They had to get up to something in the 9 months besides pissing away their money, right? And I can't say I don't think they missed him, in their own, brutal fashion. Nathan first, then the rest as they come. Read and review, please.
Disclaimer: Brenden Small owns all, but I'd klokateer for him if he wanted. No profit, (hopefully) no harm.
It is four-thirty in the morning, and Nathan Explosion has just reached the conclusion that they won't be able to go on like this.
The events since the attack on Mordhaus have trailed on like an endless slideshow of suck, and it is this final discovery that first alerts Nathan to that inescapable fact.
Dethklok had carried their manager to the hospital wing, hoping it wasn't as on fire as the rest of the haus. They'd delivered their manager to the doctor and tried to crowd into the ER after him, but were chased out by a truly terrifying middle-aged nurse. If he'd been less preoccupied, Nathan probably could've gotten two songs out of the experience, easy.
After the surgery, Nathan was keeping watch. It wasn't caring, not really—he was on thin ice already with that whole Toki thing and kind of edgy about it—because someone had to be there to tell Offdensen about all the shit he'd missed while he'd been passed out, right? And besides, Offdensen wasn't really in the band, so the rules didn't apply to him.
Because it'd been a really long day even before they'd been attacked, Nathan had fallen asleep in the uncomfortable chair, just slightly too small for his frame. And then he'd woken up to an empty bed, all clean white sheets like Offdensen had never been there in the first place.
He'd found a klokateer, busy administering medical aid to the klokateers charred by the fire and savaged by those freakish fans—Revengencers, a klokateer had called them—bent over fixing an IV. When he'd questioned where Offdensen had been moved, he watched her back tense and her fingers fumble briefly before she turned to face him.
"M-my lord," she began nervously, and that was all Nathan had really needed to hear. And then he'd had to tell the rest of the band, because he couldn't find a klokateer who wasn't too busy making sure the haus wouldn't crash down around their ears. He'd been worried the most about telling Toki. He didn't think he could deal with anymore Norwegian tears and snot. But the rhythm guitarist had been the calmest out of his four band mates. He'd merely nodded like he'd expected it, and gone back to puking in his aqua-tiled bathroom.
Nathan found Pickles, Murderface, and Skwisgaar in the shell of the living room, negotiating sitting as best they could on couches that spewed black stuffing from multiple slashes. After Nathan stammered out the news, Skwisgaar stopped fiddling away on his guitar for almost the first time since Nathan had met him. All three were tense, turned inward. Perhaps they were worried that they too would be accused of caring if they said anything, but none of them stayed in the shell of the living room for long, instead drifting off their separate ways.
The evening of the funeral, it had been Nathan who had gathered everyone from the makeshift corners of Mordhaus. He'd turfed Skwisgaar's lady-friend out and poured coffee down Pickles's throat until he could stand up and keep still. Endured both the smell and the threats emanating from Murderface's room. Found Toki, finally, half-comatose and wedged behind a couch, shaking from withdrawal. He'd smacked 'em around until they were in their suits and chivvied them, whining and bitching the whole way, to the place of honor right beside the waiting funeral pyre.
He wasn't a stranger to emotion. He was Nathan Fucking Explosion. Anger, certainly. On very rare occasions, fear. Even rarer, enjoyment—happiness was not metal. And above all, hatred.
Regret, though. That was a new one, and it may be the most brutal emotion of all.
After an impressive eulogy, a klokateer handed Nathan the torch. The rote, "We release you from your earthly duties," tasted hollow, like lines, and other words itched just under the surface of his skin, making him suppress an irritable roll of his shoulders to dislodge them.
All those times they'd told Offdensen he was a robot. Or their butler. Or telling him "he just paid the bills". He was willing to die for them—he had died for them—and they'd treated him like shit. No more than they had anyone else, but unlike all those other regular jackoffs, they owed Offdensen so much. They had owed him more than anyone.
And despite those near-constant insults, it hadn't always been business. Once a month or so since Melmord quit—left—whatever he did, Offdensen would clear his evening schedule for a night of drinking with "the boys." A chance for him to loosen—or altogether lose—his tie and get sloppy.
Those memories dragged across him like broken glass as he set the torch to the pyre and the other four cast the punt off the dock. It's been months, and he can't get those memories out of his head.
Now Nathan had a constant hot churning in his gut, like when you down an entire bottle of vodka, except it didn't block out all those stupid buzzing thoughts like booze did. He never should've bothered with the rest of the band. Now the klokateers came to them with their problems. Frontman and leader were not syner—snog—synogo—they weren't the same, dammit. This is what happened when you tried to care about other people.
And he has no clue how Offdensen did it. Not even the expenses; they'd all been wary of entering Offdensen's office and frankly afraid to go near the filing cabinets. Just dealing with the day to day running of the haus. The klokateers have mostly started taking care of themselves, but pulling Pickles back just before he OD's, and preventing Murderface from undermining the reconstruction of the haus both with his knives and his ridiculous suggestions, and keeping everyone, but most particularly Skiwsgaar and Toki, from killing each other had for some reason become Nathan's new domain. And they aren't even thinking about touring, or making new music. This is just keeping them alive and mostly intact, and it's slowly grinding what remains of his sanity into powder in a way that would be brutal if it was just happening to someone else.
Why the fuck did it have to be him? Pickles and Murderface were both older. At least, Nathan thought they were older than him.
And the caring rule is shot to shit, because he feels responsible for the rest of the band now, can't help but care. He's never felt this way about people before, gave a shit what happened to them. He hates it.
At the same time he wishes it came on sooner, because maybe if he'd cared he could've gotten to Offdensen a little quicker, actually saved him from that masked freak instead of just ensuring their manager became a slightly less beaten corpse when he was burnt to ashes.
There had been the furrows of a frown permanently etched between Nathan Explosion's eyebrows since he was eleven. It was the other discovery, stepping out of the shower, that first made him aware that they could not go on like this. His scream had shook Mordhaus to its already shaky foundations.
He'd found his first gray hair. Gray hair was so not metal.