Summary:

After everything that happened, Cecil has to heal. Carlos helps.

Notes:

Spoilers through Episode 47. Written after Episode 46 but before listening to 47.

The section involving the Benny Hill Theme was written for anyone attempting to cope after listening to Episode 47. Enjoy the mental images, everyone.

This piece was heavily influenced by speculation on Tumblr that Cecil's issues with the Apache Tracker's headdress and talk of Indian Magic might be due to his own heritage.

The treaty issues mentioned are real and currently ongoing.

Cecil lay curled up under the thick blankets, listening to the cat purring next to him on the futon.

He hurt.

But, he hurt less. And Carlos was keeping a notebook of when he needed medication and how he reported feeling - "I'll keep track of it so you don't have to," he'd said.

Cecil thought that made sense. And Carlos wasn't working on the mystery of the house that doesn't exist anymore, so he really did need something scientific to do.

He just hadn't expected he'd ever be the subject when he'd kept trying to get Carlos to let him help with an experiment.

It was just then that Carlos walked in and sat next to him. "Someone's here to see you," he said gently. "If you feel up to it."

Fear.

Carlos was still adjusting to Night Vale. He still didn't have the reflexes and danger sense Cecil had developed before he was ten. The greater danger was over, but…

But the cat still lay beside them, purring in sympathy. And he did have Cecil's reflexes. Possibly even better - he was, after all, a cat.

Cecil shifted and stuck his face out. "Who?"

Carlos smiled. "Dana and a special visitor who has something for you."

Somehow he kept the bile down.

'Special visitor' was not a good phrase for him right now. Not that he wanted to have that talk with Carlos. He really just wanted to forget everything. Just go back to before the yellow helicopters had come, when contract renewal was the most feared thing in the world and he'd been surviving that for a solid decade.

But he knew he could trust Dana, especially after what she'd done.

It was unorthodox to say the least for the voices calling the new mayor's name to not only announce someone who had not even been in town for the debate or actually running, but be in fact the voices of a conquering mysterious army said new mayor was actively leading into Night Vale at the time.

It was also unorthodox for the selection to happen over a year in advance of Election Day, but the mayor's death during the takeover made a Special Election fully justifiable.

It worked. No one cared that it was unorthodox. They just cared that StrexCorp fell and fled.

(Unsuccessfully. One quick talk with Hiram McDaniels about their plans for him - 'tastefully stuffed in the CEO's lobby in Desert Bluffs' - had led to him going off to make exactly that happen. Technically murder, but the sheriff's secret police were making absolutely sure there would never be a successful investigation. No body, he probably wandered out into the desert, so on and so forth. Kevin and Lauren had both been on the premises at the time, and there were rumors from the Boy Scouts with Advanced Security Hacking and Video Editing merit badges that the resulting security footage went well with the Benny Hill Theme.)

"Dana?" he called out.

Could it have really only been a few weeks since he'd been so sure he'd never see her anytime soon?

"I'm here, Cecil." She walked into the room and knelt close so he could see her without having to move. "In an official capacity."

"Oh?"

He had tried to do so much, and managed to do so little…

"Good afternoon, young man," said a voice that was more than a little familiar.

"Chief Sleeps-In-The-Night?" Cecil asked with more than a little wonder.

Cecil's father had been just closely related enough to get the family on the tribal rolls, and so far as the tribe was concerned once you were on you never came off no matter how intermarried you were.

Cecil had always felt awkward and defensive about it. He'd never claimed anything based on it, and it led to uncomfortable questions whenever he went out to cover one of their public events.

Legally, he belonged. Culturally, genetically, phenotypically, he completely did not.

And he'd had more than one talk with the chief about it, off the air, when the man was at the station for an interview.

Cecil had always been in awe near him. What bravery did it take to announce to the world that you didn't pretend to sleep at night, but actually slept? More than he possessed, that was for sure.

The chief knelt beside Dana, carefully setting a bag on the floor with the gentlest of thumps. "Yes. I hear you are mending well?"

"Slowly but steadily." Even if he still didn't want to be touched more than was necessary. Even if coming out of his cloth cocoon was frightening and made him feel unbearably vulnerable.

"Good, good."

Then, Cecil just had to ask. "Why are you here, sir?"

"You are legally a member of the tribe," the chief told him warmly. "After everything that happened…"

"Legally, only."

"Which more than counts. Let it never be said we don't recognize our warriors."

"I didn't manage to do anything to them."

"You certainly did more than I did, and earlier." He reached for the bag. "Now, we'll be all ceremonial about this once you're up to it, but the federal paperwork is all filed and legal now, so we held a vote and decided to go ahead."

Cecil was very confused and then the chief pulled the small shadowbox out and…

He couldn't see, and he was shaking his head even as Carlos completely gave into the urge to touch the lump of blankets covering his shoulder.

"No. No no no no. I'm not… I'm not…"

"You are," the chief told him firmly. "Success in the height of battle is only required of war chiefs. Impressive bouts of bravery serve for everyone else, otherwise few scouts would ever earn one. Trying to help that raid with nothing but a cardboard barricade and a microphone more than counts."

He wiped at his eyes with the blankets.

An eagle feather. For him. For what he'd tried to do.

He, Cecil, had an eagle feather.

Carlos asked Dana, "How is Tamikka?" while Cecil was still putting himself back together.

"She'll need more time than Cecil," she told them gravely. "And her family…"

"My son and daughter-in-law are looking after her," the chief told them. "And looking to adopt."

Cecil felt uncomfortable about that. Cross-cultural adoption had always struck him wrong, especially if the child was old enough to have adopted their own parental culture.

"Her father had the most iron-clad claim with the Cherokee I've ever seen. If she wants to pursue that later on, we'll help. Otherwise, this should be enough."

"Enough for what?" Cecil asked. "And what do you mean, 'claim with the Cherokee'?"

Carlos spoke up. "I remember reading about it, Cecil. There was a treaty, and all the freedmen who had been owned by members of the tribe along with all their descendants were supposed to be Cherokee in perpetuity. And since then, the claims under that treaty have been denied."

"She'll be asserting her birth family's history, not denying it," the chief confirmed.

"And they are taking very good care of her right now," Dana told him. "It's just a good thing for her she was already so far ahead in school."

Cecil nodded. It was a good thing. But then, anyone who could defeat a librarian hardly needed a diploma to do security work somewhere.

"Enough for what?" Carlos echoed.

The chief smiled and held up a closed hand, then began counting off by raising fingers. "She touched the enemy. She led a successful war party, and in that raid spared an enemy's life by taking her captive. And then there's the matter of the stolen helicopters, which our tribe does recognize as a form of 'horse' in some legal contexts..."

Something about that made the blood in Cecil's arteries make rushing noises in his ears.

"… those are the requirements the last Crow war chief met in World War II. I saw it on the television in college," Carlos reported with wonder.

"Tamikka is a war chief," Cecil mumbled with wonder.

He had helped a war chief by trying to get her reinforcements from the community.

Maybe he did deserve that feather.

He had Carlos hang the small shadowbox up on the wall, low enough that he could see it clearly from the futon. He was sure that was the intent, given the lecture he'd gotten as they left about not trying it on until there could be a proper formal ceremony.

It was evening. The faceless old woman had laid everything out while they weren't looking as a hint.

She'd become rather fond of Cecil during the mayoral campaign, even more than she had already been.

Carlos met his eyes uneasily. "I guess we should go ahead and get this over with."

Cecil felt fear rise, but he resisted it as he'd had to for days. There was just no way around it.

Bandage changing time, when being touched was horrible.

Part of why he'd come home from the hospital when he had was that Carlos was the only one who could do it once he'd gotten well enough to try fighting back. Well, and Cecil's sister, who had come home from out of town to a traumatized daughter, wrecked brother, and deep and abiding need for a good divorce lawyer.

Which had become a deep and abiding need for an inheritance specialist after Steve picked the wrong day to visit the StrexCorp headquarters.

Either way, she hadn't been up to it. She had her own problems. Which left Carlos, who still didn't quite have the Night Vale skill of working past someone's fear and terror for their own good quite figured out yet.

He was getting better at it. And he ought to be, with all the practice he was getting.

Cecil kept staring at the feather whenever he could.

Cecil lay trembling under his blankets afterwards. "Thank you," he whispered.

Carlos nodded uneasily. "I just wish that this wasn't so hard on you."

"Better than it was right after I got out."

Carlos laughed nervously. "You put two nurses in the ICU and you're still too weak to sit up on your own."

The fact that meant he'd been terrified enough to pull on his body's last-ditch survival reserves went unstated.

"Like I said, better than right after I got out." He looked toward the wall again. "I still can't quite believe that's there."

"Well, it is and it's legal. I saw the paperwork before Dana left a copy on the kitchen table. Federal and local. Even the sheriff's department knows and is fine with it."

"Well, of course they know," Cecil answered automatically. The only way to exist in Night Vale was to just accept that the sheriff's department knew about everything. Most of the time, they really didn't care all that much. "I... I just..."

"Face it, you're closely related enough for them to count it even if you don't," Carlos said with a good-natured roll of his eyes.

"What would you know about it?" Cecil asked.

Carlos poked at his own arm. "This. No one with Spanish blood in North America gets this dark without intentional tanning unless they've got native blood. I thought you'd have realized that by now."

Cecil met his eyes.

"It's just sort of there. It happened. And claiming descent doesn't have to mean claiming anything else." He laughed slightly. "I'd guess the chief would have been scheming to adopt you into recognition if your father hadn't taken care of that already."

"But I didn't do much of anything."

"That's not what he thinks. Or the rest of town. Or me." Carlos knelt, close enough to touch if Cecil had felt like it. His voice and his breath were both warmer than the evening air.

Something welled up that hadn't for long enough that Cecil almost didn't recognize it. And then, he almost wanted to completely ignore it. It was frightening, and scary, and who knew what might happen if he gave into it.

But oh, if he could stand it...

"Carlos?"

"Yes?"

"I... I... I feel like I want to be held," he admitted quickly.

Carlos looked at him with shock. "Well, that's new."

Cecil felt very uncomfortable.

"An experiment? We see if you can stand it, and I back off the moment you want me to stop?

Cecil answered by raising one edge of the blankets. "Before I... before I..."

"Shh." Carlos kissed the top of his head - which was so different from anything that had happened to Cecil in custody that it really didn't count as 'touching', at least not once the scabs from being hauled by his hair a few more times than Cecil wanted to think about had started clearing up - and slipped in beside him cautiously.

It was oddly okay. And it stayed oddly okay when Carlos shifted closer.

Then Carlos wrapped an arm around him, and something broke.

Cecil felt Carlos begin to move away even as the tears blocked his own sight. He found himself reaching out, grabbing Carlos's shirt in a death grip, and sobbing, "Stay. Please, just stay. I thought... I thought..."

"Shh." Carlos kissed the top of his head again and let Cecil cry into his shoulder. "I'm here. They aren't. They'll never be anywhere again."

And he stayed right there, like that, until Cecil fell asleep to the sound of his heart in the ear he had pressed to Carlos's chest.

The imperfect world turned, taking them with it, and it was good enough.

And when Cecil woke up there, he didn't even have the disjointed jolt of fear he'd had since StrexCorp had fallen, the moment of not knowing where he was, if the blankets were just a trick to be taken away later, if everything was just another of their lies.

"Carlos?" he mumbled.

Carlos groaned.

"Can we try that again tonight?"

"Sure," he grunted before rather obviously passing back out.

They lay like that together until Carlos finally woke up properly and saw to breakfast.

It turned out that day had been something of a breakthrough, and one experiment was followed by others.

Until Cecil could sit up with help without feeling like his skin was trying to crawl off. Until he could stand being helped outside without being completely paralyzed with the terror that they were still out there somewhere.

Until the day Carlos and one of the new interns could get him into the car and into town, Carlos wrapping an arm around his shoulders the entire way.

And then Carlos carried him into the building, through familiar hallways that had been so recently painted it was disconcerting, and into a booth that was his booth and yet not his booth.

He did not want to think about the fact everything appeared fresh and new and not his, even down to the floor tiles, but he also knew he couldn't have dealt with it if it had looked the same as when... as when... as when...

Carlos put him down on the half-reclined beach lounge chair that had been crammed in there for him, kissing Cecil's forehead as he stood up.

The intern got one of the interview boom mikes into a reasonable position. "I'll be right outside manning the switches," she told him. "Just worry about talking. And we can take over whenever you need to take a break or need to stop for the day."

He nodded, and she went outside.

Carlos squeezed his hand. "I'll be right out there if you need me, and I'll be next to the window where you can see me whenever I can."

"Thank you for this."

Carlos handed him the headphones before he smiled and left, closing the door behind him.

The intern's voice chirped from the headphones and Cecil slipped them over his ears.

"... remember, healing is a process. Good morning, Night Vale!"

The familiar intro music nearly made him weep.

"Night Vale Community Radio has a special treat for everyone today," she announced when it faded into otherwise dead air. "We have a special guest in the studio today, and he brought someone with him I'm sure you'd all like to hear from. So I'm going to turn you over to him and get the rest of the announcements in to him after the first supporter messages, since I seem to have forgotten to hand them over," she rambled nervously.

The ON AIR light lit up. It did not light up the usual red, and that was enough to cause a few precious seconds of dead air.

The irritation at the dead air was what brought Cecil back to what he was doing. "Good morning, Night Vale."

The flashing lights of incoming calls began immediately.

It was a good day.

He took regular breaks and things got better and better as the day went on.

And then, after he'd hastily eaten a fast dinner during the weather, Carlos came in and handed him the evening announcements.

A bit of ongoing reconstruction news.

A few special announcements from Dana in the name of community recovery emotional support.

And then...

"In state news, the state Supreme Court has lifted the stay of the... WHAT RULING!? When did anyone make a ruling? I... I..."

The intern was just staring at him, dumbfounded.

Carlos visibly shoved her sideways and fumbled at the board. Cecil knew he'd seen how to at the very least switch between microphones on the old setup.

"It happened while you were in custody. We thought they'd told you," Carlos said simply but with clear strain in his voice. "Back when they couldn't find me. And you were still completely incoherent in the hospital when I found out, and with the stay... why mention it?"

"They wouldn't have told me," Cecil told him bluntly. "Not while they couldn't produce you."

Offering real hope of something genuine would have destroyed their attempts to make me accept the false smiling future they wanted me to accept, he thought.

Only from the look that came over Carlos's face on the other side of the window made it clear that Cecil had not actually thought that, and that in fact the entirety of Night Vale had probably heard him.

By this point, word had no doubt spread through the community that he was back at the station, even if only for one sweet day, and who would want to miss that after everything?

The world was suddenly very very overwhelming and the air was very very dead.

"I didn't want to mention anything until you got better," Carlos finally said in a quiet voice. "I wanted..."

"...everything to be perfect?" Cecil asked with a growl as he found his voice again. He looked at the clock, judged his time, and charged on with the confidence of experience.

Everyone in town was going to hear this, and it was what he most wanted them to hear.

"Perfection isn't real. It doesn't happen. It's a lie. Everything has good and bad. If anything ever looks completely good, it's hiding something. You should know this by now. You should all know this by now. What we have is this imperfect day on this imperfect world with our own imperfections and everyone else's, and our own choices about how to cope with it."

Carlos was smiling despite the public chastisement. "Actually, I wanted the stay to be lifted. And you standing on your own feet for a change would be nice."

Cecil had to laugh.

They still had three minutes. There was time.

"So?"

"So."

The intern was silently making jazz hands and Cecil could faintly hear cheering somewhere else in the building.

"And with that, our time for the day is nearly through, dear listeners. Next up, by popular request, is a rerun of last year's Boy Scout Talent Show coverage. And now, I must take your leave again, until I know not when."

He felt tears running down his face and hoped it would be soon.

"Good night, Night Vale. Good night."