Gumball woke up from the beeping of his alarm clock and groaned. It was the first day back at school after the whole void incident and he was already missing the break. Not that it was much of a break. As Gumball predicted, the gang had a lot of explaining to do about the void. First they had to tell their parents about everything that happened. Well, almost everything, They decided to omit the part about Rob pushing them into the void, instead opting to say that they fell in. They knew how intense Nicole got when it came to protecting her kids and they wanted to spare him her wrath. They decided not to mention a lot of things about Rob actually, only telling them the bare bones essentials, that he was a guy who was trapped in the void and managed to get out, and that he was the one who told them about it and showed them where it was. They figured that they should let Rob decide how much of his backstory that he wanted to tell. They also didn't mention anything about the TV show. They talked it over and they didn't think anyone else should know, at least not right away. They already exposed one life-changing secret to the masses, they figured they should wait a while before exposing another one. As it was their phone had been ringing off the hook. A ton of people wanted to know what the Wattersons have gotten themselves into now, and why they could suddenly remember things that they couldn't before. Usually the phone got passed to Gumball, who was the one who was there for the majority of the story, or to Anais, who was the best at explaining things. On about the hundredth ring Gumball picked up the phone in annoyance. It was getting pretty tedious having to explain himself over and over again.
"Hello?" He answered in a bored tone.
"Gumball? Is that you?"
"Penny?" Gumball asked. She was one of the few people who he actually wanted to talk to. "Yeah, it's me."
"Oh thank goodness! I heard about what happened. I just wanted to make sure that you were ok." Gumball smiled, it was just like Penny to worry about whether or not he was ok instead of what he had managed to get himself into. It was one of the reasons he liked her.
"Yeah, I'm ok." Gumball told her. He then glitched out again. Oh yeah, he should probably mention that. "Listen, I'm ok, but I'm a bit…..different from the last time you saw me."
"Different? Different how?"
"It's hard to explain, It turns out that you don't escape from the void without a few side effects."
"Side effects? Are you sure you're ok?" Penny said, getting a little worried.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's not like it hurts or anything."
"Well good. I was so worried about you! It was so brave of you to break open the void like that and save everyone." Gumball basked in Penny's adoration. She hadn't praised him like this since the day he helped her break out of her shell. "This actually explains so much, like why you've been acting so depressed these last few weeks. You knew about the void back then, didn't you? But you didn't think you could do anything about it. You thought you just had to live with it, right?"
"Uh, yeah! Yeah, that was it." Gumball said nervously. He didn't want to tell her about the TV show. At least, not yet. Maybe someday. But for now, he actually felt ok about that. Now he had plenty of other people to talk to about it. He didn't feel so alone anymore.
Gumball took another cursory glance at his alarm clock and realized that he spent so much time reminiscing that he was going to be late for school. Despite his earlier groaning and wishing that he got to sleep in more he was curious as to how things would change now that the void was destroyed. At the very least there would be some more students now. Gumball reluctantly got up, changed into his clothes and went to eat breakfast. "Good morning Gumball." Darwin and Anais said.
"Morning guys." Gumball replied. They all looked at each other for a bit and all started laughing, they just couldn't believe that they were doing something so mundane as eating cereal after all the chaos they just endured. It was nice to laugh again, Gumball noticed, he hadn't done it in a while. When the kids arrived at school everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at them. "You think they know it was us?" Darwin asked.
"Yeah dude, I think they do." Gumball replied. The others kept staring for a while until suddenly someone started clapping. The clapping grew until pretty soon people were full-on applauding for them. Gumball gave a big smile and soaked up the praise while also getting a little teary-eyed, Darwin blushed shyly but was also smiling despite this, and Anais was shocked for a minute before breaking out a smile of her own.
"Is this what it's like to be a movie star?" Darwin asked.
"Dude, forget movie star, it's like we're freaking superheros!" Gumball said.
"Well, you did save the world." Darwin pointed out.
"I saved our world. Which was stupid enough to design itself around me in the first place. I can't handle that kind of responsibility." Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by a breathy voice. "Um, Gumball, Darwin?" They turned and came face to face with Mr. Small. (or well, face to hip. There was quite a big height difference.) "I don't really know how to ask this, but did we really…?" Gumball and Darwin both nodded. They knew what he was going to say next.
"You mean, did we really go inside the void, rescue Molly and Janice, get out in the nick of time only to lose our memories of the event later? Yes, we did. We remember it too."
"And that's why you went to my office to ask me if I remembered it." Mr. Small confirmed, Gumball nodded again.
"Well, I don't know what to say. Thanks for helping me get Janice back, and for getting my memories back and destroying that void. It really is incredible what you guys have done, you exposed one of the biggest conspiracies in this town. I kinda thought that it would be me who would do that." Gumball and Darwin shared a look, of course, he didn't know the real big conspiracy about this town.
"Well, I'm sure it's not the only conspiracy theory in town. Maybe there's even one that's bigger, just keep looking." Gumball said, throwing him a bit of a bone. Who knows, he was right about the void, maybe he could figure out the real secret. After that the floodgates had opened and everyone went up to go talk to them, including Molly, thanking them for going in the void to save her, and even Tobias said a kind word to them for rescuing his sister. Gumball was loving the attention but unfortunately there was only a few minutes before class started and everyone had to disperse. That didn't stop them from whispering and passing notes to the trio every chance they had. The only teacher to call them out on this was Ms. Simian. It seemed she wouldn't let up on Gumball and Darwin even after they'd helped save the world. And of course, whenever they went out in the halls they got mobbed by people wanting to talk to them. One passing period they saw another mob around someone else. Gumball and Darwin went to go see what they were looking at. Only to see who they were crowded around.
"Rob! Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you didn't attend school anymore." Gumball said with a smile. They had just seen each other pretty recently, they had done what Rob had suggested and went out to talk about what they were going to do now that the void was destroyed. They also had to fill Darwin in on everything that had happened, including telling him about Rob's backstory. When the story was done he got up and gave Rob a hug, much to his surprise, and kept telling him over and over again how sorry he was. But he couldn't recall him telling them that he was going back to school.
"Well, I didn't, but my dads insisted I enroll in school again. They said something about how it was important that I get an education." He pretended to sound annoyed about it but you could tell that he was happy to have his dads back and looking out for him again. His parents had been spoiling him ever since they found out that he had been basically homeless for a while after escaping the void. They felt really bad that they weren't there to help him, even though Rob kept reassuring them that it wasn't really their fault. Gumball gave him a sly smile as he saw right through it. "Well, it'll be good to have you back." Rob smiled, he was feeling a lot better lately. He had his house and family back, and a lot of people came up to him to apologize for forgetting about him, so he had all of his friends back as well, in fact, he even had more friends now than he did before. He and a bunch of other people who were trapped in the void were thinking of starting a support group for people who the world considered mistakes. "Well, now that you're back in school, you want to have lunch with us?" Rob eagerly nodded yes, happy that they still wanted to hang out with him even after they succeeded in their goal of getting Darwin's memories back. It seems being trapped in the void has a way of bringing people together. He had gotten what he wanted, he truly was part of the gang.
Meanwhile Anais was heading to her brother's table for lunch when she heard a group of eighth graders call out to her. "Hey! Anais, was it?" They asked her.
"Yeah" She said a little hesitantly. These guys had never wanted to talk to her before.
"Were you really in that big creepy static place?" One of them asked her.
"Yeah. Yeah, I was."
"That's so cool!" They said. "You want to come sit with us and tell us about it?"
"Really? Yeah! That sounds great!" Anais said enthusiastically. She then saw that her brothers had been watching the whole thing. She turned towards them and gave a not very discreet thumbs up. Gumball and Darwin smiled and shook their heads. It seemed she still had to work on this whole "friend" thing. But at least she now had a chance to do so.
Days passed, all very much like the first, until eventually interest in their story started to die down until eventually it disappeared altogether. Gumball and Darwin got involved in other adventures. Still, things had changed. Even after losing their fascination with it, their classmates never forgot what happened and what they did, so they treated them with a little more respect than they had before. People no longer lost their memories, so a few more people had figured out about the existence of the TV show, usually Gumball and Darwin had figured out that they knew and tried to help them through it, They had gained a friend in Rob, he even came along on their adventures sometimes, and Gumball, Darwin, and Anais all knew the truth about their world, and that wasn't something they could just shake off. It had changed them, for better or for worse.
Author's note: Sorry for taking so long with this one. This past semester had been crazy busy and I didn't have time for any writing besides schoolwork. Plus, it was just really hard to wrap everything up in a way that made sense. But I'm out of school for the summer so I should be more regular on here. I can't believe I'm finally done with this fic as I've spent over a year working on it. I don't really know what's going to be next for me, I have a few smaller fics I'm working on but that's about it. Hope you liked the story!
