A/N: Man, you know the Courage fandom is in a dire place when even the Halloween season doesn't see an increase in content like it used to. I can't let myself off the hook either when I specifically started the ATE Halloween story a few months early to make sure it would be finished in time for Halloween...only to not finish it in time anyway lmao. I still have hope that the Courage fandom will see something of a revival within the next few years. There was a Courage and Scooby Doo crossover special that was apparently supposed to come out this year and was probably delayed due to the virus. That prequel special that was announced a year or two ago is apparently still in the works too so we'll probably see that within the next couple of years as well. I strongly suspect the prequel is going to be some sort of Back To The Future style time travel plot. When it was announced, we were told that it was going to be about how Muriel and Eustace got together. I really doubt they are going to do a Courage special this far after the show ended and not have him be present in it. I could only see it working if there are time travel shenanigans going on and Courage has to make sure Muriel and Eustace still get together so that his future can happen. We'll have to see how it turns out, and until then I'm just going to keep writing my stupid story that I've put waaay too much thought and effort into and do what little I can to keep this zombie of a fandom alive. lol
Chapter 115: Surgery Day
No matter how hard Courage tried, he could not get Computer to lower the barrier between them. His companion's self imposed exile was starting to go on for so long that he couldn't help but worry that he had made him angry. All he could do was pace back and forth across the empty room while talking as much as he could with the hope that Computer could still hear him.
It was when the usual nasty can of dog food was brought to him that Courage began to understand just how dire the situation was. Computer did not react like normal. In fact, he did not seem to notice or care, even though he must have been feeling Courage's hunger.
Funnily enough, it was this exact sort of absence that made it so easy for Courage to willfully want to give up his only chance at surviving. As much as Computer's antics had a habit of driving him up the wall, he missed it just as much. It was as endearing as it was annoying. He could not lose that, not now. The thought of living in a world where his companion, with all of his quirks and annoyances, was gone forever, it was beyond him.
At least half a day passed, if not more, before he felt the barrier begin to waver. As it slowly came down, he got the impression that it was not something that Computer wanted to do. It was more that keeping the barrier up was taxing and it had reached a point where it was just too exhausting for him to keep it up.
With the barrier gone, Courage was suddenly hit by feelings of despair and sadness so intense that if he had not already been sitting down it would have knocked him off his feet. The truth of Computer's intentions was now entirely clear. He had not put up the barrier in anger, he had been trying to keep Courage from feeling his overwhelming hopelessness.
Courage almost couldn't believe it. His declaration that he was willing to give up his one chance to live for Computer's sake had somehow robbed his companion of some crucial hope, some vital light at the end of the tunnel that had been keeping him going the entire time. It was quickly becoming apparent that if he did not do something to fix this that Computer was just going to keep spiraling deeper and deeper into despair.
"I-" He began, ear drooping in dismay. "I'm really sorry. I never meant to make you feel this way."
He feared for a moment that even with the barrier gone that Computer was too lost in his own sorrow to hear him, but he felt his shoulders drop listlessly, not of his own accord, and his companion began to speak.
"Don't apologize. You didn't do anything worth apologizing for." Computer gently said, his voice sounding just as miserable as he felt.
"But-" Courage began, desperate to cheer his companion up.
Computer cut him off. "Thank you for thinking that I'm someone worth giving up your one and only chance to avoid a painful end, but you are wrong to do so."
He looked down at Courage's paws, unfamiliar to him even as they glowed that radioactive blue that the two of them were so used to seeing.
"You know," He sighed, giving voice to the crushing hopelessness he felt. "I really did believe that if I could just do this one thing, if I could just get you to that damnable mountain and save your life, that all of the suffering I have endured might have been worth it in the end. I needed it to mean something, to have it all accumulate into one truly good act." He listlessly looked out across the room, letting Courage's head rest against the wall. "With the way my luck is, I should have known that this was never going to end the way I wanted it to. It was a nice dream though, to at least feel for a little while like I could actually take control of my own fate and have a say in what happens to it."
He closed Courage's eyes. "No matter what we do, there is no happy ending waiting for us at the end of all of this. Either we're both going to end up dead or one of us is going to have to go on alone when neither of us want that. This has always been your choice to make though. If you really are okay with dying, for some slim chance that I might get to live, I will accept your choice no matter how much I don't want to. I must see this through to the end. I cannot turn back now, not after everything. Just understand that I cannot imagine a worse fate for myself than having to go back to what it was like before. If you live, you'll at least have more time to spend with your family before they die. If I live, it means going back to being shuffled from one owner to the next with no say in anything that happens to me. I will be alone again and at the mercy of others. I cannot think of anything worse than that."
He meant it. There was a slight tremble in his voice and Courage could feel his dread at the thought of his life going back to the way it once was.
After remaining silent the entire time so that Computer could voice his fears, Courage had to speak up. "C'mon, Compute. You know for a fact that you don't have to go back to that now. You can keep living like an organic being, and even if you did decided to go back to living as a machine, you have friends now who would never do anything bad to you. There's Nina and all of those dogs you've befriended. You are not alone anymore."
Despite his best effort, nothing he was saying was helping to stop Computer's backslide into complete and utter hopelessness. He really and truly could not see a better future for himself. After all that had been done to him, Courage could not blame him for it, but he so badly wished that he could prove to him otherwise.
"Still," He went on, deciding that there was only one thing he could do, no matter how much it hurt to give in. "I never realized just how important getting to the mountain was for you. This isn't just about me, and it never has been. What you want is important too. Let's fix this illness of mine, and when we get back to Nowhere-" He voiced this last part in spite of his growing fear and suspicion that Computer was not planning on coming back from the mountain. "-we'll get you fixed up too. I've been thinking about that joke you made about mummifying you in duct tape, and maybe that's exactly the kind of way we need to look at it. You've said it yourself that you don't think you could ever put your programming back to the way it once was. The damage He did runs too deep to be reversed. So instead of trying to fix what's already broken, we should build up entirely new programming to act as scaffolding or a support structure for the rest of your system. If we could just get it to stop falling apart, that would keep you going for at least a few more years, right?"
"You make a titanic task like that sound so much easier to pull off than it would be. A project like that would require a lot of time and a lot of planning on my part, time that I probably don't have. Even if we made it past the planning stage, it would take months of work. You would have to spend hours upon hours typing out several novels worth of new coding. I would have to guide you every step of the way and tell you exactly what you'd need to type for every last line of code, or maybe I would have to teach you enough about coding that you'd become something of a programmer yourself. Who knows, you might actually have to learn something."
Courage blinked. "What are you implying, hmm?" He dryly asked.
"That you're dumb." Computer teased.
"L-like you're any better! I've seen the idiot behind the curtain!"
"At least I project an air of intelligence, which is more than you can say." He laughed.
Courage couldn't help but laugh too. He could sense that Computer was feeling better, if only a little bit. Anything to help him begin that climb back out of the pit he'd found himself in.
"Listen," Courage began. "No matter how this ends, we've got to make the best out of the time we have left together."
Computer silently and sorrowfully agreed with him.
Courage offered him a smile of encouragement and took a page from his book and wrapped his own arms around himself. It felt a bit silly to do, but it was the only physical comfort he could offer his companion at the moment.
Feeling Computer's apologetic gratefulness, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to simply stop sidestepping the issue and just tell him exactly how much he loved him. But, he knew deep down that if he said it right now, it would only do more harm. Computer was just not in the right mental space to hear or accept it right now. It would have to wait for a better time and a better place.
Computer had to know though. He must have felt it by now and picked up on Courage's thoughts. Maybe that was exactly why Courage was suffering from such a deep seated feeling that confessing would only do harm, because perhaps Computer was already so deeply convinced that nothing good would come of it that Courage was inadvertently picking up on those feelings. He needed to fix this somehow, no matter what it might take. He was not going to let Computer keep turning an undeniable positive into a negative. There was no doubt that his companion was viewing this as yet another seemingly happy thing in his life that was only going to end painfully for him.
Courage was determined to prove to him otherwise. Soon enough he'd figure out a better way to approach this and then he'd make him see that this was not a bad thing. Out of all the pain and suffering Courage had not been able to stop from happening to his beloved companion, this was the one good thing they had between them that he was not going to allow to turn into even more hurting.
….
A day or so passed, although it was hard to figure out the passage of time in that windowless room. Computer had thankfully recovered to a point that he was in much higher spirits, although he had annoyed Courage by repeatedly apologizing for what happened the day before. Courage had, of course, assured him that it was nothing to apologize for, but that had only caused Computer to start thanking him instead for 'putting up with his depressing nonsense' with just as much annoying frequency. Courage was honestly not sure how he was ever going to get it through that thick, metallic skull of his that he was always happy to help him out and that it wasn't 'a bother', as his companion liked to put it.
Over the last few hours Computer had started taking a particular interest in the ever growing pile of empty dog food cans that they had ultimately stacked up in a corner to keep the lingering 'nasty dog food' smell away.
Courage had long since figured out where his companion's thought process was going with this, and, stifling a groan, he uttered out, "You're not going to be able to make a weapon out of those cans, Compute."
"You're just not thinking creatively enough."
A weird image flashed through Courage's head.
"You're not going to stab your way through the SCC using sharpened tin cans, Compute."
"...I can try."
Courage admittedly was getting a little worried that they were never going to get that machine out of his chest. Elizabeth had not made an appearance since she downloaded Computer into his head. Maybe Computer had the right idea about this and it was time to start figuring out an escape plan. The only problem with that was that they would need to decide if they were going to try and reach Computer's old body and see what they could do about the other Constructs, or if they should just leave them to their fate. It wasn't even guaranteed that Elizabeth would succeed in destroying them, and what then? Even if they escaped, the Constructs were likely to come after them looking for revenge if the SCC failed to put a stop to them.
Boredom was quickly setting in as well, now that the two of them had exhausted just about every relevant topic they could think of discussing. There was nothing to do in the room but pace and make complex mental blueprints about how to turn tin cans into knives.
"...Maybe we could give them tetanus." Computer mused.
Courage rolled his eyes in good humor. "Great idea, Bob."
"Ugh! Don't call me that!"
Computer had gained a renewed interest in finding a name for himself after remembering his past, and with boredom taking hold, they had fallen back upon their old time waster of thinking up names for him. He had been as picky as ever though and eventually Courage decided that he was going to annoy him by calling him different names at random, and it was working splendidly.
"What are you going to do about it?" He teased his companion. "Throw rusty cans at me, er, us until we get tetanus?"
"I might." He groused. "I should start calling you, I don't know, Fredrick or something and see how you like it."
Courage placed his paws behind his head. "You know, if the stars do ever align and you finally pick a name for yourself, it's going to feel really weird not calling you Computer anymore. I'm so used to it now that I can't imagine saying anything else. Maybe that's why you can't pick a name. Nothing sounds right to you other than the name you're familiar with."
"That's just great. I'm stuck with the name of the appliance that I just happened to inhabit and repetition has made it stick. My luck really is the worst."
"Would you rather be called Kenny?"
"...You may have a point there."
"Well, don't get too disheartened. I'm sure there's the perfect name for you out there and we just haven't found it yet."
"I'm beginning to have my doubts, and I really am starting to understand why you flesh creatures have other people do the naming for you. Trying to do it yourself is like falling into a black hole of choices from which there is no escape."
"Then why don't you just let me pick one for you and call it a day?"
"With the names you've been calling me all day? No way!"
And so the black hole of a quest to name Computer continued with no end in sight...
Even as the day wore on, Computer was still coming up with new and even more insane ways to utilize the dog food cans against the SCC. None of them had any chance of working, but at least he was having fun visualizing all of the ways he could give the SCC a taste of their own medicine. Courage was less enthused to be bombarded with images of things like rocket launchers made out of tin cans exploding people into something resembling the nasty dog food he loathed so much.
When they both heard the door unlock, Computer muttered, "Time for more ammo." and waited to be given what was going to be either lunch or dinner depending on what time it was outside of their makeshift prison cell. Not that it matter much since the menu eternally consisted of dog food that tasted like death.
Surprisingly though, it was not one of the SCC soldiers who entered the room. It was Elizabeth, finally making an appearance after her long absence. She did not have any cans of dog food on her either, much to Courage's relief and Computer's annoyance.
"I have made my decision." She announced, failing to go into detail on what exact decision she had made. "I have meticulously gone over every option we have available, and I believe that this is the right course of action to take."
Courage wanted to bring up Edgar just to see her reaction, but until he could get that machine out of his chest, it probably wasn't the best idea to provoke her.
She leered down at Courage with that smug, thinly veiled look of contempt that she just loved to give him. "First, we are going to remove the infestation from your chest. You and the Construct are the only leverage we have left if my plan goes south, so I will need you in as good of health as a dying dog can be. After the surgery, we will wait a few days to allow you to recover and then I am going to destroy the amalgamation. If I fail to destroy it through mechanical means, as a last resort we will euthanize the dog it is still hosted within. Not even a monstrosity such as the one we are dealing with can survive the death of its host body."
Courage could sense Computer's doubt that any of this was going to work.
"You're going to need my help during the surgery, right? So how is this going to work then?" He asked.
Elizabeth went on talking like she wasn't replying to him. "The dog will be put under and the Construct will remain awake within the sedated body. From there it will be able to act if any...complications occur. The whole process should be relatively painless."
"Relatively?" Computer dryly repeated back to her.
"We are in uncharted territory. Nothing like this has ever been preformed in such a way before. A Construct can very easily be kept awake while the host is unconscious, else we never would have been able to modify the possession process to make the host's mind go dormant while the Construct remains active. I have reasons to believe that the sedation during surgery will keep it from feeling any pain the host's body might experience. We will have to see if my belief holds true."
Courage winced at that. It was bad enough that the only thing he could do for himself at this point was hope that the surgery would go well, but now it was going to involve putting Computer into a potentially painful and downright creepy situation, even if the pain itself was dulled. If this did not work out, he was going to get a first row seat to finding out what it's like to have your insides pureed while alive and conscious.
Elizabeth cleared her throat. "We are getting everything set up for the surgery now. You will be escorted there within the next hour. I suggest you prepare yourself."
She turned on her heels and exited the room without another word. Courage was left standing there in dismay as an anxious pit formed in his stomach.
"Are you okay with doing this?" He asked Computer. He was lucky in that he was at least going to be asleep for what might be his messy end, but Computer was the one who was going to watch the insides of the body he was inhabiting being opened up and possibly...
"It doesn't matter." Computer answered, shaking Courage's head in a surprisingly nonchalant way. "If we're going to get this thing out of you, I have to do this. Don't worry, I can handle it, even if it ends up being a bit uncomfortable."
"B-but think of all the blood and guts!" Courage exclaimed, letting some of his own fear of the procedure color his reaction. He was certain that he must have projected an image to Computer of himself looking down at his own torso with his organs and ribs exposed.
"They're not my blood and guts, now are they?"
Courage was surprised to find that he could not tell if Computer was only putting on a brave face for his sake or if he really did not care as much as he was trying to appear. It seemed that ever since he had figured out how to put up that barrier between their minds, he was getting a little better at keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself. Courage suspected that the technique required heavy concentration that would inevitably become taxing after awhile, so Computer could not block everything out all of the time.
Still, Courage was having a hard enough time trying to control his own fear of what was coming without anxiously speculating about where Computer's own state of mind was on this. Desperate to take his mind off of everything, he decided to ask a question that had been nagging at him for awhile now and was once again relevant.
"Just why the heck does Elizabeth sound so much like you?"
Computer made him shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Courage raised an eyebrow curiously. "You sure there isn't a big twist coming that you're actually her Construct? I mean, you're always saying that you can change your voice really easily. Are you sure the settings didn't getting switched from female to male at some point?"
"I seriously doubt that." Computer argued. "I think I would remember if I had been a girl at some point, or at least sounded like one, and I can think of nothing more horrifying than being more like that Astor woman. I suppose then that I could see why a 'girl' me would rather be a guy if I had the misfortune of being modeled after her, but that cannot be the case. If I were her Construct, she could not be here right now. Of course, I would be a lot more happy if she really was a long dead pile of dust, but life never gives me what I want, so she is very much alive and cannot have been used to create a Construct."
"Maybe they turned her body into a robot after she died, or a zombie...or a robot zombie."
Computer groaned. "You've got way too much science fiction stuffed in your head!"
"Says the super weapon A.I. currently stuffed in my head..." Courage dryly shot back. "I might be on to something though. Think about it. The dying person's soul isn't used to make a Construct. What if the SCC found a way to capture the soul before it can move on? Maybe they just moved her soul into a robot!"
Computer opened his mouth to refute him, and then realized that it did make some level of sense. Alarmed, he exclaimed, "I've already got enough issues I'm trying to suppress without an identity crisis on top of it! This is not a path we want to go down, Courage! It was already hard enough to accept that the guy I came from thought that she was wife material! I really, really, really don't want to be her!"
In spite of his own warning, Computer proceeded to have an identity crisis anyway.
"There was often long stretches of time where I never talked to any of my owners. I could go months without speaking to anyone. Might I have accidentally changed my voice settings at some point and never noticed? Are my previously corrupted memories still messed up?" He made Courage's eyes widen even further in alarm. "Am I a girl?"
Courage suddenly dropped to the floor and was made to curl up into a ball. After everything, this was apparently the thing to finally break Computer.
"Can you not have a mental breakdown in my head...again?" Courage sighed. "You're a genderless soul machine thing that lives in electrical currents and has spent time in the bodies of all sorts of organic beings. Whether you see yourself as a girl or a guy should not cause you to have a world ending identity crisis."
"...I don't know who I am anymore." Computer uttered out. Overdramatic, as always.
Courage couldn't help but laugh a little at Computer's theatrics. "I saw Elizabeth bleed when you and your siblings smacked her across the head. She would have to be a convincing robot or maybe she really is still flesh and blood. Your world isn't over yet, Compute. We don't know what's going on here or why you two sound so similar. Still," He put on a small, mischievous smile. "I'm kinda having fun imagining what you'd be like as a girl."
"You wouldn't see me being like that Astor woman, that's for certain." Computer grumbled.
Courage's smile became a little more genuine. "You'd still be you, and that's all that matters."
"Well, that Elizabeth woman had better hope she's not responsible for my existence or else we're going to have quite the colorful exchange of words." He skipped a beat. "Wait, are you implying that you'd be okay with me being...ugh, a girl?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because I'm not, so stop making me see all of your weird mental images!"
"Okay! Okay!" Courage laughed. Although his laughter was cut short when he heard a sound outside their room. He reacted by yelping and jumping so high in the air that he nearly hit the ceiling. When he came back down and his feet hit the floor, Computer forced him to straighten up and dust himself off, even as he continued to tremble and whimper pathetically.
"Stop being so scared. I won't let anything bad happen to you." His companion said with complete confidence. "If I have to strangle that thing myself while your insides spill out, I will."
Courage flinched. If that had been meant to comfort him, Computer had missed the mark by a mile.
Unable to stop himself, Courage continued to tremble as the door opened. A group of five SCC doctors stepped inside, one wheeling a metal surgical table into the room. They talked amongst themselves, but never to Courage himself. They would point a quick finger or gesture in his direction, but that was about it.
Computer watched the scene unfold in wary silence. He was far more interested in what the doctors were saying compared to Courage himself, but even he could only catch snippets of their conversations.
Finally, one of them went over to Courage and picked him up. They placed him down on the cold table and strapped him in. He was suddenly reminded of all the old nightmares he used to have about being euthanized, and this felt just like that. All he needed was for one of the doctors to pull out an impractically large syringe. Because of that, his fearfulness only managed to increase tenfold.
Computer made a wordless attempt to comfort him, but even his protective presence did nothing to calm him now. It was a bit ironic though, because as Courage's terror increased, it only helped to make Computer even more confident that he could get through this for his sake. Any doubts or fears he might have had himself were slowly being replaced by sheer determination to see this through so that Courage might wake up again, alive and unharmed.
The doctors wheeled Courage down the hall and into an elevator. What little spacial awareness he had went away after that because he was not sure if they went up or down. His neck was strapped down so tightly that he could not look at the elevator display, only up into the lights. Wherever he was in the building, they wheeled him deeper inside. The SCC solider presence was increasing as well. He could not see them but he could hear them talking. Finally, they turned rightward and into a room. Still trembling, Courage soon found himself staring up at a pair of blinding surgery lights.
"Here we go..." Computer muttered out very quietly. "Have fun taking a nice power nap. I almost envy you, but who knows, it might be fun to wrestle with a deadly machine while trying to keep your insides...inside."
Given how excessively the SCC had strapped them down, they apparently very much did not want him doing anything that might result in Courage's insides relocating somewhere outside of his body.
Rendered shadowy by the harsh overhead lights, a doctor leaned over Courage, checking him. Then the darkened form of an anesthesia mask hovered over him, larger and more cone shaped for a snout than what would be used on a human. His heart rate increased as it lowered down toward him. He could hear a rushing sound inside of his ears. His own panicky breaths sounded muffled.
A voice said, "Count down from ten." as the mask was pressed in around his muzzle, and he was so beside himself with fear that he simply did as he was told.
"Ten...nine..."
That was as far as he got before unconsciousness took him.
End Of Chapter
A/N: That feel when Courage Rule 63's you and you're forced to watch. Lmao
The entire dynamic going on at the beginning of the chapter was really interesting to write. Not even all that long ago Computer probably would have angrily lashed out at Courage in a way that would have likely damaged their relationship for ages afterword and likely taken just as long to patch up. If it wasn't painfully obvious yet, one of the core themes of ATE and his character development is about him learning to cope with his trauma in less self-destructive and less self-sabotaging ways. It started as early as the Forest arc with him slowly becoming comfortable with opening himself up and being vulnerable around the people who care about him, instead of throwing up walls around himself and being a giant asshole out of the misguided belief that it's the only way he can spare himself harm. Being a big, snarky jerk to everyone was the one way he felt like he could exert any control over his life before Courage came along. Of course, I never wanted him to lose that attitude entirely or treat it like it was such a facade that once he got over it that he would no longer resembles the actual character from the show. It's more about having him be at a point where he's a sarcastic little shit in a much more healthy way, snarking at the situations he's in or toward people who actually deserve it rather than using it to avoid or damage any sort of relationship he might be developing with another person.
He's still meant to be a flawed character though, and nobody changes entirely overnight so he's still going to have moments of relapse. Notably, he still can be extremely insensitive, often without noticing that he's kinda being an asshole. Plus there was that entire bit where he held the idiot ball hard trying to 'save' Spot, which ended in him getting caught. That was an incredibly frustrating chapter to write, but it is totally in line with his character and how he copes with his trauma in unhealthy ways. Even with all of the dogs trying to save Spot's life, there was absolutely no way he was going to sit back and do nothing. There was no reason whatsoever for him to go because the others who were, you know, not dying of a stab wound were going to find help, but to write it any other way would have been out of character for him, as annoying as it is. Oh, and then there's the fact that he thinks the only way his life and all of the pain he's gone through can have any meaning is if he preforms a sort of assisted suicide using the wellspring, which is one big red flag that he's not coping with the more deeply rooted parts his trauma at all. It's pretty much inevitable that this one aspect of the story is racing toward a very messy conclusion.
And to add to the tragedy of all this, his inner monologue throughout the story has plainly shown that he DOES want to live now after years of fully expecting and wanting to die, but not if he has to go on without Courage, and especially not at Courage's expense. Then you've got all of his self-worth issues and trauma making it impossible for him to imagine a happy future for himself, especially if Courage were to die for his sake. I mean, I don't think I was able to impress upon you readers just how much it blew Computer's mind to have anyone, even someone as kind as Courage, willfully decide to give up their only chance to live for him. It literally does not compute (heh) for him. It's like he was told some bit of eldritch lore that he just cannot comprehend. Dude does not think highly of himself or worth that kind of sacrifice. Goddammit, this whole story is pretty much just one giant thesis outlining why we all need a Courage in our lives. He is the goodest of bois and the embodiment of kill 'em with kindness (hopefully not literally by the end of this story lmao)
