The next few hours of that day were a bit odd and awkward. It seemed that nobody had any clue what to do with themselves.
Dan had given his friend some space to think and had made himself content with browsing the Internet on his phone in the bedroom. He didn't fancy being disturbed, either, because he, too, was thinking almost as deeply as Phil was. He had closed the door and sat himself down on the bedsheets (Dil and Tabitha didn't mind him making himself at home, at least not after everything he'd done for them) with his headphones on, completely zoned out.
Phil, on the other hand, had made the… interesting decision of taking a blue barstool from the drinks bar and moving it over to in front of the back door so that he could put his feet up on the foot bar and stare out, absently, into the garden. He kind-of wished he could be outside right this moment, to go for a very long walk down to the river or even Oasis Springs: anywhere as long as it was quiet and peaceful and he wasn't looking at the child that was in his care, that he had… wounded. He felt a bit like he was on the other end of February and suddenly related exactly to how Dan had felt. He didn't want to leave the kid feeling like he did back when The Thing That Shall Not Be Named happened, and he knew that he had to do something before he got too overwhelmed with it all like Dan did and broke down.
That's why he was staring out into the garden.
Watching.
His laser-like eyes scrutinized every one of Dab's moves, as if all his senses were heightened, and he tried to tune in to the children's conversations, attempting to deduce their emotions, but to no avail. In one way he appreciated the distance because he needed space to observe, but on the other hand, he wished that he could hear what they were saying – what they were probably saying about him.
They'd had nothing to say to him a few minutes before, which only gave Phil the impression that they were talking about him behind his back, which didn't change much at all, really, but only added to the soupy brew of exasperation that he was stirring in his mind.
He decided to think about his stay here to try and calm himself down, so he put one foot onto the seat so he could rest his elbow on his knee (he looked a bit like a thin, lanky spider in partial death-curl), and let his mind trail back to the first of June.
That first day, he and Dan had arrived in a flood of binary code and sparks whirling around them, before finding themselves in a tangled heap on the patio in the garden, right beside the satellite, with Dil staring down to them. Their Sim had greeted them with open arms, helping them to their feet and making sure they were both very much in-tact before they decided they needed a walk to ease themselves into the new feel of the world (going back and forth through dimensions unsurprisingly came with its side effects, two of which being nausea and dizziness, so a bit of fresh air would break them in). They were told to be back at Potter's Splay at around half 7 in the evening – that being only a few hours from their arrival – and they did as they were told.
The look on Dab's face when he opened the door to them was one that was engrained into Phil's mind by now. He re-lived that moment quite a lot, but this particular time, as he remembered the joy and the excitement and the complete wholeness that they all felt, was enough to bring him to physical tears, which even Dan could probably hear through his headphones (if not sense it). He tried to dry his eyes, though, swallowed and thought back to what happened after their reunion.
They'd headed to the park and run into Summer, Phil remembered. He'd fallen asleep on a bench in the sweltering heat, taking a rest before they had to walk back home, watching the sunset as they went. One of the other reasons for coming was to appreciate the surroundings, but he believed they'd done enough of that. Maybe that was why he stopped being so elated; he stopped looking.
Dil and Tabitha had left the very next day, and Dab had still been very excited about everything. He seemed over-the-moon that he got to spend a week with his 'cool' childminders, who had power over almost the whole of his little universe. Maybe Phil had forgotten that, too: that he didn't need to be so hassled about everything because none of it was really… real… which is what Dan was trying to tell him, and should have been cemented in his mind by now, but that he kept disregarding, because to him it was so much more than pixels in a screen.
He looked down to his wan, almost transparent hands and cocked his head as if he was confused, though they were really just normal hands and nothing to be confused about. He supposed he was still getting over how all of this was even viable. It wasn't supposed to be possible, so he wasn't about to take it for granted.
He supposed he'd never really 'gotten over' it.
He closed his eyes and remembered Eliza coming over and giving them flowers and wine as a gift to welcome them back, and telling them how Summer was having a masquerade party, and how she would love it if they could go. The idea of a little caper had been too enticing, with the allure of anonymity and the knowledge that it would be all to easy to swindle Dan into thinking that his friend wasn't actually with him. Phil had spent a good amount of time planning his little joke, and had used most of his thinking time on it, especially over dinner at Chez Llama later that day. It was there that they had found Erica, and now, from his trip to Magnolia Promenade a few days ago, Phil knew that she had been watching them.
Of course she had been.
The rest of the week looking after Dab had been pretty uneventful, and Phil assumed that it was when Summer had invited him for coffee that his mood had switched. Perhaps that was when Dab started disliking him: when he possibly got too strict, when he forgot it wasn't real, when he stopped looking.
Maybe he did take it all for granted.
There wasn't really time to deeply ponder much past Tabitha's disappearance, Phil's mission to find her, his fever dream, his times at night with Dan, and nor was there any time to remember the instance where he'd been convinced that he was going to change (some sort of 'new air' he'd thought it was. That was before he went to Oasis Springs, where nothing really worked, and before he sat in the garden and thought, because thinking was the only thing to really do any more because he'd forgotten how to have fun, and before he'd gone to Magnolia Promenade. Maybe he had changed a bit. But that was also before Evan came, and that had distorted a tad more than a bit). There wasn't time to recall these things because before his mind could search around for something else, he was alerted by a sudden spontaneous snap and a thud and the sound of a very abrupt, if slightly faint, shriek.