Fred didn't know what was happening to him, and he hated it, and was absolutely terrified of it. He had no idea how his life had become this. Just a few months ago he and his friends didn't have anything to worry about except for solving mysteries, and his relationship with his dad was strained at best.

Now there was a curse, and Fred didn't know how he could even trust himself, let alone his friends, and especially not the adults around him. As for his relationship with his dad, it was better than Fred could ever remember it being.

It was weird. He knew his dad wasn't his birth dad, and that he'd kidnapped him when he was just a baby, but he was still the only person he felt like he could trust. He'd seen the worst that the curse could make his dad do, and it was bad, but at least his dad knew about the curse and was fighting it. If Fred couldn't see his dad resisting the temptation to go after the pieces of the Planispheric Disk, he didn't know if he'd be able to fight it.

Fred hated this urge deep inside of him. He didn't even know what he wanted to go after the treasure for. He had no interest in treasure. Especially not now that he knew its history. Far too many people had died or lost their close relationships with their friends. The possibility of treasure wasn't worth all of that risk.

But in trying to not lose his friends, he may have just pushed them away and ruined everything. If the curse was the only reason why he was friends with them in the first place, what if they stopped liking him if he rejected the curse?

He thought the world of his friends, but really, their friendship didn't make a lot of sense. They were so different. Just by being themselves, they kept on hurting each other. Shaggy just wanted to relax and spend some time with his dog, and just not think of the pressures his parents were putting on him, but that had led to his break-up with Velma, which still hurt her.

Fred just didn't understand emotions, especially not emotional ones, and he was content with it, but he knew that it had made him act cruel, in a way, to Daphne. Velma was smart, and she was proud of how smart she was, and she had every right to be proud. Velma never tried to imply that she felt like she was better than all of them, but Fred was silently jealous of how easy all of this school stuff came to her when he couldn't understand any of it, even if he studied for hours. It made him feel like an idiot.

And though Shaggy hadn't told the girls, and it didn't always bother him, he'd opened up to Fred once that he felt like Daphne looked down on him. After all, Daphne was always talking about her admiration for Fred, and she and Velma had their girl times together. Shaggy and Daphne didn't have that kind of relationship, and Shaggy felt like she was only friends with him because they were all friends with each other.

Fred didn't think that was how Daphne felt, but he hadn't known how to reassure Shaggy. In one way or another, they were all hurting at least one of the others, and the only way to really stop it was by changing who they were, and that wasn't fair for any of them.

Fred didn't know if it was the best friendship, because it was the only group of friends he'd ever had. The other kids at school didn't look like they were going through this kind of thing. What if this was just them, and they only thought they made good friends because the curse wanted them to think it.

Fred didn't want to have anything to do with the curse, but his chest ached and he felt like he couldn't breathe just at the thought of not having his friends in his life. Curse or no curse, he couldn't lose them.

Fred didn't sleep that night. He didn't even try. He didn't want to have a nightmare about shadows and whispers, or the weird version of the Freak that was so different from his dad. He especially didn't want to have any nice dreams about him and his friends finding the treasure and their lives becoming perfect. He didn't want the curse to convince him that the only way for him to have all of them in his life forever was by solving this one last mystery with them.

So he stayed awake, slowly reading his trap magazines that he'd barely looked at since coming home. He still didn't understand everything that he read in the magazines, but it was better than it had been before. He hoped that if he could understand the traps in the magazines, then he'd be ready to at least look at his own personal traps.

He heard his dad moan and whimper slightly in his sleep, but he didn't yell or cry out. He was having a nightmare, but not an absolutely terrible one. He slept through it, and eventually his distressed noises died down and he slept more soundly.

Slowly the night passed and it was closer to early morning than late night. Fred sighed and got out of bed. He was tired, but still determined to not sleep. He left his room and went downstairs into the kitchen. He needed a drink. He wondered if this was how his dad had felt those times when he would get himself a drink after a long or hard day.

Not that Fred would have any of those drinks. Every once and awhile his dad would let him have a little taste of his grown-up drinks, and they always tasted gross to him. Give him hot chocolate or a juice any day.

Fred searched for several minutes for a pot to warm up some milk in, but he couldn't find them. He felt like he had searched through the whole kitchen three times over. Why couldn't he find it?

Searching just got him frustrated with himself. He wanted to stop looking, but he wanted hot chocolate more than before. Fred sighed and pushed down his guilt. The sky outside, while still dark, was starting to brighten, so it wasn't a completely unreasonable hour. Fred only felt a little bit of guilt when he went back upstairs and shook his dad awake. Frederick groaned and looked at him with tired eyes.

"Fred," He lifted himself on his elbows. "Did you have a bad dream?"

"I didn't sleep." Fred admitted. "Can you make some hot chocolate?"

Frederick sighed and sat up. "Yeah, okay." In the past he would have told Fred to go back to bed, and insisted that he at least try to get some sleep. They'd both had too many sleepless nights now to try to force it. It just meant something else to talk to Dr. Alejo about when she stopped by for her daily visits.

In the kitchen, Frederick went to one of the open cabinets and pulled out the exact pan that Fred had been looking for. He had completely missed it.

"I'm putting a little green tea in it." Frederick said. "The nurse said it might help with your head. It's worth a try."

Fred nodded and sat at the table. He stretched his arms out. "I want to talk to the gang." He'd spent all night missing them as though he hadn't seen them for weeks, even though it had only been a few hours. His dad looked over at him.

"They can come over for dinner, but I don't want them here too early. Not until after you have the chance to talk to Dr. Alejo about your fight." Fred nodded. He had thought the same thing. At first he had hated that he needed to rely on talking to a therapist to just be able to do something so easy as talking to his friends. Dr. Alejo was really good at making him feel like he was making improvements.

Even though Fred had been up all night and he got out of bed really early, time seemed to pass really quickly and after what felt like no time the nurse came by for their daily visit. Fred didn't like it when the nurse was here. They were always really nice, but they asked a lot of questions that he didn't always know the answer to.

He knew that only part of what the nurse was trying to do was make sure that he was being taken care of. Mostly she was checking on how his head was recovering. He was told that he wasn't doing anything wrong if he didn't know how to answer a question, but he still felt really dumb when he couldn't tell her what he'd had for dinner yesterday, and he had to ask his dad.

She seemed disappointed when she heard that he didn't get any sleep that night, but when his dad assured her that he would be talking to Dr. Alejo about it she let the matter drop. Her visit wasn't too bad. It was definitely better than the cop's visit. Fred had never really liked the police force of Crystal Cove, but especially not now.

Whatever cop came in to check on them seemed to be looking for any reason they could to lock Fred's dad again. No matter how many times they were told, they didn't seem to understand that just because Fred was out of the hospital didn't mean he was okay, so if he acted strange or confused, it wasn't because his dad was doing something to him.

Frederick was the one that dealt with the cops the most while Fred just sat in the room and tried to sketch out new trap ideas. They were simple, but they were something. Eventually, Dr. Alejo came by, and Fred's dad sent the cop on his way.

Frederick talked to her first, briefly explaining what Fred was upset about. He appreciated it, because otherwise he might forget to talk about his friends, or he'd back out of it. His dad then left them alone.

"How are you feeling today, Fred?" Dr. Alejo asked.

"Tired." Fred muttered. He pulled Mr. Trapples to his chest. He always had his bear with him when they had these sessions. It made him feel better.

"Your dad said you avoided sleeping last night." Dr. Alejo said. She didn't lecture him about doing better, she just wanted to make sure he was okay. "Can you tell me why?"

"I yelled at my friends last night." Fred said. "I've been second-guessing our friendship. I keep on wondering…I mean, I told you about the curse, right?"

"Yes, yes the curse." Dr. Alejo smiled, but there was a slight tightness in her voice, same as what Fred's friends got when he talked about it. She didn't believe in the curse, but both Fred and his dad had talked to her about the curse, so she knew that they, at least, believed in it, and she took it seriously. She said that she didn't know whether the curse being real or not really mattered. What was important was if Fred and his dad thought it was real.

"Well, I think that the curse is the reason why me and my friends are friends in the first place." Fred said. "And yesterday I was just thinking that we don't make very good friends, because we keep on hurting each other."

He squeezed his bear's arm. "I love all of them so much, and I feel like I can't live without them, but if we're only friends because of the curse, should we even stay together?"

"At some point I want to talk to you about your dependence on your friends." Dr. Alejo said. "However, I don't think now's the time for that." She shifted slightly. "Fred, people hurt each other all the time. It's part of living in a society. I think what's important is that we don't try to hurt people, and that we learn from our mistakes."

"But we're not hurting each other with our mistakes." Fred said. "It's just us being ourselves." Fred felt guilty about not understanding emotions easily, but both his dad and Dr. Alejo had previously told him that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He didn't lack feelings, he just understood them differently, and Dr. Alejo said that they needed those different ways of thinking, because it could help him to understand other people who thought differently, even if it was still different from him.

"Well, that happens sometimes too." Dr. Alejo tapped her fingers. "If you feel like this friendship is harmful to any of you, maybe a break would be beneficial."

Fred felt a cold numbness in his chest at just the thought. "I can't lose them."

"Can you tell me about the ways that you think you and your friends hurt each other?" She asked. Fred told her about every instance that had been going through his mind all night, and she listened. He probably repeated examples, and got words mixed up, but she didn't interrupt him or point his mistakes out to him. She never did.

When he was done he was scared that she was going to say that, yes, they were really bad friends for each other. Instead, she gave him an assignment of sorts. She did that kind of thing every few sessions.

"I know you think this curse has pulled you into an incompatible friendship, but I think that even if something brought you together, you became close on your own." Dr. Alejo said. "Can you think of times where you helped your friends, or they helped you, that wasn't because it was what the curse wanted, but because it was what you wanted? Times where you didn't have to help each other, but did, just because you cared."

Fred had to pause to think about that, not because there weren't moments like that, but because there were so many, and they were just off the top of his head.

"...Shaggy used to come over all the time." Fred said. "I could just call him whenever, just because I was feeling lonely because my dad was away on a business trip or something. Shaggy would always come over with dumb movies and we'd just spend time together, just because I didn't want to be alone."

"Do you think the curse made him do that?" Dr. Alejo asked. Fred didn't have to think about that. He shook his head.

"We were already solving mysteries by then." Fred said. "We would have kept doing it even if Shaggy didn't come over."

"So this wasn't because of the curse." Dr. Alejo smiled. "It was because he cared about you."

"Yeah, I guess it was." Fred said. "And me and Daphne, we…we love each other. We want to get married someday. I don't think this is because of the curse, because it would have made me understand my feelings a lot earlier." They worked really well together now, but during that awkward time between Fred admitting his feelings to himself, and them getting together, it had been painful and weird for all of them.

If the curse was manipulating everything about their group so that they'd be useful to it, it would have made it so they skipped over that weird transition, or it would have made it so that their feelings didn't exist at all.

Fred was feeling better now, as he usually did when he talked to Dr. Alejo. "And when I was having a hard time adjusting to high school, Velma spent hours at the library. She said she was learning about developmental disorders or something."

"You don't have a diagnosis, do you?" Dr. Alejo asked. Fred shook his head.

"No, but Velma had ideas, and she thought that even if she was wrong, she'd at least be able to find ways to help me, or at least understand me." Fred said. Velma was still encouraging him to get a diagnosis, not because she wanted to show off that she was right about something, but because she thought it could help him.

"So maybe the curse isn't as controlling as you're afraid it is." Dr. Alejo said. "Your father said that he was under this same curse, and that's the reason why he raised you. Do you doubt that he cares about you?"

Fred shook his head. He knew his dad loved him. Maybe there had been a time where he had doubted it, but after his dad had been taking care of him like this, he really couldn't doubt him anymore.

"I think it might help if you talked to your friends about your doubts." Dr. Alejo said. "They understand your relationship more than I do."

"I'll think about it." Fred said. He wanted to talk to them, but he didn't want to fight all over again.

The conversation went on for a bit after that, though it went on to lighter topics. Soon their session was over, though Dr. Alejo encouraged him to call Daphne and tell her that he was okay. Fred sat on the couch while his dad had his turn with Dr. Alejo. He just stared at his phone, willing himself to just call Daphne. Even if he didn't know what to say, she didn't mind carrying the whole conversation. She just appreciated that he tried.

Fred took a deep breath and just pushed the call button before he convinced himself otherwise. The phone rang briefly, but it was very quickly answered.

"Freddie?" Daphne sounded almost frantic. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Fred said. "About yesterday, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"It's okay." Daphne said quickly. "We…we all probably said things that we shouldn't have." She was quiet for a moment. "You know, I don't understand this whole curse thing, but if you don't want to help Mr. E, or look for the pieces of the Planispheric Disk, we won't."

Fred blinked. "Really?"

"Of course." Daphne said. "We're a team. More than that, we're friends. If something bothers you, then it bothers us too."

"But Velma wanted-" Fred started.

"I'll talk to Velma." Daphne said. "And she'll understand. You know, she felt really bad yesterday."

Fred blinked. "She did?"

"Yeah," Daphne's voice was quiet and gentle. Fred could almost hear the small smile in her words.

"Oh." Now Fred felt worse about getting so upset yesterday, and for questioning their friendship. He knew that his friends cared about him, so why was it so surprising to her every single time?

"Can we still come over today?" Daphne asked. "Shaggy said there's a new pizza place in the next town over that he wanted to try."

"Yeah, I'd love that." Fred said. For once, no talking about mysteries. Just having pizza and enjoying each other's company. It sounded like just what he needed, even if he knew that he was probably going to fall asleep in the middle of it.

"I'll call the others and we'll be over later." Daphne said. "I love you." Fred felt his chest warm, like it did every time she said those words to him. That warmth spread when she continued. "And you don't have to say anything back. I know it's hard for you, and I know how you feel about me. If you say it, I want it to be at your own time, when you're ready."

Fred smiled. She was so understanding of him and his lack of understanding. He opened his mouth to say something to Daphne. Maybe not the exact words she probably hoped for, but something like that. Right then though he heard the doorbell ring. He didn't think it was his friends. After all, he was still on the phone with Daphne. She could work fast, but not that fast.

"Someone's here." Fred said. "I've gotta go."

"I'll see you soon." Daphne said. Fred hung up and went to the door. He opened it without looking to see who it was, and it wasn't until his hands were already on the doorknob did he consider that maybe he should go get his dad for this, because he wasn't really the best at dealing with strangers at the best of times.

Well, he was already here. He could answer the door by himself. He wanted to do it by himself. Fred opened the door to see a man and a woman standing right up close to the door. He didn't think he had ever seen them in his life, but something inside of him screamed familiarity. A part of him wanted to run to them and cling desperately. Another part of him wanted to run to his dad and not let him go.

"W-what are…Who-uh?" His words hadn't been that jumbled and confused since the day he woke up. These two people were making something stir inside of him that he didn't really like. It felt way too similar to how he'd felt when he'd first seen a piece of the Planispheric Disk. He had felt like it was important, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Well, look at you." The woman said. She looked at the man. "Doesn't he remind you of Ricky, Brad?"

"That he does, Judy." Brad said. "We'll have the chance to set him right."

Brad? Judy? But those were…those were the names of his…his…

Fred's eyes widened and he slammed the door closed, leaning against it for a second, breathing harshly. He knew this wasn't something to panic about, but his mind wouldn't calm down. He stood there for a long minute until he heard a knocking on the door. He jumped and instinctively started running away, almost tripping over his feet as he stumbled and his knee ached.

"Dad?" Fred cried out. He wasn't thinking about how he wasn't supposed to put unnecessary pressure on his leg. He was just thinking about his parents. All three of them. "Dad!"