Author's Note: If you guys have been reading this, and you've made it this far, let me just say thanks.
This is the final chapter. I have had a blast writing this, and sharing it with you guys. I've never finished a fic this long before, so it's been a real learning process. I really, really appreciate any thoughts or comments - let me know what you like, or didn't like!
And with that, let me take you now - to Carlos, bleeding on the floor of the bowling alley.
...
Carlos heard shouting, as though from off in the distance – heard somebody whooping happily, felt strong hands wrapping something tightly around his chest.
"Somebody call the station," he heard, and the voice sounded closer, "And let Cecil know he's gonna be …"
"Already on it" a woman's voice interrupted.
The man's voice was close to his ear now, muttering, "Poor bastard's probably going through hell in that booth…"
Carlos opened his eyes.
"Good morning, sunshine," Teddy Williams said. "Nope, don't try to sit up, you've been bleeding all over the linoleum. You're gonna be fine, but…"
"Teddy, we need you over here…like, NOW…"
"Just don't move, ok, big shot?"
Carlos didn't move. He took a slow, careful breath, felt the pull of something that had been torn open in the middle of his chest, held his breath for a moment, and exhaled. He turned his head to the side, where he saw Teddy and a small group of people huddled around a man lying, like him, sprawled out on the floor.
Carlos reached a shaky hand into the pocket of his lab coat for his cell phone, but his fingers encountered something foreign, metallic, still warm. He pulled out a watch, surprisingly light, it's dark metal now smeared with maroon blood; whether the blood was his, or the tracker's, or some combination of the two, he couldn't tell. He saw Teddy Williams, saw his strong hands go slack where they'd been staunching a wound in the tracker's abdomen, saw him look up at the NVCR station intern and shake his head.
And then he remembered.
This was his fault.
A flower in the desert.
He'd been warned.
What the HELL had he been thinking?
...
Carlos had known to find the Apache Tracker at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. Everyone in town knew, because he'd been hanging around pretty consistently, and Cecil had been venting his frustration about his unexplained presence there for the past few months on the radio every time he mentioned Teddy Williams and the citizen's militia.
"I took your advice" Carlos had said, the dusty wind catching his lab coat as he approached the rusted out Ford on which the other man was leaning. The Apache Tracker took a long, slow drag off of his clove cigarette, dropped it onto the gravel of the parking lot, and ground it out with his bare, callused foot before looking up, his expression blank.
"I checked the clocks." Carlos clarified. "I checked about 50 of them. All fake. Or …well, you know." The tracker nodded slowly.
Carlos squared his jaw, trying not to sound petulant. "So…any advice on how this new knowledge is supposed to help me, exactly?"
Carlos waited, but the tracker didn't move to add anything.
Carlos ran a hand aggressively through his hair.
Carlos was irritated, to put it mildly.
It wasn't really the other man's fault, he knew. Carlos was frustrated with himself for being led off on a wild goose chase by some culturally insensitive and possibly clinically insane layperson who'd wandered up to him in the middle of the desert and whispered a suggestion in his ear.
He'd spent MONTHS on the clocks, at this point, taking them apart, attempting to reconstruct them, calculating and recalculating and calibrating and using every tool at his disposal to try to make SOME kind of sense of how time was flowing here, but there was nothing. No rhyme or reason that he could find at all. And while he wasn't technically worse off than he'd been when he started, this new realization of just how bad the situation actually was had drained his final reserves of hope. Without time, there was no way to connect the data points, to make sense of this town - no way to publish anything even remotely credible.
He was a scientist – if he couldn't publish, couldn't validate his research, he…..he'd have to leave.
He felt his stomach clench, and crossed his arms defensively across his chest.
"Do you get what this means for me? What this could mean for my work here?" he asked. "Without a way to predict and calculate the flow of time, I lose almost every scientific tool I should have available. I mean, you understand the basics of relativity theory right?"
The tracker raised an eyebrow.* Carlos sighed and put a lot of effort into not rolling his eyes. He reached into his back pocket and began fiddling with his phone to pull up the translation app, but the tracker suddenly put up a hand to stop him.
Instead, the tracker slowly reached to his own wrist and unclasped the dark metal band of his wristwatch. Its surface caught the mid-day sunlight, and Carlos squinted against the blinding reflected light. He could see it more clearly now than he had the last time they'd met – it was sophisticated, with clean lines that reminded him of some of the university's more expensive particle physics equipment – and stood out in stark contrast to the grimy, callused hands of the tracker.
The other man reached out and pressed the watch into Carlos's hand. He clasped it tightly with both of this own, and looked into Carlos's eyes. His expression was dark, patient, solemn. He squeezed their hands
together around the sharp edges of the watch, and nodded.
"Все будет хорошо." He said. "Вы увидите. Я даже не рассердился. Расскажите своим другом, чтобы перевести мои заявления в следующий раз.**"
Carlos pursed his lips, frustrated.
A loud shout erupted from the bowling alley, and Carlos looked away from the tracker's uncomfortably intense gaze. People had been trickling in slowly from the parking lot, carrying weapons ranging from shotguns to pitchforks to buckets of hot tar, which was standard for a meeting of Teddy William's little militia, but now the shouting was getting incrementally louder, and had been joined by a low rumbling sound.
By Carlos's estimation, the crowd inside the bowling alley was rapidly passing "unruly" and on their way to "warmongering" – Carlos had seen enough angry mobs in a year to know where this was all going.
The tracker looked pointedly at the bowling alley, then back an Carlos, and shrugged. He dropped his hands, leaving the watch pressed into Carlos's palm.
Carlos let out a huff of frustration. "Well, I guess somebody has to get to the bottom of this?" he growled. He couldn't help it. He seriously couldn't catch a break today. "And…I'm guessing that's going to have to be me?"
The apache tracker reached into the back pocket of his blue jeans, retrieved his lighter, and slowly began lighting another cigarette. Carlos shoved the watch into the pocket of his lab coat, turned sharply on his heel, and stalked off across the parking lot towards the bowling alley.
He WAS going to get to the bottom of this. Of this, and of the clocks, and of everything. Even if he was the only person in this damned town who seemed to think it mattered.
"Teddy Williams is deranged." he muttered under his breath.
...
Carlos sat up, slowly and carefully, cautious of the pinching in his side.
He looked around the bowling alley – at Teddy Williams, who had just finished bandaging his chest, at the station intern who had brought him a plastic bottle of water out of one of the vending machines, at the still form of the tracker - and wished he was better at saying thank you. At saying "I'm sorry."
He wanted to apologize. For underestimating the danger they were in. For needing to be rescued, at the cost of another man's life. For failing – with the clocks, the earthquakes, with everything. For misjudging this bizarre little town, and misunderstanding whatever role he was supposed to play in this misadventure.
He wanted to make excuses for himself, to ask for clarification, to find a way to make this right.
He wanted to let these people know…
He wanted…
He sighed.
He wanted to see Cecil.
He wanted to hear him laugh, to see him get riled up about the local mayoral candidates, to wax esoteric about the nature of nostalgia, to ask stupid questions about the moon. To shine a light onto this regret and shame and uncertainty, to be the one person, the one thing, who could make Carlos feel like he was doing something right, even if he didn't believe it right now.
A scientist doesn't fear the unknown, he reminded himself.
A scientist trusts the evidence.
A scientist runs into the fire.
His hand went to his phone.
...
Waiting outside the Arby's, Carlos watched the sun set.
He pulled the watch out of the lab coat, looked at the watch face for the first time, and understood.
Then he laughed, into the still, cooling air, for a long, long time.
...
He'd been wrong, he thought. About a lot of things. About everything.
And that was ok.
It was human nature – to push back against facts that don't seem to fit, to cling, desperately, to what you think you know. Nobody was immune to it – not even scientists. The theories and constants that have worked for you for so long, that you've relied on, like old friends – you don't retire them without a fight. And when something challenges them, when some new piece of information stubbornly refuses to fit – well, it's easy to feel threatened.
But past performance doesn't necessarily indicate future success. When a theory stopped being useful – you had to move on. You had to build a new one.
So. Time didn't work in Night Vale. And that was ok.
This town, these people, were not problems to be solved. Not data points to be brought in line. They were, in themselves, beautiful points of truth – and if Carlos had to rewrite every scientific theory he knew to accommodate them, so be it. He'd already rebuilt half his lab. What was reworking a few thousand years of scientific thought?
He was just going to have to start fresh. For Night Vale.
Just because something didn't follow the laws of physics didn't mean it wasn't worth protecting.
...
Carlos was watching the lights above the Arby's. Not cataloging their movements, not compartmentalizing them for later analysis, just – watching them. They glowed beautifully, bright pinpoints in the pink haze of the setting sun, with halos of blue green and lavender and gold, shimmering, twisting about each other lazily as though they were being drawn together, and pushed apart, and then spinning back towards each other. It was like watching a dance.
He heard the crunch of tires, saw this shadow stretch out in front of him and sweep across the asphalt as Cecil's car turned into the parking lot, saw it vanish as the sound of the engine died. Carlos turned, and saw Cecil step quickly from the car, his form tense. He took a few steps forward, then stopped, hesitating as though he stood on the edge of some invisible line in the asphalt.
"Carlos." He said, short of breath. "What is it, what's wrong? The show's almost over, but, there's still a little time if you need me too…um…"
Cecil's voice trailed off. He looked like he was going to tear himself apart trying to look serious and professional, but even in the dim light of the parking lot there was a tell-tale redness rimming his dry eyes, his brow creased with emotion. Carlos had heard the broadcast, anyway. Most of it. He knew Cecil had been crying.
Carlos shook his head.
"No,' he said. "It's nothing. After everything that happened, I just…well. I just wanted to see you."
Carlos dared to look up. Cecil was standing, stock still, as though frozen in place –his eyes wide, his flush so pronounced that Carlos could see it in the dim light. He made a small noise that sounded like "oh," and Carlos felt it shoot through his heart, felt a flood of fear and anticipation and affection, and he couldn't meet his eyes anymore.
He was brave, Carlos thought. To care about something in this town was dangerous. To care about something anywhere was dangerous, really, but here – the risk of loss was so high that it was nearly a certainty. Hope was something most people gave up, like a bad habit. Carlos had seen it, in the faces of the scientists when he'd first arrived, in the furtive glances of people on the street.
Cecil wasn't stupid. He knew the risks. He chose to care anyway. About Carlos. About Josie. About the interns, and the community calendar, and the damned mayorial elections. Maybe it was a little insane - it was definitely masochistic - but it was undeniably brave. Carlos was suddenly aware of how much he admired it, how much he had always admired it, without really understanding why.
Cecil – brave Cecil - was here with him, had driven out when he called; hoping for something, expecting nothing, his heart in his hands, as always, on the off chance that he might be met with something other than Carlos's defensive, distanced "professionalism".
Of all of the anomalies he'd discovered in this town, Carlos thought, Cecil was by far his favorite.
"I used to think it was setting at the wrong time," he said, staring off into the distance, still unable to meet Cecil's eyes "but time doesn't work here, Cecil. Not like it works everywhere else, at least. I'm still working on it, but…." He stopped, started again, "What I mean is…sometimes things seem so strange, or malevolent, and then you find that, underneath, they're something else altogether. Something ….pure, and innocent."
Cecil said nothing for a moment.
Then Carlos heard light footsteps on the blacktop, felt the dip of the car hood as Cecil, quiet and careful, climbed up next to him. He was sitting, still, and close - close enough that Carlos could feel the warmth emanating from him, but consciously not touching. Never touching. The negative space between them vibrated with its own kind of intimacy, a potent mix of Cecil's hesitance and his anticipation, and Carlos felt himself drawn into it like light bending into the inescapable gravity of a black hole.
He was under no pressure, he knew. Not really. There was no rush. He could still easily back out of this. Make up something about the city, or the lights, tell Cecil he needed to go back to the station and send out an urgent message to the people of Night Vale about some random scientific paradox that would likely kill them all, and it wouldn't even rate on the list of things that people in Night Vale should be worried about but Cecil would do it. Faithfully, unquestioningly. Cecil would wait forever. But Carlos had nearly died today, and maybe he'd had enough of waiting and being cautious and careful when it came to this. Maybe you had to move fast in Night Vale. Maybe you always had to leap in, before you were ready – maybe you were never 100% sure of what you wanted before you went for it.
He reached out his hand, placed it on Cecil's knee, and it was done. There was nothing else to say.
He heard Cecil's small intake of breath, then his sigh, and then he felt the soft, warm weight of Cecil's cheek against his shoulder. Carlos felt something in him uncoil, and the nervous laugh that was forming in his chest melted into a sigh, and the next breath that he took of the cool, rich, Night Vale air felt like his first in months. He was finally breaking the surface, and he breathed deep, filling his lungs from a world that, for him, had just restarted.
His heart was betraying him, thundering in his chest; he could hear it pulsing in his ears, and he wondered if Cecil could feel it. He must. Carlos found he didn't care. Let him know. Carlos was done hiding it.
Cecil's was careless with his own heart, shameless and indiscrete and unapologetic in his feelings. He wouldn't fault Carlos for this.
Carlos leaned into it. The void gaped around them, and Carlos didn't fight it.
"You've been looking out for me, haven't you?" Carlos asked, after a moment. "Since day one."
There was a pause, as though Cecil were considering it. "We all look out for each other here." Cecil said simply. Which was probably only half the truth. But Cecil meant it, he thought, and that was good enough.
"Yes. That was…something I didn't anticipate."
They stared out into the distance, watching the lights.
"Cecil?" Carlos asked, suddenly remembering something.
"Yes?" Cecil asked from his shoulder, his voice soft and velvety with contentment.
"Did you really get me a trophy?"
Cecil went rigid at his side. "Oh my god." he whispered.
"You seriously did, didn't you?" Carlos said, and he couldn't keep the smile out of his voice. "Did you bring it with you? Is it in the car?"
"Carlos, please…" he sounded mortified, and was burying his head farther into Carlos's shoulder.
"No, I really want to see it."
"It's a BIG DEAL, Carlos!"
Carlos laughed. He knew it was a big deal. He knew he probably hadn't been expected to survive his first year, that Cecil had probably feared the worst on every holiday, after every disaster. And he nearly hadn't made it. He'd nearly tripped at the finish line.
But Carlos couldn't bring himself to care about that now. Now he was here, he was alive, and Cecil was with him, horrified and ridiculous and earnest on the hood of his car, and Carlos couldn't help but laugh. Cecil gave his shoulder an indignant little nudge, somehow Carlos's arm ended up around Cecil's waist, and they were laughing together, watching the sky coming alive with stars.
It was going to be another long year, Carlos thought. There was a lot of work he had to do, a lot of theories to reassess, a lot of constants to question. But laughing into the void, with Cecil at his side, he thought, there was something nice about not knowing.
...
*The tracker did understand basic relativity theory, of course. And some pretty advanced relativity theory – some of the bits Einstein never figured out. He just didn't like Carlos's sass.
**Everything will be fine. You'll see. I'm not even angry. Tell your boyfriend to translate my statement next time."