„You had to know if we restored Fairy World, you'd lose Peri and get your memory wiped. But you helped them anyway."
"Yeah, well, maybe I deserve it, Hazel."
"Hoho. You definitely do. But thank you for doing the right thing."
"So does Fairy World have stock options, or…"
By emitting a glowing light from his wand, Jorgen erased the elder Dimmadome's memory and send him back to Earth. Before he could do the same to his son though, Peri stopped him in the last second, by flying in front of his face.
"Wait! Can we just wait a moment with Dev, please? I have something to say.", the purple fairy asked.
"Oh, you want to use the last opportunity to blow some steam off and tell him what an awful godkid he was? Go ahead, then. I get it.", Jorgen encouraged the young fairy, all too happy about what he thought his intention was.
"Um, actually I wanted to request for Dev to stay my godchild if that's possible", Peri proposed sheepishly.
"WHAT!?", pretty much everyone asked collectively, but nobody as loud as Jorgen.
"So… is that a maybe?", Peri tried his luck.
"IT'S A NEVER! Has the long lasting magical back-up given you brain damage or are your father's genes finally kicking in!?", Jorgen wondered.
"Why would my jeans kick him?", Cosmo wondered, while Dev shivered at the mention of the magical back-up and the memory of what he put Peri through. At the same time, he was wondering what the purple fairy was up to. Shouldn't he be happy at the prospect of finally getting rid of him, instead of proposing to stay?
"Yeah, I get it. The kid messed up quite a bit… or a lot, but we all make mistakes, don't we?" Peri tried again.
"Mistakes!? He handed fairy world to our mortal enemies on a silver platter and almost caused your death!", Jorgen argued, in an attempt to refresh Peri's memory.
"Come on. He wasn't trying to do any damage. He only wanted to win his father's approval. And he didn't know about the confetti part. I am somewhat at fault as well. If I tried to connect with him instead of just lecturing him about rules and arguing back at him, this wouldn't have happened. We are assigned godkids, who need us because they are miserable. And being miserable can cause some kids to do desperate things. But taking us away from them is not gonna solve that problem. Dev needs someone and there's nobody else who can fill that position."
As Peri's explanation went on and on, Jorgen starts to look like he's actually thinking about his decision, before his stubbornness kicked in again. "The answer is no. Forget about it.", he said, while crossing his arms.
Seeing that he's not getting anywhere this way, Peri changed tactics. "Fine, then I'm gonna have to bring this case to the Fairy Council and let them decide. And we both know how good I am at convincing them."
Flashbacks of the Timmy Turner case flashed through Jorgen's mind, where the Fairy Council was about to decide whether he should lose his fairies, due to being "the worst godkid ever". The case was all but lost for the kid, when Peri (back then Poof) stepped in and changed their opinion in less than a minute. At least before the Secret Wish thing was revealed. And he did that while he was a baby… Now he's an adult. Realizing that it isn't worth the humiliation of losing in court, Jorgen reluctantly decides to take Peri up on his offer, but not without reminding him who's still in charge.
"Fine, the boy will get a second chance. But from now on, both of you will be closely watched and if there's ever any signs that he'll slip up like that again, not only will he lose you forever, but you will never be assigned another godkid ever again. Understood!?"
Everyone gasped at the ultimatum, but Peri didn't seem very afraid. "Deal.", he just said with a smirk, before Jorgen send them all back to Earth.
As Peri and Dev were poofed back into the latter's bedroom, there was an awkward silence between them at first, before Peri attempted to break the ice. "So… pretty eventful day, wasn't it?"
Dev didn't even bother to answer his fairies desperate opener to the conversation, as he had a lot of other things on his mind. "Why? Why did you ask to be a assigned back to me, after everything I've done to you?", the boy asked, while taking off his shades and revealing his sad look, in a rare moment of not minding to show himself vulnerable.
He didn't get it. He teamed up with Peri's counterpart, took over Fairy World, captured him and his parents and put them in severe danger, by not allowing them to grant wishes. And even then, he was far from nice to Peri before that incident, always overworking and criticizing him. And yet, not only did he want to get back to him, but he didn't hesitate to put his entire future career at risk for Dev's sake. Was he a masochist?
"Like I said, it's obvious you still need someone to watch out for you. I know I haven't been the best at it lately, but I'm surely not gonna leave the job to your father."
As much as Dev always idolized his dad and ignored all of his flaws to convince himself that 10 years of trying to prove himself worthy of his love weren't for nothing, he didn't exactly have a comeback for that, so he decided to change the subject.
"You really meant it when you said you cared about me, didn't you? That wasn't just a ploy so I'd let you go free, right?"
"What? Of course not! Besides with how dizzy I was from the magical back-up, I wasn't in the mental state to think of a ploy like that anyway." Peri joked, in an attempt to lighten up the conversation.
It rather had the opposite effect though as the mention of magical back-up once again reminded Dev of what he put Peri through, causing him to shiver.
Peri noticed his reaction and flew down to his godkid's level to pull him into a hug. "Hey, it's alright. I'm okay now. We all are. All tragedies have been avoided."
Dev was surprised by Peri hugging him, as that was the kind of affection he always hoped for his dad to show him at one point. But of course, he never did. It only reaffirmed his belief that he didn't deserve Peri.
"Even then, you shouldn't have agreed to this. I could always easily slip up again and put you and everyone else in danger. I'm not save to be around. I must be the worst godkid ever!"
His words shocked Peri, as he pulled away from the hug. He always wanted Dev to show some self-reflection on his actions and behaviour, but hearing this just hurt him. "You're blaming yourself far too much for this. You're still a kid, it's expected from you to make mistakes. And if I had the same upbringing you had, I wouldn't have been in the right set of mind either. And trust me: You are NOT the worst godkid ever. Far from it."
Dev still wasn't fully convinced though. "You're just saying that to cheer me up.", he mumbled while looking down.
Peri got an idea from this. With a flick of his wand, he poofed Dev and himself in-front of a secret room in his parents house, that they decorated in their fishbowl while being Timmy's godparents, but had to take out when they left him.
The sudden change in scene surprised Dev. "What is happening? What are you doing?"
"Showing you that you are not the worst godkid. This is the Hall of Infamy. A room my parents designed for the worst godkids they had over the years. And there's a lot of them.", Peri said, while opening the door.
"Guess that means I'll be the main entry in your Hall of Infamy, once you had as many godkids as they had." Dev replied, still looking down.
This wasn't going like Peri hoped. But he had one more ace up his sleeve. "Kid, I tell you something. You can look around the entire room. You pick just one godchild you see in here. One you think couldn't possibly be any worse than you are and I tell you what they did to show you how wrong you are."
"Ok, uh…", this should be easy, thought Dev. He walked around the room and looked a bit until his eyes landed on the picture of a formerly dressed girl in black and white. She looks so nice, there's no way she could've done anything worse than him, so he made his choice. "Alright, that one there.", Dev said, while pointing at her picture.
"Oh, Maryann. You picked a good one. She is responsible for the start of World War I.", Peri explained, calmly.
"WHAT!? HOW? I thought World War I started with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and murder is against the rules!" Dev exclaimed.
"It is, but there's a lot of loopholes which you can abuse the rules with. You can't directly wish for someone to be dead, but you can create a situation that will lead to a similar result. And even long after her wish, she still thought she did nothing wrong, unlike you. You'd be surprised by how many tragedies in history were caused by failed godkids. Your mess-up was a very light one compared to that".
Dev was having trouble processing all this new information, but Peri wasn't finished yet.
"And godkids aren't the only ones causing disaster. Fairies too. You know of the Black Plague which took out a third of Europe many centuries ago? One of us caused that by accident. Heck, my dad was the one who sunk Atlantis. NINE TIMES!", Peri finished.
Dev didn't know if he should be relieved that he is not nearly as bad as he thought or scared of finding out all of this, but he decided to focus on the more positive aspect of his lesson.
"Well… if you put it like that, I guess it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened. But the only reason I freed you was because even after taking over Fairy World, I still couldn't win my dad's attention. If even that wasn't enough, I'm never gonna be good enough for him."
"Kid… have you ever considered that the main problem might be that your dad is the one who's not good enough for you?", Peri carefully asked.
"Huh?" Dev was expecting to hear some empty reassurance about how he is good enough or his father doesn't mean it like that, but he wasn't expecting a response like that.
"You said it yourself. If taking over an entire magical world isn't good enough for him than what is? Nothing. That's because your father only cares about business, not people. I mean, he literally named you Development. He might as well have just called you Project D. Do you really want the approval of someone who treats people, including his own son like that? Do you want to be like him someday if you had a kid of your own?", Peri explained.
"Well…no, but… he's still my dad! I can't not care about him. He's the only parental figure I have!" Dev tried to justify.
Peri saw a good opportunity to tell him something else. "Dev, do you know why, when we're assigned kids, we're called Fairy GodPARENTS?", he asked, with emphasis on the parents.
"Ehm, no. Never really thought about it." Dev answered, wondering where this was going.
"Well, aside from granting wishes, we're supposed to be parental substitutes to our godkids. Since we're only assigned to the miserable kids, they have some pretty bad parents in most cases. My parents godkid when I was born, Timmy, his parents didn't pay attention to him most of the time. Always went on trips together and left him alone with the babysitter they hired… Vicky.", he said the last word after a dramatic pause, still having nightmares of her sometimes.
"Oh yeah, your parents mentioned that during my birthday. That's why they were assigned to him. Man, just one day with her was terrible. But having to deal with her on a constant basis, ouch." Dev concluded, the thought alone scaring him.
"And that's not even the worst one I know. There was this other kid named Remy, he was rich just like you. His parents paid so little attention to him that they didn't even know his name. Even after making a wish that they would spent more time with him, things didn't work out for the better. After a while these kids come to see their fairies as more of parents than… well, their actual parents. And Timmy and I came to see each other as brothers because of that. Family is more than who you are sharing DNA with. Family are people who care for you and will always be there when things get tough.", the purple fairy told him.
While his explanation made sense, Dev couldn't just replace his father …right?. Desperate to somehow make an argument for his case, he tried something new. "But my situation is different, Peri! My dad maybe isn't always there when I need him, but he still has high expectations in me. I'm gonna inherit the Dimmadome legacy one day. Do you have any idea what people would think, if they heard Dale Dimmadome's son has become distant from his father? I have a pretty big reputation. Do you know what that's like!?", he asked furiously.
"Actually yes, I do.", Peri replied, surprising Dev, so he let him continue.
"I attended a school for magical beings. From my first day on, kids left and right were all over me. I was the most popular kid in school and everyone there wanted to hang out with me.", Peri said, while reminiscing on the past.
"Way to rub it in.", Dev interrupted him, not yet knowing where his godfather was heading, but knowing that he himself wasn't exactly the most popular kid in school, mostly thanks to his attitude and rudeness.
"At first, I liked the attention. Over time, once I knew while I had it in the first place, I started to hate it.", the young fairy continued.
"What? Why?", Dev wondered.
"I came to realize that the others didn't like me for who I am, but for what I am. Of course everyone wanted to be around me. I was the first fairy born in thousands of years. But they were just attracted to my celebrity status and not because they liked me for who I am. They couldn't have because they started being obsessed with me before even getting a chance to know me. That made it really exhausting.", Peri admitted.
Dev could somewhat relate to Peri there. Being treated differently due to being a Dimmadome could be nice sometimes, especially if it came with benefits, but when he was just trying to enjoy a normal day, he also felt pretty annoyed by it.
"The sole exception was Irep, who was already evil back then and never would have become part of a cult following like that. He made a lot of trouble for me, but that's kinda what I liked about him. It was a nice change of pace from everyone else. At least with him I knew I was dealing with someone who's genuine, for better or worse.", Peri finished.
Dev needed a minute to take all of this in. What was better for him? To keep living in his father's shadow, a man who would barely even look at him or instead open himself up to people like Peri and Hazel, who actually care about him despite his flaws? To keep pushing this false image of himself and hate it, or stop caring about what people might think of him, in exchange for actual happiness.
…Ok, if he was thinking about it like this, the answer seemed very obvious. Peri has not only risked everything to still be with Dev, but has made the effort to share some very personal things about himself to reassure Dev. Just today Peri has done more for the kid than his father had in the last 10 years. Peri felt like someone Dev could trust. Someone he could talk to about his feelings without getting ridiculed.
And he was planning to start doing that right now. "I think I really would prefer having you as my father. Can I make a wish now?", he asked.
"Sure thing, kid. Let's see it as the first wish of our new beginning. What is it?" Peri asked enthusiastically, while spinning his wand around.
"I wish you would hug me again.", Dev simply said.
Peri was silent for a moment, before starting to smile at Dev and flying down to his level. "Of course, kid.", he replied, before wrapping his arms around him, with Dev reciprocating the gesture.
"Wait, you didn't raise your wand to grant my wish.", the boy suddenly realized.
"Didn't have to."
