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Carlos didn't learn what had happened until too late to stop it.
But when Cecil didn't turn up on the radio that night, he knew that something had happened.
He gave it ten minutes, in case of technical difficulties or time anomalies, and even waiting that short amount of time was hell. Then he all but raced out the door, scrambled into his car, and drove like he had a fully stamped Alert Citizen card to the station. Immediately, he saw that he wasn't the only one who'd noticed Cecil's absence. Two interns were already blocking the door into the radio station, wielding a scimitar and a flamethrower between them to keep back the growing mob.
Carlos wasn't sure he could get past them, or the other various and sundry citizens crowded ahead of him, although there and then he found himself scared enough for his boyfriend to try. Fortunately, he didn't have to. A tug on the sleeve of his labcoat was enough to get his attention, and he looked around and then down at Old Woman Josie.
"Where's he gone, then?" she asked, peering suspiciously up at him through her spectacles.
"I don't know, ma'am," Carlos said, running his hands through his hair in agitation, and feeling a pang as the motion only reminded him even more forcibly of Cecil. "I haven't seen him since last night."
"Eh? But he was yammering on about how you called him. Yes sirree. Said you'd called to set up a date. Said it must have been real special, since you were so nervous you asked one of your scientist-type friends to call him instead."
Carlos felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He actually knew what that felt like, since coming to Night Vale, and it wasn't any more pleasant as a metaphor. "Ma'am," he heard himself say, slowly and carefully, as if by creeping up on the horror he could make it less horrifying. "I never called him. I never asked anyone to call him. Especially not any of my scientist friends, and he's not at the lab."
Old Woman Josie's eyebrows raised. "Oh," was all she said, and then Carlos really, truly knew the situation was dire.
Desperately, he made himself think. The answer he arrived at was not good. Some of his team had left town, showing more survival instinct than all the rest who'd stayed combined. They would have heard those early broadcasts, how Cecil had gushed over Carlos with undisguised adoration long before Carlos had ever let himself acknowledge any similar feelings for the radio host in turn. And while Carlos had gotten very, very careful about his reports, in those early first few weeks, he hadn't been so careful, hadn't had any idea how important some things would come to be...
"Oh, god," Carlos whimpered, fisting his hands in his hair. "Oh god, oh god, oh god..."
He'd doomed Cecil from day one. It didn't take a scientific genius to learn from what information they had, what information Carlos had given them, how best to get access to one of Night Vale's most fascinating, vocal citizens. Whatever they did to Cecil would be all his fault, he might be dead already...
Old Woman Josie was not tall enough to slap Carlos, but she achieved a similar effect by kicking him in the shins. "You pull yourself together, boy!" she ordered sternly, as he doubled over clutching at his bruised shin. "How else are you gonna go and save him?"
"S-Save him? How am I supposed to save him?"
"You're the scientist, aren't you? Isn't that the sort of thing they pay you to figure out?"
No, it wasn't. It wasn't that sort of thing at all. And yet...and yet, the idea of leaving Cecil without trying to do something to save him wasn't even worth contemplating. Carlos was not brave. If anything, Night Vale had made him very good at knowing when to run away screaming. But this wasn't about bravery. His colleagues had set up a lab at the next major, normal city over. Even if they'd taken Cecil somewhere else, that was a place to start.
"Ma'am? I know angels don't actually exist, but if they did...do you think one of them might be willing to offer me some protection?"
She smiled. "Angels help those that help themselves, boy."
He couldn't argue with that. Carlos left the mob to its mobbing and the interns to hold down the fort, and got back into his car and drove and drove and drove. For the first and maybe last time, Night Vale let him leave. It knew that he would be back.
* * *
His ID was still good, which mildly surprised Carlos. It was enough for him to get into the lab and accost the nearest technician, demanding to know what had happened to Cecil.
That didn't really get him anywhere. Cecil wasn't "Cecil" here, after all. Just Patient Zero, as befitting his status as the first citizen of the mysterious Night Vale that they'd successfully gotten under the knife.
Carlos nearly lost it, hearing that. But he managed to keep it together, long enough to track down the monsters responsible. He told whatever lies he had to, put on an act of affronted scientific inquiry, how dare they impinge on his work like this without checking with him, Cecil was his project and he wanted him back right now!
The words made him sick to say, but they worked, and so Carlos found himself being shown into the room where they'd left Cecil to...recover. It could have been politely called a closet, hastily converted into a cell.
Cecil had been sleeping fitfully on the floor when they opened the door, but he awoke with a jerk and a strangled cry at the sound, two eyes flying wide open. He tried to move away, but had nowhere to move away to, the room was so small. He wound up curled into a corner, shoulders digging back into the wall as though he were trying to melt into the walls. And he whimpered at the sound of their footsteps, their voices, ducking his head and raising his arms protectively. Carlos could see by the way he was shaking, by the unhealthy pallor to his skin, that the radio host had been drugged, and badly.
He didn't have to check to see if they'd hurt him any worse. He could see well enough from the doorway. It was immediately obvious, by the presence of the large, clinical white bandage in the middle of his forehead, that they had. Only two eyes had opened. The third was gone.
"You bastards," he breathed. Cecil looked up towards him with a soft gasp of surprise, but not...at him. Just to the right of his head, like he couldn't focus, or...
"You bastards!" Carlos snarled, whirling on the scientist who had showed him here. "This was never what was supposed to happen! I told you not to hurt him, I told you that we didn't have to do this! They'd help us if we asked! You didn't have to...take anything like this!"
But they hadn't, she said, staring at him in honest, sincere surprise. They'd left Cecil with two eyes. There was absolutely no biological necessity for three, and the sample would provide them with valuable research material. They could have taken more, but they hadn't. Out of respect for Carlos' work.
"You blinded him, damn it! How much more could you have taken?!"
But Carlos knew, feeling cold, that they could have left him so much worse. The fact that they'd left Cecil even mostly whole out of some...favor to him made him grateful, and sick with himself that he was even that.
Carlos was not strong. In the grand scheme of Night Vale, he was still the lowest of the low rungs on the food chain. But he was still scant seconds away from throwing caution to the wind, just doing what he could to hurt them for what they'd done, when he felt a soft, almost hesitant tug on the back of his coat.
Startled and on edge, Carlos whirled around, knocking the hand away. And then he felt even worse, because it was only Cecil, trying to hold on to him.
"I'm sorry," his boyfriend said quietly, rubbing his hand where Carlos had slapped him, not even trying to look at him now. He averted his gaze instead in something almost like fear. "I thought you were Carlos, I thought I heard Carlos, but I guess I didn't, I'm still a little off-balance."
"No." Carlos swallowed hard, trying to keep back the tears. "No, Cecil. It's me."
Drugged and sick and maimed and blind, Cecil nevertheless smiled like the happiest man in the world. "Carlos? You really came to get me?"
He couldn't take it. Carlos fell to his knees beside Cecil and embraced him. Right there in front of the other scientists. After all the times Carlos had hugged him and held him, Cecil knew how it felt to have the scientist's arms around him. Even blinded, he knew him this way. And so the radio host let out a long, shuddering sigh and returned the embrace, practically clinging to Carlos as the only familiar thing in the world. "I'm sorry," Carlos whispered, squeezing his eyes shut as tears stung them, unable to keep a sob out of his voice. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Cecil mumbled. Carlos knew him by now to know from the tremor in his voice that it wasn't, he just wanted so much for it to be okay, didn't want Carlos to worry, didn't want to acknowledge the horror. It made him hug Cecil even tighter as the other man babbled in a desperate attempt to cover up the hurt. "I guess I must have startled you. I understand, a lot of things are startling me right now. Do you know how long I've been here? I probably need to get to the station, I can't be late, Station Management will already be upset that I lost that eye, it was a gift...can you take me in to work?"
"...of course I can, Cecil."
He didn't even bother trying to suggest that maybe Cecil had other things to worry about. He knew better, by now. His broadcast was everything, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd dragged himself in to work to cheerfully deliver the nightly news even if he was hurt. It would just be the worst.
Cecil had missed one night already. Station Management would not be pleased.
"Here. Let me help you up."
"Thank you. That's very nice and helpful of you." Cecil smiled, and the sight of it made Carlos sob. But his hands were miraculously steady as he guided them both upright, letting Cecil lean gratefully against him. Carlos looked up and glared at the scientists through the tears in his eyes. How had he ever called them colleagues? Had he ever been capable of doing what they'd done? Of taking a thinking, feeling person and breaking them like this?
God, he hoped not. And he would live every day from now on making sure he never would.
These scientists, however, clearly were not thinking, feeling people, if they were capable of doing this. "You think you've never seen anything like him?" Carlos growled at them. "Then you really don't want to see his bosses. We're leaving. And I'm the one you should be worried about if you ever come sniffing around again." Plans for vengeance were already racing through his head, and he was fairly certain that he wouldn't be alone when they finally came to fruition. Night Vale loved Cecil, surely they wouldn't stand to see him hurt like this by outsiders.
But those plans were not for today. Today was for getting Cecil out. And they were not stupid, his former colleagues. Just cruel and thoughtless and utterly, utterly focused on Science, the way he wondered if he had ever been. They let him leave, dragging Cecil along with him. "Come on," Carlos murmured softly to him. "Just hang on to me. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'll get you there."
Some techs asked Questions when they saw Carlos and Cecil together, but something about the aura Carlos was radiating kept anyone from actually trying too hard to stop them. Even so, Carlos felt himself shaking in anger by the time they emerged together into the sunlight and the busy city.
"Okay, Cecil, my car's right here. I'm taking you around to the passenger's side. Here, let me help you sit." Carlos could have kicked himself for his inane babbling, his vain attempts to fill in the lost world for Cecil with his words alone. Cecil, at the least, didn't seem to mind it. He was still smiling, an expression of strangely desperate euphoria, at the sound of the scientist's voice. He settled into the passenger's seat, and let Carlos buckle him in. Carlos got in the driver's side, started up the car, and drove them home.
They didn't talk much, on the drive back. Mostly, Cecil slept, in restless fits and starts as his body, that even Carlos still didn't entirely understand, tried to process the drugs he'd been put on and the pain and trauma he'd endured. Carlos brooded, and tried to keep his mind focused on the road when his boyfriend was passed out next to him with that neat white gauze pad taped over the center of his forehead. He finally pulled the car in next to the radio station a little before sunset, and reached over to gently shake Cecil awake. "Cecil, hey. Wake up. We're here at the station."
"Oh, my," Cecil murmured, looking around out of habit as Carlos helped him to the door. "It sounds like there are a lot of people around. Are there, or am I hallucinating?"
"There are." The mob had dispersed somewhat since the day before, probably with some help from the Sheriff's Secret Police, but some brave souls had come creeping back to stake out the area. "You were...missed."
Cecil smiled to hear it.
Things were better, once they were inside. Cecil closed his two remaining eyes and took a deep breath, seeming to draw some...strength from the radio station. And, while he stayed with his arms around Carlos, Carlos got the sensation that this was less from necessity and more because Cecil just liked having his arms around Carlos.
Carlos supposed it made sense. If there was anywhere that Cecil would know his way around blinded, it was here.
They'd barely taken three steps inside, however, before they were all but mobbed by the interns, all clamoring at once like puppies that hadn't been fed, all scrambling to fill Cecil in on what he'd missed. Carlos had opened his mouth to warn them all off when Cecil interjected, smoothly fielding questions.
"...and I'll need to talk to Station Management before we get started. Intern Caesar, can you get the braille copies of the reports from the office? Intern Mick, can you get Carlos some coffee? No, none for me, thank you, I'm not feeling very well. And, ah, Carlos...do you think you could wait by my desk?"
"I should go with you to talk to Station Management." The words terrified him even as he said them but, damn it, so much of this was his fault. He knew that Cecil wouldn't see it that way, and Carlos wanted to be there to take some of the inevitable punishment. It was no less than he deserved. They probably wouldn't kill him...right?
Cecil, however, didn't seem to think so. "Carlos...I can manage without an eye. I couldn't if they broke your psyche like a cheap souvenir mug. Please?" He offered Carlos a hopeful sort of smile, and Carlos felt his resistance break like a cheap souvenir mug instead.
"Okay. Just...promise me you'll actually come back."
"Of course I will. Who else would do my show otherwise?" Cecil leaned in to kiss him. Carlos tilted his boyfriend's chin in the right direction to let their lips meet. Then he let himself be led away to wait by Cecil's desk. Cecil, who at least seemed capable of walking here, went to meet his fate.
He did come back, and he came back missing no more pieces. There was only one chair in front of Cecil's microphone, and so Carlos had found himself sitting on the floor. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, to see Cecil staggering unsteadily towards his desk, his breathing unsteady, his body trembling anew. There was a bleeding cut over his forehead, and one hand was clutching at his chest as though in pain. The wounded radio host all but collapsed into his desk, and for a few seconds, only stared blindly up at the ceiling.
"Carlos?" he finally asked, quietly. Carlos saw his hand moving, groping blindly, seeking.
"I'm right here," Carlos said softly, taking Cecil's hand in both of his and squeezing lightly. His boyfriend smiled in utter, heartrending relief.
"Stay with me?" Cecil asked, almost pleading. But he didn't wait for an answer. Before Carlos could ask him what had happened, find the breath to reassure him, before he could lose his nerve, Cecil took a deep breath, leaned forward and turned on the microphone.
"Be it ever so surreal, there is no place like home. Welcome to Night Vale..."
* * *
"I didn't know you were blind."
"Well, I wasn't. Until yesterday. I hadn't been for years."
"But only because of your third eye?"
"That's right. It's all well and good for interns - we've had interns who are blind, deaf, mute, numb, permanently sniffly, knurd, or any combination. But the radio host has to at least be able to read the letters that get spat out from under the door. Prolonged telepathic communication with Station Management does tend to be hazardous to one's health."
"I've never seen anyone read braille that fast." Especially not one-handed. Cecil hadn't let go of Carlos' hand all through his broadcast, holding on to the scientist in a way that put him in mind of nothing so much as a drowning man clutch a lifeline. Cecil's voice had remained impossibly steady all through the show. Maybe that was why.
"Well, I suppose it's like riding a bicycle. And I did have a lifetime's worth of practice, after all."
"Do you think they'll...give you a new one?"
Cecil didn't look out the window quite quickly enough to hide the pensive expression that stole over him at the question. "Oh, I'm sure they will," he said, in that same tone of voice he'd used before, that tone that all but begged the universe at large not to look at him and see the state he was in. "Eventually."
Carlos was saved having to think up an answer to that, and the unspoken worries that lay beneath this shaky attempt at hope, by pulling his car up next to his lab. His true destination was his apartment, that lay on top of the lab. When he'd asked Cecil if he maybe wanted to stay over for a couple of days until he had recovered a bit more, he almost hadn't been able to finish asking before Cecil had agreed. The radio host had praised his kindness and generosity and, of course, perfection to the heavens as they walked to the car together, which had only left Carlos feeling worse.
He really did want Cecil to stay over for a few days until he'd recovered from the trauma of having an eye forcibly removed. But he also had one other purpose.
"Cecil," said Carlos gently, as he guided the other man inside. "I was wondering if you'd be okay with me examining you."
He could see immediately that no, Cecil would not be okay with that. But his boyfriend tried to disguise his fear with a shaky laugh. "Why would you want to, dear Carlos? I should have thought it was obvious which pieces of me are here and which are missing."
"Y-Yeah, it is. But Cecil, you were just operated on. Probably not safely. I want to make sure you're not infected, and that..." He looked at the bandage again, and found himself looking away. "Everything's clean, and healing, and...not getting worse. But it's okay, I understand. You can just get some rest, tonight, and I'll take you in to the hospital in the morning, and..."
"No." Cecil's grip on Carlos tightened, as though he were afraid that Carlos would pull away there and then. Staring at nothing, the wounded man's pain was suddenly clear as day to see. Maybe he'd just given up on hiding it. Maybe he was just that tired. "I...if someone has to..." he tried, stammering and stumbling now in a way that was genuinely frightening and heartbreaking to hear. "You. I, I want you to. Make sure I'm okay. I trust you, Carlos."
He didn't deserve that trust. But he would try to prove worthy of it. "Okay. The lab table is right here. Let me help you sit, and...then we can get this out of the way."
It was slow going, because they were both absolutely terrified. Neither of them wanted to be, but fear was an irrational beast that settled into the mind like a spider in a statistically probably location on the body and just wouldn't leave. Cecil was terrified of being hurt again, and Carlos was terrified of hurting him.
He did what he could. There was a lot of kissing involved, and that seemed to help. He kissed Cecil's chest after he'd finished checking his heartbeat. He'd been briefly concerned to hear it beating in four-four time instead of its usual four-eight, but Cecil had told him that it had gotten as high as eight-two time before their first date, so that had reassured him somewhat.
He kissed the inside of Cecil's wrist after checking his blood pressure, kissed every one of the needle marks running up his arms before he cleaned and bandaged them. He felt Cecil shaking, with exhaustion, sickness, trauma, the memory of fear. But these small signs of love kept him still and mostly calm, and Carlos was glad to know that he could at least do something for him.
They both hesitated when the time came to change the bandage over where his eye had been. Cecil flinched back, raising a hand as though to protect himself, as soon as he felt Carlos reaching for it. Carlos took that hand gently in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze, before carefully peeling the bandage away.
The...emptiness he saw there almost broke him as well. There was still blood. Nevertheless, Carlos made himself raise the cleaning cloth to the torn skin and empty hollow in his boyfriend's skull. Cecil bit his lip, obviously trying to stifle any sound of pain as the disinfectant met the tender skin. Not for the first time, Carlos wished that his boyfriend had been as fortunate as some of Night Vale to be born without pain receptors.
What Carlos found himself saying as he gently, carefully, lovingly tried to put Cecil back together was as much an attempt to keep him calm as it was the man he'd even indirectly helped to hurt. But they were just the right words, they kept his hands steady and soothed some of the torment from Cecil's face. And that was enough.
"You are listening, hearing me. Breathe deeply and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us, we can cope with that. We can do this together, you and I."
Tears were only just starting to blur his eyes as the events of the last few days fully stole over him. But Carlos still managed to tape a fresh bandage over the wound, and he kissed Cecil softly on the lips, letting him know that it was done, and he would be okay. Cecil kissed him back, sighing softly against him in relief.
They slept that night together in Carlos' bed, Carlos with his arms around Cecil, giving his boyfriend one steady point to hold on to while he reconstructed the world without sight. And Carlos slept with plans for the future and dreams of vengeance mingling side by side in his head. This would not pass, and this would not break them.