Chapter Text
“There’s nothing normal about this job. Or about me.”
Cecil didn’t shy away from the night sky, his voice thin, worn down to something almost colorless. “I stare at the stars and watch them burn every day. Eventually… you learn to accept it.”
That was what he told himself the first time Donald died.
Acceptance.
A lie he’d refined over the years. It was polished, rehearsed, and made presentable because some part of him had never accepted it. Not really.
The GDA was thriving, stronger than it had ever been. Efficient, ruthless, necessary, and Cecil Stedman stood at the center of it all, watching everything orbit decay.
The job didn’t just demand things from him. It consumed him, slowly, patiently, like a tide that never receded. Death felt closer now. Nowhere near dramatic, not sudden, just inevitable. It was a constant pressure behind the eyes.
Maybe that was the price. Maybe that was why he kept Donald alive.
He told himself it wasn’t selfish. That it was a strategy because Donald was valuable, irreplaceable even. But the truth lingered, quiet and ugly:
Donald made the end of the day bearable.
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
Cecil sat in silence, the kind that pressed in from all sides. His office felt too large for one man, too empty for the weight it carried. Thinking like this was dangerous, and he knew that.
Still, he couldn’t stop. The stars burn, everything burns, and we call it progress.
The door opened.
“What, Donald?” Cecil muttered, not facing him.
Donald hesitated just inside the room, reading him in that careful way he always did.
“Nothing, sir, I just- wanted to stop by.”
“Then say it.”
Cecil finally looked up. His eyes were sharp, but there was something frayed behind them, like a wire stretched too tight.
Donald shifted his weight. “I was wondering… if you wanted to get lunch with me.”
A pause. Something fragile passed over Cecil’s face, but gone before it could be named.
“...Fine.”
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
The diner was quiet, rather ordinary. The kind of place that pretended the world outside didn’t exist.
Cecil stared down at his plate like it might tell him something important. He hadn’t eaten a proper meal in ages, it felt like, though, that wasn’t his biggest concern at the moment.
“Modern medicine,” he said suddenly, “is both a blessing and a curse.”
Donald glanced up. “Sir?”
“All these people,” Cecil continued, gesturing vaguely around them, “bad hearts, weak lungs, things that would’ve killed them a century ago… they’re still here.” His voice tightened. “We’ve cheated death.”
He looked at Donald, then really looked at him.
“I should be dead. And so should you.”
There it was. The truth, stripped bare.
Cecil’s eyes shimmered, not quite tears, but close enough to recognize the shape of them.
“We’ve made something unnatural,” he went on, quieter now. “Do you think God laughs at that? Or…” He exhaled sharply. “Or do you think He just watches us ruin ourselves?”
Donald didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t, as there wasn’t a protocol for this. No training module for when the most dangerous man in the world sounded… afraid.
“I think,” Donald said carefully, “if anyone’s watching… they’re probably just as confused as we are.”
Cecil huffed a dry, humorless laugh. “Yeah,” he murmured. “That sounds about right.”
A beat passed.
“I’m sorry,” Cecil added, waving it off like it meant nothing. “That was… morbid, even for me.”
Donald shook his head. “It’s okay, sir.”
And somehow, it was.