Chapter Text
“Master Quincy, we’re going to be arriving in Sketchvale in approximately twenty minutes.” Quincy looked away from the game he was playing on his phone, a game made entirely of cubes where you would build and fight monsters. He caught Reginald’s gaze and immediately stared at a spot just above his eyes to give the illusion of prolonged eye contact, like his father had always told him he had to maintain. It annoyed him less to do that, and his father did it all the time, so it had to be something worth doing. Reginald was saying something else, he had barely paid any attention. “...Master Quincy, are you alright?”
“What??? Of course I’m fine, Reginald. Why?” Reginald raised his eyebrows.
“Master Quincy, you’ve dropped your phone onto your face four times and your hands have been shaking for the last thirty minutes.” Quincy opened his mouth to respond, but Reginald continued. “Not like they do normally. Is it stress?”
“Why would I be stressed?” Quincy replied with a huff, turning back to his phone. “I don’t have anything to worry about. I’m going to win this stupid key hunt by a landslide, and I will give them all to father on a silver platter, and then everything will be fine. He’ll be thrilled and so will I.”
Instead of leaving, Reginald sat down next to him and rested his hand on Quincy’s arm in an oddly comforting gesture not befit for someone whose sole purpose in his life was to keep him from getting mugged. “Master Quincy, don’t worry too much about this. I know your father is tough to get through to. I’m sure he’ll be proud of your efforts.”
“What are you saying?” Quincy sneered. “That he isn’t already proud of me? Everything I do is to give him a reason to believe in me. Of course I’ve disappointed him. Of course I’ve made lots of mistakes, I’m not stupid enough to think otherwise. But I’m going to make it up to him.”
“I know. I know you can.”
“Good. Because I will.” Quincy turned back to his game, continuing to build a trench for his blue Ribbotl he had caught to swim in around his base. He added as an afterthought: “I’ll make him proud if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Reginald frowned, lightly pinching the fabric of Quincy’s white sleeve. “That seems extreme, Master Quincy. But I’m sure your heart is in the right place.” He stood up again. “I’ll go request Pompaboar ham be prepared, Master Quincy. I know you like that.” Quincy looked up, startled for reasons he couldn’t quite place, but Reginald had already stepped out of the cabin. He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the table before him and then, because it had to be symmetrical, repeated this with his other hand. He glanced around and started to count random things throughout the cabin, quickly bored. Would he hurry up? It couldn’t take that long to ask for one thing.
Because it wasn’t like he’d spent thirty minutes waiting outside his father’s office before, trying to work through an entire script of dialogue he had created in his head just to ask for one of his books to study. Not at all.
Quincy saved his world and set his phone aside. He had lost interest in playing. Maybe he should reread through the complete log of the updated Doodlepedia owned by the top scientists of DoodleCo and quiz himself. That would be a suitable way to pass the time, considering he was on his way to get a Beginner Doodle from some poor professor in a trash dump of a town whose name he couldn’t even remember and would probably have to be tested so he could show he deserved it. He fumbled through his bag for the notebook he wrote down everything he’d learned about Doodle species in.
“...Let’s see. I’ll go over the Doodles father has on his team first.” He cleared his throat, starting to read. “Djinneko, final evolution of Apurrition, typing is Spirit-Mind—”
Reginald returned, sitting back down next to him. “Are you taking a break, Master Quincy?”
“Tch. No, don't be ridiculous. I’m making sure I still have every detail of the Doodlepedia memorized by heart so father will be pleased with my knowledge.” Reginald frowned again.
“...If I may provide my opinion, Master Quincy, you don’t have to work yourself to the bone and start bad habits to make your father proud of you. He already ought to be, since you’re his son.”
Quincy gave him a strange look. That was one of the most absurd things he’d heard all week, and he was quick to voice that fact. “No, that isn’t enough. That’s stupid. Why would just existing be enough to make him proud? There has to be a reason for everything, a real reason, a good reason. When that reason is no longer important or useful, then everything is out of balance and it has to be cut off for the good of everything else. That's just how life works, Reginald.” He paused. “And it’s not a bad habit to always try and work harder to improve. Right now, I don't have a reason for him to be proud of me. So if I just put in a bit more effort, learn a bit more, do a bit better, maybe then I can show that I’m more than he dreamt I’d be.”
At the end of that rant he was quite breathless, and Reginald’s look of concern went completely unnoticed. He looked out the window, seeing that they had started to descend and were going over a long, straightforward route connected to the town by a bridge. He pressed his nose to the glass, eyes sparkling and glasses lopsided on his face, briefly lost in imagination of the Doodles scrabbling around below and the Finwick he could envision making leaps through the water and falling back with a splash–it was a safe guess to make, most places with large enough bodies of water to fish in had schools of Finwick swimming through the depths.
For a moment, he thought it looked rather pretty–no, that wasn't the right word. His father’s mansion was pretty, so pretty it felt like glass and trying in any sense to make it feel lived in would break it. He suspected his father felt the same way, which was why he spent so much of his time exclusively inhabiting only a few parts of the house like his office, and then it was like a machine was running it and not someone with a soul. It had gone far enough that he rarely even came down to dinner anymore. He made Reginald wash and rewash the dishes for him every night anyway.
No, pretty was not a fitting descriptor for this route. Lively sounded more accurate. Or two-faced. Lively, with its own desperate attempt at charm to make up for its lack of beauty. But nothing ever tried that hard to seem real if it wasn't actually fake. He’d learned that the hard way.
“Will we be landing soon?” he asked Reginald, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head.
“Have you thought about which Doodle you would like to pick, Master Quincy? There’s–”
“Yes, yes, there's Pupskey, Vipember, Tabbolt, and Skrappey. Ice Type, Fire Type, Spark Type, and Earth Type respectively. Their evolutions are…” He continued to ramble about the biological structures of each of the Beginner Doodles and their respective strengths and weaknesses to Reginald, who listened without interrupting. Occasionally, when there was a small break in his long, winding speech, Reginald would say something small like ‘That’s very impressive, Master Quincy.’ or ‘I can tell you’ve studied very hard, Master Quincy.’ And Quincy couldn't begin to describe how much he yearned to hear those words from his father and not some overglorified butler, but it would have to suffice until he’d done enough to earn that.
When Quincy had run out of breath and ways to describe all their various quirks, he fell silent and thought for a moment. “I’ll decide when I get there.” He said finally, tapping his index fingers together.
“Whatever you think is best, Master Quincy.”
Quincy shut his eyes and did his best to tune out the noise of the jet as it started to land, a small hum of contentment escaping his lips as he imagined the look of surprise on his father’s face when he finally did something to prove his worth. This would just be the start, the turning point to something big. Occasionally he saw glimmers, hints of something other than complete apathy toward his own son’s accomplishments. Hopefully this would set it off, and Quincy would no longer have to pry so hard to see a glimpse of pride in his eyes.
Maybe then he’d have a place in life again. Maybe then everything would be perfect.
Maybe then he’d realize he never actually knew Quincy at all.
