#Strange and the Owl Lady BROTP

[supremestrangeness]

What…what have you done?-Luz Noceda

“I had that one night with your… what, Aunt? Doesn’t give you permission to- I don’t deserve to be judged by children. I’m not the only one in the multiverse with specific dietary needs.”

[serendipitouscontaminant]

@the-fic-place Here’s some unapologetically sappy as-good-as-it’s-ever-gonna-get Uzo & Chidi fic for BROTP week. 

DAKAR, SENEGAL

1989

Uzo is five years old and it’s his first day of school and he’s not nervous at all because that would be silly. He likes people and he’s going to make lots of friends and it’s going to be great. He’s new, but that’s fine, it’s only been a month, it’s not like all the other kids are friends and don’t want to talk to him, except all the other kids are friends and don’t seem to want to talk to him.

He knows his French and Wolof aren’t that good yet, but it’s not really his fault that his parents decided to up and leave Nigeria, and he thinks he’s doing alright.

He still ends up sitting on a bench during recess, feeling very alone.

That’s when a little shadow falls over him, and he looks up to see one of the kids in class who hadn’t really been talking to anyone, now that Uzo thinks of it. The boy is staring at him with big owl eyes behind even bigger glasses.

“Hi,” Uzo tries.

The boy says, “I usually sit here. During recess.”

Uzo frowns. “Don’t you play with the other kids?”

“Not really. I just read.”

“Oh.” Uzo and the other boy stare at each other for a while before Uzo has a very smart idea.“Want to play with me?”

The other boy stares. His eyes get even wider, which seems like it should be impossible, but obviously isn’t. He says, “…I don’t know.”

It’s kind of a weird response, but Uzo breezes past it and says, “I like playing marbles, do you?”

“I guess?”

“Great! What’s your name? I’m Uzo.”

“My name’s Chidi.” It’s the first thing the other boy has said that doesn’t sound like a question. He pauses. “Hi.”

Uzo grins, and Chidi smiles back, and in that moment Uzo, in a strange way that feels like magic but is actually just the reality of genuine connection, knows that he and Chidi are going to be very good friends for a very long time.

NEIGHBORHOOD E798F23, EST. 2059, THE GOOD PLACE

IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER WHAT YEAR IT IS

Uzo still can’t help but be startled every time Janet suddenly pops up next to him, even though he’s been around Janets for–damn, closer to four hundred than three hundred years, now.

At least these days it doesn’t take long for him to shrug it off, but he still jumps when Janet pops up next to him, cheerfully informing him, “Someone’s looking for you!”

“What?”

“Someone’s looking for you in the park next to the town square!”

Uzo frowns. “I thought Chisimdi wasn’t visiting until next month?” Not that he wouldn’t be pleased to see his daughter, she’s just not the sort of person who arrives early. Or late. Or anything but on time, really.

“She’s not,” Janet agrees. “It’s someone else. One Chidi Anagonye.”

The name makes Uzo’s fingers turn numb, and he drops his book. “Chidi?” Uzo’s voice comes out hushed, hopeful. “I mean, I knew he got here, I was planning to visit him soon, surprise him…”

“Looks like he decided to surprise you first,” Janet says before she disappears.

Uzo feels like he’s dreaming as he heads to the park, but Chidi is unmistakable.

He’s pacing under one of the oak trees, looking a little wound up, talking to a small blonde woman who rolls her eyes and scoffs at something he says. She puts her hands on his shoulders and leans in close to say something that must be reassuring, because Chidi relaxes and nods.

The other woman in the group, a tall, elegant lady wearing a flowered dress, says something else, and Chidi relaxes further.

It seems it’s easier for him to do that now.

There’s another man too, vibrating with badly-contained excitement, dressed in clashing colors, and it’s that other man who notices Uzo, who is still frozen a ways away, staring, reeling. “Hey, Chidi,” he says, gesturing at Uzo. “Is that him?”

From the tone of voice and the mildly exasperated reactions of the others, Uzo can tell that whoever this man is has been asking that question for a while, possibly about everyone who’s been walking by.

Chidi sighs heavily and starts, “I think not-our-Janet would probably tell me, Jason…”

He still turns around to see who Jason is pointing at, and then he stops cold.

Chidi looks at Uzo wide-eyed, dumbfounded, as though he wasn’t the one to seek him out, and then he walks towards Uzo slowly but surely, right up until he pauses an arms length away.

Then, after a beat, he smiles.

Uzo loves watching the sun rise over the hills. There is no such thing as an imperfect sunrise here, each as beautiful as the last.

Now, he thinks:

There is no heavenly sunrise that can compare to Chidi Anagonye’s smile.

“Hello, Uzo,” Chidi responds, taking a step closer. He laughs nervously. “It’s been too long.”

“And yet you look like you haven’t aged a day,” Uzo says, and his voice comes out rough.

Chidi’s big eyes start to glisten as they take in Uzo’s gray hair, his lined face, and he says, “I missed you.”

The tears that have been pricking at Uzo’s eyes spill over, seep into the edges of his growing smile. “I missed you too, brother. I was waiting for you.”

Chidi lets slip a choked-up laugh and says, “Just like me to keep you waiting, huh?”

Uzo shakes his head. “I didn’t mind. I knew you’d get here eventually.”

When Chidi embraces him, he does so suddenly and with abandon. Uzo hugs him back just as fiercely, because as perfect as the Good Place is, as many wonderful friends as Uzo has made in the town he and his wife finally settled in, no one could ever quite compare to his dearly departed best friend. Uzo had been so devastated when he heard that Chidi hadn’t gotten into the Good Place, a misery that was only slightly ameliorated by the reassurance that Chidi was marked for the Good Place in less than five centuries.

But he hadn’t had a choice in the matter, so he’d waited, and he’d hoped.

Hoped that Chidi would be rehabilitated like Uzo was told he would be, that he’d get better.

It didn’t sound like he would in somewhere called the Bad Place, but Uzo allowed himself to dream.

Dream that Chidi would somehow be less miserable than he’d been in life, that things would get easier for him, and Uzo knows now that his wishes came true, can sense it even from the little time he and Chidi have been reunited, because he’s seen Chidi unhappy and unsatisfied so often that now, even after all these years, it is incredibly easy to see that he is not.

Uzo holds his oldest friend close and whispers, to himself and to Chidi and to the universe, “Finally, finally.”

On AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12783966