#technically dadcher

[witch-sweets]

[shadowthrone-ammanas]

Guilt

Drabble request from @iscaredspider on Discord that ended up not being much of a drabble at all. They asked for Dadcher angst; Snatcher feeling guilty about trying to kill Hat Kid. It ended up being not super angsty and delving more into Hat Kid’s past than I intended it to but that’s okay. Thank you for the request!

Hat Kid had been gone nearing a full year now. A long time, meaning she was probably gone for good, her promises to come back and visit forgotten. That was fine though, Snatcher didn’t care. Why would he? He was glad she was gone, she’d been a pest, nothing but a thorn in his side. He didn’t miss her at all, not even a little.

He was only thinking about her because he’d pulled out the ‘How to Kill Kids’ book he’d always made sure to have open when she was around in a failed attempt to get a reaction out of her. Maybe she’d somehow known it was a fake title… or couldn’t read the language despite knowing how to speak it, she was an alien after all. He’d only brought it out because... because… why not? It was his book; he could pull it out whenever he pleased and it didn’t mean anything, certainly not that he missed Hat Kid or anything like that. In fact, he was going to…

“Snatcher!” That voice…

He looked up to see Hat Kid strolling up to his reading hollow, balancing on the vine leading to it. She was noticeably a bit taller now, her hair longer too but still tied into a neat ponytail and… still using the bow he’d made for her.

“I’m back,” she said with a wide smile and flourish of her arms as she stepped into the hollow. “Did you miss me?”

“No, course not,” he replied, forcing a sneer to hide how much his mouth wanted to smile for some reason. “Why would you even come back?”

“Because you’re my BFF silly.”

Again with the BFF thing. Why? He’d tried to kill her. And then he’d put her through the Death Wish contracts. Yes, she’d chosen to do them but… she should hate him. He was a bad person and she was a good person; good guys hating bad guys was how things worked for almost everyone else on the planet and presumably the universe because it was the most logical thing. Why was she so different?

“I would’ve come sooner,” she continued. “But uh…” the joy fell from her face, replaced with sorrow. “Stuff happened that delayed me. But that’s okay,” and suddenly she was all smiles again. “I’m here now. How have you been?”

Should Snatcher ask her what had delayed her and why thinking about it had brought that look to her face? He wanted to know purely for the sake of curiosity, not because he cared. If he asked though, she probably would assume he did so… he’d ask later, pretend it was an afterthought. “It’s been quiet around here with you gone.” Too quiet. “It’s been nice but now unfortunately you’re back.”

“Yeah, I’m sure, you’re real upset about that huh?” She giggled. “You can’t fool me, I know you missed me because even if you won’t admit even to yourself I know you care.”

“Kid, I tried to kill you more than once. What part of that says I care even a little?”

“A lot of those challenges weren’t you trying to kill me though, just challenge me. And if you were really trying to kill me with them, you wouldn’t have given me the option to not do them. And when you were trying to kill me for real it was because that’s what you do with all your contractors. If that wasn’t the standard you’d already set yourself, you probably wouldn’t have even done that, am I right?”

“Even if that was true,” and maybe looking back on it was, though Snatcher wasn’t going to tell her that, “that still doesn’t explain why you insist on bothering me so much. Most people hate people who tried to kill them, regardless of their reasons for doing it.”

“Well, I don’t.” Hat Kid shrugged. “Almost everyone I know has tried to kill me at least once or at the very least put me in a situation where I could easily die and didn’t care if I did. So, if I lived life by that standard, I’d hate everybody and that’s no fun.”

Welp, that just made it worse. Was Snatcher really just among a long list of people who’d tried to kill her? … Mustache Girl had, DJ Grooves had, without even counting the Death Wish contract, the Conductor had almost blown his train up with her on it, the Empress had and… that was almost everyone she interacted with in a major way from this planet. The only one who hadn’t put her in danger or outright tried to murder her was the Walrus Captain. Hat Kid was just a child, what was wrong with all them? Snatcher had at least had had an excuse… right? Sort of anyway? … Maybe.

“What about your parents?” he asked, pushing aside those thoughts.

Hat Kid moved forward to sit on the footstool and look up at him. “I don’t have any.”

“Meaning, you’re… an orphan?” Making the whole trying to kill her thing that much worse because who went around murdering orphans?

“Maybe, I guess. I don’t really know if they’re dead or just abandoned me to the school for whatever reason. I don’t care either because I have a spaceship.” She smiled proudly. “I get to visit other planets. It’s fun even if very few people actually like me. A lot of the people I meet always either want me dead because they want my Time Pieces or want to capture me so they can study me because I’m an alien. Sometimes they want to do both so they can dissect me.”

Every word out of her mouth even if they were spoken in a nonchalant tone just made Snatcher feel worse for her. Surely, she was exaggerating though. It couldn’t really be that bad, right? “You said something about a school, what about the teachers and principle?” Presumably the people who’d taught her how to fly a spaceship. Teaching such things to a child was questionable at best but… “Surely they take care of you, right? They’ve never tried to kill you or anything like that.” She had to have an authority figure in her life somewhere that cared for her.

“Uh… I really shouldn’t tell you about them, it’s against the rules. But you’re my BFF and the rule is specifically not to tell intelligent lifeforms this stuff but you’re dead so it’s technically not a violation of the rule.” Loopholes were great, weren’t they? “So… no they haven’t tried to kill me. But some of their tests are pretty dangerous because being a space pilot can be super dangerous so you gotta be prepared. I don’t know for sure if anyone’s died during them, though there are tons of rumors about it happening so it probably happens sometimes. And one guy I know got maimed during a test somehow and failed because of it. I don’t know the details because he got kicked out for it so I never saw him again. Heck, maybe he died and that’s a lie they told us.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s a huge lawsuit waiting to happen.” The fact that no one had sued the school out of business yet was a miracle. “They’re going to get sued into the ground, just you wait.” Everyone would be better off when it finally happened too. Snatcher would do it himself just for fun if he could.

Hat Kid shrugged. “Hmm… I guess, I don’t know. But my point was, I’m not upset you tried to kill me because I’m used to it.” And that just made it worse. “So, you don’t feel bad either, okay?” She smiled up at him, way too cute and innocent.

All right fine, Snatcher felt bad about trying to kill her. After hearing more about her life than he wanted to know, how could he not? He had before too though, hadn’t he? But only a little bit. But this is why he hated children. It was far too easy to grow a soft spot for them and then have stupid emotions and gross feelings like this. They were worse than cats because cats at least had the decency to not have the same depth of emotion, intelligence, and understanding that children did. And now he had to apologize, didn’t he? Because he done a bad thing to someone he… – ugh – cared about, and felt bad about it. So…

“No, kiddo… ugh, I apologize, okay? I didn’t know you’re an orphan and I didn’t know any of that other stuff about how awful people tend to treat you. So, stop looking at me like that, it makes me uncomfortable.”

She blinked up at him. “Did you just…” A smile spread across her face, “apologize? Are you actually admitting you care? At least enough to apologize anyway.”

His instinct was to say ‘no’ but… he kind of had just admitted it, hadn’t he? And… the reason she was so excited about that prospect was… because based off what she just told him, not many people cared about her, right? So… “Fine, kiddo, fine, I… care about you a little, okay? A tiny bit, like this much.” He held up a hand to hold his thumb and finger apart about an inch or two. “I feel bad that I tried to kill you, I shouldn’t have, it was wrong.” Not that he didn’t do wrong things all the time and not feel bad about it but she was a special case because she just was. She’d wormed her way into his cold dead heart somehow and he couldn’t rid himself of that now matter how much he would prefer if he could.

“I knew it!” She jumped up and onto his chair to hug him, even nuzzling his mane. He sighed and tolerated it. It wasn’t that bad… but it didn’t mean he liked it. It made his regret worse though because she was so happy he cared about her after he’d… tried to kill her, more than once too. And in general, she shouldn’t be so happy somebody cared about her, regardless of who they were. That was something she should be used to, not people wanting her dead or not caring if they killed or injured her somehow.

Maybe later he’d offer to try to fix that whole orphan situation of hers. He had the credentials to draft up adoption papers after all. And finding someone who wanted her as a daughter shouldn’t be too hard, she was adorable and sweet after all – though he’d never tell her those things. Heck, if he weren’t against the idea of being a parent, he might’ve offered to take her in himself. No way was that going to happen though.

For this drabble event.