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Doctor Death Defying has never claimed to be a father toward the Fab Four, and has never put special effort into trying to be their father.
The story of how they all ended up coming together is a long and boring one, but the result is that Doc wound up having his hands full with a gaggle of preteens (Party objects and says that them & Jet were thirteen at the time, thank you very much, though Ghoul was 12 and Kobra was 11) and trying his best to keep them mostly safe.
And he does not go about any of it with the intention of being a dad towards any of them.
Yes, he patches up their injuries and scrounges up food for them and shows them good music, and he teaches them first aid basics, he teaches them how to shoot, he gets worried when they don’t come home—and wonders, when did the radio station become “home” rather than just “the radio station”?—but that’s all standard procedure for dealing with kids, isn’t it?
When they go off on their own as a crew, as the Fabulous Four, he makes them promise to give updates on the goings-on wherever they set up base, and he tells himself he won’t miss the sound of Kobra’s loud snoring, or breaking up Party and Ghoul every time they get into a playful scuffle, tells himself he’ll be glad to not need to wrestle with Jet’s hair every morning to get it into a presentable shape. It’ll put less strain on his own resources, he thinks, so it will make things much easier.
But he finds himself sick with worry any time he reports on a firefight or a clap or a particularly nasty wipeout at the crashtrack; what if that was them? What if the unnamed gang in this evening’s traffic report are his killjoys? Oh, he better radio in, just in case, just to be sure.
One day they all come stumbling into the station all banged up and someone is screaming, and Doc can’t tell which of them is wailing like a banshee until he notices the wiggling bundle in Jet-Star’s arms, and Party Poison—fifteen-year-old Party with their face caked in blood and sand, a wild look in their eyes—says “everyone except her got dusted, Doc, she’s got nobody now but us.”
And—Witch damn them all, may their masks never be delivered, a plague on both their bases—he tells them it’s the right thing to do to take care of her, it’s very admirable. He lets them hunker down in the station and he helps the Four out with the kid, and his only thought for several days is that he never quite expected to be a grandparent, but his back is certainly bad enough for him to fit the bill.
They name her in secret, unofficially, recalling the various names cried out by members of her dying crew with their last breaths, calling out for the baby or for the others, no way for the Four to know whose name is whose, but wanting something to hold on to nonetheless. The loudest one had been a scream of the word “radiance” as Party ripped open the door of the mailbox the girl had been hastily shoved into for safekeeping during the raid.
“Radiance” is what they call her, in whispers, reverently, too sacred and special a name to be said aloud. They come up with placeholders.
Jet calls her by any name he’s heard in a song. Buttercup, Caroline, Billie Jean, Eileen, Rosemary. Party takes a page out of Jet’s book, sometimes, but they have a rotating list of nicknames for her; every other word out of their mouth is some new pet name. Babygirl, sweet pea, honey, starshine, Missy, sweetheart, ladybug. It goes on and on.
Doc would be annoyed by it, if it wasn’t so damn cute.
Eventually they go back to their own set-up at the diner when they get a handle on taking care of their new little motorbaby, their tiny flurry of curly hair and static shock, and Doc feels like an empty-nester again, with his flock of cuckoos all moved out.
But they still call in or stop by for visits at least once a week, and Doc nags at them to stay out of his hair and let him do his job in peace, but he never runs them off, especially not when they bring the girl over.
Sometimes he even makes a trip to the diner himself, if he can spare the fuel in his van. He never warns them ahead of time, and it’s certainly something to roll up in the middle of the day and watch them all scramble out to meet him by the door.
They’re a sweet bunch—with no thanks to him, of course—and he wouldn’t trade them for the world.
Years fly by like desert vultures, tearing the flesh of youth from highway roadkill, and Doc is blindsided when he realizes how tall Party has gotten, but he guesses that nineteen years of being alive tends to stretch a kid out. Kobra’s still just as quiet as ever, but much less timid, Jet has grown into the unofficial muscle of the group, and Ghoul’s gotten himself inked up to high heaven.
The girl might just amaze him the most. She’d started out as a squealing blanket cocoon, and has turned into a rough-and-tumble little freedom-fighter. Maybe a six year old shouldn’t be wielding a bazooka, but Doc certainly won’t be the one to break that news to her.
“I’m tellin’ ya, Doc,” Party says, “she’s really somethin’ else. I mean, you ever look at a kid an’ just— you know , you just know it, that they’re gonna do somethin’ big? Shake things up?”
And Doc raises an eyebrow and smiles when he says, “I think I can remember that feelin’, Party, yeah.”
He’d never claimed to be their dad, had never gone out of his way to fulfill that specific emotional niche— it just kind of happened.
Shit happens, Doc reminds himself, and things don’t always go as planned.
Thank the Witch for that.