Chapter Text
Crow haphazardly pawed through the drawers of his nightstand, his fingertips searching for the metallic chain of his pocket watch. He had to get out of his damn room. Away from his family, away from Eden Grove, away from all of it. He needed to talk to Mako for his safety.
“Honey, it’s not that serious!” Charlie scoffed, jiggling the locked knob of his door.
“You don’t get it!” Crow snapped. “No one gets it. You don’t understand what it’s like to go through something like this!”
“You’re making this a much bigger issue than it needs to be.”
“Of course, you think so. You’ve never had your entire world crumble in front of you in mere seconds.”
“Need I remind you of the years I spent rotting underneath your very feet?”
“Mom, that’s nothing compared to this. This is so much bigger than Dalseum.”
“Crow. Honey.”
“No! I don’t want to hear another word from you,” Crow sobbed. “Don’t expect me to be back anytime soon.”
Charlie had no option other than to deeply sigh. “Alright, then. It’s your choice.”
“The hell is going on over there?” Ronnie called from the kitchen.
“War!” Crow shrieked. “They’ve waged war against so many innocent, undeserving people!”
“One of his little games got shut down,” Charlie whispered.
“It was more than a ‘little game,’ Mom!” Crow choked. “It was a way of life. A savior for the broken people of this world.”
“They found out some Chinese company owned it and apparently harvested data. That new law or whatever shut down its servers,” Charlie explained.
“Why is he screaming like that?” Ronnie drawled. “It can’t be that serious.”
“There is nothing more serious than the banning of Block Blast,” Crow said. “Nothing has ever been more serious than this.”
“He thinks he’s funny, don’t he?” Ronnie hummed.
“I felt less emotion watching my father’s guts spill into my hands than I feel right now. Ronnie, this isn’t a laughing matter.”
“You need to stop bringing that up during unrelated conversations, son.”
“But it’s always so topical.”
“I don’t think it was when you brought it up during service last Sunday.”
“I was making connections to the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Am I not supposed to apply the text to my daily life?”
“I don’t think saying, ‘My dad was an avid enjoyer of sodomy. Then my sister ripped out his intestines, so I guess that proves God’s point’ was an appropriate response to the pastor asking you what you thought of the sermon,” Ronnie said.
“I thought it was funny,” Charlie commented.
“Glad that someone in this damn house appreciates me,” Crow mumbled, fidgeting with his pocket watch.
“He’s going to see Mako, so he won’t be back home for dinner,” Charlie said.
“More green chili chicken enchilada soup for me,” Ronnie said, clapping his hands.
“Save some for me. I won’t be too long,” Crow lied, fumbling with the knob between the charm’s loop. In the haze of his distraction, he set the hands at entirely the wrong position. He briefly thought back to Ronnie’s handbook.
“If you have weak intentions, so does the watch. Lord only knows where you’ll end up if you have no particular destination in mind.”
And, in that moment, Crow’s mind was not focused on a particular destination. Through the blur of unrelated thoughts swarming in his head, he managed to pick out the lyrics of My Chemical Romance’s “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison.”
The watch took his music choice a bit too literally, minus its loose interpretation of the term “prison.”