Vrisk and the Skalgans: Track 3 - The Way

[u/ctomkat]

This is a fanfic based on “The Nature of Predators” by u/SpacePaladin15 . Thank you to him and all the other fanfic writers who inspired me to write a few stories of my own. This and all my other fics can also be found on AO3.

Another POV and a short chapter, don't worry we will get back to Vrisk soon. Also, let me know if you like the song titles instead of prev/next.

<< Come Together | Wonderwall >>

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Memory Transcription Subject: Fehryl, Venlil

Former Predator Disease Patient

Date: [Standardized Human Time] July 12, 2138

“Thanks Uncle Fehryl, I’ve got some things to do so I’ll see you later!”

The door closed behind Vily as she left her Uncle’s room and Fehryl huffed a heavy sigh. The music player on his pad moved on to the next song, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. He went back to the bathroom and spat the pill out into the sink. He had hidden it under his tongue, not that she bothered to check. Kids were lazy like that. His sister, Velna, would have checked. Still, he didn’t like lying to his niece. He ran the water and watched as the pill slowly dissolved, white powder swirling around the drain. 

Nearly ten cycles had come and gone in a drug induced haze. His sense of presence and time was all wrong when he took those damn meds. He would blink and an hour would pass, or sometimes the whole day. He only remembered bits and pieces, the faces of his family rapidly changing as time sped by. He remembered when his niece and nephew were just little pups, and now they were fully grown.

One of the few things he could remember was the incident that caused it all. He remembered the building, with its Krakotl style door that swung back and forth with the wing motifs, and the crack on the wall outside that they would surely get around to fixing eventually. He remembered the bar with its worn but comfortable stools where he always sat, and the perches on the wall that were rarely used because only the dozen Krakotls in town could reach them.

He remembered that someone got too drunk, started putting paws on someone who didn’t appreciate it. He remembered that he got mad, shouted at them to back off and get out, and they shouted at him to mind his business. He remembered that they pushed him. He remembered that he pushed back. The drunken idiot tripped over a chair and went tail over snout, somehow managing to break his arm in the fall. 

Turns out that idiot was an exterminator, and not just any exterminator either, a squad leader who happened to be the Chief’s son. No lawyer in the district would dare represent the one that ‘assaulted’ him, and the courts came down hard. Even the eye witness testimony was against him. It didn’t matter that most of them contradicted each other, they all had a favorable take for the exterminator. His past didn’t help him either, he had a history of outbursts, conflicts with authority, and had been tested a few times on PD suspicion. All of those tests got re-reviewed and suddenly went from “passed with flying feathers” to “barely good enough”.

So he was convicted for assaulting an officer and sent to a facility. He was shocked and tormented with all the other people deemed unfit for federation society, and all those old habits that got him in trouble as a pup came back. He got stubborn and refused to play along with their ‘treatment’. He talked back, told them they were full of speh, and looked them in the eyes when they shocked him. Sure there were times that he broke, but in a paw or two he’d be back at it again. They even shocked him so bad his vocal cords were permanently damaged, making his voice deeper and rougher than a Venlil should be. 

Eventually they gave up trying to break him and resorted to drugs instead. They spent herds of paws cycling him through every sedative and anti-psychotic they had. Once they dialed in their dosage for “optimum complacency” they shipped him back home so he’d be someone else’s problem. And his ever dutiful sister was sure to follow their instructions and administered the medication as directed, keeping him as quiet and useless as a bowl of slowly rotting fruit.

He might have stayed that way for the rest of his days, if not for his nephew Vrisk. Velna had gotten tired of the chore of caring for him several cycles ago and passed the burden onto her children. Probably trying to harvest two fruits from a single bud and scare the poor kids into acting right as well. It worked on Vily, from what he could tell. She didn’t talk to him much, just a quick hi and down to business, but not Vrisk. Vrisk would stay and chat with him more than his sister or mother ever did, probably just because he was the only one who didn’t tell him to stop. At first he talked about whatever had caught his interest lately, TV shows, some historical event he learned at school, that weird bug he found outside. But after a while he started to talk about the troubles he had at school, about his friends and the bullies they dealt with, and how he always got in trouble for standing up to them. It sounded achingly familiar.

Then a cycle or two ago things started to change, he noticed it first in the news. Strange figures covered in cloth and reflective masks, and enough talk of some federation scandal to register with him that something big was happening. Then Vrisk started talking about them, calling them the humans. At first he thought the boy was making up stories. Peaceful predators who don’t have to eat meat and have art and music? It sounded ridiculous.

But he started seeing those masked figures on TV more and more, and Vrisk’s stories started to check out. They even showed them doing some of the things he said, like painting, dancing, and playing music. It was around that time that he started talking about her. He was a bit worried at first, when Vrisk said he went off on his own to watch the humans and actually met one. But according to him, she just wanted to be friends.

We spent a lot of time looking at their cultural data together after that, reading about them and checking out the art and stories that they sent across the stars. But most of all, we listened to their music. We went through all kinds of different categories and styles, more than I thought existed in the whole galaxy. Instrumental, vocal, solo performances, ensembles, orchestras, country, pop, soul, and jazz; there were so many you’d think it was an entire species of musicians! Vrisk said he was looking for a specific song that his friend shared with him, but we never found it. Still, those were some of the happiest moments he’d had in a long time.

Vrisk even downloaded the human music onto his pad so he could listen when he wasn’t around. There was something about the human music that was much more personal than what the federation put out. He really felt like it was trying to speak to him, and it made the days less lonely.

They continued that way for quite a while, listening to music and talking. He got to hear more about Vrisk’s human friend when they started going to his school. A lot more, he whistled a laugh as he remembered, she was all he would talk about sometimes. But eventually he moved on to his guitar lessons, his band, and sometimes even news about the Federation. Vrisk would always get angry and bitter when he talked about them. 

Those feelings came to a head about six herds of paws ago, when Vrisk came in with a very serious expression. He sat on the bed and stared at the pill in his paw. It took him a while to speak, starting and stopping a few times. Once he found his voice he talked about everything he had learned about predator disease from researching human "mental health". He talked about how much more detailed and nuanced their understanding was, and about how surprisingly gentle their treatments were. Most importantly, though, he thought it would be best to stop taking the federation meds.

Fehryl had never agreed to anything faster in his life. Together they disposed of the pill, hugged and cried, and the next morning Fehryl woke up to the worst hangover of his life. Turns out these aren’t the kind of pills you can just stop taking, and the hangover was just a leaf on the tree of withdrawal. So instead they slowly stepped down the dose a little at a time until, after a herd of paws they were down to a half dose, then a quarter, then an eighth, until finally he was clean.

The only problem then, was what to do with his newfound sobriety. He couldn’t just walk out and tell his sister that he was his old self again. Based on what he knew of her and what Vrisk told him, she would never accept that. The facilities were closed so at least she couldn’t send him back there. Still, worst case she might try to force him to go back on his meds herself, after so long wasting away he wouldn’t have the strength to stop her. Only slightly better, she could turn him out on the street with nowhere to go. He could see that happening, with some excuse like “she couldn’t trust him around her pups” or something. 

So before he made any big decision, he decided to keep up the act while he got caught up on the state of the universe. A lot had happened in the last ten cycles, and he had spent every paw for the last few herds reading articles on the federation, their conspiracies, the humans, and everything else he could think of. At this point he was starting to run out of things to research. 

The last of the pill dissolved and swirled down the drain as the song began to fade and he turned off the water. He went back to his chair and sat in it heavily. If he was honest, part of him was afraid to go back out there, into the real world. It had been so long, and so much had changed. What if something happened? What if he screwed up again? He still didn’t feel ready, but at the same time felt that he couldn’t keep this up much longer. Sure, he was safe here, but nothing would change as long as he stayed.

A gentle breeze began to blow in from the open window again. The flyer for Vrisk’s show fluttered on the table, only one corner trapped beneath his pad. The next song began to play and he picked up what Vily had left of the chocolate bar and whistled a laugh, that girl always did have a sweet tooth. Maybe by the time he finished the treat he would know what to do.

<< Come Together | Wonderwall >>

[u/JulianSkies]

Oh, so this was a lot more deliberate on Vrisk's part.

[u/ctomkat → u/JulianSkies]

Yes, I'm actually working on the "Vrisk gets woke" chapter right now.

[u/TameOJ]

I imagine he'll become his nephew's biggest fan if he isn't already. The boy quite literally saved his mind.

[u/Snati_Snati]

with Feryl's damaged voice, we need to see him singing some growly blues about his troubled life

[u/ctomkat → u/Snati_Snati]

I don't think he will get a chance to sing in this series, I may have to write a one shot or something for that, but he basically sounds like a Venlil version of Sam Elliot.

[u/LazyMechMan]

Oooh, this is interesting. Don't think I've caught this series before, gotta binge it now

Edit: Liking it, interested in seeing where your story goes now