Cat

In the comics, it's Brit that saves Cecil from the Chemical X exposure; from this I added my headcanon that it's Brit bridal carrying him out of there that helped preserve the side of Cecil's face where his face was tucked ;w;

Brit is US Army since forever and I hc Cecil was there for a while too, so I watched a lot of Tiktoks of soldiers getting woken up with the Reveille bugle call to make myself laugh at the thought of them PTSD saluting at the sound of it XD

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So all this came about because I wondered if any of Donald’s 39 confirmed deaths were by suicide.

In the comics, Donald is… kind of a shitty dad. He’s an absentee father, divorced from his wife, and in the couple of times his son is mentioned or seen, its about Donny Jr’s academic problems (that Donald ditches in lieu of work) or him isolating himself by playing video games, and I believe i remember in one of the side comics (guarding the globe?), Donald devalues his son’s lack of athletic skills. I thought it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Donny Jr may have committed suicide sometime down the line and that memory was eventually editted out of Donald because it consistently caused him to fall into a suicidal depression himself. It makes the fact that what finally caused Donald to accept his memories of death and move on without being wiped was Donald deescalating Rick’s suicide attempt— perhaps its what he wished he could have done for his own kid, even if only subconsciously.

I also wanted to draw Brit and Cecil’s different reactions to Donald’s death(s). Donald is in comic-canon one of Brit’s close friends, if not best and possibly only friend. Brit values him enough that one of his future wifeless versions kept Donald’s head hostage and ultimately merged with his electronic body like a permanent exoskeleton so they could be together forever. Hell yeah insane toxic old man yaoi. But canon Brit also has a wife and son that take priority over his friendship with Donald, and in the tv show they are shown being friendly and loyal to each other but only in the context of work/saving the world. Seeing his best friend slowly but surely be transformed into this weird uncanny valley version of himself with less and less original memories is bound to alienate Brit— perhaps Donald trying repeatedly to die and Cecil still bringing him back was the beginning of the end of his friendship with Cecil AND Donald. Cause Brit in canon is shown to repeatedly threaten and carry through quitting when people close to him die, or die because of him— he’s emotionally quite fragile in this regard, and its a repeated plot point for his character development. So its plausible for a time he distanced himself, and that’s when Cecil took over more and more staying by Donald’s side as was brought back over and over, until Brit literally is only around in the tv show when shit gets really bad, else doesn’t bother.

Cecil for his part keeps bringing Donald back because I like to think Donald is HIS contingency. Like, without Donald I think Cecil would legit lose it. He would no longer have his Jimminy Cricket conscience and his eternally loyal partner that backs him up no matter what when push comes to shove. So I headcanon that for his own mental health Cecil keeps bringing Donald back.

But every death is costly and a new fight to defend Donald’s reconstruction budget. Death by suicide? *Repeated* suicide?? The higher ups are this close to shutting it all down. But Cecil probably has threatened to resign if they don’t allow him this— he NEEDS Donald. Or so help them God.

So Cecil’s in this halfway stance where he cannot show he cares any more than he already has, its a huge weakness he’s broadcasting, but he needs Donald to choose to live. Brit being around helped for a while. But then it wasn’t enough. So he started cutting out painful memories, with Donald’s agonized consent. Focusing on giving Donald better memories. Heroic memories. Picking and chosing until the combination worked. For a time…. until Donald remembered enough to turn suicidal again. Even if only passively. It endlessly culminates in yet another death— if not by his own hand then by throwing himself in harm’s way for the sake of another without hesitation. It repeats until canon comes around and Donald finally lets himself remember, having made some semblance of peace with that traumatic moment via saving Rick.

I have so many more feels augh, I hope this kinda makes sense. My laptop stopped working yesterday so that’s why the art is unfinished. When it gets fixed (god i hope it can get fixed sob) I’ll draw more 🙏 Edit (16/9/25): Coloured in the last pages!

Before you come at me with Brit being OOC, in his comics an alternate universe Brit canonically turns into an evil emperor that tries his best to time capsule all of the things he loves-- he enslaves Cecil as his butler, merges with Donald, and destroys nearly everything on Earth except a museum of things he cherishes. Bro's got more than a few screws loose, he's just good about not showing it most of the time 😤

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So I've since reconsidered my stance on Donald never discovering Cecil's secret. Cecil will never outright tell him (not without sufficient pressure, that is), but Donald's clever enough to figure it out for himself, and to deny him a chance to flex his smarts would be a huge missed opportunity. He's seasoned enough with extranormal bullshit that he'd be open to the possibility of a demon deal as the cause of the strange happenings surrounding his boss; he's got high enough clearance within the GDA that he'd be able to snoop around in meaningful ways and gather good, reliable intel; and he's close enough to Cecil that there'd never be room for doubt. In short... there's no way he wouldn't eventually put the pieces together. Now, whether he can do all that undetected is another matter entirely, but… you know… prying into the director's affairs at all isn't something just anyone can do. And the potential drama of the inevitable confrontation is too tantalizing to pass up.

I personally believe Cecil is a private person by nature, closed off even to those he considered close well before he went into the GDA, so the fact that he chooses not to disclose certain things about himself isn't unusual—that is to say, Cecil being tight-lipped isn't suspicious in itself. Donald certainly has opinions about him on a personal level, but for this exact reason (and for the sake of professional efficiency, of course) they are generally thought, not spoken, and even if he worked up the nerve to ask about the strange, potentially supernatural things he's noticed as of late, Cecil would probably deny him the satisfaction of a real answer, anyway... an outcome entirely expected, since this level of discretion is just understood to be the way he operates. Donald simply knows it's a useless venture to pursue the director over certain questions, especially for things that seem inconsequential to the bigger picture... like fangs and mysterious scars.

(Incidentally, Cecil also thinks of these things as neither here nor there, as trivial as coming into work with a different-colored tie... so insignificant that it wouldn't be worth bringing Donald into the loop - which isn't true, of course, I think most people would view their boss in a skewed light if they suddenly noticed they had a mouth full of sharp teeth.)

That said, Donald knows when Cecil's bullshitting him—a skill acquired just by working as his number one—but while Cecil's only gotten better at explaining things away over the years Donald's also gotten more brazen about refusing to let sleeping dogs lie. He knows he can eventually get Cecil to tell him the truth if he backs him into a corner, just as he did with his most recent cyborg revelation, so I think once a conversation over these things actually gets going, it would proceed similarly. Regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), selling yourself to an objectively malevolent power is going to be reprehensible no matter how good the intentions, and Donald cares enough about Cecil for this to bother him personally, too.

To more directly answer your questions: Donald was already aware of Cecil's Demon Teeth by the time of the Rex incident, and so didn't ask questions—getting him under the knife as quickly as possible was far more pressing, anyway—but he's always been unnerved by them for as long as he's known about them. And since Cecil was cursed with them when he still had color in his hair... he's known about them from a looong time. He definitely considered vampirism, first, but Cecil makes regular trips outside GDA headquarters at all hours of the day year-round and is definitely known to go for long periods of time without eating anything, let alone blood, so that idea was discounted quickly.

As for the scars - it's not the first time Donald's glimpsed them, but as they seem even more superficial and less worthy of attention in the grand scheme of things, he's kept his thoughts about them to himself. For the most part, he either believes he's earning them on the more dangerous trips outside headquarters or, more morbidly, doing it to himself. (Plus, when Cecil demands he fuck off from the goo bath room, he usually listens.)

As for the aphrodisiac effect - it only affects Cecil, not his targets. It just feels good to use the entity's power, and the pleasure is maddening... appropriately, diabolically infectious, and fully intended to tempt him into using more of it. Power is addictive, especially power that can produce instant results, and in the absence of self-control someone could easily lose themselves in that bliss. This is exactly what the entity is hoping will happen, of course, and that Cecil will get himself killed doing something reckless while in the throngs of such infernal pleasure. Cecil being Cecil, however, he doesn't falter so easily, but he does have his limits; he'd eventually relent, it's just that his ceiling is a lot higher than most. Tapping into too much power* all at once or in too short a span of time will consume him just as it would any other man.

*Too much power being, in my mind, actions that leverage control over life in particular, decisions normally attributed to the whims of gods - like killing, raising the dead, curing illnesses, inflicting generational curses, creating something from nothing, etc. As an example... in the latest fic, Cecil recalls losing himself briefly after brutally killing several men with barely a thought. He admits that it felt good, but there's a guilt that weighs him down from indulging it at all, as if he could help it.

The entity's power has this destructive effect at all because it's too much for mortal flesh; it belongs to something more, and men were never meant to wield it. So it overwhelms the mind, body, and soul.

I actually don't think Cecil would have ever viewed the entity with any kind of reverence. He approaches their relationship from a mostly professional angle (as a reluctant partner, at best), and I'm hard-pressed to say he even respects it. Fear it, yes—he learned this the hard way—but any praise or adoration he might've offered when he sold himself to it was said out of desperation and he remembers begging it for its mercy about as well as a blackout drunk remembers a wild night out. He certainly wouldn't swear allegiance to it in earnest under normal circumstances… and I think that's a disposition unspoken but mutually understood between them. It doesn't bother the entity because it's confident in its power over him, regardless of his opinions, and it trusts that he'll honor their agreement to the bitter end (knowing that he has no other choice, of course, and having already demonstrated that Cecil is ultimately powerless against it).

Even if Cecil were grateful for its assistance, he's also fully aware that the entity isn't doing so out of the kindness of its heart; he knows it's just waiting for him to die so it can claim the soul it was promised—his soul—and thus it doesn't deserve veneration, being no better than a debt collector. His perspective is that, more than anyone or anything in his line of work, it only deserves to be used.