#roadkill-verse

From the roadkill b-sides, therapy pretty please? 🥺 (or if someone already asked about that one, driving lessons? but I'm SUPER intrigued by Therapy hehe)

-- @four-toast

heheh hi toast or shall i say doc, given the occasion? so glad you asked about this!

(all roadkill b-sides are one-shot prequels or sequels)

i haven’t actually started writing this one yet, but i have a pretty clear idea of what’s going to happen and the vibe.

roadkill b-sides: Therapy

Therapy gives a glimpse into the therapy sessions between dorcas and evan and, by extension, pandora. it’s made up of short moments from multiple sessions over a longer period of time from inside the psychiatric ward. the pov constantly switches between evan and dorcas to show the disconnect between evan’s hallucinations and the actual reality.

evan’s pov is hazy and detached, since he's completely riding the high of whatever drug cocktail dorcas pumped into him. in his mind, pandora is physically present in the room with them, acting as the deeply concerned sister who is confiding in dorcas and trying to find a way to help her brother and get him out of this “prison”. even from evan’s pov, dorcas’s reactions seem entirely genuine. she listens to pandora, talks back to her, and treats them as two entirely separate, real entities. of course, as a professional doctor who specializes in psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs, dorcas just plays along to keep evan stable and to avoid aggravating him.

when the pov switches, we see how dorcas actually observes evan and how he’s switching between personalities. it happens much more violently and frequently than it did in roadkill. she intentionally acknowledges the split and addresses both evan and "pandora" respectively just to keep him compliant. they talk about his childhood, his upbringing, his relationship to his father and his mother and grand-mére, and sometimes even about the events of the night at the river. though dorcas might not always be successful in the beginning. evan has aggressive, violent outbreaks where he tries to attack her or harm himself. this happens especially when she touches on the topic of pandora’s death. of course, there are guards who are immediately on him to stop him, but it leads dorcas to changing up his drugs or upping the dosage until he adjusts and reaches a level where she is able to calmly talk to pandora while evan retreats to the back.

or at least, that’s what dorcas thinks is happening.

pandora (and evan by proxy) are much more aware of what’s going on than dorcas thinks or than they will let her know. they intentionally manipulate her. pandora figures out it’s easier if she talks to her rather than evan. poor dorcas doesn’t realize that pandora is the real threat, not evan, and that it might even be her own fault, because of the drugs he’s experimenting with.

over a long stretch of time, we see dorcas’s own descent. (this is, of course, heavily inspired by the dynamic between the joker and dr. harleen quinzel (aka harley quinn)). though, dorcas doesn’t fall for evan, she falls for pandora, while the isolation and their intense sessions wears her down, her own mental health slips, in order to stay focused she starts using her own drugs. she’s a doctor, she should know better, and she should stop the experiments and distance herself, but at that point, she’s in too deep with the rosier twins. eventually, the lines blur completely and pandora starts manifesting in dorcas’s pov even when evan isn’t switching. at that point, dorcas has lost her grip on reality completely and descended into evan’s delusion.

the final scene is dorcas and pandora plotting their escape shortly before the events of roadkill take place.

hiii, another b-side, alright 🙂‍↕️

since you didn’t specify which one, i’ll pick one out for you. you get snippet from Peter’s Day Off, since I’ve actually already started writing that one. as you can probably tell, peter doesn’t actually get a day off. (this is loosely based on the clerks au i started writing at some point but will never finish, so i decided to recycle some parts of it.) we’ll spend peter’s shift at the gas station until those two idiots in a charger show up, that means we’ll see barty and evan from peter’s pov one more time.

but for now, enter deputy black:

roadkill b-sides: Peter’s Day Off (a snippet)

Tink.

The bell above the door chimes again and Deputy Black walks in, kicks the door shut behind him with his black leather boot — the door latch doesn't work properly, the wooden doorframe warped from year-long exposure to the heat and dry air.

"You should get that fixed," he yells, heading straight for the beverage fridges, the spurs on his boots jingle, like he’s some type of cowboy when really, he just rides a bike up and down I-10 all day. "Hello? Anyone here?"

Peter sits behind the counter on an empty beer crate, his back leaned against the shelves. The stool he had broke the other week, and Roy promised he'd get a new one, but didn't.

"I'm here, I'm here." Peter grunts and gets up.

Black pulls off his sunglasses. "You look like shit." 

"Double shift," Peter murmurs.

Black takes a bottle out of the fridge. "Beer and a pack of Lucky Strikes."

"Quiet day so far?" Peter asks, reaching for the cigarettes on the shelf behind him.

Black snorts and slaps a Lincoln on the counter. "Quiet enough," he says.

Peter cashes the five and puts the change on the counter, but Black just shakes his head, like he always does. "Keep it. And don't give me that look, I'm technically not on the clock yet. " 

Peter smiles sheepishly and pockets the tip.

Black takes a swig from his beer, hisses at how the cold bubbles slide down his throat. "Last few years, I mean. Not as many murders."

"Uh-huh. Did they ever catch that guy? The one from… what was it, '75 or '76?"

Black looks up at the ceiling. Scratches his chin. "No."

Peter nods.

"My mum was so scared, she wouldn't let me play outside after for months."

"And she's a smart woman for that, kid."

Deputy Black calls Peter kid, but he's barely a couple years older than Peter and objectively way too pretty to be a cop. At least for down here in rural Texas. The officers Peter grew up seeing were gruff, masculine guys with thick necks, sun-leathered skin and a big fat gut from too many hours in a cruiser and a diet consisting exclusively of glazed gas station donuts and beer.

Black is none of that. He seems to be running on coffee and nicotine only — well, and the occasional beer. Sharp jawed, high cheekbones, uncalloused hands and delicate features, almost feminine, looks like he belongs on a magazine cover, but not in the desert dirt.

And he's in fact not from here, he's got a French accent, Peter knows that much.

Peter wonders if the whole cop-on-a-motorcycle gig is some type of faćade, something to compensate. What, though, Peter isn't sure.

The guy could be a movie star in LA. Or a musician in New York.

"You like it?" Peter asks.

"Huh?"

"Being a cop, I mean?"

Black laughs. It's a bark. One of the many things that seems off about him. 

"Sure. Why? You wanna join law enforcement, Petey?"

Peter's considered it. He's considered a lot of things. He sure as hell doesn't want to spend the rest of his life working the counter in some backwater gas station. He's heard the rumors — some bigger company plans on buying the Lockharts out.

"Maybe," Peter lies, shifting his weight. "You heard about those girls?"

The cop clicks his tongue. "Heard about it? Boy, they send me to investigate."

Sure… 

"Three girls murdered over the weekend—"

Peter glances at the radio. "Four."

"Sorry?" Black grimaces, clearly not appreciating Peter’s interruption, let alone, correction.

"They just said on the radio. Another one's missing. Girl from Baton Rouge, over in Louisiana. I bet it's the same guy and he's out for a girl in Texas next."

Black snorts. "And how do you know it's a guy, Detective Pettigrew?"

Peter shrugs. "It's a serial killer, right? Statistically it’s always guys."

Black scoffs. "You never heard of a female serial killer?"

"Have you?"

Black pauses, frowns. A moment of silence passes. The little wall-mounted AC unit above the counter rattles and clicks but doesn't cool.

"Well. There are." Black decides and takes another swig of his beer.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He points at the radio. "Girl's missing, not dead. She probably just ran away with her boyfriend. Don't assume the worst. We're doing what we can," he says, nodding, smile wide, but not genuine.

He opens the pack of Lucky Strikes, taps one out and places it between those pearly whites. Lights it inside, because Peter doesn't get paid enough to tell him not to, and smoking outside next to the gas pumps would probably be way worse.