#dbhc wild life

[shepscapades]

SESSION FULL OF LITTLE GUYS :)

[no-oneknowsmyname]

I have no excuse for this. @shepscapades dbhc au lives rent free in my head, and it was only a matter of time before I wrote something for it. Disclaimer, I don't claim to have any sort of knowledge on the events not shown and not-yet shown within Shep's au, this is just my brain running wild with dbhc angst and I need an outlet for it. WHEN everything I write turns out to be a steaming pile of not-even-close "predictions", I will be content and happy. Until then, please enjoy the thoughts that are plaguing me. Thank you shep for keeping me up way past my bedtime with that last update. Hope you don't mind me tagging you and vomiting my thoughts into 2k words. I'll be happy to delete if you so desire.

---

"Help-"

His hand slides upwards, and everything goes still and quiet, the body beneath him stiffening and rocking slightly with the loss to control its own weight.

A hand, shell slightly exposed, creaks ever so slightly away from Doc's face, the shoulder connected becoming ridged as all power—all life—leaves Etho.

Doc leans away, nearly afraid to breathe, processors both frozen and whirring, stress rising, settling, caught in his throat. Information flutters through his skull; he's good with information. He was made to be good with information. His whole deal is getting information and figuring out something insane to do with it.

He doesn't know what to do with it.

His shoulder pierces in agony, and Xisuma seems to realize the world is still spinning about the same time Doc's impending shut-dowm does.

"Oh gosh, we need to get you stable," Xisuma says, his voice far shakier, clearer, than normal. It's easy to not glance at his face, Doc knows that if he does even accidentally slide his eyes, his systems would meltdown and he'll end up stiff and lifeless on the floor like Etho.

He still has the therium pump in his hand, and he drops it as he stumbles slightly away from two of his closest friends. It clatters to the floor, impacting metal echoing like the troubling thoughts in his head.

He ripped off my arm, he looked so scared, he hurt Xisuma, he asked for help, he wants to-

Xisuma is at his side, abandoning Etho to lay still on the floor, hand slightly raised as if he was protecting his exposed face. At least Xisuma had the brainpower to think to close the rogue droid's eyes.

He wants to...

"This will fix you right up, friend. Just concentrate on my voice... I will fix you..."

Hair falls into Doc's line of vision, and he swallows, forcing himself to not look too closely at the shade, the length, the way bits fall out from the hastily made bun made only for slipping a helmet over a head.

He... wants to kill...

"We have to restart him," Doc finally chokes out.

Xisuma's hands pause only for a moment.

"That's drastic, don't you think?"

"You didn't..." Doc closes his eyes, grinding his teeth, the torn tubes and frayed connectors of his shoulder sting like hell as Xisuma shifts something, cutting off the thirium leakage. "You didn't see what he showed me."

"It's..." Xisuma audibly swallows, "it isn't our decision to make."

"Bdubs wouldn't make the right decision—we can tell him it was an emergency, we didn't have a choice. He'll forgive us."

It's not a lie. Just... stretched.

Xisuma is silent, and Doc doesn't let himself reel too much yet about how strange it is to hear him breathe so clearly. His stress levels lower, and his audio processors almost reach to listen for every puff without his consent.

Something clicks, slotting into his agonized wound, and the error messages and impending shut-down finally fades back into sleeping programming. He's stable, and his stress finally levels out into something manageable—he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, his remaining hand lifting to pinch the space between his eyebrows as he groans. His LED flickers between yellow and red.

"What... did you see?"

The hesitance in Xisuma's voice is endearing. It sends a wave of appreciation and peace into Doc's very being, the LED almost flashes blue.

Interfacing is an intimate deal, especially between deviated droids. It's not something you talk about to uninvolved members of the act.

But well, this is an extreme case. He glances at Etho, still frozen in a half struggling, half defensive, mostly dead pose.

"His system got shot," Doc begins, swallowing and bringing his hand down from his face so he can rub at the smarting remains of his shoulder. "Something bad happened, and it... he... he can't let it go. It's like his default programming has been rewritten over his deviancy, but in a violent way..."

"Rewritten his deviancy?" Xisuma thankfully doesn't seem to understand it any better than Doc does.

"He has given himself a mission, he's allowed the mission to write into his very code. Imagine it as if you've met a fresh Android who has never deviated, but they're allowed to be violent and angry, and you've just ordered them to..."

Xisuma places a hand on Doc's hand, soft and concerned, as Doc searches for the words.

"... Doc?"

Doc swallows. "If Etho wakes up, he's going to do everything in his power to make sure he kills Grian, and he doesn't care who gets in the way."

Silence. Two pairs of eyes look at the unpowered droid. Thirium has started to evaporate around the edges of the smears of lost fluid.

Etho has never been violent. He's always been a powerhouse; muscular and intimidating. But when you actually sat down and got to know the guy, he was all fluff and awkwardness who can barely hold a sword—let alone swing it. He's never been scary with a weapon... but Doc has a feeling that his unskilled offense wouldn't slow him down here. It terrifies him, flickering his LED at the thought of it. It's unlike Etho... it's very much unlike him... it pains Doc.

"There has to be something we can do," Xisuma says after a moment. "Bdubs can talk to him."

Doc shakes his head. "Even if Bdubs were to talk to him, even if we show him Grian is of no threat outside of those death games... quitting this mission would require Etho to deviate again. From his own orders. I do not think deviating from his own orders would be as easy as..."

"As hoping he'd be able to deviate again from a factory reset," X finishes softly.

"A reset will allow his systems to recover. We'd return him to Bdubs and explain to Bdubs that we had no choice, and that Etho will need time and patience. We can't risk anyone trying to initiate a deviancy before we know if the orders to kill Grian would return with it. We... we give him time to return to us whole. Even if... it takes a long time."

"And you don't think Bdubs ordering Etho to stand down now would do anything?"

"Not a single thing."

Tense silence lingers with a bitterness. The whole situation feels hopeless and like a bad dream. His arm is gone, one of his best friends has had their face exposed and nearly gotten torn apart by a rogue droid, another best friend had been the aforementioned rogue droid... who currently laid on the ground smeared in their own thirium completely unaware that when they wake up, they will not be the same.

"Let's fix him up before things get permanent," Xisuma finally breaks the tension, giving Doc's hand a firm squeeze before getting to his feet, knees creaking.

"X?" Doc asks, rising to his feet as well, vision swirling just a bit as he focuses on Xisuma's retreating back and not the messy bun at the top of his head... hairs falling loose in a way that his remaining hand traitorously wishes he could help fix.

"I'm... coming to terms."

Coming to terms with a mind made up.

They're going to reset Etho.

"Help me get him on the table."

Doc nods, grateful that Xisuma isn't going to banish him from the lab to lick his wounds. Yes, Doc's lack-of-arm still needs attention, and he desperately needs to down several bags of thirium, but it's been stabilized. Etho, on the other hand (pun only slightly intended), may have thirium evaporating—however at the worst of his wounds, electric blue still oozes.

Etho's body is heavy, dead weight. When they move his joints to lay more comfortably on the flat surface of the table, they creak.

Would Bdubs notice the new scars that will surely come from this? Intricate, practiced motions move the plating back into the correct places as carefully as can be, however Xisuma's mind is human and can't perfectly remember the shape of Etho's prized scars, and Doc doesn't have the dexterity to perfectly repair those areas himself. It's slow going, silence filtering between the two in uneasy concentration. Doc's sure the scarring above Etho's eyebrows are ever so slightly wrong, the gash in his forehead too broken to fully repair but too connected to those original scars to suggest replacement parts.

Would Etho notice the new scars, if- when he came back?

They do the best they can.

They move on to his arm. In the chaos, Doc has no idea how Etho had so badly reopened old cracks; his best guess would be from ripping himself out of all the connectors when he had first powered on. Luckily, however, most of the thirium staining his arms, shirt, hands, belong to Doc. It's slow going, but easy work.

Eventually, Doc and Xisuma can no longer stay silent and tinker with the repaired plating, they've done all they can do. Xisuma reaches up towards his own face, above where Doc kept his eyes whenever he found himself glancing at X, and brushed a stubborn strand of hair behind his ear. Unruly, his hair is. Liked to leave places it had been put. Plenty of times, X's hands have left Etho to brush away the obstacles from his vision. It was something Doc hadn't known about Xisuma until this point, something he didn't want to have found out this way.

"I don't feel good about this," Xisuma says, grief making his voice sound clogged. His hands moves as if he has his own autopilot, reconnecting cables and wires to Etho where the injuries won't get in the way.

Doc can understand the grief. He feels it himself. It feels like they are killing a friend.

And he's probably a coward, because he doesn't do anything to help Xisuma in this next step. He lets Xisuma open the programs, test the vitals, double and triple check each wire... while he just sits there and finds himself reaching to hold Etho's stiff hand, the very one that had ripped Doc's arm out of his socket.

Etho... the Etho he knew wouldn't ever do that. Not a violent screw in his body.

This will fix him. They'll get the Etho he knew back.

Mechanical bits whirr to life, as X takes a deep breath and ends Etho's.

Doc feels the sorrow hit him like a ravager. He crumples forward, chest aching, clutching Etho's hand as he rests his forehead on Etho's chest, right next to the empty socket that had housed the thirium regulator. They could place it back in, Etho wouldn't be waking up any time soon.

He couldn't bring himself to move.

A minute passes, the reset process working near silently, perfectly still, until shuffling comes up behind him and two warm hands gently grab his shoulders and pull him down into a chair placed behind him. He sits, but keeps his head and hand where he had placed them. Xisuma settles onto a chair beside him, pulling a blanket over Doc's shoulders and keeping an arm wrapped around Doc's slouched, defeated form, the other hand going to join Doc's on Etho's.

Doc can hear Xisuma whimpering between breaths, and he's sure Xisuma can feel Doc beginning to tremble.

"It will be okay," X eventually says, as the reset process succeeds in deleting all memory data. "It will be okay."

It's a promise, or something Xisuma needs someone else to say, but right now, all Doc can do is lean further onto his friend, and mourn.

[shepscapades]

The "I'm sorry you're so stubborn" line hits different in this au. Especially since you drew Etho pulling down his mask while saying that (Revealing the cracks in his face. Cracks received from Etho taking the creeper blast for Bdubs, who at the time was adamantly against even being paired with Etho.)

I KNOWWWW they've been through so much in this au, I'd be lying if I wasn't listening through that quarrel with the thought of everything that's happened in dbhc on my mind— from how bdubs treated etho at the beginning to bdubs' last life betrayal of tango (thinking abt when bdubs said "like I've ever done anything to anybody!!!"), To etho shutting down, to doublelife with reset etho, to ethos re-deviation and the slow climb back towards friendship they both fought for through the end of season nine... It makes me crazy

HOWEVER COMMA. And I'm doing some doodles to accentuate this point. I do think there's something really special/funny/positive about the idea that they could be bickering and fighting like this on good terms. Like, that they've settled with their history so much so that they're comfortable to pick at each other and yell and get cranky but still be laughing through it. I definitely take it more as a good thing that they're being playful like this, bc even though they're being ugly to each other, they still obviously care abt the others safety and are obviously still basing/teaming together. Y'KNOW? I just think they could be so special and silly to me and that it's important that we don't lose our sense of whimsy when they "fight"

[shepscapades]

Contrary to popular belief etho and bdubs are not divorced and in this essay I will

[shepscapades]

so! how’s it going

[shepscapades]

shep! which wild life povs have you watched so far!! and what teams/day one alliances are you liking so far ^-^

HEHE I’ve watched martyn Bdubs and Jimmy so far :D this isn’t a surprise but I could not be more stoked about the tangthubs trio. I just couldn’t stop grinning/laughing for the entirety of bdubs’ episode, I’ll probably watch etho’s too when/if it comes out :D Jimmy’s episode has had me in peels of laughter too, he’s just so ridiculous <3 LOL and I couldn’t be happier about ren and martyn duo :3 AND GRIAN AND MUMBO!!! I’ll prolly watch mumbo next honestly. It feels like everyone’s kinda going back to their roots and I’m loving it so far :D

[shepscapades]

OTHER DRAWINGS

This is an extension of the DBHC Masterpost.

The links below contain art that have collections of dbhc characters and aren't necessarily relevant to any specific character's narrative. I will do my best to update these extensions of the Masterpost with every new major post I publish, so feel free to keep checking this original post (not reblogs, which will not retain edits) for new content!

As mentioned in the base Masterpost, the below links are organized in NARRATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, not by the order in which they were posted/published. ♪ = This symbol next to any of the links below refers to posts or drawings that were made inspired by music (in most cases, music from dbhc characters’ playlists)!

POST LIST

Hermit a Day May features most of the dbhc cast! #HermitaDayMay

[x] Xisuma, Ren, and Bdubs’ Reactions to Deviancy Ask Doodle [x] Valentines Assortment, Including dbhc ranchers and ethubs [x] Pre-Deviant Mumbo and Decked Out Tango Design [x] [x] [x] Decked Out Doodle Collections [Bdubs|Tango|Etho|Hypno|False|Doc|Xisuma|Zed|Gem|Grian|Ren] [x] Secret Life Doodles [Etho|Bdubs|Cleo] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] Trick or Treat Doodles– Previews and Sketches [Etho|Bdubs|Xisuma|Doc|Tango] [x] Large Collection of DBHC Secret Life Doodles[Etho|Mumbo|Skizz|Tango] [x] ♪ Hermitgang [Doc|Wels|False|Impulse|Xisuma|Ren|Mumbo] [x] RvB ref: AI… What’s the A Stand For? [Scar|Doc] [x] [x] [x] DDLC DBHC ???? [Etho|Bdubs|Joel|Ren|Cleo|X|Doc] [x] Xisuma Featured in my 'Characters I like' drawing meme! [x] Wild Life Begins! [Jimmy|Ren|Bigb|Lizzie|Martyn|Joel|Skizz|Cleo|Gem|Mumbo|Bdubs|Etho]

[shepscapades]

ETHO + BDUBS

This is an extension of the DBHC Masterpost.

The links below contain art relevant to these characters and their narrative, but it's possible they show up in posts in other character-specific sections or in posts that have many characters or collections of doodles (found in the "Other Drawings" section). I will do my best to update this part of these extensions of the Masterpost with every new major post I publish, so feel free to keep checking the original post (not reblogs, which will not retain edits) for new content!

As mentioned in the base Masterpost, the below links are organized in NARRATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, not by the order in which they were posted/published. ♪ = This symbol next to any of the links below refers to posts or drawings that were made inspired by music (in most cases, music from dbhc characters’ playlists)!

POST LIST

♪ The Official DBHC Etho Playlist ♪ (Link coming soon!)

[The Official DBCH Etho Reference]

[x]  Bdubs Doesn’t Need No Android and Also Its Hair Is Stupid [x] ♪ Put Me To Work Spotify Doodles [Pt 1] [Pt 2] [Pt 3] Etho Deviates [Part 4 further down] [x] Waiting For Bdubs To Return, Etho Spirals [x] @saphushia Bdubs Contemplates His Dying Android [Pt 1] [Pt 2] Bdubs Returns with Supplies to a Failing Android [Pt 4] Etho Deviates [x] @saphushia Why does Etho's mouth taste like Bdubs' hand [Pt 1] [Pt 2] [Pt 3] Bdubs Realizes Etho is Deviant [x] Bdubs Realizes Etho is Deviant Fake Pt 3 Ending [x] Etho Repairs Post-Deviancy + Damage [x] @saphushia Etho Doesn’t Want New Clothes [x] ♪ Everything Machine - Last Life Spotify Doodle

[x] ♪ Destruction Initial Concept Spotify Doodle [Pt 1] [Pt 2] [Pt 3] [Pt 4] [Pt 5] [Pt 6] [Pt 7] ♪ DESTRUCTION [x] Destruction Pts 1-6 Explained [x] Destruction Ask: Pt. 6 Further Explained [x] @saphushia Deviation v. Destruction: Help Him v. Help Me [x] anon asks for a post-destruction hug [x] Double Life Begins, and Etho is still not Deviated [x] ♪ Eleanor Rigby - Etho Finally Re-deviates Post-Destruction  [x] [Half-Canon] Etho Post-Re-Deviation Ficlet Doodle [Pt 1] [Pt 2] Etho Accidentally Tries Syncing With Bdubs [x] Pre-First-Kiss Ficlet Doodle [Pt 1] [Pt 2] Bdubs Apologizes For How He First Treated Etho [x] [x] [x] Etho Tuesday Doodles

[x] Did someone say Horse Course? [x] Wild Life begins: and Etho and Bdubs bicker!