Oct 31, 2025
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So Dad Squared is canon to the White Void AU. RS!Wily literally falls into FC!Light's arms.
Gary getting emotional to Avocato about thinking he's still not a good dad even after everything
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I live for insecure Gary Goodspeed. The man is trying his best here.
“So after you shot me--still not about that by the way--Little Cato dragged me back up to the Crimson Light.” Avocato sat at rapt attention. He craved any new detail concerning his son or his friends. And this whole adoption thing was definitely something he wanted to be caught up on.
Gary continued, waving his hand around aimlessly. “And then I was unconcious for, like, three days? And when I woke up, he was gone.”
“Gone?” Avocato asked. “What do you mean gone?”
“I mean he left me a message saying he didn’t belong with us and he left,” Gary explained, “He said shooting you wasn’t something he could come back from and that we shouldn’t look for him.”
Avocato leaned forward. “But you did go look for him, right?”
“Of course I did! I’m not gonna let a fourteen year old run around by himself.” Gary paced back and forth in front of the table. “Anyway, Nightfall and Mooncake ran around with me trying to find him. Nightfall said I needed to step up for Little Cato. And she was right.
“When we finally found him, he told me to go away. I thought it was because he didn’t want to see me, but it turns out he had joined a group of bounty hunters who wanted to kill me.”
Avocato narrowed his eyes. “Bounty hunters?”
Gary nodded. “Yeah, takes after you, I guess.” He ignored the look Avocato gave him. “So while they were shooting at us-”
“Shooting at you?”
“Yeah, there’s a bounty on my head or something,” Gary said flippantly, “But I offered to adopt Little Cato in the middle of it.”
“While they were shooting at you?”
“In hindsight, not the best idea,” Gary admitted, “But you should have seen the kid’s face, Avocato. He actually asked, ‘You wanna be my dad?’, like he couldn’t believe it.”
Avocato smiled. “To be fair, he doesn’t have the best experience with fathers. Tends to lose 'em, you know? Probably thought you were assigning yourself a death sentence by offering to be his father.”
Gary laughed. “I guess you’re right.” He took a seat across from Avocato. “But I wouldn’t take it back for anything, death sentence or no.”
“I knew I picked the right guy look after my kid,” Avocato said. “Well, our son.”
“Oh uh.. I wouldn’t say that.” Gary’s expression immediately became solemn. “I messed up, dude. A lot. I’ll be honest, I’m still not sure I’m doing a real good job.”
Avocato tipped his head. “What are you talking about? It sounds like you and Little Cato have gotten really close.”
Gary rested his arms on the table. “We have. But when you died I could barely take care of myself, much less a kid. It took a while to get used to looking after him.” He chuckled to himself. “I mean, I took him on a suicide mission to kill the Lord Commander.”
“You did what?”
“I know!” Gary said, “It was dumb. It was such a dumb decision. And then I left him alone on the ship with a time machine. A friggin’ time machine, Avocato.” He threw his hands up in the air. “Who leaves a grieving kid alone with the one crazy dangerous thing that could fix his problem? He almost got wiped from existence.
“And that’s not even the worst part,” Gary sighed. “The worst part is I can’t help him, Avocato. I don’t know how. All I can do is try my best, but I don’t know if that good enough. It doesn’t feel good enough.
“The kid’s seen war, man.” Gary ran a hand through his hair. “He’s been imprisoned and blasted into space and... I don’t know.” He slumped in his chair. “I’m doing better now, but I definitely wasn’t the right guy at the time. I messed up a lot.”
Avocato studied co-parent carefully. “Gary, what do you think being a parent is?”
Gary glanced up at him. “What?”
“Look, man, nobody knows how to do this stuff. You think I knew what I was doing? Hell no!” Avocato smiled reassuringly. “Little Cato is alive and safe and, for the most part, a halfway happy kid. It’s more than I could have hoped for.”
“So you... don’t think I’m a terrible father?”
“Do you think I’m a terrible father?”
“I think maybe you used to be,” Gary answered, “But you’re trying to be better.” He paused. “And I guess I’m jut trying to be better too.”
Avocato held out his hand. “Then we’ll work on getting better together. For Little Cato.”
“Yeah.” Gary clasped his friend’s hand with a smile. “For Little Cato.”
Inktober day one!!! Final Space yo!
In the fandom, I have seen that a lot pf people call Avocato a bad dad. He’s not the best dad, but he’s not the worst. Clarence is the worst. Avocato is trying to be better and that’s what counts. It’ll get easier as time goes on and he has his angel of a co-parent to help him raise their son.
man, we’ve all been sleeping on Optimus/Sparkplug, huh?
PM visits Wily occasionally! Usually this does not require coordinating schedules. However, Wily has a new weekly visitor.
Avocato finally telling his son verbally he loves him and is proud of him
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Hm... feel like Gary might have a few things to say on that, huh?
Prompt: Since little cato is still so small Gary and Avocato walk around the bridge holding him when he gets horrible nightmares, maybe they take turns on a really bad night
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You know, sometimes ya just gotta be held like a bappy.
A knock on the door pulled Gary from his sleep. He sat up blearily and rubbed his eyes to clear his vision. Another quiet knock snapped him out of his sleepy trance, he knew there was only one person who would be knocking on his door this late at night.
He kicked off his blanket and got up. “Hold on, I’m coming.” The door opened to reveal a shivering Little Cato, just what he was afraid of. “Hey, little buddy. What’s going on?”
Little Cato’s mouth opened to reply, but no sound came out. Gary could see the tears shining in his eyes. After about ten seconds of struggling to speak, Little Cato resorted to throwing his arms around Gary.
“Nightmare?” Gary asked. Little Cato was still unresponsive, so he wrapped his arms around the teenager’s shoulders. And as soon as Gary pulled Little Cato in for a hug, he started crying silently into Gary’s shirt. “Alright, alright. Shhh... you’re okay, Spider-Cat, I’ve got you.”
The worst ones were always when Little Cato couldn’t talk to him. Judging by how hard Little Cato was shaking, he could tell it was going to take a while for the kid to calm down enough to tell him what happened.
Luckily, Gary knew something that might help with that. “Let’s go for a walk, huh? We’re gonna go walk around the bridge.” He scooped up Little Cato easily. The kid was always lighter than he expected, much lighter than a fourteen year old should be.
But his small frame made him easy to carry, which is exactly what Gary did. He carried Little Cato all the way to the bridge, where he started pacing back and forth slowly, trying not to jostle him too much.
Gary shifted Little Cato to hold him with one hand, letting the other run through soft blue hair, messy with restlessness. He could feel Little Cato’s paw digging into his shirt, right over his heart. That nightmare must have been something awful.
“Gary?” He turned to see his co-father in the doorway. “What’s goin’ on ? Why are you up?” The Ventrexian’s gaze found Little Cato in Gary’s arms. “Is he...?”
“Nightmare,” Gary said. “It’s usually not this bad, but sometimes he just needs a little walk around the bridge.”
Avocato frowned. “It’s not usually this bad?”
Gary sighed. “We really gotta get you caught up at some point.” He walked over to Avocato and tapped Little Cato on the shoulder. “Hey bud, Dad’s here. Wanna walk with him for a bit?”
Little Cato’s hand unclenched from Gary’s shirt just slightly, which he took as a yes. So Gary looked up at Avocato expectantly, but all he received was a blank stare in return.
“I... what?”
“You just hold him, you idiot.”
“What if I drop him?” Avocato asked worriedly. “I haven’t carried him in forever and he’s shakin’ like a leaf.”
“Oh for crap’s sake, he’s fourteen, not an infant.” He gently pried Little Cato off of him and passed him over to Avocato. It had been a while since Avocato had carried his son around like this, so it took him a moment to readjust. “There, see? That’s not so hard.”
Little Cato buried his face in Avocato’s shoulder, his paw reaching up to hold Avocato’s shirt just like he had with Gary’s. “What’s he doing?”
Gary motioned for Avocato to walk with him. “Heartbeat. It’s just a confirmation to him that you’re, you know, alive. Helps him relax. Don’t worry, he does it to me all the time.”
They paced back and forth for a while, Avocato rubbing small circles into Little Cato’s back as they walked.
After about ten minutes of this, Gary noticed Little Cato starting to unbury his head from the crook of Avocato’s neck. “Hey there, Spider-Cat.”
Avocato stopped walking and glanced down at Little Cato. “You okay?”
Little Cato nodded.
Gary frowned and looked at Avocato, who mirrored his expression. They knew their son too well for this. “Try again, little bud.” He held out his arms. “Avocato, let me take him for a second.”
The transfer was much smoother this time, Avocato getting better at adjusting Little Cato’s weight. Once Gary had Little Cato settled in his arms, he and Avocato started walking again, trying to keep Little Cato has calm as possible.
“I know you don’t like asking for help,” Gary said, “And I know talking about it is hard. But it helps. Neither one of us mind listening, I promise.”
“He’s right,” Avocato agreed. “Whatever it is, you can talk about it.”
Little Cato took a steadying breath. “It was… I-I shot…”
Gary’s quickly darted to Avocato. His friend stared back at him in confusion. Sometimes Gary forgot that Avocato didn’t exactly remember his time possessed by Invictus.
A tremor ran through Little Cato’s body. “I’m so sorry,” he cried, “I didn’t want… I didn’t mean to-”
“Okay, my turn,” Avocato said. Gary passed Little Cato over to him, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to explain this. Meanwhile Little Cato bawled into Avocato’s shirt, leaving the older Ventrexian speechless and visibly worried. “Little Cato? Come on, son, talk to me.”
Gary put a hand on his shoulder. “Give him a minute. This one… this is a tough one.”
Little Cato struggled to calm down again, but Gary and Avocato just kept their steady pace. Eventually it worked, Little Cato scrubbing at his ace to wipe away the stray tears. “Okay… I-I think I’m good to talk.” He pushed away from Avocato slightly. “You can put me down now.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” Little Cato said, “I need to uh… I need to be standing for this one.”
Gary knew exactly what was about to happen, and he knew it needed to happen, but that didn’t make him any less worried for his boy.
Little Cato stood in front of Avocato, looking like a little kid you just got into trouble. “Um… I know you don’t remember a lot about what happened while you were possessed.”
“Something else I need to be caught up on,” Avocato muttered.
“Right, well, I’m about to catch you up on some of it,” Little Cato said nervously. “See the first thing you did was um… well, you shot Gary.”
Avocato’s eyes widened. “What? I did?”.
“Yeah,” Gary confirmed, “Twice, actually.”
“Twice?”
Little Cato cleared his throat. “Yeah, twice. You didn’t kill him but you were uh… you were giving it your best shot.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I tried stopping you. But you didn’t exactly listen. I got in your way and you said that um… that Gary had turned me against you and… that you would never father something so weak.”
Avocato blanked. “I said what?”
“Yeah. It was… it felt pretty crappy,” Little Cato admitted, “But I know it wasn’t really you talking, so…”
“Son, don’t downplay that,” Avocato told him. “Possessed or not, that’s a horrible thing to do. I get why you’d be upset.”
Little Cato laughed. “It’s not as bad as what I did next.”
Gary stepped forward. “Little Cato-”
“You wouldn’t stop,” Little Cato said, ignoring Gary’s attempt to intervene. “No matter what I said, you just kept moving towards Gary. And I couldn’t let you just… I didn’t know what else to do, so I…” He closed his eyes tightly, fists clenched at his sides. “Dad, I shot you.”
Avocato stared at him. It wasn’t a confused stare, or even a surprised one, he just kept his gaze trained on Little Cato.
Little Cato crossed his arms and stared back. “Well? Say something.” When he didn’t get a response, he grew anxious. “Dad, did you even hear what I said? I said I shot you.”
“I heard what you said,” Avocato said in a soft voice.
“So say something!” Little Cato exclaimed. “W-why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Avocato, hold on a minute,” Gary interrupted. “Spider-Cat, I think you need to take a breather.”
Little Cato took a step back. “Are you mad? Because I’d understand if you are, i-it was… it was bad. I-I didn’t wanna do it, but I still did it. I didn’t know what else to do a-and that’s not an excuse but…”
Gary moved to calm Little Cato, but Avocato was faster. He picked up their son easily and held the trembling teen tightly. Little Cato stared wide-eyed at nothing for a moment, looking momentarily terrified, then confused.
Once it was clear that his father wasn’t angry with him, Little Cato slowly returned the hug. Gary struggled to find something to say but he realized that, in this moment, words weren’t exactly necessary.
Avocato spoke volumes through action, but he wasn’t much for words. And Little Cato had a tough time talking things out, even with Gary. And though Gary was all for talking out feelings, maybe pacing around the bridge with him and Avocato was a quiet alternative when Little Cato couldn’t find his words.
Where Avocato failed with words, Gary succeeded, and where Gary failed trying to figure out the right thing to do, Avocato was a step ahead of him. It made the hard nights of parenting a lot easier, and hopefully the hard nights easier for Little Cato, too.
It was all about understanding. And how they communicated that understanding, with words or without, didn’t really matter. So long as Little Cato knew he safe, that was all that mattered to the two fathers pacing on the bridge.