please tell me your post-fayz howard and orc headcanons 🥺
I think that if Howard survived and that other kid, Muhammed, died (probably bad form to kill the only on-screen Muslim kid in the entire series five minutes after he's introduced, but it also would've made way more sense than killing a main character who hadn't even completed his character development yet!) he and Orc would've... made up? Or maybe "made up" isnt the right phrase.
I'm talking about Howard watching another kid die, a kid that could've--would've been him if he'd been a bit dumber, slower, because he was returning from his alcohol mill in the dead of night (which was his main source of income in this hellhole they called the FAYZ... not that he, uh, strictly needed it, anymore).
I'm talking about Howard thinking about one of the first nights of the FAYZ. Walking through the desert with Drake, not sure where Orc was, scared and--for all intents and purposes--alone.
I'm talking about Howard witnessing the end of things.
So maybe--just maybe, if we're optimistic--he came to terms with Orc's newfound character development. Maybe he wished him well. Maybe he realized that once they left the FAYZ, they'd never really be Orc and Howard again.
(Howard's the one who made up that name, you know, because Charles just wasn't intimidating enough. Orc never found out. He figured it was just something the other kids started calling him.)
Of course, that doesn't mean he accepts it when Orc runs off on his little crusade. They fight, viciously. Howard says Orc doesn't have to run off like this, that he shouldn't have to die, he begs, he pleads. Orc says he has to, that kids are dying, that at least he'll have done one good thing with his life--and then neither of them can hear each other over all the yelling.
At some point, Orc has to ask some variation of, "Why do you even care?"
Howard screams "Why?!?" and bites back his next words so hard he tastes blood.
(Because it's obvious, isn't it? It's been obvious since that kid everyone thought was too stupid--but were too afraid of to say it to his face, because last time someone tried that he broke their nose and got suspended and came back with a bruise on his cheek that definitely wasn't there before but dont you dare ask about that either--made friends with the scrawny, spiteful kid the others loved to pick on. The words really tell themselves, don't they? Not in sound, but in the way that even in the FAYZ, even after Orc became a monster and their relationship suddenly became more about survival than anything else, Howard still did his damndest to make sure Orc had a bed.)
But he bites back those words (and maybe he doesn't even realize he does) and spits: "Because you're my friend."
Orc still goes, of course. Howard does try to stop him, but he gets swatted away like a fly--as gently as Orc possibly can, but still not as gently as a malnourished 14 year old should ever be.
The explosion blows off most of Orc's protective covering; what little remained after sloughs off once the FAYZ wall falls. The skin beneath is raw and pink and bleeding in some places, but not as bad as it should've been (Astrid later theorizes that Orc's mutation was actually some kind of healing power, which would explain how he survived that night in the desert--after all, a protective covering is kind of useless after your kidney's been ripped out).
The one unprotected place, the side of his face that was left bare to the explosion, is burned nearly beyond recognition.
Orc finds this ironic.
