Chapter Text
It had been an accident. He hadn't been looking for anything specific or ridiculously personal, but it had just kind of flown out of Carlos' desk and Cecil just so happened to pick it up and his eyes just so happened to read the words on the page...
Well, needless to say, it was quite the discovery.
Traditionally in Night Vale, all citizens created their Bucket Lists in preschool. It helped children understand the fleeting nature of life at a young age, especially considering a little under half the preschool class usually got kidnapped by Hooded Figures or carted off to the Abandoned Mine Shaft as early recruitment for the Sheriff's Secret Police. Cecil's Bucket List was buried somewhere in the first couple pages of his Little Reporter's Notebook of Big Boy Note-Taking. He hadn't bothered to look at it or change it since he'd written it all those years ago, mostly because his fate was already sealed and their wasn't much wiggle room for enjoying a tour at the Museum of Forbidden Technology or doing anything other than his job as the Voice of Night Vale.
But Carlos was a scientist. Carlos was free to do whatever he pleased in his life, aside from municipally banned activities of course. Carlos was an Outsider and therefore not bound to the collective fates of the citizens. Carlos could choose his own path, write his own story. And Cecil could definitely help with some of that.
Some of them would definitely be tricky, no doubt about it. After all, he didn't really know who this "Stephen Hawking" was (some sort of bird king? A talking bird? A...Stephen? Maybe) or really what NASA really was (Nay-Say? Was he not supposed to know it existed? Probably), but those were minor setbacks. He could ask Old Woman Josie or Google the terms. Old Woman Josie would probably be the best person to consult, Google only gave him pictures of an oddly seductive cactus last time he tried to look up one of Carlos' science words.
However, there were a few things on the list Cecil knew of, like "Go parasailing" or "Reenact the Battle of the Five Armies." There was also "Write a book" and, if he pulled the right strings, Cecil knew he could get at least a couple hundred pages published. Leann Hart owed him a favor and the City Council would be more than thrilled to take away certain thoughts he'd been having about clouds. Maybe he could get Carlos a pen, a really nice pen, and he could use that to write his book! Yeah, he could do that. This could work!
His eyes kept scanning the list, committing it to near-but-not-quite photographic memory, before slipping it back into the notebook it'd been tucked away in. He could make the list happen, he just knew it. There were four he could do rather easily, the fifth being dreadful to set up, the sixth being a bit more tricky, and the seventh definitely earning him an unpleasant visit to the SSP. A small price to pay for Carlos' happiness.
After all, it was almost the one year anniversary of Carlos' return from the Desert Otherworld.