Cecil was honesty and sincerity in equal parts, a bleeding heart broadcast over local radio waves. Cecil only spoke in truths.

Perfect. Perfect hair, perfect, delicate skin. Perfect, beautiful Carlos.

Perfection was a truth to Cecil, unattainable in the damage suggested on the inside of his wrists, where a smattering of bruises, ripples of color spreading out from the pinpricks of needles, drew the eye. There was damage in the stumbles on the sidewalk and in the vacant stare that accompanied a sudden reappearance from days spent missing.

Perfection was a truth that he remembered.

"Re-education," Cecil said with eyes earnest and empty. Carlos was still breathing heavily; there was metallic silence in the air, the aftermath of thunder and lightning. Cecil never flinched; his silence unnerved, incorrect, nothing when there should have been something.

There was more nothing all of the time, spreading into chasms, taking Cecil's words and then his thoughts, leaving him in the middle of a street or in front of a window or sitting in dead air on the radio. He looked at Carlos, then through Carlos, smiled then frowned, then asked for his name. Carlos's name, and his own. And then he didn't ask anymore.

Perfection was the most difficult truth for Carlos to understand, because he understood only the absolute of it, the uncompromising and overwhelming wholeness. He was a being with large cracks, but in the middle of nothing, blank-eyed, Cecil traced patterns over his arms and through his hair, gently brushing over an eyelid, a lip, an inch of jaw or a mile of leg, whispering the truth into the air and into skin. Carlos tried to shake the whispers away, but they followed him.

They followed him to the diner, where he sat for hours. They followed him to his car, where he sat for minutes before turning on the engine and they followed him through his resolute drive to the outskirts of town. They were there when he stopped abruptly next to the city limits sign and clutched the steering wheel as though it was the only piece of reality left unbroken. They led him back home.

Cecil was sleeping on the bed, twisted in blankets and without a shirt. The wide swathes of ink bent and twisted into strange patterns, and it wasn't until he reached out to touch that he understood why.

Spidery cracks spread and shattered the expanse of skin. The scientist followed all of them with gentle fingers, tracing them up and down where they tapered off at the arms and sides and lower back, surveying the concealed damage, which was catastrophic. The tattoo bent and broke under the discolored skin, a permanence undone. He'd never known it was there.

Carlos asked him about it, asked him why he always used the word, and Cecil smiled widely. "It's the truth. You are perfect. All the pieces of you fit together so wonderfully, all the broken pieces and one beautiful, perfect whole. You are perfect in all of your pieces." Carlos didn't understand, so he kissed Cecil instead and let go of the moment.

He traced every crack to its inevitable conclusion. He traced the shuddering ink of the tattoos as Cecil breathed calmly, noting where it broke him into parts, beautiful, broken pieces of a whole. He thought maybe he was closer to a truth, and just to be sure, he whispered it aloud.

"Perfect."

He tested his hypothesis, whispering it into Cecil's forehead under a fringe of hair, the back of his neck, the ink and scarring, both of his wrists. Perfect. Perfect, beautiful Cecil.

They were broken into pieces that fit together perfectly, and Carlos held Cecil as whispers of truth surrounded them.

A/N: And now, for something very different. Sorry if this confused anyone - I know the style is a bit unusual. I just wanted to explore what re-education might do to a person so... yeah. Thanks for reading! ^_^

(Disclaimer - Welcome to Night Vale and its characters belong to those creative people over at Commonplace Books)