Authors Note: Yeah, I decided to go for it and rewrite one of my fanfictions. After seeing "The Roots" I decided this plot would work better if it happened right after that episode instead of in the middle of "The Bro's" which is what I did originally. It took me about a year, but I did it. I'm going to keep the original up though, so if you want to compare and contrast go ahead.

Darwin opened his eyes and looked around, confused. He couldn't tell exactly where he was, but he knew that it wasn't his bedroom. He decided to take a look around. He was in a tight space, and it was almost as if it was moving, like he was in the back of a truck or a van of some kind. He was surrounded by dogs in cages and closer inspection revealed that he was in a cage as well. A memory flickered in the back of his mind, it was as if he'd been here before. All of a sudden it came to him. Of course! He was in the dog catcher's van! But what was he doing there?

"Excuse me, what's going on?" He asked everyone in earshot.

"Well, last I heard you were on a quest to find your family." One of the dogs replied.

"What? My family? But this happened years ago! I found them, everything is fine now." Darwin was confused. How was it possible that he was back here again? Were all the memories of his happy life just a long dream he had? No, that didn't make any sense, you can't just dream almost a whole decade of your life.

"Is it? Then what are you doing here?"

"I….I don't know." He admitted.

"Face it kid, your family doesn't want you anymore." Darwin's eyes started filling up with tears.

"No, that's not true, my family loves me."

"Then where are they now?"

"Looking for me, i'm sure of it." He said, with more confidence then he felt.

"Really, then just look out that window." Darwin did, he saw his mom, dad, and a four year old Gumball playing together, without a care in the world.

"No! That's not what happens! That's not how the story goes! They miss me, they were putting up flyers." Darwin said, full on sobbing by this point. Suddenly all the voices started echoing around him.

"They don't need you."

"They don't want you."

"They abandoned you once, what's to stop them from doing it again?"

"Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!" Darwin shouted, covering his ears.

"Darwin?"

"What? Gumball?"

"Darwin!" Suddenly his eyes snapped open, he was back in his bedroom. It had just been a bad dream. He saw Gumball staring at him with a concerned expression. "You ok buddy?" Gumball asked.

"Oh, yeah, i'm fine, just a bad dream." Gumball thought that was a little weird, he used to get constant nightmares when they were little, but he hadn't had any in a long time. Come to think of it, almost all of his nightmares had to do with his journey back home when they first met, could today's events have triggered his nightmare? "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, not really."

"Well, ok, if you're sure." Gumball said hesitantly. He started to go back to bed when Darwin suddenly asked "do you love me?"

"What?"

"I mean, do you care about me?"

"Of course I do! What brought this on? Was it the dream?"

"A little, but mostly because you guys tried to abandon me today." So Gumball was right, the day's events did trigger the nightmare. He made a vow to himself to try to make it up to him later.

"Yeah, i'm really sorry about that, I didn't want to do it, but we thought it was what you wanted."

"Well it's not like this was the first time." Darwin mumbled.

"What?" Gumball asked, not quite hearing him.

"Never mind, forget it."

"No, I want to know what you said."

"I said that this wasn't exactly the first time it happened,was it?" Darwin snapped. He immediately wanted to take it back, say he didn't mean it, go back to the way things were before, but that would be a lie, he did mean it, he had meant it for a while now.

"What are you…..?" Gumball started, then suddenly he remembered. Eight years ago with the petstore and the fish, Darwin knew about that? How could he? But what else could he possibly be referring to? Gumball didn't think it was possible to feel guiltier about what happened today but with this revelation his guilt increased tenfold. "You knew about that?" Darwin hesitated for a long time before answering.

"Yeah, I did." He admitted.

"For how long?"

"Since the day it happened, I saw it right there."

"What?" Gumball said, shocked. Darwin saw him? How could that be? Wouldn't they have noticed? "How?"

"I was right outside the window. I actually caught up to you at our house but you got in the car before you could see me, so I followed. I followed you all the way to the pet store and ended up at the window right when Larry handed you that other fish, then I got sad and I left."

"So that's why you were in the parking lot at the mall!" Gumball said, realization hitting him. In fact, it made a lot of other things make sense, like why he got so jealous of Penny when they started dating, why he hung out in Gumball's shadow all the time, even why he called their parents Mr. Dad and Mrs. Mom. He had always assumed it was a force of habit, but maybe it was something bigger than that. "Oh my god, Darwin, I'm so sorry. I had no idea, I swear! I never would have left you at that pond if I had known!" Forget tenfold, Gumball's guilt went up to a hundred-fold after this, he was only trying to help Darwin but instead he made everything so much worse. He was his brother and his best friend, shouldn't he have known he felt like this? How could he have done the exact wrong thing to help? "This is all my fault, I should've known you would never want to leave us, that you were afraid that we would abandon you like that again. We've been best friends for eight years, I should've known you better then that. We're on the same page for so many things, how could I have gotten it so wrong?" Darwin didn't know what to do, he wanted to comfort Gumball somehow, but everything he was saying was true. Plus, he was still a little mad at him for what went down that day. "Why didn't you tell me?" Gumball asked him.

"I was just, too afraid to bring it up. I mean, what if my worst fears were confirmed? What if you really did think of me as just a pet? As something that can be returned or replaced?" Gumball's heart broke when he heard Darwin's confession. Tears started to form in his eyes. He was officially the worst best friend in the world for making him feel that way.

"No, no no no no. Don't ever believe you can be replaced! Not even for a second! I'm so sorry if I ever made you feel that way. You are special, you are so, so special. I've known that since the day we met. You're not a pet, you're my brother, you're just as part of the family as I am! I never wanted to hurt you, I love you! Everyone else does too! Mom, Dad, Anais, they all love you! After everything we've all been through together you have to know that! My life would be so much worse without you! Please, you've got to believe me." Darwin's heart lifted a bit. It wasn't as though he liked seeing his best friend so upset, but seeing that he was so upset was encouraging, it meant he had to love him, at least a little, to warrant that response. He wasn't going to let him off the hook yet though, he still had his lingering doubts.

"So, why did you do it? Or, rather, almost do it. Why did you go to that pet store in the first place?"

"I was afraid." Gumball answered. "I was afraid I would never see you again. I thought that maybe another fish would help fill the void instead of just being a painful reminder of what I had lost. I was four, I was stupid. I couldn't go through with it though. In the end I had realized that there was only one Darwin Watterson that I actually care about." Darwin's heart lifted a little more. His explanation made sense, and he didn't forget that he did actually go back for him that day. He was starting to believe Gumball when he said that he loved him as his brother. They did spend almost all of their time together. That didn't account for the rest of his family though.

"And what about Mrs. Mom and Mr. Dad? If they really loved me they wouldn't have tried to replace me so quickly." Gumball had to think about that one for a bit. He couldn't account for their actions that day. He just knew that they were trying to cheer him up and they thought it would be the best way. Unfortunately it also came at Darwin's expense. But it wasn't like they could have known. The idea that their pet fish would come crawling out of the sea and reunite with them was crazy. It was years later and he still couldn't believe that it actually happened.

"I don't know what they were thinking." He eventually admitted. "Just that they were trying to cheer me up. You should probably talk to them about it."

"I can't!" Darwin replied. "You were the one that I was the most sure actually loved me and I couldn't even tell you. Anyway, it's been to long, how would I bring it up?"

"Well you can't hold it in forever!" Gumball insisted. "You can't keep going on thinking that your family doesn't love you. I don't even know how you managed to do it for this long. It must have really hurt."

"It did." Darwin admitted. "I mean, I know they must love me at least a little. But loving a pet is different than loving a son." Gumball didn't know what to say. He knew that his parents loved Darwin as much as they loved him and Anais, but he didn't know how to convince him of that. He decided his best bet was to get him to talk to them directly. Have them convince him of their love.

"Well, nothing's going to change if you don't talk to them."

"I can't. I'm sorry, I just can't do it."

"Well, do you want me to tell them?"

"No! I don't want that either!"

"Well you can't go on like this. Either you tell them or I will."

"Ok, I'll talk to them." Darwin said reluctantly. "But do you think you could be the one to bring it up? Just say that you just found out about this thing that happened and you think they should come talk to me about it. Just to make it less awkward?"

"Ok" Gumball agreed. "But, just to make sure, is everything ok between you and me? You know I would never want to hurt you, or leave you or anything like that, right?"

"Yeah, we're good." Darwin said. But Gumball wasn't sure if he was telling the truth or not. Either way, he had a lot of making up for it to do later. "You want to hug it out?" Gumball offered.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Darwin said. They gave each other a hug and Darwin noticed that Gumball was hugging him tighter than usual, as if he didn't want to let him go. He realized that if Gumball really didn't want to let him go then he thought he was going to lose him today. He might've thought that they would never see each other again. As if he was reading his mind Gumball said "i'm really glad you're still here." Darwin smiled a bit. The hug proved it, Gumball was telling the truth, about everything. He loved him like a brother after all. Of course he still had to deal with his parents but now that he had Gumball by his side again he began to feel like maybe it would be ok.