#after like a year and a half of being a critter I’ve finally finished a drawing for it

[dirt-and-scrivles]

Jester!

[tennessoui]

FeralObi anon here. How do you come up with these so fast?? Are you an infinite number of ideas and worlds in human-shaped form? I love both of those ideas. The first one kills me tho, Obi gets his first kind touch in years from lil Anakin. Also you can have lil Anakin coming home one day with a skulking, snarling nonverbal murder puppy and saying brightly, "He followed me home, can I keep him?" Schmi thinks this is definitely worse than the time he brought a krayt dragon home.

ah! hello! yes this is the first idea of a feral obi-wan who meets anakin when he's still on tatooine. i will also still do the second idea because like. i liked them equally as much rip me

but i told myself these were going to both be very short snippets and instead this one is uh 2k so i'll post the second one tomorrow instead of tonight!

(ficlet where obi-wan is captured by pirates/unspecified forces at a young age and then tortured for a decade before he escapes to tatooine when anakin is like 6. obi-wan, after a decade of torture is....not alright in this fic though he's only here at the end) (2k)

Shmi had known that when she sent her little Anakin away to follow after the stern-faced, warm-eyed Jedi Master, that this would not be the last time she ever saw her boy. She couldn’t explain how she knew, just as she had not been able to explain how she became pregnant, but she knew beyond a doubt that one day, she would see her little boy back in her arms.

She just hadn’t known it would be so soon.

“He died, Master Jinn died,” Anakin mumbles into the front of her dress, unwilling to move his head far back enough from her hug that he could talk clearly. “On Naboo. And the stupid Jedi council refused to train me even after I was so amazing in the air. Mom, I destroyed a blockade! Entirely! And they wouldn’t--they didn’t--” his little face scrunches up and then he’s bawling into his hands.

A slave, a born slave, knows intrinsically the injustice of the galaxy. It is not often they know hope.

“Oh my boy,” she whispers, smoothing a hand over the top of his head. She has questions. She has so many questions about everything he’s just said and what those strangers have put her son through, but the most important thing is a question she cannot wait until he has cried himself out to ask. “Is your chip gone, Ani? Did they remove your transmitter?”

Because she had sent him away from her so that he could be free. And that had been her own twisted version of hope, that her son could know a life she never would again. If the Jedi masters had proven to be just like every other master in the world, she would find herself sobbing into her own hands.

“Yeah,” Anakin sniffles and wipes at his ruddy cheeks, pulling back a few steps. “They removed it and everything. And--”

He pauses and drops his satchel to the ground in front of her. “They gave me credits. To buy you. For my trouble.”

He spits out the last three words like they’re the most disgusting thing in the entire world. As if Shmi’s freedom isn’t laying at their feet, mere centimeters away.

“Republic credits are no good here,” she hears herself say faintly.

“Padme, the handmaiden you met, she talked to the queen about me I guess,” Anakin mumbles, kicking his feet. “And when the queen learned that the Jedi didn’t want me even after all that, Padme says the queen says I’ll always have a place on Naboo. Me and my family. And then she took the Jedi credits and gave me these instead. It should be enough, Mom.”

Shmi sits down on the floor. With shaking hands, she opens the bag and looks inside. Yes. Yes.

There’s more than enough.

There’s enough to buy her freedom and take her boy away from Mos Espa. There’s enough to take her boy away from Tatooine completely.

“I…” she says. “Ani, I…”

“Padme said she’d send a ship for us,” Ani reports as if their lives are not changing right in front of their eyes. “In two days ‘cause I told her it might take a little bit of time to get Ben to come with us. But we can’t leave without him.”

This is said fiercely and with his arms crossed tightly over his little chest.

Shmi stares at him.

“I’ve already left him once!” Anakin says, stomping his foot. “But that was okay, because I knew you would bring him food and water and stuff. But if we’re both gone, no one’s going to be there for him.”

Shmi bites at her lip. There’s a lot of things happening very quickly right now, and she doesn’t know how to process half of them.

Her son has come back, after only being gone for a week and a half.

He has apparently either endeared himself so much to the queen of Naboo that she was willing to give him the money necessary to buy his mother from slavery and also promise him sanctuary on her planet. He says he’s done this by single-handedly ending a blockade, which is something she just cannot even think about right now.

He has told this queen--queen--that he will gladly live on Naboo with his family. Yes. Alright.

His family seems to include his imaginary friend, Ben.

Anakin has been talking about Ben for years now, ever since he was six and a half years old and sent by Watto to retrieve any scraps he could from what looked to be a crashed pod in the Wastelands. She’d let him ramble on about the ghost of a friend, because she’d known it to be something all children go through and experience. She hadn’t thought Anakin a lonely child, not with the friends he made in Mos Espa, but she’d always known that Anakin had a wandering spirit, ill-suited for Tatooine. If he liked to imagine an older man from a strange world hiding in the caves of the Wastes, then she wasn’t going to say anything.

“You have been leaving him food, haven’t you, Mom?” Anakin asks, almost accusatory. “I told him to expect you and everything.”

No. Shmi has not been traveling to the edge of the Wastelands every day during her precious few hours of free time in order to leave food to be picked apart by womp rats and desert critters and not her boy’s imaginary friend.

“Ani,” she says cautiously, quietly, “we cannot...we won’t be able to bring Ben with us when we go.”

Anakin, predictably, does not react well. “Why not!” he yells, backing away from her even further and looking as if she is the enemy. “Padme’s fine with it!”

“Aren’t you a little old for imaginary friends?” Shmi asks desperately, feeling cold suddenly even though the heat of the mid-morning sun has not abated at all.

If anything, her son looks more offended. “He’s not imaginary! Saying...saying that he’s not coming with us...is...is a bunch of poodoo!”

“Anakin!” Shmi gasps.

“Come on,” her boy says forcefully, grabbing at her hand and tugging her towards the door. She gets on her feet reluctantly and has half a mind to pull back just because he needs to learn that this sort of behavior is not okay, war hero or not. “We’re going to buy you from Watto. And then we’re going to go visit Ben!”

---

Buying her freedom takes less time than Shmi Skywalker ever thought it would. It feels distant as well, as if it’s happening to someone else.

It doesn’t help that her Ani is impatient and surly by turn, spilling the coin out onto Watto’s counter and barely waiting for him to finish counting it before he’s looking at the price of renting a four-person speeder parked outside.

“You won’t survive out there on your own,” Watto sneers, even as he’s passing her the kill-switch of her own slave chip. “Days. It’ll be days until the Hutts find out there’s a newly freed slave with no connections out there in the open. Ripe for the pickin’.”

Watto doesn’t have to tell her any of this. She knows. Gods, does she know.

But Anakin seems so sure about possessing the favor of the Queen of Naboo, or at least her handmaiden, which might be close enough to the same thing. She thanks Watto--she thanks him and then doesn’t even know why--and meets Anakin outside.

He’s bouncing around the speeder, little hands clutching his satchel to his chest. “Good!” he says when he sees her, hopping onto the machine and putting the parcel between his feet. “I got Ben something called a fig on Naboo, but I don’t know how long it’ll take for it to go bad. Apparently they’re sweet.”

Shmi goes along with it. Shmi doesn’t know why she goes along with it, but she does. She can see this is important to her boy, and though she’d rather spend the afternoon and early evening saying goodbye to her friends, she will allow Ani to say goodbye to his imaginary friend. Maybe she’ll even talk to it. “Hi, hello, I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed the imaginary blue milk and delicacies I’ve left out for you this past week and half. Oh no, it was no bother. My son insisted.”

The ride is quick--Anakin has always been a driver to push the limits of any engine he comes across--and before she knows it, he’s dismounting on a piece of desert and rock that look exactly the same as the last four pieces of rocky terrain they’ve past.

“Ben!” Ani calls, satchel clutched firmly in his hands as he makes his way deeper into the crevices of the landscape. “Ben, it’s Ani! I’m really sorry that I left! Ben? Ben! I’m back now! Ani’s back!”

It’s actually...quite pathetic, to watch her boy speak so pleadingly to the cold stone faces of the rocks around them, but if this is what he needs to do to say goodbye to his life on Tatooine, Shmi won’t say a word.

“Ben--” Anakin draws in a breath to call again, but then there’s movement out of the corner of Shmi’s eyes, and something jumps from the rock down to land on her boy.

She screams and darts forward, but the thing on top of her son snarls at her in guttural warning.

“No, Ben,” Ani coos, stroking at the face that yes, is human, now that it’s not in unnaturally fast motion. “That’s my mom, Ben.”

Ben--Ben??--growls anyway, pinning the boy--her boy--beneath him with his legs and arms.

“She’s fine,” Ani murmurs gently, one hand reaching up to stoke over the beginnings of a beard on Obi-Wan’s face “Oh Ben, I’m sorry.”

The man on top of Shmi’s child finally looks away from her and at her boy, which is both better and worse.

“Ani,” Ben drawls out, as if the word--or perhaps forming the word--hurts him.

Anakin is happy. Shmi can tell he’s happy without even being able to see much of him. It’s like the very air vibrates with his joy. “Yes!” her son says. “Ani. Ben.” He taps the man’s chest. “Ben. Ani.”

The man buries his head into Anakin’s hair, hands rubbing up and down his sides and his arms and his face.

Shmi needs to say something, wants to say something about this strange man touching boy like he owns him, but the memory of his growl and the flash of his golden eyes stops her from stepping forward.

“Anakin, get away from him,” she hisses instead of stepping forward and tearing the stranger off of her son. She has the distinct feeling Anakin wouldn’t let Ben go anywhere, not with the way his little hands are holding so tight to the man’s shoulders. The man’s shoulders that are covered with one of her old tunics that Anakin had told her became unsalvageable after its last wash.

“No,” Anakin says, tightening his hold on his...friend. “He says you didn’t give him food the entire time I was gone! He’s hungry.”

Shmi thinks there’s a very good possibility that this Ben is going to eat her, but she knows not to say anything of the sort. Not when it’s two against one.

“He hasn’t said anything!” She cries instead.

Anakin huffs at this and pats at the feral’s head. “Maybe not to you, but he talks to me.”

Shmi stares at him and wonders if there’s something she’s supposed to be doing or saying here. The man won’t allow her to tear him off her child, she knows that automatically. But she can’t--she doesn’t know--

“Anakin,” she tries, desperately.

But Anakin doesn’t even look at her, too busy petting over the man, who has at least allowed him to sit up. “Hey, I’m sorry, I thought she would,” he tells him in an undertone. “I really thought she would, but I’m back now. I’m not going anywhere without you again--”

He extends his hand and Ben presses his cheek against it with enough force that it pushes him back slightly.

“You’re coming to Naboo with us, Ben,” Anakin promises, clutching at the ends of the man’s long hair. “Or I’m not going at all.”

To Shmi, it sounds like a threat.

The way her son’s eyes flash an unfamiliar golden color makes her feel cold as a Tatooine night. She shivers, but no one notices.

[everlarkficexchange]

Written by: @alliswell21

Title: One of Us

Prompt 145: She moves in with her aunt and uncle when her parents dies in a small town. After suffering through trama, Katniss slowly starts to get better with the help of her family (aunt, uncle, cousin) and the Mellark brothers. But when things starts happening to her and the people around her, it’s revealed that she and almost everyone in the towns are apart of the werewolf pack and that one of the Mellark brothers is her mate. #werewolves [submitted by @animekpopxx]

Rated: G for general audiences.

Tags: Canon Divergent!AU; Modern with a dash of Supernatural; Grief/Mourning; Feeding as a Language of Love.

Note: This is my final submission to this year's EFE challenge! Yay! I really am grateful to @xerxia31 and @javistg for their continued support of this fandom and for hosting once again this event. You are such amazing people, and I’m absolutely honored to be part of a community with people as amazing as you two are! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for keeping EFE alive!

@animekpopxx, thank you too! You feed my muse! And you give me Werewolves!!!!

This story was a bit of rushed job, though, and there’s more of it, I mean... we haven’t seen them turn into wolves yet!!! 🤣 I just didn’t have time to edit the complete fic before the deadline, but if you’d like to read the finished product, keep an eye out for it on AO3. I’m fairly sure the rating will keep, but we will see.

 Kpkpkpk

There’s nothing but the sound of crickets and frogs filling the vast darkness of the night.

It’s another moonless night out here in Panem… or is I like to call it ‘the middle of nowhere’. It’s weird, how dark nights feel here, there’s barely a start peeking tonight, but in a strange way, I like it.

Sitting on my aunt and uncle’s porch to watch the infinite dark ahead while listening to the nocturnal critters it’s about my favorite thing to do… it’s what did used to do when we came here for long summer stays, anyway. He used to say he felt at peace and relaxed, connected with nature. Too bad it took him to be gone, for me to appreciate what he meant by that. So every night I come out here and sit in the steps hugging my knees, staring at nothing but the deep, black night surrounding the cabin, whisking my dad was sitting next to me.

Tonight is different than usual, though. It was raining until recently, and the smell of wet earth is so familiar my chest feels tight and my throat is knotted.

“Petrichor, Katniss,” I mumble the words noiselessly, “is the smell of rain, hun. It smells the same everywhere in the world.”

I lean my chin on my knees, wishing I could go back to feeling numb like when my parents just died. But thinking of the word petrichor, while smelling the thing, is bring forth a plethora feelings and memories I don’t know how to handle.

Dad used to love Scrabble, crossword puzzles and trivia challenges. He tried to get me interested in those games, teaching me words and their meanings, every time he had a chance.

I wish I had been more enthusiastic about learning the darned stuff; it would’ve meant an extra moment spent with Dad, and less regret to feel right now.

An involuntary whine leaves my chest. It hurts to think about it, and not for the first time, I dig my nails into my skin to keep myself rooted in place, and not tear running into the void.

I feel like I’m spiraling out of control, I fear this time something will break in my head and I’ll do something crazy, like scratch my skin away and run wild into the woods, like a beast… but the overwhelming thoughts gets halted when I hear soft noises from out in the distance.

It’s like the crunching of footsteps on the gravel at the mouth of my aunt and uncle’s property. It’s too dark and isolated here, deep into the country. I’ve seen big wildlife roaming around: deer, raccoons, coyotes and even a lynx. But the longer I hear the noises, the more certain I am I’m being stalked by something big and fast.

My heart beats erratically in my chest; every hair in my body stands on point, fear is clawing its way up my chest and into my throat, my eyes feel about to pop from my skull, and then I’m disentangling my knees from my arms, standing up as tall as I can— which isn’t saying much—and then I call into the night, “Who’s there?!”

I hear a faint disturbance of air, and then…

“Good evening, Katniss!”

Slowly, from the shadows, a blonde head pops, eerie for a second. Broad shoulders follow, and then a torso. Before the rest of his body comes visible into the light of the porch, two more blonde heads come into view, flank the first person on either side: Shoulders, torsos, Jean covered legs… The three Mellark brothers make their way leisurely towards me.

I nearly faint from relief after the rush of adrenaline pumping in my veins. Going through so many emotions: grief, sorrow, dread and relief, so fast in such a short amount of time has left me winded and unsteady.

I lose my balance, but one of the boys— Peeta, the youngest— breaks ranks, and rushes to hold me upright.

“Are you okay?” He asks softly, helping me sit back down on the porch steps. I lean my head against the main post.

“I’m okay. Just a little lightheaded,” I try not to glare. They gave me a fright, but I doubt they did it on purpose.

It’s something I’ve learn over the years. People in Panem are kind of quirky.

“Sorry we scared you,” Peeta offers, sheepishly. “We wanted to check up on you, and bring you something…” he looks up at his two older brothers and Rye — the middle one— steps forward, holding up a brown, paper bag, with little greasy spots on the sides.

I can guess what’s inside. They’ve been bringing me cheese buns almost daily, since Peeta found out they’re my favorites.

Rey hands the baggie to Peeta, and the latter offers it to me with a soft smile.

“Thanks,” I mumble, gratefully. I can smell the cheesy, yeasty treat through the bag; I can feel the warmth of the buns too! “While I love freshly baked cheese buns, you guys didn’t have to make this trek just to bring me a treat… on a dark, moonless night no less,” I fix them with a glare. “How did you even get here anyway? You couldn’t have walked and I never saw a car coming?”

My aunt and uncle’s cabin is at least 4 miles from town, and surrounded by woods; but then again, most houses in this weird little place are built in similar locations. It seems the townsfolk take their privacy extremely seriously.

“We rode our dirt bikes,” chimes Rye in, cheerily. “Not much light on those bulbs, though, but it’s okay. Our night vision is prime!” He gives me the A-Okay gesture.

“Rye,” the eldest, Bannock, warns lowly. Baring his teeth.

Rye shrugs and slips his hands on his Jean pockets.

I swear Rye hisses something like “it’s true” under his breath, but Peeta has been rubbing my back with the tip of his fingers all this time, and I’m getting drowsy, so I may have imagined the whole exchange.

“You should eat those while they’re still warm,” Peeta murmurs close by my shoulder.

I nod, and open the bag, releasing all the delicious smells of the buns, while Peeta massages my shoulders, encouragingly.

I must be really out if it tonight, because outside of my family, I’ve never been comfortable with people touching me… but, my family is all gone now, and I can’t go through the rest of my life without human touch, can I?

Grief stricken me out of nowhere, and barrels through me. I gasp at the acute pain in my soul at the loss of my parents. But in an instant, I’m enveloped in strong, thick arms, warm and steady. I’m sobbing into a hot, solid chest, covered in the softest cotton I’ve ever felt.

“Shush… I’ve got you, Katniss. I’m here for you,” Peeta whispers soothingly into the crown of my head.

He smells so good; like cinnamon and dill, from the bread he must’ve made this afternoon at his family’s bakery.

It takes a few minutes for me to get a hold of myself, and embarrassedly push out of his embrace, “I’m sorry,” I mumble, mortified.

Bannock presents me with a handkerchief, and I take it gratefully to wipe off my face and nose, before returning the soiled square of fabric to him.

I’m not sure why the Mellark brothers are being so nice to me. I’ve never been around them more than a handful of days over the past few years, when we came to see Dad’s remaining family outside mom and I, his half brother, his wife and their child.

I don’t know the Mellarks all that well, but in the handful of weeks since my parents’ funeral, the three brothers have been incredibly attentive and generous to me. Peeta more than the other two, but I don’t mind… I like him best anyway.

“It’s okay to cry and be devastated, Katniss.” Says Bannock, sagely. “You’re going through the worst time of your life, and we care for you… like family.”

“Oh,” I sit straighter, blowing my nose. I feel a little strange hearing him say that, “thank you? I appreciate your kindness,”

He nods, “Peeta’s right, though. You should eat the cheese buns before they go cold.”

“A full stomach always helps me feel better,” Rye adds, patting his belly, and smiling at me.

My stomach growls, as if to show agreement. I am hungry. I didn’t touch my supper earlier. I pick up the bakery gingerly, and pretty much shove my nose into it. The steam curls out of the baggie, filling my nostrils with the delicious smells. I pluck out a bun and practically inhale it in a second; quickly followed by another one. My third cheese bun, I decide to savor, slowly.

The Mellark siblings just hang around while I devour my treats.

The front door opens just as I’m wiping my hands on my leggings. My aunt’s head peeks out of the door.

“Oh, why hello everyone!” She greets, as bubbly as always. She’s wearing a dark purple wig, to match her dark purple outfit.

“Good evening, Effie,” says Peeta, standing from his squatting position next to me. “We brought Katniss a gift,” he points at the now empty bag in his hand.

“How sweet of you, Peeta!” my aunt gushes, “thank you for checking on our girl, and making sure she’s put something in her tummy before bedtime!”

I roll my eyes. Aunt Effie keeps treating me like a kid. I hate it. I’m 17 and mourning, not a freaking baby!

“It’s no problem at all, Effie! We were just on our way home anyway.”

“Well, it’s always nice having you boys over,” she offers, “but it’s getting late, and Primrose is already in bed, which is why I came out here to begin with, to let Katniss know that her sister was already asleep, so she’d know to tip toe back inside when she was ready to go to bed herself,” my aunt smiles.

I feel a slight pang of guilt; I’ve been wallowing in my own sadness this evening, and missed tucking my sister in to sleep. She’s the only person I’m sure I love, yet tonight I’ve let my own misery drown me.

“Don’t mind us, Effie,” Says Bannock, “We were about to leave…” he pauses and then calls a meaningful, “Peeta?”

“I’m going to wish Katniss a good night, and then we’ll go,” he says.

Not for the first time, I wonder if Peeta has a crush on me? I wouldn’t know he did, even if I wasn’t feeling so rotten inside. I’m not very good at flirting… but with Peeta it is different I think. He’s so nice to me, he’s taken up asking if I’ve eaten that day and if I haven’t, he feeds me something from his family’s bakery without charging me… it’s like he actually cares for me and my well-being, and his brothers care, because he does. It’s mesmerizing at times.

Peeta looks me in the eyes, “Are you ready to go inside?” He asks, offering his two open palms to me. He helps me up from the floor, and then smiles sweetly. He doesn’t let go of my hands while we stand facing each other.

Then something strange happens. Peeta doesn’t blink, as his clear-blue eyes bore into mine, and then his pupils blow out full, until only a ring of deep, glowing azure remains for his irises, “Sleep well, Katniss,” his voice sounds deeper and warmer than usual, “Rest and have a relaxing, dreamless night. Remember what I said: we are all here for you, to help through this hard time… alright?”

I feel groggy, “Yes, Peeta,” I mumble feeling my eyelids getting heavier.

“Oh dear, can you please instruct her to walk herself to bed? She might look lithe, but I promise, her little body is as heavy as any of us,”

Huh? What’s aunt Effie going on about? I don’t understand.

Peeta chuckles, squeezing my hands warmly in his, “You heard Effie… don’t fall asleep until you’ve gone into your bedroom and change into comfy pajamas.”

I nod, “Okay,”

“Good night, Katniss, I’ll be back tomorrow. Try to eat something on your own, I know you’re sad, but you need your strength for when the solstice comes.”

What a weird thing to say! Everything is strange here though… so I nod and march inside the house, mumbling my good nights to everyone and rubbing my very sleepy eyes. Once I’m in my sleep clothes, I lay in bed, and try to ignore the yearning of having Peeta rubbing my back like he was doing while I ate my cheese buns.

I sigh and go to sleep, a weird thought pops into my mind: “I’m so lucky to have such a sweet, caring mate. Peeta Mellark. Can’t wait to be bonded with him,”

[roll-da-credits]

Lycoris Radiata Pt. 2 -Deku x Reader-

Inspired by the piano piece, "Lycoris Radiata," Written by Spikes, played by MusicalBasics.

Highly recommend listening to it whilst reading.

[1] [2] [3]

Word Count: 1.7k

When a childhood love shows up after being lost to time, it's unnerving to be presented by something so familiar yet different. Deku lost to his own love and presented with the stresses of life and unrequited love, it isn't easy to see the world with an unbiased gaze.

!WARNING!

(This is for the entire series and not just this part)

BIG TW for death, suicide, abuse,

Minor TW for death imagery, toxic relationship, toxic friendship, toxic shit all around

A/n: I hope all of my little details are noticed by you guys because it did take a long time to take into consideration all of the details, I hope you enjoy this.

After reuniting with you in that park, Deku found himself longing to hang out with you even more. Longing to hear your stories and longing to tell you his adventure as a pro. So, that’s exactly what he did.

Every time he had an off-day or a patrol near where you worked or resided. He would always stop by, say hello, catch up, talk about your day.

On not so rare occasions he’d also meet your boyfriend at the same place. When questioned about it he realized your boyfriend worked at the same place you did. It wasn’t very odd to him so he simply laughed it off and considered how lucky you were to be in the same place as your loved one very often.

“There was also this one time where they tripped and spilled the coffee on another barista! It was hilarious!!!” Your boyfriend laughed out loud behind the display of pastries, chatting with Deku.

You looked away rather quickly after he talked about that moment, “Are you ok Y/n?” Deku queried. “Ah they’re fine, they’re just embarrassed. I mean who wouldn’t be, it was their first day.”

Deku grinned and shook his head slightly, reminiscing about all the times he’s embarrassed himself with you in front of people or embarrassed himself in front of you. He smiled at it, without realizing his gaze slowly becoming pinker. Pinker with adoration and love for you.

After all these years, you still held the same grace in his eyes. Of course, you changed a little bit, people change over time. But to him, the best parts of you still remained. You were still the perfect person he would’ve loved to spend his entire life with.

He quickly darted his eyes away from your form making another cup of coffee for a customer, realizing the fact that your boyfriend had gone quiet. Most likely because of the fact Deku was staring at his lover.

“I’m sorry I blanked out,” Deku tried his best to apologize, “What were you saying again?”

For a split second Deku could feel rage beneath your boyfriend’s eyes, it was expected of course. No one would want their significant other to be stared at.

But just as quickly as that rage rose, your boyfriend switched the topics and went back to his chipper move. Though from his already pink-tinted eyes, Deku missed the way his hand gripped the metal prongs used to get the pastries, a little bit tighter.

The next day he came over to the café you worked at, and unlike usual you didn’t greet him from behind the counter. You stayed focus on your work.

Deku couldn’t help but stare once again at your adorable focusing form. Every time he looked at you, though he has yet to come to terms with it, everything else in the room disappears. His eyes, mind, soul, body, and heart all focus on you.

“You must really like our stuff huh?” Your boyfriend interrupted his train of thought and Deku had to mentally scold himself for staring once again.

You also seemed to snap out of your trance and locked eyes with him, you offered him a small smile before rushing back to take the orders of other customers.

Deku, like he would always every other day, ordered his usual. Talked a little bit with your boyfriend, liking him more and more by the day. Then leaving after he had finished his favorite red velvet cupcake you made and morning coffee, oddly enough without talking to you the entire day.

It wasn’t until the next week would he be able to come to your café again, exhausted, tired, and drained.

The week on his last trip to your café swamped him with terribly mentally draining missions and failures. He had failed to rescue the final person from being trapped underneath rubble, after saving her entire family, before he could run in the rubble fell. Instantly killing the person.

A sprout of red blood spilled from her body as her family surrounded it and cried. Deku knelt down and faced the family, his hands stained red from the blood on the floor. He cried and apologized over and over again.

The family stopped his apologies and reassured him it was not his fault.

After clearing out the rubble, the family went over to Deku and invited him to a burial ceremony that exact night. Since their Islamic tradition pushed them to bury the body as soon as possible.

Deku obviously accepted, realizing this could be a way to get through with his own feelings. As if reminding him that people die and that he couldn’t save everyone.

The ceremony was held in a gravesite extremely close to your café, a graveyard he didn’t even notice when visiting your café. To him, the entire thing ended in a flash and after once again apologizing to the entire large family gathered there. He decided to stay and apologize to the girl he couldn’t save.

He felt a foreboding sense of fear of this ever happening again. She was in the wrong situation and no one could’ve saved her if they wanted to save the entire family as well. From the corner of his eye, he saw a beautiful red flower blooming and immediately thought of you.

To him, it was extremely odd to find a flower blooming in a graveyard but he thought it was fitting. The flower had long red petals that curved downwards, red strings of stigma protruding out holding pollen on its tips. He didn’t know what the plant was, nor did he care honestly, he thought it was an incredibly beautiful gem to grow wildly in a graveyard.

Deku stood and plucked a few of them, putting some on the girl’s grave and leaving with a few to bring to you.

Though he found himself unable to go to your café since once more he was swamped with work. He placed the flowers in water, but they seemed to die rather quickly. So, he threw it out before he got the chance to give it to you.

At long last, he was able to visit you. He was rather ecstatic when he saw that your boyfriend was absent from his work. Meaning during your break, he got to have you for himself.

Obviously, he was exhausted and drained, though that would never stop him from babbling nonsense to you. Which he noticed you were enjoying yourself, but you seemed a bit more fidgety than usual. He asked you what was wrong, only to have you brush it off.

He found it slightly frustrating that despite how close you were together, you didn’t trust him enough yet to tell him how you felt. Then the topic of what he did the last week came up.

Deku told you all about the girl he couldn’t save and the flower he found. He asked if you knew the flower and if you could make it bloom right in front of both of you with your quirk. You laughed at his rather childish request but obliged.

“Of course I can silly.” You concentrated your mind to the middle of the table and slowly the same red flower erupted from the middle of the table.

Deku grinned ear to ear and complimented you on your quirk. “You’re incredible as always. I’ve always wanted to ask you so many questions about your quirk but I don’t really think I have the time right now since I have to patrol very soon. But OH do you know what flower this is by the way? I know you love red flowers and I just like the way it looks and how it’s so pretty growing in a place where dead things are you know like in a gra-”

Your sweet laughed cut his rambling short. “Izuku, breathe, I see you still ramble a lot. No, I don’t really know what flower it is, I've just seen it from animes.”

Before Deku could prod you further about the anatomy of the plant or if you could find the flower’s name for him. You quickly turned the subject to a different thing. Letting the spider-like flower in the middle of the table die out rather slowly.

“Hey Izuku, I’ve been wanting to ask.” Deku hummed in reply, “What do you think of my boy-”

But a shriek of pain suddenly filled the café. Deku’s hero instincts caused him to stand up and run immediately to the source. Everything in his eyes went in slow motion.

A woman froze in her spot as a truck rammed against her, just mere inches from Deku’s grasps. The woman immediately got run over just as the driver pressed the breaks.

Deku knelt down on her bleeding body, warm pools of red staining his clothes. Yet another life he couldn’t save. He looked around half expecting to see the looks of disappointment in people’s eyes, and yet all he saw was a pity.

After all, he was a hero, he had to be ready to be able to deal with these situations. Even if it meant forcing himself to get used to the red tint on him from all the blood.

~

“Y/n look!” A middle-school Deku urged you to look at his hand, a tiny little spider crawled on it. He found the little critter rather adorable.

Yet you found it a little bit more terrifying than him. “How could you hold it so calmly Izuku!!!” You almost shrieked in horror as he tried to pass the spider over to you.

He laughed and continued observing the spider. “Where did you find it anyways??? There are barely any spiders here.” You questioned him further.

Deku merely shrugged, “I found it on that tree, it had pretty red flowers I want to give you…” Realizing what he just said his face turned red and quickly backtracked, “Because you got that perfect score in that final test!!! I just wanted to give you a gift and I know how much you liked red flowers and I’m going to go to a separate school very soon. I don’t know where you’re going, but you know I’m going to UA and going to be the number one hero after I graduate. But I wanted to give you a gift and red flowers seem really cute and if I picked them myself it would be even cuter and I know it's weird and I hope you don’t think I’m we-”

His rambling stopped when he felt something warm on his cheek. “It isn’t weird at all Izuku. I think it’s really cute. Also don’t think so much about that kiss. You seemed too lost in thought so I wanted to snap you back to reality.”

Your funny and mischievous ways of toying with him made his heart ache a tiny bit more. He knew you didn’t realize what you were doing to him was making him fall deeper and deeper to the depths of love.

“Anyways put that spider back on the tree, I want to tell you about this guy that I met the other day.”

He closely listened to your rambles about a boy you seemed head over heels for. He just smiled and agreed to everything. He tuned out every time you gushed about him, the ache in his chest growing heavier and heavier.

He had to be selfless.

After all, if he was going to be a hero, he had to be able to control his emotions. Even if that meant pushing down the urge to tell you to be with him instead, deep inside.

[valhahazred]

Cryptid Mythos bonus! Everything that appears on this sheet is an entity reported by real people. Why no Mythos this time? Because these encounters are so strange in appearance or behavior that they could slip right into the Sothic multiverse with little to no alteration or alternative explanation. Good luck Investigators!

All Colours Sam In 1973, in the town of Sandown, 7 year old “Fay” and an unnamed friend encountered a very strange individual as they explored the fringes of a golf course. They first became aware of something weird going on when they heard a sound like an ambulance siren in the distance. Following the sound to a footbridge over a creek, the two children were confronted by a three fingered hand wearing a blue glove that beckoned them from beneath the bridge. Awaiting them was a seven foot humanoid figure wearing strange clownish clothing, seemingly reinforced with wooden slats that protruded from his sleeves and pant-legs. The figure had a book in his hands, which he immediately fumbled and dropped in the water. He splashed around cartoonishly before recovering his book, leaping out of the creek and away from the children. He moved to a small metal shed with a high-kneed hopping gait and disappeared inside. The children went to leave, only for the mysterious entity to exit again with a microphone that appeared to be the source of the wailing that drew the children in the first place. It spoke into the microphone in a friendly, non-threatening tone. “Are you still here?” The children were curious and unafraid, so they moved towards him. He held up his book and pointed at the words in order to introduce himself. “Hello and I am all colours, Sam”. They asked if he was human and he said no and when asked if he was a ghost he replied, “well, not really but I am in an odd sort of way.” The children asked what he was then and he simply said, “You know.” During their conversation with the entity they learned that although he went by Sam, he didn’t really have a name, he claimed that there were others like him and that he was afraid of humans and that he was a pacifist, refusing to harm others even if they should attack him. He invited them into his hut, where he shared some wildberries and showed them a magic trick, where he placed a berry into his ear and seemingly teleported it to his mask’s eyehole and then to his mouth with quick jerks of his head. They continued to converse for almost an hour before the children decided to leave. Was he an alien in a make-do disguise? An animated scarecrow? A figment of childish imaginations? Or just a strange homeless man dressed like a clown? Whatever the truth, All Colours Sam, also known as the Sandown Ghost Clown, was never seen again. The Crazy Critter of Bald Mountain This weird looking creature was sighted by three people in the week following a fiery object that passed over the Bald Mountain near Newaukum Lake in Washington. When the local Sheriff began an investigation into the sighting he was visited by heavily armed and uniformed men who claimed to be from the Air Force and forced him to give up the case. Old Saybrook Blockheads Mary Starr was awoken in the early morning on December 16, 1957 by a bright light shining into her bedroom. She looked out the window to witness a 30 foot cigar shaped craft hovering over her yard, less than 10 feet from her house! Inside the apparent spaceship she witnessed a pair of small creatures with fleshy skirts and clear cubic “heads” containing a floating red bulb. They raised their right arms and as a third entity appeared in the portholes the ship brightened before shooting off into the sky. Space Brains of Palos Verdes As John Hodges and Pete Rodriguez were leaving a party at two in the morning they were not expecting to meet anything from out of this world but as the car turned on its headlights illuminated two bizarre entities! The men panicked and drove away, ending the story for Rodriguez as he made it home with no complications. However, in Hodges case he next became aware of himself two and a half hours later in the driveway of his home, sitting in the car as if in a trance. Troubled by the missing time, he eventually went for hypnosis in an attempt to recover his memories of the night. While under regression he claimed that while he got his friend home safely, when he returned to his own residence the disembodied brains were waiting for him! He asked them what they wanted and suddenly he was elsewhere, in a dark room with entities that looked like the classic Greys but very tall and with webbed six fingered hands and yellow eyes. They explained that the brains were “merely translators” used in order for these beings to interface telepathically with humans. He claimed they warned him that Earth had “too much power” and showed him a map of the planet covered in lights that indicated places where humans might destroy themselves. They showed him images of dead planets and made several inaccurate prophecies before he suddenly found himself back in his car. Unlike many other abductees with similar experiences Hodges did not try to make excuses for their bunk predictions or feel like it made him important in any way. He simply assumed the aliens were untrustworthy and were playing with him. The Casa Blanca Entities This is one of the strangest and most confusing accounts of a Close Encounter of the Fifth kind, as eight children ranging from the ages of four to fifteen were terrorized by a parade of extraterrestrial monsters one summer day in 1955. It started with an array of UFOs, sun-like, disk-shaped and semi-transparent, appearing and disappearing with musical pings. Then came the entities. First was a ghostly being bearing a shiny belt buckle that was so brilliant it could blind someone looking straight at it. It was followed by disembodied arms in riveted armor that seemed to beckon to the children, small strange men that used dual ray guns to paralyze and finally a many limbed creature. All through this strange arrival something spoke to the children telepathically, offering to take them away. The kids they spoke to often seemed to be entranced, moving to the dancing UFOs mindlessly and required physical force or even being hosed down to snap them out. One child even fell off a roof in an attempt to reach a UFO, only to be protected by a red force field. The weirdest part of all is that not only did adults not see anything, they couldn’t. Despite being present for the event a mother of one of the children was unaware of the paranormal happenings. Does this mean it was all in the children’s heads, as they were overtaken by some kind of playground hysteria? Or is there some alien force that not only wants our children but can make themselves invisible to undesirable observers. The Garson Invaders In 1954 three of these insectoid entities appeared to Canadian miner Ennio La Sarza. Their appearance was already exceptional by the usual standards of reported alien contact but in a particularly striking detail their faces appeared to glow in colours La Sarza had never seen before! The beings asked La Sarza to do something for them but he refused, not only to do it but to even speak of it. It was so awful and “outright apocalyptic” that he even considered asking the RCMP to lock him up in case the creatures he’d met had some way to enforce his cooperation. The Poole Pyramid This multi-hued metallic pyramid appeared in 1965 to seven year old Terrence Druce of Poole in Dorset when he awoke to it hovering over the foot of his bed. He shrieked in terror, waking his younger brother in time for him to also witness it as it faded into thin air. That encounter might have never been recorded if the brothers hadn’t seen it again the very next day, lurking in a parking lot. They said it seemed aware of their presence and turned to watch them but it did not follow them when they decided to flee the scene. Delta Dogs An anonymous woman was driving through a snowstorm on route 07 through Syracuse in January 1958. She came across what at first seemed to be a downed plane but as she approached her engine slowly ran itself down and the car stopped itself. As she desperately tried to restart the car the snowstorm calmed and more details became apparent. Projecting out of the large object she’d thought was a plane crash was a 50 foot illuminated pole. Two strange beings rose up along the pole, floating by it as it started to retract. When the pole finished sinking into the object the creatures disappeared and the craft took off so fast she couldn’t make out where it went. The Electric Serpent of Tacoma This is easily the most unusual sighting of a sea creature that I’ve ever heard of. Seven men camping on the shore of Black Fish Bay in 1893 encountered a sea monster that appeared to be cybernetic, if not entirely biomechanical! Disturbed by a horrible noise and blinding lights the men left their camp to find a huge, hairy walrus-like animal with steaming horns, bands of coppery metal and a revolving propeller-like tail! One of the men approached it to get a better look, only to be struck by an electric blast from its copper bands and fell to the ground as if dead. When one of his friends tried to pull him to safety, he was likewise shocked by the impossible animal. The other men fled into the woods after seeing two of their number seemingly killed and the Electric Serpent seemed to lose interest and swam out into Puget Sound. Once they were sure it was gone the remaining men returned to the beach and were elated to find their friends burned and stunned but still very much alive! So what happened? Was it just one of the sadly common newspaper hoaxes of the time? Or did a bunch of 19th century fishermen find a literal fucking pokemon? You decide! Stickmen The Stickmen are an extremely recent phenomenon, with reports starting within the last 10 years or so. They are described as being stick thin and roughly humanoid, sometimes with bubble heads, glowing eyespots or even top hats. They range in size from human-like to towering in excess of 20 feet. What is most interesting about them is their apparent two dimensionality, sometimes appearing the same no matter what angle they are viewed at and sometimes being able to turn to the side and vanish as though they were never there. They are also frequently reported as being accompanied by a feeling like static electricity and of aggression or hostility. Despite those impressions the Stickmen do not appear to be hostile, instead seeming surprised and immediately retreating from a witness.

[myhauntedsalem]

13 Creepy Camping Encounters That Will Put You off the Great Outdoors

1. The Crying Girl

“When I was younger probably like 10 or 11, I went camping with my family. I’ll just get right into it. It was about 1 or 2 in the morning, and I couldn’t really sleep. The tent me and my brother were in was really hot, and very uncomfortable. Anyway, while I was trying to go to bed I heard a very faint whimper. I tried to ignore it because I figured I was just tired. Our campsite was along a road with many other camps nearby. The whimper started to get louder, and then turned into crying. I heard footsteps outside of our tent, and a girl crying.

Now let me tell you, it didn’t go faint, it got louder and louder. It remained in the same spot the entire time. That’s so important because, it indicates that she was looking at our tent site, crying. It gets worse, then it turned into a full on scream for a few seconds, then cuts out. When she started screaming by brother woke up. We both look at each other and just get all the pillows and stuff our head under them.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I’m just glad we left the next morning.” – Keithic

2. The Shaking

“This happened to an acquaintance of mine and his son. This took place back in the early ’90s.

He had taken his young son for a father and son type hike out of Skagway. If any of you are familiar with Skagpatch, there is quite a network of trails above town at lower Dewey lakes.

So, it’s evening, dinner done, tent up, bed time. Sometime later, around midnight, he’s woken up by the tent shaking violently, then silence. Then again. Keep in mind its late August, and pitch black, I mean as pitch black as you can get under the heavy coastal rain forest with no moon.

This shaking kept up for over an hour. He had no idea what it was. He went out with his headlamp, yelled, and heard nothing. Would go back in the tent, then it would start up again. He could here footsteps whenever it happened.

He was pretty shaken up by the next morning as you could imagine.

He reported it to the troopers, and the only thing they could come up with was someone with a night vision set up messing around. Or something else…” – Yukoner

3. The Middle of the Woods

“This happened to me when I was little. I went camping with my older brother and my mom. I was about 7 or 8 and I went to bed around 10 in a sleeping bag inside my tent with both my mom and brother. Some time during the night, I don’t know when, I woke up somewhere in the middle of the woods still in my sleeping bag. I had no idea where I was or where my tent was. I screamed for my mom and I heard her calling back for me in panic but she was easily 100 yards away or so. To this day I have no idea how I ended up in the middle of the woods still inside my sleeping bag. Gives me the chills.” – cckaufmann

4. The Hanging Man

“Hiking the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania for a week in…2006 and my brother and I came across a young man who had hung himself. We sprinted up to the bluff where he was strung up. I wrapped my arms around his waist to take weight off his neck while my brother cut him down with his Leatherman. He had thrown the rope up over a tall branch and lashed it off with a clove hitch at the trunk like you’d hang a bear-bag. Must’ve climbed the branches and dropped once laced in. We probably shouldn’t have even tried, he was dead for sometime before we happened across him. Fortunately no critters had come to tear him apart before we found him, it would’ve only gotten grislier from there. Called 911. Ended our trip pretty damn quick.

I don’t know why we tried, it was very obvious he had been dead for some time. Don’t know how long, he was very cold and smelled pretty bad. Intuition to help someone and adrenaline that clouds your judgement I guess? It was kind of a fucked up day so I don’t really remember my thought process.” – Anonymous

5. Scratches

“About one month ago, we are riding a favorite trail up near Camp Verde. Oldest son is leading, youngest is following him, a friend behind him and I am sucking up rear. Come over a hill and I see my youngest son with all of his gear off and his jersey. I came up asking what was wrong, thinking that he crashed, He said his back was burning. I looked and there were three scratches across his back. Looked like claw marks. No blood, but very distinct. He had a chest/back protector on so there is no way a tree branch or anything got him. We finally got him geared back up and headed out. About 30 minutes later, we reached a spot where we always stop for a break. I asked him to take the jersey off so that I could see the scratches again. They were completely gone.” – THB

6. Music in the Night

“A couple of years ago my brother bought a large piece of land out in the middle of nowhere, about thirty miles or so from cell phone reception. It’s quiet, there is no light pollution, no paved roads, and not a lot of people around.

Shortly after he bought the place, two of my brothers (the land owner and another), me, and our families spent a weekend camping on the land and doing our best to clean it up; people had used it as a dump, there were many downed trees, etc. On the second night we camped there, I woke up in the middle of the night to take a leak. As I was walking to the bushes in the dark, I realized that I could faintly hear music. This didn’t strike me as odd because I knew my brother had a radio in his camper. I finished up and went back to sleep with no further thought on the matter.

The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned the radio and music. Several other people recalled waking in the night and hearing music, but no two people heard the same music. Finally, the brother who brought the radio woke up. I asked him about the music and he seemed a bit freaked out. He woke up sometime during the night and went outside to smoke. He heard music as well and had assumed it was someone else. I should mention that he was the only one with a generator and a radio. It wasn’t his radio we heard, it wasn’t anyone else’s either.

I’ve been back several times, but I’m a bit freaked out by that place at night. I have fun while I’m there, but I’m almost always armed and I don’t sleep in a tent anymore, I sleep in my SUV with the doors locked. It may seem kinda dumb, but realizing that everyone heard different music when there are no people, no functional radios, and no electricity is quite creepy.” – goat-of-mendes

7. The Light

“We were in a river-side cabin one night in Northern Michigan. I had just stretched out when a huge crack erupted from the woods. Both of us thought it was a branch or old tree that had fallen.

After he turned off the living room light, we noticed that the light coming from the windows was abnormally strong. This sent our nerves to a new high. The light seemed to pulse several times and got so bright at one point you could have read a book by it. It couldn’t have been a car as we were almost a mile off the road on a dirt trail. Plus, the light came in from all the windows equally.

Every so often we would hear a strange humming noise that penetrated that cabin. This lasted almost half an hour. We talked about just running out to the car and leaving but neither one of us wanted to go outside.

After the light went out, we sat on the couch, occasionally putting forth theories on what it could have been. Around four o’clock in the morning, there was another loud crack. We worried that the light might come back but nothing happened.” – R. Bassil

8. Blue Spectre

“My friend and I were walking just outside of the circle of cabins. It was a bright night with all the stars shining and the moon was well lit. There was a campfire going, and in one of the big cabins there was a party going on with music and so on. We were walking, and we both got a really weird feeling, as if we were being watched. We both turned toward the sea… we saw a blue figure, very tall – about 7 feet – walking through the trees. It made no sound at all. It was a bright blue and glowing figure walking through the forest. It was emitting a shimmery aura, and my friend and I both became very frightened. We shouted at whatever that thing was and we were asking it what it was. We got no reply, of course, but we expected one. We stared as it walked away and out of our vision; we didn’t dare follow it.

We then ran back to the group of people at the camp fire, screaming and describing what we saw. Another friend of mine claimed he was watching it from a distance not far from were we were and was just as frightened as I was.” – Devin

9. Footsteps Upstairs

“Not something I experienced, but my sister and her husband did.

My family used to have a cabin on a lake in the Northwoods. It’s a lake with no public access. On the other side is/was an old Girl’s Camp that the state was letting fall apart. The camp had a large, two-story main house that was mostly intact at the time.

My sister and her husband decided to check out the camp one day. They canoe’d over and started to walk around. They went into the Main House first. They walked around for a bit. And then they heard heavy footsteps upstairs. These footsteps turned into someone running heavily towards the stairs.

My sister and her husband booked it out of the house, but they could hear the steps coming down the stairs and on the main level as they ran out. They opted to run around the house instead of heading back to the shore.

They never saw who it was, but they heard them enter back into the house. And then they heard them storm back outside again. They went into the woods this time and heard someone running in the woods after them.

They took the long way around the lake back to the cabin.

My dad and I had to go back later that day to get the canoe. We never heard or saw anything.” – joftheinternet

10. Geocaching

“I’ve been geocaching in the woods many times, and occasionally one runs into caches with weird things in them. The creepiest was an ammo box with only a handful of finds that contained broken doll parts and a handwritten note that said “Look behind you”. I definitely had the heebie-jeebies and double-timed it back to my car despite it being the middle of the day. It’s crossed my mind before that geocaching would be a great way for a serial killer to lure people out to remote locations.” – Anonymous

11. Who Followed Us?

“This happened in 81 or 82. Not sure anymore.

I had made friends with a fellow I worked with and offered to take him gigging for frogs. He was from the city and had never spent any time in the woods at night. The farm I had permission to do it on was only about a mile from my place. My friend showed up at 10:30 or so and I gave him a gig and a flashlight. We decided to walk to the other farm. We didn’t get far before we both heard something walking in the dark to the side of us. I’ve been in the woods all my life and I’ve had plenty of deer follow me but I wasn’t going to tell him that. It was clear he was getting spooked. We climbed a fence and continued on. Then we heard something else climb the fence.

Deer don’t climb fences. I tried looking around with the flashlight but he wanted none of it. We could see the house lights of the place we were going to and he ran off on me and beat on the guy’s door until they let him in. By the time I got there Mr. Barber, (the land owner), and his wife was out on the porch and wanted to know what was going on. Mr. Barber and I went back and had a look around but found nothing. My friend refused to walk back and Mr. Barber gave us a ride back to my place. We never did find out what or who it was that was following us.

My friend decided that frogging wasn’t for him. He has also refused to go on several fishing trips I have invited him to. I can’t say I was too comfortable with what happened but I haven’t let it stop me from frogging.” – Smoker

12. The Circle

“I was backpacking in New Hampshire and camped out for the night after a day hike. I wondered off from our fire to go take a piss and stumbled upon a circle etched into the ground with tuning forks surrounding the circle standing up straight…It looked like a creepy ritual circle and it bugged me out so I booked it back to the group.” – ITS_A_BADTIME_BOB

13. The Gator

“Few years ago I was camping in the Everglades in Florida with a few friends. We all had gone into our separate tents and were starting to fall asleep. The area was pretty noisy with bugs, crickets, birds, etc. I heard this very low vibration, sounding almost like a low roar. it was powerful enough to vibrate in my chest. Suddenly everything in the forest shut up. no bugs, no birds, nothing. about thirty seconds later my phone vibrates and its my friend in the other tent texting me asking if i heard the same thing. the four of us kept texting each other, wondering what it was. about ten minutes later all the animals slowly started making noise again. I slept that night with my machete at arms reach.

A lot of people are saying it might have been a gator. We were in an elevated area that was far from any streams or ponds. Its possible there might have been a pond with a gator that we missed, but the very big ones tend to hang out in lakes.” – Biggs180

[dilliebar]

I’ll Show You: A Dillie Fic

Hey guys, I just finished writing another little fic for ya’ll. I know we’re all running low on Ellie/Dina content so I’ve been working my booty off to p r o v i d e. Especially now that I’m done with school I can focus a lot more on fics, at least until June 19th anyway haha. Anyway, enjoy guys!

Ellie and Dina set out on yet another long patrol, but this time, with Dina's boyfriend third-wheeling. Having a bit of trouble in paradise, this isn't exactly a recipe for success, and when the trio find themselves setting up camp at an old community of cabins for the night, tensions begin to unfold in the love triangle. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24195085

Jackson was pretty well-known for its relatively warm springs and summers, at least in comparison to the Boston QZ, anyway. Any snow that happened to collect on the ground during the winter wouldn’t last for long. By the first sign of spring, the icy, white powder that caked the trees would quickly drip away back into the earth, snowmen that children built and admired saw their pebble smiles melt into puddles of water, and more often than not peoples’ shoes would be drenched in mud every time they took a step outside.

None of that seemed to bother Ellie, though. She would take mud and heat over the freezing temperatures and sight-hindering snow storms any day. Not to mention, this time of year was a lot less stressful on her, and so her first patrol out would be a heck of a lot less scary than the ones a few months before that brought back not-so-fun memories.

 And she was with Dina, so that was always a plus.

They had already been travelling from the settlement for a few hours, since supplies on their regular patrol routes were becoming less and less abundant. It seemed like after every patrol they would have to travel just a little bit further, and after that one, a couple miles more, and looking forward they really didn’t know where they would eventually end up. But for now, the pair set out to Idaho Falls, which was a bit more than eighty miles west of Jackson. Neither of them really had a problem with it, but the third wheel glued to their side was getting on their nerves.

“So when we get into the city, you guys stick to me. Got it?”

Dina rolled her eyes as she rode on the back of the saddle behind Jesse. He wasn’t even supposed to be on this patrol, but he had absolutely insisted on it for some reason or another.

“Yessir,” she replied sarcastically, making a face at the girl riding next to them. Ellie let out a snicker at her mocking tone. Sometimes she wondered why Dina and Jesse were even dating at all, considering how much they squabbled.

In fact, not even a day before this entire patrol, the younger girl was at her house in the middle of the night going on and on about how she was going to leave him if he kept up his behavior, how controlling and demanding he is, yada yada yada. She could see the discomfort written on her friend’s face whenever he was around, which didn’t make a lot of sense considering what a relationship was supposed to be about. Despite their arguments they almost always seemed to end up back together one way or another, though, usually ending in Dina apologizing for things that she didn’t do and Jesse forgiving her for imaginary problems.

And Ellie just didn’t get it.

The majority of the trek was filled with long stretches of awkward silence, something that was fairly uncommon when the two girls were alone. If one thing was for sure, this was going to be a long patrol.

But soon the sunlight began to dim, and disappeared over the trees, leaving the trio in darkness.

“Still about twenty miles out,” Jesse stated monotonically, “There’s a small cluster of cabins just off the highway. Best stay there for the night.”

The other two nodded in agreement as they diverged from the road.

Ellie looked over at Dina, who had been awfully quiet the entire time. There was a far-off look in her eye, almost as if she had checked out of the conversation completely, which was quite unlike her being the chatterbox that she usually was. While Ellie would generally find her sarcastic, playful demeanor somewhat excessive at times, she actually started to miss it. Instead, she felt a tinge of annoyance at the way Jesse didn’t even really seem to notice, or at least care.

That’s when their eyes met for the shortest moment, bringing Dina back to reality and causing a smile to pull at her lips. Ellie gave a small smile back in return as they approached the small neighborhood of cabins, all of which seemed to have been left without a trace of any inhabitants whatsoever.

The community was fairly rustic, with overgrown dirt paths leading from one of the three log cabins to another, all meeting in the middle, where a fire pit and an old grill stood untouched. The cabins themselves were similar, but each held their own unique features. One had a more modern, triangular design, with windows that stretched across the height of the building; the one to the east looked small, but cozy, with a stone chimney poking out the top of the house; and the last one, facing the north, had a traditional lodge-feel to it, with a small back wooden porch built just slightly over the lake. The neighborhood was surrounded by magnificent fir trees and pines, and it was a community that Ellie could see herself living in someday. It was calm, away from everything, almost as if it were a world of its own.

Ellie and Jesse rode the two horses over to separate sides of the porch of the triangular cabin, hopping off of them and tying their leads to the posts of the railing. Jesse reached up to take Dina’s hand.

“I got it,” she declined, jumping off of the saddle.

Jesse just shook his head.

“I’m gonna sweep this one, Dina-”

“I’m going with Ellie.”

He sighed in defeat, nodding in acknowledgment as he made his way up the porch steps and into the house. Ellie snickered as the two were finally left alone.

“Didn’t work it out, huh?”

Dina laughed, “Yeah, no.”

The pair made the short walk over to the small, eastern-facing cabin. From the outside, it was definitely the least spacious of the three, just big enough for one or two people at most. Rocks outlined what had been a garden stretching around the side of the house, though by this point it had overgrown to the point where the plants had begun to climb up the foundation. The wooden beams supporting the overhang of the porch had clearly worn over the years, showing its age, but frankly it seemed much more sturdy than some other houses they had seen on patrol. Ellie placed her foot on the first step, causing it to creak. Almost in response, they heard a crash from inside.

She walked quietly up the steps, pulling out her pistol from her backpack pocket. She nodded at Dina, giving her the cue to pull out hers as well before peeking in the living room window, checking to see if any infected were nearby. As far as she could tell, it looked clear, but the two knew better than to trust only their eyes. Ellie tapped lightly on the glass, with still no sign of the source of the noise. She gave a half-hearted shrug to Dina, who just shrugged in response.

Ellie placed her hand on the knob of the door, hoping it wasn’t locked, and turned it ever-so slowly in an attempt to make as little noise as possible. To their surprise, it opened with ease, and the pair made their way into the living room, guns up and ready.

The house on the inside looked just as cozy as the outside of the cabin presented itself. Aside from the bathroom off to the left side of the house, it was all one room split up into distinct areas. To their right where they walked in was an old bed, blanketed in a colorful handmade quilt. To their left was the living area, where a rustic couch, stone fireplace and knit carpet made their warm presence known. And in the back of the house was the kitchen and dining room, in which the wood stove reminded Ellie all too much of Joel’s cooking. 

Despite the welcoming appearance of the cabin, both Ellie and Dina made sure to stay alert, noticing a broken vase on the ground next to the kitchen table. It was undoubtedly the noise that they had heard, but who caused it was yet to be seen.

That’s when they heard a thud from the bathroom.

Ellie slowly made her way over to the bathroom door, which was open slightly ajar. She put her hand on the knob, and carefully pushed it open. Still, no signs of infected, but she did notice the shower curtain to her left that was pulled shut, which was most definitely hiding something.

“Careful, dumbass.” Dina whispered from the living area.

Ellie put a finger over her lips in response and then moved it over the trigger of her pistol, her other hand on the curtain. She mentally counted down from three to one in her head before ripping open the shower curtain and pulling the trigger non-hesitantly with a loud bang.

But to her surprise, the shower was empty, and a furry critter dashed its way between her legs and out the front door.

A cat.

“You two alright?!” they heard Jesse shout from across the way.

“We’re fine!” Ellie shouted back, sighing, “Stupid cat.”

She turned around and walked back into the living room, to where Dina was smirking deviously.

“What’s the matter, Williams?” she teased, “Cat’s got your tongue?”

Ellie just rolled her eyes as she began searching through the kitchen cabinets. She was slightly embarrassed but there was no way she would admit it. 

“I mean you really escaped the claws of death there.”

Finally she spun around on her heel.

“Are you gonna help me, or are you just going to make cat puns the rest of the night?”

Dina raised her hands in defense, “Sorry, last time I checked, you really liked pus-”

That’s when Jesse appeared in the doorway, bundle of firewood under his arm and a box of matches in his hand. Whatever Dina was about to say caught in her throat.

“Found some firewood, thought we could cook up something to eat.”

The two hummed in agreement as Ellie finished up scouring the cabinets and Dina searched the living area and bedside drawers. They hadn’t eaten at all since they set out from Jackson early in the morning, so both of them were pretty much on the verge of starving. But Ellie couldn’t help but think in curiosity about the younger girl as she searched mindlessly through the bedroom area.

When Dina had come over to her and Joel’s house the night before, she hadn’t really said what prompted the visit, and honestly all that Ellie really cared about- even though it was a bit embarrassing- was listening to her friend vent and allowing her to decompress. Ellie just wanted her to be happy, and she could tell right then by her blank stare and tired body language that she definitely wasn’t.

Within a few minutes they finished searching the house, unfortunately not gathering many supplies, but in all honesty that wouldn’t matter all that much once they got into the city. They did happen to find food, though, which was always a plus when it came to scavenging. Ellie was even able to find a small bar of dark chocolate, probably used for baking before all of this, which she quickly shoved into her pocket for later. It was a small, but nowadays the smallest things made all the difference between a good day and a bad one.

By the time the two got outside, Jesse was already crouched around the campfire, setting up the logs and old scraps of newspaper in an attempt to start a fire. Hot expired canned goods were always better than cold ones.

Leaning against the grill were a couple of old camping chairs, which looked old but would probably be fine. She set up one for each of the three of them, with Ellie sitting on the far right, Dina in the middle, and Jesse to the far left. Soon enough the fire was up and roaring, and they all settled on canned pasta for a late dinner. Once again an invisible elephant placed itself smack dab in the middle of their silent conversation, and yet no one wanted to bring it up. Finally Ellie just decided to break the silence. “So, find anything good?”

Jesse puffed at her attempt to make conversation, not even making eye contact with her, almost as she had done something wrong. She couldn’t really remember anything, only making her more confused with the entire situation.

Dina sighed next to Ellie, setting her half-empty portion of pasta down next to her folding chair and standing up.

“I need some air.”

Jesse scoffed, “We’re already outside.”

She responded with a display of her middle finger.

Ellie just watched in amazement at the tension that pulled on both of them as Dina disappeared into some of the trees behind the eastern cabin. Frankly, she had never seen Dina that pissed off. Usually she would at least make some sort of sarcastic remark to lighten the mood a little bit.

She looked back over to Jesse, who shook his head and stabbed at the remaining pasta in the aluminum can. 

“Okay, that’s it.” Ellie stated, “What in the hell happened between you two?”

Jesse rolled his eyes and set down the can, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. He definitely had a look of annoyance in his eyes, but he also looked much more upset than angry. He shook his head again, staring into the ground.

“Nothing.”

Now it was Ellie’s turn to be annoyed. Were they really going to just fight over the course of the entire patrol and not say a word about it? Traveling this far outside of Jackson was already miserable enough, and now she was going to have to deal with their drama, too?

“Listen, I hear you, man,” she sympathized, “but I feel like a kid sitting between two divorced parents right now.”

Jesse snickered at her comment. He thought about it carefully before looking back up to meet her eyes. Ellie never really liked Jesse from the minute he started dating Dina, but she decided to stay out of the way as long as he treated her right. Sitting here in silence while letting the tension build and build and build wasn’t treating her right.

“Just give us a minute.”

Ellie nodded as she quickly finished up what was left in her can. As she heard the shuffle of Dina’s footsteps behind her, she prayed that they could either just work this out or come to some sort of agreement at least for the rest of the patrol for her and Dina’s sake. She gave Jesse one last pleading look before standing up out of her chair.

“Going somewhere, freckles?”

She smiled at the nickname.

“Nah, I just think I’ve had about enough for today. Probably gonna turn in.”

Dina returned the answer with a small frown, a hint of disappointment flashing in her deep brown eyes.

“Alright, well see you tomorrow loser.”

“Night buttface.”

Ellie decided she might as well spend the night in the house they had already searched and leave the bigger one to Jesse and Dina. They still had to clear out the one near the lake, too, but she didn’t really feel like doing it right then and it could probably just wait until morning if at all.

She closed the door behind her and gave one last look outside the window to where the couple remained by the fire. Though she couldn’t quite decipher what they were saying, at the very least, their lips were moving as if they were talking, and that couldn’t be much of a bad thing, could it?

Ellie slipped off her shoes by the door and fell back into the bed. She felt her muscles relax instantly; they really had traveled a long way that day, and after all of the added relationship drama she could definitely use a good night’s rest. She pulled the quilt up over her body and adjusted the old, dusty pillow, finding a position she was comfortable in after a minute, and felt herself drifting further and further into rest.

She let her mind wander from topic to topic, but she found herself always drawn back to the thought of Dina. Her best friend was sarcastic and witty, but always kind to a fault, and sometimes Ellie worried about her for that. She was forgiving, and understanding, and a hundred percent invested in her relationships, and even when she didn’t get as much in return, she stayed committed. Sometimes Ellie wondered if she was really okay with Jesse, no matter how many times Dina said their relationship was fine, but if she ever thought to say anything she would usually just end up keeping it to herself for Dina’s sake.

Unfortunately for Ellie, the couple didn’t really mind letting the world know that they were having issues.

Loud shouting sounded from outside her window, and Ellie let out a groan of annoyance at the couple’s inability to work literally anything out. She ripped the covers off of her and walked over to the window to see a red-faced Dina storming off towards the lake, leaving Jesse alone by the fire. She watched to see if he would go after her, as he should, but instead he grabbed his backpack, shook his head and made his way back into the triangular-shaped cabin.

What a dick.

Ellie looked down at her tattered shoes, then back out the window, and then let out a small sigh. Did she want to just be alone? Should she follow her? After all, they were best friends, and whenever Ellie needed a pick-me-up she usually turned to Dina for a good laugh. She thought about it maybe for a moment before she was suddenly pulling on her shoes and making her way out into the summer night.

It was a bit cooler than usual, and she rubbed at her arms at the small chill she got upon exiting the cabin. She turned her head to see Dina’s shadowy figure sitting unaccompanied, legs hanging over the side of the lake cabin’s back porch, her boots just touching the surface of the water. Her head hung down and her shoulders were ever-so-slightly depressed. Ellie hadn’t seen Dina look that defeated in a while, and part of her really wanted to go tear Jesse a new one for whatever the hell he had said to make her look that upset, but instead she took the high road and made her way over to the shorter girl.

As Ellie approached Dina turned her head slightly to see who the source of her footsteps was, and her heart shattered as she noticed tears brimming in the younger girl’s eyes. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should turn around and let her have a moment to herself, but when Dina scooted over a bit to make room on the ledge, she didn’t wait long to take the invitation. She sat herself down to the left of her friend, who rubbed at her eyes and kept her head down.

When Ellie sat next to her she noticed something sticking out of her own pocket that she had completely forgotten about, but she couldn’t think of a better occasion to take it out than right now.

“You want some?”

Dina looked back up at the taller girl, who was holding out a piece of an old candy bar. The wrapper was a faded silver with blue ends, and the chocolate coating was a bit white, but she took the offered half anyway.

“Only if it doesn’t make me puke.”

“Oh, it definitely will.”

The two sat there on the porch for a bit, eating the chocolate as their legs dangled over the lake. It was probably one of the most scenic places Ellie had seen in her life, and coming from someone who had seen half the country, that meant a lot. She found herself captivated by the moon’s reflection off the water, which remained still as with the rest of the lake, and the sky was clear, allowing them to gaze up at the millions of stars up above.

Finally Ellie shook her head and turned to Dina, eyebrows tilted upwards showing her concern.

“What happened?”

Dina sighed.

“I told you last night, he’s just being an asshole.”

Not getting the answer she was looking for, Ellie prompted her again.

“No, I mean what happened?”

Dina rolled her eyes and fell back onto the boards of the porch, bringing her hands up to cover her face, contemplating.

“He wanted me to switch patrol routes with Jason.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow.

“Weren’t he and Jesse supposed to go together?”

Dina nodded.

Ellie tried to piece together the information in her head, but anything she was coming up with didn’t make any sense. Why would Jesse not want Dina to go on patrol with her? Sure, they hadn’t always come back with a ton of supplies, and sometimes things went wrong, but that was true for everybody; in fact, most of the time, they brought back more supplies than any other pair did.

“Why?”

Dina tilted her head to look over at Ellie, who was beyond confused at that point. Dina’s lips curved up into a small smile when their eyes met, much like the smile that they had exchanged earlier that day. Ellie couldn’t help but feel her heart flutter at the sight, and that’s when Dina sat back up.

“Why do you think?”

Ellie scoffed.

“Right, because I’d be asking if I knew.”

“I think you do know.”

The confusion grew at her comment, and it skyrocketed as Dina pulled her feet up onto the deck and began untying her boots.

“Now what are you doing?”

“Going for a swim, you coming?”

“I can’t swim, asshole.”

“I’ll show you.”

Ellie just stared in disbelief and felt her face get a redder and redder as Dina removed the rest of her clothes, sparing her underwear, and she sincerely hoped that Dina couldn’t see how flustered she was getting. But at the same time, her movements seemed slow and taunting, almost as if she knew what she was doing, and Ellie didn’t know whether to be grateful or embarrassed for the heat that was rising in her body.

It wasn’t until Dina reached over the ledge and felt the temperature of the water with her hand that Ellie realized she was serious. The water, even in the summer, was probably freezing, and it’s not like they had unlimited changes of clothes or something; they were old enough as it was, the water would only wreck them more.

But still, she watched as Dina slipped slowly into the water while holding onto the ledge, allowing herself time to adjust to its freezing cold temperature.

“What are you waiting for, freckles?”

Ellie gave her a “really” look.

“I mean, unless you’re scared.”

She narrowed her eyebrows.

“I’m not scared.”

“Prove it,” she teased, “stay for a bit.”

Ellie hesitated for a moment, their eyes locked in a tension-filled stare; not the kind of tension between Jesse and Dina, though, it was something that Ellie couldn’t really put her finger on. But the mood had definitely shifted from something somber to something a bit more intimate, and Ellie was starting to like it.

Before she could change her own mind, Ellie removed her top in one swift motion, throwing it to the side along with her old, tattered pair of jeans and shoes. The summer breeze chilled her skin even more, and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like when she got into the water. But then her eyes met Dina’s again, and suddenly she couldn’t even remember what cold felt like.

“Come on in,” she said, “I’ve got you.”

Dina reached up and put an arm around Ellie’s waist as she slowly lowered herself into the lake, but she stopped as soon as her foot touched the water.

“No way, that’s fucking freezing.”

“Haha no! Come on!”

“I am not going in there you ice cube.”

Dina let go of her waist and instead  grabbed her hand between her own, looking deviously into Ellie’s eyes.

“What’re you-”

Suddenly all Ellie felt was the frigid cold water around her as Dina pulled her off of the ledge and into the lake. She started to panic, being underwater and not being quite sure how to get back up, but a pair of hands quickly pulled her back to the surface.

Ellie coughed any water she had accidentally swallowed and looked at the shorter girl with a piercing glare.

“What the hell dude?!”

Dina’s hands were still placed firmly on her waist, and Ellie brought her arms up around Dina’s shoulders to keep herself afloat. She was sure that the lake wasn’t that deep considering how close the edge of the porch was to land, but not being able to touch the bottom of it terrified her.

“Here,” Dina said, pulling Ellie’s hands off of her and moving one of her own back on her waist, using the other to keep herself afloat, “just move your arms like you’re pushing the water away from you.”

Ellie sighed and hesitantly moved a little bit away from Dina, trying to do exactly what she was saying. At first her moves were frantic, as if she was absolutely sure that by doing what she said she would most certainly drown, but soon she realized that she was still above water, and she allowed her movements to relax a little bit.

“Okay, good, now kick your feet.”

Again, at first Ellie kicked for dear life, and suddenly she felt Dina let go of her waist.

“Hey, don’t leave!”

Dina laughed, making Ellie’s heart flutter in her chest.

“You’re good, look, you’re doing it all by yourself.”

Ellie looked down and realized her head was still inches above water, which meant that this was actually working. It felt unnatural, considering it was something she’d never done before in her life, but soon her body gave into the soothing flow of the water, and after a couple minutes she actually began to feel comfortable.

She then watched as Dina effortlessly flipped onto her back, floating on top of the water without needing to do anything. She looked so calm as opposed to about ten minutes ago.

“How do you do that?”

Dina hummed.

“You don’t,” she responded, “just float.”

Ellie honestly wasn’t really sure what she was doing, but she tried to mimic what Dina had done as best as possible, and soon she found herself floating on her back along with her. She never imagined that swimming could be so calm, although she wasn’t really sure if this counted as swimming, but she didn’t really care.

The two of them stayed close like that for a bit, with their arms or legs sometimes brushing up against another, and Ellie got chills every time. The view above them made it even better; it was like the universe decided to give them their own private show as the stars sprinkled themselves throughout the sky, the moon like a spotlight on their little lake here in the middle of nowhere.

This is what Ellie missed over those long hours of patrol that day, that being the closeness that often displayed itself in their everyday interactions. What was rare was moments like this; the special ones that made Ellie’s heart race whenever she thought about them; the ones that helped her see another side of her friend, one that was more vulnerable and at peace.

“We were arguing about you.”

Ellie was instantly snapped out of her thoughtful trance at those words, and she went back to wading in the water so she could stare at Dina in disbelief. Why were they arguing about her? That didn’t make any sense. Dina went back to wading, too, meeting Ellie’s gaze.

“Why, did I do something?”

Dina shook her head.

“No, idiot,” she stated with a sigh, “he’s jealous.”

Ellie suddenly felt her body heat up. Jealous? Of what? If anything, Ellie usually found herself jealous of the romantic aspect of Dina and Jesse’s relationship. Why would he be jealous of her? After all, it’s not like that had done anything like that, although Ellie definitely, definitely wouldn’t be opposed to it. She was so unopposed to it, in fact, that she couldn’t help but notice the very short distance between them.

“Why’s that?”

Dina smirked.

“Do I really have to show you everything, freckles?”

Ellie’s entire body froze as she suddenly felt a soft pair of lips against her own and gentle hands on both sides of her face. It took the wind out of her, but she cherished every year-long second that passed by right then in ecstasy. Her first instinct was to deepen the kiss, but as soon as she moved her hands to Dina’s neck she felt them begin to sink.

Almost as if she had planned it, Dina lifted her legs up around Ellie’s waist as Ellie struggled to find a balance between keeping them afloat and enjoying the long-awaited moment that was ensuing. Dina’s lips were unlike anything she could’ve ever imagined, tasting slightly sweet from the chocolate they had earlier, but heavenly on a whole other level. Suddenly she felt like she was drowning for a completely different reason aside from the fact that she was barely keeping them up above water, and Ellie was loving every second of it.

When Dina pulled back Ellie immediately wanted more, but settled for leaning their heads together to allow them both time to catch their breath and to process what had just happened. Ellie was somewhat shocked, but Dina just smiled adorably.

“See? I told you, freckles,” she teased, “swimming is the easy part.”

Ellie just smiled back and stared into those deep brown, sparkling eyes in disbelief of what had just happened. She was about to lean back in when suddenly Dina pushed back, splashing her with a facefull of water. When Ellie had finished wiping the water out of her eyes she looked around for Dina, who was just walking out of the lake.

“Where are you going?” Ellie laughed at the bizarreness of the situation.

Dina raised an eyebrow suggestively, making a come-hither motion with her hand.

“Let’s go back to the cabin,” she replied, “I’ll show you how to do some other things.”

Ellie hung her mouth open, knowing for the most part that Dina was joking, but what peaked her interest was that she was still down to her underwear and seemingly had no intention of going back to the porch for her clothes.

“Don’t we need our clothes?” she questioned, getting out of the water.

Dina smirked.

“Don’t need ‘em.” she said with a wink.

Ellie let out a small laugh of bewilderment before allowing Dina to grab her hand and guide them to the cozy cabin.

“Lead the way.”

[queen-scribbles]

Good for the Soul

Inspired by this lovely art from @levikra, this was supposed to be short but the muses had other plans. OOPS

                                                              ----

The sun’s reflection shimmered on the water, broken by rippling waves and stray seabird silhouettes as they circled overhead. It was calming. Mesmerizing. Exactly what she needed and almost enough to keep her from noticing the quiet footsteps behind her.

Astrid smiled to herself, twisted a lock of windblown hair around her finger, and spoke without turning around. “You know, some might say it’s dangerous to sneak up on someone like me. Good way to find yourself dead.”

There was a chuckle, the soft rasp of boots against sand-grit stone. “Perhaps I have faith in your judgment.”

She snorted and looked down at her feet, the soles just skimming the water’s surface. “In recent years, that’s also proven a good way to find yourself dead.”

“Astrid.” There was no missing the note of friendly reproof in Sebastian’s voice as he sat next to her. There was a beat of silence before he shifted to, “What d’you mean by ‘someone like me’?”

“Oh, you know.” She finally turned and smiled at him. She tried to make it reach her eyes. “One of the more well-known sorts. A mage. The kind of person who might be extra jumpy about being approached unannounced.”

“Ah.” There was a smile tugging his lips and concern in his eyes. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t tryin’ t’ sneak-”

“I know,” Astrid cut him off, lightly bumping her shoulder to his. Several seconds of comfortable silence stretched between them before she asked, “So, are you today’s short straw?”

Hm?” Sebastian cocked his head and ran a hand over his hair as the coastal breeze tried to ruffle it. (A deep down secret part of Astrid wanted it to succeed)

“You know, the unlucky soul who gets to make sure I’m not drowning in misery.” She kept her gaze on a swooping gull as she spoke, felt her heart give a similar lurch when Sebastian shifted closer, pressing their shoulders together.

“There were no straws,” he said with a half-smile that made her breath catch, carefully shifting so his boots were braced against the rock. “I volunteered. I know you like it out here, an’ it is quite beautiful, in the right spots. And peaceful, even, when nothin’s tryin’ t’ kill ya.”

She couldn’t help the giggle, or the more genuine smile that followed. “Oh, is that it? Too dangerous for me to be alone?” she teased.

Sebastian shrugged. “As you said, you are well-known, especially since Viscount Dumar’s started keeping council with you. Also one of the few voices of reason remaining in the city. Surely you can see how that might put you in added danger.”

“True,” she allowed, pulling her legs in so she could dry her feet and tug back on socks and boots. “I also can handle myself.”

“Well I know it,” he replied, lips still curved in that half-smile, and rested a hand on her arm. “And I didn’t mean to imply you shouldn’t be out here.”

“I was planning to head back soon anyway,” she assured him, patting his hand.  “You did no such implying.” She nodded toward the dark band of clouds off to the east. “That’s more responsible than you for my choice.”

“In that case...” Sebastian pushed to his feet and offered her his hand. “Care for company on th’ walk home?”

Astrid accepted the help up, let her hand linger in his. Since it’s you offering...  “That would be lovely. If you have the time? I don’t want to impose.”

He shook his head. “Helpin’ you is never an imposition.”

She stared at her boots, biting her lip around a smile. “Sebastian.”

“I mean it. I promised t’ help you if you needed me, an’ I have no duties this morning, anyway.”

She arched a skeptical brow at him. “None?”

“None pressin’ or that couldn’t be traded, then,” he amended. “B’sides, I’d say offerin’ my support or at least company to a friend who may still be grievin’ is a more worthy use of my morning that foldin’ linens or parin’ down candles.”

Her smile spread. “Ah. In that case, it’s most welcome. Your company, I mean.” A more insistent breeze whisked around them, tousling their clothes and her hair and she reached up to push it back as she added a teasing quirk to her smile.  “Even if I’d be fine on my own.”

Sebastian took the gentle ribbing in stride as he fell in step next to her for the walk back. “I’m sure your would be. I’ve seen how well you handle yourself. But y’ never know what you’ll run into out here, an’ two are better than one, isn’t that th’ saying?”

Astrid gave him a pointed look that lingered on his lack of armor, bow, or quiver. In fact, the only part of his usual ensemble he had on was the hooded jacket; trousers, boots, belts were all plain and unassuming. No trace of white and gold. “I take it you’re confident in your fist-fighting skills, then?”

He chuckled and clasped his hands behind his back. “I can handle a fair few, aye. But with the weather turnin’ I don’t think that’s as much of a risk. Most would-be threats are like a not seeking shelter “ There was a muffled crack of lightning and he half turned to glance behind them. “As we should probably do.”

“Wha-” Astrid turned to look as well and her eyes widened at the rapidly darkening sky. Damn unpredictable weather... She rested a hand just above his elbow to tug him into a quickened pace with her. “There’s a cave that should be cleared out a little ways up the coast. Unless you think we can make it all the way to the city?”

Even as he opened his mouth to reply, a fat raindrop hit her cheek and the wind tugged at their clothes and hair again, forceful enough it loosened her ponytail.

Sebastian shook his head. “How far to this cave?”

“Half a mile? Maybe a little more.” She pushed her hair out of her face, tendrils curling around her fingers as she tucked them back.

“I think we’ll be lucky t’ make that, rate th’ storm’s comin’,” he said. More rain pattered down around them to underscore the words.

Astrid was a bit more optimistic about their chances, but no point tempting fate--especially when she’d barely dressed warm enough for fair weather. If she got drenched, there were better than decent odds she’d catch cold this time of year. “Oh, if we hurry we can make it,” she said, reaching for his hand as they both quickened their pace again. Another strong gust of wind and they were all but running. Sebastian’s hand was warm in hers, and it took effort to focus on the path and remembering where precisely the cave was rather than that.

Fortunately, their goal wasn’t hard to find, and the weather mostly held until they were inside. The wind gusted every few seconds, and there was a healthy pattering of large raindrops mixed in, but there threatening storm still hadn’t unleashed its full fury when they reached the cave entrance.

They hurried into the shelter it offered with barely a moment’s hesitation, finally releasing each other’s hand as they leaned against the walls to catch their breath. Astrid summoned a spell to illuminate at least part of the cave, check they were alone. It was, as she’d hoped, still empty. It was too shallow a space to make a good home for larger animals or a hideaway for criminals, and too bare to be attractive to smaller critters.

Just as she finished her examination, the rain turned from warning drizzle to full-on deluge. She and Sebastian flinched further back into the cave as water hit the ground with sufficient force and volume to generate spray.

“Well, that was good timing on our part,” Astrid said with a sigh, staring at the curtain of rain. “I wasn’t expecting the storm to roll in so fast, sorry you’re stuck here now.”

Sebastian shrugged and ran one hand through his hair--which, she noticed with a small bit of internal glee, the wind had succeeded in thoroughly ruffling. It returned to a disheveled state the second he let his hand drop. “It’s not your fault, the weather’s never been predictable out here.” He flashed a smile, the glow from her spell sharply highlighting the planes of his face. “An’ I can think of far worse ways t’ spend a few hours than in your company.”

Her face warmed, making the goosebumps on her arms all the more noticeable by contrast. “As can I,” she mumbled, tucking back hair the wind had pulled loose from her ponytail. A smile pulled at her lips. “In fact, if I have to be stuck in a cave with someone, you are my first choice.”

His smile widened. “Thank you. High praise, indeed.”

“I mean...” Astrid rubbed her arm. “It says more that you’re good with sitting still than anything else.” Liar, her thoughts mocked. “If I have to spend a couple hours in close quarters to someone, best it not be someone who’ll go stir-crazy and drive me up the wall.” She hesitated a beat. “And I just enjoy your company in general.”

Sebastian chuckled. “And I yours. As that storm looks intent on staying around for a while, any ideas for passin’ the time?”

The way he was looking at her--gentle, genuine smile, with his hair all tousled like that--was giving her several ideas she’d rather die than share. “Umm...” She bit her lip in thought, rubbing both arms now as a cool breeze swirled through the shallow cave. Her shirt was just damp enough from the rain spray to make a shiver prickle up her spine. “Talking or sitting in comfortable silence are the only options coming to mind.”

“Both good options,” Sebastian agreed, his hands rising to the clasps for his jacket. Astrid forced herself to stare at the pouring rain outside rather than his long, strong fingers. “Anything in particular you’d like t’ talk about? Or avoid talkin’ about?”

She smiled wryly toward the downpour. It’s like he read my mind. “How I’m doing. Since Mother...” The words trailed off and Astrid bit her lip. “Seems like that all anyone wants to know about me anymore-” She broke off with a flinch when she realized he was standing next to her, in the process of draping his jacket around her shoulders.

“You looked cold,” he said with a shrug when she shot him a questioning look.

She couldn’t really deny it. “Thank you,” she murmured, fingers curling around the leather. After only a moment’s hesitation, she slipped her arms through the sleeves--which were, of course, too long--and wrapped it around her. It smelled of candle wax and pine rosin and cleaning oils and ever so faintly she caught a whiff of his pomade from the collar. It was like having him hug her, and between that thought and the general kindness of the gesture, it was a long moment before Astrid trusted her voice. “Won’t you need it?”

Another shrug as he crossed his arms(she stared even harder toward the rainy outdoors to avoid ogling his forearms). “I’ll manage, never fear.”

She hoped he wasn’t just saying that. If he caught cold because he’d given her his jacket she’d never forgive herself. “If you’re sure...”

Sebastian smiled and bumped her shoulder. “I’m sure.”

They  lapsed into comfortable silence for a few minutes, watching the rain fall. Another faint shiver rippled up Astrid’s spine despite the jacket’s warmth and she hugged her arms even closer around herself.

“It’s almost pretty,” she commented, nodding toward the view outside the cave.  “A little bleak, but there’s still something beautiful about it...”

An inscrutable look flickered in Sebastian’s eyes as one side of his mouth tugged into a brief half-smile. “You really are a marvel, Astrid,” he murmured. He took a seat on the lone boulder in the cave and leaned forward, bracing his arms against his thighs as he studied her and the rainy panorama with equal curiosity. “Seein’ the beauty in even days like this, not wantin’ people t’ worry about you...”

“Oh, they can worry about me all they want,” Astrid clarified with a wry laugh, sitting next to him. “I just wish they’d ask me about other things. I’m handling it, best I can. And having people ask about it constantly feels like poking a wound and wondering why it won’t heal.”

He nodded. “I see th’ sense in that.” Another beat of silence, their shoulders pressed together by the narrow seating. “Have y’heard from Carver recently?”

She shot him a grateful smile, her stomach fluttering. “Not recently, no. Maybe a month? Gamlen was going to handle writing him about ... about Mother.” Her nose wrinkled. “Perhaps I should have done it, but-”

“Not everything is your responsibility,” Sebastian interjected gently. “True, your uncle may be... less tactful than you would, but it’s fair t’ let other people take at least part of the burden from your shoulders. Even something that seems as simple as that.”

“Mm.” Astrid nudged his knee with her own but didn’t really reply. After a moment, she sighed. “This kind of weather makes me think of him...”

“Carver?”

She nodded. “Rainy days like this back in Lothering, and even before, sometimes, we’d hole up in the barn and I’d help him practice sword moves. Mother and Father would never let him actually ask anyone for lessons, so he’d watch the militia and templars train and then I’d stand in as an opponent armed with a broomstick so he could practice.” A wistful smile tugged her lips at the memory. “One time her got so caught up in it, he cracked my knuckles--I think by accident--and I hit back so hard my broomstick broke. Against his broomstick, not him,” she hastily added. “Mother was not amused. Father was.”

“Why didn’t they want him seekin’ lessons?” Sebastian asked.

“They were worried,” Astrid murmured, dragging the toe of her boot through the dirt as the heated conversation played in her head. “Worried it would draw attention, too much scrutiny on the family, especially if he asked the templars.” ‘The lone blade in a house of mages...’ “As we’ve recently had painfully reinforced”--a sad smile--”they are not all good men, and the reaction to a family full of apostates would hardly have been pleasant. So he made do. And considering what he had to work with, he did a rather fantastic job. I was--am--very proud of him.”

Sebastian smiled. “Sounds like you were close.”

She snorted a soft, wry.laugh. “As we could be.” Her ponytail drooped against her shoulder, and she shook her hands free of the sleeves to tug it entirely loose. “Carver... Carver can be prickly at the best of times, and a downright tit at his worst. I love him dearly, but it’s true.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Most would say it’s a good thing to recognize the flaws of those you love. Keeps you from puttin’ them on a pedestal.”

“Oh,we shared a room at Gamlen’s far too long for that to ever be a risk where he’s concerned,” Astrid laughed, fingers deftly twining her hair into a braid. “I almost pity the Wardens.”

“You miss him,” Sebastian said, gaze intent on her face. It wasn’t a question.

“Very much,” she said softly, keeping her own gaze fixed on the rain outside as she tied off the braid. If she met his eyes, she wasn’t sure she could hold back the suddenly-prickling tears. “But at least Carver there’s a chance I’ll see him again. The rest...” The words trailed off with a sigh.

“I know.”

The two quiet words made her face burn hot. “Maker, Sebastian, I’m sorry.” She rested a hand on his arm, wishing the ground would swallow her whole. “I didn’t... I forgot for a minute...”

“Astrid, it’s alright.” He covered her hand with his and gave it a gentle squeeze as he swallowed reassuringly. “I know you didn’t intend offense, and none is taken.”

“Still...” She gnawed self-consciously on her lower lip.

“You’re much too hard on yourself sometimes,” Sebastian said softly, his smile taking on a compassionate edge.

Astrid locked eyes with him and tried to shrug it off. “It’s part of my charm?” she murmured uncertainly. That was convincing...

“Then it’s part you could do better without,” he countered, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles. “You give so much grace to others, Hawke, extend some to yourself as well.”

“Easier said than done,” she said, quiet, rueful.

“Try,” he said, earnest, caring.

Her breath stuttered in her lungs as they held each other’s gaze, near-unblinking. The warmth of his hand on hers and his arm under it was... intoxicating felt too strong. Overwhelming? And with his hair all loose and tousled like that... 

He has vows, Astrid. The thought was cold rainwater down her smile. Ironic, considering when she tore her gaze away toward the cave mouth, the actual rain was starting to taper off. “Oh, look, it’s dying down.” She withdrew her hand and hastily pushed to her feet. (Of course, the fact she was wearing his jacket was not helping at all.)

Sebastian was nice enough to both not press the previous line of conversation and let fade the heat of whatever that... moment had been. “Aye, we should be able t’ head back soon.”

“Oh, here.” Astrid slipped off his jacket(with no small amount of reluctance) and handed it back. “I’ll be alright now. Thank you for the loan.”

He shot her a look silently asking if she was sure even as he took the jacket and pulled it back on. When she didn’t contradict herself, he started fastening the clasps. “Glad it helped.”

“It definitely did that,” she laughed. “Thank you, as well, for the company. It would have been quite boring to be stuck in here alone.”

Sebastian grinned. “Happy t’ be of service.”

It took longer than they’d expected, but after a bit the rain had indeed died to a faint, spotty drizzle. Looking at the overcast sky, this was likely the best they would get, and there was no telling the odds of another downpour. They decided to chance heading back to the city proper and hope the weather held.

“Even if we can’t make it all the way to my house or the chantry, there are, at least, more interesting places to take refuge than a cave,” Astrid said.

“More comfortable, too,” Sebastian added with a chuckle, and she laughed as well.

While the drizzle didn’t abate, neither had it worsened by the time they reached the chantry steps and parted ways.

“Thank you,” Astrid said, briefly resting a hand on Sebastian’s bicep. “I know I already said it, but I’m very grateful to have you in my life--as, as a friend, and I deeply appreciate the help you offer. In all its forms.”

He caught her hand as it started to slide away, gave it a single squeeze before letting go. “It’s my pleasure, Astrid.”

She knew the words were as sincere as his smile, and it made something warm flutter in her chest. She gave a shy nod. “I’ll see you... when I see you, I suppose. Not sure we’ll be ‘adventuring’ with the weather like this; I’ve nothing pressing.”

Sebastian nodded. “Alright. I’ll look forward to next time, then. Goodbye, Astrid.”

“G’bye, Sebastian.”

The rain started to pick back up as Astrid made her way back toward her estate, but she was near to glowing with the same peaceful warmth she’d felt earlier, watching the sun’s reflection scatter across the water. She barely noticed it.

Today had definitely helped her mood, unexpected turns and all. She brushed off Bodahn’s concerned fussing when she entered the house soaked to the bone and apologized for the drip trails as she headed for her room. Mother’s door didn’t spark quite the same looming ache it usually did, and Astrid smiled at the difference from even earlier that day.

I wonder what helped.... she thought with an airy, knowing chuckle, pulling in a deep breath that almost caught the remembered scent of his jacket as she slipped into her room to dry off.

[cutieink]

Get Along for Her Sake

A Fenhawke Fan Fic by CutieInk

Lots of angst, sass and fluff <3 

Read here on AO3

Maxine Hawke was a patient person on most occasions. She might as well been bred to be due to her upbringing. A farm girl apostate with two younger siblings to help take care of was no fleeting task growing up and often she’d shake with anxiety, biting the soft flesh of her cheeks as she held back the need to break her façade of well behaved eldest daughter of the Hawke-Amell line.

But when it became too much, she allowed herself to run from it all into the woods near her families cottage and sit while silently weeping. She’d listening to the utter silence of her surroundings and reveled in it. No orders, no bickering, no judgment, no fear, just the calming sounds of birds singing, the rustle of leaves as critters went about their simple lives and the occasional downpour of rain pattering on the forests canopy that she so loved.

As her surroundings calmed her she’d fantasize of a selfish life just made for her. Something romantic like the novels her mother had given her; Of a knight in shining armor whisking her away or maybe even her being the one doing the whisking of some fair Serrah. She’d hum a tune softly as she engulfed herself in a world of her very own; she found enough peace in these moments alone to keep moving forward. To keep being that perfect girl everyone expected of her.

These moments usually ended with her gaining her composure once more and making her way back home but if she dallied long enough her siblings would find her and inform that she need to come home immediately, or worse even her mother yelling for her but she needed this time to herself, even more so after her father passed. By then she was an adult and held more responsibilities then ever even with her fully grown siblings to aid her. It became harder and harder to find any time for herself and it would only get worse when the Blight approached Lothering…

Kirkwall, mid 3:32 Dragon

Maxine strikes down the last blood mage with a skin charring burst of magic and with that they fall to the ground finally dead. Maxine breathlessly pierces her staff into the ground with her last bit of strength and drops to the ground, crossing her legs together as she tries to regain a healthy heart beat.

“You good Hawke?” Varric asks his friend while patting her back lightly not to rouse her too much. She waves her hand behind her trying to pat him back but fails too and drops her hand in defeat.

“Yeah…yeah I’m fine just…need a moment. Sorry guys.” She feels another presence kneel next to her. Looking up she sees a vile of lyrium being dangled in front of her face.

“I think you’ll need this.” Anders said with a chuckle. Weakly she takes it and gulps it down fast, so not to gag on the thick glowing substance. Almost as quickly she feels relieved and breathes a long exhale of relief and looks up at the runaway warden and gives an appreciative nod in thanks.

“You know you wouldn’t be so broken down after battle if you actually let us do some of the work there Hawke.” Varric chuckled.

“I second that, you weren’t even letting me heal, you know that thing that’s my job when I’m around?” Anders says pointing at himself while quirking his eyebrows at her. Looking at Varric he then points to her. “She kept beating me to the punch.”

“Oh I’m sorry if you boys are too slow to do it yourself.” She scoffs with a gentle grin across her face which fades as a shadow looms over her and Anders. They slowly look up to see Fenris with his hands firmly on his hips as he glares down at Maxine before letting out a long sigh and reaching out his gauntlets awaiting her to take his offer of help up from the blood coated ground. Her face turns crimson making Anders eyes roll as she takes the offer almost timidly.

“I cannot believe I’m saying this Hawke but…”He pauses as he pulls her up with haste causing her to be deathly close to his strikingly stoic face. “Listen to the mage and the dwarf for once.” He finishes and turns on his heel to go grab his sword, leaving her flushed with embarrassment as Varric laughs at Anders almost dumbfounded face.

“Ha! Maker, Hawke you made them agree on something…and me! I believe I’ve just witnessed a miracle!”

“Yes well I’m sure you just jinxed it.” She quietly affirms to the hairy dwarf as she bites her lip in anxious anticipation. Anders rises from his squatting position, not even hearing his friends banter and turns his full attention to the broody elf that was in the middle of pulling his great sword off of the ground.

“Funny how even as you agree with me for the first time since we’ve known each other for, what a year and a half now? You still insist on calling me Mage. Which mind you I’m not even the only mage in your company at the present moment.” Anders says with an annoyed chuckle gesturing towards Maxine, leading her gaze back to Varric. “You could at least try to be a little creative.”

“Aw, shit.” Sighs Varric as he looks down in shame as Maxine hits his shoulder with the palm of her hand.

“See? You did this. You ruined the moment.”

“What can I say? I’m better at writing good moments than making them.” Varric shrugs with an apologetic grin to the women who only stood about 6 inches taller than he. Their attention is pulled away from each other as they hear an annoyed growl leave Fenris’s lips.

Fenris is now glaring back at Anders, leaving his sword to fall onto the sun bleached dirt once again. “Well you insist on proclaiming your title as a Mage so often I don’t see why it’s a problem. Besides I’ve called you far worse.” So tempted to tell him exactly what he wishes to call him. Abomination.

“Oh! So I should be grateful then! Well then yes thank you all mighty Elven Warrior for not referring to me as Abomination no longer! Truly, I am so honored.” Anders dramatically exclaims as he bows to Fenris.

Here we go. Maxine thought as her heart begins to beat faster as if she had been drained of her lyrium once again. It was a mistake to bring them both, you idiot why did you bring them both! She scolds herself as she watches her friends spit words laced with poison like vipers.

“Do not test my patience, leave this be Mage and we can move on. I’m sure we all have better things to do.” Fenris grits his teeth as he gets in Anders face attempting to intimidate him but the human stands his ground.

“Yes let’s move on Anders. Please…” Maxine begs as she digs her long nails into her arms, just wanting this to be over. It was bad enough she was forced to slaughter her own kind today, them being blood mages did not change that fact for her. Now she is forced to see her friends who loathed each other argue was just sending her into panic mode. Something she’d had been trying so hard to keep away from her friends.

Anders darts his dagger like glare to her making her breath hitch. His auburn eyes statically turn blue with mana as he loses himself to Justice. “You take this elf’s side over your own kind you wench?!” Justice blurts out before losing control to Anders. Before he can react, Fenris pins him to ground in a blink of an eye, his markings vivid with the glow of lyrium illuminating under his skin.

“Fenris! Stop, get off of him!” Maxine yells in shock while Varric holds her back not wanting her to get into the scuffle he assumes will end soon.

“T-That wasn’t me. I’m sorry Haw-Ugh, Makers balls get off of me you beast! I’m in control now!” Anders says as he tries and fails to twist his wrists out of the elfs skin piercing grasp.  

“Yes, for now! But what of next time, hmm? When will it get through your thick skull that you are in way over your head!? That you are no better than the mages we killed today!” A jolt of electricity runs through Fenris, burning his brandings from the inside. He cries out in pain as Anders gets the upper hand and practically throws Fenris off of him and holds him down by his spiky feathered shoulders. Maxine watches in wide eyed horror almost losing her footing as Varric lets go of her seeing that this has crossed a line.

Anders viciously shouts down at Fenris. “I am nothing like them! I help people; I’m trying to make this Blighted world a better fucking place for my people, for everyone! And what have you done with your freedom?! Sulk in your Masters disheveled Mansion and gawk over our Mage leader like she’s some forbidden fruit for you to devour you fucking pervert!”

“FUCK YOU!” Fenris screams his lungs out in Anders face as a tear threatens to descend his duct from the pain of his markings and the mages harsh words.

“NO! FUCK YO-Whoa!” Anders is cut off as he feels himself being swept off of Fenris easily with an invisible force. As both Anders and Fenris gain their composure they look up at the culprit looming over them.

“Holy shit Hawke.” Varric shuttered a few feet away from her, intimidated just by her stance and not even the terrifying view that the arrogant men lying on the floor had the displeasure of seeing. Her honey colored eyes flooded with a flaming rage begging to be let loose.

“Is it truly too much to ask for you both to get the fuck along!?” Maxine screeches as she eyes them both in earnest. Their stunned silence as they look at each other and then quickly back to her only seems to make her fall farther from her sanity. Unbelievable bastards she thinks before chuckling. “I mean Isabela and Aveline might get into it now and then but I know they care for one another even if they’d never bloody admit it. Maker’s sake even Carver was never this bad with me and…and…”

The thought of her sisters sweet angelic face, bloodied and bruised as her mother cries over her broken body and her blight illed brother being carried off to the wardens interrupts her train of thought. Tears threaten to blur her vision as she pressed her pale chapped lips together to prevent them from seeing her lips trembling in grief.

I failed to keep my brother and sister safe, and now I can’t even protect my friends from each other.

“You know what forget it…nothing I’ll say will change either of you stubborn pricks. Sod it I’m sure you’re both mad at me now right? Let me guess, because I threw you off a man who was just trying to protect us because you can’t control your own blighting body?!” Hawke gestures to Anders. “Well I’m sure if you were in his position you have done the same for us so don’t you dare blame him for that! And for that matter, don’t you EVER use magic on him or any of our friends like that again or I swear I will make you regret the day you left the Wardens! Is that understood?!”

“Y-yes, Hawke.” He holds his scraped up hand while averting his gaze from her in apologetic defeat. Of course she felt lousy for pushing him and with magic no less, but seeing him cause Fenris pain was too much to bear. But her anger over the whole situation made her refuse to apologize to anyone.

With that she turned her attention to Fenris who scowled at her. She was unsure if it was from the pain or he was truly annoyed with her as well, but her anger was getting the better of her. “Oh and I’m certain you’ve found some reason to blame me for all this. For making you come along even when you always insist on coming along! Or better yet, I bet you think this is some kind of sign I’m losing control of my magic, yes? That any second I’ll prove you right that even a mage like me will succumb to possession?”

She exclaims as she conjures fire in her shaky hands, displaying it before extinguishing it just as fast with a snap of her wrists, causing his eyes to widen in response before regaining his stoic composure. “Well sorry to disappoint but I will spend the rest of my sorrowful life proving to people like you that I don’t need to be leashed like a fucking Mabari! That I use my magic for no personal gain but to help the people I care for, even if they hate me for what I am!” Her voice embarrassingly breaks as she yells down at Fenris as she felt tears burning her eyes.

Fenris’s harsh gaze begins to soften as he reads between the lines of her vicious words. Hate she said. Does she truly think I hate her because she’s a mage? He could not really blame her for believing that of him. For the past year and a half he had been avid about ranting his feelings on mages. How magic is a power that taints everything it possesses.

Yet he was no fool…well not always. He knew magic could be of use. Maker he’d probably be dead by now if it wasn’t for Hawke and even Anders and Merrill’s aid during some of their bloodiest of battles. Although he had avoided admitting this, he even had begun to see that maybe some were worthy of such bewitchment. Hawke’s prowess and virtue was endearing enough to begrudgingly make him think such nonsense. Without realizing it, he had put her on a pedestal above all others. Mage or not.

The only other person who had not figured this out was Maxine herself, proving quite obvious as she looked in anguish down at him. Before he could reply, she breaks their eye contact and begins to storm off.

“Hawke, wait! Where are you going?” Varric questions as he tries to catch up with her. Not stopping for even a second, she yells back at him.

“I’m leaving before I say something I’ll truly regret later! Just…go home and if you don’t mind make sure Tweedle Dick and Tweedle Dumbass don’t kill each other while you’re heading back to town! I’m…taking a walk before I go back.”

“Uh, y-yeah you got it! Just don’t stay out too late! Rather not have your darling mother scold us for losing track of ya!” Varric yells back, watching her leave his sights before letting out a long sigh. He turns back to the men seeing Anders is healing his hand while Fenris seems lost in thought.“Soo…If I were you two I’d kiss and make up before seeing our fearless leader again. I oddly think that was her holding back on you both.” He says with a chuckle while rubbing the back of his neck.

“You may be right about that… Maker, I’ve never seen her that upset before.” Anders sadly replies as he stands up, rubbing his bruised side. He looks down hesitantly at Fenris who is still looking in the direction that Maxine stormed off too. And I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so lost for words.  He thinks as he ponders his next move.

Fenris’s gaze is blurred by a glass bottle filled with a red liquid, being dangled in front of him. He tips his head up to see the mage looking back with his brow furrowed.

“I doubt you’d let me heal you after…well, you know.”

“You’d be correct with your assumption.” Fenris replies coldly, biting his tongue trying not to say anything that might renew their altercation. Yet he smoothly pushes away the peace offering and starts to rise from the ground. “But I do not require your pity. And let us not pretend we are sorry for what we said or did shall we?” He said dusting off tights and begins to walk away when he’s stopped by Anders hand on his shoulder, making him groan in pain. His markings still dull with more discomfort than usual.  

“You’re right, I’m not sorry for what I said because it was true and I know you’re no delicate flower who can’t handle a little bloody prick of magic…but I am sorry about what we did to Hawke and I know you are too. So I’m willing to forget today and try a little harder to keep the peace with you but only if you are as well.” Anders states as he glares down at Fenris who did the same.

Fenris slowly looks down with a sighs and slight nod in agreement. “Very well…but do not expect me to not protect our comrades from your demon in the future.”

“Spirit!”

“Whatever you wish to call it does not change a thing! I will not hesitate to take you down like I did today! Just consider yourself lucky I will not rip your heart out unless it is necessary.” Fenris retorts, yanking Anders grip off of him. Their eyes burn into each other’s till they feel themselves being pushed away firmly making them grunt in unison.

“Alright, enough with the pissing contest already! Ya want me tattle to Hawke that you whiny sods kept fighting after she left?” Varric warns as he points his gloved finger and raises his eyebrows at the elf and human. Anders and Fenris look back at each other squinting one last time in disgust at one another and then take a respectful step away from one another. “That’s what I thought. Now, shake on it.”

Anders rolls his eyes while Fenris groans at the dwarf’s request but they comply. This was for Hawke’s sake and nothing more to them. Anders raises his hand casually awaiting Fenris’s reluctant hand. As they shake on it, they give a tight squeeze as they glare intently at each other before yanking their grips away quickly.

“Good boys.” Varric says patting them like misbehaved pups to which Fenris whacks his hand away while Anders glares down at his short friend. Varric only laughs in response and starts to make his way down the mountain. “Now come on you two I promised Hawke to escort you back to your respective lairs.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m coming you hairy bastard.” Anders mumbles as he makes his way to Varric’s side.

Varric looks back to see that Fenris is staring off into the direction Hawke went. “Hey Broody! You coming or what?” The elf snaps his attention to Varric but then looks down in thought as he bites his lip.

“I…think I’ll wait up for Hawke. I wish to see she gets home safe.” Fenris says as his attention goes back to the other path leading to Maxine. Anders tries to say something but Varric tugs his sleeve and gives him a look that tells him not to say anything stupid which leaves Anders mumbling a “fine” and keeps walking.  

“Sounds good to me, just try not to sour her mood more than the two of you already have eh? Rather not have to plan your funeral because you can’t hold your tongue, if you don’t mind.” Varric requests of his broody friend.

He can’t help but let out a chuckle at Varric’s way of showing concern for his and Hawke’s well being in his own humorous way. “I’ll manage just fine, Dwarf.” With that Fenris picks up his sword, puts it on his back and begins to make his way towards Hawke’s direction.  

“Alright, alright, see you tomorrow if you aren’t dead Broody!” Varric replies with a smirk and finally he turns to descend the hill once more while Anders sternly looking back at Fenris before slowly making his way down as well.

“Are you sure we should trust him with checking on Hawke.”

“Blondie I didn’t see you offering.”

“Well…neither did you.” Anders looked away flustered while crossing his arms as they continue walking.

“Hey I’m an innocent bystander in this mess if you didn’t notice. Besides, this works out well. We live in Lowtown, them in Hightown. Meaning I don’t have to walk a few extra miles today.”

“So sure you don’t need that extra exercise.” Anders says with a sly grin as he begins to calm down.

“Ha-ha very funny. Just for that I ain’t buying drinks at the Hanged man tonight. You’re gonna pay in some way for the crap you pulled today.”

“So I’m paying for your drinks? I hate to say it but wouldn’t it make more sense to do something for the two of them?”

“Eh consider it practice. You can pretend I’m the elf so we can see if you can go without saying something stupid when talking to him from now on.”

“You expect him to do the same for me?” Anders scoffs.

“Maybe not. But you said it yourself. You both need to try harder to get along. At the very least for Hawke. If that means only one of you being the bigger man, then so be it.” Varric said as he rested his hands on the back of his head, lightly playing with the back of his ponytail.

Anders really couldn’t argue with that. He knew he went too far today. They all did in their own ways. Well, accept Varric but he was always the one who tried to appease everyone around him, Hawke being a close second. He admired that but it wasn’t second nature for him like it was for them. They didn’t go through the torment he went through. He had no patients any more to bite his tongue through his oppression… If only he realized Fenris felt similarly.

Fenris easily began to track the small foot prints Hawke had left behind. He sees they become less indented in the dirt the farther he walks, showing less animosity in her stride. Although glad to see the difference in her step, he worries he’ll lose her track at this rate with how the wind seems to be picking up as the sun has begun to lower.

As he rounds another corner he sees a small figure sitting on an old log covered with moss with their head hung low and their arms wrapped around themselves protectively. Hawke he almost says allowed but holds his tongue and only watches her for a few moments, assessing her state before making his move. She is shaking as she slowly rocks back and forth on the log.

He cannot see her face as her dark chocolate hair obscures it, but the sound of her weeping paints a picture that wounds him. It’s not that he had never seen her cry before, but when she did she was silent and would only shed a few tears before gaining her composure back with time and was back to her diplomatic yet bold self. This…was different. He had never heard her sound so somber before. Not even when she came home after what transpired in the Deep Roads with her brother.

It hurt to see her in such a state but also was rather uncomfortable for him. He was not knowledgeable in the matters of comforting someone; let alone someone who he caused pain too. Maybe this was a mistake. He thinks. This is my doing. What could I possibly-

“F-Fenris?”

His thoughts are interrupted by Hawke’s hoarse voice making him blush in embarrassment. He looks up reluctantly to see her quickly rubbing her face and nose, trying to look a bit less pathetic. Her eyes and lips are puffy and red as she looks over her shoulder at him. He can’t hide how his face contorts in surprise and woe at her appearance, making her avert his gaze as her face becomes even rosier.

“Is…is it just you?”

“Yes…”

“Oh…are they mad? “

He gives her a puzzled look while stepping closer. “At you? No. Frightened maybe but I’m sure after a few ales they’ll be over it.”

Still wiping her face with her sleeve she lets out a weak chuckle. “I did go overboard on all of you didn’t I?”

“Perhaps. But I’m one to talk hmm?” he says while lightly kicking a small rock closer to her. It rolls near her and she stops it with her scuffed black boot.

“…What are you doing here Fenris?”

“I-I wanted to see you home safe…besides I’ve grown accustom to walking home with you.” He says quietly as he slowly walks closer to her.

She snickers while shaking her head still not looking at him, still trying to gain her composure. “What need me to hold your hand through Hightown? You’re a big boy you can handle yourself just fine without me.”

“If anyone needs hand holding right now it’d be you, Hawke.” He scoffs at her and taking his sword, piecing it in the ground before taking a seat next to her, not bothering to ask permission.

“Pfft, right like you’d actually-“she lets out a small gasp as she feels cold metal claws wrap gently around her shaky hand. Doe eyed she finally looks at him. His eyebrows furrowed and eyes hooded but intense as always. An intensity others would be fearful of but not her, not ever. “Well…that’s a first. Is this you trying to be the sincere one for once?”

“I could stop if you’re just going to point it out.”

“No, no this is good! It’s…just a rarity with you.” She didn’t mean to sound so matter-of-fact about his lack of affection. She understood his nature due to his grim past, even if she didn’t know the extent of the torment he went through.

“…I know.” He bluntly says while looking away seemingly ashamed of himself. Showing affection was not something he was at all use too and compared to Hawke he was as empathetic as a starved Dragon.

Everyone in their group of misfits had their own way of showing affection towards each other. Whether that was a pat on the back, a tight embrace, a punch on the arm, or even a kiss on the cheek. But they all knew to be cautious with Fenris, even Hawke showed restraint with her physical affection with him comparative to her other friends. He should have been relieved by that and yet he seemed as of lately to desire to be closer to her, to share the same affection she would give to her friends or perhaps more than that.

He feels like pulling away but feels her grip tighten before he can act on his impulse to flee. “I appreciate when you do though.” She said softly, gripping his hand and putting it on her thigh with a weak smile that eases Fenris’s nerves.

“Are you alright?” he asks knowing she isn’t.

“Been better…you?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He bluntly answers.

They sit there in utter silence for a few seconds, neither sure of how to go about discussing any of what transpired that day without causing some form of disagreement. They may have been good at fighting, but that didn’t mean they enjoyed it.

“So…did you only come here to see me home safe?” she asks nervously while grazing her thumb on Fenris’s gauntlet. He sighs deeply while rubbing the back of his neck.

“I-I wanted to apologize for causing you… unneeded stress for you with the mages and I’s quarrel.”

Hawke raises her eyebrow and glares at him while releasing her grip on his hand to fold her arms. It confuses him at first but then easily realizes his error. His hand feels oddly bare without her touch which befuddles him. He almost finds himself reaching out for her but instead digs his claws into his palm and settles his hand to his side with a sigh.

“…Anders and I’s quarrel. There, satisfied?”

“Is that so hard for you to do? Because if you remember something as simple as that, today wouldn’t have happened the way it did.” Hawke scoffs.

“Are you truly blaming me right now for this?” his voice now slightly raised showing his growing annoyance.

“I blame both of you actually. You two act like jealous mabari around each other. It’s cute till one starts maiming the other.”

“I was trying to-” he pauses and pinches the bridged of his nose, trying not to raise his voice any higher. “…I was only trying to keep you and Varric safe. Maker knows what that demon would have done if I didn’t.” Truth be told he wasn’t even thinking about Varric when he pinned Anders to the ground. All he heard was Anders distorted voice calling her a wench, making his blood boil and suddenly he was on top of him.

“Yes and I do appreciate the sentiment but I think we were just fine. You may be our main warrior of our group since I lost Carver to the Wardens and Aveline is too busy these days being Guard Captain to help out but that doesn’t mean I need you to fight all my battles.”

“Look who’s talking!” Fenris finally breaks while quickly standing up to glare down at the small mage.

“And what is that suppose to mean?” she scoffs in question.

“You were a reckless fool today! You drained your mana because you wouldn’t allow Annndersss” he draws out the other mages name to keep to her wishes but in the most annoying way possible, making Hawke’s eyes roll in response. “To heal us in battle and you wouldn’t even let the rest of us take most of the abominations down ourselves! I may be ignorant to exactly how your magic works but I know for a fact you could have easily harmed yourself with how careless you were!”

“Well maybe I wanted things done quickly, ok! Yes they needed to be put down because they were a threat but if it had to be anyone it would be me who takes them down! Not by a man who couldn’t care less about their plight or a mage who sees all blood mages as monsters when many could argue that is exactly what he is even if I don’t believe he is despite his hypocrisy! …I know at least that is how I’d want it to be if I was one of them-”

“No! You are nothing like them!” He grasps her shoulder before he is pushed off almost immediately.

“But I am a Mage! Something you like to forget it seems! Anders may have been cruel with his words but it is true you don’t treat me like other mages. Why? What’s the point?! And don’t say I should be grateful because it is no compliment to be an exception from what you despise! Either you hate me for what I am or you don’t! I am so sick of one minute we are having nothing but fun with each other and the next you are tearing my people down and expecting me to not take it personally! So pick how you feel already!” She yells back now standing as tall as she can as she scowls craning her neck up to meet his gaze.

Her eyes are red with tears and he can’t bear to look at her straight. He looks away and crosses him arms gently together, not sure how to word why he treated her so differently than others. How could he when he wasn’t truly sure himself?

“It’s not that simple. You…you are just different. I’ve never met any mage like you…or anyone who is like you for that matter.”

“I’m not that different from anyone el-”

“You are, Maxine.” Fenris butts in making Hawke look up in surprise at hearing him say her given name.

“…Alright then, how am I different?”

“When we first met, I wanted to hate you. Yes you are what I fear in this world but…since day one you’ve been nothing but kind to me, even when I never deserved it. Not even at my worst have you been spiteful.”

“Not counting today I imagine.” She let out a weak scoff while nervously running her hand through her matted hair.

“It was…justified. You’ve obviously been holding your tongue for a long time. Maybe even more so than Anders and I have towards each other.”

“You may be right about that…you were saying?”

He nods in thought before speaking once more. “It… confused me, even angered me at times how you treated me. But with time I saw you were just that way with everyone. You were treating me as an equal. Something I’ve never been before.” He cautiously takes her small hand in his. “It has been a long time since I’ve ever met anyone as gracious as you, mage or not. So I assume my reasoning is you deserve to be treated with the same respect you give me, if not more.”

“Well…that’s all fine and good but whether you like it or not I’m still a mage and I will always believe that most mages want to help others if they only had the chance too. I’d like to think my family was living proof of that. My father and sister would have never hurt you or anyone unless they saw them as a threat to who they cared for…just as I do.” She sighs and lightly scrapes her fingernails across his gauntlet.

“If they were anything like you I’m sure you’re right.” His words shock her, making her meet his gaze in question.

“…And if more mages were like me?”

“Then I’d have little to fear.” He says, looking at her with such sincerity.

Damn him. She thinks as her eyes begin to water in delight at his words.

“You make it hard to stay mad at you.” She breathily says with a smile, trying to hold back her tears.  

“Good to know.” His smirk leaves Hawke rolling her eyes but with a scoff.

“Hey, don’t push your luck.  I won’t allow you to get away with everything you know?” She says lightly slapping his shoulder which makes him let out a grunt in discomfort. Hawke’s eyes widen and she lets out a gasp. “Oh! I’m so sorry are you still in pain?”

“I’m fine. Just still aches a bit.”

“Why didn’t Anders heal you after-“

“I declined his offer.” He answers before she can finish. She gives a look that says she shouldn’t have been surprised by that and then she lets out a long sigh while rubbing her temples.

“Sit down.” Hawke orders quietly while pointing to the log.

“Hawke really I’m fi-“

“I said, sit.” She repeats with her hands now on her hips and an eyebrow raised. He glares in opposition at her for a moment before finally giving in with a sigh and plopping himself down on the old log. Hawke’s face relaxes and with that she kneels down and sits in front of him and begins to rummage through her pouch. “And you wonder why I didn’t allow Anders to do his job today. You won’t even take his help when he offers it.”  

Fenris looks in surprise at her confession. “You were-“

“Yes I was keeping you healed so he didn’t have to do it. I know how uncomfortable you are with magic and you seem to only tolerate mine if need be.”

“Hawke I do not need to be coddled. I may not like having to be helped by him if possible but I’m no fool. It’s his duty to keep us alive when he is with us, not you.”

“I know that. But I knew the minute we ran into those blood mages things would turn sour.” She pauses and swears under her breath as her hands still in the bag. “I…I knew one of you would start something after we finished them off and I just…I didn’t want to hear any of it but I knew it was inevitable. So I tried to soften the blow I guess. Just thought if I killed most of them and quickly as well as keep you two from interacting as much as possible, maybe you guys wouldn’t be at each other’s throats.”

“Our bickering upsets you that much?” A remnant of remorse laced in his voice.

“I can deal with bickering Fenris, I had two younger siblings who were as different as the sun and moon. You two don’t bicker.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I can tolerate a lot but I have my limits like anyone else, Fenris. When I saw you on top of him…and then he hurt you I-I couldn’t take it anymore.” She whimpers out before clearing her throat, making Fenris tense up. He hates hearing her voice crack in anguish.

“I see...” he quietly says not sure if he should try to comfort her again like he did when he held her hand. He was only sure he wished to feel her warm touch again and to see her smile again. This desire was cut short as he heard Hawke’s hands rustling through her back stop with annoyed sigh leaving her lips.

“Dammit…I’m out of potions I must have used them all.”  She looks up to see him cocking an eyebrow at her. “Don’t even think about saying what I think you’re going to say, I already know I pushed myself today.”

“I said nothing.” He says defensively yet with a hint of playfulness, showing he meant not to start anything.

“Yes but you had that smug look on your face.” She circles her finger in the air in front of his face. “I’m not tolerating anyone’s sass today if you haven’t noticed.” She finished, leaving him with an ever pompous grin.

“Very well.”

“Good. Now we can do one of two things; either we get back to my place and I give you some potions there or I heal you the old fashion way.” She says while wiggling her fingers in front of her. “You’re choice.”

He can’t help but smile warmly at that. My choice he thinks. There was no way she could grasp just how much it means to him that even when she’s at her limits with him she always gives him a choice. He could not remember a time before meeting her that he was given choices. A choice to reject, a choice to walk away and yet, he desires to show her the faith he has put in her to not harm him.

“Max…” Taking her wrists, he hesitantly places her hands on his aching shoulders. “I trust you.”

She can’t help but stare wide eyed into his mossy green eyes as her cheek become flushed. Her hands, shaky but firm on his arms as she takes in his words of encouragement. I trust you. She had feared she would never gain that from him. She could not hold back a joyful grin. “Well I’m glad… and I trust you too.”

“I-I’m glad as well.” He blushes in return. They stare at each other for a moment till the mood became unbearably awkward.

“I will need my wrists back though if I want to do this properly. Not that I mind you holding me close.” She says with a bewitching smirk spread across her face.

Realizing he was still holding onto her wrists, his face reddens even more and quickly lets go while averting his gaze. “M-my apologies…go ahead.”

She giggles and nods in response before letting go of him so she can hover her fingers, now illuminated in a bluish light, around his arms and shoulders. His body tenses at the first hint of mana, furrowing his brow in the process. She almost stops when she notices his discomfort but he tries gives her a reassuring smile.

“I’m fine Hawke, just get it done quickly. Please.”

“Right, I’m sorry. Try to take some deep breathes, ok?” He nods and breathes in and out at a slow and steady pace. With every breath the pain becomes less and less. He swears it almost begins to feel…calming. Magic has been nothing but pain to him, or at the least a hard pill to swallow but her touch, physical or magical is always so gentle and so thoughtful.

Her hands move smoothly past his shoulders and ghost over his collarbone, making his breath hitch as her fingertips accidentally graze the side of his neck. She pulls back immediately and ends the spell. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-“

“No, no you’re fine! Y-you startled me is all.” Startling…yet not unpleasant. He realizes in thought.

“Oh, good…how’s the pain?” she asked relieved.

Fenris rolls his shoulders and his neck, testing his pain level. Although the pain of the scuffle has now dissipated thanks to Hawke, he feels a dull ache in his markings returning slowly, but this was sadly his reality. Maybe this can never be helped. He thought as he let out a low grumble. “Back to my usual self it seems. Thank you, Hawke.”

“Just doing my job.” She says with a bashful smile which slowly fades. “And…I’m sorry for yelling at you today.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me Hawke. It’s not like I’ve never lost my temper.” He says surprised at her sudden guilt.

“Even so, I could have reacted better. I’ve just been under a lot of stress lately and I haven’t had time to just deal with it you know? And I know I need to make peace that you two just will never be friends. It’s wrong for me to try to change either of you.” She says while wistfully bowing her head and rubs the side of her arm as she still sits in front of him.

“You’re right, we’ll probably always loath each other…but we did come to an agreement that we need to try harder to put our differences aside…for you at least.” Fenris admits sheepishly, making Hawke look up in surprise.

“You did?”

“Yes and I should mention it was his idea. Don’t want him blathering about how he got no credit over this.” He sees her squint at him in annoyance at that. “…that being said I agreed with him because if we had too on one thing, it’d be not wishing to hurt you Hawke.” Fenris says with a sigh, making Hawke begin to grin. It was nice to hear that they were at least willing to try to be better comrades. This could be a good sign.

But if she had learned anything from her family who all had differing views, was that peace only lasted as long as both parties learned to respect each other’s opinions and/or kept their mouths shut over touchy subjects.

Although these principles seemed reasonable for a family that loved each other, it sadly seemed impossible for two men who cared not for each other and believed so strongly the other is an idiot and that their plight was far worse than the others. She wanted to believe their promise was true, she truly did. But they were only words spoken in a moment of guilt.

“I do appreciate that Fenris. Really I do, but I believe in action not words. So forgive me if I hold my breath.” She softly states as she stands.

“You say you trust me yet you doubt my honor to a promise?” He asks earnestly looking up at her.

“It’s not that I don’t believe your word or Anders for that matter. I just don’t wish to get my hopes up. I fear when I do it usually backfires and then I get upset and I don’t wish to have another moment of weakness like I did today just because I got too comfortable with the idea that things will be better if I just hoped. I’m sure you can understand that yes? Not wanting to be disappointed.”

Of course he could. He could never hope for more than he already had, which was very little to begin with. He lived in his old masters abandoned mansion, alone and with very little possessions and even fewer people he could trust in this blighted city.  Yet it was more than he ever had. Maybe that is why he stayed, because he truly couldn’t see himself leaving and finding anything better.

He may have not been happy precisely, but he at times felt at home. When he sparred with Aveline in the barracks, had meals with Hawke and at times with her mother and her mabari, when he humored Isabela’s flirting and silly games like guessing what undergarments he was wearing, playing Wicked Grace with everyone, listening to Hawke’s stories of her family, teasing Varric of his harry chest while Varric made fun of his “broodiness”, walking home from a long day with Hawke …Maker, she always seemed to come to mind when recalling why he never desired to leave.

He had to admit, he would miss much of her; her strange persistence to make him feel wanted, how passionately protective she was of her friends, family and even complete strangers. They never would have met if it wasn’t for that.

He’d even miss how her lovely face seemed to light up when he’d enter the room, and of course her rowdy laugh that left a whole room silent in confusion because what in the name of Andraste could be so funny?

He couldn’t help but try to get her to laugh like that and feel an odd sense of pride when he could. Even stupidly feel jealous when someone else got it out of her before he could. In turn she’d try to get him to laugh just as loud. He never did, but it was hard for anyone to top her infectious laugh, yet that never stopped her from trying to get a good giggle fit out of him that made him as red as a rose.

He’d miss how he felt around her…he even dared to think she felt the same near him. But like her, he feared disappointment.

“Yes…I do.” He weakly says as he stands and looks down at her. “and I won’t lie and say my feelings on mages will change and that Anders and I we’ll never argue again if we can help it…but I will promise that I will try to think of your feelings before I speak and I will not harm Anders unless utterly necessary.”

“Define utterly necessary.” She says with arms now crossed.

“He’s physically harming you…or anyone of importance obviously.” He corrects himself last minute, which leaves her smirking at him.

“…Alright, fair enough. I doubt it will ever come to that though.”

“Whatever you say.” He mumbles, rolling his eyes teasingly.

“Fenris.”

“Just my opinion. It’s not like I wish to be right all the time.” he shrugs smugly.

“Ughhh, Maker you’re impossible sometimes.” Hawke says as she leans her head back with a chuckled groan. Fenris smirks down at her. “At least tell me Merrill is one of the people of importance.”

“Hmmm…” he hums in thought as he scratches his chin, but stopping with a devilish grin as he sees Hawke’s growingly miffed face. “Eh, I suppose.” He shrugs.

“…Lean down for me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Lean. Down.” She repeats as she glares at him. Although he glares back in suspicion he stupidly does as he’s told. Once he’s at her eye level she smirks and quickly ruffles his hair, messing it up as well as she can get it before he quickly jerks his head back. “That’s for Merrill!”

“Kaffas woman it was only a jest!” he swears which makes Hawke let out that rowdy laugh that he so enjoys. He can’t help but look at her and begin to grin. “Hmph, satisfied with your dirty work?” he asks as he points at his disheveled snowy white hair.

She looks up as she begins to calm down and then scoffs with a bashful grin. “Hardly! You still look bloody majestic! It’s quite unfair, if my hair gets messed with or is even a little oily it looks dreadful!”

His ears twitch and turn crimson at her compliment. It was never a foreign thing for her to flirt and tell him how attractive she believed him to be, but it always made him flustered. He didn’t believe it himself, but he could not lie, he always enjoyed her flattery.

He shakes off his twitch and carefully strokes his bangs back into place. “Yes well, I don’t think your hair looks dreadful…at least on most occasions.” He swiftly grabs her wrist as her hand darted up trying to mess with his hair once more in retribution for that backhanded compliment.  “Truly though…your hair is rather pleasing to the eye.”

She stops playfully struggling from his grip to meet his soft gaze. “Oh? I always found it rather a boring color. It’s not as lovely as yours.” She mumbles as she twists a bit of her locks around her fingers. “Would have at least liked it to have become black like my father’s…”

Fenris hooks the lock of hair between his gauntlet claws, taking the strands from her and feels it slowly run across his scarred fingertips, sending a chill down Hawke’s back at his boldness. “I think it’s a rather lovely shade of brunette.”

“Thank you…it does match your armor.” She nervously grins and she lightly prods at his leather tunic making him gulp in response.

“Uh, yes it appears so...”

It’s painfully quiet as they timidly gawk at one another. Hawke’s hand rests just above Fenris’s armored chest. She can feel how fast his heart races under her touch but before she can ask if he’s alright, Fenris’s gaze quickly shifts towards the sun that has almost fully set now. It’s disappointing when he looks away but she looks in his direction and sees just how late it has become. They could now hear the crickets beginning to chirp and cool breeze swirled their way, huddling Fenris closer to Hawke for warmth, much to her delight. He still wasn’t fully use to the cold of the Free Marches which makes her wonder if he’d even last a day in Fereldon.

“W-we should hurry back to High Town. It’s scarcely considered safe here during the day, it can only get worse with night fall.”

“True enough…you also seem cold.” She teasingly smirks up at him. He realizes just how close he is too her, as his chest grazing hers and his hand now resting on her shoulder.

He takes his hand away and takes a step back, rubbing his palms across his arms for warmth. “It’s not my fault I wasn’t born with ice in veins like you.”

“Is that a quip on me being a mage or Fereldon born?”

“Hmm, I suppose both works in this case.”  He responds, leaving her rolling her eyes but biting her lip to hid her smile.

“I suppose so. Alright lets head out…Maker mother must be furious.”  Hawke whines like a pup as she picks up her pouch and staff.

“If it helps I can accompany you and explain why you were out so late.” He offers as he also gets his weapon and puts it in its sheath.

“Oh so you can tell my mother I had a mental break down in front of everyone? Yeah, no thank you. Besides I don’t want her upset with you. She likes you and I doubt you wish to break my poor mother’s heart now do you?” she asks, batting her eyes up at him. Lady Leandra could be a bit much at times but he did enjoy being on her good side, even if meant putting up with how she’d pinch his cheeks on occasion, her cooking and kind words were worth it.

“Fair point, still if I can help in any way I’d be happy to for you Hawke. It’s the least I can do to make up for today.”

“You sure you’re not just checking to see if there are any sweets waiting at home for me that you can steal?” Hawke smirks up at him.

“Can both be my intent?” Fenris asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Pfft, sure why not.” She snorts. “Come on sass master, hopefully my mother will go easy on us and I can treat you to whatever in the kitchen and maybe a glass of wine.” She says as she tugs at the top of his breastplate, steering him towards the trail back to Kirkwall.

He bashfully smiles as he stumbles for a second before finding his footing again and stands close to Hawke’s side as they begin to take their long stroll back to the Amell Mansion. “I’ll try not to overstay my welcome.”

Don’t think that’s possible. She thought with a warm smile. “Please I’m sure mother will beg you to take the guest room for the night for your safety.”

“She does know I’ve lived in Hightown longer than even you, right?” he asks in an amused tone.

“And that you can tear a person’s heart out, yet she still insists on coddling you worse than I do.” Hawke says with a shrug.

“Ah, so that’s where you get it from.” He wickedly says knowing this will irk her.

“Oh how dare you.” She gasps, making him giggle at her wide eye and mouth expression.

“Nothing wrong with that, Leandra is a fine woman.”

“I know but I am trying to be my own person you know.” She huffs.

“You are…and I rather enjoy the person I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.” He says as he looks straight forward, not daring to look down at her.

“…You mean that?” peering up at him coyly. It’s too dark to see but he is blushing as he feels her eyes on him.

“Well, you do annoy me the least out of our comrades.” He jests, trying to lighten the heaviness of what he just admitted.

“Oh you know how to make a girl feel special Fenris.” She says sarcastically but does let out a chuckle to show she doesn’t mind him changing the mood back to humorous.

“So I’ve been told.” He shrugs with a smirk that melts quickly. “…but in all seriousness, yes Hawke. I mean it.”

“Ah, good. I uh, have more than enjoyed your companionship…even when you can be a jerk.” She says bumping into him lightly with her elbow.

“I should take offense to that last bit.”

“I could have said far worse.” She states with a wink.

“Lucky me then.” He grins down at her and she smiles brightly back before looking forward. As she looks on he can’t help but glance at her now and then to see if she’s still well. Every time he did, she seemed fine but he wonders if her expression is just a mask to hide her true expression. “Max?”

“Y-yes Fenris?” she looks up with flushed cheeks as she hears her name leave his lips.

“I… am sorry for upsetting you.” He says gloomily.

“I know Fenris…and I’m sorry too.”

“You-“

“I won’t accept yours if you don’t accept mine.” She interrupts as she stops in front of him and holds her index finger up to his face. Fenris may have been stubborn, but Hawke could be as well.

“…As you wish. You are forgiven.” He sighs while rolling his eyes.

“As are you.” She says while booping his nose, making his ears flatten and face scrunch in both annoyance and amusement.  He squints his eyes down at her, making her laugh again before she turns away and begins walking again. She does not catch the smile that grows on his face while he rubs the spot on his nose she had touched when she turns.

By the time they got back to the Amell Mansion, the moon had been illuminating the raven colored sky for quite some time now. As they entered the estate, Hawke’s Mabari, Axel, barked up a storm at their return alerting Lady Leandra her eldest had finally made her way home. She scolded her child while hugging her tightly as Axel bounced around the three of them, begging for his own attention which Fenris heavily sighed and patted the big oaf on the head while he waited for Leandra to be done talking. Once she made her point, she turned happily to Fenris and thanked him for keeping her darling daughter safe, as he always did.

Like Hawke said she would, she insisted Fenris stay, get cleaned up, eat and spend the night if he wanted. He declined staying for too long but could not say no to the chilled apple pie that awaited Hawke’s arrival. Leandra’s only rule was they take the wet washcloths she had ready for them and clean up before they tracked any blood into the rest of the manor.

After they hastily wiped themselves down, Leandra settled them in the kitchen with a big serving of pie, which they thanked her for and with that she kissed her daughter on the head and pinched Fenris's cheek before leaving them be so she could finally get some sleep, no longer having to worry if her last surviving daughter was safe. She was grateful for the friends Maxine had made in Kirkwall, mostly Fenris who her daughter talked about the most.

When Leandra left, Fenris and Hawke sat in the kitchen, eating the cold but delicious pie with a bottle of wine Hawke snuck out of the cellar and enjoyed each other’s company till Hawke’s eyelids began to grow heavy. Seeing that as his cue to leave, he thanked her for hospitality and said he’d make up for the now empty bottle of wine which she graciously declines with a yawn. They say goodnight at the door of the Estate, and Hawke watches him leave till he’s out of sight. When he looks back she gives him a coy wave that he returns with a awkward smile and can’t help but blush when he turns away.

When Hawke awoke the next morning, she came downstairs to her mother saying Fenris came by and dropped off a bottle of Aggregio Pavali.

“Such a sweet lad isn’t he?” he mother said happily as she handed the bottle to her.

“Yeah…” more like stubborn lad…but he is sweet all the same. “He is.”  She finishes as she looks at the bottle and smiles.

[codylabs]

Chapter 10: The Madman’s Tale

Links: P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Dipper, Wendy, and McGucket poked their way through the depths of the alien spacecraft, and finally arrived at sector 43: the portion of the cargo area that they theorized once contained robotic life forms. They pried the door open with great difficulty, and stood staring in.

It wasn’t at all what they expected.

“Well… That’s… Somthing.” Dipper said.

“Yeah… Wait, no it’s not.” Wendy disagreed. “It’s not something! It’s literally nothing.”

“Yep. Nothin’.” McGucket agreed.

Because when they pried the door open, there was no sector 43; there was only a solid wall of dirt.

“So how would this even happen?” Dipper pondered out loud.

“Wull, this here honkytonk is underground…” McGucket reminded him. “Has been fer thousands a years… Just a matter a’ sludge and hogwash erodin’ down off the hills, and gravity has its merry way from there…”

“But… The hull…” Dipper said. “The hull would be in the way… I guess the roof must have collapsed?”

“Well.” Wendy shrugged. “If this did have escaped metal life, that would mean there’s were a bunch of critters running around with saws in there…”

“Yeah, but… But would they really chop up the entire roof??”

“Okay, I don’t know…”

The only other interesting thing about sector 43 were the words carved above the door. Although Dipper had seen words written or painted around the ship a few times, these ones were actually etched into the metal. As if their writers had a saw or grinder of some kind… Which was too big of a coincidence to be a coincidence. He pointed the tablet at them, took a picture, and had it translate. He had hoped for something profound, but was disappointed.

“ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ were here.” He read.

“Oh HO!” Wendy scoffed, as she immediately removed and unzipped her backpack. “Is that how you want to play it, mysterious ancient aliens? Fine then! FOUR can play at THAT game!” She removed a neon green can of spray paint from her pack, shook it up, and wrote Dipper and Wendy were here next to the carvings.

McGucket found this disrespectful and unprofessional, although Dipper thought it was a riot.

“So who were those two, anyway?” Dipper asked outloud, after they’d finished laughing. “ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ...?” He tried to pronounce the symbols, but it was much too hard.

“Just make up some normal names for them.” Wendy suggested. “Like… Like Betty and Barney, or something. I don’t know, Mabel could probably do better…”

“Betty and Barney it is, then.” Dipper nodded. “Yeah… Betty and Barney were here… So who were they? Were they more specimens? Or part of the crew? Or passengers…?”

“I don’t know.” Wendy shrugged. “Could have been anyone, really… But back to the problem at hand: Sector 43 is missing a ceiling, and filled with dirt. Short of borrowing my cousin’s excavator for about a month, how do we find out what was in there?”

Dipper considered this. “Well… Huh… I guess that if there’s giant holes in the roof, then chances are there’s giant holes in the walls too, right? So if there was metal life in 43, we should probably check in sectors 42 on the left, and 44 on the right. That’s where they would have breached through.”

“Right tootin’!” McGucket slapped his knee. “Wull then, I’ll give 42 a lookie, and you kids scrabdoodle off to 44!”

“Got it.” Dipper nodded.

“Don’t let the grammar hit you on the way out!” Wendy jested, as they turned to head back the way they’d come. McGucket went off the other direction, hamboning a playful tune on his thigh.

Dipper and Wendy arrived in cargo area 44, and it was pretty much how they expected.

Beyond the sliding door, they found a massive room, the size of a warehouse, and high enough that their headlamp beams didn’t reach the ceiling. The entire space was filled with gigantic hexagonal crates suspended on large, honeycombed racks, with barely room enough to walk between them.

Sector 44 was a mess, same as everywhere else. But this mess considerably messier. Here, not only the small things were broken, but also the computers, the equipment, the floor, the walls, the lights… Everything was cut all to pieces. Wires and cords hung from the ceiling in tattered tangles. The terminals on the walls were totally gutted. The walls had cavities. The cargo containers were cut open, and much of their freight was spilled about. Everywhere there were scratches and saw marks.

And as for the wall this sector would have shared with 43… The wall had been torn half away, and mountains of dirt and deposit had spilled through the missing half, partially filling 44 and destroying many of the cargo racks. Great tree roots, having groped their way down from the distant surface, peaked out of the mess here and there.

“Yep.” Wendy nodded. “This is about what I expected.”

They started to walk into the room to explore it, but suddenly something sharp caught Dipper in the leg, and he yelped with pain.

He looked down.

A large panel of the floor had been torn up, revealing some electrical lines. And out of those electrical lines, there grew a tangle of metal weeds. They were long dead, and their solar panels had rotted away, but they were still sharp, and they still stood as evidence of the type of chaos which once inhabited this room.

“Ah. Well, there we go.” Dipper nodded. “There’s metal plants at least…”

“Ooh! Dead killer robots! What a welcome change of pace!” Dipper turned to see Wendy examining a broken security drone. Strangely, this drone appeared perfectly intact on the outside. There wasn’t a single scratch or crack in its shell, although the glass appeared fogged up on the inside. “I wonder what did this guy in?” Wendy wondered out loud.

“I don’t know… Why’s it all fogged up?”

Dipper helped Wendy pry open the drone’s hatch, and they saw what had happened.

The drone had been eaten from the inside out. Although the drone’s outer glass shell was too hard for saws to cut, its mechanical innards were all exposed on the inside. And all these parts (power source, weapons systems, arms, etc.) had all been chopped up or eaten entirely.

As for the trapped robot that had done the damage… It was still there. It was long dead, and mostly decayed, but it was still recognizable. It looked almost identical to Juan and his mom, but about the size of a wolf, and with more pronounced saws. Obviously still the same species, just a different breed.

“Wow.” Wendy said, looking at the cat-bot. “Miserable way to go, huh? Starving to death inside a tiny glass bubble?”

“Yeah…” Dipper scratched his head. “…No kidding…”

They looked around at the rest of bay 44. There were a few more offline security drones, and a few more metal plants. Wendy put her hands on her hips. “Welp.” She surmised. “It’s official now. The robots are all aliens, and broke out of sector 43.”

“Yep.” Dipper nodded. “Aliens confirmed. Alien robots confirmed. Illuminati confirmed. Halflife 3 confirmed… Everything confirmed.”

“Really dude?” Wendy scoffed. “You’re memeing now?”

“Well, uh… Yeah, it just came to me I guess.”

“General Pineobi.” She said in a general Grievous voice. “You are a bold one.”

“…Is that a meme? I thought that was just a line from Revenge of the Sith.”

“Everything from the prequel trilogy is a meme.” She shrugged. “Anyway, back to the task at hand.”

“Right.” He nodded. “Right. So. They’re aliens. Broke out of sector 43.”

“But that doesn’t really explain much, y’know?” Wendy frowned. “Like, sure they’re aliens, but so what? I still have a lot of questions.”

“What questions?” Dipper asked.

“First of all.” Wendy stuck up her index finger, as if beginning a list. “If the metal life is from HERE, how did it get all the way out to the Forest of Daggers? It’s, like, 12 miles… Who moved it, and how?”

Dipper shrugged. “Maybe they took off the ceiling of 43, turned it over, put all the robots on it, and used it like a sled…? Of course, I don’t know how they’d do that…”

“Yeah.” Wendy shook her head. “Okay, now second question. WHY was this ship hauling a truckload of metal animals? These things are dangerous enough to eat a death drone alive! What the heck were they thinking bringing these along?”

Dipper shrugged again.

“Third question.” She counted off another finger. “In this ship, there’s the probatorium, which is for studying new specimens, and that’s sectors 1 through 12… And then there’s the passenger area, which is sectors 13 through 24… But then ‘organic cargo’, is sectors 25 through freakin’ 48… My question is: what the heck does ‘organic cargo’ mean??”

Dipper scratched his head. “Questions 2 and 3 are basically the same question.”

“Forth question.” She continued. “What caused this ship to crash?”

“Well… I don’t know that either. None of the diagnostic logs seemed to give any clues… Even Granny Shifter’s log hazed over the issue…”

“Yeah. Well, fifth question…” She lowered her voice. “The guy we just ran into down here… Is he the real McGucket??”

Dipper’s eyes grew wide, and he looked back the way they came. “Uh… I don’t know… The shifter is still in stasis in Ford’s lab; I checked a couple days ago… But… Wait… Are you saying…?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. We know from her tube’s label that Granny Shifter was ‘pregnant’, but we don’t know with how many… And if they all survived for this long… Or if she had a whole batch of eggs, or mixed twins or something… They could have--!”

Dipper (being a mixed twin himself) was quick to correct her. “TMI!”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry… Just had to get that out there, though… There could be hundreds of them, dude. Cross our fingers and hope our mutual friend was a single child… But just saying.”

“Okay… Well… Well… If McGucket is the shapeshifter… Or a shapeshifter… It’s certainly done its reading, much more than last time… It knew Stanford and Stanley were routinely down here… It knew that we confronted the metal life yesterday… It knew McGucket’s taken to building himself robot trousers… Heck, it even knew he uses the word ‘scrabdoodle’!”

“Yeah, but… But…” Wendy said. “Okay, now I’ve got me paranoid: what’s your name?”

“Mason. Middle?”

“Blerble.”

They both sighed.

“Can’t keep doing this.” Wendy said.

“Yeah.” Dipper agreed. “Not knowing who to trust.”

“Totally.”

“…Let’s rendezvous with McGucket.” Dipper decided. “Then head down to the engine room and download more data for Ford… See if we can find any more clues about the crash… Then we get the heck out of here.”

“Okay… And when we leave, let’s head straight to McGucket’s mansion, and see if he’s there too. If he is, that means he either has super-speed, or this one is a fake… But for now, we just keep an eye on him, but don’t give him a single hint that we suspect him.”

“Good idea.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Twenty minutes later, not far from the blocked 43 entrance, they came around a corner and ran almost straight into the old man himself. He seemed to have changed significantly in the hour since they’d seen him; and not in a good way. It wasn’t his body, number of limbs, or eyeballs that had shifted, it was his mannerisms: he had an insane look in his eye now, a shaking in his hands, and he was on the verge of complete panic.

“EGAD!” He screeched when he saw the teens. “I don’t—I GEE! I WUZZIT?!? Who-who-who… Are yeh youuuu?!?” To their surprise, he reached into his overalls and pulled out an impressively large ray gun.

“WHOA!” Dipper yelped, fell on his butt, and raised his hands in surrender.

“Calm down there, bucko…” Wendy took a step back, and raised her hands too. “Whaddaya mean?”

“I saw… I saw…” He reached into his overalls again, and pulled out a beefy, steel computer. “I saw words!” He turned the screen toward them. “Words on a wall! Written in blood!” He explained, and read. “Loose mimic outside sector 8… No one to trust! That’s what it said, an’ I know it’s true! ‘Cause I done seen one! Years ago in Ford’s lab, an’ it mimicked PEOPLE! How do I know ya ain’t ‘em?!?”

Dipper and Wendy looked at each other. “We were about to ask you the same thing…” Dipper said.

McGucket gasped for air, and his eyes seemed to bulge out of his head. “I can’t… I’m the one doin’ the talkin’ and the askin’ here, Barney!!”

“Barney?” Wendy asked.

“Same gits fer you, Betty!” McGucket took several steps back, and his fingers closed around the trigger. “Yeh aliens… YEH ALIENS! Just up an’ give… Gimme my robopants and glue back!”

Wendy set the pants on the ground, and kicked them over without a complaint. Dipper did the same for the crate of adhesive.

“An’ raise yer hands!” McGucket yelped, as he reached down to put on the robo-pants (he seemed to have forgotten that their computer was still fried).

Dipper and Wendy didn’t move.

“AH SAID RAISE ‘EM!!” His gun was shaking as he gestured to their hands.

“Umm…” Dipper looked up at his raised hands. “They are raised…”

“ALL OF ‘EM!” McGucket was close to tears. “I kinuht deal with yer alien ways! Raise all yer other weird appendages and doohickies and thingums!”

“Dude.” Wendy told him. “Calm down.”

“YE ALL CALM DOWN!”

“McGucket, you’re not thinking clearly.” Dipper said, and took another step back. “We don’t have any more limbs to raise. Slow down…”

“Take a deep breath…” Wendy added.

“I’M WARNIN’ YEH!” McGucket’s shaking hands pointed the ray gun downward, and released a shot into the floor between them. The passage was instantly lit up by a bright green explosion, and a permanent mark was burned into the metal.

“WOAH!” Dipper jumped.

“GEEZ!” Wendy gasped.

“I’M SERIOUS!” McGucket yelled, and pointed the gun back at them. “I’LL SHOOT YEH ALIENS! GET OUT OF HERE! GO ON! GIT!”

“Okay.” Wendy said. “You win. We’ll git.” She began to retreat, with her hands still raised.

“STAY WHERE I KIN SEE YA!!”

“Okay.” She complied.

“Can we talk about this?” Dipper asked.

“NO, SHUT YER WORD-HOLE! YER GIST TRYIN’ TA TRICK ME!!”

“Okay. We’ll be quiet then.” Dipper agreed.

“WON’T TALK?? I WANT ANSWERS! START SINGIN’, BARNEY!” He pointed the gun at Wendy.

“What do you want?” Wendy asked.

He was crying now. “I wanna know me friends are safe…! What’d ye do with me friends…?? Yeh blasted aliens…”

“We are your friends.” Wendy said. “We’re human.”

“Human.” Dipper reached into his pocket, pulled out his knife, and made a small cut on the end of his finger. “Red blood.” He winced, and tried to remain calm as he showed McGucket the bright fluid. “Human.”

Wendy pulled out her own knife, and cut her own finger. “Red blood too.” She repeated, and showed him. “I’m human too. We both are.”

McGucket stared at them. “Yeh…” He sobbed. “Yer real…?”

“We are. We’re your friends.” Dipper said, pressing his self-inflicted injury into his vest to stop the bloodflow. “…We remember. Remember when we took down the blind eye together? We fought together with Soos and Mabel…”

“Soos…?”

“The fat one.” Dipper reminded him. “He taught you anime, remember? And found the dinosaur for the shack-tron?”

“Eh… Uh…”

“And Mabel.” Wendy said. “The lovely little girl who made us all sweaters? Remember her? We remember her too. Because we’re real. We know each other. We’re your friends.”

“We’re your friends, McGucket.” Dipper said. “We’re real.”

Slowly, a light seemed to dawn in the aged inventor’s eyes. The ray gun finally slipped from his fingers, and clattered noisily to a stop on the floor. Then he fell to his knees, clutched his heart with one hand, his head with the other, and began to weep.

“Me BRAIN!” He cried. “Me poor brain! I’m so sorry…! I’m so so sorry… I gist can’t even trust me own brain…” He gasped. “Me brain told me ta shoot ya! It told me… It told me ye weren’t who ye said… It told me yeh were in grave danger… Hurt or dyin’…  Yeh gotta un’erstand, I been havin’ odd nightmares… An’ they play with the little scraps of memories I can’t remember, an’ the gaps I haven’t filled… People mention things I don’t know, and tell me I was there… An’ people I care about seem ta die… Or do they…? Maybe that’s just the nightmares too… I don’t know, I gist don’t know… I’m so sorry… I’m SO SORRY!”

Dipper breathed a sigh of relief, and shared a glance with Wendy. “It’s okay.” Dipper told the old man. “It’s okay.”

“We forgive you.” Wendy said.

“I thought I fixed ye stupid gull-dang thing…” He pounded his skull with both hands. “Now yeh go an’ break again… Come on brain, yeh kin do it… Yeh kin do it… Just a few more decades, brain… Then yeh kin die and take a breather on God’s golden shore… But ye’ll get someone killed before then… Lord have mercy, ye’ll get someone killed…” And he kept crying.

“Come on man.” Wendy walked up to him, grasped the straps of his overalls, and lifted him to his feet. “It’s okay. We just have one more stop, and they we’re out of here, dude. This place is bad on the nerves anyway. Nobody should be down here alone… (Dipper, grab his blaster, will ya?)”

Dipper picked up the ray gun.

“Yeh… I never will again… Never again…” McGucket promised. “I’m so sorry for almost shootin’ you fellers…”

“Let’s talk about something else.” Dipper suggested. “How about sector 42? What was in sector 42, Dr. McGucket?”

“Eh… In 42… In 42, there was a dang-blasted enormous computer in storage… And some organic cargo that looked like mice… All in giant shippin’ containers… But… Everything was a mess.”

“Describe the mess. What did it look like? What caused it? Come on man, you can remember.”

“The…” McGucket hesitated as he thought. And as his mind drifted away from dark paths and back to the familiar grounds of science and technology, he seemed to relax. His shoulder’s lost their tenseness, and his breathing came easier. “All organic bodies in storage perished during the initial crash.” He began. “But when the metallic creatures breached the bulkhead into 42, they ignored any organic matter and started to attack the computer in storage. They consumed the main processor and solid-state data core first, making special preference to silicon chips and copper wiring, likely to supplement the iron and titanium diet easily acquired from the main hull. The security system attempted intervention, but was treated with extreme hostility. Several containment drones were disabled when captured subjects dug into their primary static-energy power core, although their saws were unable to mar the external silicate shell…”

“Hey, see?” Dipper said. “Your brain’s still fine, McGucket!”

“Eh…?”

“Yeah!” Wendy said. “Were you just listening to yourself talk, dude?? You know science and robots better than anyone on the planet! You’re still smarter than all of us, man! Where would we be without you?”

“Don’t be ashamed of your brain.” Dipper said. “You’ve got the best, McGucket.”

“But… But I still feel crazy sometimes… And I thought I fixed my brain… I guess… I guess it don’t take much ta break it again…”

“It’s fine, man.” Dipper told him. “I get it… Sometimes… Sometimes it seems like my body turns against me too.”

“Yeah, it does.” Wendy vouched for him. “His body turns against him ALL the time. He gets all itchy and sweaty just randomly.” Dipper frowned at this. “But it’s alright!” Wendy continued. “That’s what friends are for! To make up for what we don’t have. To be strong when we’re weak. Right?”

“Aww… Thanks guys.” McGucket nodded. “Thanks… Thanks fer lookin’ out for me…”

“You’re a friend.” Wendy said. “And that don’t change.”

“Never.” Dipper promised.

“Never…” McGucket rubbed his eyes. “Thank yeh. Thank yeh both…” And then, pulling his resolve together, he started down the passage back toward the engine room.

Once he’d gone on ahead outside whispering range, Wendy hissed down at Dipper. “I don’t know… Think he’s a shifter or not?”

Dipper watched their old friend for a few seconds longer. “…No…” Dipper answered. “He’s good.”

They reached the engine room.

“Ah! Ain’t she just a fine machine?” McGucket asked, gesturing to the massive pillars. A smile spread across his face, as he imagined this ship as it would have been in its glory days. “These engines kin play with gravity, play with physics, play with probability… My, it could get yeh gist about anywhere in the ol’ milky way in just a couple months, I reckon… Quite a fine piece a work, eh? I gist wish I coulda seen her in ‘er prime…”

“Well…” Dipper recalled one of the logs he’d seen the previous night. “You think you could get it working again?”

“Eh… I don’t know…” McGucket scratched his head. “I been a peakin’ and a ponderin’ this place fer a while now… An I think some of the engines might still be intact… But reactor 5 is the only primary power source left even close to intact, and I can’t figure how to work it… Ah well. Some other day, perhaps.” McGucket reached into his overalls and pulled out a homemade harpoon gun, so to climb back up the engine room to the ladder.

“Uh, actually…” Dipper put a hand on his shoulder. “When Stan and Ford were down here a couple days ago, they actually found a working control room… That’s where they got the data for your app! Wendy and I were going to get some more data… Maybe you’d like to see it? There could be a way to operate the reactor from in there…”

“Eh… Uh… Sure. We kin give it a quick lookie.” McGucket put away the harpoon, and followed them away from the ladder, and down deeper into the ship. They squeezed their way beneath the pillars, into, between, over and under some other machinery, and finally found themselves at an absurdly thick pair of blast doors. Wendy stuck a piece of alien metal into the crack, and levered it open. Then they turned on their flashlights to see past the darkness, and took a step through.

Dipper stopped after this first step, half in bewilderment, half in horror.

This really didn’t look like a ‘control room’ at all; it looked like a scene from a haunted house. There were alien bodies everywhere, all lying in various positions of pain, panic, or grief. But strangely, none of them were rotted. They weren’t skeletons, like there were elsewhere in the ship. These ones appeared mummified. Dried, flakey, shriveled, but WHOLE… As if they were instantly sterilized as they died, or as if they died by intense heat… Odd indeed… Dust and ash filled the room’s air with a dry, thick taste, and Dipper wondered if they were even getting enough oxygen.

As if the bodies weren’t enough, the screens, levers, knobs and buttons on the walls were almost entirely obscured by chaos. This chaos took the form of smears and stains and dust and scratch marks, but most of all, there was the graffiti. Every available surface was sloppily scrawled over with these various paints, in every conceivable color, size, and font. None of them were neatly written or orderly, and the handwriting was of a quality usually reserved only for distracted toddlers. It would be mesmerizing, if a train wreck was mesmerizing.

“OH MY!” McGucket put his hands to his head when he saw the bodies and graffiti, and turned to Dipper and Wendy with a horrified look. For a moment, he seemed as petrified as the bodies. “First time I ever been here… An… Oh my…”

“Yeah. Don’t worry.” Dipper said. “Everything’s dead… Been dead for a long, long time. They probably wouldn’t even make good zombies at this point.”

“I… I know... But…” McGucket said. “I can feel it…”

“Feel what?”

McGucket choked slightly. “Madness.” He whispered.

“Ooh.” Wendy frowned.

Her and Dipper’s eyes traveled up to the graffiti on the walls, suddenly curious.

“I can’t do it…” McGucket whimpered.

“Can’t do what?”

“Can’t take another step into this room…” His hands began to shake, and he pulled his computer out and handed it to Dipper. Then he pointed to the terminal at the far end of the room. “You have to download the data… I can’t… I… I have to wait outside…”

Dipper nodded, and began to step his way over the bodies and toward the back of the room.

As for McGucket himself, he left them there and rushed out. When he was alone, he knelt down on the metal floor, and began to pray earnestly for mercy. For he didn’t want to stand around and read words written in blood. He didn’t want to examine bodies, or poke and prod at buttons. He felt a darkness here. Some kind of evil, lurking to break into his soul. It was a feeling that seemed familiar from somewhere, although he could no more place the memory than he could explain it. All he knew was that he wanted to flee from it. He had had enough of this ship, and he wanted to get out. Get out immediately.

Back inside the control-room-turned-tomb, Wendy held up the tablet, and began to translate the graffiti. Dipper left the computer plugged into the terminal, and joined her to read:

-Every night I see it. Every day I live it: the pain the child of our greed will birth, as it lashes out indiscriminately at man, woman and child. Surely, some mortals are doomed sooner than others.

-For the wild men, for the reckless men, for the trapped men, for the hungry men; there now sits an advocate. He comes with glad tidings of doom and despair.

-All your sins lay naked before her. She sees your rotten center.

-All is meaningless under the sun. Soon it will end beneath the Earth.

-The Captain was told exactly what he wanted to hear.

-Terror levels holding at 39.72%. Projected 65.21% when they realize the nightmares are true.

-She completely eradicated them. Except for a juvenile, which followed after her like a confused child…

-They cut down the tree, and it fell into ice.

-There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Kill him before he kills you.

-Your child the monster will kill them all. Sacrifice yourself to sacrifice it to save them, why don’t you?

-Last night I dreamt of fools. They misused the ship, and it became their tomb. Do you ever get the creeping feeling that they’re you?

-The prophecy seemed far away, but finally we’ve reached the day. Give up the past. Embrace the strange. Everything you care about will change.

-ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ will be here.

They read carefully through these translations. And then read through them again.

“Man.” Dipper said. “Why do prophecies always have to be so vague?”

“I know, right?” Wendy agreed. “I feel like I’m reading evil fortune cookies… Why did they even write this stuff down?”

“Well.” Dipper guessed. “Granny Shifter’s log mentioned an ‘anomaly’ in the universe… And now here, we can see that the crew was starting to have… Prophetic, weird nightmares… And when you consider that all this happened a real long time ago… I think our suspect list is pretty short.”

“Hmm…” Wendy nodded, and a smile spread across her face. “You’re right.” She said. “I guess there’s really only one guy that… Fits the Bill.”

Dipper pondered this pun for several seconds. Finally, he nodded, and said. “That pun was terriBill.”

“Oh… Bill me later.”

“I suppose I’d better Billd up a tolerance.”

They both guffawed.

“Oh, too much… Anyway…” Wendy pointed at a few of the scribblings. “These just sound like ‘wil ol’ Billy, don’t they?”

Dipper laughed. “They do, don’t they? That whole ‘glad tidings of doom and despair’ especially… Just his type of humor…”

“Yeah… And that ‘embrace the strange, everything you care about will change’…” Wendy laughed when she said it outloud. “Man, check it out: it RHYMES when you translate it into English! It’s like he knew we would find it one day…”

“Woah, it DOES rhyme! Soooo creepy…”

“MAN I’m glad he’s dead! That was one twisted little nacho chip.”

“Agreed.” He nodded.

The computer chimed.

“Oh hey!” Dipper jogged over to it. “The download’s done!”

He began to sort through the files. All the logs and data records seemed very neatly organized and categorized… All except for one. One file was separate from all the rest, as if it were added to the system later. He opened it.

- My name is C*:C2M]~, and I am the last sane Engineer.

“The first and fourth letters of his name look a little like ‘C’s.” Wendy said. “Let’s call this guy Dr. Chuckles.”

“Fair enough.” Dipper agreed.

-After the crash, we barricaded ourselves in here, to try and keep out the radiation from the meltdown. If we open the doors, we die. If we keep them shut, I guess we just die slower. But in the end, the radiation is the least of our worries; instead, we fear the deeper things we cannot see: the bloodbath in the mindscape… My name is C*:C2M]~, and I’m sure that I’m the last sane Engineer.

-I’m not sure why the engineering team was affected so badly by the mind event. Maybe it’s our work so near the malfunctioning uncertainty drive; all kinds of improbable things start to happen around it. That machine breaks and reforms reality when it’s working RIGHT… I’m not qualified to even SPECILATE what happens when it’s working WRONG… I think this darkness might get very… Very… Interesting. My name is C*:C2M]~, and I’m reasonably confident that I’m the last sane engineer. At least the only one who can still write such lengthy notes…

-The men started having nightmares 63 days ago, and since then they have proven prophetic. They predicted the crash, they predicted our imprisonment in the control room, they predicted the Captain’s error… They even foreshadowed our own madness. All this means that we’re somehow in communication with something we don’t understand… Something highly… Weird. It may be improbable enough for the uncertainty drive to manipulate. Problem solver that I am, I will see what I can do against this weirdness… My name is C*:C2M]~, and I think I’m the last sane engineer… I honestly feel fine except for the extra eye growing inside my skull; the one looking inward…

-Based on readings from the sensors and from the nightmares, I can only conclude that we are in a most dire situation: A time anomaly will exist in the future. For reasons I can’t imagine, the local region on this planet seems to possess a potent improbability field, and this field will one day allow an enormous time-space paradox to achieve potential here. If left unchecked, or uncontained, this disruption could result in an ZK end-of-the-universe scenario, or at least a YK restructuring-of-reality scenario. Time readings seem to strongly indicate that the anomaly is intelligent, and certainly foreign to this dimension… I think I now have enough data to reprogram the uncertainty drive into a prison for our new god. The perpetual motion emergency generators will be able to keep it running until long after me… If I don’t take the deal, that is… My name is C*:C2M]~, and I might be the last sane engineer…

-But now I wonder: why would I activate the containment field? The anomaly is either trying to warn us… Or taunt us… Or humble us… Or overpower us as a god… I, for one, think it must be a jolly good friend… A most trustworthy individual… My muse has only ever told the truth… Why would I sleep when I can dream standing up? My name is C*:C2M]~, and I could once have been the last sane engineer…

-I dreamed an abomination of warping flesh was loose in the rest of the ship, sent to cull the unfaithful. However, I’m glad that ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ will be able to outsmart it. I’m sure they will be arriving soon… In fact, I foresee that they’re arriving NOW. Forget radiation; I think I’ll open the door, let them in, and introduce them to our friends! My name is C*:C2M]~, and I don’t quite believe in sanity anymore… What do you two think?

“Huh.” Dipper said.

“Huh.” Wendy said, and shook her fist angrily. “BIIIIILL…!”

“Wait.” Dipper frowned. “That’s not the end of the file… There’s more…”

-To whom it may concern: This is ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ.

-We came to this control room to permanently deactivate the ship, and remove the power control couplings for reactor 5 (so that its abilities and technology couldn’t become a weapon for our enemy, as the drones have.) However, we found the engine room exactly as you see it: C*:C2M]~ and his colleagues perished in a twisted sort of way. We don’t know what happened here, or what sort of external enemy or anomaly caused the disabling of their minds. However, it seems that, before he perished, C*:C2M]~ reprogrammed the uncertainty drive to combat this enemy, although he never activated it.

-We have activated it.

-I don’t know who would be reading this. But it doesn’t matter, the same applies: if you are in any way qualified to understand the anomaly, or how better to deal with this extreme threat, please come and talk with us. By now we will have fortified ourselves at the coordinates 156.33/27.81. If you require our help, or if you require the power control couplings for the last reactor, you know where to find us.

-Keep the uncertainty drive field active.

-ƉN::ᶌ and Ɖg@}Nᶌ were here.

“Betty and Barney again?” Wendy scoffed. “They sure get around, don’t they?”

“Wait, hold on!” Dipper scratched his head. “How did Betty and Barney get past the radiation? It was enough to fry everyone else instantly…”

“I don’t know, but check it out!” Wendy said. “The field must have been what kept Weirdmageddon from going global! I guess a lot of people owe Dr. Chuckles their lives…”

“No, they owe Betty and Barney their lives.” Dipper corrected her. “Dr. Chuckles was just a nutcase! I mean, did you listen to his ramblings? This guy went insane, started to think Bill was a friend, and then fried everyone! Like, seriously! This guy was bonkers!”

“Ha ha! Totally!” Wendy laughed. “At first he was all like ‘I’m the last sane engineer’, then he was all like ‘I think I’m the last sane engineer’, and then he was totally off the brink, and was all ‘screw sanity, I feel like a tan!’”

“Ha ha! Yeah…! Ranting and raving with the worst of them…”

“Just writing down more nonsense fortune cookie prophesies…”

From outside the control room, McGucket’s voice rang out. “You kids think right hard about it!”

Thinking their elder might be in trouble, Dipper and Wendy rushed out of the control room to come to his aid. But he wasn’t in trouble. He was just sitting on top of a large pipe, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth on his backside.

“Think right hard about it!” He repeated, turning to them. “Y’all’ve stumbled into matters too great for ya, hear?!? Insanity? Brain demons? Suicide? Prophecy? These are too dark for you kids!” He shook a finger at them. “You don’t understand them yet! I hear y’all laughin’ and jokin’ and pokin’ fun in there, but these AIN’T LAUGHING MATTERS!! Prophecy ain’t for laughin’. Bill ain’t for laughin’. Madness ain’t for laughin’. And most of all, those scriblin’s ain’t for laughin! Yeh should stay warry and aware! Because who knows? If thems really was prophecies, perhaps some of ‘em were written fer YOU!”

He stood up, and took a step towards them. “Kids, you’re right to be afeared! Listen to me, because when I was younger, I pursued these very things too deep! I took a step much too far! I dipped my mind in places no mind should be, and I uttered a prophecy of my own that day! I said ‘When Gravity Falls and Earth becomes sky, fear The Beast With Just One Eye!’ I said that! I don’t remember how or why, but I did! Yeh kin laugh at how vague it is, yeh kin laugh at how silly it sounds, but yer laughin’ don’t change that these are words to be heeded! Don’t you dare laugh at the mad alien engineer in there! Because if you laugh at him, you laugh at everybody else who ever tried to warn you! You laugh at everybody else who ever made a fool of themselves just trying to do right! You laugh at everyone who fate ever drove off the edge! Everyone whose precious brain was ever snatched from them! Everyone who died not understandin’ themselves…”

He shook his head. “That man didn’t do nothin’ funny… That man didn’t do nothin’ wrong… Ain’t his fault what happened, but… But he done the best he could… Eh… Kids, don’t laugh at the madman. The madman’s just like you ‘er me, ‘sept he don’t know what he doin’… Kids, you know me… I was the madman once… I un’erstan’ the madman…”

McGucket walked back to the control room, took a few trembling steps inside, and located the alien closest to the door: the one that had opened it, and let the radiation in. McGucket took off his coat, and laid it over this alien’s face. Then he bowed, closed his eyes, and crossed himself. “I respect the madman…” He said.

And they became a little sadder, and a little wiser.

The humans finally saw fit to leave. They crawled back up through the machinery, grappled back up the wall to the ladder, and ascended.

Soon they were standing in the light again. Wendy stood up, stretched her aching back, and took a deep breath of the fresh Summer air. McGucket blinked a few times as he adjusted to the sunlight, and listened to the chirping of birds. And Dipper cast one last look at the dark hatchway in the ground, and considered the ancient labyrinth below. Call it what you will: a shipwreck, an ancient secret, an alien saucer, a tomb… But the truth remains that there was a darkness there. He’d taken Wendy here on a whim, and now he saw his error: this wasn’t something to treat lightly. Never again would he go in without purpose.

Wendy’s mind, a little boggled and overwhelmed by the events of the day, just decided to enjoy the summer air for a while. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, and felt thankful that she lived on such a beautiful planet as this. Such a beautiful day, wasn’t it? Too bad the Captain and Dr. Chuckles and Betty and Barney never got to enjoy this planet. Too bad all they ever saw was the inside of that rotting, derelict husk of their vessel. Earth is nice… I’m sure they would’ve enjoyed it…

“Wait a minute!” Wendy said, turning to Dipper. “Betty and Barney said they were leaving the wreck, right??”

“Yeah, to set up ‘fortifications’…” Dipper remembered. “They gave some coordinates…”

“And those coordinates…” Wendy asked. “Where do they lead??”

Dipper did some quick calculations in his head, to convert the alien coordinates to human ones. “Uh…” He answered. “Not far… Wait a minute…” He pulled out his map, traced across a few lines, and his finger landed right where he’d hoped: the red outline he’d drawn to represent the Forest of Daggers. The coordinates led to somewhere inside.

“Well.” Dipper said.

“Well well well wellwellwell…” Wendy agreed. “Betty and Barney are now officially the most plot-relevant vandals I’ve ever met.”

Mabel came trudging up the stairs to behold an empty bedroom.

This struck her as odd. Shouldn’t Dipper be here to welcome her home from the hospital…?

Suddenly she remembered her phone. It had rung earlier, and that must have been Dipper. Her phone had been in her right pocket though, and since her right hand was covered in a bandage, she hadn’t been able to answer. Now, she realized she could just reach over with her left hand. “Silly Mabel!” She laughed at herself. “All pockets are for all hands! This is a non-discriminatory, hand-inclusive environment.”

She reached her left hand into her right pocket, and pulled out her phone. It was a group text to her, Stan, and Ford.

-Wendy and i r going 2 explore CSO for clues.

-Will b careful

-If not home by 6:00, come with guns!

She glanced at the clock. It was 4:30. Then she racked her brain. CSO…? What did that stand for? Cookies So Owesome? No, awesome has an ‘A’… Crowded Soap Opera? No, Soap Opera wasn’t Dipper’s thing… Cop-Summoning Octagon? Why would an octagon summon cops? Crazy Soup Orangutan? She’d always wanted one of those, but why would Dipper go to one for clues…? No wait! That’s it! Crash Site Omega! The alien spaceship Ford found! That was it!

Well, she hoped they were having fun. Half the movies that he and Wendy watched had alien spaceships, right? That must mean they thought they were cool, right? Maybe they even thought they were romantic… Maybe they would get in a relationship! No, Dipper already had a girlfriend… Well maybe he could dump her? It wasn’t working out so nice anyway… Oh, whatever.

Waddles came up behind Mabel and nuzzled her ankle. She bent down to hug him, and her mind drifted back to Juan, her mysteriously-teleported-away-and-now-missing pet. The little robo-kitten that had been such a dear part of her life this week… Only to have his own mom show up as a total jerk and try to saw down the house… And then the whole thing where they shot the mom and Juan thought she was dead, and then Juan sawed Mabel, got kicked by Stan, and disappeared in a flash of light…

Where are you now? Who took you away? Is your mom okay? Would he ever forgive us for how we treated you? Could you ever love me again? Juan, if only you knew I forgave you… She glanced down at her bandage. I don’t hold this against you…

As if in response to her thoughts, she heard a small scraping noise coming from her bed.

Her and Waddles both froze, and looked at the source.

Juan’s original containment box was sitting on her bed. The same one Wendy had used back when she first found him. The box was a military-grade steel ammo crate, and although Juan could cut through, he found it very difficult, so he usually didn’t try.

The noise had come from inside the box.

She approached it cautiously. It looked just as it was when she’d last seen it… But who put it on her bed? She thought she’d left it in the closet yesterday…

And why did it have a note attached to it? She bent over and examined the paper. The words had been typed instead of written, so there was no chance of telling the author by the handwriting. But the note said:

Enjoy the time you have with him.

Because it’s not right for him to stay here long.

Find a good place for him, Mabel. We believe in you.

Be wise and loving. Be his hero. Save his life.

Could it be? Could it BE? Mabel reached into the drawer on her bedside table, and retrieved a pair of leather gloves, just in case. Then she gently turned the box toward her, unlatched it, and opened the lid.

Juan stared back at her, alive and well.

She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but he was back. And that was all that mattered to her. He was safe. She removed the lid entirely. The robot huddled back into the far corner of the box, and timidly retracted his saws as far as they would go.

She reached in a glove to pet him. To let him know it was alright. That she still loved him, and that he didn’t have to feel sorry or afraid…

But did he?

Stan had wanted to kill him last time, after what he did. Same with Ford. And Dipper hadn’t tried to stop him. No, Juan was right to feel afraid. They might kill him if they knew he was back! That means… Mabel would just have to keep this a secret. It pained her to do so, especially against her own family, but it was the only way to keep Juan alive. She would have to keep him here and not tell anyone… Let him suck on the outlets when nobody was watching. Keep him safe in his box the rest of the time. Play with him when they were alone.

And as soon as possible, find that ‘good place’ for him… Whoever had saved him last night had trusted her, and her alone, with the safety and well-being of this creature.

And she accepted the challenge.

She turned toward Waddles, and shook her head. Waddles met her eyes, and snorted a vow to secrecy. It was nice having a friend who understood these grave matters. Even if that friend was a pig.

[edensgay]

The Proposal

The Proposal: A Joey Hudson Fanfiction

Relationship: Joey Hudson x OFC!Deputy PRE-FC5

Rating: All Ages!

Summary: Joey plans to propose to her girlfriend, not knowing that her girlfriend is planning on proposing to her.

Warnings: Gay! SO GAY! Do not read if you’re not okay with that. Cursing, mention of puke.

Word Count: 1,662

Author’s Note: What’s up I’m back with that gay shit. I keep seeing cute videos of double proposals so I had to do this. Also, please note that I know the girls in the aesthetic board are both very white. Maddy and Joey are not, this is just because I couldn’t find another picture that cute.

Joey had it all planned out, she’d woken up before Maddy and pulled the little black box out of her work boot. She wiggled Sir Testy out of her girlfriends grasp and proceeded to tie the ring onto his bandanna, setting him on a nearby shelf when she deemed him finished.

The stuffed frog rarely left their shared bed, when it did end up on the floor or somewhere else in the house Maddy would promptly find it and bring back to where it belonged. Joey’s plan was foolproof.

Little did she know that Maddy had gotten up two hours before and placed all their mugs in the dishwasher save for one a brand new mug she'd gotten just for today, in a scheme of her own.

Joey couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she made her morning coffee, she didn’t bat an eye at the sight of the lone brand new mug. Maddy had a penchant for buying pretty much every mug she laid her eyes on. Joey never complained, after all Madeline let her keep a massive collection of touristy and downright tacky beer pints.

She stepped outside and sat on their porch, sipping her coffee with barely contained glee as she waited for her girlfriend to wake up. The morning was quiet, save for a few chirping birds and the rustling of wildlife in the grass. Joey had a routine, every morning she would get up and have her morning coffee outside, basking in the Montana sun.

Maddy usually slept in late, or sometimes wouldn’t be home in the morning at all. She had bizarre hours, sometimes working for thirty-six hours straight and other times working only a typical nine to five. Her sleep schedule was inconsistent at best, which had made it hard for Joey to plan this.

It was just coming into spring, they’d been sleeping with their windows open so they could feel the fresh air, the sounds of crickets and other critters lulling them to sleep at night. The open windows allowed Joey to hear when her girlfriend started stirring, butterflies promptly taking flight in her stomach.

She downed half her cup of coffee, smiling at the words on the lip of the mug ‘Good Morning Beautiful.’ She chuckled to herself at her girlfriends antics, bouncing her leg up and down as she waited for Maddy to get her bearings, the girl was the furthest thing from a morning person. She listened intently, hearing her girlfriend swear as she stumbled and smacked into the bathroom doorway, just like every other morning.

A few more shuffling sounds and then she heard Maddy’s voice, “Babe? Have you seen Sir Testy?”

The butterflies in her stomach threatened to crawl out of her throat and spew themselves into the world. “No idea.” She replied, standing up and taking a deep breath, this was it.

A moment later she heard Maddy’s voice again “Oh! I found him.”

A long pause, Joey was sure she was going to puke from nerves. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pajama pants, shuffling the mug from one hand to the other as she gulped down the clean valley air.

“Joey?” Her voice cracked, coming out in a barely audible whisper. Joey almost didn't hear her over her heart beat thundering in her ears.

That was her cue, she pushed into the house, jumping as the door slammed behind her. She fidgeted as she headed towards the bedroom, stopping to glance at the thermos stat on the wall, wondering how seventy degrees could feel so hot. Pausing in the hall to get down on one knee she downed the rest of her coffee and was about to set it on a nearby shelf when she glimpsed words at the bottom of her mug, she held it up and squinted as she read the fine print.

‘Will you marry me?’

“Maddy?” Her girlfriends name came out as a soft squeak, as all the air in her lungs escaped with a whoosh.

She'd worried for weeks that Maddy would say no, she'd agonized over the right words to say and the right time to do it. Now, none of that mattered, Maddy was going to propose to her too. They chose the same day, same time to declare their love to each other.

Madeline came around the corner holding a little black box in one hand and Sir Testy in the other, her eyes wide and shining with unshed tears as she spotted Joey on one knee.

“Holy fuck.” She whispered, dropping to a knee in front of her girlfriend as they both stared at each other in awe.

Joey let out a nervous laugh, “What are the odds?” Her legs felt numb, as if she'd been sitting on the toilet playing candy crush for hours.

“This is so gay.” Madeline said giving her girlfriend a dazed smile, there may as well have been stars in her eyes as she took in the sight before her.

Joey knew that what she said didn't matter, Madeline was going to say yes. The heavy feeling that had been weighing down her chest since she picked up the ring dissipated, her over rehearsed speech forgotten.

“Madeline-Ann Reese, when I met you three years ago I made a complete ass of myself. I asked you how frequently you got stabbed, because I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t care what it was about, all I wanted was to hear your voice.” Joey did her best to keep her voice even, to keep the shakiness at bay.

Maddy let out a strangled sob, wiping her face with the back of the hand that she clutched the stuffed frog in as she listened to Joey’s words.

“Our first date I picked you up in my squad car because I still had two hours before I got off but I couldn’t wait another minute to see you. We got coffee and drove up to the Whitetails where we sat on the hood of my car and talked until two in the morning.”

Her voice cracked as she continued, her eyesight getting bleary with unshed tears. She leaned forward, taking the stuffed frog from her girlfriend, untying the ring from it neck with shaky hands.

“We were having a picnic, watching a meteor shower when you called me a ‘dumb space loving dweeb’ and asked me to be your girlfriend. Now, here we are. Proposing to each other at the same time, like a couple of fuckin’ dorks.”

The girl in front of her let out a garbled laugh, wiping at her tear stained cheeks.

“Will you marry me?” She held the ring out to her girlfriend, rose gold with a moonstone surrounded by four small diamonds.

“Josephine Hudson,” Joey cringed at the usage of her full name, knowing that Maddy only used it because she knew she could get away with it, “You’re the love of my life, there’s nobody else who’s snores I’d want to hear for the rest of my life.”

Joey laughed, blinking away a fresh wave of tears. If Madeline was less afraid of babbling she would have told Joey about how on nights when they couldn't fall asleep together she laid awake for hours, unable to sleep without the sound of her girlfriends snorts wrapping around her like a blanket.

“You feed my peanut butter addiction, and let me braid your hair even though I’m really bad at it.” She stopped to hiccup and wipe at the joy that stained her face in the form of tears once more.

“When we first kissed everything clicked into place, like you were what I’d always been missing. I’ve known that I wanted to marry you since you brought me a jar of peanut butter after you got off a 13 hour shift because you knew I’d been craving it all day.”

She pulled out the ring she’d gotten for Joey, a small swirling golden ring with a dainty leaf and a chunk of meteorite.

"You complete me, you're the piece I didn't know I was missing."

Both of their dams broke at the same time as they lunged for each other, crying as they shuffled to place the rings on their respective fingers. They toppled to the ground, holding each other and laughing as warm tears streamed down their faces. They laid on the floor of their hallway, whispering how happy they were to each other for an hour before they finally got themselves together.

Joey got up first, stumbling on shaky legs as she reached down to help her fiancée up. The two stood in the hallway holding onto each other in silence, both of them basking in the moment.

“Where did you get it?” Maddy asked, her arms wrapped around Joeys neck. She looked at her hand, admiring the dainty ring, she was fucking engaged. She had a fiancée, the realization hit her like a bus as she fought to keep a fresh wave of tears at bay.

“A few weeks ago when I went to lunch with my mom we went over to Missoula.” She explained, pulling Maddy suffocatingly close to her. Joey could hardly breathe but she didn't care, there was no possible way for her to be physically close enough to Maddy in this moment.

“I got yours on etsy.”

Joey froze, pulling away from her to give her an incredulous look. “Is that why you were being such a gremlin about the mail?”

She’d been awful, hovering around the mailbox like a fly around a particularly interesting piece of unattented food. Every time Joey got to the mail before her she’d snatch the mail from her hands and run into the other room to go through it before giving Joey her rejects.

“I wasn’t being a gremlin!”

Joey had it all planned out, what she hadn’t planned on was her girlfriend -now fiancée- planning on proposing at the same time.

[marbelmasnowshoe]

Forged in Flames (Part 3)

Three Years Later…

Marbelma’s light shined brightly as it traveled down her arms and into the end of her wooden hammer, before she slammed it against the draenei’s wooden shield.  After years of tutelage, not only was she stronger, faster, and a more adept fighter, but months of dedicated prayer, faith, and vindication paid off.  The Light not only manifested in her hands, but Marbelma found that it was strong with her.

She continued to hammer away on the other squire’s wooden shield until it finally shattered.  The young draenei woman cried in surprise as she fell over, the dwarf pouncing and jumping on her stomach like a trampoline, pointing the hammer into her face.  “I win.” she gloated.

“Well done, Marbelma.” Rhyliaandra congratulated from the sidelines.  She turned to the other Exodar Vindicator.  “Looks like your student still needs work, Jul.  She lost to an opponent half her size.”

Marbelma beamed with pride as she hopped off the draenei and hefted her hammer over her shoulder.  After the end of the War Against the Lich King, Rhyliaandra returned home to Azuremyst Isle, taking Marbelma with her, to continue the dwarf’s apprenticeship.  Marbles had a natural talent for combat.  Despite an obvious size disadvantage, she was able to overwhelm most of the other apprentice vindicators in sparring sessions though sheer fury.

But as the Lich King fell, a new threat had surfaced on Azeroth - literally.  Deathwing had broken out of his prison in Deepholm and tore the world asunder.  The situation got so bad, that many Alliance citizens flocked to the Exodar, seeking Prophet Velen’s council and guidance.  Velen was able to calm the situation before it got too out of hand - calming the humans enough to convince them to go home and face the new world wrought by this thing that was already being called “The Cataclysm.”

Marbelma burned.  The more she had heard over the last few months about events across Azeroth, the more she burned for action.  Entire regions hit hard by natural disasters.  New, unexplored territories revealed to the world.  A mysterious new threat, known as the Twilight’s Hammer, acting as Deathwing’s army, enslaving elementals and setting them loose on the world.

But what burned Marbelma most were the tales of renewed Horde aggression.  A new “Warchief” had risen to power and was deadset on making the world his.  His armies were tearing apart the ancestral home of the night elves, friends and allies to the draenei ever since they crash-landed on Azeroth.  They’d continue marching north, all the way to Teldrassil, and even to Azuremyst Isle unless someone stops them.

Rhyliaandra had made it clear to Marbelma that they were to wait until called.  Someone had to watch the homefront, after all.  But the thought of sitting here and waiting made her feel useless.

She hated feeling useless.  Helpless.  Cowering in a closet while the ones you cared about are slaughtered.  Marbelma vowed never again to hide and cower.

Roniaar trotted up to Rhyliaandra and Marbelma as they wrapped up their training session.  “Arkanon Poros, friends!” the shaman greeted.  “How goes the training?”

“Well.” Rhyliaandra curtly replied.  She always seemed to hold her brother in disdain, and Marbelma didn’t exactly blame her.  The dwarf had nothing against shamanism - Roniaar proved the effectiveness of elemental combat back in Northrend.  Rather, it was Roniaar himself that the dwarf was beginning to find grating.  The drinking, the womanizing, the horrible puns - the man was an unapologetic hedonist.  No wonder he chose the path of the shaman - he never would’ve cut it as a paladin.

“Well, I’ve got some news - you’ve been summoned to battle.” Roniaar said as she handed his vindicator sister a scroll.  As Rhyliaandra took the scroll and read it, Marbelma could barely contain her excitement.  Finally!  Back on the front lines!

“Where we goin’?” Marbelma asked.

“Somewhere that isn’t too far from here.” Roniaar replied.  “Mount Hyjal.  The druids there have created a portal into the Firelands and are preparing to defeat Ragnaros the Firelord once and for all.”

Ragnaros?  Wasn’t he the one the Dark Irons worshipped?  Marbelma would get to kill the god of a hated enemy of the Bronzebeard clan?  Sounds good to her!

“It says here we’ll be with the rear guard.” Rhyliaandra said.  “It will fall to us to protect Hyjal from counterattack by Ragnaros’s forces?”

“Indeed.” Roniaar replied.

“Rear guard?” Marbelma asked, a little disappointed.

“Don’t worry, Marbles.  The fire elementals’ counterattacks have been vicious.  There will be no shortage of action on either side of the portal.” Roniaar explained.  He smiled.

“In fact, you could say the situation up there is really heating up.”

Marbelma and Rhyliaandra both groaned.

One trip to a mage and a portal later, the three of them arrived on Mount Hyjal.  Marbelma strained her neck looking up and up and up at the world tree, Nordrassil.  It lived up to its title, being perhaps the single tallest thing she had ever seen.  There was little time to sight-see, however, as the two draenei hopped atop their elekks and began their long march down the mountain road, with Marbelma riding along with Rhyliaandra on her elekk, which was more heavily armored than Roniaar’s.

Through the Circle of Cinders, past the Shrine of Goldrinn and the Grove of Aessina, before finally arriving at the Sanctuary of Malorne, the makeshift base of operations for the Guardians of Hyjal.  Night had fallen, but it was already time to go to work.  The three of them were told to head into the regrowth and rescue as much wildlife as they could from the encroaching fire elementals.

Not since Northrend had Marbelma seen Rhyliaandra leap into action, cutting down the fiery spirits with the Light’s wrath.  Roniaar was no slouch either, calling upon the powers of the wind to snuff out the flames.  The two draenei siblings shepherded the fleeing wildlife out of the forest and towards the Sanctuary of Malorne.  Marbelma saw everything from tiny little squirrels to majestic stags to mighty grizzly bears, all fleeing before the advancing flames.

She stayed mostly to the sidelines.  Officially, her job was to watch the elekks, but she suspected the great beasts were watching her just as closely.  It didn’t take her long to develop an admiration for the strange-looking beasts that hailed from the draenei’s old home, Draenor, before the Horde came and ruined everything for them.  Seemed like the Horde ruined everything for everyone.

And yet…

In the distance, she could spot Horde.  They were fighting fire elementals too - brutish orcs and crafty blood elves fighting alongside noble humans and nature-loving night elves.  She didn’t know how to feel about it.  On the one hand, she supposed the Guardians of Hyjal could use all the help if could get and it was nice to see those damn savages making themselves useful for once.  But the Alliance and Horde were at war, weren’t they?  Why the truce?

Once the two draenei came over for a break and sharpen their weapons, Marbelma asked them just that.  “Simple - it’s because both Alliance and Horde realize that there’s BIGGER things to worry about.” Roniaar answered.  “Which, at the moment, happens to be an invasion of angry fire people.”

“Yes, it’s always SOMETHING, I’ve noticed.” Rhyliaandra scoffed.  “First it was demons trying to open a gateway in the sunwell.  Then it was undead up in Northrend.  And now it’s an army of cultists and elementals lead by a mad dragon aspect.  Why must we cease our crusade against the Horde every time a so-called ‘greater threat’ emerges?”

“Because the greater threat is usually exactly that - a [i]greater[/i] threat.” Roniaar argued.  “Being more concerned with the Horde than with this is like being more concerned with a stain on your shirt than your house on fire.”

“But it [i]keeps happening.[/i]” Rhyliaandra seethed.  “Don’t you get it?  Every truce we forge is nothing more than a delay of the final blow.  I grow weary of this endless stalemate between Alliance and Horde.  Why don’t we just finish it already?”

“Well, Deathwing is the one who’s insisting on interrupting our little war with his campaign to destroy the world.  So, if you’ve got a problem with the truce, take it up with him.” Roniaar said.

“It doesn’t surprise me that you would advocate working with those creatures.” Rhyliaandra growled.

“Uh, guys?”

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?” Roniaar asked.

“Bad enough you practice shamanism, an orcish magic, but you actually WORK for those monsters.” Rhyliaandra accused.

“We’ve been over this, Rhyli - I don’t work for the Horde, I work for the Earthen Ring.  Big difference.”

“Semantics!  How could you work with those green-skinned fiends?  After everything they’ve done to our people!  To all the Alliance!”

“Guys.”

“Because I don’t waste time dwelling on the past, Rhyliaandra.  Hating the Horde isn’t going to bring back mother and father.”

“Well, working with the Horde won’t bring [i]her[/i] back either, Roniaar.”

“Who’s her?”

“Oh, I think you know who.  Did you really think that I wouldn’t - “

“Guys!”

“What?!” the two draenei shouted at Marbelma.  The dwarf pointed over to a particularly large fire elemental burning its way through the forest in the distance, sending dozens of beasts and critters running for cover.

“We can discuss this later.” Roniaar said as he hopped atop his elekk, Rhyliaandra hopping atop hers and carrying Marbelma with her.  A snap of the reigns and the two large beats stampeded their way into battle with all the confidence that came with being a ten thousand pound mammal.

Rhyliaandra’s elekk crashed into the hulking elemental while Roniaar’s chose to circle around as the shaman blasted the creature with bolts of lightning.  The elemental roared as it directed its fury towards the two upstart draenei.  Marbelma, no longer content to simply stay on the sidelines, took the risk of heading in closer to the action.

In her eagerness however, she tripped on something.  She fell to the ground hard and looked over at what had tripped her.  A branch, maybe?  A root?

It was a corpse.

She had tripped on the talon of a charred hippogryph corpse.  She gasped as she saw what the flames had done to the once-majestic beast.  She saw many hippogryphs used by the Argent Crusade during the Argent Tournament, and she always thought they were beautiful animals.  Her heart wept to see one like this.

But how did it die?  Hippogryphs should be the ones most capable of escaping the flames, what with the flying and all.  She looked around spotted her answer - a nest, high up in the tree above her.  This hippogryph must’ve been a mother, unwilling to abandon her eggs, even in the face of this inferno.

She cast a glance over to Rhyliaandra and Roniaar, still fighting the massive elemental.  They were holding their own well enough - she’s seen them both fight off worse.  They hardly needed her help.  She was just a squire, after all.

But a squire can still climb a tree.

You wouldn’t think of dwarves as being able climbers, with their stout physiques and all, but that’s because you’ve never seen one climb a mountain before.  Climbing was an essential skill just for day-to-day survival up in the peaks of Dun Morogh.  So this tree posed little challenge to Marbelma, even if it was a little on fire.

Marbelma finally reached the nest and saw the prize - a single, lonely egg.  It was surrounded by the busted shells of its siblings, little baby hippogryph corpses still in them.  This egg was lucky enough to still be intact.  Marbelma reached out for it, and grabbed it.  It was hot to the touch, but she could handle a little heat.  She stuck the egg in her backpack and began to climb down.

And that’s when she noticed the fire elemental staring her down.

Somehow, it had stomped over without the young dwarf hearing it.  She panicked and looked around.  Where was Rhyliaandra?  Or Roniaar?  She spotted them fighting off a pack of those fire snake things.  Where did those guys come from?

“You…” the elemental said in a booming voice.  “Are a child of fire…”

“What?!” Marbelma asked.

“The Rage of the Firelands burns within you…” it said slowly.

“What are ye on about ye overgrown pilot light?!” Marbelma shouted, hoping that an insult will mask her terror.

“Embrace your destiny, as your kin have…” it said.  “Serve the Firelord…And all those who have wronged you will burn…”

Marbelma growled.  “I don’t even know what yer talkin’ about, but I’ll never join you!  I’m a paladin!  And a paladin never joins the side of evil!” she shouted at the creature.  She left out the part that she was only a squire.  It didn’t need to know that.

“Then burn…” The elemental said as it raised up a huge fiery fist.  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning from above struck the elemental in the face.  Marbelma looked up and saw Roniaar, riding atop his wind drake - a strange sort of dragon that the shaman somehow acquired in the Throne of Four Winds a few months back. 

“Hold on, Marbles!” Roniaar cried as he conjured a torrent of wind to lift up Marbelma from the tree and carry her a safe distance.  “Head back to the Sanctuary!”

As she landed safely on the ground, she saw Roniaar’s drake dart around the elemental’s head as he continued firing lightning bolts at the massive creature.  What was that thing even talking about, calling her a “child of fire?”  She didn’t know.  All she knew was that it wasn’t safe here.

She looked inside her bag, satisfied that the hippogryph egg was still whole and in one piece.  She smiled.  She saved a life today, at least.  No doubt Rhyliaandra will give her a good lecture about it once the fighting subsides, but it’ll be worth it.  She closed the pack and ran for the Sanctuary of Malorne as fast as he little dwarven legs could carry her.

[benjamingarden]

This Month On The Farm: December 2020

  And just like that December is over.  Happy new year to all of you!  2020 was a bit of a crazy ride but all-in-all, for us, it was quite alright.  While we didn't have a great year financially, we really can't complain.  We learned that we could tighten our already tight financial belt even more.  With that it ensured our bills are paid, we have food in our pantry and freezers, the animals are very well taken care of, our business survived, and we had more time to spend on things we weren't finding time to get done in previous years.  

Please know that I am not trying to be insensitive to those who had tragic outcomes in 2020, rather, we are trying to focus on what went well for us.  On that same note I am super grateful we had made the decision not to move our business off of our farm so our overhead was limited.  We had struggled with that decision since we started the business and just about a year and a half ago made a final decision that we would not grow the business any larger than what we could handle ourselves in the space we've got.  

the mound on the left of this photo is my Jeep Grand Cherokee....

Well, Jay had been complaining that it didn't feel like Christmas a couple of weeks prior.  He said that because we didn't have snow he just wasn't feeling it.  Sooooo....I blame him completely for the 3 feet that were dumped on us shortly before the big day.  Yup - he is the one you can blame as well if you'd like.  It took a full 2 days to complete our snow removal - paths, deck, porches, and roofs and, since he does most of it, he was exhausted by the time it was done.  Of course he didn't much appreciate my singing of Christmas songs as we suited up to head outside for each round of shoveling or snow blowing.  Clearly he doesn't always appreciate my enthusiasm or talents.

Christmas was quiet, as it was just the two of us and the critters, so I made some special meals and treats to celebrate the day.  We basked in the hum and warmth of the pellet stove, binge watched the new season of Virgin River on Netflix, drank mugs of hot cocoa with extra marshmallows, and enjoyed a peaceful and relaxing day together.

And then Saturday I deemed a "no cook" day.  We had simple breakfasts, leftovers for lunch, and frozen pizza for dinner.  I did throw chicken wings in the air fryer for Jay's dinner as well, but it's no more difficult then throwing frozen pizza in the oven.  It was perfect.

Oliver & Jackson -  Let's start with updates on Mr. Oliver.  We took him to his consultation for alternative treatments to help keep him comfortable with his multiple herniated discs.  First, let me tell you that he had to finish up a round of a steroids in December and I am SO HAPPY it's over.  My goodness that boy was constantly starving!!  Steroids increase hunger and thirst and if he wasn't ravishingly hungry he was drinking a ton.  My day was spent feeding him, filling up his water bowl, and taking him out to go to the bathroom.  Repeat.  I also decided after the first morning of his poor bladder being so incredibly full he was clearly uncomfortable, that I would get up at 2a.m. every night to take him out to pee.  I did this until that darned steroid was out of his system.  I felt so bad for him.  He absolutely will not go potty in the house so he holds it despite the discomfort it causes.

His doctor decided that acupuncture and laser therapy were not necessary as of yet, so we purchased a therapy loop that she recommended to give him electromagnetic therapy at home.  She's hoping this will help keep the inflammation down for a while.  Eventually we will add in the other 2 therapies when needed.  He also has some stretches we do daily to keep his little body limber. 

He is not allowed to run, jump, etc. and we are keeping his walking to a minimum which is what the remainder of his life will be.  He is happy, seems to feel pretty good (we have to hold him back from trying to run, jump, etc.), and takes nice long naps so all seems to be well at the moment.  He will turn 11 in January and I think he's definitely feeling his age.

And then there's Jackson.  Actually, he's doing well.  He's the same - bratty but handsome, and is still loving his new routine of going to bed in his very own bedroom.  He LOVES taking his Rescue Remedy every night.  I have no idea why.  I do have to make sure the room is always "Jack-proofed" because he gets into anything and everything during his 7-8 hours of alone time.

In The Coop - We have EGGS!!!!  Jay is so happy.  Although we aren't getting many, at least we are getting an egg or two each day as of a week ago.  He's still rationing his use since he's not fully confident we will get them daily, but that will change soon I'm sure.

The Coop Girls are doing well.  They dislike the colder temps and absolutely detest that beautiful white snow.  When we leave their coop open they get so excited to run out and that lasts all of about 3 minutes.  Once they realize that there is snow everywhere except for their coop they return to their outdoor coop.  There's usually a lot of chatter after this is attempted each morning.  I suspect it's a bit of disappointment being shared amongst the flock.

Whole Wheat Honey Oat Bread

In The Kitchen - I've been making this recipe for Whole Wheat Honey Oat Bread (by King Arthur Flour) and we've been enjoying it.  If you happen to have any maple sugar lying around it is perfect in this bread.  I substitute out most of the white a/p flour with white whole wheat flour but other then that I follow the recipe exactly.  It's a fairly dense, sweet, and moist loaf that is perfect for morning toast or a sandwich where a slightly sweet bread would work.

I also made up a few batches of bean burgers (using 3 different recipes as guides) to store in the freezer for quick meals.  And as a surprise snack one day I made a batch of DELICIOUS Honey Butter Popcorn (it's good with or without the nuts).  If you add a touch of salt it's almost like a kettle corn (without the nuts) or cracker jacks (with the nuts) but not cloyingly sweet.  I altered it slightly by using a non-dairy butter and about 10-12 cups of popped popcorn (it calls for 6 cups) so it wasn't too sweet.  It was good even days later.

I also discovered a recipe for vegan Amaretti Cookies.  They are gluten free as well but the recipe does use refined sugar.  They are really good.  My husband (the anti-vegan) loves them.  After he ate 2 I told him they are almond flour and aquafaba.  After explaining what aquafaba was he said "why did you have to go and tell me there's chickpeas in my cookies???"  (Of course aquafaba is the chickpea cooking liquid not the beans, he was being dramatic)  I told him because I'd promised that I will always tell him what's in food he tries and never hide ingredients.  But I tell him AFTER he's tried the recipe of course!  😁  (p.s. mine look more like snowball cookies because they didn't crack but they were still delicious!)  He ate quite a few more over the course of a couple days and has requested them for this week's dessert.  So I guess he likes them!

What I've Been Reading - I haven't read as many books over the past month but I did read a few good ones. (affiliate links)

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman - this was a very different book for me to read but it was written so incredibly well.  A word of caution that it does deal with child abuse but it really is brilliant.  It's tragic, sad, funny, and enlightening.

The Twelve Dates Of Christmas: A Novel by Jenny Bayliss - apparent from the title it's a rom-com and a very well written debut novel.  I really liked the main characters and the little twists and turns of the story which is set in England.

The Clause In Christmas: A Poppy Creek Novel by Rachael Bloome - honestly, I really didn't think I would like this book.  I guess I thought it would be a bit too cheesy.  Quite surprisingly I enjoyed it (not cheesy at all).  It was light, the events were predictable, but I liked the characters and the storyline and it was a fun read.  It's the first of a series of five.

That's what happened around here in December!

This Month On The Farm: December 2020 was originally posted by My Favorite Chicken Blogs(benjamingardening)

[dragonasheswrites-blog]

The Heaven We Didn’t Choose, Chapter 19: In Which Piracy is Encouraged

...But no one seems to mind.

First: Chapter 1: In Which a Child Makes a Friend

Previous: Chapter 18: In Which Sans Has a Heart

Next: Chapter 20: The Trouble With Paperwork

Click here for the story overview.

Sans came back to reality feeling disoriented and he automatically tensed.  Pain was what woke him, and for a long moment that was all he could focus on.  Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, he took stock of what was making his bones scream at him.

His injured arm felt like it had been shattered, which sent a pulse of fear through his soul.  A quick glance down confirmed that it was still only fractured, but the sight of the injuries seemed to only increase the pain.  He hissed, trying to find some way to release the tension that wouldn’t bring Boss to his door.

It helped - a little - and he fought to focus on something else instead.  Why was he injured?  Why was he so sore?  Slowly, memories of the fight trickled back.  The kids, the cops, Undyne.  The damn dogs that ran off without a second thought.  The alleyway…

The cat was mewling softly when he rolled over to examine it, looking a bit more wobbly than it had earlier.  Abruptly, he realized that neither he nor the cat had eaten dinner.  From its size, the cat was probably pretty young; babies needed to eat regularly, if he remembered correctly.

He pulled himself upright with a grunt and slipped his jacket on.  It was still damp, and smelled awful, but it was a layer of protection.

The clock in the kitchen confirmed that he’d only been asleep for about two hours.  He was feeling it in every bone of his body.  He felt heavy and light at the same time, and he wondered idly what would happen if he just collapsed.  Would he float, caught between the two odd sensations?  Probably not, his logical mind concluded.  He’d just tip over like an idiot and jostle his already-aching bones.

There was still some canned food in the cupboard, and Sans scanned the labels.  Cats were carnivores, right?  He thought back to the few times he’d encountered Mettaton’s torture assistant, a cynical and depressed cat monster.  A hazy memory of the guy removing the bun and pickles from a burger tickled the back of his skull.  It was unusual that any monster would turn his nose up at food, so the incident had stuck with him.

Hopefully surface cats acted on the same principle.  There was a can of shredded chicken in the back of the cupboard; he grabbed it and, after a bit of quiet shuffling through the shelves, an old clamshell takeout container that Boss had insisted on washing.  He filled one half with water, then carefully made his way back to his room.

The cat was extremely grateful for the water, which Sans found surprising considering it had nearly drowned just a few hours before.  He let it do...whatever it was doing with its tongue (flicking water into its mouth?  It looked inefficient) while he wrangled the canned chicken open one-handed.

Thankfully, the chicken didn’t have any weird flavorings.  He was fairly certain that it wasn’t the healthiest thing to feed a cat anyways, but it was that or starve.  He carefully dished out some smaller pieces onto the empty half of the container and set it beside the water.

Almost immediately, the food was gone.  Sans reluctantly took a few more lumps and plopped them onto the lid.

“That’s all ya get,” he grumbled.  “I’ve gotta eat too.”

The cat responded with a plaintive meow, indicating its displeasure at being cut off.

“What?  I don’t even know how you’re eating all that.  You actually have a real stomach, doncha?  Isn’t it full by now?”

Another meow.

“Shhh.  If ya wake up Boss, we’re both out on our asses.  You feel me?”

He finished up his portion of the chicken quickly, not really tasting it.  His arm was starting to heal as his body converted the food into magic, but it was a slow process.  He considered asking if Tori had some time to look at it; he hadn’t properly talked to her in months, since before he’d started watching Att...her.  The last time he came close to visiting was when he dropped off Frisk’s Christmas gift, and he’d just left that on her front porch.  Who knew what she thought of that.

On second thought, he could probably power through it.

“‘Kay, then.  I’m gonna head back to bed for a few hours.  You good in the box?”

The cat blinked at him.

“...I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

He rolled over carefully, taking the pressure off his injured side, and tried to sleep.

“SANS”

“Whazzit?”  Had he slept at all?

“WAKE UP THIS INSTANT AND TURN YOUR ALARM OFF!  ALSO, DO NOT THINK I HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT LAST NIGHT!  BE PREPARED FOR PUNISHMENT WHEN YOU RETURN THIS EVENING!”

Loud footsteps echoed down the hallway, and Sans’s soul sank.  There went his plan of avoiding Boss.

He sat up carefully and turned his alarm off.  He’d gotten so used to waking up at a certain time that he’d been getting up before his alarm even went off lately, which was useful but flat out annoying.  Apparently the night before was enough to throw his sleep schedule off.

A soft cry from the corner of the room brought his attention back to the cat.  Sure enough, it had made some kind of icky sticky mess on his shirts; just as well that they’d be tossed in the wash.

“Ya good in there, bud?”

The cries paused for a moment, then resumed.

“I, uh, don’t speak cat.  ‘M not sure what ya want.  Are ya hungry?  Thristy?  Throw me a bone here.  Heh.”

The cat didn’t speak any language Sans knew, but it apparently recognized when his attention was on it.  Its noises changed in pitch and frequency to the point where Sans half-expected Boss to come storming up the stairs to investigate the racket.

“Okay, okay.  Shhh.  Shhhhhhh.”  He picked it up and ran his phalanges over the impossibly soft fur.  This calmed the creature a little, enough that its noises weren’t quite so high-pitched and distressed.

“I tell ya what.  If you can keep quiet 'til I get out the front door, we can raid the hot dog stand supplies for breakfast.  How’s that sound?”

The cat made a few little mruph sounds that he took as agreement.

Boss had already headed out for the day by the time Sans made his way downstairs, which was helpful.  He had to set the cat down to pull his shoes on, which prompted more crying, but it stopped when he settled it back into his jacket.  He decided to leave the zipper alone; the little critter didn't like being restrained.  The way it was sitting didn’t exactly look comfy to him, but the cat was purring again.  It felt strangely nice against his bones.

The walk to the hot dog stand was worse than usual.  The cold rain had turned to snow sometime in the night, and his usual path along the side of the road was obscured by a light dusting of white.  He could feel the ache in his bones from the fight the night before with every step, and halfway there the cat decided it liked the cold even less than it liked being confined and had retreated further into the jacket.

It was a relief when his stand was set up and he could finally settle his bones onto his stool.  The cat, interested by the fun smells, popped its head out to explore.

CLANK CLANG KA-CLANK CLANG CLANG

...And immediately retreated as far back inside his jacket as it could manage.  Sans peered in the direction of the noise, a genuine smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  “Heya, GD!  Want some breakfast?”

Greater Dog bounded up, slobber flying everywhere as he panted excitedly.  *YESYESYES,* he barked.  *WANT WARM PUP TREAT FOR BREAKFAST PLEASE.*

“One hot dog for a cool dog, comin’ right up.”  He dressed the ‘dog up the way he knew GD liked it: a few generous slices of cheese, some bacon crumbles, and a bit of steamed mustard greens.  (He’d been testing new ‘healthy’ toppings a year or so back, and while most of them were total flops the dogs really liked the mustard greens.  Since they couldn’t eat most of what he served, he kept it on the menu.)  “There ya go, big guy.  Bone appetite!”

Greater Dog barked a laugh and took the ‘dog with one large prosthetic hand.  *THANKS, FAVORITE BONE BUDDY.  LOOKS GOOD.  GOOD FOOD.  GOOD GOOD GOOD.*

“Glad it suits you.  Hey, don’t forget to pay again, yeah?  I’d give you all the ‘dogs you want for free, but I get in trouble when I don’t come home with cash.”

The dog whined an apology, then disappeared into his suit.  A moment later, he re-emerged and spat a few gold coins onto the counter.

“Thanks, buddy.”

*BONE BUDDY HAPPY?  GREATER DOG HAS BEEN GOOD BOY??*

Sans sighed.  “Yeah, you’ve been a good boy.  C’mere, big guy.”

Greater dog leaned forward, his metallic suit half-splayed across the counter of the hot dog stand.  The wood creaked under his weight, and he adjusted so he wasn’t in danger of collapsing the poor booth.

“Yer a good boy, GD.  A real good boy.”  Skeletal fingers scratched behind the dog’s ears, past the scruff of his neck, and around the sides to that spot up under his chin where he could never seem to reach properly.

Finally, after a small eternity of petting, Greater Dog sat up.  *PATROL, NOW,* he barked, ears drooping.  *NO TIME FOR MORE PETS.  SAD.*

“Hey, you’re filling in for Dogamy on patrol tonight, right?”

*YES.  DOGAMY HOME WITH PUPS.  PUPS GOOD.  PUPS NEED PROTECTION.*

“Cool.  I’ll see you then, ‘kay?  I’ll be at my usual station.”

Greater Dog whined.  *WILL MISS BONE BUDDY.*

“I’ll miss you too, GD.”

The dog licked the hand that had been petting him, then tensed.  *WHAT?  CAT?  BONE FRIEND HAVE CAT?*

“Uh...yeah?”

*CAT GOOD!  CAT FRIENDS FUN!  CAN CHASE!*  He leaned in closer.

The cat tucked inside Sans’s jacked hissed and made another rather poor escape attempt, thwarted by the fact that it didn’t quite know its way around.  Sans huffed at the unusual feeling of something furry clinging to his spine with tiny claws.  “Not this one.  I found it last night.  It’s just a baby, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.  It’s, uh…” he looked up at Greater Dog.  The dog’s eyes were bright with excitement, every muscle in his fluffy body tensed with the thrill of the hunt.  None of this was getting through.  “It’s...shy?”

*SHY NOT FUN,* he huffed.  *IS SECRET?*

“...Yeah.  Please don’t tell B...uh, Papyrus.”

*WILL KEEP BONE FRIEND’S SECRET.*  He whined.  *WILL MISS BONE FRIEND.  WILL SEE BONE FRIEND SOON.*  He barked a quick *HELLO, GOOD BYE, PATROL NOW* at something behind him and bounded off, enthusiasm barely waned.  Which was odd; GD didn’t like many people, but Sans couldn’t be bothered to care.

He was about to put his head back down for a much-needed nap when his eye sockets caught the person who’d been standing behind Greater Dog.  Someone he didn’t think he’d see again in...well, ever.  “...Uh…”

“Hi, Mr. Sans!”  Attie called, waving enthusiastically.  “I was going to come get a breakfast hot dog and tell you hello, but I didn’t want to interrupt Mr. Greater Dog’s petting.  He really likes petting, right?”

“Y-yeah, he sure does.”

“I know.  He sometimes lets me pet him outside his armor, but only when he’s security for me and Mommy.  If he has other jobs, he doesn’t let me.”  She pouted a little.

“Hey, uh, where’s yer mom?  Isn’t someone supposed to be watching you now?”  That was the rumor, anyways.  If Frisk had gotten sick again...

“Mmm-hmm.  She’s coming in a minute.  She’s prob’ly talking to somebody.”

Some part of Sans was screaming that he was being creepy, but he couldn’t stop looking at her.  He hadn’t seen her in...gosh, over a month.  44 days, to be exact.  It had been two weeks and five days since Frisk followed him home, and it had been three weeks and five days between that incident and Boss slipping Attie out in the middle of the night.

There was a strange sensation in his throat, a tightness he wasn’t used to.  It didn’t feel like strangulation - like when Boss lifted him by his collar - but more like there was something stuck there, in his vertebrae.  It was uncomfortable.  The sensation distracted him from the prickling in the corners of his eye sockets that he was far too familiar with; he blinked rapidly to avoid embarrassing himself.

“Are you okay, Mr. Sans?”

“Y-yeah.  ‘M fine.”

She bounced on her toes, making her shoes light up.  Those were the ones she’d told him about on one of the first days he’d watched her, he realized.  They did indeed have pink flowers on them, with little lights that flashed from their centers.  He wondered if that was a human invention or if she’d somehow charmed the mad Royal Scientist into making her customized shoes.  He thought about anything he could to distract himself from the fact that he’d remembered something, something small from almost two months ago, and that meant his mind wasn’t falling to pieces just yet.

Attie was dressed in a puffy white jacket with faux fur lining the hood.  On her hands were mittens, knitted in a pattern he recognized; Tori must have been busy since he last saw her.  The edges of her sleeves were stained in browns, greens, and reds.

She looked just like any other little girl.  Nothing about her appearance indicated that she was the daughter of the Ambassador of Monsters, that she had any security presence at all.

He felt it, though.  The glow of Frisk’s protective wards - much stronger now that she was recovered - was apparent in every bounce of her daughter’s feet.  There were few weapons wielded by humans or monsters that could touch someone with that much protection, and anyone stupid enough to try would be in for more than one nasty surprise.

“I don’t think you’re okay,” Attie said.  “You just keep looking at me funny and you haven’t even said ‘hello’ or ‘how are you.’  Are you gonna be a asshole again?”

“Not tryin’ to be.  So, uh, hello, Attie.  How are you?”

“I’m doing real good!  Um, really well, I mean.  How are you, Mr. Sans?”

“I’m, uh, okay.”

“Undie said you were in a big fight last night.  Is that true?”

“Yeah…?  I didn’t know she’d talk to you about that…?”

“She didn’t.  She told my mommy when she stopped in for a quick meeting while she thought I was getting dressed.  Mommy said we could come have breakfast hot dogs and make sure you’re okay, just in case.”

“Uh...cool?  Yeah, I’m in one piece.”

She looked expectantly up at him.

“...Oh, right, hot dogs.  So, uh, what do ya want on yours?”

Attie wanted bacon, cheese, onion, ketchup, mustard, and relish.  Sans handed the ‘dog to her with its toppings balanced precariously, then gave her a small stack of napkins.  “Don’t wanna get your nice jacket all messy.”

“It’s okay.  I can wash it.”

“I’m sure ya can, but you wanna look nice, right?”

“The lessons are finally kicking in, then?”  Asked Frisk from RIGHT behind him.

“Holy shit.”

“Language.”

“Uh...”  He glanced at Attie, who was giggling, then twisted on his stool to get a good look at Frisk.

...A good look was an apt way to put it.  She had a long tan coat on, red buttons in two neat rows down the front.  Her waist was accented by a simple brown belt that twisted into a casual knot on one hip.  The hat and gloves tucked under her arm were dark brown, matching her knee-high boots, but he could see the lines of a familiar pattern on them.  Tori hadn’t waited until Christmas to deliver gifts, apparently.

Slowly, hesitantly, he met her eyes.  She looked a lot better than he remembered, even from the last time he saw her in person.  Maybe it was the light - even the dull, filtered light of the winter sun through the clouds did her more justice than the harsh yellow bulb that lit the dining room in his apartment - but she looked more than ready to take on the world.

It was a far cry from the helpless mess she’d been when he found her, so many weeks before.  And she was completely focused on him in a way that she - or, frankly, anyone else - had never been.  He felt his face starting to turn pink.

Say something, his mind begged.   Come up with something - anything - to keep her from thinking you’re a complete fool.

“What-” No!  Not that!  “-do you want on your hot dog?”

He could feel his voice squeaking a little and resisted the urge to clear a throat he didn’t have.

Frisk smiled at him anyways, and he felt his soul stutter in a way that couldn’t possibly be healthy.  “I haven’t had a hot dog in ages.  Surprise me.”

The challenge in her voice was both clear and terrifying.

ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION!

He gulped and examined his options.  With phalanges that were definitely not shaking, he dipped into the small stash of fresh bakery buns he kept for his best customers, then put a few slices of cheese on it.  That went into the small, warm space behind the hot dog roller.  While it was warming he grabbed a paper plate and a sharp knife and started chopping a pickle spear and some of the baby tomatoes he’d picked up on a whim.  He pulled the bun out once the cheese was melted and put a ‘dog inside, then added bacon crumbles, onion, and his sliced pickles and tomatoes.  A drizzle of yellow mustard completed the masterpiece, and he held it out to Frisk with a flourish that (probably) disguised the slight tremor of his hands.

Attie applauded uselessly through her mittens, her own hot dog mostly gone.  “That looks really yummy!  Mommy, can I have a bite?”

“May I have a bite,” Frisk corrected.

“Sure, but only if I can have a bite of yours!”

She rolled her eyes and took a tentative bite of her hot dog.  Sans watched her chew and swallow, feeling as if quite a bit more than customer satisfaction rode on that simple action.  Finally, she nodded.  “It’s really good, Sans.  Thanks!”

“Yer welcome.”  Relief made him slouch against his counter.

“I never would’ve thought to put fresh tomatoes on a hot dog, but it’s not bad.  What was the inspiration?”

He thought, for a moment, that she was mocking him, but her face showed only sincerity.  It threw him for a loop, and he stuttered for a moment before he found his bearings.  “I, uh, well, I was doin’ a bit of research.  Gotta keep a femur upon the competition and all.  See, ketchup is pretty salty, and a lot of what I have - cheese, bacon, even the hot dogs themselves - is pretty salty too.  The tomatoes give you some flavor without the extra salt and give some texture, too.  Can’t really take credit for the idea, but...well.  Thought I’d give it a shot.”

“It’s brilliant.  You should keep it up.”

His face was definitely turning colors.  Thankfully, Frisk was distracted by Attie wanting a bit of the ‘super-special hot dog’ and he had a moment to compose himself.

Naturally, that was about when his little friend decided to make its presence known once again.

Attie squealed, nearly losing her grip on her hot dog.  “KITTY!”

“No way!” Frisk said looked at Sans, then down at the cat that was clawing its way up his shirt, then back at him.  “You have a kitten?  Since when?”

He tried to pry it off, but the claws were deceptively strong and he didn't want to break anything.  “Since, uh, last night?  It was caught in the rainstorm.  Found it when I was walkin’ home.”

“Can I hold it?”  Attie asked, tugging Sans’s sleeve harshly.  Her protective wards flared-

“Gah!”  Sans pulled his arm away, clutching at his fractured bone, and accidentally banged his bad arm on the edge of the counter.  He froze, cursing himself.  He hadn’t meant to dodge away from her like that; it was just so unnerving that someone would try to touch him (and someone with that much magic on her besides) that he hadn’t tried to simply maneuver away from her.  She hadn't registered as a threat, so she'd gotten closer to him than most people normally did.  He shrunk in on himself, taking his bearings, then remembered that she’d asked a question.  “S-sure.  Just, uh, give me a sec.”

Frisk crouched down so she was eye level with him.  “Sans, are you okay?  Undyne said you’d been injured last night in the confrontation with those humans on the mountain, but she didn’t know the details.  She thought it wasn’t serious since you shrugged it off.   Are you okay?”

Sans checked his HP before responding.  He was down to a single point.  When had he gotten so low?  He felt his breathing pick up, fear of his own mortality overpowering his pride.  “I...I...uh, I…”  He couldn’t seem to force the words out.

He felt the familiar chill of someone else’s magic invading his own, just enough to get a good read on his stats, but despite his embarrassment he allowed it.  More than that, he took a chance and showed his real stats; she'd been sympathetic before, hadn't she?  Across from him, Frisk took a sudden breath.  “Sans.  You need help immediately.  What are you even doing out of the house like that?”

“W-wasn’t that bad e-earlier.  Had somethin’ to eat...g-gosh, early this mornin’ and brought my HP up a f-few points.  I-I’ll be fine.  G-gimme a sec to grab a ‘d-dog.”

“Sans, I’m going to call my mother to take a look at you.”

“No...uh, n-need...”

“Yes, there is a need.  You and her get along fine, right?  She has some healing magic.  Just...please, let me do this.  I’m worried, and Attie’s worried too.”

They had a point.  A ‘dog probably wouldn’t bring his HP up far enough for him to get through his shift, and sentry duty later that night, and whatever Boss had planned.  He let out his breath in a solid woosh and nodded.

Frisk stepped away and started dialing.  Sans deliberately didn’t listen in on her conversation, instead focusing on carefully extracting the cat from his person.  Its nose was twitching but it allowed him to maneuver it into his lap without a whole lot of fuss.

It kept turning its head towards the counter, though.  It definitely knew where the food was.

“Here,” he said, gesturing to Attie.  “D-didn’t ya wanna hold it?”

“Can I?”  she asked in a very small voice.  “I’m really sorry, Mr. Sans.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I didn’t know your arm was hurt.”

He took a deep breath, willing his stutter away.  He wasn’t a babybones anymore, he reminded himself.  “Eh, ‘tsokay kid.  No real harm done.  If you’d meant to hurt me, well.  I’d be dust right now.  You didn’t, though, and ‘m fine, see?  Now help me with this little cat.”

He used his good hand to cup the cat as she lifted it, making sure it wasn’t actively trying to claw her.  It seemed a little upset at the movement, but its protests were more vocal than physical.  After a moment of Attie’s tiny fingernails scratching behind its ears it settled down and started purring again.

“Huh.  It likes you.”

The girl’s smile was smug.  “Of course!  Everybody likes me.”

For most kids, Sans thought, that would be a laughably arrogant statement, but...everyone did seem to like Attie.  She’d survived Boss.  She’d charmed the dogs.  She’d even melted Undyne’s heart a little, and that was a feat worthy of some kind of medal.

Frisk stepped back into his field of vision.  “Mom will be by within a few minutes.  She’s finishing up some paperwork that needs to be done before lunchtime.  Will you be okay until then?”

“Yeah.  Of course.”  It wasn’t like he hadn’t existed on one HP before.  Much as he’d come to regret how he got his LV, he would’ve been dust years ago without it.  He shuddered at the thought.

Frisk apparently mistook that gesture and hunched back down in front of him.  She looked at him for a long moment before narrowing her eyes in DETERMINATION.  “Attie, you can go play.  I’m going to keep an eye on Mr. Sans for a bit.”

The girl looked at her mother, then down at the cat in her arms.  “But...I’m holding his baby kitty!  I can’t go play!”

“Alright.  But no more grabbing, alright?  We’ve talked about this.  It’s one thing when you do it to me or your grandma and grandpa or Undyne, but you have to be careful.”

“Okay.  I said I was sorry.”

“I heard.  Good girl.  Now, Sans, where did you find this kitten?”

Sans explained how he’d found the cat in the alley the night before.  He deliberately ignored the small smile on Frisk’s face, as if she knew something he didn’t.

(He was sure she knew a lot of things he didn’t.)

Thankfully, her only remark was, “Are you even allowed to have pets in your apartment?”

“Eh, yer mom lets some of the dogs stay downstairs.  Why wouldn’t a cat be okay?”

“Uh-huh.  And how did Greater Dog react to your little friend there when we were walking up?”

“Heh, point taken.”

They both watched Attie play with the cat for a few minutes.  When it's meows became too insistent, she handed it to her mother.  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” she pouted.  “I thought it liked me.”

Frisk turned the critter over with deft hands, poking it gently along its stomach.  “He’s probably hungry.  Sans, has he eaten anything since that chicken you gave him last night?”

“Nah.  I was gonna give it - uh, him - something from the stand, but I didn’t get the chance.  Think he’ll eat a ‘dog?”

“It’s worth a shot.  Here - I’ll pay for it.”

“What?  No-”

“Please.  It’s the least I can do.”  She handed him enough to cover three hot dogs with the fixings.  He handed her back the change, but Attie scooped it up instead.

“Can I put the change in the tip jar?” she asked.

Frisk patted her on the cheek.  “Go ahead.  Don’t break anything.”

“Yay!”

Sans chopped up a ‘dog into tiny pieces and scooped it into a paper plate for Frisk, who tried to coax the starving cat to eat something.  He made another for himself and choked it down against the rolling feeling of nausea.

“Did you set that up?”  Frisk asked, gesturing to his tip jar.

“Uh, yeah.  The old coin funnel on top is something I found years ago in the dump.  Can’t remember why I bothered carting it home in the first place, but it’s come in handy now that we’re on the surface.  I, uh, had to fix it up a little to get it to accept g as well as human coins, 'n it doesn't work quite right all the time, but the kids like it.”

They watched Attie drop a pair pennies into a slot at the top of the funnel, the coins passing each other several times before dropping into the clear jar below.

“It’s hard to believe that monsters are able to enjoy things like this now,” Frisk said.  “I remember back in the Underground how, um, tense everyone was.  They’re a lot more...whimsical, I guess, now.”

“Yeah, well, fighting for space and food kinda takes the fun outta ya.  We didn’t really have time for things like this - not in public, anyways.  Heck, I didn’t dare leave a tip jar out back then; someone would’ve come by and stolen it.  Now look at me.  Some days I make more in tips than I do selling ‘dogs.”

She hummed in agreement.  Attie sent a few more coins down the chute, watching them intently.  After a moment, she turned to Sans.  “Why to they go around and around and around like that instead of dropping straight into the jar?”

“It has to do with gravity, angles, and the shape of the funnel.”

She held out a coin.  “Can you show me?”

Frisk frowned and raised a hand to stop her daughter.  “Attie, don’t bother-”

“Eh, it’s fine,” he said.  “Kid’s not hurting anything, and I’ll still be right here if someone wants to buy ‘dogs.”  He pushed himself up.  “Uh, feel free to take a seat if you want.  There’s just the one stool and it might be...a bit short for ya, but…” he gestured awkwardly and turned away.

Attie was a brilliant audience, holding onto every word as he explained the ins and outs of accelerated gravitational motion and centrifugal force.  He was pretty sure most of it flew straight over the seven-year-old’s head, but she didn’t interrupt.

“...Sans?”

He looked up to see someone approaching from the direction of the park.  “Oh.  Hi, Tori.  Thanks for, uh...y’know.”  He shrugged.

“It’s no trouble.  I heard that you were in a fight last night, but not that there were complications.  What seems to be the trouble?”

Frisk sent Attie off to play on the slides (one of the few areas of the playground without a coat of snow) while Sans reluctantly explained his situation.  Tori stood quietly through it all, her eyes occasionally flicking to her adopted daughter.

“I do not approve of healing every small hurt, but I also do not want to send a sentry out injured after what happened last night.  Hold out your arm, please.”

Sans did so, bracing himself.  Healing was an agonizing process at the best of times, and Tori was at least a little bit irritated with him.  He could feel the bone shards grating against each other as the fractures knit.  He hadn’t registered it through the general haze of pain, but there were even cracks in the small bones that comprised his wrist.  Tori’s firm grip on the damaged bones made his vision waver, and he grabbed the counter of the hot dog stand to keep from embarrassing himself.

After what seemed like hours, the pain ebbed and he came to his senses.  He didn’t realize until he extracted his hand from Tori’s that he was shaking from pain and exhaustion; the accelerated healing process was draining his reserves faster than the ‘dog he’d eaten earlier could replenish them.

“Frisk, let him sit,” Tori said, shooing her daughter off the stool.

With great effort, Sans managed to maneuver himself around the back of the hot dog stand and collapsed onto his stool.  He could feel the strain on his spine and hips from the position, but at least he was less likely to tip over in front of his…

...friends?

He decided not to think too much about it.

“If that is all, I shall be off,” Tori said to Frisk.  “Do you need me to watch Atlas this weekend?”

“That would be great, Mom.  We can talk it over this afternoon at the Embassy.”

“Very well.  I shall see you then.”

Tori walked off without saying goodbye to Sans, and he winced.  It was only half because of the little twinges of pain that kept shooting down his spine.  Shifting didn’t help much, either.

“I thought you and Mom got along?”  Frisk asked, looking concerned again.

“We do.  It’s just - ugh! - I haven’t seen her in a few months.”  In hindsight, he probably should have at least called.

“Well, I hope you get back on speaking terms.”

“No kidding.  Don’t want her to bleat me up.”

Frisk snorted.  “That was terrible.”

“I notice your lack of surprise.”

She just smiled.  “Oh, hey, your kitten’s back asleep.  Want him back?”

“Nah, I think he’s comfy.”  Both Frisk and the cat looked comfy, actually.  Realization dawned slowly on him.  (He blamed it on the lack of sleep.)

“Hey, uh, do you know anyone who wants a cat?”

“You’re not going to try to keep him?”

“Nah.  You were right ‘bout the dogs.  And, well, I don’t think Boss is gonna really go for ‘cute and fuzzy.’  He might, but it's 50/50.”

Frisk looked at him, then back to the cat, then back to him.  “Attie...has been bugging me about getting a pet for a while, actually.  She wanted a dog but, well, I’m sure you can see how that might get a tad awkward.”

“No kiddin’.”

“We also spend a lot of time at the Embassy, and when I travel Attie spends time with her grandparents.  A cat on the other hand...well, you don’t have to walk them, for one.  If you’d be willing to stop in every once in a while to feed him while I’m on trips, I don’t see why we couldn’t keep him.  If you’re sure…”

“Yeah, that’d be great!”  Attie had turned out... mostly alright, after all, short bouts of chaos and terror aside.  A cat raised by Frisk would probably wind up ruling the world (or at least the neighborhood), but Sans could think of worse things.

“Okay.  Um, do you want to keep him with you for a bit, or…”

“I, uh, don’t even have food for ‘im.  I made a little bed out of old shirts, but that’s it.  If you don’t mind takin’ ‘im now, go for it.”

She looked at the little cat, stroking gently behind his ears and smiling.  His eyes were closed, and Sans could hear the faint rumbling of that purring thing cats did when they were happy.  He grinned.

“I’d say he’s in good hands.”

“...Yes.  Hopefully.  We’ll see.”  That smile got just a bit wider, though.

Attie stomped up a little while later, shivering.  “It’s too cold to play much,” she said.  “And one of the big kids kept trying to get me to stick my tongue to the monkey bars.”

It took Sans a moment to register why this was even a thing humans would want to do.  That’s right; humans had drippy ‘saliva’ stuff inside their mouths.  Putting her tongue on the unprotected metal of the monkey bars would have probably caused it to freeze and stick.  “You tell that kid off?”

“Yeah.  I told him that if he wanted to do science so bad then he should try it first, because a good scientist doesn’t use other people as test subjects.”

“Ooookay.  I mean, you’re not wrong, but did he do it?”

“No.  I guess he didn’t believe in his hyp...hypoth’s.”

“Hypothesis?”

“Yup!”

Frisk chuckled.  “Fair enough.  Now Attie, I have an important question for you.”

“Okay?”

“Mr. Sans lives in a building with some of the dogs.”

“I know.  I heard them when I was having the long sleepover while you were sick.”

“...Right.  Well, dogs and cats don’t always get along, so Mr. Sans said he’d let us take the kitty home with us.  Would that be alright?”

Attie gasped and turned to Sans.  “Do you really, really mean it?  We can keep your kitty?”

“Sure, kid.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sans!  Thank you a whole, whole, whole bunch!”  She shuffled over and gave him a very soft, very careful hug.

He patted her on the back, feeling awkward under Frisk’s observation.  “Uh, no problem.  I’m sure he’s gonna be happy with you.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Nah.  I guess you ‘n your mom get to name ‘im.”

At Frisk’s nod, Attie began petting the kitten, her brows furrowed.  “You said you found him in water, right, Mr. Sans?”

“Yup.”

“And he’s got a bad eye, like Undie.”

“Sure does.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to name him...Terror Of the Seven Seas!!!  Because he’s a pirate cat.”

Frisk snorted.  “That’s a long name, honey.  Want to come up with something shorter?”

“Nope!  But he can have a nickname if you really want him to.”

“Terror Of the Seven Seas it is, then.”

“Guess you could call ‘im ‘TOSS,’” Sans piped up.  “Short for Terror Of the Seven Seas.  Pirate extraordinaire.”

The little girl hummed.  “That sounds okay.  He can be called TOSS for a nickname.”

Frisk was snickering behind her hand, he knew it.

Suddenly, a loud ringing noise interrupted the peaceful morning.  Frisk dug through her pockets for a moment, then produced a familiar-looking phone.  “Oh...Sans, I’m so sorry, but we’ve got to run.”

“Okay.”  It was expected, he told himself.  Frisk was an ambassador and a busy woman.

“Can we bring Terror of the Seven Seas with us to the embassy?”  Attie asked.

Her mother glanced down nervously.  “Well...just this once, I guess.”

She cheered.  “See ya later, Mr. Sans!”

“See ya, kid,” he replied.

And then they were gone, and his morning seemed all too quiet.

[badcowboy69]

A Driving Plan

Here’s a little story that’s going to open up an entire set of new, exciting possibilities for my courier and his partner.  It’s also my coming back into writing once more.  It’s been too long and hopefully this sort of absence won’t ever happen again.  Please give this a read and don’t worry it’s sfw lol    It’s just under the cut due to length.  As always this features my courier six, Travis Blackfox and his partner, Riley White who belongs to @zoey-and-dakota    Enjoy!

The light from the setting Mojave sun filtered through the drawn tan curtains covering the penthouse windows of the Lucky 38.  For some the day was finally coming to an end, but for many others it was only beginning.  One of those many was Travis Blackfox, co-ruler of New Vegas.  Humming to himself, he poured two glasses of red wine to get this evening started.  As he shoved the cork back into the bottle a smile tugged at the corners of his moustache hearing the chuckles coming from the other room.  Tonight was one of the little traditions he and his boyfriend, Riley, participated in each week.  After dinner was ate and things cleaned up, the couple would take the elevator to the penthouse.  There they would have drinks and share the company of Mister House, the mysterious being on a computer screen.  

Although for Travis it wasn’t that big of a mystery anymore.  After the second battle for Hoover Dam was won by Travis and his allies, House explained to him who he is and his mechanics.  At first Travis was baffled as to how a person could not only be alive after two centuries, but continue to function and control things.  With House now fully trusting Travis enough, he granted the courier permission to see the special isolation chamber where he “resides” via video imagery.  He then continued to explain in further detail his past role in the world as well as future aspirations.  

It was then Travis was offered the opportunity to continue living in the Lucky 38 and be co-ruler over New Vegas and its affairs.  Travis was taken aback by such a monumental request and gift and was unsure on how to respond.  Seeing he shocked the courier into silence, House went on to tell him that no matter what he chooses he’ll be taken care of for the rest of his life regardless.  Travis didn’t have to stay chained down living in the casino forever if he didn’t want to.  Not really having anywhere else to go or truly call home, Travis agreed.  He had everything a person could ever want and then some, but always stayed humble and generous through it all.  

As Travis entered the room, he gave a polite nod towards the green screened image of Mister House before handing a glass of wine to Riley.  Taking a seat next to his partner, he then raised his glass towards their host.  “Here we are in another exciting pre-war discussion!  What’s the topic gonna be for tonight?” he asked while taking a small sip of his drink, grimacing from the tart taste.

“We were talking about travel and places visited,” Riley replied as he leaned against the couch, casually crossing his legs.  “Robert here was telling me about his camping trips to Zion Canyon.  I know you’ve been there a few times.  Mind sharing some stories?”

Travis suddenly frowned and began plinking his fingers against his glass for a moment making Riley frown as well.  He knew every time Travis did that meant he was anxious about something.  Riley hoped he didn’t hit a nerve or put Travis on the spot with his innocent question.  

Taking a breath, Travis nodded slowly.  “A’yup, been there lots of times.  It’s beautiful.”  He paused and turned his attentions to Mister House.  “You’d be pleased to know it’s untouched by radiation.  There’s a few mutated critters of course like yao guai and cazadors.  Waters are fresh and clean, though.  Lots of game to hunt and fish to catch.  The Tribals that live there are great.”  He then paused for a few moments before lifting his head and holding Riley’s gaze with his.  “I’d so love to take you there, but it’s a long ways on my bike and I don’t think you’d be willing to go that kind of distance on it,” he said softly, almost defeated, making Riley understand Travis’ mood change.  

“Bike?  You’re still tooling around on that thing, Travis?” House chimed in.  “After all this time, especially with a partner, I thought you’d have a truck or car running by now for the two of you.  With your ingenuity I’m sure you could have salvaged something suitable to traverse the terrain in.”

“Ain’t any vehicles out there good enough for me to do anything with,” Travis grumped, dropping his gaze to the floor and taking a mouthful of wine.

“You mean ain’t any out there you haven’t already blown up,” Riley jested and gave his partner a playful nudge in hopes to make light of the suddenly touchy subject.  “You have to admit, you trashed a lot of vehicles that could have had potential.”

“Travis the TNT Terror of the Mojave has destroyed all possible salvageable vehicles?  Why am I not surprised,” House said dryly while Travis cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Ain’t blew up the good ones,” Travis muttered giving House a resentful glare.  “Those that got blown up were needin’ to be properly kilt and all.”

Patting Travis on the leg and giving his knee a reassuring squeeze, Riley turned his attentions back to House in hopes to defuse the topic he feared would get heated soon.  “There are plenty of vehicles around out there if you can even call them that anymore.  Whatever the bombs didn’t destroy the elements finished the job.  Hardly any have interiors left to speak of.  Those that did aren’t exactly in easy places to get them out let alone work on them.  From what I’ve seen, it would take weeks if not months to gather up enough parts from many different cars and areas to rebuild something.”

“A’yup…cars ain’t like the motorcycles which are everywhere and easy to get around.  And even though the NCR got their trucks and stuff I’m sure they ain’t willing to hand over parts just so’s I can get a car going.”  Travis twitched his moustache in annoyance not liking the direction this conversation suddenly shifted.

However, House didn’t reply and the lack of his typical sarcasm made an uncomfortable silence fill the room.  Quirking an eyebrow Travis looked up at the screen where the stoic image of Mister House stared back at him.  Travis knew it was only a photograph, but the eyes seemed to be boring into him and it made the courier begin to fidget.

Riley began to pick up on Travis’ unease and he frowned not exactly sure what to say or do.  Giving Travis’ knee an affectionate squeeze, he then took the last mouthful of wine and set the glass down on the floor.  “So…where did the NCR get their vehicles from?” he began in a feeble attempt to break the silence.

After a few long moments of silence, House’s suave voice finally came through the speakers.  “Tell me, Riley…do you still remember how to drive?  Or did you even do so back in your days?”

Rubbing the back of his neck before sifting his fingers through his red hair, Riley gave a nod.  “Yeah.  Yeah I do remember, but I might be a bit rusty at it,” he laughed.  “I mean it has been over two hundred years after all.  I’m sure driving might have the same concept as riding a bike where once you learn you can always do it…but I don’t think if I were to do it again that I’d have too much to worry about.  I mean, there’s no more traffic laws or anything so I’m sure my crappy driving would be overlooked.  Hell, it would probably be praised!”

Once again House grew quiet and this time Riley questioned it.  “Robert, is everything ok?”

“Travis,” House said after long last, completely ignoring Riley’s question.  “Would you be so kind as to go into my old bedroom?  I’d like for you to fetch something for me out of the limited edition Nuka Cola protectron.  It is still there isn’t it?  I know you have a fondness for all things Nuka Cola related and I know of your disdain for those robots as well.”

Glancing at Riley first Travis shrugged and nodded slowly in uncertainty.  “Yeah, it’s still in there.  Why?”

“If you please, head to the robot and press the center button on its chest.  It’ll be the one bearing the logo for Nuka Cola.  Bring me what you find inside.  That is of course unless you already discovered it with all your poking around.”

“No, I ain’t discovered nothing with my poking around,” Travis grunted as he got to his feet and loped out of the room muttering under his breath.  He hastily climbed the stairs and headed towards House’s old bedchambers.  The robot in question stood near the doorway as it no doubt did for centuries.  However, it now had a Legion centurion helmet on it and was holding a spear thanks to Travis’ redecorating.  Pressing his finger against the button that House instructed him to do, Travis half expected the thing to come to life.  Instead a small compartment on the robot’s chest opened with a soft pop.  Furrowing his brow Travis looked inside to find a small brass key.  

Snatching it between his thumb and index finger, Travis looked it over trying to figure out what made it so special.  Not seeing any marks or indications as to what it might be for, he turned and made his way back downstairs.   As he stepped into the room, Riley turned to look at him, his eyebrows raised curiously as to what it was that Mister House needed Travis to go and fetch.  

Travis gave him a crooked grin and shrugged before holding the key up towards the monitor.  “Got it!”

“Splendid!”  House exclaimed so suddenly that Travis and Riley jumped from being startled.  “Now then, I’d like you to take the elevator down to the sub-basement area.  That was where you witnessed the upgrades I had given my Securitrons years ago in preparation for the batte.  Once there I will give you instructions on what to do next.”  With that House’s image instantly vanished from the monitor bathing Travis in its pale green light.

Travis turned to Riley who was already standing and stretching.  “I take it we’re off to a new adventure?” he asked, stifling a yawn as Travis stepped towards him.

The courier shrugged and stuffed the key into his pocket.  “I have no fucking idea,” he grumbled.  “I’m almost scared to find out what this is for.  With my luck it’ll be for some creepy ass robot.” “Well, whatever it is we aren’t going to find out about it staying here.  Come on, what happened to your sense of adventure?  I thought you always liked exploring and discovering new things?” “I do, but when it comes to stuff from House I got every reason to be concerned.  He’s the one that hired me years ago to deliver that stupid package that what got me killed.  Remember?”

Riley sighed and crossed his arms in front of his chest as he followed Travis up the stairs to the elevator.  He could tell his partner was slowly starting to become unreasonable and irritable.  However, he knew from experience it was best to ignore him and eventually Travis would get back to normal.  Although Riley didn’t know House as long as Travis did, he felt the man wasn’t sending them on some wild, pointless mission.  It had to be something really exciting and special for House to suddenly have Travis find some long forgotten key.

Reaching the elevator Travis jammed his finger against the call button with a grunt.  “This really better not be something stupid,” he complained while the doors slid open allowing them entrance.

“Have some faith in the man, Travis.  I know that placid image on the screen we deal with doesn’t give much away emotion wise, but I picked up a hint of excitement in his voice when you showed him you had the key.  I don’t think he’d be excited if this was something stupid.”  

Travis waved it off and kept his gaze on the floor as he toed the carpet with his boot.  Riley patted him on the shoulder and leaned close to lightly kiss him on the cheek.  “Regardless of what this is all about, we’ll find out soon enough.”

Once the elevator got to its destination and the doors slid open, Riley let out a low whistle at the sight in front of him.  This was one area of the casino Travis had not shown him and it was truly something to behold.  Stepping out of the elevator put them onto a large balcony with a force field wall.  It was overlooking what appeared to be a training area of sorts with cement half-walls with targets on them.  Various sized ammunition shells were scattered on the floor as was large crumbled chunks of cement.  Along the walls were tables with what appeared to be a random assortment of tools, weapons, and more ammo.

“Starting a war?” Riley jested as he adjusted his glasses while turning his attentions to a computer and schematics piled high on the central table of the balcony.

“This was where some of House’s newly upgraded Securitrons showed off their weapons and junk,” Travis said dismissively.  “I really hated it when House sent me down here for the first time to watch the trials.  I know if it wasn’t for them we probably wouldn’t have won the battle, but they still give me the creeps.”

Riley smirked knowing his partner’s disdain for robots, but he did happen to catch a glimmer of fascination for the place in Travis’ blue eyes regardless.  Just then a crackling sound came over a speaker on the wall.  “Are you two down here yet?” House asked with slight impatience in his voice.

“A’yup, we’re here.  What now?” Travis asked while flicking some empty shotgun shells onto the floor.

“Head to your left and activate the computer on the wall.  The password is ‘rosebud’.”

Riley smirked at the possible reference to a pre-war movie, but seeing Travis’ bored expression he knew it went over his head.  As he followed Travis to the terminal, he made a mental note to explain it later on back in the Presidential Suite.  He would also have to ask House if the movie might be somewhere on holodisc or file for he and Travis to watch one night.

Once at the computer, Travis’ fingers flew quickly over the keys and prompted the machine to life.  After a few more clicks a screen appeared asking for the password.  Once inputted, Travis hit the enter button and waited.  The computer next began to make a soft whirring sound as it processed the information.  A beep soon indicated the password was accepted which was followed by a loud and unexpected grinding of gears.  

Unsure of what was going on or what to expect, Travis and Riley took a few cautious steps away from the computer.  Much to their surprise, the wall in front of them began to slide open revealing a steel door.  “Reckon this is where the key comes in,” Travis remarked as he dug in his pocket in search of the key.  Finding it he placed it in the hole and looked over his shoulder to Riley.  “You ready?” he asked getting a wide-eyed nod in return.  Travis turned the key until a satisfying click announced the door was unlocked.  Taking a deep breath and holding it, Travis cautiously turned the knob and gave the door a slight push open.

Both men waited as if anticipating a pack of rabid molerats to come pouring out of the room any second, but none came.  In fact, nothing happened for that matter.  “Well, I guess this is it,” Travis said with a slight bit of unease in his voice.

Riley detected it and clamped his hand on his partner’s shoulder.  “Don’t be so nervous.  You’ve known House for all these years and from what you’ve told me he’s always been generous towards you.  He might have a few rough edges and is snarky, but so is the best of us.  I’m sure he means well.” Travis snorted.  “Yeah, the man’s all heart.  Ah well, reckon we might as well get this over with.” and with that Travis gave the door a hard shove making it bang loudly against the wall.  Cautiously reaching inside the dark room, Travis groped around the wall feeling for a light switch.  Finding it he flipped it on and waited.  Long moments went by until at last the soft buzzing from fluorescent lights could be heard.  The bulbs closest to the door blinked and flickered until they came on and the rest followed suit for what appeared to be the length of at least two football fields.  

“Holy shit,” was the phrase both men seemed to gasp at exactly the same time.  Travis rubbed his eyes as if they were truly playing tricks on him.  Riley sort of copied the action by removing his glasses and examining them to make sure they weren’t faulty in some way.  Placing them back on he let out a long, low whistle seeing that the scene before him remained the same.

The room was surprisingly huge, way larger than either man might have expected.  The floor was made of white marble which shone dully in the fluorescent lights.  Various advertisement signs made out of metal hung on the walls along with a few neon ones which worked for the most part.  A workshop of sorts was in one corner stocked with a variety of tools,shelves, machinery and parts to who knows what.  On the opposite corner from the workshop, was a small bar area that seemed to be fully stocked with various liquors.  However, none of decor or set ups were important as the true reasoning behind this room quickly became the focal point.

What was stunning them so much and having them stand with eyes wide and jaws slack was the small collection of pre-war vehicles that were scattered throughout the room.  The collection wasn’t huge by eccentric millionaire pre-war standards, but for the current condition of the world, this was a very big deal.  The moderate collection consisted of three cars of different styles, one golf cart, and one truck.  They were all in perfect condition as best as could be expected for being over two hundred years old and untouched.

Riley was the first to break the shocked silence by taking a few tentative steps forward towards the closest vehicle.  It was a small blue golf cart with cracked leather seats which were once white, but now yellowed with age.  A pair of fuzzy dice, also yellowed, hung from the mirror and there was a vertical crack down the center of the windshield.  “Damn, this really is a treasure trove!  Never in my wildest dreams did I think this is what House wanted to share with us.  Wouldn’t it be great if this thing still worked?  Hell, wouldn’t it be great if all of these still worked?” he asked as he continued looking over the cart, blowing at the dusty dashboard which in turn made him sneeze.  However, the question went unheard as his partner had wandered off doing his own thing.   

Travis was towards the left gravitating in fascination to a sporty looking red car.  He never saw a vehicle quite like this and it made him think of a spaceship.  It was a low to the ground single seater car with a glass bubble top.  The surface was quite dusty which in turn dulled the paint, but it still looked to be in great shape.  Unfortunately all four tires were flat and one of the rims was bent as a result making the car slant at an angle.  Travis frowned seeing that and kicked at the tire in disappointment with the toe of his boot. Hearing a low whistle behind him, Travis turned to see Riley sauntering his way with his hands stuffed in his pockets.  “Holy shit, a Cherry Bomb!” he exclaimed in amazement while bending to look through its clouded glass.

“Did you ever have one of these?” Travis asked as he wiped away the ancient dust gathered on one of the torpedo shaped headlights.

“No, but saw a few tooling around the neighborhood.  Man, these things were fast on the open roads.  This…this is amazing.  This entire room is simply unbelievable!”  He straightened his posture and leaned against the car while continuing to gaze around the room to see what other vehicles were down here.  Near where the golf cart sat was a green pickup truck.  It was no surprise its tires were flat, but it also had a large oily looking stain under it making Riley frown some.  “Looks like that one is out of commission.”

“Yeah…” he began ruefully while heading towards a sleek black four-door sedan.  “All these cars…ain’t never seen them in this fine of shape.  Not even the ones I saw in those isolated spots out in the Mojave.  Seen plenty in storage in garages and stuff, but they were ransacked.  These all have possibilities, but I don’t know much about them…well…other than they blow up real good.”

Riley snorted and joined his man at the black car.  “Well, promise me you won’t blow these up.”

Travis turned to him grinning broadly.  “Aw hell, you take away all the fun.”   Wrapping his arms around Travis’ waist, Riley brushed his lips lightly over his cheek before resting his chin on his shoulder.  “You have the entire Mojave to blow up.  I’m sure you can find it in your heart to spare these vehicles.”

Humming in mock thought Travis shrugged and leaned back against him.  “Well…I reckon I can make an exception this time,” he laughed.

“Hello?  Are you boys there yet?” House’s voice suddenly echoed through the room.  

Looking around trying to figure out where the voice came from, Riley was first in spotting a small intercom near one of the work benches.  Tapping Travis on the shoulder he pointed it out.  Arching an eyebrow, Travis loped towards the intercom and pressed the call button.  “A’yup, we’re here,” he drawled.  “Dang this is off the fucking charts, House.  I had no clue about any of this.  Surprised you ain’t mentioned it before!”

“Of course I didn’t, you ninny!”  House snapped.  “You always carried on and on about those damn motorcycles of yours.  Once the battle was over and we started planning on getting New Vegas and the surrounding areas back in shape I completely forgot all about this room.  It’s funny how after all these years a random conversation sparked it.”

“Well, it’s certainly impressive,” Travis admitted as he watched Riley drifting over to a long, pale blue car that was lifted up on four sturdy jacks.  “What is it you’d like us to do with this newly gained knowledge?”

“Fix them!” House barked.  “Do I even have to suggest that?  Ever since I met you all you did was talk about travel and that only increased when you started to reinvent the motorcycles scattered around the Mojave.  When that dolt NCR sniper finally left, your talks stopped for the longest time and I never knew how to bring them up.  I am not one for coddling, you know this.  I knew you’d figure things out on your own eventually.  You have a passion, Travis.  You are a bright lad and you’ve come so very far.  I suppose once again through your passion I’d like to see mine brought back to life.  I don’t know what sort of condition of the vehicles are in, but hopefully you’ll find at least one or two that you can get running again.  Regardless of being well protected these past two centuries, I’m sure they still suffer from neglect.  This could be a great project the both of you can share in.” Travis was stunned beyond words and stood staring at the intercom with his mouth slightly agape.  All the years he’s known Mister House, he never really knew the man to be anything other than sarcastic.  He always seemed to manage to make Travis feel like a dumb hick more often than not.  That alone made Travis not want to spend much time discussing things other than business.  He jumped feeling Riley’s hand on his shoulder, bringing him out of his thoughts.  “Are you kidding me?  It’s perfect!  I mean…umm…how do we even get a car out of here?  Fixing one ain’t gonna serve any purpose if we can only drive around down here.”

House let out a long and exasperated sigh.  “Did you even stop to think how the cars got down here in the first place?  I sometimes wonder if that bullet took away more than your memories, courier.  Go down to the far end of the room and you’ll see another computer monitor on the wall.  It has the same setup like the one you used to get in here.  Behind the wall will be a mile long tunnel leading up to a sealed entrance that is similar to one you see in Vaults.  Use the key I gave you on the control panel and it’ll open to the outskirts of New Vegas.  I don’t know what the situation is for the entrance on the other side, however.  It could be covered with debris and if that’s the case I’ll send some Securitrons over to clear it out.  Maybe you should take one with you anyway in case the door opens to something unpleasant.  For all I know a pack of deathclaws made their nest in the area.”

Travis heard Riley groan at the very notion there might be deathclaws around and it made him chuckle.  “Yeah, good point.”  He paused for a minute, his finger hovering over the intercom button.  Taking a deep breath he pressed the button and said, “This is mighty generous of you, House.  I mean, this was obviously something you’ve been wanting to share with me for a while.  I’ve been a right idjet and I can’t thank you enough for this unexpected surprise.”

“It’s not your fault,” House replied, his voice sincere instead of the dry sarcasm that Travis was generally so used to.  “We are both a little to blame in that matter.  Plus I know you had your mind wrapped around Benny, the Platinum Chip, the battle…and afterwards there was simply so much to take care of.  Don’t worry about any of that.  What’s done is done and it’s all water under the bridge so to speak.  You have done so much for me and all of New Vegas, I can’t thank you enough.  Consider this a very well deserved added bonus you should have got a long time ago.”

A long bit of silence then followed which caught Riley’s attention.  He watched Travis carefully chewing on his lower lip, his mind no doubt zooming a million miles an hour trying to find the right words.  He knew Travis had an uneasy sort of relationship with House and was no doubt confused by the obvious attempt to start anew on a more positive note.  Dropping his arm over Travis’ shoulders, Riley gave him a squeeze and answered instead.  “You certainly are giving back some nostalgia to me in doing this, Robert.  We both thank you.” “You are most certainly welcome.  Hopefully something down there will be salvageable.  Anyway, it’s late.  I best bid you two goodnight for now.  I will look forward to hearing about any updates and progress.”

“Goodnight,” both men replied almost in unison making Travis smirk as he clicked off the intercom.

“Well…reckon we got a whole lot of work ahead of us now, huh?” Travis asked while stifling a yawn.

Riley put his hands in his pockets and made his way back towards the pale blue car he was looking over earlier.  He bent to look under the car then began feeling the tires.  “Out of all of them this one might have the strongest possibility of being resurrected.  There’s nothing indicating leaks that I can see.  Being up on heavy jacks might have very well saved the tires, especially the rims.”  

“Chryslus Corvega,” Travis read off the nameplate located on the car’s grill.  

“This is the kind of car I used to have.  I really hope we can get it to operate.” “Do you know how to fix one?”  Travis asked while opening the driver door and taking a seat.  Running his hands over the cream colored steering wheel he looked over the buttons and levers on the control panel wondering what they all could be for.  Other than the radio everything else was foreign to him.

Opening up the passenger door and sliding in next to his partner, Riley felt a faint smile dance on his lips in excitement.  It’s been ages since he’s sat in a proper vehicle.  “Not hardly, but I’m sure with your ingenuity and all the books around here there’ll be something somewhere that can assist us further,” Riley chimed while opening up the glove compartment in search of a possible owner’s manual.  “I’m afraid the best I can offer is light maintenance and of course the skills on driving it.”

“Lots of potentials and possibilities with this thing,” Travis said, leaning back against the seat while moving his hands over the wheel and making humming sounds like he’s heard the trucks of the NCR make.

Riley chuckled at Travis’ antics then scowled seeing the manual was not in the compartment.  “If we can get this thing running…” Riley began, but drifted off not daring to get his or Travis’ hopes up too high.  

“When we can get this thing running the trip down the Long 15 to the big waters won’t be just a dream of mine anymore.  I mean, ain’t nothing stopping me anyways, but I don’t want to go alone and you ain’t too keen taking that long of a trip on the back of my bike.”

Going quiet for a moment Travis mulled over the possibilities in his mind before continuing.  “Four doors…lots of room inside,” Travis encouraged while fingering the keys that still dangled from the steering column.  “Plenty of room for supplies.  Lots of room for our tent.  Hell…back seat’s so big we could just sleep on it instead….fuck on the back seat for all that matters.  So much dang room…we can even take Rex with us.”

“Travis, we can take whatever you like with us.”  Riley began to bite at his thumbnail for a moment before taking a deep breath and clamping his hand on Travis’ thigh.  “Let’s do this!  Let’s clean up this place and get started on getting this thing running again.  It’ll be a bit awkward for me to remember how to drive one of these, I mean, it’s been centuries,” he chuckled and smiled more seeing the excitement shining in Travis’ crystal blue eyes.  “Just don’t be angry if I hit something.”

“Riles, what the hell are you gonna hit in the desert? A fucking cactus?

“Hey, that fucking cactus can do serious damage I’m sure!  Then it’s settled.  Let’s get a good night’s sleep and we can start on this project after lunch tomorrow.  Sound like a plan?”

“It’s perfect!” Travis exclaimed excitedly while getting out of the car.  Taking a long, slow gaze around the room at his newly acquired treasure, he nodded proudly and put his hands on his hips.  “A’yup, this is gonna be great!  Mornin’ ain’t gonna come soon enough!”

To be continued….

[myhauntedsalem]

13 Creepy Camping Encounters That Will Put You off the Great Outdoors

1. The Crying Girl

“When I was younger probably like 10 or 11, I went camping with my family. I’ll just get right into it. It was about 1 or 2 in the morning, and I couldn’t really sleep. The tent me and my brother were in was really hot, and very uncomfortable. Anyway, while I was trying to go to bed I heard a very faint whimper. I tried to ignore it because I figured I was just tired. Our campsite was along a road with many other camps nearby. The whimper started to get louder, and then turned into crying. I heard footsteps outside of our tent, and a girl crying.

Now let me tell you, it didn’t go faint, it got louder and louder. It remained in the same spot the entire time. That’s so important because, it indicates that she was looking at our tent site, crying. It gets worse, then it turned into a full on scream for a few seconds, then cuts out. When she started screaming by brother woke up. We both look at each other and just get all the pillows and stuff our head under them.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I’m just glad we left the next morning.” – Keithic

2. The Shaking

“This happened to an acquaintance of mine and his son. This took place back in the early ’90s.

He had taken his young son for a father and son type hike out of Skagway. If any of you are familiar with Skagpatch, there is quite a network of trails above town at lower Dewey lakes.

So, it’s evening, dinner done, tent up, bed time. Sometime later, around midnight, he’s woken up by the tent shaking violently, then silence. Then again. Keep in mind its late August, and pitch black, I mean as pitch black as you can get under the heavy coastal rain forest with no moon.

This shaking kept up for over an hour. He had no idea what it was. He went out with his headlamp, yelled, and heard nothing. Would go back in the tent, then it would start up again. He could here footsteps whenever it happened.

He was pretty shaken up by the next morning as you could imagine.

He reported it to the troopers, and the only thing they could come up with was someone with a night vision set up messing around. Or something else…” – Yukoner

3. The Middle of the Woods

“This happened to me when I was little. I went camping with my older brother and my mom. I was about 7 or 8 and I went to bed around 10 in a sleeping bag inside my tent with both my mom and brother. Some time during the night, I don’t know when, I woke up somewhere in the middle of the woods still in my sleeping bag. I had no idea where I was or where my tent was. I screamed for my mom and I heard her calling back for me in panic but she was easily 100 yards away or so. To this day I have no idea how I ended up in the middle of the woods still inside my sleeping bag. Gives me the chills.” – cckaufmann

4. The Hanging Man

“Hiking the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania for a week in…2006 and my brother and I came across a young man who had hung himself. We sprinted up to the bluff where he was strung up. I wrapped my arms around his waist to take weight off his neck while my brother cut him down with his Leatherman. He had thrown the rope up over a tall branch and lashed it off with a clove hitch at the trunk like you’d hang a bear-bag. Must’ve climbed the branches and dropped once laced in. We probably shouldn’t have even tried, he was dead for sometime before we happened across him. Fortunately no critters had come to tear him apart before we found him, it would’ve only gotten grislier from there. Called 911. Ended our trip pretty damn quick.

I don’t know why we tried, it was very obvious he had been dead for some time. Don’t know how long, he was very cold and smelled pretty bad. Intuition to help someone and adrenaline that clouds your judgement I guess? It was kind of a fucked up day so I don’t really remember my thought process.” – Anonymous

5. Scratches

“About one month ago, we are riding a favorite trail up near Camp Verde. Oldest son is leading, youngest is following him, a friend behind him and I am sucking up rear. Come over a hill and I see my youngest son with all of his gear off and his jersey. I came up asking what was wrong, thinking that he crashed, He said his back was burning. I looked and there were three scratches across his back. Looked like claw marks. No blood, but very distinct. He had a chest/back protector on so there is no way a tree branch or anything got him. We finally got him geared back up and headed out. About 30 minutes later, we reached a spot where we always stop for a break. I asked him to take the jersey off so that I could see the scratches again. They were completely gone.” – THB

6. Music in the Night

“A couple of years ago my brother bought a large piece of land out in the middle of nowhere, about thirty miles or so from cell phone reception. It’s quiet, there is no light pollution, no paved roads, and not a lot of people around.

Shortly after he bought the place, two of my brothers (the land owner and another), me, and our families spent a weekend camping on the land and doing our best to clean it up; people had used it as a dump, there were many downed trees, etc. On the second night we camped there, I woke up in the middle of the night to take a leak. As I was walking to the bushes in the dark, I realized that I could faintly hear music. This didn’t strike me as odd because I knew my brother had a radio in his camper. I finished up and went back to sleep with no further thought on the matter.

The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned the radio and music. Several other people recalled waking in the night and hearing music, but no two people heard the same music. Finally, the brother who brought the radio woke up. I asked him about the music and he seemed a bit freaked out. He woke up sometime during the night and went outside to smoke. He heard music as well and had assumed it was someone else. I should mention that he was the only one with a generator and a radio. It wasn’t his radio we heard, it wasn’t anyone else’s either.

I’ve been back several times, but I’m a bit freaked out by that place at night. I have fun while I’m there, but I’m almost always armed and I don’t sleep in a tent anymore, I sleep in my SUV with the doors locked. It may seem kinda dumb, but realizing that everyone heard different music when there are no people, no functional radios, and no electricity is quite creepy.” – goat-of-mendes

7. The Light

“We were in a river-side cabin one night in Northern Michigan. I had just stretched out when a huge crack erupted from the woods. Both of us thought it was a branch or old tree that had fallen.

After he turned off the living room light, we noticed that the light coming from the windows was abnormally strong. This sent our nerves to a new high. The light seemed to pulse several times and got so bright at one point you could have read a book by it. It couldn’t have been a car as we were almost a mile off the road on a dirt trail. Plus, the light came in from all the windows equally.

Every so often we would hear a strange humming noise that penetrated that cabin. This lasted almost half an hour. We talked about just running out to the car and leaving but neither one of us wanted to go outside.

After the light went out, we sat on the couch, occasionally putting forth theories on what it could have been. Around four o’clock in the morning, there was another loud crack. We worried that the light might come back but nothing happened.” – R. Bassil

8. Blue Spectre

“My friend and I were walking just outside of the circle of cabins. It was a bright night with all the stars shining and the moon was well lit. There was a campfire going, and in one of the big cabins there was a party going on with music and so on. We were walking, and we both got a really weird feeling, as if we were being watched. We both turned toward the sea… we saw a blue figure, very tall – about 7 feet – walking through the trees. It made no sound at all. It was a bright blue and glowing figure walking through the forest. It was emitting a shimmery aura, and my friend and I both became very frightened. We shouted at whatever that thing was and we were asking it what it was. We got no reply, of course, but we expected one. We stared as it walked away and out of our vision; we didn’t dare follow it.

We then ran back to the group of people at the camp fire, screaming and describing what we saw. Another friend of mine claimed he was watching it from a distance not far from were we were and was just as frightened as I was.” – Devin

9. Footsteps Upstairs

“Not something I experienced, but my sister and her husband did.

My family used to have a cabin on a lake in the Northwoods. It’s a lake with no public access. On the other side is/was an old Girl’s Camp that the state was letting fall apart. The camp had a large, two-story main house that was mostly intact at the time.

My sister and her husband decided to check out the camp one day. They canoe’d over and started to walk around. They went into the Main House first. They walked around for a bit. And then they heard heavy footsteps upstairs. These footsteps turned into someone running heavily towards the stairs.

My sister and her husband booked it out of the house, but they could hear the steps coming down the stairs and on the main level as they ran out. They opted to run around the house instead of heading back to the shore.

They never saw who it was, but they heard them enter back into the house. And then they heard them storm back outside again. They went into the woods this time and heard someone running in the woods after them.

They took the long way around the lake back to the cabin.

My dad and I had to go back later that day to get the canoe. We never heard or saw anything.” – joftheinternet

10. Geocaching

“I’ve been geocaching in the woods many times, and occasionally one runs into caches with weird things in them. The creepiest was an ammo box with only a handful of finds that contained broken doll parts and a handwritten note that said “Look behind you”. I definitely had the heebie-jeebies and double-timed it back to my car despite it being the middle of the day. It’s crossed my mind before that geocaching would be a great way for a serial killer to lure people out to remote locations.” – Anonymous

11. Who Followed Us?

“This happened in 81 or 82. Not sure anymore.

I had made friends with a fellow I worked with and offered to take him gigging for frogs. He was from the city and had never spent any time in the woods at night. The farm I had permission to do it on was only about a mile from my place. My friend showed up at 10:30 or so and I gave him a gig and a flashlight. We decided to walk to the other farm. We didn’t get far before we both heard something walking in the dark to the side of us. I’ve been in the woods all my life and I’ve had plenty of deer follow me but I wasn’t going to tell him that. It was clear he was getting spooked. We climbed a fence and continued on. Then we heard something else climb the fence.

Deer don’t climb fences. I tried looking around with the flashlight but he wanted none of it. We could see the house lights of the place we were going to and he ran off on me and beat on the guy’s door until they let him in. By the time I got there Mr. Barber, (the land owner), and his wife was out on the porch and wanted to know what was going on. Mr. Barber and I went back and had a look around but found nothing. My friend refused to walk back and Mr. Barber gave us a ride back to my place. We never did find out what or who it was that was following us.

My friend decided that frogging wasn’t for him. He has also refused to go on several fishing trips I have invited him to. I can’t say I was too comfortable with what happened but I haven’t let it stop me from frogging.” – Smoker

12. The Circle

“I was backpacking in New Hampshire and camped out for the night after a day hike. I wondered off from our fire to go take a piss and stumbled upon a circle etched into the ground with tuning forks surrounding the circle standing up straight…It looked like a creepy ritual circle and it bugged me out so I booked it back to the group.” – ITS_A_BADTIME_BOB

13. The Gator

“Few years ago I was camping in the Everglades in Florida with a few friends. We all had gone into our separate tents and were starting to fall asleep. The area was pretty noisy with bugs, crickets, birds, etc. I heard this very low vibration, sounding almost like a low roar. it was powerful enough to vibrate in my chest. Suddenly everything in the forest shut up. no bugs, no birds, nothing. about thirty seconds later my phone vibrates and its my friend in the other tent texting me asking if i heard the same thing. the four of us kept texting each other, wondering what it was. about ten minutes later all the animals slowly started making noise again. I slept that night with my machete at arms reach.

A lot of people are saying it might have been a gator. We were in an elevated area that was far from any streams or ponds. Its possible there might have been a pond with a gator that we missed, but the very big ones tend to hang out in lakes.” – Biggs180