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todisturbtheuniverse · 3 months ago

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FIC: Borrowed Magic [5/5]

Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Friendship, Grief, Alcoholism, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Slow Burn, Flirting, Fluff Word Count: 4,959 (this chapter); 20,310 (total) Summary: The farmer has a way of making ordinary things seem like magic. Shane just has a hard time believing it. Also on AO3. Previous chapters: One | Two | Three | Four Notes: That's a wrap on this fic! Thanks for reading.

It was Wednesday night, and Shane was starting on his second beer, when Lydia came through the door of the Saloon.

They hadn't crossed paths since the previous Saturday, and his spirits lifted—just a little—to see her. She had a sweet pea tucked behind her ear and still wore her work clothes: denim overalls, a bright yellow t-shirt, battered sneakers. There was a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, bumping against her hip with every step. Despite the film of dust still clinging to the hems of her overalls, she exchanged cheerful greetings with Willy before crossing to the bar counter.

There was something about her cheery disposition that Shane had started to find reliable, familiar, even if he still found her relentless optimism baffling. Annoying, sometimes.

Lydia carefully pulled a couple of cardboard cartons out of her bag and pushed them across to Gus. He inspected the contents with a smile.

"These look perfect, Lydia," he told her, and popped open the cash register. "I've been getting nothing but rave reviews since I started adding Northern Lights peppers to my pizzas. Here's what I owe you."

Lydia turned a little pink, accepting her payment. "It's my pleasure."

"Can I get you anything? Beer? Dinner? I've got some fresh tuna that would be perfect for fish tacos…"

Shane tuned out the rest of the conversation, returning to his beer. When Gus and Lydia got going on food and drinks, they could go for a long time. She usually picked a night like this to do it, when the bar was less crowded and Gus didn't have his hands so full.

Of course the hot pepper pizza had been her doing. She had a way of becoming part of things, integrating, that he'd never, ever managed; Shane was pushed along by the current, but she became it, directed it.

As if summoned by his thoughts, she appeared at his table only a moment later, her conversation with Gus apparently already over. Shane pushed out the seat across from him with his foot.

"You forgot to pick up a drink," he commented.

"I can't stay," she said regretfully, and looked like she was actually sorry about it. She rested a hand on the back of the chair and adjusted the strap of the bag slung over her shoulder. "I've got a few more things to do tonight. Gus is putting together a to-go order for me, but then I've gotta skedaddle."

He felt a vague sensation of disappointment and immediately squashed it. It surprised him, though, that it had surfaced at all. Now that he thought about it, it was weird that he'd offered her a seat before she'd asked, too.

He was missing the company of a person who used words like skedaddle. Ugh.

"It's seven-thirty," he pointed out. "You're making the rest of us look bad."

Lydia smiled. There was a glint in her hazel eyes—something excited, anticipatory. "It's for a worthy cause."

His eyes narrowed. "I won't ask."

"Good," she said loftily, unoffended by his tone. "I wasn't going to tell you." He didn't have time to work out if he ought to be offended by that before she moved on. "Anyway, are you free Friday night? Around ten?"

He took an unhurried swig of his beer. It was nice that she pretended he had other people banging down his door. "Why?"

"Just meet me at the dock," she said, still smiling. "I'll bring the beer."

He usually wandered that way around that time, anyway—something she had obviously observed. And if she was offering beer, he could overlook any fishing she was planning on doing. He needed to just forget about that stupid carp. It was a dumb animal. Nothing magic about it. No harm in making it part of the great circle of life.

These all sounded like lame justifications for saying yes, even inside his own head.

"I'll see if I can free up my schedule," he said noncommittally.

"Be there," she said, pointing threateningly at him. He stared down her finger. "It'll be better than whatever your other plans are. Unless you were going to hang out with Jas," she amended. "But she should probably be asleep at ten, right? What's a reasonable bedtime for a seven-year-old?"

Before he could scrape together a response, Gus called her name.

"Ah, gotta go," she said, a vague expression of apology pinching her face. "Friday, ten o'clock, lake dock. Capiche?"

She didn't wait for a response, just turned and headed for the bar, accepting the to-go carton from Gus with effusive thanks. Shane watched her go, saying hello and goodbye to everyone that she passed. There was a sunflower poking out of her bag, the stem carefully wrapped in brown paper; he had no doubt she planned to stop by Emily and Haley's house on her way home, to drop it off.

She was nice to everyone, not just him. And Haley could be just as mean as he was—a different kind of mean, but still mean.

No one else was getting the mysterious invite to the dock on Friday night, though. No one else was hanging around her farm on Saturdays, helping her rebuild fences or tend the crops.

Maybe it was just Jas. Maybe she really liked the kid. Shane wouldn't blame her at all for that. It made more sense than the idea that Lydia liked him.

There was something else hanging out of her bag beside the sunflower: a little floppy doll, its arms draped on the edge of the bag, head lolling. It looked incredibly old-fashioned, but clean, like it was brand new. If she was going by Haley's on her way home, she'd pass by the ranch, too.

Yeah. Had to be Jas.

He wished, however briefly, that it wasn't; hoped, however futilely, that Lydia had no other motivations. That they were just…friends.

Of course, Jas wouldn't be at the dock on Friday night, but Lydia probably knew she had to keep Shane buttered up if she wanted to see the kid. Fine by him. Jas deserved a good, decent role model like Lydia. Someone who clearly didn't have trouble being nice to her, always. Someone bright, and happy. Someone resilient. All the things Shane wasn't.

He didn't have to be jealous of his goddaughter; that was a new kind of pathetic.

If the price of that connection between them was watching Lydia kill a few fish, he could pay it.

Though the sun had long since set, it was a warm, muggy evening. The insects buzzed as Shane made his way over to the lake. His t-shirt stuck to his back; he'd left his holey Joja sweatshirt at home. Still at a distance, he could see Lydia's lantern-light at the end of the dock. This time, though, there was no fishing pole in the water, and she had no book in hand: she just sat at the edge of the dock, bare feet dangling down to drift through the water, overalls rolled up above her ankles, and occasionally looked up, as if waiting for him.

It was a nice thought, that anyone might be waiting for him. As unlikely as it sounded, little though he believed it, she was here, wasn't she?

He glanced down at the paper bag clutched in his hand. He still considered ditching it behind the nearest bush before going out to meet her, but decided against it. He could see from the cooler sitting beside her that she'd kept up her end of the bargain, and he didn't want to owe her anything. An even trade—that was all.

She waved as he stepped onto the old, creaking dock. "Hey! You made it."

"Yeah, I'm missing JojaMart Dash reruns for this. Better be good."

She laughed and gave a theatrical shudder. "Come on, don't you get enough of that place Monday through Friday?"

"I like to watch the little people rob Joja blind," he said grimly. "The camera guys always catch one of the execs with a look on their face like someone just took a shit in front of them."

She shook her head, but she was still smiling. She popped open the cooler beside her. "As promised, I've got the beer."

He sat down on her other side and then put the paper bag down between them, unceremoniously.

She raised her eyebrows as she handed over the beer. "What's this?"

"Snacks."

She gave him a delighted grin. He halfway regretted not ditching the bag, but only halfway. Sometimes her sunny mood was annoying. Sometimes, it was infectious. Right now, it was the latter. He smiled back, just a little, and looked out at the water, cracking open his beer.

"Smart," she told him. "We might be waiting a little while."

"For what?"

"You'll see," she said evasively. "Here, take this."

She handed him a small paper bag, the top tightly rolled and taped shut. He put down his beer and hefted the bag; it felt like it contained a fistful of sand, shifting back and forth, whispering against the paper.

"What is it?" he asked, suspicious.

She ignored the question outright this time. "Just open it up and sprinkle it over the water, like this."

She pulled her feet from the water, folding her legs beneath her at the edge of the dock, and picked up her own bag. Carefully, she peeled the tape off, then tilted the whole thing at an angle, allowing a thin stream of vaguely green dust to drift down to the water's surface.

"Bait for the fish?" he guessed, though it gave him no pleasure.

"No," she said firmly. "No fishing tonight." She caught his eye. "It's a surprise. You're not getting anything else out of me. Pour."

Somewhat mollified, he followed her instructions and shook the dust out over the water on his side of the dock. On contact with the pond's surface, something within the dust activated; as it spread along ripples in the water, it also began to dimly glow. A weird, almost mushroomy smell drifted up to Shane's nose. The particles separated, drifting further apart. Some of them remained clustered around the struts of the dock, casting an eerie green light around them. Lydia dimmed the lantern.

"And now," she said, with apparent relish, "we wait."

"For what?" he said, exasperated.

"They prefer the quiet," she said, with a stern look at him, "so pipe down, chatterbox. Inside voices."

"You are infuriating." But he kept his voice down as he said it.

She grinned. "So you've said." She picked up the bag of snacks he'd brought and opened it up. "Oooh, strawberry cakes. I love these."

"Pierre orders them in from Zuzu City every Thursday," Shane said grudgingly. "They're untainted by JojaMart."

She snickered. "And the chips?"

"I get a discount, okay? It's just about the only perk of that stupid job."

"Believe me, I know. No judgment."

She slit open the little brown cardboard box of strawberry cakes and offered one to him first—of course. He took it, getting a little strawberry filling on his hand. She raised her own cake, as if toasting him, then took a bite and closed her eyes, chewing rapturously.

He shook his head, even though he had to admit the cakes were pretty good. If only to himself.

For a few moments, they were quiet, drinking sips of beer and eating the strawberry cakes in the dim green glow of the strange dust they'd spread on the pond. Lydia ate her entire strawberry cake before returning to her beer, and pulled a face at the first sip, much like she'd done the last time they'd met at this dock.

She seemed content with the silence, and even though he had no idea what she was up to, Shane didn't find it so bad, either. The frogs croaked across the pond, the insects buzzing; even with the lantern at Lydia's side, the stars were bright above them, the moon a slim crescent in the east. The shadow of the pines didn't seem ominous or frightening, but somehow comforting instead, like the valley held them in a pocket of peace, the world outside far, far away.

It was weird, but…nice. He wanted to hold onto that feeling, and knew it would slip away, shattered as soon as one of them said the wrong thing. He tried to just exist within it, for as long as it lasted.

It was hard not to worry about what came next. Something always came next.

Lydia sat up straight next to him. "Here they come," she whispered. "Look." She pointed down to the water.

He looked. Just beneath the surface, its body bathed in the strange green glow lingering on the surface, there was the purple, bioluminescent flash of the midnight carp. It swam by effortlessly, circling one of the dock's struts a few times, scooping some of the glowing green stuff into its mouth.

Shane was holding his breath, he realized. Afraid to alert the fish that he was here; afraid that he would scare it off. It didn't just glow; it shimmered, its scales flickering from lavender to plum to violet. Its eyes were a strange, deep blue. It didn't seem to see them at all, like the surface of the water was a one-way mirror between worlds.

It paused beneath them, mouth opening and closing slightly, and then drifted away, vanishing into the pond's underwater foliage.

"Bait," Shane said, when he thought he could trust his voice again, "but no fishing."

He glanced sidelong at her. She'd pulled her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, a content little smile on her face as she gazed down at the pond. He hoped she hadn't witnessed whatever enormous emotion had possessed him, however briefly. He barely had a name for it. It was from another time: a part of his life he'd been sure was over for good.

"There's no need," Lydia said. "Demetrius and Willy confirmed that the population is back in balance with the rest of the pond. And this food will keep it that way, as long as it's given on a schedule." She caught his eye. "Don't worry, nothing nefarious. It just slows their reproduction down a little. They got too comfortable in this pond."

Another midnight carp cruised by beneath the surface. This one didn't linger; it was visible for only a heartbeat, and then gone again, its bioluminescence leaving an afterglow in Shane's vision.

She'd seen that the fish dying had upset him, two weeks ago. She'd noticed. And this was…what? An apology? He didn't know if he liked that or not, torn in opposing directions: angry that she had noticed some weakness in him, grateful that she didn't seem to see it that way.

"Seems like a lot of work," he commented. "Just to save some midnight carp."

She nudged him, gently, in the side. "Come on, you don't really think that, do you? They're pretty neat."

Another of the fish took that moment to pause beneath them, as if summoned by her words. It stared up at them, its alien blue eyes piercing; it seemed like it was daring him to lie to her. He remembered the awe he'd felt, when she'd hauled that first one up onto the dock, before it had died. The feeling was a hundred times stronger, seeing the glowing fish cut through the water, fins and gills working, scales gleaming.

For the first time in over a year, he thought about the camera packed away in his closet. He got as far as imagining what he could capture in this lighting, how the green glow of the fish food might interfere or enhance, before he snapped that door shut again.

"Fine," he assented. "They're pretty neat."

She smiled at him, and looked back down at the water. "They're just like I remember them," she said. "It took me by surprise, when I reeled that first one in. I expected…I don't know. That they wouldn't glow and glitter the way that I remembered. That I'd imagined it. But they're exactly the way they were."

"Your grandpa took you fishing here," he realized.

She nodded. "It was such an adventure. Up late, carrying a backpack of snacks, Granddad leading the way with the lantern. I must've been Jas's age. I remember sitting here, seeing these fish glow in the dark, and thinking they must be magic." She chuckled. "Granddad didn't exactly talk me out of it."

That was what Shane had thought, too. That the fish looked like magic, but that hadn't gotten it anywhere except for dead.

"There's probably a biological reason for the glow," he pointed out.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I know that, killjoy. Do you think Demetrius didn't talk my ear off about it while we were working on this damn fish food?"

She sounded so put out, so annoyed, that he choked a little on his beer, trying not to laugh. There was something disproportionately funny about pissing her off. She presented the same optimistic, cheerful face to everyone; this side of her was like a secret, one that not everyone got to see. She glowered at him while he laughed and coughed, and he liked her better for it.

"Surprised your dad let you stay up so late to go fishing," he remarked, when his coughing fit had subsided. "Eight o'clock is generally an acceptable bedtime for a seven-year-old, by the way."

She nodded, her expression thoughtful again, the irritation fading. "Dad didn't know," she said. "We'd visit the valley in the summer, he'd get sick of it after a week, I'd beg him to let me stay. Granddad always convinced him, somehow. Maybe Dad was just that eager to get back to his business. So our late-night fishing trips were unsanctioned, I suppose."

"Was this before or after Summer Camp Boondoggle?"

"Before," she said, with a chuckle. "After Granddad died, Dad felt…bad, I think, that I was missing those summers. He never said it in so many words," she clarified, when Shane gave her a skeptical look. "But it was an olive branch. What, were your parents perfect?"

He snorted. "Far from it. You think I'd be here, renting a room from Marnie, if they were?"

She turned on the dock so that she sat facing him, her legs crossed beneath her. "Well, you've heard my sad story," she said. "Turnabout's fair play."

"It's not that sad," he said. Not compared to everything else, he thought. "They just weren't around a lot. Always working long hours, jobs that were hard on their bodies. Worse than JojaMart. And then Dad had a heart attack when I was sixteen. Mom never got over it. She moved us to a different neighborhood to try to start over. I ended up in a different high school, middle of sophomore year."

Lydia winced a little. "Must've been tough."

"Not really. That was when I met Patrick."

She let out a surprised breath. "Oh."

"Yeah. Believe me, I thought it was a good trade. I never really knew my dad. There wasn't enough time left in the day to get to know him. But Patrick…"

It was still weird, surreal, to talk about him so…casually. For a year, he hadn't even said their names; he'd said "your dad" or "your mom" to Jas, and that had been hard enough. Like if he didn't talk about them, they wouldn't be dead, just away on some long trip. The universe would forget, and they would be alive again. Like magic.

Idiot.

"Were you friends right away?" Lydia asked. "He picked you for his gridball team in P.E., and that was that?"

"Uh, no. I cheated off him on a history test. He gave me a whole angry speech about academic dishonesty after class."

"Good for him," she said approvingly.

He shot her a warning look. She gestured for him to continue, reaching into the chip bag.

"Then he said, if I was so behind, he'd help tutor me until the next test," he continued. "But if he caught me cheating again, he was going to report me."

"So you accepted his help and didn't cheat on the next test," Lydia guessed.

He snorted. "No. I studied my ass off—without him—didn't cheat, and got a better grade than him. The teacher talked through one of my essay answers with the class because she liked it so much, and he argued with every point I made."

He'd been so stubborn back then. Teenagers had all that moody angst to fuel them. He wished he could borrow some of that from his past self now. Better than the cold emptiness he usually carried around these days.

Lydia was snickering. "I guess you did tell me he was a sore loser."

"He was. But he could have reported me, got back at me, and he didn't. We ran into each other walking home that afternoon—he lived in the next neighborhood over from mine—and he just struck up a conversation like none of it had ever happened."

"And you just…let him? Wow."

"What do you mean, wow?"

"Letting him get away with his poor sportsmanship like that. Very forgiving of you."

He took a sip of his beer, thinking back on that conversation. He didn't even really remember what they'd talked about. A recent Tunnelers game, maybe? The homework that was due next in the algebra class they also shared? The movie that had come out the previous weekend?

"I just thought it was funny," he said. "That he'd let some guy he didn't know piss him off so much. And, to be fair, that I'd retaliated so aggressively. We figured out we had other things in common, and then we were friends. That simple."

"You say it was simple," Lydia said, "but it's never worked like that, for me."

He gave her a baffled look. "I've seen you make friends with everyone who steps foot into the Saloon for longer than five minutes."

She looked down at the chip bag, fiddled with one corner of it. "First, making friends is different than a passing, superficial connection. I'm acquaintances with a lot of people here, but it's nothing like the depth of the friendship you clearly had with Patrick and Charlotte."

She shifted, looking back down at the pond's surface; a movement in her jaw told him she was chewing on the inside of her cheek. "Second, yeah, I'd say I've made some friends, since coming to Pelican Town."

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, then skittered away, as if she couldn't quite hold his gaze. He got the message, though. He was one of those friends. Whatever her reasons were, there it was.

He'd find some time to chew on that later.

"But?" he asked, because if there was a first and a second, there was also a third. The proverbial shoe that he'd been bracing for earlier.

"But," Lydia said, and sighed. "Third…before I came here, I didn't really have friends. I hope it's going to be different this time. It seems like it is. In high school, in college, in Zuzu City…don't get me wrong, I always had someone to sit next to in class, or someone to get a beer with after work. But nobody was calling me up to take a weekend trip out of town, and if I needed help moving, I was on my own. The midnight carp's bioluminescence has a scientific explanation, and people have best friends, but both seem like magic to me."

He tried to mesh this revelation with his perception of Lydia. When they'd talked about their brief encounter playing gridball in Zuzu City, he'd figured she was good friends with all those people on her team. He'd been sure that they had probably all gone out for dinner afterward, trash-talked his team with glee over drinks, and then turned to other topics as the night went on.

But he remembered, too, what she'd said earlier in that same conversation. I don't really miss it. He'd wondered, and here it was. Her life had been empty, in Zuzu City—as empty as his had been full.

He'd gone out for drinks with Patrick and the team; then they'd gone home, to Charlotte and Jas. And Lydia had gone home alone, mud-splattered and cold.

The two Lydias stood side-by-side in his head, and he could not combine them; it was impossible.

"Sorry," she said, and when he looked over at her, she winced. Her cheeks had gone a little pink. "That was probably too much information. Embarrassing," she muttered.

She took a deep gulp of her beer. He watched her, brow furrowed.

"Friends are the people you get to be embarrassing in front of," he told her. "That's at least thirty percent of the point."

Her lips quirked in a hesitant smile.

"And you're right," he said, looking down at the midnight carp. "I guess it was magic." To say otherwise would have been to demean them, to lie about the place they'd had in his life. "Explains why I feel so shitty, now that they're gone."

She lifted her hand, almost like she was going to reach across the distance between them and touch his shoulder, but she seemed to think better of it; she let it fall to her lap.

He wouldn't have shaken her off, he thought, though he could see why she'd think he would. This was as comfortable, as at ease, as he'd felt with anyone since Patrick and Charlotte died. As much as that burned—as much as it felt like it insulted their memory, somehow, to move on, to become close to anyone else—he was so, so cold. He kept drifting closer to the flame, trying to get warm.

"What do you think they'd have thought of the fish?" she asked, her voice quiet.

She'd never tiptoed around his grief. He kept forgetting that.

More of the midnight carp had gathered, now. Four or five, swimming around and below and above each other in a kind of dance. The bioluminescence left a light lingering above them, just for a moment, as they passed, as if they were scrawling spell glyphs in the air.

"Patrick would've made up a dozen stories about why they look like that," he decided. "Half of them would have involved the tower over there." He nodded toward the slightly-crooked tower, just visible against the night sky to the west. "And Charlotte would have wanted a picture. Several, probably. Everywhere we went, she wanted me to get a picture of something or another. She had so many photo albums."

"You were the group photographer, huh?"

"Something like that," he said, and then, before she could ask for more detail, asked, "What stories did your grandpa tell about the midnight carp?"

"Just two, really," she said, with a mischievous smile. "That Rasmodius's magic leaked from his tower, like a pollutant, almost, and changed some of the creatures in the pond. Or that Rasmodius came here because of the fish, because of the other things in the valley, to study them. Maybe even to use them, to feed his magic."

He groaned, leaned back against the strut on his side of the dock, and closed his eyes. "I see where you get your bullshit."

"Oh, come on. You don't think there's any magic in Stardew Valley? Nothing?"

Briefly, he considered it: the weird, far-off, piping call you could hear from Lydia's farm; the midnight carp, and whatever was in the food she'd just insisted they feed them; the changing lights in the tower to the west; the Adventurer's Guild up in the mountains, and the stories Marnie sometimes told about Marlon. There were creatures, he knew that for sure. Things out there in the deep, in the dark, that he didn't have an explanation for, and that he didn't go looking for, either.

But there was probably a way to explain all of that; his ignorance wasn't proof of anything. To him, the harder thing to explain was Lydia: a person able to uproot her life, to pursue change, dogged, determined, even when she'd previously failed. Many times, if she was telling the truth, and he didn't really doubt that about her.

"Maybe," he said, finally, opening his eyes to look at the star-strewn night sky. "I guess I'm open to hearing arguments."

"Well," Lydia said, opening her next beer with a loud snap-hiss, "it's a good thing I get chatty when I've been drinking, then."

"You're already chatty."

"Exhibit A," she said, grimly, and reached into the chip bag. "Demetrius told me that records show no indication of the midnight carp in this pond until after Rasmodius moved into that tower…"

He let her talk, ate his chips, drank his beer. He argued, sometimes, as the night went on, and they both laughed, more than once.

But he remembered, reminded himself, that she had other friends in the valley. Over time, they would prove easier friends to keep than Shane. Half the time, he had no idea where his black moods had come from; sometimes he was cruel, mean, without thought, without reason. She was patient and forgiving now, but could she keep that up month after month, season after season?

No, because she would find better. Because she deserved better. Regardless of what had come before, Pelican Town loved her. Soon, she'd have so many friends that she would forget all about him.

For now, though, she was here, sharing her magic with him. He was too captivated to walk away.

#stardew valley #sdv shane #sdv farmer #shane/female farmer #depression cw #alcoholism cw #grief cw #developing friendship #pre-relationship #universe writes

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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FIC: Borrowed Magic [4/5]

Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Friendship, Grief, Alcoholism, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Slow Burn, Flirting, Fluff Word Count: 3,884 (this chapter); 15,351 (total so far) Summary: The farmer has a way of making ordinary things seem like magic. Shane just has a hard time believing it. Also on AO3. Previous chapters: One | Two | Three

"Wow," Jas said, watching Lydia finish off the last stitch of the boondoggle. "You're so good at that!"

Lydia tugged the last strand through and brought the scissors up to snip off the ends, evening them out. She was left with a finished boondoggle: built out of the weird plasticky string called rexlace, woven into one box stitch after another, the colors alternating on each of the four sides, purple and orange.

"I really loved summer camp," she told Jas. "I was that kid that did the starting stitch for everybody on craft night, so I got a lot of practice."

Jas looked down at the strands of rexlace in her hands, her brow furrowing with determination. "I'll keep practicing," she said decisively. "How did you start it off again? That's the hardest part."

"Here, like this…"

Lydia arranged the strings all in their places and showed each step slowly: wrapping one of the strands around her finger, weaving the other over and under. They weren't the prettiest colors, but Jas hadn't complained about the ugly contrast of navy blue and bright yellow. It was easier for beginners to see the stitches this way.

It was a warm day, but not hot enough to be unpleasant. They sat inside her cabin, the door propped open, Archimedes lounging in the entryway, sweating JojaColas gathering moisture rings on the old kitchen table. Every window had been thrown wide to catch the breeze, and occasionally it threatened to sweep the old rolls of rexlace off the table. Lydia felt about as relaxed as Archimedes looked.

She glanced sidelong at Shane. There was a look of intense, narrowed frustration on his face as he stared down at the rexlace in his hands, moving the strands around to start over. The furrow between his brows deepened every time he tried again, and despite his frustration, there was something sweet about the determined set of his jaw.

When he'd first arrived with Jas, she hadn't been sure what kind of day this would be. Marnie's impromptu pizza night had gone okay, but he'd turned monosyllabic over dessert. Whatever had been eating him, though, maybe it had passed. He hadn't protested much at all when Jas asked if he was going to learn how to make a boondoggle, too. It had been obvious that she didn't want to be the only beginner at the table, and it had also been obvious that, regardless of mood, Shane would not leave her alone if she asked.

Lydia recalled him waving the breadstick at her and had to fight a smile. She'd felt a little guilty about her part in the whole thing; she'd known she wasn't going to the ranch to pick up a chicken, after all, though Marnie's actual plan had been a mystery to her until the trap had been sprung.

But at some point, she'd let go of her guilt. It had been too much fun to feel guilty about.

"Hah!" Jas thrust her hand triumphantly into the middle of the table: there, a little crooked, was the first starting box stitch she'd managed, four little squares formed into one larger square, checkers of yellow and navy blue. "I did it!"

"Good job," Lydia said, smiling. "That's the hardest part. Just keep going, now."

Her expression determined, Jas started weaving: slowly at first, but picking up speed with every stitch she tightened. Lydia watched, captivated by the little delighted smile that steadily grew on Jas's face as she progressed.

Shane was watching Jas, too, a half-smile on his face and the rexlace a hopeless tangle in his hands. It was so fond, so affectionate and open, that Lydia looked away. She pulled over a couple of spools and the scissors, selecting her next colors. It was too much like seeing some secret, private part of him, one that she hadn't been invited to look at.

She didn't need to see it, not really; she was just glad that it existed at all.

She started a new boondoggle with a different, more complex stitch. Her fingers remembered better than her mind; she faltered a few times before she really got the hang of it, then unraveled the whole thing to start again more cleanly. Shane had gone back to wrestling with his own project.

"I can demo the starting stitch for you again, if you want," Lydia offered, trying to make it sound as non-judgmental as possible.

He shot her a glare, though it was not nearly as mean as some looks he'd previously given her. "I know how to do it. I just have fat fingers."

Jas giggled. "No, you just keep putting that one strand in the wrong place."

"You start it for me, then," Shane said, pushing the mess over to Jas.

She carefully set down the boondoggle that she'd just tied off, untangled the rexlace that Shane had been working on, and more quickly this time, set the starting stitch. With a flourish, she handed it back to him.

"Show-off," he said, but without any malice in it at all, a hint of a smile in his voice. Jas stuck her tongue out at him; she was smiling, too.

"Here," she said, holding out her finished creation. "This one's for you. You can put it on your key ring."

"You sure?"

Jas nodded. "I'll make another one for me."

"You just want prettier colors." But Shane took it and dug his keys out of his pocket, immediately affixing the boondoggle to his battered key ring.

"It can be both," Jas said; she was already picking out her next colors—one strand a pretty light green, the other lavender—and snipping them from the spools, getting ready to start again.

Shane was slow, but Lydia saw that he'd been paying attention. Now that Jas had started it for him, he steadily worked away at his own boondoggle, stacking stitch after stitch. Quiet fell again as they all worked. Archimedes gave a heavy sigh and flopped the other way in the doorway. He wanted to be out exploring the forest near the treehouse; he'd expected it when Jas had appeared at the farm, and he'd been pouting ever since.

"Ugh," Jas said eventually, putting her boondoggle down and flexing her fingers. "My hands hurt."

"Your fingers aren't used to doing this," Lydia told her. "Your stamina will improve if you keep practicing."

Jas eyed the boondoggle Lydia was working on. "And once I get better, you can teach me that stitch, right?"

"Of course. I'll even show you how to twist these things into cute little hearts."

Jas perked up. "That would be perfect on my backpack zipper!"

"Very fashionable," Lydia agreed. "But you've got plenty of time to practice. Maybe it's time for a break. I'm sure Archimedes would love a treehouse adventure."

She glanced at Shane, just to make sure. He nodded, not taking his eyes off his in-progress boondoggle.

Jas hopped down from her chair, grinning. "Thanks, Miss Lydia."

"Remember the whistle." Lydia scooped up her lanyard from where it hung on the back of her chair, and handed it over to Jas. Jas slid it over her neck.

"I think this one's my favorite," Jas said, lifting the lanyard to inspect one of the pins: a sheep that appeared to be made largely from a ball of yarn, knitting needles for legs.

"I didn't get that one until I was a camp counselor, for learning to knit. But, uh, not for learning to knit well."

Jas laughed. "Archie, want to go to the treehouse?"

The dog leapt to his feet, panting happily. Jas picked up her backpack and glanced back at Lydia. "Thanks for teaching me," she said, suddenly a little shy again.

"Anytime," Lydia said, and meant it. "Have fun."

She was out the door, across the porch, and down the stairs; distantly, her voice growing quieter, Lydia heard her talking to Archimedes as he paced at her side. She smiled after the two of them, watching until they couldn't be seen through the door any longer.

It was sweet to see Jas start to open up. Her and her godfather were a lot alike, that way.

"Camp counselor, huh?" Shane said. He muttered a curse and unraveled the stitch he'd started to pull tight, seeing that the strands weren't arranged right.

"During college." Lydia put her own boondoggle down. Her fingers weren't used to the work anymore, either, and needed the break. She leaned back in her chair, turning her face to the breeze. "Made some extra money, meant I didn't have to go home for the summer."

She swallowed down any follow-up explanation and half-hoped that Shane wouldn't take an interest. She really was too relaxed; she never would have let that kind of comment slip, otherwise.

He made a thoughtful sound in his throat, a kind of grunt. He was quiet long enough that she thought he wouldn't ask, but then he said, "Things that bad with your dad?"

She hesitated. It had been weeks since they'd rebuilt the treehouse ladder together, when she'd told him about her dad's neglect of the farm. She'd kind of expected him not to remember—or, if he remembered, not to care.

It wasn't something she liked talking about. But…he'd revealed a surprising amount to her, lately. Maybe under duress, a little, but he always could have chosen to walk away instead. And he was asking her a question—expressing some kind of curiosity. Not something he did often, like he'd trained himself out of it. She didn't want to punish that.

Vulnerability went both ways.

Before she could overthink it too much, she said, "Not bad, exactly. We're just different people. I've found our relationship works best when we live too far apart to drop in on one another. We do better talking on the phone every few weeks. Going back to his house, after I'd been out of it and experienced freedom…I just couldn't. He was always trying to set me up with these stupid internships at his company."

Shane raised his eyebrows at his boondoggle, pulling another stitch tight. "His company?"

"It was a big financial planning firm. Investments, banking. Not really my thing."

Shane finally looked up at her. There was a quizzical look in his dark eyes. "Your dad is a finance bro?"

That startled a laugh out of her. "Please never call him that again," she said, but she was still chuckling. "He's sixty. He's not a bro."

He glanced around at the interior of her tiny cabin: the bed tucked away in the corner; the fireplace that would hopefully keep her from freezing come winter; the minifridge, sink, microwave, and hot plate that made up the entirety of her "kitchen."

"So he's rich," he said, but dubiously.

"Sure. Probably. Seems like it." She shrugged at the look he shot her. "He doesn't share his brokerage account with me."

"That's obvious," Shane said, with a roll of his eyes. "No wonder you're not close."

"He would help," she said, maybe too quickly, too defensively. "If I asked. But his help…it always comes with strings attached. I left Joja—I left Zuzu City—to get away from that. So I make do, and for now, it's enough."

There was so much she was leaving out. But she wasn't about to dump all of that on Shane. They were still feeling out this…whatever this was. Being friends, sort of. She wasn't about to scare him off by blabbering out all of her complicated feelings about her dad, feelings she hadn't even really sorted out herself, feelings that changed week to week, phone call to phone call. This was enough information.

Shane was frowning. Not his normal frown, the scowl he used to chase people off; it was thoughtful, considering. He'd stopped working on his boondoggle; instead, he ran the loose ends through his fingers.

"That's still shitty," he said. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought that he was irritated with her dad on her behalf. "Parents should help their kids. No strings."

"Not denying that," she agreed. "I just can't do anything about it, you know? He is who he is. I can't change him."

"But you can move back to his dad's farm that he neglected for twenty years," he said shrewdly. "The place he hated, you said."

She smiled; maybe it was more of a smirk. "What, are you saying it's kind of petty to do that?"

"Yeah," he said, but he snorted; he was smiling too. "I never would have guessed that about you."

"There are times when all of us have to get by on spite," she said, and he huffed again, an almost-soundless laugh.

"What about your mom?" he asked. "Where is she in all this?"

"No idea. She left when I was so young that I barely remember her. She's never reached out."

The brief mirth had fallen from Shane's face, but he wasn't frowning, not exactly. He just looked at her, eyes slightly narrowed, head tilted a fraction to the side, like he was trying to bring her into focus.

"What?" she asked.

"I just don't get you," he grumbled, and went back to the boondoggle, starting the next stitch. "Your mom abandoned you—"

Lydia started but failed to give any retort to this; his summary was too shocking. He sure had a way with words. He did not mince them.

"—your dad's a finance bro—"

She'd managed to get her voice back. "Again, I have to beg you to not call him—"

"—you're broke, you work from dawn to dusk on this farm, and you're…cheerful."

"If you'd known me back in the city," she said, "you wouldn't call me cheerful. It's this place. It's the farm, it's Pelican Town, it's Stardew Valley. Yeah, I'm tired pretty much all the time, but working with the crops and the chickens from dawn to dusk makes me happy." She paused, considering. "And I'm getting less tired, actually."

He shook his head. "If you say so."

"I can attribute it to the junimos, if you want. Put in a good word for you, see if they'll share their secrets."

His mouth quirked at one corner. "You want to appeal to your imaginary friends, go right ahead."

It could have sounded mean, but it didn't; it just sounded like he was teasing her. She let the subject drop. The quiet that fell was comfortable, almost familiar. Shane kept working at the boondoggle, and Lydia stacked a few more stitches onto hers, mentally running through the list of things that still needed her attention today.

Reluctantly, she glanced at the clock above the door. Already after one. It was nice to sit on her ass and do nothing except shoot the shit with Shane, but spite or no, the farm didn't wait. The weeds kept growing, and those new sprinklers were not going to set themselves up.

"I need to get back to work," she said with a sigh. "Feel free to hang out, watch TV. Help yourself to the snack basket."

He was examining his finished boondoggle, turning it this way and that. "Sure," he said. "Thanks."

She allowed herself to feel the smallest sting of disappointment that he wasn't volunteering to help. She could definitely use the extra hands, true. But more than that, she wanted company, and lately, he'd been interesting company, all things considered.

The smallest sting, and then she let it go, pushing back from the table and walking out the open door, toward her fields. They overwhelmed her sometimes, but with her conversation with Shane fresh in her mind, she looked at them with a smile. There were the swaying vines of the hot pepper plants, pops of bright red beginning to appear; there were the blueberry bushes, ripening towards a deep blue, not long until they were ready to start harvesting; there was the new green growth of the corn she'd planted in the plot Marnie had helped her clear.

She heard that piping call off to the west, from deep in the woods. Keep going, a voice said in her mind. She knew it was her own, but it was Granddad's, too.

She collected her gloves, hat, foam kneeling pad, and stereo from the porch, then got to work. She'd only been weeding for a few minutes, though, when she heard footsteps, trodding down the steps and out into the field.

She looked up. Shane stopped a few feet away and shuffled his feet. "You got an extra pair of gloves?" he asked the nearest hot pepper plant. "I can help."

She beamed up at him, even if he couldn't see it. "Look in that chest right outside the front door. There should be another pair. I've got another one of these pads, too, and another sunhat. They're just uglier than these."

That got him to look at her. He eyed the hat. "I am not wearing that."

"You'll feel differently after you've experienced one sunburn on the back of your neck," she said grimly.

He didn't respond, just went back to her porch and dug through the chest to find the gloves. Shaking his head, he also pulled out the spare hat, though for now, he looped it around his neck by the strap and let it hang on the back of his shoulders. Maybe the old-fashioned strawberry-and-flowers pattern was off-putting to him.

"I'm just picking out the weeds," she told him, deciding the sunburn was just a thing he'd have to experience for himself, and showed him the little growth that she'd just pulled up from near the base of one of the pepper plants. "I try to do some every day, so it doesn't get ahead of me."

He placed the foam pad by the peppers two rows across from her and knelt. "Your knees must be killing you."

"Eh. It's like I told Jas. Practice builds stamina."

For a few moments, they weeded, steadily moving up the row across from each other. She saw him watch her technique and replicate it, getting the hang of it quickly.

He'd told her, not long ago at the docks, before the fish incident, that she had a bright future ahead of her—implying, heavily, that he didn't. Granted, he'd been drunk or at least on his way there, and she didn't always think that what someone said while intoxicated was absolutely the truth.

But she thought she'd sensed it, in his words, in his actions. That he didn't think there was anything in his future. That everything he could try, he would fail at. That he would just be stuck in the cycle she'd observed forever: the crappy job at JojaMart, the crappy beer at the Saloon after work, the crappy sleep of someone who was drinking too much, too regularly, only to start it all over again.

He didn't give himself enough credit. He was a smart guy. He'd had a bad run, but he could still do this: build fences, pluck weeds, learn how to make a boondoggle because his goddaughter asked him to. She just hoped that someday he would see it, that he had all the tools he needed to climb out of that abyss he'd talked about.

Maybe she could help. Maybe she was helping. She didn't know, but she wasn't about to stop.

"Hey," he said abruptly, not looking at her. "Sorry if I came off as rude when we first met. It takes me a while to warm up to strangers."

She smiled down at the weeds. "What was it you said? You'd give me a pot of gold to leave you alone?"

"You're very…persistent," he said. "And sunny." He grimaced. "And I'm…"

She sat back on her heels. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"You're a grumpus."

He huffed, but it sounded like a laugh to her. "I told you not to call me that."

"I'm spiteful. Consider it payback for all your rudeness."

He groaned, but it sounded halfhearted. "I'm already regretting apologizing."

"Oh, don't," Lydia said, smiling. "It was nice. I forgive you." She bent back over the weeds. "So that's it, huh? We're not strangers anymore? You're all warmed up now?"

It took a few seconds for her brain to catch up to her mouth, and then her ears began to burn. She had a brief, horrifying flashback to Tuesday night, his passing comment that she had misinterpreted. Slowly, mortified—but also unable to look away, like a bystander at a car crash—she looked back up at him.

He was smirking at her, dark eyes crinkled up at the corners. Her stomach jolted, a sudden sensation of falling, even though she was still kneeling on her sturdy little foam pad. It was a nice smirk. She hadn't seen it very often, and it looked good on him, brought a life and playfulness to his face that was usually absent. He was here, in this moment of absolute mortification with her, completely present.

Even embarrassed as she was, she was grateful.

"It takes a little more than farmwork to warm me up," he said.

She pulled her hat over her face with a groan. "I didn't mean it that way!"

She could see from under the brim of her hat that he was almost grinning now, like her humiliation amused him. "Sometimes your mouth goes faster than your brain."

Infuriated—but happy; she could not deny how happy—she picked up a weed clump and lobbed it over the peppers at him, attached dirt clod and all. She had good aim; it smacked him right on the shoulder. He brushed it off, still radiating smugness.

It was like the sun had come out from behind thick cloud cover, shining directly on him. For a moment, she saw who he must have been, before Patrick and Charlotte died, before everything changed.

You are still in there, she thought fiercely. There is something ahead of you. And I am not going to let you forget.

How many times in her life had she wished, when she was under that same cloud, that someone would offer out a hand to her? Pull her into a patch of sunlight with them, give her a break from the storm? And here was someone who needed that hand, who'd said as much, whose painful path was not exactly like hers, but was familiar. A shadow, an echo.

She was still finding the way, true. But she had opened that letter and found her way here, right when she'd needed to be here most. She had a break in the storm to offer. She could not bring herself to do less.

She couldn't tell him. He would fight her, every step of the way; he would fight her anyway, even without knowing her internal resolve. But she would be there, if he would let her—for Jas, for Marnie, for him—and maybe, eventually, the sunny days would outnumber the stormy ones.

If she was lucky. If she fought hard enough. And if the valley let her borrow a bit of its magic, just for a little while.

She thought back to the midnight carp, and started feverishly composing a plan.

#stardew valley #sdv shane #sdv farmer #shane/female farmer #depression cw #alcoholism cw #grief cw #developing friendship #pre-relationship #universe writes #lil more fluff #lil more flirting

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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In a war of skirmishes, commanders who embraced improvisation tended to win more ground. Evariste scooped up loads of strange, powerful saarebas and battlemage spells on the march. Magic that infected and exploded. In those days, they called it ‘spirit’ magic. But that was a reputational thing, a way to exalt Tevinter’s craft above the occult tricks that Nevarran mages performed. What Evariste had taught himself to cast in Seheron, with fire and blood, was a form of necromancy.

After the army, he wasn’t a tinkerer or a scholar of magical mechanics any more. He was a walking grimoire of spells no battlemage would touch; because they weren’t made for battle.

They were made to remove the possibility of battle.

On a rooftop in Dock Town, with the cloudless midday sun turning the buildings in every direction white as a swan’s ass, a blood-mage fired a spell at Neve…and Evariste slipped into his former self. As easily as putting on an old robe, he tapped into the grimoire. On this rooftop, on this day, there would not be another fucking battle with the Venatori.

The latest chapter of Papercuts is live on AO3.

Chapter Five - Bar the Door

Chapter Tags: m/m, action, violence and gore, Evariste gets real scary, military service, war ptsd, secret past, flirting, pining, insomnia, separation after an argument, smoking/tobacco, magic appreciation, guest starring Neve and Emmrich

#dragon age #rookanis #lucanis dellamorte #evariste mercar #rook #da:tv #man this chapter fucked me up #in a good way. bossuary writes violence in a very compelling fashion #it tells its own story #they were made to remove the possibility of battle like WHAT #i've now read that line several times and it still gives me chills

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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FIC: Borrowed Magic [3/5]

Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Friendship, Grief, Alcoholism, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Slow Burn, Flirting, Fluff Word Count: 4,769 (this chapter); 11,466 (total so far) Summary: The farmer has a way of making ordinary things seem like magic. Shane just has a hard time believing it. Also on AO3. Previous chapters: One | Two

Shane barely made it two steps inside the Saloon before Marnie bustled up to him, two pizza boxes stacked in her arms. A couple of other, smaller boxes balanced on top.

"I told Jas we could have a pizza night," she said, in answer to the look he was giving the boxes. "Didn't have time today to throw something together for dinner. You don't mind, do you?"

A headache throbbed in his left temple. His hand ached from catching a box he shouldn't have, but Morris would've docked his pay if all those bottles of olive oil had broken. All day, like every weekday, he'd watched the clock, waiting for the moment that Joja would release him. Tuesday nights at the Saloon were sparse. There was no crowd, no one to give him weird looks; he had his corner by the fireplace all to himself.

Instead, Marnie had promised Jas family dinner. His jaw clenched, which didn't improve his headache. It wasn't enough that he had to listen to Morris scheme about improving sales all day; no, the universe saw fit to heap extra punishment on him.

Play pretend, it demanded, using Marnie as its mouthpiece. Have a nice family dinner with your goddaughter and aunt. You're hanging on by a thread, but don't be an asshole. Smile. Smile wider.

Past Marnie's shoulder, he saw Emily dart out from behind the bar with another box. She caught his eye, grinning, and hurried over.

"Almost forgot the breadsticks!" She held the box out to Shane, smiling. "Nice and fresh. Tell Jas I said hi! I heard that hot pepper pizza was her favorite."

For a moment, he thought he might turn around and walk out of the Saloon: head back to Joja, pick up a six-pack, and wander up towards the mountain lake, where no one would expect anything from him. His toes twitched in his sneakers, like they were already on the move, like he was already gone.

But the anger driving him faded as quickly as it had come, leaving him in exactly the same place as before: drained, exhausted, defeated.

"Okay," he said, and seeing no alternative, took the box.

There was so rarely a current directing him. The alarm that woke him up for work; the chickens demanding breakfast; Gus shooting him a look that clearly said he was closing down the bar, and Shane needed to get out. He didn't have the strength to swim against it, so he went along, letting Marnie lead him out of the Saloon and back toward the ranch.

There was beer in the fridge at home, anyway.

Silently, because it was the bare minimum he could do for decency, he took the other boxes balanced on top of the pizzas so that Marnie wouldn't have to carry everything. She smiled at him in thanks. He looked away.

A delicious, cheesy, spicy smell drifted up from the boxes in his arms. His stomach growled. Maybe the novelty of pizza night would make Jas happy, at least. He was always missing the mark on that front, lately. The chicken book had clearly been a good idea, and he'd been…not happy, maybe, but content with that, for a couple of days.

And then she'd picked a fight with him yesterday morning, complaining about how he was never around to read her stories before bedtime anymore, and any lingering feelings of contentment vanished. Like they always did.

He didn't know why she wanted him around, anyway. He was shitty company, even when he tried his best.

Marnie didn't try to make conversation as they walked. Maybe she felt she'd already pushed things far enough with her family dinner machinations. Occasionally, she hummed under her breath. Shane recognized the song that had been playing on Lydia's stereo over the weekend.

"Pizza!" Jas cheered as they came through the front door. She abandoned the paper she'd been scribbling on. "Does it have hot peppers?"

"One with peppers for you and your uncle," Marnie said, with a shake of her head. "And one with a little less heat for me."

Shane frowned at the box, finally absorbing Emily's earlier remark about the pizza. "Gus never puts hot peppers on his pizza. Just sad green bell peppers."

Marnie shrugged. "Guess he decided to branch out."

"Yum," Jas said, all enthusiasm.

"Can you help get the table ready, Jas?" Marnie asked.

"I'll get the plates!" She headed off to the kitchen with a skip in her step.

Marnie set the pizza boxes down beside the register, glancing up at the clock. "Be right there," she said. "Just need to put away my purse."

Shane frowned at her back as she hurried off into her bedroom. For the first time, he interpreted her silence on the walk home differently: she was nervous. She was waiting for something.

He was not staying if she'd invited Lewis over for dinner. They'd done that exactly once, and no one had liked it.

He dropped the three appetizer boxes on top of the pizza box stack and carried it all into the kitchen. Jas was already in motion; she'd used her step stool to get the plates down from the upper cabinets, and had now moved on to folding the napkins. Penny had taught her a fancy folding technique out of a library book recently, one that made the napkins stand upright on the plate almost like they had bunny ears. She made sure the faded fairy rose pattern was nice and visible, making little invisible tweaks and adjustments to each napkin as she went.

In the next room, the bell on the front door jingled. "Lydia!" Marnie's voice said. "Right on time."

Shane's stomach dropped.

Fuck. Of course.

Not Lewis—Lydia.

Too late, he remembered that Marnie had told her to come by to pick up a chicken. The excessive amount of food Marnie had picked up from the Saloon could not be a coincidence. Inwardly, silently, he groaned. He could tolerate Lydia in small doses, he had decided, but not after a long day at Joja, not when his head was throbbing and he was already trying to put on a good face for Jas.

Despite his irritation, though, he didn't miss the way Jas's face brightened a little bit as she set down the napkin she'd been fussing with and went to the doorway.

"Never be late for a chicken pickup," Lydia was saying. "That's what Granddad always told me, anyway."

"Hi, Miss Lydia," Jas chirped.

"Hi, Jas," Lydia said, and waved through the doorway. "Hey, Shane."

"We're having pizza night," Marnie explained. And then, as if it had just occurred to her, "You know, we've got plenty. Why don't you stay for dinner?"

Lydia was still looking at Shane, and so he saw very clearly from the sudden shift in her expression that this had not been pre-planned. She'd really thought she was just coming to pick up a chicken. She was still in her overalls, her hands and face clean but her hair bedraggled and sweaty, her braid barely holding together; she'd clearly had no time to prepare. There were dirt stains on her red t-shirt. Some sweat stains, too.

He felt a little less irritated with her. Just a little. Marnie had pulled the wool over both of their eyes; it was sort of nice to have company in the dark.

"That's nice of you," Lydia said, looking back to Marnie. "But I wouldn't want to intrude—"

"It's no problem," Marnie insisted.

"You should stay, Miss Lydia," Jas piped up, surprising Shane. "There's two pizzas, and breadsticks and zucchini fritters, and I think I saw mini chocolate cakes—"

"No peeking!" Marnie scolded, but she was smiling. "That was supposed to be a surprise!"

"I should really get back," Lydia hedged. "There's always more to do, I'm trying to hook up this next sprinkler and it's been a bear…"

"You work too hard, girl. Sit down, put your feet up."

Lydia looked back to Shane. He saw a desperate edge to her polite expression, as clear as if she'd beamed words directly into his brain: I'm doing my best here but they are fighting me and I don't know how else to get out of this politely.

The train was going. Neither of them were going to stop it without making a scene. Besides, Jas seemed happy enough to have Lydia around. She warmed up to people so slowly. Shane could wish all he wanted that she hadn't picked Lydia, but it wasn't like Pelican Town had a lot of options on offer. Lydia was…okay, considering.

He gave up. There was no point throwing the brakes now.

"Stay," he said gruffly, meeting her eyes. "What, you have big plans or something?"

Some of the tension went out of her; her smile became less fixed, and more genuine, as she recognized that he was parroting what she'd said to him at the dock. "Okay, okay," she said. "Stupid to turn down free pizza, right?"

"Right!" Jas agreed. "I'll show you how to fold the napkins all fancy, since we need one more. Can you get another plate, Uncle Shane?"

"Sure, kid," he said, and allowed himself a tiny shake of his head.

Lydia sat at the table with Jas and followed along with the napkin-folding lesson; Marnie staged the pizza boxes at the kitchen counter; Shane rooted around in the fridge for beer, half-listening to Jas's instructions. He held one of the cans up and caught Lydia's eye, and she nodded.

"Serve yourselves," Marnie said cheerfully, any trace of nerves gone.

Whatever. Her plan had worked—for now. What was her goal? To force him and Lydia together until they became friends? To get Jas so attached to her that Shane had no choice but to go along? Well, he would go along, for Jas's sake, but it wouldn't make any difference. He didn't want or need friends, and Lydia would figure out eventually that she was better off without a friend like him, anyway.

They'd all gathered at the table—Lydia and Marnie on one side, Shane and Jas on the other—and started eating when Marnie asked, "You miss Zuzu City at all, Lydia? Must've been a big change, moving all the way out here."

Lydia had been about to take a bite of her pizza—the non-spicy version, Shane noticed. She lowered the slice. "I don't really miss it, no," she said, considering her pizza thoughtfully. "I was homesick something fierce my first night here, but…it didn't last. Everything I thought I couldn't do without, I've hardly thought about."

"Too tired to think," Marnie said knowingly. "It's a lot of farm for one person."

"You've got that right."

As happened too often around Lydia, Shane found his resentment—and curiosity—piqued. Of course she didn't miss her old life; everything came easily to her, including uprooting everything, changing everything. If only it had been that easy for him and Jas.

But he also wondered, a little, what her life had been like—outside of her desk job at Joja—that it had been so easy to leave it. Didn't sound like much of a life.

"Don't you miss The Wizard's Emporium?" Jas piped up. "I miss it."

"Fair enough," Lydia said with a smile. "They had some great games. Which one was your favorite?"

"Critter Racer! I'm really good at it. Well, I was, anyway. I'm out of practice. Did you ever play it?"

"A few times. I'll admit, I'm not that good at that one."

"Miss I'm-great-at-video-games has an Achilles heel, huh?" Shane commented, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm sure if I practiced, I would be great at it," Lydia said loftily. "Jas can train me."

Jas giggled. "We'll whip you into shape!" she said, with the air of a kid quoting something impressive she'd heard once, and only vaguely understood. "You'll have to practice a lot to beat Uncle Shane. He's really good at Critter Racer."

"Yeah? Who's your racer?" Lydia asked Shane.

"Speed Rooster."

"Of course. I should've known."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," Lydia said, "you're the chicken guy, right?"

Both Jas and Marnie laughed. At the look on Shane's face, possibly, rather than Lydia's comment.

"I'm the chicken guy," Shane repeated, deadpan. "Is that what you said?"

"I just meant—Marnie said you were kind of the resident chicken expert," Lydia said, looking a little less sure of herself now. "Not like—I didn't mean you are a chicken, derogatory, jeez. You're the chicken…specialist? So of course your racer is Speed Rooster—"

"Stop," Shane said, holding up his breadstick as if to ward her off. "It has nothing to do with that. It's in the name. Speed Rooster is the fastest."

"But he's very vulnerable to King Sting's venom," Jas said knowingly.

Shane nudged her in the side. "Yeah, well, I prefer a clean race, even though some people at this table like to play dirty."

Jas stuck her tongue out at him. He took a bite out of his breadstick, unfazed. Lydia chuckled.

"What about you, Shane?" she asked. "You miss anything about the city?"

Everything, he thought, but didn't say; it wasn't completely true, anyway. The truth was, it was a noisy, crowded, dirty place—but regardless of all that, he'd been happy there. He'd had his family, intact, whole. In retrospect, nothing else seemed to matter.

"The pickup gridball scene was better," he said off-handedly.

"You played pickup gridball? Really?"

"Yeah, really." He shot a glare at her. "First I'm a chicken guy, now you don't think I could play gridball?"

Lydia took a huge bite of pizza and mimed zipping her mouth shut, though she didn't look particularly abashed. Marnie ducked her head, dipping a zucchini fritter in the marinara sauce, but Shane could see her smiling. It vaguely irritated him; it was hard to put a finger on why.

"We had a neighborhood team," he said.

He took a quick sidelong glance at Jas, measuring her reaction. It was always hard to tell how she'd respond to any mention of the old times; she'd been okay talking about Critter Racer, but trips to the arcade had always been something she'd shared more with Shane than her parents.

The pickup gridball games were different. He could tell she was listening, intently, but she was also still eating her pizza with great enthusiasm, so maybe this was okay.

"Did you have a name?" Lydia asked.

"The Tardide Titans."

Her eyes lit up. "Wait, really? We played you!"

It took a moment for him to connect to the dots. "You played gridball?"

"Who's being judgmental now?" she said, but with a grin; she was so hard to offend. "It's a game, isn't it? Well, as you know, I love games, so I joined my neighborhood team—the Venzor Vultures."

Reluctantly, he searched his memory. The name did sound familiar…was that the game that had been interrupted halfway through by rain? No, but there had definitely been something to do with water…

"We only played that team once," he said, slowly. "You were up in the first half. But then…that's what it was. The sprinklers went haywire."

"Yes," she said, laughing. "And we were all muddy and soaked, but we kept playing, and your team managed to score right before the final buzzer." She raised her beer, as if toasting. "Damn, that was a good time."

"Language," Shane said pointedly.

"Oops," Lydia said, and now she did look abashed. "Sorry. Shame on me."

"You played in the mud?" Jas asked. "But…wouldn't you fall?"

"Yeah, I went down more than once," Lydia admitted. "But it was kind of freeing. Right?" she directed at Shane.

"Yeah," he agreed. Not just freeing—triumphant, almost magical: the water gushing sluggishly from the ground and, in some places, shooting into the air; the screams and laughter of players to one another as they fought to stay in position; the bright, warm sun, high above the skyscrapers, cutting through the cold.

"Why didn't you just postpone the game?" Jas asked.

"We all knew it was going to be tough going, but no one wanted to give up," Shane told her. "It was summer, so the cold water felt kind of nice. I could hardly tell who was who under all that mud."

"Gross," Jas declared, wrinkling her nose.

"Yeah, it was nasty," Lydia said, but in a reminiscent tone that seemed more fond than disgusted.

Shane's opinion of her reluctantly rose a notch. Of course she didn't mind getting dirty; she wouldn't have lasted a week on that farm if she did.

"And then your team got the game winner in right before the end," Lydia said. "Was that you?"

"Nah," Shane said, with another quick look sideways at Jas. She wasn't chewing anymore; she was just listening, hard, looking back and forth between Lydia and Shane. "It was someone else."

Lydia must have seen it on his face; she nodded, not pushing for a name. "It was a great shot," she said.

Before Shane could move the subject safely away, to easier topics, Jas reached out and touched Shane's arm. "Uncle Shane," she said softly, "was it my dad?"

He considered telling her no, and letting it lie. Jas hadn't been at that game, watching from the sidelines with Charlotte. She wouldn't remember, either way.

But there was a strange light of hope in her blue eyes. Patrick's eyes. He couldn't bring himself to shoot her down.

"Yeah," he told her, and reached back to her, resting his hand gently on her back like it could somehow comfort her. "It was your dad. He broke away, went right between three of these so-called Vultures—"

"Trash talk," Lydia muttered, rolling her eyes. "I see how it is."

"—they couldn't keep up," Shane said, ignoring her. "He was just that fast."

Jas smiled. It was a little pained, but there was still joy in it. This time, he thought, he'd made the right choice.

He didn't always, or even often. It was so hard to judge. So hard to figure out what she needed most in each moment, what would be best for her. He kept guessing wrong.

"I guess I don't remember," she said, a little sadly. "It sounds so cool."

"You weren't there, kiddo. It was three, four years ago."

"Four," Lydia agreed, nodding. "I remember I'd just seen Galactic Fury: Starfall the week before."

"Sometimes Mom and I would go to watch," Jas told Lydia. "But not until I was older. I was still really little, four years ago."

"Hard to imagine," Lydia said, her smile gentle. "You're so grown-up now."

It was the right thing to say. Jas smiled back, still a little subdued, but no meltdown seemed imminent.

"Strange to think you two crossed paths, all those years ago," Marnie said, in a guileless tone that managed to be anything but.

Lydia looked across the table at Shane, as if scrutinizing, searching her memory. It was obvious that she couldn't place him on that field; he couldn't place her, either. She'd just been wearing a red shirt—maybe even the same one she was wearing now. She'd been one of many. Maybe they'd shaken muddy hands after the match, each team lined up against each other.

If only that car crash hadn't happened. They'd never have seen one another again; she would just be a faceless person in his memory, a blur. He would still be in Zuzu City, playing pickup gridball with Patrick; magic would be a game-winning goal, a night with his friends, a weekend to look forward to, not a glowing fish that still died when its neck was snapped.

If only, he thought bitterly.

"Yeah," Lydia agreed softly. "Weird."

Jas put down the crust of her pizza. "Can I be excused?"

"Everything okay?" Shane asked her, trying to conceal his sudden spike of anxiety at how abruptly she'd asked the question.

"I just remembered, I said Miss Lydia could borrow my book, and I'm done with it, so I should get it—so I don't forget."

He knew her better than that. He knew she was tender enough over what she'd heard, missing her dad, that she wanted the chance to…how had Lydia put it, when Jas had run off to the treehouse that first time? Lick her wounds in peace.

"Okay," Shane said, taking his hand back, letting her go. "Just don't get your greasy pizza hands all over it, okay?"

Jas laughed a little bit. "I'll wash my hands!"

She scraped back from the table and scampered off, through the living room and toward her bedroom, green bow bouncing at the back of her head. Shane released a breath, unaware that he'd been holding it.

"Sorry," Lydia said, in a low voice that didn't carry.

Shane sighed. However reluctantly, he had to absolve her of responsibility. "You didn't bring it up. I was the dumbass that mentioned the gridball games." He glanced toward the door. "She did okay, though."

"She did great," Lydia agreed. "It's cute, thinking of her and Charlotte on the sidelines, cheering you guys on."

It wasn't cute. It was excruciating, thinking of that time. But sometimes a memory popped into his head and he smiled before remembering the pain, like now. The vision of Charlotte and Jas on their feet, jumping up and down and screaming their heads off whenever a mildly interesting play happened. Or, in Jas's case, when nothing was happening at all; she'd just been excited to be there.

His headache, he realized, had eased a bit. It was probably just the beer. And the pizza.

"They were unhinged," he told Lydia. "Nobody wanted to stand next to them. It was embarrassing."

Lydia smiled. "Yeah, but you liked it."

He had. Patrick had loved it, too. His own personal cheer squad.

"Maybe you can convince some folks in Pelican Town to play a game or two," Marnie said, a thoughtful look on her face. "Alex loves gridball, right?"

"He might be a little above our skill level," Lydia said, rolling her eyes.

"You mean he's an asshole," Shane said, and Lydia snorted.

"Shane," Marnie said reprovingly. Lydia had a mouthful of pizza, but she smirked a little bit, not disagreeing, and Shane liked her a little more for that. "I'd better get those cakes warmed up—cheer Jas up when she's ready to come back. Do you remember if we have hot fudge?"

"Not in the fridge," he said.

"I'll go check storage."

She scraped back from the table and bustled off to the storage room, which was really just a passway between the house and the barn; shelves had been added haphazardly over the years. The door swung shut behind her.

Lydia sat back in her chair, pizza finished, beer in hand. She looked so relaxed, like she felt right at home here. He sort of envied her for that: she could find her place in any situation, and at least appear comfortable, the hiccup at the door notwithstanding.

But what did it mean that she was comfortable amidst this collection of broken souls? Jas, her childhood ruined before it had even begun; Marnie, single-handedly holding together an old ranch, trapped in a way of life that was steadily eroding; Shane, rude and disagreeable, empty of all feeling most other times.

So what was broken in sunny, carefree Lydia? The financial burden of a neglected farm? The life in Zuzu City that had been so empty, she'd had no trouble leaving it?

Sometimes broken pieces matched. Made something not…whole, not exactly. But something that could pretend at wholeness. Patrick had taught him that, once.

"You didn't actually like Galactic Fury: Starfall, right?" he asked.

She smirked again and took a swig of her beer. "I'm not allergic to fun," she said, like a challenge, "so, yeah. I liked it."

"But the whole plot revolved around a stupid macguffin."

"Chicken guy, gridball enthusiast, film critic. You have hidden depths, Shane."

"You don't have to be a film critic to be bored by a plot device that's been reused six hundred times," he said. "Many of which were in this same franchise."

Her smirk turned into a smile. "Sometimes it's nice to turn your brain off," she said. There was something in her hazel eyes that belied her carefree voice. "Just enjoy the spectacle. You know?"

"There are more effective ways to turn your brain off."

Lydia opened her mouth and closed it again; she cleared her throat. "A movie's a little more convenient," she said, "unless you've got someone on speed dial."

Someone on…what? She took a sip of her beer, avoiding his eyes, her fingers tracing paths in the condensation on the can. What did she think he'd meant by…?

He replayed his own words, and it finally clicked. She thought he'd meant sex. Hah. Like it hadn't been years since he'd gotten laid. Was it nice that another person could think he was still capable of innuendo, or embarrassing that he hadn't even realized how it would sound?

"Beer," he said. "I was talking about beer."

There was a torturous second of silence, and then Lydia laughed, her relief—and embarrassment—apparent. Her face was a little pink. "Right! Right. Um. I prefer extensive fight choreography over beer, though. And dogfights in space."

She was plowing ahead, trying to hustle them past the awkward moment. Another current, sweeping him forward. He almost didn't go along. A part of him wanted to linger, to tease her a little over how quickly her mind had leapt into the gutter. Flustering her had been an accident, but he didn't hate the result. It reminded him of a different version of himself. A better version.

But Marnie and Jas would be back any moment, and that conversation was not appropriate for either set of ears.

Grudgingly, he said, "The dogfights were pretty good."

"Hah!" She pointed at him, grinning. "I knew it. Even a grumpus like you can have fun watching spaceships shoot at each other."

"Grumpus?"

"What?" She tilted her head a bit to one side, as if trying to bring him into focus. "You don't think you are?"

"It's too…cutesy."

"What, you'd prefer it if I called you an asshole? I guess I won't dress it up, if I don't have to."

She was still smiling. There was no ire behind the name-calling; she wasn't mocking, and she wasn't mad. He wondered if she had a single mean bone in her body. Even the way she'd killed the fish had been merciful—quick, clean.

She swigged down the last of her beer. Her nose wrinkled as she set the can down on the table. The blush on her cheeks had faded, his careless comment forgotten.

Funny thing was, back in Zuzu City, it might have worked; it might have even been on purpose. If they'd talked after that gridball game, if both their teams had hit the bar after, if…

He'd never really had a type. Patrick had ribbed him about it more than once; the people Shane took an interest in were widely varied. How could he ever wingman for Shane, Patrick had once lamented, if he had no idea who Shane would go for?

For a moment, though, he could see that once, he would have gone for Lydia. She worked hard and didn't complain; she had the kind of humor that made him laugh, even now; when she smiled, her whole face lit up. It was (annoyingly) infectious.

He would've taken a shot back then. He wouldn't have found it annoying, back then.

But he didn't even have a league anymore. He was out of the game.

Marnie returned, holding a jar of hot fudge, smiling like she'd heard at least some of their conversation. His mood, briefly buoyed, soured again. His headache surged with a painful throb. With a thrill of dread, he saw his future, a future where Marnie kept pushing him together with Lydia, well-meaning but pointless.

For the moment, he took a breath and let it go. There was cake to eat; there was Jas to consider. She was trotting back into the room, already talking about chickens with her book in hand, Lydia listening in earnest. Let Marnie think that this was the beginning of something better, that he would be better, fixed by the clumsy application of one pizza night and one new friend.

Life didn't work that way. Patrick had taught him that, too.

#stardew valley #sdv shane #sdv farmer #shane/female farmer #depression cw #alcoholism cw #grief cw #developing friendship #pre-relationship #universe writes #some fluff this chapter!#some flirting!#we can also have some nice things. as a treat

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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Origins companions: Romance edition (+Dog)

#what cuties!#dragon age #da:o #morrigan #zevran #leliana #alistair #DOG!

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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#dragon age #varric tethras

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todisturbtheuniverse · 4 months ago

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FIC: Borrowed Magic [2/5]

Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Friendship, Grief, Alcoholism, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Slow Burn Word Count: 3,839 (this chapter); 6,669 (total so far) Summary: The farmer has a way of making ordinary things seem like magic. Shane just has a hard time believing it. Also on AO3. Previous chapters: One

Lydia hefted her axe and swung. The log split evenly, a feat she'd only started to accomplish consistently over the last few weeks; it still felt profoundly satisfying. She tossed the pieces into the done pile and heaved another log up onto the stump. The motions were repetitive, familiar: lift, swing, crack, toss. Lift, swing, crack, toss.

Usually, this kind of work was meditative for her. It freed her mind to drift, thoughtless—the occasional idea or memory appearing, but just as quickly fading.

Today, though, she couldn't stop thinking about that damn fish.

She'd known, even in the moment, that she'd made a mistake. As soon as it lay still, as soon as she'd looked up, caught sight of Shane's face, she'd known. It had already been too late, though, as soon as she'd felt the tug on the line; throwing it back wouldn't have guaranteed its survival. Granddad had warned her off of sports fishing, even as a kid.

She probably should have run to Rasmodius's door and begged for the fish's life. But hindsight was twenty-twenty, and until that moment, she had not known what the fish's death would mean to Shane.

Lift, swing, crack.

The sound echoed around her, too loud; the wood splintered into ragged, uneven pieces.

Before that moment, before she'd killed the fish, he had laughed. He'd told her about his dead best friend, and she'd made a joke, and he'd laughed like he meant it.

And then she'd brought that magnificent creature up onto the dock, let him get a glimpse of magic, and destroyed it in front of him.

A week before, at that same dock, he'd said—unprompted—that he was at the bottom of a miserable abyss, unable to see the light of day, not strong enough to climb out of the hole. He had been kind of a drunk, but she didn't think he'd been exaggerating. Killing the midnight carp had to be akin to slamming the trapdoor at the top that abyss shut. Maybe even locking it for good measure.

She took a deep breath and steadied herself before lifting the axe again. There was no undoing it. She just hoped that she would get another chance. When he wasn't biting her head off, she liked Shane. She liked plenty of people in Pelican Town, but there was just something about him, regardless of grouchiness, that she connected with.

Nearby, her battered portable stereo crackled out the only station that reached her on the farm, and Archimedes dozed beside the stump where it was perched. The wind rippled over his fluffy golden fur; he snorted, half-asleep, as it caught one floppy ear. The song changed: another old country tune.

She remembered Granddad singing this one, dancing with Gram in the kitchen, and smiled. She'd never been very religious, but it didn't hurt anyone if she thought the song on the radio was some sign from him, encouraging her to keep going.

She lifted her axe and swung, and sang along: "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine…"

A moment later, Archimedes roused himself from his nap, barked, and took off eagerly toward the south end of the farm. She set down her axe and watched him go, pulling her sunhat a little lower over her eyes. If Shane was still bringing Jas to the treehouse, maybe the business with the fish was forgiven—or at least set aside, for now.

The faces of her visitors came into view, and disappointment settled in her gut. There was Jas, her face barely visible above the tall grasses, her bow a cheerful, vibrant yellow today, a pretty contrast to her dark hair. But the person escorting her was Marnie, not Shane, her smile sunny as she took in the farm, puffy brown hair blown by the wind.

"Howdy, neighbor," she said warmly.

"Hi, Marnie. Nice to see you." Lydia meant it; it wasn't too difficult to set her disappointment aside. She smiled at Jas. "Hi, Jas."

"Hi, Miss Lydia." Despite Shane's absence, at least Jas seemed like her usual self: a little shy, but absently stroking Archimedes' coat. The dog stayed pinned to her side, as if offering her courage.

"Here for the treehouse?" Lydia asked, leaning on her axe.

"If that's okay," Jas said, ducking her head.

"Of course. You're always welcome."

Marnie gently nudged Jas's shoulder. "I bet Lydia would be interested in your new book."

"Oh yeah! You have chickens, too." Jas slung her backpack around so that it rested against her chest, then pulled out a new hardcover. "It's about special chickens," she told Lydia, showing her the cover. There were three lovingly-rendered hens, one of them blue. "The blue ones are so cool."

"Blue chickens?" Lydia raised one eyebrow, still staring at the cover. The title was Unusual Chickens of the Ferngill Republic. One of the chickens was a sleek, deep black, with beautiful red accents in its coloring; it was nearly hypnotic. "I've never seen a blue chicken before."

"They're really rare. Maybe we can raise some on the ranch sometime?" Jas looked hopefully up at Marnie.

"Maybe," Marnie said thoughtfully. "Shane's the chicken expert. We'll have to get his opinion."

"Maybe he's already planning to raise them," Jas said, a note of excitement entering her voice. "Maybe that's why he got the book for me."

"Maybe," Marnie agreed. Lydia wondered if she was imagining the brief flash of doubt in Marnie's eyes.

Jas slipped the book back into her backpack and hugged it to her chest. "Can Archimedes come to the treehouse with me, Miss Lydia?" She pronounced the dog's name carefully, as if proving that she could.

"Of course. He'll have more fun with you than me. Take this with you, though."

Lydia leaned her axe against the stump and went over to her bag, propped up beneath the stereo. She dug in the front pocket and pulled out her old lanyard. It clink-clanked as she draped it over her hand; there were a number of metal and enamel pins attached to every bit of the fabric. She'd worn it for years, and the color of the fabric, once a deep pine green, had dulled. None of the pins had escaped the march of time without scratches. Only the shiny silver whistle was new, hanging on the attached keychain beside an old boondoggle.

She was fond of it, but not precious about it. She held it out to Jas.

Jas took it, her blue eyes widening. "Wow," she said softly; she traced a couple of the pins, her fingers lingering over the one that depicted a campfire. "What are all these?"

"Camp badges," Lydia said. At Jas's puzzled look, she elaborated, "When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at summer camp. You get special flair—like the pins—for learning how to do something new at camp. I collected them on the lanyard over the years. But the important part is the whistle. If you run into trouble, blow on this so we can hear you, okay? Archimedes is a pretty good bodyguard, but just in case."

Marnie nodded, clearly pleased with Lydia's forethought. Jas looped the lanyard around her neck, but she held up the whistle and the attached boondoggle, obviously still taken with it. Lydia had used sparkly rexlace in lavender and royal purple for the boondoggle, many years ago, and the resulting pattern of the little camp craft was about as fairy-ish as something made of that weird plastic string could be, even faded with time.

"It's so pretty," Jas said, admiring it.

"I can show you how to make one sometime, if you want," Lydia offered. "It's pretty easy."

"That sounds fun," Jas said, with a small, shy smile. "Thanks."

"Anytime. Test the whistle, okay?"

Jas brought it up and blew; it gave a solid, ringing note. Archimedes barked, always overjoyed to join in noisemaking.

"All right, off to your adventure," Lydia said. "Archimedes, go with Jas."

Archimedes followed her happily; he was good-natured, even for a dog, and had taken to Jas almost instantly after her first adventure on the farm a few weeks before. He made sure to pause by Marnie before going, collecting some enthusiastic ear-scritching; then he gave a soft, happy boof, and took off after the girl.

"She sure is taken with your farm," Marnie told Lydia, when Jas was out of earshot. "She thinks she's being coy, but she mentions the treehouse practically every day. She loves your old junimo drawings."

"I'm glad another kid can enjoy that place. It was always magic to me." Lydia thought, again, of the fish.

Marnie was looking around with interest. "Thinking of plowing a new plot?"

"Yeah, trying to expand in time to take advantage of the summer crops. It's slow going."

"Want a hand? I'm not bad with a pickaxe, if you want someone to break up those rocks."

"I'm sure you're much better than me," Lydia said. "But you probably have your own work to do."

"Oh, don't worry about it. Ever since Shane and Jas moved in, the morning chores go by quicker than they used to. I've got a few hours to spare."

"I'd welcome the help, then," Lydia said, smiling. "Thanks."

Marnie scooped up the pickaxe. She held it like the weight was familiar to her; she was an unassuming-looking woman, but anyone who held a ranch together on her own for so long had to be made of steel at her core. She tackled the rocks with confidence, and hummed along with the radio.

Lydia went back to chopping wood. She wanted to ask about Shane—where he was, why he hadn't escorted Jas—but it seemed too awkward. The moment had passed, hadn't it? It would be weird to ask now. It would be too…telling. Were they friends? Were they good enough friends that she could ask his aunt why he wasn't here?

She knew why he wasn't here. Damn it.

"How are the ladies doing?" Marnie asked, straightening up from a broken pile of rock.

It took a moment for Lydia to realize who she was talking about. "Oh, Yasmin and Aurelia. They've settled in well, I think. I found their first eggs on Thursday."

Marnie shaded her eyes and looked toward the coop, up near the old farmhouse. "You've got a good space for them," she said, a note of approval in her voice. "It's so nice to see this place thriving again."

"Well, I don't know about thriving. But I'm making progress."

"You're out here splitting logs like you were born to it," Marnie said, smiling. "I know it's hard work, just starting out, but trust me. This place feels the care you're putting into it. You work for it, it'll work for you."

Lydia huffed out a laugh as her axe came down, crack, and split another log. "I like that. Like there's a spirit in the land, watching out for me."

"What do you think those junimos are?" Marnie teased.

Lydia chuckled, but she didn't confirm or deny. It was hard to tell what people really believed here. Would Marnie believe what Lydia had seen in the old Community Center? Would she hear that piping call from the woods to the west and recognize it? Shane didn't believe it; Lydia had figured out that much. He was a transplant to the valley, though; someone like Marnie…

But Marnie didn't elaborate. Still, Lydia saw a different opening and took it before it could close.

"Shane gave me a hard time about the junimos," she remarked, tossing logs onto the pile. "Said the sounds I was hearing were probably a weird bird."

Marnie sighed; sorrow clouded her features. "He probably doesn't think much of our old superstitions, right now."

"Yeah. He told me about Patrick and Charlotte. He's going through it, huh?"

Marnie's pickaxe slipped, striking off-center, and a spray of gravel tumbled down the side of the boulder, peppering the dirt. She cast Lydia a startled look, readjusting her grip. "He told you about Jas's parents?"

"Yeah. Not…a lot. He's not super talkative. But the general facts."

"That's great," Marnie said, a note of hope in her voice. "He hasn't talked to anybody about what happened, not really. Maybe this is progress."

Lydia's guilt deepened. "Oh," she said. "I…I hope so."

"He would've come today," Marnie said, "but he picked up a shift at Joja. Usually he's not really in a place to work on Saturday mornings, but maybe…well, he wasn't at the Saloon last night."

"I ran into him at the dock."

"Ah." Marnie deflated. "Drinking and wandering. The other pastime."

"He left half his beer with me, if it helps?"

Marnie's somber mood passed, quick as it had arrived; she laughed. "You're giving me whiplash, Lydia."

She smiled sheepishly, and decided she might as well tell Marnie the whole story. "Sorry, sorry. Look…he probably just didn't want to see me today. I think I upset him last night. It was an accident, but…"

She explained about the fish. She didn't repeat most of the conversation; Shane had said things about Patrick that weren't Lydia's to share. But she told Marnie about the midnight carp, and how Shane had slunk off after the creature met its end.

"I feel awful," she finished, splitting another log. "I shouldn't have killed it. I should have let it escape the hook. I don't know. I wasn't thinking. I just assumed…he lives on a ranch, he knows about the less glamorous realities of country life. Hell, he's been here longer than me."

"You didn't know," Marnie said, her voice kind. "You wouldn't guess it, maybe, but he's soft, underneath all that mean."

"No," Lydia said, thinking again of how he'd laughed. "No, I can see that. And then I went and poked him with a sharp stick."

"It's hard." Marnie sighed. "He won't admit it. He won't say it. He wants everybody to believe that he doesn't care, that he doesn't hurt. I say you should take the win. He left half his beer with you. He stopped long enough to have a conversation with you. That's something. He could use a friend. And the only kind of friends there are, are imperfect ones."

Lydia took a deep breath and let it out with her next swing. "Thanks, Marnie. I won't kill any other fish in front of him."

Marnie chuckled. She swung her pickaxe, cracking another rock, and began to pry the pieces out of the soil. "Even when he was a teenager, he wouldn't fish. I don't know what he was thinking, hanging around while you had a fishing pole in the water."

"Probably thought I was bullshitting him about the midnight carp."

"It does look like magic, doesn't it? That glow, that color. They're beautiful creatures."

"Ugh. I'm never going to be able to eat whatever dish Gus is making out of them. I feel like a criminal."

"You and Shane are two peas in a pod, I think," Marnie said thoughtfully. "You've both worked for Joja, you're both transplants to the valley, you're both a little soft on animals. Both been through hard times recently, if you don't mind me making an observation."

Lydia snorted. "What, you think a perfectly well-adjusted person wouldn't give up their job and their apartment and their entire way of life to move to the middle of nowhere and rehabilitate a farm that's been abandoned for twenty years?"

"Like I said," Marnie said, smiling, "two peas in a pod."

Lydia didn't deny it. There was a reason she kept trying with him: kept saying hello when she only got something back three times out of ten, kept opening the door whenever he slammed it shut. She'd lived through times—during her own stint at Joja, yeah, but other times, too—when she wished someone had tried like that with her.

And there had been moments in the last couple of weeks, however brief, when he felt like an old friend, like she'd always known him. She hadn't ever felt that before, not really.

Their talk turned to other topics: Lydia's hopes to get a barn built before winter and buy a few cows; the crops she was planning for this new plot, which was clearing more quickly now with another pair of hands; Marnie's memories of Lydia's Granddad, one in particular of him chasing a runaway cow all the way past her ranch to the river in nothing but his robe and long johns. Lydia had to stop splitting logs, she was laughing so hard.

The afternoon passed quickly, but daylight was long in the valley in summer, and their bodies tired before the sun did. They had paused beneath the shade of a maple tree to slurp down some water when footsteps approached.

Lydia looked up, expecting Jas with Archimedes. The footsteps were approaching from the wrong direction, though, from the eastern side of the farm. Puzzled, she turned.

Shane was still wearing his Joja polo and khakis, though the polo was untucked. His shoulders were a little hunched, like he was still imagining the approach of a customer—or Morris. Tentatively, seeing him searching the fields for signs of activity, she lifted her arm and waved. He didn't wave back, but he did navigate the path to the new plot.

He looked worn, though not as bedraggled as Lydia felt after a day of labor on the farm. The breeze pulled at strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail; sweat prickled down her back, sticking t-shirt to skin; there was dirt on the hems of her overalls, dirt in the laces of her sneakers, and tiny flecks of wood on her arms. Surreptitiously, she brushed those off, then wondered why she bothered.

"Hi," she said, when he was close enough to hear her.

"Hey," he replied, not meeting her eyes, and looked around. "Jas here?"

"At the treehouse," she said. "She came by to share a blue chicken fact half an hour ago."

She saw a little twitch in his expression. Barely any movement at all, but it was there. Like his mouth trying to tug towards a little smile, and him fighting it back.

Her heart squeezed, suddenly, painfully. She thought again of the brief outline he'd painted of his best friend, the center of gravity that had been torn from him. And still, lost as he was, he'd thought to give Jas a book she loved, to nurture some magic in her life, even when he had lost it all.

Yeah, he could be an ass. But she had seen wonder on his face. The soft person Marnie had spoken of was still in there. He still had a chance to get out.

"Ready to go?" he said, addressing Marnie, not her.

Lydia glanced at her watch. "You all could stay for dinner, if you—"

"We should get back," Shane interrupted.

Marnie shot her a sympathetic look, and Lydia tried to make a subtle face back that conveyed that it was okay. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it had always been likely that Shane would pull back after their conversation at the docks. He probably felt like he'd said too much, given too much away. The fish was the cherry on top. A really awful cherry that she would be thinking about for a long time, but still.

"You should come by on Tuesday night to pick up that chicken, Lydia," Marnie said.

Lydia knew there was a question on her face and tried to moderate her expression. Not once today had they talked about Lydia purchasing another chicken. But she could see from Marnie's expression that the woman had some plan, and so she nodded, playing along.

"Sure. I'll be by around…six?"

"Perfect," Marnie said, beaming.

Archimedes burst out of the meadow grasses and into the newly-cleared plot, panting. He gave a single, short bark upon seeing Shane, and then went to circle him, tail wagging. Shane pointedly did not reach down to pet him, which did not deter Archimedes at all. Jas wasn't far behind him.

"Archie kept acting like he heard something," Jas said. "He's so smart, Miss Lydia."

"He appreciates the compliment," Lydia said, grinning.

Jas pulled the lanyard off over her head, holding it out to Lydia. "Here's your whistle. Can you, um, show me how to make a boondoggle next Saturday?"

Lydia looked the question at Shane, letting him decide, and just barely glimpsed him pulling his hand back from scratching Archimedes' ears. She pretended she hadn't noticed. He looked from Jas to Lydia, his eyes catching on the whistle and its lanyard, draped over Lydia's hand now. She thought she saw the lines at the corners of his eyes soften, just a little. He nodded.

"Sure," Lydia told Jas. "I'll make sure I get the good colors out of storage."

Jas clapped and bounced on her toes a little, grinning widely now. "Did you want to borrow my book? I should be finished by next weekend."

"I'd like that," Lydia said, trying to make it sound like her throat wasn't in danger of closing up. Jas's enthusiasm and kindness were just…very sweet. She told herself to get a grip. "Thanks, Jas." She cleared her throat. "Thanks for your help today," she said to Marnie.

"Anytime, neighbor." If Lydia wasn't mistaken, there was a kind of mischievous twinkle in Marnie's brown eyes. She had no idea what the older woman was up to, but she was extremely interested in finding out. "See you Tuesday."

"Bye, Archimedes. Bye, Miss Lydia," Jas said, and skipped off down the path toward the farm's southern boundary.

Marnie followed. Shane walked after them, passing Lydia, and for a moment, she thought that he wouldn't even say goodbye—but then he sighed, and turned back.

"Thanks," he said. "For letting her use the treehouse."

"It's no trouble." He started to turn away. "But, Shane—if it's too much trouble to bring her, or it's a bad time…I can tell her no. If you need me to."

He looked back at her. There was a hint of the previous night on his face, just a sliver of the vulnerability she'd glimpsed. He gave a single nod, and then he was gone, footsteps receding down the path and away from the farm. She watched until all three of them were out of sight, fading into the long shadows cast by the pine trees.

Her earlier guilt was not gone, not exactly, but it had been replaced by something else, something that took precedence: resolve. Lydia had left Zuzu City, left Joja, not just to get away from something, but to go toward something else. To restore Granddad's farm, yes, but also to be a part of something. Part of a community, with a connection to other people. To find something she'd always been missing.

She felt a powerful connection with that little family. She just hoped Marnie's plan for Tuesday was a good one.

#stardew valley #sdv shane #sdv farmer #shane/female farmer #depression cw #alcoholism cw #grief cw #developing friendship #pre-relationship #universe writes

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