#FOLLOWED BY INSTANT SOBBING WITH MARCY

[druidgroves]

Chapter 02: Crawl Out Through the Fallout

Fandom: Fallout 4 Words: 6,316 Characters: Georgia Tate (Canon-Divergent Sole Survivor), Preston Garvey, Sturges, Mama Murphy, Marcy & Jun Long (mentioned) Notes: Chapter two and the plot is moving ! content warning for alcohol abuse & self harm, so be warned. ch. 01 read on ao3

October 23, 2287

When Georgia woke up in her cryopod for the second time, it was with bruised and bloodied knuckles, a throat raw from screaming, and a pain in her chest where her heart should have been.

Her hands hit the ground with a resounding smack, and deep, ragged breaths followed soon after. Her head was spinning and all she could focus on was how cold everything felt. The only other stimuli her nerves registered were the hot, wet tears running down her face and no matter how deep a breath she took, it wasn’t enough. Her lungs were screaming for air and it wasn’t until she started coughing that the cool, stale air of the vault rushed through her. In between bouts of coughing were more sobs, and it took her a minute to force herself off of her knees and into a sitting position. When she did, she was met with a view of Nate through the window of his cryopod, slumped over as if he’d only fallen asleep on the couch in front of the TV like he used to.

But Georgia knew better. Georgia knew she’d seen her husband get shot and her son stolen out of his arms and he–that man, scarred across his left eye with a voice that made her shiver–made her watch. What was it he called her? A backup?

The thought disappeared from her mind as sobs wracked her body again, the tears running down her cheeks the only warmth as far underground as she was. She tried to stand up only to find herself on the floor again in a fit of vertigo. She didn’t know how long she spent on the floor like that, head between her legs as she tried to prevent herself from hyperventilating again. She felt outside of herself, numb in a way she couldn’t describe. A flex of her hand yielded only faint stimuli, barely a blip on her internal radar. Shaking hands reached up to the still-curled pieces of blonde hair, the fine layer of hairspray she had used so many mornings ago (how long ago?) still holding them in place. Georgia hardly registered the feeling of her fingers on her scalp until they pulled at the roots of her hair, hard.

The sharp pain of it snapped something inside her, and in an instant she was on high alert like all of her nerve endings had finally decided to wake up and start giving feedback again. She pulled her hands away from her head, as well as two fistfuls of hair, and shook them off onto the floor.

She picked herself off the ground, stumbling towards Nate’s pod. It took her a few seconds of clumsy fiddling with the controls, but the pod eventually opened with a hiss. Nate laid there, a dark stain and a hole in his chest, and did not move. It was almost enough to break her again, to send her back to that numbness, but she dug her nails into her palms to keep herself grounded. She couldn’t let herself go there again. Nate was dead and Shaun was somewhere, and Georgia couldn’t let herself go numb and do nothing before she was able to find him. If there was any chance he was still alive, she had to buck the hell up if she wanted to find out.

A flash of gold made her eyes dart to Nate’s left hand. She reached out and slipped off his wedding band, the inside engraved with “To Have” to match her own ring engraved with “To Hold”. A part of her was surprised he decided to wear it that day. She herself had only put it on out of habit that morning, having been up half the night before and completely out of it when she woke up. It had been routine, like so many things had been before–

The thought disappeared alongside their rings into the pocket of her blue jumpsuit.

She and Nate had loved each other once, however briefly, and despite all the time they didn’t, Georgia knew he didn’t deserve this. Looking at the rows of cryopods housing the defrosted bodies of her former neighbors, she knew no one deserved this.

“I’ll find who did this,” she said, because it was the least she could do for Nate–for herself–now, “and I’ll get Shaun back. I promise.”

----------

The rest of the week was a haze Georgia barely remembered. All she knew could be summarized in the five point list she’d managed to compile in the last few days:

The world had gone to shit.

Her husband was dead.

Her baby was gone.

New neighbors moved in across the street.

She had spent the last few days drunk off her ass.

She hadn’t drank like this since–well, she’d never drank like this. She’d only ever blacked out once in her life, during her freshman year of college when she and her friends got invited to their first fraternity party. Back then, she had a friend there to pull her hair back while she vomited and help her into bed afterwards. Now, all she had was herself and an overbearing robot in a house she barely recognized, all the while keeping herself drunker than her father-in-law at her wedding.

So much for trying to buck up for this new world.

Really, it was over the moment a monster three times her size with claws a foot long burst out of the Concord sewers and left her with three new scars across her arm. Or maybe it was over when people started shooting at her when she eventually made it to town. Or, perhaps it was more accurate to say it was over the moment Georgia left the vault, greeted with the bleak wasteland that had become the place she once called home. Seeing everything she knew turned to ash and dust had done a number on her resolve, and it was any wonder she managed to help those people in the museum at all when she couldn’t even help herself.

She had started getting drunk the moment she was back in her own house, telling the group that had followed her to Sanctuary Hills that they could take their pick of the dilapidated buildings around them. She didn’t have it in her to care which one.

Surprisingly, a decent portion of the old liquor cabinet had been left untouched in the two hundred odd years she’d spent in an icebox. Vodka, whiskey, bourbon, she hadn’t been too picky at that point. The sting of them down her throat did the same job as her newfound habit of taking bits of her skin between her nails and pinching until she drew blood. Which was to say that both distracted her enough to keep her out of her own thoughts. Unlike the pinching that pulled her back to reality whenever she started feeling numb, the alcohol turned everything into a haze she could hardly make sense of. All it did was give her a pounding headache that only seemed to be getting worse until Georgia, curled up on the faded red fabric of her couch, noticed the pounding was coming from her front door.

“Cods–Codsworth,” she mumbled into the crook of her arm, “get the door.”

The robot butler had been hovering around her for the last few days, though it wasn’t until just then that she noticed the absence of his metallic whirring. The pounding on the door started again, and when she realized Codsworth wasn’t in the house to answer, Georgia groaned into the cushions before pushing herself up and sending the world spinning.

“Give me a second,” she called out irritably, gritting her teeth at the way her brain rattled around in her skull. “Quit bangin’, I’ll get there in a second, jesus.”

The pounding stopped and after knocking over a few empty bottles by the couch, Georgia was opening the door to one of the survivors from across the street. Her brain supplied the name Preston before she could even bother asking herself who he was. The way he looked at her as she opened the door told her she probably looked like shit.

“Is there somethin’ you need?” she asked a little too aggressively.

Preston hesitated for a moment, trying his best to control his expression before he said, “Uh, that Mr. Handy, Codsworth? He’s with you, right? He came over earlier asking if someone could come check on you, so I volunteered. He said he’s worried about you.”

A pang of guilt stabbed Georgia somewhere in the gut. She hadn’t done much but wave the machine off whenever he attempted to clean up her empty bottles, telling him she wanted to be alone. But Codworth knew her–as much as a robot like himself could know anyone–but more importantly, he knew what she was like before. He knew her when she wanted nothing more than to have company whenever Nate was at work and back then, Codsworth had been happy to be that company. It shouldn’t have surprised her that somewhere in the ones and zeros that made up his personality, the robot actually cared for her. Hell, her first proof should have been the way he reacted when she came out of the vault.

“I just…I’ve been tryin’ to come to terms with all of this,” Georgia said after a moment, throwing her hand around to indicate the state of the world around them. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

The look on Preston’s face made it clear enough that he knew she absolutely was not fine.

“Codsworth said you weren’t eating is all,” he said as he fiddled nervously with his coat. “Just wanted to make sure you were still…”

He trailed off and even in her inebriated state, Georgia could tell what he meant. There was a certain weight behind his words that suggested the man was familiar with her current state of mind.

“Still alive,” she finished for him, rubbing at her temple. She still had a killer headache from the way he’d been banging on the door. “Yeah, well. Here I am.”

“Well, that’s good,” Preston said and for a moment the two stood in the doorway of Georgia’s house, not knowing how to go from there until he added, “Sturges is cooking up some food and you’re welcome to a plate. I can ask Codsworth to bring it over…?”

He left the question hanging in the air for a second and Georgia was smart enough to grab onto it. He was throwing her a line while she’d spent the past week ignoring him and his group. If Preston was kind enough to make sure she wasn’t wasting away on her couch, then she could at least be nice enough to accept his offer.

“No, I can–I can come over in a bit. Just let me put myself together first,” she replied.

Preston nodded, “Take your time. I’ll make sure to save a helping for you.”

Georgia thanked him and watched him walk back across the street until he was a blur. The mid-afternoon light was blinding now that she didn’t have Preston’s shadow blocking it, making her squint. Past the end of the sidewalk leading up to her door, everything was mostly blurry with no hard edges. She didn’t know if she could chalk that one up to her horrible hangover, or the fact that she’d always had sort of shitty vision, but resolved to deal with it later. For now, she’d clean up a little and get some food into her.

The house was lit only by whatever rays of sun were able to shine through the various holes in the walls and ceiling, but the bathroom was nearly pitch black when she walked past it, avoiding its looming darkness and the mirror on its far wall. Georgia knew she probably looked like hell and was in no mind to actually face that fact. She’d once put so much pride into her appearance, with perfect overnight curls and enough makeup to make it look like she was “making an effort” as Nate once said. His voice in her head made her teeth grit. A quick, sharp pinch to the inside of her wrist pulled her back. She wiped the dot of blood beginning to appear with the cuff of her vault suit and entered her old bedroom.

The bed was still broken and most of the things she had remembered were gone, but there were still a few drawers in her dresser that had gone mostly untouched. There was an old, moth-eaten sweater that was a few sizes too small, something she’d tucked away to be worn again when she was supposed to have lost her baby weight after Shaun, as well as the faded, paint-covered jeans she had worn whenever she had been working on the house.

She took the clothes into the remnants of the laundry room for some semblance of privacy–sooner or later she’d have to do something about the two holes in the bedroom walls–and peeled herself out of her vault suit. Georgia scrunched her nose as the smell of her own sweat and body odor hit her.

“Jesus christ I need a shower,” she muttered to herself, bracing against the built-in shelves as she pulled the suit off her legs. Her hand knocked something off the shelf in the half-light, and as she bent down to pick it up, she realized it was a small tin of baby powder. That would have to do for now.

Before long, Georgia was walking across the street in new(ish) clothes, smelling faintly of baby powder and her hair, now a shade lighter and pulled into a low bun, was far less greasy than it had been previously. She’d even found an old hand towel to redress the wounds on her arm that she’d gotten from that giant lizard thing (a deathclaw, if she remembered correctly). The power armor had taken most of the damage, but the metal pieces stuck to the outside of it were rusted out and falling apart when she had stepped into it, so she was liable to take a few hits.

While her outsides were looking better, her insides still felt like shit. The gurgling noise her stomach made as she approached the yellow house made her realize how much she’d been starving.

The door was open and Preston motioned her inside when he caught her eye. He was sitting on a couch next to the old woman–Murphy, Mama Murphy, Georgia recalled–taking bites from his bowl of food, with a dog at his feet. The purebred German shepherd bounded towards her as soon as it saw her, and just then did Georgia remember she’d picked him up sometime before stumbling across Preston and his group. She was glad he had seemingly taken up with them, but the way he was pushing his wet nose eagerly against her hands, begging to be pet, it was clear who he had really been waiting on.

“Dogmeat’s been worryin’ about you for a few days,” Mama Murphy spoke up. “Been sittin’ in front of your house like he’s posted up for watch.”

Georgia gave Dogmeat a good scritch behind the ears as she vaguely recalled there being at least two other members in the group and in looking around for them, Preston spoke up.

“Marcy and Jun like to eat alone,” he told her, taking another bite.

“Nice of you to join us,” Sturges said from his chair at an old wobbly table, his familiar southern twang a small comfort to her as he spoke. “Stew’s still in the pot, help yourself.”

He nodded towards the kitchen, where a banged up metal pot sat bubbling on a modified hot plate, wires spilling out the bottom of it. Dogmeat followed at her heels as she walked into the kitchen. A bent spoon and a chipped bowl were laid out on the counter beside the pot and she started ladling some of the stew into it. The contents of the pot didn’t look very appetizing, but the smell of it made Georgia’s stomach flip she was so hungry.

Once her bowl was full, she took a seat at the wobbly table across from Sturges while Dogmeat laid down at her feet. She wasted no time in shoveling the stew into her mouth, letting it run down her chin and earning a laugh from Sturges before Georgia realized what she was doing. An embarrassed flush creeped across her face.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Sturges chuckled. “I don’t think anyone would fault you if you want seconds.”

“Whatever this is, it’s good,” Georgia said after she was done chewing, scraping the sides of the bowl so nothing went to waste.

“It’s radstag,” Preston supplied. “Saw a few of them around that old water tower.”

Georgia’s eyebrows knit together as she licked her spoon. “Radstag? What’s that?”

“Y’know. Radstag,” Sturges said unhelpfully. “Are you tellin’ me you ain’t never seen a radstag before? Wait, forgot you’re a vaultie, ‘course you probably haven’t.”

“Is it like some sorta deer?” Georgia asked, suddenly feeling a little nauseous. “With the ‘stag’ part and all?”

“They used to be deer,” Preston said. “At least, that’s what I read once. They…mutated, after the war.”

“That’s where the ‘rad’ part comes in,” Sturges continued.

Georgia paused. “Rad, meanin’–”

As she put two and two together, Georgia’s stomach lurched. She shot up from the table, nearly knocking her bowl to the floor and making Dogmeat jump up in alarm. She threw herself halfway out of a hole in a nearby wall just as the stew she’d eaten came right back up, landing with a wet splat on the ground below. The taste of alcohol, stew, and bile was left on her tongue, making her dry heave, but there was nothing left.

“You alright, honey?” Mama Murphy called from the couch as Dogmeat whined.

Georgia pulled herself back up, the color drained from her face and her stomach just as empty as it had been ten minutes ago.

“Preston,” she started haggardly, “can I talk to you for a minute. Privately.”

The man looked a little alarmed at her display, trading glances with Sturges and Mama Murphy, but nodded anyway, putting his bowl on the arm of the couch as he followed her outside to the carport.

“Are you okay? That didn’t look good,” he said once they were away from the group.

“I just ate radiation-poisoned venison,” said Georgia flatly.

Preston grimaced, “Sorry, I should have warned you. I haven’t met too many vault dwellers in my time, kinda forget there are people out there who haven’t had to eat anything without a regular dose of Rad-X. If you’re feeling bad, I think the Longs managed to scrounge up a bag of RadAway I can ask ‘em for.”

Georgia resisted the urge to pull at her hair in front of him, lest he think she was even more crazy than she probably looked. Instead, she sighed and clasped her squirming hands together, trying to think of the best thing to say. Might as well start from the beginning.

“I’m not from a vault,” she started. “I just…happened to wake up in one.”

“But you had a vault suit. And that PipBoy,” Preston countered (she couldn’t remember what she had done with the PipBoy, actually. She’d have to go looking for it). “What do you mean?”

“I’m not from a vault,” Georgia repeated again, her voice cracking. “Hell, I’m not even from this century, I just woke up one day after bein’ frozen like some sorta human popsicle with everyone I know dead or gone, I watched my husband get shot and my baby–”

Her voice caught and she couldn’t help it this time, reaching her hand up to the back of her neck and pulling at the loose ends of her hair that hadn’t made it into the bun. She hissed a little at the pain, but it grounded her enough to start feeling embarrassed at how Preston looked at her. He didn’t look judgemental as much as he looked incredibly concerned.

“Frozen? What do you mean, ‘frozen’? For how long?” he asked with a worried brow.

“If Codsworth was right, a little over two hundred years I think,” Georgia replied. “I used to live here, in Sanctuary.”

Preston’s eyes went wide. “So that means…before the war…?”

Georgia nodded, and before she knew it, she was spilling her entire life’s story to him. They stood out there for hours, eventually taking a walk through the neighborhood as Georgia spoke and Preston listened. He was a very good listener she noted, hanging off her every word. By the time she caught him up to speed that she was a pre-war woman with no experience that could ever match what the world had become in her absence, the sun had started to set over the horizon. She couldn’t help but notice that the street remained dark as they walked, with no electricity to power the street lamps.

When she finished, Georgia looked at Preston expectantly.

“…Damn,” he said after a moment. “I’m sorry. You’ve been through a lot since you woke up.”

She almost had it in her to snort, “Yeah, puttin’ it mildly.”

“So what are you gonna do now?”

“Not a damn clue, truthfully,” she said, looking up at the night sky like it could give her all the answers. “I can barely shoot, don’t think I can eat anything without it comin’ back up, and I don’t even know if my son is still alive. If he’s out there, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Diamond City, probably,” Preston supplied. “One of the biggest settlements in the Commonwealth. I don’t get over that way too much, but I’ve heard that if you’re looking for someone, it’s a good place to start.”

“How far away from here?”

“Too far for you to go at it alone.”

“Well, great. If Concord was anything to go by, I don’t think I’d make it very far,” Georgia sighed. “Back then I was runnin’ on pure adrenaline. I can’t do that again.”

Preston hummed, biting down on his lip as they walked. He looked like he wanted to say something, and before she could prompt him to speak, he was already talking.

“I can help,” he offered. “If you want, that is. Everyone in the wasteland should know how to defend themselves. We could start with some shooting lessons and then if you’re up for it, I could help get you to Diamond City.”

Georgia looked up at him, face gone soft at his offer, “You’d do that?”

“You helped us, we help you,” he nodded. “That’s the Minutemen way. Or at least it was before...everything.”

“Preston, I–I can’t thank you enough.You and your group have been the only kind people I’ve met so far,” she said. “I’m glad I ran into y’all first. Thank you.”

“No problem. But some advice: be careful who you share your story with,” he said, suddenly serious. “There are people out there meaner than this group that would use it against you. If the wrong person found out you’re looking for a missing kid, it could end badly for you.”

Georgia bit down on her lip. There was no telling what kind of people the rest of the wasteland had in store. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Preston looked down at her from under his hat, a few inches taller than she was. Now he had a faint smile on his face as he said, “We can start practicing sometime tomorrow. If you can, we’d like some help getting Sanctuary together. Sturges has been leading the repairs, you can talk to him. After that, we can get started. Deal?”

“Deal,” Georgia nodded, and for the first time since she’d left the vault, hope bloomed in her chest.

----------

As promised, the next morning was spent helping with repairs wherever they were needed. Old paneling and wood were scavenged from any of the prefabricated houses that had completely fallen in on themselves, now used as patchwork to fix both Georgia’s house as well as the one across the street where Preston and his group had decided to stay. Going through the neighborhood and walking through the houses where her neighbors used to live had made Georgia a little uneasy, but after giving herself a pinch hard enough to bruise on the outside of her thigh, she pushed through.

With Preston’s help, the two managed to find enough old mattresses and bent bed frames for everyone to have their own bed. Dogmeat had even found himself a dog house to rest in, and after Georgia convinced Preston to help her haul it over towards her own house, that was where the dog stayed as they worked.

By early afternoon, both occupied houses had their walls patched (the roofs would have to wait until they found or made a ladder) and most of the debris was swept out. Georgia had rearranged the furniture in her house, putting everything back to where she had it so many years ago. It didn’t look the same of course, but it made her feel all that more grounded.

When she met up with Preston again after, he came bearing gifts and good news.

“Sturges said he managed to find an old generator behind one of the houses down at the end,” he said, two guns resting on either shoulder. One was the laser musket she had always seen him carrying, the other a short-barrelled hunting rifle. “He said if he can get it working, he knows how to put together a water purifier we can put in the river, get some clean water for us so we don’t have to keep boiling it.”

“God, that’d be great,” Georgia groaned. “I haven’t had a shower in–well. A long time.”

The corner of Preston’s mouth quirked and he laughed a little, “Two hundred years without a shower, gross.”

“You’re tellin’ me.”

“Anyways,” he continued, “while we were going through the houses, I found this for you. It’s no laser musket, but it’ll do. Better than that ten mil you had.”

He put the hunting rifle into her open palms, as well as a handful of bullets from his pocket. It felt heavy in her hands, but not unfamiliar.

“Ever used something like this before? It’s way different than a pistol for obvious reasons,” Preston said, readjusting the grip he had on his musket.

Georgia nodded, looking over the weapon, “It’s been a while, but yeah. My grandfather taught me when I was a kid, but I’m out of practice. He had a farm with a bunch of livestock, he knew how to work a gun.”

“That’s good. I won’t have to waste time teaching you gun safety then,” Preston said, breathing a laugh through his nose. “C’mon, I set up a range out by the water. I told the others not to wander over that way unless they wanted to catch a bullet.”

“I’m not that bad of a shot, Preston.”

Preston grinned and the two walked over towards the river, where he had set up a line of rusted tin cans on an old picnic table. The sun was still high in the sky and a light breeze made goosebumps appear on the exposed parts of skin that her ill-fitting sweater didn’t cover.

“Oh, before I forget–”

Preston started to dig around in his pockets, resting his laser musket against his shoulder again as he pulled out what he’d been looking for. Georgia made a curious sound.

“Glasses?”

Preston suddenly looked bashful. “I just, uh, noticed how much you squint. I found them in a drawer over there.” He gestured over his shoulder to the yellow house behind him. “I don’t know if they’ll help, or if you even need them, but thought I’d ask you anyway.”

“Huh,” Georgia breathed as she took the two pairs of glasses he had into her hands, “My eyesight’s never been great, but I always thought it wasn’t bad enough for me to think about glasses. Besides, I always thought I’d look a little…I dunno, dorky, I guess.”

“Well, if you want to learn how to shoot accurately, you might need them.”

She nodded in agreement, unfolding one pair and trying them on. They warped everything she saw the moment she put them on, but the second pair brought everything (mostly) into focus. For once, she could make out details more than ten feet away from her.

“Holy shit,” she said to herself, looking around the two of them, then looked up at Preston. “How do I look?”

He gave her a thumbs up.

“Thanks, Preston,” she said, gripping her new rifle with purpose. “Guess we can get started, then.”

“We’ll start with the basics first,” Preston said. “Just make sure you know how to aim before we move on.”

They positioned themselves a suitable distance away from the table of cans and after running her through how to load and reload the gun, Georgia was ready to start.

She lined a can up in the rifle’s sights, held her breath, and pulled the trigger.

The can went flying off the picnic table and for the first time since leaving the vault, Georgia felt a smile crack across her face. Her smile must have been infectious, because Preston smiled right back at her. She turned back towards the row of cans and lined up another shot, then another, until she was down five bullets and all of the cans were littered around their makeshift shooting range. It was almost too easy.

“It’s a good start,” Preston said, tipping his hat towards her, “but more often than not, unfortunately, you’ll be aiming at moving targets.”

They spent the rest of the day with Preston throwing the cans up in the air as high as he could, while Georgia tracked their fall and took shots. It was considerably harder for obvious reasons, but after a few hours she was able to shoot them out of the air before they hit the ground. Towards the end of the day, when the sun started to dip back below the horizon, she even managed to shoot a can twice while it was still in the air, pulling the trigger once and then tracking it right after to do it again. Her holler of excitement had echoed around the neighborhood.

The rest of the week had the new residents of Sanctuary clearing out the rest of the old houses, repairing the roofs, and putting together the beginnings of a crop of wild mutfruit (which, Georgia came to find out, she enjoyed the sweet taste of). Mama Murphy wasn’t much help, but Georgia kept her happy after finding a particularly comfortable armchair and a functioning radio. The Longs mostly kept to themselves, but Jun had offered to help Sturges with the water purifier at some point and Marcy proved herself to be a resilient scavenger. For a few hours a day, though, Preston and Georgia went off towards the water to practice her shooting. They’d come across a few more cases of ammunition and supplies in an old cellar they’d found behind one of the houses, and by the end of the week, the hunting rifle in Georgia’s hands was as familiar as her own face in the mirror.

Which, by all accounts, was not the face she remembered when she finally caught a look at herself in the cracked, dirty glass in her bathroom while she washed up for dinner.

A handful of candles placed on the sides of the defunct sink offered Georgia enough light to wash herself by, making her shadow dance around the room. She had a bucket of fresh water warming up on one of Sturges’ modified hot plates and an old rag to scrub the dirt from her skin. In the mirror, she looked like hell.

Her once pale skin was covered with new, dark freckles across her cheeks and nose from her time in the wasteland sun. Bags had formed under her now faintly bloodshot blue eyes, making her look gaunt. The scar on her chin that she’d gotten from jumping a fence during the one college party that had gotten busted by the cops had a new friend in the one across her left eyebrow. She’d gotten hit with some debris when the bombs dropped, and one of the vault doctors had patched her up before sending her on her way to what could have been her icy grave. She’d had no idea.

An abrupt hiss of pain called her back, and she let her fingers fall away from her wrist before tearing her gaze away from the mirror to finish washing up.

She had offered to cook for the group earlier that day as a way to say thank you for helping her get back on her feet. Sturges was glad to leave the cooking to her while he worked on fixing the wobbly table leg that had been driving him nuts ever since he got to Sanctuary.

“Here, for you,” he had said before she started cooking, handing her a bottle with a faded label reading Rad-X. “Found a full bottle of it goin’ through the houses. Take some now and it’ll have time to kick in before dinner, won’t have to keep goin’ through our RadAway.”

Georgia thanked him, and after popping one of the tablets, she got to work.

They still had plenty of radstag meat, and with the addition of a few tatoes Marcy had come upon, Georgia was confident she could make some sort of satisfactory meal. It couldn’t have been too different from cooking up venison with her grandfather after one of his hunting trips. Besides, Georgia had learned over the last few days to not think too hard about the taste of things (mutfruit being the exception), just the fact that she had food in her body. What was it Nate used to say? “Military food was never meant to taste good, just to keep you going.” For once, Georgia found comfort in his words.

The group didn’t talk much over dinner after having worked so hard the past week, though Marcy had it in her to thank Georgia for the food and everyone else had hummed in agreement. It was the most praise she had gotten for her cooking in a long time, and it made her absolutely beam with pride.

After dinner, though, Preston pulled her aside with a serious look on his face.

“You alright Preston?” she asked with concern before trading it for panic. “Wait, did I do somethin’ wrong with the food–”

A smile cracked through his sullen expression enough to reassure her, “No, no, the food was fine. Better than Sturges’, actually, but don’t tell him I said that. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

They had walked outside and started what had become their usual patrol around the neighborhood. Most of the time they walked in companionable silence, but tonight something heavy seemed to be weighing on the Minuteman.

“Shoot,” Georgia said. “What’s on your mind?”

Preston sucked in a breath like he was preparing himself, and Georgia let him take his time summoning up the courage.

“I want to restart the Minutemen.”

Georgia’s brows knitted together, “Restart? I thought you said they were all gone? What you said happened at Quincy–”

Preston held up a hand. “I want us to restart the Minutemen.”

Georgia balked.

“Us? Just the two of us? Preston, it’s an honorable goal, but…you’ve had to spend the whole week gettin’ me caught up on Wasteland 101. I don’t know how much help I’d be,” she said earnestly.

“But you’re a fast learner,” he pointed out quickly, desperately. “Just watching you the last week makes me think we could really do it. I mean, look at how we’ve put together Sanctuary. We have beds, food, clean water. Imagine what we could do for all the settlements who think the Minutemen abandoned them.”

Georgia worried her lip between her teeth.

“I just…what did you have in mind?”

“If I remember correctly, there should be a few settlements around here that used to be part of the Minutemen network before it all fell apart. We could start there, let them know we’re willing to help again,” Preston explained. “We build it back up to where we used to be, and we have the whole Commonwealth on our team. Plus…I think it could help you find your son.”

Georgia's chest suddenly felt tight. Maybe Preston had a point. Besides, what good was she doing for anyone besides herself just sitting in Sanctuary? If Shaun was out there…

“What about you gettin’ me to Diamond City?” she asked, remembering their agreement. “Are you still willin’ to help me out with that?”

Preston nodded, “Absolutely. In fact, I’m sure we could pass through some of the settlements on the way there. Two birds, one stone. What do you say? Are you in?”

There was an overwhelming sense of desperation in his voice, like he was looking at his last hope right in front of him. Georgia considered everything he’d done for her so far, pulling her onto even footing with the rest of them and making sure she didn’t drink herself to death. He’d spent countless, patient hours teaching her what he knew. In this world, all brand new to her, Preston Garvey was the closest thing she had to a friend, and Georgia couldn’t help but want to help him in return.

“I guess I’m in,” she said with a hesitant smile. Preston beamed back at her.

Diamond City would have to wait a little longer. The Minutemen were back in action.

#fallout #fallout fic #fo4 #fic: best laid plans #my writing #it's chapter 2 time babey

[laaauc]

sun digs its heels to taunt you

mod lore: well this has been a wip since march, but it's finally out! this is the one that "yunan the tea" comes from lmfao

warnings: description of surgery, blood, scars, mentions of seizures and unethical experimentation, marcy harm

2.7k

Laurel can’t take this anymore. This thing she contributed to, transformed that sobbing girl into with her own hands, it follows her through the halls like a shadow, taunting her from the darkness. 

When Olivia and Yunan escape the castle, fleeing to join the rebellion, she does not follow. She stays, because no one else can convince the Core to provide even a tiny amount of care for its host. It’s the least she can do, trying to care for the thing controlling Marcy’s body.

-

Laurel still remembers the day Olivia and Yunan had approached her and asked her to help them save Marcy, so many weeks ago, now. It’d been shortly after the helmet’s completion, and, looking at Marcy’s sullen, slumbering face as she floated in the healing chamber, her body riddled with stitches, she realized she couldn’t go through with it. She stored it away, still wired to the Core in preparation for its usage. It sat in the shadows of the operating room attached to the Core’s main chamber, where it would be used. Even knowing that Marcy would be anesthetized for the procedure, she couldn’t leave her to the fate that she would be subjecting her to otherwise.

One night, she left the laboratory and begged Lady Olivia—a newt she’d known though Marcy’s neuroscience research, a project that she’d in fact been referencing throughout her creation of the helmet—for help, all it took was a moment to tell her of the horrors the girl was being put through, even if Marcy was not aware of them, before Olivia promised to help. Two days later, the official date of the download put off until Marcy’s wounds healed, Olivia told her that she’d gained the assistance of General Yunan and that the two of them were gathering supplies to attempt a rescue. And so, that night, they ventured into the catacombs to that twisted secret laboratory at the heart of the castle.

It did not go well, and they were left with Marcy as a prisoner in her own mind, although Laurel discovered through careful observation that Marcy was most likely completely unconscious and unaware of her predicament. When they are finally able to save her, it would be as if she’s merely been asleep since that moment she passed out during the torture Andrias had forced them to subject her to. And Laurel fears for that, because Marcy will know none of the comfort she’s tried to provide her broken, puppeted body during her time trapped in her mind. Rather, the last thing she recalls will be the instant that Laurel had placed a helmet on her head that caused her truly unimaginable agony, something she never should’ve been awake for. Those last moments of terror will not fade quickly from her already-fragmented mind.

-

The other newts return weeks later, arriving when a pair of resistance soldiers infiltrate the castle.

“This is Anne, and her friend Sasha,” Olivia introduces them, Yunan at her side to keep a watchful eye for robots or Andrias. Laurel nods, acknowledging their presence but not introducing herself. She doesn’t want to. Not after what she did.

“Laurel,” Yunan says. “We’re here to save Marcy.”

Oh.

Anne and Sasha, the two humans, track down the Core first. Long ago, when Marcy had been a bright, strange child, new to this world and fascinated to explore and study it, she’d talked Laurel’s ear off for hours with stories of her friends, the two of them looking over long rolls of brain readings and data from Marcy’s study. Now, these two girls have been turned into hardened warriors by the battles of this world, and Marcy herself? Laurel can only hope she hasn’t lost her forever.

Flashes of blue come from another wing of the castle, traveling in their glow like strikes of lightning.

Yunan looks into the distance. “We’ve given them long enough. We should follow now.”

They race through the corridors, and come upon a wing that was already cracked and damaged months before this day. “Oh…” Olivia gasps. “Not… here…” 

But the bloodstains splattered on the tiles, stained thick as spilled paint, are real, as is the broken throne before the shattered crystal window. 

Anne and Sasha kneel over Marcy next to a freshly broken column, the dark-haired girl lying quite still. The Core’s helmet, complete with the long cord that threads through that device that Laurel herself had constructed and into Marcy’s skull, still rests upon her head, but the screen of the visor is cracked so as to expose the right half of her face.

“We haven’t seen Andrias—Yunan, your diversion tactic must’ve worked, but we need to get out of here. He’ll realize it’s a trick as soon as he notices we aren’t there,” Anne says, pulling Marcy into her lap. The unconscious girl’s face shifts imperceptibly at the movement.

Laurel shuffles her feet. “We need to get into somewhere where we can barricade any attackers out.”

Olivia looks to a nearby room. “There’s a closet off of Andrias’s antechamber that could work. There’s a secret exit from it, too, if we need to make an escape.”

“Let’s go,” Laurel says, already following Olivia. Anne and Sasha carry the increasingly lucid girl behind her, Yunan picking up the back. And behind them, the wires in the helmet drag through debris, disappearing far in the distant halls to the Core’s own form.

As they settle into the cramped space, Marcy shifts again. “Sashy? Anne?” she mumbles, just as she had back at that initial rescue. This time, however, they’re able to respond that, yes, it’s us, we’re here, Marbles.

And then the part she’s been dreading, as she watches Marcy catch a glimpse of Olivia and Yunan taking her into their arms with her one exposed eye. 

“N-no! P-please, please, no,” she whines, trying to writhe free.

“Shhh, Marcy, my child,” Olivia attempts to soothe her. “We aren’t going to hurt you; I promise we won’t let you hurt ever again.”  It’s no use; the last Marcy saw of them was them holding her against a chrome table as Andrias ordered Laurel to go through with the Core’s download with the assigned host awake and terrified. An experience like that doesn’t fade quickly; it may well have been the most pain the poor girl had ever experienced, even including the incident during the experimentation that she’d undergone, recorded in Triturus’s lab reports; even including the night she’d died, so slowly and painfully as the other newts’ story goes (as well as quite horrifically, based on the records and photos of her injuries kept in the lab).

So Marcy panics, held in their arms tightly once again, despite being in her best friends’ company as well as the amphibians’. Comfort is something all too foreign to this child, Laurel thinks, her heart aching.

“Yunan, the tea,” Anne reminds, and Yunan suddenly pulls a thermos from a hidden pocket in her armor. An herbal scent fills the closet when it’s opened, and Laurel sighs in relief. She won’t have to put Marcy through something like this with her wide awake and terrified once again.

“Marmar, drink this,” Sasha says, holding the thermos to Marcy’s lips and letting her sip. She drinks deeply, the Core having let her body become badly dehydrated despite Laurel’s insistence. Quickly, Marcy’s eyelids begin to droop, and she falls forward into the others’ arms, gradually settling in a position she must find comfortable, even in her surely aching condition. It won’t fully knock her out, but it will dull the pain and keep her calm and drowsy. Laurel, meanwhile, has snapped on rubber gloves and is already examining the state of the helmet. It’s not vital that she takes this off cleanly, so she splits it along an existing crack. Marcy is left facedown with her eyes buried in Anne’s arms. Her hair spills around the metal-lined hole in the back of her skull, where those wires feed. This is the hard part.

From the pouch at her belt, she removes a few sterile-wrapped scalpels, and brushes Marcy’s hair to the side with her fingers. The rectangular patch of exposed implant is about three inches long and two tall, the scalp immediately surrounding it bare of hair and scarred.

Marcy flinches a bit when the blade goes through the skin at the surface of her scalp, and Laurel, too, winces. This will be the worst part for her, she knows. Even with her scalp scarred and numb, it will sting. Once she gets deeper, to start removing the implanted device, she shouldn’t feel anything. Marcy whimpers and whimpers, tears soaking into the layers of Olivia’s dress, but she stays quiet while Yunan urgently whispers for her to avoid making noise.

Laurel pauses to mop the blood from Marcy’s hair and neck before she continues. She knows precisely how this device was implanted; she can remove it as well. She’s made her way through the scalp, past the edges of the hole already cut in her skull. The hard, shiny metal of the plate covering the implant is slick with a sheen of blood. She fiddles with that outer piece until it comes away from the part inside her head that connects to her brain, sliding down the cable that threads through it. Now, the edges of where the implant burrows into the tissue to connect to her neurons are more obvious. She lines up the scalpel with precision, hoping to cause as little damage as possible.

This is where she warns the other children to look away. 

Anne still winces when she hears Laurel’s knife sink into tissue. It’s an awful sound, and she notices Marcy’s face twisted in worry, even in her drowsiness. Her fingers clench and twist into Olivia’s skirt when Anne gently pushes her arms down to keep her from trying to touch the wound.

Just before Laurel finishes, Marcy begins spasming uncontrollably, muscles rapidly tensing and untensing. Though Olivia begins to panic, Laurel reassures her that seizures are common during brain surgery. She’ll be fine, hopefully, though more of these may be likely.

-

All in all, it takes a bit more than half an hour for Laurel to remove the device. As soon as it’s out, she immediately drops it, where it clunks to the ground with the wires still attached, covered in blood and bits of brain. But the shouts of Andrias, discovering Marcy gone, and the clanking, metallic movement of robots fill the halls already. Laurel can install a plate over the hole in Marcy’s skull later; right now they need to go. Yunan wraps Marcy’s head in bandages, Laurel pulls off her gloves, drops them on the floor of the closet as Olivia pulls a hidden lever to open the passageway, and then they run.

Once they’ve made it out, through a series of secret passageways that deposit them on a balcony, Yunan whistles for Marcy’s old sparrow. He shows up as reliably as ever, and surely with little time to spare, the whole party piles on.

They change her out of the Core’s armor on the back of the bird, just beginning their flight away from the castle. The girl faintly protests their actions, but her speech is still slurred and failing her.

Anne gasps when she sees Marcy’s scars, no longer covered by that hideous, bloody bodysuit, the raised lines clean and clinical on her torso. They’re in layers, the deep, darkened mark where Andrias’s sword had plunged through her chest being the first laid down. Then there are the long, straight, pink marks of Triturus’s experimentations, along with scars from the many other surgeries she’d undergone during her time in that laboratory. Along her back, around the exposed metal of an artificial spine; down her side, the skin stretched and rippling; on her arms and legs, such long incisions for such small ports surely hiding something implanted deeper below her skin. Most obvious, of course, are those expansive sets of scars that cover her front; Laurel knows these are from the two occasions on which Triturus had laid open her body just to see what a human looked like on the inside. Anne only sees this as evidence of Marcy’s pain, and shakes with sorrow. 

Laurel carefully checks her body for any other wounds, finding circular cuts from the tubes they’d inserted latching onto her, as well as a few gashes from the battle that she’ll have to stitch closed if they’re still leaking blood by the time they reach their destination.

-

Marcy seizes again while on that flight through the morning sky. None of the newts can stand to hold her still this time, so Anne and Sasha have to make sure she doesn’t fall off Joe’s saddle as they fly. Once it’s passed, she sweats and shivers in their arms as Joe Sparrow soars away into the clouds.

-

Staying deep under Wartwood in the caverns of the Resistance, Marcy recovers, but slowly. Laurel is forced to use a plate of frobot scrap metal to fashion a plate for her head after a week goes by without a better option. She installs it over the hole in Marcy’s skull one night, without any more sedation than another round of that calming tea. Her choked screams will never leave Laurel’s mind, not after causing those to be torn from the girl’s throat herself one two many times. Marcy stays sick in bed the next two weeks, head throbbing with pain and body aching, though Sasha, Anne, Laurel, Olivia, and Yunan all stay by her side. She has mostly regained her normal speech by the end of the first month after her rescue.

Some pains remain, even months later. The scars that cover Marcy’s body sometimes ache, deep and precise in their strokes, each mark of pain made in the name of science. Her spine, severed when Andrias had dealt that fatal blow, had been repaired with an artificial replacement that stretches from between her shoulder blades to the small of her back, the black metal starkly contrasting the heavy scarring from where the sword had burned deep wounds across her back, but moving remains difficult, so she mostly stays in her bed, set up in a cave in the depths of the catacombs beneath the Plantar Farmhouse. Her head remains achingly sore, off and on. None of them can tell if this is a temporary consequence of her frantically rushed brain surgeries or something more permanent that will remain a chronic pain throughout her life, thanks to the forceful way her mind had been violated.

Even harder to heal are the mental scars.

She flinches away from the newts for months. It’s weeks before there’s even a single exception to this. They were afraid of this; they have been ever since the disastrous attempt to save Marcy from any more suffering. That glance they’d shared the moment before they’d chosen to hold Marcy still for the download rather than let Andrias do it had said everything. But one night, she wakes from a nightmare to Laurel’s cool, partially-webbed hands holding her shoulders, and she doesn’t push her touch away, despite the horrible familiarity of that touch. And so Laurel cries into her pillow once she has returned to the bed she shares with Olivia and Yunan, just at the hope that she’ll trust them again, despite what they were forced to do to her. 

They’re still in hiding, the long, seemingly endless war having reached a lull in the Amphibian winter. Marcy, perhaps the key to winning when the combat resumes, is healing from her injuries, able to help the resistance plan its attacks even from her bed when she’s able, and now she’s recovering mentally, as well. Soon, she can leave her bed, walk slowly through the halls on makeshift crutches, regaining the strength she’d lost. 

-

Laurel can’t wait to launch an attack that will destroy the flying castle where the salamander who’d killed Marcy and left her to a fate worse than death leads the war, and watch that laboratory shatter to pieces along with it.

But this winter, they remain underground, and Marcy heals, and the planet awaits the conclusion to this war.

#mod lore #writing #marcy wu #sasha waybright #anne boonchuy #laurel rue irvine-froude #lady olivia #general yunan #abeboy

[animationnut]

Of Broken Spirits and Renewed Hope

Spoilers for True Colors.

Rating: K+ Summary: Three human girls arrived in Amphibia. Only one made it back home. Note: If Google has any degree of accuracy, นางฟ้า is Thai for angel.

“Home.”

Anne felt her vocal cords vibrate in her throat, felt her tongue curve around the syllable of the word, felt her lips as they moved to accommodate her vocal cords and her tongue. But she was speaking from instinct, not intent, as her brain swam in a haze of mixed colours—green, pink and blue, and the orange glow of a blazing sword—

Anne could feel herself wavering on the edge, practically see the black abyss threatening to swallow her whole, but three harsh coughs interrupted her dark spiral.

“What’s that smell?” rasped Polly, covering her nose as she wheezed. Her gags racked her small form and Hop Pop quickly whipped a handkerchief from his pocket, using it to cover Polly’s face.

The buzzing in Anne’s ears stopped and the world exploded with sound and sensation.

Dozens of horns blared from commuters who were impatient and annoyed with traffic that should have been as familiar to them as the back of their hands. Heat seared Anne’s exposed skin as the metal of the vehicle they were lying on burned from the exposure to the Californian sun. Exhaust rose in black clouds, sour and noxious, burning Anne’s nose and making her eyes water.

There was the click of the car door opening and Anne snapped her head around. The portly man gazed blankly at her as his mind struggled to comprehend what he was witnessing. With a boggled expression, he looked between the girl wearing an armoured chest plate and the three large, anthropomorphic frogs sitting next to her.

“Hi,” chirped Anne, managing to sound upbeat and cheerful. “Sorry, dude. We’ll just be on our way.”

“Where did you come from?” he asked. Anne couldn’t identify his dialect, but his accent coupled with the maple leaf-shaped air freshener and his outfit screamed ‘tourist’. “And what the heck are those?”

Sprig opened his mouth, no doubt to introduce himself, but Anne seized the Plantars in a one-arm hold, squeezing just tightly enough for speech to be difficult. “Sorry,” she repeated, using her free hand to snag the strap of her backpack.

She slid down the hood and if it weren’t for months of walking over sticks, stones and hard, uneven ground, the hot asphalt seeping through her worn-out sock might have crumpled her. But she ignored the pain as she swung her bag over her shoulder. The weight of Frobo’s deactivated head nearly sent her sprawling, but she regained her balance and took off running.

She weaved her way through the bumper-to-bumper traffic, climbing over vans and sports cars and SUVs, ignoring the shouts and curses aimed her way by the disgruntled owners. She reached the metal barrier that separated the embankment from the freeway and she hoisted herself over it.

They tumbled down the grassy slope and Anne sprinted through the trees. The sounds of human civilization eventually quieted and Anne halted her sprint when she registered Sprig smacking at her arm.

She quickly let them go and they dropped to the ground. Anne’s knees buckled as the adrenaline drained right out of her. Her mind was a mess of thoughts and her lungs felt like they were going to collapse.

The flaming blade piercing through Marcy’s chest. The stunned expression in Marcy’s eyes, the way all colour faded from her face. The tears that spilled down her cheeks, and the final words that tumbled from her mouth as her eyes rolled back into her head.

“I’m sorry. For everything.”

Anne’s agonized scream was promptly choked by the vomit that filled her mouth.

Hop Pop was by her side in an instant, hands gripping her shoulders as she hunched over and hacked into the grass. Her throat burned and her limbs trembled, the sight of Marcy falling lifeless and the sound of Sasha’s horrified howl haunting her.

The sobs that pealed out of her came from somewhere deep inside the girl. They were filled with pure loss and devastation and it echoed amongst the towering trees. Tears poured down Anne’s face, snot leaked from her nose as she cried and her fists pounded into the grass as emotion overcame her.

“Marcy!” she wailed. “Marcy, nooooo! Maaaaarcyyyy!”

Hop Pop wound his arms securely around her neck and pulled her close. Sprig and Polly clung to her, and all of his grandchildren were in a state of grief, tears glimmering on their skin and their small bodies shaking.

Hop Pop swallowed back his own sadness. As traumatizing as it had been to see a child slain in front of his eyes, he had to be strong for his family. He stroked Anne’s hair, patted Sprig and Polly’s heads, and gave comfort not with words but his presence.

Anne cried herself hoarse. When she found she had run out of tears to shed, she weakly sat up and wiped at her face. “It’s not fair,” she said croakily. “Hop Pop, it’s not fair.”

“I know, kiddo. I’m so sorry.” Hop Pop rubbed his thumb gently over Anne’s knuckles.

“She sacrificed herself to save us,” said Sprig, squeezing his eyes shut against the swell of despair. “Her and Sasha.”

Anne gave a distraught moan, her head bowing slightly as the weight of two worlds crushed against her shoulders.

“Hey, hey, look at me,” ordered Hop Pop, and Anne reluctantly lifted her chin. “We don’t know what happened to Sasha. She’s a tough one. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“We don’t know that!” shouted Anne, her voice cracking. “Marcy should have been fine, but she isn’t! She’s dead, and Sasha might be too! This isn’t how it was supposed to go! We were supposed to come home together!”

She began to dry heave, stress and panic and grief clenching tight around her heart and making her feel sick. Hop Pop grabbed her face with both hands and stared steadily into her wet eyes. “Breathe with me. In and out.”

Anne’s first attempts resulted in strangled gasps, but eventually she gained control of her breathing. “I don’t know what to do,” she whimpered.

“We worry about that later,” said Hop Pop firmly.

“But what about Andrias? And if Sasha is still alive—”

“Anne, right now, none of us are in a state to do much of anything,” said Hop Pop calmly. “To be honest, I don’t know if we can do anything.”

Anne blinked at him before realization hit. “The music box is still in Amphibia.”

Polly was crestfallen. “Does that mean we’ll never be able to go home?”

“What about Bessie and MicroAngelo?” asked Sprig desperately. “And Ivy! I didn’t get to say goodbye to Ivy!”

“Hush,” said Hop Pop soothingly, pulling Sprig and Polly into his arms. “The townspeople will take care of our snails, and I’m sure Ivy will understand, Sprig. As for going back home, I don’t know.” He let out a heavy sigh, feeling every year of his existence weigh down his bones. “Maybe we can figure something out. But if we can’t, we have each other. Home is where we are, even if we aren’t in Wartwood.”

He swept his eyes over his grandchildren, biological and adopted, and saw the words provided little peace in the moment of intense sorrow. But he knew they would come to appreciate how fortuitous it was that they returned to Anne’s world as a family, even when the losses they suffered hung darkly over their thoughts.

Anne was staring numbly at the ground and Hop Pop tugged lightly at her elbow. She fell easily into his embrace, as if she were made of nothing but feathers, and her forehead rested against the top of his head. For a moment they just stayed there, Anne’s body radiating warmth and causing Polly and Sprig to nestle closer to her, seeking her familiar heat.

Polly was the first one to hear the musical twinkling. She blinked over at Anne’s backpack. “Anne, your bag is singing.”

Anne slowly turned to follow Polly’s gaze, and it took her several seconds to register the noise. Suddenly it was as if a live wire had touched her and jolted to action, shrieking, “My phone!”

The Plantars were jostled as she dove for her bag. She ripped Frobo’s head out and Polly said furiously, “Hey! Don’t treat him like he’s junk!”

But Anne barely heard her. She plunged her hand into her bag, the bristles of her brush and points of her bobby pins sticking her flesh. Her fingers wrapped around her phone and she yanked it out.

Her text alert, which she hadn’t heard in months, was jarring to her ears. The notification center on her phone was being flooded by dozens and dozens of texts, missed calls and voicemail alerts. They poured in so fast Anne was only able to glimpse the names attached before they were replaced by another batch of notifications.

The majority of the texts were from Sasha, Marcy and Anne’s parents. There were a couple from the local police station, which caused Anne’s stomach to grow cold with fear. She hadn’t even considered the consequences of literally disappearing off the face of the Earth.

And then her phone froze, unable to keep up with the backlog of messages coming in all at once. Frustrated, Anne stabbed at her screen with her finger, but it was no use.

Her eyes fell upon the last text to make it to her notification center. It was from her mother.

Oh, นางฟ้า, your father and I miss you so much. We pray for a sign that you and the girls are alive, and that you will return home soon.

“Oh, Mommy,” whispered Anne, her fingers digging into the rubber material of her phone case.

Hop Pop approached and set a hand against her back. “Let’s go see your parents,” he said softly.

“But I don’t even know what to say to them,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know if they’ll understand. It’s…the things I’ve been through, the things we’ve been through, they don’t happen here. Not ever.”

“Well, we’re here to help you explain things,” said Sprig earnestly.

“Yeah, I’m…I think I might need some time to prepare them for you three,” muttered Anne. “They are so gonna freak out.” She glanced back at her frozen screen, and her heart plummeted as she read the most recent message from Marcy’s father. “Oh, how do I tell them?” she said in despair. “How do I tell Sasha’s parents that I had to leave her behind? How do I tell Marcy’s parents that their daughter is…is…”

Her voice wobbled and her eyes started to sting once more. Anne wanted to cry, but she didn’t have the energy nor the water for proper tears. Hop Pop gently set her phone back in her bag, which Anne allowed without protest. He laced his fingers with hers and said, “We’ll tell them the truth, Anne. That’s all we can do. We’ll tell ‘em how brave their daughters are.”

Anne gave a sniff. She tugged her hand free from Hop Pop’s grasp so she could rub at her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, for sure.”

She took a few minutes to gather herself, to try and clumsily sort through the heavy emotions swirling in her chest. She wanted to mourn, but there wasn’t time. She had to see her parents, had to tell them what happened.

“So, how long have you been gone?” asked Polly in a small voice, embarrassed by her earlier outburst. “Does time work the same way here?”

“Um…I don’t know.” Anne gestured to her pink backpack, where her phone was once again nestled safely inside. “It froze on me, so I can’t check the calendar or anything. And I didn’t get to see the dates on the first few rounds of texts.” She looked over to see the pollywog nuzzling Frobo’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Polly. I shouldn’t have thrown him around like that.”

“S’okay,” mumbled Polly. “I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m just really sad and upset right now.”

“Me too.” Anne leaned over and brought Polly into her arms, pressing a gentle kiss against her head. “I’m sorry, Polly. Maybe we can fix him.”

“Yeah,” piped up Sprig. “He just needs a new body, right? When we get home, we can go back to that weird machine place and get him a fresh one.”

Polly perked up at that. “Yeah…yeah!” she said. “If we keep his head safe, we can rebuild him!”

There was hope in her eyes. It glimmered and shone and Anne found herself hypnotized by it.

Something flickered in her heart.

“Until then, we’ll do what we can here.”

Hop Pop, Polly and Sprig looked at her in surprise. The teen’s chin was set, her mouth settled in a determined line. “Anne?” ventured her best friend. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not just going to sit here and wait,” said Anne. Her own hope ignited, and the spark soon blazed throughout her whole being. “I’m not gonna just do nothing.” She set Polly down and stood, her fists clenched by her sides. “You’re right, Hop Pop. Sasha’s fine. Marcy…Marcy made the mistake of turning her back to Andrias, but that wasn’t her fault. Sasha won’t do that. She’ll find a way to take the box from that monster and open the portal again.

“But until she figures that out, I gotta do my part. That music box came to Earth somehow. The thrift store where Marcy found it, they had a wardrobe with the Amphibia symbol engraved into the wood. And Marcy knew what the box could do, which meant she found some information about it somewhere.”

She thought about Wartwood, her home away from home. She thought about Wally, Mrs. Croaker, Archie, Bessie, MicroAngelo, Toadstool, Toadie, Loggle, Ivy, Sylvia, Felicia, Stumpy, Maddie and the rest of her friends from the humble country town. She thought about Sasha, who despite her need for control and her habit of lying to get what she wanted, came through for her friends in the end.

She thought about Marcy.

She had tricked them into leaving their parents, their lives, and trapping them in a world so beyond imagination that Anne never in a million years would have dreamed it up. She had done it because she was so scared to lose the friends she loved most, so desperate to stay with Sasha and Anne forever.

She had been inconsiderate. She had been selfish.

So had Anne. So had Sasha. Marcy didn’t deserve to die for her mistakes—none of them did. They were just three teen girls who sometimes did stupid, stupid things.

But they cared about each other—Anne believed that. Even if it was misguided, even if it was manipulative, she knew Sasha and Marcy cared about her—they sometimes just went about it in all the wrong ways.

And even though Marcy was the reason they were in this mess in the first place, and even though Sasha’s trickery was the reason Anne didn’t initially believe her about Andrias, she cared about them, too.

Right now, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t sure if she still wanted to be friends with Sasha after all she had done. It didn’t matter that she still stung over Marcy’s own manipulative scheme to take her friends away from everything they ever knew.

However complicated her emotions currently were, it didn’t mean she couldn’t still care about the two girls she’d shared her most precious memories with.

She was going to find a way to get back to Amphibia. She was going to save her friends. She was going to bring her frog family back home. She was going to save Amphibia and countless other worlds from Andrias’ tyranny.

She wouldn’t let anyone else she loved die by his hands.

“We’re not helpless!” she said fiercely. “We won’t let him make us helpless! We’re gonna stop him!”

Her pupils and irises illuminated a bright blue.

“They did it again!” exclaimed Polly.

Anne blinked and the colour of her eyes returned to normal. “What?”

“Your eyes! They did the funny light-up thing! Are you gonna turn blue again?”

Anne flexed her fingers, but she didn’t feel numb or tingly, like she had when Andrias had thrown Sprig out the window. “No, I don’t think so.” She glanced down at her hands, brow furrowed. “To be honest, I have no idea how that happened. I don’t even really remember it? I mean, I know what I did, but it felt like I wasn’t in my body while I was doing it.”

Sprig looked between Polly and Anne in confusion. “I clearly missed something when I was falling to my death.”

“Oh, it was so cool, Sprig! Anne went all glowy, and she was using blue magic, and she was flying! She nearly beat the snot out of Andrias!” said Polly excitedly.

The words reverberated through Anne’s mind; She nearly beat the snot out of Andrias.

She could beat him. She was still connected to her stone, and that fact seemed to cause Andrias great unease.

“Do you think you’d be able to use those powers again, Anne?” asked Hop Pop, following her same train of thought.

“I’ll learn,” said Anne firmly. “I’ll figure it out. Once I get control of my powers, Andrias won’t stand a chance.”

There was no question of whether or not she’d be able to gain control of her newfound abilities—she had to. It was her best bet to defeat Amphibia’s king.

Sprig tilted his head to the side. “Do you know what activated them in the first place?”

Anne regarded him, intense warmth and adoration bubbling in her stomach, and she gave a soft smile. “You. When he threw you out the window, I thought you were dead, and I was so angry.”

At a momentary loss for words, Sprig’s eyes filled with touched tears and he jumped into her arms. “Oh, Anne.”

“I love you,” said Anne passionately. She lowered to her knees and brought Hop Pop and Polly into her steel embrace. “I love all of you. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”

“We love you too,” said Hop Pop tenderly, lightly running his fingers through her curly hair. “That’s what we’ve got over Andrias—love for one another. Pardon the sappiness of it, but that’s what we’ll use to beat him.”

“It’s not sappy at all,” said Anne. “It’s the truth.” She gave them one more tight squeeze before setting them back down. She grabbed her backpack, swinging it over her shoulders, and she picked up Frobo’s head. “Come on. I’ve kept Mom and Dad waiting long enough. I can’t wait for you guys to meet each other.”

They headed back to the freeway, where Anne hoped one of the stuck commuters would be willing to lend her their cell phone so she could call her parents to pick them up. As they made their way up the littered slope, Anne closed her eyes briefly.

Hang on, Wartwood. I’m coming back for you. Do what you can until I get there, Sasha. I know you can do it—you never give up.

A lump swelled in her throat, and she swallowed back a sob.

We won’t let him win, Marcy. I promise we won’t. You saved us, and I’m so sorry I couldn’t return the favour.

A breeze kicked up, ruffling her thick, curly hair, and in the caress of the wind she swore she could hear a carefree giggle and a sweet summons of Anna-Banana. She let out a slow breath, and a lone tear spilled from the corner of her eye and trailed down her cheek.

I forgive you, Mar-Mar. I forgive you.

#amphibia #amphibia spoilers #true colors #amphibia fanfic #true colors fanfic #anne boonchuy #sprig plantar #hop pop plantar #polly plantar #grief #mourning #angst #hurt/comfort #byanimationnut #tw death #death

[bizarropurugly]

I fell to my knees at his side. There was little blood, only trickling from his mouth, but his body was... 

I felt sick.

“Zed?! Zed, oh god, Zed--!”

He stirred. “Marcie...?” he asked weakly.

“I’m here, I’m here!!” I grabbed up his hand and leaned over him. “I’m right here, they’re calling an ambulance, you’re gonna be okay.” I refused to look away from his face. 

He smiled. “It’s okay... it doesn’t hurt. In fact... I don’t even feel anything at all, right now...” 

I realized he couldn’t look directly at me. 

“That’s... That’s good! You’re gonna be all right!” I choked back a sob. “If you’re not hurt then it’s gonna be all right!!” 

I knew it wasn’t true. If I let my eyes trail downward, I knew it wasn’t true. 

“Marcellus... do you think that... we were meant to be... together...?”

“W-what?” I could barely hear him.

He gave a small laugh. “I’ve wanted... to ask you... but I was afraid... afraid that it would... scare you away...”

Tears streamed down my face, but I squeezed his hand.

“I don’t... feel afraid of anything anymore...”

“Don’t talk like that, you’re gonna be okay!” I said forcefully, but my voice squealed. 

“Well, do you? Do you think... we were meant to be?”

“Yes, yes I do, yes I believe it and... and that’s why you can’t leave me!” He smiled knowingly. “Please, please don’t go!” I begged. “Please, god, please... please don’t leave me Zed!”

“I believe it too,” his voice was barely a whisper.

I bawled, clutching his hand to my face, holding tight.

“Marcie... I’m sorry...”

“Nononono NO! NO!!!” I wailed. I repeated it again and again and again, my voice raising into a shriek, until I was hoarse. Paramedics pulled me away, and I grasped after his hand, screaming. 

But it was already over. It had already been over.

------------------------------

The days following were a blur. 

I don’t remember the funeral.

I don’t remember the absenteeism letters from work.

I don’t remember the eviction notice.

I don’t remember when the food in the fridge expired.

I don’t even remember the last time I ate.

All the mirrors were covered. All the blinds drawn. All the pictures knocked over. The doors to our bedrooms permanently shut. The phone disconnected.

I paced, and paced, and paced.

It was all her fault.

He trusted her. His own sister. He trusted her. And what did she do?

I couldn’t take it. Something had to be done. She had to pay for this.

I knew what I needed to do. Somehow, I would find a way.

------------------------------

It was a nice neighbourhood. So nice that her doors were unlocked, and I slipped in with ease. 

I crept through the small home, biting back a snarl as I passed by happy photos and decorative luxuries. She didn’t deserve any of them.

At last I discovered her bedroom, and eased my way in slowly. She wasn’t awake, and slept in a well-cushioned bed of silk and satin. My heartbeat and breathing became rapid, as fury burned through my body at the sight. She didn’t deserve one damned thing in this place.

Except for the knife in my hand. 

I leapt on her, using my weight to hold her down. My fat and the element of surprise were my only advantages, being smaller and weaker than her.

But I had her. 

"REMEMBER ME, YOU FUCKING BITCH!?!” I roared, strangling her with one hand, brandishing the knife above her in my other. “THINK I OUGHTTA TAKE THIS INTO YOUR PUSSY!? AIN’T THAT WHAT YOU PLANNED TO DO TO HIM!?!”

She struggled and maybe said something, but I wasn’t listening. I was paying more attention to the desperation and fear on her face. It made me smile, and I let go of her throat to grasp my knife in both hands.

Now there was plenty of blood. It was everywhere in an instant. And there was screaming, gasping, gurgling, and my breathless laughing...

But then, all of a sudden, I got the sensation of snapping awake from sleep.

I gazed down at her, covered in wounds, tears streaming down her face as blood foamed up from her mouth and opened throat with sickening bubbling sound. An icy chill settled on me as I shakingly looked at the knife in my blood-covered hands.

What had I done?

I scrambled backwards over the bed, away from her, away from the sin I committed. When I hit the floor, I struggled to my feet and stumbled towards the door.

I was so dazed that I didn’t notice my missing knife until I was bracing myself in the door frame with both hands. 

I felt a distant stinging in my back and slowly fell to my knees. Everything was going dark, and I vaguely realized I had to have fallen on the knife. I might have been bleeding out, or I might have been fainting over the stress, but either way... I knew... that I was going... to die...

And I... deserved it...

#zed n candler #BAD END #b slur --// #stories #death --/ #murder -- #rape m --//

[a-pretty-madness-blog]

Kirby's heart was on overdrive as she stepped into the entry room. It was nothing but a man with what looked like tablet in his hand, guarding a door. The room was silent and from the echo of her breathing inside her head she was sure her labored breaths were audible in the room. How she managed to get to this point was anyone's guess. She wasn't a girl brought up in any kind of rough neighborhood. She grew up in Manhattan. She was in private schools and had drivers. She was raised with a silver spoon disptie her parents distaine for her, so this was new. A back alley mystery warehouse with security and double entrances. This was definitely out of her normal spectrum. The only thing that was keeping her moving forward was the unanswered questions and the possibly answers that stood on the otherside of the metal door.

" Id?" The bouncer asked as he grunted his request. Kirby quickly reached into her wristlet pulling it out as she handed it over to the man trying to hide her trembling fingers. She was sure, like dogs, these men could smell fear and she didn't need anymore attention drawn to her. He took her license and swiped it across the scanner connected to the tablet and watched as all her information appeared on the screen. Her body froze in that instant as he handed it back to after comparing her face to the picture on the screen and opened the door as he motioned with his head for her to enter.

Her feet felt like she was stuck in cement filled buckets. Unable to movie as all her instincts and intuitions begged for her to avoid going through the door, but she did.

There was a mixture of things happening and all her senses were on high alert. Upon entering she could smell the sweaty musk as her eyes instantly locked on the fighting cage in the center of the building. She stared for a moment as she watched the the one man continue to punch the other even after he'd tapped out. She remained wide eyed as she pulled her gaze from the entertainment and began to ease herself around the venue. There were bars on either end of the warehouse with everything circled around the cages. Weaving through the crowd as she surveyed the various and obvious illict activities including the corner filled with card and dice tables. It didn't take much for her to understand the amount of illegal operations going on in one building, but it really wasn't her concern. It was an observation as she moved her gaze from face to face searching for only one. If this was his building he'd be there somewhere right.

Kirby continued to glance around feeling the sweat on her palms increase even as she tried to ease her nerves by rubbing her fingers firmly against them, but nothing was helping. Her stomach was wound so tight she could barely catch her breath. It was obvious the file her investgator had made was lacking in certain areas and that he wasn't as boy scout as the files made him seem. This was only one of many listed and she knew there had to be more.

After doing a painfully slow lap examining the building and all it had to offer, Kirby eased her way to the closest bar in hopes a drink would help her unwind. So far her fear of danger had been wrong, though illegal, they seemed to be running it like a business and with the other women around it just made her feel more safe.

"What can I get you, miss? the bartender asked as he approached her with a customer service style smile that did put her some what more at ease.

"Vodka tonic with lime? She asked and he easily obliged, but as she waited for her drink her attention was caught instantly. Her stomach dropped upon seeing him as she spotted the small group of men enter from the same door she had. He was surrounded by guards and doing what she could only describe as a presidential walk. Everyone seemed to know who he was, everyone but her. Kirby followed him as he moved to stairs she had missed on her once around. Pulling the paper from her back pocket she pulled it open to make sure it was him, but she knew. Looking from the paper to him and back to the paper and once more to him she was sure, but she was sure before. She was sure the moment she saw him like the pieces of her she got from him recognized him and ignited at the first sight. Her curiousity was pulling at her to get a closer look as she heard the bartender call for her attention for the second time.

"Sorry I just..Thanks." Taking the drink as the man looked at her skeptical. She was intranced with the man she hadn't noticed the way the bartender's eyes exmained the print out of Joaquin's face and statistics. She didn't notice the way he walked to a man at the end of the bar and whispered in his ear. She didn't notice how that man disappeared into door below the stairs. No she was too busy trying to telepathically speak to him. What would she say, what would she do? How would she address him? She couldn't just say Hey you raped my mom. There was going to be no easy way to tell the man he was her father.

Kirby took a sip of her drink as she remained transfixed on the upstairs room and its blacked out tinted window which she knew they could see out but she couldn't see in. She just wanted another glance of him. It was like she'd gotten a sample of this charzimatic man and now she was hooked. She wanted to know more and maybe just get a few of her inside mysteries solved.

She heard a door and looked up but it wasn't that one. Releasing a sigh of disappointment she felt a firm grip on her arm that resembled the moment you felt the blood pressure cuff was about to pop your arm off. Kirby turned her head and looked up at the tall barbarian with confusion as he opened his mouth to speak.

"I need you to come with me. He stated simply but left no room for rebuttal as he started to drag her towards the open door beneath the stairs. Ther was an instant sense of fear and panic, but the only thing that could cross her mind was he saw her. He saw her, he recognized her, and now he knew. She was trying to come up with an answer before she was asked a question, but as she was escorted through the door everything changed quickly. In a swift motion she felt duct tape cover her mouth and a black bag of some sort cover her head. There was an instant muffled scream from behind the tape as she tried to fight off the hands that were now holding firmly and keeping her in place.

With no reguard for her or the force he was using as he gripped her tighter every time she wiggled to try and free herself. She didn't know what was going on. She'd seen movies but this was worse. Her cheeks were already soaked with tears and she could only pray that they soaked the tape enough for her to free herself from the tape so her constant screams were heard.

She'd never felt fear before. The closest thing she'd ever felt wasa haunted house her friends insisted on dragging her to when she was a teen, but this was worse. This was gut wrenching fear. She felt her muscles ache from her useless struggle but she refused to give up the fight as she heard the voices but couldn't stop her screams long enough to make out their conversation only bits and pieces.

"Check her for a wire" one man instructed and as if on cue she felt two hands grip her shirt and rip it open exposing her bare torso and bra covered breasts. Shaking her head from beneath the bag as the fear induced thoughts fueled her anxiety. She screamed once more taking everything in her and trying as loud as she possibly could but nothing. Her cries were muffled as her body shook from her sobs as she felt the hands run her body once checking for wires and once more just to cop a feel. They'd gotten her jeans to her knees as they attempted to check more thouroughly than the TSA as her chest continued to heave from her cries.

Kirby was sure this was the end for her. She was sure that this was good bye and all she could think was she had no one. She'd kept everyone at arms length because she didn't feel worthy. She didn't feel worthy because her parents had instilled in her at such a fragile age that she was nothing to anyone. She wanted to be something. She'd wished she opened up to Aria. She wished she'd told her about her family. She wished she'd opened up to Marci and maybe he wouldn't have left so easily. Now this was the end, the end she'd prayed for so many times, and all she wanted to do was live. To make it out of this, to get away from here and never look back. To close the door on the questions she had for her birth father. He wasn't anything to her before why did she let the hole inside her lead her here.

Pulled from her mixture of thoughts she was pushed into a chair as the black bag was pulled from her head and her eyes squinted at the exposed light. Her breath was still heavy as she looked around the room at the men that surrounded her and as her eyes came front she heard the click of a cocked gun as it was placed to her temple and her eyes went wide with fear.

"Are you going to answer our questions?" He asked as if speaking to someone remedial. Kirby nodded as her tear and make up stained eyes lockedon his feeling the trickle of tear drops as they continued to flow unable to wipe them away. "Good girl. You're going to tell the truth right. You're not going to make us use this right." He asked as he motioned to the gun held by a different hand. She nodded once more as her body remained tense.

He pulled the tape from her lips and she felt the string but was grateful it wasn't yanked off. She took the moment of silence to catch her breath as he leaned in. "Who do you work for? He asked expecting an answer she didn't have to give.

" Be more Athletics." she answered as honestly as she could. He chuckled humorlessly repeating her answer before a quick blow from the back of his hand connected with her face and she felt the blow knock her head to the left. The sting was instant and quickly was replaced with a throbbing pain as she could feel the burn of her cheek.

" Don't fuck with me, Bitch. You don't wanna be here and I don't want you to be here so lets make this fucking simple. You tell me why you have this and we'll go from there." He stated holding up the paper print out she'd looked at earlier. Her eyes went to the paper and back to him as he saw her recognition of the item in his hand. He nodded. " Yea where did you get this, better yet. Why do you have this? He asked as Kirby's mind reeled with what to say, but the fear in her wasn't giving her any options but the truth.

She stammered on her words as she tried to get them out. "He.. that.. He's.. That's my father." she mangaged to get out and braced herself for another blow incase he didn't like that answer either.

The men looked at her as they all seemed confused but curious by her reply. She could see he wasn't sure if she was covering her ass or if it was the truth. " Your father... Right. That's a new one. I'll give you that. Creative. So he's your father. Then why do you have this. " Dangling the paper as he spoke.

Her voice was still trembling as she tried to form sentences that would make sense to them. She was so lost in the fear that piecing thoughts together was a chore. " I.. He was with my mother. Patrice Rus... Patrice Kelley" She explained as the man nodded and turned whispering into another mans ear before he exited and the rest remained there in radio silence.

Kirby could feel her icy cold hands shaking and knew it wasn't just them but her whole body. There was a vibration inside her that shivered from the inside out in waves. Each washing through her as the time ticked by and she let her imagination run wild trying to guess what would come next. She wanted so bad to reach up and rub her fingers against her already swelling cheek. It felt puffy from the inside as she ran her tongue against it, so she knew the outward apperance was worse, but if she made it out of there with her life a bruise was the best case scenario.

The door opened and she winced as the man returned but not alone. Just like that his presence filled the room and she looked up at him for the first time at such a close distance. What a way to meet him. Held down in a chair with a brusied face, busted lip, torn shirt dangling from her body as her jeans remained clinging to her knees. She swallowed as he looked no where else but her eyes and she could tell he saw something familar in them. With the snap of his fingers most of the men dispersed leaving the room without any direction. They just knew what the small hand gesture meant. Kirby's eyes never left Joaquin as he looked at her frustrated. He grabbed at her chin to hold her attention and she instantly winced at the pain in her jaw.

"You are to never come back here again. I don't know why you came here, but you will forget about me and forget about this place. You understand me." he was stern in his words as he held his hand out and a man handed him a small stack of hundreds. "Get dressed and get out." He ordered as he held the money out for her.

Kirby stood slowly as she pulled up her jeans and fastened them looking at him with disgust. She wasn't sure what she expected but this was no where near the list of things she would have thought. " Keep it. I didn't come for your fucking money. " She stated as she grabbed her wristlet, clutching her shirt closed the best she could as she exited the side door they directed her out of and ran for her car like a wild animal that had just been released from its cage. With trembling hands she hit the unlock on her car and fled the scene as fast as she could. She wanted to feel safe and nothing about tonight comforted her.

She drove home like she was in a race, doing a 100 as she sped through the streets. She knew getting pulled over in her current condition wouldn't be ideal, but she knew the cops would take pity on her apperance and probably allow her an escort home. Luckily it wasn't needed as she pulled into the parking garage beneath her building and rushed to the elevator. Her heart was racing as she fought the elevator button, pressing it rapidly to get her inside. She needed safety and felt none. She needed security and felt none. Kirby had never felt more vunerable in her life and it led her mind to ask why. What had she done in a past life to deserve any of this.

She stepped into her condo and forcefully shut the door as if the fear was following her and she wanted to leave it outside of her safe space. She turned the locks quickly and rested her back against the door as she slid against the wood till her ass touched the floor. The beaten and brusied brunette pulled her knees to her chest as she felt the relief of her momentary solace and let it out, crying into her hands as her sobs echoed in the silence.

#present #kirbyrussell #mywriting #joaquin