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Toad and jetpacks clearly hadn’t worked out. He’d enjoyed it, enthusiastically, and it had even lasted about the same time as his motorcar craze, if not longer. But it still hadn’t worked out.
During his spin in motorcars, Toad had crashed more times than anyone cared to remember and had been in hospital at least three times with his injuries, somehow always bouncing back like a rubber ball. The number of crashes from his jetpack adventures had been worse. They’d been louder, scarier and more frequent, the Riverbankers scattering whenever they heard so much as a plane flying in the distance. They were rightfully terrified with how Toad had noisily skidded through flowerbeds and gouged trenches in the soft earth by the river side, ruining many a home and nearly seriously hurting plenty of residents. It was by sheer luck that no one had died.
Ratty was very glad that his river couldn’t get damaged.
Then one day, an almighty commotion came from the direction of Toad Hall. Badger and Ratty were off like a shot (Mrs Otter had a very wily Portia to look after and Mole had gone to visit family for the week) and the two arrived to find the rabbits in complete uproar and panic. Even the head butler, usually so exasperated yet calmly loyal, was frantic. Something must have gone wrong.
“Toad!” Badger’s voice rang out over the rabbits’ babblings, strong and steady despite the tired concern hidden underneath. The head butler hopped up to them, nervously wringing his paws together, ears twitching with every sound.
“What is it, Rabbit?” Badger was in no mood to be danced around.
“He’s, um…he’s not responding, sir.”
“What do you mean ‘not responding’?” It was Ratty’s turn to be impatient to hide the worry that would make itself oh-so-clear in his voice.
“Mr Toad is…unconscious, sirs.”
“So? Take him to a hospital, man!”
The rabbit flinched, but jumped to attention at Badger’s order as Ratty shared a glance with him. Toad unconscious wasn’t exactly new, but it was never good. There had been one hospital trip where it had been touch and go for a few minutes, giving Ratty the worst day afterwards because he couldn’t stop thinking about what could have happened. He’s pretty sure he only got through it because Moley was there to remind him that Toad was still alive.
~~~
Mole came back to a quiet home. Ratty was usually either inside waiting for him, or out on his beloved river somewhere and Mole would have to track him down so that they could enjoy a nice picnic together. A quiet home was not something he was used to.
Mrs Otter had mentioned in passing that Ratty had left with Badger a few hours ago, but she had been soon distracted by Portia and wasn't able to give Mole an answer as to where. He couldn't even ask Badger, since the absence of Ratty meant that the elder hadn't returned home either.
“Mr Mole, Mr Mole!” His attention was pulled from the quiet room to the field mouse that was scampering up outside, the urgency in her voice calling him out.
“Millicent? What is it, what’s happened?” Mole asked of her, squinting slightly in the setting sun that just so happened to be behind the mouse’s head.
“Mr Rat and Mr Badger, they want you to come up to Toad Hall. As soon as you can, sir.”
He nodded, wondering briefly why Toad himself hadn’t asked, but Millicent was gone before he could speak; presumably to relay the message back to Ratty and Badger that Mole would be on his way. The big question on his mind though, as he tugged his coat and scarf around him before locking the door, was: what was so important that neither Ratty nor Badger could tell him themselves?
~~~
Ratty was pacing a trench back and forth in the front room of Toad Hall, anxiously clenching his fists by his sides so that he didn’t try to break anything. His tail nearly whipped the seated Badger a couple of times, the older animal huffing annoyedly when it passed a third time across his nose.
“At least pace further away if you’re going to do that,” he muttered tiredly, looking for all the world as if he could fall asleep at any moment and that only his cane was holding him up. To be fair to the man, he had been up all night with Ratty, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be.
“Look, he should be here by now, that mouse came back an hour ago!” Ratty was antsy, almost snapping at Badger.
“Have you forgotten that the fastest way here is through the Wild Wood?”
Ratty paused in his pacing, giving Badger a look. “No, of course not, you had to guide me through.”
“Exactly my point. The last time Mole went in there by himself, you had to go after him. It stands to reason that the fellow might find a way around the Wood to save himself the trouble of getting lost. You know Mole, he’ll get here.”
The water rat deflated slightly, knowing that Badger was right. Of course Mole wouldn’t put himself through the Wood again, he was a sensible creature even with the curious streak for adventure, but it still didn’t put him at ease. A multitude of things could have happened to the underground-dweller in the hour since Millicent’s message and the stretching time was giving Ratty more anxiety every second.
Which temporarily spiked at the knocking that suddenly came to his ears. Badger was jerked awake from his almost-snooze and gave Ratty a look which told him to answer the door – they’d sent the rabbits away, letting them take a break and be with their families for a while. So, Ratty opened the front door and let out an audible sigh of relief at the sight of a familiar Mole.
“Ratty! What’s-”
“Come in,” he had to cut Mole and his questions off, because otherwise he wouldn’t get past the hall’s threshold before breaking. He guided Mole to the main reception room after hanging up his coat and scarf where Badger wearily greeted him.
“What happened?” The question, though spoken softly, was loud in the thickening silence of the room. Ratty couldn’t answer, not yet, and he glanced pitifully to Badger.
“Toad has been…in an accident, Mole.”
“Oh goodness, was it very bad?” His worry was immediate. Ratty found it sweet.
“Yes,” Badger nodded slowly, taking a moment to stand up, “but as I am far too tired to explain the rest, I’ll leave it up to you, Ratty.”
“Badger-”
Said animal heaved a sigh and gave Ratty a very specific look. He knew; he knew the pain of this kind of conversation, how you don’t want to do it but you have to for the sake of everyone it concerns. Ratty stepped up to Badger anyway, a gentle yet terrified paw resting on Badger’s arm.
“Please…” he whispered, just out of Mole’s earshot. Badger responded with a quiet smile, covering Rat’s paw with his own as he whispered back.
“You can do this, Ratty.”
With a final nod to Mole, the old underground animal retreated slowly upstairs to a guest room.
~~~
Mole watched Badger leave the room. He saw how Ratty tensed once he realised that it was just the two of them. He followed as his friend carefully sat himself down on the sofa that Badger had just vacated.
“I’m sure he’ll bounce back from this, Ratty, you know what he’s like-”
“He died, Mole.” Ratty was so quietly serious that it stopped Mole in his tracks, halfway to joining the other animal on the sofa.
“Excuse me? Who?” Not Toad, surely. Ratty took a deep breath in, his paws shaking as he hugged his arms to his chest.
“Toad died, Moley. During the night.”
“...He did?” Mole's voice was watery and wobbly and Ratty had to jump up from his seat to catch him before he fell. “Oh dear...”
“They brought him back though,” was the quiet reassurance, giving Mole such a shock he almost got whiplash from his head snapping up, “those fancy machines they've got and everything, he wasn't out for long.”
“You couldn't have started with that, could you?” Mole cried indignantly, not sure whether he was crying from despair or relief.
“Sorry,” replied the water rat, suitably (and very quickly, Mole noticed) chastised, “still sort of...processing it myself, y'know?”
Once they were both sat down (on the floor this time, so as not to fall any further), Mole tried to articulate his spinning thoughts.
“So, how did…I-I mean, what went wrong?”
~~~
When Moley looked at him with those big, hurting yet inquisitive eyes, Ratty had to swallow around a sudden lump in his throat because that was an expression he had sworn to himself to never see again. This was the third time now; the first had been when Ratty followed Mole into the Woods, scaring off the Wooders to save his new (and soon-to-be closest) friend, hugging him close to make sure that he was really still alive; the second had been the moment Mole recognised his home, the poor fellow crying into Ratty’s chest with such a fierce hug that he was certain to be asphyxiated if Mole hadn’t let go.
So, he cleared his throat softly and made an attempt.
“The jetpack failed while he was flying above Toad Hall,” he began slowly, fixing his gaze to a point on the far wall, somewhere between reality and memory and barely registering the small but comfortable weight pressing against him, “Toad ended up crashing into one of his dad’s old sheds, he completely wrecked the thing as well as his jetpack. I suppose it was a blessing really that the snow was so thick it acted like a cushion. But-”
Ratty had to stop, take a breath, and work his way through a second lump in his throat that tasted suspiciously of grief.
“Ratty?” Mole gently encouraged him on from his seat to the side of the Riverbanker. Ratty shook his head slightly.
“Sorry, sorry…er, wh-where was I?”
“Snow.”
“Right…yes…” Silence continued between them.
“…Ratty? We can stop, if you can’t tell me right now.”
Mole’s voice broke through the tentative silence, finally pulling Ratty’s gaze from the wall. Mole could see it in his eyes just how much the situation with Toad had completely thrown the normally steady Rat off-kilter, making the smaller animal want to wrap his friend in a tight hug and hold him until he was stable once more. But he knew that would just unsettle Ratty further, so he didn’t, and instead waited patiently until the sheen over Ratty’s eyes had been blinked away.
“N-No, I’ve got it. Sorry. It’s just…this is what I’ve always been afraid of, y’know? Toad doing something so dangerous he ends up not coming back from it. The rabbits found him unconscious and Badger got them to call for an ambulance. They said it was bad when they got here, then they had to take him to the hospital and things went from bad to worse and then everything fell apart.” Ratty couldn’t look at Mole. He knew how the other Riverbanker would be looking at him and it would break him. Instead, he just sat and stared at the wall, holding tightly when Mole’s hand slipped into his.
“This is why I distanced myself from him,” Ratty admitted in a whisper, feeling ashamed even as he spoke it. “It’s why I tried to not be his friend again for so long. This always happened, Moley. Every time he’d do something dangerous and I’d be there, he’d bounce back straight into something even more dangerous. I’d warn him, try to get him to stop, but he never listened. He still doesn’t. I was always so scared of losing him like this and now that it nearly happened…I’m just as scared that he’s not going to care.” Ratty knew that, as much as he did truly consider Toad to be a friend, his anxiety had been much more manageable when Toad wasn’t around. It was practically second nature for him to be suspicious about Toad’s actions and to feel antsy about new hobbies that came into the amphibian’s mind. The fact that Mole was still so quiet also made Ratty nervous, and he looked over at his friend to find the underground dweller looking back at him with a rather serious expression.
“Mole?”
“You should have said something.”
“What could I say? That…That being his friend is stressful? That sometimes I feel like I’m not even here because he ignores whatever I say? I want to help him be better but how can I when nothing I do works?” Ratty had to look away again, tears on the verge of spilling down his face. It was frustrating and it was upsetting and it was altogether just a bit too vulnerable for Rat’s liking, but he had to say it all before he exploded.
“…Look at me, Ratty.” He did, reluctantly. Mole smiled softly. “You’ve known Toad longer than me, so forgive me if I might be crossing a line here, but…why not tell him all of that?” Oh, sweet and innocent and naïve Moley. “Perhaps, this time he’d listen more? You’ve seen that he doesn’t like us being upset with him.”
“Yeah, that’s usual. He wants everyone to love him because ‘who could possibly hate him?’ It’s not worth it.”
“Then tell him that he died.”
Ratty blinked in shock as he looked at Mole. “What?”
“Tell Toad that he died.” Mole repeated. “That way he knows the gravity of the situation.”
“Moley, has anyone ever told you you’re a genius?”
The mole blushed. “I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.”
“Oh hush,” Ratty smiled at the bashful creature next to him, then looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t think I can do that right now though. Toad hasn’t even woken up yet.”
“But he’s still alive.”
Ratty nodded. “He’s still alive.”
The conversation with Toad would have to wait until he awoke and Ratty couldn’t help but feel nervous about it anyway, but with Badger upstairs and Mole standing by him Ratty could at least be reassured with the knowledge that they were there to support him. Toad had gone far too far this time – more than being arrested – and there were consequences.
Maybe this way he could try to be a better listener at least.