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23 Years Ago
Etho
They were hoofing it along the spiral road that led up from the Depths. If they kept walking, they’d hit the near-surface at some point…if the Labs officers weren’t all in the way. Not to mention the Feather Foots had a vested interest in keeping people down here…well, down here, so they wouldn’t be going up very far.
Sabbie was leading the way. Her tightly fitted blue top stretched over her shoulders, blocked by grayish wings that were folded as she put one beat-up ballet flat in front of the other. Her messy, tangled knot of dark hair was tied against the nape of her neck as always.
Etho glanced over his shoulder to the uneven footsteps bringing up the rear.
“You didn’t have to come, Cleo.”
“Ah, well, I could always use a walk, you know! And besides, Bdubs needs some space from me once in a while, or he’ll grow up to be a big ol’ Mama’s boy.” The zombie mutant replied as she followed along, her augmented leg thunking solidly in the way natural footsteps did not.
Etho wasn’t sure how much he bought into that reasoning. He just suspected they were sick of always being the one left behind, and considering this was one of the few missions they’d be going on that was relatively unlikely to have a fight breaking out…or so Etho hoped…Cleo wouldn’t be in jeopardy due to their augmented leg.
It wasn’t totally dysfunctional, now, thanks to Doc, but it still wasn’t working like a normal leg would, the way the Director surely originally designed it to, if Doc’s augmented arm was anything to go by. Also, Cleo had never been a fighter to begin with, so it wasn’t like they had any muscle memory to go by.
The fox hybrid turned his attention back toward Sabbie, who was marching along at a steady pace. He awkwardly shoved his hands into the pockets of his green puffer and picked up his pace to catch up with her.
He glanced to the side at her, trying to get a read on her expression. He’d been giving that a shot every time since they’d first met, with little success. Her jaw was always firmly set. She had a strong jawline, high cheekbones…if her hair wasn’t a matted mess and her eyes weren’t bagged and bloodshot, she’d probably be one of the most beautiful people Etho had ever seen.
Then again, considering he was dating Doc, who was a nearly seven-foot-tall creeper mutant with horns and a half-metal face, his judgment of beauty might skew somewhat from the traditional.
“So.” He started awkwardly.
Sabbie didn’t even act like she’d heard him. As they walked, she glanced now and again past the edge of the road into the Depths, past the towers that shot up from the rock and into the rising gloom above them.
Etho cleared his throat and tried again.
“So.”
“What?” Sabbie bit tersely as she continued looking along the alleyways, her eyes tracing the twisted lines where she could see them.
Twisted like whatever web was around her, and Etho couldn’t have told that.
“Why’s ‘Net got such a stranglehold on you? Is he just overprotective?”
Sabbie turned her gaze onto him, pursing her lips a moment with an expression of utter exasperation so immense that Etho momentarily felt shamed for even opening his mouth. His one functioning eye turned to his own feet, beat-up boots moving one in front of the other.
“Sure. Let’s go with that.” She bit out, turning her eyes ahead again, and Etho’s ears flicked back. His tail bobbed behind him, mind whirling.
“I…just can’t shake the feeling there’s more going on than that, y’know?”
“And if there is, would you care?” Sabbie shot back, tone lowering to something jaded and bitter, and Etho tightened his paw-like hands into fists in his pockets.
“Sure, I would.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Call me a skeptic. Or a pessimist.” Sabbie grumbled, straightening back a bit. The set of tiny grayish wings on her head pressed back over her ears. Etho hadn’t seen much movement from them, though from what little he knew of avians, they were supposed to be very expressive to match their mood.
She probably suppresses a lot of that.
For what? To keep it together? Keep what together? There was a lot Etho was trying to piece together about her, and none of it quite fit.
Why did it matter? They were using each other; that much was obvious. Etho still felt like Sabbie had half a chance of turning on them at any moment.
“I mean, it’s not like we’re completely doomed, we just might all die horribly because we tried to break status quo, it’s really not that big a deal.” Cleo said, drawing the words sarcastically from a few paces behind, and Etho glanced over his shoulder at them.
Cleo was very openly not a big fan of Sabbie. She didn’t trust her.
Etho didn’t claim he did, either.
I just don’t see any other choice.
Etho was anticipating more of the same indifference from Sabbie, but to his surprise, she whipped her head again, glaring back at Cleo as her tiny set of wings flared forward and puffed up defensively.
“We aren’t doomed.”
Cleo raised her eyebrows, a flicker of something like begrudging acknowledgment in their eyes as Etho awkwardly glanced between the two of them. They’d momentarily paused in their walking, Sabbie standing a few paces further ahead on the slope.
“I’d love to share your confidence, believe me, I would,” Cleo said, slowly straightening up to their full height, augmented leg thunking against the stone one final time as they settled their weight.
Sabbie huffed. “Share or don’t, but don’t insist on coming along and then play mouthpiece for the reaper.”
She snapped as she folded her arms, wings folding forward over her shoulders.
Etho watched the movement with his one functional eye, hands still in the pockets of his puffer, analyzing.
Like she wants to make herself bigger…
More threatening.
Against what threat?
Who knew what had happened to her? What had happened to everyone down in the Depths. Etho had some awful memories. Cleo had lost a stars-forsaken leg.
This city had fangs.
It took and it took, and yet Etho knew better than to ask what had been stolen.
“What’s such a big problem for you that you’re pulling all this, then? What’s gonna make all of this worth it in the end!?”
Apparently, Cleo didn’t, though. Or, well, it was more likely that she knew better but didn’t particularly care.
Oh no.
Etho snapped his gaze back to Sabbie, already taking a breath to try to break the tension.
“You wanna live like this forever?” The avian demanded in response, jabbing a finger toward the edge of the road, into the twisted alleyways.
Cleo scoffed. “I certainly don’t, but I’m asking about you. You’re protected. You have your brother's goons who could be keeping you nice and cozy and with just about anything you want, I mean, look at you! Don’t look much like your last night was spent on a pile of trashed blankets! So why? Why is this worthwhile for you?”
They took another step forward, then another, and the tell-tale thud of the augmented leg hit. It gleamed its redstone sparks, Cleo having worn the tight shorts they owned from before, from the Wardship Program, removing the awkward bedsheet situation they usually wrapped it in.
As if they wanted to show off what was taken. Unlike Sabbie, who hid.
Etho swallowed hard and pulled his hands from his pockets, putting his palms to either of them, his ears swiveling.
“Now, do we really need to be having this conversation right here and right now? I mean, we’re kinda in a hurry, right? So why don’t we…”
“You have no idea who I am!” Sabbie’s voice was a pitchy shrill keen of a noise, warbling from in her chest.
Etho probably would’ve shut his mouth after that, but Cleo pressed forward.
“I don’t, and you won’t tell me! Expect us to trust you off of what!? A half-baked idea and some connections, is that it? You could be leading us into a trap! You could be planning to double-cross us! You’ve got everything, and we…”
“I have nothing!”
One.
Two.
Three.
Etho pressed his lips together hard over his fangs, and Cleo’s expression turned even more sour, eyes narrowing as their hands slowly curled into fists at their sides.
“S’that so? And why should I believe that?” She asked, and Sabbie’s eyes darted again, out over the twisted alleys. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her eyes seemed to flash with a sudden white-hot need that had nothing to do with the anger.
Her wings beat out halfway, then folded again. As if she’d considered taking off, and decided against it.
Etho, against his better judgment, took a step toward her.
“Sabbie, we…we just want to know so we can…we’ve all been through a lot down here, alright? You gotta understand, it’s…”
“There’s no hope for me.” Sabbie interrupted him. She flicked one tiny wing forward to hide her eyes a moment as one hand rose to scrub at them.
Etho’s chest tightened.
“…why?”
“Not your problem. Not your business.”
“I think you’re making it both of those things, actually,” Cleo said, though Etho would give it to her; her tone had softened.
Sabbie flicked her tiny wings back over her ears again as she lowered her hand. Her jaw was set firm, and her eyes were hard and determined again.
“Are we moving or not?” She asked, looking between the two of them.
Cleo glanced at Etho. He recognized that expression well enough and understood the question there.
Your call.
The fox hybrid looked at her again. Looked at her up and down, with the gray wings and the messy hair and the stance that belayed such a small stature.
“We’ll move if it’ll all be worthwhile in the end.”
Sabbie’s eyes turned sky bright again.
Not that Etho knew that view very well. But he guessed at it.
Her jaw remained set, her eyes taut, but she loosened the tightness of her wings only slightly.
Then she turned and kept walking.
Etho followed.
Cleo trailed.
And a lot was said without the words ever being spoken.
If we don’t know there’s hope…what are we walking for?
23 Years Later
Etho
“Well, she sounds cooperative,” Pearl remarked, and Etho chuckled lightly from his usual spot perched backwards on one of the chairs, chin resting lightly on the backs of his hands as he looked around the living room.
“I dunno about that.” He drawled, which caused Pearl to roll her eyes, but she seemed amused. That was good, at least. The whole point of these stories was distraction, avoiding addressing the trembling of the world above them, even for just a little while at a time.
Tango was fiddling with various bits of twine while sitting on the couch, and Jimmy was sitting beside him. Eyes light like cocoa were drifting around, clearly tired. He hadn’t been sleeping much, and yet also hadn’t been leaving the apartment very often.
The apartment wold be nice, he barely gets out of his hammock some days.
Etho considered to himself, trying not to let it bite into him with all the nervous prickles that his worries tended to bring.
Jimmy was mourning, in a way. All of them were. Their relationships, of course, but even beyond that. The lives they’d worked so hard to build, the love they’d created for themselves went way further than one person, bled into every aspect of them.
“So where is it you were going, then? Another clan's territory?” Jimmy asked, his eyes moving to Etho, lined with dark bags that had only gotten worse in the past two months.
Etho made a low hum. “Yeah. I’ll tell you about all that stuff another night, though.”
“Why am I not surprised that you’d put it off,” Grian said with a sigh, his eyes still anxiously darting upward every time there was a distant rumble or other similar sound.
Doc cleared his throat. “At least this has been managing to keep us all sane, yes?”
Grian groaned, but not in a tone of disagreement, which made sense.
Etho stood up from his chair. “Lights out, then? Tomorrow we’ve got a lot of work to do again.”
That was really only partly true. But it was easier to say it to get them all moving. Toward what? Hard to say.
But he’d keep putting one foot in front of the other, just like back then.
Back then, it had all been worthwhile.
Today?
Well, today he'd just hope for the same.