Work Text:
Neon misses the damp, sprawling forest outside more for every hour they spend down in the ruins, now that they've finally found them. It's progress, sure—the only reason they're here at all is to follow the darkness wherever it takes them, hoping against hope that where it takes them is the Water Crystal, assuming there's still a way to the Water Crystal at all—but she can't pretend she's happy to have made it, all the same.
The air feels heavy, here, every chamber cramped and dusty with strewn rubble in spite of the high ceilings and the plant life clinging stubbornly to every crumbling edge. It smells metallic, or like rocks, but never like the earth; there is no breeze. Just the too-still atmosphere, fossilized, swishing tepid past her face with every swift backstep out of harm's way and every elevator ride. It's never dark.
It's never quiet, either, and the noise is all too different from the ever-present rustling of the wind in the trees in a way she couldn't describe if she wanted to; she can't pin down just what she hates so much about it, but she knows she hates it. She hated the inscrutable tangle of the underbrush, too, but by the time they get moving again on what passes for the first morning after they climb down into this relic of someone else's ancient past, she'd take the cool wet and pitch-dark outside over the ruins any day. The constant, soft attention she had no choice but to pay in case some beast was lurking in a nearby shadow, and the hot rush of adrenaline when something unexpected moved in the corner of her eye, over the guardian automata that leap into view around every corner to meet them, slamming their full weight over and over again into her sword.
The clang of metal. Clicking; grinding and whirring; she can never tell from where—it's like the walls themselves are alive, and without knowing exactly why, Neon thinks: we walked right into this, and never really manages to shake the feeling that there's more to this than they've been seeing.
"I've been seeing this wolf," says Jack, glancing over his shoulder at her (and away from the half-unwrapped bundle of dried cod—one of the things the steward had practically foisted on them the morning they disembarked, she's pretty sure—in front of him) when she asks him what he's even doing, out here far enough from the campsite that she can't even hear the others' voices or the incidental rustling as they ready the fire. She frowns at him. "Or a dog, or something."
Tipping the fish unceremoniously out onto the dirt, he gets up, then steps her way as he gets to folding the now-unburdened square of waxed canvas. Neon doesn't see how that could possibly count as an explanation, so she doesn't respond.
He knows what she means (which is to say: 'Okay, and?'), so he elaborates: "It's not a monster; not big enough, and it's skittish, but I think it's just the one." With both hands and the partly-folded cloth, Jack gestures slightly at the abandoned provisions behind him. "I figure this is better than just hoping it never gets hungry enough to crash dinner."
"You're not supposed to feed them."
All this does, though, is give him an air of skepticism. "Right," he says; "one of you guys did used to get on me about that, didn't you."
"Not me." Neon shifts her weight back as she crosses her arms. If anyone had asked her before just now, she would've figured he already knew—she should probably just stop assuming stuff like that, now that she's thinking about it—and anyway, she'd remember if they'd ever had this conversation before; it's such a stupid thing to have to explain. "I thought you were supposed to stop us from getting killed by ideas that suck."
He makes a dismissive sound. "Says who? So maybe it's a wolf; isn't this how we got dogs?"
"No? I mean, kind of? It's one wolf."
Jack just looks at her. Immediately, Neon feels a twinge of genuine annoyance, not at him (or not exactly) but at the fact that she doesn't even know where to begin, from there; you can't turn a wolf into a dog. End of sentence. Shouldn't he just know that, too? And if he doesn't—well—how did she learn it in the first place, anyway...?
Having that thought annoys her enough to jostle the whole topic out of her mind, all at once. Anyway, it's besides the point. "If you keep feeding it, it's gonna start thinking all humans have food."
Another blank look. "We do."
"Not for wild animals!" She can hear the irritation creeping in to her own voice, and that bothers her, too. "We're leaving, someday," she presses on—this trip sucks; all they're doing is wandering around, out here, throwing themselves at dark vents in search of something; never mind exactly what, or how long it's supposed to take them to find it, "and it's gonna follow us back to the coast, and then whose problem is it?"
This time, Jack's expression doesn't stay blank—he furrows his brow, and immediately she knows she must have said something strange by mistake. "So, back up," says Jack, after a pause; "are we counting those fish-guys as humans, or...?"
Neon doesn't answer right away. Just a moment ago she was sure she remembered... the stress-weathered faces of dockhands, all gathered to squint in the violent morning sun at the Warriors of Light, but now that she's really thinking about it, wasn't that before they set out? After all, the extra work and careful maneuvering it took them to moor at what used to be Onrac's port turned out to be a total waste of time—there was no city there to meet them. No city and no survivors; nothing but monsters; in fact, she realizes now, the only reason they have enough surplus with them to be using it for something like this—the only reason wasting food wasn't the first problem with it she noticed—is...
"Huh," she says, quietly.
This happens, sometimes, and whenever it does not a one of them ever spends too much time dwelling on it, or not out loud. Jack acknowlegdes the slip with nothing but a subtle nod. "Don't sweat it." (Neon wonders whether he ever dwells on it without saying so). "But I don't think we're likely to find anybody else out here, so are you okay if I take the easy way out this time? Or am I not convincing you."
Were her feelings towards dried whitefish any warmer, she might at least tell him to wait until after they eat and leave out leftovers, or something—no matter how many times Jack scowls about having to store the results overnight there's almost always an extra portion by the time they've finished dinner; sometimes two—but in any case the question occupies Neon too completely to let her, just then. None of the old rules make sense anymore, and she's found over time that few really applied to mercenaries like them in the first place, anyway—the right to harvest in the kingswood is suspended entirely, but only because it's too dangerous to go there at all; and who'd be around to stop them, if they ventured in next time to look for chestnuts under the neglected trees, or even deer to poach? Or, more than that, who'd be crazy enough to take up a sword and follow their example?
So maybe this is like that, isn't it. No harm...
If only so she can stop thinking about it, Neon concedes. "I guess it's fine."
What they've been looking for turns out to be a tunnel. Deep underground, in the verdigrised heart of the ruins, they find that hulking monster with its long, barbed tail and crushing claws, and they kill it. Past the door at the back of the hangar-like hall it was guarding, they find a control room; and past that, two enormous metal doors, which (after much peering at, then cautious and eventually aimless flipping of the switches and levers on offer), slowly and loudly, grind apart.
So they go through. Wherever the ruins will take them, which in this case is deeper underground; before long, Ash says 'we'll end up all the way back at the coast, at this rate,' and sure enough, there soon comes into view a row of porthole-windows peeking out into the water.
What's been up to this point a shallow ramp becomes another deep and dimly-lit stairwell. Each step clanking softly beneath their boots, they follow Jack down it grimly, and the tunnel keeps going, angled down; down, until they're walking along the ocean floor.
The animal Jack's been seeing is a wolf, and it does seem like it's alone. It's small, too, and rangy; Neon catches her first glimpse of it the very next night, and the first thing that occurs to her is—she can't help but wonder how many real animals there are left, out here.
It's not the first time she's had that thought. Even back in Cornelia, travel by carriage and on horseback gets rarer and rarer as tales circulate of mounts turning monstrous right under their riders and draft animals running wild, no matter how little anyone agrees about how plausible they are; and Cornelia's a stronghold. When they embarked to sail here, they did it with fewer guards onboard than any crew would normally agree to (after all, they're the Warriors of Light, and Cornelia's guardsmen are busy enough as it is); instead, they loaded up all the supplies they had room for, hoping to finally deliver the aid the people of Onrac had requested back before the Cornelian Shipwrights' Guild had finally (and what seemed to be very suddenly) solved the stubborn engineering challenge posed by water that had lately begun to beckon their vessels down as often as it bore them up, rip out the darkness in the Water Crystal by its roots, and leave the place a little safer than they found it. But they were too late, and if the darkness is really so thick that the people of Onrac couldn't stand their ground, the animals can't be all that far behind, can they?
Sometimes, when she has a good view of the mountains to the west, Neon glimpses huge birds circling above them; even from a distance she can tell the shape of them's all wrong, their necks held too steady for being as long as they are—just the thought of how much muscle it would take to make that happen makes her nervous. She never sees one get any closer, but they've got to be big enough to swallow a scrawny wolf whole.
That's not supposed to happen, she's sure, but neither are the wolves she's used to seeing; the ones the darkness has already changed. Bigger; stronger; hungrier and meaner than any mere animal; the new apex predator all throughout what must be the whole Cornelian continent at least—everywhere they've traveled, monsters like that outcompete all the wild wolves and deer and bats that came before them, the same way the sahagin and bird-women encroach on the villages and cities and eat them, picking humans off until there's nobody left.
She tries not to dwell on things like that if she can help it, but there's not a whole lot else to think about, here. A part of her hopes they never find what they're looking for, the entry-point there might still be into the long-lost ancient shrine that was said to house the Water Crystal, long ago. A much bigger part hopes they at least find it soon, if they're going to, or call it soon and cut their losses if they're not; for every dark vent Jack shatters, the light of the sun itself seems to dim—'It's just the cloud cover,' is what he says when she points this out; 'don't let it get to you,' but Jed agrees with her (and Ash says 'maybe,' which is basically the same thing). By nightfall, though, it's almost always clear, and the stars out here are as bright as she's ever seen them. Something about it makes her feel weirdly small.
Neon is getting pretty fed up with just about all of this when the wolf first sees Jack seeing it. By then, she's so relieved to have something her size to worry about for once that she's adopted the cause wholeheartedly as her own, and feels not the slightest frustration or regret as Jack, arm held out in front of her chest to make sure she starts moving when he does, fixes the animal with that piercing gaze he gets sometimes and backs away, one slow, careful step at a time. No 'told you so' comes to mind. The following night, it's waiting for the two of them when they head out away from the campsite, standing and staring—and after a really brief moment of thought Jack pulls back his arm and throws the respectable end-chunk of cured sausage he's holding a ways to its right, and all four of the wolf's paws leave the ground as it hops back into a startled but unmistakable play-bow.
It's on the meat before she can blink, scrambling across the leaf-strewn earth; its teeth snap closed around its prize and it drops its elbows swiftly to the ground once more, just for a second—wags its tail in luxuriant victory, then just about launches itself to one side and takes off, rustling at top speed, into the night.
Neon laughs so hard she ends up sunk down on all fours, herself, gasping with warring shock and relief, her gloved hands pressing hard into the soil while Jack goes on about—'What? It worked, didn't it; do you see it coming back to hassle us? What's so funny...'
Neon's been staring at the high, dark ceiling for a good handful of uncomprehending seconds when she realizes the fact that she's still breathing means they probably haven't drowned. She's drenched, submerged to the waist as she was until moments ago in ice-cold brine (and the rest of her misted so thoroughly there's hardly a difference), but the floor under her back is porous stone and the air feels dry on her face; a moment ago, the Water Crystal was right there in front of them—and seawater was rushing into the chamber that housed it at terrifying speed; and then there was a flash of light, and now they're here. The ruins...?
"Okay, that can't be how you're supposed to get back up here, can it?!"
It's not too often that she hears Jed legitimately breathless like that. While she tries and fails to organize her scattered thoughts enough to either second him or ask him how he'd know, Ash reaches down to grab her wrist and hauls her to her feet. "You should be grateful we got out at all," he says to Jed gravely, and Neon can't help but agree with them both.
One night the wolf prances into view carrying what looks like a rib bone it must have found somewhere else and brought with it, adjusting the grip of its teeth over and over again on the smooth pale curve of the thing as it step-step-steps. Then, unsubtly and to Neon's utter disbelief, it spits it out and takes one big, careful step back.
Before too long, it takes another—its big, round eyes staring from its big, blank face. "Bet it wants you to throw it," Neon observes, smiling despite herself. Despite herself, coming out away from the fire to leave their sacrifices has been the highlight of her day ever since Jack started bringing her along, just for the chance it gives her at seeing the wolf's cute, furry ears turning this way and that on the top of its head.
Jack looks at her sidelong. "Oh, so feeding the wildlife's off-limits, but playing fetch?"
"We're already feeding it." She shrugs. Then she sits down; it seems like the thing to do. Jack laughs—heh—and then he takes a step forward, bends down, and picks the bone up.
The wolf watches him, unblinking, its head hanging low and inquisitive. It doesn't have to wait for long. Jack never wastes much time thinking; he whips the bone past the limits of the clearing almost without pausing, far away from all three of them—and the wolf takes off with evident glee.
"New dog," Jack sighs. To himself, mostly, it seems like; and there's something in the tone that sounds like 'sure; why not.'
And all it seems to want is to play, so Neon gets to look at it, for a while, all her reservations long forgotten—watch the way its long legs bunch and stretch and cross each other at the ankles and shins, never quite tangling around one another (even when it looks like they should); the way it stomps and scuffs at the decaying leaves with its front paws every time it gets excited. Swings its head back and forth.
It carries on like this for a while, to her amazement and to Jack's obvious bemusement. It gallops towards them at an angle with the bone held high; pauses; drops it a safe distance away from them both and backs up, then crashes into the underbrush at a dead sprint when Jack flings it away again. When it finally tires and lowers itself to the ground, front half first, far enough away that neither of them could lunge for it (but not much further), Jack sits down next to her.
"Not like it matters," he says. Continues, Neon guesses; she honestly didn't expect him to. "If there were people here for it to bother, it'd bother them now, or it'd bother them later." Meaning that either way, things would have to come to violence eventually, wouldn't they. A potent sadness strikes her, then; they're here for the Water Crystal, but even with the best lead they've had so far on any Crystal there's no guarantee they'll be able to find it, much less fix it. It doesn't make sense; the way nobody knows where they're even supposed to be; it doesn't seem like something that should be allowed to happen. But Jack's right, either way—she's been thinking the same thing. "Whole world's boned."
She folds herself forward, over her own crossed legs; tries to watch the wolf as it test-bites the blunt end of its bone from one angle and then another, pulling back to consider its options between each try, without thinking too hard. "We don't get to have 'wildlife' anymore, huh."
Jack leans back on his elbows, then seems to change his mind and just lies down. Neon sighs. Then, hoping to make the most of the contraband wildlife while she still can, or maybe just to quiet the part of herself that can't stop wondering how boned they really are, she fishes a dried apricot out of her pocket and rips it in half. Does her best to toss it wolfward without seeming like she's trying to goad the thing into playing again; it startles anyway, big wide-open mouth almost closing as its ears angle themselves sharply backward, but recovers when it sees that what she's throwing might be food.
It inches forward, cautious, on its belly, pushing its long body forward with its back legs, and stretches out its neck. Touches the fruit with its nose—glances at her, then plucks it from the ground with its front teeth and snaps it up.
Dogs make such stupid-looking faces when they're eating. For a few more minutes, that night, Neon shuts herself up and just watches it, smiling every time it jettisons a piece only to pause, pick it back up again, and shake its head as if to dislodge the tiny shreds of stuck detritus from the morsel's dampened surface; until it finally swallows the last bit of the last apricot she has on her and sets its chin down placidly over one of its big front paws with a sigh—and she's lucky to have seized the opportunity, turns out, because they find what remains of a corroded hatch door and a stairwell into the depths before she gets another.
On the ship, she finds she doesn't have much interest in the raucous celebration of the crew, though for all intents and purposes it's technically in their honor (or at least, they're the best excuse the crew has had for weeks on end to celebrate anything); and Jed notices. "What's up with you," he asks her bluntly when he finds her frowning out over the rail on the starboard forecastle, trying to make out the shape of those mountains to the west through the haze; and then, when she just looks him askance: "What, is surviving stuff like that not exciting enough for you anymore?"
"What? No," she replies, a little later than she means to; "it's exciting." That's one way of putting it, anyway. Neon then remembers that she should probably add: "It's just a lot," but Jed doesn't seem prepared to take that for an answer, so before he can start saying stuff like 'what; like, almost drowning was a lot?' she doubles down. "It is! How are you not tired?"
"Uh, cool music and fancy grog?" He waggles the tankard he's holding illustratively in her direction, then leans on the railing to her right. "Obviously. Hey, the water looks different now, doesn't it? Don't think I forgot about you saying there was 'no way' it'd change that much," he chatters on, settling in while Neon pines for the caraway-tasting spirit she tried once in... somewhere colder than here; she remembers it waking her whole body up at the very first sip, chilled and almost alive on her tongue—Cornelian sailors mix all their drinks way too sweet. The few times she's given in and tried them, all they've ever done is make her mouth feel gross.
The very last night they spend camping out there, in the wilds separating the long-lost entrance to that mechanized death-trap from the ghost where Onrac used to be, with the ruins demystified (more or less) and the Water Crystal restored, Neon sits on the cool, springy earth in the crook between two giant roots with that same lonely wolf wedged warm against her side.
It's not that she's too tired to appreciate how improbable this is—the wild animal lazing with its front legs curled up primly at her hip, letting her pet it absently while she tries and mostly fails to banish that too-bright flash of light that saved them from the forefront of her mind. It's honestly more that she's too worn-out to feel anything other than blunt, listless relief. Even the meal she ate with the others barely an hour ago back at the campsite—everyone present and cheered by victory, if a little shaken; nobody flattened by the ocean's crushing weight; nobody drowned—didn't do much to combat the cold displeasure that had settled in the pit of her stomach somewhere partway through the underwater tunnel to the shrine.
The wolf, though—for whatever reason, the wolf is helping. It lies there with its warm chin at rest on her thigh and lets her work her fingers through the mess of fur insulating its chest and neck, and between that and the almost-quiet of the forest at night she thinks she's finally starting to remember what normal feels like.
Despite herself, again, she's glad it found them. It's the first time they've been aboveground in days. Neon realized when Jack stood up, not long after dinner, and invited her out again for this routine with a wordless look, that she'd been thinking she'd already seen the last of it; she'd accepted it, the same way she accepts that the stray cats she bribes with scraps from the inns at Cornelia and Pravoka anytime they're in town might not be there the next time they get the chance to stay; but it's nicer that it turned out not to be true. A nice surprise. She sinks her hand practically wrist-deep in its coat, and the wolf breathes a deep breath and tilts its face a little closer to her other arm where it lays idle in her lap. Companionably, she'd like to think; except that the next thing it does is pinch delicately at the sleeve of her coat with its tiny front teeth—nibbling on it. Before she can really process that enough to do much more than furrow her brow, it takes just a little too big of a bite and manages to pinch her through the layers; she makes a disapproving sound and pulls the arm out of its reach.
Jack doesn't make a move other than to glance over at them, from where he's laying flat on his back again a little ways away—she can hear the faint rhythmic buzzing that tells her there's music playing in just one of his ears—but he does ask. "It hurt you?"
"What? Nah." She digs her fingertips again into the animal's thick, plush coat, feeling the way they part the strands and snag in the countless little almost-tangles in its undercoat, then ease them apart. She's pretty sure dogs tend to nibble on each other, don't they? Instead of using combs; or having fingers, for that matter. "I think it's trying to groom me. I don't have fur, dumbass," she says to the wolf.
Jack snorts with laughter. "We've been out here for way too long," he says; "you better straighten that out before we head back to the city. Don't expect me to bail you out of Her Majesty's kennels if you go scandalizing somebody you shouldn't."
"You're one to talk." She tries to make eye contact, but he's already gazing up into the sky again, looking for all the world like he's got nothing more to say. "You think I can't?"
He doesn't seem interested in arguing, either. "I'm just picturing it. Don't you almost wanna see what'd happen?" Jack makes a small and noncommittal gesture with one of his hands, smiling good-naturedly at the idea. "We swan into the castle all... covered in mud. 'What's up, asshole.'"
She wasn't planning on it, but this does make Neon laugh. A little, anyway. "Who's the asshole?" And Jack doesn't even have to say anything; he just rolls his head to the side again and looks long-suffering at her; so this time she laughs a little more like she means it. "Why does he hate you so much; what did you even do?"
Jack just shrugs, then lifts his hands up so he can set them behind his head.
Neon makes an impatient noise without meaning to—she sees the wolf's ears move and sinks her grip deep in its fur again, willing it to stay. "Maybe if you ever let him talk."
"He talks plenty." The long-suffering look has made its way into Jack's voice; and when Neon doesn't offer a response, it gets to him in less than half a minute. "He'd never stop; what do you want? You wanna live in the goddamn audience chamber? Give me a break."
Despite having taken up Minister Lagone's side in this hypothetical standoff, and despite the way she bristled at the implication that she might just go too feral to be helped if she's not careful, Neon feels no fondness at all for Cornelia just then, sitting hunkered on the damp of the forest floor with a wild wolf draped over her legs. Can't call to mind the bright and airy comfort of the salon Princess Sarah keeps abducting her to for afternoon tea, or the vicarious surge of childish satisfaction she can never help but feel when Mia inevitably follows them there and employs her entire, elaborate arsenal of polite formalities in refusing to be budged from her seat; has forgotten, temporarily and completely, the breathtaking sense of duty every 'well done,' every disbelieving smile that dawns on a townsperson's face when they see that the Warriors of Light are home safe from another impossible quest winds tight around her heart. Maybe it's the long journey by sea that she's dreading, knowing they'll be bearing almost the worst possible news back along with the best; or maybe it's only the distance, too big to fit in her head alongside the lingering disquiet that thing in the depths of the shrine woke in her; but as she is now, she'd so much rather stay here. Sleep here, at least.
It probably is just that she's tired. Anyone would be—and anyone would be more or less over the whole 'righteous warrior' routine, at a time like this, wouldn't they? She'd never admit it, but when Jack finally turns the music off, props himself up on an elbow, and asks her if she's ready to get going for the night, it feels a tiny bit like being rescued from herself.
She wonders whether he ever feels like that. Pretty soon, though, she has something way more important to wonder about, because as they get to walking, once they've stood up and brushed themselves off and watched the wolf stretch; shake itself; stretch again—said their goodbyes—she can't help but notice that when they start off towards the campsite, it starts walking that way, too.
Neon stops, and looks down at it.
The wolf looks back at her.
It can't mean that—experimentally, she takes another step, and then a few more; and to her consternation, the wolf trails along after her. "What am I supposed to do with this," she asks it.
No help is coming this time, either. Jack paused when she did, for a second, but he's already wandering off again. "It's sleeping with you."
She asks him if he seriously thinks she wants to wake up smelling like dog, and then hike to the coast and board the ship again and have to smell like dog and seawater; and the wolf plods along beside her while she hassles him, for just a little while. In the end, though, as they're drawing up closer to camp, the still-glowing embers of the fire must cast a subtle shadow it decides it doesn't like, because one moment its nose is nudging wet against the side of her hand and the next, without missing a beat, it's bounding away through the brush. Quiet, now that it wants to be, but not so quiet she can't hear.
In the moment, Neon feels a pang of reflexive sorrow—right when she was coming around to the idea that she might have been too hasty telling Jack there was no way to get a dog out of this, it went right back to acting like the wild thing it was, just like that?—but still, not having to find a way to chase the poor animal off is more of a relief than anything. Later, though, alone in her tent after all, she starts to think it might have been nicer if the wolf really did crawl in and curl up with her; she doesn't know. It might be warmer, at least. The air outside was colder than it is in here, but it bothered her less; which is so stupid, but it keeps her awake for some time, that night. The way she can just barely feel it. Heat's absence. The void where a wolf should be; or anyone else at all; she drifts off only after her own muffled fury has worn itself thin (what else can she do?), and dreams of the clomping of boots and the clanking of steel; wordless shouts and the suffocating grip around her chest of something changing; and the flickering reflection of flames in Castle Cornelia's glistening marble floor.