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It starts with the purple envelope.
“I have what?” Sherry asks through a mouthful of oatmeal. Still half asleep, she’s not sure she heard Darryl correctly.
“Mail,” he says. “You have mail.”
He holds out a purple envelope, and Sherry snatches it away from him, shoving her breakfast aside. The envelope is emblazoned with Sherry in silver glitter pen with the address “Base #2, Snowball Planet” scrawled below it in black pen, like an afterthought.
“What does it say?” Darryl asks, wringing his hands.
“I haven’t opened it yet,” Sherry says. She tucks the letter into her sweatpants pocket. “And I’m not opening it in front of you.”
“What?” Darryl throws his hands in the air. “Why?”
“Because,” is all Sherry says, pulling her bowl of oatmeal towards her. Darryl sighs and flops down at the table next to her, poking at his own breakfast.
Sherry shovels the rest of her food into her mouth and tosses her dirty bowl in the sink.
“I am not washing that,” Darryl snaps.
“I’ll get to it sometime,” Sherry says, shrugging.
Then she sprints out of the mess hall, pulling the purple envelope out of her pocket as she goes. She turns the envelope over and over in her hands, impatient to reach her quarters so she can finally open it.
Sherry’s never really received before. She was only six when her family fled their home planet, and twelve when she became an orphan. No one ever sent her letters when she was in the army—well, she’s technically still in the army but, you know. Maybe her granny sent her a birthday card when she was little, but Sherry doesn’t remember. Does it count if she can’t remember?
Once she reaches her room, she punches the code in and scurries inside, flipping on the light as the door hisses shut behind her. Falling onto her bed, she pulls out her knife and, holding it above her head, carefully slits the envelope open—
—and begins coughing and sneezing as a cloud of blue glitter bursts out of the envelope and covers her face.
“The fu—ack!” Sherry nearly chokes, spits out a mouthful of glitter, and sits bolt upright. All the glitter that didn’t stick to her face falls into her lap.
So, whoever the fuck sent her this letter is either a five-year-old who got a little overzealous with the blue glitter or hates Sherry’s guts. Her room is going to be covered in the stuff forever. She will literally die before this shit goes away.
Blinking some of the blue sparkles from her eyelashes, Sherry reaches into the purple envelope to see if there’s anything else inside. Her fingers close around a folded piece of paper, and she pulls it out, bringing another onslaught of blue glitter with it.
“Son of a bitch,” she mutters under her breath.
Shaking the folded piece of paper, she realizes that it’s a page ripped out from an old Warthog manual. Unfolding the note, she has to squint to read it—the message is written in red marker over the small black print explaining the functions of each of the Warthog’s six pedals.
Roses are red (I think, I’ve never seen one in person)
Just like your armor (Well, the accents on your armor)
I really like your armor.
Actually, I think roses are more than one color, but there are red ones. I think.
I’m sorry none of this rhymed.
Sincerely,
Your Secret Admirer
Sherry rereads the letter several times before laying it on the small table next to her bed. She lays down again, staring at the ceiling. She sighs, regretting it instantly as a puff of glitter shoots into the air.
Secret admirer.
Sherry looks around at the carnage the envelope left behind. Only one person on this planet could be so diabolically adorable.
So, it’s more like a secret admirenemy?
A small smile tugs at the corner of Sherry’s mouth, and she rolls out of bed and grabs her under-suit, frowning when she realizes that, even though it was in a drawer, it’s covered in blue sparkles as well. Fucking how?
Shimmying into her under-suit, she wonders how Vera got the envelope to Darryl. Did they plan it? Did she slip it under the door to the fucking base and Darryl just happened to find it first? Vera’s snuck in here before, should know where Sherry’s room is at. What game is she playing?
Sherry considers the possibility that Darryl, and by association, Terrill, are pulling her leg. Wouldn’t be the first time. As she puts on her armor, she also considers the possibility of killing her last two remaining teammates if they are, in fact, messing with her.
But once she’s finished getting ready and pulling her helmet on, she’s still ninety percent sure Vera sent her the letter. They haven’t had glitter here for years, and she knows they’ve never had envelopes. Who uses envelopes when there’s computers and shit?
It’s got to be Vera.
Stepping out into the hallway, Sherry smiles.
“She likes my armor,” she giggles.
“No idea what you’re talking about!” Vera shouts at her over the sound of bullets and bombs.
They’re having their daily brawl in the snow between their bases, chucking grenades too far left and shooting bullets a bit too high into the air.
Terrill and Darryl are busy running away from Iowa, who’s managed to halfway repair one of the jeeps and is driving it after them. Of course, half-repaired also means the jeep is on fire, which means Idaho is running after Iowa, telling him to get out of the fucking jeep while firing bullets in the vague direction of Terrill and Darryl.
Sherry figures this is the best time to confront Vera.
“Bullshit!” she shouts. “There are literally no other girls on this planet, who else would it come from?”
“I dunno, maybe there are other girls here!” Vera shoots back, jumping up to chuck a snowball at Sherry’s head.
It misses.
By a lot.
“If you wanna go on a date, all you gotta do is ask!” Sherry says.
Vera freezes in the middle of throwing a sharp chunk of ice.
“A—psh, hah, a date? No, nope, you’re the enemy, I can’t date the enemy, Sherry,” Vera sputters, “That—That would be, uh, treason?”
“Maybe so!” Sherry yells. “But who’s gonna know?”
Vera doesn’t have anything to say to that, she just stares, still holding the hunk of ice aloft. Sherry crosses her arms and waits. Somewhere in the distance, there’s a crash followed by an explosion, and Sherry really freaking hopes there isn’t a hole in the wall of her base.
Before Vera can think of what to say, however, a stray bullet hits the ice in her hand. Tiny shards of ice explode in a shower of blue and white, and Vera jumps back.
“Agh!” she cries.
Sherry loses sight of her as Vera drops behind the barrier she’s fashioned out of scrap metal, but she’s not so sure it’s to escape the onslaught of bullets. She grins, wonders if Vera has started digging a tunnel to escape again.
“I didn’t send the letter!” The disembodied voice of Vera comes from directly to Sherry’s right, which means Vera dug the tunnel before the battle this time.
Whirling around, Sherry turns just in time to see a blue blur as Vera pounces, smashing a fistful of snow onto Sherry’s visor as she takes her down, knocking the breath out of her. Vision impeded, Sherry lashes out with her arms, trying half-heartedly to shove Vera away.
Leaning down, Vera whispers into Sherry’s ear.
“If I had sent the letter, I would’ve put something a little bigger than a blue glitter bomb.”
“How’d you know the glitter was blue?” Sherry whispers back.
“Uh—fu—it was a guess!” Vera scrambles up and bolts away, tossing one last “It wasn’t me, dammit!” over her shoulder.
By the time Sherry pushes herself to her knees and wipes the snow from her visor, Vera, Idaho, and Iowa are halfway back to their base. They kick up clouds of snow as they retreat, leaving a trail of scorched ice, smoke, and bullet casings behind them.
Sherry laughs, falling back onto the ground and staring at the perpetually gray sky, ready to drop a fresh blanket of snow on their bases.
That night, before she shuts off the light in her quarters, she reads the letter that’s definitely not (not) from Vera.
Then comes the “cake”.
“Cake” in quotation marks because it’s made from freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches smashed together in a nine-by-nine square. It arrived in a purple box Darryl almost tripped over on his way to the bathroom. Whoever dropped it off decided the best place to leave it was the top of the stairs leading to their bunks.
Luckily, there’s no glitter this time.
Sherry stares at the “cake”, wondering how long Vera—or whoever, but she knows it’s fucking Vera—saved these ice cream sandwiches. Sherry and the others finished what sweets they had, like, three years ago.
“Goodness,” Terrill says, eyes wide, “She must really like you.”
“Shut up, Terrill,” Sherry snaps, lifting the “cake” out of the purple box it came in and placing it on the table. “Anyway, she says it isn’t her.”
“Right,” Darryl snorts, “And I’m definitely not the one who’s been cutting all of Terrill’s left pant legs a half an inch short.”
“You’re what?” Terrill whips around to look at Darryl, who freezes, smiles, and dashes from the breakroom. Terrill jumps up and takes off after him. “No, really, Darryl, you haven’t been doing what?”
Sherry chuckles and breaks off a piece of the “cake”, popping it into her mouth.
“Oh my god,” she groans. She almost forgot what chocolate tasted like, dehydrated or otherwise.
She’s gonna marry that woman.
“Cake?” Vera snorts, arm cocked back, ready to chuck a grenade. “That’s ridiculous, where would I even get the ingredients for that?”
Before Sherry can answer, Vera launches the grenade. Sprinting forward and away from the blast radius, Sherry leaps and tackles Vera the ground with a thud that rattles her teeth.
“Nice try, sweet cheeks,” Sherry says, pinning Vera to the ground. “By the way, how’s your supply of ice-cream sandwiches doing?”
“I have—I have no—” Vera kicks out, catching Sherry in the stomach and throwing her up and away “—idea what you’re talking about!”
Sherry lands on her back several feet away, a puff of snow shooting up around her from the impact. She shakes her head to remove the snow that’s accumulated on her helmet. If all this shit melted and never came back, it would make Sherry’s year. Even if it flooded the bases. An underwater base actually sounds kind of cool.
“Why so secretive, Vera?” Sherry shouts after Vera, who’s started skipping away.
Vera freezes mid-skip, arms pinwheeling as she fights to maintain her footing. Back still turned, she stands up straight and takes a deep breath, composing herself. Crossing her arms, she casts a glance at Sherry over her shoulder.
“There’s nothing to be secretive about, Sherry,” she says, words tumbling out of her mouth like she can’t hold onto them. “Except for, like, Freelancer secrets and stuff, I guess. But I don’t have any other secrets. Zero. Nada. I couldn’t have sent you the cake thingy, because that would be… that would be fraternizing with the enemy! Yeah!”
Sherry is torn between annoyance and amusement at this point, because Project Freelancer literally dropped Vera, Iowa, and Idaho here, fully expecting them to die. On the other hand, it’s the game they’ve been playing for months, a charade. Pretending they’re in a conflict they were kicked out of long ago. Vera’s just playing along, and Sherry wants to take a timeout.
“Maybe it’s time to… fraternize, then,” Sherry suggests. “If you know what I mean.”
“I—you—we—” Vera sputters, arms falling to her sides. “It’s—”
“Get a room!” Idaho shouts from the entrance of the ex-Freelancers’ base.
“Oh! Fuck you, Ezra!” Vera shoots back. She charges towards Idaho who, realizing Vera’s destination is him and not the door to the base, yelps and takes off into the base (“It was a joke it was a joke it was a joooke!”).
Sherry sighs, letting her head drop back into the snow. She gets a sense of deja vu, then remembers she was in almost this exact same spot two days ago, on her back, staring off into the distance. Grinning, she imagines how red Vera must have gone. Redder than, say, roses?
“She totally wants to fraternize with me,” she confides in the sky.
The last item Sherry receives is a map.
Hand-drawn, covered in green glitter this time, directions and explanations scribbled here and there in red ink.
Sherry’s base is Your House, and there’s an ‘X’ next to it with the words Where you shot that jar of peanut butter written off to the side. There’s a lopsided square a few inches away from Sherry’s base, Best Base Ever scrawled inside, with another ‘X’ nearby. The message by this ‘X’ read Blown up jeep.
“Oh yeah,” Sherry whispers to herself, smiling as she recalls setting fire to the jeep. Blinking, she turns her attention back to the map.
There’s a wavy line leading from Sherry’s base, past Where Mike licked your wall, and out into the tundra. At the end of the line there’s an oval with the words Our Place written inside.
Sherry’s heart skyrockets into her throat and she drops the map, gasp morphing into a coughing fit as she chokes on a mouthful of glitter for the second time that week. Hands shaking, she stoops down and snatches up the map again, brushing off the excess glitter—some of it, anyway—to make sure she’s read that correctly.
Our Place.
Yep. She read that right. Sinking onto her bed, Sherry isn’t sure whether to start laughing and hug the map or start hyperventilating and burn it.
Is this for real? Is it real now, not another trick, just another level of their game? Sherry’s going to the spot on the map, of course, but as the anxiety in her chest builds, she pushes away the hope bubbling there as well. Just in case.
“All right, Vera,” Sherry says, folding the map up and tucking it away. “Let’s see where this leads.”
Vera’s map is very much not to scale.
It takes Sherry much longer than she expected to trudge through the snow towards Our Place.
Gazing out at the white wasteland before her, she’s beginning to think this was a trick after all, and looks around instead for Vera, waiting for her to pounce. Her eyes fall on something squat and black, half-buried in snow about fifty feet away.
Running as best she can in knee-deep snow, Sherry hurries over to inspect the object. As she gets closer, she sees the long barrel of a gun, barely hanging onto whatever it’s attached to. She slows a bit, but not by much. No one’s going to fire that gun anytime soon.
When she finally arrives, she discovers a tank. It must’ve been there for at least five years—Sherry’s never seen it before, but she’s never had a reason to venture in this direction. She got bored, of course, but not bored enough to tramp around in the snow almost a mile and a half away from base looking for old, dead, war machines.
Apparently, Vera is bored enough to tramp around in the snow a mile and a half away from base, looking for old, dead, war machines.
“You coming in or not?”
Sherry jumps, looks up at the top of the tank to find Vera, beautiful and blue, perched at the top of the tank. Vera gestures down at the hatch leading into the tank.
Realizing her mouth is hanging open, Sherry snaps it shut, thankful for the visor shielding her face.
“After you,” Sherry manages.
“Uh, yeah okay!” Vera lifts the hatch, and a warm, orange glow erupts from the entrance, lighting up her armor.
It’s the most magical thing Sherry has ever seen, and she almost trips over her own feet moving up to the tank. Climbing up, the side, she watches as Vera lowers herself into the tank, disappearing from view.
Sherry takes a deep breath. Swallows. And drops into the tank, pulling the lid shut behind her.
Her armor screams at her before her feet hit the floor.
Warning, dramatic temperature shift, adjusting armor climate. Warning, dramatic—
Sherry pulls her helmet off and is hit with a blessed blast of warm air. She closes her eyes. Soaks it in. Tries to remember the last time she felt so warm the chill left her bones.
She can’t.
“Where did you find this heater?” Sherry breathes, tossing her helmet aside.
The tank is big, but not extremely spacious, and she bangs her knees, toes, and elbows several times during the process of removing her armor. Vera’s having troubles too, so it takes her a few minutes to conjure up a response.
“Darryl, Ezra, and I found this old heater and fixed it up,” she explains. “It’s gotta be charged, so we can’t use it all the time, and since the tank doesn’t have a lot of space that needs heating up, it doesn’t use as much power.”
“Those fuckers,” Sherry laughs, “they were in on it the whole time.”
“Actually, Terrill wasn’t,” Vera says, unzipping her undersuit. “Darryl says he couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it.”
“Yeah…” Sherry trails off as Vera pulls her arms out of her undersuit. Her arms are very nice. Very strong, not nice, strong. Well, strong is nice—
Wow, it’s really hot in here.
Sherry shimmies out of her undersuit as well, and soon the two of them are sitting cross-legged, clad in sports bras and biker shorts, twiddling their thumbs. They’ve waited so fucking long to be alone together, to be out of armor together, and now they have no idea what to say.
“I sent the card,” Vera says finally. “And the cake.”
“I know, doofus,” Sherry snorts. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Am not!” Vera lies, biting her bottom lip. She sighs and runs her hand through her hair. “Ugh, I’m a bad liar.”
“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Sherry hurries to say, leaning in towards Vera. “Honesty’s good!”
“I don’t know if it’s honesty as much as anxiety. I could never be a spy,” Vera says.
“Then why join Project Freelancer?” Sherry asks, tilting her head. Vera never struck her as the type—didn’t fit the image all the stories built up in her head.
“Well, I mean, to save my home planet!” Vera says. “Besides, not all of us did spy stuff.”
“Oh,” Sherry says. “Where’s your home planet?”
“Earth,” Vera answers. Her face lights up as the word leaves her lips, and Sherry wills her heart to calm the fuck down.
“Where at on Earth?” Sherry asks.
“Hawaii.”
“Holy shit,” Sherry says, raising her eyebrows. “This has got to be hell for you then.”
“Hell frozen over,” Vera agrees, grimacing.
“Well, hell isn’t so bad,” Sherry says. Vera raises an eyebrow and snorts.
“How so?”
“I mean, if it took going to hell to meet you, I’d go to hell a thousand times over,” Sherry tells her.
God, that was so fucking corny, she should take it back, apologize, crawl away and hide forever, she should—
“Sweet talker,” Vera giggles, interrupting Sherry’s near-panic attack.
Her laughter is fucking music.
Sherry leans in, and Vera grins, moving to meet her, brushing her thumb across Sherry’s jaw. Closing her eyes, Sherry shivers, moving her hand to rest on Vera’s, holding it to her face. If the tank is warm, Vera’s skin is red hot, burning into her yet sending chills down her spine.
Their lips meet and finally, finally, they kiss.
Sherry thinks this might be it—the center of the universe.
Is it cliché to say if hell is life with Vera, then it’s better than heaven?
Vera and Sherry break apart, breathing heavily, still clinging to each other. Vera grins, and Sherry catches it, smiling back.
“So,” Vera says.
“So,” Sherry replies.
“What do you say we, uh, fraternize?”