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“We’re back!” Beau calls out, jumping the last few stairs down into the subway where she and her family lives. It’s an easily defensible location, after all. Zombies can’t climb, or reason, so as far as they’re concerned, there’s only one highly visible entrance while the Mighty Nein can use the tracks as an exit in an emergency. More like a chokepoint, really. A chokepoint Nott trapped the absolute fuck out of. Beau jumps and weaves past the tripwires and bear traps and mines with easy familiarity, Yasha at her heels. “And we found food! And ammo!”
“Welcome home, honey!” Jester cheers teasingly, voice muffled through her gasmask. She’s spray painting again. Soon enough the entire subway station’s gonna be filled with huge, colorful murals and she’s gonna have to start spreading her art down the tunnel walls like climbing ivy covering a house. Beau doesn’t mind at all. It’s sure as hell less depressing to look at than the bare concrete walls and ancient, faded adds had been.
“Ammo?” Fjord asks, looking up from where he’s sewing up a new hole in Caleb’s coat.
“Food!?” Nott shrieks, dropping down from the… ceiling? Beau looks up and squints into the darkness. Their oil lamps don’t quite illuminate the space.
Yasha dumps her armful of rations and snack bars and gun clips onto the floor. Considering her arms, it’s a considerable pile. “Food,” she repeats flatly. And then a beat later, “And ammo.”
“I’m making a stew,” Caduceus comments, seated next to his pot which he’s got rigged up over a complicated setup which is basically his and Nott’s successful enough attempt at a functional stove. The smell permeates the subway, warm and familiar and making Beau’s belly growl. “We already have food.”
“More food,” Nott says intently, scurrying over to touch every single snack bar and packet and canned box, counting them and staring at them like they’re gold and gold still actually matters.
They’ve all gone hungry, but Beau remembers Nott and Caleb’s hollow cheeks when they first cautiously sidled up to the rest of the group, desperate enough to overcome their fear of strangers in the wasteland, armed and outnumbering them. She’s got a feeling that they went hungry longer than the rest of them combined, or close enough. She lets Nott poke and clutch at the new food, and strolls over and throws herself down on her futon.
“No injuries?” Caleb asks, not casually. He’s not good at casual.
“No,” Yasha says softly, taking her gear off piece by piece.
Beau thinks she sprained a knuckle a bit while punching a zombie’s rotting jaw off, but it’s minor, and she can bug Jester or Caduceus into taking a look at it later if it keeps bothering her. “Nope,” she says, popping the P.
She watches Caleb’s shoulder slump with relief from the corner of her eye. So ready for the worst to happen at any moment.
(“Beau,” Molly says, clutching at his bleeding shoulder.
“No,” she says, staring at it.
“I don’t want to die,” he says, and she’s always know that, but the admission makes acidic bile rise up in the back of her throat now, “but I want to become one of those things even less.”
It’s more on his neck than his shoulder, actually. It’s not even bleeding all that much. Human teeth weren’t meant to tear into living, struggling flesh with ease, even with the power of the undead behind it.
She can’t stop looking at it.
“Please, Beau,” he says, and if someone had told her an hour ago that Mollymauk Tealeaf would ever say please to her she’d laugh right in their face and then probably get in a fight. “Don’t make me do it myself. I’m already…”
He moves, and her self preservation instinct makes her eyes snap to his hands even though Molly’s an ally, a frie--
They’re trembling. Somehow, she looks up into his eyes. They’re unfocused with pain.
He’d taken the bite for her.
“Okay,” she rasps, and reaches for her gun--)
Everyone here’s got their scars. Only she and Nott know that Caleb had to put down his own parents, and he’d actually liked his parents, apparently. Still isn’t any way to live, though. Wasteland is a miserable enough place as it is without taking the chance to unwind and feel safe in your own goddamned trapped, hidden, and fortified hideout.
She breathes in through her nose, and turns onto her side to look at Caduceus instead. Doesn’t close her eyes. She needs to not be in her head right now.
He meets her eyes and smiles at her, soft and warm and casual. She gives him a brief tug of her lips despite herself.
“Smells good,” she says, tired and safe enough that her voice comes out quiet for once. Her mother would be so proud. Wherever she is. Probably dead. She can’t imagine her shooting a gun or swinging a bat even if her life depended on it.
“You did good work out there,” he says, nodding his head towards the pile of supplies that Nott is at this point just outright nesting in, like that could possibly be comfortable.
“Yeah,” she says. And then belatedly, remembering Fjord’s lessons, “Thanks.”
She hates how awkward and fake it came out. Caduceus smiles anyways. “Thank you,” he says.
“If you insist,” she says with a shrug, smiling again. Caduceus, satisfied with her accepting being appreciated, turns his attention back to the stew. She watches him hum and pour a little salt in it, all slow and quiet and domestic. When they’d found him, he’d been living in a mass graveyard of his own making. They’d been able to see the smoke of his cremation pyre from miles away; an unbelievably tall tower of unmoving zombies with their skulls smashed to bits, the flames turning them to ash. He’d done it all on his own.
Everyone deserves a funeral, he’d said matter of factly. It was about time they got theirs.
As if he hadn’t been covered in their blood. Hah. She’d insisted on recruiting the badass on the spot.
“Done!” Jester calls out. Beau stretches a bit so she can look without sitting up. Jester’s mask is down around her neck now to reveal her large, proud smile as she looks up at their newest mural. It’s three times as tall her, and there’s a messy pile of rope lying on the ground next to her. Maybe that’s what Nott had been doing up in the roof; helping Jester reach up somehow.
It’s a beautiful woman in a red dress and blue jewelry. She’s got the kind of body that makes Beau expect a seductive smirk, come hither eyes. She just looks kind instead. Beau wonders if it’s someone Jester knew from before everything went to hell, or if she’s just a comforting woman from her imagination to look over them while they sleep and rest and putter away in their safe little corner of the big, broken world.
“She looks fantastic, Jes,” Fjord says, voice soft in that tender way he gets with her. Beau looks away as he draws close to her, lets them have one of their Moments. They have a lot of them. It’s honestly pretty embarrassing.
Yasha sits down with a thump next to her and Beau startles and sits up so abruptly that her hair kind of slaps into her face even though she’s got it tied up into its usual bun. Fuck, she’s gotta get Caduceus to cut her hair again soon.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Yasha says, eyes a little wide.
“You didn’t!” she lies, voice back to its loudness, and she tries to cover it up with laughter. It’s too loud and forced too.
Beau sleeps as close to the heater as she can get away with. Yasha sleeps as close to the stairs as she can get away with, weapons close to hand. Ready to protect them all. Beau would join her, she really would, but it’s so cold. She doesn’t understand how Yasha manages to fall asleep in that part of their home. She imagines Yasha relocating to sleep next to Beau and has to curl her hand with the sprained finger into a fist to stop the distracting fluttering in her stomach.
Yasha looks at her hand. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, uh, right,” she says, uncurling her hand. She’d thought that she’d managed to hide her pain well enough during the fight that Yasha hadn’t noticed the injury. Apparently not. Ouch. Her ego.
“No,” Yasha says. And then, “No, I mean, yes. I mean, yes, no. Don’t do that either. But don’t-- don’t punch zombies, Beau.”
Beau looks at her. “... What? And let them bite me instead?” A minute flinch from Yasha, a corresponding spike of guilt within Beau’s chest. She hadn’t meant to-- “Or run away? And lose the supplies?” She gestures towards Nott, who’s now leaning against Caleb’s side as he reads a book they raided from the library, while clutching at a ration pack like its a stuffed animal.
“You could use your staff,” Yasha says mildly, “instead of putting your hands near their teeth.”
“Oh,” she says. “Right.”
She really, honestly hadn’t thought of it. It had been a fight; hectic and frantic and fast paced, no room to stop and think, only kick and punch and dodge until they were the last two standing.
Yasha fiddles with the golden ring on her left ring finger, mindlessly, nervously twisting it around. Beau’s never met or heard of any spouse of Yasha’s. What must have happened is so obvious that even asking would make her feel like Queen Douchebag. She looks away.
“I’ll try and be more careful,” she says, voice gruff. “I promise.”
A quiet, relieved sigh to her side. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
A moment of hesitation, and then Yasha leans into her side a little. Beau’s heartbeat quickens, heat on her neck, her face, and oh god she can feel her mouth doing something stupid and embarrassing and Yasha smells like that floral perfume Molly found for her in the wreckage of a pillaged mall ages ago. She must be rationing it, drawing out the bottle for all its worth even if they could go out and find her another one. Perfume bottles aren’t at the top of any raiding party’s list, after all. They’re still on the abandoned shelves, at least, collecting dust. She wonders if perfume can rot, go bad with time if not properly stored, like bottles of wine do.
Beau decides that when Yasha’s perfume is all used up, she’s gonna find her the exact same kind again. The scent’s associated enough with the woman in her mind that she bets she could pick it out from a thousand smells just by memory.
Caleb is reading and Nott is mothering him and Caduceus is cooking and Jester is painting and Fjord’s mooning over her and Yasha’s relaxed and comfortable pressed up against her and Beau feels safe. This place feels like home. The world went to shit and they fought and they bled and they scraped up a corner of it for themselves and made it comfortable and theirs. They made a home. She’s never had one of those before, not really.
“Food’s ready,” Caduceus calls out, and Jester cheers and Nott starts poking and prodding and pulling Caleb towards the meal. Yasha stands up, and then reaches a hand down to help Beau up. Her hand is broad and callused and warm. She smiles.
The world may have ended, but Beau’s always liked fresh starts.