Chapter Text
Box Day
It was Newbie day in the garden, a day that was exciting but also gave Aussie a lot of anxiety. Every month the box brought up someone, a girl who needed a lot of help, and Aussie liked to help. But she never knew who the box was bringing up. Was this girl going to be an angry one? A scared one? A crying one? They all needed different things from her and the quicker she figured out what that was, the better it went for everyone.
Luckily she was pretty good at that, at least, she was better at it than the other girls in the Garden. Despite being able to read people well and act accordingly, Aussie always felt like she was the only one who didn't fit in.
Her jobs in the Garden rotated between tending to the gardening, taking care of the animals, cooking, and mending clothes. She wanted to try her hand at building but didn't understand the angles and supports well enough to make anything structurally sound, so she settled on making things pretty. Most girls in the Garden thought it was a waste of time, but never tried to discourage her from doing it, mostly because it kept her busy and not bugging them. Plus, she was the first one the girls bonded with after coming out of the box, so there was a begrudging fondness they had for her.
Thena was one of the few that actually valued Aussie's talents, mostly because she took care of all the Newbies. Thena knew it was an essential thing to do, she just didn't have the patience or temperament for it herself. She allowed Aussie to doodle around the garden as she wished if it meant they got a well trained newbie out of it each month. Plus, whenever a girl did crack up or break down, Aussie could usually mother them back into shape when that's what they needed.
Aussie sat in her chair a few feet from the box holding her potato sack parasol to protect her from the sun. She slapped a mosquito off her arm and sneezed.
"Ready to play house, Mom?" Thena asked as she came up behind her.
"Ready as ever, Daddy-O" Aussie replied with a sniffle. She always felt miserable when the grass bloomed.
"Have you been eating the honey?" Thena asked, noticing her symptoms.
"I forgot," Aussie admitted. "I got too wrapped up in getting things ready for the newbie."
"Dang it, Aussie!" Thena chastised her, stepping around to look at the pale and scrawny girl before her. "You need to take care of yourself, even half as much as the newbies, you snit."
"Mm, thanks," Aussie mumbled, impressed with level of empathy she received, and turned back to stare at the box.
Thena shook her head and looked away, wiping the sweat from her dark brow with the hand not grasping her spear. She didn't understand why pleas and reminders for her to take care of herself were met with such disregard. Especially when she proved she was fully capable of taking care of other people. You'd think Aussie would take excellent care of herself.
"Why does it feel late today?" Thena asked as she checked the sun's position in the sky.
"I know right," Aussie agreed. "I hate it, I don't know when that stupid alarm is gonna go off. Scares the crap out of me everytime as is."
"Even though you just sit there waiting for it everytime?" Thena asked, putting her hand on her hip.
"Yeah. Go figure."
Thena stood there in silence for a couple moments, both girls staring off toward the box like it might do something different for the first time in three years.
"Well, good luck with that," Thena said before turning on her heel and heading back to the shade.
She saw Gertie, seemingly the youngest girl in the garden even though she'd been there 7 months in total. She was almost as soft as Aussie, though she had no issue with dissecting any body that life had vacated to see how it worked. Luckily she used what she learned to help anyone sick or injured, so everyone learned to deal with her morbid tendencies.
"Gertie, take Aussie some water please, it's getting hot out there," Thena instructed.
Gertie nodded her messy mop of golden curls and immediately dropped what she was doing to follow her new orders. She sure didn't learn that from Aussie.
Little Gertie cleaned her hands and grabbed a clean mason jar. After filling it with drinking water she bounded over to Aussie on her little wooden throne. Thena may have been the leader in the Garden, but to Gertie, Aussie was Queen. The difference seemed to her that Thena cared about what everyone was doing and Aussie cared about what everyone was feeling. That's why every month she sat out there risking sunburn and mosquito bites and getting itchy in the grass to be first to meet the newbies.
"Here's some water," Gertie panted.
"Oh, thank you!" Aussie smiled, pleasantly surprised before taking a drink.
"It's late today," Gertie observed.
"I noticed," Aussie nodded. "Any minute though."
Aussie went to take another drink when the alarm went off, startling her. The glass hit her teeth, pinching a bit of her lip in between, and water splashed up her nose.
"Gahl," she groaned, wiping her face. "Showtime."
She set the water and her umbrella down before getting up and making her way over to the box, Thena and the rest of the guards jogged up behind her. They were the biggest and strongest girls, usually they were the builders everyday but box day. They would unload the supplies and restrain the angrier newbies if need be. Thena had taken Aussie's suggestion and made it a rule that everyone hang back till they could talk to the newbie, just so she wasn't overwhelmed.
The doors slid open and Aussie squinted through the mesh of the box. She blinked extra hard to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. She was just about to realize that the box had in fact done something different for the first time in three years.
"Athena," she scream-whispered as she smacked the other girls arm repeatedly. "Is that what I think it is?"
The two girls exchanged glances before each grabbing a gate and throwing the top open.
"Holy snit!" Aussie tried to squeal quietly to herself, she didn't want to alarm the other girls waiting behind them.
"Wait!" Thena tried to grab her arm but she had already hopped down into the box. She motioned for the two strongest girls to approach.
They watched Aussie crouched over a body, one that looked a lot bigger than any girl before. Finally Aussie looked back up at them, exposing the newbies face.
"It's a freaking boy!" She announced, her blue eyes shining with amazement and a smile lit her face.
Sure, she had wondered a few times 'what if? What if the box ever delivered boys?' But for three years it hadn't, so it had just been a fanciful daydream till now.
Thena didn't understand why Aussie seemed excited about this strange new development, it was horrible news.
"Tell the rest of the guards to get over here, and tell Lanie to keep all the other girls the hell away from the box," she ordered one of the guards who nodded and went off to do it.
"Do you think they made a mistake?" Joan asked Thena as she kept posted by the box with her.
"I have no idea," Thena admitted with a shrug as she held her spear at the ready, her eyes not leaving Aussie as she stayed crouched over the boy, staring at him.
"Do you think if we leave him in the box they'll take him back?" Joan continued as the other guards arrived, hushed gasps leaving their mouths.
"We need our supplies though," Thena pointed out. "He might wake up before we unload everything then we're shanked."
"We could put him in the pit, unload, then put him back," Joan suggested.
As those two talked about getting rid of him, Aussie was lost to the rest of the world. She was trying to take in every detail of the first boy she could or would ever remember seeing.
His hair was reddish blond and very short, and his skin was light with just hints of freckles. His eyes were deep set and he had full lips. He was wearing a rust colored shirt with buttons up at the collar and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing thick forearms. Aussie reached her hand out and hovered it over his, seeing that it was much, much larger. She wondered why he hadn't woken up yet and gently pressed her fingers to his neck to check for a pulse. Heart was beating.
Even asleep he looked unhappy. Aussie glanced down at the rest of him as a small uneasy feeling began to grow in her chest. He was big. And not just that, he looked strong too.
"Well, is he alive?" Thena asked her, feeling impatient.
"Um," Aussie startled at her voice, her fingers pulling quickly away from the boys neck and swiveling to look up at Thena. "Yeah, he's alive. You know what, I think I should get out of the box before he-"
She was cut off by a gasp as the boy suddenly jerked awake. She turned back to look at him but he was already screaming, louder than any she'd heard before, and once she'd turned she was greeted with that massive hand she'd just admired wrapped tightly around her neck like it was a bean can, and flung onto her back. Her hands flew up to grab his wrist, which she couldn't even wrap her own hand around, as he loomed over her.
Everyone but her was yelling now. The boy was yelling at her demanding to know where he was, the guards were yelling at him to let her go. She could see the fear beneath his anger, like a caged animal as he looked up at all the spears pointed at him now.
Thena moved to were she could impale him without injuring Aussie too and took aim. Even as everything was going white and fuzzy around the edges, Aussie saw her and risked more pressure on her throat by releasing his wrist to wave at Thena to back down. Thena looked down at the girl like she was crazy, and then Aussie's eyes started rolling backwards. Thena had enough and hopped down into the box with a yell, hitting the boy hard over the back instead. He went limp, his huge body engulfing little Aussie beneath him.
"Gertie!!" Thena cried loudly as she tried to push the boy off of Aussie.
Joan hopped down beside her and helped till he was on his side by Aussie. Gertie's blond mop blocked the sunlight and signaled her arrival.
"Get down here and help Aussie!" She demanded.
Gertie hopped down beside her and looked at the boy with wide eyes.
"Hey!" Thena snapped. "Help Aussie! Help her!"
Gertie swallowed hard and looked down at Aussie. Girls had attacked her before, but it was usually a disoriented and poorly aimed hit or scratch, the occasional hair grab, but nothing like this. She'd never lost consciousness before and it scared Gertie. She checked for a pulse and it was there but barely. She put her ear to Aussies mouth but didn't feel or hear any breathing. She began to give her mouth to mouth, nervously making the compressions as she was well aware how thin and fragile Aussie was.
After the second compression Aussie drew a shuddering breath and the girls released the ones they'd been holding in a sigh of relief. Aussie was breathing with a bit of a wheeze and her eyelids flickered.
"I should roll her on her side to keep any liquid from going in her lungs," Gertie informed Thena as she began to roll her the only direction they could, toward the boy.
Her head was throbbing, her pulse pounding in her ears along with the muffled, far away sound of voices. As the blinding white light started to fade, Aussie saw him again, their faces close together. She could make out his pale eyelashes before he was lifted out of her sight, his head lolling backwards as the girls hauled him up by the arms.
"Put him in the pit," Thena hoarsely instructed Joan, not taking her eyes off Aussie. "And you don't have to do it nicely."