Chapter Text
Your footsteps echoed through the spacious corridor lined with doors as Moon led you away, leaving the pink and white fox god with the theatrically booming voice far behind. The atmosphere was weighed down by thick layers of tension, and Moon did not give your presence a single ounce of acknowledgement aside from the visible stiffness to the lines of his shoulders. The last time that you had gotten a glimpse of his expression from behind the bars, it had turned from shocked to a silent communication of stormy eyes that you were royally screwed the second the two of you had privacy away from prying eyes and ears.
Honestly, you less regretted having followed after him, and more so regretted having gotten caught. That rockstar gal as the fox god had so loudly proclaimed her to be had been scary when she grabbed you.
The dead silence of the walk of shame behind Moon made the background noise of shoes scuffing the floor deafening. The air was suffocating. Eager for a distraction, you glanced up to see two smaller gods stood by a tall, glass window; one green and wide-eyed with what looked to be a single antenna ending in a glowing ball of light, while the other was pink and squinting mis-matched eyes in disdain. They were both openly staring at Moon out of the corners of their eyes, whispering to each other in hushed tones. You skipped an extra few steps closer to Moon's back and lifted your head high from your shoulders to quietly whisper to him.
"Hey. Are those your old castmates?"
Silence.
It felt like an eerily bad omen that Moon wasn't even taking the time to tell you to shut up, especially considering the fact that you weren't even supposed to be seen talking to him in the building. You shrunk back into yourself, steps slowing down to lag behind as you had been prior.
Moon finally slowed to a stop in front of one of the large doors and pulled out from beneath his cloak the very key that the fox god had handed to him. You stopped beside him and tapped your foot against the pristine floor, warily glancing around the hallway as he unlocked it. Kissing the calm before the storm goodbye, you looked back just in time for Moon to push the door open, and you followed behind him with your gaze down low as he stepped inside. Eyes wandering as you passed him by, the room was lit up by torches against the walls and filled with all kinds of strange equipment that you'd most like find in a circus, as well as a few things you couldn't even recognize as having a Mortal Realm equivalent at all.
"I hope you had your fun back there, by the way. That was humiliating," you whispered, brow dipped low as you straightened your posture out and pulled the hood of your cloak off of your head to fall down against your upper back.
From behind you, you felt a gust of air hit you as the door slammed shut with a bang loud enough to make you startle. You turned towards Moon to see him with a hand tightly gripped around the handle, and he whipped around to face you, expression positively enraged.
Ohhh, fuck...
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?" Moon raspily shouted, and all you could do was stare at him with wide eyes. "Oh, did I have fun? Clearly not as much as you did, coming here of all places!"
You had heard him hiss before—and hiss like a cat, he did often—but shout? That was something so rarely drawn out of him. You supposed that this was the worst you had ever outright disobeyed him before, but still. It surprised you. That surprise then bubbled out into an annoyance of your own.
"I was supposed to sneak in, then sneak out. I wasn't trying to get caught!" You shouted back, thankful for the walls that you had earlier watched Moon be assured were soundproof. He scoffed.
"And what good did that do you? Because if anything that Funtime told me back there was true, then you were an easy catch. If I had left without seeing you, do you have any idea what they would've done to you!? ANY idea!?"
"I can do a couple tricks for an apple," you said through gritted teeth, balling up your fists to feel the prick of your own fingernails against rough skin. "I would've escaped."
"You are reckless," Moon took a step forward to shove his index finger against your chest, causing you to lean back and look down at it in offense, "overzealous," he took another step forward, followed by you taking a more nervous step back, "and overconfident in your own mediocre abilities. If what Sun told me about you being so smart and cautious was even remotely true, then you've been discarding that caution for... what? To prove a point? Is that it?"
You shot Moon an affronted look. "To help--"
"You could help by not getting yourself tortured or killed, did you think of that?" he hissed. You grabbed onto his wrist and firmly moved his hand away from your chest, sick of the unwanted weight against you. He retracted it with ease, ripping his wrist from your hold to swing it back to his side, swishing the folds of his gold-edged, royal blue cloak in the process. You glared at him, and his expression remained just as stormy with gritted teeth.
"If my abilities are so mediocre, then why have you been keeping me around!?" You shouted, shooting your arms out wide beside yourself with your palms laid out. "I'm not asking to leave here, but you've said it yourself! I slow you down! So just what has been the reason!?"
Moon just stared at you, anger but also hesitation crossing his features as he thought on a response. A look of irritated defeat won out, and he turned away from you to silently walk farther into the room with a slouched posture. Your gaze followed him as his footsteps echoed throughout the room, your own arms falling back down to bounce against your sides.
"Where are you going?" You asked, tone unimpressed.
"I'm sitting down. We can't leave yet without rousing suspicions. You should take a nap, now would be a good time for you to slow me down," he bitterly grumbled in response, as if you hadn't mirrored his own exact words from the past back to him. He found a chair against the wall and fell into it to cross his legs and brood.
"So you're not answering the question then?"
He did not respond.
You rolled your eyes and kicked at the floor, glaring down at the corner of the room in front of you. "Typical," you murmured.