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When Pac stopped running, it was because he had to. He wasn’t sure where he had ended up but, in a clearing in a shadowy jungle, he let himself lean against a tree, panting as quietly as he could. He had spent the whole day running and hiding. He couldn’t bring himself to keep going.
Bad spoke in his ear and Pac flinched instinctively, bringing a hand to his walkie-talkie. He mumbled something to his teammate, some excuse, and turned it off. The earbud he ripped out of his ear, tucking it into his pocket. Bad had seen the worst of him today. He didn’t need to be here for this.
With a little sigh, Pac slid down the tree, bringing his knees up to his chin. It seemed every day in Purgatory was worse than the one before. And ironically, Pac couldn’t help but see what had happened today as karma. Didn’t he deserve it? He had made a promise not to kill Fit, but that hadn’t stopped his teammates from doing it themselves. Surely, this was punishment; Team Red hunting him down, his teammates being killed in his place, Cell threatening him in whispers. This was his payback.
A growl rumbled out from in front of him and Pac’s head snapped up, locking eyes with a giant brown wolf. Its bright eyes reflected the full moon above, one that had never changed phases despite how long they had already been in Purgatory.
He hadn’t seen Team Green as wolves before but there was no mistaking who this was; even without the metal leg, he would have recognized Fit no matter his form.
“Fit?” He whispered anyway, resisting the urge to reach for his sword. The wolf tilted his head slightly, never breaking eye contact, but Pac knew he was right.
“Fit, I’m so sorry.” Pac blurted out. All the words he had kept inside him all day came rushing out. “I didn’t- I didn’t want to kill you. Tubbo, and Bad, they said we had to, for the mission, they said we didn’t have a choice. I promise, I never hit you, I didn’t want to do it!”
And maybe it was a dumb idea, but Pac pulled his sword out of his inventory and tossed it to the side. He fumbled with the buckles of his armor for a moment, but quickly the pieces of armor were being dropped to the ground, with no care for how they tumbled and crashed against each other. With a dry swallow, Pac moved to kneel, away from the relative safety of the tree.
“Kill me, Fit.” He said, a hint of begging slipping into his voice. “Please. We can make it fair.”
In a lower, quieter voice, he admitted, “I’m so tired, of it all.”
He met Fit’s gaze and closed his mouth, holding back the rest of what he wanted to say.
I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry.
There was a beat of silence, where it was just Pac and Fit, staring into each other’s eyes.
And then Fit moved, a flash of fur out of the undergrowth. Pac flinched back despite himself but realized quickly he wasn’t the target. With two quick strides, Fit had reached a zombie that was stumbling towards the clearing. Within two heartbeats, he knocked the mob to the ground. And with two well-placed bites, the zombie began to dissolve.
Fit turned back around, dropping rotten flesh from his jaw with a wrinkle of his nose. Blood dripped from his muzzle and his teeth, but he certainly wasn’t bothered by it. And Pac? Well, he wasn’t sure if it was wrong to be attracted to that.
“Okay.” He said, faintly. “Okay. So you won’t let a zombie murder me, then.”
Part of him wondered if that was so Fit could take him out himself, only amplified when Fit approached him slowly, head low. Pac froze, heartbeat picking up.
A cold nose gently prodded Pac’s hand, moving to skirt up his arm and towards his face. He was well aware of how close Fit’s teeth were to his neck, of how easy it would be to rip his throat out from this angle. The shudder that went through his body was instinctual, as well as the dry swallow that followed.
Fit huffed quietly, sending warm air into Pac’s face, before pressing forward. As fear turned to confusion, Pac let himself be moved around by the wolf, ungracefully tipping onto his back and barely avoiding smacking his head on the ground. There was a flash of concern when Fit took ahold of his pants leg with his teeth, but there was only gentleness in the way Fit straightened out his legs. Less gentle was the way Fit dropped on top of him, nearly smothering him with his weight.
“Fit!” Pac protested automatically, before freezing at the loudness of his voice.
Fit’s ears perked up and he swung his head around, scanning the area around them. Once he relaxed, Pac found himself unconsciously doing the same. Since Fit hadn’t wanted to try taking off Pac’s prosthetic with his teeth, Pac reached down absently to detach it. He was sure that if someone were to come across them, the picture they painted was a curious one. A member of Team Blue, out of armor, defenseless, and down one leg, was being cuddled by the largest wolf of Team Green.
Part of him wished Cell could see him now.
In the span of Pac’s wandering thoughts, Fit had somehow detached his own prosthetic and shuffled it to the side. He rested his head next to Pac’s but refused to meet his eyes when he turned his head. Cautiously, Pac wrapped his arms around Fit’s bulk, tangling his fingers into his fur. Careful not to break the silence that had fallen over them, he whispered quietly,
“We should talk about this. About us.”
There was a rumble from deep in Fit’s chest. The message was clear: No talking now. Just sleeping.
Pac accepted it for what it was and let himself simply bask in the warmth of his friend. For all that he loved Team Blue, and he loved Tubbo and Tina, he had missed Fit. No one could have replaced him.
(Selfishly, in the back of his mind, Pac wished that Mike was there too. His other half would have been a werewolf as well, and he would have been the only one who could have brought similar comfort to him as Fit did. But Mike hadn’t been active since they arrived in Purgatory, and there was no way anyone on Team Green would show him where they stashed their vulnerable, unconscious teammate. He doubted Fit was the exception to that.)
As Pac pressed closer to Fit, it was harder to contain the tears that welled in his eyes. Once they slipped out, he gasped out a little sob and buried his face into Fit’s neck, trembling as he cried. He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, just knew that once he woke back up, Fit was still there, a sturdy weight against him.
In the morning, Fit reattached his arm in silence and left, disappearing into the same undergrowth he had arrived from, but not without a quick lick to Pac’s hand and one last glance over his shoulder. Pac went through the motions of reattaching his leg, shrugging back on his armor, and picking up his sword from where he had dropped it, but couldn’t stop himself from wishing that they could have remained there, curled up into each other, forever. Screw this whole Purgatory thing.
But that thinking was wishful and so it was with a sense of duty that Pac stuck his earbud back into his ear and turned back on his walkie-talkie.
“Hey guys,” he spoke into it, wincing when that prompted shrieking from Bad, Tina, and Tubbo simultaneously. As they demanded to know where he had been, why he had dropped off the face of the earth last night, Pac started the trek back to their base. But before he left the clearing, he paused and opened up his map. A new waypoint was created at his current coordinates: Fit .