Work Text:
It’s a nice spring night in Octo Canyon, even if it’s just cloudy enough to cover the stars and the moon. It’s actually a pretty usual night, but there’s only one person who’s usually out here at night that isn’t secluded in an Octarian Dome: Marie Cuttlefish. Not that she ever pays attention to the natural beauty around her or that she isn’t also regularly secluding herself, mind you. After all, it’s not common for a celebrity pop singer to disappear from Inkling society, whether or not her fame seemed to be past its prime. And to some canyon, too? Of course, none of the other Inklings would understand why Marie had been staying in this little cabin, and they would have their worldviews shaken to know that the Octarians exist and that Marie’s helping fight a secret war against them for the Great Zapfish and Callie.
Most nights, Marie would probably be wallowing. She thinks that it’s her fault Callie’s gone. In a flawed assumption, she thinks that if she hadn’t made that final Splatfest so personal, maybe they wouldn’t have drifted apart. She should have fought harder for us to stay together as the Squid Sisters. She should have gotten Gramps and Three to help her get Callie before they left for that mountain. She should have been able to handle this on my own without recruiting a whole new agent. There wasn’t time for those thoughts tonight, though. She has some cleaning up to do. Agent Four, the one she recruited, has had a very rough day, and Marie can’t just send her back to the city at this hour without offering her a place to sleep.
Four encountered invisible platforms for the first time today, and it was almost painful for Marie to watch. While watching, Marie had wondered how many times Four could just run off the edge. She didn’t want to make Four feel dumb, but Four needed to use that brella and paint her way around instead of charging straight through. Normally, Four can get through two or three kettles a day, but it was getting late and she was still at the second checkpoint of this…
So now, Marie was frantically cleaning up Cuttlefish Cabin for Four. After all, the twin bed’s sheets need to be washed, the rooms need to be tidied, and some food needs to be prepared. Marie rifles through the cupboards, cabinets, and fridge, making do with what little was there. She was supposed to go grocery shopping yesterday, when Four wasn’t doing missions, but as per usual she was in a bit of a slump. There were two cups of instant noodles and some veggies that could be cooked up and added, which sounded good enough to Marie. After all, that’s the meal she’s been subsisting off of in her slump since she went off-grid a few months back.
Despite having been in a depressive slump for quite a while, Marie was still too prideful to admit to herself why she was truly doing all this for Four. She said to herself that it was just a nice thing to do for her agent after an especially long and hard day of work. In reality, she felt guilty. Marie is convinced that Four’s only in this position because of her. She thinks that she’s the one who should be out there fighting tooth and nail to get Callie back. Instead, she’s playing comms support while Four does the heavy lifting of some war she found out about a week or two ago. Marie hardly knows anything personal about Four and she’s doing all this.
Before Marie got the chance to spiral, the washing machine out back dinged that the sheets were done. When she went out to move them over to the dryer, she saw Four finally walking up.
“Sure took your time getting back, huh? Come on, dinner’s almost ready!”
“…okay…”
Marie still hasn’t seen Four say much of anything. In fact, Three said more in their time through Octo Valley. Even getting an acknowledgment like that from Four is rare. Marie knows Four’s legal name (she prefers being called Four, though), and in her background check, she didn’t find anything medical regarding being mute. She actually went to a pretty good private school and did tons of extracurriculars, so Marie doesn’t get why Four is so unresponsive. It shouldn’t have anything to do with Marie being a (former) pop star considering that Four didn’t seem to know who Marie was at first.
Marie’s meal looks better than instant noodles with some vegetables really should. Served in bowls instead of cups and with some seasoning, it looks good enough to be appetizing to Four and good enough to delude Marie into forgetting that this is the same dinner she’s had almost every day for months. Presentation aside, the meal tastes good to both Inklings. They eat in silence, which isn’t the least bit comfortable for Marie and the guilt gnawing at her, but Marie is pretty sure that she is the worst conversation starter in Inkopolis. So she stays quiet, believing that if she says anything then Four wouldn’t like it. Why does she care so much about saying the right things to Four?
After their late dinner, Marie clears the table and washes off the dishes. Four is scrunching their face while staring into her phone, but Marie can’t come up with a good idea of what the agent’s looking at. Marie starts to hum some of her old Squid Sisters setlists, but the beeping of the dryer quickly interrupts, startling both her and Four out of their rhythms, with Four now looking particularly worried. Right, Marie never told Four about prepping the bed for her.
“Oh, that’s just the dryer. I washed the sheets so that you can sleep in that bed over there tonight if you want,” Marie explained while pointing towards the bed in the back. She feels embarrassed because she doesn’t think the bed really is all that much. It is still a bed, though.
“I…Thank you, Marie. But…” Four trails off as she turns her head down.
“But?”
“I mean, you’ve already made dinner, I can’t just stay longer…” Four mumbles out. At this point, she is almost face-down on the table with her hands covering her head.
“Nonsense, I can’t just shoo you out at this hour without offering you a bed. Plus, you’ve done so much for me. You think that dinner and a night here would pay me back in full? Anyways, I’ll have the sheets on the bed in a couple of minutes and then I’ll be out of your tentacles.” Marie goes out to get the sheets. She is so caught up in how hard it is to get Four to accept any sort of help or gifts that she doesn’t notice that the clouds are clearing. Instead, she’s walking back inside to get the sheets on and say goodnight to Four, however they spend it.
“Oh, I, uh…thanks. I may as well stay here, there’s not really anyone in Inkopolis waiting on me to get back to them.” Marie gets more worried every time Four says something like that. Does she really not have anyone or anything outside of the agent work? Then again, does Marie currently have anything else? She likes avoiding answering that question (the answer is no).
“Alright. Sleep well, Agent Snore,” Marie chuckles as she leaves. There is no way she made a pun like that to Four. Marie is hopeless. She walks over to the edge of the floating island cluster and sits there for a while. She’s going to have to grab a sleeping bag from the cabin and sleep outside now that the sky’s clear, but she can do that later. For now, she’s thinking about what she found in her background check of Four.
She went to a private high school and was a top member on so many different teams and clubs. Sports? She’s athletic. Academics? She’s smart. Does someone need a substitute for the day? She’s adaptable. She managed to almost, but not quite, get prom queen, so she was decently popular. She graduated near the top of her class. She was living at home with her parents like any normal kid until she came to Inkopolis after graduation. Marie wonders if she would’ve been in that class with Four had Callie and Marie not been picked up to be teen pop stars. After all, they’re the same age. Marie’s just had to grow up faster with the whole idol and agent businesses. Life remains the same, though, and Four has the semi-regular experience that Marie dreams of.
And somehow, Four doesn’t keep up with anyone. Not her family, not her friends, no one. She didn’t need to get a burner phone to be an agent, she doesn’t have anything in this one. Still. Is that why Marie feels so bad? Is she keeping her from having a normal life? It’s totally not normal for Four to be doing a job that takes up all of her time. With these athletics and weapon skills, she could be some up-and-coming hotshot in battles, yet she’s here. She doesn’t even need to be here all day every day, but it seems like she wants to be. Marie doesn't get it. Four didn’t come into this with any personal stakes, and she doesn’t seem to be getting her greatest joy from splatting Octarians. What’s here that’s worth working so hard all the time?
“Marie?”
Marie jumps up, not having heard Four walk up through her incredibly loud thinking. Remembering that Four is still there, she asks, “Yes, Four? Whatcha need?”
“I just wondering where you’re going to sleep…I am in what looks like your bed, after all.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to pull out one of the sleeping bags here before too long. The weather’s nice, and the stars are pretty, now that I’m looking at them,” Marie sighs while taking in the beauty around her.
“Yeah, they are…” Four trails off while still looking down. After a moment, Marie realizes that Four is still standing there. Turning slightly, Marie sees that Four is still staring at the ground with a slight grimace.
“Is something wrong, Four? You look like there’s something on your mind.”
“Oh! Well, it’s nice out here, and you’re sleeping out here tonight…”
“I am. Where are you going with that?”
“I wanted to see…” Four starts. She looks like she is about to explode as she starts blushing in a golden yellow that matches her ink. Finding the ability to, she continues, “…See if I could also have a sleeping bag and be out here with you.”
Marie starts cackling. She thought that Four was about to tell her some grave news like she was quitting being an agent. Of course Marie would enjoy having Four out here, the two of them under the stars in sleeping bags. Why does she enjoy that thought, actually? That’s something to ponder at a different time. Realizing that Four got visibly more nervous at the laughter, Marie hurries, “Oh of course you can! The way you barely got that out, I thought you had some bad news or something. Here, I’ll go grab those sleeping bags if you can make sure the area’s flat. Before I do that, though, I want to ask you something. Technically somethings, but they’re all connected and junk. You don’t have to answer, especially considering how asking to sleep out here made you almost explode, but I wanna put it out there.”
“Definitely not a worrying lead-in, Marie. I’m totally not worried about this question,” Four pokes with a smirk.
“Yeah, yeah, real comforting of me,” Marie says with a giggle. “In all seriousness, though, is this what you wanted to be doing with your time? I told you that I ran a background check on your first couple of missions, and based on your school and all those extracurriculars, you should’ve been set for some high-paying job with flexible hours for battling. Instead, you spend most of the day almost every day here. You’ve also said that you don’t keep up with anyone. Is there no one that you’ve wanted to talk to? No one you miss?”
Four is taken aback, but she still answers all of that. “Well, I would be lying if I said that I planned on fighting a race that I was specifically taught went extinct after losing the Great Turf War 100 years ago in some secret war under the command of a famous pop idol that I’d heard of but been too busy to look into. Hehe, this is actually a pretty funny situation when I put it like that. But yeah, it’s not what I was looking for, but it’s nice. You are right, I was planning on getting some good job with flexible hours that lets me have all the free time I want for whatever, but I like like this more. I can just work and do things my way, and the only person I talk to is you encouraging and guiding me.”
“You don’t want to talk to anyone else?”
“Oh, I do…I actually miss my teammates and club members. Lots of good memories with them. I did try to stay in contact with them, though. Funny how none of them ever said anything to me once I stopped messaging first, though. You’d think you’d be better friends with people after sharing interests and being in proximity to them for years, but I guess doing those various things with them was the only thing that really kept me talking to any of them for that long. Oh well, time moves forward, and wanting them back just means that I drag the dead weight forward with me. I guess that I don’t actually miss the people that much. I miss feeling like the people around me care…”
“Oh, Four…”
“That’s part of why I’m here so much. You, uh, well, I…I know that you…care…about me,” Four sputters out. If Marie thought that Four might explode before, she really looks like she is going to now. That gilded blush is larger and almost glowing, and she is beginning to shake and cry. Instead of thinking, Marie runs over and gives Four a tight hug. It isn’t one of Callie’s bear hugs, which Marie also wants right now, but it is enough to ground Four. Thinking, Marie backs off a bit, loosening the hug as Four also hugs back a bit.
“I’m here,” Marie whispers into Four’s ear, “I do care about you. I’m not going to leave you behind. It’s been a long day, time for us to sleep. By the way, we’re going shopping tomorrow, my treat.”
“WE ARE?!”
“We are,” Marie says as she goes to the cabin to grab the sleeping bags. She cannot believe that she just had that conversation with Four. That might’ve been more words out of Four than the rest of this week. And Four was stumbling and fading in and out trying to say things to her. Is that Four having feelings for her? She’ll have to figure it out, tomorrow’s shopping trip should help her with that. Does she have feelings for Four? Probably, but she’ll deal with that later. When will that later be? Later.
For this night, though, that doesn’t matter. For this night, though, the past and future are distant, irrelevant thoughts for other times. For this night, though, the two inklings are peacefully sleeping next to each other as the stars up above twinkle down upon them.