Work Text:
Picnic in the Woods
“It's nice to have a day off, sometimes,” Mince says. She enjoys the hot dry weather of the splatlands, but sometimes, she finds herself longing for Inkopolis again. Sunlight is better than being in the domes, and she gets such clear views of the sky, but it hasn't rained in over a month. She misses it. “I've been so busy with classes I haven't really had a chance to, you know, enjoy and explore.”
“I haven't either, what with the Olympinks,” says Lucky. She's got a picnic basket tucked over one arm, one she and Mince packed together. They're not dating again, they agreed not to for at least another month so they can figure out how just friendship feels, but they can still enjoy picnics.
Just without the makeouts.
“So how did you find... wherever you wanna show me?”
“Oh!” Lucky grins at her. “One of my friends, uh, the friends who kinda scare you, found it. But it's... oh, you'll love it.”
She means one of her fellow agents. Mince isn't so scared of them anymore, she knows they helped lots of Octarians like her escape, but it still makes her a little uncomfortable. “What is it?”
“There's a... not a kettle, exactly, but same idea. It's a drain that leads to Mount Nantai.” Lucky leads her down an alleyway, past Grizzco's entrance, and stops. It looks different from the rest of the street, with carvings of trees in the pavement around it. “You were always talking about hiking it.”
“I was.” Mince knows they weren't real, just the hypnoshades feeding her things to keep her happy and help pass the time between lessons and patrols, but she has many fond memories of climbing the trail on Mount Nantai. So when Lucky squids through, Mince follows.
She emerges in a grassy clearing, in the sunlight, with a breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees. It's still warm here, not cold like it should be, but with all the sunlight and it could just be a long summer. That's happened before. Lucky's already got the basket open. “Should we eat here, or climb the rest of the way? I don't think the top's more than an hour off, but this is pretty, too.”
“Oh, let's reach the top,” Mince says. She looks around. This feels... familiar. Well, she hiked it in hypnoshades, fake versions, dozens of times. Of course they'd base it off a real place.
“Sounds good,” Lucky says, closing the basket. She takes a sip of her drink, tries to tuck it into her pocket, fails, and uses the decorative chain around her longest tentacle to tie it there. Mince giggles and sticks hers to a sucker. This is nice.
She has a hard time focusing on the conversation as they climb. Mince tries to enjoy Lucky's company. It really is nice, with a breeze ruffling the... she doesn't feel the breeze on her skin. No, no. No.
The worst part of hypnoshades is you can't tell you're wearing them and you can't take them off yourself. But this is Lucky. Agent Four of the NSS. Her girlfriend ex-girlfriend girlfriend ex-girlfriend friend. She's safe with Lucky.
She's safe . She knows she is. So she offers to carry the picnic basket for a while, and whistles, and focuses on how nice it is to be with her friend.
And then they pass by a river, an old log lying across it. A tree, old and branchless with age though you can see where the branches were shorn off by people who came before, balanced over the river. And Lucky leaps onto it. “This has to be here on purpose, do you wanna see the other side, Mincey?”
Mince is going to throw up.
Every time. Every time she's come here in remembrance. It hasn't been real.
Every time it hasn't been real
someone she's with
mother cousin teacher sister squadmate uncle friend
Every time it hasn't been real, someone has walked on that log.
And Lucky,
An NSS agent,
would know that.
She wouldn't do that, she wouldn't dare, if this were real.
Mince drops the basket. She turns her back on her friend.
“I know.”