Archive of Our Own

Iselin immediately sees Kirra approach the landing pad. She’s wearing a sort-of forest green jumpsuit with a tight navy long-sleeved shirt under it, with the jumpsuit’s legs tucked under her boots. 

“That’s so the ticks won’t get in my clothes!” Kirra pats and lightly pulls on her baggy jumpsuit pants. “It isn’t just operation standard, Locky.”

Iselin looks at herself. She didn’t tuck in her pale blue shirt, zip up her jacket, or anything of the sort, so she does that just as their ride approaches.

Everyone always has some form of weekend activity, even if others are on missions. Only Sage and Viper seems to stay in the base or its surrounding areas 24/7, but for this weekend, it looks like Neon, Fade and Jett are going to a formal event of some kind (they’re wearing elaborate dresses, so it’s a healthy assumption), while Killjoy and Raze seems to just be going for errands, as Raze is bringing a large plastic tote bag. 

As they get seated, Iselin simply blocks everyone out chatting about their respective weekend activities as she crosses her arms and leans her head down while she tries to take a nap. She doesn't really want to find out. She does not want to get to know them. It will be very selfish of her to do so. 

Kirra nudges her right as she’s about to fall asleep. “Hey, Locky. You going to be okay?” 

“Yes,” Iselin replies simply. “Any reason why you think otherwise?” 

A slight pause as something in the other group’s discussion triggers loud, raucous laughter. Kirra lets it pass before answering. “If you ever feel uncomfy, you’ll let me know, right?” 

Iselin watches the other group talk. She cannot understand what they’re talking about. “I will be alright, Skye.”

Something in the way she has said “Skye” made Kirra frown a little. But she does not question it, and simply settles back in her seat, seemingly deciding it’s not worth pursuing, and lets her nap.

Sometimes Iselin cannot tell why she and Kirra get along well, or why Kirra keeps her around. Maybe Kirra tolerates her silence and stubbornness. Maybe she just needed someone to walk with on these hikes, or for someone to teach woodcarving to, or to steal shirts from. Maybe Kirra likes it that she doesn’t complain a lot. She’s satisfied with being just a guy around her, somehow. 

Right as Iselin falls asleep, she hears Kirra say something. “I’ll be here either way,” she thinks she heard Kirra say. But she could just be hearing things.

After being dropped off at the start of the trail, both of them immediately started walking. Oftentimes, they don’t really talk when they hike. When they do, they talk about Protocol things. How was your last mission? How are you feeling after you got resurrected? Was this agent you haven’t been assigned with before any good? 

Iselin did just come from a failed mission last week, and she’s been decommissioned ever since. Kirra has been assisting her with getting better, but there is no uncertain time when Deadlock will be pulled to a mission again, so Kirra seems determined to maximize her time with her before that happens.

They can advance pretty well with that routine of asking the work why’s and what’s, but they chose mostly deafening silence as they let nature do the talking. The air in the trail is cold, and it gets colder the more Kirra and Iselin go further, and the gusts of wind are loud against the trees. Despite the chilly air, there is no snow, and it reminds Iselin of the air of home, just before the snow hits the next day or week. She doesn’t even know what region they are in. They can be in Norway for all she knows. But she’s been away from home for too long, she cannot really tell trees better than she can the buildings of their extraction sites.

Iselin stares at every bush she can see, trying to find the strawberries. She points at them sometimes, and asks Kirra if it's edible. 

“No, those are pokeweed berries.” Kirra roughly pulls Iselin’s prosthetic hand away from the plant, as if a single fiber touching metal will immediately eradicate her. “Nothing in that plant is edible.”

Despite being quite literally held back, Iselin tries to look closer. “They aren’t blueberries?”

“Nope.” Kirra points at the plant, specifically the black berries and their vibrant stems. “See the purple stems? Blueberries just have normal green stems. Pokeweed’s one of the only black berries that can kill you.” 

Iselin realizes she’s never seen a blueberry bush before, but she keeps that to herself. That is why they’re on this hike.

After around halfway through the trail, something catches Kirra’s eye, and she almost jumps in excitement.

“There’s berries you can eat!” She points past Iselin’s shoulder.

And there it is. A strawberry bush.

It doesn't quite look like those strawberry plants Iselin sees in commercials that seemingly prove how “fresh” store fruits are. These look smaller. The berries in it look smaller too, but something must have been in the soil, because some of them are way bigger than she expected wild strawberries to be.

Kirra takes out a small basin. “Alright! These are wild, so there may be some soil or other things on them, so a wash is still needed.” Iselin watches her take water from a nearby stream and sit up by the bush with it, immediately beginning to select and pick strawberries. “Don’t take too much, alright?”

“They’re a little misshapen now, aren’t they?” The closest one to Iselin is shaped oddly, but its red surface with the seeds makes it fairly evident it is, indeed, a strawberry. 

“Well, they aren’t on a farm!” Kirra crouches, placing the filled water basin down as she sits. Iselin can hear the enthusiasm in her voice. “Those ones, they're grown, taken care of, watered everyday by humans. These ones are just holding out on their own, so they don’t look perfect, but they’re still strawberries.” 

Iselin sits down beside her, just near enough at the water basin, watching Kirra pick one strawberry before picking berries herself. It was a blur in her peripheral vision, and Iselin absently grabbed onto the berries she sees while Kirra picks out the ones on her side. The stark contrast of the red strawberries against her white prosthetic make it a little easier. She didn’t know why her vision was odd, but perhaps it's just fatigue, perhaps it's the dewy fog. 

When she takes a look at the berries in her hands, they do look quite odd. There’s one shaped like a shoe, one small yet very ripe one. One berry stands out, large in size but very ripe, and it almost has appendages that resemble a bear, which–

A bear –

“Hey Locky, what do you got so–” Kirra seems like she was able to tell what’s happening the second her eyesight lands on the strawberries in Iselin’s hands.

Without thinking, Kirra immediately bites on the palm of Iselin’s prosthetic, so hard Iselin almost felt it. In that instant, the bear berry is gone from her synthetic palm. It took a while before Iselin was able to process what happened, and she stares at Kirra while she clears her throat and spits out the leaves, obviously visibly regretting biting into metal and a whole strawberry. 

Iselin looks at the grass beneath their feet. She doesn’t want to look at the strawberry bush anymore. She doesn’t want to look at Kirra. She probably thinks this is all so stupid. She knows what was happening. A berry. A single berry. A berry shaped like her worst nightmare. 

It's silly, Iselin thinks. Her prosthetic digs at her knee. It’s a strawberry. It’s supposed to make me feel better. It’s just a berry. We walked for so long just to get here. Why is a single berry making me feel like this?

She knows why. And she doesn’t like why. 

Iselin reaches out, tries to wipe Kirra’s face. Before she could, Kirra laughs awkwardly, almost to break the silence, and Iselin’s hand retreats.

“Shoot.” Kirra spits out another leaf and rubs her jaw. “I guess don’t do that... I forgot to wash that one.” 

Did Kirra really eat a strawberry, leaves and all, cause she thought it would help?

She just watches quietly as Kirra wipes her mouth. She’d rather not remember how big the berry was, but if Kirra is drooling red from it, it must have been a big bite… a big berry. A big bear. Almost like she just bit into flesh and blood if she squints her eyes. 

“Did it taste good?” 

“Hm?” 

“Did the bear taste good?” Iselin tries to not appear like she’s suffering inside over strawberries. At the very least, she is curious if they tasted good. If something else tasted good. 

Kirra thinks about it for a while, licking the remnants of it from the edges of her mouth. It’s almost torture for Iselin to be staring at Kirra’s mouth in this distance while she does this. “It’s sour… a little sweet really. But refreshing. I could imagine it in a soft drink, or with a sweet cream.” 

“I’ll go look for other berries.” Iselin stands up and immediately looks in another bush, having heard enough. 

Kirra immediately feels something is wrong. Iselin hears her stand up and approach. “Hey, you feeling alright there?”

“Yeah.” Iselin stares at what she’s sure is a blueberry bush. Blueberry with normal stems, not purple. “Don’t worry about it.”

Silence passes as Iselin inspects the new berry that has caught her eye. 

“By any chance, did you want to eat the bear strawby?”

What. 

Iselin turns to Kirra, basin of berries in hand. 

“Sorry, I ate it. You were quiet and you had that thousand yard stare looking at it, so I thought it… well, you know.” She is also trying hard not to establish eye contact. “Did you want to eat it?”

Iselin is curious about the berry. She’s never had a fresh one like that in a long, long while. If only it came in a better shape, she would have been a little more annoyed about Kirra snatching it from her palm. “I… didn’t,” Iselin says. A mental image of Kirra biting the bear, not the berry, flashes in her brain, and she laughs a little. It’s silly. It soothes her, though, even if Kirra does not say anything about it. “But now that you said it, I wish I did.” 

“You can always just close your eyes and imagine it, Locky.” Kirra dips her hand in the basin that she’s ignored for a bit now, and she fishes out a plump strawberry that’s also just as misshapen, but not quite bear looking, and presents it. If Iselin narrows her eyes, maybe she can make it out. It looks like a bear Kirra would carve with wood if she wasn’t finished with it yet.

“I suppose I can.” Iselin moves closer, motioning to eat. 

A stray thought passes Iselin’s mind. She does not close her eyes and stares at Kirra while she bites the offered strawberry from her hand. She hears Kirra laugh, saying something about not closing her eyes, but as she chews, Iselin lets her mind wander about flavors and yearn for something a little more than strawberries. Kirra waits with a smile, obviously waiting for her thoughts, and all Iselin can think of is that some things are just close by but hard to get, but that isn’t what she should say.

“It is sour.” Iselin lets it settle in her mouth. She needed to think of something better to say than her unrestrained thoughts and how she truly feels. “I don’t think synthetic strawberries have that flavor.”

The chuckle that came out of Kirra is bright and crisp. “Right? Way different than the store ones!” She turns away, tone fairly cheerful. She picks up the basin and approaches the berry bush with a closer eye. “There’s freeze-dried ones, but they aren’t the same.” 

“They can still be fairly good,” Iselin says. She remembered someone in base brought little packs of freeze-dried strawberries covered in chocolate for everyone, and she still craves that sweet and sour taste. “Unless you enjoy a juicy strawberry more.” 

“I do like juicy things more,” Kirra says, with a big smile on her face. The way she said it almost without thinking made Iselin do a double take. “That’s why I like that bear berry bite!” 

The mental image of Kirra, biting into the bear that’s obviously not entirely natural, makes itself stronger in Iselin’s mind. For a moment she lets the gory part of it linger, and she can definitely imagine her ripping it in shreds with her teeth and her bare hands. Iselin dismisses the thought the second she finds out that she finds the thought of Kirra literally ripping apart her source of mental troubles attractive.

Outwardly, Iselin can do nothing else but smile at Kirra. Inside, she is fighting for her life upon the realization. “I’m sure you do” is all she can spit out. She turns her attention back to the blueberries. She’s sure her face is red right now. There is no way Kirra is saying what she’s saying. 

Don’t assume, Iselin repeats in her brain like a mantra. Do not assume. 

After gathering a good amount of blueberries, she returns to Kirra with her smaller basin. Kirra seemed like she would be happy with whatever amount she brought her, and was willing to move on further up the trail in search of other things. Iselin is trying her damnest to read Kirra’s face and what she’s feeling, but a constant smile is not really an indication of anything.

“Well, we need to leave some here for the other hikers, but we should have enough.” She adds the lid on the basins and slips it back on her pack. “We chanced on this bountiful one, but we can look for other things!”

Are there more to this trail than berries , Iselin thinks. “Like…?”

“Do you know what the chicken of the woods is?”

Turns out, that is a type of mushroom. Iselin follows Kirra’s instructions to take a good amount but not most of it, as other foragers may need it more than them. Iselin agrees. If she was starving in the woods, she would be mad if some asshole took all the provisions of the forest for themselves. 

Iselin is well aware they hiked here for strawberries, but she’s enjoying other aspects of this hike, even if they’re coincidental. The cool weather means some amount of wood in the trail has died, and as they rot, plants and fungi more suited to the cold weather springs up in their place or around them. Kirra takes delight in explaining the terrain and this cycle of life in the woods, and Iselin is more than happy to listen. It takes away her thoughts from the bear. She still finds it silly and weak that all it took was a single wild strawberry to remember, but maybe in its berry form in her head, it is easier for her to digest. Easier to swallow, easier to consume, easy to acquire the taste.

It has been a while since Iselin joined the Protocol. She still feels like a newcomer sometimes, like there are so many things she needs to process. She almost prefers it that way. Iselin is still mourning, after all, for everyone and everything she has lost. She doesn't feel like she is deserving of new, happy memories when many of her comrades, her sworn sisters , have died. Would it be in vain if she does not live out her life? Is the lost arm payment to that? An offering to satiate the divine forces against her?

“These conifers are very common in the area!” Iselin’s thoughts are cut off by Kirra explaining a cluster of similar trees. “This among some oaks, yews, and willows, are what brings the chicken of the woods to life. When they rot, the fungus grows in their bark, and the rest provide nutrients in the soil for other plants.” 

She could listen to Kirra explain trees to her, somehow. Or berries. Iselin is pretty sure strawberries aren’t even berries… or fruit. She would love to have Kirra explain to her why. Why is Kirra any different? Why is she enjoying her company? Does she deserve to? 

“Quite the circle of life,” Iselin blurts. “I suppose dying in a place like this would be more beneficial, isn’t it?” 

Iselin did not realize how concerning her statement was until Kirra had approached her, so close and so fast she could have sworn she felt her heartbeat in her own chest. 

“Hey!” Kirra breathes out. “You’re not dying anytime soon!” Kirra seems so sure of it. Iselin has already died, several times. Even Kirra has died several times, as well.

“But if I do perish permanently…” Iselin realizes her prosthetic hand is being held only when Kirra raises her hand on her own chest. As if Kirra is about to swear her life to her. 

“You won’t.” Kirra is so sure of it, it almost scares Iselin. “Not on my watch.”

In the Protocol, death is nothing but a rock to kick out of the way. It may hurt them back, but it was never an obstacle that mattered. Iselin sometimes finds herself missing the sensation between dying and being revived. In it, she does not have to worry about anything. No worries about her burdens, other people. 

The mental image of Kirra biting the berry, no, the bear, surfaces again. Iselin doesn’t want anything to happen to Kirra, either. She doesn't want her to feel empty, so much that their artificial death feels like relief. She does not want Kirra to feel her fears. She doesn't want anything to happen to her. 

“Kirra, do you think I’d let anything happen to you?” Iselin grips her hands tighter and closer to her own. Kirra seems surprised by the first name usage. “My troubles are my own, but you’re already helping. Death seems conquerable now, because of your presence.” 

“But… Loc–”

“It’s Iselin, by the way.” She brings Kirra’s hands close to her face, kisses on her glove, and then immediately drops it, favoring to finish the trail. “Now, are we gonna finish this hike, or are we just doing my therapy in the woods?” 

Kirra was left dumbfounded for a moment, but she shakes her head, and runs towards her hike buddy. Or is it still just hiking buddy?

“Sure. We have a view waiting for us, Iselin.” 

They’ve finally reached the end of the trail, and what awaited them is quite a view of the nearest city, covered still in a layer of wintery fog. It isn’t enough to cover the sights, or the skyline where they can see the outline of the nearby mountains, home of more hiking trails. In the outlook, there seems to be logs to sit on, and a campfire to prepare meals with, if they choose to camp here for a night. 

“I think this was worth the hike!” Kirra stretches her body, still staring at the sun slowly rising further and further away from the mountains. “What a view! Iselin, come take a look!” 

She’s enjoying how her name sounds with Kirra’s voice, but still walks closer to look at the far city and its surrounding nature. “You can see the Kingdom building there.” Iselin points at a large rectangle by the city. “A little too close, I think.”

“Well, if that’s how they want to station themselves,” Kirra muses, finally sitting down by the log, but still looking out. “Small cities like this aren't new to industrialization.”

Iselin sits beside her, and pulls the strawberry basin from Kirra’s pack. “I guess we can report that at the Protocol when we get back.”

She absently fishes out a strawberry from the container, and takes a bite. She didn't notice Kirra looking in her way.

“Can I have it, too?” Kirra asks plainly, reaching out.

“Of course.” Before she can even start chewing, Iselin feels Kirra’s hand on her shoulder pulling her, and soft lips pressed against her own. She almost dropped the remnants of the strawberry in her hand before realizing she needs to do something , and she pulls Kirra closer, opens her mouth, and pushes a bite of the berry between Kirra’s lips, before finally relishing the taste she’s been craving this entire hike. 

Iselin almost can't look at Kirra when they part, but she dares to glance up, hoping she isn’t just imagining this, she isn’t just assuming. 

“It tastes better like this.” Kirra smiles, holding her hands and giving her undivided attention. “I think I like this view better, too.”  

They both turn to watch the sun rise even further, letting the campsite – and themselves – warm up. Technology has developed so much in the past few decades, and Iselin can only assume that in a few year’s or decade’s time, this hiking trail will cease to be, only to be replaced by an office building, a parking lot, or somewhere where strawberries get made or grown. 

She can only assume that whatever they make, it will never taste as good as the one she and Kirra shared.