Chapter Text

Act 1

The Ordinary World

The ping of his phone was both deeply aggravating, and a welcomed interruption from Greg's frustratingly fruitless stare at a blinking cursor. With a cracking smack, he slams the laptop closed and huffs – trying to convince himself that it's interruptions like this, not his own lack of inspiration, that's preventing him from writing the next episode. He can almost believe it.

Laying lengthwise on the couch, socks, jeans and yesterday’s Brooklyn t-shirt – or was it from the day before – Greg’s neck aches, his wrists ache, and his arse is flatter than a steamrolled pancake. Wrestling the sofa and mostly losing, he sits up and checks his messages on his flung phone.

Huh. It's from his agent.

“a horn asking about your schedule. u still incomunicado? script done??”

Well, fuck and bother. Also, what? A horn? The fuck is his agent talking about a horn for— Oohh. Suddenly Greg realises – not a horn – ‘A. Horne’. Which is only a partial answer. Why would Alex want to know his schedule? They weren’t due for filming for at least a month, and usually Alex would just ask him directly if something came up.

Or at least, he used to. Greg hummed, running his hand through his now-messy white hair, as he thought back on his weeks of writing isolation. It had been a while since they’d talked.

But this script! Goddamn this script. Nothing was working – the characters were just… there. Flat. Unmotivated. Not doing anything. He kept trying to make them do things, and they’d shuffle from plot point to plot point like they were sleepwalking through his hard-won narratives. This blank page wasn’t his first blank page – this was at least his twelfth draft – but pressing Ctrl+A and backspace had none of the viscerally satisfying crunch-and-throw that balled up pieces of paper had. Another week of this, though, and he might see how well he can ball up and throw a fucking laptop.

His phone – held too tightly in his huge grasp as he imagines yeeting his laptop into the bin – buzzes and bleeps again, lighting up with another message.

“told a. will call tmrw for a checkin at 10am. pick up greg”

Shit. Feeling like he’s forgotten to do the homework – and by ‘forget’, he means he panicked and procrastinated as a form of self-soothing sabotage – Greg throws his phone against the sofa in disgust. Unfortunately, the cushions are far bouncier than he expects, and the phone hits them on a corner, sending the slab of glowing black glass flying back towards his face. He flinches, arms up around his head, and yells. It misses, but the phone zips past him, over the coffee table and the rug, unerringly finding the narrow strip of hardwood beyond and landing with a terrifyingly solid thwack. Greg’s heart plummets.

“Shit.”

With a creak and a groan that he pretends is the sofa’s springs, Greg shuffles over in his socked feet to evaluate the damage. Gingerly, he picks up the phone, and turns it to see the screen. Undamaged. He sighs with relief – shoulders slumping – and then the intercom buzzes and he flinches so hard the phone goes flying out of his hand again.

Call to Adventure

“Shit! Fuck— Fucking— God damn it!”

He scrambles to grab the flying device. He hits it at least three times as he flounders and swears and all but plays keepie-uppy with his tumbling, apparently suicidal, phone before he precariously catches it between his pinkie and ring finger of his left hand. Before it can slip away from his now sweating hands, he grabs it in his right hand and shoves it hard into his jeans pocket.

God, it’s always something.

So he’s in a fine mood when he walks over to the door, just in time to catch the intercom buzzing loudly in his face, before he can press the button to find out who the hell is bothering him.

“Who the f— Who is it?” he asks.

“Oh! It’s— Ah. Sorry,” comes the crackly, fuzzy response.

“Alex?” Greg asks, baffled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Hmm.” Alex hums so loudly, the microphone picks it up and his worry comes out of the speaker all crunchy and crap. “Your schedule said you were writing, but I hoped… Never mind.”

Greg looks down with a frown, patting his jeans pocket where his phone is still recovering from its death-defying gymnastics. He thumbs the intercom button. “Have you been standing outside my house while you contacted my agent?”

“No.” Alex’s response comes through clear – the most confident he’s sounded so far. “Technically I was sitting outside your house, in my car, though I suspect that’s not the pertinent part of the—”

Releasing the speaker button only long enough to wipe a hand down his face, Greg mutters, “Fuck sake” to his empty flat.

“—Alex. Why are you— You know what? Just come up to the flat. I’m sure you have some weird explanation for—”

“Actually, I thought you might come down?” Alex asked in his most hopeful, pleading tone. The one he used on camera for his Little Alex Horne persona. Suspicious.

“...Why?”

“WeneedtogoonaquestforPatatas.”

Refusal of the Call

Greg's eyes go wide. “I’m sorry…” Greg says, not at all sorry. “...What?”

His phone starts ringing. It's Alex. Greg answers it.

Warbling and crackling and exactly a fraction of a beat out of sync, Greg hears Alex's breathy, rushed voice in both ears.

“I know it sounds ridiculous but I've just been thinking about the video we did about the Taskmaster’s cat and how he's down to his last life and it doesn't seem fair and you're always busy and I'm always busy and just this one time we could maybe do something for— for the cat but I know it's just a toy and it'd— it would be like a quest. Or something.” Alex runs out of breath.

Greg leans away from his front door far enough to see the afternoon light streaming through the living room windows. It's the middle of the day.

“Alex, are you drunk?”

A frustrated huff. “No, I just—”

“—Is this some kind of YouTube content thing? You don't usually get me involved in—”

“—No! I hoped— Never mind. I'm— I'm sorry.” Alex sighs. “It's a joke. Just— Just another one of my silly jokes! Ha ha.” Alex's voice is brittle, and the humour feels forced. “I'll let you get back to your writing. Sorry, Greg.”

Alex hangs up, and the intercom clicks off, simultaneously.

Greg frowns. This is very unlike Alex. Not the weird humour – that's almost too on brand – but Alex giving up on a joke, or an idea, or something. Even being at Greg's flat without an explicit invitation is really out of character for the man. And now he's outside talking about a task involving a stuffed toy, off the clock?

Meeting the Mentor

Greg calls Rachel.

“Gregory? What's wrong?” She picks up after three rings. There's noise in the background, as usual. “Is Alex with you?”

Greg will have to reflect on why Rachel immediately assumes there’s something wrong, later. “He's— He's outside my flat. Just turned up spouting some nonsense about a cat? And a mission?”

“A quest. Pay attention, Greg.” The phone goes muffled and Rachel tells off someone in the background, sternly informing what must be one of the boys that they need a smart pair of trousers for special occasions and to stop whinging. Then she speaks into the phone again – Greg has been too surprised to respond anyway. “Look – I don't know what's going on in his brain at the best of times, and I'm not sure he does either, but Alex has been fretting about this for weeks. Something about Patatas being on his last life.”

“It's just a toy, Rach!”

“Of course it is. Everyone knows that. But also, maybe it's not just about the toy, Greg.” Rachel sounds like she's made her point. But then, she demands – “And since when have you declined to ‘yes, and’ my husband?”

“Well…”

“Didn't you, in fact, state you'd bury a body if he asked you to?” Rachel asks, really rubbing it in.

“Fuck. No one told me the cat was dead!” Greg half yells down the phone, pacing in the hallway and flinging his other arm in the air.

“Greg.”

“So, what – is this some kind of midlife crisis? A mental break?”

“Alex just reached out and told you he needed your help, Greg.”

“Oh shit.” Greg’s chest tightens as the guilt washes over him. Alex asked him for help, and he laughed at him. Shit. Doesn't matter what it was – Rachel was right about that – Greg prided himself on being ride or die, and he’d left Alex hanging. Shit. “Rach, I need to go.”

“In more ways than one. Goodbye, Gregory.”

“Bye!”

Greg calls Alex, and while it rings, he grabs a grey hoodie and tries desperately to shove his feet into his new trainers without face-planting into the door.

Chapter Text

Act 2

Crossing the First Threshold

“Thanks for coming back for me,” Greg says, sheepishly, as he folds himself into the passenger seat of Alex’s rubbish little car.

“I, uh, hadn’t gotten very far, really.” Alex shrugs. His eyes are just the slightest bit puffy, the redness bright against the ridiculous, bright yellow of his hoodie – the one with little circles dotted all over it.

Greg claps his hands – determined to be the best damn quest goer… haver… participant that anyone had ever been. For Alex. “Right! Where are we off to then for our…?”

“Quest. Well…” Alex turns around in his seat, and reaches for the back – grabbing the scrungly, mangy looking ginger-cat toy that had been nestled on top of a carefully folded grey and blue blanket.

Patatas had always looked like he had seen some shit.

Alex pops the cat onto his lap, and gingerly wraps his fingers around it in a careful caress. He thumbs just along the cat’s jaw-line, as if he might a real, living cat.

“I asked Patatas—”

“—Of course you did—”

“—And he told me that the elixir that we’re looking for would be found in the ruins in the forest.” Alex isn’t looking at Greg. Instead, he’s frowning down at the toy in his lap, as if he’s concentrating very hard. His stubby greying eyebrows knit together, and his lips almost disappear, pursed as they are, behind his short barely-auburn beard.

Greg, on the other hand, feels like he’s staring holes into Alex – waiting for the punchline.

Given his years of experience with Alex’s awful banter section ‘bits’, maybe he shouldn’t be as surprised as he is when there isn’t one.

Yes. And.

“Good!” Greg blurts. “Have we— are we prepared? This is my first quest, after all. Do we need supplies? I've got some mini scotch eggs in the fridge I was saving for a special occasion.”

The look Alex gives him, twists the knife of guilt that has been slipping between Greg's ribs so slowly. Wide, blue eyes slightly reddened and shiny, and so full of gratitude and hope, Greg has to look away.

“I brought crisps, actually. All your favourites,” Alex says so softly.

Well, fuck. Greg stares out the passenger window and blinks a few times. Greg still has no idea what's happening, but whatever it is clearly means something to Alex.

“Alright, but I'm not sharing the beef and onion ones with the cat!”

Greg hears Alex sniff, and then clear his throat in that old man way he does.

“Of course. Wouldn't think of it,” Alex agrees, with the start of a smile in his voice.

With heaps of faux impatience, Greg turns back around and flaps at Alex with his hands. “Give him here, then! You can't drive like that.”

Alex looks down, and then at Greg. “Oh! Yes. Uh, gently, please. He's… He's on his last life.”

Greg could snap something back – call Alex out on thinking he wouldn't be gentle – or point out that everything Alex is saying is nonsense. But he doesn't.

“Of course,” he says instead, his voice suddenly serious and his hands softening as he reaches for the skittish animal that happens to be his friend.

They drive, mostly in silence, with Patatas nestled on Greg's lap, and Alex’s eyes flicking over as if to make sure both Greg and the cat are still there, at every stop.

Finally, Alex pulls them over to a stop in a tiny dirt car park on the edge of a scrappy bit of woodland, barely brushing up against the outer edge of London.

“Okay,” Greg starts, uncertain. “Do we…?”

“Hmm. I’ll, uh, just find out, if you’ll hand Patatas back.”

Greg watches, baffled, as Alex undoes his seatbelt, scoots around in the driver's seat, and carefully picks Patatas up around the body to hold him up to his ear and listen attentively.

“Mmhmm. Right. Oh? Ah. No, that makes sense.” Alex’s one-sided conversation plays out. He glances up at Greg, appraisingly. “Yes, of course I trust him.”

Greg feels a little burst of something like outrage – and something like pride. What on earth is going on? “Should I be offended?” he asks.

“No, no. Can’t… Can’t go on a dangerous quest with just anyone, after all.”

Greg raises an eyebrow.

Alex ‘listens’ intently to Patatas’s last instruction, nodding enthusiastically. “Right. We can do that. Okay.” He clutches Patatas – ginger clashing horribly against yellow – and moves to get out of the car.

Greg grabs him by the arm.

“Oi! Planning on sharing with the class, you two?” Greg asks, feeling left out. Which is ridiculous.

“Sorry! Right. We have to trek into the woods and journey to the ruins.” Alex nods towards one of the tracks leading away from the parking area. There's a bright yellow footpath arrow on a signpost, and a rubbish bin by the sign, both of which completely undermine the fantastical nature of what Alex is proposing.

Greg tilts his head, reminding himself that he’s doing this for Alex, and they both unfold themselves out of the car.

“Crisps?” Alex asks moments later, brandishing some Walkers from his backpack.

Greg hadn’t had dinner yet, and let’s be honest, probably would have accepted the crisps even if he’d already eaten. “Yeah, go on then.”

Alex smiles a little.

The two of them meander down along the path, crisps crunching and almost drowning out the peaceful sounds of nature all around them. The sun peeks through intermittently – dappling the dry dirt trail with lengthening sunshine – cooling and heating them alternately as they dip into soggy hollows and crest exposed corners. Greg is no tree expert, but he knows a conker tree when he sees one – laden with not-yet ripe chestnuts mere weeks from the ideal moment for schoolchildren to gather their playground weaponry. There’s chestnuts and oak trees, the skinny stripy white ones, and others with powdery orange streaks on them that stain your jeans if you climb them. Ask him how he knows.

It’s nice, he realises, to get out of the city for a minute, as he shoves three crisps at once into his mouth and crunches down hard on them – feeling their salty, savoury shards stab into the roof of his mouth.

Alex has the stuffed toy tucked under his arm, cradled against his body, helping to precariously hold his packet of prawn cocktail crisps. Out of the corner of his eye, Greg watches him eat – almost absentmindedly – not bothering if a crisp tumbles from between his fingers to the forest floor, and barely even remembering to suck all the flavour off his fingers in that incredibly suggestive way he usually does. No, Alex is eating crisps as if he needs something in his mouth to stop himself from talking.

“Have you been on many quests then?” Greg asks, as they take the log-embedded steps on the next rise, two at a time.

Alex almost stumbles, crisps half in his mouth, spilling crumbs as his grip on them tightens. “No! No – first time for me, but… But I’ve always liked the idea.”

Strange. “You’ve always liked the idea of going on a quest?”

“Mmm. Having a mission or a goal or something, and going on an adventure to fulfil it. The, uh, clarity of that. Knowing you’re doing the right thing.”

“Well, it might not be, though.”

“Not be what?” Alex asks, confused, as he reaches the top of the rise and turns back, rosy cheeked, to watch Greg take the last few steps.

“The right thing. Depends, doesn’t it?” Greg fights valiantly to hide how out of breath he is. “On the quest giver.”

“Oh!” Alex looks genuinely surprised, and turns back to the path.

Greg takes the opportunity to heave several heavy breaths while Alex isn’t looking. His mouth feels dry and salty and he wishes he’d brought a drink. Maybe a beer. Or three.

Alex sounds a bit wistful. “I think I always imagined the quest giver being a noble king or something.”

“Or a Taskmaster?” Greg replies with a smile.

Alex huffs a single laugh. “I suppose so. A task is a bit like a quest.”

“Mate, it’s exactly a quest.”

Alex hums, unconvinced.

The path curves down the edge of the hill a little, and Greg’s trainers slap on the dust as he follows Alex downhill to catch up. He reaches out and taps him on the shoulder. “How is a task not a quest? Or vice versa?”

Alex moves to the side to give him space, and they jam themselves side by side on the path as they keep walking. Alex chews his lip as he thinks.

“A task is… unnecessary.”

Alex goes quiet for long enough that Greg starts to wonder if that’s all he’s going to say on the matter.

“A task is silly, and it doesn’t matter if you do it well, or if you do it at all. We – you, the Taskmaster – assign points, but those don’t matter either. None of it matters – except it’s funny if we make it matter.”

“Alright. And a quest matters?”

Alex chuckles. “Nope! Nothing matters – not really – but a task is explicitly silly, while a quest is… a quest takes itself seriously. Like for the holy grail.”

“Mate, the Holy Grail I watched did not take itself seriously.” Greg pauses for a second, remembering the film. “That’s not where you got your obsession with ducks, is it?”

Alex walks backwards up the path, shoving his empty crisp packet in his pocket, and smiles. “No. Though maybe I should be using them as a unit of weight. Or maybe volume? Something about water displacement, at least.”

Greg rolls his eyes, and Alex turns back to keep walking. “No, but – Python could only make The Holy Grail because Arthurian mythology took itself so seriously. And because everyone knew about it.”

“And it was out of copyright," Greg adds, waving his last crisp.

“And it was out of copyright,” Alex agrees, nodding. “A quest strives for something. It’s a clear goal – even— even if it’s impossible, like the holy grail – issued by the highest, most moral authority in the land, and like the best tasks, you have full creative freedom on how you go about it.”

“So—”

“—But I don’t think that’s all of it,” Alex interrupts, not finished. “It’s… it’s dedicating yourself to something greater than yourself. An ideal or a person. A responsibility. It’s— It’s the highest honour you can have. It’s respect and loyalty and hard work and brotherhood. It’s courtly love and tokens of favour and long roads alone and tiny bits of hope. And… And none of it matters.”

“...Okay?” Greg says, taken aback by Alex's breathless earnestness. “So who set you this quest?”

“Ah.” Alex stops dead in the path, and Greg almost bumps right into him. He turns, looking up at Greg somewhat bashfully, and holds Patatas out. “Patatas did.”

Chapter Text

Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Then, to Greg's confusion, Alex puts the stuffed animal’s muzzle – fluffy and whiskered – against his own pinked ear. As if he were listening to someone real, Alex's lips mouth along to the words he pretends to hear, and absurdly, Greg finds himself straining to eavesdrop.

“Round here, really?” Alex looks from side to side at the leaf-laden, undergrowth-choked, wooded area around them. Then, more listening. “Hmm, that might be a bit much to ask Greg, really.”

Alex mouths ‘sorry’ up at Greg, and Greg feels like his honour just got impinged.

“What’s too much?” Greg demands. “I'll be the judge of what's too much, thank you. Come on – spit it out, you… Two,” he finishes, awkwardly.

Alex has the cheek to hold up his finger to shush Greg, as he listens to Patatas again. “Uh huh. Mmm. No, I don't— Oh, I see. No, that's fair.”

Greg can't work out if he's annoyed or baffled – so no change there.

“Alright…” Alex says at last, sounding unconvinced. “I'll ask him.” He addresses Greg, and for some reason, he's whispering. “Are you willing to seek your weapon of destiny in the wilderness?”

“Absolutely,” Greg insists. Then after a pause, “My what?”

“It's part of the quest – seeking the sword that you'll need in the final confrontation.”

“Like Excalibur?”

“Something like that.” Alex wrings his hands and looks away. Patatas hugged to his front.

“Mate, usually I'm the watery tart hanging out in ponds, but sure – I can do that. For…Patatas.” Greg nods down at the toy cat, watching Alex's expression closely.

He lights up. “Thank you, Greg!” And suddenly Alex is all business. “Okay. I'll go this way, and you take that side, and we'll meet back here with our weapons in fifteen minutes? Or, when we're both back, if that's sooner.”

Alex gestures broadly at the two sides of the path where the trees are somewhat sparse, and gentle undulating hills look almost walkable. Greg looks down at his trainers, and sighs – expecting them to get scratched and scuffed to bits. But he straightens his shoulders, and takes his first step off the path.

“Patatas better be worth it, Alex!” he calls out over his shoulder.

A soft, almost unheard, “He is,” drifts after him through the trees.

Greg is regretting his decision. It's the longest seven minutes he can remember, and after confidently storming into the undergrowth, he's stumbled three times, gotten his hoodie caught on brambles twice, and had a close encounter with a very dark green patch of mature nettles that he almost fell back into. The next step he takes almost takes him right out – his ankle twisting on hidden uneven ground, and he drops to one scuffed knee with a yell.

“You alright?” he hears Alex call out through the woods.

Greg mutters some colourful swears to himself, before shouting, “Yes! Just quest shit!”

Quest shit. What the hell is he doing, Greg wonders. Alex’s little outburst is unlike him, and Greg worries at it in his head as he pulls himself back to his feet by a crunchy, scratchy branch. Quests. Quests that mean something, but don’t. Quests that aren’t silly like tasks are. And yet what is Alex being, if not silly, when he’s taking instruction from a ginger creature that looks like bad taxidermy?

Greg shakes his head, lost in thought, and picks his way through the messy forest floor.

He was so insistent that Greg come along. It must mean something, even if Alex says nothing matters. Greg wracks his mind, trying to remember anything that might be a clue. The quest is to find some kind of elixir for Patatas. Rachel said Patatas was on his last life – why did that sound familiar? Like he’d read it in a script one time. A rotten branch turns to woody powder under his heel, and Greg wobbles again. Shit. Wait. He had read it in a script – the ‘Story of Patatas’ script, or whatever it was. Alex had sent it over, and he’d skimmed it, seeing that his only involvement was a brief bit of filming in the Avalon office where he had to pat the thing, and then throw it off the table.

Greg tries to remember, but shit – he can barely remember what he had for breakfast that day, never mind what was in a script he didn’t even have any lines in. It was… maudlin, he remembers. Patatas was supposed to be his pet – or rather, the Taskmaster’s pet – and then he’d been discarded when Greg had tired of him. Alex had played up how pathetic Patatas’s life had been, and compared his troubles to… to his own.

Hmmm.

Shit! Why can’t he remem— Wait. Greg smacks his own forehead. He can just watch the damn thing on his phone.

Three minutes of skipped around, 1.5 times speed, youtube watching later, and Greg hums, worried.

According to the lore that Alex spun, Patatas is on his last life of nine and his ‘very existence is on a constant knife edge’. Patatas had lost eight of his lives at the hands of their friends and peers in their ridiculous attempts to complete their tasks. Failed rescues from a tree, violently hauled out of a dome, and eaten in stop motion films twice! Hell, the only thing more frequently used and abused in Alex’s tasks, is…

Alex.

Something pricks at the edge of Greg’s understanding, and he starts to wonder if it’s not just Patatas who ‘feels’ like he’s running out of lives – running out of usefulness – and worried that he’ll be discarded by the Taskmaster.

That’s… That’s ridiculous, surely?

Taskmaster is Alex’s baby – it doesn’t happen without him. He’s the mastermind behind the tasks and the ridiculous nonsense they play out together and making sure the brand stays true all around the world and in all the different, weird, expressions. Alex even manages Greg, and all his ridiculous requirements and preferences and even his sense of humour. Winding him up, letting him loose – setting the tasks that he thinks Greg will get a kick out of.

Greg has been idly stumbling around – eyes unfocused through the white noise of nature, paying no heed to the crack of branches under-foot or the calming rustle of leaves in the breeze.

He can tell, for example, when he’s being catered to when Alex presents Greg tasks with a narrative.

There’s a louder snap than usual, and suddenly, Greg’s eyes go wide as the ground gives way.

He’s upside down. He’s bent in half. He’s tumbling, rolling, and there’s dirt in his mouth. Suddenly there’s an almighty CRACK and he comes to a jiggling halt at the bottom of the hill.

Greg holds perfectly still – eyes wide with shock behind his knocked askew glasses. He can see a tree trunk – gnarled and curled like scrolls – entirely too close for comfort. As he pants, chest heaving as his heart gallops a hundred miles an hour, he watches a tiny woodlouse skitter from behind one twist of bark to another – antennae wiggling angrily at this interruption to whatever the fuck woodlice do all day.

He’s in pain. The impact, the sound, the fright of the thing – terror bubbles up inside him that he’s done something… very bad to himself. Trying to slow his breathing, he takes stock. With each inhale, there’s a stabbing pain in his chest that cuts his breathing in half. His leg – the one he’s lying on – feels wet and somehow pinched.

Greg is really worried now.

Slowly – so very slowly – he brings his free hand up to feel where the stabbing pain is. He pushes and presses – looking for pain or blood or sharpness – and finds… a lump on the tree stump that’s simply pressing into his chest. It’s got a slightly sharper edge on one side, and every time he breathes in, he pushes his body against it. Fuck sake.

Emboldened, he pushes himself upright – and finds the pinched, wet sensation on his leg is just a pool of leaf-litter-garnished rainwater captured in a hollow in the roots of the tree.

Annoyed, Greg grumbles. Looks like the only real injury is to his dignity, his jeans, and to his relatively new, now muddy trainers. He looks up the short incline to where he fell, and sees a short-but-pronounced path of devastation. At least, he thinks, Alex didn’t see it – he can imagine the breathy honking already.

As he moves to stand – making all the noises and holding on to the crumbly, bug-ridden, bark – he finds a bendy branch jammed underneath him. The source, he realises, of the terrible snapping sound.

It’s about four feet long, straight, with young shiny bark and almost no branches along its length. There’s a sharp twist of a second branch at the base where it’s snapped off, creating an eyelet-like loop. Or, he suddenly realises, like a hilt. Greg moves it around in his hands – feels the heft, the balance – and feeds his hand through the loop at the heavier, slightly thicker, end of the thin, whippy length of branch.

Oh, it’s good.

Suddenly reconnected with his seven-year-old self, Greg grips it tightly, and swings it down through the shimmering, sun-dappled air. It makes such a good, sharp, swishing sound, Greg gets goosebumps on the back of his neck, and his grin breaks out across his face involuntarily.

Three more deeply satisfying swishes, and Greg is entranced. This is a great stick. The few tiny branches on the end are stripped off, the sharp point at the base of the hilt is bent forward and backwards until it snaps, and with barely the work of a minute, he peels off the bright green bark to reveal the pale, shining, dew-damp flexible wood beneath.

When next he swings it, it leaves a streak of pale light through the air, and an echo in his ears.

It’s not good. It’s perfect.

Pride swells in his chest – excitement, even – and Greg immediately wants to run up the hill and show Alex. He’s found his weapon. He’s completed his part of the quest. He’s armed, and ready, and he feels like he could take on a – small, admittedly – army with it. He swings it again, and it feels so right. With a hop, he turns 180 degrees and flourishes his new-found rapier at an invisible foe with a “Ha!” He spins into a crouch, and thrusts with its point – skewering absolutely no-one, but my god if there were someone there, he’d have got them a good one!

He’s Zorro. He’s Puss in Boots. He’s a fucking Three Musketeer! Or he’s one of them, at least. Maybe Dogtanion. Wait – that’s the Muskahounds. Fuck it – he’s a Muskahound now.

He stands straight, and imagines himself as a noble swordsman of legend. Or swords-dog. With a figure eight carved out of the air in front of him, he twirls the weapon down to his left hip sheathing it in a belt-loop. The balance is all wrong, threatening to tip upside down and slip out of his trousers, but that just means he needs to hold the heel of his hand on the woody pommel, and well, that’s a pretty cool pose itself.

Greg strides up the hill, head held high, feeling like a hero.

He finds Alex on the path. His yellow hoodie has a green stain across one shoulder, and he’s dusted all over with leaf litter crumbs, and he’s swinging – two handed – an ugly length of half-rotten branch. Greg steps down onto the path from a tree-root, emerging from behind the trunk, feeling elegant and commanding in comparison – and Alex’s face lights up when he sees him.

Then Alex shoves a mud-dusted hand up to his mouth to hide his giggle.

“What? Whaaaat?” Greg demands, pacing elegantly towards the ridiculous, wood-scuffed, man. “How dare you mock me, Monsieur Weasel!” Greg reaches for his sword – his bit of willow branch – and draws his blade. It catches on the belt hoop only momentarily, hardly undermining his dramatic moment at all. With all the length that his enormous arm can provide, and the skinny, flexible length of the stick itself, Greg holds himself imperiously and waves the broken tip of the stick just shy of Alex’s chest.

“Monsieur?” Alex splutters, delighted.

“Indeed. And what have you done with our glorious leader, His Royal Patatas-y, knave?” Greg really spits the insult, looking down the length of his steel— stick, at Alex who mouths ‘knave’ silently to himself with a smile.

“I have… uh… put all that nonsense behind me!” Alex claims, with a twinkle in his eye.

Greg blinks. Tries to think how Alex would think. He lowers his sword arm with a huff. “He’s in your backpack, isn’t he?”

Alex nods, delighted, and turns around to show Greg. Patatas stuffed into the backpack, his derpy, endlessly bedraggled head sticking out the unzipped opening at the top. Of course he is.

Shaking his head and amused despite himself, Greg watches as Alex turns back around to see him – still grinning his stupid, gap-toothed smile.

“That’s a great sword, Greg!” he says, awed.

And dammit, Greg does preen a little. “It is, isn’t it?” Greg swishes it through the air, Zorro-style, and it makes that great sound again. Alex ‘oohs’ appreciatively, and it’s good.

“You, uh, been through the wars?” Alex asks, looking Greg up and down, and it’s only now he remembers his soggy leg. He looks down, and a dried up leaf falls out of his hair as he does. Dusty greyish-brown smears streak and scrape against his grey hoodie, and his shoes – his poor shoes – are speckled with mud.

Greg owns it – puffing out his chest, and holding his stick like a cane – the length of it bending as he pierces the path with its point. “You…” he declares, “...Should see the other guy!”

Alex laughs – his charming, wheezing gasps scattering a couple of birds from the trees – and Greg’s chest swells with pride – real, this time. Alex is dappled with blobs of tree-cut sunlight that sway and shimmer in the light breeze, and turn back the time of the auburn in his greying hair as he shakes with amusement. A rogue sunbeam catches Patatas on his back as he bends over, and gives Alex a scraggly, fluffy, shining golden halo for a fraction of a second – just enough for the idea to lodge in Greg’s memory forever. He should be in stained glass, Greg suddenly realises.

Before Greg knows it, Alex – blue eyes shining like sapphires – has composed himself and gestures down to his own lumpy stick with a bit of wry disappointment.

“I think I may have chosen poorly,” Alex says, emphasising the last word and really getting his mouth around it. “Or, hmm, I haven’t even chosen at all, really.” He hums to himself, in that nonplussed way he does.

Greg takes a closer look. In one hand, Alex is hefting a wrist-thick, maybe five-foot long, gnarled and twisted length of stick. Two broken off branch stumps form a cross-guard about a foot from one end, and the other end still has a short leaf sprout sticking out just before the broken tip. Chunks of greyish-bark seem held on by hope alone, and thick mats of fluffy, velvety emerald-green moss cover most of one side. It looks heavy – damp – and Alex struggles to hold it aloft with one hand. In his other hand, and almost forgotten compared to the near-broadsword, he has a short – barely a foot long – dagger type stick. It’s curved, and almost flattened – looking like it may have once been a root of a climbing vine or something. As the tip of the two-hander dips to the ground – too heavy to hold – Alex instead waves the dagger around and gives it a few hesitant stabs into the air. He hums again.

“I can’t decide.”

Greg brings his cleanest hand up to his mouth, and ponders dramatically. “Let’s see you swing the big one?”

Alex shoves the dagger-length stick into the back of his jeans, and picks up the bigger stick with both hands. His knuckles flash white as he tightens his grip and the tendons on his neck raise proud. With a frown, he gets it almost vertical, and then faster and faster, he slashes heavily and hard through the golden air. It doesn’t make a swish sound like Greg’s does – instead leaving a trail of dust that sparkles and drifts in the light. Alex’s arms and shoulders flex beneath his oversized hoodie – the strain visible on his reddening face – and his chest twists above his waist as the weight spins him around. To Greg’s great surprise and no small amount of delight, Alex spins the sword around by his wrists then with a lunge forward to the side of the path – does a great big overhead swing.

“Hyaaah!” he puffs. Alex pulls his swing just before the broadsword’s tip smashes into the ground, and almost overbalances.

“Oh, yeah,” Greg drawls with a nod, “Definitely that one. You could do some real damage with that.”

Alex’s serious, concentrating expression evaporates in a sunbeam, and he glows with his grin. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” Greg steps towards Alex, feeling a warmth in his chest. “And also, there’s something very dramatically symmetrical, or some shit, about…” Greg reaches out and fondly plucks a mat of cobweb from out of Alex’s short, dusty, silver hair. “...A hairy stick with a hairy stick,” Greg says down at him, with a wink.

“Ha!” Alex tilts the stick upright again, and leans it against his shoulder, tilting his head towards it. “Is there some resemblance?”

Greg ‘locks eyes’ with the stick – definitely not Alex – and nods. “I can only tell which one’s you because of your boyish good looks!”

“Thank you,” Alex says, primly, then turns to peck his sword on the mossy ‘cheek’ with a kiss. “Mwah.”

Greg steps back with a chuckle. “You’re so weird, Alex.”

Alex beams at the compliment, even if Greg wasn’t sure it was supposed to be one. Probably was. No, definitely was on some level, given the rest of Greg’s friend group.

“That’s Sir Alex of Chesham, thank you,” Alex says.

“Oh is it? Does that make me Sir Greg of Wem?”

“Mmm, at least.” Alex curtseys. “Or maybe Wet Greg of Wem?” he says, as he looks pointedly down at Greg’s soggy leg.

“Alright, shut up, you.” Greg looks up and down the path where the beams of shifting sunlight are lengthening as the afternoon wears on. “What’s next on our quest for the magical elixir?”

“Right!” Alex nods and straightens and frowns as he glances off the path just a little ways ahead where a faint trail dives down the hill. “We’ve sought our destined weapons – check – and now we must journey ‘cross the dangerous lands to the Ruins of Swift-Deer.”

The little pop of cynicism in Greg flares, and he shoves it back down inside. Instead, he watches Alex – Alex whose pleading eyes glance back at Greg, seeking his… approval? Agreement? Excitement?

“Well, Sir Alex, there’s no-one I’d rather face the unknown with by my side,” Greg says, and really feels it as he says it. Especially as Alex’s ears pink up with a blush, and Greg watches him fight off a smile. “Lead on?”

“Oh! Right. Yes. Thank— Yes. You— You too? Or, me too. Yes, me too. About you. I’ll… I’ll just— It’s up this way.” Alex turns and almost trips over a tree root that has been there the whole time, stumbling forward with a huff. His big sword-stick still resting on his shoulder, and Patatas watching as Greg follows behind – the cat toy looking remarkably smug for an expressionless stuffed animal.

It’s a really lovely day, Greg realises as they walk. He’s a sweaty man at the best of times, and all this walking up and down inclines and slopes, dusty turns and stone-slab steps, in the heat of the autumn evening, is turning him into a sodden beast – but the breeze drifts up and across them, cooled by the almost-turning leaves, and ruffles his damp hair against his shining forehead like a balm. He pulls down the zip of his hoodie, and it feels heavenly against his neck. The air smells thick with fresh green smells – grass and mosses, yesterday’s flowers, a hint of musty mushroomy smells, and the sparkling topnote of a nearby brook. He breathes it in and feels it fill his chest the way that city air doesn’t.

If this was how all quests went, Greg thinks, he wouldn’t mind going on a few more. He rests his hand on the pommel of his sword, and imagines this was what it was like – the two of them, brave adventurers both, venturing out into the unknown trusting that their courage, skills, and camaraderie will see them through whatever trials fate might throw at them. Alex, ahead of Greg, huffs a bit as he pulls himself up and over an especially steep bit, and Patatas sags to the side in his bag. A quest to save a cat – to save a friend – throwing themselves into a fight to grasp a few more moments of life with a loved one. Who wouldn’t do that?

Maybe that’s what all these quests boil down to, in the end, anyway – the bargaining stage of grief turned physical. I’ll go on a quest, if in exchange I’ll stop fancying my king’s wife. I’ll go on a quest, if only I can feel holy and chosen by god to be his champion. I’ll go on a quest, if only I get to keep my friend just a little longer. A flaw; and a quest to pay the cost of it.

Greg wonders what ‘Sir Greg of Wem’s flaw is. Or more importantly – what ‘Sir Alex’s flaw is, that’s driven him to start this quest in the first place.

If this really were a story, Greg thinks, their flaws are going to come back and bite them soon.

Chapter Text

Approach to the Innermost Cave

Alex has led them off the main walkway onto a narrow trail that sometimes turns into a couple of flat embedded planks in the ground, or a carved out narrow curve on a steeper bit of hill. Up and down they go, around and through – more willow trees hanging their weeping branches across their path like curtains, revealing the way ahead. Down more than up. Damp more than dry. Until, heralded by burbling and splashing, they find a narrow stream across their way.

A trial, Greg thinks.

“Sorry, what?” Alex asks, turning around.

Oh, shit – he said it out loud. Fuck it – lean into it. “A trial, I said – meant to test us.” Greg gestures heroically to the stream that does not seem to be blessed with anything so helpful as a bridge.

“Oh! Right, yes. On our— On our quest!”

“Well of course!” Greg says with a flourish, striding up to the edge of the water, and past Alex with his fluffy companion. “Do we… uh… overcome this challenge through brute strength, or… cunning?” Greg tries to draw his sword to use as an impromptu pointer, but it gets a bit caught in his belt-loop, and he very smoothly – so smoothly, he’s sure – changes to leaning his elbow on the pommel like he’s leaning on the bar in the pub. Crossing his ankles. Gesturing to the water in the hope that Alex will look at that, instead of the absolute state of him.

Alex smirks, and politely looks at the stream.

“I’m not usually one for brute strength,” Alex says, rubbing his jaw with his hand.

And honestly, the stream isn’t that much of a problem anyway. It might be a little wider than usual, having had a bit of rain earlier in the week, but it’s late summer, the last few days have been dry, and at its widest the stream is no wider than a decent sized sofa.

“Well, no – but it’s all about the motif, innit?” Greg says, getting a little closer to the water’s edge. This close, the water has a border of crispy mud crazed with dead strands of grass, and his trainers crunch into it satisfyingly.

“Mmm?” Alex looks at Greg sideways. He leans forward, and pokes a bit of the water’s edge with his stick, and it immediately sinks in with a sucking gloop. “What motif?”

Greg huffs, as if Alex should have been privy to his earlier thoughts. “A quest is a metaphor for bargaining with, and overcoming, a grief-based flaw – and that flaw is the motif that carries the whole thing forward.” Years of teaching well up within Greg – half educational, half bullshittery said with absolute confidence. “How we overcome the trials needs to thematically rhyme with the fundamental issue we’re unwilling to confront!”

Alex nods, agreeing without thought. “Well. Right. Yeah.”

Greg turns, and pokes Alex in the soft, fluffy, chest. “What’s Sir Alex’s flaw?”

“...What?”

“Come on!” Greg barrels into his interrogation – urging answers out of a dumbfounded student once again. “Every hero’s got their flaw that drives them from civilised society to participate in The Quest! Some reason why he’s not tucked up at home, content in the loving embrace of friends and family – what’s Sir Alex’s?” Greg raises his eyebrow and waits for Alex to answer. Then thinks better of it, and interjects before Alex has a chance to open his mouth. “—And wonky teeth or a lack of a neck do not qualify as flaws for the purposes of this conversation.”

Alex’s mouth snaps shut, and his eyebrows twitch. He looks down at the water again. He pokes the mud a lot more forcefully. He hums, and the brook babbles in his stead for several long seconds.

“...Guilt?” Alex says, quietly. He’s still looking down, but his face is stuck, expressing the doubt and uncertainty of that last syllable.

Greg pats Alex on the back, pleased. “Good! Right! We can work with—”

“—What’s… What’s Sir Greg’s?”

“Oh. Uhh...” Well, shit. Greg should have expected this.

Alex looks up at him – his expression earnest. “Sir Greg is on the quest too. What’s y— What’s his flaw?”

“Alright, gimmie a minute,” Greg snaps, peeved and then immediately sorry about it. He much more softly adds, “I’m thinking, alright?”

Sir Greg. Why would Sir Greg go on a quest? Well, Greg is on this quest out of some sort of sense of duty? Or responsibility? So maybe Sir Greg would be the same? Nah – that doesn’t count. Duty isn’t a flaw, after all. Greg thinks back on how his own quest had begun – he’d told Alex to fuck off, in not so many words, when he’d first asked. Ha! ‘Rejecting the Call’ – like in the Hero’s Journey! He’d been sat there, with his laptop, in his ‘ordinary world’, doing just fine, thank you. Mentally, Greg ticks off the stages of the narrative model. Ordinary world. Call to adventure – that’s when Alex literally called him. Bit on the nose, that, he thinks. Then he rejected the call. He does feel a bit bad about that, still. Does that mean that Rachel is ‘the Magician’ or ‘Mentor’? Oh, she’d love that. And then they’d entered Act 2 when he’d literally crossed the threshold of his flat and gone to join Alex.

Fuckin’ Joseph Campbell!

Alex clears his throat, and Greg flinches, remembering he’s got an entirely too personal question to answer.

So what’s his flaw? Greg sighs. He thinks back to himself sitting at his laptop, struggling without progress. He hadn’t been fine – not really – going out of his mind with boredom and frustration and…

“Loneliness,” he says, out loud, in answer to Alex’s question.

Alex doesn’t say anything, just nods. They stand there for a moment – two grown men covered in mud and leaves and stains, clutching broken branches as if they were precious weapons, looking morosely down at a perfectly mundane little stream.

Darkness, as a cloud passes in front of the sun, turning the hollow a shadowless emerald and the birdsong comes to an end.

Alex’s words feel almost physical in the suddenly magical space. “I… I think Sir Alex feels guilty about not having enough time for everyone. Sir Alex… acts like there’ll always be time, next time, but what if there isn’t? What if… What if Patatas is on his last life? What if there isn’t a next time?”

Greg feels aware of everything – his own breathing, the thousand different shades of green around them, the scratch of a label on the back of his neck, the sudden lack of fidgeting from his dear friend beside him.

“Well, Sir Greg is a fucking idiot,” Greg says. “Sir Greg turns people away even when he needs them. Especially when he needs them. Til the loneliness builds higher and higher and it’s the only thing I can feel any more.” There’s a pause. Greg realises what he said. “He can feel. The only thing he can feel,” he corrects himself – but it’s half-hearted.

“Sounds like they’re both pretty flawed!” Alex half-chuckles.

Greg agrees with his own abortive almost laugh. “Yeah.”

“And this is going to help us get across the stream?” Alex pulls the end of his stick out of the mud with a sloppy plop sound, and points at the water with it.

After a moment, and a shrug, Greg just says, “Nah. Maybe sometimes the curtains really are just fuckin’ blue, right? Come on – I’ll go first.”

Greg pats Alex on the shoulder like a good mate would – hardly stiff or awkward at all – and takes a few long strides further up the stream to a series of rocks that might work as stepping stones. They’re green and slick on their downstream sides, but there’s bits of dry, pale-grey, uppermost surfaces here and there that Greg thinks will be more than sufficient to get him across. Really, with the stream’s width, he just needs one or maybe two good stepping spots to get him – and his long legs – over to the other side.

He walks as close as he dares into the mud – stepping daintily, toe first, onto a crumbly broken bit of branch half sunken into the drying goop. It sinks, but leaves Greg’s right trainer barely more muddy than it already is. There’s rustling from the other side of the bank, and he snaps his gaze up to look, but sees nothing. There’s no more sounds there, or none he can hear over the tinkling of the water. The bank is a bit steep over there with a short overhang cut into the grassy dirt, and covered in low-lying weeds of some description – cleavers, maybe – but nothing he can’t step up on to.

His first target – a grapefruit sized stone that’s furry and verdant beneath the water’s surface, trailing bubbles behind it in the miniature rapids of the crystal clear, cold water.

“You want a hand?” Alex asks, sidling up next to him.

“Nah. It’s a fuckin’ doddle, this.” Greg insists.

With one hand on his pommel to keep his sword upright, he holds his other out wide for balance, and takes the first long step onto the rock.

Which immediately wobbles. It makes a terrible clock-ing sound – skittering and bashing into other, river-soaked rocks under the water – and half rolls, half sinks beneath Greg’s foot.

“Fffffff— Shit!”

Greg flails wildly. His heel tilts and dunks into the water – which immediately swarms up the surface of his shoe and splashes greedily at his striped sock. He leans forward instead – the shock of the cold sending him full-body flinching – and the rock full-body pivots like a lightswitch, another hollow-sounding, deep clunk accompanied by several smaller, aftershock-like clitters and clatters as other, supporting, stones shift and threaten to give. His toe touches the surface of the water, and Greg’s heel – now soaking wet – darkens the previously dry rock with streamwater and very effectively lubricates the stone’s surface.

“Ohhhhhh-fffff!!!” “Greg!”

Greg feels the stretch in his crotch – in his thighs – as his legs split too wide, too fast. The rock skitters ahead between parting fellow riverstones – bobbling and rippling and shaking Greg’s cry as his treacherous foothold skips across the streambed.

Like a panicked, swearing tree in the forest – Greg feels himself fall.

And then stop. His hoodie tightening about his chest, suspending him from where he still has his foot on the crumbling, muddy stick. Alex hauls him backwards – first by his hoodie, and then by his arm and a hand hooked into the back of his jeans.

A bare moment later, and Greg is functionally embracing Alex – arms wrapped around him for stability on the muddy side of the stream. Like confused contestants in a three legged race, they stumble away from the water.

“Well, fuck! Shit! Goddammit!” Greg almost yells, uncoiling himself from Alex to instead pace about the patchy grassy verge. He’s half laughing at himself, half genuinely startled and scared – his heart rate far faster than it should be. “Fucking rock!” Greg really does yell – shaking a fist at the innocent stone in the river that chooses that exact moment to lazily tumble a few more inches downstream.

Greg’s ‘sword’ gives up the ghost and tumbles, upside down, out of his belt loop onto the ground.

When he bends to pick it up, he finds Alex – trainers, socks, and the first two inches of his jeans entirely plastered with mud.

“Oh shit! Alex – your shoes!”

“Mmm? Oh, it’s fine,” Alex says, dismissively.

“Mate, you look dipped in crap chocolate like someone failed a technical challenge on Bake Off. You didn’t have to do that for me.”

Alex shrugs, throwing his shoulders up and letting them fall again. “It’s what Sir Alex would have done.”

Greg doesn’t know how to respond to that. He feels touched, and odd, and like he and Alex are having two different conversations at once. No – they’re having at least four different conversations, and Greg is struggling to keep up.

“Well, Sir Greg thanks you. Genuinely. I’d have made a right mess of this pretty little stream with my head smashed open in it.” Greg gestures back at the water, seeing the sucking footprints where Alex had waded to his rescue slowly filling in again.

Alex hums, unhappy. “Do you want to head back?” he asks, sounding conflicted.

Greg spins around to look at Alex’s hurt and hopeful face. “Fuck no. We’re only half way through Act 2!” Behind Alex’s ear, Patatas’s furry face peeks out, brown-limned blue eyes not even half as bright as Alex’s.

Alex’s relief washes across his face as he bends to pick up his discarded, mud-smeared, wooden ‘sword’. “I had an idea for crossing, then, if you’re still interested?”

“Not brute strength?” Greg teases.

“No,” Alex says, with a weak smile. “More of a team-task, really. Using the tools at our disposal.” He holds his stick like a walking staff, and before Greg can stop him, he walks through the mud and into the cold, rushing water.

“What are you— Alex! You’ll fucking freeze!”

The water blooms brown and cloudy as it tears the mud from Alex’s shoes, socks and jeans, and Alex gives a shiver as the fresh water rushes under the hem of his trousers, darkening them and starting to wick upwards towards his knees.

“Ooh! It’s… That’s brisk!” Alex gasps. “C— Come on, Greg! I can— Whoah— I can help you acrosssss. Fffffuhhhh...” Alex, shivering, steps from foot to foot, splashing about in the water, his trainers almost free of their coating of mud as he shifts and steps on the stones of the riverbed – his wooden stick keeping him steady despite the slippiness. With his free hand, he gestures to Greg, beckoning him towards another of the dry, stepping stone rocks. “P— Please, Greg.”

Hesitant – heart still thumping from his last brush with death – Greg snatches his stick – his ‘rapier’ and throws it across to the other side of the stream where it stabs into a bush of some kind like a pin in a cushion. Now both hands free, and tamping down his nerves, he steps over as much mud as he can, and takes Alex’s hand.

“Fuck it,” Greg mutters, and steps onto the first rock. He wobbles for an instant – and Alex is there, steadying him. Even as Greg’s other arm windmills, Alex holds rock-steady – his white knuckled hand keeping Greg stable and secure, even as it cools as Alex starts to freeze. Greg steadies with Alex’s help. Two more steps, with Alex following him by his side through the rushing water – holding his waist as Greg moves to grasp Alex’s shoulder – and they reach the other side.

With a breathy ‘oof’, Greg takes the big step up and over the undercut on the bank and grabs the nearest sapling to haul himself fully out of the stream. He’s out only a few seconds, before he turns, crouches, and holds his hand out for Alex.

They clasp arms.

“Come on! Uuuup you get!” Greg groans as he pulls his sodden friend from the waters.

Cold water streams from Alex’s darkened jeans and squelching trainers as he slips once or twice on the slick, wettened, grass. Finally, he falls forwards instead of back, and flops bonelessly in a twisted heap – half curled around his walking-stick slash broadsword – at Greg’s feet. He sighs with relief.

Greg flops down on the grasses and weeds by Alex’s side – grateful for the excuse to breathe and let his heart rate get back down.

From up here, the stream looks even narrower and less impressive.

Greg scowls at it.

Muffled slightly from a mouthful of old dandelion leaves, Alex mumbles, “What was that about the curtains just being blue?”

With a wet slap on Alex’s calf that rings throughout the glade, Greg refuses to grace Alex’s cheeky observation with a reply beyond, “Shut up, you.”

Because yes – he’d needed Alex’s help even though he’d refused it at first. And yes, Alex had dived – almost literally – to the rescue when someone needed him, even to his own detriment. Loneliness and guilt. The curtains don’t feel simply fucking blue, that’s for sure.

Patatas stares at him glassily from Alex's backpack. Knowingly. Greg finds himself glaring back into those eyes, slowly shifting with each one of Alex's slowing, exhausted breaths, and can't tell whether he feels resentment towards him for dragging him out here to be doomed by the narrative, or a sense of camaraderie and gratitude for the exact same reasons.

Either way, Patatas looks very pleased with himself.

“Right! Patatas and I are going to retrieve my sword,” Greg declares with a slap on his own thighs. “Wherever the fuck I threw it…”

“Oh…” Alex starts to turn on his side with a groan, but stops.

“Nope. You rest. Maybe try to wring out your trousers or something. This is between me and the cat.” Greg rests his hand on Alex's shoulder, feeling the warmth through Alex's hoodie, before bringing his other hand over to unzip the bag enough to extract the fuzzy toy. He’s gentle about it, remembering Alex's concern earlier and, he's willing to admit, because that's what's right. It's…it's what Sir Greg would do.

Then with a groan of his own, Greg stands – nestling Patatas in the crook of his arm, protecting the mangy animal from stray branches and drifting leaves. Greg straightens and then panics, snatching at his glasses as they almost get slingshotted across the stream by a springy green twig.

“Shhhiiii—” He grabs them, and seats them back on his face. “Fuckin’ trees…”. When he looks down again, he sees Alex looking up from the forest floor – wide eyed but a smirk spreading across his face. Greg watches as Alex's eyes flick from looking at his face, to the stuffed toy protectively cradled in Greg's arms, and back to where Greg feels the heat of a scratch across his cheek where the branch caught his undefended face.

“And you can shut up and all.” Greg spins on his foot and strides off into the undergrowth.

Moments later, he squeezes between an old tree trunk and a scratchy holly bush, and emerges a ways down the bank where his stick landed. He is, he thinks, mostly out of earshot of Alex, if he whispers. Which he does.

“Well, Patatas,” he grumbles, “I think it's time you and I had a little chat.” Greg daintily steps over a gnarly root, and gets closer to where he thinks the hilt is protruding. Then he stops, and brings Patatas up to his face. He glares at the dumb creature. “What's all this about sending my little assis— No. Sending Sir Gregory's little squire on a hopeless quest?” Greg pauses, and then holds up a finger to interrupt the silence. “Bababah! No. You have. There's no such fucking thing as an elixir of life and you know it.” Greg is holding Patatas by the scruff now, eye to plasticky eye. “It's cruel to take advantage of his guilt like this.”

The clouds thin a little, and the sun shines watery into the stream, turning its churning and rippling surface into a disco ball au naturale, and Patatas’s eyes glint and shimmer. Is it the sign of the sadness welling up inside his stuffed little body?

Greg sighs.

“Hey. Don't be like that.” The sun catches on Patatas's synthetic fur and shines like tiny threads of fleeting gold. He feels soft and warm against Greg's fingers, and Greg holds him up with his other hand and finds the top of his head velvety and nice. “Look. That's not what I meant,” Greg grumbles. “I just think with all he does, Alex is the last one who should feel guilty, and if you have something to do with that—” Greg stops mid-sentence, mouth left open before he closes it with a snap. Then a huff. “Yeah, it probably is more to do with me, than you.”

“Greg?” Alex calls in his old man like yell. He's only a few metres away, but with the thickness of the undergrowth, it could be leagues. “Any luck?”

Under his breath, and tucking Patatas back under his arm, Greg whispers conspiratorially, “Doesn't mean I like getting called out on it, cat.”

With his free hand, Greg reaches over and pulls the stick from the bush like pulling the sword from the stone. “Found it!” he yells. “We found it.”

Speaking out of the corner of his mouth as he heads back to Alex, he hisses, “Not a word of this to Sir Alex or I'll run you through, you cur.”

Then Greg bumps right into him.

“Oh! There you are!” Alex says, a bright, shining grin dawning on his face as he looks up at Greg. Brighter than the glimmers off the water. Brighter than the sun. “Who's a cur?”

“You, obviously,” Greg blusters.

“Thank you,” Alex says, tilting his head like a dog and never losing his smile.

Greg finds himself struggling not to smile right back. “Are we getting on with it then?”

“Oh! Right. Yes of course, Sir Greg! This way, I think.” Alex turns and points with his ridiculous sword stick towards a narrow, winding, dusty trail.

“You think?!” Greg demands.

With each step a squelch, Alex nods and stiffly shambles – jeans sticking to his legs – up the hill. “Can't be far now! Come on, you two.”

Behind Alex's back, Greg shares A Look with Patatas, and then wonders who the crazy one actually is.

Chapter Text

The Ordeal

“The Ruins of Swift-Deer!” Alex announces with a flourish.

It's an absolute tip.

A ruin right enough, Greg thinks, but of a tiny pump substation or something made half of brick and half of seventies concrete, before time and multiple generations of idle teens had conspired to tear it down to broken toothed bones. Stubs of walls, toppled and smashed, delineate a small building with just two boxy rooms. The ground is flaked with shattered black slate roof tiles thrown and smashed for fun – or just something to do – giving the place a shadowy, dark undertone in the late evening's light. Rusted pipes spew from the concrete poured floor of one of them, barely distinguishable from the roots and vines of years of ivy crawling all over them. Door-frames barely standing give the space the suggestion of its use by people once upon a time, and heaps of debris – both natural and architectural – are layered with strata of crisp packets and beer bottles that Greg just knows would date each summer's idle youths back to at least his own misspent years.

And daubed in old red spray paint on the largest bit of still standing half wall, censored and blocked out with brushed, mildew-stained white paint in parts where someone with half a sense of decorum couldn't let it lie, are the words:

‘BUCKFAST MAKES YOU □□□K FAST’

Greg turns to Alex, his face twisting with barely suppressed disgust. “Swift-Deer???”

“Oh yes.” Very seriously, Alex nods. “And our quest’s ultimate destination,” he says, really wrapping his mouth around the words for no good reason.

Greg takes a second to pass his rapier stick from his free hand, to the one cradling Patatas under his arm – freeing it so he can properly wipe his palm over his face, knocking his glasses askew.

“Fucks sake,” he mutters.

“Language, Sir Gregory!” Alex scolds, reaching forward to wrap his long-fingered hand around Patatas’s little fuzzy ears.

“Oh, well if you’re so worried, you can carry the little bastard!” Greg backs off, lifting his elbow and watching as Alex scrambles to catch the toy before it tumbles to the dirty, dusty ground.

Alex manages, barely, to grab and cuddle Patatas against his chest, and doesn’t drop his walking-stick slash two handed sword stick as he does – but it’s a close thing. At least his trainers barely squelch now.

Instead, Greg strides into the middle of the clearing, looking around at the uninspiring setting for their quest’s grand finale. Dust kicks up at his feet from the flattened, deadened, old abandoned clearing that once lead to the building – barely fifteen feet across – before the mostly-rotten door frame leads to the leaf-litter strewn exposed interior. The evening sun dips ever lower, sending coins of light swaying across old red bricks and green-tinted concrete alike.

Alex walks past him, and ducks through the skewed doorway, sword and cat in hand.

“I guess… Hmm… The elixir will be around here, somewhere,” Alex says, sounding uncertain. “Maybe… Maybe one of the bottles?” With the toe of his still-wet trainer, he nudges a discarded beer bottle from the noughties, half filled with dead algae and last week’s rainwater. It gloops unsettlingly.

But there’s something wrong. Greg knows it in his bones, as sure as he knows Sir Alex and Sir Greg. As sure as he saw the stream as the trial that it was – this isn’t the way the story is supposed to go. It itches at the back of his head, and he scowls, looking to and fro trying to work out what’s missing.

“This isn’t right,” Greg says, mostly to himself.

“Hmm? No, probably not that one. Not exactly appetising.”

“No, I mean – the quest isn’t… It’s… The fucking narrative wants something.” Greg starts pacing.

“S— Sorry?” Alex looks at him, and his eyebrows pinch in the middle.

Greg reaches the edge of the clearing and wheels around – he draws his wooden sword from his belt loop, and swishes it in Alex’s direction to punctuate his words. “I put it to you, Alex Horne, that the quest isn’t done. That there’s a grand climactic moment that ties the themes together bubbling under the surface…” Greg gets closer and closer to Alex and Patatas, waving his sword like he’d wag his finger in the studio. “...And without that – without confronting our greatest fears head on – we will never be worthy of the elixir. Of saving Patatas.”

Greg finishes his desperate, mad-sounding statement at a swords length from Alex – the tip of his rapier-like willow-branch almost brushing Alex’s yellow hoodie-covered chest. Greg is utterly certain he’s right, and has absolutely no idea if Alex will believe him.

“But how do we— Oh. Wait. What's that?” Alex says, bringing Patatas up to his ear.

It's ridiculous. It's stupid. It's absolutely the only thing that makes sense. Greg stands, waiting, sword raised as well as his eyebrow, as Alex presses the fuzzy, whiskery muzzle against his own fuzzy, whiskery face. A beam of sunlight caresses across both of their heads and they glow shimmering gold.

“Uh huh. Oh. Oh no. No I don't—” Alex looks unhappily at Patatas's face and then ‘listens’ again. “But… But he's my friend.”

Greg feels his shoulders slump as the obvious outcome forms in his mind. Of course, he thinks; it would come to this.

Greg lowers his rapier, and turns away. Slowly, as Alex's dismayed objections are whispered into an uncaring, fluffy ear, he takes up his place on the far side of the clearing, rolls his shoulders a little, and waits.

Eventually, Alex's face settles into an expression of sad resignation, and Greg knows he's ready.

“We have to fight, don't we,” Greg says without the rising inflection of a question, because of course they do. It's been leading to this. The moment they found their weapons, the narrative was locked into place. Instead of a Chechov’s gun, Chekhov's swords are clearly placed above the fireplace of their storyline, lanterns hung upon them.

Alex doesn't want to say it.

He shakes his head, lips pursed, holding the words back. Not a ‘no’, but a ‘no, thank you’. A ‘no, please’.

Greg makes eye contact with the cat in Alex's arms. “You knew from the start, didn't you, Patatas? No one saves the cat without a dark night of the soul.”

“Hmmm. I don't want to fight you, G— Sir Greg,” Alex says – vacillating between himself and his character in the storyline they’ve yes-and-ed into life.

Greg feels strangely calm. “And yet, we find ourselves doomed by the narrative to do so. En – and you should probably put the cat somewhere safe for this – garde, Sir Alex.”

Alex looks around, still frowning, and places Patatas on the top of the climber-choked outcropping of rusted red pipes in the old pump room – a throne of his own to observe the task before them now. Alex gives him a quick smooch on his soft, velvety head, and Greg’s gut tightens.

“Come on. Get on with it. We haven’t got all day!” Greg huffs, more annoyed than he ought to be.

With a last stroke down the soft, sunlit fur, Alex reluctantly takes up a position on the other side of the dusty clearing, shuffling in his mud-caked, damp trainers.

It’s not high-noon. No storm thunders overhead. Torrential rain isn’t a metaphor for the tears they cannot shed for one another. Instead the evening sun brightens and paints the scene with a gold that hangs in the air from late-summer dust. Midnight blue shadows stretch across the scuffed dirt arena, and all about their heads the leaves are blackest green or shining, shimmering glinting things catching a flash of sun. Greg draws the tip of his blade through the dirt at his feet, and a tiny tornado of particles takes to the air in its wake.

The story holds its breath.

“Have you done much stage fighting?” Greg asks. His words feel out of place as they drift across the space between them.

“Hmm. A half hour lesson back at uni, but with two brothers and three boys I’ve gone through a lot of cardboard tubes over the years.” Alex hefts his long wooden branch off the ground, holding it two handed just below the branch-stub hilt. Light follows it, as dust shakes loose from dry moss and cracking, rotting, bark. “Have you?”

“Taught the basics for years. Nothing past stomp-punches and faked hair-grabs though.” Greg stands straight, raises the tip of his springy wooden rapier, and brings it up to his face. A salute.

Alex tries to mirror the pose – his much slower, heavier sword obscuring much of his frown-pained expression.

“Good luck,” Greg says, and means it.

Greg launches forward – two quick paces – as he lowers the rapier with a lightning fast swish. The length of his legs chewing up the distance at a terrifying rate, and the length of his arm bringing him just within reach of Alex before either can blink. He slashes – aiming for Alex’s leg – and through instinct or luck, and with an audible yelp – Alex jumps out of the way, his heavy sword falling in the other direction and coming down heavy towards Greg’s shoulder by sheer act of physics.

With a snarl, Greg spins backwards, out of the way, and pulls back his rapier just in time. The leaf-sprout tipped two-handed sword scuffs the front of his hoodie.

Alex prances out of the way, circling anti-clockwise, trying to muffle a horrified giggle.

Greg spins – trainers dainty on the dust, arms out for balance – and fixes Alex with a glare. “One of us has to lose, you understand.”

“Uh huh,” Alex nods. He keeps Greg at his front as he sidles around, leaving heavy scrapes in the dust as he does. Leaves and brambles grab at his back as he keeps every inch away from Greg that he can. Greg sees his chest rising and falling fast. “Do you— Do you want to yield, S— Sir Greg?”

Outraged, Greg huffs. “No, I fucking do not. I thought you would yield!”

“Nuh uh.” Alex shakes his head enthusiastically. “I’m, uh, too competitive for that.” Alex raises his weapon – his eyes flicking towards Greg’s left side far too obviously for words. “I’ve got a streak,” he over-enunciates.

Alex moves. The two handed sword is held high, and he makes a hesitating hustle forward – a shuffled three-and-a-half steps that scream uncertainty. Lip bitten, eyes now fixed on Greg’s left side, Greg shifts his weight and moves to block the obvious… the far too obvious…

At the last second, Greg flicks his rapier to his right instead of his left, and finds Alex’s oh-so-heavy sword there mid-blisteringly-fast-strike. With a deafening hollow clunk sound that rings around the forest, the two weapons clash and explode.

Bark, moss, dust and millipedes burst forth like a rotting supernova where the two swords meet. Greg’s rapier bends and springs, and the weight of Alex’s weapon drives it closer and closer to his hip before Greg bends his body cartoonishly – his mighty stomach leading the way as he turns into a giant crescent to dodge the filthy, muddy strike.

Then, the spring of his weapon kicks in, throwing Alex and his stick off to the side.

“You little bastard!” Greg says, more impressed than he means to be. “You tried to fake me out!”

“All’s fair in love and war, Sir Greg,” Alex says with a cheeky, gap-toothed grin. “And I prefer to call it a ‘hand-and-a-half’ sword, actually,” he says, nodding at his ragged log of a weapon.

Greg straightens up and paces – pushing his glasses solidly back into place with his swordless hand. “A what?”

“A hand-and-a-half sword. Also known as a bastard sword.” Again, Alex really wraps his mouth around the word for the devilment of it.

Greg scoffs. “It is not!”

“Genuinely, that’s what they call them.”

“Well it’s certainly helping to remove any regrets I had about fighting you,” Greg says. “Bastards both!”

Alex opens his mouth to retort, but snaps it shut as Greg dives for him in a flash. The light sings on the pale white whippy wood as it whooshes through the air, and Alex flinches back – not quite managing to get out of the way in time. Greg’s ‘rapier’ connects with Alex’s still-damp jeans with a sharp whap sound, and Alex yelps!

“A hit!” Greg yells, triumphant. “Take that, you prick!”

“Hmmm. So much for courtly manners,” Alex grumbles.

“All’s fair, Sir Alex – all’s fair,” Greg reminds him smugly, as he takes a dramatic, swooping bow.

Alex narrows his eyes, and advances slowly on Greg. The two of them circle each other slowly – watching the other’s eyes for any hint of attack or feint or counter-attack.

Greg thrusts, and Alex blocks. Alex swings, and Greg deflects. Round and round they go – the air hot and dusty in their mouths as they breathe heavily under the watchful eye of Patatas.

Alex stumbles and Greg presses his advantage – slashing madly at the rapidly retreating Alex who barely manages to bring his heavy sword up in time to deflect the worst of it. Clacks and thocks echo through the space, shuffled feet and kicked up dust. With a gasp, Alex slams his back into the doorframe, and Greg swings high and hard at him – but far too high, and his stick almost snaps on the top of the slanted wooden frame above Alex’s head. They stare, wide eyed, at each other for a beat – both surprised – and Alex moves first – diving into the ruin of the building and away from Greg.

“Get back here you weasel!” Greg roars.

”No, thank you!” Alex giggles nervously, and dodges around the old heap of pipes as Greg chases him.

They dance – both dodging left and right around the pile of junk between them both. Alex feints clockwise, and Greg dives for him – whapping the rapier around an unlucky bit of vine that explodes with the impact. With Greg’s back exposed, Alex launches himself around the other way – grabbing the pipes to swing around – and catches a glancing, muddy blow to Greg’s arse!

Birds flee from nearby bushes as Greg throws his head back and roars!

Alex smacks his hand to his face and honks up a storm as he runs, terrified and delighted, into the other part of the ruin. Any second now, Greg will turn his wrath on Alex – and the anticipation is almost too much!

“Sir Alex? Ohhhhh Sir Aaaaalex?” Greg calls out, tauntingly.

Something changes in the air.

When Alex hesitantly pokes his head around the ruined bit of wall to see, he finds Greg standing by the heap of pipes – the tip of his rapier resting millimetres from the soft, vulnerable, neck of Patatas.

Alex gasps. “No! You— You wouldn’t, Greg.”

Greg looks unconvinced. “Wouldn’t I?” He asks, arching his eyebrow well above the frame of his glasses. “You’re the one who taught me that all’s fair in love and war, Sir Alex.”

“But… Patatas. He’s the one we’re here to save. He’s the reason for the quest in the first place.”

Greg nods. “I’m aware.” Greg steps even closer to Patatas – one huge hand wrapping around the impossibly soft fur on his tiny little body, holding him still, even as the broken tip of his wooden sword pushes ever so slightly against the ginger ruff beneath his tiny chin. “The question then, is what will you do to save him, Sir Alex?”

The look Alex gives Greg is heartrending. Anguish. Betrayal. Confusion. His sword dips to the ground in his loose grasp, as he straightens up and shuffles through the broken door frame towards Greg and his innocent captive.

“Ah ah! That’s close enough. At least while you’re holding that ugly thing.” Greg gestures at Alex’s bastard sword with his own rapier.

Alex looks down at his sword, as if in a dream. The shock of Greg’s betrayal too much for him to take. He turns the sword in his hand – the end of it scuffing against old bricks and fallen, crunchy leaves, leaving scraps of bark to twist off and lay scattered on the ground. Slowly – so slowly that at first it’s imperceptible – Alex shakes his head.

“Mmmm… No.”

“What was that?” Greg asks, eyebrows raised – his sword once again pointing at Patatas.

Alex shakes his head again – more firmly now. His brows crease, and his mouth purses, and his hand tightens on the hilt of his sword – the other balled in a fist at his side. “...No. This— This isn’t how the story goes. You’re not the bad guy.”

Greg scoffs. “Mate, you wrote me as the bad guy. I’m the big bad Taskmaster!” Greg flings his arms in the air – higher than the ruins of the walls, higher than the roof that once covered the building, as high as the darkening sky, to cast a terrible shadow across Alex, the ruin, and the clearing beyond. All is plunged into his darkness.

Alex steps forward. He’s biting his lip while he gently shakes his head at Greg. His blue eyes catch what little light there is, and shine. “No. You’re Sir Greg in this story. My hero. My friend. You wouldn’t hurt Patatas.”

“He’s just a stupid toy!” Greg bellows, mirroring what he’d told Rachel what feels like hours ago.

One more step closer, and Alex, with his longer sword, is within reach of Greg. He wraps both hands around the handle, and slowly raises it above his head.

“I’ll do it!” Greg threatens, holding his rapier and angling it first at Alex, then Patatas, and back at Alex again – the thin stick whipping through the air with a whistle of indecision. “One more move, and it’s all over, Alex!”

Alex takes a deep breath, and very slightly nods. The tendons on his neck stand proud, his eyes glint, and as fast as he can move, he lunges forward – a huge, terrible, weighty swing down of his massive lump of rotten stick through the darkened, evening air. For a moment, the tiny green leaf on the tip – higher even than Greg’s shadow – catches the evening sun and flashes with light.

Greg moves – a thrust – terrible and fast – and everything happens at once. A deafening smash. A gasp. An explosion. And then two men freeze as if in tableau.

Alex holds in one limp hand the ruin of his sword’s hilt – the blade scattered into a million tiny softened pieces of rot-light wood and sodden bark all around them both. Greg is pressed to his chest – hand against Alex’s body – holding the handle of his rapier against where the blade disappears beneath Alex’s shoulder. Their faces are motionless – Greg’s a look of despair, and Alex showing only calm acceptance.

Patatas sits unharmed on the pillar of pipes, above where Alex had intentionally smashed and destroyed his own sword.

“Alex, no!” Greg’s whispered words break the silence of the ruin.

A thud, and the last piece of the bastard sword falls to the ground from Alex’s hand. He brings instead the hand to where the rapier is, pinned beneath his armpit, and holds it there as his knees soften and he starts to sink to the ground.

“I…” Alex starts, hoarsely. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt him, Sir Greg.”

“You idiot. You were supposed to be the hero!” Greg mutters, holding Alex gently as they go down to the ground together.

Alex smiles; a big toothy grin, though kneeling on a bit of bark makes him wince in a way that feels very appropriate to the narrative. “I think I still am?”

“Well that’s alright for you!” Greg practically yells, as he places Alex gently down – the rapier stick having to angle as it bends and wobbles against the detritus hidden, old brick floor. “Your flaw was guilt! Guilt over not doing enough – and now you’ve given everything! But where does that leave me?”

Alex frowns – suddenly worried.

“Alone, Alex. It leaves me alone. And I can’t go on without you.” Greg’s grey eyes pin Alex far worse than the rapier under his arm is supposed to have done, and he grabs Alex by the bright and cheerful yellow hoodie to shake him in his despair. “Don’t make me go on without you, Sir Alex!”

Greg, crouching over Alex’s prone body, shoves his face into Alex’s chest, and shakes.

“Oh. I… Hmm. I didn’t know,” Alex breathes. He brings a hand up to cradle Greg’s head – his silver more precious than the gold of Patatas. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter Text

The Reward (Seizing the Sword)

“I forgive— AHH!” Greg gasps! Surprise. Delight. Horror – as Alex thrusts the wooden ‘dagger’ from before under Greg’s armpit with one hard shove. Greg snaps rigid – eyes wide – as he reassesses how the story is going to go. A smile starts to dawn across his face, before he tamps it down and puts on an expression of noble tragedy instead. “Oh! Oh, I am killed!” he wails.

Alex really does smile. Looking up at Greg who has clutched both hands to the stubby wooden weapon against his hoodie, reeling up and throwing his head back.

“Cruel fates!” Greg roars to the sky. “Fickle gods! What tragedy is this!?” Greg heaves himself to his feet, which is kind of difficult and takes him a moment. He bats away Alex’s hand when he tries to help him – this is his death scene, thank you very much. He spins and staggers – one hand now holding the bit of wood to his body, the other gesturing to an invisible audience. “To pit two noble friends against each other to the death!? One afflicted by the need to do so much, the other cursed to find himself alone…”

Greg finds a bit of wall still tall enough to beat his fist against, and does just that.

“...And this! This is how the story will be writ!? No – must be writ! Flaws played out – our heroes’ journey – was it always fated to be thus!?”

Alex sits up a little and watches, entranced – almost forgetting the stick under his arm and that he’s supposed to be dying tragically.

“So be it!” Greg yells, and then softer, as he looks down at Alex leaning against the base of the pillar of pipes. “So be it. Just as this tale was meant to come to this, so too I was meant to be your friend, Sir Alex.” Greg takes a staggering step towards Alex, then falls to his knees. Or rather, goes down onto his knees quite gently because there are sticks and little stones and it’d hurt quite a lot, otherwise. He shuffles closer and at the last, turns to lay back beside Alex – their shoulders knocking against one another. “Let us end this quest, as it was begun…” he stage whispers, as he takes Alex’s hand in his own. Which takes a moment as Alex figures out what he’s doing and they finally entwine their fingers.

Then both of them say, with the last of their respective character’s breaths, “...Together.”

Sir Greg’s eyes flutter, and flutter, and finally, with a deep, rumbling sigh, close for the last time – his body going limp.

Sir Alex sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, scrunches his eyes closed, and tilts his head towards Greg. “Ughhh…”

It’s peaceful. The birds sing their sunset songs and the wind softly rustles the drying leaves high above them. Some branches knock against one another, and ever so distantly, the gentle burbling of the stream they struggled to cross. Somewhere far away, a lorry swooshes past on a B-road behind the trees. Which is technically but not metaphorically…

Act 3

...The Road Back

Alex starts to fidget.

Resurrection

Greg ignores it for a moment, then Alex full-body twitches – sending a jolt all up their sides where they’re pressed and warm together – and Greg cracks open an unimpressed eye. “What?” he asks, impatiently.

“Sorry— I’m just— Ahhh. I’m— I’m lying on— Ow…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. A man can’t even die in peace any more.”

Alex untangles his hand from Greg’s, and squirms on the ground, trying to get his hand underneath his back, searching for the offending object. “It’s just— Ooh that’s— Ahh! Ffffff…”

Greg pushes himself up to sitting, the wooden dagger falling to the dirt, and he twists to watch Alex undulate like a caterpillar on the ground – his face contorting with every little wriggle. Greg admits to himself, if not to Alex, that it’s kind of funny.

“It’s— Argh! Oh! I’ve got it! Oh my god,” Alex almost collapses with relief as he pulls something out from behind him with a flourish.

It’s a bottle.

With glass thick and green like English ivy, flattish and flask shaped, an almost black label glued to the front and a big fat cork stoppering the top, the bottle sloshes as Alex tries to leverage himself upright from the ground. Letting Greg’s rapier fall, he manages to get his knees under himself, and kneels up.

Suddenly, the evening sunlight strikes the bottle, and it glows. Gold and emerald, light and life, it shimmers and shines and turns blinding. Greg squints, as the sunlight turns it from grimy trash to something… transcendent. Songs would be written about it. Women would weep in the street. God herself had reached down and with a perfectly manicured hand, touched that bottle and turned it from crude material into the luminous divine.

Then Alex heaves himself to his feet with an old man’s groan, and the light fades to something merely wonderful.

“What the f—” Greg hesitates – suddenly uncomfortable swearing in the presence of the artefact. “What the heck is that?”

“Mmm?” Alex looks at the bottle with something like surprise. “I think it must have got into my pocket while I was, uh, dying. Just some rubbish?”

Alex winds his arm back, ready to throw the bottle away.

“Stop.” Greg’s hand smacks around Alex's raised wrist. The bottle gleams. “Alex – It's the elixir,” Greg says, awe in his voice.

Alex's eyes go wide. “Ohhhh.” Instantly, he understands.

Together they lower the bottle, holding it between them – sideways onto the setting sun where the golden light can still swirl within the viridian depths. Glowing motes dance and sparkle even beneath the dusty crust of dirt, as Greg wipes his thumb across it's surface, laid in Alex's opened hand.

The writing is lost to the ages. The contents a dubious mystery, but Greg knows that this is where the quest will end. This is their goal.

“Would you give it to Patatas?” Alex says, hushed and whispery. The air feels too thick, and the magic too fragile. “Give him his nine lives back?”

Alex's blue eyes glow against his sunlit golden face as he looks up at Greg, hopeful and soft.

He's ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Of course Greg will do anything Alex asks.

Greg shakes his head. “I'm sorry, Sir Alex…” Greg picks up the bottle – cool and smooth with a strange lightness to it, despite being full. “This isn't an elixir of nine lives.”

Alex's face falls, eyebrows twitching with disappointment and then resignation.

“This,” Greg clarifies, “Is an elixir of eternal life.” Greg turns the bottle in his hand, examining it dramatically. He adjusts his glasses as if he can make out a single word on it's surface, and tries not to smirk. “Our little Patatas is going to be around for a very long time.”

Greg takes the step over to Patatas where he's resting on the pillar of rusty, broken pipes – a red and golden throne befitting him at last – and ignores the bright dawning grin on Alex's face. Instead, he gives the cat a little scritch beneath his plush chin, half closing his eyes in greeting, and purring, “There's my good boy.”

Alex walks over and they stand, shoulder to shoulder, as Greg twists off the cork with a squeak. Alex tilts Patatas up, holding him by his soft and velvety front paws, and Greg cups his tiny face in his massive hand. In his other, he holds the elixir to Patatas's furry mouth, and subtly covering the bottle’s mouth with his thumb, ‘pours’ the magic potion into Patatas.

The sun’s last ray thins and weakens, and finally ends – the bottle's magic entirely consumed, left as a mere piece of rubbish left in a tip.

Patatas looks… different.

Greg takes away the bottle and stoppers it, but Patatas – held in Alex's hands in the blue cast of twilight – looks somehow better. Oh he's still scraggly and dopey looking – an expression that betrays the complete lack of brain cells behind those blue and brown-touched eyes – but he looks…content?

Alex picks him up, and hugs Patatas to his chest. “Thank you,” he whispers.

Greg huffs, jealous. “Hey, don't I get a—”

Alex turns and slams himself into Greg's chest, pinning the soft fluffy body of Patatas between them.

“Oof. Okay. Better,” Greg concedes. Greg wraps one arm around Alex's back – feeling him warm and alive and close through his yellow, forest-dusted hoodie – and the other he places on Patatas's head, covering Alex's hand with his own.

Alex hugs him harder.

“Careful,” Greg whispers into Alex's hair. Alex smells of dust and soap, moss and crushed green grass. “Or I'll ruin this touching moment with the fart you're about to squeeze out of me.” Greg feels Alex’s body shake with a laugh and he smiles, resting his bristly chin on Alex where his greying hair thins a little.

One big, chest swelling sigh later, and Greg lets Alex go. Alex… takes a second longer. Patatas's fur sticks up from where they'd squished him – Alex's hair does the same.

“You good?” Greg asks.

“Yeeeah,” Alex drawls quietly. “Especially for being dead.”

Greg is holding Alex by the shoulders. “Oh. Don't worry about that. It was metaphorical or some shit. We probably needed to unhand the old tools of our own self oppression or something.”

“Oh yeah. I love to ‘hand my tool.” Alex nods, looking down.

Greg barks a laugh. “Fucking metaphors!”

“Self-fucking metaphors,” Alex says, doing one of his cheekiest, gap-tooth grins up at Greg. “...Technically.”

“Sir Alex!” Greg pretends to be shocked, but can't hide his grin.

Greg shoves Alex on the shoulder, who staggers back with a giggle, clutching Patatas to his chest.

Greg picks up the battered and bent piece of willow that had been his sword. “Sorry for killing you, I suppose,” he says, throwing the rapier as hard as he can over the ruins and into the dense shadowy undergrowth beyond.

“Mmm,” Alex replies, doing the same as he finds his short length of old vine roots that served as his dagger. “Sorry for dying?”

“So you fucking should be.” Greg waves the still sloshing bottle of ‘elixir’ at Alex. “Don't make me make you drink this too!”

“Hmm. No, thank you!”

Greg takes a sniff. “Fucking hell.” His face crumples with disgust as he holds the bottle at arms length, stoppering it with shaking hands. “Yeah. Maybe not when you're driving.”

“End of the story, then?”

With a flourish to the audience not there, Greg dramatically narrates the quest’s conclusion. “Sir Alex and Sir Greg return triumphant. Having at least momentarily overcome their flaws – and been forever changed by their experiences – they return to the ‘normal world’ with deep, personal growth and intangible treasures beyond measure.”

Alex holds up Patatas. “And we saved the cat.”

“And we saved the cat,” Greg agrees.

“And my feet are wet.”

“And your feet are— oh fuck!” Greg looks down where Alex's jeans are still dark below the knee and his trainers squelch very quietly. “Sorry! I completely forgot.” Greg waves a hand about and finishes his ‘narration’ in a rush. “Blah blah, they all lived happily ever after. The end and shit. Let's get you home.”

“Yes please!”

Alex takes off, leaving damp footprints in the dust, with Greg following – taking a different route from the one they arrived by. Within seconds it becomes clear that this is the main trail, and after only a minute or two, they're safely back at the little car park.

Return with the Elixir

Greg folds himself in to the passenger seat.

“Will you hold Patatas white I get dried a bit, please? There's a towel in the boot.”

“Yeah, alright,” Greg says, barely grumpy about it. “Give him here.”

Alex places Patatas – soft as ever, though a little dusty now – in Greg's massive hands. “Be nice, okay?”

Greg holds him on his lap as if he's Blofeld from James Bond, stroking down his fluffy back. Before Alex can close the door, Greg puts on the accent. “No, Mr Horne – I expect you to dry!”

Alex's honked laughter is audible even after the car door slams shut, and Greg wiggles in his seat with how pleased he is with himself. He turns Patatas around – face to fluffy face once more.

“And what do do have to say for yourself, getting Alex into a panic like that, eh?” Greg asks, voice low and soft in the quiet of the car's interior.

His eyes almost pop out of his head when he hears a voice – as deep as a man selling magic pens beneath a bridge – reply, “I would say it wasn't me that he was really worried about, Greg.”

Greg spins frantically around in the seat, left and right, looking for the source of the voice. There's no one in the back seat, and it hadn't sounded like it was from there, anyway. Greg checks the glove compartment, but it's just stuffed full of papers and instruction manuals. Greg looks and Alex is bent double behind the car, struggling to remove his wet trainers and apparently paying Greg and his mental breakdown no heed.

Greg peers suspiciously into Patatas's eyes and moments pass. Moments more, and Alex is slamming the car boot and walking up to the driver side door.

“No one will ever believe you,” the rumbling, thundering, smug voice tells Greg.

“Yeeeaaaargh!” With a yell of horror, Greg throws Patatas onto the driver's side seat just as Alex opens the door.

Scrambling, Alex catches him before he falls. “Hey! What happened?” Alex looks at Greg with concern.

“Your cat started talking!”

Alex smirks, and then almost immediately looks serious again. “Mmm, technically your cat, Greg. I hope he told you what a good job you did.” Alex gets into the car and pats Greg on the shoulder quite patronisingly.

“He said no one would believe me,” Greg grumbles.

“Did he say anything else?” Alex asks, buckling himself in with an easy smile and a lightness in his manner that Greg realises he'd missed. Even though he's wet and dusty and just as scraggly as Patatas himself – Alex is a different man from the one who buzzed up to Greg's flat just a few hours ago.

Greg thinks about his answer. How Patatas has said it was Greg that Alex had been worried about. How frantic Alex had been to go on this quest with Greg. How lonely and stuck Greg had been.

He…doesn't think he's either of those things any more.

“What— What's the name of the camel?” Greg asks. “You know, the one from the show—”

“—Stuart?” Alex tilts his head and frown-smiles in confusion.

Greg looks straight ahead and nods. “Thaaaat's right – Stuart. Patatas said Stuart might have a quest for us next week.” He clears his throat. “If you're not too busy.”

Greg chances a glance, and sees Alex beaming at him, blue eyes shimmering in the twilight.

“I— If you— Well if it's— If it's for Stuart I'm sure I can—” Alex stammers.

“—Good. Settled then. We can discuss it over a beer at mine.” Greg holds out his hands. “Give him here, then. The faster you drive the sooner I can loan you some dry socks.”

“Mmm, I'm not sure, Greg.”

“What?! Oh come on. I only threw him a bit. I'm pretty sure he's forgiven me.”

“Oh it's not you, Greg,” Alex says, scowling at the plush toy as if he's personally affronted. “Patatas lied to you. Bad cat.”

“Hey. Hold on a minute—”

“—He said no one would believe you – and I do.”

“Oh. Well.” Greg feels stupid. Stupid and warm. Stupid and warm and happy. “He probably just meant no one important.”

“Ah, yes. That— Of course. Thank you.”

Alex nods and Greg nods and both of them have their best serious faces on. Alex passes Patatas over to Greg who cradles him like an old friend, and Greg quietly pats his pocket where he's stashed the recorked bottle of elixir of eternal life.

The End?