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Boothill was getting tired of Penacony.
He knew he shouldn’t have come back to the Planet of Festivities for one last look around, but after the chaos of the Wardance and the Stoneheart Aventurine’s invitation to meet, he decided against his instincts of staying in the same place for too long. And now look where he was, running around with summoned heroes from other dimensions or something.
Lancer was helpful a little bit, but Boothill was used to relying on himself. Shooting walking tv’s, running through silent horror movies and other stuff was really getting on his nerves. At least taking his frustration out on that IPC guy was fun. Boothill laughed to himself as the group ascended the stairs into the Grand Theatre as how Skott begged for mercy. No permanent damage could be done from within a dream, but the IPC would need to pay a hefty fine to repair Skott’s dream-avatar. Boothill was just fine with that.
They - the summoners and summonees - got past the defenses at the door easily enough. Robin’s summoned hero Miss Note was harder to crack, but Boothill easily pulled his gun on her and squeezed the trigger. She vanished into a swirl of dream bubbles before their eyes and Boothill pushed ahead past thick curtains into the main area of the theatre.
Only, he didn’t step into the theatre. Boothill looked around and found that he was now outside. As in, alone in a grass field.
“Fork me…” Boothill muttered under his breath as he found no trace of the Grand Theatre anywhere, just a moon and stars overhead, and endless grass around him. The landscape smelled like dirt. “Robin? Trailblazer?” He called out to the darkness his eyes were rapidly adjusting to. “Aventurine? Saber?”
Nope. No responses. Boothill kicked the dirt and started trudging forward. His eyes adjusted further and Boothill could see a blackness below the skyline, a treeline. He was approaching a forest of some sort. Boothill switched to night vision in his eyes to get a better view of where he was stepping. He reached the trees and started hiking through them, not really following any direct path, but somehow feeling like he knew where he was going.
He’d been here before, right? He knew this patch of trees, just south of the farmhouse and east of the river. He picked up the pace and broke into a run. He was late, he needed to hurry. His scarf and hair flapped in the wind, and he held his hat to his head. He came to the edge of the trees and found a campfire surrounded by logs, with a number of people sitting around the blaze. His night vision returned to normal as the group glanced in his direction.
One person, a woman with freckles that were highlighted by the warm glow of the fire, stood and waved him over, calling out a name that was sharp on her tongue. He joined the circle and sat down next to her, apologizing for his tardiness.
An older man with sandpaper skin and salt and pepper hair handed him a guitar. “Let’s get this started. Ready?”
He was ready. He picked at the strings with metal fingers, which made him pause for a second before he blinked and found warm flesh instead. Yeah, regular fingers. What else would he have? His sister next to him produced a banjo and their brother across the circle from them started clapping a beat.
The notes came naturally to him, with his name that was too sharp for the smile that was curling on his lips. The lyrics flowed between him and his sisters and brothers and siblings that joined in. The older man whistled, the other old man next to him balanced something precious on his leg and bounced her to the beat. The precious one clapped her hands, too, and no one cared that she had no rhythm.
He stood with the guitar and spun around, kicking his feet around the fire as the family repeated the chorus with echoes of delight and laughter. He looked towards the endless night sky and closed his eyes, spinning on his toes. His knees whirred mechanically no they didn’t and his fans heaved he doesn’t have fans, but he didn’t care.
The man with salt and pepper hair took the guitar from him, and the other old man handed him the baby. Their son held their granddaughter and took her tiny hand in his, wrapping her impossibly small fingers around his as he swayed her back and forth in an imitation of ballroom dancing. She squealed happily and leaned her head against her chest. He put his other hand on her back to sit her on his hip, and kept singing, enamored by her uneven dimples and the way she seemed to glow in the light of the fire. He didn’t even notice he’d stopped dancing to watch her wriggle in his hold to the music, with as much coordination as a bowl of jello mind you.
His siblings kept playing and singing, and he sat down on a log to just stare at her. She pulled her head up to look around and she laughed. It sounded a little like a cough, but it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard, and he’d heard Robin channel the literal Harmony before.
Robin? The Harmony? He shook his head, he didn’t know those words or names. He focused on how his hand held up his baby as she kept wriggling happily, how her tiny muscles flexed to keep herself upright against his palm. It was the same hand that the IPC had taken from him not one year after he’d left this place to get his revenge.
The shades of his family continued to sing and dance around him, the baby in his lap looked up at him with unconditional love and joy, and Boothill knew what was happening.
He kissed her forehead, her soft skin feeling so real on his lips, and pressed his nose to her hair, inhaling deeply, before passing her back to his old man. He stood, tipped his hat at everyone, and turned back to the woods.
A tug in the back of Boothill’s mind told him he was close to his friends again, and when he left the forest again, he was in the Grand Theatre. The Trailblazer was getting to her feet, Saber had a hand on her sword, and Aventurine was shaking his head. When the group went around sharing what they’d been shown in their visions, Boothill said;
“Me? I had… a long-awaited reunion.”