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The emptiness was too dark for his own body's light to make a dent in the void, but with the stars glittering all around them, Firey could see her clearly. Floating gently, she propelled herself towards him.
He caught his breath, worried she was moving too fast and would collide with him, but he shouldn't have doubted her. Effortlessly she caught his hands in hers and the momentum sent them spinning, not enough to make him sick, but enough to force him to grip her hands tightly. With even this amount of speed, losing his hold would send them spinning away from one another into outer space with no way of reuniting.
“Hey there!” she chirped, not a care in the world. Consequences be damned, Leafy would spin in space if she wanted. Sometimes it seemed like the very idea of consequences was foreign to Leafy anyway.
“Hi,” he answered.
“How's your side of the solar system?”
He glanced backwards while Leafy giggled. It was funny, really, how he'd never met anyone else who made everything fun the way she did.
“It's pretty okay. How's yours?”
Leafy made a big show of looking around, giving Firey an opportunity to admire how the darkness and light moved across her as they spun.
“Hmm… Yours is nicer. We should trade.”
“No way! This is my half solar system.”
Her lips turned down and her brow furrowed in mock-annoyance. “What?? Not nice! Firey, I thought we were friends!”
She was playing around, but he still felt guilty. Then stupid, for feeling guilty. “We are,” he said.
Leafy smiled, eyes low lidded despite the darkness, not bothering to hide her pleasure about his reaction. I'm easy, Firey thought, as his stomach somersaulted for reasons completely unrelated to their orbit.
“I guess maybe I can share it with you, if you really really want it.”
“Yay!” Leafy cheered. Her fingers adjusted and stroked his palm as she slipped them around and tightened her grip around his fingers. The sensation was so soft, yet so intense it was something akin to pain. Were his hands supposed to be so sensitive he was aware of every subtle adjustment she made? Were they supposed to feel so sweaty?
Firey had never been too comfortable with people touching him-more often than not, it ended in disaster- but right now, he couldn't help but hope she never let go.
The stars twinkled in the dark night sky. Far below, the cold of yoyleland's hills seemed to sap his energy.
Firey's eyes drifted between open and shut. He could barely sleep with his heart beating like a drum, his pulse racing to remind him he was going to die, but he was too exhausted to remain fully awake. Staring straight up helped to ease the awareness of how high up he was, but it came with its own set of unfortunate memories.
A violent shudder in his stomach eased the dull throb of hunger pain he had gotten used to at this point. Firey lowered a hand and rubbed the flickering midsection to settle it - a feat only he could really pull off, thanks to his limbs’ obvious immunity to flames. He gazed back up at the sky and saw a flicker, as if the stars themselves were winking at him.
Leafy…
Firey squeezed his eyes shut. They had made her unrecoverable. They had wanted her dead. She was a menace, a huge menace, but they wanted her gone forever. Firey couldn't fathom it. How could anyone think her anger outweighed the value of her smile? That the world would be better without her in it? Was she okay? Was she alive? What had happened during his pathetic, stupid display of distraction? Had he failed yet again- was he capable of doing anything but failing?
Leafy...
Out of nowhere, there was a jolt. The cage swung erratically and Firey's panic washed over him once again, his fear taking hold. His hands shot out, elbow hitting the edge of the metal painfully, and he wrapped his fingers around the cold metal as if it would help him one single bit.
His breathing was erratic - he was being hoisted upwards - the chain clinked and all at once he was on solid ground, the top of the Yoyle Needy observation deck. His eyes (when had he squeezed them shut? A hiss of steam arose embarrassingly from his cheeks as he blinked away tears) opened slowly.
“Hey, Firey.”
“Needle?”
She was just standing there, gazing down at him unnervingly. He couldn't read her expression.
“Um… How're you holding up?” she said finally.
He didn't want to dignify that with a response, but he never liked ignoring people. It was hard enough doing that with--
“How do you think?”
Needle shifted her weight. “Oh, yeah.” She let out a nervous little laugh. “Well, I mean... It is a punishment, after all...?"
“Is there a reason you're here?” Firey asked, trying not to sound desperate. There had to be a reason she lifted him up and allowed his heartbeat to steady for the first time in who-knows-how-long -- he'd drifted in and out of consciousness many times, but he hadn't kept track of sunsets and sunrises. Looking at them was.. uncomfortable.
Luckily, he wasn't wrong. Needle produced a sandwich from out of nowhere, passing it between her hands. Firey's eyes tracked it as it moved; dribbles of drool were beginning to pool dangerously in his mouth.
“Is … is that for me??”
“Yes,” Needle said, but it felt like half a thought. She stopped in the middle, then, like it was an afterthought, glanced behind herself furtively. Oblivious to her anxiety, Firey watched the food, the first meal he'd laid eyes on in so many hours.
“Can I have it?” He begged.
“In a second,” she replied in a snap that was less vindictive and more distracted.
“Why in a second?”
“I keep feeling like someone's following me and I'm not supposed to be doing this.” Needle pressed her fingers into her temple and sighed from the depths of her chest. “Or, I don't know. I don't think you're meant to be starved? Everybody is focusing on other things, but I--”
“Please!”
Needle finally took pity on him, reaching through the bars to pass along the sandwich. He snatched it away from her and shoved the whole thing in his mouth at once. It tasted a little dusty, somehow, but it was good otherwise- peanut butter.
It was so good, the best meal he'd ever had. Firey sighed, deeply and contentedly, then jolted as Needle stepped towards the chain again and began lifting the cage.
“What?! Wait, wait wait wait-”
“You stole Dream Island!” Needle hissed.
“You KNOW why I stole -- Needle, I thought you would understand!” He pleaded, staring up through the metal cage. She avoided eye contact, biting her lip. “Needle, what was I supposed to do?! Let them kill her forever?!”
“Why do you even like her?”
“What kind of a question is that?!”
“Are you the one who recovered her all those times?” Needle pressed. “We know it was somebody.”
“Th-that was somebody else!”
Needle opened her mouth to retaliate but something caused her to abandon the thought. She spun around quickly, looking over the rooftop.
“Is someone up here with me?!” She called, angry and uncomfortable. The subtle sound of the wind high above the ground was her only response. Firey had no clue what her problem was.
“What's wrong with you?”
“I don't know,” she said, and stifled a yawn. “I can't tell if I'm going crazy, or it's…. But it can't be. She's supposed to be…”
“You mean Leafy?!”
It was such a relief to say her name out loud again. So much sweeter than the bitterness he had expected, it rolled off his tongue so much more easily than it should have. Not shouted, high above the ground, in the midst of a crazy game of tug of war with the worst prize of all time.
Needle's eyes narrowed at the sound. She didn't respond.
“Is she alive?” he pressed, reaching through the bars to grab Needle's hand in supplication. It was an instinct, something someone else had done a long time ago, and Needle drew herself away like his touch hurt. He knew enough to know that it didn't.
“She's…” Needle trailed off. Reluctance radiated off of her in waves, thick and intense. She didn't want to say. Was that good or bad?
“Please, Needle, tell me she's okay.” He was begging again, even more painfully this time. The throes of hunger were gone but his stomach felt sick.
“Book… they said Book finished her off…”
Needle didn't believe it. Firey didn't have to be a mind reader to understand that. She was being followed; it was probably Leafy. Leafy wouldn't let herself get killed so easily once she was freed from her cage. She'd escaped so many times, he thought, frantic. Needle thought Leafy was alive and if that was all he had, he would cherish it. Leafy was probably stalking around here now, probably had spotted him in his cage and sighed about how another person had become an island stealer like herself, not having a single clue as to why he really took that stupid farm. Leafy, Leafy, Leafy, Leafy, Leafy.
Firey did not say any of this out loud.
“Thank you for telling me.”
When Needle booted the cage back over the edge with an apologetic nod, Firey found the drop didn't seem so massive when he had a full stomach. The terror-inducing suspension, drifting ever so gently from side to side as the wind pushed and pulled in a perpetual motion, wasn't nauseating in the slightest.
Firey fixed his gaze back up at the sky and pretended they were spinning away up there, alone together, weightless and giggling forever.