Chapter Text
It’s been getting colder and colder the past couple months, and with that, everyone was going to the store more often. Ze, though, on the other hand—has been staying inside more often, with his bedroom heater on(which he just recently found out they have.)
One morning—and a VERY early morning, he was woken by the muffled, but still loud, music playing downstairs. Ze sits up in his bed, groaning in annoyance from the noise as the covers slide and fold down to rest on his lap. He runs a hand through his hair as he collects his thoughts from sleep.
Wait..
Is that Christmas music?
He throws his legs over the side of the bed, and stands up. “Why would they possibly play Christmas music at this time of ye..-ar…”
At that moment, he actually takes the moment to think—what even is the date?
Ze grabs his phone from his dresser to check the date.
“DECEMBER 10TH?” He exclaimed, he wasn’t paying attention to what date it was for like, 2 months. He hasn’t even thought of gifts for moe, regect, and Wakafonte (And MAYBE others.)
Before Ze can even attempt to get up, and get ready for the day—he hears the music get louder, before suddenly his door is kicked open.
Regect and Moe are standing there, a speaker on full blast playing Christmas music.
When they realize that Ze just woke up, Regect pauses the music. It’s silent for a few seconds, before finally.
“Dude, you look like shit” Regect says, trying to hold back from laughing. But you can practically hear the grinning in his voice.
Ze gives regect a dirty look, but he was right. He had insane bed-head, and his clothes were all wrinkled, But maybe if they didn’t budge into his room—he could’ve looked presentable.
Instead of saying that though-
“your the color of shit when someone’s diet is that unhealthy” Ze retorts, which regect holds a hand up to his chest, feigning injury.
The act gets a small honk of laughter from moe, before she pulls out 3 Santa caps from her pocket, and puts them on the 3–including herself
———————————————
When Ze finally gets dressed, and fixes his hair, and goes outside—moe and regect have been hanging outside for the last 20 minutes.
Ze opens the front door to immediately be hit with the cold biting what skin is uncovered, he wasn’t expecting it to be this cold, even more that it was actively snowing.
By the time he catches moe and regect in his sight, regect gets sniped in his invisible face with a snowball thrown by moe.
Regect falls off balance, and lands directly on his back onto the ground.
“FUCK, SNOWS STUCK IN MY EYE!” he wails, rolling back and forth on the snow covered ground, getting himself covered in more snow.
Moe lets out a series of intelligible honks, before noticing Ze and waving at him. “HONK! HONK HONK HONK HONK HONKHONK HONK!” (“ZE! You should join the snowball fight!”)
Ze takes a moment to think, but before he can respond moe decides he’s taken too long, and threw a snowball right at him, hitting Ze on the chest.
Ze looks down at his chest, and lets out a shocked chuckle, clearly not expecting it.
Moe gets a laugh out of it, but by the time she focuses back on Ze—a snowball is already being thrown at her, with Ze already preparing another one.
“I can play that game too, moe!” The smile on Ze’s face is very audible in his voice.
After a while, the whole snowball fight turned into everyone not only throwing snowballs, tackling each other, and throwing insults back and forth.
And despite all the rough housing, everyone seems to forget about their worries and trauma.
———————————————
F-R-E-E-D-O-M
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Ze quickly sat up—a cold sweat glistening on his skin, slightly reflecting the orange hue ahead. He hadn’t even realized his eyes were open once he came to his senses, ‘why was it so dark?’ He thought
“What the fu..” Ze mutters, pulling his hand back from the ground like it scorched him. Why was the floor so cold and rough? Where was he?
Ze hesitantly, and slowly went to stand up—saying slowly because he almost fell over from how dark it is—before running a hand through his slightly tangled hair.
“Okay..” he says, louder than his last sentence “this isn’t.. where the fuck am I?” He asks no one, well, probably himself—looking around like he’s going to find something, which.. he surprisingly does!
It’s far away, but he does see light, he can’t make out what’s around it, or what the source is, though.
Ze makes his way to the light, but once he gets there, and the light illuminates the terrain around him, he realize’s its torches, lined on walls.. bedrock walls.
Fuck, was he in the hole? Did Ze even ever escape?!
“What..?” The word comes out way quieter than what he wanted. “WHAT THE FUCK??!” Ze yells out in anger and disbelief, punching the bedrock wall—which surprisingly ‘only’ leaves a slight crack in it. The force of it causes 2 of the torches to fall off, and die down, the light extinguished.
He looks down at the now extinguished torches, and looks up at the remaining ones, standing there for a moment—Before it suddenly goes out, the one directly across from it going out with it.
It catches Ze off guard, and while more and more torches go out—he starts hearing the laughter as it gets darker and darker.
He’s confused, and just standing there, but once one more pair of torches goes out, his instincts tells him to just run toward.
Ze turns, and starts running fowards—as he does he spots a door he didn’t see before. He takes it as a chance to escape.
No matter how fast Ze seems to sprint towards it, it doesn’t look like he’s getting closer to it—but the laughter so as hell is.
What feels like the blink of an eye, he’s at the door. He’s fully expecting to run full force into it, possibly even breaking it—but the moment his fingers even brush the handle—everything around him starts to glitch until he’s in what he assumes to be a void, with the only light being a dim, invisible, light source.
Ze crashes down hard onto the ground, leaving him light headed from the fall, and panting from his run.
When he finally recovers and sits up, he sees the eyes right in front of him.
Ze immediately pulls out a hand gun he always keeps on him—pointing it directly at the eyes, but his vision blacks out for less than a second and it’s gone.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?” Ze tries to yell at it, but the only thing that comes out is absence. He feels helpless in this moment.
Suddenly, his jacket seems to disintegrate, leaving him onoy in his tank top. Revealing his wings, and the scars he got from boot camp (+ other incidents), it makes him feel exposed.
Ze’s feathers puff up, and his wings goes to cover his body.
He puts his head on his knees and covers it, like it’ll hide him from how the eyes are trying to break him down.
He just wants to go home, back to Moe, and Regect.