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“So, are you coming with me or not?” Adam looked at the hand extended to him.
It was his favourite Red Sentry, wearing a cozy orange cardigan and a muffler around his neck. His hand was extended towards the black sentry, who sat on the garden bench, slumped on his rifle, with no thoughts in his head whatsoever. He’d been sitting like this for quite a bit, now, he realised— and probably Skull had noticed it too. After all, the window pf Skull’s new room in this palace that was now slowly starting to feel like home instead of a military bunker, overlooked the very garden he’d been sitting in.
“Wh- what?” Adam asked, confused.
He’d been so lost in his thoughts that he’d not registered that Skull had asked him a question. The black sentry looked up at him, once again stricken by the realisation that his own nose was no longer invisible to his eyes.
How strangely the human body worked, he thought, phasing Skull out of his thoughts again. When he had vision in both his eyes, somehow, his brain would automatically filter out the nose. Wasn’t that how it happened? While your eyes technically could see your nose, it remained in the peripheral vision and the brain to filter it out to avoid cluttering your vision, or something of the sort.
The doctors had explained to him in painful detail, how it’ll take his brain a few days to adjust enough to filter it out once again. The injury didn’t hurt much, anymore, he just felt vaguely numb about it… much like how he felt about most other things.
“Fishing? You’re coming or…?”
“Right, right, fishing” Adam repeated, without thinking too much, his thoughts still as cluttered as his vision was, “wait,” he found himself confused again, “it’s winter. Where are you going to fish?”
“Ice fishing!” Skull said, with a smile on his face. Adam had seen this man wandering the palace like a ghost ad the oddest times of the day and the night— seeing him smile like that, with wrinkles crinkling the corners of his eyes, was such a… different sight. And yet, it felt like it belonged.
“Ice… fishing?” How was he still not catching on? He remembered the words vaguely, but his brain felt too much of a clutter to actually make sense of what he was saying.
Skull held up a 6-inch power auger and a fishing pole, “Ice fishing! You know that lake that’s a few miles of a trek from here? Up north?? I’m hearing some of the younger sentries got quite a catch there~”
“Uh… take Bulk or someone... I think I’m good,”
“No, you’re not.” Skull said, placing his hand on Adam’s shoulder, reassuringly, “And besides, we don’t have to talk. You can sit and ponder over whatever problems of the world you’re pondering over while we fish too.” He leaned in closer, his voice conspirational, “and I make killer jumbo Perch fillets, so if you come fishing, you can evade the canteen’s bean and lentil curry”
Adam’s stomach growled in response and that was indication enough for Skull to chuckle and tug at Adam’s arms to get him up from his depression-bench and pull him towards the woods.
.
.
.
“You sure you don’t mind carrying all that?” The Red sentry asked, concerned, as Adam hauled the ice-hut stove with him, while Skull carried the auger and the other fishing equipments.
“It’s better than walking on my own and wandering away into the woods because I can’t focus.” Adam shrugged.
Skull patted him on the back, as if saying ‘fair enough’. Skull always knew where he needed to push and where he didn’t need to.
They’d been walking in relative silence for a little over seventy minutes, now, lugging through the snow-covered forest and making their way across trails that Skull knew too well.
“You like coming to the trails, don’t you?”
“I do, ever since I was a kid.” Skull went silent for a few very long moments. Adam didn’t ask more, he knew that Skull would share more if he wanted to.
“When we were kids, Billy and I used to play pirates in these woods.” He smiled, looking back at where Adam was following him, “we’d hijacked one of those old boats that weren’t taken to the middle of the lake anymore because they were rotting, and while Billy’s dad didn’t allow us to actually take the boat into the lake, we pretended it was a part of our pirate ship, docked on the shore.”
Adam couldn’t help but smile at that thought.
Something about the image of a tiny version of this hardened red sentry, playing make believe with that blonde boy who’s picture he kept in his trunk at all times…
They continued walking together, silently. No sound to be heard except for the chirping of the birds and the sound of their footsteps through the snow, until they finally reached the lake.
The trees cleared out into the ethereal sight that was the lake; surrounded by the forests and the mountains on all sides, a white sheen covering the entire surface where every molecule on the surface had frozen into an icy, crystalline lattice.
Skull halted close to the lake’s surface, sat down on his haunches and gently inspected the surface with a gentle tap, then another, firmer one. Adam stared at him, no thoughts in his mind, just taking in the red sentry and his… antics.
Skull then got up, stretched, and let out a happy little sound that vaguely resembled a giddy fox.
“C’mon, let’s find a fishing spot!”
.
.
.
The two sentries trudged a little further along the frozen shoreline until Skull found what he was looking for: a spot where the ice looked thick and stable, but not too far, so they’d fins a place where the underwater weeds might still hold life.
“Here,” Skull announced, planting the auger firmly. “This’ll do.”
He fired up the small gasoline-powered auger with a practiced tug. Adam just stared blankly for a second, as the machine blared to life, its whirring sound the only thing that was echoing across the lake for miles. He wondered if he should lend a hand, but Skull looked like he had enough experience.
Within minutes, Skull had drilled a clean, dark hole about eight inches across. He scooped out the slush with a metal ladle, then dropped a small depth finder in to check.
“How long are you gonna carry that folded stove on your back, buddy?” Skull looked up, his hair covered in a thin sheen of flyaway cotton-ice, and grinned, “you look like an oversized turtle shell.”
He didn’t know why, but he found his cheeks heating up at Skull’s comment. It was rare for Adam to blush this easily, but the red sentry truly had his ways. He set the stove down and helped unfold the ice-hut. Skull meanwhile figured around the logistics of the hole and the stove, while he gave the propane burner a brief try just to see that everything worked well.
The sun was out and the wind was light, turning the day into something almost pleasant despite the cold, it seemed like the fishing trip was going well after all.
Skull baited two lines with small minnows he’d kept alive in an insulated bucket, then handed one rod to Adam.
The black sentry nodded absentmindedly as Skull gave him some instructions about what to do, and simply lowered his line, while also lowering himself to sit on the little foldable footstools they’d brought along. Skull sat next to him, letting his own weighted fishing line sink, and said something along the lines of “the last time I’d come here, we’d forgotten the stools- and froze our butts off, sitting on the lake.”
Adam chuckled at the anecdote, but didn’t offer much in return. The two of them sat and fished together in silence, Skull having kicked off his shoes (and socks) and folded his legs up so he could sit cross legged on the stool, which was somehow a more comfortable position than the hunchbacked pose Adam was donning, with his feet firmly planted onto the icy ground.
For a long while, nothing happened. The only sounds were the occasional creak of ice expanding in the distance and the soft rustle of wind through the pine needles.
Adam let himself get lost in his thoughts again.
What had they done to deserve a life in this world? Where everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong— Adam half wondered, that even with Drakkon gone, maybe their days were still numbered. Skull allowed himself to be… happier, didn’t he? Things like this, fishing, reading books, finding mundane things to do. How, Adam thought, sometimes, could someone- someone who had already experienced death once, could find joy in things like this?
He remembered Skull mentioning to Kimberly that he wanted to ride in the gravezord once. It was an interesting thought, but again, why would Skull want to ride in the Gravezord?? Something that was responsible for causing far more dest—
Before Adam could complete that train of thought, the tip of Skull’s rod twitched.
“There we go!” Skull yelped, excitedly; he waited, letting the fish take it, then pulled, letting the fish run a little before reeling in the line, quickly. Adam watched with a smile creeping up his lips as the fish— a fat, golden, jumbo perch— broke the surface and started flopping wildly onto the ice.
“Oh, ho!” Adam joined in, Skull’s excitement at the fish was contagious. The little thing was almost a foot long, and a nice catch, so they decided to keep it.
Adam’s line eventually twitched too—once, twice—then nothing. He tried jiggling it more actively, like Skull showed him, but it seemed the fish preferred Skull’s line more.
“Maybe fishing isn’t for me,” Adam groaned, when the same incident repeated a third time, while Skull’s brought them another one.
“Or maybe you’re just looking for excuses to go back and sit on that bench again”.
Adam frowned at that. Was he? Did he just not want to be here?
“No?”
“No what?” Skull replied, seemingly his mind had already drifted further away from the conversation.
“I don’t want to go back and sit on that bench again. I want to fish here- with you.”
The smile that then spread on the red sentry’s face was absolutely priceless. Even Adam could tell, because the next words that left his lips were, “what? Why do you look so surprised?”
Skull didn’t reply, he just smiled and shook his head, “Well, let’s keep going, then!”
Finally, after a few minutes of Skull showing him some sort of fishing trick that was bound to get him something, it actually did— he felt a strike and as the rod jerked up, he started reeling it in. The fight was very strong for the fish under the ice, but then Skull also weighed in and the two reeled the clunky, stubborn perch out of the hole.
“Good catch!” Skull patted Adam on the shoulder and the two returned to their stations. Seemed like Adam had learnt the trick, for a couple hours later, the both of them had a decent enough catch for a proper meal. Each time a fish would come up, Skull would stun and kill it quickly and humanely with a small club he’d carried, then lay it on the snow to freeze slightly while they continued.
“Are we taking some back to the palace?” Adam asked.
Skull shrugged, “Nah, they have enough food to keep themselves preoccupied. This is our prize,” he dipped forward and gently winked, “look at what this baby can do.”
With that, Skull pulled them back onto terra firma from the thin ice sheet and lit the propane stove, setting a skillet on tp of it with a generous pat of butter. As it melted, he filleted their catches with quick, masterful strokes of his knife, which told Adam that this wasn’t Skull’s first fishing trip.
Well, he knew as much, but still, seeing the Red sentry with his skills in person was always nice.
“Where’d you learn all this?”
“My brother used to take me fishing when I was small. There used to be a lot more people here than there are now, but hey, the calm is sort of nice these days.”
“Doesn’t try to eat you as it did back when the ugly old fuck ruled.” Adam said, which made Skull wheeze a little as he salted and peppered and sprinkled herbs on the fish. A sizzling sound had now filled the air, a rich savoury aroma telling them that the food was going to be so good~ Adam’s stomach growled, loudly.
Skull chuckled. “And you were settling for canteen curry.”
“It doesn’t stand a chance,” Adam shook his head. Skull handed him a fork and pieces of bread so they could eat directly from the skillet, without having to use proper plates. Between the bites, they passed around a thermos of spiced masala tea that Skull had brought from home, the warmth spreading through them.
“You know… it feels… normal,” he admitted quietly. “Being out here. Doing something that isn’t… thinking.”
Skull nodded. Once again, he wasn’t pushing, but he knew exactly what to say, “That’s the point sometimes. Just do the thing in front of you. Fish. Walk. Eat. The rest sorts itself out eventually.”
“Easy for you to say when you can see with both eyes.”
“You still can see with one eye,” Skull reminded, “Not that it matters. But it also doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter.”
“Double negatives always confuse me,” Adam pointed out, “say it in easier words, Commander?”
“Losing something- or someone— is always hard. But the more you keep thinking about it, the worse it’s gonna get, you know?”
“That’s not what you were trying to say.”
“Isn’t it?” the red sentry’s voice sounded a bit high pitched, he chuckled, “I’m not here to give you life advice and stuff— unless you want some, of course, in which case the 76 year old uncle inside me is going to awaken and start rambling— but I will say, if you feel like there’s too many unwanted thoughts in your head, about the ugly old fuck, or about this, or anything else, just let me know; whatever you need, be it taking your mind off things or talking you through them, I’m gonna be here, okay?”
Adam nodded.
“Okay, good. Just wanted you to know that.”
Adam smiled. “Thanks, buddy.” For once, the static in his head seemed to have quietened down.
Maybe he didn’t need to think about how long it was going to take his brain to filter his nose out; maybe it didn’t really matter either. They were here, sitting and eating, and in no way, during the entire trip, had Adam felt, for even a second, that Skull had treated him any differently than he would’ve had they been here a few months ago, when they’d been still under Drakkon and he’d have been a sentry with both of his eyes functioning.
He just had one question.
“When was the last time you came here?”
Skull turned to look at him, a piece of the fish still in his mouth. He didn’t swallow, before he finished speaking, so his words sounded like a jumbled mess— in the cutest way possible, of course— “When we were fourteen.”
“Why now?”
“Nobody can kill us for not taking fish back to the palace, now.”
“Stupid defence.”
“Bad memories?”
“Too vague.”
“You’re telling me the entire story as we walk back.”
“Do I have to?”
“You just promised you’re gonna do whatever I say—“
“That’s not what I promised.”
“Isn’t it?” He repeated, then made a puppy dog eyes face at the red sentry- a part of him wondered if it would work as well as it used to, because with only half the ammunition—
“Alright fineee.” Skull dragged the last syllable, “But on one condition. You’re fishing with me next week too.”
Oh, it so fucking worked.
“Yeah,” he replied, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile. “I think I’d like that.”
Skull’s eyes crinkled again with that same warm Eugene Skullovitch smile.
They sat together for a while more, polishing off the food, and then, as the sun dipped lower, they slowly started making their way back to the palace. The sky had turned soft pink and orange above the mountains, the white snow coloured in their colors. Adam carried the stove again, but it felt lighter now. His steps were surer, and even though the fog in his head hadn’t vanished completely, it had thinned— much like the ice on the lake— still there, but no longer completely solid.
He’d be okay.