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Fanny has not been avoiding Bubble. She has not been strategically leaving the room whenever she can to avoid talking to her former, maybe still a little bit of a crush and teammate.
Okay, maybe she is, but Fanny doesn’t know how to talk to her again. It’s been five years since she’s last seen the other woman that it’s daunting to just even go up to her.
It especially doesn’t help that Match has been hanging around her in a depressive state ever since Pencil left.
She’s glad that pencil left, good fucking riddance. But something that Fanny does not understand is why did Bubble forgive Match so easily? Even after all that she’s done to her?
Fanny wants to ask, but she doesn’t want to go anywhere near somebody who treated her so horribly back in BFB.
“Are you avoiding bubble?” Tree puts a gentle hand on the top of her head as she gets down from the table the two were sitting at in the hotel’s dining hall as an impromptu lunch date.
“N-no?” she lies, tail flicking
“Your tail is giving you away, love.” Tree teases and she grumbles, sitting back down across from him. “What’s going on? I thought you two were friends.”
“I haven’t seen her in five years, tree. What am I supposed to do?”
“Go up to her? Say hello. How are you? I haven’t seen you in five years, let’s catch up?” Tree suggests like it’s so simple and easy.
Fanny groans loudly in to the table.
“I’m right!”
“You don’t get it Tree, Match is there and I HATE her.” Fanny says morosely, “She treated me horribly in BFB and Bubble for probably longer!”
Tree gives her a look, one of those looks that’s calling her out on her bullshit. She hates that look on his stupidly handsome face.
“Stop looking at me like that.” She growls.
“There’s more to it that you’re not telling me.”
“No, there isn’t.” She lies again, a flick of her tail.
Tree stands up.
“Okay! Fine! Wait!” Fanny scrambles to her feet, nearly falling on her ass when her back twinges angrily at her sudden movement, stopping him before he can move any further. “Ill tell you.”
Tree sits back down, giving her an expectant look.
“I may or may not have had a crush on her in BFB and I haven’t quite gotten over those feelings like I thought I have.” Fanny admits, glaring at a stain in the table, her face heating up slightly as her blades whir to life, “there. You happy?”
Tree hums, “Thank you for telling me, is that it?”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘that’s it?’ wh-“ she says, baffled, blinking at him. “What, did you think there was more?”
“You’re nervous to talk to her again because of that crush of yours?” Tree raises an eyebrow. “That didn't stop you from talking to any of us.”
“Tree, I didn't have a mouth for some of that.”
“True, that is true. Why is this stopping you now?”
Fanny is silent for a moment. Why is she not talking to Bubble? Oh, right, Match is there, and she doesn’t want to talk to Match at all. Ever. Not in a million fucking years.
“Cause Match’ll tell me to fuck off or something.”
“She can’t hate you that much.”
Fanny makes a noise in disagreement, putting her head on the table. “You don’t get it!” she groans.
“Love, you just have to rip off the band-aid and go talk to her.”
“Don't compare me and Bubble to band-aids that’s disgusting. I hate that metaphor, tree.”
Tree stares at her, unamused. Wordlessly, he gets up, causing Fanny to look up in panic.
“No! Come back!”
“It’s for your own good, Fanny!”
Fanny makes a noise like a wounded animal as she watches Tree walk over to her kind of, sort of crush, striking up a conversation with both her and Ruby. Pointedly ignoring how Match glares at him.
Only for Match to catch her staring at her group and glare at her instead.
Fanny bares her sharp teeth at the other object in return, growling. But air, this is so humiliating.
Why does she have to be so stupid and scared to talk to her friend again?
She hates how much Tree cares about her. Kind of.
She doesn’t hate it, actually. She likes how much he cares about her and their two other partners, but right now she hates it.
Fanny just hates how he’s talking to Bubble so easily and- oh fan blades she’s looking at her.
Bubble turns around to look at her and gives her a big smile and a wave.
Fanny is going to die right here at this table and it’s all Tree's fault. Stupid bastard, why the hell does she love him anyway!?
She smiles back, but it feels more like a grimace than anything else.
Ruby also gives her a wave, because of course she does. Nobody can hate Ruby, not even Fanny can.
So she waves back, because what else is she supposed to do while waiting for her stupid boyfriend to bring her stupid crush back to the table where she’s sitting and waiting in agony!?
Fanny should’ve hung out with Black Hole today, but he’s busy with Golf Ball and Basketball at the moment. Or Marker. But she didn’t want to intrude on his reunion with Stapy and Foldy.
Ugh. She swears all of her partners hate her in this very exact moment.
She should’ve hung out with any of her other fellow Pact members today, actually. Then maybe she wouldn’t be going through this.
Fanny briefly contemplates running away, but then Tree would be upset with her, and she doesn’t want that. She hates it when Tree is sad.
So she just sits at the table, regretting her entire existence as their conversation drags on and on into eternity before eventually Bubble gets up and follows Tree over to where Fanny is sitting. It’s too late for Fanny to do anything now.
“There, I talked to her for you. Now you can have a proper conversation.” Tree says, giving her a smile and a kiss on the cheek, “Once you're done, come and find me, okay?”
“Okay, whatever.” She grumbles, glaring at him as he walked off.
“You wanted to talk?” Bubble asks, rocking on her heels.
“Yeah…” she swallows, getting up from the table. “I’ve been kind of… avoiding you. It’s not your fault though!”
“I know, it’s just been a lot of catching up with everyone, and Match is taking Pencil leaving kind of hard.” She says, walking towards the door.
Fanny holds back a string of unsavory words regarding those two, so instead, “Why… why are you talking to her again? She hurt you.”
“I know. I forgive her. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind, with Pencil gone back then…” bubble trailed off. “I had a lot of time to think about things after BFB ended, you know?”
Fanny hums but doesn’t answer.
“A lot of things changed, Fanny. Firey and Leafy made up. Me and Ruby are dating Flower. We used to be dating Lollipop too, but that’s a long story.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! It’s been really nice. Flowers changed a lot, too. But that’s probably not what you wanted to talk about.”
“No, i- I wanted to catch up. Talk, find out your reasoning for hanging out with Match again.” Fanny kicks at the dirt with a huff.
“Oh yeah, she showed up at the Pillary Ruins after that big storm. She was so lost and afraid. Ruby and I talked about what we would do if we ever saw Match or Pencil again… well, long story short, we already forgave her.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Fanny grumbles, “but I still don’t like her.”
Bubble laughs, and something inside her flutters; air, she missed her laugh. “That’s okay, you don’t have to. You and Tree are together?”
“Yeah, me, Tree, Black Hole and marker are all dating, actually,” she says with a fond smile. “I hate feeling vulnerable, so it took me a while to get used to it.”
Bubble hums, “You seem a lot happier than you were back in BFB.”
“Yes, I guess getting romantically involved with people can make you happier.”
“No, I mean, you look like you aren’t constantly angry anymore. It’s different. You’re different. I like that you’re finally happy.”
Fanny sputters, stopping in her tracks, face flushing. Bubble cannot just say that to her and then proceed as normal, what the fuck?
“Are you okay?”
“Yes- I'm fine. Thank you.” She chokes out, good one, asshole. Turning away so her blades don’t accidentally blow bubble half across the grasslands. “I think being on a team that cares about me did wonders for my self-esteem.”
“I cared about you,” Bubble frowns. “Lightning did too, didn't he?”
“I know, but that’s not what I meant. I was more or less talking about my chances of getting hurt by my own teammates was now slim to none,” Fanny says, regretting her choice of words. She hates Bubble looked sad when she looks back at her.
“Lightning is the reason I forcibly changed The Pact and… uh… how I got with my partners.” And the reason why One got out… why all of this happened. Why she and Bubble are even talking right now.
“Oh, you’ll have to tell me about that!” Bubble smiles widely.
“It’s not a fun story,” Fanny grimaces. “Lightning got eliminated, had an outburst that resulted in a bunch of landmarks getting broken - including the moon, by the way - and ugh, I dont know. I guess I was getting fed up with how the team was doing challenges. I was feeling confusing things about my teammates I couldn’t fully grasp, while being angry that my friend got eliminated.” She trails off with a sigh. Fanny is proud of herself for getting the pact to change, but killing Tree? She hates remembering it.
She doesn’t regret it, and she’s glad she did it. But in the end, she hurt her boyfriend.
Growling, she kicks a small rock a distance away, “I killed Tree. Black hole was mad at me for months, marker just didn't quite get it.” Every time Fanny thinks about that time, a deep pit forms in her stomach. Why was she ever forgiven? What she did was right, but it caused an almost impossible to fix rift to form between her and Black Hole.
“I don't know how Black Hole still managed to have a crush on me during all of that.” She mumbles, almost ashamed of herself.
“But Two had a nightmare challenge; we went into Black Hole’s nightmare, which was… well… death. Long story short, we talked it out. We came to an agreement about the meaning of The Pact, then he used the magic from the dream to give himself a physical form, he confessed his feelings to me, and. Uh, kissed me.” She coughed, looking away embarrassed that she’s even talking about her love life with her first crush.
“It’s kind of like how Ruby and I forgave Match,” Bubble says. “She hurt us, but she apologized, and we knew she really meant it. Except we didn't kiss.”
Fuck. Fanny gets it now.
Fanny wants to yell. Really loudly. She does not want to relate to Match at all. She hates it, even.
“I’m glad you two came to an agreement, though; that sounded tough.”
“Even worse was that Pin ripped off my mouth so I couldn’t talk.” Fanny grimaces at the thought, “but she apologized a lot after we ended up on the same team after Two did a team swap.” And maybe they did a bit more than that after Pin apologized, but Fanny will not tell Bubble any of those details; what the two of them did stays between her and Pin.
“Yeesh, you’ve been up to a lot. The only crazy thing that happened with us was that Four felt like he was being replaced and underappreciated and sinking into the ground for a while, with The Announcer coming back, Purple Face and Profily, and our show nearly ending.” Bubble trails off.
“Is that why four was the literal sun!?” Fanny asks, baffled, thinking back to when the world was tinted blue for a couple of hours.
“Yeah, that was part of it.” She says sheepishly, “How did you get your mouth back?”
At that question, Fanny would usually lie. Fanny would lie about how she went back to the canal and found her mouth and stuck it back on. But she doesn’t have the luxury of doing that anymore. No longer can she hide comfortably behind a lie.
Now that everyone knows she made a deal with One. She has to think about what she did.
Her being erased didn’t even hurt; it was quick and painless, but thinking about it does. Thinking about the consequences of her desperate actions makes the scar that runs across the middle of her body ache and burn in the worst way possible. One could have erased her while she was torturing her, but she didn’t, instead letting her revel in the pain for a little while longer as she plucked off Iance one by one.
“I need to sit down,” she mumbles, stumbling. Her entire body hurts.
Fanny all but face-plants into the grass after taking a few steps forward; she feels like she’s going to throw up with how intense the pain is.
Bubble makes a noise out of panic, “I'm sorry- sorry- I shouldn’t have asked.”
Fanny grunts, taking a moment to just lie there as the pain wracks through her body. “It’s fine,” she manages, “I'm going to have to stop lying to people who ask, which I hate.”
Bubble sits down next to her, a look of concern on her face, “Do your partners know?”
It takes a moment for Fanny to register the question, but she nods, “They know about the pain.” She hates being in pain!
She sits up once it doesn’t feel like she’s going to get ripped in half again; she doesn’t know how long it’s been. The ache is still there, but not as bad.
“Are you okay now?” Bubble asks, gently putting a hand on the top of her base.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, grimacing, tail flicking in frustration once it uncoils itself from her own leg, “one was in the moon. She made deals with people to give herself leverage. Me with my mouth and Ice Cube with her legs, I don't know what she offered Barf Bag, or Gaty or Basketball or any of the others but... I was stupid and desperate and scared and- and I felt like I had no choice.”
Fanny does not want to talk about how she felt like she was alone in her knowledge; she doesn’t want to talk about her desperate late nights with Ice Cube, stewing over the limited knowledge they had while Two rotted away in bed.
She hates thinking about Two being so depressed they couldn’t even move; she can’t see them the same way anymore. She stuck around when they were at their lowest, devoid of all the life and happiness that usually followed them. It was hard to be the only one who even remotely cared, even if she was only there to get answers out of them for most of the time.
Fanny hates seeing people like that.
She hates that One disguised their data, that her and Ice Cube couldn’t do anything about potential new victims. They couldn’t even properly warn Donut. Or Pencil. Not that it mattered now.
She hates a lot of things about One. She’s glad she’s dead.
Growling, “I hate one!” she snarls angrily, tail thrashing rapidly in her anger.
“I wish I could’ve done more in the exit.” Bubble says, “But she popped me before I could.”
“I’m the reason she killed all of you first; you probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything regardless. She was too powerful. Taggy was the one who delayed my erasure.” Fanny sighs, glaring at the moon off in the distance. “Have you met Price Tag, by the way?”
“I don’t think I have, but I talked to Book briefly yesterday. They’re Book and Ice Cube's new partner? Right?”
Fanny shrugs, “Probably? I don’t really know, I didn't pay too much attention to that.” Thinking about her conversation with Price Tag a few days ago, how persistent they were to become her friend while they talked. “They are really persistent, though. I hated how much they said they cared about me when we barely knew each other.”
“You don’t really mean that, I know you don’t.”
Fanny groans, “They said the same thing. How am I so easy to read now!?” she growls at herself in disbelief.
Bubble laughs, and something flutters inside her again. She really likes Bubble’s laughter. “Like I said, you’ve changed. Those walls you put up around yourself in BFB aren’t there anymore.”
Bubble was right; those walls were long gone by now. Carefully broken down and deconstructed by the people who love and care for her the most in the entire world. Loving her for her faults, anger, and quick temper, being patient when she can’t quite find the words she’s looking for when she wants to show how much she loves and cares in return.
She wishes Bubble got to see her change into the person she is now.
Fanny missed her so much it made her heart ache. She never had a chance to begin with, and she sure as hell doesn’t have a chance now.
She wouldn’t change who she fell in love with in a heartbeat. Never in a million years.
It’s quiet between them for a moment, and Fanny almost wants to lie back down in the grass and watch the bugs. But she has to be honest with herself; she needs to be honest with Bubble now, or it’s never going to happen.
She has to get her heart broken in order for it to heal. In order to get over these feelings that she has for one of her best friends. She hates having to talk about her feelings, but it has to be done.
Eventually, she says, “There was a time when the world was ending from the failed TPOT debuters going back in time. Do you remember it? Do you remember the moment we had in the courthouse?” She asks quietly, not daring to look at her; a part of her desperately hopes that Bubble would know what she was talking about.
Bubble hums, thinking, “Vaguely, it’s very fuzzy, but I’m not sure that’s what actually happened that day. Why do you ask?”
“I missed you a lot. That was the first time saw you again in years.” She whispers, she can’t chicken out of this now.
“I missed you too! You were such a good friend to me back in BFB and that meant the entire world.” Bubble says, an earnest smile on her face as she puts a hand on Fanny's leg. “You were there for me when my friendship with match was falling apart.”
“I couldn’t let her treat you like that,” Fanny says, looking away as her fan blades whir to life again. She doesn’t want to literally blow Bubble away while she cools herself off from the blush that spreads on her cheeks while she’s trying to confess her feelings.
“But I think there’s more to that, right?”
Fanny pulls her legs up to her chest. She always fantasized about this moment, where she would tell Bubble about her crush on her, how much she enjoys hanging out and being with her. Never going through with it because she knew it’d hurt with the inevitable rejection that would come from it.
“There is.”
“I think I know.”
Does she?
“Tree told me.”
What?
“That fucking bastard.” She grumbles to herself, “I had… I have? A crush on you. Yeah. Fine.” She grunts in annoyance; every ounce of anxiety that she had is gone.
Bubble smiles, “I appreciate your honesty, and I am flattered, really. But… I love you as a friend.”
It doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would.
“I never said anything because I knew you’d reject me.” She says with a sigh, tail flicking mindlessly, “and it’d hurt a lot more back then than it does now.” Five years awaiting a rejection, and it feels like nothing. Really, it just feels like a weight has been lifted off her chest now. She hates talking about her emotions, but she would be lying to herself if she didn’t say it.
“I’m glad you aren’t upset.”
“Oh, I'm more mad at Tree right now. I’m gonna go kick that motherfucker in the shins after this.”
Bubble laughs again, “I enjoyed catching up with you; we should hang out again.” She smiles, pausing for a moment to lean in and kiss her on the cheek.
Oh fuck.
“That was for being a good friend, teammate, and someone I can put my trust in. We will never be in a romantic relationship, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you as a friend. Remember that, okay?” she says and stands up.
“Okay,” she chokes out, blades spinning to life once again. Air, she’s so goddamn pathetic.
“See you around!”
Fanny decides she’s just going to lie here in the grass; she’s dead, she’s gone, and it’s all Tree’s fault.
She stares up at the clouds until they look like stupid blobs of nothing. Fanny is not taking this rejection hard, she’s taking it just fine. She and Bubble are still friends, and that’s all that matters to her.
Suddenly, the blue sky and the clouds are gone, only to be replaced with Black Hole, who is presumably staring down at her.
“Well, hello there,” he says, a smile obvious in his voice.
“Heyyyy did Tree send you over to get me? I need to kick him in the shins.” She smiles up at it.
“No? I saw you over here by yourself, and Bubble was walking away. I wanted to know if you were okay.” He hums, inching closer until she can feel his gravitational pull; it feels like a hug.
“I’m fine; we talked.”
“Oh, that’s good. What did you talk about?” it moves back when she sits up, careful not to suck her up.
“Things. Just stuff that’s happened recently and, uh, my crush on her from back in BFB. She rejected me, just like I thought she would. It's fine, we’re still friends.”
“Ouch, rejection still hurts though, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m all good.” She frowns when he moves further away when she sits up. “Catch me,” she says, preparing to take a running jump into its orbit.
Black Hole makes a panicked noise, but catches her effortlessly. “Do you want me to take you to Tree?”
“Yup, I gotta yell at him.” She grins widely, spinning slowly in his orbit.
“And kick him in the shins?”
“Yup!”
“I’m glad I don’t have those. Why are you doing that, anyway?”
“Cause he told Bubble about my crush so we could talk.”
“Ah, gotcha.” Black Hole says with a click of his probably nonexistent tongue, “Okay, ill take you. Just don’t hurt him too much?”
“I’m not! I probably won’t even do it hard.” She rolls her eyes.
The two of them find tree over by himself laying in the grass, so black hole drops fanny on the ground nearby with a soft thud.
“Ouch,” she says in a monotone voice. It barely even hurt, but she just likes being dramatic for the sake of it.
“Come on, I didn't drop you from that high up.”
Tree is sitting up by the time she and Black Hole make their way over to him. He gives both of them a soft smile. “How.’d it go?” he asks
Fanny kicks him in the shin, hard enough for it to hurt, but not hard enough to actually injure him.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“You told Bubble I had a crush on her! I was gonna tell her!” she pouts.
“I was helping you?” Tree says, rubbing his shin.
“I mean… I was probably going to chicken out,” she grumbled, “so thank you. I guess. Ugh.” She really can’t stay mad at Tree for that long.
Tree reaches out for her, and she leans into his hug, sinking into his embrace as she sits down next to him.
“You had a big emotional moment, you must be feeling a bit drained.” He says quietly.
Fanny hums, “Only a little, wasn’t too bad.” She says, burying her face into his leaves, “I had fun talking to her again.”
She doesn’t know when Black Hole had floated off, bringing back marker who was also happy to hear she reconnected with Bubble, much like he had reconnected with Stapy and Foldy recently.
Sitting down on her other side, he wraps his arms around both her and Tree, dragging them both down into the grass with a giggle.
Yeah, a nap sandwiched between marker and tree sounds good right now.