Chapter Text
Chayanne woke up to the cold.
It was at his back, seeping through his shirt, crystallizing along the length of his wings. He shifted, fingers searching for the edge of a blanket that wasn’t there. All he got was a fistful of more cold, packing beneath his grip. Snow, but there shouldn’t be snow because yesterday had been overcast and mild and he’d fallen asleep in his own bed.
But now there was only the cold. On his nose, down his fingertips, in his lungs. He opened his eyes and stared up at unfamiliar trees and a darkening sky.
Wrong. This was all wrong, and the same ache still sat in his bones, like an anchor weighing him down into the earth. He wondered if he could close his eyes again and open them to the world set right, a black brick ceiling and carefully planted flowers all around, Tallulah sleeping next to him and Phil’s chair a few feet away.
He wanted the shivering to stop, the weight to go away, and his dads—both of them—to be back.
He almost closed his eyes again.
But then he heard it, the little whine, and the heaviness settling over him blinked away. He knew it was Tallulah as surely as he knew himself, and suddenly retreating from all this wasn’t an option. If she was there, if she was in pain, then he had to get up.
He rolled over onto his forearms to push to his feet, and then he could see her, several meters away in the snow. Tallulah had curled into a ball, eyes squeezed shut. Stumbling through the powder, he didn’t even take the time to look around, just made it to his sister, gently pulling her hands out of the ball and into his.
“Tallulah,” he said, and he wished his voice didn’t sound shaky. “Come on, we gotta— you gotta get up.”
She unsteadily made it to her feet, shaking hard, and her hand didn’t stop gripping his tightly.
(Neither of them were dressed for this weather. If Chayanne hadn’t gotten up, they would have died; the realization sparked something in him like live wire, humming and snapping.)
“Where are we?” Tallulah asked around chattering teeth, and only then did he really look around. They were in some sort of snowy forest, and he waited for any sense of recognition to click. It didn’t.
He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here.
I don’t know, were the words on his tongue, but he looked back at Tallulah and she didn’t look panicked yet so he couldn’t bring himself to say them.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” he said instead. “Right now we should get some wood in case we have to stay the night out here.” Really that was the most productive thing they could be doing, the threat of the freezing cold and prowling monsters when the sun went down shivering down his spine. They were armorless, weaponless, really lacking anything and everything. They were sitting ducks.
She nodded agreement, but she looked so uncertain right now that he probably could have dragged her along anywhere. Together they did the first thing you did when you had nothing: collect wood.
Chayanne was warm on the adrenaline, hyper aware of every lengthening shadow. They didn’t have long, they didn’t have enough time—
And he had no idea how far out they were from everything else. This was a wooded area, but thin enough that he was sure he’d be able to see rising smoke or shining lights if they were there.
They weren’t.
He bit his lip as he stacked the wood he’d been able to collect. It was something, but not much. Not enough to make a shelter, if they even could make one that fast.
As he stared at their options, he remembered all the things Phil had taught him. His dad was a master of survival, and Chayanne had used so much of his advice in the past as he learned how to fight, how to farm, how to cook. He’d never really thought he’d have to pull from the tales of his dad journeying into a new land and starting from scratch, but he remembered the core principle: don’t try to fight when you’re weak. Just wait it out.
(Uncle Techno, even as the greatest warrior Chayanne knew, had taught him something similar. Know the enemy and know yourself. Pick your battles, kid. He knew the enemy, and fully-geared with others at his side, he didn’t fear them. But right now was different, and this was a battle he couldn’t win.)
Before the sun went down and the monsters came out, they needed to find a place to hide. “That’s good enough for now. Let’s find somewhere undercover.”
He’d eyed the trees, but there were things that could reach them even up in those branches. And it was so icy here that climbing might be dangerous.
Which left them with… caves. Or ideally some sort of crevice, surely that was something they could find with the area around them so rocky. Then they could seal up the front with their wood and wait it out.
They came to a hillier part of the terrain, scanning the rockface for any sort of opening. Chayanne ended up carrying all of the wood, and he was starting to struggle with its weight but Tallulah had been struggling worse, her breathing starting to come in wheezes. The air was too cold for her to be doing all this, and any other time he would have paused with her, but they had to keep moving.
Hopefully not for much longer…
“Chay,” Tallulah rasped, and he followed her finger to where she was pointing. It was darker, shadowy, an opening.
He hurried the rest of the way to it, hoping for a little space just big enough for both of them to be comfortable. His stomach sank to be met with something much deeper than that, extending back further than he could see. He could hear the trickle of water and fainter, hopefully much deeper, the groan of something that could tear them apart.
“This will work!” he decided, trying to sound a bit enthusiastic. They would be safe here! They’d found somewhere to shelter before sunset!
(They just had to get a wall up between them and the world first.)
He let Tallulah pick out where they’d settle, a sort of corner near the entrance. It was all basic crafting from there, but his hands were shaking around it. Wood into planks, then a table for them to craft on. Tallulah ended up doing a lot of it, holding the pieces in place as he built the temporary blockade.
It was nothing compared to the workmanship that made up any of their houses. It did the job.
“This will work.” He sounded flatter this time, and maybe that was because the thing keeping the danger out was also sealing them in. This was their cage until morning and they had nothing.
Next to him, Tallulah slid down the wall and pulled her knees to her chest, huddling into a ball again.
For a while he fiddled with the crafting table, trying to get as much out of their remaining wood as he could. He went for a sword first, as imperfect as it was. He would take the blunt edges if it meant a way to defend them. The pickaxe he crafted seemed like a good idea at first, but it became clear pretty quickly that this was too tight of a space to mine. More than that, it was loud, the sort of noise that had Tallulah clamping her hands over her ears and could only be giving everything hostile nearby a target. He didn’t want to test the strength of their barrier; he set the pickaxe aside.
Settling down next to her, he shivered against the stone. It wasn’t as sharp of a feeling as the snow and at least they’d escaped the wind, but he wished they’d had enough time to find something warm to huddle under.
“We’ll be safe here?” Tallulah whispered. She looked so small like this, curled forward so her head was half-hidden behind her knees.
His heart twisted. The brief glance at the wall told him everything he didn’t want to see: there were gaps where the cold could leak in, gaps where undead fingers could push through.
But still he nodded. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
And he meant it. He meant it with every cell in his body, the only thing he was certain of right now.
You and me. You and me. Always.
If the monsters got through the wall then he would fend them off with his sword, and if they got through his sword then they would have to go through him.
And so they settled in. He brought his fingers to his lips, blowing on them to retain any warmth he could. They had an unspoken agreement that either of them was welcome to lean over and fall asleep, but sleep didn’t come. Tallulah tried until a skeleton rattled through the cave and jerked her upright, Chayanne’s eyes had drifted shut briefly only to hear a hiss that brought him back to alertness.
They spent the night with their shoulders pressed together and a sword against Chayanne’s shoe.
He listened to the slow sounds of water, almost enough to be soothing if not contested by the growls, the shuffling. He stared at the wall and wondered how they’d gotten here. How everyone had promised them they would be okay and now they were here.
Nothing near the wall looked like this. The only thing he could think of was kidnapping. That someone had taken them, again.
Would he not remember this when he saw his dads again, scared without a way to pinpoint why? Had he been here before? And if this was a kidnapping, it was weird. Couldn’t they just leave?
There were no answers, only questions like staring into a void. He pulled his knees tighter into his chest.
Phil would be looking for them, he at least had that. They would try to figure out their way back tomorrow, leave this land of freezing days and nights. They’d been okay every time before, they’d be okay again.
(He still remembered how weak he’d felt, trying to lift a sword or put on armor and knowing again that he was nothing like his Uncle Techno. Not even strong enough to protect himself.)
“Does it still hurt, Lulah?” he asked quietly. As hard as he’d wished that the feeling yesterday would just be him, it was every one of his siblings as they’d woken up. And Tallulah had it the worst, describing pain where Chayanne would only note discomfort.
“Yeah.”
He hated himself a bit for not being able to help.
“I hope it goes away.” Because that was all he could do.
The silence came back, stretching out in the limited space around them. Neither of them wanted to talk too much, to give the monsters something to investigate.
But eventually they came anyway.
Chayanne had spaced out a bit until he heard it, the groans and footsteps. Too close. He’d been hearing the creatures outside near constantly but never this close, and he tensed, fingers reaching for his sword. Don’t go for the wall—
It was one of the most haunting sounds he had ever heard, a guttural, choked yell. And then the hard sound of a strike.
Not on the wood.
Not on the wood, but something else that let out its own pitched noise. One time Phil had told him that the monsters would fight each other if he could get them to meet. That was this.
It sounded horrible, and only a few steps away, and Chayanne rose to a shaky battle stance, sword raised, just in case. Once they finished their clawing and tearing and dying maybe they would come for them—
One of the monster’s pained noises retreated; he could only hear one set of footsteps. His stomach did a slow flip.
He strained to see through the gaps in the wood.
He could hear it breathing.
And Chayanne barely dared to breath himself, hands tight around his sword. What if it could hear him, or see him through those cracks, or feel the warmth of his exhales—
He stepped the tiniest bit to the side, in front of Tallulah.
How long it was there, engaged in what seemed like the world’s most terrifying indirect staring contest, he didn’t know, only that it felt like forever and his heart was pounding loud enough that it could surely hear it.
And then it went away.
Chayanne still stood there, sword raised, for longer than he needed to, until he noticed his arm starting to ache and he could take a deep breath. He set the sword down slowly, hands shaking, and turned to check on Tallulah.
Which quickly became him crouching down in front of her because her head was buried down in her knees again, arms shielding over the top and shoulders shaking silently.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said quickly. “It’s gone, we’re okay.”
She didn’t answer, only uncurled to pull him into a hug, both of them kneeling on the cold floor but feeling the warmth of each other more than anything, the way Tallulah was gripping his shirt like she was scared of him leaving.
His wings curled forward like they would wrap around her if they were long enough, the same way the clipped remains of Phil’s wings would strain toward them.
“I want to go home,” she said, hiccuping around the tears, and his eyes started burning, too.
They never had to fall asleep to the sounds of monsters at home.
Phil would tell them a story, or Wilbur would play on his guitar back when he was still around, or Missa would sing to him. And when they had nightmares and didn’t want to wake their parents they would read one of the books or go into the kitchen to make hot chocolate or Tallulah would play notes on her flute. This wasn’t a nightmare, though.
He brought a hand up to wipe at the tears before they could drip onto Tallulah’s sweater.
“We’re okay,” he repeated. “Nothing is going to get to us tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll go home.”
The island was big, but people built all over it. They would find their way.
He stayed there ignoring the discomfort of his knees until she’d calmed down and let go. And even when she did, he didn’t go far, sitting down next to her again.
By morning, their stomachs were louder than their eyes were heavy.
Morning light slowly started to slant through the gaps and the steps of monsters became crackling and then silence, only to be quickly replaced by birdsong. Chayanne glanced over to see Tallulah smiling, just a little bit.
He stood first and offered his hand down, pulling her to her feet. His limbs were stiff with the cold, but it felt good to be standing, to have made it through the night.
And now they would go home.
They tore down the wall together and walked out into the sun. Chayanne was ready with his sword—he knew not every monster disintegrated with the light, and any of them could be hiding in the cave—but to his relief, he didn’t have to test the rushed craftsmanship.
The sword was at least enough to get them some food, Chayanne hunting while Tallulah found a patch of berries that they probably ate too many of, desperate to stave off the grumbling emptiness. They drank messily from a creek; their hands were the best available options for scooping but turned numb from the icy water.
Chayanne couldn’t wait to leave this freezing wilderness for the much nicer weather back home. He never minded spending long days outside there.
The ground was hard in most places—fresh snow hadn’t fallen in a while—which meant a lot of slipping over rocks and slow moving. They stuck close together, arms out to try to help in case the other needed steadying.
He ended up with scraped hands, but it could be worse.
Today they could move a little slower for Tallulah’s sake, even if Chayanne was eager to get to somewhere familiar. He wouldn’t have his sister overstep her limits for this, especially when he had no idea just how far they might have to walk.
It would be nice if they found a river and built a boat to float down it. Instead they found themselves scaling the mountain that stood in their path. It was by far the slowest part of the day, Chayanne out of breath too as they moved steadily uphill, but at least this would be worth it. If they were close enough to home that the horizon didn’t curl it into invisibility, maybe they would be able to see the wall and know which way to go.
He kept looking for it: the distant green of his potato farm, the tops of the avocado trees Tallulah held a grudge against.
The hope spiked every time they were a bit higher and he looked out. There was nothing each time.
Which was fine, he knew it was a long shot anyway. Still, he was swallowing down the disappointment to keep it from infecting Tallulah.
They descended into more of a valley and stopped to eat the berries they’d saved. But neither of them wanted to stop for long, even if they were tired; the desire to find home thrummed in Chayanne’s veins like a drum line. He kept thinking just over this hill or after we pass these trees, that even if they didn’t see buildings the area would spark any sort of recognition.
And then the snow-dusted rocks turned to sand. They’d reached the sea.
Too soon, it felt like. His heart sank with the sun slowly dipping toward the horizon. He just wanted to be home. But they were going to spend another night here, wherever here was, and probably even more after that, and he was so tired already and he just wanted his dads—
“We need to find another cave, don’t we?” Tallulah said, voice as light as the wind blowing over the waves.
He blinked away from the horizon, away from the threatening tears, to look at her. Already she looked exhausted and dirty—empty, staring out at the horizon line. Phil never would have let it get so bad so quickly. Phil would have done a better job; it fell to Chayanne now.
Because his dads weren’t here, not even his uncles. But he had Tallulah, always, and he was the only one here to protect her.
He swallowed the homesickness and nodded. “We should get started.”