Disclaimer: I own nothing. All the characters, places, and creatures mentioned belong to Insomniac.
You may recognize this from my DeviantArt account. It's a short one-shot, so no asking for sequals. It also has nada to do with any of my other stories; it's a simple bit of fiction that I felt like writing. Old fic.
Angela Cross rolled over in her bed, the movement unsettling a small blue ball of fluff that had positioned itself on her stomach. It churped at her, half-annoyed, half-worried. It had seen her behave strangely at night: sometimes she would lay aimlessly for an hour or two, simply staring at the ceiling, not trying to fall asleep, not contemplating anything in particular it seemed, simply staring. Or she would pick up her Protopet - as she had first designed it for herself, then worked to perfect it for Megacorp - and sit, cuddling it against herself, not in an especially affectionate way, but simply to have something to hold. And her peculiarities unnerved the small bundle of fur.
She smiled vaguely and tickled it under the chin reasuringly. The small creature was not frighteningly intelligent, but it was, at least, in tune to emotions. It gave a contented purr and fell asleep on top of the thick blanket, not minding the slight chill of indoor Greblinian air.
She glaced at the clock: five AM. She needed to be up in two hours at the very latest, but now was as a good time to get up as any; she wouldn't be getting any more sleep anyway. Besides, if she tripped as many times this morning as she did every other morning, she'd need a bit of extra time.
Moving quietly, so as not to disturb her sleeping pet, she slid out of bed, the hem of her nightgown nearly entangling her ankles. She took her morning shower - warm, as she figured she deserved at least a bit of heat in the Tundor Wastes - and redressed in her bodysuit; it was the only thing with few enough folds and drapes of cloth to avoid tangling her long legs in.
She blinked at the clock, now fully awake. Five-thirty. She'd taken longer than she'd intended to, but that was alright. She dried her hair and pulled her hood up snugly around her head, forming her characteristically-thick ponytail at the back.
She sat on her bed and pulled the sleeping Protopet into her arms, cradling it against herself. The thing barely even twitched a foot as she ran a finger over its back and - in an almost playful way - poked at its antena. The red ball on the end seemed to almost glow in response, though not nearly as bright as the little robot.
What was his name again? Clank? Yes, that was it. Ratchet and Clank, who she sometimes secretly refered to as 'her boys', though neither of them were. Well, at least not technically. She had her suspicions, but she had been wrong on one too many accounts to act on a pure hunch; she would bide her time and wait for a proper moment. Or, more precisely, she was waiting for a proper moment, not to make an advance, but to return one.
Setting the blue ball of fur back into her blankets and neatly arranging them - for Angela was a bit of a neat freak at times - she walked to the back door of her house and stared out, letting the cold air bite her bare arms and face through the open doorway.
"Oomph!" She slipped on the icy threshhold, landing in the soft, powery new winter snow outside. Standing back up, she cursed the frozen water in every way she knew. The tiny crystals clung to her fur, ingrained themselves in the leather of her gloves, and worked their way into the grooves of her suit.
As she dusted herself off, a loud cry rang out over the frozen wastelands. One of the ice beasts stretched up, its head and neck a mere shadow over the moon. It called again, and a second head burst from the ice a good ways away.
"Not this again..." she muttered, picking a few stubborn crystals from her short eyelashes. The two creatures would spend a moment calling to each other, then one would duck under the ice and resurface beside the other, at which point they would nuzzle each other and generally act very sweet - if two-ton beasts could be called such.
The truth was, she felt a bit cheated. Creatures that were hardly hospitable, completely unfriendly, barely even likeable from a distance, could still find at least one other being of their own species that took an interest in them. And yet she, in the prime of her life, had yet to find anything beyond a "hunch" or close friend.
Close friend...pffth. "Close" was not something she and Ratchet were. The poor boy was almost scared of her, it seemed; he kept an arm's length or more for the most part. At first, she had assumed it was because she had all too often tripped and he was afraid she'd fall on him - she had often been refered to as "gracefully challenged" by her coworkers - but even sitting on a couch he squished himself into the corner, as if she would bite if he got too close.
Or perhaps her height frightened him. And yet, again, it seemed, it seemed as though it were something else. Something she couldn't quite place a finger on, something just beyond her grasp. She'd caught him glancing at her once or twice, sure, but assumed that it was nothing more than his impulsive, don't-miss-a-beat nature taking in his suroundings.
Yes, he was a little fireball, that Ratchet. He held back, but it was about like holding back one of the leviathans out in the ice fields: the cables held for only so long; then they broke. She herself held back much, far too much; it was only a matter of time until her own cables broke.
And what would be unleashed when they did? She wasn't sure, but she was sure she didn't want it to happen. There were times when she lost her self-control, when one of the anchors gave way or a rusted cable snapped in two before it could be repaired. So far, however, it had only happened twice in front of Ratchet. Once when she had discovered that her employeer had been replaced by a cheapscate in a suit, and then again when that young lombax had defeated the mutated version of her small pet.
That had been completely out of line; she scolded herself for even thinking of kissing him. True, he had not jerked away in complete and utter horror, but it was at that point at which he became more aloof to her. She had behaved out of character, and he had reacted in the most natural way: he backed off to reconsider this new facet.
At first, it had been nearly painful, but now it was almost a game between them. A game with strict, unspoken rules. Strict, unspoken rules enforced most efficently. Should she overstep the boundaries he enforced, he simply put as much distance between them as possible, be it physically edging away or running off on one of his mental daydreams, and kept that distance until she backed away.
So far, however, the lines seemed to move ever-closer together; each round the rules became less severe, the repercussions less harsh. When she had formerly had to keep a distance at which there was no way to touch, even if they both stretched their hands out, she now could at least share the same half of the couch or sit the next chair over from him as he played games. Not what she'd call close, but at least he'd condecend to breathe much of the same air as her.
The two leviathans seemed rather distant from one another, too. One - she couldn't tell if it was male or female - reached out towards the other, nearly touched, then pulled back as its mate refused to lean forward. The spurned creature sulked a bit before reaching out again; this time, the other nuzzled its head against it. She smiled a bit, feeling happy for the more persistant beast.
Perhaps that was what she needed to do, too. Although she had nothing concrete to base her asumption on, she had a strong hunch, a little inkling of a voice deep inside, telling her that a small show of friendliness - perhaps even affection - would not be so quickly turned away by the boy she fancied.
The larger of the two beasts she watched - for it was indeed a good deal larger - reared up higher from the frigid waters, cracking the ice around it as a large body passed through the hole only big enough for its head. It slammed down hard on the narrow strip of ice separating it from the other one, effectively combining their two pools into one.
Angela looked at them, playfully shoving and wrestling like children. And, indeed, perhaps they were like children, innocently happy; love could do many strange things, even transforming a vicious brute into a playmate.
It was cold out, but she didn't mind so; she was used to the cold. However, Mr. Fizzwidget didn't need to know that. She could call in sick, say the weather had her down, even though her spirits were high. After all, the Kyzil Plateau of Veldin was a nice, warm place about now, and she deserved a bit more warmth than a hot shower.