Over the Wall Again (Wirt/Beatrice) Part 1
This is a story I had previously posted on Tumblr, but I've decided to move it here and give it a makeover. I'm much happier with it now, and I hope new and old readers will equally enjoy this. I've added more details about Beatrice and her family, how they got to where they are in this fic (which takes place five years after the show. Since Wirt and Beatrice seemed to be peers, I have them both at 20 now, which means OTGW took place when they were fifteen. I do not own Over the Garden Wall. There will be quite a few OC's in this fic in the form of Beatrice's family. Since that tree was completely filled with birds I'm going with 12 siblings, and rather than The Unknown being purgatory I'm going with the alternate universe theory as it fits my story better. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to drop me a review!
Beatrice rolled over for what felt like, and probably was, the hundredth time that night. She let out another sigh, regarding her deeply sleeping younger sisters with a bit of envy. They wouldn't have to worry about…ugh, marriage, yet like she currently was. Flopping over onto her back, she wondered how Roberta and Patience, her older sisters, had been so composed when her parents had gone through the whole courtship process with them. Then again, they were perfect ladies who had always loved the idea of maintaining a household and having a husband beside them and going through pregnancy after pregnancy. Beatrice had always preferred playing with her brothers (when they weren't being stupid) and reading books about far off places and exploring the very outside of the woods with her dog. The idea of marriage terrified her.
She played with the ends of her braided hair. Maybe Roberta and Patience had been more…sheltered? For one, they actually preferred staying inside and doing needlepoint and cooking and learning about the importance of household décor and how to be wives. Additionally, Beatrice's family didn't move away from their (now quite large) homestead often, aside from rare trips to the closest neighboring village for festivals on holidays, and in the past five years the household staff they'd acquired went on shopping trips every two weeks. Her parents knew the Unknown was a dangerous place, everyone living in and around it knew how easy it was to get lost. Everyone who lived within a hundred miles of it knew that. So, aside from their time as bluebirds, her siblings had never spent any significant amount of time in the woods. Beatrice had always been fascinated with the place, and when she was younger she would always volunteer to go with her mother and father to pick rosehips from a bush just a few feet within the borders of the woods with her mother and father. But that was always during the day, and her father always brought an axe with him.
And even when they'd turned into bluebirds, the rest of her family had spent all of their time living in a tree. She was the only one who'd seen adventure, who'd met other people, who knew what meeting a boy her age was like, how feelings could come out of nowhere and nag you even years after the object of your affections had gone. Roberta and Patience had never gotten to have…crushes, like that. They'd met a few boys on the day of their debuts and picked the least offensive one with the hope feelings would develop after the marriage papers were signed. That's how everyone in her family did it, and everyone in the village too, from what her parents had led her to believe.
And now that her father had rebuilt the mill and hired a staff of men to run it with him, they had been able to produce flour faster, which means more and more was sold, and now her house had been expanded to these gigantic proportions and men would throw themselves at the women in her family. Her mother had been of noble birth before marrying her father; resulting in her grandparents disowning her for 'lowering herself', and now that they'd make a significant amount of money with the mill and sent Beatrice's older brother Allard to college to pursue medicine, suddenly her grandparents loved them and invited them to big parties and reinstituted her mother's title. Which frankly, was absolutely disgusting to Beatrice. Now her mother was a Lady and her father a Businessman, instead of simply a Miller and his Wife like they'd been before.
Throwing off her blankets, she finally decided to take a walk in the garden to just clear her mind of titles and marriage prospects and her feelings for another that had never gone away. She knew her parents wouldn't approve, but she needed to quiet her worries with a distraction somehow before she had a nervous breakdown. Quietly, she crept by her sisters one by one. Lucinda, Charity, and Beryl's sleeping forms remained motionless, and then Beatrice hit the creaky floorboard with her big toe and let out a whisper of a curse when she heard Anna, the sister closest to her in proximity, stir from her sleep.
"Bea?" She sat up rubbing the sleep from one of her eyes. Beatrice hushed her promptly.
"Shhh, Anna, I'm just getting a drink." She lied smoothly. The ten year old nodded and lay back down, muttering,
"If you're going for a walk again, take Hercules with you." Beatrice rolled her eyes before turning to give Anna a smile and a loving pat on the head.
"I will, Anna. Promise." She whispered, leaving the room then to avoid waking up any more of her sisters.
Beatrice wandered the halls of her home as quietly as she could, stopping in the hall closet for a lantern and the supplies to light it, which she would do once she got outside. Keeping her promise to Anna, she roused her dog Hercules from his place by the back door, rubbing his ears when he let out a doggish groan. Breathing a sigh through his nose, Hercules stood up and yawned, ready to take his place at the side of his master. She opened the door with a gentle hand, letting the night air in to tussle by the little red whisps of hair loose around her ears.
Smiling, she loosened the blue length of ribbon around the end of her braid, letting her locks unwind and flow freely. She reveled in the feeling of the cool stones of the garden path against her feet, Hercules trotting beside her with an occasional affectionate nuzzle to her hand. She passed the many fountains and clusters of flowers, finding no peace in them. Even after five years, they didn't feel like a part of her home. she missed the tiny creek that'd been filled in to build the garden. She breathed through a flutter of anxiousness in her chest at the idea of being caught, and crossed the small field in the front of her homestead to sit at the edge of the woods, where her feelings could flow freely. But of course, as she sat down she thought of Wirt and their journey together.
Here, here was where she felt closest to him. She let out a long sigh. Five years, and Wirt was still in her heart, the way he'd grown and proven himself as a hero. It was he who had shown her just how brave and loving a person could be despite their flaws, how important it was to do right by others. He'd changed her entire perspective and as he'd grown as a person, so had she.
Beatrice had hung on to trivial annoyances before. They were her way of avoiding deeper conflict, they always had been. She was an expert at coming up with excuses to skirt around people. She had always thought that was the best way to go through life, avoid and hide from whatever problem she was facing through a mask of sarcasm and purposefully rude remarks so she would be left alone. And Wirt…he had taken that frightened world of hers and blown it to pieces.
Trivial things were just that, Wirt had proven when he tossed away his own moodiness for his brother's devotion. When he'd ripped Greg from those roots and held him close…Beatrice had known that her views had changed. Wirt was almost a role model to her now. She was learning as best she could to love those around her and take interest in her siblings instead of hiding from them. She could say with certainty now that she truly loved her family, and it was all thanks to that messy haired hero.
The hero she could never have. Who was gone forever. He'd never even gotten to see her as she really was. He'd never even gotten to know what he'd done to her, how he'd changed her for the better. She wondered about him every day, what he looked like, what he could have been doing. Did he ever think of her? They'd spent quite a bit of time together traveling, and by the end of that journey she knew they had become good friends. Did he still have messy hair? Was he still skinny? She'd considered his appearance quite a bit from her perspective as a bird and had always suspected he would grow to be a handsome man. But these thoughts didn't have any real worth in thinking them, did they? He was in his world now, probably happy with his-
"Sara….ugh." She heard a muttering straight ahead of her, almost a groaning, coming from the woods. "I let her…and now I'm here again-" There was a scream of pain that had startled Beatrice into standing.
"Who's there?!" Beatrice shot to her feet, raising her lantern. Hercules growled beside her, ready to protect her. There was no way she was hearing what she was hearing. There was no way that familiar, but slightly deepened voice that seemed mere yards away from her belonged to him.
"Who- is someone there?" She could see a figure now, slumping towards her. Taller than she was, slim build…messy hair. Definitely messy hair.
"I, I have a weapon. St-stay away!" She backed up further, but the shadow only moved towards her, letting out another cry of distress. Oh, please let it not be him. Not in so much pain.
"No, I need help, please! I'm lost, and I…" The figure coughed and fell on all fours, but persisted in crawling towards her. "Please…" the lantern just barely illuminated his face as he was still about six feet away, his dark eyes and nut brown hair and his slightly large nose. Was it truly him?
"No. No no no, that's not you, my mind is playing tricks on me." She insisted as the figure crawled onto the grass in front of her, out of the woods but right back into her life. The boy looked up, and she could see him with complete clarity in the lantern's light. It was him, aged but familiar. His face broader, but still HIS. Oh, he'd finally grown into his ears. Beatrice was breathing fast, leaning down to look at him closer. He squinted. He was soaked to the bone, and looked like he was shaking with cold.
"You…voice...do I know you…?" He asked, struggling to sit back up. He was clearly dazed; she was surprised he'd gotten this far from…wherever he'd come from. Beatrice surprised herself with a laugh before turning to her dog. It was Wirt!
"Hercules, go wake everyone up, we need help. Back to the house, go!" She gestured wildly and her faithful companion raced off towards the mansion, barking wildly. She turned back to the boy in the grass, stooping down to drape his wet arm over her shoulders to help him stand, noting that one of his legs seemed to have become dead weight. She winced when his arm caught her hair at an awkward angle, but hoisted him up closer to herself nonetheless as she did her best to hold him steady the closer they came to her house.
"Who…." He leaned on her heavily, his breath puffing against her face. She simply smiled as she saw the lights brightening the house ahead of them, and her mother rushing towards them, flustered and holding her nightcap to her head.
"Wirt, you beautiful mistake of nature." She squeezed his side. "I've got you."
"Beatrice…" He mumbled before giving another cough.
"Right-o, you big pushover." Her cheeks were already sore from smiling. "Let's get you inside."
And that's the new and improved first chapter!