Prompt: 19: Found
Fandom: Monsters Inc, set months after Sulley is reunited with Boo.
Rating: soft T
Characters: Sulley is the only one present but Randall is mentioned.
Genre: Angst.
Any shipping? Nope.
Summary: Sometimes Sulley wonders if Randall wants to be found.
Warnings: Mentions humans using drugs and has dark themes.
A/N Actually wrote this some time ago, but I'll just post it now.
Sometimes Sulley wonders if Randall even wants to be found.
He often thinks this near the end of the day, just before he drifts off to sleep after another day of fruitless searching. It's often a bitter feeling, as he is filled with frustration, sometimes resisting the urge to roar this out and see if he comes out, even if it's only to hurl an insult. At least then he'd know.
Not knowing is almost worse than finding a body.
Almost.
Night is the time he starts to ask himself these questions. Sometimes by a fire, sometimes not. Dry wood could be hard to get depending on where you were and food and clean water was more important to carry. He tried to avoid some of the answers for why he hasn't found him yet, but some stuck out in his mind, sometimes spilling into his sleep as he dreamed.
Even without the more grisly possibilities it's been more than a year. Given the reaction of the the human mother and son after he himself had pieced together a second door to go through he wouldn't have blamed him if he'd decided to high-tail it out of there given the chance.
If he got a chance that is.
And the swamp was hardly the most pleasant place to live in the first place. Beautiful perhaps in its own strange way, with strange and ancient creatures and trees and earth, but hardly ideal. Seeped with memories sucked into its damp ground, not all of them good. It is an odd feeling, but he isn't sure how else to describe it.
But the door and the swamp it went to is the only lead he has.
Rumours also swim of a creature which sounds like Randall in this place, but they're rumours far older than Randall himself. It's hard to tell after all, when a story is truly as a result of another fellow monster or merely humans drinking too much and beginning to believe their own wild lies in the telling.
Though Sulley doesn't get many chances to speak to many humans to begin with he has sometimes taken the risk. Some, which are strung out on something he's not sure he wants to know about, think him a mere hallucination if they come across him, but he can't resist the urge to stop and talk all the same. It means he hasn't forgotten how, which is easy to fear when you've gone weeks and only have mosquitoes, alligators and fire flies for company.
Randall has possibly had months to forget how.
He shifts to his left, gazing at the fire he made, wondering if it was wise to make it at all.
It's easy to become paranoid in this place. He couldn't help but think. Because while this small area is now filled with light, it makes everything else outside of its influence seem darker than before. And where its influence does extend, shadows can dance in the nearby trees and across the ground before it.
The fire also could make him more noticeable to whatever he couldn't see.
But in his own way, despite the fact it was his idea, and his decision to come here he can't help but feel that he fears finding Randall more than anything else that could find him out there.
And not just because Randall tried to kill him.
But because he was afraid to face that part of himself he'd tried to bury. That part he could have so easily ignored and went on with his life had he really tried.
That in the darkness, with what he'd find, he'd find himself staring back and what he was capable of.