I'm baccck! Review please!

I own nothing that belongs to Fox or Blue Sky Studios.

I GOT MY COMPUTER FIXED I CAN UPDATE NOW! except I need to finish a speech for debate so it'll be a couple of weeks before i get back in the game. Hey, so the government shut down. Yeah, that happened. Dang, son, looks like Yosemite is outta biz. Read and review?


Okay. Breathe in. Don't freak out. Maybe you just hit your head.

Buck was standing in front of her, but he was different now. He was older- years older, but still too young to be in the underground Utopia. There was no way he could have aged that fast in a day. Unless...

No. She refused to believe she'd gone on a time-traveling adventure again.

"May I help you..?" The blue eyed weasel asked cautiously. His voice was deeper than she remembered Teen Buck's voice being.

"Uhh...Is Buck..here?" Peaches stuttered, still staring at the brown creature. He gave her a faint smile and nodded.

"I'll be right back." He left the door slightly ajar, and after a moment's pause she heard yelling. A piece of pottery broke against a wall somewhere inside and she cringed.

"ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, WILL YA BLOODY calm down?" The teenager Peaches had grown accustomed to seeing yanked the wooden door open. He turned to her, and with a tense smile asked, "Yes...?"

"Yeah, ahh...Hello," she mentally smacked herself. She continued uncertainly, "can I...May I...Talk...to you?" The end of the question bobbed in the air like a fishing hook. Buck eyed her.

"We are talkin'."

"Well, yes, I can see that, but I mean, like...um. Elsewhere."

Buck laughed. "Ya lost again?"

Peaches fought the angry blush that began to rise in her cheeks. She forced a smile. "Something like that, yeah. Except you might-"

"Think you're crazy? Already do, sweethea'ht. Come on, then off we pop." The small creature slammed the door.

"Don't slam the door, please," came the tired voice of the elder weasel.

"Sorry," Buck called. Peaches noticed a tinge of weariness in his facial expression as he said that. Seeing she was curious, he added softly, "My brothah."

"Oh, obviously," Peaches said in a 'Why did I not realize that?' tone. "For a second I thought he was you."

Her uncle-to-be let out a barking laugh. "Aye, most do. 'Cept 'tis usually the other way around. Now," he guided her down the hard-packed lanes, "you wished to speak with me?"

"Yes," her voiced wavered at the daunting prospect of confronting the truth. She steeled her heart. Sucking in a breath, she flicked her eyes to him. "You remember how we met."

"Can't really forget."

"Right, and remember how I was confused?"

"Yes, you scream quite shrilly."

A teensy bit miffed now, she continued. "You may have gathered I'm not from England."

"Obviously. We are much more sophisticated than you present yourself to be," he said in mock criticism. She suppressed a smile.

"What year is it?" She asked. Buck told her.

"But that doesn't make sense, you see, because I was born..."

He slowed his pace, and laughed his clear laugh again. "My silly, silly friend. Do I look a day over twenty to you? Do I look like I'm over three decades older than you?"

"Not here. Not now. But you will be. I swear," she felt a flutter of panic. He wasn't going to believe her. He was too cynical, too injured by the past to believe her...

He looked her dead in the eye. "Listen, crazy, I don't know where you come from, but if you can't prove it to me you can very well hop outta here and leave us alone."

"Please, just listen," she begged. He was piteous and sat down on a stone. She sat in front of him.

"So when I was born, my parents met this guy-Hey, sit back down please!- and he told them his name was Buck, Short for Buckminster, long for Buh. Long story short he saved their butts and they became f-friends," Peaches noticed that Buck stiffened at his name. "They went their separate ways and some years passed before Buck joined up with them again, and in those years they told me all of the stories about him, made up some even. And later when I met him I also met his brother," Peaches hurried on before Buck could sigh again, " named Matthias, and his sisters Melody and Dorothy, and his-"

Peaches stopped before she could say the word daughter. There was a wall of blank, suddenly, concerning everything she knew about his family.

"And I knew him for a long time before he left again but I don't know how I'm here because- because it was just- and my parents told me, but I- and there was an earthquake, and Louis, oh God please not him not him," she hiccuped through embarrassing tears. "I don't know how this happened and I have no idea how to get back home and you probably can't help me but- but-I-"

"I'm sorry," she cried.

"Shh, 't's ahright," Buck whispered, drying her tears with her trunk. "I think you're crazy anyhow, but I'll..."

Buck didn't finish the sentence- he caught himself before he could say the words that would, inevitably, bind him. He let her cry. She was crazy, a nutcase, a lunatic- but she knew the names of his family...She was so out of place...Perhaps...Maybe...

"When I was younger," he began carefully, "there was an old badger in the neighborhood. He used to tell stories, lots of 'em anywhere and anytime. And I can't remember well, but I recall vaguely a story of a boy who was lost in a lightnin' storm."

"Does this have a happy ending?" Peaches stared straight ahead through the walls of aspen to a sliver of blue sky. Sky that she remembered so well- every day of her life, only it wasn't her sky, it was Buck's sky, it was her parents' sky...this sky did not belong to her...But then, had anything ever belonged to her?

Buck paused and cast her a mournful look that please for forgiveness. The teenager felt a smidgen sorry for the mammoth.

Peaches took in a shuddering breath. "I thought so."

"D'you still want to hear it?" Buck asked softly, standing up.

Peaches thought for a moment, her brown eyes growing hard.

"No." No, Peaches did not want to learn her hypothetical fate. Soon, yes, but not yet. She wanted to wait a while. Wait until...

Until what? Until things "settled down?" How could things ever settle down now, here? On the other hand, she didn't want Buck to think her a coward- then again, his opinion didn't actually matter right now.

A cold wind swept through the chilly sunlit glade.

"Not yet, eh?" he asked softly. He was asking something more than what pertained to the story at that moment. With a twinge of trepidation, he backed away from her. Away from the demented she-moth.

Closing her eyes, she whispered tearfully, "Not yet, no."

She heard her last hope scuffle away.

It had been a futile hope, anyway. Hadn't it?

"Why don't I remember?" she asked the trees.

Buck turned around halfway, glancing at the forlorn figure he was leaving behind. Her tone chilled him.

Why don't I remember?

What doesn't she remember?


For a few minutes, Buck thought his life might regain a facade of normalcy. For a few minutes, Manny was very disturbed by the similarity between his dusty memories of an eye-patched hero and the small figure crossing the village square. Sid tripped over his own foot and collided with the furry creature.

The furry creature was quite surprised.