AN: We're moving into the final part of this story and I'm beginning to realise that there are a lot of scenes I wanted to put in which never got written. Ah well though, we'll see how many of them I can fit in.
Disclaimer: I don't own HTF and since I have to put this disclaimer in I barely own this story anymore.
Chapter 25: Nightmares and Daydreams
In a way Lucy was lucky that the medic core didn't leave their tent till late, the watchmen of her barrack was perfectly happy to let her wait up for a 'medic friend' (she was beginning to get the feeling that some of the soldiers just thought of the new recruits as children under their care). She had been allowed to wait until that friend of hers left the tent, that took her till 11PM. Then she had had to hide in the shadows until the man with the cane left. By this point it was the most she could do to keep her eyes open, she thought she might even have fallen asleep at some points and cursed herself every time she lost track of a few minutes. For all she knew her last obstacle could have left and she was now just wasting her time.
Eventually though the mole in dark glasses stepped out of the tent and into the moonlight. He tilted his head slightly, smiling widely and tapping his cane along the ground gently as he walked. Lucy held her breath when she realised he was coming her way, pushed herself as far back into the shadows as she could and prayed. By some miracle though the man passed right by her, tapping lightly and smiling all the way.
And before the man had reached his tent Lucy was out of her hiding place and in through the flap of the medic's tent, they were so prone to fits of 'inspiration' at all points of the night that they never bothered to tidy or close up their tent unless they needed to return. And that was the biggest problem! She had no idea how long she had before someone found her!
Lucy tried to picture what she was aiming for, a syringe with... Yellow, yes she was sure it was a yellow liquid, or orange, maybe red. All of these coloured medicines and more were laid out on the table next to Sonia. She flinched thinking about what all of those medicines could do if she picked the wrong one, all the pain and damage it could do if she chose the wrong one.
Lucy bit her lip and considered for a moment, her hand gliding forwards and backwards over the medicines, her other hand fiddling with the end of her thick gloves. She made a decision, then looked up at her friend. The worries came flooding back, seeping into her head like water through a cracked dam and she changed her mind.
Lucy's hand moved back the other way settling on a bright turquoise solution on the other side of the gurney, not because she knows it's safe. She was sure it was not, she can remember seeing it used, remember how her friend screamed and twitched. But she also knew it wasn't fatal, Dale had said so himself, whispered it to another medic when they were watching.
She lifted the syringe and after a moments thought pushed it into her friend's upper arm.
People were always forgetting that the silent girl in the background was there, that had been Lucy's biggest advantage in all of her plans, for a second she smiled at her cleverness.
And then Sonia woke up with a scream and all her happiness drained out.
Not that this hadn't been planned for, a second layer of gloves, three coats and an extra scarf, she'd put them all on for a reason. Clumsily unstrapping her shaking friend she pulled Sonia as best she could (the girl was both larger and stronger than she was) over to one of the tables. Leaning her down she wrapped her friend in a coat, striped scarf and gloves, doing as best she could to hide Sonia's quills. She lifted her friend again, too tense to speak, silently begging her friend to help her.
It worked. Sonia yelped and pulled herself as best she could to her feet, pulling another syringe off the table and stabbing it into her own leg.
It took a few minutes, every second stretching out forever, and finally Sonia stopped spasming. She turned to Lucy and gave a shaky smile, "Anesthetic" she explained, "Won't stop it forever but it'll help." She stumbled as she stepped away from the table, falling onto Lucy's shoulder.
Lucy smiled and helped her friend to stand. They made their way out of the medic's tent, meeting one of the medics that Lucy had been dreading.
The medic glanced warily at her but seeing the stripped scarf Sonia was wearing he laughed.
"Your friend stab himself did he?" He remarked, Lucy tried to smile. By that point though the man had passed.
Good, that part of the plan had been a last minute thing, but it had worked, Toffee's scarf and coat were large enough to cover most of him, the same would be true of Sonia. If people didn't look carefully it was easy to mix up the young squirrel and Sonia, especially at night.
Lucy was flagging by now though and, by the time they made it to one of the large barracks filled with corpses, Sonia was practically carrying Lucy along instead. Lucy sat down as Sonia pushed the door open, not thinking, letting all the little worries about how well her friend was handling this drift out of her mind. She let herself drift away as well. By this point Sonia had entered the barrack and guessed what her friend wanted her to do, grimacing she climbed up one of the piles and hid herself as best she could. Lucy waited for her friend to get out of site, then leaned back and fell asleep. Yes, it would look a little odd when she was found sleeping outside a barrack full of corpses, but then again the girl who wore thick coats in summer, who never spoke and fainted all the time...
Well she was a little odd anyway, people wouldn't be too worried.
Lucy loved it when a plan came together.
A council of war wasn't exactly the first name that came to mind, especially not when the only actual soldier was missing, still that was what they chose to call themselves. It was more just a few members of the camp gathered around a fold-up table trying to come up with something that resembled a good plan.
"It's simple, if we attack them they panic and either flee or lose." Handy repeated for the fifth time as if he were explaining to a child.
Pop groaned again, taking a puff on his pipe before he replied, "Yes that might work. Or it might get us all killed, they're soldiers for God's sake."
"Then I'll die. At least my children will be safe." Handy's hand would probably have come slamming down on the table to punctuate that sentence, but since he didn't have it anymore his stump just slashed at the air.
Pop simply ignored Handy's outburst this time, nodding in response to something that Cro-Marmot had said before turning and explaining to Handy, "The problem is we don't cause nearly enough fear to the enemy, we can be almost certain that they'll fight us and kill us all. And any plan we come up with will have a similar problem." He paused, "Let's leave the overall plan for a second, what resources do we have that they don't."
Handy grimaced, pushing a stack of papers out of the way clumsily, really he was only here because he was one of the few sane people left in the group. He just wanted to stop fiddling around with details and fix a plan that got his kids back as quickly as possible. He stopped for a second, Pop was probably feeling the same, he still remembered how proud the bear had been when Cub was a baby (despite his occasional negligence), it would be killing him as well not to be able to just go blazing in. Handy pulled the papers back and glanced at the top one, "Okay, we've got eight normal adults, virtually no use in a war, myself included. Two people with army experience." He placed Flippy and Cro's papers to one side, "Only Flippy was in multiple battles though and..." He paused on a sheet, "what about Splendid, invincible, fast, strong, psychic-"
Pop interrupted him, much to Handy's ire, "Unstable, unpredictable, arrogant and unstoppable if he switches sides. Remember this is the man who injured that little lamb."
A few miles directly upwards Splendid cut off his hearing, as flattering as it was to hear a meeting that seemed to be all about him he wasn't sure that he really wanted to know what people said about him behind his back (or beneath his feet in this case).
Slowly Splendid opened up his other senses, letting emotions, UV rays and Infrared all flood into his perception. They overwhelmed him for a second, blocking out his vision in a sea of strange lights and bombarding his ears with the sounds of tiny air currents. He checked them all in that time, making sure all his senses were working, then realised he was falling. He cursed and cut his sense out one by one, including vision unfortunately, his eyes searched wildly for light as he righted himself, smashing into the ground a second later. With a wave of nausea he realised he could feel the viberations in the ground going out for at least a mile and quickly cut that sense before he was sick, bringing back his vision. He cursed again, every day, every time he had breathing space he'd practiced, since his powers started developing at the age of four. And yet still, still his powers didn't work all at once, he could turn back time, he could lift mountains, he could bake a perfect souffle with one hand, but he couldn't handle seventeen measly senses and flying at the same time. Whoever his forefather's were he was sure they would be laughing at him.
He blinked away the rage, fourteen senses plus flight, the same as every other day for the last seven months. Maybe if he put psychic sense at half-power? No he'd tried that, two months ago, that one's all on or not at all.
The blue flying squirrel was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn't notice the person behind him until they spoke.
"You just crashed through my tent."
Splendid looked up for a millisecond, startled, blinked, mumbled a confused apology and went back to thinking, before realising less than a second had passed and forcing himself to slow down. "My apologies miss. Entirely accidental."
The apology though didn't sate Giggles' anger, "Well aren't you going to do something about it." Splendid muttered something, then disappeared, less than two seconds later he had succeeded in getting himself tangled in the guy ropes of the tent twice and set the thing on fire. Giggles blinked in confusion for a second, unsure whether to be even angrier or amused that her tent had just burst spontaneously into flames. Eventually she settled for the latter and picked up one of the fire extinguishers that were scattered around the camp (although it was less scattered since Petunia had got to them) and blasted the tent with foam.
"You know I just would have settled for a more sincere apology." Splendid looked down at her, confused, "Well, you sound like someone who's trying too hard to sound like a superhero." Giggles explained, "It's not all that convincing."
Annoyance flashed across Splendid's face and his fists clenched. The anger was gone in half a second though, replaced with the hero's normal proud, somewhat concerned expression, "I'm sorry ma'am I'm not sure I understand, what's not convincing?"
Giggles smiled, lifted another tent pack out of a pile of bags and tossed it to Splendid who caught it one handed. "The whole superhero act- read the instructions this time- even that expression, it looks heroic but a few seconds ago you looked like you were going to tear my head off."
Splendid blinked, not many people noticed the occasional lapses in his facade. "I'm sorry, truly, my mind was on other things."
Giggles frowned, "And right now you just totally ignored me."
Splendid grimaced, he hated people who just wouldn't accept a good person, "What do you want," He growled, his hands rapidly tying knots in the tent rope and slamming a peg into the ground with his heel, "A hero or not? If I wasn't saving people you would have died a thousand times."
Giggles sighed, "I'd prefer a person, not some character out of a comic, you're always floating around and taking command and we don't even know why you came here."
"I could say the same about you." Splendid watched a sort of surprised anger flood over Giggles, then saw that that response wasn't going to work, "I followed you to protect you all, you're not exactly traveling with the safest crowd."
Giggles thought for a second, "No that's not it, if you'd been worried about our safety you wouldn't have been so angry at Flippy and Lammy before they hurt anyone."
Splendid looked away and finished putting up the tent before turning back, "I'm trying to save my nephew okay. That's my reason, my only reason no heroic compulsions, no real care about the people around me, are you happy." The look on Giggles' face told him that, whatever she had expected it wasn't that answer, "Except that's not it either, because I'm not allowed to think like that am I?" He turned to her so quickly that she flinched, "No, because people need a hero, and since I'm the only one with anything close to superpowers that's got to be me. I can't just sit on the sidelines and let people suffer like everyone else does can I? No, because I can do something. And then because I can do something I suddenly have to be able to do everything, stop trains and prevent global warming and make sure the whole world keeps spinning." His voice was getting louder and louder as he spoke, until the tents around him shook. Giggles covered her ears and backed away from the squirrel, trying to shout over him. Splendid stopped, breathing heavily and let his anger dissipate. "Sorry, it's just I know I'm going to fail, I've spent my whole life trying to save people, trying to be the big shot superhero, something was bound to slip and now everything's gone to pieces and it's all my fault because I wasn't strong enough."
Splendid was rather surprised to find he'd bore his heart to someone, he was also rather surprised when Giggles stepped forwards and hit him in the side of his head. He didn't feel anything but it was a good gesture! Giggles sucked in a gasp of pain and cradled her hand for a second before glaring up at him, "You aren't understanding anything at all. All you talk about is how you failed, it's not your job to look after the world you know, you're not some comic book hero no matter how hard you try to be."
Splendid nodded, "I know, your not the first person to give me that speech you know, I just... I'm not a good hero, I've killed as many people as I've saved and you're trying to tell me that's the best I can ever hope for. I can't live with that while I can still save people."
Giggles smiled slightly, "You're a good person Splendid, that's all you really need to be. After all you made me feel happy, you let people forget about the reason why we're out here and just pretend that it's all a dream, you make people feel safer (for the most part) and that's a good enough thing to do. You can't very well only help when someone's life is in danger and leave them the rest of the time can you?"
Splendid nodded slowly, smiling to himself, "Thank you." A thought occurred to him and he frowned, "You never told me why you and Cuddles are out here though did you?"
Giggles smiled, "Cuddles always goes on about how people should learn to help themselves, but I don't think he really believes that. I'm sure he just felt like he needed to help his friends."
Splendid nodded again, "And you?"
Giggles looked embarrassed again, "Well, I, um, I was friends with most of the children that went missing and since..." She trailed off, apparently lost for words.
Splendid though just nodded, "I understand," He let his voice settle back into it's usual heroic tone, "My apologise for prying Miss. I shall go."
Before Giggles could respond Splendid had disappeared into the sky. The pink chipmunk stood blinking for a second before turning and heading back into her tent. She hadn't known that Splendid had a brother but come to think of it she didn't even think 'Splendid' was the hero's actual name. She sighed before settling down to sleep, hoping that her friends were having and easier time making sense of the world than she was. She hadn't managed to figure it out by the time she'd fallen asleep. She doubted she'd ever really know why she'd actually come along. Or why she still didn't have a family to call her own.
Half of Flippy's mind had always just followed behind the first, in the war his nicer half had come out only when his darker half wasn't needed, in his family his dark side had taken a back seat. Right now though he wasn't really sure which one was in charge, his soldier mentality dragged him on to find his enemy, his clear-eyed counterpart to find his daughter, both with equal vigor and the same aim. The soldier probably would have asked his comrades but clearly that wasn't going to happen. His less militaristic side decided he would ask his wife. Flaky wasn't normally the first person one went to for advice, her paranoid life view generally buried any good advice under a cloud of fear, but Flippy knew that she was often the best person to talk to, if only for the purpose of talking to someone.
He really hoped it was one of those latter occasions, but that didn't really look likely. From what he'd heard Flaky had got worse since they'd left Happy Tree Town, she'd had to be carried most of the way here by Splendid and since Flaky suffered from terrible vertigo at the best of times, especially since that plane ride... Well, it didn't bear thinking about.
Worrying wasn't getting him anywhere Flippy decided. He pulled himself to his feet and crossed to the tent where his wife sat, rocking backwards and forwards, apparently oblivious to the holes her quills were gouging in the canvas.
"Are you okay dear?" Flippy let a reassuring smile (an expression he'd had a lot of practice at over the last few years) slip onto his face.
Flaky glanced up, her eyes wide and filled with tears, before returning her gaze to the ground. When she spoke her voice cracked, "I'm going to die aren't I?"
Flippy frowned slightly, it wasn't unusual for Flaky to think something was going to kill her but it was strange for her to be so blunt. "What do you mean?"
Flaky pointed a shaking finger outside the tent, "Those things hiding in the shadows, they've been following me since we left home and then if they don't the chicks will, and if they don't," Flaky was talking faster and faster and seemed to have trouble getting the words out, "There's lightening, and drowning and cutting myself on knives, and explosions and wolves and the world seems to hate me and fire and him-" She stopped, scurrying away from Flippy as if she'd just realised that she was talking about him.
Flippy caught her in three strides (there wasn't really anywhere to go in a tent). "It's okay Flaky, you're safe. I'm not going to hurt you."
Flaky was still shaking, "B-but he..."
Flippy smiled, really smiled this time, "Flaky don't worry, you're safe. Like it or not he's me, I think even he figured that out a while ago. He's a part of me I needed years ago and couldn't get rid of and..." He paused to think, "You know I love you don't you Flaky?" She nodded, her face telling him that she didn't know why he asked, "Well he loves you as well Flaky, as much as I do. He just... He's not very good at showing it, he's scared and he's angry. In the world he lives in the war isn't over until he's dead, he has nothing else, except you. He- I'm so tired of fighting but part of me just can't stop and... You're safe Flaky, if anything comes to hurt you I, he, both of us will die before we stop protecting you and Sonia. He won't let anything hurt you, he can't, the two of you is what he's fighting for now and yes he scares you, he's cruel sometimes but... He still loves you Flaky and he'll do everything he can to keep you safe."
For a second Flippy worried that Flaky hadn't heard him, she just kept looking down and he searched for something more to say, something comforting. Just as he'd thought of something though she looked up and smiled, wrapping her arms around Flippy and pulling herself close to him. Part of Flippy tensed, it always did, but he shoved that part down and hugged his wife close.
"It's okay Flaky, everything's going to be okay. We'll find Sonia and we'll bring her back and..." Part of him was just talking to reassure himself now, "We'll be a family again, a little happy family just like you always wanted."
Flaky nodded, gently letting the fears that had been building up over the past weeks break up and float away, let herself feel safe and stopped noticing all the dangers around her.
In Flippy's case he just let exhaustion overtake him, feeling like he was back in the war all the time took so much out of him, you didn't feel tired until you stopped and then you collapsed. He let all his worries and his worst-case-scenarios go with Flaky's fears. Somehow despite his wife's insecurities and her phobias he had never felt safer around anyone, more able to forget about the war.
And God knew he needed to forget the war, because if all went according to plan he'd be going straight back into the thick of it in two days at most.
Right then Flippy was every bit as scared as Flaky was.