Prompt: Abandon

Characters: Emil, Lalli, Kitty

Lalli's bed was empty.

For a few seconds, Emil only stood staring, the bowls of food he brought inside weighing heavy in his hands. At the creak of a floorboard behind him, he whipped around, to come face to face with their medic.

"Lalli's gone." The words came out of his mouth of their own accord, without any thought behind them at all. Lalli… gone… What had happened?

"Hm, yes." Mikkel was rubbing his chin. "I did warn him not to go to. far, but I'm afraid he didn't—"

"Wait, what?" His mind was now whirling; forming coherent sentences was a difficulty. "When?"

"This morning, while I was cooking breakfast," Mikkel said slowly, with the same tone one would use to explain to a toddler that he won't be allowed dessert until he eats his vegetables. "I was just getting ready to take it off the stove—"

"Lalli's awake?" Apparently, he still had not managed to process that single, simple fact. "Why didn't anybody tell me!?"

"I thought that you had noticed. You were standing right beside the door when he came out of the tank."

Right beside the door? Was this another one of the Dane's sick jokes? "If you're trying to make me look stupid again—"

"Hey, what's with all the racket?" Sigrun stuck her head into the tank, balancing her own bowl of porridge in her good hand. "I will not have us switch campsites again because you two didn't know when to shut up."

"Emil didn't notice when Lalli woke up, and is now convinced I kept it from him out of spite."

"Oh, is that all?" Sigrun shrugged. "Yeah, he came out while you were coming up with dumb names for Pusekatt. Thought you'd seen him."

Mikkel, he'd expect to play this sort of prank on him—but not Sigrun. With a swallow, Emil accepted the far more likely possibility that what they were saying was true. "Where could he have gone?"

"I suspect not far. He didn't leave the tank that long ago."

Emil didn't bother to tell him how fast Lalli could move when he wanted to.

"Twig's gotta eat sometime." Sigrun clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, he'll come back when he's hungry."

…except he was pretty sure Sigrun had never noticed that Lalli was such a fussy eater that half the time he'd rather let himself starve than eat Mikkel's slop. If he really wanted to, Emil was sure he could stay out in the Silent World for hours, days… even supposing he didn't get hurt, or lost, or… or…

Before Emil even knew what he was doing, he had dropped the food and was running out of the tank, frantically scanning the fields around their campsite for any sign of a skinny Finnish scout. "LAL—"

A third bowl clattered to the floor, and hot slop poured down his back as a hand clapped over his mouth, cutting off his shout. Sigrun had pulled him in close against her, her hold on him surprisingly strong for all she had the use of only one hand; for a few seconds he struggled instinctively before sagging in defeat.

"You done panicking yet?"

Tears of defeat welling in his eyes, he nodded. Sigrun released him, and he staggered forward.

Mikkel, meanwhile, was surveying the three dropped bowls. "Half our breakfast, gone to waste…"

"That sludge barely qualifies as food anyway." She turned back to Emil with a sigh. "Look, if I let you go out and look for him will that make you feel better?"

Well, it wasn't what he'd been hoping for, but it was better than nothing. He nodded.

"You see a troll or a beast, kill it and get back here—but no gunshots, and no fireworks. Be back by noon, with or without the scout.

"Are you sure that that's wise?" he heard Mikkel ask as he walked away. "Letting Emil walk around an unscouted campsite like that?"

"Which is exactly why we need the scout back. Besides, it'll do him some good to get a bit of practice killing stuff."

"Miu."

Emil looked down. There, padding along beside him, was little Kissekatt.

"Oh. Did you want to come?"

Her plaintive meow was answer enough. Smiling, Emil bent to scoop her up and place her on his shoulder, where she began purring immediately.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a bit of company." Not to mention a warning if something's about to eat me, he thought, but didn't say out loud.

Not even thoughts of getting eaten were enough to distract him from his real mission, though. As he stepped into the trees, Emil took the time to look around.

"Lalli?" he ventured in a whisper—he had the feeling that Sigrun would kill him if he tried shouting again. For a moment, he stood still and listened, but there was no answer—at least, not one that he could hear over the wind in the bare branches.

If he were Lalli, where would he have gone?

Somewhere quiet, somewhere safe. Had they been making too much noise? Was that it? His heart sank as he realized what it must have been like for Lalli, the night scout who hated crowds, to wake up to all of them yammering away like a murder of crows.

Kissekatt jumped down from his shoulder.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Somehow, it never even occurred to him not to follow, or that maybe he should run back and get Sigrun first. A cat's instincts were always to be trusted, and this cat wasn't hissing or spitting—only determinedly running forward, as if to a destination.

…to a tree.

Emil looked up.

There, sitting on a high thick branch, his back resting against the trunk, was Lalli.

Emil sagged with relief. Lalli was awake, and he was okay. "Thank goodness I found you!"

Kissekatt was already scaling the trunk, climbing one paw after another in her clumsy, baby way. Emil tried to follow, but whatever handholds Lalli had used to get himself up there, he couldn't find them. After a few attempts that all ended with him sliding a good half meter down and getting bark scraped off all over his uniform, he was forced to give up and looked back up at Lalli, craning his head. "I can't get up there. You're going to have to come down."

Kissekatt, meanwhile, had just reached Lalli's height, and put out a paw to pull herself onto the branch. Before she could even touch it, though, Lalli turned toward her with narrowed eyes, hissed a warning so vehement that she pulled back in fear and flattened herself against the trunk, and then turned away.

"Lalli!" he chided. "That wasn't very nice." Emil took a step back so he could look up at Lalli without craning his head quite so much. "What did that poor kitten ever do to you?"

For a second, those silvery eyes were turned on him, and Emil now found himself on the receiving end of a death glare the likes of which he hadn't seen on his friend's face since their very first mission.

Their first mission…

"You abandoned me first!"

"I wish that I'd been there when you woke up." With a sigh, Emil shrugged off his bandolier and sat down at the base of the tree, leaning his back up against the bark. "But I needed to just take some time and relax outside with the others too, you know? Mikkel and Tuuri said that you were fine, so I guess I just kind of assumed that you were."

There was no answer in return, but then again, Emil did not expect there to be: Lalli had never talked back at him, even though he must know Emil wouldn't mind being unable to understand his words. Instead, he kept talking, hoping that in some way or other, the meaning of his words would get across.

"We'd had a pretty rough night, ourselves. You should have Tuuri tell you about it when we go back—well, Tuuri didn't even see the whole thing. You just started screaming in your sleep, for no reason… or maybe there was a reason. I guess you'd know more about that then I would." And maybe someday, you'll find a way to tell me.

"A few seconds after that, Sigrun and Mikkel fainted. Both of them. At the same time. Again for no reason. Then the next thing I know, Tuuri's driving away screaming something in Finnish.

"Even after they came to, nobody knew what was going on. We were driving around the Silent World at night. We didn't have a map, and we were in an area you hadn't scouted yet. We came to a roadblock. Sigrun wouldn't let us turn back, so she and Mikkel got out to clear it and I ended up standing guard."

Again, he paused in his story to sneak another look up into the branches of the tree. He could see maybe a glimpse of Lalli's glove hanging over the edge of the branch, but nothing more. Lalli was far too skinny. Emil resolved to get him to eat something, anything, after they got back to camp—whatever it took.

Even if he had to shoot a deer and make Mikkel butcher it, Lalli was in need of a good meal. Really, it was the least he deserved.

"Anyway, I… got attacked by trolls. But I set them on fire! All of them!" Even when talking to someone who didn't speak his language, that was probably as much as Emil needed to share. It wasn't like he was lying or anything. "By the time I got back to the others, though, Sigrun was soaking wet and she and Mikkel were being attacked by a really big troll. We got away, but we had to keep walking forever just to get back to the tank."

After that… well, everything after that had been one big sleep deprivation induced blur. Emil had stayed awake just long enough to go through decon—if not for Mikkel's hands on his shoulders guiding him back to his bunk, he might have curled up right there in the back. He'd gone to sleep right away, his eyes slipping closed even before his head had touched the pillow.

Waking up the next morning had been one of the best feelings Emil had had for as long as he could remember. Bright sunlight, crisp air, the smell of sludge cooking, being able to debate stupid things like kitten names with Sigrun and Tuuri—that morning had been a gift, and he'd known it. They were alive. They were unhurt. Whatever nightmare the previous day had become was gone, burned away like a wisp of mist in the morning sun.

"Look, Lalli. I didn't mean to ignore you, I swear. I just didn't realize you were there. But for what it's worth… I'm sorry."

There was a sound of shifting cloth above him. Looking up once more, Emil saw Lalli's face peering down at him from the side of the branch. This time, though, he wasn't glaring anymore—his face only bore the same inscrutable, incurious expression that he always wore.

Tentatively, Emil smiled. "Come down?"

Lalli shook his head. He gave a sigh. Then, he swung down off the branch.

He'd only gone a little way down when Kissekatt mewed plaintively—though she had managed to climb up on her own, the poor thing didn't know how to get back down again. "Lalli—"

Before he could even finish his request, however, Lalli was already pulling the kitten from the trunk of the tree and settling her on his shoulder, whispering something in Finnish that sounded like an amused scolding before resuming his climb back down.