Chapter 13: My Iron Lung

"You can't be serious."

Penny gestured at Foxy, who was drunkenly mumbling incoherent gibberish with his face against the table. "He's not walking out of here on his own, I'll tell you that much."

The three of them had come to Mama's to try and calm their nerves after a very emotional day with a lot of reopened wounds. They had a few drinks, relaxed, even cheered up a bit before it came time to head back home.

But just as they were about to leave, Penny had seen something out of the corner of her eye. On the balcony, a certain russet vulpine had drunk more than his fair share, and was barely conscious. His head was laying in a painful-to-look-at position on the busted table in front of him.

And Penny, being the helpful survivalist that she was, dared suggest that they take him back to Horton's.

"He's a fucking murderer, Penny," Liz shot back, "I'm not going to help the bastard that killed my sister."

Scarlet bit her lip, opting to step in with a voice of reason. "What, does that make you a saint?"

Liz rolled her eyes as the vixen continued.

"Our mantra hasn't changed– we help our own. He's drunk out of his mind, the least we can do is bring him back to Horton."

"He is not one of us."

Scarlet's calm facade cracked just slightly, staring very intently at Liz as her hand gripped the lizard's shoulder tightly. Very. Tightly.

"Liz."

The reptile groaned, slightly intimidated, but mostly just annoyed at Scarlet being too uptight about helping her 'neighbor.'

"Fine," Liz scoffed, "Don't expect me to be nice to him while I do it though."

The three of them got around Foxy, Liz heaving him off the table as Scarlet and Penny got under his shoulders to help him walk. As Scarlet went to pick him up, the three of them were greeted by Foxy's drunk rambling as he fumbled with the last of his drink.

"Aye…. me bottle o' scrumpeh…"

Penny caught the mug from his hand as he let it slip from his furless metal fingers, and set it back on the counter.

"It's on," he yelled, pumping his empty fist into the air. Scarlet narrowly dodged the uppercut as they all adjusted their grip on him.

"It's on liii-ehhh…." he trailed off as he fell asleep.

Scarlet held back a smirk as they maneuvered him out of the bar. Part of her hated to think the person that killed Lana almost made her laugh, even a little. Another part of her was reminded of how things worked down here.

People died all the time– very rarely could you hold a grudge for it– it was just how things were.

But still, Lana's death, Lana's killer… That wasn't something she was just going to forget.

She was envious of Penny. She was calm, collected, unmoved. Sure, she was just as devastated as the rest of them, but that didn't stop her from being as reasonable as ever. The less dead people the better, and right now this one needed help.

Scarlet's voice of reason told her she had to move on already. She had to be mentally sound, she needed to be an unmoving pillar for her sisters to lean on. Letting this get to her wasn't helping. He was probably just trying to survive, like them, right? He was certainly protective enough of his scrap to fit the bill.

But the voice of emotion in her wanted to scream, to drop to her knees and just cry for however long it took to feel better. She wanted to throw this bastard off her back and down the deepest pit she could find. Maybe stab him a couple times for good measure.

So, naturally, she suppressed all these conflicting thoughts that came to her mind.

Seemed like a healthy enough plan.

Getting Foxy out of the bar was challenging enough, both physically and on Scarlet's emotional stability. But now they were finally out, only next came the long part.

Walking him all the way to Horton's Shop.

All the way on the eastern edge of the city.

And down several flights of stairs along the way.

…Scarlet was beginning to have second thoughts. Third thoughts, even.

"Penny?"

"Yes?"

"Fuck you."

"...Noted."

Penny and Scarlet both struggled as they were practically dragging Foxy along the metal walkways through the city, Liz trailing behind a bit.

"W-wha-?… w-who -hic- whoo'ssszzzz on me ship?"

"Your ship?" Scarlet raised a brow, "this is a walkway, not a ship."

"Nnnnuh-uh. This... is m'ship lass… I'mmmm the captain of this mighty ves… vell… vesull… vuh…"

"Vessel?" Penny suggested.

Foxy's brows furrowed like he had to think very intensely about that.

"...Yes. I… think. Vessel… vvvvvesselllll… I don' think thas a real word. Yer tryin' tuh trick me! What kind of crewmate are ye? Tryna trick yer cap'n like that…"

Penny stifled a chuckle, "He really thinks he's a pirate?" She whispered to Scarlet.

"And a captain at that," Liz scoffed from behind them.

"Think?! I AM a pirate lass, the best damn pirate to ever sail the…" he paused, counting under his breath, "...The sev'n seas! Whaddya… whaddya think the eye patch… is… fer…"

The drunken fox's head slumped over, his legs now dragging on the ground as the weight on Scarlet and Penny's backs just got heavier.

"Is he finally dead?" Liz called out from behind. Scarlet returned a frustrated glare at her, while Penny examined him before chuckling again.

"He's asleep."

"He's fucking heavy is what he is," Scarlet grunted.

"Just help us get him into Horton's shop, Liz. we'll dump him there and you can go right home."

"Alright, alright…"

Reluctantly, the lizard pressed on with the both of them, pretty much carrying the vulpine on her back and handing him off to the two of them whenever she got tired. After 20 long minutes of this, they finally found themselves at the outskirts of the city, only a short walk away from Horton's shop.

Liz paused, Scarlet and Penny already knowing that meant it was their turnt to carry him.

"Think you two can handle it from here?"

"Shouldn't be too much trouble if we're only this far out," Penny answered. "Why?"

"I'm heading back to our place then."

"Liz-"

"I helped carry him, he's here. You two will be fine on your own, and hell knows no one's gonna bother me on my way back."

Scarlet held back a frown, and not another word passed between all three of them until Liz was out of sight. At that point Scarlet nudged Penny beside her, and they got started carrying the unconscious vulpine through the final stretch.

"You think she's okay?" Penny asked.

"Of course she's not okay, she just carried the guy who killed Lana all the way back to his home," Scarlet shot back, almost a little too readily.

"...Are you okay?"

Scarlet just stared at Penny for a moment before responding.

"I thought I got over it. I haven't."

"...Neither have I," the hawk admitted.

An introspective silence passed between them again, both trying to find the words, or even the thoughts they wanted to convey in the first place. Scarlet spoke up first, sounding more tired than curious.

"Why are we doing this?"

"He needed help-"

"I know, I know, but… Did we really need to be the ones to do it?"

Penny scoffed. "Like anyone else was going to?"

"I doubt Diamond would've had any trouble."

"You know she'd be drunker than him before she closed up shop."

Scarlet sighed, looking down at the dusty ground beneath them.

"I don't know. We've done stuff like this plenty of times before, but I feel like it just isn't keeping me going like it used to." She glanced down at the fox dangling by his arms, an indecipherable expression blanketing her face. "...Especially now."

"Helping around gets old when everyone keeps dying anyways," Penny muttered. Her eyes somehow seemed even more exhausted now.

"What's worse is that I don't even know if I want to stop what I've been doing either," Scarlet said, readjusting Foxy in her hands. "We've been doing it for so long that I don't even know how to stop."

"Do you want to stop?"

"I'm tired of having to try so hard, Penny. We're not helping our home; not in any real way."

As they neared the doorstep to their destination, Penny took the lead by heaving half of the unconscious fox up the stairs.

"Well, maybe just this last one," the hawk breathed. "How's that sound?"

"I guess it only seems fitting."

As soon as Scarlet finished her sentence, the door opened.

"What in the-"

"Hi, Horton," Penny wheezed out, "I hope you don't mind the unplanned visit?"

The owl glanced at her, paying more attention to Foxy's limp body. "I didn't think it would happen so soon, I…"

"He drank way too much, figured we'd help him home."

"Wh- Oh! Oh thank heavens, I thought…"

Scarlet raised an eyebrow at that.

"...Nevermind," Horton awkwardly finished.

Noticing the awkward air, Penny spoke up again.

"So… Can we come in?"

"O-of course, come on in. I suppose this is a lot heavier than the usual book find."

"Yep," Penny was barely able to grunt as she and Scarlet both heaved Foxy's body through the cramped doorway.

After almost a minute of just trying to get him through the door, Penny and Scarlet were more than a little tired.

"Where's his room?" Scarlet asked, adjusting the vulpine over her shoulder.

Horton gestured towards the stairs behind him. "Top floor."

"Fucking great…"

Just as they were about to get on with carrying Foxy all the way up to his room, they were interrupted by Argos coming down the stairs.

"Oh, sorry. Did you need help?" he asked.

"We'll be fine, any more than the two of us and I don't think we'll fit in that narrow-ass stairway."

Argos took note of that, especially hanging on the word 'two.' He looked past them before slipping out of their way.

"Is…" Argos began.

"Liz already left," Scarlet interrupted.

"Oh…" he trailed off, sounding disappointed. "I'll be downstairs."

Scarlet and Penny both watched as the lizard retreated into his workspace in the basement.

"What's got him down?" Horton remarked.

Scarlet scoffed, and Penny turned to him with a look of both amusement and disbelief. "How do you not see these things?"

Horton just shrugged, "I've never seemed to be wired like the rest of you."

A 'feh' of amusement escaped Penny's beak before she and Scarlet began heaving the drunken vulpine up the stairs.

Horton made an effort to try and help them carry Foxy, but any more than the two of them was more trouble than help. So, he resided himself to holding a door open here and there and following behind, each time getting a good look at just how drunk the vulpine was.

"Do you know how many drinks he had exactly?" Horton asked, sounding rather concerned.

"Must've been at least six given the empty mugs," Penny grunted as she lifted the vulpine up the last step.

"Jesus, what did Marty say to get him this bad? He is not in the condition to be handling this…"

That last comment caught Scarlet's attention again, but Penny spoke up before she could even open her mouth.

"Marty? You mean like… Marionette?"

"N-no…"

Yeah, that sure sounded convincing. Horton could tell he wasn't doing a very good job with the lying, the tension in the air growing a little thick. Scarlet didn't like it, so she attempted to change the topic.

"Horton," she started, "What exactly do you mean about Foxy 'not being in condition to handle this?'"

The owl's expression darkened.

"Oh, uh… He's… he's dying."

That caught Scarlet off guard, making her almost drop Foxy instead of laying him down.

"He's dying?" She said, sounding skeptical, "How can a robot be dying?"

Horton flinched, nervously rubbing the cuff of his lab coat.

"When he first came down here he was already in bad shape, so I tried to repair him and… his internals are all so damaged that I… I couldn't do anything about it. He could short out at pretty much any time."

Penny and Scarlet both had a grim expression of dawning realization.

"Before, we had no idea how much time he had left," Horton continued, "But as it gets worse, we're getting a better idea of the time remaining. As of now, it couldn't be any more than one or two weeks before he… well, short-circuits and gets fried beyond repair."

A long, painful silence filled the room, only interrupted by the occasional groan or snore from the dying, drunken vulpine of mention. Suddenly, Scarlet felt a lot more understanding of how defensive he was over his scrap. Of course it belonged to him, anyone would be defensive, but knowing this? She felt even more guilty about it than before.

"Is that why he-"

"The scrap is our only chance to help him. More or less a full body replacement."

"And you can do that?" Penny asked.

"Easily, I just need a bunch of specialized parts to actually do it. However, getting our hands on them is the hard part," Horton explained, "Which makes it all the more confusing to me why he'd give you so much of his winnings. He knows time is running short…"

With a remark like that, it felt like Horton had poured salt in the open wound that was the guilt creeping its way into Scarlet's conscience. It'd seem almost intentional if it wasn't for her being well aware of just how oblivious the owl could be to people's emotional state.

Scarlet felt the need to say something. Anything. But she had no idea what she'd say, let alone how she'd word it. Before she even thought of anything, Horton began again.

"...I'm going to go whip up a little homemade remedy for the hangover he's doomed to have, I'll be downstairs."

"You know a hangover cure?" Penny asked, genuinely surprised.

"Of course I know a hangover cure, I didn't learn nothing after drinking myself to sleep every night for a whole year."

"...Wha-"

"Ignore that," the owl said, already on his way down the stairs.

Penny turned to Scarlet. The vixen already recognized the look she was giving her. Any time Penny was going out to see if she could find any new books to steal from the shops that scavenged the surface, or go deliver said books to Horton, she always made this same flustered expression along with whatever excuse she cooked up that time with her signature cheek scratch.

"I'm going to go with him," Penny started, scratching her cheek right on queue, "Make sure he doesn't hurt himself or something…"

"Uh huh…" Scarlet sarcastically mumbled.

"I'm serious!"

Scarlet raised an eyebrow at her, "Right, and I'm sure you're always going out of your way to find books for him because you're just that nice of a gal."

"Oh, shut up!" Penny shot back with a flustered expression on her face.

The hawk exited the loft that the fox resided in, shutting the trapdoor behind her with an audible creak. Scarlet watched as the light dipped, leaving the outlines of Foxy's living space faintly illuminated by the light from the moon, and the center of the city.

Her eyes danced around the room as they adjusted to the darkness, taking in the details that the loft allotted.

The space was barren of any personal belongings for the most part, with the majority of the room being taken up by storage containers full of who knows what. On the far side of the room was a crude 'window' made primarily of metal grating– not uncommon throughout the Hellmouth. Just beside the opening lay a stack of books, some with little pieces of cloth on string stuffed in between the pages.

Scarlet crouched down to look at the tiny library, finding several books covering fighting and mental discipline, except for one book which sat by its lonesome next to the others.

Curious, she picked it up and looked it over.

Treasure Island

She glanced back at the vulpine who'd since been rolled out on his sleeping mat, complete with eyepatch, tattered shorts and not much else.

'Go figure.'

Rubbing the fibrous sheets against her digits, she turned a few pages in and began to read.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow…

Her ears suddenly twitched and swiveled toward the vulpine.

Was he awake?

Not being keen on accidentally removing his bookmark, Scarlet carefully held the rest of the pages shut as she closed the book and set it back down in the same place it was in.

He seemed to be mumbling something, just barely intelligible. His lips moved around like he was trying to speak, but his voice never made its way out to follow.

Scarlet glanced back out the window. Liz was probably back at home, relaxing, not being bothered by whatever anyone else had to deal with.

She recalled her conversation with Penny earlier, still unsure if her self-given role of a 'silent helper' was even making an impact, or if she could even do anything different. If the Hellmouth as a whole was her family, then they were dysfunctional at best.

Then again, the free drink from Diamond every once in a while was a nice incentive.

"...ch…"

She turned to look at Foxy, who was suddenly conscious again. Though, he was no less drunk or delusional. His eyes were glassed over, flickering faintly.

"Che…"

Scarlet scooted a little closer to him, trying to make out what he was saying.

"Are you… feeling any better?"

"..."

"Foxy?"

His voice spoke out again, still drunkenly slurring his words here and there, but much more coherent than before.

"...Chica?"

Scarlet froze for a second. That was… certainly not the response she was expecting. Just as she was about to correct him however, she stopped.

He sounded almost... relieved to say that name. She didn't want to make him any more depressed than he already seemed to be.

Besides, he was drunk, it's not like he'd remember this.

"...y- yeah?"

Foxy hadn't responded for a moment, making Scarlet begin to worry that might not have been the best decision, when he finally made a noise.

It was a stifled choking sound, sniffling between every shaky sigh.

He was trying not to cry.

"Hey hey hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just- I had the worst nightmare. It felt so real, I… I missed you."

It was at this moment Scarlet realized she may have overstepped a boundary. But she was curious, and truth be told, it'd be even worse to correct it now. It felt so, so wrong, but curiosity killed the cat– not the fox.

"What was it?"

"It felt like years. They replaced us with these plastic freaks… they tortured us… they busted my jaw… they made me- made me… that girl…" He choked on his words, struggling to keep back the tears. "Everyone... I thought I'd lost you all forever."

"Fuck…" he muttered under his breath.

Scarlet was frozen. She felt like she had just read someone's diary right in front of them- this definitely wasn't something she was supposed to hear. For him to open himself up to her like this, it felt to her like she was taking advantage of him. What was she supposed to say now? Nothing? She already started playing along, she couldn't just quit now and leave him worse off.

"Well, I-I'm here now."

"Yeah, yeah..." he sniffled, "I'm glad it was just a dream."

Scarlet bit her lip.

"What happened after that?"

Foxy was quiet for a moment.

"I… stayed there and withered away for years after Freddy… after Freddy left. So I got up and I ran away. I got trapped in this... hole. It was horrible there. Everyone was trying to kill me, I was slowly dying, someone… helped me, and I… I killed her too- she even begged me to do it!"

Scarlet winced.

"That sounds… awful."

"...I guess I deserved to die, after that."

That took her off guard. In just a few sentences, all of the bravado he'd shown at their very first encounter had crumbled away, revealing a blackened heart of depression and self-loathing.

'Was this really who killed Lana?'

"Don't… don't say that."

"...Sorry."

The two of them sat in silence for a long moment after that. Scarlet was just watching him while realizing that whatever kind of person she assumed he was, he clearly wasn't anything like what she'd assumed.

Foxy's drunken daze was fading, not to clear consciousness, but back to sleep as his flickering eyes seemed to dull even further. His speech faintly buzzed in and out. He seemed scared of that, worried he'd return to that nightmare. Guilt overwhelmed Scarlet when she understood that his nightmare followed him wherever he went.

"Chica?"

"Y-yes?"

"Can you stay here just a bit longer?" Foxy asked, barely mumbling it though his lips. He reached an arm out towards Scarlet, his palm opened. "I… I don't want to lose you again."

She hesitated, unsure if this was okay. But she followed through, gingerly putting her hand on his.

What remained of the calloused, synthetic pads of his hands were warm to the touch.

His fingers delicately wrapped around hers, a grip gentler than she could've imagined.

"Of course, I'll stay as long as you need."

"...Thanks. Don't tell Bonnie, he'll probably rag on me for this... I really don't need his shit right now."

"...I won't tell a soul, I promise."

It was only then that she noticed the palm-sized, laminated photo next to the vulpine's bedside. The picture was of Foxy, along with three others in a group hug.

A bear, a rabbit, and a chicken.