...aaaaaaannnnndddd I knew this would happen. It's been a few months, hasn't it?

I'm not good at writing in installments, and it's been much easier to work on other projects that I can endlessly rewrite and re-imagine without have to post anywhere in a timely manner. I'm going to try and get myself moving on this story, but I'm not sure how successful I'll be.

If you're still reading, thank you!

"You keep doing this! We don't need to stop early. I'm fine!" It was their first fight, and Peaches was yelling so loud she could have sworn the skinny evergreens around them were shaking with her emotions.

"I'm just trying to help…" Julian was scrambling to keep up, and the frown on his face was only growing deeper.

"I don't need you to tell me what to do!"

A few weeks' worth away from home, and here they were in the middle of a random path with a brown and green valley on one side and a sparse forest behind them. The second mountain range they'd seen was to their left, massive against the horizon.

"I'm not telling you what to do, Peaches. I just know that sometimes you don't like to include me on what you're thinking. I want to make sure that neither of us gets too tired or push ourselves too hard. We still have a long-"

"Don't say it." Peaches shook her head.

"-way to go, and we need to stay healthy."

"We don't have a destination."

"Well, that's not exactly true." And here they went. She watched Julian wag his head a little in his way of showing affable disagreement. "We'll know when it's time to stop."

They had barely gotten into arguments while dating, and the explosion of realizing that the past two weeks of conversations and micro adventures and little annoyances were all that was waiting for them for miles ahead had suddenly dropped on Peaches like a surprise thunderstorm. The clouds cracked apart, and all the things that they'd been carefully tolerating were suddenly unbearable.

Peaches heard herself saying words that she hoped would make Julian upset because she was getting tired of him reassuring her that he was the only one of the two of them who really knew where he was going. As if she wasn't capable of telling when a cliff face, now a few miles back, looked unsafe or that they shouldn't cross a river on ice so thin they could see fish swimming underneath.

She wasn't used to feeling stupid, and there was something about her new husband's uncanny ability to try and take care of her when she least wanted it that she just couldn't stand. So what if he had a knowledge base that she didn't? She could learn, couldn't she?

Meanwhile, Julian was obviously struggling to keep his cool, and while he had yet to raise his voice, the carefree undercurrents that always characterized his tone were gone. He was forcibly patient, almost patronizing. And the fact that he wouldn't just yell the way that she was made her feel even worse.

Caught between wanting to really tell him off for his attitude and feeling guilty for what she was sure were over-the-top reactions, Peaches took a few steps backward. "I need some air."

"So you're going to walk away?"

"I'm not going to get myself lost if that's what you're thinking." She snapped.

It wasn't what Julian was thinking. He just didn't want to see her walk off without him because he loved her. Even at the height of their argument, he'd rather trail after her than have them be separated for even the small amount of time she'd need to cool down. It upset him to not be together. But right now Peaches didn't care. Right now she was channeling the fights that her parents would occasionally have when she was younger. Dad, a consistent hothead, was no match for Mom when she finally got angry enough to really argue with him.

Peaches felt like both of them, the part of her that had been passively angry for a few days was finally colliding with what she was quickly learning were her main tics. Being taken care of. Not being listened to. Close proximity without the ability or cause to finally snap. Knowing she was being ridiculous and not being able to stop herself. Wishing she could be less like her dad and more like her husband.

Maybe this was more about her than it was about Julian. And with that thought, she turned and stormed off in an unnecessary way that seemed a fitting end to this reckless argument.

Exploring, roaming, seemed to be an acquired taste the longer she spent doing it. The original excitement had taken awhile to wear off, but it had more or less left them now.

Now they were just walking to nowhere, and she was slowly realizing that maybe this whole adventure thing was a lot more about them than it was about going somewhere new. Even after a couple of weeks of walking, the changes in the land weren't enough to really replace the snowy, dusty ground that seemed to never end.

In fact, the stunning landforms they did encounter – large lakes and waterfalls frozen solid, marshes that were so humid her fur was matted down from the water in the air by the time they came out the other side, and mountains that she liked to watch the sunlight and shadows move around – none of it was as eye opening as listening to Julian talk about his adventures. Hearing herself tell him stories about her family. He liked to reminisce about the early parts of their relationship and relive the magic of falling love.

Peaches liked those times. Although, as she walked farther and farther into the dark pull of the trees, she had to ask herself if this was partly why she was so upset today. In the midst of listing off all the reasons for his happiness, Julian didn't do a very good job of compensating for what was left out. He didn't talk much about his family. They weren't tight knit the way hers was, and Peaches had never really fully appreciated how much being a part of her herd meant to him. She wished she knew how to appreciate her life more, but without him in it, she'd probably have never noticed that beneath her three uncles' shenanigans and her dad's sour attitude was a comfortable sort of perfection. Or that she was lucky.

She didn't know how to reconcile this with the stifling childhood she had battled through. She understood that Dad's first family had died and that he was going to do everything in his power to never let it happen again, but their daily life was uneventful. A few brief stints with other animals that had wished to do them harm was the extent of their wild ride. Everything else was ordinary to the point of insanity.

Peaches had wanted this adventure. And she'd wanted it with Julian. And she didn't know how to ease herself into it without wanting it all. Wanting Julian's entire life inside of her head, a better version of herself than she'd known at home, a place for them to live together.

"What are we doing?" Peaches stopped in a small copse of trees, blue night making them dense shadows. Night had just started to fall when Julian had finally cracked the ice and suggested that maybe they should stop early because Peaches looked tired and he wanted to be considerate because he knew she wasn't used to this like him. She could have killed him.

So they'd started screaming at each other instead. Well, she'd been screaming at least.

Now, the epiphany that roaming was hard on her and that Julian was right, dawned on her. She hadn't been prepared for the toll it was going to take, and she was struggling to make sense of having no plans. She was too much like her dad to just up and go like this. And it wasn't Julian's fault.

She owed him an apology.

From somewhere in the dark, something moved. It was so unexpected and loud that Peaches immediately turned towards it, footsteps much too noisy. She cringed at the sound of her own clumsiness and tried to force her eyes to distinguish safe and dangerous in the dark, shapeless, forest around her. She felt herself bunching up, trying to get smaller in a laughable attempt to make herself less noticeable. And she suddenly felt very, very alone in the darkness.

Waiting, for the sound to come a second time or for something to suddenly come at her out of the quiet nighttime, she briefly considered simply turning tail and running. Uncle Crash and Uncle Eddie would say that was the wise thing to do. They were always running from something, and she was usually the one standing up and standing her ground. Her inability to run being unwise was probably the one thing that Dad and they agreed on.

But right now, in a part of the world that hadn't existed for her that morning, she felt how much she'd never really dealt with situations like this. The only thing that had ever come close (besides bedtime stories of dinosaurs she apparently experienced but couldn't remember) was the time that crazy monkey had come ashore on his iceberg, herding them all off of the ledge they'd been trapped on and announcing with offensive assurance that he was getting revenge on her father.

Revenge for Dad wanting to get back to Mom and her of all things.

So they'd been trapped, and the monkey's first mate, a little rabbit with a knife and overflowing energy, had tied Mom to a boulder while Peaches had been kept close to the captain, awaiting her father and still reeling from the drama of the last few days with Louis and Ethan and her own disappointment in herself.

Now she was focusing her hearing, staring blankly into the shadowed trees and trying to remember every fighting move that Dad had taught her.

And Peaches waited, and waited in the silence until it finally became obvious that nothing was going to happen. And her initial surprise was gone, and it seemed colder than usual tonight, here on the edge of yet another valley at the foot of another mountain. And she was standing in an offshoot of forest by herself because she'd had a fight with her husband.

Whatever it was, was either gone or wasn't a threat. Probably both. Peaches took a moment to collect herself before turning, and walking slowly back to their campsite.

Julian was sleeping off to the side, the rhythm of his breathing a familiar feeling next to her. She sunk down beside him, exhausted. The same silence from the forest lay over their campsite.

"Peaches?"

"Yeah?" She whispered back, immediately feeling guilty for waking him up.

His voice was sleepy. "Are you still mad?"

"No," she answered.

"I'm not mad either," Julian said with a huge yawn.

"Good," Peaches sighed and reached for his trunks with hers. "It's probably time to get some sleep. We can talk about it in the morning."

"Mm-hm, love you."

"I love you too."

000

By the dawn, when it was time to get up and move on, Peaches had an apology ready for him in which she did her best to communicate to this excitable, kind, soul that she needed a little more structure; just a little. That she did appreciate him wanting to stop for her, but she also needed to feel like she was calling the shots too. That she wanted him to be himself and that maybe she still had a bit to figure out herself.

Julian just smiled and nodded and asked if she was hungry. So the argument was over just like that, and as they went onward, talking, Peaches found herself happy again.

Everything that had happened before was gone, and with it, the memory of the sound in the dark.

I've been thinking about this story (in place of actually sitting down to write it), and I think it's turning into more of an exploratory piece. I'm sorry if it feels a little slow right now. There is action and lots of answers coming up, but I'm still in the setup phase because I'm really interested in these characters on an emotional level. I wish the movies would go into that more than they do.

This is going to be a pretty reflection-heavy fic, but there are some major twists and deviations from the films. I'm sure you've spotted some slight differences from canon in this chapter, and there are a bunch more that will begin to snowball (pun intended) as the story goes on.

Next up, we're back with the herd, and Sid is not happy.

Thanks for reading!