Hi all!

I want to say a BIG thank you for the guest reviews on the last two chapters! I love reading your comments, and I'm so glad you're liking the story so far!

It took them a good two hours to get from one side of the plain to the other.

It certainly wasn't that long of a walk, but they weren't really in any hurry.

The rest of the leveled land was empty to the edges of view, and even though Peaches was keeping an eye on the northern horizon, where another storm was passing by on the edge of eyesight, their surroundings were calm.

Still, Peaches very much felt like they were between something. Or on the edge of a between. The forest behind them had felt firm and consistent, but this plain was too open.

Neither of them was quite sure what to do about the tracks, and they spent more time slowly walking around the prints and looking at them than moving forward.

The other animals must have come through when the storm was over, in what was then a fresh blanket of snow. Because the land was so flat, most of the snow that had fallen had been blown into the leveled trees behind them, leaving a slightly thinner piling across the plain. And it was all too easy to follow the well-defined trails.

The farther they walked, and circled, and examined, the easier it was to plot out a path. The tracks wove and intersected randomly on the coming and going routes. And as the two mammoths danced around them, Peaches wished that they were less defined. Or not there at all.

Because there was definitely something off about the pattern. For a full-grown wolf – Julian had stood over one print about halfway across the plateau for a long time trying to guess the age – and a much smaller, obviously herbivorous, animal in the same place at the same time, it was weird that there were no signs of a fight.

Either Peaches was horrible at this, or something weird was going on here.

She thought about their own herd for a moment and then kept walking.

A few steps ahead, Julian looked puzzled, but not fearful. When he saw her looking in his direction, he smiled. "Whoever it was, they must be long gone by now."

"But have you ever seen…this?" Peaches looked down at her own feet, which were sinking farther into the snow than the tracks around her. They'd avoided stepping on the prints, and now it looked like they were a part of whatever little convoy had come through. Almost like the two of them had met the other animals at the edge of the tree line for an escort. Would someone come after them and wonder what had happened here?

This was exactly the kind of thing that Dad would not like, and they'd have either doubled back by now or would be taking a different direction forward.

Peaches frowned at the tracks as Julian said, "No, I haven't. But like I said, I've never been up this far north."

"Do you think we're safe?" She looked up at him.

At this, Julian hesitated. Then he shrugged and looked toward the opposite tree line. It had been impossible to see when they'd begun their walk, but now Peaches could see that another forest was more than likely coming up. It sat slightly northeast, and it felt like the position of the plain, and more obviously the tracks across it, were pushing them in that direction. "I don't know. But it's not too late to pick a different route."

They both stood thinking for a few minutes. Peaches wasn't sure what was on Julian's mind, for once, but she knew that the tracks bothered her. The prospect of letting them scare her off bothered her even more.

After another silent moment, Julian said, "I think I'm okay with keeping going. Unless you want to go south and put distance between us and them."

The problem was that they didn't know where "them" – whoever they were – actually was, and as Julian was speaking, it was quickly occurring to Peaches that this would be the case no matter what they did. Because here was really nowhere. Just as a few steps, five steps, a mile farther, was also nowhere. They were out in the middle of a wasteland, and they'd come across a situation that neither of them had ever encountered before.

Ironically, this was what her family's life had always been like before she came along. They'd traveled and explored just like everyone else. Because the truth was, they didn't know what was waiting out there. For a long time, staying in one place hadn't been the safest option.

And maybe being "safe" wasn't always the most important thing anyway.

Peaches lifted her head toward the sliver of forest in front of them. "No. I want to know what's over there."

"Really?" Julian asked carefully.

"It's like you said when we were first talking about this. We've got the whole place to ourselves." Peaches looked over at him, waiting. He'd said he wanted to keep going, but she could hear his hesitation. Whether it was out of second-guessing himself or simply worry that she'd think he was crazy, Peaches wasn't completely sure. Either way, she wasn't going to push him into this.

"Then let's do it." He grinned.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Julian also looked toward the horizon, a too-cool smirk brightening his face. He tilted his head up dramatically, and Peaches started laughing as he struck a confident pose. "Time for another daring adventure!"

So they started off again, purposefully following the tracks.

000

It was late afternoon by the time the tracks disappeared into the rises and gullies of uneven, forested ground. But the trees themselves were only about fifty paces thick, and then they too fell back into another plain that was smaller than the last but eerily silent.

Peaches and Julian simultaneously stopped and looked at each other.

It was like stepping abruptly from one ecosystem into another. While their earlier travels had transitioned gradually from one environment to the next, like a slow sunset, there had clearly been an incident here. Maybe not a fire or a flood, but something had cut through this piece of land and left it flattened and barren.

And there was less snow. It looked like this area had just narrowly avoided the storm, and only the edges of the trees and ground to their right had a thick covering.

Everything else was drier and emptier. And there were still no sounds.

"Wow! Cool!" Julian hopped ahead of her eagerly, and after a few moments, she began to slowly follow.

For all her talk, Peaches was still worried. She knew that this was the right route to take, and that they'd made the right decision, but it didn't make this place any less unwelcoming.

Julian, however, kept retracing his steps and looking at the ground. He'd lean in close, one eye squinting at the lines and the small bits of rocks and plant debris that ran longways through a break in the trees on their left and right. It almost seemed like something massive had come through and leveled it all.

"Where are we?" Peaches murmured, her own voice cutting at the emptiness.

"I don't know, but I like it here." Julian tossed the rock he'd been holding with his trunk and straightened up.

The snowstorm had been in the late morning, and as they eventually made their way towards the other side of this clearing, the light was steadily falling into night.

They reached the other side and walked into more trees, thicker this time and without an obvious end.

The weird energy seemed to dilute, and Peaches breathed a big sigh of relief.

Julian didn't seem to notice a difference, and he reached for her trunk and grinned. Peaches grinned back.

They were in this now, and even though the image of the dead-silent clearing behind them hadn't totally left her mind, Peaches tried to relax.

"This reminds me of the time I had to go through this swamp in the dark." Julian started saying, swinging their trunks, and bounding along fearlessly. "Have I told you this? The one with the beehive and the hailstorm…?"

After an hour, once the sun had fully set and they were walking through trees and shadows, there were voices.

Julian had long-since finished his swamp-hail story with the assertion that beehives were deceptively sticky, and it was best not to leave them on one's back for too long. Peaches had struggled to hide her laughter when he indicated the patch of shorter fur just behind his shoulder blades where he'd had to rip the hive off. Her husband was the best.

Now as they walked in silence for a few paces, listening, it was quickly obvious that those were definitely voices somewhere farther ahead in the trees. They quickly decided to move closer and check it out.

It was talking, and sometimes laughter, and the closer they got, the more it seemed like the voice stayed mostly the same. Until, suddenly, Peaches and Julian were stumbling on a well-hidden clearing packed with animals.

In the dim light of the moon, Peaches looked around, just as Julian was doing next to her, trying to take in the mammoths on the edges, lounging and listening. There were shapes in the middle, sabers – a lot of them – and some deer and other animals, all the way up to where a lone saber was sitting at the front, facing the crowd. "And so we kept walking. The weather was getting brutal, almost the worst I've ever been in…"

To their right, one of the dark shapes, a saber, scoffed. His friend, another saber, turned and smiled at him sarcastically. The two of them noticed Julian and Peaches and blinked at them.

"What is this?" Julian leaned past her and whispered.

"Someone wanted him to tell a story, so we're taking a break from rounds." The scoffer whispered back and then grinned sideways. "We've all heard this a million times, but it's still crazy."

"Can we join?" Julian asked quickly, eyes lighting up.

"Of course." The saber nodded to where they were standing, motioning for them to make themselves comfortable. This was basically the only free space in the entire clearing, and the two of them immediately laid down next to each other.

Only a few of the other animals around them seemed to notice, and no one looked at them for long.

Peaches snuggled down next to him, idly looking around them and up to the saber at the front. This was weird. Way weirder than she could have guessed. But, they'd agreed that this was their route, and it only made sense to stick around and scope this place out.

"Once it stopped snowing, I went on ahead a little to scout for issues. And to try and regain some of my body heat." The saber telling the story was laying on a rock that raised him up just high enough to see over the backs of the other animals. He was smiling at this memory as he continued. "I was just coming over the ridge that would take us down and around the ice caves when I saw them." He paused for dramatic effect, but it was more playful than anything else.

A few animals laughed or giggled.

"There were the humans! I knew that I only had a few seconds to change our course or we'd never get to where I needed us to be." He shook his head, and Peaches was sure that his smile got just a little sadder. More sheepish.

"And then what happened?" A sarcastic voice cried from somewhere ahead of them.

There was more laughter and happy murmuring among the listeners.

"Yeah Diego, how are you going to get yourself out of this one?"

The saber just grinned evilly. "The only way was to pick the alternative route. Through the ice caves it was."

A collective groan. A million times indeed.

"They wouldn't budge, and I ended up yelling to get them inside. That caused in avalanche, and we were trapped. I remember thinking that it was a really good thing that I insisted on figuring out a route through even though Soto thought it would be useless…"

Next to her, Julian was rapt with wonder. She'd never seen his eyes so big, and Peaches just smiled lazily and leaned more against him.

This was a good story. The ice slides were exactly the sort of fun Dad would disapprove of, and the human cave sounded like something from a dream. Peaches had never seen the humans; she'd only ever been vaguely aware that they existed at all. Most of their presence was taken over by the fact that they'd attacked her father's first family. She'd never thought about them much beyond that.

"As we were walking through that cave, things started to change." Diego's smile was a little shy, until he told the part about the sloth trying to calm the baby down because in one of the drawings "the sabers were just playing tag with the antelope."

Diego rolled his eyes. "That was nonsense, and I was feeling pretty off my game from those ice slides and the friendly competition, so I walked over to him and said, 'Come on Sid, let's play tag. You're it.'"

Peaches would have stood up in shock if Julian hadn't been leaning against her. Instead, she just sat forward, forcing him to steady himself with a surprised yelp.

"I was trying my best to ignore them now that I'd actually enjoyed our little adventure together, but that changed once we got to the ice sheet."

Diego had mentioned a mammoth, too. They'd raced side by side down the final stretch.

"The fire was hot and awful. I still can't believe Sid was the only one who felt it bubbling up, and once it hit the surface, everything became a blur." Diego was saying seriously, "I somehow ended up at the back of the group, and there was only one ice bridge for about a mile on either side. We couldn't go back because that part had already collapsed, and Sid was taking his sweet time going forward. I tried to get them to move faster, but of course, all I got back was sarcasm."

The crowd laughed again, but there was an anticipatory hush that immediately followed.

"Eventually, it was just me. Another huge section had fallen off between where I was standing and the last bit of ice that connected to solid ground. It was either try and jump or stay put and fall in. I don't remember thinking that it was a long way; I just knew that I needed to go sooner rather than later. I think if I would have backed up a few paces, I may have been able to get farther onto the other ledge. But, in the moment, I just went for it. My front paws hit the ice, and I dug in. But I didn't have enough leverage or grip to pull myself the rest of the way back up.

"I don't think I was hanging there for more than a few seconds when I looked up and saw that Manfred was slowly creeping toward me with his trunk extended. It all felt almost instantaneous. In the moment, I honestly wasn't surprised to see him, I was barely keeping myself focused on the situation as it was. When he finally reached me, I remember quickly extending my paw to try and meet him when the ice under me snapped."

Peaches felt Julian take a quick breath.

"He caught me as it fell. His feet were as close to the edge as they could be, and he had me by the foreleg with his trunk. Everything felt very precarious, so I reached up and clawed his trunk a bit to get some purchase in case he lost his hold.

"Then, before either of us could do anything else, there was a louder snapping sound, and we shifted down a few inches. I was still in midair, but I know he felt it because he looked backward and a moment later swung me over his shoulder. I hit the ground hard about twenty feet away, and just as I caught up to what had happened, I looked back and the ice broke the rest of the way. We could hear him trumpeting as he fell.

"For a few seconds, all I could do was stare at where he'd just been and wish that what had just happened, hadn't just happened. Of course, what I didn't notice while we were on the ice bridge was that, as the chunks fell, they were being pushed back upward from the magma. Another few moments, and Manfred was shooting back up as well and crashing down near us.

"Sid immediately went over to check and see if he was okay and ended up almost suffocating him on accident. But I just laid there." Diego shook his head. "I should have gone over and made sure he was going to be alright. Sid wasn't doing much more than fussing, but I was still too shocked. And angry. My motives for that journey were, at best, unclear to them. And Manfred still decided that it was worth it to risk his life. I didn't want to feel like that should mean something to me. And I didn't want to admit to myself that it made me care.

"I was so mad at myself, that I asked him why he did it. It was the dumbest thing I could have done. I should have just apologized, and in the end, his answer is what did me in." Diego's expression picked up into a little self-deprecating smile. "He said, 'That's what you do in a herd. You look out for each other,' like we were on the same team. I didn't know it right then, but I was so screwed."

That got a huge laugh from everyone around them, and Diego waited a few seconds for it to quiet down again before smiling and going on. Other than when he'd started this section of the story, his voice was even and easy, like he'd relived this so many times, it didn't bother him anymore.

But it bothered Peaches.

"…and then once we reached the cliff face, the wind died down. I remember standing next to Manfred, looking at Half Peak in the distance as he asked me how much farther to Glacier Pass. We were about three miles away at that point, and even saying so made me extremely uncomfortable. When he suggested we stop for the night, I was relieved. We all needed to rest, and I would have felt bad for pushing him to go farther.

"Which, by the way, is not a good feeling to have when you're leading someone into a trap."

"Then don't be a jerk Diego!" A high-pitched voice yelled from somewhere to their right. A bunch of animals laughed, and Diego cracked a huge grin in that direction, bright green eyes glinting.

"Let him finish his story, Claire!" Another voice called to even more jeering and joke-making.

"We made camp there," Diego began, probably to stop whatever good-natured argument was about to break out. "Sid started drawing on the cliff face wall and…"

As Diego talked on about the fire, Uncle Sid's first fire; the baby approaching him; realizing that he was more comfortable with a mammoth and a sloth than he was with his pack; and his midmorning confession in a hollow of the mountain, Peaches struggled to keep her anger in check.

Her father and uncle had teamed up with a carnivore to save a human baby. And they'd never told her about any of it.

Diego obviously knew how to maximize the story's impact, though, and the clearing was tense as he went through the fight with his pack blow by blow. When he got to the part about his pack leader throwing him into a rock, even Peaches was captivated.

"Manfred was cornered when I came to," he said. "I knew what Soto was going to do, and I also knew that the fight wasn't over yet. It wasn't too late. I came between them because it was my fault. And I didn't want him to die."

They'd said sad goodbyes in the thickening snow, and Diego had urged them on for fear that they would try to stay with him for too long. "I passed out for a while after that, and when I woke up again, I was alone. I tried to catch their scents, hoping that they were still close enough for me to track, but I never did figure out where they went after that. I hope that they caught up to the humans in time. But, at least my pack was off their tails. At least I did one thing right.

"So…yeah. The end." Diego shrugged, and a round of whistling and cheering began. He smirked at them. Whatever gravity he'd been manipulating during the story vanished, and he looked content and happy sitting up there as animals stood to approach him or nod to him and each other as they dispersed.

Peaches rose to her feet.

"Honey…are you okay?" Julian asked carefully as the animals around them were getting up and leaving. Without answering him, Peaches parted the tide as she made her way to the front of the clearing.

By the time she got up there, Diego was talking to a deer and saber. When Peaches got close enough, they all looked up, and Diego smiled. "Hi."

She stopped squarely in front of him. "All of that stuff you just said, that was true? About the mammoth and the sloth?"

He nodded like he was used to this question. "Yeah, I know it's a little crazy. It was crazy while we were in the middle of it."

Peaches was vaguely aware of the other two animals saying goodbye and joining the dwindling crowd behind her. "And you were all traveling together, on purpose, and trying to return the human baby to the humans?"

Diego pulled a face at that but smiled all the same. "By the end, yes. My pack leader was on a revenge mission, so I was guiding Manfred and Sid to our territory under the guise of helping them reach the human camp on the other side of Glacier Pass. I won't speak for them, but everything I said is what I remember happening."

"I never knew." Peaches muttered, feeling a strange guilt come over her. No, secondhand guilt. She wasn't the one who needed to be sorry. "My dad never told me about any of that."

"…Your dad?"

"Yeah, and Uncle Sid." Peaches shook her head, adding in a quiet voice, "They lied to me."

Diego blinked at her, surprised into silence for a moment. Then he was looking at her in disbelief, a sort of wonderstruck smile lighting up his eyes. His voice was soft as he said, "Manfred got remarried?"

"Yeah, he did." Peaches huffed. She was angry, so angry. And definitely betrayed. But Diego's excitement seemed to tilt her perspective for a moment. She wasn't the only one getting unexpected news right now. News that clearly meant a lot to him judging by how his eyes were alight and he was looking at her like he couldn't believe this conversation was happening. Besides, he didn't seem to care that she was coming into this blind. Peaches made an instantaneous decision to calm down.

"How are you they doing? Are they okay?"

"They're fine," Peaches reassured him as Julian skidded up to her side.

He was grinning nervously and clearly ready to keep Peaches from going over whatever edge she was inevitably inching toward. "We really liked your story."

Peaches took his trunk in hers, feeling a familiar pride as she said. "This is Julian. He's my husband. Julian, this is Diego. He knows my dad."

"Oh, cool. We weren't sure if…you know." Julian nodded compulsively as if to fill in his point. "Since I don't think they ever mentioned…?"

"No, they didn't." Peaches frowned a little and looked back at Diego. "Like I said, I had no idea that my dad had done that. And they've never talked about you."

"That's not surprising." Diego shrugged, his reverence from a moment ago disappearing into a good-humored scoff. "I'm sure they're still angry with me for all of that."

"Angry at you?"

"Yeah, they said they weren't going to hold a grudge but…I'd be pretty mad if someone arranged to have me ambushed by their pack. So stupid." Diego shook his head in muted exasperation before looking between them. "Is your herd migrating then?"

Peaches and Julian quickly recounted their wedding and subsequent journey.

"I'm a little surprised Manfred let you guys go by yourselves."

"Dad wasn't that happy about it." Peaches rolled her eyes.

Diego chuckled. "I'm sure he wasn't."

Before Peaches could even begin to think of more questions, because it was obvious that this saber knew her dad, a white saber with black stripes padded over. She glanced at them with sea-blue eyes before turning to Diego with a teasing smirk. "Are you ready to go yet?"

He nodded, standing up and glancing at the two of them, "Peaches, Julian, this is Shira. My mate."

"Hi." Shira looked at them again and then glanced at Diego like she was already beginning to work out who they might be. She didn't seem surprised when he told her why Peaches had approached him.

"So you stopped to see how much he'd mess up the story." Shira summarized, her expression sharp but attentive. She was quick; Peaches could sense that she'd already jumped to several, more than likely correct, conclusions in the last few seconds and had made a decision about how to play this. "Are you two passing through this area?"

"Apparently they've been heading northeast from somewhere back near the ocean." Diego answered as a couple of sabers hopped past them followed by a laughing dire wolf. All three glanced at them and called goodnight before disappearing between the trunks and underbrush of the dark forest.

"Yeah, we're roaming. Kind of an extended honeymoon." Julian gave her a quick smile.

Shira smiled back, brilliant and decisive. "I assume you're stopping here, then. There's a storm coming in tonight. I don't think your parents would want you out wandering in it."

Diego nodded, green eyes alight and ready to talk strategy. "We could go see Brian, I'm sure he'd put them up for the night."

"Or they could just stay with us." Shira shrugged like this option should have been his first idea.

"Really?" Peaches asked excitedly.

"Really?" Diego echoed, his expression deadpanning.

"We'd love to stay with you!" Julian did a little bounce.

"We would." Peaches added giddily. She'd come to the conclusion that, most of all, this situation was embarrassing. All of these animals already knew a story that she should have grown up with. She felt behind, and she wanted to know everything.

"But you don't know us." Diego was looking between the three of them like he wasn't sure how they'd gotten to this ridiculous point.

"You just told us who you were."

"You mean the story about how I went after a human baby because my pack leader wanted to kill it and then tried to dispose of your dad when he got in my way?"

"We weren't here for the beginning." Julian waved him off.

"See, they weren't even here for the beginning." Shira chimed in. She'd sat down and looked quite comfortable now that the conversation had taken an uncertain turn.

"I don't know if this is a good idea…"

"Please?" Peaches prodded. "I obviously have a lot of questions, and what's the point of being here if I can't talk to you about any of this?" My family deliberately hid this from me. I have to know the whole story. I want to know you. And I can't do it if you shove us off on someone else.

"We saw some tracks in the snow, coming here." Julian cut in. "It looked like a wolf and…maybe a deer? Wherever we stay, is there anything else we need to know?"

"Claire." The sabers said at the same time.

"This area is safe for herbivores." Diego added. "You'd technically be fine anywhere."

"I don't think Manny would like it if he heard we passed up a perfectly good place to stay. Especially with someone he already knows." Julian said dutifully.

"Can we stay?" Peaches asked again and held her breath. It certainly wasn't lost on her that, had things worked out slightly differently, she may have had yet another uncle. And despite the small part of her that was burning through pure anger right now, it wasn't too late.

Diego had one eyebrow quirked, clearly surprised, before finally sighing. "Okay."

Shira smiled at her mate and tilted her head toward the trees. "Let's go get some sleep."

"Awesome." Julian enthusiastically drug out the word, and they began following Shira and Diego into the forest.

"Is this okay with you?" Peaches whispered to him, even though she was fairly certain the sabers could hear her anyway.

"Of course!" Julian whispered back. "This is what roaming is all about. I'm glad we came this way."

"Okay, good." Peaches nodded, taking a deep breath. "Good."

YAYYYYYYYYYY! We're finally here, and so is Diego! This extra-awesome boy is my favorite character, and I'm so excited to throw him into a bunch of situations that he's not going to like!

In canon, Diego is really concerned about the parts of himself that he lets others see. This attitude seems to come from a mix of factors; and the way he behaves when he butts up against things he doesn't like about himself usually forms the backbone of his character arcs. The Diego in this fic has had to mature through those feelings more quickly, and he's more open about how his life has changed for the better since Half Peak. However, without the ongoing validation of Manny and Sid's friendship, a part of him will be doubtful and lost when it comes to their relationship. He's sure that they haven't really forgiven him, and he's not going to believe otherwise unless it comes directly from them.

I've had this idea for about ten years and finally decided it was time to write it. The characters and events have changed with the movies, but after re-watching the first Ice Age all those years ago, I couldn't shake the feeling that letting Diego be "dead" at the end of the movie and then bringing him back in a sequel would have been a great story.

Thanks for reading, and please review!