I need to just stop saying things like, "Hopefully it won't be another two months!" because then it ends up being more than two months.
"Jackson… Jackson!" Peaches was trying not to draw too much attention. But apparently her whispered shout had still been slightly too loud. A few of the leaders that were already here turned to stare at her as they all headed through the darkened trees toward the main clearing.
But Jackson heard her. And Peaches was relieved when she saw him a moment later walking against the weak tide of animals back to join her.
"Hey." Now that she was actually here, confronted with the opportunity to say something, she wasn't quite sure where to start. How to ask if he'd really been looking.
"Peaches…" Jackson was looking at her tiredly, maybe a little irritably, and she braced herself. She'd talked it over with Mayim on the walk back, and they'd decided that more than likely his "patrols" were Buck related.
"Look, Jackson, I was talking to Mayim and…"
"I owe you an apology." Jackson said, just as she was gearing up to explain how she might have gone and made probably the most vicious saber here angry at him.
"What?" they asked at the same time.
"You talked to Mayim," he said the words slowly, a self-satisfied smirk crinkling the corners of his eyes as he took in the information. "And you actually survived."
She glared at him. "What are you doing on all those solo patrols you jerk?"
He rolled his eyes. "Like I said, I owe you an apology." His gloating smile dropped off. This was the Jackson she remembered from last week. "I'm sorry that I wasn't more supportive about…you know. And, I have been doing some…checking…of my own. That being said, I haven't found anything. Yet."
"Yet," she echoed, giving him her sweetest, most gratitude-filled smile. "Thank you, Jackson."
"You're welcome." His eyes drifted away from hers in embarrassment. She tried not to laugh at him and failed.
When he gave her a deadpan look, she grinned at him and motioned in the direction of the main clearing. "Come on. We'd better go."
"Alright." He looked her up and down once, confused, and they started walking. "So. Mayim."
"Yeah. We kind of hit it off." Peaches told herself she wasn't ashamed that Jackson had been right.
Until she looked down and saw his smug grin and lightly shoved him once to get him to stop.
"You are not going to stop me from enjoying this," he regained his footing easily, grin still in place. If possible, it was even more cocky and annoying. "I told you there was nothing to be freaked out about. I knew they'd love you – wait a minute." He pulled to a stop.
"Jackson, do you love me?" Peaches asked in mock surprise as she stopped too. Mostly to hide her real surprise that he'd said it in the first place.
He ignored her, not surprisingly. "Mayim told you about this meeting. You didn't just get up to come and talk to me."
"No offense, but there are plenty of other times to talk to you that don't involve getting up at an insane hour. I don't like you that much."
"First of all, that's news to me, so, ouch. Second of all, did she invite you here?"
"Apparently I qualify as one of the leaders." Peaches shrugged. This was the part that was still a little too much of a reach for her. And now, standing here in front of Jackson, she honestly didn't know if she'd be able to walk the fifty more steps into the main clearing if he disagreed.
"Oh, I see." He snapped before she could panic too much. "You'll listen to her, but not to me."
"You never told me that I was a leader."
"I told you to stop selling yourself short. And, considering the fact that you don't answer to anybody and don't need to do this, why would you want to be anything?" In true Jackson fashion he looked like he wanted to say more and subsequently shut his mouth.
"If you don't think that I should be here-"
"That is not what I said."
"I know, but…" Peaches shifted a little bit to try and calm the steadily building nerves down. "Just…tell me, okay?"
He stared at her for a second, almost coldly. She imagined that this was what it was like to stare down a carnivore that she didn't know. "You're not a leader, Peaches. And I don't think that you want to be. You shouldn't want to be."
"But you're going to be pack leader someday. I thought you…wanted that."
"I do. But my point is, Julian isn't your second in command." He raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for her to get it, and when she didn't say anything, added, "You're not leading a herd. You two can literally do whatever you want. You're not a leader, and that means you have power and opportunities that we don't."
She hadn't thought about it that way, and she knew that she probably never would have figured it out for herself. Even though she'd basically been doing it her whole life – operating on the fringes and going her own way. And it immediately felt better, more real to her, than the idea of being a "leader." She knew she could do this. But more importantly, someone else wanted her to do this. Wanted her the way she was…
"Can I safely assume your silence means you understand?" Jackson's voice tugged at her to come back.
Peaches hadn't realized she'd been staring off into space until she had to blink a few times and locate Jackson again. His eyebrow was raised once she finally looked down to where he was standing.
In answer, she swept her trunk around his shoulders in a quick hug and then let go and walked a few more steps ahead, looking back to where he was still standing, looking surprised, embarrassed, and trying to hide what was clearly a pleased little smile. After another second, he walked up to join her, and they made their way to the main clearing.
000
This meeting was, more than likely, going to be terrible.
When they arrived, Jackson had gone over to talk to a saber that Peaches didn't recognize, and she'd slouched her way to a mammoth-sized free space in between a couple of herbivores that she definitely hadn't seen before. They barely glanced at her, too busy trailing their eyes over the other animals who'd arrived and the few who had just entered and were finding places.
It was really, really early, and she watched quietly as the other leaders took stock of each other in the shadowy pre-morning light. As they waited in taut, expecting silence, she tried to imagine what it would be like to have to sit down with a natural enemy that she had actually had a negative, shared past with and have to talk and trust and agree.
It didn't seem pleasant. And she was almost grateful that her dad had spared her the gorier emotional details about Half Peak as she glanced around at the looks they were all giving each other. After all, it had really been about Diego figuring out that Soto's revenge plan wasn't a good idea, and it had been a lot easier to understand coming from him.
"Good morning!" an increasingly familiar voice greeted, and Peaches looked in the direction it had come from, only mildly surprised that Diego exited the tree line exactly where she'd expected him to on the far side of the clearing.
Then again, it hadn't been difficult to understand how the mixture of suppressed feelings had led to his standoff with his pack leader, and Dad should have just sucked it up and told her anyway.
"Thank you for coming. We'll be starting shortly, and then we can all get back to sleep for a few more hours. I'm Diego, pack leader for Merle. I'm sure you've all heard about that by now." He nodded at all of them, appearing unruffled and unconscious of some of the more…expressive…glares a few of the leaf eaters were sending his way. He was smiling as he called something to a camel who'd been standing and shooting poisonous glanced on the fringes the entire time. Peaches couldn't hear what was said, but based on the crap-eating grin Diego had picked up as he turned away, she figured it hadn't been anything positive. The camel redoubled his efforts at Diego's back as he went over to join Jackson.
With his entrance, the stanch silence in the clearing fractured a little, and a few whispered conversations cropped up between leaders sitting next to each other. Peaches hadn't noticed it at first, but it looked like most of the groups were a mix. While there were definitely patches of herbivores all sitting together, there wasn't a clear divide.
A few minutes later, Isaiah slipped between a couple of cave lions who had been spending most of their time exchanging distrusting glances between each other and generally ignoring everything else going on around them, and headed over to where Diego and Jackson were deep in a quiet conversation with the other saber.
When Isaiah happened to glance to where she was sitting, Peaches grinned and waved excitedly at him with her trunk.
The resulting angry frown he gave her made her giggle uncontrollably, which only served to make him duck his head as he walked to his chosen place next to Jackson.
A few more animals trickled in after that, including Mayim, who swiftly claimed a spot directly across from Peaches, just as Brian practically bounced into the clearing and positioned himself in the empty center of their circle.
"I see you all found your way out of bed. Congratulations." He cast a sweeping grin around the group as conversations came to an abrupt halt and those who had been sizing each other up turned their attention to him. "I want to thank you all for coming. I know it's early and I know this is all a little strange, but I appreciate each and every one of you for making the journey here to get this figured out."
Brian paused for just long enough to let the praise sink in before continuing. "And, as you've been notified, we've called this meeting to discuss lodging and general rules of conduct that everyone will abide by."
A small wave of murmurs sounded at his words, but Brian just smiled. "Yeah, the good stuff! So let's get to it!"
000
"Absolutely not."
"Get over here!"
Watching Manny chase Bodhi around was even better than Eddie had hoped. He and Crash were standing well out of the way of the commotion, watching silently, eagerly, as Bodhi dodged Manny's wide swipes and threats.
They'd stopped about fifteen minutes ago for a rest.
"I don't need to ride. I'm fine." Bodhi darted into some trees and came back out in a different spot moments later.
"You're not fine, and you're riding whether you like it or not." And Manny had brought up the fact that Bodhi should probably take it easy, followed by another invitation for a ride.
"You don't get to decide that. And you can't make me." And now they were edging toward an all-out brawl. And given how much Bodhi was swaying on his feet after being on the defensive, it wasn't going to be much of a fight.
So far, Manny's "dad voice" – the one that sounded like echoing thunder – also seemed to be having an effect on him, strangely enough. The rest of them had learned by now that the longer they ignored it and the louder it got, the closer he was to losing the argument. But Bodhi actually seemed to be buying it. Then something weird happened and suddenly Manny's voice got really quiet. Like, scary quiet. "I can and I will."
Bodhi flinched.
Eddie had never heard him use that tone before, but it seemed to fit him in an obvious sort of way. And when he glanced over at Crash, he knew they were both thinking the same thing.
"Ellie!" Bodhi leaned around Manny to give her a pleading look.
"Leave me out of this." Their sister held up her trunk from her own spot well out of the way. She looked sorry. Which meant that she wasn't actually sorry and was just glad she didn't have to do any of this herself. Slacker.
Sid was crouching behind her back leg, looking worried and more than a little scared.
Bodhi shot her a downright furious glare before focusing his attention back on Manny who was poised on the defensive, waiting for his next move.
"I'm not tired."
"You're hurt."
"I'm fine."
"You're in pain."
"So?"
As if his tone shift hadn't been weird enough, now Manny's expression darkened until he actually looked scary. Like, for real scary. Eddie had never been afraid of mammoths until that moment. And if it had been just him and Crash, he would have been pumping his paw in the air. Because now they were getting somewhere.
000
"And I'm saying that you need to be more careful which packs you allow to join!" a camel was practically screaming at the rest of the group.
"I…actually agree with him." a dire wolf nodded.
"Don't patronize me." The camel fixed him with a withering glare. Apparently, his herd was almost as big as Merle's, and that had been one of his other sticking points – too many carnivores in comparison to the rest of them. How else were they supposed to fight them off when this all inevitably turned out to be a trap?
"The pack has already agreed to talk to and supervise the incoming carnivores." Brian's voice had gone through multiple stages of grief in the last half an hour as the various leaders spent most of the time attempting to verbally rip each other apart and argue with every single thing that was said.
"Good for them." One of the cave lions drawled in answer, and a deer that had spoken all of three words so far, which was more than enough for Peaches to know that she hated him, bared his teeth, presumably because he'd been about to say the same thing.
"So what? They're not in any danger," a mammoth scoffed. One that Peaches had seen around a few times and who had been here for a while. And she doubted that he'd even be at this meeting if his small herd had been having any problems. If they had, Brian would have heard about it. Which meant that, by extension, everyone within twenty miles would have also heard about it.
"We don't have to be in danger to do our jobs." Jackson intoned. He'd been staring off into space for most of the time, somehow looking even more disinterested than Mayim.
Peaches glanced over at her as she turned her head to watch the other mammoth's reaction. Mayim was occasionally glancing her way from the other side of the rough circle they'd made, which seemed to be her version of encouraging smiles.
Their brief eye contact hadn't conveyed her emotions, which wasn't surprising. But it did make Peaches feel just a little bit better.
"Travis, the pack is peaceful. You've seen it yourself." Brian had the patience of her mother. But when he turned to look the complaining mammoth in the eyes, there was no mistaking the annoyed glint in his own.
"We're not interested in starting a massive, self-destructive fight if that's what you're asking." Diego also looked annoyed. But he'd had that expression on his face since shortly after the meeting started. Right when the arguing began.
"Right now you're not." Travis snapped at him.
"And I'll be sure to let you know if that changes."
Travis was a bully. Plain and simple. And as he attempted, unsuccessfully, to stare Diego down, Peaches felt another surge of pride.
Whether he liked it or not, Diego was in his element here. He'd been effortlessly backing Brian up the whole time, making sure that the conversation eventually got back on topic when it became bogged down in unhelpful side conversations, and was generally glaring down or arguing circles around the other leaders when they asked purposefully inflammatory questions.
She knew he'd hate her for it, but she couldn't help but think it all the same. And even though this meeting was definitely turning out even worse than her anxious attempts at imagining it last night, she was glad she'd come. And grateful to Mayim for inviting her.
When she looked over to her spot, Mayim's gaze swiftly found hers, and the two girls nodded slightly at each other. Another tiny bit of reassurance.
"What will make you feel more comfortable with this situation?" Brian was asking, eyes sweeping around the rest of the leaders.
There was some general muttering, but other than a blunt comment by one of the cave lions about favoring the herbivores' preferences too much, nobody was jumping forward with an answer.
"I know this isn't ideal." Isaiah's voice sounded strange, probably because he hadn't said a word yet. And everyone's eyes turned to him as he stared back fiercely, "But I didn't come all the way over here to listen to complaints from animals who chose to come here. My pack does hunt normally, and I vouch for Merle's pack. And Diego's leadership at the present time. But since that probably doesn't mean anything to most of you, let's just get on with it."
"This is a safe area, then." An emu summarized. Her family had been snowed out of their usual territory, and they were desperately trying to find a solution so they could return home.
"Correct." Brian gave her a smile. "We haven't had issues in a long time, and the ones we did have before came from an outside source. But Gutt hasn't been here in a long time, and I doubt that he would venture back now with all the ice on the lakes."
The name hit her hard. And Peaches glanced swiftly at Mayim. It took the other girl a second to notice, and by the time Mayim was staring back at her, confused, the conversation was moving on.
"And if he does show back up, I doubt he'll make it out of here alive this time," someone else was saying.
Mayim was still staring at her when Peaches met her eyes again. Peaches shook her head slightly.
"Gutt won't be back." Brian's voice had an edge that had been conspicuously missing this far.
"And we're ready to deal with him anyway." Diego was speaking directly to him as he said it, and the mammoth nodded once at him.
"And now this topic has circled in on itself and is no longer relevant to the larger conversation." Isaiah looked bored. "We've already decided that there is a problem. There is something going on here, and if there's something to be done, that's what we need to be talking about."
"But I don't think that there's anything more to say here today." The annoying mammoth, Travis, had an equally bored look on his face.
Isaiah didn't even bother to glance at him. "Agreed. We've figured out lodging. Now it's time to follow through and get along."
"Thank you for your time. We'll schedule another meeting in a few weeks to get things started." Brian had pretty much dropped his forceful perkiness. And with Isaiah's loaded, cocky statement drawing angry muttering from just about everyone, the group dispersed.
Isaiah did an excellent job of pretending like he couldn't hear them as they walked away, instead making his way to where Brian was standing.
"Let us know if you have questions." Diego called to the retreating animals. No one acknowledged him, and he looked more amused than anything by that.
The saber Peaches didn't recognize said something to him then, and the two of them headed off together a couple of seconds later, talking with their heads together.
She glanced over to Mayim, who was also in what appeared to be a terse conversation with that Travis guy.
So Peaches went to join Jackson.
"You okay?" He was frowning at her. She had no doubt that he could see that something had changed.
It had. But she had no idea what. What was she even supposed to do with this information? And why did everyone here, the locals at least, know automatically who Gutt was? She had no idea what he knew or even how to begin to ask. "I'm fine. So…um…that was really intense. And we got off topic a lot."
"I'd love to tell you that this wasn't a normal meeting, but I'd be lying."
"Do you really think they're going to find a solution to this?"
"I think it's a longshot." He looked slightly amused by this. "And I think in light of today, your original point is still valid."
"That wasn't what I meant…"
"I know." He still looked amused, and she realized that he was teasing. Which felt really good. She'd missed it. She'd missed him. And now that they were good again, she couldn't help but be more optimistic.
"Hey Jackson?" he turned to look at her. "Thanks."
A grin. And then Mayim was joining them and it dropped into an impatient smirk. "Good morning."
"We'll see." She was wearing her usual frown, but it seemed extra grumpy. And she certainly didn't look happy with Jackson.
"Well, either way, I hope you're happy now that you've dragged Peaches into this." Jackson jerked his head toward her once before Peaches could even think to respond. "She didn't need to be at this meeting. And now you've stressed her out unnecessarily. She doesn't need to be a leader, she's fine the way she is."
"Peaches is here because you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing." Mayim cocked one eyebrow at him and Jackson flinched.
"Oh, yeah, and I talked to her about all of that stuff too." Peaches added in a rush as she watched Jackson's growing look of realization mixed with a little bit of betrayal. She attempted a smile when his head jerked up to look at her.
"Don't tell Mayim stuff," Jackson whined. "Especially not stuff like this!"
"She should have had a tracker with her from the beginning. And you should have known enough to supply her with one." Mayim's usual look of disdain looked a lot more severe now that she was able to take him to task directly.
"What did you want me to do Mayim? Go against both of my pack leaders?"
"I want you to do your job. Protecting your pack is top priority. I don't care what my dad thinks, and I certainly don't care about Merle's opinion."
"Of course you don't. You're a pack leader, you don't answer to anyone. How would you feel if Sidney did something like this?"
"I would be proud of her for doing what's right."
"Look, I'm not in the mood for the 'pack leader's orders versus conscience' debate right now, okay?"
"You never are. And that's your problem." Mayim rolled her eyes at him and Jackson rolled his back at her in response.
"I don't know which of you is worse," Isaiah snarled as he walked past.
"Bye best friend!" Peaches waved at his retreating back. His utter lack of response reeked of embarrassment. But he'd also brought up a good point. "Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this here?"
"I'm keeping tabs on everyone." Mayim answered easily, like it was no big deal, and aside from her general awe, Peaches believed her.
"Just let me know what else you need me to do." Jackson added impatiently, ducking his head as Brian passed by them.
"That went well." Mayim said by way of greeting.
"They'll get used to each other." Brian's genuine smile had returned. "And by the end of this, who knows! Maybe we'll all be friends!"
"You say that every time." Mayim said.
"And it's worked every time. So far." He hesitated a little on the last words. But then rallied and waved brightly at Peaches. "I'm glad you came this morning. We need all the help we can get, so come to as many meetings as you'd like okay? You're always welcome."
"Thanks." Peaches gave him her most noncommittal smile, and he continued happily, and obliviously, on his way, taking the last of the meeting goers with him.
"As I was saying, you failed to do the basic job of protecting your pack…" Mayim launched back into complaining.
Peaches aimed an apologetic smile down at Jackson as he glared between the two of them. "Would it help if I said that I'm sorry, you're the best, and I appreciate the fact that you're still on my side?"
He did not look appeased.
000
So, one long, drawn-out argument later, and Bodhi was riding. He'd agreed to "try it" after Manny had said something about helping each other being part of living in a herd. Something obvious that seemed like an ever-present, unspoken fact of their lives.
And Bodhi had gotten this really weird look on his face. And then he'd said okay. No arguments, no pouting. It was a very un-Bodhi reaction.
Crash and Eddie eyed each other when the argumentative dust had settled. Because that look meant that Bodhi knew something. Which was even more interesting. Because Crash and Eddie also knew something. So, while it was probably too soon to dive straight into the mud pool, this was a start.
000
"You know Gutt." Mayim had undoubtedly been waiting until they were far enough away from everyone else to bring it up.
She'd been expecting it to come up once it was just the two of them, but Peaches still jumped.
"And you know what he's like."
"How do you know him?"
"Mom was part of his crew for a while." Mayim had held it together better than Peaches at the meeting, but now she looked unrestrictedly horrified. "She left when she met Dad. It was a whole thing around here. He hasn't been back since."
"Shira was a pirate." Peaches blinked, half aware that she was muttering to herself more than responding. And when she glanced at her, Mayim looked genuinely scared.
"What did he do?"
Peaches explained what had happened, both the barebones details that Dad had told her about the ship and the island, and in more detail about being held hostage awaiting their return and the fight that ensued.
"So, as far as you know, Gutt didn't know who you guys were?" Mayim asked carefully when she'd finished.
"Not as far as I know." Peaches shook her head. She didn't tend to think much about Gutt. It had been scary, sure, and infuriating. But she'd been more concerned about whether she was ever going to see her father again. Whether Louis would ever forgive her. How they were going to make it to solid ground now that the land bridge had crumbled.
"So he was up to his usual nonsense." But Mayim was unhappy and probably had way more to say, and she wasn't making an effort to hide it. Which, in all honesty, was quite flattering.
Peaches nudged Mayim's shoulder with her trunk. "I swung around on a vine at one point and hit him in the face so hard he went flying backwards.
Her reward was a satisfied little smirk.
"Is it okay with you if I'm not officially participating as one of the 'leaders'? Like, am I allowed to do that?" Peaches asked about the other topic the meeting had left unsettled between of them.
"You're allowed to do whatever you want."
"It's just that I don't feel like a leader. At all. And to be honest, I don't think I need the label. Or that it would be helpful in this situation. I want to be able to do what I need to do when I need to do it."
Mayim nodded once. "That is wise."
Relieved that the other girl wasn't offended at the difference of opinion, Peaches let her shoulders relax and the silence stretch. There was something comfortable about the uncomfortableness of it.
"Thanks for inviting me, though." Peaches finally said a few minutes later as they neared their clearing. She'd left too early for even Julian to want to wake up to wish her good luck – not that he hadn't offered – and now she was ready to have some breakfast and fill him in on everything.
Mayim, apparently, had other duties to attend to for the day, which served to make Peaches feel good that the other girl had opted to walk her back before running off to do them. "Of course. I would still highly encourage you to state your opinion though."
"Really? You mean like I did today?" Her own silence hadn't even occurred to her until the meeting was over and Jackson and Mayim were saying goodbye to each other by way of complaining and making fun of all the ridiculous, unnecessary comments.
"Yes." Mayim answered, ignoring her sarcasm. "Because you actually want to help. And you're clearly looking at this from the right angle."
"I don't know…" When Mayim jerked her head up to look at her, Peaches sighed. "Sorry, I'm just not used to people expecting me to get it right. The truth is…I don't know that I actually know how."
"Nobody does. Look at my Dad."
"He's really in his element right now. Not that I would ever tell him that."
Mayim's laugh was short, and it died half a second after it started. Peaches liked it a lot.
"I just want to be useful. For once." Peaches huffed another sigh.
"You don't have to apologize for wanting to help or not knowing what that will look like yet." Mayim sounded hesitant though. And she was silent for a few contemplative paces as they crossed into the clearing, "Do you feel like your family tends to try and keep you out of things?"
"That's an understatement."
"You wouldn't want to run everywhere doing everything if your sibling was the one telling you to, though." Cooper had joined Julian at some point, and the two of them were lying facing each other.
Mayim immediately headed over to her brother. "Peaches has met Gutt."
"What?" He jumped to his feet, looking to Peaches who was trailing her. "Do Mom and Dad know about this?"
"I didn't really get a chance to talk to them about it." She shrugged. Mayim was intense by nature, which made Cooper's rigid, almost feral stance and wide eyes all the more concerning. "And Gutt didn't say anything about Diego, at least not while he was holding us hostage, at least as far as I know. And who knows if he said anything to Dad and he chose not to tell us that part."
"Wait, did you say he was holding you hostage? What the…"
"Does this have anything to do with Shira saying she used to be a pirate and stuff?" Julian, easily the least concerned of the four of them, scratched his head in thought from where he was still lounging in the spot he'd fallen asleep in.
"You knew?" Peaches turned to him.
"Uhhhhhhh." After looking between all of their serious expressions, Julian shrugged with an apologetic smile. "She mentioned it the day that we tricked Diego into talking to you and then everything went crazy. Soooo…it's Merle's fault for getting hurt and us getting off topic?"
"Seconded." Cooper said before looking between the two of them. "I don't think Gutt knew who they were. If he had, he would have brought them here to rub it in Dad's face. You got lucky."
"Very lucky." Mayim agreed.
"Yeah, maybe wait to say anything until Dad's no longer leading the pack. He's not going to take this well." Cooper looked between the two of them. "Mom isn't going to either. Actually, maybe just never tell them. I feel like that's a better plan."
Next to him, Mayim rolled her eyes.
"You want her to go tell Dad right now? You wanna walk her over there and watch him have an anxious meltdown?"
Mayim actually cringed at that.
"Are you okay?" Cooper turned back to her. He looked worried and scared and sick, and Peaches had been seconds away from asking for details about Shira's life before he did and immediately thought better of it.
She nodded instead. "Yeah, we're fine. And thanks for the heads up. If Diego asks, I'll just remind him that I also tried to tell him about Buck, and he didn't want to listen to that, so I just figured he wouldn't care about the other weird stuff we've gone through."
"Genius and evil. I'm pissed you're already married." Cooper's grin returned quickly, and Peaches giggled.
"Bruh." Julian rolled his eyes.
"I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Julian. But I think I've found somebody else." Cooper's grin was absolutely conniving before he suddenly turned to his sister. "Oh, also, that one butt-faced deer wants to talk to you."
"Which is what you should have said first," Mayim growled and immediately turned and stalked toward the trees, "I'll see you at home. Stay out of trouble."
"You're not even my pack leader!" Julian called after her to the tune of an even deeper growl and Cooper's overjoyed laughter.
000
Buck slumped against the boulder, his legs finally giving out. Dizzy. So Dizzy.
His knife was out of reach, he couldn't breathe, and the loud sound of his pounding heartbeat was making it very hard to focus. And to hear for that matter.
"And you come into our territory; you follow us here! And, better yet you…"
He'd spent the last few days tracking the three of them down, a grueling journey that brought him here, to the lush, forested middle grounds. He hadn't been this way in years, hadn't bothered to come after… Well, he just didn't spend much time in this area.
But when he'd seen that ice, how it had caved through the upper surface, through solid rock on the upper surface, he'd known this was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Not to mention the weak, sparkly sunlight refracting down the swiftly melting chunk.
He kept his routes to the surface small and out of the way. Much too small and high up for most, if any, dinosaurs other than Gavin and his children to make it through. And when he saw that, the easy path up the ice and out through the cracked ground, his heart had stuttered painfully.
"You followed me to the surface." His teeth were gritted too tightly, but he couldn't make himself stop. He didn't even bother to wriggle around as the claws around his torso pressed tighter, pushing him further against the rock's surface. "You couldn't find me, so you tried to kill a saber instead and ran away when you couldn't finish the job."
"We didn't attack a saber." Gavin was in his face, bug eyes shot through with anger and presumably hunger. The three of them had been on the hunt when he'd arrived, and Buck had gotten involved, again. Mostly for the sport of it. But he'd still been looking for them, specifically. To confirm.
"Well if it wasn't you, then who bloody was it!" Buck snarled back.
"How would I know? There are no friends down here."
"Yeah, no one to help you now." His daughter was grinning sharply behind him, just on the edges of where Buck's vision was starting to go fuzzy.
"You're telling me," he muttered sarcastically, and his chest was pressed tighter in answer, the ribs straining against the pressure. He should have known not to interfere immediately. Should have known. He gasped, "And you haven't been to the western boundaries recently, I assume."
"We go where we want." Gavin was madder than Buck had ever seen him. Rather than the cool, calculating anger of Rudy and their not-quite-to-the-death rematches upon rematches, the dino birds were out for blood.
And Buck didn't blame them.
"That isn't a 'no.'" But he believed them. They hadn't followed him, hadn't attacked the pack leader in vengeance. Because if they had, Gavin wouldn't have been able to keep himself from gloating about it. Which meant that there was an actual dino on the loose in the surface world. And the blissful ignorance of its inhabitants was about to crack down the middle. "You may want to have a look. It isn't good over there."
"That's what you came here for? To accuse us and then talk about the western boundaries?"
"Idiot," a voice said in the background. "Come on, Dad, let's eat him!"
"And then we should probably go check the western boundaries." His son added, and shrugged his shoulders as all three of them turned to look at him. "Free advice isn't necessarily bad advice."
And it was only because Buck had lived here for so long that his body knew what to do before he told it to. In their moment of distraction, he was shoving hard enough against Gavin's clawed talons to slip to the ground. He was into the bushes in a matter of seconds.
The enraged roar behind him and scuffling of leaves as they started searching for him pushed him further than he would have been motivated to go on his own. His legs were wobbly and his chest felt like the inside had been lit on fire and the spark was eating its way out.
Buck only stopped when there was a shout through the trees, probably about near the area where their confrontation had taken place. They'd retreated. Then Gavin was calling, "When you want this…thing…back, we'll be ready, weasel."
His knife.
He wouldn't have had time to pick it up and still get away even if he'd remembered to. And he'd been so focused on getting out of there – getting back to the surface to warn everyone – that it hadn't even occurred to him. In that moment, he'd known the information was too valuable to allow himself to die there, and he'd had to get away.
Buck couldn't go back for it now, would have liked to believe he wouldn't have been stupid enough to even if they hadn't found it and claimed it as their own. And he forced himself not to think any further on it, the empty, gnawing feeling, like when he'd first lost his eye, how it was all that was left, and now it was gone…
No. Not now. He turned and darted through the underbrush, ignoring how it felt like he was forgetting something, missing something. He'd fight them for it later. For now, he had to get back to the surface.
Parks and Rec reference if you noticed it!