The sun's rays blazing through the darkened, tainted windows of the van stirred Randal from sleep. As expected, everything hurt, although at first he could hardly remember why. It took time for his mind to catch up to his aching body and when it did it brought his blood to a boil. He had been thrust out of the monster world by Wazowski, Sullivan, and that terror of a child! He had been beaten and forced to run into hiding to lick his wounds. And he—!
His eyes flew open and he cringed in the mess of blankets that made up the bedding of the otherwise empty back of the vehicle. Tani—he found Tani! But he froze with a moment's doubt… He had seen her, didn't he? That is, if he hadn't actually dreamed it all: He still didn't know. The harsh course of time would never make him forget that voice or face, but it had filled him with a certainty that he would never hear or see any sign of her again. And if, even for a second, he placed some ill-conceived hope on an illusion… He couldn't. He had hardened his heart so much that if any part of it were to crack it would shatter him completely.
But as he lifted a hand to his pounding skull and rose up, his tail brushed against the wad of fabric beside him to evoke a quiet murmur from the pile and instantly he felt a mixed wave of bittersweet joy, relief, and uncertainty. Joy, of course, because he really did have Tani back after all this time of thinking she was as good as dead; relief, because it wasn't just an illusion—she was really there, lying at his side; and uncertainty, because he had no idea what it all meant or where either of them would go from here.
Gently, he brushed the back of his hand against the side of her face, a sad smile tugging at his mouth. Look at us, he said in his mind, we've both grown-up… The decade apart had taken its toll on both of them, from the duller look to their scales to the mature ting to their voices replacing the zealousness of youth. For him, the years had meant pouring all that he was into his work: And for her…? He had no idea. He knew that there were banished monsters who managed to get by in the human world—others back home would use the legends that followed after them to their advantage in scares—but it still seemed like a miracle to him that Tani was alright, and an even bigger miracle that he stumbled upon her.
Eventually, the subconscious caresses dragged the female reptile out of sleep. Her eyes fluttering open, she raised her gaze from the blankets to Randall. Similar to him, it took a second for her to gather her wits, but a moment after she shoved herself up to embrace him by the waist. Unlike the night before, there was no hesitation as he returned the affection. Beyond immediate family, physical contact had become an overall foreign entity to him, but the feel of her touch carved through the decade-long barriers he had put around himself.
"It wasn't a dream," she murmured against him with teary eyes, "It's really you…"
"Yeah, it's me…" he choked, his lower arms hugging her close. The events of the night before seemed to repeat. This time, however, the initial shock had ebbed enough to allow him to think clearly. He continued to hold her, but inevitably pulled her back to look her in the eyes with a careful gaze, "But what about you?! Ten years, Tani—you've been here for nearly ten years! What are you doing here? Didn't you ever try coming back to our world?" Gripping her by the shoulders, he had to restrain his emotions to keep his fingers from digging into her flesh. "Tani… what happened to you?"
Scaled brows furrowing, she stared back at him for the longest while, then—sitting up with her legs beneath her—she lifted a hand to his face. He winced. Her tender examination of his wounds felt like a hammer driving into his skull. Her faint, sympathetic grin countered the pained, slight draw of his mouth. "Looks like you've got your own story to share," she lightly quipped, fingers lowering to graze his cheek in doting affection. One of his upper hands rose to overlap her own, but the moment lasted all too briefly. She shuffled away from him to sort through the mess of the decrepit van, "Let's just see if we can get you patched up first."
Randall glanced around the van's interior as he waited. He could take it in better than previously with the late-morning light filtering through the windows. Save for two in the very front of the vehicle, the rest of the seats had been removed—the space instead filled by the mattress and blanket pile. The mess aside, they added cushion to the otherwise hard, worn floor. There were a few shirts; wrinkled, but neatly folded in the passenger's seat, most of them similar to the large tank that Tani wore in that none of them were new and all of them would've made a better tent for her than wardrobe. There were also plastic bags and cardboard boxes loaded with all kinds of miscellaneous things: Yellowed books with worn covers and lose bindings, old newspapers and magazines, plastic bottles filled with swamp water, chipped plates and plastic dinnerware, odd trinkets from fishing lures to game pieces, sealed containers of who knew what else—all things she had likely found while rummaging through the dump. Whatever she had been doing for all this time, she had managed to create a decent, 'do-it-yourself' bunker for her to survive in.
Contrarily to all of the junk that surrounded them, the mixed-matched first aid kit she plucked out from the mess looked to be in pretty decent condition: There was no fear of getting an infection from a use bandage. With a water bottle in one hand, she took a mason jar containing an olive-colored salve in the other and sniffed at it. He couldn't tell what the concoction was, but he imagined it to be something of her own creation rather than a certified medicine. That… was actually probably for the best. Even if humans weren't actually toxic to them, that didn't mean that their biologies were similarly enough for their remedies to work: If anything, given the diverse biology of monsters and how expansive the biology and medical fields were in their world as a result, it likely wouldn't have. He could trust her experimental attempt a lot more than whatever was the 'best' a human medic could offer.
With everything gathered, she returned to his side and began to clean his wounds. He grit his teeth together from the fierce sting that dug through his flesh. When she next applied the salve, it felt like liquid fire before it caught the air and turned into a soothing, icy chill. His head, shoulders, and upper back had taken the brunt of trauma when he had been attacked. There were a few cuts from where the edges of the shovel had raked him. Mostly though, he was just beaten and battered: He hopped that was the case, anyway. He could endure a lot, but no amount of tolerance to pain could cross out the possibility of a concussion or some other internal damage. Maybe that was the case, given how it was one of the last things on his mind. Silence drew on for a long while until he addressed her a second time, "Tani?"
She didn't answer him, avoiding his gaze and focusing her energy into the task at hand.
"Tani," he said one more time, taking her wrist in a firm grasp. She seemed caught off-guard by the action, like she was startled out of a mild trance. A part of him wondered if her time here in the human world dramatically affected her ability to communicate with others. He hoped not, or that it wasn't permanent. Her jarring confidence and free-spirited nature was a part of who she was: He didn't want to think that that part of her might be lost. Which begged the question all the more, "What happened to you?"
Her expression turned crestfallen, her eyes clouding over with the haze of a distant memory. The seconds passed on languidly until she took a breath, tugged her wrist free, and got back to her task. Then, in a soft, strained voice, she answered, "I did go back to our world, you know. Just once."
Randall felt his throat tighten at the news. In that case, then why did she let everyone think she was missing? Why didn't she come back to Monstropolis or her hometown? Why didn't she let anyone know that she was alright? What about him? Well, maybe at the time she was still furious with him, but what about her family? Her other friends? What about all of the things she talked about for the future: She had wanted to be a scarer as much as he did!
Before he could ask any of that though, she continued, "It wasn't for very long." Her shoulders lifted into a faint shrug as she shook her head, "It took me longer to find a working door to get back than it did before I found myself here with the humans again. When I went back though, I didn't end up anywhere near Monstropolis: I didn't recognize the company and I never even got out of the scare factory."
The more Tani explained, the more baffled he was by her story. She continued to spread the salve on his wounds. He continued to listen.
"There was this one kid that always left their bedroom window open at night. Thanks to that, I heard the screams and was able to sneak in without a problem when his scarer showed up the next night. I didn't think about where I'd end up: I just figured I'd find someone to help me once I was back in the monster world. So I charged through the door and ended up finding myself standing on a scare floor right in the middle of their afternoon shift.
"It didn't take long before someone noticed that I didn't belong there. Not much to say about that except that they called security: They dragged me off to quarantine, interrogated me, and checked to make sure I wasn't some banished escapee—standard procedure. During the whole mess, their boss showed up and started asking me questions. I didn't think anything about it."
She paused with a heavy sigh. It seemed hard for her to continue, and that she was contemplating whether or not to at all. Once her gaze met his again, however, it was apparent that something in her gave: Not from trust or from desperation, but from a sad, grim acceptance of whatever her situation had become.
"Randall, our entire world thinks that human children are toxic. Scarers and researchers face them every day wondering, in the back of their minds, what'll happen to them if they mess up and get contaminated. But all there's never been anything to worry about in the first place! They're no more toxic than we are…"
He stared long and hard at her. Is that what she had been trying to avoid talking about? He knew about that already. Soon though, he remembered that he was a rare exception: Of course she wouldn't expect him to believe her. He forced a smile, offering the only reassurance he knew to give: He said, "I know."
Her eyes widened and for a brief moment the world appeared still. It was clear that that revelation had a deeper effect on her than what she thought her news would on him. Eventually Tani blinked, lowering her gaze as she shook her head a second time. Her breathing became tight and heavy, like some pressure within her had finally been cut. Bearing that information 'alone' must've felt like the world weighed against her.
She looked half brought to tears as she replied, "You're one of the few who do then. The boss of that scaring company? He knew about it all along too, but he didn't think it was something to share." She clasped the mason jar with both hands as she set it in her lap, "I let him know good and well that I wasn't going to keep quiet about it and… Well, let's just say it didn't make him happy. He took it on himself to banish me through another door without a second thought, and he let me know before that that there would be few people who would listen to me and more people like him if I ever went back."
Her story shook him, a deeply gnarled anger swelling up in his chest the more he thought over it. On one hand, it didn't surprise him: That kind of news would shake the bedrock of the industry, and maybe even that of the entire monster world. He had kept quiet about it himself because it was so unbelievable and he wasn't willing to gamble away his career—and possibly his freedom as a sane citizen—over it. However, it wasn't like Tani to keep quiet about anything. He could only imagine what kind of threats were made if she continued to try and speak out.
When Waternoose had approached him to work on the scream extractor, he thought he had been sharing a secret regarding the lie about human children being toxic as well. Randall had to play along as if he didn't know anything beforehand. Now he wondered, Did they all know? All the heads of the scaring industry and the CDA? If so, they had the entire monster world blind to a massive conspiracy and held the threat of banishment over the heads of innocent people if they ever find some clue of it! They controlled monsters who gave it their all working for them with fear and lies!
It was an outrage in itself, but the added fact that Tani had been made a victim of it made the matter personal. "Did you fight back?" he asked. She had too have, but he wanted to hear it. He wanted to see that there was still a piece of her spunky nature left after everything she'd been through—that for all the damage they caused, they hadn't stripped that part of her away.
It came as a relief when, finally, a spark ignited in her eyes. She smirked in answer, "Like a wild saberhound."
Randall couldn't help himself. He pulled Tani against him for the third time since the previous night. A thousand horrible scenarios had gone through his head whenever he had thought about what might've happened to her. Before they learned the truth, he used to think she could've been overtaken by contaminants. Her kid's parents or some other human could've killed her, or they could've captured her and treated her like a test subject. She could've starved in hiding. The more time had worn on, the more possibilities had filled his head until he had accepted that, whatever the case, he was never going to see her again. He had never been more relieved to be wrong; nevertheless, the knowledge that all of this was the fault of their own kind—among the same sort in their field at that—infuriated him.
Tani was content to stay where she was in his arms, but she also pressed him for his story next. He didn't hesitate to tell her, from the moment she vanished behind the malfunctioned door to his rivalry with Sullivan at Monsters Inc. for the all-time scare record and the place as the company's top scarer. He answered every question she asked, giving her as much information as he could to the things she had missed. The only thing he didn't tell her, keeping one secret to himself, was the plot that had led to him ending up in the human world with her.