Caged Honor
Clatterclatterclatter!
Fergus's head shot up in startled reflex from where it lay on the ground. His bleary eyes fell upon the three trays of "breakfast" on the floor of the cell, dropped in from a thin slot. His vision then raised up to the knight who had done the clattering. The anonymous soldier's eyes rolled in disgust behind the slit in his helmet as he turned to leave, clanking down the hallway and around an unseen corner.
Groans emerged from the two other bodies laying around the long, shallow cell, as Felicia and Farkle pushed themselves up off of the hard granite floor where they'd slept with varying degrees of soundness.
Even in an ideal universe - one in which they were not in the Duloc Knight Department's custody - the siblings hadn't given much thought to how much uninterrupted, concentrated time with one another Leaving together would entail. And now, behind bars, that time was mandatory and inescapable, in a single, cramped space, no less. They hadn't slept in the same room in nearly a decade, and even then, they had mattresses, pillows, and the comforts of home.
What little pride and excitement the teens initially felt at being arrested and shaking things up in a stuffy place like Duloc, quickly evaporated as the monotony of incarceration set in.
The knights making their rounds of the prison weren't fans of chatter amongst inmates, and were keen to curb any remote signs of it, as the ogres had quickly learned. Not wanting to give the knights the satisfaction of yet another thing to police, the three kept to themselves. This was relatively easy, as none of them had been particularly interested in interacting with their additional two cellmates who'd helped land them there in the first place.
The siblings' eyelines did their best to avoid the others', and if they happened to miscalculate and cross glances, they were quick to avert.
Fergus finally rose to his feet, not wanting to prematurely tire of his main daily activity of sitting. His head raised to the iron-grated window high on the cell's wall. It was just past sunrise, as it had been the past three mornings they'd been rudely awoken, courtesy of Duloc's finest. Grasping the bottom button of his well-worn overcoat, he etched a third hashmark onto the filthy brick wall.
As he blew away the dust of his tally, he caught a low but unmistakable scoff over his shoulder. Fergus closed his eyes as his mouth set in a firm line, not turning his head toward the sound's contemptuous source. "What?" His low utterance contained no upward inflection, no hint of intrigue.
"Dramatic much, Gus?" Farkle's blasé jab was nearly drowned out as his urine stream hit the chamber pot he stood over in the corner of the cell.
Fergus didn't acknowledge his brother's lame attempt at derision. He turned away from Farkle's direction and reclaimed his sleeping spot on the hard floor. He closed his eyes as his back touched down, just as he remembered the food left for them. He considered undoing his expertly executed unaffected gesture in order to claim his portion, but decided to commit. He laced his fingers atop his chest and sighed, hoping to perhaps fall back to sleep to eat up another couple hours instead.
"It's a month. We're not gonna go insane. Chill." Felicia inserted her opinion where it was neither requested nor appreciated as she waited for the commode.
"That's rich, coming from you." Fergus kept his eyes closed as he spoke. He knew where he was treading, he just didn't care enough to resist.
In a blink, Felicia stomped her way over to Fergus. "And what does that–" She suddenly stopped herself from what was sure to be a scathing evisceration. "Forget it. You're not worth it." Fergus opened his eyes as she shot him a contemptuous glance over her shoulder, just as the knight had done earlier. He quickly glanced aside at the wall, giving neither sibling the satisfaction of any more attention.
The possibility of breaking out was a fantasy. Upon being booked, the three were thoroughly patted down and separated from any possible tool to aid them - hair pins, needles, belts, and most regrettably, Fergus's knife. Felicia and Farkle had luckily left theirs in their bags. "Luckily," assuming their bags would still be up in that tree when they got out. In a month.
Bladders emptied and stomachs filled, the siblings settled back into their sedentary ennui, each independently focused on the distant sound of a water drip from somewhere deep in the facility. As the hypnotic rhythm threatened to lull them into a premature sleep, they were roughly jerked back to the present by a sword dragged across the cell's bars.
"Congratulations, beasts." The knight tossed a folded newspaper into the cell, landing in Farkle's breakfast dish and sending drips flying. "Your idiotic little escapade made the news! Assuming you can read." The knight sheathed his sword and clinked self-importantly away.
Farkle pulled the tin along the floor toward him, lifting the folded paper from its sticky resting place. He shook it, causing even more flecks of gruel to find their way to his siblings, much to their ire. He wiped away a particularly large smudge of watery gravy over the page's top text.
"Hey!" Farkle shouted in the direction the officer had strode down, "This is yesterday's—" A backhand to the gut cut his gripe short, and the paper flew out of his fingers.
Felicia opened the trifold and stared into their own black-and-white faces. "Guys…" she looked up at her brothers, eyes wide.
"Wait, isn't this the paper we get at–" Farkle attempted to take it back.
"No no no no no–" Fergus muttered as he beat Farkle to snatch it from Felicia, unfolding the paper fully and frantically consuming the accompanying article. The other two crowded over either of his shoulders. They may have been speaking, but he couldn't hear it over the deafening white noise his brain was filled with. If they'd made it into the paper, then surely their parents would know–
"Intent… unclear…" Fergus mumbled, barely audible, "Vandalism… Assorted Mischief…" He scanned the text up and down as his adrenaline crested, ensuring he hadn't missed anything.
But he hadn't.
He looked aside erratically at either sibling, as did they to him, still processing being able to let go of the panic that gripped all of them just moments prior. The map was nowhere to be mentioned.
The three had failed at their objective so spectacularly, it wasn't clear why exactly they had broken into the museum. They'd gotten embarrassingly ensnared before the map was even implicated. The knights, and therefore whoever wrote this article, had to have assumed it was pure pointless hooliganism… ogre savagery, as Duloc's collective voice might refer to it.
For this single, highly specific instance, perhaps there was a bright side to failure. And really, had it all gone to plan, the paper would have instead reported on three delinquent ogres breaking and entering the Duloc Museum, with only one item unaccounted for: a map to the Dragon's Keep. The paper that their parents read every morning. Not exactly something they'd remotely considered when planning their Leaving itinerary.
For that short, panic-fueled moment, the captive siblings had forgotten they were incredibly mad at each other.
As they sat in their separate corners of the cell, their heart rates slowing, they began remembering again. Their smiles faded as the moment passed.
"So… they know." Fergus finally uttered.
"That we're in jail," Felicia quickly clarified, mindful of her volume, "Not that we were after–"
"Did I say that?" Fergus shot back. "They just know what we did. Not why."
"Well yeah," Farkle inserted, "apparently no one knows why we were–"
"QUIET DOWN THERE!" A bellow came from the direction the knight had gone off in, followed shortly by the piercing tone of an alert bugle. The three ducked their heads erratically at the aural punishment. The cell was again rendered silent for several moments.
"And no one's gonna," Felicia finally concluded bitterly. She crossed her arms in front of her and looked away, signaling she was done with the conversation. Fergus and Farkle's eyes caught each other's, but quickly averted, as the three resumed their daily routine in stony silence.
Fergus's eye fell onto the day's new hashmark, cutting diagonally across the first four. His eyes raised up to the barred window, the sun roughly indicating midday.
Felicia methodically twisted a few strands of hair pulled free of her top bun into a thin, fine braid. When she reached the bottom of the bundles with nothing left to twist, she ran a finger down through the braid, undoing her handiwork to be able to start over again. And again. And again.
Farkle kept himself raised on his elbows and toes, back straight as a plank, attempting to break his personal record.
Fergus closed his eyes, not particularly hoping for sleep, but were it to come to him, he wouldn't object.
Brrr-BRRRRR!
Fergus sprung up ninety degrees, eyes now unable to close if he wanted; that bugle never got any easier on the ears. Felicia yelped as she accidentally yanked her hair at the startling sound. Farkle gasped and coughed as he hit the ground belly-first.
"Up and at 'em, ogres," the knight who clinked up to the cell piped perkily, a palpable sneer in his tone. He dragged his sword along the bars as he continued along the cell, sheathing it as he came to the end. "You have a visitor."
The siblings' eyes widened and their heads rushed with blood. No. No way. Were they really such utterly pathetic excuses for ogres that they had to have a parent come and–
The knight stood at attention as the visitor strode down the hall toward the cell. The shadow cast was far too slight to be their father's imposing stature, nor their mother's. As Sternbluff's spectacled face came into the sporadic torch light of the cell's hallway, their initial dread did not give way to relief; quite the opposite, really.
The knight nodded to Sternbluff, who returned the gesture, and the knight made his way back down the way Sternbluff had come, glancing at the ogres in disgust as he passed them.
The siblings slowly got to their feet, their limbs feeling impossibly heavy as Sternbluff stood calmly at the bars, neither a frown nor a smile on his face. As the three approached, Sternbluff removed his glasses, holding them up to the daylight entering through their cell's meager window, and wiped them habitually.
"So…" Sternbluff began airily, "how's the food in here?"
The triplets paused half a second, before smiling self-consciously. Sternbluff, too, smirked as he replaced the glasses onto his face.
"Had better," Farkle replied, matching Sternbluff's tone. The older man nodded, meeting each of their eyes, as the four fell into silence again.
"Look, Doctor," Felicia spoke suddenly, closing her eyes as her brow furrowed, "We– we're sorry. We didn't mean to–"
"Destroy my life's work?" Sternbluff couldn't help the tug at the corner of his lips, hands held behind his back, watching the teenagers squirm under his nonchalant conviction. He looked away, giving them a momentary reprieve from his gaze. "I'm exaggerating, perhaps. A couple first-edition books were destroyed, but what they contained I can transfer into a new volume. And a framed portrait was torn to shreds, by means of a falling shelf. Otherwise, there's just the work of putting everything back in its place. And, of course, the exhibit itself was untouched, which is good." His eyes returned to the trio, their ears receding to a degree in response. He waited a moment longer, but none of them felt spurred to fill an uncomfortable silence with a confession. They may have been sufficiently embarrassed and genuinely apologetic, but they remained solidly tight-lipped.
Sternbluff caught Fergus's eye, to which the ogre immediately glanced away, fiddling with his trouser pockets. His siblings were more firmly resolved to avoid his gaze entirely.
"Okay," he leveled. "It's clear you're not keen to divulge what and why you did what you did - I know there was more to it than mere vandalism, or mindless mischief. You're better kids than that." The three looked up at him. "But… I do think I, of all people, deserve the truth."
The ogres looked aside at one another, silently determining who would start, where they would start.
Sternbluff spoke again, sounding more amused than annoyed at their hesitance. "I will say, I do have a good guess. You three aren't exactly the most subtle bunch." Their faces paled a bit more as they swallowed another bite of humble pie. "But, I would like to hear it from you directly. It will remain in full confidence, I promise." He stepped closer to the bars, his voice low to certify his sincerity.
Fergus finally exhaled in defeat. "We wanted the map to the Dragon's Keep." His voice was similarly low, keeping out any nearby stray ears. The other two closed their eyes, the words finally out there.
Sternbluff nodded thoughtfully. "So my guess was correct, then." He paused a moment. "I would be lying if I didn't half-expect you three to attempt something, after I denied you the map up front. Perhaps more than half." He calmly looked between his three young subjects, waiting to see who might finally crack fully.
"So…" Sternbluff continued, his tone gently pulling teeth. "You asked me for the map, and then broke in for the map, because…"
"We wanted to go there." Farkle spoke simply, finally able to meet Sternbluff's eye.
"Ah," Sternbluff mused, "A bit more to it, then. Not just, 'our father used it.'"
"I mean, it is cuz he used it," Felicia mumbled. "He used it… to get to the Dragon's Keep."
"Of course. And so, then, I must ask you three: what's a deserted place like that have to offer? That's worth jail time?"
The ogres was silent for a moment following Sternbluff's inquiry. They had their reasons. But nothing that some human man would understand, no matter how much he may have known about their parents in regards to his hometown's history.
Then again, most of their loved ones likely wouldn't understand their reasons, even - especially - their parents.
"You wouldn't get it." Farkle muttered.
Sternbluff's face shifted ever so slightly, processing Farkle's sentiment. "I could try, if you explained it to me."
The siblings glanced aside at one another briefly, again unsure where to start, or who would start it. Sternbluff spoke again one final time, "I understand the need for discretion, obviously. Why you three couldn't have just asked Far Far Away. Or your parents."
"It's just like–" Felicia began, again careful of volume, "it's been this huge thing our entire lives. Their lives, really, the whole fairy tale thing. Everyone who knows them knows about it. On a surface level of like, 'oh yeah, he rescued her from a tower.' But then–"
"It's off-limits." Farkle took over their explanation. "No one talks about it, we can't ask about it, we don't know anything about it. And it feels like we're the only ones who don't."
"Cuz we are," Fergus continued. "Dad's made sure we've always known not to bring it up. I guess when we were little they just kinda… dealt with it, until we understood why."
"I mean she has nightmares, they can't think we don't know about those." Felicia spoke neither to Sternbluff nor to her brothers. She immediately caught an elbow to the ribs.
Sternbluff held up his hands, to prevent further escalation. "So, as I understand it, it's a sensitive topic for your family, and… you still want to seek it out?"
"They wouldn't know!" Fergus whispered defensively. "What they don't know won't hurt them. It's just for us."
"Like– we're not kids anymore. We can handle it. We just wanna know." Farkle added.
"But… you can't handle asking them." Sternbluff had the frustrating ability to meet any of their points with a valid counter. "And unfortunately, as I'm sure you've read–" he eyed the crumpled-up newspaper next to the chamber pot, "even had your operation succeeded, they would have known. The paper would have reported on one very specific artifact missing from the Museum, and the culprits responsible." He watched the ogres' faces fall.
"Perhaps you're right," he continued. "Perhaps I don't understand fully, perhaps I could never understand. I won't claim to. But… if this goal of yours was so off-limits, so dependent on the utmost of secrecy, with so much at stake… maybe that's reason enough to put it aside."
The ogres stewed in the inconvenient truth he offered. Sternbluff sighed, looking at them with understanding, and a tinge of pity. He removed his glasses, wiping them to occupy his hands while he spoke. "I think I should get back to work on repairing the Museum. I'm going to head back down the hall behind me, toward the stairs down to the first floor. If I kept walking forward, I'd turn the corner onto a dead end, just one big window with a rusty grate. I'd have to walk all the way back around to the main entrance if I managed to jump out of it, onto the fields outside the city walls. That wouldn't do, for my purposes. Knights wouldn't fare well jumping from such a height in all that armor, either." His eyebrows raised quickly with a subtle shrug of his shoulders.
Sternbluff replaced his spectacles and glanced between the three ogres, whose expressions spanned blank to thoroughly baffled. He took a step back from the bars and straightened out his tunic. "I wish you three the best on your endeavors, whatever you choose to do. I hope your sentence flies by." He absentmindedly pat-checked his tunic and trouser pockets. He nodded his farewell to the ogres and turned to make his way back down the hall, as he had just explained in such peculiar detail.
As Sternbluff stepped away from the cell, something fell from his back pocket with a light tink on the granite floor - a metal-tipped feather quill. Felicia reached through the bars to retrieve it.
"Doctor, you dropped–"
Sternbluff raised a hand, quelling her call. "Oh you're mistaken, dear, I didn't drop a thing." He looked at them out of the corner of his eye and winked, before he turned the corner out of sight.
Felicia stared at the writing instrument between her fingers, as did her brothers, brows furrowed. Her eyes lifted, looking down the hall the opposite way Sternbluff had gone, a bit of light on the ground catching her attention. It must have been coming in through… the grated window around the corner, at the end of that dead end hall.
Her eyes suddenly widened, darting to the lock that held their cell door closed, then to Farkle and Fergus, waiting for the realization to hit them as well. It soon did.
Farkle pointed at the quill in Felicia's grasp. "Did he just…"
"Yeah. I think he did." Fergus answered, a small smile slowly spreading.
The next day saw the ogres making note of when the knights made their rounds: once an hour, every hour. For as much as they clearly enjoyed psychological warfare, the knights really dropped the ball on random, routine-depriving visits.
Fergus had insisted on observing for one more day, just in case they were somehow onto their plan, and were orchestrating a counterstrike.
"If they knew anything," Felicia whispered, "they wouldn't waste any time. They'd just kill us or something. But fine, if it makes you feel better." Her tone constricted mockingly, even in a whisper.
"What's another day, Fel?" Farkle mumbled.
"You, of all ogres, suggesting we be patient, now that's–" Felicia began.
"I'd rather this be successful, than we get even more screwed. Hm?" Farkle made his own condescending expression at his sister.
Felicia looked at him, then at Fergus. She rolled her eyes and returned to her corner.
On their second night of observation, a good long while after sunset and into the dark of nighttime, their plan began.
The three sat perfectly still, in their usual places, listening for any activity. None detected.
Felicia produced the quill from within the voluminous red mess of hair atop her head, its regal feather frayed and bent from its days of concealment, and reached through the bars around to the lock. Millimeters before the metal tip entered the keyhole, she stopped, her other hand signaling to the other two, opening and closing frantically. After half a second without instant gratification, she whipped her head back toward them, her eyes then shooting to the rag by Farkle's feet. He blinked in surprise, and quickly put it in her grasping hand. She rolled her eyes as she turned back to her task, placing the rag over the quill and lock to muffle the clicks and scratches the picking would generate.
Farkle glared at the back of her head. "You can roll your eyes at yourself, Fel, for not grabbing it in the first pl–"
"Sh," Felicia hissed shortly, as she finessed the tip within the iron keyhole.
"Where'd you learn to lock pick anyway?" Fergus whispered.
"Well, when one's mother was locked in a tower, one has to learn these things," Felicia smirked to herself. She glanced aside at Fergus. "I'm surprised you didn't learn it yourself, mama's boy."
Fergus clenched his teeth behind tightly pursed lips. "Just hurry up, since you're so–"
Click.
Felicia's eyes widened, as did the boys'. They sat still another moment, breath halted, half-sure someone must've heard that. But nothing.
The one variable that couldn't be helped much was the great metallic groan and scrape of the bars being opened. No amount of acidic saliva would remedy that - if anything, it would eat away at the smooth, grimy iron and create even more clamor. So, they'd just have to brute force it and barrel through.
She carefully removed the quill from the keyhole, still muted under the rag, and put it back up into her hair, sticking it securely through the hair tie. As she rose back to her feet and turned to her brothers, Farkle already held the near-brimming chamber pot in his arms, and Fergus held the end of the sliding bars, feet firmly planted.
Felicia gave a single, short nod.
Fergus yanked the massive iron bars open with one great heave, hard enough for it to bounce against the wall. Disregarding the incriminating cacophony, Felicia sprinted like a light from the cell, down the hall and around the corner toward the dead end. Fergus was right behind her.
"Hey!" An unseen voice down the other end of the hall called out. More confused, irate voices joined in.
Brrr-BRRRRR!
As the clank of running metal armor grew closer, Farkle readied himself in the hall, chamber pot poised.
Four shiny soldiers rounded the corner, swords drawn, eyes alight with rage upon seeing the mopheaded ogre before them. They lurched toward him.
"You guys really should empty out the chamber pots more regularly–" Farkle snarked, tossing the pot's contents at the knights' quick-moving feet on the granite.
The front two immediately went down, their metal footwear only giving way easier to the ogre waste they were slipping on. The two behind them naturally tripped over their comrades, all four now fallen victim to what would surely leave them with a nasty case of pinkeye.
"–it's a hazard!" Farkle grunted a laugh as he chucked the hefty wooden commode at the pile of metal-encased men, hitting the one laying on top of the heap square in the head, knocking him out and rendering him dead weight atop the others. Farkle wiped his hands on his trousers, and ran down the hall after his siblings.
CLANG!
The window's rusted grate was no match for a spinning kick from Felicia. The crumpled metal popped out and fell out from the window, nicking the city's wall directly below and flying off into the grass.
Felicia peered one story down as she perched in the bare window, quickly determining how far she'd need to jump to avoid the wall; nothing too extreme, it would be–
"Fel c'mon! They're getting up!" Fergus yelled behind her, the faint sound of armor hitting his ears.
"I am!" she spat over her shoulder, "I just need to–"
"Jump!" Farkle interrupted as he shoved her out with both hands.
Felicia didn't have time to scream, to curse, to think. Her legs instinctively pushed out from the wall as she fell, helping her just miss the squared-off notches of the city wall. Her feet hit the soft grass and she rolled forward, and continued running. She heard a thud paired with a sound of effort in the grass behind her, and then another, but didn't look back.
The moonlit field felt impossibly vast in the still night, as if the trees kept stepping back further and further from them no matter how hard they ran.
Lungs burning and legs aching, they finally arrived at the grove of trees. Farkle, who had surpassed both siblings in their mad sprint, climbed up the one where their bags were tied - untouched from when they'd left them. Fergus and Felicia clamored up adjacent trees. They didn't say a word, or move an inch, or breathe a sigh of relief. They listened.
Far off, around the city's sizeable perimeter, the sound of armor clinking and horses galloping grew closer. The twelve-man cavalry was soon directly below them, as was the stench of ogre waste that clung to those few truly unfortunate knights' armor.
The knights searched among the cornstalks beside them, spreading out a quarter mile in all directions the felons could have possibly gone in. The apparent captain remained inconveniently around the bushes at the base of the very trees the ogres were perched in, overseeing the troops. He suddenly raised his head, his eyeline shooting straight through Fergus, suspended in the branches. But the trees' foliage was so thick that no moonlight could penetrate. Fergus closed his eyes to prevent any glint, exhaling so gradually that even the leaf directly under his nose did not stir. The captain turned his head, unwittingly staring right at Farkle. The captain's olfactories having been desensitized by close proximity to his affected knights, he just as simply looked away, returning his eyeline out toward his men.
Their dad would've been proud of their stealth.
The captain galloped out from under the tree cover, rounding up the troops. "All right men, fall back. They're not worth it." The captain steered back toward the city gates, the rest returning and following suit. "Hit the showers." The squadron grumbled their discomfort as they rode back to town.
Still, the ogres moved not a muscle. Not until the coast was undeniably, assuredly clear. Fergus opened his eyes, straining to glance aside uncomfortably without moving his head. They watched the last mounted knight disappear behind the massive footprint of Duloc's walls in the distance, and waited a few minutes more.
Finally, the siblings let go a collective, exhausted exhale, and Farkle untied their bags. The sacks dropped to the ground, as did the ogres themselves.
"Ugh." Fergus pulled his hand from his sack, covered in rotten vegetable mush from what would have been their post-heist food supply. He sniffed it again, a curious eyebrow raised, and licked his fingers clean.
The methodical sound of feet on grass made Farkle and Fergus look up toward Felicia - or rather, the empty space she'd been standing, as the ogress herself stomped away.
"Fel, where are you going?" Farkle asked after her, more irate than confused in tone. Felicia didn't reply, didn't acknowledge him, and didn't stop.
"Fel." Fergus called, his tone even less benevolent than his brother's.
Nothing.
The ogres rolled their eyes as they slung their bags over their shoulders, and jogged after her.
"Where in the f–" Farkle grabbed Felicia's bag on her back and spun her around to face them. He was met with a firm, sharp slap across the face. "FELICIA–"
"You could've KILLED me pushing me out that window!" she seethed up at him. "I'm AGH–" She was cut off as Fergus grabbed her by the shoulders, yanking her around toward him.
"HEY–" Fergus grunted, his larger size the only thing helping keep her under control, though with great effort. "What is your– PROBLEM–"
"YOU!" Felicia kneed Fergus in the gut, releasing his hold of her. As he rolled onto his side, doubled over without breath, Felicia stumbled back from the two, but remained standing. "BOTH of you, are my problem. If I'd gone in by myself LIKE I PLANNED then–"
"WHAT, Fel? THEN what!?" Farkle barked. "Then like Sternbluff said, the paper would say the Dragon's Keep map was missing from the Museum!"
"Well we wouldn't have been implicated! So–"
"You don't think that– THAT map being stolen–" Fergus coughed, sitting up on his knees, "–days after we Left– wouldn't have been 'implication' enough!?"
Felicia stared wild-eyed between the two for a second too long. She felt her eyes sting and chest constrict, but she wasn't about to let that happen, no matter how valid a point she was faced with.
"Look," Fergus continued as Farkle offered him a hand up, "I get you're pissed that our plan didn't go how we–"
"You know–" Felicia spat, a dissonant smirk across her face, "maybe this all was a mistake. Maybe– maybe Sternbluff was right! It was a mistake thinking you two dead weight IDIOTS could–"
"Would you STOP!" Farkle cut her off. "NONE of us even thought about–"
"We're so pathetic is what we are!" Felicia blurted. "Leaving late, Leaving as a wholesome embarrassing little trio, LIKE ALWAYS!" She felt a tear fall down her face, to which she quickly rubbed it away with her arm. "Is there a reasonwhy they didn't eventell us about Leaving Day until we should've already Left? Why we're always the weird ogres? Hmm!?"
Fergus and Farkle just watched her, their eyes dark, unable or unmotivated to say anything. Felicia took her cue to keep going.
"And what if it'd gotten into the paper!? So what. REAL ogres shouldn't be concerned with hurt feelings, that's their probl–"
"Fel, you don't mean that." Fergus told her flatly.
"You–" she pointed a finger in his face, desperately denying his sentiment, "–don't get to say what I do or don't mean." She took a deep breath, slightly shaking. She turned to her sack where it dropped when Farkle grabbed her, and threw it over her shoulder. "It was a mistake coming to Duloc, and… all this. Leaving is about doing your own thing, not… whatever it was we were trying for. We should've gone somewhere no one knows us, as far away from home as we could. And from each other." She looked between her brothers a moment, before again turning to leave.
Fergus looked at his brother, but Farkle didn't mirror his concerned expression. Fergus started after her. "Fel, we said we were gonna stick tog–"
"You said that, dude." Farkle corrected to the back of Fergus's head. Fergus whipped back at him, surprised. Farkle continued. "Maybe she's right. I didn't say anything like that."
Fergus looked at him incredulously. "...You agree with her?" He shot an arm to gesture at Felicia, who'd stopped at Farkle's interjection. "She's being a b–"
"But is she though?" Farkle continued, taking a step toward Fergus. "She can get lost, don't get me wrong. Screw her." He looked directly at Felicia, and her face hardened. "But we should ALL get lost."
Fergus looked back at Felicia, whose eyes were still shooting daggers through Farkle. He then turned toward the ogre in front of him. "But we– we said–"
"What? Are you scared?" Farkle's tone turned mocking.
Fergus's eyes sharpened defensively. "No, I'm not scared. Just– Mom thinks we're–"
"Grimm, again about Mom!" Farkle snapped. "She's not here, Gus! This is about us! She's not exactly an expert on Leaving, ya know. This is our time. You should start acting like it." He picked up his own sack.
Fergus stood, dumbfounded. "What do you mean 'act–"
"You might be the sorriest excuse for an ogre out of all of us, Gus." Felicia's voice cut through the night air over Fergus's shoulder.
Fergus's eyes met hers, and for a moment she looked like she would apologize and take it back. But she didn't. He looked to Farkle, who only looked away.
Fergus's mouth pressed tightly together as his teeth clenched even tighter, and he shrugged agitatedly. "Well then, I won't bother you two with my sorry ass anymore." He pulled his shoulder straps uncomfortably tight on his back. "See ya in six months." He stomped off in the direction Felicia was heading, pushing past her as if she weren't there.
"Ogres shouldn't even be concerned with months, Gus." Farkle muttered.
"Guess I really am pathetic, then. Screw yourselves." Fergus kept walking.
"Kick rocks!" Felicia shouted after him.
She and Farkle remained. Felicia turned to go herself, in a different direction than Fergus. "Don't follow me, Fark."
"Don't flatter yourself, Fel."
Farkle stood alone in the grass, the stillness hitting him as he was finally able to experience it. He looked around for a third direction to choose. His eyes fell on the cornfield behind him. He shrugged and set off, offering one last look over his shoulder as his siblings' silhouettes disappeared.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Congrats for making it through another massive chapter!
ANYWAY: What's more unhinged than having designated every character's astrological sign? Making a playlist for your fic:
Youtube DOT com SLASH playlist QUESTIONMARK list=PLJiVeFEQwEJfN77M1tz5pw_u4zQJ4ABzX
It's currently in the "adding every song possible to it, and edit it later" phase.
Songs relating to events in this story, about characters/relationships in general… about things that haven't been published yet… I also take requests! My only rule is, no songs that are already featured in the series.
Thanks as always to hanny spoon for editing and moral support, as well as fauxgre, Alethyia, and my anonymous readers. Thanks for stopping by! Leave a review if you feel inclined! :)
