The endless floodplains were wrapped in the bitter embrace of winter, its river flush with ice, cattails & reeds frosted splendidly, glittering in the early haze of morn. This was no mind to Zachary as he walks the docks just as he had hundreds of frozen mornings before. The smaller boats & pontoons here were personal vessels situated along the outskirts of the commune’s central hive of honeycombed houseboat barges. He holds his right hand to his lips, warming his aching knuckles, ducking into a boat’s cabin suddenly before shutting the door behind him.
This vessel in particular was a rickety thing, much like the young man who ventured further in, towards its heart, worn & creaking with the slightest of movement but held strong against the passage of time. Reaching an engine room of sorts, Zac makes for a locker. An assortment of logbooks, tools, & canned goods crammed into the dented thing. Zac quickly plucks the only item void of dust in the entire unit & seals this back up as well.
This had been his routine for a week now. His morning walks interjected by suspicion. Tossing the logbook on a nearby counter he bows his head & assesses the most recent entries, finding them just the same as they had been all week. But that doesn’t make sense. Frowning, his gaze flicks over to the fuel gauge. Empty. (Even lower than yesterday. & in sparse supply for relics such as these). Looking back down, Zac has the mind to make a fuss over joyriding.
That’s what it had to be, he convinces himself, cabin fever was setting in & the boys must be out racing again. Had to be, he huffs, how stupid. He slams the log shut. Didn’t they know ? Zachary squeezes his eyes shut & swivels around to sit against the countertop, pinching a brow in a bid to avert the imagery of flames & inky black smoke. He breathes in deeply, breath hitching as if it still scorched his lungs.
Didn’t they know -------- ? Umber eyes open to the barrel of a gun.
Didn’t they know how dangerous it was ?
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He hadn’t had any time to react before the pair had cornered him. Clever bastards, Zachary thinks meekly amidst the struggle, they’d waited- they’d waited for him overnight to prevent warning prints in the snow. He tries to shout, but it comes out as a pained bark as he’s slammed against a wall.
“Fuel,” the man with the gun hisses, getting straight to the point while his partner moves to guard the door, “where’ve you hid it,” the metal is cool against Zac’s temple, “it’s not worth the bullet, boy.”
“If you’ve drained it it’s gone,” Zac croaks out his lie miserably, content only with the knowledge that the reservoir was guarded beyond the reach of any common thief, “that was the last of it ‘til spring thaw.”
“A hundred hippies on a hundred boats,” the gunman forces Zac’s cheek flat against the wall, the weapon digging into his skin, “& not a drop of gas between them ?”
Zac swallows deep, eyes clamping shut, willing the gun away as he gives the thieves a shrug of pitiful half agreement, “ --- h-hippies.”
The comment earns him a sharp strike across the brow with the side of the gun, the man snatching him with his free hand before Zac could curl into himself, slamming him back into the wall with renewed force & frustration.
“Money,” the gunman demands now, “weapons,” Zac bobs his head no each time, unwilling to tempt the desperate man’s rage by answering with spoken word, “You freaks got anything here ?”
The gunman strikes a final time when met with silence, allowing Zac to slide down to the ground where he fusses over his injuries from his knees, hardly registering that the pair had begun to argue about their next course of action over the ringing in his ears.
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It was around this time that Eliza walks along the wooded docks. Hands stuffed into cozy mittens & cheeks nuzzled against the rabbit fur trim of her chore coat. Knowing her brother’s ritualistic path by heart she makes good time, even without her companion by her side (the pup home in bed for a lazy snow-day morning (Eliza so hated waking her when unnecessary)). & she would have wandered right on past if muffled bickering hadn’t caught her attention.
Were the fishermen arguing again ? She’d walked into a nasty spat just the other week. Something about misplaced liquor. Imagine that. Slowing as she approached the fishing boat, Eliza cranes her neck for better hearing. There was something going on down there.
A moment of hesitation later & Eliza has boarded the boat. Carrying nothing but silence in her step & spiraling cane in her left hand --- guiding her through the cluttered cabin. The clang of her cane hitting the metal door to the engine room betrays her presence & the voices below go silent. Clutching the tool tighter, Eliza carries on, joining her brother in the heart of the vessel, figuring whoever it was might appreciate an ear of reason as they let off some steam.
The air felt heavy & oddly warm. A number of eyes scorching into the blonde as she loiters in the doorway. The most pained of all were those of umber, welling with tears, as Eliza is similarly greeted with a pistol to the face.
Utterly unphased by this development, Eliza turns her head, not from cowardice or fear, but, once again, for better hearing, “ ‘ello ?” she whispers into the silent room, cruel realization dawning on Zachary’s captors.
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Forced to witness the horror his sister could not, Zac could hardly contain himself as the gunman returned to his previous position. Pinning the younger man with a gentler, but just as firm, grip to avoid alerting the newcomer. Watching together as his partner stepped aside & allowed the clueless Eliza in.
Thankfully Eliza was not nearly as clueless as the thieves hoped. The creaking she heard in that moment could be mistaken so easily for the swaying fishing boat settling into its ribs, but Eliza knew. Oh, she knew. She’d pestered that stupid brother of hers for months to grease up that stupid, noisy leg.
Her blood runs cold & no number of mittens or coats could begin to help. Forcing herself back into motion, Eliza keeps up her act. This intrigues her terrified brother as she approaches the counter & finds the closed logbook with fluttering fingertips. Humming innocently, she picks it up. Wandering off to put it away in a bid to buy herself more time. A few careful clanks of her cane & several snail paced steps later (with equally cautious evasions by the thieves & the ensnared Chance) & she’s found what she assumes to be the appropriate storage locker. Her heart jumps when she hears one of the thieves step towards her in time with the opening of the door, attempting to guise their steps with the brief groan of metal.
Calming herself, Eliza half wonders half hopes it was Zachary playing a terrible prank on her. The figure continues to hover just behind. It wouldn’t be like him, she decides, continuing to rummage through the locker, Zac hadn’t done anything of the sort since they were very young, he wouldn’t do that to her. Not when she was digging around for a weapon.
Her hand bumps into something promisingly solid. Yanking off a mitten with her teeth, she finds again the clunky object she’d nudged out of place, fondling it with expert fingertips, being certain to block any view of the item with her crouched form. A gun. A real gun ? Eliza isn’t so sure, it didn’t seem to take normal bullets & was comically shaped. There’s a click & Eliza’s mind goes blank. It no longer matters if it’s real. Time’s up.
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Zachary could no longer restrain himself & shrieks something that was meant to be her name. His cry is drowned out by two more additional shouts & a sudden blast. So it was a gun. Sort of. The pandemonium the flare creates in the engine room was just enough to protect her from a misfire on the thief’s part & gave Zac the distraction needed to worm himself out of his captor’s clutches.
The gunman curses as result, firing a more purposeful round after Zac as he scrambles into the disorienting smoke. The brilliance of the crimson flare leaves behind spots in his vision. He doesn’t seem to notice. It didn’t matter. All that mattered in the moment was tackling his sister to the floor & shielding her from yet another round of gunfire. Their cowering was momentary, Zac bouncing back to his feet, dragging Eliza up with him. She was choking on the smoke, but Zac could tell that their distraction would be short-lived, glancing behind in time to see the flare sputtering out its final pulses of light.
“Go- !” he begs as if he wasn’t forcefully shoving Eliza through the door & up some stairs, “go, go, go, go--- !”
They’re practically on all fours as they burst into the cabin & out the front door. Untangling from each other they separate to pursue different objectives : Zachary, slamming the heavy cabin door & holding it shut with the full weight of his body, hoping to imprison the thieves & shield himself from further gunfire, while Eliza raced up the docks to ring the warning bell.
Thankfully there was no need. Eliza collides into the attentive arms of a rapidly approaching group of frantic locals. Alerted by gunfire & the alarm, the group instantly splinters into smaller groups. A number remaining behind to scout surrounding boats or dote on Eliza while the majority rushed for Zachary ; relieving him of his hopeless position.
Subsequently, the thieves are eventually disarmed & properly imprisoned.
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The twins were uncertain what would become of the pair. & as they sit together on those same docks much later in the evening, they find it hard to care.
Zac is the first to speak. Resting his head snuggly against Eliza’s shoulder before booping her nose with the previously missing mitten, uniting it with its master, “... thanks.” he mutters, ego as bruised as his eyes.
Grinning, she snatches the mitten back & smears the plush thing playfully across his face (not too hard of course), laughing at the annoyed groan he made. He sits back up to avoid the onslaught & Eliza gives it a rest, slipping the mitten back on, cheerfully resting her head against his shoulder. “Welcome.”
