Paper Messages
Prominent Character(s): Peregrine Mendicant, Aimless Renegade Pairings: Peregrine Mendicant <3 Aimless Renegade Genre: Hurt & Comfort (a.k.a sadstuck) Length: 2289 words Warnings: Dealing with death, sadstuck Extra Info: So this is what I was working on a few months back and I'm sick of it laying in my comp unfinished so i literally went enough and finished it rn so hAVE AT IT also i'm sorry for typos so if you find one, tell me in an ask and i'll fix it up thank
Summary: The only things PM had left to remember the Aimless Renegade by were her own faded memories, a broken heart and a little can filled with his last words to her.
~~~~
The Prospitian Monarch’s house was one of the first things built on the Can Town of Earth 3.0.
It was the first step of a dream that had started out as a little town made out of cans; it was the beginning of a dream belonging to a dead dersite who laid buried alongside his dreams of being a real mayor.
It was a surprisingly modest house considering PM was the unofficial leader of the carapaces who’d survived the war-- then again, why would she want to live in a large house if she had no one to share it with?
The first weeks in her new house had been the hardest.
Days in New Can Town were so peaceful, it was as if she was back on Prospit...or back in the desert she had grown to call home. It was so peaceful, in fact, that she often forgot AR and WV were dead.
How many times had she unconsciously set up three places at the table for dinner before remembering she’d be eating alone? How many times had she woken up in the middle of the night and stretched out her hands expecting to take hold of their hands, but being greeted by two empty spaces on the bed? How many times had she forgotten AR and WV had been taken from her before snapping back to reality and thinking “Oh, right…”?
She’d try to distract herself by helping out with the town or organizing her new house. The more she had to do, the less her brain had the time to think of the two dersites. The less she was at her house, the more she could avoid dealing with their death… and having to go through the bag with WV’s last belongings tucked away inside it.
Dave had given it to her right after WV had died and, to that day, she had never summed up the courage to open it. It wasn’t so much because it had WV’s last belongings in it, but more because, unbeknownst to Dave, the contents in the bag did not belong solely to WV.
It had been WQ’s idea. Before Jack arrived, the royal advisor had proposed that a bag should be filled with essential items to take in case they needed to make a quick getaway. AR had found the bag in the old ruins and, after they all filled it in with personal and survival items, WV promised to keep it with him at all time-- a promise he kept right up until the first time Jack attacked him.
It wasn’t until a month had gone by since she started living in New Can Town that she finally found the will to get over with it and open the bag. She had been sitting at her kitchen table, the old and worn-out bag resting in front of her. It had been so long, she couldn’t even remember what she had put in it...or maybe she didn’t even want to remember anything that had to do with that awful week.
After a few minutes of staring at it, she finally opened it and reached inside, taking out its contents one by one.
The first things she took out were some cans of TaB that had belonged to WV. She couldn’t help but smile-- of course WV would have tried to salvage some of his favorite soda. She placed the cans on the table and reached inside the bag again, taking out a very pretty necklace that must have belonged to WQ.
PM, assuming it had been a present from WK, imagined it must have looked very pretty on her former advisor. Carefully placing the necklace next to the cans of TaB, she reached once more inside the bag and felt her heart sink as she retrieved an old and rusty can, its top sealed with caution tape and the name AR written on one side of the can.
~~~
“Messages in a box,” said PM.
AR looked at her. “Huh?”
“It’s something we did back home,” she explained, making her way through WV’s base, sitting down next to Can Town and taking an empty can from the floor.“We’d take a container, make a hole, fill it up with little messages and then, after a little while, we’d exchange containers, open them up and read the messages.”
AR watched as she cleaned the can and then sealed it again with his caution tape, leaving a little hole to slip strips of paper in.
“Want to do it with me?” she asked. “We could make messages for each other.”
AR chuckled. “That sounds like something WV would do, not me.”
“Aww, come on,” she insisted, showing him her work of art. “Look, I’ll start!” She got up and grabbed a nearby oil container. She sat back down next to her can, opened the container, dipped her finger in and carefully wrote her name on the side of the can. “Can you please pass me the etiquette book?”
AR indulged her and handed her the once heavy tome of proper human etiquette. A rather large amount of pages had been already torn from the book by the exiles to use for all kinds of things, primarily as napkins and kindle for the campfire.
She started leafing through the pages of the book and neatly tore off an almost blank page. She then ripped the page into several strips, dipped her finger in the oil again and carefully wrote something on one of the strips. She waited a few moments for the oil to dry off before folding the message and slipping it inside the can.
“What did the message say?”
PM grinned. “It’s confidential!… Unless you also make one for me!”
AR crossed his arms. “That is silly and mushy.”
PM smiled. “If you say so, AR,” she said, making another message and putting it into the can. “Maybe WV will do this wi--”
“Okay, okay!” he interrupted, taking one of the empty cans on the floor.
“Yaaay!”
“Yeah, whatever,” AR grumbled, cleaning out his can, a little smile creeping up on his face.
~~~
She shook the can and could tell it was pretty full with messages. Placing it on the table, she stared at it, unsure of what to do. Should she open it? Could she even open it? AR had been dead for over three years, but now that she was face to face with the only thing of his that was saved, she realized that maybe she still wasn’t over his death. Would she ever be?
After what felt like an eternity, she got up to get some scissors, sat back down at the table and carefully cut off the tape. She poured all off the messages on the table and placed the empty can next to the necklace and cans of TaB.
She then folded her hands on her lap, her heart shrinking once more in her chest. Funny how she had no problem fighting a skull monster and a blood-thirsty dog-god but was terrified of a bunch of harmless strips of paper. Why did she feel almost sick at the prospect of reading the messages? Was it because she was scared it would bring back the pain or...was it because, on the contrary, reading his final words meant closure for her? Was she afraid that she’d be forced to come to terms with his death?
She took one of the papers and carefully unfolded it. The words had faded out a little but she instantly recognized his hand writing.
~
i think you should just admit that i am a far better kisser than wv.
~
PM covered her grin with her hand, reading and re-reading the message. She could practically see the playfully smug grin AR must have had on his face when he wrote that message. She then started thinking of him kissing her and could feel herself blushing as she buried her face in her hands, giggling.
AR had always been much greedier than WV when it came to showing affection. While WV would always be much more timid, AR usually had no problem with stealing kisses or shamelessly flirting with her. He’d been shy, at first, but once he had been completely sure that his feelings were reciprocated, he never held back.
After regaining some composure, she folded the message and dropped it inside the empty can before taking another one.
~
i wish your nightmares were illegal so i could throw them in the slammer. also that they were actual things i could touch. because then i could shoot them.
~
AR had always hated the nightmares that plagued PM and WV every other night; she always suspected it was because he felt helpless against them. He never had nightmares as terrible as PM and WV did, so he didn’t know what to say to make them feel better when they woke up in cold sweat during the middle of the night. Not that he needed to say anything, because he always knew how to make her feel better.
There were several times where she had woken up form a particularly nasty nightmare to find him silently getting up from his spot and lying next to her, holding her close until she fell asleep. There had been other times when he’d stay up talking with her until dawn so she’d forget the nightmare, asking her plenty of mail-related questions so she’d be talking about something he knew would take her mind of the nightmares.
She kept on reading the messages, his handwritten words temporarily tricking her into forgetting he was gone.
~
serenity accompanied me on my patrol tonight. i could not understand her blinking but she was great company.
~
i made dinner tonight and you said you liked it very much. i think i am going to start cooking more often.
~
but i also love your cooking a lot. this is a very difficult decision.
~
She folded the note and put it on the pile, remembering the time she had accidentally burnt dinner, only for AR and WV to pretend they thought it was the most delicious thing ever. Smiling, she reached inside and took another message.
~
i love you.
~
Before she even realized it herself, tears had started trickling down her cheeks. Oh gosh, she missed him. She missed him so much, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt like hell.
She remembered AR talking about their future with such high hopes. Sure, he had been scared at times, but he was always convinced that they’d be fine in the end, that they’d be together no matter what.
“Vagabond says that the first thing we should build is the city council, but I want to build our house first. It will be a lot safer and you won’t have to sleep in the cold anymore.”
He had always cared more for her own interest than his own. Even though the three of them loved each other above all else, AR had always been irrevocably and unabashedly in love with PM since the very beginning. She had once heard that, in every relationship, there was someone who loved and someone who let themselves be loved. AR, both towards WV and towards PM, had always been the one who loved.
~
i can’t wait to read your messages.
~
She covered her face with her hands, feebly attempting to stop herself from crying. Why did he have to die? Why, why, why, why, why? They had been so close to ending it all, so close to being together forever, so painfully close.
She placed her forehead on the table, hands still covering her face. She wasn’t even able to bring back his body. She wasn’t even able to give him a proper burial, wasn’t able to hold him as he died, to tell him how much he had meant to her, how much she loved him, and tell him just how damn much she would miss him.
After some time, she managed to regain some composure and wipe the tears off her face. She looked at the can, messages still inside, and wondered if she even wanted to keep reading. Why was she even torturing herself with them? They were words belonging to a ghost, to a dead soldier, to a memory-- words as faded-out as the one who wrote them.
Why cling to something that wasn’t even there anymore?
And yet…
And yet, her hand still reached for the can, still took another of the little folded strips of paper.
~
questant believes we might have to fight soon. i am scared of dying. but if i die fighting next to you. and as long as you are still alive and well. then i guess i can deal with being dead.
~
PM stared at the message for a few minutes before carefully folding it again. However, instead of putting it with the others, she decided she wanted to keep it in a little pocket of her messenger bag, so it would always be with her. She put the messages back in the can and decided to read them later. She was already running late to help out around Town and figured AR wouldn’t mind waiting a little more for her to read the rest of his messages.
After cleaning up herself a little, she left her house, wondering in the back of her mind if she had an empty can she could use to make new messages for AR. One day, maybe soon or maybe far away, she’d see him again, and then she’d be able to keep her side of the deal.
After all, she had so much stuff to write to him about.
*Art by Miry * There seems to have been some confusion with the drawing so I just wanted to explain that it's AR reading PM's messages in Limbo.