Chapter Text
"Thank you- what was it, Barney?"
"Hrm!" The villager nods.
"Right. Thanks, Barney. See you around!" Jesse smiles and waves with her free hand, the other holding a brand-new map, fresh from the cartography table.
"My pleasure! Good luck on your adventures, ladies!"
Jess nods again and walks off with a brand-new map of the surrounding three-thousand or so blocks. There's a couple of towns marked down on there, but Petra is more concerned with keeping her eyes in front of her so Jesse doesn't run into anyone. Not like there's enough hustle and bustle here for that to happen anyway, though. There's more farm animals than pedestrians from the looks of it.
"Alright, what do you say we stay the night in this area before officially hitting the road again?" Jesse suggests.
"Sure. Gives us more time to prep and stuff."
"Oh, and, um..." Jesse's gaze falters, and she crosses her arms shamefully. "I kind of spent the last of our iron on books about the biomes I wanted to visit. So we'll have to build ourselves a place to stay tonight."
"Why am I not surprised?" Petra chuckles.
"Hey! They were on sale, okay? It's, like, psychologically easier to get people to buy things if they're on sale. Or something. Not my fault!"
"It's alright, I'm not mad! Just... amused," The ginger defends herself, putting her hands up and backing away from her girlfriend.
Jesse huffs as she puts the new map in her bundle. "You're sleeping on the floor."
"Wha- we don't even put our beds together!" Petra laughs, and Jesse scoffs.
"Yeah, but I bet you'd like us to."
Petra opens her mouth to throw something back, but when she actually processes Jesse's words, the words get caught in her throat. She's used to Jesse being quick-witted, and sharp with her words, but she's not used to it being directed at her.
"What, cat got your tongue?" Jesse raises an eyebrow. Ooh, that's something Petra can work with. It's become a game, nowadays, to see who can get the other to shut up the fastest. While Jesse is quick and efficient with her flirts, Petra's discovered that when she says something particularly risqué, she can win almost immediately.
"Tch, nah. I'd like you to have my tongue, though." Maybe a bit dirty, maybe a bit too far. But It'll definitely win.
"Oh! Oh. Um." Jesse stops in her tracks. Mission accomplished. "That's-- okay. That was smooth. You win."
Petra pumps a fist. "Yeahh! Petra, king of, um, flirting! Huzzah."
"Ugh. Dork," Jesse groans.
"You know you like it."
Jesse takes a second. She looks up at Petra's smug little smile, those brown eyes flicking all over her face. It's... weird.
"Yeah," She finally says, with the warmest smile Petra has ever seen. "I do."
Petra feels her chest twist and swirl and bend under the pressure of... whatever mixture of positive emotions she's feeling. Her smug grin falls into a nervous, wobbly one. If she had no shame, she'd squeal into Lluna's thick, fluffy coat, but instead she fidgets with the llama's lead, twirling it in between her fingers. She both hates and loves this feeling. Hate, because it's unfamiliar. Love, because she thrives in the unknown.
"Anyway," Jesse continues, seemingly not noticing how she's affecting her girlfriend. It's so weird I can say that now. After years of pining... "We should head out of town to get some materials right now, if we're gonna be building."
"Um- yeah. Let's go, then, boss!" Petra exclaims, saluting with her free hand. Jesse groans in response.
"Eugh, if you call me 'boss' or anything like it ever again I think I'm gonna vomit."
"Aw, c'mon, I thought you liked- mmph!" Jess slaps a hand over the ginger's mouth before she can finish. Probably for the best, if she's being honest.
"Nope. Wood. Let's go."
The sun is setting, and Lluna is sleeping by the trunk of the tree their temporary treehouse sits upon. It's a simple single room with nothing the essentials- a crafting table, a furnace, and two beds, one on either side of the room- but it works. It's their go-to shelter for when they visit quieter towns. They're barely a day's walk from Beacontown out here anyway, so there's no point in building a more permanent base just yet.
Jesse unrolls the map onto their makeshift table (made of two upside-down stairs facing each other, you know the type) and places a little stone on each of the corners to act as paperweights. Petra seats herself in the chair across from Jesse, and practically melts into the seat. She hasn't sat down in hours- the day-long walk from Beacontown to this dingy old village made sure her legs were working overdrive- so you can't blame her.
Jesse remains standing as she grabs her quill from her bag. She looks intently at the map, eyes darting from location to location.
"So, what did you wanna look at, exactly?" Petra inquires.
"That is a good question..." Jesse responds, eyes skimming over the left side of the map. "Oh! There it is."
"Where?" The ginger leans forward in her seat to get a better look.
"Here," Jesse taps a finger near the top left corner of the map. "It's all the way across the map- we're way southeast of there- but there's tons of neat geological stuff on the way, and plenty of smaller towns to hunker down at if we need to."
"Oh. That's, like, over fifteen hundred blocks away. You sure you're up for it?"
"I'm up for anything, if you're with me."
"Ugh, gross, affection."
"Come on, dude, you're dating me. Get used to it."
"Damn, really? I had no idea. You sure you've got the right guy? 'Cause you're, like, way out of my league..."
"Says the six-foot badass humanoid muscle."
Petra can't come up with a retort because she's too busy giggling at "humanoid muscle." When she gets control of herself, she drops the game. "Aheh- anyway, we hit the road in the morning, yeah?"
Jesse grins. Petra might explode. "Yep. We might have to head back into town to make sure we're stocked up, but after that we should be on our way."
"Cool beans."
"What- hey!" Jesse says, pausing midway through stepping away from the table to place her hands on her hips. "That's my line."
"Tch, who said you could own words?" Petra raises an eyebrow.
"I kind of, you know, saved the world? I literally used to be called "Hero-in-Residence". I think I have the right to own words at this point."
"Oh, and I didn't help with that?" Petra shoots.
Jesse opens her mouth to retort, but shuts it before one can come out. "Touché."
Petra chuckles, sly grin widening as Jesse backs away in defeat. She goes over to the crafting table and pulls some beetroots and a bowl from her inventory. Meanwhile, Petra squints at the map to get a closer look at the exact spots Jesse marked. A town sits in the center of a couple of biomes, and nearby are a couple of red arrow-shaped marks that warn of pillager outposts. There's a star on the Mangrove Swamp, the flower fields, and a couple other smaller basic biomes that don't really stand out. Oh, and a Pale Garden. A river runs through the area, and Jesse drew little lines where the water is thinnest. Her little doodles are cute...
Wait, hold on- Pale Garden?
Petra does a double-take. Pale oak. Pale oak next to a Mangrove next to a river next to a meadow, and a town in the place where those biomes all meet. This is eerily familiar. Almost exactly identical to...
...that place she's been avoiding for a decade now.
Identical to her hometown.
Oh, no.
And this map is new, right? The outposts still being there is especially concerning, in that case. You'd think they'd try to exterminate those damn pests, but no, they're all still there. Have there been any major raids since she left, on the neighboring villages or hers?
Surely she isn't there, then, if it's so unsafe. Surrounded by outposts, more than there were the last time Petra looked at the area. No one would want to live there.
No one has ever wanted to live there, to be fair; it's a very sad little town. Almost nothing to do there except get out of it.
Speaking of getting out, she's starting to feel really hot all of a sudden. She steals a glance out the window to see that the sun has set. It's around the time they usually feed Lluna some hay. A good time to get some air, she thinks.
Petra lets Jesse know she's feeding Lluna, and she gets a hay bale tossed at her in response (which she catches flawlessly, mind you). When she climbs through the trapdoor and down the trunk of the tree, a cool breeze nips at her bare arm. Similar to the constant uncomfortably cool climate in Pale Gardens.
Petra tries so hard to distract herself from her mind. The whole world is a reminder of something she can't possibly think about right now.
Focus, focus. On anything. Literally anything, goddamnit...
The rungs of the ladder. One, two, three, four, five... a group of five friends, three of which gone, one of which's whereabouts being unknown, and the last one being... no. Nope.
The leaves. One falls in front of her- bright red, like her father's hair. Another one drifts past her face, this one the same shade of yellow as the hair of an old friend. Double nope.
Maybe the trunk of the tree! The bark is rough and brown, and when Petra squints she can see the old, faded sigil of the pillagers etched into the wood. Pillagers. War. Death. No, no, no. Triple nope.
The sky? Yeah, that can't be bad, it's really pretty right now. Shades of orange turning green, to navy blue, to inky black. A few clouds pepper the horizon, almost in the shape of smoke.
Smoke. Fire.
Yeah, no. That's not working.
"UGHH!" She groans when she hits the ground. "Every time! Every damn time. It's fucking everywhere!"
"Hurnk?" Lluna bleats, lifting her sleepy head to look a frustrated Petra in the face.
"Yeah, like you care." She stares daggers at the llama.
"Ornk."
Petra hands Lluna the hay bale, and sits at the base of the tree. She sighs. "But maybe you do. Urgh, who am I kidding, of course you do. You wouldn't like me so much if you didn't."
"Mergh?"
"It's like... I can never get away from it. From them, from him, from... there." Petra's legs tremble. Why do they do that every time she thinks about this?
"...Hurf."
"It never works. I try to run and it follows me everywhere. I try to hide it, but I have so many scars from that day, and the time after... even though I have enough scars nowadays it's easy to lie about how I got them." She scoffs. Runs a trembling hand through her messy hair. "It's not fair. Every time I think I'm out of the water, and I'm okay, it comes back to me. It's following me like a phantom at midnight on a full moon."
Petra sinks to the ground, and curls up into a sad little ball. "This is pathetic. Isn't it? I should be over it by now. I should be over it, but it won't leave me alone."
She sighs. Hugs her knees and sets her chin on her arms. She looks up, at the sky, at the leaves shielding her from the light of the waning moon slowly becoming more visible as the minutes pass. "Will it ever?"
The llama huffs. Petra's gaze lowers to the dirt.
"I can't keep running, can I? Not forever."
Of course she can't. She knows damn well she should've went back to her hometown years ago. But she's a coward. Or, rather, she was a coward, because she's not going to run this time. She's put this off for, what, almost ten years now? Probably longer, she doesn't have the time to do the math.
Hopefully she doesn't break down or something! That would be really pathetic.
Lluna puffs again and stretches her neck out to sniff the ginger's hair. It tickles enough to make her chuckle and playfully swat away Lluna's snout.
"Ack- hey! Eheh!" Petra giggles. "You're right. Maybe I'll be okay. Jesse's with me this time, and she makes everything better." She says that last part wistfully, voice dripping with affection. "God, I sound so cheesy..."
Petra looks back up at the sky. The last light of the sun is dissipating, falling prey to the eerie pale glow of the moon. A cool breeze nips at her fingertips, and the smell of wet earth and dried leaves wafts through the air. Petra inhales, and exhales.
She thinks of Jesse, and her calming ritual is complete. She's cool. She's okay.
Even when they were just friends, Jesse made everything better. Even before Petra knew she liked her, she made things better. By some odd stroke of fate- or maybe just luck- she's best friends with someone that brightens any room she enters. That's a talent few people possess, and she'll never not admire the hero for it.
"Hey! Petra! Dinner's ready!"
Speak of the devil. That girl's voice still gets Petra every time it appears.
"I guess I'll see you in the morning, Lluna. Thanks. Don't get eaten, or whatever." Petra sighs, ruffling a hand on the Llama's head before taking a deep breath, and climbing back up the ladder into the tree.
"Heya," Jesse says, beating Petra to opening the trapdoor. The view is something to die for. This is one of the few times Petra gets to look up at Jesse instead of down (their height difference is comical) and she savors every second of it.
"How'd you know I was coming up?" Petra questions, stalling just a moment longer before climbing the final few steps.
"I didn't, aha... I kind of just guessed." Jesse shrugs. Cute. "But anyway- get your butt up here, I wanna eat!"
"Fine, fine, but you could eat without me," Petra says, heaving herself up into the treehouse and taking Jesse's left hand in her own for a second. "I wouldn't mind at all."
"I know, but we're about to be jumping from place to place for over a month." Jesse's tone turns a bit less confident, and Petra drops her playful demeanor the moment she hears it. "I wanted to have some, I dunno, peace and quiet for a while."
"Oh! In that case, we could've stayed in town a day or two longer. Again, I wouldn't mind. We've got all the time in the world."
Jesse looks out the window from where she stands, a gentle smile gracing her face. She exhales, closes her eyes, and... leans forward to rest her head on her girlfriend's chest.
Petra, befuddled by Jesse for the second- third? Ugh, who's counting- time today, just blinks. Unsure of what to do. Should she initiate a hug? Play with Jess's hair? Or just stay still? The former two are the most appealing, of course, but...
"Uh, you okay, Jess?" She manages to say.
"Mhm. Just tired." Jesse mutters. "Sorry, I keep saying I'll get more sleep, but I never do..."
"It's cool. Maybe I can just hide your books, or something. Heh. That'll fix it." Petra chuckles. She really wants to hold her girlfriend.
"Noooo, wait, don't!" Jesse pleads, while Petra giggles. "What if I need to look up a mob we've never seen before?"
Petra sits there for a moment, before deciding she can swallow her nerves. It might be a little self-indulgent, but who cares?
She slowly takes her hand out of Jesse's and lifts her arms until she holds the smaller girl closer than she thinks she's ever held anyone, both literally and figuratively. The brunette's arms rest around the taller one's waist and tighten gently; a silent thanks, Petra assumes.
"I'm pretty sure we've at least heard of all of them," Petra retorts.
Jesse scoffs. "Um, no. Not even close, from what I'm aware of. There's plenty of biomes we've never been, all with their own mobs and plants and... that's why I'm so excited about this trip. I've never been to a Mangrove Swamp before!"
"Wait, really? I grew up around one. They're not that special." She leaves out the fact that the one they're going to explore is the one she grew up around. For her sake and Jesse's.
Jesse lights up like a firebug at dusk. "You're joking. No way."
"Yes way? Me and my si- um... dog... would go every weekend and do dumb kid stuff, get all muddy and shit. I think you'd like it."
Jesse seems a bit put off by Petra's self-correction, but if she's got something to say, she keeps it to herself. Her brow furrows for a second, her gentle smile weakens.
Petra mentally bashes herself for slipping up like that. Why did she even lie in the first place? She's supposed to be more open with Jesse. She's her best friend. She's her rock and her light and all that sappy shit.
Sometimes Petra forgets they're dating, and gets startled at Jesse's oh-so-effortless flirting. Sometimes she has no clue what to do, and ends up making things awkward. And sometimes she wonders if she even deserves a girlfriend at all, with how unfamiliar that kind of thing is to her. How bad she could be at it. She's got no clue.
"Oh, you've gotta tell me everything you know about it, then, on the way there. Blockhead."
Can you blame her, though? It's been a long time since she's felt this safe around someone. Maybe she never even has.
"I can't tell you everything, you goober. It'd ruin the surprise of going there for the first time!"
She's not going to let this feeling go.
"You're..." Jesse pauses. "You're right, actually. Nevermind. Don't tell me anything until we're there."
I don't want to lose her.
"You mean I win?"
Jesse just lifts her head from Petra's chest to stick her tongue out, which just incites more giggles from the both of them. After a moment, Jesse goes back to her previous position and sighs.
"This is what I mean, by peace and quiet..." Jesse mutters. She nuzzles deeper into Petra's embrace and she swears she can feel her organs melt. "Don't think I ever told you how much I like hugs. I bet you've noticed by now, though."
"Yeah, anyone could guess."
"Heh. Thanks for indulging me. I know you told me you're not used to it, so this means... a lot."
Petra hums. Jesse's right, but she has no reason to apologize to or give thank. Petra would move mountains for this girl. Defeat a world-ending natural disaster mixed with monster, slay the greatest beasts known to man, save the world together countless times. She'd do it all twelve times over. Even if all they could ever be was just friends, she'd do it all. And how lucky is she, that she gets the reality where they're more?
A familiar pit in her stomach resurfaces. Of course, things could change, people come and go like the clouds in the sky, never the same when you see them again. If you ever see them again. History can repeat itself, her mind says. You could lose her like you lost them, it whispers. You'll only get hurt, it growls.
Jesse starts to hum a tune, face still buried in Petra's shoulder, and squeezes harder, gently but firmly. The knot in her gut doesn't dissipate, but the feeling of a tender hand removing her bandana and combing through her hair muffles it well enough. Almost too well.
It's been a while since they've been able to be this close. The last time they hugged for this long they weren't even dating! And now Petra's face is burning, more than it already was, somehow- because she realizes this is somewhat new territory. She's loving every second of it, and she's not about to act like she doesn't, but she's really nervous. More than she probably should be.
It's just a hug, but it's more welcoming than winter is to snow. Just the softest hand in the world messing with her hair. Just the soft hums of a voice she'll never forget. She knows this feeling. No, no, not now.
It's distant, it's muddied by sorrow, but a memory surfaces, and a lullaby plays in Petra's mind. One sung by a man with hair the color of dawn and an embrace warmer than the sun. A song of safety and love and nudges to sleep.
Shit. Not now.
Jesse isn't humming a lullaby- it's one of her favorite songs, Petra forgets the name- but the feeling it brings is the same. Contentment, care, joy, love. And of course, of all the times for the ever-consuming dread to remind her of its existence, this exact second is when it chooses.
...I can't lose her.
This fear is too familiar.
Now is not the time for this. Petra can wallow in her long-suppressed grief and terror later, maybe when (more like if) Jesse goes to bed. She wants to be here, now. In the moment.
Unlike all those that came before, Jesse promised, to her face, with utmost certainty and confidence, that they'd stay together no matter what. Petra often finds herself coming back to this one fact whenever she doubts, and it's all that can soothe her worry. Not by much, but it helps nonetheless.
"Your voice is really pretty," Petra mutters into Jesse's hair during a pause in her humming.
She's not nervous anymore. Just... on guard. Because this kind of touch isn't the touch Petra is used to. This isn't the kind of talking she's used to. The kind of feelings she's used to.
"You think so?" Petra swears she can hear the smile in her girlfriend's voice.
"Yeah." She inhales. The vague smell of dried leaves and wet dirt fills her nose. "It's... soothing. Or whatever."
"Hm." Jesse's fingers tug a little tighter on the ginger's shirt.
Petra keeps holding Jesse, and Jesse does the same, for an amount of time neither could accurately say. By the time they remember that Jesse made beetroot soup, it's cold. They still enjoy it, of course. They're together. How could they not?