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wishing4nuclearwinter · 2 years

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You Won’t See Me in the Harbor Lights

Whumptober 19: Enough is Enough (ft. Varmint)

[warnings: implied child abuse]

ao3 link

The wind and waves lap as one, breaking against towers of jagged stone that mark the shoreline. Heidi’s thrumming heart drowns in the sea’s violent cacophony, but fifteen wasted years on this beach have rendered it white noise.

They press the toe of their worn out sneaker against the heel of the other and unceremoniously peel each off in turn. Dirt and wet gravel immediately cling to the soles of their feet as they step closer to the cliff’s edge.

The once blue ocean is rendered black under dark rolling clouds and memories of rain. Unsafe waters for ships; deadly for swimmers.

But Heidi is neither.

Poseidon’s children belong to the sea as much as any finned creature. Heidi carefully pulls their shirt over their head only to blindly toss it to the side as a crumpled ball. Someone will find their abandoned clothes eventually, but will they know? Heidi has carried out this routine for years. It’s not just expected— it’s obligatory. Their duty to their people to hunt and provide them with the sea’s bounty.

But they know better than to treat their threadbare belongings with such carelessness as to leave them in a dirty heap outside. It’s a message that will doubtlessly be lost in translation.

Their jeans join their shirt, frigid wind gnawing at their exposed skin like it means to meticulously strip them down to bone. Generations of radiation-induced adaptations have them shaking off the sensation readily, but they can’t soothe the dull pulsing ache beneath their right eye with the same ease.

Good for nothing varmint.

Heidi grinds their teeth as they brush a thumb across their father’s parting gift. Of course, he won’t get to stew in his short lived guilt when it bruises and stains muddled shades of purples and sickly greens. Not this time at least.

No, they’ll wash up on some southern shore soon and they’ll scrape themself together with their own two hands; they’ll make something of themself.

And if they don’t? If they bleed out in a dank back alley of a foreign town as their parents always warned? Well, Heidi can only hope they’ll be able to hear the laughter six feet below.

Despite everything, they wield the unyielding hubris of any young teen ready to spit in God’s eye. They cannot see the other side of this blade pointed at their own soft belly.

From behind them, a raspy meow calls out, closer to the screech of some abomination than a house cat’s kindly greeting.

Guppy headbutts their calf affectionately before wrapping her slim frame around it, tail flicking curiously. Her patchy fur is damp, though Heidi is unsure if it’s from rain or sea water.

They offer her a thin smile.

“I’m leaving.” The words feel strange on their tongue. “You’ll follow me, won’t you?”

Guppy’s enormous black eyes stare up at them and the inky void is unreadable, but the third yellow, recognizably feline, eye scours their face before blinking slowly. The vestigial fourth remains unseeing.

A sliver of tension slides from Heidi’s shoulders. They won’t be alone. Guppy is not a creature of water despite her best efforts— she could never make that swim— but she’ll find them by land. She always does.

As they reach down to pet her, Guppy wraps a prehensile tail around their wrist and squeezes briefly like a person might grab their hand in reassurance. They scritch behind her ear in like.

“I’ll see you soon, Admiral.”

Guppy puffs up as she pads to the edge of the cliff as if vindicated by that silly title Heidi gave her so many years ago. She stretches languidly and settles to see them off.

They return their attention to their task and the choppy waves below.

With one hand, they untuck the end of the stolen bandage from under their armpit and allow it to unravel. It spills like ribbon around their feet, a puddle of beige attesting to the sheer grief of inhabiting the figure it hid. Swiping a new roll will be priority one when they crawl back on land, but with any luck— and a packful of caps they don’t yet have— they won’t need them much longer.

They suck in a breath and it feels like the first one they’ve ever taken. Their ribs ache with the fullness of it, though they so often do these days. Even on dry land the gills running down their torso sing praises of relief, no longer smothered and suffocated.

Stripped down to only ratty underwear, they step up to the ledge until the uneven ends of the stone dig into their feet.

Finally, finally, they are here. They roll their shoulders back, crack their neck, uncurl long fingers. They tell themself the buzzing in their limbs is giddiness and not terror. Glancing back one last time at the dreary village that has caged them for so long, Heidi can’t help themself.

They raise a middle finger and jump.

#whumptober2022 #no.19 #enough is enough #fallout #fic #child abuse #fnv #varmint tag #guppy tag #timeline: judgement day #writing4nuclearwinter #ringing the dinner bell like come get yalls varmint origin story

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