Who The Frick Frack Tallywack Fucky Ducky Is Bucky

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Ben

The sky was already turning when he opened his eyes. Gray light, flat and cold. No birds. No wind. Just that stillness he didn’t trust.

He stayed there a while, listening. Breath first. Then movement. Nothing inside the walls. Nothing outside either.

Too quiet. He didn’t like it.

Ben

The sky was already turning when he opened his eyes. Gray light, flat and cold. No birds. No wind. Just that stillness he didn’t trust.

He stayed there a while, listening. Breath first. Then movement. Nothing inside the walls. Nothing outside either.

Too quiet. He didn’t like it.

1.

Alice

They say the Hollowed can’t think. That they’re just meat now—muscle and hunger and echo.

But Alice knew better. The old ones, the ones that lingered... they remembered. Not faces, maybe. But places. Doors. Smells. And sometimes, when it got real quiet, they looked at you like they were trying to say your name.

At just eleven, Alice had already killed twenty-three Hollowed, two grown men, and a skunk that wouldn’t die right—and only one of those still haunted her.

Never once had she screamed. Her dad said screaming was useless. Screaming got you bit. Screaming told every Hollowed in a mile radius where your soft little lungs were. And she was too old to be screaming at corpses, even the ones that twitched after they were supposed to be down and blinked at her until she split its brains all over the place.

If she was being honest—which she usually was, except when she wasn’t—the blinking was the one thing that kind of freaked her the hell out. Just a tad.

She didn’t tell Ben. Not because she was scared, but because he’d make that face again. The one that looked like someone just took a shit on his boots while he was thinking about his dead wife. He got like that sometimes. Quiet and staring and colder than the nights up near the pass, and she didn’t like seeing him like that, because it made her remember things, too. Like his laugh. Or how he used to call her bug instead of just kid or hey or lower your voice, Alice, we’re not alone out here.

She missed the way he used to smile.

Now his smiles were like bullets. Rare, spent carefully, and usually only if she managed to say something so stupid or ridiculous that it snuck out of him before he could swallow it back down.

They lived in an old farmhouse about a mile off an old back road that no one used anymore, because backroads meant trees and trees meant shadows and shadows meant maybe you didn’t come back. It had two floors (sort of), a wood stove that Ben had patched with spare car parts, and a barn where the chickens used to live until one night a Hollowed dragged itself in and got all tangled in the feed netting and screamed until Ben put a hatchet in its head.

After that, no more chickens. No more barn. Now they kept their gear there, and Alice never went in alone.

The house smelled like smoke and earth and sometimes damp socks, and the walls were patched in duct tape and old road signs. A few cracked solar panels still clung stubbornly to the roof, scratched but functional enough to cough up just enough electricity for a single bulb and a working socket or two—luxuries so rare now that Alice sometimes felt guilty enjoying them. The upstairs bathroom didn’t work anymore, and the downstairs one only worked if you jiggled the handle just right and sang to it like you meant it.

But it was theirs—and they were alive. Which was saying something.

There weren’t many kids left. Not really. She hadn’t seen another one in over a year, and the last time she did, the kid was missing two fingers and had eyes like a scared raccoon and stole half their jerky before vanishing into the woods. Alice kind of respected it, honestly. Raccoon Kid had balls.

Most of the time, it was just her and Ben. Sunrise to sunset. Routine like religion.

Wake up. Check traps. Check perimeter. Eat. Practice drills. Scavenge if they had to. Eat again. Listen for the wind. Go to bed (and by that, meaning Alice went to bed while Ben stood guard all night like some creepy statue). She wasn't actually certain she'd ever seen him sleep.

Ben had this way of knowing when something was wrong before it happened. Like his bones felt it. Alice didn’t ask how. She figured it was Dad Magic, or maybe some kind of post-apocalyptic sixth sense that came standard with losing your wife and surviving long enough to look like your skin forgot how to relax.

She remembered him different.

Warm hands. Bad singing. Lifting her up by the armpits like she weighed nothing and spinning until they both collapsed in the backyard laughing so hard her stomach hurt. That was before everything. Before the Red Hour. Before Mom fell to the ground and never got back up again. Before the world started smelling like rot and ash and wet leaves.

She didn’t remember the exact moment everything changed, just the after. Just Ben bundling her into the truck when that wasn’t right, because it was supposed to be dinner time, and he’d stuffed her shoes on the wrong feet, and there was the sound of sirens, and something screaming in the distance that wasn’t quite human.

She’d asked about it once. The scream. What it was.

Ben just said: Nothing we need to remember.

So, she didn’t ask again. But she thought about it.

She thought about a lot of things when the nights got too quiet and her brain wouldn’t shut up; when she stared at the ceiling and imagined stupid things like what it might be like to have a birthday party again. Balloons. A cake that wasn’t made out of protein bars and rehydrated dried fruit. Music. Candles. A laugh from her dad that didn’t sound like it had crawled out of a war zone.

She didn’t know if that world was real anymore. Maybe it never was.

Still, she held onto the idea of it. Like the last good marble in a pocket full of cracked glass. Some days she even hummed songs she barely remembered, just to fill the air.

It helped. Sort of.

Today was supposed to be a normal day. Same old shit, same old drill. But the blinking Hollowed changed that.

Ben had been out scouting the fence line. She was supposed to be inside cataloguing their supplies, which was code for don’t touch the damn rifle, Alice, and don’t go outside unless you want your face eaten.

Except she’d gone outside anyway.

Just to the edge of the property. Just to check the snare they set three days ago. And there it was: this Hollowed—fresh-ish, one eye missing, mouth slack—caught in the wire. She’d thought it was dead-dead. Like, all the way gone.

Then it blinked. So, she stabbed it. Because fuck that.

Now, standing over its corpse, the screwdriver still sticky in her hand, Alice wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and whispered, “Jesus Christ,” even though she wasn’t supposed to take the Lord’s name in vain. Not that it mattered. God had left this place a long time ago.

Behind her, leaves rustled. Ben stepped out of the woods like a ghost, rifle slung, eyes sharp. His gaze landed on the dead Hollowed, then on her.

Alice smiled.

“Surprise.”

He didn’t return it, as usual. But he looked at her—eyes scanning her over from head to toe in an instant—and then, after a pause, said, “You okay?”

And she nodded. Because she was. Sort of. Mostly.

“I stabbed it in the face,” she said proudly. Just in case he hadn’t noticed her handiwork yet.

Ben just grunted. She waited. Then, just before he turned to head back to the house, she heard it—that sound she chased like sunlight. A breath. A huff. Not quite a laugh. But close.

Alice grinned. That was progress, as far as she was concerned. Maybe tomorrow he’d actually smile.

Maybe. If she stabbed something weirder.

*

Back at the house, Ben made her scrub the screwdriver in the rain barrel by the front door while he gutted the snare trap rabbit they might not even get to eat now, he wasn’t sure, because she “couldn’t follow one goddamn instruction without poking something in the eye.” His words, not hers. Not that he was mad. Not really. That was just his version of parental affection: swearing, scowling, making sure she washed her hands and didn’t die of tetanus or zombie bites.

The water was cold. Her fingers stung. She scrubbed anyway. Under her nails. Around the grip. Into the threads where the rust liked to hide. She imagined she was scrubbing out the memory of that blink, too. Like if she scraped hard enough, it would stop replaying behind her eyelids.

But she liked the sting. It meant her nerves still worked. Even better, it meant another day in the books where her hand wasn’t rotting off yet.

Ben muttered to himself the whole time, slicing up the rabbit with his hunting knife like it’d insulted his mother. Something about wasting resources, attracting attention, and what the hell had she been thinking going out there alone. She didn’t answer. He didn’t expect her to.

Once inside, Alice toed off her boots at the door like she’d been taught—mud stays out, Hollowed stink stays out, and if you ever forgot, Ben would lecture you with that quiet, disappointed voice that hurt worse than yelling. That whole ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ emotional terrorism only grownups were apparently allowed to get away with.

She sat on the overturned milk crate by the woodstove, picked a pebble out of her sock, and listened to the wind try to push through the gaps in the walls. It made a low, howling sound. Not quite human. Not quite Hollowed. Just the bones of a place settling like they missed the weight of the people who’d gone.

If anyone bothered to ask her opinion on the matter, Alice would say that this was the part of the day she hated most. The nothing part. The waiting part.

Because when there wasn’t a thing to kill or fix or look for, her brain went sideways. Started chewing on thoughts like a blender with the lid off—shit flying everywhere, impossible to clean up. Sometimes she’d remember stuff she didn’t want to… like the way her mom smelled, or the faint sound of her dad wailing a horrible sort of sound into the open air before they left her behind forever, or the clatter of bones in the backseat that one time they opened the wrong car door.

Other times she’d think about music. God, she missed music.

Not the stupid harmonica Ben kept for morale emergencies. He’d played it once (if you could call it playing, and Alice wasn’t about to go that far) during a recon nap and three Hollowed came crashing in like it was a reunion tour. No—real music. Stuff with drums. Stuff with pretty voices that made you feel like maybe the world wasn’t a total toilet fire.

Years back, when she was eight, she’d found a cassette player in a gas station. Didn’t work. Rusted through. But she held it anyway; sat there for ten minutes with it in her lap, pretending she could hear it.

Ben had watched her the whole time, expression hard and eyes unreadable as usual. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t take it away either, though. But later, Alice found it in her bag, carefully wrapped in an old T-shirt—almost delicately, in a way she didn’t realize her dad’s hands could touch things anymore. She never mentioned it, and neither did he.

Now, she looked at the little pile of parts on the shelf over the stove—busted walkie, cracked solar charger, what might’ve once been a radio antenna. Someday, she was going to make it work. Even if her dad didn’t believe her, which was fine, because she knew the truth. Someday she’d hear music again.

Ben came in, boots heavy, coat wet. He set the rabbit meat in the pan, muttering about rot and risk and why he let her do anything alone when she couldn’t even follow—

“—one fucking rule, Alice. One.”

She gave him a look. The Look. Capital L. The one that said, I know I fucked up but you still love me so quit pretending you don’t. A mix of shit-eating grin and wide-eyed innocence, weaponized over the years into something just barely effective enough to dent his permanent scowl.

He regarded her from the corner of his eye and then grunted, short and sharp under his breath. Called her a gremlin before turning his attention back to their dinner-to-be.

She smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

He didn’t say anything. He never did anymore. Not when she called him Dad like she used to when things were normal, back when he smiled more and the world didn’t reek of blood and smoke. Sometimes it felt like she was reminding him of who he was—of who they were—just by saying it out loud.

*

Dinner was meat, a tin of beans, and something green that Alice pretended was edible. Probably dandelion or moss or some weird mutant cousin of spinach Ben found growing in the runoff near the well. He’d boiled it until it wilted like snot.

She ate fast, like she always did. Shovel, chew, swallow. Repeat. Quick bites were warm bites. Fast meals meant less time sitting still with your thoughts—which, in Alice’s case, tended to multiply like rats in the walls if you let them.

Ben said eating fast made you careless. That if you couldn’t slow down for food, you’d miss the thing sneaking up on you next time you camped out under open sky. But then again, he also said that if you stopped paying attention during a fight, you ended up like Uncle Jared (who was neither their uncle nor particularly missed).

Uncle Jared had frozen once, just once. Stared too long at a Hollowed that used to be someone he knew. Now he was fertilizer near the edge of Sector One. Or, at least, that’s what Ben usually said when he wanted to make a point.

After, Alice helped her dad gather some wood from outside and he made them a fire in the living room. In their telltale silence, they sat in the low orange glow of the fireplace, sharpening blades. The light threw long shadows across the patched-up floorboards and clung to the soot-lined corners of the room.

Ben cleaned his rifle, slow and methodical like always. His hands moved like they had muscle memory independent of thought. Alice cleaned her nails with a rusted multi-tool, flicking dirt and dried blood into the embers.

The lack of conversation wasn’t awkward. It was just how they lived. Casual chit-chat cost energy, and energy was for people with full bellies and safe homes. They had neither.

Still, though, part of her suddenly had the gnawing urge to break.

She wanted to ask if he remembered that one birthday when he made her a cake out of cornbread and cough syrup and sang like a dying cat. Wanted to ask if he ever thought about what came next. If there even was a next. If there was any point to sharpening knives when the world was already broken, and they were just chewing stale protein bars waiting to die slightly more prepared than everyone else.

Instead, she said, “Do you think Hollowed ever dream?”

Ben looked at her, slow. Not annoyed—just tired. Like they’d been down this road before. Too many times.

“What for?” he asked. “They’re not people.”

She shrugged, but didn’t back down. “They were.”

“Yeah, well, they’re not now.”

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, voice still casual. “Yeah, but maybe some part of them still... I dunno. Feels something.”

He set the rifle down with a quiet clack. Not angry. Just final.

“You start caring about what’s left of them, you’ll hesitate,” he said matter-of-factly. “You hesitate, you die.”

She didn’t respond at first. Just let the words settle. Let them sit like dust in the air. Then, she mumbled, “I’m not saying we don’t kill them. I’m just saying... I dunno, like… maybe they don’t go all the way dark. That’s all.”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at the fire. Alice wasn’t expecting more than that, which was good because he didn’t give it.

Silence settled again, warm and thick. The fire popped, chewing on a wet log like it was a bone. Rain started tapping against the roof—light at first, then steady. Somewhere outside, a possum screeched. Or maybe it wasn’t a possum. Out here, you learned not to ask.

Alice’s eyes tracked the shadows climbing the walls. Her brain, always a step ahead of her mouth, started wandering again. Now she was picking absentmindedly at a scab near her knuckle, then said it—casual, like she was tossing it away: “You ever gonna smile again, or is this just your face now?”

Ben didn’t move. Didn’t look at her. Just kept staring into the flames like they owed him something. She didn’t push it. Just shrugged and muttered, “Used to, is all.”

He scratched his beard. Shifted like his coat itched, but still didn’t look at her.

“Yeah,” he said finally, flat as dirt. “Used to.”

And that was it. No long pause, no apology, no reassuring hand on her shoulder. Just two people sitting near a fire, not saying everything they wanted to. The wind outside pressed against the window like it wanted in. Somewhere in the dark beyond the glass, there was the faint ghost of a howl—a thin, warbling sound, like a scream stretched too far.

Not close. But not far enough either. Neither of them flinched.

Alice shifted her weight, curled her feet up onto the crate, and leaned back against the cold stone wall. The fire cracked. Ben adjusted the sights on his rifle.

Life went on. Sort of.

1.

Alice

They say the Hollowed can’t think. That they’re just meat now—muscle and hunger and echo.

But Alice knew better. The old ones, the ones that lingered... they remembered. Not faces, maybe. But places. Doors. Smells. And sometimes, when it got real quiet, they looked at you like they were trying to say your name.

At just eleven, Alice had already killed twenty-three Hollowed, two grown men, and a skunk that wouldn’t die right—and only one of those still haunted her.

Never once had she screamed. Her dad said screaming was useless. Screaming got you bit. Screaming told every Hollowed in a mile radius where your soft little lungs were. And she was too old to be screaming at corpses, even the ones that twitched after they were supposed to be down and blinked at her until she split its brains all over the place.

If she was being honest—which she usually was, except when she wasn’t—the blinking was the one thing that kind of freaked her the hell out. Just a tad.

She didn’t tell Ben. Not because she was scared, but because he’d make that face again. The one that looked like someone just took a shit on his boots while he was thinking about his dead wife. He got like that sometimes. Quiet and staring and colder than the nights up near the pass, and she didn’t like seeing him like that, because it made her remember things, too. Like his laugh. Or how he used to call her bug instead of just kid or hey or lower your voice, Alice, we’re not alone out here.

She missed the way he used to smile.

Now his smiles were like bullets. Rare, spent carefully, and usually only if she managed to say something so stupid or ridiculous that it snuck out of him before he could swallow it back down.

They lived in an old farmhouse about a mile off an old back road that no one used anymore, because backroads meant trees and trees meant shadows and shadows meant maybe you didn’t come back. It had two floors (sort of), a wood stove that Ben had patched with spare car parts, and a barn where the chickens used to live until one night a Hollowed dragged itself in and got all tangled in the feed netting and screamed until Ben put a hatchet in its head.

After that, no more chickens. No more barn. Now they kept their gear there, and Alice never went in alone.

The house smelled like smoke and earth and sometimes damp socks, and the walls were patched in duct tape and old road signs. A few cracked solar panels still clung stubbornly to the roof, scratched but functional enough to cough up just enough electricity for a single bulb and a working socket or two—luxuries so rare now that Alice sometimes felt guilty enjoying them. The upstairs bathroom didn’t work anymore, and the downstairs one only worked if you jiggled the handle just right and sang to it like you meant it.

But it was theirs—and they were alive. Which was saying something.

There weren’t many kids left. Not really. She hadn’t seen another one in over a year, and the last time she did, the kid was missing two fingers and had eyes like a scared raccoon and stole half their jerky before vanishing into the woods. Alice kind of respected it, honestly. Raccoon Kid had balls.

Most of the time, it was just her and Ben. Sunrise to sunset. Routine like religion.

Wake up. Check traps. Check perimeter. Eat. Practice drills. Scavenge if they had to. Eat again. Listen for the wind. Go to bed (and by that, meaning Alice went to bed while Ben stood guard all night like some creepy statue). She wasn't actually certain she'd ever seen him sleep.

Ben had this way of knowing when something was wrong before it happened. Like his bones felt it. Alice didn’t ask how. She figured it was Dad Magic, or maybe some kind of post-apocalyptic sixth sense that came standard with losing your wife and surviving long enough to look like your skin forgot how to relax.

She remembered him different.

Warm hands. Bad singing. Lifting her up by the armpits like she weighed nothing and spinning until they both collapsed in the backyard laughing so hard her stomach hurt. That was before everything. Before the Red Hour. Before Mom fell to the ground and never got back up again. Before the world started smelling like rot and ash and wet leaves.

She didn’t remember the exact moment everything changed, just the after. Just Ben bundling her into the truck when that wasn’t right, because it was supposed to be dinner time, and he’d stuffed her shoes on the wrong feet, and there was the sound of sirens, and something screaming in the distance that wasn’t quite human.

She’d asked about it once. The scream. What it was.

Ben just said: Nothing we need to remember.

So, she didn’t ask again. But she thought about it.

She thought about a lot of things when the nights got too quiet and her brain wouldn’t shut up; when she stared at the ceiling and imagined stupid things like what it might be like to have a birthday party again. Balloons. A cake that wasn’t made out of protein bars and rehydrated dried fruit. Music. Candles. A laugh from her dad that didn’t sound like it had crawled out of a war zone.

She didn’t know if that world was real anymore. Maybe it never was.

Still, she held onto the idea of it. Like the last good marble in a pocket full of cracked glass. Some days she even hummed songs she barely remembered, just to fill the air.

It helped. Sort of.

Today was supposed to be a normal day. Same old shit, same old drill. But the blinking Hollowed changed that.

Ben had been out scouting the fence line. She was supposed to be inside cataloguing their supplies, which was code for don’t touch the damn rifle, Alice, and don’t go outside unless you want your face eaten.

Except she’d gone outside anyway.

Just to the edge of the property. Just to check the snare they set three days ago. And there it was: this Hollowed—fresh-ish, one eye missing, mouth slack—caught in the wire. She’d thought it was dead-dead. Like, all the way gone.

Then it blinked. So, she stabbed it. Because fuck that.

Now, standing over its corpse, the screwdriver still sticky in her hand, Alice wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and whispered, “Jesus Christ,” even though she wasn’t supposed to take the Lord’s name in vain. Not that it mattered. God had left this place a long time ago.

Behind her, leaves rustled. Ben stepped out of the woods like a ghost, rifle slung, eyes sharp. His gaze landed on the dead Hollowed, then on her.

Alice smiled.

“Surprise.”

He didn’t return it, as usual. But he looked at her—eyes scanning her over from head to toe in an instant—and then, after a pause, said, “You okay?”

And she nodded. Because she was. Sort of. Mostly.

“I stabbed it in the face,” she said proudly. Just in case he hadn’t noticed her handiwork yet.

Ben just grunted. She waited. Then, just before he turned to head back to the house, she heard it—that sound she chased like sunlight. A breath. A huff. Not quite a laugh. But close.

Alice grinned. That was progress, as far as she was concerned. Maybe tomorrow he’d actually smile.

Maybe. If she stabbed something weirder.

*

Back at the house, Ben made her scrub the screwdriver in the rain barrel by the front door while he gutted the snare trap rabbit they might not even get to eat now, he wasn’t sure, because she “couldn’t follow one goddamn instruction without poking something in the eye.” His words, not hers. Not that he was mad. Not really. That was just his version of parental affection: swearing, scowling, making sure she washed her hands and didn’t die of tetanus or zombie bites.

The water was cold. Her fingers stung. She scrubbed anyway. Under her nails. Around the grip. Into the threads where the rust liked to hide. She imagined she was scrubbing out the memory of that blink, too. Like if she scraped hard enough, it would stop replaying behind her eyelids.

But she liked the sting. It meant her nerves still worked. Even better, it meant another day in the books where her hand wasn’t rotting off yet.

Ben muttered to himself the whole time, slicing up the rabbit with his hunting knife like it’d insulted his mother. Something about wasting resources, attracting attention, and what the hell had she been thinking going out there alone. She didn’t answer. He didn’t expect her to.

Once inside, Alice toed off her boots at the door like she’d been taught—mud stays out, Hollowed stink stays out, and if you ever forgot, Ben would lecture you with that quiet, disappointed voice that hurt worse than yelling. That whole ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ emotional terrorism only grownups were apparently allowed to get away with.

She sat on the overturned milk crate by the woodstove, picked a pebble out of her sock, and listened to the wind try to push through the gaps in the walls. It made a low, howling sound. Not quite human. Not quite Hollowed. Just the bones of a place settling like they missed the weight of the people who’d gone.

If anyone bothered to ask her opinion on the matter, Alice would say that this was the part of the day she hated most. The nothing part. The waiting part.

Because when there wasn’t a thing to kill or fix or look for, her brain went sideways. Started chewing on thoughts like a blender with the lid off—shit flying everywhere, impossible to clean up. Sometimes she’d remember stuff she didn’t want to… like the way her mom smelled, or the faint sound of her dad wailing a horrible sort of sound into the open air before they left her behind forever, or the clatter of bones in the backseat that one time they opened the wrong car door.

Other times she’d think about music. God, she missed music.

Not the stupid harmonica Ben kept for morale emergencies. He’d played it once (if you could call it playing, and Alice wasn’t about to go that far) during a recon nap and three Hollowed came crashing in like it was a reunion tour. No—real music. Stuff with drums. Stuff with pretty voices that made you feel like maybe the world wasn’t a total toilet fire.

Years back, when she was eight, she’d found a cassette player in a gas station. Didn’t work. Rusted through. But she held it anyway; sat there for ten minutes with it in her lap, pretending she could hear it.

Ben had watched her the whole time, expression hard and eyes unreadable as usual. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t take it away either, though. But later, Alice found it in her bag, carefully wrapped in an old T-shirt—almost delicately, in a way she didn’t realize her dad’s hands could touch things anymore. She never mentioned it, and neither did he.

Now, she looked at the little pile of parts on the shelf over the stove—busted walkie, cracked solar charger, what might’ve once been a radio antenna. Someday, she was going to make it work. Even if her dad didn’t believe her, which was fine, because she knew the truth. Someday she’d hear music again.

Ben came in, boots heavy, coat wet. He set the rabbit meat in the pan, muttering about rot and risk and why he let her do anything alone when she couldn’t even follow—

“—one fucking rule, Alice. One.”

She gave him a look. The Look. Capital L. The one that said, I know I fucked up but you still love me so quit pretending you don’t. A mix of shit-eating grin and wide-eyed innocence, weaponized over the years into something just barely effective enough to dent his permanent scowl.

He regarded her from the corner of his eye and then grunted, short and sharp under his breath. Called her a gremlin before turning his attention back to their dinner-to-be.

She smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

He didn’t say anything. He never did anymore. Not when she called him Dad like she used to when things were normal, back when he smiled more and the world didn’t reek of blood and smoke. Sometimes it felt like she was reminding him of who he was—of who they were—just by saying it out loud.

*

Dinner was meat, a tin of beans, and something green that Alice pretended was edible. Probably dandelion or moss or some weird mutant cousin of spinach Ben found growing in the runoff near the well. He’d boiled it until it wilted like snot.

She ate fast, like she always did. Shovel, chew, swallow. Repeat. Quick bites were warm bites. Fast meals meant less time sitting still with your thoughts—which, in Alice’s case, tended to multiply like rats in the walls if you let them.

Ben said eating fast made you careless. That if you couldn’t slow down for food, you’d miss the thing sneaking up on you next time you camped out under open sky. But then again, he also said that if you stopped paying attention during a fight, you ended up like Uncle Jared (who was neither their uncle nor particularly missed).

Uncle Jared had frozen once, just once. Stared too long at a Hollowed that used to be someone he knew. Now he was fertilizer near the edge of Sector One. Or, at least, that’s what Ben usually said when he wanted to make a point.

After, Alice helped her dad gather some wood from outside and he made them a fire in the living room. In their telltale silence, they sat in the low orange glow of the fireplace, sharpening blades. The light threw long shadows across the patched-up floorboards and clung to the soot-lined corners of the room.

Ben cleaned his rifle, slow and methodical like always. His hands moved like they had muscle memory independent of thought. Alice cleaned her nails with a rusted multi-tool, flicking dirt and dried blood into the embers.

The lack of conversation wasn’t awkward. It was just how they lived. Casual chit-chat cost energy, and energy was for people with full bellies and safe homes. They had neither.

Still, though, part of her suddenly had the gnawing urge to break.

She wanted to ask if he remembered that one birthday when he made her a cake out of cornbread and cough syrup and sang like a dying cat. Wanted to ask if he ever thought about what came next. If there even was a next. If there was any point to sharpening knives when the world was already broken, and they were just chewing stale protein bars waiting to die slightly more prepared than everyone else.

Instead, she said, “Do you think Hollowed ever dream?”

Ben looked at her, slow. Not annoyed—just tired. Like they’d been down this road before. Too many times.

“What for?” he asked. “They’re not people.”

She shrugged, but didn’t back down. “They were.”

“Yeah, well, they’re not now.”

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, voice still casual. “Yeah, but maybe some part of them still... I dunno. Feels something.”

He set the rifle down with a quiet clack. Not angry. Just final.

“You start caring about what’s left of them, you’ll hesitate,” he said matter-of-factly. “You hesitate, you die.”

She didn’t respond at first. Just let the words settle. Let them sit like dust in the air. Then, she mumbled, “I’m not saying we don’t kill them. I’m just saying... I dunno, like… maybe they don’t go all the way dark. That’s all.”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at the fire. Alice wasn’t expecting more than that, which was good because he didn’t give it.

Silence settled again, warm and thick. The fire popped, chewing on a wet log like it was a bone. Rain started tapping against the roof—light at first, then steady. Somewhere outside, a possum screeched. Or maybe it wasn’t a possum. Out here, you learned not to ask.

Alice’s eyes tracked the shadows climbing the walls. Her brain, always a step ahead of her mouth, started wandering again. Now she was picking absentmindedly at a scab near her knuckle, then said it—casual, like she was tossing it away: “You ever gonna smile again, or is this just your face now?”

Ben didn’t move. Didn’t look at her. Just kept staring into the flames like they owed him something. She didn’t push it. Just shrugged and muttered, “Used to, is all.”

He scratched his beard. Shifted like his coat itched, but still didn’t look at her.

“Yeah,” he said finally, flat as dirt. “Used to.”

And that was it. No long pause, no apology, no reassuring hand on her shoulder. Just two people sitting near a fire, not saying everything they wanted to. The wind outside pressed against the window like it wanted in. Somewhere in the dark beyond the glass, there was the faint ghost of a howl—a thin, warbling sound, like a scream stretched too far.

Not close. But not far enough either. Neither of them flinched.

Alice shifted her weight, curled her feet up onto the crate, and leaned back against the cold stone wall. The fire cracked. Ben adjusted the sights on his rifle.

Life went on. Sort of.

Well hello, my lovely peeps - it’s been a hot minute, huh?

As if it’s been 10 whole years since I started this account and began writing #Stucky fanfic on #AO3. To those of you who never got the endings to my WIPs (looking at you, After Hours and Little Lies), I am SO. Fucking. Sorry.

Life has taken me many places over the last decade. I have since gotten married, moved across the country, and have 3 kids (2 amazing stepsons and 1 feral toddler). Over these last 10 years, I have thought of this fandom often, I have thought of my unfinished stories, and I have thought of our beloved Steve and Bucky.

Unfortunately, I also developed a crippling fear of writing again.

We knew the drill - I would show back up here every couple years with the (very honest) intention to get my ass back into gear and finally pick up the stories I left hanging. I - however unintentionally - gave a lot of you hope that those stories would be completed, only to vanish back into the void again.

For that, I want to say that I’m sorry.

The reason I’m back is because I want to share some exciting, vulnerable, and to be honest, terrifying news:

I am currently working on my first original novel - and I would like to start sharing it with you (at least, teasers) as it’s being written.

While it might not be Stucky, I hope that there might be at least one or two people here who would be interested and willing to read my original work - to meet these characters I have grown so in love with, and embark with me on their journey of survival, healing, and remembering what it means to let one’s self love again.

Along the way, I would ideally love to get your guys’ feedback on chapter snippets, have you help me shape and pick certain scenes, and basically help me be the writer I used to be again.

(And in turn, once the book eventually gets published, I’d love the opportunity to send you a free copy as my way of saying thanks! 🥺)

I’m not sure how many of my followers are still lurking around here, or how many will be interested in reading any of my work now.

But if there’s even one person willing to read it and give me their feedback, I will write for you.

Happy to be back and hope to hear from you,

Cap

Well hello, my lovely peeps - it’s been a hot minute, huh?

As if it’s been 10 whole years since I started this account and began writing #Stucky fanfic on #AO3. To those of you who never got the endings to my WIPs (looking at you, After Hours and Little Lies), I am SO. Fucking. Sorry.

Life has taken me many places over the last decade. I have since gotten married, moved across the country, and have 3 kids (2 amazing stepsons and 1 feral toddler). Over these last 10 years, I have thought of this fandom often, I have thought of my unfinished stories, and I have thought of our beloved Steve and Bucky.

Unfortunately, I also developed a crippling fear of writing again.

We knew the drill - I would show back up here every couple years with the (very honest) intention to get my ass back into gear and finally pick up the stories I left hanging. I - however unintentionally - gave a lot of you hope that those stories would be completed, only to vanish back into the void again.

For that, I want to say that I’m sorry.

The reason I’m back is because I want to share some exciting, vulnerable, and to be honest, terrifying news:

I am currently working on my first original novel - and I would like to start sharing it with you (at least, teasers) as it’s being written.

While it might not be Stucky, I hope that there might be at least one or two people here who would be interested and willing to read my original work - to meet these characters I have grown so in love with, and embark with me on their journey of survival, healing, and remembering what it means to let one’s self love again.

Along the way, I would ideally love to get your guys’ feedback on chapter snippets, have you help me shape and pick certain scenes, and basically help me be the writer I used to be again.

(And in turn, once the book eventually gets published, I’d love the opportunity to send you a free copy as my way of saying thanks! 🥺)

I’m not sure how many of my followers are still lurking around here, or how many will be interested in reading any of my work now.

But if there’s even one person willing to read it and give me their feedback, I will write for you.

Happy to be back and hope to hear from you,

Cap

Well hello, my lovely peeps - it’s been a hot minute, huh?

As if it’s been 10 whole years since I started this account and began writing #Stucky fanfic on #AO3. To those of you who never got the endings to my WIPs (looking at you, After Hours and Little Lies), I am SO. Fucking. Sorry.

Life has taken me many places over the last decade. I have since gotten married, moved across the country, and have 3 kids (2 amazing stepsons and 1 feral toddler). Over these last 10 years, I have thought of this fandom often, I have thought of my unfinished stories, and I have thought of our beloved Steve and Bucky.

Unfortunately, I also developed a crippling fear of writing again.

We knew the drill - I would show back up here every couple years with the (very honest) intention to get my ass back into gear and finally pick up the stories I left hanging. I - however unintentionally - gave a lot of you hope that those stories would be completed, only to vanish back into the void again.

For that, I want to say that I’m sorry.

The reason I’m back is because I want to share some exciting, vulnerable, and to be honest, terrifying news:

I am currently working on my first original novel - and I would like to start sharing it with you (at least, teasers) as it’s being written.

While it might not be Stucky, I hope that there might be at least one or two people here who would be interested and willing to read my original work - to meet these characters I have grown so in love with, and embark with me on their journey of survival, healing, and remembering what it means to let one’s self love again.

Along the way, I would ideally love to get your guys’ feedback on chapter snippets, have you help me shape and pick certain scenes, and basically help me be the writer I used to be again.

(And in turn, once the book eventually gets published, I’d love the opportunity to send you a free copy as my way of saying thanks! 🥺)

I’m not sure how many of my followers are still lurking around here, or how many will be interested in reading any of my work now.

But if there’s even one person willing to read it and give me their feedback, I will write for you.

Happy to be back and hope to hear from you,

Cap

Have we talked about this scene yet? Because I want to talk about this scene and why it’s important that this is the memory Steve is thinking about right before he has to face the Winter Soldier again.

We all know how out of place and unhappy Steve feels in modern society. The movie doesn’t make any bones about it. Even though good ol’ Cap exudes positivity, we see how he uses his time. When he’s not at work for SHIELD, he’s grasping at straws, trying to catch up, trying to make sense of how he fits in a world that’s moved on without him. When Steve starts to feel out of place even when he’s playing soldier for SHIELD, Sam tells him that he could do something different, anything at all; but Steve looks blank. Sam asks him what makes him happy, and Steve doesn’t know. 

The only thing that keeps him going is knowing that his sacrifice helped save the world. As he says to Peggy, he always wanted to do “what was right,” and at least he can take some comfort from the fact that he helped save countless lives from Hydra by losing everything that meant a damn to him.

That is, until he and Natasha find Zola in the underground bunker and they find out that Hydra is still alive and well – thriving, even – within the ranks of SHIELD. 

This is the moment Steve learns he gave up his life for nothing.  

So. The flashback scene.

I’ve heard some people say that they think the scene is extraneous. That it’s enough to know that Bucky and Steve were friends way back when, only Bucky doesn’t remember (and if you want more skinny!Steve and scenes of Bucky and Steve being chummy, go back and watch The First Avenger). On the surface, it may seem like this scene is rehashing old territory, but it’s actually telling us quite a bit more than that. 

Bucky is walking Steve home after his mother’s funeral, and Steve is obviously vulnerable and shaken. His parents were the foundational figures of his life, and they’re both gone now. Before Bucky can even get the question out, Steve rejects the idea of moving in with Bucky. He insists he can get by on his own. Then he fumbles clumsily in his jacket looking for his key, but he can’t find it. Bucky casually picks up the spare and hands it to him. 

This moment.

It’s such a simple gesture, but the camera focuses in on that key like it’s the freaking Tesseract. Why? Why is this moment with Bucky so prominent in Steve’s thoughts? Why not something out of their days together with the Howling Commandos? Or why not something from when they were kids running around on the playground? 

This moment is an echo of exactly what Steve’s feeling in the future: lost and alone. Everything that means home is shut behind the locked door of time (or a coffin lid).

But against all possibility, Bucky is alive. And, to Steve, Bucky doesn’t just have the key back home, he is the key back home.  

“I can get by on my own.”

“But the thing is, you don’t have to.”

Ninja Turtle