#*agatha

Agatha cleared her throat and nodded. “Right. Sorry.” Without further delay, she approached the door and knocked.

There was an abrupt pause in the conversations being held inside, but they resumed immediately after one of the patrons proclaimed, “I’ll get it!” Agatha shifted anxiously from foot to foot as the muffled click of someone’s heels drew closer, until finally they stopped right behind the door. Agatha stared, waiting for it to swing open, but instead a little slot toward the top of the door slid aside and revealed a pair of brown eyes. They blinked at her curiously through the opening.

“Hello,” the person behind the door greeted. “Password?”

“Uh...” Agatha replied intelligently. When the eyes simply blinked at her, she carefully shifted Faye to her other arm and gestured toward her. “I’m just here to drop off this little girl. She directed me to this place.”

The eyes narrowed at her. “And why would she ask you to drop her off? She has legs.”

“She got hurt playing tag with some other kid, so she can’t walk. You could ask her yourself.” Agatha looked at Faye, but the girl was hiding her face in her shoulder. “Right, Faye?”

Faye squirmed away from the eyes peeking through the door and muttered something into Agatha’s shoulder. “What was that?” Agatha asked with a frown. Faye repeated it more loudly, but it still came out muffled. “What? Hey, let go so we can hear you.”

Albeit reluctantly, Faye obeyed and faced the door with averted eyes. “...I’m sorry, Aunt Sheila...”

The brown eyes peering at them through the door widened slightly. “Oh, baby, it’s okay! Come here.”

The opening in the door slid shut and, after several bolts and locks were undone, the door itself finally swung open. Immediately, out came a tall redhead woman in black heels, spreading her arms out wide to retrieve Faye from Agatha. Agatha clumsily handed her off and released a deep breath as the weight was finally lifted from her arms. The redhead woman seemed to carry Faye with no problems, however, and even managed to maintain her balance perfectly in her high heel shoes. She smiled widely at Faye and kissed her cheek, leaving a smudge of red lipstick on her face. Faye giggled and looped her arms around the woman’s neck in a similar fashion to how she clung to Agatha, though she was clearly more comfortable with the woman.

The redhead herself was made up nicely, with dark maroon lips and just enough blush to emphasize the contours of her face. Her hair came down her back in curls that were dull and frayed from the lack of proper hair care, but Agatha couldn’t help but admire them regardless. She wore a black turtleneck that came down to her elbows and gray slacks with buttons at the cuffs; simple, yet altogether an oddly stylish outfit for someone who was living in the middle of nuclear winter. Then again, perhaps the woman’s wardrobe simply consisted of many stylish things. Amelia would have liked her, she mused. She was, after all, always trying her best to look good with what she had.

“Thanks for taking care of my niece,” the woman said after properly smothering Faye with affection. “And sorry for whatever trouble she caused you. Kids, you know? They live through a catastrophic apocalypse just once and they think they’re invincible.”

Agatha grinned a bit, sheepish. “It’s cool. I wasn’t really busy doing much, anyway,” she confessed.

The woman appraised her for a moment, leaning against the doorframe. “I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we? What’s your name, chica?”

“Agatha. Agatha Liu.”

“Agatha...” the woman repeated, sounding out her name into carefully separated syllables. “That’s a cute name.” The woman took Faye into one arm and stretched out her free hand. “Mine’s Sheila. I run a bar here with my brother, Roy.”

Agatha took her hand and shook it. “Oh, that’s cool,” she said without thinking. Immediately after the words came out of her mouth, she lost a bit of her confident momentum and blushed; she was relying far too heavily on that one stock phrase, and it was quickly becoming a bad habit.

Sheila just smiled, and then beamed suddenly. “Hey, you know what? You can tell your folks to stop by and barter with us sometime. We accept supplies, fuel, souvenirs--anything, really--in exchange for food and services. Sometimes we can even offer a place to stay,” she said. There was an ominous crash behind her, followed by a short pause and nervous laughter. She leaned in and lowered her voice to say, “We don’t have any vacancies at the moment, but as soon as these two bozos take off I think we’ll have enough room.” She winked. “Do you have anything you can trade? Something you can bear to part with?”

Briefly, Agatha was reminded of Natasha’s attempt to ‘barter’ with her over the boat and decided that avoiding that line of questioning was probably for the best. “Uh...no, that’s okay. My parents...aren’t with me right now,” she answered slowly, choosing her words carefully.

Sheila frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re traveling alone?” Agatha nodded mutely and waited for her frown to grow even deeper, but instead she just raised her eyebrows. “Really? Wow, I’ve gotta say, that’s impressive for your age. You must’ve been just a few years older than Faye here when the bombings occurred. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Agatha shook her head. “Well, I haven’t been traveling alone all my life. I just started recently,” she confessed.

Sheila looked between Agatha and Faye, who was growing more and more visibly uncomfortable as the conversation progressed. “One moment, sweetie,” Sheila said to Agatha before temporarily kicking the door shut.

Agatha waited impatiently, again shifting from foot to foot as time went on. She could feel the blood between her legs beginning to spread to her inner thighs and shuddered, pressing her legs more tightly together. Even if they did have a pad for her to use, she didn’t have anything on her that she could trade off. After all, Natasha would kill her if she let anything happen to the medical kit. There wasn’t anything on the boat for her to use, either, so she was stuck bleeding through her clothes until either Natasha and Ryan returned or Penny and the others caught up with them, whichever came first. Either way, her clothes were doomed to be ruined, and her extra set was still in the middle of drying.

The door creaked as it was reopened, snapping Agatha out of her thoughts. “Sorry about that,” Sheila said, her arms Faye-free. “I had to take Faye to her daddy. Poor girl’s going to get a real verbal lashing for going out too far into the city again. He’s such a drag, honestly.” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, then brightened again. “But he told me to thank you.” Agatha just smiled uneasily, her thighs still pressed together oddly. Sheila noted her discomfort with a raised eyebrow and nodded at her. “What’s that, the pee-pee dance?”

Agatha’s face colored quickly. “...Do you guys, um, have a bathroom or something?” she asked, partially sidestepping the question.

Sheila hummed thoughtfully. “Well, normally I’d have to charge you to use our facilities, but I suppose that the bandages you used on Faye’s leg could be considered your payment. Plus, to be honest, I’d really prefer it if you didn’t piss all over my front porch,” she replied.

Agatha brightened. “Really? That’s great, thank you!”

Suddenly, Agatha stopped right in her tracks and blew out a frustrated white puff of air. She gazed up at the new height of the wire fence; previously, it had been short enough for her to hop over, but between the last time she visited and now, her father’s underlings must have extended it too high for easy entry. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. She kicked the fence petulantly and sighed. “Guess I better climb up.”

The fence rattled noisily as she grabbed on and hooked her feet into it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t climbed a fence before, but after her massive growth spurt about a year or two ago, she hadn’t really needed to. The fence had stayed exactly the same in all of her six years hopping over it, and as she grew older, it grew shorter and less intimidating. Granted, she hadn’t been all that intimidated by the ‘KEEP OUT’ sign when she first saw it--in fact, she had felt intrigued by it, at least enough to climb over and ruin her favorite shirt in the process--but climbing it every day had still been a daunting task.

Many things about the effects of the nuclear winter had always been kept secret from the children of the town. The forest was blocked off by the infamous wall, which had been built twice as tall as her own mother and father stacked on top of each other lengthwise. Other children and even entire families mysteriously moved away little by little without explanation; it wasn’t until Agatha turned twelve that she learned that these families had been exiled for stealing food or embezzlement. The town, boring as it was, had very strict rules about everything from rations to curfews to restricted areas no one was allowed to visit. Specifically, entry to the shore had been banned for a long time, not only because of the monster June encountered, but because of the accidents that occurred on the abandoned boardwalk. After both of those incidents, no one wanted to go anywhere near that place.

The snow softened her landing as she fell on her back with a solid thud, though the impact still knocked the wind from her. Regardless, she hastily picked herself up and ran down the cobblestone path to the beach, slipping carelessly on a few wet rocks on the way. Her back was sore from the landing, and there was a pebble in her boot--or perhaps her stocking--that stabbed her heel with each firm footstep, but she kept running anyway because she hated being late for their daily meetings and she was very, very late. It wasn’t as if Pinky had never been late a day in their life, but they were almost always the first one there when she arrived and she felt guilty for that. She couldn’t imagine how long they had been waiting.

“I’m here!” Agatha exclaimed as she skidded to a halt at the shoreline. She stopped, the snow well above her ankles at this point, and squinted out into the darkness. Upon confirming that yes, she was practically blind without proper glasses or a light, she clicked on her headlamp, but all she found was dark water rising and falling in its usual motions. When there was no response, she added, “I’ve got food!”

After a long moment, a familiar tentacle hesitantly shot out and rubbed her cheek in greeting. Agatha held the tentacle close to her face and smiled apologetically. “Sorry for the wait. Here.” She reached into her messenger bag and shook the jar of dead fish for emphasis.

Impatiently, Pinky pried their tentacle off her face and wrapped it around the jar, leaving bright red suction marks in their wake. Agatha sat down cross-legged and watched them dump their meal into the water hungrily. “You must be starving, huh? Since I didn’t stop by for lunch.” Pinky used their other tentacle to splash water at her, so she instinctively held up an arm to shield herself from the spray. “Don’t be like that; it wasn’t my fault! It’s all because of that stupid guy who got me in trouble...” She removed the headlamp from her head and shined it on Pinky’s tentacles as they gobbled down the rest of the fish. Their skin glistened with sea water in the lamplight, but it was difficult to see anything clearly with the way Pinky constantly swayed and fidgeted and, once their meal was over, tapped their tentacle against the shore demandingly. 

Agatha rolled her eyes. “I don’t have any more.” Pinky made a disapproving noise. “Well, what do you want me to do? Break into the food warehouse and smuggle all their salmon to you? Don’t you already have fish in the water, anyway? What’s up with that? Is our fish just more tasty than yours?” 

Pinky blinked their many eyes at her pleadingly while she frowned and crossed her arms. The blinking outlasted the frown, however. “...Oh, fine. I’ll try finding something bigger for you next time. And people call me spoiled.” Pinky rubbed her cheek with the underside of their tentacle, their skin smooth against hers.