One Of The Talk

Aldrich volunteered to take the first watch while Fiona and Camelia tried to get some rest.

On the upside, Trevor was still asleep, mercifully quiet, not screaming or complaining.

That was a small blessing amid everything else.

'I need to think this through,' Aldrich thought, his gaze fixed on the flickering bonfire before him.

His mind wandered, pressed down by the complexity of their situation.

Trevor lay fatally wounded, Dante, the supposed key player, was nowhere to be found, and now, to make things worse, there were Pharaoh's ants, prime walkers hunting them down.

A sickening sigh escaped Aldrich as he tried to grasp how all of these pieces fit together.

"What are you thinking about?" came Fiona's voice, startling him out of his thoughts.

"Huh? Can't sleep, I guess," Aldrich replied, noticing that Fiona had come over and now sat beside him by the bonfire.

"With everything going on, all the dangers lurking around us and everything we've been through, I can't imagine how anyone would sleep," Fiona murmured, her voice laced with exhaustion.

They both sighed in unison, staring into the fire, the crackling flames a stark reminder of the restless night ahead.

"Your familiar... When did it hatch?" Aldrich asked, breaking the silence.

Fiona glanced at him, then shrugged. "It happened a day ago. I was in the training room, working on my sword skills. I had the egg sitting on the side, and then suddenly... I heard a crack. And there she was—Tulip."

"You named it Tulip?" Aldrich's voice rose in surprise, the name seemingly out of place for a Firefox.

"Well, yes," Fiona said, her lips curling into a smile at the mention of her familiar. "I figured if it turned out to be a female, I'd name her Tulip. And she's a she, not an it."

"Right... Tulip," Aldrich echoed, a bit awkwardly.

A brief silence fell again, this one more comfortable than the last.

Aldrich shifted his focus back to the fire. "I see your familiar egg still hasn't hatched, though?"

Fiona glanced over at his egg, still nestled in its protective carrier.

"Nope, still waiting. I have no idea when it'll happen, but I hope soon."

Fiona nodded thoughtfully. "The sooner it hatches, the sooner it'll grow stronger. Your familiar's already an advantage."

"Yeah, but I'm not sure what to expect," Aldrich admitted, glancing down at the egg. "I'm not exactly sure what kind of familiar I'll get."

Aldrich's thoughts turned inward.

The chances of getting a familiar like Dwayne's, another Aldaman with a cat-type familiar, seemed high.

It wasn't common for members of the same clan to share the same familiar type, but it wasn't unheard of either.

He thought of the Pendragon clan, whose members almost universally bonded with dragons, an extinct species of familiar.

If Dwayne and Saldrich had both managed to summon a cat-type familiar, Aldrich's chances of getting one were higher than he'd previously thought.

He calculated the probabilities in his mind, the odds leaning heavily in favour of a feline familiar.

Still, the prospect of it wasn't the only thing on his mind.

It was the sudden and deep silence that felt like a restriction between them.

Aldrich shifted in his seat and finally broke the quiet. "Listen, Fiona... I know you've been avoiding me."

That was it, Aldrich finally decided to unseal what it was that had been eating at him all this time.

Fiona froze. "Avoiding you?" Her voice was filled with denial, though Aldrich could sense the unease beneath it.

"Come on, Fiona. I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm not the dumbest either. I know when someone's avoiding me, and you've been doing exactly that." He paused, ticking off the examples.

"Not coming to check on me when I was in the hospital, avoiding eye contact when we were at the shore, ignoring me at the institute... And you think I'll buy that it's all in my head?"

Fiona hesitated, her gaze dropping to the fire.

There was no denying it now.

After everything he'd pointed out, trying to play dumb would only make him seem foolish, and that wasn't her intention.

"Okay, fine," she admitted, her voice small. "You're right. I have been avoiding you."

Aldrich's lips twisted into a faint smile. "I knew it."

"But it's for a good reason," Fiona said quickly as if trying to defend herself.

"A good reason?" Aldrich scoffed. "Neglecting me while I was in the hospital? That's your idea of a good reason?"

Lost for words, she could not help but let out a chuckle, a hollow one defiant of actual humour. "I didn't mean to distance myself from you. It's just... complicated."

Aldrich raised an eyebrow. "Complicated? What's so complicated that you had to act like I don't exist?"

Fiona sighed, her eyes avoiding his. "I didn't want to get too close to you because... "

She was hesitant, unsure how else to phrase it.

Besides, she felt whatever was said now would only appear as excuses to Aldrich, and she did not want to be viewed that way by him.

"You are worried about me? Worried that my being close to you would get me in trouble with Selina".

Aldrich figured it out on his own and helped put it out there, what she was hesitant to say

It didn't take a genius to figure out what her reason would be.

However, Aldrich might have missed the part where she started avoiding him even before Selina came into the picture.

"So that's it, right?" Aldrich asked, leaning forward slightly. "You thought that staying away from me would somehow keep me safe from Selina, right? "

He was sure that was the reason, but it would not hurt to confirm it directly from her, to know that he wasn't being avoided because she was not at all interested in having anything to do with him.

Fiona nodded, her voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't want you getting caught in the crossfire."

Aldrich shook his head, disappointment flashing in his eyes. "Fiona, I'm not some damsel in distress that needs protecting you know. I can take care of myself."

He let the words hang in the air, heavier than the night around them.

His heart had a moment of respite to know Fiona was not avoiding him out of not wanting to have anything to do with him.

But it's too late for that now, is it not? One way or another, I am already tangled up with Selina so I don't think there is any reason for you to keep avoiding".

The reason was no longer valid since the deed had been done already.

"You don't get it Aldrich. There's still a chance for you to back out now. Selina hasn't completely set her eyes on you yet so you can st-".

Aldrich held out a hand to stop her. His expression with disappointed.

"Selina doesn't scare me. And you shouldn't be ignoring me just because of her. If you enjoy my company, you'd want to spend time with me, no matter what. But if you're just making excuses to stay away... well, then I guess I've got my answer."

Fiona looked at him, her eyes searching his face.

Unless his assumption was right, she had no reason to be this way...

The silence between them deepened as Aldrich waited for her response.

"So tell me, Fiona..." Aldrich leaned closer, his voice steady. "Which is it?"