Hobbstown Pt3
title Hobbstown
verse Honest-to-god Harsh Realm
rating R
summary Five years post canon, Tom Hobbes and Mike Pinocchio have a refugee camp and a real resistance settled in the anonymity of the American midlands. Their world and their cause have grown bigger than themselves, however, and has come to affect the lives of hundreds, if not thousands. Two of those thousands cross paths in Hobbstown during the days leading up to one of the resistance’s greatest accomplishments. But even in the relative sanctuary of the camp, nothing is certain or permanent. Rated for cussing and bad decision making.

(Pt 1: little ripples) (Pt 2: day to day)

It was amazing how time blindsided you, day in, day out. My first two weeks in Hobbstown felt like an eternity, almost to the point of pushing what had happened just a few weeks before into distant memory. For a long time before I made it to Tom’s little oasis in the woods, I’d been surviving in ghettos and cityscape warzones. It was my life, all that I’d known, but, hell. In the camp you were actually given a place to live. Just like that, I settled into domesticity. I couldn’t help it. I might have just been another sucker roped into a refugee camp, but I was safe, well fed, and – turns out – not a total waste with a gun.

“Didn’t suck,” Pinocchio said, one day, sitting down with his back against a tree behind me, reading through a stack of papers three inches thick. The fucker wore reading glasses, which should have been fucking hilarious, but you don’t tease kids with glasses when they can punch back. I wasn’t stupid. And anyway, they actually kind of suited him, thin wire frames in a very dark shade of blue.

“Fuck you,” I said, peering at the target. “I landed half that clip on that target. That was fucking amazing.”

“Yeah, yeah, Rambo, we’ll stick you on the front lines for the next invasion, how’s that sound?” Mike said, rolling to his feet and going to fetch the target. I probably wasn’t supposed to see it, but there was a quick flash of approval on his face as he walked back to me, studying the perforated silhouette.

“Like I said, didn’t suck,” he said, handing the paper over. “Good enough to call it a day, actually.”

“What?” I said, glancing up from my handy work. “We only just got here, man. What’s the deal? It’s a long ass walk back to the tent.”

Mike rolled his eyes, going over to pick up the rucksack he’d brought with him. “Sorry, princess, don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said, indicating Hobbstown with a nod of his head, “Got a few other things going on in my life right now.”

“Oh, blowing your boyfriend, okay,” I said, rolling my eyes as I stuffed the target into one of my bags. “I get it. Must be so much fun, fucking an honest-to-god G.I. joe. Here was me thinking that those things didn’t come with anything between the legs.”

“When he looks like that, who cares?” he said, but there was something satisfied in his smile that said that that wasn’t all of it. Shrugging on his pack, he waited for me to fall into step beside him before heading back to camp. “Hey, remind Nash about tonight, would you? Hauling out at six thirty.”

”Oh, he knows,” I muttered darkly. Never mind that he was still pale and shaking from the last top secret stunt the dream team had pulled. Pinocchio and Hobbes still had no idea how bad the jobs fucked him up. Nash wanted it that way, full of fucking self-sacrifice as he was, and I went along with it more or less because it was easier than bitching. Some days, it was a breeze to pretend like I didn’t care. Roll off my shoulders, your problem, not mine. But, whatever, fuck it - I’d shaken him out of a dozen nightmares the past few weeks and the chore was starting to cut into my beauty sleep. I’d seen night terrors and exhaustion before. But this…this wasn’t what fighting in trenches did to you. This was something else entirely.

“Gonna tell me what you fuckers are up to or what?”

“Nope,” Mike said simply, nodding me to the side of the road as a convoy of Jeeps started by us on the road, dozens of Marines packed in the back like a row of G.I. Joes on a toystore shelf. I had my hands shoved in my pockets, cammo pack hanging off my shoulders half empty, toes wet and freezing cold in my threadbare All-Stars. I hufted hair out of my face, watching the trucks ease by. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers…Tom Hobbes had finally got his war.

Mike nodded in response to a few shouted greetings, old friends, old fucks – who knew. I didn’t really care. What I did notice were the shouts and whistles that were definitely not for Tom Hobbes’ second in command. Apparently don’t-ask-don’t-tell didn’t last after you nuked a hole through the bottom of the world and let all the human decency drain out. Me, I attracted the fuckers like flies. Not that I minded, usually. Usually some hopped up Marine was a damn good way to spend a Friday night. But with Mike fucking Pinocchio walking alongside me like a damn shadow, I felt a shameful flush spread across my face.

He didn’t say anything right away. Eventually the convoy passed us, leaving us walking in awkward silence near the edge of the military side of camp. Distantly, I could hear someone counting off ’One! Two! Three!’ from the one of the quads, droning on in the early evening. Fucking military running laps at dinner time, like that was any kind of life.

“Anybody giving you trouble?” Mike asked eventually, breaking the silence and nodding in the direction the convoy had gone.

“They just want to fuck me,” I mumbled quickly, shrugging my shoulders and darting a look over at him. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Right,” he said, cocking his head at me. “’Course not.”

“What do you want me to say?” I sighed, digging a rubber band out of my pocked and tying my hair back in a nub at the base of my skull. “Save me, hold me, make the bad men go away? It’s fucking life, Pinocchio. I’m not your damn girlfriend. Besides…” I muttered, laughing a little bit, biting my bottom lip as I glanced over at him. “Unlike some people, I haven’t been laid since I got here.”

Pinocchio just rolled his eyes, smacking me on the back of the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Samantha, someone will ask you to prom.”

I grinned over at him, hoisting my pack higher up onto my back and picking up the pace to see if he would follow. “Hey, good pep talk. Thanks.”

*

Home. It was a hard idea to get used to. For a while, home had been some floor space in a tenement outside Cleveland, which was pretty okay, considering the digs had a floor. Those were the good days, right before dad died, but even then it hadn’t been anything like home. Home was chocolate chip cookies and cross-stitch pillows. Dad was a traveler, rambler, roller, sang songs at the dive bars for quarters and did the best that he could with me. Mom was a distant memory and a waft of perfume. For a long time it had been me and him traveling, one city after another, right up until he crossed paths with some fucker in a red beret and, bang-bang, one bullet is enough to change your life.

Two months in one place, however…I didn’t even see it happening, but you fall into ruts. Knick knacks cluttering up the tent space, percolating coffee in the morning over the fire and hitting the mess after the breakfast rush. Stumbling out of bed to shake Nash out of nightmares and laying my hand over his forehead as he settled back to sleep, not even aware that I’d woken him up. You get used to things, take comfort in them, and maybe that was the same as it being home.

I whistled as I got insight of the camp, a low and lazy cat call, just taking the piss. Nash was shirtless, throwing kindling on the fire, a borrowed ax leaning against a nearby tree.

“Going native, soldier boy?” I called out, just to see him whip around, rolling his eyes when he recognized me.

“Doin’ the hard work so your pansy ass doesn’t have to,” he said, indicating a new pile of wood with a jerk of his head. “I took some over to Mary-Ann, too. Gabe’s still getting over the sniffles, so she ain’t got the time. Where the hell have you been, anyway?”

“Had a date with Pinocchio,” I said falling down on my belly in front of the fire, propping my chin up in my hands. I sighed dramatically, fluttering my eyes. “He’s just so dreamy.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “You think you’re gonna make him wait all the way to the third date before you put out?”

I lowered my head, hair falling across my forehead and face, and looked up at him through my eye-lashes, letting my lips pull up into a soft, secret grin. Being on your own for so long taught you some tricks. “Who says I haven’t already?”

“You painted whore,” he muttered, turning away but not before I saw something proprietary and dark flash across his face. Huh. “Come on, beautiful. How about you and me go out to dinner tonight, just the two of us. I’ll hold your tray at the mess hall and everything. Try and win you back, like.” He smirked over his shoulder, tossing his pre-packed mission bag onto his back. “From the winsome and dark charms of Mike Pinocchio.”

“Ah,” I said, wincing and laughing when he leaned down and slapped my ass as he passed me. “Romance. You really know how to show a guy a good time.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, winking as he helped me up, “I’m still just digging for that heart of gold.”


*

So we went to the mess for dinner, like we did just about every night. For the second week, it was unidentifiable grey meat in brown gravy, with tiny potatoes and wilted veg for sides. I was still only a few months from pot-bellied mal nutrition and wasn’t close to complaining, but some of the other refugees were starting to make noises, poking around their plate with their silverware and asking what kind of meat it was.

“Assholes,” I muttered, pushing my carrots onto Nash’s plate without having to be asked. “That’s the first fucking rule, isn’t it? Don’t ask, hah, don’t tell. As long as it isn’t human, who gives a shit? My dad cooked up a mean squirrel marsala.” I gestured with a fork dripping with brown stuff, green stuff, and mashed stuff. “Pampered sonsofbitches. Pinocchio and Hobbes are already doing more than they fucking can.”

Across the table Nash just grinned and arched his eyes at me as he dug into dinner. No hesitation or squabbling there.

“What?” I demanded, fork half-way to my mouth, “What the fuck are you laughing at, asshole? Am I wrong?”

”No,” Nash said quickly, still grinning as he moved his hands in slight, soothing motions. “No, you’re not wrong. I’ve just…never heard you stick up for anybody like that before. It’s…cute.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, flicking a spoonful of my dinner at him. “It’s just disgusting. These people don’t know what good is. Need to walk a fucking mile and then talk to me about rubbery meat and old lettuce. Jesus Christ.”

“Hmm,” he said, wiping gravy out of an eyebrow and giving me a thoughtful look. “I, uhm. I guess you’re right, Zeek.”

I hunched my shoulders and nodded, pushing the stale bread around my plate. It wasn’t like I was looking for pity – fucking Christ, no. It was just ridiculous that these idiots were still coming into Hobbstown looking for handouts from Tom Hobbes’ bottomless, endless heart. Good thing it was Pinocchio in charge of camp guarda – Tom was too full of second chances and redemption, which fucked you in Santiago’s world. That was why they worked, the two of them, black and white and fitting perfectly into one another. It was the first balance that had ever worked. It was why they weren’t loosing, yet.

I was still trying to figure out what the fuck that look in particular from Nash meant when a group of Hobbstown’s freakshows wandered by our table, about half a dozen of them, all nodding amiably to Nash on their way to a secluded corner of the room. It was far from being the first time I’d seen them around, but something you just never get used too. My mouth twisted up and I scooted my chair away from them as they passed.

“Hey,” Nash muttered, giving me a hard look. “Don’t be an asshole. S’not like being a Particular is catching and you know it, Zeek. Jesus. You’re smarter than that.”

“Yeah, well,” I muttered, glancing over my shoulder, watching as the group limped, slid, and bobbed their way to a far off table. “Still gives me the fucking willies. Freaks. I don’t know how you fucking put up with them.”

“More or less like I put up with you,” he said, pushing his tray away from him. “Patience and a lot of grace.”

The Particulars. I’d been here maybe a month the first time I caught camp gossip about them. They were Weird. They were Strange. Most of them looked like the ordinary homeless psychos I’d lived side by side during my formative years. A lot of them could have easily been the same unwashed, raving madmen that wore doomsday sandwich signs and screamed into megaphones. But others were…deformed. Ritually maimed. Hunchbacked, scarred. One girl, maybe sixteen years old, had a thumb and two thick, elongated fingers on each hand. An old man had blood red, lattice birthmarks down the sides of his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. Most of the refugees were afraid of them, and not just because they were all fucked up. There were all these bullshit rumors flying around – mysticism shit, as if the freaks had mutant powers. The rumors were never specific and...yeah, even I knew that war time did things to the way people think. It probably was just another whisper passed from ear to ear in the dark, something to fill up all that aching uncertainty. People said Santiago wanted them dead for what they could do, and people said it was the same reason Tom and Mike needed them alive. People said a lot of things, but sure as sunrise, every time the dream team disappeared on a mission into that strange little shack in the middle of camp, at least a few of the Particulars went with them – limping, gibbering, laughing madly to themselves.

“They scare the hell out of me,” I muttered, almost apologetically.

“Be scared of Santiago,” Nash said tiredly, giving me a long-suffering look. “Or the meat you’re eating. Not the Particulars. They’re harmless.”

“They’re fucking bizarre.”

“Not as bizarre as you might think,” he murmured, watching them over my shoulder, something weirdly sympathetic flickering across his face, there and gone.

“Is it true?” I blurted, glancing up at him. “About the shit they can do? Mind reading and stuff?”

Nash rolled his eyes. “Come on, Zeek….”

“Don’t give me that shit,” I muttered, “That wasn’t a fucking no, Nash.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Hey, don’t be an asshole,” I snapped back. “Your fucking missions, your fucking secrets. Don’t get me wrong, Nash. It’s not like I give a shit, but honestly, it’s getting a little old, you know?” I ran my tongue around the inside of my lip, dripping with disgust. “You don’t want me telling the bigwigs how often I’m holding your hand and shaking you out of nightmares, that’s just fine but-”

”What?” he said, leaning across the table, eyes wide, bewildered. “What the fuck did you just say? Shake me out of nightmares – ? I’ve been – what the hell are you talking about, you little-“

“Me little what?” I snarled, leaning across the table. “Little whore? Little bastard? Just what the hell were you going to say, Nash?”

“That’s it!” he said, throwing up his arms. “I’m sick of this, Zeek. What the hell is going on in that squirrelly little brain of yours? I say black instead of white and suddenly your fucking world is coming to an end. You don’t care, yeah, I get it, you practically end every sentence with it. Hi, hello, good morning, by the way I wouldn’t care if you wound up dead in a ditch in a couple hours, and while you’re up can you pass the salt? What the hell do you want me to do?” He took a deep breath, staring at me with his mouth half open. “What the fuck would it take to make you happy?”

“I-” I managed, totally taken aback. “I mean -”

“I thought so,” he spat, getting up and throwing his tray into the trash can. “Maybe if I started acting like a total asshole carrying automatic weapons with me wherever I went, I might be able to calm you the fuck down.”

“What the hell does that mean,” I shouted, launching to my feet. I was halfway onto the table, ready to lunge across and grab him by his collar when someone pulled me back down, pinning my arms gently but securely behind my back.

“Take a walk, Zeek,” Tom Hobbes murmured, frog marching me to the door as Mike fucking Pinocchio appeared out of no where and tugged Nash to the side.

“Get off me, who the hell do you think you are -”

“I said,” Tom murmured, low and un-intimidated, “Take a walk.”

*

Later, I was sitting with my back against the outside wall of the mess hall, knees pulled up to my chest and staring at the muddy laces on my stitched together shoes.

“You want to talk to me about it?” Tom said, arms crossed over his chest and looking down at me. His dumb dog was settled with its head in my lap, whimpering softly and nuzzling against my stomach. Despite myself, I dragged my hands over the back of the mutt’s skull.

“No, but if you could just bake me cookies and tell me what a special person I am I might feel better.”

Tom cocked his head at me, frowning slightly. “Why do you do this, Zeek? Why are do you just…push everyone away like this?” He dropped down across from me, hemorrhaging out empathy and concern. Scoffing, I looked away. If my throat got tight and my eyes welled up, fuck it. It was ragweed season anyway. “It’s not healthy. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“Nash just thinks I want to fuck your boyfriend,” I said harshly, glaring up at him. “Mind your own fucking business, Hobbes.”

“Hobbes!”

We both whipped around, ruining my catty little moment. Mike was standing at the edge of the mess hall, arms crossed over his chest.

“We doing this thing, G.I.?” he demanded impatiently, jerking his head over his shoulder. Behind him, the shed was just visible through the trees. Plain and unassuming. Always locked.

“I’m coming,” Tom said, but not before turning and graciously offering me a hand up. No jealousy. No disgust. Nothing. Son of a bitch.

“Thanks,” I muttered, dusting myself off.

“No problem,” said Tom Hobbes, savior, christos, shrugging on his pack to get ready to save the world. “You sure you’re okay, Zeek?”

“Quit asking me that,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Right,” he said, “Sure.”

I followed him around the corner of the mess, studiously avoiding Mike’s impassive look. Four or five Particulars and Nash were standing in cammo and with big packs, shuffling to attention as Tom drew close. His voice dropped and the ungainly group drew closer, listening in for what must have been commands. Nash didn’t even look up for me.

“Gonna ask when we’re getting home?” Mike said, leaning against the wall beside me.

“Nope.”

He arched his eyebrows, looking me up and down. “Don’t care if your bread winner’s gonna be home for Sunday dinner?”

“Not really. I’m looking for another tent, actually.”

“Big steps, Zebidiah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You should ask,” he added with a grunt, adjusting the straps on his pack, and spoke to a spot in the middle distance. “Hard days ahead for us. Not exactly safe. Your boy’s got-”

“None of my business,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets, “It’s none of my business, Pinocchio. I don’t care.”

“Way to make a guy feel special, Zeb,” Mike said, shrugging on his pack as I walked away. “See you in a week, dickhead.”

“Take care,” I called out. I walked away. One week. Right. Whatever. I’d probably have new digs by then, anyway. I’d always known I’d be better on my own. Two months didn’t change a thing.

It was cold out, getting to be autumn, and a cold, sudden wind sprang up. Behind me, one of the Particulars started laughing in high, hiccupping sobs and, somewhere underneath it all, a code was punched in and the door to the shed swung open.