Z and Quest's Short Stories (NO POSTING)

[caf.]

Here's where I'm going to be storing all of the stories I write involving my OCs Z and Quest, along with the other characters existing in their universe (Jesse, Tuesday, Takami, Rendin, Carolina, Kat). Keep in mind that each of these AUs is separate, therefore, if Z dies in one story, that will not translate to other stories unless I specifically notate the sequel as being such. Enjoy!

Contents:
Condensation*
Apologies*^

*death mention
^blood mention

[caf.]

Condensation

It was a maddening, sudden storm that slammed onto the Winchester property that Saturday night. A few people relaxed in the groom’s lobby that dark evening, the prospect of running to their homes in the driving rain too much to comprehend. They shuffled around, movements inhibited by heavy, wet clothing, skeptics of whether the heating vents were truly operating. The storm had cropped up without warning, initiating a frantic, rigorous scramble to bring in the animals. It seemed eerily calm in the open room, too quiet to have been preceded by such a rush. It was as though the air in the room had simply grown too heavy for anyone to continue functioning.
“It’s no wonder everyone’s in an induced coma,” the anesthesiologist stranded on the farm mumbled jokingly to the groom next to him, his thick voice betraying his tiredness as he tried to brighten the mood. He was surprised, far more than he should have been, to find her in a sound slumber. Watching the soft rise and fall of his friend’s chest, the younger man considered awakening her but at the same time found it almost cathartic watching everyone in the room drop off into merciful sleep, one by one. Therapeutic, in a way.
While the veterinarian-in-training lounged in the comfort of the groom’s block, a dark figure struggled up the pathway to the building, pulling sizable feet from the mud, bracing itself against the wind. Blasts of water and air shot from flared nostrils until even the creature itself couldn’t tell what it was breathing. Teeth bared and chattering, the slow-moving figure continued closer and closer to the steps. The winds gusted stronger, a precursor to the sheets of rain about to come down harder, spurring the soaked being to duck its head as it pushed on to the porch, taking a moment to revel in the respite of the roofed deck.
A loud clear knock was heard presently at the door. The vet-in-training stood suddenly and alertly, completely alarmed by the shadow in the window. For a brief moment he considered all of the ghost stories he’d heard from this farm on his breaks before concluding that there could be much worse things out there than some angry spirit or another. Cautiously, he moved the curtain obscuring the window aside, peering out with an air of uncertainty. A familiar hooked nose poked out out from a filthy cloak, flashing green eyes meeting his frantically.
“Jesse...you’re still here?” the ranch owner’s daughter wheezed between heavy breaths upon the opening of the door. Before he could answer, she stepped inside, ducking her head timidly even though she had all the authority in this situation.
“Wh - why on earth are you down here?” the readhead - Jesse - questioned incredulously.
“Truck decided that a foot-deep puddle was too much,” she responded playfully, though her raspy breaths betrayed how absolutely spent she was.
“We had to get down here to check up on the dams.”
“.... The dams?” Jesse’s voice was touched with surprise and concern. “Z, what happened?” Z - Azalea - sighed and shook her head; it was practically visible, the rewinding in her mind as she chose to start at the beginning. Jesse tossed his coat over her shoulders as she sat delicately, shaking her head as though in denial of the events of the night.
“So, y’know I was on the western patrol,” she began rather informally, in keeping with her usual jerky, broken storytelling style. “It was bad over there, Jess. The power’s down in, like, all of the the barns, the mud’s ankle deep, and one of the gates broke. Which wouldn’t have been bad, I guess, if it weren’t the far west pasture.” She took a moment to cough, allowing Jesse to process her words. The far west pasture - the bull pasture! “So by the time we got down there, anyway, half of the monsters were out. So, uh, we pulled out in front of the dam. I guess we thought they’d come there since it blocked some of the rain. But they didn’t, and we couldn’t see anything, and at this point we didn’t even know what to do. We had like six bulls on the loose, downed power lines all over the place, and our truck could barely even move.”
Jesse laughed sympathetically; similar things had happened before, and had always resolved themselves with a sense of irony. He awaited some tale of Z being dumped unceremoniously into a puddle, or perhaps confronting one of the bulls. He laughed at the image of the timid teen challenging one of the black monsters. Z looked at him curiously before continuing once more, taking a deep breath.
“Jerry and Randall and all them - you know, the maintenance guys - jumped out of the truck and started waving their flashlights around and yelling. I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish, I guess they wanted to attract the bulls. Why, I’ll never know. And just then this huge crack sounded. And I really thought it was lightning until I saw the water seeping out of the dam.” At this point Z was gesturing wildly with her hands, tracing with two fingers the outline of this break in the dam. Her eyes shone with a youthful awe as she continued.
“I knew that dam had always been puny, but I never did think it would crack. It was a tough thing, you know? Sure enough, though. Randall and Simon just started pulling us all out of the truck and yelling at us to crawl out of the ditch because it was filling up with water, and we just had to stand there and watch as they tried to pull the truck out of the mud. I think two guys might have jumped down there to help them, but they told me and the others to stay up. So I was just watching these guys - and then - then-”
Jesse covered his mouth in shock as Z continued, her head ducked, abnormally quiet even for her.
“There was just so much water. I...I don’t think that will ever be replicated. Just - Jus' all rushing out at once. As if the dam weren't even there. I couldn’t see the truck at all and everyone was just pulling at me and running me away from the edge and into the trees. And we just ran scared, y’know? What were we supposed to do? We couldn’t get reception at all.”
Jesse nodded sympathetically, by now sitting in front of her and realizing just what a traumatic blow this would be to the farm. He listened closely as she detailed how they’d met up with the northwestern patrol, how they’d told her to drive east to the grooms’ block in one truck while the rest took another to look for the maintenance workers.
“I guess they didn’t want me to see,” she commented shallowly, her eyes taking on a look of torpor as the night started to catch up with her. “Or maybe they just knew I wanted to come check up on you guys. I don’t know.”
Jesse was glad of his little accidental sojourn at the farm, glad that he’d been able to greet his younger friend, glad he’d been awake to hear the latest on the storm, glad she’d had someone to come to.
“It looks like a whole other realm out there,” she commented in a low wheeze, and it was then that Jesse could really hear just how congested her throat was, how difficult it was for her to breathe.
“Okay, you’re going to develop hypothermia if you don’t get something warm into you right now. Jeez, I’m sorry I didn’t notice earlier,” he apologized, standing. The younger teen insisted that he really didn’t need to make something, that she was fine, but the vet-in-training ignored her, stepping into the kitchen. “Only ethical!” he joked, making the tired girl laugh at the reference to the grumpy old resident veterinarian’s common phrase. “It’s only ethical,” he always would say when a frightened calf would buck and squeal at being vaccinated. Only ethical. She wondered how ethical it had been for her to have been pushed out of the ditch and then asked to drive onto the east end of the property - alone.
Jesse handed her a mug, making it clear that she was going to wait out the duration of the storm there, in the safety of the lobby. She sighed gratefully, clutching the drink with both hands, her taste receptors numbed by the heat. Her eyes lit up a little when she saw her friend, Quest, stretch out from her previously comatose position and clutch a pillow to her chest, a murmur of satisfaction escaping her lips as one arm curled around behind her head. “She’s okay?” she questioned, to which Jesse responded with a curt nod. “ A little rain soaked, but I think she’ll be okay. She was one of the first people in here, helping out and such,” he spoke of the sleeping groom. Z nodded her approval. “I...think I’m going to sleep now,” she murmured through a yawn, moving to the space on the long couch that Quest wasn’t taking up. Jesse sighed, a wave of tiredness hitting him as he realized just how long he’d been up. It was almost one in the morning by now, and he’d been awake since five. “Go to sleep, you,” he heard from the couch, a low, timid voice with just a hint of humor. Z had curled up with her upper body on the armrest, her eyes just cracked, her feet curled up close to her body so as not to disturb Quest’s sound slumber. “You’re exhausted. No wonder you haven’t been saying much.”
“No wonder,” Jesse agreed. The storm faded away into the workers’ dreams.

[caf.]

Apologies

Quest was falling.
Perhaps not literally, not the way she fell from her bike or fell down the stairs or fell out of bed in the morning. But the sinking of her heart, the crumpling of her shoulders, and the sickening emptiness filling her entire body seemed to rock the earth from under her feet until it seemed as if it had never been there in the first place. In fact, falling may not be the best word to describe how Quest felt, because the word implies a lack of gravity; crushed may be the better word indeed.
She wasn’t the kind of sad that makes someone cry and eat ice cream and call friends and watch Netflix; her emotions now weren’t so easily remedied. This was the kind of sadness that makes people stare at their bedroom walls until they forgot to blink, forgot to breathe; the kind of sadness that dulls someone’s will to care for themselves, eat, move; the feeling of being too sad to cry, to tired to sleep. She had passed through the stage of, “She’s gone,” past “Why?” and “Can’t I go back?” All of her repetitive, nagging thoughts circled and centered around the same question; “Why am I still here?”
Dull ears neglected to register a knock on the door down the hall, followed by a muted conversation and footsteps thumping softly closer. The bedroom door creaked open. Quest’s clouded green eyes rolled upward, meeting a familiar pair of grey-browns. The expression on Kat’s long face upon entering the room went from mild confusion to poorly concealed shock. “Q-Quest?,” she stuttered. Quest felt a memory tug on her sleeve, the look on her longtime friend’s face pulling her back to just shy of a year beforehand. She greeted Kat with a sigh and dipped her chin, pulling the memory into focus in an attempt to remember everything she could before it was too late.


Even though Z had a friendly smile on her bright face, her easy banter occasionally interrupting the softly playing radio, Quest could see her smaller friend’s nervousness betrayed by her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The fresh, cool air whipped across their faces as evening set in, though the driver seemed to pay the weather no heed as she kept her hands almost neurotically still.
“Z, ease up,” she gently reminded her, placing a thick hand on her friend’s shoulder. Z readjusted her thin fingers, stretching them out as she eased the car to a stop, obeying the red light glaring down at them. Kat, riding behind them, leaned forward and cracked some sarcastic comment or another; Z’s laugh forced the bad-tempered teen to break into an uncharacteristic smile. Quest giggled too, glad she’d managed to gather her group to go to the party so she wouldn’t show up alone. They bantered easily, even Z resisted the temptation to retreat into the recesses of her nervous mind. Z glanced ahead for a moment before turning back to Kat, giggling as she started to crack some comment -
Nobody realized or remembered what happened next. Quest didn’t remember closing her eyes, but when she opened them they were not facing the road but in fact a rusty wire fence. She smelled smoke and heat. Kat grunted, sitting back up straight and snorting puffs of blood from her nose. She swore, unclipping her seatbelt as she met eyes with Quest. Her look was one of annoyance and disorientation, right up until she glanced to the left side of the vehicle. She paled. Quest, still oblivious to what had happened, snapped her head to the left. The taller female’s jaw dropped at the sight.
Z’s head lolled at the end of her neck, her eyes half-closed, her jaw slack. Blood trickled from several lacerations all over her face and neck. Her left arm was trapped between the mangled car door and the seat, garishly twisted. Quest and Kat cried out in fear of this horrible thing that had happened, recoiling in fear from the sight. In her blind panic, Quest shook her friend hard, yelling almost hysterically; "Z! Z, wake up! Call the hospital! Z - Azalea! Get up!" Z moaned pitifully, the shaking sending pain ricocheting up and down the fibers of her broken arm. Her eyes met Quest's for a second before flicking down to her arm, to the door. "I'm sorry," she sobbed breathily, overwhelmed with pain and fear. Quest wrapped her arms around the shaking teen, murmuring whatever comforts she could at that point. Z released her grip on the wheel.
Kat, knowing with a pang of regret that she wasn't going to be able to help in this situation, patted Z's shoulder sympathetically (if not awkwardly) before stepping out of the car into the crumbling orange-and-red leaves, stiff but mostly unharmed.
"J-Jesus," she stuttered in a low voice at the view of the wreck. A pickup truck sat perpendicular to their vehicle, the front partially crumpled but otherwise not in terrible shape. A man stood talking outside the truck; Kat assumed he'd already called paramedics, as she could hear faint sirens in the distance. Another man sat on the asphalt, his nose broken from the impact. Her hand rose to her own nose, and, finding it, too, crumpled, stepped back to the car. She didn't want to talk to the two men, nor did she want to speak with the EMS. She wanted to talk to her friends.
"What's up, Destiny Quest?" Quest smirked up at her brown-eyed friend.
"Are the other guys alright? What's going on?" she questioned, still holding Z tightly.
"Two other guys. I think one broke his nose. The other's alright," Kat responded gruffly. They both nodded at each other, their gazes turning to their injured friend.
"Z? You okay?" The delicate girl nodded miserably, keeping her eyes shut against the pain. Kat nodded and looked around as coolly as she could manage, watching the EMS, police, and fire department race in before helping Quest out of the car, giving Z a stiff wave, and stepping away respectfully to watch as they pried the door open and arrange the limp body on a stretcher.
Quest and Kat approached the stretcher once more before it was loaded into the waiting ambulance, Quest laying a gentle hand on her friend's shoulder. Z was deliriously pale and exhausted, only able to manage half-lidded eyes and weak pants. She stirred when she felt the stretcher being lifted into the back of the truck.
"I'm sorry," Kat heard her whisper before she was pulled away.


A weary smile and a gift bag were the first things Z saw when the door burst open at nearly ten o’ clock at night. The hospital room had been dark, the patient laying back and watching TV with the same blank expression she always had when she was thinking. She peered at the sudden bright light with a hint of trepidation until Quest’s familiar form became clear to her.
“‘Sup, Z?” the bright-eyed teen asked, setting down the bag and flopping down on the bench next to the bed, already making herself at home in the cramped room. Z couldn’t help but grin; the presence of her best friend was enough to boost her mood.
“I’m doin’ good, you?” she responded in her classical manner. Quest nodded, shrugging, never responding with a clear answer.
“How’s the arm?,” she asked. Z shrugged, showing off her cast and sling.
“It doesn’t hurt right now. It’s a little itchy though,” the injured female commented. Quest nodded a little gratefully, glad they’d been able to repair the twisted forearm with minimal surgery and only a few months of wearing the cast. She anticipated Z’s next question with ease.
“Kat and I came to the hospital in another ambulance. Said I was fine. Kat’s a little concussed and broke her nose, but she’s not in bad shape. No sports for a few weeks, though. She crashed at my house tonight since it’s quite a ways to her house, and - shocker, I know - her parents don’t mind. You know how they are. She’s sleeping now; I don’t know if I didn’t have the heart or the guts to wake her up.” They both chuckled, knowing Kat’s already nasty attitude was at its worst after waking. Her lack of release now that all of her sports were temporarily out of the picture would only serve to make her act worse. Z’s face suddenly clouded, her voice taking an anxious tone at the thoughts that had been nagging at her all night.
“You’re not -? We’re -?,” she stuttered, unable to finish her sentences. Quest stood and gently wrapped her arms around her friend, sitting gently on the bed. Z sighed and relaxed into the warm embrace.
“I’m not mad at you, okay?,” Quest reassured the worrying girl, mindful of her bad arm. Z nodded, pulling back, shy and small. She sighed, averting her eyes; Quest knew that in most times like this it was impossible to put her fears completely to rest. ‘I know what’ll cheer her up,’ she thought with an eager grin. Without a word she took the prim, red gift back from the table and gently pushed it into Z’s hands. Carefully, the thin fingers felt at the bag’s edge, waiting momentarily for Quest’s silent approval before pulling out what appeared to be a manila envelope and a few chocolate bars.
“Awh, you’re the best,” Z sighed upon inspection of the candy, noting that all of her favorite sweets were present. Quest tossed her dark hair over her shoulder flippantly, eliciting a giggle from Z as she ran a finger along the inside of the envelope. Pulling out a stack of files, she stared momentarily before the epiphany hit her. Z’s eyes turned into saucers.
“The - the publishing company - they’re - we - they’re publishing us!” Z’s voice rose to an excited squeal. Quest couldn’t rein herself in, shouting, “December!” with all the breath she’d been unconsciously holding. Their session of comforting quickly became one of squealing and yelling, enough that it attracted the attention of a nurse who told them gently to keep quiet for other patients. Z couldn’t conceal her glee when she pulled out a videogame case, “SPIRIT” marked across the top in large lettering.
“The team is going insane,” Quest told her in jumbled words. “We’ve gotta go to Japan and have a party or something. We got published!”
Their bantering continued as they both slowly wore out, Quest finally collapsing back down onto the bed next to her friend after her fifth or sixth victory lap around the room. Z smiled softly, leaning against the taller teen for support.
“‘M tired,” she yawned. Quest chuckled, patting her good shoulder evenly. They sat in stunned silence, the events of their busy few days creeping up on them. The wreck had only been a day ago, but it already felt as if it had been years.
“I missed you,” Z murmured somewhat suddenly. Quest assured her that she would come see her as soon as she came home from the hospital, giving her one last assuring hug before standing, stretching, and turning towards the door.
“See you,” the taller girl heard from behind her. She turned around assured herself that she was okay, that she had everything she needed. The room was in order; she could see Z had her hand on the button to recline the bed and go to sleep. Giving her a warm look, Quest cracked a half-smile and nodded a farewell.
“Goodnight, Z.”


“Quest, c’mon, pay attention.” The dark-haired female flinched a little upon hearing the gruff, if not slightly less harsh, voice. Her eyes met Kat’s apologetically.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, eliciting a sigh from her friend. Kat slunk in next to her, standing at the wall. The shorter girl peered thoughtfully at the spot that Quest so intently stared at, entranced. It was a saddening sight to see bright, sweet, energetic Quest so suddenly quiet.
“The team’s missing you -” she began, but she was cut off quickly by a voice encased in ice.
“Look,” Quest snarled through clenched teeth. “This is not the time to put me on a guilt trip.” Quest lifted her glare to the wall once more before averting her eyes, a shot of air escaping her nose.
“I’m already guilty enough as it is,” she spoke more quietly.
Kat, a little shocked by her friend’s demeanor going south so quickly, held her tongue. They stood in silence for awhile, both unsure of what to say, a nervous tension filling the air about them. Finally, Quest dropped her chin, sighing.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just really, really can’t talk to them right now. I...I need time,” she futilely tried to explain, shaking her head with frustration at her inability to form a coherent statement. Kat nodded assuringly, her mouth opening and closing mechanically until she found the words she needed so desperately.
“We can talk about it. I-If you want. If it would help. I don’t really know exactly what happened,” she offered, keeping her eyes glued to the wall, preparing for another icy snap from the distraught teen alongside her. Quest placed a hand over her mouth and nose and nodded, exhaling slowly.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” she half-lied. She didn’t want to go into it, but Kat deserved to know. After all, she was her friend too. She sucked in a breath.
“Jesse and she and I were driving to school in his big old truck, and she was sleeping on the window, and it was good and fine until this guy pulls in front of us and we didn’t hit him that bad but the seatbelt hit her in the neck and -”
Quest took a moment to regain her composure, the rising crescendo of her babbling explanation broken as she sucked in air until she resumed her normal breathing.
“An’ she just never took another breath but she was wide awake and she was turning blue and -”
The sobs were uncontrollable now; Quest’s chest collapsed, her chin dipped and turned away as she hid her face shamefully. She managed one wobbly sentence before bursting entirely into tears.
“Z died in my arms, Kat.”
Even though she’d heard the story what felt like millions of times, it still shocked her. She realized dully that Quest would be traumatized about this for her entire life. The words still didn’t compute in her head. Z? Dead? How?
Suddenly it was just too much. Kat was surprised to find a tear running down her cheek, her breathing ragged. ‘It must look ridiculous,’ she thought, ‘two girls crying and staring at a wall.’
Quest was surprised to feel a hand on hers; Kat hated being touched accidentally, let alone physical affection. It had been a wonder she’d always been willing to hug - ‘No, no, don’t think about it,’ Quest thought, wrapping her fingers firmly around Kat’s. “It’s not your fault, Quest,” she heard from her left in an unusually quiet voice. She met eyes with Kat, staring with each other with the kind of connection that only the dispatching of a mutual friend can create. Quest struggled to hold her composure, her knees starting to shake as the awful memory replayed itself in her head. Kat’s voice faded almost to a whisper.
“I’m sorry.”
Quest fell.