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The ability to actually hear birdsong was nice, even though Muw wasn't really used to it. She was used to the fog of London, the noise of a bustling city, full of music seeping through the cracks. In her opinion this was nicer, hearing the birds chirping overlapping with each other and the small wind that rustled the grass she was sprawled out on was a lot nicer than London was. While she loved it, she understood that it wasn't perfect. Muw missed it, the silence of the area she was in left too much space for her to think. If she thought about it too much then tears were sure to follow. It was funny to her in a way, she was an adult woman and yet she bawled like a child when thinking about London for more than a few moments.
Muw was staring into the sky, technically she was cloud gazing. Staring blankly into the sky shouldn't count, but there is nobody enforcing rules about it. It was a pretty new activity for her, back in London it was too foggy to do it and even on the rare occasion the fog disappeared the clouds formed a ceiling separating the sky from what was visible to people. Even if the sky was visible enough, then there was no good place for it. The tiny garden she shared with Rue could barely fit two seats for the two of them and some flowers that didn't immediately die from the air quality being awful. To be honest, she missed it. She missed the constant barrage of noise, stopping by someone performing on the street to watch for a few minutes, she even missed the air pollution. Because that was the only thing she knew for the majority of her life, it was something she was used to. Though maybe those weren't the things she missed about London, it might have been the familiarity and the people who made it what it was. It was loud and bad in many ways, but it was her home.
The storm that buried all of London underneath snow was the reason she heard actual silence for the first time. Not the silence of her apartment at night, where the noise was mostly blocked by walls. It wasn't sound being blocked it was a lack of it. It was jarring. Muw wasn't aware until then that an absence of sound was possible. Hearing her footsteps crunch the snow while she looked to see if Rue was still somewhere was disturbing. All she had to remember London by was her girlfriend's jacket and some tiny trinkets she managed to shove into its pockets.
"Muw? Are you okay?" a voice rang out above and someone's foot lightly shoved her torso. Muw groaned and looked up to see Bug standing over her with a concerned expression on their face. "I was looking for you earlier."
"Yeah, I'm fine. What did you need?" she said and stretched her arms above her head.
"Nothing, I just wanted to hang out" e swayed a little. "What are you doing?"
"Cloud watching, I fear they might run away if I stop looking" she answered and laughed at the groan Bug let out in response to her dry joke. He didn't need to know that it was an excuse to think about her past in peace or that the alternative was jumping into a pile of snow. "Wanna join?"
"Is this like an old people thing?" she asked, but still sat down next to her. They pulled their knees to their chest and laid their head on them.
"I'm not that old." Muw rolled her eyes and went back to staring at the sky. She looked for any clouds that were shaped in an interesting way. "That one looks like a dog wearing a birthday hat."
"You are like fifty or something, that's so old."
"What?" she shot up with a laugh and lightly shoved Bug. "I'm in my thirties, not fifties ! Please tell me you don't actually think I'm fifty."
"Same thing" e grinned, showing off eir sharp teeth.
"Shut up, you're like twelve" Muw retorted and giggled at Bug's surprised expression.
"Eighteen!"
"Same thing~" she sang with a grin on her face and laid back down again.
The two of them stared at the sky in silence for a few minutes, it didn't seem like Bug wanted to talk about clouds so Muw closed her eyes. It wasn't the suffocating kind of silence, it was quite pleasant. She had to fight with herself not to fall asleep.
"...That one looks like a tree," he pointed somewhere in the sky. Muw squinted and followed where Bug was pointing with her gaze, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't find any clouds that resembled trees. One of them could, but in her opinion the base was too thin to be a tree, maybe a flower of some kind, not a tree.
"There's no way that's a tree, the trunk is too thin."
"It's totally a tree, can't you see it?"
"Maybe a flower, but I just don't see a tree there."
"You're too old to see a tree when you see one I guess," Bug sighed theatrically. "Such a shame, soon you'll be too old to know the difference between a tree in the clouds and an actual one."
"You're so mean to me" Muw pretended to wipe a tear from her eye.
The two of them talked about clouds for some more time, they rarely agreed on what a cloud looked like. They playfully argued about who was right, but soon enough the conversation shifted from the topic of clouds. Bug told her a little about their girlfriend, Doe, with the expression of someone experiencing being in love for the first time, this was the first time Bug was dating someone unless Muw misunderstood, so it made more than enough sense. She talked a little about how her life with Rue looked, she might have omitted some less than pleasant parts of their relationship, instead focusing on what was good. Neither said anything concrete about their pasts, but Muw felt like it suited them.
"Can I tell you something?" Muw asked, still staring into the sky, but no longer trying to find anything in the clouds. Bug got a stick from somewhere around the area they were in and was drawing shapes with it, e hummed in agreement. "I wish I was able to bury Rue."
"...I think I understand" Bug mumbled out, he stopped drawing and looked up into the sky.
"Sorry, I ruined the atmosphere didn't I?" she let out a sigh and sat up.
"No, it's fine. I wish I could have said goodbye to my family properly" Bug said softly. "I kind of just- left them to die, that's awful. I'm a terrible person."
"Hey, no, you're not a terrible person. From what you told me you didn't have a choice." Muw got up and brushed off the grass from her pants. "You were just a kid, hell! You're still a kid. C'mon up, I have an idea."
"Okay," Bug took her hand and she pulled them up. "What's your idea?"
"Remember when we made a grave for Dirtbag, before we realised that he can respawn?"
"Yes?" e said in a confused voice, Muw was leading em somewhere. Well, to be honest she was looking for a nice enough place, but Bug didn't make a move to let go of her hand and she wasn't going to point that out.
"Would you like to make one for your family? Maybe you could say goodbye that way" she explained, the two of them were now walking along the edge of some river.
"Isn't that kinda weird?" he asked with a huff that sounded almost like a laugh. After a moment of silence she added a quiet: "Yeah, I think I'd like that..."
The two of them walked for around half an hour before finding a place that they liked, it was silent. If Muw had to be honest with herself, the silence that was quickly becoming the usual sound of her life was growing on her. Neither of them felt the need to chatter about anything as they walked. Even when Bug decided on the place where the symbolic grave should be they didn't speak, instead pulled on the sleeve of Muw's sweater and pointed at it. It was a very pretty place in her opinion, the edge of a small forest right next to a creek, the ground was covered in pink and purple flowers. Bug placed a big stone down and Muw handed em a sign, in exchange e smiled and said a soft 'thanks'. He wrote a few words down, before hesitating.
"Uhm, do you think I should just write 'Mum and Dad' or should I use their names?" She showed her the sign, which at the moment only had the words 'Ant' and 'Cicada' on it. Muw bit her lip in order not to laugh, but Bug looked at her and laughed. "As you can see, my parents had a theme. To be honest I think they ran out of ideas by the time they had me."
"Yeah, you've got Ant, Cicada and then just Bug. They should have named you at least Butterfly or something" she giggled.
"They actually taught me how to drive space ships, Cicada was the oldest he had a license, Ant was still learning." It seemed that Bug finally figured out what to write, because they carefully wrote down the letters. "Mum and dad were so mad, but when I had to leave Anrokka I think they were pretty happy about me being able to drive."
"How old were you?"
"Hmm, like around thirteen."
"That's practically a baby!" Muw exclaimed, waving her hands in disbelief. "They let a baby drive!"
"Shut up!" e shoved Muw, but she knew e wasn't actually mad. He was also giggling uncontrollably. She dug through the ground with just her hands and made a shallow hole, Bug rifled through her pockets and threw a small piece of metal in it. They buried it and pat the ground in order to make it more solid. Without looking at Muw e explained: "It's a part of my space ship, it was technically the family space ship before everything went wrong."
"That's lovely" she smiled and placed some flowers she picked up on the grave. "It's nice that you're using something to represent them."
"Thanks, could you... leave me for a moment? I just want to say goodbye, but I don't think I can if I know someone is watching" he whispered, Muw just smiled and walked away.
She found a big rock and sat on it, she stared at the sky for a few minutes, but leaves obstructed it too much to do any more cloud gazing. Instead Muw picked up her guitar and played a simple melody on it. It was one of those that she had memorised. On the outside she looked concentrated, but her mind wandered. Muw wanted to say that she was beginning to move on, that she was unlearning her previous mindset that Rue taught her. But she wasn't, not yet at least. It has been a long time since she left London, but it was still influencing the kind of person she was. She had to actively remember to take care of herself and she convinced Bug to make their house as far away from snow as possible, just so she wouldn't have access to it. It was the beginning of something, but it wasn't perfect, she still forgot to take care of herself without reminders, she still fantasised about finding a pile of snow and staying in it until she froze. She still intentionally hurt herself if it wasn't obvious that she was doing it on purpose. Muw was trying to get better, but it would take a long time until that happened. She didn't notice that Bug had come over to where she was sitting until she waved a hand in front of her eyes.
"Oh, you're done already?"
"Yeah."
"We can go back then" she said as she put her guitar back in its case. Noticing Bug staring at her she tilted her head in a silent question.
"Don't you want to make Rue a grave too?" they asked and pulled Muw up to their feet, she groaned while getting up. She was getting old. "You seem like you need it, it made me feel better so maybe it would make you feel better too? You said you wished you were able to bury her earlier, so I thought you'd want to make a grave for her too."
"Maybe" she muttered and walked towards the area where the grave for Bug's family was. To be honest she didn't even think of making a grave for Rue and it made her stomach twist uncomfortably. Why didn't she think to make one for her earlier? Muw bit her lip and stopped when she felt something warm running down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and cursed under her breath, this time she genuinely wasn't intending to hurt herself. Sometimes it just happened, no conscious input from Muw needed.
She repeated the process of placing down a big stone and writing a sign. Sneaking a glance over at what Bug has written down she noted that e didn't write down any dates, she wrote down Rue's full name, her birthday and the day she died. She didn't have anything to represent her girlfriend to bury, so instead she placed down some flowers. Muw sniffled, trying her best not to burst into tears. Bug was right, making Rue a grave made her feel better.
"I looked for her body, you know? It took me long enough that I got frostbite," Muw wiped her eyes. "It took a few months to fully heal. Sometimes I miss that feeling, I think it might be why I used snow as a way to hurt myself. Back when I had frostbite my fingers were always hurting at least a little bit. Maybe if I looked a while longer I would have found her body, maybe my fingers would have fallen off or maybe I would have died. Is it bad that I kind of wish one of those things happened?"
"I get what you mean, there are still times when I wish that I stayed on Anrokka until the end" he said and took Muw's hand. "But I don't think thinking about what might have happened is healthy, we just- have to live with what happened. We can't change what happened, even though that sucks."
"Yeah, it sucks" she laughed with a shaky breath, Muw wiped tears from her face. "Do you wanna come back to the house?"
"Sure, can I tell you something?" Now Bug was leading, they were still holding hands and neither made a move to let go. Muw hummed in agreement. "Thank you for not seeing me as just a dumb little kid or treating me like one. Most people probably would have just pitied me."
"No problem, can I tell you something too?" Bug nodded and swung their hands harder. She smiled at that, maybe she didn't see them as a little kid, but some of their traits showed that they were still a kid. "I'm happy that I met you, thank you for being here."