☆ Control ☆ (COMPLETED)

118: Super happy friendship reunion.

Night snuck up on the forest, it was going to eventually. This was the time that everyone was starting to dread, as this was the coldest. It was debatabley the coldest it had been so far.. Lollipop and Clock had both taken a walk away from the cave. Originally it had just been Clock but Lollipop joined him as a volunteer. Partly because she felt cramped in that cave with eveyone else, but also because Clock couldn't defend himself very well so it was better if she accompanied him.

Originally they didn't talk much, making their way through the heavy snow silently as the gentle winter breeze brushed them. But Lollipop slowly took upon a conversation and, Clock was weirdly mature to talk to. He definitely could switch between seriousness and.. well, joking-ness. It was weird how well he could do it.. Lollipop wasn't very good at defining the two because she always looked smug either way, but talking to Clock when he was serious was actually kind of intimidating.

They were hoping to find Pen on their trip and had kind of gone into a conversation about it. They were on their way back now, half because of the cold but also because it was getting too dark to see.. it was best to find their way back before they couldn't find a way at all. Lollipop was mildly concerned for Clock, because he was much shorter than her and was struggling to walk through the snow. It hardly passed her knees because of her long legs, but Clock had to basically kick the snow out of his way to get through.

"I underestimated how deep the snow would be.." Clock complained in self hatred, her looking down at him with an amused face. "Well, I'm not going to defend you here." She smiled playfully, but her smile was gentle and weak. She felt tired, bringing a cold hand to rub her eye. She was worried about the snow getting into her robotics so definitely wanted to speed up. Clock was slowing her down though.. luckily they weren't too far from the cave.

"Do you think Pen is okay?" Lollipop wondered aloud, looking up at the sky as it was blocked by the many trees above. She hated to ask such a blunt and straight foward question, but she couldn't deny that it was frustrating for her to not know of his whereabouts. They had lost too many recently so.. losing more would be painful.. really painful. She just wanted this stress to end.. she didn't want to constantly be worried about eveyone anymore.

They were rarely all okay.

Clock wasn't sure how to answer such a question, thinking as he walked with more effort than needed. Well.. hopefully? "How has he done before on his own?" Clock wondered.

Lollipop thought about when he went looking for Snowball. He went through all that snow and cold.. even burning hot flames, although he was accompanied at that stage. He survived the snow by himself though.. didn't he? He clearly knew how to handle it... this was much colder than before though. She winced as a bitter gust of air blew at her face, wincing and squinting as she went to pull her arms close to her body and rub her face into her shoulder. "Hm..he has performed this before.. and was fine. But I must admit, I worried this time he won't be so lucky. " she explained her thoughts.

"You think that he survived because of luck?" Clock repeated what she  basically said. Lollipop rolled her eyes at this, scoffing at the same time. "That just sounds cruel. I do not think that.. " she denied, bothered that he made her words sound that way.

"Then what do you think?"

She sighed heavily, shaking her head in response...what DID she think?. "I don't..even know. I just ..want him to be alright. We need him to be alright.. It will effect ... a lot of us if something bad happens to him."

"Well.. he does have a lot of friends around him." Clock commented, supposing so.

They kind of fell silent after that statement. The word friends always caught her off guard because she knew she hardly had any. She knew that Gaty was hopefully alive but.. the others were not. It pained her every day and she wasn't even sure if she was getting better. She thought about Clock.