Seeing Through the Trauma

Misery loves company (11)

In the end, Mei started grooming the other side of MK's arm while Red moved to his shoulder, MK's tail swishing around behind him happily as the three enjoyed each other's presence in silence. It was enough to make MK forget all about everything else that was going on until a while later when Mei suddenly spoke.

"I hope everyone in the city is okay," She said, and MK nodded, flicking his tail around so that it was sitting in his lap so he could smooth out the fur there.

"Yeah, me too. I wonder if- OH MY BUDDHA we didn't tell Pigsy what's been going on!" The realization hit him suddenly, gasping at his own forgetfulness of something so important and his claws dug into his tail as he squeezed it in stress.

"And Tang! I hope they're both okay." What if they weren't? MK hadn't even thought about them when he'd seen ice begin crawling all over the city, too busy being selfish. 

"Oh yeah, man we should really call them." Mei agreed, pulling out her phone and MK leaned closer to her as he watched her find their contacts, doing a video call as the phone rang... and rang...and rang...

MK twisted his tail nervously in his hands, breathing beginning to pick up as the dialing noise came through. 

"We're sorry, the person you are trying to contact now is unavailable, please leave your-" Mei cut off the generic, monotone voice with a sigh, frowning as she looked down at her phone like it was the one that had failed her. 

"Maybe Pigsy lost his phone?" She suggested but MK wasn't sure and tried his best not to let his mind run wild with different horrible ideas, each worse than the last, about what had happened to them.

She tried calling Tang then, only to get the same result and MK's breathing hitched at the sound of the automatic voice coming through again, worry flooding him. 

"It's possible that all that ice knocked out the reception towers." Red Son said suddenly and MK tilted his head back to look at him, a little bit of hope making the anxious feeling in his chest lighter. 

"You think so? They might just be fine then, right?" He asked even though he knew Red obviously couldn't know but he was desperate for some form of comfort, some way to live in denial.

"They're probably fine, so stop worrying so much." The older complained, rolling his eyes like MK was being dramatic but what he'd said made MK sag in relief, sincerely hoping that was the case as he let some of his anxious worry die down.  

"Yeah, and when we go back after all this they're gonna be so mad at us for not telling them about all this." Mei laughed, leaning into MK's side as she snickered at the idea, and while MK didn't enjoy being in trouble, at the moment he did if it meant they were still alive and fine to be able to actually be mad at him, so he nodded with a small smile. 

"Pigsy will yell so loud." He agreed, and Mei nodded in acknowledgment, both knowing how vocal the demon could get when scolding them.

Then his ears twitched as he heard the sound of footsteps from behind them, coming out of the waterfall and although MK wanted to tilt his head to look, he couldn't without knocking Mei off him so he resigned to simply listening as the two sets of footsteps got closer until- 

"We're back!" Wukong sang loudly and Mei moved, jumping to her feet as Red also stood up, MK taking the opportunity to move his head so he could see Baba and Nezha approach. 

"Good, did you find anything useful?" Macaque asked suddenly and MK tilted his head to look at him too, frustrated when he didn't even seem to look in MK's direction at all, his arms crossed as he looked only at Wukong.  

"Sure did!" He grinned, grabbing something from Nezha and waving it about for a moment until Nezha snatched it back angrily, huffing as he kept the bundle of... fabric? close to his chest.