Purple

Eighteen

Dedicated to xMc_Lancex

Two hours rolled right on by around them. Luce and Liam must have fallen asleep at some point because, by the time she opened her eyes, the condensation was shrinking against the glass, and a few rays of morning light had made it to the forest floor.

As Luce stirred, so did Liam. For a while, they said and did nothing beyond working out the cricks and kinks from the awkward positions they slept in. When it came time to finally let go of his hand, she felt the first touch of cold air work its way in from outside.

"Wake up, team," he said. His shoulder popped as he reached back to slap Chubs' knee. "Time to carpe the hell out of the diem."

Less than an hour later, they were standing in front of the black minivan, watching as Zu did one last check under the seats. Ruby buttoned up her shirt up to her throat and wrapped a red scarf she picked up around her neck three times.

"Are you that cold, Green?" Liam asked her.

"You can't really call her Green anymore," Chubs pointed out. He was making the difficult decision about which books to abandon and which to take with him and had seemed to settle on about three books while he left behind three.

"Yeah," Ruby said. "No more Green..."

"All done?" Luce called to Zu. When she gave her a thumbs up, she threw her pink bag over one shoulder and her own bag over the other. "Any day now, Marian Librarian. I thought you were the one that wanted to check out."

Chubs gave her the finger, leaning forward to put his full weight into closing the briefcase. Ruby leaned over to help him, trying to avoid the look on Luce and Liam's faces as they stood staring at Betty's mangled black shell. Zu was crying without making a sound; Liam had his hands over her shoulders, holding her steady. Even Chubs looked at the car with a rare softness, his fingers bunching up the fabric of his pants.

Liam had gotten them as close as he could to Lake Prince, but it was anyone's guess how long it would take them to walk there.

"It feels like we should do something," he said. "Like, set her off on a barge out to sea and set her on fire. Let her go out in a blaze of glory."

Luce raised a brow. "It's a minivan, not an Asgardian."

Chubs gave her a weird look. "You mean a Viking?"

She shook her head. "Don't tell me you're not familiar with Thor and the Asgardians? Come on, even I knew about them from the comics before being dumped."

He shrugged. "I'm more into Aquaman, to be honest."

She stared at him for a good ten seconds before saying, "I'm just going to pretend you didn't say that."

Zu pulled away from Liam's grasp and headed for the trees to her left. He rubbed the back of his neck, at a loss. "Hey," he started, "it's okay, we'll-"