Trubel with Josh

Road Trip Part One

Here are a few little scenes of Josh and Trubel's road trip! My hopes are that my next chapter will be more substantial. Anyway, enjoy!

-TRBL247

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"Wow!" Josh said as he and Trubel slowly drove out of Nick's neighborhood. He stared excitedly out the windows and was almost bouncing in his seat. "We're actually doing this! I get to go home!" he added elatedly.

Trubel didn't respond and instead stared straight ahead.

"And without dying, too!" he said. When Trubel still didn't respond, Josh turned in his seat to look at her.

She continued to stare at the road in front of her, but she sniffled and quickly wiped the sleeve of her jacket under one of her eyes.

Josh's enthusiasm faded and he asked, "Are you okay?"

"I'm good," Trubel said, but her voice sounded thick with emotion.

"Maybe I should drive," Josh suggested.

"I said I'm good," Trubel repeated, sounding a little harsher than she had intended.

"It's okay to be sad," Josh tried to comfort.

Trubel shook her head. "I had no idea it would be this hard," she said quietly. "I never thought I'd care about anyone as much as I care about Nick, and Juliette, and everyone else."

"But that's a good thing, right?" Josh asked her, trying to figure out what was going on in her head.

"I don't know," Trubel admitted. It made her uncomfortable to have connections to others. She knew that no matter how far she went, her friends would always occupy some space in her head. In some ways, it felt like she could never be as independent as she had been before she met Nick, like getting to know him made her vulnerable somehow and changed her into someone she wasn't.

But in other ways, it felt good to have allies.

Trubel felt split into two different people - the lone wolf she used to be and the family girl she had started to turn into. Now she was still wondering who she'd become after starting her new life. It was one hell of an identity crisis.

"Are you ever planning on coming back?" Josh asked her.

Again, Trubel didn't know.

"I don't know if I should," she told him. Josh looked like he was going to say something, but Trubel interrupted him before he could spit it out. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Like what?"

Trubel wracked her brain for a new topic of conversation. She couldn't settle on any specifics, so she just said, "Anything."

She opened a can of worms that she wasn't ready for. For the next hour, Josh was asking her an assortment of wild questions.

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"Do you think that Wesen can talk to animals?" Josh wondered aloud.

Trubel looked at him like he was crazy. "What?"

"You know, like can wolf Wesen growl and stuff to communicate with, like, actual wolves?" Josh clarified. "Or can leopard Wesen understand the sounds that real leopards make?"

"Josh, that's ridiculous," was all that Trubel had to say on the topic.

"I don't think it is," Josh said, sounding offended. "I think it makes perfect sense."

Trubel rolled her eyes. "Well, maybe you'll have to ask Monroe if you ever talk to him again. I'm sure he's seen a wolf before," Trubel said in a mocking tone.