It’s probably fortunate that he finds out with one of those puffball seikret chicks in his lap, the one that stowed into his bag and needs to be taken home tomorrow. Fray isn’t sure what he would have done if there hasn’t been a small, warm monster dozing contentedly on him. He wants to jump up, but can’t; to raise his voice, but it would wake the chick, plus alert everyone outside the tent, which he cannot afford. So instead he just clutches at one of the leather loops in his armor and stares at Proxy, in horror. “You what?”
Her little feline face is impassive, even haughty. She looks imperiously down at his seat on the ground, which puts her at just-barely over his eye level. She says, again, “I went hunting without you.”
“You c—can’t!”
“Well, I did,” Proxy says, sauntering over to where the tea kettle is still heating up. She hops onto the stool she uses as a boost and begins a practiced form of ignoring him entirely in favor of preparing her cup. “Don’t freak out about it,” she adds.
Fray is freaking out. Fray has very good reasons to be freaking out, and the only reason he is not freaking out more is because Proxy has not tried to tell him that this isn’t a big deal. His disbelieving gaze follows her like a cloud of gnats. A dozen things he could say collide into one another in his mouth, and none escape. Ever the mute. It’s only when Proxy pours the hot water that he finds his tongue in the gentle splashing. “Who?”
Who, because he needs to know how bad a mistake she’s made. Who, not because he’s jealous or something stupid, but because if she’s gone rogue, Fray needs to know who to bribe to keep quiet. And dragons forbid she went solo—
Proxy’s face twists into exasperation. “Who do you think?” At his impatient gesture she rolls her eyes. “Telum Unit.”
It’s a better answer than it could be. It could have been with one of the sketchy hunters in Felar Unit. Telum Unit, their unit, with Belial, Marco, Lorelei, et al, is not the worst she could have picked. But—“With Glee there? And Piksel?” His voice goes a little shrill, he can’t help it. That weird green felyne handler is a pain in the ass on a good day, and delights in nothing more than seeing that the Guild’s rules are observed. Chief among those rules is Palicoes don’t hunt solo. They’re too small, too trained in support, and too bite-sized. Palico fatalities went up by seventy percent the last time the Guild tried to relax the rule, or so he’s heard. This is why he adds, “Are you stupid?!”
She ignores this jab. She pours milk into the tea.
“Prox, tell me you’re k-kidding.”
“I told them,” Proxy says evenly, “that you were supposed to be there. Which is true, by the way. Glee posts us to a hunt, we are supposed to be at the hunt.”
This is true. Fray tries not to think about it, and why he wasn’t there, and why he really hasn’t been at any of the more challenging hunts since his arrival and addition to Telum Unit. He fails, immediately. Even if he hadn’t, Proxy keeps going. “So if you keep pussying out of hunts,” she says, “I don’t really know what else you expect me to do—”
“We work better alone—”
“You think we work better alone because you’re letting that gold rath get to you! You made a mistake one time and you’re letting it ruin your life!”
It’s this again. The Argument. Fray clenches his teeth. “It ruined Anya’s life,” he reminds her darkly, again. “Was my call, my mistake. Tetsu—”
“Anya and Tetsu shouldn’t have been put on that hunt to start with.” Proxy has gathered her tea things together now, and sits primly on her stool, sipping. A storm brews in her face. “That was the handler’s call. Not yours.”
Fray looks away. It always ends like this, in stalemate. Proxy can’t seem to understand. Anya and her Palico, Tetsu, shouldn’t have been put on the hunt, but he was the team lead, and he should have said something, done something. Told them to scout or clear out the jagras or something, anything that wasn’t letting them come with him to fight the golden rathian that had begun to haunt the Ancient Forest. It’s still his fault that Tetsu was skewered by a dozen poisonous spikes and now lies in a grave.
For a little while, there’s only breathing and the sound of the Plains wind.
“You can’t hunt without me,” he says lamely, eventually. He says it like she doesn’t already know this, like it isn’t hammered into every hopeful Palico candidate. “You’re support.”
“Yeah, and I went and supported my unit’s hunters.”
“You—”
“It’s fine, okay?” she says, losing her patience all at once, like a bursting geyser. “I’m not going to get in trouble. Glee made an exception. There’s paperwork or whatever. Fabius isn’t going to find out.”
In his lap, the little seikret burbles and puffs up even rounder. Absently he strokes its downy back. “Promise me you won’t do that again,” he says. “I can’t … if you lose your license, Prox—”
“Promise me you’ll start doing your job,” she says. At his silence, her temper worsens. Her ears flatten back and her eyes narrow into slits. “You can’t hide forever. This isn’t Fifth. You can’t just fuck off anymore. Oh, what the hell is that look? What am I supposed to do?” she goes on, hissing over her mug. “Sit on my ass waiting for you to get over your hero complex? Tetsu died. We tried to save her and we couldn’t. We did our best, Fray.”
“I—”
“You’re not the only one who isn’t happy with how this assignment turned out, okay?” Her paws tighten around the metal mug. “Nobody told me we’d be hunting in groups, or I wouldn’t have pushed you to come to begin with. I miss our old handler, and I miss our house, and I miss Chef’s cooking! I miss not having sand in my fur! I miss hunting! I miss hunting with you, you fucking coward!”
Her jaw snaps shut. They stare at one another, until the little seikret peeps softly.
Fray is still processing the words when Proxy slips off the stool, mug in paw. She lifts her chin, unapologetic. “Figure your shit out, Frou-Frou,” she says blackly. “I’m not giving up the hunt on your account, so either you get back on the kirin, or I fly solo until big boss finds out and strips my license. That’s your call.”
And with that, she marches out of the tent.
Fray’s eyes, slowly, turn from the gently waving tent flap to the little animal on his thighs. It’s woken up, and peers at him when he turns his attention on it, chirping plaintively. Distracted, he riffles his fingers through its silky feathers. It’s small comfort in the face of his companion’s ultimatum. He can see the writing on the wall. Either she loses the license or he loses her to another hunter. He can hardly stand to think about either. Proxy has always been his Palico. They work together like perfectly machined parts. He can’t even imagine learning to hunt with someone else.
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it,” he tells the seikret, who stretches out a wing sleepily, and yawns.