The Raccoon and His Boy - A Varian x Reader story

XXII

You leaned back against the wooden caravan wall behind your cot, feeling the house-on-wheels begin to move as the horses took off in the front. While Sylvia kept saying you were gathering vital information, it still felt to you that you hadn't made any real progress these past fifteen days. It'd seemed like you had a lead back in Old Corona, but Sylvia took it down almost instantly, and since then your biggest indicators of where to look were burned patches in the forests and weird ocean behavior.

The mission to fix your sleep schedule wasn't going well either. If you even managed to sleep at all, the slumber was usually plagued with either terrifying nightmares of life if you didn't succeed in finding the compass, or in memories from the last year of times when you were happy. One would think happy memories would help, but unfortunately the opposite was true, especially considering most of them contained Varian.

The tension between you hadn't died down. On the contrary, you felt more confused than you had on the first day of the mission. Varian didn't seem sure if he wanted to apologize and repair your relationship or just ignore you altogether and move on, and honestly, you weren't either. Obviously, you didn't want to hold a grudge, but the fight you'd had seemed too big to just forgive and forget.

You sighed and slowly slid your back down against the wall until your head hit the thin pillow. Star hopped up to join you, and you brushed your fingers through her grey fur, trying to find comfort in the softness. Rapunzel and Sylvia were still in the den, discussing the mission's progression, and in the quiet with only your cat beside you, emotions finally started surfacing. You couldn't hold the tears of frustration and homesickness back any longer, and slowly but surely they slipped down your face, creating glistening trails on your skin.

Star curled closer to you the more you cried. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but you felt like you had been sobbing for a lifetime when the tears finally ran out. You still felt weak, though, both emotionally and physically now that you'd cried so much, and so you didn't bother moving from your place in the bed, pulling the blanket over yourself instead.

For once, sleep came easily. You knew it was stupid to sleep now, since it meant you'd have another restless night ahead of you, but you were too tired and overwhelmed to really care. Your eyelids grew heavy and you curled into a ball under the covers, hugging Star to your chest, and within minutes you were asleep.

Your dream was simple, depicting only you running through a field of sunflowers. Bliss hung in the air, and you felt weightless, letting the wind blow through your h/c hair as you roamed among the flowers.

Of course, there was no way it could ever end happily. After a while of feeling simply happy, the scent of smoke started reaching your nose, brought to you by the wind. You glanced around for the source, only to discover the field had been set on fire. As you looked around for a way to safety you were suddenly enclosed in a dome of darkness, and the last thing you heard before jolting awake was a menacing voice cackling evilly.

"Y/N."

After taking a second to calm yourself from the dream, you finally registered Rapunzel's voice and rolled over to look at her. "You slept through the whole night," she told you, a sympathetic look in her forest green eyes.

"O-Oh..." you said, sitting up slowly and rubbing your eyes. "Sorry, I've just been... dealing with a lot, I guess."

"I get it," Rapunzel replied, nodding in understanding. "You should probably get up, though. Lance made pancakes!"

You did your best to smile sincerely. While you were still feeling a little down, your not-so-little nap had helped a lot, and fresh pancakes did sound especially enticing. As Rapunzel left, telling you to hurry up before they were all gone, you pushed yourself out of bed and did your best to get ready quickly.