Backdated to Sept. 21st. Finished yesterday. Totally written in Gdocs like a bunch of nerds.

Finn had no idea why he was getting mail from the Charles Darwin Institute - especially, like, enormous, important-looking envelopes? - but hey, they’d sent him a thing and it looked important and there was something intensely intriguing about a return address in the Galapagos. He ripped the seal open before he was even on the stairs, and skimmed the top page as he made the climb up to his apartment. That… sort of jogged his memory, a little bit? He’d definitely applied to the field school program, just for appearances sake, and his advisor had written a glowing recommendation--

--but never in a million years had Finn expected to be accepted. He’d already made so many plans about staying in Destiny City, about staying with Arkady... Even if he went, he couldn’t leave her behind, and that was something to consider. Anyway, it looked like he had a few weeks to make his decision, and the program was only three months…

“Hey,” he called, opening the front door. Arkady was on the couch, watching a documentary that was apparently about, predictably, birds. “So, uh, what do you know about the Galapagos Islands?”

Shibrogane
“Finches,” said Arkady immediately, kicking up her heels to make room for Finn on the couch but predictably not moving the rest of her long torso from where she was sprawled, her giant fluffy penguin pillow tucked under her head to conceal both her new tattoo and the new undercut. “Charles Darwin studied a lot of finches. And how all the birds had different beak lengths.”

It was because of seeds. Sort of like how humans had sharp canines to tear meat, and molars to grind up vegetables and stuff… right? She wasn’t a dentist but she thought she’d read that in an internet argument about vegetarianism. Finn would probably know more about it than she would, which was awesome, but also totally acceptable, because Arkady really only cared about birds as far as animal studies went.

She peeked up at him, carefully not lifting her head just yet. “Wait, are we playing Jeopardy? What is… finches.” A cheeky little smile graced her face, and then she dropped her head again. The person on the screen was holding up a tiny owl with enormous eyes, and Arkady cooed, “Oh, babyy” at it. Like it could hear her. She realized that was stupid and flushed a deep red. “Why do you ask about the Galapagos?”


If Finn noticed the splash of color creeping around her neck from under the penguin, he wasn’t going to ask her about it just yet. She’d had some suspicious looking bandages on for a few days, and his mind had been abuzz with what she could have possibly done to herself - body art had crossed his mind, and he’d decided that Arkady was a grown adult and could do what she wanted. Tate would have considered it mildly sacrilegious to mark her body in such a way, but…

Tate didn’t live around here anymore. He held the top letter out for her to look at. “I’ve been accepted to a field school program in Puerto Ayora,” he said, “It’s a three-month program and I’d have to get down there by, like, October? They’ll pay travel. Obviously I’m not going to leave you here by yourself, because that turned out so well the last time I did it.” He wasn’t sure if she’d find that amusing, but the point stood: he was not going to leave Arkady in Destiny City by herself.

“So I guess the question is do you want to come to the Galapagos with me?” he asked. It felt stupidly like a marriage proposal.

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Arkady sat up, green eyes a little wide at his offer. On the one hand--wow, going on a trip with Finn! To the Galapagos!! Where there were birds!! And presumably a beach!! And she could show him her awesome new tattoo, and get all tan. Maybe she’d even get freckles. Freckles were super ******** cute.

But on the other hand… she didn’t really want to leave this war. She wanted to be here! Doing stuff! Making things happen! And if she went to the Galapagos, she’d just be there… with Finn… doing…

Her gaze flicked back to the television for a second. Three months with Finn. Three months to convince him that she really did understand what she was offering, without the war to get in the way and show him the empty spaces that still hung in her head in a dim fog. It wasn’t like the war was going to change by then… “Okay,” she said. “D’you want to see my tattoo?”


Finn smiled back at her. “Is that a yes?” he asked - okay, in his experience, was one of those phrases that had a lot of different answers depending on inflection, but if she were down for going with him, then he’d contact the program tonight and tell him he was interested and needed to bring her along. He’d find a way to make that work, right? And being away from the war… Being away from the war would do her a lot of good, he thought. Arkady needed experiences that didn’t revolve around henshining up to go fight evil by moonlight.

“Your tattoo,” he said, bemused, his eyes flicking back to the bandage on her neck. So she had gone and inked herself up. Well, like he’d just considered, Tate did not live around here anymore, and Arkady was free to do as she wished with her body. “Yes,” said Finn, finally taking a seat beside her. “I would love to see your tattoo. I was waiting for you to offer.”

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“That’s a yes,” she said, the verbal duh loud and clear. She sat up, tucked her long legs under her, and carefully tugged away the bandages to display the flower-and-beetle pattern going up the side of her neck. It continued down beneath her sweater, but she wasn’t sure he’d want her to show him that. “I just thought it was pretty,” she said, carefully tracing the lines of ink. They were healed, but she’d been worried that Finn wouldn’t like it…

“Oh,” she said. “I had to cut some of my hair.” That explained the undercut, right?



“It looks great,” said Finn, leaning to look. He could tell that it continued further down, but… That wasn’t something he was comfortable asking Arkady to show him right now. He’d seen her naked, but he was pretty sure that asking her to take off her clothes sent the entirely wrong message. After all, his priority was to get her to stop sexually throwing herself at him. He didn’t not want her, he just…

Don’t ******** the amnesiac, Kaatje van der Weydin sing-songed in the back of his head.

“That looks great, too,” he said, examining the buzzed side of her head. “Do I want to know why you had to do that?” He couldn’t help but be a little… worried.

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She peeked at him through the curtain of her hair, and then grabbed hold of his wrist. “You should feel it,” she said, carefully setting his hand at her undercut. “It’s really soft, isn’t it? I like how it feels.” Anything was better than telling Finn she’d been out fighting with a General. He would not be pleased with her if she admitted she’d done that.

Except… maybe the secret was a little old? “Um, well, you see, I was outside, and there was a monster!! And I tried to kill it, but it was a person, actually, who’d merged with a monster, so I knew you wouldn’t want me to kill it, but it pulled my hair and got all this black sticky stuff in. So I asked Tallulah to help me with it.”

Arkady tried a smile. Hopefully he accepted that for what it was, and wasn’t mad. “So we should pack, right? For the Galapagos?”


Well, that sure as hell sounded like Bischofite - though Finn wasn’t about to ask her about what the monster general might have said to her. It wasn’t something he wanted to get into right now, so he just nodded in what he imagined to be a sage manner and rubbed her hair. It was soft.

Her question made him laugh. “You’re about six steps ahead of the game,” said Finn, kissing the buzzed part of her head. “We’re not leaving for like two weeks! We can start… pre-packing. Making lists of everything we need and then going to go get it. Okay? Sound good?” He liked that she was excited… but she needed to slow down.

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As far as she was concerned, she was exactly as many steps ahead of the game as she needed to be. “I don’t own a bathing suit,” she pointed out, throwing her arms around his shoulders and leaning into him. That was a good start to the list, wasn’t it?

She hopped up and said, “I will get some paper.” If she was going to travel, she was going to be ready.