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Leafy peeked out from behind the base of a skyscraper, hands gripping the ivy climbing it as an anchor for her nervousness. The night was dark, the moon a sliver of silver in the navy sky.
Nobody should be awake, but she had to be careful. Even if she was overdoing it. She needed to be cautious.
She'd been let off with a warning. She couldn't get caught again. No matter how badly she wanted it.
She creeped through the rocky streets of Yoyle City, glinting in the dim moonlight. Yoyle berries- her own form of feeble protection against wind and rain and ray guns that aimed to kill.
Yoyle City was, admittedly, beautiful. Even with its dusty corners, its weed lined gardens, and it's crumbly buildings, it was still a lovely sight. The city hosted a very famous monument- the Yoyle Needy, and it's long-standing buildings were a nod at a popular, flashy past, even if there was nothing left here anymore. Nobody left here anymore.
Not like the lack of fellow objects was going to stop the former BFDIA contestants. They'd crawled into this city after "killing" Leafy, starting a new life. A contest, drama, "Dream Island Stealer" free life.
Leafy wasn't supposed to be a part of this new start. Book had told her to stay away. To leave. To save herself.
But she couldn't find it in herself to willing be lonely again. At least, from the cold shadows of Yoyle City's streets, Leafy could watch the other objects play, laugh, and repair around the city. Even if she wasn't among them- wasn't a part of them.
Because to her, forced distance seemed better than forced isolation. Out of the two, she could better convince herself that distance was what she wanted.
Leafy was snapped out of her thoughts by the sight of the Yoyle Needy looking up in front of her. She sighed, sitting up against her usual place near its front, leaning against the wall. Then she looked up, and there, in a flying birdcage that looked like freedom from afar, was a spark of bright, orange light.
Firey.
Leafy came to watch Firey swinging around in the air when her little corner-camp at the edge of the city felt too cold. Maybe it was weird, and it was definitely fruitless, but at least Leafy could delude herself into feeling warmer at the sight of that spark.
Leafy had no clue how Firey even got up there- or why. It seemed like some kind of cruel punishment- because what was better that suspending the guy with a fear of heights hundreds of feet in the air? But Firey was everyone's picture-perfect victim. He was the winner of the first season, before "that evil, horrible, menace Leafy" "stole" his prize right from his hands. Which Leafy herself thought was BS, obviously. She didn't steal it, first of all, she bought it. And the Announcer had let her. Second, Firey deserved it! He'd let everyone on, given everyone a second chance, and then had, pettily, excluded only her because of the Ferris Wheel incident. So she'd gotten her revenge!
…She was getting off track again.
Firey was lucky to still have her company, even if he didn't know she was there. Leafy was nice enough to stay by his side, even in hiding.
Leafy winced when a gust of wind brushed against Firey's cage, making him shriek in terror as it swung around in the air. The rest of Yoyle City slept through Firey's screams- to be fair, they'd all probably adapted to the noise. But when Leafy wandered close, it was enough to make her feel a tinge of guilt. Firey's fear was thick enough for her to bite, and, as much as Leafy probably shouldn't admit it, she didn't really like its metallic taste.
She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them and watching Firey with half-closed eyes and unfocused attention.
He was like a bright comet against the dark, smooth backdrop of the sky, stark and eye-catching. He was almost pretty like that- a smudge of tangerine paint against dark blue. He was a mini sunset, and Leafy would undeniably admire him forever, even if he couldn't warm her yoyle metal heart back up with such beauty.
Leafy had assured herself that it was okay to think of Firey as beautiful, because she knew getting too close would erase all those feelings. The Firey she knew was comforting from a distance, but if you got close then he was just mean. Biting. His words and actions stung just as badly as his flames did- except his personality spared her chlorophyll in favor of forming cigarette scars on her mind.
She'd done this a million times already. Firey was always scared of heights- and she'd seen his fear almost every other day. This wasn't abnormal. Her being there wasn't going to make him feel any better unless she did something- which she probably shouldn't.
'You can't just sit here and WATCH him!' Cried a quiet, anguished part of her mind. 'Look at him! He's suffering! Poor guy…'
But she could. She could sit there- she could just not do anything, and let the night end how it always did- with her leaving when Firey's voice went hoarse from screaming and he succumbed to exhaustion. It wouldn't be long- Leafy could already tell he was starting to get tired of yelling.
…But the Yoyle Needy door was unlocked and wide open. And he was right there.
Leafy cursed as she stood up, stomping almost angrily over to the doorway so she could climb the stairs. She didn't need to do this. She didn't owe Firey anything. She was just doing this out of her own good will- because she's so kind, y'know!
She trudged up the stairs, holding her knife carefully. Her rage slowly started to give way to wariness the higher she got. She was risking herself, too. One misstep- one slipup- and she'd be found out. Even if she just dropped her knife, she was sure it would be enough for someone to wake up. And she couldn't risk that- she wasn't even sure if Book would let her slide again after finding her.
When she made it to the top, she was slapped in the face with freezing cold wind. She wasn't even sure how Firey was still alive in these conditions, because the air up felt like freeze juice- thin and icy.
She slowly walked over to the the chain hanging over the side of the Yoyle Needy, then peered down.
There was Firey. Much closer than he'd ever been.
He was dimmer than she remembered- probably the work of the breeze up here and Firey's own prolonged stress- and more lousy, too. He was gripping his cage tightly, pressing himself into a corner and trying to make himself smaller with each subtle sway of the cage.
Leafy sighed, grabbed the chain in one hand, and pulled.
The metal felt cold, even to her similarly metal fingers. Her grip was shaky- really, she was trying to pull up a cage weighing several pounds in one hand, just so she could hold her knife- and the tremble in her arm rattled the chain, earning a completely new kind of scream from Firey as his attention snapped upwards.
Leafy almost felt bad for him.
After some struggle and pulling and several steps back, she managed to drag the cage over the edge of the Yoyle Needy balcony. It landed on the floor with a loud, heavy clank that made Leafy wince. There was no way that noise went unnoticed, which meant she had to leave, asap.
And yet, as Leafy was about to flee, a feeble, trembling voice called her name.
"L-Leafy?"
She stopped in her tracks, back to the cage.
She'd been hoping that Firey would have been too delirious from exhaustion to notice her. Obviously there had been a small chance that he would see her, but she hadn't really considering that in the moment.
"...Hey, Firey." She mumbled. Her voice was quiet, but not cold- and yet, it lacked any of her usual fondness. She knew how this game went. A neverending loop of hide and seek; of chasing, then hiding, then chasing again.
She glanced back at him, and he was staring. Not with forced indifference, not with hatred, but an odd, unfamiliar look of desperate relief.
Tears were pricking Firey's eyes, although Leafy could tell he was trying not to let them spill. His hands were slack against the bars of his cage, but he didn't seem bothered by his position. Or, at least, he didn't seem to care about how he looked right now.
"Oh- oh sparks, Leafy-" Leafy's eyes widened as Firey stumbled over his words, his choked with emotions that she couldn't place. "You- you're alive- I thought-" His flames flickered higher when his tears finally started to drip, evaporating almost immediately on contact with him.
"Firey?" Leafy drew closer. "Oh, trees above." She murmured. She hadn't been expecting this.
This desperation.
...Maybe he was delirious.
"I thought they killed you." Firey gasped, clearly struggling to breathe. The air up here was thin- he couldn't cry and burn brightly at the same time- and the realization slid a new priority onto her list.
Forget getting caught. She wasn't going to let Firey suffocate to death.
"Hey." Leafy knelt in front of his cage, laying her knife at her side. Firey leaned closer to the walls of his enclosure, almost reaching for her. "Firey. Slow down."
"I- I-"
"Fireball." She forced her voice to go softer. "Breathe."
Firey gripped his bars tightly again, but he started to slow his breathing through quiet whimpers. As he slowly started to calm down, he seemed to be getting off his adrenaline high, his shoulders lowering and his eyelids drooping.
When he finally started to breathe normally, Leafy reached through the cage bars to pat his cheek, and Firey leaned into her palm. Leafy's face flushed a bit at the sight, but Firey himself didn't seemed to notice, too busy with trying to keep himself from blinking into sleep.
Eventually, Leafy dragged herself up to a stand, grabbing her knife to leave, and Firey made a soft, punched-out noise, just barely watching her through half-closed eyes.
"You didn't see me, okay?" She waved her knife at him, and he just nodded, barely paying attention to the weapon in his face. "You don't remember any of this."
"Don't leave…" He whispered, although he was starting to lean sideways, jerking upwards everytime he remembered he was supposed to be awake. Leafy studied him before turning away, fiddling with her knife.
"Go to sleep, Firey." She mumbled before absolutely booking it out of the building, her face on fire. If Firey called after her, she didn't her it, almost tripping down the stairs on her way out.
When she burst into the- admittedly less cold- night air of Yoyle City's ground level, she was gasping for her own breath, wheezing as she ran a hand down her face.
She shouldn't have done that. She really shouldn't have.
…But it felt nice, to have helped Firey. It was a kind of niceness she'd forgotten how to feel until now- a cozy softness that carved out a space inside her.
Maybe lurking around Yoyle City wasn't so bad after all.
...So if there was a tiny, leaf-shaped lump of metal near the foot of the Yoyle Needy each night, it was nobody's business.
And, similarly, it was nobody's business if Firey's flame burned a little brighter each night.
He was, after all, trying to warm a yoyle metal heart.
And once it melted enough, then maybe, she would come back.
And spare him another visit.