Sunset ^beta

"Well, I certainly hope you're happy with this mess."

OEA trudged along sullenly without answering, the snow crunching under her boots. She shivered as frozen threads streamed down around them, and looked, out of the corner of her eye, at OAA.

"And quit side-eyeing me!" OAA snarled.

"I'm not side-eyeing you!" she snapped.

"You are too," said OAA. "Ugh. This is all your fault." She crossed her arms, shivering. OEA felt a bit sorry for her; she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt -- appropriate for a heated debate or a flamewar, but definitely not a mass freezing. OEA, having spent most of her time that day in a canon recs thread on Arctic canons, had a comfy sweater on under her winter jacket, and had thus been well-prepared for the sudden cold snap.

"Do you want my jacket?" OEA asked.

"What? No! Fuck your jacket," said OAA. "Fuck you, and fuck your jacket. What even is that color, anyway? It's like Barney the Dinosaur barfed up a muppet."

"Shh! Bodily fluids rule!" OEA hissed.

"Oh whatever," said OAA, rolling her eyes theatrically. "We can't get much more frozen than we already are. Seriously, why did you keep arguing with me? How dumb do you have to be? Of course I was trolling!"

"Well, I'm sorry, I just didn't realize you were trolling! I just wanted to share my feelings about breakfast pastries," OEA said.

"And it didn't occur to you to question it when I had an inexplicable hateboner for Pop-Tarts?"

"Well, lots of people unfairly malign Pop-Tarts," OEA explained reasonably. "I think the fact that conversation about Pop-Tarts got banned for the next three posts is squarely on your shoulders, though. You probably shouldn't have said that thing about the anon-you-replied-to's kids. That was crossing the asshole line kind of a lot." She paused, trying to quell her irritation before giving up and adding "And that was not me who you said that to, by the way. Not everybody who disagrees with you is one person! I don't even have kids!"

"I didn't say anything about anyone's kids!" OAA said. "That was someone pretending to be me! God, no wonder you suck at debate, you can't even tell the difference between me and a troll!"

OEA narrowed her eyes. "I thought you said you were trolling."

OAA sighed, the steam of her breath pouring out of her like an unwilling admission of defeat. "Ugh, just shut up, all right? Pop-Tarts are dumb and you're wrong for liking them. I bet you like Red Delicious apples too."

That remark about apples was a low blow, but OEA couldn't help but think her irritable companion looked awfully lonely. It was probably hard, being over-aggressive. Maybe she had a tragic past. Maybe she was secretly a woobie. Maybe a little kindness could remake her into a new nonny. "Hey," she said, "are you sure you don't want my jacket?"

OAA glowered. "Can we not have this conversation again?"

"All right," said OEA, in what she hoped was a gracious manner. "But we should probably get somewhere warm. You look really cold."

"Your face looks really cold," muttered OAA sullenly.

"Come on," said OEA. She tried to take OAA's arm, but OAA shoved her away.

"No," she said. "No, I'm not going to go frolicking through the wintery fucking wonderland with you."

OEA rolled her eyes. "Look, we have to do something until the next post. If we stay here we'll just get frozen again."

"Fine," said OAA, and she trudged along after OEA, though every time OEA tried to make conversation she responded with "Ugh, who cares?" or "This is so boring." At one point, when OEA asked her what her fandoms were, OAA said only "I hate list threads!" through gritted teeth.

But OEA persevered; though it was difficult to see the way through all the freezing, and though they had to dodge angry mod comments every now and then, they managed to find their way through the threads to a high point in a conversation that had been buried somewhere on page 3 of the post, and from this vantage they could see all of meme.

"Look, over there!" said OEA, pointing at a blotch in the distance. "I think it's a Canadian Shack!"

"Couldn't we have just dememed that?" OAA asked. "Or something less... shack-like? Maybe one of those threads on gorgeous fictional houses? Do you have some kind of ...weird Canadian shack fetish? You know Canada's not all shacks, right? I bet you don't."

"Dememe's down," said OEA.

"Oh," said OAA, sounding stricken. She pulled out her phone and proceeded to completely ignore OEA, who shrugged it off; being ignored was probably better than being verbally abused and kinkshamed for a purely hypothetical shack fetish.

"Come on," said OEA. "There's bound to be one tiny blanket and a bed in there. Maybe a fireplace, if we're lucky!"

OAA didn't look up from her phone, but she followed OEA down the slope, through the rapidly-accumulating snow, and they walked in silence for several minutes. OEA hoped they got to that shack soon; OAA's teeth were chattering and OEA didn't dare offer her jacket a third time.

And then, suddenly, OAA said "Dememe's down!"

"I just said that," said OEA.

"No, this is terrible!" said OAA. "Look! It's down!" She shoved her phone in OEA's face.

"Come on," sighed OEA, pushing the proffered phone away gently.

"But how can we find our comments without --"

"Your lips are turning blue. Come on," said OEA.

"But dememe --"

OEA pulled OAA along. She really didn't like how bad OAA looked, and as she half-dragged her former nemesis to the shack in the distance, she tried to dredge up memories of fic research threads about cold weather and survival that she'd scrolled right on by. "Lousy mods," mumbled OAA. "Fucking ponies."

By the time they'd gotten to the door of the shack, OAA was definitely in bad shape. She was shivering violently, and OEA dearly wished she hadn't scrolled past the last Plot Unfucking subthread on hypothermia.

"It's very cold," mumbled OAA, as OEA dragged her into the shack. "Definitely still your fault."

"It is not my fault," said OEA, primly. "It is your fault, because you are a troll, and I was just going about my business, happily memeing away when you decided to attack my entire way of breakfast with weird, disingenuous remarks implying that pastries are classist." She dumped OAA unceremoniously onto the bed she'd known she would find in the shack.

"Oh," said OAA. She frowned, and held up her hands. "Oh, that's why my fingers are numb," she said. "They changed color!"

"Oh for fuck's sake," said OEA. "Look, you stay here," she said. "Don't make trouble." She wrapped one of the ragged blankets around OAA's shoulders gently, then looked around to find a way to light the stove. As she looked around, she was relieved to find that it was a well-appointed shack: one bed, a blanket large enough to cover approximately one and a half people, a box of matches, a large potbelly stove, a small pile of wood, and some generic-looking canned food.

To OEA's relief, she managed to get the fire going -- hooray for paying attention in some useful plot-unfucking threads at least -- and then she hovered around OAA worriedly, trying to monitor her condition without actually making eye contact, because OEA didn't want her head bitten off again.

"I'm going to go out and see if I can find something warmer for you to wear," said OEA once the cabin was warm enough that she couldn't see her breath in front of her face. She watched OAA, huddled in the little scrap of blanket, for a long time.

Finally OAA shrugged. "Whatever," she said, and OEA took this as the only acknowledgement she was likely to get.

OEA put her coat back on and went back out into the frozen wank wilderness, and after half an hour of careful foraging, returned with a Wooly Sweater for OAA and a Bandersnatch Cummerbund for each of them, with matching scarves and deerstalker hats. They weren't fashionable (and the Wooly Sweater smelled awful) but they would have to do.

When she returned to the shack, OEA found OAA banging a can of beans against the wall, trying to open them.

"Why don't you use a can opener?" OEA asked.

"Fuck you and your can opener privilege!" snapped OAA. "There isn't one, and I'm ravenous here."

OEA sighed, and began rummaging through the stack of cans for a can opener. "Okay, one out of ten, nonny, for coming up with a brand new kind of fake privilege, but... shit, you're right, we don't have one, do we?"

"Like I said," snarled OAA. She resumed her useless hangry flailing with the can.

OEA pried the can out of OAA's hands gently but firmly. "If you keep doing that you'll bring this whole place down around our heads and we'll be right back where we started. There's got to be a way. Why would this place have cans but no can opener?"

"To torment us, probably," said OAA. She sat on the bed once more and wrapped herself in the blanket. "Great. We're stuck here, cold and hungry and tired, with no dememe and no can opener."

"Aw, come on, it's not that bad," said OEA.

OAA looked at her blankly. "How is it not that bad? Ooh, maybe ~*~*at least we have each other?"

"Well, yeah," said OEA. "Even you have to admit, it'd be really boring to be stuck somewhere with no one to argue with on meme."

OAA rolled her eyes. "Also, I have to ask, what the fuck is that you brought in with you?"

OEA suddenly remembered the bundle of warm clothes she'd brought in from the wank threads. "Ah. The sweater's for you."

"It smells like asshole," complained OAA, wrinkling her nose. "And it looks itchy."

"I know," said OEA, apologetically, "but it's better than freezing to death."

"Is it? Is it really?" OAA asked.

"Would you prefer to freeze to death than wear the sweaty woolens of Wool Sweaterly?" OEA asked.

"...well, he's an even bigger asshole than you are," OAA said.

"How am I an asshole?" OEA demanded. "Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, nonny, I saved you from wandering through meme dememeless, put up with your jerkiness the whole way here, and I got you some clothes that may smell like wanker but at least they're warm, goddamnit."

OAA laughed. "Man, case in point, you just went off on me for no good reason. How can you say you're not an asshole?"

"Argh, never mind. I'm ignoring you," said OEA. Of course she was going to be a jerk. Of course.

"Sure, okay," said OAA. "I guess if you have no better arguments. I don't really care!"

OEA rolled her eyes and silently picked through the pile of cans one more time, just in case there was a can opener they'd missed.

"Look how much I don't care. It isn't even a thing," said OAA.

OEA hummed to herself, deliberately ignoring OAA as loudly as possible.

"Oh come on, earworming someone is the easy way out of an argument," OAA whined.

"Were we having an argument?" OEA asked. "I thought I was trying to be useful while you failed to pick a fight with me."

"I thought you were Overly-Earnest Anon, not Passive-Aggressive Anon," said OAA.

"Right now I'm Had It Up To Here With Your Bullshit Anon," said OEA.

"Lolol, okay, whatever," said OAA. "You know you're enjoying this."

"No, actually, I'm not," said OEA. "You're on your own. Have fun in your adventures over the asshole line!" She stomped out and slammed the door. Ha! Now who's getting the last word?

But even that didn't stop OAA. OEA had been walking for barely ten seconds before she heard OAA shout "But you can't! It's almost Yuletide! There are bears out there!"

She didn't bother to respond.

And so she wandered through the frozen wasteland, determined to find another shack (Canadian or otherwise) soon.

But the frozen threads were unforgiving, and of course, what with all the wank, the post was mountainous and rocky and full of thorny tangents. She kept thinking she'd found a fellow nonny and running towards them until she realized they were just strawman arguments.

Shivering, she realized that even on the new post no one would be there to welcome her, because it was getting dark, and soon it would be Dead Hour on meme.

And then she felt that something was horribly wrong... quite aside from the darkness and the cold. Was it velociraptors? Bears, maybe? All she knew was that she was sure she was being watched. She froze, hoping whatever it is would go away, but it was hard to stand still in the snow when her feet were numb and her face was numb and her clothes were wet and her hands were scratched from scrabbling up and down steep threads.

There was a low growling noise, and she closed her eyes, hoping and praying that something would happen, some mod would see her and send ponies or Thor or anyone to her rescue. Well, anyone except Loki. But hell, right now she knew she would've settled for Frank.

But no mod came, and the growling got louder, and finally she couldn't take it any longer. She broke into a run, blindly stumbling through the wank wilderness, and her whole body hurt with the effort of fleeing. What the hell, she thought, I'm not even signed up for anything! She resolved to make a very angry post on the next Yuletide thread, if she managed to make it to the next post. (She was pretty sure she'd broken her scroll key falling off a thread earlier anyway.)

And just when she was too frozen and exhausted and angry to run any longer, and the bears were catching up with her, she saw a light in the distance. She pushed herself to keep running, but it was too far away, and she knew she wouldn't make it.... But she ran right into a door, and the bears were gaining on her, and she shouted and demanded to be let in and knocked on the door, and the last thing she saw before passing out was the door opening just a crack.

* * *

When she came to, she found she was sitting in front of a fire. She was really glad that someone had thought to give her a blanket -- a real blanket, thick and soft and warm. It was unbelievably luxurious not to be totally freezing.

"Oh, good, you're awake!" said someone. She turned, half-expecting to see OAA there, but the woman standing over her wore long robes, like she was some kind of old-timey religious figure.

"Um. Yeah. Where am I?" OEA asked. She looked around the room. It was a small, dark room with stone walls, and lit only by torches, but, somewhat incongruously, the floor was covered in rugs and the décor was cozy and reminded her very strongly of her great-aunt's living room. The couch even had those plastic covers on it.

The woman in robes smiled gently. "Welcome to the Sanctuary and Fortress of the Benevolent Order of Kindness, Happiness and Everybody Getting Alo--"

"Oh, the Cult of Nice!" she said. Then she realized how rude that was. Oh well. It was true.

"We are not the Cult of Nice!" said the acolyte, so harshly that OEA worried she was going to get kicked out again. "That's the Militant Siblinghood of Let's All Sing Kumbayah down the road, not us." And then, as if she hadn't committed a grave faux pas, the acolyte smiled again. "Do you want some soup? You must be very hungry."

"Yeah, actually. I would kill for something to eat," said OEA.

This got her another dark look, but it was brief. "I hope that was humorous exaggeration. But, great! I'll be right back!"

OEA waited until her rescuer had left the room before she stood, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, and slowly walked to the door. She listened to make sure the acolyte wasn't just on the other side, then opened the door to peer out.

It opened onto a long, dark stone corridor, and if she was quiet and still, she could hear chanting in the distance. As bad as she probably was at adhering to the doctrines of the Cult of Nice, that was an awfully nice fire, and she didn't really want to get lost in their fortress, so she closed the door and explored the room rather than the building. It was lined with bookshelves, which was great, because OEA could totally go for some tropey sickfic right about now. She examined the spines of the books on the shelves carefully before picking one out, but no sooner had she settled in on the plastic-covered couch than the acolyte had returned with a huge bowl of soup.

"Oh!" she said, upon finding OEA on the couch. "I didn't know you wanted anything to read. You know, we usually don't let people in unless they give us a nice comment, but considering your great need..."

"Oh, yeah, thanks, you guys are total lifesavers," said OEA. "Also this soup smells amazing. Thanks!"

The acolyte looked pained. "I hope you're not just saying that because you feel like you have to!"

"Um." She was not quite sure how to respond. "No, I'm hungry and you saved my life, pretty sure anyone would be grateful under those circumstances. ...Well, most people," she said, thinking darkly of OAA.

"Some people are just jerks," agreed the acolyte. "But I'm glad you liked being rescued!" She looked at OEA expectantly.

OEA was not sure what to say. "Yup. Glad you rescued me," she said, finally, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. She went back to greedily spooning up soup, because after trekking across a frozen meme for a day, she was hungry.

"Soon you'll be up and about and ready for us to take you back to namespace!" said the acolyte. "That meme you got here from is dangerous, you know."

"Um," said OEA. "I'd actually prefer not to --"

"I mean, you never know who might be talking about you," said the acolyte. "Most of the people on there are trolls anyway. It's a lucky thing we were there to help you!"

"So, about that," said OEA. "I have this friend -- okay not really a friend, more like a, uh. ...Man, actually, she isn't even slightly a friend, she's more like an enormous asshat with anger issues, but anyway I was wondering if you could send someone over to find her and --"

"Oh, I'm sure she can't be that bad," said the acolyte, laughing nervously. "Nobody's that bad."

"But you were just telling me about the trolls and --"

"You're tired and confused," said the acolyte. "It's totally normal! Don't worry, we'll take care of everything and soon you'll be far away from that meme with nothing to worry about --"

"But I need to get to the next post! And OAA is still out there! I left her all alone, what if she gets eaten by bears or velociraptors or mantises or --"

"I'm sure everything will be just fine," said the acolyte. This was so vague as to be the exact opposite of comforting, but OEA could tell she wasn't going to be able to convince her that OAA needed help. So she said nothing, and finished her soup, and tried to concentrate on the sickfic she was reading. She knew she had to get out of here and find OAA; if she didn't, she'd never make it to the new post, and who knew what would happen to OAA without her?

Eventually, when she had finished her soup and the sickfic, the acolyte offered to find her somewhere to sleep "before we take you back to namespace." Sensing any protest would be waved away, OEA conceded, glumly, and went with the acolyte, out into the stone corridor. She found, to her surprise, that she was not the only nonny they'd taken in; three others were being herded towards a dormitory, hooded acolytes in tow. She could tell the other nonnies weren't getting along, because they kept glowering at each other and at her, and one of them kept muttering about Destiel under her breath, but the presence of five or six Cultists of Nice were preventing them from saying anything more.

It was kind of weird, actually. OEA would have felt way more comfortable in the midst of a stupid shipping slapfight.

Then, apropos of nothing, one of the acolytes tripped another and punched a third in the face. She threw down her hood and shouted "EVERYBODY RUN!"

"Oh, it's you," said OEA, following her as she ran down the corridor towards, hopefully, freedom.

"Who the fuck did you think it would be?" OAA demanded.

"I was worried about you, I thought you weren't going to be okay!" said OEA. They were approaching the huge front door of the fortress. Cultists of Nice were gathering around to defend it, although they didn't seem to be doing anything more threatening than wringing their hands and pointedly ignoring OAA.

"Ugh, of course I was going to be okay," said OAA. "What, you don't think I can survive in a frozen wasteland?" She shoved a cultist aside with a muttered "Fuck you!" and elbowed another viciously, then started to pull the door open.

"You weren't doing very well earlier," said OEA, helping her with the door. It was huge and heavy, and she didn't think two nonnies alone could manage it.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't prepared," said OAA. "But after I realized you weren't going to come back, I tracked you down and killed the bears --"

"How did you manage to do that?" OEA asked. The door still wasn't budging. "NONNIES!" she shouted at the cult's other three captors, who had caught up with them. "Help us with the door!"

"Um. Really, I don't think they're that bad," said one of them.

"Yeah, did you really have to punch them?" another asked. "I mean. What were they gonna do, viciously snub you?"

"Do you want them to drag you back to namespace or what?" snarled OEA.

This prompted a chorus of "Namespace?" from the hesitant nonnies, before they helped OEA and OAA open the door. All five of them managed to slip out the door. They fled the Sanctuary and Fortress of the Benevolent Order of Kindness, Happiness and Everybody Getting Along while the Cultists of Nice avoided looking at them and said to each other, loudly, "Well we don't need their comments or kudos ANYWAY."

Once they were out of sight of the Cult of Nice, they stopped running. As OEA tried to catch her breath, the cold air hurting her lungs, OAA grumbled to herself and threw off her acolyte's robes to reveal that she was wearing a bear pelt.

"Wow. I'm really impressed," OEA admitted. "And kind of scared of you."

OAA glowered at her. "You're welcome."

"No, seriously, how did you manage to kill and skin a bear, and find me, and... and... all of that?" OEA asked.

"Dememe's back up," said OAA. "So I went and looked at all the wilderness survival Ask Memes and plot unfucking threads I could find, and then tracked you down. Come on, there's a plot-convenient cave nearby, we can build a fire and sleep there for the night and go on to the new post once you've gotten some rest."

"Okay," said OEA. "Thanks. Seriously." Then, impulsively, OEA kissed her, before she could ruin everything by turning into a total jerk again.

OAA kissed back roughly, and OEA took her face in her hands to bring her closer. But then OAA pulled away. "Come on," she said, "your hands are fucking freezing."

"I -- well -- well you still smell like bears and wooly sweater sweat," said OEA, blushing.

"And whose fault is that?" OAA asked. But she grinned, and put one arm around OEA, who had to admit she was warm.

And with the help of dememe, they found their cave. OEA found a recipes thread nearby, and they feasted on an odd assortment of holiday foods, favorite comfort foods, and a whole slew of recipes for a nonny who'd recently acquired more squash than they knew what to do with.

And afterwards... well, it was a cave, but it was a plot-convenient cave, so the fire made it warm and the floor was not too rocky or uneven. They sat by the fire, wrapped up in OAA's bear pelt, and when OEA kissed her again, she responded a lot more favorably. OEA couldn't remember ever having had a more enjoyable Dead Hour on meme.

And the next morning, once they'd finally made it to the new post, OAA cleared her throat, awkwardly. "Um. I was wondering. If you wanted to... um. Exchange email addresses?"

"That would be great," said OEA, and she wrote her sock email on OAA's hand.

From the last page of the old post, they looked down at the glorious vista of the new post. Its verdant slopes were warm and teeming with ponies, and it was already three pages in. "Looks like we missed the pony line," OEA said.

"Yeah, but there's already wank on page two, it looks like," said OAA.

"Of course you want to check out the wank. Of course," said OEA.

"Hey, I play to my strengths," said OAA. "Anyway, maybe it's wank you like too."

"Ooh. I hope it's teddy bear detective wank," said OEA.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up, it's probably countrywank," said OAA.

OEA shrugged, and took her hand. "It's a new post! It could be anything."

"Always the optimist," OAA said, rolling her eyes. But she grinned at OEA, and hand in hand, they joined the rest of meme.