It is late at night. Basil is still fast asleep, apparently having fallen into a fever after all, much to Fresh’s worry. Jubilee has gone to bed as well.

“Tools…” mutters Fresh to herself, as she tinkers with some iron-bars upstairs behind the counter. It is past their closing time. Fresh stands there, thinking about what kinds of tools she should make, so that they can attract a less adventurous clientèle. Probably just the common things, like back in the north? Hammers, scissors, needles and so on.

Looking up to make sure that the shutters are closed, she begins her work. Fresh didn’t really feel like sitting down in the basement. She had spent so much time there already these last few days. She wants to stay above ground, at least for tonight.

The door opens from behind her and Shamrock comes upstairs, setting a few assorted materials down onto the counter that she had asked him to get for her as a favor. “Thanks, Shamrock,” smiles Fresh at him, blinking as she sees the dusty smudges on his armor. “Ah, stay there,” she says. The giant freezes in place, as if controlled and spellbound by some powerful magic. She grabs a cloth from below the counter and walks back to him, starting to rub the basement grime off his chest and shoulders.

“Don’t you ever get tired wearing all of that?” she asks curiously, narrowing her eyes as she presses the squeaky rag down a little harder to get rid of a stubborn spot.

“No,” replies Shamrock, looking down towards her.

“Huh…” She frowns, looking at his dirty armor. “What did you do?” she asks, looking at the amount of dust that seems to have gathered on him in the short few minutes that he was downstairs.

“Went to the basement.”

“Is it really that dusty down there?” she asks, not having noticed that herself.

“Yes,” is all that he says.

Fresh, channeling a little Jubilee, places her hands on her hips and looks up at the man. Though she isn’t really sure what it is that she wants to say. Instead of saying anything, she sighs and stands there for a second.

“It’s not my business. But can I ask you why?”

He looks down at her. “We need to sweep.”

Fresh laughs, her posture loosening. “No~! I mean why the armor?” she says, rubbing the last spot on his left shoulder clean, before throwing the cloth back beneath the counter and turning around to return to her work, wordlessly offering the man an avenue of escape to go upstairs, should he want to.

“To kill monsters,” he explains, apparently taking his chance and walking behind her to go towards the stairs.

“You don’t need to kill monsters anymore,” argues Fresh, grabbing a copper-bar. She has decided that she doesn’t want to make tools. She wants to make telescopes.

He stops, apparently thinking, as he is quiet for a moment. “I do. The sword.”

“That only needs to be filled up if you’re carrying it,” says Fresh. “The curse can’t steal your breath if you keep it locked away,” she explains, knowing that he also knows that. He has barely had his cursed sword in his hands since they’ve arrived. Apart from the times he goes into the dungeon by himself while everyone is asleep. Fresh never sees him do this, but she knows that he does, because there are always little pieces of loot down in her materials pile that weren’t there before. ‘Tribute,’ as he had called it in the forest.

Shamrock doesn’t say anything, perhaps realizing that he is caught in the trap.

She smiles, not sure what it is that she’s doing with the materials before her. She’s just kind of pushing them around from side to side in a sort-of ‘pretend work’ as she talks to him.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Shamrock,” says Fresh, scooting the copper-bar across the table for the fourth time now. “But if you do, don’t lie,” she says. “We’re friends,” she reminds him. “Until the moon falls to the world and then even after that,” she says with no shame. She starts work on the first telescope. Jubilee hadn’t arranged a buyer yet, but they had said they were close to making a deal.

She lifts a finger, poking one of the little toy slimes on the counter. It jiggles back and forth, its goofy face wobbling left and right in a playful manner. Despite the almost tense mood, she can’t help but laugh as she watches it move.

Fresh hears him exhale loudly behind her and she hears the rustling of his armor as his leg shifts as he begins to at least consider walking away. But he stops and stands there quietly instead, while Fresh tinkers with the telescope.

“I am unsightly,” is all that Shamrock says, breaking the quiet. She turns her head over her shoulder to look at him for a moment, before turning back to her work.

“Back in the north, that one night when I was scared and ran into you by the fountain, you helped me even if you didn’t need to,” she says, recalling that moonlit night which had felt so dark for her. “You brought us something super-expensive when it was hot, even if you didn’t need to,” explains Fresh. “And when everything went wrong because of me, you showed up and saved me when nobody else would.”

“I serve.”

“Not then you didn’t,” beams Fresh. “That was before you knew what I was,” she says, waving him off as she turns around to look at him. “Jubilee even said a lot of nice things about you back then. That never happens, Shamrock,” explains Fresh, lifting a finger. “Jubilee!” she exclaims again for emphasis.

The man doesn’t say anything else and neither does she, as both of them stand there, doing what it is that they’re doing. Fresh returns to her work and Shamrock quietly stares and watches her do it. Soon enough, she finishes the first telescope of many more to come tonight.

Picking it up, she holds it up to her eye and looks through it towards him. To her surprise, Shamrock, the stoic giant does something that she has never seen him do before.

He takes a nervous step away.

Seeing that she’s troubling him, she immediately lowers the telescope. “Sorry!” she apologizes, setting it down onto the counter before walking over to him and simply trying to wrap her arms around him in a hug instead to get her point across. “We all think you’re great, Shamrock,” she says. “Not because you’re super strong or because of what you look like,” she says, feeling his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides, as he doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. “But because of who you are.”

Shamrock doesn’t say anything as is normal and neither does she, what needed to be said has been said. They just stay like that for a minute. Fresh looks up at him. “I’m not letting go until you hug me back,” she threatens. “We’re having a moment.” She puffs out her cheeks threateningly in a display of dominance as he stares down towards her. Getting the message, he seems to relent and his arms find their way to her back. In exchange, her cheek, now deflated, plants itself back against his breastplate.

The two of them stay like that for a while, listening to the sound of a shared heartbeat which pushes through them both.

Much like with Jubilee, the mystery of Shamrock has long since been solved by Fresh, whose subconscious mind had mulled it over now and then, allowing the pieces of the puzzle to all slowly come to fit together. It isn’t that it’s her business or that she was actively conspiring to come to the conclusion that she has arrived at, it’s simply what her mind had done all on its own, while she was working, while she was crafting, while she was shopping and while she was living her quiet, comfortable life together with her cherished friends.

She isn’t going to tell Shamrock that she knows the truth about him, about what lies beneath the armor. Because he already knows that she does. She can feel it in the nervous, uncoordinated fingers on her back, the weakness of which she attempts to alleviate by squeezing her arms tighter around him.

Fresh realizes that while the things they have gone through together may, in many cases, be considered traumatic-events that needed moments of healing and processing themselves, that her friends have also gone through their own troubles long before they had come together. Most of those scars they all still carry with them, much like she had in her old life.

However, she simply won’t stand for it anymore.

This new home of theirs, this new life of theirs, up here so high upon the mountain, far, far away from the hauntings of their past, she has decided that there are no ghosts allowed. Not inside of her home. Not inside of herself and most certainly not inside of her friends. Perhaps she’s gotten a little overly maternal lately. Maybe that’s just what her personality is becoming as she develops herself as a person, or maybe it’s an effect of her having true friends for the first time in any of her existences or maybe she’s got some odd case of witch-brain. But she’s going to do everything to keep this life and she won’t let anyone touch it. She won’t let anyone or anything besmirch it. She won’t let anyone take it from her.

Fresh feels the metal of his armor press into her skin as she squeezes tighter, to make sure that he can’t get away until the hug is over. But then her nose twitches, bringing on a sneeze, as she breathes in some dust from a spot she had missed before.