Enjoy!

Valerie awoke in the middle of the night after a nightmare.

Her forehead was drenched in sweat, her breathing was heavy and her face was flushed from the heat.

She gently took the covers off of herself, careful not to disturb the sleeping girl next to her in the process. She reached down into a drawer in the table beside her bed, grabbing a cloth and dabbing over her head.

Fucking trauma flashbacks. She thought as she placed the cloth back down. Anything but that academy, I thought I was done with that when I graduated. 

She let out a few murmurs of swears, arising herself from her bed and stretching her arms above her head, taking deep breaths to calm herself down as she glanced to the clock that rested on her bedside table.

3:54 AM.

I didn't feel like sleeping anymore anyway.

Valerie knew that she was definitely sleep deprived a lot of the time, but honestly, she didn't mind, she'd had worse sleeps in her life, one time where she even had to be rushed to the hospital and put under antiseptic to force herself to sleep.

Yep, it was a problem, seriously, she'd been to the hospital so many times that she was pretty sure every doctor in every department knew her name solely because of the vary of problems she'd experienced up until she turned thirteen.

Despite the train of thought running through the now fourteen year-old's head, she managed to lift herself off of the bed and made her way over to her workshop, maybe working on one of her projects would keep her mind of things.

-

She didn't even bother changing out of her pajamas, just putting on her tick gloves and starting to carve a little duck out of wood. She knew how to do a variety of things, not just things in the pyrotechnical area, that's just the area she had expertise in because of her arso- *cough* 'training' that she went through.

As she was close to finishing the duck toy, a weak voice called out from behind her.

"Valey..?"

The girl perked up. Only Marcy ever called her that, and only ever in private. A light blush spread across her cheeks as she turned, being met with the sleepy girl, hair a bit messed up, droopy eyes and loose hands.

Valerie barely managed to launch forward before she collapsed.

Marcy muttered a lazy 'thank you' under her breath as Valerie helped her up, steadying her as she did. The brown-haired girl then sat on her desk, Marcy following as she rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her tiredness away.

"Nightmares again?" The noirette asked gently as she stretched herself out, her eyes returning to their normal width. 

Valerie sighed and turned away, both from Marcy and her own feelings. "Yeah." She choked out, clearly not wanting to be pressed about the topic.

Despite the obvious hint, Marcy scooted closer to her and grazed a hand along her shoulder.

Valerie tensed at the touch. She seemed a little on alert from her 'dream', but when she noticed that Marcy seemed to have no intent of harming her, she relaxed again, just leaning back a little into her hand.

"Look, I don't know what's going on for you, or... what's going through your head, or what you've even experienced, but." She patted Valerie's shoulder as said girl turned her head to look at her with stars in her eyes and a smile faintly tracing her lips.

"You know I'm here for you, right..?"

Valerie leaned a little closer, and in a hushed whisper, said "I know."

She turned so that she was fully facing Marcy, as she could feel the girl's stare flicker to her lips. Not just once, no, twice.

 It seemed like there was a magnetic force in-between the two, pulling them in closer to each other. There was barely about an inch when she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye, it seemed to be one of the axolotl's she worked with.

But she knew better than it was just an axolotl.

Valerie sighed and pulled back, trusting the sign. "I've gotta go." She gave a glance to the amphibian off to her side and it moved it's head, eyes flashing, almost as if nodding to what she was thinking.

She quickly pecked Marcy's cheek, and ran off, leaving behind the girl flustered, flushed and completely frozen in shock.

-

Valerie allowed the axolotl to drag her into the woods, and as they finally got out of sight from the shadowed town and it was well in the distance, the two hid behind a tree. As the brunette turned to look at the green axolotl once again, she saw it's body start to glow with a faint aura, it's eyes fully gold.

"Alright, knock me out or whatever." She said awfully calmly as the axolotl lightly picked a rock up off the ground and hit her in the back of the head, her vision tunneling into blackness.

-

As her eyes fluttered back open, Valerie clearly wasn't in her normal state.

Her whole figure-- while still outlined and colored, was a bit fainter and slightly more see-through than usual, as well as having that gold aura around her. She got up, her eyes landing on a fully gold figure in the distance, who was glowing as well and fully that color, just in different shades, and with glowing gold eyes.

The brunette made her way over to said figure and hissed "Gold!"

The entity turned, meeting her eyes. "Yes?" She asked in a high voice, not crazy high but definitely not in the lowest of pitches.

"What was that for?!" Valerie asked, crossing her 'arms' as she looked to the spirit. "I swear, if you give me the 'Trust the gold gem's fate' speech again, no, don't I'm not suffering through that whole thing again."

"Oh heavens no! I need to have you back before your girlfriend wakes up." Gold said as she twiddled with some more controls on the dashboard she had in front of her.

"SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND-" Valerie argued, a blush glowing on her cheeks as she argued in protest, her eyes wide.

"Yet." The entity corrected, finally turning away from what she was working on.

"You know what, nevermind." She took some deep breaths, calming herself down and counting to ten in a whisper again, a usual technique for her to use to calm herself down when her anger got the best of her. "Why did you stop me from kissing her?"

"I saved you from a parallel future. One where, well, it wouldn't end so well for her." At the press of a button, the screen in front of the control booth lit up. It displayed Marcy with some kind of helmet on, with at least ten orange glowing eyes.

"Yikes." Valerie grimaced, shivering at the thought of Marcy being trapped in her own mind like that. "Wait, but what does that have to do with-"

"Plot, my dear, everything has it." Gold said as she stepped towards her, tucking a strand of hair between Valerie's ear. "I'm just helping you stick to yours. There's danger coming up, but the others don't know just what you've been through to become an assassin at such a young age. You have something the others don't, you know that, right? You're the protector."

"I'm aware," Valerie responded in confidence.

"Good." She then pushed the aqua-eyed girl away, leading her to fall into a ray of light. "Now go, I'll sort everything out from there, don't worry about a thing."

 Valerie nodded as her already glowing figure was engulfed in light.

-

As Valerie awoke, she noticed she was fully dressed in casual gear. Ripped denim shorts, a black t-shirt with the edges outlined in white and a denim jacket tied around her waist. She also noticed she was standing upright, as well as the thick gloves that she wore the carve sitting on her hands.

Grab the wood duck.

Valerie didn't question the familiar voice as she grabbed the near done wooden duck and her carving knife. As she started to finish the carving, Anne, Marcy, and the Planters entered the room.

"Dude, where the heck were you?" Anne asked, making Valerie look up from her project. "We've been looking for you for ages!"

The brunette shrugged, saying the response that first came to mind. "Well I woke up last night and couldn't get back to sleep, so I've been up and about, I packed some of my things and then headed out to the woods for an early morning walk and to get some more wood. I just came back."

"Wait a second... Why were you packing? You didn't even tell us you were coming with us or anything." Sprig said with narrowed eyes, his obvious trust issues peeking through his words as he crossed his arms.

"Oh it's fine! Me and Val talked about it last night." Marcy seemed a little... flustered? Whenever 'last night' was mentioned at all. The others just nodded, trusting Marcy's will. Valerie mouthed a 'thank you' to the noirette as she rushed past her to grab her bags.

-

Valerie and Marcy were loading their bags among others onto Joe-- the bird now awake and ready to fly.

"So..." The fourteen-year-old started. "You said I could stay with you, right? Would that mean sharing a bed again?"

Marcy looked to her, flaring up red. Valerie knew that she liked her at this point, but Gold kept telling her 'just wait, don't risk the timeline.' Which was fair in her eyes. So she would wait until she got the green light.

"U-Uhm... y-yeah, I guess so." Marcy replied, forcing the blush off her cheeks, (or attempting to). She looked up to the taller girl with sparkly eyes as Valerie reached a hand over and gently patted her head.

"Alright, then let's get going."

-

Now everyone was loaded on the bird, and they had started to fly back.

Valerie's eyes flashed to pure gold as they came over the horizon of Wartwood.

'I don't know what's coming, but I'm ready. I'm ready to take down anyone who tries anything with my friends. I'm ready to protect those around me.'

'Good,' Gold responded in her head. 'Now remember, Love is the strongest emotion you'll find.'

'Why's that?' Valerie asked back to Gold's voice.

'Because it can be the strongest source of happiness. Yet the strongest source of rage, too. Remember that.'

Valerie took a deep breath, as she allowed the words to carry out in her head: 'I will.'

This is roughly how gold looks

It's bad I know 😭

Anyway hope you enjoyed, the next chap will be all scenes that have her in it from New Wartwood and friend or frobo, because she's not too big of a part in either and I'll skip the next two because she's not in those at all.

Kay byeee!