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Fandom: Slime Rancher
Challenge/Prompt: Bittiest Bingo (for want of a nail - sacrifice - bonfire - alien nation)
AO3 Link: here
1.
There is a world out there in which Hobson never finds his door. There is never a ranch for Beatrix to buy and so she never leaves Earth at all.
She and Casey settle down, maybe, or maybe they drift apart anyway; maybe they break harder without the pull of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to give them the push they need.
That Bea never loses sleep over feeding schedules and plort market fluctuations, never runs herself ragged trying to hold a five-person job all by herself. Maybe she’s even satisfied.
All things considered, though, this Bea’s pretty happy with what she got.
2.
Bea flattens herself up against the cliff wall, but this close to the sea the rock is always slippery and she is, slowly but surely, sliding down.
If hell isn’t an empty jetpack and an unavoidable drop into the slime sea it must be pretty close. Her own fault for being, as always, unable to resist the distant glint of a treasure pod.
On the plus side: that teleporter schematic is hers now. On the minus side: weeelll.
Another inch down. She’s never really been one for putting off the inevitable.
Bea breathes in and out and takes the plunge.
3.
There is something deeply satisfying to feeding the fire slimes. The way the flames dance and sing.
Back home she used to feed things to the fire just to watch them burn—unwanted photographs, train tickets or concert passes—old, done with things. It disturbed Casey to no end, this need to burn her bridges as she went, but it was just a way to mark change. Out with the old, etc. Bea doesn't know how to live her life except as a constant move forward.
She throws in piles of printed starmails and watches as they turn to ashes.
4.
In the end it doesn’t take long to get her affairs in order, and by the time night falls the corrals are empty, the drones dormant, the silos filled to bursting. Whoever 7Zee can find to replace her, they’ll have an easier time of it than she had.
She’s not sure what’ll be waiting for her on the other side of the warp terminal—another world, another time, another far, far away star. But that doesn’t really matter, no, what matters is that the other side is there, waiting for her.
Bea breathes in and out and takes the plunge.
