#if you can't tell I wanted to grab rayan through the screen each and every installment

[writereleaserepeat]

This last month I've been enamored by @sowhumpshaped's interactive whump story, "Stray." It came to a beautiful end just a few days ago, and I was inspired to come out of the woodwork long enough to write a little fanfic. Make sure to go read their story before continuing here! It's a lovely work of art and I had so much fun seeing where it went. I miss the daily updates already!

This story is set twenty years after the main storyline of "Stray," and ten years after total pet liberation. It takes place in I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Disneyworld, and it features our MC (you!) meeting a ghost from their past.

CW: mentions of pet whump, second person POV, swearing

WC: ~2250

You run your tongue along the mountain of sweet vanilla cream, savoring its delicate flavor as it slowly melts in your mouth. With how much this ice cream cost, you were determined to enjoy every moment of its blissful respite from the summer heat. The mouse might know how to mark up its sweets, but it wouldn't steal away your enjoyment of this day, not even with an ice cream cone that cost an arm and a leg.

You're pulled from your thoughts by the sight of the ride coming to a halt beyond the fence. The harnesses begin to release and the children start pouring towards the exit, all smiles and laughters as they rush to find their parents on the other side. Your daughter is easy to spot, a tall girl - god, when did she get so tall? - with a glowing, gap-toothed smile.

Much to your surprise, she comes to greet you with another girl in tow, a child whose face reminds you of someone you can't place, their eyes sparkling with a hint of familiarity. A celebrity, maybe?

You don't have any more time to ponder before your daughter begins talking. She holds the other girl’s hand, a child who couldn’t have been a year older than her, and all but pulls her up to greet you.

"This is Delaney, we were on the ride together! She's so nice," Libby speaks in that same pleading tone you're never able to resist. "Please, please, please can we go to the next ride together?"

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” you say as sympathetically as you can, putting a palm on Libby's head. “We need to ask Delaney’s grown-up first.”

“My dad will say it’s okay,” Delaney says with a vigorous nod, “he’s right over there!”

She points towards a man striding in your direction, his hair long, but his gait familiar. As he brushes the hair from in front of his eyes, you freeze. You know those eyes. You’ll never forget those eyes, even if they’re set deeper in wrinkles now.

The world stops. For one painful moment, you don’t even feel your heart beat. It’s like all the air has been sucked out of your lungs.

But it wasn’t. You draw a breath, a deep breath that pushes hard against your ribs. You’re free. All the pets are free now, and they have been free for ten years. It had been another ten years before that since you’d last seen Rayan.

He recognizes you too, you can tell in the way his jaw slackens, dumbfounded. That glitter of recognition continues as he finally stumbles into earshot and his tongue begins to work.

“Thirt-"

“Not in front of my daughter,” you hiss, leaning in towards his ear as you do so. “Not in front of my fucking daughter.” You keep a smile on your face, only just, so your child doesn’t have to see you fall apart before her eyes.

He seems startled, startled enough to shut up for one moment. But silence had never been his strong suit, you could remember that much, the way he'd ramble on and on after his volunteer shifts. You'd always let him talk - not today. The dynamic had shifted. Today, you look him in the eyes as an equal.

“I’m sorry, I-“

“Papa!” Delaney interjects, cutting Rayan off a second time. “I met this girl on the ride, her name’s Libby, she’s super fun, and super nice, and we want to go on another ride together.” She tugs on Rayan’s arm, but he doesn’t look down.

“Actually,” you say, pulling your daughter close to you, “I think we need to go catch up with Libby’s little brother and my partner.”

“Please?” Libby pleads again, staring at you with those doe eyes that always melt your heart. “Just one ride. It can be this one, we can do it again, we don’t even have to walk anywhere.”

Fuck.

What was almost twenty years of therapy worth if you couldn’t stand next to Rayan for another five minutes? You’d imagined talking to him a thousand times over, you’d thought painstakingly about what you’d say to him if you ever could, you'd prayed to his memory as much as you'd cursed it. But now, all you want is to walk away and never look at him again.

No more running. You'd promised yourself that almost two decades ago, and hell if you couldn't carry through with that promise today, especially with a family that needed you.

“Okay,” you concede, forcing a smile at Libby. She would never see you falter, not now, not ever. “You can ride this same ride one more time, just once, and only if you use your QuickCard to skip the line. We don’t want to get too far behind the rest of the family.”

“Sure,” Rayan says, voice measured. He smiles down at Delaney as well, but you can tell it's forced. “You can go too. Don’t forget, you only have three more taps on your QuickCard.”

“That’s okay!” Delaney chirps, already pulling Libby towards the line. “We’re going to have so much fun!”

And as the girls run in a tangle of limbs and laughter back into the ride's entrance, you’re left alone next to Rayan. The silence weighs heavily on your shoulders, and you feel the ice cream beginning to melt between your fingers. Then it's just you and Rayan, alone.

Not literally alone. You two are the furthest from alone you ever could be, stood next to a swinging steel pirate ship, amidst a park milling with tens of thousands of other people. But you can hardly hear the screams, the voices, the mechanical groans of the rides. Rayan’s presence next to you is suffocating.

You say nothing yet. What is there to say? You’ve said it all a million times before. To the shower walls, to your therapist, to the darkened skies in the early dawn. But none of it had ever compared to what you feel right now.

Something like hope begins to itch in your chest. Maybe this would give you closure, real closure, not the metaphorical closing of a book at the end of a therapy session. You've craved closure for so long. Could Rayan finally be this holy grail?

“I’m sorry,” Rayan says. If you didn’t know better, his voice sounded on the verge of breaking. “I’m sorry for everything.”

His swallow is louder than even the most cacophonous thunderstorm. He continues, tripping over his words, falling over himself with every syllable.

“Look, I was just doing my best. I mean, you were a kid, and I was basically still a kid too, and I was doing what I thought was best, just trying to help, you know? It’s been twenty years and I’ve never forgotten your face. And I mean, look at you now, here with your kids, this is what all the freed pets wanted, isn’t it? The chance to live like this?”

In that moment you know what you need from Rayan. It's what you've needed from him all along, even if you couldn't name it before now.

“Say it,” you mumble, struggling to find your voice. That hope for closure, god, you can feel it, you need it, and-

“What?”

“Say it,” you growl, more firmly this time. “You know what I need you to say.”

“Look, thir- whatever name you chose, I don’t know what you want from me.”

You finally look him in the eyes again.

“Say that I’m a person. Tell me that I’m a person.”

“Of course you are,” Rayan begins, and you watch him hold up his hands as he fights against his tongue's knots. “That’s what the Decree says. All pets had their legal status changed to reflect their unequivocal personhood.”

“That’s not what I asked. I know my pet lib history - likely better than you do. I want you to tell me that I, me, the living being standing in front of you, is a person.”

That nervous look in Rayan’s eyes tells you everything you need to know. The pregnant pause that follows is just painful confirmation. There would be no closure here for you today.

“Pathetic.” It takes all of your strength not to slap him in the face. “Twenty years and you haven’t learned a damn thing. The rest of the world has moved on from that nonsense and you can’t take five seconds to pull your head out of your ass.”

“Look," another swallow as Rayan wrings his hands. “Yeah, it’s been ten years, and still, there’s these studies, right? I'm sure they taught you to read in the, uh, the rehabilitation classes. There's studies that shows the pets that were liberated, they just aren't adapting to society as people do, you know? They don't excel at their jobs, they don't succeed in forming traditional family units, they engage in crime and anti-social behavior at much higher rates..."

You scoff and roll your eyes. All you can feel is the bile thick in your throat. Those studies, those lies, that propaganda, it would never stop. And people like Rayan would never stop feeding on it. You knew this, hell, you taught about it, at your community college's pet lib program. There would always be someone with an interest in the tyranny over 'pets,' be it emotional or financial, and it would succeed as long as people like Rayan were stupid enough to buy it.

"Look," Rayan says, putting his hands on the nearby railing as he looks away from you, "all I'm saying is, if you're a good- as good a soul as I think you are, you'd want what's best for your daughter, right? And, and maybe, well, maybe what's best for your family is how things used to be. You don't know for sure that things are better now. What if you're denying your family the chance to be taken care of, to truly thrive? What if they're not meant to be taken care of by, ah, by something like you?"

For a moment you think about striking him. You think about taking him to the ground, right there in the middle of the theme park, and pummeling him senseless. You want to beat that nonsense right out of his skull.

But that would prove his point, wouldn't it?

No. You know you can't do that. You can't wait for your daughter to come back and see your knuckles bloodied, this stranger choking on his own teeeth, your face contorted into an unfamiliar visage of rage. You weren't going to be a monster.

"You disgust me." The words are stickier than honey on your tongue. "Your vapid platitudes mean nothing. Your saviour complex has kept you stuck in the past while the rest of society is growing and learning from our sins. I'll always be grateful that you dragged me out of the trash that one day, and I'll always be grateful that you kept a roof over my head long enough for me to find my liberation. But I owe you nothing, not now, not ever again. I have my personhood - I always have. It's a shame you aren't using yours for something more meaningful."

You see a flash of pink out of the corner of your eye. Libby was coming back, running hand-in-hand with Delaney, that same joyful smile on her face. The smile of a child who had never seen the tyranny of the system you'd oncee been subdued by. The smile of a child who would learn just how important their personhood was, and always would be.

"Libby, darling, we need to go," you say as she comes within earshot. Your tongue is dry and sticky in your throat, and you need a drink of water. Your partner has water, wherever they are in the park now. You want to go to them now, seek the affirmation of everything you'd built in the time since you'd left Rayan behind all those years ago. You want to feel their comforting touch, something to ground you, to remind you of who you are. Who you've always been.

A good person.

Libby seems to wilt a bit, dejectedly dropping Delaney's hand from her own.

"Aw, but-"

"No buts. It's time to see what your brother is up to, and we have a lot of rides to catch before the day is over."

She pauses for a moment, and you can see her thinking it over. After another second she nods, seemingly convinced.

"Okay, as long as you promise to come on the next roller coaster with me."

"I promise," you say, reaching out a pinkie towards her. She hooks her pinkie in yours, and you take the opportunity to pull her close to you, away from Rayan, and away from the child he will undoubtedly raise to think just like him.

"Bye, Delaney! We're friends forever, okay?" Libby shouts over her shoulder as you begin to walk away.

"Bye Libby! Forever!" Delaney replies, giggling as she waves.

Your eyes meet Rayan's one last time. They're clouded with emotion, his lips pressed in a thin line. In spite of yourself, you smile at him once, and turn away.

"Alright, sweetheart," you speak to your daughter as the door to your past slams shut behind you. "Let's go have some more fun. We've got the whole day ahead of us."