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fandom-lover2 · 7 days ago

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Deep In The Woods, Something Lingers In The Trees

Chapter Nine - Caged In

Chapter Eight - He Is Not Tarzan

“Damnit!” Will swore, slamming his hands down onto the desk.

I guess this was about a good of time as any to knock.

His head snapped up to me, and then he relaxed when he recognized who it was.

“Bad time?”

“Always.”

“It’s been three days. When it my time to shine and testify? I’m guessing I’ll need to be briefed by the lawyer on the types of questions they’ll ask. And I have tons of photos and videos on my phone as evidence and-”

“Not gonna happen.” Will cut me off.

My heart dropped. “What?”

Oh god. Was he dead? Please, please don’t tell me he was…

“90 days till we can apply for a court date. There’s nothing we can do until then.”

Oh. Not the best news.

But he wasn’t dead, and 90 days was actually good news.

“That’s fine. More than enough time to build a solid, indisputable case. We’ll get him back in no ti-”

“I don’t have time to build a case right now.” Will stood, clicking his desktop mouse twice before the printer starter up and began spitting out papers.

“What? Why?”

What the hell could be more important that getting Caesar out?

“Charles is getting worse. The disease it is mutating. I need to work on revising the original ALZ-112.”

ALZ-112. That must’ve been what Caesar had.

Wait, worse? Revising the drug?

“You’re going back to the work in the lab?”

Now that I looked, boxes and a briefcase were packed and ready to be loaded, his lab coat hanging from a hook.

“Will, Caesar need us to-”

“I can’t do anything for Caesar!” Will shouted, spinning around and scowling at me. “For 90 days, I can’t do anything. I can’t even go visit him. But right now, my father needs me more.”

He turned back to the printer, adding the pages to a blue folder. “I don’t think you should come around anymore. Leave your key on the way out.”

And it was clear there would be no more reasoning with him.

I turned on my heel, throwing the spare key onto the kitchen counter, and marched out his house, slamming the door closed behind me.

Yes, his father was dying. And yes, he had a good chance at curing it.

But Caesar was family too, and while Charles was important, I wasn’t going to abandon my brother.

As I got halfway across the street, I was hit with the fact that that was possibly the last time I ever left that house. Getting Caesar back seemed to be an increasingly impossible challenge. And if we were able to, there wasn’t a guarantee Will would let me back in, not after all that happened.

He’d probably move them all far away, out the city and away from me. Would the last time I ever stood with Caesar be us fighting? Would I ever go into his room again, or would the memory of our fight taint the tranquility of that place, forever?

Would I ever step foot in that home again? Or see Charles and Caroline again?

Slipping into my room, I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop.

My latest google search was still open, research on different boarding options in Boston.

I was ready to move with my life, get out of that attic and start living. And now? I’d have to give all that up to get him out. Months, possibly years, would go into this.

I closed the tab, and my wallpaper came into view. It was me and Caesar, the ape and I leaning against one another was we watched the sun set from the attic window.

Caroline had taken it sneakily, and sent it to me.

Caesar was all I had. It didn’t matter how much it took, he was more important than any of that. He was in this mess because of me. I’d get him home.

I wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for someone else, I couldn’t. I was going to get my brother home.

---

“Please!” I begged, following the man out his office and into the break room where the other guy were sitting, not bothering to hide they had been watching us.

“Go to the zoo.” John Landon dismissed, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot.

“They turned me down.” I lied, adding a hint of desperation to my voice.

John turned to look at me again, taking a deep drink from his coffee. When he was done, he sighed and placed the coffee cup down. “Let me see those again.”

I fought hard to hide the smirk, holding out the papers I had printed yesterday evening to him.

False acceptance letter from Standford and the even faker forms stating I needed to log 4 months of volunteering at a zoo or sanctuary for primates as part of my course in Primatology.

I stood with baited breath as John scanned over the pages.

Eventually, he sighed. “Guess you boys would appreciate a free set of extra hands.”

Outside, I smiled politely in thanks. Inside, I felt as though my chest would burst. I got in.

“I’ll take these back to my office to sign. Dodge, show her around. And don’t get me a lawsuit.” John addressed the younger man, the one with evil in his eyes.

We sized one another up, before he scoffed. “Come on. I’ll show you the monkeys.”

Not monkeys, I corrected internally.

I followed Dodge out the office, down the ramp to the cages. It stank, so much that I had to take a moment at the door, forcing myself to not gag.

Dodge laughed. “Their shit stinks. Wait till one of ‘em throws it at ya.”

Ok, maybe I hadn’t really thought this plan through.

But Caesar wasn’t allowed visitors, and I needed to make sure he was ok, for however long he was stuck here. God only knew how these apes were being treated

Regaining control of myself, I continued down the ramp after Dodge.

“We let them out every second day to clean.” he started, beginning to walk down the walkway between the cages. He continued on about something, more about the schedule I think, but I wasn’t concentrating.

There he was, second cage on the right. His back was to us, and it seemed as though he was asleep. His didn’t have a shirt on anymore, but still had his jeans from what I could tell.

I paused, just a moment too long to watch him, and Dodge noticed.

“He came dressed like that.” he felt the need to defend, which sounded alarms in my head. “People dress them up sometimes, thinking it’s funny. Kinda is.”

My eyes snapped over to him, but I didn’t say anything.

“Come on. I’ll show you where we prepare the food. It’s time to make dinner anyway.”

Fighting every bone in my body telling me to stay, I followed Dodge further into the main floor. The cages took a bend, leading to a basic industrial kitchen.

My heart broke with every cage we passed. Each contained an ape, mostly chimps, one orangutang. They all looked so miserable, so broken. In their tiny cages, it was a miracle they could move around at all. The cages were damp, and cold, and barely lit. Chimps sat in their own shit, staring at me with lifeless eyes as I passed.

How could people just leave them here? I mean, I knew there really wasn’t anywhere else they could go, and it was better than the alternative, but they deserved better. Real grass, and real tress. Real, clean air and open sunlight. No this, not hell.

I didn’t even want to think about how Caeser must be feeling, what he had been through the past 7 days.

We entered the kitchen, and found another man there already, mixing something in a bucket.

“Rodney, this is Alina. A new volunteer. Rodney is the vet.” Dodge introduced.

Rodney, a tall man, barely made eye contact with me as he nodded, keeping mixing the food.

I didn’t get as big ‘asshole’ vibes from him like I did Dodge, but something still felt off about him. He seemed shy, skittish even. Maybe the apes weren’t the only ones Dodge liked to laugh at.

“Nice to meet you.” I addressed him, not really even talking to him as I took in the parts of the food being used as the ape’s food.

Rice boiled on the stove, while the counters were littered with open cans of beans of all kinds. At a cutting board, carrots were being grated.

“They eat that?” I hadn’t meant for it to be so disgusted, or maybe I did.

Will had never once made Caeser eat anything like that. Was any of it even safe for chimps to eat? Never mind the orangutang I saw, which should only be eating fruits.

“None of them have starved, yet.” Dodge joked. “I’m leaving you with her.”

Then, he spun on his heels and marched out the kitchen. I turned to watch him leave, catching the exact moment he slammed something red against the nearest cage.

The chimp inside screamed, jumping to latch onto the bars and began rattling its cage. As it did so, all the others joined in, screaming and shrieking, all banging on their bars. The noise was loud, and horrifying, and all too familiar.

My hands raised to block my ears, my heart hammering in my chest.

PTSD. Frequent flashbacks to the event, trouble eating and sleeping. All signs I would expect to see in the following days of my incident. And I’d decided to sign up for hours on end with the very animals that caused it.

What the fuck was I thinking?

“You can keep going with the carrots!” Rodney called, shouting over the noise outside.

I turned back to him, frowning at the vet.

“The carrots.” he repeated, gesturing to the cutting board with his ladle.

The noise outside died down, the chimps having lost interest in the commotion.

You have to sell it, fake it till you make it. Blend in. Be normal.

“Ok.” Washing my trembling hands, I picked up the old potato peeler and began to grate the remaining carrots on the board.

“So, what will our daily chores be?” I asked, watching as Rodney checked the boiling rice before turning off the gas stove.

“Mornings we clean the main area, feed them breakfast, and put on something for them to watch. Days they go out, we clean out the cages. Then in the afternoons we cook dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.”

“Any enrichment activities on given days?” I pressed.

Rodney laughed, more of a nervous chuckle. “They have the TVs.” he added, when he realized I was being serious.

Holy shit, this place really was ape hell. We finished making the apes food in silence, the job taking a good hour longer. Shit, I really should have gotten here earlier this morning.

Distributing the food into buckets, we headed out to feed them.

The apes, knowing what time it was, began hollering and sticking their hands out the cages the moment they saw the buckets.

Rodney had taken the first bucket of food, saying that I should watch him first and not get to close. My job was to follow behind, shoveling in a pitch fork full of straw into the cage for the apes to make a nest for the night.

We started closest to the kitchen, going down the line slowly. Meaning, Caesar would be one of the last.

I kept my eyes low, forcing myself to take calming and even breaths.

These apes weren’t Caesar. They weren’t smart like him, and they didn’t know me. I wasn’t safe with them. I couldn’t get close to them, couldn’t look away. I’d have to keep my guard up at all times.

Finally, we made it around the circle and to the final 4 cages.

Glancing over, I looked into Caesar’s cage and found him standing at the bars, waiting silently.

Caeser’s eyes caught mine and I saw them lighten in recognition.

I hurriedly dropped the wheelbarrow, raising my hands and signing for him to stay quiet. ‘I’ll come back soon.’

Checking to make sure Rodney hadn’t seen me, which he hadn’t, I continued to shovel the straw and then followed Rodney back to the kitchens.

“There’s one more, but I’ll do him today. Probably shouldn’t scare you on the first day.” Rodney mumbled, taking a single scoop of the sludge and a handful of straw before leaving me behind.

I was going to use the chance to rush to Caesar, but I could see Dodge and John in the office and so had to hold tight.

When Rodney got back, we cleaned and I did some more chores, before being called back into the office to speak to John.

“So what hours are you thinking?”

I almost said all day, every day, wanting to spend every second here with Caesar, but I needed to keep the lie up.

“A couple hours a day, maybe some weekends. It depends on my class schedules and homework.”

John bought that answer.

For the next 40 minutes I had to sign legal documents and a waiver about injuries. And then had to listen to him repeat over and over again that I was a student, a volunteer, that I would not be getting paid for anything I did.

This wasn’t about credits, or money, or anything. This was getting to help Caesar. No job would turn me away from that goal.

“Any more questions?”

“Do you mind if I walk around a bit? Get comfortable with where things are and all that?”

John waved me off. “Suit yourself, but be gone by 6. Dodge needs to close up.” And then he grabbed his coat and left.

Doing a quick scan from the higher vantage point, I didn’t see Doge or Rodney anywhere.

Rushing down the ramp, I stopped before his cage.

“Hey Caes.” I whispered.

He spun around, grunting as he did. When he recognized me, he hopped down from his ledge and stepped up to the bars.

I took the hands he pushed through the cage, brining them up to kiss his knuckles. “Hey buddy, hey. It’s ok. I’m here.”

And then he flinched, jerking his left hand back.

“Caes?” I looked closely, and my stomach. There, on his knuckles, an open wound. Several, almost like puncture marks. He’d been bitten.

“Oh my god, Caesar.” Tears filled my eyes, my heart feeling like it cracked. “What did they do to you?”

He whimpered, pressing his face against the bars, trying to get closer to me.

For days, I had imagined what would happen when we saw one another again. I ran every scenario in my mind, practiced what I would say in the shower.

I lay awake at night, wondering if the fear alone would stop me from speaking to him. If I would freeze up again. If I would even be able to face him.

All it took was seeing him again and none of that even crossed my mind.

He was Caesar, my Caes. Nothing had changed that.

“I’m sorry.” I gasped, hot tears rolling down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

He pulled back, face still pulled tight in pain as he reached up to wipe my cheeks.

“Time to go home?” he signed, breaking my heart all over again as another sob left me.

“No Caesar, you can’t go home yet.”

He pulled away from me, betrayal in his eyes.

“But I promise, I’ll be back soon…” I trailed off when he turned around, pushing himself into a corner and facing away from me.

“I promise Caesar. I’m working on it. We’re going to get you home.”

I’d probably been wasting too much time here, and if anyone caught me with red eyes that’d raise suspicion.

I stood up and took a step back. “I’ll be back tomorrow Caes. I promise you.”

#pota caesar x reader #pota x reader #pota caesar #rise of the planet of the apes #planet of the apes #pota will #pota caroline #pota charles #pota maurice #pota rocket #pota cornelia

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