Aaron "Sullivan"
Aaron and Juniper left town so quickly that an ignorant Dustie might have thought they shot Noah. A hell of a hike later and after bickering about where to set up camp and how far to hike, Juniper sat with only the front of her aglow. She poked a stick absentmindedly in and out of the hot embers as she thought about the day. What a shithole Dust was. Aaron yawned loudly as any sense of time they had was obliterated by their hike into the night.
"So how come you've been bugging me so much about going on a camping trip?" Aaron asked casually. Juniper looked over at Aaron with a guilty look on her face. Honestly, just going camping with him wasn't the reason that she wanted to go back into the wilderness. Juni shrugged her shoulders in defeat.
"Truthfully," she said, making it sound more like a question than a statement. A nervous laughed escaped her as she continued, "You're going to think this is stupid." Juniper leaned toward Aaron like she was telling him some kind of secret. "I needed to come out here to cleanse myself... To reassure myself that not just bad things happen out here."
"So something bad happened out yonder when you left Dust before?" Aaron persisted. Now he was intrigued.
"Something," Juniper scoffed, "try many things." The only person that Juniper had ever disclosed about her life outside of Dust was Luke. Even then he didn't get the whole run down. Juniper figured that Aaron deserved to know something. "In short, I almost died of dehydration. Completely my fault, and completely stupid, but I was in a hurry to leave. Then, someone saved my sorry ass and set me up in a shack in the middle of nowhere." Juniper stopped, trying to piece everything together.
"Then I met Robin, who was actually apart of band of scoundrals trying to rob me." Juniper skipped everything in between. "Everything was uphill from there and... then it wasn't. It was actually a cliff and I fell right off of it," Juniper said, making a silly motion with her hands.
"Life seems to do that," Aaron acknowledged. He took a moment to take in everything Juniper had to say; he didn't quite expect that deep an answer to as simple a question as he initially asked. Nevertheless, he wasn't insensitive to what she had to say either. Aaron looked at her calmly and understandingly. "Do you feel safe?"
Juniper blinked at Aaron; she hadn't expected him to ask her that. Her eyes darted to the fire and her brow furrowed, thinking about the complete solitude she was in for the majority of her banishment. "I don't know," she said slowly, trying to get a grasp on how she felt. It was then that she realized she wasn't alone nor was she going to be abandoned. Juniper looked back at Aaron before saying, "Yeah, I guess I do feel safe."
"Well that's good to hear," he replied positively. "I think you're going to have a good time tomorrow," Aaron told Juniper, "because I think if you have this idea that the wilderness is all bad, you didn't do it right." Yawning obnoxiously loud again, Aaron then asked "so how 'bout some sleep?"
With a nod of the head Juniper stood up from the rock she was sitting on, kicked some sand into the fire, and sluggishly made her way to the tent. Aaron finished putting out the fire by throwing more and more dirt into the fire pit, and by spreading the embers out so they'd burn quicker. It was only a few minutes before he couldn't feel the heat of the fire with the back of his hand anymore, and he joined Juniper in his small backpacking tent.
"Surprise," he said playfully as he crawled into the tent. He took a moment to untie his boots and put them in the corner of the tent before lying on his back on his sleeping bag. "Am I too fat or are you okay over there?"
Juniper laughed, partly from his jokes and partly from the fact that they were in such close quarters. "Oh please," she said playfully, "you're only crushing me." Juni slipped into her sleeping bag with a smile on her face and wrapped her hair into some kind of bun. Settling into the comfort of her bag she lazily looked over at the man next to her. "Hey, Aaron," she paused for a moment, "thank you."
The sound of her words seemed to make him freeze as he gazed blankly up at the top of the tent. Aaron was noticeably more tense as Juniper showed her appreciation for him. Thoughts he himself considered insane ran through his mind; they were friends, maybe close friends at that, and that's not something Aaron wanted to lose. Already there was enough to deal with between Evanne and Noah. He just wanted to avoid pain and tension for now while he sorted out all of his thoughts and emotions. He scratched the side of his head while he pondered.
"Don't worry about it," Aaron finally told Juniper after a long moment of silence. He turned over on his side, facing away from Juniper and looking at the nearest wall of the tent. He hadn't even bothered to get into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. "Just sleep for now."
Juniper nodded her head at Aaron as he flipped in the opposite direction and told her to go to sleep. Her eyelids drooped closed with exhuastion but her mind bounced around tirelessly. The majority of her thoughts twisted around the townsfolk and their agression toward the Thompkins.
"Aaron," Juniper finally said, interupting the stillness of their tent.
"Yeah?" he answered; he was not exactly comfortable in his tent like this, and with all that he himself had to contemplate, Aaron was not so fast to fall asleep.
Honestly Juniper wasn't sure where she was going with this. Taking a moment to collect her thoughts she finally spoke again, "I'm sorry about all this shit with Evanne." It was unfair, the way that Aaron was tossed so frivolously aside. He was kicked down like a dog and ignored, and all because Evanne was a coward. Suddenly, Juniper saw a direct correlation with Evanne and Robin. Then Juni thought about herself, everybody had a little coward in them. A little coward that had the ability to take over when things got too hard. And the cowardly aspect of Aaron that was unsure of himself froze. Simply, he stared at the wall of his tent with his back still to his friend. Inside of him was a chaotic bag of emotions he was afraid of showing to anyone else.
A wall of exhaustion hit Juniper as she tried to finish her train of thought. "You never deserved any of this..." Juniper said, drawing a little closer to Aaron. "You're one of the good ones," she finally stated, trying to come to a real conclusion. Her tired mind was flicking off its switches though, making it hard for her to really say what she wanted to say. Instead of trying to articulate her thoughts into words Juniper nuzzled her head into Aaron's side, forcing him to put his arm around her. This gesture was purely platonic for Juniper and once she settled her head on his chest as she said it again. "You're the best of us, Aaron."