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[peachfuzz]

Connie had a terrible habit of wandering without notifying anyone that he'd be doing it. If no one ran into him while he was prepping to go, and asked what he was up to, he would leave people guessing when the last time they saw him was. He never planned on making anyone worry, of course, but Connie had long since gotten used to doing things on his own and though he liked the crowd he now ran with at the compound, it never occurred to him to report something like this to them.

It had only happened a few times in the month and a half since his arrival, and until then the longest he'd spent out was two nights. With all the fuss that was kicked up over that, he'd then tried to limit his outings to afternoon excursions or something that would get him in early the next morning before anyone realised he'd been gone at all, but this time he got distracted and ventured further without thinking on who might be wondering about his absence.

And so this time, it had been twelve days since anyone had last seen him.

He came back mid-morning with his old school backpack he'd managed to hang onto despite everything on one shoulder and a newly found but dirtied neon orange messenger bag over the other. Both were packed full of his findings, and he was chewing on some turkey jerky he'd uncovered in his travels as he strutted back into familiar territory.

His shirt had an entirely new tear in it, from getting snagged in a tree branch on his way down from where he'd been sleeping one night, and his hair tie had broken, leaving his mass of hair bobbing with every step, but Connie was, in fact, completely okay.

Comments

[pyred]

Marco has managed to accept that Connie, wild-child that he is, will sometimes disappear for a day or maybe (only the one time) two. It makes him worry, especially since Connie won't go with Sasha, Annie, Reiner or Bertolt, but he can't make the teenager do anything he won't want to.

And then one day turns into two turns into three, and it's nearly two weeks. A week in, Marco was still pretending Connie was probably okay, but it was obvious to anyone around him that he was worried.

Connie wasn't as young as his students had been, but it felt like the same kind of pain in his chest when he thought of Connie dying. When he thought of Connie alone, without anyone to help him - even if that had been how he'd managed it at first.

Which is why, when he spots Connie on his way to get rid of some actual trash-trash (Sasha has been showing him how to save animal skins and bones, which might be trash to people like Jean but useful for what she's teaching them) he spots the familiar mass of hair.

He stops, stares, drops the bag he's holding and lets out a sharp cry of "Connie!" in uncharacteristically loud fashion. Connie won't get much warning before he's scooped up in a huge hug. Not a Reiner-style bear hug, but something close to it. Probably more along the lines of 'relieved teacher'.

[notvaljean]

It's hard work, pretending not to give a shit when your friend is missing.

Jean knows Connie likes to go wandering, and he also knows that Connie can take care of himself. Still, as the days stretch into a week, and then two, he feels a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, one that won't go away. The nightmares start up again, and he even has to sink to creeping into Marco's bed in the middle of the night, just to get cuddled so everyone else can sleep.

By the time the two week mark rolls around, Jean has almost stopped looking for Connie when he draws watch, and has almost accepted that he'll never see his friend again. So when he spots someone strolling towards the compound, he doesn't immediately think it's Connie. It could just be a particularly stylish walker, and he gets ready to get off the roof and go stab it in the eye if it gets near the fence. But it's not moving like a walker, and when it starts getting closer, Jean realizes that he knows that strut. He knows the strut, and the hair poofing out everywhere, and he can't help the bright, excited grin that spreads across his face.

"Connie!" He yells it loud enough to alert the rest of the compound, and vaults down off the roof to run to the gate. "Connie, you stupid fucker, where've you been?!"

[bertall]

The first night Connie was gone, Bertolt was torn between being angry and just plain upset. Someone either didn't see him, or they let him out without finding out where he was going. When one day turned into two and two turned into four, he didn't sleep until he was harassed into doing so. Sure, Connie was old enough to make his own choices, but those choices still affected the group.

He felt that Connie and everyone else he and Reiner had met and taken in along the way were his responsibility. Too many people had died and because Connie managed to slip past the guards... He even wondered if it was during his own watch. It couldn't have been his fault, right? Reiner had to reassure him god-only-knows how many times. It's no one's fault.

He'll be okay.

He'll be back.

He thought of Connie huddled in a tiny corner with walkers pounding on a door while he bled from a bite. He thought of him lying in a ditch from a broken ankle. He thought of him coming back to the compound, skin gray and bruised and bloodied. So when Bertolt heard the cries of 'Connie' near the fence, he mentally prepared himself for the worst when he stepped outside.

What he saw left him staring.

Connie was alive. He was alive and he wasn't bitten and he was okay and he was alive he's alive! But Bertolt doesn't move from his spot near the sleeping quarters. He didn't run down and greet him like everyone else did. Was he happy that the younger boy was alive? Of course. He just didn't know how to properly express it. So, he waits. He waits for the reunions to end and the sun to set before he finally makes an effort to track Connie down within the compound. When he finally finds him, Bertolt just sort of watches him.

"...Connie."

[lordofthefries]

She finds that reading all the books she can get her hands on kills the time. Not all of it and that's mostly because Sasha doesn't understand some of the material in the books, but at least trying to figure out what words mean and what the concepts are keeps her busy enough to not worry about Connie. He keeps leaving them, out of nowhere, with no head's up about anything. And sure, she's offered to take him with her on supply runs if he just couldn't sit still, but he's never agreed. So she, like everybody else in the compound, sits and waits for him to return, if he returns.

Sometimes Sasha thinks he might not. This is one of those times.

One day was one thing, same for two days. Two whole weeks usually meant something bad went wrong. She didn't want anything bad to go wrong for any of them, but secretly, she thought that more about Connie. So the day he returns, dirty and ripped up, looking like a caveman with his hair free and wild, she drops the three year old Farmer's Almanac she was paging through and jumps up to greet him with a hug and a knock to the head that he probably doesn't feel through all that hair.

"Connie! You're alive! STOP DOING THAT!"