Title: A Return to Once Home
Fandom: Planet Of The Apes
Rating: T
Length: 430
Content notes: Implied Off-screen Canon character death
Author notes: Set between the first and second movies of the franchise reboot. Set about a month or so after the first movie.
Summary: In which Caesar returns to his first home and a friend follows.


Many months after leading the Apes to a new home in the mountains, he returns to a city that is strangely quiet and so unlike the lively city that he had led his brethren out of. It looks much the same, but still so very different from his memories of it.

Soon enough he's in the trees of the neighborhood where he grew up and standing in the open doorway of the house that he grew up in. Disturbing layers of dust as he remembers that Will wouldn't have allowed to be there. Carefully he steps through the house as dust falls and rises around him while memories flit through his mind.

There's a smell clinging to the house that he doesn't like as he makes his way up to the bedrooms and moves to the room that he remembers as his father's room. He spots the body on the bed before he's even entered the room, then he's on the bed before he even registers that he's entered the room and putting his forehead against the cold forehead of his human father and closes his eyes.

In his heart, he wonders where the woman who was close to his father is and if she is still alive.

He opens them again to a darker when a heavy hand latches onto his forearm, he can guess who it is just by glancing out the corner of his eye to see the orange fur and know that Maurice has followed him. Slowly he sits up on the bed and starts signing as the bigger ape gingerly sits on the floor to watch his signing.

You followed me.

Slowly Maurice nods his head, he thinks there is a slight smile on his face, and starts signing in return.

Of course I did. Wouldn't do Apes any good if we lost you to the humans. What is this place to you?

“First home.”

Green eyes glint in the dim light of the night hour and he wonders if Maurice had already guessed as much when he followed him from the mountains.

Him?

Father.

What do you want done with his body?

Bury it. Bury it with our dead in the forest. Near the water.

As you wish.

Together they gently wrap the body in sheets and Maurice gently carries it on his back as he leaves through the open front door. He follows the older Ape and stops in the doorway to take one last look around his old home before he leaves.

Perhaps this will be the last time he enters it.