I whipped this up a while before WALL-E came out (a few weeks, I wanna say) when I caught the Finding Nemo bug again really bad. Then I randomly found it again. Woo! Just a little perspective on Marlin's relationship with Dory. Marlin and Dory are my favorite characters in Finding Nemo, so I just had to write something for them. Enjoy!

Disclaimer o' Doom n' Stuff: Finding Nemo belongs to the same people who own Wall-E. How unfair is that? I wanna own them D:

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Pep Peeve

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She. Never. Shut. Up.

"What, ocean isn't big enough for ya or somethin' like that?"

It was more than just a little annoying.

"Hey Mister Gwumpy Gills..."

Let's just say it instilled the strong desire in him to bash his head against the nearest rock repeatedly. It made him want to cram a wad of seaweed or some other nearby debris into her mouth if only to silence her for a moment. It made him think other uncharacteristically violent solutions to curb his growing intolerance of her nonsense.

"Just keep swimmiiing!"

He wanted to believe years of dealing with his little son's constant streams of questions had made him more patient. He was dead wrong, apparently. Still, she was certainly nothing like his little Nemo, because at least with Nemo there were moments of pause. With her, there was never the blessing of a comfortable silence. Just endless waves of nonsense and babble crashing over him, pushing him to the brink.

"P. Sherman, 42, Wallabe Way, Sydney! P. Sherman, 42, Wallabe Way, Sydney!!"

He was a reasonable fish. It did occur to him more than once to just take off and leave her, but he knew better than that. She was a young, confused little thing, and abandoning her out in the dangerous open waters would be far too cruel. As much of an annoyance as she was, he didn't really wish any harm on her. Well, outside of a good swat to the side of her head to straighten her out a little, but even then...

"Wait up, partner!"

They'd recently met with an ominous trench. Dory, predictably, wanted to take the dangerous route and swim through. Aside from her chatter, his second biggest problem with the silly creature was her absolute lack of common sense. But he wasn't a cruel fish, so he simply distracted her with the promise of a shiny object and off they went. Easy as that.

"I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be mine."

They'd raced through the jellyfish forest, seemingly with ease. Her love of games had made it a simple task getting her to move her fastest out of danger. All the while, her laugh echoed around him, and he got a little caught up in the thrill. He'd pulled ahead and emerged, safe and completely unharmed. But his victory was quickly forgotten when he realized something was out of place...

"Dory?"

He couldn't believe it was silent. Her voice was absent from the waters all around him. For once in a great while, there was nothing, no questions, no babble, no nonsense.

It was at that moment he realized, after all the stress, the annoyance, the irritation...

He couldn't live without the noise.