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“Could you entrust your life and future to someone like Siffrin right now?”
Silence. Not one person argues back, not one person interjects, not one person even clears their throat or yawns or gasps. Complete and utter silence.
Because they agree.
They don’t trust you.
No, worse than that.
They hate you.
They hate you they hate you they hate you they hate you.
They want to defeat the King without you so they can finally be rid of you.
They want to go home.
Without you.
There’s a thick, burning sensation in your throat. You squash it as far down as you possibly can, because you don’t deserve to feel. You don’t deserve to cry. If you could reach into your chest and rip out your beating heart to stop yourself from feeling ever again, you would. You would do it in the blink of an eye.
They hate you.
You try to take a deep breath in, but get nothing more than a tattered wheeze. You attempt a deep breath out, and all your stupid useless lungs can do is repress a pathetic cough. You dive out of the shadows and out the door of the clocktower as quietly as you can so none of the others can detect your presence. You hide underneath the bark of one of the nearby trees and cover your mouth with a hand to try and quiet the volume of your breathing. When that works, you close your eye and drop to your knees, tightly gripping at the grass to stop your hands from shaking.
It’s decided, then.
Kill the King, and it’ll all be over.
That has to be it.
Kill the King with your hands, and you can finally be done with these blinding loops.
It doesn’t matter that you’re just one person. It doesn’t matter that you’d be going in without any of the special skills and Crafts you’ve had all those times before. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. If you make it to the King and he somehow figures out how to kill you for good, it doesn’t matter.
Either way, it means you’ll finally be done.
It’s not like you have anything left to lose, haha!
You’ve made up your mind.
You stand to your feet, brush the grass off of your cloak, and you start on your journey over to the House. You’ve done it so many times that you could probably do the whole walk with your eye closed. You’re almost tempted to, just to make something feel different.
But no. You can’t waste any time. This has to be done now.
Your stomach growls, which is your only reminder that you haven’t eaten during this loop. You groan, and punch yourself in the stomach a few times to try and get it to quiet down. Even if you could eat and the food would actually stay in your stomach, you wouldn’t deserve it. Disgusting awful manipulative creatures like you don’t deserve the mercy of food. (There’s a painful twinge in your chest when you think about Bonnie’s samosas a little too long; you especially don’t deserve food cooked with love).
You suppress a yawn, your only sign you haven’t slept, and you shake your head violently enough to give yourself a headache; if there’s anything you’re not trusting, it’s sleep. These whole blinding loops started when you decided to take a nap, and you’re not willing to trust anything that could potentially reset your loops. Until this is all over and done with, sleep is your enemy.
When you finally arrive at the House, you take the Orbs from your pockets and awkwardly wrangle them all in your arms to unlock the front door. It opens with a shing and a bright flash you’ve seen so many times that it doesn’t even make you blink anymore. You step inside, shaking your arms out in front of you to give yourself some semblance of calm, but it’s not like any of it matters anyways when you immediately find yourself facing that same blinding sadness.
You don’t even think. At this point it’s just instinct. You rush forward, stabbing and slashing it over and over and over again until it’s no more than a pile of lightless goo on the floor. For good measure, you scrape it with the heel of your boot until it blends in with the rest of the House’s dark tiling. You attempt to breathe in and out, but all that escapes you is a pathetic little huff of air.
Useless and broken. Just like the rest of you.
You shake that thought off because you can’t afford any distractions, and you power your way through the rest of the floor on autopilot like you already have dozens and dozens of times before. You’re so used to entering and re-entering the same rooms over and over again from all of your loops blending together that you don’t even process that there’s something off about…well, everything until you find yourself walking into the same blinding storage room six times in a row.
But it’s fine! It’s fine! You’re probably just going crazy! It’s probably just you! It’s probably your blinding broken brain screwing up its own memory in real time! Of course you haven’t been in here before, silly! What are you talking about? What kind of idiot would get lost in a building they’ve been through every day for months, huh? You! Of course you would! Of course the one time you can’t afford to get turned around is the one time that your instincts are failing you! It’s hilarious!
You laugh out loud to yourself, just to hear something other than your own thoughts, and you keep powering through a House you seemingly can’t remember a thing about. Your stomach screams for food once more by the time you finally reach the first Nostalgie, and you take out your frustration and anger with yourself by taking it out in one hit. You grip the Star Crest tightly against your chest, and focus on its odd warmth and sweet scent as you thrash your way to the door where you know Calamité waits for you.
As you reach for the door, you think you can hear Loop’s voice in the back of your mind. They sound flabbergasted, and angry, and if you wanted to be a little bit selfish you could almost say they sounded worried, but at this point you can’t even tell if they’re actually trying to reach out to you or if you’re just imagining things. You thought you made it pretty clear that you were done talking to them when you stormed away from the Favor Tree, and you know that you haven’t done that weird talking hand symbol since entering the House, so you brush it off as little more than another hallucination and power through.
For some reason the hallucination doesn’t like being ignored, and Loop’s voice gets even louder when you don’t pay it any attention and clean through Calamité in one slice.
Stars, it’s giving you such a headache.
Everything is, as a matter of fact. If you could just plug up your ears and turn all of the world’s sound off just to give your screaming head a break, you would.
But no.
If even the short wait for the Keys to unlock the doors to the stairwells are enough for your body to start eating away at itself, that means you don’t have time to stop for anything. Now or never, it’s saying. No rest for the wicked, as they say.
You ignore it, as you’ve ignored everything else, and thankfully that seems to be enough to make Loop’s voice go away. For some reason, though, even as you focus on navigating your way through the second floor of the House, the rest of your body seems to start screaming at you in place of Loop’s voice. Your headache gets worse and worse, your eyelids begin to feel heavy, and your stomach begins growling loud enough to echo off the walls.
Stars, having a body is so blindingly annoying sometimes.
By the time you finally find all of the Star Crests and Keys to unlock the doors to face Accablement and Abbattement, you can barely keep your eyes open anymore. You can’t keep your balance, you’re walking in zig-zags, and every one of your instincts is screaming at you to sleep.
You can’t take it anymore.
You remove one of your gloves, hastily stuff it in your pockets, and take your dagger from its sheath. You squeeze it by the blade as hard as you can with your ungloved hand, and you squeeze and you squeeze and you squeeze until your brain shuts up, and you squeeze until your dagger drips with blood. With your other hand you quickly yank the dagger away by the handle and stick it back into its sheath.
You were expecting pain and a rush of adrenaline to help shove aside the wave of exhaustion crashing over you, but for some reason it doesn’t really help solve either problem. Instead you just sort of find yourself staring at the blood dripping from your sliced hand and staring off into space thinking of nothing, nothing, nothing.
What was it that Loop had said?
Using your dagger on yourself would just make your body feel more like a disposable object than something that’s part of you?
You shake your head.
No. They were talking about using it to kill yourself. This is different! All you did was draw a little blood to keep yourself awake, teehee! No different than giving yourself a little slap! Or drinking some coffee! You’re helping your body still alert, silly!
You squeeze your hands to shake those distracting thoughts, and hiss when the pain in your sliced hands finally starts to register.
Back to it, then.
You shove the door open with your shoulder as you put your glove back on and storm through the room. This one isn’t much of a fight, either, because even with your injured hand you’re able to take them both out in one hit. You shake your dagger off when you realize it’s still dripping with a little bit of your own blood, and force yourself not to think about it as you make your way up the stairwell to the third floor.
This is it.
One floor to go.
One floor to go, and this will all be over.
One more to go, and you’ll be done.
…
…
You don’t want to think about it.
You punch the wall closest to you to force yourself not to think about it.
When you step through the hallway to the entrance to the third floor, you’re suddenly hit with such an overpowering smell of burned sugar that it makes you want to vomit. You slap yourself in the face once, twice, three times, because surely you’re just imagining things, your exhausted brain is just making things up to fill in the empty spaces, but nothing ever works, and that blinding smell never goes away.
(Like it’s all some kind of sick joke, a small voice in the back of your mind wonders if you’ll ever be able to stomach eating crème brûlée ever again.)
You sigh, silently cursing yourself for thinking about food, and power on.
Well, that’s what you want, at least.
“Power on” isn’t exactly the words you feel you could use to describe anything about you right now.
Because it’s like the Universe itself saw that you were getting so, so close, and decided that now would be the best time for it to check in on its favorite little plaything. The more you wander through the halls of the third floor, the worse your condition seems to get. The smell of burned sugar just keeps getting more and more powerful the further you go in, which in turn makes your stomach churn, which then reminds your stupid brain that you haven’t eaten all day, which then makes it growl like a caged animal. Your head starts to hurt like crazy, like the entire weight of the world is sitting on top of your skull and trying to push you downward. You ignore it, you ignore it, you tell it to shut up, but all that talking to yourself just triggers another wave of exhaustion. You stumble through the hallways, squeezing your hands together, trying to invoke any semblance of adrenaline from your injured hand, but instead all you’re doing is making the pain grow louder and louder and louder. You keep trying to ignore it, because you’re so close, you’re so close, you’re so close, but now it seems that even the temperature regulation Craft in your cloak is failing you, because your body temperature feels like it’s going all over the place. In one moment you feel like you’re frozen solid, and in the next you feel like you’re about to burst into flames. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
You thank the stars above for your muscle memory for at least getting you through all the right rooms to find all the right keys, and you curse your dumb human body for flaring up in pain at just the wrong moment during your fight with Bourdon. It’s not much of a setback, as it just takes you two hits to take it out instead of the usual one, but as you stumble towards the hallway leading towards the final break room, you’re so drenched with sweat that you’re honestly surprised that you don’t squelch with every step.
You’re so close. You’re so close. You’re so close.
Until you’re not.
Just as you’re about to reach the frozen body of Mirabelle’s roommate, you start seeing dark spots in your vision. Weirdly enough, some of them are in weird shades, the very same one that you saw when you tried to say your blinding country’s name.
…
…NO
NO
NO!!!
NO NO NO YOU CAN’T!
YOU CAN’T DIE HERE! THAT’S NOT FAIR! THIS ISN’T HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO!
NO!
You feel yourself beginning to tip over.
NO!
YOU CAN’T!
YOU HAVE TO!
With the last of your energy, you attempt to push yourself just a few steps forward, just a little farther, but it’s no use.
You collapse to the floor right in front of Mirabelle’s roommate, their frozen body towering over you like it’s making fun of you for failing so close to the finish line. You squeeze your eyes shut, because you’d much rather have the mercy of staring at nothing if you’re about to die anyway, and then everything goes dark.
For some reason, the feeling of time rewinding never comes. Neither does the harsh sunlight of snapping awake in the field. Weirdly enough, though, your body still feels kind of floaty, like you’re stuck in place between dead and alive.
It’s a horrifying thought, but a short lived one, because all at once you think you hear the sound of pounding footsteps, and then a shing of something (or someone?) using some kind of Craft, and then an overwhelming flash of bright light.
And then, nothing at all.
You don’t know how much time has passed.
To be honest, you’re not even sure if you want to know how much time has passed.
But you can tell, vaguely, that you’re lying down somewhere, and your eye is closed.
You can’t bring yourself to open it. Not yet. You don’t think your poor heart can take waking up in that field again. You can’t start over again. You can’t recite the script again. You can’t you can’t you can’t you can’t you can’t.
You know you have no choice.
You know that you have to open your eye and face your reality eventually.
You take a deep breath in, and you’re surprised by how shallow and weak it sounds.
That’s…odd. Usually, when you reset, all of your ailments from the previous loop disappear with it.
It doesn't matter. Mirabelle will be over to wake you up from your nap any second now, so you-
Something cold presses itself against your forehead.
Something cold presses itself against your forehead.
You’re so startled by the sensation that you whip upward. For reasons unknown to you, your whole body screams at you in pain at the motion, and your vision is spinning, and-
Wait.
As your vision begins to correct itself, you’re suddenly made very, very aware that you are not, in fact, lying in a sunny meadow.
You recognize this room. You’ve been in this room dozens and dozens of times before.
You’re in the House’s infirmary.
Ah, so you must be lying in a bed. You bring a hand to the weird, cool sensation on your head, and you flinch when you touch something moist.
Is that a…washcloth?
N-No! You must be imagining things! You have to be! How could you have possibly ended up here? It’s not like anyone could’ve brought you here! You’re alone! It’s not like you could’ve walked yourself back down to the second floor, found the infirmary, dug through the medical cabinets, found a washcloth, opened a tonic, soaked the washcloth, and put it on your own head without remembering it!
B-Besides! You died, didn’t you?
You had to have! You looped back, didn’t you? You had to have! You were feeling pretty awful when you collapsed, so you must have! You always loop back!
You’re losing it, Siffrin!
You have to be!
You’re…you’re still dreaming! That has to be it! You’re not awake yet! You just have to-
The sound of a soft gasp slices through your whirlwind of thoughts. You lift your head from your pillow, and sure enough, there’s Mirabelle, but…something’s wrong.
She rushes to your bedside, sliding to her knees and cups her hands in one of yours without thinking. “Oh, thank Change,” she murmurs, and whispers a few words of Healing Craft before letting go of your hands. Before you can question her on what happened or how you ended up here, of all places, she stands to her feet and cups her mouth towards the door leading out to the hallway.
“He’s awake!” She shouts, and when she glances your way again her hands begin to tremble. “I…don’t exactly know if they’re okay, but they’re awake!”
Is everyone here?
You open your mouth to try and ask Mirabelle what’s going on, but it’s a pretty pointless question, because before you can even get one word out, you can do nothing but watch as Odile, Bonnie, and Isabeau all come shuffling into the infirmary.
B-But if they’re all here, that must mean-
…
…No.
Don’t get your hopes up.
Clearly something just went wrong between loops. Mirabelle must’ve come to wake you up from your nap in the field and you weren’t responding, so she decided to carry you to the House, and the others came with her because they were worried about you.
You know, beside the whole…none of that making any sense thing.
But when have the loops made any sense? M-maybe you just…
Oh! That’s it! Maybe you just…looped back to the second floor without realizing it! Maybe at some point in the loops you used the infirmary bed to loop back, and you just can’t remember because it’s been so long! Sure! Let’s go with that, Siffrin! That makes perfect sense, Siffrin!
You give them a weak smile, and you’re about to crack some dumb joke about getting in one more good sleep before the end of the world, or something along those lines, but when you go to push yourself up to a sitting position, you-
…
Your hand hurts.
The hand you’d sliced with your dagger earlier to keep yourself awake.
Why does it still hurt?
Now that you think about it…why does everything still hurt? Why does your head hurt? Why are you so dizzy? Why does your stomach hurt so much? Why are you so tired? Wasn’t all of that supposed to go away when the loops reset?
…And why are they all looking at you like that?
…
Is this…
Is this the same loop?
IS THIS THE SAME LOOP?
YOU DIDN’T LOOK BACK?
WHY DIDN’T YOU LOOP BACK?
Oh stars, oh stars oh stars.
This is the same loop where you said all of those awful things to them.
This is the same loop where they hate you.
NO!
NO!
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK!
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK!
GO BACK GO BACK GO BACK GO BACK!
WHY AREN’T YOU GOING BACK? YOU HAVE TO! YOU HAVE TO!
WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?
OF ALL THE TIMES! THE ONE BLINDING TIME WHERE YOU WANT TO GO BACK, AND THE UNIVERSE WON’T LET YOU? WHY WON’T IT LET YOU? WHAT KIND OF SICK JOKE IS THIS?
YOU HAVE TO-
“Whoa, whoa, it’s okay, Siffrin!” Mirabelle exclaims, reaching forward and taking your hand in hers again. “You’re okay!” She gives your hand a good squeeze, and places a hand on your forehead as she helps you lay back down. Her hand feels nice and cool, so you’re sure that your forehead must feel like it’s on fire. She frowns, and waves her other hand over you as she whispers a few more words of Healing Craft. It doesn’t do much for any of the pain, but at least it helps you regain some of your energy. “Can you hear me?” She asks, like she was worried you’d gone deaf from all the panicking, or something.
You nod, and she sighs in relief. She brings her hand to your forehead again, shakes her head when she realizes that your fever didn’t budge, and tries whispering more Healing Craft over you again. While she tries that, you turn your glance towards the others, and none of them seem able to meet your eye. A selfish part of you wants to think it’s because they’re worried about you, but…
You sigh.
If the Universe wants to decide to trap you in a timeline where they all hate you, then…
“What…” you try, and you curse your voice for breaking. “What are you all doing here?”
Suddenly they’re all very capable of meeting your gaze. They still have those sad looks in their eyes, but for some reason your question makes them all look kind of flabbergasted.
Odile’s the first to speak up. “No, Siffrin, what are you doing here?”
You flinch. Ah, of course. You’d be wondering what you’re doing taking up space around them if you were in their shoes, too.
Odile must have the power to read your thoughts, because she sighs, shrinking in on herself. “No, that’s not what I…” she pinches the bridge of her nose, and looks to Mirabelle for help getting her point across.
Mirabelle frowns. “When we woke up this morning the Orbs were gone! And you were nowhere to be found! We thought something awful had happened to you! Nobody had seen you since yesterday morning!”
“We didn’t want to believe that you’d run off without us,” Isabeau adds, and he flashes you a smile. “So we looked everywhere for you! All over Dormont!”
“We must’ve looked crazy!” Bonnie shouts, pumping their fists in the air. “We’d probably still be running around looking for you if that super tall star person hadn’t overheard us yelling your name over and over again and offered to help us!”
Star…person?
LOOP?
IS LOOP HERE TOO?
Your eyes start darting all over the room to look for them, but no matter how carefully you scan each corner of the room you can’t find them anywhere. You try to push yourself up in bed in case they’re hovering out in the hallway waiting for you to come to them, or something, but your sliced hand catches on the sheet and you hiss in pain as you slip back down into a lying position.
“Oh! No, they’re not with us right now!” Mirabelle rubs sheepishly at the back of her head. “We did offer if they wanted to come with us, since you two seem to be friends, but they froze up when we started talking about going into the House. But they still want to help! They taught us this…” she looks to her hands, and then looks to Isabeau and Odile. “...How did that Craft thing they taught us go again?”
“Oh! Yeah! They called it Talk to Loopcraft, right?” Isabeau snickers. He raises his thumb, and then his little finger, and then puts his hand to his face with his thumb to his ear and his little finger to his mouth. “This thing! And we could use it to talk to them as we ran through the House looking for you!”
“As weird as it was…” Odile speaks up. “They really did seem to know what they’re talking about. They gave us some pretty good advice on how to navigate the House, and…” her gaze drops from yours, a tinge of guilt lingering in her eyes. “They sure seemed to know exactly where to find you.”
Your stomach is twisting in so many knots that you can taste bile in your throat. Just how much did Loop tell them? Did they blab about the time loop? Or about all the times you manipulated them into liking you? Or the times you forced them to learn special skills so you could reach the King faster? Or about all of the stupid stupid stupid ways you’ve died? Or the amount of times you let them die? Or-
“They didn’t say anything mean about you, if that’s what you’re thinking” Bonnie cuts into your thoughts, giving your arm a gentle pat. “If they had, I would’ve beaten them up, like hey! Stop being mean to Frin! Pow pow pow!” They demonstrate by punching at the air, which you can’t help crack a smile at.
“What Boniface is trying to say,” Odile places a hand on their shoulder, “is that they wouldn’t say much to us, either. If they know what’s going on with you, they did a good job at keeping it hidden.” She shakes her head. “The most we could get out of them is that they were really worried about you.”
“We were all worried about you!” Mirabelle exclaims. “When we got to the House, nothing made any sense! Everything was scrambled around! None of the rooms were in the right places! There were overpowered Sadnesses on the first floor! It felt like just standing in the hallways was giving us all those weird headaches!” She starts pacing back and forth. “We could barely make our way through without a few close calls!” She stops pacing, claps her hands together as a feeble attempt at self-soothing, and turns to you again. “If something else had found you in that hallway with my roommate before we did, you could have…” she closes her eyes, breathing in and out and in and out, and Isabeau steps forward to wind an arm around her for comfort.
Died?
You have.
Countless, countless times, you have.
Your stomach hurts. You don’t want to look at them.
Odile doesn’t let you look away. “Well, then?” She says firmly, “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
You don’t want to.
Your stomach hurts your head hurts your heart hurts your heart hurts your heart hurts.
You can’t.
You can’t.
“I can’t.”
Odile raises an eyebrow. “You can’t, or you don’t want to?”
You shake your head violently. “I can’t,” you try to double down so they’ll end it there, but your shattered inhibition betrays you and your mouth spills open before you can bring yourself to stop. “...You’ll hate me.”
Isabeau moves from Mirabelle’s side to sit on the edge of your bed. “Sif, unless you’re about to give us all the world’s greatest villain monologue about how you’ve been working with the King this whole time and that we just walked into your trap when we found you lying face-down and half-dead on the floor, I seriously doubt that there’s anything you could say to make us hate you.”
There’s a part of you that wants to laugh.
If that were true, it’d make everything so much easier. If that were true, they’d have legitimate reasons to hate you. You’d hate that person too! That’s a good reason to hate someone!
But no.
Instead they have to hate you because you’re a disgusting, selfish freak.
What an embarrassment.
You want to laugh.
For some reason you’re crying.
Not just crying, even. You’re sobbing. Bawling. If you had a stronger voice you’d probably be wailing.
Isabeau flinches and scatters backwards off the bed, like the very sight of your pathetic (manipulative) tears burned him.
“I can’t,” you punch the side of your pillow. “I can’t,” you grip at the blanket tightly. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” you chant, over and over again, hoping that if you keep talking long enough you’ll be able to stop crying and you can just drop it. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this again, I can’t-”
“Again?” Odile asks, and now she’s the one sitting at the edge of your bed. “What do you mean you can’t do this again, Siffrin?”
No!! Stars blind it, what is wrong with you? Why can’t you control a single blinding word that’s coming out of your mouth anymore? What is the Universe doing to you?
“Nothing!” You shout. “N-nothing’s happening again! I-I must’ve just misspoke! Of course I’ve never been here before! Why would I have?” You try to flash her a bright grin, and you don’t think about how incredibly unconvincing you know that you look right now. “Besides, aren’t there more important things that need taking care of? Why are we making this all about me?”
Odile sighs, and removes her glasses to clean them on her shirt before putting them back on. That’s usually a sign she’s trying to figure out how to start a difficult conversation.
You swallow, the smile slipping right off your face like a cheap old mask. You don’t even want to see the look on your own face right now.
You’re grateful she’s merciful enough not to comment on that, at the very least.
“Your star friend was named Loop, wasn’t it?” She continues, and your heart just about drops to your stomach. “There was something off about them, and the way they spoke about you that I couldn’t quite place my finger on, but I think I might finally be piecing it together.”
NO!!!!
SHUT UP
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!
She frowns, pulling her gaze from yours. “You’ve been looping in time, haven’t you, Siffrin?”
“N-no! Of course not! That-that can’t be true!” You shout, and no matter how hard you try you cannot stop the tears from welling in your eyes. “B-because if it was, that would make me awful! That’d make me disgusting!” You cry, because you guess you just don’t get to have an internal filter anymore! “That’d make me gross, and awful, and no better than the King! Because I wanted you to stay! That’s awful! I’m trapping you because I need you to stay,” you choke, “I forced you to stay because I need you and it’s disgusting! I’m disgusting!”
Your ears are ringing so loud you can’t even hear the sound of your own desperate pleas anymore. Everything smells like burned sugar, everything tastes like burned sugar, your head feels like it’s splitting in two, your vision is getting spotty, you can’t breathe, you can’t breathe, you’re breaking out in a cold sweat, your limbs are going numb, and you feel like you’re going to-
Someone grabs your shoulders, snapping you out of your panic-induced spiral. You can’t quite see who it is because they pull away before your vision finishes correcting itself, but Mirabelle speaks up, so you can probably safely assume that it was her.
Breathe, she must be saying, so you do.
In, and out.
She gives you a relieved smile at that, but it’s quickly replaced with a worried frown as she takes a seat at the bed. “Trapping us here? No better than the King? Forcing us to stay? What are you talking about? It’s not like you chose to trap yourself in a time loop! You’re not going out of your way trying to repeat the same day over and over and over…” her voice trails off, like she’s thinking about the implications a little too hard for her comfort, but she catches herself and clears her throat before you have time to cut in. “And!” she squeaks. “And! It’s not like we can remember any of the loops, so it’s not really like you trapped us, either!” She smiles at you sweetly. “You’re not forcing us to do anything.”
You know she just said that last part to try and help, but…
You shake your head. “No, that’s not what I…” Another lump forms in your throat. “When the King is defeated, all of us have to go our separate ways." You swallow, trying to give yourself even a shred of dignity and make it to the end of a sentence without bursting into tears. Bonbon has to go home to their sister, you have to stay here in Dormont, Odile has to go back to Ka Bue, Isa has to go back to Jouvente…After today, when there’s nothing left for us to do, when we don’t have anything else keeping us together…” You can’t finish that sentence, so you settle for violently shaking your head like you can rattle those awful thoughts right out of your brain. “I’m no better than the King because I trapped you all here. I forced you to stay with me because I can’t, I can’t, I-I c-can’t…” You swallow hard. “I can’t be alone again. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-” You pull at your hair to get yourself and your brain to shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up, and Mira reaches out and takes your hands in hers to stop you from hurting yourself.
“Well…” she smiles, and exchanges glances with the rest of the party. “Who said we had to?”
You…don’t follow. “Who said we had to do what?”
Her smile just gets brighter. “Who said we had to part ways? Who said we had to stop traveling together?”
Wh…WHAT?
N…no, that can’t be what she-
“Yeah!” Bonnie cheers, and they jump up onto your bed and sit down in front of you. “Yeah! It’s not like I can just walk all the way back to Bambouche all by my lonesome, now can I? I’m just a pre-teen!” They flutter their eyes at you. “You wouldn’t want lil ol’ me wandering out there by myself with nobody to help defend myself, now would you?” They make their eyes all big. “And how would I get to brag about Nille to you if you’re not there? She won’t have anyone to thank for saving my life!”
…
“Not to mention,” Odile adds, sitting beside Bonnie. “I still have plenty of research left to do.” She gives you a Secret Wink. “And I just don’t see how I could possibly get it done without a few hands to help make some progress.”
…
“And! Um! You know, there actually isn’t anything keeping me here in Dormont! The House of Change never explicitly says that pilgrimages have to be taken alone! Or how long they can or can’t be!” Mirabelle sits beside Odile. “In fact, they even encourage us to take them with others we care about! They always say that a long, happy journey is one of the best ways to Change yourself without ever needing to do a ceremony, because you’re always growing and changing with everyone around you!”
“And~” Isabeau sing-songs, sitting on Bonnie’s other side closest to you. “I could always use some inspiration for some projects I’m working on, and I can’t think of a better muse for me than you, Sif!” He grins, but then he starts blushing up a storm when his brain seems to catch up to what he just said. “A-and you know,” he averts his gaze from yours, “it’s not like the Defenders would even want me back after I made a big stink about quitting my job after nobody wanted to help Mira anyways. So like, no rush! Jouvente can wait plenty.”
. . .
“Is that what this has been about this whole time?” Mirabelle asks. “You just wanted to keep traveling with us?”
You want to curl up and die. You want to curl up into a ball and die right here and right now.
You bury your face in your hands, and the squeak that involuntarily comes out of your mouth just cements it for you even further.
“Aww, Sif!” Isa coos, and drapes himself all over you. “You looove us!” He beams. “You love us so much that you’d break the rules of time and Craft for us~!”
Your face feels like it’s on fire.
This is too good to be true.
It can’t be true, can it? You’re having a tear-induced dream after tripping into a set when you passed out. You must be.
But…
You frown. “What about all those awful things I said earlier?”
“Up up!” Isabeau chimes in. “Nope, we can have that conversation later when you’re not a fevered, crying mess. Right now you just need to focus on getting better.” He gives your arm a gentle pat. “Acknowledging it’s a good start, though!”
“I agree!” Mirabelle smiles. ‘On both accounts! We can definitely have the serious apologize-y part of the conversation later, but we gotta make sure that you’re physically okay enough to have that conversation, first!”
(You don’t deserve them).
…
Another, scarier thought comes to you.
“What about the King? What about Vaugarde? You went after him, didn't you?”
They all look at you like you just broke their hearts in two.
“We…” Mirabelle shakes her head. “We couldn’t just leave you in that hallway to die, Siffrin,” she mumbles under her breath, and you’d guess part of that is so Bonnie wouldn’t have to hear. “If you hadn’t been trembling from your fever when we picked you up to bring you down here, I would’ve thought you were already…” her voice trails off with a waver, and her gaze drops towards the ground like she can’t even stomach the thought.
“The point is,” Odile cuts in to stop Mirabelle from spiraling. “He’s still waiting up there for us, if that’s what you’re asking.” She rolls her eyes. “Knowing what we know about him, he’s probably getting bored of waiting for us up there.” She holds a hand up in defense, like she wants to preemptively stop you from spiraling as well. “It’s not like I think we’re in any danger by making him wait much longer, to be clear.” She snorts. “At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if that maniac up there just kind of thinks of this whole thing as some sort of twisted game.”
“Yeah!” Bonnie shouts. “That dumb crab is probably sitting around all sad and cranky that nobody’s come to play with him yet! But what he doesn’t know is that the reason we’re taking so long is that we came super-duper prepared!”
You…huh?
You tilt your head. “How so?”
“Well, from Loop, sort of!” Isabeau beams. “We were having a ton of trouble trying to find our way around the House with all of those scrambled rooms, but when we were talking with them they helped us find a ton of extra tonics!”
“And the secret library!” Bonne whoops.
“Oh, yes! The secret library!” Mirabelle gins, clasping her hands together. “I don’t know how they could’ve known about it when I didn’t even know about it even after living here for years, but! But! There was a really helpful book in there about a special kind of shield! I think we could even use it to block the King’s special attack!”
All of them have these big, determined smiles on their faces, like they’re just raring to go. Even Bonnie’s getting all hyped up, twirling the handle of their wok back and forth in their hands like they’re gearing up to hit someone with it.
You want to be happy for them.
You really do.
It’s wonderful! It’s great! And you don’t think you could ever repay Loop for helping to make sure that nothing awful will happen to them in your stead. You’re more relieved than you can describe, knowing that they’ll be okay in battle without you, and you’re glad that the rest of Vaugarde will be saved, because they have all the answers, and they’ll be okay, and they said all of those nice things, but…
They don’t need you anymore, a vicious voice whispers in the back of your mind. Put on a smile and let them go, it says. They’ll see how easy it is without you slowing them down. They’ll change their minds about keeping you around.
You try, but the louder, selfish part of you that needs them to stay won’t even let you put on the tiniest, most pathetic of fake smiles. Instead you settle for dropping your gaze away from theirs so you don’t have to see the look on their faces when they come to the realization that the tiny voice in your head is right.
“So…what’s stopping you, then?”
“Hmm?” Mirabelle tilts her head. “Stopping us from what?”
Leaving.
“What’s stopping you from going on to fight the King without me?” You frown, burying your face in your blanket again. “I know you said all of that nice stuff about traveling together, and I really appreciate it, and…” you close your eye and take a deep breath. “I do believe that you mean it, I really do, and I’m clearly not going anywhere…” you gesture to the bed. “I’m okay, Mira, really. If you want to go take care of that and then come and get me after it’s all over, you can. Why wait?”
They all exchange looks, and you expect pity, you expect an apology, you expect them to turn their heels and leave with your okay, you expect anything, everything…except what they actually do.
They all look at you with soft, loving smiles.
“We’re not the Saviors of Vaugarde without you, Sif.” Isabeau’s warm smile melts you down to your core. “If beating the King together like we always planned means waiting just a little bit longer for you to feel good enough to get back up on your feet, then that’s what we’re gonna do.”
You...
You can’t believe what you’re hearing. Waiting to save the whole country for your sake? “You’d…” your voice cracks. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course we would!” Bonnie slaps their hands down on the bed. “We’re a family! Families gotta stick together! Especially during the scary end-of-the-world parts! If we can’t do it together with all of us, I don’t wanna do it at all!”
None of them even blink. No laugh, no eye roll, no interjection.
…They all agree? With you or not at all?
Okay, yeah, it’s decided. You’re dreaming. There’s no way they’re choosing you over the potential end of the world.
You blink once, twice, three times, but the image in front of you never changes. No matter how many times you blink, or rub your eyes, or pinch your arm under the blankets, they’re still all here, with you, silently promising you the world.
This is real?
This is real.
This is real!
This is real! You want to scream it to yourself, over and over again. This is real! This is real!
In this moment…
No, not just this moment.
When you are with them, you are loved.
They are yours, and you are theirs.
You breathe in, and out, and all at once you notice that the smell and taste of burned sugar aren’t as overpowering anymore. And maybe it’s just because you’ve had some time to rest, but you feel like some of that awful stomach pain is starting to ease up on you, too.
(...Huh. That’s…awfully specific. You wonder what that could be about.)
…
…You still don’t fully feel like you deserve them. You don’t know if you ever will.
But you love them.
You love them, you love them, you love them. You love them with every fiber of your being, and you know, even if only in the smallest of ways, that they love you, too. They want to stay with you, too.
That, you know, is more than anything you could ever wish for.
You smile the first real, genuine smile you’ve done in what feels like months, and you look at your family.
You’ll always remember this. You’ll take it into your hands, make it yours, and you’ll always, always remember this.