Archive of Our Own ^beta

I had given Him my faith—

“Hah! It's no longer important.”

and sworn my allegiance to Him—

“Now it's clear as day.”

how, then—

“There simply is no point in denying it…”

can I go back from this—

“You and I… We are meant to be together.”

and not hang myself, traitor that I am?

My name is now Shadow Milk Cookie, but my name used to be something else.

I used to be someone else. It hurts, sometimes, that empty void where something should be. And I know who to blame.

But do I think it's his fault?

No, not really.

Time has been tricky, lately. It slips through my fingers, pouring from the crucible of my perception like water through a sieve, and pools together — idle minutes, wasted hours, puddles of murky space where my memories should have been.

I try to fill the gap with chatter, with gossip and antics and preoccupation. But something is still missing.

I'm not used to not being enough, I'm not used to the liquid burn of inadequacy. But I suppose there are firsts for everything.

Something shatters next to me, and in a flash the Other-Realm rises up behind me, snarling and thrashing, snapping up whatever is falling towards me before collapsing in on itself and imploding into nothing.

Turning to the source of the disruption, I cast my gaze over my creations. The finest apple grown from a tree long dead, carefully coated in sugar-sweet syrup until it glistened with temptation and stuck like no other candy. The finest grapes plucked from the most prolific rumor-vines, slowly crystallized and tempered until a perfect sapphire emerged from the fires of untruth. I remember making them like it was yesterday; it’s as if years go by in the blink of an eye, and I have many of those.

There is a whining in the air, a high-pitched voice grating on my ears. Thoughtlessly, I flex my fingers, and with one twist of my power the complaints are silenced.

My sapphire bows his head and wordlessly collects the red-tinted tarot card now laying on the ground. I've always liked that about him; he knew when not to push, when to distract and ease away instead. Nothing like his sister - always brash, constantly demanding attention, fists perpetually clenched, body language screaming look at me.

What a pair they make, one hungry for praise but always lashing out, the other eager to please but too caught up in reigning in the former. I don't regret them, I don't think I could. But sometimes I regret their circumstances.

I watch my apple rage and stomp her feet inside of her confines. I watch them confer and argue, hushed whispers carrying through the air to me.

Thoughtlessly, I turn to the side, a witty quip at the expense of them readied on my tongue, expectant of dull yellow and darkened blue to be watching me, already flicking my eyes to search for those deep embroidered robes, that choppy, messy hair that looked like something straight out of a high school rebellion.

I am met with empty air.

Ah, how could I have forgotten?

Truthless Recluse lied. He left. And now I have to pick up the pieces.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I am dimly aware that the argument has paused. Somewhere in the empty echoes of my head my senses are pinging with the feeling of gazes upon me, a multifaceted sensation that makes me want to take a bow and claw off my skin at the same time.

But all I perceive is the empty space. All I feel is the lack of heaviness in the air, that blanket of crackling ozone long gone. There is no resonating Soul Jam near me, now.

Voices filter into my ears, sounding like they're from a thousand miles away. They're inquiring about my health.

Ah, yes, that's right. My creations. How could I have forgotten?

Time has given me cruelty, insight, knowledge. It's only fair that it has taken from me, too.

And oh, has it taken. Taken the color from this world until my vision has gone grayscale, and taken the tissue from my chest until an uncanny valley yawns behind the cage of my ribs.

There is a tug on my sleeve. Abruptly I let my hovering go, limbs sprawling ungracefully to force my creations back, folding in on myself like a corpse as I fall toward the ground. Between one blink and the next I slip through the fabric of reality, plunging into a subset of the Other-Realm that welcomes me readily, my plummet slowing until I am hanging in nothing.

Here in the space between worlds my incompletion is even more evident. There is a hole in my being, a gaping rift that aches horribly and cracks at the edges, and the absence of what was meant to fill it pulls at me now, a gnarled, bloody thing of sinew and flesh, dragging my body into pain, demanding penitence, ordering guilt.

I have spit on it, raged at it, laughed in its face. Now I let it damn me: I have run out of sentiment to spare.

Or, at least, that's what I thought.

Pure Vanilla is back.

“Shadow Milk Cookie,” he calls, and I am there, bearing down on the Spire, every fibre of my being straining to hear what he will say next.

“Won't you come to greet me?” He asks, and I am about to snarl at him, anger and want and something else bubbling in my throat, but then he continues.

“After all, I've come back to offer myself again.”

I mean to turn him down. I mean to inflict upon him that same wretched rejection he cut me with. But what comes out of my mouth is not a refusal.

“Silly Vanilly, were you not long mine before you left?”

The happiness that blooms across his face is something I will remember, whether he will stay this time or not.