Chapter Text
Make the Clock Reverse
He hadn’t realized he had heart enough left to shatter. Not until he was faced with the fragile shards fragmented at his feet. It was all too much. Deceit and betrayal, guile and trickery, the puppet master played, the director center stage illuminated under the cold, uncaring light of Truth, and now - this? To see this face look upon him, uncomprehending, unknowing? The pity in that sightless gaze stuck in his throat like tar.
It's too much.
He stumbled backwards, claws digging into his dough, truthful lies and deceitful truths dripping from his lips. A warning, a promise, and the unforgiving, relentless Knowledge that he no longer Knew where Lies ended and Truth began. A portal, a last-ditch effort to hold together the illusion of his fracturing façade, and then, at last, he was finally alone.
He hated it.
It was safer.
***
The scent of wet earth, the faint chill in his dough from a gentle misting. Pure Vanilla’s eyes snapped open uselessly as he shot upwards, a little panicked. The Faerie Kingdom? No – he could feel the wind much too clearly for that forested realm. Fingers digging into the damp, crumbling soil beneath him, he willed his heart to calm. The Spire? No – the illusions there had always settled uncomfortably at the edges of his subconscious. No matter how much an illusion deceived his senses the wrongness prickled at the edge of his mind like a burr. Truthless Recluse had simply ignored the discomfort, as if it would go away when unacknowledged. And before he’d simply not understood enough to see the mask for what it was. Now, though? He knew the difference.
He had felt like that, too.
Pure Vanilla shuddered, mind flitting from the thought instinctively. He had meant what he’d said – that offering of friendship – even if it’d been in the heat of the moment. How could he not, when Shadow Milk Cookie felt like a raw, festering wound? But just because he’d finally found his Truth – that didn’t necessarily mean Pure Vanilla was ready to face it. Not when he’d been fractured apart and slotted back together so hastily he could still feel the disparate parts sliding against each other unevenly.
With a shake of his head, Pure Vanilla pushed himself upright, swaying unsteadily. Arms swinging out wide, he spun, focusing on the empty space around him. He couldn’t sense his staff, and questing fingers didn’t brush smooth wood by his feet. With his eyes open, all he could see was a vast swath of brown, or maybe grey. With a frown, he allowed his magic to unfurl, as it had in that brief moment in the Spire, when he had pushed beyond himself, when his Truth had finally revealed itself to him, when he had just barely glimpsed Knowing.
There was a brief moment of eyes opening, existing beyond himself, the impression of a vast, overgrown field seen in too many directions at once, and then Pure Vanilla hunched over with a groan, hands clasping reflexively at his temples as a bolt of agony lanced through his head.
Pushing aside the throbbing, he rose from his crouch, taking a few, stumbling steps. More concerning than his headache, this strange new locale, was the fact that he hadn’t glimpsed nor sensed the children, anywhere.
***
Searching for the children proved useless. Of course it did. He was practically blind. But if he could not find the children, perhaps another cookie might. Picking a direction, Pure Vanilla walked. If he could not do what he must, he would do what he could.
With a wry sort of amusement Pure Vanilla picked himself up from his fourth tumble into the soil. The fallow field was loamy, and the path treacherous with the remains of tillage. …he had grown too accustomed to the privilege of sight.
Humming a soft tune and veering slowly towards the shadows and cooler air towards his left, he broke through a tree line with some relief. At least now, he could fashion himself a staff. Tapping along through the underbrush with cautious footing, Pure Vanilla hastened his pace when he realized he’d stumbled across the faint remains of a dirt lined path. Cookies!
The shadows grow thicker, the air cooler, and his makeshift staff tapped against something hard and unyielding that swiftly revealed itself to be the foot of a staircase. Nearly tripping up the stairs in his haste, Pure Vanilla rapped eagerly on a sturdy door, before trying to tidy his robes in an attempt at making himself presentable. Hands fidgeting with dirtied cloth and trying to straighten his tangled hair, he waited. The silence stretching out like a living thing.
He knocked again.
“Hello? Is anyone there? Forgive my intrusion, I mean no harm-“
The door swung open with a ponderous creak, and Pure Vanilla’s knuckles tightened around his staff. He couldn’t feel warmth nor light.
Silence.
“Ah, forgive me, I really do mean no harm, I’m just…rather lost… and looking for my – ahem - some children – three young cookies, one with the scent of ginger, another like strawberries and a the third with the crackle of popping candies-“
The silence persisted longer. Long enough for Pure Vanilla to worry that maybe there was no one there at all and he’d somehow imagined the way the air became even cooler, the sensation of standing before another cookie, being watched. But then, another voice rasped out, hoarse from disuse, “Pardon?”
Pure Vanilla took an instinctive step back, alarm and a frisson of fear shuddering through his dough. There was a moment of weightlessness – stairs! – before a pair of clawed hands curved firmly around his shoulders, steadying him. “Careful, you’ll fall,” came that same, ragged voice.
“Shadow Milk Cookie?!” Pure Vanilla finally expounded; voice pitched high in incredulity.
Silence, somehow tinged with something festering, forlorn.
“…Is that what they’re calling me, now?”
“What is going on?” Pure Vanilla sagged, exhaustion tugging at his dough.
“…you came here seeking answers,” That horribly, horribly familiar voice answered, tainted with a strange, unfamiliar fatigue.
“I rather think that’s going to be impossible.”
“Hmm.” A soft huff of air, then a clawed hand wrapping gently around his wrist. Pure Vanilla tensed subconsciously at the touch, the memory of claws too tight around Truthless Recluse's limbs. There was a moment of stillness, before the feel of displaced air from rapid movement. The empty air around his wrist felt even colder than the hand that had once held it. “…come in. You look dreadful.”
The sound of robes susurrating across a firm, stony floor, the creak of a door being held open wider. Wondering if he perhaps was the terminally silly cookie Shadow Milk had named him to be, Pure Vanilla stepped across the threshold before the door swung shut behind him, a somber knell.
“And…I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else. …my name is Blueberry Milk Cookie.”