Chapter Text
White Lily scrambled to her feet, the darkness around her almost seemed to be pressing against her despite there being nothing but empty space around her. The void stretched in all directions, blue stars and blue eyes shone with a malice all directed at her. Was this what Pure Vanilla saw back then in the Faerie Kingdom? Why he’d looked so haunted?
“Shadow Milk!” She called out, hating the waver in her voice. The fear threatened to close her throat. “Enough of this. I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it.”
“Liar.”
She whirled around and saw Shadow Milk’s puffy sleeves crossed over each other. She slowly looks up, eyes climbing the massive form in front of her. Shadow Milk easily towered over her, his hands big enough to hold her if he just reached out for her. In the oppressive darkness, it was hard to tell where he began and ended. He was laying down, arms crossed and feet in the air behind him, gently swinging. His hair and coattails spilled out behind him and slowly faded into the void around them, all the eyes still laser focused on her twinkling like stars. It was breathtaking in a terribly beautiful way.
“I’ve been waiting months for you to admit it. You can’t take it back now, little flower.”
He smiled, his face twisting into a mockery of proportions. His smile too wide, his mouth shouldn’t split like that, he shouldn’t have three rows of razor sharp teeth that disappeared into more a black hole than a throat. His eyes too danced with a malicious mirth in the swirling galaxies they held that had her wondering if she was going to survive this encounter. He tapped the fingers on one of his hands, the fingers blackened at the ends, claws glinting like obsidian blades as they barely grazed the fabric of his sleeves. It would take nothing at all for those claws to impale her, probably wouldn’t even take more than a gentle push.
She’d never been more terrified in her life.
Her staff wasn’t here. Her magic would be a fraction of its usual strength without her magic focus, and that’s without taking into account that her Souljam was now on the floor who knows how far away from where she was in this realm.
Even Silent Salt hadn’t made himself seem invincible like this. He’d still been a force she could withstand. Shadow Milk had successfully reminded her why the Beasts used to be seen as gods. He was otherworldly like this.
“You asked me a question. Once upon a time, I would have gladly answered any question posed to me. You should feel lucky. Blessed even! I’m choosing to answer yours.”
He laughed and the darkness around her seemed to press heavier against her. She was finding it hard to remember to breathe.
“Shadow Milk… Could we-”
“Ah ah ah! I didn’t say you could speak little flower. Zip it!” He flicked one of his hands to the side and a comically large zipper appeared in front of her and lashed across her face. Scrambling for it, she found her lips had physically been fused shut. She glared at Shadow Milk in front of her.
“Aw, how cute! The little flower has some bite left in her still?” He lets his hand fall back to the ground, the resulting crash shaking through her legs and nearly sending her to the floor. “No matter. Let’s get on with the show…”
“You wanted to know why I care to try and pretend? Why did I become a monster? Did you ever think for a moment maybe I never wanted to be this either? That maybe there was a method to the madness? A reason for the fall?”
White Lily rolled her eyes at him, despite her shaking, and Shadow Milk cackled with an echoing mania.
“I was once Knowledge. It was baked into my very dough to Know everything. To have an insatiable curiosity. Can you even comprehend what that means? I knew why the forests rose and why they burned. Why the rivers bend and shift in place over time. Where mountains would rise and how many years it would take them to fall. But that was not all I knew…”
“See
everything
includes what you tiny cookies called forbidden knowledge too. You learned but one little forbidden secret and your fragile mind shattered. Dark Enchantress still runs free, a testament to your brief stumble into madness. I know so many more awful secrets than that. I was baked to be able to withstand that Knowledge, to be able to Know and deal with the implications of horrible things. Things no mortal should ever have to contemplate. Any question that was asked, I had to Know the answer, compelled to Know it by every fiber of my soul no matter if it hurt nor how much.”
“I can show you them if you like. Implant the memories in your head, grind the feeling of it into your soul, but I don’t think you’ll survive that Knowledge. Others barely survive parts of it, forever traumatized and scarred by it for their entire lives. You barely survived one dread secret of the world, granted it was a pretty big one I’ll give you that much, little witch flower. Instead, I’m just going to answer your question with some of my own. Hmm. Let's start with something… familiar.”
White Lily just stares. It’s all she can do, mouth bound and unable to make a sound. She stares and she shivers in the cold and the dark.
“Do you know what cookie dough tastes like?”
Her eyes widen as the shock seizes her lungs for a moment. Unbidden, her eyes flick down to the myriad fangs spread out in a smile in front of her.
“Do you know how filling it is to have a belly full of it? Do you know the taste of the guilt as it tries to regurgitate back up your throat? Have you ever had to rationalize the temptation that comes with seeing other cookies after? How it feels to Know that your dearest companions, friends and family, would be horrified to learn you even thought of it as an option, forced or not? The what-ifs that swim through your head as you try and pretend you wouldn’t mind to taste it again since it no longer truly disgusts you?”
She feels tears begin to flood her eyes. Once more she is terrified. She watched the witches eat cookies, but she never thought Shadow Milk had known the same banquet. Had they forced him? Had he chosen to? How many–?
“Do you know what it is like to shatter a bone? I’m sure you’ve broken at least one in your lifetime. How about all of them? Do you know what every single bone you own feels like to have break? What does that feel like when it's all of them at once? How does it feel to have an eye ripped from your face? To have to sit there while your body no longer responds to your nervous system?”
“How long do you think it took me to learn how to liquify every crumb of my body into pure magic so that I could dive into the shadows and shapeshift at will? Why do you think I even tried it in the first place?”
White Lily shudders and can’t help but remember that Shadow Milk hardly ever walks anywhere for long periods. How he almost never picks up anything unless it’s with magic, how weak his motions even when he does. The dawning grief as she realizes there may be a reason that isn’t a lazy sense of convenience. She’d wanted to solve the question of fragile bodies… How had she missed that someone in her vicinity might have had one?
“How does it feel to drown? To choke on the very first instinct your body ever learns? To slowly lose consciousness knowing that you are going to die? How many years do you think it takes for an immortal to lose the instinctive fear of the water? How many more after that to be able to withstand being submerged? I Know that answer too. I wonder if I’ll get to see Pure Vanilla recover from it. Will he also celebrate the day he no longer panics when his feet touch the water?”
What? When did Pure Vanilla–?
“Do you know what poison feels like coursing through your veins? There are so many of them and they all change how the pain burns through you. How does it feel to be torn apart by an animal with teeth and claws? To be crushed by a creature that lacks them? What does it feel like to have organs fail on you one by one? I had to Know all that too.”
How much pain had Shadow Milk endured?
How much had he subjected others to with that knowledge?
“Do you know what it is like to feel your soul torn in two? How long does one have to sit in the quiet and the dark before hallucinations begin? How long until your sense of self falters in the unending silence? What does it feel like to slowly have to pull yourself back together from scattered fragments of memory you aren’t even sure are real anymore?”
White Lily closes her eyes, tears freely escaping. She didn’t want to hear any more. She tries to pool her magic in her chest, but her panic was difficult to concentrate through. Shadow spots danced in her vision and she wasn’t sure if that was Shadow Milk’s doing or the fact that she only just shuttered out another breath, as if only just remembering she needed to.
“Do you know exactly how many spells can destroy a cookie’s psyche? Do you know how long it takes for someone to break under the threat of pain unending? Do you know how to fracture a mind so that they no longer know friend from foe? What do you have to do to convince a pair of lovers that the only way to prove their devotion is to eat each other alive, cannibalizing their feelings of amor? What combination of spells to use to render someone a mindless doll willing to do anything you tell them? How to erase someone’s sense of self without erasing their will to live?”
She’s going to be sick.
“I have plenty of them. What do you think I should do with them? Mindless dolls from back when cookies did not know anything but fear and terror in the Chaos of Iron and Flame. Where murderers were given to me for experiments with no regard for if what they would be subjected to was Fair and Just. Those concepts were something that I had to teach puny cookies to adhere to.”
“Even today, how many cookies are willing to become murderers to retaliate against someone they see as nothing more than filth? That they’ll call it just to kill to soothe their own sense of morality. Or to watch with a shrug as that person falters and takes their own life for them. The smallest of infractions can cause those who want to feel superior to harass another to death and they’ll pretend it was Deserved. I wonder how many think that of me? Of you ? How many hope we’ll disappear one day? How many generations before people no longer remember the crimes we committed and we are freed of the glances and stares? Or do you think we'll break first and erase that history to hide from our shame?”
White Lily collapses to her knees. She realizes that once more she asked a question she wasn’t ready for the answer to. She’d made that mistake again.
That’s when she noticed a small oddity in the void around her. A single golden eye, different in style to all the others, hovered behind Shadow Milk’s head, watching the two of them. It flicked to Shadow Milk, gentling its light before turning to look at her. It blinked slowly at her when it noticed that she’d seen it.
Pure Vanilla. It had to be. He was watching too.
That gave her the solace to breathe again, though she still felt her dread knotting in her stomach and chest tightly. Pure Vanilla would protect her. She believed that wholeheartedly.
“You can stop pretending you forgive me. Stop lying to my face. Stop lying to yourself . Because you don’t. You still see me as a monster, just one that you reluctantly have to sit at a table with. I personally would prefer it if you allowed yourself to be angry with me. Enough with the charades. We have eternity to learn how to get along. An eternity to learn to forgive for that Silly. Warm. Fool.”
“You like to pretend that you and I are so different from each other, but you buckled under the weight of horrible Knowledge so quickly. You allowed yourself to fall to madness when you fell into that dough and came out with the desire to see the whole world burn. You can separate yourself from Dark Enchantress all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that a part of you became just as much of a Beast as my family did. Perhaps you should be careful who you call a monster when all you need to see one is to look in the mirror. Hypocrite. So much for your hope that everyone deserves a second chance, huh?”
It was then that the golden eye exploded with white light. It rapidly overtook the darkness around her, pulling her away from Shadow Milk, though she noted that while he dissolved into the shadows of the void, a blinding white figure ran after him.
A pair of golden arms appears from behind her, dragging her backward into warmth. Those arms settle at her shoulders, rubbing her arms as her breathing slowly settles. The tears well up more as she looks behind her and sees her friend looking down at her with gentle sorrow. His awakened robes are all inverted, where there is usually white there is gold instead with hems capped with a gentle glow. He doesn’t have his staff, but something tells her he can see just fine right now with how many eyes are around them. He looks apologetic, maybe worried he should have intervened sooner.
She struggles to turn around without getting up, allowing herself to throw her arms around Pure Vanilla’s chest, all but collapsing in his lap. His arms hover over her for a moment before he slowly allows himself to settle them on her back. A warmth seeps into her from all angles, the opposite of that cold oppressive darkness, yet strangely just as painful to endure.
The hiccupping sobs slow down eventually as she realizes that unfortunately Shadow Milk was right. If she wanted to understand the Beast and be able to forgive him, White Lily would need to accept that she hated what he did, how similar what she did in turn. To allow herself to grieve, both for Elder Faerie but also for herself. To allow his overtures of peace to actually be taken rather than brushing them off with the politeness that she’d been forcing herself to maintain.
Maybe they would need to dislike each other for a while, while remaining civil for Pure Vanilla. White Lily had been forcing herself to pretend she liked Shadow Milk for the sake of her friend because she wanted to be forgiven, not because she wanted to learn to forgive. She’d been pretending from the start and that wasn’t something she could do forever. The mask would crack eventually, like it had tonight.
For Shadow Milk to be appeased, White Lily had to stop pretending.
For her own heart to be, she needed to start forgiving them both.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
White Lily sat in the harsh light, eyes pressed tightly closed for untold moments. Part of her wondered how long they sat there. She’s sure she could ask Pure Vanilla, but she honestly did not care what the answer was.
Eventually she tried to open her eyes, only for Pure Vanilla to press his hand over them immediately as she hissed against the brightness. The darkness had shifted to blinding white light, dotted with gold stars and eyes around them. Not even closing her eyes banished the light entirely, the usual dark explosions of color of eyes pressed shut were lit only in a solid pink reflecting the jam coursing through them.
“I apologize. My side of the Other Realm is a bit much, isn’t it? I'm still trying to learn how to turn it down.” Pure Vanilla laughed gently above her. “May I pick you up? I can take you anywhere you want to go to leave this place.”
She nods, allowing herself to settle with her face pressed into his collarbone. She tucked her arms in, shielding her chest and stomach from stray touch, though she knew he would be careful. He gathers her cloak behind her and tucks it under her legs, picking her up by crossing his arms under her thighs. His hands are careful to hold his own sleeves rather than grabbing at her. It definitely is a more awkward stance than other holds would be, but she can’t bring herself to unfurl from the tight ball she’s pressed herself into.
She feels briefly guilty for being troublesome. Pure Vanilla doesn’t complain.
“Where would you like to go?” He asks instead, whispering. The quiet is a mercy on her overwhelmed state.
She doesn’t know. She whimpers on his shoulder.
“How about you tap my chest then? One tap, your room in the castle. Two taps, the garden. Three, we can hide away in the Blueberry Academy for a bit, though I doubt you want to be surrounded by eyes right now.”
She takes a shuddering gasp. Her face is wetting his robes.
Pure Vanilla waits.
One tap. He immediately moves. She hears the same rip that Shadow Milk’s portals make. It makes her flinch though she knows it was just Pure Vanilla. He gently murmurs an apology to her for the sudden sound.
Pure Vanilla gently places her down on the soft sheets of her bed. She allows herself to finally uncurl as he pulls her blankets over her shoulders and around front for her to grab at. Wrapped in a cozy cocoon, she manages to look up at him.
“I’m sorry.” She mutters.
He laughs gently, shaking his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Not to me. Do you want to tell me what happened?” He asks, sitting gently next to her.
“I was… Shadow Milk asked why I kept pretending to like him.”
Pure Vanilla hummed. He waited, somehow knowing she wasn’t done. She’d never understand his ability to just innately know what she needed, what anyone needed. He wasn’t infallible, but he did a better job listening and being patient than anyone she’d ever met. Pure Vanilla places a hand on her knee. For once though she wished he’d push past her old boundaries.
“I asked him why he killed–” Her voice failed her as she hiccups on a sob. “I wanted to know the reason.”
“Did you though?” Pure Vanilla asks, though he sounds disappointed. “I don’t think that was the Truth. I think you already knew the reason. So why ask again?”
White Lily stares down at her hands clutching the sheets. “I don’t know.” She settles on.
Pure Vanilla hums again. He quietly shuffles himself up on the bed to sit closer, still careful of his touch. “Perhaps you wanted a different answer. One that would make it easier, rather than the harsh truth of it. You did not understand the reason, so you sought a new one.” He grabs one of her hands. “But there isn’t one. Not one that will make it okay. Not really. There is no reason that makes what happened right, just one that makes it understandable.”
“Can I hug you?” Her voice cracks getting the question out. She's such a mess.
Pure Vanilla smiles gently at her and opens his arms. “Do I need to get our ink out again or do you just want me to allow touch? You can just tap me if I go too far?”
She laughs lightly and tackles him onto the bed, allowing herself to bask in his warmth. He puffs out a small noise when she throws herself at him initially before chuckling. He set to brushing out her hair with one hand, gently carding it out of her face while she leaned across his chest.
“Maybe it is time we retraced the ink. Later though…” She murmurs into the gentle quiet of the room. She sees Pure Vanilla nod above her, closing his eyes gently.
Back in their time in school when she’d first told Pure Vanilla she was uncomfortable with touch, instead of making fun of her like others did, Pure Vanilla had nodded and left her room. When he’d returned, it was with a dough safe temporary ink and he asked her to show him on her arms, face, anywhere she was comfortable being touched and to tell him where she wasn’t. She’ll admit, she might have changed since then, she wouldn’t know since he never tested those lines once since that night they covered her in ink and scribbles. She remembers their teacher's confusion when she came to class covered in full sleeve tattoos covered by their uniform, her legs from the knee down similarly discolored, her face barely cleaned of the stray blots of notes.
“Hurt people tend to hurt people.” Pure Vanilla finally says, breaking her out of her memories. “That makes it predictable, easy to understand, to see the pattern… but it doesn’t make it okay. Shadow Milk has been hurting for a long time, so he has hurt a lot of people. He needs to learn how to curb the habit if he wishes to stop hurting.”
White Lily nods, gripping his robe near her face. She waits to see where this is going, unwilling to interrupt her friend.
“You… you have also been hurting for a long time. I think that’s why everything fell apart for you back then. You’d already been cracked and barely holding on, so whatever it was you learned, you fell apart. I saw it back then and I did nothing. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that. You two are more similar than either of you want to admit.”
She turned her face down into his chest, avoiding his eyes, though she knows they are still closed. A harsh truth, but she can’t deny it. She wants to… Oh, does she want to. Stubbornness tries to make her angry, only she’s already cried out any emotion she can bear for the night. She can’t hold his bluntness against him, she reminds herself. Pure Vanilla is still under the love potion’s chatterbox effect. Instead she lets the truth settle over her like a slightly uncomfortable blanket.
“Yea.” She finally admits, muttering it into his chest. “I just don’t like thinking about it like that.”
“Not many would. Even if you never turned into Enchantress, you were hurting us Ancients with your distance. While it’s not the same severity of pain, it does mean that you were doing damage to yourself and to others much longer than you realize… I’m glad you are reaching back out now. It’ll help all of us to heal, Beasts and Ancients both.”
Her breath hitches as some tears pool in her eyes again. They barely blur her vision, her body unable to muster much more in the form of reaction. Pure Vanilla keeps petting her hair.
“I just… I don’t know how. I never understood what you all liked in me. And now that I’ve hurt everyone so much, I don’t understand why you forgive me either.”
“So you were trying to figure it out by pretending to forgive them?”
White Lily turns to look at Pure Vanilla’s face. He still has it turned to the ceiling, eyes closed and hand still petting what part of her hair he can reach. He’s placed the ribbon holding her hairstyle together on the bed near her knee; she didn’t know when that had been taken out. His words struck her. Was that what it was?
She had been pretending to forgive him to soothe her own desire to be forgiven.
“Maybe?” She wondered aloud, voice shaky. Pure Vanilla waited for her to piece it together better. “I guess I wanted to believe that I deserved a second chance. That if I repented, after everything was done, I would be allowed to stay. So when you came to me asking if we could try giving the Beasts one… I guess I saw it as proof that I could deserve it too.”
“Why would their redemption mean you deserve one? You do, but not because of them. You deserve one because you are trying on your own. Just like Shadow Milk accepted trying for his when he took my hand.”
“I don’t… I guess I saw myself as ‘not as evil’ as them? If they were worse than me, and you forgave them then…” She trails off, looking away. “Even though I directly attacked you all, they’d done so much more damage.”
“Do… do you still think that?”
“No.” White Lily sighed, letting herself sink further onto him. “You were right, we are more similar than I like. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like his answer… because it's exactly the answer I expected.”
“Shadow Milk is used to people not liking his answers. I’m a little disappointed that you reaffirmed that old fear of his.”
“It’s what broke him, isn’t it? Today but also… before.”
“Yes. You can ask him about their falls some other day. I’m sorry he scared you. He lashed out at me earlier in the night and I think he was still in too fragile a headspace to handle that confrontation. Which is why he initiated it in the first place.”
“To hurt himself as much as to hurt me…”
“Yes. Doesn’t make it okay. I’m talking to him about it too.”
She laughs and sits up. “Where did you learn that by the way? I saw another you run after him.” He leans up on his elbows to look at her. “Was that one of your perks from Awakening?”
“No, I learned that in the Spire before I Awakened. I split myself into Fortune Teller Cookie and Truthless Recluse so that I could trick Shadow Milk.” Pure Vanilla shrugs. “It’s mildly difficult to concentrate on… I think my Souljam might be the reason I can do that? I can try and teach you someday. Shadow Milk does it too.”
“Hmm. Maybe it's something only you two can do, but I’m willing to try it. It would be helpful to be in two places at once.” White Lily muses gently as she smirks, trying to allow mischief into her voice again. “I suppose I’ll have to apologize for pushing him, though I definitely think throwing me in a nightmare realm was a bit much for retaliation.”
Pure Vanilla snorts gently. “Nightmare realm indeed. I’m just glad he held back.” At her face, he scrambles to elaborate. “Not to belittle how bad that was! I just know he could have forced you to endure the physical sensations of everything he was talking about or dragged you through your most painful memories.”
White Lily’s face tightens. “Did he do those things to you? What did he make you see?”
“I don’t think you want the answer to that. I have forgiven him, let’s leave it there.” Pure Vanilla sighed, letting himself collapse back and throw one of his hands over his face. “The Spire will stay between us for now.”
Maybe someday he’d tell her it all, but it was probably best it wasn’t right now. She already disliked Shadow Milk enough, she didn’t need further reason to abhor him. She can save those revelations for a future date. Maybe for a small bit of revenge she can just settle for bullying him about his obvious crush on Pure Vanilla. Who knows? She may even be the one to kick his ass out of the denial river after the whole love potion thing wears off.
“Perhaps.” She decides to allow the subject to drop. “Why don’t you tell me about your Kingdom? I missed a lot of its history being so far away.” White Lily tucks her loose hair behind her ear, smiling down at him gently.
“Only if you’ll tell me more about your adventures. Letters only have so much to tell.” Pure Vanilla smiles in return.
They’ll be okay. She’ll learn to accept that she deserves forgiveness, even if she has to ask Pure Vanilla to remind her again and again. She'll talk to her other friends too. It's about time she apologized more directly to each of them instead of just hoping she deserved their forgiveness. Tough discussions that need to be had. And she’s determined to actually let herself try to forgive the idiot jester too, even if it means she’s going to have to hate him just a little bit first.
In the future, she’s going to make triple sure she wants an answer before she asks Shadow Milk any more questions though. White Lily isn’t sure what to think of Pure Vanilla’s sanity that he finds that at all attractive.