Chapter Text
It began with a single, tragic sneeze.
The kind of sneeze that echoed faintly off the high ceilings of the inn's front room, trailed into a pitiful wheeze, and was followed by a soft, despondent mutter.
“Ah. No.”
Viktor, slouched at the edge of the couch with a book open on his lap and a cup of now-cold tea at his elbow, dabbed at his nose with an embroidered handkerchief like a man who had just learned the sun would never rise again.
From across the room, Jayce looked up from his scattered schematics. “Bless you.”
“I do not wish to be blessed,” Viktor rasped, already sounding hoarse. “I wish for death. Or failing that, a functioning immune system.”
“You have a cold.”
“I have suffered, Jayce.”
Before Jayce could roll his eyes, the front door slammed open.
“I heard Viktor sneezed!” Jinx yelled, dragging a duffel bag that was 20% first aid and 80% glitter glue. “This is not a drill, people! Full containment protocol! CODE DRIP!”
“Oh no,” Viktor whispered.
Oh yes, said Isha—without a word.
She appeared beside the couch holding a clipboard as long as her torso. One raised brow, a flick of her finger, and she handed Jayce a yellow cue card labeled: PHASE ONE – COMFORT, THEN SOUP. The next one, slid to Jinx, read: PLEASE DO NOT LIGHT ANYTHING ON FIRE.
Jayce blinked. “How… how long have you had those prepared?”
Isha smiled, innocent as the morning sun.
Viktor reached for a pillow and gently placed it over his face.
“Is it too late to disappear into the woods and perish among the mushrooms?” came his muffled voice.
Terra walked by just then, cradling a bowl of something warm and greenish. She wordlessly placed it on the table in front of him. Then, without comment, stared him down like a well-intentioned hawk.
“I don’t trust that color,” Viktor muttered.
She raised a brow.
“Fine,” he groaned. “I will sniff it.”
Mistress Curl, the inn’s resident menace in feline form, leapt onto the couch and settled squarely across Viktor’s knee, tail flicking with regal authority. She stared him down with glowing eyes and the energy of an eldritch creature sworn to pest control and personal vendettas.
“…You’re all in on this together,” Viktor whispered. “I can feel it.”
---
The next forty-eight hours were, in Viktor’s words, “a parade of indignity.”
Jayce insisted on building him a heated blanket that beeped when his temperature dropped. It beeped constantly. Terra kept pushing teas that tasted like potting soil, and Jinx rigged a disco light above the couch labeled “HEALING ZONE.”
Mistress Curl chewed the end of his handkerchief. Isha—bless her organized soul—implemented a precise rotating schedule that involved color-coded hydration reminders, supervised naps, and “stern but loving” glances whenever Viktor tried to sneak off to the lab.
He did not succeed.
By day two, Viktor sat—well, slouched—on the couch swaddled in a heap of blankets like a tired burrito of misery. His hair defied gravity. His nose was pink. His patience was gone.
Jayce returned from the kitchen carrying another attempt at soup. “You look better today.”
“I am only alive because I ran out of the energy required to perish.”
“You’re fine, Viktor.”
“You tried to make tea in the waffle iron.”
“I got creative.”
“Jayce, I am begging you—stop cooking.”
From across the room, Jinx shouted, “TOO LATE! I put the goat in charge of the stove!”
“…What goat?” Jayce asked.
“Oh no,” Viktor said.
“Oh yes,” Jinx said. “Meet Sir Baa-a-lot, Esquire.”
A very small goat in a bow tie wandered in from the hall, bleated, and walked directly into a chair.
Isha calmly held up a cue card that read: PLEASE STOP ADDING NEW CHARACTERS TO THIS CHAOS.
---
By day three, Viktor’s fever broke.
But the recovery party did not.
Jinx built a “You Didn’t Die!” banner out of safety pins and yarn. Jayce made a cake. Terra disappeared into the garden muttering about medicinal plants and inner peace. Isha began enforcing mandatory bedtime using a stopwatch and a glow-in-the-dark rubber chicken.
Viktor, now somewhat better, dragged himself out to the porch and sat down in the rocking chair with a dramatic sigh.
“I will never be the same again.”
Isha brought him tea.
He accepted it with a soft grunt of gratitude. Then, with a sniffle, he said:
“…I suppose I will not die today.”
She smiled, just a little.
And behind her, the goat walked into the door again.