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When Shadow Milk opens his eyes, he expects to be surrounded by thick, treacherous darkness.
He expects to feel the familiar weight of chains wrapped around his limbs, the anguish choking him until he can no longer scream.
He expects to be back in the cage where every cookie on Earthbread believes he belongs.
What he certainly doesn't expect, though, is to be awakened by a golden, warm sunray stabbing his eyeballs.
He mumbles, grabbing the fresh sheets he is lying on. He doesn't know why they are so perfectly folded, nor why he is sleeping on them, but the warmth of the light filtering through the crenellated curtains makes this little vanilla-scented nest far too comfortable to give up on just yet—
Shadow Milk's back snaps straight.
They smell like vanilla.
A quick glance around the room, over the frosted walls and the waffle-cone motifs on every piece of furniture, to a pair of mismatched eyes already fixed on his.
A deep shiver runs through Shadow Milk's jam from top to bottom.
“Good morning, Shadow Milk Cookie,” Pure Vanilla says calmly, sitting on a chair a few steps away from the foot of the bed, hands clutching his faithful staff.
“I was beginning to doubt you would ever wake up.”
In the blink of an eye, a wave of unpleasant memories floods the cookie's mind with overwhelming force.
The fight, the blinding light that washed over him, and then darkness again, before he fell into nothingness.
Shadow Milk fights back the urge to vomit.
Pure Vanilla defeated him.
He's bent the Beast to his knees, the kill within his grasp. He had every right to swing the sword— Shadow Milk would only have been grateful to be freed from the humiliation he would face afterwards.
Instead, as rightfully expected, the old man's good spirit spared him and dragged his unconscious body into his kingdom as a trophy to show off.
Adorable, in a way. He really knows how to make his sweetheart hate him to death.
"I know this may seem confusing,“ Pure Vanilla says, white eyelashes fluttering shut. “But give me a moment, just one moment, to explain—”
Gasping, Pure Vanilla is thrown to the ground along with his stupid little chair.
Shadow Milk towers over him, slicing through his dough with an unflinchingly intense gaze and a wide plastic smile.
The intermission lasted long enough. It's time for the show to start again.
“If this is another of your silly attempts to befriend me,” his voice rises and rises until it reaches an almost hysterical pitch. “I swear I won't hesitate to turn you into millions of tiny vanilla crumbs.”
“Go ahead, then,” Pure Vanilla instigates in reply.
Shadow Milk's perfect smile drops.
“I'm not going to deny my intentions,” the other cookie continues, his gaze unwavering on the figure suspended in midair.
“Back in the Spire, I could have killed you with extreme ease. But when I looked the Beast of Deceit in the eye, just as I am doing now, I saw not even a glimpse of the cruel monster I had prepared myself to face. What I saw was a lonely, hurting creature who just longed to be understood."
Shadow Milk swallows a bubble of air.
It's not like him to forget his lines in the middle of a performance, but he fears that no words will be able to come out of his mouth without trembling.
“I promised myself I wouldn't give up on you easily,” Pure Vanilla admits with revolting determination.
“Because if ensuring the happiness of every cookie means sacrificing the happiness of one of them, then it's not the right thing to do. So, do it. Turn me into crumbs, if that will prove my honesty to you.”
Liar, Shadow Milk grits his sharp teeth.
You silly, little fucking liar.
The early mental fog is swept away by a hurricane of sheer fury, a murky storm of lightning that mercilessly strikes his expression. But it's not enough to satisfy him, to satisfy that desire buried deep within himself which he still struggles to grasp.
He has been waiting for eons to finally feel satisfied.
But his resentment is much, much greater than himself. It creeps beneath his feet like tentacles of shadow, flooding the floor in dense tar in which Pure Vanilla finds himself trapped. It climbs the walls, morphing into twisted vines. It thickens the ceiling of the room with black, rumbling clouds that prevent any light from passing through.
Every space is steeped in Shadow Milk's darkness, but it is still not enough.
If only he could lean out a little and snatch what was stolen from him from the other cookie's brooch—if only he could satisfy the one burning desire that has kept his consciousness anchored to the ground during the long centuries spent imprisoned inside that cursed tree— perhaps, at that point, the feeling would finally come and fill him whole.
But this won’t happen today. So he let this ravenous flame spread inside himself, consuming his parts like a leaf in a fire.
Pure Vanilla doesn't let his focus waver; it's all on the cookie right in front of him. Shadow Milk's dough trembles with frustration.
What a fool.
Does he truly believe he is no longer a puppet just because he managed to cut some strings? Does he believe him and the Beast of Deceit are now on equal footing? Does he believe all it takes to fix old, unerasable mistakes is just a little bit of perseverance?
Liar. Dirty little liar.
The naivety of that cookie is nothing short of ridiculous. How foolish! To think that every problem in the world can be solved through the power of friendship!
A series of muffled giggles starts bubbling up in his chest, erupting into loud, uncontrollable laughter that echoes off the walls of the small room and shake his body like a puppet dangling in midair.
Because— it's hilarious.
“Only you can make me laugh like this, Nilly,” Shadow Milk sighs, wiping fake tears away from the corners of his eyes. “Pursuing such unattainable desires so fiercely. It's truly admirable. Your stupidity is enough to make me cry!”
“You're the one who makes them unattainable, Shadow Milk,” Pure Vanilla insists. “You've lived with loneliness for so long that you've learned to treasure it. You fear what you don't know, and that's why you fear my offer.”
“Ah, how many times do I have to repeat this for it to get into that stupid blonde head of yours? I don't feel lonely!”
Shadow Milk exclaims, doing a pirouette in the air. But the cheerfulness in his voice sounds forced and exasperated, dangerously close to the point of explosion.
“Candy Apple cookie and Black Sapphire cookie have been my wonderful, loyal companions for years. And I certainly can't forget to mention my dear brothers and sisters! The Beasts! Oh, if only you knew about all the fun we've had over the centuries inside the Silver Tree! And then... I have you.”
He lunges forward, stopping with his feet off the ground, leaving a thin crack of space between his face and the other cookie's. “My sweet other half.”
To his immense delight, Pure Vanilla seems to be at a loss for words.
“Perfect, then,” Shadow Milk gives him one last sharp-toothed smile, clapping his palms together. “Now that we've cleared up any misunderstandings, I think it's time to end this charade! It's been a great displeasure to see you again, my dear Nilly. I sincerely hope next time, you'll be as ready to kill me as I am to kill you.”
“Shadow Milk, wai—”
Pure Vanilla's words are drowned out by the loud thud the front door produces while falling to the ground, smashed by the other cookie with a swift movement of the cane he just summoned. A wild laugh bursts from his throat once again.
Like a snake, he slithers out of the room, savoring the cocktail of elation and rage flowing through his jam.
Oh, he simply can’t wait to shatter the fairy-tale reality Pure Vanilla has crafted in his head.
He can't wait to hear him scream, to bend him and break him until that spark of hope he oh so stubbornly protects is extinguished.
Perhaps, at that point, his immense and inexhaustible hatred will finally be reciprocated.
Mh, what a delightful thought—
He snaps out of his bizarre fantasies as quickly as he fell into them, sensing an uncomfortable chill creeping up his body.
Pure Vanilla is staring at him from his chair.
Again.
“Wha—” the words die in his throat as his gaze sweeps around the new room he has just walked into.
A perfect carbon copy of the previous one.
No. No no no.
“Shadow Milk,” Pure Vanilla pulls him back to reality with a firm voice. “Let me explain.”
But an alarm bell has already gone off in Shadow Milk's brain, and with the same swift movement of his cane, he breaks through this door too, catapulting himself to the other side.
Nothing has changed.
The same furniture.
The same pair of mismatched eyes staring at him with apprehension.
Shadow Milk’s breath starts to falter.
The cane in his hand moves with an almost mechanical gesture, breaking through door after door, crossing room after room, in a growing spiral of panic and anguish that threatens to swallow him whole.
He's never been inside the Vanilla Kingdom, has he?
Pure Vanilla has done his absolute best to make this realm as welcoming as possible, but he certainly can't erase its purpose.
To keep the Beast of Deceit imprisoned in an endless limbo.
Oh, how shamefully blind of Shadow Milk to let himself be fooled by that dirty little pest.
All that talk about friendship and forgiveness, when it's evident that in Pure Vanilla's eyes he is nothing more than a threat to be contained.
Liar, he chants in his head, feeling an inexplicable ache in his heart accompany the word.
Liar, liar, liar!
When he bursts into the same, identical room containing the same, identical Pure Vanilla waiting for him on his chair, the very foundations of reality begin to dissolve beneath his feet.
Shadow Milk laughs. An animalistic laugh that shakes his body with painful spasms as his fingers twitch and pull fists of hair from his scalp.
“You can't do this to me,” he barks a desperate laugh, dragging his hands across his face as his back slowly slides against the wall. “Not after all that time... Not again.”
“Shadow Milk,” Pure Vanilla rushes over immediately, falling to his knees a few steps away from his trembling body. “It's just a temporary solution. I was in a hurry and couldn't think of any other way to help you while ensuring everyone's safety.”
He sighs. For some strange reason, even his eyes seem full of suffering. “I owe you an apology for not telling you about the realm sooner. I feared a reaction of this kind, but… It's clear that my caution has been useless.”
Shadow Milk hears nothing but muffled muttering in the background. His entire body has short-circuited, his heart beating outside his chest, his airways inexplicably constricted.
Every inch of his gut is screaming at him to run. But where?
Tag is over. You got caught again.
Suddenly, his hands are being lifted and enclosed in a pair that is much, much warmer. He lets out a strangled gasp.
“What are you—” Shadow Milk sighs between rapid breaths. “Are you doing?”
He doesn't know when exactly his fingers clung to that touch as if it was the only buoy keeping him afloat in an abyss of despair, but doubts he'll ever be able to forgive himself for this carelessness.
“Shadow Milk cookie, focus on me. Focus on my touch. I need you to calm down.”
Shadow Milk tries, and next thing he knows, his head is reeling in a growing, relentless whirlwind of overwhelming sensations. A deep crack in his incomplete soul pulses with dissatisfaction, pulling his limbs in two opposite directions.
The panic that still grips him, the burning hatred in his chest, and the urge to scream, and the urge to cry, and his rough, sharp hands inside Pure Vanilla's soft, welcoming ones—
It infuriates him. It makes him crumple like a sheet of paper.
He is dying to bite off that unbearably warm hand— he is dying to lean into the touch and drown into a tenderness he has been deprived of for as long as he can remember.
It's all too much for him.
The explosion is as sudden as it is inevitable.
Shadows begin to dance on the walls, seeping into cracks and lungs like thick, filthy tar. The snap of his broken back echoes with disgusting clarity as his limbs deform, cracking, growing until they fill the entire room; manes of dark fur flood his body, swinging like a furious fire in the unbreathable air.
His face stretches into a snout. His teeth become sharp, merciless fangs. And lastly, a sharp cry, halfway between a wary hiss and a melancholic howl, tears through his chest and seems to tear through Pure Vanilla's, too.
How curious. Of all his forms, this one...
“Shadow Milk!” Pure Vanilla cries out, pinned against the wall by the giant body the other has taken on. “Listen to me!”
Shadow Milk lunges forward, bringing his half-open jaws closer to the small, fragile body in front of him. On each side of his neck, rows of eyes wet his dark blue fur with starry tears.
“Stop clinging to me,” he growls, exhaling a hot, heavy breath.
“Stop clinging to what I could become. To what you want me to become. Your egocentricity... It makes my blood boil.”
Pure Vanilla doesn't seem the least bit intimidated by the threat of being devoured— his gaze goes beyond the fangs, straight to the weakest point of the wolf form, the part of the shell closest to Shadow Milk’s very soul. The eyes.
And oh.
How heartbroken he looks.
Shadow Milk shakes his head, his chest torn by another mournful howl. He can't stay here. He mustn't stay here. He's willing to do anything to get as far away as possible from that filthy manipulator.
“I never wanted anything from you,” Pure Vanilla screams. “Except your happiness!”
Liar. Liar liar liar—
“LIAR!” The word comes out of Shadow Milk's mouth like a roar, accompanied by the sharp thud of his tail slamming against the walls of the room like a whip.
“You’re lying! Lying lying lying! Admit I’m just something to feed your savior complex!”
Another whiplash shakes the entire room like jello. Perhaps, if the strike is strong enough, it will be able to break through the realm. Pure Vanilla gasps, his pained gaze falling to the deep claw scratches marking the floor.
“You poor, wounded soul,” he mutters after a long pause. “How long has it been since you received kindness, for you to be so distrustful of it?"
A wet ticking sound echoes in the sudden silence between the two.
Shadow Milk mentally urges the eyes in his fur to stop crying so much, that it is an embarrassing display of emotions too fragile, too human to suit an immortal creature of his standing. And yet tears keep flowing, soaking him.
His tail lashes the wall ferociously—this time, drawing a crack along the entire frosted facade. “Shut up.”
“Shadow Milk, please, go back to yourself. The wolf's anger will end up taking over you.”
“Shut. Up!” he screams, spitting saliva. "YOU are the reason for my anger! It's all because of you! You'll never be able to fix what you ruined!"
“You're the one who doesn't want to fix it,” Pure Vanilla stares at him with unwavering, unbearable resolve. Shadow Milk fights with all his might against the urge to maul him alive.
It's surely better than standing still with no argument to counter. Better than admitting to himself how readable his face truly is even to such battered eyes.
But certain truths simply cannot be hidden.
And the truth is, Shadow Milk has fallen so low in his spiral of misery that he sees no reason to climb back up. But the ladder is there, right in front of his eyes.
Every day is a deliberate choice to fall a little, little bit deeper.
How dare Pure Vanilla think my decisions can be influenced by him?
A burning, excruciating rage takes complete control of his command center.
How dare he treat me kindly after what he did to me? After what I did to him?
In a final, resounding blow, the glass of the fake window shatters into a thousand opalescent fragments.
How dare he understand me better than I understand myself?
A sharp pain cuts through Shadow Milk's back, where several pieces of glass burrow into his dough. It doesn't matter now. The room's foundations begin to tremble with increasing intensity, shaking dust onto his black fur.
The realm is collapsing.
In one big leap, Shadow Milk throws himself out of the window.
“NO!”
A cry, and a sudden tug on the fur of his neck. With his paws suspended in midair, Shadow Milk realizes with horror that Pure Vanilla is clinging to him for dear life.
He opens his mouth, as if about to confess something.
And they both fall into an abyss of emptiness.
His awakening is much more abrupt than he had imagined.
There is no ray of light to wake him up. Only the deep, familiar darkness that envelops his now back-to-normal body like a cold blanket.
Except that, through Shadow Milk's hazy mind, reality feels inexplicably warm.
He's back in the Spire of Shadow. At the very moment when the fight between him and Pure Vanilla ended in disaster. Rubble of his beloved house surrounds him in a theater of destruction, as the smell of burnt dust unpleasantly stings his nose.
A deep shiver shakes him wide awake. Then— the pain.
It's the equivalent of a thousand needles being stuck into his back and twisted around in the dough. Even the slightest movement is enough to make his bones scream in protest; the mere act of thinking sends painful throbbing waves through his temples. Guess the wolf form really took a toll on him.
He sucks air through clenched teeth, feeling a strange heaviness on his sternum that prevents his lungs from expanding properly. He looks down at his chest and, suddenly, finds an explanation for the unfamiliar warmth he's been basking into.
Pure Vanilla is lying on top of him with all his weight.
Which doesn't amount to much, but still too much for Shadow Milk's aching body to bear.
With tremendous effort, he manages to kick the other cookie off his chest, drawing a grunt of pain from his mouth.
Unfortunately, Pure Vanilla's hands are quicker. They cling tightly to the other cookie's hips, dragging him along as they roll. Shadow Milk groans in surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?” he croaks, quickly wiggling away from the awkward touch.
“You're bleeding,” Pure Vanilla drags his back up off the floor. Shadow Milk doesn't know how much the abrupt transition from realm to reality has affected him, but saying he's in better shape than him is definitely a stretch. “Please, let me heal you.”
“Ah! You, heal me, in such a state? Don’t overestimate yourself, Nilly. Think about healing yourself first.”
“You need it more than I do.”
A pulse, straight into his chest, of reinvigorated anger. Shadow Milk didn’t think he had any left. Will this piercing feeling under his skin ever wear off? Will it ever stop burning?
Yet this time, drops of deep-rooted sadness taint his fury in an unknown and overwhelming blend. He swallows, trying to get rid of that annoying lump in his throat. Without his other eyes to cry for him, all these stupid unexpressed emotions piling up in his chest threaten to make him explode in a much, much worse way than before.
I don't need help.
I don't need YOUR help.
But when Pure Vanilla finds the courage to approach him and place a hand on top of his, Shadow Milk can't help but throw himself into the touch as if he has been waiting for it his entire immortal existence.
Pure Vanilla does his best not to show his surprise—his hands hover over the other's back for a brief moment before grabbing him firmly, pulling him close to his warm chest. Shadow Milk trembles violently, returning the embrace to keep himself from falling apart.
A shot of realization. What the hell is he doing?
Pure Vanilla's arms have never been welcoming. They're just bars to keep him imprisoned.
What an idiot, he almost fell for it again.
“AH—!” Pure Vanilla arches his back, sucking in a breath as a row of sharp claws dig into his shoulder blades.
“Guess I underestimated your stubbornness,” Shadow Milk whispers, tracing red lines across Pure Vanilla's dough as he holds him trapped in his embrace, drawing increasingly sharp moans of pain from him.
“I’m not someone worth saving.”
“Shut up,” Pure Vanilla spits through clenched teeth.
“... Excuse me?”
“I said,” The other cookie repeats with equal firmness. “Shut. Up.”
Claws slice through his back like a rake through the soil. Shadow Milk is distant, every grunt of pain muffled in his ears. He no longer knows what he is doing, nor why he is doing it, yet he understands that if he stops digging now, nothing will remain to hold his broken bones together.
He recoils when hot, red jam suddenly splatters over his legs: the sensation is enough to snap him out of his dissociated state, and it is not pleasant.
Pure Vanilla's candid robes are torn across the back. Crimson red stains his sharp nails.
Shadow Milk holds back a retch.
How could Pure Vanilla think this rotten heart still has some good left in it? How could he, after all the evil it's hurled at him?
He snaps back, hissing at a threat that doesn’t exist, but Pure Vanilla's arms capture him back in a suffocating lock. Shadow Milk feels a hand run through his hair, gently pushing his head against the other's shoulder. He—
He doesn't understand.
“Why are you still clinging to me?” he mutters in a strangled voice, feeling his eyes sting. “I hurt you. You should run away. You should hate me.”
He sniffs, voice becoming small. “Why don't you hate me?”
“I already told you I wouldn’t give up on you easily.”
Pure Vanilla strokes his trembling back with a gentle motion of his hand, making Shadow Milk melt right into his arms. How can he, even while bleeding, not be afraid of him?
“You're ma-making a mistake,” he insists, cursing in his mind as his voice breaks into a pathetic, stifled sob.
“I never thought you cared whether my choices were right or wrong.”
“I cared whether they were… Convenient for me.”
“Guess this is not very convenient for you, then,” Pure Vanilla slightly pulls away to beam him a small, cruelly gentle smile.
He's hurt, bleeding, and his clothes torn apart.
And he still has the audacity to smile at the very someone who caused him such pain.
Shadow Milk stares at him, wishing with every fiber of his body to scratch that expression off his face, but he knows it wouldn't be enough. He can try to control him, manipulate him, drag him back into his spiral of madness and despair and turn him into the perfect puppet, the perfect toy, the closest thing to himself, and yet, in the end, Pure Vanilla would still be smiling at him, and it's so annoying and incomprehensible and foolish and—
And—
Uncontrollably, a flood of tears pours down his face all at once.
He can hear Pure Vanilla stifle a gasp of surprise at this immediate and rather new display of emotion, but firmly refuses to lift his face from his hands to confirm it with his own eyes.
“Oh Witches, I— I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you cry! Oh, I hope I have a tissue with me...”
The cookie goes on babbling, pointlessly. All Shadow Milk can listen to is the shame digging inside his chest, the shame of not fighting the warmth of Pure Vanilla's hands cupped around his face, or the gentle brush of his thumbs against his wet cheeks. The shame of admitting that these gestures make his heart feel fuller than it ever has been.
“All this suffering, locked inside you... How long?” Pure Vanilla whispers, sounding genuinely sad.
The available response options range from “I hate you” to “shut up,” but Shadow Milk can’t get anything out of his mouth except loud sobs anyway.
A small, gentle kiss pressed on his forehead makes him tremble like jelly and hiss like a cat. “It's okay,” Pure Vanilla tightens his grip around him, letting him rest a cheek on his shoulder. “You can let it out now.”
Shadow Milk doesn't need to be told twice, sinking into the embrace like a thrown towel.
Ah, who knows what the other Beasts would say if they saw him now! They would laugh at this pathetic show of weakness for all eternity to come.
How utterly defeating of him.
Pure Vanilla doesn't laugh at him, though. He cuddles and cradles his body, the same body that carved deep cuts along his back, as he uses his powers to heal them both from their wounds. And even when Shadow Milk stops crying, he doesn't pull away, stroking his hair and whispering words of comfort until the tremble stops.
The warmth radiating from his dough is so intense it doesn't take long, anyway.
There comes a point when silence spreads over them, punctuated by occasional sniffles.
When even those stop, Shadow Milk slips out of the other's arms like a shadow snake. He reappears floating above his head, their faces dangerously close, his gaze struck by a terrifying intensity.
“Let's get one thing straight: if anyone finds out about this, you're dead.”
He warns, deadly serious.
Pure Vanilla— as he should expect by now from that dirty manipulator— dares to respond with a smile.
“I'll respect your wish. Just know, however, that there's nothing wrong with showing weakness from time to time.”
Shadow Milk stares at him as if he were the devil incarnate.
“But I won't ask for anything more than you're willing to give,” Pure Vanilla adds with a sigh, taking a step back. “And today, I think I've already asked you way too much.”
Shadow Milk is unusually silent. His throat is dry from all the tear-shedding, and his mind unsure on how exactly to go on acting as his usual self now that Pure Vanilla has gotten a front-row view of what lies behind his masks.
So he just floats in the void, burning him with an unflinching stare.
The other, of course, is completely unfazed by his behaviour.
“I hope you'll continue to consider my original offer, though,” he even has the nerve to say.
Shadow Milk's eye twitches.
This…. Shameless little bastard.
With a flick of his cane, a portal opens right under Pure Vanilla's feet: before he even has time to scream, he's already falling into who knows what reality Shadow Milk just sent him to.
Silence falls once again in the wide corridors of the Spire of Shadows.
Well.
What a pretty intense day.