wroughtandtempered | heart game

Longing and determination sings through you, equally matched by spite and plain old stubbornness. The task ahead isn’t going to be easy, but like fuck will you let that stop you.

MK smiles as he gets to sweeping. "Just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't right," MK says and smiles as he works.

"No one can say you aren't determined, Eve. Like, no one can say that ever."

The floor has already largely been swept; there's not much work left for him in that regard. Soon the wood floor is clean.

"Okay. That's done. Someone beat me to a lot of it. Okay...table," MK approaches the examination table and gently touches it, running his fingers over the scorched metal.

Nothing happens.

Most of the tools sitting atop it are typical for a jack-of-all-trade’s doctor’s office: scalpels, forceps, tweezers, a stethoscope. However, there are also a few out of place items: a soft green scarf, a silver bracelet, a bandage with cartoon monkeys on it, and a small music box.

There are bandages currently in the pot, though the water doesn’t seem hot enough to sterilize them.

...Aaand Rinku has just used foreceps to knock another mirror shard out of the flames and onto the floor.

MK touches the cartoon monkey bandage first. He'll deal with the mirror shard thing after.

You remember—

(Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. This memory is quiet and blank; the thoughts-that-aren’t-your-own come with effort and stumbling, like trying to walk across a wildly swaying surface in the dark. There’s no stability. There’s a hole in everything, impossible to ignore and equally impossible to describe.)

Discussion. MK talking. You do your best to follow the conversation, but you feel… odd. Not all the way there, and so fucking tired that when MK obliquely brings up the possibility of you dying it almost sounds…

Like it’d be a relief. Like it’d be better. Things would stop happening so much, and you wouldn’t be dragging anyone down, and—

—but Choco would be fucking devastated. …Something’s wrong with the thought, anyway— what the fuck is wrong with you? That you’d think like that.

...MK notices that something’s wrong, though. Sits down. Offers an ear, and you tear your mind away from a cutting realization you can no longer remember the shape of, wood and leather fitting perfectly in your hands before coming violently apart to turn instead to...

It’s a brief, momentary scramble of memory: Calling him a pants-on-head moron. The rage that had burned in you, when you’d found out what he’d done to your kindhearted girlfriend. ...Him calling you cool— and the look on his face as he’d set himself on fire, again and again and again. And now—

“Like talking to a stranger,” he finishes, strained and a little desperate, and... something in you that had gone very quiet stirs a little and says, emphatically, no.

You don’t want this clumsily kind boy to be a stranger. And maybe it’s a betrayal, but— you don’t think you want him to be an enemy, either. You want— you think you want—?

...You want to help.

MK shakes as the memory plays out, the feelings, that oh so familiar feeling. Freedom from it all, for just a moment.

That nothingness.

His eyes lose focus as he drifts into his own memories. Fire. Choking. He can't breath. He can't move. He can only watch.

He can only-

"stop," He says quietly to himself. "Be here. Now. Just be here. Now. Be. Here. Now..." He feels the tears running down his cheeks and making his fur all damp.

She wants to help. She called him here to help her. That's what he is going to do. Help.

It's what he's good at. It is what he loves to do. He's the Monkie Kid.

"We...definitely need a meeting of the mind fucked club after this..." He mumbles and goes to pick up the mirror shard.

Your fingers close around the mirror shard.

Instantly, pain slices through your fingers— but when you look there’s no sign of blood. Instead, you can hear Eve’s voice, faintly:

“’First, do no harm’… am I really cut out for this? Like I won’t do more harm than good.”

As you take it, the fire under the pot abruptly leaps, no longer sputtering as it flares to life. It’s not long before the pot set over it begins to finally boil in earnest, and the room starts to fill with warmth.

MK winces and looks at his fingers again. No blood. Ow. Still, the warmth builds in this place. Good. That's good!

"Okay. Finding the mirror shards seems to be helping. This is good," MK turns his attention to the drawers. He goes over to see if he can help restore any of them.

Sniff. Rinku rubs her eyes and nods.

"So we gotta fix a mirror? I bet we can manage that!"

She pushes forward a smile and looks around. It still feels like they're being watched, but she's gonna leave the drawers to MK and try the music box.

You remember—

A jumble. Several memories, just barely separate enough to detangle— Kantera singing something soft and steady while you claw your way out of a morass of guilty self-loathing and a memory of agony that isn’t your own. Kantera singing I’m here, despite everything, and so are you— a lifeline to pull you out of terror and mostly back to yourself, despite the thick drugged fuzziness in your mind.

Kantera singing I’m here, hurting, help me at the top of his lungs, because he needed it, and your own voice raised in harmony to warn off anyone who would try to take advantage of him for his pain. The relief in his raw voice after, and your gladness that this time you could help heal him.

Whether it's her own affinity for music or her transformation in this space compelling her, Rinku starts to sing along without thinking. In Kantera's voice, in words she doesn't know, she sings to the room, to MK, to Eve wherever she is, to the thing that must be watching them now.

While she sings, she goes to help MK
repair the drawers. It looks like it'll be a lot of work, after all. It's better if there's more people.

Edited 2024-07-28 02:05 (UTC)

Some of that singing was definitely wolf-song. Have fun making husky noises, Rinku.

There's something like 64 drawers; even with a good chunk of them already repaired, trying to do too many more will take a while.

You say this like she wouldn't think that was fun.

Repairing all these shelves, however, is another thing. Rinku finishes one and flips over it, rubbing her face that's rosy from the cold.

"This is really hard... Maybe you're right," she sighs as MK says they're probably not supposed to fix them all. She puts the drawer back and looks for any sign of a change.

There's no visible change, but abruptly Rinku knows all the medicinal uses for licorice root. Congratulations...?

"Huh... okay!"

She'll have a use for this eventually. Probably.

"So if this is Eve-chan's heart and mind and stuff... then these drawers are a bunch of things she knows about medicine? Does that mean something made her forget all of them? Like another one of those games?"

"That might be it. And fixing these will help her remember. Huh. If we have time near the end, we can come back and try to fix a few more."

They can have the burns sanded away and new veneer glued on, but with how many drawers there are, it'll take a long time...

"Every little bit helps, right?" MK gets to work on at least one. If he had his clones in here, this would be easy.

But no clones today. At least he can get one drawer back inside where it belongs. He does look around as he's sanding, wondering where that watching presence is coming from.

There's no clear sign of the source of that presence, but it does seem to soften some as he works— more like someone watching over him than just watching him.

As he finishes the drawer... well. Suddenly he knows a lot more about the medicinal uses of St. John's wort.

"Huh. That's interesting. There is a lot of drawers here. It's gonna take a while to get them all done. ...Not sure we can do it all on our own. At least, not yet. But if we each do one, and put them back, that will help a little."

MK nods. He takes both mirror pieces out and sees how they fit together, wondering if any more are missing.

The pieces fit seamlessly together, merging into one larger chunk. It looks like roughly half of a circle, though the reflection is kind of smokey and foggy.

"Alright. Two down, two to do," At least, that's MK's math. He stands up. The room is warm now.

"Should we finish touching everything or do you think we should go to the kitchen next?" He asks aloud, to Rinku and just the clinic around them.

"Hmm... If we're supposed to fix the mirror, we gotta get all the peaches. Let's go to the kitchen. Okay!"

Rinku smiles, even if it's more muted than it had been.

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wroughtandtempered - 2024-07-28 02:56 (UTC) - Expand

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