Chapter Text
Pure Vanilla Cookie takes the first step outside. It’s the middle of the night- silent apart from the gentle clicks of his staff against solid stone, with dark shadows that creep along the walls as he walks. His yellowish light erases them with ease, but the brightest supernova couldn’t banish the shadows over his own thoughts. Not at this time of night. It never fully can.
Sometimes just some gentle sunlight was all he needed, and the thoughts would recede, like the lowering tides of the sea. Light made it easier. Lifted the burden. He’d feel better, for a little while. Light made smiling easier, made moving easier, made existing easier.
But they would only come back stronger later, that comforting sunlight just delaying the inevitable. And they’d return like a tsunami, impossibly tall, impossibly strong. He’d wake up screaming, trembling, drenched in sweat mixed with jam from scratching at his arms in the foolish hope he might claw such thoughts directly out of his dough. It never works, but somehow it helps, just a little. The smallest bucket against his personal tidal wave. That ‘bucket’ was what had always stopped him before.
It’s cold out. An icy breeze rustles past, shifting his hair and sweeping his cloak about behind him.
The moonlight is cold, too. It’s light is tinged with gray, barely enough light to see what’s in front of him.
The cold moonlight reminds him of someone, but thinking of them makes him want to turn back. They’d want him to turn back. But they’re not here. Not anymore.
The white stone balcony extends out a few meters in front of him, rimmed with a smooth fencing. It’s held up by half a dozen round pillars. He knows it well. He’s been here before. Many times before. But back then, he went back inside. Maybe this time will be different.
There’s someone sitting on the ledge. Someone else got here first. How did he let someone else get here first.?
He moves closer. Narrows his eyes. It’s hard to make them out, their body not much more than a silhouette in the dark.
It’s Gingerbrave. He’s holding his candycane in his free hand, the other rested beside his waist holding him steady on the edge. He’s gazing at the stars, his legs swinging ever so slightly in the breeze. His eyes are closed, looking quite peaceful.
“Gingerbrave?” he calls out.
Gingerbrave hesitates, flinching when he recognises Pure Vanilla’s voice, then turns to meet his eyes. “Pure Vanilla.? I didn’t think anyone was awake at this hour.”
He looks nervous, now. He’s interrupted something.
Pure Vanilla sits down next to him, and pulls him closer with one careful arm around his shoulders. “I have a feeling I know why you’re here.”
Gingerbrave doesn’t speak for a long moment. He knows Pure Vanilla has guessed correctly. He glances back at the stars, strangely enraptured by them despite his surroundings.
“Is it okay if I talk to you.?”
A strange question, Pure Vanilla thinks. He’s hardly oblivious to the fact he’s become a bit of a comfort-person, the ‘therapist friend’, so to speak. Cookies told him things about themselves they wouldn’t tell anyone else. Things sometimes they barely wanted to admit to themselves at all. He supposed he must be some sort of negativity magnet. Or he was just a good listener. He didn’t care enough anymore to ponder it much longer.
Sometimes he’d wished someone might take the time to ask him the questions he’d asked them, the questions he’d asked a thousand others before them, and would ask a thousand others after them. No one ever did. That was his job, after all.Surely he couldn’t so desperately need the help he so readily offered to others. If he could look another cookie in the eye and ask those questions, surely he could just as easily look into his own, and ask himself such questions.
He couldn’t.
He didn’t really need to- he knew the answers.
It made no difference.
“Of course.” Pure Vanilla smiles his usual smile. It takes a moment to return to him, but it does, eventually. “You know I’ll always listen.” He’s almost surprised Gingerbrave asked for permission in the first place- cookies usually just sort of spiralled without a second thought. He’d call it a small act of kindness if he didn’t know the context.
Gingerbrave fiddles with the candy cane. “Well, in the war- that Venom Dough Cookie, they said that if I were to die, then Dark Enchantress Cookie’s plans would’ve been for nothing.”
He glances at Pure Vanilla, who only now realises he can see tears glisten in Gingerbrave’s blue eyes. “I thought… doesn’t that mean that if I had crumbled, wouldn’t that have prevented the war? And the casualties? Was it selfish of me to keep living if crumbling would save everyone else?”
Pure Vanilla shakes his head. “No. I knew Dark Enchantress Cookie much better than you. If her plans relied so heavily on your survival, she would’ve had a backup plan. She would’ve never let her plans rely solely on someone else.”
“But… I know what Venom Dough Cookie said. They yelled at everyone about how their suffering was because we had started the war. There would’ve been no war if there had been no me.” Gingerbrave’s free hand is shaking visibly. “Does that not give me any responsibility?”
“No,” he says, more forcefully this time. “The suffering and the deaths in the war were because of Dark Enchantress. Not you. She committed war crimes before you were even thought of. The wars were because of her actions.”
“But-”
Pure Vanilla’s grip around Gingerbrave tightens noticeably. “No. Come on, it’s cold out. Let’s go back inside, hm?” His tone sounds like he’s scolding Gingerbrave- he isn’t, if he was at all angry with him it was just for happening to be here when he’d wanted to do it alone, not for trying to deny what Pure Vanilla was saying. Though… he couldn’t deny he felt the tiniest prick of anger- no, not anger. Something else. Jealously wasn’t the right word either. Something like envy.
At least if Gingerbrave had made such a sacrifice, it might’ve actually changed something. Not like the sacrifice he’d made all the way back when, for what? To delay the war, and lose her? At least Gingerbrave had had the chance to make a difference. At least he might not have screwed everyone over when he’d had the chance to turn things around.
Gingerbrave’s eyes slowly meet Pure Vanilla’s, then drift to the hand Pure Vanilla has on his shoulder. He takes it.
“Yeah. I’ll go inside.”
An opportunity missed, Pure Vanilla thinks, but the balcony will still be there tomorrow. The thoughts will persist until tomorrow. He can make it that far.