Chapter Text
An Angel came down from heaven
And gave us gifts of wonder
The men, they clipped her wings-
To ask for yet another
She - so kind and graceful
Gave them all out in turn
The men - they chopped her wings
As their wants still burn
She teaches me her kindness
At sunset, when no man wants her -
She teaches me her secrets
And teaches me to dance with fire
Thusly, I shall build wax wings
Adorned with feathers like she
And here - I go in flight
And hear the pluck, pluck, pluck of me
Pure Vanilla Cookie awakens to the harsh blow of wind against his face. He groans, trying to sit up and reach for some kind of open window to close to rest a bit more.
Except his hand does not reach any kind of window lock, and more importantly, he cannot sit up because he is currently in the arms of Shadow Milk Cookie.
The king’s eyecings shoot wide open, dreariness forgotten in the face of confusion. He’s still in his Awakened Form, his staff is still in his left hand, though now it’s flush against the metallic orchid from the loosened grip.
He flails around for a bit, struggling to stretch his dough after his rest. His left arm is swung over Shadow Milk’s shoulder whilst his right is dangling uselessly against the wind. When he tilts his staff to see the ground below, he sees nothing but a vast forest with no civilization in sight.
Pure Vanilla Cookie is hardly an expert in nature when it comes to anything beyond flowers, but he can faintly see amidst the blur that the trees look nothing like the ones in Crispia, nor the ones in Beast-Yeast. Where was Shadow Milk Cookie even taking him? What kind of Cookies lived in the lands below?
He wants to swing his staff up to get a better look at Shadow Milk Cookie’s face, but his arm can’t stretch far enough to swing the staff over the jester’s head. With what little vision he has left, Pure Vanilla can just barely see that Shadow Milk is not wearing his typical grin. His mouth looks small, frowning even. His eyecings look like two little blue balls dotted on his equally blue dough, but it doesn’t take a proper good-visioned Cookie to see that they lack the sadistic joy that was commonplace in those hues.
Next to Pure Vanilla’s cheek, he can feel Shadow Milk Cookie’s Soul Jam thrum with anxiety. The magic held inside the jewel is quivering endlessly without rest. Carefully, he strokes his own Soul Jam on his chest and feels it vibrating with the same tension and unease. The resonation of their Soul Jams seems to have grown stronger; before, Pure Vanilla needed to hijack Shadow Milk’s Other Realm in order to glimpse at his true feelings beneath the surface. Now, it took barely a glimpse to see his true emotions.
It only makes him more determined to pull him out of his self-inflicted darkness and rage.
Before long, the Vanillian king can see a brilliant white building reveal itself in a quaint clearing amidst the trees. More accurately, he can see half of this brilliant white building, the other half is obscured in black because his staff is smushed against Shadow Milk’s suit.
The Beast in question wastes no time in flying straight down to the doors of this building. The ground cracks a little at his sudden descent, even Pure Vanilla makes a noise when the sudden inertia stop swings him in the jester’s arms.
Shadow Milk Cookie walks up to the door and gives it a very graceful kick. A “graceful kick” in the sense that he nearly makes a hole in the wood with the amount of force he put into it.
A tiny young Cookie pushes open the door that is quite literally half her size. It’s terribly obvious that she clearly was not the intended Cookie to open it.
“R-really sorry,” she says, “The Sanctum of Healing cannot take any new patients as-”
The young Cookie stops, looks up to see Shadow Milk Cookie carrying Pure Vanilla in his arms, and promptly screams. Before she can even shut the door on this terrifying monster, Shadow Milk jams his foot in the tiny sliver she created to take a look at them. With a little readjusting to carry his hostage in one arm, he swings the door open and throws Pure Vanilla inside, staff and all. He flies a few feet in the air before colliding into the floor with an “oof”. Before the door fully closes, Shadow Milk drops First Milk Cookie’s legs (presumably pulled from his Other Realm) an inch away from the door and flies away out of sight, not even saying a word.
The poor little Cookie takes a full second to comprehend what just happened before she scrambles to close the door shut. She grabs the giant syringe on her back and points it straight at Pure Vanilla Cookie.
“S-stay back!” she cries, tears poking at the edges of her eyecings, “I-I’ve got a syringe filled with water a-and I’m not afraid to use it! D-Don’t come anywhere near me! I-I’ll make your dough soggy from the inside out!”
“Calm down,” Pure Vanilla says, motioning his right hand for her to lower her weapon, “I…well, I certainly promise I mean no harm. I have an idea of why Shadow Milk Cookie brought me here, but..”
“...Cottage Cheese Cookie, what’s with all that noise?” a voice calls out.
Skim Milk Cookie emerges from one of the hallways in this supposed Sanctum, and Pure Vanilla can’t help but notice that he certainly looks less for wear right now. There are deep eyebags under his eyecings, his hands won’t stop twitching, and his dough looks ready to crumble any moment.
When Cottage Cheese Cookie sees him, she bursts into even more tears as she makes a beeline straight toward him. She runs behind the Cookie and hides behind his coat.
“...Pure Vanilla Cookie,” he finally says after giving him a look, “What brings you to the Sanctum of Healing? From my impression, weren’t you supposed to be in a war right now?”
“I should be, yes,” the king admits, “That is until Shadow Milk Cookie hoisted me into the air after we both saw First Milk Cookie getting…injured, to say the least.”
The revelation that the Beast brought him here fills Skim Milk Cookie with unease. He carefully steps back, one of his hands brandishing a surgery knife at the king.
“I promise you, I mean no harm,” Pure Vanilla says, “I understand why you feel nervous, but from what I felt of him the way over…perhaps he simply wants me to help you heal her. She is here, right?”
Skim Milk Cookie keeps his knife aloft as he slowly makes his way over to the king with Cottage Cheese Cookie shuffling behind him. He gets close enough where the knife is only a few feet away from Pure Vanilla Cookie’s chest.
“...Your Soul Jam,” the doctor finally says, “I heard about it in the Solarium of Unity. Just hand it to me, and I’ll let you see her. I can’t risk you crumbling her when she’s in such a dire state.”
Taken aback, Pure Vanilla places a hand on his Soul Jam. It’s understandable that Skim Milk is so wary, but to simply hand over what he’s been trying to protect feels a little foolish. To be apart from it would be very risky, yes, but regrettably, it seemed like there was no time to waste.
“I will,” he agrees, “On the condition that I may have it back when we begin treatment. My Soul Jam holds a majority of my power, and I won’t be of much help to you if I don’t have it on me.”
Skim Milk Cookie looks straight into his eyecings before tersely nodding. Pure Vanilla undos the clasps holding his Soul Jam at his chest and carefully hands it over to Skim Milk Cookie. The Cookie in question carefully takes it from his hand and slowly backs up, twisting it around in his grasp to confirm it isn’t a fake.
“This is real, right?” he asks. “You really are Pure Vanilla Cookie? This isn’t some trick so you can get rid of First Milk Cookie?”
“I promise,” Pure Vanilla responds, “That I am as real of a Cookie as you are. I am no illusion.”
The doctor pokes around at the king’s icings for a while, tugging a few clumps of his haircing and poking his cheeks in an attempt to “dispel” any kind of illusion over him.
After a minute of that that stretched like an hour, he simply says “...Follow me,” and walks off.
Cottage Cheese Cookie clings to his coat. “Will…will you be alright?”
Skim Milk Cookie hesitates, then pats her head reassuringly. “I promise, I’ll take a break as soon as this operation is finished. Could you get me some barley tea from the garden and make some for me? Two cups for me and him at two o’clock, please.”
Cottage Cheese sniffles, but nods as she slinks away to the opposite hallway, her gaze still carefully tracking Pure Vanilla’s movement until she’s completely out of sight.
Skim Milk Cookie guides him into a long corridor. At the end of the hallway lies a single blue door, looking much more futuristic than the others he passed by. When he opens the door, Pure Vanilla Cookie can see First Milk Cookie lying in an operation bed. There’s an IV attached to her arm and her legs have been elevated up to keep the jam inside her body. A blanket is draped over her body as her chest rises up and down incredibly slowly, the only proof that she’s still alive. Littered around the bed are several other pieces of medical equipment. X-rays, antiseptics, a Life Powder Monitor, even two entire first aid kits on opposite walls.
“I’ll need you to administer some Honey Pollen whilst I do the incision work,” Skim Milk explains, pulling a surgical mask over his mouthcing. “Amputation is no easy feat, so we’ll have to work very carefully.”
“Amputation?” Pure Vanilla questions. “You won’t simply reattach her legs?”
Skim Milk Cookie looks at him like he’s suddenly grown a second head on his hat. “Perhaps the exhaustion of war and kingly duties has simply gotten to you, but where do you see any legs I could reattach?”
“I-” Pure Vanilla says, “Well, Shadow Milk Cookie dropped them by the door-”
“Ah yes, legs given to us by a Beast! I’m sure that won’t inhibit the procedure whatsoever!”
Skim Milk Cookie’s volume goes far louder than he means to, and he coughs once he realizes he spoke too loud.
“I’m sorry,” he apologies, “I’ve barely had a wink of sleep since a few days ago. In any case, even if those legs that Beast gave were the real deal, I’m afraid I still wouldn’t be able to reattach them. Here, let me show you.”
The doctor walks to the operation bed and pulls away the blanket covering First Milk Cookie’s legs. Pure Vanilla Cookie instinctively winces at the sight of the wound.
“Look here,” Skim Milk Cookie requests.
Carefully, Pure Vanilla walks over to the patient for a closer look. Her dough seems well intact despite the heavy damage. There are no indicators of crumbling beyond the initial wound. However, when he traces his hand up until the wound itself…
“The dough here feels much harder than on the rest of her legs,” he notes, “It’s almost as if it’s…”
“Overcooked? Burnt? Yes, actually. It is,” Skim Milk Cookie finishes for him, “Even if by some miracle I had her legs and by some other miracle I had enough medical knowhow to be a true surgeon, I still wouldn’t be able to attach her legs. As it stands, the dough here is simply too overcooked to bond with any other kind of dough, and I presume it’s the same on the broken parts of her legs as well. I’d have to cut the dough off to access the fresh dough above it, but by then there wouldn’t be enough of it left to fully reattach her legs and give her the proper height at the same time. That’s not even mentioning the bones that would be completely misarranged if I ever went through with it…”
Skim Milk Cookie does not look at Pure Vanilla Cookie a single time when he talks, but the king doesn’t need to see his face to understand the desperation he feels.
“Then we don’t have any time to waste,” Pure Vanilla states, “We best get operating as soon as possible before her dough dries out even more.”
Pure Vanilla Cookie stretches out his hand for his Soul Jam back, but Skim Milk Cookie hesitates to hand it over to him. With reluctance, he presents the gem over to him and looks him dead in his eyecings.
“I don’t care what I’d need to do,” he says, “If you hurt First Milk Cookie in any way, shape, or form, I will ensure you don’t leave this Sanctum in one piece. Understand?”
Pure Vanilla Cookie gives a single nod in response. The doctor hands him a mask and tells him to put it on First Milk Cookie’s face.
“She’ll breathe in the Honey Pollen better this way,” he responds when Pure Vanilla questions him about it, “We get this from the Honey Drop Colony a few hundred hectometers or so away from us. Incredible stuff, really. Knocks out any patient on the operation bed in mere seconds. I’d give my soul to whoever made such effective anesthesia for patients.”
The next few hours pass by with careful precision. Skim Milk Cookie spritzes sugar water onto First Milk Cookie’s legs before cutting away the overcooked parts with a surgical knife. They both individually work on one leg each, cutting the bone inside and shaping the remaining dough into a round lump at the bottom.
Helping with a surgery is certainly no easy task for Pure Vanilla Cookie, especially when he has to shuffle his staff in his elbow every now and then to make sure he can actually look at what he’s shaping, but if there’s one thing he’s learned in his academy days, it was shaping dough in all those experiments he helped conduct with White Lily Cookie.
Skim Milk Cookie injects a calcium solution into the lump to get the dough to fuse better, and Pure Vanilla waves a wash of Light Magic over the stumps to accelerate the process.
“You said that her…her legs were by the door, yes?” Skim Milk suddenly asks.
“Ah? Yes, to my last recollection, they were,” Pure Vanilla answers.
“Could you get them, please? I want to try and extract any remaining Life Powder in them. It’ll be good for stabilizing her vitals.”
Pure Vanilla quickly speedwalks out of the operating room to collect First Milk’s severed legs. Once he returns with them, Skim Milk carefully cuts them apart into smaller pieces. He inserts a syringe to extract the little Life Powder the crumbling limbs had left and mixes it with the calcium solution before gently rubbing it into First Milk’s newly amputated legs.
Just as the digital clock perched upon the wall hits two, Cottage Cheese Cookie comes rolling in with two cups of steaming tea perched upon the table she wheels in.
“Two cups of barley tea, as promised!” she announces.
Pure Vanilla Cookie gingerly takes one cup and drinks down the tea, the warm liquid spreading throughout his dough and reinvigorating his spirit.
Skim Milk Cookie takes a huge sip of his own cup before stopping to stare straight into her eyecings.
“Cottage Cheese Cookie.”
“Yes, Skim Milk Cookie?”
“Why do I taste chamomile in my tea instead of barley?”
“...H-huh? Wh-what do you mean you’re tasting chamomile…?”
Skim Milk Cookie’s eyecings begin to droop at an alarming rate. “Cottage Cheese Cookie, don’t tell me you…”
He doesn’t even get to finish his sentence as he slumps down in his chair, completely knocked out. Cottage Cheese Cookie scrambles and tries to shake him awake, frantically calling out his name.
Pure Vanilla coughs. “I…suppose that teacup was supposed to be for me, wasn’t it?”
Now with her plan blown up in her face, Cottage Cheese’s face screws tight. Her lips are pursed and shut tight, and before Pure Vanilla can ask any inquiries, she bolts out of the operation room with the cart in tow. Not even a minute later, she comes back in without the cart and tries to drag Skim Milk Cookie out; a plan that somehow does even worse when she’s half his size.
The king cautiously walks over to her, politely asking, “Would you like me to help you?”
“I don’t need any help!” she cries, still nearly being crushed under Skim Milk’s weight, “I-I’m gonna save him and I’m gonna take him away so you don’t get your dirty hands on him!”
“I promise you, I mean no harm-“
“Liar! You flew in with that Beast! How could I ever trust you when he nearly crumbled First Milk Cookie and Toughie the first time he came here?!”
Pure Vanilla’s lips purse. She’s not wrong, and he certainly doesn’t put it past Shadow Milk to have once attempted to crumble another Cookie before. Any words he could say to possibly defend himself end up dying before they even end up spoken at all.
Instead, he simply kneels down to reach her eyecing level.
“Cottage Cheese Cookie,” he calls. When she refuses to turn her head, he sets down his staff and pushes it towards her, the metal hitting her foot. He raises his hands in surrender when she turns around.
“I use my staff to navigate the world around me without my sight. It’s also the only way I have to conduct my magic in a safe manner,” he confesses, “I’m afraid that without it, I am but a helpless blind Cookie at your mercy.”
A slight lie, his Soul Jam is more than enough to give him enough firepower to blow a hole into the ceiling at the cost of his hand, but she doesn’t need to know that right now.
Cottage Cheese Cookie carefully leans down and picks up the staff in her hands, Skim Milk Cookie now fully on the floor and dozing away.
“…Why?” she asks, looking at the metallic orchid adorning the top. “Why give this to me if it’s so important to you? A-Aren’t you afraid that I’m gonna inject the syringe I have in my back into you now that you can’t see where I am? A-aren’t you scared that you can’t use magic to defend yourself anymore? *sniffle* W-why do you trust me so much?”
“Because,” Pure Vanilla Cookie states matter-of-factly, “I never saw a Cookie that would violently hurt others just for the sake of it, I only saw a Cookie that wants to try her best to protect the ones she loves. And if I’m what you would consider a threat to the ones you love, then I simply have to prove that I’m not.”
He can’t really tell what the young girl does with his staff amidst his blurry vision; blobs of color can only form so many defined shapes. The blob he remembers being Cottage Cheese Cookie walks towards the operating bed with First Milk Cookie still on it, resting. She rubs her hand on the stumps, and Pure Vanilla can hear soft whimpering and a few tear drops drip onto the blanket.
“…I still don’t like you,” she sniffles. “But…I guess you’re okay. You promise you won’t hurt them?”
“I promise,” Pure Vanilla swears, “That I would much rather harm myself than harm innocent Cookies.”
Cottage Cheese raises an eyebrow before shyly requesting, “…Can you help me get Skim Milk Cookie to a proper bed?”
He smiles. “Of course.”
With staff back in hand, it’s a feeble affair to carry Skim Milk Cookie out of the wing and into a spare cot in the opposite wing. Cottage Cheese tucks him in very carefully before giving Pure Vanilla a proper look over, her eyecings mainly centering at his staff. She holds out her arms and makes some “grabby-hand” motions before Pure Vanilla realizes that she wants him to hand over his staff again.
“May I keep it?” he asks, “I would still like to see.”
The young girl pouts, but relents. “I guess it’s okay…you probably wouldn’t help us so much if you could get that Beast to level our Sanctum in a few minutes. *sniffle* Fine, you can keep it, but you better make sure you don’t hurt anyone with it, alright?”
He nods, and she smiles. She starts skipping towards another corridor, babbling about how she’ll need to rehydrate herself and tend to the patients to make sure First Milk and Skim Milk get a proper rest.
With nowhere else to go, Pure Vanilla heads back to the operating room.
There, he sees Shadow Milk Cookie, hovering over the operation bed, with First Milk Cookie still completely unconscious.
All at once, the air is filled with a strange tension, palpable and thick.
“Shadow Milk Cookie,” Pure Vanilla starts, then stops. He puts his hand on his chin, attempting to find the proper words to even speak.
“Thank you,” he eventually decides on, “For taking me here. I must admit, flying to land beyond Crispia or Beast-Yeast was certainly nerve-wracking, but I’m grateful I could save the life of a good Cookie.”
Silence continues to loom. The Beast of Deceit stays unnervingly still.
“...Shadow Milk Cookie? Are you-”
A cold, haunting laugh spills out from the jester’s mouth. It sounds sick, revolting even. Even still, Pure Vanilla can’t help but notice how forced the laughter sounds.
“Oh, I knew it!” the jester exclaims, enveloping the room in a dark shadow. “I just knew you were a two-bit hack of a goody-two-shoes! The Healer Who Can’t Heal! What a worthless little gnat you are! What would your good friend think of you now? Can’t even sew a few legs back together?”
Pure Vanilla blinks. Was that really the point of contention he was working with?
“If you’re talking about First Milk’s amputation,” he starts slowly, “Then there was nothing I could do about it. My magic can’t reverse time, I-”
“To think! A Cookie holding a Soul Jam can’t even perform the most basic of miracles! What a riot! Now do you see the foolishness in not handing it over to moi~?”
“Shadow Milk, you speak as if she’s already crumbled-”
“I can’t wait to see the look on your friends’ faces when they see they’re putting their lives in the hands of a useless, no-good-”
Pure Vanilla slams his staff down on the floor. “Shadow Milk Cookie. I am seeing that there is something you have an issue with, and though I am willing to listen to you to understand what that is, may we please take this outside? First Milk Cookie needs to rest after her operation.”
Shadow Milk, once again, goes still. Eerily still. Cautiously, Pure Vanilla steps forward in an attempt to reach for him. The moment that their fingers touch, Shadow Milk seems to gain all his vitality back, because now he’s hoisting his other half up by the leg with a thick tendril of Dark Moon Magic, dangling him and being unnervingly close to bashing him into the floor until he crumbles.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he hisses. “I’m the director, I’m the playwright, and I’m more powerful than you!”
Pure Vanilla stays firm. “My request remains the same. If you must try to break me like this, then I want you to move us outside of the Sanctum of Healing. First Milk Cookie is still resting-”
“HAH! And what makes you think I’d care about a silly little Cookie’s feelings?”
“Shadow Milk…why are you acting like this? If you really didn’t care about her, why bring me here at all? Why else would you steal me away into the sky just to bring me to help heal her?”
Somehow, Shadow Milk’s teeth grow even sharper, baring at his neck. “You tell me, Silly-Vanilly! Perhaps I simply find it no fun to crumble a nearly-dead gnat!”
“If you wanted that, then why not rush me into healing her in the first place? Why-”
The Beast slams Pure Vanilla into the wall, cracking ever so slightly. When the king looks at his face again, it’s grown more erratic. He’s breathing heavily with nothing but pure rage existing within his eyecings.
“Shut up shut up SHUT UP!” he yells. “You have no right to ask me such asinine questions! If I say I want her to crumble, then that’s what I SAID! How dare you think that I could ever be lying when it comes to-”
“If…you want it…”
Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla both snap their heads to the operating bed. First Milk Cookie is barely awake, her eyecings barely cracked open a sliver.
“If…if it makes you…happy…” she rasps, “Then…you…can do it…”
Pure Vanilla Cookie can’t help but be horrified at what he hears. “First Milk Cookie…why would you ever say that about yourself?”
First Milk Cookie smiles, her eyecings reflecting guilt and despair.
“...Why?” she whispers, “It’s…because…death is only fitting…for a useless person…like me…”
Her eyecings close, and the remnants of the pollen lulls her back into the realm of unconsciousness.
The shadow holding Pure Vanilla’s leg up in the air trembles before unceremoniously disappearing. The king falls to the floor with an “oof”, and he just barely has enough time to witness the look on Shadow Milk’s face before he flees the Sanctum.
He looked…well he looked the same as he did back at Beast-Yeast. Yet again, he looked nothing like the Shadow Milk Cookie Pure Vanilla had come to know. His jester-like facade was all but completely gone, his eyecings blown wide in horror as if he simply couldn’t process what First Milk Cookie had said.
Yet beneath it all, there had lied an undercurrent of anger, only visible through the eyes in his haircing. They too were shaking wildly, but half of them had seemed to shake in fear, whilst the other half shook in fury.
Pure Vanilla Cookie feels his Soul Jam with his hand. Torrents of hatred, confusion, and anger swirl within the gem, so violent he feels like he might get swept away. However, in that eye of the hurricane of emotions, there lay a deep pit with an emotion unable to be ignored.
Hatred. Self-hatred, growing and growing no matter what tried to stop it like an unforgiving sandpit. Through the resonation, Pure Vanilla felt himself loathing his very self, as if he was blaming his existence for every curse and sickness that befell Earthbread.
In a wild attempt to free himself from the sudden explosion of negative emotions, he rips the Soul Jam from his chest and throws it across the floor. He breathes heavily, his heart thumping wildly against his chest. As the connection fades, he can feel the Beast attempting to suppress them all like a child trying to shove all his toys into one toybox.
For a long while, Pure Vanilla stays there on the floor, breath not slowing and brain grinding gears in his head to understand why Shadow Milk acted the way he did.
He knows very little - and he really only knows that much - but even he can see that the relationship between Creator and Creation was far deeper than he had ever suspected, even after witnessing the Fount of Knowledge’s memories within the Spire. Enough for every pre-conceived impression he’s built of the Beast of Deceit to disappear before his very eyecings.
He had not taken Shadow Milk Cookie as one who was easily disturbed by the notion of sacrifice. He had taunted him with his own self-sacrificial ideals not too long ago. Why then, was First Milk Cookie’s affirmation so much different to him?
Though yes, he too was horrified at how willing she had been to lay down her life for him, but was there something else that he was missing?
Pure Vanilla Cookie once again looks up to the operation bed. First Milk Cookie is still sleeping, her chest rising up and down softly with every breath. The IV continues to feed nutrients into her dough. Though the monitor reports that her Life Powder is below average, it does not reach critical levels.
He stands up and pulls a chair to sit right next to her, waiting for her to awaken.