The villa door creaks open.
Shadow Milk Cookie sits up from her position on the couch, bundled up in the cardigan made for her. The hood falls over her face, obscuring the hollow look in her eyes, the chopped remnants of her hair, and the tiny black horns protruding from her head. Even still, she knows who's arrived. Pure Vanilla had prepared her specifically for this moment. This specific reunion.
She clenches her fists, struggling to keep those cake claws from emerging.
"...Black Sapphire Cookie?"
Pure Vanilla had warned him.
Black Sapphire didn’t believe it – of course. Not at first. Even with the months stretching in, the silence, the lack of connection between Master and Disciple. Even Candy Apple had redirected all her anger and rage elsewhere, and Black Sapphire… hovered. He listened, he waited. He poked in shadows and adopted multiple forms just to catch a whisper of his Master’s whereabouts. Meeting Star Anise Cookie in the middle of … a jambath. That’s what it was. The way the cookie had moved, the familiarity of it all. The veil that hid their face, but those blue eyes were unmistakable.
He had demanded to join, to drag the scientist that had done this to his Master through the hells and back. He had demanded knowledge. Location. Status. Anything. A sliver of knowledge to where Master Shadow Milk Cookie had gone in those intervening months. Years? He didn’t know. Black Sapphire ignored time as much as a faerie did after the first two centuries.
Whatever had been done to her – the debriefings from Pure Vanilla Cookie had been nothing compared to seeing her directly like this. The words and assurances that his Master was fine. A bit shaken, but fine.
This was not fine. This was not the definition of [ fine ].
Still, he kept those thoughts locked away. If the memories of his days at the Fount’s side resurfaced, especially those latter years – he locked them away. Boxed up and put back on their shelf where they damn well should be.
A perfectly executed bow, polite and attentive as ever.
“Master Shadow Milk Cookie.” Black Sapphire’s voice remained as it always was: jovial, polite. Courteous and commanded respect as much as it gave it, when it came to the Beast of Deceit. “I’ve been searching for you for a while now. It pleases me to see you alive and… well. Well.” what had been done to her? The experimentations that had been described had not… explained any of this. He didn’t remember what happened after the hotel. The ensuing chaos had been so much; it’d been near impossible to make heads and tails of it in the intervening years.
… The other Beasts had disappeared too, with their minions and armies.
The tarot card in his jacket pocket shivered, and he discreetly pressed his magic against it. Not now, he internally spoke to it. He would have to contact Candy Apple Cookie later.
“Pure Vanilla Cookie explained what happened in the aftermath,” he said finally, the eyes in his hair blinking open. He had changed in those intervening months – years, as well. In a vain effort to both find and keep Dark Enchantress Cookie off his trail, Black Sapphire had tapped more and more into the powers granted to him by the Beast of Deceit. He had allowed his perfectionism fall to the wayside in order to stay alive; his faerie heritage manifesting as well to allow his horns to grow in properly now that he wasn’t trying to keep himself wrapped up tightly. “That she did this to you.”
A brief hesitation, before he approached to settle in front of her, sitting on the floor. Reaching out – like he had always done, to both comfort himself with the knowledge that the Fount Shadow Milk Cookie was still there, and to assure her that he was no trick of the eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue you, Master.”
