Circles
Summary: Going round and round is all that they have known.
Fandom: In Stars and Time Characters: Loop Relationships: Loop & Siffrin Rating: T Word Count: 3497 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 11/01/2025
Notes+Warnings: A little Loop thing I wrote last July to see if I could capture the tone. It covers Acts 2 to 6, Two Hats, and a little bit of SASASA:AP.
General warnings for violent imagery and suicidal thoughts.
~~~
PROLOGUE A breath. Another. You feel them rattling in your chest like a bunch of loose bones as the weight of what just happened falls on you like an anvil. Wildly, you whip your head around, but the scene does not dissolve like a dream.
Bonnie is still wildly cheering, bouncing on the balls of their feet. Beau is beaming in joy, a warmth directed towards you that makes your insides go all gooey. Odile stands calmly, betraying nothing except for a tiny glint of relief in her eyes. Belle has walked ahead, peering excitedly up the corridor, barely contained trembles travelling up and down her body.
You… You’ve done it. After tens, hundreds, thousands of loops, you’ve finally done it! You’ve put an end to the king, and reached the end of your journey!
It doesn’t feel real, and you half expect your hearing to distort and the world to go all wobbly as it always does when time flows backwards.
But it doesn’t happen - the King’s armour is still scattered across the floor, the evil defeated once and for all. It’s not fading away, and you take a breath, secure in the knowledge that you no longer have to repeat this horrible day ever again.
“Hurry!” Belle rocks on the balls of her feet, cheeks dark. “The Head Housemaiden! Euphrasie is just up ahead!”
The name tickles something in your brain, something small and tucked so deeply that you have never brushed against it before. The smell of pastries baking in the oven, a gentle hand brushing hair out of your eyes, a warm voice whispering a name that is nothing more than blank space in your memories -
But just like that, it’s gone. You blink, disoriented for a moment as you stumble. Well, it couldn’t have been that important.
Crossing the short distance towards Belle, you can’t help but aim a vicious kick at a chunk of the King’s armour, sending it skittering across the floor. Good riddance! Odile’s gaze fixes on you from across the room, but you can’t care less at the moment. It’s over. You couldn’t care less about anything.
As you reach out your hand towards Belle’s, your fingertips barely brushing, your vision begins to waver. Static encroaches at its edge, and your heart freezes in your chest.
No. No, no, no, no! It’s over! It’s over it should be over why is it not over -
“Siffrin?” Mirabelle asks, her expression crumbling into fear as she reaches out desperately towards you, perhaps hoping to pull you back from the abyss you hover over, even if she cannot see it. As if she could ever save you.
As if any of them could ever save you.
You.
Feel.
A.
Tug.
On.
Your.
Stomach.
~~~
INTERMISSION Your skin burns, the heat of a dying star scorching you from the inside. You wonder if you are shining, your skin illuminated from within by a blinding light that cannot possibly be blocked. Ah, how bright that would be.
You had woken up in that same. Blinding. Clearing. The one that had haunted your life for days upon endless days, melding together into monotonous years that had stretched on into millennia. The never-ending beginning of your nightmare. And apparently, one you can never escape!
Belle had come to greet you, as she always did, a gentle smile already on her face. But you had bolted, refusing to heed her worried cries. They were almost familiar, in a way. You must have heard them too, once upon a time.
If you’d stayed, you would have been staring at an eternity that would have eventually ground away your heart - you were already most of the way there, having once shoved the names of your beloved party members away so it would hurt less. You didn’t want to betray them any further. And so you had refused to stop running, even as the others tried to catch up to you, their pleas falling on deaf ears.
You had fallen to your knees before the Favor Tree, remembering the ashes of a wish you had made in a life long before this one. And you had begged, begged, begged the Universe for a miracle. For all of this to finally end, because you could take no more of it.
And the Universe had gifted you a Star. It had caused your flesh to sizzle and pop as you cradled it in your melting palms, your face splitting into a grin as you stared at the entity destroying your mortal body. You had faintly registered the horrified screams of those you had once considered family behind you. But you had not turned back, tears of relief flowing down your cheeks as you took a big bite out of the flaming ball of plasma.
You had burned, surely bursting into flame at that very moment below the Favor Tree. You continue to burn. The world’s brightest supernova, in a void of nothingness, interrupted by a singular presence. The Universe, observing you, the world’s greatest laughingstock.
It is peaceful.
You drift away.
~~~
ACT TWO You find yourself under a massive tree, the breeze rustling the leaves on the boughs hanging above your head.
Not just any tree. A Favor Tree. And not just any Favor Tree.
It's the Favor Tree, the one that has stood in Dormont for… however long the Housemaiden had said. You would know - its every branch had been burned into your mind as you were engulfed in a brilliant light.
How. How are you back here?
You think, faintly, that there would usually be bile already on the tip of your tongue. But you can't taste it - in fact, you can't taste even taste the dryness of your mouth. The breeze is strangely muted against your skin, and you barely have time to register the lightless shade of your skin when you hear footsteps.
Coming up the path is…
Yourself.
Familiar hat and cloak. An eye patch. Shaggy darkless hair ending in lightless tips from an ill-fated dyeing session.
Siffrin carries himself with a jittery fear. It is one you can no longer remember - how many years has it been since the first time you woke up in that field, gasping as a phantom pain gripped you? But it is intimately familiar.
You remember your wish. It remains, making its burning presence known.
Please. Someone, anyone, help me!
You feel a bubble of laughter, threatening to push its way out from the chest that your fingers uselessly scrabble against, unable to scratch away the glowing imprint of a star. You wonder if you can laugh and laugh until the world crashes its merry way to the end. If you threw yourself out of this tree now, could you split your head open on the ground? Would there even be brains to leak from the wound? Would that finally put an end to your suffering, or would you wake up here again?
Trapped, trapped, forever trapped in this blinding town. Going round and round in endless circles, looking for an escape that was nowhere to be found. If it had ever existed in the first place, it must surely be shut tight by now, the door rusted shut and overgrown with vines.
What a lovely place to be!
Siffrin’s head pushes its way through the leaves, and they stare at you with unabashed shock, single eye wide.
You wonder idly how long it would take to steal the air from them. It would be as easy as wrapping your fingers around his throat and squeezing. You would know, given how many times the King had done it to you. Such a simple gesture that even a child could do it. And with the strength you’ve gathered from the loops, there’d be little chance of him fighting you off.
But you don't. For this, too, is intimately familiar. Playing a role, and pretending, hiding all the tumultuous emotions behind a smile so that no one would be any the wiser. The perfect actor, skills honed over decades of unwilling performance.
Time to get up on stage.
“Hello there, Stardust! How can I help you in this wonderful new loop?”
~~~
ACT THREE You watch as Siffrin defeats the King for the first time, triumph flashing across his face as the Housemaiden delivers the final blow, shining with that dazzling light that she possessed, welling from her soul.
Rage swirls like a nebula beneath your skin, energy fizzing up the lightless surface, screaming to be let out.
How dare they. He'd died to the King… what, three times? He hadn't had to suffer like you had, watching countless times as the life slowly drained from the pained expressions of your family. Until the agony your own body suffered through was nothing more than an impression, wounds inflicted over scars that your body did not remember. They didn't have to hear the sick crunch of Mira’s body as the King treated it like a ragdoll. Didn't have to listen to the bloody wheeze of Isa’s breaths until they petered out. Didn't have to feel the vibration of Bonnie’s terrified footsteps as Odile yelled at them to run.
How dare he.
You turn your gaze away as Siffrin continues into the hall ahead, unable to continue watching. Something like glee rears its ugly head in your non-existent heart when you feel the world warp around you, the scent of sugar overpowering on your tongue. There is something else squirming beneath that writhing emotion, something you shove far away, unwilling to contemplate it at this moment.
Your face is still by the time Stardust approaches, ready to shatter across the cracks spidering across their soul. Together, you question the loops.
Questions you were never able to field in your own timeline, truly believing the entire time that all you had to do was beat the King. That it was your own fault for being too weak to take him down. These are not questions you have ever had the opportunity to ask, your soul so worn down by the hundredth loop that the capacity to question, instead of sticking to a script written in stone, had been all but decimated.
You watch as Stardust offers help to his party (his family, your traitorous mind whispers, knowing they could never be yours), watch as these second-hand actors tell him things that you never got the chance to know as they scamper around town in cute little quests, spilling their hearts.
Or perhaps you once did, and the memory of it was yet another thing the loops had stolen from you. You will never know, and the realisation makes the star embedded in your chest dim. So you can only learn from their reflections in funhouse mirrors, smiling and talking to Stardust like they love them.
(You can barely remember the kind things your family used to tell you - the compliments, the jokes, the teasing. Were any of their words even true? Or just things they thought were still true of the silent puppet that you had begun dangling in front of them?)
Some loops, you melt the bark on the trunk of the Favor Tree. When you see Stardust talking to their Fighter, your fingers tighten and burn around the wood. You can barely bear to watch as the Fighter tries with darkened cheeks, again and again, to stumble through words that you only realised the meaning of once he was lost to you. Yet neither can you bear to look away as Stardust remains oblivious, smiling his usual easy smile and keeping their heart close to their chest. You want to scream at him, shake him by the shoulders, tell him that they should hold all of them close and never let go, that they should relinquish them to you -
You squeeze your eyes shut when the Fighter shoves them away, a familiar tug pulling on your stomach.
Even as you belittle Stardust, wanting to believe that at least in the world you left behind your Fighter would have wanted you, you know it to be a lie, a feeling like broken glass churning beneath your skin. He would have done the same to you. Worse, even.
After all, you'd abandoned them all. Unworthy of love.
Disgusting.
~~~
ACT FOUR You want to tell yourself that it is still glee that sparks in the air around you as Stardust holds back sobs, their shoulders shaking as they face a reality that had once, and still was, your entire existence.
But you know this to be a lie too. After all, you could have just left them to flounder. You could have hidden yourself and never revealed yourself to him - left him to a fate similar to yours, repeating the same two days hundreds of times over without ever knowing what to change. Sure, the Universe put you here. (And oh, aren't you the Universe’s favourite cosmic joke! A world-famous one-man act!) But you didn't have to stick to the script it had given you. What was another thousands loops to a broken being like you?
You could have watched, and laughed.
Instead, you had stared at your mirror image - no, not your mirror image, but the image of a past you that now slumbered peacefully beneath the waves, far out of reach. And you had realised you didn’t want to see Siffrin suffer.
You remember what it was like, to be standing in the middle of a nondescript corridor in the House and suddenly realise that you were stuck there for eternity, unable to see a way out. How quickly you had slit your own throat, running from the thought and uncaring of the horrified expressions on your party member’s faces as they watched you fall, hands stained with fresh blood.
So when Siffrin suggests the dagger, his entire body shaking and their eye wide, you shut him down instantly, insisting with a hiss that it isn’t necessary, your heart pounding.
There's a raging inferno in your veins, your hands shaking as you remember holding the dagger to your neck for the first time, hesitating and feeling like you’re about to be sick, before finally, finally letting it slip. How you'd missed slicing through the entire artery and had to lie bleeding out on the floor as Mira cradled your head and tried in vain to save you, her tears falling onto your cold skin. How it got easier with every time that followed. Even now, you think, if you could get your hands on Stardust’s dagger, you could end yourself in one smooth motion.
Even after the Universe forces you to tell him (because the Universe leads and we can only follow, right?) you still try, unwilling to let it end here. Until he gives you the dagger hilt-first, something almost like trust shining in their eye.
It makes you feel sick, but you take the dagger anyway, letting your fingers linger.
~~~
ACT FIVE Siffrin trembles like a feral animal before you, teeth bared and eye crazed, ragged breaths dragging from his lungs. You try and talk them down like you did before, but nothing is getting through the barrage of sharp shards he spews, cutting like glass. It barely phases you, and you keep prodding, certain that you can…
Until finally they find the chink in your armour and begin to chip away at it with ruthless determination.
Because it’s true. You had believed there was no way out, feet dangling over a void with no bottom - something to fall endlessly down, the darkness swallowing your bitter laughter as you shattered against the sides. You had reached out to Stardust and done your best to “help” them, even as, for the longest time, you had thought this all hopeless.
They had already discovered so much more than you ever had. You were beginning to glimpse a glimmer of hope over the horizon, piercing the endless dark. And though it hurt to believe once again in the idea of escape, knowing it might just be another failure in a long string of them, you want to cling onto the tiny speck with all your might with Stardust by your side.
But he slashes and slashes, as unrelenting as he is with his dagger, and with your wounded heart, you cannot help but turn away as Stardust stomps back in the direction of the clocktower.
As day turns to dusk turns to dawn, you sigh, knowing you cannot while your time away here, turning into a statue as you stare off into space. This cannot possibly end well for Stardust - the two of you have a penchant for causing dramatic situations. When you'd been at your lowest, your party had noticed and tried to mend your broken heart, one small piece at a time. But this Siffrin… he's so much better at acting than you had been in those last few loops. And somehow, you don't think the party will be able to help him. Not without some… outside assistance.
You don't want to do this. You don't want to face their reflections in the water, just a step or two removed from familiar faces that had been your everything. But you have to.
Sighing, you raise your hand to your ear.
~~~
ACT SIX You watch as the red sky knits itself back together, the ugly rip closing as the strange shades vanish like they'd never been there in the first place. The air is fresh, the sunlight warm on your star-speckled skin.
You breathe. Slowly. One at a time, feeling the strange stretch of your chest that you had become accustomed to.
Your family had looked at you like you were a stranger, somebody who posed a danger to them. Bonnie had frowned. Mirabelle had looked puzzled. Odile had looked wary, one hand already on her book. And Isabeau… his smile had been friendly, but lacking all of the gentle warmth usually reserved for you. Because it had all been taken up by Stardust. The better Siffrin, the only Siffrin that remained.
It had torn you apart from the inside to talk to them, to pretend to be civil (but not too civil!) as you guided them to the King. Giving helpful advice as befit your role of the gracious Loop, letting nothing about yourself slip, each word a lump of hot coal on your tongue.
The knowledge of the wish that both you and Stardust had made washes over you. You scratch at your skin, frowning when you fail to break through. Something boils beneath, and you ache to release it.
You could have had it all. You could have stayed with your family, if only you weren't so greedy. If only you could have learned to let go, they might still be close enough for you to touch.
It'd been so simple all along.
There is a freezing want creeping up your throat that has been your persistent shadow your entire stay in this world where you are nothing more than an unwanted stranger. You want to be with them. With Mira, Odile, Bonbon, Isa…
You want…
What exactly is it that you want?
~~~
EPILOGUE You snarl, ready to slice the scissor sign across Stardust’s neck. To let the blood contained within them spill out and stain the grass of what had been your resting place, but also your prison. You want to rip their heart out and replace it with your own, the beating dead star in your chest. You want to take their place, to be with your family again!
You want… You want to feel that warmth again. The vivid flavours of Bonbon’s cooking, the muffled sound of Mira reading under her breath, the sarcastic barbs from Dile, the sweaty palms of Isa under your own hands.
Stardust, pressed up against you, their head lolling on your shoulder.
You can't do it. Stardust stares up at you with a peaceful smile on his face, neck bared for you, and you can’t do it.
You fall back, frustrated laughter bubbling out of you as you cover your face with your hands.
After everything, you can't do it. Even as Stardust offers their life up to you on a silver platter, you can't take it. This family… it's theirs, not yours.
Your family is something you can never get back, no matter how much you try. Not unless you wish, and that is not something you want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Never again.
There is nowhere to go, and nothing more to do. These are the consequences of the actions you have taken, and nothing can change your fate. You explain to Stardust as you begin to fade, gifting him the hopes of tomorrow that you had once cradled.
You hope that he'll be happy - that he will know what it’s like to be loved.
As the darkness claims you, you close your eyes.
You hope your dreams will be restful.
