Chapter Text
Pure Vanilla didn't even notice he'd lost consciousness when he'd dropped through the pool of Shadow Milk's darkness. His only way of realizing that he'd passed out was the intense aching that engulfed what seemed like his entire brain upon his waking. His hazy sight struggled to do so much as make out the colors surrounding him as he attempted to blink away the pain. One by one, thoughts formed within his head, and the pain faded. One thing he realized right away was that his arms were suspended over his head, bound together at the wrists, and that he couldn't quite feel the ground beneath his feet.
Pure Vanilla felt a sharp twinge of annoyance at his other half's theatrical antics. Shadow Milk had no inkling of when to quit, and it truly showed. Vanilla was testing the resistance of the ties holding his wrists together when a truly elated giggle echoed from every direction.
"Ah, ah!"
From the endlessly high ceiling Shadow Milk shot down like a diving hawk, pausing precariously in front of Pure Vanilla's face, his sharp grin seeming to stretch from ear to ear. He gazed endlessly into his counterpart's milky eyes, knowing with a smug satisfaction that he would be no more than a large smudge of azure and cyan in front of him.
"Why did you bring me here, Shadow Milk?" Asked Pure Vanilla, his voice steady yet tight with frustration, and Shadow Milk thought he detected a hint of weariness in the healer's voice, in the way he hardly resisted against this blatant form of abduction.
Perfect, thought Shadow Milk, his smile growing that much bigger, he has a weakness. He knew, from years and eternities of experience that where there was a will, there was a way. If Vanilla turned out not to be as cool as he was coming off, Shadow Milk could certainly use that to his advantage and break his other half once and for all.
"What's the matter, huh, Nilly~?" Shadow Milk cooed, floating about Vanilla's suspended form with the grace of a cat stalking its prey. "Don't you want to spend time with dear old me?"
"Shadow Milk... just tell me what you want." Vanilla sighed heavily, his head dropping slightly, though Shadow Milk did notice that he tried to play it off by shaking his silky, infuriatingly perfect hair out of his face. The bright strands setted back into place as Vanilla attempted to "watch" his counterpart swirl around him, framing his light complexion in what looked like a wreath of light if Shadow Milk stared at him long enough-
Which he wouldn't.
The Master of Deceit abruptly turned away from Pure Vanilla, crossing his arms in what he hoped was a theatrical display of sheer indifference while he tried to calm the sudden roar of thoughts inside of him.
"Oh sure, Nilly," Shadow Milk snapped, shooting Vanilla a bitter glare over his shoulder his voice hard and cold to hide how he was trembling deep within, "you waltz into my spire, fall into my trap, and you have the sheer audacity to demand answers from me?!" Shadow Milk let out an outraged, mirthless bark of laughter, streaking through the air to perch atop a guardrail, one leg crossed over the other, his burning face still turned away from Vanilla's suspended form. "The absolute gall of you cookies!" He ranted, "no respect for the beings who hold--"
"You never answered my question, though."
Shadow Milk immediately fell into a confused silence, his entire train of thought broken by Vanilla's sudden interruption. He blinked, momentarily not having a witty comeback, or snarky remark. "Er... excuse me?"
"You never answered my question," Vanilla repeated, his voice a carefully constructed monotone, as if he were a doctor counting back, waiting for the anesthesia to kick in. "What did you wish to accomplish by bringing me here?"
"Well-- I--" Shadow Milk stammered pathetically, his permanent grin completely falling for a brief moment, an action he would not have allowed to happen had Vanilla been able to see. After several seconds of meaningless stutterings of "Well, you see", Shadow Milk let out a frustrated snarl, to which Pure Vanilla merely tilted his head to the side, as if gauging the sound and the emotions behind it. " Shut up!" He hissed, his hair bristling with anger that this soft, fightless healer could get him this worked up. "It's none of your business, anyway!"
With a spiteful flick of his wrist, the enchanted bonds withholding Vanilla dissipated, and he dropped to the floor. Shadow Milk nearly gave himself whiplash, he snapped his head the other way so violently. "Don't take it as me being a soft bastard," he growled, casting Vanilla a sidelong glance out of the very corner of his eye, his fingers twitching in the fabric of his sleeve at just seeing his counterpart up and alive rather than
on the floor shuddering with pain.
While he watched Vanilla struggle to regain his bearings, Shadow Milk felt a liquid, hot something flood through him, which me merely brushed off as residual anger, but he didn't take the time to realize that he was so hell-bent on forcing himself to hate Pure Vanilla that... he couldn't even remember why he was doing it.
"I'm not a soft, washed-up bastard," he repeated to himself, staring down at the struggling healer far below him. "I'm not like you."
Even as he said it to himself, even as he remembered how Pure Vanilla had stolen a piece of him, Shadow Milk didn't stop to ask, to at least give a moment of his time to entertain this one small thought: If he couldn't even remember why he was doing it, was there really truly anything to hate?