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Madeline came to muzzy awareness on what felt like a couch. There was a weight on her chest, literally-just enough to make it hard to breathe. It had been a while since she had felt like this, but it was still intensely familiar. She had to be either cat-sitting, or at her mother’s house, to have Samsy on her chest. As great a cat as he was, he didn’t quite seem to realize that eight kilos of maine coon directly on your chest had its downsides.
Without bothering to wake up any more than she already had, Madeline lifted her hand to gently pet his head. Sure enough, she felt softness under her hand. It made her hand hurt, a little, but not enough to wake her up.
Madeline began drifting back to sleep as she petted the cat. She was distantly aware of a feeling like the echo of a massage on the back of her head, neck, and shoulders. It was nice, especially on her sore shoulders. Somewhere, there was a faint click. Not relevant. Probably her mother doing something.
After around a minute of gentle petting, noting that no purring had happened yet, Madeline went to scritch behind Samsy’s ears.
And didn’t find them.
Abruptly more awake, Madeline cracked open an eye to try to figure out what the hell had happened there. It turned out that the answer was ‘purple.’
After a moment of simply boggling at the apparently purple Samsy, Madeline finally woke up enough to process that she wasn’t looking at a cat, but rather at a mostly-floating young woman half-curled up on top of her.
What the hell had she been up to last night.
The woman shifted slightly, making a vaguely upset half-asleep noise. Unsure of what else to do, Madeline resumed petting her hair and waited to wake up enough to remember the previous night.
This was definitely not her house, or her mother’s house, which only further compounded the mystery. The other woman made another half-asleep noise. She didn’t seem to be relaxing, so she probably hadn’t been upset about the petting stopping, unless she was and now was awake enough to be upset by the petting.
There was another faint click, which Madeline recognized this time as the sound of a phone camera going off. What the hell-and she remembered, in a rush.
The woman on top of her was her other self. She was on a certain old lady’s couch, on Celeste Mountain. The phone camera was probably Theo being Theo. Everything was fine, mostly, even if she was a bit sore and had a few blisters from all the mountain climbing, including one on the hand she’d been petting her other self with.
Sighing, Madeline shifted position slightly to one that was a bit more upright and a little more comfortable. Now that she had relaxed, her other self had relaxed as well. Badeline, right, she’d insisted on that name, claiming it was “edgy”.
Smiling, Madeline shook her head slightly, murmuring, “Last night, when the old lady was trying to figure out who slept where, you insisted you didn’t need to sleep. Clearly you changed your mind.”
Badeline made a quiet, half-asleep squeaky noise. It sounded a little like how Madeline imagined a snoring bird might sound.
“You know,” she continued, slightly louder, “having you asleep on me, especially given what you’d said last night, was so incongruous that I mistook you for Samsy?”
This got a response that may have even been words. It was too muffled to tell, though.
Madeline made a slight amused noise, then continued, “Only realized when I went to scritch behind his ears and found your lack of cat ears instead. Don’t think you’d appreciate having your ears scritched. I sure wouldn’t. “
More incoherent mumbling.
By this point, Madeline was almost up to normal speaking volume. “And then it took me a moment to figure out who you were!”
Badeline shifted just enough to look at Madeline’s face. She looked more awake than Madeline felt, as if she hadn’t been mostly asleep literally seconds before, and she was smiling faintly. “I said earlier. Doesn’t need to doesn’t mean isn’t able to. Not my fault your other arm was in the way.”
Theo snickered quietly. It sounded like he was trying, and failing, not to laugh.
Badeline looked serious for a moment, before giving Theo a side-eyed glare. “I hope you’re not planning to upload those photos, Theo.”
“Wha-I’m not going to, I told you yesterday-how’d you know I was taking photos? You were asleep.” Theo sounded like he was spluttering. Madeline couldn’t help but be amused.
“I’m part of Madeline. She knew you were taking photos because she heard the camera noise.” Badeline didn’t bother to look at Theo, instead opting to lean more on Madeline.
“Hey. Madeline. You stopped.”
Madeline blinked, realizing that at some point she had stopped petting Badeline’s head. She extricated her arm from underneath Badeline, then pulled her into an actual hug with one arm and started running the fingers of her other hand through her hair. It was surprisingly relaxing, even with the occasional sound of Theo taking another picture.
Now awake enough to actually notice things properly, Madeline found that Badeline’s hair was actually curling slightly around her fingers as she petted. She’d already known it was prehensile- Badeline had used it to hold a strawberry at one point last night- but she hadn’t expected it to react like that to touch. She briefly considered how it would react to brushing against something sticky, then realized that if it had as much tactile sensation as she thought it did- and having been fused before she did have some of Badeline’s memories, although mostly subconscious- that brushing against something sticky would just be awful.
Thinking about Badeline’s weird hair had Madeline thinking about her other powers, too. Some of them were probably dream things, but others...
“Hey. Badeline.” Madeline paused for a moment; the name was still awkward to say. “You’re telekinetic-would it be possible for you to use that for mundane things like an extra pair of hands or something, or is it solely for throwing rocks and being a ‘windshield’?”
Badeline looked more baffled than anything else.
“...It’s got a minimum force. A large minimum force. I’d break things, unless they were big and heavy. Also, if I wanted extra hands, I could just have five bodies.”
Theo muttered something that was probably “wait, what?”. It certainly had the right tone for it.
“Oh,” said Madeline. She’d known Badeline could have several bodies-it was hard to forget being chased by six Badelines- or, more pleasantly, having three of them spin circles around her until she got dizzy- but she had to admit that telekinesis was just plain cool.
After a few more moments of petting Badeline’s hair, she had another thought.
“...Big and heavy, or possibly immune to fall damage?”
This time, Badeline looked outright alarmed.
“Madeline, no. I am not throwing you around with telekinesis, no matter how fun it would be. I might squish you.”
“Is this a needing-practice thing or is it a hard limitation?”
Badeline sighed. “It’s a ‘that-is-irrelevant-because-we’re-going-home-tomorrow.’”
“...Yeah, but we might come back.”
Badeline buried her face against Madeline’s neck, sighed again, and made it very clear that she thought this entire conversation should be over by abruptly fusing with Madeline, leaving her half-sitting half-lying on the couch, disoriented and still holding her arms as if Badeline was there.
Madeline shook her head to try to shake off the disorientation. Fusing and unfusing was usually only a split second of slight confusion, but usually she knew it was coming, or at least that something was going to happen. This time it had come with no warning whatsoever and left Madeline feeling a little like what a 3d movie looks like without the special anaglyph glasses.
“Could’ve just said it was time to get up,” she grumbled, folding her arms properly, “but nope, just went into my head fast enough to leave me dizzy.”
Theo seemed to think that was hilarious.
Madeline glared half-heartedly at him. “Oh, go ahead, just laugh at my pain.” This only made Theo laugh harder. Madeline managed to keep up her glare for another few seconds before she, too, gave in to laughter.