Chapter Text
“You must help us.”
Weak, resigned, pleading, oh so genuine and saccharine. Oh, how the shock melded with indignation, like a bout of sour cream in soup, churning and twisting like so many reeds.
“Help you?” Snowball said it out loud, tasted the sheer audacity on his tongue, and his voice pitched higher, both mocking and entirely incredulous.
How happy he'd been, to set up the scene, speak from the shadows and relish it. Brain offered no rebuttal. He’d just stared into the dark, with more mouse-like anxiety that he'd ever permitted in his life.
“Help you?”
But that plea had him stalking forward, abandoning his nicely rehersed monologue. The mouse didn't move, perhaps too tired, and Snowball was right up in his face and throwing up his arms immediately, “Oh, Brain. That is rich. Positively affluent!”
Ludicrously, Brain seemed to think there existed a chance his begging would work, and he deflates even more. Snowball was surprised by how much it irks him. Bah. Sentimentality! As if he would fall for it.
“We may have been friends once,” He said, before starting on a rant he for the ages. Fury takes hold these days, it is a cathartic way of getting one's point across, and he pays no mind to any arguement Brain offered: he saw him flinch, even cower back, but never once flee or even step away.
The mouse’s scowl returned. CallIng him mad, after trying to plead his case once again. He was being so irritatingly civil, as if their last clash didn’t happen, that it only served to make Snowball angrier.
“Pay attention Brain!”
The mouse was scowling deeper yet, accusatory but silent, “Here, I am the ruler. You may have prevented me from taking the world, but this little shangri la? This is mine.”
Brain’s eyes drooped. A more empathetic person would see it as a sign of fatigue.
To Snowball? It resembled annoyance.
So he decided it was time to wrap up this little chat. “I have a joke for you Brain,” He stated, leisurely.
Brain remained deadpan.
“Knock, Knock.”
To his amusement, Brain played along. To an outsider, this would look like the mouse was humouring him out of self preservation, but,
In fact, it was something they used to do as children, staring at the shadows cast by cage bars and lab lights, sitting and talking. Just to twist that knife a little.
“Who’s there?”
Snowball can’t help the grin that splits his face. “Brain.”
“...Brain who?”
“Exactly.”
Finger on forehead, he shoves the mouse. It sent him a good few inches back, tripping over his own feet. He hit the floor with a gentle, comical flop.
Time to end this little game. Snowball raised his hand, ready to snap his fingers, call one oaf he’d brainwashed, and have Brain dragged to await his fate. He waited for the mouse to drag himself back upright, so he could look him in the eye when he did it.
Waiting. What’s taking him so long?
The Hamster loitered there and for the sake of, oh, good sportsmanship or something of that ilk, let him have a few more seconds.
Then he stormed forward,
“Don’t embarrass me,” He muttered, “Oh Bra-in? Gravity a little too harsh for your fragile bones this evening?”
But when he used his heel to nudge the mouse onto his back, he found Brain has gone entirely limp, though his chest rose and fell. His ears are droopy, his lips parted.
“Oh, how the great mouse falls.” He drawled.
Snowball was now alone.
What to do. Certainly wouldn’t be any fun to do away with him like this.
And that thought struck him rather profoundly, as he drummed his fingers along the matchstick he was holding. (The one he’d hoped to use to light a nice, toasty fire beneath the mouse’s feet.)
Doing away with Brain sounded perfectly delicious in every aspect. To watch him squirm and realize his impending defeat, and pop that ego snuggled inside that chubby head.
And yet, to do so would mean he’d never wrangle that reaction out of his arch nemesis, his former friend, ever again. A world where Brain was not breathing was, in practise, one Snowball wouldn’t be used to. Brain had been a presence in his life (even if they didn’t speak for years) for as long as he could remember.
Snowball growled, clutching the match in both hands and fuming at the calamity in his wishes.
All the while Brain seemed to be languishing at his feet.
… At any rate, he wasn’t ending this bitter rivalry like this, with the jungle as the victor. He never liked third players.
…
He must be coming to the penultimate. So exhausted he couldn’t even feel the horror and terror anymore, much like those experiencing hypothermia suddenly feeling hot…
Suddenly, there was cold on his lips. Water? He sipped at it, muscles still working frantically, and he hazily wondered if Pinky got a hold of some kind of container. Were they on the raft still? Was the whole, admittedly insane incident with Snowball a fever-dream?
Let it be so. There was a hand on his forehead, a tutting sound. He couldn’t find the strength to open his eyes.
…
When Brain regained his bearings, his first thought was that the nauseating vertigo was gone. Ergo, he was no longer dehydrated. But the moist air, the scents bombarding his brain told him he was still in the jungle.
His eyelids were like sandpaper when he opened them.
“I feel like death.” He murmured. Barely a whisper.
“You certainly look it.”
Oh, cruel fate. Brain angled his head and found Snowball standing nearby, but still at a notable distance. Appearing very at ease and leant on that darned matchstick with an acutely self-important expression. Brain must have looked a sight, as the Hamster laughed,
“Oh, come now, that wounds me! You would think I was going to harm you.”
“Isn’t that your ploy? Weren’t you close to ending it all a few moments ago?” Brain was trying to be bold, but his voice wavered under the strain. He sat up, at least, clawing back some shred of composure. The hamster, to his fury, simply chuckled and shook his head, as if watching the antics of a child,
“You've been incapacitated for far more than a moment. And oh, I considered it, but where would the thrill be in that? Killing a rodent that was already half-dead?”
Brain didn’t reply. So it was ego, then? Snowball had a very skewed view of what was fair, but maybe even ounce-away-from-roadkill was too much for him.
“Don’t look so irked.” Snowball said, with the air of someone enjoying every second of said annoyance, “I’m only doing what you asked.”
Brain opened his mouth to argue…
And found he had none. Snowball was... helping him. Albeit for a deranged, self-serving, diabolical reason, so he could kill him on more level terms no doubt. Brain wouldn’t lie, an unwanted trickle of unease was reappearing.
Snowball was unhinged. More so than ever before, he could change his mind about this whenever it suited him.
So, Brain mused reluctantly, being snippy and biting back would probably get him killed brainwashed-tourist style. And Pinky…
A snap directly in front of his nose made him jump. “Snowball!” He half-yelled, “Do not do that! It is most unbecoming.”
“You were lost in the sad chaos of your little mind,” Snowball crooned, jabbing the mouse once in the forehead. (Which didn’t help that headache.) “I know you aren’t a socialite, but I’d hoped you’d at least be able to carry a conversation by now.”
...Brain clasped his head in his hands.
“All right. You’re helping us.” He said, hating himself but darn it all, they were desperate. He had to play this carefully. Snowball was not in his right mind, anything could set him off. Play along, Brain, and don’t be rudimentary. Still, he tried not to sound too defeated.
“Hm-hm. Why don’t you collect whatever wits you call bearings? I have a few things to attend to.” Brain quirked a brow at his former friend, already directing his gaze elsewhere and fiddling with the end of his matchstick-staff. What in heaven's name (pardon the vernacular, concerning a Hamster who definitely didn't belong there) could he be so busy with here?
“Do try to get some rest, dear Brain.”
Off he strode, and it grated Brain to see how completely relaxed he was until -
“Oh, and Brain?”
The hamster had halted. Brain said nothing, keeping himself sitting upright by placing his weight on his hands (he was laid on some uncomfortable...empty match box. Slightly worrisome.)
Snowball hadn’t turned around, but had paused mid-stride. Brain regarded the back of his head silently.
“Don’t try to escape. I’d hate to think you weren’t appreciating my hospitality.”
He did it again. His voice dropped to a low, snarling growl, so unlike his usual charming cadence. Brain scowled. There was something vicious in that creature, he mused as Snowball vanished from sight.
Something vicious indeed.