Chapter Text
And that “hide and seek” — that’s why that game is so important — is to know that even when I’m gone, I live inside of you. Even when I’m gone, when I come back you’ll be there. Even when I’m gone, I take you with me.
Ever since the kid left, Snatcher had acquired the habit of floating up to the very top of his hollow, where the shrouded canopy of Subcon Forest parted to give a clear view of the sky. It was nice to remember what stargazing felt like is all. No other reason. When the kid’s ship re-entered the planet’s airspace over a year after she first departed, Snatcher was one of the first to see it, and the entire forest thrummed with his anticipation.
After the first day of waiting, Snatcher reasoned that she probably had some business to attend to. Maybe her ship needed maintenance. The contraption did look so bizarre and complicated after all. The second day, anticipation turned into impatience, and on the third day, impatience to irritation.
“Where is she?” Snatcher paced back and forth across the floor of his hollow. A crowd of Subconites had gathered to listen to him rant. “All that fuss about forcing me to be her ‘BFF’ or whatever, and she doesn’t even come to Subcon when she finally comes back? Is she standing me up? Did she even land? Kids these days really have no manners. Unbelievable!”
“Maybe she’s too afraid,” one minion supplied, tapping their stubby hands together nervously.
“Yeah, Boss! Maybe she realized how terrifying you are,” another said.
Snatcher paused in his pacing for a moment with a small groan. It was a valiant effort, to be sure. He’d have to consider stealing some really encouraging mail for them. “No, she’s too much of a pest for that, unfortunately. But feel free to continue your flattery.” He craned up to look toward the sky, obscured as it now was by the shadowy trees. She couldn’t be in trouble, could she? Not that he cared if she lived or died, but he would prefer it to be by his hands, for all the trouble she’d caused him.
He remembered watching her fight with the little red girl. Hat Kid was tough. Snatcher wasn’t going to say it to anyone, but when he had fought with her, it had actually been...kind of fun in a way. Usually his good-for-nothing contractor victim died in an unceremonious pillar of magical fire, soul ripe for the snatching. Hitting him with his own attack though? Cheeky brat. But clever. Snatcher could respect the resourcefulness. And that’s what it came down to, wasn’t it? He could just kill Hat Kid, eat her soul, blah blah, be done with it. But at this point, it was just too unfulfilling. It had to be climactic. Narrative payoff and all that. He stopped pacing again, and this time dropped himself into the armchair, gears churning in his head. Snatcher summoned a blank parchment. Boy would he show her a narrative. He began to write.
The intruder alert blared the moment he phased into the interior of the ship. He had never actually seen it from the inside before. It...definitely looked like a child lived in it. Toys, clothes and books lay strewn about the floor, and one particular chair seemed to be the victim of a mountain of the clutter. To say nothing of the real genuine mountain of pillows on one side of what appeared to be her bedroom. That seemed comfortable enough to impose his presence on. Snatcher fixed himself a little nook and summoned a book from his pocket dimension and sat down to wait.
The kid must have been planetside since he managed to get through a good number of pages before the doors slide open in a hiss and she came charging through, no doubt in search of the alert source.
She tilted her head at him. “Snatcher?”
“Where the heck have you been?” He glared down at the small child standing at the foot of the frankly ridiculous pillow mountain.
Hat Kid raised her eyebrow at him with a smirk. “What? No ‘AHAHAHAHA! FOOOOOOL!’?”
“Please, I’m not going to waste any more dramatic introductions on you. And I don’t sound like that. It should be much more impressive. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Her expression became even more quizzical. “Home? You knew that. I told you when I left.”
“I meant the last three days you spent hanging out up here, while I heard not so much as a peep from you in my forest.”
Hat Kid shrugged. “I had some stuff to do around Mafia Town and Dead Bird Studio first.” The smirk returned as she peered at him sidelong. “Why? Were you waiting for me?”
Snatcher crossed his arms, recoiling. “What? No! I was only shocked, since I normally can’t get a moment’s peace from you.” Damn it, too defensive. Keep it cool. Still, the realization that she had gone to visit other places first before coming to see him left a feeling he didn’t care for. No need to unpack all of that.
“Sounds like you were waiting for me,” she said, sauntering up the ramp toward him.
“Pff. If I was waiting for anything, it was another chance to get that soul of yours.” He leaned forward, darkening the shadows in the room so that only his face illuminated hers. “You made a big mistake coming back here.”
Unperturbed, Hat Kid reached out and patted him on the face, making him sputter. “Definitely. Does that mean you have another contract for me?” she asked.
“Wh! Ugh, did you just pat me? You really have no respect.” He did, in fact, have a contract. He had many contracts. There were drafts. Since, you know, she went and took so pecking long to come to Subcon! With a flick of his wrist, Snatcher summoned his work of art, laying out the map in front of her. Hat Kid inched closer to examine it over his shoulder. “Here, since you’re so eager to lose your head.”
She pulled the corner of the map to angle it toward her as her eyes flicked over the terms. “Before I agree to anything, I have some simulations of my own,” Hat Kid said with mock formality, pitching her voice deeper.
“What? Wait, do you mean ‘stipulations?’”
“Yeah, those. I think I should get a pass on the hostage soul thing. BFF privileges.”
“BFF priv--No. Out of the question. That’s not even a thing.”
“Is too. Look it up.”
“Kid, do you know how many books I’ve read? Is not.”
“Is too, is too. I bet you don’t have the BFF book. It’s in there.”
“I am very certain that is also not a thing.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “How do you know? Did you go to contract school?”
Snatcher raised an eyebrow at her. “I did, actually, little smart-alec.”
“Oh. Right.” she said, lifting a hand to her chin as though pondering something. “Forgot about that,” she said under her breath.
Snatcher’s grin dropped a bit. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She jolted a bit, grimacing at the indication he’d heard her. “Nothing!”
He watched her for a moment, but she gave him the politest smile he’d ever seen on her face and held it there under his staring. “That’s not suspicious at all. Anyway, like I said, there are no special provisions for so-called BFFs.”
Hat Kid folded her arms and turned her nose up. “Well, too bad. Those are my conditions. I’m not giving you my soul this time.”
Snatcher dragged a hand down his face. “Ugh, you’re so--Whatever! Forget it. Why am I even arguing about this? Do you want the contract or not?” He narrowed his eyes. “I have to warn you, these aren’t your average, everyday contracts. I’m particularly proud of them, if I do say so myself. They’ll really put you through the wringer.” He cackled at that. “But, I’ll make it worth your while if you miraculously complete them. I’m not completely unfair. Obviously I had to create some incentive for you, since there’s plenty in it for me! I call them the Death Wish contracts.” He elbowed her with a broad grin. “Because you’d have to have a death wish to want to go through with them, get it?”
Hat Kid stared at him deadpan, and Snatcher gave her a pout. “Oh, you’re no fun,” he groused.
Her poker face broke down a bit and the edge of her lips quirked up, but she made a valiant attempt at hiding it. Snatcher pretended not to notice and watched in silence as Hat Kid initialed over the first contract. With a nod and a snap of his fingers, he stamped his seal onto the document next to her signature.
“Perfect! Excellent!” Snatcher rubbed his hands together. “Now, as I’ve said, these are advanced contracts, so things work a little differently here. Allow me to demonstrate.” He reached into his pocket dimension and pulled out a shadowy replica of the time pieces the kid used to power the ship.
She gasped, a bit of concern creeping into her face. “Where did you get that?”
He waved a placating hand. “Keep your socks on, kid. It’s not the real deal. I hate to admit it, but your time shenanigans are a bit beyond me. I thought the shape would get your attention, though.” Snatcher winked at her, earning a blown raspberry in response. “Anyway, my schtick is more along the lines of illusion and creation. And fire, but that’s not the point. What this little baby right here does is builds a pseudo-reality based on your memories, and I get to manipulate it into the perfect little nightmare-scape to torment you. When you activate it, who knows what material it will give me to work with. Isn’t that exciting?”
The kid did look impressed. “That’s pretty dramatic.” But a thought seemed to cross her mind, and she frowned at him. “Seems like a whole lot of work just to get my soul. You probably could just pop my head off right here.”
Several solid seconds of awkward silence followed. “Uh, do you...want me to do that?” Snatcher asked.
“No-o! I’m just wondering because it’s weird ,” she retorted.
“What’s the point of just taking your soul right here? Where’s the panache? The showmanship? The song and dance? Why do you think I make contracts? I’m immortal for goodness’ sake. How else do you expect me to have any fun with the rest of my unlife?”
“Aww, you think I’m fun!” Hat Kid said.
Snatcher made a face. “Where did I say that? The fun comes from messing with my victims, you know this.”
Hat Kid just smiled smugly back up at him, leaning on her umbrella. “Admit it. BFF privileges,” she whispered.
“Shut it. Those aren’t real, for the last time. And stop making that face, before I change my mind.”
“Sure thing, BFF.” She gave him an exaggerated salute.
“Oh! That’s it!” Snatcher swiped at her, albeit somewhat lazily, but the kid had already spun on her heels and fled out of his reach, diving into the pillow mound with peals of giggles.
“Too late, I signed the paper! We have a deal.” Her muffled voice drifted up through the cushions.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m having regrets already,” Snatcher said, sitting back in his impromptu nook and picking up his book again.
The pillows rippled as Hat Kid burrowed her way out from underneath and popped out at the bottom, still holding the shadow hourglass. She turned it around in her hands, giving it a once-over, then a twice over, peering into the gaps. Snatcher watched, bemused.
“You can consider this a test run, seeing as I’ve never actually seen how well it works. But there’s no hurry to try it out immediately. I have all the time in the wo--”
“Boop.” Hat Kid tapped the trigger mechanism and the magic in the hourglass burst out, enveloping the room in shadow.
“Well, alright then,” said Snatcher. The shadows had by now swallowed the entirety of the ship, replacing it with a limbo dimension. The fragments of Hat Kid’s memories whirled around him, and he reached out with his mind toward the most coherent and enticing. “Oh, how interesting. I can work with that.” All he needed to do was add some...personal flair. Snatcher clapped his hands together, and the illusory world materialized. Mafia Town. It looked quite familiar to him, especially considering he had never personally seen it not covered in lava. So seeing a jet of it spewing from the top of the tower in the center of the town was not at all a surprise. “Let’s crank up the heat a bit more, shall we?”
Hat Kid appeared in the streets below. She looked around for him, but Snatcher hadn’t manifested physically. Since he was the one maintaining the dimension, it got a bit too meta for his tastes to make an appearance. Not to mention, too hot in this particular case.
“This should be easy for you. Just a stroll down memory lane. Hope you’re not retreading any old wounds,” he said, smirking to himself as the kid hurried about in the sweltering heat, desperately trying to stop the flow of lava before she collapsed from exhaustion. Snatcher pulled his attention away for a moment, sifting through the other memories for new content he could use. Assuming she even made it through this first challenge of course. Just because this pocket world was built from her mind didn’t mean it couldn’t do real harm. That’s where the fun was.
He caught snippets of her adventures on their planet from a year ago. But then, there also was the matter of that year in between. Curiosity spurred him to push farther into the memories, searching for the unfamiliar. Surprisingly, it took a while to find. Whenever he noticed something that seemed unusual, different from Earth, those memories fluttered away from him, crowded out by those of the kid’s more recognizable adventures.
“Are you hiding something from me?” he muttered. A quick check back to Hat Kid’s current challenge revealed that she was...actually making good progress. Drat. Ah, well, she never was one to be underestimated. He would have plenty more to throw at her soon enough. If only he could reach those pesky, elusive memories. The fact that they kept dancing just out of his mind’s reach only made them all the more enticing.
One appeared more vivid than the others, and in a lunge, Snatcher grabbed for it, snagging it just by the edge. “Haha!” he crowed, reeling it in to examine it.
A crystalline world revealed itself to him, pillars of glass and metal sprawling out in a technological forest as ships of various shapes zoomed across the sky and wove between the buildings. The kid’s home, must be? Hat Kid herself faded in, sprinting from her comparatively rickety ship across a broad hanger filled with other shinier vessels. The vision followed her as she wove through the shocked crowd of people, through corridors, and up lifts, until she reached the glass doors of a large room. She barged through them, and the memory flooded Snatcher’s mind with her elation at having finally arrived.
A group of adults jolted at her unruly arrival, surprise and disbelief dawning in their faces. “Can it be?” one of them murmured.
“I made it back!” Hat Kid announced, pride in her breathless voice.
Another adult smiled at her, but Snatcher frowned at the image. He knew an empty smile when he saw one. Why weren’t they happy to see her? Considering how excited the kid had been to get there…
“Indeed, you did,” said the false smiler. “How unexpected.”
“How did you do it?” the first speaker asked, their voice a bit dry.
“Well first, I had to find a ship, which I did, but it was all beat up and old, so I had to hurry up and fix it, and then I needed to power it,” Hat Kid rattled out. It mostly sounded like nonsense to Snatcher, without any context. He didn’t listen that hard. No, he paid more attention to how the audience reacted, and from their expressions, he could tell that wherever they came from, the kid had been intentionally abandoned there. She wasn’t meant to return.
Despite the fact that Snatcher himself had tried to expel her from Subcon, also never to return, indignation rose up inside him. At least he had been up front about the fact that he’d wanted her gone. He had that down in writing! Of course, the kid had scribbled all over that, but that was her problem, not his. Clearly, the kid had the impression that she was meant to beat the odds and return home to a jubilant reunion.
Based on the emotions radiating from her memory, Hat Kid was coming to the same realization he was, and her excitement waned. “I guess I can...I can stay on my ship for a while. Until I find a place to live,” she said in a small voice. “But I can be useful! I learned lots of stuff on my way over. I can build things. I can harvest Time Pieces.”
The adults muttered amongst themselves before the false smiler spoke again. “Of course. I’m sure we will find something for you to do. However, we’re very busy at the moment. Busier still, now that you’ve...surprised us.”
Hat Kid backed toward the door. “Right. I guess I’ll get going.” The adults had already turned back to their discussion before she finished speaking, and she watched them for a moment before leaving, much slower than when she’d entered. The memory began to struggle from Snatcher’s grip, resisting his further scrutiny, and he loosened his hold, letting it slip away.
“Shit,” he breathed.
His own dimension alerted him that Hat Kid had reclaimed the shadow hourglass, completing the challenge he’d set for her. Snatcher snapped his finger, and the darkness of the limbo world warped away, returning the two of them to their original places on Hat Kid’s ship.
“I did it!” she shouted, hoisting the hourglass in triumph. She was covered in sweat.
Snatcher plastered his usual grin on his face. “How unfortunate. Not a scratch on you. Not to mention, you’re filthy.”
“Bleh, it’s your fault for making it so hot,” she said.
“Whatever. Just don’t touch me with your slimy hands. Don’t you have a washroom around here? I would consider using it, for once. At least I know that hourglass worked exactly as I planned it. I’ve got so much more to throw at you. You’re going to regret writing that BFF clause soon enough.”
“Hope you’re going to make it actually hard next time,” Hat Kid said, dancing around with the hourglass and not in any way looking like she intended to bathe.
“Be careful what you wish for, kiddo!” Snatcher shouted, cackling. “But seriously, please wash yourself. You’re disgusting to even behold.”
“Whatever, you’re not my dad!” Hat Kid said over her shoulder as she headed toward the door. He hoped that she was leaving to actually clean up.
“I thank the universe every day that I’m not!” Snatcher hollered back.