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He had never fallen before.. At least, not this far. It was a strange feeling, hovering between two spaces with nothing solid to support you, nothing to hang onto you. Jeremy had always taken care of him. He felt safe in those careful hands. But there was no one to catch him now.
It felt curiously slow and hectic all at once. He didn’t really see where he was going to land. He was just floating, waiting.
When he felt the first break ripple through his body, he was surprised it didn’t hurt. Maybe it was the shock. Even as his body shattered, he remained strangely detached.
He heard a gasp from up above and a shadow stretched over him. A gasp.
“Your optimug prime!”
“It’s okay, it’s just a mug,” said another voice. The familiar tones of his Jeremy. Yes, everything would be okay now. Comments of ‘just’ a mug aside, Jeremy cared for him. Jeremy would make things right. “I’m basically a genius, I can fix it.”
Yes . Optimug thought with complete trust and a surge of hope. He can .
-----
X was a mug that kept to himself, for the most part. Never gossiped in the sink or jostled for position with the others in the cabinet. He was, for the most part, a cool and collected mug, that spent his days on a designated shelf, only mixing it up with the other mugs on the drying rack from time to time.
Fairly recently, a new mug had been brought to the station. Called itself Optimug Prime. Honestly he found it a little annoying at first. Not as annoying as Nedley’s Dad mug (Why were those mugs always like that? Was it because of the amatuer hands that made them? Handmade didn’t always mean better) but still annoyingly bright and shiny.
Over time though, he’d gotten used to the positively caffeinated personality. He’d gotten used to hearing the mug repeat Jeremy’s mutterings, the concerns about the group, and the musings on the plucky scientist’s attractions. Optimug was endlessly positive that things would work out, no matter how grim the humans had gotten. It was refreshing.
So when Jeremy rushed into the room clutching the brightly colored ceramic fragments it hit X like ice cubes from a dispenser. If he hadn’t been empty, he might have broken into a sweat.
All mugs knew of The Shattering. They were told the tales even as they were coming out of the kiln. “Be careful not to fall,” older mugs would tell them, “or if you do, try your best to hold together and not fall to pieces.” Because even if someone was there to put you back together, a rarity as it was, you would never be the same. Mugs don’t heal like humans do.
X leaned forward as far as he could, until his center of gravity shifted and he tipped forward on the drying rack, catching himself against the edge. A risky move, for sure, and technically against the strict Mug Code about moving in human presence, but Jeremy didn’t seem to be paying attention, and there were no other humans in the room yet.
“O-kay,” the human said while rolling his shoulders back, “time to put you back together, buddy.”
If he had eyes, X would have rolled them. Everyone knew mugs didn’t talk to their people. Not in the way humans could understand. But he supposed the sentiment was charming nonetheless.
But then Jeremy was gone. Didn’t walk out, didn’t fall. He was just gone.
X sensed a change had come over the room, but in all honesty he didn’t care. He was a mug and his concern was for his Dolls and his fellow mugs. In particular, the mug on the table.
“Optimug? Optimug!” X called out, hoping to reach his friend. He couldn’t cross the gap, the fall was too far, too frightening, but he could try to reach him anyway.
“Optimug, are you alright? Come on, Prime, talk to me!”
A groan like the sound of grinding ceramic trembled in the air, preceding a weak voice “X? X where are you? Where am I?”
X grimaced internally. Shattered mugs were said to lose track of their senses. It wasn’t a good sign. He tinked against the drying rack again so Optimug could hear him. “I’m right here, buddy. You’re in the break room and I'm on the drying rack. How are you feeling?”
“Bad,” Optimug grit out, “It didn’t hurt at first, but now it, I can feel every shard, every piece of me is wrong!” One of the larger fragments rocked back and forth, a clear sign of Optimug’s distress. It shattered X’s heart to watch. He had to do something!
“Hold together, Prime” he said with an authoritative voice like his Dolls always used. “You know Jeremy isn’t going to let you stay this way. You’re his mug, he’ll take care of you.”
“Where is he?” Optimug whimpered. “I was in his hands and I can’t feel him anymore.”
X turned in place, grinding his rim in frustration. How could he tell Optimug that Jeremy had disappeared?
“He’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”
Optimug’s pieces slowly stopped rocking and he sighed softly, soothed by the reassuring tones of X’s voice “Yeah… yeah you’re right. I’m sure he’ll be back any moment. Maybe he went to get some kind of special materials. Do you see anything near me? Any kind of bonding agent?”
X surveyed the table as best as he could from his position “I think there’s a bottle of superglue, but I can’t be sure.”
Optimug’s heart sank like a weighty teabag. “Oh,” his voice trembled, and X could feel the waves of insecurity radiating from him even from across the room “I thought…”
X tilted to one side, straining to hear his friend over the distance. If only he could cross the gap and get to Optimug’s side! “What’s wrong?” he asked, concern lacing his voice like cream through coffee. “Superglue does a good job, usually.”
The stillness of Optimug’s pieces lasted so long it started to worry X, but just when he was about to call out again, the shard with Optimug’s face design turned towards the door. He spoke so quietly, X almost missed it.
“I thought,” the smaller mug whispered, “that maybe he could fix me without leaving cracks.”
It took a minute for X to decipher the words, but when he did he rocked back with a sigh. Cracks and chips were a touchy issue for mugs. In recent years, there was a growing thought that such markings made some mugs look edgy or sharp, others thought it gave them character, but there was still a lot of judgement about it. Traditionally it indicated a restless recklessness that had no place in mug society. Or worse, it meant that your person didn’t care about you, which earned you piteous comments and whispers.
Such things never really occupied X’s thoughts. A chip or a crack was just a thing that happened on occasion (to other mugs, of course, X was far too disciplined to fall and his Xavier took impeccable care with him, even if it did mean being left behind in favor of a travel mug when Xavier was on the road.)
But for Optimug, with his bright red logo design and track marks that could highlight the errors… X sighed again.
“Look, Opti” X began in a firm but steadying tone, invoking a nickname Optimug had once suggested to X long ago. “I know it can be… hard, to go through life after a shattering. But you have friends here, okay? Friends that will support you. Unimug, Garfield, Whiskey, Jazz, even Dad, I suppose. They’ll all stand up for you if need be. And they won’t think any less of you for the damage you sustain. ”
He paused, wondering how to put what he wanted to say next. Well, best not to wait until the coffee gets cold, as someone once told him.
“Hey,” he started again, wanting Optimug to focus on him for the next part. When one of Optimug’s shards turned towards him he continued “ I won’t think any less of you.”
The shards on the island counter trembled, “Y-you won’t?” Optimug whispered softly.
X turned so his handle moved back and forth in a clear ‘no’. Then he remembered Optimug couldn’t see him and spoke, putting emphasis on his reply. “Of course not. You know, some of the best mugs have scars.”
“Yeah, but I’m just, me, you know? I’m not the kind of mug that can pull that off.”
X chuckled at Optimug’s ever present humility. “I bet you can. You’re much more special than you think you are. Look how much Jeremy cares for you. Even Waverly knows your name because Jeremy insisted she learned it.”
“She called out my name,” Optimug said quietly. “When I broke. She was worried about me. She was scared Jeremy wouldn’t be able to fix me.”
“See?” X said with a bit of triumphant hope in his voice, “What other mug get’s called their mug name by a person that’s not theirs? What human worries about someone else’s mug? You mean something to them, Prime. You mean something to all of us. And we’re going to do our best to make things right.”
Optimug was still for a while, and quiet, as if deep in thought. X waited for him, knowing Optimug took time to struggle with his feelings and would eventually open up about whatever was stirring in his mind.
“I don’t know,” Optimug said, a little remorsefully, “I know it’s vain, but… I don’t know if I could face myself like that. I don’t-” There was a ceramic grit like sound from the shards as Optimug choked on his words “I don’t know how I could ever be alright with being like that.”
The room fell silent as the words rang through them. X didn’t know what to say back to that admission. He wasn’t a counselor’s mug. He had no experience with that kind of thing. But he knew, somehow, he had to show Optimug that he could still be beautiful, even after a shattering.
Then, slowly, and idea came to him, floating up from the depths like stirred creamer. An old conversation he had with Waverly’s unicorn mug. He felt hope fill him.
“Prime. I think I have an idea.”
-----
Mugs cannot talk to their humans. Humans, sadly, simply don’t possess the right senses to interpret Mugspeech. But there is a sort of exchange of the minds, a communing, that occurs when a human drinks from a mug. Which is why, so often, humans like to settle with their mugs for quiet contemplation. They might not be able to sense the words, but mugs were always there to offer support, thought, and inspiration. It was one of the best parts of being a person’s mug, truly.
So X couldn’t directly tell Dolls about his plan, but he could share the general feeling of the idea, which he did, with everything in him, pouring the thought into his person’s mind earnestly. He knew the thought had taken when Dolls raised X to take a sip, paused halfway to his lips once, twice, then drank and stood up.
----
“It’s, ah, it’s called kintsugi.” Dolls said simply to a mildly confused Jeremy. “Waverly’s been trying to get someone on board with trying it with her and she thought-”
“OH!” Jeremy’s eyes lit up, “We talked about that at craft night once! I remember now. Yeah, no, that would be an awesome idea!”
“Yeah, and I thought it might make Waverly feel a little better after everything that happened if you, y’know, used a technique she’s been big on trying.” Dolls scratched at his temple. To be honest, he wasn’t sure why the idea had sprung into his mind, but once he had it, he couldn’t seem to let go of it.
“Yeah, for sure, absolutely!” Jeremy was up and at a different desk in no time,rummaging through the contents of one of the drawers. “In fact, let me just see here… nope… no… what is that, even? Ah, here!” He held up a small container triumphantly, “I even have pigment I can use!”
Dolls narrowed his eyes, caught between confusion and disapproval, “You keep craft supplies at the office.”
Jeremy shrugged, “You never know, it could come in handy.”
Dolls seriously doubted it, but opted to say nothing as Jeremy hurried back to the break room, thankful the young scientist was finally going to take care of the broken mug occupying valuable counter space.
----
“Prime?” It was X’s voice again. Optimug always liked that voice. He’d been lulled into a state of semi-conciousness by Jeremy’s delicate handling during the repair process. Stirring himself awake was taking a minute.
“Prime, can you hear me?”
Optimug especially liked the way X’s voice sounded saying his name. Sure and caring.
Something felt different, Optimug realized. He felt… more put together. Whole again. He wiggled, and found the familiar weight and presence of his body move as one. When he dared to take a peek, he found he was placed upright. All of him.
“X! X I’m fixed!” he said with a laugh, and spun excitedly in place. When he looked to the drying rack though, X wasn’t there.
“X?” he asked, turning one way and then another.
“Hey.” Came that voice again, behind him this time. X was there, resting confidently on the counter beside him, both of them tucked away near the microwave.
Optimug slid closer to tink against the familiar vessel. “Careful,” X warned, “You don’t want to chip anything.” Optimug let up, but shifted in place all the same. “Hey! What are you doing here? Dolls never leaves you out on counters.”
X twisted a little self consciously, “I, ah, made a suggestion to Dolls that he had to be away urgently so he would leave without putting me in the sink. I’m carrying cold coffee by now, but I figured you’d like some company when you came around.”
“I do, I mean, did!” Optimug answered cheerfully, “I mean… I like that you’re here.” There was an awkward pause, one they both felt like speaking into, but neither knowing what it was they wanted to say.
“So,” Optimug spoke into the silence, spinning around again, but more slowly this time. “How do I look?” His voice was friendly and curious at the surface, but X could sense the tension and nervousness hidden under it like separated sugar.
“You know,” X said thoughtfully as though he were sizing the other mug up, “why don’t you take a look for yourself?”
He turned towards the microwave and Optimug followed his gaze. The side of the microwave wasn’t polished. It was full of smudges and fingerprints. But under it all, Optimug saw his reflection.
And he gasped.
All around his body elegant branching lines of silver etched their way through the ceramic in a chaotic, but somehow beautiful way. Optimug had seen lightning once, when Jeremy had been out on the porch of his home, watching an approaching storm. They way the lines twisted and danced across the clouds, sometimes webbing back together, sometimes spreading out, reminded him of what he saw now, on his form. The color shone against the black and dark grey and brilliant red. It looked almost intentional. It looked cool. It looked…
“It’s art.” Optimug said softly. “Jeremy… he made me a work of art.”
X sidled up beside the smaller mug and gently rested his handle against Prime’s side before murmuring softly.
“You always were.”