Work Text:
Eret’s been having difficulty remembering things lately.
Not in the sense that she can’t remember. There are no gaps that startle her, she’s definitely not lost any time, and there’s never any moments that she doesn’t know where she is or what she’s doing. But she’s been wondering if her memories are … unreliable, recently. Because sometimes there’s a strange hazy quality to them, if she thinks back to something she was doing the other day, and other times she’s certain she remembers an event differently to what others insist occurred - Foolish being the primary source of these jarring moments, but there’s been a few with almost everyone by now. The other day, she was chatting with George, who she hasn’t seen in literal months - it was like walking on eggshells, or so she thought, but he seemed weirdly content to have a casual yarn with her, and she wasn’t going to object.
He was certain that, when she wore her crown, it bore emeralds; she swears she remembers lapis. She hasn’t been wearing it around, recently, but when she goes home to the empty echoing castle to find it resting on the throne, it glitters ruby-studded and uncompromising, the stones like blood welling from a carefully designed pinprick. In skin, or memory, or bone.
This wouldn’t be as alarming if it occurred in isolation, but - it’s more than a pattern, it’s a constant. And she’s far too young and beautiful to be going senile yet.
There are others, she knows, who have their moments of unreliability on the memory front. She doesn’t know if it would be considered rude to go to one of them for help, but after the hundredth time that Foolish mentions a picnic they never had, a dress she never wore, a card game she never even learned how to play, she makes up her mind: she’ll just ask a few casual questions. If nothing comes of it, so be it. Eret’s been around long enough to be able to handle a few wonky memories.
She spends hours chiselling designs into the stone around the foundations of her castle, histories and mythologies and fantasies, true and false and in-between. In the morning, she wakes to find them blank.
They find Karl sitting under a mushroom, cross-legged, brow furrowed, slouching over; when they clear their throat, he startles. Tucks something hastily underneath his shirt, which is a cacophony of so many colours that Eret doesn’t know where to begin, loose and billowy in a way that hides the shape of his chest and makes his sleeves look like a wizard’s; they’d compliment him on it, if they weren’t a little preoccupied. It’s the kind of shirt they’d love to own, themself.
After stumbling through stilted phatic remarks, Eret poses their question in as casual a manner they can muster, burying it in hedging and awkward laughter. Karl sees straight through them. (His eyes have gotten brighter, Eret thinks, almost gold where they used to be the hazel-brown of river water - or maybe that’s just them forgetting. Whichever it is, Karl’s eyes bore into their own, like the sunglasses aren’t even there. Eret feels exposed, a jolt of it flooding through their body.)
“... What helps me,” Karl says, after a moment, falling back into the motion that he has always been found in - sleeves catching the breeze, eyes darting around the clearing, fingers busy with the number of fidget-able tools and crystals dangling along his belt - “is surrounding myself with things that remind me. Who I am, what I love. The people I care the most about. Then I forget less. Or, when I forget, it comes back faster.”
It hasn’t been a secret for a while, that Karl’s memory has been slipping from his grasp; he told one of his fiances, who let the word escape only for it to spread like a grass-fire, or maybe one of Philza’s crows caught a passing remark Karl made to himself and brought it back to its master, or maybe one of those stupid raccoons Tommy released all over the world one weekend learned to talk. Secrets are never secret for long, in this world, on its shores or under its belly or journeying over its hills. What is secret, then, and remarkable as such, is why Karl is losing his memory in the first place.
Still, Eret thanks him. Karl does not ask after their own tangled headspace, after all, and if Eret is anything, it’s polite.
They’ll take his advice. It’s the least they can do.
Working with Foolish feels like falling into place. Foolish is clever, despite his self-professed creed, and has an incredible eye for architecture, and he and Eret share a sense of humour that feels like one jointly cultivated. Everything about their dynamic feels jointly cultivated, actually; they can build together in perfect sync without ever misplacing a single brick, and Eret finds it strangely easy to have those conversations through eye-contact alone that are so characteristic of old friends, and sometimes fae finds faerself remembering details about him that fae doesn’t know if he ever told faer. But sometimes there are just people like that in the world, who you come home to the first time you meet them, and Eret has always assumed Foolish is someone fae happened to click with and nothing more.
He doesn’t make it easy to keep to that conclusion, though - laughing about a history fae doesn’t remember as he lifts faer in his palm so fae can place a torch atop the highest point of their new, monumental brazier, scaffolding be damned. (People were starting to complain about the small ones the two of them left everywhere, so naturally they decided a fucking huge one was the solution.) The moment between Foolish’s laughter and faer hasty own feels like a ravine, like a century, like a gap that is impossible to bridge; fae knows he notices.
He doesn’t comment, though, like he always used to. Instead he waits for faer to place the torch, then lowers his hand so that the two of them are on eye-level - Eret never feels small when he does this, only comfortable - and gives a small sigh. “How was Karl?” he asks, with all the wisdom he pretends not to possess.
Eret smiles, a little bashful at being so easily picked apart - fae knows he understands exactly why fae went. “He seemed preoccupied,” fae says truthfully. “And gave me some good advice.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” Foolish says, then holds his hand to the scaffolding Eret used to build part of the giant brazier. Fae clambers over his thumb and onto the bamboo, totally unafraid of the height. “I have something for you, actually,” he says, and, while Eret makes faer way down the scaffolding, turns to a nearby ender chest and begins picking delicately through it.
By the time fae’s made it to the ground, Foolish is sitting down, as low to the ground as he can get, and holding something impossibly tiny in his fingers that are far, far too large for it. It makes faer wonder how he made this - because it’s obvious he did. In Foolish’s hands is a tiny totem-shaped charm, a fraction of the size of the normal totems Foolish wears at his belt; it’s gold, as all totems are, but glittering with the green-flaring sigils of primordial enchantment, with eyes too bright to be shards of natural emerald, and it dangles from a fine wire hook that Eret realises makes the entire thing an earring.
“Oh,” faer says. “Is this -”
“I made it for you,” Foolish says, uncomplicated and earnest, with eons sitting just out of touch behind his words. Eret is sure fae should know them by heart, but faer memories are playing tricks on faer, and plus - fae knows Foolish is impossibly old, with the kind of lifespan that can only be borne by a god. Fae is regular, and human, and definitely didn’t live through those thousands of years that Foolish speaks of so wistfully. Sometimes he gets old and new memories confused. That’s all. Fae does the same, really.
Fae takes the tiny totem and hooks it into faer ear. “I - don’t have anything to give you in return,” fae says. Faer voice comes out quiet.
Foolish’s laugh is bright and clear. “You’ve given me enough, Eret. Don’t worry about it.”
“Well - thank you,” fae blusters, still stunned. Trying to convey faer sincerity, fae looks Foolish in the eye.
He looks away. It shouldn’t chill faer to the bone, and yet it does.
Eret finds Ranboo at the community portal to the Nether, completely unintentionally even though shi’d just decided a few minutes ago that shi could maybe have a talk with him sometime. It feels too conspicuous not to take advantage of, so shi calls out to him, just before he disappears, and gets to see the always-comical sight of someone stumbling back out of a Nether portal they just entered, woozy and disoriented and not quite sure which way is up.
“Sorry,” shi says, not really guilty.
Ranboo dusts himself off, looking disconcerted. “Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he says, blinking owlishly at zir - more specifically, at zir hands, then at zir feet, then at the distance over zir shoulder. Virtually everywhere except zir eyes. “Uh, did you want something, or? Because if you just wanted to talk, that’s chill. I’m not really busy. Um. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” shi lies easily, with a smile. “But, um, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Ranboo, when the two of them meander around to the topic, suggests writing everything down. His eyes, when shi dares to dart a glance at them, are weary and sympathetic, and he wears the same suit he always has; shi doesn’t think shi’s ever seen him in anything else, but it’s well-worn, patched neatly, with tears mended in dark thread that can only be seen if shi looks closely. He tells zir that for him, not remembering is a foregone conclusion, not something that can be stalled or avoided; he does not keep track of his story to cement it in his mind, but to refer to it when it inevitably slips through his fingers. Sand in an hourglass.
Eret thinks, obstinate and a little foolish, But I don’t want to forget. Ranboo only looks at zir levelly, like he knows exactly what shi’s thinking, and tells zir to invest in a sugarcane farm, because shi’s going to be making a lot of books.
It startles a laugh out of zir. Ranboo waves zir goodbye, and shi toys with zir new earring for a minute, their stomach full of sinking feelings, before stumbling zir way down to the riverbank for paper.
Shi’s been carving histories into museums and fortresses and stone for a long time, now. Time to make a record of something more personal.
Eret has not slept well in his castle for a long time. Tonight is no exception.
I hear you’ve been talking to Ranboo, says a voice he knows all too well, deceptively casual. That’s nice for you guys. Having fun?
Something snaps.
(Don’t go, Foolish is begging him. It’s the same circle, over again. This time, Eret, stay -)
A dam breaks.
Aeons flood into him, the impact a wall of force; he splutters and chokes and remembers, clawing for the surface, and breaks out of the skin of the memory only to jerk awake and have it slip away -
When Eret wakes, it’s furious and long-awaited and the years past are thrumming through vis veins, cloudy and complex and tangled but ve remembers, and ve knows damn well who’s responsible, and ve storms through the world in some kind of god-shaped daze, doesn’t quite know where ve is until ve has already breezed past the Warden and walked through the walls with tricks learned in lives long past, lives that are still this life, lives ve had forgotten, and all because this bastard -
“You took them from me,” Eret tells Dream, somewhere between stunned and vitriolic. Ve doesn’t remember ever having been this angry - no, that’s not true, the memories are there, they’re just. Roiling up against each other. Ve has been furious before, just like this, for just the same reasons -
“Yeah, we’ve been over this,” Dream says. He’s in a state, but doesn’t sound like it, voice cool and collected even as the rest of him is fucking gross, dirty and sweat-stained and wearing a godawful orange jumpsuit. Eret wrinkles vis nose. “What brought it on this time? Not much I can do from in here, but for future reference, you know.”
Eret is shaking. Ve is almost incoherent with vis fury, and vis head is muddled and too full and vis eyes are stinging, and ve repeats, voice wobbly, “You took them from me.”
“Sure did.”
“Why?”
“One of you is plenty to have hanging about,” Dream says. He is sprawled in a corner, one of his legs at an odd angle, bloodstained and with matted hair and with a glimmer to his eye. “The two in the Arctic make three’s-a-company, since they mostly keep to themselves. But four? Four’s a crowd, Eret, so I have to keep my pet immortal in check somehow.”
A surge of something ugly reels in vis throat, like ve wants to smash his teeth in; ve struggle to wrangle it down. Ve is not a vengeful person. Ve is not bloodthirsty. Ve doesn’t know where this is coming from. “What did you call me,” ve rasps on old, old vocal cords, and some part of ver already knows -
“You heard me,” Dream says, cocking his head, and holds out his hand. “Wanna see?”
It’s dirty, and the nails are bitten down far past the quick, red and angry and raw like the inside of Eret’s throat. Trembling, against ver better judgment, ve takes it. Sees, for a moment, vis own pale fingers - clean, the nails gold and dark blue after inspiration ve took from Foolish, vis sleeve cuffed close to vis wrist while Dream’s jumpsuit hangs limp -
Eret’s ears are ringing. Something is hammering a chisel into vis skull. Vis eyes, vis eyes, they’re burning -
Eret’s been having difficulty remembering things lately.
Maybe she should ask some people for help.