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It was early in the morning on a rainy Tuesday when Milla went down to the Noodle Bowl. She’d gone to her office earlier than usual today in order to get some extra work in. Although it was a couple weeks after Maligula’s revival attempt, the aftershocks of the incident could still be felt throughout the Motherlobe. Specifically in the form of lots of extra paperwork to be filled out, and reports to be labelled, sorted, and shipped out. While the mailroom now had a new employee working in it, letters and papers were still getting shipped out at a snail’s pace. If there was one thing the Gzar of Grulovia had a surprising talent for, it was organization. Oleander had joked once about granting the gzar amnesty in exchange for going back to being in charge of the mailroom, but no one had really found it funny.
On top of that, the actions Maligula made had certainly not gone unnoticed by the surrounding world despite the Psychonauts’ best efforts to keep it under wraps for the safety of the Aquato family. A couple of hikers who had been exploring the mountains near Green Needle Gulch had spotted the gigantic water tornado from afar- and to be fair, it had been a pretty big tornado, it’s not surprising that it was spotted- and reported it to the authorities. For a couple days, Truman had to deal with prying government officials wondering why a giant water tornado had sprouted out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains. Although the officials had been given a seemingly acceptable version of the events, it did not stop the conspiracy theorists and gossip magazines from knocking on the Psychonauts door at least once a day wanting footage, interviews, and the like. The interns had started taking turns driving them off, which was why the lake surface in front of the headquarters was surrounded by a wall of ice, along with a conspicuously placed whale.
So while the headquarters had moved back to the usual monotony of paperwork and printers, Milla still felt restless. The adrenaline from dealing with not one, not two, but three world-threatening missions had not worn off yet. She’d decided, after losing focus for the umpteenth time while proof-reading documents on the process of unfreezing Grulovia and a request from an online conspiracy theory blog to see confidential documents on the tornado incident, that a quick walk around the headquarters would clear her mind.
As she walked out of the agents’ office areas, head still foggy from work and a lack of sleep, she heard a ding as the doors into the Nerve Centre swung open. Charging out of them towards the Lobby was Lili, carrying a bundle of rope, a climbing harness, and a large container of gasoline. Surprised, Milla called out to the girl, who turned and looked at her with a frustrated expression.
“It’s rare to see you out of Truman’s office this early, darling. Why are you in such a rush?”
Lili growled, eye twitching. “Some wannabe reporter from an obscure newsletter decided that they were tired of us ignoring their unfounded and numerous requests for access to files about the incident at Green Needle Gulch, so they decided to get my dad’s attention directly. They are currently scaling the building, and are banging on the windows of my dad’s office.”
“Really?” Milla sighed. “Well, some people just can’t stand being told no, I suppose. Are you going out to drive them off?”
Lili tilted sideways slightly to prevent the ominous jug of gasoline from falling from her arms. “Maybe.”
“You do know how volatile that liquid is when lit, right?”
Lili stared Milla dead in the eyes. “Maybe.”
Milla sighed. On a regular day, she would’ve given Lili a lecture on why her plan was a bad idea. But it was 4am. She still had 3 stacks of paperwork to read. So instead, she rubbed her forehead. “Well… just don’t do any grievous harm. We already have a potential investigator coming to ask about the Green Needle Gulch incident. We don’t need inquiries about death and dismemberment of the press too.”
The ten year old grinned in a way that was more unharnessed fury than happiness. “Got it. Non-lethal measures only.” She took off towards the Lobby, rope trailing behind her as she ran.
Milla let out another sigh, levitating towards the Noodle Bowl. Although it was relatively early for workers to be preparing food., there was usually coffee and tea available at the buffet area. A nice warm drink would help her concentration, as well as her inevitable headache. As she entered the threshold of the cafe, she was surprised to see that the door to the kitchen was ajar, and the light was on inside.
She floated over, landing quietly before the door to the kitchen. Peeking in, she saw Razputin sitting on a stool next to the stove with a large metal bowl in his lap, vigorously stirring a white mixture with a fork.
“Razputin?”
The young boy looked up in surprise, face morphing into a smile when he saw the agent. He stopped stirring and placed the metal bowl on the counter before hopping down to the ground. “Milla! It’s good to see you!”
“It’s good to see you too, darling, but it’s so early in the morning! I thought you would still be in bed at this hour.”
Raz blinked and took a quick glance at the bowl on the counter. “Well… I was kind of bored. I couldn’t sleep.” He replied sheepishly, twiddling his fingers. “And the head of the cafeteria gave me permission to make my own food in the kitchen, as long as I cleaned up everything I used and did it after hours. So I decided to make a snack for the rest of the interns.”
Milla smiled. “That’s so sweet of you! What are you making?”
The boy reached up and picked up the metal bowl, giving the mixture inside another stir. “Papanasi! It’s a recipe that my family made for us as a treat!” He placed the metal bowl to the side and moved over to a smaller, plastic bowl that had a small mountain of flour in it, taking a small box out and sprinkling some other powder in. “It’s more of a dessert than a breakfast snack, but we’ve been working really hard this week so I figured it’d be a nice treat!”
“It sounds delicious,” Milla commented, walking over to look at the white mixture in the metal bowl. It smelled of cottage cheese and lemon zest. “Do you need any help?”
Razputin paused as he used a whisk to mix together the dry ingredients. “It’s ok, I can do it on my own!” He dumped the flour mixture into the metal bowl and began to stir them together aggressively, although mixing it clearly required a lot of effort. Not wanting to annoy him, Milla stepped to the side to give him room.
“You said your family made it for you. Is it a recipe from your family?”
“Well, it’s been in my family for as long as I can remember.” Razputin hummed, grunting as he tried to mix the gooey dough around with a wooden spoon. “If the circus did well enough, Dad would go and buy the ingredients and Nona-” he paused, looking a bit shaken, before blinking quickly and continuing to stir. “Nona would cook them. I remember she’d sometimes let us try little scoops of uncooked dough as a snack. Mom always told her to knock it off, said it wasn’t healthy for us to eat raw flour or something. But Nona always let us try a little bit when she wasn’t looking.” He smiled. “The only time she told us to leave was when it was time to fry the papanasi. She always made us go outside to wait because the hot oil could be very dangerous. I remember Dion thought she was kidding, and tried to fish a piece of the dough out with his fingers.” Razputin laughed a bit. “We heard his scream all the way from the circus tent!”
“Oh dear, was he ok?” Milla asked, a bit of worry seeping into her tone. Razputin waved his hand dismissively.
“He was fine, but he learned his lesson that day for sure!” Razputin paused for a moment, grunting as the wooden spoon he was using got stuck in the dough, before pulling it out with a yelp, nearly sending the spoon flying and falling off the stool. “Oof… anyway, after that Mom didn’t let us cook with Nona unless she or Dad was there to watch us.” He placed the bowl down, poking the dough with one finger experimentally. “I think the dough is ready. Do you wanna help me shape it?”
“Of course, darling.” Milla approached the counter, where the young intern was sprinkling flour over the flat surface before plopping the glob of dough down on it. “What would you like me to do?”
“Okay, so first we have to tear off chunks of the dough and shape them into balls. Then we poke a hole in through the centre of them.” Razputin explained, fiddling with a bit of the dough that he was already shaping.
“Got it.” Milla replied, peeling a chunk of dough off the huge lump and coating it with a bit of flour before rolling and shaping it in her hands. Pretty soon they had a good amount of doughnut shapes.
“Now we make little round balls of dough that will go on the top of the big ones!” Raz instructed, plucking a small chunk off of the dough pile. The two of them continued shaping the dough, and Milla even used her telekinesis to work with two bits of dough at the same time. Razputin’s awe at her ability to multitask with her power made her smile, and she promised to give him pointers on how to manage multitasking with psi-powers more efficiently later in the week.
Before long, all the bits of dough had been shaped, and Razputin had set up a small pot filled a fifth of the way up with oil on the stove. As Milla carefully placed the dough one at a time in the pot, she noticed Raz was looking down at the counter, brow furrowed. As the hisses and bubbles from the pot began to rise, he spoke up. “Hey… Milla?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Do you… ever struggle with using an ability? Like… if something happens that is loosely connected to a certain power, do you feel hesitant about using it again?”
For a moment, Milla felt a shift in her chest as the burning orphanage flashed in the back of her mind. But she clenched her fists, keeping her breathing steady. “...yes, I do. Are you- are you struggling with using certain powers, darling?”
Razputin opened his mouth, but no words came out. He closed it and looked down again, clearly thinking deeply. And then he spoke.
“...ever since I became a fully fledged Psychonaut agent, I’ve been trying to harness my hydrokinesis. Now that I know that the curse was fake, I wanted to try and use it. But well…” he sighed. “Even though the Hand isn’t trying to drown me anymore, it’s still just… hard to use. Like, when I try to reach out to shape the water, I get scared. And it doesn’t work.” He rubbed his eyes. “I thought that now that I know that the curse never existed, I could learn to use hydrokinesis, but it just isn’t working…” He sniffled, the sound barely audible over the hissing oil.
Milla bent down, carefully opening her arms. Razputin accepted the offer, throwing his arms around her neck and squeezing her tightly. She could hear him sniffling, face clenched tight in an effort to hold back his tears, and patted his back as her own heart twisted with pain and empathy.
“I know it’s hard, darling. Healing isn’t a simple process. It can take longer than you think to make what seems like the smallest step. But even though it seems like a waste, it’ll all add up one day. There is no way to put a certain end date to when the process of healing trauma ends.” She felt him pull away, stepping back with his arms clenched around himself and eyes red and watery. Milla brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes gently. “But all we can do is take it one step at a time.” Razputin nodded, sniffling a bit as he tried to wipe the tears in his eyes. They were interrupted by a loud hiss from the stove, and Milla got up and smiled at Razputin. “It looks like it’s time to take the papanasi out of the oil.”
Several minutes later, they had dolloped sour cream and jam onto the papanasi and were sitting at the large windows of the cafeteria, looking out at the structure of the Motherlobe as dawn approached and lit the building in subtle shades of yellow and pink, each of them with one of the treats in their hand. The rest of the papanasi had been bundled up for later. Raz rubbed some crumbs and jam from his face. “The main reason I decided to make papanasi this morning is because I had a nightmare about the fight with Maligula, and I needed a distraction.”
“Do you have nightmares often, darling?” Milla enquired.
“Sometimes. Usually they aren’t too bad, though. But sometimes they’re bad enough to wake me up, which is why I went down to the kitchen.”
Milla patted him on the shoulder, and felt the protective warmth in her chest grow when she noticed him subtly lean towards her. “I know some tactics to help manage nightmares. I can’t guarantee that it’ll make them go away, but it might help you get a better night’s rest.”
Raz nodded, mumbling his thanks with a smile on his face.
In truth, Milla wasn’t really sure if her healing process had ever finished either. She avoided using pyrokinesis whenever possible in the field, and understood Raz’s fear of his own powers completely. But their healing processes might differ completely. Raz wanted to learn hydrokinesis, while she never wanted to use it again. Even so, the healing process wasn’t linear. Maybe it’d change for one of them, or both of them.
Either way, I’m the adult here. I have to be a stable place for him to lean on as much as I can. He’s been through so much, and he’s just a child. He deserves to be able to heal and find himself again in as welcoming and supportive of an environment as possible.
They stayed there, enjoying the papanasi in silence, for what could’ve been hours when a high-pitched, muffled shriek erupted from above. The two of them turned their heads to see a figure in the distance, wreathed in flame, falling at a high speed outside on the other end of the Motherlobe. The figure tumbled like a shooting star downwards, until they hit the lake with a splash and were extinguished. Milla sighed, feeling a headache beginning to well up. “I forgot about Lili.”
Raz blinked. “Wait, what?”
She patted him on the head before levitating briskly out of the cafeteria. “I’ll explain later, darling. For now, I need to go make sure your girlfriend didn’t commit first degree murder just now.”
Raz made a sputtering sound as she exited the cafeteria and shot towards the lobby. “I- she isn’t- I- what?!”