Work Text:
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here.
The floating blue star was right , he thinks as he sits on the bottom of his cage, dangling dangerously over lava, maybe time is an illusion.
He remembers a man in red, but it seems like so long ago. He wore a matching outfit to his, but he’s been in this cage so long he thinks that maybe he’s starting to go crazy, maybe there was never a man in red and he made it all up. But it felt real. The man in red that showed up in his dreams was like a brother to him, and so he always looked forward to dreaming.
But if he actually had a brother–one that cared –wouldn’t he be out of this scary place by now?
And he has what he is pretty sure are memories dating back to the time he was a kid, like the time the man in red, just a baby at the time, jumped a blond boy for bullying him. That felt real. So he held onto that feeling like it was his last lifeline, like the last shred of sanity he would ever have.
He could have been in that cage for five minutes, five hours or five anything, and he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. He knows his mind is slipping faster than usual because of the rising heat from the lava below the cages. He probably had multiple sunburns. Could you get sunburn from lava? Either way, he knew he was getting dangerously close to being overheated, to the point of heatstroke.
The only thing keeping him there may very well have been the memories of the man in red, and the only thing keeping him coherent may have been the talking penguins, who weren’t faring much better than he was himself.
Sometimes he hears a name being called faintly, his name, and once he asked his fellow prisoners if any of them had said it, and they looked at him like he was crazy. That was answer enough, so he never spoke to them unless they spoke to him first.
They probably did think he was crazy, then.
One time he dreamt about the man in red there was someone else there, too. A girl in a white shirt and black overalls, one that reminded him of a colorful party he attended when he was a lot younger. Teen years. High school, probably. She and the man in red looked younger, too. And the man in red hooked his arm around a lady’s arm who was wearing a red dress. And he hooked his arm around the girl who wore a white shirt and black overalls. But not at this event. For this one she wore a black two piece with sparkly pants and a cape that draped behind her, but not so far that she would trip. And they all went to the party together.
The wizard who had helped the scary turtle dragon who had put him in here after he had been captured by the faceless red things basically torture him appeared in the dungeon all of a sudden with a noise that sounded like someone skidding on a specific type of floor.
Luigi stood up quickly, nervous that he would get in trouble for merely sitting down.
“You don’t deserve this,” the wizard announced. “but you’re all invited to the royal wedding!”
“YAY!” one of the penguins cheered.
“Where you will all be ritualistically sacrificed!” the wizard finished, as if it was a normal thing. Then he disappeared into thin air.
Luigi grabbed the bars of his cage, looking down at the lava, worry clearly evident in his eyes. He thinks of the man in red, saying his name aloud and mentally.
“Mario . . .”
“Mario . . .”
He jerked awake, breathing heavily. He hadn’t been dreaming until he heard his brother’s voice say his name, the image of his younger twin dangling over lava engraved forever in his mind.
He sits up and grabs his hat, making his way over to the rock he had sat on earlier while talking to Princess Peach.
“Thinking about your brother?” She had asked after noticing him sadly look at the hat in his hands, turning it over and studying every inch of part of the outfit he matched with his brother.
He looks up at her. “We’ve never been apart this long.”
She gives him a sympathetic look. “We’re going to save him.”
She had seemed so genuine, so sure that they would be able to save his brother, and he had taken her word for it.
But he realizes now that nobody said anything about surviving.
He had snapped at the princess once, and he looks over at Kate, who is curled up on the grass, sound asleep. She had been the one to explain his frustration, always the middle ground, the level head. Mario was bad about jumping into things quickly, and while Luigi did too, he did it out of anxiety. Mario would react slower sometimes, but in the restaurant with Spike he hadn’t because he knew they hadn’t gotten any calls. That is, until Luigi had bragged about their mom calling to brag on their commercial.
Kate was always the level-head, the middle ground, and she probably kept Mario and Luigi from doing dumb things and kept them out of trouble more times than both brothers could count combined. And she had done the same when he had snapped about Princess Peach out of worry for his brother.
“Don’t take it to heart,” she had said. “he and Luigi have been inseparable from day one, you know? They’re twins, and they’ve done practically everything together. They’re a package deal–you don’t get Mario without Luigi and vice versa. And sure, they did things on their own, too, but most of the time they both did things.”
Peach had been so understanding.
“Mario was more popular in high school, so he got invited places more than Luigi did. But he still made a point to bring Luigi with him whenever he could. And Luigi did things on his own, too, but he always preferred to do things with his big brother. They’re best friends–always have been.”
Peach nodded. “How long have you known them?”
Mario kicked a rock, feeling Kate’s eyes land on him for a second.
“Ever since I can remember. We grew up together. They’re like brothers to me.”
There had been more to the conversation between the girls, but Mario didn’t want to think about it anymore. Instead he placed the hat on his head and stood up, walking towards the Fire Flower field and stopping right at the edge.
“Hang on, Luigi . . .” he whispered. “I’m coming.”
Luigi isn’t focused on the fact that there’s a royal wedding happening before him. He’s too busy freaking out at the large body of boiling lava under him he’s bound to be burnt to a crisp by, according to his calculations.
Ritualistically sacrificed? Dangling over lava at a wedding? Yeah . . . he’s probably put two and two together and gotten four.
And the man in red, Mario, was nowhere to be found.
At least he gets to see sunlight before he dies.
“ Mamma Mia, fa caldo! sto per morire! non voglio morire! Mario, dove sei? ” he says in a very bad Italian accent. He knows his native tongue, he just doesn’t speak it in the accent very well. It’s weird. He always got teased for it by his family. But, believe it or not, his first word was actually in Italian–his first word that wasn’t Ma or Dad or Mario.
“LOWER THE PRISONERS!” he hears the dragon yell, and his cage jerks before starting to gradually lower him towards certain death.
“AH!” he screams, trying desperately to get out by pulling at the lock. His cage was the lowest out of all of them, so he’d be the first to burn.
“Whee! Ha ha ha!” he hears the floating blue star laugh.
He doesn’t want to die, he thinks. He just wants to go home.
The cage freezes suddenly, and he sees a blonde girl in a blue dress fighting multiple bad guys, and the turtle dragon is surrounded by a big block of ice.
Still no Mario. But they’d been joined by a bunch of giant monkeys who had recognized him.
One of them looked sad, and looked at Luigi with a look in his eye Luigi couldn’t place. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t sympathy. There was sadness and something else Luigi couldn’t name.
He had told Luigi that he was gone.
So there was no Mario to save him. No Mario to return home to.
Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad, then. At least he’d have a chance of seeing his older twin again.
He tries calling his name mentally again, hoping maybe Mario could answer.
All he had to do was wait.
“At least your brother isn’t gonna die because of you.”
He and DK argue, but Mario’s heart’s not in it. If Luigi was dead, he didn’t see the point of getting out of wherever he was.
Being swallowed by a giant pink eel was not on his bucket list, but neither was getting sucked into a pipe and dragged into the Mushroom Kingdom and trekking across it to save his brother from some creature named Bowser.
“Mamma Mia . . . sto per morire! non voglio morire! Mario, dove sei?” he hears in the back of his mind.
It’s Luigi.
I'm dying! I don't want to die! Mario, where are you?
The eel burps suddenly, and Mario and DK are pushed into something.
DK’s cart.
Mario looks at him and smirks, and DK does the same.
They’re out of there.
The cages are lowering again.
Luigi can feel the tips of his boots start to melt already before the lava even enters his cage through the metal barks preventing him from escaping. He pulls at the lock again, but it’s useless. He’s going to die here.
The lava enters through the bars.
“ Hothothothothothot–” he says, scrambling upwards, trying desperately to get away from what was sure to boil him alive. He’d never complain about Ma handing him a hot bowl with no potholder again if he ever got the chance.
He’s so close, so close to the lava and he can’t climb any higher. He has nowhere to go, and certain death is boiling right under him. His hands and feet are slipping, and he’s so close that he can feel it, and it’s starting to burn small holes into the knees of his overalls.
It stops suddenly again, and he’s dangerously close, he notices, even closer than he was before he closed his eyes, whenever that had happened.
“Huh?” And then the cages are being lifted upwards, and he watches in awe, relief– he doesn’t know what this feeling is– as he’s pulled away from the lava lake below him. “ Oh.” he sighs.
“Booooo . . .” the floating blue star says miserably, laying on the floor of its cage.
Luigi swings out, grabbing onto the outside of the bars so he doesn’t slip and fall–he’s not a starfish, after all– and tries to pull himself to the top of the cage.
But something causes his hand to slip and he dangles precariously, only the tips of his fingers keeping him from slipping and falling, but the grip isn’t enough and the surface of the cage isn’t ideal terrain to hold on by just the fingertips and he slips off of the cage and falls back down towards the boiling pit below.
Mario is trying to find Kate and Luigi when all of a sudden he winces, hearing screams both inside of his head and outside, and when he looks to find the source of the sound his heart nearly stops. The edges of his vision black out, and he’s left with the image of Luigi falling towards his doom.
He takes off flying as fast as he can towards his brother. He would not lose him today–he refused. He had just found him–he wasn’t going to lose him immediately after. Not again.
He flies, faster and faster, until he barrels into the familiar figure and grasps his hand tightly, like a lifeline.
“Huh?” he hears Luigi say, but he’s too focused on getting his brother away from the lava to look down. “Ah!” Luigi grabs his arm with his other hand and tightens his grip, and only then does Mario allow himself to look down and really believe that his brother is here, in his arms.
“Lu!”
“Mario- oooo !” Luigi laughs hysterically, and Mario can’t blame his reaction. His little brother is probably feeling multiple things right now–he can’t help but laugh in relief.
Mario drops him to the ground once they’re safe and Luigi does a frontwards roll, but as soon as he’s standing and Mario’s done celebrating he pulls Luigi in and clenches his fists into his brother’s overalls, taking in the faint scent of Luigi left behind all of the smell of fire and heat.
“I told ya, see?” Mario exclaims, touching his forehead to Luigi’s. “As long as we’re together, everything is gonna be okay.”
Luigi laughs, and Mario hugs him tighter, even going as far as picking him up, still not quite believing that he really did it, that he really saved his brother. He’s still full of adrenaline and shock.
“Mario, why do you look like a bear? What is this?” Luigi asks and Mario smiles, the tail of his raccoon suit wagging with his emotions.
“Wait, where’s–” he starts to say, but then someone shouts boys! and barrels into the two Mario twins, and Mario looks at whoever is hugging him, relieved when it’s exactly who he was about to ask about. “Kate!”
She and Mario had gotten separated at some point, but Mario is just relieved at the fact that his other best friend is okay. He barely notices that it’s her overalls that are white now, not her shirt.
Kate lets go of the boys and turns to Luigi.
“Luigi!” she says, hugging him again. Kate had always been close with both of the brothers, but with also being a younger sibling, she had hit it off with Luigi from the start, and the two had always had a sort of connection.
“Kate!” Luigi exclaims. “How did you get here?”
“Doesn’t matter.” she says, hugging him a little tighter before finally letting him go, a relieved smile still plastered on her face.
“Wait, where’s your brother?”
“I don’t know. Still in New York, probably.”
Mario turns to the princess, who had made her way over to them.
“Oh! Luigi, this is Princess Peach. She’s the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a much nicer place than here. And Princess, this is my twin brother, Luigi.”
“Twins? No way.” she teases.
“We’re frater–” Luigi starts to explain as Peach messes with Mario in his raccoon suit, but a spit of fire is launched at them and their meeting is forced to come to a stop.
“Launch the Bullet Bill and destroy the Mushroom Kingdom!”
The group look at each other frantically before a humongous black bullet is released into the air and aimed right at Peach’s castle.
Mario takes off again–without thinking–but isn't really surprised when Kate doesn't try to stop him.
“What is he gonna do?” Luigi asks. He’s still not sure how having a tail helps his brother fly –or why he even has a tail, or why he looks like a bear–but nonetheless his brother had taken off without a second thought.
He turns to Kate. “Why didn’t you try to stop him?” he asks, a little more aggressively than he meant to. “Also, why do your clothes look different?”
“Did you find a fire flower?” the princess asks.
“A what? ” Luigi asks, but his question goes unanswered by the two girls.
“Yeah! It was awesome!”
Peach laughs despite the situation.
“Alright. Can someone please explain what is going on?!” Luigi exclaims.
“A fire flower lets you shoot bullets of fire out of your hands. A giant turtle is trying to annihilate an entire kingdom. Mario has a raccoon suit. Happy?” Kate says quickly.
“A little, yes!” he shoots back.
Suddenly the ship jerks and they’re encased in a blue light. Everyone–Luigi, the princess, Kate, the walking, talking mushroom man–tries to grab onto something in hopes that they won’t be sucked into whatever the explosion had caused, but the entire ship–people and turtles and mushrooms included–were sucked into the blue.
Luigi heard a noise, the same one he had heard when he had been sucked into the pipe accidentally the first time, and then it was dark.