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Chapter Text

Juanaflippa misses her father.

This is her first waking thought, and it's one she's had many times before, as she stretches and yawns under the covers. She adjusts her glasses, crooked from keeping them on before bed, wanting to see her father clearly if he really came back this time. Sitting up, she brushes her hair and does her braids, humming a tune her other father had sung to her before, smiling as she slips her shoes on.

She sits back on top of her bed, staring across the wall to look at the chests and barrels across from her.

She kicks her legs back and forth, hitting the wooden bedframe with her sneakers. She sighs, and falls backwards onto her bed.

She stares up at the dark wooden ceiling, looking to the left of it, then the right. She closes her eyes, before adjusting her broken glasses, and sits up.

Today will be a long day.

She hops out of her bed, climbs the ladder, and pulls out a chair from the table. Scouring through the cabinets on her tip-toes, she pushes aside boxes of cereal until she finds the one of her choice, grinning triumphantly as she holds it up.

Grabbing a milk jug from the fridge, Juanaflippa pours it into a bowl of cereal, splashing the insides of the ceramic. She sits down and picks up her spoon, swinging her legs back and forth underneath the table idly.

Juanaflippa scoops up a spoonful into her mouth, the blandness coating her tongue. She looks across the table, staring at the empty chair as she eats absentmindedly. She does not look away until she hears her spoon scraping the bottom of the dish.

Her eyes burn, yet she can't look away from the empty chairs. She blinks.

Juanaflippa gets up and grabs the empty bowl, putting it in the sink as she hears it clatter against the others.

She looks out the window, the sun casting a glare on her glasses.

Creaking open the front door, she steps out onto the grass, putting a hand above her eyes to block out the sun. She continues, walking towards a tree, before sitting next to it in the shade. She pushes her glasses up as she pulls out a book from her pocket, resting it on her lap before opening it.

“Juanaflippa,” she reads, her mouth forming the words as they have so many times before. “I don't know where you are, but we are leaving on a train to find the other eggs.”

Her eyes track the inked words on the pages as she repeats them. “If you're reading this, follow the tracks. We're going to be on a different island for a while. Things might get dangerous here, and I want you to come with me, but I don't know where you are right now.”

Juanaflippa listens to the surrounding birdsong for a moment. If she strains her ears, she can hear her father’s voice in it.

“I'll come back for you as soon as I can.” Juanaflippa continues reading, “I wish you were coming with me right now. I don't really want to leave, but it seems like bad things might happen to everyone if even one person stays.”

“I can't be responsible for another egg cracking.” She reads, and sees both of her fathers' horrified, bloodied faces behind her closed eyes, the surrounding chirps sounding like familiar screams in her ears. She opens them, and takes a breath.

“Love you, Flippa. I'll come find you as soon as I can. If you don't see me, come find me instead. You're smart, you're strong. And if anything goes wrong, you can always backflip away."Her eyes burn as she repeats her father's parting words, " See you soon, Slime. Love you.”

Juanaflippa looks at the book, at the text scrawled hurriedly across the paper, at the words her father left for her.

A drop of water hits the inked lines, blurring them before Juanaflippa closes the book swiftly. She doesn't want to ruin the book he gave her, she thinks to herself.

Another drop of water hits the book, this time falling onto the leather cover. She looks up above her, the sunlight falling onto her face from between the leaves. It isn't raining.

Her vision blurs with unshed tears. There is a lump in Juanaflippa’s throat, she can still taste the bland cereal in her mouth that's never as good as the warm breakfasts her father used to make for her back when he was still here, and she is just so sick of this.

Juanaflippa rests her head on her knees, clutching the worn book into her chest. The movement pushes her glasses off of her face into the grass as her breath hitches.

Juanaflippa cries. Hot tears slip down her face as she sobs and sobs and sobs. Birdsong covers the sound of a young girl’s cries, and she strains her ears to hear her father’s voice in it again, but she can't kid herself now.

A leaf from the tree behind her falls onto her lowered head, and maybe if she tried harder she could imagine it was her father’s hand in her hair, running fingers through the strands. But it's not, and Juanaflippa is tired.

..Juanaflippa misses her father. She drags her fingers through her hair, gripping the strands tightly in utter grief.

Her father decided, before she came back, to isolate himself on an island a thousand miles away as a punishment for himself. Now more than ever, it feels more like a punishment for her. There is nobody to hear her desperate pleas for her father to come back.

Juanaflippa quiets, her breaths shaky. Her throat hurts, and the tear tracks are wet on her face.

She sniffles, and picks up her glasses. There is nobody here to console her, she knows, all she can do is get up.

Juanaflippa gets up.

She wipes her eyes, slips the worn book into her pocket, and walks until her sneakers meet sand.

She lifts her head up, seeing the familiar sight of four empty, dusty wooden chairs around a campfire. She sighs, and her mouth twitches briefly into a smile, before fading.

She sits in the chair made for her, the real her, the dusty chair with vines and moss crawling up the legs of it.

Juanaflippa knows her father made these seats for their family. She also knows that he was the only one to ever be able to sit in them.

She raises her hands up to face the fire, distantly feeling warmth against her skin as the flames lick at her palms. The light of the fire flickers against her glasses as her tear tracks shine with the reflection of the flame, and Juanaflippa still feels cold.

The sun rises higher in the sky, and Juanaflippa hops off the chair and walks towards her home, stepping in before grabbing a bag of marshmallows off the countertop and swiftly stepping back out.

Her footsteps pad against the grass as she briefly stops to pick up some sticks off the ground before making her way back to the campfire. She sits back down onto her seat, pulling out a stick and placing a marshmallow on top of it.

She directs it towards the fire, and waits. Humming idly, she taps her foot against the sand, the steady psh-psh-psh providing percussion for her tune. In the back of her mind, Juanaflippa realizes it sounds pretty similar to the song her father once sang to her as a lullaby. She smiles at the memory.

Looking back at her marshmallow after a bit, she finds it has grown browner, darker. She removes the stick from the warmth of the fire, and pulls out a pack of graham crackers from her pocket, a chocolate bar in her other pocket.

Taking the marshmallow off the stick, Juanaflippa drops it onto the graham cracker, a chocolate bar underneath, before placing a second graham cracker on top of the marshmallow. She fixes her gaze to the horizon as she takes a bite.

Man, she knew that alive Juanaflippa was vegan, but she was really missing out, Juanaflippa thought to herself as her molars crunched the cracker. A quieter voice whispers, So is your father.

Looking at the clouds, she attempts to see shapes in them, squinting her eyes and tilting her head as she eats.

For a moment, she thinks she can see a cloud shaped like glasses, but the idea is quickly stomped out as she disappointedly realizes it actually just kind of looks like an average cloud.

She huffs, and takes the last bite of her s'more, resting her head on her palm comfortably. Chewing, she looks to the left and right of her, picturing the people those chairs would have belonged to. Her father to her left, her other father to the right. Tilín in the chair in front of her. She can almost picture the blood splatters on that one.

Juanaflippa looks away.

Moving her gaze back to the horizon, a sunset with purples and pinks awaits her, puffy white clouds drifting away as stars shine distantly behind them.

Briefly, Juanaflippa thinks to take a picture and show it to her dad when he gets back, like how he always said he wished to do for her when she wasn't here to see it. She remembers her father still has the camera, and a feeling of sinking emptiness hits her stomach, before quickly turning to anger. Juanaflippa shuts her eyes, and grits her teeth.

Juanaflippa glares up at the sky, her vision blurred by furious tears as her eye twitches angrily. The view doesn't mean anything, not really, not if her father’s not there to see it with her.

Juanaflippa misses her father.

A breeze blows through her hair, the cold wind stinging her cheeks, and she gets up and walks back to the house. Her arms wrap around her for warmth, or maybe it's to mimic comfort. Juanaflippa does not know, when she does the action.

Opening the door, she slams it behind her before searching through the chests in the kitchen. Her hand makes contact with a paper-wrapped tin can, and she grabs it out of the cabinet, procuring a can of chicken noodle soup.

She clicks open the tab, empties it into a pot before pouring some water, and places on the stovetop, her fingers automatically turning the knobs and pressing the buttons with practiced maneuvers.

She sits at the table and waits for it to boil.

Back when her father was still here, he used to tell her stories as they waited for the meal to cook. Talking about the latest trouble he got into, or about how many of Roier’s windows he was able to break this time. Or about his ‘bitch wife’.

Juanaflippa wonders if he knew he was talking to his daughter when he went on those specific rants. It did not seem like the kind of thing you talk about to your daughter, but maybe Juanaflippa just wasn't meant to hear those rants.

..Juanaflippa misses her father.

The sound of the soup boiling as the bubbles pop is a harsh but welcome interruption to her thoughts as she sighs and gets up, retrieving the pot from the stove.

She grabs a jug of milk from the fridge, pouring it into a glass before setting it on top of the table.

Fishing out a spoon from the drawers, she sits at the table and eats.

A spoonful is poured into her mouth, the salted soup and noodles mixing with the spices and chives on her tongue. It's warm in her mouth, and Juanaflippa sips from a spoon.

She looks to her left, at her father's empty seat. A suit jacket is still laid across it from his father's old presidential campaign. Juanaflippa feels her eyes begin to burn again, and she blinks furiously.

She quickly takes a sip from her glass to distract from the feeling, the taste of the dairy slightly sweet. She looks to her right, at her other father's dusty seat. If she squints, she can imagine her father's red gloves put aside so he could hold his silverware easier like he used to. A familiar lump in her throat returns, and she quickly takes another drink to get rid of the feeling. She's beginning to grow tired of crying over people who aren't here.

She closes her eyes, and lifts another spoonful to her mouth. If she strains her ears, she can hear her parents arguing over dinner like they used to, her brain rapidly having to switch between the languages as they spewed insults rapidly.

She opens her eyes and looks across the table.

Her father's seat is empty.

There are no gloves on her other father's side of the table.

There is no arguing to be heard, only the creaking wood of the house her father built, and the wind howling outside. Distantly, she can hear the lonely sound of waves crashing.

Juanaflippa remembers when she used to wish at the dinner table for her parents to stop arguing, to just eat.

Now, she wants nothing more than to hear her parents' voices again, even if it's them arguing, even if it's them realizing she isn't the real Juanaflippa and cursing at her for it. She'd take anything, at this point.

The food feels cold in her mouth, and a hot tear falls onto her face, dropping into the bowl of now cold soup

Another tear slips down her face, and then another. Juanaflippa sniffles, but she does not sob. She swallows the last portion of her meal silently, miserably, as more teardrops fall into the bowl. Her parents always told her not to waste her food.

Her vision still blurry, she picks up her bowl and throws it into the sink, hearing the ceramic crack harshly. She glances back through the window in the door, a blurry, inky black night staring right back at her.

Juanaflippa stares, before she wipes her face and eyes, and climbs down the ladder.

Walking over to her bed, she can see all the past signs she's wrote for her father, talking about lullabies and her telling him goodnight in her messy handwriting.

She takes her shoes off, and climbs into her bed, rummaging through her pockets for the book her father left for her. She pulls the blanket over her shoulder, and begins to read it to herself like a bedtime story.

“Juanaflippa,” she begins reading. She is alone when she goes to bed that night.

Juanaflippa misses her father.

Chapter Text

Juanaflippa opens her eyes blearily, and feels warm underneath the covers of her bed. It is almost comfortable enough for her to want to sleep in, but she decides otherwise.

She blinks open her eyes a bit more to see her hands clutching her father's book to her chest, with it still open from falling asleep while reading it.

Sitting up in bed, she adjusts her glasses and sets the book to the side before tearing off the blankets and hopping out of bed. The routine is familiar to her by now, putting her hair in braids and slipping on her shoes.

Juanaflippa walks over to the ladder and begins to climb it, reaching the top before she walks over to one of the cabinets in the kitchen and searches through it, her hand brushing boxes of cereal. The routine is familiar.

She grabs one that catches her eye, a different one than the two kinds she's eaten the past two weeks, something with bright colours and a cartoonish capybara mascot on the box. Her father must have gotten this one for her, then. Or maybe her father just enjoys eating cereal with a cartoon animal on it, Juanaflippa doesn't know.

She slips the box out of the wooden cabinet before grabbing a bowl from another cabinet, setting them both down on the table.

Juanaflippa steps towards the fridge, opening it and reaching for the milk jug just before she hears a warping, magical hum. A very familiar warping, magical hum.

Her eyes widen, and Juanaflippa runs from the fridge to look out the window, the fridge door shutting on its own.

Unable to see anything from this angle, she swiftly runs out the door, not bothering to close it behind her.

Her footsteps are quick on the grass before she skids to a sudden stop at the sight in front of her.

Wind blows through her braided hair, and Juanaflippa can feel the start of tears in her eyes as she stares at her father, leaning on the warp stone with slight exhaustion. A dark gas mask is wrapped around his head, the lenses opaque and green.

Her eyes blur with tears, making it difficult to make out his injuries and scratches, but she can tell they're there.

She sniffles, and her father finally looks up, noticing her. He quickly takes the gas mask off, his eyes flashinh briefly with what Juanaflippa thinks is hesitant skepticism as he looks at her, before he sees the tears in her eyes and it gets completely overridden with worry. He runs over to her, smiling, his eyebrows furrowed with concern.

“Flippa!” He yells, hugging her tightly. “Oh my god, it's been so long! I missed you!”

She has just enough movement for her arms to write out a quick message on a sign, placing it in front of him but not moving away from his hold.

Her inked words spell out, ‘‘D@d!!!1! 1 m1ss3d y0uu t00 !1!!’’

He pulls away from her slightly to read it, his eyes scanning the words quickly.

“Flippa, did you– did you get my book? I would've brought you with me, but–” He starts, halting the sentence as he sees her writing hastily on a sign as she continues to sniffle quietly.

She holds up the sign, “1 d1dd d!!”

“Alright, good. I’m sorry I left you for so long, Flippa.“ Her father apologized, hugging her once more.

Juanaflippa sniffled, before looking up and staring at him, her eyes still wide. She can't believe he's really here. She paused, before shoving her head into his chest. Hot tears soaked into her father's shirt, mixing with his bloodstains already on it.

Her father paused briefly, before holding her tighter, running his fingers through her hair.

They stayed like that for a moment, sitting in the grass as she cried. Distantly, Juanaflippa thought she could feel some drops of water onto her head, and hugged her father tighter. She knew it wasn't raining.

Wind whistled past Juanaflippa’s ears, stinging her cheeks with the cold. Waves crashed against the shore distantly.

Her father stood up, releasing her, “Flippa, were you.. alone? Out here?” He looked at her, concerned.

She started writing on another sign, her braids swinging behind her in the wind.

“Y3s, but 1t’s 0k@yy!!1 1 kn3w y0u u w0uld c0m3 b@ckk k!1!!” She smiled as she held it up, tear tracks shining on her face.

He looked distraught. “I’m so sorry, 'Flippa. Fuck, I’m– shit.”

“1t’s 0k@y, r3@llyy y!!1” Her inked words tried to reassure after a moment of pencil sketching.

Her father held her hand, and began walking back towards the house. “What did you do while I was gone?”

Juanaflippa pulled out a sign as they walked, writing on it the whole way to their house. She knew what she wouldn't mention. Talking about it would probably just make him sad, anyways.

“1 m@d3 s0m3 s’m0r3s 0n3 t1m3!!1! Th3y w3r3 v3ry g00d :)” She displayed faux-proudly. Juanaflippa liked to think she was a good actress.

“You made s’mores? Damn, Flippa, I might have to ask you to make me some, sometime.” Slime replied, walking through the front door she forgot to close and making his way into the kitchen.

“So, now that I'm back, I can make you breakfast!” Her father said, his hands on his hips as he looked at her.

Juanaflippa tilted her head as she wrote on another sign. “Y0u h@v3 s0m3 bl00d 0n y0ur cl0th3ss ss. ” She wasn't really one to talk, she could feel the grass stains on her knees, but it's not like she was going to be the one making breakfast. Bloodstains are worse than grass stains, anyway.

He read the sign, before defending, “I can still make breakfast in bloody clothes!”

She stared at him, before shrugging as she wrote something quickly. “1f y0u s@y s0!!1!1” Juanaflippa didn't really care all too much about eating a blood covered breakfast, but she's been informed that it might give her away if she didn't care.

Sitting down on a chair, she kicked her feet back and forth as her father moved around the kitchen.

“So, what're ‘ya thinking?” Slime asks, opening some cabinets and drawers.

Juanaflippa quickly sketches on a sign. “N0T C3R3@L!!1! !”

Her eye twitches at the thought of another bowl of bland cereal. She's only been eating it the past two weeks because it's the only breakfast food she knows how to make safely. Turns out it's difficult to flip pancakes with a slightly burned hand, she learned with the experience of a failed attempt and the smell of smoke wafting through the air.

Her father raises an eyebrow for a moment at the outburst, but accepts it pretty easily with a shrug. “Alright, not cereal, then. Uh, we have waffles, pancakes, some avocado toast! I know you love that, Flippa. Uh, some bacon–”

She cuts him off with the sound of her pencil scribbling on a sign, presenting the sign with a wide grin.

It read, “B@c0n, pl3@s3!!1!”

Slime looks at her with an indiscernible, vaguely pained expression on his face. Yes, she knows the real Juanaflippa was vegan, but bacon just tastes good! You can't really blame her.

“..Sure. Sure, Flippa.” Her father replied with an uneasy, half-hearted smile on his face and a more mellow tone, turning around to grab the frozen meat from the fridge.

He opens up the bag of it, before grabbing a pan from a cabinet and placing it on the stovetop. He turns the knobs until a small flame sparks underneath the pan, pouring a bit of vegetable oil on it, before grabbing the frosty bacon and scattering it across the warming surface of the aforementioned pan.

Juanaflippa pulls out a sketchpad while they both wait for the bacon to cook, her father talking about what happened while he was gone.

“–but Bad just could not, like, stop spawnkilling Jaiden and me for even a second? And then after a bit, Étoiles and Roier showed up and–” Slime rambled, before being cut off by the sound of sizzling.

He turned around, flipping the bacon quickly with a spatula, before turning back to face her. Her tongue stuck out in concentration as she tried to scribble the events he told her.

“Oh, can I see?” Slime asked, walking around to peer at her curiously.

She nodded, and held up the unfinished creation proudly. She so far had put a lot of effort into the crossed out eyes and sticking out tongues of her father’s and Tia Jaiden’s bodies.

Her father smiled, barely stifling a snort, and her eyes narrowed as he began to speak hurriedly. “Holy shit, Juanaflippa! Great fuckin' work, no other huevo could draw mine and Jaiden's bodies so, uh. Accurately.” He assured quickly as he nodded, ruffling her hair with a fond smile and a genuine tone.

She smiled, not fooled. Yes, maybe the corpses looked a little cartoonish and kinda maybe just stick figures actually, now that she thinks about it, but it's not her fault that their bodies just looked that way! ..It's okay if he was gonna laugh a little at the drawing, though, Juanaflippa thinks, just as long as he was here to see it.

A sharper, louder sizzling passed her ears, and her father turned around to check on the bacon. He turned off the stovetop, before picking up the tongs and grabbing the bacon, placing some on a plate.

He slid the plate and a fork over to her, before placing a fork and the remaining bacon on another plate, presumably for him.

Slime sat down at the table, silverware in hand. “Order up!”

Juanaflippa grinned, and dug in. Finally, something that wasn't cereal for breakfast, and homemade, too.

Her father started eating as well, and only wind whistling past the windows could be heard as they dined.

Eventually, their forks scraped against their empty plates. She picked up her plate, before dumping it in the sink. Her father followed, before looking at the piled up bowls in it, right next to their newly added plates.

“Well, that's a lot of bowls.” Slime noticed plainly, raising a hand to his chin.

Juanaflippa scribbled on a sign quickly, her mouth twitching downward into a frown for a brief moment, “S0rryy y, 1 d1dn’tt t kn0w h0w w t0 d0 th3 d1sh3ss s.. .” A frowny face was scribbled next to the end of the image.

“It’s alright!” Her father consoled, smiling, “Probably won't even take that long to do.”

“0k@yy y1!!!1” She wrote, smiling back at him after a moment.

“So, 'Flippa, got any tasks today?” Slime asked, resting his chin on his hand. An unbandaged cut on his palm smeared blood across his jaw, staining it red.

Her brows furrowed, writing quickly, “Sh0uldn’tt t y0u uu t@k3 c@r3 0f th0s3 1njur13ss s?? ?”

“..Huh, yeah, I guess I probably should.” Her father realizes, proceeding to sit still and drum his fingers against the table idly. He looked to be getting lost in thought.

Juanaflippa stares blankly at him.

“..What?” Slime asks, raising an eyebrow confusedly. A cut on his cheek seeped blood on the wooden surface of the table as he spoke, a steady drip-drip-drip reaching her ears.

She writes rapidly, “@r3 y0u g01ngg g t0?? ?? ?”

Her father blinks. “Oh, right, yeah, sure.” He gets up from the table, rummaging through some chests before finally his hand emerges with some bandages and a health potion.

She sits at the table, flipping her pencil through her fingers absentmindedly as her father wraps the bandages around his wounds before drinking the potion.

“Alright, I should be good now. What were your tasks, Flippa? Do you.. have any?” Slime inquired, tilting his head.

Juanaflippa thought for a moment, a realization coming to her mind. ..She didn't really HAVE to write the tasks in her book. Surely it’d be fine if she didn't have any for just one day...

She shook her head, refusing to elaborate any more.

Her father looked curious, but seemed to accept the answer.

“Alright.. is there anything you want to do?” Slime asks.

She thinks again, for a second.

She shakes her head. She doesn't really care what they do all that much, she'd go fishing at this point if it just meant she’d be spending time with her father.

Slime looks at her. “..Alright. I know you probably want to see all your tios and tias, now that we're back, but maybe we could just.. stay home today, Flippa? I just– I haven't seen you in so long, and–”

Juanaflippa doesn't think she's even thought once about her tios and tias today since her father came back. She remembers once wanting just someone, anyone, to visit her, but now that her father's here, she doesn't care about anything else.

She nods quickly. Half of her tios and tias are getting too skeptical of her anyways, it would probably be best for her to stay away from them.

“Okay! What do you wanna do?” Her father asks, adjusting his glasses with a bandaged index finger.

“Hmmmmmmmm mm.. . … ..” She writes, getting lost in thought as she presents the sign.

Juanaflippa remembers spotting a flower field on one of her walks around the island. Poppies and lilies covered the grass, with dandelions and daisies scattered around. (She remembers picking up a dandelion and blowing the seeds away in the wind, making a wish for her father to come back.)

Shaking herself from the memory, she writes, “1 f0und th1ss c00l fl0w3rr r f13ld wh1l3 y0uu u w3r3 g0n3!!1”

Slime reads the sign, and smiles, “'Flippa, that sounds amazing! Do you wanna go there?”

Writing on a sign once more, she grins. “Y3S SS!!!!1!11!” Holding up the sign, she jumps up and down. The flowers would be prettier with somebody there to see them with her.

“Alright, let's go!” Slime says, taking a step forward confidently before stopping abruptly. “Oh, shit. 'Flippa, do you have any food? I ran out.”

She quickly hands him some avocado toast, before walking to the front door eagerly. Standing in front of it, she waits for him to follow, tapping a foot on the hardwood floor impatiently.

“Thanks. Alright, you ready?” Her father asks. She nods quickly, and he walks forward, opening the front door.

She follows after him before running in front to show him the way, skipping happily along the grass as her father walks next to her. She smiles with her eyes closed behind her glasses when they reach the flower field, and she thinks he smiles back. They pick flowers and run around playfully until the sun goes down, and Juanaflippa feels happy, even when they have to go home eventually.

Juanaflippa is not alone when she goes to bed that night. The taste of a hot, homemade dinner lingers on her tongue, and the memories of their conversations as they waited for it to cook echoes in her mind. She smiles.

A new lullaby rings in her ears as her head lays on a pillow, her father’s voice humming and singing a sweet tune. She thinks that it must be what love sounds like, and that is her last thought before she falls asleep, her father resting on the floor next to her.

Juanaflippa does not miss her father. Why would she when he's right here?