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The Mushroom Kingdom was the same as it always was.
It was a relief to find that, despite Mario, Luigi, Peach, and plenty of Toads disappearing for quite some time as they went through their adventure in Concordia, their home was still safely waiting for them upon their return - most likely since Bowser and his minions were also unavailable to try and attack during their absence.
Everyone that had stayed behind had celebrated the return of their princess and heroes with plenty of enthusiasm, wanting to hear the stories of what amazing journey they had gone through this time. As the days passed, things eventually calmed down, settling into their old, usual routine. Bowser’s attempted kidnappings included (though, of course, the Super Mario Bros were quick to defeat him and send him on his way).
It was a beautiful, sunny day, and Mario was walking down the road from Toad Town to his and his brother’s house, Luigi by his side.
While he was one to always embrace any new adventure, always giving it his all, Mario couldn’t deny what a relief it was to finally be back home. To sleep in his own bed, sit in his own living room and eat Luigi’s home cooking, to look out through his window and see the familiar sight of the Mushroom Kingdom, with Peach’s Castle in the distance.
He loved traveling and meeting new people - but few things were better than returning to the place where he belonged.
Still, there was something odd, something Mario couldn’t quite shake; he glanced at Luigi, who seemed to be perfectly at ease, glancing distractedly at the flowers on the side of the road.
He knew better, though.
Something was going on with his little brother. He wasn’t acting like his usual self. It was small enough that Mario had been inclined to let it go at first, could actually have believed when Luigi insisted he was fine, he was probably still just tired from their adventure, is all.
But it had been a few weeks already, and despite having plenty of time to rest, every now and then Mario would look at his brother and his chest would twist uncomfortably with worry in a way that he couldn’t explain properly. There was something wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. And he was decidedly not happy with that.
Distracted by his own thoughts, it took Mario a second to realize when Luigi suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“Luigi?” he turned in place to see his brother standing completely still, staring with wide eyes at the empty space in front of him. Eyebrows furrowing in concern, Mario walked back to him. “Luigi, what’s wrong?” Mario asked, reaching for his shoulder.
The contact seemed to shake Luigi out of the state he was in. He looked at Mario, who couldn’t help but notice the panic in his brother’s eyes. “Sorry, Mario,” he stuttered. “I… thought I’d seen a shadow there.”
“A shadow?” Mario asked, turning to follow Luigi’s gaze. The sky was clear and they were on an open road; there wasn’t really anything nearby that could make a shadow on the ground. “Maybe it was a bird or something?”
Luigi didn’t seem reassured. He took a few cautious steps forward, raising a shaky hand and holding it out in front of him, as if expecting it to touch something at any moment. Mario waited, holding his breath.
There was nothing but empty air.
“... Weegee?” Mario called quietly, stepping towards his brother again.
Luigi dropped his hand. Shaking his head, he turned to give Mario a shaky smile. “Sorry! Guess I was wrong,” he chuckled nervously.
“You don’t think there are any ghosts around here, do you?” Mario asked, looking around as if he could see them, too. “It’s the middle of the day, surely they wouldn’t…?”
But Luigi was already shaking his head again. “Nope, no ghosts! It was nothing, bro. I’m… sure it was nothing,” he repeated. “Let’s just go home?”
Mario wanted to push it further, but a single glance at the sheer desperation in his brother’s eyes made him drop it. “... yeah, let’s go home.”
They continued walking, the peaceful mood from earlier now shattered beyond repair.
Mario itched to keep asking what was wrong, to find out what was bothering his brother. He didn’t know why Luigi wasn’t trusting him enough to share whatever was troubling him since they returned from Concordia - and that thought left him with a hurt of his own, too.
He kept an eye on his brother for the rest of the day, but nothing of the sort happened again.
Still, Luigi stayed on edge. Every now and then, Mario would catch him staring intently at the same spot for minutes at a time, as if waiting for something to happen; or he’d jump and turn his head suddenly as if he’d spotted movement in the corners of his eyes. Every time, he’d reassure Mario it was nothing, he just thought he’d seen something but it was nothing, Mario knew Luigi was always jumpy anyway, was there anything specific he’d want to eat for dinner tonight?
Mario played along, for now. But they both knew it was just a matter of time until he stopped allowing Luigi to avoid the issue.
Muffled noises coming from downstairs woke him up.
Mario opened his eyes to a dark room. Not as dark as it would have been if it was the middle of the night - the sun was probably going to rise soon. To add to the strangeness of the scene, the room was also more silent than it was supposed to be; there was no light snoring filling the air. Turning his head, Mario confirmed that the second bed was empty, and Luigi was nowhere to be seen.
There was more shuffling coming from below. He was probably downstairs, then; maybe he went to get a cup of water for himself, or even decided to start the day early. It wasn’t unheard of.
Under normal circumstances, Mario would just close his eyes and go back to sleep.
But his chest was uncomfortably tight, so much that he had to concentrate to be able to take a deep breath. It was like every cell in his body was screaming with agitation. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with Luigi.
And that thought woke him up the rest of the way, sending him stumbling out of bed and towards the stairs.
The lights in the kitchen and the living room were on. Luigi was standing there, his back to the stairs. His shoulders were stiff, and it looked like he was staring at something in his hands.
“Luigi?” Mario called softly, his voice barely above a whisper.
It was still enough to make his brother jump. Luigi turned around, allowing Mario to see his eyes wide with fear and the faint tear tracks going down his cheeks. His brother was shaking like a leaf, his hands holding a camera with so much force it looked like he was trying to crush it in his grip.
The camera, Mario noticed, was on and recording.
“Luigi!” Mario shouted, his panic now mirroring his brother’s. He jumped down the few remaining steps and rushed to him, only stopping when Luigi actually flinched at his sudden approach. “What’s going on? Are you okay?!”
Luigi shook his head. “It’s-”
“Don’t say it’s nothing again!” Mario cut him off. “Please, Luigi. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know there's something bothering you. You know you can always talk to me; I want to help. Please,” he asked, unable to keep his voice from shaking.
They stared at each other in silence for a second that, to Mario, took way too long to pass.
Finally, Luigi’s face crumpled.
“I… I thought I heard him,” he whispered, his eyes filling with tears once more. “I had a nightmare, and when I woke up, I thought I could still hear him laughing, a-and I had to come look.”
“Who?” Mario asked, stepping slowly towards his brother, reaching out for him again - Luigi didn’t move away this time. Mario's heart was hammering inside his chest, but he had to keep himself together. “Who did you hear?”
But Luigi merely shook his head again, shutting his eyes tightly enough that a tear escaped and slid down his cheek. He was shaking bad enough that he was probably going to end up dropping the camera soon.
Noticing that, Mario took his hands gently and tried to pull the camera from him.
Almost immediately, Luigi’s grip on it tightened even more. “No!” he nearly shouted, taking a step back and clutching it to his chest. “No, we need this! If- if he’s really here, then we- we-” he couldn’t finish the sentence.
Mario stared, wide-eyed at his brother’s outburst. “Weegee… please, talk to me,” Mario pleaded. He reached for his hands again, this time merely holding them, trying futilely to keep his worry from going overboard. “What was your nightmare about? Why do you think there’s someone here? Who did you-?”
His mouth fell shut mid-sentence.
Slowly, Mario’s eyes fell to the camera once again, and everything clicked.
“... Reclusa,” Luigi whispered, having seen the understanding in Mario’s face and knowing it was pointless to deny it further.
It took a moment for Mario’s brain to recover from the stutter. “He… what?” He tried to look at Luigi, but his brother was looking down at their intertwined hands. “Luigi, Reclusa is gone. We defeated him-”
“But what if we didn’t?” Luigi asked suddenly, his raised voice seeming to echo through their little house. “What if this, all of this, is just another trick? When we got caught by those flowers, when we were in his fake Mushroom Kingdom first, we didn’t even question it until Snoutlet said something, so how do we know that this-”
His voice broke alongside Mario’s heart. “Luigi…” he muttered, gently raising his hands to cup his brother’s face, wiping away the tears with his thumbs.
Luigi leaned into the touch, his lip wobbling, and he took a deep breath before finally managing to whisper, “how do we know that this is real?...”
As if verbalizing the fear that had been torturing him for weeks had suddenly sapped away all his strength, the camera slipped from Luigi’s hands, clattering to the floor right before his knees buckled. Mario followed him down, and all he could think to do was pull his brother into a hug, trying to give him as much comfort as he could. Luigi returned it, wrapping his arms tightly around him.
“I-I can’t stop thinking about it, ever since we came back,” he said, his voice muffled by virtue of his face being pressed into Mario’s shoulder. “Because Reclusa was there, trying to adjust our world so that we’d be satisfied, s-so maybe this was him getting it right. Us escaping, defeating him, coming back - what if everything was just him showing us what we wanted to see to lower our guards? What if we’re still there, still being held by those flowers, and all of Concordia was destroyed already and we’re never really going home?” he choked on a sob. “What if we failed?”
Mario couldn’t help but hold his brother tighter. “You… you’ve been worrying about this the whole time?...” he whispered. Luigi’s strange behavior suddenly started to make sense; Mario realized, to his absolute horror, that his little brother had been looking for signs that this happy ending had been nothing but an illusion, unable to fully believe his own reality. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was scared,” Luigi’s voice was nearly a whine. “I-I was scared that if I let on I knew what was going on, then everything would start falling apart again. That everything was going to end,” he tried to explain between muffled sobs.
Mario tried opening his mouth, but found that words were failing him.
Truth be told, he had tried to avoid thinking about the fake Mushroom Kingdom ever since they escaped it. The experience had unnerved him. To be trapped in a loop where things were just a little too perfect to be true, to touch and interact with objects that weren’t supposed to be there; to feel Reclusa’s presence and taunts as that monster warped reality around the two of them, to watch the world shatter piece by piece the more they understood that it was never real to begin with.
The sheer sense of wrongness that he’d felt the whole time they were there had been enough to make him sick.
… except it hadn’t really been the whole time. At first, when he found himself and Luigi back home and everyone was telling him that it was over, Mario had believed them. It felt real. He’d been relieved, and happy, and he thought that they’d actually be able to rest then.
He and Luigi had been tricked once. Was it so hard to believe that they could be tricked again? Maybe Luigi was right, maybe they were still there, still apart from each other, with Reclusa having won and all their friends from Concordia long dead. And they’d never be able to tell before they died, too.
Mario flinched violently from the thought, trying to purge it from his mind. No. No, he couldn’t allow himself to go down that route. He focused on the feeling of his brother still in his arms, still shaking and crying quietly; on the night sky starting to turn into day that he could see through their windows, on the sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom waking up outside. This was real. This had to be real. And he had to find a way to prove it to Luigi - and to himself.
His first thought was going to Peach - but he almost immediately scrapped it as a bad idea. His mind flashed back to that endless, dark castle hallway, to Peach standing in their way and begging them to stay in the fake Mushroom Kingdom over and over, her smile as fake as her laughter, as fake as her. No, as much as he loved the princess, going to her now probably wouldn’t help, not with the state Luigi was currently in.
Mario racked his brain, desperately searching for something, anything, he could do. Once you’ve experienced a fake world that had the potential to be indistinguishable from reality, how could you prove, beyond any doubt, that something was real?
It was then that the answer hit him, so obvious he shouldn’t have even needed to think about it.
Slowly, Mario leaned back, removing himself from the hug as gently as he could, but still keeping a firm grip on Luigi’s arms. His brother looked horrible - his face still tear-stained, eyes red and puffy and scared and Mario wanted nothing more than to chase away that fear for him.
“Luigi, will you come on a walk with me? I want to show you something,” Mario said.
His eyebrows furrowing in confusion, Luigi stared at him silently for a moment.
“It’s gonna help you,” Mario insisted, moving to take Luigi’s hands and squeeze them gently. “I promise.”
And apparently his word was enough, because his brother’s eyes lost some of their haziness as he managed to escape his own anxious thoughts and focus on Mario. Luigi nodded, returning the squeeze.
“Uh, but can we get dressed first?” he asked, looking down at the pajamas the two of them were still wearing.
With a chuckle, Mario nodded.
By the time the sun properly rose over the horizon, painting the skies of the Mushroom Kingdom in soft pinks and purples, Mario and Luigi were already halfway there. The air was still cool and fresh as the night was slowly chased away by the day, and it made for a pleasant experience to go out on a walk this early in the morning.
Mario hadn’t really told his brother where they were going. They had put on their usual outfits and hats, and after he convinced Luigi to drink a glass of water before leaving, he started leading the way towards their destination, with his brother as always by his side.
“When was the last time you were up early enough to see a sunrise, Mario?” Luigi asked, a hint of teasing to his voice.
Mario huffed. “We can’t all be early birds like you,” he said back. It was at least good that Luigi was a little calmer now, even if he was obviously still troubled.
“Maybe you should try,” Luigi went on. “The early bird gets the worm, you know?”
“And maybe the worm wouldn’t have been gotten by the bird if it had still been sleeping under the ground,” Mario teased back, earning an eye roll from Luigi at the familiar rebuttal.
“So, are you gonna tell me where we’re going, or am I gonna have to guess?”
“I’m gonna be honest, I thought you’d have guessed it already by now,” Mario admitted, “We’ve walked this way plenty of times recently.”
Luigi frowned. “I… haven’t really been paying attention to where we’re going, to be honest. I’m just following you,” he said. “Sorry. Still a little out of it, I guess.”
“Hey, don’t worry,” Mario said softly. “But we’re almost there already.”
After reaching a certain point on the road, Mario turned away from it, and the two brothers went up a large, round hill, the grass crinkling slightly under their boots. At the top of it, they found what Mario was looking for.
A tree sapling that had been planted there recently. It was still small, but it had already grown a little, and it looked healthy enough that it was likely going to continue doing so. At its very top, there was something unusual for a tree - a small lightbulb, its light barely noticeable during daytime, but it was still there, shining steadily.
Luigi gasped once he saw it. “The Uni-Tree sapling we got from Connie?” he turned to Mario. “Is that what you wanted me to see?”
Mario nodded, sitting down next to the tree. He gestured for Luigi to sit across from him, the sapling standing safely between them.
“It’s looking alright, don’t you think?” Mario asked him. “I mean, I don’t know a lot about plants. You’re the expert between the two of us,” he chuckled.
With a small smile, Luigi nodded. “Yeah. I was a little nervous at first - the Uni-Tree back in Concordia has a whole group of people dedicated to caring for it, and we don’t exactly have trained Wattanists here in the Mushroom Kingdom, you know?” he laughed softly. “But we’ve been managing to take good care of it. You, me, Peach, I think even some of the Toads are helping, too.”
“Connie seemed convinced that the tree would flourish here,” Mario said, recalling the last words he’d exchanged with her. “She said that the Uni-Tree’s health reflects the bonds it senses around it. We even got to see some of it back in Shipshape Island. So, with the way we all care for each other, she was sure the tree would be fine,” Mario said softly.
Luigi nodded. “I hope she was right,” he whispered, raising a hand to brush it slightly against one of the sapling’s leaves. The tree wavered with the gentle breeze, seeming almost like it was leaning into the touch.
Mario smiled at his brother for a moment, before it slowly slipped from his face. He took a deep breath, preparing to breach the subject they couldn’t really ignore. “When… when Reclusa used those flowers to create the illusion of a perfectly happy world for us, it seemed fine at first. Certainly good enough to get us, and everyone else, fooled for a while.”
At his side, he felt Luigi tense again; he looked away, drawing his legs close and hugging his knees to his chest.
“But it was all superficial,” Mario went on. “There was no depth to it. Not to that illusion of Peach, or to the fake Mushroom Kingdom - it was just a bad caricature of everything we loved. Reclusa… couldn’t understand what was truly important to us. What made us the way we are.”
Luigi tilted his head slightly to look at his brother, a fragile hope shining in his eyes. “He could have gotten better,” he mumbled. “Reclusa tried over and over to make that illusion world perfect. Maybe he fine-tuned it enough that he-”
“Luigi, can you give me your hands?” Mario interrupted that line of thought, reaching out with both hands to his brother.
Startling a bit, it took a moment for him to move from his curled position - but Luigi eventually reached back, his hands holding tightly onto Mario’s, their arms on each side of the Uni-Tree sapling.
The reaction was almost instant.
The light on top of the little tree got brighter, just slightly; and their hands started glowing as well, a familiar golden glow that seemed to glisten with colorful particles. It dimmed after a second, but still remained barely visible. Their hands tingled at the warm sensation, one that they’d experienced plenty of times during their stay in Concordia.
Luigi simply stared at their hands with wide eyes, as if expecting something else to happen. Nothing did. They were aware that the peaceful morning simply continued to go on around them, but as far as their thoughts went, it was like the world ended on that hill, with the two of them and that little sapling.
Mario tightened his grip slightly. “The bonds between people… we’ve always known that they exist; but to me, it was always more a matter of feelings than something ‘real’, in a sense. But this… seeing the connection between the two of us as something visible, something tangible, this energy that can be directed and used for good things - it made me strangely… happy, you know? To be able to look at this and think ‘yeah, this is us’.”
Slowly, Luigi nodded. “I feel the same. Even if seeing it like this was a bit strange at first.”
“And… I don’t know how to put it into words, really,” Mario said. “There was never any doubt to me that the bond we share was real. It has always been the most important thing in my life. But, seeing it like this, I guess it makes it… not more real, but…”
“Real in a different way,” Luigi completed the thought. “There is a difference between knowing that the way we love each other is real and us opening a whole portal to another world when we hold hands, Mario.”
Mario laughed, drawing a small chuckle out of Luigi, too.
“... Reclusa didn’t understand this,” Mario said. “It was incapable of it. To the very end, it just couldn’t understand how important bonds are, how they make us strong - how they make us better.” He paused for a moment, looking up at his brother. “I think, if this was his illusion world, if we were still trapped in those flowers, he wouldn’t have bothered to create this as a way to fool us,” he gestured at their hands. “Wouldn’t have known to. Wouldn’t have understood enough past the most superficial level to know that this is something that matters.”
With every word, Mario could see the fear in his brother’s face dimming slightly, being replaced by the same realization he’d been hit with earlier. It made his heart settle, his chest filling with relief.
“We’re here, Weegee. We’re real,” he whispered, reaching for Luigi’s face and bringing their foreheads together. The glow on their hands didn’t go away. “Our connection is real. And this Uni-Tree sapling is real.”
“... and Connie giving it to us was real,” Luigi went on, finally reaching the point Mario wanted him to get to. “And everything else was real, too. Reclusa… Reclusa isn’t here. We beat him.”
“We did,” Mario agreed. “We did it together. We saved Concordia. And now we’re here.”
Luigi sighed - a heavy, relieved sigh, as if he was expunging all of his worries and anxiety from his lungs. “We are,” he whispered.
If there was anything - in this world, in all the worlds, in every single universe out there - that Mario and Luigi could believe in, it was in each other, and the bond they shared. Nothing could simulate it. And nothing could ever be more real. Just like the light of the Uni-Tree, it would always show them the way, and it would always guide them home.
It took a moment for them to be willing to separate. Luigi sat back on the grass, more at ease than Mario had seen him in a while - he looked up at the now bright blue sky above them, a gentle smile on his face.
“Thank you, Mario,” he said softly.
“It’s nothing,” Mario said back, feeling himself finally able to relax, too. “I think I needed some reassurance, too. But at the end of the day, there’s no reason for us to worry.” He looked up as well. “Our success was relying on the strength of our bond. There was just no way we were going to lose.”
Luigi laughed. “You’re right,” he grinned. With a stretch, he let himself fall backwards, laying down on the soft grass, his hands behind his head.
Mario followed his lead. The Uni-Tree stayed between them, looking as healthy as ever. A tangible connection they still had with their friends in Concordia.
“Do you think they’re all doing well?” Luigi asked, as if he’d been reading Mario’s thoughts.
Mario nodded without hesitation. “I know they are. The danger is over, and we saw Concordia put back together,” he said. “I’m sure they’re all living their best lives.”
“... do you think they miss us?” Luigi asked again, his voice considerably quieter.
“I’m sure they do. Some of them didn’t even want to let us leave,” Mario chuckled softly. “Do you miss them?”
Luigi nodded quietly, raising a hand to pull the brim of his hat down a little. He still hadn’t gotten used to how light it felt without Snoutlet hiding away there.
“... Peach misses the IDLE kids like crazy,” Mario said, keeping his gaze upwards. “She’s afraid of wearing the scarf they gave her outside in case she loses it, but she told me she keeps it in her wardrobe, so she can see it every time she opens the door. I think she mentioned wanting to make a painting of them soon, so she wouldn’t risk forgetting their faces. And he may not be around, but I know for a fact Bowser Junior is missing Buddy, too.”
“And you?” Luigi asked, clearly not looking past the fact that Mario hadn’t said anything about his own feelings in the matter yet.
In response, Mario hummed thoughtfully, bringing his hands together so he could fiddle with his knitted gloves - the ones Connie had made for him and Luigi during their journey. “I think I couldn’t talk about how much I miss everyone there without keeping us here all day,” he chuckled. “Shipshape really became a home away from home.”
“It did,” Luigi nodded. “Connie is gonna grow up to be a great Wattanist, isn’t she?”
“The very best,” Mario said. “Concordia is in good hands with her.”
The sapling next to them seemed to be humming softly, almost singing with energy. It was enough to reassure the two brothers even further. They could be worlds apart now, but one thing was certain - their bonds with the friends they made back in Concordia were also real, and if it was up to them, they’d last for a very long time.
“Mario,” Luigi pushed himself to sit up again. “Ready to head back?”
“Are you?” Mario stood up as well. “Feeling better now?”
Luigi nodded. “I am. I want to enjoy being back home.”
Mario grinned. “That’s what I like to hear! You wanna go visit Peach?”
“Oh yeah! Let’s-a go!”
The sun was shining, the adventure was over, and a whole new day was waiting for them. They were together - and everything was alright.