Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Hey, this one seems normal. At least I'm not an animal this time around."

"Oh, I'm a fairy again!" Zoe giggles.

"And so am I," Mio observes, looking back at her wings and fluttering them. "This is kind of cool."

"Isn't it?" Zoe agrees.

Mio takes in the surroundings of the Side Story they've just entered, and what seems to be a well lived-in house. "Is this… fine china?" She presses a hand to the flowery, blue and white porcelain walls surrounding them, and when she looks up, she sees the shape of a teapot. There's a window and door shape cut expertly into the side of it, however, letting light through.

"Oh!" Zoe realizes: "This must be another story that Ella and I came up with. I remember this teapot. We were bored over summer, visiting our grandparents on their ranch, so we used to make little houses out of things in their kitchen and imagine there were fairies living in their garden. I must say, this looks a lot nicer than what we did though."

"Of course your grandparents live on a ranch," Mio jabs playfully, and then relents, "but that's cute. Anything we have to watch out for in this side story?"

"Well, there are evil garden gnomes."

"All right," Mio cheers. "Time to go kick some gnome ass."

"So violent!" Zoe exclaims, and then goes on an impassioned rant. "They're actually very misunderstood. They just want to be friends with the fairies, but end up scaring them off, and the fairies hate them because the gnome leader crushed the fairy monarch when they were about to begin trade talks, and then a long war started between the two races… I know this all sounds very bad, but the point is that they didn't mean to."

"Okay, hold on. Did you say war? Crushed?"

"…Yep. I mean, garden gnomes are like giants to fairies. And there is a war going on, but that's mostly in the home realm. We're just migrants who've settled down in a human's domain; we come from a line of fairy godmothers, so we tend to do that. Of course, we still technically do carry deep-rooted predjudices against garden gnomes."

"Ugh. So how do the fairies fight back? Please tell me we have magical fairy powers or something."

"We do! All fairies have types of magic, and fairy godmothers specifically have wish magic! This is so exciting to see with my own eyes. Okay, so, the magic depends on a couple things like the strength of the desire and intent of the wish. And of course, nothing ethically wrong or crazy like murder. In other words, let's say Rader for example, would probably really really want his machine to be fixed, but since he's a very bad man intending to do very bad things with the machine, he wouldn't get shit. And—"

"I wish for a billion dollars," Mio blurts.

Nothing happens.

"I was getting to that! You can't wish for things for yourself. I'd have to wish for you, my dearest friend, who wouldn't use the money for evil, nefarious things, to get a billion dollars."

Mio looks with hope in her eyes, waiting for money to materialize in front of her.

"…Anddddd I can't give you a billion dollars anyways, because billionaires are unethical. Sorry."

"Damn it. Can I get… fifty thousand?"

There's a bright shining light, pink and rainbow sparkly hues, and when it dies down, there's a pile of small berries at their feet.

Zoe laughs. "Fairy money!"

"It was worth a try." Mio sighs. "So, are we going to have to overcome our biases against gnomes? Maybe fight in the war?"

"I guess we'll see; I had a lot of ideas tied to this world."

"This seems pretty well thought out for a child. Did you go back and flesh it out?"

"Yeah, when I was looking through my drafts to send to Rader, I dug this one out of an old journal. I didn't really plan to submit it—seemed too childish, you know? But I was drawn to it and just ended up writing more for it… Thinking about Ella, probably."

Mio smiles gently. "You should finish it, when we get out of here."

"I just might." Zoe smiles back. "Okay, enough standing around. Let's get to it. Machine to destroy and all that."

Mio nods, and they both get up, working together to roll the stone (acting as their door) away from the entrance.

Outside, the world is chilly and the sky is a dreary gray; Zoe and Mio draw further into themselves, preserving warmth. Bright orange and yellow leaves cover the ground beneath them. There's a fence of sticks surrounding their teapot, and a few acorns piled up near it.

"Ella and I always used to write letters to the fairies in the hut. I wonder…" She studies the acorn with focus.

Confused, Mio stands by and watches as Zoe cracks open the large acorn with surprising ease, and an advert for a pixie cleaning service falls out.

"The only way to stay connected to the news of the home realm is by squirrel mail transported in acorns." She digs around inside, upper body disappearing within it, and returns with a newspaper. "Mhm. There's a war alright."

As Zoe reads, Mio looks at the cover image of the newspaper: a giant gnome footprint and a destroyed fairy home in the indent of it. Cringing, she moves on to the rest of the papers in the acorns, and digs out advertisement after advertisment from some treasure… trolls (they might be goblins; she's unsure) trying to sell their wares. "Seems like a lot of junk."

"Yeah… I guess there's nothing like the letters we wrote in here." Zoe sighs, and puts the newspaper back, sifting around inside the pile again. "Oh? What's this?" Her voice echoes through the acorn.

She steps out to show Mio a fancy letter, sealed in wax and an envelope.

"You think it has something to do with finishing this Side Story?"

"Maybe." Zoe replies, and gets to opening it.

"That font just screams pretentious." Mio comments, trying to make sense of the swirls and loops and flourishes in the fancy cursive script.

"It's pretty, is what it is." Zoe sniffs. "You should appreciate fine arts like calligraphy."

"See? Pretty pretentious." Mio rolls her eyes. "Fantasy authors."

Zoe rolls her eyes too, and moves on. "Look, it's an invitation of some sorts. Uh, to the…" She squints, "Royal Ball?"

"Huh. That's… unexpected. Unless we're the fairy godmothers trying to help a princess be freed from her evil stepmother in order to get to the ball?" Mio speculates, and turns to Zoe.

"I remember it now. This isn't even a story I revised, I think! This is one from… so long ago. It's a bit cute looking back on it, but… It's about Ella's crush on some boy at our school. It was probably only third grade—so not that serious at all, but we imagined he was the fairy prince, and our goal was for her to woo him and end up married with a happily-ever-after."

"Wow. Even fairy godmothers get romance stories in a fantasy world?"

"I know. Interesting, isn't it? And um, you might not want to hear this, but…"

"…Zoe…?"

"Since I'm, obviously, well, me. And you're, obviously… errr… Ella."

"…What? Just tell—Oh God, Zoe!" Primal fear crawls up Mio's back.

"Have fun charming the prince!"

Chapter Text

"Zoeeeee! You should not be this smug about this. Stop. Laughing!"

"Okay, okay. Calm down," Zoe says, but she's the one who needs the time to stop laughing and settle.

Once she's recovered her composure, she starts plotting their next move: "So, the gala tonight is technically only for royalty. That means we're going to have to dress the part to convince them."

"Why do we have this, then?" Mio asks, shaking around the invitation.

"Let's just say I know a squirrel or two."

"Oh, sneaky." Mio smirks. "Can we just wish our way there or something?"

"We can get there with wish magic easily now that we know where it's being held—the hard part is what we're going to wear. The area around the palace has magical disruption because of the Prince's destruction magic, so if we take something in that's made by our wish magic, it'll dissappear."

"Are you telling me we have to sew our own clothes like Cinderella?" Mio looks slightly stricken.

Zoe makes an excited noise. "Oh that would be fun, wouldn't it, probably a bit hard to manage with how tiny we are though... But no, our grandmother used to help us make clothes for the fairies, so there should be outfits in our bedroom we can use."

Mio stares up at the impossibly tall house. "Is your room on the first floor by any chance?"

"Nope. But we can do it. C'mon! We're fairies!" Zoe starts flying up, reaching down to Mio. "Let's go."

She tentatively starts flapping her wings until she's up, soaring higher, balanced by Zoe's hands in her own. They float slow and steady towards the open window of the second floor, and soon enough Mio's won over. "This is kind of fun actu—"

"Mio!" Zoe cries as they're separated by a heavy gust of wind.

The two spin out, going round and round in undeterminable directions, unable to right themselves until the wind stops howling.

From the top of a tall bush, Mio calls: "Zoe?! Where are you?!"

"Over here!" She responds, perched atop a flower petal.

"Seems like we'll have to fly and then ground ourselves when the wind blows!"

"Got it!"

The two go on different paths, trying to make their way to the second floor window propped open by a small wooden dowel.

Mio goes from the tall bush down to a mailbox—painted with the Foster family's handprints—then jumps to a part of a long perimeter fence and in-between it's posts, taking refuge on one of the slats when the wind picks up again. She goes from post to post like that, until she reaches the garden edge.

She looks around, trying to figure out where she needs to go. Maybe through the field of flowers? But then suddenly, something red and amorphous nearby begins to move, and with a start Mio realizes that they're all small red hats.

Garden gnomes. There were garden gnomes right in front of her this whole time. She hadn't really processed them, just used to them being part of the environment as decorations.

Judging the distance between the fence and where she needs to go, she aims for the top of the garden gnome's heads, and jumps from one another until she can climb up a tall porch light, and further still by quickly flying to a gutter at the base of the roof after she waits for the wind to start up and slow down again.

"Nice, Mio!" Zoe says, seeing it all unfold. She had already jumped between several different flowers, hunching in their pollenated middles and grasping on for dear life when the wind got heavier. Getting a move on, she finds her way up rusty nails (where her grandparent's Easter wall decor is currently hanging) buried in the side of a wooden porch beam, looking down at the garden gnomes with wonder as they pass by with great thuds.

She grapples from the screws to beams on the roof, and finally reaches the roof's gutter where Mio is waiting, shooting relieved smiles at each other.

There's nothing but the long expanse of the roof between them and the window, so the two have no choice but to fly as fast possible to the window, before the wind picks up too much. Together, they wait for the wind to pass, and then take off flying, flapping their wings as fast as possible, with all their might, to the open window.

"Mio! Hurry!"

"I am!" She shouts as they finally go tumbling through the window and straight into Zoe and Ella's guest bedroom, bouncing off of the bed and sailing through the air, trajectory aiming them to roll safely on the ground.

But Zoe quickly recognizes their next rapidly approaching problem: a pile of Lego bricks left strewn about, much bigger than usual and just as sharp and deadly.

"Mioooooo! Fly, Mio!!" Zoe swerves up swiftly while attempting to pull Mio with her, which causes them to tumble onto a desk chair cushion.

The two lay there for a while trying to catch their breath, heaving and exhausted.

"Don't ever talk to me about excessive violence again when you wrote Legos into your story."

"They're not just violent and painful." She defends between breaths. "They're fun too, of course they'd be here."

Still breathing heavily, Mio swings herself up, looking around the room, curious about where Zoe once stayed as a child. After a while, she holds a hand out to lift Zoe up. "Okay, where are we looking?"

Zoe lets out one last heaving breath of air before taking Mio's hand, then looks around the room. "Perfect! It should be right in this desk drawer."

They work together to pull the drawer open, flying up and pulling with all their strength. Inside, among other dolls and toys, are doll clothes and shoes made for ones similar to Zoe and Mio's small size; there are many casual clothing pieces like ripped jeans (to Mio's delight), but they only end up finding two fancy dresses for the ball (to Mio's trepidation).

"Really?" Mio sighs, holding the same pink, frilly gown as Zoe.

"Yeah, well, Ella and I were twins. Everything had to match when we were younger, even our doll clothes…"

"That's not the issue. I just… hate it."

"It's quite impractical. But it's rather cute!"

"I'm all for getting dressed up, but this is not my style."

"Let me guess, your dress up is giant sunglasses and skimpy clothing?"

"When I used to go raving, sure."

"What about when you were a kid? You never played dress up before?"

"At that age I was tossing around a football with my dad. I love him, but he is not the type to play princess with me."

"So you wanted to, then?"

"Maybe. I can't remember."

"You toootally did." Zoe teases then adds, "And there's nothing wrong with that! I would've played with you if we'd known each other."

"…Thanks," Mio replies, slightly pleased. "—I guess."

"And you're in luck, because we're going to be playing princesses for a day anyways! It's almost like we're healing your inner child." Zoe drapes the dress over her front, grasping the skirt part of it in her hand and dancing around with it, spinning circles around a resigned Mio.

"You're pretty hyped about this ball," Mio comments unenthusiastically.

"Of course! I've always dreamed about going on one of those fantasy LARP vacations, y'know? But they're soooo expensive, and I didn't have anyone to go with. This is almost exactly like that, but better. Can you imagine all of the drama there? The food? The people and fantasy races and—ooohh I'm so excited to see it all."

"I'm happy that you're happy." Mio manages to muster up a genuine smile about the ball.

"I have a great idea: we should go put on some makeup too! Dress for the occasion, you know? We just have to go to my grandma's room and break into her collection." Zoe starts flying towards the open doorway, leading Mio with her.

"Oh, joy. What type of makeup?"

"You should just do whatever makes you feel pretty. Your smoky eye will work perfectly if that's what you're feeling, it doesn't really matter though—you'll look wonderful in whatever you decide."

"I was more thinking, what does the prince like? Do you know?"

"Oh… Right." Zoe frowns. "Probably something that matches with your dress then, and maybe a more natural look, though I'm not entirely sure… I think that's what men usually like."

"I can try. I do full glam for going out sometimes, but not usually clean makeup."

"That's impressive. I'm basically just a lipbalm girl. My collection of Lip Smackers is way too large for someone who ends up using the same tub of Vaseline over and over."

"I can help you with your makeup. If you want."

"…Sure," Zoe says after a beat.

"If you want," Mio repeats dubiously.

Zoe smiles goofily. "I do want! I was just surprised you were offering, is all. I will gladly accept master makeup artist Mio's help with my ball transformation for tonight."

"…Okay. Enough of that." Mio shakes her head fondly, exasperated at the excessive praise.

They fly into a new bedroom and land on the vanity, helping each other open the large drawers and drag out makeup palettes, sticks, and pencils.

"I guess we'll just have to use our fingers to blend," Mio asserts. "Alright, you're up first. What're you feeling?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. Maybe just whatever you were planning to do on yourself? If you don't mind matching."

"I don't mind. You'll be my guinea pig then."

They sit down on a sewing cushion and velvety jewelery box nearby the giant vanity mirror, and Mio starts on Zoe's eye makeup. Mio is so close to her, Zoe feels she hardly has space to even breathe.

Zoe hears Mio take a deep breath in and start on her eye makeup. There's nowhere to look besides Mio's face, or somewhere over her shoulder, which she tries a bit failingly to do. Mio is a bit mesmerizing this close, so it's hard to look away. She's usually mesmerizing of course, but it's different now; rather than looking at her sword-work from afar or seeing her fly her dragon, here Zoe can see her concentration, the furrow of her brows, the edges of her already done smokey eye fading away from the day's genre hopping.

Mio's eyes are an interesting shade of brown. Zoe ponders about how she would describe it if she were to write about it. Not regular brown, but lighter where the natural sunlight hits it, and closer to mocha than hazelnut. Pink makeup would suit her well, but Zoe's probably biased, because she can't think of anything that would look bad. She wants to see Mio's full glam suddenly, wants to see Mio in her natural city environment, somehow free as a bird while still being caged by all that city industrialization.

She asks about it then: "Do you still go to music festivals?"

"Not really. I used to go with my friends from high school… but I lost contact with them over time. They just got busy with college, and I just got busy with, you know…"

"We should go some time. Once we get out of here." Zoe asserts, hoping she's not overstepping her boundaries, but saying it anyways.

"We should," Mio agrees so easily, it's like day and night from how she was at the beginning of their adventure. "I can't imagine you in festival clothing though. Or maybe if it's one of those flowy pants and tops. With a corset."

"Like a pirate?"

Mio laughs. It's louder than usual, this close to Zoe. She wants to hear it again, then a hundred more times. "Sure, like a pirate with chunky sunglasses."

"Guess I'll have to do some shopping. I haven't dressed up as a pirate since I was six. For Halloween. And yes, Ella and I were matching."

Mio smiles at this, imagining little Zoe and Ella on Halloween. After a while, Zoe sees her dabbing some powder on her face, and then she says, "Okay, you're all done. What do you think?"

She opens her eyes, swiveling to look in the mirror. "It's lovely Mio! You're so talented! Thank you so much." The person staring back at her in the mirror is sort of unrecognizable, in a good way.

"No problem." Mio smiles softly. "You look great."

Zoe turns back around in her seat, only to suddenly perceive the way Mio is standing sort of above her, slightly bent with one knee propped onto the sewing cushion to gain some stabilization while Mio was doing her makeup. Zoe's boxed in like this, between the mirror and Mio.

Mio moves away with a speed that feels too quick to Zoe, seating herself back on the jewelery box and starting on her own makeup. With Zoe processing and Mio concentrating yet again, a quiet settles over them, not unpleasant, but not as easy as it usually is between them, Zoe feels. She isn't sure how to describe it, other than a very general adjective of weird.

Zoe looks around the room awkwardly, staring down at the pink dress in her lap, not fully committed to wearing it; she settles on watching Mio add more pink to her eyelids and cheeks, all for the sake of the prince, and something like dead settles in her stomach for some reason.

Mio begins to sense the lightly tense air growing between them, so to fend off the awkward energy, she starts: “So, what about this prince guy anyways? What's he like?”

“Interested in your romantic partner, Mio?” Zoe says jokingly, but Mio feels it fall a bit flat.

She plays along anyway. “No! I just need to know how to act to get him to love me.”

In a tone harsher than she'd intended, Zoe recalls: "Not that I can remember much about him, but he seemed nice enough for a third grader. Nice enough that he didn't get lumped in with the whole boys have cooties sentiment. Oh, and a lot of girls liked him too, so he must've been cute at the time. I guess."

"Alright. So he's kind. That's it?"

"He liked reading. I gave him some fantasy recommendations and we talked briefly about some other books as well when we were sat next to each other by our teacher. He did used to get Ella and I mixed up a bunch though. That's it," She sums up, happy to be done talking about him.

"That's more than I remember about anyone I knew in third grade."

"Honestly, I only remember so much about him because Ella was going through a crazy crush phase. She begged me to switch seats with her thinking our teacher wouldn't notice, but I was too scared of breaking the rules," She recounts with much more fondness in her tone.

"So you were the goody two shoes and she was the troublemaker, huh?" Mio remarks, looking away from the vanity mirror and smirking at Zoe for a second.

"Oh yeah. She was much more adventurous than me; I preferred my adventures stay in my books." Zoe laughs, and then quiets. "Honestly, I should've just let her sit there."

"I'm sure she didn't hold it against you."

"Right. Anyways. Sort of on topic but not really: I was thinking—you should really just do your makeup how you want. You don't have to change yourself for him."

"That's kind of against the goal of this side story, isn't it?"

"Well, we just have to finish it. Who knows, maybe marriage isn't even part of the ending anyways?" Zoe reaches.

"Marriage?"

"Whoopsies. Did I forget to mention that plot point? Ella was very set on the fact that happily-ever-afters constitute getting married."

Mio groans, gesturing annoyedly with her cotton swab. "Do we have the time for this? How long are we going to have to be here for me to get married to the guy?"

"Wait. You're right." Zoe beams. "If it's going to take too long, we should just leave now, before we even have to see the prince's face at all. We have glitches to find and a machine to destroy, after all."

"…Are you telling me to give up and let Rader have this idea? Without even seeing your fantasy world too? Who are you and what have you done with the real Zoe?"

"Well, it's just a small childhood idea after all; I wasn't even going to submit it to be published, it's fine if he takes it. What's he going to do with it anyways? And I'm sure other glitches we visit will let us experience plenty of things in my genre."

Mio squints at her suspiciously. "Is it just me, or do you not want to go to this ball anymore?"

"Nooooo." Zoe insists. "Of course I want to go. I said so earlier."

Mio continues giving her an unimpressed look.

Zoe caves quickly. "Okay, fine. So maybe I don't want to go. It's just, if we have to go there at your own expense, then it doesn't seem very worth it. I'm sure the last thing you want to do is try to convince that stupid prince to marry you."

"Zoe, this whole dimension hopping has been at my expense. At both of our expenses. This side story is almost a break, unless it takes too long or there's some kind of secret murder plot you forgot about. Besides, you want to see your drama, right? Your food?" She steers them to the giant mirror. "And a little bit of makeup doesn't make me a different person. Like you said, we're matching—it's fine isn't it?"

Zoe was right: any type of makeup would suit Mio perfectly.

They stand together in matching pink, cutesy, doe-eyed, soft makeup. Strangely pleased at the sight, Zoe nods. "You're right. Now hurry up and put your dress on." She enthusiastically shoves Mio away to the other side of the mirror and pulls on her own dress.

When they step out in front of their reflections again, the full ensemble is even better; Zoe can't help but be excited now, hesitance forgotten. They're going to a fantasy ball, and they're matching—a silly prince can't ruin this for them.

"Okay, so let's try to save this side story from Rader. We got this." Mio smiles.

"We got this." Zoe smiles back. "Let's use some wish magic."

"And how do we do that?"

"First of all, it's probably easier to channel our magic energy by holding hands, since I'm wishing for you and you're wishing for me." Zoe sticks hers out for Mio to take.

Tentatively, Mio does, and closes her eyes so she doesn't have to look at Zoe, who is so very close again.

"Okay, now we just have to really, really, wish hard. Really want it. And think about the things surrounding your wish too, like why you want it, the details of what you want."

Mio thinks of getting Zoe to the Prince's castle. They need to go, to save Zoe's story. More importantly, they need to go together. Mio needs Zoe there to help her navigate her genre. Without Zoe, she'll be lost, so she needs to get Zoe over. The prince's castle, and Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.

"Now, we have to say the magic words… Are you ready?" She whispers.

Mio makes an affirmative noise.