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Cookiekind was a mistake. All they ever did was take. Always greedy, always hungry for comfort over truth. They’d ask to hear it, the truth, raw and unfiltered, and the moment it left his mouth, they’d recoil angrily. Grimacing, as if he’d done something wrong by answering honestly. What did they really want? A lie, gift wrapped in colorful paper? Something sweet enough to drown out the reality they couldn’t handle? He wondered, time and time again, what it would take to satisfy such willfully blind minds. Maybe nothing ever could.
What was the point in his existence, if not to spread the truth, spread knowledge? It’s why the Witches created him, his reason for living, the only purpose he ever had. But even that felt like a joke now. No one wanted the truth, they wanted bedtime stories and sugar coated dreams. He’d been built to illuminate, to tear back the curtain and show the world what it didn’t want to see. But who cared? No one listened. No one ever listened. And if no one listened, then what was the point? What was he but a mouthpiece for a message the world had already decided to ignore?
The Fount started to wonder if silence would be louder, if absence might finally make them pay attention, if vanishing would speak more clearly than any words he ever could.
The thought crept in slowly, then wrapped around his mind like a fog. Maybe it would be easier to disappear. Not out of spite. Just… tiredness. A tiredness that lingered, that crept in the back of his mind, a constant ache that yearned to be soothed. He was tired of being hated for doing exactly what he was made to do. Tired of being the villain in someone else’s fairytale, just because he didn’t sugarcoat the ending. Maybe the mistake wasn’t cookiekind, maybe the mistake was him.
There he stood, staring through the loop of the rope that taunted him endlessly, calling his name, begging him to finally give in. It was always there, always waiting silently, patiently, as if it knew him better than anyone else ever could. And maybe it did. Maybe it understood him in a way no cookie ever could, the weight he carried, the knowledge stitched into his mind, the unbearable truth that he was supposed to know everything. That was his purpose. That was the reason the Witches made him; to answer every question, to leave nothing unknown.
But this… this was the one thing he couldn’t name.
What came after? What waited past the veil? He didn’t know. He’d scoured every scroll, every lost scripture, every buried fragment of ancient thought, and found nothing but theories and fables. No certainty, no truth, just silence. A blank spot in his mind where there should have been clarity.
The unknown clawed at him, cruel and cold and infinite. He wasn’t built to not know. It terrified him in a way nothing else ever had. It made him feel small, powerless, like a fraud. How could he live with that? How could he keep existing, knowing the one answer that mattered most was beyond him?
He had set up the rope before. Countless times had he stood in front of it. Looked through the loop, wondering, hesitating, always backing away at the last second, crippled by the fear of that question echoing unanswered in his mind. What comes next? The one thing no one could tell him, the one thing he’d never been able to learn, no matter how much he tried. And what terrified him more than death was the idea of stepping into it blind.
But this time, it felt different.
He was tired. Truly, deeply tired. Not just of being ignored or hated or twisted into something he wasn’t, but of being. Of waking up each day with a mind too full and a heart too heavy. He felt hollowed out and useless. Not because he didn’t have the answers, but because the one answer he didn’t have was the only one that mattered now. And if he couldn’t know it, maybe he could meet it.
Maybe that was the only way left to do his job.
His hands shook as he reached up, slowly and carefully. Not out of drama, but ritual. Like this was the final page of some long forgotten manuscript. Something sacred. Something terrible . The air felt thick. His breath caught. And still, no answer came.
He closed his eyes.
Maybe he'd find it on the other side.
Or maybe there was nothing at all.
Either way… he was done being afraid of the question.
Climbing atop the chair, he slipped his head through the noose. It scratched lightly against his neck, an almost gentle touch, like it was welcoming him home. This was it. He was finally going to face the unknown, no longer burdened by the endless noise of cookies who couldn’t stop tearing each other apart, who never wanted the truth unless it came dressed in something soft.
A single pitiful tear slid down his cheek, unhurried. He thought of his allies, the rare few who stood beside him even when his words cut too deep. Faces flickered in his mind like candlelight, brief and aching.
And what he’d always known, what he’d read in stories and carved into memory, was true: your life does flash before your eyes when you embrace death. But it wasn’t the grand moments that showed up. It was the quiet ones, the shared laughs, the silence after a long explanation, the way someone once looked at him like he mattered.
The chair tipped. The rope tightened. He expected the burn in his lungs, the pop of bone, the weightlessness that comes before the end.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
All of a sudden, he was staring at his own body from afar on the floor, headless as it stumbled around like it was trying to catch itself after slipping out of the rope.
What. The. Fuck.
“And that’s how I figured out I could pop my head off!” The jester exclaimed cheerfully with an almost proud look on his face, like he hadn’t dropped the largest bomb on the healer possible, as if he’d discovered a new party trick instead of casually describing a brush with mortality.
Pure Vanilla stared at him for a long moment, his eyes doing that soft, slow blink he reserved for when he was trying to process something deeply unsettling, brows furrowed slightly.
“Are you…” he started, voice gentle but visibly strained, “okay?”
Shadow Milk tilted his head, lips pursed in mock thought, as if he had to genuinely consider it. Then, with a lazy shrug and his usual maniacal smile, “Yeah? I mean, I can pop my head off. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
Pure Vanilla stared at him, utterly unconvinced.
There was a pause. Then, gently, he spoke again, “Would you like to talk about it?”
Shadow Milk blinked. “Talk about it?” he echoed, like it was a word he’d never heard before. He gave a small, baffled laugh. “Why would I wanna do that? It’s already off my chest- well… off my neck , technically.” He chuckled at his own joke, clearly amused.
Pure Vanilla, however, did not find it funny, his worried expression only hardening.