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Pure Vanilla Cookie was drowning. The thick, white liquid of the yogurt river pulled at his legs, dragging him deeper down. He could hear the screams of Gingerbrave, Wizard Cookie, and Strawberry Cookie, calling his name in desperation from the shore. Already, they were suffering. He must mitigate it, at any cost. But he just kept sinking, and it wasn’t long before he could no longer hold his breath….
Pure Vanilla woke with a loud gasp for air. His sharp inhale was quickly followed by a cough, and he blinked away the blurriness in his eyes as he attempted to catch his breath and regain his senses. His eyes adjusted to the darkness of the night, revealing the familiar surroundings of his and White Lily Cookie's room in the Faerie Kingdom palace. Pure Vanilla gripped the bedspread beneath him, and looked to his right to see the face of his wife, still sleeping.
He was home. He was not drowning. He was no longer a puppet of Shadow Milk Cookie.
He was himself. No one else.
Pure Vanilla got out of bed and grabbed his staff, careful not to make too much noise as he slipped out of the room. He needed a walk. Fresh air always did him some good after another nightmare. He quietly stepped down the silver and white halls of the castle, following the familiar path to the garden. As soon as he stepped outside, Pure Vanilla slowly inhaled, filling his dough with the cool night air. He held his breath for ten seconds, then let it out slowly over twenty seconds. He then silently walked over to the bench by the berry bushes and sat down.
His eyes remained closed, but the gaze of his staff traveled to the tree in the center of the garden. Not the one currently holding the seal on the Beasts, but the one under which White Lily had slept for so long. In the place of her glass case was a white headstone ornately engraved with the crest of the Faerie Kingdom: Elder Faerie Cookie's grave. It was almost five years ago that he closed his eyes for the last time, leaving his kingdom and power to White Lily. These were the happenings that led to the War of the Awakened Beasts. Nearly five years… and yet its events still haunted Pure Vanilla to this day.
It was truly the lowest point of his life, which was saying something. Pure Vanilla had been around for a long time. He had seen and experienced many things, and been tested many times. He had made mistakes and paid the price, faced the twisted remnants of his beloved in battle. But nothing compared to the time he spent in the Spire of Deceit, that hellscape of blue, black, and white. Where nothing made sense, where the world felt cold, dark, and lonely. Where Truth and Lies were indiscernible, and he could not tell the difference between his true self and what Shadow Milk Cookie wanted him to be.
Truthless Recluse.
His time as an entity of Deceit was torturous. It was probably only a few days, but it felt like several months. Shadow Milk Cookie's fortress existed outside the normal laws of time and space. Pure Vanilla's corruption was quick, thanks to Shadow Milk's expert manipulation skills, but not immediate. While Gingerbrave and the others traveled with Pure Vanilla to the Spire of All Knowledge, Truthless Recluse was already aware of his existence inside the Spire of Deceit and the fact that he was actively being inducted into Shadow Milk's ranks. It was horrible: he felt as though he was slowly dying in a vat of toxic acid, watching as everything that was good in him melted away until only doubt and self-loathing was left. By the time the heroes finally arrived at the inn, and met him as the Fortune Teller Cookie, he already felt as though Pure Vanilla was dead and gone. His tarot card reading was a last ditch effort to warn the group not to come, lest the two realities connect and solidify his fate.
Of course, Shadow Milk Cookie's intentions were never hidden. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted Pure Vanilla on his side and turned into the worst version of himself possible. Pure Vanilla knew that, and yet he still fell right into the palm of the jester's hand.
Over the years, time and clarity revealed to him exactly why it worked. Pure Vanilla was an emotional person, and Shadow Milk used that. It was relentless abuse, expertly designed to rapidly twist his self-image. His feelings were a plaything to Shadow Milk. But… that didn't fully account for the obsessiveness. Shadow Milk Cookie messed with anyone he could, yet Pure Vanilla seemed to draw his attention more.
It got much more obvious the longer he was at the Spire. Shadow Milk's excessive delight in his presence, the flirtatious verbage, the odd fixation with Pure Vanilla's downward spiral into darkness… the eventual advances. Shadow Milk Cookie didn't just want the Soul Jam. He wanted Pure Vanilla. It was a thought that made the king's dough crawl, even now. But if the thought itself was uncomfortable, Pure Vanilla's own actions in response were downright sickening to himself. It was nauseating in the moment, and still was every time it crawled back into his mind. A decision he made out of the bitterness and hostility that coated his once-tender heart.
If you want to play with my feelings, I will play with yours.
‘You and I… we are meant to be together.’
And it worked like a charm. Pure Vanilla was honestly surprised how effective it was, even now. It was no secret to anyone that he was not a good liar. Maybe Shadow Milk Cookie was just that eager to have him. Or perhaps it worked because part of Pure Vanilla himself believed it. Truthless Recluse was convinced of the twisted portrait his manipulator painted. Pure Vanilla still felt the remains of the self-hatred and fear that had gripped his mind, all these years later. He doubted the scars would ever fade completely.
“Dearest?”
Pure Vanilla turned with a small gasp of surprise, opening his eyes to see a sight that eased the pain in his heart almost at once. White Lily Cookie stood at the garden entrance, still dressed in her green nightgown. Her face was filled with concern. “I woke up and didn't see you. How long have you been out here?”
“Not long, Lily,” Pure Vanilla answered, putting on a smile. “I'm fine. I just wanted fresh air. You should go back to bed, I'll be back in a bit.”
White Lily frowned. “It was another nightmare, wasn't it?”
Pure Vanilla blinked, then gave a half-hearted chuckle. “I can never hide things from you, can I?”
White Lily smiled knowingly. “You happen to be one of the worst liars I know, so no, you can't.”
That made the ache inside Pure Vanilla's chest all but disappear. His wife always knew just what to say. She walked over to the bench and sat down beside him, taking his hand into hers. They simply sat there in peaceful silence for a moment, taking comfort in each other's presence. Pure Vanilla watched fondly as White Lily held out her hand to one of the many fairies that floated in the air of the garden. It landed on the queen's palm, taking that moment to rest its wings. “You are no more Truthless Recluse than I am Dark Enchantress Cookie, Vanilla,” she said gently. “These identities are a part of us, but they do not define us. We keep them close, so as to never forget and make the same mistakes again. But we also must not wallow in regret. We must keep living in the present.”
“I know… I know,” Pure Vanilla sighed. “But, when I think about the kind of person I was… I cannot help but feel mortified. I was hurting, and I wanted to hurt him back, to make him feel even an ounce of the agony I felt.”
“Because he taught you to think that way,” White Lily pointed out. “All you knew was pain. He left you no choice but to play by his rules. But you survived.”
Pure Vanilla's head lowered. “Only because I realized my Truth was powerless on its own. To save our friends… I had to accept Deceit. I had to beat him at his own game. But I almost lost myself trying.”
White Lily rested her head on his shoulder. “Because Deceit is not in your nature, and never has been,” she insisted softly. Then, in a more lighthearted tone, “You're just no good at being evil. You're clumsy when you try.”
Pure Vanilla let out a soft laugh. “Maybe. I suppose it is simply… hard to accept. My heart believes you. But my mind…”
“I understand, dear. I understand so much it hurts. You know that.”
“How do you remind yourself of who you are?” Pure Vanilla's voice was a whisper now.
“I lean on the people close to me. Like you. But when that isn't enough, I tell myself that if I were the same person as Dark Enchantress Cookie, what remained of my true self would not have used the moon stone to split away and return to safety here. That way, the doubt in both my head and my heart are eased.”
Head and heart. The value of both was something Pure Vanilla and White Lily shared. But they did have their differences. White Lily leaned slightly more into her head to make decisions. That was why her heart was led astray, turning her into Dark Enchantress Cookie. Her pursuit of forbidden knowledge hardened her heart. Pure Vanilla had the opposite problem. While he was intelligent, his decisions were often governed more by his feelings. That was why his mind was unable to use logical reasoning to escape the chokehold Shadow Milk had on his emotions. Even though it made no logical sense, Pure Vanilla was led to believe a terrible lie, one that filled him with so much self-hatred that he looked his own friends in the eye with a cold smile and told it to their faces.
‘This is where I belong, the greatest liar of all.’
The years since then were not easy. The ugly truth was that, during his time in the Spire of Deceit, he had become so starved for anything but cruelty that he learned to accept the twisted alter ego that was Truthless Recluse. Ever the people-pleaser, he chose to become a villain out of desperation for approval. And that desperation turned Shadow Milk's attention into a drug. Despite how much Pure Vanilla Cookie detested the Beast, despite knowing how terrible he was for him, despite knowing he had become something despicable because of it… Shadow Milk's dark and abusive brand of affection was addictive in the absence of anything pure and true.
It took a very long time to understand that falling for it was not Pure Vanilla's fault.
Healing was not quick. He left Crispia after the war, and traveled back to Beast-Yeast, for there lived the only person he knew could truly understand his pain. White Lily Cookie, now whole after the defeat of Dark Enchantress Cookie, had taken her place on the throne of the Faerie Kingdom. She and her subjects welcomed Pure Vanilla with open arms. Among the faerie cookies, Pure Vanilla slowly got better. It also helped that despite the proximity to the Silver Tree, the renewed seal suppressed the presence of the Beasts. It was proof that he would never again suffer at the hands of Shadow Milk Cookie. That was something he needed before he could rest.
And of course, there was White Lily. She reminded him that love was kind and gentle, and should feel free and true. But perhaps equally importantly, she understood his guilt. She knew that pretty words could not mend such deep distrust and hatred of oneself. Only time and patience could heal these wounds. And the journey was not over. Pure Vanilla was still haunted by nightmares of his time with Shadow Milk. Some nights, like tonight, it was the River of Rebirth. The panic and confusion of drowning as his friends called out for him was still so real.
Others, it was the day he burned his tan and white robes and donned the colors of navy and gold. It was his idea. Convinced of a deceitful heart he did not have, he cast away the garments of the Vanilla Kingdom. He felt unworthy of them, like simply wearing such pure colors was a lie itself. He remembered watching them burn in the fireplace in his room at the Spire, tears falling down his face, his own heart feeling as though it, too, was on fire.
Still other nights, it was watching his friends be pushed off the top of the Spire as his Soul Jam was taken by Shadow Milk Cookie. Their screams as they fell and the maniacal laughter of Shadow Milk still rang so clearly in his ears. He remembered his own cries of ‘It's my fault!’ He remembered how hard it was to accept that it wasn’t.
The worst nightmares were mercifully rare, but always had him the most shaken after waking from them. Every once in a while, he would find himself walking through the cold halls of the Spire of Deceit alone, only to be taken by surprise as he was dragged away to a dark corner of the fortress by Shadow Milk for a fierce, practically dizzying embrace that left him feeling heavily intoxicated and disoriented. When he finally told White Lily about these nightmares years after confiding in her about the others, she insisted that he wake her every time he had that nightmare, because that was a burden she refused to let him carry in silence.
‘Love should never, ever, feel so violating,’ she had told him firmly, her voice almost shaking with rage at his suffering. ‘Please, tell me whenever these memories plague you. I will comfort you, to remind you what real love is.’
What he did to deserve her, Pure Vanilla still did not know.
Truth was often hard to discern. Pure Vanilla knew that perhaps better than anyone. To this day, he still didn't know if the longing he'd felt back then was for the Beast or to feel any kind of love in a place so absent of it. He didn't know if he accepted the affections because he wanted to or because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t. He didn't know if the perpetual fire burning in his soul was yearning or hatred. It was a time of fear, confusion, and misery.
But slowly, he was learning to come to terms with it. He'd already come a long way, thanks to his friends and his wife, who reminded him that hope was worth striving for. That there was beauty in the world. That the purity of his heart had never died, and never would. That he was his own cookie and belonged to no one but himself.
Pure Vanilla watched as the fairy in White Lily’s hand took off, and when his eyes drifted back to her face, he smiled. The glow of the flowers in the garden softly lit up her face, and Pure Vanilla wondered if anything more beautiful could exist. “Kiss me?” he asked gently.
White Lily looked back at him and giggled. “You ask like we're still dating. Of course.” And she did, and Pure Vanilla felt a warm serenity wash over him. He could hardly believe how lucky he was to be at her side.