Work Text:
Susie's jacket is a tapestry of secret colors. A dozen different purples peek from once-ripped seams. A yellowish blue holds shut a hole in the shoulder; a minty green keeps the lining intact. The pockets would have fallen off if not for the black that lines the edges.
“Why did you stop color-matching?” Kris signs as they watch her sew the left cuff of her jacket back onto the sleeve. The color for this repair is a deep, coppery orange.
She pauses as she interprets their hands. “Ran out of purples,” she shrugs. “Got harder to find.” Considering there is no proper sewing supply store in Hometown, she's probably had to make due with scraps.
Her hands are steady as she passes the needle through the fabric. The thread gathers too thick in some places and too thin in others, but it is steady enough to keep the cuff from falling. She leaves a gap on the inner wrist, then cuts a similar gap in the same place on her right sleeve. Kris cocks their head as they stick a finger in one.
Susie smiles as she pulls her jacket on and slips her thumbs through the holes. “How’s it look?” she asks.
“Badass,” Kris smiles. They take her hands and flip them around, tilting them back and forth to study the uneven little stitches. “Can you make other stuff?” they ask, running their fingers through hers.
“Nah. I just fix things.”
“Bet you could.”
“Probably not.”
“Probably so.”
“Dude,” Susie starts, leaning back on the bench they’ve been sharing, “what would you even want me to make?”
Kris thinks a moment — what would they want her to make? Clothing would be too big of a project, and they don’t really want to change their wardrobe. Something small would be better, with not a lot of parts. A pillow, maybe, or....
An evil grin stretches their face. Susie raises a brow at it.
A finger rises to point at their own face.
“You?” she laughs. “I’m not making you!"
“Why not?!” they sign.
“There’s already one of you. What would we need another for?” Her large hand closes over their head, ruffling their hair. “’Sides, I don’t think the world can handle another.”
When they pout, they put a tiny little tremble in their lip, and lower their brows to just above their wide eyes, and give her the saddest expression they can muster.
If there is anything Susie cannot deny, it is Kris’ begging puppy face. She tries to look away, studying the gravestones on her other side.
They lean their chin against her arm and let out a pathetic little whine.
“Fine!” she snaps, twisting to face them. “But only if you, uh... Oh! You have to make Ralsei!”
Face falling into confusion, they jump back. “What? I can’t make Ralsei.”
“And I can’t make you,” Susie says, tapping their forehead. “But I will if you make Ralsei.” She crosses her arms and looks down at them with a victorious smile.
“Why can’t I make you?” Kris asks. A flicker of doubt flashes through her eyes, and they immediately regret the question. “I’ll make Ralsei,” they concede.
“Wha-” its her turn to jump back. “You weren’t supposed to say yes!” she shouts.
“Well I did,” Kris smirks as they sign. They’ve never been good with a needle; all their clothes have been mended by their mother. And there’s a good chance whatever they make will turn out super derpy.
But on the other hand, they’d get a plush of themself, handmade by Susie.
“I’ll grab what we need tomorrow,” they continue. “Let’s head to Castle Town after school.”
And that is how, the next day, they find themselves standing amongst the chaos of the Dark World. Ralsei greets them outside the castle, trying his best to ignore Lancer’s bike — which has been upgraded since they last saw it. It now boasts a really powerful, really fast, really loud engine that drowns out everything he says.
Lord, he has the patience of a saint. If Kris had half the penchant for peace that he did, they'd have done something to silence Lancer long ago.
Lucky for the little prince, they revel in trouble making. All they do is give him a thumbs up before whisking Susie and Ralsei through the oversized castle doors.
“What brings you two here?” asks Ralsei once they’re in the relative quiet of the foyer. The sounds of outside still echo faintly from the cracks, but are no longer as loud. Kris shifts their bag of sewing supplies into his face.
“Making plushies,” they say.
“Oh!” He digs through the bundle of fabrics, picking out two familiar colors — cyan blue and purplish pink. He holds them up to the two of them. “Are you making each other?”
Susie snatches the pink and stuffs it deep into the bag. “I’m making Kris. Kris is making you.”
“Me?” He blinks, then turns to smile at them, one hand on his chest. “I’m flattered, Kris!”
“Of course,” they mumble, starting toward the stairs to hide their blush. “Let’s get started.”
The castle creaks as they ascend, and Ralsei calls for them to enter their room. When they open the door, they find that all three of their bedrooms have been combined into one. Three bean bags sit around a rug in the middle, close enough for them all to reach the middle, spread enough that they still have plenty of room to stretch. Kris empties the bag onto the rug and throws themself into the blue bean bag. Susie bellyflops onto the pink one, and Ralsei settles gently into the green one.
“Well,” Kris nudges Susie, “Where do you start?”
She grunts, studying the array of items. “Cunt,” she calls them, grabbing a handful of spools of purple thread. “Didn’t know you had some.”
“I think you should use more colors,” they laugh, waiting for her next move — which is gathering a bunch different colored fabrics.
Following her lead, they pick out a white, a black, and a green. She narrows her eyes at them. They smile.
Every move she makes, they copy. When she cuts a pattern, they use the scissors next. When she switches threads, they dig through the others to find a new color.
It goes this way until she gathers the rest of her materials and turns her bean bag around. They can’t see what she does, and, yeah, they have no idea what to do next. Kris has never sewn anything before; what lies in front of them now is a variety of scrap fabric and hastily threaded needles. Ralsei is in his own world, sewing his own project that is suspiciously pink and purple.
Well. This won’t be the first time they have to bullshit their way through something. That’s how they’ve passed most tests so far. The whole SOUL ordeal had them bullshitting their entire life for a week.
They do watch, from the corner of their eye, as Ralsei ties knots and dips the needle along newly formed seams. They try to mimic it, folding together a black rectangle, looping the thread around. It bunches together, ugly and bumpy, but they cannot make it look any better without sacrificing its structure.
Shit, this is harder than they thought.
An hour passes. Then another. Ralsei finished his project somewhere between the two, and it now sits in his lap — a perfectly sewn, cutely chibi Susie plush. It makes Kris grimace, just a bit, that they neither made a Susie plushie (not that they’d be able to do her justice) nor will they get a Susie plushie.
Unless Ralsei is feeling super generous, but he’s grown into his own person since the end of the prophecy. There is a good chance he’d hoard all three plushies.
Susie turns back to them at the end of the third hour. In her hands is less a plush and more a doll — only slightly chibi, with a big blue head and yarn hair, but its limbs are long and lanky, gently stuffed with fiberfill. Its face dents in at the chin, and it does not sit on its own, like plush-Susie does. But it is soft enough to bend at the waist, so it sits propped up against her knee.
And... It does look like Kris.
The thing in Kris’ hands is somewhere between. Its under-stuffed head is more oval than round, with eyes drawn on scarily wide and flaps of ears that are only half-sewn on. The body is just shorter than the head, its limbs mere stubs of hastily attached fabric. Its arms are half-covered by the green dress, and the pink scarf is not stitched on; it is more tied tightly around the neck like they were trying to choke it.
The way Susie laughs when she sees Kris’ creation sends her rolling across the floor. “The hell is that?” she screams through tears. A blush paints their face from neck to ear. They throw it at her.
“You wanted Ralsei, right?” they demand.
A closer look makes it harder for her to breathe. “This ain’t Ralsei,” she manages. She calms enough to roll over to the rug of supplies and picks up some pastel pink felt and a marker. “Here,” she says, folding the felt in half and drawing a curved triangle on it. “Cut along this.”
They collect the scissors and follow the line. Susie hands them a needle threaded with as close a color as she found, and Kris follows her direction to separate the triangles and sew them onto the top of the head. They then cut the arms free of the robe, and use another marker the draw a heart on the chest.
It still doesn’t look like Ralsei when they’re done, but it bears a closer resemblance than what they had before.
“There,” Susie snickers. “Not perfect, but it’s done.” She sets her Kris doll next to the abomination Ralsei. Real Ralsei sets plush Susie on the other side of Kris doll. Real Susie frowns, just for a fleeting moment.
“Perfect,” Kris says, leaning to rest their head on her arm.
“It is.” Ralsei curls into her other side.
“Guess so,” she smiles, soft and sincere as she wraps them in her arms.