Work Text:
It was the middle of the morning, and if he felt worse he would have been content to sleep through it, but Soul’s eyes were wide open anyways and he’d started tapping his hands from restlessness, so he figured he might as well get up. He pulled back the covers and sat up on the edge of his bed, and stretched the sleep out of his body before standing up. He headed downstairs, catching the smell of coffee from the kitchen. Must be Mind, he thought to himself. Any of them were lucky to catch even a glimpse of Heart before at least 2 PM.
He entered the kitchen and saw Mind sitting at the counter with a mug in one hand and a pen in the other. The two made eye contact as Soul strode over to the coffee maker to grab himself some as well. “Mornin’, Mind,” he said with an easy smile. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine,” he replied, glancing back down at whatever it was he was working on. “You’re weirdly cheery today.”
“What can I say?” He grinned at the observation as he stirred sugar into his cup. “Woke up on the right side of the bed for once, I guess.”
“Hm. That’s good to hear.” Soul heard the sound of pen scratching on paper. “You took your meds, right?”
“Awh, shit, knew I was forgetting something.” He grabbed a small orange bottle full of mood stabilizers off of the windowsill and tapped out one pill into his hand. “You know how-”
“Water,” he said flatly, gesturing at the cabinet with his pen hand.
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, fine.” He took a glass from the cabinet. “You’re so damn picky.”
“I’m realistic. I know you’re going to slam an energy drink in maybe two hours anyways. You do not need that much caffeine in your system.” He glanced up. “Besides, it’s probably not good that-”
“-That I have this much caffeine with my meds anyways, yeah, I know.” He waved his hand and filled up the cup at the sink. He downed the pill with a gulp of water and walked over next to Mind. “There, you happy?”
He snickered. “Sure, whatever.”
He leaned on the counter and looked at what Mind was doing. “Oh, god, is that math?” He feigned disgust. “Shit, that’s awful. Out in front of everyone in the kitchen, you freak. Can’t keep that behind closed doors?”
“It’s computer code, dipshit,” he laughed, clicking his pen and setting it down. “I printed it out because it’s not working in the terminal. I needed to get a different perspective on it.”
“Here, lemme look.” He grabbed the paper away from Mind and held it up in the air, peering closely at it. “Hmm.” He nodded. “Yes, of course. I see, I see.”
“What?”
He set the paper back in front of him. “I don’t understand a single fucking word on that page.”
He laughed and pinched the bridge of his nose, his smile scrunching his whole face up. “That part’s not even that complicated. I could explain it to you in ten minutes.”
“Oh, no no no.” He put his hands up. “I’ve heard you say that to Heart about ten minutes before he left the living room sobbing. You’re not going to fool me with that, tin man.”
“I’ll never understand. You’re great with hardware, and you don’t want to learn what makes it actually run.”
“Being kind of okay with a screwdriver building an extremely modular PC does not translate to being anywhere decent with- what is that, Java?”
“C++, actually.”
“See, I can’t even tell the differences between these things. They’re like foreign languages to me. I’d crash the computer in the first five minutes.”
“That’s not how it works-”
They both heard a yawn from the other side of the kitchen. “You guys are so loud.”
Soul turned and saw Heart standing in the entryway, rubbing his eyes underneath his headwings. “Oh, hey!” He smiled. “Didn’t hear you come downstairs.”
“I bet not,” he murmured. “I can’t hear anything over your shouting.”
“Oh, come on,” Soul said lightly. “I had to protect myself. Mind was trying to talk me into learning to code.”
“Eww.” Heart crinkled his nose, and a smile tugged on the corner of his mouth.
Mind rolled his eyes. “Fine. Both of you can fix it yourselves when you download another drive-frying virus.”
Heart’s face scrunched up. “That happened one time.”
“Uh huh. And who fixed it?”
“Ugh, whatever.” Soul could hear the eye roll in Heart' voice, even with half his face obscured. He ran a hand along the counter and sniffed the air. “Did one of you make coffee?”
“Yeah, Mind did,” he replied. “D’you want some?”
“Mhm.” He nodded and took a seat at the counter next to Mind.
“No milk or sugar, right?” He poured him a cup.
He shook his head and took the mug from Soul. “Thanks,” he said, voice groggy.
“No problem.” He picked up his own cup. “Will you two survive if I leave you alone for a bit?” he teased. “I wanna go outside.”
Mind shot Heart a sideways glance. “Um-”
“If he doesn’t start anything, we’ll be fine,” Heart murmured, taking a sip from his mug.
“What- when am I the one starting shit?” His face scrunched. “You’re the one who decided to come down here and-”
“Oh my god.” He leaned on the counter next to Mind, one hand around his mug handle and the other propping up his chin. “I’m messing with you.”
Mind’s expression shifted from irritation to confusion. “You- ugh.” He rolled his eyes. “We’ll be fine, Soul.”
He gave them both a pointed look. “Good to hear.”
With that, he turned and left them to… Whatever it was, exactly, that Heart was doing to Mind, and, after grabbing his cane from its spot against the doorway, headed out from the exit at the far side of the kitchen into the backyard. He breathed in the cool air – even in their strange pocket of existence, this place still had seasons, and they were just at the cusp of autumn.
He heard soft clucking and felt a brush of feathers against his leg as their chicken, Darrel, ran up to join him on his stroll. He laughed and let his cane dangle on its wrist strap before he picked him up. “Hey, you.” He grinned and hoisted him into the air. “What, you wanna walk with me?”
The chicken cooed, and Soul grinned back at him, looking into his beady eyes. “Well, alright, if you insist.” He set him down next to him, and continued walking, laughing as he tried to avoid letting Darrel get underfoot.
It was a few minutes later that he’d come to a sprawling meadow, with the sound of the ocean distantly off in one direction and his house far behind him in another. The sky was clear and bright, with only a few wispy cirrus clouds far above him – the perfect day to be out in the middle of it.
He took a seat and laid down in the grass, staring up into the endless blue. He smiled and moved his arm for Darrel to settle down against his side, and took a deep breath as he listened to his soft clucking. There was never a place nor time where the air felt better against his skin, nor the ground better underneath him, and for just a second he let himself feel like it was the perfect day.
The thought briefly crossed his mind, certainly, that it was still early enough for something to go horribly wrong. Strangely enough, however, the notion didn’t bother him as much as it usually would – something about how Heart had talked to Mind, maybe, put him a little more at ease, or maybe it was his conversation with Mind alone before that. He figured it didn’t matter too much what it was. He was just grateful to have a day like this at all.
He closed his eyes and took in the feeling of the sun shining on him.
Is this concord?
His eyes flickered open at the thought, and he glanced around. Peace came so quietly that he hadn’t even noticed it.
He held his hands up into the air and took a good look at them. His right hand – obviously – looked and felt mostly the same as it always did, never without throbbing pain but duller that morning than it often had been.
But we’re not whole. I’m still here. They’re… still… here.
He blinked. His hand cloaked in shadow looked as normal as it could as well. It didn’t flicker. The shadows formed him in the near-perfect shape of a human.
He crossed his hands over his chest and stared off into the sky once more, and he felt his thoughts start to wander. This wasn’t right, was it?
Shouldn’t he be someone else?
He took his cane, lifted himself up, and walked further towards the ocean. Darrel didn’t keep pace – once the grass gave way to sandy dunes, he turned and ran back to the house, which was fine. It’d be annoying if he got sand in his feathers anyways. It was frustrating to use a cane on the sand as well, so he left it and its stability in the grass next to his shoes before walking out onto the beach.
Even though it wasn’t what he thought would be right, the day he’d had so far didn’t feel wrong. He felt stable. He felt real. But he still felt like Soul. The empty shell. The shattered host after calamity.
That’s what he was, wasn’t he? It was how he always defined himself, even in moments when he felt utterly on top of the world. All he was, was always directed towards what he should be, what he needs to be. He needed to go back. He needed to fix it. He needed to become that Whole again. But there, standing on the beach, getting sand in his cracked porcelain joints, it was like-
-like he was whole all as himself.
He blinked.
“Hah.”
He knelt down right where the sand met the sea and let the ebbing waves wash over his hands. He watched the sunlight make the water glitter. His hand bumped against something hard, and he found under his palm a small sand dollar, perfectly round, coarse with sand. He held it up into the light and turned it back and forth, and on its underside he saw webs of cracks in its underside. A couple pieces of it were even missing.
He let it fall back into the ocean.
He stared out across the sea one more time, before turning away from it and leaving the beach. He kicked out his feet a bit to dislodge sand.
He picked up his cane in one hand and his shoes in the other, and walked back home. As he approached the doorway he’d left from, he heard sounds from the other side. His brow furrowed and his pulse quickened for a second, until he realized what he heard was laughter.
His gaze softened, and he smiled to himself as he reached for the door handle, and went back inside.