Chapter Text
The ride back from Beast Yeast was going fine. It was all splendid, though slightly more cramped due to the presence of a new cookie and the stowaways no longer hiding away. It was fine, everyone was safe.
So why did Wildberry feel like he was going to die?
The knight in question stands next to the railing of the ship, watching everyone’s calm daily lives, and feels his heart pound in his chest hard enough to hit his lungs. Everything feels wrong, and he doesn’t know why. Everything feels like it is in danger. Unfocused eyes glance down at his hands and his knuckles strain under the gloves, indenting the wood.
He… should go somewhere to rest. Perhaps he’s sea sick.
The rail splinters as he lets go, walking to get below deck, thankfully ignored by all but the most perceptive of eyes as he stumbles over uneven wood. He feels horrible, and the sea only makes it worse. He wants to be laying in his room at home, instead of… of… The train of thought is hard to keep. He wants to lay down.
He needs to lay down, the world is spinning around him, even when he raises a hand to shade his eyes. He needs-
A butter tiger brushes against Wildberry’s left side, the butter tiger’s sister his right. She grabs his hand, forcing him more upright. “Too hot… Den, Berry.” Her voice is like a cool hand to his burning head, as she and the tiger drag him inside quicker than his own fruitless navigation could. Of course the ones from the wild would smell a fever quicker than anyone else, though the thought feels distant through the haze of it, as do any other words they might say to him.
The only clear thought is the pleading of his body to just lay down. He doesn’t know if this is his assigned room and he doesn’t quite care right now, collapsing onto the first bed he sees and curling into a fetal position, struggling to breathe.
Everything is on fire. Everything is burning and everyone is unsafe, and yet he cannot move quick enough to warn anyone, as the world blurs to nonsense in front of him. He can’t even tell if the two from the wild have left the room, a small whine falling from his lips.
This… This progressed too quickly. He knows it progressed too quickly, but it's so hard to think about that, even as he tries. The thought dissipates like grasping water, flowing through his fingers before he can even wrap his head around it.
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Hollyberry enters her room to find her son collapsed on her bed, struggling to breathe as his fingers dig into his own arm, and her first thought is ‘Thank the Witches we dock soon’. Her second thought is ‘How did I not see this coming?’
She doesn’t know what she should have seen coming, but she should have seen something with her new power, something that would help her protect him from whatever is ravaging his body. Such hopes are useless, though, as she moves through the too sweet air and sits on the bed beside him, pulling his shivering form into her arms to try and get a better look at him.
His dough is wet with syrupy sweat, small portions of it even beginning to get soggy from the amount. His breathing is harsh, like every gasp has to be forced. His eyes are tightly closed and yet she keeps glancing at them, hoping he knows she is here, she will keep him safe. She keeps saying it, just in case he’s listening. Just in case…
He smells sweet. He smells sweet enough that it makes the air hard to breathe, that it lingers on her tongue with each word. He has the same sweetness to him as…
“Knight Raspberry Cookie? Go find Sugarfly Cookie, please?”
“On it, Queen Mother!”
Sugar. Wildberry smells like Pavlova Cookie and sweet Eternal Sugar Cookie, that cloying scent that threatened to take her passion. And now it lingers on her son as he jerks in her arms like a dying animal. She pets his hair, pulling it out of its careful braid in an attempt to get through to him.
Hollyberry watches Raspberry go, and breathes a sigh of relief as she slowly slides Wildberry’s crown off, letting him rest the dough of his burning forehead against her shoulder. All she can do now is wait.
“You wished to see me, Lady Holly… Oh.”
Sugarfly looks horrified.
She is looking at her son, her sick son, and she looks like she knows something, and she is terrified by that.
Hollyberry is scared.
She holds her child closer as Sugarfly Cookie steps forward and touches a hand to the side of his face, pushing her palm flat against his face and feeling the too warm temperature before jolting back as if burnt, right as Wildberry does, as Hollyberry pulls him closer and shields him from the world. She could almost hear him whimper. Her knight, her son, pained from a simple touch.
“I- I’m sorry, I… I should have warned someone. Eternal Sugar Cookie isn’t a healer, despite her best efforts. Her… Her healing can have… consequences.”
The air is tense, Hollyberry feeling a tremor in her soul before she speaks, trying to urge Sugarfly to just say it.
“Please, just say what you mean.”
“I don’t know what it entails, not at all. Any time this would happen, the cookies involved would disappear, though she’d tell me they were fine and- and I do not know if she lied. She… She always looked so horrified when it happened-”
Hollyberry has to interject, stop the rush that makes her only more scared.
“Sugarfly Cookie, please-”
“He’s been cursed. I- I’m pretty sure he’s cursed. I don’t know what it will do. I’m sorry.”
Hollyberry feels the bed drop out from under her as her grip tightens around her cursed child. She remembers the poisonous feeling of Eternal Sugar’s magic, and thinks of how she begged her to heal him, begged her to save his life from the wounds he got defending her.
And now, who knows what her rush to save him damned him to?