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Being a magical Wish Craft clone is complicated. Sometimes Loop thinks they love their stardust, and other times they think they hate him. He's so lucky. He gets to be himself. The basis, the prime, the real one. When people look at him, they think, “Ah, that is Siffrin, our friend, a human.” When people look at Loop, they think, “What the changedamn fuck?” Even if the rest of the party says they don't feel that way, Loop can't stop assuming they do. Who wouldn't? They're…not even human. Not even a real person.
And confronted with a version of themself that is a real person?
Universe preserve them both.
Or maybe not. Because right now, Loop can't wish anything good on their stardust, the very one they were fashioned by the Universe to help. Can only tremble with rage and hatred and let Mirabelle lead them by the hand away from everyone else, nothing but How dare they? looping (hahaha. HAHAHA!) through their mind as they go.
How dare stardust ever fight with Loop? He gets to have everything, keep everything!!! How dare they go about flaunting their hair brushed by Mira, and their parents’ cloak, and an eyepatch made by Isa, and cuddles and a happy ending and unconditional love and everything Loop can't have can't ever deserve, when they're just as disgusting and burdensome and stupid stupid stupid as Loop and HOW DARE THEY!?!?!?
And then have the nerve to claim LOOP is being unfair? Mean? As if he ever has the right to say anything against their first iteration after Loop burned themself to the ground and drew a smiley face in the ashes just to keep stardust from the same fate?
How dare they how dare they how dare they Loop wants to grab his throat and squeeze wants to carve stars into their arm until they sob wants to make them pay for their failures–
“Lulu?”
Loop is snapped out of their violent haze by the name they've been experimenting with for the past several days. The world focuses back slightly. Right. Mirabelle. Softness and skill and healing and help to the unworthy. Everything about her makes them want to hide their incredibly violent internal monologue so she doesn't get scared of them.
Mirabelle is holding a wooden chair. “Do you want to help?”
…Right.
The first time Loop and Siffrin got into one of these verbal brawls, Loop assumed their family was going to chuck them out. After all, Loop is the clone, and only by the grace of their original are they allowed to be happy. Because they help him. If their use is no longer viable, if the real Siffrin no longer has perfectly positive feelings about them, there's nothing to do with them but abandon them, leave them behind.
Instead, the party was worried. Apparently they considered it a ‘complicated situation’ because Loop and their stardust were the same person. The things Loop and Siffrin said to each other apparently ‘made them worry about their self esteem’ and ‘constitutes concern.’ So instead of choosing one to be right in each argument and punishing the other, they developed the game plan of ‘drag the Siffrins away from each other and put them somewhere quiet until they calm down and hug it out.’ Right now, Loop is absolutely certain they'll never calm down, never forgive their stardust. But they're certain of that every time they get into these fights. They know calmer waters are coming, and they’re almost bitter the storm won't rage forever.
…Besides, if they don't let themself be calmed, they won't get Mirabelle pillow fort time. Which is their designated calm-down-after-almost-killing-stardust/themself tradition.
“Okay,” they mutter, grabbing another chair and helping Mirabelle set up the fort.
. . .
You'd think saving the country would make Mirabelle feel LESS useless. But nothing can ever go the way it's meant to with Mirabelle, can it? Euphrasie says that after being in fight or flight for so long, it makes sense that only now does she feel safe enough to express her bottled up emotions. But Mirabelle hates it, still. She cries easier than ever before. She spirals at the slightest sign of rejection. And she hides from her fans behind her friends.
Her friends…Change. Why did any of them want to keep travelling with her? Because she couldn't handle her quest on her own, she nearly got them all killed.
Change, she got Siffrin killed! She'll be having a good day, reading a book, hanging out with her friends, and that thought will lodge into her brain like a dart and trying to pull it out just brings more pain. Siffrin died. Siffrin died in agony, over and over and over and OVER AND OVER because of HER!!!
Because she couldn't convince him to take the Death Corridor seriously.
Because she didn't help look for the keys.
Because she couldn't Craft a shield without needing them to find that once-Changed carrot method.
Because she took them on a doomed quest and expected them to be okay with it!
Wasn't taking their eye from them enough!?
She knows it's not fair to herself, to think like this. She knows every time Bonnie gives her a snack, or Siffrin tells her he doesn't regret it, or Isabeau gives her a hug, or Madame cuts through her anxiety with logic.
But she can't shake off the guilt.
And then she met Loop.
Mirabelle's greatest fear is involuntary Change. Which seems pathetic. After all, she's a Housemaiden! Even if she doesn't choose a Change, she should still celebrate it! And besides, Houses have resources for people who Change against their will, she wouldn't be lost on what to do!
(“You'll meet the right person.” Mirabelle dreads the day that happens, if it ever does. Finding someone who will make her want all these–awful, disgusting things she never has, who will put her under some sort of mind control to make her want kissing and babies and all the things she does not.)
She didn't just let Siffrin die hundreds of times. She let them die thousands of times.
And let them live out her own worst nightmare!!!
Twisted into someone else with no say in the matter.
She was catatonic for days after she found out. Her friends had to take care of her. She was both unable to muster the strength and angry at herself for her weakness to boot.
She's always struggled with feeling useless, even before this trauma-rama of a save-the-country quest, ever since she was the bumbling youngest Housemaiden going from class to class.
One day, back then, she signed up for the Healing Craft introductory course. And… something about it spoke to her. Satisfied an urge deep within her. When she healed Isabeau’s paper cut, or Bonnie's scraped knee, she wasn't useless. The contentment that flooded her when she watched her loved ones knit back together at her own hand was practically euphoric. She didn't feel useless. She felt competent. Able to take care of those she loved.
These sessions with Lulu brought her a similar kind of peace. The simple, step-by-step way of taking care of her dear family member.
Scooch the chairs into a square pattern in the middle of the room. Wrestle the blankets from the beds and drape them over the chairs to create a canopy. Assemble the pillows into a soft little nest inside. Watch the flashing rage and sparking tension fade from Lulu as they assist her.
Then, crawl into the small, warm haven, Lulu at her side, whose rage has simmered down into silent embarrassment. She holds out her arms invitingly, familiar with thrmy suffering from this mood.
Lulu huffs, and shimmies into her hold, resting their head against her chest. “Well. That certainly happened.”
“Mmhm.” Mirabelle is proud of their progress. When the two of them first began this tradition, Lulu would try to brush off how emotionally charged they were with jokes and dismissal. Now they let her hold them right off the bat.
“...I hope stardust isn't taking what I said too seriously,” Lulu muses.
“What about what was said to you? Are you okay? Wanna talk?” Mirabelle checks, not wanting Lulu to hoist all of the blame onto themself.
Lulu shrugs. “They didn't say anything inaccurate.”
Mirabelle frowns, and gives her party member a light shake, making them squeak. “Yes, they did!” she says. “You aren't a failure. Siffrin wasn't thinking straight and you weren't either.”
“...”
“Tell me I'm right, and you aren't a failure,” Mirabelle says comfortably.
“...Housemaiden…”
Mirabelle boops where their nose would be, playfully reproving.
Lulu squirms. “Miraaa~!” The two of them giggle, warmth fluxing through the air around them, safe and cozy in their tiny sanctuary of cloth.
“...Mmphfph. Fine. You're right and I'm not a failure,” Lulu parrots back, pouting. “Satisfied? How could you do this to poor old Loo–I mean, Lulu? Jail for Mirabelle! Jail for one thousand years!”
Mirabelle laughs, noticing Lulu’s eyes light up with joy below her chin. “Yes, I'm satisfied. But please,” she folds her hands together pleadingly, arms still clutching Lulu, “No jail!”
“Yes jail. You're getting stale bread and water,” Lulu condemns mercilessly.
“But then…I wouldn't be able to read the next chapter of Cosmic Frontier: Adventures in Space and the Cosmos with you,” Mirabelle points out.
The beams of light exuding from Lulu’s head twitch slightly, like an interested cat’s ears. (Adorable.)
Mirabelle untangles one of her arms and places two of her fingers on her nose. “NOSE GOES!” Then she pushes Lulu away, rolling them out of the pillow fort. “You have to go leave our comfy fort to get it!”
Lulu keens like a dying animal. “It's not fair! I don't even have a nose! You are a cruel woman, Mirabelle!” Then they scamper out of the fort and return holding the book. This time they make themself comfy snuggling against her side. Mirabelle opens to the page with the silk bookmark.
“Chapter 9. Captain Avery paced the foot of the lounge, heart beating at a million lightyears an hour.” Lulu rests their chin(?) on her shoulder. “Could his dear friend, Chief O’Bailey, really be his enemy? But no. He couldn't believe it. He knew, deep within his soul, that O’Bailey was no villain…”
The two of them get lost in stories of space, past and present becoming a pleasant blur, in the soft confines of their pillow fort.