Work Text:
Purple lived alone. That was how she liked it. Because when she was alone, she couldn't be caught doing things she wouldn't let anyone see her doing. She could sing to herself all she liked, often weaving tunes that nothing but the walls of her apartment would hear, recounting stories in the notes that came out of her mouth. She could put as much flourish as she liked into any little movement, the art of flipping food in a pan becoming a dance move, any old tax sheet turning into an enemy conquered with the final stroke of her pen.
She could even act in ways no adult would be found dead acting. She could walk on her knees, too unsteady for the full length of her legs. She could babble things that were half-nonsense, half-songs she used to know when she was a kid. She could sing a lookalike of her mother into existence that would guide her hands into working the stove, or of her father that would hold a false book and read nothing from it while she rested on his knee.
These times were few and far between. But they still happened, often against her will, so she spent a lot of time at home or in Minecraft alone.
Minecraft was a more dangerous place for it to happen, though. Not because of the mobs.
Because of her friends.
That was a thought. Her friends. Very often, she still thought of them as separate from herself, like she wasn't a part of the group despite visiting them so much. But they were her friends, really, they'd told her as such so many times before. She wanted to believe them.
They were her friends. So they knew where she lived in Minecraft. The treehouse in the Jungle biome that she'd set together, every copper block and wooden plank.
The times when she acted less like the 14-year-old she was and more like she was 5 again didn't usually sneak up on her— she could feel them coming, if only by a few minutes. She tended to know, earlier in the day, if she was going to need her music-note mum to comfort her in melodic silence. So because those times didn't sneak up on her, she could avoid others during them and take care of herself as she needed to.
See, the keyword in that first sentence there was usually.
Usually had to account for visits. To her friends, to her King — his name was Mango, but she still preferred to call him her King in her head, if not to his face — she paid attention to them often. Having them drift away was a pain she didn't want to bear again. So she made the effort to stick around, to help her King manage his house when she didn't have to manage hers, to join the Prism Gang in their various activities. She was even in a group chat with them all.
(Mango had it muted. He hardly ever texted unless she directly messaged him herself, which she did almost daily. Just a simple check-in. He always answered her.)
Usually didn't mean always. Usually sometimes meant she'd be at her King's house, watching over it and cleaning up while he was at his new job of the week, and that sometimes she'd stumble upon a room that was never meant to be opened again, and that sometimes she'd find the toys of a child like those she never remembered having.
Those walls were painted in pretty shades of rust-gold-mango, starting from a dull reddish color at the bottom and ending in a color almost identical to her King's at the ceiling, which didn't follow this pattern but instead faded into a pretty maroon-red-blue color near the light. Various stickers were pasted all around, especially over the bed that rested in one corner, with a lightning-bolt patterned blanket sprawled messily around the faded brown sheets, like someone had rolled out of it just that morning. The whole room was covered in dust.
Something in Purple's chest told her she shouldn't be here. That the color lining the middle of the walls was terribly similar to the color of the kid in that photograph her King never let her touch.
But… she could see a couple things from the doorway. Things that something else inside of her longed to examine.
Just a little. Just some dusting. Then I'll leave.
Well, she dusted. She opened a window and let the light and fresh air in so the signs of neglect wouldn't just settle back into place. And while she dusted, she found things. A dresser, equally as covered in stickers as the ceiling. A closet with a floor covered in toys. A small collection of blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags, some of which didn't seem to match the former occupant's style. Photos of people she didn't recognize… for the most part. Arts and crafts, some unfinished. A pot with something that might've been a plant, once.
And boxes, under the bed.
For a second, she was afraid of what she would find in those boxes. But they, like the rest of this room, needed dusting. Even to her, it was a poor excuse, but the tightness welling up in her throat wanted to see it so badly. She hesitated… and pulled the boxes out.
More dust stirred up with them. Purple waved it away from her face, looking down into their contents.
They were open, cardboard flaps folded inwards and pinned by the various toys. Some were hard plastic, some were soft and plush. She pulled out a stuffed bull (or was it a buffalo…?) and looked at it for a second — it was well-worn and loved, the texture rough but comforting under her scarred hands — before gently putting it aside, making sure it stayed upright. What she was doing, the gentleness with which she treated it, didn't even seem to register.
Next was a toy car, after carefully digging through the box and trying not to disturb it too much. It was so painfully generic, and she placed it on the old carpet and drove it back and forth anyway, humming little "vroom vroom" sounds in the quietest notes she could make. Then, when she decided that carpet wasn't the best thing to be driving a tiny car on, she placed it carefully by the stuffed toy and returned to the box.
The third thing she pulled out was an almost ancient drawing device, one with knobs instead of a pen that told the lines which direction to go— up and down, side to side. She remembered a friend having this when she was very small. She didn't remember its name.
Regardless, she played with the knobs for a while, glad to see it still worked. She tried to draw a crown, but it didn't come out very well, and she didn't know how to erase it. Using her finger didn't work. Drawing back over the lines didn't work. So she put that down, too, nestled safely beneath the hooves of the stuffed toy.
After that were some figurines. None of them were characters she recognized, but they looked pretty cool, so she took one in each hand and sung a little figure of herself to interact with them. It didn't hit her quite yet that she was playing. She hadn't played since she was 5, and she didn't remember having any toys back then to play with. It was always mumma and daddy that played with her.
The wordless scene played out, accompanied with nothing but a melody she made up on the spot. It was cool, the way she could just sing other figures into existence. It was a thing she practiced again and again, from the day she found the Note Block Universe, and now she was good at it! Good enough to play with it!
The song and dance had taken a sharper, harsher turn some time in, which was why she didn't hear the front door to the house opening. Her volume was uncontrolled, which was why she was too loud to notice her name being called. And the scene she played out with the figures and her own tiny self was too captivating to let her notice when someone was at the door, watching the toys and the notes make their movements under her clumsy fingers, until-
"Purple?"
Her voice cut off with a sudden, shrill pitch. It had driven high enough to hurt Purple's own ears, but she slammed the figurines down over the little her made with notes, hearing it shatter against unyielding plastic. Her fingers spread out like she could hide them from the man in the doorway, the one she looked up at with so much fear.
Her first coherent thought in a while was, He's the same color as the walls.
Mango stared down at her. The look on his face wasn't something she could describe, not now. Not like this.
Unable to choke out a "sorry," she scrambled to grab the toys she'd taken out of the box and put them back in. Her hands shook. Why was she so cold all of a sudden? In went the drawing pad, the toy car, the stuffed buffalo, and then she realized she was still carrying the two figures she was playing with and shoved them back as well with far less care. Then she started to worry that she'd broken them, and stopped mid-push to check them over.
She didn't get to let herself know that they were fine before a hand was on her shoulder and she shrieked. Her entire body reacted, kicking the box back under the bed while her upper half flinched away, arms covering her head, chin tucked tightly into her chest. Even her fists were tight and ready, but only one of them— the other forced itself to stay open after a moment, just in case she needed to catch a hit.
"Purple. Purple." It wasn't Mango's voice that she heard, for a minute. It was… someone else's. Someone trying to urge her up, get up, get up get up get up get up get up and fight- "Purp, what are you doing in here? I thought the door was locked."
Wait, that was something she could answer. She shook her head, as quick as she could. No, the door wasn't locked when she came to it. If it had been, she wouldn't have bothered— a locked door was meant to stay locked. She knew that. She learned that when she was 6.
"Purple, hey." The hand touched her shoulder again and she flinched just as hard, curling up, protect the vitals- "I'm… not gonna hurt you. Just get up. Can you look at me, please?"
Get up. That was a command she recognized. She got up. Her head raised, and her hands lowered, only to her chest, ready to strike as she was taught, a battle stance she would know if she was thrown out of bed and told to get up, get up get up get up get up get up and fight-
"Purp, breathe. What are you looking at?" An orange hand covered her fist. Orange? But he was-
What was she looking at. She was asked a question. What was she looking at? She certainly wasn't looking at anyone's face. Her eyes were blurry, her mind unsteady- she wasn't looking at anything. She was looking in the direction of something, something that couldn't decide if it was blue or orange, navy or mango-
"Look at me, kid. Look up." The opposite hand to the one on her knuckles tapped lightly under her face. Look up. Answer him. She looked up.
The face she saw… wasn't right. It wasn't supposed to have those big, bushy eyebrows, or the hair that was just barely starting to grow out again.
"Na-" No, not Navy. "King?"
The man seemed to flinch. But no, that wasn't right, there was too little movement. Besides, Daddy never flinched. "Mango, Purp. You know my name."
His name. Mango. Not Navy, Mango. Her King, Mango.
"Mang- my King-" She dropped her head into her hands, automatically tensing for a hit and covering her ears. "I'm sorry- I won't do it again, I'm sorry, I just- found it, and-"
Her hands were warm. Something was holding them. Someone else was talking. Listen to him when he's talking. Carefully, shakily, she moved her hands away from her ears, slower than a snail's pace. Purple peeked up at the man talking to her, only one eye open, but blurry. Why was it blurry-? Oh, she was crying. Don't cry. Don't show weakness, be a big, strong, brave girl. Brave girls don't cry.
She couldn't quite make out what he was saying. LISTEN TO HIM. Even looking directly at his lips, she still couldn't. Then she saw a pause, the familiar flicker of disappointment and confusion, why can't you just get this right, and then she was pulled into his side and she was prepared to strike back, but- she-
She… was warm. It was warm. Her hand landed on fabric, and she curled her stiff fingers around it, feeling the texture, the softness, the lines in the wool- Daddy never wore anything like this. Daddy was never this… warm.
The man was walking. Maybe she leaned a little far into him, but she walked too, following his lead out of the yellow room and looking back only once at the toys she'd left behind. They were never hers, anyway. The door closed.
It was forever and no time at all before the two of them were on the couch. The man peeled her off of him and sat her down at one end, then he went to sit on the other, and she pretended like she wasn't trying to reach for his nice sweater again. Why did she feel like this? Why did she feel so… weird?
The man looked at her a second, taking a deep breath and sighing it out with the all-too-present sound of disappointment.
"Why were you in that room, Purple?"
Why was she-? Why was she… he was asking why she'd gone in, in the first place. Why had she?
"… cleaning," she mumbled, then realized he wouldn't be able to hear her, and he would get mad. So she repeated it, louder. "Cleaning. Th' door wasn't locked…"
His eyes did a weird, tight, small thing. She looked down at her knees. Her legs were folded haphazardly underneath her, and her hands were in her lap, not quite still, always pulling at her fingers and hearing them pop.
The room was quiet for a few minutes.
"… Why did you think I was going to hurt you?" The man asked. It didn't come out smoothly, or even surely. She realized he'd been trying to figure out what to say this whole time. Purple didn't looked up as she shrugged.
"Dunno. Thought you were Daddy."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand clench around a corner of the couch and her shoulders stiffened. Her legs slipped out, to a better position in case she had to run, jump up and fight, get up, get up get up get up get up get-
"Alright, kid," he started again, after another deep breath. "Let's get one thing straight. I don't know if I've said this before, but I am never going to hurt you again, okay? Not on purpose." And he sounded so serious about it, so stern, that she actually looked up and saw his face. He looked just like his tone of voice. "And if I do, you tell me, okay?" There was a pause there. Purple nodded, slow and stunned. Her King nodded back. "Okay. Second things… I guess I should tell you about that room."
And he leaned forward, rested his head on his hands, and told her about a kid named Gold, his little Marigold, who was no longer around but who used to live in that room. And she listened, enraptured, even as half the words slipped right past her head and halfway through, she realized:
Oh. It's one of those times.
It hadn't been one of those times earlier. But now that she knew, she also knew she couldn't just sing her mother into the room, couldn't just sing her father into his chair, and definitely couldn't let her King know.
"And… well, longer story short, they're the reason I was like that, in Minecraft." There was a pause, where he looked into her eyes and realized how wide they were, how she wasn't all there, how her head was kind of tilted to one side and how her joints still twitched like they weren't where they were supposed to be. "… You okay, Purp? I tried not to say too much, but… was that too much?" His eyes twitched, in the way they did when he didn't like the way something came out of his mouth. That habit, she was aware of. Familiar with.
And the words came out of her mouth without her wanting them.
"They seem like a good friend." And her voice was loud, uncontrolled like her song, unsuited for the situation. "Wish I coulda met 'em. I woulda played toys with them." She looked down, at a swirl on the couch that she started absently running her finger over, because it didn't belong there, and she missed the way her King's brows furrowed, the way he repeated a couple of her words under his breath in a too-high tone that matched the one she had by accident.
"Are you okay?" He asked again. She shrugged again, still distracted with her spiral. "What's going on?"
"Dunno," she mumbled. "Havin' a weird brain day."
"Good weird or bad weird-?"
She'd found where the spiral began. A pulled thread. Her finger started tracing circles around that instead. "Usually okay. Don't really… show anyone." Her hand stopped abruptly. Wait, she wasn't supposed to tell him! Shoot!
Her King put one of his hands down, leaning closer. "Usually? How much does this happen?"
"Um…" Purple started pulling at her fingers again, glancing back and forth between him and her feet and wondering how fast they'd carry her if she decided to leave the house right now. "Not much…? No, a lil more after… um… the Nether." Her mumble got worse, but she didn't want to correct it this time. "The Nether" was a vague phrase on purpose, it always was.
"Well-" King sighed. Now he was looking away as well, and they sat there in silence again until he figured out how to speak. "What do you do, when… this happens?"
"Stay alone," she mumbled out again. There wasn't much else she could say without making him worry. She cooked for herself, she cleaned for herself, she sung her parents back into the house with her so they could be a happy family like they were before-
Her hands seized up. Carefully, and without touching anything else, she laid them both out flat on her lap before taking one and very lightly running her fingertips over her other palm. It stung. It… burned.
It took her a moment to realize her King was speaking to her again. "Anything else…? Anything… in particular?" She shook her head.
"Don't wanna say."
"… Why?"
Her eyes slid to the seam between the couch cushions. Well, she might as well tell him the truth. The reason for it couldn't be that bad, right? "You'll get worried. 'N I don't want you to worry."
He leaned closer, probably just trying to hear what she was saying, but she hunched into herself anyway. Even though he had directly said otherwise, it was hard to get the thought out of her head that he might hurt her. But then he registered the words, and sat up again, looking at the ceiling. With a sigh, he muttered "Baby steps."
She likely wasn't meant to hear it, but Purple nodded anyway. "Baby," she repeated, because that was the truth. But again, she cringed at herself for being so open about it. This was why she never let herself be around anyone when this happened!
Her King blinked. Then looked at her with a newly confused expression. She looked away before he could hold eye contact for too long.
Finally, he sighed. "You know what, we don't really need to talk about that until you're feeling better. I think I know something we both need, though." Mango opened his arms, and smiled at her. "What do you say, Purp? Can I cash in that monthly hug?"
Purple gasped softly. Was he really…? Oh, he was! Without thinking much at all, she smiled and nodded and jumped forward, and just like that her head was as fuzzy as his sweater. She buried her face deep into it, and felt his arms wrap around her.
It felt warm. It felt like she was home.
They laid there for a while, one feeling like she was floating through clouds, and the other concerned, but seeming happy enough that she didn't really care.
They never did end up talking about the state she was in. But if Purple came over a little more during those days, well, Mango wouldn't stop her. Her lightheaded and dizzy thoughts wouldn't get her hurt if he was there to catch her.