Chapter Text
He wakes with a violent, full-body sneeze that snaps him out of sleep so abruptly it feels like being dragged up from underwater.
For a moment, he just lies there, eyes shut, breathing through the lingering irritation in his nose. His head feels thick, slow, like it’s packed with wool. There’s a faint ache behind his eyes, one that suggests either bad decisions or not enough sleep. Maybe both.
He cracks one eye open.
White.
That’s the first thing he registers. Not just the ceiling—everything. The walls, the sheets, even the light itself feels white, pouring in through tall windows in long, blinding streaks. It’s too clean, too bright. Not a place he recognizes.
Then the smell hits him, the one that must have caused his sneeze. It’s sweet, and cloying, and altogether allergy-triggering.
He turns his head slightly and finds the source: a glass vase on the bedside table, filled with white lilies, their petals wide and open. His nose prickles again in warning.
“Jesus—”
He clamps a hand over his face just in time to muffle a second sneeze, groaning afterward. His voice sounds rough, unused, and much higher than he remembers
Grumpy, disoriented, he pushes himself up onto his elbows. The sheets shift under him, and they’re too soft, too clean. Expensive. Definitely not his.
He’s starting to panic a little—who wouldn’t, at this point—because he has no idea how he’s gotten here.
A one-night stand, maybe?
That’s not usually his style, though, so he’s not sure.
He sits up fully now, slower, testing his balance. His head swims for a second before settling into a dull, persistent ache. He presses his fingers to his temple, frowning.
“…great.”
Nothing comes back. No memory, no explanation. Just a blank, irritating absence.
Just as he’s about to get out of bed, the door opens. In the doorway is a pretty, put-together blonde. Her clothes are a bit odd, so unlike anything he's seen, but he doesn't linger on the thought.
She freezes, pale blue eyes wide. He stills too, one hand braced against the mattress, halfway to standing.
For a strange, suspended second, nothing moves.
His brain scrambles to make sense of it and fills in the most convenient answer.
Okay. Fine. One-night stand. Weird room, but whatever.
“Korkie!” the blonde woman says, rushing over to his bedside. “You’re awake!”
He stares at her blankly. Vaguely, he registers that something isn't right.
First of all, Korkie? That’s supposed to be a name?
Secondly...he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be dead.
That thought lands a beat too late, and then before he knows it, he’s hurling all over the pristine white sheets.
Faintly, he realizes he never got around to the third point.
The blonde pats his back and brings a washcloth to clean his mouth, and really, he has no idea what’s happening.
He gags again, though mostly because of the sheer shame coursing through him. He tries to push himself upright, but she keeps a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Korkie, sit still!” she says. Her voice is panicked.
Calm down, please, he thinks. Why is she calling me that? Who the hell even is she? And why am I alive, or dead, or—he shakes his head, banishing the headache-inducing thoughts.
He blinks at her, hoping that maybe if he stares long enough, this will make sense. It does not. Instead, he catches sight of himself in a mirror across the room. His reflection—Korkie’s reflection—stares back, blue eyes in a much, much too small face.
Oh, he thinks faintly. That’s number three.
She hands him a glass of water. He takes it, but instead of drinking, he accidentally spills it on the bed. Water meets vomit meets sunlight. A new aesthetic.
Art. Modern art.
Embarassingly, he starts to cry.
By the time she gets him to calm down, he’s so tired that he doesn’t even react to the robots.
Because, yeah. Robots.
Not the cute kind, either. Not the rounded, blinking things from kids’ shows. Not Wall-E. No big eyes, no cheerful beeps. Instead, in front of him sits a terrifying creature of nightmares.
“Run a diagnostic,” the blonde says, like this is a completely normal sentence to say in a completely normal situation.
The robot’s “eyes” glow a little brighter, and it leans down.
He considers running.
He really does. There’s a brief, shining moment where his brain goes absolutely not and suggests getting up, bolting, maybe screaming on the way out—
But the thought barely gets off the ground before collapsing under the weight of everything else—exhaustion, nausea, the lingering burn of embarrassment, the fact that he’s in a body that feels too small and too weak to back up any kind of defiance.
Because apparently he’s a small child now.
A very tired, very nauseous small child who has already cried, thrown up, and humiliated himself beyond repair.
So instead of running, he just… stays.
Which, frankly, feels like a betrayal of every survival instinct he’s ever had, but here they are.
A thin arm unfolds from its side, a blue light blinking from where the hand is supposed to be.
He leans back on instinct, shoulders pressing into the pillows, but there’s nowhere to go. The blonde’s hand is still on him, steady and insistent, like she thinks he might bolt at any second.
She’s not wrong.
“Hold still,” she says, which is rich, considering the circumstances.
“I am holding still,” he says, deeply offended.
The blue light sweeps over his face. It’s not painful. Not even uncomfortable, really. Just… weird. A faint warmth, like standing too close to a screen. He crosses his eyes trying to look at it.
The light moves down, over his neck, his chest, his arms. He watches it go, equal parts horrified and fascinated, like if he pays close enough attention he might figure out what the hell is happening.
He does not.
He does, however, notice something else.
He’d seen, distantly, earlier, how wrong he’d looked in the mirror. How young. But that had been easy enough to shove aside in the face of more immediate concerns, like violently ruining a perfectly good set of sheets with his bodily fluids.
Now, though, there’s nothing to distract him as the light passes over his hands.
He stares at them. Really stares, this time. They’re… small.
Not just small—tiny. The proportions are off, fingers too short, knuckles too soft, the bones beneath the skin not quite where they should be. Pale, unfamiliar hands, curled slightly against the sheet like they belong to someone else.
Because they do, he realizes. They belong to Korkie, not him.
At that moment, his stomach decides to grumble. Not subtle, either. Very loud, and very embarrassing.
He freezes.
The robot continues scanning, utterly unbothered, but the blonde’s head snaps toward him, attention sharpening in an instant.
“Oh,” she says, like this explains something. “Oh, of course.”
Of course what.
He’s still staring at his hands, shame burning hot in the pit of his belly, when she straightens slightly and turns toward the door.
“Some food, please,” she calls, voice quick but controlled, like she’s used to being obeyed. “Can we get something brought up? Immediately.”
There’s a pause, just long enough to suggest someone is, in fact, stationed right outside.
“Yes, Duchess,” comes a muffled reply.
He blinks. Duchess?
His brain tries to latch onto that, but it slides right off. Too many other problems currently in the queue.
“Something light,” she continues, already turning back to him. “Broth, maybe. And water—fresh water.”
“Yes, Duchess.”
Footsteps retreat.
The blonde woman—a duchess, apparently—turns back to him. She reaches out without hesitation and brushes his hair back from his forehead, fingers cool and careful. Her expression softens as she looks at him. Not just relieved, but fond. Almost… doting.
He, as a grown and adult man, does not melt into her touch. Absolutely not. He does not lean into it, either. Not even a little.
He certainly does not go still in that very specific way that suggests some deeply traitorous part of him finds the contact comforting.
“I know you prefer tiingilar,” she says, “but I'm afraid your stomach is too weak for that, currently.”
Tiingilar?
He has no idea what that is. But some part of him has the creeping, nauseating suspicion that he’s supposed to.
The door opens again before he can ask.
A tray is brought in, steam rising from a shallow bowl, something pale and thin that smells faintly herbal, not unpleasant but… unfamiliar. Everything here is unfamiliar.
“Careful,” the duchess says softly, taking the bowl before the servant can hand it over. “It’s hot.”
He peers into it, deeply suspicious. It looks like chicken broth. It smells like it, too.
But then he remembers he's in some place where robots are doctors. Meaning he should be a lot more dubious of any food he's offered.
She sits on the edge of the bed, close enough that he can feel the shift in the mattress, and lifts a spoon.
Oh, absolutely not.
“I can feed myself,” he says immediately, reaching out, and blinks when his hand closes around air, still half a foot from the spoon.
There’s a pause. A terrible, ringing, soul-leaving-his-body kind of pause.
He stares at his hand. His hand stares back, small and useless and profoundly unhelpful.
The duchess does not laugh. She doesn’t even smile. She just watches him for a moment, something careful and measuring in her expression, before gently pressing the spoon into his hand instead.
“Of course you can,” she says.
His wrist wobbles when he lifts it. The liquid trembles dangerously, surface tension doing heroic work to keep it from sloshing over the side. He brings it closer. Closer.
It drips anyway, a thin line down the side of the spoon and onto the immaculate white sheets.
Fantastic.
He pretends not to notice.
Very carefully, very deliberately, he gets the spoon to his mouth.
The broth is warm, light, faintly savory with something floral threaded through it. He hesitates for half a second, just long enough to remember he has no idea what’s in it, where it came from, or whether it’s safe—and then he swallows.
God, it’s good. Clean and gentle and easy on his stomach in a way that makes something unclench deep in his chest. Whatever lingering nausea he had retreats almost instantly, soothed into submission.
Despite everything—despite the robots, the strange room, the fact that he's not even in his own body—he loves it.
He’s always loved food. That, at least, feels solid. Familiar. A small, stubborn piece of himself that hasn’t slipped away.
Warmth spreads through him with each swallow, slow and steady, like his body is remembering how to exist one basic function at a time. Eat. Swallow. Breathe.
Okay. Good. He can work with that.
He takes another sip, then another, picking up speed now, caution rapidly losing ground to hunger.
The duchess makes a soft sound, something between relief and amusement, but doesn’t stop him.
“Slowly,” she murmurs.
He absolutely does not go slowly. If anything, he speeds up out of spite. Also because he is, apparently, starving.
Which raises several deeply concerning questions, none of which he is equipped to answer right now.
He lowers the spoon briefly, eyeing the bowl. “What’s in this?” he asks, curiosity finally outweighing common sense. “Chicken?”
She blinks at him. Actually blinks. Like that was not a sentence she was prepared to hear. “Chicken?” she repeats, faintly baffled.
Alright. Not a great sign.
She exhales, a little exasperated but threaded through with unmistakable fondness, as if this is a familiar kind of nonsense. “No,” she says. “This was made from nuna, I think.”
He stares at her. “…nuna,” he repeats.
She smiles softly, already reaching to steady the bowl as he shifts. “I know you dislike how they look, Korkie, but really. It will help you recover. And see, wasn’t it tasty?”
He looks down at the nearly empty bowl.
Tasty is… not the issue.
The issue is that he has no idea what a nuna is. And the fact that she looked genuinely confused at him suggesting chicken as an ingredient is not helping.
Slowly, all the things he's been ignoring start creeping back in. The fact that he's quite sure he's dead. The fact that he is now a small, pale, red-headed child. The fact that he is now in some sort of palace, with a duchess, who has servants. The fact that there are robots instead of doctors, and soup made out of something he's never heard of before.
“…okay,” he says quietly, mostly to himself. The spoon feels too light in his hand now. The bowl too far away. His own body too unfamiliar in a way that is suddenly impossible to ignore.
He sets the spoon down with deliberate care, as if sudden movement might make everything worse. It doesn’t help. Nothing feels stable anymore.
He swallows once, then looks up at her. “What happened to me?” he asks. It comes out simpler than he expects. Smaller, too.
The duchess stills, gaze softening immediately. There's love, there, he realizes. And sadness, and grief, and relief. “You became very ill,” she says gently.
He waits. She continues, slower now, choosing her words with care.
“A severe infection. It progressed quickly.” A pause. She clears her throat softly. “You were not responsive when we—I—found you.”
“You were on the verge of organ failure,” she adds, matter-of-fact but quiet. Her gaze drifts for a moment, unfocused, like she’s looking at something that isn’t in the room anymore. “I was very worried,” she finishes, a little stilted.
That last part, he realizes, is personal. She is someone important to him. That much is obvious…not from a memory he no longer has, but from the way she stands too close without thinking about it, the way her voice softens when she looks at him, the way worry slips through her control like a crack in glass.
His mind scrambles to assign meaning to it.
Mother? Aunt? Guardian? Something in-between?
He searches her face again, more carefully this time. The familiarity he should feel is still missing, but there’s something else there instead. Something in the curve of her jaw, the shape of her nose. A sense that she is not a stranger to him, even if he is a stranger to himself.
He shifts slightly in the bed. The sheets whisper against his skin, still too soft, too clean. “…how long?” he asks.
She blinks, refocusing.
“You’ve been unconscious for six days,” she says.
Six. He exhales slowly through his nose, like that might organize his thoughts into something usable.
Instead, it just makes him more aware of the fact that his body is small. Tired. Aching in places he can’t properly name. He looks down at his hands again.
A long silence stretches between them.
Then he asks, quieter, “Am I going to be okay?” He hates how childlike it sounds, small and a little bit frightened.
Her expression shifts, something fierce and bright passing behind her eyes before she answers. “Yes,” she says firmly. “You are safe now.”
Safe isn't the same as okay, but he nods anyway.
Days pass in a blur of bedrest, scary medical droid visits, and gradually solidifying food.
He learns, in fragments, what his body can and cannot do. He cannot stand for too long without his legs protesting. He cannot walk without someone hovering too close behind him, ready to catch him like he is made of glass.
He can, however, eat, which is becoming a problem.
Because every time something new is brought in, his brain immediately forgets all caution in favor of food = good, consume immediately.
At some point, the duchess stops being surprised by how fast he finishes things.
She said he used to be a picky eater. Now, she seems to believe his sickness, too long without solid food, has changed that.
He meets more people, too.
Like Tani, who he's pretty sure he's supposed to know.
She is an attendant, though the role feels more layered than the word suggests. Half caretaker, half overseer, something close to a nanny, almost.
He gets the impression that Korkie spent more time with her than anyone else here—more than the duchess, even.
Someone who he learns is his aunt.
Which is… yeah. His aunt is a duchess.
That fact doesn’t land the way it probably should. It doesn’t feel impressive or clarifying so much as oddly disconnected, like he’s being told a piece of trivia about someone else’s life.
Something that’s occupied a lot of his thoughts recently are Korkie’s parents. Because if he’s wherever he is right now, being raised by his aunt… then where are his parents?
It’s the kind of question that should come with a clean answer. Simple categories. A neat explanation that slots everything into place.
But nothing here has been clean or simple.
Still, his mind keeps circling it when things go quiet. They're dead, he assumes. At least, that’s the most logical conclusion. It's hard not to notice the parent-shaped absence in his life, one his aunt isn't present enough to fill.
It makes sense, in a way. Important people are always busy. Meetings, decisions, places to be. Someone has to handle everything in between. Tani is the one who handles the in-between.
She is a constant presence in a way the duchess stopped being once the med-droid cleared him from immediate danger. He wouldn't call her absent. Not even distant. Just no longer always there.
Tani, however, remains.
She doesn’t treat him like a patient. Not exactly. More like something she has been responsible for a long time, whether or not he remembers agreeing to it.
The strangest part is how natural it feels.
“You’re thinking too much again,” she says, setting a glass of water beside him.
He glances at it, then at her. “I am not.” As he talks, though, he reaches a slightly shaky hand to the glass.
He has to be careful whenever he talks to her. Around everyone, really, because he’s decided that he does not want anyone to know that he’s not Korkie. That he woke up in a life that isn’t his.
That there is a gap in his head where a person is supposed to be.
The consequences of that are something he does not want to think about.
He brings the glass to his mouth carefully, like he can will his body into behaving correctly if he just concentrates hard enough.
Tani watches him the way she always does when he tries something slightly beyond what he should be doing alone.
“…I’m fine,” he says, finally.
Tani doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, she steps closer and adjusts the pillow behind his back with practiced efficiency, fingers briefly brushing the edge of his shoulder to steady him as he shifts.
“You are improving,” she says eventually.
He doesn't respond to that. He looks down at the glass in his hands instead.
The water inside it ripples slightly from his movement, small disturbances spreading outward, catching the light from the tall window in thin, shifting lines. It looks fragile, he thinks. Delicate.
Behind him, Tani moves quietly. Cloth rustles. Something is set down and picked up again. The room continues its careful work around him.
He lowers his gaze slightly. The ripples spread again when his fingers tighten around the glass.
Smaller this time, faster to fade.
He notices that too.
That the longer he holds it, the more the water learns him. The more it settles around what he does instead of resisting it.
He swallows. The sound is small in the quiet room.
Improving, Tani said.
He turns the word over in his mind the way the water turns light. Improving implies direction, a movement toward something.
But all he can feel is adjustment.
His grip steadies without him deciding to do it. The water steadies with it, the ripples thinning into softer, slower rings before they disappear entirely. Light gathers again on the surface, whole and unbroken, as if nothing had disturbed it at all.
Tani’s voice comes again, softer now. “You don’t have to strain yourself.”
He gives a faint hum in acknowledgment, though he isn’t thinking about her words anymore. He’s thinking about the water, about how easily it changes.
About how it never stops being what it is, even when it looks different for a moment—shaken, disturbed, scattered by movement it didn’t choose. It always settles back into itself. Always returns to a single surface, a single shape, as if everything that happens to it is only something passing through.
The glass feels warm in his hands now. Familiar in a way it wasn’t before.
He watches the last of the ripples fade.
I am still me, he thinks.
The thought arrives quietly, without force.
I am still me, even when I don’t remember everything that made me that.
Even when the edges are missing. Even when the surface looks unfamiliar.
His fingers adjust slightly around the glass, and the water responds with a small, natural shift, settling again instead of breaking.
Even if I am also Korkie.
That part doesn’t cancel the first thought. It doesn’t replace it. It sits beside it, like two reflections sharing the same surface at different angles. He lets both exist without trying to resolve them.
Behind him he can feel as Tani moves again, quiet and present.
The room does not ask him to choose. The water does not ask him to become anything other than himself.
Since he's woken, he's always felt like he's been falling in between versions of himself. Now... he thinks he can just be.