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Karl ran after the duck, heart pounding in his chest as the rain battered against his exhausted body. But he couldn’t stop moving, wouldn’t stop moving. To do so would betray everything he had built up, everything he swore he would never lose.
Karl woke to a gentle rain. It wasn’t harsh, but it was cold and the air invaded his senses and froze his body all the way down to the tips of his toes.
He got up and looked around, trying to locate where he was. Unfortunately, his constant loss of his short-term memory made it a pain to try and remember the landscape and his fruitless attempts at looking around only made it worse.
He tried to grasp the dream, but it was quickly seeping through like water, quickly lost to the earth.
Karl sighed, a sad smile playing on his lips. He was so close, so close to finding out what the important thing he was missing even was. He was sure it was important, knew it like the cold air he breathed.
But he couldn’t remember it.
He wandered for a while, a lost traveller with no way of remembering how to get back to Kinoko.
He was pretty sure he had sleepwalked, though the how of how he got there wasn’t nearly as important as making it back, so he decided to just not think about that for now.
There were bright lights in the distance, but it wasn’t Kinoko much to Karl’s chagrin. He approached it anyway, staring at the dazzling lights.
A sign in the distance promoted the land as ‘Las nevadas’.
A memory, a name was at the tip of his tongue. If only he could figure out what it was.
More rain fell on his hair and he went to move under the sign, he couldn’t afford to get more wet than he already was, he needed to retain some amount of warmth after all.
“Karl?” A voice said in the distance, he felt as if he should recognise it. But he was too far gone.
___________
Quackity, unsurprisingly, was not having the best day. Finding the fiancee who apparently forgot about you and unceremoniously dumped you from their life after abandoning you in the first place would ruin anyone’s day.
Nevertheless Quackity, like the stupid idiot that he was, still asked Charlie to carry his collapsed love into the main building.
He was still referring to Karl as love in his head for the love of Prime.
Charlie deposited the green and purple man into a bed next to Quackity’s office and was off with a ‘good bye Quackity from Las Nevadas, I hope Karl from Kinoko wakes up soon!’
And Quackity was alone with the man who had claimed to love him in one breath and in the next cursed him out and called him a murderer.
Quackity sighed and felt Karl’s forehead, checking his temperature. Who knew how long he had been in the rain.
He dried out Karl’s hair and removed his sopping sweater, sighing in relief when he found that it hadn’t let that much water leak through to his shirt, the shirt being only damp.
He didn’t touch Karl’s pants of course, that would be an invasion of privacy and a level of intimacy that Quackity just wasn’t on anymore.
Finally, after putting some warm water and hot soup next to Karl’s bedside he walked off. He had things to do after all.
Quackity ignored the maps on the wall pointing out the locations of all the buildings and the bright red arrow that said ‘you are here.’
He ignored the fireproof curtains and rugs, making sure that nothing could be burned down by complete accident.
Reasonable design choices, he called it, something that any person who wanted a country to thrive would place there.
But he couldn’t pretend that this area, this space, wasn't supposed to be inhabited by three, He couldn’t pretend that the decisions he made for this country weren’t made with brilliant laughter and cheeky giggles in mind.
He couldn’t ignore the fact that his office connected to three bedrooms instead of one.
____________
Karl woke up warm, and his first thought was that he definitely hadn’t made it home on his own. He hadn’t dreamt enough for that.
The second thought wasn’t his own. He noticed a note on the table next to him (yet more proof that this wasn’t his own bedroom) and picked it up to read it.
Karl,
This is Quackity. You are in Las Nevadas. Feel free to drink the water and soup provided for you on the bedside table.
I have placed a comm next to that, feel free to call Sapnap so that he can take you back.
The soup may be hot. Be careful.
Quackity. Karl tried to recall where he had heard that name before. He tried to put a face to it.
He tried to grasp the memories that he was bringing up, but they quickly faded out of his reach like fog in the wind.
He tried to brush away the feeling that something was wrong. He took a sip of the soup, accidentally burning his tongue. Flip. He blew on the spoon. Ignoring the fact that it had burned him, it tasted quite good. Salty with the slightest hint of apple in it.
Just how he liked it. Just like how…
Just like how Quackity made it. The name from the letter, the one he couldn’t place. Memories finally began flooding back.
He remembered calling it fondly, then harshly, calling him a murderer.
He remembered calling his fiancee a murderer.
But wait a second. He only had one fiancee, one love of his life. Why was his mind conjuring up images of duck wings and a beanie. Of suits and gentle nicknames in Spanish.
He forgot a whole person?
But he could’ve sworn his memories were doing well, that they were perfectly fine.
He had forgotten Quackity and they still picked him up and out of the rain, who still took him in and took care of him. Who still warned him that the soup may be too hot.
Karl cried.
He called Sapnap, his fiancee rushing over immediately once he found out Karl remembered. A slime hybrid brought him in.
But Quackity didn’t come inside even after about an hour had passed with Sapnap there.
Sapnap wasn’t quite sure if they were welcome, but they took one taste of the soup that Quackity had definitely been the one to make and decided they would stay anyway.
So the two waited for their fiancee, their last third.
_________
When Karl had gone missing, Sapnap was a little ashamed to admit that he hadn’t panicked.
In his defence, though, Karl was one of those people who would always disappear somewhere, who would always go missing on random days and reappear another.
What actually made Sapnap concerned, however, was when Karl messaged his comm from an unknown number and told him that he was at Las Nevadas.
And that he remembered Quackity.
Sapnap missed his fiancee, or his ex-fiancee, as much as he was pained to admit it. So he rushed over immediately, only stopping to grab a sword in case things went sideways.
He was escorted up by a man calling himself Charlie.
But he hadn’t seen Quackity.
It took a little convincing, but Karl managed to get Sapnap to stay with him in the room Quackity had leant them. Had leant Karl.
Sapnap brushed his hands against the curtains, noting incredulously that they weren’t a flammable material.
Non-flammable materials, especially of this high calibre. From all the stories he had heard, Sapnap had always assumed that Quackity was more money hungry now that he wasn’t their fiancee.
Were those rumours untrue?
Or maybe, just maybe, had Quackity made this room with Sapnap in mind?
Sapnap was jerked from his musings when the very fiancee he had been thinking about entered the room. They were distracted by their slime friend, talking with him as they flared their golden wings out behind them.
Sapnap’s heart caught in his throat as Quackity, the love of his life, who once loved Sapnap just the same, turned and went still.
The only thing to come out of his mouth were two words, not said angrily, not said sadly, but with a barely disguised hopefulness that made Sapnap’s heart flutter dangerously.
“You stayed?”
_________
Later on, as Karl told Quackity and Sapnap that they had forgotten to give Quackity his invitation to Kinoko, apologizing for accusing him of being a murderer and betraying his trust, Sapnap leaned back in his seat and sighed happily.
They were re-kindling love that hadn’t quite been smothered, all was right with the world.
And Sapnap was with the loves of his life, there was no place else that he would rather be.