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When you finally escape the loops that have made up the last… however many months of your life, you ask Odile to hold onto your dagger for you.
It’s… inconvenient, at best. You feel exposed, unmoored without something to protect yourself with—you all know that just because the King is gone doesn’t mean you won’t run into troubles on the road to Bambouche. You don’t like it, but… you’re trying to place more faith in them, trying to be more open about where you’re at, emotionally. And where you’re at, emotionally, is bad.
You don’t trust yourself with a dagger right now, if you’re being entirely honest. You turned it on yourself a few too many times during the loops, to the point where it almost became instinctual by the end. You don’t just come back after dying anymore, but you became so used to it that it’s hard to remember this when you’re feeling your worst.
Besides, you don’t need a dagger to use Craft. Yeah, it’s certainly easier to have something to channel it with, but you’re so good at fighting by now that the difference is hardly that noticeable—and you’ve never used Craft on yourself. Not the kind that injures, anyways. So it’s not like giving Odile the dagger will put you or your family in more danger or anything.
You had expected a lecture from Odile, or at least a sigh of some kind, but she surprised you by simply looking at the weapon, glancing back up at you, and giving a silent nod before taking it from your hands. She didn’t ask questions—but then, she didn’t really need to, did she?
You haven’t mentioned the fact that you became very familiar with where the carotid artery is and how best to sever it so as to make it impossible for Mira’s healing to do anything. You haven’t mentioned it, but your family isn’t stupid.
They saw that you were a danger to yourself. They saw you tear at your own hair, your own face, your own throat, rather than turning that power on them during the confrontation at the top of the House. They saw exactly why you shouldn’t be trusted with a dagger right now.
Things are… better, now. You wouldn’t go so far as to claim that they’re good, but they’re better. You still wake up screaming, sometimes. You still lose track of reality, others. But your family is with you, and they want to help.
You sit now in an inn room with Mirabelle, chatting as she braids little plaits into your hair. Weeks ago, after leaving Dormont, she had suggested that the two of you engage in “self-care” sessions when you have the luxury, which has thus far amounted to doing each others’ hair, painting each others’ nails, and eating a whole lot of junk food. Sometimes you talk about your feelings, but others, you simply gossip about your other family members while they leave you to your spa day.
It’s… nice. It almost feels like when you would chat with Loop between cycles—a bit of a reprieve before you had to get the show back on the road.
You miss Loop. You hope, wherever they are, they’re okay. You hope you see them again, soon.
“—and then I teased him for being so infatuated with you,” Mirabelle giggles, “It’s really so cute to see.”
You smile softly as your cheeks turn dark. You and Isabeau have been taking things slow, ever since he finally confessed. You’d expected him to be disappointed to not have his feelings reciprocated immediately, but he’s been perfectly happy to take things at your pace—and Mirabelle’s not really wrong.
Every time you reach out to take his hand, he blushes and stammers and looks at you with such adoration in his eyes that it gives you… what had Odile called it? Cuteness aggression? It gives you cuteness aggression.
“Okay, your hair is done!” Mirabelle exclaims. She holds up a hand mirror for you to see.
There’s tiny little braids littered throughout your hair, mostly in the bangs and sides, that are tied off with dark ribbons. A few have little beads braided in, too.
You smile again. Mirabelle loves to do your hair, and you always love how it turns out, so this is a win-win situation.
You lean back into her chest and look up at her. She looks back down at you in turn, a bright, beaming smile on her face as she does.
“It looks great, Mira,” you say, “Thank you.”
Somehow, her smile gets even brighter. “Any time! Can I do your nails next?”
You nod, rolling up the sleeves of your night shirt as she drags over her bag of nail polish. You adjust so that you’re lying on the floor with your head pillowed in Mira’s lap. You both started to do each others’ nails for fun, but it’s been helping the both of you with your shared habit of nail biting. Nail polish doesn’t taste very good, after all.
It’s also probably not supposed to be ingested.
“Okay! Do you want something dark again, or lighter this time?” she questions, holding up the options. You glance between the shades she presents before ultimately pointing towards a lightless bottle. She nods, putting the others back away, save for a bright shade, which she merely sets aside. Maybe she wants you to paint her nails, next?
You hold up your arm for her, and she gently grasps your hand and starts painting. She talks animatedly about everything, from Bonnie’s cooking to the little bits of embroidery Isabeau has been adding to everyone’s clothes when he has to mend them. He always asks first, and you always smile and nod.
As she turns your hand slightly to get a better angle, her fingers brush momentarily over thin, neat lines of scar tissue on your wrist.
She stills. You turn your head away in shame.
This… this is why you gave Odile your dagger. You hadn’t been able to control yourself, the first few nights. The pain made you real. The scabs lingering later, a sign that you were really, truly free of those starsforsaken time loops. Your wounds were always gone at the start of a new cycle, so waking up with an injury sustained the night before, or the night before that, proved quickly that you were safe.
But you had enough clarity to know that it could get out of hand quickly. So Odile holds onto your knife until you feel like you can keep it without hurting yourself in a blind panic.
Mirabelle knows they’re there. She’s painted your nails before, held your hand, grasped your wrist. She knows. But she never seems to know how to respond to the reminder of their existence. You don’t really, either.
“…I’m sorry,” you murmur after a moment.
She looks down at you with sad eyes. “Oh, Siffrin,” she says, “you don’t have to apologize.”
“It just…” you start, “It upsets you every time. I don’t want you to be upset because of me.”
Mirabelle tenderly brushes your bangs aside, setting your hand down to instead cradle the sides of your head.
“I’m not upset because of you, silly,” she replies, “I’m upset for you.”
You glance away again. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No,” she responds, “Being upset because of you is what happened the day before we fought the King.”
You remember. You never want to treat her like that again—or any of them, for that matter.
“I’m upset for you because this,” she gently grasps your wrist again, “was the only thing you could possibly think of that would make the situation feel real, and that makes me sad.”
You don’t know what to say in response. It doesn’t… really feel like that big of a deal to you, if you’re being entirely honest with yourself, but you know from experience that not being concerned about this sort of thing is upsetting to others.
When you lost your eye protecting Bonnie, you’d gone down before the rest of your family was quite there yet. The pain of a Sadness tearing their claw through your eye is second only to the pain of when you’d tried so desperately to say the name of your home country. The pain nearly made you black out on contact, but you held on by a thread to make sure Bonnie would be okay.
The moment you saw your friends rushing to save you and Bonnie, you had simply let go, trusting that you had bought enough time. When you woke up again in the infirmary of the nearest House, the first thing you’d done was ask to see Bonnie.
When Isabeau told you about the loss of your eye, your only response was, “But Bonnie is okay?”
He had confirmed, and you had simply sighed in relief. “Then it’s fine,” you had said, “I don’t need two eyes to see.”
Odile, Mirabelle, and Isabeau had looked amongst each other uneasily, and you didn’t understand why. You still don’t, not really, but you don’t have to understand why that sort of thing might upset someone in order to respect it.
So, no, you don’t think shrugging off Mirabelle’s upset over your fits of self-inflicted harm would be helpful at the moment, even if it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal to you.
Instead, you quietly say, “It’s getting easier, now. To… know that this is real. That I’m not stuck in the loops anymore.”
She smiles softly. “That’s good. Is there anything specific that helps?”
You think for a moment. “The braids,” you say, “It’s not like I ever did my hair before the loops, and I certainly didn’t take care of it during. So having washed and styled hair is surprisingly helpful at keeping me grounded.”
Her smile brightens, and she returns to painting your nails. “That’s good! Anything else?”
“Um…” you trail off, cheeks turning dark. “Well, uh… you guys… touching me, I guess. It’s… I know why you didn’t do it before, but that’s also not something I experienced before the loops. Or very much during them, either.”
You think about how many times you tried to brush your arm against them all, in the hopes that someone, anyone, would reach out and touch you back.
You think of a warm hand, slowly reaching out to touch your own underneath the Favor Tree as you attempt not to spiral.
“I see you, stardust. I see you.”
…You really miss Loop.
“…Bonnie’s cooking, too,” you add. “Anything other than the snacks they brought to the House with them.”
Mirabelle hums. “I forgot that you said they brought snacks the other times. What did they bring?”
You think of the malanga fritters that turned slowly from a kind gesture from a person who cares about you into another part of your home that you’ve lost. You don’t know if you can enjoy them ever again—at least not for a long, long time.
You frown. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, s-sorry! I wasn’t thinking, I should’t have asked that, I—“
“It’s okay, Mira. You didn’t know.” You give her a tentative smile, and she smiles back.
“Um, so, I was thinking,” Mirabelle starts, “I got these little… tools? At that flea market we wandered into a couple days ago.”
“Tools?” you prompt.
“Yeah, I think they’re called dotting tools?” she responds, “They’re for doing nail art! Like, drawing little designs with nail polish. A-and I thought… maybe I could try them out? On you? If you don’t mind?”
You blink. She wants to…?
“I-I just thought, y’know, Sif likes stars a lot! Maybe I could just, do some little bright spots on the dark polish? And maybe some of the little four-pointed stars? If that’s something you’d like…?”
You… suddenly feel a little bit like crying, and you’re not entirely sure why. You smile fondly at her. “I’d love that, Mira.”
She relaxes at that, and immediately smiles again. “Oh! Okay! Let me just….” She turns to dig through her bag for the aforementioned tools, and quickly gets to work.
It’s clear this is the first time she’s ever used the dotting tools, because some of the dots take up most of your fingernail, and some are almost too small to even see. She apologizes profusely for what she considers a bad job, and you simply smile and sit up to hug her.
“It’s perfect,” you say, honestly. “Thanks, Mira.”
Mira giggles and hugs you back, wrapping you up tightly in her arms. When you part, she brushes your bangs aside to give you a kiss on the forehead. Jokingly, you grimace as she pulls away, and she merely laughs at the face you make.
“Okay,” she says, “now it’s your turn to do my hair!”
“Of course,” you reply softly. You love Mirabelle so, so much.
Glancing at the stars painting your fingernails, you feel confident in saying that she loves you, too.