Chapter Text
You wake up slowly.
Your head is pounding.
For a few moments there is really no other sensation than the pain throbbing inside your skull, stopping you from forming any coherent thoughts.
So you don’t try to.
You resign to just laying there and waiting for the pain to subside enough to do literally anything but endure it.
…After a while, it does. You’re not quite sure how long it takes but eventually, you manage to move a bit.
It takes you a while to adjust to being awake. With the light being quite harsh on your eyes you can’t quite open them yet. Your memories lie jumbled in your brain, refusing to put them together to tell you what is going on.
But disregarding the splitting headache, it feels peaceful. Your blanket is warm and your surroundings are quiet. Tranquil.
You rest your eyes for a few extra minutes.
The headache starts subsiding more and more.
When you finally manage to open them fully, you’re met with a familiar scene. A tent. Yours and Isa’s tent to be precise. You see his usual bag lying in the corner with some of his clothes neatly folded on top of it. A few of your things are strewn around as well. Even some of your carving projects there right beside your bedroll. Carving projects that. You don’t remember starting? Intrigued, you take a closer look at them. There was a little flower, something that looked like it might become a bowl and a… a shape. Made up solely of pointy spikes facing outwards, so that you might prick yourself if you tried to touch it. But gladly it had some more, still untouched wood attached, so you could pick it up.
You look at the shape from all angles. You know what this is. The word for it is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite place it. Just when you could almost grasp it, your headache intensifies. You hiss in pain and let the wooden figurine fall. It hits the ground with a soft clinking sound.
In that moment you hear something rustle outside your tent and just a second later turn your head to see the tent flap being opened. Isa peeks inside. His face visibly relaxes when he sees you, you wonder what makes him so relieved.
“Hey buddy, glad to see you’re up.” He comes inside fully and sits next to you on his sleeping mat. …Keeping a respectful distance. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.” you say instinctively.
Isa looks at you with clear concern on his face. “You sure? That sadness hit you pretty bad, you’ve been out for almost a day.”
Almost a day? Huh. Okay.
You backpedal a little to maybe give a more fitting answer. But you don’t want to worry him, so you gesture to your head and mumble “Just a little headache, it’s not that bad.”
The words are laying heavy in your mouth, the sound of it a little weird.
You try to smile reassuringly but you’re not sure how well you manage. Isabeau still looks at you with that pinched expression, hints of pity gracing his features. So you try to change the topic.
“Where are the others?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to let your clear downplay stand but still resigns to answer your question. “They’re out gathering some supplies. There’s a small village right down the stream but it doesn’t have an inn or a House so we thought letting you rest here makes more sense.” He rubs his neck while talking. If you didn’t know any better you’d think he was worried about your reaction. Weird. You nod.
The silence that follows is a little awkward but you don’t really mind. Not when it’s Isa.
After a few moments, the silence was cut short anyway. By none other than your grumbling stomach. Oh yeah, that makes sense, if you’ve been out of it for a day that means you haven’t eaten anything in a day.
“OH! You must be hungry!” Isa probably had the same realization you did just now. “We left you some of the mushroom cream soup Bonnie made for lunch. It’s probably cold by now but it’s really good, don’t worry.” He says as he shuffles back out from the tent and holds the flap open for you.
You laugh a little. “Well, yeah Bonnie made it, what else would it be.” Which is met with a warm smile from Isa. Wonderful, keep it going!
“Obviously, their food is always soup-er good.”
At this he bursts out laughing. Success!!!
“You seem in a good mood today?” he chuckles. You shrug. Your headache is almost gone by now so yeah, sure.
As you get out of your tent and follow Isabeau to the middle of the campsite you notice that… you don’t remember setting this up?? Of course, every campsite looks more or less the same with your usual stuff and routine but the nature around it is always different. Sure, often it’s woods but even there the differences are apparent. It’s your job after all to notice things like that. Be it the uneven treeline, the oddly twisting branches behind a tent or the few barren patches in midst the grass. You notice things like that.
So you are very very sure that the tree stump in the middle of your camp that apparently has been used as a makeshift table was indeed very very new.
But then again… can you be sure?
You look around more while Isa rummages through a little bag besides said log-table. In addition to the unfamiliar nature, there is something else that immediately catches your eye. There. Are four tents. Not three. Four.
When did you get a new tent??? And for whom? You and Isa obviously still share one so did Mira and Bonnie separate? Is it really a good idea to let Bonnie have their own tent?? Out here??!!
“Hey Isa?”
“Hm?” He sets a bowl with the soup on the log-table and waves you over to eat. Your eyes are still fixated on your new finding while you walk towards him as if the tent would vanish as soon as you looked away.
“Where did the fourth tent come from?”
Isabeau looks at you weird. “Loxeau? That travel shop that had that really nice sign outside?”
Loxeau? But didn’t you just pass through Le Ánte like. Two days ago? Isn’t that kind of far? You thought you were pretty good with Vaugardian geography. You travelled so much even before you joined them but. Maybe you’re not after all. You probably just misremember something. No point to worry over, Isabeau seems like he knows the way. So the others must too.
“Oh, right!” You try to play it off but Isabeau doesn’t seem convinced. He’s about to say something else but you just dig into your food. You seem to do so forcefully enough that he drops that subject too. From the corner of your eye you see him shake his head a little in exasperated fondness. He fishes a little book and a pencil out of his pocket and starts scribbling in it.
A sketchbook? You didn’t know he likes drawing.
This goes on for the time you’re eating. It’s nice.
When you finish, you spot a bucket of water with a dirty pot beside it that is soaking to be cleaned later. You take your empty bowl over and start washing it.
“Cleaning dishes on purpose?” You look up to see Isa staring at you in amused disbelief. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
You just stick your tongue out at him and return to your task. While you’re at it you’ll just clean the pot too. It looks like it’s already been soaking for a while.
As you go on to dry the dishes you watch the sun, high in the sky. It’s pleasantly warm in a way that reminds you that there’s still a lot of time in the day left. So, naturally you ask. “It’s just after lunch, right? Are we gonna leave when the others come back? I can start packing up camp.”
Isa glances up at you for a moment as you sit back down next to him. But his gaze goes back to his sketchbook almost immediately. He seems really concentrated on whatever he’s doing.
“Leave? Why would we? It’s still better if you rest a bit and there’s a hiking trail with a waterfall nearby that Mira wanted to check out. We talked about it yesterday, remember?”
“Um.” No. You don’t. “I’m fine though. No need to wait because of me, I probably wasted enough of our time already.” Just like when you lost your eye. Because you were too slow, you slowed them all down. You shouldn’t be doing that again, you’re fine. Really.
“You-” Isa was a little taken aback by that, his focus now entirely on you. “You haven’t wasted any of our time. I need you to understand that. Your wellbeing matters.”
Woah. You have never heard him be so serious. Yet alone get straight to a point like this. It almost makes you believe what he says. …Almost.
“Um.” You don’t like to disagree with any of your friends but. “Aren’t we kind of on a time limit though?”
His brows are pinched together and he shakes his head a little in confusion.
“We need to get to the King as fast as we can, right? His curse is speeding up, we don’t have that much time left?”
“The King?” Now Isabeau looks increasingly concerned. Then his expression softens to something akin to pity. Or at least you think that’s what this is. “Wait, are you- no no, the King’s gone.” He tries to smile at you reassuringly. You’re confused. Isa reaches out to you but you flinch away instinctively when his hand meets your arm. He moves back a little but not all the way. “We defeated him, the loops are over. We’re not even in Dormont, we’re on our way to Rillac. It’s okay.”
The… loops??
You wonder what that’s all about. But before you can even think about if you want to ask or not, you’re interrupted by a loud shout from your favourite preteen.
“SEE!! I TOLD YOU THEY WERE GONNA BE UP WHEN WE GET BACK!!!”
Bonnie and the others are still pretty far away but you could probably hear them all the way to Porteria when they yell like that.
You smile, watching them sprint towards you with apparently no intention of slowing down. Though before they can crash into you, Isa catches them. Literally.
You watch in amusement as Isa scoops them up to hold them below their arms, straight out in front of him. Despite the silly gesture he looks serious at Bonnie and speaks in a deliberately calm tone. “Hey Bonbon, I know you’re excited but let’s save that for a moment.” He glances at you not so subtly. “We might have another situation.”
“A school situation??” Bonnie asks, still pouting a little.
“I’m not sure yet, let’s ask-” Isa couldn’t finish because Bonnie squirms and flounders so much that Isa has to let them down.
“But they don’t look pan-ikt.” Bonnie turns around to you, and speaks with an uncharacteristically calm voice. “Are you panicked?”
“Umm. No?”
You’re. Really not?
That seemingly gives them all the permission they needed to yell again. “GOOD!!! Cause we brought really cool stuff I wanna show you!!”
You feel almost a little sorry for Isa the way he could barely get in a word. “Hey, wait a second, we should talk about-”
“We got a WEIRD HEADACHE BOOK!!” Bonnie grabs something out of their very stuffed backpack and shoves it in your face. They stare expectantly at you. You take it and look at it. That sure is a weird headache book. You can’t even make out the title. “That’s. Very nice, Bonnie.” You say. You don’t quite get why they give this to you, you can’t read it. But their eyes sparkle, so you’re happy. They rummage in the bag some more.
“And we got FANCY CARDS FOR PLAYING!!!” They shove the deck of cards in your face as well. You take it too. “And ONE OF THOSE SKY DOT MAPS!” They add it to the pile in your arms. “And NEW BIG SPOONS!” Those too. “And Dile even let me get some CARDAMOM !!!! I’M GONNA MAKE NILLE’S SECRET CURRY RECIPE TONIGHT!!!” They pump their fists in the air like they just won something. Curry does sound very good, you have to admit that. Though you can’t quite join in their excitement since your arms are more than full with all the contents of the now empty backpack.
You try to put it all on the log behind you, Isa quickly helps you so that nothing falls down on the ground.
“That’s really cool Bonnie!” You genuinely mean it. You kind of want to make a pun about the cardamom but you refrain from it because you don’t want Bonnie to be annoyed with you right now. It. …It’s been a while since they’ve been so friendly with you??
You don’t really know what brought about that change but you don’t want to ruin it either. So you just keep quiet as they start organizing some of the food stuff.
Isa still looks at you, thinking. For some reason you shrink away from him a little bit. You feel analyzed. Like he knows something you don’t.
…
You sift your hand through your hair, trying to get some loose strands out of your face. When did it get so long? You didn’t even notice it growing.
No matter though, you see more figures nearing your campsite.
“Our sleeping beauty is awake, I see.” Odile says when she’s near enough for you to hear without having to raise her voice
You smile and want to say something but the rebuttal you prepared died on your tongue. Because behind Odile you see not one but two people trailing behind. Next to a fully laden Mirabelle is a figure that makes your blood freeze in shock.
It is… how??!!
They come even closer, and you couldn’t blame it on a trick of the light or sudden bad eyesight or a funny coincidence anymore.
No, it is as clear as the stars above.
Before you stands an exact copy of yourself.
You stare at them with wide eyes, your pulse rushing at the sight before you. Your hand reaches for the dagger on your hip as you back away but it’s not there.
None of your friends seem worried about this.
The copy dares to look happy when they see you. Wearing a smile on their (your?!) face that drips of familiarity. An expression that cracks the longer they look at you.
“Good to see you’re okay?” Their observation turns more into a question as they approach you.
The copy comes closer and closer, trying to reach for you. You flinch away.
They mirror you.
Now you have the attention of everyone else. Their worry only raised at your reaction and not. …
Not……….
Your double looks at you, concerned. You’re at a sort of standstill now, silently staring at each other.
Though after a moment, they address you again.
“Loop?”
Panic and rage wash over you.
(You don’t know why.)