Work Text:
“So it was you!”
“...”
The air stills.
The hallway’s jet black pillars echo every strained syllable squealing from Licorice’s mouth. Dark Choco winces, reeling from the ringing now infecting his ears from the noise.
“...Licorice Cookie.”
There’s no one else here. No one besides the portraits of nobles long bludgeoned to death by cakehounds and the crumbs of their nameless masses not born lucky enough to acquire a painted visage.
Dark Choco sighs. He hates when his ears ring.
“...If you’re going to scream about nonsense,” he says with a quiet hiss, “then at least keep your voice down.”
“No!”
Dark Choco winces. His ears ring again.
Licorice catches up with him quick.
He thrusts his scythe into Dark Choco’s face, who stands completely stone in spite of it. The scythe’s dull glint hints that it hasn’t been polished in a while, or even really sharpened for that matter. Not like it was ever used as a real weapon. But Licorice liked to keep it polished as one even though he was far too weak and inconversant to swing it with any deadly force.
Dark Choco glares.
Licorice holds his ground.
“You, you—!” he says with a fist. He stumbles from the scythe’s weight and put shis hand back on it. “Don’t...don’t pretend like you know what you haven’t done to me, fiend!”
“...”
Dark Choco sighs again. And rolls his eyes in unison.
He doesn’t even bother to force the scythe out of his face, instead opting to just turn his back altogether. Knocking it aside with his shoulderpads, Licorice stumbles under the movement and he almost gets a good whack in, but’s it’s too late.
“...Hey!” Licorice yells again. “You...You listen to me now...! Listen to me you obstinate piece of—“
“Are you going to get to your point anytime soon?”
Harsh voice. With the impact of glass shattering in a quiet room. Dark Choco doesn’t even give him an eye.
Licorice cowers. Pulling his scythe away and holding it close to his own body, the only comfort he’s ever had in this world. The hard, bleached bone was never intended to be held as a teddy bear would, but Licorice could not afford the basic luxury of a soft touch.
Kicking a few stale crumbs out of his way, Dark Choco shakes his head and rolls his eyes again.
His sword clinks against his belt. Licorice holds his scythe in tighter at the sound.
“I don’t have the patience to listen to your daily drivel again,” he says with a click of the tongue. “Or the hearing. You of all people are certainly not good for that fading sense of mine.”
Licorice grits his teeth. Dark Choco finally gives him a glance.
Nothing. His face of full of nothing. Licorice is just another gnat to annoy him, another fly to buzz in his ear as he endures hell’s power.
Before a few seconds can even pass he’s already walking away. Licorice finally uncoils and points his scythe again as if he ever had the authority to do so.
“H-Hey! Why you—get back here!”
“No. I am needed elsewhere.”
“I said get back here! You impotent little cretin...don’t you ignore me, we still have a very important matter to discuss...!”
“Then say it!”
Dark Choco turns around and holds out the tip of his broadsword from his cape.
Licorice freezes, watching the blade. Finally peeking out from that huge, abyssal cape that draped his body.
That silver...Licorice cringes as his eyes fall into it and swirl around the sleek, ultra-polished edges. It‘s huge—nearly as tall as Dark Choco himself, and it drips with a blackish red lightning that always smelled like burnt butter and iron. The most unholy of combinations, and the one reason Licorice hated working with metal when he used magic.
He clutches his scythe to his chest. Dark Choco stares at him intensely, the one eye making up for a glare that was supposed to be shared by two. Red as blood and as sharp as thorns...
So this was the man Dark Enchantress tasked with destroying those no longer useful to her.
Licorice shivers.
Those thoughts...he shouldn’t dwell on them.
“Spit it out,” Dark Choco says with a hiss. “Spit it out, or I’m leaving and you will never bring this matter up for discussion again!”
He pushes the sword out just a bit more. If Licorice could have seen the scars on the hands that held them, a twisted and grotesque kind of sympathy would have bloomed within his heart.
Dark Choco’s hands held an abyss of scars, some from childhood, some from days ago. Every single one from a blade polished fresh as the morning grain recovering from a frost.
Licorice’s hands...were going white in splotches, not too dissimilar to the way mood grew. Years of failed plans and violently exploding magic spells wore heavy on his fingers and nails as well, to the point he began painting his black in an effort to convince himself he wasn’t the old ugly rags conjurer everyone assumed him for.
Not that it mattered.
No matter what he did, he could never hide the huge vertical slices adorning his wrist. And he knew people always saw them and gawked.
Dark Choco knew this too. It never occurred to Licorice, but he was the only minion who did not stare.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons he wore the cape he did. It was...safe. Nobody pried into your body or your business because you looked like you had none you wanted to share.
Licorice has to steel himself to look Dark Choco in the eye. Deep breaths with his nails digging into bleached bone.
And even then, it can only be done with one of his own closed.
“...You...You little....”
Dark Choco waits. Steadfast almost, despite his frustration.
Silence.
Licorice tries to get the next word out.
But as he does so, he chokes on his own spit and begins coughing, hunching over.
“Gah! Augh, shit! Shit! Fu-u-uck...!”
Licorice holds his chest as his lungs attempt to give out. This was definitely supposed to be some of big dramatic reveal, some tension he could maybe hold over Dark Choco in the anticipation. Why must bad things like this always happen to him, and always at the absolute worst of time?!
“Fuck it, shit, ack—!” he says in between coughs. “Dammit, Dark Choco Cookie! You...!”
“...I what?”
He retracts his sword a bit. And his face softens a little.
“You...! You...!”
Another cough. And a few more. Dark Choco sighs and pulls himself out of the defensive posture.
“...Please try to be quick about this.”
Licorice shoots him a dirty glare as he pounds his chest and finally gets up.
“You...you...!”
Silence.
Dark Choco still waits.
This big reveal thing isn’t as satisfying as it is in the movies. Holding out the mystery is just making him look like a bigger fool than he already is. It doesn’t feel satisfying, or like the power fantasy he was looking for...it just feels like he’s being a dumbass all over again.
Just like always...
Maybe he should stop getting ideas from things. After all, he knows in his heart that those never work out.
Licorice screams with all his might as he slams his scythe blade against the floor and finally breaks.
“...I know you ate all the cupcakes I baked, you bastard! You stupid fucking bastard!”
“...”
“......”
“..............”
“.......................”
Silence.
Dark Choco just stares.
His expression’s completely changed now—contorted into something that vaguely paints a picture of vexation, annoyance, and disbelief all together. His negative expressions always make him look more tired than he is somehow, but that doesn’t help the sting Licorice feels looking at it.
“...Is this some kind of jest...?” he says softly but with gritted teeth.
Licorice huffs. And slams his scythe blade against the ground again.
“No!” he says with a shrieking yell. “Wh—How could you even think that?! Fess up to the deed, right now! I know it was you! I didn’t come all this way for you to deny it!”
Dark Choco sighs. Yet again. He’s getting tired of this. Licorice wants to hit him with his scythe, and almost tried it when he retracted his sword and stood up straight.
“Hey now!” he barks. “Don’t give me the silent treatment! Those cupcake were special treats for my minions, and we failed a mission because they weren’t fed the proper meal they were promised! It’s your fault I’m in hot water for—!”
“I don’t eat sweets,” Dark Choco pipes. His face is warped with the disgust of just a mention of it. “And you know this.”
“Oh really?” Licorice says with a foot stomp. “Well, I can prove you did, you filthy liar! You stupid liar! Don’t act like that! Don’t act like you...!”
And Licorice drawls on. Dark Choco slams his sword against the linoleum and turns away tuning him out and trying to hide his sheer horror of the accusations. Him? Eating sweets? What an injudicious assumption. He is...er, was, a prince of the Cacao Kingdom, and eating sugar past adolescence is a grave sin. He left that behind in his youth, just as he did his silly games and toys.
His ears start ringing again. Licorice is always too loud. Between his voice and the unbelievable tripe he was throwing, Dark Choco wonders if he’ll have any brain cells by the end of the day.
Maybe, maybe not. He didn’t really need his thoughts when to sleep anymore because he stopped dreaming decades ago.
Licorice Cookie... he thinks.
He always acted like he had something to prove...which he didn’t. He never did. Someone like that was only kept around for appearances. Better to be useless to the dark side than end up accidentally helping those in the light. Dark Choco knew the way his mistress and Pomegranate spoke about him—lamenting over his failures, disappointed in his results, wondering if it would just be easier to feed him to some cakehound than to put up with his yammering.
He would almost feel sad, but then he would remember he wasn’t really any better. He deserved to be ripped apart by some animal much more Licorice did. He was annoying as hell but...
To his knowledge, he never actually hurt anyone.
Permanently, at least.
“Hello!” Licorice yells again. Louder than usual this time. “Earthbread to stupidhead, where are you going?!”
“I’m done here,” he says flatly. “I’m going to lie down. This is a bunch of nonsense you are spewing.”
“What! You recalcitrant little—!”
Licorice rushes after him.
“No!” he says, getting in Dark Choco’s face, albeit not without a minion trailing behind him. He always saves a quick spell for occasions like this. They could be easily summoned by powdered lightning, a creation of his own nefarious design.
“Not this time! I can prove you ate those cupcakes! And that you caused me to fail!”
Dark Choco snaps and whips out his sword completely. Slamming it against the ground, a burst of chain lightning bellows forth.
Licorice yells, and backs up just as Dark Choco points it in his direction.
“Drop it!” he says coldly.
“...No!” Licorice pipes.
He holds onto his minion as the huge broadsword scrapes the floor. Dark Choco assumes another stance, this time offensive and revealing the true bulk of his armor and figure.
“No!” he says again. “I get to be the one who’s right this time. Not you, not Pomegranate, and not that stupid bitch tamer who cares more about his dogs than us! Now, I can prove you’re the one who ate the cupcakes because Pomegranate—“
Dark Choco growls. He pulls his sword into his cape again and sprints for his chambers, Licorice tailing him as fast as he can. Prattling on and waving his arms like he had anything meaningful to say.
“—because Pomegranate hates asking for stools to reach stuff. You know how short she is. And Red Velvet doesn’t go near the refrigerator because his cake arm will get hard and weird looking. Which means given that I would have seen mushrooms everywhere if Poison Mushroom was the one who—!”
Dark Choco finally reaches his chamber at the end of the hall. Throwing open the door, he slides in without a word and slams it in Licorice’s face, scaring the minion in his arms and Licorice to boot.
“—who ate them, that leaves you! YOU! You as the one who ate my cupcakes!!!”
“...”
Silence.
Licorice huffs and holds his minion tight as Dark Choco’s voice finally comes, muffled from behind the door.
“...Are you done?”
“...”
“Can I have some peace and quiet then, please?”
“...”
“You can go be a gnat about this to Dark Enchantress Cookie if you really feel I compromised your...mission.”
Licorice scoffs, stuttering a bit before going silent. Folding his arms, the minion trailing him tries to pry the door open.
A lock clicks, and Licorice yanks the minion away. It whines and cries a little bit, only wanting to help.
“...So it’s not a big deal then,” he says. “........You wasted my time for nothing.”
“...No! No, no I didn’t!”
Dark Choco sighs. Licorice hates how loud he is, how much he could be heard even behind the door.
“I know you did it!”
“And that matters why? I told you, I don’t eat sweets. I haven’t eaten them since I was a child and I will stick to that rule. There is a flaw in your reasoning somewhere, and I don’t have the time or the patience to entertain you while you find it.”
Licorice growls. He slams the minion against the door where it lands with a wet thump, it’s body splattering like old paint mixed with mashed potatoes.
“...You...! You...! You stupid little fucking...!”
The minion reaches out for him with what little of its hand it has left. Even short lived, they still had feelings. They still wanted to fulfill their purpose.
And this one was made to be held.
“If you don’t ‘fess up to me Dark Choco, I’m—! I’m—! I’m going to...!”
The minion whines and gurgles. Licorice almost kicks it in anger, but he can’t even muster up the courage to do it.
Not with those large, sparkling eyes still blinking in an attempt to be cute. Almost like his own back in academy, when he still had no idea of the true nature of the world and the people within it.
His gaze falls to the ground. Wanting to cry, he tears up quickly and wipes them with his sleeve.
This was supposed to go his way....this was supposed the one time he was supposed to be right about something! The one time someone else gets punished for his failures!
He was tired of being punished for failing. Tired of being talked down to as if he was the comic relief, as if he was just some weirdo with an old wizard’s robe that could nothing except fail in the most hilarious and worthlessly depressing of ways.
He deserved to be the one in the right for once. Deserved to be the one apologized to, deserved to be the one being told “it’s not your fault you failed. I’m sorry someone else has wronged you. We aren’t going to hold this against you, so relax and let us take care of it.”
But no.
Never.
It was always his fault. Always his mistakes. Always his best never being good enough, no matter how much he tried or improved.
Stuck in this endless cycle, he was never going to be right. He was never going to stop failing. Try and try, even his best was just going to be overwhelmed by the insurmountable number of character flaws he was cursed with and he was never going to be able to change that. His impatience, his carelessness, his willingness to go all in for the prize without even looking before he crossed the street...
He was just born with the most rotten of luck, the most rotten of selves.
And the worst super power of them all: being unable to be taken seriously.
...And he supposes maybe that’s just how he’s always going to be treated.
Maybe how he deserves to be treated...?
Who knows. Maybe his entire existence really was offensive enough to warrant this kind of thing. Deep within himself, he always knew that he was destined for failure. Destined for those who would never get their name in the history books. He never wanted to figure out what kind of cosmic force hated him so much, because if he found out, surely his life would become even more pathetically lackluster than it already was.
But...in the face of all that...
He still didn’t want to go down without a fight.
Even if it made him look all the more piteous in the process, he was going to fight his fate and get what he wanted and deserved! No matter what. If he kept failing, then he needed to use that pain to try even harder. Do even more. He was just stupid! He was just missing something crucial, and it was all his fault, but he knew maybe somewhere, somehow, he could fix it! He could fix himself, take everything he hated about himself and make a new person. He was cursed with always coming in last, but why shouldn’t he keep fighting so that everyone else could see he wasn’t satisfied with always being there?
Maybe then, someone with power could grant him the strength to overcome himself.
But did that really work? Did it ever? Licorice didn’t know. At first, that’s what he thought Dark Enchantress was—someone taking pity on him and granting him access to an infinite well of power of which to overthrow his propensity for failure.
But when he kept failing under her, plan after plan going to waste, he realized that nothing changed. Nobody paid attention to him, not unless they were there to chastise him, glare at him, or punish him. Or unless he was being loud and overenthusiastic.
But he had every right to be. He had every right to be obnoxious and mean—why shouldn’t he, after all these years?! After all these years of incessant failures, unrelenting heaps of mental torture and abyssal periods of isolated solitude.
Was that what he was missing...? Nobody ever took him seriously. His threats were empty, from the books. He didn’t really know how to act like a real villain. Hurting people always failed because he would just get called “Old Rags” and they’d all fall down to their sides.
So what was the template for that he was supposed to follow...? This template for success, for darkness and true evil that forced others to their knees to beg for mercy and offered catharsis in their suffering? This template that would finally get him what he wanted?
Who the most successful person that he knew...?
What was the template for power and respect...? It had to exist. Dark Enchantress’s army wouldn’t be functioning without one.
...
........
................
.........................Of course.
Pomegranate Cookie.
Of all people...
Licorice gulps. A thought creeps into his head as he remembers that one time.
“...”
Should he really do this...?
He looks back to the minion on the floor sizzling away, the spell binding it finally falling apart. It begs for him to hold its hand in its final moments, wanting to fulfill its purpose.
Licorice does, and he looks up to the door as it finally fades away into a puddle of goo.
“...I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” he says softly. Standing up, he wipes the dust off his cloak and the tears from his eyes, pulling his hood over his head.
The first knock is soft.
Dark Choco doesn’t answer.
Licorice snarls and grits his teeth, knocking again. Louder.
He knows he can get away with being as loud as he wants to here because Dark Enchantress isn’t here, Dark Choco having specifically requested his bedchambers be located in an isolated wing.
He keeps knocking. Again and again.
Louder, and louder.
He smiles to himself as he thinks of the sweet relief he’ll finally get from this. Dark Choco’s defeated face, finally telling him that he’s sorry.
But something inside the room breaks, like a chair being smashed. As if being struck by lighting.
The sound rips through the air and Licorice jumps, but it’s not even a few seconds after does Dark Choco answer the door by forcing it open so quickly Licorice can’t even react.
It’s completely black inside.
Only his eye is visible through the cracked door.
“...I told you to leave,” he says. In a voice that is...full of some kind of power not his own. His eye looks as if to melt, but Licorice steels himself.
Licorice looks down at the broken lock. He can’t bear that eye, in all its hungry hazes. It looks like it wants to devour someone with a diamond blade.
“...No, I won’t.”
The door opens a little bit wider. Licorice takes a step back.
“...I’m not leaving until you fess up, Dark Choco Cookie!”
He assumes a more defensive posture this time.
Silence.
“...And if I don’t?”
Licorice pauses.
“If you don’t...”
He cackles to himself.
“The I’m going to tell Pomegranate Cookie.”
Dark Choco freezes.
And Licorice smiles in victory, taking a step forward.
“You’re still holding on to your princely ways, aren’t you...” he says softly. Cooing at him the same way Pomegranate does. Remarkably, it actually holds up as a pretty good impression of the poison her voice carries.
“You know full and well what she will do to you when she finds out you still hold on to these ideals of yours. Don’t pretend like I don’t know where this rule of yours come from.”
I was born of the Licorice Sea that borders your land after all, he thinks.
The air is deathly silent yet again.
Dark Choco looks down to the floor. His red eye softens, but somehow the feeling that the power within it was going to swallow him whole hadn’t faded.
Licorice didn’t notice until now how hard he was gripping the door.
Almost to the point of breaking it. As if fighting for something.
Shaking like a new born foal.
They stare at each other for a while, Licorice smiling to himself.
The dark energy stops swelling. Dark Choco’s eye glances back up at him and his chambers begins to lighten. After a while, his face starts to form again out of the inky darkness.
Licorice meets his gaze, expecting some kind of mouth agape surprise to dress his face, in a way that will forever be pointed out the next time Dark Choco dared to call him annoying.
But no.
Instead, it is the face of a young prince. With an eye as wide as the world and tears forming on the edge of it.
The same expression he wore all those years ago when his father threw him out of the kingdom’s gates and told him to never come back.
Even after all these years, time still didn’t change how absolutely broken Dark Choco looked when he was begging for mercy.
A stone drops in Licorice’s chest, and he yelps, ripping himself away from that face and that terrible eye that adorned it.
This was a line he should never had crossed.
Licorice forgot the most important part of manipulating someone was to distance yourself from them as much as possible. Whether be in power, in distance, or through the simple act of not staring them in the face.
But he doesn’t want to let his conscience get in the way of him getting what he deserves. Dammit, Dark Choco’s had too much success in his career of darkness—he deserves to be cut down just a little bit! It’s not like it would matter, right? Right? Why would he give a shit about just another person mentioning his past, it’s not like Pomegranate or Dark Enchantress couldn’t beat those feelings out of him again!
It was nothing compared to the pain Licorice went through! Nothing!
Nobody else suffered more than he did!
Nobody!!!!!!
He deserved to be right for once! He deserved to be mean! To be petty, to be cruel. Dark Choco did it to him all the time! What did it matter that Licorice was doing the same thing? Who fucking cared?!
But Licorice was not like Pomegranate. He was not like Dark Enchantress. He didn’t chose this life out of power, he chose it because he had nowhere else to go. Nobody was going to take in a laughingstock of a wizard who failed so hard with his experiment at the Century’s Fair that word spread across Earthbread in just a few days.
Nobody except the darkness, that is.
Here, he was free to be as petty and as evil as he wanted to. Just as he deserved. He deserved to stomp in the faces of all who insulted him! Of all who thought of him as useless!
But why in the one time that he got that chance he couldn’t go through with it?!
“...Don’t...Don’t do that,” Dark Choco says softly. He opens the door a little wider, still trembling. Tears are beginning to fall.
“...Please.”
Dark Choco never really lost the youthful look to his eyes. Or just...eye. He still looked like a child when he was afraid, as if he was still innocent to the pain and terror of the world. It didn’t really help he had wider eyes than most people knew—he just kept them half-lidded all the time out of annoyance, subservience, or boredom.
That, aside from the hair, was the easiest way to tell who his father was. Both he and Dark Cacao shared those same large eyes—as big as a world, able to see all perhaps too much for their own good.
Licorice growls at him.
“...Then confess what you did to me,” Licorice says flatly, taking the hood off his face. “...I don’t want to have to tell her, but I will if I have to! I will! You caused me to fail, and I’m tired of going to Dark Enchantress day after day with failures!”
Dark Choco watches him silently.
“...”
Licorice growls again, tapping his foot and trying to drag himself away from Dark Choco‘s face.
He probably looks ridiculous now. As he always did. Of course he’s going to look soft after not following up on the one real threat he makes.
“Now!” he shouts. “I don’t hear you fessing up!”
“...Please, don’t make me say it,” Dark Choco says quietly. He sticks his head out of the door a bit more this time.
Licorice watches with wide eyes a sickening sense of dread in his chest.
“...I know I’m not supposed to...eat those things, but...let me live with my own guilt in peace. Please. Don’t tell Pomegranate anything. Please...”
“...”
Dark Choco watches Licorice with his eye finally fading away that terrible power it had once before. Now...it’s just empty. Empty as if there was no soul left behind those eyes, as if something had broken with Dark Choco a long time and he was only alive because he couldn’t muster up the courage to be anything but with his own two hands.
It’s the first time Licorice has seen him without his sword in his hand. Was that why he looked so empty? Thinking back on it, Licorice could hardly recall Dark Choco looking like he was alive except when he was clutching that sword.
...Great. Licorice is having sympathy now. And morals even, god forbid. Ugh, why was he still here if he wasn’t committed to this?
He looks at Dark Choco in the face again. One more time.
And takes a deep, long sigh.
He couldn’t...he couldn’t go through with this to someone who looked like that. Maybe it was all just a ruse—maybe Dark Choco was just the best actor there ever was and somehow he had concocted this whole thing up to fool Licorice into not divulging his little secret.
Maybe he was just being duped again for laughs! Maybe Dark Choco was going to laugh with Pomegranate later about how stupid he was, how he couldn’t even go through with being evil when it really mattered.
Because he was evil! He was! And he was going to be the best minion ever, and he was going to ruin so many things! So many people!
He deserved all of that! He deserved to ruin someone else’s life for once, after so many people ruined his! That’s how the world worked, that’s just how it all played out!
If you weren’t the bigger and meaner one, you would get trampled on and shoved aside! Stepped on and removed like the shit you were while everyone else got the better treatment because you weren’t powerful enough to claw your way to the top!
But it didn’t change the fact that Dark Choco still looked like Licorice did back when his big experiment failed. Back when he had hundreds of thousands of people looking at him, waiting for the big moment all of his hard work was going to coalesce into a huge parade of licorice minions and whimsical magic.
No, Licorice looked worse back then, actually. When it all exploded in their faces and his minions melted away as he fruitlessly tried to summon them again.
But that didn’t matter.
Licorice summons a minion with his staff and throws it at Dark Choco, finally tearing up while his voice broke. The memories of his big failure were flooding back to him, the abyss of insults he endured that day coming along too for the ride.
Dark Choco flinches. But Licorice whiffed on purpose, and the minion melts away as soon as it splatters against themdoor.
“...Okay!” he yells with gnashed teeth. “You win, you stupid idiot! I...I won’t tell her. But don’t you go off eating my cupcakes again, you asshole!”
Licorice slams his scythe on the ground with black tears forming in his eyes even more so than usual. Fucking hell, why was he always remembering academy and his wizard days at the worst of times...?!
Stupid idiot, he thinks. You deserve nothing from anyone, of course you couldn’t go through with this. You’re too weak for anything and you’ll always be that way no matter what.
His own failures haunting him...the fame and glory he worked so hard for denied to him...he really couldn’t do anything right, could he?! He couldn’t even dedicate himself to evil! The one job he thought he was at least halfway decent at!
“I’m really just comedic relief for you guys, aren’t I...someone for you to laugh at because I’m so useless...!”
He throws another minion at the door and stomps off with loud, ugly sobbing. Dark Choco flinches again at the sound and shuts the door quickly, not even giving Licorice another thought lest he fall into whatever he is dealing with in addition to his own hell. Licorice turns around again one more time again as he hears the slams, but it’s useless. Done. Over with.
He’s not going to do anything right today, and he’s got to accept it.
Accept his failure like always, because he’s really no better than anyone.
He sulks down the hallway in shame and sobbing, half-heartedly summoning minions that toddle behind him and tug on his cloak as he disappears into the darkness.
——————————————————
The next day, Dark Choco finds the cupcakes again.
Top shelf, as per usual in the second refrigerator. They’re only half decorated, with the icing sagging in all sorts of weird places and the skull toppings malformed and saggy. A few even look eaten, although they’re dripping with purple drool from where his minions tried to take a bite out them.
Probably before they were even taken out of the oven, knowing them.
Dark Choco looks over his shoulder as he takes the most competent looking one out of the tray, placing a bag of shiny sugar skulls next to it. White as bone and completely undecorated, they shine like resin and smell of slightly overdone caramel. Somehow, Dark Choco thinks he can catch a whiff of burnt grape soda and cola in there as well.
Hideously sweet things like this...ugh. Disgusting. This was what he subjected himself to constantly so that he wouldn’t be tempted to take a piece of red velvet cake when offered to him. The smell of sugar had to become hideous to him again, just like it did when he did his adolescent rites.
But...
He’s halfway down the hall when he finishes the cupcake. Hideous amounts of licorice make it almost too bitter to swallow, but he supposes he deserves it for daring to think he would find any sort of respite in something he’s not even supposed to be eating in the first place. And he finds a sort of comfort in it, thinking that maybe if someone was watching, he wasn’t going to be scolded as badly for this as he would for say, a lollipop.
That...
And, well, he never really was leaving behind the idea he could go back someday, was he?
How could he even begin to hope for the idea that maybe he could be let back into the kingdom gates if he no longer acted like a prince? No longer acted like he belonged there, like he was some kind of outsider and not the son his father raised.
His father...
Dark Choco stops. He holds the cupcake wrapper in his hand.
His father was not...the most competent baker in the entire world. Yes, he was an excellent cook, and knew how to make what was needed for an everyday meal, but he did not bake. Bread, cake, anything that needed an oven...he abstained from all of it for some reason beyond Dark Choco’s understanding.
Except that one time.
Dark Choco clutches the wrapper hard and leans against his sword.
I don’t want to see this, he thinks to himself.
But he doesn’t want to stop. The sword could take it all away from him, like it always did...
It’s his birthday. He’s about...seven, maybe eight. His father has two people over, one dressed in a garish hot pink and the other in a serene, sunflower yellow.
They’re trying to tell him jokes amidst making conversation, but all he can do is smile softly and nod. There’s no one else in this wing of the castle today, something that perplexed Dark Choco just as much back then as it did now.
“Happy birthday~!” the two strangers say, putting the cake and presents down on the cold dining table. His father’s looking away, and the pink stranger grabs his arm to pull him in.
“Aw c’mon Cacao, lighten up! It’s your little one’s birthday, and you’re just gonna stand there like a donkey in the sun?”
“...Hollyberry, please,” he says quietly, covering his face. Dark Choco never remembered his father being so embarrassed before this moment.
“Now now,” the yellow stranger says. “You know why he’s like that. After all the effort it took to learn this, I think he’s earned some abashment here.”
“But it’s his kid’s birthday Pure Vanilla! Doesn’t he wanna see what his kid thinks of it?”
Dark Choco doesn’t remember what his father’s face looked like in that moment. All he can remember is finding out years later from those same two figures why he acted like that on his birthday. Dark Cacao ended up using salt instead of sugar for the first attempt, and with only a few hours left to spare until the big moment, they had to go for a cake that was half the size of the original.
Dark Choco knew why. He figured it out on his own a while after Hollyberry told him.
His own father had abstained from all things sweet for so long that he had forgotten how it smelled when you opened it.
A tear rolls down Dark Choco’s face as he’s taken through that party again. The memory is quick after the cake is set down, and for some reason he can’t quite remember what else of not happened that day, aside from the cake tasting really good and his father giving him a birthday hug.
Sugar...cupcakes, cake, frosting, lollipops.
What childish things.
He shouldn’t be eating what reminds him of the days he can never get back.
He should have killed that craving the moment he became adolescent, all those decades ago.
It was what his father commanded him to do, what he was supposed to do for his people. To be a good ruler you had to control yourself. You had to stay your own appetite for the good of the collective. Sugar was a precious resource far too scarce for a land encased by snow in all directions.
It was the only way to coax the smallest of his kingdom’s children into eating the bitterly harsh foods that were the only source of sustenance for miles. That made the faces of even the hardiest of foreign travelers cringe.
But he never really lost that craving. That taste. Even as a young prince, he contemplated taking whipped cream and frosting from the pantry to satisfy himself after a long day.
But he he knew what his father would do. And he knew what his people would say.
Perhaps that was why he never confessed that to his father. Aside from the usual arguments they had before he was cast out.
Did he not have the strength to deny his own demons anymore?
...Who knows. He doesn’t, and he‘s tired of caring. He cares too much, and wishes sometimes that was he as unburdened by power as Licorice was.
A life of mediocrity...of staleness, of people not caring about you anymore, with no ties to the world anyone who lived in it...
Dark Choco wonders sometimes if Licorice knew how lucky he was. He always yelled and got upset about no one taking him seriously, but he was completely unaware that he could be gone and that nobody would care or seek him out. If he disappeared tomorrow, Dark Enchantress was only going to count him as another casualty.
But him...
She was going to chase him. Hunt him down. Drag him back to his place where he belonged.
Just as painful as always.
And this would have been surprising to his young self. To admire someone who had nothing. But he was looking less and less like the beautiful prince his kingdom so yearned for with every passing day. He could no longer afford to care about what his past self thought, especially as he stepped into the darkness more and more with each time he used the sword.
Dark Choco sighs as he crumbles the cupcake paper and throws it to a stray cakehound in the hall. It swallows it whole, running off in the opposite direction with not a single thought in its head.
He watches it go and clutches his sword.
“...Is there a point to playing prince anymore?”
Maybe Pomegranate had a point. Maybe he really should just give up the act and into the sword completely.
Let it consume him, body and soul. So he would no longer think, no longer feel. The pain of existing in the ambiguity between black and white finally ceasing forever.
The thought horrifies him.
But at the same time, he knows that he deserves worse than eternal suffering for what he’s done.
And if there was one thing Dark Choco Cookie was tired of feeling...
It was pain.
He sighs to himself as he disappears into his chambers again, hoping for the first time ever that Licorice succeeds in a mission. That maybe if he dies soon, or something worse happens he’ll at least have helped one person. (Maybe.)
...Maybe.
He sighs.
Nothing will ever undo the sins he’s committed, but that doesn’t stop part of him from hoping.