Chapter Text
It’s been five months, you’d say. Give or take a few lo- no. Not a few loops, because Stardust broke those when you couldn’t. Of course you wouldn’t be able to, yet the copy the Universe made for you to aid was able to escape the loops.
Yet you watched Stardust, your Stardust, fall into worse habits than you did! You watched them beg over and over to the Universe, or maybe even to anyone who would listen, for death. He wanted to rest. You get it, you really do. You wanted rest, you still want rest. You want nothing more than to grab a limb off the Favor Tree and plunge it into your chest where that stupid, darkless star lies. It isn’t all the time you want it. You remained, and continue to remain, because Stardust- Siffrin, they have a name. Use it, you stupid. stupid idiot.
…From the top of the scene, why don’t you? More enthusiasm into it all! Get some more blinding enthusiasm, Loop.
It’s been a great five months! Wonderful, even! You just love being a star and watching Stardust break out of those loops! You are so overjoyed that you would even be willing to take their place and his family!
You’re losing your ability to act, Loop. Get back to it. Back to the stage. Be the sponsor again just like you wished for.
You pause, for just a moment. You can ponder, a moment longer. A day longer, a loop longer. You’ve had plenty of pondering, just a bit more won’t help. What will a bit of friendly self-deprecation do to you? Just get back to your normal, blinding cheerful self after.
You smile with your eyes. You haven’t had a mouth to smile with in a long, long while. It’s your fault though, isn’t it? You don’t deserve the right to mourn that which you lost because of your own foolishness. You are so far in your thoughts, you don’t notice your hands shaking. You don’t hear cautious and slow, yet light, footsteps approaching you. The same footsteps that have approached you loop after loop. You’re tired. You keep going.
Stars, aren’t you just stupid. A stupid, stupid star who made a stupid blinding wish! And then, even worse, you had to watch a blinding copy of you succeed while you lost everything! Your- your friends. No, calling them just your friends would be bad. Your family. They’re your family. They’re not actors, or fictional- they’re your family. The very family that you must have killed with the stupid wish that you made that day.
They’re real. You’re real. You’re here, and you’re alive at the very tree Stardust had made their wish at. Didn’t you make your own wish, thousands of loops ago?
You pause, looking at the tree where you sat day after the same day. If a wish brought you here, surely one could bring you back, right? You haven’t wished since then, but if you’re extra careful with your wording then maybe it’ll be ok. It has to be. It can’t not be ok.
You pluck a leaf from the tree, looking carefully. A wish ruined your life, but you could potentially get it back. Get them back. And isn’t that worth the risk? You breathe your wish into the leaf’s surface. “Bring me, bring Siffrin back to my family.” You repeat it three times over, just like you had back then. You fold it afterwards. The proper way to make a wish.
If you could, if they wouldn’t just immediately evaporate against the star that replaced the face you wore, you’d be crying right now. The back of your throat burns,
You bring the wish craft back to the tree and you feel a tug on your stomach. Suddenly, you begin to realize how bad of an idea this was. You never thought about how stardust’s wish would still be fulfilled- how you could possibly bring them with you. Stupid stupid stupid star! Oh so helpful Loop bringing down the entire blinding universe with you!
You breathe. In, and out. In, and out, In, and in, and in and in and in and in and-
And out, right? Yes. Yes- you breathe out. Normal breathing, Loop! That’s what humans- what people do! And you’re a person, right? You walk. you give advice, you smile with your eyes even as you beg Stardust to kill you over and over and over and over and-
You need to take your own advice, once in a while. It’d do you some good, for once. But then again, when have you ever done anything good for yourself? The air around you smells of sickly, burnt sugar. You want to cry. But you don’t.
The smell is overwhelming now. You gag on nothing- you didn’t even know you could do that, now! You’ll be fine, because you have to be fine. You have to be helpful and fine and if that’s the blinding fate you resigned yourself to when you pulled back your original wish and then begged the Universe for someone, anyone, to help you? You breathe out. You didn’t realize you had been holding your breath.
You’re fine.
You feel a tug on your stomach, stronger this time. You’re going back- back when it all started. Back when you were still Siffrin, when you were resembling something human when you inhabited a suit of skin that worked more like a tool to be able to loop back, to be able to try again and again and repeatedly seeing the blinding King slam Mirabelle- no, her corpse, against the floor time and time again.
Now that you’re thinking about it, you want to cry. It reminds you somewhat of a toddler throwing a tantrum, slamming their toy against the ground in anger. As if Mirabelle, the one of your family who you had once comforted time and time again even when you knew it wouldn’t mean anything ever more-
As if she was just a doll for the King to throw around.
You feel your poncho, the same one you had called a cloak despite knowing full-well it was actually just a poncho, against your skin. You’re lying against the same blinding field you had every other time. Having hair and skin again is weird, apparently. Who would’ve guessed after one hundred loops of being distinctly inhuman that inhabiting the good-old flesh suit would feel a bit weird!
Laughter fills your ears for a moment. It quickly dissipates. It came from you, after all. You know how to control yourself. You just need to get up. You’re back, and it suddenly occurs to you that this isn’t what you want. You want out. You need to stand up.
You look to your left. There’s nothing but grass.
You look to your right. A near-perfect mirror image of what you had once been- of what you are again, you mean, lies staring wide-eyed at you. Their cloak is stained, and he lacks his hat. You have yours.
You queue up the line. The same line of greeting them, of asking how you can help them in this oh-so-wonderful new loop. Nothing escapes your throat.
You can’t speak- you can’t breathe-
Your vision blurs. Your eye, your single eye because you lost this body’s other eye defending the kid you eventually saw as a little sibling- you can’t see anything. Not in any actual quality, at least. Everything is blurry and seems too close yet too far. You couldn’t see out of the eye in the other body you had, either, but at least you had an eye.
This isn't your body, not anymore. Not that you had really seen it as yours after a while. You had ended up seeing it as a suit you inhabited after you’d say… the first few hundred loops! You used it to loop back quickly. By the third floor you’d use the tears that’d often wobble their way towards you, but on the first two there weren’t nearly as many.
You had become very familiar with the feeling of metal on flesh on blood on hot, crimson, iron-tasting blood. Stars had ended up dotting your arms, just like they had to Stardust’s when he decided to be a fool and traverse the entire House alone.
It’s not like you don’t get it. You do, you promise you do. There had been times in your own set of loops where you had wondered if simply doing it alone would be best. You just would’ve preferred if Stardust hadn’t gone through the House on their own. It was too late for that though, you suppose.
You hear someone underwater. You think they’re trying to breathe… with you? You scold yourself inside your own head. Stupid Loop! You’re worrying the person- the person? Stardust. You are worrying Stardust and they will hate you and he’s going to leave if you don’t bother to get your act together.
With the will of someone who has lost everything (which is exactly what you are, but not anymore because you’re back- you’re back, you’re back you’re back YOU’RE BACK YOU’RE BACK YOU’RE BACK-)
You breathe in, and out. No experience was received, not this time. No new skill, no ‘wow look at me!’
Just silence. You prefer it this way. You, the star, the guide, the comic relief. You, now Siffrin, break the silence. Your own grating voice scrapes against your throat, escaping your mouth and tongue. It hurts a bit. At least your voice is the same, unlike everything else that went back to how it had been.
“How can I help you in this wonderful new loop?”