Chapter Text
It’s some sort of strange, powerful magnetism that holds them together. Nastasia has given up fighting it.
She tried, at first. When they found themselves in Flopside, the door to the castle impassable, Mimi ran away to hide at Merlee’s manor and Nastasia spent about a week rebuffing O’Chunks. She saw no reason that he should seek her company; she was complicit, after all, in the lie about creating new worlds. She had given up. Her reasons for continuing had vanished, and as she used what little pocket change she had on her to stay at inns she wondered why she was even bothering.
But O’Chunks was persistent. Toward the beginning he was courteous about it, respecting her crumbling boundaries and accepting her refusal to see him. Then, as soon as she was almost certain she had convinced him that she didn’t want to see him, he showed up with more ammunition.
“Got a house,” he told her. “Come an’ see.”
It was an old thing on a lower level of Flopside, and it needed a lot of work. It’d been abandoned for some time now, and most of the lights didn’t work but the plumbing was a bit sluggish. He said he was in the process of fixing it up, so that they could stay there, and not bounce around inns. He’d been doing odd jobs around the dual towns for pay so he could get it. It took all of what he’d saved up.
“What are you doing?” Nastasia asked him helplessly, looking at the sad structure.
He looked at her like she was insane. “Startin’ over,” he said simply. “Come in, I’ll get a fire goin’.”
He practically dragged her into the house, which was cold from no heat. The only furniture in the main room was an old sofa whose springs moaned when sat upon—but he sat her down there and bundled her up in a dusty blanket, and once the fireplace began to warm her, she found she couldn’t leave.
She wept for what must’ve been hours on that sofa. O’Chunks said nothing about it. He brought her some freshly simmered stew and sat beside her while they ate and not a word was said. When she’d drained herself completely, he gave her another blanket and a pillow so she could sleep on the cushions. She supposed there couldn’t have been a bed in the house, so she wasn’t sure where he slept that night.
Half the lights and the refrigerator worked well in the kitchen. The stove was functional enough but had a nasty habit of turning itself off while being used, and since it was a gas range, it had to be watched closely while cooking. The wiring throughout the house was dodgy at best; O’Chunks warned Nastasia not to turn the overhead light in the bathroom on. She didn’t question it, as she could see just fine in the dark. He kept several flashlights handy for himself.
He spent most of those days out of the house, building up more money for amenities. Complain about his meddling as she did, the house was cold and empty without him; she took solemn walks through Flopside. As dreary as Castle Bleck was, this world seemed dimmer still.
Then Mimi got pulled into the eddy as well.
It was on one of Nastasia’s zombie-like walks that she found her. Mimi was in disguise as one of the townsfolk, but her magic could never fool Nastasia’s keen eyes.
“Mimi?” she asked cautiously, wondering what the purpose of the disguise was; the Flip-Flop folk bore no grudges against them despite the world nearly ending.
Mimi looked for a moment like she wanted to run away, but only managed a single step backward before flinging herself forward into Nastasia’s arms.
“I mi—I missed you!” Mimi bawled, her spell bursting into smoke.
There was little for it but to take Mimi back to the house. Mimi hated the house because it had nothing, but she sat on the sofa and rubbed her eyes and admitted that she’d been to visit several times. She had seen O’Chunks often as he was always about in town but had felt too uncomfortable to approach. Why would he want to associate with her, when he was making a somewhat respectable life for himself?
Well, Nastasia had thought the same thing.
“You two live here?” Mimi asked, bewildered. “There’s nothing here!”
“We have a table now,” Nastasia told her.
Mimi housesat for Merlee, guarding whatever strange things the shaman kept. (Or perhaps stealing them, Nastasia supposed wryly, as Merlee was scarcely home to notice.) And as it turned out, she made some money doing it. Enough to spare some for some furnishings, maybe, but she couldn’t bring it to Flopside to use without permission. She had to wait until Merlee returned.
Nastasia was astounded by Mimi’s willingness to offer money, but she wasn’t about to decline. Mimi left, promising to visit again.
After some days, O’Chunks was able to buy a mattress. It nearly cleared out their funds again, but it was modestly spacious. Although they had no frame to put it on, it fit nicely in the upstairs. The space was small up there, conjoined with the attic by a small crawl-through door, and the ceilings slanted. O’Chunks had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on them. The overhead lights didn’t work at all, but it was better insulated against the cold.
“I’ll take th’ couch t’night,” O’Chunks said, after setting the sheets. “Ye move ‘n here.”
Nastasia stared at him for a moment in disbelief. “Why? It’s big enough for us both.”
He’d been sleeping on a too-small, makeshift cot in one of the rooms, while she’d been sleeping on the sofa. He stared at her now with the same level of disbelief as she had at him refusing to use the bed.
This whole time he’d been bending over backward to accommodate her needs while ignoring himself. They hardly spoke to each other since he was always out of the house. And now she realized that perhaps the reason for that was to give her space, because she’d been so vehement that he leave her alone in the first days after the Void closed.
Her heart filled with sadness. Neither of their mindsets had been healthy. But not once had she considered him a bother since coming here.
They fit okay. He was a big man but always hyper-aware of it, trying to scooch to the very edge so she could have all of one side. She badgered him that first night until he relaxed, and regrettably it might have been the most she’d spoken to him in a week.
But they fit okay. Though the world had treated them unkindly, they had each other.
O’Chunks gradually loosened up after that, and they spent more time together. He didn’t try to get out of sharing the bed ever again, and she grew so accustomed to the additional warmth that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep without him there.
Mimi came back and crawled all over O’Chunks when he indicated she was an idiot for not talking to him earlier if she wanted to. She brought with her some home improvement funds; not a huge sum, but more than they’d had. The next step was finding out what to work on first.
“That bloody gas range,” muttered O’Chunks, eyeing the kitchen longingly. He’d tried several times to fix it himself, only to narrowly avoid burning the house down.
“It’d be nice to have the oven work,” Nastasia agreed.
“Elly coulda fixed it,” Mimi said. “We’d make him do it for free, too! An actual electrical guy is gonna be expensive.”
“L en’t here, lass,” O’Chunks said, a bit of melancholy entering his tone.
“What about furniture? We’ve got to replace that thing,” said Mimi, wrinkling her nose and pointing at the sofa. It didn’t take long for one of the springs to break, propping the left cushion up at an unpleasant angle. The fabric was starting to sag as well. “I want a…one of those long ones. Ooh, a sectional! I wanna get a sectional! That way we all fit!”
The other two exchanged looks.
“We?” O’Chunks asked. “Ye movin’ in, lass?”
Mimi’s face did a peculiar twitch until she smoothed it over. “What? No, this is your space—but, y’know, for when I visit. This house is waaaaaay too small for me.”
And yet, despite the house being ‘too small’ for her, she continued to come back. Once, twice, three times a week, occasionally staying the night on the sofa. Each time she made an excuse for visiting, like bringing clothes she bought for Nastasia or sharing her allowance so O’Chunks could work on the house, and each time she made an excuse for leaving again.
O’Chunks and Nastasia sat on the sofa in the living room together in front of the newly acquired television. The sofa was new, too—not a sectional, as it was outside of their budget, but much bigger. Even though there was plenty of room, the pair sat with their shoulders touching.
“Yeah, so should we just tell her she can stay?” Nastasia asked, blowing on her hot chocolate.
“Think she needs tae decide for herself first,” O’Chunks said.
It was true that Mimi seemed to be indecisive on the matter of whether she should keep inserting herself into their lives. Nastasia trusted O’Chunks’ judgement. Plus, for all they knew Mimi might have to stay at the estate as part of her arrangement with Merlee.
In time, the issue would resolve itself. During one of the next visits, Nastasia awoke one night with a start to find Mimi in the process of climbing onto their mattress. They stared at each other for a moment, Nastasia confused and Mimi mortified, until O’Chunks reached across Nastasia and gently tugged Mimi onto the bed.
Mimi stumbled for a moment, flustered, before burrowing under the covers and snuggling up to Nastasia’s side with a content sigh, and O’Chunks turned onto his side so that he could put a large arm around them both.
From that moment Mimi was no longer visiting. She was living under the same roof, and only visiting Merlee’s manor to clean occasionally.
Come the next morning, Mimi was done with doubt and stepping quietly around her feelings. She was back to her boisterous self. Nastasia didn’t realize how sorely she missed Mimi’s energy, or how well the contrast served as an effective counterbalance for her sorrow.
The house became a lot tidier as well. Mimi was particular about a lot of things, but above all she couldn’t stand messes. O’Chunks was less messy than he was careless about leaving things out; Nastasia, however, was known to operate within her own clutter. Bare as the house was, Mimi kept it spotless and ensured nothing was left out to trip over.
They began painting. The floors needed redone, but it made more sense to start with the walls. That way any paint that dripped would be taken away along with the horrendously dirty carpet. The walls became the girls’ project while O’Chunks was out on errands, and he would come home and find them laughing and pressing hand-shaped paint stains onto each other’s coveralls like children.
“We didn’t, um, think this through very well,” Nastasia called, opening every window in the house to diffuse the smell. They painted every wall on the first floor within two days, and the odor was unbearable as they had no fans to move the air.
“But look at this!” O’Chunks triumphantly shaved a square of paint-stained carpet away with a knife, revealing dark walnut floors. “It doesn’ even need re-stained! Why would ye cover this up?”
“I wanted carpet,” Mimi pouted.
“We’ll keep the carpet in the upstairs, but it’ll need deep-cleaned, ‘k? Everything’s so dust—wh—” Nastasia stopped in surprise in the process of opening the window in the living room facing the alley. A rectangular cut of paper appeared to be tucked neatly onto the outside sill, visible through the glass once she moved the curtain.
Mimi paused in gleefully trying to wrestle the carpet knife from O’Chunks to see what had Nastasia so frozen in place. “What’s that? A bill? The mailmen around here sure are screwy, ain’t the mailbox on the front of the house?”
Nastasia carefully retrieved the envelope. “It’s a letter,” she said, frazzled. “And it—” She poked her head out of the window to check, but not a soul was in the alley, and the street was quiet. “It’s—this is Blumiere’s handwriting.”
Mimi and O’Chunks were on their feet immediately.
The letter had no return address. On the front of the envelope, in Blumiere’s messily slanted cursive, was written “to my friends.”
The three of them sat on the couch as Nastasia very gently extracted the letter, as if the envelope were a priceless family heirloom. The letter was long, full of sorrow and appreciation. In it he detailed that he was alive and well, along with Timpani, and please don’t try to find him; he would come to them when he was ready. He added some fragments of what he’d been up to in the time since his disappearance, how he and Timpani have been finding their way around after everything that happened. He apologized generally for the “mess he caused,” said that he hoped they would forgive his madness, and that he wished they were well and had stayed together. He signed it with a promise to visit, should they have remained in or around Flipside.
O’Chunks had to take the letter halfway through, lest Nastasia’s tears sully the page.
“Alive,” she murmured, “he’s alive. He’s alive…”
“Why’d he tell us not to find him?” said Mimi, frowning. “He didn’t even say where he was! How’d he even get this to us? Are we sure it’s not fake?”
“It’s his handwriting,” repeated Nastasia.
Turning the letter over, O’Chunks’ eyes narrowed at the bottom of the page. “There’s a PS. Not sure I like it.”
Nastasia wiped her eyes and put her glasses back on, leaning against his arm to read the note.
P.S.: When you find Dimentio, make the decision for him. His ego has become very fragile.
“Says ‘when’, not ‘if’,” O’Chunks grumbled sourly.
Now they knew how the letter got there, and perhaps why Blumiere insisted no one find him. It may have been meant as a warning that no one else come find him. Still, the news was somewhat troubling.
Did they seriously create an ending somehow where they all made it through?
Another week passed. The little house began to look more like people lived in it, although many things still needed fixing, and Nastasia started to wonder, with how often Mimi snuck upstairs to join them, if they might invest in a bigger mattress. They fit nicely side-by-side, still—but Mimi liked to stretch out during the night, or end up lying across the other two. In the end, they figured out that she just wanted to be in the middle.
But that spot was Nastasia’s—the middle of the mattress between all the love and warmth, with the steady safety of O’Chunks curled around her and Mimi’s sweet-smelling hair tickling her nose. She couldn’t be budged. Eventually, Mimi relented and decided that the easiest way to keep from kicking Nastasia at night was to get herself so tangled up in Nastasia’s limbs that she couldn’t move. As it turned out, no one had any complaints.
“Now all we need is for Chunky to find himself a rich boyfriend, and we’ll be set,” declared Mimi.
“Wot now?” he snorted. “Why don’ ye find one yeself?”
“I’ve decided boys are gross,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m not sure how tae take that, lass.”
Just about the time O’Chunks was considering throwing half the appliances out of the window, Mimi came home from checking in at Merlee’s and announced her arrival by kicking the door open. “O’Chunks!” she yelled. “Get out here!”
O’Chunks stomped out of the kitchen with one of the burner grates in his hands. “Lass, what—?!”
Mimi gave him her best winning smile and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I found us an electrician!”
Nastasia, trying hard and failing to concentrate on her book through all the noise, turned toward the door and her eyebrows went up. Luigi was standing in the doorway warily.
“Was less of you finding me than it was me yelling after you at the grocery store,” he offered. “But okay.”
The burner grate slid out of O’Chunks’ hands and banged loudly on the hardwood floor.
Luigi stepped into house and looked around. His eyes landed critically on all the flashlights littered around the tabletops. “…Is there anything in here that does work? Ah—that outlet,” he pointed, probably making a mental note. “But not the overheads, huh.”
“Elly, pleeeeeease,” Mimi whined. “I can’t stand the dark and we’re living off of TV dinners!!”
“Yeah, yeah, you already said,” he reminded her mildly. He ruffled her hair as he passed by on the way to the kitchen. It seemed to be more of an automatic movement than anything conscious. “Beep, beep, Braveheart.” He brushed past O’Chunks, who stood there frozen in shock. The contact shook him out of it, and he slowly picked up the grate from the floor.
Mimi grinned wickedly. “What’s wroooooooong, Chunky~?”
“Nothin’!” he snapped. “I jus’…wasn’t expectin’… Why’s he here?”
“I dunno,” she said. “Like he said, we ran into each other at the store, so I kidnapped him.”
“What the heck!” came the yell from the kitchen. Luigi emerged a moment later, stopping in front of O’Chunks and leaning up close to look him directly in the eyes. “Do. NOT. Turn that thing on again,” he said darkly, and then: “You got a screwdriver?”
O’Chunks froze again for a few seconds before leaning in as well, looming over the other since he was taller. Luigi stepped back a bit from the challenge. “Ye can fix it?”
Luigi blinked, like he was only now registering O’Chunks’ presence. “Uh, no,” he said. “It’s basically fried. Screwdriver.”
They directed him to their scantily equipped box of tools. After making a disparaging comment very typical of Mr. L about the quality, he started removing the outlets from the walls to look inside at the wiring. There were three outlets in the living room. Only one of them received a nod of approval.
“Thinking maybe you should just turn everything off,” he said. “Where’s your breaker?”
“Basement,” O’Chunks told him, pointing toward the door to the stairway. “Ye’ll need a flashlight.”
“That bodes ill,” Luigi commented, disappearing into the basement.
Two minutes passed.
Then, “THIS IS A FUSEBOX, O’FLUNKS!”
They all jumped. Luigi thundered up the stairs, looking furious. He pointed at the two outlets he had left unscrewed in the wall. “Don’t plug anything in those. You’ve got ten fuses and six of them are toast. It’s a miracle this place hasn’t burned down—how long’ve you been living here?”
“Um. A couple of months.”
“Move out.”
“No!” O’Chunks barked. “We’ve put work in here!”
Not to mention they had just gotten comfortable, and there was little chance of affording another residence.
Luigi put his hands up. “Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine. Listen. Gonna need a few days to find some things. C’mere, though.”
He shoved them all into the kitchen and tapped the oven door with the side of his boot.
“Pull it out,” Luigi ordered.
O’Chunks looked contemplative for a beat. “The range, or…”
Luigi cough-laughed at this, surprised and red in the face.
Mimi grimaced and rolled her eyes. “Ugh, boys.”
“Oh, my god. The stove, yeah, the—god, I can’t believe you remember that! Kill me.”
“Would never forget ye makin’ a complete ass o’ yeself, lad.”
“…I’m not sure I want to ask,” commented Nastasia.
“Short version: one time I got myself really drunk,” said Luigi. “The rest is redacted.”
“I walked intae the room while he was sloshed an’ he started flirtin’ with me,” supplied O’Chunks.
“I said, the rest is redacted.”
“Not from me memory, sadly.”
O’Chunks scooted the range about two-thirds of the way out of its spot between the counters. It scraped horridly on the floor when moved, so he started to pick it up instead.
“Waitwaitwaitwait,” Mimi said, waving her arms. “Are you saying it needs replaced? We can’t afford it right now—”
“It’s a fire hazard. Like, a big one.” Luigi disconnected the wires from the backside of the range once O’Chunks had it lifted, and once it was completely out of the way he gestured with a flourish at the wall where it had been. It was stained black with what looked like soot. “Exhibit A.”
Nastasia sharply inhaled—had it been smoking at one point around the wires, and they hadn’t noticed?
Luigi walked around the small kitchen, putting his hand against the walls near appliances and lights, like he was testing something. He promptly unplugged the microwave and switched its placing with Nastasia’s coffeemaker on the other side of the counter, but he moved nothing else.
“Don’t use that outlet either,” he said, indicating where the microwave had been. “God, the currents in this house are so janky— Do you need money?”
They all blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden and unrelated question.
“Do you need money,” he repeated, eyeing them seriously.
“Yes!” Mimi said, before the other two could open their mouths. “Do you have money?”
“I may have money,” Luigi offered cryptically.
Mimi started elbowing O’Chunks ribs ecstatically, triggering a gentle slap-fight.
“We can’t accept tha—”
“Yes, we can! We definitely can!”
Nastasia gave Mimi an exasperated look.
Luigi left shortly after, suggesting that they not flip switches repeatedly and maybe avoid blowing up the house before he came back in a few days. O’Chunks placed the range outside in the alley, out of the way until they could find somewhere to scrap it, and then he left to stock up on things that could tide them over in the microwave.
Nastasia was beginning to realize, after witnessing the interaction with Luigi, that O’Chunks might be sorely missing male companionship. She knew he was in the military when Count Bleck picked him up; they had traversed the wasted, abandoned camp until they found him. He was probably used to drinking and sparring and trading stories with those men, before it all went to hell. It was different living with women; Nastasia wasn’t exactly into roughhousing, and Mimi often drove O’Chunks mad with her rhetoric and mean-spirited taunts.
Of course, O’Chunks would never bring it up as an issue that needed addressed; instead, he sated his boredom by running errands and going for walks. But Nastasia had the mental picture of a sword slowly rusting with disuse, and the thought that he might dread coming home sometimes.
Before she could start to address the issue, or corner him long enough to even bring it up, he brought home a surprise.
“Oi, Mimi,” he called from the front door. “Got ye a present.”
Nastasia looked up from the FlipFlop Tribune and balked.
Mimi slid into the living room on her socks. “This better be good, I’m reorganizing my closet—OMIGOSH!!” she cried, clapping her hands together in delight. “You brought me a really shitty boyfriend!”
Dimentio, tucked under one of O’Chunks’ arms like a sack of luggage, blinked slowly at her like a cat.
She cut across the back of the sofa and bounded over to him. “Hiya, Dimmy!” she said cheerfully, and then she slapped him so hard across the face Nastasia swore she may have heard something crack.
O’Chunks could tell what was going to happen when Mimi’s arm swung back, but all he had time to do was quickly let go so Dimentio might handle the recoil better. The magician landed hard on the floor, propped against the wall, and then Mimi dropped onto her knees and threw her arms around his neck.
“You’re such a dummy.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared straight ahead into space while she hugged him, dazed.
“Ugh, you stink though,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “We’re taking care of that first!”
Mimi hefted him up off the floor into her arms. It wasn’t surprising that she could carry him, light as he was. No, what was surprising was that he listlessly let her do it. No complaints, no physical resistance. He let his chin rest on her shoulder as she toted him toward the stairs.
He looked absolutely exhausted. Exhausted and defeated. Nastasia felt her stomach twist unpleasantly upon realizing he looked exactly how she felt for the first two weeks after the Void closed—she had recovered, but he still had not.
As Mimi stole Dimentio away to the upstairs bathroom, O’Chunks lingered by the door. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but it was apparent by the stiff movement of his jaw that he was upset in a way Nastasia hadn’t seen before. O’Chunks had previously been very vocal about not letting Dimentio set foot in their house even if they found him, so it was peculiar that he was the one to bring him home.
“O’Chunks,” Nastasia said, patting the seat on the sofa beside her.
“Diggin’ through the bins,” he said hollowly.
“What?”
He dropped heavily onto the sofa, balancing his elbows on his knees and pressing his forehead into his clasped hands. “The dustbins. Top floor o’ Flopside. Sat down on th’ ground an’ jus’….waited, when he saw me. Like I was comin’ tae settle a score an’ he was jus’ gonna let it happen.”
O’Chunks took a deep, steadying breath. “Know I said some things about him bein’ here. ‘Bout how we couldn’ trust him. But he’s so damned broken, Nastasia, he broke himself more’n he did the rest o’ us, an’ I can’t… I could never…”
Nastasia rubbed his shoulder soothingly. “…Did he say anything?”
“Didn’ say a word. I jus’ picked him up—not a damn word—and brought him here. Dunno if it were right or not, but crivvens, I couldn’ leave him there.”
Dimentio continued to not talk for days. Every now and then he would respond quietly, just one or two words, but for the most part it was like his mouth was glued shut. There were few things quite as jarring as a silent Dimentio, as he was known to say a lot of things about anything at any given time. The circles under his eyes were dark, and Mimi had to bully him every day to take care of himself.
Aside from the silence, he was also listless. A nearly daily occurrence involved him just…stopping mid-float, like he wasn’t sure where he was or where to go. Or he would sit on the floor against the wall of the first-floor guest bedroom, away from everyone else, and stare. Mimi was the only one allowed in the room with him—if Nastasia or O’Chunks entered, Dimentio would make himself scarce by hiding in his dimension.
He did the same thing at night. Instead of joining the other three upstairs, he would go into the guest bedroom and vanish until well after noon, when he would emerge for O’Chunks to hand him lunch. He was at least eating well. He wouldn’t eat with them, but the plate he brought back was always picked clean.
“Dimmy, c’mere,” Mimi said the second she caught him exiting his adopted room. She plucked him out of the air and held him like her favorite dolly, carrying him over to the sofa. “We’re gonna watch a movie or somethin’.”
“We don’t have any movies,” Nastasia reminded her.
“Then we’ll find somethin’ dumb on TV!”
By ‘find something on TV’ Mimi apparently meant spending ten seconds on each channel while watching if Dimentio showed any sort of response. He didn’t. She crowded him up against the armrest of the sofa while sitting nearly in his lap, and he just looked tiredly at the screen.
“Omigosh,” said Mimi, flipping from a tennis match and pausing on a music entertainment channel. A toad was singing an elegant solo on a concert stage, accompanied only by a piano. “I want her voice!”
—Which was sort of a terrifying thing for her to say, since she could actually make that happen.
The sound of the piano made Nastasia’s ears twitch, and she sighed wistfully.
“What’s wrong, Nassy?”
“I miss playing sometimes.”
There had been an upright piano in Castle Bleck. The echoing acoustics in the castle made it difficult to play, but it went a long way to keeping her fingers busy and her mind from tanking under pressure. The others often asked her to play, even though she felt she was a novice at best, in high-stress situations, like just before the heroes stormed the castle.
“Where would you put it?”
Both Mimi and Nastasia jumped at the sound of Dimentio asking an unprompted question. His voice sounded strange after its long disuse.
“…Um, what?” asked Nastasia.
Dimentio was still staring at the screen. “Your piano,” he murmured. “Where would you put it.”
“I…” Nastasia glanced at Mimi, who just shrugged in equal confusion. “The house is hardly big enough for…”
“Against th’ wall there,” O’Chunks said, coming out of the kitchen and pointing to the living room wall across from the windows. “So I c’n listen tae ye play while I make dinner.”
Dimentio nodded curtly at him, like this was a suitable answer. Then he carefully extracted himself from under Mimi’s legs and teleported away. Only a couple of minutes passed and he was back, touching down on the floor next to the wall. He snapped his fingers with a flourish, and the piano from Castle Bleck appeared neatly where O’Chunks had pointed, across from the window so that the sunlight came through and glittered off of its clean, white finish.
Dimentio exhaled deeply, and then went back to where he was sitting without another word. Mimi looked at him as if she had never seen him before.
Nastasia rose from the sofa unsteadily to investigate. It needed tuned, and the keys needed cleaned; O’Chunks brought her a washcloth to wipe away the layer of accumulated dust. The bench had appeared with it, and still contained her few pages of sheet music. Once she had it mostly tuned and cleaned, she sat and started to play from one of the sheets. Her fingers were clumsy at first, but the sour notes smoothed out eventually. It was much easier to play without the echo of the cold castle.
Mimi turned off the television, O’Chunks took Nastasia’s spot on the sofa, and Dimentio finally relaxed against Mimi’s shoulder.
“Is it okay like this?” Nastasia asked that night, slipping under the covers into her usual spot.
O’Chunks cocked his head, confused. “Wot? Like how?”
She folded her glasses and placed them on the floor above the mattress. “I mean, uh, you don’t mind? Dimentio being here, I mean.”
“Lass, I’m the one what brought him.”
“He won’t look me in the eyes,” she said, staring up at the ceiling. “Like he thinks I’m going to try to hypnotize him if he does.”
O’Chunks regarded her carefully. “Don’ think he would’ve delivered the letter if he didn’ want anything tae do with us. He’s just flighty still.”
“He hasn’t run. He hides, but he doesn’t run.”
“Aye.”
They were silent for a time. He joined her under the covers, on his side curled around her.
“I think I’d hate him,” Nastasia blurted, “if Blumiere had died. I don’t think I ever would’ve forgiven him. And he—used that sprout on you.”
“Aye, he did.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“It did. I think back tae it diff’rent now. Was a test subject, but he’d no intention o’ hurtin’ me. If he had, he woulda let the ceiling crush me.”
There was truth to that. In the end, Dimentio was part of the reason any of them had survived the end of the world. She knew this, and it made her hate herself—because Dimentio figured out how to get to the ending he wanted without sacrificing any of their team, after she had long given up on it being possible.
“Nastasia,” O’Chunks rumbled, smoothing her hair behind her ear with a thumb twice the size of her nose. “Stop it.”
“I knew,” she said, frustrated. “I knew. I knew what both of them were doing. But I still…I still let you and Mimi believe that…that it was going to be okay—”
“We are okay,” he corrected her sternly.
“But what if we weren’t?”
“Don’t wannae hear it. Stop hurtin’ yeself, lass. The whole lot o’ us survived, an’ any alternative ye brain cooks up didn’t happen.”
She sighed, not entirely convinced but willing to believe it. They lay in silence for a while, O’Chunks sort of shyly caressing the soft skin on the side of her face with his thumb. The warm contact made her blissfully drowsy.
“Come on, you doofus,” Mimi’s voice floated from the first floor. “Stop hiding, will ya? We ain’t gonna bite.”
She emerged from the stairwell, carrying her favorite magician.
“Mimi…” Nastasia started warily, as she thought forcing the issue with Dimentio’s antisocial sleeping habits might not be the best approach.
But, again, he didn’t run. He could teleport wherever he pleased in an instant if he wanted, but he never did leave them, no matter how apprehensive he looked.
“Ugh, stop squirming,” Mimi complained through a yawn. “We’re sleeping, okay? Bedtime.”
She climbed into bed beside Nastasia, hugging Dimentio to her like a stuffed animal. He made a disconcerted noise but didn’t fight her. Even though there was a body between them, Nastasia could tell how stiff he was. She closed her eyes and tried not to imagine his discomfort.
It didn’t take long.
“D-Dimmy,” Mimi whispered, a mixture of surprise and dismay. “Hey…”
Dimentio hiccupped pitifully in response.
O’Chunks tapped Nastasia on the shoulder. “Lass, if ye could…”
“Yeah,” she said, dragging herself out from under the covers.
Mimi rolled over so that Dimentio was pressed between herself and O’Chunks, and O’Chunks let his arm fall heavily around them both. Nastasia took the vacant spot on the edge, resting on her back with her arm around Mimi’s waist.
“See,” Mimi said softly. “Chunky’ll keep us safe and cozy, and Nassy’ll make sure we don’t do anything dumb again. It’s okay! Now sleep.”
Dimentio made a shivery sighing noise, his grip tightening around Mimi, and together they all fell asleep feeling a great deal better.