BONGOVYCH ART BLOG ! 🦆

"Huh?" It catches Pure Vanilla by surprise. It had been difficult emotionally, but logically straightforward to admit they were two sides of the same coin. He couldn't imagine how that could be wrong, and acting upon an old habit from his student days, he finds himself frantically unravelling that conclusion in his head again to figure out the issue.

Shadow Milk doesn't give him the chance, tutting as he shakes his head in mock disappointment. "You must have a brain in there, can't you use it?" He laments theatrically, contorting himself into an odd shape against the edge of the window pane. Then, again barreling on before Pure Vanilla can reply, "Look, think of it like this. To say we're two sides of the same coin means that we have similarities, even if we are otherwise opposites. That is true to an extent, but it makes our differences sound way more clear cut than they actually are. It may be easier for you to believe, but we aren't really opposites. That would imply I am not whole, and I can assure you, Soul Jam aside, I am just as I always was!"

Ah, so it's a matter of wording. Pure Vanilla isn't sure why he is entertaining this - no, it's because he doesn't want to give Shadow Milk the satisfaction of turning away from the truth. Even now, Shadow Milk's eyes squint cheekily at him, daring him to try and end the conversation.

"Then... we are made of the same components in a different composition." Pure Vanilla tries, a little frustrated with his own hesitance, but it is difficult to tell how Shadow Milk wants him to answer when he isn't making it blatantly obvious.

"So close!" Shadow Milk sighs dramatically as he snaps his head to the side so sharply it makes Pure Vanilla wince, imagining the cracks that would cause on any other Cookie. "But you're relying on technicalities. It's much simpler than that."

It dawns on Pure Vanilla, then, exactly what Shadow Milk is aiming for, the realisation making his insides crawl. He doesn't have to say it, not really, but he isn't sure what Shadow Milk will do if he doesn't, and he unfortunately doesn't have the ability to wake himself up on command.

So he takes a deep breath, fidgeting with his staff as he says, even less than a whisper yet twice as loud. "We're... We're the same. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

"Ding-ding-ding!" Shadow Milk trills, suddenly reaching through the candy glass to grip the window frame and lurching forward across the threshold, leaving a mess of shattered glass behind his head like a halo. It startles Pure Vanilla, who instinctively shifts his foot back, only to be instantly locked in place as the reaching shadows soldify around his legs, its eyes winking up at him playfully. His grip on his staff tightens, willing it to shed its light, the beginnings of panic stirring within him at the restraint. The staff does, but the shadows seem to eat the light without a problem.

Pure Vanilla is so distracted by the shadows that he doesn't notice Shadow Milk's hands until they grab his face. His heart jumps in alarm, and his eyes dart up to find half of Shadow Milk leaning down out of the window, far too close. He is grinning at him, wide and self-satisfied, and his hands are cold and harsh. "See, I knew you had a working brain! Yes, the right answer is that we are one and the same."

He pinches and pulls at his cheeks, and Pure Vanilla tries to cringe away, tries to manuver his staff between them. It doesn't work, if only because hands emerge from the darkness to anchor his staff too.

"But that isn't true." Pure Vanilla mumbles when he isn't able to wiggle his way out and Shadow Milk still shows no signs of stopping, hoping the argument will make him lose interest in his face. "I admit that there are similarities between us, but we aren't really the same."

Shadow Milk pauses, his grip tightening until it borders on pain, and for a moment, Pure Vanilla thinks he may have miscalculated.

But then Shadow Milk snickers to himself, releasing his face entirely and pulling back, his hands resting lightly over Pure Vanilla's shoulders. The brush of weight keeps Pure Vanilla from relaxing, but it is a bit of added distance, at least.

"Aren't we? Well, you are the biggest liar, so I should have expected you would lie to yourself too." Shadow Milk hums, almost sounding delighted at this turn in conversation. It unnerves Pure Vanilla, because he had assumed his disagreement would annoy him.

Instead, Shadow Milk smirks, his many eyes glinting gleefully at him. "Listen carefully, Vani, because here's the truth." He says, his voice dipping into a wicked purr that seems to shudder through Pure Vanilla's whole body. "All the things you hate that I have done, you have the capability of doing too. After all, you've already used people for your own gain, haven't you?" Shadow Milk leans closer with a condescending lilt to his words, shifting his hands so he can wrap his arms loosely over his shoulders, and Pure Vanilla freezes under the touch. "Oh, I know you think it was necessary, but you still sent those naive, tiny Cookies off to carry out your errands for you, regardless of the dangers. That's only a few steps behind what I've done, you know, making people dance to my tune. The only difference between us is severity and time."

The words sink heavily to Pure Vanilla's stomach, not quite true but not quite not true, and he feels a little lightheaded, fingers twitching against his staff. Maybe it's because of that, or maybe it's because of his discomfort from the close proximity, but he finds himself distracted by the way Shadow Milk is talking. He carries his usual air of showmanship, but it is nowhere near as exaggerated as during his brief takeover of the Faerie Kingdom. With his insistence of specificity, his mention of technicalities, his structured method of explaining things, he almost sounds like a–

"We are the same," Shadow Milk repeats, tilting his head to the side, the glow of his eyes burning holes through Pure Vanilla, "and one day, you'll end up just like me."

A scholar.

That makes sense – at some point, his virtue had been Knowledge, and nobody seeks it out as fervently as a scholar – but it still feels like a surprise. Pure Vanilla had always known that Shadow Milk was different, once, but only in the sense that the fact existed in the back of his mind.

"No rebuttal, hmm? Are you ready to accept that?" Shadow Milk asks smugly, slightly impatient with Pure Vanilla's lack of response, but mostly watching him expectantly, as if waiting for a bomb to go off.

Pure Vanilla has never thought about what Shadow Milk might have been like, before he became like this. There was no reason to even consider it. But now, he can't help but wonder, because while he cannot imagine this chaotic, brutal Beast, this great unknown evil, as anything else – Shadow Milk still carries echoes from a past life that he doesn't seem to notice enough to hide with his lies.

"...If we are the same," Pure Vanilla finally scrapes his thoughts together enough to reply, carefully, "then doesn't that make the opposite possible too? That, one day, you will become like me and return to the light?"

Shadow Milk blinks once, his face falling blank. He blinks again, all of his eyes in quick succession.

And then he throws his head back and laughs, the movement jostling Pure Vanilla in the process with his arms still firmly around his shoulders. It sounds unhinged, ricocheting across the room, but it is openly amused. It makes Pure Vanilla antsy, especially with how it rings in his ears like an explosion from their closeness.

He wonders if Shadow Milk's laugh was different, before everything. It must have been. He wonders what it sounded like, and immediately realises that he's being ridiculous. The realisation that a before exists seems to have opened the floodgates in his mind, and now thoughts of hypotheticals can't help flitting in.

"You say such silly, silly things." Shadow Milk bites out offhandedly as his laughter winds down, the lingering remnants still dancing on his tongue. Without warning, he pulls Pure Vanilla even closer, the darkness that had been keeping him in place swirling and shoving him forward. Pure Vanilla gasps, the sound catching in his throat, and one of his hands fly off his staff to reach for something to steady himself on. It finds an edge of shattered candy glass, flinching back and falling down to scrabble against its smooth, intact surface.

Shadow Milk is giggling at him and Pure Vanilla is mortified, horribly so. They are far, far too close, Shadow Milk's face taking up the near entirety of his vision and their upper bodies almost pressed together. It feels claustrophobic, which should be impossible in such a wide, open space.

Shadow Milk makes matters worse by pressing their foreheads together, the gesture weirdly tender and doing nothing to make Pure Vanilla any calmer. His bright blue eyes look directly through him, dissecting him piece by piece.

"Why don't you cut down the Silver Tree and find out?" Shadow Milk coos, his voice overlapping with the Light of Truth's in a deeply unsettling way. His presence is overwhelming.

Pure Vanilla's eyes flicker downwards to escape his piercing gaze, and finds their chests so close that their Soul Jams are overlapping. Overlapping, and not touching, because Shadow Milk's Soul Jam seems to fizzle out of existence where the other makes contact with it, as if it were an illusion. Behind it is an empty space, black as the abyss. With the way they are lined up now, it is obvious that Pure Vanilla's Soul Jam would fit perfectly into the crevice with a little turning. He knew that already, but it still feels strange to see it.

Pure Vanilla sighs, a long, thin, shuddering sound. "...You didn't truly believe that would work, did you?"

In the edge of his vision, Shadow Milk smiles tauntingly, all teeth, but he doesn't say a word.

And Pure Vanilla wakes up, off kilter, exhausted and oddly cold.