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Chapter warnings: Character Death (the inevitable, again)
Chapter Summary: Sausage and Shubble learn that second, and even third or more, chances are possible.
[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3]
(Also available on Ao3! )
Chapter Four
Sunrise found Shubble safely ensconced in the dark upstairs room behind shuttered and boarded up windows, a feature turned useful instead of discouraging. Sausage thought it best to let her stay through the day instead of attempting to travel back to her own home. He himself had a nap on a sleeping bag in a spare room downstairs.
He considered going to confront Scott about his wings then thought better of it. It might not serve any purpose – he doubted the vampire would have misgivings about it, and certainly wasn’t likely to apologize. He also doubted the wings would even work anymore.
During the afternoon he took some time to sit by a window and just look up at the sky, remembering what it was like to fly among the clouds and allowing himself time to accept that those days were over. He was still sitting there, now just absently gazing out at the courtyard with his head propped on one hand, when Shubble came down the stairs. She yawned to announce her presence. “I feel like that was the best sleep I’ve gotten in a while! Your house is really nice, I should have thought about building something like this instead of a greenhouse.” She laughed humorlessly. “It’s kind of silly, when all the plants keep dying anyway. I guess I’ve just blocked out too much of the sun for them, when really I was trying to give myself a way to see during the daytime.”
“I could try to help you fix it,” Sausage offered. “I mean, the plants will just die again if I get near them, but maybe after we change some things you could get new ones and they’ll be okay.”
“I suppose we could try. Okay, yeah, let’s go.”
“Oh, but wait a minute.” Sausage went to find the few surviving plants he had left and came back to present her with a small, tangled bramble vine. “It doesn’t look like much, but it used to have some pretty purple flowers. Maybe you can get them to come back.” He carefully placed it in a backpack and then they headed out.
With her vision being keener at night, Shubble watched their path for hostile mobs and Sausage dealt with any trouble by throwing a skull. Soon they fell into a rhythm and casually chatted in between explosions. When they reached her home, she kept a lookout while Sausage did the planning and building of a second, smaller greenhouse that had regular glass instead of the tinted glass of her original build, in the hopes that less heavily filtered sunlight would help. Then, together they set up new tables and prepared plant pots, and although as much as he wanted to, he had to leave it to her to collect new flowers later. She placed the bramble vine he had given her at the front.
With that finished, he helped her redecorate the inside of her house. In turn, it helped him feel a little like his old self. He talked about some things he had thought about building around his new manor even if a garden was off the plate. She said she would be happy to visit again to see it all when he was done.
Before he left for the night, he gave her a list of different plants he had found during his explorations and the best way to get to them for someone who couldn’t fly. She promised she would let him know when she got them and invited him to come back to look at them – if not from a distance – if she was able to get them to thrive in the new greenhouse, which she would tend during nighttime.
He gave her a smile and went on his way.
~*~
A few days passed. Sausage worked on his building projects, looking forward to having Shubble see them. One thought continued to plague him, however, and he would still end up looking toward Heaven’s Reach, aching to go to the church to talk to Pearlescent. Finally, out of frustration, he gathered an assortment of stones, a bucket of water, and an iron sword, then picked a patch of dirt behind the stables. There he laid out an approximation of a miniature crop field, with the stones as the walls and using the sword tip to draw lines where the crops would be planted. He made a small trench and poured the water into it, then pressed some cracked, unusable wheat seeds into the lines. Lastly, he stuck the sword into the ground in the very middle.
He sat back to look at his work and thought it to be rather pathetic. Maybe he should at least have gotten some sunflower seeds, but he couldn’t bear the thought of destroying one of them with his touch.  He clasped his hands, sighed, and bowed his head. He knew better than to expect an answer but he felt a small measure of peace from the gesture. It was better than staring with longing at the church he couldn’t enter.
Yet that peace was broken by a sudden feeling that something was terribly wrong. A vision of shadows and swaying trees came to him. He rushed to his feet and looked around. It felt like something had been there and now was gone. He couldn’t name it, but…he needed to check. Shadow and trees…
He needed to see Shubble.
Quick as he could he mounted one of the horses and rode off, crossing the plains and heading into the forest. An ever-growing sense of dread rose within him. The soul lanterns dotting the trees near Shubble’s home came into view. He urged the horse on faster until the roof of the greenhouse appeared. He leapt down and began searching—
He didn’t need to go far. Only a short way from the front door Shubble lay half-phased into the ground, a small, incongruous crater nearby. He knelt and tried to fool himself into holding out hope that she was merely unconscious, but a closer look told him it wasn’t so. He was able to push his hands into the dirt and get a hold on her, pulling her out despite her semi-solid state.
He obviously couldn’t see what her injuries were, but one thought made him feel along her neck for bite marks in case Scott had fancied himself a taste of shadow blood. He was relieved to not find any, and that left the question of the crater. He could only assume a Creeper had snuck up on her in the woefully underlit surroundings. He cradled her body in his arms, her head tucked under his chin. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he whispered softly.
He gently set her down, keeping an eye out in case she started sinking through again as he removed his cloak, planning to wrap her up so he could bring her to Heaven’s Reach and put her to rest in the cemetery where she could stay protected in the light. Yet before he laid the cloak on the ground, he realized something.
Maybe, like he and Scott, she would come back, too. There was no guarantee what she would come back as, so he quickly decided he would build a small crypt where she could safely rest until then. He worried, though. How long did the process take? She had to have been there long enough already, right? But then again, he himself could have been laying out there for an entire day without knowing, before he changed.
Sausage checked inside the new greenhouse and was disheartened to see that all of the new plants had already died, save for the one bramble vine. He made short work of converting the greenhouse into a covered crypt, replacing the glass with stone and dirt, partially camouflaging it against intruders but leaving the door accessible should Shubble awaken. He draped his cloak over the table he had cleared, then carried her inside, placing her upon it.
Reluctant to leave, he sat beside the table for a little while, wondering. If a moth became a vampire, and an angel became part wither, what would a shadowcrawler become? Was there a chance her misfortune would be reversed? Was there any way to influence it? There was no way to know for sure, but an idea made him go outside and start searching around the woods. Somewhere nearby there had to be…
He spotted a cluster of tiny white flowers with long, curved stems and picked one, then ran as fast as he could back to the improvised crypt. The flowers had already begun to wilt by the time he tucked the stem into Shubble’s hair, but at least he had made it before it completely died. He then withdrew to the door, giving her one last parting look. “Rest well. I hope to see you soon.”
 He had no way of predicting the circumstances under which they would meet again.
~*~
Sausage scrunched up his face as bright light made itself known. Was it morning? Had he been sleeping? The ground at his back felt like stone. A bird chirped nearby. He was outside—
The last thing he remembered was falling.
Well, falling again. The back of his head hurt a little and one of his legs ached, but otherwise he seemed okay. The sun felt rather warm.
The bird chirped again, and then it sounded like a voice. “Sausage!”
The sun felt warm.
“Hey, Sausage! Are you okay? Did you trip or something?”
He sat up then glanced at his hands. The haunting shadows under his skin did not appear. In fact, his skin looked less pale than it had been before. He turned his hands over and checks his arms. Aside from a bruise on his left elbow, he looked much healthier.
Another chirp came from the bird, sounding like it was right next to him. He looked down and saw a small humanoid with winged arms, blue feathers, and an oddly familiar face. He had never seen her features in color before but he found he recognized her amber eyes. “Shubble? Is that you?” A hopeful grin broke out on his face.
“Yep! I woke up like this! Isn’t it cool? I’m a cute little birb now.” She chirped again and then tilted her head. “You look a little different, too. Did you die again?”
“I think I…did,” he marveled, looking around at himself and holding out his arms. “I was building way up there and then – Yeah. Yeah, I fell.” He gazed up at the platform high overhead, squinting against the bright sunlight to pick out the shape of accidentally blasted glass and broken scaffolding. He looked back down at her then held out a hand. She hopped up to perch on his finger. “I think this is what happens to people in this world – we become something new any time we die.”
“It looks like it!” She sounded elated. “I never thought that when I got out of the shadow realms that I hadn’t returned to my old world, and it had just changed while I was gone. But it looks like I came out somewhere completely different, and-and I have a second chance!”
Sausage smiled. “You are kind of small now, but… you look happy.”
“And people can see my face now! I don’t mind being smol at all! I can fly around and the light doesn’t hurt to look at! What about you? What are you now?”
He flexed the fingers of his other hand, already knowing he wouldn’t be able to summon a wither skull. There was some other type of energy there, however, slightly buzzing as it waited to be used. He would work on figuring it out later. “I’m not sure yet. I feel a little like my old self – livelier, I guess, but still not an angel anymore.”
“I guess we can’t really go back to who we were before.”
“But like you said, second chances.” He smiled warmly and raised his hand, giving her a higher vantage point to take off from as she spread her wings in agreement.
~*~
The next time he saw Shubble, she was a cat, which was kind of a funny thing to follow a bird. By then he had gotten a handle on his new ability to affect gravity, and they talked about becoming superheroes to protect others in the world.
Then it so happened that he had another accident and woke up as an ant of all things. He had a good laugh about it and had fun crawling around in spaces he could never imagine getting into before, although reaching storage chests became quite the challenge. He built himself an anthill, because, well, why not? It didn’t last long but it added to his experience. From time to time he wondered if Pearlescent was looking in on him. With the trial of being part wither behind him, he knew he could get through whatever else fate threw at him. He hoped she was enjoying the adventure along with him.
