#monoco fluff

You were losing your hair. In great wind-blown waves you left pieces of yourself all across the continent. You barely dared to detangle it in the mornings, although you did for fear of your hair condition worsening, and watched it fall away strand by delicate strand.

It was stress, you assumed, that was causing the change. Facing down death every day, watching your friends die, listening to Gustave… Having to witness the destruction of so many lives as you uncovered all those who came before were dead and gone. It was too much for anyone to handle, and if the cost was your hair, so be it.

Or so you thought to yourself. Under the moonlight with the monolith looming ever closer it was more difficult to wrap your head around your circumstances even with the feeling of loose hair tickling between your fingers.

Maybe you were losing your hair because you were just plain ripping it out. A nervous tick, perhaps, to card your fingers through your hair and feel the drag of your nails against your scalp. With how few mirrors there were around the continent you could only hope you didn’t look like a poorly maintained doll.

You were letting those strands fall and get caught in the wind when Monoco came over to sit beside you. His mask drifted from your face to your hair blowing away and glinting slightly as they caught the moonlight.

“You won’t be very good at fighting Nevrons if you’re fighting a cold too,” he said. His voice held little inflection, so you weren’t sure if he was chastising you or teasing.

You shifted so you could look at him better. “Are you offering to keep me warm?” you asked, venturing to guess Monoco was trying to lighten your mood. The Gestral was often well meaning, but he was made of wood too.

“I think he wants me to help you out with that,” Verso’s voice startled you slightly as you weren’t expecting him to be coming up behind you. Monoco’s mask tilted to look behind you, and you craned your neck to see Verso was settling down on your other side.

You didn’t even have the time to ask him how he planned to do that. As soon as he settled in the grass, he grabbed you and pulled you near. You shifted with him, letting him pull you against his chest. Verso was warm and soft and as comforting as he had always been. The barest shift in the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed reminded you that you were still alive.

“What’s bothering you, ma cherie?” Verso asked, rumbling against your ear.

Instead of waiting for your mind to flood with everything that had ever happened to you, you blurted out the first thing that was on your mind. “I’m going bald,” you admitted, a little more dramatically than maybe you intended.

Monoco had been observing the two of you, but his mask tilted in worry at your words. “Is that something that can happen?” he asked, appalled.

Verso nodded behind you, his hands trailing up to push his fingers through his hair. You tried not to wince at the feeling, even as his fingers flowed through without catching on any tangles. “Is it the stress?” he asked lowly.

“Of course,” you sighed, settling further into his embrace. You tilted your head up to look at him. His fingers massaged against your scalp. “How do you keep all that hair on your head?” you asked.

Verso stiffened under you, a feeling you barely registered but for how familiar you were with him. It was like he was trying so hard to hold himself back from telling you the truth. And you could live with his lies, you told yourself, as you watched Monoco share a curious glance, because he gave you everything else you could want.

“Luck, I guess,” he said after a while.

“We could do your hair,” Monoco offered almost at the same time.

“Huh?” you asked, confused.

“Over the years we’ve done each other’s hair,” Monoco explained, “cut it or styled it. We could do that for you, too.”

You looked from Monoco to Verso and back. You trusted them to keep you alive. You supposed they had deft enough fingers. Doing hair hadn’t been on the list of skills you attributed to them. What did you have to lose, really?

“Okay,” you agreed with a shrug, “if you think it’ll help.”

Monoco seemed to light up in his excitement. He shifted so he was sitting next to Verso and they both had full access to your hair. You watched him, as he moved, pull out a peculiar looking book from the pack he kept on his back.

“What’s that?” you asked.

Monoco handed the leather-bound book to you. “Be careful with it,” he warned as you opened the cover. “It’s where I press the flowers I’ve cultivated outside the Station,” he explained when you flipped the page and saw the delicate colors held within.

You gasped at the beauty of it and turned the page gingerly. It was all so fleeting and fragile. Each bloom was perfectly almost perfectly uniform in its growth, the colors delineated on a microscopic scale as to be almost indistinguishable from the next. The whole journal was thick with the same repeating pattern of petals and stems all lovingly placed and maintained by the protective Gestral’s hand.

“They’re beautiful,” you breathed. The book had distracted you enough that you’d barely noticed the two had started in on your hair. Verso’s fingers slipped easily along your scalp while Monoco picked this bud and that from the open book to wind along the pattern Verso was crafting.

The well-preserved flowers were the same exuberant purple that accented the expeditioner’s uniforms. Soon enough there were far fewer contained in the journal than were cascading over your shoulder. They were weaved expertly through the twists and braids Verso had managed to pleat and tie from your scalp all the way down to your split ends.

At the end your hands hovered over the work of art they’d created on your head. You hardly wanted to ruin it, but you couldn’t really see what they’d done.

Then Verso pulled something from his pocket. A small metallic compact. It flipped open with a pop, and he handed it to you. On one side was dusting of the remains of a long over-used powder. The other held a pristine mirror. It was small, but with some maneuvering and determination you soon had a clear picture of what the two men had given you.

The entire thing was breath taking. There was an extravagance to it that you had never experienced before and feared, momentarily, you would never experience again. “It’s wonderful,” you breathed, trying to do three things at once. You couldn’t stop looking at your hair in the mirror, but you wanted to make sure Verso and Monoco understood just how grateful you were.