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make-it-mavis · 4 years

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Homesick (Entry #27)

(cw: drugs/addiction) ----------

01/13/88 4:05 PM

Hey.

I had a lot to think about after that total clustercuss.

Once I came down enough from my high to start feeling sick, I threw the blanket over Fix-it and left. Not in a mushy way or anything, more like tossing it over a chair or coat rack. I would have stolen it and added it to the pile, but it reeked of him. That’s not what I want to smell while I’m falling asleep.

The arcade opened the same as any other day, which felt strange given the surreal horrors I’d spent the night battling. I definitely took some wounds away from it, in the way of the worst hangover I’d had in my life. Chills, headache, puking, all the standard stuff was there, but I’d never had mental effects quite like that before. My moods were spinning as much as my head. They were so intense, yet so cold all at once. Minute to minute, I’d be laughing ‘til it hurt, then hyperventilating, then punching the bark off the trees, then crying so hard I couldn’t stand up -- yet it all felt dissociated from me. They were physical symptoms of emotion, but the emotions themselves just weren’t there. I was just numb.

Eventually, I passed out. I fell asleep craving nothing more than the quenching release of GC.

One more, I told myself. Just one more.

What I told Fix-it was the truth -- I didn’t want to corrupt. I did want to avoid it. But what I said before about the risk feeling far away? That only got worse, moving forward. My brain said that if I had gotten this far, I was tolerant to it. I was tough. I could take just one more and be fine. If I didn’t take another, I’d be left with a bad taste in my mouth. If I didn’t take another, I’d be giving up one last chance to experience the freedom and euphoria that the first hit gave me. The second one couldn’t be the last. I couldn’t end on such a horrifying note with nothing to wash it down. I couldn’t be ready to face my reality again dragging that around. I needed just one more. Just one.

So, once I’d woken up and had some more time to pull myself together, I drew another portrait, from memory this time. I’d drawn Fix-it so many times perfecting my disguise of him, it was like muscle memory. I guess I just didn’t want him to be one of the first faces up on the wall, otherwise I’d have drawn him sooner. But at that point, I didn’t have the patience to track anyone down to model for me. He’d have to do.

I set out for Tapper’s, portrait in hand. But halfway there, the weirdest and creepiest thing happened. Remember in my buff trip where I’d lose little chunks of time?

That started happening in real life.

One second, I was crossing Game Central Station. One flash of blue later, I was standing outside the bar, having just gotten off the train, with no memory of the time in between, and drumming pain in my head. I knew that was weird and definitely not a good sign.

But it was okay, because I wasn’t going to take any more GC after this last hit.

I entered the bar and sat in my usual spot. The atmosphere seemed somehow even drearier than before, even darker, as if Tapper had dimmed the lights. I wasn’t about to let it get me down, though. I whistled for Tapper. To my surprise, he didn’t come over right away, despite it being a slow night.

He wiped down a counter a little ways away. When I whistled, he took a deep breath and sighed through his nose. He didn’t even look at me. I got the sense, though, that he wasn’t trying to give me the cold shoulder. He just seemed so reluctant to even acknowledge me, so avoidant, as if being pressed on something he didn’t want to talk about. I actually had to get up and go sit in front of him for him to actually talk to me.

“What’s the problem, sad sack?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be happy to see me.”

Tapper stopped cleaning, took another deep breath, and looked me in the eyes with a sad sort of scrutiny. He asked quietly, “Mavis… is there anything you’d like to say to me?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“...No?”

“Really,” he furrowed his brow. “Nothing at all.”

“I’d…” I trailed off for a second, before pulling out the portrait and placing it in front of him. “I’d like to say ‘Pleasure doing business with you!’”

For a second, he froze in inspection of the portrait, and then sighed harshly. He leaned the heels of his palms wide on the counter’s ledge and nodded at me. “I know, Mavis.”

My insides turned cold, but there was no use fighting or running away. I lied to him in full consciousness, knowing that it would hurt my well-intentioned bartender and business partner that I am very fond of. I made my bed. I make many beds. Sometimes I have to lie in them.

So I sat down in my metaphorical bed, and lied some more.

I tucked my chin. “Know what?”

“Quit playin’ dumb, kid,” he sneered a bit. “And take off those damn shades. You’re not foolin’ anybody.”

I was genuinely confused. “I’m not wearing shades.”

I flinched as he reached over and, with a single motion, snatched away the aforementioned unusual darkness in the room. The lights hadn’t been dimmed. I had just been wearing shades without even noticing -- surely an embarrassingly amateur attempt at hiding my blue pupils from the public without use of my brush. If I know me, I’d say it was more for the walk to Tapper’s than the actual conversation with him. But I don’t think I would have taken them off before speaking to him, anyway. I think I felt worse about that than I did about actually lying to Tapper in the first place. At least the first time, I gave him enough credit to be a convincing liar. This was just stupid.

“Oh…” I blinked against the light. “‘Kay.”

Tapper leaned his elbow on the counter and squinted at me. Then, he sighed. “Yep. That’s what I thought. It’s dim, but it’s there. You couldn’t even wait for your eyes to fully fade before coming out to look for more.”

I caved. I took a deep breath through my nose, leaned on the counter and started munching out of a nearby bowl of pretzels. “So. How’d you find out?”

“Ralph told me.”

My pupils might have been blue, but I saw red. “He did what.”

“But he wouldn’t have had to, Mavis, with you showing up like this. The shades, the eyes, the-- the--” he looked at the portrait, grasping for words. “Whatever the hell this is.”

“Excuse me? That’s Fix-it Felix Jr., you dope!”

He just spun the paper around and showed it to me. It was not the image I remember drawing. It looked like it might have been a drawing of Fix-it once, but the lines all got drunk and staggered around the page in cliques. It looked like I drew it with my eyes closed.

“Wh…”

“It’s over, Mavis. I’m puttin’ this deal on hold.”

I can’t say I was surprised. But I was pretty disappointed. The deal had been a good one -- quick, convenient, and benefitting my favorite bar. But once it was over, my brain didn’t even give me time to be upset. It dove right into figuring out how to get my last hit by other means.

I was quiet for a minute, before popping a pretzel in my mouth. “On hold?”

“My walls still need to be filled. I still like working with you. I still like you, kid,” his eyes faded, “but I should never have given you credits, not right now. I should have known better than to think a promise would keep you clean. Now you’re out there getting high with the credits I gave you. I might as well put poison in your root beer.”

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing he said was untrue. I just looked at him severely, waiting for him to finish.

“Now, listen,” he pointed his index finger against the counter. “You go get help. You go get clean. You process all the stuff you gotta process. You give it time. A lot of time. Then, and only then, can we talk business again. I won’t singlehandedly fund your addiction, Mavis. I can’t be responsible for that.”

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. I pointed a pretzel at him. “It’s not an addiction. I enjoy it, sure, but I don’t need it. I’m still me. I’ve still got full control of my brain.”

He didn’t look up from cleaning the counter. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, Tapper.”

“Then what the hell are you eating, kid?”

“Pretz--” I stopped dead. There was nothing in my hand. There was no bowl on the counter. It’s kind of funny to look back on, but at the time, I got a chill up my spine. It really was worse than I thought.

I suddenly felt I had to leave. I grabbed my crappy drawing and hopped from the stool. “Alright, well. It was fun while it lasted, Tapper. Seeya round.”

“Mavis.”

I stopped.

“You’re gonna have to swallow your pride. You need to get help. ‘Cause I want you to come back. And if you keep walkin’ down this road,” he paused. “You ain’t comin’ back.”

I just sighed through my nose and started walking. “Yeah, I’ve heard it before.”

Just when I thought he was done, he said loud enough for me to still hear, “What if you heard it from him? What would he say if he saw you like this?”

I’d spent all my lowest hours with a conflicting gratitude that you couldn’t.

I didn’t slow down. I just dragged a faint groan in the deepest part of my throat.

“He’s not the boss of me.”

I saw another flash of blue. Next thing I knew, I was stumbling a bit on bricks. I was in the dump back in my game, and there was an anxious anger boiling in my guts. Wreck-it had made one too many decisions for me. I decided I’d been far too kind to him, I’d shared too much with him. I had to share my feelings one last time. Ugly ones.

I climbed over a small peak, and I saw him. He saw me.

At once, we both yelled, “YOU!”

Then, “ME?!”

He barked, “You dirty little liar!”

I barked, “You big fat narc!”

We advanced on each other, while he growled, “I oughtta whip you across the map!”

“I oughtta stuff your throat with bricks! Why do you keep messing with my life?! It’s none of your Dev-damned business!”

“Oh, it became my business the second you lied to Tapper! I let you stay here just ‘cuz you didn’t want to be alone, I helped you get out there when you were too scared to go, I brought you to see someone who cared about you when you needed it, and what do you do?! You lie to his face so you can go get high! What’s WRONG with you?!”

We stopped just a bit outside of his arm’s reach. I wished so badly that I could fly, so I could float eye-level with him. Having to look up at him sucked.

“I didn’t WANT to go! I wasn’t READY! You dragged me out against my will -- what do you want in return, a freakin’ medal?!”

He gave a full-body eye roll. “No, I don’t want anything! I didn’t want anything! All I wanted was to help! And all you had to do was-- was NOT do exactly what you did! Easy!”

I seethed. “EASY?!”

“EASY!”

“I have not had,” I grit my teeth, “a second of ‘EASY’ since-- since--” I couldn’t even say it. “You have no idea of the things I’ve been through! You have no freakin’ idea what this is like!”

“Yeah! ‘Cause I’m not allowed to ask about it, remember?!”

“I can guarantee, I can bet my very pixels on it -- if you had to deal with even half of what I have, you’d be blubbering like a 650-pound baby!”

“643!” he spat. “At least I wouldn’t be spinning lies and stuffing my pixels with buffs like you, you little sewer rat!”

“Oh, ho, ho,” I laughed, “That’s just adorable. Buddy, let me tell you -- if you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t have even lasted this long. You’d have gotten us all unplugged.”

“Oh, gimme a break.”

“It’s true! You’d have gone and corrupted a long time ago! If you had to deal with HALF of what I have!”

An upset look sparked in his eye for a second, but he quickly countered, “No, see, that wouldn’t happen, because unlike you, I don’t make my own therapy with-- with--” he gestured sharply, “I’unno, substances.”

“Oh, I see. So, the fact that you go to Tapper’s every single night’s got nothin’ to do with that, huh?”

He clenched his fists. “Don’t even start. I go to Tapper’s because I like talkin’ to Tapper.”

“No, you’re nursing something,” I gave a sickly-sweet smile and took a half-step forward, and I saw his foot twitch back. “You’re drowning some sorrows. What are they, huh? You sad? You lonely? You want things you know you can’t have? You want to change things that can’t be changed?”

“No,” he growled.

“Yeah,” I nodded, knowing I’d struck emotional gold. “You feel trapped.”

“No,” he grit his teeth. “I don’t.”

“Yes, you do!” I laughed, just about ready to derail and completely unhinge. “Everyone does! Because, guess what? We are. All we do is chase things that make us feel like we’re not. And you know what the cheapest, most reliable escape is? Intoxicants.”

“Stop it.”

“So let’s just cut the crap,” I marched forward, and he shuffled back, “If you had nothing, absolutely nothing to bring you joy anymore other than your drink, and you had to lie to get it, you’d lie a million times! You wouldn’t even bother with Tapper if he didn’t pour out your sweet medicine so you can lap it up like the thirsty boozehound you are!”

I just barely dodged his fist.

He roared and slammed his huge meaty cudgels again and again, and I weaved and jumped and slipped out of the way. It was almost the same routine as ever, but his rage was like nothing I’d seen in him before. I grabbed a brick and sprung up to crack it on his head -- I succeeded, but pain stabbed into my brain when I tried to launch from his shoulders. I tumbled against his arm and spilled down onto the bricks. I tried to push up, but the pain in my head held me down. The binary in my eyes crackled away just in time for me to see him standing over me, both fists raised, fire in his eyes.

I just closed my eyes and braced for impact.

It didn’t come. When I looked again, his arms were down, and he was checking me over in a distasteful sort of way, like I was a machine that mysteriously stopped working. I guess he was disturbed to see my usually impressive acrobatics reduced to... that. His chest heaved with anger, but he was clearly pulling the reins.

“Look,” he said quietly, raising his index finger, “let me make one thing perfectly clear: I told Tapper… for Tapper. I brought you out to see Tapper… for Tapper. I like Tapper. I wanted to help him. And I wanted you outta my home. ‘Cause you and I,” he gestured between us, “are not friends. I didn’t even want to get mixed up with you in the first place, and I shouldn’t have. ‘Cause clearly, I wasted my time. You don’t wanna get better. You just wanna keep using everyone, right? You love that. Especially now that everyone feels sorry for you. They think you’re some kinda… kinda tragic poster child for addiction. Well, guess what? I don’t. I think you’re a shady lil’ double-crosser who has no problem taking advantage of sprites who love her. And then you act like you only did what anyone else would have done. Like everyone shares your crappy worldview, or whatever. Listen -- yeah, I do drink when I go to Tapper’s. But, newsflash, not every sprite who drinks is as miserable as you are.”

He kicked a splash of bricks over me, and they hit like a barrage of punches. Then he turned to leave me lying there, calling back as he disappeared over a rise: “Now get out of my home. And stay out.”

I didn’t. Not right away. I just stayed there, lying against the bricks, waiting for my headache and the pain of the brick shower to fade. And, I’ll admit, I felt like crap. Not for what I’d done, exactly. Just for where I was. How I’d gotten there. What drove me to that point. What I was like before all this. Wreck-it was right about one thing: I was miserable. But I wasn’t always.

There were nights where my nonexistent sleeping schedule would keep me awake while you slept. I’d lie there remembering my first nights in the woods, with the sharp grass and the cold baths and newfound loneliness. And then I’d look at where I ended up, safe in a soft bed kept toasty warm by the relentless heat of your body next to me. And I’d just feel so happy over how far I’d come.

The cold, hard bricks under my bruised body were a far cry from where I’d been with you.

For a while, I lied there alone, trying so hard to banish thoughts of those nights from my head. They were so far above me by then. I didn’t want to look up and see how far I’d fallen.

After a decent wait, the pain in my head clenched enough to flash me down to the bottom of the bricks. I wasn’t sure if I lost time or just warped. A second later, I flashed into Game Central.

It wasn’t remarkably busy. The atmosphere felt pretty safe, relative to how it had been. For the first time in a while, it felt safer than my game. So I wandered aimlessly. I sat on the benches, I paced, I watched one of those weird dragons from Joust fly by and wished I could chase it. My brain just flooded with nagging thoughts of how I would obtain that last hit of GC. They grew more insistent by the hour, but I was mostly coming up short. Normally, I would hunt the buffs down myself, but I didn’t feel ready to venture into other games again, not other than for meeting my one dealer. But I had nothing to offer her anymore. I was stuck. As my body began to shake, withdrawal approaching fast, I knew I had to come up with something quick.

So many times, I’d lose a chunk of time and find myself sitting on a bench in front of where your game used to be, staring down the dead, black hall. I’m not entirely sure why. I obsessed over the emptiness of it. The wrongness. It hurt so badly to look, but you know when you get a tooth knocked out and your tongue won’t stop running over the empty spot, even though it just makes you bleed more? It was kind of like that.

I could see wandering sprites looking at me. Of course they did. They didn’t like what they saw, either -- supposed accomplice of mass murder looking at where the murderer himself used to live? Definitely drew some glances. Most were just morbidly curious, it seemed, as if waiting for me to lose it. Others glared and shook their heads, making angry gestures in conversation with their friends. But the last category really caught my eye. A good amount of them showed anxiety. Some watched, wide-eyed. Some exchanged worried whispers. Some even tried to hurry off to their games inconspicuously. At first, I marveled at how stupid they all were. I wondered what it would take to get it through their thick heads that I genuinely had no interest in hurting anyone. I wondered if it would even be worth the headache. But then, something dawned on me.

I’ve always been a master at working with what I’ve got. If I couldn’t soothe their fear, I could at least make it work for me.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #make it mavis #original character #homesick

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