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make-it-mavis · 4 years

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Homesick (Entry #16)

(cw: drug withdrawal) ----------

01/04/88 12:02 AM Hey.

I don’t like this part.

That’s nothing new.

As I was waking up, a small, ghostly memory of your trailer floated around in my head again. Blame it on the couch, I guess. I thought I heard you rummaging around in the kitchen and talking to yourself, but it was short-lived. Reality woke up slowly after I did, growing like a huge, hot light that burned my eyes. You were still gone. I still had no idea what to do about it. I’d still been murdered without actually dying. The entire arcade was still against me. I was still up to my eyeballs in withdrawal. And, of course, it was just Fix-it I heard, going about his morning routine. When I asked him who the hell he’d been talking to, he said it was me. Apparently, I’d been carrying on a sparse conversation with him since he got up. That was just splendid. I didn’t ask what we’d talked about. I figured, on top of everything else, I was better off not knowing.

Fix-it asked if I wanted anything, but I was still too sick for breakfast. I didn’t want food, anyway. All I wanted was Boosts. But I couldn’t very well say that, could I? He knew I’d been taking buffs on the regular, but I didn’t think he knew my sickness was withdrawal, and I wanted it to stay that way. Let him believe it was just stress-induced. The last thing I needed was him throwing together some sort of intervention or something, totally blowing out of proportion a tiny, accidental dependency that would leave my system in under a week. Blink, and it’d be over.

Not to say it didn’t suck while it was happening.

We lingered in extremely awkward silence for far too long after Fix-it finished making his breakfast. He sat at his table and ate quietly, pretending to gloss over some papers I didn’t care to identify. I shivered on the couch, struggling with the fact that the arcade would open soon, and I’d have to find something to do with myself. Eventually, the atmosphere became too suffocatingly heavy to bear. Whether I was ready or not, I had to leave. I’d figure something out.

When I stood up, I realized just how disgusting I felt, like a lukewarm, moist, smelly sock. My code itself felt swollen stiff. I grabbed my clean clothes, which Fix-it had folded in an annoyingly neat pile, and went to have another shower. I was just about clean when I heard a knock.

At first, I was understandably irritated, and called out, “Can it wait?”

But he didn’t answer, which was somehow more irritating. Like he’d knocked and run off just for the fun of it, completely in the wrong context for that kind of prank. Once I turned off the water, though, I heard him talking just outside of the door.

I called out again, “Uh, y’know I can’t hear you, right?”

“No, no, it’s okay, Mavy, it’s the front door.”

Great, I thought. Nicelanders. I’d scarcely been in less of a mood to deal with them. I also had no idea what Fix-it would tell them about the night before, intentionally or not. I turned on the sink faucet so he wouldn’t get suspicious, and put my ear to the door.

Whoever was at the door was too muffled to hear, but I could just barely hear Fix-it’s side of the conversation. He sounded anxious.

“--course not, but you know, she’s feeling quite under the weather, so she’s staying with me for now.”

Stayed with him, I wanted to say.

“What do you mean? ...Yes, I know… No, I know it’s not, but it’s not exactly a normal situation, either.”

I grasped the door handle, ready to open it and punch him out if he said absolutely anything about the night before. But then things took a turn unlike any they had taken in the past. A firmness crept into his voice, relative to his usual overly friendly tone.

“I understand your concern, but it’s a private matter… Yes, a very private matter… No need, I’ll handle all that before we--... Exactly what I told you… I’m afraid I’ll just have to ask you to trust me, and carry on-- and, and... not get involved. Not even a little bit.”

I could hardly believe it -- suddenly, there was a note of anger. It was faint and mild-mannered, but still there.

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware of what you think, but it’s not what I know. I do not appreciate you behaving as if you know my cousin better than I do. Now, I can’t change your ridiculous opinion of her, but I’ll not hear another hurtful word about her from you, or anyone else in this building. Are we clear?”

He scolded a Nicelander for me.

“Very good… I’ll see you in the morning huddle. Good morning, Gene.”

I heard the door close.

He scolded Gene.

Where in the eight bits was that four-and-a-half years ago!?

I took a generous amount of time getting dressed before I left the bathroom. By then, Fix-it was obviously ready to go, and seemed like he might have been waiting on me. The emotional loop-de-loops were really starting to give me vertigo, so I hoped he’d keep whatever he wanted to say brief.

He asked if I had plans for the day, and I said I didn’t know. He said I was welcome to stay in his apartment and rest, and I told him it would be hard to rest with the building getting pounded. He offered for me to take the puke bucket with me, and I told him I probably had a few in my hoard. He told me that I was still welcome to come back and spend the night. I told him I’d think about it, and at the time, I meant it.

When it was really time to part ways, he squeezed his hands anxiously, and said with grating sincerity, “Mavy… you’ll make it through this. I believe in you.”

In the usual way, his words seemed to force my gaze away. I just stared at the curtains and fidgeted, unsure of how to proceed. I didn’t want to say anything -- there were lots of things I could have said, I guess, but I didn’t want to. I appreciated a few things about that whole ‘visit’, but none of them magically fixed everything about us. If we’re really a family, we’re a pretty poor excuse for one, and I couldn’t see that changing.

But I think I’d be lying if I said, after all I’d been through, I wasn’t at least a little glad to hear it.

Eventually, I settled on mumbling, “Yeah. ‘Making it’ is kinda my thing.”

We ended at that. He hovered towards the door, but mostly watched me open a window and get ready to fly out. Freshly fixed brush in hand, I went to paint feathers on my heels. But when I looked down, there was just… a sheet of yellow paint splattered over my heel.

Needless to say, I was confused. I had a perfect grasp of all the colors in my head, so wetting my brush with them should have been as easy as flexing my fingers. But, for some reason, only yellow was showing up, no matter what I tried. Just short-lived splatters of yellow paint.

This had never happened before, but I tried to stay calm. I called Fix-it over and asked him to hit my brush and paint can with his hammer again, thinking it must have glitched or something the night before. He complied.

At first, I thought it did something. I hadn’t exactly tried to produce red or orange before calling him over, but I found that I could after his fixing attempt. But that was still just it: Red, orange, and yellow.

I asked him to do it again. Nothing changed. I asked again. Nothing. My attempt to stay calm flew straight out the window, like I should have. I threw down frantic splatters, all disappearing and reappearing right after another.

Red, orange, yellow. Red, orange, yellow. Red, orange, yellow.

My brush didn’t work anymore.

Hey... Remember when I said that things weren’t about to look up any time soon? Well, I wasn’t kidding. I wish I had been.

Before that, I already thought I’d lost everything that mattered to me. Now the Devs were coming for things I’d never even considered that I could lose before. They took the very fabric of what makes me who I am and shredded it. I’m supposed to be a chaotic twister of rainbows. After that, I was nothing but an analogous smear on the wall.

I could feel something terrible about to burst from me. I held my brush in my hands like a dead bird, shaking so hard I could have dropped it. Fix-it looked just about as mortified and panicked as I’d ever seen him, looking from my brush to his hammer, turning it around like something might have been wrong with it, too.

“Hey,” I said, barely stopping myself from shouting. I grabbed the glass from the coffee table, poured it out on the floor, and stomped it beneath my foot. “Fix this.”

He did as he was told quickly, seemingly just as much for himself as for me. Flash of light, and the shards were completely whole again, forming a glass that looked even better than before I crushed it.

“I’m-- I’m so sorry, Mavy, I don’t-- I don’t know what’s wrong! I mean, this hammer fixes everything, even things that aren’t broken in the first place, and it’s never done this before, so I have no idea what to--”

He went on babbling quicker than his mouth could keep up with. At a certain point, I couldn’t hear him anymore. I felt like my insides were about to crawl out of my mouth.

It wasn’t his fault. I know that, now. I probably knew it deep down, back then, too. But if he wasn’t to blame, then it meant there was something wrong with me. Something that, if it had even resisted his hammer, could very well never be fixed. I just couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t let myself believe I was broken, not when I needed to be strong more than ever.

I’m not proud of it. But blaming him was all I could do.

“Hey, it’s okay, maybe it was a fluke.” I strode back to the window, grabbed the curtain, and yanked it so hard, the curtain rod broke away and sent drywall crumbling down. “Fix this.”

He leapt up, panicking even harder than before. I could see it in his face -- he knew what was coming, and he wasn’t prepared. By the time he reached the window, I was already across the room, blocky lamp in hand.

“Can you fix this, too?!” I threw it full-force at him, and he just barely ducked in time. It exploded into pieces on the wall right where his head had been.

He may have made some sort of plea for me to calm down, but I was having none of it. I’d started to rage, and, as we both know, there’s no stopping me once the momentum builds. It was going to run its course, one way or another. And its course led me right into the kitchen. I swung open the lower cupboards and kicked them off their hinges. I opened the fridge and swept an entire shelf to the floor, breaking a few jars. I grabbed armfuls of plates and glasses and shattered them on every surface available. I trashed everything I could get my hands on, all the while screaming things I barely remember, things like...

“C’MON, HANDYMAN!! WHERE’S YOUR MAGIC HAMMER?! FIX IT, FELIX!! FIX IT, FELIX!!”

I’m not even sure what Fix-it was doing during all that. I lost track of him -- it didn’t matter to me anymore. He was probably appalled, keeping a safe distance somewhere, maybe trying to get through to me, more likely crying or something. I honestly don’t know. I didn’t see him again until after I’d flipped his kitchen table and grabbed one of the chairs. Even then, I avoided looking directly at him, like I’d rupture something if I did.

I took the chair in both arms and swung it at one of the windows, hearing a boing indicative of Fix-it springing out of the way. The glass took a few hits to break, and I found myself screaming with every swing: “THIS!! CAN’T!! BE!!--”

The glass shattered.

“--HAPPENING!!”

Then, with a whole-body spin, I flung the chair at Fix-it’s wall of medals. It busted a huge fold into the drywall and more than a few shiny medals hit the floor. Suddenly, I had nothing in immediate range to break, but my body threatened to crumple in on itself, quaking with the thunderous rage still rolling inside me. It had to get out somehow. I just grasped my hair, closed my eyes, and screamed so hard, it hurt. In such a small space, it was ear-splitting -- at least for Fix-it.

Then, well. You know all too well what happens when there’s nothing left to break. The stinging in my eyes could not have been a clearer cue to hightail it out of there.

I didn’t stop to say anything, didn’t even look his way. I just made a beeline for the window I meant to leave through earlier. But I was so out-of-it and desperate to make my escape, I just threw my legs right out into the open air. Forgetting that I couldn’t paint my shoes mid-fall anymore. I just barely caught the sill in time to plant my feet against the brick wall.

Naturally, Fix-it appeared, at his wit’s end, trying to help me back up, but I screamed “DON’T TOUCH ME!!” before he could. He shrunk back, and I climbed over onto the fire escape, like an earthbound loser. I hate, hate using that thing, but I had no choice. I tore down the stairs as quickly as my weary body could handle, and started to run towards my den. But my balance lurched and my vision darkened. It was a miracle that I hadn’t puked from all the exertion already. So I had to slow to a walk. Broken code, buff withdrawal, on the verge of tears, walking.

I know my game’s forest by heart. It’s not really my home, but I’ve lived in it for almost my entire life.

But when I reached the tree line, I froze to the spot. My trees look drastically different from the ones in Dragon’s Lair, but it didn’t matter. I stared into the darkness, and, for the first time in my life, I was too afraid to go in.

Then, inevitably, the tears came. I folded up on the grass, clutching my brush close, crying in the most pitiful way imaginable. I just wanted it all to stop. Just once, I wanted to believe that things couldn’t get any worse, and be right.

More than anything in the world, I just wanted my best friend back.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #fix it felix #make it mavis #turbo #gene #original character #homesick

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