Sicktember 2024 Day 6

[mrsluigivargas]

Fainted Memories
Peach wakes up in her bed feeling incredibly disoriented. It takes her a bit to fully remember what had happened to get her there.

Fandom: Super Mario
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Peach, Mario
Additional Tags: Sickfic, Implied/Referenced Violence, Angst, POV Second Person
Length: 675 words
Sicktember Prompt: Dizziness/Vertigo

~~~

When you open your eyes, memories come back to you in bursts and fragments.

Running, shouting, red-red-red on off-white stones. A glint of silver, darkened green; a searing light, copper and bile on your tongue; your ears ringing, your world twisting, fading, hands on your shoulders fading with it. And something beyond the memories, something important; a missing link that both brings them together and gives them meaning, yet stubbornly hovers just out of reach.

But now it’s the gray of your ceiling, the dark pink of your bedsheets, the light pink curtains over your bed. You turn your head, a throbbing behind your temples. A spot of brown rests by your pillow, pillowed itself by a red arm.

You sigh, air through a dry throat. The spot moves, and drowsy blue eyes rise to meet yours, snapping into focus and fragility all at once. Your gaze drifts from them to catch the frayed edge of a white glove. You blink, and it's gone, tanned hand reaching for your cheek.

The touch grounds you, and you come back to yourself enough to feel the echoes of an absence inside you, on inhale, on exhale, an ache stretching out and wrapping around bone and muscle and marrow. You look down at your own chest, at the cavernous void you expect to see instead of your nightgown. You try to raise your arm to prod at it; not even your fingers respond to your attempt. Your hand is moved for you, to press against your sternum, to feel your intact heart beating beneath.

A voice passes through your mind, old and weathered and familiar, though its words are too muddy to parse. Its tone, however, feels scolding, and you frown. The warmth at your face pulls away, and you raise your head to see where it went.

There’s a face staring back at you. Round, with shiny eyes and a large nose and a messy mustache and — Mario. You say the name aloud, to punctuate the realization. The sound doesn't make it past your throat. Mario’s lips twitch.

His hand strokes your hair, lulling you into a doze. Through half-lidded eyes, you see him reach beyond your head and come back with something clutched in his hand. It’s green. He shakes it out and something silver falls free with a jingle; it swings from where it's tied around his wrist, catching the sunlight and flashing it into your eyes. When you blink the spots away Mario's removed his hand from your head to juggle both the silver and the green — the pendant and the hat — and he twists his arm and there's a faint discoloration above the hat’s brim, a darkened spot that's bloomed from its emblem, and at the same time the pendant is wrangled and tucked back under his sleeve — red — which is pulled up to his glove — off-white — and something in between your ears rings as memories tug at you, and the missing link between them snaps into place all at once and —

— and you’re sitting upright, and the world is twisting around you; hands on your shoulders keep you from twisting along with it. Bile and copper on your tongue, you struggle against your body to stand, to go, to draw from the well of magic inside you and push it —

The well is empty. The discovery sends echoes of agony through your skull, your chest, your bones and muscles and marrow; you dig deeper still for something, anything, and hands cover yours, snuffing out the remnants of what you're able to gather. You struggle against it all, breaths turning ragged, desperate, clawing at the consciousness slipping through your fingers faster than you can hold it — you can't lose it now; you need to stay awake, you need to gather every last drop of magic you can and go beyond your limits and give everything you have up to and including your own lifeforce if you don't if you can't if you fail then he’ll — he’ll — you can't — you won't —

...

...

...

(you lose consciousness.)
~~~

This one...well, I tried my best.

I posted it and it seems that no one understood what was going on in it OTL I dunno if it was the second-person POV or the unreliable narrator or what, but I’m definitely disappointed.

But anyway, what’s supposed to happen is that before the events of the fic someone attempts to assassinate Luigi, and almost succeeds. Peach pours all her magic into healing him enough to not die, and then passes out. She wakes up half-aware hours later, fully magically exhausted, and she gets triggered into thinking she’s still in the midst of the assassination attempt and passes out again.

I’d wanted to write another scene or two in this little ‘verse, but I’m feeling pretty discouraged, so I probably won’t. At least I got to write in second person again, and practice my descriptions.