Hello readers :) I announced the reboot of Your Poison of Choice on my DeviantART page in November last year; a little over a month before the publication of the comic based on the story. Now I'm gonna follow through with it before finishing the comic, which has, thanks to my loyal readers and subscribers become quite the masterpiece. The fic however needs to be updated and fleshed out for it to make a little more sense.

Iggy's Poison was originally just a chapter of an older fic of mine; Yellow Roses (written in 2011, deleted in 2012) but it's proved to be one of my best fanfics ever. I'm proud of that.

This story is not intended for children. Read that line three times, please, and the one about don't bothering to bitch if you read the story anyway and get offended ten times.

Here I will not let Iggy narrate the entire story, as that sort of crippled it the last time. :)

Trigger warning for... Oh, who cares. Besides, far be it from me to give away the best parts...

The walls tower over me.

I was told, a long time ago, that when one grows older, they grow taller as well. That's not true in my case. I'm older, yes. But the walls have stolen what could have make me grow.

Several letters and drawings are now pinned to these barriers of wood and plaster, and I sit down on the floor to look at them. Some of them are from me, some are from my usual pen pal. About ten feet from where my tail is planted now, my Mama helped bringing him into the world. Right over there, by the Bloody Stairs, where she vanished only a little while after telling me how a Koopa grows.

His creation felt so good. So empowering. I marvelled at him back then as the height of my spiritual evolution. Unfortunately I failed to see him for what he really was; an afterbirth of sorrow, shame and guilt. And that's why I'm sitting here right now.

Dear razor.

Please.

Let this be it.

This is my turn.

Set me free.

What I'm holding isn't really a razor, but's just as sharp; a box cutter I nabbed from one of my brother Ludwig's toolboxes when he wasn't looking. King Dad has decided that I shouldn't have access to sharp objects, "probably for this very reason", I think to myself as I bleed out on the black and white marble tiles. Oh, the blood is so lovely. I put my palms on it to warm myself on it. It gushes from my slashed wrists with every heartbeat, and while I grow colder and colder, the blood gets warmer and warmer. My spinning head is carefully placed on the floor after I look at the walls, who have never seemed more imposing than they do right now. There's a connection here, I just know it.

He shows up to bother me again, so I mutter some lines from a song we used to listen to together.

"Hush, hush, darlin', hush, hush, darlin'..."

It gets increasingly difficult as a dreadful black sleep is tugging at my eyelids. So I close my eyes and welcome death and darkness.

If you are moving towards the light, you are not done bleeding.

King Bowser was tired of waiting for his son, who had skipped both breakfast, lunch and tea to sit in his room with his drawings. "Well," he thought to himself, "he won't get away from dinner. Kid won't eat, no wonder he can't grow."

Usually he would have a guard fetch the Koopalings, the notable exception being just Iggy. Trying to force him out of his room was the closest thing to a blood sport one could get these days.

Bowser held on to the banister of the staircase that lead to the portrait hall, the library and Iggy's bedroom. The steps were built for small mammal feet, not Koopa feet, and were incredibly steep. One one wrong step and you'd seriously hurt yourself, which was the reason the Koopalings called it "The Bloody Stairs."

There was another reason it had this nickname, but Bowser couldn't bring himself to think about it. Maybe getting rid of the staircase and replacing it would have solved the problem. Thing was, that the death of his Queen had caused the collapse of Dark Land's golden age. At least in his mind it had, and now every Coin counted and redecorating wasn't on any list of priorities.

"Iggy?" Bowser knocked on the door with the little wooden sign that read his son's name; a birthday gift from his second oldest son, Lemmy. There was no answer. Bowser frowned. The door was locked. It wasn't normal for Iggy to sleep at this hour, or any hour for that matter.

"Iggy, open the door. Everyone is waiting for you. If you don't come right away someone's just gonna hog the dessert again." Bowser hated missing dessert, and today was ice cream.

A soft thud from inside the door made him react instantly. He slammed his shoulder into the wood, which instantly popped it open.

The curtains were closed. The room was incredibly dark and hot. Bowser blew some fire on a torch on the wall and turned around.

"No..."

The sight made the Koopa king's blood curdle, despite the temperature of the room. For a moment Bowser thought back to the first time he had laid eyes on his green-haired son; right after he had hatched he had curled up on his pillow, exhausted from breaking free from his egg. Bowser had been so proud he had immediately grunted and blown smoke on the little one, like all Koopas did when they felt full of pride and love.

Iggy lay there on the floor, just like he had as a hatchling, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and hand placed next to him. Now it clutched a blade, not his father's index claw. Bowser sank to his knees, and when he hung his horned head, he saw the piece of paper wrapped around the boxcutter.

"Ludwig I am sorry. But I stole everything and ruined it. He says it's my fault. It hurts so much in the place I showed you. I can't do it anymore. It hurts. Please forgive me. I don't deserve to live because I destroyed the family."

The sentences were incoherent, the penmanship was hardly legible, as if written by a trembling claw. The paper was also stained with blood. Bowser hated blood.

Blood is red as both fire and rubies, but the color of it is also and ominous; opaque and sinister. The quality of its colors, and the amount of it on the floor had initially lead Bowser to believe that his son was already dead. He was after all so cold and pale he might as well be any other object in the room. But as he held the Koopaling in his arms he could feel Iggy's plastron expand and retract slightly. Breath.

Closing his son's gaping wounds with his claws, he called for the guards, who immediately came running to the Koopaling's room. The Boomerang bros had seen worse on the front, and within minutes they had compressed Iggy's wound and were on their way to Toad Town Hospital.

The shock had rendered Bowser quite incapable of moving. He stared at the patch of floor surrounded by coagulatory calamity. It was shaped like Iggy.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again they roamed over stacks of books, framed photos of the family and the army, the terrarium for his hissing roaches, and the wall full of drawings. One of them made King Koopa rise from the floor and wander over to it. In that moment he realized, though not fully understood why Iggy had done the unthinkable.

The drawing was of Dead Iggy. For a while this hallucinatory houseguest had only appeared in Iggy's letters to himself. Iggy refused to talk about him, but when Lemmy found scary letters addressed to him, Bowser had to restrict Iggy's access to paper and pens. That backfired, as this had made the disturbed Koopaling panic and begin his disturbing and troublesome habit of hoarding whatever paper he could find; in his shell and hide it in the grandfather clock, under the furniture and even in ring binders.

Bowser wanted to take his rage out on someone, but no bystanders were in sight, so instead he cleaned up the blood with a swipe of his scepter. If the cleaning ladies of the castle got a whiff of this the entire Mushroom Planet would also learn of it within a day. The Koopa king sighed. His family and army had already gone through enough as it was.

Later he sat in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit at Toad Town General Hospital. He wasn't alone; a Beanish lady sat and watched the television with an exhausted, empty gaze. A Toad couple had been waiting so long they had both fallen asleep. They weren't even roused by Dr. Toadley, who called Bowser's name.

"Your son suffered massive blood and fluid loss. We have closed his wounds and stabilized him, but it will take a week or so before he can be allowed out of bed."

Dr. Toadley lowered his voice and looked even more serious than usual.

"The admission chart states the cause of injury as an accident. I saw the cuts myself. They were smooth and deliberate. King Koopa, for how long has your son displayed severe psychotic behavior?"

It started soon after his mother died. After the funeral he caught pneumonia from sitting in the freezing crypt all through November that year. I thought I was gonna bury a son, too instead of lighting a Christmas tree. The Star Lady must have heard my prayers, because Iggy got healthy again once spring came, but when it did it became impossible to get him to eat. Everyone at the castle tried everything. In his own words, food tasted either like "blood or shit". He's a young Koopa, and his very inhibited eating habits didn't seem to take much of a toll on him until he entered puberty. He's not half as strong or fast as he used to. Whatever was ailing him didn't really become annoying until he started controlling the other Koopalings and frightening them with stories that made no sense. If Iggy wasn't giggling like a maniac and thrashing aound he sat there, quietly, staring into nothing, which was just as unnerving.

"Iggy, put the knife down. Listen. I'm your father and I'm telling you to put the weapon down."

The green-haired Koopaling was brandishing a blade, and pointed it at Bowser with nerve-wrecking, jerky lunges. "They're all gonna kill us." He was backing away, still holding the knife with a trembling hand. In the other, he was holding baby Wendy, who had been patient for a while, but was now threatening to become fussy.

"Who are gonna kill us?" Bowser had ordered the guards to keep their distance not to scare Iggy.

"The mustache men, of course," Iggy answered as if his father were daft. "They'll jump on our heads and put Bob-Ombs in our beds."

Wendy was hot, hungry and tired, and wanted her pillow and bottle. She whined, but Iggy paid her no attention.

"If you're afraid of that, why would you hurt your little sister?"

Bowser was a military Koopa, and as such knew very well how impossible it is to reason with a psychotic individual. But this wasn't madman with frilly pants. It was Iggy Koopa, a prince of the blood and heir to the jungles and deserts.

"I knew you wouldn't understand," Iggy said, voice cracking with tears. "It's OK. You shouldn't have to understand. But they can't take us if we go away first. We have to die. It's the only way they'll ever leave us alone."

A Sledge bro was silently closing in on the Koopaling. Normally the Troop solved hostage situations like this with a well-directed arrow, quick and with little mess. Bowser realized then how lacking his military procedures were. Maybe not everything had to be solved with violence.

The last thought vanished out of King Koopa's head the next second, as the Sledge Bro reached out to take Wendy. She smiled; when the Sledge Bros held her they always either played a fun little game with her or gave her something yummy.

"Sebeh!" She exclaimed happily, as this was her word for "Sledge Bro". Unfortunately Iggy knew this, and he turned around on a dime and plunged the knife so hard into the Koopa's plastron it cracked one of the latter's ribs. Bowser grabbed Iggy, who fought back with every scale on his body.

"No! They'll get us! They'll bomb our castles! Make us inhale stuff! Make us into cardboard cutouts!"

King Koopa had closed his eyes as Iggy was taken to the dungeon. The Koopa he had hurt took a long time and a few lawsuits to heal, but he returned to work sooner than Iggy.

From that day on, Bowser decided to excuse Iggy from his military duties. That meant that he had to confine Iggy to his room and the dungeon. At night Bowser placed his troubled son in Ludwig's bed to help him feel a little safer. All he accomplished by doing so was robbing Kooky of sleep, as Iggy wept all night, every night. King Koopa was at his wits' end; there was nothing more he could do for his son.

When Bowser had found Iggy on the floor in a pool of his own blood, he had wondered if this wasn't the best for Iggy. Maybe death wasn't so bad. At least now he could rest. When he found out that Iggy was still alive, however, all such thoughts vanished. He had never even once before imagined life without Iggy, or any of his precious Koopalings. Most Koopas are very family-oriented and Bowser was no exception.

It was impossible to ex plain all this to the doctor.

The Koopaling was still hooked up to a bag of blood when his father entered the room. That was not why Bowser was infuriated.

"Why is my son strapped to the bed?!"

Iggy had soft poseys around his arms securing him to the bed.

"Please, Your Awfulness, we are not a prison," Toadley's intern said as she approached Bowser, who looked quite prepared to tear Iggy's restraints off. "We are not otherwise prepared to care for suicidal patients."

Suicidal patient, huh?

The darkness that covered my eyes like a sack-cloth comforter vanishes. The sun is up. But it's not a warm, yellow sun. No, not at all. I look at it. It's as if the moon was lighting up the sky. An ethereal, silvery fog clothes it. It's so beautiful I can't help but reach my hands towards it. I can't reach it, however, because another resident of the light has seized my hand.

"That's good, Iggy," a distant, yet so close voice says. "Can you squeeze my hand?"

My fingers must have curled around his, because he calls me a good Iggy again and lets me rest for a while.

My father the King is towering over me. He looks at me, and no one has ever seen his eyes making this expression, I'm sure. He doesn't talk. He's probably still angry with me for making a mess.

"He was going after Lemmy," I say before he can scold me. If King Dad begins pontificating there's no shutting him up.

"Who?" King Dad asks. "Him?" He holds out the drawing of my pen pal.

"Yes. I didn't let him have Wendy. I couldn't give her to him, so he demanded Lemmy, and then Morton. I couldn't let him have them, so I tried to give him me instead. I did what I had to do."

A nurse puts me back into bed and prepares a syringe, and that makes King Dad back towards the door.

"I did what I had to do!" I cry after him. "Don't leave me here!" If only King Dad would listen he would understand how good a son I am. But he is abandoning me. The injection is quick and painless, and soon my eyelids betray me.

Don't we all die alone.

Bowser went back to the waiting room, which was empty. Ludwig and Lemmy had to leave their dinners behind to help their father with Iggy and were probably still by the vending machines. Lemmy had probably crawled into one. He had done that with vending machines ever since Roy told him a ridiculous story of how fairies lived in there and made candy.

"Lord Bowser?"

King Koopa knew it wasn't Lemmy or Ludwig as none of them ever adressed him as 'Lord Bowser'. Also, the voice belonged to a woman. A Koopa woman, dressed in a purple skirt suit and lab coat approached him.

"Who else than me?" Bowser replied with a shadow of a smug grin on his snout.

"I am Doctor Clawdia Greenkoop," the pink-haired lady said with a little, dignified nod. "The hospital called me to consult your son Ignatius after the nature of his condition was made available."

That was quick. Bowser looked at the Koopa accompanying her. He was almost as tall as Bowser, just a lot thinner and with a cerulean mane. The king recognized him; he was a renowned koopediatrician who had received an award for his work with underprivileged little Koopas. It had been all over the weekend news, but it was his other field of expertise that made Bowser ask Clawdia:

"Sorry, what kind of doctor are you?"

Dr. Greenkoop smiled as she lead him into the hallway. "I'm a psychiatrist. I work closely with adolescent Koopas like your son and their families at Freaky Fred Memorial Institute."

Bowser raised an eyebrow; no wonder these two had come out of the woodwork so fast. Ludwig had spent some time at the Institute's Ministry of Insane Laughter-ward for turning a local loan shark into a lab rat and testing a line of radioactive deodorants on him.

"I'm sorry," Bowser grumped, "But Iggy hasn't committed any crimes. Lately."

"We don't only work with juvenile delinquents, Lord Bowser," Dr. Greenkoop said, stretching her smile as far as the still fresh Restylane allowed her. "The local psychiatric facilities do not have the manpower nor the competence to handle Iggy's case. That's why the hospital contacted us. Your son needs help."

Bowser looked at his son through the inch-thick glass of the intensive care unit's door. Iggy was sleeping. Someone had removed his glasses. His eyes were sunken, and the skin blueish from dehydration and insomnia. Bowser sighed, but not so anyone could hear. If he were to send Iggy to a happy farm he would have to find his extra thick glasses.

"Things have changed in Dark Land, and the treasury has changed with it. I can't afford it."

Clawdia Greenkoop just waved this away. "The Institute has also changed, Lord Bowser. It used to be a private hospital, but now it's financed... publicly. Its procedures, facilities and treatments have been updated, too. I'm a family Koopa myself and I know you want the best for your son. At Freaky Fred's we know what's best."

Bowser took the pen he was offered, and before he knew what he had done, even before he had asked any questions, the commitment papers were signed.

"Thank you," the pink haired doctor said. She closed the folder and tucked it away so quickly Bowser didn't get any time to study the logo that had caught his attention. "We will take excellent care of your son."

She and her companying colleague disappeared into the crowded hospital hallway. A moment later Ludwig and Lemmy returned to the waiting room. The latter was full of dust and had chocolate on his face.

"I caught one of the fairies, and she gave me all her snow caps!" Lemmy declared.

Bowser growled in annoyance. "Son, only a blithering idiot would believe that crap. Are you a blithering idiot?"

"No," Lemmy replied.

"Then both of you get back on the Doomship and tell the troopas to set course for home. I'll take a Warp Pipe."

"You... You're not coming with us?" Ludwig asked.

"No." Bowser looked at the papers he had received. "I have some papers to fill out."

"I want to see Iggy." Lemmy demanded. "King Dad, I want to see him."

Bowser shook his head. "Not now, Lemmy. He's sleeping now."

Lemmy looked sad and disappointed. "Why did Iggy hurt himself?"

Bowser didn't have a good answer, and he told his sons that. "Have a safe trip home, you guys." He then looked at Ludwig, who was almost as pale as Iggy.

"Is something bugging you, son?" He asked.

"No, not at all," Ludwig stuttered a little too quickly, but Bowser didn't notice. He stood there, alone in the crowd, feeling as if the ICU door was staring at him with accusing eyes.

"Iggy?"

The moon isn't beautiful anymore.

"Iggy, honey. Look at me."

I don't want to see you. You would hit a guy with glasses.

"Don't be scared. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Go away. Go away.

"I won't let anybody hurt you..."

I turn my face towards the voice.

"Welcome home."