Ab Initio, an a hat in time fanfic

Notes:

Fair warning; this was written to torment my friends on discord. After 'Null and Void' was posted, we playfully argued, during which I play-threatened to write a sad alternate ending to Null and Void. That evolved into this, which is why they're so dang similar. But, I thought them different enough to post them both here. Hopefully, you enjoy this painfic as much as the other one~

He hadn't known Subcon's corrupted magic was still at work. Hadn't known that people would still change, if they stayed long enough. Neither, it seemed, had the hat child – as eventually, the more she visited, the less she seemed to want to leave. He'd thought it was just her , at first. Her clingy nature and desire to frustrate him by staying in his forest as long as possible when he repeatedly told her to get out .

And she hadn't said anything to him about any changes, so when she finally came to him one day looking like some horrendous, cobbled-together combination of his minions and Vanessa , Snatcher became... dare he say, worried . Almost terrified.
The kid frustrated him to no end, but there was a mote of fondness, a touch of enjoyment of her stubbornness and willpower. She was like how he'd thought Vanessa was originally – which was part of the reason he wanted her out.

He couldn't do this again. Not again. He refused to become fond of a person only to have them stab him in the back and decimate Subcon forest.

The citizens had been through enough .

Currently, Snatcher was in the 'arena'. It wasn't always an arena though. Right now, it was acting as more of a laboratory – and he'd all but banned access to anyone he didn't strictly tell to be there. Not that they didn't know exactly what was going on, of course.

They could feel his aura, and they could feel the kids aura as well. And they didn't like it. Every time he left to do something elsewhere, gather some supplies or otherwise check that everything in the forest was okay, questions about her were the first thing on his minions minds. They'd become fond of the kid as well.
All the more reason to undo what the Queen's corrupted magic had done. A glance at one of the hanging cages around the arena, at the creature it contained – the creature that had once been a cheerful, stubborn little girl – and he turned back to his work.

He would not let that ice witch have her.

The longer he couldn't help her, the more aggressive she seemed to get. The corrupted kid couldn't do anything, couldn't hurt him – he wasn't blue, for one. For two? She didn't have – and couldn't use – her umbrella. It was hanging from a length of chain, this odd, brightly colored spot of cheer in an otherwise gloomy forest.

Even though Snatcher knew she wasn't nearly coordinated enough to use the thing, he still kept it out of her reach. Just in case.
He wasn't about to underestimate her. He'd already done that once.

More and more he left his makeshift lab for the world outside the forest. He could leave, just didn't like to. Didn't like to leave his forest unattended, unguarded. But he had to. There were things he had to do if he wanted to fix the kid, and he couldn't get them in the forest.

In fact, the only place he could get what he was beginning to suspect he needed, was in her ship. Hanging up in the sky like a little oblong star. Snatcher knew from experience that chemicals and potions wouldn't be enough to save her. Granted, it hadn't stopped him trying, but his ideas had worn down over time, and he was left to one of his last ideas, that he'd honestly hoped he wouldn't have to use.

It was going to hurt. It was going to hurt a lot.

But it would save her.

"Don't worry kiddo. Your 'contractually obligated bff' is gonna make things all better..." And he would. No matter what rules he had to break.

The kid wouldn't know, but magic was just energy. And if you knew how, energy could be manipulated. All energy, fire, ice, earth, plant – even the energy of her little trinkets. It was all the same, especially to somebody who manipulated energy practically for a living. If the kid had been in her right mind, she'd be yelling at him, fighting to get free and to stop him because that was why she was here, that was why she'd been so adamant on getting these little things back .

But she wasn't in her right mind, and he'd known as soon as they'd fallen in his forest what these little things were capable of. The kind of power they held within their little hourglass shapes. Honestly, the idea of just taking them all for himself and using them for his own gain was... tempting. She couldn't stop him. Not even if she was free, because her mind was gone beneath the corrupting magic that had changed her.

Not all bodies responded the same to magic. Clearly, the kid was one of the few who just... couldn't handle it.

But back to the trinkets.

All forty of the little things sat quietly in his pocket dimension – well, minus the one that sat on a makeshift desk, hovering quietly and emitting a gentle hum as it glowed. He could use them right now. Strip them all of their energy and use it to stop Vanessa before they'd even met. Save his Subcon before it even had a chance to be threatened.

But no.

He would still know, still remember what she had done, and like she'd probably say – messing with time was dangerous. There was no telling how much would change if he tried to go back that far , change that much . The mustached brat had already tried that and gotten a planet covered in lava for her trouble.

"Sorry kiddo." A glance at the once-girl, as she aggressively tried to escape her hanging cage. "Like I said. You don't have a say in this." Not anymore.

Drawing the energy out of the Time Pieces was... difficult. Time energy, as he was coming to learn, was volatile . Clearly the little trinkets had been made with stabilizing the stuff in mind, because when he coaxed the glowing, humming, thrumming energy out of it's containment, it pushed and bucked and writhed , desperate to get out and away. But he held it. It would stay, because he demanded it.
It had a purpose beyond fuel now, and he would demand it's obedience. After that, it would snap back into it's containment and everything would be done.

And nobody would know. Not if things went how he intended it to. All he had to do was layer a spell over it, a simple little spell that would keep everybody from remembering. It was imperative.

She had to stay out of Subcon, and he would do whatever it took to ensure that.

"If you're in there, kiddo, I'm sorry. But it'll be fixed soon, and you won't remember a thing. I know what I'm doing." Turning away from the angry child-shaped creature that eternally tried to reach him. Ignoring her once more, and shutting out the increasingly distressed sensations of his minions auras. He hadn't left to see them in ages. They were scared for him, for the girl, for what they knew he was doing and knew they couldn't stop.

Not even Vanessa could stop him now.

The more energy he drew out of the Time Pieces, the more hot he felt. Snatcher knew he wasn't meant to hold this much power, but he had to. He had to take it all, keep it all, had to tell it exactly what to do, where to go, when to stop – he had to drain all of them if he wanted to be sure he'd hit his mark.

The kid was damn near screaming behind him, and Snatcher wanted to think that she was still in there, angry, furious, desperate to get out and stop what he was doing. But there would be no stopping. Not until he was done.
Not until he fixed this mess.

The last mote of energy was drawn from the last Time Piece, and Snatcher – barely holding himself together with all the raw time energy running through him – turned to the kid one last time.

"You'll thank me later, kiddo."

And then everything was gone.

He opened his eyes to see his hollow-tree home. No arena, no caged and transformed kid. No time energy. Not in the forest, and not in him. For a moment, he shivered – terrified that it had all gone wrong. He couldn't feel her aura but that meant nothing . What if he'd gotten something wrong, gone back too far and caused a loop? A paradox? What if the forest started to unravel before his eyes?

Then, as he noticed it. Light.

Little glittering lights in the sky that he knew weren't stars because they came too close, too bright, falling objects full of energy . Time energy.
He'd done it.

Snatcher, as soon as he could think again, spread himself and his magic thin, knowing where each and every little trinket was going to fall, making sure there was a net of energy there to catch it, keep it intact and safe. If his plan was to go off without a hitch, he had to make sure she had no reason to linger here, no reason to become familiar with the place and run around exploring the parts she wasn't.
He would take the time pieces and hand them to her. No tricks, no contracts. Not this time.

Making her stay would sentence her to a fate he refused to let her suffer.

Panting as he pulled himself back together again, as he felt each individual net of energy catch it's target, he shivered. This was going to hurt. Not physically, no, but because in order to absolutely ensure she didn't linger, didn't stay – he'd have to hurt her. Mentally, physically, he'd have to make her terrified of Subcon and unwilling to spend any more time here than she absolutely had to.

Even then, there was no guarantee she'd stay out. But it was better than the alternative.

He felt it as soon as she hit ground. As soon as she was in the forest, her aura ran over him. Concernedly, he went in – felt each and every mote of her aura as it twisted and moved. No magic. Well, none but her own, anyways. No corruption, no dark magics, no hints at all that she'd been unchanged by his attempts at changing time. He did feel motes of his own energy though, quiet and flecked with slowly decaying time energy. She was normal .

He'd saved her, and she shouldn't remember anything. Good .

Now came the hard part. The painful part. He'd demanded all his residents stay away from her, even the wispy little dwellers that couldn't talk. She was to be left alone, not so much as to be in the same area as them. They hadn't complained, though they had been concerned, confused. But they hadn't questioned him. After all, they didn't know who she was anymore.
His magic had made sure of that, layered into the time spell such that nobody would be able to remember.

Snatcher drew into his own energy – pushing and pulling himself until his form was different . His form was altered, sharpened, made as scary as he could manage – he'd even borrowed some ideas from Vanessa, as there was nobody that she didn't scare to death nowadays.

The only one of his minions that was allowed to be near her was the one that lured her, drawing her into a trap. He watched, heart aching as she ran down the same path, to the same trap, and eventually, into the same pocket dimension that he made his deals in.

Time to start the show.

His heart ached . But he couldn't let it show. This had to go perfectly, it had to. She was already terrified just at seeing him – she'd already been scared the last time, when they'd met that first time he'd threatened her with death. But this time he had to be cruel. Had to go out of his way to make her genuinely terrified.

And it was working.

The more he hissed and yelled and threatened, the more terrified she got, and the more unstable her aura became. She was terrified , and even though it killed him inside to do what he was doing – she didn't deserve this kind of treatment – he had to. There was no other choice.

He'd made a contract with her. She gets her Time Pieces, and she never comes back. To give her even less of a choice, he'd threatened her with death, terrified her all over again that she was going to die right there.
She wasn't. He'd never be able to kill her at this point. If the kid tried to call his bluff she'd find out that this was all a ruse, but he had to keep her scared. If she got any hint at all that all of this was fake, the terror would drop from her in an instant.

"Get the heck out of my forest!" Layering magic over his voice to make him sound as scary as he'd made himself look. " Or I'll make sure you never leave again. " Low and whispered and threatening because she had to leave she had to leave or she really would never leave again.

As soon as she vanished back to her ship – taking her Time Pieces and her terrified aura with her – he let out a surprisingly upset breath. His form wavered, then went back to normal. There. He was done. There were no Time Pieces in the forest, and with his threat of death and suffering hanging over her head, hopefully he'd left her with no desire to come back.

He'd have to pull that shape and act again later on, once that mustached brat did her thing, but that was later. For now, Snatcher... just wanted to be alone. His heart hurt for the first time since Vanessa, and he didn't like it.

As much as he'd like to just let her run all around Subcon, enjoying herself and being happy – he couldn't.

She'd be better off terrified of him. Like everyone else.