Chapter Ten: Draining

It was no mystery to Baby Smurf who was "it". His dreams as of late had been lined with mirrors, and large, oversized glasses of the exact same size that might as well have been mirrors. As he walked by them in the dream, he could see his own reflection in the lens. They were looking for him. But he didn't want to be found. So he adapted. He started navigating Smurf Village carefully. He'd already been making himself scarce. Whoever he was with, whether it be Lazy or the smurflings, was stuck haplessly following him around in his efforts at avoidance lest they lose track of him – the little smurfling would not be contained.

Grandpa seemed to catch on, catch him in his little hide and seek act with smurfs that didn't seem to be aware they were playing.

"Well… I'll be smurfed if I'll ignore or disregard the clear signals of a young smurfling," was all that Baby heard Grandpa say on the matter, more to himself than anything. He wasn't sure what that meant, but the much older smurf seemed to be supportive.

From the looks of it, Grandpa was noticing something different about them too, and other smurfs were beginning to follow suit… Baby heard talk that Vanity was starting to neglect his chores.

Baby was glad that he didn't need to do any chores around the village yet, and wouldn't for a long time. It was more fun to just play. Slouchy and Nat, however, they were being given more and more responsibilities these days, now that they were getting older. Although, it really didn't have to be so difficult. Why didn't Slouchy and Nat just use their magic when tasked with things like cleaning up? That's what Baby would do. Just wave your hand about, and everything would fall back into place. He even tried to suggest as much, but they wouldn't listen.

"This isn't one of our games Baby, we really do have to clean up!" was all they would say.

It would be so easy for him to just wave his hand and get the job done for them, but there was probably a reason why the other smurfs always seemed to refuse to make use of their magic in their day-to-day lives. Maybe there was a rule against using magic for that kind of stuff. In which case, Baby didn't want to break it in front of the others and get in trouble. Besides, he was too young to do chores! If a task was allocated to Slouchy and Nat, then they had to do it. So, restricted in this manner, Baby would simply stand by and watch.

Brainy found that if he did it just right, it was even easier when he wasn't trying to concentrate, but to instead let a more subconscious force take over. Although it did tend to leave him a little… talkative. Blurting out observations, at times. All he knew was that it was easier, so he'd slipped into it, but he hadn't been expecting this. And it was much harder to slip out of…

He did his best not to be inspecting every aspect of the other smurfs' selves. Sometimes he stared at the ground, at a table in front of him, anything but them. He just needed to keep it up until he was finally allowed to see his own self. At other times, he couldn't look away.

Grandpa came over to him, warily.

Brainy was always doing his best not to let his eyes come into contact with the older smurfs especially, now. Sometimes it was unavoidable. This seemed to be one of those times. Was he going to be forced to engage in conversation…? He felt that their privacy had an added layer of sacredness to it that he shouldn't be trespassing into.

"Hello, Brainy," Grandpa said carefully. Insights into how Grandpa's extensive travels had shaped him danced about in Brainy's mind. He could see his connection to Nanny Smurf, lasting far back into their pasts, back when she looked just like every other smurf.

"…You seem distracted," Grandpa continued.

He couldn't look at Grandpa for too long, even if he wanted to. He was just too bright, almost painful to look at. His glow had to be the strongest out of all the smurfs. Brainy was left with no choice but to shield his eyes from the unbearable brightness of his being.

Grandpa's voice came to him once again. "Brainy…?"

"Nngh… Sorry." There was one way to help alleviate this mess… he took off his glasses, just as he'd been doing whenever speaking to Clumsy recently. It was easy to readily slip them off around his best friend and just talk to him normally. It was a little familiar, in a comforting kind of way, as it harkened back to when he hadn't been able to wear his glasses at all, and Clumsy was there to look out for him. That meant he already had plenty of practice with talking to a Clumsy that he couldn't even see. A carefully practiced motion of letting his guard down a little, as it were.

Although Grandpa was unused to such a motion.

"I just need to give my eyes a rest," Brainy explained, seeing nothing now, no more eye-straining incandescence.

"Hmm… Perhaps you're in need of a stronger pair of glasses," Grandpa suggested, "Papa and I could take a look at them…"

"Oh, no, it'll be fine. I've just been staying up far too late recently, aha."

"Well… Okay. But Papa did want to speak to you, in any case," Grandpa prodded, "just to make sure everything's right and smurfy."

Brainy shook his head. "No, I mean I – I'm fine."

"Brainy…"

"Please. I appreciate the concern, Grandpa, but there's nothing wrong." He could handle this himself!

He snapped his glasses back on. He did not wish to deal with the disadvantages of being unable to see right now. He wouldn't smurf that vulnerability for anysmurf. Why should he?

"You've been acting mighty strange as of late, you know. We're a little… worried. You weren't, heh, advising everysmurf in the village as you normally do for a few days, but then uh, when ya did…"

"When I did, I smurfed more truth than was expected? Well excuse me for being perceptive of my fellow smurfs. Why not worry about yourself, Grandpa? That memory of yours, you've been fretting over it more and more, of how there's so much memory that seems to be lost to you now. On some level, does it not constitute the breakdown of the self? If our memories are an integral part of our makeup, and you're losing them, you wonder if it heralds a loss of identity." Brainy had trailed off into his more monotonous tone towards the end of that, as that autopilot he'd experienced lately had taken control. He was back now. "It must be terrible to not have access to those important aspects of your own self…" he turned away from the older smurf then, not wanting to face him any longer, and just kept walking, past Smoogle sporting that inexplicable radiant sheen. It was strange, wasn't it? The way that Smoogle glowed, but Nanny didn't.

He came across Vanity, and stopped. He had dark circles under his eyes, which was highly unusual for the smurf normally so preoccupied with beauty. Wasn't Vanity always the one going on about beauty sleep? The moment any blemish appeared on Vanity's face, he'd always been quick to react, to take counteractive measures. He wasn't sure if he'd seen him dishevelled like this before.

He was exhausted. Just as exhausted as Brainy was.

"Vanity, you've been hopelessly lost in yourself for far too long! Don't you think it's time to give it a little rest?" Brainy asked. Vanity was muttering into his mirror feverishly.

"You could look into another smurf. Like me. And tell me all about it." He sat down in front of Vanity. Still no reply? How rude.

So then he relaxed, slipping far too readily into that more robotic state of mind. He didn't have to feel tired, did he? He could just flip that switch. So, what was going on, inside of this smurf he knew too well, and who knew himself even better? Vanity Smurf, there is such a thing as too much introspection, you know… "You're losing the bigger picture. When you look at something for too long, a single thing, it stops making sense. When you focus on something too much… it loses all meaning. In the very act of trying to know all about you, you've left yourself with nothing, rendering senseless the very concept of a self, your self, which as is anyone's, is ever-changing, seems to dissipate the closer you get. How can you categorise it? You're unable to consolidate anything now. But still, you try. But haven't you started to notice the ongoing feedback loop that begins to start up, when you is all you focus on? The self observes the self, ad infinitum, but what does that make the true self, when it all interacts, intersects? Who is the unobserved observer? There is none. So what it becomes, is self-destruction. The self observes itself and then crumbles until there's nothing left to see."

"At least I stick to myself, stick to minding my own business." Vanity was talking. Finally, he was talking. "You know, I don't actually appreciate you seeing into all that is and should be secret to me."

"But right now, you can barely see yourself. You can't see like I do. You don't have an outsider's perspective. And I can see that you need to focus on something else."

…But he wouldn't, would he? He caught glimpses of the others, could even see how looking away from his spellbinding mirror would, if anything, be far more rewarding at this point. But his infatuation with the smurf he saw in the mirror was just too strong. It consumed him. And he was too proud to admit he was getting sick of it, he was actually getting sick of it. It had been amazing to really see himself for the first time after receiving the insight, and now it was habit, stubborn persistence, and the desire to have that level of clarity again that drove him to keep on gazing into the glass, fruitlessly.

Brainy spoke again. "You should go back to Roesia. Have the insight taken away."

"Oh, I will. Right after you do." Vanity cast him a glance. A glance that said, got you there, haven't I?

"It's having a terrible effect on you, you know. You really should."

Vanity turned his eyes on him now, didn't look away. Oh… Now he was seeing into him. "Unlike a certain someone, I can actually see myself perfectly well. Haven't you paid any attention to yourself? You're not exactly doing very well either. You risk losing yourself in a sea of others. The self that you cherish so much is slipping. You see, two can smurf at that game, Brainy Smurf. But here's the difference: I can see into myself."

They were locked now in the strangest impasse, where both could see just about everything about the other. They could see the concern they had for each other's current predicaments, wished to impel the other to do something about it, while stubbornly doing nothing about their own.

Vanity continued to study him intently.

"Can you tell me what you see, Vanity?" Brainy asked hopefully. "What do you see…?"

Vanity only smirked. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

And at that snide remark, all of Brainy's patience flew out the window. "Yes!" he hissed in frustration, restraining himself from allowing the exclamation to turn into a shout. Vanity was simply tired and choosing to be petty.

But he was tired too.

"Fine. If I can't know… if I can't see me, then why should you see you?" Brainy went to snatch Vanity's mirror away, but he leaned back out of the way. Brainy was undeterred, grabbing at the mirror persistently.

"You shouldn't smurf with this mirror anymore, Vanity!"

"It's mine! Get away!"

They struggled over it, two sets of hands trying to wrench it away.

"Great smurfs! What is smurfing on here!"

They looked up. Papa Smurf. A little behind him, they also saw Architect, who quickly averted his eyes, walked off whistling. Ah…

Vanity spoke first. "He's trying to take my mirror, Papa Smurf! Well, I say he should get his own mirror!"

"Papa Smurf, from just one look at Vanity you'll clearly be able to see that-" the two smurfs started talking over each other rapidly.

"Okay, okay, enough!" Papa looked the two now-quiet smurfs over before continuing, taking in the bags under Vanity's eyes with disapproval and suspicion. "Vanity, I thought I told you to finish your chores!"

"O-oh, sorry Papa Smurf…" Vanity replied.

"I think your attachment to your mirror this past week has been too unhealthy. I have no choice but to confiscate it."

"But Papa, please!" Vanity protested, aghast. Brainy was snickering.

Papa Smurf shook his head. "When I can see that your tasks have been completed, then we can talk."

"Oh, it just isn't fair! What about Brainy, trying to smurf my mirror away like that?"

"It was for your own good! Papa Smurf agrees with me, and Papa Smurf is right, because-"

"-And as for you, Brainy," Papa said sternly.

"W-what? Me?"

"You haven't been yourself lately… I want to see you in my lab."

It was such a useful method that managed to double as a fun little experiment to match. Roesia had never really shared her insight with anyone before, but she knew that such a thing was possible. And now, she could observe the results firsthand. But that was only secondary – whether or not they had accepted the insight, it would make little difference in the end. This would simply make things go just a little bit more smoothly – a way to doublecheck everything for absolute certain to confirm that she was ready.

An extra pair of eyes or two wouldn't hurt – it could only serve to benefit her in the end.