Title: wrong space wrong time
Fandom: Star Vs. the Forces of Evil
Summary: AU. Toffee's life has been too freakin' weird.
Character(s): Toffee, Eclipsa, Monster Love, Glossayrck, OC's
Warning(s): violence
Notes: Started writing this AU after "Just Friends" and after seeing all the episodes before that one; first started writing this before season 2 finale. Just started to go wild with the theories here before the season 2 finale. Continuing to write this after seeing the season 2 finale, reading some of the tie-in book "Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension", reading some of the "Deep Trouble" comic arc, and THAT SEASON 3 PROMO OMG I'M EXCITED WOW. Part of this fic is kinda experimental, just me writing for my own interest and to explore things.
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Star Vs. the Forces of Evil.
v.
"So we good, crystal? Everything clearer now?" Glossayrck asked, looking at the Magical High Commission through half-lidded eyes.
"…Toffee needs to know this," Rhombulus said, sounding dazed, and looking down at the young half-monster still passed out on the table.
Except for Glossayrck, Queen Sun's transformative outburst had blown them all back. The rest of the Magical High Commission just had to pick themselves up after that, but they found Toffee knocked out, which was not much of a surprise. Even if he was apparently immortal, he was still a child.
While Lekmet intercepted the queen before she could lunge for Toffee, Rhombulus had plucked the boy up and laid him on the table. He then ripped off part of his cape to wrap a makeshift covering over Toffee, to compensate where his shirt was in tatters. And pondering it further, Rhombulus began trying to clean the blood off the boy.
Only Glossayrck could talk the queen down and make her transform back into her base state, after whispering something low into her ear.
"I'll try explaining the finer points to Toffee when he's ready," Glossayrck replied, glancing at Rhombulus. Then he turned to Queen Sun. "Now we can do the lineage test."
Hekapoo crossed her arms, smirking. "Not gonna take Glossayrck's word on this? The kid said the same thing too."
"I require more confirmation," Sun said flatly. She then lifted her wand, which shimmered and shifted into a knife, and held it above Toffee.
Rhombulus squirmed, then made a move forward—only to stop as Lekmet grabbed him, giving a quiet bleat.
"You don't need much," Glossayrck said. "An imprecise hand won't do."
Sun glanced at Glossayrck from the corner of her eye. "Will your little immortal heal too quickly to get a sample?"
Glossayrck stared back, expression unchanging. "Just don't take much."
Sun arched a brow; then turned her attention to Toffee. A glare crossed her face, and her jaw clenched. She took a breath, focused the diagnostic spell in her mind and in her wand-knife, and carefully, precisely sliced a thin cut across Toffee's cheek.
The superficial cut did not swiftly heal, as the boy had done earlier, after the queen's wand-vine had rapidly sprouted thorns that skewered him. The cut remained, and the spell functioned as expected—making the cut glow white. Equally white smoky tendrils drifted up from it, and gathered into the unmistakable shape of a spade.
"Congrats, it's a boy," Hekapoo said with a wry voice, while Sun glared, and angrily flicked her wrist, dissipating the smoky spade, and her wand resumed its usual shape. Toffee only stirred a little, but otherwise remained passed out, with only a normal-looking, superficial cut on his cheek.
"...So, um, do the small things heal slower, or—?" Rhombulus asked, staring at the cut that lingered.
"Eclipsa's spell made Toffee immortal, not necessarily invulnerable. It'll only really kick in with something more severe, or lethal harm," Glossayrck said. "And it's still a heavily experimental spell, altering one of the most serious aspects of life; it's bound to have its imperfections. Be finicky."
"…So, what, like a conservation of magical energy or something?" Hekapoo wondered.
"Sure, let's go with that," Glossayrck replied with a shrug. Hekapoo just arched a brow, while Rhombulus looked extremely annoyed.
"He is Septarian, isn't he?" Queen Sun questioned.
"Half-Septarian, anyway," Hekapoo added, and only smirked when the queen shot her a glare.
"What of his Septarian regeneration then?" Queen Sun asked in a low voice, turning back to Glossayrck. "Is that part of what we witnessed earlier?"
"Pretty much. It's been accelerated," Glossayrck replied. "Now that I've answered, there'll be no need for a stress test, will there be, my Queen?"
Sun cracked a very thin smile.
Cyclops eye frowning, Rhombulus shook one snake-hand, who then spat out a small adhesive bandage on top of the head of his other snake-hand. Rhombulus then bent over the young half-monster, and carefully stuck the bandage over the cut on his cheek.
Leaning back, Rhombulus fidgeted. Then said, "Maybe…we could—guys, can't we—?"
Everyone—minus Glossayrck and an unconscious Toffee—said "No" in unison (bleated it adamantly in Lekmet's case).
"You didn't even let me finish!" Rhombulus whined.
"We are not authorizing Eclipsa's release," Hekapoo snapped.
"Just her head!" Rhombulus said. "Just so Toffee can talk to her—"
"That's still too risky!" Hekapoo snarled, the fire above her head burning higher.
"She's right," Omni agreed, while Lekmet gave a low, assenting bleat.
"Absolutely not," Queen Sun said. "And you are to say nothing of Eclipsa to the boy, none of you are." Her glare had gone around the room, but focused on Rhombulus—who winced—then turned to Glossayrck (who didn't react). "As far as he'll know, Eclipsa died centuries ago."
"Well, fine then," Rhombulus said, crossing his arms and pouting. "But what are we gonna do now with—?"
"That is no longer your concern," Queen Sun said, picking Toffee up and tucking him under one arm. "This is a matter for the Butterfly family now."
"Wha—but—" and Rhombulus shot the other High Commission members a look, and while they had varying looks of concern (even Hekapoo seemed uncertain), none made a move. At a loss, Rhombulus turned to their creator. "Glossayrck?"
"It's as the queen says," he replied, and Rhombulus frowned.
"Of course you'd say that," he grumbled, cyclops crystal head looking away. But out of the corner of his eye, Rhombulus watched Queen Sun and Glossayrck leave with a still unconscious Toffee.
…
Toffee was slow to wake, covering his head with his blanket. He wanted to sleep in. When the boy finally peeked out of the covers, one groggy eye focusing, his sluggish movements stilled as the realization hit him: this wasn't the quarters he shared with Mom, or ones that belonged to Dad's extended family, or anywhere in the temple. This wasn't home.
The boy bolted up, and winced when his head pounded. He rubbed his aching head, ran a hand down his face, to rub the sand out of his eyes. His hand paused when it felt the bandage on his cheek, and he poked at it experimentally.
Toffee shivered, and drew his blanket closer—his blanket?
Looking down, Toffee confirmed it wasn't his blanket from home, like his previous grogginess had assumed. This was Rhombulus' cape he was wrapped up in—or part of it, as the ripped and tattered edge suggested. (That, and it was too small to be his full cape.)
Rhombulus—Toffee squeezed his eyes shut, feeling sick as he remembered everything. The last thing, the last thing was…he had tried to take the wand from Queen Sun, and then she started glowing like Eclipsa, and threw him back with rising magic; his head got hurt, and then nothing, he must have blacked out then.
Now, Toffee tried to get up slowly, trying not to make his head pound horribly again.
"…won't work," Glossayrck said.
Toffee stilled, and slowly looked around, toward the old man's voice. The boy realized he was definitely in a different room; it looked more like a workshop. There were no windows. He realized he had been laid out on another table, smaller than the other that had been with Rhombulus and the others. And to his mounting horror, he realized Queen Sun stood not a few feet away, her back to him, and with a floating Glossayrck at her shoulder.
The young monster started to move slowly and carefully, trying to get away without her noticing.
"That's another thing I need to confirm for myself," the queen said, immediately turning around before Toffee could duck out of sight.
The Mewman caught his eye, and Toffee froze. She did not look surprised at all by his waking up now. Queen Sun approached, and still Toffee didn't move, even when the wand started glowing green at her side. The boy was petrified, fear making everything in his mind and body freeze and seize up.
When Sun was close enough, she raised her wand—and Toffee threw the scrap of Rhombulus' cape into her face, finally able to move himself to desperate action. It didn't exactly land, fabric was hard to throw; but it momentarily blocked her vision, and Toffee took what chance that offered him. He jumped off the table and ran, while the Mewman was already reaching to swipe the fabric out of her line of sight.
The boy's eyes darted around until they fell on an exit next to a bookshelf. Where the exit actually led, he had no idea; but it was out of this room, which was good enough for now. Toffee ran for it—but then the bookshelf glowed green, and suddenly slid in front of the exit.
Toffee could not stop in time. He tried, and skidded, but still he crashed into the shelf, and fell down to the ground. The impact wasn't only enough to throw him down; the shelf shook, and some books fell down on top of the boy. Instinctively he covered his head, his eyes squeezed shut. His jaw clenched when he felt pain burst on his back and shoulders, and across his tail.
Toffee opened his eyes, and scrambled to his feet, shoving books off of him, trying to ignore the protests of his banged up body.
When he looked up, the Mewman had her wand raised toward him, firing a green blast—
…
Queen Sun watched the half-breed brat fall back to the ground, lifeless, with eyes wide open and blacked out, snout slightly left gaping, small fangs showing.
The monarch's blue eyes switched to the wand. At first it seemed fine, at first it seemed to have worked.
And then the wand shook in her hand, vibrating wildly, until butterflies made of glowing light burst out of it, their color shifting from green to pale pink, and they flew back around Toffee, rapidly spinning around the boy.
Sun swore, but the light butterflies remained, and soon dove straight into Toffee's chest. They seamlessly pierced and disappeared into him, making his eyes glow white for a moment, and then he woke up with a gasp.
…
Sitting up, Toffee hungrily sucked in air, trying to figure out what had just happened. If the Mewman had just knocked him unconscious, why did he feel so desperate to breathe?
With a new spike of alarm, Toffee realized he didn't have the queen in his sights. He found her soon enough, and was grateful she wasn't again firing a blast of green straight into his face before he could react. But she looked down at him with a terrible rage and dark disappointment clouding her expression.
"I told you it wouldn't work," Glossayrck said, just appearing out of thin air at Queen Sun's side. "You can't suck the lifeforce out of him, you cannot absorb his immortality enchantment; Eclipsa took those threats into account, she tried to be very thorough with this spell—"
"You…you want immortality?" Toffee asked, blankly staring up at the Mewman. Somehow this surprised and confused him enough to override his fear for the moment. Or maybe his emotions were hitting such a feverish point, he was now coming straight out the other side feeling numb and blank and used up.
"Hold your tongue about things beyond your pitiful understanding, beast!" The queen snarled at him, and Toffee flinched, recoiling back, feeling fear take him again. He remained crouched on the floor, terrified and homesick.
"A lot of people want immortality," Glossayrck said, his voice mild.
Toffee scowled, and seized on his rising anger (it was better than fear). "I don't! I just want to go home!" Then the boy crumpled, feeling his anger leave as fast as it came, and desperation and grief come to choke him instead. "Glossayrck, please. I just—"
"Nothing can be done, Toffee," Glossyarck said, looking the young monster in the eye. "You can scream for it all you want—and this is not wrong for you to do; you are a child, you have every right to demand to go home…but it's a demand that can never be met. You cannot go back to your original time. This is a fact, as absolute as your father's death."
Toffee's breathing grew very harsh, labored. He stood back up, looking at Glossyarck with growing horror in his eyes. He shook, his claws shook, even when he curled them into fists, they wouldn't stop shaking. The boy's horrified eyes slowly shifted into a glare, and they blurred with tears dripping down his face.
"Don't…don't…t-talk about my—don't talk about my dad," Toffee finally said in a low scrape of a voice. He knew there was more he wanted to say, but that was the first to spill out. "You…you can't talk about my dad…what the hell do you know about him…you horrible…useless…heartless—"
Toffee snatched up one of the books that had fallen on top of him, and threw it as hard as he could at Glossayrck. Of course, the old man floated out of the way.
"If you're not gonna help me, then just go away!" The young monster screamed at him, crying harder now. "I hate you!"
Queen Sun's eyes impassively darted between the two.
"You heard him, Glossayrck," the Mewman said. "You may leave us."
He carried no emotion, but Glossayrck still favored Toffee with a look. The boy's chest still heaved with crying, and the glare still burned in his eyes.
Glossayrck bowed to Sun. "As you wish, my queen."
And then he was gone. Just like that, back into thin air.
Toffee stared at the space where Glossayrck had been; the one familiar face from home...now the only person he had left from home—
His knees threatened to buckle, but the half-monster fought the urge to collapse. He still breathed harshly, and now glared at the queen, trying to swallow his fear. There was still the wand; as impossible as it seemed to reach, if he could just get a hold of it, maybe he could make it take him home...surely it could do that, everyone was wrong to suggest that it couldn't, that nothing could be done, they had to be wrong…
With enough of a tense quiet finally passing, Toffee was able to calm down enough to try to remember what he and the other children at the temple had been taught about fighting and defense. He took a stance and readied himself. Toffee did not think there was anything else to do but try direct force to get the wand now. The queen was watching him too closely; he couldn't catch her off guard the same way he managed last time. He couldn't even fathom how to try outsmarting her. All the boy could think was he had to try to fight her for it now; if he could even manage to get one claw tip on the wand, it might give him all the advantage he sorely needed. Toffee remembered when he first held the wand, the Mewman knights it slayed to defend him. He tried to ignore the horror of that memory, and just remind himself that it had worked for him then; it could work for him again. (This was all the reasoning of an eight-year-old caught in emotional turmoil, and knowing he had no real help in sight.)
Toffee didn't dare take his eyes off the Mewman right now, but he thought of wherever the hell he was now; it seemed like a lab, actually. He could try to use the environment, try to find a makeshift weapon, knock stuff over in distraction, to impede her...but, it was a lab, with what seemed like a lot of bottles of unknown substance. While it could be useful to mess with them, it could also be disastrous. He remembered his mother warn him to mind the bottled potions and chemicals in the lab she shared at the temple with dad, as they could be dangerous. (Toffee tried to squash the anger, grief, and desperate longing the memory of Eclipsa inspired in him.) If only he recognized anything Sun had here, what to avoid, what he could use; but the boy couldn't identify any of them. He didn't think he was desperate enough to risk breaking something that might explode the very room they were in, or start some other terrible reaction beyond what he could withstand. (This was also the reasoning of an eight-year-old child not used to recently granted immortality.)
It did not help that Queen Sun's cold blue eyes looked down at him, watching him so closely, considering, calculating. It did not make him feel free to look away for even a moment; nor did it help with his fear. Her watchful blue eyes were unnerving. It left him with a sense of no escape, and no hope for catching her off guard with anything this time. Toffee's heart pounded, and he did his best not to crack under her gaze.
The boy flinched and raised his arms to block when she suddenly raised her wand—but her blast hit the floor in between them, leaving behind a short sword clattering to the ground. He stared at it warily, not lowering his arms from their block, expecting the conjured sword to float up and attack him, or to sprout out some terrible form of animal magic from its hilt.
He heard the queen move, and Toffee's eyes frantically darted back up to her, he couldn't let her out of his sight—
But Sun was only tying her blue hair back up, adjusting every strand back into place.
"Toffee," she said, and he jolted, somehow more disturbed than satisfied to hear her use his actual name, for what seemed like the first time. He had detested being called beast, but something about her using his name didn't feel much better. Something in her voice still made him uneasy.
"If you're intent on trying to fight me, there you go," she said, taking her time fixing her hair, shrugging a shoulder at the conjured weapon. "I'm curious to see if you can touch me even once with that sword."
Sheer rage enveloping him, Toffee burst forward, snatching up the sword and slashing it forward with an inarticulate screaming, shrieking roar of hate. So what if the Mewman was playing with him? So what if she said that because she knew he could never lay a claw on her, that he was that weak compared to her? So what, so what—he would cut her to ribbons, he would make her pay, he didn't care she was far stronger, he would—
Shooting forward with the sword, Toffee missed. The queen sidestepped him and swept her leg back, then kicked him hard in the stomach in one swift, brutal movement that threw him down to the floor with a sickening crack. He bounced on the floor, lost the grip on his weapon, and eventually skidded to a halt, crying out in pain, his eyes squeezed shut and burning with a fresh wave of agonized tears. His world was reduced to how everything in his body hurt and the terrible noises he was making because of that. His trembling arms reflexively gathered over his battered abdomen, useless. The young monster started wetly coughing uncontrollably, aggravating the fire in his body even more; and though every inch of him protested it, he rolled off his back and onto his side, where it was a little easier to cough, where the wetness could spill out instead of pool in his maw.
"Of course I'll fight back," said Queen Sun, and at her voice, Toffee curled up tighter, shaking. (She hit so hard.) "And you're welcome to try as long as you can stay conscious."
Toffee growled lowly, and slowly opened his eyes. He saw blood, on the floor, around his maw. He began to sit up, groaning, trying to wipe off some of the blood and tears off his face with one claw, while the other still gripped his stomach. He tried to catch his breath, though now breathing really hurt. The monster struggled to stand, and looked around for where his sword had fallen.
Finding it, he stumbled for the weapon, and carefully picked it up one-handed, while his other hand still gripped his wounded stomach. The sword hung limply at his side, and now Toffee felt more keenly the weight of it.
He had to raise his weapon. Toffee thought he should use both of his hands again. It took him two tries before he managed to get both trembling hands around the sword hilt and leave his throbbing stomach alone.
Sword raised, Toffee tried to get his hands to still and stop shaking. He tried to remember everything Eclipse had taught him about sword fighting. (He tried not to think of how much he wanted his mother after again remembering her so directly. He had to focus on the fight.)
Toffee hadn't managed to fully compose himself when the Mewman darted forward, a blade of energy bursting from her wand and forming a sword-shape, with the wand itself acting as the hilt. The young monster struggled to react in time—
She was too tall, she looked so big, looming, towering
—and all he managed to do was raise his arms and barely block her strike with his weapon, but the shock from the block painfully ran up his arms. And he did not stand his ground; her strike still forced him back, though it did not make him fall.
The queen kept striking, fast and hard. Toffee struggled to block, trapped in defense, until finally her blade of energy slid through and struck his shoulder. While it made him cry out, he also realized that her spelled weapon didn't cut, but batter and burn and sting.
The young monster slowed after that strike, and he tried to get back to his previous speed. But the queen took full advantage—or likely held back less—and rapidly struck again and again, Toffee failing to dodge or block. Eventually it just became a pained blur to the boy, only broken up by the sound of his body finally crashing back to the ground.
Panting, wheezing, Toffee managed to shakily stand back up, using his sword planted in the ground for support. At least he hadn't dropped his weapon; he actually had it choked in a death grip now, his claws had only tightened uselessly around the hilt with every hit he took.
As soon as he felt able, Toffee didn't even think; he just struck forward with the sword, growling, even if every part of his body still hurt. Queen Sun deflected his every attempt, unless she dodged it.
"You do have some training with a sword," the Mewman observed, her voice detached, as she deflected another strike. "It's remained common enough for royalty to be trained in the art; I wonder if this is something Eclipsa shared with you…"
Growing even more frustrated with his failure and the queen's power, growing angrier at the mention of his mother—and with Sun reading the situation accurately enough, he had learned about sword fighting mostly from Eclipsa—the young monster shot forward with a greater burst of speed and aggression. Again the queen dodged, and Toffee's momentum kept him going, exposing his back to her.
Toffee screamed as what felt like fire slashed across his back, and his legs wavered. He started to fall.
Desperate, furious, the boy managed to stay on his feet, and twist back around and stab toward the queen again—
Her sword was faster, it was going to hit, he couldn't dodge or block it, it was going to hit his—he closed his eyes in time, but Toffee still shrieked when her blade struck across one of them.
Her next attack sent him flying, and he cried out when he felt his body smash itself against something hard, and could only groan when the impact sent him crumpling to the floor. He dropped his weapon, his eyes still squeezed shut. One of them throbbed terribly where the queen hit it, though he dimly felt it was swelling up like a black eye, he knew what a black eye felt like. Toffee had gotten little ones in scraps with other kids back home; and bigger ones, worse ones during some of the Mewman raids on temple grounds. This black eye would be one of the bigger ones, the worse ones.
From where he lay broken on the ground, again Toffee was tempted to stay down; his body did not want to move anymore. The young monster's jaw clenched, fighting with himself.
Get up—
I can't—
Have to—
I CAN'T—
Finally his battered mind registered the sound of the queen's footsteps, and his claws dug into the floor, feeling anger, hate, fear, every foul feeling wash over and threaten to drown him.
GET UP—
I can't do it anymore!
She's coming, the Mewman is coming, and she's gonna—
Mom, I want Mom—I want my Dad—MOM—
THEY'RE GONE!
The footsteps grew louder, and Toffee…then Toffee realized the queen may not be surprised if he did pass out now.
The boy felt something inside him, somewhere inside the throbbing wound it felt like his entire body had become—he felt something inside him grow very still and quiet. And then Toffee stopped fighting for the moment, and gave into the exhaustion and pain, slumping down. His claws stopped digging into the floor. Toffee waited, eyes still closed.
The Mewman's footsteps stopped, and Toffee could smell her nauseating perfume. He remained limp and laid out on the ground, eyes shut. The picture of someone beaten into unconsciousness.
Toffee felt the tip of her boot nudge his side, and he shoved down the instinct to recoil at the sore ache she was prodding and irritating, drew more on his body's exhaustion and pain to keep him down and still. He felt that foot draw back—he heard it keep moving backward—he grew certain the queen was drawing back to kick him again, to harshly make sure he was unconscious—
The young monster, summoning what energy and strength he had left, snapped up and sunk his fangs into the queen's other leg. If all of his sensibilities were not consumed with pain and emotional upheaval, Toffee would have been more repulsed by the taste of blood and flesh and bone in the course of battle. Now, he was just focused on attacking his tormentor.
She did not cry out, nor fall. Toffee thought the queen stumbled only a little.
He tried to bring up his claws and dig them into her flesh; he tried to twist, break her leg; he tried to pull away, rip a part of her leg off—
But he felt a familiar brilliant light against his eyelids, and felt a terribly familiar force throw him back, and again he crashed to the floor.
Toffee groaned from where he lay on his back. Grimacing, he rolled over, so that he could rise up on his knees and hands. He could still fight, he could still—
What felt like vines sprang up around him, lifting him up and entangling him, trapping him, and a heightened spark of terror and panic ignited within Toffee. The last time the queen had him in vines, their thorns had skewered him, and he would have died for good if not for Eclipsa's immortality spell. Toffee squirmed and shouted. He tried biting at what held him. Nothing helped, he was again trapped. Would he be skewered again?...
"You're more clever than I gave you credit for," the queen said, and Toffee raised his head, panting, glaring through one eye, the other well and truly swollen up—then his remaining eye widened.
The Mewman had transformed like Eclipsa could do. She had the wings, and the extra arms, though her color was different. He realized the vines that trapped him were different from before; they weren't vines at all—this was her webbing, like what his mother had when she was in this state. Wrapped around her leg where he had bit her was webbing too, forming a makeshift bandage.
"Perhaps your half-breed brain is more Mewman than I thought," Queen Sun said, and Toffee felt the anger burn in his throat.
"Shut up!" He shouted at her, again struggling madly with the webbing. It still wouldn't let him go.
The queen scowled, raised a hand, and shot a stream of webbing that covered Toffee's maw, muffling his angry and now terrified protests.
"I would've thought by now your insolence would have quieted somewhat," she said, her voice cool. "But you're a stubborn little beast, aren't you?"
Toffee's swearing was muffled by the webbing, and the rest of it that bound him, no matter how hard he fought, remained tight.
"And with a filthy mouth too," the queen scoffed, watching the boy struggle. "You monsters have no manners at all."
Toffee kept fighting, but eventually he moved slower and slower. Finally he slumped forward, breathing harshly, and unable to keep his eye open any longer, his head feeling too heavy. He was so tired.
"Done? Good." Queen Sun said, and Toffee felt the webbing whip away as quickly as it had come, and he fell forward, only to flinch when he felt the queen roughly catch his arm.
After the severely one-sided fight, just the queen's touch ignited Toffee's fear and one last burst of adrenaline. He tried to get away from her. The boy clawed and struggled and snapped his jaws at her, trying to bite her again. The Mewman hissed, and wrapped one strong hand tight around his throat, choking him. It was then Toffee finally opened his eye, and realized the queen was no longer transformed; she was wingless and with only two arms again. The webbing remained wrapped around her bitten leg, bandaging it.
"Enough, I'm done attacking you," Sun said, her voice unfeeling. "Understand? I'm taking you to your room now. There's no point in struggling, you're in no position to do that."
She squeezed his throat tight one more time, making his eye screw shut and his jaw clench. Then she let go, and Toffee slumped over, coughing and gasping.
Sun grabbed his arm again and yanked him forward, and the young monster struggled not to trip over his own feet.
Opening his eye again, he saw the queen pull out a pair of scissors. Uncomprehending, he watched her move the scissors down—and then a hole in space began to tear where the scissor blade went.
Toffee gaped. Were those—he had heard of them, but they were rare, and he never heard of a monster possessing one, he had never seen real dimensional scissors before—
Watching the hole in space rip open, the young monster began to feel sick, remembering the time-space portal Eclipsa had thrown him through recently. When Sun began to pull him through the new hole in space, Toffee resisted, caught up in that terrible memory, an overwhelming fear swallowing him—no he couldn't do another portal again not again not again—
"Idiot beast, do you wish to stay here?" Queen Sun hissed. And then with a roll of her eyes and with seemingly very little effort on her part, she yanked Toffee forward, and it happened so fast, he had no time to give a terrified scream.
He was thrown forward, there was a strangle crackle in the air, he saw a flash of swirling light and color—then that was all gone, once he crashed down. Stomach churning uncomfortably, the young monster sat up, and realized the floor was completely different from where he last had been.
Trying to calm down, Toffee looked back, and saw Queen Sun on the other side of the portal. "A physician will come for you later. You will have some time to rest—I suggest you take it," the Mewman said, her voice curt. "I will call for you in due time." And then she and the portal were gone, and Toffee was left entirely alone.
In the first few seconds of that absolute isolation, his current situation sunk in deeper. Toffee doubled over, vomiting up bile and blood, the latter more due to the injuries he had sustained, rather than his mounting fear resulting in the former.
Scrubbing the bile and blood off his maw, Toffee looked around. He was in a small, tidy, plain bedroom now. It was connected to an even smaller restroom, its door left open. The bedroom had—well, a bed; and a shelf of drawers. Again, there were no windows. There was another door, closed.
Although thinking it was probably futile, Toffee dragged himself to that door, and tried opening it. Locked, just as he thought.
Sighing, Toffee rubbed at his black eye, grimacing. If Eclipsa were here, she would tell him to stop that, and then run cool water over a towel and lay it on his black eye, and then she'd—
The young monster sobbed, hugging himself, until his claws dug angrily into his upper arms. His jaw clenched, and he wiped away his tears with a frustrated claw. Toffee didn't want to think about his mother right now, not when she made his heart and head ache. (Not when she had ditched him like this.)
Toffee went to the bed he had spotted earlier, coughing on the way, and feeling at least a little grateful he didn't hack up anymore blood. The young monster crawled under the covers, and finally felt some relief when he stopped moving, stopped fighting, just lay there. Toffee soon fell asleep, too tired to think, to dream.
(Too tired to remember Eclipsa and his dead father and the temple and home.)
…
Queen Sun waved the wand, and part of the half-breed's blood floated up from the floor, and into an empty vial she had set aside. She bottled it, put it away for later analysis, and left the lab to deal with other issues surrounding Toffee's sudden arrival.
She had to give the actual order to the physician, possibly some explanation, possibly not. She had to make her excuses for keeping the half-breed in some proximity—he had shown some potential in combat, she would just keep him as a conscript. And it wouldn't entirely be an excuse; she was not lying when she judged his warrior's potential. Toffee certainly—and aggravatingly enough—showed more fire than Moon. If Sun intended the half-breed as a personal resource, she could certainly use him for more than one purpose, use him as much as possible until the appropriate time.
She had to do more research and run more spell simulations. She had to develop further what plan she was brainstorming.
The queen needed to ensure that Toffee could be of use to her. That he could give her what she wanted.
A/N: So for this fic, went with the idea that the apparent life/magic draining spell Toffee used in the season 2 finale was something used against him by someone else before. Also drew on the visual of those light pink butterflies that had surrounded Toffee losing an arm and then growing it back in the season 1 finale (they were there when he lost the arm, there while he was on the ground maimed, but then gone when he actually regenerated the arm, if I recall correctly). Tbh that's a detail that makes me suspect Toffee is a mixed race member of the Butterfly family; but it is a kinda vagueish detail I think could be relevant, and hope it ends up tying into something later/will get some explanation later. With school semester done, I hope to update this AU fic more. Thanks for reading! I would appreciate hearing any comments/feedback on this. Also: OMG THAT SEASON 3 PROMO WAS FANTASTIC, I'M SO EXCITED.