A/N: Apologies for the belated update! I thought I had posted the most recent writings but. apparently. I had not. oops. The next part should hopefully be sooner in the posting, but I'm juggling so many different writing projects atm we shall just have to wait and see!
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Chapter 7
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The world Baron and Muta enter is jarringly similar from the one they've left behind.
At least, for a moment.
The courtyard around them bears the same stone pillar in its centre, the same archway behind them, the same green-accented building of the Cat Bureau... It is almost identical, save for small, throwaway details that only someone who has spent decades living there would notice. One of the other buildings has the wrong number of windows; Muta's wicker chair is just a touch too tall; the postbox is just a shade too red.
Somehow, all these little changes feel less like errors, and more like... corrections, smoothing out the inconsequential flaws Baron had never noted until now.
It's uncanny, at least until the web springs up from the cobbled floor, seemingly out of nothing, and closes about them in an opaque sphere.
x
The Other Baron freezes and Haru twists her hands free. The immobilising reaction in her limbs have slackened, and she almost stumbles in surprise, only to be steadied by Other Muta's paw upon her shoulder.
Ah, right.
She'd almost forgotten the rest of the Other Bureau, and she tenses, bracing for the ensuing argument.
"I have to go home, Muta."
"I know, Chicky." He sounds different – tired, and Haru realises she can't remember the last time she heard Other Muta being anything but cheerfully upbeat. He looks drained now, slightly stooped like a puppet with its strings loosened. "Hey, birdbrain, we good to go?"
Other Toto tilts his head, watching something beyond the Bureau balcony windows. "There's two of them this time, enough to keep him occupied for longer this time, but not by much. If she's going, you'd better make it now."
Other Muta glances to the Other Baron. The Creation's head is tilted, as if caught mid-thought, but the brows continue to twitch. Occasionally a finger will flicker.
Haru is sure she sees the ghost of a smile catch on the corner of his lips.
"No time for dilly-dallying, Chicky; time to skedaddle," Other Muta prompts, and propels her in the direction of the Bureau doors.
Haru can't help it; she cranes her neck back to catch another glimpse of the Other Baron. "What's happening to him? It's not the same as my freezing, is it?"
"Nah," Other Muta dismisses. The doors swing shut behind them, closing off Haru's view. "He's just got too many plates in the air at once, and this one's taking all his focus."
"What plate – oh."
Between Toto's column and the archway out, there is a giant ball, seemingly woven of silk thread, or perhaps wool. At Haru's current diminished size, it could hold at least three of her comfortably, and even as she watches, more strands slither across the surface. Within, lights shimmer.
"What's that?"
"The reason you're getting outta here." Other Muta steers her towards the archway which will lead her back to her world. "But we ain't got long before – oh, sh–"
"GET BACK HERE!"
The Other Baron erupts through the Bureau doors, moving with unnatural speed with legs longer than Haru remembers. His face looks different – and not just with the unfamiliar rage – but not in any way Haru wants to get closer to see.
Haru tries to stumble to the archway, to her portal home, but Other Muta's paw on her shoulder holds her in place. The tiredness she'd seen earlier in him has vanished; back is that undaunted cheerfulness that now sets her nerves on edge. It feels artificial, in a way she'd never noticed before.
"Where do you think you're going, Chicky?"
She squirms in his grip, just enough to meet his uncanny smile. "Home, Muta, please–"
Her voice catches as she spots the threads, silver and sliver-thin, rising from him. Like silk, or cobwebs...
Or puppet strings.
She drops a hand into her bag, but the action is sluggish, struggling as another immobilising spell creeps through her – but now she can see the web she's snagged against, trapping her in place.
The Other Baron has slowed, the rage replaced by reassurance of his trapped companion prey, and yet there is still an ugliness to his emotions. "Do you really think you can just leave, Miss Haru? After all the time you've spent here? After all the effort I've put in?"
Only Haru's fingers are free, and they scrabble at the contents of her bag. "What are you?" she rasps through numbed lips.
"Why, I'm your friend, Miss Haru. I'm the Baron you wanted." He approaches, and his limbs grow long and thin – they had always been gaunt, but now they are beyond skeletal. His hands become nothing but claws. "Don't you recognise me?"
"I think I would remember wishing for this," she hisses, and her fingers find purchase on her penknife. She slices through the web mooring her hand. Her arm judders free and snaps more of the threads anchoring her, the knife severing what didn't immediately give, and she hears the not-Baron give an unholy screech.
She doesn't afford him a glance – she doesn't have the time and, anyway, she can clearly hear his frantic approach – and she sweeps her penknife up, cleaving the web binding Other Muta's paw.
His grip loosens, and Haru stumbles back. Just a few more steps – the archway home is so close – and her legs snag against more cobwebs. She slips. She sees Other Muta's paw come for her again – she slashes with the knife – misses – and finally she glimpses the terrible, furious form of the not-Baron, sunken face and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth –
Other Muta's paw snags the lapels of her coat. A smile – small and lopsided – ghosts across his face.
"Don't come back, Chicky."
And he pushes her through the archway.
Just before the portal swallows her up, she sees another burst of light from the silk sphere. Within, she glimpses two humanoid silhouettes, and then she is stumbling out onto into her world.
She spins around, but the doorway is already gone. Instead, her Sanctuary lies open before her, empty and quiet.
x
The Bedlam makes no effort to pull his façade back into shape after the mortal has gone.
What's the point? She's seen clearly past his mask; the time for pretty words has passed. Time to abandon the carrot, and pick up the stick.
He approaches his marionette, its form having fallen still the moment he'd dropped its strings. Inanimate. Lifeless without his puppeteering, as it should be. He plucks at its strings, and again finds no fault in his weaving.
How bizarre, then, that two of his creations should act out – first the best friend, and then the cat – when he has crafted them perfectly?
The Beldam waves a hand, and the web sphere vanishes, combining with that on the Bureau mantelpiece to be a singular prison. It sits on a small display stand, and from the outside it looks like a strangely clouded-over snowglobe.
For his own entertainment, the shadow is only one-sided; its occupants see clearly the show he puts on.
He paces the Bureau, frustration prickling at him.
"A fine mess of it you've made," his first captive calls. "What makes you think she'll come anywhere near this place after that tantrum?"
The Bedlam pauses before the pseudo-snowglobe and, with another wave of a hand, it clears enough for him to see its diminutive prisoners. As far as collections go, a complete Cat Bureau is a pretty find. "Why wouldn't she," he asks, "when I have such irresistible bait as yourselves?"
"She's smart!" the white cat snaps. "She'll run a mile now she knows what a monster you are."
The Bedlam's smile near cracks his face in two. "Just like she wouldn't, y'know," and the Bedlam's voice echoes the cat's, "just blindly trust some button-eyed doppelgangers, would she?"
Both felines flinch.
"If you're going to talk about someone," he continues, "best not to do it where their eyes are watching." He inclines his head. "It could be considered rather gauche." His gaze moves to the cat Creation. "No words, Baron? Perhaps you're wiser than your companions. After all, you are the one who warned her that love makes you reckless."
The Baron holds himself still, rage pooling in those eyes the Bedlam never could replicate. His gloved fingers are curled tightly around the crook of his cane.
"What's the matter?" The Bedlam alters his face back into a mockery of the Creation's. "Cat got your tongue? I watched quite a few of your adventures, you know, and I'm quite hurt by this silent treatment. You're not even going to offer one measly little 'you'll never get away with this' spiel?"
The Baron's face doesn't shift, but there comes the tell-tale stutter of breath, the betrayal of a thought surfaced and then smothered. After the day the Bedlam has had, suddenly this – the failure to bait one pathetic cat doll into a reaction – is the last straw.
"Or maybe you don't offer such trite threats because this is the nightmare scenario you worked so hard to avoid – and all for nought," the Beldam hisses. If he's had a bad day, he's going to make sure someone else has it worse. "The fear that she would sacrifice herself to save the likes of you. You pushed her away – and in doing so, only hastened her fate."
"What makes you so sure she will trade anything for us?" the Baron asks at last, his voice low and edged. "For me, after our last encounter?"
Finally.
The Bedlam tilts his head to better appraise the Creation. He notes all the ways he improved upon the original design – from the sharper cut of the suit, to the softened stripes beneath the eyes – perfect, save for the eyes.
Maybe if he'd gone with green buttons, his prey might have taken his offer.
"Do you want to know why your smart, sensible Haru fell for my world," he asks, "even with button-eyed doppelgangers? Why she couldn't see the web, until it was too late?" He meets the cat Creation's gaze head on, and marvels how easy he is to read with those eyes. "She was blind, Baron, because she wanted to be. Because she desperately wanted the lie I offered to be true." He smirks. "Because even an alternative version of you was better than nothing."
There — he sees it: the rage weakens, and grief flickers in the Baron's eyes.
"You made it easy, Baron," the Bedlam purrs. "Practically threw her into my arms."
"Not too easy though," the crow Creation adds. He doesn't bristle with rage, like the mortal cat, nor burn with the same intensity as the Baron. Part of that is surely from his longer stay in the Bedlam's cage, his anger spread out thinner, but there is still something pointedly calculated in his eyes. "She didn't seem so eager to throw away her soul for a chance to stay with you, even after all the time you've spent winning her over."
"A miscalculation," the Bedlam replies. "I let my temper get the better of me." Perhaps he should have played his part for longer, kept up his charade – but his attention had been divided by his intruders, and when he had come back to the matter at hand, his meal had been halfway to the archway, led by none other than one of his own puppets.
That's another dilemma...
He looks on his captives, two out of the three the baseline for his marionettes. For weeks, he had watched them, refining their doppelgangers – a little less of the arguing, a little more teamwork – and now, as he considers their blind rush into his world to save their friends, he sees his mistake.
He had made them too true to the originals. They care too much for Haru, enough that they would rebel against him, if it meant saving her.
It's a mistake he won't make again, but the damage is done for this trap. He doesn't have the time to weave them anew; the best he can do is make sure their strings are good and tight.
Before Haru returns, he will be sure to bind all his puppets with more web. Even if they don't want to play along, he can make sure they dance to his tune.
One problem down…