A/N: Hello, you lovely folks! Thank you so much for all the support in the last couple of chapters, especially after several months of silence, it was wonderful to see that people were still reading this! It might be another couple of weeks before the chapter after this is posted (then again, it might be only a week, who knows) because the next chapter is one I am super excited for, but I'm struggling to make it live up to the version in my head!
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Chapter 10
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As they approach the castle tower door, Toto shrinks down and lands on Haru's shoulder. "This could be a trap," he says
"I'd honestly be surprised if it wasn't one," Haru replies. She gives the door a gentle nudge. It's not accompanied by any explosions or monsters or buckets falling down from above, so that's a fairly auspicious start, at least. Even so, the interior is definitely not what Haru expected.
Toto peers into the dungeon-esque lit corridor. "Well," he says after a dubious beat, "he's certainly done his research."
Pale stone walls stretch out before them, gritted and rough-hewn, and the floor beneath is earthen, scattered with sand. Haru's encountered these walls only once in her life, but the memory has stuck with her, over a decade later.
"You know, the Cat King cheated with his maze!" Haru hollers, hoping – assuming – the Bedlam is listening in. "This doesn't exactly install me with a lot of confidence that you're gonna play fairly!"
"Were you in any doubt that he was going to cheat?" Toto asks as Haru steps gingerly into the building.
"No, but it was nice to dream." Haru comes to a fork in the corridor, and picks the one the orb's string trails off into. There are no torches or lamps, but the interior is lit with a gentle, omnipresent glow. It would be almost pleasingly atmospheric if it weren't for the ominous rumble in the distance.
Haru tries not to think about the kind of monsters labyrinths are usually occupied by.
"Haru," Toto begins, "about what happened back with Baron..."
Haru takes a left and waits for Toto to finish the sentence.
"He didn't tell us what he'd done until later. If he had... well, I'm not sure he'd have listened, but we'd have tried to stop him."
"And when he did finally tell you?"
"We gave him an earful – both Muta and I."
Haru chuckles. She glances through an open door on her right and passes it by. "And I thought the only way you and Muta would ever agree on anything would be if you were Bedlam puppets. Should I be worried?"
"There aren't many things we put our bickering aside for," Toto admits, "but you are one of them. While Muta distracted Baron, I came to check on you. I saw you vanish into the Bedlam's world, followed after you, and... well, I wasn't quite so helpful as I'd hoped."
Haru recalls the first crack in the Bedlam's world, of his strange distraction all those days ago and Other Hiromi's sudden warning. "You were more helpful than I think you know," she says. "I think you unintentionally gave me the first heads up that not everything was as it seemed."
They delve deeper into the maze; there's no way all this could possibly fit in the castle tower, but Haru doubts the Bedlam cares much for things like physics.
"Do you wish it had been real?" Toto asks suddenly. The question itself is abrupt, seemingly out of nowhere, but his voice is soft. Almost as if he doesn't want the answer. "The Bedlam and his world?"
"It's kind of moot," Haru replies. "Turns out it wasn't real."
"But if it had been?"
Haru falters. She turns her head aside, throwing her gaze down an open door to one side. "I... It's..." Her eyes widen. "There's someone in there."
"Haru–"
But before he can impart another plea for caution, Haru has slipped inside. She only makes it a handful of steps before she freezes. She makes a motion with her hand, as if searching for something to steady her, and in the end has to use Baron's cane.
"No..."
"He couldn't work out what was wrong with her," Toto says gently. He hops carefully down onto the hand holding the cane, his gaze drawn irrevocably to the abandoned puppet. "Why she went... off script, as it were and attempted to warn you away. In the end, he discarded her, but I never knew where to until..."
"Hiromi..."
"She was only ever a puppet–"
"And you were only ever a stone statue," Haru shoots back. "If we're splitting hairs."
"The Bedlam created her because he knew your attachment to the real Hiromi would draw you deeper into his world."
Haru waves him off her, and crumples down to kneel beside the remains of Other Hiromi.
The puppet lies like a discarded rag doll, slumped in the corner and with unseeing button eyes. Half her right leg is missing, and the open wound reveals her to be made of nothing more than cobwebs. Like macabre stuffing.
"Haru, we need to go," Toto prompts softly. "Muta and Baron–"
"I know!" she retorts. "Trust me, I know! I just need... I need a moment, okay?" Other Hiromi had been absent since her initial warning, but Haru had only thought... had believed it had simply been due to her own busy schedule. She'd never imagined...
Shakily, she tucks Baron's cane in Other Hiromi's lifeless hands. Even her fingers feel like that of a stuffed doll, all pretence at life discarded.
"What are you–"
"She'll need it if she ever wakes up," Haru says. She doesn't mean to, but her voice quavers. She isn't sure if it is that, or the clear stubbornness which causes Toto to back down. It will be enough, Haru thinks. It has to be.
She rises uneasily back to her feet – if Toto thinks it would be easier if she still had the cane, he's wise enough not to comment – and collects back up the remains of Baron's hat and the silk orb. And as she steps out into the corridor, the peace is shattered by the arrival of what had once been Other Muta.
He fills the entire corridor, shoulders hunched, head bowed, like a bear, or a bull in a china shop. What had once been fur is now cloth, a woollen fabric with seams along his joints and muzzle – and only a stitched line for a mouth.
And there, in place of one of his button eyes, is an orb.
He lumbers towards Haru.
And Haru steps back.
He should be adorable, that's the thought that keeps rattling through her mind. Built like a stuffed toy, like the marshmallow cushion she has teased him so often as, and yet there is something palpably, gut-wrenchingly wrong about him.
He lurches, and his body sways weightlessly. His paws though...
His paws slam into the floor like sacks of sand. Haru feels the tremour ripple through the ground, feels the weight behind them. One good smack from those paws, and Haru isn't sure she'll rise again any time soon. They're not even clawed, but they don't need to be.
She steps back again. Just for good measure.
Other Muta steps forward.
Toto leans his beak to Haru's ear. "Haru, the orb–"
"I know." She takes another step away.
"We need it–"
"I know."
Other Muta nears, and Haru takes the only sensible course of action to her.
She flees.
Toto rises to the air, flying alongside her as best he can in the enclosed space of the corridor. "If I go for the eye–" he begins.
"He'll turn you into a pancake!" Haru retorts. She takes a right. A left. Another right.
"I'm fast!"
"And indoors!" she reminds him. It was right, wasn't it? God, she can feel Other Muta's footsteps through her own soles. "You don't have the space to get any proper speed!"
"What other choice do we have?"
"This!" Haru cries, and she turns into a dead end.
Dammit. Guess it was left, after all.
Other Muta pauses at the corner. He sways in that uncanny puppet manner, head bobbing and limbs lax.
"There's still time to admit defeat," croons the Bedlam. Haru can't see him, but the voice drifts through the walls. The anger has dissipated, and now he sounds more like Baron than ever. Calm. Reasonable. "Take the buttons, Haru, and your friends can go free."
"You say that like it's a generous offer," Haru says.
Other Muta pads towards them.
"Surely your soul is a reasonable price for the safety of your friends," says the Bedlam. "You've risked your life so many times over in your time with the Bureau, what makes this so different?"
Haru edges away until her back hits the wall.
"I can only presume," the Bedlam continues, "that it's because you never really believed you'd have to follow through. You thought you'd always find a loophole, a way out before it got to that point."
Haru sets a foot against the wall, hands splayed across the brickwork. In the fingers of her right she still holds her penknife.
"It's all performative, isn't it? A show, to make yourself look selfless," and his voice is still so akin to Baron's, Haru's breath hitches, even knowing the Bedlam's true nature. Other Muta raises a paw, ready to strike. "Because when it comes to it, to be truely selfless, you still look out for number one."
Other Muta's paw comes slamming down, but Haru has already pushed herself away. She twists as the paw thunders into the wall, and slices at the strings puppeteering it.
The other paw is coming for her, but Toto is already on the case. He tears his talons through the strings and now both front paws are slumped across the floor.
The remaining puppet strings are pulled taut, but the weight of the untethered front paws make any substantial movement impossible, anchoring him in place.
"Or maybe," Haru says, "I'm just smarter than you give me credit for. Toto, if you wouldn't mind...?" She nods to the remaining strings. "I don't want to take the orb while he's still... you know."
Toto doesn't argue about Other Muta's alliance, not this time, and begins to cleave the threads that are still in play.
"Or maybe Baron was right to throw you out," the Bedlam hisses. His voice cracks, distorts. "Maybe he knew that your blindness to your own mortality would one day get you killed."
Other Muta collapses down as the last string is severed. He almost now looks... at peace.
"Oh, please," Haru retorts. "Like I'm the first mortal to ignore the fact I'll die one day. I'm not special." She steps across to the inanimate puppet. "Most of humanity is good at that until it slaps them in the face. We'd go mad, otherwise."
"I mean, just look at the mess you've made," the Bedlam continues, undaunted by Haru's reply. "You tried playing Bureau all by yourself, and you're going to get your friends killed in the crossfire."
Haru shakes her head, and gently pries the orb loose from Other Muta. She does her best not to tear the fabric, but the orb is embedded into the socket so thoroughly there's no way to hide the damage.
"No one's getting killed yet," she mutters, and cracks open the sphere.
Muta hugs her before he's even landed properly on the ground, paws – real, furred paws – embracing her and she leans with relief into the hold.
"Good to see yer again, Chicky. Never doubted you'd win that for a moment."
Haru chuckles and pulls away from the hug. "Not even a little bit?"
"Not even a little bit," he lies bare-facedly. "Not even when yer ran, or when yer came to the dead end – yer should've gone left if yer wanted the exit–"
"I know," Haru groans. "I panicked."
"Yer were so close."
"Don't remind me."
"Would I?"
"Yes."
Toto lands on Muta's shoulder and Haru doesn't miss the passing smile that flitters across his beak. "It's good to see you're not dead."
"Yeah, you too, beaky." Muta glances back at the lifeless form of Other Muta and shudders. "Mr Buttons needs his eyes checked if that's meant to be me."
"Oh, I don't know. I think he got your likeness just perfect."
"Why, you–"
"And there goes the heartfelt moment," Haru sighs as she steps between them. "Come on, you two; we've got bigger fish to fry. Baron, remember?"
Muta grumbles and steps back from Toto, but the disgruntlement doesn't fade. "I hope yer know we gave him an earful when we learnt what he did," he says.
"Toto's already told me he didn't run any of it by you first."
Muta grunted and sidestepped by Other Muta. "We wouldn't've let him."
"We still tried to stop him when he did tell us," Toto says.
"Yeah, but by that point it looks like yer were pretty deep in this world."
Haru begins to step around Other Muta, and then falters.
"Which, given all that had happened, was quite understandable," Toto reassures.
Haru can't stop staring at the torn stitching where the orb had once been on Other Muta's face. One button eye stares unseeingly out, like a lopsided cyclops, and her hand rests atop his brow. Her fingers brush the dark spot on his ear, the mirror side to the real Muta's.
"Hey, Chicky, yer coming? The exit's this way!"
"Coming!"
She takes Baron's top hat, which she has carried thus far, and tilts it across Other Muta's face. She sets it at a jaunty angle, so it hides the scar where button, then orb, had once been.
Like that, she can almost pretend he's whole.
"Chicky!"
"I said I'm coming!" She sets off after the others, where Muta and Toto are lingering on the threshold of the building. Beyond, the Sanctuary's courtyard is as cobweb-filled – if not more so – as when she had left it. The orb from Other Muta unwinds in Haru's hands – as Toto's had – and the thread leads straight into the Bureau.
Naturally.
"So," Muta says, "what's the plan?"
"You're not gonna like it," Haru promises.
"Do y'know how many of Baron's plans I've heard over the years? Yer can't say anything I haven't heard before."
"I need you two to stay out here."
"I hate it."
"Told you."
Toto doesn't respond immediately, but Haru can read the unhappy quirk of his beak. "This... is a plan, isn't it, Haru?"
"What else is it going to be?"
"A self-sacrifice."
"Toto, if I wanted to be self-sacrificing, I'd have taken the Bedlam up on his offer in the first place. Trust me, I intend for everyone to have a happily ever after." She pauses. "Apart from the Bedlam. He can go choke."
Muta snorts, but Toto still doesn't look impressed. He does, however, look a little mollified. "I still don't see what is to be gained by you going on alone," he says eventually. "This whole fiasco started because you were separated."
"I know."
"We are stronger together than we are apart–"
"I know," Haru says, and she smiles softly. "But so is the Bedlam. If we're divided, so is his attention."
"Yer want us to be the distraction."
"He can't watch us both at the same time," Haru says. "We can use that to our advantage." When Toto still doesn't look convinced, she adds, "Just because I'm going in by myself doesn't mean I'm alone. This time, I know I have back-up."
"Be careful," Toto says. "Even if you win, there's no guarantee the Bedlam will honour the deal."
"Even if I win?" Haru winks. "I've come this far, Toto; I don't plan on failing now."
As she steps up to the Bureau's double doors, she pauses.
"Just... be ready to run, okay? I have a feeling we're gonna need a quick exit."