[PRP] So Bitter the Taste of Betrayal [Sleepless/Bitter End]

[Maxx D]

"I know," she said, with a bitter smile that her journey had culminated in this bizarre coincidence. "In the middle of a storm, in a cave we just happened to duck into? It's ridiculous. You thought it would be so hard to find."  

[Jun D]

”No!” Sleepless cried, heedless in her bafflement, falling upon the root, scrabbling at the dirt around it, ”I mean it shouldn’t exist!”

Uh oh.  

[Maxx D]

"What?" she snarled, eyes narrowed, feeling altogether too much like her old self all of a sudden.  

[Jun D]

She froze, suddenly recalling herself, now that that old, dangerous edge was back in Bitter End’s voice.

”That is…” she started, then faltered. The jig was up.  

[Maxx D]

She started to circle Sleepless like a predator, teeth bared and body poised to leap. "You - lied to me. This whole thing - this whole thing - was a lie after all?" Her voice was low but steady, almost forced through her teeth. "So when I said you were a fraud back then, I was right? It was all a TRICK?!"  

[Jun D]

A sick, sick feeling stirred in her gut, a sick, strange feeling that was half-fear, half-guilt. She stared down at the glowing, mocking root, and felt that terrible feeling solidify into...something very much like resentment.

”Look...okay…YOU’RE CRAZY,” the words exploded in a sort of petulant howl, ”I WAS TERRIFIED. WHO GOES OUT TO FIND A WITCH TO MURDER THEIR EX?! YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO KILL ME!!! IF I’D KNOWN YOU’D DRAG ME OUT ON THIS INTERMINABLE JOURNEY, I’D RATHER HAVE JUST DIED THEN.”  

[Maxx D]

"Interminable journey..." She repeated, mockingly, though it was unclear as to whether she meant that jibe at Sleepless or herself at that point. "I thought we were..." and she bit her lip, hating to sound so childish, "...having fun together. I thought - I thought we were friends." She spit out the last word, hissing the rest. "I thought for once, just for once - I had a friend. Now I see I was wrong about that. Of course."

Bitter End turned away, a shudder running through her shoulders.  

[Jun D]

Okay, no. Now it was mostly guilt.

Why should I be feeling guilty? the lingering dregs of resentment piped, all along, I’ve been the prisoner…

But there was Bitter End, a lone figure against the dark cave mouth, looking nothing like a captor at all.

Just a doe.  

[Maxx D]

She stood stoic, facing the pitch-black tunnel they came through. "Of course. Who would want to willingly be with me? It was foolish - foolish and egotistical to ever have presumed that. I'm so weak. Insignificant. Who cares how I feel when I brought it upon myself? Now I just - I'll just be disappointed with myself, that's all. Friend." She repeated to herself. "I was stupid to think I had a friend."  

[Jun D]

Guilt. Resentment. Guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt. And yet.

Sleepless scowled, glaring down at the root. Bitter End wasn’t the victim here. She was the violent one, the unreasonable one, the unruly doe who’d invaded her sanctuary, trampled her garden and dragged her off for a curse - dragged her right off to find this damnable root.

That shouldn’t exist!

Obsessively, she began to dig into the soil, a grim rooting with both hooves till the mass of the mysterious tuber was out in the air, the rain washing more and more of the mud off the glowing flesh that she scraped -

- wait.

...It wasn’t glowing.

It was just white.

It was huge. And it was white.

But it wasn’t any Swamp Witch Root.

“It’s a radish.”  

[Maxx D]

She was deathly tempted to look over her shoulder, but since she was staunchly not-crying right now, she couldn't bring herself too. Also, it felt like the sight of a radish would sting really, really hard. She was feeling bitter and stupid enough as it was.

"Well, what did we expect." She said, tartly. "It was never real to begin with. So that's it - whatever. It's a radish. It's the Swampmother's cosmic joke upon a couple of idiots in a cave thinking one thing or another about each other."  

[Jun D]

She stared mutely at the radish. A radish. She’d given herself up over a radish. Just some dumb carrot.

Slowly, she rose to her hooves, bedraggled with soil and mud and the ever-beating rain.  

[Maxx D]

"Forget it." This time she sounded almost tired and soft, spare that sharp turn of voice at the end of the statement. "I'll take you home. Forget any of this ever happened - it's for the best. Nobody needs to know about an epic misadventure that concluded with a radish." She started to move, shaking the droplets off as she walked back into the darkness.  

[Jun D]

A thousand things to say ran through her mind, but none reached her mouth. What more was there to be said?

Silently, Sleepless followed.

END