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[Even as Shadow Milk moves around to stand before Silent Salt, the taller Cookie does not meet his eyes. He stares somewhere above the man, ever distant. He thinks back to those days, where one by one the other soul jams grew distant from his own. His first instinct had been despair, believing his friends lost. The second was wrath, considering them traitors.

Neither was fully the truth.]

Before she became the Beast she is today, she struggled with her role. Happiness, she learned, was fleeting, and she was left to grapple with a constant failure to provide it to those that expected it of her.

She began to succumb to despair.

[His head tilts faintly, gaze sliding toward Shadow Milk in order to study his reaction. There is no reason to doubt Pavlova Cookie's words. Certainly not when White Lily trusted him so. But he has to know if Shadow Milk was aware of this.

He has to confirm if the thread was a common one.]

Does this sound familiar? The story, I mean.

Edited 2025-12-10 07:17 (UTC)

[He stops at his words. The gaze of the beholders narrow upon the man seated, and Shadow Milk clenches his jaw. Fingers tighten where they were clasped behind him. Of course he knows the story. Happiness is like a butterfly, she had said.]

[And here is Salt, the ever silent, the one who had left them to rot while preaching his Solidarity. Something dark rises in him for a moment, bile at the back of his throat. The shadows in the room grow, some begin to writhe. His words come out venomous.]

Are you here to mock me, Silent Salt Cookie?

[In the end Silent Salt does not need details. He needs only the confirmation of the tone. It could be argued that it is only care for his fellow Beast, especially one he was willing to craft another cookie with, but Silent Salt's own self-doubt denies this possibility.

Things are just as he expected. And that thought makes him ill.

Still, he cannot waver from the topic at hand. Confirming his suspicions was merely a bonus, if it could ever be referred to something like that. No, instead he must use it as a segue for what is truly important.]

I had reason to doubt his words. But the boy revealed to me the power he possesses. A power that would allow him to see any secret from any Cookie.

It was only a matter of time until he passed the truth on to you. So allow me to respect not only our truce, but what we once were, and reveal it to you on his behalf.

[Good, he didn't want to tell you the details anyway!]

[Instead the shadows go completely still as Salt talks, and there is something deeply cornered about the way Shadow Milk looks now. His expression turns wild, desperate.]

No.

[What secret, what Truth, no. No something in him stings, like a poisoned dagger through his heart. Venom seeping in his veils, and it hurts, just thinking about what Salt could possibly tell him.]

No! I don't want it! Whatever Truth you want to tell me, rot with it! Get out!

[While the anger and madness is a familiar look to Shadow Milk, perhaps more obvious now in his cracked mask, is the terror and desperation. Like someone looking at the ledge of his tower.]

[As Shadow Milk rails against the potential truth, Silent Salt finds only more evidence to support his hypothesis. Beneath the mask of a Beast is a fellow Cookie. They had all been made out to be monsters, but it was only through failure that they had been molded into that form.

By the Salt of Solidarity's failure.]

You will listen to me, because you will hear it from me. I will not allow anyone to whisper my crimes in your ears. I will not let you accuse me of obscuring what happened.

[Even if he indeed had done so while they were sealed away. At least he would be honest now. It would not absolve him of his sins, but it would make facing whatever came next all the easier.]

For all your knowledge, you know that the Witches abandoned us. Their gaze turned elsewhere, and we were left to wallow in our own sin. There was no divinity left to seal us into place.

[He takes a step toward Shadow Milk Cookie, hands held at his side. He does not let the other man shy away.]

There was only a Beast. The first Beast — the one that fell by failing to honor his own virtue to stand in Solidarity with the others.

[Somewhere along the way, his voice had begun to rice. Now, it falls into a hushed tone.]

And failing to recognize my own sins, I alone sealed my greatest failures away.

[Shadow Milk actually backs away from him, the moment he steps forward. A snarling wild animal is what's before him in place of the once Fount of Knowledge. The Shadows come to life, but they snake around him, almost protectively. He doesn't want this, he doesn't want it at all.]

[And even still, his mind swirls, begins putting pieces together. As Salt begins to weave his Truth, Shadow Milk so easily traces the lines. Of course, of course the Witches had abandoned them, that had been the whole start of this mess. Shadow Milk had begun to doubt, begun to tire, and he called out to them for help, for guidance and was left with nothing but silence, bloody silence.]

[And then they returned to seal them. He had caused chaos and destruction, orchestrated the downfall of their precious Earthbread and it had gotten their attention finally, that's how the story went.]

[The Master of Lies is the best at Lying to himself, of course. What a fool he was. Of course the Witches hadn't returned, of course it had to have been something else that sealed them away. The writing had been on the walls the entire time and he refused to look any closer, content with the little Truth he had accepted.]

[For the first time in months, the eyes in his hair open up, though they are unseeing, they are wide, distraught. Shadow Milk begins to laugh, low, and quiet at first as his hands slowly find his face.]

[But it grows, steadily, louder, he laughs. He laughs under it rises above anything else Salt could try to say, until his voice begins to fray, tearing at his vocal chords until it sounds like the screaming and wailing of a tormented spirit, his blind unfocused eyes wide. His claws tear into the skin on his face and the air fills with the smell of acrid blueberry.]

YOU! It had been YOU ALL ALONG! Oh! What a punchline! What COMEDY!

Edited 2025-12-10 09:03 (UTC)

[After the Barren had been ravaged, Silent Salt had been borne from grief immeasurable. Here and now, though, the Salt of Solidarity, long believed dead and dormant, feels a similar blade slip into his dough. Once, the Fount had been his friend. Time and arrogance had separated the two.

From Shadow Milk's corruption to the maiming he inflicts in the here and now, Silent Salt knows it to be his fault. Perhaps not the minute actions, the individual decisions, but it was by his absence, his abandonment of his own virtue, that Shadow Milk had been lost. And the rest naturally followed after.]

Indeed. By my hand was the spell cast, imprisoning you all as a result of my initial folly.

[Once more he advances, without a weapon. He submits himself to the blade of the executioner, the rack of the torturer, to the strings of fate.]

Whatever wrath you choose to invoke, do it and be done with it.

[Better to not drag it out, to not make others suffer overlong for their quarrel.]

[Like a wounded animal, the laughing becomes a howl of agony, of rage and sorrow, and he screams at Salt not unlike the way he did at Pure Vanilla back at his Spire. There is something unbelievably raw about his voice now.]

HOW DARE YOU MAKE DEMANDS OF ME AFTER WHAT YOU JUST SAID!

[But he gets his wish, the shadows surge forward, and if Salt does not fight it, he will feel himself be yanked back, over the table he was once sitting at. Shadow Milk is shortly upon him. His jam covered hands wrapping around his throat.]

I spent eons in that tower begging for reprieve from the torment of my divine mission! Abandoned by the creators! Rejected by Cookiekind for doing my sole purpose, I had nothing! Nothing but silence!

[He squeezes his grip and he is delighted for a moment, at the thought of choking him until he stopped breathing, until his treacherous lips spoke no more. Something mad and deranged bubbles up in his chest and he laughs again, but this time something hot runs down the side of his face.]

[The flash of Pure Vanilla with Shadow Milk's hands wrapped around his throat flashes into his mind, and like he'd been burned, Shadow milk screams and recoils away from him. Slams his back into the opposite wall as if he could move through it to escape from him. He screams and wails as milkcrown begin to bloom at his feet.]

Edited 2025-12-10 09:35 (UTC)

[Comparatively small though Shadow Milk is, between the magic he wields and the force of his attack, Silent Salt collides with the table. He does not fight the hands, reminding himself of his two-fold mission. Let the other cookie believe him to be the sole perpetrator of his sealing.

And let this be Silent Salt's penance for it all. For failing his kin. For abandoning those that he served, and the cookies that served with him. For condemning Elder Faerie to centuries of deceit, and for sealing them all for his sin.

But something shifts, something he does not understand. He watches as Shadow Milk shrinks away, as flowers bloom (familiar indeed), and as the other cookie writhes.

He knows not what to do. For as much as he blames himself for Shadow Milk's fall, it is still difficult to offer comfort. Lashing out at Silent Salt would have been one thing, but innocents had been crumbled on that quest. It is a difficult thought to reconcile.

In the end, he continues to offer truth. He rises from the table, fingers of one hand massaging at a spot that may well bruise. His steps feel more unsteady than ever, but he approaches Shadow Milk all the same.]

Indeed, you were alone. [There is a rasp now to Silent Salt's throat, courtesy of the pressure applied.] You were alone because Solidarity was the first to fall.

[Whether it is directly in front of Shadow Milk or held at bay, eventually, Silent Salt comes to a kneel. He bows his head, a silent admission through submission, even if he cannot yet stomach an apology.]

[And Shadow Milk all but coils in on himself, fighting off that horrid pounding in his chest, that way his throat closes up and the agony threatens to strangle him right there. He has to fight the urge to get sick.]

[Had this been many months ago, Shadow Milk might have gladly killed the other cookie, reveled in his jam on his hands. Roared with laughter as the curtain fell on this treacherous cookie. But that is not the case tonight, and instead Shadow Milk is left trembling with the knowledge he came close to doing what he had once almost done to Vanilla when he hadn't been in full control of his emotions.]

[No. He won't become a monster again, and he won't let Salt of all cookies be the one to bait him into that. To be what tempts him to throw out the work he's done in becoming something Vanilla could be proud of. That Lily could be proud of.]

[He bites down the urge to do it again as Salt comes before him. He laughs again, something hoarse and quiet. He can't even be happy that Salt's admitted to the thing he spent thousands of years being bitter about. It feels so unsatisfying, boring, flat, and he can't even enjoy his downfall anymore. What had it all been for in the end?]

[It sobers him considerably, as the jam continues streaming down his face, as the tears stain his skin.]

I won't give you what you want. You'll get no satisfaction from my retribution and I won't let you turn me back into what I used to be.

[The monster who killed without regard.]

Get out. I don't want to look at you anymore.

[It is a curious thing, what Shadow Milk says to him. Perhaps some part of him does want that. It's largely because he only seeks to absorb whatever wrath churns within the other cookie, to spare his co-conspirator from any blame. But then, he cannot deny that there is another, smaller part, that simply longs for that release.

Regardless, he is mildly surprised when it does not come. It would be Shadow Milk's right, and yet he pulls the punch all the same. Instead, as Silent Salt looks up, he stares upon a face that is the amalgamation of his failure. Torn and tear-stained, abandoned by solidarity in antiquity.

The regret fills him almost instantly. He rises as requested, but does not turn immediately.]

I did not intend to make you into a monster. [Here and now? Or back then. It's hard to say.] I only wished you to enact whatever justice you felt proper.

[Such is his way, thinking in terms of justice and what is right. He knows he has committed a grievous crime, after all.

But he does not press the matter. Shadow Milk has cast him out, and so he turns away. Some part of him feels guilty for leaving him alone in this state. It's the exact reason why he opens his soul jam, sealed off from Lily to prevent her from having to suffer through any of what Shadow Milk dished out, and sends a brief burst through it.

Tend to Shadow Milk.]

On the contrary-

[Shadow Milk leans against the wall, sliding down trying to catch his breath, trying to work through the grief of, sure, its fucked up and upsetting to find out Salt had been their warden all along, that the fool had twice damned them to isolation and misery.]

[But more than that, he has simply confirmed that the Witches had never returned. Everything he’d done, the horrors he’d wrought, the jam he spilled, it had been for nothing.]

[he laughs, but it is a bitter thing.]

I can think of no greater justice, than to force you to live with your crimes just as I have to. Death is a mercy neither of us deserve.

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CW: SELF HARM AND GENERAL MADNESS HERE he's fuckin losin it

CW: SELF HARM AND GENERAL MADNESS HERE (just delicately keepin' that)

cw: attempted strangulation

cw: attempted strangulation

cw: implied panic attack,

cw: mild ideation

cw: mild ideation