Archive of Our Own ^beta

You can’t say you’re surprised that it’s a dragon of all things that happens to be your guide through the loops. If anything would know about time loops, it would be a dragon. You just wish they weren’t such an irritating one, lounging in the branches of the Favor Tree as they tease you and give you hints without any real answers.

Still, they’re company, and someone to talk to about the situation you’ve found yourself in. And they’re interesting, too. You’ve never met a dragon before. You know of them, sure, creatures of immense power harboring knowledge over time, but they’re so rare you’ve never seen one before.

The appearance of the King was the first time most in Vaugarde had even realized that dragons were more than just fantasy and legend. The first anyone had heard of, the first anyone had seen. The knowledge that they existed didn’t surprise you, though. You were just surprised that one had decided to settle here in the first place.

You weren’t expecting to see a second dragon. You wonder if dragons gravitate towards areas where time doesn’t flow as it normally should, and that’s why they know so much about it. Or do they cause it themselves? The King certainly is the reason for Vaugarde being frozen in time . . . Though Loop vehemently denies being the cause of your time loops.

You wonder why it doesn’t affect them. Do dragons live outside of time?

Five loops in, your skin starts to itch. The backs of your hands and your shoulders and your arms and your legs and your back. You ignore it, at first. It’s not enough to affect your ability to fight, just an ever-present irritation.

Four loops later, you’re writhing in the meadow, doing anything you can to relieve the pinpricks burning across your entire body. When you take off your gloves to help scratch, you find far more callouses than you thought you had, most of them in places that make no sense for them to have developed. The callouses you already had have hardened to the point of making a tic tic noise when you tap your nails against them, and they’ve darkened to a concerning degree. 

“Oh, yeah, that happens,” is Loop’s response when you mention it to them. They tell you it’s an effect of the time loops, not harmful, but permanent and will develop further. When you demand further information, all they tell you is that the itching will fade, and to keep an eye out for further changes.

As Loop promised, the itching has faded. You’ve defeated the King. You’ve defeated the King and yet you’re still looping. Loop was aware that this would happen and didn’t tell you. You’re infuriated, but you leave Loop be to go talk to the rest of your companions. This all is giving you a headache, almost piercing pain in your head.

When you reach Bonnie, they say that your eye looks weird. You ask what they mean, but they refuse to elaborate, only restating it as weird. After you leave, you look at your reflection in a window, and find your pupils to be slits.

“Stardust,” Loop says when you rush back to them. “Why do you think dragons are associated with Time Craft?” They don’t elaborate further, but you feel the dread rise in your gut regardless. You’re changing. The loops are changing you. The strange darkened callouses are scales.

You’re becoming a dragon.

The next loop your headache is worse, and when you reach your hands up to clutch your head, you feel the starting nubs of horns.

You’re starting to be glad that you wear such covering clothing. Your companions know nothing of the scales dotting your skin and your hat effectively hides the slowly lengthening horns. You can’t do anything about your eyes, though, so you just deflect whenever it’s brought up.

For the past several loops, though, your mouth has felt weird. You run your tongue over your teeth again, and come to the conclusion that, yes, those are in fact fangs coming in. You decide to limit how wide your mouth opens when you talk.

You’re so desperate to see Bonnie you don’t notice the gouges you make in the dirt as you push yourself off the ground and rush to the other side of town. You have- You have to see them you have to you HAVE to you have to make sure they’re here and alive and-

They are, thank the stars, but you slipped character, you were obvious, and they point out the now quite obvious fangs in your mouth. On instinct you tell them you’ve always had them, they just never noticed, but you leave before they can question it further.

It’s then that you notice the dirt on your gloves and the claws piercing the ends of each finger. Great fine lovely you’ll just be extra careful this loop.

Unfortunately it’s difficult to hide the tips of your fingers when you need to point two of them forward to properly use Scissors Craft. You have to walk the fine line of not letting them notice while also not behaving suspiciously. It doesn’t help that you’re pretty certain your fangs have started just poking out from under your lips. You hope they’re not obviously visible with your mouth closed, but you’re certain they are any time you open it to speak.

. . .

Your attempt to walk the line fails on both accounts. Not only were you suspicious, but you didn’t actually properly hide any of your draconic traits, either! Stupid stupid stupid! Odile calls you out on your changed state and oh stars oh no oh universe she figured out the time loops, too!!!

It’s the straw on the camel’s back. You snap and scream at her and when you realize just how badly things are going you loop back and things are fine things are fine things are FINE!

The next loop, you take a deep breath. Your gloves are back to normal, but the claws are still there. Enough pressure could make them pierce the fabric again. You touch a hand to your mouth and can feel the tips of your fangs poking out. You won’t be able to hide that anymore. Could you convince them that you’ve always had them? Bonnie seemed skeptical last time, and you’re certain that Odile especially wouldn’t believe you. Maybe you could pretend you were crafting your body . . . ?

Your back burns, and you don’t want to think about what’s coming next.

They hate you they hate you they hate you you messed up they’re abandoning you they’re leaving you they’re going without you FINE THEN YOU’LL JUST GO FACE THE KING BY YOURSELF! YOU JUST NEED TO DEAL THE FINAL BLOW AND YOU CAN EASILY DO THAT IF YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE FIGHTING HIM!!!

Going through the House on your own is at the same time horrible and relieving. Your mind seems to be playing tricks on you, like you’ve forgotten where to go, like things aren’t where they’re supposed to be, like things are wrong. But at the same time, you don’t have to act! You don’t have to act you don’t have to hide you don’t have to worry about performing with your actors about pretending to be fine you can just GO. The burning in your back itches but you ignore it as you slice down sadness after sadness with your bare claws.

The King calls you a dragonlet when you reach him, but you don’t respond. He asks what you’re hoarding, and you don’t respond. You just attack, and you attack, and you attack, and he quickly realizes why you’re a dragonlet when you don’t stay dead when killed. He changes tactics after that, and you can’t do anything to stop it as he slows you down and down and down and down and down and-

Everything stops, and you’re left to fight with an enemy that can’t be defeated, your own homesickness coming to swallow you whole and strangle you until there’s nothing left-

Your family is here. Your family is here! They . . . came to help you? Even after everything you’d done to them? They came back?

They came back! They came back and they reflect the King’s own attack right back at him, freezing him with his own Time Craft! Everything goes white, and you feel like you can breathe for the first time in a while.

You feel awful. Not just emotionally, but physically as well. You can hardly hold yourself up. Luckily, your family is there to help. You don’t understand them, why they’d come to help you after all you’ve done for them, but you can’t help but cling to them and their support. You’re so glad they’re there.

But it’s the end. It’s the end and they’re going to leave and YOU CAN’T LET THEM LEAVE!

All of a sudden, you know what you’re hoarding.

You scream as the sadness overtakes you, wings ripping themselves from your back as you shriek down at your companions that look so, so much smaller than they just were, and you scream at them to not leave.

Yet even despite that, they refuse to attack you, and they refuse to let you loop, and you’re forced to talk to them and you realize that it’s your fault, you’re the one who got yourself stuck in the loops, you’re the one causing your own transformation by hoarding a family that was going to abandon you to the world after your journey ended.

And yet . . . once they learn that you want to stay with them, despite everything, everything you’ve done to them, the words you said, the loops you’ve trapped them in, they also want to stay? They . . . they want to stay. They want to stay! They want to STAY!

And as you’re surrounded by your family, held in loving arms, you break down crying.

When you’re eventually released, safe in the knowledge that you’re not going to lose everyone, you all take stock of the final changes of your transformation. You’re not a full out dragon like Loop or the King - this all stopped before you could progress that far. But there’s not a single spot of scaleless skin left, your claws, fangs, and horns are fully developed, and your new wings, though too small to be able to actually lift you into the sky and hidden under your cloak, have left your back raw and sore from where they tore out much faster than they should have.

You’re also pretty sure you have a small nub of a tail that was not there before.

But your family is far less concerned about your appearance than they are of your wellbeing, and you relish in the experience of being loved.