Chapter Text
“Huph!”
Martlet let out a little gasp as she heaved her laundry basket onto her bed. It was more than a bit overfilled with freshly-cleaned clothes, a small mountain of fabrics sitting above the hamper’s rim. Could’ve maybe brought each load up one at a time, but I’m already here.
The bluebird had woken up today with a weirdly high amount of energy, and had chosen to channel it into something productive. What’d started at light sweeping and dusting had soon turned to this; she knew she never had much want to do these kinds of tasks, so she chose to act now. There were a couple other things like this, but she’d picked laundry at the top priority among those. She knew herself. If not now, it wouldn’t get done until she had to march downstairs in wrinkled pajamas.
She dumped the laundry basket onto the bed, and tossed the emptied basket aside in a practiced motion. Her body essentially started moving on auto-pilot, making messy individual piles of shirts, pants, and so on. The system wasn’t the most organized thing, but it’d always worked best for her.
A trip to the closet to grab a handful of hangers, and she got started. Martlet hummed a little tune to herself as she put each shirt up, pretty quickly slipping into the routine of it. Hang a couple, then walk them to the closet, over and over again until the pile was gone.
As she closed the closet door and turned around, she let out a little sigh as she looked at the rest. She still kept herself going, walking over to the piles and assessing where to start, but her energy was a little dashed knowing the tedium to come. It’s the same amount as before, really, I just don’t like folding stuff.
She shrugged to no one but herself, picked up a pair of jeans, and got moving. Drape it over the wing, lift it, fold it again. Drape, lift, fold. It was probably simpler than the process for shirts, but it’d always irked her for some reason. She’d always assumed it was because she didn’t do it as a kid; she had more than a couple school pictures that acted as blatant reminders of that.
Martlet shook her head and took a deep breath. No use getting like this over a chore. She gently rolled her eyes, continuing to work on the stacks of clothes. She brought each stack to the wardrobe, slotting the garments into the empty spaces one by one. At the very least, she liked how it all looked when everything was sorted like this.
At the same moment she looked back at the bed, she felt a light rumble in her stomach. Giving a glance at the clock on the far wall, she could see it was around lunchtime. She briefly considered letting herself take a break, having been on her feet all morning, but seeing what little remained on the bed convinced her otherwise.
She started grabbing around for her socks, quickly bundling them together while mumbling to herself, “..just a bit left to go.. are those muffins I got still good?” She was still on task by definition, but she let her mind wander elsewhere.
Back to the wardrobe, and she slotted in the socks and undergarments. She turned around one more time, looking at the last thing she needed to put away: a plain white fitted bedsheet. Replacing the sheets was also something she often forgot to do, so she was at a bit of a loss as to where to start with this.
She tried a couple of times to fold it in any coherent way, but constantly came up short. The awkwardness of the elastic on the edges made it hard to get any kind of symmetry on the folds, and at this point she was beyond caring. She walked back to the wardrobe and opened the bottom drawer, revealing bedsheets folded to a similar caliber. That is to say, barely.
Seeing the drawer already in disarray, she chose not to go against the grain. She placed the fresh bedsheet around the middle, and when she saw how it stuck up, chose to start pushing it towards the left edge of the–
“FUCK– OW!!”
Martlet’s hand recoiled violently as a sharp pain shot through it. “What kind of goddamn–?!” She held her wing close, waiting for it to heal. She assumed it was a splinter, but if that was the case, it was one hell of a splinter. She couldn’t recall anything different about the bottom drawer, but..
..wait.
The pain wasn’t subsiding. This wasn’t normal. A bit of wood in her feathers stung, then calmed down until she pulled it free. A bit of wood wouldn’t stay as this piercing pain, a bit of wood wouldn’t be causing a buzz to spread throughout her wing.
Wait wait wait wait–
She kneeled down as quickly as possible, shuffling the sheets aside in an increasingly frenzied manner. Her SOUL sank to the bottom of her stomach at what she saw: the syringe she’d nabbed so long ago, pushed up against the left of the drawer. The plunger was halfway through the vial. The needle was dripping.
Martlet lifted up her wing. It was bleeding indigo.
How could I have forgotten–?!
She couldn’t even finish that thought before her entire body seized up, forcing her onto her hands and knees. All at once, the sensation shot from her wing to the entire rest of her body. Tears instinctually formed in the corners of her eyes. One second in, and it was already unbearable.
It didn’t stop there. Of course it didn’t stop there. The magic contained within her body started shifting, stirring around as if it had a mind of its own. She couldn’t tell if it was melting or congealing. It was hard to tell any feeling apart at this point. She could definitely feel her pulse, but only because every rapid beat of her SOUL seemed to deepen the agony happening inside of her.
Martlet screamed as her body seemed to attempt to escape itself. It was a brief spasm, but most spasms didn’t contort her down as if it were putty. It happened again, a stronger surge near her waist. She shut her eyes tight, trying to focus on her breathing in this hurricane of suffering. It barely worked, as the breaks in her form only seemed to get more frequent.
Her eyes slitted open. Something fell off of her face. It wasn’t a tear.
She had no control left of her own body. All she could do was reel on the ground and let this serum do whatever it was doing. Continued screams echoed through the room, growing weaker as she became less and less able. This was worse than hell, she was convinced.
Her physical strength only seemed to diminish further as her body gave in. She couldn’t move if she tried at this point. She had no voice left to cry. The only thing left she had any control over was her thoughts. Enshrouded in the torture she was experiencing, she repeated two words to herself:
Don’t die don’t die don’t die don’t die don’t. fucking. die.
As if in response, she felt her right wing move itself outward in a violent motion, sending a scalding sensation throughout her arm and up to her chest. The spasms seemed to calm themselves as all of the pain localized to that wing, then started moving for her other one. The same thing again, an unwilling motion outward that caused her to nearly knock over her wardrobe, and a searing pain to follow it.
Martlet’s body seemed to be calming down, turning unbearable pain into odd sensations. She fell face-down onto the hardwood, unable to keep herself conscious a moment longer.
It came as a light surprise to her when she opened her eyes. A welcome one, but a surprise nonetheless. She felt fatigued, and it was easy to assume why. She glanced at the clock. Forty-five minutes had passed.
“..huh?” In using her peripheral vision, Martlet noticed something unusual. Her hair had likely been thrown about from the impact, but the few strands that were in front of her were clearing her shoulders easily. I haven’t worn it this long in years, right?
She sluggishly moved to brush that hair aside, only to be hit by a different realization. She paused her motion to make sure she hadn’t seen it wrong. Sure enough, shadowy feathers stared back at her, so dark they were closer to black than blue. Her breath hitched in her throat.
With a sudden stint of energy, she pushed herself off the ground. Her chest felt heavy. In a similar motion, she got her lethargic body to stand up–
“OW!” Martlet jumped back a bit as her head bumped against the ceiling, cautiously ducking down a moment later to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong. Her bedroom hadn’t felt this small an hour ago.
Looking around in increasing desperation, she tried to find any immediate answer. Standing up like this, she could plainly see a bright blue chestplate that’d somehow found its way onto her body. This only sparked more questions in the growing cacophony of her mind.
Her eyes fell on one thing: a dusty old hand mirror on top of her wardrobe. She shuffled over to it, clumsily lifting it up with one oversized hand. She carefully turned it over.
The piercing yellow gaze that looked back at her was almost petrifying. A soft whisper of “..w-what the hell??” was all she graced it with before dropping the mirror entirely.
Her breathing grew heavier. Her pulse was rising. Nothing about this body felt like her, yet it was. Martlet’s memories, her experiences, were all still contained within it, but it just wasn’t right. Even in this rising panic, she was hit with the realization that breathing felt weird. Such a basic function was now foreign to her.
Whatever had happened, it had changed her beyond recognition. Even the beak she breathed and spoke through had turned from yellow to the cyan her feathers used to be. Martlet knew it was the serum’s doing, but she didn’t know how it’d done this much. This was unprecedented, as far as she was aware.
..can I even be sure that it’s done?
That single line of thought was enough to get her moving again, despite her emotional state. In an awkward hobble, she leaned down to grab the syringe from the drawer, then moved over to grab her phone. She gripped both in one wing, careful to keep the needle pointing away from her body, and walked over to the door.
Even ducking, she couldn’t make her way through the door. With a brief look to the side, she saw that the overdesigned pauldrons of the chestplate were colliding with the wall. She groaned, doing an awkward lean to get through the door sideways.
She was thankful to find the ceiling in the hallway to be a bit higher. Not like I ever had to care before, but whatever. Martlet pulled her phone from her wing, and struggled to operate it because of her larger feathers. She stayed focused on the task despite that.
She has to know.
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“csan yuo vcome ocer to my houss” -Martlet, sent 12:57pm
“Qiuckly” -Martlet, sent 12:58pm
Em sped through the humid airspace of Waterfall, trying her best to keep a level head. She’d been having lunch when her phone buzzed with those two concerning texts, and she’d taken to the skies maybe sixty seconds later. Nothing about this felt normal, and she wouldn’t calm down until she had an answer.
She was trying to run through the possibilities in her head. Martlet was, somehow, conscious enough to text her while being unable to type properly. Fatigue was pretty much out of the picture, as she’d already seen her text properly while fatigued. Unless it’s more severe..? Hypothermia was feasible, but besides the “how” of it, it seemed less than likely that she’d have fine motor control in that condition. Paralysis..? Don’t even humor that one, Em.
“Wuh!” The phoenix made a sharp right, barely dodging a pillar of stone. It took her a bit to steady her flight again, but she chose to flap higher up after that incident. She ended up closer to the cavern’s ceiling than the floor, but it at least allowed her to keep the route straight. The less there is to think about right now, the better.
Em kept on course, propelling herself through the area as fast as she reasonably could. She couldn’t hear anything over the wind beating against her, but it did at least keep her hair out of her eyes. She couldn’t really focus on these silver linings, though. No use, really.
She coursed another surge of wind magic through her feathers, trying to speed things up further. While she succeeded, she also flinched as the button on her cape piece came undone, sending the garment flying off behind her. Em didn’t look back. In a tiny mutter, she justified, “..that one was old anyway.”
There wasn’t much more time to think about that. Slowly, she started making her descent as humidity gave way to cold. This view, combined with the circumstances, were both familiar. The last time hadn’t been this urgent, but it hadn’t been heartless, either. Guess she was still a friend at the time.
Em started nearing the treeline. She hoped this wouldn’t become a pattern.
One careful right turn, and Martlet’s house was.. in… sight? The phoenix was immediately confused at what she saw from afar: a large, dark blue avian with ornate armor was sitting against the wall of her house. Is it a Guard member? They don’t seem hostile… Em was still on the defensive, in her head.
Just under a minute later, she touched down in her girlfriend’s front yard. The monster against the wall stood up in response, and something that made itself immediately apparent was their height. Em was already tall, but this bird had two feet over her, at least.
As they approached, Em tried to put her face on. “Um.. hello?”
“Hi, Em.”
The phoenix’s heart sank. That was Martlet’s voice. It sounded like it’d been put through a bit of a filter, but it was irrefutably her voice. She only stuttered out a small, “..w-what?” while trying to process any of this. Concern for her state collided with guilt over not recognizing her own lover until she spoke, creating a nasty cocktail of emotions in an instant.
“Okay, don’t panic. It’s just me.” She looked down at her, bright yellow eyes meeting her own. It felt off, and she hated that it felt off. It was so obviously Martlet’s SOUL still beating in there, yet there wasn’t the same comfort in her gaze that’d been there twenty-four hours prior.
In some attempt at speech, Em stumbled out, “I-I mean, yeah… yeah, b-but.. why.. h-how-?” She found two words that summed up her thoughts: “What happened?!”
“Okokok, let me explain..” Martlet sat down, putting herself just below Em’s eye level. Is this how she felt around me? Surely not this extreme, at least. “..where do I even start with this?”
Rather straightforwardly, the phoenix answered, “A concrete answer as to how your entire physical form changed would be nice?” A light sigh, then she followed with a small, “..sorry.”
“It’s stressful for both of us, dear. I understand.” The bluebird.. Bluebird? Parts of her are blue, it counts. ..reached into her back pocket, and brought out a syringe. Em stepped forward, seeing it contained a deep indigo liquid. The plunger was halfway through the vial. “For a definitive answer, it was this stuff that caused all of..” A broad gesture at herself, “..this.”
The phoenix nodded. “What is ‘this stuff,’ then?”
Martlet hesitated, looking around as if to see if anyone was watching. After a bit longer, she replied, “As far as I know, Alphys calls it ‘Determination.’”
“A-Alphys?! Wha-”
“Let me finish, please?”
“Sorry.” Em paused her motions, very purposefully keeping herself under control. Any less, and she’d be a bundle of those kinds of outbursts right now.
“Alright. Did I ever tell you that I was assigned to guard the lab in Hotland before I got my station in Snowdin?” Martlet shuffled on the ground, putting the vial back into her pocket.
Em shrugged. “You might’ve said something in passing, I don’t know.”
“The details aren’t too important, but..” Martlet huffed. “At the time, I got some… advice-” A shocking amount of malice struck her tone with that word, “-from someone I really trusted. It stuck with me for pretty much all of my days on the Guard.”
The phoenix nodded along. She’ll connect these dots with time, just give her time… Her boot tapped lightly on the snow.
“It took some time, but being at and around the lab for that long, I was able to tell that something was weird. I couldn’t necessarily pin it exactly, more just a vibe I got.” Martlet spun one massive wing around, as if hurrying herself along. “I eventually realized that Alphys would disappear into a door labelled as a restroom for… uncomfortably long amounts of time.”
“All of that came together, and I eventually was able to sneak in there. I figured if something in there was worth hiding, it should be able to help me with that advice I got..” Martlet took a deep breath, and followed, “‘Humans are dangerous and cannot be trusted,’ verbatim, if I’m not mistaken.”
“And you found that down there?”
“Mhm.” Martlet nodded. “I got in and out as fast as I could, but I caught glimpses of logs left by Alphys. I assumed that Determination could help me, should any bad human cross my path.” Another sigh, followed by, “..then Clover happened.”
“You see the fault in whoever’s advice, you see no necessity in even holding it, then.. what?” Em was piecing some of it together, but none of this pertained to what’d happened today.
“After that day, this vial stayed where I hid it initially. I wasn’t going to dispose of it, given it could be dangerous, and it’s not like I could just.. return it, either.” She adjusted, then pushed off the ground to stand up again. With a loose gesture, she wrapped up, “The hiding spot leaves my active memory, because I’m an idiot, and then one careless motion leaves me more than just pricked by that needle.”
Even among all the other concerns, Em still had it in her to say, “Please don’t talk about yourself like that.” Martlet’s eyes looked down at her, an expression something between confusion and joy. “You made a mistake. That doesn’t make you dumb.”
Martlet’s eyes rolled to the side, quietly muttering, “This is more the culmination of a few mistakes, Em.”
“Still!” Em held her ground, looking up authoritatively. When her lover’s expression softened, she got back to more immediate matters. “Alright, alright, so all of this happened, and you got me over here… why?” Her left wing started shuffling towards her satchel, “..I’m not sure how effective my medicine would be, but I could at least try–”
“Don’t.” A larger wing halted her motion. “This stuff is unnatural, if it wasn’t obvious enough. I doubt there’s an herb in that bag that would even begin to revert this.”
Em let go of her satchel, looking up to prompt her on. Martlet continued, “I’m going to the lab, and I want you to come with me. A lot of my assessment of that vial was based on assumption, and I need actual goddamn answers.” Her tone lowered, “I really hope it’s not as bad as it seems, because..” She shook her head. The phoenix could hazard a guess as to what she was afraid of.
Wordlessly, Em walked up to her lover and hugged her tight. It felt odd, being the smaller one in the embrace, but she was hardly focused on that right now. Quietly, she whispered, “..it’ll be okay, honey.” She hated that she didn’t believe that statement wholeheartedly.
Martlet seemed to reciprocate it, though, as her dark pair of wings wrapped around her back. With a light pat on the back, and an equally light, “Thank you,” the two released each other.
“Regardless, though-” She looked back down, putting a bit more pep in her voice, “I want you there as part emotional support, part witness. Given what this stuff did to me, I have no reason to trust this Angel-forsaken lizard.”
“Got it.” There was no hesitation in her response. She had enough answers for now, and the course of action from here felt straightforward. Em stepped forward, readying herself for flight. “I know the way, before you ask.”
Martlet took a similar stance and responded, “Good. The sooner we get there, the better.” Without another word, the bluebird took to the skies with a blast of wind magic so powerful it nearly knocked Em off her feet. After regaining some semblance of balance, she propelled herself to the skies after her.
She didn’t fail to notice the fact that her lover’s wings had suddenly changed to a faux-galaxy pattern, slowly dissipating back to their prior coloration as her magic mellowed out.