12AN: Fav chapter here. Hope you all enjoy.
xXx
The first time her holder dies, it's unexpected and fast, in the middle of a fight. One minute she's there, and the next... At that moment, Tikki realizes that she didn't understand pain until right then. The loss and hurt is indescribable, like a hole in her chest that keeps sucking and sucking and sucking and gives nothing back. That's the best she can do to try and classify what she feels, and yet, that doesn't really describe it. It doesn't even scratch the surface.
She refuses to go back into her stone. She doesn't want to be alone, even if she doesn't want to see anyone either.
Plagg finds her when he can. She can feel him, but she doesn't care. Instead, she concentrates on using what little access she has to her miraculous cure again and again and again. She tries to heal it, but nothing happens. Somehow, she knows that hole will never fill.
"Tikki," Plagg says, approaching her carefully.
"Oh, Plagg," she says through her sobs. "Is this what you were born of?"
He pauses and looks like he's about to shrink away, so she latches onto him, unable to keep back her tears.
"I'm so, so sorry for you. This... this is too much..."
"Yeah," he says softly. "It really is."
"I keep trying to cure, but it won't work. Why won't it work? My cure has always worked before!"
That's when Plagg relaxes into her, wrapping his arms around her in a warm embrace. "This isn't the kind of pain you can just heal. Your wielder will never come back. She was human and humans die. Dying means parting, and partings mean pain. This is the kind of pain you just... have to deal with."
"I... I don't know if I can."
"Shh, you will," he says. "Because you still have me. You'll always have me."
She squeezes him tighter.
"You know," he says softly, echoing the words she told him once, "it's okay to feel this."
"B-but it hurts."
"It's okay to hurt sometimes. It makes the days of happiness brighter. Take it from someone who knows pain, death and destruction."
She managed to calm her sobs ever so slightly. "It's really okay? Promise?" she asked.
He chuckled sadly. "Promise."
It didn't make the pain go away, but it did help a little. And that, she supposed, was pretty miraculous.
xXx
The second time she loses her holder it isn't to an accident. It's to a betrayal. A dear friend, who her wielder thought he could trust, stabbed him in the back. Literally. Then he ran away in fear, leaving Tikki to watch her holder's life slowly drain out. Due to the residue, Plagg can tell she used what little ability she had to try and heal him, but it wasn't enough and her weilder obviously didn't have the energy to try and transform.
When Plagg finds her that time, she's just sitting in the mud, staring at the man that had been her friend for so many years.
"It doesn't get any easier, does it?" she says in a dull, muted tone that does not fit her at all. It sounds more like something a dark fae would say and that scares Plagg more than he'd care to admit.
But he also can't lie to her.
"No," he says softly. "It doesn't get easier. You just get stronger."
Slowly, as if with great effort, she turns her blue eyes to stare dully at him. "I don't feel stronger."
He sighed. "Well, that makes sense if you think about it. You've lost twice as much now. Of course you're not going to feel any stronger than last time."
That did seem to make her think, so he decided to push it.
"Besides, it's always the first few times that hurt the worst."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, and he could see the tears in her eyes. "You don't know that."
"No, but I've run across a lot of humans who have lost people."
"Isn't it... different with... every person?" she asked, trying very hard to not fall apart.
"Yes. But we got through the last one. We'll get through this one. Together."
She broke down then. It hurt so badly to see her cry, but it also felt as if she were healing somehow, and so he would deal.
For her.
xXx
The third time is the first time Plagg's holder dies first. It won't be the last. It is also, arguably, the hardest for Tikki.
She comforts him after his holder's body has been taken, the way he comforted her. His holders tended to be the dregs of society, not treated well by their peers, difficult to control and Plagg can still only use negative emotion to power his stone, but he cares for his holders nonetheless.
Then he's sealed away and Tikki is left to live more years with her wielder... and then watch her wielder die of an illness even she can't cure. She has to go through it without Plagg, and she wonders how her counterpart was able to cope alone the first two times.
It isn't the first time her admiration for her partner skyrockets, but it is one of the most memorable.
xXx
Humans are fickle creatures, Tikki comes to find out. They are so complicated and naturally feel so many things that it's difficult to predict what they'll do and why. At least for her. And apparently for other fae too, because no one saw it coming.
Looking back, Tikki can't say she's too surprised (although at the time, she remembered feeling so utterly confused), but a corrupted human accidentally gets a hold of Trixx and her stone. Trixx who, among them, is the embodiment of chaos and illusion. Tikki's holder tells her that they've been lucky it hasn't happened before. It's the first time they have to fight one of their own, and Tikki understands hate for the first time because she hates it.
That... isn't one of her favorite memories.
Fae coming after humans? Completely predictable. Humans fearing the holders? Surprising but not too out of the ordinary from what they've been able to observe. Humans actively using magic to come after humans... just... why? There's no reason to. Humans don't feed off of other humans like fae do, and humans don't instinctively manipulate other humans to increase their magic. So, why?
Well, for whatever reason, it happens. The human decides to use the miraculous to try to hurt and control other humans. All of the remaining Kwami and their holders get together and have a meeting about it because this is just unprecedented. At least to those who used to be Fae.
Plagg just looks at the rest of them and shakes his head. "This is why I wanted more control over what we could and couldn't agree to," he muttered, but Tikki can tell he's surprised too. That he doesn't understand, just like the rest of them.
After a while, Tikki retreats for some time to think, heading to the roof of their humans' little hut. She's not sure to be upset or grateful when Plagg approaches her a little while later and then sits down next to her.
"How can you stand it?" she asked softly.
"Stand what?" He says it warily.
"This... this negativity. I don't like feeling this hate." Somehow even the stars and the moon seem too bright, so she buries her head in her arms.
Plagg sighs and comes to sit by her. "Y' know, sometimes I really have to wonder which one of us really has it best. With my background, well, it can only get better. I see humans and what they do for each other and how they care for each other and it blows my mind. It's pretty amazing to see the good in others when all I could see initially was the bad. I still really don't understand it all. And when I see the bad, well, I'm used to it. I can deal with it. But you come from a place of such happiness and positivity that, well, sometimes I feel that you could only be brought down.. and I hate that."
"Oh, Plagg," she says softly, "don't!"
"Don't what?" he asks, confused.
"Don't hate because of me! I couldn't stand it!"
He blinked at her for several seconds and then sighed. "Well, I was a fae of pain and calamity. I don't know if there's really a way around it."
He sees her droop and pull her knees to her chest a little tighter and feels, for the first time, that he is willing to give up his own comfort to help her feel better. It's a strange feeling, but not wholly unwelcome.
"But... I can try," he says softly, not looking at her.
She turns her head to him, eyes wide in surprise. "What?" she asks.
"I'll try not to hate that you're not happy... if will make you hurt less."
The way her face brightens up and how she practically tackles him in a hug, clinging to him for the rest of the night, makes it all worth it to him.
