#[ rly does leave behind a void huh

[pirateborn-a]

i love how absolutely Normal Roger left everyone he'd known in his death

[sixpossumsinatrenchcoat]

The things we leave behind: FURY

A postgame Headspace AU set in the ruins of a discarded dream. In part 3 of 6, Aubrey faces her demons. This AU is easily the most indulgent thing I’ll ever write for this fandom, but I just rly needed to see more interaction between Omori and Sunny & sometimes u gotta make ur own food.

Sunny opens his eyes in an empty void. No ceiling. No walls. Just empty white as far as he can see in every direction. The silence is deafening. How did he survive for years on only this? How and why?

(Stupid question. Of course he knows why. This is the only place he could escape himself. The only place where he could still see Mari.)

He sits up. On the other side of the void, Omori is hunched over his old laptop.

“Finally,” Omori huffs, unfolding to his feet. “Can we go?”

Sunny opens his mouth to say something agreeable. His mouth says, “Where’s Mari?”

…Oh. He didn’t mean to say that. But now that he has, he doesn’t want to take it back. He wondered about it the whole night, the last time he was here. Mari wasn’t at any of her picnics. Omori said she was okay, but—what does that even mean? How can she be okay if she isn’t here?

Omori glares. “None of your business.”

“But—”

“Do you love your friends or not?”

Sunny’s questioned a lot of things over the years, but that was never one of them. “Yes.” Obviously.

“Then let’s go.”

###

Pyrefly Forest is a bloodbath.

It was always a ghost town. A horror story still unfolding. Melancholy scales in minor keys, plinking up and down a phantom piano. The silhouettes of dead and dying trees, choked by cobwebs and shrouded in fog. When you looked at them too closely, they almost seemed to move.

But this is different. This isn’t a graveyard. It’s a massacre.

The ground is littered with corpses. Not human corpses, thankfully—it’s crushed bulbs and shredded leaves, not cooling viscera—but vaguely appalling nonetheless. Strangely, the forest has never looked healthier. The leaves on the trees grow thick and glossy. The bark on their trunks shines steely gray.

Sunny squints toward the nearest picnic blanket. Empty. Like all the rest.

“So,” he says, testing the waters. “Mari’s not at the picnics.”

Omori doesn’t answer.

“But you said she’s okay.”

A curt nod.

“Can I see her?”

“No,” Omori says coldly. “Any more stupid questions?”

Yes. Definitely. A lot. But he doesn’t want to push his luck. “...No?”

“Good.”

###

They find Aubrey by the Weeping Willow’s spring, playing whack-a-mole with half the population of Sprout Mole Village. In lieu of her bat, she’s swinging a ludicrously oversized crowbar, a flashy cartoon weapon in a distinctly different artstyle. Maybe she brought it with her?

When she spots Sunny, she throws an arm up in greeting. “Yo, what’s up! You wanna help me smash these weird rats?”

Sunny darts a glance at his alter ego. Omori’s eyes have gone round with wonder. He obviously didn’t expect Aubrey to be so buff. Or so heavily tattooed. Or so… pink.

“She’s pretty cool, huh.”

“Die,” Omori says immediately.

Sunny gives him a knowing look.

Omori counters with a withering glare. “We might need back-up… Wait here. I’ll call Kel.”

“That’s not a good idea.” Whatever’s going on with Headspace-Aubrey, Kel is bound to make it worse. When Omori just stares, Sunny grimaces. “Aubrey’s… easily embarrassed.”

“What? No she isn’t.”

Sunny can’t help laughing. “You might not know her as well as you think.”

“You might not know what you’re talking about.”

“Two Sunny’s, huh?” Aubrey asks cheerfully. Both of them jump. In the time they were arguing, she must’ve closed in. “Cool, cool. So, were you guys gonna help me fight these weird bugs or not?”

Sunny looks to Omori, who rolls his eyes. “Just make her come with us.”

###

As Omori leads them through the fog, Aubrey elbows Sunny. “So… what’s with the sidekick?”

That gets Omori’s attention. He whips around with both hands curled to fists. “I am not his sidekick.”

“Hah! Oh, man. I forgot how much of a brat you were at that age. You remember that time Kel spilled juice on your sketchbook and you made him sit in the corner?”

“...No,” Sunny lies.

“You made him a dunce cap! Oh my god, he wore it for hours. And when he asked if he could take it off you said— You said, Do you think you’ve learned your lesson? And he said—”

Sunny can’t hold back a snort of laughter. “He said no.”

“He totally said no!!! Oh my god, what a fucking moron. Whoops. Sorry, I probably shouldn’t cuss in front of your inner child.”

“I am not—” Omori sputters.

“Aw, c’mon, Sunshine,” she tells him, one-handing her crowbar so she can mess up his hair. If Sunny tried something like that, he’d lose that hand. But apparently Aubrey gets special treatment. “You know I’m just playing. Can you blame me? You were fuckin’ adorable. Like an angry little kitty cat.”

Omori’s face turns red, then white. He glares at Sunny. “Make her stop.”

Sunny shrugs. “I’m not her supervisor.”

“And thank god for that,” Aubrey agrees. “Hey, so where are we going, anyway? Between you and me, I’m pretty sure this isn’t real.”

Sunny’s gone back and forth on that himself. “I don’t know. Omori?”

Omori doesn’t answer.

“Pfff,” Aubrey snorts. “Silent treatment, huh? Now I’m getting all nostalgic.”

Sunny can practically see the steam rising from Omori’s ears. “You should probably stop messing with him,” he tells Aubrey. “He does have a knife.”

“Aw, Sunny. It’s so cute that you think you could get near me with that thing.”

“I’ve done it before,” Sunny sniffs.

“Only ‘cause you took me by surprise. And it was two against one. Totally doesn’t count.”

“Will you two shut up?” Omori hisses over his shoulder. “Or do you want to get eaten?”

Sunny’s eye narrows. As far as he knows, there isn’t anything in Headspace that eats people. Or at least, there didn’t used to be.

Aubrey opens her mouth to argue. But before she can get a word out, a deep, rattling snarl rumbles through the trees. Even with its source far out of sight, Sunny can feel it buzzing in his chest.

Aubrey’s eyebrows go up, and her mouth clacks shut.

###

The further they walk, the louder the growling gets. Sunny walks a little closer to Aubrey. He’s increasingly convinced that he knows who’s making all that noise.

At the Pyrefly Pluto stop, just south of what used to be Sweetheart’s Castle, Omori finally stops. That rattling snarl isn’t in the background anymore. It’s loud enough to shake the ground under their feet. The grass is littered with dead leaves, shaken from their branches by sheer sonic force. The air is thick with the scent of decay, musty and sickly-sweet. The forest is barren. All the trees here are dead.

“Wait here,” Omori mutters, and darts ahead. In an instant, he’s swallowed by the fog.

Aubrey elbows Sunny. “Dude. What’s the deal.”

Oh. “Sorry. We’re—um. You’re… dreaming.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. There’s not usually two of you.”

…Right. “And we have to go—do something. Talk to someone, or… something like that. Like a quest.” As cover stories go, it’s not very inspired. But it is more-or-less true.

“Uh huh,” she says. “But like. Why?”

Ugh. Of course Aubrey wouldn’t just go along with it. She was always going to be harder than Kel. “We just have to.” No, that’s not going to work either. Aubrey doesn't take orders from anyone. “I need you to?” he tries. “As a favor. …Please.”

“Well,” she drawls, smirking a little. “I guess if you need me.”

He rolls his eye at her. “Really it’s Omori. The other one. Oh. And you should probably stop calling him—”

“Shh,” she hisses, stiffening. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“In the trees. It was— I thought I saw something.”

Something. But does that mean— Could she be talking about—

Sunny’s heart leaps. He knows he shouldn’t get his hopes up but he can’t help it. He misses her so much. He whips around, scanning the treeline for a familiar silhouette. Long and dark, with one glaring white eye.

A blur of motion flits between the trees. Lightless, eyeless. Almost formless. Just a shadow among shadows. He only sees it for a moment before it vanishes, lost to the surrounding dark.

When he turns around, it’s looming over Aubrey.

(In Sunny’s memories, the Stranger is just a black-and-gray version of Basil. He wasn’t even scary, really. Just lonely, and sad, and strangely magnetic. Wherever he appeared, Omori couldn’t help but follow.

But Sunny isn’t running Headspace anymore.)

The Stranger’s limbs have lengthened, stretched sapling-long and pencil-thin. When he stands half-hunched, his knuckles scrape the grass. His fingers, hooked like talons, are tipped with jagged claws. His legs don't end in feet, but cloven, pointed hooves. And there’s something hanging from his neck. A loop of slick black rope. It drags behind him like a rat’s tail, heavy and unnervingly greasy.

“You,” the Stranger hisses, close against Aubrey’s ear. His voice is like spider's legs. Like dead leaves over dry bone. “You remind me of sss-s-someone.”

Omori materializes out of the fog with his knife already drawn. “Easy, Stranger,” he says warningly.

Aubrey doesn’t flinch. She might as well be carved from stone.

“You aren’t afraid,” the Stranger cackles. “Eh-hehe-heh-he. You were always-s-sss braver than the ressst of us.”

“Wait.” Aubrey’s eyes widen. “Basil???”

The shadow lets loose a wild laugh. “Ohhh, you are interesting, aren’t you? Mmh… Such an a-a-angrrrry little bunny.” When he stutters, his neck clicks and jerks like bad claymation. “A r-rrrRRRHhrr-rabbit hunting wolves. And now you’ve found them.” He twitches closer, breathing down her neck. “You want me to hurt you, don’t you? I can s-sss-smell it on your ssskin. All the things you think you deserve.”

“Stranger,” Omori says again.

“Eh heh heh. Ohh-h-h, calm down, Omori. I'm not here to break your toys. I was only sssaying hello.”

“We’re looking for Aubrey,” Omori says calmly. In the background, the real Aubrey looks confounded. “She isn’t in her fortress. Do you know where she went?”

“I know where ev~eryone is. The princess-s-ss is out hunting. Rabbitsss,” with a savage grin for Aubrey. “Glutting on blood and sinew and s-s-ssssucking the marrow from their little bones.”

Omori doesn’t back off. “Where?”

“I could take you,” the Stranger whispers. His smile is a knife-wound. It slits his face from ear to tufted ear. “But she won’t s-s-ssee you. She hatesssss us.”

Omori gestures impatiently, like that goes without saying. “Just tell me where to go.”

###

“What the fuck,” Aubrey says succinctly, after the Stranger sends them on their way.

Sunny isn’t listening. He’s too busy trying to catch up to Omori. “The Stranger. He’s not not all messed up. Or—not as much. Not like Kel.”

Omori doesn’t slow down. If anything, he walks even faster.

Sunny lets out a frustrated breath. “Omori.”

“What.”

“Why isn’t he all messed up?”

Omori huffs irritably. “He’s another exception. Obviously. Like Longlegs. And me.”

“And Mari.”

Omori doesn’t answer.

“He didn’t sound different,” Sunny mumbles. He didn’t even act different, really. “But he looked—”

Omori whips around with his teeth bared. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want everyone to stay exactly how you left them? This place isn’t yours anymore, Dreamer. You left. You don’t get a vote.”

Sunny frowns. Does that mean that Mari’s different, too? Is she even still his sister anymore? Or is she just another monster? “Is that what happened to—”

“You don’t get to ask me about Mari.”

“Um,” Aubrey cuts in. When both of them turn to glare, she laughs nervously. “Heh. Uh… Sorry to interrupt, I guess? I just had a question.”

“What,” Sunny says impatiently.

“Uh. I guess basically… What the fuck?”

“Shh,” Omori hisses, grabbing them both and yanking them back into the bushes. “She’s close.”

###

A flurry of rabbits streams past, a river of white fur and terrified eyes. Crow scatter and screech. The trees tremble.

And then they see her.

Captain Kel was swollen to Looney Toons proportions, but at least he was recognizably human. This creature is decidedly not. Sunny can tell, because humans don’t typically grow as tall as a fucking house. And they’re definitely not supposed to be covered with plush, feathery pink fur.

The monster’s eyes are huge and dark, but the light that glitters in its pupils glows an unnerving blood-red. As far as Sunny can tell, it’s not any one animal, just a chaotic jangle of monster parts: rabbit’s haunches and ram’s horns and a colossal crocodile maw of shark’s teeth, all smushed together into the world’s ugliest chimera. It looks like what would happen if you put eight tertiary predators in a blender and set it to puree.

Filmy threads from Aubrey’s old nightdress still cling to the monster’s paws, and the entire front half of its body is spattered red. Its round, lizardlike muzzle is drenched in it. But the ribbon Mari gave her is still pristine, tied in a neat bow around her neck. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Sunny looks at Omori. Omori nods.

Sunny just stares. Because—what? What is he supposed to do about this? Aubrey might be tough enough to come out on top of nine out of ten bar fights, but even she can’t take down a monster the size of a school bus. It doesn’t even look like her. Except for the bow, maybe. And the eyes.

But when he turns to see how the real Aubrey is doing, her face is gone cold. Her fists are clenched, her jaw set.

“So,” she says darkly, once the monster’s lumbered out of range. “That’s the quest.”

It isn’t a question, but Sunny answers anyway. “Yes.”

“It’s me.”

“...Yes.”

The breath hisses through her teeth. “Right. Sure. Of course it is.”

Omori looks taken aback, but Sunny is barely surprised. Aubrey was always more self-aware than the rest of them. She isn’t like Kel, who’ll only take a good hard look at himself if you take his head in your hands and make him. Aubrey sees to the heart of things. It’s why she was so quick to recognize Stranger, even though it took Sunny years and years.

Besides. Aubrey might be all grown up, but that doesn't mean that she can always see it. It’s all too easy for her to see herself in a monster.

Sunny frowns and tugs on her elbow. “It isn’t really.”

“Hahh?” she demands, twisting around to glare. “Which one is it?”

He doesn’t know how to answer that. “It’s just a piece,” he tries. “Not even a big piece.”

Aubrey softens. “Y-Yeah. I know. Sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Okay,” she mutters, and shakes herself off. “Okay. So this is, what? Some kinda vision quest? Hunting my inner demons, or some shit?”

“...Something like that.”

“So why are you here? Fucking, twice, I might add?”

Sunny shrugs.

“‘Cause it seems like it’d be a guilt thing, but—if I’m honest, I feel way worse about Basil. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Hrmm.” Aubrey holds her frown for a moment longer and then rolls up her sleeves. “Well. Whatever, I guess. Fuck it. Let’s go kick my ass.”

For once in his life, Omori looks genuinely moved.

###

They stalk Kaiju Aubrey—(Monster-brey? Monbrey? …He’ll keep working on it)—back to King Crawler’s clearing before regrouping at the picnic.

“So I pretty much just hit her on the head until she dies, right?” Aubrey asks cheerfully.

Omori chokes.

“Not exactly,” Sunny snickers. Ideally, she’d stop before Beastbrey died. (Beastbrey, he thinks. That’s not bad.) “Um. Try not to kill her.”

“You sure? ‘Cause that sounds a lot easier.”

“Pretty sure. Yeah.”

“Suit yourself,” she yawns. “Pretty sure you’re supposed to kill monsters, though.”

“She’s not a monster,” Sunny mumbles.

“Pfft. Right. Good one.”

He frowns at her. “You’re not—”

“Aaaand I think that’s enough with the heart-to-heart, thanks! Can we please just fight?”

###

So, they fight.

Headspace-Aubrey made her lair in King Crawler’s old grotto. The grass is littered with sprout mole husks and rabbit’s bones. But the surrounding forest has never looked healthier. The trees here are violently lush, with glossy leaves and thick strong trunks. The grass grows long and perfectly key lime-green.

At the farthest end of the clearing, Beastbrey is splayed languid, gnawing the bones of her last meal.

The bulk of her body is blunt and barrel-shaped, like a boar’s. But those powerful, tightly coiled haunches would look more at home on a jackrabbit, or a frog. Two colossal silver ram’s horns curl from either side of her head, and her thick coat of fur is run through with slender, translucent spines—like a hedgehog’s, if hedgehogs had spines all over their bodies.

To Sunny’s surprise, there aren’t any claws on her front paws. Instead, each leg ends in a blunt, chitinous protrusion of bone, like the head of a mallet. Or like the monster is wearing very uncomfortable white mittens.

While Omori sifts through his inventory, Sunny sidles up to him. “Omori. I really think I should have a knife.”

“Cool. I guess you should go find one.”

But they both know that Omori has artillery to spare. Sunny frowns. “Are you mad at me?”

“Not everything is always about you,” Omori says coldly.

Since Aubrey showed up already armed, she doesn’t need to borrow a weapon. But Omori does thrust a CHARM at her. It’s one that Sunny doesn’t recognize, a pastel-pink headband adorned with a huge silk gladiolus.

“Aw,” Aubrey snickers, amused but clearly also touched. “For luck?”

“Something like that.”

She slides it on, pinning her bangs back from her face. “So? Is it cute?”

“I don’t know,” Omori mutters.

“Sunshine?”

“Totally,” Sunny says promptly. It suits her, actually. It’s flashier than the pins that Basil wears, but then again, so is Aubrey. “Gets a little lost in your hair. Maybe a different color?”

“It’s not for fashion,” Omori hisses. “Never mind. Let’s just get this over with.”

READ THE REST OF CH 3 HERE: archiveofourown.org/works/45213322/chapters/126779419

OR START FROM THE BEGINNING: archiveofourown.org/works/45213322/chapters/113743957