fandomtownies | Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

Iris was mostly taking the whole pixelated thing in stride. It was weird, but it was a pretty harmless weird, and Silly looked adorable as a tiny pixel bird. Sorting out her shop, on the other hand, was an exercise in confusion since most of her stock was just…

Mushrooms?

If anyone came in and bought anything this week, it was coming with a disclaimer that she had no idea what she was selling them. (Though she was amused by the poisoned mushrooms that had shown up in the corner of Shame.)

And then there was her greenhouse.

Her poor, poor greenhouse had suffered a lot this summer already. Now, she couldn't really call what had happened to it this week suffering, exactly, but she also couldn't do much with all the red and bitey plants or the weird beanstalk ones.

(Iris was sort of hoping she got to keep one or two of the bitey plants though; she was always down for more weird plants.)

As for the beanstalks…

Well. Obviously, right, the only thing to do was to climb them.

Which was how Iris had found herself up on a suspiciously solid set of clouds, staring at the floating gold coins just waiting up here for her, and then leaning over to peer down at everything below.

… Huh. Okay. Now the question was, would each of her beanstalks lead her to more money? Would she get to keep the money?

Pick Your Poison is… Open…? Ish?

[But obvs the post is entirely open!]

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Watching Zack not fall through the clouds was, actually, rather helpful. If he didn't fall, then she was unlikely to fall.

"What, up here?" That slightly breathless laugh was mostly because his showing up here, out of the blue, had shocked her. "I'm just messin' 'round with Silly, mostly."

And tiny, teeny pixelated Silly was going to make a break for Zack to say hi at the top of his pixelated little lungs.

"Hey," she added.

"Hey," Zack said, smiling warmly and reaching up to wave a pixelly hello to Silly in turn. "Here seems like a nice place to mess with a bird, I can't deny that." A pause. "Mind if I sit?"

He had stuff on his mind.

"Go ahead," she said, tucking her phone away and frowning a little. It wasn't that she was unhappy to see him, but it was that… he'd sought her out and wanted to talk.

Given the last few months, Iris felt she was justified in feeling antsy about that.

"Is everythin' okay?" she ventured.

"Maybe?" A pause. "Kind of?"

Another pause.

"Things were better last week, admittedly," Zack sighed, frowning a little. "When everyone was changing and portals were opening all over the place? I got stuck somewhere else for a while. But... that wasn't so bad. The weirder part was that I wasn't exactly me when it happened."

Iris wasn't sure what to say to that, really. She'd spent the week getting lost other places but after years in croquet hell world, spending a day or a few hours anywhere hadn't bothered her. It had been kind of neat, really, but she'd been herself the whole time.

Silly bobbled over to land on her shoulder and Iris pressed a kiss to his stupid little head.

"None of anyone were really themselves last week," she said, "so it ain't seeming like there's much reason to dwell too hard on it, is there?"

Zack was quiet for a few moments, lifting a shoulder slightly.

"I was happy," he said, simply.

Those were three words he hadn't been able to say very much. Not in quite some time.

As she took a seat nearby, dangling her legs off the edge of the cloud in sheer defiance of where they were, Iris glanced at him.

"Happy," she said softly. "You deserve to be happy, Zack."

She wished he was.

Zack nodded a little, looking out over the island from where he'd seated himself.

"I was him, Iris."

Him.

He figured she'd know.

And Iris missed him. So much. Tseng did too, grieving in his own way.

"Oh."

She was painfully, selfishly glad she hadn't met Zack while he'd been the Zack that her memories missed so badly. Iris loved Zack as he was, but it was so hard to see him like this when she also knew exactly how he'd been too.

If she'd met the Zack she missed… losing him again would have hurt so badly.

"Yeah." Zack sat in silence for a few long moments, just... staring out over the island. "It was nice."

It wasn't who he was. But it was nice.

"I'd forgotten what it felt like, being able to breathe, you know?"

Iris flinched a little at his open acceptance of it not being who he was.

She wasn't exactly the woman who'd never gone through losing him either, not with her memories jumbled and tossed together, to trip over at unexpected moments. But she wasn't not her either and Tseng seemed to be about the same.

For his actual question…

"Yeah," she said, "I know how that goes."

She'd basically drowned for five years, after losing him, believing him dead.

"Yeah."

Zack was silent for a few more moments.

"He's not me," he said again, finally. "But it would be nice if I could get close to that again."

Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

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