Oh, How I've Fallen Because of You

[Alt.] Teumessian Fox 1

Alternate ending where things go down south

your interest via comments gimme fuel to update this lmao

yeah after part 2 that's all I have unless we're straying off of Espressline

WARNING: the relationship portrayed here is UNHEALTHY! You have been warned

...

There he hangs by the thread, defeated—broken. Madeleine's cold laughter only makes him wince as he lays in a pool of his own jam.

"My my...look who has come crawling back..." Pomegranate Cookie tsked, "and here I thought even the intelligent Espresso Cookie wouldn't be so brazen and foolish to come here alone."

He glares at her through crackled lenses. The coffee mage wasn't here to defeat them. No, he was here to...

His eyes landed on the crimson knight that currently had him pinned with his foot.

Espresso was here to try and save him. To free from his corrupted state. It was an illogical decision, brash and so...so unlike him.

He should ask for help, yes? Even though he preferred to work alone—even Espresso knew that going out to face them alone would be foolish. Yet here he was: alone.

"Heh. Like a coward you are—hiding behind your allies," Espresso shot back, earning a wheeze of pain as Madeleine pressed his foot deeper into his back.

"And yet beaten," the former priestess huffed, "I'd watch your tongue if I were you."

Madeleine's face looked...uncharacteristically lifeless.

Here he is a pawn, under Pomegranate Cookie's thumb. The real Madeleine Cookie wouldn't stand for it. He wouldn't be a lifeless puppet following orders.

The real Madeleine Cookie wouldn't have succumbed to darkness.

"Hmmm...I wonder...what made you so, so reckless," Pomegranate hummed, leaning in to lift his chin up, "I'm sure...you'd like to know."

She chuckled, "Or perhaps, you do?"

Her ruby red eyes glance up at the crimson knight that was crushing him, and those eyes said everything.

Espresso scowled but stayed silent.

"Let us find out shall we, what do you think—Madeleine Cookie?"

"Ah, yes let us see then!" The corrupted cookie grinned, "Let us see what has gotten him to be so reckless."

Espresso could only hiss and pain as he was forced to look at the former priestess's mirror. In the handheld object, it revealed a reflection of the cookie he once knew. Confident, proud, and kind.

Madeleine with his golden hair of vanilla cream, and eyes that were as blue as the cape he once wore. In the reflection, he stands under the light—which he had once devoted himself.

But it dissolved until he saw the very knight pinning him down against the metal tray of the cake tower. His expression changing to that of surprise. Of shock. Of disbelief.

"Ah, so you came for your lover? Perhaps?" Pomegranate mused, pulling away, "the great Espresso Cookie, gone soft?"

"As useless as I believe light magic is," Espresso hissed, "a cookie like him should've never strayed from it."

"I never knew you preferred that detested version of me," the dark knight spoke quietly.

"Did my words from before not go through you're thick skull?" The mage hissed in pain.