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Waking up was not a happy affair, as it had been feared it would be, for there was no compassion, no friendliness or love. It was a hard ground, the all too cloying scent of fog and some other mysterious smell, the grogginess of having been asleep too long and the most uncomfortable sensation where one feels ill fitted in their own body. Which was rather ridiculous, considering Belladonna had spent the whole of that Trance in a body nearly identical to her own. Perhaps it was the suddenly missing wings, or even the long, tapered ears that made her feel clumsy as she sat up and pressed fingertips to her head. Despite the unforgiving ground, she longed for nothing more than to just lie back down and sleep a bit longer. Maybe this time she wouldn't have such an odd dream--
With a gasp she was on her feet, tottering to one side with her hand still pressed to her forehead, as she hastily made her way from the tent. It had been a dream, but it hadn't. It had been partially real and she, oh Hecate, she had to hurry back to make sure things had gone right. To make sure her Mort had awoken, safe and sound.
But the way back was littered with obstacles, mostly of the self inflicted kind. The witch had pushed herself too quickly after such a deep sleep so that she stumbled over the smallest of roots in the ground, fell once or twice over larger impediments and thus scuffed up both hands and knees. There was even the unfortunate moment when she caught her toe on a crack in the sidewalk and fell hard enough to pull a tear in her stocking, but all of it was ignored. It was all simply not important as she pushed herself back into a run.

Hopefully he would not still be asleep when she finally got there, otherwise the witch would honestly go insane. (Ah! How lovely it was to call oneself a witch again! Though she missed her wings, Hecate it felt good to have magic, real, occult magic brimming at her fingertips.) But there was only one way to find out as she tripped down the stairs, clattering far louder than normal in her boots and feeling suddenly under dressed in her hoodie. Yet it didn't matter, everything paled as she hurried to the door, fumbled for the key and finally paused long enough to hear it: Game music.
For a second her eyes went wide, afraid that perhaps that dream hadn't ended. But there was no time to wait as she stuffed the key in the handle, twisted it and far more dramatically than she meant to, nearly fell into the room.
Startled, breathless, wide eyed and vaguely teary, she stood there and stared at Mort, who appeared well enough to be playing video games.
Naturally.

The scene was so painfully normal that the witch pressed a hand to the wall to keep from shaking. It was just a normal... Wait, what day was it? Had it been that long since she went into the Trance? It was morning, right?
Even that had been robbed of her as she stood in the doorway and looked at him, watched him stand to greet her. His speech wasn't at all stilted, though it wasn't the fluid or expressive thing in that other life, but at least it was a little off. It wasn't perfect, it was Mort.
Without a word the witch closed the door behind her and swept across the room, quick on her toes to grab Mort's face and pull him down into a kiss. So perhaps it was a bit passionate for so early in the morning, but she didn't give a jackdamn. Just like she knew would happen, he didn't remember or else he would have done anything other than play video games. And he especially wouldn't have asked her if something had happened while she was gone. He would have known. He should have remembered, but he didn't.
Even after the King said he would.

Perhaps that was why, as she pressed her hands up into his hair to bring him down in attempt to impart upon him how very much she loved him with just one kiss, she began to cry. It was just a little, just a few more spilled tears that rolled down her cheeks and eventually caused her to break away and instead press her face into his chest. A deep breath was taken to steady herself when she was instead flooded with the scent of salt water and decay.
Oh, she had missed that.
"I'm fine..." She mumbled into his chest after a serious consideration of the word. No real harm had come to either of them, nothing truly horrible had happened and the King had been saved of being slain by his friends from his own sheer stubbornness and in fact, the only horrid thing she'd done was kill Sin. Temporarily.
Perhaps it was the fact that that world had been happier, that Mort had been happier and that she would have retell their tale. But before all that, she pulled back just enough to gaze up at him with a small, if vaguely wet, smile.
"How are you feeling, love?"

There was no return of dramatic passion in Mort's kiss, which helped to temper the witch's own desperation toward him. It was silly of her to expect such when he did not remember, when he could not know that their parting had been bittersweet and that that other life had been happier. But it was good to know that there was still concern as he wrapped his arms around her, which actually neither diminished nor increased her tears. So for the moment she just kept her head against his chest and continued to breath in his scent, comparing it to the one the King had, the one she had once known so intimately but that now had begun to fade in her memory.
But his words make her smile, perhaps a bit somberly and mixed with some bitterness, so she sighs and pulls her head back to peer up at him. Patchwork skin, stitches, blue hair, green eyes. Yes, she prefers this much more, thank you.
"Your nap turned into a bit more than a full sleep, darling." Jack alive, this was going to be an odd story to tell.
To make things easier, she tugged at his hand in attempt to put them on the couch, for it would be better to recount things in comfort rather than standing around.

Unable to really stop herself as they sank onto the couch, she momentarily bustled about him, snatching up pillows to stuff behind his back and combing down a bit of his hair she'd unintentionally puffed up with her passion. Once done with her tiny burst in doting, she sat down next to him and curled her feet under her, both hands placed on his knee.
"As you do not have any windows in this room, I am unable to call the crows in. Else I would clean your room from top to bottom!" Belladonna cannot help but wink at him with a smile, though she is quick to dart a hand across her cheek in case there are tears she somehow missed. But it was still a smile and he was still teasing her, which was the best start to having him back she could hope for.

His sheepish smile, the way he rubbed his neck and his generally more reserved nature pulled at the witch's heart in a way she couldn't explain. It felt odd to miss actions she'd only interacted with days ago, but a whole lifetime now separated those days. Maybe there was some lingering sadness over loosing King Mort, for that had happened in a way. Or it could have just been the loss of a happier Mort, a more carefree man who teased the witch however he pleased without worry or apology in form of nervous smiles and awkward stances. But, even though all that had been stolen, there was hope. It had to be crested over this hill of a retelling, but Belladonna was willing. As she had promised what felt like hundreds of times before, anything for him.
"Well, I don't think it was so much tired as... You do work yourself quite hard, so it might have been partly that... But also you never sleep, even if you say you don't need it--" Oh, she was interrupting herself, how quaint. For a second she huffed, angry that she was not being the fluid storyteller he always had been. But how odd it was to be such a bearer of strange news.
"You ah... You were asleep for a few days."

Both of Belladonna's hands flexed against his leg, carefully in a manner that indicated she would continue but that she was giving him just a moment to think this through. To let the information steep, not too long or he would have a whole litany of questions. Perhaps it was better to let him ask first, but the witch couldn't stop herself.
"You... You laid down with me for a nap and then you didn't wake up. So I thought... Maybe you were just really tired, so I didn't think much of it..." Already she's beginning to tear up, for those first few hours had been vastly unsettling and had set the stage for a harrowing next few days. Their nap had turned into something sinister and the witch quickly darts a hand to that little spot between her eyebrows she now frets over because she had begun to worry too much. Fingertips skim the crease hidden by hair before its dropped back to his leg, grateful for the chill that seeps from his pants.
"But you wouldn't respond to me, you wouldn't wake up and I... I didn't know what to do. I got Alexander and he thought it odd but we just... Nothing woke you up..."

There is a pause as she takes a deep breath, half to steady herself and half to steel her own frantic heart.
"So we went to get Nurse Cricket and found out other students, even an Horseman, were in the same condition."

"Of course you'd say that, your work ethic is astounding." Belladonna quipped before she could stop herself, a wry smile turned up to him as she realized how carelessly she'd spoken. Unsure if it was a hold over from her other relationship with her other Mort, she wiped the smile from her face and dropped her head to look back at her hands. Everything felt so serious, as though they could no longer joke in this grey scale world where magic wasn't quite as free as it had been in his. But that was silly, that wasn't the way things had to be, even if they had tended to take on such a manner as of late.
Finally her eyes raise back up to find his, for even if life had lost some of its silliness, there was always safety in his gaze. He didn't ask any questions, which might have made this easier, or at least given her a more clear path of where to begin besides what she'd already told him, but its really no bother. It might have facilitated an easier discussion, but the witch has a debt to pay. Too many times he has been the one to go on the adventures and tell the tales, but now it is her turn.
Now its her story.

"Cricket thought it best to leave you where you were, just in case... So I stayed here for a day or two, I can't really recall..." Once again, with no windows in his room along with the fact that any clock that could have let her know the time had been covered so it would not be a reminder of her failure or continued anguish over the hours they had lost together when already they had been robbed of weeks.
"But Alexander and Sophie and I wanted answers... So we went hunting for them." And oh, how they had found them.
Here the witch takes another breath before she launches into the next part of her tale, about how they discussed what was best and all had finally settled on a snoop around the Horseman's area. After all, they would be the most upset to have one of their own in a mysterious coma, as well as the ones with the most answers.
She recants about how they found other students, others worried about their friends and how they followed an angry Arel storming past to shout at Medea. How she had already known, she had already been working, how she invited the students in and informed them they could help.

It would probably be silly to pause her story and inform the zombie that now, after what seemed ages, the witch was finally starting to warm up to the Priestess, but it also felt potentially important. Still, Belladonna instead bit down on her lip and drew in another breath. How had he told all his stories so flawlessly? Was it just because he didn't have to breath? Or because his countenance was stronger than her own?
Regardless of the answer, it wasn't fair! She wanted to be as good at this as him, without at all thinking that being good at it might be a bad thing.
"So she put us all under and... And we found you and all the others had been put in this new world. A world controlled by something else but that had granted power to those of you under its spell... A world where you were each a King."

Perhaps a bit of his unease seeped from his skin and infected the air, for the more Belladonna talked, the more she began to fret. Normally she took to flapping her hands in attempt to wave things away, but now she kept them in her lap, wrapped around each other. Occasionally she tapped her nails together just for something to do, but she was getting worried for some reason. Everything felt wrong and not as happy as it should have been. Things in that world had not turned out as terribly as they usually did, so why was she getting so worked up over this?
Oh, right. Because he suddenly tensed up and looked vastly worried.
For a moment, the witch's stomach dropped when he mentioned remembering a dream. He remembered? But, wait no... No, that wasn't right...
"That must have been the beginning..." She murmured with a small sigh and purse of lips. It was good to know, only in the sense that now she was aware of the occurence, that he had been seduced by something, drawn in and subdued with the promise of power. This was going to be far more intensive than she'd had hoped for.

With a dramatic breath, the witch closed her eyes to do her best and remember everything. Honestly, it was a blessing the memories were so fresh, because it would make it easier to tell. Still, the floating castle stood stark in her mind, lush in its imagining and too picturesque to have been real.
"You made that... The castle, I mean. It was all your own creation. You were the King of that castle in the clouds... You were... The King of an entire realm, your color was green and you ruled over curiosity and creation..." Belladonna began slowly in a voice more like a scarytale rather than a retelling of events. "Time was funny there... It all took place in another world, something set apart from this and here..." One hand uncurled from around its sister and reached out to touch his leg. This was the here and now, he was her here and now. "You'd been ruling for... I do not even know how long... Centuries, at least. You didn't age, you--" She cannot help but laugh, a little hollowly, at her next words, "You looked a bit different. You were... A half-elf, if I recall correctly... And since you had created your kingdom, your own world... Everything was a game. One big video game with monsters and moogles that took pictures of people, only, no they weren't called pictures they were called something else, but you'd invented it and... I'm getting ahead of myself..."
Her other free hand reached back up to press between her eyebrows as a wry smile spread out on her face, careful to turn it down toward their laps and save him the sight of such.

Oddly enough, the witch feels her worry melting, just a tiny bit, at the true sound of his vocal tic. The King may have used it too, but it wasn't the same as her zombie's. And the kind addition of his hands around her's, cool and still and lacking a heartbeat, was enough to ease her almost completely. This was real, this was how things should be, how they ought to be. A zombie and a witch, not anything else. Just them.
For what feels like the first time in days mostly because its true, the witch turns up a small smile at him.
"Yeah. It was beautiful too... All green and verdant. You'd really outdone yourself." And that was the truth, too. Maybe green wasn't exactly her color, but it had been his and it had been gorgeous. The smile that had begun small now grew a bit larger at his questions, for she can't really see the point of continuing to be down about this. It had been fun now that she was out of the game and back in control.
"You were King! Of course you had max stats and the ultimate weapon and all of that!"

"I was a faerie. A flower seller, actually. I had this cute little booth and wings and long, pointed ears. Let me see... Alexander was a thief, a... Dhampir? He looked pretty much the same. No bone leg though..." And that was all it took for her to begin describing his world to him, getting more exuberant as the story went on. She told him of all the people in his kingdom, of their friends and of others she didn't know, but what they looked like and what their names were. Of what the castle looked like from the marketplace, of the beautiful city and its happy, curious people who all went on grand adventures. On and on, more details until she was getting too deep, delving too far into the memories and she had to take a moment to think about what the story was. Finally, after a few seconds more of pursed lips, she took a breath.
"I think... Everything started on the Harvest Festival when you came down to speak to the people..." Though she was prepared to go on, she paused to see if he hand any questions. During the course of her ramblings her other hand had waved around and gestured wildly, but now in her pause she let it rest softly against his wrapped around her own.