Dreaming that I'm blind again

“…Somewhere she’ll be treated just as she deserves.”

Nick had gotten used to Dakota’s vaguely ominous and cryptic warnings. It was a technique she employed to obfuscate and deflect whenever he tried to get a serious answer out of her- a sign that she was trying to intentionally frustrate him, and that no further explanation would be forthcoming.

Most of the time, it worked.

Not this time.

“Dakota, I’m serious here,” Nick growled, refusing to let her weasel her way out of this like she always did. This wasn’t some prank, or an emotionally-charged moment she was trying to deflect from. No, this involved someone Nick cared about, someone he just saw disappear without a word, and if Dakota thought he was just going to let that go, she was dead wrong. “You tell me what you did with Kim right now. I’m not playing games! You said it yourself, she deserves to rest. And where I’m sitting, it looks like you used me to manipulate her into making things worse for herself! So spill it- what the hell did you do, Dakota?!”

Nick’s anger was nothing new. Dakota had seen him blow his lid a couple of times since he came onto the show, and this wasn’t even the first time she was the target of it. So she was able to keep her cool with little difficulty.

It helped that, for once, she was being completely forthright with him.

“I’m telling you the truth,” she said, her voice silky and gentle like a soft ribbon. “As a part of her Sick Day punishment transformation, I gave Kim some leave. As the manager of the property where she is employed, that is certainly within my purview, is it not?” She flexed her fingers open and closed along the cane, wearing her usual wicked smirk. The one that did little to reassure Nick that she could be trusted.

And yet…

“Don’t you trust me?” Dakota’s voice took on an edge that made Nick wince. The way she was looking at him… that spark in her eye… it gave him pause.

It felt like she was testing him.

“Don’t you trust me?” Those words brought long-buried memories from their past back to the forefront of Nick’s mind. And not from just when they were kids, either. But their shared alternate history that had been crafted for Dakota by Sylvia’s hand (though in hindsight Dakota likely had far more influence on it than he would have expected) and how many times she’d asked him that.

“Don’t you trust me?” When she was ****.

“Don’t you trust me?” When she was frustrated with him.

“Don’t you trust me?” When she was inconsolable.

“Don’t you trust me?” When she was overjoyed.

“Don’t you trust me?” …When she was lying through her teeth, and she knew that he knew that she was lying to him.

Those words were so much more than a question. They were practically a plea. A magical pact crafted by Dakota to beg for his trust, even as she lied and manipulated him. Because she knew that the answer would always be “yes”. Even when he knew that she was lying. Even when, two seconds after Nick reaffirmed his trust for her, she admitted the truth.

All she wanted was to hear him say that he trusted her. It was desperation. Manipulation. A twisted blend of Dakota’s desire to monopolize Nick’s love and trust, to constantly reinforce his loyalty to her in her own damaged, lonely mind.

It didn’t surprise Nick that growing up into a damaged teenager with the childhood that she’d had would lead to the **** woman he saw in front of him. The woman who had been spurned over and over again by the one person who should have always had faith in her. It made sense to him that, lacking the support of her mother, a maturing Dakota would seek it out from whatever external source she could, and covet it when she received it like water in a desert.

At times, Nick even wondered if she had intentionally lied to him and played mind games just so she could get another hit of “Yes, I trust you” from him to reassure herself that she had someone who wouldn’t abandon her.

…Maybe, if Dakota had lived into adulthood in the real world, she would have done the same thing. But that wasn’t how things had gone. Even though Nick knew to some degree that Dakota’s alternate past was no less real than the alternate reality where Marley was Carly’s sister, he couldn’t bring himself to equate the two. Even though he could feel, on some level, that all those events had happened, they just couldn’t eclipse the life he knew he’d led. The life where Dakota had been swallowed up by the river, never to be seen on earth again.

But those were her eyes staring back at him. Not the covetous, greedy pools of liquid blue that he knew from his childhood, but a deep, piercing gold like an amber fire burning intensely and fueled by her unending desire.

“…How can I?” He finally asked. It was something he’d never voiced before, even when he’d wanted to. But this time at least, he knew he couldn’t just blindly say yes. This wasn’t some trick on him, this wasn’t a little white lie she was telling for her own comfort. Long gone were the days of “Of course I didn’t pour the salt packet into your soda while you were in the bathroom, don’t you trust me?” when the torn packet was sitting right in front of her, empty but for a few fledgling grains.

And to Nick’s surprise… Dakota didn’t respond. She just stared at him with a calm, understanding gaze in her eyes, as if she knew that this time, things would be different. That this time, no, he wouldn’t just accept her word for it and blindly tell her yes.

Instead, she stepped forward, and cradled his cheek in her hand.

Her touch still felt like ice to him. But he didn’t shrink away. That would be a victory of a different sort for Dakota; an admission of her superiority, and his submission. Nick let her touch linger as the cold spread across his face, and looked into those deep pools of gold without blinking.

“I love you…” Her voice was like the hiss of a serpent in his ear. “You are everything to me, Nick. I know you even better than you know yourself. It’s why I’m here… it’s why you need me. You can lie, and say you don’t want the things I do for you, that you don’t agree with them, and I understand why you do. Because you’re such a wonderful, caring person inside. And you’re afraid that if you accept what you truly want, you’ll lose that part of yourself. The wonderful, human part of yourself that makes you the man I love… …So you resist. You tell yourself you don’t want it, because only a bad person would be happy with the things I gift you from the bottom of my heart. But… that’s where you’re wrong, Nick. You are NOT a bad person. No… you are the best person I have ever known. And that’s why, someday, you’ll look back on all this, and you’ll know that I was right. That I was giving you what you needed… and you just couldn’t accept it.”

“…You’re wrong,” Nick croaked out, wanting to shake his head in denial but finding himself paralyzed by Dakota’s touch. What could he even say to her? That he didn’t love the women he was finding himself enamored with?

That would be a lie.

“Don’t you trust me?”

That the bad things Dakota had done… the bad things he kept making excuses for… that he knew they weren’t done with ulterior motive, but for his benefit?

That would be a lie.

“Don’t you trust me?”

That he hated being here, he hated her for manipulating him to this point, and subjecting the people he cared about to her twisted games?

That may have been true… but in a way it would also be a lie.

“Don’t you trust me?”

Like so many times in the past, whose words wrapped themselves around his brain. Dakota’s eyes pierced into him like they always had, whether blue or gold or polka-dots.

Nick’s fickle heart was his greatest foe when it came to dealing with the woman in front of him, because even though he knew he couldn’t, even though he could never be so foolish as to do it, every part of him desperately wanted to.

He wanted to trust her. That was just how great of a hold Dakota had over him.

Dakota removed her hand, but her cold touch still lingered against his skin, just like her words lingered in his mind.

Like her very being lingered in his heart, spreading through him like a virus.

“You can hate me if you want,” Dakota said, looking as if she was already resigned to that outcome. “But I will still love you. I have never broken a promise I made to you, Nick. Even now, you are the only one I have in my heart.”

That was the thing, wasn’t it?

Dakota lied. Dakota cheated. Dakota manipulated without hesitation, if she thought that it would get what she wanted. Even before this show and its curse had twisted her into the abomination standing in front of him, that had always been who his dear friend was.

But every promise Dakota had made, she had kept with him.

“I promise, no matter what, I will never love anyone as much as I love you.”

How many years ago had she said that to him? He could hardly remember that far back. But the flame blazing in those golden eyes still burned brightly, telling him that those words were just as true today as they had been back then.

“Then promise me,” Nick said seriously, narrowing his eyes. “Promise me that Kim will be okay, that you didn’t do anything to her.”

“I did do something to her,” Dakota replied coldly. “I gave her a punishment transformation. I sent her away. I can’t promise you something like that. But what I can promise you, Nick, is that I am well aware that Kim’s suffering would sadden you. And anger you. And hurt you. So why would I wish for that, when what I want most is your happiness?”

An invisible scale sat in Dakota’s heart, a scale that Nick couldn’t quite read. The two sides of Dakota’s personality hung on either end of it- her love and devotion for Nick, and her petty, vindictive nature that surfaced whenever she couldn’t get her way.

So the only question before Nick at this moment was whether or not Dakota’s love for him and desire for him to be happy outweighed her spite for Kim. And without knowing just what had happened between the two of them for Kim to earn Dakota’s ire, he had no way of properly judging the weight of those two things.

He still felt her ghostly fingers on her cheek, even as they wound themselves around her cane.

“You may not trust me any longer, but in the end… nothing can change what’s been done,” Dakota said, speaking truth to reality as much as Nick hated to hear it. “She accepted the transformation, and she’ll receive what she is owed for doing so. And when all is said and done and the two of you are reunited, then maybe next time I ask you… you’ll tell me that you trust me.”

“…I trust that you think you’re doing what’s best for me,” Nick said aloud, opening up the wall in his heart for Dakota to peer inside. “But that doesn’t mean I trust your actions.”

Dakota looked sadly at him. “…I suppose… that is what I deserve,” she conceded, shaking her head. “I wish you could take comfort in my words today, Nick, because I’m afraid that your concern for Kim may hang over you like a cloud. And I wish I could clear it for you. But all I can ask is that you take comfort in what I’m going to say… that, when all this is said and done, Kim will be thanking me. I’m quite certain of that.”

“I’ll kill her,” Kim seethed. Contrary to Dakota’s believes, she was not in a very thankful mood. “That fucking icy bitch, I’ll kill her… fucking throw her in the river and drown her all over again, that lying piece of-!”

“Icy bitch?” The pink-haired girl in front of Kim went pale for a moment, her eyes widening slightly. But her smile remained. “Um… there hasn’t been a mixup, has there? If-if you’re from Yuki’s season, you gotta let me know, okay? It’s the rules. You gotta tell me if you’re a Yuki contestant…”

“Who?” Kim took note of the woman for the first time. “Yuki? No, I… who the fuck are you, anyway?” She demanded.

Kim wasn’t one for cursing, usually. Her dark humor tended not to go in that direction if she could help it.

But she wasn’t in a very humorous mood, either.

The woman in green cleared her throat loudly and refocused. She wore a suave smile on her face that reminded Kim of her own for a brief moment; the sort of expression someone who worked in customer service was likely to have perfected.

“Yes, I do believe introductions are in order! I hear you’re a very diligent young lady, and it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance! I’m-”

“Are you related to Nola or something?” Kim interrupted her. “Because you look a lot like this leprechaun I know.”

“…I don’t like being interrupted,” the woman replied coldly. Any trace of affability had left her smiling face.

Kim was pretty sure that being interrupted wasn’t the reason for the sudden rise of hostility she felt from the strange, verdantly-clad woman, though.

“…My name is Little Miss,” the woman finally concluded her introduction. She did a little flourish as if she was expecting applause, but Kim wasn’t feeling very charitable.

She just stared at her.

Little Miss straightened up, and seeing that she wasn’t going to be getting the reception she’d been looking for, decided to push past it and move on to business.

“Now, I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here-”

“I’m here because Dakota is a lying, manipulative scumbag who tricked me,” Kim snapped at her. She’d been enjoying a nice morning with Nick, exhausting as it had been, and Dakota had taken advantage of that exhaustion to send her here. So she wasn’t feeling much up for small talk.

A sulky expression crossed the girl’s cherubic features.

“…Yes, well, that much is obvious,” she sniffed. “That wasn’t at all what I meant! What I meant was-”

“Look, where even is ‘here’ anyway?” Kim demanded, looking around the room. It was a bit of a daunting sight. The room seemed both incredibly cramped and impossibly spacious, inexplicably at the same time. She looked at one corner and she saw a bunch of sex toys lined up in a neat little casing. She looked at another corner, and she saw more books than she had ever seen in one place before. Look at another, and she saw a rainbow of toys and games from cloudy bouncy balls to a towering inflatable waterslide. Then in another corner there was a mountain of farm equipment, everything from the latest industrial combines to ancient wheat scythes, and everything in between, all sparkly and new as if they’d all been plucked from time and assembled here. And then in the next corner, ancient pottery from a myriad of cultures and periods that only someone with far more education than Kim could begin to identify.

That’s right, the rectangular room had five corners to it, somehow. No, six. Wait, no, three. Everywhere she looked the number seemed to shift, and she kept seeing something new. It felt like she was looking at a puzzle one individual piece at a time, without any ability to grasp the sheer size and scope of the entire picture.

The pink-haired woman flashed a catlike smile and spread out her hands, turning her palms out to Kim in presentation. “Welcome to my shop, Kimiko Lewis! The Harem Hotel Store! We’ve got absolutely anything and everything your heart could desire!”

Kim wasn’t sure what the woman in front of her was looking for. Applause? Adulation? Not anything she was ready to give for such a bland presentation.

“…My name is Kim,” she said dryly, throwing the other woman’s words back at her.

Little Miss pouted. “That’s it? I bring you here, show you my fine establishment, let you browse my curios, and all you can say is ‘it’s Kim’? My, my, you’re far ruder than I thought! Don’t you work in customer service?”

“…It’s my Sick Day,” Kim said hesitantly. Because even if that was technically true, she knew that her whole reason for being here in the first place was because of that transformation.

Dakota had said she wouldn’t screw Kim over.

And yet, where did Kim find herself, after agreeing to Dakota’s terms?

Standing in another store.

Only this one was making her queasy as she struggled to wrap her head around the conceptual realities of what she was observing as everything around her continued to change drastically in size and scope, like a living organism.

It vaguely reminded Kim of a cartoon chameleon rapidly shifting between colors like some ****-induced freak-out.

Kim was pretty sure that real chameleons didn’t actually do that.

With a sigh, Kim decided that there was no sense in being rude and antagonistic, even though she really wanted to. Whatever reason Dakota had sent her here, making this woman upset wouldn’t do her any good.

Especially if this was Dakota’s idea of ****. Send her to an even worse job.

So she took a deep breath, and **** the best smile she could muster onto her face.

“Look, miss-”

“It’s Little Miss,” the other woman corrected her firmly.

Kim stared blankly at her, thrown for a moment.

“Right, uh… Little Miss.” Kim scratched her head. “Look, I don’t know what Dakota told you, but… I’m here because I used a transformation and I’m not supposed to be working. But I’m guessing you already knew that.”

Not seeing any choice, Kim reluctantly pulled up the punishment transformation Dakota had given her, to see what the damage was.

• Mandatory Sick Leave: Kim has been overstressed these last few days and thus has not been putting in her best performance at work. She’s been creating a hostile work environment and feuding with upper management. To help her get the proper mindset for being a productive member of the workforce and properly begin taking care of herself, she’ll be put on mandatory leave. Hopefully she’ll be able to calm down and not be such a massive pain in the butt. (Punishment)

Kim needed to read it two more times just to make sure she was seeing it right. She tried not to let her annoyance surface.

“Welcome aboard, Kim!” Little Miss cheered, applauding like a giggling child. “We’re so happy to have you! Now- we just have to do something about that outfit of yours…”

Kim looked down. She was still buck naked. And the only thing she had to put on was the qipao Dakota had tossed to her, which she still held bundled up in her arms.

She sighed in frustration.