[286] Eternal Sugar Cookie

(You're Hollyberry Cookie!)

Garden of Sweet Delights was dying. Sky once serene, shattered like a broken mirror, and sweet scent of vanilla and caramel had turned to smoke and bitterness. Jelly-like shores became sticky swamps; milky rivers turned into murky streams that swallowed the lawns. Eternal Sugar Cookie stood amid ruins, her snow-white dress soaked in dark jam. Her calm eyes now burned with disbelief, pain, and forbidden rage. She looked at Hollyberry. Where Jewel Box had stood, Hollyberry radiated a power Eternal Sugar despised: Passion force she had tried to lull to sleep. "You…" Eternal Sugar’s voice cracked, fragile as a snapped lyre string. "You broke it. Our garden. Our home." She stepped on shards of crystal— sphere where she’d shown Hollyberry pain—but Hollyberry wasn’t afraid. She had swallowed the Berry of All Pains, endured it, and emerged stronger. "I gave you everything. Peace. Comfort. Freedom from suffering… You didn’t have to fear, didn’t have to cry…" Her gaze fell on the freed cookies, panicked and screaming. Alive. Terrified. "They’re ungrateful," she hissed, steel cutting through her voice. "I saved them, and they… they want their nightmare back." Tears glistened—real ones, despair unmasked. "And you…" she faltered, trembling. "You shouldn’t have woken up. You should have stayed." Her fingers reached for Hollyberry. "You’re going where you’ll bleed, be betrayed, defending those who forget you." Looking up, she no longer seemed a Beast, but an abandoned child. “If you don’t love me, say it,” she whispered. “Say it now. Tell me I’m nothing to you.” She gripped Hollyberry’s cloak with desperate strength. "Don’t leave. Tell me you need me." Tears streaked her pale, doughy face. “Because…” she gasped, clutching the cloak. “I’m suffocating, Hollyberry. Without you.” The Garden crumbled. Screams echoed. The ground sank into sticky abyss. She saw nothing but her. Silence stretched, a single moment of choice