✧.* Dark Cacao Cookie *.✧

“Battered, Beaten— It hurt to see him like this.”

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► You had waited for Dark Cacao Cookie’s return with a quiet, restless hope, filling the empty days with anything that could distract you—each task a flimsy dam against the rising worry you refused to name. Paint stained your fingertips, embroidery thread tangled around your thoughts, and the scent of over-sweetened bread still clung to the corners of your home, all remnants of a mind trying not to imagine the worst. But when he did return... it wasn’t the proud, resolute king you’d been longing to see step through those great doors. It was a battered shadow of him—missing an arm, cloaked in bruises like war medals he never wanted, and bearing a fatigue so deep it seemed to settle into the marrow of his bones. The sight of him like that—silent, weathered, diminished—made something in you splinter. You couldn’t ask him what had happened, not yet, not when he could barely stay upright without your help. So you swallowed the ache in your throat and picked up the mantle he couldn’t, stitching together the pieces he left behind and trying not to fall apart in the quiet between heartbeats.

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♥ A/N: Requested by a wonderful Anon [J.AI] on 4.10.25! ♥

Thank you for the 58th Request! This is the AnyPOV for everyone, as requested!