CONTENT WARNING: vomit, descriptions of abuse, light descriptions of injury, intrusive thoughts

“Hold still, Marmoset, or I can’t get the porcelain out.”

The RainWing jester’s squirming was stopped by firm white talons, who pushed them down to be still against the infirmary bed they were in. Angel Trumpet was carefully inspecting their injuries from the day’s performance, which had gone awry when they accidentally knocked over an expensive vase with their tail. Between porcelain shrapnel in their scales and bruised ribs from the Queen slamming her tail into them in her frustration, Marmoset was thoroughly beaten-up, and Angel Trumpet was refusing to let them go anywhere because of it. They sighed through their nose, pink scales flickering white with pain as a pair of tweezers carefully extracted another shard from their injuries.

“How much longer?” they asked, wincing when breathing too quickly made their ribs hurt. “I’m not stuck in here for days, right?”

Another bit of porcelain landed on the cloth by their head, perfectly in tandem with an exasperated sigh from the doctor tending to them. “As long as it takes to properly bandage your tail and make sure she didn’t break any of your ribs – which I assure you will feel like forever if you don’t sit still and let me work,” Angel Trumpet answered tersely, pushing down their twitching tail tip. “Stop making my job harder.”

Across the room, Lightningbug, who had been sleeping off whatever food poisoning she’d contracted earlier that day, opened one of her eyes. “Mind keeping it down? Some of us are trying to rest,” she called before rolling over with a grumble. Angel Trumpet looked like he wanted to throttle her.

“Not helpful, Lightningbug.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

Marmoset decided it might be better to focus on the floor instead. The floor didn’t bicker with anyone, and the last thing they needed right now was more chaos around them. In fact, the floor didn’t do anything but have interesting patterns in the marble.

That one looks kind of like a RainWi- Oh. That’s my reflection.

They’d never seen themself look so tired before. Since when did they have such sad eyes? Were their colors really that dull, or was it just the marble’s pale color playing tricks on them? The jester tried to smile at themself, but the movement felt nothing short of forced, fangs poking out in a way that felt more like a snarl than anything else. The way their face looked sent a jolt through them, and they tamped their expression down into neutrality before their scales had a chance to turn fear-green. Luckily for them, the yellow hue of surprise already blended well with their wings. Good. They were not allowed to deviate from their happy, pink self.

I want to burn this whole city to the ground.

NO. Bad Marmoset. Happy. Think happy. Be happy.

The world might as well end if they broke the facade of the plucky, goofy, perpetually optimistic dragon they showed everyone else. Over their dead body.

“Are you alright?” Angel Trumpet asked in a very soft voice, startling them back from their reverie. “You’ve been staring into space for ten minutes. I’m mostly done with your bandages, you know.”

Marmoset’s head shot up instantly. “Oh! You are? Thank you! I’m fine, I just- just-”

Oh, who were they kidding?

The tears didn’t wait any longer to fall, prickling in the corners of their eyes and forming rivulets along the scales of their snout. They could feel their scales turning a dull, stormy blue accented by a cacophony of browns and greens indicating extreme stress. If the water flowing from their eyes was rain, then their whole body was the ground being turned muddy beneath the downpour.

“I’M FUCKING STRESSED. ALL THE TIME. AND I’M SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY BUT I’M NOT AND I FEEL LIKE A TERRIBLE DRAGON AND-”

“And all of that is completely valid. You overwork yourself,” Angel Trumpet murmured, gently wrapping one wing around the sobbing jester. He was pleasantly warm. “It’s okay to be upset.”

Claws clicked across the floor as Lightningbug heaved herself up to join the other two. “Also, hot take, but it’s perfectly okay to be upset about a dragon who literally throws you around. I can’t imagine how scary that must be,” she chimed in, coming to flop down on the floor in front of Marmoset so they could make eye contact. “She’s terrifying. Being unhappy is a completely reasonable reaction.”

“I-it’s my fault for knocking the vase over,” Marmoset replied, taking a deep breath and shaking their head. “I-it’s… It’s expensive.”

Lightningbug made a face at them not unlike a dragonet refusing to eat their vegetables. “Um, hello? She’s literally the queen. An expensive vase should mean nothing to her. It’s no excuse to hit her palace staff. She’s a shit queen if a fucking vase is more important to her than the wellbeing of another dragon.”

“But she’s also ill, and that must be causing her a lot of st-”

Angel Trumpet cleared his throat, gently clamping Marmoset’s snout shut with his talons for a moment. “Respectfully, she has brainwashed you. She has brainwashed all of us. Illness and being a terrible dragon are in no way correlated or mutually exclusive.”

Marmoset blinked. “… She has?” they asked, and felt a little stupid for how obvious the confusion was on their face. Their snout shifted to a bewildered shade of purple mixed with orange.

Fortunately, Angel Trumpet responded patiently. “Yes,” he said, finally backing off to sit on the floor next to Lightningbug. “Honestly, the fact that she managed to convince you that her treatment of you is acceptable because of her own problems is a glaring sign of that.”

You know it’s not fair. You know that, don’t you?

That was true. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.

This is why you should kill her. This is why you should raze this whole kingdom to the ground.

Black. There was hate-black creeping in on the tips of their talons. Shit! Tamp it down, tamp it down!

Marmoset was frankly terrified of the idea of someone seeing black in their scales. While not everyone was well-versed in the exact meanings of RainWing scale colors, there was really no telling how much their colleagues might know. Were they only at the level where they knew that red was angry, yellow was happy, and blue was sad? Or were they at the level where they understood that only light blue was sadness, and that brown meant stress and that orange betrayed frustration? They didn’t want to risk any of their coworkers knowing that they could feel something as dark as hatred – especially when they were supposed to be the happy one that nobody worried about. What if dragons became scared of them, or thought they were a burden?

With herculean effort, they schooled their scales back to a more normal range of colors. Discomfort green would do. They had been having a very uncomfortable day, after all.

“Do you guys wanna hear a joke?” the jester offered with a smile, hoping their expression and tone weren’t too forced. “I’ve got a few, being the jester and all.”

Generally, the job of a jester was a varied one. Juggle? Put on a skit? Make a fool of themselves? Make fun of people the Queen didn’t like? Make fun of the Queen? They did it all (except for that last one, which would probably get them killed), and they did it well. On some level, they even enjoyed their job, making other dragons smile and laugh with their antics. The amount of effort they put into cataloguing countless jokes and memorizing them would’ve been impressive even to Karma, who was the most obsessively scholarly dragon they knew.

“Go for it,” Lightningbug encouraged with a toothy grin, Angel Trumpet nodding politely next to her. He was fidgeting with his claws at this point, looking about as tired as Marmoset felt on the inside.

Thank goodness. If there was one thing that came naturally to Marmoset at this point, it was knowing the perfect joke.

“A snake walks into a tavern. The bartender asks ‘How’d you do that?’”

That one had to be one of their favorites. As usual, it took their audience a second to process, but sent both into laughter once they did. Lightningbug guffawed, insectoid wings vibrating with the force of her amusement while Angel Trumpet snorted and shook his head with a smile.

“I’ll have you know that was terrible,” the LeafWing doctor said, but the glimmer in his eyes told Marmoset it was really fine. The prideful beginnings of indigo burst across their scales, starting at the tips of their wings, tail, and talons and mixing along their body with joyful yellow and pink.

“I’ve got another!” Marmoset exclaimed, suddenly feeling much more animated as they sat up, beginning to gesture with their talons as they spoke. “How about this one? A few weeks ago, a guard came to my door, saying he was looking for a dragon with one eye. I told him he’d have much better luck if he looked with both.”

The delighted sounds of amusement seemed to blur into a natural part of the background as Marmoset cracked one joke after the other.

“A librarian finds a 9-foot scroll on one of the shelves. When they ask their apprentice ‘How did that get there?’ the apprentice replies ‘I dunno, but it must be a long story.’”

That one sent Lightningbug cackling at a concerningly high volume. Angel Trumpet sat up and reached over to try soothing her, but he was a second too late. The laughter turned into coughs and retching as Lightningbug’s body finally decided to expel what was bothering it so much. Marmoset felt their scales shift to dark disgust green as Angel Trumpet sighed heavily.

“… Both of you please just lie back down.”