Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Fixed versus Broken	By : anacsadder Category: +S through Z > Super Mario Brothers Views: 3978 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Mario franchise and I'm not making any money from this.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
Only a day or two later, the house was cleaner than it had been in years. Luigi was happy enough with that. He also found, however, that the lanky doppelganger was growing on him.
He was on the couch reading again when she rounded the corner from the kitchen. She clasped her hands behind her back as she leaned against the wall at the foot of the stairs. Her eyes focused on the floor. “Um... You're out of bleach...” she said sheepishly.
The poor thing always looked so nervous when she had to ask for things. Luigi closed his book. “No problem. I'll run out and get some.”
Waluigi flinched.
“I can wait until after Mario gets home, if you don't want to be alone.”
“No... I mean... I know, but I made a mistake and I want to fix it before he gets home...”
Luigi cocked his head. “Why? What happened?”
She seemed to struggle with herself. Then she blushed and forced a nervous smile. “I accidentally put one of Mario's socks in with his shirts. It's, uh, pink?”
The man in green laughed a little before he could stop himself. Waluigi looked puzzled and maybe a little hurt for a second, but then she allowed herself a slightly wider smile.
“I know. I shouldn't be afraid of Mario. My first impulse when I mess up has always been panicked damage control, though.”
He shook his head. “No, I shouldn't have laughed. You really need to learn to relax, though. He's not going to care.” Luigi laughed again. “The thing is, he used to do it all the time when he did his own laundry. So it's... funny...”
This time she chuckled, too. A chuckle that slowly evolved into a hesitant giggle.
Shy, blue eyes flicked briefly over the dingy yellow dress. Then they widened and lit up. “Oh, I have an idea! Why don't you go take a relaxing bubble bath, and I'll get that dress washed for you? You've been wearing it for days. It can't feel good.”
She frowned. “Why are you always trying to take care of me?”
The reaction caught Luigi off guard. It shouldn't have, he realized, when he thought about it, but it did. “Because... Because I want to. I mean, friends help each other, right?”
“Friends,” she repeated carefully.
“I guess we don't have to be friends...” Luigi bit his lip. “I figure if you're living with us, we should try, though...”
She studied the carpet again. Her eyebrows rose, and then drew together into a scowl, and then her face relaxed as she shrugged. “Maybe... If I- If I fit in your tub.” One corner of her mouth drew up awkwardly.
Luigi glanced at her legs, but only long enough to acknowledge the joke. Staring still made her uncomfortable. He couldn't say he blamed her. “You know where the towels are, I guess. I'll, uh... Leave the dress on the doorknob or something. I'll give you a few minutes and then come up for it.”
Waluigi nodded and slunk gracefully upstairs.
000
Later that night, curled up in bed facing the wall, Luigi heard her whisper his name. He rolled onto his back and found her staring down at him with a sheet around her shoulders. “Yeahp?” He slurred sleepily.
“I had a...” she hesitated. “I can't sleep.”
Luigi propped himself up on his elbows. “You want some milk?”
She shook her head. “I need to talk.” Her eyes moved off to one side and she added, “I think.”
The groggy man sat up and cross his legs like a teenager at a sleepover. “What do you want to talk about?”
Her bed sheet glowed in the moonlight from the window. With her thin face and narrow shoulders, she looked like some kind of skeletal ghost in the dark. “I don't know, but I need another voice to focus on.”
Luigi struggled for something to talk about. He wasn't used to talking about himself, but she rarely wanted to talk about herself. “Did anyone ever tell you about how I saved Mario from King Boo?”
Waluigi shook her head. “Is that why you hate ghosts?”
“I hate ghosts because they're scary.” He smiled weakly, half amused by the question, half caught up in the memory of the fear. “Boos have those fangs, as long as my finger. Not to mention that giant baby that had giant rocking horses chasing me around. I still don't know if he grew or if I shrank.” Luigi fiddled with the tip of his mustache.
“Are you going to make me ask about the giant baby?” Waluigi said in a flat voice.
“Well...” Luigi decided to start at the beginning. “It started when I got a letter telling me that I won a mansion, with a map attached to it. The letter, not the mansion.”
A delicate eyebrow arched. “Of course you would fall for the old 'free mansion' trick.”
The human frowned. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
The doppelganger nodded and rested her chin on her knees. She didn't look distressed though. Just settling in and getting comfortable. Luigi told her about professor Elmer Gadd and the angry ghosts that destroyed his lab. He told her about the portraits. He told her about the ghosts dancing in the ball room, and playing the piano. Ghosts entirely unlike boos. Some parts she leaned close and stared with wide eyes. Some parts she listened from behind drooping eyelids, tired but attentive.
“I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see him,” Luigi finally wound toward the finish. “He was so proud of me, when the disorientation wore off, but I was really just so glad to have him back.”
She absorbed the story in silence for several moments. Just as Luigi was beginning to think she'd fallen asleep sitting up, she said, “I wish someone would trap Wario in a painting.”
Luigi shrugged. “Only King Boo knows how to trap live people in paintings, apparently.”
After a little more silence she muttered, “Maybe he'll crash his stupid motor cycle.” Then she sighed. “One more story?”
The venom in her voice threw him off. He couldn't imagine hating someone enough to want him dead. Wario was a fuck-up, though. Luigi thought that if he was going to hate someone that much maybe it could be Wario, but that sort of violence wasn't really in his nature. “I could...” Luigi laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “I could tell you about the second time King Boo trapped Mario in a painting. This one involves a possessed staircase and a magic, crystal moon.” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers dramatically.
She giggled a little, too. It was a sweet sound. “How does King Boo manage to catch Mario twice, when Bowser's failed twenty times?”
“Ghosts are really tricky,” Luigi shrugged. “Invisible, intangible, and practically invincible without the poltergust. Even with the poltergust, they're pretty slippery...”
“Huh.” Her fingers twirled in her hair. “I wonder why Bowser and King Boo never work together.”
“That's a scary thought,” Luigi winced. “Don't give them any ideas.”
She yawned and curled up on her side, with her hands clasped under her cheek. “So what was that about a crystal moon?”
Luigi continued talking until she fell asleep.
000
As they moved toward the end of the second week with their new maid, Luigi was getting a little tired of being cooped up in the house all the time. Watching Waluigi unwind and begin to enjoy herself made up for it, though. She used to obsess over having dinner finished exactly five minutes before Mario came home, and became very distressed when the schedule of his coming and going tended to err on the erratic side. Only recently, she'd learned and excepted that it was okay if dinner was a little cool or a little late.
There was one thing Luigi hadn't been able to convince her to change her mind about, though. The dress. He'd offered her a t-shirt and pajama pants for sleeping. They were short, but she was definitely thin enough to fit in them. She'd shyly declined the offer. Mario and Luigi offered to buy her a new dress, but she protested that gesture, too. If it wasn't necessary for housework, survival, or hygiene, she wouldn't accept it from them.
One evening Luigi got out of the shower and headed toward the stairs. Music played faintly somewhere downstairs. It sounded classical, maybe something by Mushzart or Beetoaden. This surprised him, because he'd never considered Waluigi the sort to listen to classical music. As he reached the foot of the stairs and faced the kitchen, he found the door stood open. He also saw her shadow on the wall, swaying and dipping with the flow of the piano.
He'd seen Waluigi dance before, when the doppelganger was really happy. It felt good to see her happy enough to dance. Luigi stopped at the doorway. She'd pushed the table and the chairs to one side so that she could have more room to arabesque. Even then, Luigi marveled at how she managed not to knock anything over. The human was sure most of the things on the counter would have been on the floor if he tried to dance ballet in the kitchen.
Waluigi twirled and dipped into a bow. As she swept back up with her arms over her head, she locked eyes with her audience and froze. Her hands dropped to cup her elbows and her shoulders hunched. “Do you need something?”
“I heard the music and came to see how you were doing,” Luigi explained. Her embarrassment was contagious. Geeze, why did his own doppelganger make him feel so... blushy all the time? “You like classical music, huh?”
“I... like to dance to it...” she admitted. “I like to dance to lots of things, though.”
“You're very good at it,” Luigi said, hoping to defuse the awkward tension. “Very graceful.”
“You think so?” She asked carefully.
“Oh, definitely.” Luigi put on an encouraging smile.
“Wario thought it was funny. He used to say...” She hesitated. A confused frown creased her face. “He said I danced like a girl. He...” Her knuckles pressed against her mouth.
Luigi entered the room, head tilted. “What's wrong?”
“It feels weird, being normal again. It's confusing me. I think.” Waluigi looked like she wanted to say more, but couldn't figure out how to capture her thoughts. “He pressed me to be a certain way, and now that I don't have to I'm, uh... confused is the only word for it.”
The man in green pulled two chairs away from the table and sat in one. She sank into the other one, but didn't seem to realize she was doing it her. Her gray eyes were distant. Glazed. “I wish you'd talk to me.”
Right on cue, the response he'd come to expect. The careful, guarded, “Why?”
“It seems like you want to talk to someone,” Luigi said. “I don't know why you won't.”
She didn't curl into a ball. It had been a couple days since she'd done that. She did pick at a loose thread at the hem of her skirt. “It's not that I don't trust you or anything. I just don't think there's anything you could do about it if I did talk to you, so I don't see the point.”
“Is keeping it to yourself helping?” Luigi asked.
Her eyes squeezed shut. “I... am feeling better, but... He made me do this and I didn't get the right time to adjust. Now that I have it, time, things I thought were done are coming back.” Waluigi shrugged and looked at Luigi. “It's hard, but there's nothing I or you can do about that.”
Luigi eyed her uncertainly. She snorted and gave him a half smile.
“You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?”
“I...” He rubbed the back of his head. “I'm not sure.”
Her shoulders drew back as she sat up a little straighter. She put her hands out to her sides, palms up, at waist level. The posture arched her spine and stuck her chest out a little. Luigi eyed her a moment longer, and then his eyebrows shot up.
“Oh!” He blushed as his face transformed from surprised, to shocked, to perplexed. It wavered between the last two as he tried to think of what to say. “How? Why?”
“I don't know.” She clasped her hands in her lap again and looked away. “I don't really need to go into why, do I? I'd rather not.”
“Oh my god...” Luigi put a hand to his mouth and looked at the floor. “I don't- I didn't- I mean, I assumed you wanted to-”
“He says I'm better this way. He used to go on and on about how some part of me looked like a girl, or how I did something like a girl.” Her head stayed down, but her eyes flicked to Luigi's face. They darted uncomfortably past his eyes and stopped somewhere between his eyebrows. “I'm starting to wonder if I am better this way. It's just when I'm not constantly being reminded that I'm female, I start to... forget, I guess. Then it's jarring when I am reminded.”
“Well...” Luigi fumbled for words. “If you do think of anything I can do, I hope you'll tell me.”
“Yeah...” She twisted a few strands of hair. “You know, you're not so bad, eye balls,” she smiled. Then her eyes widened and she jumped to her feet. Her skirt swished as she spun to face the stove. “A-anyway, the meatloaf is going to... I'd better...” She hid her face in the fridge as she rifled through the vegetable drawer.
“I could set the table,” Luigi offered. “At least put it back where it was...”
“No, no,” she said quickly without turning around. “I got it. Go relax or something. Dinner's like... five minutes...”
Luigi wanted to say more, but the sound of his brother coming home interrupted him. Besides, Waluigi had shut down again. There wouldn't be much use in pushing for conversation.
- 8
- 9
- 10
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Fixed versus Broken