Three Months

Meatballs

Apparently, while they were out, Mario came home early from his golfing trip, setting up the guest bedroom. 

Mario wasn't happy about the whole situation, but he wasn't about to kick Dimentio back to the woods. It was very clear that if Dimentio went anywhere else he'd be arrested, and the prison system was terrible. It was built upon punishing instead of building and redeeming. Mario himself had made many powerful enemies, and there was no better way to defeat them than to redeem them, which was the main reason he was allowing this. 

Well, that, and because Luigi seemed to have such high hopes. Mario himself still got nightmares nearly every night about Dimentio, so this was quite an emotional strain. He couldn't even take his mind off the worries while golfing. (Daisy won, as always. Peach came in with a close second place, and Mario was last.)

Once Luigi and Dimentio got home as well, the man in red refused to make eye contact with Dimentio. Looking into Dimentio's eyes always gave him a jolt of fear because, though the jester from his nightmare looked vastly different now, his eyes were still the same.

It wasn't like he was the only one who was uncomfortable with the situation either. Dimentio was always silent around him, refusing to make eye contact as well. He looked at the ground often. Mario couldn't tell if it was because he felt guilty or because he missed being able to hide behind his mask and was just trying to hide his expressions. Perhaps it was neither of those and Dimentio was just humiliated by the fact that his life had come to that.

As Luigi and Dimentio got home, Luigi gently nudged the poor guy towards his older brother while smiling and saying, "Mario can show you to your room! I'm gonna start on dinner," leaving the two in awkward silence as he brought his cheerful energy away with him into the other room. 

Mario and Dimentio maintained the harsh silence as Mario led the way, showing him to a small room on the second floor. There was a twin-sized bed next to a window, as well as a small dresser with a mirror attached. Mario gestured inside, then walked away silently, leaving Dimentio on his own. Dimentio was silently grateful that Mario wasn't forcing him to engage in conversation, unlike Luigi. 

He felt as though the air was significantly tenser when Mario was around, which was odd and unexpected since Luigi was the one he had done the most wrong to.

Dimentio slowly stepped inside. The room was slightly cooler than the hallway outside, likely because people hardly occupied it. It was at least neat and clean. He sat down on the bed next to the window, feeling the mattress sink beneath him. It was significantly softer than his old mattress at Castle Bleck, which used to give him back pain from how incredibly stiff it was. He waited a moment, then fell onto his back, allowing the mattress to sink and nearly swallow him whole. He rather liked the feeling. The sheets smelled like they had been freshly cleaned and dried. He liked the smell and the warm feeling. There were heavy blankets, but as he got under them he didn't feel as if they were suffocating him, but instead he felt more like he was being secured. It was like the blankets were keeping him safe.

He stayed that way for a while, just staring at the ceiling while he tried to understand what Luigi and Mario's reasons were for allowing him to stay. Luigi technically had explained his reasons, which only further confused Dimentio and only opened more questions, but still. Dimentio had no idea why Mario would allow him to be there. Wasn't his job to protect the people of the Mushroom Kingdom? How would allowing a criminal to stay in his own home look on his resume? Surely it wouldn't look good.

He fell asleep for a while but was awoken by what he guessed was forty minutes later because of the smell of baking. He couldn't quite identify what he was smelling, but whatever it was, it smelled quite good. His sense of smell was not his strongest sense, but he could almost taste whatever was being baked.