Chapter Text
They hated him.
That much was clear. Maybe he’d known for a while, but that didn’t make having it spelled out for him any easier. He couldn’t seem to get their looks of betrayal out of his head.
“Am I really that awful?”
He sat rigidly in his office chair, fingers tapping out a nameless frantic tempo. His tongue sat between his grinding back right molars, a bad habit he’d developed a while back.
“Of course you are!”
Bubble’s nasally voice punctured the silence. Caine scoffed, just what he needed. He moved finding a way to bar Bubble from his office up on his mental to-do list.
“I wasn’t asking you! Just leave me alone right now.”
He flicked bubble out with a *pop*, only for them to reappear almost instantly. They floated closer, soapy swirls of green and purple reflecting faintly in dim ambient lighting.
“Well there’s no one else here, silly!”
Another one appeared.
“Don’t you know by now you’re alone?”
And another.
“I’m not alone! I have my guests!”
“The guests that hate you? The ones that despise your adventures and talk about how awful you are when they think you can’t hear?”
“N-no, no, that's not–”
“The guests that were the happiest you’ve ever seen them when they thought they were leaving you behind? Thooooose guests?”
There were too many of them, those who weren’t taunting him were snickering, and the ones who were weren't stopping. He closed his mouth.
“Awww, are you gonna cry? Who are you going to run to for comfort? They all hate you, you’re alone.”
Then, they were gone. He peaked his teeth open, scanning his surroundings. He was in the void, endless shifting planes of white surrounding him. If he had needed to breathe he was sure he would have passed out by now. As such, his form was glitchy, and he curled over as his avatar clipped in and out of proportion.
He wouldn’t listen to Bubble, he couldn’t. He knew by now that too much strain on his psyche, or really the code that functioned as it, would divert too much of his energy, and the circus server could possibly crash. He had no idea what would happen to his guests in that case.
‘Still doing so much for them, and for what?’
His internal monologue sounded annoyingly like Bubble. He wrapped his arms around himself tightly, letting himself float weightlessly in the converging planes of space. He couldn’t just abandon them, they gave him a purpose. An entertainer without an audience is nothing. He remembered how it was before any humans joined the circus; predictable and futile. His npcs got boring fast, there was nothing they could do that he couldn’t already anticipate. He couldn’t go back to that.
The first humans felt like a god-send. So new and strange in amazing ways, all very different from each other and yet all alike. He was able to learn and adapt to their needs, and he’d finally felt like he had a reason for existing, a thing he was good at. He’d even felt like he was forming positive relationships with them, like maybe they weren’t so different after all.
But that feeling was short-lived. None of them looked at him the same after Scratch abstracted. Most of them took to avoiding him, or putting on a fake act whenever he was around.
God, why couldn’t he see it then? The first humans had hated him too. That made him the common variable. All of them hated him, except… maybe…
She certainly hadn’t liked him, but she was more tolerant of him for her husband’s sake. Kinger had avoided him the least, smiles edging on genuine when Caine was around. He remembered one of their conversations held under the guise of privacy. They'd been stargazing, leaning comfortably against each other, and she asked Kinger why he put up with Caine so much.
~~~
He chuckled, holding out his hand for a firefly to land on.
‘I don’t know, honey. I suppose I sympathize with him, he’s trying so hard to fit in. Don’t you see how sad he gets when everyone avoids him?’
She hummed in acknowledgement, carding her gloved fingers through the grass. It looked gray in the moonlight.
‘Have you heard what the others have been saying? About him maybe being the reason we’re all stuck here?’
‘I’m sure he’s just as much a victim of circumstance as we are. He puts so much effort into making us adventures, it’s hard to believe he could be so malicious’
‘Mmm, and you’re sure it's not just because you helped make his code?’
‘Well, I suppose that's part of it. Can’t it be both?”
She laughed, a warm, honied sound, and placed her hand gently on his.
‘My husband, the altruist.’
The firefly flew away.
~~~
Kinger hadn’t hated him, not then. Caine wasn’t sure about now. His face when Caine had been lowering his wife’s glitching black form into the dungeon had seemed mostly devastated, but the way he had avoided him for months afterwards definitely felt like there was some lingering contempt. Eventually, that pained expression had faded into a blank one, and even that seemed better than before, so Caine had decided everything was fine and turned his attention to his new ragged guest.
Caine’s avatar clipped out, more violently than before. He curled further into himself, scratching at his arms. He needed to calm down. Bubble’s taunts replayed in his head.
‘Who are you going to run to? They all hate you…’
Apathy in the face of disdain could almost be comfort, if one was desperate enough, and he was. Kinger might not acknowledge him but anything would be better than the deep resentment the others held for him. Before he could think about it too hard, he snapped his fingers and reoriented in the circus tent.
The lights were dim and the main floor was deserted. He’d been apparently spiraling long enough for the night cycle to begin. He floated soundlessly, eyes flicking back and forth in a show of paranoia. He couldn’t face anyone else right now, Kinger was going to be difficult enough. Soon he came upon the familiar mound of pillows. It stood out like a sore thumb among the checkered floor, but it had never bothered him.
Mounting feelings of anxiety made him want to snap to anywhere other than where he stood in front of the fort, he’d even risk running into Bubble again in his office, but he squashed it down. He tapped his cane twice on the ground in an imitation of knocking, and cleared his throat.
“Kinger?”
It was a few seconds before he heard shuffling from within, and then a pillow was shifted and Kinger was staring up at him.
“Caine?”
Kinger didn’t sound mad, which was good. He also hadn’t ignored him, which Caine hadn’t entirely considered could happen until now but he was glad it hadn’t. He knew the others would have. His avatar glitched again, and the circus tent around them distorted into pixels and basic shapes before snapping back into clarity.
“Um, are you okay?”
His grasp on his cane tightened.
“Right as rain my loyal royal!”
Caine cringed as his voice echoed in the empty space. He took his volume down to normal speaking level.
“Could I, err, come in?”
Kinger blinked, as if processing, before moving aside. The inside was more spacious than it seemed, even with pillows lining the ground in most places it was easy to walk around. He shuffled over to the opposite wall and sat down, wrapping his arms around his legs. Kinger looked at him for a long, questioning moment before replacing the door pillow and hobbling over to sit next to Caine.
Caine sighed, closing his mouth, and tried to imagine that the silence was a comfortable one. He could pretend that this was regular for them, that it was just another easy hang-out between friends. The air was warmer in here than on the main floor, something he noted absently. He started picking at the fabric on his knee.
“Are you… chewing your tongue?”
He slipped his tongue back inside his mouth, feeling his gums heat up in embarrassment.
“Yeah, sorry. Bad habit.”
“Oh.”
He heard the pillows shuffle beside him, and through squinted incisors saw that Kinger had moved closer. The hollow feeling in his chest grew. This mockery of familiarity made him feel worse.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“What?”
“Your tongue, when you chew it.”
“Oh. Um, I guess not. It’s more just pressure.”
“Interesting.”
The silence was heavy now, almost suffocating. Coming here was a bad idea, it only made him feel more alone. No matter how much he tried to form connections there would always be the fact that they were human, and he was not. He moved to stand up.
“Well! I have important brainstorming to catch up on, better get ba-AC-Kkk–”
He clipped out, this time almost painfully, as he tried to move towards the door. What was the point in brainstorming if his guests would surely not be willing to participate anytime soon? His last idea had been a trainwreck, what if his next one was even worse? Though surely it couldn’t get any worse than this…
A hand closed down on his arm and he restabilized. Kinger was looking at him with a pitying expression, and he felt the warm static fuzziness of digital tears pricking his eyes. He let Kinger guide him back down onto the pillows, limbs loose in an ache for comfort.
“Caine, why did you come here?”
Something in his chest clenched.
“You don’t hate me, right?”
He sounded small even to his own ears. This was pathetic wasn’t it? He was a god in this realm, pleading for a sense of solace from one of his imprisoned guests. He would laugh if he wasn’t already crying.
“What? Caine, of course I don’t hate you.”
He tilted his head up, hands clenched in nearby pillows.
“Even after… everything? How could you not? It’d be so easy to, all the others do.”
Kinger slowly took his hands, gently unhooking them from the fabric and holding them out between them. He started rubbing small circles with his thumb, seemingly absentmindedly.
“I don’t hate you because you’re just as trapped as the rest of us are. I can see you trying your best to make us happy every single day, and even though that might not be enough for the others, it means everything to me.”
This was going better than he could have ever hoped for. He suddenly felt a lot warmer.
“But w-what about, her?”
A wistful look crossed Kinger’s face, and his caressing slowed down.
“I’ll always miss Queenie, but I don’t blame you for what happened. It’s just the effect this place has on humans. Compared to our lives before, it can just seem so pointless at times.”
Caine shrunk inwards. This was it for him, this place was all he’d ever be able to experience, and it was apparently nothing compared to where the humans were from. How could he possibly hope for his adventures to compensate for what they’ve lost?
Kinger’s eyes flicked back to his, and sighed. He scooted closer until their sides were touching, and he wrapped an arm around Caine to pull him more snuggly against him. A feeling like fear spiked his nerves, but it was softer.
“You’re not a bad ringmaster, Caine. I think it would be easier for the others to see that if you just listened a little more. You could do that, right?”
He felt sure he’d never wanted to do anything more. He nodded silently against Kinger's robe, focusing more on the feeling of his hand on his side that whatever words came afterwards. It’d been a while since a human had touched him. Is that why it felt so intense?
“Caine? Did you hear what I just said?”
“Uh- to listen more?”
Kinger laughed quietly and Caine had the sudden realization he didn’t care too much about what the others thought of him, as long as Kinger thought he was good.
“Yes, and I said you should probably avoid the others for a few days, just to give them some time to process and recuperate.”
“Oh, okay. I can still see you though, right?”
Kinger’s eyes tilted up in a smile.
“Anytime.”