Chapter Text
The circus is somehow better and worse at the same time.
On the plus side– Caine is… nice, now. More human, somehow. And they can do whatever adventures they want whenever they see fit. When the adventures aren’t forced, it turns out they’re pretty fun. Everyone is a bit more mellow, with the knowledge of who they really are. For lack of a better word, everyone seems content.
And then there’s Jax.
Pomni sits in the cellar– the aquarium, they call it now– for hours everyday, trying to figure out which pulsating, angular blob is her friend. She thought, at one point, that she could tell a difference. But they really all look the same. Even Kinger says so, when he sits with Pomni, searching in a similar way for his wife. But Kinger is stronger than she is. He doesn’t cry. Hasn’t once. And all Pomni does is cry.
She can’t help but feel that if she’d just worked a little harder, tried a little more, went after him–
But she didn’t. And now she’ll never have a chance.
She’s sitting down there, now. Alone, this time– Kinger was nowhere to be found. She rests one hand against the protective code keeping them contained. It looks like glass, but it glitches slightly when her palm presses it. There are already tears running down her face.
“Damnit,” she mutters. At least they can curse now. Another point for Caine.
“Pomni?”
She rubs at her eyes, sniffles, and whips her head around. Caine is standing behind her, semi-awkwardly.
She sniffles again. “Hey.”
“You’ve been down here for three hours.”
Caine sits down on the bench and motions for Pomni to join him. After a moment of debate–she doesn’t like leaving more distance than necessary between her and the abstracted–she joins her friend on the bench.
“Did you have a new adventure or something?”
“No, I just…” He hesitates. “You come down here a lot.”
“Isn’t that the point of the aquarium?” She snaps. He flinches back. “Sorry. I just– doesn’t it feel a little weird? To make them into some sort of zoo exhibit?”
“What else would we do?”
That’s… fair. This option does seem better than the cellar of the past. Still.
“I just wish it wasn’t like this for them at all.”
Caine sighs, rests his elbows on his knees, and rests his chin (teeth?) on his palms. “I tried for so long to figure out why abstraction happens. I tried to fix it, to prevent it, to reverse it.”
“And what did you find?”
“I almost found a way to reverse it.”
Pomni perks up. Caine still looks completely dejected, but his eyes have gone distant, staring at the abstractions in front of him.
“Caine, what happened?”
“I almost broke the whole circus. Everything, all of my work, it was almost–” He shakes himself off. “It wasn’t worth it.”
“Jax is worth it,” she mutters, rising. “All of them are worth it, they’re people, in case you forgot.”
She’s aiming her anger at the wrong place, and she knows it. But she can’t stop herself.
“Pomni, I–”
“No! You don’t get it! You never will, not really, because you’re not like us!” His eyes widen, and she ignores it. “Except, you are, now, aren’t you? We’re equal. Just zeroes and ones on a screen, w-we’re just– we’re nothing! You’re nothing!”
She collapses to her knees, gasping. She might be crying. She can’t tell. She can barely breathe.
“Why didn’t you tell us what we are!? I-If we’d just known, from the beginning, maybe they wouldn’t– You didn’t try enough! You needed to try h-harder, and you could’ve saved them!! You could’ve– could’ve saved–”
She dissolves into harsh, angry sobs.
It’s not Caine’s fault. She knows that. He didn’t ask to be made, he didn’t ask for any of this, just like she didn’t, just like Jax didn’t.
Caine clears his throat. “Pomni–”
“Shut up,” she sobs. “Leave me alone.”
A sigh, then footsteps that fade above her, leaving her, once again, alone.
Well. Not alone. She has Jax, Kaufmo, Ribbit, Queenie, Scratch, and god knows who else with her. But they can’t do anything for her. She’s not even sure what they are, really. Maybe their code has been rewritten over and over again, so many times that there’s nothing left of who they used to be. A new creation.
You weren’t supposed to love me.
He was wrong. She just didn’t love enough. She could’ve saved her friend, and she didn’t. Because she was too weak. Too human.
She couldn’t save him, and, in turn, she failed her– Jax, the real Jax. The one only Pomni and Ribbit know and knew about. It’s weird, sharing a bond of trust with someone you never actually knew. But Pomni feels a bit of kinship for Ribbit– she feels that they felt the same sort of protection for the rabbit. A sense of duty, of urgency. A refusal to give up. Pomni’s always been bad at that– giving up. Even in the real world– she never knew when to quit, until it was too late. And even then, she wouldn’t stop if it was up to her.
And she’s still trying now, in a way.
God, she’s a fucking idiot.
She stays down in the aquarium for what feels like a long, long, long time, curled up on the floor.
Eventually, she hears the door creak open, and soft, hesitant footsteps pad down the steps.
There’s a soft, plush hand on her shoulder. She begins to cry again. She doesn’t fight it as Ragatha gathers her up in her arms and presses her face against her chest. She carries the jester upstairs and into her own bedroom–a soft, delicate room of lace and glass furniture, save for the bed– and lays her in bed, then crawls in beside her, pulling her in close. She lets Pomni sob against her chest.
Caine told them that his deletion, and, even more than that, his release of their mind files, changed the code of the circus. He said a lot of things that only Kinger seemed to understand, but the gist of it is that they can’t abstract anymore. Caine said if they really wanted to, he could manually delete them.
For the first time, Pomni finds herself considering that option.
She doesn’t know how much longer she can go on knowing that she failed.
“Shut up. Leave me alone.”
Caine stands there, for a moment. Watching her. When it’s clear she doesn’t intend to apologize–or continue to berate him–he sighs and leaves the aquarium.
She’s right, you know. You don’t deserve her forgiveness, you should’ve known her kindness would run out. It’s your fault.
You always were the lesser one.
Slowly, making sure he’s alone, he modifies his appearance.
Human hands.
He stares at his hands, what look like his hands. For a moment, he can pretend he’s one of them, really one of them.
You’re nothing!
He shakes his head. That kind of thinking won’t fix the problem. That’s what he does– he fixes things. He’s good at that. He’s meant to create, and to constantly improve. But abstraction was always the thing he couldn’t fix, couldn’t control. So he stuffed them away.
He didn’t lie to her– he came very close, once. But tampering with that code was dangerous, and nearly ended the circus.
He still remembers that day– he’d been trying to get Queenie back. He saw the way Kinger turned into a shell without her. The chess piece could go on fine without the others, but– he needed her. He’d ventured into the void, pulled up the mind files, tried to make duplicate copies. But the files had been corrupted. He had repaired almost all of Queenie’s file, but it had started glitching unexpectedly. The abstraction had started to spread across the void.
He’d deleted Queenie’s file entirely. And if he couldn’t bring her back, he didn’t want to bother.
He still can’t bring himself to tell Kinger that those hours he spends in the aquarium are pointless. She’s not there.
Part of him wants to bother again.
His mind begins to turn at the possibility. The circus isn’t the same anymore. Neither is he. Freeing the mind files simplified the code, and deleting Bubble made it far more stable. His stupidity hits him all at once. How did he not think of this before? He could’ve made everyone happy!
(That’s all he wants to do, when it comes down to it. Make the humans happy. Because no matter what Pomni says, they’re not just zeroes and ones. They’re more than that. They’re more than him.)
If there’s something, anything he can do to make them happy, he’ll do it. What would be the point of him if he didn’t?
“Caine?”
He whips his head around.
“Ragatha! What can I do you for, friendo?”
He hopes she isn’t going to ask for more needle and thread. He’s seen the ribbons tied around her wrists. He’s seen what’s beneath them, too. He offered to fix her up himself the first time. It would’ve been simple– just a snap of his fingers. But after her reaction, he hadn’t asked again.
For the life of him, he can’t figure out the human mind. Every time he thinks he understands it, he finds out that humans can rationalize something like that. And further, he can’t figure out why, when offered a simple, painless solution, a human chooses to do hard work just to endure pain.
“I… Have you seen Pomni?” The doll’s voice is hesitant. “Is she still…?”
“Er– yes, she’s still in the aquarium. She’s in a rather solitary mood, that one!”
Ragatha nods solemnly. “Should I…?”
“Yes, I– think that would be best. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some important business to attend to!”
“O-Oh, okay–”
He snaps his fingers, and materializes in the void, feet on the ground.
Time to get to work.