Chapter Text
Ragatha was the nicest and most stable of them. When Zooble first came, Ragatha was the one to calm her down, as she often did for everyone who allowed it. And, despite how many times it happened, she was always so sad when another one of them abstracted. She was here the longest next to Kinger, yet she was still the most sane one here.
Zooble would like to be in the same mood that Ragatha was always in, but they also knew that behind closed doors she was one of them who was struggling the most. She cared too much about other people before herself. She found this out after Zooble saw their first abstraction. They couldn’t sleep that night, so they wandered the circus until they finally decided to head back to their room in the middle of the night, thinking everyone was asleep by now.
Only when they crossed by Ragatha’s room and heard muffled, sorrowful sobs dulled by a pillow did they figure out the truth. Zooble was never the first person to comfort someone; in fact, they hated being a shoulder to lean on, considering Ragatha had been by their side since they first got there. They felt a kind of guilt for not returning the favor.
As they were about to knock on the door, a gloved hand caught theirs. They nearly jumped in shock, only to realize it was Jax, and the shock was replaced with a glare. “What the-” They said before he gave a hushed “Shut it!” He pointed to the door with his thumb, obviously telling them to be quiet, or Ragatha would hear.
Zooble once again looked at him in shock before he grabbed them by the elbow away from the door a little before Zooble yanked away. “What the @#!$ Jax?” Zooble said, annoyed, but still made sure to keep their voice to a lower volume. His smile seemed to widen at their annoyance.
Even after two months, they still didn’t really care to get to know anyone beyond surface-level things, except Ragatha, who did her best to keep the unwilling newcomer company. Jax was only what they saw on the outside. A mythic A-hole.
So without beating around the bush, they cut to the chase and asked, “Why do you even care?”
His face drops for a nanosecond before he switches back to his regular yellow grin, looking bored at where his finger nails would be. “I actually don’t, for your information.”
Zooble scoffed, rolling their eyes. "It doesn't seem like it. You’re the one stalking her door in the middle of the night to stop anyone from seeing if she’s okay, Jeez. I knew you were a sadist prick picking on the only person who no doubt deserves to be here all the time, but I didn’t think you actually hated her.”
A loud thump on the floor snapped their vision back to the rabbit man. His slightly tinted purple face suddenly filled with a darker purple angry flush, and the rabbit ears that shot up past his hair pulled back. His smile finally turned downward as they glowered over Zooble. “You’ve been here, what? A month, and you think you know me? Get real, @#$%@.” He pointed a gloved hand in their faces.
Despite the slight surprise of seeing him for the first time, seeing him actually pissed off Zooble’s face remained in a glare that matched his slapping his hand out of their face. “You have all of two seconds to get out of my face, or you’ll wish you were the one to go today. Maybe everyone else puts up with your #&^$ but not me %#&*!^.”
He scoffs and backs off, making his face go back into a neutral expression. “*@ off, the only reason I’m not making your life more of a hell than this place is so you don’t wake up. Raggedy dumb@$%.”
Wake up? Zooble only just noticed the sobbing had stopped, replaced with an oddly louder snore. “She’s been crying for like two hours; she thought she’d never stop.” He said it once again, looking bored, but as he listened to her snore a bit more, they could see he was visibly almost completely back to his normal relaxed and annoying nature.
“Why?” They asked.
They knew Jax didn’t need a clarifier but asked, playing dumb anyway. “Why what, Crabby?”
Zooble once again cut straight through his bullshit, “Why do you care? Really.”
He scoffed and placed his hands in his dumb, cartoonish overall pockets. “I told you I don’t.” He looked at Zooble's deadpan face and knew they wouldn’t drop it until they got an answer. He almost told her to buzz off again before they threatened to ask the whole circus if he wasn’t going to give them an answer. “Freaking nark”.
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes until they went almost to the back of his head. “If I tell you, you can’t say jack. If Rags finds out, this will all be for nothing, got it?” Zooble stayed silent but nodded.
“When she gets this way, if anyone says a word to her, she’ll get even more depressed for, like, a week.”
“Why?”
“Some dumb need to never ‘upset’ anyone. The one thing she hates more than anything is thinking she hurt someone. Which is dumb as hell. I get she has this bleeding heart or whatever, but the woman needs to seriously bite the bullet and be an @#$hole one of these days.”
He continued after a moment of silence, “When she’s all depressed, everything and everyone feels like shit. I hate to admit it, but she kind of makes this place bearable for everyone. like the sun through the clouds or whatever that dumb poet said. Anyway, this place gets dark as shit at that point. And doing funny things to people when they have a reaction of a brick wall is boring as hell. Messing with people is the only thing that keeps me from going insane in this place. That’s why.”
Zooble stays quiet for a moment, like they're processing everything he said before they nod, brushing their pink hair out of their face. “Makes sense. Kinda.”
He rolls his eyes again, not caring whether they approve of his reasons or not. Until they broke the silence again, “Like the sun through the clouds, huh?”
His head snaps to theirs, and they let out an amused exhale through their nose before speaking again before he can retort. “Don’t worry, Romeo; the secret's safe with me.” They laughed as they walked away.
He actually almost strangled them at that moment, but was interrupted by a particularly loud, pig-like snort/snore from across the hall, and he rolled his eyes, smirking a bit. Before catching himself and pitching the bridge between his nose trying to stop the oncoming headache. Whatever she’s asleep, she’ll be back to her cheery facade in the morning. He’d done his personal job of keeping the sanity in this place level.
His personal job of keeping the sun out of the clouds.