Work Text:
It’s only been a little while since Juniper came out to the group, but so far things have been… well, they really have been.
Juniper is better now than she has been in a long time, in a million different ways. After keeping it all a secret between her and Pomni for so long, it’s weird having everything out in the open—but it feels good, hearing her name; knowing that when they look at her, they’re seeing a version of herself that she actually likes.
Her relationships with the others are mountains better than the gutter they’d been in before, too, awkward as they might still be. She can’t remember the last time she broke Gangle’s happy mask, now, and she’s been making a concentrated effort not to get on Ragatha’s case so much. She tries to make jokes the others might actually laugh at—and even that’s easier, too. She has more to laugh about than she's had in years.
It’s not something Juniper ever thought she’d get to have in the circus. Now that she does, she finds herself frustrated that she closed herself off from it all this time—because the big reason it’s not perfect, really, is down to everything Juniper did before she got to this point. Changing her name hasn’t exactly made her a different person, after all; all of that baggage, that history with the others is still hers. The mending relationships feel so new and fragile and strange because she was the one who broke them down in the first place.
She’s had conversations, made apologies, and it’s been working out, for the most part. But it’s an effort against years of previous habits, and there’s a part of her that’s worried it’s never going to feel like enough.
(There’s a part of her that feels like everything should have just been fixed when she transitioned, too, when everyone knew. But it’s the part of her that wants to ignore everything that came before it, and she can’t do that anymore.)
(So what can she do instead?)
Pomni is her best friend for a lot of reasons, primarily because she’s the most ridiculous woman Juniper’s ever met. Part of the reason in the beginning, though, had of course been because she was new. There was no past to work around, no old grievances and grief to ignore—she’d been a clean slate, and although Juniper had very nearly screwed it up for herself, it had been the first screw up. It wasn’t the last in a long line of straws that came to bear down and break the jester’s back. If she had been with anyone else in that swap adventure, then, she’s not sure what would have happened.
But that’s not the point. The point is that Pomni’s her best friend, and by far the easiest person to talk to in the circus—so when it comes time for paired adventures, Juniper sticks to her like a burr and doesn’t let go.
The problem with doing that, however, is that it sometimes ends in making Caine want to switch things up. For bonding purposes.
(And, of course—though he likely doesn’t want to admit it—because he finds consistent pairings boring.)
The adventure for the day is some kind of rage-room-slash-purge-style event set in a sprawling office building. In pairs, they’ll each take turns chasing the others down and doing as much damage to the building as they can until their time runs out and it’s the next group’s turn. If you get caught by the pursuing team, you’re out. Whoever does the most damage, sets the building fully on fire, or manages to catch everyone on the other teams first wins.
It’s exactly the kind of adventure that Juniper likes. But instead of being able to go on a rampage with Pomni, Caine reaches out six sets of gloved hands towards each of them, and puts her with Zooble. It’s Ragatha that gets to go with Pomni—and Gangle and Kinger get shoved next to each other too.
Juniper tries not to look too much like she’s pouting when Pomni turns around, as Caine disappears before anyone can give him any kind of reaction to the pair-ups, portal left in his wake. The jester grins at her, sharp-toothed and wide.
“Good luck, Juni!” she taunts, and—oh, that’s a new nickname. “We’re gonna kick your @%$! Right, Ragatha?”
Ragatha kind of looks like she didn’t want to be included. “Uh, y-yeah! Sure!” she sputters, with all the enthusiasm she can apparently muster for the idea of an office-based rage room.
“We’ll see about that!” Juniper drawls in return. She turns to Zooble, tempted to goad them into joining in on the back-and-forth, but she can’t tell if the look on their face is amused or annoyed. She gives them a long grin and shoots a “But there’s only one way to find out!” in the other pair’s direction to save face against the way she falters for a moment. Thankfully, when she saunters towards the portal, Zooble follows.
Gangle and Kinger had gone ahead first, and neither are anywhere to be heard or seen by the time they’re through, so they must all have been taken to different parts of the building. That makes sense, although personally Juniper was hoping to chase everyone down straight away.
The floor they’re on is a mess of cubicles, dying houseplants, and computers. There’s random bits and pieces dotted around—and a lot of the clutter doesn’t particularly look like something you’d find in an office—but it’s basically just a stock image Caine has given a three-dimensional rendering to. That being said, Juniper does spot a fire extinguisher hooked onto the nearest wall, and as such promptly grabs it for herself to play around with and maybe use to hit someone later. Zooble, evidently, has nothing to say about that.
Caine’s been giving practically every adventure a new outfit recently (for a reason Juniper’s fairly sure only she knows right now), and this one is no exception. She’s been changed into a yellow pantsuit with a white blouse—gloves changed in colour to match the latter rather than the former—and she has a pink pair of flats and a little wrapped bandanna tied off at the side around her neck. Zooble is in a very eighties-patterned sort of tie with shirtless-shirt cuffs around their wrists. Really, Juniper thinks Caine has been having the hardest time coming up with Zooble’s outfits out of everyone’s.
“So,” she starts, when the silence between them carries on for a little longer than she’s comfortable with. “What’s the plan, Zoobie? Are we focusing on chasing everyone down first, or trying to light this place up? Or do you just wanna smash some office supplies?”
Zooble raises an eyebrow, tilting their head upwards to gesture at something with the acute angle of their face. “You might need to focus on not getting your @5$ beat first,” they say—and sure enough, there’s a text box floating near the ceiling, reading ‘FIRST UP: GANGLE & KINGER’ with a timer counting down to the beginning of the round with not long left on it.
“Aw, what? That sucks,” she complains noisily, twisting the fire extinguisher around in her hands. “Now what?”
Zooble shrugs. “You could stay on this floor until someone finds us, or you could look around and see if you find anyone.”
If they saw Gangle and Kinger, they’d have to try and get away from them so they don’t get caught out before the end of the round—but if they find Pomni and Ragatha, they could stick as a group until the time's up, and then either chase them or be chased depending on whose turn it is next. That definitely sounds more exciting than just waiting around until someone shows up.
But Zooble had said you, not we.
“You’re not gonna come with me?” she asks.
Zooble gives her a pointed look. “Don’t you usually like going off on your own?”
“Wh—it depends!” she denies, feeling weirdly defensive. “Maybe I want a human shield!” There, that sounds more like something she’d say.
Zooble rolls their eyes, casting a glance at one of the two sides of the room with a double door that most likely leads to the other floors. “I am not going to climb ten flights of stairs to be a human shield for you.”
“There might be an elevator somewhere?” Juniper shrugs, though whether or not Caine remembers to add in stuff like that for multi-level adventures is really a toss-up. In the nebulous space above them, a shrill timer goes off. “Don’t you have some competitive fire in you, Zoobs? Any leftover rage you need to work out? Latent bloodlust?”
“Latent bloodlust?”
“Come on, everyone’s got a little bit! Besides, we’ve gotta beat Pomni and Ragatha!”
“Not Kinger and Gangle?” they question wryly.
Juniper waves them away, ears twitching at a strange, rapid thudding noise coming from somewhere in the building. “I just assumed you’re too much of a sap to go against your girlfriend.”
“You—”
Zooble had probably meant to say something scathing in return (or deny the claim, which—come on, really?), but they’re interrupted by the sound of the other set of double doors on the floor slamming open. Both of them whirl around half-synchronised in alarm, and Juniper’s eyes go wide at the sight of Gangle and Kinger in the doorway—the former wielding a pair of fire escape signs she’s clearly ripped from the wall like boomerangs, and the latter brandishing a frankly giant houseplant.
For a mask with no pupils or eyebrows for pulling faces, there sure is a pretty maniacal twinkle in Gangle’s eyes.
“Did somebody call Human Resources?” Gangle announces, and it would be a painfully cheesy one-liner if she didn’t sound so threatening. And if she wasn’t looking Juniper right in the face with a smile like she’s imagining her rubber skull with a sign poking out of both sides.
Juniper makes the executive decision to not even say anything in return. She turns on her heel, makes some kind of face at Zooble, and runs straight for the other exit.
Fortunately, Zooble’s closer to the door than she had been, so they’ve already opened and gone through it by the time Juniper’s rushing to reach it. Despite the weight of the fire extinguisher that she refuses to leave behind weighing her down, she makes it just as the doors swing shut. Two cracking thuds mark the sound of the fire escape signs hitting where she’d been only seconds ago.
There’s some cleaning supplies in the small platform between staircases they’ve found themselves in, so Juniper grabs a mop and a broom and shoves both in Zooble direction. Thankfully, the pick’n’mix gets the idea without having to discuss anything—shoving the mop in between the door handles to lock them in place and keeping a hold of the broom for themself.
The mop probably isn’t going to hold them off for long, though. They need to get out-out.
Juniper looks both up and down the seemingly endless square-spiral of stairs for a moment and wonders if she’s going to have to throw Zooble down them so they don’t get caught up to. Before she can start to seriously consider it, however, Zooble pipes up.
“Oh thank f*£%,” they heave. “There’s an elevator.”
Hurried on by the ominous sounds of rattling coming from the blocked-off door, the two of them rush over to the lift panel and repeatedly slam the button to call it to their floor. Her foot taps impatiently as it approaches, and the second it arrives they’re both pushing inside and jamming down the buttons for what looks like the upper floors.
The elevator voice calls ‘going up’ right as the double doors burst open, and Juniper gets one look at Gangle’s face before the lift closes—just enough time for a sign to be thrown razor-sharp through the closing gap.
From the way it embeds itself in the wall-mirror behind them, she’s lucky it didn’t hit her.
“See?” Juniper says brightly, once they’re both done heaving from the sudden rush of adrenaline. “Wasn’t that fun?”
“You’ve got a weird definition of fun.” Zooble retorts, and it is very clearly a thought they’ve had more than once.
Juniper shrugs lightly. “Might as well enjoy it, right? Maybe if you had a little more of my kind of fun you’d be less stressed.”
“Sure,” they dismiss, tone half-flat, before casting their eye towards the door, lingering in the ensuing silence with a suspicious glare. “Hey, have we like, actually moved?” Zooble asks incredulously, with a notable hint of concern.
“What? Of course we have,” Juniper, obviously, immediately resorts to confirming this by kicking at the elevator door, and wincing tightly when all it gets her is a resounding thud and a tingling sort of burn in her foot. “Agh, that hurt!”
Zooble snorts, because they’re awful and cruel and enjoy watching her suffer. “What did you think would happen?” they ask, trying a few more elevator buttons and getting nothing in return. “I think we genuinely might be stuck.”
“But I don’t wanna be stuck in an elevator for the whole adventure—that’s so boring!”
The pick’n’mix just rolls their eyes at the way she’s clutching her foot. “Chill out, it probably won’t even be for the whole adventure—we just need to wait a couple minutes or something. If you’re capable of doing that without breaking your foot first.” Zooble snarks.
“I can’t believe you’d make fun of an injured woman like this, Zoobs; I’m hurt, I really am.” Juniper derides, making a show of hopping back and swooning against the wall opposite them.
“What, physically or emotionally?”
“Both.”
She drops the performance when it’s clear the conversation isn’t going anywhere else, and for a good minute or so, they both just stand there, feet tapping away impatiently across the silence. Juniper thinks she does pretty well for herself, not lunging to fill the stillness with something, but the longer it goes on for the more clear it becomes that they’re going to be in here for a while, and the thought of staying like this for all that time is genuinely revolting.
“So… you and Ribbons, huh?” she wonders aloud, for lack of anything more interesting to open with.
Zooble’s casts her a narrow look for the effort. “Shouldn’t it be me asking about you and Pomni?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Juniper leans forward to get more into Zooble’s face, needling.
“Just an observation. You’ve been basically attached at the hip for months now, and you’ve been spending a lot of time in her room.” they point out, as if they haven’t been spending a lot of time in Gangle’s room—and for a lot longer, at that.
Juniper waves them off. “I can’t say no to a girls’ night. She’s got DDR in her room.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah, with a flatscreen TV and everything—and the way she plays it is hilarious,” she snickers, trying not to get too caught up in the image of Pomni that flashes in her mind, crouched on all fours like a bug. Juniper glances back up at Zooble, looking at her funny. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m just saying; you two are close,” they note. Juniper scoffs.
“Duh—she was my girl guide.”
Zooble barely pays any mind to the half-assed joke. “She’s been good for you.”
“We’re not dating or anything—we’re just—she’s just Pomni,” she preemptively explains, remembering a similar conversation with Gangle from some time ago, trying very hard to find a word for it that she doesn’t actually have. That answer alone probably says enough, though. Juniper tilts herself even further into Zooble’s personal space to make up for it, voice lined with a vague accusation and a strange curiosity. “Seriously, what are you trying to get at here?”
Zooble shrugs, casual if not for the way their stare pierces the air between them. “You, I guess,” they say, and when Juniper’s expression blanks with non-understanding: “You know we haven’t actually, like, talked since you came out, right?”
…No, she supposes they haven’t.
That’s weird, isn’t it? You’d think they would have sought each other out at least once after she came out, as the only two openly trans members of the circus, but this is the first time they’ve even had a one-on-one conversation since Juniper dropped weird hints to them in the kitchen, and it’s not like they’d really had any meaningful conversations before then. She was too busy trying to turn everything into a joke, and they were too busy trying to stop her from getting to the punchline.
They’re just… they’re not friends—they’ve never been friends, what with the way Juniper’s behaved since they arrived. But things aren’t as bad as they were before, are they? Maybe they’re at least acquaintances, or frenemies, or semi-amicable kind-of circus-mates. Maybe they can be, someday.
But what do you say to those kinds of people?
“We’ve talked on adventures,” Juniper refutes, because she really doesn’t know.
Zooble only raises an eyebrow. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
“You really wanna do this in here?” she snipes wryly, nodding around to the rest of the cramped space they’re in.
“Why not? At least I know you can’t run away from it right now.”
Unfortunately, it’s a little too fair of a point. Juniper straightens up and leans back against the wall, folding her arms across her chest. She doesn’t usually have more than one layer on in outfit-changes, and the feeling of fabric shifting against fabric is almost foreign. “I’m guessing you have something in mind, then.”
Zooble pauses for a long moment, as if trying to fully take her in, and Juniper tilts about with the discomfort of being peered through. It’s only on the precipice of her doing something to speed the conversation up that they finally speak.
“I’ve always kind of wondered about how you ended up the way you did,” they say, tone flat and inscrutable, “But I don’t think that’s a question I really need the answer to. You’re happier than you were, right?”
Juniper snorts. “I thought that was pretty obvious, what with the whole character development thing I’ve had going on recently.”
“You apologised to Gangle and Ragatha for all the $h!% you’ve pulled over the years—it’s weird. I never actually thought you would.”
Juniper looks off to the side, finding her silvered reflection in the back wall of the elevator. “Neither did I.”
“…If none of this happened, what would your plan have even been? Just keep causing chaos for the rest of your life?” they ask, as if the answer could be any more obvious.
“Pretty much,” she replies succinctly. “I guess I thought that—well, nothing here is real, right? Not the circus, not me, not anyone else. And if that was true, and we’re stuck in one big cartoon joke forever, then what was the point in doing anything but treating it like one? If I could do almost anything I wanted so long as it was funny, then I figured being funny was my best bet.”
The only person that Juniper has ever explained the archetypes thing to that's still occupying the circus's definition of alive is Pomni, but if she’s being honest, the rest probably didn’t need a whole expository conversation to know how she felt. Of course she hadn’t thought anyone was real; she’d never treated them any other way. She’d never done anything she thought she couldn’t get away with, and so long as there was a punchline, everything was free game. Nothing was permanent except the absences, and if someone wasn’t there, they might as well have never existed.
Everything was hilarious, because it had to be.
(Nothing had been funny for a long, long time.)
“I know you and Pomni had a fight during that gun thing a while back,” Zooble recalls. “I’m guessing that’s what it was about?”
Despite how much stress the argument caused at the time, she can’t help smiling a little at the memory. At the wild absurdity of it all. Pomni had decided she wasn’t going to listen to reason—and after that she’d literally tried to beat it into her. Who does that? “She called me out on my bull$h!%, and it freaked me out because she was trying to convince me we were, like, actually friends. I tried to get her to stop talking to me completely.”
Zooble huffs a little, half-amused. “Yeah, how’d that work out for you?”
“For such a tiny jester, she’s stubborn as hell,” Juniper assents, somewhere between sardonic and warm. But then, “You—when I told everyone that I'm, uh, you know—you said that you wouldn’t be surprised if I hadn’t figured it out even after getting turned into a girl for an adventure. Part of me kinda thinks that I wouldn’t have if Pomni hadn’t confronted me about the whole thing.”
They look… maybe not surprised at the information, but perhaps surprised she’d say it out loud. “Really?”
Juniper shrugs. “I mean, I guess I’ll never know. But even if I did realise, I know for a fact I’d have never said anything.”
“Sometimes it feels safer to just ignore the things you learn about yourself,” they agree, and Juniper is starkly reminded of the fact that Zooble was already out by the time they arrived in the circus. Had any similarities in their experience been mere memory for them by then? Did they even get the chance to live the way they wanted in the real world at all before they disappeared?
“…How long did you know you were trans before you came to the circus?” she asks, because after a moment she just can’t resist.
Zooble doesn’t look uncomfortable, per se, but their posture shifts slightly. “Not actually that long, if you can believe it,” they admit, aiming for nonchalance. “I’d come out to a few friends, and I’d changed my name, but…”
“Family?” Juniper guesses, something in her stomach hollowing in tandem.
“Maybe they would’ve gotten it if I’d had more time.” Zooble replies, which is answer enough, really. “What about you?”
She blinks, offset. “Huh?”
“I’m taking a bit of a guess here, but… the way you reacted to that maid dress made me think it wasn’t the first time you’d thought about it. Even if it was the first time you’d worn something like that.”
“Uh, it’d been in the back of my head a few times, but I never did anything about it,” She concedes with a sideward tilt of her head. “I didn’t even know why I felt that way. It didn’t seem worth it.”
Zooble nods quietly in understanding, and despite knowing intimately why she hadn’t, a part of her wishes she’d talked to them sooner. Pomni is—well, she’s Pomni (and she’s everything)—but it’s different, talking to someone who really, actually gets it. Who’s lived it, albeit in not quite the same way.
As if to tilt the subject to the left, they lift a mismatched hand in a sidelining gesture. “You know now, at least.”
“Yeah,” she huffs quietly, closing her eyes.
And she could just leave it there. They’ve had their weird, somewhat behind schedule heart-to-heart, and they can wait out whatever’s wrong with the elevator together in casual silence and move on feeling good about themselves. They could resolve this here, and it would be fine.
But Juniper decided a few months ago that she was sick of settling for just fine, and there’s been something nagging her in the wake of it all that she hasn’t been able to shake—and maybe—maybe Zooble would get it.
She opens her eyes slowly. She wants to cushion it, a little, lead herself in sideways, indirect so the landing is easier, but she knows herself well enough by now to acknowledge that she’ll chicken out if she dances around it. She just has to say it. Breathe in, and say it.
“You know, I thought I was going to abstract after that awards show thing.”
Zooble jolts like they’ve been stung. “What?”
Well, no taking it back now. “I mean, I’d had it in the back of my head that I might be heading in that direction for a while before then, but that was the first time I thought, like, ‘oh, $h!%, it’s really about to happen’. I snapped out of it pretty quick, all things considered, but it scared the hell of me.” Juniper admits, and even now comes a pinch of embarrassment with the confession, like it’s some kind of dirty secret.
“No $h!% it scared you,” Zooble echoes limply, stare wide until a harrowed breath blows of them, and they close their eyes, head thudding against the wall behind them. “F*£k, and you never would have said a word.”
“Nope,” she agrees, popping the plosive even if her heart isn’t really in it. “I, uh, haven’t mentioned it to Pomni yet, either—so, y’know, maybe keep that quiet, yeah?”
Juniper can hear Zooble’s breaths, deep and slow and heavy, but after a second of recollection, they lift their head back up so they can look her in the eyes. “Only if you swear you don’t feel that way anymore.” they reply.
Juniper can feel the weight of the words pressing down on her, and she knows immediately that if her answer is even remotely unsatisfactory, they’ll claw their way out of this elevator and grab anyone they think could talk her out of it. And as much as she wants to spare Pomni at least this one thing, it would almost certainly be her.
“People would miss me now,” she says quietly. “I’m… I’m pretty sure I’d miss living, too.”
Zooble keeps the eye-contact up for a few seconds longer—as if searching for some confirmation that she’s telling the truth—but they must find it, somewhere, because they nod with a heaving, relieved sort of hitch. “For what it’s worth…” they begin, and Juniper’s eyebrows raise at the reticence in their tone. “We would have mourned you. Even before all this.”
“Oh.” she blinks, eyes burning, even though there’s a part of her that wants to ask, desperately; why would you, when I didn’t deserve it? “Thanks.”
“Just… tell someone if you feel like that again. Tell Pomni. And if you don’t want to talk to her for some reason, I doubt I’m your first choice, but you can talk to me too.”
Juniper smiles, just a little. “Even though I’ve been an @$%hole to you this entire time?”
Zooble glares at her. “I don’t care how much I hate you sometimes; you staying alive is more important than the $h!% you’ve pulled.”
“But you don’t forgive me, do you?” she asks, because she can never leave well enough alone—and maybe a part of her wants to hear it said aloud.
“Of course not," comes the irrefutable reply. And yet, "I barely know you outside of that stuff right now. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about whether you live or die.”
It’s about what she expected and, weirdly, exactly what she’d hoped for. Juniper does want forgiveness someday, or at least something like it, but for now she’s glad not to have it. She doesn’t want it to feel fake—it has to matter—and it’s funny, how much Zooble seems to understand that.
“You know, I think I’d have really liked being friends with you.” Juniper remarks, trying for idle, but perhaps lending a little too much weight to the words for it to work.
Zooble laughs, but for the first time since Juniper’s heard it directed at her, it doesn’t sound annoyed or forced. “Hey,” they reply, giving her a knowing look. “Don’t write it off too fast. There’s still time.”
Juniper doesn’t stop the grin forming on her face. “Let’s see how long you can stand being stuck in an elevator with me first.”
After another five minutes, they’re fed up enough that waiting it out is no longer an option. Juniper initially goes back to her original idea of kicking and prying at the elevator door, but once again, all it gets her is sore feet, dents in her fingers, and Zooble laughing at her. In the end, they spot a hatch in the ceiling, and resort to using one of Zooble’s antenna like a crowbar to pry it open.
Climbing up the elevator cords while still carrying the fire extinguisher she refused to leave behind is a herculean task, but they eventually manage to find a floor where the lift doors haven’t been loaded in to crawl out of.
They come joint-second in the adventure overall, because Juniper manages to tank Ragatha over the head with the fire extinguisher, and Zooble takes out Kinger with a chair before Pomni gets them both and Gangle sets the building on fire. But despite how differently she’d intended for the day to go, she’s not mad at how it turned out. She and Zooble aren’t friends yet—there’s still a little too much baggage a little too recent—but there’s a chance for it now, in the future, where before there hadn’t been any at all.
Who knows? Maybe she’ll ask Caine if they can have another chance at destroying everyone in an office purge together someday.
For now, they just need to tell him to work on getting his elevators unstuck.