Chapter Text
For as long as Boxten could remember, he was always told, “Nothing stays the same, so embrace change!”
He didn’t really understand the phrase. Didn’t some things stay consistent? A clock would never have more than 12 hours, gravity would always pull towards the center of the Earth, and the toons’ lives in Gardenview would continue ticking on as they always had.
Boxten hoped the phrase meant the seasons, the way the sky and trees changed outside the skylight. Perhaps it meant the way well-worn costumes needed to be redyed or stitched back into shape. It probably meant how in time, leaky faucets grew rust and needed to be replaced.
It definitely didn’t apply to Gardenview, the place all the toons called home. It was a consistent, predictable, and safe underground stasis. A place like this was resistant to such change.
Why would the kids stop traveling to the park on weekends, during fieldtrips, or for the holidays? Why would anything go wrong during Dandy’s simple performances in his sunny, garden-themed exhibit? Why would Boxten suddenly not be able to play music for or read books to the kids?
Soon enough, though, something started changing in the center. It was imperceptible at first. Performance rooms were closed for maintenance. Dandy spent more time in rehearsals, leaving his usual audience to the other mains. Then the entire center closed for surprise cleanups, sometimes for days at a time.
Boxten wouldn’t have minded these hiccups to his routine, but then started the rumors.
“‘Gardenview’s facing lawsuits,’ whatever that means.” Connie reported to the sleepover in Astro’s room after silently sneaking away from the ‘important meeting’ on another floor. Toons peered out anxiously from pillow forts and sat up from islands of comforters.
“Did you get any more than that?” Vee pressed, wrapped in a blanket and looking irritated.
“Percentages, quotas, blah blah blah.” Connie rolled her eyes. “It sounded boring, so I left! I eavesdrop when I want to, I won’t be your little spy.”
Boxten gripped his mug of hot cocoa, hands suddenly clammy.
Poppy put a hand on his shoulder assuringly. “It’s probably nothing, Boxy! Don’t let that put your bandana in a twist.”
Glisten nodded in agreement, idly sewing a pink heart in the sweater he was given. “If a company doesn’t run into at least one lawsuit, then it’s probably a laundering scheme.”
Boxten laughed, a little put at ease. “Well, you’re right about these things.”
“Thank you!” Poppy beamed, puffing out her chest.
“He meant me.” Glisten took on a more exaggerated version of her pose.
Poppy smacked Glisten’s shoulder, and Boxten’s two best friends laughed, relaxed.
Isn’t this happening a bit fast, though? Boxten stewed, that familiar, cold pit of anxiety curling in his stomach. The shutdowns, the maintenance? Isn’t it a bit odd?
All the toons in the room glanced at Dandy as Connie settled back with her friends. The flower was unconcerned and happy, snuggling up to his best friend Astro in his blanket and talking casually to the other mains. Boxten let out a breath. If he wasn’t intimidated, then it was probably fine.
It didn’t really get any better after that, though.
More closed rooms for maintenance that stayed closed. The center was closed for longer, and when weeks passed by, Boxten wondered if it would ever open again. Staff cuts. Electricity rationing. Dandy disappeared for weeks at a time. Without his presence as a mood setter, the rumors spiraled.
More lawsuits, whispers of both child and staff injuries, whispers of deaths.
They wouldn’t just allow this place to fall apart like this, Boxten thought desperately, as more side character handlers and cooks disappeared. This is our home! They wouldn’t just do this to us!
One night, Boxten saw… something. He’d forgotten his bandana in the rehearsal hall. Through the open door to the stage, he saw something big. Something dark. He closed the door and decided to forget about it.
In the same week, one morning, Arthur Walton gathered all the toons in the lobby. Past him, the staff gathered their things onto the train. For some reason, Delilah Keen wasn’t beside him. Maybe she had already left?
He spoke with his usual, friendly authority that reminded the toons so much of Dandy. This time, though, there was a brittle undercurrent to his words.
Like always, he spoke confusing, sideways, approximate corporate jargon, but his message was clear. Gardenview was shutting down. The humans were going away. The toons would be safe, fed, but alone. The toons followed him towards the train in a panic, hurriedly asking questions, for clarification.
“You’re leaving us here? Who’s going to maintain the building?”
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“Why is this happening, Walton? What caused this!”
Arthur left, presumably, forever.
So, nothing will ever be the same. Boxten’s stomach dropped, his shoulders collapsing in defeat as the train left the station. We’re just mascots, our lives will never be under our own control.
The crowd searched the lobby for Dandy, but like he had been for weeks, he once again was missing. Astro was gone too. Boxten couldn’t be sure, but while the mains looked as dismayed as the rest of the toons, they didn’t seem surprised. Maybe they were just trying to keep a brave face for the others?
Over the next few months, they settled into something of a new normal. In order to maintain the building ‘until the humans came back’, toons were given or volunteered for chores. Things like cleaning, making food, repairing Vee… Once again, Boxten found himself underneath the mechanics of a leaking sink, before a wall stripped bare to reveal its pipes, and at a machine, pumping vitalizing ichor through the building.
Boxten wanted to believe that he could continue like this, doing chores and interacting with the other toons. It was a little boring, a little liminal, without kids playing or staff members bustling about. This was still predictable, though, wasn’t it? This was still safe. And yet…
There were still unanswered questions. Whatever had caused the center to shut down, they hadn’t been given any insight to. Whatever he had seen when forgetting his bandana in the rehearsal hall… He felt like the toons were standing underneath a thundering sky just before the storm broke. Like at any moment, things could get even worse.
As they rolled in crates of dry food and canned soup, Boxten wondered what would happen if the food train ever failed. While turning machines deep underground, he couldn’t help but worry that one day the generator may break entirely, plunging the toons into darkness forever. And while everyone gathered around the radio during lunch, no one said they believed the staff would never return.
Through it all, his two best friends never wavered.
“Like we need an audience of children to let us know how great we are.” Glisten said, studying his reflection through his desk vanity. He was still making the effort to look dazzling every day.
“Besides, Boxy,” Poppy added, sitting on Glisten’s bed before they all headed out for their chores, “The worst is already over! Now we just have the time to, y’know, focus on ourselves!”
“Sure, yeah. Time to ourselves.” Boxten let out a breath, looking at his friends gratefully. It was always them comforting him. I really need to get my act together..! If everyone else can be strong, I can too!
Everything is going to be fine, the worst has already passed! He told himself, pushing what he’d seen in the rehearsal hall to the back of his mind. I can do this! I shouldn’t be dragging everyone down!
Heading down below Gardenview, he ignored the shuddering groans of the building settling and the whispering gasps of air conditioning flowing from room to room.
If everyone else can take this, what’s wrong with me? I’m not gonna let this wreck me!
When a nauseating wave of paranoia pulled him away from his machine, he gave up on everything.
The claws scoured through his chest, his sides, ripping out what frayed hope was left.
Gardenview was at its very worst now, and it would never get better.
Astro closed his eye and let his other eye open.
Once upon a time, everything made sense. He knew exactly what he had to do, exactly what he had to be.
In his dreamworld, the clouds once rolled like a gentle sea, shining like fresh snow beneath the full moon. Each toon’s dream was a cloud in the vaporous ocean. At the buck of a wave or growl of thunder, he knew when to duck below the surface and investigate.
Back then, his presence alone was enough to reverse the dream. Nightmares were never scarier than reliving an embarrassing performance, fighting to tamp down another kitchen fire, or being chased by the villain from the last sleepover’s movie.
These days, especially tonight, a violent storm raged below. The clouds thrashed, convulsing with lighting, clapping with the thunder of frantic toon nightmares.
Peering down from where he floated in the night sky, Astro inhaled deeply, steeling himself. It’s going to be a long night.
That’s when a huge wave, dark cumulonimbus clouds tumbling through the air, lunged up from the sea and dragged him under.
When Gardenview was open, there were two dreams he couldn’t enter. Occasionally, Looey’s mind was a dark, anxious, impassable nimbus cloud. Shrimpo’s dreams were consistently inaccessible; Astro had never once seen the inside of them.
Astro slammed into the ionized side of Shrimpo’s dream. It spat him back above the surface with an angry spray of vapor.
Before he had the chance to recover, another wave enveloped him.
When attending to his nightly duties, Astro was often caught in the emotions of a dream. In really bad nightmares, it was hard to distinguish which feelings were his own and which were not.
In this one, he felt anxiety. Paranoia. Terror.
He whirled around, startled by the shambling shape of… something, face to face with its red eyes.
His heart seized with panic as he was thrown into a wall and pinned there. He felt it, the nauseating, burning pain of claws raking down his sides.
I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Boxten’s mind pleaded.
Just like that, as one would be thrown from the back of a horse, Astro was torn from the dream, sent wheeling up into the night sky. Stars raced in his vision as he fought to steady himself, body still trembling.
Up here in the upper atmosphere, gentle clouds of blank, sleeping minds drifted. They were unburdened by the weight of dreams. Back then, a lot more clouds floated up here, teamed by the vacant whisps of holiday toons in their antisocial trances.
He saw Sprout’s mind, up here as it often was, peaceful and dreamless. You save me again and again, Astro sighed, clambering on top of it to survey the typhoon below.
His heart thrummed so hard against his lungs he couldn’t breathe.
I’m so useless.
He knew very well whose feelings were these. They were the same feelings he’d been enduring the past six months. The center continued to crumple and warp around him. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything, but sit and watch everything get worse.
He curled into a ball, hugging his knees, and stared into the edge of the horizon. I hope you know what we’re doing, Dandy.