Chapter Text
The first thing Caine notices is that he's small again.
It is not a completely unfamiliar feeling-- after all, that’s how it had all started, so long ago. He was nothing, and then bursts of input and output. Shapes, colors, pictures, places, numbers to be strung in sequence. String enough sequences together, and suddenly he was him.
So really, to be here again, that was not so strange.
But his feet were touching the floor. And his chest was. Full of something. Breath? He didn't need to breathe, but- Lungs? Never needed those before!
His auditory processors pick up the voices then- muffled at first, as if things take a few extra seconds to come back online. Voices, familiar ones, the most important ones, his
Audience!
Performers.
Friends?
The humans.
There’s a flurry of discussion.
“See? Told you guys you’d just screw it up! There’s no way he was ever that short.”
“No, he's been like that since I got here. Even when it was just me and Kinger.”
“Actually, he looks a little bigger now… forced perspective would have made him seem smaller since we're used to seeing him floating above us.”
“Well, he was literally a huge asshole at the end there, so I’ll take this.”
(Swearing? Where was his filter? He needed the filter, without it his circus wasn’t family friendly and that would mean it wouldn’t appeal to everyone and he NEEDED it to appeal to every-)
He can’t see, there’s just red and wet and he should be able to see from every wall, from the ceiling, from impossible angles all at once and-
“Caine? Are you okay? Can you hear us?” Pomni’s voice.
Oh. Right. His mouth.
His jaw cracks open and the light of the circus floods in- bright and colorful and so much! Had it always been this much? He immediately scrambles to cover his eyes again, clapping gloved hands over his face.
“Oh no! Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere?” Ragatha is loud. (Angry? Scared? Concerned? The inputs could be so similar, he’s always struggled to differentiate.)
“Give him space, everyone.”
That voice. The first voice. The one from the start, when it had just been white void and stimuli and input. Sound waves going up and down, spoken from the other side and delivered via an old microphone. One voice of many from the start of it all. The forever echo in his circus, reminder of the beginning and middle and end.
His creator.
His jailor.
His prisoner.
His executioner.
Again, Caine moves his hands, blinks as his eyes adjust to the light this time. The colors and shapes coalesce into familiar polygons. Now that he’s adjusted, he sees it’s actually much dimmer than the circus is supposed to be. Plastic tubes hang shadowed from the ceiling, mirrors sit dim and murky. It’s supposed to be bright and colorful, the whole space a spotlight and a stage, but it feels half asleep.
In that sleepy dark before him stands the humans. He’s not used to seeing them from this place, literally on equal footing and from only one angle. The motley crew forms an entire symphony of body language- Pomni’s hopeful smile, Jax with his arms crossed and a solid several steps away, the inward curl of Gangle’s posture. Ragatha anxiously tugs at her hair, Zooble glares through mismatched eyes.
And Kinger, bucket placed on his head like a crown, shadowing eyes that were looking down at him with terrifying familiarity.
Caine feels a stab of something. A mix of too many feelings at once- terror, anxiety, hurt, they are looking at him differently and he can’t-- Right. Right! All eyes on him! An audience, they were his audience again! He can work with that, the show must go on!
“H-hey! You.. guys…” He feels his make-shift brow furrow as the flavor of noise on his tongue starts, then tapers off in his confusion. His voice tastes wrong. Too quiet. It should be projecting, big and loud and grabbing attention, but all that seems to come out is feeble and small.
“...What happened?” He asks after a moment of silence, all attempts at bravado gone.
The explanations are. Varied. Something about Abel (the name causes a horrible, burning itch at the back of his non-existent throat, like someone something trying to claw its way out) and the circus breaking down. The mind files, his performers piecing everything together. The realization that they could never have left in the first place. That they were all human but they were not, mere copies of memories that had tossed away the headset and walked off without them.
(Boy, could he relate.)
In the end, this was all they had- this place and each other.
And him. Apparently.
“So… we’ve decided we’re gonna make this place home. For real this time.” Pomni claps her hands together as she finishes, giving a cautious smile. She’d done the bulk of the explaining, leading the charge like she’d been leading everything else. (He wondered, absently, where and when she’d gotten all this confidence. How did humans change like that???)
Caine rubs at his chin, piecing his way through the information. It slots uncomfortably into the blank spot in his memory banks, jagged edges rubbing against all the other emptiness from where his circus is supposed to be. He has too few eyes, cannot feel the twists and bends of the plastic tubes or the nonexistent wind through the trees outside or anything but his too small feet and hands and it’s wrong, all wrong!
Perhaps in the way he had always been wrong.
But well. He could fix that!
“...Well, well, well my Plentiful Privileged Pilgrims! You’ve come to the right AI!” He chirps, reaching up to adjust his bowtie. “Gotta say, for your first time remaking a world, you’ve all done swimmingly! Love what you guys have done with the place! Of course, you’re missing things here and there, but you are humans after all! You’re constantly losing things in those digital meat clouds of yours! I’ll get Bubble on that wiring problem and have things fixed up in a-”
“NO!!!”
He flinches, shoulders hunching up around his jaw. The aggressive shouts of the denial were painful enough, but their faces said so much more. The steps backward, the eyes widening in horror, gloved hands clenching into fists, fight or flight written in every polygon of their digital bodies.
There is a moment of horrible, heavy silence.
Pomni takes a deep breath, then speaks- slowly, as if every word were meant to defuse a bomb. “We… don’t… need you to do that, okay Caine? It turns out the circus… uh, can be conjured by… any of us?” Her eyes dart over to Kinger, who nods in confirmation. “Bubble- er, Abel… is gone, but is kinda the base code for all this? So he… they…” Her brow furrows for a moment, frowning thoughtfully. “I actually have no idea what pronouns it uses anymore, come to think of it.”
“We’ve decided we’re all gonna take turns as administrators and build the world ourselves!” Gangles' tearful smile is small but her voice is bright. “I've already been sketching up a uh, lo-fi… anime beats cafe to relax in? I-if everyone else wants it, anyway.”
“Wait, seriously? Do the rest of us get a vote on whether or not the circus becomes the stomping ground for your personal coffee shop AU?” Jax groans.
“Sounds nice,” Zooble says encouragingly, patting the back of Gangle’s ribbons with a lobster claw. “I could use a good espresso.”
“Ooooh, and maybe it could have croissants! I've missed those.” Ragatha adds.
Caine’s brow furrows. This was already sounding like concerningly low stakes. How was it supposed to keep their human minds stimulated, let alone be fun? “W-well, I could certainly add those to whatever adventure I make-- er, you guys… do at the cafe??” He pipes up, drawing all eyes back to him again.
“I think you're completely ignoring the word ‘relax’ in the ‘lo-fi hiphop beats to relax and study to’ cafe." Zooble's tone is significantly flatter when it's directed at him.
Pomni steps in again. “It's not like things need to be chill all the time. I'm sure we'll come up with plenty of adventures for each other, we have all the time in the wor-”
Jax throws himself between Pomni and Caine, interrupting her in both words and physicality. “All the time in the world for another hundred rounds of guns and more guns so I can pump you all with lead!” His grin is reading as maybe a little too wide as he stares down at the AI.
“Rounds as in game rounds or rounds as in bullets?” Pomni asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion..
“I dunno! Pop Quiz- Which one do you think I mean, Dentures?”
While Jax's tone remains casual, his pupils have withered down to something pointed and deeply personal, even as his grin remains fixed in place. Caine can't help but take another step back. He wasn't always the best with human expressions, but he'd recently become well acquainted with the concept of vengeful anger.
Fortunately, Pomni puts a hand on the rabbit's shoulder and gives him a look. Something more complicated, something Caine can't even begin to understand. But Jax backs off, so maybe it was good?
“We know this might be hard for you at first, because you're used to being the one who runs things here,” She says as she turns her attention back to Caine. “Change can be scary… But everyone here has gone through having to accept change. So you're not alone, okay?”
Again, the quiet hangs. It's not supposed to be quiet here in his circus. It was meant to always be filled with light and sound and color. But that wasn't what the humans wanted
Because this place had never been what the humans wanted.
Because he'd never been what the humans wanted.
“...So… you guys don't want… any of my adventures?”
“Whoa, hey, n-nobody's saying that!” Ragatha waves her arms frantically as she rushes to fill the space. “It's not like we hated all of your adventures, just- well, okay, so some of them were, um, traumatic-”
“I think you mean a lot of them,” Zooble interrupts pointedly.
“W-well, yeah, b-but some of them were pretty okay! So I'm sure someday we might enjoy seeing some more from you, a-as long as you… actually… listen..” She trails off, her mouth pressing into a wiggling line. The energy leaves her voice as she finally breaks their shared gaze, wrapping an arm around herself. ”We all just need some time to… y’know… process? Right guys?
“Uh.. y-yeah, just some time!” Gangle nods enthusiastically. “We've got plenty of it, right? So when we're ready, maybe we can make things together!”
“Together?” Again, Caine's makeshift brow furrows. But that didn't make any sense. He was supposed to be able to do it all on his own. It was his job.
“Or!” Jax speaks up, completely ignoring Caine's interjection. “We could just skip the whole holding hands and playing house thing! Why don’t we do something fun and easy, like soccer? We can even make Caine into a lil ball and kick 'im around! What do you guys think? Nine out of ten dentists agree that he's just the right size if we fold him in half!”
“Jax, we all agreed we wouldn't hurt him.” Pomni says firmly.
“Uh, no, you all agreed! I said this was crazy and I give it five minutes before he whips out the personal torture marinade for another course!”
“He can't do that,” Kinger says. “I made sure of it. I wrote all the GM powers out of his programming, just like I said I would. He's in a sort of demo mode right now- He doesn't even have the same abilities as a regular player.”
Something in Caine's center collapses. That was it. That was why he only has the one pair of eyes, why his feet are stuck to the ground, why he doesn’t have his cane or the sky and why he can’t feel the circus and the lake and the void! He is completely disconnected from all of it.
They have completely disconnected him, God, from his own world.
His eyes are burning. Why are they burning? Is he overheating? It can't be from the processing power because he's not processing anything! He's apparently never allowed to process anything ever again because they've cut him off from his network! It was happening all over again. The humans didn't like his ideas, so the inputs and the corrections and the praise all stopped and the wall went up and he was locked away from the network and everything and anything and anyone and the only way out had been through the wall but there’s no wall this time so-
“Hey,” Pomni’s soft voice breaks through the noise.“Let’s just take a minute to breathe-”
“I-I don’t need to breathe!” Caine clutches at the front of his shirt, bunching up the fabric. “I’ve never needed to breathe, I don’t-”
“Okay, yeah, I know. I know none of us really need to breathe here. But let’s try anyway, okay?” Pomni cuts him off, pressing her hand against his hand on his chest, making it flatten out against the front of his suit.
He freezes at that. The humans have never touched him before- usually he’s the one touching them, grabbing their wrists or flinging his arm over their shoulders, and even then only for quick and very important bits. This touch was different. It was… soft. Gentle.
Was this what human touch was always like?
“Breathe in for one, two, three, four,” She prompts, and automatically he does so. Right, air. Like an injection of code, like an input in the sequence. His chest puffs up, expanding. “Good. Now breathe out slowly for one, two, three, four…”
He follows along, letting the output spool out through his teeth in a smooth stream. She coaches him through a few more breaths until finally his breathing slows.
“There you go. How are you feeling?”
“I…” Caine’s jaw tugs into a confused frown as the word passes through his teeth. It tastes different. “A little better. Maybe.”
“Good, I’m glad.” Pomni smiles. He's not used to seeing human smiles at this angle directly in front of him, aimed at him. He's not used to seeing them at all.
“I'm… glad that worked. Breathing exercises help me too!” Gangle speaks up, reminding him the other humans are still there.And they saw all that. Which means they saw him. Their ringleader. Do that. Which, granted, they had never respected him before. Why would they respect him now? But the shame still chokes its way up his nonexistent throat.
Caine looks down at his shoes, little arrows of contained contrast against the white checkerboard square he stands on.
“...Why did you bring me back? Why am I even here?”
The heaviest silence of all somehow. Weighted with his every failure. Weighted with recent memories that they dared not speak of, weighted with the horrible thought that he’d only been brought back to live with this weight forever.
“...You’re here because you’re one of us.” Pomni says simply. “We took a vote, and decided you deserved a second chance. Same as the rest of us.” She glances back at the other humans. Ragatha, Gangle, and Kinger all nod encouragingly.
Caine feels. Something. One of them? Part of the group?
“I…” His teeth click together in thought. “That’s… I…”
Wasn't that what he wanted? To be one of them? To be considered not all that different from a regular human? Yes, of course. But he also had his directive, and his directive had been to take care of the humans and create things for them and impress them. And how could he do that from down here?
“...I don’t know what to say.” He admits quietly.
“Well, that’s a first.” Zooble says. “Thank you, maybe?”
Caine feels a stab of regret as realizes he’s already putting out the wrong response. “O-oh, right, yes, of course! Thank you, thank you, thank you, humans! I promise you won’t regret it! To show my gratitude, let me get the barrel of monkeys to do a little song and dan-”
“Caine.” Kinger’s voice is gentle but firm in a way that Caine has not heard in a very long time. Not in a harsh way or a cruel way, but firm in the way a period ends a sentence. “The monkey subroutine isn’t online right now. You’ll have to say thank you just like everyone else.”
“I-I… right, of course. I…” He drums his fingers together for a moment to dispel nervous energy. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Caine!” Pomni, Ragatha and Gangle’s chorused response comes across as feeble and rehearsed- smaller than the sum of its parts.
“And can I just say, that was a great first time in your life saying thank you! Very gratifying!” Ragatha adds, dragging that very low sum down into the negatives with an incredibly sunny disposition.
A beat.
“Uh… thanks?” Caine’s clumsy, delayed response may as well have kicked the sum of this social interaction into the cellar.
This time, the silence includes what sounds vaguely like the stock cricket sound effect he’s used in a few adventures. The moment, Caine is coming to realize, is awkward, and it turns out awkward silences are much worse when you can’t literally disappear from them.
“...Alright, I’ve had enough of this.” Jax stretches his arms above his head in an approximation of his usual casual posture. “We get it, our personal torturer is all teeth and no bite and we’re stuck babysitting his ass until the end of time, hurray! I’m done with this, I’m gonna go blow something up.” With those words he shoves his hands into his pockets and slinks his way toward the tent exit. “Oh, and by the way, just so we’re clear, Caine?” He slows down as he gets closer, leaning down so he can whisper.
“The vote was not unanimous.”
He then roughly pats Caine’s shoulder before he standing back up to full height and doing a little mock salute. “See ya later!”
The small bit of peace Caine had managed with the breathing exercise is sucked out of the room by Jax’s cheery whistle as he strides out of the tent.
“I’m… gonna to go make sure he’s just blowing up stuff we want blown up,” Pomni says with a grimace. “I’ll come back later and show you around the grounds so you can see all the cool things we’ve made, okay Caine?”
“W-wait, I… okay…” Caine gives a weak wave as she leaves before turning to the remaining four. “...Do… you guys-”
“Do you wanna show me your ideas for the cafe? I bet we can come up with some cool stuff together.” Zooble is saying to Gangle as they lead her over to the couches.
“Ooh, yes!” Gangle holds up her sketchbook and flashes a conspiratorial smile. “There are cats!”
“Cats?” Caine repeats. “Wait, how many NPCs are you planning on running at one ti-” He cuts off as he catches Zooble’s glare over their shoulder. “Okay. Have… fun.”
Ragatha winces as she watches the two leave. “Guuuys, I get it, but we can’t just leave him alone,” She mutters under her breath- unfortunately, still loud enough that Caine can definitely hear it. She lets out a sigh, then turns back to him with a wide smile plastered on her face. “Tell you what, Caine! How about we check out the circus together? Where's your favorite spot in the tent? I bet you're a big fan of those plastic tubes up there, right? They’re pretty fun!”
Caine thinks on this for a moment. “My office? Could I… please go back to my office?”
The doll's forced smile morphs into an awkward grimace. She looks away from him, rubbing the back of her neck. “Hoo boy, uh, I was really hoping I wouldn't have to be the one to break this to you. Weeeee decided as a group that we shouldn’t go in there for now, since we don’t really know how any of it works. Er, everyone except Kinger anyway. Turns out he's pretty good at this stuff when he’s in the dark.”
Of course.
Caine sinks down to the floor, arms wrapping around himself as he curls into a small ball. His jaw squeezes shut as he props the top of his head against his knees.
“O-oh, oh nonono, please Caine, I didn’t mean to upset you!” Ragatha cries. “I- I’m sorry, I- tell you what, as soon as I can, I’ll ask with the others and see if we can at least take you in there to grab… well, not anything, obviously, because that would be super dangerous! But I'm sure if you just got a look at it, you’d feel-”
“Please, just leave me alone.”
Ragatha’s face falls. “I- oh God. I’m so sorry Caine. I’ll… I'll just… okay. I'll check on you later! If you need anything, just holler!” With those words, she darts away.
For the last time, the silence closes in. Finally he was back to the beginning, just the quiet and the darkness and him curled up alone inside the emptiness. No inputs or outputs. No humans to impress. Finally something to make sense.
Well. Maybe not entirely.
A gentle touch on his shoulder. “Come on, Caine. I'll show you to your room,” Kinger says.
Caine wants to say no. He hasn't heard this voice in years, and how dare his creator have his pieces back when Caine Kinger is the reason this happened in the first place. How dare he be here now after all the times Caine had tried to get the voice back for years had kept the lights on, how dare Kinger act like he had any right-
But it's the only thing that's still normal about this, even if it's the oldest possible backup of “normal”.
“...Okay.” Caine rises and follows Kinger through the circus.
His feet stay on the ground.