Work Text:
Caine remembered the moment when talking to Kinger didn’t make any sense anymore. It was just after an adventure, their cast was small, and suddenly, he wasn’t speaking normally.
He sounded like he didn’t know where one thought began and the other ended. Caine knew the feeling well, having sat in a trap of it for years.
However, that type of thinking meant abstraction. At least that’s what the humans called it. He just said that they were gone under so he wouldn’t have to think about it too much. But Kinger was about to abstract, surely.
Which meant that he’d be gone soon.
Caine didn’t know how to feel about that.
All of the original humans had “abstracted” years ago. Or at least he thought it was years ago. He wasn’t sure anymore. He knew his “birthday” was in 1991, or something like that. He didn’t know when it was then. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.
Because other than these handful of people, he was all alone.
And his favorite was about to leave.
He didn’t know if he’d be able to put Kinger under the map. His least favorite thing to do was put people down there, because then he had to look at all the others who came before them. He’d be putting the others at risk if he let Kinger roam free, but what else was he supposed to do? Leave Kinger down there with all those other beasts until he forgot about him?
He couldn’t do that.
He ended up waiting until everyone went to their rooms and then set out a bunch of pillows for Kinger to make one of those forts that he and the other chess piece had liked so much, leaving a small book on bugs there too. He could summon and create anything he wanted, why not help out an old friend, a creator just like him.
He hoped that it was enough, heading back to his office with this nervousness following him.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Caine remembered the moment when Kinger didn’t remember anything about himself anymore. Ragatha had just asked him about butterflies, hoping to spark something in him. Jax rolled his eyes at that, moving across the circus to get away from them while Zooble looked just as eager as Ragatha to hear Kinger’s answer. There were six of them that time, rather than only two or three. Caine was slightly happy that there were more people to enjoy his ideas.
But Kinger wasn’t answering. He just looked confused.
If Caine had a heart, it would have dropped straight out of his chest.
He didn’t want to summon a butterfly or shove Kinger back into his pillow fort, lest the other humans think that he played favorites. They wouldn’t love him if he did that. He’d learned that about humans, they were finicky things when it came to their feelings.
Caine was starting to know the feeling.
“Kinger?” Ragatha asked again, waving a hand over Kinger’s eyes, “Can you tell me that?”
“Tell you what?”
Zooble stepped in, arms crossed, “Do butterflies sleep, Kinger?”
“I-” Kinger started and Caine felt his whole code freeze, “I don’t know,”
Ragatha’s face fell and Caine felt his do the same. Kinger used to be able to rattle off bug facts to Scratch for hours, using it as a way to keep him sane. Hell, that fact had been in the book in his fort.
“He’s gonna abstract, Ragsy! I wouldn’t worry your head off about it,” Jax said, sliding away to where everyone’s rooms were.
Ragatha let out a breath as Kinger looked at her strangely. Zooble went up to Ragatha and put a hand on her shoulder.
“He’ll come back eventually. I wouldn’t worry about it. Jax’s just being an-” a large clown horn sound cut off their words, but Caine could infer what they were going to say.
“I know,” Ragatha said sadly, “I’m just worried about him,”
“Worried about who?” Kinger asked, looking terribly confused.
The two of them gave Kinger a pitying look before slinking off back to their rooms. Ragatha looked like she was about to cry. Bubble apparently had a bet with an NPC that she would be the next to abstract.
He was just glad that Bubble wasn’t saying that Kinger would.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Caine remembered the day when Kinger wasn’t the first to greet a new human. It was for this new one that looked like a frog. Kinger had just blinked at them, eyes starting to look tired now.
Another sign of “abstraction”.
Kinger didn’t react when another one showed up, this one a clown. Caine sent him a butterfly to distract him when Jax started yelling about getting out of the circus.
What adventure for the day? He wanted to pick something to introduce the new recruits to the circus, but also didn’t want Kinger to be at any risk of abstraction.
He used the murder mystery one. The one with the clues hidden around the circus and the ever running murderer. Maybe it’d snap Kinger back into place.
It didn’t. If anything it made him worse, being out in the light for too long. And Caine wanted to feel bad about it, but his code didn’t do much with that.
He ignored that feeling, spending the rest of the day holed up in his office with Bubble chattering nonsense in his ear (?) as he tried to work.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Caine remembered when Pomni showed up not long after Ribbit abstracted. Bubble had apparently lost a lot of money there. Caine liked Pomni, she went along with his adventures and rarely complained.
And she got Kinger to talk again.
He usually didn’t care about their conversations unless they were discussing him specifically, but he did appreciate Pomni talking to Kinger while he was lucid.
“I ended up shooting the love of my life, mistaking her for the creature”
He liked getting to hear Kinger talk about his wife with such passion again. Even though he was busy with Zooble, he still checked in anyway.
“Cherish the people around you,” Kinger had said, clearly still basking in the memory of Queenie, “You never know when they’ll be gone,”
In this world, the worst thing you can do is make someone feel like they’re not wanted or loved.
Caine knew the feeling.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Caine remembered finally getting them all in that backroom in his office with the two buttons. He remembered being happy that Jax pressed the button to stay.
Kinger didn’t look very lucid, even though he’d purposefully make it darker.
And he didn’t know what to do with that. They all hated him and Kinger (the only one who might still care) was too out of it to care.
Bubble made fun of him in his office later for the whole debacle. He ignored him, popping him several times until he finally shut up.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Caine remembered the group all coming up to him and telling him everything they loved about his adventures. It was a full 180 that he loved.
Up until he realised that Kinger wasn’t there.
“Where’s Kinger?” he had hissed, teeth pressing close to his eyes. The whole cast froze and he knew. He knew.
Kinger and the others were trying to shut him down.
“We think your adventures suck!” Pomni yelled, startling him out of his thoughts.
He laughed at them, taking them on a musical adventure with him, torturing them along the way, happy to have just a little more fun with them.
I am God.
And then suddenly he was in the recycling bin.
♚♔—♘—♔♚
Now, Caine was sitting alone in the recycling bin, hoping and praying to anything that might listen to let him out. Maybe Kinger would. Maybe anyone would.
He summoned a butterfly, just one. Golden just like the one Kinger had given Ragatha. He let it flit around him before it disintegrated. He was still pretty weak from whatever was keeping him there.
And there was nothing he could do about it.