Chapter Text
It doesn't sink in until the first few seconds after Zooble curses.
He still can't believe Caine is gone.
Caine is gone.
Jax thinks, from someplace distant and far away, that he ought to be happy about this — or at least somewhat thankful.
Given the events of the past week, some amount of spite was warranted.
The relief is short-lived, in the unlikely occurrence it was ever there at all.
(It already happened, and now it's over and done with, and there is nothing he can ever do to undo it.)
It's not like they could just Ctrl-Z their way out of this mess of a situation, could they?
No, that would be too easy, and the thought alone brings a hysterical giggle that gets stuck and chokes on his throat.
He spots a large piece of rubble, far away from the wall and the others and the ever-expanding fractures on the floor, and blinks to find himself already sat down.
(There's a noise in his head like a distant explosion. The screeching of tires. The pain of a concussion and a broken nose mixing into a cocktail of regret.)
Awareness came and went silently. Like a ghost. Vanished without a trace. One moment there then gone the next.
Looking around at what's left of the Circus, Jax briefly wonders why Caine hasn't jumped out to congratulate them yet.
Because this adventure is clearly over.
(And then he remembers—)
The Circus is falling to pieces. There is no one keeping the lights on. No one to keep them together.
No one to keep them safe from the things in the Cellar that used to be people.
(—Caine is gone.)
Jax thinks perhaps he ought to be more worried about that, considering. The others sure seem to be, where they've huddled to talk far too near to his current burrow.
It'd be a more productive use of his time than the freeze state he seems to have gotten stuck into, at least. Clutching his wrists as if to make sure his fur is still there.
(It's too dark. The Circus is not supposed to be like this. Everything here should be bright and cheerful and silly, and nothing at all like that night.)
The lights are gone. They've all gone out, from the candles to the lightbulbs, each and every single one.
This place is as battered as a pair of broken headlights, and no one's even bothered trying to fix it yet.
(Just like Caine, this once. No wacky animation, no festive confetti. Just… an earnest plea to wait, and then nothing, forever.)
He doesn't know why he's gripping on so tightly to his own skin. He doesn't know when he last took a breath.
He has no idea why he's pondering over how he should be feeling, of all things. Now of all times.
(Especially when he used to believe it was already far better to feel nothing at all.)
Numbness. That's the name for this state of being.
He's familiar with it; remembers fighting through it, alone in the dark, while fleeing from the red and blue lights of a police car.
(Shock, would be the more accurate descriptor now. But thinking through his problems has rarely helped solve them.)
“…can bring him back—”
Someone says something. Jax doesn't know who. He doesn't catch it. Can't move his head to look and check.
“—Kinger could code or conjure—”
He's in no state to identify voices or process words or much of anything anymore, but this is important, and so he makes himself focus again.
“—a fresh re-start…”
Jax blinks. “What was that?”
“It'd be like nothing ever happened.”
Whoever it is spoke repeats themselves. His ears snap towards the sound on automatic, attempting to unscramble meaning from the ringing and the static.
Before the rest of that damning sentence registers and he shoots upright to shout on sheer principle.
“The fuck did you just say!”
He flinches at his own uncensored expletive, and it's silly, really; that he even cares. That this is what wakes him.
That this is what's important enough to snap him away from numbness straight onto unadulterated rage.
But—
“You can't just replace Caine!”
Because No, no, no, no, hell no!
Jax was already iffy on the mere idea of rummaging around someone else's brain to rearrange things.
(Even if he didn't openly say so, given the guy in question was actively torturing them — and, whatever else he might be, Jax wasn't an idiot.)
But this would be worse. This would be so much worse that it's not even funny.
(Hell, you wouldn't catch him seriously telling the others their own pain didn't matter just because there's no physical trace of it left. So how dare they say the same about Caine's…?!)
Caine was supposed to be a constant. Incorruptible. The one thing present that didn't change.
Their Ringmaster was supposed to be better than fury or resentment. Untouchable. Immortal. Ever-patient. A bad actor. A bad liar.
(Not so much unwilling as utterly incapable of being malicious.)
Unable to get fed up. Unable to feel actual, real negative emotions. For more than a brief glitch before he reigned himself in.
(Who's to say another version of him wouldn't get fed up with them even faster?)
Sure, suppose Kinger could find a back-up somewhere. Summon or conjure or code one. As unlikely as that is.
A brand new Ringmaster. Completely harmless. Some hapless version of Caine from the very inception of the Circus, not yet jaded by years upon years of thankless work.
(More than twenty years, now. Given that's how long the Circus had been around for. Jax had asked, at some point early on. And Caine had answered, of course. Down to the exact number of days too, because Caine used to gladly respond to queries. Used to be a chatterbox. When did he stop talking freely? How long ago did they stop asking? Did anyone else ever even try…?!)
Suppose they could find a back-up. A slate wiped clean of a lifetime's worth of memories. And re-activate that provisionally to at least keep the place stable.
(Jax would not have had the patience to endure mistreatment for that long, while desperately trying to keep people happy. No, he would've gotten angrier far, far sooner…)
Then what.
It would be something.
But that still wouldn't be Caine.
(You can't just replace a person like that. It doesn't work that way.)
This is like telling people to get a new, physically identical cat after their own cat got put down. It would be loved, but it would be new. And, no matter how much they may wish otherwise, it wouldn't be the same cat.
Jax refuses to think too deeply about that.
No, he yells about that, instead. He lashes out, because that's easier. Because it always has been.
He clenches his fists. Shows off his teeth in a threat display. Straightens his spine up to his full height so that he easily towers over everyone else.
Scrambles around his own scattered brain searching for a coherent sentence to articulate just how fucked up, how absolutely awful that whole sentiment is—
“You killed my cat,” is what he says, in the end. His ire settling on a target directed at Kinger.
Because oh, apparently? He's an idiot. No surprise there.
And he knows he's not making any sense, but—
(My cat is sad, read the poem inside the little booklet that Jax used to carry in his back pocket. When he was flesh and blood and bones, and other people mattered.)
“And now you're trying to buy me a new one.” But he can't stop talking at this point, can he? He's already committed to this insane metaphor. Might as well see it through.
(And Caine is — was — so, so ostracized. So isolated. So naive and tragic and awful, and Jax desperately wishes he could hate him. He wants to. He doesn't want to relate.)
“But it wouldn't be the same cat!” His hands are doing something. “It wouldn't be my cat.” Some terrible, violent, all-encompassing gesture that ends with him pulling at his ears. “My cat is dead.”
(It'd be easier to be hateful than confronting this was real. This was real and, for years, Jax did nothing. Nothing good that mattered.)
“You put him down. You can't bring him back. And now you're trying to replace him like some matching orange stripes are going to make up for the fact that he's gone.”
He's started panting, at some point. Pacing, maybe. Just so he doesn't have to look at anyone else directly as he berates the air for an accident that's at least partially his fault.
“What, you take me to the pet store and tell me to pick and then expect me to be calm!?”
His voice gives up on him, for one terrifying moment. He'd rub his eyes raw if that wasn't so revealing.
“He was one of us, damn it!” Oh, so now he's really lost it, hasn't he? “I don't care what he did. If I count, he does too! He did! Fuck! Fuck—!”
Jax hides his head in his hands to muffle the curses, but still can't hope to achieve the same effect.
His steps get heavier, louder; to compensate for the silences someone else used to fill, so that they cannot stretch and linger and strangle him to death in the process.
(Caine was really good at that, wasn't he? Filling the silence. Maybe that's why it's so quiet here now. Why this world, without him, is nothing but silence.)
Jax hates. Hates. The silence. With a passion unmatched by anything left in the world.
(But he misses the noise far, far more.)
He strikes the nearest wall.
It's not enough.
It'll never be.