Chapter Text
Caine always tried not to play favorites with the humans, but even he could admit Kinger and Queenie had been at the top of his “less likely to annoy him” list.
The couple had been extremely interesting to observe since day one: the way they looked and talked to and with each other. Plus, it didn’t hurt that even taken separately, the two of them happened to be particularly patient.
Queenie had liked bugs a whole lot. Caine had tried to insert them as a sort of gift in as many Adventures as he could. Not that it had made much of a difference in the end, she abstracted anyway.
Kinger hadn’t been too talkative since the start, but Caine had caught on quickly; the chess piece was extremely smart. Smart and desperately in love.
Queenie’s abstraction had left him shell shocked. Caine had noticed, of course he had, but what was he supposed to do? Not even his powers could bring back humans from abstraction. It was a process way too complex, involving things like humans: impossible to figure out. It wasn’t even for a lack of trying on Caine’s part. He did try, so hard, but he could only get so close before hitting a wall.
It had been a week without any adventures. Kinger had been in shambles and Caine had tried to respect that. Deep down, however, the ringmaster was afraid he’d be left alone again. If Kinger followed his wife and abstracted, Caine would be left alone. He couldn’t even think about it without starting to glitch.
To try and avoid that happening, Caine had done his best to check on his only remaining resident constantly. Every day, multiple times a day. Kinger would always be in his pillow fort, in complete darkness and silence. He didn’t eat — not that he needed to — nor slept, if the vitals Caine regularly checked on were correct. And they were.
It was almost nighttime when Caine made his fourth visit of the day, knocking on Kinger’s pillow fort and making the sound effect of knuckles on wood.
As expected, Kinger didn’t answer and Caine let himself in, closing the pillow door right after he entered.
Kinger was laying on the floor and didn’t even try to lift his head at the intruder’s arrival. The first few times Caine had walked in he had fought him, telling him to get out, but the human had already given up seeing how stubborn his own AI could be.
Caine sat next to Kinger, crossing his leg and staying unusually quiet. The ringmaster didn’t like quiet, it made him feel useless — and he wasn’t useless, no, he was essential. However, he would give quiet if Kinger was the one asking, at least for a while longer.
The pillow fort was bigger on the inside and Kinger had taken advantage of it by moving a lot of Queenie’s belongings in there, hoarding them into piles.
“Kinger,” Caine went for an upbeat tone, making Kinger flinch and squeeze his eyes shut “I have just the adventure to get your mind off of-“
“Not now.”
Caine couldn’t help but glitch at the coldness of the other’s tone. What was Caine doing wrong? He was supposed to make the humans happy? And instead they had all abstracted, the one remaining seemed on the verge of abstraction as well, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.
“Can I… get you anything?” Quite literally. Caine could make anything. Although the AI had the impression it wasn’t a thing Kinger wanted, and he couldn’t give him that.
As expected, the chess piece made a negative sound that left very little room for argument.
Caine had spent a couple more days leaving Kinger to his own but it was really getting ridiculous. How long was his only human thinking of staying all curled up crying over himself? If Caine had learned something from his players was that they loved getting distracted, especially when things got tougher. And Caine was great at distraction!
With a snap of his fingers, Caine summoned Kinger outside of the fort, right in front of the stage Caine was currently standing on. The chess piece looked up at him with a squint, like the sudden light was hurting his digital eyes.
“Hello my soggy-foggy cookie jar!” Caine floated down to be more eye level with Kinger.
“Caine,” his voice sounded tired, he brought a hand to where the bridge of his nose should’ve been, pinching it.
“Don’t ‘Caine’ me, Kinger-boy,” Caine patted the top of Kinger’s head “we need to get you out of this gloomy state!”
Kinger looked like he wanted to argue with him, before ultimately giving up. Better that way, it helped save a lot of time.
“Wonderful,” Caine waved his hand and, in an instant, they were in a newly created space. It looked like the booth of a restaurant, one very similar to some of the images in the AI’s database. The table was circular and instead of chairs, it was enclosed in a long bench with red cushions. The light was faint, coming from nowhere in particular. The walls were not far from the table itself, the space was small, more easily manageable.
Kinger sighed exasperatedly, which wasn’t at all the reaction Caine had wanted.
“What is this?” the chess piece’s detached hand waved about the space while its owner sat hunched over the table.
“Welcome to the ‘ let’s get you to stop thinking about your dead wife and risk abstraction’ adventure!” The name was a work in progress.
“What? No.” Kinger made a move to get out of the booth only for Caine to close the bench in a full circle.
“Caine, I’m really not in the mood.” The odd thing that Caine had noticed about Kinger, the thing that made him starkly different from anyone else, was how controlled he always seemed. Either that was just part of his personality or, Caine had started to believe, he was constantly holding himself back.
“What am I doing wrong?” snapped Caine, leaning his upper half over the table.
“I’m trying here, but you just keep hiding away in the fort and leaving me here with nothing to do,” alone.
Kinger stared at him in silence for a couple of seconds longer, like trying to compute how to respond.
“I need time, that’s… I can’t just move on,” answered the chess piece, holding his hands on top of the table. Caine looked at him, still trying to understand, but he couldn’t. He didn’t feel the kind of grief the humans seemed to feel, or the kind of love. He felt something, of that he was sure, but he couldn’t say what.
“But you can’t just rot in your fort, it’s not good for your health, what with all that darkness?” Caine moved right next to Kinger “no vitamin D, I tell you.”
Caine was aware of Kinger’s mental state, his memory lapses, more frequent in the light. He could make the adventures darker if Kinger needed that. He could make it so that there was no light at all. Whatever Kinger needed.
“Can I be honest with you?” asked Kinger, looking down at the empty plate in front of him. Caine nodded enthusiastically. There was nothing he loved more than humans being honest with him.
“Sometimes, in the dark, I forget she’s gone, I feel like she’s right behind me, just out of sight,” he explained “I don’t know what to do.”
Caine stared blankly, at a loss for words for once. His hands hitched to reach out but he didn’t want Kinger to stop talking. This had been the longest he’d spoken since Queenie’s abstraction.
“I-” Kinger looked over at Caine, as if he was making sure the AI was still listening. “I don’t know how much of this you can understand, really.” Caine wasn’t sure either.
“I can draw you a bee,” he blurted out, taking Kinger so off guard he managed to get a chuckle out of him.
“Why a bee?” Caine shrugged and materialized a notepad and a pencil in his hands.
“I’m exceptionally good at drawing bees,” he offered, trying to regain his previous attitude.
Kinger didn’t answer, deciding to look over Caine’s shoulders as he drew a small circle with wings and stripes.
“Here,” he showed off the drawing, looking up at the other for approval.
“Oh, yes, this is exceptionally good,” Caine wasn’t sure if it was meant to be sarcasm, he still had a hard time with that. (And why would anyone ever say something they didn’t think? It made no sense whatsoever).
Either way, Caine beamed, he hadn’t realized how much he missed being praised for his creation, it hadn’t happened in so long it was easy to forget the feeling.
Suddenly, Kinger’s expression soured once again and Caine had no idea why. He had believed things were going okay now.
“What’s wrong?” I can fix it.
“Nothing, I just think she would like your bee as well.” Caine looked down at his drawing and agreed internally.
To try and dissipate the growing unease, Caine snapped his fingers to summon two servings of something his database had filed as a ‘cheese-cake’.
Kinger looked down and furrowed his brows “this looks very detailed, I’m impressed.”
Caine felt his system heating up just a tad. Was Kinger even aware? Probably not, too focused on prodding the digital dessert with a fork.
“Let’s eat!” His voice came out a bit too loud, he realized, Kinger flinched slightly and stared at him as he pushed the whole cake and plate in his mouth. Cartoon logic doing the rest to make him assimilate the object.
The chess piece next to him, on the other hand, took his time, like he could actually savor the thing. Eating wasn’t necessary and, to Caine, it wasn’t even particularly enjoyable, but the humans seemed to like the normalcy of it.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” asked Caine, leaning toward Kinger and invading his personal space. There were very few humans who had never pushed him off, only one, actually.
“I… maybe, it’s better than ruminating alone.” he offered, turning his gaze toward Caine and giving back what the AI read as a smile, although it was hard to tell with no mouth.
“It is!” confirmed Caine, placing his hand on the other’s shoulder. He knew a thing or two about ruminating.
Kinger looked at Caine’s hand, following his arm and landing on his eyes. There was something in the way he was looking, analyzing him. But it was gone before Caine could comprehend.
“I suppose you’ve also been alone since…” Kinger’s hand, the one holding the fork, made a vague motion.
“Terribly alone,” Caine made an exaggerated nod, still refusing to move away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Kinger brought a piece of cake to where his mouth would’ve been and it disappeared before making contact with the wood.
“No need for that,” he shook his head, “all that matters is that you won’t miss out on any more adventures.”
“I could even accept suggestions once every hundred adventures!”
Kinger chuckled again but didn’t say anything.
Maybe one suggestion every hundred adventures had been a bit of an overstatement. More than a bit, really, because all Kinger had to do was throw out there the idea of stargazing once for Caine to make up an adventure for him.
Caine wasn’t programmed to know which constellations were present in which time of year and his database included many pictures of the night sky from many parts of the world. In the end, Caine had mashed together a bunch of white glowing dots on a black canvas and called it a day. Or, a night.
“I used to stargaze, with her,” started Kinger, who was lying on the grass with his eyes wide open toward the sky “before working at C&A, that is.”
Caine turned on his side, he was also laying down, right next to the human.
“And after?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to know to fill in the gaps in his memory regarding the company that had made him or out of genuine interest.
“Life got way too busy after that,” Kinger turned his head toward the AI and stared in silence.
“We were making something extraordinary, at C&A” he sighed, still looking over at Caine.
“I thought it was all worth it, that I had time, it didn’t matter if I came home late more often than not, we had…” Caine waited for Kinger to finish his sentence but that never happened.
“I wish I had done this kind of thing when we had time.”
“You have time now,” offered Caine, although he was aware of the fact it wasn’t the same.
“I suppose,” Kinger closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply.
“I always wondered,” he started, his eyes still closed, “do you have any understanding of the concept of love?”
“I… well, I guess so, why?” Caine had been given many different pieces of information on many different subjects, but his system was built for developing on its own. It was hard to say what he knew and what he didn’t.
“Just a thought,” answered Kinger, looking back at him.
“Well, I know the definition of love and I think I can simulate it, I know the most common love languages too, if that matters.” Kinger nodded.
“Can you feel it?” Caine couldn’t technically feel anything, but also, he believed he could.
“I love humans, does that count?” it had to, it proved he could feel the emotion.
“What about romantic love?” Caine felt himself blue screen for half a second before coming back to himself.
“What?” he asked. Again with those damn processors heating up. What was wrong with him? It would be best to do a scan as soon as possible to make sure there were no issues with his system.
“Well, it's obvious you created NPCs with romantic feelings,” Kinger pointed at the moon, who promptly winked down at Caine, making him shiver.
“Apparently,” Caine was more concerned with not catching the moon’s attention than the current line of questioning.
“So, do you feel romantic love as well? Or do you just understand it?”
Caine looked up toward Kinger again, as if he could find the answer in the chess piece’s eyes. While the second part of the question had an undoubtedly positive answer, the first… it should’ve been easy to say whether or not he felt romantic love. Caine knew how it looked like, he even had real life examples in the circus itself. And yet.
“How do I know?” Kinger hummed, considering the question.
“It’s different for everyone, but…” Kinger smiled bitterly, like tasting something that no longer felt like he remembered it.
“When I love someone I want to spend time with them, I want to see them smile at my jokes, share all I do with he-them.” Caine nodded along, filing the information in his database.
“I do feel that,” confirmed Caine almost instantly.
“Do you?” The AI nodded.
“Anything else? About being in love?” Kinger turned to face Caine completely, he seemed intrigued by the ringmaster’s curiosity.
“I’m not an encyclopedia on the matter,” he stated. Caine scooted slightly closer.
“But you have firsthand experience!” Kinger tensed, like he had been trying not to think about it.
“What do you do with someone you’re in love with?” Kinger flushed pink on his cheeks and coughed.
“I mean…” he waved his hand, trying to skip over the question. Caine held his gaze, set on receiving his answers.
“All sorts of things, really, spend time with them, talk, eat together…” that couldn’t be it, there had to be more, for sure.
“We do that all the time,” he argued. “What else?”
“Uhm…” Kinger pulled at the fur around his neck like a collar too tight around his neck “kiss?” he blurted out.
Caine nodded, noting everything down in his mind.
“I know about that!” So that was an essential part of romantic love, good to know. Caine had suspected so, but could never be sure if it was just another way humans showed appreciation for one another.
“Yes… that’s pretty much it.” Kinger seemed to be avoiding answering further, but Caine assumed it was due to having opened up that way. Humans were so emotional.
“Do you miss it, kissing?” asked Caine, looking straight in Kinger’s eyes.
“In a way,” confirmed the chess piece, “I miss the closeness.”
Caine thought about it. Closeness. Kinger missed the feeling of being close to someone the way he had been with his wife. Was it a different feeling than being close to someone else? How different?
“We should kiss,” he proposed. Kinger sat up immediately, looking down at Caine like he had offered to cut his head off.
“We should leave.” he argued “this is messing with your system.”
“I would know if anything was messing with my system.” that was true to a point and even Kinger knew that, but he didn’t need it confirmed.
“We can’t kiss.” Kinger seemed to be putting his metaphorical foot down but Caine couldn’t understand why.
“Well, technically not, but I’m sure I can be creative enough,” Caine sat up, floating some inches from the ground to be at eye level with Kinger.
“That’s not…” Kinger momentarily lost his train of thoughts when Caine grabbed the lapels of his cloak.
“You don’t even need to do anything, I can figure this out on my own,” assured Caine, drawing closer to a stunned Kinger.
“Can you back off?” Kinger placed both hands on Caine’s shoulders “I can’t think with you in my face.”
“Then… don’t think?” It seemed rather obvious.
Before Kinger could argue any further, Caine went for it. It sure needed a lot of imagination for the action to feel like more of bumping into each other, considering neither of them had lips. Kinger’s eyes widened and he froze in place, which Caine wasn’t sure how to interpret. All the AI knew was that he was feeling lighter than ever, like he was moments away from glitching.
Kinger tightened his grip on Caine’s shoulders, squeezing his eyes shut. It ground the ringmaster, in a way. He felt like he was being kept, for once, instead of sent away like an annoyance.
Before Caine could bask in the feeling for too long, however, he was quite literally being pushed off. Kinger had an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“We should go.” Stated Kinger, looking down at his hands.
Caine decided to agree.