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As everything became still in the circus, Pomni found herself wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
Her head was too full of thoughts and shattered hopes for even the idea of sleep anytime soon, and she imagined the others were the same way.
She remembered how excited Zooble had been to get out, and how they’d promised Gangle they would find each other.
She remembered the way Ragatha grabbed her hand and squeezed, anxiety and hope coursing through Pomni’s friend at the same time.
She remembered the way Kinger had seemed out of it, but still seemed to grasp how important this moment was.
She even remembered the look Jax had given her when she’d offered her hand. The fear his eyes had conveyed that his mouth would never share.
Even hours later, the look Jax’s eyes had held when he’d pushed her aside and slammed that red button haunted her. The panic and fear in his movements, and his maniacal laughter echoing in her ears. Jax was not okay. That much should’ve been obvious.
She remembered the look of clarity that had come to Kinger while Caine had been talking. The words he’d uttered, “Scratch. The first abstraction.” Pomni realized the man knew more about the circus than she thought.
She remembered the disbelief on Ragatha’s face when Jax had slammed down on the button, red lighting filling the room, and the way her face had fallen further when Caine appeared. Ragatha was tired of everything being an adventure.
She remembered the way Gangle had clung to Zooble, and how pissed Zooble had been at Jax. Their hopes of new lives together shattered in an instant by the adventure created on a whim by a mad AI.
And worst of all, Pomni remembers her own hesitation. The way she’d seen those buttons, and instead of making the choice herself, had decided to let Kinger do it instead. Even then though, she still blocked the buttons, even after the whole group united on escape. If she hadn’t of hesitated, maybe she still wouldn’t be haunted by Jax’s eyes.
Will all of this brimming inside Pomni’s head, she gives up on sleep. Throwing herself out of bed, she’s careful to avoid the letter blocks scattered across the ground, and quietly exits the room.
Upon entering the dark hallway, she spots someone also exiting their room further down, and turning towards her.
Pomni elects to ignore the figure, figuring they were having the same problems sleeping she was, and continues her route down the hallway.
About half way down the hall however, the figure catches up to her, and brushes against her shoulder.
Pomni looks up to find Ragatha, a small smile on the rag-dolls face. Pomni gives a half smile in return, and the two continue walking together in silence.
As they hit the main room and are about split off, Ragatha grabs Pomni’s hand and gives a quick squeeze.
It’s a silent reassurance, a way of saying, Hey. We’ll find a way. We always do.
Pomni is thankful for her friend’s optimism, and gives her a nod as they separate.
As she walks through the darkened circus, Pomni doesn’t really have a goal as to where she’s going, but before she knows it, she winds up in front of Kinger’s pillow fort.
Pomni stands there for much longer than she’d be happy to admit, not wanting to bother Kinger if he was asleep. On the other hand, she really didn’t want to go back to tossing and turning the whole night.
With a deep breath, she shifts one of the pillows, which was supposed to catch Kingers attention and then he would help her in without damaging the fort. Kinger had been insistent that this was how she entered, since once Pomni had been in a hurry to talk to him and had accidentally brought the entire fort crashing down around the two.
After setting the pillow back, Pomni steps back and waits for Kingers gloved hands to pop out of the fort and his blue eyes to stare up at her out of the darkness, kind and understanding like he already knew why she was there.
However, there’s no movement this time, and Pomni’s heart sinks as she thinks he must be asleep.
As she’d about to trudge back to her room, she hears shuffling from inside the fort, and pauses.
She puts an ear to the fort, wondering if she just woke Kinger, but she doesn’t hear anymore movement. She hears something else instead.
She hears,
Crying?
Pulling the pillow out she’d shifted earlier, Pomni peers into the darkness, allowing her eyes to adjust.
When she gets a full glimpse of what lays in front of her, she feels her heart drop.
Kinger sat in the middle of the pillow fort, his knees pulled tight to him and his hands clamped over where would be his ears if he had any. His entire body was shaking, though Pomni wasn’t sure what from. His usually bright blue eyes are dark and glazed over, tears dripping out of them, and every so often one of them would glitch and appear colorful and striped.
Pomni had never seen this before, but deep down, she knew what it was.
Kinger was abstracting.
…………………………………………………………
As Ragatha sat in the quiet darkness of the circus, she let herself fall into her thoughts for the first time in a while.
She knew this was a bad idea, especially since most of her thoughts held the voice of her mother, but they were so loud that she just couldn’t resist anymore.
She sits there in her thoughts for what feels like hours to her, when someone’s shaking her by the shoulders.
Ragatha snaps back to reality with a start, wondering if maybe she’d managed to fall asleep, but as she readjusts to the world around her, she find the circus still dark, and Pomni being the one shaking her.
Ragatha is about to snap at the jester before she sees the look she’s sporting.
Pomni looks terrified, panic and fear clashing on her face in a way Ragatha didn’t think she’d ever seen before.
Upon seeing Ragathas eyes on her face, Pomni stops shaking her and utters only two words, but those two words are enough to send fear down Ragatha’s spine.
“It’s Kinger.”
Ragatha is on her feet in a second; the two rushing back to Kinger’s pillow fort like his life depended on it, and if this was about what Ragatha thinks it is, then Kinger’s life did depend on it.
Pomni climbs into the pillow fort ahead of her, and Ragatha takes a deep breath, preparing herself for what she’ll find inside.
Once inside, she finds that her worst fears are true, as Kingers form in the middle of the room is occasionally glitching and one of his eyes has that haunting abstracted look.
Pomni is frozen staring at him, her hands shaking slightly.
Ragatha knows how she feels, the jester had really only experienced one abstraction since arriving, and she hadn’t even known Kaufmo beforehand. Knowing the person behind the abstraction added extra layers of guilt and grief that ate at you day after day.
That was why Kinger had always struggled. He lost his wife so long ago, and couldn’t even remember half the time, so any reminders of her hit him twice as hard.
Ragatha remembers Kaufmo, and how his spiral to abstraction had been sudden and fast, one day ranting about exits, the next sitting in The Cellar.
She just never expected it to happen to Kinger of all people, who had seemed like he was finally allowing himself to move past his wife and focusing on escaping this place instead.
Ragatha remembers her first day here, how confused and panicked she’d felt about being with her friends and then suddenly just being somewhere else entirely. The only thing that had kept her from abstracting day one was Kinger.
The man had caught her when she’d fallen and had comforted her. He’d guided her around the circus and made sure that for a while at least, she never had to be alone. They slept in the pillow fort every night, and attacked Caines adventured together. Slowly but surely, Ragatha adjusted.
She also remembers watching the only good parental figure she’d ever had deteriorate before her own eyes. How day after day, in the light, he seemed to grow more and more confused. Once, they stepped out of the pillow fort, and Kinger had blankly stared at her like he had no idea who she was. That day terrified her, thinking that he could one day forget her.
Slowly, as more people arrived, Ragatha stopped being so dependent on Kinger. By the time Gangle arrived, she barely saw the man anymore, and his sanity in the light was as good as gone.
Still, to this day, she had a soft spot for him. She teamed up with him for every team adventure, even if it resulted in her losing, and helped him with whatever he asked for. She thought he’d forgotten those days so long ago, but every so often he would surprise her.
Now to sit here and lock eyes with the man who had finally taught her that parental figures were supposed to be good, and watch him slowly fade away, it was killing her.
She shakes herself out of the memories and sits down beside Kinger, wrapping her arms around the chess piece and burying her face in his robe, hoping beyond hope that her presence would somehow bring him back to them.
…………………………………………………………
Pomni looks straight ahead, staring so intently at Kingers form that she’s almost looking through him.
She thought they would all be alright. They’d made it this far and all of her friends and herself were still here. They couldn’t lose anyone after they’d come so far.
In the corner of her eye, Pomni sees Ragatha get up from where she’d been crouched in front of Kinger and moves to the right side of him, wrapping her arms around him and leaning into his robe.
Seeing Ragatha do that reminds Pomni of the haunted house, and how she’d clung to Kinger in the basement when that tape recorder had been playing and those hands had come crawling out of the ground.
She remembers the way those spirits had taken over her body, the terrible words she uttered to him, How’s your wife, Kinger? She remembers the way he fought to get her back, beating the spirits back and telling Pomni that it would all be okay.
She remembers the way he gave her time, and quietly told her about his wife. The way he lost her to this hellish landscape that unforgivingly took soul after soul and was never satisfied. How he felt sane in the darkness, because that was the last time he ever saw his wife. Pomni felt for him that day, and she feels for him now.
She remembers the way Kinger had led her through the tunnel, his presence allowing her to tune out the doubts and worries and just follow this man who she knew would keep her safe. When Kinger started glowing, it was like a beacon of safety, or a candle in a window lit by a parent waiting for their child. It felt like home.
Kinger had promised her he would get her to safety, even though that meant his memories of the whole event being scrambled. But Pomni remembered, she would always remember. Kinger may be strange sometimes, but underneath the kookiness was a man who genuinely cared for the people around him in such a fatherly way.
And here Pomni was, losing him to his own mind.
She shakily stands up and walks over to Kinger, mimicking Ragatha as she sits down on his left and wrapping her arms around him as well.
The two sit there in mostly silence for a long time. The silence is only occasionally interrupted by tears falling from someone’s eyes, whether that be Kinger or the girls, they are not sure.
Slowly however, Kinger comes back to them.
His shaking subsides, and his tears gradually slow before stopping. Pomni and Ragatha wait for the man to say something, hoping that they’d saved him from the dark parts of his mind.
…………………………………………………………
When Kinger comes back to reality, he expects himself to open his eyes to his wife, or less hopefully, The Cellar.
What he doesn’t expect is being back where he started.
Slowly, his senses come back to him one by one.
First is his hearing, and he hears quiet sniffling as well as the sound of quiet crying.
Puzzled, his touch comes to him next, and he feels two sets of arms wrapped around his torso, and two warm bodies on either side of him.
Lastly to come back to him is his sight.
He blinks a few times, clearing away the remains or pastel colors from his vision, to find himself staring at the inside wall of his pillow fort.
He looks down to his left, to find Pomni, with her face buried in his robe and her arms wrapped tight around him like a lifeline. The jesters hat shook slightly with every tear she shed.
To his right, he finds Ragatha, the rag-doll’s arms also wrapped around his torso, but she was looking forward at the pillow fort wall, her non-button eye damp with tears and seemingly empty, as if she was in her head.
Kinger gently lifts his hands and places one on Pomni’s shoulder, and the other on Ragatha’s, pulling the girls closer to him in a protective embrace.
His movement startles both girls, as Pomni’s head shoots up and Ragatha turns to face him, both of their eyes clear in an instant.
Kinger looks from Ragatha to Pomni, his eyes tracing over their exhaustion and fear riddled faces before saying in a quiet voice,
“I’m sorry you had to see that my dears.”
“Kinger.” Ragatha starts, “Are you…”
She appears too distressed to finish the question so Pomni asks it for her.
“Are you okay? What happened? You were fine today.”
Kinger looks sadly at the two girls, who had detached from him and now sat side by side in front of him.
“I’m sorry my dears. Caines adventure today made me think of… before.”
Both girls understand what he’s saying, he was thinking of the time before Ragatha came, with his wife and the others. When the circus was new.
“I just miss her so much.” Kinger says, his hands ever so slightly shaking in his lap. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen. Thank you girls for saving me.”
Ragatha finally takes a deep breath and regains control of herself, asking,
“But Kinger, you’ve never almost abstracted like that before. Not since I’ve been here.”
“I’m afraid it’s not just my wife I miss my dear. I miss my old life, with my friends and her especially. Even if we managed to get out, I don’t know if there’s a way to free the abstracted. Not even Caine could. We were planning on becoming parents before this happened, and now I’ll never see her again.”
Words spill out of Kinger, so many that Pomni knows that Kinger’s been holding this in for a while, and perhaps just today’s adventure had been one straw too many on the camels back.
Kinger takes a deep breath, before finishing his explanation.
“But. I see now. I see that even if I never got to have children in the real world, I have you two to look after. In fact I have all of you to look after. In a way, you’re teaching me how to parent. So thank you for that girls.”
Pomni simply gives a nod while Ragatha attempts to fight off tears beside her.
They sit there in quiet for a bit, before Kinger finally gathers up the courage to ask,
“My dears. Would it be alright if you stayed in here tonight? I’m afraid of… slipping again.”
Pomni and Ragatha look at him like they were simply waiting for the invitation, and the two immediately scoot back to his side. Kinger grabs a blanket and throws it over them, as the two girls fall asleep almost immediately, revealing how exhausted they’d truly been.
Kinger closes his eyes, Pomni leaning against him on his left side, her jester hat half sliding off her head, Ragatha on his right side, her closed eye giving her a look of peace she so rarely carried on the day to day.
Kinger knew that one day, abstraction would come for him. Today however, was not that day.
Right before Kinger joins them in the world of sleep, he thinks something quietly to himself,
I’m sorry Queenie my dear. You’ll have to wait a little bit longer to see me. I have people counting on me up here, and in a way, they’re teaching me to count on them as well. These children need to learn that the world doesn’t always need to be so scary. I love you with all my heart and I hope you understand.
I found a reason to stay.
…………………………………………………………
The next morning, a pillow is shifted in the wall of the fort, allowing light into the darkened space. It doesn’t wake any of the three inside, but it does allow Gangle and Zooble a clear view inside.
Distantly behind them, Caine is shouting about adventures, and Jax can be heard cursing the AI out as best he can for even the idea of one.
Upon seeing the three inside the pillow fort, Gangle gives a small smile, and Zooble squeezes Gangles hand reassuringly.
Maybe they’d get through this after all.