Chapter Text
The sheets crinkled under Ragatha as she turned to her side again, curling into herself and then uncurling, flopping onto her back again. Her eye twitched.
Of course she was used to insomnia by now, having had it plenty as a kid, but it felt different as an adult. Instead of crying herself to sleep while laying motionless, her face stayed dry while she couldn't stop moving.
What was she doing? She didn't need to sleep here anyway. Why even bother to keep trying?
She didn’t want to be alone in here. But she didn’t want to be alone outside of her room either.
On nights like this back at home, she would carefully sneak out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and outside. Across the pasture and into the stable, to sleep alongside Chestnut, Butterscotch and Alfredo. She would wake up with hay in her hair and a dirty smell in her clothes, but she would pretend she’d gotten up early to practice horseback riding and got knocked off, and that would help her avoid getting yelled at, or… punished.
She deeply inhaled as she climbed out of bed, fixing the blankets out of habit before leaving her room, to go… somewhere. Wherever that was, she wasn’t sure yet.
The circus was eerily quiet at night. It made her uneasy, like wandering the halls at night would wake somebody up. Like that person would hurt her if they woke up.
She hunched over, clasping her hands together and walking as lightly as she could. So lightly she was barely audible at all. After all, her plush body barely weighed a thing. That’s why it was so easy to throw her around…
She carefully took a deep breath, trying to stay quiet as she did but still get enough air. As if she even needed air…
Ahead of her, she saw a big pile of pillows. A familiar sight, but at night it was so much less colorful. Less playful, and more… comforting.
Her hands loosened their grip on each other, falling to her sides, but she lifted them back up to her chest, hovering next to each other as she slowly approached Kinger’s pillow fort.
Was he a light sleeper?
Would he wake up from her walking near his fort?
Would he wake up from her climbing inside of his fort?
When he woke up in the morning, would he mind having her inside his fort?
She hovered one hand in front of the… door? It was the spot he usually entered through, anyway. But it looked the same as the rest of the fort. Just pillows.
…
…
Her hair noodles stuck up.
She dropped her arm to her side, and clasped her hand around it, mouth forming a squiggly line. Her hair remained upright.
She paced. Back and forth. Back and forth. Raised her hand to the pillow wall again, dropped it, and paced. Back and forth. In a circle. Walked the opposite direction, then spun around on her heel to face his fort again.
Exhale.
Her hair finally fell back down, as she dropped to the floor, back against Kinger’s pillow fort, not where the door is, but just a random side of it.
“I can’t do it…” she softly uttered, voice barely a whisper. “I don’t know why, but I can’t. I don’t want to wake you up.”
Silence.
Why did the circus have to be so silent?
Not even the light hum of a fridge, or distant crickets outside.
Ragatha softly leaned her head back, resting it on the makeshift wall behind her.
Comfy.
But then, of course it was. It’s a pillow.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Close eyes.
Open them again.
Her thumbs found each other, gently rubbing against each other, while sitting on top of her fluffy skirt. Caine didn’t give them pajamas, so she had to sleep in the same clothes that she had every day. Of course, she was used to that…
“Kinger?” She asked, a bit louder than she intended, then bit her lip, holding her breath again, listening for noise to see if she’d woken him up.
Nothing.
She resumed what she had planned to say.
“Why do you think…” she huffed, the memory still hurting. Why wasn’t she over it by now?
“Why do you think my mother gave me such fancy clothes for parties… but for all my work, home, sleep clothes, she didn’t bother buying anything? We were wealthy. She could have, but she got it all as baggy hand me downs, in colors I didn’t like.”
Ragatha looked down at her plush thumbs, stopped rubbing them together, and instead gathered a small clump of her skirt and clutched it in her hand to stop the shaking.
“And then she still, somehow, blamed me for what I wore… Told me my shorts were too high. Too tight. That I shouldn’t be braless, even if no one was around.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tell you that last part…” Another deep inhale and exhale. It’s okay. You’ll be okay. Despite the red face.
“She didn’t even get me bras or underwear that weren’t hand-me-downs…” She gripped her dress tighter. “Who does that?” Anger bubbled up into her chest. Anger she’d be repressing since the time she realized that wasn’t normal, when she was about 11. “And then she would get mad if I didn’t wash my hair every single day, which you’re not even supposed to do! It’s not healthy to do that! She washed her hair with the harshest soaps in the world, and wondered why it wasn’t healthy!? She blamed me for that! Said she had beautiful hair before I was born and I stole it from her!”
Ragatha panted, then rubbed her neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t yell… I hope I'm not bothering you or anything...” She listened, face flushed red out of embarrassment. She shouldn't be sharing such personal details. Neglect can't be talked about if it's hygiene related... It's not appropriate.
Nothing.
“She did stuff like that all the time.”
Still nothing. She didn’t want him to be awake. But the silence made her loneliness stretch out further.
Inhale.
Exhale.
You’ll be okay.
Inside Kinger’s fort, he sat quietly, brows furrowed listening to Ragatha’s stories. He’d woken up when she was still only pacing outside, but he stayed quiet. He thought she wanted him to stay quiet.
“She constantly pointed out my specific features, telling me how attractive they are.
And how disgusting that is.
How much danger I put myself in by looking that way.”
Ragatha pulled her knees up to her chest, turned her head and rested it on top, voice quieter again. “Why would you say stuff like that?”
Kinger scooted closer.
Ragatha paused, thinking she heard something, but then continued, on a completely unrelated story, because all the memories kept crashing into each other, all seeming equally urgent to get off her chest.
“She didn’t send me to public or private school. She believed in ‘unschooling’. Not the actual kind, but just… giving me some papers and books, and… telling me to study. Yelling at me when I didn’t do enough if she was paying attention to me, but usually, just leaving me alone, not even checking to see if I did anything at all.
Then she’d get mad when I didn’t know something she never bothered to teach me… Saying ‘if I think I’m so responsible, why can’t I do this simple thing’, and ‘why are you so clueless? You’ll make me look bad if you talk to anyone’. Stuff like that…”
Kinger brought his hand up to where his mouth would be, stroking where his beard would be, out of stress.
“I…” she uncurled her legs, staring at her plush hands. They were blurry, and shook in her version.
A long pause, trying to remember something else. There were many memories swirling and tumbling around in her head, crashing into each other, blurring at the edges, drowning in each other. So many memories she couldn’t manage to place one specific one.
It took a while for one to be visible enough to say out loud, because the view around her felt similar to it.
“I’m used to darkness.”
Kinger was still listening.
“It was sort of always dark in our house. All the curtains drawn, sometimes multiple pairs of curtains on top of each other. She’d scream if you opened them. ‘People might see’.
In hindsight, that’s awfully suspicious, huh? But at the time, I just thought she was paranoid.
She said she wasn’t paranoid. But whenever I would ask to go somewhere, she would tell me I’d get kidnapped if I did that. Dragged away by traffickers, or… [$!)#$]ed.” She covered her mouth, not expecting the loud censor noise to appear.
“Is that a bad word…?” she whispered.
Silence.
Inhale.
Exhale.
You’re okay.
She swallowed, and leaned back against the fort. “Well… I heard it plenty growing up. So often, I almost stopped fearing it. Just… tired, instead. I really believed it was inevitable, not just possible.
She hesitated before adding, “And that if it happened, it would be my fault for being so pretty…”
Kinger’s eyes were wider than usual. He knew Ragatha had issues. He just hadn’t considered they would be like this.
“She-” Ragatha huffed. “She used to- to-” her mouth formed a large, open smile for some reason, pupils small and staring off at nothing in the distance. “She used to trap me in between her thighs if I tried to go to bed when she wanted me awake to cuddle her while she read.”
Both of them satin a long, horrified silence, before Ragatha began laughing, one ‘ha’ at a time with pauses between each one, getting progressively louder and closer together until a few tears formed in her eyes and her guts slightly hurt. “And she laughed about it! Like it was some kind of playful, normal thing to do! Why would you laugh about that?!” Her hair felt frazzled now, though she wasn’t sure what caused it, and her imaginary throat dried up, face falling and laughter stopping abruptly. “Why? … Why did she laugh about it...? How could you laugh about- Something like..." she stuttered a bit, trying to find the words, failing, and settling on, "that.”
She stayed in place with her head hung, dry swallowing, fiddling with her thumbs, and shuffling her legs around on the floor. Somewhat antsy. But not enough to actually move.
Kinger wanted to respond, wanted to get up and help immediately, wanted to say something profound, something consoling, wanted to take away the memory completely, but he was too horrified to speak or move yet. So he sat in silence, trying to unfreeze his body, blinking only when his eyes actively felt dry.
After about a minute of pure silence, Ragatha kept talking. Because of course she had more. She would always have more.
(“It used to genuinely hurt to speak, because I never really did. My mother really believed I hated talking to people…”) She could’ve talked for hours straight, and she still wouldn’t have run out of things to say about her mother.
But Kinger didn’t let her do that. He didn’t want her to talk to the air. So he inhaled, and he exhaled, and he finally managed to get up to help.
Ragatha fell backwards, eyes wide, shielding her face with her arm instinctively at the startle of Kinger leaving his fortress, before recognizing that it’s only Kinger. He wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t threaten.
You’re okay.