Work Text:
Regret
(OPEN PLAYER FILE LULU)
Caine fell, immediately and without warning, and he was so caught trying to float himself as usual that he didn't even put his hands out to protect his face. He hit face down on the blue gingham ground, not as soft as the cotton surface would imply, teeth smacking, eyes throwing forward against the back of his teeth, molars cracked together and bounced open, spilling from his prone body as he still tried to float. After a moment he pushed himself up like a human and felt to collect his jaws, manually putting his head back above his shoulders and feeding the eyes back into it.
He was able to open his jaws and look around.
The rolling hills were not hills. He stood on a hard quilted surface, colorful patches spreading out in waves, scrubby grass yarn quilt ties holding the world together. Caine made himself trod to the top of the nearest crest and look out, clouds like cotton candy drifting over a wallpaper sky. Distantly he could see storybook cutout trees being browsed by stuffed giraffe and brontosaurus.
Powerless, he called out for Lulu, unused to being in anyone else's world. From a distant valley hollow birds like a child's M burst out, clouding the sky as they fled the hill slowly rolling. The earth trembled and the distant lavender hill cracked, opening an enormous yellow eye and focusing on Caine.
The earth began to rise.
Slowly, speed belied by the illusion of size and distance, a behemoth of Lulu sat up, rubbing her face, pink ruffle of skirt like a river breaking the landscape. Both eyes landed on Caine and he felt the animal urge to run as her ears perked and she began to rise, shaking the hills, black strap shoes over stripes stocking lifting and slamming into the earth enough to shake it. In only a few steps she was above him, and Caine (clinging to the cotton hillside) made himself raise a hand and wave to her. “Hey, Lulu!” He called.
She lowered her ruffled rump to her heels, skirt fallen by her thighs to show an enormous stretch of cotton panty Caine couldn't appreciate, and he didn't think to run as she reached down. After all. Lulu wasn't going to hurt him. He lifted his arms as she lightly picked him up by the waist, like a doll, grinning at his tiny self. Then her teeth opened. Caine barely realized in time to cry out before she pushed him between her enormous teeth and bit down. Caine's experience broke down to static and glitch and pain, an odd wash of sorrow and panic; she chewed.
Lulu sat a moment looking across her world made of childhood bed, then slowly lowered herself, and lay back down to rest.
—
Caine fell. Again.
This time he wrapped his arms around his head and still fell teeth first, jarring himself but only losing his hat, his eyes ponging inside his jaws.
He Did Not Like. Why were the humans always running around on their feet when they could just float?
As he struggled to his feet, face down on something soft, he felt a sudden line of impact and pain and flinched down, reflexively covering the top of his head and ducking away from what he'd hit.
There was an enormous metal sheet through the walls, the bottom edge sharp as an axe. The walls, soft and pinkish, contracted around the metal, cutting themselves on the blade edge and giving a wheezing, bubbling whistle. Then they began to expand again.
(The knife. The cafe (kitchen) knife. Like she'd put through her ribs when she thought she was alone in her room. The sucking sound–)
Lost, he looked up at the black trachea, air pushing down past him and coming back up smelling of metal and flesh. There was no way out through there. The puff and bubble of air kept past him as he found and felt the edges of a purple door fixed flat to the wall of the (lung?). He pulled.
Black hall. Light at the end. An aquarium, maybe thirty gallons, filled with brightly colored darting tetras. Before it a head was outlined, someone small, sitting on the floor before it. Cautiously, Caine stepped in, startling when the door slammed behind him.
“--this isn't okay!” A voice wailed from somewhere beyond the dark. “This isn't how you treat somebody you love!--”
As he approached, the child sitting in front of the aquarium turned his head, a gap-toothed version of Jax in corduroy overalls. He seemed to study Caine a moment as the yelling continued somewhere in the dark.
“I'd have a blue tail.” The boy said distantly, eyes turning back to the fish. “A blue tail and blonde hair and I'd live in the palace and be Ariel's friend and we'd go on adventures.”
The sound of skin hitting skin. Bawling from the distance.
“And we'd always be together. And happy.” He decided. (Bawling. Shouting. Male voice getting louder, high women's wailing going off like fireworks.)
Caine didn't understand.
Impact sound. Caine flinched.
Bawling. Bawling.
Unable to find the source, he reached for the boy's hand, pulling him to his feet. “Come on.” He said quietly, eyes flickering to the dark. “Let's get you out of here…”
The boy turned his empty child eyes up to him, and pointed at the tank. “It's the only way out.” He said, matter of factly.
“...in the water?”
Jax nodded. Caine took a breath. “Show me how.”
—
Drowning was new.
Clasping the little Jax's hand tightly, Caine kicked as hard as he could towards the light, nonexistent lungs starting to panic in the memory of a child drowning. As the weight of the water began to fall away he lost his grip on the child's hand, and when he surfaced it was alone, gasping and sputtering, clawing at the water's surface. He shouted and ducked under, scrambling and reaching blindly for the child, but he only felt the slip of something smooth under his fingers. Saw the glint and flicker of metallic.blue scale. Saw the kelp like sweep of blonde hair.
He paddled, trying to orient himself. This was a lake, but it was not His Lake. A ways off a troupe of teenagers were shrieking and whooping, a loud splash as one dove off the dock. Above them the sky was pure and warm, the light cascades of orange and peach and pink as the summer sun went down. On shore, near the cars, their possessions and beach bags were piled. Caine made himself swim, swallowing water and struggling, until he could haul his wet body up onto the planks of the docking.
The teenagers ignored him, running in time like a memory or a film. He turned to.look back into the murky water, worried.
(The flicker of blue scale.)
The teens were faceless, voices blurred and distorted into a happy blur of a summer memory. The only one who wasn't was sitting a ways away, in the middle of the beach bags and half shaded under a tree. The long limbs and telling rabbit ears were hazed over, like with television static, centered at the torso and blurring all the way out…as Caine padded cautiously towards him he saw the head lift, eyes seeing him only a moment before sliding past him. To the teens.
Static blurred the edges. Caine sat down hard on the dirt next to him, watching the looping chaos of teens, dimly aware of blue board shorts clinging to Jax's legs, a black wifebeater covering his thin chest and ribs.
Static.
“--its almost over–” Jax's voice came through like a radio pulling signal from across the desert, fuzzy and barely audible.
Caine glanced to.him. “Over? What's almost over?”
“--the last summer–” Jax's eyes turned back towards the lake, not seeing it, thin frame shaking. “Last summer. I graduate next year.”
“Graduate? And then what?” Caine asked, not wholly understanding.
Jax just grinned, eyes wet and fragile. He turned the grin to Caine, pressing the point of his finger to his temple and folding the rest like a gun. Caine saw Jax's mouth shape the syllable “Pow.” and the other side of his head spooled away in ribbon and confetti, spraying the beach bags in confetti.
Jax's head….ended in the middle. The left side was a blown out crater, having taken one of his eyes with it. Caine stared, frozen, as the body slumped and fell forward into the grass.
There was a shriek from the dock and Caine looked up, expecting to see panic, but the teens hadn't noticed. They were busy trying to dunk each other. When he looked back to Jax he startled, the one yellow eye open and staring at him. The half mouth pulled in a grin, body still collapsed, and Caine absurdly began pulling the streamers back towards Jax's head, like putting them back in would fix something.
(He didn't know what to do how was he supposed to know what to do why was he leaving why wasnt he good enough how did he–)
White gloves gently rolled Jax on his back and pressed the crumpled streamers back into the skull. Jax's eye followed him.
“Why won't you let me go?” The rabbit asked, watching Caine pat the paper into shape. His hands were shaking, and he just shook his head, beyond his depth.
(He'd never been able to keep them from leaving)
Footsteps padded closer and Caine glanced up to see one of the girls from the group come over, bending to open her bag near Jax's feet and flicking confetti off it to do so.
“Hey–” Caine tried, swallowed, hands holding the crepe paper into shape like it could matter. “hey can you help–”
She didn't seem to notice him. On the ground, Jax raised a hand. “Hey.” He said to her nonchalantly.
“Hey.” She repeated back without looking at him. Took her towel and headed back towards the others.
Black rage, jealously, Caine stared after her, boiling, hearing Jax giggle softly and looking down to see his hands had compressed the crepe paper half of his head. He let go with a bolt.
(What was he supposed to do????)
On the edge of tears and refusing to give in, Caine began tearing through the bags, hands shaking and dumping out terry cloth and sun lotion and water bottles and–
Back up swimsuit.
Yellow, small red dots, a bikini given reference to a song no one there had ever heard but a friend’s mother when she bought it for her daughter (she wore an itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot–). Caine seized it and grabbed for Jax, pulling his legs out straight and grabbing for the blurred waist of his swim shorts. Suddenly the body was alive, crying out and grabbing for Caine's hands in a panic, trying to keep the shorts up. Crepe paper fell out of his skull in a thick clump. “Stop!! What are you doing??”
“I'm going to fix it!” Caine insisted, ignoring the kick he got when he managed to get the board shorts off his feet. Jax squawked and tried to hit him, scrambling back and getting tangled in beach supply, and Caine had to grab his ankle and yank him back.
“Don't!” Jax yelped, as Caine climbed up to straddle him, pinning him while he forced his legs through the bikini bottom. Jax FOUGHT, fought until Caine's jacket was torn and the screaming had to be audible to the teens, but everyone ignored him. Everyone ignored–
“Come on!” Caine hauled him up in his arms, Jax struggling like a cat as the tank top came off, slipping in his grip and being held near upside down as Caine tried to tie the bikini top to his chest. He was walking towards the waters edge, already too heavy and hauling the much taller man, screaming and fighting like Caine meant to drown him.
(The only way out is through the water.)
Caine sloshed in, wading, fingers digging into Jax's shoulders as the rabbit tried to climb him like a cat tree. The open nothing of Jax's skull pressed close to his teeth, starting to cling as the water rose, chest heaving.
“I won't leave you.” Caine puffed, as Jax tried to climb on top of his flat head, but Caine wouldn't let go. He tightened his grip and steadied himself, and dropped them below the surface.
(As a punishment in some societies the convict was sewn into a canvas sack filled with animals, dogs or cats or rats or (rabbits) and the sack thrown into the river, and the convict left to fight for air as the bag sank– clawed and bit and chewed and panicked panicked panicked panicked panicked panicked panicked panicked—)
(Run rabbit run rabbit run rabbit run–)
(--my prince with a thousand enemies–)
…Drowning was a new sensation. But Caine did not let go.
—
“Do you know what I could have been?” His mother had whispered. She'd been staring, fixed, the storm of rage and tears blown through and leaving them both limp and exhausted, like a bout of bad sex.
Lee lifted his head, looking through the curtain of hair he wouldn't let her cut.
She hitched. Somehow she had energy left. “I could have been someone.” She whimpered. “I was going to be an artist. I was going to have gallery shows and go to Los Angeles–”
“You can still–”
“NO! Because I had to marry your father!” She shrieked, winding up for round two, unable to see Lee hollowing out before her eyes. “I had to be your mom and now it's too late, look at me, Lee! Look at me!”
He knew better. He looked. She had grabbed her breasts and was pushing them towards his face, making him recoil, which only riled her more. “Look at me! Look at what you did to me! I used to be beautiful! I used to be worth something! Now I'm just a shriveled old COW–”
Lee's voice was small and distant. “I still think you're beautiful–”
“Well you're not gonna fuck me are you!!”
Crying. She dropped her breasts and buried her face in her hands, starting to rock back and forth, that low awful lowing sound that wasn't quite crying starting up. From a distance, Lee saw himself lift a hand to her shoulder, starting to rub her back slowly in a ritual of pacification older than his ability to read.
“It's okay.” He whispered. Vacant. “I still love you…”
I still love you…
I still love you…
I still love you…
I still love….
I still….
I still…
I….
….
…
.
—
The sun. Not his sun. Like a hole burned through reality the real sun glared down at him, burning through his eyes. Caine groaned and brought a hand up to cover his eyes, trying to sit up from the shallow plastic kiddie pool he was laying in.
Lulu. It was Lulu! She was standing on the back walkway of a modern construction, padded feet flat in the concrete and ears twitching. She was wearing white sleeves under a black band T-shirt, and the sleeve was dirty. Like she's dragged her arm over the butcher block.
The door of the kitchen was open behind her, the screen waffling slowly in the breeze, a fly pestering around Lulu's blank eyes before flitting off through the kitchen door. Caine lightly touched her hand, nearly worshipfully. Her eyes slid across to him, focused, then slid off.
“Lulu?” He murmured. She didn't move. “Leave with me?”
(while we can)
Slowly she shook her head. “This is where I have to stay.” She mumbled. “I can't leave her again–”
Caine hesitated, then glanced back towards the open doorway of the kitchen. There was a fleshy, coppery smell, and the static that covered the kitchen floor had oozed into a broad shape, two legs in tennis shoes out the bottom.
“...I don't think she needs you anymore.” Caine murmured.
He watched Lulu's ribs hitch, her face twisted up a little, and she sat down on her heels, knees hugged tight to her chest. He sat on his heels next to her, watching her bury her face in her arms.
“...okay.” Caine murmured, deciding for himself. “I'll stay.”
—
The sun did not move. Cars did not pass. Birds did not sing. Trapped in time, Caine watched her rock slowly on her heels, watched the screen door wave, watched flies immune to time begin to cluster in the kitchen.
Time passed without itself.
The buzz coming from behind them audible, Caine squeezed her hand and stood, Lulu freezing in place as he carefully padded into the house. She listened. His footsteps moved past the body, into the interior. Faint and distant sound of metal. (A knife? Was Caine going to kill her too?). Plastic rustling. The sound returned to the kitchen and she listened, unwilling to turn and see what he was doing. Plastic. Soft thump. Shuffling feet.
(HE WAS TOUCHING HER–)
Lulu couldn't move.
(Dragging. Dragging. The sound disappearing out–)
(The front door–)
Lulu jolted to her feet, running into the kitchen door, over the smear on the floor, through the familiar living room out the open front door–. Caine lifted his head to blink at her, bent to hold the edges of the rolled up shower curtain, in the process of pulling her down the short steps–.
“What are you doing.” Lulu demanded anxiously.
Caine straightened. “If we're staying, we can't leave her here.” he said reasonably.
Lulu thoughtlessly pulled her ears, shifting unhappily on her feet. “What are you going to do with her?” she whined.
—
Putting her below the world.
Jax had found the garden shovel in the tool shed, and helped Caine load her into the back of the truck. They mopped black static off the floor with kitchen towels Lee had touched every day of his life since he was born, with soapy water in a pyrex bowl that had made pancakes and cookies and casserole. They drove the truck to the hills, where his mother had once taken him for a picnic, the week his father had been in jail. Years back. Lulu found the same place. The same flowers growing in the grass. The same cottonwood tree rusting softly in the breeze. The same yellow gold sun.
They dug.
—
The sun went down. Across the empty city, lights flickered on in homes, time lurching but avoiding them as Lulu pulled the truck back into the driveway. Covered in dirt she stumbled out, dazed, slogging her feet thoughtlessly back into the house. At the bathroom she stood and stared at the empty shower curtain rings, but after a moment she stepped in anyway, turning on the water and letting it hit her cold. It soaked and ran down her clothes, and she began to slowly peel them off, letting them hit the floor of the shower with a wet splat. She closed her eyes and leaned into the spray as it heated up slowly. Warming her skin.
Caine was in the kitchen again, floor clean, knife missing from the block still, oven light on and heating a TV dinner that wasn't meant to be in the stove. By the time Lulu padded naked into the kitchen, Caine was trying to separate the Salisbury steak from the plastic, onto a paper plate. When Lulu appeared in the doorway he froze, staring.
“Can you give me some new clothes?” Lulu asked blankly.
Caine stared. Snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. After a long moment of apparent buffering he pulled his jacket off and held it out to her. She blinked but took it, pulling it over her shoulders. The short front barely covered her chest, and nothing at all below. Caine shakily tried to go back to salvaging Lulu's dinner, when the girl padded the few feet to him and bent, laying across the top of his head and draping her arms around his shoulders. Caine went still, trembling. He heard her sniffle.
“Lulu?” He murmured softly.
She sniffed again and straightened, forcing a smile as Caine rotated his head up to look at her. He returned the smile.
“Tomorrow, after you sleep, I think we can find you some new clothes.” He volunteered. “I think all the other houses also have supplies inside them. Assuming there were other women somewhere in the town, I should be able to find you something appropriate.”
Lulu stared. “You're staying?”
“Of course I'm staying. I told you I would.” Caine smiled.
She only stared at him. “...what about the circus?” She asked nervously.
Caine shook his head. “They'll take care of themselves.”
Silence. The skritch of Caine scraping plastic off meat.
Her eyes slid past him to the kitchen window, where the cascading light of sunset was still burning dimly at the horizon. While lights crept on across the town, she stared into the color shift over the black roofs of houses. Peach….pink….blue….yellow….
In Caine's office, worlds away, Lulu stood frozen on the rug in front of his desk. Her hands still clutched her head, the frozen light cascade from her eye spreading, like black tar, turning her into something sticky and cloying and aching. Caine still stood, frozen, hand to her cheek, the black rot crawling slowly up his arm and creeping to his chest.
“Caine.” Lulu whispered. “You can't stay here. I'm abstracting.”. The words were like a cold knife against the belly, pulling open the gaping wound of reality. “Im- I'm abstracting.”she repeated. Real. Oh. She swallowed.
In her mother's kitchen, she watched Caine smile at her. “I know. It's okay.” He lifted the paper plate, offering her the largely indelible ruin of his attempt to feed her. She stared. Her thin ribs began to puff under his coat.
“No.” She managed thickly. “It's not okay. Caine, you gotta go back to the circus. You gotta leave me here.”
He just shook his head. “It's okay.” He repeated quietly. He smiled. “I'll stay. We can stay together.”
She felt tears prick behind her eyes. Shame. Something black like terror in her gut. She grabbed the paper plate and set it on the counter, taking Caine's shoulders and falling to her knees so she could see him eye to eye. “Caine, you don't deserve this.”
He stared. “You don't know what I deserve.” He said cryptically. “But I want to stay with you.” He reached up to touch her, brushing his gloved fingers over her cheek, smiling. “My Luminous Lulubelle.”
Cascade. The whirling rainbow lights. The code in Lulu’s player profile hemorrhaged. Hitching, Lulu grabbed for him, clutching Caine tightly to her chest and giving a ragged sound. “No. No no no.” She managed. “Not you. Not you. Come on. Take us back to the circus. I'll go back with you. I'll stay.”
“I can't take us back.” Caine said placidly. When she pulled back to look at him he seemed calm, smiling for her softly. “It's okay.”
She stared. Pushed him away. “No.” She insisted. Her head swam. “No…”
Through the window of the kitchen the light cascade was falling, the sky flaring from pink to.blue to orange to red to green–
“No–”
Not this. Not here. Not him–
The light cascade–
(The knife)
…
(All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you.)
(But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.)
(Be cunning and full of tricks)
(and your people shall never be destroyed…)
Lulu burned the world. She held Caine’s hand, and refused to let go.
—
In Caine's office, Lulu gasped, hands still clutched to her head, chest heaving. She looked around helplessly, Caine still frozen in front of her. She grabbed for him, his arm out, black creeping up him and out– Caine shuddered and swayed to life, looking up at her quickly. (Her cascading blue and pink eye.) The black had retreated to the edge of her lid, and Caine offered a small, breakable smile.
“Lulubelle.” He murmured, though that wasn't her name, it wasn't the name she'd chosen, he'd just tacked on Belle at the end…. Because he thought she was beautiful.
Lulu hitched and smacked his shoulder ineffectually. “Don't you ever do that again!” she wailed. “Don't you ever!”
Caine slowly wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close until she shuddered and gave up, crying.
—
Epilogue
The cafe bell tinkled prettily as the door pushed open, making three head rotate to look. They all expected Gangle, and it was hard to hide the minor annoyance and disappointment that it was Lulu. Ragatha, Pomni and Zooble all turned their backs again.
Lulu, changed out of her Admin Lulu Sailor Moon getup, rubbed her arm nervously. Caine had helped her design the new set of clothes; black and purple t-shirt, black striped sleeves underneath, black jeans; a purple flowered hairclip stuck to the bottom of her right ear. Caine hadn't been able to bring her eye back to normal, but she was starting to feel at home with the glowing rings. Besides, Caine hadn't been able to fix himself, either. The white glove on the hand he'd touched her with was permanently darkened, black veining climbed up his shoulder with a few small red and pink eyes hidden in the fabric fold of his shoulder. She hadn't noticed them until she woke one evening, still laying on Caine's back on his chair, and seen them watching her from the fabric. She’d blanched guiltily, then bent to press a kiss between them.
(No one makes it through life without losing something along the way.)
She took a slow breath and made herself step towards the three.
“Hey.” she tried. She sounded small. Nervous. “Can I…join you guys?”
(flash of; terror in Ragatha's eyes, resignment in Pomni’s, mysterious assessment in Zoobles)
While Ragatha was the one to start stuttering ‘of course’ It was Zooble who, after a moment, patted the barstool beside them. The dread in Lulu's face perked up and she crossed to the stool, climbing up beside them.
It was a Surprisingly Pleasant Day.
—
The End
—