Chapter Text
“How did you know?”
Pomni jumped, her hand jolting away from the handle to her room with an only slightly embarrassing yelp as she whirled around.
Ragatha stood with her eyes on the floor and hands clutched in front of her.
“Oh, hey Ragatha! I didn’t hear you—” And then, the question registered. The confusing, nonsensical question, and in reply, all that Pomni managed was a puzzled, half-laughed: “Wait, what?”
Ragatha blanched, hands breaking from their laced posture to wave frantically. “Sorry! Sorry, I just was hoping, I mean, if you have a minute or two, but if not that’s fine! Totally fine, no worries.” The smile on her face spread too thin, too tight, and too familiar. It was the same look she’d worn after shooting the rest of her cosmo like it was a whiskey finger. “But like, if you do, would it be alright if we talked for a minute? Not now necessarily, like, tomorrow maybe or—“
“Wait, okay, back up.” Pomni held up a hand, the promise of a bed shielded by her bedroom door forgotten. “How did I know what, exactly?”
“Just, um, you know.” She gestured to nothing in particular.
“I don’t…?” Ragatha went very still. The smile wilted from her face, peeling at the edges like over-pasted wallpaper. Pomni felt something heavy settle in her chest. “Is… everything okay?”
Ragatha just stood there, mouth pressed in a firm line, glancing to the ceiling as if a good answer would be written on it. Her hands curled against her skirt.
“You, uh, said you wanted to talk about something?” Pomni tried.
She exhaled. “Earlier, you said something that I just… I couldn’t figure out. It’s been driving me nuts. I wasn’t going to bring it up, but—“
That heavy feeling–dread’s the name, don’t wear it out–redoubled and in perfect time, a stream of guilt started to pool into her. She had a sneaking suspicion about what was coming. There were more than a few things that had happened throughout the day to render Ragatha this frustrated.
(The bar, the little wisps of memories that slipped out without her seeming to realize it; the stargazing, the unintentional dig thrown at Jax, his anger; barely getting to play at her own adventure suggestion; the spat in the dugout.)
Pomni cleared her throat awkwardly. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened during the game. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat like that right after saying it was okay to get mad. Jax was being a d%$!#khead. He had it coming, I just didn’t want to escalate, you know? I’m sorry about that. And I mean, I’m not mad, if that’s what you’re worried about,”
Ragatha looked taken aback. “No, it’s—“
Okay. Rerouting.
“And I know we all got really quiet at the bar, but it was just because we were a little surprised. I was, at least. Not in a bad way! You don’t talk about yourself very much is all,”
“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s not that, it’s...” Ragatha sighed. It was a tired sound and Pomni tensed because oh god here it comes— “How did you know about Queenie?”
Loud incorrect buzzer noise. Reroute aborted. Pomni did not, in fact, know what was coming.
“Who?”
“Queenie.” Ragatha repeated, as if that would suddenly make Pomni understand.
“Dude,” She said gently. “Who?”
“Kinger’s wife.”
A dot.
“Oh.”
Ragatha picked at her dress. “I… I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone else because, well, they don’t know. None of them were around and Caine tucked her room away and I just couldn’t figure out how you could’ve found out so—“ She shrugged weakly. “Care to fill me in?”
Pomni considered lying. Why, she wasn’t entirely sure. But some mumble of intuition told her the truth would strike like a closed hand against flesh. Something told her the truth would leave a bruise.
She didn’t want to leave a bruise. But a poor lie could batter someone just as badly, and she had never been a good liar.
“He told me.” She said plainly.
“He told you?” Ragatha echoed.
“Yeah. In the haunted house a few weeks back. We sorta fell into hell—“
“What.”
“—and I was kinda spinning out. He talked me through it and he ended up telling me a bit about his wife. It was… sweet.” Pomni paused before daring to ask: “Her name was Queenie?”
“She… yeah. Her name was Queenie.”
“I didn’t know that part.”
Ragatha made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. “I didn’t think anyone else knew about her at all. He hasn’t talked about her in—in years. I thought…” Her voice trailed off.
“He’d definitely been a bit more lucid down there.” Pomni’s head tilted a little. “So… how did you know about her?”
“Oh, you know.” Her shoulders raised and fell, noncommittal. Hiding something, Pomni had come to realize. “I’ve just been around a while.”
A dot.
Pomni’s brow creased. Ragatha, for all her friendliness, was a rather private person. She didn’t share often. She didn’t show people her room. She didn’t talk about herself much. Pomni’s first and only exposure to her life outside the circus was literally earlier that day.
It didn’t sound particularly pleasant.
“Sorry for, um, for ambushing you like that.” Ragatha gave a sheepish look. “I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks, though. For telling me.”
Pomni opened her mouth to say no, it’s okay, you’re not in my hair, I’m not sure if I even have hair under this dumb hat, you’re not bothering me.
What came out instead was a simple: “No prob.”
Ragatha vanished into her room.
A line.
Pomni stood in front of her door, hand hovering by the handle again, half expecting someone else to pop up. That… that felt important. That felt important and it felt old and it felt private in a way she couldn’t figure out. Like she’d just glimpsed a single page in a novel she’d never read.
Pomni let the door fall shut behind her with a soft click. Her room glared at her, oversaturated, blinding.
“What the f%$!#k was that?” She asked the striped walls.
They did not reply.
Her fingers began to itch.
Ragatha spent most of the night cleaning her room.
Not because it was dirty, but because she had spent about twenty minutes at the top of the evening tearing it to shreds.
Tears had burned her for only a moment before she turned into a hurricane. She refused to let them fall.
She had just been… angry. No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t as simple as anger, she was jealous. She was jealous and hurt and wondering why, in years, Kinger hadn’t been able to hold a coherent conversation with her but was suddenly regaling Pomni with stories about Queenie.
Queenie, who had vanished years before even Gangle had shown up.
Pomni, who had only arrived a month and a half ago.
She’d been so casual too. “Do you guys know about his wife?” She’d said. Ragatha had jolted so hard her knee rammed against the bar. She nearly broke her glass, setting it down too hard and too fast.
Queenie, she’d thought frantically, how does she know about Queenie.
“My what?!” Kinger cried.
Ragatha had felt a burn in her throat. Whether it was the remains of her drink coming up, angry at being swigged instead of sipped, or a spike of nerves was anyone's guess.
Caine appeared before she had the chance to say anything, tossing them into a stadium full of mannequins and declaring a game of softball.
Jax was trying to get under her skin and it worked. She was off balance. She was upset. She wanted to know how Pomni had learned about the only ex-member Caine ever agreed to keep a secret.
Ragatha had her answer now. And… and she was angry.
Why was Kinger lucid all of a sudden? Why did Pomni get to talk to him? And the real question that burned and boiled at the back of her mind, that snarled and spat and wept: why not her?
Why did Pomni get that, but she hadn’t gotten so much as a nickname out of him in ages? She missed it. She missed the name he gave her.
It was an ugly feeling. It was a cruel feeling. She didn’t want it inside of her, so she emptied her drawers onto the floor and shoved the vanity against the wall so hard a crack splintered the glass. She hoped that earning herself seven years of bad luck would be worth the split second of relief.
(For a brief moment, she thought about the room seldom used just down the hall from her, the key she'd pretended to lose, but squashed the idea before it started sounding too appealing. She hadn’t done that in ages. She had promised she would stop.)
Ragatha didn’t want to be angry or jealous. It was a nasty quality. It was unbecoming. She tried to rend it out and her bedroom paid the price.
She cleaned up afterwards. It took hours.
Caine could’ve snapped it back to perfection in an instant, but for her, putting something back together was even more cathartic than breaking it apart. It was proof that she could still fix things. It was evidence. She realigned the shelves one by one.
It settled her mind.
The ritual, the routine, the methodic attention to detail—it kept her hands busy. It forced her to think about something other than the swell envy that screamed through her. Eventually, it would dull into a quiet ache. Eventually she would feel okay, and eventually the stinging reminder of Queenie would scab over. That’s how it was supposed to go, so that’s how it would.
Ragatha was not new to this. She had felt this before.
She kept cleaning.
Without warning it was morning and her room was perfect again. Well, almost.
She ran a finger along the cracked glass and sighed. “Caine can fix it.” She muttered bitterly. Not because he could, but because she couldn’t.
She ran into Kinger halfway to the main tent. He had that hazy look that he sometimes got. Ragatha prepared herself for the incoming blow as they traded hellos, pleasantries, bug facts, the works.
Abruptly, his eyes swung left and right, clouding over. She braced for impact.
“Ragatha!” He exclaimed, as if just noticing her. “Where’s Kaufmo? I’ve been looking for him all over the place. He didn’t get stuck in the valley again did he?”
It hurt despite her bracing, despite the repetition. She should be numb to it by now, and in a lot of ways she was, but some part of her still flinched. It still hurt.
It was another eventually, like the anger and the grief.
Eventually, somewhere in the back of his mind, Kinger would register that Kaufmo wasn’t coming back and stop asking. Eventually this constant picking and plucking at the wound would cease, and she could have her turn to mourn. Just like he did with everyone else. But for now, she would play the chaplain, and he the bereaved. “He’s gone, Kinger.”
His head tilted. “Where to?”
“He abstracted, Kinger. Last month. Do you remember?”
“Pfft. That can’t be right. I saw him earlier. I think.”
Ragatha’s voice was more brittle than she wanted it to be. She was usually better at this. “He’s not here Kinger. I’m sorry. Look, his door–the portrait is crossed out.”
He looked at the door, then back to her. “Are you sure?”
“Mm-hum.”
Kinger stared at her, and she stared back. “You ever heard of déjà vu?” He asked.
She managed a smile. “Yeah,”
“I just had the weirdest feeling we've had this conversation before.”
“Weird.” She agreed tightly.
“How crazy would that be? To forget about… about that.”
“We all forget sometimes. It happens.”
He nodded sagely. “That we do.”
He meandered off to get breakfast and Ragatha stood there with her heart in her throat and hands in fists.
Pomni stared down at the paper.
“It sucks.” She said.
“It’s a first try.” Gangle corrected. “It takes practice.”
“I think it’s nice.” Ragatha leaned over to get a better look. “The colours go together well.”
Pomni grumbled, accepting the second piece of paper Gangle had torn from her sketchbook and starting again. She tried to follow her lines as she guided Pomni through the silhouette of a cat.
It was not going well.
Zooble was absentmindedly doodling something that twirled over the page, like a wave or maybe a string of vines; Ragatha was carefully sketching a landscape, legs folded under her (she shrugged when Pomni asked if it was a real place: “Half-real, I guess. Memory is funny, you know?”) and Kinger—
Pomni tilted her head, trying to peer over to his paper. “Whatcha working on?”
Kinger yelped, spinning to face her, bug-eyed where he’d sat on the floor. He blinked. “Sorry, what was that?”
“She asked what you’re drawing.” Ragatha whispered.
A dot.
“Oh! Thanks Ragatha.” Kinger turned to Pomni. “Just this.” He turned the page around. She leaned forward.
“Pretty.” She said, taking in the sketch. “What kind of flowers are they?”
Kinger’s eyes darted between the drawing, the round petals and cluster of circles that made up the centre. “Paper?”
Pomni laughed. “No, like, in the real world.”
“Oh, they’re—!” Kinger cut himself off. His eyes pinched. “They’re….” He looked down, studying the flowers. “Huh. I don’t think I know.”
“Eh, no worries, I was just curious. Not like I know much about flowers anyways.”
“I think I’m supposed to know what they’re called.” His fingers creased the edges. “They’re someone’s favourite.”
Pomni nodded along, her pencil scraping along her own paper, hastily tracing Gangle’s already half-finished cat. “Yeah, every flower is probably someone’s favourite.”
Kinger shook his head a little. “No, no… not anyone, someone.” Pomni fumbled the long curve of the cat’s tail.
“Uh,” She looked to Ragatha for help.
She offered an apologetic look, voice low. “He gets like this sometimes.” She whispered.
“Ah,”
“It’s fine if you don’t remember.” Ragatha said.
Pomni was quick to add: “Yeah, I don’t need to know.” But Kinger didn’t budge.
His eyes narrowed further, grip on the paper tightening. His fingers creased the edges. “Ragatha, what flowers are these?”
Kinger held up the paper. Her expression shifted, just slightly. “They look kind of like meadow cress.”
“Meadow cress.” He repeated. “That sounds close. I don’t know.”
“Some people call them cuckoo flowers.”
He looked back at the paper, brow knit before flatly mumbling: “I think I was making this for someone.”
A line.
Pomni’s fingers twitched.
A girl with red hair fell from the sky at breakfast.
She hit the ground hard, table flipped sideways by a stray limb. Pancakes and poorly rendered strawberries decorated the floor. Kinger felt himself wince at the tumble she took before he processed that holy dino nuggets someone new just entered the circus.
The girl with red hair scrambled to get her feet under her. “W-where—how did—“
Kinger stood, hands out in front of him as he moved forward. “Deep breath,”
Her gaze swung wildly. “What is this?”
Oh boy. Loaded question.
She wobbled before he could provide an answer, balance askew as she tried to back away. And it was no wonder why—she looked like a crochet project. Her skin was woven, joints stitched, and if he had any money to bet, he’d be betting that underneath was nothing but cotton.
She was a doll.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he started, “but try not to panic.”
“Try not to panic?!” She all but squeaked, arms curling around herself protectively. “That’s not exactly reassuring!”
Fair enough.
Kinger gestured to the scattered seats. The table with valiantly trying to glitch through the floor. “I know. Just sit down and I’ll explain as best I can.”
She eyed him suspiciously. She eyed the table too. It wedged into the ground sideways, still flickering but still.
Kinger kept his hands out in the open as he took a chair and nodded for her to do the same.
She sat as far away from him as possible. He tried not to take it personally.
Kinger did his best to walk her through everything and hoped he didn’t sound like he was delivering news of a funeral. The red haired girl looked more and more shellshocked with every passing moment. Her gaze grew distant.
“I’m stuck here.” She said slowly.
He winced. “I’m so sorry.”
A hysterical little chuckle forced its way out. “I’m stuck here.” She repeated.
Kinger shifted, reaching out to do… something. He wasn’t sure what, but the thousand yard stare she wore made him feel almost sick. She looked like she was about to start crying and he needed to do something—
—the girl with red hair flinched.
Kinger swallowed a second apology and pulled his hand back.
He didn’t want to let his hopelessness soak into her. He had grown it over years and years of being trapped like mold in a leaky basement. It was making him sick. It was making Queenie sick. This girl didn’t need that. She didn’t deserve that. Even if it was inevitable that despair would take root, he should try to offer some comfort.
Unfortunately, comfort was in limited supply around here. So Kinger told the one truth he had available.
“You aren’t alone. We’re here too, you know.”
She hesitated before asking: “We…?”
He went to reply, but a shrill dial-up tone cut the air. A blur of teeth swept up to the girl’s side.
She nearly jumped out of her chair as Caine shouted: “A new character?! And you didn’t tell me?”
Kinger went to protest, because the girl with red hair looked scared and shaky all over again, but Caine was a force to be reckoned with.
“You need a tour,” he announced as he whisked the girl away.
“Be careful!” Kinger called after them.
An echoing reply came from Caine, chipper as ever: “Haha, no!”
Kinger hoped he would go easy on her but wasn’t about to hold his breath. Caine was overeager at the best of time, and considering this was their first new arrival since… since…
Had there been anyone else?
Kinger made his way to the stretch of hallway where the rooms lay. Queenie’s door was ajar. Kinger knocked anyway.
“Love,” he called.
“Hm?”
The door swung open. She sat in the low lighting, same as he’d left her. There was a deck of playing cards scattered in front of her. She had been trying to remember the rules to solitaire, and from the looks of it, hadn’t gotten far.
Kinger knelt in front of her. “Someone new arrived.”
That got her attention. She turned, eyes big and shining with surprise. “What?” She asked quickly. “When?”
Kinger rested his hand over hers. “Just now! You wanna come meet her?”
She squeezed back and relief washed through him. Her eyes were brightening. “Yes. Yes! I’d love to. It’s been so long since… What's her name?”
“It’s—“ He paused as they shuffled through the door. “She doesn’t have one yet. But I think she’s a rag doll.”
Her hands itched.
They had been itching for two days. Pomni had been alternating between pawing uselessly at the fabric of her gloves, and trying not to make her fighting too obvious. The latter of which she was failing at miserably.
She couldn’t help it though. Because two days ago, Ragatha had stopped her in the hallway wearing an emotion Pomni just couldn’t shake—one she couldn’t name, for that matter—and ever since, what she said clung to Pomni like freshly-gnawed gum to hair. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t comb it out.
Ragatha had just seemed so… upset. She’d been so quiet.
Pomni stared up at her canopy. The mattress under her squeaked.
It could be nothing, and in fact it probably was. Pomni had a history of seeing things that weren’t there, inside the circus and out, but some gut instinct told her otherwise. Her fingers scrabbled absently against the sheets.
I think I was making this for someone, Kinger had said. A dot. A line. A clamour of alarm bells in her head.
At the end of the day, she had nothing to go off of but a mumble intuition and the blink of emotion she’d caught on Ragatha’s face as she retreated behind her door.
Two days.
It just wouldn’t leave her mind. It constellated. Dots and lines strung together, finding connections where they probably weren't any.
Despite that, Pomni felt like she was missing something, but couldn’t put her finger on what. Even today, everything seemed fine, but there was an inexplicable yanking at the back of her mind. It cried out, insisting that the axis Ragatha turned on had jarred ever so slightly, that she was off kilter, and that Pomni had glimpsed the corner of a canvas she wasn’t meant to see.
“Today’s adventure is: The Secret Adversary!” Caine had hollered at the asscrack of dawn.
Zooble narrowed their eyes. “Like the Agatha Christie book?”
“Precisely!” Caine clapped.
“Nerd.” Jax coughed.
“Can you even do that?” They asked. “I thought her stuff was copyrighted.”
“Of course I can!” His voice switched, monotone, and his eyes went static. “The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie is in the public domain in the US and as such may be freely copied, distributed, performed, displayed, and adapted. Use of public domain works is protected under copyright law. Wikipedia.”
“What.”
“Have fun!” He shoved them through the portal.
As they trudged through the grey streets of a fictional London, she found herself glancing at Ragatha. It wasn’t on purpose, really, but her gaze was wandering and Ragatha seemed to catch it like a glare of light. Something felt off. It didn’t look or sound off, but it felt off.
Her hands itched.
Ragatha seemed… normal, walking arm-in-arm with Gangle, searching for leads. The two of them trotted along while Zooble marched a few feet in front, occasionally snapping at Jax when his snide digs got too sharp, lobbing an arm at him when he crept a bit too close to Gangle with a throwable item in hand. All par for the course.
Kinger drifted, sticking his fingers into rat-traps for crayon-coloured cheese cubes. Somehow, he was quick enough to not get caught. Every now and again, Ragatha left Gangle’s side, guiding him a few steps closer, cheerily saying something about sticking together, and safety in numbers.
“Right!” He chirped. Her fingers tapped against his. Ragatha had done that a million times before. It happened almost every adventure. It wasn’t new or unusual or even all that apparent. Pomni didn’t know why she was noticing it now. She didn’t know why it suddenly felt like it mattered.
“What’s with you today?” Jax fell into step with her a few paces behind the rest, arms behind his head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What, did another NPC you like come back from the dead?”
She grumbled at him. “Knock it off.”
He grinned. “You know you’ve been staring at Rags like she’s missing a head, right?”
“I have not.” She huffed.
“Sure you have! Like this:” His eyes went so wide they took up most of his face, mouth vanishing, pupils down to pinpricks. Pomni glared and pushed him away. His smile returned a beat later, elbowing her sharply. “What, did she tick you off?”
“Wh—no!”
“Oh, so you ticked her off, gotcha.”
“I didn’t say that—“
“You know, I didn’t think anyone but me could make her mad, I’m impressed, really.”
Her teeth ground. “Could you just—“ Her voice cut abruptly, the whisper of guilt at his word deadheaded before they bloomed. She watched for a moment: Kinger had wandered off again; Ragatha coaxed him back to the group. Pomni was silent for a long moment before she asked: “Does she seem off to you?”
It must’ve thrown him pretty bad, because Jax, for a moment, faltered. “I… what?”
“Like, have you noticed anything weird?”
“Anything weird? Rags—?“ He blinked, stunned for just a fraction of a second longer. Then, as if it never happened, Jax hissed out a laugh. “Nope. Seems like the same old buzzkill to me.”
“Something’s wrong.” She muttered, mostly to herself.
“Maybe you’re just going crazy.” He suggested happily. “You can Kinger can start a club.”
“I’m not crazy.”
He tapped his chin, feigning thought. “Oh, what’s the word for seeing things that aren’t there?”
“Crazy’s not the word for it.” She hissed.
Jax laughed at her. “And there’s the admission of guilt. I should’ve been a lawyer.”
Pomni didn’t reply. She couldn’t be bothered—her attention was elsewhere. She watched the two of them. Ragatha watching Kinger, and Kinger collecting his cheeses. This was not the first time they’d done this.
Not this specifically—with the cheese and the rat traps. It was the careful eye she kept and his happy compliance.
Pomni was struck with the abrupt feeling that she was intruding. As if she was peaking into a closed window or through a heavy set of drapes.
Jax rolled his eyes as he strolled off, apparently bored of grilling her. “Whatever. Have fun losing your marbles.”
There was a word for it, but it wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t that broad. It had a name.
Pomni set her jaw and jogged to catch up. “Hey, Ragatha!” She called. “Mind if I join?”
“Yeah, of course!” She made room for Pomni quickly. “How are you liking this one?”
“It’s not bad. Kinda fun, actually. Like an escape room.”
They fell into idle chatter. Pomni tried not to let her studying become apparent, but even up-close, Ragatha seemed fine. Whatever she’d caught wind of before has vanished. They talked, joked a bit, the mystery unravelled, and all the while, nothing odd rose to the surface. It was driving Pomni up the wall. There was something she was missing, she could swear.
Caine congratulated them on a job well done once they returned to the circus and Pomni B-lined to her room the minute dinner was dismissed.
Now here she sat, staring at the wine-red canopy of her bed, the night getting old and restless, and her hands still twitching.
Pomni buried her face in her pillow with a groan. “Go to sleep.” She mumbled to herself. “You’re overthinking.”
She had gone through this in the past, finding a pattern were there wasn’t one, digging her nails into a knee jerk instinct without a basis and hold on for dear life. Pomni had conspirized herself into a corner before. She was nosy and when her gut said go, she did. Actions and reactions; if X then Y. It was a bad habit that she was trying to kick.
But two days ago, Pomni swore she'd caught a thread in some much larger tapestry and was now daring herself not to pull at it.
Their talk echoed through her head again.
None of them were here yet.
She knew there was a word for this thing she did. She knew seeing faces in objects and shapes in clouds was a stone's throw away. The closest her mind could get was epiphany, but that wasn’t right.
Pomni turned the conversation over in her head, dusting it off for examination. She tried to make sense of the words, but there were too many variables she didn’t know, too many unassigned values to crack the code.
He hasn’t talked about her in—in years.
It wasn’t a lie, but there was more concealed by the vague shrug of an answer.
I thought he’d…
Maybe Jax was right (ugh, ugh, ugh), maybe she was crazy for latching onto a blip in demeanour like this. It wasn’t really any of her business anyways.
But… something about the exchange snagged onto her like raw wool over hangnails. There was some piece of this that she couldn’t see, like ultraviolet light or frames past twenty-four per-second.
Oh, you know.
“It’s nothing.” She said aloud. “You’re being weird.” Because saying it meant it was true. Saying it out loud meant nothing was wrong and she was doing that thing she did where an assumption given the weight of fact and she acted on it like an idiot.
Pomni stubbornly rolled over, eyes screwed shut and beating down the insistence that she needed to look a little harder.
I’ve just been around a while.
Pomni’s fingers itched.
Ragatha added a second crack to her mirror that night.
She hadn’t meant to, really. It had just happened.
She hadn’t closed the door and thought, ah yes, time to throw things against the wall again, yay! No, she didn’t even realize what she was doing until her hands were already in motion.
Her chest had felt tight and her face was hot and she just needed a way to cull the burning feeling that racked over her. And now her room was a mess for the second time this week.
Ragatha took a deep breath, taking in the wreckage and feeling guilt sweep through her like heavy rain.
“This is gonna take ages.” She said to herself, though whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was still up in the air.
Ragatha started to pick up her books. She wondered if this was helping at all or if it just kept her busy enough to ignore her emotions.
Whatever.
It was her own fault anyways. She might as well have invited the anger in for dinner. She shouldn’t have stuck so close to Kinger today. It had been childish, keeping him in tow and tapping on his hand as if he would remember to tap back.
Maybe she was hoping that some traces of that lucidity were still clinging to him, that even if the haunted house had been weeks ago, there would be something left for her too. Some fossil of who he was that she could excavate and hold onto. Anything to keep the reminder of Queenie from pushing her to something far worse than a wrecked bedroom.
All she received was a chipper tone, nonsense words, and heartache.
“Look,” She’d said, pointing to the window of a London toy store where a chess board sat next to a plush doll, “it’s us.”
Kinger laughed. “I’m not a doll, Ragatha.”
She laughed too. “I know,”
What else was she supposed to do?
No matter how close she looked or what angle she stood at, Kinger wasn’t really there. And all while, she’d felt eyes at her back, following her through the cobblestone streets of the adventure.
Ragatha caught Pomni giving her a strange look more than once, she heard her whispering with Jax, and every time she glimpsed the expression—brows low, frowning slightly, confused, maybe annoyed—she wanted to break her room apart all over again in the hopes that she would feel better once it was clean.
(Their conversation still rolled around in her head. He told me, Pomni had said, and that was that.)
Pomni trotted up next to her just before the story’s third act, closing the gap between them that Ragatha usually took care of. “Mind if I join?”
She bit her tongue first and answered second. “Yeah, of course! How are you liking this one?”
Pomni smiled at her. Ragatha wanted to break another mirror. She struggled to keep her tone light as they spoke, because Pomni hadn’t done anything to warrant such an ugly reaction. She hadn’t done anything at all. It wasn’t fair. Ragatha knew it wasn’t fair.
She knew her feelings on the matter were just… wrong. She was wrong. She shouldn’t feel so bitter.
Ragatha spent the rest of the adventure gulping down resentment, hoping none of it seeped out. Lucky for her, she knew how to stomach the swallowing of emotions. It burned like liquor, but she held it well. At least, she held it until there was furniture to take it out on.
For the second time, it took her until morning to fix what she’d ruined. The second crack on her mirror made her cringe inwardly.
“Caine can fix it.” She said, “It’s fine. He can fix it.”
She smoothed her skirt, slipped from her room, and held back a sigh when Kinger met her halfway. Same old, same old. He looked dazed again.
So Ragatha braced again. She flinched again, too.
It went the way it always did—with Kinger humming to himself happily as he left, and Ragatha standing there, staring at the empty space he’d left.
She didn’t count the seconds, but she definitely stood there longer than she should’ve, jaw tight enough to cramp and arms shaking at her sides. She wished she had actually slept. She wished she hadn’t pulled her bed apart. She wished she could just go to someone else’s room for once and rest.
(She thought about Kinger’s room again. She ignored how tempting it sounded.)
She needed to move. The others would wonder where she was, why was she running late again. If she was really unlucky, Zooble would corner her and ask what was up, or Gangle would come knocking later to ask her to join a doodling session.
Ragatha’s shoulders shook.
The only mercy of delivering this news to Kinger over and over again was that she didn’t cry from it. Even if she wanted to cry, the now-sacred ceremony of a matter-of-fact tone and dry face wouldn’t let her. Grief and anger washed over each time, yes, but Ragatha had long since outgrown the tears.
She hid her trembling hands. Usually it was over by now. Usually it was sunken in, somewhere in his subconscious, that whoever was gone wasn’t coming back. Part of her wondered why this was different, while another part begged her not to dwell on the fact that he was getting noticeably worse.
She took a slow breath and had just about composed herself when something gentle touched her arm.
Ragatha jumped.
“Sorry! Sorry, that was on me.” Pomni put her hands up in surrender. “You uh, you good…?”
Ragatha pasted a smile over her face. It felt frail. “Of course. Never better.”
Pomni watched her carefully. “I overheard you talking to Kinger.” Her hands wrung as she added: “I didn’t hear what you were saying. I just… I heard it was him and I heard it was you.”
Fuck.
Ragatha smiled wider, waving it off. “Oh! Yeah, he just forgot something.”
“Ragatha,” Pomni started, and for some reason it sounded like a warning.
“He’s fine, I promise!” She said hurriedly, which was apparently the wrong answer because Pomni frowned at her.
“Okay, but are you?”
“I… yeah. I’m great.” Pomni was staring at her with wide eyes, like she’d just said something terrible. Ragatha didn’t understand what she’d said to warrant it. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Pomni wasn’t supposed to hear that.
“It’s nothing. I just wanted to make sure. I guess.”
She really wasn’t supposed to hear that.
“Oh, well… thank you, then?”
Pomni swallowed hard. “Breakfast?” She asked clumsily.
“Yeah, we better grab some before it’s gone.”
It took six minutes to get from the hallway of their rooms to the main tent. Three of those minutes were quiet.
She watched Ragatha out of the corner of her eye as they walked, side by side, to the common room. Ragatha was politely quiet; Pomni was stewing. A sticky, gross sensation crawled over her as they went, coiling into a pit in her stomach.
She shouldn’t have listened in on them; shouldn’t have intruded; shouldn’t have continued to listen once she realized what was happening. She tried to scrub the exchange from her memory as they walked, but knew an afterimage would be burned in its place anyways.
Kinger said it was like déjà vu. There wasn’t a doubt in Pomni’s mind that the conversation had already happened. There wasn’t a doubt in Pomni’s mind that it would happen again.
“What did Kinger forget?” Pomni finally asked.
Ragatha’s hands clasped in front of her. “Oh, nothing. He was just a bit turned around.”
“Right... a bit turned around.”
“It would be hard not to. This place is pretty confusing sometimes.” She tried to catch Pomni’s gaze. “And, seriously, don’t worry about Kinger. He’s alright. I mean, I’d probably get lost all the time in here if I were him.”
“I guess,” she tried not to sound frustrated, “I just—are you sure you’re okay?”
She looked confused. “I’m sure...?” She sounded hesitant.
Pomni almost wanted to argue, but guilt kept her from following through. “Does that happen a lot? Kinger—“ forgetting someone abstracted, “—getting lost? Forgetting where he is?”
Ragatha got this sorta resigned look about her. “Kinger doesn’t remember most things these days.”
They rounded the last corner, and Ragatha changed. Her posture straightened and her voice carried through the air. “Good morning!” She waved. “Sorry we’re late.”
Her hands itched.
The girl with red hair had not left her room in five days.
He couldn’t blame her for it, the circus was overwhelming in every way possible—the colours, the low-poly graphics, the strain it left on your eyes, the objects spasmed and glitched through the floors. He’d probably want to lock himself in too, but that didn’t mean he didn’t worry.
He stopped by her door every morning with a soft series of knocks. Tap tap ta-ta tap.
Kinger always listened for the response, but nothing followed.
Caine was getting antsy about it. “Why won’t she come out? I made today’s adventure specifically for her! And yesterday’s! And tomorrow’s!”
“Give her a bit of time to adjust.” Kinger tried, but Caine just paced through the air.
“But—!”
Queenie pulled him down to ground level from where he floated. “Caine, she’s in shock right now. Give her a few more days, okay?”
He crossed his arms, grumbling. “Fine, a few days.”
In private, Queenie whispered to him: “I’m worried. I haven’t seen her once. What if–”
Kinger squeezed her hand. “Don’t you worry. She’ll be just fine.”
“Check in on her?” She asked. “Please?”
He leaned the crown of his head against her. “Took the words right outta my mouth.”
On the sixth day, Kinger took a deep breath. Tap tap ta-ta tap.
“Morning’, Dolly.” He said, and then he waited. Time dragged on as he strained to hear behind the door.
Then, softly: Tap tap.
Kinger exhaled.
On the seventh day, he repeated. “Mornin’, Dolly.”
Again, she completed the phrase. Kinger felt himself relax a little more.
On the ninth day, the door cracked open. “Two bits.” She chimed, so quiet he almost missed it.
Kinger did his best to mimic a smile, eyes half winking. “Good to see you again.” She stepped out hesitantly. “Wanna walk down together?”
“Okay.”
So, that morning, they did.
“Hi,” She said when she finally met Queenie.
“Hello,” Queenie said, practically aglow. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Ditto.”
The shell around the girl with red hair started to chip away. Each morning, he would knock, then she would knock. Her greetings got brighter, louder. Queenie would meet them at the first bend in the corridor, one hand slipping into Kinger’s, the other carefully reaching up to straighten out the girl’s ever-so-slightly crooked bow.
The girl had a bright smile. Queenie whispered to him that she was lovely. That she liked the girl. That she was glad for a new face.
Caine had been impatiently waiting for the couple’s nod of approval before sending Dolly on her first adventure. When he finally got the go-ahead, Caine sent them to do something simple, something rather pleasant.
They went fishing.
The three of them sat on a creaky wooden dock that swayed with the waves and cast out their lines. They dragged up fish, saltwater and fresh alike, boots, a treasure chest, bones, and a few stringy piles of code that might’ve been seaweed. Flowers bloomed along the banks.
"I think they're meadow cress," Dolly said at one point. "They look sorta like that."
"I always called them mayflowers." Queenie brushed a hand over the petals. They jarred in her wake. "You like them?"
"They were really common where I grew up. Nothing special, but I always thought they were nice." She said, a little shy but still accepting the bloom Queenie tucked into her hair.
"They suit you."
He filed the information away for later.
Kinger lost his rod to a hound-sized frog early on, settling in beside Dolly as she cast her line out. Queenie studied the low-resolution water striders as they skittered across the surface; Dolly’s hook came up empty again. She cast it out farther.
“Have you picked a name?” Kinger asked. Her face approximated an embarrassed blush, red diagonal lines embroidering themselves to her cheeks. She shook her head. “Still thinking. But I’ll figure it out eventually!”
“No rush, Dolly. Gotta find one that feels right.” He paused. “Can I keep calling you that until you figure it out?”
She just gave him a grateful look, a little shy around the edges. “I don’t mind it.”
He hummed. His fingers tapped.
Dolly, then.
She hummed back. Her fingers tapped the reply.
And just like that, two became three and Kinger felt—he felt alive again. He felt like a person again. For the first time in years, he remembered that even if it wasn’t there physically, there was still a heart in his chest, a mind in his head, and a soul in his body.
It wasn’t just him either. Queenie had come back to life. All the lethargy, all the hours spent staring at walls and aimlessly wandering the tent was snapped away, swallowed by the presence of the girl. She was animated and stern and she and the red haired girl got along like a house on fire. She looked more like herself every day. Her eyes were brighter and her voice crystalline.
And Dolly. Oh, and Dolly.
She had been slow to shake off her caution, but once she did, oh.
Oh goodness.
She was so full of energy. She had a spark to her and of course, as if doused in kerosene, it caught Kinger and Queenie.
The girl blazed and Kinger felt himself being lifted out of the something that had been eating away at him. Even moreso, he saw Queenie being lifted out of that same something that she had nearly been enveloped by.
He would never say it, because it wouldn’t be fair, it was a responsibility she didn’t invite and she certainly didn’t ask for, but she had saved them.
Caine gave them a day to themselves every now and again, which Queenie always claimed part of for cards. She loudly announced how sick she was of solitaire, and then dealt hands anything that worked with three players.
Queenie was also a multitasker. She was determined to help Dolly find a name. Not just because the girl had been stalling for a while now, but because Caine was starting to nag and give his own (horrible) suggestions including but not limited to: Pxghx, Aawsg, Mpsko, and about a dozen more that were spat out before Kinger asked him to put the random letter generator away.
“Do you remember anything about what your old name was?” Queenie played a king of hearts to start. Dolly placed a card face-up with a shrug. Six of hearts. “I don’t think so.”
Kinger drew from the deck. “Not even the letter?” Six of clubs.
She frowned. “There might’ve been an A in there? Or a G?” Four of clubs. Skip a turn.
“Well that’s a start! How about Alexandra?” Dolly made a face. “Audrey?” Another sour expression. “Alice?”
Queen of spades. Dolly groaned. “Come on, man.”
“Don’t forget about the G, hun.” Kinger called. Dolly placed her card. Ace of spades.
“Right! Hm, A and G…. Grace? Abigail?” Nine of spades. Dolly hummed politely, far too sweet to voice her lack of interest in naming herself but clearly more focused on getting rid of the five cards she just had to pick up.
Kinger felt himself soften a bit. “You know, it doesn’t have to be a real world name if you don’t want it to. If you want it to be a bit more… silly, there’s nothing stopping you.” He gestured to himself and Queenie. “I mean, we named ourselves after our avatars.”
She considered her hand, and considered his words. Dolly picked up a card from the pile and brightened. “Maybe something a bit less serious would be good.”
Eight of hearts. Change suit.
Her name was Ragatha.
“Lovely,” Queenie said.
“Finally!” Caine cried.
“Can I still call you Dolly?” Kinger asked.
She sent him a big smile. “Please do.”
So he would. He did.