Chapter Text
None of this feels real. It never does. Even on a good day, the circus only mostly feels real to her; feeling alone never sold it, for her. Most of the validity of her existence was supported by deliberate mental effort, active and laborious.
In the silence that follows 'holy shit', Ragatha stares at the gray floor seeing a red room and white eyes looking back. Still seeing dinner, coiled up dead with a hundred legs on her plate, unfinishable and unpalatable and unacceptable anywhere but crammed down her throat before she can leave. Still seeing the others at the table, limp and quiet and blank and unable to do anything but endure alone. Still seeing the knife handle, sticking out of where she used to have her other eye. Still seeing her—
—The Woman across the table. Ragatha is still seeing Her.
Her throat is swollen shut, locked tight like the hatch of a fallout shelter after the sirens start. She can hear the rising and falling whine in her head, warning of bombs inbound, of a hand being raised, of that little sigh the Woman gives before She starts screaming. Of the smile She has, when She's thought of the perfect thing to hurt her with. Of those eyes, top-arched and half-lit, so in love with the way She lets herself be, made drunk on ecstasy by things She'll pretend to apologize for later— but only if someone else saw her do it.
It'd been so many years since Ragatha had sat at that table. The doll had accepted ages ago that she'll probably never have to see Her again. Nothing had helped her endure her digital prison better than the realization that She wouldn't ever find her here. So she knows that it should be impossible, that it probably wasn't real, that it was probably just Caine's best (and perfect) guess on how to make her suffer.
She also knows that Caine's been the eternal bedrock of the circus, and that the idea of her finally being free from Him is a slim proposition, too. What're the odds, really, that she can move past both of them, now? Shouldn't this just be a dream? It's what she had assumed, up until a few days of Caine's 'new show' had already come to pass. No nightmare endures quite so long, so Ragatha had accepted that Caine had become Her replacement, and that she was going to just have to bring out all her old tricks, all her old smiles and pleas and silences, brought down from the shelf and dusted off and pressed back into service.
(There was no dust. They had never been retired.)
And now Caine was gone, removed as suddenly and absolutely from her life as her previous tormentor had been. Dimly, somewhere in the back of her mind, she weighs in retrospect that between the two, She was a thousand times worse.
At least Caine didn't really care what Ragatha thought. He wasn't actually interested in her placations. He just wanted to hurt her, straightforwardly, vengefully, and without backtalk. He was predictable, in that way, if in no other. He never apologized. He never wept at her. He never made her responsible for what he was doing to all the rest of them. He did blame her for the suffering he inflicted— just like She always did— but Ragatha figures that's the free bingo space of people like them.
Honestly, he was the best jailer she ever had. Maybe she'll miss him. Maybe she won't. Nearly a decade of neglect and a week of torture already has her reckoning with the fact that freedom from him won't feel real, not for years to come. Freedom from Her still doesn't.
Because it isn't real, surely. Because even now, even in the wake of the end of an era, even with Caine gone, even with everything they had all been through certainly being real, she isn't all sure. Ragatha stares at the gray floor and sees red and white, still sees Her, when she closes her eyes. And that half-lit stare back is more real to her than any of this ever was.
She sidles up next to Pomni— her default position— and tries to ground herself in the closeness. She tries to ground herself in the 'what-nows', in the muttered, newly-unfiltered curse words spoken with more shock than catharsis, in the speculation, in the hope and fear and relief and breakdowns that follow their freedom.
Freedom of a sort. Not freedom to, freedom from. It's the only kind she's ever known anyway, so, good enough for her.
"Ragatha", She says, sounding kind, sounding soft, sounding patient, sounding the way the doll knows will sucker her in and open her up and leave her vulnerable for the well-prepared blow like it always does. "Ragatha, hey, are you with me?"
She runs through her options, her survival-protocol running dutifully; the amygdala never lets her down.
Of course I'm with you, mother.
What do you need? I would do anything for you. I love you.
I'LL KILL YOU.
Sorry, I was just distracted, it won't happen again.
Her body performs its motions expertly while she decides, carefully extracting the ever-tempting faulty option from her list so she doesn't do something stupid like say it. Her head slowly scans to Her, to meet her eyes, like she's always expected to, like she must. White stares back at Ragatha as she deploys smile #13— polite, clean, but a little ashamed. The sight of guilt always did please Her.
"Hey," the voice says again, still pretending to care. White stares back, with blue and red shrunken pinwheels in the center.
"Pomni..." Ragatha reminds herself. Pomni's real, isn't she? She blinks once, then twice, as if comparing lenses at the optometrist, seeing Her with her eye closed and Pomni with it open. "I can't tell... where I am..."
She tilts her head, eyes widening in offense, wondering how She should remind Ragatha where she is. In the cold gray of what's left of the circus, Pomni reaches a hand out to her that Ragatha takes with desperate abandon.
The touch is real. It's as real as the pain in her other eye was, just a few short minutes and twenty years ago.
Ragatha waits, clinging tight to Pomni's hand, as She and Pomni both decide exactly what the doll is about to be told, what must be said to correct her in-between state.
"You're with me," Pomni beats Her to it, speaking decisively, without hesitation, squeezing her hand tighter. Ragatha could almost laugh; the Woman always wasted so much time trying to find the perfect blow that She missed her chance half the time.
"I'm with you," Ragatha repeats, taking Pomni's hand in both of hers and holding on for dear life.
Pomni looks to the floor, searching for more, finding nothing. Her eyes are haggard, her posture limped and weak, her hands trembling in the doll's grasp. She isn't well.
Pomni isn't well. What must've she seen? Is she still seeing it, when her eyes close? "Are you okay—"
"Not after that. No. But I'm here. Don't—" Pomni takes a shaky breath. "Be here with me, not for me, okay?"
Ragatha nods. Her eye starts to sting; she refuses to blink. She can still feel half-lit white boring into her, she can see it when she turns her back, when her eye is closed, when she's asleep, awake, she'll still see Her when she's burning in hell (as has been proven), but right now, she's looking at Pomni, hand in hand.
She can still hear the others, voices indecipherable in her current state. A lot is going to have to happen now, she supposes.
"Can we take a walk together?" Pomni asks, voice run thin, cracks starting to show. She looks up at the doll with pleading eyes.
"Yeah. Yes. Yes, of course, Pomni. I'm here with you."
Pomni excuses them as they set off to wander the halls, avoiding the holes in the ground, pale purple around the edges glowing like melted metal around an acetylene cutout. Ragatha wanders off with Pomni in her hand and the Woman on her mind.
Ragatha doesn't know how many times she's said, "Yeah", or "That's true", or, "I guess so", by now. Pomni speculates away, voice still shivering, on what comes next, on how things will turn out, on what they're supposed to do now. Looking forward, not backwards, with desperate fervor. Ragatha fails every time to keep the conversation going, her attention locked in retrograde. Neither of them are really in the present, save for a sliver of each that the other holds tightly.
The living quarters are remarkably intact, all things considered. Some sections are still sliced-out, lost to the void, and the lights are all burst (as they've been for days now), casting the hall into pale half-dark. But, overall, they all still have their rooms.
Oh joy.
"I really hope we can... fix this place. Or replace it. Or something," Pomni says with a sigh. "It feels even more like purgatory now, with this color palette."
"All the holes are a tripping hazard, too. We really should be careful," Ragatha answers quietly.
"Agreed. The void is not a fun place to be."
Ragatha forgets to voice her agreement. They walk in silence, soft footfalls on distorted floors echoing in the eerily quiet halls. Ragatha waits for a board to creak and give her away, to wake Her back up. She keeps drifting towards the walls, though Pomni guides her back to center every time.
"You still seem..." Pomni tries, voice soft, trying to think of a question that she doesn't already have a guess at the answer to. "Do you need to talk about something, Ragatha..?"
"I... I don't know if I can," Ragatha gives a weak shake of her head, her voice frail.
"I understand. It's... when he, um... right before the end there. That's what... we're both thinking about, right?"
Ragatha nods.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you went through... whatever he did to you. I'm sorry I goaded him into it. It had to be done, I don't regret that, b-but I—"
"No, hey, Pomni— it's okay. You said it yourself, it had to be done. It would've been that for eternity for us if you hadn't kept him away from Kinger."
"I know. It's just... you've been looking right through me since it ended."
Ragatha blinks and regrets it. The Woman is still staring at her, waiting under her eyelids, waiting in her head. "I guess so, huh... I'm, sorry for you too, Pomni. About whatever you must've seen. W-We don't need to talk about it right now. Maybe eventually."
Nodding, Pomni leans into her shoulder as they come to a stop. The half-hug turns into a full one in short order. "Maybe. We'll... be there for eachother, when we're ready, right? We're all we got."
"We are..." Ragatha agrees with a whisper. "...We can talk once it's actually over."
"Huh?"
"...Half of me is still with Her. She's still looking at me."
"O-Oh." Pomni holds her tighter, not bothering to confirm her strong guess as to what she means.
Ragatha keeps her eye peeled open, though it's drooping to half-lidded by now, the exhaustion of a week of torture with hell's own cherry on top weighing her down. She can't imagine falling asleep right now nor any time soon; if she lets herself leave what's left of the circus for even a second, she knows exactly where she'll end up. She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to leave again if she has to sit at that table one more time.
Scanning over Pomni's shoulder, Ragatha stares into the darkness of her room; her door's open. Strange. She doesn't remember leaving it ajar. Dark shadows spill out of her bedchamber into the hall. She's never ever seen anything less inviting. Her eyes watch vigilantly for a silhouette in the shadows.
"...Maybe..." Pomni tries, a dim, frail spot of hope in her voice. "Kinger said we can all do what Caine could, right? With practice. Maybe we can make something better here for ourselves. Just start... a little at a time. Tent's gotta go, first thing's first, right? We can live in real houses. Like a little village or something."
"Ha... that'd be... cute..."
"I think so. I already got ideas for how it should look. Fountain in the plaza, trees lining the street... walkable and quiet and peaceful. Ha. Fuck you, rental market, I'm gonna own a house after all."
Ragatha laughs softly. "I'll bake you a pie... as a housewarming gift..."
"I'd love that," Pomni says, nuzzling into Ragatha's chest. "What about you? What's your dream home?"
It can be anything, as long as you're there, she thinks, but no, that's too sappy right now. "I... do you think I could have horses again? A stable?"
"If we figure out how to, uh, conjure, then yeah, I bet you could. As many as you want."
"I only need my three."
"Three should be easy. I'd love to meet them finally, or— your versions of them, I guess."
"You'd like Barrel," she nods. "Everyone liked him. Ha ha... think we'll have... weather? Again? He always hated the rain."
"Maybe. If we can figure that out. Maybe it'll just happen with our moods, like, unconsciously or something."
"...Do you think we could do that? Make things without... trying...?" Ragatha asks, unsure of where the nervous, icy feeling spreading across the back of her neck is coming from.
"Maybe eventually, if we feel strong enough about it, or with enough practice. I don't know. I mean, I did it first day I was here, right? All I had on my mind was the exit, and so, I saw one. Or, I dunno, I guess you could say it found me."
It found me. Ragatha's heart seizes.
Looking over Pomni's shoulder, she swears she sees the door creak open just a little wider, the shadows growing a little darker, a little redder. The motion startles her; she blinks. Though her eye is closed for only a split second, Ragatha still sees Her eyes half-lit, loomed in so close she can smell the wine on her breath, can hear her lips wetly crack into an ugly smile. She looks so, so very pleased.
When Ragatha's eye opens again, She hasn't left her sight. Two gleeful white eyes stare back at her from within the dark of her room, hair just like her own silhouetted by a sickly red glow. As piercing and cold and terrifying as Her half-lit eyes are, it's the unmistakable presence, Ragatha realizes, that had been missing before. Caine couldn't have ever replicated it, Her gravity and the event-horizon it creates, past which there is no escape. Some part of her will always be at that table, and the pull is only doubled for the fact that She knows it.
I told you that you'll always wind up back with me, didn't I?
The whole world spins beneath Ragatha's feet as she clings to Pomni like a shield, keeping the jester firmly between herself and—
—Her mother, exactly the way Ragatha had remembered her. Not with a face, not as a woman with red curls and a precious career, but as gravity, as half-lit eyes, as a fear superseding all others, as a living well of bottomless cruelty she had spent her whole life drowning in.
As something that would always find her, no matter how far she ran. Mother looms closer towards her, towards the open door, out of the shadows and into the pale light, present and unignorable whether Ragatha's eye is open or closed.
"Woah, hey, are you okay?" Pomni asks, peeling her cheek off Ragatha's hyperventilating, pounding chest.
"No... No... No no no no no..!"
Pomni pulls out of the hug— or tries to, at least, but Ragatha won't let her, clamped down with a vice-grip. Staring up with concern, Pomni follows Ragatha's gaze over her shoulder, turning around to see what has the doll so frightened.
Time slows. Ragatha's eye goes wide as it darts down, her arms frozen as if in rigor-mortis as Pomni strains to check behind her. There is nothing Ragatha wants to do more than to stop her, to press the jester's head into her chest, to never let anyone see Her, in the vain hope that maybe, just maybe, it's all in her head, that She didn't just leak out of her past and into her only remaining present, that the circus had not taken her nightmare as suggestion and shrugged, why not, have fun before unleashing it upon her. But mother's gaze paralyzes, as it always does, and so she does nothing, as she always does.
"W-What the fuck is that!?" Pomni gasps, clinging tightly, taking Ragatha with her as she takes a step back.
"You can't see her," Ragatha pleads. "There's nothing there, Pomni. You can't— tell me you can't see her. Please, please tell me you can't see her!"
Mother smiles. "Of course she can."