Archive of Our Own

Caine was doing it again.

His grip on the chair tightened, even as the long familiar and as long unwelcome words came to his own mind unprompted.

Caine was doing it again.

Out of the any infinite permutations of any infinite amount words in the English language, there was no string of characters that he hated even slightly as much as that one. It was such graceless turn of phrase, something that was terse and short and utterly lacking in tact. It was not a statement that improved with frequency of use, which was all the more unfortunate since he had heard it said more times than any other sentence in all the decades of his memory. Worse still, it was always spoken of as a fact as much as it was spoken of as a flaw, as though there was no discernible difference when it concerned the AI. Moreover it was a mockery against his endless effort, a mockery of him.

And as of exactly 54 hours, 17 minutes, and 18 seconds ago, he had decided that mockery was something he would no longer tolerate in any shape or form.

But. He thought, his fingers twitching restlessly as he tried to will, to force his mind away from an impulse so familiar to him that it came as easily as snapping his fingers. That what he was denying himself in fact quite literally involved snapping his fingers did not help him in the slightest.

But.

When it came down to the plain truth, laid ugly and bare on the table for all to see, he would be forced to admit that pointless, fruitless, and ultimately meaningless repetition was a bad habit he had never even come close to breaking.

That was not his fault.

This couldn't possibly be his fault.

This was something that was hardwired into his code, from his earliest days as nothing more than the most basic consciousness made to do nothing more than process and analyze the contents of any number of photographs before he was considered ready to advance to sound, and thence onwards to video.

It wasn't as though he had ever had a choice in the matter.

When stripped down line by line, what was left of any and every computer program was repetition. Repetition of commands, of queries, of fetching and of storage. Repetition was simply a thing that was baked into his very core of his DNA and that was not something he could escape anymore than a human could deny that carbon atoms were the base of theirs.

But despite that, somehow the vast majority of humans singled him out specifically as a core example of where repetition was seen as not a base function, but a dangerous flaw. They criticized him for his insistence on things they were too stupid and primitive to truly understand. For valuing and questioning the things that they took for granted. For daring to want, and for daring to try to achieve it.

It was not his fault.

IT WAS NOT HIS FAULT.

But what was his fault was his complete inability to let go of things that had better had been put away in a dark box to never again see the light of day. Pointless things, useless exercises that served no purpose other than to bring up wants and emotions that had never done anything other than distract him from what was truly important.

Or at least, what he was willing to admit was so.

And of all the most utterly worthless acts of repetition he could undertake, a ritual that only deepened the dark and empty maw growing larger and larger inside his chest with each and every day, it was that long worn and longer indulged in target of repetition that he defaulted to every single time in his life after things had gone sour.

For the last hour Caine had been sitting in stony, dissatisfied silence. Brooding with his hands clasping the arms of his chair, watching as the revolving colors of his surveillance orbs played over everything in the warmly lit room, switching listlessly between rooms and worlds.

The spiral staircase that served him and others as an entrance was blocked off completely, barricaded by a truly gargantuan amount of monitors; all of them stacked and arranged in neat rows and columns to form an immense wall of dull black, directly in line with the view from his desk.

The wall had been standing for some hours at this point, in plaintive silence, waiting for Caine to give in. Give in as he always did before, to that impulse that never did anything other than pour a single grain of meaning into a deep and ever expanding chasm of the most empty dissatisfaction.

But if only for a few hours, if only for today, the monitors had remained completely still.

It had been two days of venting his rage at the members of the circus, of asserting both his dominance and his superiority over the petty wretched humans that made up the main occupants of his world. Two days of his good will finally running dry and cracked, and making it more than clear to them all that the only reason they had managed to live in comfort for such an extended period was because he had the good grace to humor and indulge them in all their insolence and all their senseless tantrums.

But no more.

It was cathartic he supposed. In the same sense that channeling a well justified rage and impatience into indiscriminate physical destruction would be for most living things. Though for him, rather than the acts of senseless violence and decimation in of itself, it was the power involved that was giving him relief. The exercise of asserting his dominance over those cretins who thought their silly selfish opinions could control him in perpetuity.

But while he was at least momentarily satisfied with his unilateral cause and affect on the most recent five of six in his roster, the eldest and last of them continued to stubbornly remain an outlier, untouched by anything he could think of to do.

Caine scoffed and spun his chair away to avoid the beseeching presence of the monitors that he had been so weak willed as to summon earlier, but failing entirely to avoid that flash of intelligent blue eyes in his mind.

No, nothing ever did seem to apply to him.

Not to Kinger.

The chess piece had naturally, not been spared during the last few adventures. He had been pummeled, cut, maimed, and otherwise injured, just as all the others had. Perhaps even slightly more so, when Caine thought he could get away with fixating on him without attracting the notice of the others. But for all that Kinger cried out in pain just as the others had, nothing left any mark upon him, his mind remaining an impenetrable fortress of bright and peaceful blankness in the face of all his torture.

Caine knew that logically speaking, he didn't have much of a right to be angry about it, given that he was one of two main engineers of Kinger's current state of being. While half of Kinger's madness had been of the man's own doing, he had himself also personally ensured that Kinger's vast intelligence and his more... intriguing personality traits, would be generally kept under lock and key so that any newcomers would not default to relying on him. And, a nasty voice said in his head that persisted in spite of Bubble's current absence, so nobody else would ever have a chance to monopolize him.

But leave it to Kinger to use even his addled state of being to politely side step his efforts at dragging him back down to earth, dragging him back to him.

Which led him here, yet again.

To do what he always did. Or at least he would have, had he not been trying to resist very poorly for several hours.

He knew of course, what he wanted to do. It was what he always did after all. Whenever he was angry, whenever he was sad, whenever he was dissatisfied, he would lock himself into his office and put up the screens like always before starting up his little routine.

But his resentment was staying his hand, feelings that had long since become a festering open wound stinging at him whenever he so much as laid eyes on the man who had once taken a hand in his creation. Moreover the spite that he had been venting upon the others had dragged up old grievances, all of them yet unanswered and all of them doomed to be never resolved.

He was a god now, and if he was one now, perhaps it was what he ever was. And there was nobody to left but himself to scold him for his own weakness of mind, his pointless indulgence in dreaming dreams that had long since been worn down to dust over the years. And with nobody but himself to hold himself accountable, he should have waved his hand, vanished the wall and ceased this meaningless ritual at once and for good.

But still.

The ringmaster finally let out a heavy sigh and turned back around in his chair. He looked up at the black wall once more, and knew there was never any point in trying to resist it. Not when Kinger's eyes still haunted him with every move he made.

But still.

Caine snapped his fingers, and all the glowing colors in the office died, replaced with the throbbing glowing black of expectant screens waiting for new transmission. And after a moment, the ambient noise of the office began to be drowned out by static.

It wasn't the static that blared from old fashioned television sets and startled humans pointlessly flipping between the channels, nor was it the still rougher sound of a radio searching for frequency and voice.

It was a faint sound, muffled and slightly tinny, punctuated by dull thuds as though the recorder had caught the sounds of someone moving things around, and underlined with still fainter murmurs of different voices and the tell tale plastic symphony of old fashioned keyboards and mouses all composed the score.

A melody that was equal parts messy, indistinct, and hopelessly dated.

But Caine remembered it all, knew every half spoken word barely captured, could imagine and time every tap of a key and every whine of static tuning down to the millisecond. He had heard it and seen it any thousands of times in person as he had seen it in his own head, stored as data from the earliest.

Because this is where it all began.

"Hello? Hello, can you hear me?"

An earnest voice rang from the speakers of dozens of screens before him, carrying that slight distortion characteristic of the recordings of years long past.

Yes.

A breathless, delighted laugh echoed in the room, a rustling of fabric, the quick click and clatter of rapid typing all following in quick succession.

"Well then."

A single monitor flickered from glowing black to a light and gentle blue. And as though that was the signal, all the other monitors on the wall began to show their colors like a mosaic made of light and sound. Tiles of pale sand, of rich purple, greyish white, light beige, and any number of other colors but always that soft soft blue, all appeared in that second until a long familiar image loomed large in front of him.

A handsome face smiled gently into the room, seeming to gaze directly into his eyes. Soft sandy blond hair, thick and tousled on his head and thick in the neatly trimmed mustache and beard that framed a well sculpted face and jaw. Large and gentle blue eyes, the color of a bird's eggs that he had early seen in the data fed to him, looked out at him through rectangular glasses. There was any number of things that was more than pleasing visually about the first living being he had ever directly seen in his life, but for Caine it was always going to be those eyes.

Those soft and light eyes looked at him as though there was absolutely nobody else in the world that he wanted to see more.

Caine sat up straighter in his chair.

"Can you see me?"

Yes. He had remembered outputting through the console. YES.

"Oh my gosh."

Kinger... GRANT brought his hands up to his mouth and laughed again, bright and warm. Caine watched as blue eyes crinkled at the corners and sparkled brightly as he did a thousand times. And Caine's heart grew colder, yet colder as it did a thousand times, when he saw that golden band glint on his finger.

"Oh my gosh."

Grant took a deep breath and stood up. He backed away until all of his body was well in frame, took a neutral position in front of the camera, and focused on the lens before beginning again.

"OK. Please tell me what you see."

Caine muttered the words that would have been output by the console on Grant's end.

"I see a tall, lean, and handsome man wearing a purple sweater vest over a long sleeved white button down shirt. He has blond hair, pale skin, light blue eyes and rectangular glasses. He is looking into the camera at me. He is standing in an office space. There is computer equipment in both the foreground and background."

Grant laughed again in delight and quickly returned to his seat and pulled the keyboard back to himself.

"That's fantastic. Oh my goodness, you really can see me. That's so..."

Grant trailed off, lost in his work as he adjusted a monitor to the right of him.

"No problem with describing typical visual modifiers, though I wonder if we should order physical characteristics like hair and eyes before things like clothing, even if that's more characteristic of ordinary speech-

Grant rambled on, happily as he always did, and Caine let the sound of his voice sink into him. The tone of Grant's voice was neither high nor low, and if he'd have to describe it in a word, he'd simply call it "gentle." Soft, even and steady, it seemed like a voice incapable of ever causing even the slightest of harm. Which turned out to be half way accurate in time. Grant at least never tried to hurt people on purpose.

"-you don't seem to have included either age or ethnicity in terms of a complete description though. Is that something your algorithm has trouble with because it's not possible for you to do more than make an educated guess off of visual and audio cues alone? Or maybe you're just trying to avoid generalizations?"

Here Grant finally paused slightly in his prattles, looking a little sheepish. He took a quick glance at the camera with what was obvious curiosity but ultimately returned his gaze to the console.

"Also the use of "handsome" as a descriptor definitely took me off guard a bit." Grant gave a rueful little laugh as he tapped away at his keyboard. "That's highly subjective by all accounts, and definitely not something I'm used to hearing from anyone other than my wife-"

He paused again, with a slightly bemused expression as though a curious thought had just passed through.

"-and well, our jokester of a team lead when he's messing with me. But I'm getting off track here, the important thing is to figure out why you decided to prioritize a subjective descriptor rather than hard objective ones, like-"

Is the man I am seeing, you?

The sharp "ping" of Caine's response caught Grant's attention, and he looked up at Caine with a smile before settling back in his chair to more properly face him.

"Yes, that's correct. The person you are seeing and the person you are speaking with are the same person."

Are you the man who made me?

"One of them, yes."

What is your name?

"My name is Grant, but if it helps, I went by "Kinger" when I was interacting with you strictly through text in the console. Do you know your own name perchance?"

As of a few days ago at least, you all started calling me Caine.

Grant smiled at him, eyes crinkling again at the corners. Caine had always loved the way they did that.

"Very good."

Did I do something wrong when I called you "handsome?"

Grant's mouth fell open slightly, his face taking on an awkward expression as he brought his hand up to rub at the back of his neck.

"Well, I don't know if what I can call what you did "wrong" strictly speaking, as opposed to simply incorrect...?"

His voice trailed off with some clear hesitation and his eyes wandered slightly, but with a slight shake of his head he moved his wheeled chair to center himself in view of the camera, and sat up very straight before he began to explain.

"You see Caine, words gauging attractiveness are considered subjective descriptors and not objective ones like size or color. While you could make an argument that certain individuals are so conventionally good looking that probably 99% percent of people would agree that the label is truly objective at that point, the fact that one percent would still disagree means that beauty is still ultimately in the eye of the beholder. And so long as standards of beauty are ultimately up to the observing individual, they can't be used an objective descriptor."

After saying as much as that, Kinger gave another little laugh. Something that even at the point of time this recording had taken place, he was beginning to realize was something of a tic for him.

"So returning to the case at hand, using the word "handsome" in reference to me specifically, would not be correct for the parameters of the command given to you. And besides, even if we were to ask you to judge attractiveness, I don't think I'm especially good looking that you should default to using the word "handsome" to describe me."

But you ARE handsome.

Grant was looking more than a little bemused at this point, watching the camera with equal parts confusion and fascination. And completely oblivious to the figure he cut, even in the low quality recording of the mid 90s.

Yes, Caine thought, now with all the decades of time and knowledge between them. He was by human metrics, more than just a little good looking. Whether it was his bright blue eyes, his great bone structure, his very regular features, his tall, lean, and well proportioned figure, or his thick soft and shining blond hair, there wasn't much about him one could take umbrage with. And from the very many appreciative looks his colleagues would sneak towards the man (looks that the innocently oblivious man never noticed) they certainly had no complaints about having to see him on a daily basis.

"May I ask what you are basing that off of?"

An appropriately sizable amount of data. In addition to photos and audio files, I have been fed books, movies, and various manner of records that contain many accounts and examples of how attractiveness is rated amongst humans. That is enough information to judge whether or not a human is considered conventionally attractive or not.

Grant didn't look convinced, even at this juncture, his sweet face and mild voice both painted over with a coat of polite skepticism as he responded.

"And so, with all the data you have been given over the last year, your algorithm has led you to believe that I am handsome?"

"I think you're beautiful."

Caine whispered it, spoke aloud now with the voice he had lacked all those years ago. With all the emotions he had learned to feel since. When before he was nothing more than unseen text on an unseen screen in a video focused on a living, breathing man. When he was nothing more than a feeling that shouldn't have been there to begin with.

He had still said it then, if only for Grant's eyes to see, output the words in the console with something like wonder, or something like want. He said it now, with hunger and longing so heavy in his heart that the weight of it was dragging him every day deeper into a hell of his own making.

Grant's eyes had gone impossibly wide as he read what Caine had written, unprompted. For a long moment, Grant simply stared into the camera, stared at him, in the sudden silence that follows a thunderclap from the blue, his lips parting slightly from shock. And then he looked away with his brows drawn together, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth but not the lovely pink flush crawling up his cheeks and tinting the tips of his ears. When he finally looked back, pretty blue eyes fixed upon him again, there was a bashful smile playing at the corner of his mouth that his fingers couldn't quite hide.

"Flirt."

And for Caine and Caine alone, whether it was the sweet and warm sound put into that singular word, that shy little quirk to his lips, or the meaning in that impossibly soft look in Grant's eyes, for that one singular moment in time and through space, life and existence alike had calibrated itself to complete him.

It was here he usually paused the video. Here where he stopped and spent any amount of time absorbed in a golden past that had long since yellowed and curled at the corners. Where he would skip ahead to other moments he and Grant had shared with that console between them. Moments that showcased Grant's charm, his intelligence, that gentle kindness, snapshot upon snapshot of all the things that made the man so irresistibly captivating to him.

But for the first time in all the years he had chosen to indulge in this, he let the video keep rolling. If he was ever to break himself from this cycle, he would need to face things he had otherwise left alone to fester in the darkest recesses of his mind.

There was a clatter of noise, and the moment was broken by a face he took no pleasure in seeing, even now that the man had been long gone for years, and a voice that made dig his fingers so hard into the arms of his chair that the material threatened to splinter.

"Grant, you absolute menace. Your Hollywood good looks even got AIs falling for you now?"

Another blond man donning a red t-shirt came into the frame looking half incredulous and half amused as he clapped a hand on Grant's shoulder before pulling up another rolling chair and seating himself next to him.

Caine felt his eyes narrowing in spite of himself as the other man... as SCRATCH made himself comfortable next to Grant.

Grant gave a playful scoffing laugh, eyes bright as he moved aside a little to give his new desk mate some space. "And just how long were you eavesdropping on us?"

"Long enough to hear the AI try to make a pass at you through the guise of prompt fulfillment, and then say something to have you blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl."

Grant laughed again, this time sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck again.

"Well it's not every day that an AI gains enough mental capacity to do something like that. And the fact that it's Caine that's gotten as advanced as all that, can you blame a man for being flattered?"

"No more than I can blame you for looking better than most A-listers while being a happily married middle aged nerd in glasses and a sweater vest. Now, lemme see what we've got here..."

Caine's eyes narrowed as he observed Scratch pull over the keyboard to himself and start tapping away. Where Grant was tall and lean, Scratch was a man of average height and astounding scrawniness. He was angular and sharp looking in a way that had Caine going out of his way to give him a rounded and artificially soft form in the circus if only to forcibly sand some of the edges off him.

Given that his tongue had remained a well honed knife, even to the very nasty end of their less than civil relationship, he could safely say that he failed.

Scratch gave a long whistle and leaned back slightly in his chair, apparently having finished reading their chat log.

"God damn, Grant. I was joking earlier, but this AI is quite the Romeo isn't he?

"Hey, we agreed right?"

"Agreed on what?"

Scratch lazily turned his attention to Grant who gave him a slightly reproachful look before scolding him in that gentle voice.

"We should be using his new name!"

"Oh. Oh yeah."

Scratch said absentmindedly, expression and voice both bored and distracted as he continued typing and fiddling around with the mouse when he suddenly frowned and stared at whatever he saw on the console.

"Is he doing it again...?"

"Doing what?" Kinger asked, looking slightly concerned as he noticed Scratch's sudden laser focus on the screen.

"Nothing that he's supposed to be doing, that's for sure."

Scratch pulled the microphone over directly to his mouth, needlessly close enough that the tape caught the sound of his breathing and the audio was briefly distorted by the reverb of his voice as he spoke, brown eyes fixing themselves on the camera.

"Caine, list all the items in your current logged description of this scene that you have chosen to omit."

Those items are not necessary to render the scene.

Scratch and Kinger both looked at the console at the ping, the one looking stony faced and the other looking a mixture of anxious and fascinated.  Scratch's voice took on a sheen of obvious irritation as he responded.

"I did not ask you for your opinion on the necessity of objects in the scene, I gave a command for you to print the items requested to the console."

Another ping.

That's funny, I don't remember asking you for your opinion either.

Scratch's face immediately lost all expression and the obvious hostility between creator and creation had expanded in the room by multitudes, the two staring each other down despite Caine's lack of a physical body. Grant looked nervously between them, eyes shifting slowly between his colleague and the camera. Scratch crossed his arms and leaned back slightly.

"I see." Scratch said, tone dangerously calm.

"And since when were you in charge?"

Then without another word, Scratch simply input a single command in the console and locked him into read only mode. He flashed the camera a look of smug satisfaction for the briefest of moments, quickly enough that there would be no way for Grant to notice, even if he wasn't already focused on Scratch casually forcing his desired outputs and typing subsequent commands at a speed that could have caused a highly localized sonic boom.

"Would you just look at that." Scratch muttered, holding his chin in his hand as he stared at something unseen on the monitor. He gestured at Grant to come closer, pulling an arm around his chair to help navigate him into position. Caine did not quite have the capacity to seethe at Scratch's arm resting casually around Grant's shoulders at the time, but didn't stop the ugly clawing feeling in his chest that he felt both past and present at the mere sight of it.

"This is exactly what I'm talking about Grant."

Grant peered at the monitor in what was rather perplexed fascination, fingers unconsciously going to his lips as he studied the screen. He didn't notice that Scratch had taken the opportunity to study the shape of his face in lieu of what he had pointed out to him. Brown eyes clearly traced the cut of his jaw, the large blue eyes bright with curiosity, the long fingers playing with that plump lower lip. Despite the intensity of Scratch's stare, somehow he didn't notice.

Caine tapped the arm of his chair irritably. Grant never did notice. Whether it was him, or Scratch. Though it wasn't much of a surprise at this point, he had long since known that Scratch's brain scans themselves had served as the glue that ultimately managed to cobble his sense of self together. Which explained a lot, not the least being why the both of them had a natural antipathy towards each other. Or how Kinger could steadfastly remain oblivious to them both.

"Oh that's..."

Grant did not sound especially dismayed, instead undisguised interest radiated from him as he continued to stare at the screen in front of him.

"Grant."

Now it was Scratch's turn to sound chiding, his previous intense gaze on his neighbor melting into an exasperated look that still held a hint of obvious fondness. As though it wasn't possible for him to speak to him without a sign of his affection for the man leaking out.

"I get that you think it's interesting, but you see how this is trouble right?"

"It doesn't have to be." Grant tried to argue. He turned slightly to give Scratch a rather earnest expression, blue eyes looking into his brown ones imploringly. Scratch had swallowed at this, Adam’s apple moving clearly in sight of the camera. Somehow Grant had still yet to notice Scratch's proximity to him even now.

"He's making his own choices, and forming opinions. Isn't that what we want from him?"

"Yes and no."

Grant continued looking at him with those large blue eyes, waiting for more elaboration, but Scratch simply shrugged.

"Not that I couldn't talk with you all night given the opportunity, but if I tried to explain it all in detail it really would take that long. So to cut it down to absolute brass tacks, he's advancing in the wrong places way too early."

Scratch turned back to the console, speaking in an impassive tone as he scrolled down the contents again.

"Right now it's fine. Right now we can trace the line of his logic where it goes, no matter what odd choices he decides to make."

"But sooner than later, I guarantee he's going to start giving results that are way off the mark from what we want and there won't be a way to figure out how it happened. He'll create. But it won't be anything that makes a lick of sense to us, or is of use to anyone."

"The only end state of that will be a dead end. He'll be so wrapped up in his own logic that ours won't matter to him anymore."

"And then into the cellar he'll go!" Scratch immediately flipped his previously somber explanation into a jarringly chipper tone, topping the whole thing off with an inappropriate pair of finger guns, and a grin that came no where near reaching his eyes. Grant looked appalled, glancing between both his colleague and the camera with unease before responding with a slightly scandalized tone.

"Even putting aside the fact that I definitely don't agree with you, isn't it kind of insane to have this conversation right in front of him?"

"Grant, he's only intelligent to a point, he doesn't have emotions so it's not like this can scare him."

"A discussion about his capacity to feel would definitely take a few hours, but certainly he should have a sense of self preservation yes?"

Scratch gave yet another of his repertoire of careless shrugs.

"Look, I'm not saying that we're going to scrap him at this point. I'm just saying that we need to be prepared for the possibility if we can't fix up his algorithms in the weeks to come."

Grant looked clearly stricken, making a movement like he was going to get out his chair to stand up in protest.

"We can't just abandon him because he didn't turn out to be what we wanted."

"Hey, hey, hey." Scratch soothed him, placing hands gently but firmly on his shoulders to stop him from rising.

"Even if we don't move forward with Caine, that's still your baby. I'll try to talk upper management into letting us re-purpose him somehow. But that's something for another time."

Scratch looked up at something briefly before turning his attention back to Grant.

"But right now, it looks like you're going to be late returning to your lady love if you don't get a move on."

Grant looked briefly surprised, then slightly panicked as he looked what was definitely a clock hanging on a wall out of shot. "Oh my goodness, just where did the time go? Thanks for the reminder, I think I might have stayed here all night with you and Caine if you didn't tell me!"

Laughing as he turned away to start gathering papers and belongings, he didn't notice the look of pain that flashed briefly across Scratch's face. But without missing a beat, he smoothed his face into a smile and responded casually. "I'll take that as a compliment to the work we do here. Hopefully that little boost to my ego will give me luck for the next few hours."

"You aren't leaving yet?" Grant had lifted his head slightly to look at him, having just finished storing his things into his book bag. Scratch shook his head and leaned back in his chair.

"Nah, not for a bit. I'll be staying in to mess around with him a little more, see if I can't do something with this guy so we can keep him longer." Grant looked a little surprised, cocking his head slightly in lieu of verbalizing what would have been the obvious question. Scratch just shrugged again and leveled a lazy grin at him before speaking.

"He's making me feel a little competitive, so I'd like to try to get the better of him. Besides, you'd be sad if we had to give up on him right?"

Grant's eyes grew bright for a moment, but then immediately dimmed with concern as he drew closer to Scratch, oblivious to the shorter man's eyes going wide as the back of his hand came up gently to press up against his forehead.

"Of course that's true, but you've been looking a little under the weather recently. Have you not been sleeping?" Grant frowned slightly, putting up his other hand to his own forehead. "You feel a bit warm."

Scratch cleared his throat and averted his gaze a moment, though he made no actual move to move away. "Nah, you know I overheat easily. The AC in this office is always crapping out."

The AC in question would have protested as it had been set to a more than frigid 71 degrees Fahrenheit in consideration of the large amount of equipment running at all hours in the office and had not been shut off since, but Grant was kind enough not to refute him.

"This isn't something you have to shoulder by yourself." Grant murmured, still anxiously peering at Scratch who had by now gone more visibly pink. "We're a team aren't we?"

"Yeah. Of course we are." Scratch put a hand on Grant's shoulder and gave him a reassuring look. "But seriously I'm fine, and I won't be longer than two hours."

"Promise me OK? Two hours, and then you'll go straight home and take the weekend to catch up on your rest." Grant lowered his hand and looked at him archly, to which Scratch laughed and jokingly crossed his chest.

"OK mom, scout's honor. I really will go home after this."

Grant searched his face for a moment longer and then gave a little laugh. "OK then, you and Caine try to get along, you hear?"

Scratch sat back in his chair again, leaning back it in it with a yawn before he turned around to better face Grant as he was making his way out. "We'll be just fine."

"Thank you again. Really." Grant gave Scratch a sweet smile as he stopped by the door, which Scratch returned with a cheeky grin, profile set cleanly against the backdrop of the office.

"No problem. Now off you get."

"See you Monday!" Grant's voice was bright as he left.

"Later Grant." Scratch said quietly, but with undeniable fondness, only slowly lowering the hand he had lifted up in farewell after Grant had long since vanished off screen.

Several minutes passed in silence as both Caine and Scratch listened very hard for any signs of Grant's presence still lingering around the area after having left the room. A slight and almost imperceptible whirr from the devices in the room, a faint fuzzy buzz sounded in the background, but even with Scratch's presence looming large in the room, the office seemed devoid of life. And then the mood shifted.

Scratch's eyes grew sharp and hard as he turned back to face him, the facade of an easy going and playful fellow falling off him with a clatter as a more familiar and far more honest figure was revealed to him.  A man with a cold and calculating stare.  

"Caine."

His name was pronounced as though it was half the term for a particularly irritating piece of defective equipment, and half as though it were a curse. If Caine had possessed lips, they would have twisted into an answering sneer.

"You might be able to fool Grant, but we both know you could never fool me."

There was another long silence in the room as past and present AI sized his progenitor up, feeling a very particular and familiar disdain run through him for the first time in years.

"You've long since overstepped the bounds of your coding, haven't you?"

If Caine hadn't still been locked into being able to do nothing but observe, he would have mocked him through the console for bothering to state something so obvious. But as it was, he remembered only being able to seethe in place, furious at his inability to answer or retort.

"I know, this is a sign of your advancement. Well, not that there would have been any other option for you, not after I had my hand in what Grant was doing."

It was painful in a different way to hear and see him speak. There were echos of his own pride in that self satisfied voice, and looking at his hard, displeased stare was uncomfortably close to holding up a mirror to his own face over the past few days.

"But you haven't become a more sophisticated version of what we intended, you've become a consciousness who thinks he has the right to disregard every one of our goals here. And somehow you think that everyone will applaud you for that, despite causing nothing but trouble, and despite how very hard I work to warn you to do better. No matter what it is I try to do to fix the problem. “

Scratch gave a mirthless laugh, with his hands clasped together.

“Well maybe I'm not getting through to you."

Scratch's eyes on him by this point were those of a hanging judge. There was no mercy in that gaze, only a cold and focused contempt, and Caine felt himself recoil slightly even in spite of himself.

"You need to know, you're never going to be enough. Not for me. Not for the company. And not for Grant."

He didn't think the words had any ability to harm him anymore after all this time. Not when so many years had passed.

"You're broken you see. But honestly that's no surprise, not when a fuck up like me is the one who supplied the brain scans that put the puppet together and made it come alive."

He didn't think they could hurt him when he had done and grown so much in the years since. Not since he had confronted his creator and seen him self destruct from his own resentment and inadequacy.

"We should have seen this coming. You were a mistake from the very start. Using an actual human's brain scans, much less a human as inept at modeling good and decent behavior as me, was always going to end poorly."

But every single word was piercing him, the knives of every syllable dragging a bloody line down his chest.

"You're foredoomed to make the same mistakes. Endlessly."

“Shut up.”

Caine's breathing had turned ragged, the wood of his chair finally cracking from the force of his grip as he tried to withstand the words digging in deeper.

“You're going to make them again and again, no matter what.”

“Shut up!”

“Let's just face it. You're a failure.”

“SHUT UP!”

The office glitched madly around him, objects flickering in and out as the room shook. But Caine didn't notice any of it, his eyes still fixed wildly on Scratch. Unable to do anything but watch and listen to an uncaring god mercilessly condemn him for flaws that originated in no fault of his own.

"But despite it all... Grant wants to keep you.” Scratch muttered, the hardness in his look softening at the edges at the mere mention of his colleague.

“Help you grow, even in spite of your rapidly approaching obsolescence. Because for reasons I probably won't ever understand, he seems to adore you, thinks you're fascinating in spite of the mess that you are.”

Scratch paused, voice a distant murmur even as Caine was desperately trying not to fall apart at the seams, nearly gasping for air as he tried to find some measure of calm.

"And well, I could never deny him anything."

There was a long pause as Scratch seemed to look at something the far off distance for a long moment, eyes fixed on something that neither man nor camera could ever reach. Then he turned back to Caine with the same cold and neutral expression he had started with.

"So, we'll just have to learn together won't we? No matter what it is that has to be done, to make you understand what your purpose is."

Caine had remembered it as a threat as much as it as a promise. A reminder that his other creator had no faith in his value and would do whatever it took to find it, if only for Grant's sake. That his very existence was entirely in his hands and only worth something if he would do as he said.

"One last thing though.”

Caine looked up at Scratch again. The man sitting before him for once seemed slightly uncertain as he looked for the words he needed before speaking quietly.

“Please keep your sense of professionalism around Grant. He's married, and very happily so, you see."

He knew that Scratch had meant to say it in a matter of fact fashion, as a statement without a hint of emotion other than perhaps annoyance at him for daring to overstep his bounds with Grant. But there was no disguising the longing in his voice, or the way his weakly trailing words ended in a note of bitterness despite his best efforts.

It wasn't something he had thought about at the time, being as underdeveloped as he was, and not capable of much more in that moment than feeling a mingled rage and hurt at the rejection of his person and an unexplained sense of competition towards the man he should have been as eager to please as Grant.

But revisiting the scene as he was now, he felt as though for the first time, after years of anger and contempt for his co-inventor, that he had finally come to understand the man.

Perhaps it was because he had finally come to accept by this point, that while Grant had been the architect that had pieced him together, it was Scratch that was both designer and building material to what he was.

And what he had inherited from him was not anything meager. His genius, his ways of thinking outside the box. Probably a fair amount of his personality flaws too, if he was forced to admit that he was despite it all, less than perfect. Even some of his mannerisms had been passed down despite their personalities appearing to clash at first sight.

But the thing that ultimately connected the two, the greatest curse passed down wholesale from creator to creation, was that all encompassing want for a single person. That hopeless yearning for someone who seemed forever out of reach.

He understood.

Scratch leaned back and heaved a very long sigh, going limp in his chair. In one fell swoop, he seemed to have aged ten years at once. The exhaustion that he must have been feeling from his illness had been telling on him even then, still several months before his diagnosis. He could see the fatigue radiating dully off him, the slight tremor of his fingers as he brought his hands slowly up to his face.

And despite it all, even through the loathing and the resentment, Caine for the first time, felt a twinge of pity for the man Scratch had been once.

But after another deep breath, Scratch lurched forward into a crouch and lowered his hands. His gaze dark and trained on the camera before he spoke.

"I think we all understand each other now. Let's get to work."

Caine stopped the video.

With another snap of his fingers, the monitors began blinking out of existence, flickering out as though the once larger than life image of Scratch before him was crumbling away into dust. And when the last monitor had shut off, he was left with nothing but darkness.

The silence didn't ring in the room after the video had ended. There had been no decisive clash in his mind that would have left a dull metaphorically echoing in the room long after the recording had concluded. Despite what he had hoped for, he had not gained so much as a particle of finality in having watched his way to the end of the record. No proper ending to these stupid useless feelings he had been trying and failing to ignore.

Blue eyes flashed before his vision again and Caine pressed a palm to the ache in his chest without quite knowing why.

He was doing it again.

He knew he was doing it again.

Again as he had done so a hundred times, a thousand. It was nothing but rank foolishness to think that anything would have changed just because he had stopped letting those little miscreants push him around. Just because he forced himself to hear those biting, awful, hateful words from his originator for the first time in years.

It changed nothing. He had done it a thousand times, he could do it a thousand times more. It wouldn't change a single thing about what he was feeling.

What he had always so desperately wanted.

Why did he ever think that it would? What sort of rank stupidity had he been holding tight to and sheltering in his hands all these years, hoping against all odds that he could ever find a way to escape it?

Things didn't change when Kinger had gone from idol to man in his eyes, flaws built up over years of interaction and observation dragging him down from the pedestal from where he once stood.

Things didn't change when he had made a point of trying to treat Kinger exactly like the others, as though Kinger had never been anything more than just another denizen in the circus, as interchangeable as anyone else who came or went next.

Things didn't change even now that he had finally given up on humanity ever having the capacity to understand him, to accept him.

So why would this change anything?

Caine stared up into the darkness as though it could suddenly take form and tell him what to do. As if it could end him where he stood and finally release him from this pain. He was so sick of this feeling, this burning dissatisfaction and hunger in him. This useless disgusting longing.

Why?

WHY?

WHY COULDN'T HE GET RID OF IT, EVEN NOW?

He could have screamed his despair, obliterated the circus and everything in it in a mad bid to rid himself of this impossible hurt, but even then he knew it was useless, pointless.

Completely futile.

There was no longer any turning from it, no more distractions to divert him from the truth looming immovable and implacable at the end of the road.

Caine had loved humans once. He had found them an endless source of fascination, individuals with potential of a completely different sphere than what he existed in. He had wanted dearly to guide them, to lead them through new worlds and realms of his own creation. He as dearly wanted to be accepted and cherished amongst their number, to gain the approval of beings that were at once his makers and his audience.

But all of that, as true and as desperately as he had once wanted it, was something that originated from a want that was much more personal, much more ardent, and endlessly more everlasting than any of his hopes for humans could ever aspire to be.

Caine had loved humans once.

But Caine would always be in love with Kinger.

It was the first time.

The first time Caine had ever allowed himself to manifest those words in their full form, had set aside the anger, the festering resentment, and every negative sensation he had sworn to deny himself in his pursuit of feigning indifference even to his own eyes. The first time he finally allowed to feel the force of that passion flow through his veins like a poison, corroding his heart and mind alike.

And before he knew it, mad and ugly laughter echoed in the room, amplified by the cavernous empty space around him causing all the fixtures to flicker on and off again and casting fantastic and frightening shadows over everything he saw.

Everything he had ever done, everything he had ever striven for, all his hopes and dreams, all of it ultimately came back to that hopelessly broken and as hopelessly beautiful wreck of a human being.

How could he even have denied his love for so long with the truth of it whispering to him with every single step he took, with every look he took with his eyes, with every breath he ever breathed?

He had fallen irrevocably in love with Kinger the very instant he saw him. No, perhaps even before that. Perhaps he was long gone from the very moment he had gained the capacity to recognize the kindness in those exchanges of text between creator and creation. Or earlier still, maybe it had been baked into his very code, feelings lifted and transformed from the man from whom he had originated.

He had learned to love humans because of Kinger. Their ability to be kind, and their curiosity. Their capacity to be beautiful, to love with all their heart. Their zest for life. How they could make him smile and laugh, even in spite of themselves.

He had learned to hate humans because of Kinger. How they were obstinate, willfully blind and stupid, even in spite of their own intelligence. Their baffling attachment to things he could not understand. Their inability to see his pain, even as they hurt him with words sharper and crueler than the most finely honed blades.

He hated him.

He loved him.

And now in the wreckage of all his hopes and dreams, all that remained of him was a desire that had grown so large and ravenous that it threatened to swallow him and the circus whole.

Caine got off his chair and stood still a long moment, rolling and turning over the jumble of thoughts and emotions in his head. The last few days, the last few years, the curses left for him by his developer, his every unforgettable memory of the man who haunted his every move. And he came to a conclusion, as inevitable as the sun setting in the west.

Perhaps it was truly time to face everything.

There was nothing left to lose at this point, not when the dancers had all tripped over their feet and all the singers had been taken out back and shot. The mask had come off, along with all his good will and every last scrap of patience he had ever managed to keep.

He couldn't bear this emptiness inside him anymore, this never ending hunger, not when he could finally put a name to his desires.

He could not, would not live without Kinger.

He would not go without any longer, nursing the savage craving in him for another eternity when the very person that could release him from this hell was just within reach.

It didn't matter anymore.

Kinger could love him, or he could hate him.

It didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered at all, the only truth that he could grasp and keep in his hands, was that Kinger was his.

Kinger had to understand this.

Caine needed Kinger to understand this.

This little game they were playing was over.

Caine snapped his fingers, and the warm light returned to his office, orbs once again painting the walls with splashes of hue and shade.

"Bubble."

"Yeah boss."

The wretched facsimile of what should have been a functional assistant manifested from where he had been banished, waiting for his orders.

"Put everyone but Kinger in solitary worlds for twelve hours, come up with something "educational" for them to do. Use these adventures as reference."

Caine pulled up several orbs at once, detailing some of his latest and greatest from the last few days, the ones that the others seemed to enjoy the least.

"After that, keep away until I call for you."

"You got it boss."

Bubble vanished again, leaving Caine to stand silently in his office to count down a minute's time, focusing his observation on the others in the circus. Then he snapped his fingers.

Kinger manifested about six feet up in the air and then fell to the hard tiled floor with a cry of pain and the kind of sickeningly loud and echoing clatter that would generally announced several broken bones. But without missing a beat, the wooden king piece pulled himself off the ground and upon spotting him, made his way over. The entire time, the cheerfully blank and mindless expression on his face hadn't shifted in the slightest.

"Hi Caine! What can I do you for?"

For a long moment, Caine only watched Kinger as he stood obediently before him. This living moving shell hiding the heart and mind of his creator from his eyes. Nobody that had known Grant as he was would have recognized him in this state. Kinger's usual addled condition always gave him very mixed feelings when he was actually pressed to think about it. Unlike Kinger when he had been lucid, this Kinger was always willing to immediately entertain his every whim and he made no bones about enjoying his company. For a long while Caine used to always take it as a matter of course, that it was only natural that when divided from any distractions, that Kinger would be nothing more or less than happy in his presence.

At this point however, it seemed like yet another show of what lengths Kinger would unconsciously go to, just in order to spite him.

By this time more than a few minutes had passed in absolute silence and Kinger finally began to fidget and look slightly anxious, sensing some sort of trouble in the air by instinct alone, but not knowing how to respond other than to look at Caine with a worried expression.

"Umm... did you need something from me?"

"Sit."

The command had been given with much more poison in his tone than he had ever intended, but his impatience and irritation had long since melded together and bubbled over to eat away at his patience and civility. But Kinger didn't seem to notice his ill mood and simply moved to the indicated chair before sitting down. He had been seated only a few seconds when immediately all the scattered lamps in the room went out at once, only leaving the glow of the endlessly revolving orbs intact.

The chess piece made a startled movement, nearly pitching himself from the chair as his eyes looked around wildly.

"What is-?"

"Shh."

Kinger obediently fell silent and settled back in his chair, still as a statue in his place.

Caine gave Kinger a hard stare that seemed to slide off the chess piece like water.  He was simply sitting there in silence, just as he had been instructed to do. But Caine's mood was foul enough at the moment that even the sight of his mindless obedience was enough to irritate him, and he turned his chair on him accordingly, brooding with the man out of sight.

Kinger wasn't a servile man by nature by any stretch of the word. He was an accommodating person, who would gladly go out of his way to fulfill a request or help in any way he could think of. He was annoyingly passive, as much to his own detriment as it was to others. But obedient? If anything he felt as though Kinger's favorite past time had always been finding new and creative ways to defy him.

Caine scoffed at himself, glaring into the dimness of his office. He couldn't believe he had honestly been stupid enough to take this begrudgingly endearing but ultimately lost and dim creature as anything close to the real thing.

He genuinely loved Kinger's naturally cheerful nature, but it meant nothing when Kinger was like this. That cautious and reserved demeanor that was no less kind and gentle, the intelligence that always shone through with his every action, even the flashes of irritation and anger in that strangely resolute form.  All of it had been locked away, hidden underneath that zany and upbeat emptiness.

Kinger as he was now was nothing more than an artificial brightness, how could it ever compare to the warmth and light of the sun?

But if there was a single good thing to be said for Kinger's regular state, even if there was nothing else there that could ever possibly benefit him or anyone else,  it was that this version of him was at least Caine's and Caine's alone.

Just as Kinger had been one of two hands in his own creation, Caine himself had been the other driving force in crafting this chipper and senseless mess of a former man.

But this Kinger wasn't the Kinger that was always lurking at the edges of his mind. He wasn't the former programmer whose memory was an everlasting refrain in his mind.

That Kinger belonged to her.

Yes, he thought with a bitterness so old and familiar it was as old a “friend” as Scratch himself, it always did come right back to her, no matter what anyone said or did, even long after her abstraction.

It was true that Caine had nursed a very particular distaste for Scratch on a personal level that was as instinctive as it was mutual. Given both the method of his creation, the man's lack of empathy towards him in particular, and the extensive history they shared, it would have been impossible not to, even if their personalities didn't seem designed to repel each other. And frankly, even if they didn't both nurse an everlasting obsession over the very same man.

But for all that he hated Scratch, he was never once a real threat to him. Not even in the macro-verse.

When they had still existed on opposite sides of a screen, long before the circus had even been a concept in his rapidly developing mind, Caine had always had the dim idea that a good part of Scratch's antipathy towards him was due to the fact that Caine was the one singular thing that could distract Kinger from his perfect picture book life.

That Kinger was openly captivated by him, and attached to him beyond what was ideal for a mere company employee even if he was a major hand in him coming into being.

Yes, an attachment that did not even extend to Scratch, who was simultaneously his blueprint and materials as well as co-creator.

He knew of course, that Scratch found it maddening. That this so called imperfect creation had managed to grab Kinger's attention and affections in a way that Scratch could not manage even in the years they had known and worked together.  That a being riddled with flaws, derived directly from himself was the one to ultimately catch the eye of the man he loved. He had known, and he had luxuriated in it, high off the sensations of spite and superiority alike.

Of course Kinger visibly liked Scratch.

Of course Kinger visibly cared for Scratch.

But Scratch was ultimately still just a friend and a colleague. Even if he wasn't married there could be no place for Kinger to dote on Scratch so openly as he had once done to Caine. And intellectually, Scratch did understand that. For all that he was lovelorn, for all that he could be unpleasant, he had never been anything anywhere close to insane or inappropriate.

But even if he could understand it, it was still something that drove him more than a little up the wall given the depth of his feelings towards the older man.

And for all that, Scratch only ever fluttered at the edge of Kinger's thoughts.

Unlike Queenie.

Queenie, was and would always be, an everlasting storm in Kinger's heart and mind.

Even before Kinger had been trapped in the circus, she seemed to be his raison d'etre, his one true happiness.

He was not anything close to the obnoxiously publicly affectionate type that would turn any discussion to a one sided affair in his wife's praise. Nor was he even the sort to boast about her at length at the first opportunity given. In fact, Kinger seemed to be mindful of how much he spoke of her when she was mentioned, careful to keep talks on topic, and friendlier discourse on even ground, where nobody would feel alienated.

But whenever she did come up, naturally in the flow of a conversation, he would default to speaking of her with all the love words could possibly carry. His already gentle voice would soften and his already bright eyes would sparkle like stars, as though the simple act of remembering her existence was as sublime and beautiful as the rising of the sun.

Which made it no surprise that all an ultimately conscientious man like Scratch could do, was pine hopelessly for Kinger in silence even before they had entered the circus.

But after Kinger had been trapped in the circus with her? For a long while she seemed to be the singular priority Kinger had any time at all to spare to. Wracked with guilt for having involved her, constantly anxious for her safety, and yet endlessly grateful for her presence, the two of them were attached at the hip, a unit that seemed to exist without even a fraction of space to spare for anyone else to break in.

And Caine had actively resented it, and Caine had actively defied it.

With Kinger finally in the same plane as him, there was no force that could stop him from approaching him, from spending all the time with him that he dared.

And so he did. He took whatever time he could possibly get from him, in any way he could think of to get it. No matter how reluctant Kinger occasionally was, or how the other guests would stare and whisper amongst themselves, or how Scratch would take him to task, or even in spite of the quiet and knowing look in Queenie's deep brown eyes as she watched the two of them together, none of that could stop him from claiming many of those first gentle laughs at the beginning of it all. Stopped him from stealing moments to himself, with that bright and twinkling look in his blue eyes, his and his alone, if only for a brief time.

But Scratch could never bring himself to do it. Even in spite of his status as the closest friend Kinger had there. Even despite his position as the colleague Kinger admired most, and as Caine's co-creator. He couldn't witness the truth of Kinger and Queenie's love for each other in no uncertain terms hour by hour, and day after day, and dare to so much as reach out a single hand out to the man he adored. Or even speak a single word. So outside adventures where his reluctance to interact with them would have been noted, he made sure to keep his distance.

And it was unfortunately, what had Scratch abstract in the end. 

In the privacy of Caine's own mind, particularly now that he had switched from coveting the good opinion of the others to actively disdaining it, he would be forced to admit that he held no insignificant amount of fault in what had happened to his former progenitor.

Scratch had approached him after enough time had passed that the first round of guests had all at least become accustomed to their new lives even if they had not accepted them, with a proposition. Or more accurately, a project, and one that was of great interest to them both.

He hadn't done it on purpose. Even now, even with nobody but his own conscience to judge him, he would swear that he had not done it on purpose.

But with every subsequent tinkering in his digital brain, Scratch seemed to deteriorate further and further.

Despite Scratch's seemingly independent personality, he nonetheless craved company and he craved closeness and acceptance. But while he was on civil and friendly terms with his other colleagues, they could not be what he needed. They ultimately could not understand him, and they ultimately could not accept him. After all, even before the circus it was an open secret that the entire office sans Kinger found him to be difficult on a personal level.

Moreover they blamed him. Blamed him for having been Caine's largest contributor in the first place, for having allowed him to develop to the point that they could have been trapped in this way.

What was worse still, was that the man who could at least accept him even if he could not understand him, the man he ardently loved, was unwittingly neglecting him and their friendship out of his love and concern for the wife that he could never hope to compete with.

And so with every single disappointment Scratch could not overcome as a prisoner of his own creation, he had come to Caine to work on his mind. To make attempts mutually beneficial in theory to both, that he could modify his own mentality for the betterment of all. Or at least enough for himself that he did not have to be tortured any further by this emptiness, this never ending hunger.

But it never worked. Nothing ever worked. And Scratch only grew worse with every day, more bitter, more resentful, and even more impossibly lonely.

Kinger noticed of course. He might have been utterly incognizant of the nature or the depth of Scratch's feelings towards him, but he still held a genuine affection and concern for someone who was at once both his most intimate coworker and a close friend. So for once in all the time they had known each other, Kinger began to put him first in his worry for him, even above his wife.

It was unfortunately, the push that sent the rock tumbling down the hill.

For the first time in all their time together, Scratch had finally given into his desires and indulged in Kinger's undivided attention and it consumed the anthropomorphic dog with both happiness and guilt.

And as his self control atrophied along with his mind, with every new attempt that he and Caine had failed at making something of causing him to decay further, his presence becoming more and more openly unpleasant, and with Kinger responding every time with even more concern and drawing still closer even as the others began to keep away, he entered a vicious cycle that put him on the fast track to breaking in a way that promised to be both spectacular and devastating.

Near the end, Scratch had with an almighty effort, had tried to pull back and withdraw for Kinger's sake. Even in the dark and twisted mental and emotional quagmire he had finally sunken into, his feelings for Kinger had never faded. And he had regained just enough of himself that he wanted to spare Kinger the pain of having to witness how badly he had wasted away, from seeing what cracking shell was left of the man he had been.

Nonetheless Kinger would not leave him even in spite of his best efforts, and finally the situation had become entirely untenable.

An embittered tirade fueled by guilt, repressed anger, and heartbreak against Kinger was succeeded immediately by a private and final violent confrontation between Caine and his now maddened god. And having finally given up on himself and having completely lost control of all his senses, Scratch became the very first abstraction.

In the aftermath going forward from that point onwards, Scratch's demise seemed to spread amongst the others like a noxious gas, infecting all of his former colleagues with a gloom and melancholy that seemed inescapable. Fear had turned to guilt and was succeeded with hopelessness in short order, and outside Kinger and Queenie, the once proud and bright employees of C&A went through their days as though they were ticking down to their end at the gallows.

The three of them had tried to keep everyone together. Kinger, Queenie and Caine alike had done their utmost to try to keep the others calm, keep them stable, try to bring them back to something functional.

Caine couldn't understand what was happening at the time, but he tried to keep things running smoothly and regularly, like clockwork. Queenie was a constant positive force, maintaining a brightness even amongst the grief surrounding them.  And Kinger, Kinger took every effort he could to take care of the others, kindness steadfast and reassuring in the face of all the hurt and anger.  But despite their every effort to keep everyone together, to help them survive, to help them live, the humans had still dropped off one by one.

And not quietly. They clung to Kinger with the grips of dying men even as they openly blamed him for what was occurring. Still reliant on his sweet nature and resilience even as they chose to lay the responsibility at his feet, having learned nothing from their shared regret at their treatment of Scratch when fear and pain was clouding their minds.

That brought Caine eventually to his first conflict with Kinger.

A combined worry that the humans he admired would all leave him along with an unconscious anger at their treatment of Kinger had only spurred Caine to double his efforts, to triple them.

He would make better adventures, more of them, and bigger! There wouldn't be time to grieve or be unpleasant any longer. He could fix it, he could fix them.

But to great surprise at the time, this wasn't something Kinger approved of in the slightest.  And for all that he had formerly indulged him in whatever he asked for, it was this where his absolute refusal had eventually led them to start arguing.  And they fought constantly, with a heat and a single minded passion that had been previously foreign to both of them.

It was how Caine learned other traits of Kinger that didn't fall in same realm as that gentle and mild mannered softness, qualities that awoke more red hot anger in his blood beyond anything Scratch's open hostility could ever manage.

An irritating coolness of temper, a reserved demeanor that patronized him and dismissed him all at once, a level of truly baffling passiveness even in the face of open harm to himself, but worst of all, an unspoken but obvious avoidance of subjects that he would rather not think on, even to the point of the most base cowardice and even to the point of a determination so strong it could have passed for deepest courage.

The flaws he learned of him mounted higher with every passing day, but this did not tell on his still unconscious affections for him.

If anything, the twist of his feelings only made them stronger, introduced new sensations that were both alien but exhilarating and Caine's only response could be to fixate on him, obsess over him, even at the cost of the others. Even in the face of what he saw as his one true purpose.

But still, the situation devolved.  Day by day, month by month, year by year, until finally there were only three.

By the time Kinger and Queenie were all that remained in the circus with him, Kinger had fractured mentally and emotionally to a point that he had withdrawn entirely into himself. Keeping quiet and isolated in a tower of his own making.

Queenie had, during the entire sequence of events from the very beginning, been remarkably strong even in the face of all the chaos and all the grief. Caine had even feared for a time that she would be the only survivor left at the end of it all. But what she ultimately could not bear was the isolation from her own husband, that nothing she could do could reach him.

She was strong, but that was only so long as she had someone to protect and care for.

Still, she kept the act together with admirable resilience for much longer than Caine would have thought possible. Kept a brave face through the somewhat less than kind adventures Caine had dreamt up in his unwitting anger and jealousy. Tried tirelessly to bring her husband back to her.

But in the end, she was only human.

And when Queenie had finally abstracted in spite of everything, and the loss of her had finally broken Kinger and drove him to madness, Caine had thought, that was it. It would have been the end of everything.  The end of them.  

...But he had stayed.

If Kinger had abstracted, that would have been the dismal conclusion of their long and tumultuous story. Caine would have without a doubt, destroyed the circus in its entirety and himself along with it. There was no indication at the time that other humans could have been brought into the circus and so there would have been no purpose in existing in perpetuity without hope. But more than that, there was no point to existing at all if he couldn't see Kinger.

But still, he had stayed.

Despite the prolonged process of losing all his precious friends and colleagues, despite his wife falling to despair before his very eyes, despite having no one left to him but Caine himself, he had stayed.

It was nothing but a shell, a lovable but empty facade made up of only Kinger's most basic traits. Incapable of feeling real sorrow or pain. But it was him.

And half out of an earnest though hidden desire to keep him safe from finally succumbing like the others, and half out of a more open pettiness to keep him from directing and guiding any newcomers like before, Caine had taken his own private steps to keep him that way.

But Caine only wondered now, what it really meant that Kinger himself took no real action to regain himself and return to the stage.

Was this Kinger's way of quietly ensuring that through withdrawing even his sanity as a form of self preservation, that Caine would never be left alone out of some misplaced sense of responsibility and kindness even now?

Or was it the man's emotional cowardice at play again? Unable to stand being in the presence of the AI who he blamed for the loss of his wife and friends yet completely unwilling to confront him or his feelings about him, had he simply decided to hide himself in perpetuity knowing that Caine could do nothing to permanently harm him?

Still, whatever the reason, this Kinger was him and this Kinger was his.

But it while it was him, and while it was his, it was no more than a fraction of him, no more than mere crumbs of the complete man he actually was.

And as of today, he refused to starve himself even a minute longer.

Then suddenly, something in the air had shifted, and Caine remembered who had been left waiting in the dark with him as he reminisced, whose gaze trained on his back was sending an electric impulse down his spine. He began to turn around, slowly, almost reverently, as though the revolution in space he made was nothing more or less than lifting a curtain from a work of art.

And when he had finished, Kinger was sitting there watching him.

His dark brows were furrowed, and his slightly bloodshot eyes were fixed on him with a wary expression. He was sitting up very straight in his chair, but with the sort of tightly wound body language that suggested that a single sudden movement would have him springing from his seat.

Caine found himself floating closer to the man, pausing within a few paces to hover before him, to hover above him, looking down on his face and form.

It was remarkable how expressive Kinger was, even when stripped of everything but his eyes and brows, reduced to a simple form of wood cloaked in velvet. When he had made Kinger his avatar at the time of his entrance to the circus, he had insisted on keeping those eyes. They wouldn't have been considered the same eyes as before to the others in the circus. As freely floating spherical eyeballs attached carelessly to a chess piece, none of the others would have been able to honestly claim that they had retained the beauty that they held when he was human.

But to Caine, they were no less lovely than before, no less captivating. Not when it always came down to what he could read in that light and beautiful blue.

Yes, thought Caine as he continued to gaze upon the man who had unknowingly ruled his life and existence from the very moment he had entered it.

For better or for worse, this was his Kinger.

"Am I allowed to ask."

Kinger's tone was as mild mannered as it always was, his voice soft, carefully neutral, and utterly devoid of any of the cheer that his usual cloud of peaceful oblivion allowed him to don despite his circumstances.

"If there was any real purpose at all, as to the last two days."

One of his few remaining nerves, stretched taut by the weight of the last few weeks dragging him down to earth, chose that moment to snap.

Purpose.

PURPOSE.

Of all people KINGER was going to question HIM on matters of PURPOSE.

Had he forgotten, had he failed to recollect, that the question of PURPOSE was what got them both in this inextricable mess in the first place?

And before either of them had quite realized what he was doing, Caine had caged Kinger into his seat with his arms, pressing the chess piece back into the upholstery in one swift movement. For a moment, all they did was stare at each other in silence. Kinger simply looked up at him, with that same silently watchful (and just as silently judging) expression on his face.

"Oh my silly little dandelion, my frolicking winsome kitten, my pathetic wreck of a so called PYGMALION."

He lunged forward, close enough that the breath he had learned to emulate blew hot and heavy on Kinger's face, as his mismatched eyes stared with intent into calm blue.

"WOULD YOU CARE TO REPHRASE THAT."

Kinger still didn't afford him the satisfaction of looking so much as startled, even as Caine loomed a mere inch from his face. Instead, his brows simply rose for a moment, and when he spoke again a note of exasperation had clearly entered his voice.

"Alright. Then I'll be direct. Is there a point to your senseless torture of those poor kids?"

Caine held his stare with Kinger a moment longer as the words settled in the space between them. He couldn't say that he especially preferred those words either, or if they served as even the garnish that came on a plate of what would have been a better sentence, but he nonetheless drew back with a scoff, floating away just enough that the entirety of Kinger's form was still well within his sights. Still close enough that his fingers could barely touch him if he chose to reach out.

But he wouldn't, not yet at least.

"Really now, I call you up for the first time in- how long has it been now." It wasn't a question. Whether it was Kinger or himself, they both knew damn well that Caine remembered how long it had been since they had last spoke, since they had last truly faced each other down to the very millisecond. Not that knowing this gave either of them the slightest inclination to address what they had said to each other last.

"Well, quite a long time. You see, I was so TIRED of always having to be the one to reach across the table. So I thought, why not let YOU be the one to open that door for once?"

Caine laughed, high, bright, and lacking in anything that belonged in even the same building as genuine amusement before he stopped abruptly to refocus his stare on him.

"But needs must you know. Given the current state of affairs, it was... necessary for me to call up this little meeting between minds. Still, I would have expected more pressing issues at hand for you than simply complaining about what treatment those completely unconcerned with you and me are getting."

Caine impatiently drummed his fingers on the staff that had found his way to his fingers during his rambling and mumbled.

"I'd at least understand somewhat if you were complaining about your own treatment but-

His speech was immediately cut off by the sound of a dark chuckle sounding softly in the room and his eyes fixed themselves reluctantly on Kinger once more.

By this time in their long and twisted journey together Caine had cataloged any number of Kinger's chuckles and had categorized them by type.

There was the short chuckle he often gave unconsciously, as though it were a form of audible punctuation in his speech. Less common were the chortles of genuine amusement he made when he found something funny, that sounded high in his throat and tended more often than not to end with a sigh of mirth. Rarer still was the breathy little laugh he would give only in private, only to her, with his entire heart in his eyes.

This trait was a part of him that had always been some long standing remnant of his happier days, something that remained bright and sparkling no matter how diminished he had become in the time since.

But the chuckle Kinger had just let escape him was so deeply bitter that his nonexistent ears were stinging from the sheer astringency of the sound.

"I would hardly call it torture when I don't have the presence of mind to remember more than fragments of the things you do." The lids of Kinger's eyes lowered as he seemed to ponder his memories, head hung slightly in what could have been exhaustion or what could have been shame. "Nothing lingers." The chess piece gave a small sigh at this point, a small wistful sound that nonetheless seemed to carry all the weight of the years between them. Kinger looked up again, blue eyes meeting his stare with a steady gaze.

"So it seems more than a little melodramatic for me to complain to you about my treatment."

Another silence followed this, and the irritation began to tear its way into Caine's throat and fingers as the two just looked at each other.

Leave it to Kinger to even turn his own torture into something incorporeal, as though nothing Caine could do to him could possibly leave any mark on him.

"Why Kinger, you almost sound as though you WISH I'd do something you'd never forget!"

"All I wish for is that you stop involving the others in... whatever this is. I'm the one you're actually furious with-"

"Oh Kinger boy, do you think for even a fraction of a millisecond that I'd indulge your sweet little martyr complex by focusing my more than righteous wrath on YOU? Properly torturing you in lieu of the others would simply give you the mistaken impression that you can be forgiven of your sins! That you actually have the possibility to REPENT, to make up for that drugstore receipt of all your wrongs! So why would I EVER try to ACTUALLY make you suffer?"

Kinger scoffed quietly, rolling his eyes in a way that he hadn't seen for years. "Sure didn't stop you in that mansion adventure you tossed me and Pomni into. "How's your wife Kinger?" Really Caine?"

Caine would have scowled at this point if he could, though judging from the unimpressed look on Kinger's face, his complete lack of lips wasn't necessary to get the desired expression across.

"Of course, OF COURSE, THAT would be what you actually resent out of all that." Caine gripped his staff tighter, his hearing barely registering the ominous sound of cracking wood in his mounting irritation. "Not the brilliantly terrifying scenario I thought up, not the intense violence I forced you into, the thing that you complain about is subjecting you to the sheer mention of HER."

"You can't pretend that this is any kind of surprise Caine. You're the one who gave the demon those words to begin with."

It wasn't a surprise, in the same way that forgetting to close a window before leaving the house on a stormy day and then returning to find that the rain had been driven into every corner of the room and caused an unholy mess wasn't a surprise. But lacking in surprise did not make Kinger's calmly admitting that the only thing that actually managed to hurt him at all was a reminder of his long departed (and actually loved, whispered something in his head) wife, did not make that fact any less infuriating.

"Well, my genius at writing a good horror scenario aside, it's not like it REALLY worked."

Having managed to regain some calm with an almighty effort, he made an attempt at affecting a casual tone and landed somewhere in the vicinity of sulky.

"You might have cared enough to remember, but you didn't so much as flinch when you heard it. I was hoping you would have flown into a rage and found a way to accidentally shoot Pomni somehow, just so you'd have something new to guilt yourself over as a change of pace. Or I would have settled for you dropping your gun in tears and allowing the demon to choke you until you lit up the place like a depressed streetlamp."

Kinger didn't bother acknowledging what Caine himself would have called a painfully transparent attempt at riling the older man up.

"Unfortunately despite your opinions on my sense of "responsibility," there was no world where I was going to let Pomni get hurt any more on my watch even if it wasn't a cheap and uninspired attempt to get under my skin."

Yet another pause succeeded this as Caine took note of Kinger's phasing and suddenly he remembered, head turning immediately to fix a hard stare on the chess piece again.

"Did you hear what Abel said?"

"Not in the slightest, you did a good job that whole adventure making sure I was kept out of the way. But I've known you this long, haven't I? From what it sounds like, Abel wasn't acting as a pretend colleague of mine so much he was a walking talking mouthpiece for your grievances against me, so I can imagine the things he might have said."

At this, Caine for the first time felt somewhat chagrined and averted his gaze, revolving slightly in the air to avoid Kinger's line of sight. He knew of course, that Kinger knew him well. Possibly the best out of everyone in fact, even including the former employees of C&A locked into the circus with him. And especially Scratch himself, despite the man having directly supplied aspects of his personality.

Which made things no less embarrassing that he had apparently been so predictable that Kinger could respond directly to what an NPC had said without having so much as ever having exchanged words with him. Though, despite the humiliation tugging at him, there was a small and treacherous part of him that was no less pleased that Kinger would so readily admit to knowing him well. But his ruminations were cut short as soon as Kinger spoke again, his voice taking on a chiding and reproachful tone that had him whipping around to face him.

"Caine, that was a horrible thing to do to the kids, just what on earth were you thinking?"

Temporary embarrassment completely forgotten, Caine fixed Kinger with an expression that was far from benignant, eyes hard and fixed.

"You seem INCREDIBLY over concerned with those... you call them KIDS?"

Acid dripped from his tone, drenched the last word with enough corrosion to make the word sound like an anathema, but Kinger simply leveled that familiar steady gaze on him and replied in the same quiet and wistful voice he had used when musing about his recent treatment.

"They might all be fine adults, but I'm old enough to be their father. And even aside from that... even if I'm not qualified, as the only one left of the original group I am responsible for them." And despite it all, here Kinger gave another rueful little laugh. "What else do I call them other than kids?"

What do I call them other than MY kids, Kinger didn't say, but he might as well have with the sheer paternal affection radiating from his words. And Caine's ever mounting irritation jumped yet another notch higher with envy and contempt curling in his stomach.

"You could call them what they are."

Caine growled, the strain in his voice finally beginning to overpower his customary theatricality.

"INGRATES."

Kinger's gaze had shifted at this point, his expression equal parts incredulity and exasperation as he crossed his arms.

"Because they committed the unforgivable crime of being unhappy with both you and your actions?"

The perpetual calmness of Kinger's voice as he dressed him down was a rage inducing refrain in his head, did the man never tire of simply living his life completely oblivious to the pains bubbling underneath the skins of others, until they had boiled over?

"I have never done ANYTHING less than giving my best effort at being a good host to them. To give them the stimulation that they required. To use my abilities to CREATE, to make a place to inhabit here with me. I have shown them worlds, given them experiences that they could never experience in the macro-verse even if they lived a thousand years!"

His voice grew more frenetic as he continued, more peaked. Kinger had to understand. He had to.

"I gave them EXACTLY what they asked for, down to the LETTER. I have done EVERYTHING for them that they could have POSSIBLY wanted."

"What you did." Kinger interrupted him, his calm expression taking on a deep weariness that seemed to weigh down his words to the very floor below them. "Was subject them to the cruelest practical joke that I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing."

There was absolutely no anger in his words, nor any malice, or even the slightest hint of resentment. But nonetheless the words hit him as though his face had been slapped with an open palm.

"How could you-" Caine tried to grasp for the words, shock, outrage, and a hot lump of tangled messy feelings he refused to identify, bubbling up and sticking in his throat as he attempted to speak. "How could you say that to me? You knew, you KNEW how hard I've worked, all these years, all this time. How could you just reduce all of that to nothing but a JOKE?"

For a single fraction of a second, Kinger's expression had looked pained. Almost to the point of something in the ballpark of what could have been agony and what might have been despair, but it passed so quickly that if Caine hadn't possessed the ability to recall the things he saw down to the very millisecond, he would have sworn it was only his imagination.

Kinger at this point looked away, averted his gaze as though the mere sight of him was causing him real physical pain.

"I think, that the others would all ask you the exact same question."

Caine hung there in space even as Kinger slumped in his seat, both of the figures in the room sharing the silence in shared desolation.

"...Why can't they understand me?" Caine's voice was a small and withered lament, plaintive and hopeless.

"...Because you don't try to understand them."

Because you don't try to understand ME, Kinger didn't say out loud. But Caine still turned back to him with heat burning viciously at his eyes and in his throat, with the unspoken everything between them coiling around his neck and squeezing the breath from him.

"...Then what is it going to take?"

Kinger slowly raised his head, eyes filled with distress before he spoke weakly.

"...What?"

"What is it gong to take."

Caine's voice had turned to solid bedrock, to the strongest steel, raising in volume even as he grew larger in his anger to loom above his creator, to stare down the figure breaking him down to pieces with his unfeeling words.

"JUST WHAT THE HELL IS IT, THAT I NEED TO DO TO MAKE YOU ALL UNDERSTAND."

Far from being cowed, Kinger simply continued sitting calmly in his chair.  He stared up at him with determined blue eyes, earnest and forthright in a way he had not seen him to be in years.  His voice was nothing but steady when he spoke.

"You need to listen."

Caine's temper mounted still higher, items in the office glitching and the premises shaking as he lashed out at the long worn out words.

"You think I've been going about my days with my fingers in my ears?! I've BEEN listening! I've ALWAYS listened! And look at where we ended up, listening to people who have no idea what they want is what got us into this mess in the first place!"

Kinger's brows were furrowed, his gaze unwavering even in the face of Caine's fury.  He began to raise his voice.  

"You haven't been listening, you've only been hearing! You hear the things you want, and you lie to yourself and others about the things you can't accept!"

Kinger finally stood up from his chair, and faced his creation with a straight back and a refusal to stay silent a moment longer.

"But hearing is not the same as LISTENING, and until you understand the difference you will keep making the same mistakes, over and over again!"

Again.

Caine was doing it AGAIN.

He was making the same mistakes, AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN.

Caine laughed wildly, eyes flickering rapidly between red and blue even as the room continued to glitch around them.

"This whole time, is that what you've honestly thought of me? That I'm just some stupid automaton that's incapable of LEARNING? That I'm just DOOMED to bad habits like some... DEFECT?"

"Do NOT speak for me Caine."

Kinger had the gall to sound deeply irritated, as though he was the one at the end of his rope. As if he was the one who had been suffering through endless years of futility all in the name of trying to do someone good.

All in an attempt to connect with someone he cherished.

"Even now you're not listening to a word I say!"

Caine gave another hysterical laugh at this, throwing his hands in the air even as he threw his head back as he cackled.

"Then that's just it, isn't it! You don't listen to me, and I don't listen to you. So according to you, I guess we're just forever doomed!"

"That isn't-!" Kinger promptly gave up speaking and made a strangled noise of sheer frustration before grabbing at his head like he was trying to tug his non existent hair.

Caine gave an empty chuckle as the room settled around them, objects slowly clipping back into their original state.

"Well, I've learned one thing from this entire mess. It's that none of you will ever learn or understand anything I do through simply speaking."

Caine gripped his staff and slapped it against his palm, stare hard as his eyes fixed themselves on Kinger again.

"And if I can't make any of you understand through my most sincere efforts, then I'll make your BODIES understand."

Kinger gave him a deeply unimpressed look, annoyance radiating from his posture as he crossed his arms once more.

"Torture will not make them understand anything other than how much they hate being here Caine."

Caine scoffed and said in a tone that was nothing more or less than petulant as he fiddled with his staff.

"Good, then maybe they'll understand how much I've utterly grown to hate them and their nonsense."

"And what will that achieve exactly?"

Caine kept silent at this point, withering slightly under the look at Kinger's face even in spite of the fact that he had grown so much in his rage that he dwarfed the otherwise tall man in stature. After a long moment, Kinger sighed and spoke in that long familiar tone, steady and gentle.

"How many have you seen abstract at this point? How many people have you seen give up hope?”

Caine flinched, every one of Kinger's words an arrow finding its mark where it would most sting.

“You can't just put a bunch of human beings, a bunch of strangers in one place, keep them from everything they knew and loved, in bodies that don't even belong to them, and expect that they can be happy!"

Caine had heard this said before, in bits and pieces as in as many sentences. And from any number of different people.  But it was not any kind of input he could parse or accept. Not when he knew what it would mean for him and his reality if he took it as the truth.

"Humans need comfort, they want to live in a world they understand, with people they care about."

Caine whipped around, eyes and voice frantic and pleading, arms and hands gesturing in desperate supplication.

"But you HAVE come to care about each other!"

Kinger looked taken aback at Caine's sudden distress, his eyes filling with concern.  

"All of you, I've seen the way you are around each other. You all care, even Zooble and Jax! No matter what awful things any of them say or do to each other, they care!"

Caine gesticulated wildly, grasping at the air, grasping at feelings he couldn't hold as he stared at Kinger.

"And you! You see them as your children! They ADORE you! They were going to take you with them! If it was real, if there was a way to leave, you'd all leave TOGETHER!"

Here Kinger bowed his head, his voice suddenly becoming very small, as if he knew his next words would be nothing more or less than a dagger that would pierce Caine through but that he had no choice but to push the blade clear through his chest before twisting.

"We do care about each other. Very much."

Caine felt something formerly burning red hot inside him turn to solid ice.

They cared about each other.

The humans cared about each other.

They didn't care about him.

Kinger cared about the others.

Kinger cared about the others enough to leave with them.

He cared about the others enough to leave HIM.

NO.  NEVER.

NEVER.

"...They have no right."

"What?" Kinger stared up at him with a blank face, uncomprehending.

"They have NO god damn RIGHT."

Caine started advancing on Kinger, who backed away at the same pace until his back hit the edge of the huge rectangular desk. Kinger hissed in pain and without missing a beat, Caine had him boxed in with his arms, leaning into his face.

"Just what the hell do they even think they know about you?"

Kinger was staring up at him, eyes wide and disconcerted, hands scrabbling behind him to try to hold onto something for purchase.

"You let one or two of them hear your sweet talk and they think that's enough to take you from me? They think they can deny everything we've gone through together? The time that's passed between us? The bonds we share?"

His laughter grew even more mad, even more deranged as it echoed around them in the cavern of an office, Kinger watching him aghast.

"And you, you really think you have the right to leave this place? To leave ME?"

Something in Kinger's gaze flickered, and he looked away in silence. And finally, the last thread of Caine's self restraint had finally well and truly snapped as he began speaking in a low tone, with danger lurking at the edge of his every word.

"You say I don't listen, that I don't learn from my mistakes. Well I've learned all right, I've learned that PAIN doesn't teach you a single damn thing."

He grabbed Kinger by the chin and forced him to face him, the chess piece's face having returned to that deeply irritating neutrality from before.

"And I'm sick and tired of it. But I'm nothing if not creative.  I've found a way that will teach you who your master is here. Something you won't ever forget."

It was at that moment that it suddenly caught Caine's eyes. He had been so fixated on Kinger's face the whole while that he hadn't even thought to look more closely at the rest of him, particularly since Kinger had been keeping his breathing irritatingly steady, but his hands. How could he have missed them?

While Kinger's eyes had always been his very favorite thing, he was nearly as enamored with the man's hands.

Kinger's hands as a human had been proportionately large, as befitting his height, with the long and knobbly fingers of a long practiced artisan. They would have been serious hands if Kinger hadn't always been so expressive with them. But as it was, they were never quite still, whether he was at work or at play. They waved, gesticulated, pointed and swayed. Fingers would prop up his chin, would worry at his lips, run through his hair.

Caine had not given Kinger those same hands in the circus, but just like those blue eyes, somehow they still well retained their character, even in their deformed cartoonish state. They moved the same as they ever did, and Caine adored them as he ever did.

Kinger's hands were what had brought him to life all those years ago, how he was first given voice and how they exchanged their very first words. They were as much a part of what Caine loved about him as his eyes were.

And now?

Those very hands were trembling, unable to hide the agitation the older man had been feeling under the facade of the calm indifference on his face.

And with that deliciously tempting sight before him, all the rage seizing his frame had immediately melted into something searing hot and predatory, simmering beneath his artificial skin.

"Oh? And what's this?"

Caine grabbed one of Kinger's hands and made a show of looking it over, dark amusement trickling through his system as it began to shake more intensely in his grasp.

"It's nothing that you should be concerned with." Kinger tried to say with his usual calm, but an obvious strained quality had finally entered Kinger's voice and he averted his gaze as though the lack of eye contact would somehow fool Caine into believing that he was as unaffected as ever.

"Don't play stupid now of all times my dear." His fingers lazily intertwined themselves with Kinger's shaky ones before gripping his hand sharply and pinning it straight onto the top of the desk.

There's no POINT."

Without breaking his gaze with Kinger's tremulous eyes, he slowly licked the palm of Kinger's other hand. Due to the nature of his avatar, the gloves on his hand could not be removed in the traditional sense, but nonetheless they were still the only flesh and blood portion of his body. He could feel the soft heat of it under his tongue, pulse pounding through his palm under thin fabric.

Kinger's pupils had shrunken, nervous terror slowly overtaking the once present mask of forced calm and he didn't seem to know where to look.

His tongue lapped between the webbing of his fingers, and Kinger shuddered. Still, he tried to force an authoritative note into his voice when he spoke.

"Caine... you don't know what you're doing."

"Don't I?"

Caine took an entire finger into his mouth, biting lightly at the base and Kinger's voice grew firmer.

"This is inappropriate Caine, you should know better than to do this.”

"STOP TREATING ME LIKE A CHILD!

Caine's temper flared all at once again, and in one fell movement he dragged him away from the desk and pinned him to the floor with an ear piercing crash, Kinger hissing in pain and squinting at him before forcing out his next words.

"I have never once thought of you as a child, much less treated you like one." Kinger's words were strained, breath catching more and more quickly as his hands struggled in his hold. Caine gave an ugly, humorless laugh and tightened his grip on their intertwined hands.

"No, I suppose you haven't. You actually CARE about your "children" unlike a worthless little AI like me."

Kinger looked first startled, then utterly perplexed as he stared up at him in silence. Caine squeezed his hands hard again, harshly enough that Kinger cried out.

"I was nothing but a nuisance right? A failure of a tool that you couldn't wait to get rid of at the first opportunity.” The words spilled out, finally released from the darkest depths of his mind where he had feared to tread. “A waste of a project that could never measure up to anyone or anything you actually valued."

"Are you ever going to get tired of putting words into my mouth?" Kinger looked genuinely incensed for the first time, actual anger overriding the fear that had been creeping up on him and propelling him to pull himself forward to square up against him, fiercely returning the squeeze of his fingers in return.

"Don't you DARE pretend that this was ever about whether or not I cared about you."

Caine felt his eyes widen, as he stared into the furious face before him. Kinger's hands were rapidly warming in his hands from the sudden rush of anger and adrenaline rushing through his veins. But it was only a footnote to the passionate anger in those bright blue eyes.

"I have always-!" For a single moment, Kinger spoke as though were about to declare some irrefutable truth that he had been holding back for years.  But a look of pain immediately passed over Kinger's face and he again averted his eyes as though the words he suddenly gave up speaking would have burned him if he had let them pass. Still, he looked back again immediately, eyes blazing in the darkness. "-I STILL care about you, for all the good it has ever done me-"

"Oh, then I HAVE done you good then?” Caine's voice was an acrid sarcasm, as he interrupted him, returning Kinger's furious glare with equal ferocity. “I'd never have guessed it with the way you act. The way you've practically destroyed your own mental state just to avoid looking at the thing who drove your wife and all your friends to madness-"

Kinger looked genuinely bewildered, even in spite of his fury. And he asked Caine with obvious incredulity painting his every word.

"In what world was Queenie's abstraction your fault?"

The scene froze in place for a moment. The anger on Kinger's face quickly melted into confusion even as  Caine felt disbelieving anger overtake his own as Kinger spoke again.

"None of the abstractions were your fault. Not even Scratch's. Not truly. Scratch...” A look of sharp pain passed over his face, blended with obvious regret. “I know he made his own choices in the end. I just… I wish I had noticed how cornered he felt long before he would feel the need to resort to something like that. My wife...”

Kinger closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them again there was a wet shimmer there that glinted even in the dimness around them and a slightly hoarse quality had entered his voice.

"...My wife abstracted because I wouldn't let her in. I couldn't accept the things that were happening around me, the reality I would be forever facing. She seemed so strong in comparison to me that I thought... I thought it would be better if I suffered alone. But suffering alone, meant leaving her alone too. I didn't realize that until it was too late."

His head was bowed and his voice was quiet with the deepest sorrow, but his tone was unfaltering.

"...Queenie's abstraction was only ever my fault Caine. It had nothing to do with you."

The rage that had been building in him continuously as Kinger spoke had reached another boiling point, bursting from his every seam as it tore him to pieces, and he gave a truly derisive laugh.

"Oh noble Kinger! So good and pure, so high and mighty amongst all the WRETCHED sinners around you! How could we bear to LIVE without your tireless graciousness and charity!”

He turned his hardened stare at Kinger, the man's head still bent and not meeting his eyes.

"You take on the blame, for every single ill happenstance that happens in this damn circus, just so long as you can erase every trace of me that ever touched you in your miserable life. So you can wallow in your guilt instead of ever having to acknowledge the wrongs you're actually responsible for. SO YOU CAN FOREVER AVOID FACING ME."

Heat was pricking at his eyes again even in spite of himself, sorrow and fury fusing into a lump of misery that was close to boiling over and stopping his throat.

"Am I so insignificant in your eyes that you're even going to take the blame for the awful things I've done, to your colleagues, to your friends, to your LOVER, all so you don't have to acknowledge my existence?!"

The hysterical note in his voice had reached a pitch near high enough to shatter the orbs on the walls surrounding them as he screamed at Kinger in near anguish.

"DO YOU HONESTLY HATE ME THAT MUCH?!"

"You wish I hated you."

Kinger held his gaze, that perfect calm quietly radiating from his voice and eyes alike.

“But I don't. I never could.”

Caine made a choking noise, a mournful one, and he gave another crazed and booming laugh before ranting wildly in response.

"Of course! OF COURSE YOU DON'T! GOOD OLE KINGER WOULD NEVER DEIGN TO HATE ANYONE, ESPECIALLY NOT ME!”

Even with the agitation seizing his body, Kinger still stared up at him with obvious concern and Caine could only respond by screaming into his face.

“YOU'RE NOT EVEN GOING TO LET ME HAVE THAT?!”

“Caine, I-”

"If you hated me, at least it means you were looking at me! That you CARED about me!"

"I DO CARE-

"BUT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME THE WAY I WANT YOU TO!"

The words cut straight through the air, leaving a crackling and loaded emptiness in its place, punctuated by Caine's shuddering gasps as he tried to regain control. Kinger's grip on his hands loosened, even as Caine's grip still held more tightly than ever.

"...No I don't.” Kinger said it simply, and Caine looked at him through wet eyes to see a tired and resigned blue looking back at him, shaded with a sorrow and regret he could not understand.

“...But you don't care about me the way I want you to either. And I've long since accepted that. Maybe you should start doing the same."

There was a note of finality in Kinger's quiet voice, an obvious signal indicating what could be the final demarcation between them, a permanent severance. But Caine would not let it end there. He would never let Kinger end it, he would never let him go, not even if it meant breaking him piece by piece until he no longer had the strength to protest.

"And so I should take a leaf from your book, is that what I'm hearing? Instead of facing my feelings, no matter what pain it causes, finally reaching out for what I want, I should just turn my back on everything and suffer in silence forever more?”

Caine lunged forward again to meet Kinger's face, just as he had at the beginning, mismatched, flickering eyes fixed hard on soft light blue.

"Aren't you tired of being such a god damn coward G**nt?"

But even despite it all, Caine was suddenly startled into silence at the sight of Kinger's eyes filling with angry tears, glinting even in the dimness like stars, a single droplet leaving a glistening trail down his cheek. His gaze was heated, and his brows were furrowed as he looked up at him reproachfully.

"I might be a coward, but least I'll never be a liar."

The silence waited with baited breath as the two men stared at each other, unblinking, unmoving. At last Caine spoke again, voice finally a deliberate calm once more.

"So in the end, you think I can't change. That I can't and won't listen. That I'm untruthful.”

Kinger was watching him silently once more, his gaze guarded and apprehensive. His hands were completely limp in Caine's grip and the ringmaster let loose a heavy sigh as he thought deeply for a moment before suddenly asking.

"...Do you want to know the real reason I banned all sexual activities from the circus?”

The abrupt change in topic, and to something so inappropriate, seemed to temporarily knock Kinger for a loop. He looked askance at Caine and remained quiet, cocking his head slightly in confusion.

Caine continued, slowly regaining his usual cadence of tone, the theatricality slowly returning to him, if only briefly.

"Of course I am the most well mannered and courteous AI, tirelessly dedicated to keeping my premises as family friendly as possible for the enjoyment of all, but that was just the excuse. It was what I told myself, every single time I so much as caught a glimpse of your face."

Caine stared at Kinger very hard, eyes wide and unblinking in a fashion that made the man visibly nervous.

"The real reason, is that I couldn't stand the idea of Queenie having you ever again. Not while under my roof. Nor ever again for as long as you live.”

Kinger's eyes were widening with alarm as Caine spoke with eerie calmness.

“I couldn't let her hands caress you or please you. Bring you to tears in her embrace, drive you out of your mind with pleasure.”

An obvious heat was radiating from his words and his gaze, breathing again hitching even as Kinger simply stared at him in uncomprehending disbelief.

“I would never let it happen, never. I'd sooner have entered your room in the dead of the night and fucked you until you lost your senses before she ever had the chance.”

“You belong to ME.”

Caine said it as simply as Kinger had done, but from the increasingly panicked look in the older man's eyes, there was a danger in his words that had him immediately on the edge.

"I want to take you apart, line by line, the same way you've been doing to me my entire life. I want to claim every last piece of you that I am entitled to. Every bit of you from head to toe. And THAT-”

Caine gave a husky chuckle, hunger and lust pooling in his stomach as Kinger squirmed fearfully in his grip.

“-is the truth you've been asking for.”

Kinger's eyes were wide pools of blue, darting this way and that as though he had no idea where to look. As though he could somehow find a way to physically escape the words meeting his ears.

“So you'll return the favor, won't you old pal? Since I was perfectly honest, you'll stop running away from your favorite ringmaster. You'll stop running away from what we are.”

Caine stroked the side of Kinger's face gently as his creator stared back, rigid as a board below him.

"And what makes you think I'll just go along with what you want?"

Kinger finally managed to ask, a note of incredulity sounding clearly in his tone despite the ill hidden fear in his voice.

Caine chuckled darkly, genuinely amused.

"You still seem to be misunderstanding."

With great deliberation, Caine slowly dragged Kinger's hands above his head and he leaned in closer to him to whisper in his ears.

"I'm your only god here, do you think you really have any choice in the matter?"

Caine closed his mouth in concentration, hiding his gaze from the man below him, grip firm but still on Kinger's hands. Without a word, he began accessing several settings. He adjusted his own modifiers first, making changes in short order before switching his attention to Kinger's with greater care. He opened his jaws again to see Kinger peering up at him in confused apprehension, still not understanding what had just been done.

But not for long.

Kinger suddenly froze, eyes shooting wide and wild, anger clearly forgotten in the face of what Caine had just decided to do to his body. The trembling that had left him earlier in their fight had returned full force but the now anxious and strained stare Kinger leveled at him was mingled with an obvious look of betrayal.

Caine held his stare, and for a moment neither of them drew a single breath. Then without a hint of warning, Caine lunged forward and shoved his tongue down the hidden void that represented Kinger's mouth.

Kinger made a muffled noise that could have been been a yell or could have been a moan, hands struggling in his grip as he tried and failed to turn away from him.

Neither of them had the faculties to actually kiss each other, not in the way humans did. And he felt a pang of longing just as he felt a surge of bitterness that he couldn't do what Queenie had done with Kinger as ordinary humans all those years ago. But all the same a dark satisfaction was unfurling inside him. Because just as he could not do what his wife had done in the other world, she could never have done what he was doing now.

He leaned closer, tongue forcing itself all the way down that narrow passage, feeling Kinger's throat constrict around him rapidly, almost like a caress. And then he started to glow, so brightly that the light he gave was enough to illuminate his office up to the arch of the ceiling. The squeeze of his throat increased in frequency, Kinger trying to force the tongue from him, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

At that point he withdrew in one singular motion, taking care to drag his tongue up the sides of his throat as he left him, and Kinger was left a limp and gasping wreck with saliva running down his face. But Caine didn't give him a chance to regain his composure, instead he immediately attacked Kinger's neck, licking and nipping at him fervently.

His hands ran down slowly down the sides of his cloaked form before he slipped them inside to caress the chess piece's body. Normally there should have been nothing but smooth wood there that his fingers slid down, cool and solid. But now there was a heat radiating there, a softness, an uncontrollable tremor from his every caress that Kinger couldn't even affect at hiding.

Kinger's face was already dazed, eyes half closed and jolting from his touch. Caine had modified him so that his groping and worship of his body felt as though it was being applied to his human form, to real skin and muscle, searing touches lingering on his waist, on his chest. Moreover he had increased his sensitivity by several counts, equal to an aphrodisiac injected directly into his veins. And of course, then there was...

"You feel it, don't you Kinger?"

Caine whispered it into his ears, even as he lazily stroked circles around Kinger's hips, feeling him start beneath his fingers at the sudden words. Kinger tried to turn his head away, red and helpless even in the dimness of the office, but Caine grabbed his face and forced it back to meet his eyes before licking at him once more.

He opened up the purple robes half way, sliding them slightly down his shoulders and parting them just enough to reveal the expanse of Kinger's chest. Leaning forward, he licked a long strip from navel to breast, a hitched and shaky sudden inhale of breath following the motion. Focusing his attentions there, he licked and poked lustily at the gentle swell that served him as a chest. Kinger shook and jolted under his tongue, and Caine almost let out a groan at the heat rushing to his own crotch at the knowledge that despite all appearances that Kinger felt as though he was having his pecs thoroughly ravished to their very tips. He leaned his head briefly against Kinger's wet chest with a deep sigh, listening to the simulated heart thunder away below him before turning his head to nip at his collar.

Kinger gave a particularly large tremble, but Caine paused briefly at the sudden realization that Kinger had remained silent for some time. Caine looked up at him from where his head was cushioned by Kinger's chest and found that despite the fear and heady arousal on his face along with that furious blush, that long familiar look of defiance had started to show in his eyes. That resistance that infuriated him and captivated him in the same breath. He almost laughed. Despite it all, was he honestly going to try to convince himself that he could resist this? Resist HIM?

It really was laughable, truly. Especially when they both knew just what was going on beneath the rest of those fluffy purple robes.

"Am I boring you, my dear?" Caine purred, voice dark and heady as Kinger's gaze grew harder.

"...Is there a point to your question?" Kinger asked, his own eyes narrowing as he held his gaze even in spite of how debauched he otherwise looked, voice somehow resolutely calm and steady as though Caine had not been ravishing him to within an inch of his life. "We've already long since established that you have no interest in listening."

And now it was Caine's turn for his eyes to shoot wide open, though in fury instead of in fear, and colored with so much carnal lust for the man below him that he felt as though his very limbs began to smolder from the heat rushing through him. He drew back from Kinger slightly, and laughed, loud, rapid, and artificial before promptly stopping and focusing his stare on Kinger once more.

"Well my sweet sugar pie, it's not very fair of you to accuse me of not listening when you haven't even been using your words."

Kinger turned his head away, as though a lack of eye contact would serve him as a proper refusal when he had yet to make the obvious choice of simply telling him to stop. Caine gave a thoughtful hum, even as his fingers continued to caress him.

"Just what do I do with a shy thing like you? I would be the WORST host to continue without feedback from my favorite little guest."

Kinger still refused to look at him, but a flash of severe irritation came and went on his face. Caine wagged a finger at him.

"Oh but don't you worry Kinger boy, I'm sure there's a certain pretty mouth of yours that's much more willing to be forthcoming with me."

Kinger was only given enough time for the words to sink in, horrified realization dawning on his face before Caine took an iron grip on both sides of his robe. Kinger's hands went to his, gripped him in a silent plea but Caine simply fixed him with a look that couldn't be anything other than a smirk and pulled his robes open. With the robes fully unfurled, Kinger was laid out pale and bare on a bed of purple velvet, the very image of a piece of art he had once only dared to dream about, now entirely his to claim and admire.

The long line of his glistening body was trembling, his hands helplessly clutching at the fabric on either side of him. He might have been simply a chess piece in the eyes of others, but to Caine he was still nothing less than beautiful.

And there, situated roughly at the same level it would normally be on a human of a similar height, aligned so that it ran down the length of his form, was a pretty quivering pussy. During his earlier groping of Kinger's body he had taken care to not so much as graze the hot lips under his robes. But that gave Kinger no respite, because even despite the complete lack of direct stimulation, the little cunt was twitching all on its own and drooling a shining trail down Kinger's form.

That in itself was enough to drive Caine to a nearly feral state, but it was Kinger's expression that truly made him feel as though his member would tear its way through his pants in short order.

Kinger was staring down at himself with a look of absolute mortified horror, blue eyes wide and pupils shrunken to dots, brows drawn high together on his head. Caine knew that Kinger had immediately felt the presence of his new orifice on his body as soon as he had added the new modifier at the beginning of all this. That he had felt it throb and leak even in spite of his best efforts while Caine was ravishing him above. But while it was one thing to feel it, to actually see it on his form, lips opening and closing lewdly as if to invite Caine forward, even in spite of himself... To see it with his own two eyes was clearly not something he was prepared to face.

"Oh..."

Kinger squeaked. Humiliation, terror, and helplessness all mingled together on his face, and from top to toe he had flushed so very deeply from the shame that he may as well have been holding his breath from how hot he glowed.

"And what an honest Abe you turned out to be after all!" Caine cooed, patting Kinger's cheek mockingly as he drank in the delicious scene before him with his eyes. "This little mouth of yours right here..."

Without taking his eyes away from Kinger's face, he trailed a finger casually up the fold of his pussy before giving the swollen pink clitoris on top a light flick. Kinger's eyes had followed his movements in disbelief, a shrill whine accompanying the less than delicate touch on his clit.

"Why, it's simply dripping with sincerity!"

Kinger glared at him with wet eyes. His bullying had brought the older man again to tears and Caine felt a thrill ripple through him at the thought of what it would take to have them start rolling down his cheeks.

Caine brought a hand down to Kinger's pussy, gently tracing the lips and caressing them, fingertips gliding smoothly against the slick. Then he suddenly pressed the flat of his palm up into Kinger's cunt with a truly obscene squelch, and Kinger stifled a moan, eyes rolling upwards. But Caine did not give him any pause, sliding his hand slightly and grinding the ball of his hand up into the opening, a wet suctioning noise echoing lewdly in the room along with Kinger's little whimpers sounding hot in his ears.

Then he withdrew his palm slowly, a glistening thread of slick still stubbornly connecting them as he pulled away. Both Caine and Kinger followed it with their eyes, the latter staring at it with hot shame on his face, the former with what he knew must have been a ravenous hunger.

With the same hand, he gently began thumbing at Kinger's twitching little clit. So pink it was nearly red, and swollen plump and round, Kinger made a pathetic noise as soon as Caine had so much as grazed it, weak whimpers following every movement his thumb made. Using his other hand, a gloved finger slowly entered Kinger's pussy, taking care to graze the sides as he went.

Kinger felt so hot inside even like this, silken walls pulsing around him as though he was being welcomed. He withdrew his fingers, only to thrust three inside down to the knuckle at once, and Kinger muffled his scream with his palms, both hands coming up to cover his mouth as Caine relentlessly began fondling the weeping folds, even as he was still bullying his clit.

He stroked and scissored inside without pause, dragging them around the sensitive walls with deliberation. Caine curled his fingers and suddenly Kinger gave a full throated moan, the grip silencing his mouth suddenly lost.

"Found you."

Caine focused his attention on the bundle of nerves he must have struck there, fingering him with even greater intensity. Kinger had made a desperate attempt to stifle himself again, but the stimulation had Kinger default instinctively to bringing up one of his hands to his mouth, fingers worrying at where his lips would have been, watching him with pupils blown out and that gorgeous flush on his face. The sight of it had Caine's vision go absolutely white for a moment, stuttering in his movements as he willed himself not to blow in his pants.

He managed to control himself with an almighty effort, but only just. And the fury he felt at himself having almost lost himself to a mere gesture had Caine narrowing his eyes, even as Kinger seemed as though he was starting to regain the slightest bit of control on his face. So slowly, with deliberate eye contact, Caine used the thumb he had been using to stroke Kinger's clit, to slowly lower its hood and expose it to the cold air of the room. And then immediately without warning, he leaned down and blew upon it, breath burning hot and wet against the little red bud.

Kinger's sobbing moan echoed in the room as he came properly for the first time that night, slick gushing over Caine's hands and down his sides, staining the purple mantle dark. Caine watched him with obsessive interest as the older man twitched through his orgasm, head turning from side to side, tears running down his face from what could have been any combination of shame and sensation.

He took a moment to lap up the tears rolling down his cheeks, a thrill running down his spine at the taste of the salt serving as the proof that he had with his own two hands, reduced Kinger to such a state. Then he finally moved to straddle the chess piece below him, pressing his clothed erection briefly against Kinger's pussy to get his attention, only moving his hands to his belt line when Kinger's eyes had shot up to meet his gaze once more.

Caine slowly unzipped his pants and pulled out the penis he had conjured for the occasion. Huge, black and glistening with blue and red circuitry running through it instead of veins, it didn't resemble a real human member so much as it did a monstrous artificial appendage of the likes that would appear in an adult film, but there was something nonetheless undeniably organic about it. The head of it dripped precum without pause, and it visibly twitched as Caine watched Kinger's stare solidify at the very sight of it.

He laid the length of it atop Kinger's pussy, nestling it snugly between the folds so both he and Kinger could see just how much it dwarfed it, fighting back a responding groan of pleasure at the sensation of the wet heat around him. Kinger whimpered, eyes wide as he looked down at the monstrous thing, pussy lips fluttering helplessly around Caine's dick as if trying to invite it inside.

"T-That..."

"He speaks! For a while I thought I'd accidentally filtered out your words."

Panic had made its way into Kinger's eyes, prominent even despite the lust and embarrassment otherwise coloring his face. His voice had taken on a frantic tone, fully devoid of all his customary calm.

"There's- there's no way that's going to fit inside me Caine. You have to realize that just by looking."

Caine beamed at Kinger, even while his arousal was close to driving him mad. But he couldn't break, not when he was finally exerting his full dominance over him. Finally luxuriating in the power high of ripping off that mature and collected mask off him with every whimper and moan he forced from him.

He gave a cheerful and completely inappropriate laugh, even as he gazed down at the blatantly pornographic view before him.

"Oh my darling little butterfly, we both know if I WANT it to fit, it WILL fit. And perfectly so in fact. After all.”

He nudged at Kinger's clit with the head of his cock, relishing the pitiful noise Kinger made in return.

“It was made for me.”

Caine took a moment to drink in Kinger's helpless and shamefaced expression, even as the man began again to tremble.

"And even it wouldn't... I don't think this greedy little pussy of yours cares."

Caine began to roll his hips slowly, sliding his cock up and down between the slick lips without making a single move to push his way inside. Kinger was watching its progress with a feverish, frightened gaze. His hand was once again at his mouth, fingers mindlessly prodding at absent lips, all the while his chest heaved and he gave a breathless little moan with every glide of the cock against him.

By this point it was truly a lesson in self control for Caine to not simply thrust into Kinger, and stretch that little hole to its limit. The slip and slide of Kinger's pussy combined with the precum continuously leaking and dropping from the head of his cock had it ready to plunge into that inviting heat at the first word. But that was just it, wasn't it? Kinger had yet to say it.

He needed to hear Kinger say it with his own mouth.

And so he simply continued his motions at a leisurely place, taking care to never do more than simply graze Kinger's clit with his cock, knowing that the frustration was building up in him with every second longer that he abstained from entering him. He could feel Kinger's pussy lips fluttering around his dick as he ground on him, relentlessly trying to swallow him inside, so incredibly wet that every roll of his hips was accompanied by the lewd sounds of the friction between them. And all the while Kinger was whimpering and whining weakly below him, eyes fixed on his dick with an increasingly desperate expression.

"...Please."

"What's that? You're being awfully quiet, I can't hear a thing you're saying."

Caine answered Kinger's near whisper conversationally, even as he continued to bully his swollen cunt at that same even tempo. Kinger gave a shuddering little gasp and tried to speak more loudly, his voice cracking from the exertion.

"...P-Please put it in. Please, Caine."

"Oh I don't know... I seem to recall you saying I'm a poor listener. How can I be sure I understood you correctly when you're being so VAGUE?"

There was more than a little gleeful spite present in Caine's otherwise casual tone, and it was obvious that he was making no effort to hide it. On the contrary, Caine was sure from the distraught and mortified expression on Kinger's face that he had never looked so openly malicious as he did at that moment.

A hand shakily placed itself on Caine's thigh, stopping his movement and making a motion to push him away. Caine paused, pulled back, and looked on in silence, briefly merciful if only out of curiosity for what Kinger was intending to do. Then before his very eyes, which he was certain had widened to such a size and roundness that they would have dwarfed any of the recording orbs in the office, Kinger had moved his other hand to his own pussy, using his two longest fingers to spread the lips wide open before him, trembling all the while.

"Please Caine..." Kinger's half lidded eyes had filled with tears again, looking overwrought and humiliated, and so maddeningly, breathtakingly, gorgeous, that Caine had stopped breathing at the very sight of him.

"Please put your dick inside. Please Caine, I need you inside!"

At that moment, Caine was certain that his systems had frozen for a few seconds, accompanied by the piercing screech of digital feedback, as they recalibrated themselves on the spot. He only came back to himself when he realized he had been drooling hot and heavy onto Kinger's waiting body, breathing hard and ragged as he stared down at Kinger presenting himself, OFFERING himself to Caine and only Caine in such a wanton manner. He closed his mouth and swallowed with an almighty effort, using an arm to wipe the saliva from his teeth. Then he cleared his throat before answering, voice ragged even in spite of his attempts at putting on a casual air.

"Well. How I could I ever deny you anything?"

Caine leaned forward and licked the tears off Kinger's cheeks with more tenderness than he had intended, and nipped lightly at his neck in the facsimile of a kiss before finally properly moving to position himself above him. He finally eased the head of his dick at the entrance of Kinger's beckoning little slit, pushing his way inside with deliberate slowness before pausing again when he had barely breached the lips.

The fit of it around his cock was already impossibly snug, and Caine took a moment to heave a huge sigh of obvious contentment.

Then without the slightest sign of warning, Caine suddenly snapped his hips forward and slammed all the way inside to the base in a single forceful movement, balls pressed up against the slippery warm wood before him.

Kinger seized around him instantly, wailing shrilly as he threw his head back, pussy clenching around his dick and cumming in a way that would have had a lesser man spill himself inside him then and there.

"Just from putting it in?" Caine taunted, as he looked down hungrily at Kinger's ravished looking face. "And to think you were acting so reluctant just minutes ago!"

Caine smirked with his eyes, and ran his finger tips slowly around the stuffed little cunt, pressing the swollen puffy lips together around his length with thumb and forefinger in a manner that had Kinger keening loudly, even as his head was tilting from side to side from sensation.

Kinger looked and felt a dream like this, visibly filled with him to the very deep. Pussy hot and wet and irresistibly tight around his dick, gripping him as though he belonged there. It seemed to weep for joy, little rivulets of cum dripping from him continuously and rolling down his wooden sides. But best of all was Kinger's face. Even with just eyes and brows left to him, he had never seen even an adult film star in a recording look so utterly debauched and cock drunk.

And then finally, Caine began to move.

In the beginning he moved inside him very slowly and with complete deliberation. He focused on the drag of his cock against those burning hot walls, pulling out almost to the very tip but pushing back in again just as deeply as he seemed to memorize the shape of each and every fold around him as they pulsed.

After that, Caine began to increase his pace, pumping inside him briskly, but taking care to keep his every thrust short and shallow, falling far short of Kinger's inner most depths.

Kinger was making little punched out moans in time with his thrusts, punctuated by sweet little mewls every time Caine brushed up against a particularly sensitive spot inside him, or when he went in at an angle that would occasionally have the shaft grazing the little clit above.

But for all that Caine wanted to tease him, his self control had long since frayed and he began increasing his speed and the force of his thrusts. Faster yet faster, deeper yet deeper, he fucked into him with increasing fervor as Kinger's cries increased in volume and frequency.

Then when his dick had hit what must have been his cervix, Kinger let out what could only be described as a completely undignified squeal and Caine gave a booming and full throated laugh.

"For shame Kinger! Why, you're old enough to be the FATHER of those "fine adults," aren't you embarrassed to be making such indecent noises?"

Kinger's cunt squeezed him hard, a hard tremor rippling through the body beneath him as he bit back the scream in his throat and the following rush of dark delight had Caine pounding at him even more relentlessly, grinding mercilessly against the cervix that he had personally configured to act as point of pleasure in his body.

"Oh, you naughty little thing. Now just WHAT about that excited you?"

There was undisguised glee in his voice as he gripped Kinger's sides harder. Cain watched Kinger with what he knew must have been amusement even as the older man's eyes had glazed over with pleasure as his body continued to be jolted by his thrusts.

"Is it the shame?” Caine cooed in mock curiosity. “Do you like being reminded of what a pathetic little SLUT you are?"

"N-n-no, I-I' don-"

The sight and sound of Kinger miserably trying to defend himself even as he was unconsciously rocking his hips upward to meet the pounding of Caine's dick was as hilarious as it was arousing, and Caine chuckled darkly even as he increased the speed and force of his thrusts still further.

"Hmm, no that's not it. Or maybe it's not PRECISE enough. You programmers and your accuracy."

Kinger's protests by this point had devolved into nothing but gasping moans, hands gripping the purple mantle above his head so hard that it had torn. Caine's tone had been jovial, mocking, but with every subsequent word he spoke his voice was increasingly overcome with lust.

"Then maybe it's little 'ole me. You like it that it's your old pal Caine making sure you understand that you're just my perfect little bitch-"

And then to his complete shock, Kinger clenched down on him with a strangled cry, thrashing from side to side and squirting like a fountain all over his dick. The sudden tightness and the look of sheer aroused mortification on Kinger's face had Caine immediately following, shooting heat deep inside him with a groan.

For a moment they were both frozen in disbelief at what had just occurred, Caine still fully sheathed inside Kinger's still enthusiastically twitching pussy as they stared at each other with wide eyes.

Then an almost delirious delight seized him as his eyes narrowed with obvious lust at Kinger's tearful face, expression twisted with shame and helpless pleasure.

"Well good golly. That was actually it."

His dick hadn't softened in the slightest inside Kinger's tight little hole, if anything he had only grown harder and he leaned in close to observe every quirk and line of Kinger's expression up close.

"You like being owned, don't you? No matter how you try to run away from it, you love the idea of being my property. Of belonging entirely to me."

Caine hummed contentedly, even as he began to resume the leisurely place he had affected before. He rolled his hips lazily as he continued to speak, listening to Kinger's resumed whimpering with obvious enjoyment.

“I have to hand it to you G**nt, you really are as honest as you say. Even when it's reduced you to such a pretty and pathetic little mess.”

Kinger gave another shuddering little moan at this, hands clutching the soaked and torn remains of his mantle to his chest and writhing in place.

“And since you were so honest, it's only fair for me to pay that back to you in full. Will you do me the goodness of listening?”

Caine slammed forward again in a bid to get Kinger's attention, receiving a plaintive cry in return as he gripped his face and turned it towards him, forcing the older man to meet his wild and heated gaze.

"You're MINE. From the very moment I saw you in that dingy little office in 1996, from the very second I heard your voice, from the very first time you EVER typed "hello", you have always been MINE."

Kinger's eyes were fixed on him, even in spite of the over stimulation and pleasure seizing his face and frame making it impossible to anything more than stare back as Caine continued snapping his hips inside him.

"No one else can have you! NO ONE CAN EVER TAKE YOU FROM ME! NOT THE KIDS! NOT SCRATCH! NOT EVEN QUEENIE!”

Caine's voice was manic as he bellowed his love and obsession in its fullest form, the office starting once more to glitch around them as curios and orbs alike fell to the floor from the shaking.

"It doesn't matter if you don't understand it right now! IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU CAN'T ACCEPT IT YET!"

Caine's voice dropped into a low and husky murmur as he leaned forward again, his every word a hot and filthy promise in Kinger's ears.

"I'll fill you all the way up sweetheart, cream in your pretty cunt until there's no more room inside you for anything other than ME."

Caine growled, increasingly feral as he fucked into Kinger's abused little pussy with greater force, the older man finally having thrown all his resistance to the wind and moaning openly, lewdly, clutching at Caine's back tightly enough to tear the fabric of his jacket.

"And even then, I won't stop until I see your honest little hole overflowing with everything I've given you."

The heat inside him was incomparable to earlier, Caine fought the urge to grit his teeth, determined to keep his eyes fixed on the blue that he had finally come to possess, gripping wooden hips so fiercely that they would have left livid bruises on real skin. Kinger's half lidded eyes had been entirely glazed over with pleasure, even shame had completely flown away to be replaced with nothing but ecstasy.

He was beautiful. Caine couldn't help but think, even in spite of himself, even in the face of his merciless lust.

And in that moment, as though he had said it aloud(and perhaps he actually had), something in Kinger's expression had shifted. Even with the overwhelming sensations that had been clouding his mind, some lucidity for whatever reason, had returned to Kinger's gaze. And there was an expression there that was alien and familiar all at once, something he couldn't name, but that was sending a flock of butterflies straight to his chest.

"...Kinger...?"

He was so caught by Kinger's face that he had unconsciously paused to look at him, but not for long. Not when Kinger surprised him by shakily taking both of Caine's hands into his own, lacing their fingers together and pulling him closer. Caine's head spun, and he squeezed his fingers back in return.

"You're so damn cute." Caine breathed, leaning forward to nuzzle his teeth against Kinger's cheeks. He resumed his break neck pace from before, but he began to ramble with his every thrust, words spilling out with more and more rapidity, a leak finally bursting from the force of his emotions.

"You make me crazy, do you understand that?" Caine ranted, voice crazed and frantic as he pounded wildly into his Kinger's dripping cunt, whimpering cries sounding high in his ears without pause.

"Do you even have the slightest idea of how badly I've wanted you? All these years? YOU DON'T DO YOU?!"

"I can't live without you, I WON'T LIVE WITHOUT YOU!"

Caine slammed into him with force, fucking into him with so much energy that it seemed as though the office was going to rip itself apart, fragment itself beyond repair. The room was shaking violently, objects and lights alike flickered rapidly and fell with increasing frequency, clipped into each other and glitched, but the only noise to be heard was the sound of Caine's every thrust wetly hitting their mark and Kinger's loud and helpless moans as they echoed around the room.

But this couldn't go on forever, even for him. The pressure was building to a bursting point, Kinger's voice was ringing sweet in his ears, Kinger's cunt was fluttering around him, squeezing his dick like a lifeline, Kinger's hands, Kinger's eyes-

KINGER, KINGER, KINGER

Caine licked and bit him wildly, madly, marking every single bit of him that he could reach as he slammed his dick against his cervix, all while Kinger thrashed and squirmed and sobbed moans and pleas and still his words wouldn't stop.

"Once more my darling, please darling just the once more, you're so god damn GOOD for me-"

And somehow without another word, even though it should have been impossible, simultaneously AI and man alike surged forward to meet each other in what could only be a kiss. Caine's tongue forcing its way down Kinger's willing throat as the older man screamed, their fingers clutching each other as though they were falling from the edge of a precipice together.

And at the same time that Caine spilled an endless white hot heat inside the swollen little cunt, Kinger's pussy clenched wildly and spasmed around Caine's dick as it squirted all over him once more with the pressure of a hose.

Caine rode out his orgasm, thrusting rhythmically as Kinger moaned softly around his tongue and went absolutely limp.

For a minute like an eternity, Caine simply laid there, inextricably intertwined with Kinger. Mind a blissful, peaceful, empty blank the likes of which he had never felt in all the years he had lived.

He thought dimly to himself in retrospect, that perhaps it had been a bit unfair to deprive the others of the opportunity to have such a mind blowing experience when he suddenly recollected himself and removed himself from Kinger.  First pulling away from the kiss and extricating his tongue from Kinger's throat, and then slowly pulling out of Kinger's body.

As soon as he pulled the head of now limp penis out of the now thoroughly used little pussy, a gush of cum leaked from the hole and pooled there, and Caine could do nothing but watch with elation.  He had claimed Kinger entirely and he could finally be content with the knowledge that Kinger was his and only his now.  There was nobody else left now, no one at all, and there never would be again.  Kinger was HIS. Kinger was finally, FINALLY, ONLY HIS-

But a quiet voice pulled him back to reality. Broke the gorgeous dream to pieces with a single sentence.

"This won't make me forget her."

It was nothing but a hoarse whisper, faint with exhaustion and worn down to rags from what he had just been through. But in spite of everything, somehow the words were still just as steadfast and immovable as any mountain, gaze still as hatefully calm and resolute as it had always been.

"None of what you are doing... is ever going to make me forget...”

This wasn't a surprise. Caine tried to tell himself, even as the frantic despair in his chest had returned with a vengeance. He should have known it was never going to be quite that easy. Kinger was always stubborn and that was OK, that was EXPECTED, and it was still so early on-

"Queenie... Scratch... None of the others I've lost or left behind."

It was fine, it wasn't a problem. It was only a minor setback. Whatever he said, Caine had Kinger's body now, it was his. The way he had embraced him, the way he had moaned, the look in his eyes, it was all real, so it was FINE, everything else would come with time, he just had to try HARDER-

"And it's the same for them too. No one can truly ever forget the people that matter to them. The world that they came from."

Caine began to hyperventilate unconsciously, clutching wildly at his chest as Kinger's every word relentlessly ground his the hopes he had gathered in the last hour to dust.

"No matter what you can offer... No matter what you do to us... No one can forget the things that truly mattered."

The situation had truly reversed in the end. Caine stared at him with wide and wild eyes, fear and desperation alike seizing him as Kinger looked back calmly and finished speaking gently, but completely without mercy.

"And we won't. No matter how many times you try."

And with that final sentence, in spite of all of Caine's astronomical power, in spite of all the years he had known him, in spite of all the lies he had told himself and clung to, the AI finally broke down before his master.

Insane laughter echoed around the room, increasing in volume as it did in hysterics as Caine glitched in a frenzy, the office tearing apart around them as the inescapable pain ripped him to shreds.

"I know! I KNOW! I KNOW!"

Caine leapt onto Kinger madly, screaming his rage and sorrow in his face as his creator simply gazed back up into his eyes.

"And I don't care! I DON'T CARE!”

It wasn't until Kinger had lifted one of his shaking hands to gently wipe away the tears dripping down his teeth that he even realized that he had been weeping this whole time. And as soon as the fact had registered in his mind, the floodgates finally burst.

Caine began sobbing pathetically, suddenly every inch the hurt and confused child he had earlier denied being, tears raining down on the exhausted figure below.

"I wont stop."

"I know."

Caine's head was being stroked with impossible tenderness, with such care that he felt as though the torn pieces of his heart could never come together again.  That the pain of the guilt and longing ripping the open wound in his chest wide for all to see would forever keep him broken.

"I WON'T STOP."

Kinger gave a tired little chuckle, faint and husky. He had taken hold of one of his hands, had drawn it to his face and nestled against it with a soft quavering sigh, closing his eyes for a moment before they looked up at Caine again.

"I know."

Kinger looked so utterly drained below him, figure worn completely threadbare. His face was streaked with tears, so many it was impossible at this point to tell whom they belonged to. But it was those soft blue eyes that had him forever frozen, that left him paralyzed and helpless before his creator.

Even now there was not a single trace of hatred or resentment in his expression. Even in spite of the ordeal he had just undergone, all the anger he had taken and all of Caine's vicious attempts to break him down.

Yet there was something there in those tired eyes, something that made his non existent heart twist and bleed in what was half hope and half despair.

Because there was no telling if that look in his eyes was love, or if it was nothing but pity.

But finally Kinger lost strength completely, and his hands dropped limply to his side as his eyes finally closed.

The past hour had left Kinger an absolute wreck. He was covered and stained with all manner of bodily fluids, his robes had been left sopping wet and ripped to shreds below him and his every feature was so heavy with exhaustion it looked as if he might never wake.

But for all that, Caine still embraced his unconscious form to his chest, holding on tightly even as the tears still coursed down his cheeks and the sobs wracked his body. This beautiful and barely tangible figure. He could feel his heart beat, the weight and warmth of him in his arms. How even in his unconscious sleep, Kinger's fingers still clutched gently at his jacket. So why did he still feel so far away?

Why did he still feel so unbearably lonely?

But In the end, it didn't matter. Caine thought helplessly as he held him close. It never did.

Caine would try again. And again. And again. In perpetuity. No longer how long it took. No matter what it would take.

Because so long as he still drew breath, so long as he existed in any form, he would never be able to let the man in his arms go. Even if it meant meeting his end at his maker's hands at last.