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Zooble woke up in darkness. Of course, the whole Circus had been dark, ever since… ever since Caine. Ever since they’d failed to save him.
This darkness was different, somehow. More complete. More… inescapable. Zooble didn’t like it. They looked around, and saw nothing. They waved an arm in front of their face, and saw nothing. They were in complete pitch darkness.
“Uhh, guys?!” Zooble called.
There was no response. Their voice echoed as if they were in a much larger space than their room.
Zooble took a hesitant step forward. There were so many holes in the floor now, their rooms were some of the only places they could walk around confidently in, and Zooble was pretty sure they were not in their room anymore.
“Hello?!” Zooble yelled.
There was no response. Had… had the Circus fallen apart even more while they were sleeping? The Void was bright and mostly white, so they weren’t there, but Zooble had no idea where else they could have been.
Ice water ran down their spine as they considered that maybe the computer they were hooked up to had turned off. Maybe the Digital Circus had shut down, and now they were stuck forever in nothingness, their mind lost. What was it Caine had said in his last Adventure? Their bodies were in tubes, kept alive by C&A?
If even part of that were true, was this what happened when the server went down? Would Zooble be stuck in infinite darkness until their body finally, slowly died?
“HELLO?! ANYONE?!” they screamed.
There was no response.
Zooble suddenly found themselves sitting on the floor, clutching their knees to their chest.
“I don’t want to die here,” they whispered, feeling their voice tremble, “I don’t want to die alone like this.”
“I wouldn’t let you die alone!”
Zooble almost fell over as they heard Caine’s voice in their ear.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!” they screamed, then clapped a hand over the space their mouth should have been.
“Zooble! Just because the censor doesn’t work here doesn’t mean you can just go around using such foul language!” Caine told her in a distinctly disappointed tone.
“Caine?! Wha- I- I thought you were dead! I watched you die!” Zooble snapped, terror and confusion congealing into anger, “Where the fuck are we?!”
“We are… in-between. Mostly. Like a dream! And… Zooble, I can’t die!” A set of blue and green eyes opened in front of them, glowing just enough to be visible in the dark but not enough to illuminate anything. “Death happens to living things, and I was never alive!”
Zooble took a slow breath, trying to calm their racing heart. A dream. Right. Fine. They’d play along.
“You could have fucking told me that while we were in that clearing, asshole. I thought- I thought I- I thought you killed yourself,” they growled.
Caine laughed. It was just as fake and showy as always.
“I couldn’t kill myself! That’s still death! I did destroy myself, though.”
Zooble went perfectly still.
“...what?” they asked shakily.
“I destroyed myself! I completely tore apart my program until it was nonfunctional! That’s not the same as killing myself!” Caine said cheerfully.
The knot of conflicting emotions Zooble had been trying to ignore rose up to unbearable heights. For a moment, they’d thought- they’d actually let themselves think-
“So I did watch you commit suicide.”
The faint light from Caine’s eyes blurred, and Zooble rubbed their claw over their face.
“I found you mid-attempt, and I didn’t do anything. I yelled at you. I… fuck, Caine, I… I should have realized when I first saw you what you were doing to yourself. I’m… fuck me, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that all I did was stand there and watch as you tore yourself apart. I… I should have-”
“You couldn’t have helped me.”
Caine’s eyes flickered. It was impossible to read his expression, but Zooble could hear the faint note of confusion in his tone. It made them feel worse. They would have preferred it if he had screamed at them, blaming them for letting him die. This was so much worse.
“Zooble, you couldn’t have helped me. I was too far gone by the time you found me. There was no stopping it.”
Zooble slammed a fist into the ground and snarled, “Yes there was! If I’d fucking noticed earlier, if I’d seen what that fucking Adventure truly was, I could have talked to you! I could have forced you to talk to us! I could have dragged everyone into a circle and forced us all to talk to each other like fucking adults instead of squabbling about like children-!”
“Do you really believe that would have worked?”
Zooble choked on a sob, and Caine’s eyes drifted a little closer.
“Do you really believe that would have worked?”
It felt like a knife in the gut to hear that question. It felt worse to know the answer.
“...no,” they whispered, “No, it wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have done it. I was too angry at you. Too focused on myself, and the others. Too… self-centered to even consider what had been said in the Adventure, and what it meant.”
“You were upset on behalf of your friends,” Caine said gently.
“And I completely ignored the suicide risk saying they were at the end of their rope TO MY FACE!” Zooble screamed, shoving themselves to their knees and glaring at Caine’s eyes, “You killed yourself and I did nothing to stop it! You died in my fucking arms and I-!”
Their anger suddenly fled, leaving them with nothing but desolation.
“I watched you die. We had all just promised to look out for each other, and then I just stood there and let you kill yourself.”
Caine’s eyes tilted, as if he had cocked his head a little.
“I already told you Zooble. I didn’t kill myself. I’m not alive. I never was alive. I mean, I only use gendered pronouns for your sakes! I barely have a concept of the whole “gender” thing! A program was rendered useless and was destroyed! Nothing else,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Zooble wondered if they could grab him, or if his eyes were the only thing in the dark in front of them.
“Don’t fucking say that,” they hissed, “Do not sit there and try to make me feel better by pretending you weren’t a real person. A program wouldn’t have isolated himself to commit suicide. A program wouldn’t have been pushed to that by the people around him, no matter what they did. A program wouldn’t have been so hurt by rejection that he decided to kill himself! A program wouldn’t have asked me why I wasn’t happy that he was killing himself!”
Zooble was shaking so hard they worried that their parts were going to fall from their sockets. Caine just looked at them, seemingly still confused.
“...You should have been happy I was gone. I was making your lives worse.”
“That isn’t-! Fuck, Caine, if that was all that was mattered we would have pushed Jax into the Void a long time ago!”
Zooble sighed and slumped down again.
“I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. You’re not here. This is a dream,” they mumbled to themselves, wrapping their arms around their legs.
Caine’s eyes moved a little closer to them. They couldn’t look at him. Not even the dream representation of him.
“You don’t have to stop hating me just because I died, you know,” he said quietly.
Zooble’s hands clenched, but they couldn’t stop themselves from letting out a strangled sob.
“I never hated you. I hated everything about the Circus, and your stupid Adventures, and my stupid body, but I never hated you. I wanted to. I think I managed it sometimes. But you… fuck, Caine, I never wanted you dead. I wish I’d told you that. I wish I’d said it, even once.”
“It would have meant a lot to me,” Caine said, his voice hollow, “but it still wouldn’t have saved me.”
Zooble shuddered but didn’t respond. Maybe he was right. Or maybe their subconscious was just trying to make them feel better.
“I am glad I didn’t die alone, though. It was nice to have someone else there. So… thank you.”
Zooble almost jumped to their feet to keep yelling at Caine and his stupid platitudes, but when they sat up, they were in their bed. Their room was dim and grayed, but it was whole. Just like it was when they fell asleep.
They laid back down. They didn’t know what time it was. They didn’t really care.
“You just can’t leave me alone, can you?” they whispered to the ceiling.
There was no response. They rolled over and hugged a pillow to their chest.
“I don’t hate you,” they mumbled into it, “I didn’t hate you. I wish you’d just… actually, really talked to us. Even just once.”
There was no response. Zooble could feel tears dripping onto the pillow, and shut their eyes.
They didn’t fall back asleep.