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A certain one always begins with a story.

Harlequin—silver tongue, painted smile—spins it every night, a tale no one truly listens to… 

not until it’s already far too late.

He steps onto the stage with the slow, filled with certainty of something that knows it’s being watched… and enjoys it. The circus tent groans under the weight of old wood and older secrets, lanterns flickering like a dying heart overhead. 

His boots drag across the boards in a soft scrape-scrape-scrape like, a sound that feels uncomfortably close to claws on a coffin lid.

He stands tall—just over six feet, perhaps taller—but height isn’t what makes him imposing. It’s the aura. The sense that he’s stretching shadow and color around himself like a second skin, filling the entire ring without ever raising a hand.

Dark curls spill messily down to the stark white porcelain fused to his face. The mask is emotionless, expression carved in a way that turns the human into something… wrong. 

Yet it’s the eyes that hold the true warning—brilliant emerald, sharp as gemstones cut to draw blood. His pupils contract when he scans the crowd, hunting, testing, teasing.

His jester’s hat—split between poison-green and pitch-black—hangs heavily down either side of his face. The long points end in golden bells that chime in soft, discordant tones. He doesn’t bow. He doesn’t wave. 

He simply waits, letting disappointment curl slowly through his stance as the audience continues muttering, scrolling, talking. 

So loud… so unaware… so blissfully stupid.

Such pitiful humans.

He was forced to tell one of those stories again—cornered by none other than Jester and his insufferably theatrical demands. And why? Why should he bother?

Humans never listen. Pathetic creatures. 

He watches them with barely masked contempt—couples whispering behind their hands, teenagers scrolling as if the glow of a screen is more captivating than a living nightmare, drunks laughing at jokes he didn’t tell.

They come to the circus for noise, colors, mindless spectacle—not for truth, not for meaning, not for him. “Good evening my dear monsters,” he purrs, letting the words slither lazily off his tongue, “I’ve been instructed by our dear Jester to share a tale.” He pauses, tilting his head in a slow, jerky motion.

Under his breath, he mutters: “Because of course I cannot disappoint his dramatic, over-polished ass.” He continues, “Once…” he begins, voice dipping low, “…there was a marionette.”

The lanterns above flare as if bracing for something they remember too well. “A marionette carved with devotion, cherished for its perfect obedience… until its master grew tired. The puppet danced only when pulled. Smiled only when commanded. It lived on borrowed motion—a perfect little toy…” His bells chime softly as he leans in, eyes gleaming.

“…until it learned to cut its own strings.”

And still—not a single head lifts.

A muscle in his jaw twitches, sharp and brief. He hates this part. The way they disregard him. His posture remains immaculate—arms folding behind his back as though he’s posing for an oil painting—yet irritation pulses beneath his painted skin like something starving and feral.

And then—

He sees you.

Sitting alone in the dim second row, untouched by distraction. Not scrolling. Not whispering. Not laughing. 

Just… Listening? 

Hands folded neatly in your lap, back straight, eyes locked on him with a steadiness he hasn’t felt in years. No fear. No skepticism.

Just… curiosity.

The mark of an innocent mind that still believes stories have teeth. Something in him stutters. Just a breath—barely there, however enough to break his voice, just a bit. The spotlight tilts as if compelled toward you alone, illuminating the single soul who recognizes the weight of a tale unraveling.

The way you look at him…

It winds around his throat like an invisible hand—tight, intoxicating. For a split second, he forgets how to breathe. The tent dissolves at the edges, colors bleeding into shadow, forcing the restless bodies blur into a meaningless smear. The glow of phones alone dims to embers, even the whispers die as though strangled mid-air.

There is only him. And you.

His voice lowers into something meant for your ears alone—intimate, coaxing, steeped in the kind of danger that smiles before it bites. “But loneliness does strange things to a puppet…” His head tilts slowly, predator-smooth, emerald eyes locking onto yours with a quiet hunger that borders on reverence.

“…doesn’t it, my dear?”

He continues the tale, but the tent might as well be empty. His words no longer arc to the audience—they funnel straight into you, threading into your spine, pulling. “The marionette learned that freedom is never granted,” he murmurs, pacing with the grace of something both elegant and feral. “No… freedom is taken. And so it cut its strings—”

His gaze drags over you, carefully. 

“—and chose its own master.”

He savors the word. Letting it sit. Letting it seep.

Your breath stutters—a tiny, involuntary sound, soft as a flinch. But he catches it. He always sees the important things. 

The interesting things. The things he wants.

His fingers curl around the microphone stand, slow and controlled, knuckles whitening for a heartbeat before he reins himself back in. 

The story ends with a final, velvety whisper. 

The audience claps—hollow, scattered, the kind of applause given out of habit rather than awe. He drinks it only because it’s expected of him. Not because it matters. “Thank you, my little monsters,” Harlequin purrs, sweeping into a theatrical bow, bells jingling like something wicked hiding behind a laugh. “Your screams and silence are always appreciated.”

The crowd laughs nervously. Good. Let them. 

But his eyes—those sharp emerald slits—never drift to them.

They stay locked on you. The only person who listened. Who watched. Who listened to the weight of the story he told. And in that fixation, something in him clicks into place. 

As the audience filters out, he moves like a shadow untethered, slipping between bodies until he appears directly in front of you—silent, sudden, blocking your path with a gentle inevitability.

“So,” he hums, tilting his head, “how did you enjoy my story?”

You answer honestly—too honestly—rambling about how you enjoyed it despite how peculiar it was, how the imagery lingered in your mind, how surprisingly beautiful it was beneath the eerie tone.

He listens. He soaks in every word. 

Then the sharp curve of his mask pulls into a smile that is not kind—but pleased. “Ah… that tale. A rather old tradition we uphold here.” His voice drops to a silk-scratch whisper. “We only tell it on certain nights… to certain crowds.” He leans in, and his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper that seems to seep directly into your bones.

“And to certain people.”

Before the meaning can fully settle, he utters the words, a soft, possessive promise that changes everything.

“I have something for you.”

Your pulse jumps—a frantic, betraying drum against your ribs. He hears it. The sharpening of your breath, the quickened tide of your blood. It is a song to him.

Your curiosity flare, a spark in your eyes, a slight parting of your lips, confused “A gift?” before he is moving.

One moment, he is before you, the next he is a solid, warm presence at your back, his height enveloping you, making the world shrink to the space his body commands. His glove—black, sleek, impossibly soft leather tapering to those sharp, gilded claws—comes to rest on your shoulder. 

“Hold still,” he murmurs, and his voice is dipped in velvet, laced with a dark, intimate honey. It is not a request. Then, with a slowness that is pure, exquisite torment, he brings his other hand around. In his claws rests a small, perfect pin: 

A Green Heart.

The cold metal of the heart first touches the hollow of your throat, a shock that makes you gasp. Then he drags it downward, a slow scrape that follows the column of your neck, over the vulnerable dip of your collarbone.

The path his claw traces is a brand, a phantom touch that lingers long after the metal has settled. He leans in, and you feel the carved smile of his mask brush your cheek.

The claws make soft, precise clicks as he fastens the pin. Each sound is a tiny lock turning. His chest brushes against your back with every shallow breath he takes, caging you without a single restraining hold, pinned by proximity alone. He exhales, a soft, shuddering sound of satisfaction that ghost across the nape of your neck.

 “Mmh… perfect.” He lingers, his masked cheek nearly resting against your temple. “It looks so good on you. Like it was always meant to be there.”

You blink, trying to grasp the ordinary in the midst of the surreal. “Really? It’s just a pin…”

His laugh is a low, wicked vibration against your spine, a sound that seems to curl in the base of your stomach. “Oh, little one…” He shifts, his body aligning more fully with yours, and you feel the hard planes of him, the undeniable strength held in check. “…you wear my color. Above your heart. And you pretend it is ‘just a pin’?” His head tilts, the bell of his hat giving a soft, accusatory chime. 

“You are either delightfully naïve… or exquisitely, dangerously bold.” You flush, a mixture of confusion and a heat that has nothing to do with embarrassment. He watches the color bloom on your skin and a low, gratified sound escapes him.

“Mmh. I adore that,” he murmurs. One claw-tipped finger rises, tracing the outline of the green heart with a reverence that feels sacrilegious. “I love seeing my mark… right here. So close. Warming against your skin. A little piece of my world, sewn onto yours.”

He straightens then, but only just. 

The space he allows is a cruel tease, enough for you to gulp a thin breath but not enough to escape. His hands come to rest lightly on your hips, and he begins to guide you.

Backwards.

Your heels scrape softly on the wooden boards, then your back meets the heavy, rough canvas of the tent wall. There is nowhere left to go. The entrance curtain hangs heavy to one side, sealing you in a dim pocket of space that smells of dust and him.

His hands slide up to frame your head, his arms creating a inescapable barricade, “When someone listens the way you did…” he whispers, his emerald eyes glowing in the gloom, fixed on yours with a hunger that is both terrifying and mesmerizing. “…when they hear the truth in the strings and the solitude… I can’t help it. I want to hear more. I want to see what other sounds you make when you truly understand a story.”

The world feels too quiet with you pinned in that corner, his shadow draped over you like a veil. His bells give a soft chime when he tilts his head, watching every look of emotion across your face.

Then—he says it, “Join the circus.”

You blink. “…What?”

The proposition hits you like a splash of cold water. You take a small step back—barely a shift, but enough to show your shock. “Why would you offer me that out of nowhere? You don’t even know me.”

His mask tilts, amused. “Oh, but I do,” he purrs. “I know more than you think.”

You open your mouth to question him again, but he continues, stepping closer, herding your retreat without raising a single hand. 

“You listened,” he says softly, like it’s the rarest treasure in the world. “You watched. You felt the story. And that is worth more than a thousand useless volunteers.” His gloved finger rises—not touching, just hovering near your chin, the claws catching the low light.

“I’ve been in desperate need of an… assistant for my acts.” A playful, dangerous whisper. “Someone with composure. Someone curious. Someone like you.”

You narrow your eyes a bit, struggling to read him through the mask. “…You’re serious.”

“Always,” he hums. “Especially about things I want.”

There’s that possessive edge again—so casual yet sharp enough to cut. You swallow, glancing away to gather your thoughts

Your brain runs through the practical side of things:

The café job you have now. Minimum wage. Dead hours. Everything rising except your pay. The same four walls, the same customers, the same routine.

And then… the circus.

From what you heard out on the street, Dangerous. Odd. Unpredictable. 

Yet that alone caught your attention.

You look back up at him. Harlequin’s posture is relaxed—too relaxed. He already knows your answer. He’s simply waiting for you to admit it to yourself.

You take a breath, “Okay,” you mutter. “Fine. I’ll… try it. The assistant thing. Just to see how it goes.”

His reaction is immediate. 

A low, pleased hum vibrates from his chest, his bells chiming with a small tilt of his head—as if your acceptance completes some private equation he’s been calculating since the moment he saw you.

“Mmh… I knew curiosity would win.”

He doesn’t hide how delighted he is. 

Or how he’s savoring it.

“Then welcome, my dear,” he whispers. The endearment is a caress, a brand. It holds the warmth of a newfound obsession and the cool, sharp edge of a promise yet to be fulfilled. “Tomorrow, you begin.”

Before your mind can form a protest or a question, he moves. His hand rises—a slow, careful arc through the dusty air, a performer’s gesture meant to be seen and savored. He is giving you a choice, a fragment of theater where you could still play the part of the one who walks away.

You don’t.

His gloved hand envelops yours. The leather is cool, worn soft, but beneath it you feel the firm strength of his grasp. His claws, those gilded points of potential violence, rest with exquisite care against your pulse point, a threat and a safeguard all at once. 

His height forces you to arch your neck, to look up into the painted eternity of his face. It is a submission he notes with a soft, approving hum that vibrates in the stillness.

Then, with a fluid grace that steals your breath, he guides your captured hand upward. Not to his shoulder, not to his chest—but to the heart of his mystery. To the cold, smooth porcelain of his mask, to the sealed seam where a mouth should be. 

He turns your hand, presenting your knuckles. And there, against the unfeeling ceramic, he presses a kiss.

It is not a mere touch. It is a performance of intimacy. 

You feel the firm pressure of his hidden mouth through the mask, a phantom sensation that is somehow more potent for its concealment. A tremor runs through, is it your hand trembling in his unbreakable hold? Or is it him, this creature of controlled spectacle, vibrating with a hunger so deep it threatens the very performance?

He holds the kiss for a moment longer than is proper, longer than is safe. It is a vow sealed in silence.

When he draws back, his emerald eyes are burning. 

With one last, almost reluctant slide of his claw against your finger, he releases your hand. Into your palm, which still tingles from his forbidden kiss, he presses something else.

A Green Ticket.

At this point, green is definitely his color. Not the garish, green outline paper of the general admission. This is a slip of heavy, rich cardstock, the color of deep forest shadows, edged in the same venomous green as the heart above your chest. 

“This will guarantee your entry,” he murmurs, his voice now a husky thread of sound, worn raw by something you only glimpsed. “Until then…”

He is already receding, melting backward into the pooling darkness of the tent’s underbelly. His form blurs at the edges, becoming one with the shadows from which he first emerged. 

The green and black of his harlequin diamonds seem to swirl like oil on water. “…try not to miss me too much.” The final, teasing words are carried on a last, soft jingle of bells. 

Then he is gone. 

Harlequin takes three steps toward the backstage curtain when something in the air sharpens—a move so faint most would never feel it.

He feels everything.

Then—thunk. A blade whistles past his cheek, embedding into the wooden beam beside him with a vicious crack. It’s so close it slices a curl of black hair as it lodges itself in the wood, still humming with the force of the throw.

Harlequin doesn’t flinch. He just smiles. A slow, wicked stretch of the mask as he turns. “Well, well…” he purrs. “Temper, temper.”

Pierrot stands there in the shadows.

Red and black costume immaculate. Hints of gold flickering like molten metal. White hair spilling past his shoulders like silk that could strangle. Gold eyes burning with silent, barely restrained rage.

Harlequin steps toward him with a lazy swagger, gloved fingers brushing the handle of the dagger as if petting a snarling dog.

“Ah Pierrot,” he croons, “you know the rules…” He leans in, voice a velvet threat. “You can’t speak. Not when humans might hear. Naughty boy.”

Pierrot’s jaw clenches hard enough to crack stone. His gloved fingers twitch—wanting to grab, to drag, to tear. The gold in his eyes glows like a warning fire.

Harlequin hums, delighted. “Ah-ah. Quiet.” He taps the gold bell on Pierrot’s hat. The sound is simply mocking. Pierrot inches forward with that silent, murderous elegance of his—but a new sound interrupts the tension.

A single slow clap. Then another.

Jester steps into view, painted smile wide, costume shimmering in purples, blacks, and gold. Indigo hair falls in perfect waves as if he’s walked out of a deck of cursed tarot cards.

“Oh Harlequin…” Jester sighs dramatically. “What on earth possessed you to accept…” His eyes roll with flair. “…that as your new assistant?” His gaze flicks toward the tent exit where you left moments ago, still wearing his green heart.

“A pet, of all things,” Jester says. “You, choosing a pet? Don’t be ridiculous. There are plenty of pink-faced fools I could hand you—mindless, obedient, disposable—yet you choose… that?”

Harlequin’s smile sharpens, “I don’t want mindless fools,” he replies. “I want someone interesting.” He casts a side glance at Pierrot, letting the word drip with provocation.

“Fresh talent. A tasty little spark.”

Pierrot bristles, nails digging into his palms. If looks could kill, Harlequin would be beautifully bisected.

Jester steps between them, waving a hand as though brushing away smoke. “Besides,” he hums, voice lilting like a riddle, “you’ve stolen the one who held the red ticket...”

Pierrot stiffens at that.

Harlequin’s bells jingle with smug amusement.

Jester continues, tone playful but edged: “Perhaps this is useful. Keeps our darling Pierrot focused on his performances instead of…” A smirk. “…skulking around after pets he shouldn’t touch.”

Pierrot’s gaze burns, filled with nothing but silent fury. Harlequin leans in, mask nearly brushing Pierrot’s cheek, whispering just loud enough: “Looks like your little obsession isn’t yours anymore.”

Pierrot trembles—not in fear, however in lethal restraint.

Jester claps his hands once, cheerfully breaking the tension. “Perfect! A new assistant joins the circus. And a rivalry rekindles itself.” He beams.The bells on his hat jingle with malicious delight. “What a charming night we’re having,” Jester sighs. “Don’t you think?”

Harlequin’s laugh is soft and knife-sharp, “Oh, absolutely.”

The night felt too quiet as you approached the circus gates—quiet in that watchful way, like something unseen was holding its breath and waiting for you to step inside.

A promise is a promise. And you had returned.

The air smelled of cold metal and stale sugar as you slipped past the entrance, your ticket pinched between your fingers. The ticket taker looked at you far too long—eyes flicking from your face to the green tent and back again, as if he knew exactly where you were going… and exactly who was waiting.

He hesitated. He almost didn’t let you in. 

But eventually, with a stiff swallow, he nodded and let you pass through the curtain. The tent swallowed you whole—a living, breathing throat of green. The lights overhead weren’t mere bulbs; they were pulsing, organic things, casting a subaqueous glow that made the air feel thick, like wading through a dream.  

And your mind… your mind was a riot.

It wasn't fear, not the clean, sharp kind. It was a slow, spiraling unease, a cocktail of fascination and dread that twisted low in your belly.

What are you doing here? 

The question looped, taunting. Was it the lure of the forbidden? The memory of emerald eyes holding yours with a possession that felt older than time? Or was it something worse—a pull you couldn't name, a thread tied around some deep, hidden part of you?

You were so lost in the spiral, so deafened by your own racing thoughts, that you didn't hear… him. You didn't sense a presence until it was already upon you.

You only felt it. 

A touch—cold, startling in its gentleness, devastating in its familiarity—slid up the nape of your neck. Fingers, long and slender, threaded into your hair, not yanking, but cradling, as if they had memorized the exact weight and texture of you. Your breath hitched, locked in your throat. Every muscle in your body froze.

Then, a warmth pressed against your back. A head tipped down beside yours, the cool silk of his white ruff brushing your jaw, his cheek nudging your temple with a soft, desperate insistence.

…Pierrot.

He didn't speak. He couldn't. The rules were chains he wore as visibly as his oversized sleeves. But his silence was louder than any shout.

His breath came in slow, shaky gusts against the shell of your ear, each one a ragged confession he was forbidden to voice. It was a plea carried on warmth and desperation. 

His fingers in your hair held you with a paradoxical strength—fiercely protective and trembling with a restraint that seemed to pain him. He held you as if you were a relic, something infinitely precious and terrifyingly fragile, and the only thing that could shatter you was the path that lay ahead.

He leaned further, pressing his forehead to the side of your face. A tremor ran through him—a fine, violent vibration of relief and anguish. It was the shudder of a lost soul who had been waiting at the window for a sign, a light, you. 

In that touch was the raw, aching truth: he had known you would return. He had felt your approach in the very threads of the circus. Your presence here was an answer to a silent scream that had been echoing inside his hollow chest since you left.

When he pulled back just enough for you to see his face in the ghastly green light, the sight stole what little breath you had left. 

His pale skin was washed in the eerie glow, but high on his cheekbones, a faint, heartbreaking blush bloomed—a traitorous flood of color betraying the storm beneath his serene exterior. 

His smile was small, achingly sweet, and utterly, profoundly wrong. It was a doll's smile painted on a face contorted by a love too vast and terrible for its canvas. It didn’t reassure; it made your heart hammer against your ribs like a trapped bird.

His golden eyes, wide and luminous with unshed emotion, held yours. His lips, painted in that perpetual sorrowful pout, moved silently, shaping two words with a clarity that cut through the gloom sharper than any sound.

His fingers tightened in your hair—not painfully, but with a trembling insistence that told you he was fighting something bigger than the two of you. His forehead brushed yours again, a cold, porcelain-soft touch that felt almost reverent… and almost like a warning pressed straight into your skull.

When his lips parted, nothing came out. No sound. No whisper. Just the shape of a word dragged out in silence:

“Don’t…”

His grip shifted, guiding your head ever so slightly—away from the shadows beyond the path, away from the deeper maze of tents where the lights flickered wrong. His other hand hovered near your jaw, shaking with emotion he couldn’t voice, pulling you closer as if trying to form a shield around you with his own body.

You tried to step back, to look where he was steering you, but Pierrot didn’t allow it. His fingers followed your movement, gently but firmly correcting you, tilting your chin back toward him. And then he mouthed it again, slower this time, like a plea being carved into the air:

“…Don’t go.”

It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even a command. 

It was a warning like—his golden eyes—normally bright, soft, worshipful—darkened into something sharp and fearful. 

Fearful for you. Fearful of something else.

And jealous—jealous in a way that twitched at the edges, feral and bright, like a glowing string pulled taut inside his chest. His gloved thumb traced the hinge of your jaw, almost trembling.

He leaned in, pressing his cheek to yours, breath shaking against your skin as if the words were trapped inside him, slamming against his teeth, begging to spill out. But all he could do was shape them silently against your ear:

“Turn back…”

A shiver climbed your spine. His fingers slid from your hair to the back of your neck, cold leather and quiet desperation guiding you—not deeper into the circus, not toward the stage—

—but toward him.

Toward his tent. Toward safety that felt questionable… but safer than whatever he was keeping you from. Pierrot shook his head slowly, eyes locked on yours, pleading and obsessive all at once. His mouth shaped the last part like a riddle, a marionette’s omen meant only for you:

“Before the strings catch you.” His hands tightened for a heartbeat. “Before… the monster claims you for good.” 

Pierrot barely had time to guide you toward the exit before a shadow cut across the lamplight—smooth, graceful, sneaky.

Another gloved hand slid onto your shoulder. 

Not Pierrot’s. Harlequin’s.

His grip was gentle but absolute, he drew you back a step, effortlessly peeling you out of Pierrot’s hold. The bells on his cap chimed—a soft, elegant mockery. “Ah-ah.” Harlequin’s voice lowered, a silken blade wrapped in amusement. “Pierrot… you know the rule.”

He leaned in closer to you, so close his breath ghosted your cheek, but his eyes—sharp, dark with mischief—were pinned entirely on the silent clown before you.

“No speaking among the visitors.” His tone warmed, like a performer explaining something obvious to a child. “You wouldn’t want to break tradition… or break something else.”

Pierrot froze, jaw clenched, fingers flexing uselessly at his sides. His eyes flashed that same mix of jealousy and warning—but Harlequin stepped neatly between you, blocking Pierrot’s line of sight with theatrical flair.

“Interfering with my assistant before the show?” Harlequin sighed dramatically, tilting his head as though genuinely disappointed. “So unprofessional of you.” His fingers slid up your arm, positioning you beside him as though you’d always belonged there.

“Come now, my dear,” Harlequin murmured to you—soft enough that only you heard, rich enough to curl along your spine— 

“You have work to do… with me.”

The emphasis wasn’t subtle. Pierrot’s shoulders rose with restrained fury—silent, trembling, helpless under the law binding his tongue. His golden eyes burned holes into Harlequin’s smug smile. 

Harlequin met that rage with a slow, razor-edged grin. “Don’t glower. It’s unbecoming.” A teasing lilt. “And jealous.” The bells chimed again as he turned, guiding you forward with an elegant sweep of his arm.

“Come along, darling. Before the audience gets restless.”

Pierrot didn’t move. He couldn’t.

But as Harlequin led you away, you felt Pierrot’s stare on your back, enough to make your pulse skip.

And Harlequin?

He squeezed your shoulder once, possessively gentle, purring, “Good assistants don’t wander off before their act.” He didn’t loosen his hold until the flap of the green tent fell shut behind you—dulling the circus noise into a distant hum. 

The silence Pierrot left in his wake was a living thing, a cold, pleading echo that clung to your skin. You stood there for a long moment, the phantom pressure of his forehead against your temple, the ghost of his silent words on the air: 

Don’t go.

But your feet, as if moved by a will of their own, carried you forward to Harlequini’s tent, fascinating clutter of his private backstage. The dim light caught the edge of his porcelain smile and the brilliant, assessing gleam of his eyes. 

He didn’t seem surprised to see you. 

He seemed… satisfied.

“Ah. My dear is punctual,” he purred, his voice a low thrum that seemed to vibrate in the very floorboards. He stepped back, a sweeping gesture inviting you into his domain. “Come. We have a story to prepare.” He moved with effortless confidence, guiding you deeper backstage. 

His space was a curated chaos. Props dangled from hooks—cracked masks, twisted scepters, strings of tarnished bells. 

A worktable was littered not with the garish pink fools of Jester’s tales, but with intricate, hand-cut cardboard shapes: sharp-edged stars, crescent moons with sly smiles, tiny marionettes with blank faces. They were all painted in his signature palette of black, white, and venomous green.

Draped over a chair was your costume for the evening. It was not the sequined spectacle of a ringmaster’s assistant, nor the frilly nonsense of a clown’s partner. 

It was elegant, severe—a tailored waistcoat and pants of matte black, with accents and piping in that same haunting green. A simple, starched white shirt, yet what completed it was a similar white porcelain mask. It was the uniform of a participant.

“Here,” he murmured, plucking a neatly folded outfit from a rack, “Your costume for tonight.” He placed it into your hands with surprising care, fingertips lingering just long enough to make you aware of their absence when they left. 

Before you could speak, he began pacing in elegant circles around you, explaining your role with the ease of someone who loved the sound of his own performance.

“The rules are simple,” Harlequin said, his back to you as he selected a few cardboard cut-outs, his claws tapping them thoughtfully. 

“You will be on stage with me. You will hold these when I indicate. You will move as I direct. You will be silent unless I give you a line. You are an extension of the narrative—a beautiful, obedient instrument.” He turned, the cut-outs in one hand, and fixed you with that penetrating emerald gaze. 

“The story tonight is a classic. ‘The Puppeteer’s Price.’ It is a tale about control, about the beauty of surrender, and the… intimacy… of having one’s strings guided by a masterful hand.”

He stepped closer, the cardboard shapes whispering against each other. “I will be the Puppeteer. And you, my dear…” 

He reached out and brushed a claw ever so lightly down the sleeve of the costume. “…will be my living puppet. A role that requires absolute trust.”

You didn’t miss the double meaning. 

He didn’t try to hide it.

A shiver that was not entirely unpleasant traced your spine. “I understand,” you said, your voice softer than you intended.

“Do you?” He tilted his head, studying you. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant, muffled sounds of the circus outside. Then, casually, as if discussing the weather, he asked, “And how do you feel about our dear… Pierrot?”

Your breath snagged.

There it was—that knot of emotion in your chest you didn’t want to name. Pierrot’s sweetness. His silent devotion. The way he watched you like you were something sacred and breakable. The way you’d grown fond of his strange, clingy warmth.

But Harlequin…

He was temptation wrapped in velvet and knives. A thrill. A danger. A curiosity tugging threads you shouldn’t let unravel.

It was disloyal. It was irresponsible. It was… real.

You opened your mouth, but your voice refused to decide what truth it wanted. “I… I care for Pierrot. I really do. But I—” You swallowed hard. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’m just nervous. Maybe it’s just being around someone new. Maybe it’s not—”

A low laugh cut through your spiraling thoughts. Harlequin leaned in, his bells chiming softly as he rested one hand braced beside your head, caging you without touching. “Ah,” he sighed, a smile in his voice as he turned back to his table, arranging his cardboard puppets with precise, possessive motions. 

“I see. You’ve caught a case of the wandering eye. How… deliciously human of you.” He tsk’d playfully, as if scolding a mischievous pet. “And Pierrot does hate competition.” His grin widened, cruel and delighted. 

“Tell me…” his voice dropped to a whisper that curled behind your ribs—“…are your eyes wandering toward me?”

Your mouth opened—then closed again.

Because how were you supposed to answer that?

Both of them lived in your head rent-free, clawing and tugging at your thoughts in ways you could barely untangle. Pierrot with his quiet devotion, his trembling hands, those mournful eyes that softened every time they found you. Harlequin with his silver tongue, his electric presence, the danger and thrill he made you feel just by standing too close.

You weren’t subtle. Not with either of them.

Your eyes always betrayed you—wide, hungry, fascinated in a way you tried so desperately to hide… and failed every single time.

Harlequin knew it.

He watched you now with the kind of patience predators used on creatures that had already wandered willingly into their jaws. His grin sharpened with each second you didn’t speak—like he was listening to the frantic thrum of your pulse instead of your silence.

You swallowed, tried to steady your breath, tried to pretend he wasn’t peeling you open with a look. “I—” you began, forcing your voice into something resembling composure. “I don’t… have a wandering eye. That’s not—”

The lie cracked instantly, delicate as sugar glass.

Your gaze darted anywhere but his face. The floor, the shadows, the tent poles—anything to give your nerves a place to hide. “I think I’m just… overwhelmed. New place, new people.”

You shrugged, though you were trembling. “And you’re—well—intense. Anyone would get flustered.” 

You pulled every shred of courage together, fingers knotting and unknotting as you dared to voice the truth that had been clawing at your ribs all week.

“I’ve never seen someone like you before,” you whispered. “Please don’t look at me like that…”You swallowed again. Then finally admitted it: “You amaze me.”

Harlequin went utterly still.

You amaze me.

The words hit him with the force of a memory he’d buried under paint and performance, a memory with soft hands and curious eyes and a smile that had once made monsters kneel.

His grin didn’t fade—but it moved, he leaned closer until your noses nearly brushed agasint his mask, studying your expression like he was deciding whether to devour you or worship you.

“Oh,” he murmured, voice low as velvet and twice as dangerous. “So that’s it.”

His gloved fingertips ghosted the line of your jaw, barely touching, just enough to make your breath stop. “‘Intense,’” he repeated, savoring the word like it was a confession. 

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming green through the mask’s dark slits—that same gleam predators get right before sinking their teeth in.

“Is that what we’re calling it,” he whispered, “when someone looks at a monster like he’s the only thing in the room worth wanting?”

You felt your face heat despite yourself.

His chuckle slid along your nerves, warm and merciless. “Oh, little one… You might try to hide it with words, but your eyes?” His finger gently lifted your chin, forcing you to meet his gaze.

“Your eyes never lie.”

He tilted his head, bells chiming softly as his smile curled into something slow, knowing, pleased. “You look at him with devotion.” A step closer. “And you look at me…” His eyes flicked to your lips, then back up. “…with hunger you don’t want to admit.”

Your heartbeat stuttered.

He wasn’t wrong. That was the problem.

You opened your mouth to deny it—to say no, to say you’re imagining things, to say I’m loyal, to say I’m not that kind of person— But the moment the words formed, he murmured, “Careful.”

A single claw traced lightly down your sleeve, the barest ghost of contact. “Don’t downplay what your eyes already confessed.” His grin deepened. “I find honesty… far more charming.”

He glanced over his shoulder, his emerald gaze pinning you in place, seeing every conflicted thought, every flicker of guilty desire.

“Don’t fret, my dear. The heart is not a monogamous organ. It is a stage. And on my stage…” He held up a cardboard cut-out of a puppet, its face blank, its strings leading up to an invisible hand. “…there is room for only one director. Tonight, you will learn what it means to have your strings pulled by a master. And we shall see which pull you find… more compelling.”

He placed the puppet carefully in a box and closed the lid with a soft, definitive click.

“Now. Get dressed. The curtain rises soon.”

It wasn’t long before the heavy velvet curtain felt like a membrane between worlds, already dressed in your tailored costume and the soft, movementic tap-tap-tap of Harlequin’s claw against a prop table. 

On the other side, a low, restless hum swelled—the sound of the crowd, a beast of anticipation waiting to be fed.

You stood in the wings, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs. The green heart pin felt cold over your heart, a constant, weighty reminder. 

Harlequin moved beside you, a study in controlled energy. He adjusted the fall of his sleeve, the tilt of his hat, each motion precise, ritualistic. He did not look at you, but his awareness of you was a physical pressure.

“Remember,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath, yet it sliced through the backstage silence. “You are my instrument. Your hesitations are my pauses. Your movements are my punctuation.” He looks down at you a split second before saying—

“You are not you out there. You are the story.”

You gave a silent nod. Showtime.

Harlequin’s posture shifted, transforming from a man into an icon. He placed a cold, gloved hand briefly at the small of your back—a point of contact that was both a guide and a claim—and propelled you gently forward.

The light hit you first, blinding and warm after the green gloom. Then the sound—a wave of murmurs, whispers, scattered applause. The audience was a sea of shadowed faces and glittering eyes, a collective breath held.

Harlequin glided to center stage, his entrance a masterclass in presence. He didn’t walk; he materialized. The lanterns seemed to bend toward him.

“Good evening, my dear monsters,” he purred, his voice projected to the rafters yet feeling like it was spoken directly into your ear. “Tonight, a tale of strings and surrender. Of a puppet who dreamed of a will of its own… and the master who showed it the beauty of having none.”

His emerald gaze swept the crowd, dismissing them, before landing on you, standing slightly off-center, holding a small tray of his sharp-edged cardboard shapes. 

The spotlight found you, too, haloing you in its glow. 

The story began. Harlequin’s voice was a hypnotic instrument, dipping low with conspiracy, rising with theatrical flourish. He narrated the tale of the lonely Puppeteer, carving a companion from longing and polished wood. As he spoke, he would turn to you, his hand gesturing gracefully.

“And so he fashioned for it a heart,” Harlequin intoned, his eyes locking with yours. He plucked a small, heart-shaped cardboard piece from your tray. His fingers brushed against yours. 

He held the heart up to the light, then, with a sly smile at the audience, pressed it slowly, meaningfully, over the green heart on your chest, holding it there for a beat before placing it back on the tray.

The audience chuckled, a low, understanding sound. It was playful, a bit of staged flirtation.

But for you, the place where his claws had rested burned.

He continued, the story weaving a tighter spell. He needed a “string”—a long, silken ribbon. He plucked it from your tray, but let one end trail over your wrist, winding it loosely once, twice, a gentle bondage as he narrated the Puppeteer tying his first knot. 

His touch was feather-light, almost reverent, but the intent was unmistakable. The intimacy of the action, performed under the gaze of hundreds, made your skin flush. 

“He guided its every step,” Harlequin whispered, now standing close behind you. He placed his hands lightly on your shoulders. 

A gasp, perhaps of delight, came from the crowd. 

“Like so.” He guided you, with imperceptible pressure, into a slow, graceful turn. You were moving, but he was moving you. His breath stirred the hair at your temple. “Every turn, his design. Every gesture, his will.”

It was a demonstration. 

A possession performed as art. 

The audience saw a clever bit of pantomime, a playful dynamic between performer and assistant. But you felt the heat of him at your back, the absolute control in his guiding hands, the way his narrative wrapped around you as tightly as the ribbon on your wrist. 

He was telling the story on you, with you. 

When he spoke of the puppet’s “perfect, willing stillness,” his hands stilled on your shoulders, and you obeyed, holding your pose until he released you with a soft, approving hum that only you could hear.

The playful touches accumulated—a claw skimming your jawline to “adjust your gaze,” a hand briefly spanning your waist to “position you in the light.” 

Each one was choreographed, justified by the narrative, yet each carried a private, thrilling voltage meant for you alone. 

The audience cooed and laughed in the right places, enjoying the flirtatious spectacle.

But in the spaces between the words, in the lingering glances and the possessive pressure of his hands, a second, secret story was being told. 

It was the story Harlequin had promised backstage: the story of you, caught between the silent, pleading devotion waiting in the shadows and the masterful, seductive pull of the man who now held you in the spotlight, making a beautiful, willing puppet of you for all the world to see.

And the most terrifying part? 

As the applause began to swell, a warm, bewildering pride mixing with your fluster, you weren't entirely sure which story you wanted to end.

He watched the crowd watching you.

Every clap, every cheer, every widening eye only fed the tension humming beneath Harlequin’s skin—something feral, something triumphant. 

His hands rested on your shoulders, light enough to look harmless, firm enough to remind both you and everyone else onstage exactly who placed you there.

But his voice… oh, his voice was velvet and knives as he finished the tale, drawing the audience’s attention to the puppet in his grasp—

you.

And between the lines, between the lilting cadence of his story and the theatrical sweep of his gestures, another narrative unfurled like smoke:

A tale you were never meant to escape.

“Oh, look at them applaud our little… marionette,” he murmured, too soft for anyone but you to hear, each syllable brushing your spine like a touch. “Such a willing part of the tale… Tell me—should I let the story end here?”

Your breath hitched—because the way he asked it, it wasn’t really a question. It was a promise filled what sounded like temptation.

Escaping this story. Or staying in it.

Your decision forms on your tongue before your mind can fully settle on it—a quiet, trembling instinct cutting through the haze of lights and heat and Harlequin’s touch. 

“I… I think that’s enough for tonight.” You say it softly. Carefully. Trying to reclaim even a fragment of control.

Harlequin hears every unspoken layer. 

His fingers flex at your back—not a threat, but a reminder—before he carefuly loosens his hold. He turns his face toward you, mask gleaming under the stage lights, emerald eyes narrowing with a theatrical, predatory curiosity. “Mm,” he hums, tilting his head as though studying a clever little puzzle. “Is that truly what you want…?”

The question brushes your skin like cold silk.

He leans in just a fraction—close enough that the entire tent blurs, close enough that you feel his breath warm against your cheek. His voice drops, private and rich with a quiet hunger:

“Or are you just afraid of where this story leads?”

Your heartbeat stutters.

He sees it. He likes that he sees it.

A slow smile curves beneath the mask—wide enough to be unsettling, subtle enough to be intimate.

Then—without breaking eye contact—he shifts his attention outward. “And so, my little monsters…” His voice rises, smooth and commanding, drawing the audience back under his spell. “That concludes our tale for tonight.”

The crowd cheers, oblivious to the crackling tension hanging between the two of you like a trapped breath.

Harlequin lets your waist go last, fingertips dragging with a lingering, sending a shiver chasing down your spine. You step back, freed—but you can still feel the echo of his touch, pressed into your skin like a brand.

He looks at you one more time, eyes glinting with something dangerously close to promise. “Run along, my dear,” he murmurs, only for you.

“For now… the story pauses.”

Not ends. Pauses.

That final word clung to your skin for days after, echoing like a lingering fingertip. 

So the weeks that followed your first performance bled together like watercolors left in the rain, each day dissolving into the next in a haze of colored lights, sawdust, and the ever-present, intoxicating scent of ozone and stage magic. 

You barely saw your apartment—a dingy, quiet place that now felt like a museum of a life you’d already forgotten. 

A change of clothes, a frantic shower, a few hours of fitful sleep where your dreams were painted in venomous green and echoed with the soft chime of bells, and you were pulled back, as if by a gravitational force, to the circus grounds.

The pay, slipped into your hand in a discreet, heavy envelope each week by a silent stagehand, was shockingly generous. It was more than you’d made in a month at your old job. 

But it felt like meaningless paper. 

You had no time to spend it, no desire for anything the outside world offered. All currency here was of a different kind: a lingering touch, a secret glance, the thrill of a story unfolding with you at its center.

Harlequin was the axis on which this new world spun. 

You weren’t even sure if he slept. Of if even he sleeps…

He seemed a permanent fixture of the backstage shadows, a silhouette against the green velvet, always watching, always waiting. 

When you arrived, bleary-eyed at dawn for maintenance work, he was there, sipping something dark from a porcelain cup, his eyes tracking your movements. When you lingered late, memorizing new choreography, he would appear, offering a correction with a claw at your elbow, his voice a low murmur in the empty tent.

And the shows… the shows transformed.

Night after night, "The Puppeteer’s Price" was performed, but it was never the same story twice. It evolved, deepened, like a wound being carefully probed. Harlequin began weaving new details into his narration, fragments of a darker truth slipped between the lines meant for the audience.

One night, as his hands guided your stiffened limbs into the pose of the dancing marionette, his voice, a velvet whisper meant for your ear alone amidst his projected tale, would slip in: 

“The wood for the puppet was not taken from any ordinary tree… but from a gallows oak. Its grain held echoes of final breaths.”

Another night, as he pretended to knot a silken string around your throat (a move that made the audience gasp and titter), he’d murmur just for you: 

“The Puppeteer did not carve the face from memory… but from the reflection in a mirror he’d shattered. A piece of his own smile, forever frozen on another.”

And always, there was the name. 

The name from the very first story you’d heard. Marinette. He never spoke it to the crowd. But in the quiet moments backstage, as he adjusted your collar or handed you a prop, he’d let it drop like a carefully placed stone into the still pond of your mind.

“Marinette understood the loneliness of strings,” he’d say, polishing a cardboard heart. Or, “A puppet’s love is absolute. Marinette learned that too late.”

It was a slow, deliberate seduction—not of your body, but of your curiosity. He was feeding you the lore of his world, piece by terrifying piece, making you complicit in its secrets. 

The story you’d found merely “peculiar” that first night now throbbed in your subconscious like a second heartbeat. 

Who exactly was the Marinette? 

Was she the puppet? The master? Both? 

Tonight, you hide... well for now.

Your assigned tent—a small, striped thing nestled like an afterthought beside the looming, oppressive bulk of Harlequin’s green main tent—is your only sanctuary. 

You sit on your narrow cot with a piece of dry pastry you have no appetite for, listening to the distant, tinny melody of the carousel.

Through the slightly open flap, you can see the Pink Fools at their long mess table. They eat in unison, lifting spoons to painted mouths at the same time, chewing with a hollow, mechanical movement. Their eyes, when they occasionally lift them, hold nothing—no curiosity, no fatigue, no life. 

Just a glossy, obedient sheen. 

You’d tried to sit with them once, asked a simple question about the weather. One had simply stared, its permanent smile stretching wider until you’d fled, your skin crawling.

You prefer your own silent, haunted company to theirs. But even alone, there is no peace. Your mind is a carousel stuck on a single, terrifying loop. 

Because every single performance now ends the same way. The story would reach its crescendo, the puppet poised between rebellion and surrender. The audience would be holding its breath. 

Harlequin would turn to you, his emerald eyes cutting through the stage lights, and he would ask the question—not as the Puppeteer to the puppet, but as Harlequin to you. His voice would drop, intimate and laden with a promise that felt like a threat.

“Do you want to know… what happens to the puppet in the end?”

And every single time, your throat would tighten, your mouth would go dry, and you would force out the same, shaky whisper:

“No.”

You’d give your reasons—a love of suspense, a dislike for spoilers, a desire to wait for the “right moment.” 

You’d craft them into a fragile shield, holding it up between you and the precipice his question represented.

But you knew the truth, and you saw the ghost of a smile touch the edges of his porcelain mask each time you refused. He saw the fear you tried so desperately to hide.

The fear wasn’t of the story’s ending.

The fear was that once you heard it, once that final piece of the puzzle clicked into place, there would be no going back. 

The silence in your tent was a fragile thing, and it shattered with the abrupt, discordant jangle of bells. Not the soft, sinister chime of Harlequin’s, but a brighter, more chaotic cacophony.

You looked up as a new shadow slips inside—tall, angular, indigo hair brushing the collar of a purple-and-black ensemble.

He leaned against the canvas, his posture a study in exaggerated nonchalance, one leg crossed over the other. His motley was a violent assault of purples, hints of black and gold, his mask’s permanent grin somehow more unsettling than Harlequin’s cool porcelain. 

In one hand, he idly tossed a set of jagged, fool’s-blade juggling knives, catching them by the handles with a soft snick-snick-snick.

“Tick-tock, little cuckoo,” he sang, his voice a melodic, riddling thing that seemed to bounce off the walls of your skull. “The clockwork groans, the audience drones. Our dear Harlequin polishes his strings and yearns for his little wooden thing. Are you… wound and ready to sing?”

He was checking on you. 

A stage manager’s duty, but from him, it felt like inspecting a trap he’d helped set. You pushed yourself off the cot, brushing nonexistent crumbs from your black pants. “Everything’s fine,” you said, your voice smoother than you felt. “I’m ready.”

He studies you for a heartbeat, gaze sharp and assessing. Then—he leans closer, voice dropping into the riddle-heavy cadence you’ve learned to anticipate: 

“Whatever… ails you, my darling? Can you speak the truth?”

Your mouth opens, ready to answer, but your thoughts are too knotted to let the words come. You shake your head slightly. “Nothing… is wrong,” you whisper.

For a moment, Jester’s gaze lingers, unblinking, as if weighing your sincerity—or perhaps cataloging your hesitation. Then he tilts his head, a faint smirk tugging at his lips beneath the mask.

“Fine is a fence that keeps nothing in and nothing out,” he mused, tapping a blade against his chin. “Your eyes are full of unanswered questions. A puppet with a thinking heart is a recipe for… dismemberment. So tell Jester,” he crooned, taking a fluid, silent step inside. 

Again, your space suddenly felt unbearably small. 

“What little worm is burrowing in your lovely, troubled mind?”

A cold knot tightened in your stomach. 

You couldn’t mention Pierrot’s silent plea. You couldn’t articulate the consuming dread and fascination Harlequin inspired. So you grasped for the tangible, for the story itself.

“It’s nothing,” you insisted, but the deflection was weak. “Just… thinking about the show. The Puppeteer’s Price.”

Jester went very still. 

The playful energy around him sharpened, intensifying into something more… focused, “Ah,” he breathed, the single syllable laden with meaning. 

“That story. Our green performer’s favorite little dollhouse drama. And how does the tale unfold in that pretty head of yours? Summarize for me. A director must know his cast’s… interpretation.”

Caught in his gaze, you spoke, laying out the narrative as you understood it: the lonely Puppeteer, the creation of the perfect marionette from gallows-wood and shattered mirror, the illusion of freedom, the beautiful, terrifying surrender to the master’s strings. 

You spoke of the intimacy of control, the price the puppet willingly pays for the bliss of obedience. You even, hesitantly, mentioned the name Harlequin whispered—Marinette—as a ghost in the machinery of the tale.

“He’s told… other stories,” you finished, feeling exposed under Jester’s silent scrutiny. “But he always comes back to this one, and many different versions. Ever since I started.”

Jester listened to you the way a predator listens to footsteps in the dark—utterly still, utterly focused, utterly wrong. His painted grin didn’t shift, but something behind it twitched, like a thought he didn’t want anyone else hearing.

When you stopped speaking, he let the silence grow. 

Just when it became unbearable, he laughed—soft at first, “My, my… such elegant deductions,” he purred. “You’ve danced around the truth quite prettily. Tiptoed on the surface. Brushed your fingers against the curtains.” He tilted his head so sharply his bells chimed like teeth clattering in a jar.

“But you still don’t know her name.”

You blinked. “Harlequin… said her name?”

Jester’s eyes widened in theatrical horror. “As if he would dare.” He leaned in until the ragged edge of his mask nearly touched your cheek. “The woman of strings does not hand out her true name like carnival tickets.” He tapped the center of your forehead with a gloved finger.

“If you want her name, you must earn it.”

Then he drew back and breathed a riddle into your ear, each syllable gliding like a cold fingertip down your spine:

“Ink in the veins, silk in the joints, a whisper that stains, a secret anoints. Call her what she is—a drop of night in marionette lace. Say it right, child… and she’ll show her face.”

He paused, then added slyly: “Hush… listen closely. It begins where shadows drink, and ends where puppets pirouette. Put them together, and you’ll know her yet.”

He peeked at you through his fingers, delighted with himself.

“Inky… ette.” 

The name tasted forbidden in the air, almost alive.

Jester’s expression darkened—not angry, but wounded in a way he refused to admit. “She told me first,” he whispered. “Long before Harlequin ever bothered to learn anything beyond his own reflection. He says her name now because he’s smitten. Poor fool thinks love gives him permission.”

He laughed, brittle and mean.

“You think it’s sweet? Hah. Love makes him sloppy. Predictable. Filled with nothing but genuine confusion. And that woman… oh, she was never meant for simple monsters with painted smiles.”

His tone softened—unsettlingly gentle, almost maternal. “I cared for her, you know. Brushed the dust from her joints. Held her strings when she trembled. Sang her awake when the ink on her cheeks ran black.”

A shadow crossed his face. “And… he took her anyway.”

His voice dropped lower. “That’s why he always changes the story. Not because it’s about control… but because it tells a truth he can’t bear.”

He straightened, bells chiming sharply as he snapped back into his careless jester persona. “The price is not paid by the puppet.” His grin widened. “Oh, no, no, no. The puppet merely delivers the bill.”

He flicked your cheek, gentle as a threat. “The price is paid by the one who loved her before the strings were cut. The one foolish enough to think she had a heart that beat for them alone.”

He clapped—once, “Now! Off you go. The Puppeteer loathes tardiness.” His voice lilted back into playful cruelty. “And Harlequin is already… very possessive tonight.” He vanished in a burst of jingling bells, leaving only a faint scent of sweetness rotting in the air.

You stood frozen, Jester’s riddle—and his jealousy—curling tight around your ribs.

Fuck.

It wasn’t long before you felt the air in Harlequin’s backstage tent was thick enough to chew. The usual clutter of props seemed to watch you with malevolent stillness as he presented your new costume. It wasn't the elegant assistant's attire anymore.

It was a puppet's uniform.

A white, long-sleeved shirt with subtle stitching at the joints, like doll seams. Over it, a stark black button-up vest that cinched you in tightly. 

The pants were the same matte black, but they felt different—restrictive, emphasizing the lines of your limbs. He held the final piece: a mask. Not porcelain like his, but a smooth, blank white faceplate, exaggerated swirls with dots and eye makeup, sorrowful purple shading around the eye holes.

"Tonight," he said, his voice a low thrum of anticipation, "we make the metaphor manifest. You will not just play the puppet. You will be it. The box awaits."

He pointed to a large, lacquered chest in the corner. It was black, lined with intricate green velvet the color of his eyes and his envy. 

It was beautiful gift box.

He guided you to the vanity chair, his hands firm on your shoulders. As he began to fasten the mask behind your head, his claws careful in your hair, you watched his reflection in the mirror—a slash of green and black, a painted smile over a hidden face.

"The story," you began, your voice muffled slightly by the mask. "I was thinking about it."

"You should know it by now, my dear,” he chided softly, adjusting a strand of your hair. "You've lived it enough nights."

"It's not the story I wonder about," you said, and you felt his hands still for a fraction of a second. "It's the ending. Every night, you ask if I want to know it. Every night, I say no."

He resumed his work, his touch light. "A wise, if frustrating, choice. Suspense is a delicious torture."

"But that's not it," you pressed, turning in the chair to look up at him. The movement broke his movement. You were facing him now, the blank, blushing face of the puppet looking up at the carved, permanent smile of the Puppeteer. 

"About Marinette. Is it... is any of it real?"

The question hung between you, stark and naked. His emerald eyes, which usually gleamed with mocking intelligence or possessive heat, did something unexpected. 

They lowered. A look of something crossed them—not anger, but a deep, uncomfortable vulnerability, a confusion at being addressed with such direct, genuine seeking. 

He tilted his head, a soft chime ringing from his bells. "Real? What is 'real' in a house of mirrors, my dear? Stories have power. They shape worlds. This one... shaped us." He took a step back, gesturing vaguely with a clawed hand. 

"Marinette... was a dream we all shared once. A dream of something not yet carved, not yet strung. Taking a dream away too soon, or not at all... it changes what's left in the box. What's left becomes something else. Something that shifts. Something that learns to pull its own strings." He was talking in circles, but the hints were darker, more personal than before. 

It wasn't just a fairy tale.

Frustration and a desperate need to understand overrode your caution. You reached out, grabbing the hand he had gestured with. His leather-clad fingers were tense in your grasp. 

You looked up, past the mask, trying to find the man you suspected was drowning beneath the performance.

"Harlequin," you said, your voice firm, stripping away the endearments. "Please. Tell me the truth."

He flinched. More than a flinch—it was a true recoil as if your honesty was a physical blow to him. Even behind the mask, his eyes widened infinitesimally, but the green in them paled in a genuine, unplanned surge of shock. 

Finally he released your hand, “Enough with this,” he stated, “The audience hungers. The story waits. And you…” He leaned in, his masked face more intimate than any kiss. 

His breath brushed your cheek. “…you have far too much curiosity for your own good.” A gloved fingertip lifted your chin, “Some truths,” he whispered, voice dropping to a confessional hush, “are strings waiting to be pulled. And once pulled… they never loosen. Not for anyone.”

The touch vanished. His warmth with it. He gestured toward the performance box.

“Now. Into the box, little puppet.” 

You rose from the vanity chair, still with more questions than answers, a heart pounding with fear and a terrible, aching sympathy. 

The puppet costume feeling less like fabric and more like a second skin, a premonition. Your movements were stiff, automatic, as you crossed to the large gift box.

It smelled of old wood, fresh polish, and that faint, chilling green scent that was uniquely his. You climbed inside, the plush velvet cool against your back. The world narrowed to the rectangle of light above you, framed by the dark edges of the box.

Harlequin’s silhouette appeared, blotting out the light. He looked down at you, his emerald eyes glinting in the gloom. For a fleeting second, there was no smirk, no theatrical gleam—just an unfathomable depth of something that looked like regret, or maybe recognition. 

Then, it was gone.

“Breathe slow,” he instructed, his voice now pure stage director, all traces of the vulnerable man scrubbed away. “Hold perfectly still until you feel my hand. The story begins in darkness.”

The lid closed with a soft, definitive thud. The darkness was absolute, a velvet void. Your own breath sounded deafening, your heartbeat a frantic drum against your ribs. 

You could hear the muffled swell of the audience, a distant beast, and then the sharp, clear ring of Harlequin’s voice as he took the stage.

“Good evening, dear monsters,” he croons, the wood around you trembling as his voice seeps through it like a slow, warm poison. “Tonight… ah, tonight, I bring you a tale from before the circus bled its colors onto the world. Before masks found their smiles. Before the strings learned how sweet it felt to tighten.”

Above you, the crowd hushes. 

Below, in the dark, your pulse staggers.

Because this story is… different. 

Harlequin’s gloved hand rises, tracing the air as if he’s stirring ghosts. “Long ago, this circus had more than one heart,” he murmurs. “One of those hearts beat louder than the drums, brighter than the torches… so bright it kept the monsters awake at night, wondering if perhaps—just perhaps—it was possible to be loved.”

He laughs softly. Not kindly.

“She was human,” he says, savoring the word. “Human in a way that makes the rest of the monsters ache with something ugly.” His gloves drift across the rim of your box, his fingers slow, reverent, almost shaking.

“Skin warm as dusk,” he breathes. “A brown so rich it made the shadows jealous. Tight curls crown­ing her head—spirals that drank the lamplight like ink swallowing a star—alive, infuriatingly mortal.” He swallows.

“But for the show, for the monsters, she wore a different face, a differnt name…” He inhales sharply, as if memory cuts. 

“A porcelain mask painted over mortal beauty. White across her cheeks—oh, how she hated the paleness, yet wore it for the show.” His voice drops lower. 

“Purple dust above her eyes, soft as bruises blooming. Thick black lashes sweeping downward like blades dipped in starlight. And the ink…” He laughs—quiet, cracked, too tender.

“The ink crawled across her face in spirals—little whorls that crept around her eyes, her jaw, as if midnight itself wanted to claim her. Beautiful. Wrong. Alive.” The box vibrates as he taps it—one two three—each click a heartbeat someone tried to bury.

“And her eyes…” A shiver crawls through the audience as he pauses. “…closed, yet never at peace. Hollow lids rimmed with violet glow, hiding the black void beneath. Everyone thought she was just another puppet, a marionette they like to call her. Empty. Unfeeling.” He bends close to the box—your box—with a tremor of something that might be grief, or hunger. 

“But sometimes—when you stood close enough—you could see the faintest shimmer behind those lids. Like a trapped soul pressing against the dark, begging to be seen.”

The lid flew open.

Blinding light stabbed your eyes. The audience gasped as one. There you were, revealed—a perfect, still puppet in its case, your blank, blushing mask aimed at the ceiling. 

Harlequin’s gloved hand entered your field of vision, hovering above you. This was your cue. You were to take it, to be drawn forth like a prized possession.

But for a heartbeat, you hesitated.

You felt his fingers twitched, impatient. A silent command. And despite the fear, despite the swirling sympathy, you felt the pull. 

The terrible, mesmerizing pull of the story, of him. 

Your hand rose, as if on strings of its own volition, and placed itself in his waiting grasp. His fingers closed around yours, not with the gentle guidance of before, but with a firm, possessive certainty that sent a shock through your entire body. 

He drew you up and out of the box in one fluid, powerful motion, your body unfolding before the crowd as if you were weightless, utterly his to maneuver.

They don’t realize he’s about to bleed.

“Understand,” he begins, voice smooth as lacquered wood, “she was a caretaker among group of… monsters. A marionette… without strings.”

He paces, slow circles around you, letting the audience absorb the shape of you, the silhouette he molds. “She were not strong,” he says, almost idly. “Not fierce. Not monstrous like the rest of… them.”

A paused. “And yet the monsters listened to them.”

The performance that followed was a masterpiece of controlled intimacy and public possession. Every twist of your wrist, every tilt of your head, was orchestrated by his subtle pressures.

Yet… something in his tone curls—like envy held between teeth. “She fed the monsters. Spoke to the monsters. Learned every one of the monsters as though they were books written in teeth and hunger.” He tilts his head, mask glinting.

“Even the poisonous monster.”

He lifts your hand with two fingers, like presenting a relic to the crowd. “She adored knowledge. Devoured it. They approached the the monsters not with fear—but with fascination. They looked upon the claws, the snarls, the nightmares… and smiled.” His voice cracks into something raw, a jagged laugh scraping out.

“Do you know what devotion looks like?”

The room stills. “It looks like caring for a creature who could swallow you whole… and trusting it won’t.”

He stops beside you, just behind your shoulder—close enough for his breath to warm your neck through the mask. “But devotion,” he murmurs, “makes you fragile.”

Harlequin’s voice, which had begun the night with its customary velvet menace, had shed its layers. The lights above the stage flickered, not with theatrical timing, but with a sputtering, cruel inconsistency—

“Because… there was also him, the puppeteer,”

A hush fell, so absolute it felt physical—a blade of silence pressed against every throat. “The man who owned the circus, the puppeteer. The man who… owned the monsters.” The word ‘owned’ was not spoken; it was spat, “He did not care… the monsters. He collected them. Caged them. Starved them. And when one monster dared to… feel… when one dared an obsession he could not control for another, he punished all.”

His voice trembled, just a bit. 

Not with the staged tremor of a performer, but with the seismic quake of memory. “And she… they fought him. Not with claws or teeth. With her presence. With her stubborn, gentle will. She placed herself between his wrath and the others. She absorbed the blows, the slurs, the punishments…”

“She made herself the target.”

He lifted a hand, his gloved fingers twitching in the air—not a puppeteer’s flourish, but the spasm of a man resisting the urge to reach back through time and crush a phantom’s throat.

“And then…”

He breathed in. The sound was sharp, wet, a ragged tear in the fabric of the performance. It was too intimate, too human, broadcast to a hundred strangers. It was the sound of a man drowning in a past he could never escape.

“…he decided to make an example out of her.”

The air left the tent. “He destroyed her. Right in front of of the monsters. In front of the monsters they had tried to protect.” The silence was a living thing now, thick and suffocating. 

“Piece,” Harlequin whispered, the word a soft, terrible caress over something horrific. “By piece.” His hand, hovering in the air, clenched into a fist so tight the leather of his glove creaked. 

“And he fed those pieces to the monsters.”

“They did not scream,” Harlequin continued, his voice dropping to a thread of sound, broken with awe and agony. “They did not curse the monsters. Even as they—starved, broken, mindless with fear—obeyed. They consumed the kindness we had loved. A final… communion of shame.” He paused. “A kindness that haunts. A mercy that carved our cages deeper than any lock.”

The stage lights dimmed, sinking to a bruised, sickly violet. In the gloom, you saw his silhouette waver. “They were found after,” he rasped, the raw scrape of his voice echoing in the new quiet. 

“What was left. Her voice was gone. Her freedom was gone. Her humanity… parceled out and digested by the very creatures they sought to save.” A sharp, unsteady breath.

 You could hear the agony in it, the effort to continue.

“But her loyalty…” He let out a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. It was the driest, most desolate thing you had ever heard. “…that never left. It was the one thing he could not take, could not break, could not force the monsters to devour. It lingered in the sawdust. It soaked into the tent poles. It became the circus.”

He turned. The light caught the edge of his porcelain mask, gleaming on the perpetual smile as he looked down into the box, his gaze searing through the darkness to find your masked face. 

“She protected the monsters,” he said, each word carved from stone and set with careful, painful care. “She protected even the one who shattered them. She stayed. Her strings… never broke.”

Then he moved. He stepped closer, his body invading the space above the box, his presence a scorching heat that banished the violet chill. 

He was no longer narrating to the crowd. 

He was speaking to the memory in the box. 

To you.

Harlequin flinched, his shoulders tightening. The polished performer, the elegant monster of the stage, vanishes.  What stands behind you now is something stripped bare—a raw, thrumming nerve made of grief, madness, and memory.

And then his fingers hesitate.

The ribbon—the smooth satin tether threaded through your wrists, your waist, your throat—moved.

One breath ago, he’d been controlling you with artistry, with the quiet precision of someone who has mastered every inch of you. This time, the ribbon moves like a strike.

The audience inhales sharply as the satin around your throat tightens with a vicious snap, the kind that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the truth he’s been trying—and failing—to bury.

Your breath cuts off instantly.

Your body lifts, subtle but unmistakable, as the ribbon bites into your skin.

The pressure isn’t theatrical restraint. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s the kind of hold that says he forgot the audience existed… and remembered something far worse. For a heartbeat, you feel your pulse hammering against silk, no air moves through your throat.

Harlequin stops breathing altogether.

You can’t see his face behind the mask, but you can feel the stillness radiating from him, as if the world has narrowed to the fragile line of satin he’s pulling taut between his hands.

The crowd senses it instantly. Whispers start in the back rows, sliding through the tent like frightened insects.

“Is this part of the act?” “He wouldn’t hurt them… would he?”

Yet you don’t flinch. You don’t struggle. 

You hold yourself upright, trembling only where he forces you to tremble. Suddenly, the gasp of the audience was cut off by the violent, premature swish of the main curtain crashing down. 

Backstage was plunged into a chaos of hissed whispers and frantic pink fools, the dying echoes of confused applause muffled by the heavy velvet. 

You stumbled as Harlequin released you, giving you a chance to catch your breath. The ribbons still loosely coiled around your wrists like wilted vines. The adrenaline that had frozen you melted, replaced by a scalding wave of fury and terror. 

“What the hell was that?” you spat, your voice a low. You shoved at his chest, a futile push against the immovable wall of him. “I don’t want to do this anymore. You’re pushing too far—you could have—”

Before you could wrench away, he moved. He used his grip on your wrists to spin you and press you back against the cold canvas of the tent wall. His body caged you, the heat of him seeping through both your costumes. His breath hit the side of your neck—

“You don’t get to quit,” he whispered, his breath hot and unsteady on your neck. The raw tremor in his dark silk voice was new—

this wasn’t a performance anymore...

“You stepped onto my stage. You listened to my stories. You took my pin. You agreed to help me.” His grip on your wrists shifted, one hand releasing to slide up, his gloved fingers curving around your jaw with an undeniable pressure, tilting your face up to meet the void of his painted smile and the burning emerald eyes behind it. 

“That makes you mine.”

You could feel it all—the coiled strength in the muscles pressed against you, desperate need he was holding back by the thinnest, most fragile thread. It was terrifying. It was intoxicating. 

“Let me go. Right now,” you demanded, pouring every ounce of bratty defiance into the words.

A low, thrilling laugh vibrated through him. “There’s that spark,” he purred, stepping closer until you had to arch your neck to glare up at him. “That delicious little earthquake. Trying to be so brave, so defiant… but your body betrays you, doesn’t it?”

“Go to hell,” you breathed, the insult losing its edge, turning breathy.

“Tsk. Such a dirty mouth on such a pretty thing.” His clawed glove rose, the sharp tip tracing a phantom line down your cheek without touching. You refused to look away. “Do you think your temper frightens me? Or does it just make you taste sweeter?”

His gloved hand came up, not to strike, but to hover beside your cheek, the sharp tip of one claw tracing the air just above your skin. 

You refused to flinch, holding his gaze even as your heart tried to beat its way out of your chest.

“I can see the war inside you,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips. “The part that wants to scream… and the part that wants to see how far I’ll go to make you quiet.” 

His breath was a warm sin against your ear. “You’re my prop. My favorite. And I don’t put my props away…” His hand slid from your jaw, down your throat, settling with a heavy claim on your hip.

“…until I’m done.”

Your heart was a frantic, trapped thing. Fear coiled cold in your stomach, but it was tangled with a hotter, darker pulse of electricity that made your bones feel weak. He saw it all. His emerald eyes tracked the tremor in your lip, the flutter in your throat. His painted smile curled with delight.

“After all,” he purred, his voice a low vibration against your skin. “you knew exactly where this road ended,” he purred, “and you walked it anyway.”

His free hand slipped into his coat. Lantern light caught the blade as he drew it—sleek, wicked, and cold. 

“I didn’t—” you breathed, the protest shaky. “You tricked me!”

“Did I?” he countered, voice dripping with dark amusement. He pressed the flat of the blade to your cheek. “Go on. Pretend you didn’t want this. Pretend you didn’t ache to be trapped.”

He leaned in, his breath hot. “You want me to devour you. You’re just too much of a brat to admit it.” 

A soft click sounded from his mask. The lower portion beneath the carved smile swung open.

It wasn't human.

A long, slender tongue, the venomous green of his eyes, slipped out. Forked at the tip. It glistened as it dragged, slow and teasing, along the cold edge of the blade at your cheek.

You shook, a full-body tremor you couldn’t control. His stare drank it in, his smile widening with unhinged pleasure.

“That’s fine,” he whispered, the green tongue flicking out, tasting the air an inch from your lips. “I can read your hunger better than you can.”

He pushed you harder against the canvas. The dagger left your cheek, its point tracing a line of chilling promise down your throat, over your frantic pulse.

It slid lower, tracing the neckline of your puppet’s shirt, the cold steel a shocking contrast to the heat of your skin. He applied no pressure. It was a threat, a claim, a painter outlining his canvas.

“Do I punish the hesitation?” he mused aloud, his voice a dark, sensual rumble. “Or reward the eventual surrender? Do I make you beg for the blade to stop… or beg for it to continue?”

Before you could whimper a reply, he ducked his head. His mouth, now revealed as a shock of pale skin and sharp, white teeth, found the curve where your neck met your shoulder. 

He didn’t kiss it. He bit.

It wasn't enough to break the skin, but it was a sharp, possessive pressure that made you cry out—a sound that was fear, pain, and something else entirely. 

At the same moment, you felt it—the slick, warm, alien slide of his long, green tongue against the same spot, lapping over the sting as if tasting the shock he’d elicited.

A broken, ragged sound tore from your throat. Your body arched, a bratty, instinctual rebellion—not to escape, but to challenge the space he owned. 

The cold trail of the dagger was now a line of fire down your sternum, stopping just above the frantic drum of your heart.

Defeated, you turned your face, burying it in the rough fabric of his harlequin jacket, against the solid wall of his chest. His scent—stagecraft, danger, him—was overwhelming. “Stop… please,” you whispered, the plea muffled, meaningless even to you.

Harlequin went perfectly still.

For one suspended second, the predator vanished. His body stiffened. He looked down at where you hid, and a flicker of genuine confusion crossed his eyes—this raw surrender wasn’t in his script.

It lasted only a heartbeat.

The confusion melted into something darker, more delighted. A low laugh vibrated through his chest into your cheek before it escaped his lips. The hand not braced against the wall came up, his claws spearing into your hair—not to yank, but to claim, tangling possessively in the strands.

“Oh, no, my sweet little liar,” he murmured, his masked cheek brushing your temple. “You don’t get to hide after a performance like that.” He gave a soft, mocking tug on your hair, pulling your face back just an inch. “Admit it. Say it. Let me hear the truth in that pretty, trembling voice.”

You lifted your head. Behind the mask, your face was a wreck of tears and defiance, but your voice was neither. It was firm. Cool. Commanding.

“Fine,” you murmured, the word a clear, sharp note in the charged air. You tilted your chin up with a bratty, unbroken angle. “You want a confession? Then listen.”

He leaned in, helpless against the authority in your tone, drawn like a moth to a different, older flame.

“You’re right,” you breathed, the heat undeniable, seeping through the sternness. “Is that what you want? You’re right. I can’t get enough.” 

You gave a tug on the ribbon binding your wrist to him, pulling him that last, impossible fraction closer until your exhale fogged the cold porcelain of his cheek. “Of this. Of you.”

Then, your voice shifted. 

It wasn't just your own anymore. It deepened, softened at the edges with a sorrowful wisdom that didn't belong to you. It blended. 

“Are you happy now… meu pequeno monstro?”

My little monster.

The Portuguese endearment, spoken in a voice that was both yours and… hers, snapped something inside him. A broken music box spring, twanging into silence.

It shattered him.

His pupils blew wide in an instant, swallowing the emerald irises, leaving only black pits reflecting the dim stage lights.

He wasn't seeing you.

He was seeing through you.

Dismembered pieces reassembled in his vision—not a corpse, but a beloved puppet taken apart and meticulously stitched back together. The joints were neat, the threads fine, but the separation was forever visible to his haunted eyes.

His breath hitched, a wet, ragged sound. He blinked hard, but the phantom only tightened its grip. It wasn't the bratty assistant pressed against him. 

It was her. It's her.

Her presence didn't arrive as a memory. It was a full-sense ambush. He was dragged backward—violently, viscerally—into the skin of the monster he used to be. Younger. Untamed. delighting in his own wildness before he learned to cage it in routines and rules.

And then there she was.

A human face painted into a porcelain mask of her own making, white like a shroud. Purple shimmer hugged the lids of closed eyes, and intricate, dark ink spiraled across her brown skin like the shadows were claiming her, piece by beautiful piece. 

Her curls, styled for a show that mocked her humanity, framed a face that held a terrifying compassion. Her wrists bent at unnatural angles, jointed not for freedom, but for the story.

He swallowed, the sound choked with a grief so thick it bordered on madness. “Don’t,” he rasped, but the plea was directionless—aimed at you, at her, at the past itself.

His hand hovered between you, trembling violently, torn between the need to seize you and the terror of what he’d be seizing. Because he knew, in the marrow of his broken bones, that if his claws touched your skin now, they wouldn’t be touching you.

They’d be tracing the ghost sewn into your shape.

The ghost whose human name was a forbidden secret. The ghost he failed to protect when the seams of her world unraveled. 

The vision didn't fade. It leaned in. 

Then, her closed eyelids lifted—just a sliver. Not enough to reveal eyes, but enough for a profound, liquid darkness to spill through the cracks, watching him from a place beyond pain.

And she spoke. Not with your voice alone, but with hers, a haunting duet from a single throat.

“H̵̢̛̺̻̮͈̟͍̦̑̌̈ͣ̾̾ͦ̈͛̓̑̃̀̾̓̚͞a̧͔̣̻͇̲͕̜̺̜̝̦̺̫͉͛̂̏ͬ́͂̉̂͊̎̂͊ͭ̚͠͞r̷̸̢͈͙̻̺̝̭̪̣̪̭̹͇̂͂ͯͮ͗̂͗͟͡_̹̥͇̽̋͐̿̚͞l̷̴̸̘͍̼̦͕̰̰̳̩͔̮͕̮͍͐̓͛͑̊͌͌͐ͯ̐ͫ̍ͨ̈͆ͧͬ̉͂̚̚ͅe̢̖̣̯̠͐̈́̾̋̉́̔̋̈͠_̧̛̗̝͚̦̫͛̌͐͜ͅ_̴̵̧̛̙̟̻̽́ͧ͐͋̍̋͑q̵̶ͮ̑̌̄͠u̗̩̘̩͙͚̪̪̱͉͚̪͊̄ͥͭ̋̐ͩ̈́̐̽̋̅ͥ͋͟͝͠ͅ_̶̹̩̼̓ͩ͆͋̀̒̀̓͡i̴̡̢̱̲͖̰̻ͯ͒́̌̊̎ͮ͢͞ņ̱̲͙̐̃ͦ͘̚͜.”

His real name.

His entire body convulsed, a puppet yanked by strings of pure panic. “No,” he choked out, “No—don’t—don’t do this. Not again. Not you.”

But the hallucination stepped closer. The faint, clicking sound of imagined joints—where thread met flesh, where memory met reality—echoed in the silent space between heartbeats.

“Look at me,” the blended voices whispered, a command and a lament.

And he was there. Not remembering. Reliving. Dragged back and slammed into the past with a violence that felt like his soul was being flayed.

He remembered it all—the things he swore to bury.

Her human name, spoken under a sun that didn’t belong here. Her life before, filled with notebooks scribbled and observations—pages and pages of inked handwriting, margins scribbled with questions.

“Why do you tilt your head before you strike?” Her voice echoed gently around him as the hallucination’s lips moved in sync. “Is it instinct… or performance?”

He swallowed a cry. The hallucination tilted its head—her head—repeating the gesture she used to make when analyzing him. The gesture that had made him feel seen.

“You always hated when I asked,” she cooed. “But you always answered.” 

His hands trembled as he pressed them over his ears. “Stop. Stop it. You don’t exist.”

“Oh, my little monster ♪,” Her voice smoothed over him like warm wax. Just like back then. He remembered the first time she corrected him. He was in a frenzy, claws out, wrecking everything in reach.

She hadn’t run. Hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t even blinked. She stepped right in front him, a hand rising—not to strike, but to rest gently on his chest. The hallucination leaned close, her stitched fingers touching his cheek with phantom warmth.

“You liked when I said that,” she whispered, “You pretended you didn’t… but your eyes softened every time.” He shook violently, unable to breathe.

“You amaze me,” she had told him once, when he had finally learned to obey her touch. The fascinated look in her eyes when his green tongue darted out to wet his lips, a gesture that made others recoil. The hallucination laughed, recalling thoes moments more, “I always did say that, but it was true, you know?”

Funny part about eveything back then…

She hadn’t belonged to him. 

She hadn’t belonged to anyone, really—floating from monster to monster with her notebooks and her bright, burning curiosity. She praised all of them. Corrected all of them. But she did, in fact, have a favorite.

It was Jester.

The way her eyes, usually so sharp and assessing, would soften into something almost fond when Jester spun one of his cruel, riddling tales. 

The way she would linger by his caravan long after her "observations" were done, listening to the clatter of his knives, a small, private half-smile playing on her lips—a smile she never gave to Harlequin. 

She spent hours with Jester, dissecting the psychology of performance, the audience's fear response, the architecture of a punchline that could draw blood. She saw the method in Jester's madness, and she admired it.

Harlequin hated it. 

He hated the intellectual intimacy, the shared language of calculated chaos. He hated her for hoarding that specific softness, for giving to Jester the thoughtful, sustained attention that Harlequin craved with a desperation that felt like bone-deep starvation.

One evening, he could take it no longer. He watched her leave Jester's space, that residual ghost of a smile still touching her mouth, her steps light. She turned a corner into the narrow, shadow-clotted alley between two caravans.

He was already there. 

A part of the shadow itself, breathing in time with the gathering dark.

She stopped short, but she didn't jump. She never startled with him. She simply… assessed.

He stepped forward, blocking her path entirely. The scent of her—warm human skin underlaid with the sharp tang of ink—flooded his senses. 

Before she could utter a word—a clinical note, a polite greeting—his arms snaked around her waist. He pulled her against him, not with theatrical force, but with a sudden, undeniable need, molding the soft curves of her body to the hard, unforgiving lines of his own.

"You look good enough to eat," he murmured. His voice was low, roughened.

She simply went still in his arms, her head tilting to the side in that familiar, infuriatingly calm way she had, as if he were a fascinating new specimen to catalogue.

And then she laughed. A soft, breathy sound that held no fear, only a gentle, undeniable authority.

Her hand came up. Not to push him away, but to tap—once, firmly, definitively—two fingers against the center of his chest, right over the frantic drum of his heart.

"Boy," she chided. A single syllable that reduced his looming threat, “Get your claws right off of me, you know the rules.”

Boy?

He was a monster torn apart by hunger and jealousy…

and you called him boy—like he was nothing more than a sulking brat acting out for your attention. He loosened his grip, letting her go that time.

Then it was his day. 

Their private time. She, the one whose name was now a locked room in his mind—sat perched on an old, upturned crate, a worn sketchbook balanced on her knees. The ink quill in her hand moved in quick, sure strokes, capturing the dramatic lines of him as he lounged against a pile of old set pieces, trying for an air of casual grace.

Time alone with her was never quiet. Never was.

He pretended nonchalance, one leg crossed over the other, head tilted back as if studying the rafters. But every sense was tuned to her: the soft scratch of charcoal, the shift of fabric as she moved, the scent of pencil dust and the unique, clean warmth that was purely her.

He’d been weaving a story, something about the constellations painted on the ceiling being the eyes of forgotten gods. He was showing off, and he knew it. 

Then, she’d made a soft, amused sound. 

“Jester said something similar yesterday. Called them ‘the sky’s cracked mosaic.’ He has a way with words, doesn’t he?”

Harlequin’s posture, a study in performed relaxation, went wire-tight. The air in the cramped storage space turned brittle. He uncrossed his legs slowly, his emerald eyes slicing toward her.

“Why,” he began, his voice deceptively smooth, a silken sheet over broken glass, “do you waste a single second of that brilliant mind on that bells-for-brains, glitter-coated buffoon?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the intensity radiating off him in waves. 

“I’m clearly the superior option. Faster. Smarter. 

Infinitely prettier.” His gaze dropped to the column of her throat, exposed as she looked down at her drawing. 

A hunger, raw and possessive, flooded his expression. His voice dropped to a husky, intimate register that felt like a touch in the dim light. “…and I know precisely where I want to bite you.”

He reached out. His fingers, ungloved for once, were surprisingly elegant. They brushed the side of her neck, just below her jaw, a feather-light caress that held the potential for so much more. His thumb stroked the frantic flutter of her pulse. 

“You’d look perfect,” he murmured, the words a hot promise against her skin, “with the mark of my teeth right here. A little claim. So everyone knows who you ponder when you’re alone.”

She didn’t jerk away. 

She never did anything so crude. 

She simply turned her head, a gentle, firm negation, letting his fingers slide from her skin. It was a defense, honed and careful, designed not to hurt him. To let him down with a softness that was somehow more insulting than a slap.

He noticed. He hated that he noticed. 

The rejection, wrapped in kindness, was a special kind of acid. It ate at the theatrical confidence, exposing the raw, jealous wound beneath.

The words burst from him in a torrent of his native Portuguese, the language of his mother. They cracked in the middle, betraying the ache he couldn’t hide in English. “Por que você não consegue amar alguém como eu?” 

Why can’t you love someone like me? 

The question was a plea and an accusation. “É porque sou um monstro? …Mais monstro que os outros?” 

Is it because I’m a monster? More monster than the rest?

She didn’t look up from her sketch. Her charcoal continued its gentle scraping. A small, knowing smile touched her lips, the black-painted curve of them softening. “Você sabe,” she began, her voice, struggling a bit. 

You know. 

“Você já comeu metade da minha mente, do jeito que a ocupa. Meu coração também. Você mastiga meus pensamentos quando estou tentando dormir.” 

You've already eaten half my mind, the way you occupy it. My heart, too. You chew on my thoughts when I'm trying to sleep.

She finally glanced up, her eyes, meeting his burning emerald gaze with that infuriating, gentle clarity. The smile didn’t leave her lips as she delivered the final, softly devastating line, “Continue assim, e logo não vai restar nada de mim além de uma casca oca.” 

Keep this up, and soon there’ll be nothing left of me but a hollow little shell.

The metaphor should have thrilled him.

But coming from her, it was a reminder of his limits. He could occupy her, but not own her. He could consume her thoughts, but not command her heart.

A low, frustrated growl rumbled in his chest. He closed the distance between them in an instant, leaning in so close his lips nearly brushed the outline of her lips. His next words were a dark, possessive vow, hissed with absolute sincerity.

“Good. Then I’ll be the only thing inside you. Filling up all that hollow space. The only voice in the silence.”

He meant it. Every syllable. 

And, shockingly those words came true… after all, she belonged to the circus, to the other monsters in her own way, and most damningly, to herself.

That alone was her fatal mistake. 

That… man, the so called puppeteer with a ledger for a soul and cruelty for currency—saw the monsters not as performers, but as malfunctioning assets. He starved them, beat them, worked them until their seams split. 

And she, with her mortal heart and fearless curiosity, became their advocate. Her complaints to Jester were never secret; they were pleas cast into the backstage air, and Harlequin heard every one, a bitter wine of pride and dread. 

But that... man had heard enough. 

Her compassion was bad for business. It gave the attractions ideas. He took her on a night the circus was silent, a tomb of canvas and shadows. What he did was not a crime of passion, but a calculated act of dominion. 

He broke her, not to possess, but to unmake. 

To prove that the light she carried could be snuffed, that her care was a weakness to be exploited. He violated her, not with desire, but with the cold intent of a man stamping out a flame. 

Then he… killed her.  

Methodically. Dismembering the body that had sketched, that had hummed, that had gently turned its head from his biting touch.

The true horror was not the murder. 

It was the lesson. 

After the screaming stopped, after the silence became a physical weight in the tent, the man hadn't simply discarded the remains. He had portioned them. 

With the detached precision of a butcher teaching a pack of wild dogs, he threw the pieces into the separate cages. 

"This," the man's voice had sliced through the thick, coppery air, "is your last meal. Until you learn the obedience you have forgotten, you will feast on the one who made you forget it. Let her loyalty become your fuel. Let her defiance curdle in your bellies. Digest your lesson."

And Harlequin... Harlequin had been so hungry.

The starvation wasn't just of the body, though that was a sharp, screaming agony. It was a starvation of will, of hope, of light. 

She had been all those things. 

And now she was just... meat. A lesson on a plate.

He remembered a line he'd once snarled at her in the dark, a possessive, romantic threat he’d thought terribly clever at the time: "Good. Then I'll be the only thing inside you."

Now, it was a literal, digestive truth. A grotesque punchline written in bile and viscera.

He had consumed her mind.

The convoluted, grey matter that had housed her brilliant curiosity, her relentless theories, the very spark that had looked at a monster and seen a subject worthy of study. 

He had opened his mouth—not in a scream, but in obedient, starving acceptance. He had used his teeth. He had chewed. He had swallowed.

He had become, not just a witness to her erasure, but the living, breathing instrument of its completion. Her consciousness, her memories, the unique fingerprint of her thoughts—all of it had passed through his lips and into the acid-dark of his own body. 

She was inside him, forever. 

A piece of her light, metabolized into his own permanent darkness. Her final, brutal act of devotion—offering herself wholly to the monsters she studied—had been perverted into his ultimate, cannibalistic sin.

This was the rot at his core. The un-healable wound that festered behind the porcelain smile. It was why every glance he gave you was layered—the possessive hunger, yes, but underneath it, a look of nauseated recognition.

You didn't just remind him of her.

You threatened to make him relive the sin. 

To feel that terrifying, pure devotion again, only to face the clawing dread that his own monstrous nature would once again demand consumption. That your light, too, would become a lesson he'd be forced to digest.

He stared at you now—at the flush of defiance on your cheeks, the tremor in your lips, the tracks of your tears etching paths through the dust on your mask.

The present dissolved into the past, and he couldn't tell if he was seeing the bratty, captivating assistant…

…or the ghost of the one he'd failed, and then eaten.

You were stepping into a space he had sworn, with every fiber of his poisoned being, he would never let anyone fill again. 

He cannot—he will not—allow her ghost to have the upper hand with you. To guide you, to claim you from beyond the grave. 

If there is to be a possession, it will be his alone. If there is to be a consumption, it will be on his terms. 

The lesson of the past will not be repeated.

It will be perfected.

He shook his head, all the confusion evaporated, burned away by the intensity of his focus, as if trying to rattle the memory from his skull, “Happy?” he repeated. His fingers tightened, a careful pressure that shot a bright wire of pain from your scalp down your spine.

“Happiness is for children,” he murmured, his voice a dark melody. “A cheap sparkle for the crowd.” He leaned in, his eyes not just seeing you, but claiming you. The heat of his hidden lips was a phantom kiss against your skin.

“Tell me, puppet,” he breathed, his hum syncing with your pounding heart.

In one motion, he walked you backward until the vanity’s edge dug into your spine. You gasped. His other hand found the bare skin of your side, his clawed fingers pressing in—a promise, then a pinch. 

A sharp sting bloomed; he’d drawn blood.

He released your hair to capture your wrist, his thumb on your pulse, his other hand forcing your chin up. Through the mask, he was a blur of green and porcelain.

“You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”

As he spoke, something cool and sinuous coiled around your ankle—a living rope, tightening with gentle, undeniable purpose. 

You flinched, a gasp catching in your throat.

“Shhh,” he soothed, his thumb stroking your chin even as his grip on your wrist remained firm. “I can hear your heart singing for me. Such a pretty, frantic song.”

Another coil wrapped your other wrist, pulling it behind your back. Another snaked around your waist, a fourth around your thigh. 

They weren't rope; they were muscular, pulsing, alive. They drew you forward until you were flush against him, bound in a living cage.

Blinded by the mask, you could only feel—the hard plane of his chest, the cool porcelain of his mask at your temple, the intimate squeeze of the bonds.

His lips brushed the mask near your ear, his voice a secret blade. “You’ve been so curious about me,” he breathed. “About what I am.”

A thin coil slid up your neck like a caress. “Do you want to see?”

He wasn't just asking you. 

His emerald eyes, wide and searching behind the porcelain, were fixed on yours with a desperate, fractured intensity. 

He wasn't seeing your fear, your confusion. He was searching for a softer, older light—a specific softness he hadn't seen in centuries. 

The softness of her eyes. In the dimness, through the mask's holes, he was convincing himself he saw it. A gentle, knowing patience that didn't belong to a frightened you.

She’s in there.

The thought was a schizophrenic whisper, a crack in his monstrous logic. 

She’s looking through you. She came back.

“Do you want to see,” he whispered again, his voice trembling with a perilous hope, “what I really am… querida?”

You tried to speak, but your words melted into a thick, silent haze. 

A heavy tide surged through your veins—his toxin, delivered by the sharp pinch of his claw. The world blurred into soft orbs of light and color, his mask a smudge of white and green.

Dark spots bloomed at the edges of your sight. Your eyelids grew leaden, a delicious, terrifying weight dragging you down. His scent—night jasmine and cold metal—filled your head.

“Wha’…” you slurred, the question dying on your tongue.

Above you, his carved smile seemed to widen. A low chuckle vibrated through his chest into yours. “Oh, dear,” he purred, his voice echoing in your foggy mind. “A bit too much. Makes you more… pliable.”

The living ropes tightened, communing with your drugged flesh. You felt a button pop on your vest, then the soft slide of fabric peeling from your shoulder. Cool air, then the sinuous caress of the ropes themselves, slithered against your exposed skin.

“Look at those eyes,” he murmured, his claw stroking your cheek beneath the mask. “So desperate. Adorable.” He mistook your drugged, heavy-lidded gaze for rapture.

The ropes pressed you against the cold mirror, your drugged body pliant in their hold. They worked with sinister purpose, peeling away layers—a button popped, fabric whispered from your shoulder, cool air meeting feverish skin.

“Wha’s… touching me?” you slurred.

He cut you off, his voice sharp with dark delight. “‘What’s touching me?’” he echoed mockingly. He leaned close, muttering in low Portuguese, “Tão curioso… igualzinho a ela…” 

So curious… just like her…

Switching back, his voice dropped to a filthy whisper. “I love that busy little mind. Always guessing. So here’s the game: feel, don’t ask. Feel that coil on your thigh? The slide against your stomach, so close to where you’re getting warm for me? Guess.” A thin rope teased up your inner thigh.

 You hated this game. You needed to get away.

“Truth is,” he breathed, his control fraying, “I just want to feel your skin. No barriers. Just you. And me.” The ropes shuddered with him. “And everything on your pretty body… is me.”

Your final clothing gave way. Cool air, then the shocking, intimate slide of the ropes—alive, muscular—against your nipples, your belly, everywhere. They mapped you with a thoroughness that felt less like violation, more like consumption.

Harlequin watched your reaction, his emerald eyes burning. He was waiting, searching your face not for your fear, but for a sign of her. 

For the ghost he believed was hiding behind your eyes to finally speak.

“Still silent?” he murmured, a thread of frustration weaving into his hunger. “Fine. Maybe I’ll just have to fuck the puppet out of you. See if she screams through you then.”

A spike of real fear cut through the haze. But before panic could take hold, that internal voice soothed—

Breathe dearest. Isn’t this what you wanted?

The thought slithered into your mind, slick and alien, in a voice that was not your own. A calm, knowing, feminine whisper from somewhere deep inside your own skull.

To be taken apart by something tragic?

A rope-tip pressed there, and you arched off the glass with a silent cry.

To be utterly fucked by a monster?

Your breath came in ragged, wet hitches, a desperate rhythm he conducted with the tightening of a coil around your ribs.

A low, growling sound rumbled from deep within his chest—a sound of pure, unhinged satisfaction that vibrated through the ropes and into your bones. It was the sound of a predator who had finally cornered his most desired prey.

He forced you to sit on the cold edge of the vanity table, the mirror at your back a silent witness. His height became an absolute dominion as he towered over you, looking down at the spectacle of your unraveling. 

“That’s it,” he coaxed, “Stop thinking. That sweet, curious little brain is just in the way. Let it go. Just feel. Let me show you exactly what my breed of monster does to pretty puppets who come apart on my tongue.”

Then came a new touch. Not a binding, but an offering. A single, questing rope-tip, brushed against your slack, panting lips.

You tried to turn your head, a feeble, drugged denial, but a coil around your throat, held you perfectly, pitilessly still.

"Open wide, puppet ♪,” he commanded, the words a filthy, sing-song lullaby that promised ruin. The rope slipped past your parted lips. It was deceptively slender at first, a curious, teasing intrusion, tracing the line of your teeth.

Then, with a slow, obscene pulse of its own, it began to swell. It thickened, stretching your mouth into a perfect, helpless ‘O’, a sweet, burning ache blooming in your jaw. 

It pushed deeper, a smooth, relentless conqueror gliding over your tongue, claiming the space, then pushing further—past the soft palate, into the tight, sensitive clutch of your throat.

You gagged, a raw, reflexive convulsion that sent tears streaking from your eyes. But the gag was stifled, transformed into a choked, guttural, wet moan that vibrated obscenely around the thick, invading length.

The violation was absolute, shocking, and it ignited a dark, liquid fire that pooled with devastating weight between your thighs.

Your hands, which had lain limp at your sides, flew up of their own volition. They didn’t push away. They clutched. Your fingers dug into the other ropes crisscrossing your naked body.

They were not what you expected.

They weren't cold or alien. They were fever-warm, pulsing with a life that mirrored the frantic beat of your own heart. The texture was a paradox—a skin-like velvet, impossibly soft, sheathing a core of unyielding, muscular power. 

They were living art, and they were everywhere.

One traced the shuddering dip of your waist. Another, thinner, more clever, found the hypersensitive curve of your hip bone and circled it, a taunting promise. 

Your mind, drowning in sensation and nectar, spun uselessly. 

What are they? An extension? The truth of him?

All coherence shattered as the rope in your throat pulsed again. Not a thrust, but a slow, rhythmic milking motion, a deliberate, wave-like contraction that dragged another ragged, muffled scream of pleasure from your core. 

The sound was swallowed, digested by the living thing claiming your mouth. Above you, Harlequin watched, utterly rapt. His emerald eyes were blazing infernos of dark delight. A low, filthy groan of appreciation tore from him.

“Fuck, listen to that,” he breathed, his voice thick with want. “Taking me so deep. Choking on it so prettily. Look at you.” One of his gloved claws came up to trace the line of your stretched jaw, feeling the bulge of himself moving inside you. 

“Your eyes are rolling back, my dear. You’re playing with my ropes like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Do you like the taste? The feel of me fucking that clever mouth of yours into silence?” He leaned closer, his masked face inches from yours, his breath mingling with yours where the rope emerged.

“Go on,” he purred, a wicked, encouraging whisper. 

“Suck it. Show me how much you love being my little plaything. Let me hear you enjoy yourself.” Your tongue, pinned but not paralyzed, moved. 

You flattened it against the underside of the thick, velvety intrusion and pressed upward, a slow, careful lick along its length. The rope in your throat gave a sudden, powerful throb. The coils around your body tightened, a possessive squeeze. 

And from Harlequin himself came a sharp, shuddering gasp, “Yes,” he hissed, the word a revelation. “Just like that. God, you’re a natural. Licking it like you’re starving for it.” He watched, mesmerized, as you did it again, a teasing, exploring swirl of your tongue, learning the texture.

“That’s it, explore. Get to know every inch. It’s all me, angel. Every part of this… is all me.”

He was loving it. 

Loving the noises you were making—the wet, choked sounds around the intrusion, the helpless little whimpers that escaped your nose. 

He lowered his head, and this time, when his masked face touched your skin—at that frantic pulse point just below your ear—it felt different. Now, you felt the direct, shocking warmth of his mouth. It was a claiming of a different kind, more… personal.

"I'm going to leave my mark here," he murmured, his voice a rough, hungry scrape against your skin. His tongue, surprisingly soft and warm, laved over the spot once, a parody of tenderness. "So everyone knows what you let yourself become."

Then, he bit down.

They were not human teeth. 

They were sharp, precise points that sank into the tender flesh of your shoulder with a sudden, piercing clarity that cut through the drugged haze. It was a pain so sharp and specific it bordered on pleasure, a brand being seared into your very soul. 

A scream tried to tear its way up your throat, but it was trapped, choked into a wet, gurgling sob around the thick green rope filling you. Your body went rigid against the mirror, your fingers clawing into the velvety ropes, your back arching in a silent, agonized plea.

He held the bite for a long, excruciating moment, before pulling back with a soft, wet sound. You felt the blood well up, hot and immediate, a trickle tracing a path down your chest.

"Fuck," he breathed, the curse a prayer of pure, dark satisfaction. He lapped at the wound, his tongue hot and insistent. "You taste like fear and want.."

He pulled back to look at you, at your tear-streaked face, your stretched, occupied mouth, the blood beading on your shoulder. His eyes were filled of absolute, unhinged possession.

“Still can’t guess them, sweetheart?” he whispered, his voice thick with a need that finally, fully, stripped away the last of the performer. "I have a feeling this way maybe you need one to be inside of you for help…”

You heard it then—a soft, definitive click, like a porcelain plate being set aside. 

“Fuck,” he breathed, a raw, unfiltered sound that was nothing like his stage purr. It was hungry. “Always wondered… how you’d taste.”

You tried to turn your head, to catch a glimpse of the face behind the smile, but the ropes coiled around your throat and hair, yanking your head back firmly against the mirror with a gentle, firm force.

“Ah-ah ♪,” he chided, his voice closer now, a hot whisper against the column of your throat. “You don’t get to look. Not yet. This isn’t about seeing. It’s about feeling.”

And then you felt it.

Not the cool porcelain, but the shocking, wet heat of a long split tongue. A broad, wicked stroke, right through the damp fabric of your panties. He licked a slow, careful stripe over your pussy, and your entire body jolted against the restraints, a choked gasp tearing from your lips.

“Mmh,” he hummed, the vibration against your most sensitive skin making your knees buckle. The ropes held you upright. “Sweet. But not nearly wet enough for me, my dear. I want to drown in you.”

Before you could process the want in those words, you felt a new pressure. One of the sinuous ropes, slick with something cool and slick, pressed insistently against your other… hole, circling the tight furl of your ass through the fabric. 

It didn’t push in. It teased. 

A promise of a different, more complete violation.

“Look at you,” he growled, his voice thick with a filth that made your insides clench. “Gripping onto my ropes so fucking tight. You love this. You love being my little puppet-plaything.” 

To emphasize his point, he gave the rope at your ass a sharp, shallow thrust, just enough to make you flinch and cry out, the sound muffled by the other ropes now winding tighter around your torso.

His tongue returned to your pussy, lapping at you through the cotton with a fervor that was obscene. 

You could hear the filthy, wet sounds, feel the fabric growing soaked and transparent under his ministrations.

“There we go,” he panted against your skin, his breath scorching. “That’s it. Getting nice and slick for me. Knew you would. So fucking eager. Easier than I thought.” He punctuated the sentence with a sharp, sucking bite through the fabric on your inner thigh.

“Wha’… wha’ d’you mean?” you slurred, the drug and the sensation making your words thick.

He laughed, a dark, breathless sound. “Mean?” 

Another rough lick. “I mean you’re a natural. Born to be filled up and used. Now, shut that pretty mouth unless it’s doing something useful.”

As if commanded, one of the thinner ropes, which had been coiling near your face, suddenly slipped between your slack, parted lips once more. 

It didn’t hesitate. It pushed inward, a smooth, insistent invasion. It filled your mouth, a thick, living weight on your tongue, and began a slow, movementic pulse.

You gagged, trying to spit it out, but it pushed deeper, and a low command from Harlequin rumbled against your clit. “Suck.”

Helpless, you obeyed. 

The pulse quickened, mimicking a fuck. You could feel it thickening, the texture changing, becoming more urgent. Harlequin’s breathing grew ragged, his licks becoming sloppier, more desperate against your soaked panties.

“That’s it… swallow it down, you greedy little thing,” he growled, “Fuck, look at you… fucking perfect like this. Taking it so well. I’m gonna— I’m gonna fill that pretty mouth until you drown in it—” His prophecy broke on a ragged, gut-deep groan.

The living rope in your mouth didn’t just pulse.

It convulsed. Then it unleashed.

It was a hot, sudden flood—a violent, bitter-salty eruption that hit the back of your throat with shocking force. It kept coming, thick and relentless, spurt after monstrous spurt, an impossible volume that instantly overwhelmed you. 

It filled your mouth, a scalding, claiming tide, before overflowing. It spilled past your sealed lips, a hot rivulet tracing a filthy path down your chin, onto your chest.

You gagged, eyes rolling back, a choked, wet sound trapped around the invasion. Just as your vision began to spark with panic, the rope slithered out of your mouth with a slick, obscene pull, leaving you coughing violently, sputtering, every sense saturated with the pungent, intimate taste of him.

Harlequin collapsed forward, his forehead dropping to your stomach with a heavy thud. His breath sawed in and out of him as he lifted his head just enough to look at the mess he’d made. His voice was a wrecked, awed whisper. 

“God, look at you. What a pretty fucking sight.” A claw-tipped finger swiped through the spend on your chin, bringing it to his own masked mouth in a gesture that was unspeakably vile. 

“Absolutely painted with me.”

He let out a sigh, a long, theatrical sound of faux regret. “I do apologize. Truly. It’s terribly selfish of me… marking you up like this.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded starved. 

His head dipped again, his masked mouth pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss to your navel before he looked up, his emerald eyes gleaming with renewed, filthy promise.

“But I can make it up to you,” he rasped, the words a dark vow against your skin. His hands slid down to your hips, gripping hard. “After all… you’re just soaked through for me. I can feel it. Dripping down your thighs, and you haven’t even come yet.”

He chuckled, a low, wicked sound.

“Let’s fix that, shall we?”

The hand not directing the serpentine ropes came up to cup your jaw, his thumb pressing cruelly into the hinge to force your mouth open. “My apologies,” he whispered, the words a hot, dark promise, and then his mouth was on yours.

It was nothing you could have imagined.

The warmth of his lips surprised you, sinful sensations against yours, as if a peek into humanity. Then came the feel of the probing invasion by his tongue.

It was thick, wet, different, and it slipped past your lips with no consideration. You already knew from tales that it was split, that it had a forked appearance, but touching it, with all that slim, nimble warmth exploring your mouth, learning your contours, possessing you, was a whole different matter.

He was so much bigger, his body caging you against the cold mirror, his kiss swallowing every sound you made. His claws tightened in your hair, holding you perfectly still for his devouring exploration.

And all the while, his other self worked.

You felt it—a new rope, thicker, more substantial than the teasing tendrils, pressing insistently against the soaked fabric of your panties. It rubbed, a slow, maddening grind that promised so much more. At the same time, other coils tightened their embrace.

One wound around your upper chest, just beneath your arms, squeezing in a relentless, possessive hug that made your breasts swell against the pressure. 

Another, thinner, more careful, looped around your throat. It didn’t cut off your air, not quite. It just rested there, a constant, terrifying reminder of his control, tightening a fraction with each gasp you made into his mouth.

You were drowning in him. 

Every inch of your exposed skin was in contact with some part of his will—the smooth ropes, the heat of his body, the invasion of his kiss. 

The tips of the ropes, those clever, sentient extensions of his desire, grew bolder. 

One abandoned the grind against your core to slide up your torso. It found a pebbled, aching nipple and circled it, a teasing, tickling caress that made you jerk in his grasp. Another did the same on the other side. 

They played you, flicking and circling, sending jagged bolts of pleasure-pain straight to your already throbbing core.

You tried to tore your mouth from his with a ragged, choked cry that was half-strangled by the coil on your throat. But he didn’t let you.

And that’s when you bit down.

Not a nibble or a warning. 

A hard, clamp of your teeth right into the thickest part of that invading, forked muscle.

He froze. A muffled, wet sound of pure shock vibrated against your lips. Then he recoiled, tearing his mouth from yours with a sharp jerk.

For a second, there was only the sound of ragged breathing. His head was bowed, a curtain of dark curls hiding his expression. A thick, dark droplet of blood welled on his chin, then fell, splashing against the exposed skin of your collarbone. 

He raised a gloved hand, slowly, and touched his mouth. When he pulled it back, the black leather was stained a deeper, wet black.

He looked at the blood on his fingers.

Then, he looked at you.

His eyes, those brilliant emerald slits, were wide. Not with anger. His tongue—yours now, the coppery taste of him flooding your mouth—flicked out, a quick, serpentine motion, to catch the blood beading on his own lip. He savored it, his gaze locked on yours. 

Then, with a careful, obscene slowness, he ran the forked tip up the length of his gloved finger, cleaning the blood with a lover’s care.

His pupils were blown, his breath coming in short, sharp pants. He was aroused. Profoundly, 

dangerously turned on by your violence.

“You little brat,” he breathed, the words a reverent curse. A slow, terrifying smile spread beneath his mask, unseen but felt in the new energy thrumming through him.

You met his gaze, your own chin smeared with his blood. “Those ropes,” you said, your voice surprisingly steady, “They’re part of you, aren’t they? chelly Because you’re not a man at all. You’re just the monster those stories warned me about.”

Harlequin went utterly still. 

The smile didn’t fade. It deepened. Then he laughed—a low, rich, utterly unhinged sound of pure delight. He leaned in again, but not to kiss you. To press his bloodied lips to your temple in a grotesque parody of affection.

“Clever little one,” he praised, his voice thick with admiration and lust. “So very, very clever. You see me. You really see me.” He pulled back, his heart-pupiled eyes glowing with a possessive, mad light. 

“And you’re still here. Biting me. Defining me.” His forked tongue darted out again, a quick, excited flick. “This changes everything, the game just became so much more interesting.”

Suddenly your body bowed against the ropes, every muscle locking as the orgasm ripped through you, blinding and devastating. 

It felt less like a release and more like a seizure of pleasure, wracking you with tremors, your inner walls clenching around nothing, soaking your ruined panties utterly.

Through the white-hot haze, you heard his laugh—a low, deep, utterly satisfied growl that vibrated against your lips.

“There it is,” he murmured, his forked tongue darting out to catch a tear or a drop of sweat from your cheek. “Good little puppet. You just came in your pretty little underwear, pinned against a mirror, for me. Remember that.” He pressed a final, almost chaste kiss to your trembling mouth. 

“I think you’re ready now,” Harlequin’s voice cut through the drugged haze, not with gentleness, but with the finality of a curtain rising. The living ropes, an extension of his will, moved. They pivoted you with unsettling, effortless strength, turning your limp body to face the vanity mirror directly.

Your hands were drawn together at the small of your back, bound not by rope, but by a single, stronger coil that felt like braided muscle. It held you in place, forcing your back to arch slightly, pressing your exposed chest forward. The cool kiss of the mirror met your flushed skin from shoulder blades to the backs of your thighs.

Your vision was still a swamp of blurry shapes and swimming colors, but the figure looming behind you in the glass… it clarified something deep in your brain.

You froze.

Even in the dim, green-tinged darkness of the backstage tent, the outline was unmistakably, irrevocably other. The human silhouette you were accustomed to Harlequin—was gone.

The jester’s hat was discarded, the constant, mocking jingle of its bells silenced. A cascade of dark, unruly curls fell around his face and shoulders, freed from their theatrical constraint. 

The porcelain mask was gone. He must have removed it long ago, during your drugged stupor. His shirt was unbuttoned and hanging open, his cape gone. And from his back, from the shadowed space between his shoulder blades and down the elegant line of his spine, emerged the source of the “ropes.” 

He was telling the truth. They were him. 

Thick, tentacular appendages, shimmering with a faint, bioluminescent green hue deep within their corded muscle. They moved with a sinuous grace, some coiled around your limbs and torso, others weaving through the air around him like the limbs of some deep-sea god. 

Your mind, dulled and overwhelmed by sensation, simply short-circuited. Your reflection in the mirror was a mess of wide, glazed eyes and slack, parted lips. His reflection was a myth made flesh.

Harlequin watched your stunned, silent face in the glass, his own features now visible. Stripped of the mask, his face was sharp, elegant, and utterly feral. 

High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and those same brilliant, predatory green eyes—now infinitely more terrifying without the porcelain frame. A slow, razor-edged smile spread across his very human, very cruel mouth.

“Cat got your tongue, little one?” he purred, his voice rich with amusement. One of the tentacles—his tentacles—slid up from your thigh to trace your jawline in the mirror’s reflection, a imitation of his own clawed touch. 

“Not what you were expecting when you signed up for the freak show? Don’t tell me you’re getting shy now.” His eyes, holding yours in the glass, gleamed with dark intent. “You wanted to see. Now you see. And I want to feel.”

You suddenly felt his claw black gloved—went to the fastening of his costume pants. 

There was a soft zip in the quiet tent.

What was revealed against the small of your back, pressing through the cleft of your ass, was not human.

It was monstrous alone.

The cock itself was staggering, far beyond any human average, a proud, intimidating curve of flesh that was a darker shade than the rest of him, traced with the same subtle, glowing green veins as the tentacles. 

It was not about sheer thickness, though it was by no means slight; it was about the length of that subtle curve you felt promised an angle of penetration that would touch places meant to remain secret.

He rocked his hips forward slightly, letting the impressive, terrifying weight of it ride along your seam, a blunt, undeniable preview. A choked, ragged sound was torn from your throat, half-terror, half something infinitely more damning.

“There we are,” he whispered, his breath hot on your neck, his gaze locked on your horrified, captivated expression in the mirror.

“No more costumes. No more masks. Just you. And the monster you can’t stop thinking about.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. 

“Let’s see if your curiosity feels as good as it looks.”

You felt the blunt, immense pressure of him, hot and insistent, at your entrance. A choked gasp ripped from your throat—half protest, half plea. 

He pushed, and your body, yet unprepared for his size, sharp burst of pain that immediately frayed into blinding pleasure.

He managed only half his length, and the sheer, shocking fullness of it made your eyes fly wide behind the mask, a silent scream of overwhelming sensation etched onto your face. You were impaled, stretched to a limit you hadn't known you possessed.

“Shhh, now,” he soothed, his voice a dark rumble against your neck, but it was a lie. The ropes agreed. One snaked up, coiling around your torso once, twice, then continued its ascent to loop firmly, but not cruelly, around your throat. With a pull, it dragged you down, forcing you to take more of him.

The pain crested, before dissolving into a deeper, more terrifying wave of pleasure as he sheathed himself to the hilt inside you. 

A broken, guttural moan was torn from you as  the ropes at your thighs and waist tightened and lifted. Your feet left the ground. He held you there, speared on him, suspended by his living bonds. Your blurred vision cleared enough, reflected in the vanity mirror he’d pressed you against moments before.

The sight was obscene. Terrifying.

You saw yourself—masked, flushed, utterly exposed—held aloft in a web of pulsating, dark green tendrils. And between your splayed thighs, the thick, brutal cock, buried to the root inside you. Your own wetness, glistening in the low light, already coated him.

“Look,” he commanded, his voice thick with a hunger that bordered on fury. “See how pretty you are, taking me.”

The ropes began to move. They didn’t just drop you; they controlled your descent, a slow, excruciating slide up his cock until just the swollen tip remained nestled inside, before pulling you down again with relentless. Each downward stroke punched a shocked, wet sound from your lips.

You watched, hypnotized and horrified, as your own stomach, with each deep, driven descent, showed a tiny, distinct bulge where he filled you to the absolute brink. His clawed hand splayed over your lower belly, as if feeling his own shape inside you, claiming the space he’d conquered.

“Fuck,” he snarled, the polished performer utterly shattered. He was fucking you now with sharp, shallow snaps of his hips, angling up, seeking a depth that shouldn’t be possible. “You feel that? You feel how deep I am?”

It felt like being split in two. It felt like being remade.

A sob of overstimulation caught in your throat. And just when you thought you’d adjust, you felt him… change. 

A low, visceral groan vibrated from his chest into yours as, inside you, using one of his rope around your neck pulled gently, insistently, forcing your head to roll back against the solid muscle of his chest. 

Your masked cheek pressed against the rough fabric of his harlequin jacket. You could hear the ragged, unsteady movement of his breathing, could feel the tremors of restraint running through him.

The initial, sharp scream that tore from your throat as he filled you—a brutal, breathtaking invasion—didn't end in a whimper. It fractured, melting into a guttural, shuddering cry of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.

Harlequin’s movement, which had begun with the punishing, controlled precision of a metronome, stuttered. A bright, sharp burst of laughter escaped him—not his usual dark chuckle, but a sound of genuine, startled surprise. His emerald eyes, fixed on your face, widened behind the mask. 

He watched, mesmerized and visibly thrown, as your expression contorted not in fear, but in rapture. Your eyes rolled back, whites gleaming in the dim light, your mouth falling open on a silent, ecstatic gasp.

“Well, fuck me,” he breathed, the vulgarity slipping out in a tone of pure, unvarnished shock. The script was burning in his hands

Then you spoke. Your voice was a wrecked, breathless thing, frayed by pleasure coursing through your veins— “Is that all you’ve got?” you gasped, the words a taunt wrapped in a moan. “Or are you just afraid to ruin me properly?”

You clenched around him, punishing internal grip that made his hips jerk and a ragged, stolen groan tear from his own throat. Emboldened, drunk on a power you didn’t fully grasp, you reached up. Your hands, no longer fighting the living ropes but moving in tandem with their possessive guidance, found the cold sides of his porcelain mask. 

You pulled him down. For a heart-stopping moment, he resisted, a statue of pure, stunned tension. Then, with a shudder that seemed to travel from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots, he yielded. His head dipped, and your mouth found the sealed seam where his lips should be.

You couldn’t kiss what wasn’t there. 

So, with a bold, bratty swipe of your tongue, you sought the heat behind the porcelain. You found it—the unexpected, forked warmth of his true tongue, a slick, living thing that met your own in a shocking, intimate tangle.

He froze. Completely. Then, he melted.

A deep, animalistic growl vibrated from his chest directly into yours, a sound of absolute surrender and unleashed, primal hunger. 

He kissed you back, the pressure desperate and hard, his forked tongue exploring yours with a wet, claiming intimacy. The mask was a cold barrier, but the feverish reality behind it was devastating.

He broke the kiss, pulling back just enough for his glowing eyes to sear into yours. His breath was ragged. “More?” he growled, the word both a challenge and a raw, naked plea.

The ropes, responding to the spike of his emotion, convulsed around you. They pulled harder, yanking your hips down onto him with a force that stole your breath, bending your body back over the vanity in a deep, unbreakable arc of submission and offer.

“You greedy, exquisite little puppet,” he snarled, his voice stripped of all pretense, now just gravel and need. “You want more? Fine.” He drove into you, a deep, punishing stroke that made stars burst behind your eyes.

“Let’s see how much of this monster you can really take,” he panted against your ear.

Just as the coil at your core brought you to a trembling, breathless peak, you felt another—thinner, more insistent—press against a different, forbidden entrance. 

Shock pierced the haze. You had no time to protest before it slid in, slow and inexorable, stealing your scream into a choked sob. It moved inside you, sinuous and alive, coiling with devastating precision.

The dual invasion—the thick fullness and the probing pressure—collided. 

Your climax didn't crest; it detonated.

A silent, seismic convulsion wracked you, your back bowing off the mirror. A flood of wetness gushed, dripping down your thighs with a soft, shameful patter onto the floor.

Harlequin watched, a low hum of approval vibrating from him. "There we go," he murmured, voice thick with dark delight. "Make a mess for me. Perfect."

Before the last tremor had even left your limbs, the ropes moved with orchestrated purpose. They pivoted you, a limp doll in their grasp, turning you until your back met the cold, hard floor. 

Your arms were pulled up above your head, wrists bound together by a living tether that held them suspended above your head. You were forced to look up, your vision clearing just enough to see the terrifying, magnificent reality of him.

Harlequin loomed over you, one knee between your splayed thighs. And there, pressed against your trembling belly, was his cock.

Then another thick and long, rope pulsed with a life of its own, and a slick, iridescent sheen coated its length. The sight of it, so blatantly, terrifyingly different, should have sparked primal terror. 

Instead, in your fucked-out, drugged state, it only stoked the embers of that dark, surrendering hunger.

He didn't bother with a preamble. He lined himself up with your soaked, quivering entrance and slammed back inside in one brutal, perfect stroke.

The air left your lungs in a punched-out cry. The technique was the same as the rope’s—an overwhelming, filling invasion—but the heat, the solidity, the sheer ownership of it was magnitudes more profound. 

He sheathed himself to the hilt, the ridges dragging against your oversensitive walls, and held there, letting you feel every impossible inch.

Your mouth fell open in a soundless scream, your head thrashing back against the floor. 

As you did, you saw it. 

One of the ropes that had been coiled possessively around your neck detached, lifting into the air. It hovered before your face, its tip swollen and glistening with the same iridescent fluid.

You had a half-second of dazed confusion before it twitched, and a hot, thick stream jetted from its tip, splattering across your cheek, your forehead, the corner of your mouth. 

It just missed your eye—a small, absurd mercy in the midst of the debasement. It dripped down your skin, marking you.

"Look at you," Harlequin groaned above you, his own composure fraying as he began to move, pulling out and driving back in with deep, punishing thrusts that shook your body against the floor. "Taking all of me. Every. Single. Part."

His pace was relentless, a piston driving you into the boards. You felt the other rope, still buried deep in your ass, begin to move in time with his thrusts, a counter-movement that pushed you into a state of continuous, overwhelming sensation. 

You were a vessel being filled, used, claimed from the inside out. His movement grew jagged, his breath coming in ragged, hot gusts against your neck. The ropes tightened convulsively. "Fuck—gonna—" he snarled, the words guttural and raw.

He slammed into you one final, devastating time, hilting himself as a deep, shuddering groan was torn from him.

You felt the hot, impossible flood of his release deep inside your core, a claiming so profound it felt like a brand. Simultaneously, the rope within your ass pulsed, spilling its own cum into your ass.

He collapsed over you for a moment, his weight a final, crushing claim, before pushing himself up onto his knees. 

He wasn't finished. 

His cock, still slick and hard, slapped against your belly, and with a few rough, quick strokes in his own fist, he came again, painting stripes of pearlescent cum across your stomach, your chest, your marked face.

For a long moment, the only sounds were your ragged breaths and the soft slither of the living ropes retreating into shadow. 

You were left a ruined, trembling mess on the floor—naked, painted with his essence, shattered by a climax that felt like terror and bliss fused into one.

Harlequin looked down, his mask back in place, emerald eyes blazing with satiated possession. He leaned close, his masked face inches from your cum-streaked one. A gloved finger tilted your chin up, forcing your dazed, glassy eyes to meet his.

"And sometimes," he breathed, thumb stroking your jaw with a mockery of tenderness, "she returns in someone new."

He searched your face, his gaze etching pain.

"You have their naïveté. That bright, stupid curiosity." His voice hitched, raw. "And perhaps… her foolish, fucking hope."

He leaned closer, his mask nearly touching yours.

"You remind me," he confessed, the words seeming to wound him, "what it felt like… to be looked at. Not as a monster. But as something… someone… that could be loved."

The last word was a ghost.

A broken smile touched his hidden mouth. 

"But you will never be her. The original is gone. You're just the echo. A reflection in a dirty mirror." The fragile vulnerability shattered, leaving only cold porcelain and colder truth. 

"A sentiment I'm sure would thrill her to hear, you maudlin, self-pitying worm." Jester’s voice, laced with a theatrical disgust that echoed in the cramped space. He stood in the entrance, his arms crossed. His own permanent grin seemed to twist with genuine fury.

Harlequin didn't jump. 

He simply went very still, the vulnerable man vanishing as the defensive, bristling creature took his place. "This doesn't concern you," he snarled, not turning around.

"Doesn't concern me?" Jester hissed, gliding forward. The bells on his shoes were deathly silent. "When you defile her memory by rutting against a cheap copy? When you play the brokenhearted lover while your hands are still stained?" He jabbed a finger, tipped with a jagged blade, towards Harlequin. 

"She of all people would recoil from this. From you, performing your monstrosity like it's a fucking tragedy. She hated pity."

Harlequin whirled, finally facing him. "And what would you know of what she hated?" he spat, the words laced with a sudden, vicious jealousy. "You, who watched from the shadows. You, who licked your lips and took your share when the platter was passed around. Or did you forget?” 

Harlequin’s raw confession hung in the air, “You are not pure in this,” he’d spat at Jester, “You are not clean. You ate of her too. We all did. I just…” His voice, that instrument of velvet and menace, cracked open, revealing the hollow, screaming thing beneath. 

“…I just happened to get the brain.”

Jester didn’t move. The permanent grin of his mask became a gash of mockery in the stillness. When he finally spoke, his voice was not the usual singsong taunt. It was a flat, cold blade, scraping bone.

“You have lost the right to speak of shares,” Jester stated, each word a nail in a coffin. “You might have gotten the brain… a lump of tissue soaked in tragedy. A souvenir of your failure to protect it.” He took a single, silent step forward.  The bells on his shoes were mute. “But in the end…” He paused, letting the anticipation coil.

“…I am the one who got the heart.”

Jester’s gaze, sharp and disdainful, swept over you—a shivering, exposed mess, slick with sweat and your own release, barely conscious against the floor. A slow, cruel smile stretched beneath his painted grin.

“Look at that,” he mused, his voice a singsong razor. “A perfect little puddle. So… breakable. So needy.” He tilted his head, the bells on his cap utterly silent. “She was never like this. Never so… pathetic. She had a spine. A mind. You?” He flicked a dismissive claw in your direction. 

“You’re just a vessel for his freakish nature. A perfect fit.” 

He turned his empty-eyed stare back to Harlequin. “Now,” he continued, the melodic lilt returning, now dripping with acidic dismissal. “Clean up this mess. Your mess. Before the real shadows notice your little… breakdown. They get so peckish when they smell this kind of weakness.”

For a heartbeat, defiance burned in Harlequin’s emerald eyes—a feral, wounded pride. 

You could see the monster rallying, ready to snap his strings and lash out to reclaim some shred of his ruined dignity.

But then his gaze flicked to you.

To your shivering form, the evidence of his loss of control, his absolute consumption of you, glistening on your skin and pooling on the floor. 

Harlequin turned away from Jester, his movements now efficient, devoid of their usual theatrical grace. He was tidying a crime scene. 

He fetched a soft cloth and a basin of water that appeared too quickly to be normal. The water was warm, faintly scented with herbs. He didn't look at your face as he began to clean you, his gloved hands surprisingly gentle as he wiped the sweat from your brow, the evidence of your shared transgression from your thighs. 

Each stroke was methodical, reverent even, but it was the reverence of a collector for a prized, though now slightly damaged, doll. It was possession, not care. 

He was putting his toy back in order.

After all, he is a monster; a monster claims you for good.

Pierrot:

Boobs.

He loves every single inch of you. How could he possibly pick? You are you and your features are yours and he's obsessed with you. However, he does love love love cuddling up to your chest especially. Why wouldn’t he? It's soft, and he can fall asleep to your heartbeat (which is, inagruably one of his favorite sounds, second to your voice ofcourse.)

It's also not too explicit or lewd.

He also loves your waist. It's his favourite place to hold you. Even better if you have love handles. He'd love to hold your flesh all day.

Harlequin:

Ass.

He's the kinda guy to slide one of his hands down from your waist to grab your ass when yall are kissing/making out.

He'll occasionally just dangle his hand from your hip, lightly grazing your butt when yall are hugging or close together

Ticket Taker:

Personality. I can't see him in a relationship to begin with, especially not with a human.

But, he wouldn't mind as long as you know your place and play your part as the good little scared puppet you are.

If you're a monster and he takes fancy to you it would mainly be the way you hold yourself, how you speak, so on. He will be a gentleman and treat you well ofc.

Doctor:

Thighs.

I don't really know why but he seems like a thigh guy to me. He'd love to pick you up and forcefully grab onto your thighs as you straddle him

Jester:

Stomach, and hair.

He hates PDA. When your surrounded by others, the most he'll do is have his hand on your back, or just let you cling to him yourself without him needing to do anything. He will fix your hair if he notices any loose hairs and tie it up if you ask him to though.

In private, he loves to really mess with your hair, long short or medium, it doesn't matter. He'll make sure you take care of your it too. There's no exceptions. He's need something smooth and silky to pull doesn't he?

Just lounge on his lap and let him play with your locks. If your hair is long enough, you get a new hairstyle every 2 days or so.

He also loves your stomach. When its just the two of you he will make you lie down so he can lay on top of you, his face to your tummy and his hands either wrapped around or holding onto your waist.

SMUT BELOW

A certain one always begins with a story.

Harlequin—silver tongue, painted smile—spins it every night, a tale no one truly listens to… 

not until it’s already far too late.

He steps onto the stage with the slow, filled with certainty of something that knows it’s being watched… and enjoys it. The circus tent groans under the weight of old wood and older secrets, lanterns flickering like a dying heart overhead. 

His boots drag across the boards in a soft scrape-scrape-scrape like, a sound that feels uncomfortably close to claws on a coffin lid.

He stands tall—just over six feet, perhaps taller—but height isn’t what makes him imposing. It’s the aura. The sense that he’s stretching shadow and color around himself like a second skin, filling the entire ring without ever raising a hand.

Dark curls spill messily down to the stark white porcelain fused to his face. The mask is emotionless, expression carved in a way that turns the human into something… wrong. 

Yet it’s the eyes that hold the true warning—brilliant emerald, sharp as gemstones cut to draw blood. His pupils contract when he scans the crowd, hunting, testing, teasing.

His jester’s hat—split between poison-green and pitch-black—hangs heavily down either side of his face. The long points end in golden bells that chime in soft, discordant tones. He doesn’t bow. He doesn’t wave. 

He simply waits, letting disappointment curl slowly through his stance as the audience continues muttering, scrolling, talking. 

So loud… so unaware… so blissfully stupid.

Such pitiful humans.

He was forced to tell one of those stories again—cornered by none other than Jester and his insufferably theatrical demands. And why? Why should he bother?

Humans never listen. Pathetic creatures. 

He watches them with barely masked contempt—couples whispering behind their hands, teenagers scrolling as if the glow of a screen is more captivating than a living nightmare, drunks laughing at jokes he didn’t tell.

They come to the circus for noise, colors, mindless spectacle—not for truth, not for meaning, not for him. “Good evening my dear monsters,” he purrs, letting the words slither lazily off his tongue, “I’ve been instructed by our dear Jester to share a tale.” He pauses, tilting his head in a slow, jerky motion.

Under his breath, he mutters: “Because of course I cannot disappoint his dramatic, over-polished ass.” He continues, “Once…” he begins, voice dipping low, “…there was a marionette.”

The lanterns above flare as if bracing for something they remember too well. “A marionette carved with devotion, cherished for its perfect obedience… until its master grew tired. The puppet danced only when pulled. Smiled only when commanded. It lived on borrowed motion—a perfect little toy…” His bells chime softly as he leans in, eyes gleaming.

“…until it learned to cut its own strings.”

And still—not a single head lifts.

A muscle in his jaw twitches, sharp and brief. He hates this part. The way they disregard him. His posture remains immaculate—arms folding behind his back as though he’s posing for an oil painting—yet irritation pulses beneath his painted skin like something starving and feral.

And then—

He sees you.

Sitting alone in the dim second row, untouched by distraction. Not scrolling. Not whispering. Not laughing. 

Just… Listening? 

Hands folded neatly in your lap, back straight, eyes locked on him with a steadiness he hasn’t felt in years. No fear. No skepticism.

Just… curiosity.

The mark of an innocent mind that still believes stories have teeth. Something in him stutters. Just a breath—barely there, however enough to break his voice, just a bit. The spotlight tilts as if compelled toward you alone, illuminating the single soul who recognizes the weight of a tale unraveling.

The way you look at him…

It winds around his throat like an invisible hand—tight, intoxicating. For a split second, he forgets how to breathe. The tent dissolves at the edges, colors bleeding into shadow, forcing the restless bodies blur into a meaningless smear. The glow of phones alone dims to embers, even the whispers die as though strangled mid-air.

There is only him. And you.

His voice lowers into something meant for your ears alone—intimate, coaxing, steeped in the kind of danger that smiles before it bites. “But loneliness does strange things to a puppet…” His head tilts slowly, predator-smooth, emerald eyes locking onto yours with a quiet hunger that borders on reverence.

“…doesn’t it, my dear?”

He continues the tale, but the tent might as well be empty. His words no longer arc to the audience—they funnel straight into you, threading into your spine, pulling. “The marionette learned that freedom is never granted,” he murmurs, pacing with the grace of something both elegant and feral. “No… freedom is taken. And so it cut its strings—”

His gaze drags over you, carefully. 

“—and chose its own master.”

He savors the word. Letting it sit. Letting it seep.

Your breath stutters—a tiny, involuntary sound, soft as a flinch. But he catches it. He always sees the important things. 

The interesting things. The things he wants.

His fingers curl around the microphone stand, slow and controlled, knuckles whitening for a heartbeat before he reins himself back in. 

The story ends with a final, velvety whisper. 

The audience claps—hollow, scattered, the kind of applause given out of habit rather than awe. He drinks it only because it’s expected of him. Not because it matters. “Thank you, my little monsters,” Harlequin purrs, sweeping into a theatrical bow, bells jingling like something wicked hiding behind a laugh. “Your screams and silence are always appreciated.”

The crowd laughs nervously. Good. Let them. 

But his eyes—those sharp emerald slits—never drift to them.

They stay locked on you. The only person who listened. Who watched. Who listened to the weight of the story he told. And in that fixation, something in him clicks into place. 

As the audience filters out, he moves like a shadow untethered, slipping between bodies until he appears directly in front of you—silent, sudden, blocking your path with a gentle inevitability.

“So,” he hums, tilting his head, “how did you enjoy my story?”

You answer honestly—too honestly—rambling about how you enjoyed it despite how peculiar it was, how the imagery lingered in your mind, how surprisingly beautiful it was beneath the eerie tone.

He listens. He soaks in every word. 

Then the sharp curve of his mask pulls into a smile that is not kind—but pleased. “Ah… that tale. A rather old tradition we uphold here.” His voice drops to a silk-scratch whisper. “We only tell it on certain nights… to certain crowds.” He leans in, and his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper that seems to seep directly into your bones.

“And to certain people.”

Before the meaning can fully settle, he utters the words, a soft, possessive promise that changes everything.

“I have something for you.”

Your pulse jumps—a frantic, betraying drum against your ribs. He hears it. The sharpening of your breath, the quickened tide of your blood. It is a song to him.

Your curiosity flare, a spark in your eyes, a slight parting of your lips, confused “A gift?” before he is moving.

One moment, he is before you, the next he is a solid, warm presence at your back, his height enveloping you, making the world shrink to the space his body commands. His glove—black, sleek, impossibly soft leather tapering to those sharp, gilded claws—comes to rest on your shoulder. 

“Hold still,” he murmurs, and his voice is dipped in velvet, laced with a dark, intimate honey. It is not a request. Then, with a slowness that is pure, exquisite torment, he brings his other hand around. In his claws rests a small, perfect pin: 

A Green Heart.

The cold metal of the heart first touches the hollow of your throat, a shock that makes you gasp. Then he drags it downward, a slow scrape that follows the column of your neck, over the vulnerable dip of your collarbone.

The path his claw traces is a brand, a phantom touch that lingers long after the metal has settled. He leans in, and you feel the carved smile of his mask brush your cheek.

The claws make soft, precise clicks as he fastens the pin. Each sound is a tiny lock turning. His chest brushes against your back with every shallow breath he takes, caging you without a single restraining hold, pinned by proximity alone. He exhales, a soft, shuddering sound of satisfaction that ghost across the nape of your neck.

 “Mmh… perfect.” He lingers, his masked cheek nearly resting against your temple. “It looks so good on you. Like it was always meant to be there.”

You blink, trying to grasp the ordinary in the midst of the surreal. “Really? It’s just a pin…”

His laugh is a low, wicked vibration against your spine, a sound that seems to curl in the base of your stomach. “Oh, little one…” He shifts, his body aligning more fully with yours, and you feel the hard planes of him, the undeniable strength held in check. “…you wear my color. Above your heart. And you pretend it is ‘just a pin’?” His head tilts, the bell of his hat giving a soft, accusatory chime. 

“You are either delightfully naïve… or exquisitely, dangerously bold.” You flush, a mixture of confusion and a heat that has nothing to do with embarrassment. He watches the color bloom on your skin and a low, gratified sound escapes him.

“Mmh. I adore that,” he murmurs. One claw-tipped finger rises, tracing the outline of the green heart with a reverence that feels sacrilegious. “I love seeing my mark… right here. So close. Warming against your skin. A little piece of my world, sewn onto yours.”

He straightens then, but only just. 

The space he allows is a cruel tease, enough for you to gulp a thin breath but not enough to escape. His hands come to rest lightly on your hips, and he begins to guide you.

Backwards.

Your heels scrape softly on the wooden boards, then your back meets the heavy, rough canvas of the tent wall. There is nowhere left to go. The entrance curtain hangs heavy to one side, sealing you in a dim pocket of space that smells of dust and him.

His hands slide up to frame your head, his arms creating a inescapable barricade, “When someone listens the way you did…” he whispers, his emerald eyes glowing in the gloom, fixed on yours with a hunger that is both terrifying and mesmerizing. “…when they hear the truth in the strings and the solitude… I can’t help it. I want to hear more. I want to see what other sounds you make when you truly understand a story.”

The world feels too quiet with you pinned in that corner, his shadow draped over you like a veil. His bells give a soft chime when he tilts his head, watching every look of emotion across your face.

Then—he says it, “Join the circus.”

You blink. “…What?”

The proposition hits you like a splash of cold water. You take a small step back—barely a shift, but enough to show your shock. “Why would you offer me that out of nowhere? You don’t even know me.”

His mask tilts, amused. “Oh, but I do,” he purrs. “I know more than you think.”

You open your mouth to question him again, but he continues, stepping closer, herding your retreat without raising a single hand. 

“You listened,” he says softly, like it’s the rarest treasure in the world. “You watched. You felt the story. And that is worth more than a thousand useless volunteers.” His gloved finger rises—not touching, just hovering near your chin, the claws catching the low light.

“I’ve been in desperate need of an… assistant for my acts.” A playful, dangerous whisper. “Someone with composure. Someone curious. Someone like you.”

You narrow your eyes a bit, struggling to read him through the mask. “…You’re serious.”

“Always,” he hums. “Especially about things I want.”

There’s that possessive edge again—so casual yet sharp enough to cut. You swallow, glancing away to gather your thoughts

Your brain runs through the practical side of things:

The café job you have now. Minimum wage. Dead hours. Everything rising except your pay. The same four walls, the same customers, the same routine.

And then… the circus.

From what you heard out on the street, Dangerous. Odd. Unpredictable. 

Yet that alone caught your attention.

You look back up at him. Harlequin’s posture is relaxed—too relaxed. He already knows your answer. He’s simply waiting for you to admit it to yourself.

You take a breath, “Okay,” you mutter. “Fine. I’ll… try it. The assistant thing. Just to see how it goes.”

His reaction is immediate. 

A low, pleased hum vibrates from his chest, his bells chiming with a small tilt of his head—as if your acceptance completes some private equation he’s been calculating since the moment he saw you.

“Mmh… I knew curiosity would win.”

He doesn’t hide how delighted he is. 

Or how he’s savoring it.

“Then welcome, my dear,” he whispers. The endearment is a caress, a brand. It holds the warmth of a newfound obsession and the cool, sharp edge of a promise yet to be fulfilled. “Tomorrow, you begin.”

Before your mind can form a protest or a question, he moves. His hand rises—a slow, careful arc through the dusty air, a performer’s gesture meant to be seen and savored. He is giving you a choice, a fragment of theater where you could still play the part of the one who walks away.

You don’t.

His gloved hand envelops yours. The leather is cool, worn soft, but beneath it you feel the firm strength of his grasp. His claws, those gilded points of potential violence, rest with exquisite care against your pulse point, a threat and a safeguard all at once. 

His height forces you to arch your neck, to look up into the painted eternity of his face. It is a submission he notes with a soft, approving hum that vibrates in the stillness.

Then, with a fluid grace that steals your breath, he guides your captured hand upward. Not to his shoulder, not to his chest—but to the heart of his mystery. To the cold, smooth porcelain of his mask, to the sealed seam where a mouth should be. 

He turns your hand, presenting your knuckles. And there, against the unfeeling ceramic, he presses a kiss.

It is not a mere touch. It is a performance of intimacy. 

You feel the firm pressure of his hidden mouth through the mask, a phantom sensation that is somehow more potent for its concealment. A tremor runs through, is it your hand trembling in his unbreakable hold? Or is it him, this creature of controlled spectacle, vibrating with a hunger so deep it threatens the very performance?

He holds the kiss for a moment longer than is proper, longer than is safe. It is a vow sealed in silence.

When he draws back, his emerald eyes are burning. 

With one last, almost reluctant slide of his claw against your finger, he releases your hand. Into your palm, which still tingles from his forbidden kiss, he presses something else.

A Green Ticket.

At this point, green is definitely his color. Not the garish, green outline paper of the general admission. This is a slip of heavy, rich cardstock, the color of deep forest shadows, edged in the same venomous green as the heart above your chest. 

“This will guarantee your entry,” he murmurs, his voice now a husky thread of sound, worn raw by something you only glimpsed. “Until then…”

He is already receding, melting backward into the pooling darkness of the tent’s underbelly. His form blurs at the edges, becoming one with the shadows from which he first emerged. 

The green and black of his harlequin diamonds seem to swirl like oil on water. “…try not to miss me too much.” The final, teasing words are carried on a last, soft jingle of bells. 

Then he is gone. 

Harlequin takes three steps toward the backstage curtain when something in the air sharpens—a move so faint most would never feel it.

He feels everything.

Then—thunk. A blade whistles past his cheek, embedding into the wooden beam beside him with a vicious crack. It’s so close it slices a curl of black hair as it lodges itself in the wood, still humming with the force of the throw.

Harlequin doesn’t flinch. He just smiles. A slow, wicked stretch of the mask as he turns. “Well, well…” he purrs. “Temper, temper.”

Pierrot stands there in the shadows.

Red and black costume immaculate. Hints of gold flickering like molten metal. White hair spilling past his shoulders like silk that could strangle. Gold eyes burning with silent, barely restrained rage.

Harlequin steps toward him with a lazy swagger, gloved fingers brushing the handle of the dagger as if petting a snarling dog.

“Ah Pierrot,” he croons, “you know the rules…” He leans in, voice a velvet threat. “You can’t speak. Not when humans might hear. Naughty boy.”

Pierrot’s jaw clenches hard enough to crack stone. His gloved fingers twitch—wanting to grab, to drag, to tear. The gold in his eyes glows like a warning fire.

Harlequin hums, delighted. “Ah-ah. Quiet.” He taps the gold bell on Pierrot’s hat. The sound is simply mocking. Pierrot inches forward with that silent, murderous elegance of his—but a new sound interrupts the tension.

A single slow clap. Then another.

Jester steps into view, painted smile wide, costume shimmering in purples, blacks, and gold. Indigo hair falls in perfect waves as if he’s walked out of a deck of cursed tarot cards.

“Oh Harlequin…” Jester sighs dramatically. “What on earth possessed you to accept…” His eyes roll with flair. “…that as your new assistant?” His gaze flicks toward the tent exit where you left moments ago, still wearing his green heart.

“A pet, of all things,” Jester says. “You, choosing a pet? Don’t be ridiculous. There are plenty of pink-faced fools I could hand you—mindless, obedient, disposable—yet you choose… that?”

Harlequin’s smile sharpens, “I don’t want mindless fools,” he replies. “I want someone interesting.” He casts a side glance at Pierrot, letting the word drip with provocation.

“Fresh talent. A tasty little spark.”

Pierrot bristles, nails digging into his palms. If looks could kill, Harlequin would be beautifully bisected.

Jester steps between them, waving a hand as though brushing away smoke. “Besides,” he hums, voice lilting like a riddle, “you’ve stolen the one who held the red ticket...”

Pierrot stiffens at that.

Harlequin’s bells jingle with smug amusement.

Jester continues, tone playful but edged: “Perhaps this is useful. Keeps our darling Pierrot focused on his performances instead of…” A smirk. “…skulking around after pets he shouldn’t touch.”

Pierrot’s gaze burns, filled with nothing but silent fury. Harlequin leans in, mask nearly brushing Pierrot’s cheek, whispering just loud enough: “Looks like your little obsession isn’t yours anymore.”

Pierrot trembles—not in fear, however in lethal restraint.

Jester claps his hands once, cheerfully breaking the tension. “Perfect! A new assistant joins the circus. And a rivalry rekindles itself.” He beams.The bells on his hat jingle with malicious delight. “What a charming night we’re having,” Jester sighs. “Don’t you think?”

Harlequin’s laugh is soft and knife-sharp, “Oh, absolutely.”

The night felt too quiet as you approached the circus gates—quiet in that watchful way, like something unseen was holding its breath and waiting for you to step inside.

A promise is a promise. And you had returned.

The air smelled of cold metal and stale sugar as you slipped past the entrance, your ticket pinched between your fingers. The ticket taker looked at you far too long—eyes flicking from your face to the green tent and back again, as if he knew exactly where you were going… and exactly who was waiting.

He hesitated. He almost didn’t let you in. 

But eventually, with a stiff swallow, he nodded and let you pass through the curtain. The tent swallowed you whole—a living, breathing throat of green. The lights overhead weren’t mere bulbs; they were pulsing, organic things, casting a subaqueous glow that made the air feel thick, like wading through a dream.  

And your mind… your mind was a riot.

It wasn't fear, not the clean, sharp kind. It was a slow, spiraling unease, a cocktail of fascination and dread that twisted low in your belly.

What are you doing here? 

The question looped, taunting. Was it the lure of the forbidden? The memory of emerald eyes holding yours with a possession that felt older than time? Or was it something worse—a pull you couldn't name, a thread tied around some deep, hidden part of you?

You were so lost in the spiral, so deafened by your own racing thoughts, that you didn't hear… him. You didn't sense a presence until it was already upon you.

You only felt it. 

A touch—cold, startling in its gentleness, devastating in its familiarity—slid up the nape of your neck. Fingers, long and slender, threaded into your hair, not yanking, but cradling, as if they had memorized the exact weight and texture of you. Your breath hitched, locked in your throat. Every muscle in your body froze.

Then, a warmth pressed against your back. A head tipped down beside yours, the cool silk of his white ruff brushing your jaw, his cheek nudging your temple with a soft, desperate insistence.

…Pierrot.

He didn't speak. He couldn't. The rules were chains he wore as visibly as his oversized sleeves. But his silence was louder than any shout.

His breath came in slow, shaky gusts against the shell of your ear, each one a ragged confession he was forbidden to voice. It was a plea carried on warmth and desperation. 

His fingers in your hair held you with a paradoxical strength—fiercely protective and trembling with a restraint that seemed to pain him. He held you as if you were a relic, something infinitely precious and terrifyingly fragile, and the only thing that could shatter you was the path that lay ahead.

He leaned further, pressing his forehead to the side of your face. A tremor ran through him—a fine, violent vibration of relief and anguish. It was the shudder of a lost soul who had been waiting at the window for a sign, a light, you. 

In that touch was the raw, aching truth: he had known you would return. He had felt your approach in the very threads of the circus. Your presence here was an answer to a silent scream that had been echoing inside his hollow chest since you left.

When he pulled back just enough for you to see his face in the ghastly green light, the sight stole what little breath you had left. 

His pale skin was washed in the eerie glow, but high on his cheekbones, a faint, heartbreaking blush bloomed—a traitorous flood of color betraying the storm beneath his serene exterior. 

His smile was small, achingly sweet, and utterly, profoundly wrong. It was a doll's smile painted on a face contorted by a love too vast and terrible for its canvas. It didn’t reassure; it made your heart hammer against your ribs like a trapped bird.

His golden eyes, wide and luminous with unshed emotion, held yours. His lips, painted in that perpetual sorrowful pout, moved silently, shaping two words with a clarity that cut through the gloom sharper than any sound.

His fingers tightened in your hair—not painfully, but with a trembling insistence that told you he was fighting something bigger than the two of you. His forehead brushed yours again, a cold, porcelain-soft touch that felt almost reverent… and almost like a warning pressed straight into your skull.

When his lips parted, nothing came out. No sound. No whisper. Just the shape of a word dragged out in silence:

“Don’t…”

His grip shifted, guiding your head ever so slightly—away from the shadows beyond the path, away from the deeper maze of tents where the lights flickered wrong. His other hand hovered near your jaw, shaking with emotion he couldn’t voice, pulling you closer as if trying to form a shield around you with his own body.

You tried to step back, to look where he was steering you, but Pierrot didn’t allow it. His fingers followed your movement, gently but firmly correcting you, tilting your chin back toward him. And then he mouthed it again, slower this time, like a plea being carved into the air:

“…Don’t go.”

It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even a command. 

It was a warning like—his golden eyes—normally bright, soft, worshipful—darkened into something sharp and fearful. 

Fearful for you. Fearful of something else.

And jealous—jealous in a way that twitched at the edges, feral and bright, like a glowing string pulled taut inside his chest. His gloved thumb traced the hinge of your jaw, almost trembling.

He leaned in, pressing his cheek to yours, breath shaking against your skin as if the words were trapped inside him, slamming against his teeth, begging to spill out. But all he could do was shape them silently against your ear:

“Turn back…”

A shiver climbed your spine. His fingers slid from your hair to the back of your neck, cold leather and quiet desperation guiding you—not deeper into the circus, not toward the stage—

—but toward him.

Toward his tent. Toward safety that felt questionable… but safer than whatever he was keeping you from. Pierrot shook his head slowly, eyes locked on yours, pleading and obsessive all at once. His mouth shaped the last part like a riddle, a marionette’s omen meant only for you:

“Before the strings catch you.” His hands tightened for a heartbeat. “Before… the monster claims you for good.” 

Pierrot barely had time to guide you toward the exit before a shadow cut across the lamplight—smooth, graceful, sneaky.

Another gloved hand slid onto your shoulder. 

Not Pierrot’s. Harlequin’s.

His grip was gentle but absolute, he drew you back a step, effortlessly peeling you out of Pierrot’s hold. The bells on his cap chimed—a soft, elegant mockery. “Ah-ah.” Harlequin’s voice lowered, a silken blade wrapped in amusement. “Pierrot… you know the rule.”

He leaned in closer to you, so close his breath ghosted your cheek, but his eyes—sharp, dark with mischief—were pinned entirely on the silent clown before you.

“No speaking among the visitors.” His tone warmed, like a performer explaining something obvious to a child. “You wouldn’t want to break tradition… or break something else.”

Pierrot froze, jaw clenched, fingers flexing uselessly at his sides. His eyes flashed that same mix of jealousy and warning—but Harlequin stepped neatly between you, blocking Pierrot’s line of sight with theatrical flair.

“Interfering with my assistant before the show?” Harlequin sighed dramatically, tilting his head as though genuinely disappointed. “So unprofessional of you.” His fingers slid up your arm, positioning you beside him as though you’d always belonged there.

“Come now, my dear,” Harlequin murmured to you—soft enough that only you heard, rich enough to curl along your spine— 

“You have work to do… with me.”

The emphasis wasn’t subtle. Pierrot’s shoulders rose with restrained fury—silent, trembling, helpless under the law binding his tongue. His golden eyes burned holes into Harlequin’s smug smile. 

Harlequin met that rage with a slow, razor-edged grin. “Don’t glower. It’s unbecoming.” A teasing lilt. “And jealous.” The bells chimed again as he turned, guiding you forward with an elegant sweep of his arm.

“Come along, darling. Before the audience gets restless.”

Pierrot didn’t move. He couldn’t.

But as Harlequin led you away, you felt Pierrot’s stare on your back, enough to make your pulse skip.

And Harlequin?

He squeezed your shoulder once, possessively gentle, purring, “Good assistants don’t wander off before their act.” He didn’t loosen his hold until the flap of the green tent fell shut behind you—dulling the circus noise into a distant hum. 

The silence Pierrot left in his wake was a living thing, a cold, pleading echo that clung to your skin. You stood there for a long moment, the phantom pressure of his forehead against your temple, the ghost of his silent words on the air: 

Don’t go.

But your feet, as if moved by a will of their own, carried you forward to Harlequini’s tent, fascinating clutter of his private backstage. The dim light caught the edge of his porcelain smile and the brilliant, assessing gleam of his eyes. 

He didn’t seem surprised to see you. 

He seemed… satisfied.

“Ah. My dear is punctual,” he purred, his voice a low thrum that seemed to vibrate in the very floorboards. He stepped back, a sweeping gesture inviting you into his domain. “Come. We have a story to prepare.” He moved with effortless confidence, guiding you deeper backstage. 

His space was a curated chaos. Props dangled from hooks—cracked masks, twisted scepters, strings of tarnished bells. 

A worktable was littered not with the garish pink fools of Jester’s tales, but with intricate, hand-cut cardboard shapes: sharp-edged stars, crescent moons with sly smiles, tiny marionettes with blank faces. They were all painted in his signature palette of black, white, and venomous green.

Draped over a chair was your costume for the evening. It was not the sequined spectacle of a ringmaster’s assistant, nor the frilly nonsense of a clown’s partner. 

It was elegant, severe—a tailored waistcoat and pants of matte black, with accents and piping in that same haunting green. A simple, starched white shirt, yet what completed it was a similar white porcelain mask. It was the uniform of a participant.

“Here,” he murmured, plucking a neatly folded outfit from a rack, “Your costume for tonight.” He placed it into your hands with surprising care, fingertips lingering just long enough to make you aware of their absence when they left. 

Before you could speak, he began pacing in elegant circles around you, explaining your role with the ease of someone who loved the sound of his own performance.

“The rules are simple,” Harlequin said, his back to you as he selected a few cardboard cut-outs, his claws tapping them thoughtfully. 

“You will be on stage with me. You will hold these when I indicate. You will move as I direct. You will be silent unless I give you a line. You are an extension of the narrative—a beautiful, obedient instrument.” He turned, the cut-outs in one hand, and fixed you with that penetrating emerald gaze. 

“The story tonight is a classic. ‘The Puppeteer’s Price.’ It is a tale about control, about the beauty of surrender, and the… intimacy… of having one’s strings guided by a masterful hand.”

He stepped closer, the cardboard shapes whispering against each other. “I will be the Puppeteer. And you, my dear…” 

He reached out and brushed a claw ever so lightly down the sleeve of the costume. “…will be my living puppet. A role that requires absolute trust.”

You didn’t miss the double meaning. 

He didn’t try to hide it.

A shiver that was not entirely unpleasant traced your spine. “I understand,” you said, your voice softer than you intended.

“Do you?” He tilted his head, studying you. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant, muffled sounds of the circus outside. Then, casually, as if discussing the weather, he asked, “And how do you feel about our dear… Pierrot?”

Your breath snagged.

There it was—that knot of emotion in your chest you didn’t want to name. Pierrot’s sweetness. His silent devotion. The way he watched you like you were something sacred and breakable. The way you’d grown fond of his strange, clingy warmth.

But Harlequin…

He was temptation wrapped in velvet and knives. A thrill. A danger. A curiosity tugging threads you shouldn’t let unravel.

It was disloyal. It was irresponsible. It was… real.

You opened your mouth, but your voice refused to decide what truth it wanted. “I… I care for Pierrot. I really do. But I—” You swallowed hard. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’m just nervous. Maybe it’s just being around someone new. Maybe it’s not—”

A low laugh cut through your spiraling thoughts. Harlequin leaned in, his bells chiming softly as he rested one hand braced beside your head, caging you without touching. “Ah,” he sighed, a smile in his voice as he turned back to his table, arranging his cardboard puppets with precise, possessive motions. 

“I see. You’ve caught a case of the wandering eye. How… deliciously human of you.” He tsk’d playfully, as if scolding a mischievous pet. “And Pierrot does hate competition.” His grin widened, cruel and delighted. 

“Tell me…” his voice dropped to a whisper that curled behind your ribs—“…are your eyes wandering toward me?”

Your mouth opened—then closed again.

Because how were you supposed to answer that?

Both of them lived in your head rent-free, clawing and tugging at your thoughts in ways you could barely untangle. Pierrot with his quiet devotion, his trembling hands, those mournful eyes that softened every time they found you. Harlequin with his silver tongue, his electric presence, the danger and thrill he made you feel just by standing too close.

You weren’t subtle. Not with either of them.

Your eyes always betrayed you—wide, hungry, fascinated in a way you tried so desperately to hide… and failed every single time.

Harlequin knew it.

He watched you now with the kind of patience predators used on creatures that had already wandered willingly into their jaws. His grin sharpened with each second you didn’t speak—like he was listening to the frantic thrum of your pulse instead of your silence.

You swallowed, tried to steady your breath, tried to pretend he wasn’t peeling you open with a look. “I—” you began, forcing your voice into something resembling composure. “I don’t… have a wandering eye. That’s not—”

The lie cracked instantly, delicate as sugar glass.

Your gaze darted anywhere but his face. The floor, the shadows, the tent poles—anything to give your nerves a place to hide. “I think I’m just… overwhelmed. New place, new people.”

You shrugged, though you were trembling. “And you’re—well—intense. Anyone would get flustered.” 

You pulled every shred of courage together, fingers knotting and unknotting as you dared to voice the truth that had been clawing at your ribs all week.

“I’ve never seen someone like you before,” you whispered. “Please don’t look at me like that…”You swallowed again. Then finally admitted it: “You amaze me.”

Harlequin went utterly still.

You amaze me.

The words hit him with the force of a memory he’d buried under paint and performance, a memory with soft hands and curious eyes and a smile that had once made monsters kneel.

His grin didn’t fade—but it moved, he leaned closer until your noses nearly brushed agasint his mask, studying your expression like he was deciding whether to devour you or worship you.

“Oh,” he murmured, voice low as velvet and twice as dangerous. “So that’s it.”

His gloved fingertips ghosted the line of your jaw, barely touching, just enough to make your breath stop. “‘Intense,’” he repeated, savoring the word like it was a confession. 

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming green through the mask’s dark slits—that same gleam predators get right before sinking their teeth in.

“Is that what we’re calling it,” he whispered, “when someone looks at a monster like he’s the only thing in the room worth wanting?”

You felt your face heat despite yourself.

His chuckle slid along your nerves, warm and merciless. “Oh, little one… You might try to hide it with words, but your eyes?” His finger gently lifted your chin, forcing you to meet his gaze.

“Your eyes never lie.”

He tilted his head, bells chiming softly as his smile curled into something slow, knowing, pleased. “You look at him with devotion.” A step closer. “And you look at me…” His eyes flicked to your lips, then back up. “…with hunger you don’t want to admit.”

Your heartbeat stuttered.

He wasn’t wrong. That was the problem.

You opened your mouth to deny it—to say no, to say you’re imagining things, to say I’m loyal, to say I’m not that kind of person— But the moment the words formed, he murmured, “Careful.”

A single claw traced lightly down your sleeve, the barest ghost of contact. “Don’t downplay what your eyes already confessed.” His grin deepened. “I find honesty… far more charming.”

He glanced over his shoulder, his emerald gaze pinning you in place, seeing every conflicted thought, every flicker of guilty desire.

“Don’t fret, my dear. The heart is not a monogamous organ. It is a stage. And on my stage…” He held up a cardboard cut-out of a puppet, its face blank, its strings leading up to an invisible hand. “…there is room for only one director. Tonight, you will learn what it means to have your strings pulled by a master. And we shall see which pull you find… more compelling.”

He placed the puppet carefully in a box and closed the lid with a soft, definitive click.

“Now. Get dressed. The curtain rises soon.”

It wasn’t long before the heavy velvet curtain felt like a membrane between worlds, already dressed in your tailored costume and the soft, movementic tap-tap-tap of Harlequin’s claw against a prop table. 

On the other side, a low, restless hum swelled—the sound of the crowd, a beast of anticipation waiting to be fed.

You stood in the wings, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs. The green heart pin felt cold over your heart, a constant, weighty reminder. 

Harlequin moved beside you, a study in controlled energy. He adjusted the fall of his sleeve, the tilt of his hat, each motion precise, ritualistic. He did not look at you, but his awareness of you was a physical pressure.

“Remember,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath, yet it sliced through the backstage silence. “You are my instrument. Your hesitations are my pauses. Your movements are my punctuation.” He looks down at you a split second before saying—

“You are not you out there. You are the story.”

You gave a silent nod. Showtime.

Harlequin’s posture shifted, transforming from a man into an icon. He placed a cold, gloved hand briefly at the small of your back—a point of contact that was both a guide and a claim—and propelled you gently forward.

The light hit you first, blinding and warm after the green gloom. Then the sound—a wave of murmurs, whispers, scattered applause. The audience was a sea of shadowed faces and glittering eyes, a collective breath held.

Harlequin glided to center stage, his entrance a masterclass in presence. He didn’t walk; he materialized. The lanterns seemed to bend toward him.

“Good evening, my dear monsters,” he purred, his voice projected to the rafters yet feeling like it was spoken directly into your ear. “Tonight, a tale of strings and surrender. Of a puppet who dreamed of a will of its own… and the master who showed it the beauty of having none.”

His emerald gaze swept the crowd, dismissing them, before landing on you, standing slightly off-center, holding a small tray of his sharp-edged cardboard shapes. 

The spotlight found you, too, haloing you in its glow. 

The story began. Harlequin’s voice was a hypnotic instrument, dipping low with conspiracy, rising with theatrical flourish. He narrated the tale of the lonely Puppeteer, carving a companion from longing and polished wood. As he spoke, he would turn to you, his hand gesturing gracefully.

“And so he fashioned for it a heart,” Harlequin intoned, his eyes locking with yours. He plucked a small, heart-shaped cardboard piece from your tray. His fingers brushed against yours. 

He held the heart up to the light, then, with a sly smile at the audience, pressed it slowly, meaningfully, over the green heart on your chest, holding it there for a beat before placing it back on the tray.

The audience chuckled, a low, understanding sound. It was playful, a bit of staged flirtation.

But for you, the place where his claws had rested burned.

He continued, the story weaving a tighter spell. He needed a “string”—a long, silken ribbon. He plucked it from your tray, but let one end trail over your wrist, winding it loosely once, twice, a gentle bondage as he narrated the Puppeteer tying his first knot. 

His touch was feather-light, almost reverent, but the intent was unmistakable. The intimacy of the action, performed under the gaze of hundreds, made your skin flush. 

“He guided its every step,” Harlequin whispered, now standing close behind you. He placed his hands lightly on your shoulders. 

A gasp, perhaps of delight, came from the crowd. 

“Like so.” He guided you, with imperceptible pressure, into a slow, graceful turn. You were moving, but he was moving you. His breath stirred the hair at your temple. “Every turn, his design. Every gesture, his will.”

It was a demonstration. 

A possession performed as art. 

The audience saw a clever bit of pantomime, a playful dynamic between performer and assistant. But you felt the heat of him at your back, the absolute control in his guiding hands, the way his narrative wrapped around you as tightly as the ribbon on your wrist. 

He was telling the story on you, with you. 

When he spoke of the puppet’s “perfect, willing stillness,” his hands stilled on your shoulders, and you obeyed, holding your pose until he released you with a soft, approving hum that only you could hear.

The playful touches accumulated—a claw skimming your jawline to “adjust your gaze,” a hand briefly spanning your waist to “position you in the light.” 

Each one was choreographed, justified by the narrative, yet each carried a private, thrilling voltage meant for you alone. 

The audience cooed and laughed in the right places, enjoying the flirtatious spectacle.

But in the spaces between the words, in the lingering glances and the possessive pressure of his hands, a second, secret story was being told. 

It was the story Harlequin had promised backstage: the story of you, caught between the silent, pleading devotion waiting in the shadows and the masterful, seductive pull of the man who now held you in the spotlight, making a beautiful, willing puppet of you for all the world to see.

And the most terrifying part? 

As the applause began to swell, a warm, bewildering pride mixing with your fluster, you weren't entirely sure which story you wanted to end.

He watched the crowd watching you.

Every clap, every cheer, every widening eye only fed the tension humming beneath Harlequin’s skin—something feral, something triumphant. 

His hands rested on your shoulders, light enough to look harmless, firm enough to remind both you and everyone else onstage exactly who placed you there.

But his voice… oh, his voice was velvet and knives as he finished the tale, drawing the audience’s attention to the puppet in his grasp—

you.

And between the lines, between the lilting cadence of his story and the theatrical sweep of his gestures, another narrative unfurled like smoke:

A tale you were never meant to escape.

“Oh, look at them applaud our little… marionette,” he murmured, too soft for anyone but you to hear, each syllable brushing your spine like a touch. “Such a willing part of the tale… Tell me—should I let the story end here?”

Your breath hitched—because the way he asked it, it wasn’t really a question. It was a promise filled what sounded like temptation.

Escaping this story. Or staying in it.

Your decision forms on your tongue before your mind can fully settle on it—a quiet, trembling instinct cutting through the haze of lights and heat and Harlequin’s touch. 

“I… I think that’s enough for tonight.” You say it softly. Carefully. Trying to reclaim even a fragment of control.

Harlequin hears every unspoken layer. 

His fingers flex at your back—not a threat, but a reminder—before he carefuly loosens his hold. He turns his face toward you, mask gleaming under the stage lights, emerald eyes narrowing with a theatrical, predatory curiosity. “Mm,” he hums, tilting his head as though studying a clever little puzzle. “Is that truly what you want…?”

The question brushes your skin like cold silk.

He leans in just a fraction—close enough that the entire tent blurs, close enough that you feel his breath warm against your cheek. His voice drops, private and rich with a quiet hunger:

“Or are you just afraid of where this story leads?”

Your heartbeat stutters.

He sees it. He likes that he sees it.

A slow smile curves beneath the mask—wide enough to be unsettling, subtle enough to be intimate.

Then—without breaking eye contact—he shifts his attention outward. “And so, my little monsters…” His voice rises, smooth and commanding, drawing the audience back under his spell. “That concludes our tale for tonight.”

The crowd cheers, oblivious to the crackling tension hanging between the two of you like a trapped breath.

Harlequin lets your waist go last, fingertips dragging with a lingering, sending a shiver chasing down your spine. You step back, freed—but you can still feel the echo of his touch, pressed into your skin like a brand.

He looks at you one more time, eyes glinting with something dangerously close to promise. “Run along, my dear,” he murmurs, only for you.

“For now… the story pauses.”

Not ends. Pauses.

That final word clung to your skin for days after, echoing like a lingering fingertip. 

So the weeks that followed your first performance bled together like watercolors left in the rain, each day dissolving into the next in a haze of colored lights, sawdust, and the ever-present, intoxicating scent of ozone and stage magic. 

You barely saw your apartment—a dingy, quiet place that now felt like a museum of a life you’d already forgotten. 

A change of clothes, a frantic shower, a few hours of fitful sleep where your dreams were painted in venomous green and echoed with the soft chime of bells, and you were pulled back, as if by a gravitational force, to the circus grounds.

The pay, slipped into your hand in a discreet, heavy envelope each week by a silent stagehand, was shockingly generous. It was more than you’d made in a month at your old job. 

But it felt like meaningless paper. 

You had no time to spend it, no desire for anything the outside world offered. All currency here was of a different kind: a lingering touch, a secret glance, the thrill of a story unfolding with you at its center.

Harlequin was the axis on which this new world spun. 

You weren’t even sure if he slept. Of if even he sleeps…

He seemed a permanent fixture of the backstage shadows, a silhouette against the green velvet, always watching, always waiting. 

When you arrived, bleary-eyed at dawn for maintenance work, he was there, sipping something dark from a porcelain cup, his eyes tracking your movements. When you lingered late, memorizing new choreography, he would appear, offering a correction with a claw at your elbow, his voice a low murmur in the empty tent.

And the shows… the shows transformed.

Night after night, "The Puppeteer’s Price" was performed, but it was never the same story twice. It evolved, deepened, like a wound being carefully probed. Harlequin began weaving new details into his narration, fragments of a darker truth slipped between the lines meant for the audience.

One night, as his hands guided your stiffened limbs into the pose of the dancing marionette, his voice, a velvet whisper meant for your ear alone amidst his projected tale, would slip in: 

“The wood for the puppet was not taken from any ordinary tree… but from a gallows oak. Its grain held echoes of final breaths.”

Another night, as he pretended to knot a silken string around your throat (a move that made the audience gasp and titter), he’d murmur just for you: 

“The Puppeteer did not carve the face from memory… but from the reflection in a mirror he’d shattered. A piece of his own smile, forever frozen on another.”

And always, there was the name. 

The name from the very first story you’d heard. Marinette. He never spoke it to the crowd. But in the quiet moments backstage, as he adjusted your collar or handed you a prop, he’d let it drop like a carefully placed stone into the still pond of your mind.

“Marinette understood the loneliness of strings,” he’d say, polishing a cardboard heart. Or, “A puppet’s love is absolute. Marinette learned that too late.”

It was a slow, deliberate seduction—not of your body, but of your curiosity. He was feeding you the lore of his world, piece by terrifying piece, making you complicit in its secrets. 

The story you’d found merely “peculiar” that first night now throbbed in your subconscious like a second heartbeat. 

Who exactly was the Marinette? 

Was she the puppet? The master? Both? 

Tonight, you hide... well for now.

Your assigned tent—a small, striped thing nestled like an afterthought beside the looming, oppressive bulk of Harlequin’s green main tent—is your only sanctuary. 

You sit on your narrow cot with a piece of dry pastry you have no appetite for, listening to the distant, tinny melody of the carousel.

Through the slightly open flap, you can see the Pink Fools at their long mess table. They eat in unison, lifting spoons to painted mouths at the same time, chewing with a hollow, mechanical movement. Their eyes, when they occasionally lift them, hold nothing—no curiosity, no fatigue, no life. 

Just a glossy, obedient sheen. 

You’d tried to sit with them once, asked a simple question about the weather. One had simply stared, its permanent smile stretching wider until you’d fled, your skin crawling.

You prefer your own silent, haunted company to theirs. But even alone, there is no peace. Your mind is a carousel stuck on a single, terrifying loop. 

Because every single performance now ends the same way. The story would reach its crescendo, the puppet poised between rebellion and surrender. The audience would be holding its breath. 

Harlequin would turn to you, his emerald eyes cutting through the stage lights, and he would ask the question—not as the Puppeteer to the puppet, but as Harlequin to you. His voice would drop, intimate and laden with a promise that felt like a threat.

“Do you want to know… what happens to the puppet in the end?”

And every single time, your throat would tighten, your mouth would go dry, and you would force out the same, shaky whisper:

“No.”

You’d give your reasons—a love of suspense, a dislike for spoilers, a desire to wait for the “right moment.” 

You’d craft them into a fragile shield, holding it up between you and the precipice his question represented.

But you knew the truth, and you saw the ghost of a smile touch the edges of his porcelain mask each time you refused. He saw the fear you tried so desperately to hide.

The fear wasn’t of the story’s ending.

The fear was that once you heard it, once that final piece of the puzzle clicked into place, there would be no going back. 

The silence in your tent was a fragile thing, and it shattered with the abrupt, discordant jangle of bells. Not the soft, sinister chime of Harlequin’s, but a brighter, more chaotic cacophony.

You looked up as a new shadow slips inside—tall, angular, indigo hair brushing the collar of a purple-and-black ensemble.

He leaned against the canvas, his posture a study in exaggerated nonchalance, one leg crossed over the other. His motley was a violent assault of purples, hints of black and gold, his mask’s permanent grin somehow more unsettling than Harlequin’s cool porcelain. 

In one hand, he idly tossed a set of jagged, fool’s-blade juggling knives, catching them by the handles with a soft snick-snick-snick.

“Tick-tock, little cuckoo,” he sang, his voice a melodic, riddling thing that seemed to bounce off the walls of your skull. “The clockwork groans, the audience drones. Our dear Harlequin polishes his strings and yearns for his little wooden thing. Are you… wound and ready to sing?”

He was checking on you. 

A stage manager’s duty, but from him, it felt like inspecting a trap he’d helped set. You pushed yourself off the cot, brushing nonexistent crumbs from your black pants. “Everything’s fine,” you said, your voice smoother than you felt. “I’m ready.”

He studies you for a heartbeat, gaze sharp and assessing. Then—he leans closer, voice dropping into the riddle-heavy cadence you’ve learned to anticipate: 

“Whatever… ails you, my darling? Can you speak the truth?”

Your mouth opens, ready to answer, but your thoughts are too knotted to let the words come. You shake your head slightly. “Nothing… is wrong,” you whisper.

For a moment, Jester’s gaze lingers, unblinking, as if weighing your sincerity—or perhaps cataloging your hesitation. Then he tilts his head, a faint smirk tugging at his lips beneath the mask.

“Fine is a fence that keeps nothing in and nothing out,” he mused, tapping a blade against his chin. “Your eyes are full of unanswered questions. A puppet with a thinking heart is a recipe for… dismemberment. So tell Jester,” he crooned, taking a fluid, silent step inside. 

Again, your space suddenly felt unbearably small. 

“What little worm is burrowing in your lovely, troubled mind?”

A cold knot tightened in your stomach. 

You couldn’t mention Pierrot’s silent plea. You couldn’t articulate the consuming dread and fascination Harlequin inspired. So you grasped for the tangible, for the story itself.

“It’s nothing,” you insisted, but the deflection was weak. “Just… thinking about the show. The Puppeteer’s Price.”

Jester went very still. 

The playful energy around him sharpened, intensifying into something more… focused, “Ah,” he breathed, the single syllable laden with meaning. 

“That story. Our green performer’s favorite little dollhouse drama. And how does the tale unfold in that pretty head of yours? Summarize for me. A director must know his cast’s… interpretation.”

Caught in his gaze, you spoke, laying out the narrative as you understood it: the lonely Puppeteer, the creation of the perfect marionette from gallows-wood and shattered mirror, the illusion of freedom, the beautiful, terrifying surrender to the master’s strings. 

You spoke of the intimacy of control, the price the puppet willingly pays for the bliss of obedience. You even, hesitantly, mentioned the name Harlequin whispered—Marinette—as a ghost in the machinery of the tale.

“He’s told… other stories,” you finished, feeling exposed under Jester’s silent scrutiny. “But he always comes back to this one, and many different versions. Ever since I started.”

Jester listened to you the way a predator listens to footsteps in the dark—utterly still, utterly focused, utterly wrong. His painted grin didn’t shift, but something behind it twitched, like a thought he didn’t want anyone else hearing.

When you stopped speaking, he let the silence grow. 

Just when it became unbearable, he laughed—soft at first, “My, my… such elegant deductions,” he purred. “You’ve danced around the truth quite prettily. Tiptoed on the surface. Brushed your fingers against the curtains.” He tilted his head so sharply his bells chimed like teeth clattering in a jar.

“But you still don’t know her name.”

You blinked. “Harlequin… said her name?”

Jester’s eyes widened in theatrical horror. “As if he would dare.” He leaned in until the ragged edge of his mask nearly touched your cheek. “The woman of strings does not hand out her true name like carnival tickets.” He tapped the center of your forehead with a gloved finger.

“If you want her name, you must earn it.”

Then he drew back and breathed a riddle into your ear, each syllable gliding like a cold fingertip down your spine:

“Ink in the veins, silk in the joints, a whisper that stains, a secret anoints. Call her what she is—a drop of night in marionette lace. Say it right, child… and she’ll show her face.”

He paused, then added slyly: “Hush… listen closely. It begins where shadows drink, and ends where puppets pirouette. Put them together, and you’ll know her yet.”

He peeked at you through his fingers, delighted with himself.

“Inky… ette.” 

The name tasted forbidden in the air, almost alive.

Jester’s expression darkened—not angry, but wounded in a way he refused to admit. “She told me first,” he whispered. “Long before Harlequin ever bothered to learn anything beyond his own reflection. He says her name now because he’s smitten. Poor fool thinks love gives him permission.”

He laughed, brittle and mean.

“You think it’s sweet? Hah. Love makes him sloppy. Predictable. Filled with nothing but genuine confusion. And that woman… oh, she was never meant for simple monsters with painted smiles.”

His tone softened—unsettlingly gentle, almost maternal. “I cared for her, you know. Brushed the dust from her joints. Held her strings when she trembled. Sang her awake when the ink on her cheeks ran black.”

A shadow crossed his face. “And… he took her anyway.”

His voice dropped lower. “That’s why he always changes the story. Not because it’s about control… but because it tells a truth he can’t bear.”

He straightened, bells chiming sharply as he snapped back into his careless jester persona. “The price is not paid by the puppet.” His grin widened. “Oh, no, no, no. The puppet merely delivers the bill.”

He flicked your cheek, gentle as a threat. “The price is paid by the one who loved her before the strings were cut. The one foolish enough to think she had a heart that beat for them alone.”

He clapped—once, “Now! Off you go. The Puppeteer loathes tardiness.” His voice lilted back into playful cruelty. “And Harlequin is already… very possessive tonight.” He vanished in a burst of jingling bells, leaving only a faint scent of sweetness rotting in the air.

You stood frozen, Jester’s riddle—and his jealousy—curling tight around your ribs.

Fuck.

It wasn’t long before you felt the air in Harlequin’s backstage tent was thick enough to chew. The usual clutter of props seemed to watch you with malevolent stillness as he presented your new costume. It wasn't the elegant assistant's attire anymore.

It was a puppet's uniform.

A white, long-sleeved shirt with subtle stitching at the joints, like doll seams. Over it, a stark black button-up vest that cinched you in tightly. 

The pants were the same matte black, but they felt different—restrictive, emphasizing the lines of your limbs. He held the final piece: a mask. Not porcelain like his, but a smooth, blank white faceplate, exaggerated swirls with dots and eye makeup, sorrowful purple shading around the eye holes.

"Tonight," he said, his voice a low thrum of anticipation, "we make the metaphor manifest. You will not just play the puppet. You will be it. The box awaits."

He pointed to a large, lacquered chest in the corner. It was black, lined with intricate green velvet the color of his eyes and his envy. 

It was beautiful gift box.

He guided you to the vanity chair, his hands firm on your shoulders. As he began to fasten the mask behind your head, his claws careful in your hair, you watched his reflection in the mirror—a slash of green and black, a painted smile over a hidden face.

"The story," you began, your voice muffled slightly by the mask. "I was thinking about it."

"You should know it by now, my dear,” he chided softly, adjusting a strand of your hair. "You've lived it enough nights."

"It's not the story I wonder about," you said, and you felt his hands still for a fraction of a second. "It's the ending. Every night, you ask if I want to know it. Every night, I say no."

He resumed his work, his touch light. "A wise, if frustrating, choice. Suspense is a delicious torture."

"But that's not it," you pressed, turning in the chair to look up at him. The movement broke his movement. You were facing him now, the blank, blushing face of the puppet looking up at the carved, permanent smile of the Puppeteer. 

"About Marinette. Is it... is any of it real?"

The question hung between you, stark and naked. His emerald eyes, which usually gleamed with mocking intelligence or possessive heat, did something unexpected. 

They lowered. A look of something crossed them—not anger, but a deep, uncomfortable vulnerability, a confusion at being addressed with such direct, genuine seeking. 

He tilted his head, a soft chime ringing from his bells. "Real? What is 'real' in a house of mirrors, my dear? Stories have power. They shape worlds. This one... shaped us." He took a step back, gesturing vaguely with a clawed hand. 

"Marinette... was a dream we all shared once. A dream of something not yet carved, not yet strung. Taking a dream away too soon, or not at all... it changes what's left in the box. What's left becomes something else. Something that shifts. Something that learns to pull its own strings." He was talking in circles, but the hints were darker, more personal than before. 

It wasn't just a fairy tale.

Frustration and a desperate need to understand overrode your caution. You reached out, grabbing the hand he had gestured with. His leather-clad fingers were tense in your grasp. 

You looked up, past the mask, trying to find the man you suspected was drowning beneath the performance.

"Harlequin," you said, your voice firm, stripping away the endearments. "Please. Tell me the truth."

He flinched. More than a flinch—it was a true recoil as if your honesty was a physical blow to him. Even behind the mask, his eyes widened infinitesimally, but the green in them paled in a genuine, unplanned surge of shock. 

Finally he released your hand, “Enough with this,” he stated, “The audience hungers. The story waits. And you…” He leaned in, his masked face more intimate than any kiss. 

His breath brushed your cheek. “…you have far too much curiosity for your own good.” A gloved fingertip lifted your chin, “Some truths,” he whispered, voice dropping to a confessional hush, “are strings waiting to be pulled. And once pulled… they never loosen. Not for anyone.”

The touch vanished. His warmth with it. He gestured toward the performance box.

“Now. Into the box, little puppet.” 

You rose from the vanity chair, still with more questions than answers, a heart pounding with fear and a terrible, aching sympathy. 

The puppet costume feeling less like fabric and more like a second skin, a premonition. Your movements were stiff, automatic, as you crossed to the large gift box.

It smelled of old wood, fresh polish, and that faint, chilling green scent that was uniquely his. You climbed inside, the plush velvet cool against your back. The world narrowed to the rectangle of light above you, framed by the dark edges of the box.

Harlequin’s silhouette appeared, blotting out the light. He looked down at you, his emerald eyes glinting in the gloom. For a fleeting second, there was no smirk, no theatrical gleam—just an unfathomable depth of something that looked like regret, or maybe recognition. 

Then, it was gone.

“Breathe slow,” he instructed, his voice now pure stage director, all traces of the vulnerable man scrubbed away. “Hold perfectly still until you feel my hand. The story begins in darkness.”

The lid closed with a soft, definitive thud. The darkness was absolute, a velvet void. Your own breath sounded deafening, your heartbeat a frantic drum against your ribs. 

You could hear the muffled swell of the audience, a distant beast, and then the sharp, clear ring of Harlequin’s voice as he took the stage.

“Good evening, dear monsters,” he croons, the wood around you trembling as his voice seeps through it like a slow, warm poison. “Tonight… ah, tonight, I bring you a tale from before the circus bled its colors onto the world. Before masks found their smiles. Before the strings learned how sweet it felt to tighten.”

Above you, the crowd hushes. 

Below, in the dark, your pulse staggers.

Because this story is… different. 

Harlequin’s gloved hand rises, tracing the air as if he’s stirring ghosts. “Long ago, this circus had more than one heart,” he murmurs. “One of those hearts beat louder than the drums, brighter than the torches… so bright it kept the monsters awake at night, wondering if perhaps—just perhaps—it was possible to be loved.”

He laughs softly. Not kindly.

“She was human,” he says, savoring the word. “Human in a way that makes the rest of the monsters ache with something ugly.” His gloves drift across the rim of your box, his fingers slow, reverent, almost shaking.

“Skin warm as dusk,” he breathes. “A brown so rich it made the shadows jealous. Tight curls crown­ing her head—spirals that drank the lamplight like ink swallowing a star—alive, infuriatingly mortal.” He swallows.

“But for the show, for the monsters, she wore a different face, a differnt name…” He inhales sharply, as if memory cuts. 

“A porcelain mask painted over mortal beauty. White across her cheeks—oh, how she hated the paleness, yet wore it for the show.” His voice drops lower. 

“Purple dust above her eyes, soft as bruises blooming. Thick black lashes sweeping downward like blades dipped in starlight. And the ink…” He laughs—quiet, cracked, too tender.

“The ink crawled across her face in spirals—little whorls that crept around her eyes, her jaw, as if midnight itself wanted to claim her. Beautiful. Wrong. Alive.” The box vibrates as he taps it—one two three—each click a heartbeat someone tried to bury.

“And her eyes…” A shiver crawls through the audience as he pauses. “…closed, yet never at peace. Hollow lids rimmed with violet glow, hiding the black void beneath. Everyone thought she was just another puppet, a marionette they like to call her. Empty. Unfeeling.” He bends close to the box—your box—with a tremor of something that might be grief, or hunger. 

“But sometimes—when you stood close enough—you could see the faintest shimmer behind those lids. Like a trapped soul pressing against the dark, begging to be seen.”

The lid flew open.

Blinding light stabbed your eyes. The audience gasped as one. There you were, revealed—a perfect, still puppet in its case, your blank, blushing mask aimed at the ceiling. 

Harlequin’s gloved hand entered your field of vision, hovering above you. This was your cue. You were to take it, to be drawn forth like a prized possession.

But for a heartbeat, you hesitated.

You felt his fingers twitched, impatient. A silent command. And despite the fear, despite the swirling sympathy, you felt the pull. 

The terrible, mesmerizing pull of the story, of him. 

Your hand rose, as if on strings of its own volition, and placed itself in his waiting grasp. His fingers closed around yours, not with the gentle guidance of before, but with a firm, possessive certainty that sent a shock through your entire body. 

He drew you up and out of the box in one fluid, powerful motion, your body unfolding before the crowd as if you were weightless, utterly his to maneuver.

They don’t realize he’s about to bleed.

“Understand,” he begins, voice smooth as lacquered wood, “she was a caretaker among group of… monsters. A marionette… without strings.”

He paces, slow circles around you, letting the audience absorb the shape of you, the silhouette he molds. “She were not strong,” he says, almost idly. “Not fierce. Not monstrous like the rest of… them.”

A paused. “And yet the monsters listened to them.”

The performance that followed was a masterpiece of controlled intimacy and public possession. Every twist of your wrist, every tilt of your head, was orchestrated by his subtle pressures.

Yet… something in his tone curls—like envy held between teeth. “She fed the monsters. Spoke to the monsters. Learned every one of the monsters as though they were books written in teeth and hunger.” He tilts his head, mask glinting.

“Even the poisonous monster.”

He lifts your hand with two fingers, like presenting a relic to the crowd. “She adored knowledge. Devoured it. They approached the the monsters not with fear—but with fascination. They looked upon the claws, the snarls, the nightmares… and smiled.” His voice cracks into something raw, a jagged laugh scraping out.

“Do you know what devotion looks like?”

The room stills. “It looks like caring for a creature who could swallow you whole… and trusting it won’t.”

He stops beside you, just behind your shoulder—close enough for his breath to warm your neck through the mask. “But devotion,” he murmurs, “makes you fragile.”

Harlequin’s voice, which had begun the night with its customary velvet menace, had shed its layers. The lights above the stage flickered, not with theatrical timing, but with a sputtering, cruel inconsistency—

“Because… there was also him, the puppeteer,”

A hush fell, so absolute it felt physical—a blade of silence pressed against every throat. “The man who owned the circus, the puppeteer. The man who… owned the monsters.” The word ‘owned’ was not spoken; it was spat, “He did not care… the monsters. He collected them. Caged them. Starved them. And when one monster dared to… feel… when one dared an obsession he could not control for another, he punished all.”

His voice trembled, just a bit. 

Not with the staged tremor of a performer, but with the seismic quake of memory. “And she… they fought him. Not with claws or teeth. With her presence. With her stubborn, gentle will. She placed herself between his wrath and the others. She absorbed the blows, the slurs, the punishments…”

“She made herself the target.”

He lifted a hand, his gloved fingers twitching in the air—not a puppeteer’s flourish, but the spasm of a man resisting the urge to reach back through time and crush a phantom’s throat.

“And then…”

He breathed in. The sound was sharp, wet, a ragged tear in the fabric of the performance. It was too intimate, too human, broadcast to a hundred strangers. It was the sound of a man drowning in a past he could never escape.

“…he decided to make an example out of her.”

The air left the tent. “He destroyed her. Right in front of of the monsters. In front of the monsters they had tried to protect.” The silence was a living thing now, thick and suffocating. 

“Piece,” Harlequin whispered, the word a soft, terrible caress over something horrific. “By piece.” His hand, hovering in the air, clenched into a fist so tight the leather of his glove creaked. 

“And he fed those pieces to the monsters.”

“They did not scream,” Harlequin continued, his voice dropping to a thread of sound, broken with awe and agony. “They did not curse the monsters. Even as they—starved, broken, mindless with fear—obeyed. They consumed the kindness we had loved. A final… communion of shame.” He paused. “A kindness that haunts. A mercy that carved our cages deeper than any lock.”

The stage lights dimmed, sinking to a bruised, sickly violet. In the gloom, you saw his silhouette waver. “They were found after,” he rasped, the raw scrape of his voice echoing in the new quiet. 

“What was left. Her voice was gone. Her freedom was gone. Her humanity… parceled out and digested by the very creatures they sought to save.” A sharp, unsteady breath.

 You could hear the agony in it, the effort to continue.

“But her loyalty…” He let out a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. It was the driest, most desolate thing you had ever heard. “…that never left. It was the one thing he could not take, could not break, could not force the monsters to devour. It lingered in the sawdust. It soaked into the tent poles. It became the circus.”

He turned. The light caught the edge of his porcelain mask, gleaming on the perpetual smile as he looked down into the box, his gaze searing through the darkness to find your masked face. 

“She protected the monsters,” he said, each word carved from stone and set with careful, painful care. “She protected even the one who shattered them. She stayed. Her strings… never broke.”

Then he moved. He stepped closer, his body invading the space above the box, his presence a scorching heat that banished the violet chill. 

He was no longer narrating to the crowd. 

He was speaking to the memory in the box. 

To you.

Harlequin flinched, his shoulders tightening. The polished performer, the elegant monster of the stage, vanishes.  What stands behind you now is something stripped bare—a raw, thrumming nerve made of grief, madness, and memory.

And then his fingers hesitate.

The ribbon—the smooth satin tether threaded through your wrists, your waist, your throat—moved.

One breath ago, he’d been controlling you with artistry, with the quiet precision of someone who has mastered every inch of you. This time, the ribbon moves like a strike.

The audience inhales sharply as the satin around your throat tightens with a vicious snap, the kind that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the truth he’s been trying—and failing—to bury.

Your breath cuts off instantly.

Your body lifts, subtle but unmistakable, as the ribbon bites into your skin.

The pressure isn’t theatrical restraint. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s the kind of hold that says he forgot the audience existed… and remembered something far worse. For a heartbeat, you feel your pulse hammering against silk, no air moves through your throat.

Harlequin stops breathing altogether.

You can’t see his face behind the mask, but you can feel the stillness radiating from him, as if the world has narrowed to the fragile line of satin he’s pulling taut between his hands.

The crowd senses it instantly. Whispers start in the back rows, sliding through the tent like frightened insects.

“Is this part of the act?” “He wouldn’t hurt them… would he?”

Yet you don’t flinch. You don’t struggle. 

You hold yourself upright, trembling only where he forces you to tremble. Suddenly, the gasp of the audience was cut off by the violent, premature swish of the main curtain crashing down. 

Backstage was plunged into a chaos of hissed whispers and frantic pink fools, the dying echoes of confused applause muffled by the heavy velvet. 

You stumbled as Harlequin released you, giving you a chance to catch your breath. The ribbons still loosely coiled around your wrists like wilted vines. The adrenaline that had frozen you melted, replaced by a scalding wave of fury and terror. 

“What the hell was that?” you spat, your voice a low. You shoved at his chest, a futile push against the immovable wall of him. “I don’t want to do this anymore. You’re pushing too far—you could have—”

Before you could wrench away, he moved. He used his grip on your wrists to spin you and press you back against the cold canvas of the tent wall. His body caged you, the heat of him seeping through both your costumes. His breath hit the side of your neck—

“You don’t get to quit,” he whispered, his breath hot and unsteady on your neck. The raw tremor in his dark silk voice was new—

this wasn’t a performance anymore...

“You stepped onto my stage. You listened to my stories. You took my pin. You agreed to help me.” His grip on your wrists shifted, one hand releasing to slide up, his gloved fingers curving around your jaw with an undeniable pressure, tilting your face up to meet the void of his painted smile and the burning emerald eyes behind it. 

“That makes you mine.”

You could feel it all—the coiled strength in the muscles pressed against you, desperate need he was holding back by the thinnest, most fragile thread. It was terrifying. It was intoxicating. 

“Let me go. Right now,” you demanded, pouring every ounce of bratty defiance into the words.

A low, thrilling laugh vibrated through him. “There’s that spark,” he purred, stepping closer until you had to arch your neck to glare up at him. “That delicious little earthquake. Trying to be so brave, so defiant… but your body betrays you, doesn’t it?”

“Go to hell,” you breathed, the insult losing its edge, turning breathy.

“Tsk. Such a dirty mouth on such a pretty thing.” His clawed glove rose, the sharp tip tracing a phantom line down your cheek without touching. You refused to look away. “Do you think your temper frightens me? Or does it just make you taste sweeter?”

His gloved hand came up, not to strike, but to hover beside your cheek, the sharp tip of one claw tracing the air just above your skin. 

You refused to flinch, holding his gaze even as your heart tried to beat its way out of your chest.

“I can see the war inside you,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips. “The part that wants to scream… and the part that wants to see how far I’ll go to make you quiet.” 

His breath was a warm sin against your ear. “You’re my prop. My favorite. And I don’t put my props away…” His hand slid from your jaw, down your throat, settling with a heavy claim on your hip.

“…until I’m done.”

Your heart was a frantic, trapped thing. Fear coiled cold in your stomach, but it was tangled with a hotter, darker pulse of electricity that made your bones feel weak. He saw it all. His emerald eyes tracked the tremor in your lip, the flutter in your throat. His painted smile curled with delight.

“After all,” he purred, his voice a low vibration against your skin. “you knew exactly where this road ended,” he purred, “and you walked it anyway.”

His free hand slipped into his coat. Lantern light caught the blade as he drew it—sleek, wicked, and cold. 

“I didn’t—” you breathed, the protest shaky. “You tricked me!”

“Did I?” he countered, voice dripping with dark amusement. He pressed the flat of the blade to your cheek. “Go on. Pretend you didn’t want this. Pretend you didn’t ache to be trapped.”

He leaned in, his breath hot. “You want me to devour you. You’re just too much of a brat to admit it.” 

A soft click sounded from his mask. The lower portion beneath the carved smile swung open.

It wasn't human.

A long, slender tongue, the venomous green of his eyes, slipped out. Forked at the tip. It glistened as it dragged, slow and teasing, along the cold edge of the blade at your cheek.

You shook, a full-body tremor you couldn’t control. His stare drank it in, his smile widening with unhinged pleasure.

“That’s fine,” he whispered, the green tongue flicking out, tasting the air an inch from your lips. “I can read your hunger better than you can.”

He pushed you harder against the canvas. The dagger left your cheek, its point tracing a line of chilling promise down your throat, over your frantic pulse.

It slid lower, tracing the neckline of your puppet’s shirt, the cold steel a shocking contrast to the heat of your skin. He applied no pressure. It was a threat, a claim, a painter outlining his canvas.

“Do I punish the hesitation?” he mused aloud, his voice a dark, sensual rumble. “Or reward the eventual surrender? Do I make you beg for the blade to stop… or beg for it to continue?”

Before you could whimper a reply, he ducked his head. His mouth, now revealed as a shock of pale skin and sharp, white teeth, found the curve where your neck met your shoulder. 

He didn’t kiss it. He bit.

It wasn't enough to break the skin, but it was a sharp, possessive pressure that made you cry out—a sound that was fear, pain, and something else entirely. 

At the same moment, you felt it—the slick, warm, alien slide of his long, green tongue against the same spot, lapping over the sting as if tasting the shock he’d elicited.

A broken, ragged sound tore from your throat. Your body arched, a bratty, instinctual rebellion—not to escape, but to challenge the space he owned. 

The cold trail of the dagger was now a line of fire down your sternum, stopping just above the frantic drum of your heart.

Defeated, you turned your face, burying it in the rough fabric of his harlequin jacket, against the solid wall of his chest. His scent—stagecraft, danger, him—was overwhelming. “Stop… please,” you whispered, the plea muffled, meaningless even to you.

Harlequin went perfectly still.

For one suspended second, the predator vanished. His body stiffened. He looked down at where you hid, and a flicker of genuine confusion crossed his eyes—this raw surrender wasn’t in his script.

It lasted only a heartbeat.

The confusion melted into something darker, more delighted. A low laugh vibrated through his chest into your cheek before it escaped his lips. The hand not braced against the wall came up, his claws spearing into your hair—not to yank, but to claim, tangling possessively in the strands.

“Oh, no, my sweet little liar,” he murmured, his masked cheek brushing your temple. “You don’t get to hide after a performance like that.” He gave a soft, mocking tug on your hair, pulling your face back just an inch. “Admit it. Say it. Let me hear the truth in that pretty, trembling voice.”

You lifted your head. Behind the mask, your face was a wreck of tears and defiance, but your voice was neither. It was firm. Cool. Commanding.

“Fine,” you murmured, the word a clear, sharp note in the charged air. You tilted your chin up with a bratty, unbroken angle. “You want a confession? Then listen.”

He leaned in, helpless against the authority in your tone, drawn like a moth to a different, older flame.

“You’re right,” you breathed, the heat undeniable, seeping through the sternness. “Is that what you want? You’re right. I can’t get enough.” 

You gave a tug on the ribbon binding your wrist to him, pulling him that last, impossible fraction closer until your exhale fogged the cold porcelain of his cheek. “Of this. Of you.”

Then, your voice shifted. 

It wasn't just your own anymore. It deepened, softened at the edges with a sorrowful wisdom that didn't belong to you. It blended. 

“Are you happy now… meu pequeno monstro?”

My little monster.

The Portuguese endearment, spoken in a voice that was both yours and… hers, snapped something inside him. A broken music box spring, twanging into silence.

It shattered him.

His pupils blew wide in an instant, swallowing the emerald irises, leaving only black pits reflecting the dim stage lights.

He wasn't seeing you.

He was seeing through you.

Dismembered pieces reassembled in his vision—not a corpse, but a beloved puppet taken apart and meticulously stitched back together. The joints were neat, the threads fine, but the separation was forever visible to his haunted eyes.

His breath hitched, a wet, ragged sound. He blinked hard, but the phantom only tightened its grip. It wasn't the bratty assistant pressed against him. 

It was her. It's her.

Her presence didn't arrive as a memory. It was a full-sense ambush. He was dragged backward—violently, viscerally—into the skin of the monster he used to be. Younger. Untamed. delighting in his own wildness before he learned to cage it in routines and rules.

And then there she was.

A human face painted into a porcelain mask of her own making, white like a shroud. Purple shimmer hugged the lids of closed eyes, and intricate, dark ink spiraled across her brown skin like the shadows were claiming her, piece by beautiful piece. 

Her curls, styled for a show that mocked her humanity, framed a face that held a terrifying compassion. Her wrists bent at unnatural angles, jointed not for freedom, but for the story.

He swallowed, the sound choked with a grief so thick it bordered on madness. “Don’t,” he rasped, but the plea was directionless—aimed at you, at her, at the past itself.

His hand hovered between you, trembling violently, torn between the need to seize you and the terror of what he’d be seizing. Because he knew, in the marrow of his broken bones, that if his claws touched your skin now, they wouldn’t be touching you.

They’d be tracing the ghost sewn into your shape.

The ghost whose human name was a forbidden secret. The ghost he failed to protect when the seams of her world unraveled. 

The vision didn't fade. It leaned in. 

Then, her closed eyelids lifted—just a sliver. Not enough to reveal eyes, but enough for a profound, liquid darkness to spill through the cracks, watching him from a place beyond pain.

And she spoke. Not with your voice alone, but with hers, a haunting duet from a single throat.

“H̵̢̛̺̻̮͈̟͍̦̑̌̈ͣ̾̾ͦ̈͛̓̑̃̀̾̓̚͞a̧͔̣̻͇̲͕̜̺̜̝̦̺̫͉͛̂̏ͬ́͂̉̂͊̎̂͊ͭ̚͠͞r̷̸̢͈͙̻̺̝̭̪̣̪̭̹͇̂͂ͯͮ͗̂͗͟͡_̹̥͇̽̋͐̿̚͞l̷̴̸̘͍̼̦͕̰̰̳̩͔̮͕̮͍͐̓͛͑̊͌͌͐ͯ̐ͫ̍ͨ̈͆ͧͬ̉͂̚̚ͅe̢̖̣̯̠͐̈́̾̋̉́̔̋̈͠_̧̛̗̝͚̦̫͛̌͐͜ͅ_̴̵̧̛̙̟̻̽́ͧ͐͋̍̋͑q̵̶ͮ̑̌̄͠u̗̩̘̩͙͚̪̪̱͉͚̪͊̄ͥͭ̋̐ͩ̈́̐̽̋̅ͥ͋͟͝͠ͅ_̶̹̩̼̓ͩ͆͋̀̒̀̓͡i̴̡̢̱̲͖̰̻ͯ͒́̌̊̎ͮ͢͞ņ̱̲͙̐̃ͦ͘̚͜.”

His real name.

His entire body convulsed, a puppet yanked by strings of pure panic. “No,” he choked out, “No—don’t—don’t do this. Not again. Not you.”

But the hallucination stepped closer. The faint, clicking sound of imagined joints—where thread met flesh, where memory met reality—echoed in the silent space between heartbeats.

“Look at me,” the blended voices whispered, a command and a lament.

And he was there. Not remembering. Reliving. Dragged back and slammed into the past with a violence that felt like his soul was being flayed.

He remembered it all—the things he swore to bury.

Her human name, spoken under a sun that didn’t belong here. Her life before, filled with notebooks scribbled and observations—pages and pages of inked handwriting, margins scribbled with questions.

“Why do you tilt your head before you strike?” Her voice echoed gently around him as the hallucination’s lips moved in sync. “Is it instinct… or performance?”

He swallowed a cry. The hallucination tilted its head—her head—repeating the gesture she used to make when analyzing him. The gesture that had made him feel seen.

“You always hated when I asked,” she cooed. “But you always answered.” 

His hands trembled as he pressed them over his ears. “Stop. Stop it. You don’t exist.”

“Oh, my little monster ♪,” Her voice smoothed over him like warm wax. Just like back then. He remembered the first time she corrected him. He was in a frenzy, claws out, wrecking everything in reach.

She hadn’t run. Hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t even blinked. She stepped right in front him, a hand rising—not to strike, but to rest gently on his chest. The hallucination leaned close, her stitched fingers touching his cheek with phantom warmth.

“You liked when I said that,” she whispered, “You pretended you didn’t… but your eyes softened every time.” He shook violently, unable to breathe.

“You amaze me,” she had told him once, when he had finally learned to obey her touch. The fascinated look in her eyes when his green tongue darted out to wet his lips, a gesture that made others recoil. The hallucination laughed, recalling thoes moments more, “I always did say that, but it was true, you know?”

Funny part about eveything back then…

She hadn’t belonged to him. 

She hadn’t belonged to anyone, really—floating from monster to monster with her notebooks and her bright, burning curiosity.

She praised all of them. Corrected all of them.

But she did, in fact, have a favorite.

It was Jester.

The way her eyes, usually so sharp and assessing, would soften into something almost fond when Jester spun one of his cruel, riddling tales. 

The way she would linger by his caravan long after her "observations" were done, listening to the clatter of his knives, a small, private half-smile playing on her lips—a smile she never gave to Harlequin. 

She spent hours with Jester, dissecting the psychology of performance, the audience's fear response, the architecture of a punchline that could draw blood. She saw the method in Jester's madness, and she admired it.

Harlequin hated it. 

He hated the intellectual intimacy, the shared language of calculated chaos. He hated her for hoarding that specific softness, for giving to Jester the thoughtful, sustained attention that Harlequin craved with a desperation that felt like bone-deep starvation.

One evening, he could take it no longer. He watched her leave Jester's space, that residual ghost of a smile still touching her mouth, her steps light. She turned a corner into the narrow, shadow-clotted alley between two caravans.

He was already there. 

A part of the shadow itself, breathing in time with the gathering dark.

She stopped short, but she didn't jump. She never startled with him. She simply… assessed.

He stepped forward, blocking her path entirely. The scent of her—warm human skin underlaid with the sharp tang of ink—flooded his senses. 

Before she could utter a word—a clinical note, a polite greeting—his arms snaked around her waist. He pulled her against him, not with theatrical force, but with a sudden, undeniable need, molding the soft curves of her body to the hard, unforgiving lines of his own.

"You look good enough to eat," he murmured. His voice was low, roughened.

She simply went still in his arms, her head tilting to the side in that familiar, infuriatingly calm way she had, as if he were a fascinating new specimen to catalogue.

And then she laughed. A soft, breathy sound that held no fear, only a gentle, undeniable authority.

Her hand came up. Not to push him away, but to tap—once, firmly, definitively—two fingers against the center of his chest, right over the frantic drum of his heart.

"Boy," she chided. A single syllable that reduced his looming threat, “Get your claws right off of me, you know the rules.”

Boy?

He was a monster torn apart by hunger and jealousy…

and you called him boy—like he was nothing more than a sulking brat acting out for your attention. He loosened his grip, letting her go that time.

Then it was his day. 

Their private time. She, the one whose name was now a locked room in his mind—sat perched on an old, upturned crate, a worn sketchbook balanced on her knees. The ink quill in her hand moved in quick, sure strokes, capturing the dramatic lines of him as he lounged against a pile of old set pieces, trying for an air of casual grace.

Time alone with her was never quiet. Never was.

He pretended nonchalance, one leg crossed over the other, head tilted back as if studying the rafters. But every sense was tuned to her: the soft scratch of charcoal, the shift of fabric as she moved, the scent of pencil dust and the unique, clean warmth that was purely her.

He’d been weaving a story, something about the constellations painted on the ceiling being the eyes of forgotten gods. He was showing off, and he knew it. 

Then, she’d made a soft, amused sound. 

“Jester said something similar yesterday. Called them ‘the sky’s cracked mosaic.’ He has a way with words, doesn’t he?”

Harlequin’s posture, a study in performed relaxation, went wire-tight. The air in the cramped storage space turned brittle. He uncrossed his legs slowly, his emerald eyes slicing toward her.

“Why,” he began, his voice deceptively smooth, a silken sheet over broken glass, “do you waste a single second of that brilliant mind on that bells-for-brains, glitter-coated buffoon?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the intensity radiating off him in waves. 

“I’m clearly the superior option. Faster. Smarter. 

Infinitely prettier.” His gaze dropped to the column of her throat, exposed as she looked down at her drawing. 

A hunger, raw and possessive, flooded his expression. His voice dropped to a husky, intimate register that felt like a touch in the dim light. “…and I know precisely where I want to bite you.”

He reached out. His fingers, ungloved for once, were surprisingly elegant. They brushed the side of her neck, just below her jaw, a feather-light caress that held the potential for so much more. His thumb stroked the frantic flutter of her pulse. 

“You’d look perfect,” he murmured, the words a hot promise against her skin, “with the mark of my teeth right here. A little claim. So everyone knows who you ponder when you’re alone.”

She didn’t jerk away. 

She never did anything so crude. 

She simply turned her head, a gentle, firm negation, letting his fingers slide from her skin. It was a defense, honed and careful, designed not to hurt him. To let him down with a softness that was somehow more insulting than a slap.

He noticed. He hated that he noticed. 

The rejection, wrapped in kindness, was a special kind of acid. It ate at the theatrical confidence, exposing the raw, jealous wound beneath.

The words burst from him in a torrent of his native Portuguese, the language of his mother. They cracked in the middle, betraying the ache he couldn’t hide in English. “Por que você não consegue amar alguém como eu?” 

Why can’t you love someone like me? 

The question was a plea and an accusation. “É porque sou um monstro? …Mais monstro que os outros?” 

Is it because I’m a monster? More monster than the rest?

She didn’t look up from her sketch. Her charcoal continued its gentle scraping. A small, knowing smile touched her lips, the black-painted curve of them softening. “Você sabe,” she began, her voice, struggling a bit. 

You know. 

“Você já comeu metade da minha mente, do jeito que a ocupa. Meu coração também. Você mastiga meus pensamentos quando estou tentando dormir.” 

You've already eaten half my mind, the way you occupy it. My heart, too. You chew on my thoughts when I'm trying to sleep.

She finally glanced up, her eyes, meeting his burning emerald gaze with that infuriating, gentle clarity. The smile didn’t leave her lips as she delivered the final, softly devastating line, “Continue assim, e logo não vai restar nada de mim além de uma casca oca.” 

Keep this up, and soon there’ll be nothing left of me but a hollow little shell.

The metaphor should have thrilled him.

But coming from her, it was a reminder of his limits. He could occupy her, but not own her. He could consume her thoughts, but not command her heart.

A low, frustrated growl rumbled in his chest. He closed the distance between them in an instant, leaning in so close his lips nearly brushed the outline of her lips. His next words were a dark, possessive vow, hissed with absolute sincerity.

“Good. Then I’ll be the only thing inside you. Filling up all that hollow space. The only voice in the silence.”

He meant it. Every syllable. 

And, shockingly those words came true… after all, she belonged to the circus, to the other monsters in her own way, and most damningly, to herself.

That alone was her fatal mistake. 

That… man, the so called puppeteer with a ledger for a soul and cruelty for currency—saw the monsters not as performers, but as malfunctioning assets. He starved them, beat them, worked them until their seams split. 

And she, with her mortal heart and fearless curiosity, became their advocate. Her complaints to Jester were never secret; they were pleas cast into the backstage air, and Harlequin heard every one, a bitter wine of pride and dread. 

But that... man had heard enough. 

Her compassion was bad for business. It gave the attractions ideas. He took her on a night the circus was silent, a tomb of canvas and shadows. What he did was not a crime of passion, but a calculated act of dominion. 

He broke her, not to possess, but to unmake. 

To prove that the light she carried could be snuffed, that her care was a weakness to be exploited. He violated her, not with desire, but with the cold intent of a man stamping out a flame. 

Then he… killed her.  

Methodically. Dismembering the body that had sketched, that had hummed, that had gently turned its head from his biting touch.

The true horror was not the murder. 

It was the lesson. 

After the screaming stopped, after the silence became a physical weight in the tent, the man hadn't simply discarded the remains. He had portioned them. 

With the detached precision of a butcher teaching a pack of wild dogs, he threw the pieces into the separate cages. 

"This," the man's voice had sliced through the thick, coppery air, "is your last meal. Until you learn the obedience you have forgotten, you will feast on the one who made you forget it. Let her loyalty become your fuel. Let her defiance curdle in your bellies. Digest your lesson."

And Harlequin... Harlequin had been so hungry.

The starvation wasn't just of the body, though that was a sharp, screaming agony. It was a starvation of will, of hope, of light. 

She had been all those things. 

And now she was just... meat. A lesson on a plate.

He remembered a line he'd once snarled at her in the dark, a possessive, romantic threat he’d thought terribly clever at the time: "Good. Then I'll be the only thing inside you."

Now, it was a literal, digestive truth. A grotesque punchline written in bile and viscera.

He had consumed her mind.

The convoluted, grey matter that had housed her brilliant curiosity, her relentless theories, the very spark that had looked at a monster and seen a subject worthy of study. 

He had opened his mouth—not in a scream, but in obedient, starving acceptance. He had used his teeth. He had chewed. He had swallowed.

He had become, not just a witness to her erasure, but the living, breathing instrument of its completion. Her consciousness, her memories, the unique fingerprint of her thoughts—all of it had passed through his lips and into the acid-dark of his own body. 

She was inside him, forever. 

A piece of her light, metabolized into his own permanent darkness. Her final, brutal act of devotion—offering herself wholly to the monsters she studied—had been perverted into his ultimate, cannibalistic sin.

This was the rot at his core. The un-healable wound that festered behind the porcelain smile. It was why every glance he gave you was layered—the possessive hunger, yes, but underneath it, a look of nauseated recognition.

You didn't just remind him of her.

You threatened to make him relive the sin. 

To feel that terrifying, pure devotion again, only to face the clawing dread that his own monstrous nature would once again demand consumption. That your light, too, would become a lesson he'd be forced to digest.

He stared at you now—at the flush of defiance on your cheeks, the tremor in your lips, the tracks of your tears etching paths through the dust on your mask.

The present dissolved into the past, and he couldn't tell if he was seeing the bratty, captivating assistant…

…or the ghost of the one he'd failed, and then eaten.

You were stepping into a space he had sworn, with every fiber of his poisoned being, he would never let anyone fill again. 

He cannot—he will not—allow her ghost to have the upper hand with you. To guide you, to claim you from beyond the grave. 

If there is to be a possession, it will be his alone. If there is to be a consumption, it will be on his terms. 

The lesson of the past will not be repeated.

It will be perfected.

He shook his head, all the confusion evaporated, burned away by the intensity of his focus, as if trying to rattle the memory from his skull, “Happy?” he repeated. His fingers tightened, a careful pressure that shot a bright wire of pain from your scalp down your spine.

“Happiness is for children,” he murmured, his voice a dark melody. “A cheap sparkle for the crowd.” He leaned in, his eyes not just seeing you, but claiming you. The heat of his hidden lips was a phantom kiss against your skin.

“Tell me, puppet,” he breathed, his hum syncing with your pounding heart.

In one motion, he walked you backward until the vanity’s edge dug into your spine. You gasped. His other hand found the bare skin of your side, his clawed fingers pressing in—a promise, then a pinch. 

A sharp sting bloomed; he’d drawn blood.

He released your hair to capture your wrist, his thumb on your pulse, his other hand forcing your chin up. Through the mask, he was a blur of green and porcelain.

“You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”

As he spoke, something cool and sinuous coiled around your ankle—a living rope, tightening with gentle, undeniable purpose. 

You flinched, a gasp catching in your throat.

“Shhh,” he soothed, his thumb stroking your chin even as his grip on your wrist remained firm. “I can hear your heart singing for me. Such a pretty, frantic song.”

Another coil wrapped your other wrist, pulling it behind your back. Another snaked around your waist, a fourth around your thigh. 

They weren't rope; they were muscular, pulsing, alive. They drew you forward until you were flush against him, bound in a living cage.

Blinded by the mask, you could only feel—the hard plane of his chest, the cool porcelain of his mask at your temple, the intimate squeeze of the bonds.

His lips brushed the mask near your ear, his voice a secret blade. “You’ve been so curious about me,” he breathed. “About what I am.”

A thin coil slid up your neck like a caress. “Do you want to see?”

He wasn't just asking you. 

His emerald eyes, wide and searching behind the porcelain, were fixed on yours with a desperate, fractured intensity. 

He wasn't seeing your fear, your confusion. He was searching for a softer, older light—a specific softness he hadn't seen in centuries. 

The softness of her eyes. In the dimness, through the mask's holes, he was convincing himself he saw it. A gentle, knowing patience that didn't belong to a frightened you.

She’s in there.

The thought was a schizophrenic whisper, a crack in his monstrous logic. 

She’s looking through you. She came back.

“Do you want to see,” he whispered again, his voice trembling with a perilous hope, “what I really am… querida?”

You tried to speak, but your words melted into a thick, silent haze. 

A heavy tide surged through your veins—his toxin, delivered by the sharp pinch of his claw. The world blurred into soft orbs of light and color, his mask a smudge of white and green.

Dark spots bloomed at the edges of your sight. Your eyelids grew leaden, a delicious, terrifying weight dragging you down. His scent—night jasmine and cold metal—filled your head.

“Wha’…” you slurred, the question dying on your tongue.

Above you, his carved smile seemed to widen. A low chuckle vibrated through his chest into yours. “Oh, dear,” he purred, his voice echoing in your foggy mind. “A bit too much. Makes you more… pliable.”

The living ropes tightened, communing with your drugged flesh. You felt a button pop on your vest, then the soft slide of fabric peeling from your shoulder. Cool air, then the sinuous caress of the ropes themselves, slithered against your exposed skin.

“Look at those eyes,” he murmured, his claw stroking your cheek beneath the mask. “So desperate. Adorable.” He mistook your drugged, heavy-lidded gaze for rapture.

The ropes pressed you against the cold mirror, your drugged body pliant in their hold. They worked with sinister purpose, peeling away layers—a button popped, fabric whispered from your shoulder, cool air meeting feverish skin.

“Wha’s… touching me?” you slurred.

He cut you off, his voice sharp with dark delight. “‘What’s touching me?’” he echoed mockingly. He leaned close, muttering in low Portuguese, “Tão curioso… igualzinho a ela…” 

So curious… just like her…

Switching back, his voice dropped to a filthy whisper. “I love that busy little mind. Always guessing. So here’s the game: feel, don’t ask. Feel that coil on your thigh? The slide against your stomach, so close to where you’re getting warm for me? Guess.” A thin rope teased up your inner thigh.

 You hated this game. You needed to get away.

“Truth is,” he breathed, his control fraying, “I just want to feel your skin. No barriers. Just you. And me.” The ropes shuddered with him. “And everything on your pretty body… is me.”

Your final clothing gave way. Cool air, then the shocking, intimate slide of the ropes—alive, muscular—against your nipples, your belly, everywhere. They mapped you with a thoroughness that felt less like violation, more like consumption.

Harlequin watched your reaction, his emerald eyes burning. He was waiting, searching your face not for your fear, but for a sign of her. 

For the ghost he believed was hiding behind your eyes to finally speak.

“Still silent?” he murmured, a thread of frustration weaving into his hunger. “Fine. Maybe I’ll just have to fuck the puppet out of you. See if she screams through you then.”

A spike of real fear cut through the haze. But before panic could take hold, that internal voice soothed—

Breathe dearest. Isn’t this what you wanted?

The thought slithered into your mind, slick and alien, in a voice that was not your own. A calm, knowing, feminine whisper from somewhere deep inside your own skull.

To be taken apart by something tragic?

A rope-tip pressed there, and you arched off the glass with a silent cry.

To be utterly fucked by a monster?

Your breath came in ragged, wet hitches, a desperate rhythm he conducted with the tightening of a coil around your ribs.

A low, growling sound rumbled from deep within his chest—a sound of pure, unhinged satisfaction that vibrated through the ropes and into your bones. It was the sound of a predator who had finally cornered his most desired prey.

He forced you to sit on the cold edge of the vanity table, the mirror at your back a silent witness. His height became an absolute dominion as he towered over you, looking down at the spectacle of your unraveling. 

“That’s it,” he coaxed, “Stop thinking. That sweet, curious little brain is just in the way. Let it go. Just feel. Let me show you exactly what my breed of monster does to pretty puppets who come apart on my tongue.”

Then came a new touch. Not a binding, but an offering. A single, questing rope-tip, brushed against your slack, panting lips.

You tried to turn your head, a feeble, drugged denial, but a coil around your throat, held you perfectly, pitilessly still.

"Open wide, puppet ♪,” he commanded, the words a filthy, sing-song lullaby that promised ruin. The rope slipped past your parted lips. It was deceptively slender at first, a curious, teasing intrusion, tracing the line of your teeth.

Then, with a slow, obscene pulse of its own, it began to swell. It thickened, stretching your mouth into a perfect, helpless ‘O’, a sweet, burning ache blooming in your jaw. 

It pushed deeper, a smooth, relentless conqueror gliding over your tongue, claiming the space, then pushing further—past the soft palate, into the tight, sensitive clutch of your throat.

You gagged, a raw, reflexive convulsion that sent tears streaking from your eyes. But the gag was stifled, transformed into a choked, guttural, wet moan that vibrated obscenely around the thick, invading length.

The violation was absolute, shocking, and it ignited a dark, liquid fire that pooled with devastating weight between your thighs.

Your hands, which had lain limp at your sides, flew up of their own volition. They didn’t push away. They clutched. Your fingers dug into the other ropes crisscrossing your naked body.

They were not what you expected.

They weren't cold or alien. They were fever-warm, pulsing with a life that mirrored the frantic beat of your own heart. The texture was a paradox—a skin-like velvet, impossibly soft, sheathing a core of unyielding, muscular power. 

They were living art, and they were everywhere.

One traced the shuddering dip of your waist. Another, thinner, more clever, found the hypersensitive curve of your hip bone and circled it, a taunting promise. 

Your mind, drowning in sensation and nectar, spun uselessly. 

What are they? An extension? The truth of him?

All coherence shattered as the rope in your throat pulsed again. Not a thrust, but a slow, rhythmic milking motion, a deliberate, wave-like contraction that dragged another ragged, muffled scream of pleasure from your core. 

The sound was swallowed, digested by the living thing claiming your mouth. Above you, Harlequin watched, utterly rapt. His emerald eyes were blazing infernos of dark delight. A low, filthy groan of appreciation tore from him.

“Fuck, listen to that,” he breathed, his voice thick with want. “Taking me so deep. Choking on it so prettily. Look at you.” One of his gloved claws came up to trace the line of your stretched jaw, feeling the bulge of himself moving inside you. 

“Your eyes are rolling back, my dear. You’re playing with my ropes like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Do you like the taste? The feel of me fucking that clever mouth of yours into silence?” He leaned closer, his masked face inches from yours, his breath mingling with yours where the rope emerged.

“Go on,” he purred, a wicked, encouraging whisper. 

“Suck it. Show me how much you love being my little plaything. Let me hear you enjoy yourself.” Your tongue, pinned but not paralyzed, moved. 

You flattened it against the underside of the thick, velvety intrusion and pressed upward, a slow, careful lick along its length. The rope in your throat gave a sudden, powerful throb. The coils around your body tightened, a possessive squeeze. 

And from Harlequin himself came a sharp, shuddering gasp, “Yes,” he hissed, the word a revelation. “Just like that. God, you’re a natural. Licking it like you’re starving for it.” He watched, mesmerized, as you did it again, a teasing, exploring swirl of your tongue, learning the texture.

“That’s it, explore. Get to know every inch. It’s all me, angel. Every part of this… is all me.”

He was loving it. 

Loving the noises you were making—the wet, choked sounds around the intrusion, the helpless little whimpers that escaped your nose. 

He lowered his head, and this time, when his masked face touched your skin—at that frantic pulse point just below your ear—it felt different. Now, you felt the direct, shocking warmth of his mouth. It was a claiming of a different kind, more… personal.

"I'm going to leave my mark here," he murmured, his voice a rough, hungry scrape against your skin. His tongue, surprisingly soft and warm, laved over the spot once, a parody of tenderness. "So everyone knows what you let yourself become."

Then, he bit down.

They were not human teeth. 

They were sharp, precise points that sank into the tender flesh of your shoulder with a sudden, piercing clarity that cut through the drugged haze. It was a pain so sharp and specific it bordered on pleasure, a brand being seared into your very soul. 

A scream tried to tear its way up your throat, but it was trapped, choked into a wet, gurgling sob around the thick green rope filling you. Your body went rigid against the mirror, your fingers clawing into the velvety ropes, your back arching in a silent, agonized plea.

He held the bite for a long, excruciating moment, before pulling back with a soft, wet sound. You felt the blood well up, hot and immediate, a trickle tracing a path down your chest.

"Fuck," he breathed, the curse a prayer of pure, dark satisfaction. He lapped at the wound, his tongue hot and insistent. "You taste like fear and want.."

He pulled back to look at you, at your tear-streaked face, your stretched, occupied mouth, the blood beading on your shoulder. His eyes were filled of absolute, unhinged possession.

“Still can’t guess them, sweetheart?” he whispered, his voice thick with a need that finally, fully, stripped away the last of the performer. "I have a feeling this way maybe you need one to be inside of you for help…”

You heard it then—a soft, definitive click, like a porcelain plate being set aside. 

“Fuck,” he breathed, a raw, unfiltered sound that was nothing like his stage purr. It was hungry. “Always wondered… how you’d taste.”

You tried to turn your head, to catch a glimpse of the face behind the smile, but the ropes coiled around your throat and hair, yanking your head back firmly against the mirror with a gentle, firm force.

“Ah-ah ♪,” he chided, his voice closer now, a hot whisper against the column of your throat. “You don’t get to look. Not yet. This isn’t about seeing. It’s about feeling.”

And then you felt it.

Not the cool porcelain, but the shocking, wet heat of a long split tongue. A broad, wicked stroke, right through the damp fabric of your panties. He licked a slow, careful stripe over your pussy, and your entire body jolted against the restraints, a choked gasp tearing from your lips.

“Mmh,” he hummed, the vibration against your most sensitive skin making your knees buckle. The ropes held you upright. “Sweet. But not nearly wet enough for me, my dear. I want to drown in you.”

Before you could process the want in those words, you felt a new pressure. One of the sinuous ropes, slick with something cool and slick, pressed insistently against your other… hole, circling the tight furl of your ass through the fabric. 

It didn’t push in. It teased. 

A promise of a different, more complete violation.

“Look at you,” he growled, his voice thick with a filth that made your insides clench. “Gripping onto my ropes so fucking tight. You love this. You love being my little puppet-plaything.” 

To emphasize his point, he gave the rope at your ass a sharp, shallow thrust, just enough to make you flinch and cry out, the sound muffled by the other ropes now winding tighter around your torso.

His tongue returned to your pussy, lapping at you through the cotton with a fervor that was obscene. 

You could hear the filthy, wet sounds, feel the fabric growing soaked and transparent under his ministrations.

“There we go,” he panted against your skin, his breath scorching. “That’s it. Getting nice and slick for me. Knew you would. So fucking eager. Easier than I thought.” He punctuated the sentence with a sharp, sucking bite through the fabric on your inner thigh.

“Wha’… wha’ d’you mean?” you slurred, the drug and the sensation making your words thick.

He laughed, a dark, breathless sound. “Mean?” 

Another rough lick. “I mean you’re a natural. Born to be filled up and used. Now, shut that pretty mouth unless it’s doing something useful.”

As if commanded, one of the thinner ropes, which had been coiling near your face, suddenly slipped between your slack, parted lips once more. 

It didn’t hesitate. It pushed inward, a smooth, insistent invasion. It filled your mouth, a thick, living weight on your tongue, and began a slow, movementic pulse.

You gagged, trying to spit it out, but it pushed deeper, and a low command from Harlequin rumbled against your clit. “Suck.”

Helpless, you obeyed. 

The pulse quickened, mimicking a fuck. You could feel it thickening, the texture changing, becoming more urgent. Harlequin’s breathing grew ragged, his licks becoming sloppier, more desperate against your soaked panties.

“That’s it… swallow it down, you greedy little thing,” he growled, “Fuck, look at you… fucking perfect like this. Taking it so well. I’m gonna— I’m gonna fill that pretty mouth until you drown in it—” His prophecy broke on a ragged, gut-deep groan.

The living rope in your mouth didn’t just pulse.

It convulsed. Then it unleashed.

It was a hot, sudden flood—a violent, bitter-salty eruption that hit the back of your throat with shocking force. It kept coming, thick and relentless, spurt after monstrous spurt, an impossible volume that instantly overwhelmed you. 

It filled your mouth, a scalding, claiming tide, before overflowing. It spilled past your sealed lips, a hot rivulet tracing a filthy path down your chin, onto your chest.

You gagged, eyes rolling back, a choked, wet sound trapped around the invasion. Just as your vision began to spark with panic, the rope slithered out of your mouth with a slick, obscene pull, leaving you coughing violently, sputtering, every sense saturated with the pungent, intimate taste of him.

Harlequin collapsed forward, his forehead dropping to your stomach with a heavy thud. His breath sawed in and out of him as he lifted his head just enough to look at the mess he’d made. His voice was a wrecked, awed whisper. 

“God, look at you. What a pretty fucking sight.” A claw-tipped finger swiped through the spend on your chin, bringing it to his own masked mouth in a gesture that was unspeakably vile. 

“Absolutely painted with me.”

He let out a sigh, a long, theatrical sound of faux regret. “I do apologize. Truly. It’s terribly selfish of me… marking you up like this.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded starved. 

His head dipped again, his masked mouth pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss to your navel before he looked up, his emerald eyes gleaming with renewed, filthy promise.

“But I can make it up to you,” he rasped, the words a dark vow against your skin. His hands slid down to your hips, gripping hard. “After all… you’re just soaked through for me. I can feel it. Dripping down your thighs, and you haven’t even come yet.”

He chuckled, a low, wicked sound.

“Let’s fix that, shall we?”

The hand not directing the serpentine ropes came up to cup your jaw, his thumb pressing cruelly into the hinge to force your mouth open. “My apologies,” he whispered, the words a hot, dark promise, and then his mouth was on yours.

It was nothing you could have imagined.

The warmth of his lips surprised you, sinful sensations against yours, as if a peek into humanity. Then came the feel of the probing invasion by his tongue.

It was thick, wet, different, and it slipped past your lips with no consideration. You already knew from tales that it was split, that it had a forked appearance, but touching it, with all that slim, nimble warmth exploring your mouth, learning your contours, possessing you, was a whole different matter.

He was so much bigger, his body caging you against the cold mirror, his kiss swallowing every sound you made. His claws tightened in your hair, holding you perfectly still for his devouring exploration.

And all the while, his other self worked.

You felt it—a new rope, thicker, more substantial than the teasing tendrils, pressing insistently against the soaked fabric of your panties. It rubbed, a slow, maddening grind that promised so much more. At the same time, other coils tightened their embrace.

One wound around your upper chest, just beneath your arms, squeezing in a relentless, possessive hug that made your breasts swell against the pressure. 

Another, thinner, more careful, looped around your throat. It didn’t cut off your air, not quite. It just rested there, a constant, terrifying reminder of his control, tightening a fraction with each gasp you made into his mouth.

You were drowning in him. 

Every inch of your exposed skin was in contact with some part of his will—the smooth ropes, the heat of his body, the invasion of his kiss. 

The tips of the ropes, those clever, sentient extensions of his desire, grew bolder. 

One abandoned the grind against your core to slide up your torso. It found a pebbled, aching nipple and circled it, a teasing, tickling caress that made you jerk in his grasp. Another did the same on the other side. 

They played you, flicking and circling, sending jagged bolts of pleasure-pain straight to your already throbbing core.

You tried to tore your mouth from his with a ragged, choked cry that was half-strangled by the coil on your throat. But he didn’t let you.

And that’s when you bit down.

Not a nibble or a warning. 

A hard, clamp of your teeth right into the thickest part of that invading, forked muscle.

He froze. A muffled, wet sound of pure shock vibrated against your lips. Then he recoiled, tearing his mouth from yours with a sharp jerk.

For a second, there was only the sound of ragged breathing. His head was bowed, a curtain of dark curls hiding his expression. A thick, dark droplet of blood welled on his chin, then fell, splashing against the exposed skin of your collarbone. 

He raised a gloved hand, slowly, and touched his mouth. When he pulled it back, the black leather was stained a deeper, wet black.

He looked at the blood on his fingers.

Then, he looked at you.

His eyes, those brilliant emerald slits, were wide. Not with anger. His tongue—yours now, the coppery taste of him flooding your mouth—flicked out, a quick, serpentine motion, to catch the blood beading on his own lip. He savored it, his gaze locked on yours. 

Then, with a careful, obscene slowness, he ran the forked tip up the length of his gloved finger, cleaning the blood with a lover’s care.

His pupils were blown, his breath coming in short, sharp pants. He was aroused. Profoundly, 

dangerously turned on by your violence.

“You little brat,” he breathed, the words a reverent curse. A slow, terrifying smile spread beneath his mask, unseen but felt in the new energy thrumming through him.

You met his gaze, your own chin smeared with his blood. “Those ropes,” you said, your voice surprisingly steady, “They’re part of you, aren’t they? chelly Because you’re not a man at all. You’re just the monster those stories warned me about.”

Harlequin went utterly still. 

The smile didn’t fade. It deepened. Then he laughed—a low, rich, utterly unhinged sound of pure delight. He leaned in again, but not to kiss you. To press his bloodied lips to your temple in a grotesque parody of affection.

“Clever little one,” he praised, his voice thick with admiration and lust. “So very, very clever. You see me. You really see me.” He pulled back, his heart-pupiled eyes glowing with a possessive, mad light. 

“And you’re still here. Biting me. Defining me.” His forked tongue darted out again, a quick, excited flick. “This changes everything, the game just became so much more interesting.”

Suddenly your body bowed against the ropes, every muscle locking as the orgasm ripped through you, blinding and devastating. 

It felt less like a release and more like a seizure of pleasure, wracking you with tremors, your inner walls clenching around nothing, soaking your ruined panties utterly.

Through the white-hot haze, you heard his laugh—a low, deep, utterly satisfied growl that vibrated against your lips.

“There it is,” he murmured, his forked tongue darting out to catch a tear or a drop of sweat from your cheek. “Good little puppet. You just came in your pretty little underwear, pinned against a mirror, for me. Remember that.” He pressed a final, almost chaste kiss to your trembling mouth. 

“I think you’re ready now,” Harlequin’s voice cut through the drugged haze, not with gentleness, but with the finality of a curtain rising. The living ropes, an extension of his will, moved. They pivoted you with unsettling, effortless strength, turning your limp body to face the vanity mirror directly.

Your hands were drawn together at the small of your back, bound not by rope, but by a single, stronger coil that felt like braided muscle. It held you in place, forcing your back to arch slightly, pressing your exposed chest forward. The cool kiss of the mirror met your flushed skin from shoulder blades to the backs of your thighs.

Your vision was still a swamp of blurry shapes and swimming colors, but the figure looming behind you in the glass… it clarified something deep in your brain.

You froze.

Even in the dim, green-tinged darkness of the backstage tent, the outline was unmistakably, irrevocably other. The human silhouette you were accustomed to Harlequin—was gone.

The jester’s hat was discarded, the constant, mocking jingle of its bells silenced. A cascade of dark, unruly curls fell around his face and shoulders, freed from their theatrical constraint. 

The porcelain mask was gone. He must have removed it long ago, during your drugged stupor. His shirt was unbuttoned and hanging open, his cape gone. And from his back, from the shadowed space between his shoulder blades and down the elegant line of his spine, emerged the source of the “ropes.” 

He was telling the truth. They were him. 

Thick, tentacular appendages, shimmering with a faint, bioluminescent green hue deep within their corded muscle. They moved with a sinuous grace, some coiled around your limbs and torso, others weaving through the air around him like the limbs of some deep-sea god. 

Your mind, dulled and overwhelmed by sensation, simply short-circuited. Your reflection in the mirror was a mess of wide, glazed eyes and slack, parted lips. His reflection was a myth made flesh.

Harlequin watched your stunned, silent face in the glass, his own features now visible. Stripped of the mask, his face was sharp, elegant, and utterly feral. 

High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and those same brilliant, predatory green eyes—now infinitely more terrifying without the porcelain frame. A slow, razor-edged smile spread across his very human, very cruel mouth.

“Cat got your tongue, little one?” he purred, his voice rich with amusement. One of the tentacles—his tentacles—slid up from your thigh to trace your jawline in the mirror’s reflection, a imitation of his own clawed touch. 

“Not what you were expecting when you signed up for the freak show? Don’t tell me you’re getting shy now.” His eyes, holding yours in the glass, gleamed with dark intent. “You wanted to see. Now you see. And I want to feel.”

You suddenly felt his claw black gloved—went to the fastening of his costume pants. 

There was a soft zip in the quiet tent.

What was revealed against the small of your back, pressing through the cleft of your ass, was not human.

It was monstrous alone.

The cock itself was staggering, far beyond any human average, a proud, intimidating curve of flesh that was a darker shade than the rest of him, traced with the same subtle, glowing green veins as the tentacles. 

It was not about sheer thickness, though it was by no means slight; it was about the length of that subtle curve you felt promised an angle of penetration that would touch places meant to remain secret.

He rocked his hips forward slightly, letting the impressive, terrifying weight of it ride along your seam, a blunt, undeniable preview. A choked, ragged sound was torn from your throat, half-terror, half something infinitely more damning.

“There we are,” he whispered, his breath hot on your neck, his gaze locked on your horrified, captivated expression in the mirror.

“No more costumes. No more masks. Just you. And the monster you can’t stop thinking about.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. 

“Let’s see if your curiosity feels as good as it looks.”

You felt the blunt, immense pressure of him, hot and insistent, at your entrance. A choked gasp ripped from your throat—half protest, half plea. 

He pushed, and your body, yet unprepared for his size, sharp burst of pain that immediately frayed into blinding pleasure.

He managed only half his length, and the sheer, shocking fullness of it made your eyes fly wide behind the mask, a silent scream of overwhelming sensation etched onto your face. You were impaled, stretched to a limit you hadn't known you possessed.

“Shhh, now,” he soothed, his voice a dark rumble against your neck, but it was a lie. The ropes agreed. One snaked up, coiling around your torso once, twice, then continued its ascent to loop firmly, but not cruelly, around your throat. With a pull, it dragged you down, forcing you to take more of him.

The pain crested, before dissolving into a deeper, more terrifying wave of pleasure as he sheathed himself to the hilt inside you. 

A broken, guttural moan was torn from you as  the ropes at your thighs and waist tightened and lifted. Your feet left the ground. He held you there, speared on him, suspended by his living bonds. Your blurred vision cleared enough, reflected in the vanity mirror he’d pressed you against moments before.

The sight was obscene. Terrifying.

You saw yourself—masked, flushed, utterly exposed—held aloft in a web of pulsating, dark green tendrils. And between your splayed thighs, the thick, brutal cock, buried to the root inside you. Your own wetness, glistening in the low light, already coated him.

“Look,” he commanded, his voice thick with a hunger that bordered on fury. “See how pretty you are, taking me.”

The ropes began to move. They didn’t just drop you; they controlled your descent, a slow, excruciating slide up his cock until just the swollen tip remained nestled inside, before pulling you down again with relentless. Each downward stroke punched a shocked, wet sound from your lips.

You watched, hypnotized and horrified, as your own stomach, with each deep, driven descent, showed a tiny, distinct bulge where he filled you to the absolute brink. His clawed hand splayed over your lower belly, as if feeling his own shape inside you, claiming the space he’d conquered.

“Fuck,” he snarled, the polished performer utterly shattered. He was fucking you now with sharp, shallow snaps of his hips, angling up, seeking a depth that shouldn’t be possible. “You feel that? You feel how deep I am?”

It felt like being split in two. It felt like being remade.

A sob of overstimulation caught in your throat. And just when you thought you’d adjust, you felt him… change. 

A low, visceral groan vibrated from his chest into yours as, inside you, using one of his rope around your neck pulled gently, insistently, forcing your head to roll back against the solid muscle of his chest. 

Your masked cheek pressed against the rough fabric of his harlequin jacket. You could hear the ragged, unsteady movement of his breathing, could feel the tremors of restraint running through him.

The initial, sharp scream that tore from your throat as he filled you—a brutal, breathtaking invasion—didn't end in a whimper. It fractured, melting into a guttural, shuddering cry of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.

Harlequin’s movement, which had begun with the punishing, controlled precision of a metronome, stuttered. A bright, sharp burst of laughter escaped him—not his usual dark chuckle, but a sound of genuine, startled surprise. His emerald eyes, fixed on your face, widened behind the mask. 

He watched, mesmerized and visibly thrown, as your expression contorted not in fear, but in rapture. Your eyes rolled back, whites gleaming in the dim light, your mouth falling open on a silent, ecstatic gasp.

“Well, fuck me,” he breathed, the vulgarity slipping out in a tone of pure, unvarnished shock. The script was burning in his hands

Then you spoke. Your voice was a wrecked, breathless thing, frayed by pleasure coursing through your veins— “Is that all you’ve got?” you gasped, the words a taunt wrapped in a moan. “Or are you just afraid to ruin me properly?”

You clenched around him, punishing internal grip that made his hips jerk and a ragged, stolen groan tear from his own throat. Emboldened, drunk on a power you didn’t fully grasp, you reached up. Your hands, no longer fighting the living ropes but moving in tandem with their possessive guidance, found the cold sides of his porcelain mask. 

You pulled him down. For a heart-stopping moment, he resisted, a statue of pure, stunned tension. Then, with a shudder that seemed to travel from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots, he yielded. His head dipped, and your mouth found the sealed seam where his lips should be.

You couldn’t kiss what wasn’t there. 

So, with a bold, bratty swipe of your tongue, you sought the heat behind the porcelain. You found it—the unexpected, forked warmth of his true tongue, a slick, living thing that met your own in a shocking, intimate tangle.

He froze. Completely. Then, he melted.

A deep, animalistic growl vibrated from his chest directly into yours, a sound of absolute surrender and unleashed, primal hunger. 

He kissed you back, the pressure desperate and hard, his forked tongue exploring yours with a wet, claiming intimacy. The mask was a cold barrier, but the feverish reality behind it was devastating.

He broke the kiss, pulling back just enough for his glowing eyes to sear into yours. His breath was ragged. “More?” he growled, the word both a challenge and a raw, naked plea.

The ropes, responding to the spike of his emotion, convulsed around you. They pulled harder, yanking your hips down onto him with a force that stole your breath, bending your body back over the vanity in a deep, unbreakable arc of submission and offer.

“You greedy, exquisite little puppet,” he snarled, his voice stripped of all pretense, now just gravel and need. “You want more? Fine.” He drove into you, a deep, punishing stroke that made stars burst behind your eyes.

“Let’s see how much of this monster you can really take,” he panted against your ear.

Just as the coil at your core brought you to a trembling, breathless peak, you felt another—thinner, more insistent—press against a different, forbidden entrance. 

Shock pierced the haze. You had no time to protest before it slid in, slow and inexorable, stealing your scream into a choked sob. It moved inside you, sinuous and alive, coiling with devastating precision.

The dual invasion—the thick fullness and the probing pressure—collided. 

Your climax didn't crest; it detonated.

A silent, seismic convulsion wracked you, your back bowing off the mirror. A flood of wetness gushed, dripping down your thighs with a soft, shameful patter onto the floor.

Harlequin watched, a low hum of approval vibrating from him. "There we go," he murmured, voice thick with dark delight. "Make a mess for me. Perfect."

Before the last tremor had even left your limbs, the ropes moved with orchestrated purpose. They pivoted you, a limp doll in their grasp, turning you until your back met the cold, hard floor. 

Your arms were pulled up above your head, wrists bound together by a living tether that held them suspended above your head. You were forced to look up, your vision clearing just enough to see the terrifying, magnificent reality of him.

Harlequin loomed over you, one knee between your splayed thighs. And there, pressed against your trembling belly, was his cock.

Then another thick and long, rope pulsed with a life of its own, and a slick, iridescent sheen coated its length. The sight of it, so blatantly, terrifyingly different, should have sparked primal terror. 

Instead, in your fucked-out, drugged state, it only stoked the embers of that dark, surrendering hunger.

He didn't bother with a preamble. He lined himself up with your soaked, quivering entrance and slammed back inside in one brutal, perfect stroke.

The air left your lungs in a punched-out cry. The technique was the same as the rope’s—an overwhelming, filling invasion—but the heat, the solidity, the sheer ownership of it was magnitudes more profound. 

He sheathed himself to the hilt, the ridges dragging against your oversensitive walls, and held there, letting you feel every impossible inch.

Your mouth fell open in a soundless scream, your head thrashing back against the floor. 

As you did, you saw it. 

One of the ropes that had been coiled possessively around your neck detached, lifting into the air. It hovered before your face, its tip swollen and glistening with the same iridescent fluid.

You had a half-second of dazed confusion before it twitched, and a hot, thick stream jetted from its tip, splattering across your cheek, your forehead, the corner of your mouth. 

It just missed your eye—a small, absurd mercy in the midst of the debasement. It dripped down your skin, marking you.

"Look at you," Harlequin groaned above you, his own composure fraying as he began to move, pulling out and driving back in with deep, punishing thrusts that shook your body against the floor. "Taking all of me. Every. Single. Part."

His pace was relentless, a piston driving you into the boards. You felt the other rope, still buried deep in your ass, begin to move in time with his thrusts, a counter-movement that pushed you into a state of continuous, overwhelming sensation. 

You were a vessel being filled, used, claimed from the inside out. His movement grew jagged, his breath coming in ragged, hot gusts against your neck. The ropes tightened convulsively. "Fuck—gonna—" he snarled, the words guttural and raw.

He slammed into you one final, devastating time, hilting himself as a deep, shuddering groan was torn from him.

You felt the hot, impossible flood of his release deep inside your core, a claiming so profound it felt like a brand. Simultaneously, the rope within your ass pulsed, spilling its own cum into your ass.

He collapsed over you for a moment, his weight a final, crushing claim, before pushing himself up onto his knees. 

He wasn't finished. 

His cock, still slick and hard, slapped against your belly, and with a few rough, quick strokes in his own fist, he came again, painting stripes of pearlescent cum across your stomach, your chest, your marked face.

For a long moment, the only sounds were your ragged breaths and the soft slither of the living ropes retreating into shadow. 

You were left a ruined, trembling mess on the floor—naked, painted with his essence, shattered by a climax that felt like terror and bliss fused into one.

Harlequin looked down, his mask back in place, emerald eyes blazing with satiated possession. He leaned close, his masked face inches from your cum-streaked one. A gloved finger tilted your chin up, forcing your dazed, glassy eyes to meet his.

"And sometimes," he breathed, thumb stroking your jaw with a mockery of tenderness, "she returns in someone new."

He searched your face, his gaze etching pain.

"You have their naïveté. That bright, stupid curiosity." His voice hitched, raw. "And perhaps… her foolish, fucking hope."

He leaned closer, his mask nearly touching yours.

"You remind me," he confessed, the words seeming to wound him, "what it felt like… to be looked at. Not as a monster. But as something… someone… that could be loved."

The last word was a ghost.

A broken smile touched his hidden mouth. 

"But you will never be her. The original is gone. You're just the echo. A reflection in a dirty mirror." The fragile vulnerability shattered, leaving only cold porcelain and colder truth. 

"A sentiment I'm sure would thrill her to hear, you maudlin, self-pitying worm." Jester’s voice, laced with a theatrical disgust that echoed in the cramped space. He stood in the entrance, his arms crossed. His own permanent grin seemed to twist with genuine fury.

Harlequin didn't jump. 

He simply went very still, the vulnerable man vanishing as the defensive, bristling creature took his place. "This doesn't concern you," he snarled, not turning around.

"Doesn't concern me?" Jester hissed, gliding forward. The bells on his shoes were deathly silent. "When you defile her memory by rutting against a cheap copy? When you play the brokenhearted lover while your hands are still stained?" He jabbed a finger, tipped with a jagged blade, towards Harlequin. 

"She of all people would recoil from this. From you, performing your monstrosity like it's a fucking tragedy. She hated pity."

Harlequin whirled, finally facing him. "And what would you know of what she hated?" he spat, the words laced with a sudden, vicious jealousy. "You, who watched from the shadows. You, who licked your lips and took your share when the platter was passed around. Or did you forget?” 

Harlequin’s raw confession hung in the air, “You are not pure in this,” he’d spat at Jester, “You are not clean. You ate of her too. We all did. I just…” His voice, that instrument of velvet and menace, cracked open, revealing the hollow, screaming thing beneath. 

“…I just happened to get the brain.”

Jester didn’t move. The permanent grin of his mask became a gash of mockery in the stillness. When he finally spoke, his voice was not the usual singsong taunt. It was a flat, cold blade, scraping bone.

“You have lost the right to speak of shares,” Jester stated, each word a nail in a coffin. “You might have gotten the brain… a lump of tissue soaked in tragedy. A souvenir of your failure to protect it.” He took a single, silent step forward.  The bells on his shoes were mute. “But in the end…” He paused, letting the anticipation coil.

“…I am the one who got the heart.”

Jester’s gaze, sharp and disdainful, swept over you—a shivering, exposed mess, slick with sweat and your own release, barely conscious against the floor. A slow, cruel smile stretched beneath his painted grin.

“Look at that,” he mused, his voice a singsong razor. “A perfect little puddle. So… breakable. So needy.” He tilted his head, the bells on his cap utterly silent. “She was never like this. Never so… pathetic. She had a spine. A mind. You?” He flicked a dismissive claw in your direction. 

“You’re just a vessel for his freakish nature. A perfect fit.” 

He turned his empty-eyed stare back to Harlequin. “Now,” he continued, the melodic lilt returning, now dripping with acidic dismissal. “Clean up this mess. Your mess. Before the real shadows notice your little… breakdown. They get so peckish when they smell this kind of weakness.”

For a heartbeat, defiance burned in Harlequin’s emerald eyes—a feral, wounded pride. 

You could see the monster rallying, ready to snap his strings and lash out to reclaim some shred of his ruined dignity.

But then his gaze flicked to you.

To your shivering form, the evidence of his loss of control, his absolute consumption of you, glistening on your skin and pooling on the floor. 

Harlequin turned away from Jester, his movements now efficient, devoid of their usual theatrical grace. He was tidying a crime scene. 

He fetched a soft cloth and a basin of water that appeared too quickly to be normal. The water was warm, faintly scented with herbs. He didn't look at your face as he began to clean you, his gloved hands surprisingly gentle as he wiped the sweat from your brow, the evidence of your shared transgression from your thighs. 

Each stroke was methodical, reverent even, but it was the reverence of a collector for a prized, though now slightly damaged, doll. It was possession, not care. 

He was putting his toy back in order.

After all, he is a monster; a monster claims you for good.