ElectricChair

“This is quite a busy establishment, dear thing. I don’t have all night to watch and wait for you to deliberate.”

The purple-clad storyteller sat behind a wooden desk in front of you, clawed hands neatly clasped on its surface. Beneath his arms rested a piece of paper. A contract, its dotted line left unmarked by a signature. Your signature. A knot twisted in your stomach whenever you glanced at it for too long. But it wasn’t exactly enjoyable to look up at the Jester’s beastly eyes either.

“You know the offer. You know the price. All that’s left…”

He moved one of his star-patterned arms to slide the empty contract towards your side of the desk, though there was no writing utensil for you to use.

“Is for you to pledge your payment.”

Something cold and trembling and immensely uncomfortable coiled around your heart, then your lungs, and finally your intestines. You tried rubbing a finger or two on the seam of your pants on the outside of your thigh. It did nothing but make you acutely aware of how anxious you were.

The Jester, though you weren’t looking at him, had a smile on his mask, as you knew he always did. But there was also a smile in his voice now. A knowing and deeply unsettling smile. You didn’t need to look at him to know he had tilted his head in mock-sympathy when he began to speak again.

“Life always presents us with difficult choices, visitor. This one is no different.”

Your breathing became shallow in your attempts to fool yourself into thinking you were calm. When you ceased one diffident habit, another began.

“It’s sad…But true. Many things are.”

Yes, it was quite tragic, the position you were in.

The Jester had sent for you (he had a Fool knock on your apartment door at an ungodly hour in the night, and the masked performer in pink—who you now knew was a kidnapped and brainwashed person—wordlessly beckoned for you to follow. You did so, and now here you are, back in the circus) to offer a proposition.

The offer was simple, really. It was quite obvious that the Pierrot had taken quite a liking to you—the understatement of the century—and so did the Harlequin. They were rather curious about you. More so than any other human Jester had seen them encounter. (You seriously doubted he meant that as a compliment.)

But alas, the circus is not a sedentary thing. It is no different from a migratory bird species or a grazing animal in need of new pastures. It is a business, one that simply keeps moving forevermore as a fact of its existence. But that fact would prove itself incompatible with the Pierrot’s…fixation.

In other words, the Jester was proposing that you (somewhat officially) join the circus as a permanent resident. It was a way to avoid any pesky problems like, oh, he didn’t know…kidnapping you? Killing you, maybe? Such things would result in Pierrot becoming…irrational, he described. And we can’t have that, can we?

Think of it as tying off one last loose end, he said. After all, you knew quite a lot about the circus. He can’t in good conscience just leave you to idly prattle about the troupe and its tendencies behind closed doors. It was quite the risk that he wasn’t willing to take blindly. You understood, didn’t you?

Really, he was just using flowery language to describe you becoming a circus pet. A glorified emotional support animal. A life-like doll, fit with customized responses. It made your stomach churn to think about.

Of course, there was always the alternative. That being your guaranteed kidnapping and eventual inevitable demise, whether that was you being devoured, experimented on by the Doctor, torn asunder by the Harlequin...He spoke of those things so casually, like he knew you wouldn’t say even a word to a single soul outside the circus. It seemed he had long since abandoned any thoughts of pretending that you didn’t know what was happening behind the curtains of this place.

This whole “proposal,” in fact, felt like one big act. A performative illusion of choice when the leader of the circus had long known your answer before you even did. If so, was he doing this for formality’s sake? Was this just a way to get you to squirm in your seat and shrink under his gaze?

It felt less like a genuine proposition and more like a stage, one in which you were an unwilling and unknowing performer for him and him alone.

Your mouth became dry. What choice did you have, really? Try as you might, you couldn’t find any falsehoods or places to argue in the Jester’s reasonings—if they could be called that. It was true that Pierrot was…unpredictable when it came to you. You knew the circus would leave your city at some point—you awaited it, actually. But what would Pierrot do? He made it abundantly clear that simply leaving you wasn’t an option.

Would he steal you away from your home, your life, your very existence? Would he devour you whole so nobody else could have a chance at claiming you? Would he try to keep you like a child does with a stray lizard found in a garden?

It’s not like you were complacent in all this. You enjoyed Pierrot’s presence, liked him, even. But you didn’t know him. You didn’t know any of the circus members. And now you’d just move in with them, uprooting your independent life to become a glorified servant or god knows whatever else? You didn’t even know their real names beyond their circus titles!

Any sane person would simply laugh in the Jester’s face if he offered such a shoddy attempt at a fair trade. Leaving your life behind, and for what?

But of course, that isn’t the full extent of the deal. It was silently known that it was pretty much inevitable that you would end up in the circus one way or another. If not by choice, then…

Well. The alternative is what you were hoping to avoid.

If you were to make this contract with Jester, with the circus, you’d have guaranteed protection. You would be an official member, and members weren’t allowed to hurt each other, of course. If you didn’t join, then you would be fair game for the other members to toy with. After all, you’d be Pierrot’s responsibility—after he inevitably kidnaps you—like a precious doll meant to be kept safe in a drawer. And if the others came across that precious thing? Well, it was Pierrot’s fault for not keeping it—you—safer.

However, you are no doll. You are not a plaything that gathers dust and cracks and shatters with a wrong stare—despite what the Jester seemed to think.

You are a person. And that means that you are capable of reasoning. Of bargaining.

If this whole situation was truly as inevitable as it seemed, if there really was no better option but to remain with the circus one way or another…then you wouldn’t be so quick to just lie down and accept it. Not without a last-ditch effort of your own.

“The other Fools…” Your hands clenched into fists on your thighs, the action making just the slightest amount of bravery flow through your veins. It was frail and short-lived, but it was there, and that’s what mattered. “What will happen to them?”

The violet-eyed performer in front of you simply tilted his head as if not immediately understanding where your words were coming from. But he answered your question anyway.

“The same thing that always happens to them when we must relocate. We dispose of them. Cut any ties tethering us to our past locations.”

He was being awfully straightforward. It was uncanny considering his previous words towards you, subtle enough to be played off as mere theatrical flair, but just close enough to the truth to make you uneasy. You would almost consider this new routine a breath of fresh air if his words weren’t so macabre.

The Fools…Carol and who knows how many other people would be thrown away as broken puppets or cracked dolls. Like useless things that only took up space. Like garbage. Or worse, the circus would find some other use for them that still disposed of them…

Your mind drifted back to what little you had seen of the black tent at the very edge of the circus…

Carol didn’t deserve that. You didn’t pretend to know her as anything other than a colleague, but she still had her whole life ahead of her. She was hardworking, diligent in every task she took without complaint. She was a good person.

And what about the other performers in pink? What about their lives, their dreams, their aspirations?

…But what about yours?

If you did this, if you joined the circus, there was no going back. You got a distinct feeling that any kind of contract with an inhuman beast would only end once your life extinguishes. And you didn’t even fully know what you would be doing as a permanent resident of the circus.

Jester only said that you would not start out with full clearance to do as you wished. You had to work, had to earn your place above any other Fool to prove that you were worth keeping and providing for.

It was insurmountably selfish to think of yourself now. But perhaps it was simply in your nature as a human to only care for your own survival. Jester would likely agree.

You swallowed thickly, forcing your knee to stay still and not tremble with excess anxiety. It was now or never to make a proposition of your own. You forced your voice not to waver as you finally got a chance to speak.

“…Alright. I’ll do it. But on one condition.”

Jester tilted his head, interest piqued and eyes hungrily awaiting. You didn’t know if he would actually hear you out or if he was just curious. But you knew that you had to test your luck anyway. A deep breath filled your lungs, but it gave you no comfort.

“I’ll join the circus without any issues or complaints if you let Carol go. Let all of the Fools go, actually. Return them back to normal and let them go back to their normal lives.”

Purple eyes bore into your own, searching your gaze for something you couldn’t see. Maybe he was looking for any cracks in your resolve. Maybe he was looking for where you gathered the sheer audacity to ask—no, demand—such a thing. Maybe he was considering abandoning this farce and just kidnapping you on the spot. Your gaze didn’t waver, despite the fact that both of you knew that you were afraid.

It was ominously quiet for a split second, but it felt like an unbearable eternity. But you didn’t back down. Didn’t retract your words or try to soften the demand. Jester’s eyes seemed to flicker brighter for just a moment.

“You would willingly do this for her? For strangers you will never meet?”

You slowly nodded, knuckles nearly turning white from how hard you clenched your fists. This was really happening. But you knew it wasn’t for some noble reason you were making a deal of your own. It was because you would never be able to sleep soundly again if you knew that Carol was reduced to a shell of who she once was, lost in a sea of other pink performers whose names and faces were stolen from them.

And then what? They’d be disposed of? Killed or eaten or tortured or god knows whatever else simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Carol didn’t deserve that. None of those poor souls did. Some of them very well may be awful people. But some of them might be good people as well. Most of them were probably troubled yet innocent people, easy targets to pluck from the cracks of society.

But they were all just people. And that was reason enough.

The Jester hummed a small considering sound, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“Hm. Consider it done.”

You couldn’t help but feel your resolve weaken just a little after hearing that. The amethyst-colored storyteller didn’t try to bargain. He didn’t try to intimidate you out of your conditions or even question them. It was downright unsettling how quickly he accepted those terms, so much so that you felt the need to repeat yourself to ensure he knew what he had agreed to.

“Just…leave the others out of it. This is between you and m-“

“Oh, dearest thing…”

Jester interrupted you, and you felt your heart drop to an ever-expanding pit in your stomach as he leaned forward slightly. He smiled a triumphant sharp-toothed grin that said one certain thing: he had won.

Uh oh.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He laughed a full and rich laugh, not like the performative empty ones you heard before. You didn’t know if that meant you were safe or if you were utterly fucked. With your luck in this place…it probably meant the latter. You leaned back in your hard chair as the violet-clad troupe member stood from his own chair and approached you, but you didn’t try to run.

You made an agreement, after all.

An uncomfortable heat crawled across your skin. Sweat began to bead up on your nape. But you still didn’t move—whether it was because you knew you had made a deal fair and square or because you were simply frozen with dread was yet to be determined. Jester was in front of you now, violet eyes shining with a knowing triumphant glint.

He got the better end of the bargain, this you could feel in every fiber of your being. But was there ever a chance of you getting an equivalent exchange in the first place? Should you have played your hand better and tried to test your luck and ask for more? Or was this whole game rigged from the start?

You could feel it. Your luck had run out. Just as the Jester said it would on that night you first spoke to him in his purple tent. Your lungs began to ache with dread, heart pounding like it was trying to escape from your body through your throat. The beast in front of you smiled wider like he could smell your unease—he probably could, now that you thought about it.

“You worry that I will make you a mindless slave. That I will take your name, your face, swallow you whole, never to be seen again…And under normal circumstances, you would be right to fear that.”

A single clawed fingertip made its way beneath your chin, putting just the slightest amount of force to tilt your face upwards. Your breathing went still.

He seemed to like that.

“But you would be more entertaining fully lucid, no? And you agreed willingly.”

The question was rhetorical. You knew this because he didn’t move his claw to let you nod or make even the slightest movement with your chin, and his face was relaxed like he already knew the answer anyway.

“Therefore…”

His claw kept pressing beneath your chin, and you realized he was slowly guiding you to stand up. You followed his action—mostly to avoid the sharp tip of his finger from puncturing through your jaw—to slowly stand from your seat while maintaining eye contact, your heart still pounding and stomach still churning with uncertainty.

“I will give you just a little bit of leeway.”

His star-patterned hand then suddenly grabbed your jaw—not violently, but firmly and without hesitation. You couldn’t help but let out a combination between a small gasp and a shaky confused sound at his uncharacteristic closeness. This was the most physical touch you had ever even seen him do in the entire time you’d known him—which isn’t a lot of time, but enough to know that touch wasn’t something he did casually.

The lower half of your face was almost entirely engulfed in his long and sharp fingers save for your mouth. He held your jaw with restraint, this you knew, but you still panicked that his claws would put five perfect finger-sized puncture wounds in your face. His other hand grabbed one of yours and stretched your arm past his shoulder, forcing you to lean back slightly and hold an uncomfortable pose as if he had just finished some twisted dance with you.

He just chuckled at your expression, which you were sure now revealed your nearly endless dread and doubts about what you just willingly signed up for. Dear god, were you more of an idiot than you thought? What made you think any of this would turn out alright?

“You won’t tell the others of this, will you?”

You were confused for a second, and your face reflected that. What did he mean?

Your eyes went wide when his mask suddenly met your face in an intense and overwhelming kiss, heart hammering against your ribcage and free hand trembling with the urge to shove him away, to slap him, to dig your fingers into his shoulder, to do something. And yet you didn’t dare move a muscle to fight against him, acutely aware of how his claws threatened to dig into the skin of your face and one of your hands. Your free hand trembled and shook unbearably, and you clenched it into a fist to try to resist the urge to push or punch at the performer’s chest.

This was wrong. So very, very wrong. Why was Jester doing this? What could he possibly get out of doing this to a member of the species he clearly held noticeable disdain for?

This had to be some sick and twisted display of power over you. It’s not like his actual face was touching yours, instead his cold mask awkwardly pressed against your lips in a way that only made you more aware of how wrong this all was.

You tried pulling away after a couple seconds, beginning to feel how your face was definitely flushed and steaming hot with discomfort, and your lungs were starting to ache with how you hadn’t breathed a full breath in too long and your muscles were starting to hurt from how much tension was stored in them and oh god he’s not letting go he’s not letting you pull back he’s trying to get you to open your mouth he’s pulling your arm harder what’s happening what’s happening what’s happening

You could feel his grip on your chin changing just ever so slightly, not loosening but angling your face a little differently. Your mouth opened just the tiniest little imperceptible bit in your struggle to move away…

It was all over. You instantly felt something hot and slick infiltrate past your teeth and slither its way into your mouth, and you had to actively force yourself not to give in to your instincts to harshly bite down on it. There was a taste of coffee and unidentifiable spices on your tongue from his that made you gag. You let out a sound close to a desperate suppressed yelp, yet Jester still didn’t relent.

Your lungs were starting to burn now. You started to panic even more than you had before, and in your instincts to try and get away to get some air, you pressed your free hand to the Jester’s chest to try and make another desperate attempt at pulling away.

An unbearably sharp and painful sting was all you felt in your mouth after laying a hand on his purple and yellow costume. Something warm and wet and coppery slowly filled your mouth. You could feel yourself trying and failing to cough, the warmth of the substance making you choke. Something leaked from between your lips and his mask’s mouth, wetting his mask opening and your chin.

Unable to hold yourself back now that you were in unfathomable pain, your fingers dug into Jester’s shoulder as you let out a suppressed yet still pained scream against his pale mask’s mouth. Your hand that was still held in his black gloved one squeezed his long fingers tightly, so tightly that it hurt your own joints.

Finally, finally, after what felt like an eternity without air, he allowed you to pull away. You stumbled to the floor onto your hands and knees, unable to comprehend what the fuck just happened. Red relentlessly flowed from between your lips and onto the floor in a sickening and rapidly expanding puddle. You coughed and choked on the sickly warm substance as a static feeling traveled across all of your limbs.

Blood. It was blood that you were choking on. Your blood.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This can’t be happening. It can’t be. It can’t be.

Your spittle was stained red. Gobbets of blood both thick and thin seeped between your teeth and clung to the cracks in your lips. It sprayed and dribbled between your front teeth as you coughed up and then forcefully swallowed some of the metallic-tasting fluid just to not choke on it as much.

It was hard—if not nearly impossible—to swallow now. Why? Why couldn’t you swallow properly? Why were you retching so much?

You weren’t sure how long you stayed like that on the floor, just spitting up mouthfuls of blood onto the growing puddle beneath you and trying not to choke or gag from the sheer amount of it, but at some point you felt that something was fundamentally wrong.

Something felt different.

You looked up to Jester, who simply stood there, arms folded behind his back like nothing had happened at all. He looked to be enjoying the sight of you on the floor like some scolded dog. There was a big wet red stain on his mask’s chin covering the purple lines that descended from the corners of his mouth. You couldn’t do anything but stare at him with fear in your eyes and dread (and also now your own blood) pooling in your gut.

Jester just smiled wider. You watched as his mask’s mouth opened, sharp triangular teeth shifting and parting to create a gap and reveal an unnaturally long purple tongue, one now stained and dripping red and-

Oh god.

No no no no no no no no no

There, on the center of his long tongue, was a small lump of pink wet flesh.

You tried moving your tongue to feel for what he had bitten. Tried feeling for what was stolen from you.

There was nothing in your mouth.

You had no sensation in your mouth.

It was just an empty orifice. No familiar wet muscle resting between your teeth.

What?

What?

You feverishly reached a couple fingers past your lips and front teeth, feeling nothing but sickeningly warm blood and the sides of your molars. A gag escaped from your lungs as you realized you had to reach all the way to the back of your throat to feel any sort of texture. Your hand trembled as you looked down to examine it, fingers slicked and sticky with dark red. The warm stench of the stuff was starting to make you dizzy. Your vision began to get blurry.

This wasn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. No muscle, no flesh, only blood. Only searing pain. You couldn’t swallow. You couldn’t breathe.

You trembled when you finally looked back up to Jester, who smiled a knowing expression down at you.

He swallowed.

You had a sudden urge to hurl. Either from what you just witnessed or from the overwhelming amount of blood that has accumulated in your stomach, you didn’t know. Probably both. You could feel sweat starting to form in your palms and across your forehead, even though shivers crawled across your arms.

Your breaths were wet and shaky. They grew more frantic when your mouth began to tingle with excess saliva. Tears pricked at your eyes when you finally lost control of your body and felt your abdomen spasm painfully, and you emptied the contents of your stomach (blood, it was just blood) onto the puddle already beneath you.

Bile mixed with the coppery substance in your gut made your nose sting and your throat burn, and your arms became unbearably shaky. The taste of iron and the stench of organic matter only made you want to gag and purge your stomach further.

The acidity of your stomach acid only made the burning wound in your mouth unimaginably worse, and you trembled and cried out guttural gurgled sounds like a wounded animal at the sheer amount of pain you were in. Your head was buzzing like TV static at this point, peripheral vision blurred and fingertips turning numb.

When you finally finished spitting up pure blood from your stomach, a brief and dazed feeling of relief overcame you that there was no longer an uncomfortable warmth in your abdomen. But it was just that: a fleeting feeling that quickly disappeared when you heard Jester’s voice above you.

“I couldn’t resist getting a little taste of my own. Had to see for myself what those two are so enraptured by.”

Oh god. This was all real. Your tongue was gone. It was bitten off. It was just…not there anymore. You couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t think or feel anything. Red was splotched on your shirt and pants, the wet spots soaking into them like freshly blooming poppies. Everything was too loud and too quiet. You were acutely aware of every sensation on and in your body yet also unable to feel anything.

You stayed on your hands and knees, watching the way the blood pooled beneath you rippled with every trickle of liquid—bile, sweat, blood, tears, you didn’t know—from your chin. The dazed and frightened and red-spattered person looking back at you in the subtle reflection was unrecognizable.

“Be still, visitor. This loss of yours isn’t permanent.”

You trembled as the violet-clad troupe member leaned over your choking form, not going down to your level, but instead making you feel even smaller than you were by looming over your vulnerable state.

“Or at least…it won’t be permanent if you prove yourself valuable enough to earn your voice back.”

Anger and adrenaline flowed through your veins upon hearing that. You felt the urge to scream and shout, to call him every curse word in the book, to yell up at him with a throat bubbling with hate that you didn’t say anything about losing your voice—no, your fucking tongue—but of course, you were too preoccupied with choking on your own blood and saliva and stomach acid. And you now no longer had the vital muscle to form the words you wanted to spit at him.

“You didn’t really think you’d be allowed to have a voice, did you? So why have a tongue when you have no need to speak?”

Oh, you didn’t know, maybe to eat? To live properly?

The feigned innocence in his voice made you want to wipe that stupid fucking grin off his face, made you want to reach a hand out and punch him as hard as you could, wring his neck, claw at his face with red-stained fingers. But you were far too weak as you were, trembling like a leaf on a sidewalk and having to support yourself while retching on your hands and knees. You could only let out strained guttural snarls that sounded more pathetic than anything else.

The air became thicker and impossible to pull into your lungs. An acrid taste had formed at the back of your tongue, though whether it was from your vomit or your dread, you no longer knew. Probably both. You looked back up to Jester, who in turn looked down at you with a brighter purple glint in his eyes. An instinctive sense of dread made your heart sink.

“Your sole purpose is to listen now. So hear my words and listen well, dear thing.”

You didn’t realize tears had started to roll down your cheeks until you felt tiny droplets of cool liquid rather than warm ones pattering against the backs of your shaking hands. Were you crying from the vomiting? From instinctual fear? You didn’t know. You doubted you ever would.

“You belong to me, to this circus, in both body and mind now. Pierrot and the others can have your heart and soul and whatever scraps are left after I’m done with you.”

Blood still freely flowed down your chin in warm and sticky rivulets as Jester moved even closer to you, black boots stepping into the puddle of red on the floor. He used a single black-clawed finger to push against your forehead and force your gaze upwards, similar to how he did it earlier with his claw beneath your chin.

“I say jump, and you say…” He laughed a sickeningly amused and wicked kind of laugh. “Well, you can’t exactly say anything anymore, can you?”

Your tears begin to flow even more, eyes stinging and face burning yet also holding back horrified shivers. Angered and pained as you were at your predicament, you were truly just afraid. Afraid of what would happen to you, to your life, to what you had built before this godforsaken hellhole of a circus had ever arrived.

Your vision started to blur even worse than before, though you knew it wasn’t entirely from your tears. How much blood had you lost at this point? There was already a grimy puddle formed beneath your hands…

You felt the storyteller’s claw move from the top of your head back to beneath your jaw, maintaining your face’s upward tilted position. A borderline offensive attempt at comfort or consolation. Or perhaps—and more likely—just a thinly veiled display of his power over you.

“There, there. Your words won’t be lost forever. We monsters have our own remedies for things like this. The marvels of medicine, hm?”

His words brought no relief. If anything, they felt painfully hollow as you began to get dizzy. How the hell would you ever recover from something like this? How were you going to eat, drink, speak, live? He had effectively defanged and declawed you like a troublesome pet. Your breath trembled as you thought about what it would be like for him to break you in like he were taming a wild animal. A stray.

That’s all you were now. A beast to be bound and broken and subdued.

You couldn’t ever hope to be physically strong enough to fight against these creatures. Deep down in your heart, you knew that to be true. All you could ever hope to use was your voice, your ability to reason, your words and persuasion. But now all of those things were taken from you.

No. Not taken. In your stupidity, you had willingly given them to the circus, to him.

You knew it couldn’t have been this easy to join the circus with your own conditions and demands. You should have known this violet-eyed fuck would add a condition of his own. Yet you lowered your guard anyway.

He didn’t lie to you or trick you. He did no more than you let him do.

An ugly and broken sound came from your throat then, nearly making you choke on blood and saliva. The noises produced from your mouth sounded foreign now, and you clenched your hands into fists at your own stupidity and naivety.

The Jester gripped your blood and tear-stained chin—slightly gentler this time—and turned your face side to side like he was examining a piece of meat at a market for purchase. The deep red fluid on your chin had begun to trickle onto his black glove, but he paid it no mind.

“I’ll have the Doctor tend to you, yes? This amount of blood loss can’t be good for you. We need you in good shape, after all.”

You watched as he removed his hold on your jaw, bringing his hand close to his face. In a single motion, his long purple tongue slid out of his mouth and between his fingers, effectively yet sickeningly cleaning your blood from between them. Your stomach began to churn again. A breathy and fearful sound escaped from your lungs and past your red-stained lips.

“Consider this your initiation, dear thing. Your signature on the contract…And your payment confirmation.”

That’s right. The contract. The paper was still sitting on the surface of the desk, untouched and unsigned. Just as you suspected. This was all just a performance, a false sense of formality to get you to lower your guard. You had nearly forgotten that human methods of bonds and contracts likely held no meaning for beasts.

You watched with rapidly fading sight and weakened limbs as the Jester’s purple tongue slid past his opened teeth again to lick up your blood that had smeared on his mask’s chin. His grin widened as though he thoroughly enjoyed the taste.

It was the last thing you saw before everything started to go dark. Just as your arms lost their strength and you limply laid on the ground in a puddle of your own blood and bile and filth, you could hear that damned voice chuckling again.

“Welcome to your new life in the circus, MC.”

≫ Now, before anyone says anything, I know that Jester likely wouldn’t directly hurt the MC in the main game canon. But in the context of the AU fic I’m writing it makes more sense I PROMISE

≫ But if you’re not interested in that, then you can imagine this oneshot to be interpreted through a lens in which Jester is fed up with the MC’s nonsense with Pierrot and Harlequin. In this way, it’s a sort of final decision to allow the reader to join the circus—but not as an equal. Think of it as like when a parent takes a toy that two children squabble over.

≫ Would the MC ever gain respect as a human being from him? Would they ever see the circus as a home and gradually come to view it as where they belong? Would they earn their voice back and become an equal? Would they rebel and fight against their situation? I’ll leave that up to your interpretation, lovely reader.

≫ Title for this work is from “The Point of No Return” from The Phantom of the Opera! I listened to it nonstop while writing this. I also listened to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, 2nd Movement: Allegretto!

(Specifically the Ultrakill version hehe)

≫ This work was made without the use of any AI. Please do not scrape any text from this post to feed into any character-based AI or other LLM. If you’re going to anyway, don’t tell me about it.

————

You obviously don’t immediately have the emotional capacity to fully hate or forgive the circus members for what they had done. It takes a lot of introspection and patience with both yourself and them to reach any state of mind that can resemble acceptance.

Every stage of grief, every stray thought that shifts your view yet again…

Not only do you have to deal with the memories of your past self, but you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not the same person as that naive and callow human from long ago. Not entirely. And the beasts have certainly changed after so many years.

It’s black where things were once white, white where things were once black. Everything turns into varying shades of grey.

It’s very thin ice you walk across. Every step feels like a possibility of plunging into depths that you can’t return from. But you realize after a while that they are walking on that thin ice, too. In a sense, it’s a little comforting to know that the beasts are just as unsure as you are. It bridges the gap between your kind and theirs a little.

Perhaps…if nothing else, this is the one thing you could have in common with them.

It’s that one common trait that allowed you to establish a thread-thin connection to them. And, bit by bit, you become less of a ghost or a pest to them and become…well, a person. Each of them initially thought of you as something other than a person as a way of distancing themselves from what they had done.

It takes a lot to break through the shields they had crafted for themselves, and you can’t use the same approach for every member. A couple of them may be more receptive to genuine words, others to gestures. Sometimes it’s like walking on eggshells, and sometimes you make mistakes.

You’re rather lucky that the Little Dove is still lingering in the circus. Without her advice and comfort, you’d likely have screwed up in several places. She hears your struggles when nobody else would understand, reassures you that you are more than what you do for the others.

You are still a person, after all. Therefore you must take care of yourself as well. It’s hard. But it’s not impossible. But you were always good at taking care of yourself, weren’t you?

You wouldn’t be irrational or wrong to occasionally resent the role you had taken upon yourself. It’s a lot of work, and it’s oftentimes thankless or viewed as disingenuous by the others—save for Pierrot, who is a whole other level of hurt.

(Remember to give yourself grace as well for the things you feel guilty about. In order to forgive others, you must first forgive yourself.)

However, if you prove yourself to be just as stubborn as your past incarnation…

If you remain persistent in your desire not to forget and move on from their wounds but to acknowledge and provide a balm for them…

You would be rewarded with loyalty beyond obsession. A monster’s respect is seldom taken lightly, especially if it towards a human. Any monster can desire a human if they wished, but to truly respect one? It’s almost unheard of.

And to earn the respect and loyalty of not just one, but five? And not just any five monsters, five monsters who had been horrifically abused and traumatized at the hands of humans? Truly, it’s commendable.

It doesn’t even have to be in any romantic sense. Regardless of your personal feelings towards them, and regardless of whether or not you’d seek more personal relationships with them, they’d respect you first and foremost. They’d respect your resolve to do what is right simply because it was the right thing to do.

(Even if they’d think it to be right on the line between admirable and downright foolish. Don’t you know that it’s useless to try to see something in them that simply isn’t there?)

It’s in no way dramatic or anything like that. It’s a very slow and gradual process. Sometimes you may think it isn’t worth it. Sometimes you may think that it simply isn’t possible to come to terms with such a thing.

The closeness you had with the beasts in your previous existence certainly wasn’t normal, nor was it ever allowed to become little more than the barest form of friendship or a slightly unhealthy dependency…but that was why you were here now, isn’t it?

You can’t expect to be welcomed and cared for in the way humans care for each other. If there was one thing you learned from two lives…it was that monsters simply don’t live and love the way you do. But there was something once.

You know you can’t expect things to be how they once were. That would just be unfair and a waste of time to everyone involved.

Instead, you want to know who these monsters had become since that moonless night. You want to hear their stories again. You want to be seen and heard again. You want to see and hear them when nobody else would know their truth.

But you know it. And from it, you find acceptance for your part in their story. It was all a matter of increasingly unfortunate and unfair circumstances that nobody had any control over. The Ringmaster had cultivated a hellish place where the law was to eat or be eaten. And it was very clear which roles had been cast to who.

Your real hardships would come from getting each of the troupe members to accept their parts in their past.

You obviously don’t know everything there is to know about them, nor can you attempt to. But you want to understand. Not out of morbid curiosity that fades as soon as it’s answered, not out of a thirst for knowledge, not out of self-serving interests in making yourself feel better.

It’s out of a desire to give them what both you and them had been denied once. Consolation. Closeness. The circus members give off the impression that they no longer need such things, but they’re wrong. They need it more than anything else in the world. More than flesh. More than closure.

They will not open their hearts to the world. Instead you must slowly yet surely wriggle your way into their lives. And in their hearts are barbs and traps and sickly festering wounds. But if you can withstand those things, not without hardships but despite them…

You will find every reason to remain close to them. And they will find every reason to respect and want to protect you. However…

If you could stand face to face with foul monsters like them and dare to see beings worth loving, then there was nothing in the world they would need to protect you from anyway.

————

Pierrot, I imagine, would be rather hesitant, even despite knowing the truth of who you are. You could become frightened of what he is, could see something ugly and horrid and regret ever coming near him. Just the thought of it makes him gently refuse to take off his mask near you. He hates denying you anything, but it’s for your own safety, he tells himself.

But when you finally get him to crack, when you finally convince him to let you get just a glimpse…he reluctantly relents. But only in the privacy of his red tent, in the dark…and while your eyes are closed. It kinda beats the purpose of him taking off his mask at all, but he thinks it best that way. Seeing as how you don’t want to make Pierrot genuinely uncomfortable, you agree.

When you sit before him in his darkened tent, eyes closed and trusting him completely, he finally takes his mask off. He says nothing, watching the way your eyelids flutter as though begging to witness what was in front of you. But you don’t try to sneak a glance.

Instead, you ask to hold his face. If you couldn’t see him unmasked, then could you at least feel him?

Pierrot doesn’t know what to say. It’s been a very long time since someone—anyone—has ever done such a thing to him. But he quietly agrees. How could he refuse you?

He nearly starts shivering when you first move your hands to map out his face, his jaw, his hairline. He can see the way your face twitches in extraordinarily subtle little expressions. Confusion, uncertainty…but not fear. Not disgust.

You’re not used to his human-like form, he can see and feel it in the way your fingers delicately search for features and details that aren’t present. That would make sense, as you only knew him when he was still a starved beast kept in a cage in your past life.

His golden eyes watch as your fingertips almost seem to attempt to map out where a slightly pronounced snout would be. Your palms lightly prepare to meet with long and pointed ears that are not there. It’s admittedly a little funny and cute how your face turns a little confused when your present sensations and past memories do not match.

But then his heart starts to hurt again when you speak for the first time in a long time, eyes still closed in a thoughtful expression.

“You were different, back then.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that at first. He can’t tell if you intended to actually get a response. But after a moment, he utters out a few words just above a whisper.

“…Yes, I was. We all were.”

The only reason he was different now is because…

Because he and the others ate you. And thus began their cycle of eating more humans to sustain their forms. But it all began with you.

He doesn’t realize he’s trembling until your hands firmly frame the sides of his face. Your voice is calm when you tell him that things are different now. The two of you had changed in some ways, and remained the same in many others. And that was not inherently a bad thing.

The two of you are here now. Isn’t that what matters?

Pierrot blinks back tears when he leans into you and your scent, your similar yet different scent of coffee and cream and dust.

Sometimes he thinks his life has been nothing but a dazed dream. Sometimes he thinks he’ll wake up bleeding to death in that horrible rust-choked prison. But sometimes, very rarely…

He thinks that he could hope to deserve this second chance.

————

Harlequin would be dismissive of the thought of taking off his mask. Not because he doesn’t want to—he is always a sucker for pushing rules just for the sake of doing it—but because he doesn’t want to face the possible reactions you might have. Fear, sorrow, anger…pity. How bothersome.

But you insist that you wanted to see his face again, that you weren’t afraid. Well, there’s only one way to find out if that’s the truth.

…Just don’t say he didn’t warn you, foolish thing.

He doesn’t immediately show you his face. Instead he waits for you to approach him one day, and he unexpectedly drags you to a secluded and dark part of his tent—just so he doesn’t get caught and lectured by the others. You freeze and go quiet upon seeing his unmasked face.

Harlequin only grins, sharp teeth glinting and forked tongue eager to explore unassuming flesh.

“Poor thing. Having second thoughts, are we?”

You still don’t say anything. He laughs a forced and empty sound.

“What’s the matter? Not having any fond memories?”

He’s being cruel and he knows it. It’s not fair of him to bring up those things. It’s not fair to you or him, but he doesn’t care. He needs to fill the silence, needs to speak over the fear in his heart that you would see him for what he really is and turn away.

But then your face softens in what he can only describe as recognition. You’re not smiling, but not frowning either. Your eyes are neither afraid nor angry nor joyous. It drives him mad. He thrives off of making others react to his words and antics, so when you don’t show signs of any emotion other than nostalgia and familiarity, it makes him uncharacteristically antsy. He hides it well, he knows that, but it’s still there.

“…There you are.”

It’s all you utter in his tent, and he freezes. Just like before, you’re not afraid in the slightest. You look upon him not with malice but with respectful curiosity. It makes him want to puke.

Foolish. Utterly foolish. He really should teach you a lesson in well-placed fear. He takes advantage of the darkness, using his thin tendrils to wrap around one of your wrists, your thigh, through a belt loop on your pants.

He can smell your surprise, your initial instinctive hesitance towards the unknown. But then he feels you touching one of his tendrils back, as though exploring something you recognized from long ago.

He tries to ignore it and goes to sink his teeth into your flesh just to get a reaction out of that foolish Pierrot later on, all while muttering the same meaningless nonsense he’s said to every other foolish human he’d tasted. He shallowly speaks of hanging this moment over Pierrot’s head, bragging that his was the first face you had seen beneath his mask.

But then he stops and looks down at your neck. Right at the spot where he knew your birthmark from your past life was. The spot where his claws once pierced your skin to poison you into an eternal sleep from which you would not wake.

…

You ask him if he’s alright. He doesn’t respond.

…

He kicks you out of his tent after that. For being “boring,” as he puts it. He did as you asked of him. You got what you came for. He’d seek his “repayment” some other time, when it would be even more delicious to spite that red fool.

(He knows the truth. But he hates that you know it, too. Give it time.)

————

The Ticket Taker absolutely rejects the mere idea of him taking off his mask. Rules are rules, and even a troublesome and rule-avoiding human like you—especially a troublesome and rule-avoiding human like you, actually—should know that he would never do such a thing.

Besides, what makes you think he’d ever want to show you his face? You’re a thorn in his side and a constant reminder of things he does not want to think about. An outlier who constantly bends or even breaks the rules set for the circus and its members.

The worst part? The others don’t seem to mind it very much anymore. But not him. No, you won’t seep your rule-breaking exception-making influence into his mind. (Yes you will)

For some reason he finds himself wanting to know your reaction to his true face, to his form unobscured by shadow and illusions. Maybe some petty and cruel part of him was wanting to scare you so badly that you’d leave the circus and never come back.

But even still, that doesn’t change the fact that he and the others are strictly forbidden from removing their masks or showing any parts of their forms beneath their clothing. Not a single inch.

However…there aren’t any specific rules against what you may or may not see in a mirror reflection.

He’s not sure why, but he goes out of his way to indulge you this one time. Perhaps to test you. Perhaps to try to scare you. Perhaps just for old time’s sake. He doesn’t let himself dwell on it.

“My tent. Tonight. Don’t be late.”

It’s all he says to you upon handing you a small blue ticket out of nowhere, a special one with specific instructions written on the back. To the maze of mirrors, where not your eyes or ears or even your heart can be trusted. If you see or hear something like, say, his monstrous form…Well, that very well may be just your mind playing tricks on you, and he cannot be blamed for it.

When you walk through his hall of glass reflections, you don’t look back this time. A strange thing for one as disobedient as you are. However, the Ticket Taker is certainly not one to complain about the change. You’re quiet and contemplative, he can tell by the way you search the mirrors for something you don’t name.

(How futile. You search for the Oblique when all that remains in the present is the Ticket Taker.)

But then you reach a mirror in a secluded corner of his tent. It’s unassuming and normal-looking. But in the reflection you see not just yourself, but a shadow. A shade of something—someone—you once knew before.

You don’t even realize you pressed your hand against the reflection, a low rumbling animalistic noise coming from behind you. Despite your curiosity, you don’t turn around.

And then, out of view, just perfectly out of view, you felt another hand press against yours against the mirror, making the surface of the glass ripple when it shouldn’t. It was dark and clawed and larger than a human’s. You knew whose it was without seeing anything else, he knew. Was he pushing you away? Indulging in this one moment for this one time? Pretending you were someone else?

You can’t really tell. But then again, neither can he.

And then everything turns cold and still. The moment had passed. You’re escorted out of the blue tent. The Ticket Taker does not speak of what occurred. If you try to, he says it all must have simply been in your head.

He does not speak of it again. And for both his and your own sake, you better not speak of it again either.

————

The Doctor is initially a little surprised upon hearing your request. He was the one who usually does the observing and exploratory procedures, not the other way around.

He doesn’t mind bending the rules just this once. For research purposes, obviously. If you were to see his face, would that prompt more memories to return? Would you experience more familiarity? Truly, the questions are endless, and it’s more than enough for him to agree to take off his mask.

You don’t say much when you finally see his face. Just tilt your head to one side in curiosity. You’re so much like the one before, and you don’t even realize it. So unafraid of things that should not be brought to light.

He notices the way you slightly squint your eyes as though searching for differences in his face. It has changed considerably with this human-like form. Your eyes occasionally glance down to his gloved hands.

Ah. You must be wondering what else has changed about his form. Your desire for knowledge was admirable…if not borderline foolish.

“Curiosity is a dangerous thing, sweetie.”

You just nod your head, not even bothering to argue against that. It was true, no denying it. How do you think you got here, after all?

“It is. But it’s worth the answers every time, isn’t it?”

That gets a slight chuckle out of him. A little erudite yourself, aren’t you? Well, he can’t argue with that. He slowly peels off one of his gloves, moving the sleeve of his costume enough for you to see his dark skin littered with feather-like quills all over. Your eyes widen as if remembering something.

You and him spend a long time simply talking about the nature of your memories, the life you lived, the one you have now. He can tell you’re somewhat glad to have someone to talk to about this. The others are, well…a bit touchy about that topic still.

That doesn’t mean he’s unaffected by the past and his role in it, obviously. It shows when you become quiet again, a question begging to be asked on the tip of your tongue. He asks what it is you wish to know. You turn your head away in slight shame at being caught in your curiosity.

How amusing. Just like before, long ago when you thought he and the others couldn’t see your expressions in that darkness. He always pointed out your face and the thoughts etched into it. And you always got that same little look of sight surprise and embarrassment at being caught in your mind.

Your voice is hesitant and unsure when you slowly make your request, like stepping onto a frozen lake without knowing how stable it was.

“May I…touch your arm? I, uh…always wanted to know how you feel.”

You always wanted to know? Even back then? How…intriguing.

You quickly sputter out that he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, and you were technically the one supposed to be examined right now, and you can’t believe you just asked that-

“Very well.”

He only tilts his head in mild amusement, holding his palm up for you to see and carefully examine for yourself. Your fingers gently brush against his skin, wandering over short feathers and deep scars older than your parents and their parents before them.

It’s quiet, but not uncomfortable. The Doctor isn’t used to being the one examined and perceived in such a way. It’s a strange feeling. In a sense, it sort of reminds him of being beneath that suffocating spotlight, beastly features on display for all to see…

But this is different, he reminds himself. It’s just you seeing him in the privacy of his tent. And you’d seen him before, long ago. You were not afraid or malicious with your gaze then. And you are not afraid or malicious with your gaze now.

You’re not naive in the way you look at his features. There’s a distance in your gaze as your fingers nearly ghost over the tips of his claws. You had seen them, felt them before, and your memories prove to be quite conflicting for you at times. This is one of those times, he observes.

“Still the same as what I expected, but…so different, too.”

It’s all you say after a few minutes. The Doctor finds himself twitching the corners of his mouth upward in the same way he once did so long ago.

“As are you. Still that strange little human, but different now.”

That makes your eyes land on his, a slight smile on your face. A rare sight to see back then when you were in that twisted circus, but far more common in this age.

Yet another difference between your past and present self. But this is one that the Doctor doesn’t find himself immediately needing to find a reason for.

————

Jester completely dismisses the idea. You’d seen them before. Granted, it was long ago, but there was no need to do such things here in the present. Rules are there for a reason. When one exception is made, more are bound to follow. And we can’t have that, can we?

Still, he can’t deny there’s a part of him that’s curious to know your reaction. But he ignores that. He knows better than to give in to a human’s wants.

That doesn’t stop you from subtly trying to find a way to ask. But he sees through your feeble attempts and asks you a question plainly.

“If I did show you, what would you give in return? That’s a very bold request, beast.”

He sees the way you want to say something in response, but hold your tongue. You can’t argue against that. That keeps you quiet for a while. Both of you know that you have nearly nothing to give him that he would want. And so he is satisfied in the apparent stalemate.

Ah, but he should have known that you were too stubborn to simply give up. You had a tendency to dig your heels in when you were trying to help them in their cages, why wouldn’t you be the same way now?

That’s what he realizes when you approach him out of the blue, offering to tell him whatever it is he wants to know about your perspective of the past. Your life, the old circus, the Ringmaster…

He just stares at you with an amused smile, waiting for you to finish your offer to tell you that he has no interest in such information. The past is not now. There was no use in learning new things about a time and place (and people) that no longer exist. Except you, but even then he still isn’t interested.

You visibly deflate, but you don’t argue. You then tell him that you’d give him that information without anything in return, not even seeing his face beneath his mask. That piques his interest just a little.

“There is one thing I would be interested to know, creature.”

You look up to his face, eyes filled with that naive thirst for answers. He slightly leans down to your ear.

“Your father. The one you have in this life. What is he like?”

He can tell you’re confused. But you answer him honestly and truthfully anyway.

“…My dad? I mean, my mom divorced him when I was still a kid. I had to be in shared custody until I was old enough to say I didn’t want to visit him anymore.”

Jester narrowed his eyes at that, urging you to continue to speak. You shift in a way that tells him you don’t like speaking of your father, who seemed to be still alive.

“He’s a real piece of work. Always obsessed with his religion and whatever other messed up stuff he believes in.”

The Jester just looks at you for a few moments. After giving that…interesting information, surely you deserved compensation, no? (Not really. But that’s his internal excuse for indulging you this one time)

The next time you approach him in his tent, his mask is off. He says nothing out of the ordinary, just speaks to you and acts as though nothing has changed from his usual interactions. And while he speaks to you, he can see your initial surprise. But you know better than to say anything about it.

You don’t speak, don’t try to move to get a closer look. It’s a good thing you’re still somewhat considerate in this life (even despite your stubbornness and curiosity that persisted across time and even death).

You’re really very lucky that Jester finds you just the slightest bit endearing enough to bend his own unbreakable rules. Nostalgia can be a very powerful thing, even for someone who doesn’t look back into the past like him.

After a few moments, he holds his hand out expectantly, still acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. He treats it like nothing, like he deigned to let you see his face as a favor returned.

You don’t move for a few moments, but you quickly pick up the fact that he was expecting you to hand him something. Turning your head, your eyes land on the pale mask on a desk near you. Jester watches the way your arms tense as though the cold material sent a chill up your spine when you carefully clutch it in your grasp.

He watches the way you walk slowly yet purposefully, not making any comments about the rather personal nature of what you were doing. The purple-eyed beast doesn’t miss the way you hold his mask gently yet firmly, not wanting to soil it with your fingers yet also not wanting to drop it.

When you hold it out for him to take, he doesn’t move for a brief moment. The two of you make eye contact for a strange amount of time. Is he testing you? Gauging your reaction? Not even he can say.

Finally, he takes his mask into one of his black-gloved hands, pressing the familiar material to his face in silence. You take a couple steps back to avoid intruding in his personal space.

He looks down at your face. It’s quiet for a moment before he starts speaking again, completely moving on from what just happened.

There. Now he doesn’t need to owe you for anything. And you’ll finally quit bothering him about seeing his face, won’t you?

Don’t say he never did anything for you.

As for what he does with the information about your father you shared, well…it’s better if you don’t know. Just a little light research for his free time, really. A tiny bit of searching and speculation.

He doesn’t do any of it for himself. Everything he does is for the ones under his protection and leadership. Don’t you worry your little head about it. He’s just curious, is all. Curious to know if he and the others could maybe have a little…indulgence.

For old time’s sake.

————

————

“How does it feel? How does it feel to be struck down and beaten simply for being what you are?”

…(insert prose here)

“You…You killed my child-!”

“And if you had more, we would certainly kill the rest of them right in front of you.”

“But this one…this one was good to us. Ironic, isn’t it? Such a pure soul born from the likes of you.”

“No matter. This one will be with us forevermore. But you?”

…(brief description)

“Perhaps we should just let you burn and rot like the rest of your precious circus.”

…(you get the idea)

“What’s the matter, holy man? Where’s your God? Why hasn’t he struck us down yet?”

“Go on. Call for him.”

“That’s right. He’s not here. He does not love us. And He does not love you.”

————

I ended up cutting any and all of the dialogue from the beasts because I felt like it was just…unnecessary. Like, why waste time and effort on words when the monsters knew what they would do to their abuser the moment they ever attained their freedom?

That was my ideology, anyway. No spoken words felt like enough to portray their anger, their hatred, their loss and desire for revenge. So I just didn’t have them speak. ┐(´ー｀)┌

In the present, though, if the circus members were to realize that the Ringmaster had been reincarnated…I imagine it would play out similarly to the dialogue you provided. (Lovely work, by the way! Loved it!) They’d force him to remember, force him to relive every horror he had inflicted upon them…and every horror and agony they inflicted upon him in return.

As for your speculation about the Ringmaster’s role in his wife’s death, that’s actually something I hadn’t considered! When I wrote the MC’s mother’s death, I actually intended it to be unknown and simply not as important as the hole she left in her husband and child’s hearts upon dying.

But your idea that the Ringmaster had a part in it…it’s very interesting! Very interesting indeed, especially since I wrote him to have this desire for control over everything and everyone in his life…

General: What if the child of the Ringmaster MC was reincarnated into the Present!MC?

≫ I imagine it’d be pretty neat if the Present!MC initially has no memories of their past life, though there are still vague impressions of their (your) past existence. Same face, same name, same good-natured curiosity and desire to help.

≫ But there are other flickers of the past in this new life, coincidences that are later realized to be echoes of that life all along…

————

≫ You had frequent childhood dreams of bright-eyed monsters, scrawled crayon and marker drawings of dark horned figures that filled your drawers, an inherent interest in all things morbid, mystical, and macabre…

≫ You even had claims of having imaginary friends in your youth, shadowy creatures that appear in your dreams. They hate being in their cages, you’d tell your parents. They’re very hungry all the time. They don’t like talking for too long. They’re very tired and not very good at walking.

≫ You even used to kneel down in your bedroom as though you were actually talking to these nonexistent friends, exchanging words and phrases that a young child wouldn’t normally understand. You’d brush a hand on your neck as though tending to a wound that wasn’t there.

≫ It got to the point where your father got concerned that you wouldn’t be able to make any normal friends, or that your habits were a sign of possession. You seemed rather convinced that your imaginary companions were actually real. And you had very…unconventional interests, to say the least.

≫ But eventually, those strange habits and quirks faded away as you got older, and you interacted with others quite normally, all things considered. Outside of those odd habits (something your mother attributed to all kids being weird in their own ways), you had an uneventful childhood.

≫ And like all children, you grew up. Fledged the nest. Went off to establish your own life somewhere else with nothing but your own determination and your parents’ support.

≫ You still had a fascination with all things spooky and morbid. You listened to podcasts about unsolved crimes, garnered all sorts of “weird” paraphernalia of your interests, read books and watched documentaries about mysteries both felonious and paranormal. You didn’t believe in half the ghost stuff you consumed, but it was interesting nonetheless.

≫ You got a job working as a barista in a coffee shop. Carol, your coworker, even shared a couple of your interests! And your boss is a pretty nice guy. Your life was simple, if not a little uneventful. (A blessing, really. But it's human nature to silently long for what you shouldn't have, isn't it?)

≫ One day, though, you notice that there’s a sort of small festival or fair set up in a public park area. Tents are seemingly set up overnight, and there's no shortage of gossip about the new events going on. After a day or so, flyers start to show up everywhere—plastered on the sides of buildings, stapled to telephone poles, handed out to just about anyone who spares the tall performers a glance.

≫ It was inevitable that you'd learn what exactly had come to the city. A circus of horrors, one that supposedly wasn’t for kids or families. It was admittedly quite interesting, as this circus advertised against what most other circuses and fairs marketed themselves towards.

≫ But other people seemed to have an issue with that, evidenced by the way someone had attacked one of the circus workers after only a few days of them being in town. You were walking to work when you saw it: a man beating a jester clad in red to the ground. The small crowd that had formed didn't seem exactly keen on helping him.

≫ Naturally, the sight alone fuels you to instantly go against your better instincts to mind your own business, and you intervene. You position yourself between the altercation, refusing to back down. The man eventually walks off, and you help the clown up while offering a bandage.

≫ But once you actually got a good look at him…you got a really weird case of Déjà vu. You knew you hadn’t seen him before. It would be pretty hard to forget a really tall bright crimson-wearing jester guy with white hair and a mask.

≫ But it was undeniable. His golden eyes…they seemed so familiar. It was almost unsettling.

≫ You snap yourself out of your daze, internally scolding yourself for rudely staring—nearly gawking—only to realize the red-clad clown was doing the same. Did he also feel that strange familiarity? It’s not like you can just ask him, that would be really weird…

≫ Brushing off that lingering feeling, you politely bid the clown farewell before making your way to work. You try to forget that encounter, those golden eyes paired with that ashen hair. Such a distinct combination, such a distinct-looking person overall, there was no way you’d seen him before.

≫ Oh well. It was just a brief interaction, and you likely wouldn’t see him again. Better to just move on from that strange encounter.

≫ But of course, fate has different plans.

≫ You end up meeting the red clown once more, and he introduces himself and even gives you a red ticket to the circus! How kind of him. It's like he knew you were drawn to creepy and eerie things. The tickets to the circus were so expensive (likely to discourage families from attending) and you had resigned yourself to unfortunately missing out on the unique experience.

≫ But this gesture was your once in a lifetime chance to attend the performances, and you wouldn't dare question it now. (Even though you really should be questioning certain things at this point like your coworker's absence and why Pierrot seemed so uncannily familiar)

≫ Ah. It seems nobody thought to quell your naivety and ravenous curiosity in this life either. But can anyone really blame you?

≫ You're excited to learn about this circus of horrors. It was so unconventional, so interesting. You clutched both your ticket and the red paper flower the Pierrot (you ask yourself why he wears jester-like attire if his role is that of a Pierrot's) had gifted to you as a token of appreciation for aiding him earlier that day.

≫ The two of you actually have a lovely conversation about things deemed unseen or morbid, about how fear reveals a lot about people. Some people vehemently try to reject and suppress their fears, others are haunted and hollowed by them. And some don't even realize their fears until its too late.

≫ You were sure you could have spoken to the Pierrot for much longer, but it was past closing time. After confirming that you would attend his show, you bid him farewell and go back home to your apartment. However, once inside the threshold, you slump against the door.

≫ The amount of nostalgia and familiarity you felt while speaking to that red clown was almost nauseating. There was a sinking dread in your heart that infested your lungs. It made you feel short of breath, like you were constantly on edge despite the fact that he didn't pose any threat. He worked at a circus of horrors, but he was rather nice. Weird and perhaps a little creepy at times, sure, but he wasn't intimidating.

≫ ...Not that intimidating, anyway.

≫ You try not to think about it too much, but it proves to be a daunting task. It's like something is hiding right beneath your nose, some sort of vital yet elusive detail that won't make itself known.

≫ That night, you have dreams like the ones from your childhood that you had nearly forgotten. Hushed voices and unnaturally colored eyes and sharp teeth glinting from nonexistent light. You looked down at your hands and saw blood and rust and the veins in your fingers turned sickly black. You awoke in a cold sweat, unsettled and nostalgic for all the wrong reasons...and late for work.

≫ The day mostly goes by normally, and you meet the one called the Harlequin on your way to work. He was far more...talkative than his fellow performer. He tries to trade your red ticket for his green one, but you're not even given a chance to consider the thought before Pierrot shows up, golden eyes slitted in a way that made your heart sink to your stomach.

≫ That sight remains in your head longer than it should. Kind and large eyes turned malicious, almost animalistic, it was a very jarring and unsettling change in behavior for Pierrot. Granted, you didn't know him that well, but for some reason it felt as though you had known him for ages.

≫ You try to brush it off. It's just an act between the two. Isn't it?

≫ That dread and sense of foreboding doesn't disappear, especially after learning that Carol was now missing. Some of the excitement you felt about visiting the circus is somewhat dampened by the undeniable tension that had formed in the city ever since it arrived. You don't entirely know what to think.

≫ But you had made a promise to use the red ticket. Pierrot had lightly grabbed your arm earlier—for some reason you braced for him to place his black-gloved hand against your mouth—and eerily asked you to promise him that you'd use it. What else could you do but agree?

≫ The Harlequin had also entered your workplace, and it was noticeably odd how much you were seeing these guys in the matter of just barely a couple days. But strangely enough, it feels natural. Even stranger, it feels deeply unsettling at the same time.

≫ When night comes and you make your way to the circus threshold, the man in the blue suit elicits yet another involuntary sense of recognition. It was getting a little ridiculous now, how all of the circus workers seemed to be the cause of such sensations. But what is even stranger is the way you notice the black and white-masked man freeze for just a split second upon moving to greet you and take your ticket.

≫ But the moment is gone as soon as it came. He recovers from his pause effortlessly, wishing you a good experience in the circus after punching your ticket. You thank him while avoiding eye contact. The ticket in your hands now seems less like an invitation and more like an indictment. Just what had you gotten yourself into?

≫ You remain slightly on-edge as you make your way to the green tent, where the Harlequin tells a strange story using puppets made of paper. The figures are all silhouettes, obscured and simplified forms whose names don't matter, only the roles they play.

≫ The green clown weaves a story of monsters, men, and angels. Suffering and insatiable hunger and desperation. Your eyes remain fixed on the paper puppets, thoroughly invested in the story. But then the angels just...disappear. Vanished into the moonless night with the wind.

≫ Chills creep up your spine every time your eyes land on the stitch-like markings on the backs of the Angels. One was a monster, the other a human. How could either of them be angels sent from above?

≫ There's something off about the story. Something missing. You're not sure what that missing piece is, but you feel it deep in your gut in a way that's hard to explain. You know that you've never heard such a story before. Yet still there's that sense of familiarity, of some distant and tiny connection to it.

≫ You can't even entirely pay attention to the Harlequin trying to make advances on you after the show just because of the overwhelming feeling that you had heard a voice like his before. Sly and almost serpentine...

≫ After the green tent was the red tent, and you watch from the front row as Pierrot dances beneath a spotlight in a way that made you deeply unsettled. His pale ashen hair swayed with his movements, tiny bells on his costume ringing like death knells. The lights above him didn't hide his golden gaze...instead they only exaggerated it.

≫ For some reason you expected Pierrot to have a saddened or pained expression on his face as the show went on. Instead the expression on his white mask gradually turned more and more sinister, a sharp smile growing wider as he danced with his own shadow. It made a pit form in your stomach.

≫ And then he started throwing those knives at that stage assistant. The crack of the blades hitting and slightly splintering the wooden board the woman was strapped to made you flinch back slightly. They got close. And then closer. And then even closer. And just when you thought he was finished with a third knife...

≫ A fourth one went straight for her head, splitting it open.

≫ You ran out of the tent after that, your lungs aching for air and your head buzzing with too many thoughts and attempts at rationalization. You were into morbid and creepy things, sure, but even that was too much for you. How did those other people in the crowd not panic like you did?

≫ It feels like the entire world is in on some giant joke, like everyone in the world got a script to follow except you. But that obviously couldn't have been a real person who got a knife to her head...just some insanely good practical effects, right?

≫ Pierrot came up to you after that, leaning next to your ear and asking how you liked his show. Obviously you told him that it was very realistic, so much so that it gave you chills. He looks happy to hear that, but you can only internally wince.

≫ And then he asks if you want to stay at the circus and see more of it, if you want to join him and learn more about the performances. A terribly tempting offer. But you were almost feeling nauseous from what you had seen in his performance, and all the strange familiarity of this circus was starting to make your head hurt.

≫ (It doesn’t matter what choices you made. Eating drugged circus food, being kidnapped by Pierrot, going home safely and dreaming further of rusted cages and paper-thin lamenting voices…Nobody gets to choose their fates, only how fast they reach them.)

≫ It all ends with you being even more confused by the circus members. You catch glimpses of what lies behind their masks, the truth of their nature. For some strange reason, the implication of inhuman beasts existing isn't what frightens you. What unsettles you is the fact that it feels so normal, like it was expected to happen. Like you had encountered this all before.

≫ But then you run into one of the performers in pink, and her mask falls off. You have to resist the urge to puke when you see your missing coworker standing like a doll, eyes clouded with a purple haze. Carol. She's here, alive...but is she really?

≫ You don't realize you’re back in your apartment until you’re standing right next to your bed. It was all just a daze of shock and paralysis ever since seeing Carol like that. You don’t even realize you’re holding a red ticket until you drop it to the ground like it was contaminated with something.

≫ And then you hear Pierrot’s voice. It’s distant and muffled, like…

≫ You freeze upon seeing his golden eyes looming over you. That gilded gaze was once looking over you like this in darkness while your vision was fading, telling you to sleep with a hushed and rasping voice, digging black claws into the sides of your head. Those eyes were the only thing you saw as your vision warped and swayed-

≫ You don't even realize Pierrot was calling your name with a concerned expression until you suddenly snap out of that daze with a sharp gasp.

≫ He backs away, worried that he had hurt or frightened you. You don’t know what to say. But you eventually tell him that you’re afraid. So much has happened in just two days, you’ve seen things you can’t unsee, learned things you can’t unlearn.

≫ He tries to reassure you, but you don’t have the heart to tell him that you knew things that you couldn’t. About the circus. About him and the Harlequin. About the repeated instances of Déjà vu and familiarity that ate away at your mind the longer you tried to ignore it.

≫ But there’s only one option left if you want to make it to tomorrow alive and sane. You have to go back to the circus.

≫ And so you do. What else can you do but see if the other circus members also resembled the shadows in your dreams? Even now you denied the resemblance of Pierrot and Harlequin to the golden and green-eyed ones in your subconscious.

≫ The first place you visit in the circus is the blue tent. You see the same shadows that had always existed in your dreams, hear voices that had once only been heard in your childhood when you played with imaginary friends.

≫ You chalked most of it up to the nature of the performance and the overarching narrative the circus seemed to have—a narrative that you seemed to know so very well—until you encountered the cracked mirror just near the exit.

≫ There, in the glass, was your reflection. But not really. You were wearing unfamiliar non-modern clothes. Though there was a large crack over where your eyes would be, you still recognized the figure as being you. There was a wet red splotch on the front of your clothing that only seemed to bloom the longer you stared.

≫ You blinked once, and you gasped. There was now a blazing fire behind your reflection, a gaping wound just beneath your chest that exposed your ribcage and entrails. The reflection didn’t show the shocked expression you knew you had plastered on your face. Incoherent whispers filled your ears.

≫ The stench of bitter smoke and burning wood made your face twitch in disgust, and you turned away from the cracked glass. It was just too much.

≫ And towards the end, just when you thought you had gotten through the worst of it…

≫ “Come closer.”

≫ A set of pink eyes meet your own. You take a few steps towards that mirror towards the end of the maze…

≫ And you’re dragged into the mirror at the end of the hall by dark hands.

≫ What you witness is nothing short of horrific. Shadows of beasts and whispers in hoarse voices and a death so gruesome and utterly undeserved it makes you nauseous.

≫ And then you’re suddenly seeing through someone else’s eyes, no longer an onlooker but a participant in this disturbing tale. You can’t look away. You can’t ignore the screams of pain and the inhuman wails and cries. It’s all just so overwhelming.

≫ When it’s finally over, the pink-eyed reflection in the mirror looks almost…hopeful. A jarring sight compared to the macabre story you just witnessed. She thanks you for hearing her story. But her voice is laced with familiarity and fondness that you felt you hadn’t earned. You don’t know her…do you?

≫ You don’t get time to process it before you are within the Cyan tent, then the Purple tent. You barely manage to shamble through both of them—while getting nearly sick with nostalgia from meeting the Doctor and the Jester—before someone holds you from behind as you try to leave.

≫ It makes you remember things that hadn’t happened to you. Strong arms holding you from behind while someone else pricked something into your neck, a warm wetness traveling down your collarbone while a stinging burn is seeping into your veins-

≫ You nearly yelp, only to realize it was Pierrot who was behind you. He tells you that he loves you for who you are, that he can’t bring himself to let you go for even a moment. You can’t and don’t believe him.

≫ And then you’re on your own to walk home, back to your apartment. What choice do you have but to trudge home in a daze, trying your best to ignore the fact that you feel new sets of eyes watching your every move?

≫ Nothing feels real. Everything feels like you walked into a darkness that nobody returns from. It still feels like you’re on a stage with an invisible audience watching and judging your every move, waiting for you to mess up some unknown script so they can devour you whole.

≫ You can’t sleep after that. Can’t think, can’t even breathe properly. It feels like you’re going insane.

≫ The next day arrives, and you call in sick for work. Your boss sounds concerned but you tell him that you’d stay home and stay safe. You can’t bring yourself to leave your apartment, but you also can’t sleep, too restless and trying to digest all that you had learned and ignored and didn’t want to know.

≫ It feels like you’ve known the circus members your whole life. But you’ve known them only for a couple of days at most. What’s happening to you? Why is your mind betraying you? Why can’t you think or sleep or just ignore what’s happening?

≫ So with your sleeplessness you start to rack your brain for clues. You do some research on any circuses that had made their way through your home. Flip through a couple unfinished journals you had filled with drawings and paragraphs of especially vivid dreams over the years.

≫ You deny it. You deny everything. That reflection, all the dreams you’ve had over the years…they can’t be yours. Surely you’ve been experiencing someone else’s life through their eyes?

≫ You end up slowly passing out on your bathroom floor, completely overwhelmed with all that was consuming your mind. Turns out having an existential crisis, depersonalization episode, and panic attack all at the same time isn’t very healthy.

≫ Deep in your subconscious, you can’t hide from your innermost thoughts and fears. If anything, they’re multiplied. You dream of flickering flames and gnashing teeth. Brittle claws and rusting metal and pointed eyes always in the same colors.

≫ Golden yellow. Deep purple. Venom green. Cyan turned blood red. Blue and white. Pale pink.

≫ And then you look down to your hands, your clothes. Unfamiliar patterns, yet somehow you still recognize them as yours. The veins in your wrists turned an unnatural color from something that had should not be alongside your blood.

≫ Poison.

≫ And then you look back in front of you, seeing that someone was now standing there. It was…you. But it wasn’t. But it was.

≫ Same face, but with a sad and restless expression. Same eyes, but without any light like a living person. The person looks into your eyes with their dead ones. Red begins to seep through their clothing, but they don’t move. Four points along their neck begin to bead up with blood, and it trickles down their collarbone. They still don’t move, don’t even react to the injuries.

≫ Your shoulder starts to sting, right over where you knew you had four tiny little dot-shaped birthmarks. The back of your throat begins to tighten like you had swallowed something sharp and hot.

≫ This was you. This person was you, and you are this person. Memories of love, hate, suffering, loss, yearning. A wish never granted. A curiosity towards things that lingered in the dark. Fear of God, of the ones you loved rejecting and forgetting and denying you simply for not being perfect.

≫ You wake up on your bathroom floor, stomach churning and eyes stinging. You then proceed to vomit your guts up into your toilet, moaning in pain and trembling from head to toe. It was a very lucky thing that today was yet another day off from work.

≫ Not really. Instead of possibly being distracted by your daily tasks at your job, you’re left leaning against your bathroom door to retain some sense of control over your situation.

≫ You can’t face anyone today. Not even yourself. Especially not Pierrot or Harlequin or any of the other circus performers.

≫ There’s so much dissonance between the ones you know now and what you knew then. Too much of a difference between the monsters in your dreams and in the circus. They killed you. Ate you. Yet the golden and green-eyed beasts hold your hands in theirs and claim to your face that they wish to keep you safe.

≫ Did they already know the truth? Were they just stringing you along to try and devour you once again? Was this all some cruel rigged game? And if they didn’t know…how long until they did? What would they do, what would they say? What should you do?

≫ How early into your life was it too late for you?

≫ A sob escapes your throat at the idea of being doomed from the start. You just...can't think. It’s too much.

≫ You just stay there, sitting on your bathroom floor and breathing too hard to be healthy. It feels like the only safe space in the entire world from hungry inhuman eyes. Your fingers tremble and your head hurts. Bile bubbles at the back of your throat and coats the end of your tongue.

≫ Fear plagues your mind. Yet there’s also an ache in your heart that comes from some stinging sense of betrayal. And betrayal only comes from those dear to you.

≫ Yes. You had found yourself endeared to Pierrot in such a short amount of time. You liked him, enjoyed his endearing personality and his devotion. And you were effortlessly intrigued by the Harlequin, aching to know more about him and his true nature.

≫ You found yourself endeared to the entire circus as a whole, in truth. Even despite your fear. How much of these feelings were leftover from your past life, how much was from your own heart here and now?

≫ God, what’s gotten into you?

≫ You don’t know. You don’t know whether to consider that past existence yourself or someone else. You saw through their eyes, felt their pain, shed their tears. Lived their…your life in that god awful prison disguised as a circus. That death was yours.

≫ Those dreams you now realized were memories, those experiences, that life…all of those were yours. Weren’t they? The fondness and fear, those feelings of wonder and terror.

≫ But every cell in your body is fighting against your soul. You don’t know which side of yourself to listen to, that aching hunger to know the truth…or the terror of being dragged down into a darkness deep as hell where no one is supposed to go.

≫ But eventually, you ran out of things to cry about on your bathroom floor. At some point, you have to dust yourself off and face the facts. (Which is much, much easier said than done, by the way)

≫ With aching and shaky legs you force yourself to stand up, hands gripping your sink like it were a lifeline.

≫ You don’t want to meet the gaze of the person in the mirror. Who is that?

≫ A naive and stupid human who thought they were a normal person until yesterday, that’s who. No, that’s not even the whole truth. You always knew there was something going on beneath the surface of the circus. You just tried to ignore it and brush it off as something else.

≫ Pull yourself together, will you? There’s still something important that you have yet to consider in all of this.

≫ As far as you know, you have two main choices.

≫ Either face those beasts once more and almost certainly end up killed…or try to run as fast and as far away as possible to live the rest of your life until the inevitable arrives.

…

≫ No. No, that can’t be it. You can’t just give up when you haven’t even tried. That was then. This is now. Your life…This is somewhere. This is something. This may be all you have, but it’s still something. Your home of crowded streets and working in a coffee shop for minimal pay. The sky above, the world below.

≫ You’re still here. You’re still alive. Things are different now. They have to be.

≫ This was a chance. A chance to do something different. A work of fate to do something better than what had happened so long ago. You turn on your sink faucet and splash your face with cupped palmfuls of water, grounding yourself in the present as best you can.

≫ Right now, there’s something you must do. Something you should have done a very long time ago.

≫ You need to get some answers. If not for yourself or your previous life who died afraid and undeserving…then for the one they call Columbina. The one you once called the Lamb. Your friend.

Circus Member Reactions:

Pierrot:

≫ I feel like Pierrot, despite being the first to encounter the MC, would be the last to fully realize and accept that the MC is, in fact, the same kind human who helped them all those years ago, reborn into new flesh but with the same soul. Or at least fragments of it.

≫ He attributes the feelings of familiarity and nostalgia to simply being a form of his lovesickness. Clearly it must mean that you and him were destined to be together, right? Surely it was just coincidence that you looked and sounded exactly like that human from before. Humans all tended to blur together over the years. Surely this was just another case of that.

≫ But one thing he can’t deny is your scent.

≫ It’s less about the physical attributes of your scent and more about the impressions and memories that spark as a result of them. You smell of coffee grounds, steamed milk, and other subtle things that become sinfully alluring. But strangely, those qualities elicit an odd reaction in his mind. Impressions of the one before…

≫ The human in the past smelled differently, like fresh linens and cotton…and blood. But one distinct note is shared between you and that other human whose name he and the others never learned. The subtle smell of dust. Dry and earthen and delicate. Easily missed, but not easily forgotten by one such as him.

≫ It's hidden, elusive. But it's there. As he continues to interact with you and learn more about you, it's nearly suffocating. But he ignores it. Or at the very least, he poorly attempts to. If he acknowledges it, then that could mean the others would find out. And what scares him the most is the fact that he doesn't entirely know what the others would do with you, do to you.

≫ But it all comes to a head after you went back to your apartment, and you hadn't been the same since. You were much quieter, tenser. You had the telltale signs of having learned something you couldn't unlearn. But what?

≫ If it had anything to do with the circus, then you were in great danger. A sharp pang of fear spears through Pierrot's heart at the mere thought of you being in any kind of danger, let alone danger from his own fellow circus members. He has to protect you. He has to. He has to talk to you, to know what it is that you've learned.

≫ When you encounter him once more, there's a strange awareness in your eyes that seems all too familiar. You don't say anything for a moment before you slowly ask him if he had ever worked in a circus before the current circus of horrors. He's slightly caught off-guard before admitting that yes, he did.

≫ But then you ask him if he had known any humans in that old circus. He's confused, but you don't let it go. You ask him if he knew about what you had been feeling these past few days. If he remembered as much as you did.

≫ "I...I don't know what you're talking about, MC."

≫ He very much does know what you are talking about. But he never wants to think of such things. Can't you two just ignore it? Can't he just remain as your admirer, your loyal inamorato, your Pierrot? He doesn't want to remember his time as some sorrowful creature rotting in a corroded cage.

≫ But apparently, you do.

≫ "You held me from behind. You told me to sleep. Your voice was the last one I heard."

≫ He presses his palm to your mouth before you can get another word out. It isn't voluntary, his body moved on its own before his mind could even begin to fully comprehend what it is you said. But then he retracts his hand as though the contact burned him...or you.

≫ "I..."

≫ It’s not possible. But the words that came from your mouth were true. And there was no way for you to know such things unless you were there with them on that night. None of the other troupe members had spoken a word of what had happened.

≫ It's not possible. Yet here you are.

≫ When he finally comes face to face with the undeniable truth…he’s terrified. So terrified that he doesn’t know what to say or do or even think.

≫ If you have the memories of the one before…then you know what he is. What he’s done. You being truly afraid of him is one of his deepest fears. What if you flinch away from him? What if you try to run? What if he can’t stop himself from tracking, pursuing, hunting?

≫…What if you hate him for what had happened in the past?

≫ And yet, despite his fears and dread, he still can’t leave you. There isn’t a single bone in his body that would let him do that. But he’d be lying to himself if he claimed that he was completely alright with this new revelation. He's just...frozen.

≫ Fear, guilt, sorrow, shame…these all swim through his head and make him lightheaded. You knew he was a monster. Your eyes reflected sorrow, pain, and a knowing pity. For him or for yourself, he can’t tell. It makes his heart and mind hurt even worse than if you were afraid.

≫ But eventually, those thoughts form one single cohesive desire.

≫ He needs to protect you. But how? He can’t just…stay away from you. He can’t do it. He won’t. It’s selfish, this he knows. Terribly selfish and foolish and bound to end terribly in more ways than one. But Pierrot can’t bring himself to leave you be.

≫ If the others find out...

≫ They might try to stake their claim on you. They might try to hurt you. They might devour you whole because they had long convinced themselves that it was all they were meant to do with humans and the ones they cared for.

≫ He can't let that happen. He can't lose you. He refuses to let you go.

≫ Both of you need time to process. But he doesn't want to leave you on your own. So the two of you just sit near each other, not exactly embracing or speaking, but trying to hold in all the information and your emotions. He doesn’t admit it outright, but you know that he knows.

≫ He's afraid to hold you, touch you, be anywhere near you. He can still remember the scent of linen and cotton and dust, the smell of death, the stench of iron. He held you still while the others, they...

≫ And then he...

≫ It's going to take a while for this all to really sink in. Even longer for him to come to terms with it all. But he won't leave you. Not even with his pain and tears. He loved you, lost you, consumed you once. But now there was a second chance. A second chance that he knows he doesn't deserve. But he'll use it anyway.

≫ You thought he was bad before? Good luck having any degree of freedom from him in some form. (You're gonna need it. Like REALLY need it.) The only reason he doesn't outright kidnap you is because the others would have easier access to you.

≫ He knows better than anyone that the others aren't mindless bloodthirsty animals, but he still can't help but want to protect you from them. Who knows what their reactions would be like once they inevitably find out the truth? Will they seek to repeat the past? Will they want to make an example of you?

≫ What's likelier is that they already know the truth, just as Pierrot knew it (and ignored it) from the start. It's simply a matter of time until they actually face it and accept it.

≫ Until that time comes, though, Pierrot will cling to you impossibly tighter. But can you really blame him? I'm sure if you asked for some distance to process your memories on your own, he'd give you whatever you needed. But he'd be waiting.

≫ He's tied with Harlequin to be the one who wants to talk about those old memories the least. He just wants to love and protect you here and now from anyone or anything that would threaten you. Why linger in the past if there was nothing left for you there?

≫ But there is something left there. And it will take a lot of time and effort to finally acknowledge the wounds still bleeding on his heart.

≫ In the end, Pierrot is actually one of the ones who accepts the MC being a reincarnation the easiest. Not the fastest or the happiest about it…but simply the easiest. Mostly because he doesn’t ask very many questions when it comes to fate. You were here. You showed him genuine kindness. There exists a second chance. That’s all that matters.

≫ It’s no surprise that he would want to keep you close to him forever, take you from the cruel and cold world and keep you safe in the circus.

Harlequin:

≫ Harlequin, on the other hand, instantly notices the uncanny familiarity, the way you’re drawn to the circus like a moth to a flame. He initially thinks it to be your curiosity about things that best remain in the dark. That curiosity will be the death of you, this he can feel. (If only he knew it had already been the death of you once before)

≫ But as he gets closer to you, there’s an undeniable sense of nostalgia. It becomes harder to deny the fact that he's just as drawn to you as you are to the circus.

≫ It isn't until you visit the green tent and watch his show that he starts to become slightly intrigued outside of wanting to take you from Pierrot. He notices the way you watch his paper puppet story intently, the way your eyes remain fixed on the simple silhouettes meant to portray the monsters and humans.

≫ You ask about his show. About the little Angels sent from above. About what happened to them. This piques his interest in you even further. What was it that made you so drawn to the circus, to the story of suffering woven and ingrained within its very foundations, to him?

≫ Well, if you were so insistent on learning more, on being near things like him and the others…why not give you something to remember?

≫ That’s what prompts him to enter your apartment after that foolish Pierrot had finally left your side. Oddly, the red-clad clown seemed…disturbed. Unsettled. Harlequin thinks nothing of it.

≫ Pierrot was laughably sensitive to every word you shared with him, every little thing you did to him. It was likely nothing of note that affected him so deeply. Now was the Harlequin’s chance to steal you away from him, just as he had done with the Angel before.

≫ But when he enters your apartment from your balcony door the way he had before, something is off. You’re less responsive, seemingly distracted by something. It’s not nearly as fun if you’re not entirely focused on him.

≫ So he probes at your mind, questions what has you so distracted from someone like him. Surely it couldn’t be that red fool, he sneers with barely contained disgust. But still you don’t say anything. You barely even look at him.

≫ But when you do, Harlequin regrets ever going into your apartment.

≫ “You poisoned them. The Angels. You poisoned me. Right here.”

≫ You press the fingers on one hand to the side of your neck, to the spot where a strange birthmark was. Four subtle little dots along your neck and shoulder. The exact spots where his claws had once pricked a certain human with his strongest poison. He feels his practiced smile shrink and tighten.

≫ But he doesn't let himself be caught off-guard for long. You're good at getting his walls down...but not good enough. He's back to his outward persona in a matter of moments.

≫ “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t think you do either, MC.”

≫ It’s one of the only times he uses your actual name. A hidden warning. Don't keep doing this, he silently tells you. Don't speak of things you don't fully understand. He was just starting to like you, too. It would be a shame to have to cut this all off-

≫ "You didn't want it to hurt."

≫ That makes his entire body halt. His heart skipped too many beats, his lungs surged as though he had been stabbed. The blood beneath his skin had turned to ice. There was no way you could have known such a thing. Yet here you were, spouting words that he desperately wanted to pretend he didn't know the meanings to.

≫ But even still, he doesn't break. He had broken once, but never again. His eyes narrowed at your words that stung like accusations.

≫ "You don't know that. You don't know anything about that story. I think it would be wise for you to choose your words carefully."

≫ But to his surprise, you don't have any other words. You simply step closer to him and wrap your arms around his torso, embracing him in a way that made him want to puke.

≫ His arms awkwardly move away from the gesture, a guttural and visceral hiss coming from deep within his chest, but you don't let go. Instead a small wet spot starts to form on his costume where your face is buried. Tears. You were crying.

≫ Harlequin's own eyes begin to ever-so-slightly sting behind his mask, but he ignores it. Instead his claws instinctively sharpen at his immense discomfort and nearly sink into your flesh, but that instinct is quickly quelled. Mostly.

≫ He continues to hiss, to warn against your foolishness, to spit barbed yet shallow words to get any kind of reaction out of you, but you still don't say anything. You just keep holding onto him like you had any idea what you were doing to a loathsome monster like him.

≫ Foolish. Only an idiot would show such nauseating displays of affection towards someone like him if they knew what he'd done.

≫ ...But in that sense, maybe you really are that callow human from before reborn anew. Rebirthed in new flesh to haunt him and the others in a new cruel way. As if the circus itself wasn't haunted enough.

≫ He doesn't regret what he did, he tells himself. It was the only way. What was done was done. That story was finished. So why would you come back? It just doesn’t make any sense.

≫ How dare you. How dare you return to them now after all this time? What could you want from them? Your existence can’t mean anything good for the circus or its members.

≫ Harlequin keeps his distance from you after that. He can't handle the idea of you, the idea that the past had taken on a form of flesh to loom over him and remind him of everything he had done. He avoids you like the plague.

≫ It will take a tremendous amount of time and patience on your end for him to even consider the idea of facing what he and the others had done in the past. And he’ll try his hardest to make you want to avoid him just as much. He’s willing to make you scared, angry, sorrowful. Anything to keep you away.

≫ But of course, his sharp words did not work on you back then in the old circus. You still came back, night after night, offering sustenance and warmth and companionship, however pathetic and meager your attempts were. Why would he expect thorns and barbs and pointed edges to work now?

≫ Because it’s all he knows. It’s all he’s ever known. And it’s all he ever will know.

≫ (That’s what he had told himself long ago, and he forced himself to think that he accepted that. But you challenged that before, and now you challenge that once again.)

≫ Harlequin wants to be rid of you once more. To get rid of his loathing longing for a way to atone for what he had done. But he cannot change. Nobody can.

≫ He is still a monster. You are still a fool. This story can only have one ending. Fools are eaten by monsters for their crimes of curiosity and ignorance. That’s how the stories go. Those are the roles that had been cast for you, for him, for every human and beast that dared to cross paths.

≫ However, deep in his blackened and caged heart, there was a flickering glimmer of hope that refused to die once and for all. And it only got worse when he had met you, when you dared to show kindness to a beast like him.

≫ But that all means nothing. Try as he might, this was not one of his paper doll tales. He was not the one in control here. And he wants so desperately to be able to tell this story without having to be a part of it. To distance himself from the truth.

≫ Even the most ambitious of vipers know when to abandon prey, when to loosen their coiling grip and hinge their jaws once more. This prey was not poisoned, not pointed or sharp…

≫ But sweet. Sickeningly so. Like a carnivorous plant, unassuming and alluring to an insect…only to swallow them whole in moments, leaving nothing behind but a husk.

≫ That is what awaits him, he is convinced. After all, why wouldn’t you want to exact revenge for what was done to you? Blood repays blood. Why wouldn’t you hate him for what he had done?

≫ (Of course, he never makes any of his suffering known. If you try to acknowledge it, he’ll ignore it and you. If you try to force him to confront what must be said, he’ll laugh in your face. Lean even further into the persona he had cultivated over many years. Be patient. Silently leave your arms open and he will slowly walk towards them, step by step.)

Ticket Taker:

≫ The Ticket Taker is the one who first recognized the strange illusions of memory with you. He was simply using his human disguise to hand out pink tickets and only wished to stop and get a cup of coffee at the place where he scouted out his latest doll.

≫ When you come out and begin to take his order, he is immediately caught off-guard with that nostalgia. He doesn't let it show, obviously, but it's undeniable. You look like an ordinary human, unassuming and ultimately forgettable in the grand scheme of things.

≫ He needs to get to the bottom of this, he decides. And what better way to do that than give you a pink ticket?

≫ But of course, several things get in the way of you being completely at his mercy. (Whether or not you take the pink ticket from him in the shop doesn't matter in the slightest, as fate itself seems to have different plans for you outside of the pink tent.) That seems to be a recurring trait about you, always slipping through his fingers like water.

≫ But when you enter his tent for a second time, this time on your own and without anyone to protect you...he recognizes an opportunity. Your curiosity is insatiable, and it is all too easy to draw you further and further in his tent with visions and voices and brief tricks against your mind with his mirrors.

≫ See why in shadows we hide, he and his reflections whisper from within the glass, beckoning you closer and closer to a mirror that houses an obscured mirage of his true form within. He waits inside the reflection, waiting for the perfect moment to close in, to corner you, to render you completely helpless.

≫ He can tell that your mind is wildly beating against his lure like a bird ensnared in a trap. But even the most rabid and arrogant creatures can be broken in with the promise of something desired.

≫ You walk closer, unafraid when you should be, naive when you shouldn’t. The Ticket Taker slowly emerges from the mirror’s surface, the glass rippling when it shouldn’t be possible. One of his white-gloved hands reaches out, an invitation that served more as a trap.

≫ But just before his hand could touch yours, you drew back, seeming to realize or remember something. Your eyes shone in a way that felt much too familiar.

≫ “It's you. I know you. A long time ago, you...”

≫ Your eyes drift downward as if you were truly recalling a memory that couldn’t be yours. But before you can get a word out, the Ticket Taker speaks over whatever thoughts could be turning in that head of yours. (That head which had a face so very much like a human he once knew)

≫ “…You’re speaking nonsense, visitor. And I think it’s about time we drop this charade.”

≫ He fully steps out of the reflection in his mirror, though you don’t step away or flinch back. Not this time. How strange. Perhaps you thought that luck was still on your side.

≫ But your luck had run out, this the Ticket Taker was sure of. You held no red ticket, had no white-haired beast looming over your shoulder. Some indulgent and slightly sick part of him took pride in knowing that he would see that frail sense of security shattered.

≫ But then his heart stops when his gaze lands on something you take out from one of your pockets. A few matchsticks. Unassuming and irrelevant to all who would see them. All except for him…and you. It’s painfully silent for too long. But then you begin to speak again.

≫ “You told me-"

≫ "That's enough."

≫ His white-gloved hand moves to grab your shoulder, to get you out of this circus so you can't cause any further problems. Where exactly would he take you? Hell if he knows. He just needs you to go back with the other humans where you belong. (The thought of dragging you to the pink tent is tempting, but Pierrot would likely become a problem)

≫ But his hand never reaches your shoulder. It gets closer and closer, but you don't move away. Not even a flinch. Not even a fearful look on your face. It makes him freeze just before his fingers can reach to grasp your shoulder. That look in your eyes. That damned look in your eyes.

≫ It was just like...

≫ He pulls his hand back, moving to brace both of his arms behind his back to retain any modicum of professionalism and control over the situation.

≫ "I think it best you leave, visitor. Before you disrupt anything any further."

≫ Outwardly he looks composed and refined. But anyone with functioning eyesight would be able to detect that not even his half-faced mask with a constant smile would be able to hide his insurmountable stress. Anger? Sorrow? Fear? Not even he really knows what roils within him. He’s just…stressed.

≫ This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to be left behind to rest like everything else in that godforsaken prison, supposed to be a distant memory. You were supposed to stay dead. That’s how the world worked. Humans died as a result of their own curiosity, and monsters feasted on them.

≫ But undeniably, here you stand in front of him once again. Alive. Naive. Intruding on a story that wasn’t supposed to account for you.

≫ You don’t move from where you stand for a second, and he feels his composure start to crack, his claws threatening to split the seams at the fingertips of his gloves. You’re disobedient and unbearably frustrating. So impossibly foolish and unknowing. Just like…

≫ Just like back then. Always coming back when he and the others warned against it. Every single time, without fail, you would show up from behind those curtains. Always with that damned look in your eyes that made it hard to refuse to answer your questions.

≫ He retreats into one of his mirrors upon involuntarily making the connection, never once taking his eyes off of yours. It’s the first time he actively avoids a glaring problem instead of moving to remedy it in some way.

≫ But what can he do to be rid of this outlier, this stubborn and irksome human? As easy as it would be to simply drag you to the pink tent and get rid of this problem at its source, to maybe keep you in his blue tent forevermore…he can’t. Not only because Pierrot would become irrational and unstable over you, but also because…

≫ He doesn’t let himself finish the thought.

≫ This is one of the only times the Ticket Taker has ever felt so powerless, so unknowing of what to do. The circus had encountered myriads of problems in countless forms, and it had endured every single one of them. Not always cleanly, and certainly not always proudly, but the troupe had withstood. He had withstood.

≫ But now there was one little exception, one little human who should have stayed in the past where they belonged. What will you try to do now? Will you wriggle your way into their lives like you had before, becoming yet another catalyst for insurmountable loss?

≫ That can’t happen again. Each of the circus members had worked too hard for too long and lost far too much just to have it all be rendered meaningless by a single human.

≫ Of all the circus members, the Ticket Taker is the most concerned and stressed with these circumstances. You had wandered into their darkness once before, learned the truth of their nature and paid the price for it. But what would you do now? Would you try to become some martyr? Would you attempt to bring an end to what they had tried to build?

≫ He doesn’t know, and he only gets more and more frustrated the longer he realizes he can’t entirely control what you do. He feels no different than when he was in that wretched cage, powerless and helpless. And he detests that more than anything else in the world.

≫ He loathes that. Loathes you. You and your godforsaken curiosity and influence over the circus and its members.

≫ (He does not. But it’s quite easy for him to convince himself that he does. He hates what you represent in his eyes—loose ends. Unresolved business. Unfinished work.)

≫ He wants you far, far away from the circus, from his kin, from him. You can only bring trouble. Unnecessary drama and risks that simply aren’t worth it. (It is, but he doesn't know that.)

≫ He wishes more than anything that he could nip this problem in the bud, but he can’t. The best he can do is hope that the others help him with this…anomaly. If he can’t kill you…then he’ll avoid you.

≫ Unless ordered by the Jester to do otherwise, it’s all the Ticket Taker can bring himself to do.

The Doctor:

≫ Like Harlequin, the Doctor instantly picks up on the strange impressions he gathers from you. He’s encountered countless types of humans before, but only once has he encountered one like you. So very curious about and drawn to the things that go bump in the night. So strangely unafraid of things you should dread with all your heart.

≫ Or perhaps you were afraid and dreading, and you simply hid it well. That was an equally intriguing possibility. After all, it was quite rare when anything escaped the Doctor's watchful gaze.

≫ After you entered his tent for the first time, he’s left with more questions than answers. Inconclusive results that make him want to split you open, examine and poke and prod at your mind, your heart, your nervous system, everything.

≫ Which parts of you would reveal what he wanted to know? Such a delicious and promising specimen, this human. Frightened by many things, but not for the reasons he initially expected.

≫ There’s something in your eyes that tells him there’s more behind your fear beyond shallow dread towards the unknown. In fact, it almost seems like there’s a knowing fear in your gaze.

≫ Interesting. Very, very interesting.

≫ He decides to perform a little test when he spots you finally making your way towards his cyan tent once again. A minor psychological assessment, he calls it. You look concerned and mildly nervous, but not outright afraid.

≫ When you’re strapped to the medical chair and left completely at his mercy, he doesn’t refrain from poking and prodding both figuratively and literally, trying to dig down into your psyche and see what makes you different.

≫ You’re oddly quiet…more so than any normal human being he had ever had in his examination process. You’re distracted. You’re unable to move in a strange and dark environment, and your mind is off somewhere else, clearly finding a more important priority to think about than your own survival.

≫ Clearly, a more intensive treatment is needed. A mild escalation.

≫ He injects just a small dose of a pink serum, one that will make you a little more…compliant. Just to ensure you don’t lie to him. It was rather important you remained truthful for this.

≫ When you’re good and drugged up, he then holds two items up for you to see. In one hand is a bandage, an item all other humans would have chosen. But in the other hand is an ancient-looking metal key spotted with rust. He asks you which one you’re more drawn to and why.

≫ You briefly look both items over before answering, movements sluggish and words ever-so-slightly slurred from the drug he administered.

≫ “The key. It’s…familiar."

≫ Your words make him still his actions. But he remains calm and level as he tilts his head at your choice, more intrigued than anything else.

≫ "You've never seen it before."

≫ "Yes I have, from..."

≫ You trail off, evidently quite tired from the serum in your system. An unfortunate side effect. The Doctor’s red-gloved hand finds its way beneath your chin, clawed fingertips tilting your head upwards to encourage you to wake up a little. He still needs answers.

≫ “From?”

≫ “…From before. From the circus. The old one. The Ringmaster, he…”

≫ You trail off again, struggling to keep your eyelids open, too tired to continue. You seem to relax in the chair you were strapped to, face leaning into the red glove that no doubt reeked of blood and death and medical sanitation substances.

≫ You, a human in a strange environment with no way to move, were trusting him with your life. You dared to allow yourself to be so vulnerable like this. Why? How? Why weren’t you more afraid? How was your nervous system not panicking and forcing you to stay awake?

≫ But most importantly, how the hell did you know the significance of the key?

≫ The Doctor knows you haven't seen such a thing before. He knows you would have no way of knowing about the old circus. He knows you wouldn’t have a single clue about him if you were an ordinary person.

≫ Well. Clearly, you are not an ordinary person. You knew about things you shouldn’t, made him and all the others feel some strange sense of nostalgia, and resembled someone from very long ago…

≫ This warrants further study. Further testing.

≫ He should cut you apart while you were asleep and oh-so enticingly vulnerable. He does not. Why, he can’t decide. Perhaps you had more of an effect on him and the others than he thought.

≫ That needs to be studied as well.

≫ He injects you with yet another serum, this one a mild stimulant to wake you up a little. This isn’t the time for a dissection or a vivisection. For now, he’ll let you walk away. There are too many questions he needs answers for from you, and you would be of much more use if you were alive.

≫ “Come now, sweetie. Wake up. There’s work to be done.”

≫ The Doctor is the least visibly affected by the reveal that you are a reincarnation of the human from so long ago. Though the past was obviously a sore and fragile wound, he is actually more invested in the how rather than the why.

≫ He lists every last question that comes to his mind, every possible test and procedure he can do to possibly explain this strange phenomenon. He wants, no, needs to know every detail of how you returned, how you came back the same and yet so very different.

≫ It’s not really a surprise that he wants to keep you, though not exactly in any ethical or entirely moral sense. If you become a circus doll dressed in pink? Good. If you’re alive and fully conscious/lucid? Great! If you’re dead? Not ideal, but he’ll get what he can out of this.

≫ The Doctor favors you over his other dolls and test subjects. He likes you, even! But he doesn’t entirely respect or acknowledge the fact that you have your own autonomy and will. He isn’t cruel or rude in the slightest, just…subtly condescending. A little bit patronizing.

≫ He’s quite used to treating humans as test subjects instead of…well, you know, people. It’s gonna take a while for him to see you outside of those rigid norms. (Assuming you survive long enough for him to do so)

≫ If you put in enough effort, you could get him to acknowledge the past and the part he played in it. But there isn’t much to say about what happened, is there? That was then. This is now. And now the two were intersecting, and he wants to know why and how.

≫ But if you challenge him in your own way by observing him just as much as he tries to observe you…that makes him halt temporarily. It reminds him of the way he used to study and learn from that human from his cage just in the same way that creature once learned from his and the others’ stories.

≫ Funnily enough, despite the fact that the Doctor wants nothing more than to splay your innards once more, to peel you apart layer by layer…I imagine he’d actually end up being the least of your worries in the circus.

≫ He can’t kill his most important patient, after all. He still has so many questions to quell his insatiable morbid curiosity, and when one is answered, two more form from the previous conclusion.

≫ So he won’t hurt you. Not seriously, anyway.

Jester:

≫ The Jester senses something strange before he sees anything. It's subtle, easily missed and just as easily brushed off. It gives him a feeling that someone, something, was slinking around. But oddly enough, its not a bad feeling. Instead, it's...familiar.

≫ But monsters aren’t attuned to the supernatural or paranormal. Jester merely attributes such feelings and contemplations to the time of year near the anniversary…the yearly time of that fateful moonless night. That must be it. He wasn’t immune to nostalgia, that had to be it.

≫ But unlike some of the other circus members, Jester remembers that old night with startling clarity. Every word. Every tear shed. Every bite. And he remembers that human who insisted on intruding into their godforsaken prison. Their face, their scent, their eyes filled with so much naivety and unmarred goodness. It's sickening. Yet he never fights those memories when they emerge.

≫ So it's especially strange that so many things are suddenly remembered when you arrive to the circus. Jester feels it before he sees it, a presence so familiar and unbearably nostalgic that it genuinely puts him on edge for the first time in a long time.

≫ And when that he gets a proper look at the human, when they finally make their way to his tent and his play...that feeling only multiplies. He stares into your eyes, watches the way you turn away to leave yet also glance behind your shoulder. Something coils and writhes behind his ribcage upon seeing that. Seeing you.

≫ A part of him wishes to immediately string you up as one of his dolls, examine every part of your mind. But a larger side of him decides to wait. If you really were anything like the one before...you'd be back. It was simply in your nature.

≫ And how right he was. He sees you wandering near the circus threshold, eyes filled with so many emotions and a desire to know. And that’s when he makes the connection far faster than any of the others. But he has to make sure.

≫ He indulged you before with knowledge...why not indulge you now?

≫ And so he decides to make a test out of this. A judgement of character, in a sense. He uses and puppets one of his Fools to lead and guide you to a place where no guest is allowed to go. To his personal quarters, just past the outskirts of the circus itself. You hesitate at the entrance, yet you go in anyway. Jester knew you would. It was in your nature, after all.

≫ So curious. So naive. So desperate for answers, even after all this time.

≫ You don't even notice how he effortlessly followed you in, hiding in the shadows and watching your every move. How nostalgic, he thinks.

≫ Violet eyes watch from the darkness as you seem to have some sense of intuition that prompts you to slowly move towards a specific storage box. It's old yet reliable, and it houses many precious things. But you are drawn to only one precious thing in that entire assortment.

≫ Your fingers tremble slightly as you gently pick up something loosely wrapped in cloth. That cloth is then peeled away from the item, a fragile and singed book with burnt edges now held in your hands. The pages are thin and extraordinarily brittle, no different from dead leaves. The spine is warped, and the words written inside are just barely legible.

≫ Jester watches the way your fingers gently trace the words written in that journal, your face twitching and subtly shifting in a way he had seen many times before in many humans who had learned just a little too much. Recognition. Dread. Realization.

≫ He hears you exhale a short and shaky breath when you carefully turn a few pages and land on a set of old drawings. Dark-inked sketches of shadowy figures that appear both humanoid and animalistic. Jester had flipped through that diary himself so many times over so many years that he could tell exactly what pages you were looking at.

“They spoke again tonight. They told me about their old home. A valley. It was as empty of food as it was full of mouths to feed. Monsters Beasts of all kinds lived there. Tight-knit families and clans and groups. But there were also those who had broken away from their kind to have better chances at survival. What is better, to live among those you love and suffer from empty stomachs and suffocating cages together, or survive alone and suffer only of loneliness? I am not quite sure I fully understand either option. I have always had Father, but…I have also always felt lonely. Perhaps humans suffer differently from other creatures. Or maybe we all suffer the same.”

≫ Beneath that written passage was a set of sketches of flowers in various states of bloom and decay, then a rendition of the beasts in their cages with their luminous eyes and sharp edges. Jester knew it without even fully seeing the pages.

≫ He stepped forth from the darkness then, the bells fastened to the ends of his cap and atop his boots jingling just a little. The sound was more than enough to make you flinch and jolt your head in his direction, eyes reflecting just how startled you were. You didn't say anything for a moment, and neither did he.

≫ “You."

≫ It's the only word that comes from your mouth. One word, and it means more than an hour's worth of speaking. It's spoken with awareness, dread, sorrow, but also...

≫ Just the slightest bit of familiarity. But that familiarity wasn't yours to have. Not here. Not now.

≫ It was all the Jester needed to hear to know everything he needed to.

≫ "I-"

≫ “Why do you return to us now, creature? Why here? Why come back at all? Why haunt us in this way?”

≫ You say nothing. The journal in your hands was clutched to your chest as though it truly did belong to you. And in a sense, it did. With wetted eyes and paralyzed limbs you continued to stare at him, unable to answer his questions. His eyes narrowed, face uncharacteristically unsmiling.

≫ “You shouldn’t have come back, beast. There’s nothing left for you in this place.”

≫ He notices the way your eyes widen slightly with the nickname, like you recognized it as once being yours. He didn’t even realize he had used it for the first time in many years.

≫ “...Unless you wish to do this all over again?"

≫ He steps closer to you, moving one of his black-clawed hands near your neck and just below your jaw, almost grazing his long and sharp fingers near the skin there. But just before his sharp fingertips could make any contact, he stops himself. Whether for your sake or his, not even he knows.

≫ What would your heart taste like this time, he briefly wonders. Would your bones still scrape so cleanly like they did last time? Would your flesh still taste sweet...or would it now become bitter from fear?

≫ You still don’t answer him. Did you interpret his words as a threat? A promise? An invitation? Not even the Jester himself entirely knows how he intended them.

≫ He has an urge to claim your mind, to make you one of his dolls. It would certainly make tracking you far easier. But for some reason he doesn’t. Besides the logical reasoning that Pierrot would certainly react poorly to his pet being toyed with, there’s something else preventing him.

≫ But he cleverly hides his inner turmoil. Disguises it as toying with you by pulling you one way and then another when in reality his mind shifts like a tide. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Going everywhere and nowhere.

≫ Should he kill you, nip this little problem in the bud? Should he keep you as a doll, claim your name and your face and hide you where nobody could find you?

≫ The Jester is uncharacteristically and completely indecisive, a very rare occurrence. He was used to handling the burdens of making hard decisions, used to being looked towards for answers and conclusions. But here, he had no answer for himself.

≫ He simply does not know what to do. And that unsettles him more than your existence.

≫ It would be rather easy to simply get rid of this problem entirely. It’s what Bil would do. Yet he also finds himself wanting to know about this strange occurrence in its entirety. Why did you come back? How? Are you merely a mimicking echo of that dear human, or are you something else?

≫ You are not that human from before. Not entirely, anyway. Here and now, you’re less afraid. Less naive. But still bold. Still ignorant of the toll that must be paid to cross over into the beast’s world, their world where to love is to devour and to suffer is to survive.

≫ You’re in their environment now. And there was nothing stopping him or anyone else from tearing you apart and making you a ghost of the past once more. Or worse.

≫ Nothing except, well…those damned undefined feelings that still reside in his blackened and twisted heart even now. It would be…a wasted opportunity, of sorts, to kill you now. Not when there were opportunities to learn from what you are and how you came back.

Columbina:

≫ Columbina has been so unfathomably lonely for these many years. She can’t recall many details of her life before the old circus, can’t remember what it was like not to suffer in one form or another.

≫ But what she can remember more than anything else, more than her own death, is a light in the darkness. A source of comfort from her feelings of filthiness and a distraction from her hunger pains. A human who wished to help her and her kin. Why? She didn’t know. Not at first.

≫ But she also saw your goodness, your desire to help simply because it was the right thing to do. You saw beings who were suffering and wanted to alleviate their pain. Why weren’t all humans like that?

≫ Such questions will never be answered.

≫ The Little Dove can only hope that she had told you enough to remain safe and close to her. Would you piece everything together? Would you keep trying to ignore what she already knew?

≫ She could only hope you’d come back, that you would be alive, that the others wouldn’t give in to their suffering and be rid of their only chance at peace…

≫ You were a shining light of hope for redemption, a mercy from fate made manifest into flesh born anew. There was no way the others could be so callous as to be rid of you once more. Columbina knows that there’s still goodness in them hidden away somewhere.

≫ She closes her eyes, trying to focus on that light, your presence. It’s all she can do to weakly remedy her insurmountable sorrow and isolation. Was it her own mind conjuring such naive thoughts? Maybe insanity had finally come to claim her mind.

≫ And then she realizes that the light isn’t merely a hallucination or a dream, it’s real. You’re here. Here and alive and present and drawing near the mirror that houses Columbina’s spirit.

≫ Step by careful step, you approach the echo of her presence, eyes wide but not afraid. You seem more sad than anything else. Like her.

≫ "Its you. You…you knew me, and I knew you.”

≫ She just nods. Of course she knew you. She knows you better than she knows herself. If she were blind or deaf or unfeeling she’d still know you.

≫ Columbina never thought she’d see you again. Not while she was still here like this. Her chest aches when she sees the knowing look in your eyes, and her undefined hands press against her side of the mirror’s surface.

≫ "Sorry...to have you shoulder these pains and burdens."

≫ Her dark and cold hands reach out past the mirror, though not without great effort from her end. It's been so long, and she only has so much energy to interact with the living. It's a good thing you have such an attunement to things beyond the mortal veil. A part of her aches further when she cradles your warm face in her barely corporeal hands.

≫ "Sweet human. You who attempted to aid us once before. You who paid the price for my mistakes..."

≫ Be you a phantom or a cruel figment of the Ticket Taker's looking-glass illusions or truly a reincarnation...the Little Dove no longer cared. She just wants this one chance to see you again, alive and well...It brings her soul just the slightest bit of peace for her lingering guilt and regret for not being able to protect you better.

≫ "I wish there was more I could do for you. But all I can do is ask this one thing."

≫ She has no right to ask of anything from you, this she knows with every fiber of her being. Yet she asks anyway. This was the only way to get a somewhat happy ending for everyone...

≫ "Amorzinho...see the others not for what they've done, but for who they are. We are more than monsters. More than foul devils. You showed us that once."

≫ It was selfish of her to expect you to bring peace to her kin simply for being what you are. She knew all too well what it was like to have roles and titles substitute her name and identity. But she wouldn't have asked this of you if she believed there to be another way.

≫ She strokes her thumbs against your face then, already knowing what you were feeling without you needing to say it aloud.

≫ There’s an understanding in your eyes. Those memories, those dreams and feelings and recollections…they were still yours even now. There’s also a tinge of fear in your expression. A deep dread of losing who you are now in order to remember who you once were.

≫ “You have a good soul, dearest one. You always have, and you always will.”

≫ There was no angel watching over you or Columbina on that moonless night. The two of you met with unfortunate deaths, but not endings. But with this one chance, maybe something become of this. Maybe she could become your guardian angel if nothing and nobody else would.

≫ No harm will come to you, she’ll make sure of it with everything she has and everything she is. Maybe Columbina could redeem herself in this way. Maybe she could atone for her past mistakes by ensuring that you stay alive.

≫ She leans forward, her face reaching the top of yours. It drains her to do so, but she presses her lips to your forehead in a gesture of care. Of protection. Something wet trickles over her thumbs on your face. Tears. She swipes them away slowly with her thumbs, nudging her forehead against yours. She faintly remembers that gesture from her family.

≫ “I’m sorry.”

≫ For dragging you into this again. For not being able to do more. For not being able to protect her only friend in that wretched prison. For not being able to protect you better in the present. For placing this burden of choice upon you.

≫ Your voice is hushed and thick with apologetic grief when you finally respond.

≫ “I’m sorry, too.”

≫ For not being there in time. For not being able to save her from that awful fate. For not being able to save any of them…

≫ Columbina just holds you closer. A deep sorrow roils within her very being.

≫ It is certainly not your responsibility, but…a part of her wishes for you to take care of the others since she cannot. They’re so lost, so hurt, so convinced of their brokenness and irreparable suffering.

≫ The others obviously aren’t entirely innocent, but she knows better than anyone that there is no such thing as black and white in this place. Despite their best efforts to make it seem otherwise, everything resides in shades of grey.

≫ No matter what choice you make, if you wish to live out your second chance at life away from the circus, if you wish to remain here and seek whatever it is you desire from this place…Columbina will do her best to help you. She knows what it’s like to be unable to choose her fate. She knows that you had been deprived of choice once before.

≫ The least she can do is honor your wishes and autonomy, and try to answer whatever questions you may have.

≫ If it is the circus, your past life, or the others you wish to know more about, then she will tell you everything she knows. You were kind enough to listen to her story and remember it for what it was. So she’ll give you whatever it is you need to remain safe in this place where knowledge is a double-edged sword.

≫ Or if you wish to live your fullest without any burdens of the past, to live the life you were denied in your previous life, then she will tell you anything and everything you need to disarm the others, to escape the cycle of eating or being eaten.

≫ Just as long as you make your choice without any regrets…then she will bear no sorrow or resentment towards you.

————

≫ Knowing what you know now, what can you possibly hope to do?

≫ Perhaps this would be the point where you decide whether to forgive the beasts for what they had done, or seek some feeble form of revenge, or perhaps even attempt to get some closure for your undeserved and untimely death long ago. But if you’re quite honest with yourself…

≫ None of those options sound like something you could do. Not yet, anyway.

≫ But you can’t just move on with your life like nothing happened. There would always be a part of you that’s just so…sad. So restless for answers and reasoning. And it will always eat away at you from the inside.

≫ You will always be in pain from wanting things from those who do not and will not want to give you anything.

≫ The lines between who you were, who you are, who you wanted to be, and who you are yet to become are blurred and undefined. Story becomes memory. Memory becomes knowledge. Knowledge becomes suffering.

≫ But maybe there was another way. Another hope beyond these sad cycles of violence and fear and twisted care. Your story may not have had any happy or fair beginning…but maybe that’s why you were still here.

≫ (How funny. Still so naive after all these years. That’s going to be your end, you know. Or is it?)

≫ It all depends on your choices. If not for yourself in the present, then maybe for that young and innocent version of yourself from so long ago. And for the Little Dove who did not deserve such a brutal end.

≫ There is one thing that is almost certain, though. The circus members are not quite done with you yet. One way or another, you’ll find yourself inextricably linked to them. Resent or embrace or ignore it all you want, it makes no difference.

≫ Between knowing fear and naive hope, what will you choose?

≫ Will you put in the work, try to get some form of closure for yourself and create unbreakable bonds with the monsters in this life as well? Or will you seek answers more directly through any means necessary and at any cost, including your sanity and closeness with them? That, I will leave up to you.

————————

≫ GOD this took a lot out of me. Had to fight myself to write at least a little bit every day before my brain would turn to sludge. >.>

≫ I listened to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack while listening to this so I'm sorry if this all seems a little melodramatic LOL (I may or may not have drawn just a little inspiration from the mirror scene for TT’s section…iykyk)

≫ I also listened to the Ballad of Jane Doe from Ride The Cyclone as a sort of inspiration for the MC's plight with their nature! I don’t see a lot of reincarnation stories where the main character genuinely has an existential crisis over who they were, who they are, and who they are expected to become.

≫ I wish I was good at art so I could draw out some of the things I thought of while making this, but alas, I am not. (Whatever higher power that exists had to nerf me I swear) Guess we’re all gonna have to use our imaginations!

≫ This is actually my first ever time making any sort of AU thing, so I apologize if any of this isn’t very good by AU standards. I’m still learning! >_<

≫ Feel free to ask further questions about this AU in my ask box or make content of your own about it! I’d love to see how you guys could interpret this. :)

≫ This and all of my posts are made entirely without the use of generative AI. I do not consent to any of my work being scraped, copied, or otherwise fed into any form of character-based AI or other LLM. If you’re going to do that anyway, then don’t tell me about it.