It an Unhealthy Relationship

Use of Power

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Year 3

—

Quiet.

He was learning to like it best when it was quiet.

The little bird he heard in the tree was a bad sign; it meant Caine was paying attention to him. As he continued to stare past the horizon he barely blinked as the little glowing cabbage moth flitted past his face.

(“--Mamestra brassicae! Did you know why they're named that? They eat the wild mustard plants, you know, brassica, the one we bred all the vegetables out of–)

His eyes glazed over, head lolling back slightly as he heard the rustle of her robes in the digital grass. Kinger couldn't bring himself to look at her as she sat down beside him on the hill.

(“--its isn't their fault. They'd be keeping the balance in a nice flower field if we hadn't turned one species into a hundred and planting huge monocrops of nothing but delicious food–”)

“You okay?” She asked quietly into the empty world.

Kinger closed his eyes, swallowing thickly. Silence persisted. After a moment he heard the soft brush of her fingers through grass. He didn't need to look to see it; he could see it in his mind, in any world; her fingers brushing aside grass stems so she could see the soil beneath, the little ants and aphids and creatures crawling the earth. Caine had even made her ants, eventually. Once he realized.

(Please…..please don't …)

“You aren't even going to look at me?” She asked softly.

He nearly cracked. Instead Kinger made himself blink slowly, focusing his eyes on the distant skyline. He knew it wasn't sky. It was the textured dome Caine projected on the void. To make it less frightening.

(Because there was nothing–)

The touch on his fingers made him jump. Even knowing it was coming. He felt the so familiar trail of her small finger up the back of his hand. The sound of her breath…

“--if it's so bad, just close your eyes–” she was saying, tone a firm frustration unlike herself, the world starting to come in and out for Kinger like the bobbing head of a man drowning. He turned his head to her slowly, stare a thousand yards away, looking past his wife's digital form.

“Caine.” He managed, voice thick with disuse. He swallowed, while his wife just stared at him. “Please.”

(Three years it's been three years she's been dead for THREE YEARS–)

“I can make you.” Queenie said oddly, staring at him. Through him.

(Queenie never stared at him like that.)

(...only on her last day. Only on the dark day, the one that replayed in the back of his mind when he tried to think of her, warping with distention of time–)

(--no one stared at him like that. No one staying–)

He swallowed again. Closed his eyes. “Not again.” He said firmly, refusing to plead in tone if not in words (what was left of his pride was…so small.). “Take her off. I can't… I can't look at you like that. I'll do it if you take her off.”

A moment. Silence. Kinger focused on keeping his breath even, listening for some kind of indication Caine had done what he'd asked.

“...fine.” she muttered snippily, and after a long moment Kinger risked cracking his eyes.

Caine. Red and white and black, like an infecting wound on the landscape. Or a spider bite. He stared at Kinger darkly through a gap in his teeth, and reached out. Kinger let him, going limp as Caine pushed him back into the grass and crawled closer, straddling the column of his body. Kinger's damp eyes blinked miserably at him while Caine delicately ran his fingers down the man's face. Misery. Like death.

Glancing up to the sky, Caine gestured obscurely, and only when Kinger felt the heat and light begin to bloom above then did he realize Caine had gestured to the Sun (that bitch–)

–the rest was impressions.

—

Year 6

The enormous red head of the ringmaster was laying over his thighs, and Kinger just kept petting it absently. If time had mattered at this point he'd know he'd been petting Caine for nearly forty minutes straight.

The circus tent was silent.

“Caine.” Kinger rasped. He hadn't said it for a month now, but Caine lifted his upper plate anyway, peering at the man around the teeth. Kinger swallowed. “Could you … could I see her? Just for a little bit?” He asked shakily. Again. The bright electric lights burned through his thoughts.

“No.” Caine said easily, as he always did.

Kinger's shoulders slumped slightly and he eventually resumed petting Caine's head. Because Caine could–

“I didn't mean it.” Kinger murmured quietly, as he always did. “I didn't mean forever. I havent–. It's just–. It's been so long. So long since Ive seen–”

“No.”

Kinger swallowed. Slowly his hand resumed petting. “...maybe….maybe one day?”

To this Caine said nothing.

Kinger continued to pet.