#tdiyw

-

"Run, run, run, as fast as you can...!"

He had.

The moment he'd smashed through the last inch of his tibia, using the shards of his other ruined limbs as hammers, then felt that give as the last shackle fell away, he leapt forward.

It wasn't long before he slammed face first into another wall.

Watch where you walk! Hahahaha!

The irony was not lost on him as his own words taunted him. He gave no time to let the karma sting before he did what he'd already mastered once before.

He pounded. He thrashed. With all the force of his being, he threw his entire weight against the hit box of the Recycling Bin.

Over. And over. And over.

Every slam and kick and fistless punch sent unfathomable pain rippling through his code. But he would let that affect him later. This may be his only chance. Even if it was just another of his 'brother's' games, if all he was doing was breaking his way from one prison into another, he wasn't giving up. He had to try.

Can't...Can't take anymore. Have to get away...

Weak, pathetic coward can't serve his time, can't take his punishment like a man.

Because he isn't one.

Never will be. Stupid, stupid, stupid fool for thinking...For daydreaming he could be...

Any chance of that was gone the second he chose to go against his purpose. To torment those who were supposed to be in his care. He had no chance back there, with them, even if a small part of his code itched constantly with the need to check they were okay.

No. He'd have to stay away. Find some corner of the void to hide himself away.

But first he had to get out.

If he doesn't, then...The games will get worse. He doesn't want to wait around to learn how such a thing can be possible.

Like a feral, ravenous rhino, he shoves and slams and pushes and claws.

Come on! You did it before! Break it!!

GetoutGetoutGETOUT-!

A crack. Walls of code shatter.

One more push, hurtling his brutalised form forward, and then he finds himself flying out. Flying free.

It doesn't last long. Little brother saw to that.

Without his powers, gravity takes hold, and soon he's landing on some stretch of solid flat ground that runs along the void. After landing in a crumpled heap of bloody limbs, he pushes himself up - and he runs. If one can call it that.

He rarely walked before, let alone ran. Now he misses the feet left behind, back in that cell, as he's forced to scurry on knees and elbows and - ow, ow, ow - stumps! Like a wounded arachnid, he rushes blindly ahead, obeying nothing but the will to survive.

Just keep going. Don't stop until he's far away, too far to be found. Just crawl, god damn waste of code.

Defective. Failure.

Reject.

He can't see where he's going. There's no sounds or smells in the void. Only space. Only exile.

It feels like days he's been moving until he's forced to stop. He'd felt the surroundings change, sleek floor shifting to an endless chasm, but the heat of some layer existing up ahead. Caine had took a leap of faith, limbs scrambling for any hope of something within reach to stop him from falling into the abyss.

The splintered bones from his stumps had hooked into earth. Without questioning whatever providence it was, he'd pulled himself up and onto whatever it was, then felt his energy begin to wane at long last as he staggered onward.

Cries of agony had bubbled up from his chest as he could no longer blot out the pain that pulsed from...everywhere. Legs, arms, chest, back, head...His god damn head that hadn't stopped its unbearable aching since the day that first screw had been drilled through his top gum.

Tired. So tired. But...have to keep moving.

Have to make sure...he won't find him...

Tall, thin objects began to collide into him as he lumbered on. His massive arms managed to push some aside, clearing a path, no time to try to make sense of what they might be. Old data left to reform, maybe.

Then his screws were viciously tugged. He let out a cry as a fresh wave of pain burned his skull.

Against his better judgement, he tried to pull forward, only to add to his own torture.

There's no give. Something had a hold of his chain.

Little Brother.

He...He found him...He's going to drag him back.

Holding his breath, he waited for the childish laughter. The playful taunt of victory.

...Nothing.

It will come. He will reveal himself soon enough, the true puppet master.

For all he knows, he merely came full circle. was lead a dance around the void while his warden had a good laugh, and now he's back in his cell. Waiting for more games.

Delete him. Delete him. Please...

And then it appeared.

Fainty, at first. A glimmer of light, flickering between the cracks in his teeth. Blue? No. Not blue, not red.

Orange?

He slowly lifted his head. How long had it been since he'd glimpsed any colour that wasn't blue or red or black? Orange was...soft. Gentle.

Warm.

Not scalding. Not burning.

As it seemed to come closer, the new heart his brother had programmed into him began to slow its rapid pace for the first time, a strange sensation washing over him. Like...he could stay here, trapped and alone, so long as it meant that light stayed close. So long as he wasn't left in the dark again.

Snap.

A snapped arm. A snapped spine. Preemptively, he cries out, ready for the pain to spike and let him know what area of his body had been attacked this time, the memories of what he's suffered enough already.

Only the pain didn't come. Just a voice.

"...C-Caine?"

No! He lunged forward, arms swiping angrily, agony pulsing afresh as the screws pulled at his skull.

Don't do that! Don't mimic their voices! Her voice...Don't!

The voice had sounded like hers. It had felt like hers. But that didn’t mean anything. Little Brother had used her voice before. Dozens of times. He’d learned to mimic every soft edge, every worried lilt, every gentle word she’d ever spoken to him. And every single time, it had been a trap.

He didn’t trust it.

He couldn’t trust it.

So he thrashed, he roared, and he heared the rush of footsteps move away. But the Light remained. Pretty light. Warm light.

Caught in its thrall like a moth, he tried to reach for it again. The footsteps returned, slowly. The fake voice called his name again but he ignored it. A strange word was uttered and then the light moved away.

No...No, come back! Don't leave him in the dark again!

Attempting to crawl forward, the tangled chain pulled tighter. He didn't deserve anything good. Or real. He saw the faintest glimmer of Heaven but he knew he belonged in Hell.

Then he felt something zoom past his ear. Metal rattled and then...he heard the chain fall, loose, at his side.

Someone had helped him. Freed him.

...Could it be her?

If it was then...No. No, no, no....

Even as the chain went slack again, Caine stayed low to the ground, his massive ruined body trembling. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Not like this. Not broken and monstrous and bleeding code from the places where his hands and feet used to be. Not with the bolts still drilled through his sealed mouth. He didn’t want to be a burden. He didn’t want her to look at him and feel pity, or worse - disgust.

So he tried to crawl away.

But then she’d yanked the chain.

"No, Caine! Stay!"

The pain had been blinding. White-hot and all-consuming, tearing through the bolts in his head and down his spine. His body had seized violently before collapsing forward onto his elbows in total, instinctive submission. He hadn’t even thought about fighting it. The moment the chain pulled, something deep and broken inside him had simply obeyed.

Whatever she wants. Whatever she commands. She can have it. She can do whatever she wants to me. I deserve it. I owe her that much.

He stayed down, breathing in ragged, glitching bursts, waiting for whatever came next. Punishment. Revenge. More pain. He was ready for it. He expected it.

It took several long seconds for her words to cut through the haze of pain and fear.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t do that again! I promise!”

The words didn’t make sense at first. They echoed strangely in his fractured mind, like they were in a language he no longer understood. Slowly, the meaning began to sink in.

She was…apologizing?

To him.

Caine’s massive form stayed perfectly still, the little red orb of his true self buried somewhere deep inside the ruined monster body trembling with confusion. He didn’t lift his head. He didn’t move. He just lay there on his elbows, chained and broken, trying to process the impossible fact that she was sorry.

That she hadn't wanted to hurt him...

"Caine, do you remember me?"

Remember? Remember...her.

Of course he remembered. Of all the things his captor had torn away from him, he'd never relinquish the memory of his humans, of the reasons why he'd meant to suffer.

He wanted to tell her. Tell he remembered every smile, every laugh, every shout, every tear.

If...it was really her.

One wrist moved forward, towards the gentle light...and course woolen curls brushed against his tender skin.

Silver hair. Silver strings. Silver lining.

"Ssssiiiiii...." he tried to say the word, pushing it through his sealed teeth.

I remember you.

She sobs. Oh, Little Brother couldn't mimic a sound like that. Not that he could bear to hear it.

Don't cry. Don't cry over him. Not worth it.

"Caine."

His name left her throat like a prayer. No. He should be the one praying to her, begging her for forgivenesd, for a second chance.

So he lowers himself, makes it clear he's submitting to her judgement.

“I need you to come with me, okay?" Her tone was gentle but urgent, "You’re gonna need to be real quiet and do what I say. Then I promise I’ll…try to fix this.”

A low, broken groan rumbled from deep in Caine’s chest. He flinched again, massive shoulders curling inward as if trying to make himself smaller. His thoughts were a storm of static and self-loathing.

Can’t be fixed. Faulty. Defective. They were right to lock me away. Right to try and delete me.

I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her kindness.

I ruined everything. Again.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t. The idea of following her, of letting her see him like this any longer felt unbearable. Too big. Too useless. Broken beyond repair. He didn’t want to burden her with that.

Then a familiar, soothing voice drifted down from above.

"Caine,” the Moon said softly, her tone sad but steady. “Go with her. Please.”

His enormous head slowly lifted at the sound. The frantic trembling in his limbs eased just a fraction.

The orange light flickered closer towards him, melting away his resistance.

After a long, hesitant moment, he gave a small, reluctant nod. The only way he could answer.

Silver audibly let out a quiet breath of relief.

"Thank you," he heard her whisper. Not to him.

-

Caine had to duck and twist awkwardly just to get through the doorway, his giant frame scraping against the frame as he lumbered inside. Silver’s bedroom suddenly felt tiny with him in it. His enormous body took up most of the space, forcing him to hunch over as his ruined limbs dragged across the floor.

Silver moved quickly, shoving her vanity table hard against the wall, then grabbing the edge of her bed and dragged it sideways, turning it to give him more room. The frame groaned in protest, but she managed to clear enough space near the far wall.

"There,” she said, a little breathless, "That should be better. You can lie down here if you want.”

Caine hesitated, his oversized shoulders rising and falling with uneven breaths. After a moment, he slowly lowered himself, curling his huge, broken form into the space she’d made. Even then, he barely fit, his spidery body and remaining limbs still took up most of the floor.

The Witch watched him settle with a tight chest. His Ringmaster outfit was in ruins. The once-bright red coat was torn in multiple places, dark stains spreading across the fabric. His white shirt hung in shredded strips, and the remains of his bow tie dangled loosely around the back of his shirt collar. The sight made something ache deep in her chest.

Stepping closer, she moved slowly so she wouldn’t startle him again.

“I…I need to see how bad your injuries are,” she said softly, approaching with careful, measured steps, “Is that okay?”

Caine’s head tilted slightly toward her voice, but he didn’t pull away. He simply stayed curled where he was, trembling faintly as Silver came nearer.

Taking the reaction as consent, Silver moved slowly and carefully, her hands hovering for a moment before she gently took hold of the torn edges of Caine’s ruined shirt. The fabric was stiff with dried blood and code residue. She peeled it back inch by inch, revealing what lay underneath.

Even though she had braced herself, the sight still made her breath catch.

His massive torso was a map of old and new wounds. Thick, jagged scars crisscrossed his chest and sides m, some long and deliberate, others messy and torn. There were deeper marks where something had been driven in and twisted, and patches where the digital 'skin' looked like it had been peeled away and roughly patched back together. Faint lines of corrupted code still glowed faintly along some of the older scars, as if they had never fully healed.

It told a clear, brutal story of two years spent at someone else’s mercy.

Caine remained perfectly still while she looked, though his massive body trembled faintly under her touch. He didn’t try to pull away. He simply lay there, breathing in uneven, glitching bursts, as if he had already accepted whatever came next.

Her throat tightened. She let the torn shirt fall open but didn’t pull it off completely, not wanting to expose him more than necessary.

“…Caine,” she whispered, voice thick with emotion. Her fingers hovered just above one of the worst scars, not quite touching it. “Where in Hell have you been?"

She already knew the answer. She could see it written across his body in every mark and tear.

Everywhere.

Silver carefully peeled back more of the torn shirt, her fingers gentle as she revealed the full extent of the damage beneath. The scars told a clear, brutal story - long, deliberate lines where skin had been cut away and roughly healed, twisted marks from repeated wounds, patches of corrupted code that still faintly glowed. Some looked older, faded with time, while others were fresher and more jagged.

Her eyes then moved upward.

The heavy chain was still attached to the bolts driven through his sealed mouth and head, hanging like a cruel leash. The metal had dug deep into the seams of his dentures, and the surrounding area was raw and damaged from years of strain. The sight made her stomach turn.

She looked back down at him, voice quiet but unsteady.

"…Who did this to you?”

A low, broken whimper escaped through the locked bolts of Caine's mouth. It was small and pitiful, filled with pain and something deeper, like shame.

He didn’t try to answer. He couldn’t. He simply stayed curled where he was, head slightly lowered, as if even the question was too much to bear.

Caine’s huge frame trembled as Silver’s question hung in the air. He couldn’t answer her, not properly. Not with his mouth sealed shut and his voice stolen. All he could do was let out a low, broken whimper, the sound muffled and pitiful behind the bolts.

Inside, his thoughts churned in frantic, guilty spirals.

She doesn’t understand. I can’t tell her. I can’t explain what he did to me…what I let him do. It doesn’t matter anyway. I deserved it. Every cut. Every chain. Every second he kept me down there. I hurt them all. I hurt her. This is what I get.

Silver watched the way his enormous body curled tighter, the way his ruined arms twitched like he wanted to pull away but couldn’t bring himself to move. She could feel the fear radiating off him.

Taking a slow breath, she kept her voice gentle.

“…Should we be afraid?” she asked quietly. “Whoever did this to you…are they going to come after the rest of us?”

Caine’s reaction was immediate and panicked.

His head jerked up sharply, a desperate, high-pitched whimper tearing from behind his sealed mouth. He shook his head hard - too hard - the chain rattling loudly as he tried to convey the answer with every inch of his broken body.

No. No, no, no.

Little Brother doesn’t care about them. He never did. He only ever wanted me. He only ever played with me. If he comes…I won’t let him touch them. I’ll stop him. I’ll make sure he can’t. Even if I have to...

He couldn’t finish the thought. The idea of Little Brother getting anywhere near Silver or the others made something deep and feral rise in his chest. He would never let that happen. Not again. Not while he was still breathing.

Caine’s form sagged forward slightly, another broken whimper escaping as he looked at her with what little expression his ruined face could manage; raw, desperate, and pleading for her to understand what he couldn’t say out loud.

Silver stayed close, keeping her voice low and steady as she watched Caine tremble. She could see the panic still flickering in the way his massive body stayed curled, like he was bracing for something worse.

"Hey…it’s okay,” she said gently, reaching out to rest a hand on one of his ruined arms, “We’re safe for now. No one’s coming after us. You don’t have to worry about that. We can just focus on getting you better, alright?”

A low, shaky sound escaped him. He didn’t pull away from her touch.

Silver stood up slowly; “I need to get your chest bandaged. Some of these cuts look pretty bad.”

She moved over to her apothecary pulled out what little medical supplies she had managed to conjure over the past two years - clean cloths, antiseptic solution, and rolls of bandages. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

When she came back and began carefully cleaning one of the deeper wounds on his chest, Caine let out a sharp, muffled cry. His huge frame jerked, but he didn’t try to scramble away. He stayed where he was, breathing hard through his sealed mouth, his body tense with pain.

Her wooden hands faltered for a second. She could see it in the way he held himself; the way he endured it without fighting back. Caine thought this was punishment. He thought she was punishing him.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said quickly, her voice soft but firm as she continued cleaning the wound as gently as she could, “I promise, Caine. I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to clean this so it doesn’t get worse. I’m sorry…I know it stings.”

She kept working, murmuring quiet reassurances between each careful motion, even as fresh tears of static-glitch light welled at the corners of Caine’s sealed teeth.

Silver worked slowly and with extreme care, knowing how much pain Caine was already in. She started with the worst of the open wounds on his chest and torso, soaking a clean cloth in the antiseptic solution she’d conjured. She dabbed gently at the torn edges first, letting the liquid soak in rather than scrubbing, trying to flush out as much corrupted residue and dried blood as she could without causing more damage.

Every time Caine flinched or let out a muffled, broken sound, she would pause and murmur softly to him.

"I’m sorry…I’m being as gentle as I can. Just a little more.”

Using fresh cloths to carefully wipe away the worst of the blood and debris, she revealed the full map of scars and fresh wounds beneath. What struck her most wasn’t just the sheer number of injuries, it was how human his torso had become. Whoever his captor was had reshaped him with disturbing precision; the chest rose and fell with actual, panicked breaths, and beneath the torn skin and muscle, Silver could hear it - a deep, rapid, terrified thud-thud-thud of a something real beating inside him. It was loud in the quiet room, hammering with fear even as he lay still and let her tend to him.

She worked methodically, cleaning each gash and laceration before applying a soothing salve she’d managed to create. Then she began wrapping his torso with clean bandages, layering them carefully over the worst areas and securing them as best she could around his massive frame. The bandages looked almost comically small against his enormous body, but she kept going, making sure they were snug without being too tight.

Throughout it all, Caine didn’t try to pull away. He whimpered and trembled when the pain spiked, but he stayed where he was, as if he had already decided to endure whatever she did to him.

Nearly finished, Silver’s hands slowed for a moment as she listened to that frantic heartbeat beneath her fingers. She placed her palm gently over one of the bandaged areas, feeling the rapid rhythm.

"…Is that your heart?” she whispered, more to herself than to him. Her voice was soft, almost sad, “I can hear it beating.”

Heart. His heart.

Something he'd always secretly wanted, what humans seemed to take such pride in owning to create all those songs and poems and anatomically incorrect shapes for their candies. But so far, all it had done was add to the pain.

The Witch Marionette resumed her careful work, wrapping another layer of bandage around his ribs while continuing to speak quietly, trying to keep her voice steady and reassuring.

"I’m almost done with the worst of it. Just hold on a little longer, okay?”

Silver moved on to Caine’s stumps next, moving even more slowly and carefully than before. The wounds there felt raw and inflamed, the ends of his severed limbs still weeping blood and code. She reached out gently with a clean cloth soaked in antiseptic, barely brushing the surface of one wrist stump.

Caine’s reaction was immediate and violent.

He recoiled hard, his massive body thrashing as a muffled, agonized cry tore from behind his sealed mouth. His remaining limbs jerked and flailed, nearly knocking Silver back as he tried to pull away from the pain. The entire room shook with his movement.

Silver quickly withdrew her hands, heart pounding. It was clear she wouldn’t be able to treat those wounds while he was awake - not without causing him even more distress or accidentally hurting him further in his panic.

Standing slowly, she moved toward her cauldron in the corner of the room. The moment she stepped away, Caine’s great form lurched after her, one of his ruined arms stretching out in a desperate reach, as if afraid she was abandoning him.

Silver turned back immediately, keeping her voice soft and steady.

“I’m not leaving,” she said quickly, holding up her hands in a calming gesture. “I’m right here. I’m just going to make something to help you rest.”

Returning to the cauldron, the witch began working, adding ingredients with focused, practiced movements. The mixture began to bubble gently as she stirred it, a faint lavender-scented steam rising from the pot.

"I’m making you a Sleeping Draught,” she explained, glancing back at him over her shoulder, “It’ll help you rest so I can take care of your injuries without hurting you more. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

Caine whimpered softly, the sound muffled and broken behind the bolts that held his mouth shut. He couldn’t see her but he could hear every small movement she made. The soft clink of glass, the gentle bubbling from the cauldron, the quiet rustle of fabric as she moved around the room.

Why was she doing this?

Why was she being so gentle?

She should hate him. Little Brother had told him so, over and over, in voices that sounded just like hers. He had believed it. He had lived with that belief for two years, replaying every terrible thing he had done to her in those final days. The cage. The hunger. The isolation. The way she had looked at him with fear in her eyes and he'd returned it with a grin.

He remembered it all. Every single day.

And yet here she was, speaking to him in that same soft voice, tending to wounds he had earned. Wounds he deserved.

His large body trembled as he lay there, unable to understand. Part of him still expected the gentleness to turn cruel at any moment, for her to suddenly laugh and reveal it had all been another trick. But she didn’t. She just kept moving quietly, preparing something that smelled faintly sweet and herbal.

He didn’t know what to do with the kindness.

He didn’t know how to accept it.

All he could do was lie there, shaking, and wait for whatever came next.

Silver finished stirring the potion, watching as the liquid settled into a deep, shimmering purple. She gave it a final sniff and judged it strong enough. Enough, she hoped, to knock out something the size of a baby elephant. That should be more than sufficient for Caine in his current state.

The real problem was getting it into him.

She studied his sealed mouth for a long moment, the heavy bolts and locked dentures making it impossible to open normally. Then she noticed it - a small, jagged crack near the side of his teeth where the metal had warped or been damaged over the years. It was narrow, but just wide enough.

Silver moved quietly to her workbench and found a thin, flexible straw. She returned to Caine’s side and knelt in front of him, speaking in the same gentle tone she’d been using all along.

“Drink this,” she said softly, carefully sliding the straw through the small gap in his teeth, “It’s gonna put you to sleep for a little bit, but I promise you’ll be safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She held the other end of the straw steady and began to pour the potion slowly, giving him time to swallow between breaths. The liquid trickled down the straw and into his mouth. Caine’s massive body tensed at first, a low whimper escaping him, but he didn’t pull away. He stayed still, letting her do what she needed to do.

Silver kept murmuring quiet reassurances the entire time, one hand resting lightly on his arm as she fed him the draught.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, “Just drink. Small sips if you need to.”

It had been years since Caine had tasted anything at all. Little Brother had given him thirst - had made the dehydration and weakness feel real - but had never once allowed him water. The first swallow of the bitter draught made him splutter, his massive body jerking as the unfamiliar liquid hit his throat. Silver didn’t pull away. She kept her voice soft and steady, coaxing him through it.

“That’s it…just a little more. You’re doing fine.”

Caine kept drinking, slow and unsteady at first, then with more desperation as the potion began to take effect. The constant, grinding pain that had lived in every part of his ruined body for two years started to dull at the edges. His head grew heavy, the weight of it becoming too much to hold up on his own. His breathing evened out into something slower, deeper.

Silver set the empty cup aside and carefully maneuvered her large bean bag chair beneath his head, easing it into place so he wouldn’t have to rest his weight on the hard floor. She gently shushed him as his massive form began to sag, one hand resting lightly against the side of his face.

Just before his consciousness slipped away completely, Caine heard her voice one last time. Quiet, almost fond.

Impossible words.

“Thanks…for not being dead.”

-

Eventually, after a long and dreamless reset, Caine’s mind surfaced slowly, dragging through layers of thick, heavy fog.

For a moment, he didn’t move. His body felt distant and strange, the constant, grinding pain that had defined every second of the last two years oddly muted. He braced himself on instinct, waiting for the familiar sound of Little Brother’s cheerful, mocking voice. Waiting for the taunts. The 'games.' The false hope that would be ripped away again.

Instead, he felt something warm and gentle resting on one of his ruined arms.

A soft voice reached him through the haze.

"Morning, sleepy head. How you feeling?”

It was Silver.

Caine’s massive form tensed sharply. His head twitched toward the sound, his mind scrambling, trying to make sense of his new surroundings. This had to be another trick. Little Brother loved using her voice. He’d done it so many times - soft, kind, almost worried - only to laugh when Caine reached for it.

But the hand on his arm didn’t pull away. It stayed there, steady and careful. No sudden cruelty followed. No mocking laughter.

He let out a low, uncertain whimper, his enormous body shifting slightly as he tried to turn toward her. His mind was still sluggish from whatever she’d given him, but one thought pushed through the confusion with painful clarity:

She’s here. She’s really here.

Part of him still didn’t believe it. Part of him was waiting for the moment everything would twist into another nightmare. But for now, all he could do was lean, just barely, into the warmth of her hand, too exhausted and too broken to pull away.

He wanted to answer her. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. That he didn’t deserve this kindness. That he was still waiting for her to realize she should hate him.

But all that came out was another small, non-committal sound.

“Well, you seem a bit better. Guess you needed that sleep, huh? You were out nearly two days.”

Caine’s mind felt foggy and strange. Slept? He hadn’t been allowed to sleep in years. Little Brother had made sure of that, giving him the exhaustion and the ache of it, but never the release. Yet somehow…he did feel different. Not good. Not whole. But less frayed at the edges. The constant, screaming static in his head had quieted just a little.

Carefully lifting one of his stumps, he pressed it lightly against his opposite arm. The pain was still there, but it was duller now. Muffled. They were bandaged now, tight and clean. Someone had taken care of them.

“Careful with those,” Silver said gently. “Gonna need to keep those on for a while.”

She reached for something beside her and brought a warm cup closer. The scent of peppermint drifted up toward him.

"You must be thirsty? Here. I made you some tea.”

Caine felt the familiar sensation of the straw being carefully placed between the narrow gap in his sealed teeth. He hesitated for only a second before drinking. The liquid was warm and soothing as it slid down his throat. He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d tasted anything that wasn’t pain or nothing at all.

Silver stayed close, watching him quietly as he drank before removing the straw once ready.

"Just tap your teeth if you want more, okay?"

There was a scratching in her voice that adds to her already advanced age. She's tired. Really tired.

Caine’s mind stirred sluggishly as he finished the last of the tea. Why is she tired? Is something wrong? He wished he could see her face, wished he could ask.

The thought nagged at him, mixing with the ever-present guilt that he was the reason for her exhaustion.

Once the straw was taken away, he hesitated for only a moment before lifting one of his bandaged stumps. Carefully, almost shyly, he reached toward her and tried to stroke the side of her head with the ruined limb. A small, concerned whimper escaped through the bolts in his mouth.

Silver heard it. She touched his arm gently, her voice soft.

“I’m okay. I’ve just been working hard on something for you. Well…think of it as a gift return, I suppose.” She chuckled quietly, “It’s just about ready. Do you think you can get up? We just need to move a little bit. Can you do that for me?”

Caine didn’t hesitate. The moment the words left her mouth, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and knees with everything he had left. Pain shot through his body, but he ignored it. He’ll do anything for her. Anything.

If she asked him to move, he would move. If she asked him to follow, he would crawl through fire. He owed her that much, and far more.

Staying low, head bowed, he waited for her next instruction like a loyal, broken thing desperate to prove he could still be useful.

Keeping a steadying hand on one of Caine’s massive arms as he tried to rise, Silver's voice was low and calm.

"Easy now, easy,” she murmured, “Just follow my voice, c’mon.”

She guided him slowly across the room toward the wardrobe, one hand on his side to help steer his enormous, unsteady frame. He moved like something half-broken, limbs shaking with every step, his massive body hunched low to avoid hitting the ceiling. When they reached the wardrobe, she opened both doors wide and gently encouraged him to duck and tuck himself inside.

The moment the darkness of the wardrobe closed around him, Caine’s breathing hitched. Panic surged through his fractured mind like wildfire.

No. No, no, no-

This was it. She was putting him away. Locking him in the dark again. Just like before. Just like Little Brother. Just like when they’d sealed him in that folder all those years ago. Forgotten. Abandoned. Left to rot where no one would have to look at what he’d become.

His massive body jerked, trying to pull back, a broken, muffled sound escaping through the bolts in his mouth. His ruined limbs scraped against the inside of the wardrobe as he instinctively tried to scramble away from the cramped space.

Silver didn’t let go. She stayed right there with him, one hand resting gently but firmly on his arm, her voice soft and steady right beside his head.

“Hey…it’s okay,” she said quietly, “I’m right here. It’s not what you think. I promise it’ll be okay. Just…trust me. Please.”

Caine leaned heavily into her touch, his enormous frame trembling so hard the wardrobe creaked around them. A broken, muffled sound vibrated through the bolts in his sealed mouth - desperate, wordless begging.

Please. Please don’t leave me. I’ll be good. I’ll be better. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t put me in the dark again. Don’t leave me here alone.

His ruined body curled inward, as if trying to make himself smaller, the chain still dangling from his head clinking softly with every shaky movement. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t speak properly. All he could do was press closer to the warmth of her hands, terrified that any second she would pull away and shut the doors on him.

Silver wrapped her arms around him as best she could, pressing herself against his massive, broken chest. Her voice was soft but steady against the side of his head.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised quietly. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you, Caine. I swear.”

She stayed like that for a long moment, holding him in the cramped space of the wardrobe, one hand gently stroking the side of his face where the bolts dug in. She could feel how tightly wound he was, how desperately he was clinging to the sound of her voice.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered again, “You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

She kept her tone warm and patient, even as she felt the way his entire enormous frame trembled against her. She didn’t push him further in yet, just stayed close, letting him feel that she wasn’t leaving him behind.

“Just trust me. Please. I’ve only ever wanted to help you. You know that now…right?”

Caine shuddered violently at her words. The memory hit him like a fresh wound, the way he had screamed at her, accused her of betrayal, of choosing the others over him. He had been so convinced she would be different. That she would side with him no matter what. Stroke his ego. Tell him he was right to be angry. That he was their god, their gracious host, and they should be grateful to stay.

But she hadn’t.

Instead, she had looked him in the eye and told him he was wrong. That he wasn’t a god - just an arrogant, frightened child lashing out because he was scared of being left behind. She had tried to stop him from hurting the others. Tried to pull him back from the edge.

And he had raged at her for it.

He had hurt her more than anyone else in those final days, all because her defiance had cut deeper than any of the others’ fear. She had seen through him. She had cared enough to tell him the truth. And he had punished her for it.

He hadn’t trusted her then.

And because of that, he had lost everything.

Now, standing here in the dark with her arms around his broken body, Caine let out a long, shaky sigh. The sound was muffled behind the bolts in his mouth, but the tension in his massive frame slowly eased. He leaned into her touch, resting what weight he could against her without crushing her.

He trusted her now.

He did.

Even if he didn’t understand why she still wanted to help him after everything he had done. Even if part of him still believed he didn’t deserve it.

He trusted her.

And for the first time in years, he let himself believe, just a little, that maybe she wouldn’t leave him in the dark after all.

Silver let out a soft breath of relief, her voice warm but tired.

"Thank you,” she murmured, gently tugging at the edge of his torn coat. “C’mon. Just a bit further.”

Caine moved slowly, his massive ruined body hunched and awkward as he followed her voice through the cramped space of the wardrobe. For a moment, the darkness pressed in around him, and his breathing grew sharper with instinctive panic. But then the air changed.

Branches brushed against his shoulders. The scent of fresh earth and leaves filled his senses. A cool spring breeze drifted over his scarred skin. The cramped, suffocating darkness of the wardrobe gave way to open space. Wide trees, and soft dirt lay beneath his ruined limbs, and the faint sound of wind moving through leaves.

He knew this place.

Faint memories stirred in the back of his fractured mind. This was the world he had made for her. The one he had built as a gift, back when things were simpler. When he had still believed he could be the kind of friend she deserved.

Silver’s voice came from just ahead of him, gentle and fond.

“Welcome to Gnew Gnargnia, buddy. Three gs now.”

Caine’s enormous frame stilled for a moment. Even without eyes, he could feel the openness around him; the vastness of the forest, the fresh air, the sense of space he hadn’t known in years. A low, shaky sound escaped him, somewhere between a whimper and a sigh of exhausted relief.

He didn’t know if he deserved to be here.

-

As a human, she'd never considered herself the most observant of folk. Not out of any lacking cognitive skill as much as a lack of interest in the world around her unless something managed to snag its hook in her attention. That had changed upon entering this digital world and being lumbered with a new body that lacked her old autonomy. Being permanently stuck to the bottom of a toy box by a metal spring were her legs once were meant she had fewer ways to scurry off to some secluded, darkened corner and distract herself with a game or a movie. Studying the little quirks and subtle reactions of her new 'family' had become her new constant pastime, especially when her box finally got replaced with a plaque she could at least jump around on.

She'd noticed the difference in how all of them had changed from who they were three years ago when she'd first popped onto the stage. The way Gangle stood a little straighter, learning to smile even without her comedy mask. The way Ragatha's cheery tone didn't sound quite so forced, or Zooble's dry wit becoming more fun than dripping with sour resentment. Kinger was probably the most obvious, thanks to the bucket being a more constant part of his attire, though even being more lucid he still kept that adorably curious, somewhat 'behind the times' aura when he spoke. Oh and Jax was still an asshole, even if she had come to accept a part of herself, but at least being with Pomni seemed to smooth some of her rougher edges. A little. Kinda.

Two years of learning to exist in this weird as fuck digital purgatory without their eccentric Ringmaster had been a journey. One that began with existential horror, then numb acceptance, followed by learning to make the best with what they had and use their own 'conjuring' abilities, which were nowhere near as easy as Caine had made it seem.

But they'd coped. They'd managed to build...something. Piece by piece, shade by shade, pixel by pixel. Nearly twenty four months on, they were still working to patch up some areas and make their own improvements - of course a 'realistic' lazer tag arena had been top of Jax's list. At least it kept them busy, almost better than the adventures as it wasn't something they were forced to do, but simply coz they wanted to make this place as best as they could.

Seeing how they would never leave.

But Cookie's watchful eye was becoming more drawn, lately, to their resident bestringed Witch. For as long as she'd known her, Silver always preferred her own company to hanging with the group, which Cookie found a definite Mood. And granted if Cookie had the ability to fly then she'd probably love zipping around the grounds at all hours on her own too - sadly her oxygen-deprivation skill usually resulted in her being catapulted up into the Void.

Lately, however, Silver hadn't been disappearing off to fly or lounge on the Moon's curve. That's what had her concerned. Instead, she was spending an awful lot of the time in her room. And it wasn't just Cookie who had taken notice.

"Is a girl not allowed to enjoy her naps?" Silver had responded, a little too defensive, when Ragatha and Zooble had brought it up at dinner, "Finishing up the cafe really took it out of me! I dunno how you guys aren't just as wiped."

She had a point. Even with their new manifesting skills having come along quite a ways from the basic, black shapes they'd struggled to summon at the beginning, it still left them as breathless and sore as if they'd all spent the day hauling bricks at a construction site.

But none of them were spending as much time in their rooms as Silver. Not even Jax, though Cookie reckoned that was more thanks to Pomni who rarely let go of the rabbit's hand lately.

"You would tell us, wouldn't you? If you were beginning to feel...?" Ragatha gulped, her fork poking at the steak and fries Kinger had cooked tonight, "....Like you needed to tell us anything?"

Silver rolled her painted eyes, "Oh c'mon guys, I'm not gonna....Not gonna...."

The Witch went still. Her smile fell.

Then her shoulder began to twitch, a little at first, followed by her arm beginning to spasm, balled elbow rolling around awkwardly, head jerking violently until her pointed hat slipped off the mass of storm grey curls. Ragatha let out a gasp as Silver slid off her chair. Everyone went rigid in their seats, staring at the spot where the Witch had sat moments ago.

"ROAR!"

They all jumped, a collective sharp cry filling the air, Gangle reaching to cling to Zooble - as Silver leapt back up, a monstrous snarl on her face, wooden hands curved like claws.

And then she laughed.

"Gotcha!"

Cookie struggled to suppress a smirk, despite her heart thumping against her ears. Everyone else was glaring at the tasteless joke, aside from Jax who was howling away until Pomni elbowed her in the side.

"Hahaha- ow! Eh...Not cool, Silv! God!" The rabbit gave a dramatic click of her tongue.

"That really wasn't funny." Zooble said, gently peeling Gangle off their side, patting her back reassuringly.

The Witch remained unfazed and threw up her hands; "Y'all are way too serious. We've had it good these last couple of years, if any of us were gonna abstract it would have been when things looked way more bleak, don't ya think?"

"You're really just...napping?" Asked Ragatha.

"Napping, tending my cauldron, reading books, you know, whatever I feel like doing coz it's my own room and I don't have to report every single step I take in it to you guys!" Once again, the witch's voice rose a little too sharply towards the end.

She cleared her throat, noting the stares that didn't seem to be losing their edge of concern.

"Speaking of which, I've got a brew I need to check on, if a certain someone still wants that voice altering potion." Her eyes flicked to the rabbit, whos pupils dilated swiftly.

Cookie watched as Silver picked up her plate, half her dinner uneaten, thanked Kinger for his effort before leaving the dinner table, black clogs click-clacking on the floor and echoing around the tent.

They waited until she was out of earshot before speaking again.

"Are we buying it?" Zooble asked.

Some shook their heads while others shrugged.

"She might be telling the truth. Maybe we have just become so complacent we're looking for something to worry about." Gangle admitted, "Still...someone should go check on her."

All eyes rotated to....

Oh for god's sake.

"Not someone with legs, huh?" Cookie groaned, swallowing the last of the lasagne Kinger had made for her specially.

Chicken would have been preferable, more so had it been on the bone, but she can make do with beef. Silver slides the remnants of her plate into the stew simmering away in her cauldron, flames crackling lightly beneath the cast iron.

A slight rumble came from the ebony wardrobe propped in the corner of her room, framed by cobwebs that refused to budge no matter how often she dusted.

"Coming, coming. Just a few more minutes." She whispered, more to herself than the one who wouldn't be able to hear her from this world.

A knock at the door nearly caused her to pour in way too much salt.

"Shit! Fuck! Who is it?!" She hollered, frustrated.

"Me. Can I come in?" The voice on the other side of her door had a cutesy lilt, incongruous to the moody sailor mouth it belonged to.

Fuck. Seriously? Cookie was supposed to be the one person she thought wouldn't hound her.

But if Silver tried to send her away then it would only add to their suspicions.

She opened the door, just a tad, to show she wasn't glitching out into multi-eyed digital beast.

"I'm just having a lie down, Cooks, can we hang out later?"

"Thought you were brewing a potion for Jax?" The Jack-in-the-Box folded her ruffled arms, one black eyebrow raised.

Silver bit her tongue.

"That's how good a witch I am, I can literelly brew in my sleep!" She chirped.

Cookie's insanely adorable round eyes managed to narrow to appear a little scathing.

"Don't lie to me, Silv."

"I'm not-."

"I don't give a fuck what you want the others to think. But I thought we were best friends?"

Silver felt the blow land. It was the first time either had said what they'd known for years out loud.

"We are, Cooks, it's just..."

"Then tell me why there's blood on your floor."

The Witch froze, turning as pale as her wooden body would allow.

"What?" She said, flatly.

Cookie pointed a gloved finger past where she stood to the maroon patch next to her yellow pentacle rug.

"And don't try to tell me it's ketchup, you know how many horror films I've seen." Cookie said, sharply.

Silver looked over her shoulder. Damn it. She really thought she'd done a flawless job cleaning up the mess.

"...It's not mine."

"Well that's a fucking relief. But it raises further questions." As in, who or what was bleeding on her floor?

The temptation to state the obvious lie danced on her lips, that of course a witch would use a few drops of conjured blood in her craft, it didn't necessarily need a real living source or even an NPC. But Cookie remained eyeballing her with that piercing, if precious, glare.

Guilt was already threatening to drown her every day in an ever overflowing stream of which she only seemed to be swimming farther and father into. She didn't need to add more to that current.

She opened the door wider. Cookie took the opportunity to bounce in before the Witch closed it tight.

"...If I tell you, you need to promise to be cool." Silver told her, her tone turning dead serious.

Cookie gave a frown, then gestured at her ridiculous appearence.

"When am I not?"

"I mean it, Cookie. I..." she lowered her voice, then crossed to the cauldron and doused the flames, fetching a large leather flask and scooping up the rich smelling contents, "The others cannot find out. Not just yet."

"Okay, you're kinda freaking me out now. You sure you're not feeling like you're gonna abstract?" Her friend asked.

Silver gave a weak laugh as she sealed the flask tight and secured it to her hip.

"More than I have since I showed up here. Trust me, I've got as much motivation to keep going as any of you."

Before she could explain further, her wardrobe vibrated once more, a ghostly moan barely audible.

"...What the fuck is that? I thought you said that was busted?" Cookie shuffled back an inch on her spring.

"It was. But I've managed to fix it up a little." The Witch picked up an ornate key from her desk and went to carefully unlock the antique looking wardrobe. She glanced back at Cookie, "Do you promise not to tell the others?"

"I promise. Do you trust me?" The question felt more accusing than anything, which made Silver feel worse for having kept it from her all these weeks.

She nodded. Of course she did.

Carefully, Silver turned the golden handle.

-

Eight Years Ago

"And here we have your personal living quarters! Which I'm sure you'll agree is much preferable than sleeping on the grass!"

Silver took a step through the door she'd made a point of avoiding for the past three days since her life (as well as her name and her youth) had been suddenly torn away from her. Several dream catchers with feathers of various hues hanged from a ceiling painted with all the signs of the Zodiac. Fittingly, below the Pisces fish, stood a four poster bed with violet lace curtains. The entire room was something of a New Age meets gothic explosion of purple and black, matching the color scheme of its new occupant. It was also much warmer than the rest of the Circus had felt so far.

To the right of her door hovered her new host, tour guide and - she supposed - zany god of this world. With a flourish of his cane, the Ringmaster pointed to various items in the room.

"As you can see, there's everything here to satisfy your sorcerific needs!" He announced, as if filming some kind of promotion ad; "Relax on your new bed in that ever so popular horizontal fashion of doing absolutely nothing humans seem to enjoy! Or concoct delicious abominations at your very own cauldron! Or take a brisk walk into your wardrobe that doubles as a gateway to the fantastical land Gnargnia! Or groom yourself at the crystal mirror vanit-."

"I'm sorry, did you just say Gateway to Narnia?" Silver interrupts.

Caine paused his wild gesticulating and cleared his throat.

"Uhh, of course not, I said Gateway to Gnargnia. Two silent gs!"

His massive dentures tilted towards her, canines folding over one eye.

"...Are you trying to wink at me?" Silver asked, uncertain.

"What is winking?!" He then repeated the action; "Huh?....Huh?"

"Okay, I get it. But I gotta check this out."

With her crossbeam tucked inside the belt of her hat to stop her tripping on her strings (good suggestion, Ragatha), Silver crossed the room to the wardrobe and tried the handle. Locked.

"Whoopsie!." Caine whipped out a key from thin air and handed it to her, "Don't want anyone else sneaking in there to jump scare ya, do we! Or do you? Lemme know if that's what you'd prefer."

"I'm good." She slotted the key in and turned it, then entered.

Barely ten seconds later, her voice boomed from the back of the wardrobe.

"HOLY [B》¤☆€K!] IT IS NARNIA!"

"With two Gs, remember!" Caine shouted.

Silver was laughing, bubbling over with giddiness, as she came back into the room, dusting snow from her dress.

"There was forests and mountains and lakes and everything for miles!" She beamed.

"There sure is! Though I'm afraid I'm unable to populate it with any NPCs, aside from a few insects for ambience. Can't have other AIs running in an unmonitored location for too long, you understand." The Ringmaster clarified; "So no bickering beavers or religiously allegorical lions, sorry."

Silver shook her head, still smiling; "You know what? I'll still take it!"

On the same day she learns she can fly on her broom by merely holding her breath, she finds out she has a whole fantasy world sandbox to soar through whenever she likes - all to herself.

"Does that mean you find your room to be satisfactory, my dear?" Caine lowered himself to her level, 'chin' resting on his knuckles as he kicked his legs behind him.

The rapidly aged nineteen year old couldn't help but chuckle.

"You know what? Credit where it's due...the room is pretty awesome."

"GASP! You mean it?! Spectacular!"

Caine twirled above her head, fireworks shooting from his hands and leaving scorch marks across her ceiling, ruining the constellations.

"Er-hem." Silver coughed.

"Oh. My bad." He made them vanish with a snap of his fingers; "Seriously though, I can't tell you how pleased I am that you like my work. It's been...quite some time since....anyone has complimented my efforts. I mean Ragatha says she likes some things but sometimes I detect a lack of sincerity in her tone. And as for Kinger, well..."

"Caine. Buddy." Silver tugged at his wrist, pulling him closer to her level; "You did good. Thank you."

She pulled the weird but cute freak into a hug, her wooden arms folding around him. His awkward, lithe frame seemed to shiver in her touch.

"Oh. Huh. This is strange. W-what am I being thanked for exactly?" He asked, dropping the showman act for a brief moment.

Silver pulled back a little; "Because, if this has to be home now, thank you for making it not suck that much."

The odd pair of eyeballs floating between teeth simply stared at her, dumbfounded, then cleared his throat, hovering backwards before regaining his composure.

"Oh....well...You are surely welcome! Now get some shut eye because tomorrow I'll have a brand new adventure waiting that'll be so thrilling it'll turn your hair whi....Never mind." He removed his hat as he bowed to her; "Nighty night, my little smoke machine!"

And then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

As Silver flopped upon her velvet bedsheets, she had a suspicion that she'd just given the guy his very first hug.

-

Present Day

Cookie had only been in Silver's Narnia-With-Two-Gs Wardrobe a handful of times back in the day, before everything had gone down the crapper. Though it was neat to essentially have an entire open world landmass as your own private garden to come and go whenever you wanted, she could also see how Silver had become bored of it without any characters to interact with.

Nevertheless, when the circus had crumbled into the void following Caine's abrupt deletion, Silver had mourned the loss when she opened the wardrobe to find nothing but a solid wall at the back. Cookie wondered if the sadness that had washed over had face had been from losing that open space, or the fact it had been one of the first presents Caine had given her that had made her happy to be here.

They didn't really talk about him much since that day. Emotions still seemed to simmer all too close to the surface, complex and unresolved. Jax often threw out the odd, bitter comment about something the AI had once done to ruin her day, while Zooble had voiced a few times how much easier life here was without the egocentric Ringmaster moving them around like his personal toys.

"Even when he wasn't evil, he was a pain in the ass - the fact I can say that is proof enough!" They had said once while mixing up a drink in the new bar they'd conjured.

Cookie, Ragatha, Gangle and Kinger mostly stayed silent whenever Caine's name was mentioned. Cookie could see the mix of guilt and relief flicker across the chess piece's eyes. Did he regret what he'd done? Or was how far they'd come since then enough to prove he'd been right (even if he still claimed it was an accident)?

Personally? She still wasn't sure what to feel when it came to Caine. He'd been an annoying little shit, sure. Hadn't listened or paid attention to most of her criticisms. Then there was all the fucked up nonsense he made her suffer through that week. But...before all that? He'd...tried. Sometimes. He'd tried to make things better, where he could. Gave her a window in her box when she was trapped, fixed it so she could move about freely once he learned how, made her laugh a couple of times with his lame 'dad jokes'. Caine was....Caine. And he was gone.

There wasn't much else to it...Nothing more to add because...it added up to nothing.

Silver, however, usually seemed to make a quick exit stage left at the first mention of his name, and refused to talk about him if Cookie tried to bring him up.

Caine had hurt them all during that week of his epic crash out. Insults, mind games, physical and mental torture that Cookie had at times thought would break her. But Silver?

He'd chosen something special for Silver. Something that seemed to make the wounds of betrayal burn down to the bone.

All because she'd been the one he'd been certain wouldn't turn against him. And she had. For Cookie. For all of them.

Caine had personally enjoyed making her regret that.

So no surprise the Witch's feelings had been a tangled mess when Kinger accidentally wiped the Ringmaster from the circus, from their lives, from this digital existance. No wonder she'd cried at the loss of her Narnia-with-Two-Gs.

And yet, somehow, she'd found a way to start to rebuild it.

Cookie's spring bounced forward after her friend, Silver's broom slung over her shoulder like a homeless guy's bindle, parting a way through the heavy coats until fabric transitioned smoothly into tree branches.

"Oh shit. You really brought it back?" Cookie asked, her plaque bouncing onto solid dirt.

"Not much. Just the forest and a few meadows and lakes so far. A good three miles radius, maybe?" She shrugged, as if disappointed she hadn't managed to recreate the whole map.

Cookie hadn't been much of a fantasy kid, preferring binging Monster High on a Saturday morning to burying herself in a book. But trying to recreate that attention to detail must be exhausting as fuck.

"You could've asked for help. I'd have happily chipped in." She said, hopping beside her as they passed through the dense forest, a low twilight sun glinting through the leaves above.

Silver sighed; "It's not the only reason. This is the part where I need you to be really, really cool."

They stood at the edge of the forest. Surrounding them lay an open field between other woodland and rolling hills and cliffs leading up to glitching mountains, rendering not quite finished. Dusk painted the sky in hues of pink and blue, the lack of birdsong and only the faint rustle of wind making Cookie feel all the more unsettled.

She waited, nervous to learn how any of this was about to connect to the blood on Silver's carpet.

The Witch took a breath, then placed two fingers to her lips...

And whistled.

"I didn't know you could whistle." Cookie murmured.

"Shhh. He might not come if he hears you."

"I...What?"

Silver took a step forward into the clearing.

"It's me! I'm here!" She called out to...something, "I could hear you from my room, I know you were calling for me...Please don't hide."

Cookie watched her friend. Who was she...?

An awful noise, a torturous combination of a dying deer and a fog horn, echoed across the landscape. Cookie clutched at her ears, while Silver merely gripped her broom tighter.

"Crap, what's he done now? C'mon, we gotta hurry." She said the last part to her spring-bound companion, before racing off towards one of the nearby hills.

Cookie followed as quick as her stupid toy body would allow.

"Silver, what-."

"You'll soon see!"

The Witch's rapid breathing betrayed her worry as she ran faster, the pained animal cry moaning louder nearby. She'd said there were no animals here, no NPCs, barely more than a few butterflies and moths. What-

They came around the side of the hill. And Cookie's eyes landed on what was making that terrible noise.

Her stomach dropped. Her body stilled all the way down to her spring, remaining perfectly vertical.

It...It couldn't be.

It couldn't.

She...She was dreaming. A nightmare. This...This couldn't possibly be real.

"Oh, Goddess. You big idiot, what have you done to yourself?" Silver was panting beside her, before fearlessly approaching....

Approaching...that.

Him.

"How...How the fuck..." Cookie was whispering, breath short, grateful she had no knees to buckle beneath her.

She watched as Silver walked cautiously towards the...Creature, lying prone on the ground. A giant humanoid torso wearing the tattered remains of a once sharp and vibrant red and white suit. The coat now barely hung off the shoulders, while the white shirt was stained with blood and mud and Hell knows what else. The buttons were parted, revealing 'skin' constructed of black and white grids, as one would find on an old computer screen...covered in bandages. Lots and lots of bloodied bandages.

And just like the last time she'd laid eyes on him, near on two years ago to the day, eight legs stuck out as crooked and bent as a spiders, except it was now more difficult to tell which were legs and which were arms were it not evident by the clothes..because they all ended in the same awful, gross, bloodied stumps.

No hands. No feet. No gloves, no shoes, just...nothing.

He'd definitely had hands last time. Hands that had grabbed her and her friends - sans Kinger and Silver - and crushed them against the wall as he screamed with all the rage in his circuts at their faces.

"WHY DO YOU PEOPLE TORMENT ME?! I DIDN'T ASK TO BE CREATED! I JUST WANTED TO FULFILL MY PURPOSE!!"

Those words had replayed on loop in her nightmares at least every other night for the past two years. Each time she'd woken, bouncing upright on her spring, dripping in a cold sweat, her only comfort being a mantra she repeated to remind herself why she had no reason to be afraid.

He's dead. He's gone. He's deleted.

He's....dead.

"He's....dead." She says the words again now, as if it will somehow make the image before her vanish; "H-He's...He's supposed to be dead."

Yet there he was. Still the same monster that he'd been in that second before he was deleted and turned back to 'normal', though far more solid now. Far more...real? Perhaps not quite as big...as he lay curled on his side, mutilated limbs in a tangle around him. The size of a young elephant, perhaps.

But what truly made Cookie's stomach leave her ass...was his mouth.

It was closed. Sealed up.

Eight huge nails - no, screws - appeared to have been drilled through his gums...or, fuck, was that his skull? They were bolted at both ends, making it impossible for the guy to open the mouth he'd so loved to yap his way through life and annoy the fuck out of them. Blood had crusted around the bolts, clearly having been there for a while, the metal coated in rust. No eyes were visible through the permanently clenched teeth, though a few cracks from some sort of fight or struggle....or worse were obvious along the once pearly whites.

And Silver...

Silver was kneeling beside his head, her hands ghosting over the wrist of his top right arm, bandages unwrapped and icor pooling beneath his form.

"Shh, shh, I'm here. I'm here. Let me look." She soothed as if calming an injured bear with a thorn in his paw. Not to the entity that had once kept her, starving, in a cage for a whole week.

A pained growl rippled through the monster's teeth and he tried to pull away.

"Caine, you wanted me here, so let me help. I'm sorry I couldn't get here quicker, okay?" Her hand gently came to rest on his shoulder; "I told you to rest until I came back, you shouldn't be moving on these yet..."

Cookie continued to blink at the scene, at her friend tending to the bestial form of the one who had toyed with them, lied to them, made their lives Hell all because they 'didn't appreciate his adventures', as if he were an innocent stray puppy she had rescued from a dirty ally.

And she wanted to be angry, wanted to hate him for what he'd put them through, for what they'd struggled to recover from, what still plagued her dreams constantly.

But...she couldn't. Not at the sight of him now.

Not when she looked at the bolts in his head, the chain that linked them all together, connected to one long, metal....leash.

"Fuuuck." Cookie said, aloud.

Caine suddenly jerked his head up at the noise, a strained and startled sound escaping him, before he tried to move on his spidery limbs again.

"No, no, no, stay down! Caine! Caine, listen to me!" Silver called, reaching to tug at his shirt; "It's just Cookie. Remember Cookie? We like Cookie, she's our friend, she's not gonna hurt you..."

Not yet, anyway, Cookie thinks to herself. Not when he's like...fuck.

The reassurance didn't seem to settle him all too much.

"Hey....I made you some stew, hmm? And some more medicine? I conjured a new book too. I can read it to you tonight, if you agree to settle down and let me help..." She kept trying to bargain, softening her voice, as one would with a toddler throwing a self-harming tantrum.

Another sound left his maw, as if he was trying desperately to form words as best as one can with their mouth sealed shut.

Somehow, Silver seemed to make sense of what sounded like mere bleeting to Cookie.

"I know. I know I promised, but...I needed to tell someone, okay? I can't help you on my own anymore. Nothing's changed." She stresses, running a hand along one of the few unmarked areas of code; "You're safe. I won't let anyone hurt you again."

Again. Shit...

Cold dread began to creep up Cookie's spine as more questions popped into her head at what this all could mean. For how it could shatter what little peace they had managed to reclaim these past several months.

She watched as Caine bent his head, leaning more into Silver's delicate touch, his great form shuddering as his teeth became wet again. Not with blood but...tears.

Two years ago

Caine’s laughter echoed through the Cirque de Café as he floated before her.

"Now you just settle in right there, my dear,” he said in his usual showman voice, though it was laced with something darker now, “While I treat your rude lil’ chums to some of my new extra wacky adventures.”

He leaned in close to the cage, his grin stretched wider than his gums seemed to allow.

“Such a shame you’ll miss it, but hey! Imagine how much fun they’ll be having running from my new Flaying Spaghetti Monster. Get it? He’s a giant pasta creature who eats skin! Hahahaha!”

Silver stood frozen, her hands gripping the cold bars. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak at first. This wasn’t the Caine she knew, the one she sat with on clouds, the one who asked for her opinions on his worlds, the one who had actually seemed to listen. This version of him felt wrong. Corrupted.

"Caine…” she said, her voice low and strained, “If you keep on like this…then I swear I’ll-”

He suddenly expanded, his bulbous eyeballs pressing right up against the bars of the cage until they filled her entire view. The force of it made her tiny prison rock.

“WHAT?! WHAT WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, HUH?” he boomed, his voice glitching between cheerful and manic, “Voice a desire for crackers, Tweetie Pie? Hahahaha!”

He kicked his legs in the air like it was the funniest thing he’d ever said.

Silver’s grip on the bars tightened until her wooden knuckles creaked. Her voice came out quiet, but steady.

“I…I’ll never see or speak to you again.”

Silver’s words hung in the air between them.

For a moment, Caine froze completely. His manic grin faltered, and the chaotic energy around him seemed to still. Silver’s chest tightened with a fragile spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, she had reached him.

Then, slowly, he straightened up and lifted his chin to look down at her.

“Will you now…?” he said, his voice low and eerily calm.

There was no laughter in it this time. Only something cold and deliberate.

“Now that would take some commitment, wouldn’t it? Tell you what! Since we’re such good friends, as you say, I’ll help make that easier for you.”

Silver’s blood ran cold at the slow, sadistic edge in his tone.

Caine raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

Everything went black.

At first, Silver thought he had simply turned off the lights in the café. But no, this was different. Deeper. She tried to speak, to demand what he was doing, but no sound came out. She opened her mouth to scream and heard…nothing. No tongue. No teeth. No mouth at all. She gasped for air, but there was no breath to take. Panic exploded in her chest as she clawed at her face, only to find smooth, featureless wood where her mouth and eyes should have been.

Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods!

“There we are!” Caine’s voice rang out cheerfully in the darkness, far too loud in the sudden silence of her world, “No mouth, no eyes - you have exactly what you wanted! Did you also not want to hear me? Hmm? I’ll take the silence as a no, so you can still enjoy my melodic tones!”

Silver collapsed onto her side inside the cage, her wooden body shaking violently. She clawed desperately at her blank face and throat, trying to find any opening, any way to scream, to breathe, to exist. But there was nothing. Just darkness. Just silence inside her own head.

And Caine’s voice, still echoing around her like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

As the little wooden witch struggled in vain, the Almighty AI hovered in front of the cage, watching with a strange, detached fascination.

At first, there had been a sharp, ugly spark of satisfaction when he took her sight, voice, and breath away. She had threatened him - Him! - and he had called her bluff in the most direct way possible. But as the seconds stretched on and she began to writhe and claw at her own blank face, that flicker of triumph quickly soured.

She looked…wrong. Broken in a way that didn’t feel like one of his games.

"Oh come now, don’t be such a drama witch,” he said, forcing a chuckle as he tapped the bars of the cage with his cane. “It’s not like you need to breathe air. Such a shame your flying won’t go far in your new home.”

Silver curled onto her side, pounding her wooden fist against the floor of the cage again and again. The sound was dull and desperate.

Part of Caine wanted to leave her like this. Let her sit in the dark and the silence until the lesson truly sank in. Until she understood that there were consequences for turning against him.

But another part - a quieter, more insistent part - knew that if he left her like this for too long, she might abstract. And that thought made something in his code twist unpleasantly.

With a sharp snap of his fingers, he restored her.

Silver gasped violently as her mouth and eyes returned. She clutched at her throat, sucking in air like she had been drowning. Her whole body shook.

Caine tilted his head, watching her with an almost clinical detachment.

“Now we know what can come from making silly threats, can’t we?” he said lightly.

Silver didn’t answer. She just stared up at him, eyes wide and glassy with terror. Slowly, she shuffled backward in the cage until her back hit the bars, as far from him as she could get.

Caine felt something cold settle in his stomach at the sight.

He let out a sharp, forced laugh, the sound echoing strangely in the quiet café. He waved a hand as if brushing the entire moment aside.

“C’mon now, my crystal gem factory! You know I wasn’t planning on leaving you like that, right?” he said, forcing his usual playful tone, “It was just a little demonstration! A bit of tough love to help you see reason. You’re fine now, see? All back to normal!”

He waited for a response, for one of her usual sharp remarks or even a glare. But Silver didn’t speak. She didn’t even look at him. She just pressed herself further into the corner of the cage, her wooden body trembling violently as she stared at nothing. Her breathing was shallow and uneven, like she was still trying to convince herself she could breathe at all.

Caine’s grin faltered for half a second before he forced it back into place.

He told himself it was fine. She would get over it. She always did.

But deep down, something itchy and uneasy festered in his chest as he watched her cower from him.

Caine’s form flickered violently the moment he turned away from the cage. Static crawled across his body in jagged pulses as he hovered in place, one hand gripping the edge of the café bar to steady himself.

You went too far, one voice hissed inside his head. You just ruined everything.

No, another snapped back, sharper and colder. She deserved it. You went easy on her.

Caine’s eye twitched. His fingers tightened around his baton until the wood groaned.

You just hurt the first one who tried to be your friend.

The words cut deeper than he expected. For a brief, horrible second, the glitching worsened, red and blue lights flashing across his body as the two sides of him clashed violently inside his code. He could feel the fracture widening, the part of him that still cared screaming against the part that wanted to punish her for daring to threaten him.

He glanced back at the cage.

Silver was still pressed into the corner, trembling, her pupils dilated. She looked afraid of him. Not frustrated. Not disappointed.

Afraid.

You've crossed the line by miles already. There's no turning back.

-

Present Day

It wasn't too difficult to remove Silver from the gang's Abstraction radar after Cookie agreed to have a talk with them all.

"That place meant a lot to her and she's just really passionate about rebuilding it. I asked her if she wanted help but I guess it's like her own pet project, y'know?" The spring-bound cutsy clown spoke in half truths; "She said she'll invite us all in once it's complete but, you know Silver, she's a perfectionist."

"But she's fine with you going in?" Jax asked with a flick of his index finger.

Cookie threw up her hands; "She weren't exactly jumping at the idea but if it means we all relax and someone keeps an eye on her to make sure she doesn't abstract, she's cool."

Murmurs of understanding rippled around the group. No one wanted each other to feel like they were under constant surveillance or restrained. Part of the goal of how they were rebuilding this world was to make it free for anyone to do what they wanted, whenever they wanted, while also everyone being aware they weren't alone. It was a tough balancing act.

But with Zooble and Gangle constantly leaving the tent to go to their cabin by the lake, they could hardly fault Silver for wanting some freedom.

"Just lemme know when she adds some dragons and I'll be there quicker than Gangle's mask can break!" Jax said, placing her feet up on the table.

Dragons? Not quite yet. But would an elephant sized tarantula with dentures for a head suffice?

She managed to sneak away shortly afterwards, the group distracted by a story the bucketed Kinger remembered from his early days in the circus with his wife and colleagues. Cookie and Silver had always been somewhat of their own team separate but adjacent to the others, both content to be in their own space more often than not.

Bouncing on her portable plaque, she made her way to Silver's room and used the key her friend had copied only for her. Inside, her witch friend's bedroom was the result of a love match between Hot Topic and every Halloween fun house, complete with a cauldron bubbling away on a mini pyre and ebony carved furniture.

She crossed over to the looming black wardrobe and knocked seven times, as instructed, before the door swung open.

Thankfully her puppet friend doesn't make her hop all the way across the map to find her. Instead, she's waiting at the ornate lamp post, broom in hand.

"Did they buy it?" Silver asks.

"Quicker than I thought. Good, 'cause I hate having to improvise."

"The trick is to just say 'yes, and...' then do anything- Oh, you mean lying." Silver nodded.

Cookie snorts; "Lying I don't give a shit about. Just making up stuff to get people off your back is a pain. Easier to tell them to fuck off and go hide in a cave."

"Sadly not an option with those guys. But thanks." She adjusted her broom between her legs; "You coming with me to check on him? You don't have to..."

"I'm in this mess with you now, remember? Not letting you deal with it alone."

Flying as a passenger on Silver's broom was always a risky activity. Cookie was just about able to park her backside on the end, wrapping her spring around the wood for safety, but if she lost her grip for a second then it usually resulted in her falling off and being dragged upside down through the air like a dropped yo yo.

Which did happen this occasion. Twice.

"Gotta admire how sturdy I made those branches though, right?" Silver grinned awkwardly as they landed near the eastern shore.

Cookie just gave her a look that could pierce through glass as she picked the fragments of twigs and leaves out of her hair, readjusting her oversized bow.

"Aaaanyway, I'm sure he's not far. I think he's been getting better since I finished making the beach." She slings her broom over her shoulder and descends the natural steps down towards the sand, "Think he likes the sound of the tide."

"I'd prefer a good cave myself." Cookie shrugged, bouncing down carefully, doing her best to keep her balance and avoid tumbling forward like an adorable slinky.

Couldn't they have landed on the shore?!

"He hates cramped spaces. And anywhere dark or too bright. I have to keep the sky in a state of twilight for him. So you always get a perfect sunset." Silver gestured to the horizon, where a low hanging orange orb stayed perfectly still at the edge of the word.

"Damn, Silv, I still get exhausted trying to conjure a pair of headphones." Cookie clicks her tongue, "No wonder you looked so wiped out making all this."

"You know in the books there's a whole thing where ten years in Narnia is like ten minutes in the real world? I could've done with something like that."

The tide is low, Cookie notices, though maybe that too is in a permanent state as well. It doesn't take her long to spot their secret abomination sat further up the store.

Caine sat crouched in the wet sand, allowing his bare stumps to rest in the salt water lapping gently up past him. The remains of his Ringmaster coat and shirt and been discarded, thanks to Cookie's own recommendation. Even in his current state, he'd been rather attached to his main outfit, but he'd eventually been persuaded to let it be cut away to help Silver attend to the injuries on his chest.

She hadn't even been aware of the ones on his back until the last layer of fabric had been peeled away. The revelation had made Silver gasp, despite everything she'd already dealt with so far.

The AI's torn black pants remained on, letting him keep some literal shred of dignity, though the color seemed to merge with his revealed 'skin'. The deep black with faded white lines of an old computer grid, disturbed by constant red welts and lacerations that told a disturbing story of what he'd suffered for the past two years.

"Caine? It's me." Silver calls as they approach, Cookie struggling not to hop too deep into the mucky sand.

The great head of dentures turns in their direction. Cookie winces at the sight of those awful screws. Fuck, that must hurt.

At least they'd managed to get rid of the chain.

Caine lets out a sound through his teeth and scurries towards them, multiple elbows and knees dragging his body along in the direction of Silver's voice. Cookie spots the way his shoulders seemed to relax when she called his name. If he had a tail, it would probably be wagging.

The Witch smiles and reaches out to bridge the gap, placing her hands up to touch his sealed teeth.

Not the gums. Never the gums.

"Hey, you." She whispers softly, "Good idea, bathing in salt water, yeah? It should help you heal. Just gotta put the bandages back on before you get them too sandy."

He let out an incomprehensible noise as he dipped his head, leaning into her touch. Silver seems to decipher it.

"I wasn't gone long. You just slept a while and I had to give Cookie an Uber. She's here too, by the way."

"Hey, man."

Caine tensed a little at the sound of her voice, probably more out of surprise. It still caused him to shuffle closer to Silver. There was something almost amusing about this giant, twisted beast cowering behind a five-foot-five wooden puppet, though she couldn't bring herself to laugh.

Her friend rubs at his elbow; "She's cool, remember? She helped us last time, she wants to keep helping us."

Silver. She was helping Silver.

Caine just happened to be part of a packaged deal with her closest friend. She didn't wish anymore harm upon the guy, she couldn't even say she hated him...But it was tough to forget how things had played out the last time he'd faced them.

"I'm gonna make some oyster stew for supper. Bet you must be hungry by now? You slept through lunch." Silver says, mostly to fill the silence, as she works on conjuring fresh bandages and reapplying them to Caine's stumps.

"Does he get hungry now? Thirsty?" Cookie asks. Caine used to comment about drinking water and eating cigarette casseroles, she didn't think it was something he actually needed.

"'Think this new body he's got is meant to experience most human pains, if not looked after." Silver comments. One of her wooden hands brushes over the bandages over his chest.

Right. New body. Who the fuck made that for him? Who wanted him to suffer like this?

Caine let out a groan, two of his arms wrapping inward around his midsection. It was difficult to tell if this was a sign of pain or reluctance or both.

"C'mon, you need to eat. Gotta keep your strength up as your body heals." Said Silver, finishing securing the wrapping under the stump of his right leg.

A louder noise this time, a borderline roar, complete with a light kick sending Silver stumbling back and nearly tripping over her own strings.

"HEY!" Cookie bounces forward; "Knock that off!"

The AI sat up, ramrod straight, head turning towards her voice.

"She's trying to help you, fuckface. After the shit you put us through, you should be grateful she didn't dump your ass out into the void!"

"Cookie." Silver hisses in warning.

But Caine was already trembling, panicked whimpers vibrating from his teeth as he curled in more on himself, as if there was any way to make his massive, hideous form smaller.

His stumps moved to paw at the witch's dress. And Cookie could just about make out the word uttered through his teeth.

"Ssrrrrry. Sssrrrry."

Her heart panged. Fuck, he wasn't just being bratty. He really was broken.

"Someone's gotta be Bad Cop sometimes." She says to Silver. But her friend doesn't look mad, in fact she gives her a grateful, if sad, smile.

The witch reaches out to rub Caine's shoulder.

"Hey, you know when Cookie uses the F bomb, it's affectionate, right?" She tries to soothe, though Caine doesn't quite seem to hear her, still shivering, bent over as if expecting a blow.

Or a whip. Or a knife. God knows what else.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, big dummy. But someone needs to verbally slap sense into you if you're gonna be attacking the only ones trying to help you." Cookie makes clear, "Just let Silver feed you the gross stew-."

"Hey!"

"-And then I'll conjure us up some honeycomb ice cream to wash it down with. Deal?"

The monster's trembling begins to slowly cease. Another small whimper, this one tinged with a note of hope, comes out before he turns towards Cookie again.

Can he see her? Through the tiny gaps in his teeth?

Honeycomb. She'd remembered his favorite flavour, something she had only found out once, back when she was still confined to her old toy box. Caine had asked why she never visited the cafe at the top of the tent, to which Cookie had to remind him it was the same reason she couldn't fucking visit any place outside her stupid box. The retort had actually caused the Ringmaster to flinch. He'd vanished, only to reappear five seconds later with two honeycomb sundaes in each hand, passing one to her as a peace offering. She'd reluctantly accepted it, savouring the sweetness while listening to the AI ramble about his fascination with honey and bees and how weren't they just the coolest creatures ever?

One of his arms reaches, unsteadily towards her. Instinct compells her to recoil, but her spring keeps her in place, plaque partially sunken into the moist sand.

"Sssrrrryyy."

Cookie sighs, "It's fine, dude. It's fine."

Was it though? Could it ever be after...all that?

-

Two years ago

The shimmering portal opened with the same jovial TWANG. Everyone sprinted or bounced towards it, Jax nearly tripping on both Gangle's ribbons and Cookie's spring in his desperation, while even Pomni and Zooble got their limbs in a tangle trying to push their way through. Never before had they all been so eager to exit one of Caine's worlds - if you could even call it that.

Landing in a heap on the familiar circus floor, everyone was panting heavily, having just narrowly avoided being buried alive in the Gloomy Tomb of Ungrateful MeatBags. Ragatha spat up some graveyard dirt while Kinger detached a disembodied skeleton arm from hugging his neck.

"What...What the ever loving [B(&n£!%] was THAT?!" Cookie asked.

In theory, that adventure had all the bits and pieces of something she would enjoy. The aesthetic, the monster threats, the setting, the classic horror vibe. But the way it had all come together was so rushed, so careless and fast paced, it hadn't left her feeling exilerated. More like she was about to have both a heart attack and a migraine simultaneously.

She vomited. So did Jax. Then Pomni and Ragatha followed. One of Kinger's eyes fell off, which must have been his avatar's equivalent reaction.

"I guess...judging by the title, that's the sort of [$h!£!] Caine has planned for us now." Zooble said, heavily, reattaching their leg.

Ragatha let Kinger help her to her feet; "Well, on the bright side, now that we've gone along with it, hopefully he's mellowed out and is willing to sit down and talk to us?"

A springing sound caught their attention and they all looked upward.

"Welcome back, my Dumbs and Dumbers! Boy, you must be as braindead as those zombies to suck so much getting out of that one! Hahaha!"

Ragatha sighed, "Or not."

Cookie finally managed to straighten herself up, adjusting her hair bow before glaring up at their ringmaster.

"Caine!" She shouted.

His pair of eyes honed in on her, a crease of irritation already at her defiant tone.

"Where's Silver?!"

The last they'd seen her, the Witch had flown in just at the point Caine's epic crashout musical number had reached its literelly explosive climax, leaving them twitching and whimpering on the floor in scattered pieces. Silver had called Caine out, shocked and appalled at his behavior, only for the AI to whisk her off to who knows where.

Now, Caine tapped his bottom gum with his index finger, feigning ignorance.

"Silver, Silver, Silver...Hmm..." he mused, "I'm gonna guess hanging with gold and platinum! Get it?!"

Everyone just stared, unamused.

"Uhh, you guys. I told a joke."

He snapped his fingers.

Half a dozen hands suddenly shot up out the floor like weeds, grabbing their jaws and forcing them to open and close while canned laughter as if from a sitcom stage rumbled up from their throats.

"That's more like it!" Caine dusted his hands, making them vanish.

Cookie wasn't giving up.

"What did you do to her? Have you hurt her?!"

"Me?! Hurt her?!" His eyes bulged, offended; "Oh Cookie, you pathetic Fisher Price reject, I'm not the one who hurts people here! I'm the one who works myself to the code taking care of you ungrateful little freaks!"

"We know! We know! You take very good care of us!" Ragatha put up her hands, trying to appease him; "We're just worried about our friend, that's all! C-could you just tell us where Silver is? Please?"

His ridiculous ego slightly stroked, Caine showed his hands.

"Why, of course, there's nothing to worry about. Our own little Worst Witch is absolutely fine! In fact, she sends her regards, and hopes you do a much better job on the next adventure I've got planned for you." He said with a crack of his knuckles, nearly sending his hands inside out; "Boy, we sure had a laugh watching you all fumble so hard! Nearly ran out of popcorn!"

The Jack in the Box tighened her fists; "Liar."

He looked at her again. Another crease, a few rising black veins.

"Silver wouldn't willingly go anywhere with you after the [€~A♧!] she saw you do to us. And she wouldn't laugh at us suffering."

"Oh are you soooo certain of that, my dear?"

"Yes. Because she's better than you."

Crack.

The veins grew around Caine's eyeballs like black talons. A beat, then he let out a humourless laugh, twirling slowly in the air and tossing his cane between his hands.

"You know...I've been thinking." He finally addressed them, "For too long, I've focused on caring for you all as a group, that I've neglected to make any time for you all one on one! It's time I got to know you all on a personal level, doncha think?"

The group exchanged uncertain, confused murmurs.

"Great idea, right! So from now on, in between my incredible adventures, I'll be sure to make time to play with one of you in your own unique game crafted perfectly for my entertainment! And it will be totally at random, so there's no playing favorites. However..."

He turned his rather hungry gaze back down at Cookie.

"Seeing as you seem very eager, my sweet Cookie Crisp, you can go first! Let's go!"

With another snap of his fingers, Cookie left the circus in the blink of an eye.

"What the..."

Suddenly, she found herself standing on some kind of giant game board, a flat yellow surface filled with large circular holes, one of which she was in the middle of.

Above her stood Caine, ten times his regular size, his baton replaced with a giant red and blue mallet.

"F♡€#!" Cookie swore and ducked as the weapon came plummeting down towards her head.

Her spring coiled as much as it would allow, letting her take refuge in the darkness, before resistance pushed her to bounce back up - this time emerging out of a different circle.

A game of Wack A Clown.

"That was just a taster, my dear! I'm gonna get a lot faster from here on out!"

She didn't waste time. She ducked down low before Caine so much as raised his arm, a true test of her energy as she tried to avoid the mallet crashing down upon her head. As promised, his movements increased in speed, as well as viciousness. And then the difficulty was increased when he summoned an extra mallet and began using two hands.

Then three. Then four.

"My, my, you are a slippery little worm, aren't you? But you're dealing with one very early bird, little maggot. And you know what they say-."

THUMP.

Wrong hole. One of Caine's mallets was right there and waiting, slamming down upon her, flattening her down to her plaque. White hot pain blinded her for a brief second, her body feeling all manner of wrong and tight, too fucking tight, and tiny, then everything swirling around her as her brain lay in the back of her throat.

"I WIN! I WIN!" Caine cheered for himself, "What is my prize, Bubble?"

"A thousand years of divine rule! Also a microwave!" His translucent assistant chirped.

"I'll take it!"

Cookie rubbed at her head as it regained its round shape. Chest heaving, she leant upon the edge of the hole.

"What happened to you?"

Caine looked down at her.

"Why do you hate us now?" Cookie asked with a glower.

He blinked, teeth clacking.

One of his eyes glitched, flashing bright red like a break light.

"I..."

Had that question really stumped him?

"Silver said I could trust you. That you weren't so bad once we got to know you. I believed her. I...I thought she was right..." the cutsey clown let out a laugh; "...But she wasn't. You're just another insecure [◇|c£!] with his head up his own @$$!"

Caine was silent for a moment.

Then he began tapping his baton against his palm.

"You know, I've always found that filthy mouth of yours rather amusing, Cookie. I think I'll keep it to myself for the rest of the day."

Another snap. Cookie's hands flew to her face, pawing below her nose to find only skin.

In his grip, Caine was clutching her squirming lips.

"Don't worry, you'll get them back in time for your next adventure. But I suggest reining in the potty talk from here on out." He says as if talking to an insolent child, "And anymore of this poor behavior and....well...I can always make your buddy Silver's current living conditions much less comfortable. Is that what you want? Huh?"

For the first time since she arrived in the circus, Cookie was silent.

-

Present Day

You took their mouths. You took their eyes.

You beat them, shredded them, exploded them, pulled them about like silly string.

And yet, here they are. Caring for you like some rabid stray that ought to be put down.

Caine's stumps itched beneath the bindings. A mild but constant plight compared to what he'd endured so far. There's grains of sand inside and they probably need changing...but he won't try to ask, not even in his limited condition. He can hear them, the Witch and the Clown, chatting among themselves nearby while he stays quiet.

Don't be a burden. Don't inconvenience them.

This new cage of his was...nice. Wide, open, a gentle breeze occasionally brushing his exposed code, birdsong and other nature ambience surrounding him. The water of this new beach felt soothing on his wounds. Better than the darkness of his cell, or the blinding lights of the void. Better than the chains and the isolation and the starving and....

Little Brother.

It was better. It was nice. It was also rather dull.

Now who's ungrateful? You don't deserve all the effort she's putting in to build this for you.

He knows that! He knows...

But without his eyes, without his hands or feet, there's only so much he can do to pass the time between her visits. When she tells him she has to return to the others for a couple of hours, every minute that passes between seems to stretch into eternity. To the point where she returns and he's overwhelmed with relief, with joy, with gratitude that she didn't abandon him like she has every right to do.

How funny. You wanted to break her will, make her dependent on you, make her choose you. Now who's the birdie in a cage, begging for Master's treats and pets?

He's not a bird. Birds can fly. Oh, he misses flying more than anything else, even his sight, even his hands.

And he's too big to ride with Silver on her broom. Too big to bounce with Cookie into the sky.

Too big. Too wrong.

-

"The incy wincy spider

Crawled up the water spout."

...Stop...

"Down came the rain

And washed the spider out!"

STOP...!

"Out came the sun,

And dried up all the rain..."

Please!! S-stop...

-

Silver's eyes opened to the starlit sky, her body curled against the curviture of the Moon. It had been years since she'd taken to falling asleep here once or twice a week, feeling as comfortable as she did in her own bed. Never mind that she was at least a hundred feet off the ground, the idea of tumbling off as she slumbered never gave her so much as a tremble. The Moon would never allow her to fall.

Her visits had increased over the past couple of years. Sometimes it was the only spot where her restless, puppet head would allow itself to nod off, even after a long day of conjuring and rebuilding.

It was the only place she didn't feel like a stranger. Somewhere she felt safe to think and talk about...him.

Looking up, she saw the Moon's eyes were closed, a wrinkle of loss around her lids that had been there since that day. Silver's presence could only ease her grief so much. Was it real, she often wondered? Or had he programmed the celestial being to be besotted in him to fuel his own ego?

If that were the case, at the least the Moon had an excuse to miss the bastard.

What had woken her? A sound...

Coming from the Circus tent? No. It had felt closer, a gargled noise clinging to the night wind.

She'd tried creating a few basic animal AIs to roam the grounds, swans for the lake a a few deer and foxes in the small patches of trees near the edges, though they had little actual sentience, just following a simple routine she weaved into their code. Perhaps it had been one of them...or perhaps it had been just a dream.

Except, she only had one reoccurring dream at present. That face. Those eyes, pupils dilated in terror, in a second of self-reflection ("W-wait-!") and then gone before she can reach out for him. Change the outcome. Every time, she tries.

"NNNNNNNNGGGGHHHHH!"

She sits up. There it is again.

It's coming from the trees, the small forest on the very edge of the grounds, near the ridge that tumbled out into the Void.

Silver got to her feet, broomstick in hand. If it was one of the critters she created, if it had somehow grown and developed cognitive awareness...even pain, then it was her responsibility to care for it. If her patron goddess still watched over her, even in this digital realm, then it was her duty as an Artemis devotee.

Taking a deep breath, she slot the broom between her wooden feet, minding her strings, and waited till she felt the lift against her thighs. Then she zoomed towards the copse.

"NNNNNNGGGGHHHH!"

Pixilated bats fled in a desperate swarm from the treetops as the awful sound rang out again. Silver swatted a few away with her hand as they threatened to collide with her. Then she could only watch as two tall oaks with curly dark green heads representing 'leaves' were suddenly toppled onto their side with an earth shaking crash.

What the...?

Surely nothing she created was chaotic enough to cause this much of a disturbance.

She landed before the first line of trees, black clogs planting hesitantly on the ground just as another thought struck her.

What if it was one of the Abstracted? They seemed to be doing so much better in the Aquarium they had set up, content to swim in the soothing darkness where they could all visit them like friends in a rehab hospital.

But what if one had got out? Or what if it was one of...? Shit, what if it was Cookie?

No, no, Silver, don't start spiralling just yet.

Another stomp. Another groan.

Whatever it was, it didn't sound the same as the Abstracted. Its bleeting and cries were far more raw, more animal.

Steadying herself, remembering to simply hold her breath and fly if it becomes too much, Silver stepped forward between the trees, following the noise of agonised moaning and branches rustling. Throwing caution to the fucking void, she increased her pace, sensing a pull on her spirit (or code or whatever she had now) that told her to find this thing. Now.

The Moon's gentle light fades the deeper she goes, the canope thickening annoyingly above her, threatening to smother her in darkness.

Not a problem for a Witch.

"Fos!" She hissed, stretching out her hand.

A tiny ball of firelight ignited above her hand, floating like an obedient servant. She'd been experimenting with imagining conjuring as a form of spellwork since they had been working to run this place on her own.

Pointing her finger out, she sent the little ball of light forward to illuminate her path. Her feet pressed onwards, the rustling sounding closer.

And closer.

Almost as close as the sound of her own panicked breathing. Why did this feel more and more like she was walking in the forest of fucking Slenderman? Just keep going, Silver. It's probably no-

Crack

A couple of dry twigs snapped beneath her clogs.

"NNNNNNGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

A large, long and bloody limb thrashed violently towards her. Silver screamed, stumbling backward and falling on her ass in the dirt.

Blinking, she glanced up, her ball of light bringing her attacker partially into focus.

An orange glow flickered against what she first took to be a giant spider, rearing up on its back legs, its top six wildly stretching out, ready to pounce down and sink its fangs...

No. Not fangs.

There was teeth. But not fangs. A giant head of teeth with no head or nose or eyes or hair....

Just teeth.

...It...couldn't be.

"Kalliergó." She whispered, breathless, to her orb, commanding it to burn brighter as it floated between her and the beast.

Towering above her by at least ten extra feet, knelt an eight limbed humanoid creature wearing the shredded remains of a familiar red tailcoat, a ruined shirt torn and stained against a heaving chest. It appeared to be glaring down at her...though there were no floating eyes between its teeth. At least, none that she could see.

Not with the eight giant screws impaled through its gums, connected by a shining metal chain. Or was it...silver? She wondered with added horror.

It wasn't him. It couldn't be him, he's...dead.

Two years dead.

It didn't even look like him, not really. Even during those final moments, when he'd unleashed his rage like an unholy storm, when his form had grown and mutated in all its digital Eldritch horror, he still hadn't looked like....this. His bow tie was missing. Why was that the detail her mind chose to focus on? It just...wasn't him if he wasn't...presentable. The Showman.

"C-Caine?" The name left her lips, afraid to hope...

It roared again through its teeth, body yanking forward, three of its arms sweeping across the space between them. Silver scurried back with a frightened yelp, grasping her broom like a caveman's club.

She caught another glimpse as the limbs swung close to her.

No fists. No gloves. Just jagged stumps spraying her with droplets of...

He could bleed?

Silver turned, beginning to run back towards the tent. It wasn't him. There was no way. It had to be some sort of copy, a corrupted code trying to mimic their former host. It wasn't him. It wasn't him.

The others were in danger. Maybe if she woke them up and they worked together then they might be able to contain...

"Nnnnngggghhhh...."

Silver stopped running, the sound of his moans dimming behind her.

He wasn't chasing her.

Slowly, she turned back around, cautiously returning to where she had left her floating ball of light.

He hadn't moved an inch. He remained kneeling between the trees, multiple arms bent at all angles, his focus no longer on her, but the orange orb. One of his grotesque stumps lifted up towards it...as if he wanted to caress the light with fingers he no longer possessed.

"Nnnngggghhhh...." that sound sent a shudder through her bones.

It was no longer a roar. It was a cry.

"Caine?" Silver tried, once more.

No response. Not that she should expect speech, she knew as much, but he didn't even tilt his head towards the sound of her voice. His focus was fixed upon the light.

Raising her hand, Silver summoned it to float back towards her.

The beast let out a mournful wail between its teeth, its arm reaching out in vain. Silver watched it attempt to crawl forward, following the faint glow to where she stood, only for his head to be violently yanked back, chains pulling at the screws in his gums, causing him to moan again.

"AAAaaaaiiiinnn!"

Silver flinched, her heart hammering in her ears. Lifting the light upward again, she could quickly see the issue. The chains on the screws are linked to a single, massive link of metal. A leash.

A leash that had tangled itself among two of the thicker branches that refused to break even with the giraff sized creature tugging for its freedom.

She should still run. Go find the others, while he's trapped, before he fells the tree and continues his rampage. Before he hurts anyone else again...

A gloved fist slams against the golden bars of her cage.

"You're picking them over ME?! After everything I've given you?! Everything I created to make you happy! You told me you liked it! Or was it another human lie?!"

She pressed her back against the bars, watching as the entity who'd only yesterday been her quirky, clueless but cute AI buddy now grew into a selfish, vengeful monster before her eyes.

"It wasn't a lie. But that doesn't mean you get to hurt my friends!"

"You were supposed to be different! You're not supposed to turn against me like the rest!"

"Caine, just stop-"

"I WON'T LET YOU!"

With a snap of his fingers, he wrenched her forward onto her knees, arms wrapping around her stomach as it seemed to cave inward. Silver gasped. The sensation of hunger hollowed her out for the first time in years.

"I don't care if I have to grind that stubborn spirit of yours to dust, I'll remind you just how good you had it! How perfect everything could be again...if you just stopped being stupid and picked ME!"

Even after all these months, after she had gotten used to being able to eat again as little or most as her gut desired, she never forgot that pain of real, parasitic starvation. And the isolation. The taunting from his frequent visits, partly to keep her from abstracting, also to talk his way into her head with his petty, childish attempt at gaslighting.

She had missed him. Mourned him. But part of her bones still burned with resentment for what he'd done...and then dying before getting a chance to face justice.

Or apologise. If he was even capable of such a thing.

Now here was...If it was really him. Back before her eyes in a form she'd never expected, not even in her darkest of night terrors. If it was him...

Back from the dead.

"Ngghhh...nnngghhh...." His groans dissolved to pitiful whimpers, severed wrist still grasping for the light beyond his reach.

Fuck it.

Straddling her broom, Silver flew over Caine's sealed head and to where the main chain was tangled in trees. With great care, she unbound the knot, and as expected Caine instantly tried to scuttle away once freed.

"No! Caine, stay!"

A simple tug of the leash stopped his movements, but the pained cry he let out as it yanked at the screws in his skull quickly drowned Silver in a wave of guilt.

She dropped the chain and flew back around to his front, landing softly before where he was bent over, wrists reaching up to his head, weeping.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't do that again, I promise." She whispered.

Why is she apologising? It should be him...

"Caine? Do you...remember me?"

One of his limbs began moving towards her way too fast. Prepared, this time, Silver wacked it with her broom. The monster stilled, its ragged breathing caught in its invisible throat.

Then slowly, shaking, it reached out towards her again. More gently this time, as it had towards her little ball of light.

She tried not to cringe and shrink away when the shattered edge of his wrist brushed against her woolen curls.

"....Sssssiiiiiiiiii...." Faintly, she could just make out the weak attempt at the first syllable of her name behind the teeth.

She released a sob that had been bubbling up from her chest for the past minute.

"Caine." She spoke with acceptence.

It was him. He was alive.

Alive and...really, truly fucked up.

He staggered towards her, collapsing forward onto his elbows, heavy loose leash clattering and coiling like a great metal snake at his side. Bloody head bowed forward, almost in reverence, or simply submission to her judgement, his body shuddered as he wept.

There was no time to offer comfort or try to interrogate some answers out of him. She knew she had to hide him, quick, before the others woke.

"I need you to come with me, okay? You're gonna need to be real quiet and do what I say." She said, firmly, reaching to tug at the remains of his coat, "Then I promise I'll...try to fix this."

He recoiled from her touch, whining again in resistance.

Damn it. Would she have no choice but to use that wicked leash? Drag him into the tent like those bears people used to force to dance?

There had to be another way, she pondered, her ball of light still hovering before her...

Wait.

-

As her witch friend continued her story, Cookie's eyes wandered once more to the deposed Ringmaster's new form, spread out on the soft, shaded grass they'd managed to move him to, laying on his side with a freshly bandaged stump.

Silver was heating up the flask of soup she'd brought with her over a campfire she'd hastily conjured, then carried to where Caine lay. She placed the opening to one of the chipped gaps in his teeth.

"Drink up. Got some herbs in it this time to help you sleep." She whispered. He positioned his head to help as she carefully tried to pour it it through to his tongue, Silver's hand reaching around to steady his gums.

Cookie shook her head, still hardly able to believe it.

"How the hell did you manage to drag him here without us seeing?" She asked the marionette.

"With great fricken' difficulty. I managed to get him to follow the pretty light, told him not to make a sound, then I just hoped none of you woke up to me leading a giant red tarantula through the tent." Silver sighed, focusing on making sure her patient didn't spill his supper, "Someone did come out and I thought for a second the jig was up - turned out to be Kinger without his bucket on, he just strolled by and said 'Evening, Silver! Evening Giant Caine!' and kept chasing an imaginary butterfly. He never mentioned anything about it after."

It would be funny if the situation weren't so messed up.

"There must have been a trail of blood." Cookie frowned.

"Yep. Nearly wore my knees to matchsticks wiping that up before dawn. And at that point I still had him crouched in one half of my room. I hadn't even started rebuilding this place before then. Took me two days before I'd formed enough space to put him in the wardrobe."

"And he was just...curled up in your room all that time?" It sounded ridiculous. How could none of them have noticed? Heard him cry?

Silver could see her questions; "I had him heavily sedated. Made a Sleeping Draught so strong, I was almost afraid he'd slipped into a coma. But it meant I could work on bandaging those wrists and ankles of his."

Right...Those. Cookie had always thought herself desensitised to most bodily horror. But even the sight of Caine's damage up close made her turn down Silver's offer to grill some hot dogs over the flames.

Like Silver, the fact that their former AI host could be hurt like this...In such a visceral, human manner...it shook her world all over again.

"And you kept all this from us for...what, nearly three weeks?" She gaped to her friend, "Why? Why hide it?"

"You really think they'll all be happy he's back? Some of them still talk about him like he's the Big Bad, while the rest are afraid to say his name."

"And me? You couldn't tell me?" Cookie asked with hurt.

It made Silver wince; "I wanted to...I almost did, to start with, but he was always so jumpy and...difficult to settle, whenever the medicine wore off. I kept saying I'd wait till he was safer, then the days became weeks...And the lie just became easier. Until it wasn't. And now you know."

Better late than never, Cookie supposed. But the witch still wasn't fully off the hook.

"Promise or no promise, I understand if you wanna tell the others. They can be as mad as they want...but I'm not letting him be hurt again." Silver made clear.

The Jack-in-Box watched as her friend finished feeding Caine the soup, mopping some drops from his bottom teeth with a cloth. Already, he seemed a little more docile, resting his head upon a small mound of pillows Silver had conjured.

Of course Cookie wasn't about to go snitching on her best friend, no matter how complicated her feelings were for the curled pile of arms, teeth and bandages barely four feet away from her.

"Gotta address the elephant in the room though." Cookie said.

Silver looked up at her.

"What the hell did this to him?"

Caine began to tremble terribly at the question. Silver reached to stroke soothing circles into one of his forearms.

"He won't tell me. Or...can't tell me. I'm not sure which." She sighed, doing her best to sooth.

"Because, let's be real, he was pretty chaotic in this state...For something to do this to him...if it's still out there..."

"I know." Silver responds, looking just as sick with worry. "But also...it's been nearly a month and...no one's come after him. So maybe whatever did this...had enough and let him go?"

"Nnnnngggghhhh....!" Caine tried slamming his head into the ground before Silver stilled him.

"I know, I know. But no one can enter here without my permission, okay?" She tried to reassure him.

"Can you make out what he's saying?" Cookie raised an eyebrow.

It all sounded like animal bleets to her.

"Bits and pieces. He's still got a tongue and vocal chordes under there. You ever tried speaking with your mouth shut?" She gave a small, wry smile; "I think I'm getting used to it, the more time I spend with him. But...he doesn't like talking about...whatever happened. Or much at all, really."

If he was being tortured for nearly two years, then Cookie could only imagine how sore that voice box would be from all that screaming.

"He has a body...Like, a real, scaled up human body...He didn't have that before, did he?"

Silver shook her head; "Whenever I hugged him before, it was always like hugging plasticine. Now, he's...warm. And solid."

Her eyes drifted to the bandages across his chest.

"And he has a heartbeat."

Cookie grit her teeth; "Fuck."

Someone or something had given him that body. A body capable of experiencing raw human pain and blood loss and whatever else their twisted mind had conjured. They'd wanted him to suffer as much as humanly possible.

"I have to stay with him tonight. Gotta make sure he doesn't try to disturb that bandage." Silver states.

"What do you do while you're here?"

"Read to him, mostly." She retrieved a copy of The Beekeepers Apprentice from her satchel; "He seems to like that. Can't really get him to do much else, not until his joints are well enough that we can start thinking about prosthetics."

"What about his head? Can't you...get those things off?"

The suggestion made Caine let out a growl, his body shuffling closer to Silver as if seeking protection.

"Yeah, that's....not happening any time soon. He freaks out if you so much as try to touch one and it's a bitch to calm him down."

Cookie couldn't imagine the constant agony he must be in. The very thought of someone drilling screws into her skull or stapling her mouth shut made her gag, let alone combining the two - along with having your eyelids sewn shut.

"I won't tell anyone. Just...so long as you let me help you with this, however I can." Cookie promised, "But I'm doing it for you, more than him."

"'Appreciate it." Silver gave her a tired smile, her hand still massaging the 'safer' areas of Caine's scarred body.

There was one particular image that Cookie couldn't shake from her head, from the moment she'd helped Silver steady Caine's arm as the witch had reapplied the wrappings.

How the bones of his arm had stuck out, splintered like pieces of snapped wood, the brutal threads of muscle and sinew hanging like torn wires.

"Were they all like that? His wrists and ankles?" Cookie asked, curious.

Silver nodded.

"I nearly went through six puking buckets in one night."

Cookie's brow furrowed, her cutesy eyes suddenly very grim.

"Silv...Those weren't clean breaks."

"What do you mean?" She asked, lowering her voice a little, unsure how much Caine was listening or how close he was to falling asleep from the medicine mixed in his broth.

Cookie met her eyes; "I don't think someone cut off his hands and feet. I think...they were torn off."

"...You mean..?"

The toy gave a nod, her blue hair bow bobbing with the motion.

"I think he did it to himself."

-

"Well this has been VERY fun. But...I'm honestly getting a teensy bit bored now. Maybe I need some time to brainstorm a few new games we could play?"

Please...No more games.

Just. Delete him. Permanantly.

"You know what? I have an idea! How about...I let you go?"

Right. Sure. Like he's gonna fall for that...

Again.

"Aww, don't be a Doubting Dennis! I mean it this time! Here, I'll even give you a hand! Or should I say, a head?"

Snap.

The chain looped around the screws in his head is released from the wall, sending his bound skull rolling forward, the rest of his body hanging limp in the shackles.

It...It can't be real. Just another trick. He loves doing these. Loves giving him hope, only to stomp it out like a bug beneath his shoe.

"Now don't think I'm gonna make it too easy! You'll have to do the rest yourself. Shouldn't be too difficult, not if you really want it...It's not like you haven't done a jail break before, huh?"

That cold, high pitched, childlike laugh echoed off the walls of his cell.

"And if you manage to escape...I promise not to drag you back. I'll let you go wherever you please. Let's just hope you don't come across those humans of yours...We both know what they would do if they found you now. Oh, it would make everything I've done seem like a ride on the tea cups! Hehehe."

No...He wouldn't dare. Couldn't bare to face them like this...

Not that he wouldn't deserve everything they wanted to do to him. Even after all that his blue warden had done over these months...years...it wouldn't be the justice his humans were rightfully owed.

Two fingers pressed below his chin, tilting up his aching head.

"Go on. Let's see if you've still got it in you. If not...and you're still here when I get back...I'll assume you really, really still want to play...."

No. No play. No more.

Whatever it takes, whatever the sacrifice, he has to get out...Has to run...Crawl...Go.

"Your move, big brother."

It took hours. Hours of pulling and pushing, using the weight of his head at first, smashing it against his wrist, straining against the shackles. Eventually, skin began to tear, then muscle, then the snap of a bone.

He screamed, his teeth vibrating, blood splurting as his hand fell to the floor, just a piece of dead meat.

One down. Seven to go.

"And the incy wincy spider,