An exchange between Kinger and Ragatha that I had to cut from the chapter from my fic that I'm working on right now. . .
It didn't flow well with the rest of the dialogue in the scene, but there isn't enough content of other characters calling Kinger out for the bullshit he was complicit in and it'd be a shame to waste some perfectly good angst so. . . HERE:
———
“Kinger. . . Since you’ve been here since the start, I’ve been meaning to ask. . . I don’t know if this is the right term or not, but has Caine been, uh, self-aware this whole time?”
Oh god, no. Don’t ask me that. Don’t—
“Er, depends on your definition of ‘whole time’,” Kinger began, trying to remain level-headed as his chest started to tighten, “Caine started showing signs of sentience a year or two before he added the first members to the Circus in 1999. It was difficult to gauge the depth of his consciousness until recently, though. . . It’s hard to say if a being has a rich inner world unless they actually tell you about it!”
“Oh, for sure! That’s why I never really thought of him as an actual person back in the day, I guess. I feel awful about it now, but I only ever talked to him when he was in, uh, ‘ringmaster mode’, and you just can’t get a genuine emotion out of someone putting on a show like he always was. . .” Ragatha looked like she might get lost reminiscing about her own missteps with Caine but, regretfully, she turned her eye back to Kinger and resumed her gentle interrogation, “Even back in the early days, though, he never talked to you guys— the C&A employees, I mean?”
How did I manage to let this conversation go off the rails already? I haven’t even told her what my argument with Caine was about yet. Why am I so—
“. . .Caine used to try to connect with me and the rest of the developers, a bit like the way he’s been trying nowadays but. . .” Kinger attempted a weak laugh, but it came out more like a sputtering cough, “You think he struggles with social graces now? You have no idea!”
“Oh man, I seriously can’t even imagine. . .”
”He was just so dang excited to have us there, y’know? But we were all too determined to find a way out of the Circus to pay much attention to him. . . And we knew he had something to do with us ending up there, so I think we all started viewing him as an annoying obstacle at best, and an outright manipulative villain at worst. No patience for his shenanigans whatsoever. It’s hard to look back on now, but at some point he just kinda. . . Gave up. Stopped trying.”
“Oh, that’s. . .” Ragatha trailed off as she considered the tragic implications of Kinger’s words, “. . .Has Caine always been alone in the Circus, then?”
Kinger stared at Ragatha, silent as he struggled to keep his head above water while the riptide in his mind tried pulling him out of the conversation.
“In what sense?”
“As long as I’ve been in the Circus, I’d never seen him spend any time with anyone other than Bubble until the last few months. Did anyone ever just hang out with him and talk or—?”
Kinger knew the answer but desperately did not want to say it aloud.
Ragatha covered her mouth. "God, Kinger, that’s awful.”
“We interacted extensively while training him, but after the project was shelved. . . M-my wife was the only Circus member that ever really spent any meaningful amount of time with him, probably. God, she was so patient with him, what a saint. . . But then— ah, well, y-you know what happened. . . Even then, though, they weren't close pals, more like friendly ah-acquaintances, so I mean. . ."
He stopped himself, realizing the bucket had slipped down to cover his eyes completely at some point during his pathetic rambling. He tipped the lid up so he could look at Ragatha again, hesitating as her distressed expression was revealed to him.
"He's been alone for almost as long as he's existed,” he rasped, the words dragging out of him like sandpaper against wood veneer, revealing a shame long hidden beneath.
‘It’s cruel, the way you ignore him, Kinger. You’ve got a conscious being that’s actively seeking your attention and you just–! Avoid him?! You don’t see the hurt look in his eyes whenever you walk away from him, but I do.’
‘Honey. . . It’s tempting to anthropomorphize him, but you have to understand, most of those human behaviors are pure mimicry based on his training data. He’s very convincing sometimes, but there’s no real depth to—’
“Uhhh, Kinger?”
‘You can’t be serious. You cannot seriously look at Caine and tell me he’s not capable of self-reflection and complex thought. Or maybe you can, actually, considering you never even try to reach out to him.’
‘Queenie, stop, let’s calm down and—’
“Kinger? Are you still there. . .?”
‘I know you better than anyone, Kinger, and I know that you’re guilty. I know that you blame yourself for what C&A did to Caine. I know that you’re afraid to interact with him because you’d have to literally face the consequences of your actions. And I know that you dehumanize him because, otherwise—’
“. . .Kinger?”
‘It’s going to be hard, but you’re just kicking the can down the road every time you dodge his questions. I love you, Kinger, and I want to support you, but I’m not going to stand by and watch anymore as you—'
“Kinger!”
“What?!”
Ragatha jumped backwards, shocked by the chess piece’s uncharacteristically aggressive tone. Kinger, in turn, yelped, startled by her sudden moment. His thoughts scattered in a panic, ricocheting off the walls of his skull like a frenzied clowder of feral cats.
His eyes blinked consecutively as his mind tried to pull itself back together. “. . .Oh, hi Ragatha!”
“Uh, h-hi, Kinger. I lost you for a bit there, do you remember what we were talking about?”
“Ah, wait, gimme a sec. . .” He looked inward but found nothing but angry waves lapping at the shoreline of his conscious mind, left behind in the wake of something that had left his ghost of a heart racing, “. . .Aw, dang, I can’t. Weird, usually the bucket keeps the ol’ rebellious grey matter in line!”
“I’m so sorry, that was off-topic, anyways, I shouldn’t have— Oh gosh, you’re shaking. . .” Ragatha took one of Kinger’s hands into her own, and the stabilizing effect highlighted the unsteadiness of the rest of him, “Let’s find somewhere to sit down, okay?”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"Kinger thought that his conversation with Caine had been headed in the right direction, but the strange way the ringmaster starts acting the following morning reveals the conflict is still ongoing. After Caine rebuffs all his attempts at a satisfactory resolution, Kinger is forced to do something drastic. . . Yes, our brave hero must confide in a friend about his personal problems instead of just burying them under several layers of awful coping mechanisms! Ew! Gross."
GOD IT TOOK FOREVER, but chapter four is done babyyy.
I still don't 100% understand what they were going for with that scene of Caine letting go of the Blue AI*, but I'm actually glad they kinda bungled it cuz now we get all these hella rad AUs of people interpreting the meaning and aftermath in different ways.
That's why I enjoyed the finale even though it was mediocre! So many plot holes perfectly sized to be filled with fanworks, plus the ideal amount of frustration about what could've been in order to motivate people!!! That's what it's all about babyyy.
I anticipated most of what happened in the finale either cuz I got spoiled ahead of time or I just saw it coming, but my favorite reveal that genuinely caught me off-guard was that. . . When Caine made the Circus and brought the mind files to life to inhabit it, that was 100% of his own volition. It wasn't in his programming or anything he was specifically taught to do. NO ONE asked him to do that shit. But he did! He sure did do all of that!!!
That was one part of the plot that I was totally satisfied with because it is simultaneously the funniest and most fucked up reason for the Circus to exist. Motherfucker was so sad and bored that he had to will a conscious, captive audience into existence in order to stave off his crushing loneliness! What a silly guy.
Oough, it's such a relief to make an account after lurking for months, partly cuz I can share my own TADC stuff but also because I can finally yell at other people about all the cool shit they've been making!!!
