You hadn't meant to get involved. A bandage offered to a stranger, a green heart pinned to your collar, and somehow you'd found yourself holding three tickets with a decision that needed to be made. The red belonged to Pierrot, the green to Harlequin. The pink belonged to no one, or so you thought. You chose it because it seemed safe. Neutral. A way to see the show without taking sides. What you didn't know is that the pink ticket held a weight that, once chosen, was impossible to reverse.
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The streets became quieter as the evening crowd thinned to a few scattered pairs walking close together against the cold. You kept your hands in your pockets and your eyes mostly forward. The pink ticket was tucked inside your coat, and you were aware of it in a nagging way that lingered at the edge of your mind.
The walk to the circus was longer than you remembered.
Or perhaps it only felt that way because you kept slowing without meaning to, each step resisting something you hadn't done in a very long time. The lights were visible before the tents were, bleeding color into the dark above the rooftops.
You thought about your mother.
It was unavoidable, really. She had loved the circus in the effortless way that adults who remember being children love things. She didn’t need the wonder and mysticism of it the way you had. You could still picture the angle of her face when she'd looked down at you in the crowd. The soft patience of it, the adoration. You didn’t understand it back then.
Your father had held your other hand. He’d complain about the price of everything, called the games and their prizes absurd, and yet bought it all regardless. He had been the kind of man who called things what they were and did them anyway. You had inherited that from him, or so you liked to think.
You slowed without meaning to.
You thought about turning back. You genuinely considered it, breath misting in front of you. You could go home, brew another cup of tea you wouldn't finish, sit in the silence you'd grown accustomed to. There were practical reasons to be nowhere near this place. Two women were missing and the signs were pointing in this direction.
You had almost convinced yourself when Pierrot found his way into your mind.
You remembered his face when you'd told him that you weren’t coming. The way his face fell, posture closed, and his eyes. His eyes held so much emotion. You'd noticed, and wished you hadn't.
Harlequin was an entirely different kind of problem.
You didn't trust the green pin, which, for some odd reason, you had failed to remove even now. Something about him was a performance to his core with amusement as his armor.
But you hadn't come for either of them, you reminded yourself firmly. You'd chosen the pink ticket precisely to belong to no one. You would watch the show from whatever anonymous corner you could find, and you would let yourself feel whatever small portion of wonder this place could still offer. Then you would go home, and that would be the end of it.
Your feet had resumed walking while you reasoned with yourself.
The glow grew warmer as you rounded the curve and the tents came into full view. Your breath left you in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
You had forgotten. In the way that grief tends to take the good things with it when it goes, you had simply forgotten what it looked like. The scale of it. The strange and total world it made of itself. Music drifted from somewhere inside, low and in a minor key, nothing like the cheerful brass you remembered from childhood.
A queue had formed at the entrance and you fell in at the back of it automatically, tucking your chin down against the wind.
Then the line moved, and the ticket taker came into view.
It was only then, as the crowd shuffled closer, that you noticed the tickets. Everyone ahead of you held one, and every one of them caught the circus lights the same way. A deep, unmistakable gold. You glanced down at the pink slip in your own hand, then back at the people around you. Gold. All of them gold. You turned the pink ticket over, as though the back of it might offer some explanation, and found nothing.
Did it even matter? It probably meant nothing. A different tier of seating, or a nightly variation you had no way of knowing about. And yet something stirred within. The type of instinct that comes from an almost primal place. Your feet felt suddenly shaky beneath you, and the urge to step out of the line came not as a decision but as something closer to a warning.
You were still turning it over in your mind, stuck in an internal battle, when the ticket taker leaned forward.
"Hello there, visitor! May I punch your ticket?"
You stared at him with what was undoubtedly a dumb expression. The urge to leave had not gone anywhere. It sat at the base of your spine, and you found you couldn't quite make yourself move forward or back. Behind you, the queue shuffled. Someone cleared their throat. You glanced once more at the golden tickets passing easily through the gate, and then down at the pink ticket in your hand.
You needed to make a decision. Now.
"Visitor, if you need to purchase a ticket, please visit the booth to my left and return once you've obtained one."
You jumped at being addressed a second time. The embarrassment of holding up the line snapped something loose. Why were you so nervous? You let out a short, shy laugh and shook your head.
"Sorry. I spaced out. I do have a ticket, actually."
The ticket taker seemed to straighten the moment it came into view, his eyes narrowing to it in recognition. Then the grin returned wider than before with the same sharp and intense quality every circus worker seemed to share.
"Oh, a pink ticket? Well, then you're in luck. That ticket grants you special access." He stepped aside and extended one arm toward the entrance. "Please, come with me."
He didn't wait to see if you would follow.
That was the first thing that unsettled you. He simply turned with the certainty that you would, and moved away from the main entrance along to the outer edge of the tents. You looked back at the golden ticket crowd filing in behind you, then at the ticket taker's back before taking a step.
The path he took curved away from the main area, where the lights dimmed and the music faded. You kept a careful distance behind him and found yourself studying him the way you did when you were nervous.
He was slender and walked with impeccable posture. His coat was a deep navy with gold buttons and a top hat of the same deep blue sat atop his head, which softened the peculiarity of his mask. It was split cleanly down the center. The left side was white with black markings that dripped beneath the eye like liquid. The right side was black with its details swallowed by the darkness.
He had not looked back at you once.
The unease that had been sitting quietly was becoming harder to reason with. You thought about turning around once again. The main entrance was not so far, and you could still hear the distant music if you listened. You could slip back into the crowd and go home and that would be entirely reasonable. Nobody was stopping you.
The pink tent appeared between two larger ones, tucked back as though it did not want to be found. The canvas was a pale and faded rose, almost colorless in the dark, with no signs or lights along its entrance. Nothing to indicate what it was for or who it was meant to hold. The ticket taker stopped before it and finally turned to look at you, his one visible eye catching the dark in a way that made it difficult to meet.
Slowly, he took hold of the tent flap and drew it open.
“Right this way, dear visitor.”
You looked at the opening, then at him. You looked back into the tent, and saw nothing inside. It was completely black and devoid of any apparent show. You remembered what everyone had told you, that this circus was unlike any other, that it was scary and morbid and unlike the family friendly versions you were accustomed to. As you considered your options, he simply smiled at you politely, as though he understood your thoughts perfectly and knew that it was only a matter of time before you complied.
The flap fell closed behind you, and the dark was immediate and total. Not the dim of a room with curtains drawn, not the dark your eyes might gradually adjust to. It was the kind of dark that consumed everything around you. You stood very still and heard nothing but your own breathing, and the faint sound of the tent settling. Somewhere far away, as though from a different world entirely, the low music of the circus continued on.
You felt your heart begin to race, just as it had the prior night when the breaker box had failed on you. You tried squinting, as though that would accomplish anything. You reached a hand out in front of you and found nothing.
Nothing happened. The ticket taker did not speak. The lights did not come on. There was only the canvas settling faintly around you and the sound of your own breathing, and then a rustling. Coming from somewhere you couldn't place.
‘Fuck this,’ you thought. You had come to see the circus, not to stand in a dark tent while something moved around you. You turned, fully intending to find the exit and walk back out into the noise and the lights, leaving the whole thing behind you.
The blow came from behind before you'd finished turning.
It was blunt and intense. For a single, splitting moment it was the only thing that existed. Then your knees met the ground and the rest of you followed. Your vision became prickly at the edges, and when you opened your mouth to scream, no sound came out.
The last things you were aware of arrived in pieces. The cool ground against your cheek, the pull of something at your wrists. The sensation of leaving the ground entirely, folded over a shoulder like luggage.
You woke to the sound of voices.
Male, low, murmuring to one another above you. Your first instinct was to move your hands, and you couldn't. The restraints at your wrists were tight enough to feel professional, digging into skin in a way that told you they had not been tied in haste. Your legs were folded beneath you, bound at the ankle, and the ache that had consumed your lower body was dull and pulsing. Your head was worse. The throbbing behind your skull made rational thought feel like an impossibility.
You tried opening your eyes, blinking rapidly to retain any fragments of cohesion that remained. Immediately a voice spoke.
“Looks like they’re awake… They’re quite pretty.”
You finally open your eyes all the way and look up at the figures before you, your heart dropping to your core. There were five of them, arranged in a loose half-circle, looking down at you with varying degrees of interest. The tallest wore the long coat and beaked mask of a plague doctor, his arms folded and expression unreadable. Beside him stood the ticket taker, fully composed as though this were simply a regular part of his duties. On his other side, a figure in a deep purple jester’s outfit with long hair to match watched you with a smile that made your skin prickle. Something about him was different from the others. More sinister.
You then looked at the last two, and you stopped breathing entirely.
Harlequin was watching you with his usual sharp interest, the smirk in its usual place. But his posture was rigid, his brows drawn together in something that looked, beneath the performance of it, like genuine displeasure.
His eyes were wide, moving between you and the others in quick, unsteady flickers. He swayed slightly where he stood, as though the effort of standing still was costing him something. The guilt on his face was unconcealed, visible even through the apparent shock.
You looked at him for a long moment.
You didn't know him. He had not promised you anything. And yet the sight of him standing in this room while your wrists ached and your head split open made something go cold in your chest. You should have listened. You should have listened to every warning, every whispered word blaming this place for tragedy. You should have listened to all of it.
The ticket taker's voice broke the silence.
"Shall we begin? Is anyone interested in this one?"
The purple figure spoke first. He tilted his head at you with an expression of mild consideration.
"Hmm… Tempting. However, I have enough mouths to feed as is." He smiled pleasantly. "I must decline."
The doctor looked at you and answered with a flat voice, laced with a thick Russian accent. "No. I don’t want to be distracted from my current experiments."
Then silence, and the weight of it shifted toward Pierrot. He had not spoken. The purple jester glanced at him with a raised brow.
"Pierrot? Do you have an interest in this one?"
He looked over, and then back at you. He shook his head lightly, which at first you interpreted as another no, before he spoke.
"I gave you my red ticket." When he finally spoke, his voice was slow and quiet, as though he were still trying to understand it himself. "Why would you use a pink one?"
The room went still. You tried to answer, and produced only a muffled sound behind the tape. Harlequin laughed at that, short and sharp.
“My my, looks like your dearest didn’t want either of us!” He looked down at you with something that might have been appreciation. "I almost respect that, honestly. Well then, if you don't want her, Pierrot, I'll happily take her off your hands."
You did not see Pierrot move.
One moment Harlequin was speaking, and the next there was a knife in his shoulder. You screamed behind the tape. The doctor stepped between them immediately, one arm extended. The jester and the ticket taker exchanged a look. Harlequin glanced down at the blade with something closer to amusement than pain, gripped the handle, and pulled it free. He let it drop to the ground. His expression, when he looked back up, was almost pleased.
"Pierrot, did you give this human your ticket?"
The word the Jester had spoken landed strangely. Human. As though it were a category he was observing from outside of it. He couldn’t be implying that they themselves were not human, could he?
Pierrot looked at the Jester and nodded before he looked back at you with a softened gaze. His eyes glowed in the dark, holding an intense, conflicted emotion.
"My dear." He stopped, seeming at a loss for words. "I did not anticipate this. Had I known you carried a pink ticket, I would have taken it from you before you ever reached the gate." He paused, voice growing even softer. Quieter. "This is all my doing, but… I want you… I want you so badly I can hardly bear it.”
With every word, his voice became quicker and less composed. You watched him without making a sound. Your head still throbbed in insistent pulses, and some distant part of you was still trying to determine whether any of this was real.
Harlequin looked at the knife on the floor, then appeared to decide against whatever he'd been about to say. Nothing helpful, you were certain.
You had no leverage here. No argument, no exit, nothing but the mercy of your captors. The jester regarded Pierrot for a moment before clasping his hands together as though this had all been settled.
"Then that’s that. Pierrot claims this one." He paused. "If you'd like, I'll allow you to select their mask before the transformation."
Pierrot moved before the sentence finished.
He placed himself between you and the jester, and something behind his mask had shifted. Something with an almost malicious intent.
"No." The word was quiet. “You will not turn this one into a fool. I chose them because I want them as they are. I will not allow you to change them.”
The jester paused, looking as though he had not expected that. Harlequin snorted, quite rudely, and the doctor tightened his hold. This time, the Ticket Taker spoke with a measured tone.
“Pierrot. You are aware that we cannot allow humans to retain full knowledge of the circus. They would become a liability, a risk we cannot take. This is how it must be.”
What came next was not a sound you had a name for.
It started low, below hearing, vibrating up into your bones. A low growl. Every part of you that was still animal recognized it and told you to run. To your shock, and slight horror, you realized it was coming from Pierrot.
He was taller now, you were sure of it. You watched as his hands flexed open and closed, revealing the sharp claws you had failed to notice with every prior meeting.
“I refuse to let you touch them. They defended me." His voice had dropped into something rough and strained. "The townspeople had surrounded me, kicked me, said things I will not repeat. They put themselves in front of me, and was struck in my place." The last words came out slower, lower. "They are kind. They have been nothing but kind to me."
You felt something shift in your chest at that. A small, almost involuntary thing. Hope for your situation. Hope that was shattered in an instant.
The jester let the silence sit for a moment, as though giving Pierrot the opportunity to hear himself.
"After everything, have you not learned?" His voice had not changed, had not raised nor sharpened. That was the most unsettling part of it.
He began to move slowly, in a wide circle around you. Not looking at you. Looking at Pierrot.
"Humans are fragile things. Lovely, sometimes, in the way that fragile things can be. They break easily and break others just as easily without ever knowing." He paused. "This one defended you on a street corner. That may be true. Yet the very crowd that they defended you against was made up of the same creature. The same hands that offer comfort are the ones that throw stones. You have been here long enough to know that."
Pierrot said nothing. He stared at the jester as he circled around, matching his steps so that he was always placed between you.
"They are useful, at times," the jester continued. "But utility and companionship are not the same, and confusing the two will cost you." He glanced at you then with detached interest and mild loathing. "It will cost them something as well, which I suspect you care about more."
"You are describing other humans," Pierrot said, "they’re different."
The jester stopped walking. He scoffed, looking at Pierrot as though he were a fool.
"I am describing," he said, the first trace of his composure cracking, "what I have watched happen. Repeatedly. To members of this circus, including yourself." He tilted his head. "They will smile at you. They will mean it, for a time. And then something will frighten them, you will frighten them, and whatever they felt will curdle into something they can justify. They will tell themselves they had no choice. They will tell others that you are dangerous. And the cycle will begin again, in a new town, with new flyers."
Pierrot's hands had not unclenched. The low rumbling had faded, but the feeling of it hadn't. Like the way thunder leaves the air charged long after it's passed. You stayed very still and watched the jester complete his circle and come to a stop.
"I know what they are," Pierrot said. His voice had regained some of its control, but not all of it. "I am not confused about that."
"Then you are choosing this with full understanding." The jester's tone was not a question. "That is somehow less reassuring."
"That’s right. I am choosing this."
The jester looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at you, evaluating you in a way that felt clinical. You held his gaze because looking away felt like a confession you couldn't afford.
He turned back to Pierrot. Whatever conclusion he reached, he kept it to himself.
"If I permit this," he said, and the word permit landed with a weight that made you flinch, "you will be responsible for them. Entirely. What they see, what they know, what they do with either. If they become a liability, which I am certain they will, if they speak to the wrong person, if their presence draws the kind of attention that forces us to move before we are ready," he paused. "I will remove the problem and we will be in a new town within the week. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
Pierrot understood. You could tell by the way he went still.
"Say it plainly. So they understand."
A pause. Something moved through Pierrot's expression that he did not try to conceal.
"If they become a risk to this circus, you will kill them."
"Without hesitation," the jester said simply.
The silence that followed was the longest yet.
The jester turned away from Pierrot, which seemed to be his version of a conclusion.
"See to it that they are not." He moved toward the exit with a fluid, graceful movement. "And take them to your tent."
The remaining figures began to disperse one after the other, each looking down at you a last time before leaving. The jester left without another word. The doctor gave Pierrot a single, unreadable look before following. The ticket taker straightened his coat, glanced at you with that same expression of professional attention, and disappeared.
While the others filed out with the purposeful quiet of people returning to their routines, Harlequin remained exactly where he was, watching Pierrot with a mischievous glare.
"Well," he said. "That was quite the performance."
Pierrot didn't look at him.
"I mean it as a compliment." Harlequin tilted his head, the smirk widening by a fraction. "I didn't know you had it in you, honestly. All that growling. Very dramatic." He glanced down at his shoulder, where the fabric was still torn. "Though I could have done without the knife."
"Then you should have kept your mouth shut."
"Hmm?~ Perhaps." He didn't sound even slightly troubled by it. He began moving in your direction, hands clasped loosely behind his back. "Though in my defense, I wanted to know what you'd do. Now I know. But really, you should know better than to show your cards to me." He crouched down to your level without warning, close enough that you could see seams where the mask met flesh. "Funny how things turn out, isn't it?"
You held his gaze and said nothing. The tape was still placed firmly over your mouth.
"Don't antagonize them," Pierrot said. His voice had gone flat.
"I wouldn’t dream of it~ I'm being friendly." Harlequin looked at you with an expression of exaggerated sincerity. "I'm a very friendly person. Ask anyone."
Pierrot grabbed another knife, seemingly out of nowhere, and gripped it tightly as a silent warning for whatever may come next. Harlequin scoffed.
"He gets like this," he told you, as though Pierrot were not standing directly behind him and had not recently thrown a knife. "Very territorial. It's honestly a little embarrassing to watch, but the heart wants what it wants, I suppose. Apparently what his heart wants is," he gestured at you, "this. No offense."
Pierrot's hands had begun to flex again. You could see it in your peripheral vision. The low rumble hadn't returned yet, but something in the air had shifted in the direction of it.
Harlequin rose without hurry and turned to face him.
"No need to get riled up," he said, almost laughing. "You wouldn't want to scare them more than you already have, would you? Make them hide from you? Make them despise your very presence?"
The smirk returned to its usual satisfied position.
He turned back to you one last time. The smug look hadn’t left his face, but something more resided underneath it. His eyes seemed to glow ever so slightly as he looked at you.
"You've had quite the evening," he said. "Let’s see how long you last, hmm?" He reached out and, with two careful fingers, straightened the green pin on your collar that had somehow survived all of it. "Try not to have too much fun without me."
He stepped back, and offered a slight, theatrical bow.
"I'll be seeing you around, dear one."
He left without looking at Pierrot.
The tent was quiet. Just the two of you now, and the faint sound of the circus continuing on somewhere outside, indifferent to all of it.
Pierrot stood motionless for a moment after Harlequin left. As though he needed the silence to confirm it was over.
Then he closed the distance between you in two strides, dropping to his knees and gathering you against him with a force that bordered on desperate. His arms wrapped around you completely, one hand pressed to the back of your head with a gentleness that didn't quite match the urgency of the rest of it. He held you like something he had nearly lost and was still in the process of believing he hadn't.
"Forgive me." The words came out low and uneven, against the top of your head. "Forgive me, forgive me. I should have… I should have found you before the gate. I should have been watching you. This is my fault entirely, and I am deeply, deeply sorry."
He pulled back just enough to look at you, both hands moving to cup your face with a tenderness that contrasted the claws still visible at the ends of his gloves. His eyes moved over you in quick passes, checking for damage.
He reached for the rope at your ankles first.
He worked at the knots with more care than you expected, given how his hands had looked minutes ago. He took his time. When the binding finally gave, he set your legs down with the deliberate care of someone who understood that the ache would need a moment. He moved to your wrists next, and you heard something low and unhappy in the back of his throat when he saw the marks the restraints had left.
When the tape came last, he hesitated. His fingers found the edge of it with delicate precision, and he peeled it back so slowly it almost didn't hurt. Almost.
His eyes had dropped to your mouth. He stayed there a moment too long, something flickering through his expression that he didn't fully conceal. His face moved in closer, closer than it had been a breath before. Then he blinked, pulled back, and the composure returned.
He took your hands in both of his instead, cradling them with the marks from the rope facing up, as though he could do something about them by looking. He breathed out, partially angry, partially devastated.
"I will make this right," he said. "I give you my word. You will want for nothing here. I will perform for you every night if you wish it. You will have the best seat, always, the kind no ticket can purchase." He was speaking faster now, the formality dropping away with every word. "I will see to it that you are fed properly, that your clothes are warm and comfortable, that you’re happy here. There are things here, within this circus, that you cannot imagine. I will protect you. I want you to be happy, I want you to like it here, I want you Y/N, I want-"
You pressed one finger to his lips.
He stopped instantly. His eyes went very wide, fixed on you, pupils flaring bright.
Your voice, when it came, was not entirely steady.
"Pierrot." You held his gaze. "What is going on?"
