Chapter Text
Ragatha knew what she was doing was wrong. If her mom knew about this, she would have a fit. But when stuck in a Digital Circus with no exit in sight, everyone has their vice.
And this was her coping mechanism of choice. One that only she knew about.
After their laid-back adventure as fast food workers, the adventure Ragatha practically blacked out for, she found a bottle of the traitorous stupid sauce still in her pocket. At the time, she glared at the forsaken bottle, blaming it for her making a fool of herself and damaging her relationship even further with Gangle. She tossed it in the deepest corner of her room to forget about it, hoping the memory of the adventure would be forgotten with it.
She should have found a way to throw it away permanently, but there wasn’t a true way to do that without bringing it to Caine’s attention, and she didn’t want the fact that it was in her possession to be on anyone’s radar. Especially Jax’s. He would probably call everyone’s attention to it and bully her relentlessly, calling her an addict to embarrass her.
Well… He wouldn’t be too far off. Or, at least, further down the line.
Adventure after adventure, and her spirits only continued to dim. She wouldn’t say she was abstracting, no, she was stable enough to regulate her emotions and keep the bad thoughts at bay. She knew based on… Other experiences, that as soon as she loosened the reins on herself, there would be no way of returning. However, despite her best attempts, there was a deep depression that sank its teeth into her heart once she closed her bedroom door, a beast she didn’t let anyone else see.
On an especially restless night (or, group-agreed sleeptime would be more accurate), she pulled at her hair while hiding under her covers, replaying her mistakes from the day on loop.
Pissing off Jax during stargazing. (Did Pomni think she was a jerk for that?)
Oversharing at the bar unprompted. (Nobody asked, Ragatha)
Blowing up at Jax and Pomni during the softball game. She was so excited to play one of her favorite sports from when she was younger, and although the game was strange and definitely didn’t follow the traditional playbook, she had fun doing it… She even won the game! (Let’s ignore that she won Caine-style.) But despite all these positives, the only thing on her mind was Pomni’s expression, and how she and Jax walked off into the circus afterward, leaving her alone.
She wished somebody would check up on her the way she checked up on others.
It was unlike Ragatha to blow up on anyone, but she was emboldened by Pomni’s encouragement… Only for her to switch up and tell her to calm down when she lost her temper. Ragatha couldn’t erase the other woman’s look from her mind. Judgemental. Like she was doing too much. Like her feelings weren’t valid.
She tugged harder at her hair, threatening to rip the strings right out. It was times like this when she wished she could cry, but her mom had long trained her out of that nasty habit. Even when she needed the catharsis, her eyes remained dry. The most she could do was get teary-eyed, but no tears ever fell.
Her emotions were always a fickle thing. Her mom didn’t appreciate them, so she always had a hard time expressing herself. Hell, her self-regulation skills were top-notch because of her. But she wished she could just relax sometimes instead of battling with her own mind. The only time she really felt that way was when she was drunk or-
Her thoughts paused. Conveniently, she remembered the bottle of stupid sauce from days prior.
Ragatha sat up in her bed, letting the sheets covering her slide off. She eyed the corner she knew she stashed it in, between the bookshelf and the wall, with a horse plushie on top to hide it from view.
Hesitant, but desperate, she crawled off the bed and crept to the corner, like when she was a kid creeping downstairs to grab a sweet treat after dinner. Surely it wasn’t still there, right? Items from their adventures would poof out of existence after a while. Part of Ragatha hoped it had disappeared, but her indulgent desires hoped otherwise.
The demons won that day. As she moved the horse plushie out of the way, there the bottle lay, just as she had left it.
The temptation gnawed at her. Well, what could it hurt? She was fine last time she took it, and that was by accident. She could pace herself this time and try just a dollop… And maybe try it orally instead of getting it in her eye.
Squirting a fat dollop on her finger, she curiously licked it off, and the rest was history.
She enjoyed the dizzying, disorienting effects as it first hit her tongue. The world spun around her in a beautiful blur before fading to black as she took the backseat in her mind. She could feel her eyes dilate as it spread through her system, her soft doll limbs relaxing, all tension leaving her system.
It felt so good. Her brain felt like it was buzzing. She felt like dancing.
The first few times, she stayed in her room. She would wait until everyone disbanded for bed and retired to her room, keeping the knob turned as she set the door back into place, an old habit of hers. The sound of the doorknob clicking into place made her anxious. After securing her door, she moved the horse plush from the corner to reveal the bottle, patiently waiting for her at the end of a day full of long, tiring adventures.
Drinking the sauce soon became what she looked forward to each day. She had fun with everyone else, sure, but she enjoyed the time by herself where she could drink her stress away dollop by dollop. It was the only time she wasn’t drowning in her thoughts or worried about verbally stepping on anyone’s toes. The only emotions that mattered in those moments were her own.
And, she could do whatever she wanted! Without worrying what people thought! She would read her books to the horse plush, drunkenly pretending it was one of the ones from home. When she pet the soft velvet, she imagined the coarse hair of her favorite mare.
When she was too inebriated to read, she would sit at the piano and play whatever came to mind. Sometimes it was scales, other times it was fragments of her favorite pieces… She had been in the circus too long to remember the full song. She would play as much as she could, a silly grin on her face as she lost herself, until her hands faltered, and a pang of panic would strike through her chest before she reminded herself, You’re having fun, not performing for the family.
Oh, if her mother could see her now. How disappointing she has become, letting her skills deteriorate and rot.
Ragatha shook her head, squeezing the ends of her hair. No, it didn’t matter anymore. This was her time, not self-pity time.
Another glop of stupid sauce was enough to distract her from the feelings of disappointment.
Sometimes, her trips weren’t so fun. When she had nothing to distract her, she would get sucked into her thoughts and struggle to break out of them. She would lie on the floor of her room, petting and pulling the rug anxiously to ground herself.
How long has she been in the circus? So many people have come and gone. Why was she still here? Others who came after her were… Not here anymore. Why hasn’t she abstracted yet? Was it really because of her self-preservation?
What did it feel like, abstraction? Would she know if it was happening? What if it were happening now, and she didn’t know it?
Did her family miss her? … Would anyone miss her…?
She sat up with a jolt, smacking her cheeks before her hands found their way into her hair to pull at her strings. This is crazy. What was she thinking? She just needed some fresh air to clear her head. Yeah, that would do her some good.
She clumsily pushed herself to her feet, giggling as she stumbled and fell against her bed. Whoops, looks like she may have taken a little too much. No matter, it would wear off eventually. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t as strong as it used to be. She must be gaining a tolerance.
Even if it wasn’t daytime, she still checked herself in the mirror. Be presentable, Ragatha told herself with words that weren’t hers.
She looked totally blasted, her eyes half-lidded and red. The dopey smile never dropped, even when she tried to act serious. Acting serious only made her giggle more, unable to take herself seriously. She dusted off her dress with her hands before getting distracted, enraptured by the sight of her own hand. She turned it over, looking at her fingers. She wished she had five of them like when she was in her human body.
She took the single finger of her left hand, the only one not morphed together, and chewed on it. Weird, it hurt, but it also didn't. She pressed her teeth together with the fabric in between, all her stuffing pushed away. She shivered. Oh, that felt strange in a not-so-good way.
Realizing what she was doing, she spat her finger out of her mouth, wiping it lazily on her dress. Ew, gross, stay focused!
She adjusted her bow and double-snapped, pointing finger guns at her reflection. “Looking snazzy, Razzy~.”
Approaching her door, she felt a pang of anxiety deep in her stomach. Aside from at the fast food joint, she hadn’t been ‘drunk’ off stupid sauce outside of her room. Her hand dropped away from the doorknob, and she clasped them together in front of her. She couldn’t resist the urge to fidget… Yet another habit her mom would scold her for.
Looking over her shoulder, she spotted the bottle where she had left it on the floor. Biting her lip, she quickly walked over and swiped it up, tucking it safely into her pocket.
Yeah, that’s right, she should keep this with her just in case. Not because she needed more, no, it was so that nobody found it! After all, you could never be too comfortable when Jax has keys to everyone’s room… To her dismay. There was a reason her horse plushie stayed stuffed in the corner… He had teased her for it on more than one occasion.
After another (in her defense) smaller dollop, she summoned the courage to open her bedroom door.
It was certainly a lot brighter in the circus than in her room, even at nighttime. She wandered aimlessly, a perfect balance of wasted to find everything around her as interesting as if it were her first time being here. She practically skipped down the hallways, dragging her hand along the wall. Why were the walls squishy? She didn’t think about it too hard.
She entered and exited rooms on a whim with no destination in mind, following her feet wherever they decided to take her. If she snuck another dollop of sauce here and there to keep the high going, then that was a secret for only her to know.
For fun, she twirled midstep, feeling her dress flow out beneath her. A titter of a laugh escaped her, bubbling from her chest. It felt like, for a moment, she flew like a fairy. Fairies were pretty. She wished she were pretty. Maybe people would like her more if she were.
A momentary panic crossed her mind. What if somebody went to her room looking for her? Oh, wait, she couldn’t help but snicker at her own thoughts. As if, what was she so worried about? Nobody ever came looking for her. Why would they start tonight?
The hallway Ragatha had wandered down opened into a large room, the ceilings high above her head, with a maze of tunnels and slides out of reach. Underneath the inaccessible sky labyrinth sat a large bouncy castle. It looked just like the ones her family rented for her younger siblings’ birthday parties. It was a mix of vibrant yellow, red, and blue with an inflated slide attached to the side.
Ragatha recalled her twirl in the hallway and how nice it felt to ‘fly’. How fun would it be as a fairy princess in her castle, flying without a care in the world?
She could barely contain her excitement, her smile hurting her cheeks. She clumsily ran to the bouncy castle entrance, crawling up the short ramp and lifting the flaps, giddily giggling. She was so excited!
Upon her first step into the castle, she yelped in surprise as she bounced a foot into the air, unable to steady herself before falling forward onto the inflated ground. Wow, this bouncy castle had an emphasis on bouncy.
She found that she could not stop giggling. This was all so silly. She pushed herself up, sitting with her legs folded on either side of her. She slowly moved herself up and down, a peal of laughter escaping her as she felt her body leave the ground with hardly any effort at all. Oh, she loved how her dress flowed around her. She felt beautiful.
She held her hands to her cheeks, covering her smile, feeling embarrassed. When did she get so egotistical? It felt nice to love herself, though, to feel comfortable in her skin.
With a newfound sense of energy, Ragatha gingerly rose to her feet and steadied herself… Before bending at the knees and launching herself into the air. She shrieked in surprise at how high she flew, losing balance in the air and leaning horizontally. When gravity worked its magic, her stomach lurched as she fell, but luckily, the stupid sauce helped her not panic. After all, it’s not like they could actually get hurt in the circus.
She managed to steady herself midair before she touched the ground, landing on her feet before sending herself back into orbit. She quickly got addicted to the feeling. Up she went, down she’d go. She let her imagination take her somewhere else, somewhere far away from here.
As she reached the height of her trajectory, she closed her eyes and breathed in deep, so much air in her lungs that they threatened to pop. She never wanted this feeling to end.
“Ragatha? What are you doing?”
Ragatha’s eyes snapped open. She struggled midair, but gravity already took hold of her, sending her careening to the squishy ground. In her panic, she tried to see who had caught her in the act, but all she could see was a blue and red blur.
She landed on her side with an oof as all the air left her lungs. Of course, humiliatingly, she bounced back up into the air, and she flailed helplessly before smacking back down, this time face-first, but graciously, she didn’t bounce a second time.
The world spun horribly fast, a nasty mix of her anxiety swirling with the stupid sauce still strong in her system. She pushed herself up slowly, almost too humiliated to lift her head to see who called her name.
Of course, it was the second-to-last person she wanted to catch her: Pomni. The jester looked surprised, but not angry or disgusted. Actually, it seemed there was something else that caught her attention on the ground in front of her. Ragatha followed her gaze and felt her heart skip a beat.
The stupid sauce lay on the ground between them, having tumbled out of Ragatha’s pocket during her less-than-gracious fall.