Chapter Text
No one speaks of the cards lost from the deck.
There is no reward for delving deep into the dusty catacombs of memory; only the dissatisfactory silhouette of a smile, or the distant echo of a voice without an owner. The vague shape of the forgotten faces are fated to forever wander in the limbo nestled between light and dark, reality and dreams— lest their companions are especially, stupidly daring.
The rotting tomb of neglect is not meant to be pried open. Clearing away the layers of dust and grime that cling to its mahogany lid will only seal the fate of another sufferer. The surface, wiped clean, shall reflect the cruel reality of their existence in the shape of an inescapable mirror, refusing to release its hold on the feeble-minded once its claws ensnare their psyche: here in the Dark, everyone is so very forgettable.
Truth, unvarnished, is a daunting entity: it takes and breaks naivety like harnessing emotion is a grievous sin, dismantling all that once was a being of the dark until all that remains is a shallow shell that will forever carry the heft of its punishment for daring to feel in the first place. The frivolities of hope, of desire, belong to souls. It is blasphemy to even play pretend.
Thus, a Darkner must not dwell; lest they wish to lose any semblance of sanity left in their accursed vessel. They must weave a web of preferable lies, a meticulous avoidance of what stalks their sentience from just out of view. They must embrace the fabrication of purpose so entirely that they forget it is a fabrication at all.
"The deck has always been like this. Incomplete."
The mantra is obediently chanted within their subconscious until all doubt is drained and delsuion is reborn from its ashes. Until the distant ache of deep-rooted grief reduces itself to the preferable hum of oblivion that resonates throughout their pretend-bones in a chorus of pretend-contentedness. Until that sensation of static that throbs behind their eyes whenever they think about the history cradled within the teeth of their kingdom becomes another faraway figment of their hazy imagination.
There is no reason to seek what lies beyond the barrier set by their subconscious, a wordless warning to stay away from suspicion. The agony of knowledge is far less comfortable than the route of ignorance; a choice, a sacrifice, that must be made to continue… for whatever reason they feel they have to do so.
Yet, in the rippling expanse of purgatory, an especially rare fool may form, undeterred and unrestrained by the gravity of the impending embrace of their coffin— daring to claw at the hinges of their own fate, heedless of the splinters burrowing into their shriveling flesh the more they tear away the velvet, into wood, through the suffocating weight of dirt and darkness and everything beyond.
A tremendous wave of loss smothered the calm of the kingdom without warning, the day that the Queen vanished.
If it had been a commonor, the mantra would have held firm. The king, however, in all of his uproarious grief, refused to submit himself to dismissing her altogether. Command after insistent command to scour every last inch of their land did not yield, not for a long time.
Of course, the outcome was set in stone since the very day her throne fell cold. It was a fool's errand to search for a Queen that could not return. No card ever did once they disappeared from the deck.
His efforts began to feel like a performance, after a while, maintained solely for his undying loyalty— a vow, sealed by a wedding that never happened but felt too right and real to be a dream and it had to be real because she was real and she was everything.
Who was she?
Perhaps even the King, too, forgot who it was he so adamantly sought. Perhaps that is why, with a final, resounding cry of sorrow, he stopped looking altogether.
After all, a river cannot mourn the water that has passed; it has narry a choice but to flow forth regardless.
The second throne remains untouched, pristine save for the accumulation of dust where her Majesty once served. It is a memorial, the final sign that she existed at all, and he would not allow it to be taken alongside her. Despite its presence, however, his courtiers would huddle and hiss consipiratorially when they believed he could not hear the theories they exchanged— claiming him to be mad, for there was never a Queen of Spades at all.
Perhaps not.
There was no other explanation, though, for the weight that shifted in his chest when he lay eyes upon the barren throne; like a sore reminder that someone he loved was meant to be seated right beside him, raising their infant son and doing all of the right things in rearing him properly where his pitiful excuse of a father could not.
The Queen was not the only card to vanish that day.
The court jester's disappearance was an afterthought amidst the chaos of soothing his Majesty's misery in the wake of his wife's sudden departure. Their absence was only truly noticed when, shortly thereafter, a shadow unceremoniously shuffled himself into the deck to serve as a replacement.
He flaunted about with an air of self-assuredness that effortlessly radiated charisma, so very personable that it singlehandly strangled any lingering trace of doubt regarding his inexplicable appearance, until it retreated right back into their subconscious where it belonged. He was a walking, talking reminder of the mantra engraved in their hearts.
The former jester's mannerisms were only remembered when the replacement managed to imitate them in a way that came across as uncanny, a stark contrast to the natural joy emitted from the forgotten one. The former's laughter could clear a room of melancholy with its unbridled joy, whimsical and musical like the chime of a bell. The imp's, however, was an ill-fit hand-me-down: a jagged, gravelly bark that felt foreign to the ear when compared with his higher pitched speech. It almost sounded sore, as if an eternity of entertaining a crowd he had yet to face was finally taking a toll on his vocal cords.
The sharp edges of his cackling fits were reflected in the teeth he wore in a permanent smile; the giddiness of his grin just a little too exaggerated, though sincere nevertheless. It remained too still, like a meticulous mask painted on alongside his makeup. It stretched too wide, like the only thing keeping it on his face were the very few rules that bound him to reality. It was soft, sometimes, when the days were especially dreary and he needed to give his glee to an audience far more deserving of it.
His audience was simply wonderful at playing pretend. They pretended they did not notice that the actors had switched mid-performance. They pretended that they did not wonder about what the stage curtains hid just out of view. Instead, as overcompensation for their wariness, his audience rose into thunderous applause after every trick, every joke, every bow. After all, they thought as one, the show must go on.
Even when he had the gutsiness to challenge the king's decrees like they were mere suggestions for how to play his game, like they were nothing more than annoying yet amusing constraints to tease and bend until they inevitably broke— the King's wrath never fell upon his prized entertainer, and thus, the curtains of their show never came to close. The jester could do anything, and he would, if only to postpone the dread of boredom and isolation.
Because, when you can do anything, life eventually loses its appeal.
His audience was lovely, really and truly— but none of them were fit to see past the curtains. None of them wanted to, anyways, and he had enough standards to restrain from yanking a member of the audience up onto the stage to bask in the spotlight, right there by his side.
The first person to willingly waltz onto his stage was the magician.
They were notorious in a larger-than-life way, more of a legend than a wisened old wizard. Whispers of their name wore down the walls of Card Castle until it was inscribed across its proud tiles, a ghost of praise left unheard by the very mage they murmured about; praised by pippins, respected by rudinns, yet never quite appreciated enough to converse with them, save for banter from across a card table.
No matter how such rumors took their form, the result was all the same and equivocally uncontested: Seam was unrivaled in any assortment of card games. Poker, Old Maid, something made up on the spot by a particularly sore loser as a final, frantic bid to break their streak— it was all the same.
Seam never lost.
And true to their stoic self, they never showed a sense of satisfaction for their piling victories. Perhaps such high praise might have wrought such an emotion, once: every wager was a promise of relief from the unrest of reality, albeit fleeting. Alas, those halcyonic days were long gone, and with it, their passion for play.
Repetition rubbed away what once kept their patchwork heart alight. Opponents grew stale, their tells as transparent as an open hand. Nights blurred together to paint one muddied mess of a picture, brushstrokes dirtying the canvas with predictable efficiency.
Regardless, Seam did not pack away their trusty deck for good. Routine had become too deeply embedded into them to bear part with— and Card Kingdom had never been known to go against the established. They were no different from the rest, in that regard. Predictability, while awfully boring, was safe.
They tended to be rather pessimistic, to their own chagrin. Perhaps it was blatant on their face, and that was why so many of their fellow courtiers looked upon them with discomfort. It would not have been a stretch to assume that the final ebbs of hope— that someone, anyone would finally surprise them— had been snuffed out. It just so happened that for all their negativity, Seam was terribly stubborn.
A blessing from the heavens they had reluctantly rejected— or that had rejected them— appeared one fateful evening, the first and final act of goodwill bestowed upon Seam by the cruel thing that cast them into this unwanted Darkness. This riddle given impish form was enough for them to glean a world with a god in it again in a blissful moment that was agonizingly long yet not nearly long enough.
He’d materialized in the threshold of the den's doorway, as if awaiting an invitation to enter and rearrange everything they had ever known (and really, they would have thanked him for it). Even in the dim lanternlight, the magician could recognize the mischief he carried: the glint in his eyes, black as night, paired with a grin dangerous as shards of glass. A picture-perfect promise of the chaos he would come to preach like its final messiah.
It was funny. They hadn't noticed him staring at the few Darkners lounging around the card table— no one had— but the instant their eyes met, Seam knew that he had been observing for an uncomfortably long time. They also knew that, if he had not been willing to be seen, he would have been perfectly capable of watching forevermore in the nook of shadows he seemed to meld into, with those eyes that said what his mouth did not: "I know you, I will always know you, and I will unravel all that you are and will be."
They could not wait for him to try.
Maybe they did not need words to converse with the clown, but Seam broke the spell of silence anyways with a curious hum. "A new addition to our deck, hm…? How exciting."
Their voice was wonderfully worn-down with a wisdom that no Darkner should have to bear alone. It was smooth, soothing, yet too flat to be considered musical to anyone besides the jester they met.
One of the pippins they were playing with blinked in befuddlement, following the magician's gaze until it finally took note of the unnerving presence lurking just behind them. They rose from their seat across from Seam, then— slowly, yet tense enough to give away how startled they truly were— having finally accepted yet another loss against the masterful mage. Pippins, it seemed, never truly learned when to quit.
The den, previously alive with the soft tittering and cohorting of the pippins' friends, hushed itself like a breath held steadfast. Sidelong glances were spared across the table, like any further movement or comment would be inking their own eulogies. A fog dampened the silly smiles plastered across every dice's face beneath the suffocating force of tension, palpable with uncertainty and intrigue. Only the two performers were permitted to speak. The rest of them were but an audience.
The room was reminded to breathe when the jester took a single step forward, no longer blanketed in flickering shadow. With the tension lessened, the collective curiosity simmering amongst the courtiers approached its boiling point for every tense second without a response from the peculiar performer. One by one, the pippins yielded to the surface tension and reclaimed their tongues, hissing predictions amongst themselves whilst ensuring their volume never rises too noticeably.
The flow of murmurs faltered when the jester finally closed the distance between the doorway and the card table. He paused just beside the chair opposite to the mage, where their prior opponent, a wide-eyed pippins, stood stock-still like they had been caught ransacking the treasury. Wordlessly, the jester's mitt slithered forth to pat the back of the pippins' hand as a means of dismissal. They blinked, jaw agape as they scrambled for some kind of response, yet any semblance of coherency died when they met his grinning eyes. Unnerving, enrapturing, otherwordly in the best and worst of ways that their mind couldn't quite comprehend but their white-hot nerves certainly did.
He didn't do so much as blink until the pippins finally ducked their head to avert their gaze from the piercing pupils that had entranced them. Like his hypnotic eyes, the jester's smile curved like a crescent moon— well-rehearsed in its patience, yet uncany in its perfect porcelain stillness. They returned it in kind with a jittery grin of their own, splintered and frail like a bird about to take flight.
The magician's smile, throughout the unraveling spectacle, maintained its air of unreadability; infinitely gentler than the jester's, yet it held plenty of secrets, too, neatly caged by rows of frayed stitches.
The pippins scurried for the safety of a neighboring chair. Of course, in their haste, a misstep was inevitable: their head cracked against another pippins', dice spinning alongside their vision until it settles on a measly one.
There was no time to dwell on the sudden surge of sickness brewing in their gut, nor the steady tingle of vertigo spreading through their limbs like an aftershock for their own clumsiness; they, much like all the others sureounding the table, assumed the role of a quiet spectator. The stage was nearly set for the performance of a lifetime. They were no longer delegated to play the role of a mediocre afterstudy, not when the star of the show had come to take center stage.
Before the performance even began, the jester's heart ran wild with greed; an all-consuming desire to drink up the secrets behind their eyes, until the two of them could share in the sorrows they kept.
What a marvellous fun it will be to chip away at those impenetrable walls of theirs.
Even if Seam could read him, decipher him, like the rows of runes they studied in the castle's library, they didn't say a thing.
As the jester kneaded at the cushion of his claimed chair until it was deemed comfortable, Seam observed the sway of his hook-like tail. It reminded them of a pendulum in need of reparation.
He collapsed down onto his chair with a sound somewhere between a squeak and a huff, satisfied with his work. The jester centered his sights across the table once more. He leaned forward in his seat, painfully, deliberately slow. His elbows rose to rest against its surface, until he could cradle his cheeks in his palms. His smiling eyes bored through the magician with an intensity that reassured them that the game had started long before he had sat down.
"WELL?" Jevil chirped, the bells of his hat jingling with a sharp tilt of his head. "LET US BEGIN, BEGIN."
Oh.
How very fascinating.
Arrogance was not a new phenomenon at this table. They had witnessed many bluffs in their time; desperation disguised as determination, miniscule movements betraying shows of bravado. It all followed a pattern. Patterns were safe. Patterns were good.
Patterns were supposed to be predictable, yet it seemed that fate had other plans this evening.
Seam laughed breathily, a tired yet genuine sound all the same. They hoped it hid how severely their heart had lurched.
They didn't fill the air with meaningless conversation. The only sound— save for the whispering pippins— came from the practiced precision with which they shuffled the deck, fanciful and befitting of their reputation as a grand magician. It came to a conclusion all too soon; a dramatic yet elegant flourish of the wrist to click the cards against the corner of the table, and the deck was straightened out. Their paw slid forth to form a hand for two players, one card at a time.
The court observed as the stacks grew, submerged in near complete silence… save for the pitchy humming of the jester, who accompanied his unpleasant tune with the restless tapping of his foot to the floor. His fidgeting was not necessarily out of impatience. It just so happened that he could never fall still.
Seam set the remaining deck onto the table's middle, a silent permit for the jester to snatch up the hand he had been eagerly eying. With a barely audible hum, Jevil's arm jerked forward to peer at his hand with unrestrained enthusiasm, biting down on his lower lip as though resisting a squeal; his squinting eyes somehow conveyed his emotions with intricacy, even without the aid of pupils or eyebrows. Through his dagger-like teeth, a miniscule giggle slipped as he pulled his cards even closer to his face to finally glimpse his hand—
"BWAH-HAH !!!"
The bark of laughter was sudden enough to startle the spectators out of the relative stillness they had settled into. Seam, however, did not flinch. The sound was not cruel, nor mocking. It was raw, unfettered elation, the likes of which they were entirely unfamiliar with.
What an unusual man.
"OHO!" the jester exclaimed, voice still wavering with the ghost of a giggle, "WHAT A MOST MARVELOUS, MARVELOUS FUN ALREADY!" He raked through his cards without even trying to conceal them properly behind his glove. His fang teased at the forked tongue which now hung limply from his smile to drape over his chin. "A HILARIOUS GAME, INDEED!"
Seam stared. That was all they could think to do, really, save for mull over a single question in their cotton-stuffed head— What, exactly, is this fool's strategy?
For the absolute life of them, they couldn't tell.
Anyone in their right mind would avoid being this blatantly, idiotically open at the table— well, unless he was already mad, they supposed. That assumption felt glaringly reasonable to make… a compliment, coming from their jaded perspective.
Scouring the jester's body language for any clues came back with unsatisfactory results, to their chagrin. It seemed that they had been analyzing every inch of the aforementioned fool a little too intensely, though, because he made a meticulous show of slowly lowering his hand of cards, just enough to offer a knowing smirk accompanied with a low chuff that made the mage's fur bristle.
His eyes, ignited with two pinprick pupils, pierce them in place and made them acutely, agonizingly aware of how their breath hitched. Not by means of instinctive fear— perhaps this raw emotion was steeped in animalistic roots, but it was far too complicated to be strictly primal.
The jester reeled Seam back out of the muddy waters of their inner monologue by rocking back in his chair with a strained huff, before he kicked his feet up onto the corner of the table like he owned the room— no, the castle itself. "DO TELL," he hummed lazily, a hint of intrigue sparkling somewhere within the abyssmal blackness of his eyes, "IS IT TRUE, TRUE THAT THE CARDS FAVOR YOU?"
The straight-forward nature of such an inquiry coaxed a chorus of incredulous gasps and whispers from their lingering audience, yet not one spectator dared to raise their volume beyond meager mumbles. Not before Seam, the head of the table, took the honor of seizing the silence for themself.
"… ‘s that what they say?" the magician mused with the lonesome longing of someone stuck upon an old memory they can never relive; far-removed, yet notably fond. They toyed with the anticipation permeating the air by extending the stretch of quiet, a paw raised to carress their chin in feigned thought.
Their gaze had wandered to look into nothingness, through the jester and beyond what anyone could see at all. It returned with a vengeance, forboding and forbidding, onto the jester's fluctuating face— he shivered, visibly, beneath their stare, smile unspooling alongside his reservations. His stomach devolved into a stirring soiree of sensations most perturbing, which climb forth from the cobwebbed chambers of his conscience to dissipate throughout his fuzz-struck body in a wave of wonderful warmness.
To be seen, truly seen, is a wonderful, wonderful thing, after all.
"Well, then…" the mage shrugged halfheartedly, smile thinning whilst they began to finger their cards in an absentminded anticipation of the first play. "If that is the case, I suppose it is not entirely incorrect…! Ha ha…"
Seam slowly shook their head, purposely evading the imp's eager gaze, until they regathered the courage to meet those complex eyes of his. This time, they allowed their own to hold strong, undeterrable in the presence of an oncoming storm.
"Let us see if that truth holds it weight by the end of our game. How does that sound, my friend…?"
"OH," the jester crooned right back, "BUT I DESPISE WAITING, YOU SEE."
His tail flicked sharply, an emphasis upon his warning. Those piercing eyes of his only sharpened against Seam's face until they felt the phantom of a knife's blade run a jagged path down their cheek. They nearly obeyed the silly, instinctual pressure that urged them to feel for any trace of cotton spilling forth from the imaginary wound.
"I CANNOT STAND IT ANY LONGER, CANNOT STAND, NO-SIREE, UEE HEE! NO, NO— THIS GAME, YOU SEE, IS BEGGING TO BE PLAYED BY YOU, BY ME!"
The obnoxious screech of chair legs meshed with the jester's splintered cackle like teeth gnawing on bone. He thrust himself onto his tip-toes to balance precociously atop his seat, suspended in stasis like a spinning top on needlepoint.
A gloved hand collided with the battered wood of the card table with a resounding crack, the sudden sound a mirror of his sharp laughter; a wordless punctuation of their game's enactment. Beneath his mitt, the lead playing card laid trapped like a butterfly between talons; its secrets pinned to the scarred surface of the table, until he spared its wings by lifting his hand to expose its contents to his opponent.
"BE PREPARED, PREPARED— FOR THE UN-PREPARABLE!" he cried, voice wavering with innocent, impish glee, "FOR THE GAMES I PLAY, PLAY, TAKE ON A LIFE OF THEIR VERY OWN!!"
Hm, Seam begrudged silently, their buttons boring into the divots of ink detailing the jester's first card. This is probably not good. Their narrowed eyes cautiously came to reunite with the jester's curious crescents, alight with expectancy. Not good at all.
The outcome of games like this were almost always predictable, cozy with monotony.
The sense of safety that came with foreseeability had been unequivocally shattered the very instant their eyes met across the den what felt like a lifetime ago.
At last; they had been blessed with a true spectacle, a battle of wit that they had resigned to never receiving.
Burrowed behind the blankets of composure and patience they wore so well, a long-dormant spark caught the kindling it craved.
Seam felt it, then; the bygone swell of excitement, ignited anew.