Chapter Text
Sasha dreamt of ice, chains and blood. If the dreams were merciful then near the end of them her feet would run across snow covered landscapes - the red fluid trickled down the back of her heels into the white underneath her no matter how tightly she clutched her back - but they rarely were. The cold always terrified her, and in those dreams she could never leave it behind.
When she woke from her nightmare, an unfamiliar hotel ceiling was all that greeted her. It had been different places ever since she had escaped; Zuko had decided that it was the safest thing to do while Iroh had tried to find some way to get them into a protection program. Sasha didn’t think it would work out for them in the long run; she’d seen the kind of violence she was able to do with a mere flick of the wrist. Running forever probably would work better. You couldn’t keep up with something if it was always running, Sasha hoped.
Sasha looked off to the other bed in the room. Zuko hadn’t stirred in the slightest. She envied him; she’d lost track of how many nights in a row she’d woken up overnight and had refused to go back to sleep. Zuko hadn’t lost track - the following morning when he would see her eyes boring a hole in the far-off wall - he would be able to correctly remember it had been the sixth night in a row.
She at the very least got tired of lying down, and instead lifted herself to curl her arms around her knees. With her chin nestled in between her kneecaps, it was the most secure feeling she could even think of. The wall was so monotone that her eyes drooped ever so slightly…
“Sasha.”
The sing-song memory of her name being called instilled panic into her again. It served to keep her awake long enough that she wouldn’t sleep for longer than a few seconds for the rest of the night.
Zuko woke earlier than most people did, but he noticed very easily that he wasn’t the first yet again. He was starting to become worried; she’d already looked quite skinny and lethargic when Iroh had recognised her in the crowd - manic look in her eyes, tears freely flowing and muttering to herself about how she had to keep moving - and he was quite certain extensive sleep deprivation wasn’t going to do her recovery any favours.
The following night he tried to sneakily introduce Sasha to the concept of a warm cup of milk before bed. It was harder to get her to accept it because of her wariness around food, but after preparing another one for himself and likening it to the kinds of tea that Iroh had made for her before she ended up drinking it. It hadn’t produced a full night’s sleep like he had hoped for.
The night after that, a tried to keep a lit candle on a nightstand. Sasha immediately blew it out - citing a worry about a fire after they both would be asleep - and Zuko decided he didn’t want to push it further.
After a third night of trying a new solution (the two of them sleeping in the same bed, which only seemed to make Sasha sleep even less), Zuko started to realise that the promise he had made to Iroh to look after her while he was gone was harder than he initially thought. He asked Sasha whether there was anything he could really provide that would help her sleep. She didn’t know, and neither did he.
With Iroh still likely gone for longer (who knew how long it would take to get their request put through against the thousands of others that came in daily), Zuko decided that he needed more help than he knew how to give. After a hefty struggle with a library computer, he learned of a company on the planet they had taken refuge on.
It was a failing company - having partially shut down a few decades before Zuko had even heard of it - and someone had picked up the rights for cheap from a previous developer of it. They had tried and failed to make an intelligent AI (Zuko didn’t know what that meant. Something to do with computers?), and after running out of money and the lead developer dying, subsequently closed up office. What caught his eye however, is that the new owners of the business had tried out the head gear the original crew had left behind and found that it induced a very deep state of sleep for the user. Zuko managed to find a phone number and called them the very same day to ask whether it was safe for use.
The new owners of C&A were more than eager to let them try on the headgear. Sasha was worried about the idea from the moment the two of them walked into the dark, cable littered room that held a hooked up headgear. She was sleep deprived, sure, but not enough to miss the fact the owners mentioned that their assumption was based on test notes by the developers of the old team; she was the first official person to put on the headset in ten or more years.
Zuko wasn’t as concerned; because of the two of them being there first the owner was letting them use the machine for free as long as they wanted, as long as they talked about their experience so that it could improve. The two of them were running out of money from staying at hotels, and Zuko just wanted Sasha to get some sleep.
“I don’t like it,” Sasha reminded Zuko as she ever so slowly laid down in the lounge chair. She already disliked it when people watched her when she slept - an image of her popped into her head - and she had to stop herself from going rigid when Zuko’s shadow loomed over her.
“I know,” Zuko soothingly said that, but gently lifted the gear until it sat on Sasha’s ears. The whole thing at least didn’t fully block out her view; it reminded him more of a weird mixture of headphones that wrapped around the back and became a thin frame of blue plastic in front of Sasha’s eyes. “It’s just to help you sleep for a few hours. All of their notes say that it only made them sleep, and you’re going to collapse if you keep going night after night like this.”
She wanted to make an uncomfortable noise, but buried it before it remotely existed. She never was allowed to make noises that implied anger, confusion, sadness or… Anything that wasn’t a docile nature. Zuko smiled gently at her through the deep water glass thing, but Sasha defaulted to a neutral face in the hopes it went by faster. Completely blank, like a doll, like she had always learned would get the nicest treatment.
“I’ll still be here,” Zuko promised her, as Sasha noticed the glass began to sparkle softly. The glass held weird little shapes full of bright colours that she had only ever seen in the wildest of flowers and skies, and the metal parts on her ears seemed to chirp and whirr like a mechanical bird. “Hopefully this will be just a blink of an eye. No dreams, just sleep.”
It felt like the couch melted away beneath her, and she sank below it into nothingness. The bright colours fizzed and sparkled out from just the glass into the whole sky around her, exploding out in showers of fireworks that fizzled endlessly. Sasha tried to lift her hand to grab the nearest dark peach spark, and she could see the sleeve of her dress float, writhe and wither as she continued to sink. As though the softest of winds blew, with no cold to be felt.
As the fireworks grew distant, the world around her flashed in more colours; small and large dots, as they pulsed in time with a rhythm she couldn’t hear. A soft leaf one seemed to pulse a lot in front of her, and when she attempted to touch this one the very fabric of it buzzed and fizzed around her fingers rather than let her touch it. She could understand; she wished her body did the same when someone would reach for her.
When the dots calmed, the ribbons came in. They twirled in all manner of shapes, wildly twisting in and out of each other in such a way that she thought their colours might become one. But no, they never clung too tight before they let go just as soon.
The ribbons seemed to fly off from her sight, and instead the bright colours dulled out into the night. A single line of pure snow blinked into view, and waved slowly up and down. Sasha raised her arm to see whether the line wobbled at the same time as her sleeves, but it was much faster than that. Her doll like facade finally cracked fully when she pressed a hand over her heart. It was right in time with the line. The world around her was changing with her.
As her heartbeat settled back to a calm, docile rhythm, the line softly dimmed and left. Sasha turned her head around her, but couldn’t feel the weird helmet or see any other colours anymore. It had left her in pure night, the vague sights of her own floating dress and body her only company. She continued down, down, down, ever so slowly for a long time.
The end of her journey only came when she felt her back softly come to a halt against solid ground, an audible blip as a ring of soft strawberry travelled out into the night. As she used her hands to sit up, even more rings spread out from every-time that she touched the inky night under her. From the sound and feel of it, Sasha couldn’t understand; it felt like a lake but it left no water on any of her.
It hadn’t been like any dream she had ever had before. No sign of the very woman who had kept her around as a toy for years, and nothing she had ever experienced in her life. It was… Quiet, for the first time since she had been taken.
She laid back down, and let out a breath. In this place, her captor didn’t seem to exist. For the following couple of hours she slept undisturbed.
When Sasha woke some time later, she was surprised to note that she hadn’t grown hungry. She had never eaten much - going away from her ‘doll appearance’ was always dangerous - but she knew the hunger pangs well. It often was a reminder that she was alive, if nothing else.
“Zuko?” Sasha called out into the night. She got no response.
…Well, that’s probably enough, Sasha thought to herself. This new sleep place had worked well, but her body was staying in one place, which she knew keenly was a dangerous idea. They needed to keep moving if they wanted to stay ahead.
Her hands reached up to try to take the helmet off, but her hands only touched her hair and head. She remembered vaguely that she hadn’t felt it partway down, but it definitely had to have been on her head. She tried again; shifting her hands upwards from the sides, but it only pushed her hair up and did nothing more.
“...Zuko? How do I get the helmet off?”
The night was silent.
“Zuko!” Sasha yelled for him, only to sharply recoil when her voice seemed to bounce back at her. She tried yet again to pull against parts of her head, but all she could feel was her body shift.
There finally was a sign in the thick night; a ring of soft apple flowed over the water towards her. Something else had made a movement against the ground.
Sasha stared off towards where she thought the ring most likely came from. It was hard to see, but there was a vague hint of soft light that seemed to exist there.
Her dreams had never been kind to her in the first place. Sasha’s first instinct was to believe that it was being mean to her again - that moving towards the light would only end up showing her worst nightmare - but she also wanted to know how to leave the dream. Perhaps the light was Zuko, after she hadn’t woken up? She hoped it was the case, and slowly picked herself up to walk towards it.
The rings of soft strawberry that she made soon seemed to clue in the other being that they hadn’t heard wrong before, and a single one returned back to her. It served to make Sasha pause, and not long after a significant stretch of silence two more soft apple rings came to her. Please don’t leave, the rings seemed to say to her.
After clenching her hands together, she dared to keep moving.
The soft light progressively became a dull apple glow, and although it was hard to see in the dim glow, there was a being. And with the rings that shone under her, they could see her too.
When Sasha came to a stop a few steps away from the creature, it seemed to unfurl from it’s sat position and grew much taller than her. It seemed to tower over her, so much so that she instinctively took a few steps back. The being seemed to notice this, and slouched substantially to make themselves not appear as tall… They still were much taller than she was regardless.
It was… Sasha had only seen that kind of colour on the most extravagant silks of nobles. It must have been extremely rich, to be covered entirely in such colour. Furthermore it was tall, thin, and beyond the rounded shape that she assumed was its head it held long ears that very nearly brushed the lamp post they stood underneath. She could only barely see that their eyes were a dusty honey colour, with strangely blocky black pinpricks that moved as it beheld her.
“...You’re real?” It asked her, alongside a raised hand that seemed to reach out to confirm she was solid. Sasha naturally recoiled before either of them touched another, and the quick dance of lights underneath them showed her the clothes it wore reminded her of what farmers would wear. “How… How did you even get here? Nobody should be able to be here, not since…”
The being didn’t understand in the slightest how the girl had gotten there. The last they had seen of anything remotely alive it had been the last glimpse of a overly nosy jester who had tried in vain to bring him back. Since then, he’d been on his own in the weird void for… He didn’t even know how long. The first time he had tried to count along the seconds drove him mad - his skin sharply spiking out in jagged black edges - that for the rest of his existence there he just sat with his back against the lamp-post and waited for the day he’d stop functioning.
After the sudden shout in his void, he realised he wasn’t alone anymore. No, for some reason, the weirdly realistic looking girl came to him when he signaled to her. She didn’t even look remotely like she belonged in their weird digital world; her light blue hair and similarly looking lolita dress looked far too detailed - far too realistic - to be anything close to the cartoony effect that happened to everyone who entered the circus.
Part of him wondered whether this was a sign that the circus had gotten better at making false NPC’s, and had sent one to torment him on his loneliness. No, that doesn’t make sense, he thought to himself. The digital circus had never done that before. And besides, last he had seen, Caine had been deleted.
Sasha looked around her, but it was just the two of them there. She supposed it was the closest she was going to get as to some answers.
“...Where am I?” Sasha eventually dared to ask, and the being looked horrified.
“You’re… Did you put a weird headset on?” They asked her, and Sasha nodded. They didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or to cry from that answer. “Well, then… Then you’re probably trapped in here, just like I am.”
“...Trapped?”
“Yep. Anyone who ever put one of those headsets on made a copy of their mind, and the computer puts the copy into a weird digital world,” they said, their voice progressively sounding more and more upset. Right behind the hand they held over one part of their head, Sasha could see a swirl of a violent mixture of colours in their left eye. “Congrats girly, you’re not real. Just like me.”
Sasha didn’t understand what they were talking about. A simple glance down at her body, and it looked the same as she always had. She didn’t even doubt that she could feel pain as well; her back still stung as if she was awake.
“...The helmet was supposed to help me sleep,” Sasha mumbled, which only served to make the being let out a bitter laugh.
“They’re putting the headsets on more people!” They laughed almost maniacally, as they turned away from Sasha. “Because of fucking course they would! They would always-
The sentence they were saying sharply got interrupted. Their entire left arm buzzed and vibrated until it seemed to prickle outwards, as though the life-blood that ran through their body seemed to want to violently escape out through the skin. Sasha could tell it hurt them, as they loudly let out a cry of pain as their left arm twisted, blurred, and violently shook with a dark, ominous colour. The longer time passed by the more it seemed to spread, even spreading over the back of their head - their voice coming out distorted as they gasped in pain.
Sasha had seen death many times in her life, but this looked nothing like an injury. Even so, a part of her latched onto the desire to prevent harm to someone else, and her hands reached out to try to hold the infected arm still for them.
The moment her fingers grazed the ink jagged edges she felt the pain spike into her own skin. It was akin to millions of needles being driven into her, and those very same needles attempting to warp her flesh into sloughing infection.
“N̷̩̭͒̀̾ó̵̝̔̕,̵̳̮̒̏̎ ̴͖͚̐̇ḍ̶̈o̵̦͚͝n̷͇̏'̴̮͇̮̍͑̕ṭ̵̯̋͋͜ ̷̠͍̽͐t̸̰̫̏͒ǒ̶̡̢͛̑ǔ̸͚̬̻̾c̶͖͖̀͋̚ḧ̶̡͕̘͠-̴̙̼͚̍ ̶͙̱͚̿̚Ḑ̴̳̘̈ỏ̷̩̜̯n̶̢̦͔̈́'̷̡̜̼̀͘͝t̵̡̬̓̔͜ ̸̦̔̕ṯ̸̝͝ó̴͚̰ů̸̧c̵̬̾h̶͉͌͝ ̸̳̙͋̔ͅm̸̨̎͌e̷̝̦̣͊̋͘ ̵̰̘̘͛͆w̸̻̠͂̈́h̴͓̞̤͌̇̚ë̶̟́͠ṉ̴͔͎̑͛ ̸̰̰͐I̵̝̮̿̑͠'̸̡̢͍̃̈́̂m̶̼̭̰̊ ̷͖̜̂l̵͇͓̐į̵͈̫̊k̶̗̪̃̂̾è̴̮͠ ̴͈͚̕t̶̻̜͆̃̂h̵̛̪̺͊ͅȉ̷͉͉ṣ̸͔̮̌̈́!̴̦̰͆͋͝” Sasha could barely make out what they were saying, but her fingers still clamped tight onto their arm. She didn’t know this place, and she was scared of being alone with no way out, so she held ever tighter. “A̵͈̺͖̾͝h̵͉̾,̴̮̩̈ ̶̞̗̌f̴̫̮͂̉̾ớ̸̠̤͝r̷̝̞͌͂̑ ̵̘̓̊f̸̠̙̽̿͜͝ŭ̷͕͖̯c̸͎̣̃̽k̵͍̲̋̍͑'̸̢̄̊̕s̶̰̗̠͂̇ ̵̧͓͂s̸̳͉̜͑̄à̵͓̖͝ḳ̵̙̔e̸̥̐̑́!̸̭̔̋̌”
Once the being realised they were unable to shake her off - or maybe just realising that she already had been infected with whatever they had - they stayed very still, and tried to get some small bits of control over their breathing and thoughts. They struggled to still the rampant panicked thoughts, but with several minutes of wishing away the pain their breathing seemed to calm enough that their skin slowed. The inky spikes softened and the buzzing lessened, until their skin returned to the same smooth it had been when they first met. A glance over their shoulder showed that the moment the infection had left them, it too had left Sasha.
“...You need to be careful; you can’t touch me when I get like that,” they said, and Sasha finally dared to open her eyes. From what little she could spy of their head, the violent colour swirl was gone from their eye. She openly wept for the pain they both had experienced. “You’re lucky it’s in here. Before, it could go all over my body and it wouldn’t stop.”
Sasha didn’t respond initially, she just clenched their arm even tighter in her fingers as the after effects of the needles still was vivid in her mind. It was starting to hurt their arm a little bit… But they didn’t want to be alone either. They had been alone for so long, even some pain was a welcome trade.
“...How do we get out?” Sasha managed to ask that through tears, and they sighed a low deep note.
“We don’t. This is all we have now,” they quietly said.
“...Then please don’t leave me,” Sasha begged them, and in that moment the being wondered whether they knew what abstraction was. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Don’t let go,” an old familiar voice had begged of him.
“...Okay,” they agreed. He wondered whether she even needed to ask him that; he would have been the one to beg that if she hadn’t.
The two of them took a moment to sit next to that little bit of light they shared - and the floor bounced another strange ripple of pink that he thought looked close to his overalls.
“You’re pretty lucky, you know?” He dared to try to crack a joke, as he felt uncomfortable with the way she kept silently crying for some time. “When I got brought to this place, I didn’t get to keep my normal look. Ended up as this weird rabbit.”
Sasha didn’t think they looked anything like a rabbit. From what rabbits she had seen kept by the cooks of the kingdom, they were covered in fur with different colours, but not the rich one. And they most certainly did not walk on two feet or wear clothes.
Her mind turned back to the dress she had always been instructed to wear. She never particularly liked it. Even if it hadn’t been forced on her, maybe she would have simply disliked it because of the way it reinforced what had been told to her. Like a doll, she remembered her saying too well. Even the necklace that held the tube of black lipstick her captor liked her to wear was still there.
He didn’t know what to do with her silence. It wasn’t that far off from just talking to oneself so far… But based on what she had said before, it hadn’t remotely sounded like she had first appeared in the circus and then mistakenly been sent to his void. And it wasn’t as if all abstracted people ended up in the same place, as otherwise he would have encountered everyone Kinger had lost, most of the people who came after Ragatha, and…
No, he would have noticed them. He absolutely would have.
“When you got here, did you end up in a big circus tent with some others there?” He tentatively asked her, and he finally seemed to get some life back into the girl when she looked at him confused.
“...What’s a circus?”
“It’s, uh…” He faltered a bit. He hadn’t ever encountered anyone who didn’t know what a circus was before. Maybe she came from a planet where such things were just outdated. “It’s a place where people go to get entertained. A big - often red - tent, with lions and clowns and jugglers inside of it.”
Sasha perked up at the sound of lions. She hadn’t ever been allowed to go, but she remembered her captor being informed that a travelling group of beast tamers had come into the city and could show off all of the tricks their beasts had learned. Esdeath hadn’t been remotely interested.
“No, I was here when I went to sleep,” Sasha remembered why she had been asked about it, and he idly thought to himself. He didn’t think he was going to be a very good companion for this person; a lot of the people back at the circus would have been way better to keep her company. Hell, even possibly make her happy.
Just as he was about to voice his disappointment on the matter, a loud echoing ca-chunk resounded through their void. She immediately perked her head up to see where it came from, but he spent some time trying to figure out why it sounded somewhat familiar to him.
It was a noise he must have often heard of since he appeared in the circus. A gun cocking? No, that didn’t happen often enough. A door unlocking from the millions of keys he pilfered from around the place?
He turned his head to see what exactly the girl beside him was staring at so intently, and he saw a door. A polished wood, shiny round knobbed, complete door.
There was no way it had been there from the start; he would have definitely remembered it. The only vague memories he had of a door was his last visitor as they came stumbling into his mindscape - Pomni being pulled out of his grasp as tears got stuck in his jagged white skin - and he had looked for that door for days after it had happened. Why now?… He couldn’t help but think.
Sasha didn’t seem as hesitant as him about the sudden appearance, as she quickly picked herself up and began to walk over. Halfway through her journey she seemingly realised that her new companion hadn’t immediately followed her, so she paused and looked back to them. It was only when he too picked himself up and warily followed behind her that she continued on until she was right in front of the door itself. Her hand slowly reached to grasp the knob, and it firmly turned.
“...It’s open,” Sasha said as she looked back at the rabbit that followed behind her. The little wave of their hand seemed to indicate that they thought she should go through, but she faltered when it looked like he wasn’t close enough behind her to follow. “Are you coming too?”
He thought of the people he left behind at the circus. He wondered whether any of them had even missed him while he was gone, minus the one person who seemed to keep running after him.
But, another glance at the solitary lamp-post behind him, then back to the girl in front of him made him all the more worried. The girl looked so tiny compared to him - petite, malnourished even - that he wondered if she would be able to make her way back to the circus unscathed. Hell, did she even know what way it was? Did he?
“I guess I gotta,” he ultimately decided, and he easily noticed the way the girl looked somewhat less worried. Now standing at his full height again - god she was small for a human, it seemed like she could only reach his chest if they compared heights - he came to rest on his feet next to her in front of the door. “Someone’s got to make sure you get to the circus in one piece.”
“And you promised not to leave me alone,” Sasha said as firmly as she could manage, and he responded with a somewhat flippant ‘yeah, yeah’. He wouldn’t ever easily admit that it was a promise he’d never forget.
“What’s your name anyway?” He asked her, and in the new vague light they had from behind the door Sasha could see that he wore gloves the same kind of dusty honey colour as his eyes. “I don’t want to have to call ‘hey you’, and I bet you don’t either.”
“...Sasha.” Sasha told him, as it was the name she had for the longest time.
“Jax,” he told her as he pointed a single gloved finger into his chest. As he spoke, Sasha could see his teeth were the same as his eyes and gloves. A little strange, she thought to herself. “Now I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking sick of this endless void. Let’s go.”
With that, Sasha opened the door and the two stepped through it to what lay beyond.