Chapter Text
Some of you might recognize this as the chapter I gave to my friend Baileymermaid95 for her challenge fic (“We’re Circus People”), but since it didn’t work out, I get my chapter back. Yay… So, here I go. And if you did read it, but didn’t participate or review or anything, REREAD anyway because I changed a lot of stuff to suit my preferred plot methods.
X X X
“Check it out, man.”
“Wow, what a freak show!”
It was the words that used to bother Roxas Strife the most, but he was a little more than used to it now. It was easy to sit with the maimed side of his face to the crowds and stare off at nothing, deep in his own thoughts. Sitting on his little chair in the Freak Tent, safely behind a low velvet rope to keep the marks back and a glass partition, he had plenty of time to think about his life even though he wished he could learn to think about something else.
Like the cute red-headed contortionist, Kairi, who had folded her half-naked body up small enough to fit into a suitcase and been wheeled away for her last show.
Or Riku, the man who kept his eyes hidden behind a blindfold during the day because they were strange iridescent green, lighting up like bright lanterns that literally glowed in the dark.
Or the pyrotechnist, Axel, who had set the curtains to the stage on fire accidentally and stood there watching it burn until someone slapped him in the back of his red head with a running fire hose.
Or the strange dark-haired girl, Xion, who had joined the freak show a few weeks ago. When she saw Roxas’s eyes on her, she opened her mouth in a weird sort of grin to show her protruding vampiric eyeteeth.
Or even Leon, the owner and organizer of this traveling family. Leon was such a kind man, driven to start a rolling family for people like him, people that were born with defects and not accepted by modern society. Leon used to have a strange growth on his face, but he had had it removed when it proved to be cancerous. Now, there was only a long thick scar bisecting his handsome face.
Sora was mostly what bothered Roxas now.
It bothered him how his beautiful unmarred flawless perfect fraternal twin brother had decided to run away to the circus with Roxas when he just couldn’t take it anymore. Sora had so much ahead of him, but here he was now, working the stands outside the Freak Show tent where his twin sat endlessly being gawked at. And Sora even enjoyed it, enjoyed being here and working the stands. It was like living in a constant vacation to Sora. He even had a little crush on Kairi the Contortionist.
Roxas sighed and tried to push all those thoughts away. He decided to watch the crowds and see just how many people were shocked by his damaged face.
It was then that she walked into the tent.
Dragged by a brown-haired girl in a yellow tank top who was clearly her friend was the most beautiful girl Roxas had ever seen in his life. She was fair-skinned and fair-haired with enormous innocent blue eyes and wearing short white shorts and a white tank top splattered with different colors of paint. She actually looked ashamed to be gawking at the freaks and weirdoes, her cheeks tinged cutely pink. When she looked up and met Roxas’s eyes, he suddenly had the overpowering urge to turn the maimed side of his face away so she wouldn’t see it, but that was what people paid for and he forced his gaze forward so she could see. Her mouth opened in a strange little ‘o’ and then her friend was pulling her along down the tent. A moment later, they were both gone.
“Jesus, what an ugly bastard!”
“Got his face stuck in a meat processor.”
The boys barked out horrible laughter, but Roxas was used to that. That girl’s eyes… they stayed with him all night and he wasn’t used to that. Even his guilty thoughts of Sora went away. Tonight, well, tonight would be the night that changed everything.
…
When the night was finally over, Roxas jumped down from his own platform and let himself out the small door to the cell-like Freak Show Tent where he sat eight hours a day. He went through the tent, helping down those that had twisted legs or no arms or just generally couldn’t get out of the partitions without help. Xion followed his lead, hoisting down a young girl with an extra set of small legs inside her thighs and helping their strange z-shaped woman step down in her jagged heels. With all the freaks loose like animals set out of their cages, Roxas went out to find Sora.
The carnival was closing for the night now—the bright candied lights of the rides and the flashing lights of the midway winking out one by one leaving the area cast in a deep shadowy glow.
Even in the darkness of Leon’s circus-slash-carnival, Roxas had no trouble making it to the game-stand his twin always worked, the High Striker. Sora always worked up great custom for that stand because he was small and thin with a winning smile and honest blue eyes and he could ring that bell without even breaking a sweat. He looked like a porcelain doll and if he could do it, a lot of marks thought they could do it too, but Sora was a lot stronger than he looked.
“Sora,” Roxas called out when he drew close.
He glimpsed the glow of Riku’s bright eyes in the darkness, but after a moment the light winked out. Riku had either put his blindfold back on or else closed his eyes. He was so strange… How could eyes legitimately glow like lanterns or light bulb, such a strange green like that? Those eyes were like lightning bugs in a permanent state of glow, strange though beautiful.
Sora turned, his perfect pale face lighting up in a smile, as he lowered the giant hammer used to strike the levered target over his narrow shoulder.
Sometimes, it was hard to believe he and Roxas were twins, even fraternal ones.
Sora Strife was beautiful. There was no way around that description of him. The planes of his face were porcelain ivory, carved by the hands of the gods, with the most big and beautiful cerulean blue eyes fringed with lashes so long and thick they were like twin fans. His hair was the color of chocolate, feathered against his cheeks as if melted by the heat of his skin and styled every night by his pillow. Even his body was beautiful, slender, with long limbs and thin long-fingered hands and as virtually hairless as that of a child. If he were to put on wig and a dress, he would be the most beautiful girl in the world. As a young man working the High Striker, he drew plenty of girls’ eyes and forced their boyfriends to buff up and give the machine a go to no avail.
Roxas Strife was the Freak Show’s “Hamburger Head.” The right side of Roxas’s face was twisted and marred from an… accident that has scarred him as a child. Healed over now, the flesh there disfigured and stained with a dark purple birthmark. His bright cerulean eyes, the same color as Sora’s, were still lovely even in his ugly face though. His hair was like spun gold, spiked wildly up on one side of his head as if wind-blown. He had the same build as Sora, slender and fair, and almost as deceptively strong. It was just his damaged face that made them so different. It was almost too cruel for beautiful Sora and hideous Roxas to be twins, but Sora never even saw the damage to Roxas. He always looked right past it, smiling and hugging his twin tightly.
“Roxas,” Sora said cheerfully. “How’d it go tonight? The tent looked busy from here.”
“Fine. Axel didn’t light anything on fire, did he?”
Sora laughed. “No, but it was close. I was prepared tonight.” He gestured to the hose lying in range.
“Everything was good out here then?”
“Oh yes. I had a bunch of fools try the High Striker and two of them couldn’t even lift the hammer.”
Roxas chuckled. “You make it look too easy, Sora!”
Sora’s eyes drifted as the lovely contortionist, half-dressed as usual, walked by on her hands with her legs folded up in the air like a pretzel. “Hey Sora,” she called as she passed, waving at him with her foot. Sometimes, it was frightening the things that girl could do with her body.
“Hi… hi Kairi,” Sora forced out, his eyes fixed on her.
“Roxas,” she said cheerfully and then stretched her legs out over herself into a c-shape and walked off like a crab.
Roxas elbowed his twin. “Sora, you should just talk to her.”
“I know… but… what if she thinks I’m just looking for a freak?”
“You’re not and she knows it. Look at the way you are with me.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with you, Roxas,” Sora said.
Roxas’s heart swelled with a mixture of love for his brother and frustration that Sora just didn’t see what bothered Roxas so much and forced him to join the circus because he just couldn’t take the taunts anymore. “Sora,” Roxas breathed and met his twin’s eyes.
Sora lifted his hand and laid it over the damaged part of Roxas. “See,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong.”
Roxas pulled away, catching Sora’s hand. “Thanks, Sora,” he whispered.
Sora grinned at him widely, teeth white and straight, but Roxas was reminded of Xion’s twisted smile with her sharp fangs. “So, you really think I should talk to Kairi?”
“Definitely.”
“What should I say?”
“Don’t worry. Just be yourself, Sora. You have a way with words.”
Sora smiled, finished boxing up the High Striker for the night with Roxas’s help, and then hustled off to Kairi’s trailer to talk with her.
Roxas sighed, watching his twin go, turned around, and let out a squawk of surprise. “Xion, damn it! Don’t do that!”
She grinned, showing those teeth. “Sorry. I wanted to talk to you,” she said and tucked some dark hair behind her ear. Roxas had no idea why Xion had come to the circus to be a “Vampiress.” In this day and age, the obsession with vampires was sexy and she probably had a line-up of people who wanted to be with her because she was so different. But, hell, that might be why she was here with other strange people. She wanted to fit in—like Sora had said, some people were looking for freaks just so they could say they had done it. “So, do you have a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The lights of the bright Ferris Wheel winked out in succession and the wheel loomed like a lurking spider overhead, casting cage-like shadows from the silvery moonlight. They walked through the carnival grounds together, helping close up where needed, until they finally reached the edge of the grounds and Xion stopped, looking out over the field of long grass.
“It looks like the ocean, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“The grass.”
Roxas followed her gaze. “In a way, I suppose.”
Xion wet her lips and pressed her fingertip to her fang until her finger ran with blood. “I saw the way you looked at that girl in the tent earlier.”
His heart skipped a beat. “What girl?” he feigned.
She slid him a look. “Don’t play coy with me. You know which girl.”
“What about her?” Roxas grumbled, crossing his arms.
“You don’t think…” she hesitated before continuing, “You don’t think that people like us have any real chance at love outside this place, do you?”
Roxas sighed. “Xion, you—”
“I mean, carnies are carnies for life. They stay in this place forever.”
“Xion, you could always get your teeth fixed.”
“But I don’t want to. It’s a part of me that I accept. I want someone to love me, to accept me for all that I am, even the freakish part.” Her blue eyes glowed in the dark. “Don’t you want that, too?”
“I have that,” he whispered. “I have Sora.”
She sighed, looking away. “You don’t understand.”
Roxas’s mind returned to the pale girl with those bright blue eyes, her cheeks pink with embarrassment and her mouth opened slightly at the sight of him. What would it be like to be with her if he was normal? If she could touch his face without wincing away? What if she could be like Sora? “I do, Xion, I do, but…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Xion sighed, closing her lips over her teeth.
“I mean, there are people out there who are different. Look at Sora.”
“I know. You’re very lucky to have him.”
“Sometimes… I feel like I’m dragging him down with me,” Roxas confessed.
“How so?”
“Well, he’s perfect, beautiful even. He doesn’t need to be wasting his life here with me in the circus.”
“But he loves you,” Xion whispered.
“I know. I know he does.”
They stood together at the edge of the sea of grass in silence, watching the lightning bugs dance and wink. The stars and the moon looked so close here, like they could just reach out and touch them, pull them down to earth and put them on display.
“It’s beautiful here,” Xion whispered suddenly. “I wish we could stay forever. I wish this could be home.”
Roxas touched her shoulder, the fingers of his free hand going to his maimed face. “Carnies don’t have a real home. This place, these people and these tents, are our home.”
“I know that. I know that,” Xion whispered.
Suddenly, there was a burst of bright flame behind them, lighting up the dark sky and casting their long shadows out like wraiths over the swaying grass, and they heard several people shout Axel’s name accusingly. Then, Axel could be heard shouting, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” The, the moment between them was over then as Roxas and Xion dashed to grab Sora’s waiting hose and help put out the fire Axel had once again started before it consumed the entire area. That moron…
X X X
I made a bunch of changes because I didn’t need such a set plot anymore. Now I can play!
Questions, comments, concerns?