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Harlequin was a fast learner. He always had been. Thinking back on everything now he realised just how quick he’d had to learn to keep up. He remembered it all so clearly.
That day, the day Columbina had died, he’d been so hungry. He’d been scared and she offered him food. She really was an angel. He could still remember the feeling of fullness in his belly afterwards. It made him nauseous now but at the time he’d been so delirious he didn’t even understand what he’d done. He was barely sixteen that night.
Now he was twenty two, and remembering the misery of that night.
He remembered someone else had taken out the ringmaster that night. He’d been too weak. He remembered how much pain hed been in trying to stand and walk. His cage was flatter than the rest, and four years of being hunched over of pressed against the ground made it excruciating to stand. Not to mention what the ringmaster had done to him.
He whimpered at the memory. He always had been the pretty one.
He’d struggled to get up, inevitably letting out a cry for help when he’d realised he couldn’t do it alone. He’d waited and watched as they’d gone without him. He waited and waited until he realised they weren’t going to come back for him. That he was going to need to do it alone.
He remembered the agony he’d been in. Dragging himself up stone steps with his jumpsuit covered in a mix of bloods. The cold grass had hurt on his injured skin, and he’d practically crawled half the way until he’d spotted his family in a nearby opening.
He crawled towards them, desperate. He saw them huddled together, comforting eachother so gently and his mind blanked. He crawled in to join, rocking back and forth, craving some comfort. What he’d got was far from.
He remembered the noise in far too much detail. The smack as something collided with his dorsal fin, the crack as it broke, the terrified howl he’d let out as he’d instinctively fled to the bushes to tend his wounds.
He’d stayed in them the whole night, watching everyone but him get held and reassured. Watching no one even glance his way. Waiting to see if dawn would break or someone would check on him first. Dawn won.
He watched them eat breakfast and leave none for him, and that’s when he’d learnt his most important lesson. He came last.
He wasn’t top priority. Not for food, for comfort, for baths, not for illness, checkups or money. He scored dead last in every category except for who to get rid of first.
So he planned around it.
When the circus started up he had a method. Eat last, wait quietly, don’t ask for anything unnecessary. That lasted five years.
Until he met her. She was out on the street while he was on flier duty in the rain. She’s given him her umbrella. It had made him feel disgustingly fuzzy inside, he would’ve folded right there if he didn’t still have the looming anxiety of the others down his neck.
He couldn’t bare the thought of loosing her. She let him come in for a drink, made it dairy free so he didn’t puke it up later. It made him melt.
When he’d gone home he’d decided to tell no one, terrified the one person that loved him would go. He needed love too, he swore to himself he needed love too, that the past few years had been miserable and this was all he needed to be amazing.
It didn’t last. Nothing did.
Two days later he walked in for a drink and he saw them. His dear and Pierrot. Together. Talking like Harlequin didn’t exist. Like he was just a side character who was easy replaced. He felt his heart shatter into a million pieces right there and he started to cry.
He’d never been a crier but he couldn’t help it. The last person he knew who even remotely loved him was gone. No longer his. He broke down right there. His mind raced through it all over and over.
Columbina, food, pain, starvation, violation, Columbina, food, pain, starvation, violation, now this.
He thought back to that night, his fin broken and bleeding, laid cowering in the dirt from people he loved beyond anything. People he adored, people he trusted, people he never wanted to hurt, and all he could think about was how much better it could have been if it had been him. He wasn’t worth much. Not nearly as much as her. It should have been him.
It should have been him.
But he was still here. Twenty two and wrapped in what was left of a blanket. Sat on his cot, waiting for anyone to come find him before it all kicked in. Hoping maybe this time someone would hold his hand while he was in pain. That maybe they’d cuddle him while he drifted off one last time.