Superstar_II
She'd been trying to keep out of the Trickster's way for the past few days, since he had left, keeping her head down and looking inconspicuous, which was difficult (to say the least) when one was wearing a bright red, sparkly, flared dress. It wasn't that she was afraid of what he was going to do to her or anything, she'd just... been trying not to call attention to herself. He probably wouldn't get rid of her completely - she was an okay dancer, she could probably be charivari'd without too much work, but still, she was technically made of dark matter* and he might want to play on the safe side.
So she sat and watched everyone else doing their thing, honestly not minding the chance to relax too much. It is one of the laws of logic that an assistant must have someone to assist. Otherwise, she is just an idiot in a red dress standing there and being laughed at.
He was going to have plenty of assistants in the new show, he'd told her. Some girl called Green Bird. The Trickster didn't think that she had to go with him, so she'd ended up saying goodbye to her disco-ball-suited partner and staying, without a purpose of any kind.
She sat, hands on her lap and knees crossed, on the third step of the external metal staircase winding around the bataclan, and someone slithered down from above and landed next to her. "Hello, sparkly woman."
"Hi, Pickpocket."
"Christian."**
"Pickpocket."
"Christian."
"Pickpocket."
"Christian."
"Pickpocket."
"Michael?"
"Shut up." She rolled her eyes, and looked at him from under her bangs, which had grown out a bit lately. "What do you want?"
"Nothing." He looked right back at her, and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
He grinned boyishly. "Me too. High five."
She held her hand up for him. He high-fived in it a friendly fashion. They sat together side by side on the narrow step, their legs squeezed together a bit.
"Do you miss him?" the Pickpocket asked.
"Yeah. A bit." She glared at him, but only half-seriously. "What do you want?"
"Nothing. Do I always have to want something?"
"Yes. Or you should. Actually, really, what do you want."
"Well, I thought maybe you and I could -"
"No. We can't."
"Okay. I thought it was worth asking."
The juggler's former assistant rested her head on the Pickpocket's shoulder. "Do you care about anything?"
"Not really. Do you?"
"Not really."
They sat in silence for a bit.
"You've got to stop putting so much oil in your hair," she told him. "It's like an environmental disaster up there."
"It's hair gel, actually. Does anyone still use hair oil?"
"Dunno. My point still stands."
"But I like slicked-back hair."
"Shut up."
"You shut up," said the Pickpocket companionably.
More silence.
"Where're you from, Pickpocket?" the juggler's assistant asked.***
The Pickpocket frowned. "What?"
"Where are you from?"
"London."
She rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh."
"Stockholm."
"Uh-huh."
"Paris?"
"Mmhmm."
He sighed. "Little town north of Berlin, in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do there and I am not even kidding you."
"Yeah, but you grew up, right? You had parents and school and a childhood and a name and things."
The Pickpocket shifted on their step, pushing the juggler's assistant's head off his shoulder. "Mother was a feminist. Father worked. I was the second youngest of five kids. I ran away when I was fifteen. Never went back. It wasn't much of a childhood."
"But it was one. I'm just a jumped-up skeleton. We're so weird, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"Yup."
"Do you think the Trickster is going to... get rid of you?"
The juggler's assistant looked at the Pickpocket sideways. "It's not killing. Just, like, resetting."
"Okay, reset you."
"No idea. I might just end up learning percussion or something."
"That would be scary."
"Oh, shut up."
"Will not." He stuck his tongue out at her. She whacked him with the back of her hand, and he grabbed her wrists. "Tell you what. Let's say goodbye to all this. Run away together."
She grinned at him. "Run away from the circus!"
"We have no money, no food, no relatives, no connections, it's perfect!"
"Who needs money of their own when it's you we're talking about? The world is at our feet!" She pulled him to his own thirties-clad feet, swinging around with him in a slow circle as they held each other's wrists, laughing.
"We could tour Europe. I'd take you to Germany."
"Visit America!"
"New Orleans - Mardi Gras!"
"Las Vegas!"
"Oh, yeah! I'd get hired as a showgirl, and you'd become a billionaire by cheating all the casinos blind!"
He twirled her around as they laughed, and led her in a rapidly quickening dance around the stage.
The Trickster watched them from the shadows of the bataclan, and smiled slowly.
A/N:
*'Tis my belief that the juggler's assistant (and possibly the juggler himself) is a disguised skeleton. Or at least created from a skeleton. See later in the fic.
**Yeah, again with the Christian thing... I tried to give all the actors more-or-less equal sway in this one, but it kept coming out. I'm sorry.
***The Pickpocket, unlike everyone else in Kooza, is a real human being. As in, not a god or one of Trickster's creations. He just wandered in accidentally at some point and found the realm to his liking and decided to stay for a while.
Anyway.
I rather like this. It was inspired somewhat by Zikka-chan mentioning this as a pairing option at one point, and somewhat by the question (in my Cirque-continuity-obsessed brain) of 'What does a juggler's assistant do when the juggler moves to a different show and takes one of the already-existing characters there as his new assistant?'
Pickpocket and Assistant do have an interesting relationship. They're mostly just best friends, or at least platonic - they both can get sex other places if they should ever desire it, and that's not what they want each other for. They're very casual with each other, and probably beat each other up occasionally - they're too much alike for it not to happen. But they are very good friends, and they will go tour the world now, you know it. They're going to go all over Europe and Australia and Asia, catching rides on freight trains and shipping boats, and eventually end up in America, where they'll, at some point, go see La Nouba. Now that's going to be... interesting...