Chapter Text
Aim for the stars and never look back.
That was the only sentence lingering in his mind as he sneaked through the sea of tents, restlessly looking around as if he did not belong to the lively group of artists.
A small bag hung from his shoulders, occasionally hitting against his hips with a muffled metallic clang and getting tangled in the crutch he had used to keep his balance. Like a clumsy shadow he limped from one corner to another, hiding from the milk coloured moon that lazily made its way through the night sky.
Listening with his whole body, he carefully concealed himself in the darkness provided by the colourful fabrics that were dipped in the hues of the night.
The big top behind him looked like the castle of a fairy tale villain, dark and cold, its two peaks reaching for the sky with their lonely silhouettes.
Instead of inviting him for a show, it wished to scare him back to his bed.
Maybe in any other days he would have heeded the warning. He would have listened to his trembling heart and turned around to rush back to the straw scented mattress.
However, time was running out and the sight of the dark giant only made him quicken his steps in order to get out of its sight.
He flinched when his crutch hit against one of the ropes that was nailed into the ground in order to steady the tent they used as a storage. The fabric held by the rope shook violently as he tumbled forward. His heart was thrumming loudly in his ears when he managed to catch his balance. Something fall to the ground with a metallic clang and rolled on the ground until it finally hit something. Gripped by the fear of being found, he decided that he needed to get out of the camp as soon as possible.
He limped forward, awkwardly rushing past the small practice field they had set up, praying that nobody would think about honing their skills in the middle of the night nor looking out the window of their wagon. He already risked far too many things, by wandering outside, he did not need an adult to start asking him or worse… drag him to Bernard’s office in the middle of the night.
He had to be more careful for his own sake!
As he walked, the clouds covering the sky broke, drawing the moonlight to this thin body almost as if it was trying to notify the rest of the troupe: Joker, the clown apprentice, is on the run… for a while at least.
But it did not matter. He was ready for anything. Even if someone appeared to stop him from reaching his goal, at this point they could not get to him anymore.
The dried out blades of grass cracked beneath his feet as he tried to pass through the moonlit field, his heart thrumming louder in his ears each time the owl sitting in the tree branch above him called for the other bird in the distance.
Further away in the middle of the meadow, he could see the silhouette of a small structure, breaking the wilderness with its artificial shapes. It looked like two ships put together in a way that their front formed a pointy nose, aiming towards the starry sky. For those who were not familiar with the ideas behind it, it probably looked like a strange tend, or a failed attempt to build a rooftop.
Anyone in their right mind would have done their best to avoid the strange object, but upon seeing it, the boy steps become longer as he walked, and he would have ran if it was not for the crutch that held him back.
Suddenly a cheerful voice spilled over with brightness that could illuminate the entire field around him. His heart skipped a beat and in fear he threw his crutch at his attacker, realizing it far too late that this way he also got rid of the only thing that helped him with walking. Just before he lost his balance and fell towards the patch of wildflowers a hand grabbed onto his arm, pulling him back.
“I thought you would never get here!” Mike tried to whisper, but his excitement seeped through his words, eventually earning a nervous hush.
“You will wake everyone up...” Joker rested his weight on the boy’s shoulder, before reaching down for the crutch he had thrown in the grass. Standing was not a big deal. His problems started when he had to walk and his twisted right leg refused to move properly.
“Right, right, sorry…” the blonde boy flashed him an apologetic smile. He did not feel sorry at all, and Joker was fully aware of this fact. Even if they got caught, the boy in front of him would just mutter a barely audible sorry and consider his part of the problems solved.
But then again, it was easy to be the son of the director.
If Joker was caught stealing equipment he would have gotten thrown out from the circus with momentum that would take him to the other side of town. His legs probably would not touch the ground until he hit something.
The difference between their treatment was simply too big, yet this never stopped Mike from reaching out and dragging him around while he spouted nonsense and made nonsensical plans to pass their time.
However, even if Joker enjoyed the attention it was not right. It was something he did not deserve as a mere clown and Bernard did not miss a chance to make a low comment on the kind of people Mike befriended and how he should behave if he wants respect from his fellow artists. Thankfully, the words seemed to pass through the boy’s head, the moment they reached him.
For Mike, the circus consisted of Joker and Murro, everyone else was just a background actor. While it was a selfish thought, Joker hoped that this would never change.
Fiddling restlessly with his fingers, he let out a sigh.
“Did you bring it?” Joker asked in the end, his eyes looking back at the camp, still fearing the possibility that someone decided to follow him into the wilderness.
“Of course! I did not forget it this time,” Mike exclaimed proudly earning another panicked hush. Walking to the metallic container he grabbed a bag that he had carefully set against the wooden holder, handing it to the young pierrot.
In the darkness, the only proof of Mike’s promise was the weight of the fabric bag. Not too much, but it was no too light either and when his fingertips touched the surface of the contents, he immediately felt that tar-like stickiness, the same sensation he experienced whenever he prepared his tools for a show.
It was gunpowder, enough to blow up a small car, if not something bigger. However, this time the material would serve a scientific purpose and Joker quickly took out the metal cylinders that he had put together while he was making plans for his new act.
“Will it be today?” Mike asked, his smile clearly visible even in the moonlit field and his mood seemed to be just as sticky as the gunpowder, because the clown soon found himself mirroring the smile, alas a bit more awkwardly.
“Yes, I think it will be. Everything is ready and the weather seems to be perfect,” Joker replied in excitement as he opened a small hatch in the metallic cone. “I put together the mechanism already, so all we need is to mix out the ignition powder, put the exhaustion cylinders in their place, some sparks and then the next stop is the moon!”
“The moon…” Mike repeated in wonder, and the smile on Joker’s uneven lips became even wider.
Alone, he wouldn’t have done something as reckless as this. He would have been fine with just reading books in his tent and imagining the Columbiad, the giant space gun in all its metallic glory instead of trying to recreate it in real life.
However, there was something about Mike’s enthusiasm and the way he presented his dreams that inevitably grabbed onto him and kept nagging him until he finally stood up and acted. Without noticing his heart was filled with anticipation and a strange spark that was ignited by the freckled boy, who seemed to carry the sun in his voice.
Something told him, if Mike was there, any goal became just a little bit easier to reach.
For every experiment, there needed to be certain safety measures, which in their case was a wall of mud they had built ten meters away from the makeshift rocket. Mike, being the faster one of the two, took the role of igniting the string that led to the newly made rocket while Joker waited, his eyes never leaving the small object.
The result of several nights of hard work made of pieces and parts scavenged from the circus shine proudly in the moonlight and even if it failed to look like the illustration in his book, he felt a strange warmth in his heart as he looked at it.
“Come on, hurry!” he felt himself whisper under his breath as he saw Mike messing around with the matches, a small flame appearing above his hand several times, before he finally broke out in running, away from their self-made safe gun. Joker made the calculations, he was sure that they had time to hide, but a small voice kept warning him until he felt the other kid crashing against his side on the ground.
Minutes felt like hours as they lay next to each other, their eyes glued to the construction in front of them.
The sparks went out as they disappeared underneath the cannon-like structure.
Joker held his breath as a deafening silence enveloped them, only being disrupted by the lazy bugs singing in the summer night.
The rocket refused to leave the ground. It stood still in the middle of the meadow, reflecting back the moonlight from its metallic surface.
Something was not right.
Did he mess up again? No. This time he made sure that everything would be perfect and took more time with building too. Did the gunpowder get wet somehow? Was the cylinder not secured tightly enough? The thoughts kept following each other feeding into the despair that gripped him by the nape, but he could not move. Not yet. It might have been delayed, ready to detonate at any moment.
Next to him Mike kept squirming, soon he pushed himself off the grass, sweeping the ground off his pants as he climbed over the small, natural trench, “I’ll check it.” he hummed, however his suggestion earned the opposite effect.
Joker did not know what came over him.
Maybe for once in his lifetime Lady Luck decided to stand next to him and aid him for a moment. His body moved on his own, like he was shot from a cannon himself, he pushed himself forward, quickly grabbing onto Mike’s hip from behind and pulling the boy to the ground followed by a muffled thud and a terrified yelp.
“Are you crazy?!” he scoffed between tears.
“I just tried to check if everything was right,” Mike tried to explain himself, but even in the dim light of the night, his cheeks were burning from shame.
“By walking close to a bomb? What if it–”
As if to prove his point, suddenly a sizzling sound went off net to them, before the meadow went silent again. Pulling Mike back to their small cover, Joker started crawling backwards, readying himself for the worst. A delayed detonation already meant that something was off with his construction, and while he calculated several possibilities where the experiment would fail, none of them contained notes about the son of the ringmaster dying between his arms.
The closeness felt weird. He should not have even go near the other boy, yet there he was hugging him as if his life depended on it, his head filled with the scent of old furniture and costumes.
Sparks flew where the chute for the gunpowder should have been and soon Joker could see their rocket tumble to the side with a pitiful, empty clang, the bottom that was supposed to take it towards the starry blanket lit up the ground around them, pushing the rocket in zigzag, as the weight kept changing in it due to the gunpowder holder tipping its balance off.
His hands refused to leave Mike’s back holding the boy to the ground as he watched weeks of hard work, lying and stealing go to waste in a single minute almost blowing up both of them in the process.
Lying there, unsure what to do, from the corner of his eyes he stole a glance at Mike. He expected disappointment, a childish pout, but in reality the one who wanted to break down crying was him, the boy was looking at the danse macabre of their creation with an excited smile.
It was amazing how he found enjoyment in the world around him. Even a failure became something special when Mike was around.
However, this did not stop the overwhelming feeling of despair finally stomping him to the ground. The red flush of humiliation spread across his cheeks as he watched the pitiful joke of a rocket breath his last and finally run out of gunpowder.
The only thing keeping his tears at bay was the warmth of Mike’s back against his palm. How foolish he was to think that he could successfully recreate something out of a book!
“This was…” he bit his lips as he fell silent. So many words gathered at the tip of his tongue, yet none of them seemed to be devastating enough to describe the mess he had caused.
“Amazing…” Mike whispered, smiling at him as if his entire world was still intact. “Did you see when it lifted from the ground? Just a little bit, but it did!”
“Before it crashed into the ground,” Joker added bitterly as he reluctantly lifted his hand and rolled on his back, staring at the starry sky above them.
Mike just laughed brilliantly, following his example, almost burying Joker’s shoulder beneath him when he turned over.
“It crashed to the ground because this was the first test! We will do more and more until it finally reaches the moon! I think it’s all about how much you believe in the goal and yourself, just like how Impey believed in his own skills!”
“Wish I could believe in myself the way he did,” the red haired boy admitted out loud, knitting his eyebrows together sadly.
“If you don’t believe in yourself, then I'll do it in your stead. I’ll believe in your until you finally agree with me!”
Colours seeped across his face as he listened. So many childish dreams, he could not help but smile.
“In that case, I have to bring you a proper souvenir when I finally reach the moon.” he wondered, looking at the sky and trying to search for a constellation. “Maybe a star or two for your help.”
“And a drop of the milky way!”
“That’s not even a thing…”
“Well, you have not gone to the moon yet, so I don’t believe you. Once you get there and return, you can even tell me that the moon is made of cheese.”
“But it is,” he joked, allowing himself to smile when he heard Mike snort.
“Then bring me a piece of that too. Bring me everything you can find!”
“That would take a long time… To collect everything.” his mouth curved into a smile. “And patience is not exactly your forte.”
From the corner of his eyes he could see Mike pouting at his response, before he wiggled closer to him, summoning butterflies in Joker’s stomach when their shoulder touched.
In that moment, he just wanted to collect every star in the sky and bring them to Mike, if it meant that they would stay like this just a little while longer.