Archive of Our Own

There were many reasons why Clown loved his mask and one hundred percent coverage costume: Recognisability, the fear factor, the anonymity, the comforting warmth, feeling the security of no one being able to see his facial expressions and many, many more.

The reason that made Clown probably love it more than any of the others combined, though, had to be that no one would see how fucked up he really was; why his people (were they ever really his?) abandoned him so long ago.

They… they could understand it completely. Why they abandoned him. He couldn’t blame them. After all… Who was to say if they saw someone steal their face, their body that they wouldn’t hate them, too? That would be if they had a face.

See, Clown had this really… unfortunate ‘ability’ (more like curse) that allowed him to change their appearance, sometimes at will, sometimes involuntarily.

The crucial part being the involuntary bit. They had a lot less control over it than they wished. For example, whenever they met another person and started to get a connection in any sense, they would involuntarily morph into a near identical copy of them, with only slight changes, such as his eye colour being a slightly different shade, slightly longer or shorter fingers and/or hair, different teeth or height. Just a teeny tiny difference in appearance, which triggered a sort of uncanny valley feeling in everyone who saw them (if seeing someone who looked like yourself didn’t already do that).

Then, once that phase had passed, as if temporarily stealing another person’s body wasn’t bad enough, they kept a trait in their usual form.

Be it eyes, hair, height, finger nails, birthmarks or nose, none of his parts were his. Everything was stolen from another person.

So, the decision of the village’s people to get rid of them was completely understandable. They were even kind enough to spare his life, even though he stole from them in such a cruel and disgusting way.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t choose to rob them of their faces because it did anyway.

Not only that, but it also stole their personalities and was just wrong.

Its inability to understand them and their affections, to speak and act like a normal person made it natural for them to believe, to know that it was a changeling. A horrible, horrible creature that was put in their beloved child’s body in exchange for the real one.

It was only natural to get rid of a changeling, after all it replaced the human child that should have been.

At first they tried to get their child back by banishing it, using a multitude of ways. But when neither depriving it of sustenance and people to steal from, nor yelling and screaming, not getting it to a priest to exorcise it or holding its head under water until it lost consciousness or even plain beating it with a stick worked and it continued to steal and be wrong, they decided that it wouldn’t give their real child back and left it deep, deep in the woods without anything but the simple instruction to walk until its legs gave out and to never come back.

Of course, they were entirely right to do so. Who wouldn’t do that to a monster, a demon who was pretending to be their child?

Clown didn’t know how exactly, its memories were very blurry and missing at times, but it survived on its own for a long time, until it was taken in by a kind demon and a happy diamond golem.

It somehow managed to hide their stealing from them and lived with them and their blaze son for a good few years.

Until they found out about it stealing faces, bodies and personalities when the blaze son came home with a masked friend and it just couldn’t help stealing his face.

As soon as they saw, it ran. And ran. And ran, ignoring their oddly worried sounding shouts.

Then it hid inside of a hollow tree, clasping a wrong, wrong, stolen hand over the baker woman’s daughter’s mouth when the demon came walking past its hiding spot.

The demon called the name he had given the evil, evil changeling, saying that they were worried about it.

It didn’t answer, of course. It didn’t consider, even for just a second, to go back. They didn’t really worry about it. They just thought they did because they didn’t know what it was.

And it stole from them. It couldn’t go back. No, no, no.

And so, it kept on walking through the forests, eating leaves and tree bark and squishy apples that lay on the floor.

At some point it saw itself in the reflection of a river and decided to hide its face.

Using tree bark and the string of the demon’s hoodie, which it had been wearing when it fled, it made a provisional mask.

No one would ever have to see it steal a face again.

It kept mostly to itself, travelling through the lands, only occasionally stopping in a small village, collecting random things to help it survive.

By the time it towered over most normal humans it encountered, it had put together a pretty good disguise. Most of the time, it wore a long black cloak, not too different from the one the demon had worn a lot of the time, a white-ish mask made from hardened clay, which looked similar to the blaze’s new friend he had stolen from, black gloves it had snatched from a nest, similar to the ones the butcher in the village had always worn, trousers it had actually traded for a small favour from a kind villager and boots it had taken from a person it killed after they had jumped it.

It hoped all those people were okay and happy now that it was out of their lives and afterlives and wouldn’t steal from them anymore.

Then, in a life changing course of events, it came across people who didn’t care in the slightest that it was a thief. They should have cared, but they did. Maybe it was because they were also monsters, but they accepted it in their bounds.

They called themselves its family. They trained it to fight properly, more efficiently.

They gave it a name, ClownPierce, a new identity and most of all helped it to make a better mask and overall outfit to hide all its flaws.

They taught it to enchant the mask so the outfit would connect with it, so that if it took off the mask, the costume came off and if it put the mask back on, the costume would come back.

They introduced it to new people, one of them making it its very own weapon: a scythe, which it could also use as a vessel for blood magic, which, apparently, came naturally to it, given its monstrous soul.

They called it ‘he’ and ‘they’ and treated it as if they were a person, too.

ClownPierce became a force to be recconned with. A true monster that could kill nearly anyone, that could fight many people at once.

He barely ever took off his mask, even though their family allowed them to, saying that their face and their stealing were completely okay.

Eventually, they went on their own path, but never losing contact with his family for long. They ended up at a place called LifeSteal, where any person could live, no matter how strange they were, as long as they were prepared to fight for their lives.

ClownPierce found a second home there and no one knew what a horrible abomination it- he was, regardless of how many faces he stole.

He barely ever had any troubles with that anymore.

Until now.

Clown had a major problem.

It had started off simple, Clown had started to work together with a person called Branzy and, predictably, they stole the man’s face and body. Clown was particularly glad for his boots that always kept them at his original height. He didn’t care much about Branzy’s shorter statue, they just preferred their ‘own’ a lot.

Without their mask on, they looked almost exactly like Branzy, just the eyes had a tad too much red in them and some of the freckles were misplaced.

They just kept acting like usual, secretly wondering which trait he would inherit from the white haired man, and, even more secretly, hoping that it wouldn’t be his height.

But then they didn’t lose Branzy’s form.

At first, they didn’t think much of it. Many forms stuck around longer or shorter than others, so this might just be a very persistent one.

But when the two finished up the funhouse completely and tested it, and Clown still had Branzy’s form, he started to get concerned.

Despite knowing that in this involuntary form they couldn’t shift at will, they tried and tried and tried to shift into something else. Of course it didn’t work.

Why couldn’t he stop having Branzy’s form? 

Why was he still a copy of Branzy?

They acted as normal as they could, even suppressing the weird urges they had, like doing things with his hands all of the time, rambling about things he liked, whether it was when he was alone or with Branzy, and repeating noises or words they heard, while doing the funhouse schtick with the shorter man, which completely drained him. It was more and more frequent that everything got too loud, too bright, too much and Clown found themselves drifting further and further away from reality, their grip on their sanity getting weaker.

Luckily, they managed to finish the funhouse deal without having any of those weird breakdown things.

After they had gotten their revenge, he went to visit his good friend Rat, one of the only people he ever really took their mask off with and the person who made Clown’s scythe, for a few days.

Of course Rat noticed something was up when Clown didn’t take off their mask at any point during his visit.

So, on the last day of their visit, Rat confronted them about it.

“What’s wrong, Clown?” he asked, sounding worried, which Clown absolutely despised. A person like him shouldn’t be worried about it- them.

“Nothing,” he said, knowing that they didn’t sound even a little convincing.

Rath sighed, brushing their hair behind their shoulder, and Clown knew that Rat knew that he knew.

“If it’s about a new trait, it’s okay,” the rat person said, “No matter how… ‘weird’ whatever new trait you picked up might be, I don’t mind. You’re fine.”

“Prime, I wish it was about that,” Clown muttered, not elaborating despite Rat’s questioning glance.

“What is it then?” he asked once he realised he wouldn’t be getting an answer without verbally asking.

“I-,” Clown said, interrupting themselves with a sigh, “It’s- I’m still completely in someone else’s form.”

“Oh?” Rat asked, “Did you meet someone new right before coming here? You didn’t tell me about that …”
“Because I didn’t,” Clown said, “I’m… I’m Branzy right now. You know, the guy I met like, what? A month ago? And made the funhouse with?”

“But don’t these phases last a week at maximum?” Rat asked.

“Well, yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” Clown said, “But for some reason I still look like him and it’s weird and wrong and I need to stop trying to fake being a person.”

Rat just wrapped an arm around their shoulder, pulling them into his side.

“You are a person,” he said, “And I am sure you will figure out something. You always do.”

“But what if I don’t?” Clown asked, “What if I don’t figure out anything? Every day I feel more and more uncomfortable in his presence. I’m wronging him and I don’t know if I can pretend for much longer.”

“You should talk to him about it then,” Rat decided, ignoring Clown’s shout of “What?!”, “You obviously care about him. A lot. And if it’s not going away and also affects you, you will need to talk to him about it. If he’s really as great as you make him out to be, he won’t be weird- well maybe a little weird at first, but not mean about it, you know? And if he’s not, then you can just perma kill him.”

“When did I make him out as ‘great’?” Clown asked because Rat wasn’t necessarily wrong, but they didn’t understand where he got his information from.

“When you talked about his genius for about fifteen minutes yesterday,” Rat deadpanned.

Oh…

There was a silence between the two for a few minutes, until Rat broke it.

“Anyways, you should talk to him about it,” he said, “At least if it doesn’t go away in the next three days. I’ll see if I find anything about your conditions and if I do, I’ll contact you immediately, okay?”

Clown nodded.

Truthfully, Clown had intended to talk to Branzy about it, but they genuinely forgot.

Until Branzy and him were celebrating another huge success another month later, this time with their casino, and he, somewhat jokingly, said that he could kiss Branzy.

“Oh?” Branzy asked, grinning. In the time they’ve been working together, Branzy had gotten over his initial fear of Clown. He still acted weirdly nervously around Clown most of the time, but Clown got the feeling that it wasn’t out of fear anymore.

“How about you do it then?” Branzy continued, moving a hand on Clown’s mask, causing him to go rigid. Normally, he would completely imobilise Branzy or even kill him, but it was Branzy . Clown didn’t want to hurt Branzy, so he just. Stopped moving.

Branzy immediately backed off. “Sorry,” he said, suddenly sounding nervous again, “I- We don’t have to do that obviously, sorry.”

“It- I do want to do that,” Clown said, staring straight at Branzy before averting his gaze, “It’s just…”

“The mask?” Branzy asked, “You don’t want to take it off?”

Clown nodded.

“That’s fine,” Branzy said, “I can just kiss you on the mask, if you want to.”

Clown pondered over it.

He did want that, but wouldn’t that be taking advantage of Branzy? He was a changeling and currently taking, stealing, stealing, stealing Branzy’s form and Branzy didn’t know.

And if Branzy knew, he would not want to kiss him. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even want to be on the same server as them.

“I- I don’t think so,” Clown settled on saying, “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I think I do, actually,” Branzy said, sounding defensive all of a sudden, “I’m not stupid.”

“I’m not saying that you’re stupid-,” Clown tried, but got interrupted.

“Then what?” Branzy asked loudly and suddenly there were tears in his right purple eyes, “Do you think I’m too weak for this? Do you think that I- that I don’t know the risks of being with you?”

“No!” Clown said, a little louder now, too, while stepping back.

“Then what-?!” Branzy shouted, looking as if he was about to break down, only for Clown to cut him off.

“You don’t know who, or rather what I am,” Clown said, sounding coldly without intending to, “And I am certain that if you knew, you wouldn’t want to kiss me or be anywhere near me at all.”

“What?” Branzy asked, sounding utterly confused, before furrowing his eyebrows, “Don’t you think I can decide that for myself?”

“I…,” Clown started slowly before taking a deep breath and continuing, “I’m not like you. Or anyone, really. I’m not… a person.”

“What do you mean you’re not a person?” Branzy asked. “Of course you’re a person!”

“I’m a changeling, Branzy” Clown finally got out, “I’m a monster that got swapped out for a human child. And I steal people’s faces and bodies and their personalities and I am wrong and shouldn’t exist and you should be with a person, a person that is worthy of being around you.”

“What the actual-?” Branzy asked, “What the heck do you mean you shouldn’t exist?!”

“Uh, well,” Clown said dumbly, “You see, I am referring to the state of something when it is not in actual occurrence. By that I mean that I should not be occurring? right now. As in-”

“I know what you mean in a literal sense, Clown,” Branzy said, “I just. What makes you think that you shouldn’t exist? And what do you mean you steal people’s bodies and personalities?”

“Well, I shapeshift,” Clown said, “Mostly involuntarily like right now.”

“Elaborate…?” 

“Whenever I meet, like, actually interact with a new person, I automatically take their form,” Clown explained, “With a few flaws. Like, I have been you but with more reddish eyes and with different freckles for two months now.”

“And you stay like that until you mirror a new person?” Branzy asked, not sounding mad for some reason.

“Uh, no,” Clown said, “That’s the weird part. Usually , it’s less than a week until I go back to ‘my’ form with a trait from the form I had temporarily. But for some reason this still hasn’t happened yet and I am still you. With wrong eyes and freckles.”

“And taller,” Branzy added, sounding not at all disgusted or freaked out, but completely casual.

“No,” Clown said, “That’s an illusion created by my boots.”

“Wait, you’re short- no average height now?” Branzy asked excitedly, “Can you show me?”

“Why would you wanna see that?” Clown asked, absolutely confused.

“Because that sounds absolutely insane and I need to see that,” Branzy said.

“I- fine,” Clown said, taking off his mask, revealing his uncanny valley Branzy form.

Branzy gasped.

“Holy moly christmas glory!” he exclaimed, “That is so weird! In a cool way.”

Clown blinked at him.

Branzy brought his hand up to Clown’s cheek but stopped right before reaching it.

“Can I?” he asked and Clown nodded reluctantly.

Branzy actually put his hand on Clown’s cheek, causing them to blush ever so slightly.

He brushed over Clown’s cheek and freckles with his thumb a few times before moving Clown’s face to look at it from different angles.

He looked like he was about to say something, but then everything shifted and suddenly Clown was tall again, looking down at Branzy.

“Holy-!” Branzy exclaimed, looking as shocked as Clown felt.

“I-,” Clown said, “...Did not expect this.”

“Well, that’s a problem solved,” the now only white haired person in the room said, standing on his toes to reach Clown’s cheek again.

Clown, to help him, leaned down a little, initiating eye contact, which wasn’t really the greatest because Clown was not the biggest fan of eye contact. It felt less uncomfortable than it did with other people, though, if that meant anything.

“Your eyes!” Branzy exclaimed, “They have  purple specks now!”

Clown blinked. That… wasn’t the worst trait he could have stolen.

“Let me see,” Clown said, moving towards the closest mirror, which was one of those more distorted ones, but it would have to do. It showed him enough.

Branzy was right, in the middle of his green eyes were purple specks, the colour perfectly matching Branzy’s this time. 

What stood out more, though, was the white streak amids all the black and red that fell over his eyes.

“And I have a white streak now,” Clown commented, mostly to themselves, but Branzy gasped from behind him.

“That’s from me?” he asked. “That’s so cool! It looks good on you!”

Clown blushed and turned to Branzy.

“You’re not mad?” they asked, “Or disgusted that I stole that from you?”

“What do you mean ‘stole’?” Branzy asked, “I still look the same.”

“Still,” Clown said

“Well, I’m not mad, nor disgusted,” the completely white haired man answered, “It looks great on you and I feel very honoured to have been an inspiration for your form.”

“I… Okay,” Clown said. Maybe Rat hadn’t been wrong after all.

He looked at Branzy and decided that he was happy.

“Well, can I kiss you now?” Branzy suddenly asked, then, sounding impatient.

Clown laughed at that ever so slightly.

“I think the deal was that I kiss you,” they said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s too bad, because you took too long and now I’m kissing you!” Branzy said, grinning.

“Then go ahead,” Clown said and Branzy practically pulled him down and kissed them.