The last laugh

The back room smelled of dust and old wood polish, the kind of place performers ducked into when they needed a breath between acts. The little family of former criminals sat in mismatched chairs, laughter soft and easy, their voices carrying a warmth that could’ve belonged to any ordinary troupe. They weren’t running anymore, weren’t stealing anymore. They were just… living.

The door creaked, and in came two uniformed officers doing routine searches. Tension rolled through the group like a ripple, but they didn’t bolt. Not yet.

“Evening,” one of the cops said, polite, casual. They had no idea that they were talking to the very ones they were actively searching for.

Conversation rose between them—small talk, teasing remarks, the kind you’d hear at a tavern table. The family kept their faces open, their words careful, planning to slip out and away from the cops. They’d been good at this once—slipping out of trouble without leaving a trace.

But then came the voice.

It slithered from nowhere and everywhere at once, deep with bloodlust, sharp with amusement. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

The officers stiffened. Shadows bent strangely, the air humming as though the room itself had begun to laugh. Then he appeared, stepping through the flicker of his own magic—Jester. His grin was too wide, as if it might split his face; his presence was like broken glass wrapped in silk.

“You’ve been speaking with the shadows that always escape you.... but not this time~” he told the officers, tilting his head. “These are your criminals. Every last one.” Then he glanced at the leader, “Well, not this one, she only started this little group...”

The leader barely had time to rise before his spell slammed her away—folding space, locking her into a box of cold iron buried far beneath the ground. Yet she still heard the screams before the silence. Heard the gunshots. Smelled the blood. It was as if Jester wanted her to suffer, and she did.

---

The box was small enough to force her into herself, metal pressing back against every blow she struck. She screamed until her throat was raw, clawed until her nails bled in the small grooves in the wall, burned her palms with sparks of useless magic. Days blurred into weeks, and her voice was barely a whisper now, black coated her hands and arms up to her elbows from countless spells burning her from the inside out. Her family’s absence rang louder than the screams in her head, slowly driving her insane.

One month in, she stopped. She ate when food slid through the slot. She drank the measly water they gave. And she hummed. A fragile little tune that never changed. Soft, haunting, always sent chills down the guards' spines.

The guards shook their heads. “She’s gone insane.” “She cracked.”

But they were wrong.

Beneath that stillness, she was gathering. Every drop of grief, every splinter of rage, every note of that hummed song was pulled inward, braided tight into her magic. She would not waste it on steel walls.

---

When the door finally opened, a year had passed. She stepped into daylight, thinner, quieter, her eyes strange with patience. They thought she was harmless, broken.

They let her go.

---

That same night, music and laughter spilled from a bright hall in the city. Officers in dress uniforms raised glasses, celebrating their triumph—one year since the fall of the famed criminals. They toasted themselves, clinking drinks over the memory of lives they had ended.

Then the world trembled.

Across cities and homes, through minds and hearts, her voice bloomed in the air. Images bled into their visions—her family smiling, working, giving food to the poor. Returning what they had once stolen. Fixing what they had once shattered. The truth burned itself into every eye: they had done no harm in years. They had done only good. Every cop in the hall stilled, confused, afraid.

And then the vision shifted. The same family, laughing with the cops in the back room. Warmth. Camaraderie. And then—bullets. Blood.

Her voice followed, low and fierce:

“You laughed with them. You spoke with them. You liked them. But the moment you knew their names, you killed them.”

The vision broke as the hall doors burst open.

She stepped so lightly that she seemed to be floating. Not the broken woman they had buried, but a storm shaped into human form. Her magic shimmered just under her skin, and even the air itself seemed charged. Every officer in that room realized she wasn’t the broken woman that they'd thought they’d created, but rather—judgment in flesh.

Screams rose, chairs crashed back as they scrambled back. Her song shattered glass as it flowed from her, that same soft humming she had carried in her cell, but now it was laced with power. And one by one, she brought her family justice, silencing the ones who had silenced them.

Jester’s name lingered like an unfinished sentence. His absence promised a reckoning yet to come.

But tonight, her voice carried far and wide. Tonight, the world knew the truth. They will love you till they know your truth; it doesn’t matter if you’ve changed.