Chapter Text
He was running, his shoes thumping the pavement beneath him, sprinting down his familiar street as fast as he could, putting as much distance between him and the house behind him.
He’d left his cheap old car parked at the neighborhood’s pool. He couldn’t remember why. Some stupid reason, instead of just having it outside the house, in his driveway.
His lungs were burning, screaming for rest and air. His heart felt like it was about to explode from how hard it was pounding.
He slowed, staggering, his arm outstretching to lean against a streetlamp, as he gasped for breath, silently cursing his lack of cardio.
He was drenched in sweat, feeling it coating his back, soaking into his shirt.
He shouldn’t be stopping, shouldn’t be wasting time like this.
Had Mom gotten up by now? Were the police on their way?
Was she still lying on the floor, back there? Not moving, so dreadfully still?
A sudden, thunderous wave of nausea overtook him, and before he could even try to stop it, a torrent of half-digested dinner spilled out of his mouth, splattering onto his shoes.
It came again, and again.
He felt muscles in his core stretching painfully as he heaved, his hand still clenched around the base of the streetlight, and he knew in his soul that he’d never been lower.
She was right.
He was pathetic.
He couldn’t stay long. He tried to silence his breathing, keeping his hearing pricked for the sound of approaching sirens.
There were none.
Wiping his mouth with the thin, ratty sleeve of his hoodie, trying to blink away the tears in his eyes, he started running again.
“The next time I saw Ribbit, she had…” Jax sighed, her stomach in a low pit. “She was gone. And…it was my fault.”
It was later that night. Hours had passed. Jax hadn’t left the bench she’d been sitting on, in front of the aquarium’s glass, only turning around to face the other way.
Pomni and Kinger still sat on either side of her. Gangle and Zooble shared the bench across from the three of them. Ragatha stood behind the two of them, near the opposite glass window. Off to the side, Caine floated anxiously, just a few inches off the ground.
The group had listened to Jax as she finally let the long-waiting confession off of her chest. It had festered within her, for so long.
Everything she’d said, everything she’d done to drive Ribbit away, all out of a panicky, cowardly fear of being known.
“…Jesus fucking Christ, Jax…” Zooble was the first to break the silence, their eyes wide.
At their side, Gangle sniffled, crying softly into her own ribbon hands.
“I know,” Jax sighed, her eyes locked with her own feet on the floor. “Things fell apart between me and Kaufmo after that. We were never as close as we used to be again. I think he always knew, at least a little, what I did. And, years later, when he started obsessing over finding a way out…I wasn’t there to pull him back.”
Caine finally settled both feet on the ground, removing his hat from his head in silence.
Jax wiped her wrist against her eyes, smearing brimming tears on her forearm.
“I wish I could take it back. I wanna just…” She glared at the cane in her hand, her fist tightening around it. “I wanna just go back in time, to my younger self, and just…”
After a long silence, she sighed, loosening her grip on the cane. “…But I can’t.”
Ragatha had stood silently at the back of the group throughout Jax’s story, her face hidden by the shadows of the dark aquarium tunnel.
Now, Ragatha slowly walked around Zooble and Gangle’s bench, crossing the aquarium tunnel to stand directly in front of Jax.
Jax raised her head to look up at Ragatha.
Ragatha’s mouth was a thin, pursed line in the middle of her face. Her eyes brimmed with hot tears, a barely-contained volcanic fury behind them as she breathed heavily through her nose.
“…Ragatha?” Pomni quietly asked at Jax’s side.
Jax remained silent, staring up at the woman who had also been Ribbit and Kaufmo’s friend, awaiting whatever came next. Jax had hurt everyone here at some point or another, in the past, but she had taken two of Ragatha’s friends from her, and then shouldered her with the burden of never talking about one of them ever again.
The sound of Ragatha’s stuffed palm striking Jax’s cheek was more of a muted pomf than a crisp slap.
Physically, Jax had barely felt it. It was like being hit with a plushie.
Emotionally, Jax felt like the scum of the earth she was.
Ragatha stood there for several long seconds more, her other hand clenched tightly at her side, breathing heavily as she seethed with righteous fury.
When she finally spoke, her voice trembled with the effort of holding in her anger.
“Jax. You are my friend. And I can tell. That you feel bad. And are trying to make it right.” It was as if there was a singular mass of words stuck in Ragatha’s mouth that she had to bite a few off at a time and spit them out to speak, or she was going to start screaming and never stop. “But. I am very angry at you. And I am going to leave now, or I am going to say something that I can’t take back.”
Silently, Ragatha turned on her heel, and stalked toward the stairs.
Jax watched her back as Ragatha silently strode up toward the main Circus area, leaving the rest of the gathered group behind her.
“Ragatha…” Gangle murmured, raising one hand.
“Let her go…” Jax sighed. It was what she deserved, for everything she’d done.
Her eyes raised to stare up at the opposite window. A lone Abstraction was swimming lazily, off a ways from the tunnel.
“Well…” Zooble sighed, their hand squeezing Gangle’s. “Jax…thank you for telling us. I…never met Ribbit, she was before my time, but…Kaufmo was always pretty distant, too.”
Jax chuckled bitterly, not breaking eye contact with the distant Abstraction. “Surprised you’re not angrier at me.”
“You…” Gangle took a deep breath, her ever-present tear drops wobbling at the edges of her eyes. “You’re feeling bad enough for everyone here, I think.”
A sad, uncomfortable silence fell over the group, as everyone collectively processed the story Jax had told.
Jax kept staring at the far-off Abstraction.
Was it Ribbit? Maybe. Maybe not.
It’s multitude of eyes rippled and shimmered, almost hypnotically, layers of neon colors rippling and overlapping with each other.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Jax twitched, startled by Kinger’s voice.
All sets of eyes in the aquarium were on Kinger, as he stroked where his chin would be.
The veteran member of the Circus had stayed silent throughout Jax’s story, listening silently, not judging.
Now, his eyes were furrowed, focused, lost in thought. “I’ve…been considering something for a while. I was…trying to find the best time to bring it up, but…this seems as good as any.”
Kinger’s eyes slid from face to face, in the circle around the bench he sat on. “Abstraction…it’s caused by emotional rock-bottom. And, until Jax came back, no one ever really came back from it. But, Jax is also the only one we’ve ever really tried, with.”
Jax blinked, her pupils shrinking in shock as she started to put together what Kinger was getting at.
Kinger was still talking. “Now, granted, Jax had only been Abstracted for maybe an hour or so, before Pomni did her…” He waggled his fingers. “Mind journey, and this is by no means an exact science, but…” He met Jax’s eyes with his own, sincere and compassionate. “I think it’d be remiss if we didn’t…try again.”
Gangle and Zooble shared an uneasy glance, as did Pomni and Jax.
It would be a lie to say that none of them had thought about it, both since Jax Unabstracted and a thousand times before that.
“Would that…even work?” Zooble asked, glancing at Jax, who looked back at them with wide, hopeful eyes.
“I-It’s gotta, right?” Jax stammered. “I-I’m living proof. I was gone, and…you brought me back.”
“Well, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t.” Kinger shrugged. “There’s still so much we barely know about Abstraction.” He motioned to Caine. “Caine and I have been here the longest, and we barely understand how it works, just that it does.”
“He’s right,” Caine nodded, unconsciously rising off the ground once more. “No one was more surprised than me when…” he paused for several seconds, finding the words. “…When Scratch went, the way he did.”
Jax felt Kinger’s floating hand squeeze her shoulder. “Jax, I’d hate to think you’re the exception to this rather than the rule, but…speaking realistically…you had only been Abstracted for a little while when…” He waggled his fingers. “When Pomni did her mind-dive thing on you. For Kaufmo, or Ribbit, or…” He trailed off, staring at the glass wall at the far end of the tunnel for several long, silent seconds. “…Or anyone else, they’ve been gone for…a lot longer. Even if we tried…it may not be as…clean as yours was.”
Years ago, Jax might have sidestepped all of this. Might have written all of them off as crazy, might have made a snide comment she pretended was endearingly rude when it was just insulting.
As it was, Jax was sure sounded as small as she felt, as she glanced back and forth between Caine and Kinger’s faces, such that they were. “We…we gotta try, though…right?” She turned to look at the two-toned jester sitting to her right. “Pomni…run me through everything that happened when you…did your thing, with me.”
Pomni nodded, all business. “I followed you into the hallway for the bedrooms. I’d held onto that gun I was using during the Gun Thing, so I shot out the lights.” She nodded at Kinger. “Kinger had told me darkness calms the Abstractions down, so I figured…” She shrugged. “Go for broke, you know?”
An assortment of nods from around the room as she continued. “It worked, you got super calm, calm enough that I was able to hug you.” Pomni raised her hands before her, gesturing as she attempted to explain her process. “What I was trying was, since Kinger had been teaching us how to conjure, was…basically try and open a door into you? I knew it was gonna be messy, but it worked. I ended up in…your consciousness, I guess. It was…kinda like the Palaces in Persona 5- what am I doing, none of you know what Persona 5 is.”
“I do.” Gangle raised a single ribbon hand. “I never got to play Royal before I got here, though.”
“You’re not missing much, the stuff Royal added was terrible.”
“Aw.”
“But, anyway,” Pomni continued, getting back on track. “There were a bunch of doors, and a bunch of you’s, and I…basically stumbled through a lot of your memories.”
Jax nodded. Pomni getting a tour of her consciousness and her mistakes, quite literally through her eyes, had been a topic the two of them had mutually agreed to not bring up unless they had to.
“When I got to the…the bottom, I guess, of it all…” Pomni smiled gently at Jax. “That’s where I found you. Next to a streetlamp.”
Jax remembered it, in that hazy, half-there way you remember dreams.
Standing in an infinite darkness, the only light a streetlamp next to her, casting her in a sickly purple glow.
The same streetlamp Jax had leaned against, that night, a thousand years ago, even if it had surely only been a few.
She hoped Leeroy, or whatever the real-world version of herself called herself, was still free. She hoped she was still happy.
Pomni was still talking. “After you- Abstraction you, stepped on that leftover flashbang, you got agitated again, and everyone else yanked me back out. After we got you calm again in the tent, I tried again, but…” She sighed. “It never worked. I wasn’t able to re-enter your brain. I guess you only get one try.”
“Why?” Jax asked, only for Pomni to shrug. “Hey, I’m just here. I know about as much about this as you do. I was just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.”
Kinger nodded. “And that’s all good information to have, Pomni, but…” He paused for several seconds, searching for the right words. “…I don’t have a good way to say this, so I’m just going to say this, and I apologize in advance, Jax.”
Jax raised an eyebrow. “O…kay?”
“You’d spent a long time pushing everyone away, back then, and Pomni was the only one who really had a connection with you.”
Jax grimaced, but nodded. It was true.
Kinger continued. “And I think that might have been a big help with you specifically, but…” He glanced at Pomni. “The only ones here who really knew Kaufmo and Ribbit were Ragatha and myself, and…” He tapped the side of his own head with one finger. “My noggin’s only really just recently started being able to…work, again.”
Pomni sighed. “He’s right. I never knew either of them, and they never knew me, so I might not be able to pull the same trick with them.”
Zooble clicked the crab claw they were using for their left arm today contemplatively. “So, following that logic…it would have to be someone they knew? That’s most of us off the table for a lot of them. No offense, Kinger.”
Kinger merely nodded. It was a statement that was not untrue.
Continuing, Zooble added “But, except Pomni, we all knew Kaufmo. As for Ribbit…she was before me or Gangle, so it could really only be Kinger, or Ragatha.”
“Or me.” Jax murmured.
The silence that hung over the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.
“Bruh.” Gangle whispered.
“…Jax…” Zooble’s eyes narrowed, in the way that said they were trying to find a way to say something complicated. “No offense…okay, some offense, but…I don’t…really think you’d be the best choice, for Ribbit specifically.”
“That’s why I gotta do it.” Jax glared back at Zooble.
At her side, Jax felt Pomni’s hand gently squeeze her elbow. “Jax, are you sure? What if…I dunno, it…re-kickstarts your Abstraction, or something?”
It was a genuine question.
“I don’t think that it would,” Caine said, breaking the silence. “Glitch jumblies aside, Abstraction itself isn’t directly contagious. It only occurs as a result of genuine mental changes.”
After several seconds, Jax took a deep breath, her hands tightening around her cane, and shrugged. “If it happens…then it happens.”
She ignored the heartbreak on Pomni’s face as she turned to look at Caine. “Does this aquarium have a room where you can get to the top of the tank?
Caine stared back at Jax for several long seconds. The others watched silently, waiting for Caine’s response.
Finally, Caine slowly raised one hand, snapping his fingers. The sound echoed in the tunnel.
“It does now.”
The room was more of a square concrete cell than anything. Four blank walls, lit by a single lightbulb on the ceiling. A single basic door, leading back out, emerging right next to the top of the stairs leading down into the aquarium.
The room was spartan, utilitarian. None of the colorful playfulness of Caine’s usual design philosophy. It was strictly for something serious.
A flat concrete floor led to the surface of the water, lapping gently just below the edge.
Below the surface, a deep, deep drop down into the barely-illuminated depths. Looking down, Jax could just barely see a colorful smudge, somewhere far below them, swimming along.
The thing that used to be Ribbit was down there, somewhere.
Jax’s leg was hurting at her side, her hand clenched around the head of her cane.
Jax felt Zooble’s claw tug gently at her elbow. “Let’s maybe step back from the edge, huh? Seeing you standing there like that is giving me bad vibes.”
Jax didn’t argue, turning around to see Zooble’s concerned eyes. Over their shoulder, the rest of their group, collectively staring at the two of them.
Jax sighed. “Look…I’m not sayin’ it’ll be fun. But…I gotta try. I…”
Her eyes were wide and desperate as she stared at the group. “I have to.”
Pomni broke from the group, gently pushing their way past Zooble to stand in front of Jax.
The two friends stared at each other for several long seconds.
Finally, Pomni took a deep breath. “Jax…if you’re gonna do this…if I’m gonna trust you with it…I need to know that this…” She took a hitched breath, and Jax realized she was holding tears back. “That this isn’t some…some self-punishing horseshit, because y-you…” She trailed off, letting the words hang in the air.
Jax’s face softened. “It’s not, Pom.”
Pomni reached out to gently grasp Jax’s forearm. “Promise me.”
Slowly, deliberately, Jax carefully knelt down on her good knee, to meet Pomni’s eye level. “I promise.”
“Because if you…if you don’t come back, or get re-Abstracted, or eaten or something while you’re down there, I’ll never, ever forgive you.”
Jax couldn’t help chuckling. “I won’t.”
Pomni paused for several seconds, before slowly, telegraphing her movements, she wrapped Jax in a hug around the shoulders.
Jax leaned into the hug, her face against Pomni’s padded shoulder, exhaling softly.
“Be here later.” Pomni whispered.
Nodding, Jax slowly rose to stand again, wincing at a flash of pain in her knee. The pain was starting to migrate to the rest of her, a dull ache in her other knee, her elbows, her joints.
Nonetheless: “I will.”
The door at the back of the new room clunked open, drawing Jax’s attention.
Ragatha stood in the doorway, the main hall of the Circus visible behind her.
The crowd of the other players slowly parted as she slowly approached Jax, her plush hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes were downcast, her feet silent against the concrete floor.
Jax grimaced, more than a little awkwardly, as she looked back at her friend.
Pomni stepped out of her girlfriend’s way, allowing Ragatha to step into her place.
Trying to find the words to say, Jax could only manage a “H-“
Before Ragatha was yanking her into as tight a hug as she could manage.
Jax sighed, hugging Ragatha back, face buried in her red hair strings. She smelled like bergamot.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” Ragatha murmured.
“It’s okay,” Jax whispered back.
As the long hug finally broke, Jax handed her cane to Ragatha. “Hang onto this, okay?”
Ragatha nodded silently, taking the offered cane.
Behind her, Zooble simply squeezed Gangle’s hand. “…Good luck.”
With one last nod, Jax turned, suppressing a wince as her bad knee complained at her with a flash of pain.
Then, before she could back out, Jax took a deep breath, and dove forward into the frigid waters of the aquarium.
The shock of the chill froze her in place, just for an instant, her romper soaking through down to her fur.
After a few seconds, she forcefully made her joints cooperate, and began to swim.
Jax began to descend, down, down, her legs kicking above her, propelling her further, deeper. Her lop ears flowed in the self-made current behind her.
She squinted in the dark water, trying to make out shapes, anything to guide her.
The light above her was getting further, further away.
As Jax continued to hold her breath, she felt her lop ears begin to move on their own, as her personal breath-holding effect kicked in, the one she’d never shown anyone else.
Slowly, delicately, as if guided by invisible hands, her ears began to tie themselves into a knot.
It was dumb, and for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever kept it a secret from the others.
Her ears painlessly tightened the first knot to the base, before beginning to tie the remainder in a second one. It’d be a pain to untie them, later, once she was back out of the water.
It might be a while, before that’d happen.
The cruel thing in the back of her head chimed in with a snide memory:
(“We can’t die of oxygen deprivation, remember?”)
The darkness of the aquarium tank around her was deeper, now, wrapping around her like a blanket, drawing her deeper and deeper.
The deepest she’d ever swam before was way back in the real world, in the public pool, when she’d swam to the bottom of the deep end, to touch the rough concrete with her fingertips, before quickly turning tail and swimming back to the surface.
That had been a measly twelve feet, and it had felt impossible at the time.
Jax was so, so much deeper than that, now. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much, much less calculate it.
At least the aquarium’s water wasn’t chlorinated. That saved her eyes from burning as she squinted in the blackness.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the observation tunnel, where they’d all just been, barely a few minutes ago. It seemed so much longer.
An Abstraction loomed on her right, from behind, and Jax fought down the urge to gasp in shock.
She stopped kicking downward, adjusting her position to be right-side-up, watching the Abstraction slide gracefully past her, through the water.
A few technicolor eyes glanced disinterestedly at her, before continuing its lazy circuit.
Her lungs were burning, screaming for rest and air.
Her heart felt like it was about to explode from how hard it was pounding.
Jax slowly paddled herself in a circle, glancing around, staring at each Abstraction in the clear-but-dimly-lit water. Her ears had finally stopped tying themselves in knots, having run out of ear to tie. Now they were tucked up behind her, like a hairbun.
Some ancient animal instinct in her brain was screaming at her that she was suffocating, that she needed to breathe, to take as deep a breath as possible of air that simply was not there.
Jax clenched her teeth in her mouth, ignoring it the best that she could. Even if she couldn’t drown, she couldn’t imagine a lungful of water would be terribly pleasant.
C’mon, c’mon, gimme somethin’ to work with, anything.
She squinted through the water, looking for some sign.
Abstractions swam, slowly, easily, through the depths.
They all looked fucking identical.
A minute passed.
Two.
Three.
Five.
Ten.
Twenty.
Jax’s face was burning, even in the cold water.
She was certain that her face was turning blue.
She was dimly aware that she was experiencing the other effects of oxygen deprivation. There was a weird, fuzzy feeling in her head, now, a strange, giggly thing that wanted to spill out.
Maybe she should take a break, go back up and reorient herself, get her bearings back.
Then, once she was feeling back to normal, she could come back down here, and try again. It wasn’t like there was a time limit to this.
Jax felt her shoulders slump with disappointment.
She paddled herself in a loose circle, trying to approximate facing the concrete ledge she’d dove from-
She saw it.
She almost could have missed it.
It was sheer dumb, blind, stupid, doo-dah clueless luck that she ever did.
An Abstraction was staring at her, not that far off, it’s bulk a black outline in the murky water. That much was easy to see.
It’s multitude of eyes were trained directly on her, staring at her.
At her.
Dead center of its collection of hypnotically shimmering multicolor eyes, colors that hurt her head and her heart and her already aching joints…
…was a single eye with a familiar, pie-shaped pupil.
It was her.
It had to be.
Jax thrashed in the water, ignoring the complaint from her bum knee as she kicked, swimming as hard as she could toward it, her hand reaching out to gently press one bare palm against its front, the thing seeming to lean into her touch,
before she flung her arms around it, hugging it tight.
You only get one shot at this.
Make it count.
Door door door door door door DOOR-
The world lit up in a cascading vortex of eye-searing colors, and the aquarium
vanished around her
Jax felt like she was being stretched, her arms and legs extending beyond her
There was a sound somewhere, blaring in her ears, something between a Merry-Go-Round calliope, and a saxophone, playing an endless spiral of notes
Her vision was filled with a painful blur of technicolor
Spirals and brains and eyes, all spinning and collapsing like stars
Somewhere, very very far in the distance, was a silhouette, floating in the overstimulating everythingness.