Chapter Text
She was a child.
A butterfly cut out of its cocoon before it could fully develop its wings. A baby bird pushed out from the nest and forced to fly before it was ready to take that leap. A kitten not yet weaned off of its mother’s milk but made to choke down dry food anyway.
A girl turned into a woman too early.
She was a child.
But that doesn’t matter to the beasts. Meat is meat, and they all taste the same. In fact, the younger the better.
Tender is the flesh of the one who writhes, and they get a sort of thrill out of being the first to take a bite out of it. They become intoxicated on the sweet nectar of her innocence, more potent than any tequila, stronger than any vodka.
Sinking their fangs into her jugular and sucking out the golden purity of her youth. Swallowing it. Regurgitating it back up past her lips as something bilious and tainted. Stroking her throat to coax her into gulping it down.
Having no choice but to obey.
Her girlhood rots away in her mouth.
It’s been about a week since the incident. The outburst. Her frenzy. Whatever it may be dubbed. It’s been a week.
There’s been a shift in the very Digital Circus itself that one would have to be stupid to not notice. It’s like everyone is walking on eggshells when they’re around her, and they’re constantly glancing at her like they’re waiting for her to explode again. They know something is wrong with her, no mentally stable person would ever react the way she did, and that makes them wary of setting her off. She’s a ticking time bomb, and they’re bracing for the next inevitable destruction.
Caine still hovers around her, but he avoids touching her completely. Sometimes, he’ll make a move to put an arm around her or grab her by the shoulder, Pomni guesses out of pure instinct, but he always stops short, usually because she flinches and tenses up. He’ll then clear his throat and proceed with what he had been saying like nothing happened.
Jax, on the other hand, fully keeps his distance from her. He watches her from afar when he thinks she doesn’t notice (or maybe he does notice and doesn’t care about being sneaky), peering at her like he’s trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with her. When he does interact with her, he does it at arm’s length, and his words are always clipped. He doesn’t really look at her. Not in the eyes, at least.
And, like with their reactions to her huge detonation, the others treat her differently, too.
Gangle is a bit more cautious than the others, constantly mentally preparing for another breakdown. She doesn’t get close to Pomni, like she’s afraid that she’ll be yelled at next if she gets within a ten foot radius of her, always speaking at her from afar.
Kinger acts like absolutely nothing happened, but at the same time, he also acts like there’s a giant brick wall built on all sides of Pomni. Like Jax and Gangle, he keeps his distance. He doesn’t go near her.
Zooble is mostly unperturbed, but Pomni can tell curiosity is gnawing away at them. They want to know what happened to her and why she reacted the way she did. They’re always glancing at her and seem to be on the knife’s edge on asking.
Pomni likes that she’s no longer having people breathing down the back of her neck, but this isn’t what she wanted. She doesn’t want anyone to tiptoe when they’re around her.
And there’s the other issue.
If people don’t pity her for what happened to her, then they’re uncomfortable with her.
It’s like they think she’s contagious or something. Her existence is just a reminder that something so horrible can happen to anyone. And that’s not something people want on their minds.
As they say, ignorance is bliss.
People just can’t handle the true state of nature—the unbridled chaos, the corruption and the mutations, where nothing in life stays pure forever, where death and devastation lurks beneath every shining surface. They turn away from it all, pull the wool over their eyes, and stay safely locked behind a garden wall.
And on one hand, Pomni gets it. Nobody likes being reminded of how vicious man can be.
But on the other hand, she wishes she hadn’t been thrown to the other side of that garden wall, left to fend for herself against the wolves that ravaged her. She’s scratched and clawed at old tarnished brick for years, begging for someone, anyone, to hear her.
They never do.
And then, there’s Ragatha. The only one who truly understands the mess inside of Pomni’s head.
Ragatha isn’t smothering or overbearing, even after having Pomni cry on her. She doesn’t bring attention towards her problems, instead keeping an eye on her from afar and checking in on her in private. It’s nice to not be shoved under the spotlight.
But Pomni’s brief moment of respite from the trauma isn’t enough to clear her mind.
An improvement is an improvement, and it’s nothing to sneeze at, but plucking one tooth out with pliers doesn’t stop the slobbering jaws from biting down harder.
Because this kind of damage will eat you.
And it will eat you.
And it will eat you.
And even when you think you have nothing left, even when you’re sure you’ve been emptied out completely, even when you have the false hope that you’ll finally be released, it eats you some more.
Adult humans regularly have thirty-two teeth. Dogs only have ten more.
Even while in this digital world, Pomni is still having nightmares about it- more so than usual since the incident with Caine. It’s even worse now because she has no access to therapy or medication. Her dreams are haunted by their naked bodies, their disheveled hair, and their fingers inside her, and no amount of fighting will make them go away because it’s not like that worked to begin with.
“Envy is a deadly sin, Mary Warren,” Abigail Williams once said, but she failed to mention lust. Or gluttony. Or greed. At the end of the day, they all encompass the same thing- the need to tear away what is not theirs. They don’t like to be denied, like stealing a bone from the maw of a hound, but that bone was a part of her ribs first before they ripped it out of her chest.
She’s so sick and tired of having their memory festering away in her mind- a Hiroshima shadow burned black upon her brain. She’s stuck in the body of a goddamn jester, but even still, they don’t leave her alone. They’ve chased her down, and now she truly knows that she will never truly be free from their assault.
She’s having a nightmare about it again.
She’s on the ground, and her head is throbbing from getting smashed against the wall. A concussion-induced headache renders her useless, and all she can do is twitch helplessly on the floor like a bird with broken wings as a horrific being of claws and teeth and too many tongues snarls above her.
There is blood pooling between her legs, so dark it looks more black than red, and she chokes on a sob. Bleeding her dry, yet also stuffing her full. Her thighs are no more than mangled scraps of flesh once they’re done with her.
Dry, burning friction abrading her insides. His mouth on her mouth. His teeth in her neck. Making her suffer for his sick needs. Tortured in the worst way a body can be tortured.
And then, she wakes up, sweating and gasping, shaking all over. She aches between her legs, and her skin stings like she’s been seared by the worst sunburn. The blankets over her body feel too oppressive and heavy to be comforting, similar to a net that’s trying to hold her down, and she frantically claws it off with all the ferocity of an animal attempting to escape from a trap.
She doesn’t know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. She needs to get up. She needs to move. She’s too scared and anxious and paranoid to remain laying in her bed any longer.
So, she crawls out of bed and exits her room.
The lights in the living quarter hallway have been switched to neon fluorescents, turning the corridor into a shadowy tunnel of purple and green and blue, meaning it’s still nighttime. She’s actually happy about this, as she really doesn’t want to interact with anyone right now.
Pomni wanders around the Tent, and she ends up finding herself at the large, yawning exit. The Grounds are just barely illuminated by the soothing blue light of the moon up above. The wind—if it can even be considered that in this world—feels like a cool, static white noise on her cheeks, but she welcomes it openly. She takes a few more steps forward and walks out of the Tent fully.
The Grounds are a vast expanse, seemingly endless in every direction, and the scenery is both eerie and enchanting, sort of like a liminal space. The grass is a little too green, and the air is much too crisp. Her footsteps crunch over the spongy ground beneath her. When she sits, the ground feels more like fake turf than real grass, itching her skin ever so slightly.
Pomni takes a deep breath and tries to recall some kind of relaxation technique she’s sure she looked into before, but those memories feel fuzzy and far away, and it’s hard to grasp the steps that she had learned. Breathing is all she can think to do, but that can only do so much.
“Oi.”
The voice comes out of nowhere, and Pomni nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears it. At a near breakneck speed, she whips around to see none other than a tall, purple rabbit standing in the archway of the Tent.
Jax.
Of course, it has to be Jax.
Pomni isn’t sure what to say in response to his appearance, but luckily, she doesn’t have to worry about speaking because Jax is already proceeding, “What are you doing out here? It’s, like…” He looks up at the sky as if he can gauge what time it is by the placement of the moon, seems to realize he has no idea how to do that, then says, “…the middle of the night.”
Pomni has never had a conversation with Jax that went smoothly or made her feel good about just about anything that’s going on, and she isn’t sure she really wants to talk to him after just having a nightmare, especially when he had been one of the reasons she freaked out a week ago to begin with. But she also knows Jax is the kind of person to not go away when you ask them to (something that really doesn’t make Pomni comfortable at all), and he will most certainly pester her if he realizes that something is wrong with her. So, she hopes that if she keeps her responses to him short, vague, and dull, he’ll get bored and go away.
“I was just…getting some fresh air,” she says. “That’s all.”
Jax eyes her skeptically, his long ears twitching ever so slightly. And then, to Pomni’s dismay, he starts to stroll closer to her—oh, please don’t come near me, please don’t come near me—seemingly unbothered by the late hour or her reluctance to engage in conversation.
“Fresh air, huh?” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “At this time of night? Really?”
“Y-yes,” Pomni says with as much conviction as she can manage. It’s not like she’s lying or anything- she genuinely needed to clear her head. But she doesn’t want to go into detail over why.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something,” Jax points out bluntly.
“I’m fine,” Pomni says a bit too quickly.
Those kinds of responses have been on the tip of her tongue for years- ‘I’m okay’ and ‘I’m alright’ and ‘I’m fine.’ She knows that it’s not good to keep things bottled up inside, but this isn’t the type of thing you can just talk about with ease, and she doesn’t like to discuss it most of the time. But human beings (or humanoid rabbits, in Jax’s case) are incredibly nosy creatures; they have to gobble up any and every scrap of information they can get their canines on, even if it means digging through someone’s skin to find it. They love to pry, and when they pry, they jab the bent claw of a crowbar into a seal in her throat, wrest the scab open, and release a torrent of blood.
Blood that, most of the time, they aren’t ready to have stain their hands and clothes, which causes them to frantically try and cover up the hole that they willingly went out of their way to unsecure.
Trying to change the subject, Pomni says, “What are you, um, doing awake?”
Jax shrugs nonchalantly. “Couldn’t sleep. Then I heard someone getting up, realized it was you, and followed you to see what you were doing.”
The words ‘followed you’ makes Pomni’s stomach hurt a little, but she tries to let it go. She says, “Oh.” She isn’t sure where to go from there.
Luckily, or unluckily, really, Jax seems more than happy to fill the silence. He gets closer until he can plop down right next to her, and there’s only about two and a half feet between them. Too close for comfort. Pomni can feel herself getting nervous.
There’s some kind of bleeding, seething beast inside of her chest, and the personal space bubble she keeps around herself is its territory that’s just been intruded upon. It’s biting at what’s left of her ribs, clawing at her sternum, vicious and angry.
Jax seems to be genuinely oblivious—or ignorant—of the tension Pomni’s feeling. He stretches his arms out, then leans back, and Pomni finds herself watching his hands. She’s afraid of what they may do.
“Why have you been acting so weird lately?” Jax asks.
“Wh-what?” Pomni answers, surprised by the question.
Jax rolls his eyes. “Don’t play dumb, Pomni. I know you’re not that stupid.” When she just stares at him, he heaves a sigh. “Am I really gonna have to be the one to point out the elephant in the room? Fine.”
Pomni instinctively tenses, already knowing exactly where this is going. It’s a conversation she’s been dreading since the incident happened.
“What the hell happened last week?”
Picked clean, emptied out. Hollow. Hallowed. That beast bred between her tarnished flesh and innocent blood writhes in her chest.
“You know, with you freaking out on Caine for no reason.”
Pomni has had too much experience with men who talk to her as though she’s just a dumb cow. And even though Jax doesn’t have the same motives as them (at least, she really hopes), the patronizing tone in his voice, like he’s trying to explain a basic concept to a toddler, brings forth less than comforting memories.
They would tell her that she’d like it if she tried it. That she only thought she was asexual and aromantic because she hasn’t fucked them yet. That she likes it because she’s getting wet.
Fingers clamped tight around her wrists, firm enough to leave bruises, holding her arms high above her head while they murmur, “You’re too pretty to let yourself not be touched. Come on, I know you want it.”
Hands forcing her to feel between their legs while they say, “Look at how excited I am for you. Let’s have a good time, baby.”
Vicious claws yanking her by the hair when she tries to flee while they growl, “Hey, bring your little ass back over here, I’ll fuck you straight.”
Breathe in—too fast. Teeth in her lungs, tongue down her throat. Impossible to breathe. It’s getting hard to breathe.
“I don’t like being touched,” Pomni whispers. She hugs her knees to her chest and tries to calm her racing heart.
Jax raises his eyebrows and blinks at her. Then, he snorts slightly, and Pomni is almost wounded by the reaction. “You don’t like being touched?” he echoes. “Really? You literally let us touch you all the time, and you never said anything about it then. You know, until you screeched like a banshee.”
Jax shifts his body a little, trying to get into a more comfortable position, but his movements make Pomni even more anxious. Their shoulders are almost touching. If she turns slightly to the right, she’d be able to feel how warm his fur is.
Pomni doesn’t. Instead, she tucks in as far as she can. That animal in her is screaming. It’s fighting to tear its way out and hurt him. But for some reason, Pomni’s forcing it to stay calm.
“And plus,” Jax continues, “that whole thing was a total overreaction on your part. I mean I get being uncomfortable, but there was no reason for you to scream at him like that. Caine is a bit wild and eccentric, but he’s not a creep or something.”
Jax is holding the hammer, and he surely sees the nail, and Pomni is just so completely baffled by how he hasn’t hit it on the head yet. Instead, he’s hitting everything but the proverbial nail.
She understands what he’s saying, probably more than he understands her uncomfortable body language. She knows, at least from what she’s seen, that Caine means well, and there’s no harm in what he’s doing.
But in Pomni’s world, every man is capable of atrocities. And she can never be too careful.
And more than that, reassuring her that someone won’t do anything to her does not make her feel any better. In fact, it makes her even more wary.
If a man knows they would never do something like that to a woman, they have no reason to prove it to her by saying something.
“I… I…”
Stomach full of blood. Lungs full of blood. Thighs smeared in blood. Gory shame stuck between her teeth, and her claws aren’t sharp enough to pick it out.
“It… it really isn’t any of your business,” she says, trying to put her foot down for once in her life, but the words come out shaking and tremulous instead of firm and confident like she wanted them to.
Jax easily catches the weakness of her rebuttal and rolls his eyes again with a scoff. “Actually, it has everything to do with me. We’re literally trapped in here with no way out. So if one of us is acting weird, it’s all of our problem.”
He…has a point. Even Pomni can’t deny that. They’ve all been forced to rely on each other and get along for their own sake, so they can’t afford to have some giant rift split between them.
“And, you know, weird is actually the understatement of the century,” Jax goes on. “You, Pomni, went out of your way to have a public meltdown and then went radio silent on everyone for a week.” He shakes his head. “I just don’t get it.”
“It was…” She hesitates, trying to think of the right word. “Personal, okay? It’s my personal issue. And I’m allowed to keep that to myself.”
And if she isn’t allowed to keep that to herself, then what the fuck does she get to have to herself at all?
“Personal?” Jax says. “I have no problem with people having issues that they don’t want to share. But screaming in everyone’s face about it? That’s another thing entirely. And, as I’ve said before, it’s still our problem because you not talking about it just makes things awkward for everyone.”
Pomni’s heart begins to beat faster and faster and faster.
Opened. Ravaged. Eaten.
Raw.
Without realizing it, she begins to scratch her arms, and she’s tearing up.
“I… I— …I…” Pomni’s not able to fully breathe, and she’s struggling to formulate a proper sentence. He doesn’t get it.
Jax notices her mounting distress and says, “Woah, hey. Quit that.” He reaches out to grab her, maybe to stop her from scratching, but she flinches back.
“Stop,” she rasps, and the word barely manages to leave her mouth.
Jax’s hand quickly falls away from her. “Stop?” he repeats, and he looks more confused than anything.
“Stop doing what?” he asks, and there’s a hint of concern in his voice. Does he not know what is bothering her so bad? Does he truly not understand why she’s so uncomfortable, even though she’s given him plenty of clues?
“S-stop,” Pomni mutters again. This time, she manages to make eye contact with him, and she’s sure she must look like a frightened animal. “You’re too close, and I… I don’t like it, okay? Please…”
She’s tearing up even more, and her voice is raw and strained. She’s terrified out of her mind. Her eyes are fixed on Jax to the point where she’s not even blinking, as she’s afraid that if she does, he’ll do something in the brief moment she has her eyes closed. Jax definitely isn’t helping their current situation with how close he is.
Pomni's breathing is getting more erratic, and she grips her knees even harder. She doesn't want him anywhere near her. She needs him to leave immediately.
“Calm down,” Jax says. “I’m not going to hurt you. There’s no reason to be so anxious.”
…
There’s no reason to be this anxious.
There’s no reason, is there? Because it’s just her imagination spinning out of control, right? It’s all just in her head. There’s nothing to be worried about at all. She’s being delusional and crazy and hormonal, as women are.
You can’t live your life expecting the worst out of every man you meet.
Eyes of a rabbit, watching, watching. “Are you good?”
Captive. Captor. What difference has it ever made?
A crying dog, a roaring rabbit. Which is the predator, and who is the prey?
Pomni stands abruptly. She wobbles for a moment, her head spinning, and then she streaks for the Tent to go back inside.
“Hey, wait!”
Fingers. Around her wrist.
Pomni’s eyes pop open wide. The moment Jax puts his hands on her, a part of her comes undone.
That part of her is a child who’s been hurt and betrayed and used again and again by adult men she had to trust.
And the other part is an adult woman who feels no stronger than the little girl.
One part of her wants to curl up and cry, and the other part of her wants to tear this guy’s face off with her bare hands.
Like when Caine put his arm around her a week ago, something itches its way up Pomni’s throat, but what comes out isn’t a shout or a demand or even words at all.
It’s a scream. An ear-splitting scream from the bottom of her very soul. A scream that she has not uttered in quite some time.
And, suddenly, she feels like that little girl again.
Pomni yanks violently away from Jax, causing her to stumble- she’s suddenly on her hands and knees, and she’s cowering in the grass—shaking and sobbing and utterly terrified.
Jax stands above her, seemingly bewildered. He saw her shriek at Caine, and now it’s his turn to be screeched at. “Hey now, there’s no need for that! Just calm down!”
But Pomni can’t calm down. There’s no calming down right now. She curls up and just wails.
The sound of her screams has woken up and attracted the others, and they’re all suddenly outside of the Tent to see what’s happening.
She hears Zooble’s voice first: “What the F[@#$] is GOING ON?!”
And then Gangle’s voice next: “I-is she okay?!”
And then Kinger’s voice after that: “Is everything alright?”
And then, finally, she hears the sound of footsteps approaching where she’s balled up into a fetal position in the grass. They stop just before they get too close, and she knows that it’s Ragatha before she even looks up or hears the doll’s voice.
“Pomni? Sweetie, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
Ragatha’s words are gentle, soothing, and they’re easier to swallow than Jax’s.
“Take a deep breath. Just like you did before. It’s going to be alright…”
Pomni dredges in a breath, and it quivers when it passes through her lips. She hiccups, then half-sobs, but she tries.
“…What did you do to her?” Ragatha is asking that to Jax, and there’s a tone to her question that Pomni has never heard from her before. Something about the way she says it makes Pomni scared for Jax. It’s a cold, icy but eerily calm anger, one that nobody would ever expect to come out of Ragatha’s mouth of all people.
Jax’s fur bristles as he gets defensive. “I didn’t do anything to her!”
Ragatha stands up, and she turns to face him. The others all take a cautionary step back when they, too, see the fury dancing in her eyes. “Did you touch her?”
Jax stammers for a moment before replying, “I only—”
Ragatha stops. A muscle ticks in her jaw, and her brow furrows.
“You only, what?” she says in a low voice. “Because if you even laid a finger on her, Jax, I swear…”
Jax holds up his hands and takes a few more steps back. Pomni can’t believe it, but he almost looks a little nervous.
“Okay, okay, I touched her wrist,” he admits. “But she’s fine! She’s fine…”
“Fine?” Ragatha repeats. “Fine?”
She’s quiet for a moment, seemingly debating something internally.
Then, she says, “I suggest you take a step back.”
Jax blinks. “What? What are you—”
Ragatha doesn’t wait any longer. She places a hand flat on Jax’s chest and pushes him away herself. “I said,” she seethes with all the ferocity of a mother bear defending her cubs. “Take a step back. Now.”
Jax is stunned by the sheer boldness of her action. He stumbles backwards, bumping into the Tent. “What the hell are you doing?”
Ragatha stands there, daring him to challenge her.
But this is Jax, and he’s not going to back down easily.
“Ragatha, this is crazy! She’s fine! She’s not a child any—”
Ragatha cuts him off. “Do. Not. Touch. Her.”
Kinger attempts to step in. “Ragatha, maybe we should—”
But Ragatha shoots him a dangerous look, and that’s enough to shut him up.
Jax shakes his head. He seems embarrassed about being admonished like this. “What kind of a woman is triggered by hands touching her wrist? What kind of a woman is afraid of being spoken to?”
“Most of them.”
For once since Pomni has gotten into this digital hell, Jax is rendered speechless. He stands there, staring at Ragatha like she’s just unzipped her skin to reveal a pink polka dot elephant underneath.
Ragatha leans into him, almost hissing her words, “Go inside. Now. We will talk in a moment.” She’s treating him like a child. Like a mother scolding her son.
“But—”
“NOW!”
Jax’s ears swivel back. One of his haunches twitches. And then, finally, he turns and goes back into the Tent, muttering to himself.
Ragatha takes a breath, then looks over at the others, who have been watching the entire time. “Go back inside.”
They don’t have to be told twice- the group scatters.
Ragatha returns to Pomni’s side, her voice sanded down from all the spikes that were used on Jax a mere second ago. “Sweetheart?” she murmurs. “How are you feeling?”
Pomni sniffles, then whimpers. She isn’t hyperventilating anymore, but the fear still lingers. “I-I don’t… I don’t know…”
“That’s okay,” Ragatha assures her. “It’s okay to not know. Do you want to go back inside?”
Pomni nods. Ragatha extends a hand but doesn’t touch, silently asking for permission. Pomni shakes her head, not ready for physical contact just yet, and Ragatha respectfully withdraws her arm.
It’s that easy. It’s that simple.
And it fucking hurts to know how effortless it is to just ask for consent.
Pomni staggers to her feet and wraps her arms around herself. Ragatha walks beside her, guiding her back to her room, and she never lays a single finger on her the entire time.
When they get to Pomni’s bedroom, Pomni sits on her bed and stares at the floor. She can’t look at Ragatha right now. Her throat hurts, her chest hurts, her mind is still in pieces.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ragatha asks.
Pomni doesn’t answer.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
Pomni doesn’t answer.
“It’s your choice.”
Pomni takes in a shuddering breath.
“H-he just… He was trying to talk to me about what happened last week. With Caine. I kept making it clear that I didn’t want to talk about it, but he wouldn’t listen. H-he didn’t hurt me or anything, all he did was grab my wrist, and maybe I’m just overreacting, maybe I deserve it, but—”
“Hey,” Ragatha cuts her off at that. “No. You do not deserve that.”
“B-but—”
Ragatha shakes her head and sits down beside Pomni on the bed. “No. Do you want to know what you do deserve?”
Pomni looks at her, then gives a small nod.
“You deserve to be listened to. To feel safe,” Ragatha tells her, her voice carrying unwavering conviction. “You deserve love and comfort and everything that was stolen from you.”
Pomni stares at her.
“I just… I just wanna… I want to…” A whimper tears at her throat, and she can feel herself falling apart again. “I-I don’t feel okay… H-hold me. P-please.”
Ragatha doesn’t hesitate- she wraps her arms around Pomni and pulls her in close. Pomni buries her face into Ragatha’s chest and begins to sob once again.
“Breathe,” Ragatha whispers. “Slow, deep breaths, okay?”
Pomni tries to slow her breathing, but it’s hard. Ragatha just holds her tight, letting her cry it out.
“It’s okay. It’s okay… I’m here… I’m right here, sweetheart…”
She listens to Ragatha’s voice, and she clings to her words in the same way she clings to her dress, and she tries, just for a moment, to believe that she’ll be okay.