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Pomni was crying herself to sleep again. At first, she thought she’d get used to this, but so far, all that had met her was just endless days of grueling “adventuring” at the behest of Caine, with no exit in sight. Indeed, try as she might to fight against this simple, ineluctable fact, there was no way around it: there was no escape. Whoever had created this place, and whatever purpose it, in actuality, served, it had been created without an exit. The rest of her life, whatever it would turn out to be, would happen entirely within this circus, and within this form.
It’s not that it was entirely intolerable. Most of the people here were, if not kind, then at least decent enough to try and help her adjust. Even Caine had noticed her resisting discomfort, and had given her lighter tasks to accomplish as she “settled into the role.” But that’s just the thing - she didn’t want to settle into a role. She’d had a life before putting on that goddamned headset, and that counted for something, right? It was endlessly horrible to know there had been an entire life, and entire her, before coming to this place, and that it was now as irretrievable as a good night’s sleep.
That was the reason she was crying tonight. She was crying for her lost self, for the terminally limited scope of the rest of her existence, for the way in which a life which must have had so wide a road ahead of it had suddenly been narrowed down into a train track of continual misery. It was a deep, existential sadness, the kind that was so all-consuming she hadn’t even heard the door’s lock turning, the light sound of footsteps crossing the room.
“Woah, you’re in a bad way tonight,” Jax said, sitting down next to Pomni’s crying form.
Pomni was too sad to be shocked. Besides, she knew this would happen eventually - he had everyone’s keys, after all. She sniffled up enough to be able to speak. “What do you want, Jax? Isn’t there someone better to pick on?”
“Hmmmmm, nope!” Jax said with a shrug. “Besides, I’m not here to make a joke of things for once, I promise. And I’m not just saying that because your blubbering is keeping me up.”
Pomni, not uplifted by such swelling words, flopped down deeper into her admittedly comfortable bed. “Alright, then what do you want? Do you want me to replace Zooble’s arms with her legs while she sleeps or something?”
“That would be pretty funny,” Jax said, “but actually, what I want to hear is what’s got you so torn up.”
“Oh come on, Jax. You’re a jerk and a #*^@#$! but you’re not stupid. We’re trapped here! Forever! Doesn’t that bother you?” Pomni kept her head turned away, not wanting to turn and see that smug grin.
“It bothers all of us, sweet cheeks. But that doesn’t mean we can just sulk around forever.” There was something different in his voice as he spoke, almost something bitter, as if he was speaking from experience. Which he was.
“Yeah? Well watch me!” Pomni said, dramatically picking up several pillows and covering her head with them, shutting out the world beyond her own mind. Jax stuck his face in after her a few moments after, not wanting to let her alone.
“Hey, woah, hey, don’t go running off like that,” Jax said, his head snuggling in next to Pomni’s. “I get it, this #$^#$! sucks &%#%#!, and no one is gonna deny that. But it’s not all bad here, and I mean that for once.”
“I’m sure you do, ‘cause you get to torment everyone like it’s all a big game,” Pomni said, sighing. “Not all of us can just, you know, take out our problems by being jerks to others!”
“You don’t gotta be a jerk to others, all I’m sayin’ is that you can’t keep living like, you know, this. Doing the bare minimum during the adventures and then running back here to sulk. You’ll abstract, you know. And what will we do then?”
Pomni finally turned at that. There’d been a sincerity to that final sentence that’d caught her off guard, and she got the feeling Jax was showing her something he didn’t often show others. “What did you just say?”
“Geez, look, you’ve got me all sentimental now,” Jax said, teeth forming into a frown. “Look, see, we all got our place in the Circus. Each of us holds the others up, in one way or another. I even help people stay grounded by giving them someone to hate. So if you up and go, well, your friends are gonna miss you. And I don’t gotta tell you what’ll happen then. All I’m sayin’ is, you got things to like here, right? Give a try to enjoy it before giving up and leaving them all alone.”
Then, most shocking of all, Jax reached out and ruffled her hair. Or, rather, her hat, and the hair that was presumably under it. He stood up, swiftly, a blush crossing his cheeks he was hoping it was too dark for Pomni to have seen, and made way for the door. Before he reached it, however, Pomni’s words reached him.
“Wait, hold on, Jax, why tell me all this?” She was sitting up now, her tears drying on her cheeks.
“Doesn’t matter. Just, you know, don’t mention this to anyone, right?” Jax said, stepping out and slamming the door behind him before she could say more.
Pomni rolled over on her bed. The sadness hadn’t entirely gone away, a single conversation wasn’t going to fix all of her problems. But Jax was right. For everything that’d gone wrong these past few weeks, she still had friends here. Friends, a good place to stay, food and drink, a place to sleep - really, she had it a lot better than others in the previous world did. Snuggling back into her covers, hoping to get to sleep, she supposed that Jax was right. She should try and make a life here, because even if it wasn’t the path she’d been intending, it was still a life.
…Though, now she’d have to figure out how she really felt about Jax.