Chapter Text
“What would you do…” Pomni turned away from Jax, hiding her expression. “…if I abstracted tomorrow?” She held her gun tightly to her chest, her finger hovering just over the trigger as she waited for his response.
“I’d move on.” Jax smiled, tilting his head to the side as he started at the jester. ”And probably forget about you.” Jax’s expression dropped, his face neutral.
That was all it took. One sentence from Jax for Pomni to loose it all. She started laughing, a dry, broken laugh. Her teeth forming sharp points as a wave of insanity ran through her.
“You’d really forget about me-? Just like that?” Her finger hovered dangerously close to the trigger, now, her voice wavering.
“Well, what else can ya do? It’s not like I care about any of you, anyways. You’re all just playthings to me!” Jax laughed, running a hand through his nonexistent hair and pushing his ears back. “What, you really thought I’d get hung up over some dumb little jester?” He smiled, his eyes dilated and unfocused. Jax couldn’t see the jester in front of him properly anymore, and unfortunately, he wasn’t able to process her next movement fast enough.
“Then I guess I’ll leave you with something you’ll be forced to remember.” Pomni smiled, pointing the gun to her head, right between her eyes, and pulling the trigger without a second thought.
A blast of confetti followed the bang, popping out of Pomni’s head in place of blood. Her body fell limp, the gun dropping from her hand as her body plummeted. The clatter of metal against the tile floor was deafening. The single heart Pomni had left above her head flickered briefly before disappearing, along with her body, leaving Jax completely alone.
It took Jax another minute to be able to move again, and when he did, he only fell to his knees in despair. Or, at least he thought it was. His eyes were still wide and disassociated, unsure if what he just saw had really happened. The only evidence that Pomni had just been lying lifeless in front of him by her own hand was the splatter of confetti, and a gun laying scattered across the floor. Her avatar had disappeared, just like the others when they ran out of lives. So why was he so upset by this one? Was it because… she’d done it to herself? No, Kinger had shot himself on accident, and he felt no remorse for that. So it had to be something else. Was it because of their conversation?
Jax laughed, smiling and grabbing his ears, hard. He pulled them, trying to feel something, anything, other than what he was feeling right now. He couldn’t figure out why he was reacting this way, as his chest rose and fell rapidly. The start of a panic attack, he realized. But he couldn’t stop it, and the feelings washed over his body in a wave of terror and regret.
“Theyre… they’re only playthings!” He yelled to himself. “None of this is real, and we’re all just some dumb cartoon characters!” Jax tried desperately to remind himself of the ideals he hung onto so closely, but the tone of Pomni’s voice… the way they’d been getting so close and forming a genuine connection before their fight... What he’d said right before she pulled the trigger. It stuck with him, and it made him suffer.