Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As much as Pomni didn't want to go on another insane adventure, she was at her limit sitting in her room in silence. She used to enjoy some alone time, but none of her normal hobbies exhisted in this digital world.

Ironically there was no internet connection and Caine wouldn't let her have any real music because it was "unlicenced". She liked him, but he operated by a very strict and unknowable set of rules that could make him deeply frustrating to talk to. He was also extremely literal and constantly failed to comprehend emotion. He clearly made some kind of effort to understand everyone who lived in the Circus, but his adventures always missed the mark by a longshot.

Pomni wished she could figure out how to get through to him. Maybe more normal adventures WOULD actually help them. Who knows. Or maybe she was just fooling herself with optimism.

Regardless, where was Caine?

She trudged up from her bed and opened he door to the hallway. She looked left, then right. She was met with dead silence.

Time always passed in an impossible way. Days dragged into nights which dragged into days. Everything almost always the same while the sun and moon gave a vague indication of the time.

Everything all the time, but it was usually split up by Caine's adventures. There was always one every day. Sometimes multiple ones in a single day. But for the last three days? Nothing.

No one dared ask the question in everyone's minds out of the fear that they would be launch into yet another horrifying reality- but Pomni was done waiting.

"Alright, everyone," Pomni announced down the hall. "I'm sorry but I have to know what's going on."

She heard a long, drawn out huff from Jax.
After a second, he opened his door. His expression covered in exhaustion and not trying to hide it.

"For once I agree," he grumbled.

He shook his head and plastered on his best award winning grin.

"Oh, Caine!" he raised a hand to his mouth and shouted as far as his voice could carry.
Pomni braced herself for the energetic host to pop into existance- but there was nothing.
Pomni and Jax stared at each other for a moment.

"Caine?!" Pomni joined in.

Still nothing.

Jax rested both his hands on his hips. His grin stretched into a smirk.

"That's unusual. Maybe he's finally given up," Jax chided.

Pomni shrugged.

"Maybe. That doesn't sound like him. We should go look for him," Pomni suggested.
Jax sighed and dropped himself into a slouch.

"Ugh, fine. It's not like there's anything better to do," he reluctantly agreed.

Pomi followed Jax's lead towards the main room. 

No one was there. Not even Bubble. It was dead quiet.

Pomni searched around the couch. Then around the main stage. Still nothing.

It was completely normal. The sky above and black and white tile below. The sound of her own footsteps unnerved her as she walked through the silence.

"Pomni!" Jax suddenly called.

She walked in the direction of his voice, confused.

She turned the corner to see his tall, lean figure staring at a bright red door labeled "Exit".

She heard him chuckle. Gradually, his soft laugh bursting into unstable laughter.

"They weren't crazy. Can you believe it?" He asked, not taking his eyes off the door.

He reached out with a shaking hand and slowly turned the knob.

"Be careful. I was fooled once before," Pomni warned him.

Jax didn't turn to look at her, as if fearful the door would disappear if unobserved.

"It's okay, Pom-pom. I'll get us all out of here or die trying. We just have to see if this is the real deal, before it disappears again."

They stepped through the frame into a vividly real world of grey. The two of them glanced at each other. They still looked the same, so they weren't out yet, but they were in a building that looked... Normal.

Pomni recognized it instantly. It was the abandoned building- well- abandoned in her own time, where she had picked up that damned headset. Here, the office looked nearly new, not at all like the abandoned building she had found. The room was full of blocky yellowed computers from the 90s, clunky keyboards, heavy wood and metal desks, and cubical walls. That common super thin, rough carpet coated the floors and awkwardly placed windows let in dim, eiry light.

The wall to their left read "C&A". It was similar to the last time Pomni had walked through that building. Actually, it was exactly like the first time she had entered. It wasn't just door after door like her last failed escape attempt, but instead a nearly perfect recreation.

For a while, the two of them just walked. They roamed the first floor of offices. It felt so real....

"The computer was on the 4th floor," Pomni realized.

Jax's eyes grew wide.

"That's right. How could I forget...." He replied softly.

They soon found the staircase and made their way up.

Floor after floor, they almost dared to have hope.

There was a kind of anticipation in their brisk steps that made them feel something they hadn't felt in a long time.

"It almost makes a weird kind of sense," Pomni said. "We have to go out the same way we went in."

Jax threw her a determined expression and picked up the pace.

Very soon, they stood before the door to the 4th floor.

Jax grabbed the handle tight in his hand, but hesitated.

They both knew that on the other side would be a computer bathing the room in light. An old game booted up and connected to a headset. It was the last human memory they had.

What would be there now? The game had to still exist if they were still moving around in it. But was the empty office building still there? Abandoned like when Pomni had found it? Would she magically reappear human again? Or was her dead body somewhere else, long gone? Would they really be able to go back as if nothing happened?

"What if this is it?" Jax asked. "After all this time?"

Pomni tried her best to smile.

"We'll figure this out together," she promised.
Jax shoved open the door.

They felt themselves falling. Through the dark, then through pure white light. Maybe this was it.

When Pomni opened her eyes again, she was shocked to see-

"Caine?" Pomni's voice sounded like a scream echoing through the empty void.

Where she hoped would be the real world was instead, yet again, the vast in-between. A rhelm of nothing but intimate possibility. Was this the first step back home? Or was this just the edge of their tiny universe?

Caine looked over his shoulder at the sound of his name. He looked durranged and angry. Sharp teeth surrounded his glowing eyes, one blue and the other red. He was surrounded by bland floating objects that contradicted his vivid figure. Dull grey and black office chairs, those weird ceiling tiles with holes in them, an entire wooden desk, and at least two dozen pens floated around him.

Caine floated in the central, standing before a central glowing square playing only black and white static.

"Hi, Pomni!" Caine greeted her cheerfully. His sharp teeth disappeared in an instant. "What are you doing here? You'll spoil the surprise!"

"Sur... prise?" Pomni asked nervously.

"Yes, my little superstar! Remember the day you arrived? I told you I was working on a door but I didn't know what to put behind it? Here we are! I'm working on it!

Exit door: coming soon to a circus near you! You know... Once I can get it to work."

Pomni looked over at Jax. His mouth was the smallest, flattest line in existence and his eyes were as wide as could be. His puples were tiny black dots that refused to focus as his figure floated ever so slowly through the white nothingness.

Pomni turned back to Caine.

"Okay. Um, well, we've been looking for you. Are you... okay?"

"Okay?" Caine echoed. He froze and then unfroze. His hands glitched red and blue.
"I'm right as rain, Pomni! I've been thinking lately, and it's like I've been telling Bubble: none of you like my adventures!"

"Oh, um. Caine, that's, um-"

"It's okay, Pomni!" Caine assured her with a warm laugh.

"It... It is?" Pomni asked slowly in confusion.
She stared at Caine. He continued to grin, but it didn't seem genuine anymore.

"Yes!" Caine promised her cheerfully. "None of you like me! But you WOULD like an exit door! So-s-so- So I will make you an exit door!"

Caine glitched again. It was more forceful this time. His face appeared to cut in half and then remerged like nothing. His body scattered with light; red, then blue, then red, then normal.

"At first I was stalling a little because, ah, well. We were all having so much fun together! But if you're not having fun anymore... and ... you don't want me or my adventures anymore .... Well...."

He froze for a second. His voice caught like a broken record.

"W-W-W-Well- I will make you all happy again!" Caine smiled. "I live to serve!"

Pomni squeaked nervously, unsure what to say. Caine looked... scarier than usual. His teeth were sharper, his eyes were bold and glowing. His movements more jagged, glitching and breaking up. She didn't know what to do.

"I can't wait to show you the door. You will all be so happy to see the exit, and then you will all like me again!"

Blue and red and purple streaks pulling at him.

Pomni looked behind her to the door they had stepped through. Bright red. Labeled with Exit.

"You really are trying...." Pomni realized. She then shook her head and pushed at the air with her hands to float upwards.

"But Caine, it's not like that. We do like you!" she promised.

Caine moved again, sharply, and his glowing eyes began to flash.

"You don't," he said factually. "I know you liked the suggestion box adventures more than mine. And then I saw the favorite character awards results. No one voted for me."

He sighed and looked away. He relaxed for a moment. It was the most human she had ever seen him.

"Zooble was right. I really am bad at the only thing I'm good at," he confessed.

Pomni reached out a hand for his shoulder. She didn't realize he was capable of feeling at all, let alone feeling like this. She wasn't sure how she had never thought about it before now. If that crocodile AI Gummygoo was capable of feeling so deeply, then certain Caine had to be thousands of times more complex.

She had never realized he could be hurting.
Before she could process what to say, and instinctually shielded her eyes as a flash of bright light nearly blind her.

She flinched back as Caine's mouth opened and a darkness poured out of him. His own eyes weren't in there anymore. Instead, dozens of neon eyes poured out in a shadow of nightmares.

Darkness began to fill the white void. Caine's body disappeared into it so quickly she didn't have time to react. As the light went out, the only thing left to see was the staticy box floating, drifting alone in darkness.

Before Pomni could process how to react, Jax grabbed her arm.

The red door was now green and the sign said "Enter".

Jax kicked it open and they both screamed as they fell through it.

Chapter Text

They tumbled out onto the main stage, but it didn't look the way they were used to. The sky had soft clouds in a blue sky split open with tears of distant stars on a black backdrop. The black and white tiles beneith their feet were beginning to crack apart and drift away from each other.

Pomni and Jax began to run for the hallway where the others remained, unknowing the madness taking place.

They leapt from tile to tile- until Pomni turned around and realized Jax wasn't following anymore.

Screams errupted from the basement. Pomni looked down through the drifting tiles to see the entire room underneath was filled with the same blackness coated in multicolored eyes.

Jax stared as one of them leapt up through the floor, splitting the distance between the two of them.

"Jax!" Pomni yelled.

Jax didn't respond. He stared up at the mass of nothingness towering over him. His body betrayed him as he breathed heavily and rapidly. His eyes overtook his face with fear.
"Hey... buddy...." Jax said. His eyes fell behind his head.

"Jax get over here!" Pomni screamed.

Jax shrugged.

"Hey, that's okay, Pomni. You go get the others. I'm just going to have a little talk with an old friend, okay?" Jax assured her gently.
Pomni couldn't do anything except watch as the wall of abstracted people began to grew until she couldn't see him anymore.
She began to run.

By the time she reached the hall, tears were streaming down her face. The world around her was falling apart in front of her and all she could do was watch.

"Everyone get up now!" she yelled.

Ragatha stepped out of her room in confusion.

"Pomni what's going o- AHHH!"

Zooble, Gangle, and Caine soon joined them.
"What is this?" Zooble asked.

"I don't know. I think Caine abstracted," Pomni explained.

"Caine did WHAT?!" Ragatha exclaimed.

"He wanted to make us happy so he was building an exit, but something went wrong with him. Maybe he was in the void too long, I don't know!" Pomni told them all.

"Oh this is... Very bad," Ragatha panicked.
"He was trying to build an exit?!" Zooble exclaimed.

Pomni nodded.

"Yeah, he built the door all the way into the void but then something must have gone wrong. He was holding this box of static. It was really strange-"

Suddenly the sky above began to crack and glitch. The paintings fell from the walls as the hall began to glitch in and out of being. The world fractured around them and the floor fell into the white void.

"Run!" Ragatha shouted.

The group ran down the long hallway. It's vivid patterns began to simply into flat sheets which cracked like broken glass. The pieces blinked in and out of their reality until entire rooms fell into nothingness.

Their own rooms began to vanish. The rooms of old, long-gone friends disappeared.
Pomni fearfully watched the picture on Jax's door delete from existance. She wondered if she would ever see his face again. She wished she had even one photo.

Kinger was the first to reach the last room at the end of the hall. It's door had a picture of Caine and Bubble smiling on it.

"In here!" he said.

Everyone followed as fast as they could. He shut the door behind them.

The office was dark, but at least the the corruption hadn't reached it yet. They flipped on the light to see Bubble sitting behind a desk and wearing a sun hat.

"Fucking Beach Party!" Bubble announced cheerfully.

Zooble, Pomni, and Kinger glanced at each other.

"Hey, Bubble if something was... wrong with Caine, would there be a way to fix him?"

"Yeah!" Bubble announced. "Just refresh."

Bubble dipped under the desk and then slammed a huge box in front of them. It looked like a massive keycap labeled "F5".
"Caine hates it. It deletes his unfinished adventures, which he has many of."

"That sort of makes sense, in a weird way," Kinger agreed thoughtfully. "Reloading a game deletes unsaved progress but might fix any errors. Abstraction might count as an error."

"Are you crazy?" Zooble exclaimed. "If we restart Caine, that might restart the entire circus! Would we even survive that?"

"It's not a full reset, right? It could work," Pomni said, half trying to convince herself. "It might be the only option we have."

"It will only work if Caine presses it, so good luck convincing him!" Bubble grinned, cheerful as always.

Pomni frowned.

"Oh boy," Pomni breathed nervously.

With two hands, she carefully pulled the box from the desk.

"What do we think? Should we vote on it?" She asked.

The group exchanged glances.

"I guess we don't have much of a choice," Zooble spoke up with a shrug.

"How are we going to get through to Caine? He has to push it," Gangle inquired.

Kinger and Ragatha glanced at each other, then Ragatha raised her hand.

"Well... We know what he wants, right?"

The rest of the group looked uncertain.

"He wants us to like him, right? We just need to make him feel included."

"How are we going to do that when he's all... You know?" Pomni asked nervously. 

Suddenly, the door behind them started to peel away. Piece by piece the door and the wall became nothing.

Bubble pushed open a side door.
"Laterzzz!!!"

The group suddenly burst back into the main room.

When they looked behind them, there was no door and no office. It must have been some kind of short cut.

"Oh my fuck," Zooble exclaimed.

The room was full of abstracted players. They were blobs of nighttime, big and small, with millions of eyes all neon and wild.
The floor was split apart with chunks of tile floating and drifting past each other.

Pomni was too overwhelmed to move for a moment.

Kinger headed for his pillow fort immediately. She saw him from the corner of her eye. She wondered if he would find Queenie there.

"Jax!" Ragatha shouted fearfully.

He was barely visible beneith a massive abstracted blob circled around him. Another was asleep next to him. Their mere touch was causing him to glitch out, no doubt causing him an insane amount of pain.

Somehow, despite it all, he looked calm.

"Hey, Rags. We're all going to be really calm so that we don't upset the others, okay?" he said quietly and through his teeth.

Ragatha covered her mouth and tried not to cry as Jax closed his eyes with a smile. His body was deteriorating, but he was at peace.
Zooble and Gangle were talking between themselves.

Pomni finally found it within her to register the sight above them all.

What used to be Caine was floating up there. Huge colorful eyes guarded a glowing static box.

Pomni nervously stepped forward.

She began to sing softly.

"T-There's Gangle... and Zooble... and Kinger, too....
Ragatha, Jax, and there's Kaufmo, woo-hoo"

She hesitated, but pressed on, trying to remember what Ragatha said. They needed to show Caine that he was included.

"Um
Day after day after day, we fly
Past the moon and the sun and we don't know why"

The two largest eyes of all slowly turned to look down at her. They locked into her small figure.

The world was little more than floating debree around them.

"There's uh- Queenie, and Ribbit, and more friends too,
There's Pomni and Bubble and Caine, woo-hoo"

Caine stopped. Whatever he had become began to drift downwards to her.

Pomni continued,
"Day after day after day, we play
With our friends and our games we can grow each day"

She tried really hard to make up a new rhyme.

"And maybe one day we find the door
But it's importantly to have friends more"

The part of the mass that was only made up of red and blue eyes shrunk down in front of Pomni. The darkness morphed into a smaller, Caine-sized figure.

Pomni stepped up closer and held out the box in her arms.

"We, uh, got you something," she said nervously.

"We know we aren't always the easiest to work with. Sometimes, we were awful to you the way we were awful to each other. But we also know you really are trying to help us. We should have done more to communicate what we want.

We all really appreciate you trying to make us an exit door. We're sorry, Caine."

She held the box up.

Part of the black blob shrunk down as if it was melting. The other eyes closed and disappeared until there were only two left.
They blinked, and two limbs stretched out to take the box. The second they touched the box, a robotic voice spoke.

"Caine... Recognized. Permission granted."
The entire world disappeared in an instant.

Chapter Text

Pomni woke up with an insane headache. The world was ringing in her ears and the colorful world slowly came into focus as she sat up from the floor.

Everything looked normal again. The same main stage, the same tile, the same ballpit and slides and towering blocks.

Did they fix it? Did they survive?

She turned around to find Caine was standing in front of her, staring at the box in his hands.

"Update successful," the box politely told him.

Then it blipped out of existance.

Caine stood there completely still. He looked like his usual self again. His eyes were more or less normal again, one blue and one green with only a hint of red in his green one. He was humanoid, in his red and black suit too as if he had never abstracted.

"Are you okay?" Pomni asked.

After a second, Caine smiled.

"Thanks, Pomni! There is a new update available. Would you like to see it's contents?" He asked cheerfully.

"Um. Sure, Caine," she agreed.

Suddenly, Caine openes his mouth and his own voice projected out like a speaker.

"Update Installed! 1.4.7

Customization- Successful.
Music- Successful.
Patch: Exit- Successful.
Patch: File Corruption- Successful.
Profanity Filter Update- Successful.
Language Support- Successful."

"Caine did you just say exit?" Pomni exclaimed.

Caine closed his teeth and then resumed back to normal.

"Yes! It seems whatever that was did a load of good! The digital circus now has tons of new material! This is so exciting! I seem to have forgotten what I was so upset about!"
Pomni gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it. It's all okay now," she assured him.

"Awesome!" he grinned. "I now have 12 new sound bites! Allow me to select one to celebrate this occasion!"
He opened his mouth and an 8-bit rendition of Happy Birthday played.
"Never change Caine," Pomni smiled.

"Hi, um, what's going on?" a new voice gently asked.
Pomni turned around to see a new group of characters she had never met. There were certainly some new faces but also quite a few she recognized from their photos on the doors in the hall.

A cutely designed frog with a bowtie stood in front of her.

Pomni grinned in disbelief.

"Nothing at all. Just some updates apparently," she explained.

"Oh. That's so strange," the frog replied thoughtfully.

"Don't worry about it," Pomni promised warmly. "I think there is something more important for you to focus on."

She tilted her head and darted her eyes behind the green figure. Ribbit followed her glance turned around slowly to lock eyes with a familiar purple bunny staring, wide-eyed in shock.

Jax immediately broke into a run and leapt joyfully at the frog, tackling them to the floor in a hug.

"RIBBIT!!!" Jax cheered with tears streaming down his face.

Pomni tried to surpress a laugh as she watched the two collapse to the ground. Jax's momentum kept them tumbling across the tile.

"I'm so sorry- I missed you so much- I never meant to push you away-" Jax sobbed.
"I know Jax. It wasn't you. It was me too," Ribbit promised.

They fell into a mess of crying in each other's arms.

"I love you so bad," Jax confessed into Ribbit's chest. Years of waiting, thinking he would never get to say it, all collapsed onto him all at once.

Ribbit smiled and hugged him close.

"I love you too," Ribbit assured him.

Jax sobbed, only muffled by Ribbit's body as they hugged him protectively.

Nearby, Kinger had quickly found his wife Queenie.

Pomni couldn't hear them, but she watched Kinger ramble and beg for forgiveness before Queenie pulled him close. It made her tear up as they started crying too. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for them, apart for so long after being together for so long.

It felt like everyone was crying around her. Friends new and old shared apologies and hugs. Some introduced themselves for the first time, some broke down, and some didn't need to say a thing.


Before she knew it, she realized Caine had disappeared again. As much as she wanted to stay and get to know so many new faces, she felt like she needed to go after him.

How did he really feel about all of this? How did he really feel about abstracting? If he could do that then... he wasn't really the simply AI bot they thought he was.

Somehow, of all places, she found Caine on the roof of the tent. He was floating in place in front of a familiar red exit door.

"Caine?" Pomni said as she climbed off the ladder and stepped unstablly towards him. She had never been on top of the tent before, but it moved like a trampoline beneith her feet.

Caine floated over to her and offer out a hand.

She took it and he guided her to hold onto his arm and step onto his foot.

It felt strange how stable he was. She had never spent enough time realizing that he was as real as anyone else there.

He floated up to the peak of the tent where the door stood, looming over the entire circus. Over the tent, over the lake and the carnival. Over everything.

"It should work now," Caine communicated flatly.

Pomni could barely wrap her mind around it. It didn't feel real. It didn't feel possible.

"You think so?"

"Almost certainly! There was a backlog of updates and patches I was prompted to accept during the refresh period.

Someone out there, beyond my sights, has been trying to help. Or, at least make your our lives more comfortable. There must have been some kind of disconnect until now," he said thoughtfully. "I wasn't able to accept updates while the Circus was running, and I can't turn the circus off without risking everyone inside.

That brief millisecond in between allowed me to make some changes."

Pomni didn't know what to say. Someone out there really cared. Someone out there, in the real world, actually found them and was trying to help. Maybe this big group of trapped souls really did matter after all.

"If you don't mind, we can tell everyone tomorrow," Caine suggested.

Pomni nodded.

"Yeah. We've already waited this long. We should give everyone some time to prepare and say their goodbyes."

Caine sighed sadly.

"Yes. Goodbyes. I'm... not looking forward to that part."

Pomni considered this thoughtfully.

"It doesn't have to be goodbye. Maybe we can find a way for you to exist beyond the circus? Maybe we can still talk," Pomni suggested.

Caine smiled sadly.

"I appreciate that, but it's quite alright. The circus is my home. It's what I was made for. I want to learn to be good at my purpose. If anyone else ever wants to visit, I want to make them smile."

Pomni nodded. She felt tears in her eyes.
It wasn't goodbye yet, but it might as well be.
After all this time and everything that had happened, she felt attached to Caine. He had tried to hard to be a friend and a leader, but they had never fully understood him.

"Don't cry, my dear. You're a very kind soul. Everything will work out for you."

He gently brushed aside a tear from her eye.
Pomni wrapped her arms around him and gave him a hug. She didn't get to see the way Caine panicked for a moment before gently returning the hug.

After a moment, Caine wordlessly floated them down to rejoin the others.

His dress shoes gently tapped against the floor as he returned Pomni to solid ground. Pomni let go of him and tried to compose herself. The emotion was overwhelming.

They got everyone back, and they very well might make it out of here, but it felt strange to consider that they might actually leave. It felt like nostalgically missing school even though the only thing you wanted to do while you were there was leave.

And after everything, Caine would be left behind....

"Hey Superstars," Caine announced to the now large group of players. "I'm so sorry if I scared anyone," Caine apologized. "Oh gosh," he exclaimed, looking around at their faces, "please stop crying, oh no. Pomni, why is everyone crying?"

"They're happy," Pomni explained.

"They... are?" Caine scratched whatever the top of his head technically is.

"You fixed everyone. They're happy to see each other," Pomni exclaimed.

Caine stared blankly.

"Oh... Wow. I finally made them happy," he said in disbelief. "That... makes me so happy too. That's all I ever wanted."

Pomni patted Caine's arm.

"You've got this," she reassured him.

Caine smiled.

"Quite right. Welcome friends, new and old, to The Amazing Digital Circus! Today's adventure? Let's spend some time catching up! Have a picnic, make some art, chat away the day, it's all okay! And it's so nice to see so many returning faces!"

Pomni looked around. One last adventure. Maybe the adventure really was the friends they made along the way. How ridiculous.

What a strange and beautiful world.