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Jax hasn’t slept in what feels like days.
He isn't sure anymore — time stretches and folds in ways he can’t track. The lights never dim in the tent; the same tinkling calliope loop plays faintly in the background, winding through his skull until it’s part of his thoughts. Every time he closes his eyes, something laughs— high, digital, and just out of sight.
He sits in the corner of the common room, arms around his knees, staring at the seam where the floor meets the wall. The patterns shift sometimes. He doesn't trust them.
“Jax?”
Her voice startles him. He hadn’t heard Ragatha come in. She crouches a few feet away, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her hair is a little frizzier than usual — she looks tired too. Everyone does lately.
“You’ve been… in here a while,” she says softly. “You didn’t come to breakfast.”
Jax’s mouth feels like paper. “Wasn’t hungry.”
She smiles — the kind of smile that trembles before it settles. “You always say that.”
He looks away. The shadows under the table are moving again. He knows they're supposed to, but that doesn't make them stop.
“Rags…” His voice cracks. He hates that. “Do you see that?”
Her smile falters. “See what?”
“The… shadows. They’re moving. They—” He breaks off, pressing the heel of his hand against his eye until bright colors burst behind the lids. “Never mind.”
Ragatha hesitates, then crosses the distance between them. She sits down beside him, slow and careful, like she’s approaching a scared animal. Her hand brushed his shoulder.
“He can’t hurt you right now,” she whispers. “He’s not here.”
“You don’t know that,” Jax mutters. His voice was small — smaller than he meant. “He’s always here. Watching. Waiting for me to mess up again.”
Ragatha doesn't argue. She just wraps her arms around him. Her body is warm, her fabric soft against his. For a moment, the tent stops spinning. The music dulls to a distant hum.
“You’re okay,” she murmurs. “You’re okay. I promise.”
He wants to tell her not to promise things like that. Wants to laugh, maybe, the way he used to. But he can't. His throat burns, and his eyes sting. He doesn't realise he's shaking until she holds him tighter.
Ragatha hums— the same lullaby she uses to calm Gangle after one of her crying spells. The tune wavers, off-key and quiet.
Jax lets his head fall against her shoulder. Just for a minute. Just long enough to forget the shadows, the laughter, and the endless, sleepless night that never ends.
____
He dozes sometimes— a few seconds here and there — but Caine always finds a way to wake him. Sometimes with laughter, sometimes with a voice that isn’t his. Once, it's a whisper right in his ear, soft as silk and full of static: “You can’t hide from me, funny man.”
Now, the world is full of echoes.
The floor breathes. The walls bend and sigh. Ragatha’s face flickers when she speaks, like a puppet with a broken string. He knows she isn't real sometimes — or maybe it was the other way around.
“Jax, you need to eat something,” she says. Her hand hovers near his arm, unsure if he’ll pull away. “Please. Just a little.”
He stares at the plate she brought. The food doesn't look like food anymore — it shimmers, colors bleeding into each other like oil on water. When he blinks, it moves.
“Not hungry,” he mutters, voice raw.
Ragatha sighs. “You said that this morning.”
“Please,” he says. The word sounds wrong. “Can you just leave me alone?”
Her eyes softens. “You haven’t slept in three days.”
He laughs— or something like it. A sound scrapes out of his throat. “Feels longer.”
Ragatha crouches in front of him, lowering herself to his level. “Jax… he’s trying to break you. Don’t let him.”
He rubs at his eyes, fingers digging into the fur of his face. “Too late for that.”
“Hey.” Her voice sharpens, just enough to pull him back. “You’re still here. You’re still you. Okay?”
He wants to believe her. But the tent lights are strobing now, slow and lazy. The shadows behind her twitch and stretch into long fingers.
“Ragatha,” he whispers, “behind you.”
She turns. There's nothing there.
“That's not funny, Jax.”
When she looks back, he's trembling.
“Hey—hey, look at me.” She reaches out, cups his face in both hands. “It’s not real. Whatever he’s showing you — it’s not real.”
Her voice cracks. She doesn't sound sure anymore.
Jax tries to meet her eyes, but they flicker too — red, blue, then gone entirely. His stomach twists. He pushes her hands away, scrambling back until he hits the wall.
“Don’t touch me,” he says. “You’re not her. You’re—”
He freezes A voice from above — Caine’s — echoes faintly through the tent, too loud, too cheerful.
“Trouble sleeping, sport?”
Ragatha flinches. Jax doesn't answer. He just presses his hands over his eyes, whispering the same word over and over.
“Stop. Stop. Stop—”
The laughter fills the space like confetti — bright, sharp, endless.
Ragatha reaches for him again, even as her own hands shake. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’m here. I’m real.”
But Jax can't tell anymore.
____
The tent is quiet now. Too quiet.
No laughter. No music. Just the faint hum of the world, like the breath between acts. Jax is still sitting slumped against the wall, eyes half-open but not really seeing.
Ragatha kneels beside him, her dress pooled on the floor. She’s stopped trying to make him eat or talk hours ago. Now she just… stays.
His breathing hitches sometimes, like his body forgot how to inhale properly. His gaze drifts around the tent — ceiling, floor, her face — as if searching for something that might anchor him.
“Jax?” she says softly.
He blinks, slow. “Mm.”
“Can you look at me?”
It takes a moment, but he does. His eyes are glassy, red-rimmed. He looks scared in a way she’s never seen before. The usual sharp, mocking gleam was gone, replaced by a dull, restless flicker.
“You’re real,” he whispers, voice thin as paper. “Right?”
Ragatha smiles— or tries to. It wavers. “Of course I’m real.”
He frowns, almost childlike. “You keep changing.”
“I’m still me,” she murmurs, brushing a bit of lint from her sleeve. “You’re just tired.”
He laughs weakly. “Can’t sleep. He won’t let me.”
“I know,” she says. “But you can rest your eyes for a second.”
“I—”
“Just… close your eyes for a bit. I’ll stay right here.”
Jax’s hand twitches. She takes it, gently, and feels the tremor in his fingers.
“Promise?” he asks.
“I promise.”
He tries to nod, but his head tips forward, and for a second she thinks he’d actually fallen asleep — until he mutters something under his breath Ragatha doesn't quite catch.
She squeezes his hand tighter. “Don’t listen to him. Listen to me, okay? You’re safe right now.”
His breathing steadies a little. She hums that same broken tune she always does, soft and cracked from exhaustion.
Jax’s eyes flutter, then slowly close.
Ragatha doesn’t move. She watches him for a long time, afraid that if she let go, he’ll vanish — or wake up screaming again.
She brushes her thumb over his knuckles and whispers, “It’s okay, Jax. Just rest. I’ve got you.”
The tent lights dim a little — or maybe her vision blurs from tears. For once, the world is still.
____
Jax isn't the same anymore.
The sharpness that used to make him unbearable in that teasing, familiar way has turned to something meaner. He snaps at everyone — Zooble, Gangle, even Pomni. Sometimes he doesn't even seem to notice what he's saying until the words are already out, hanging in the air like glass.
And every time, Ragatha tells herself the same thing: He’s tired. He doesn’t mean it.
He looks it, too. His colors have dulled, his movements sluggish. The dark rings under his eyes are so deep she could almost swear they’ve been painted there.
She tries everything. Food. Music. Jokes.
He either ignores her or stares at her with that haunted, unfocused look — as if she's flickering in and out of existence.
At night, she stays in his room. She can't remember when it started, just that it's become routine. She made a bed for herself on the floor at first, but after one too many nights waking to his quiet murmuring — or worse, sudden gasps like he’d been shocked awake — she began sleeping beside him instead.
He doesn't like to be touched anymore, but she finds he’ll let her hold his hand.
So she does. Every night.
Sometimes she’ll wake up and realize he’s tightened his grip in his sleep — a small, desperate clutch, like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he lets go.
Other nights, his hand falls limp, and she’ll whisper his name until he twitches, until some tiny spark of awareness returns.
Nothing she did helps, not really. He’s slipping, piece by piece. The spark that used to light up in his eyes when he teased her — gone. The smirk, the careless laughter, all replaced by long silences and sudden outbursts.
Ragatha can handle the shouting. What hurts more is the quiet.
When he sits in bed staring at nothing, lips moving like he’s talking to someone she can't see.
When he laughs under his breath, low and humorless.
When he looks at her like he can't quite remember her name.
She tells herself she’ll keep trying. She has to.
If she stops, he’ll be alone.
Ragatha can always tell the moment it starts again.
Jax’s eyes go distant, darting around the room like she's tracking something she can't see. His hand tightens in hers until her fingers go numb. His breathing picks up — shallow, ragged.
“Jax,” she says softly, “hey, look at me.”
He doesn't. He's staring past her now, toward the far wall. “They’re back.”
Her stomach twists. “There’s no one there.”
He flinches. “Don’t— don’t say that. You don’t see them.”
“Because they’re not real,” she insists, scooting closer. “They’re not. None of it is. It’s him — he’s doing this to you.”
Jax’s jaw clenches. “Stop.”
“He wants you to break,” she goes on, desperate now. “That’s what this is. You just have to remember it’s not real—”
“I said stop!”
The words come out like a whip crack. She freezes. His voice has that low, shaking edge that always comes before something snaps.
He turns on her then, eyes wild, voice raw with exhaustion. “Easy for you to say, huh? You don’t have to see them! You don’t have to hear all that sick crap whispering in your ear! You don’t have to watch things crawl out of the walls every time you close your eyes!”
Ragatha’s lips part, but she can't find any words.
He looks away, shaking all over, laughter spilling out of him — broken, hollow. “You just get to sit there and pretend everything’s fine. That’s what you do, right? You just smile and patch things up like a bit of glue fixes everything!”
“Jax—”
“Just stop lying to me!”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to hurt.
His shoulders sag. The fight goes out of him all at once. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, shuddering.
“I can’t do this,” he whispers. “I can’t— I can’t keep doing this.”
Ragatha hesitates, then reaches for him. This time he doesn't pull away. When her arms go around him, he collapses against her, trembling so hard she can feel it in her chest.
“I can’t tell what’s real anymore,” he says, voice breaking. “Everything feels wrong. Everything looks wrong. I just want it to stop.”
She holds him tighter, rocking him like a child. “I know,” she whispers, tears slipping down her face. “I know. But I’m here, Jax. You’re not alone. You’re not.”
He doesn't answer. He just buries his face against her shoulder and lets go — a shuddering, ugly sob tearing through him like something has finally cracked open.
Ragatha doesn't tell him it will be okay. She doesn't tell him to be strong.
She just keeps holding him, whispering the only thing she still believes:
“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”
Until her voice breaks too.
____
Ragatha knows it won’t last.
She tells herself that every night when she watches him sleep — this is temporary, it’ll pass, he’ll be better tomorrow.
But she doesn’t expect this.
It starts with the outbursts. The sudden flares of anger that come out of nowhere, sharp enough to leave everyone raw. Then the laughter — the wrong kind, wild and hollow — echoing through the halls long after everyone else has gone quiet.
He says things that don’t sound like him anymore.
Things that cut deep.
When Zooble tried to tease him one morning, he barks a laugh and said, “Shut up. This is all your fault, anyway.”
Gangle cries.
Pomni doesn’t speak for hours afterward.
Ragatha finds him later in his room, pacing, muttering to himself. His hands tremble constantly now — he’d started scratching at his own arms, enough to leave a mark.
“Jax,” she says gently, stepping inside.
He freezes mid-step and turns toward her. His grin is wide, his eyes too bright. “Ragatha! Come to check on your little project again?”
She bites the inside of her cheek. “You’re not a project. You just need rest.”
“Rest?” He laughs, the sound grating. “That’s rich. You think sleep fixes this? You think anything fixes this?”
She swallows. “I think you’re hurting.”
He stares at her for a long time, and for a second — just a second — she thinks he’ll soften. But then his smile twists.
“Maybe I am. But at least I know I’m real.”
She flinches. He sees it, and for an instant his expression falters, guilt flashing across his face before the grin returns like a mask.
Ragatha doesn’t move. She just stands there, holding onto her calm like its the last thing she has. “I know you don’t mean that,” she says quietly.
He turns away, muttering something under his breath.
That night, she still stays with him. Still holds his hand. But its different now.
Sometimes, when he speaks in his sleep, it isn’t words anymore — just sounds, broken and frightened. Sometimes he’ll wake up screaming and shove her away before realizing where he was.
Ragatha tells herself he doesn’t mean it. She says it every time. He doesn’t mean it. He’s scared. He’s sick. He’s still in there somewhere.
But the words start to lose weight the more she says them.
Because when she looks into his eyes, sometimes she doesn’t see Jax anymore. Just the hollow reflection of someone who used to be him.
And still, she stays.
Because leaving him alone felt worse than dealing with this.
It creeps up on her slowly.
The exhaustion. The constant ache in her chest. The way her own smile begins to feel heavy, painted on, hollow.
She used to be the one who kept everyone steady — who smiled and comforted, who pretended not to notice when someone’s voice shook. Now, when Jax starts screaming, she doesn’t always move right away.
Sometimes she just stands there, frozen, listening.
She whispers his name softly at first. Then louder. Then she begs.
And when he finally quiets down, trembling and muttering apologies, she holds him like nothing has happened — even as her hands shake against his back.
Ragatha starts dreaming again, though she isn’t supposed to. The dreams are fragmented and wrong. Rooms she’s never seen before. A sunlight she can’t feel. Her own laughter echoing somewhere far away.
In one of them, she stands in front of a mirror and sees Jax’s reflection instead of hers. He smiles. She doesn’t.
When she tells him about it, he laughs and says, “Guess you’re finally catching up.”
It isn’t funny.
The next day, she doesn’t leave her room. She can’t. Every sound outside — every footstep, every whisper of static in the walls — makes her stomach twist.
Caine tries to check on her once, bouncing in with his usual cheer. She tells him she’s fine. She isn’t.
She can feel herself thinning — not physically, but somewhere deeper. Like parts of her are being erased, pixel by pixel, each time she tells Jax it will be okay.
He needs her, she knows that. But shes starting to realize she needs saving too, and no one is coming for her.
That night, when he starts crying again, she doesn’t go to him right away. She just sits there on her bed, hands pressed over her ears, whispering to herself, “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”
But the voices still bleed through. His sobs. His laughter. The sound of something breaking.
She can’t tell if it was him or her anymore.
____
Ragatha doesn’t mean to yell.
She doesn’t even realise her voice can sound like that — jagged, desperate, human.
It starts like every other fight. Jax pacing, muttering things she can’t quite follow, then snapping at her when she tries to step in. He looks worse than ever; his fur dull, his grin strained and twitchy. The dark circles under his eyes make him look almost hollow.
“Jax, please,” she whispers, reaching out. “You’re tired. You need to—”
“Oh, I need to?” he cuts in, laughing that sharp, humorless laugh. “You think you know what I need, dollface? You think any of this is your problem to fix?”
She flinches. “I’m just trying to help—”
“You’re always ‘trying,’ Ragatha,” he spits. “Trying to smile, trying to care. Guess what? It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic.”
Her throat tightens. She’s heard worse — she has — but something about the way he says it breaks something small and quiet inside her.
“I’m trying so hard to be nice to you,” she snaps, voice cracking halfway through. “I keep trying, and you make it so hard, Jax! You make it impossible!”
He tilts his head, grin widening in that warped way it did when he was on the edge. “Aww. Poor Ragatha. Gonna cry again?”
That does it.
Something inside her just—snaps.
She stumbles forward, tears spilling down her face, voice trembling but rising anyway. “You think this is funny? You think this is all some game? I’m doing everything I can to keep you from falling apart, and you just keep—keep pushing me away! I can’t do this anymore!”
Her voice breaks completely now, raw and shaking. “I hate you!” she screams. “I hate you, Jax!”
The echo of her voice fills the room, bouncing off the walls like static.
And then—silence.
Jax just stares at her. The grin fades, piece by piece, until there is nothing left. No sneer, no sarcasm. Just wide, glassy eyes and a twitch in his jaw, like he can’t quite process what he’s heard.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, he looks… lost.
Ragatha covers her face with her hands, sobbing quietly. She doesn’t look up to see the way his expression softened, guilt flickering faintly in his exhausted eyes.
For a moment, there’s only silence. Then Jax’s voice changes.
Low. Cruel. The kind of tone that crawls under her skin and made her stomach twist. “Oh, there it is,” he says softly. “There’s the real Ragatha. Took you long enough to crack.”
She freezes. Her cheeks are still wet, her chest still shaking, but everything inside her goes cold.
“Jax,” she whispers, her voice tiny now. “Please don’t—”
He laughs. Quiet at first, then louder, until it fills the whole room. “You hate me, huh?” he hisses. “You hate me, but you still try to fix me? That’s rich. You think you’re better than me, don’t you? The perfect little doll who can’t stop patching up everyone else’s mess. Well—guess what—”
She steps back as he moves toward her, hands trembling. Something wild glints in his eyes.
“—you can’t fix this!” he snarls. “You can’t fix me!”
Ragatha’s back hits the wall. Her breath comes fast, uneven. She’s seen him angry before, but never like this. Never with that empty kind of rage that looks more like pain than hate.
“Jax,” she says again, but it comes out as a sob. “Please stop.”
He tilts his head, that awful grin stretching again. “Aw, don’t cry, dollface. You’ll make me feel bad.”
And then something inside her snaps for the last time.
She turns and bolts for the door.
Behind her, Jax’s laughter follows — warped, echoing through the room.
“Oh, look at that! Ragatha’s running away! You scared, sweetheart? You scared I’ll hurt you?”
She slams the door shut and locks it, her hands shaking so badly she almost drops the key. His voice keeps calling through the door— taunting, teasing, laughing.
“Come on, Ragatha. I was joking. You can’t take a joke?”
Her breath hitches. She presses her forehead against the cold door, tears sliding down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
But she doesn’t unlock it.
She can’t.
As she stumbles down the hallway, his voice follows her — muffled through the walls, still laughing, still cruel — until it all starts to blur into the static hum of the world around her.
____
That tiny sound echoes louder than any scream could have.
Jax stands there, frozen, staring at the door she’d just run through. His grin — that awful, familiar mask — stays fixed on his face a second too long before it begins to falter.
The silence presses down on him. His chest rises and falls fast, like he’s just run a mile.
What did he just say?
What did he just do?
He takes a few unsteady steps back, the weight of it hitting him like a blow to the gut. He’s scared her. Ragatha. The one person still stupid enough to stay.
A dry laugh scrapes out of his throat, but there’s no humor in it. He slumps down onto the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees.
He hadn’t meant it. Not really. He just wanted her to stop looking at him like that — all pity and worry and soft smiles that felt like lies. He just wanted everything to stop.
But now it’s quiet. Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that makes his skin crawl.
He leans back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling that flickers faintly in the dim light. He blinks once, twice — and thinks he sees something move in the corner of the room.
Just a shadow, he tells himself. Just nothing.
Then he hears it.
A whisper. Thin and sharp.
At first, it almost sounds like Ragatha’s voice.
He squeezes his eyes shut. “Shut up.”
His breath hitches. “Shut up.”
He sits up, heart pounding. “Shut the hell up!” he shouts into the dark.
The whispering doesn’t stop. It grows louder — not shouting, but overlapping, dozens of soft, relentless voices murmuring from the corner, from the walls, from inside his own head.
He presses his palms over his eyes until his arms tremble, but it doesn’t help. The words melt together, nonsense and guilt and laughter.
And then he starts laughing too.
It comes out sharp and broken, bubbling up until it hurts. He laughs so hard he can barely breathe. He laughs because it's all he has left. Because it's either that or scream.
But then the laughter cracks.
And the sobs slip through.
He curls up on the bed, shaking, the sound of his own crying echoing in the flickering dark. The voices keep whispering, softer now — almost gentle.
He doesn’t know if they’re comforting him or tearing him apart.
____
Ragatha doesn’t mean to come back.
She tells herself she won’t— that it’s better this way, that he needs space, that she needs space. But the longer she sits alone in her room, the louder the silence becomes. Every faint sound down the hall makes her flinch. Every thought of him alone in the dark makes her stomach twist.
Eventually, she can’t stand it anymore.
When she unlocks the door, the room feels different. Still, heavy. The air thick with something she can't name.
Jax is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor. The moment the door creaks, his head snaps up. His eyes look red and hollow, and for the first time in what feels like forever, he doesn’t smile.
“Hey,” she says softly, forcing her voice to sound normal, even cheerful. “I—uh, I brought you something to eat.”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares.
She steps further in, placing the tray on the nightstand, pretending not to notice the way the lights in the room flicker in and out. Pretending none of it had happened.
“Jax?” she tries again, a little quieter.
Before she can move back, he stands up — too fast — and grabs her.
Ragatha gasps, stiffening, but he only pulls her against him, arms locked around her like he’s afraid she’ll vanish.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice raw and cracked. “I’m so sorry, Rags. I didn’t mean it. Any of it. I just—” His breath hitches. “I can’t stop hearing it. I can’t stop seeing it. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
She stands there, frozen. His grip trembles against her, desperate, shaking.
But she can’t move. Can’t bring herself to hug him back.
Her hands hover at her sides, useless. The words it’s okay sit on her tongue, but she can’t force them out.
Because it isn’t okay. None of this is.
Jax buries his face against her shoulder, his voice breaking again. “Please don’t leave me.”
Ragatha shuts her eyes, silent tears slipping down her cheeks.
“I’m right here,” she whispers. But her voice is empty, and both of them know it.