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He doesn’t know why he came here. He hasn’t really come out here willingly, since…well, he doesn’t like to think about it.
But that is part of why he came out here.
Time feels different here, he realizes, not for the first time. In the real world, time had been smooth, something soft that came and went gradually, like the rising sun. Here, though, it was jarring, snappy. Even after all these years, he hadn’t really gotten used to it. No matter how many times Caine snapped him somewhere else, or he watched the sun shoot down past the horizon like a bullet, it never did make it any easier to process. But at least it wasn’t quite as jarring as it had been in the beginning.
Jax hears something in the water, and when he glances up, he sees a ripple in the water, surrounding a sleeping toad NPC illuminated in the silvery rays of moonlight. It rests on a lily pad, or maybe a leaf. He’s not close enough to tell, and he, quite frankly, doesn’t care enough to be. His feet are in the water, and that’s far enough for him.
He remembers sitting here, in this same spot, with Ribbit, all that time ago. He barely knows how long he’s been here now, how long it’s been since then. He still counts the digital days, though, since she left. Since she abstracted.
His fist clenches where it lays in the sand, grasping a handful of grains as it does. He lifts his hand, fully intending on scattering the sand over the water to try to feel marginally better. The grains slip between his fingers before he gets the chance, before he even fully lifts his hand. And he stares, like his own empty hand has offended him.
How ironic, he thinks, considering the day I’ve just had.
He hits rewind in his mind, just like he has been all night. But nothing in his memory changes. It’s all just the same. He hadn’t known Abel was an NPC. Not really. It was just a hunch, a desperate bid for a reason not to trust him. Anything so they didn’t have to leave the circus, so he didn’t have to pretend he wanted to. He never could have known. Abel had seemed human enough.
But, somehow, based purely on his cartoon-logic, he had guessed right. Abel was a fake, a pawn used by Caine to make them believe. To give them hope, and steal it right back away again. To remind them of just how utterly trapped they are.
A part of him, some small part he desperately wants to ignore, tells him that surely Caine didn’t mean it that way. But he doesn’t care. He can’t find it in him. Because it still had the same effect.
Sure, he may not want to leave, but at least having the option would have been nice. And it would have been good to the others, too. Pomni would have loved to get back home, he was sure. She had seemed so excited, too.
He refused to acknowledge that it was his own fault that her face fell the way it did.
Pomni, however, would give him no such grace. That was fine. He knew he didn’t deserve it anyways. Based on the hurt in her voice when he pressed that button, he had a feeling she would be ripping into him the next time she got the chance.
When a pair of red and blue jester’s shoes entered his vision, however. It seemed he was proven wrong. Instead of scolding him, she simply dropped down to sit beside him, close enough to touch, but not close enough to be uncomfortable.
He wants to stare, to ask her why she’s here. He knows better than to do so.
So she speaks first. “We missed you at dinner.”
“No, you didn’t.” His voice comes colder than he means it to, but he doesn’t correct it. He doesn’t have the energy. He doesn’t have the faith that she’ll care.
There’s silence, then a quiet sigh. “Maybe some of the others didn’t. But Kinger did. I did.”
The silence persists longer this time. Long enough for Jax to find a perfectly smooth stone under his palm and toss it into the water, just to watch it ripple. He would have skipped it, maybe, if he had known how. But he didn’t.
The next words that come are hurt, but not angry. Confused. But it almost sounds genuine, almost. Maybe if he believed it hard enough. “Why?”
He doesn’t answer. What is there to say? Even if he told her, he doubted it would do anything to help her understand. Besides, it’s his burden to carry, not hers.
But she waits, and the silence is heavy. And Jax never did sit well with silence. “Why else?”
And somehow, she understands. She doesn’t press for answers, she doesn’t tell him off. She just nods, and looks out over the rippling lake, watching the moon dance off each movement. And when he throws another rock, she watches those, too.
It reminds him of Ribbit. He doesn’t throw the rock this time, holding it in his palm until it would have warmed in the real world, waiting for heat that will never come. Waiting for warmth.
Before, had never cared much about how the temperature wasn’t affected by them here. It didn’t bother him that high-fives felt less real, and cushions didn’t warm under him. But now, he finds himself desperately wishing he could have felt her warmth before she abstracted.
His hand tightens on the stone, and he stares. So much has changed since then. Kaufmo was gone, too. He was the only one left of their little trio. The only one who hadn’t abstracted. And yet he was so close just earlier today.
There’s a hand on his back pulling him sideways before he can even question why. And when he falls, it’s against Pomni. The angle suggests she was aiming for his head to hit her shoulder, but he’s too tall and she’s too close for it, and his face ends up landing a bit awkwardly on her head.
At first, he considers making a joke and pulling away, just like he had after the gun adventure, telling her off and pushing her away. But when he hears her nervous laugh, he can’t find it in himself to do that to her again. “Maybe I should have thought that through a little more…,” she giggles again, one hand coming up to rub the back of her neck, before she’s shifting, pulling him in closer, not resting his head on her own shoulder like she had planned, but instead laying her own head against his chest. He can’t imagine why, though, considering he knows he won’t find a heartbeat.
“You having a good time down there, Pom-Pom?” he asks, a smirk edging at his face just enough to bleed into his voice. But, to his surprise and only mild irritation, she gives him a genuine answer.
“Yes.”
So, he doesn’t move. He lets her lay against his chest, looking quite comfortable as she stares at the water before them. He can’t read her face with this angle, but he can see her shoulders slowly, ever so slowly, unwinding, as if they had been tensed before and he simply hadn’t noticed. To be fair, he didn’t really look at her before then, though.
When the silence is broken again, it’s by Pomni again. “You stopped talking. And I’m not really great at the whole comforting people thing, so…I thought this might help.”
And to his surprise, when she mentions it, he realizes it has helped. Where he had once been tense himself, he now felt…oddly comforted with her head resting where his heart should be. Like she was meant to settle there. Meant to rest against him after such a long day.
So he just smiles, and just wraps his arm loosely around her shoulders. “I dunno, it looks to me like you were the one who wanted to be comforted,” he jokes, but his voice is just a touch too fond, a touch too exhausted, to be anything but grateful.
And her response is much the same. “Maybe that, too. But that doesn’t mean I’m not doing it for you, too.”
And they stay there, just like that. For once, Jax feels truly real in the circus. When his lungs expand, he feels the breath he takes and the way Pomni’s head is lifted when his chest moves. When he shifts, he feels the grains of sand under him, and the way Pomni’s weight is a rather gentle pin, keeping him in place. When Pomni breathes, he can feel his arm moving ever so slightly with the rising of her shoulders. And, for the first time in his memory, he feels peaceful.
There will be a lot to talk about tomorrow. The adventure, what Caine revealed, what he did. He knows he’ll be confronted in the morning. He knows he’ll have to face their anger tomorrow, face the consequences of what he’s done.
But right now, it’s just the empty beach, the rippling water, him, and Pomni, nestled against his side, and peace. Warm, soft, filling peace. And for now, that’s all he wants. An okay, but not perfect, ending to an awful day.
A lily pad floats by, sans toad, this time. But in its place is a beautiful, still-blooming flower, petals illuminated by the moon’s gentle rays. And the water ripples.