Work Text:
They are not supposed to get sick. So why did he feel like his head was going to explode?
─ “Damn...”
He rubs his eyes. Cough. Sniffs.
─ “You look like a zombie,” he mumbles to himself, his words muffled by his hand on his jaw.
─ “Jax, Caine is waiting for us.”
He presses his eyelids, breaking all contact with his reflection in the mirror. The sound of that stupid Ragatha's voice drums in his skull, and it’s fucking not normal.
─ “Yeah, I'm coming...”
His voice is lazy, slightly hoarse and nasal. He drags his feet to the door of his room and gently opens it.
─ “He can wait two minutes.”
Ragatha is standing there, in front of her door. Which is surprising, because they avoid each other like the plague. And also, because it is always Pomni who comes to pull him out of his room, and he doesn't know why, not seeing her on the threshold of it irritates him.
─ “Jax,” she calls again, her eyes half-closed. “What did you do? You look...”
He carefully avoids her gaze, which forces her to interrupt herself. Her face is veiled with an emotion that he cannot define when he looks at her again.
─ “I'm going to stay in my room today.”
─ “Are you sick? Do you want me to call Caine?”
He runs his hand over her face with annoyance.
─ “No, and no.”
It punctuates with a sniff that is too indiscreet to be credible. The redhead raises her eyebrows as she crosses her arms.
─ “Jax.”
─ “What.”
─ “You breathe as if you had just run a marathon.”
─ “It's my natural charm.”
─ “You make the same noise as a boiler.”
─ “It's sexy, a boiler. Now, leave me.”
He closes the door. Ragatha reopens it.
─ “Hey! We swore we'd never enter other people's rooms without an invitation!”
─ “And you're the first one to break all the rules here! What the hell is wrong with you?”
He tries to smile. Bad idea. A violent pulsation perforated his skull and made his zygomatics tense.
─ “What’s it to you, Doll Face ? I just slept badly. It happens to everyone, doesn't it?”
─ “Jax, you must-...”
─ “Don't tell me what to do and get the fuck out of my room!
He pushes her away and slams the door, hoping that the noise will dissuade her from trying to enter again. Seriously, who does she think she is?
He closes his eyes, taking deep breaths. His legs are shaking, and he has just enough time to fall on his mattress before they give way. His heart pulsates to his temples. He feels like he's carrying a bowling ball on his shoulders.
Knock knock.
He sighs, frowning. He doesn't even have the strength to get up.
─ “Go away, Ragatha.”
─ “It's me, Pomni.”
He opens his eyes in stupefaction, then realizes that his reaction is not normal. He opens his mouth to answer but his voice chokes into an uncontrollable coughing fit. His chest is on fire. And his body is too sore to allow himself the slightest movement to straighten up.
─ “Can I come in...?”
These are good manners. It's not that hard to ask for permission, damn.
─ “Caine is going to get impatient, it seems,” he gets annoyed without answering her question.
─ “Ragatha told me you looked sick, and Caine vaguely explained that there was no reason why we couldn't catch a virus here. A priori, nothing had ever been planned to prevent this... And if this world can simulate pain and anxiety, it can also simulate a cold, I suppose?”
He rolls his eyes. That does me a lot of good.
─ “I feel so lucky to have the privilege of being the first, then,” he grumbles. “Come in.”
The door creaks slowly. Pomni sticks her head in, seems to hesitate for a split second, then enters completely. She closes behind her, more delicately than necessary.
─ “You look... unwell,” she admits as she sits on the bed.
Jax chuckles weakly and finds the energy to sit up against the wall, so that he is half seated.
─ “It's probably nothing, Pom. We must stop making a big deal out of it.”
She purses her lips, as if she were thinking at full speed. This brain function seems so far away to him... He had the impression that his skull was flooded with a viscous marinade, limiting the neural connections between them.
Cautiously, she brings her hand to his forehead.
─ “Jax...”
He jumps, leaving his thoughts, and violently pushes her hand away.
─ “Don't do that!”
─ “You're hot.”
─ “I'm always hot.”
Pomni frowned, visibly unimpressed by his humorous tone full of sarcasm and bitterness.
─ “It's not funny. Your forehead is strangely hot.”
─ “Wow. Thank you for the medical precision. You should have started a YouTube channel about medicine instead of filming yourself in haunted houses.”
He tries to sneer, but his laugh turns into a painful scraping at the back of his throat. He puts a hand on his chest, short of breath.
─ “I'm not kidding. You're shaking, Jax...”
─ “It's the scenery that moves.”
This is obviously false. He doesn't know how long the air in his room seems so cold to him. The temperature at the Circus has always been ambient and perfect, though.
He closes his eyes for a moment, letting himself fall entirely onto the mattress, too weak to maintain his balance while sitting. He found himself lying on his side, his legs slightly drawn towards his chest.
─ “What are your symptoms, concretely?”
The fact that Pomni improvises herself as a nurse makes him roll his eyes under his closed eyelids.
─ “Let me think... I have a jackhammer stuck behind my eyes.”
─ “Mm-hmm.”
─ “I feel like I've eaten sandpaper passed through a flamethrower.”
─ “Okay.”
─ “I breathe as if my lungs have decided to convert into a vacuum cleaner.”
─ “Jax.”
─ “And if I move too fast, my room goes for a ride and it makes me want to throw my guts up. And,” he adds after a second of silence, “I am cold.”
A silence.
Squinting one eye, he discovers Pomni slightly leaning towards him.
─ “Jax, you realize that we're not supposed to be cold here,” she says, looking puzzled.
He closes his eyes again, too exhausted to keep up his sarcasm at full throttle.
─ “Congratulations," he murmurs. “The Circus has officially just given me a defective update. Wow.”
A shiver runs through him despite himself. His shoulders contract painfully.
─ “If Caine has an after-sales service,” he adds in a hoarse voice, “I'd like to file a complaint.”
─ “Headaches, cold, cough, chills, nausea... In our world, it would clearly have been a classical flu.”
─ “Great. Now that we have a diagnosis, can I have medication? IT'S TRUE, WE DON'T HAVE AN-...”
He coughs, unable to finish his sentence. When his fit subsides, he lets out a groan of discomfort.
─ “I'm fucking dying.”
Pomni rolls her eyes, smiling faintly, as if it amuses her.
─ “Caine can surely help you.”
─ “Caine, Caine, Caine... You have only this name on your lips, you and Ragatha. Is he a doctor? A pharmacist? Why didn't he come to treat me by snapping his fingers, if he's so great? He must be able to do that!”
─ “I don't think he can...”
─ “He made me a vegetarian! Made me wear a dress! Transformed Gangle into a rhinoceros and Zooble into a pink flamingo. He's PERFECTLY capable of- (He coughs.) to make sure I'm no more- (He coughs again.) sick.”
He is again seized with a coughing fit, then tries to breathe as gently as possible to avoid irritating his airways. Then, he feels Pomni cover him with her duvet.
─ “Stop...”
His voice is pleading, but Pomni seems determined not to listen to him.
─ “If you're cold, cover up.”
I don't need a helicopter mom, he wanted to answer, but he feels unable to make the slightest effort to say it out loud.
─ “I'm going to get Caine. Don't move.”
Pff... As if I was going to go anywhere.
*
He probably fell asleep. Because he feels strangely healthy.
In his dream, Jax was sitting on a couch, watching his fellows arguing over a game of Uno while Gangle drew.
─ “I'm bored, I'd like to have an adventure!” Zooble complained, then placed an Ace of Clubs on a "+4" card.
─ “That's not how you play chess,” Ragatha stammered, putting down a "change color" card. “And we can't go on an adventure, Caine is absent today.”
─ “Are we playing chess?” asked Pomni, looking up from her GameCube controller, whose wire was connected to... something, probably — it was hard to say, the wire was so long that it stretched beyond the main room.
Jax narrowed his eyes, an amused smile on his lips.
─ “I don't understand what's going on at all,” he thought out loud.
Pomni began to shake the controller.
─ “Damn, I was disconnected... Jax, can you see what's going on, please?”
He stood up with a sigh.
─ “Yeah, yeah. I'm going.”
Probably if he wasn't dreaming, he would never have accepted. But he had to admit that this long thread appealed to him.
Jax began to follow it, then rushed into the long corridor of the dormitories. The wire passed under the door of Gangle's room. He opened the door and entered the room without turning on any light. He walked a few meters in the dark, then ran headfirst into the wall. Rubbing his forehead, he realized it was a door — a closet door, probably — and opened it. The light engulfed him... and he found himself back in the corridor. He narrowed his eyes, puzzled, and closed behind him. On the door was Ragatha's face. On the floor, the wire continued to Pomni's room. He was sure that the wire only crossed the corridor once... He started again, and left Zooble's room.
This time, the wire led to a bedroom... unoccupied. His chest tightened.
Ribbit.
He put his hand on the handle, his heart pounding.
Boom boom. Boom boom.
He swallowed his saliva, the vision stammering in front of him.
His palm was sweaty against the cold metal. He could feel it through his white gloves. Her friend's face was crossed out. A red, clear, irrevocable cross. And yet, he could hear commotion on the other side of the door.
He hadn't been here since...
His fingers tightened around the handle. With a single blow, he lowered it and opened the door wide.
The room was hidden in darkness, like all the others. In the center of the room, a cathode ray television crackled intermittently, sometimes displaying visual snow, sometimes a scene of... He pressed his eyelids, trying to remember the name of the game. And the name came back to him in one fell swoop: Smash Bros Melee. He competed when he was a teenager.
Jax knelt in front of the screen, unplugged the end of the cable, and then plugged it back in.
Pomni's main remained motionless. He banged on the top of the television. On the second attempt, the image became clear, and Jax rolled his eyes when he noticed that Pomni was playing Jigglypuff. She should have chosen another character. Against Marth, she won't stand a chance of beating him...
─ “Jax...”
He jumped with an unmanly cry, then turned around.
The world was turned upside down when he met a look he would have preferred to forget.
"R-Ribbit...?" he wanted to ask, but his voice remained blocked at the bottom of his chest.
The frog stood between him and the entrance of the room, creating an eclipse phenomenon thanks to the light in the hallway.
It didn't last, because the door closed behind her, and the screen of the CRT TV lit up her face better.
Jax stepped back and leaned his hip against the big TV, his heart pounding so hard in his chest that he soon thought it was punctured.
No.
No no no. She's dead. DEAD.
And yet, there she was. Get up. Whole. Too real.
Jax's brain was yelling at him to leave, but his heart was asking to stay.
─ “Do you want to play?” Ribbit proposed, pointing to the television. “Like in the good old days?”
She didn't look threatening, angry, or too happy. She just looked... normal. As if their presence here was only a formality.
Jax shook his head.
─ “We've never played it together,” were his first words.
Ribbit does not react, perfectly insensitive to the remark.
She took a step forward, and Jax stood still. Should he accept? Sit and play with her?
He closed his eyes, looking for an answer. He took several deep breaths and, opening them again... Ribbit was no longer there.
Jax was in a huge room, like the ones he had once visited at conventions. It had never been his style to hang around there, although he couldn't deny that he had agreed to accompany some pop culture fan friends. But, in his dream, this room was empty. There were only endless rows of chairs, and two CRT TV in the center, as if all eyes should be riveted on them. He remembered his first Smash Bros Melee competition. He was young, fourteen years old if his memory served him correctly, not very talented but motivated by fun and his competitive side. When did he become so... little involved in all areas of his existence? Since he had been fired from his crappy job? Since his friends had started to turn their backs on him? Or, since he...
─ “⊘⊘⊘⊘⊘ !”
He turned around on himself, without understanding where that familiar voice came from. Did he hear... a first name? His own, the one he had before arriving at the Circus? He did not understand it, as if it were only a series of sounds without meaning or connection between them.
─ “Stop countin’! I'm hidin’!”
He turned again, and the room vanished, making way for a little girl's room. Poorly made drawings decorated the walls, and toys littered the floor. Jax stepped over a teddy bear, then frowned. He remembered that room. The walls painted pink, the soft carpet in the shape of a circle, the bed too big for a five-year-old... His vision blurred. His legs trembled. Instantly, his eyes searched for the window, but it was too late: a heart-rending scream pierced his skull.
─ “No no no no NO NO!!”
He rushed to the window, probably breaking a few toys as he went, and pulled the curtain violently after kneeling on the huge lid of the toy box that had allowed the child to pull himself up to the ledge, the one on which once rested a flowerpot that he remembered watering over and over again.
Jax leaned forward, his body held by his arms that firmly grasped the window frame, whose glistening sill of water implied that it had rained just an hour ago.
The air refused to enter his lungs. His chest froze in an aborted breath, as if breathing had become secondary to him. His whole body vibrated with uncontrollable spasms. His arms, which still held his body, trembled so hard that he had to step back so that they would not give way and make him fall over in turn.
At the bottom, there were too many details.
Far too many.
He remained paralyzed there, kneeling on the floor, his face turned towards the window.
Then, the next moment, he found himself at the wheel of his car.
He was driving fast. Far too fast. Dusk announced the imminent return of the girl's parents. They trusted me. They were fucking confident.
His gaze slid to the rearview mirror to glance at the back seat. The girl's body wrapped in a pink carpet took up almost the entire width of the seats.
Night fell quickly, and in the blink of an eye, Jax was in the middle of a cornfield, a shovel in his hand that he had found at the entrance to it. He dug. Again. Again. How could a game of hide-and-seek end so badly...
Again.
And again.
*
He hardly opens his eyes. With a weak hand, he removes the wet towel from his forehead and straightens up on his bed. He is back in his room.
─ “Hi...”
He jumps, then looks into Pomni's eyes. She is kneeling on the floor, leaning on the mattress. She rubs her eyes as if she had just woken up.
─ “I... You... What are you...”
─ “The others will be coming home soon,” she replied. “As you looked restless in your sleep, I stayed to keep you company.”
His heart is on the verge of exploding. He realizes that tears are running down his cheeks, and hopes that Pomni will put it on the fever.
─ “You stayed all the way...? But why?”
─ “Because I'm worried about you, Jax.”
He rubs his eyes and takes a deep breath.
─ “Hey... How do you feel?”
─ “I feel like I've gone under a truck.”
His voice is raspy, drawling. He swallows with difficulty before running a hand over his face, as if to chase away the images that still cling to it. The fever left him with a heavy head.
He inhales slowly, trying to regain his footing in the present moment.
─ “… And I can't know if I'm still dreaming,” he adds in a low voice.
His eyes don't try to see Pomni's reaction. Instead, they let themselves slide towards the ceiling of his room. He blinks, slowly, but the impression of being absent persists. His skull is still pulsating, each beat of his heart resonating a little too loudly in his temples.
─ “You have a fever, Jax, it's probably normal...”
─ “It's weird,” he mumbles, as if he hadn't heard it, even though Pomni's voice had been perfectly clear to him. “I feel like my head is full of noise. As if someone had left the TV on on an empty channel.”
He feels Pomni's hand on his hand, without him chasing it away.
─ “And I see things when I close my eyes. Places, memories… but they are all mixed up. I was sure I had managed to forget them.”
His gaze finally falls back on Pomni. She looky... sorry, lost in an analytical silence.
He shakes his head.
─ “Forget about it, I may be delirious from the fever.”
He tries to laugh, but the sound breaks before it even exists in a coughing fit that he thought he had gotten rid of while sleeping.
Pomni purses her lips.
─ “Jax, I spoke to Caine earlier... He thinks you've probably contracted a computer virus, or something. He had warned me that you might be disoriented and that you would hallucinate because of the fever... He is currently looking for a solution for you.”
A shiver shakes him.
The problem with verging on abstraction every time he was anxious is that hallucinations are already more or less frequent for him. Would having a fever finish him off? Literally?
A knot forms in his stomach. He swallows, his throat dry, and he looks away at the wall as if he fears that Pomni will be able to read what is going through his mind.
Anxiety. It's happening again. Fuck, fuck, fuck…
He wasn’t meant to be panicking. Definitely not.
His fingers tighten around the duvet, breathless. Pomni's hand is still on one of them, and she presses down a little harder.
─ “Everything is fine, you don't risk anything.”
He opens his mouth to explain his reality, but he changes his mind. If Pomni knows, will it change anything in the situation? How can this be explained, actually? How can we put words to a fear that is not rational but experienced?
He inhales, slowly. As if his body was trying to remember how to do it. His blocked nostrils don't help, and probably neither does his burning chest. Stop panicking, it's useless.
This thought bounces around in his skull without clinging to it.
─ “You say that because...,” he begins before interrupting again.
Because you don't know what you're talking about, Pomni.
Because you've never experienced what I'm going through.
He swallows his saliva with difficulty.
─ “Stop worrying about me, PomPom,” he sneers to restore his composure. “Of course I'm not worried!”
The lie seems hollow, even in his own ears.
─ “That's not the impression I have.”
He is dizzy. Of course she doesn't believe me. How could she?
He looked away, his face veiled by a new emotion that he couldn't chase away with his sarcasm.
─ “Look at me, Jax.”
He did not obey right away. His fingers continue to fiddle with the duvet, ignoring Pomni's grip on one of them. Reluctantly, he plunges his gaze into the young woman's two-tone eyes. She doesn't smile. She also doesn't scold him like Ribbit would have done. She just looks focused.
─ “You can pretend, if you want,” she said calmly. “But it doesn't change what I see.”
He blows his nose, almost annoyed.
─ “And what do you see, Madam Nurse?” he mumbles, rolling his eyes.
─ “Someone who’s afraid.”
The last word hits his chest more violently than he would have thought. He straightens up a little, a defensive reflex immediately thwarted by a wave of fatigue that falls on him.
It's strange to feel tired. Probably a symptom of his illness.
─ “Nonsense. I just have a fever.”
─ “You didn't have any, the time you asked me for help when you were in the middle of a panic attack.”
He opens his mouth, hesitates, closes it.
─ “Do you remember, the day when Caine sent us to a desert and a clairvoyant hypnotized you,” she explains, holding her gaze. “And that hypnosis helped you relieve your anxieties and your obsessive disorder-...”
─ “Stop, Pomni.”
She becomes silent.
─ “I hate it.”
─ “What do you mean?”
─ “To be... as I am. A defective archetype.”
─ “You're not defective, Jax.”
He doesn't believe her, but he doesn't try to be right.
His headache comes back, and a shiver shakes him briefly.
─ “Are you still cold?” she asks softly.
Instead of answering, he observes her. Her eyes. Her expression. Her lips.
─ “Perhaps. A little.”
It is only now that he notices that Pomni had brought him a glass of water, and that it had been on the bedside table all along. Without thinking, he grabs it and drinks it out.
─ “I can bring you my duvet, if you want?”
He does not answer. He is not sure he understands the meaning of her question. That said, the lack of reaction does not prevent her from leaving the room to return, a few minutes later, with a blanket in her hands. Jax just stares at her, while she unrolls the fuzz over his. She sits down on the mattress.
─ “Thank you...,” he whispers at last, his voice almost inaudible.
Pomni nods softly, without saying a word. Her gaze remains fixed on him, attentive and patient. Jax closes his eyes, letting his breath calm down a bit, but his brain refuses to rest completely. Memories jostle in his skull, fragmentary, and his fever amplifies everything: sensations, emotions, angst...
Did we get sick when we were close to abstraction? Had Kaufmo, Ribbit and the others gone through the same thing without daring to talk about it?
Would things have been different if she hadn't decided to hide on the windowsill, behind the curtain, during his babysitting time? Did the police find her body in that cornfield? Did they find Jax, whose mind had been swallowed by a virtual reality headset? What if he had pressed the other button and accepted the fate of justice?
If his sense of time didn't falter too much, she should have celebrated her sixth birthday recently. It was hard to say, because he wasn't even sure how long he had spent at the Circus...
─ “What are you thinking about?”
Pomni's voice is soft, almost a whisper. She is so benevolent, with him... When he didn't deserve it.
All of it... everything she does for him to relieve his illness, his anxieties... Why? Why was she helping him? Why did she get attached? He was probably going to disappear, corrupt like all the others; Did she seriously deserve such a pain? She didn't deserve to spend her nights crying. To lament the loss of a guy as pathetic as him. A guy who buried a little girl's body and fled his town.
─ “Is that... How would you react if I abstract myself?”
She had asked him this question one day, and today, her answer interested him.
Because he didn't want to know that she was going to cry for him. That she was going to regret him. And that her pain corrupts her in turn, in the same way that the loss of Ribbit is destroying him.
Pomni remains stunned for a moment, as if she were unable to answer. He didn't blame her. He had hurt her deeply that time, with his grotesque lie. Her answer finally fell:
─ “You need to rest.”
There you go.
That's all.
Jax's smile freezes, before crumbling. Afraid to reveal his emotions, like a reflex, he explodes with laughter. A laugh that rings rather true, to be honest, but prone to a pain that he can't seem to chase away.
Pomni doesn't laugh with him. She just sits there, hands clasped on her legs, a blank stare at Jax.
He would certainly have wanted her to get angry for that time. Let her say that she will not forget him. Or that she reassures him that he will never become abstract. But no. She chose the option he deserved the most. Ignorance.
─ “Well, PomPom, I've seen some changes of subject, but this one is the most indiscreet of all, hahaha!”
She simply grins, as if he had seen through her scheme. But her smile seems more embarrassed than delighted.
─ “Yeah, you're right. Don't answer. My question was stupid, anyway. In fact, I think I would have been disgusted if you answered that you would start crying.”
He tries to swallow his cough when his laughter ends up strangling him in his chest. Yeah, downright stupid, completely stupid!
While he was laughing and coughing at the same time, Pomni lowered his gaze slightly. Not enough to run away from the conversation, but just enough to not look him in the face. He notices this detail. Of course he notices, just as he noticed that she was starting to play nervously with her fingers.
─ “Damn, wow, I feel like this fever isn’t showing me at my best. Can I have another glass of water?”
She barely reacts.
─ “Come on, don't make that face. What are you thinking about?”
─ “I... I don't know,” she finally whispered. “Nothing, I guess.”
Jax's laughter stops for a second, just one, before he starts again. This time, Pomni seems to be reacting, as she frowns, betraying her displeasure.
─ “And I'd like to know what makes you laugh like that. Did I hurt you?”
He wipes away a tear of laughter with his index finger.
─ “Haha, of course not. I don't care, honestly.”
─ “My answer doesn't count for you?”
Jax shakes his head while holding his stomach.
─ “Everything I've done for you since you've been in bed doesn't count either?”
He shakes her again, without stopping laughing.
─ “And the time you came into my room during an anxiety attack to ask me for help, a few weeks ago?”
─ “I just used you,” he laughs again.
Pomni's muscles tense. That's good, go on. Hate me.
─ “So when you were crying when you woke up, and you told me all those things... Actually, you really use me. All the time.”
She stands up before giving him time to nod.
─ “Stop. Stop making me look like an idiot.”
─ “Boriiing. You’re imagining things, as usual. You've always been a little dramatic, Pom,” he laughs again, his laughter fading little by little to leave, instead, a horrible headache that he hides as best he can.
─ “Dramatic... Because you... You're just cruel. Even if you are suffering, you can't help it!”
He sneers, but his laugh rings... different.
─ “Touched.”
I can't help it.
─ “Do you know the worst part of all this? It's not even that you're using me.”
─ “Oh really?” he wonders, smiling.
─ “It's because a part of me feared it. And that I still spent my whole day at your bedside, worrying about you...”
─ “Yeah, and you did a good job,” he says, sniffling. “Five-star service.”
She closes her eyes for a second, as if she is holding back from jumping at his throat.
─ “You could at least thank me.”
─ “That would be hypocritical of me.”
She shakes her fists but does not counterattack. She just goes to the door. Without turning to him, she concludes:
─ “If you corrupt yourself... I don't think I would care.”
There you go. She said so. His smile resurfaces. Broken. Full of pain. But he had been looking for it. That was what he wanted, right? So why did it hurt so much… ?
─ “And... that's probably what I'd like to happen to you, Jax.”
And she disappears behind the door, which it does not completely close. His pupils are dilated to the maximum, frozen on the handle.
She left, taking with her every trace of comfort, of warmth.
He collapses onto the mattress, his face crushed against the pillow, all smiles gone. Every heartbeat is a cruel reminder that it was believed... that he was seen... and that he destroyed everything.
The sight of the door being ajar became unbearable to him. Painfully, he straightens up, sits down, and shudders at the cold air of his room. He gets up. Hardly. Does a few steps, and closes the door. The reopens. Closes it. Reopens it, and closes it, to make sure it's properly locked.
And he stays there. Standing in front of the door. Devastated by his own actions. His own words.
It's better that way. I'd rather suffer your hatred than know that you'll mourn my loss.
He coughs. Then he slips back under his sheets, shivering with cold.