Archive of Our Own

Jax disassociates on a good day- and he'd recommend the practice to anyone currently living in a cage, things move much faster when you stop worrying about the specifics- and this is not a good day. The circus has lost its color, there's holes everywhere, and Caine is dead. Zooble swears- the full word, more startling than a gunshot. It's the first time he's been able to hear Zooble's voice form the i and the t in all these years. Jax's mind straight up peaces out for a bit, though it feels like seconds- between one blink and another, they go from the playroom to the couches. They've probably been talking. Might have even responded. He doesn't remember any of it.

He flopped onto the familiar purple couch and let his head dangle backwards, ears drooping with the force of fake gravity. He feels nothing. He feels everything. He feels an intimately familiar weight on his lap and running their hands all over his face, his shoulders, his eyelids. The touch is feather light but possessive, groping him like a girl in a hentai on a train. Caine had always loved bees the most, but he'd branched out to other animals over the years and even replicated some of their traits- like the stick of a frog's pads, tugging gently on his purple skin. Jax had never had fur. Something about the framerate.

It doesn't matter. Jax can't even find the energy to be disturbed; he just sits there, knowing abstraction is chewing on him from the inside while his mind tormented him with the inevitable. Ribbit isn't here. Ribbit isn't real. Ribbit wouldn't sit in his lap. Jax's life motto was that anything could be funny if you told the joke well enough, but by god has this one been hard to swing. He was still editing the punchline.

"Jax?"

It takes him a second to remember that's his name. Another second to crack open his eyelids and stare blankly at Gangle, sitting nervously next to him. A third to remember who Gangle is. Jax scowls, fresh out of good insults, and says nothing. He's alone again.

Gangle is (justifiably) terrified about being this close to the guy who's tossed her into danger time and time again, but things have shifted in the past week- Caine had been everyone's focus, struggling to keep sane against a sudden deluge of body horror. Jax hadn't had the time, ability, or strength to do more than give a few half-hearted jabs, all of which had gone ignored. She puts her ribbon hands on his arm, smooth and cool to the touch, just to ground him. His skin crawls. "Are you... okay? All things considered."

"Who cares?" he replied, candid. Jax hates how empty he sounds. "It's all over."

"It's not," Gangle insisted, taking a second to sniffle. "It hasn't gotten any worse since Caine... K-Kinger thinks it should be safe."

That felt almost entirely unrelated. Jax didn't care about the holes in the floors, or even that the basement might be connected to some of them. It wasn't a matter of survival- it was just logistics. No Caine meant no new stimuli. No more dinners, no more routines, no new board games or cards decks or any of the other ten billion games they played between adventures to keep their minds off of it all. The circus had always been a cage- now it was going to be a cage with no upkeep.

"You can't honestly believe that," he says. "Did your yaoi finally rot what's left of your brain?"

And Gangle- Gangle rolls her eyes at him, like he was an annoying insect on her sketchbook. "It's not my fault you have no taste."

Jax goes to reply with something that's only half-thought through, something probably too honest- no one actually likes being a guy, and no amount of gay sex will make that feeling go away, trust him- but Zooble's here now, hands on their hips, regarding him like an errant toddler.

"Jax, you ass. Have you been listening to a thing I've said?"

He rolls his head to the other shoulder. "Nope."

(Being here had seriously warped his brain, because no amount of hearing the uncensored swears will make them feel natural again.)

"Get up. We've got work to do."

Jax blinks up at him sluggishly, exhausted. "Haven't we done enough for one day?"

Zooble hesitates long enough for Kinger to scoot over, taking little peeks from under the bucket to avoid crashing into anyone. It feels weird having him cognizant, too. Like this was an alternate version of hell. "Sorry, Jax, I wish we could- but I don't think we should risk waiting. We need to gather all our important things, just in case more of the floor goes."

"If the floor goes, the items might go with them."

Zooble swats his shoulder. "We have to try."

Jax doesn't have it in him to argue. He knows they won't let it go; and if he's going to get yanked along anyway, it seemed a waste of effort to throw a toddler tantrum for a half hour first. "Finnnneeee. This is stupid and pointless and I hate all of you." He threw his weight forward, rocking onto his heels. He means for it to be jazzy, but he catches movement out of the corner of his eye and gets distracted, tripping over his own paws. Zooble has to help him stand up straight; in the distance, near the slide entrances, Kaufmo is waving. He always had loved physical comedy.

"Stay close to someone," Zooble instructed him, scanning him like a war general does the battlefield for ankle-breaking holes. "If you wander off on your own, I'm going to tie you up again."

Jax raises his eyebrows. "You gonna give me aftercare when I go into subdrop, Zoobie?"

"Use a safe word and I'll think about it."

Zooble needs to stop being funnier than him. It's really starting to piss him off.

Jax wanders off. They all expect it, but Jax doesn't expect how difficult it is to do so- it seems Ragatha's been spilling some of his tricks of the trade, the little nark. He doesn't know how to handle this sudden influx of attention, even if he suspects it's mostly perfunctory. Jax hadn't given them any reason to act like they were friends- quite the opposite, really, and quite on purpose.

Jax was living on limited time- he knew what was coming next the day Ribbit left them, and he knew it was all his fault for getting attached in the first place. He likened it to the guy in a zombie movie who got infected for being too cocky; there's no cure, and he can't chop off his arm and forget about it. So Jax had given up the pretense of niceties, or of making new friends, or even of living a stagnant life. His main goal since had been to find what indulgence he could- he was the dog about to be taken out back, and he wanted his cheeseburger first. Dying dogs can afford to bite.

Besides. It's not like he's planning on abstracting right this second anyway.

Jax takes to the halls, studying the graying patchwork of digital art pieces as he strolls. He'd always considered himself the most knowledgeable about the circus- except for Kinger now, apparently, whatever that was about. The others had only used the bare minimum of doors and pathways, terrified of getting lost or falling into one of the many mini-worlds Caine housed at random in various rooms, but Jax liked a good challenge to keep his mind off things, and he especially liked rewarded play. People don't keep things behind doors unless they have some level of value to them- and Caine had never cared about Jax's sticky fingers. Occasionally he even seemed delighted to find old items Jax had squirreled away in random corners.

It'd never seemed weird to him. Other kids his age collected sticks, rocks, pinecones. Jax collected lunchboxes, bike chains, barricading material. Keys. Once he'd managed to steal a truck, sell it, pocket the reward, and pay the overdue rent before his cousin even realized it was gone.

None of the others seemed to understand a damn thing about locks, though. Jax liked to snag their keys, but they weren't necessary to get in- every door in the hallway held the exact same lock, which opened to the exact same key, which Caine pretended to create new whenever he'd given a new member theirs. Jax had brainrotted on lockpicking one year as a kid; he never quite managed to get his clunky fingers to work the picks, but he did learn how absolutely useless locks generally were. He kept his key on his person, and that key meant he could access all of them.

(All except for Ribbit's. Caine hadn't quite understood why Jax asked for a different lock on her door, but he also hadn't minded the two seconds it took to snap his fingers and shift the internals.)

(But Caine is still Caine, and he fully admits there's a key to it somewhere in here.)

(Jax has been looking for that key ever since. It's a compulsion.)

(He just wants it to happen in her room, on her bed.)

(It's fine. It's whatever.)

Jax grabs things at random from their rooms, things that looked important or seemed worth the hassle. Ragatha's sewing kit and some spare yarn, a handful of colorful blocks from Pomni's in case they needed to glitch out again; Zooble had a pile of parts beside their bed that seemed to feature more often than the others, so he snags one for each limb just in case. For Gangle he retrieves her sketchbook and a bottle of super glue- the adhesive couldn't repair the emotional aspect of mask-breaking, or so he's been told, but it works well as a short surface fix. Jax's mind considers them items of equal importance as he hucks them unceremoniously into a sack, and he spends a few solid seconds considering the pile of unopened art kits Caine had given her, tempted to bring one just to be a dick, before realizing it's too much work and moving on.

His room. Jax racks his brain for something important to get. He doesn't have any fancy method for patching himself up, or a hobby to keep his mind off the looming doom. The pictures on the wall feel like too great a burden to lift. Most of the keys are duplicates. Jax knew how the others would take it if he came back empty-handed for himself- either they'd try to convince him it was a noble act, or they'd get that soft and pitying look on their faces that made him want to rend and tear. Finally he just gives up and grabs the duplicates, the bigger and shinier the better.

There's one last temptation. Jax hadn't been able to fight the urge to snap up a token from the gun adventure; under the obnoxiously pink table, taped to the bottom, was a handgun. He'd honestly forgotten about it until his fingers felt the bump- and he had no real use for it. Caine might've forgotten to delete every single gun, but the ringmaster had been religious on taking away projectiles over the years. Taking it had seemed like a fun rebellion at the time- now, in his hands, it felt like a lead weight. It's not just useless, it's incriminating.

On a whim, he lifted it to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. Nothing but clicks.

His final goal for the night is the Chinese Room. Caine had either forgotten to unload it (possible, he'd been panicking pretty hard before his meltdown) or had simply decided to keep the gag going- and Jax wanted to take a peek inside to see if the damage extended to the entire digital world. Maybe they could loophole themselves out of the consequences. Either way, the room was chockfull of paper, a commodity they didn't get to indulge in often.

That in mind, Jax tosses the handgun into a random hole in the floor- he gets about two steps before he backtracks at the sound of clattering, the weapon skidding off a surface before entering the void beneath. Jax peers down and finds a platform just beneath, flooring attached to an invisible beam in the air. Honeycombed hexagons. Muffled whimpers of glitching pain as the hunched over figure taking sanctuary fights to keep himself alive.

Caine.

It's Caine.

Of course it's Caine. Jax wants to slap himself for even being surprised. He doesn't. He stares down at Caine as the finality of Caine's existence sinks in. He should be afraid. He kind of is. But he's mostly just grateful. Thank fuck, it's Caine. The rabbit in him locks his limbs into place, uncomprehending of the suffering of the AI, brain churning slow as molasses and faster than light all at once.

He has exactly two thoughts.

1.) If I run away now, I can act surprised when they find him later and no one will ever know.

Caine hadn't exactly been friendly lately. Everyone had picked up on his growing frustration and sense of helplessness, even if they couldn't fully comprehend how a God could still feel lackluster. They'd been taking bets on when Caine would go off on them for it- well, Jax had been trying to get them to take bets, anyway- though none of them had expected him to indulge in torture tactics. Maybe, if Jax left him to die, he actually would, and they could make finding his body a group activity.

The blob rolled over a little, stirring. Caine was covered in pixels that he was trying to cover with his suit jacket, pulled over his head like a child blocking out the room does monsters. He's shivering with artificial fever as a single, blurry eye locates him. Jax watches in real-time as it dilates.

"Ja-aaaxxxx?" he groans, stuttering and clipping.

2.) I gotta get him out of there before it's too late.

'Too late' isn't the pixels, or the void, or even abstraction. Jax's mind rolls over like a cold engine as his new goal sets into place; if Kinger's ham fisting the delete key couldn't take out Caine, then Jax had nothing in his arsenal that could finish the job. Worse than that- if he walked away now, Caine would surely seek revenge if he did survive, and Jax knew his luck wasn't good enough to kill.

"Hang on," Jax call down- it explodes out of his mouth so fast it surprises even him. He finally knows what he needs to get from his room. Getting tied up in the Luigi's Mansion rip-off hadn't been fun, but it'd gifted him with some damn good rope after. Throwing it away would've been a waste. Now he just feels like an idiot for forgetting it. Jax can't explain why this feels like a timed event, but it does- like he could conceivably fail at some quicktime button here.

Kaufmo and Ribbit hound his every step- Kaufmo tries to push him along, Ribbit points at the doorknob, they both grab and push and pull as he ties it tight. Jax's breathing is fast as he tosses the rope down the hole; he recognizes, innately, that Caine is in no position to secure himself- if Caine was able to think or move, he wouldn't need the rope at all, and could float or teleport out- but the idea of going so close to the void triggers the coward in him without fail. In the nothingness, there is no ending it.

Ribbit pushes on his back. None of it is real. None of it actually moves his body. But Jax flinches regardless, falling face-first into the crevice. He barely gets out a yelp before smashing his teeth with pixels. Stunned, he has to wait to catch his breath before feebly rolling over; Caine's gaze is glazed over and uncomprehending, even at this distance.

"Jaaaaaxxxxx?"

His name, again. Caine's voice glitches up and down the scales as he sounds it out.

"No," he says, with the reflexes of an idiot, "the fucking Easter Bunny."

Caine flinches, curls under his jacket, and starts sobbing.

Deep, painful sobbing; the kind Jax could only liken to the cries of an animal with a freshly broken leg. Each shuddering gasp with a rising tide of despair and terror as they recognized death coming so much nearer but didn't comprehend why, or how, or what they'd done to deserve it. Jax has never been good with handling other people's emotions, even when he was a less terrible person, but especially not tears. Gangle was a rare exception in that her default voice was sniffling- he'd had no choice but to adjust, and it'd made tormenting her all the more satisfying.

Here and now, Jax doesn't feel like a hero. He doesn't even feel like a person. He's exactly what this circus clocked him as- prey, staring stiffly at something able to kill him with such ease he knew he should be running but couldn't make himself move. A deer in the headlights. A rabbit when it spots a man.

It takes him a few seconds too many to remember why he exists, and what he's here for. "C'mon, Caine. Let's go." He hesitantly reached out to touch the AI's arm, intending on giving him a little nudge- it feels like he's shoved his fingers into a socket. The pixels surge around the contact and up his arms, mechanical wounds that shift into neon eyes as it transfers over. Ribbit grabs his ears and yanks, hard. "Caine?"

"Leave me alone," he whimpers, and only some of it is camp. "You all hate me- I know you do!"

"I- what?" Jax asks, frazzled. It's so hard to focus when the room is buzzing- he barely knows one from two, let alone emotional depth. He can't think of anything else to do, so he goes back for more, throwing the ringmaster's arm across his shoulder so he can tie them together. The world feels like it belongs to a fisheye lens all of a sudden- like he's many eyes, all of them blinking and twisting and stinging at once, and one set of hands feels comical. Jax's sobbing now. He's giggling. "Work with me here, damnit!"

It's the same affliction, but wildly different. When Jax approached that colorful nonexistence before, it had been tranquil. This was like having his skin ripped off all over again- the eyes were shards digging into his body, chipping at his rabbit form to reveal the wolf underneath.

He's always seen things he shouldn't. At least, he has for a long enough time for it to feel that way. Random movements. Ghosts of the people he's let down. Stress made it worse- and when was Jax not stressed, really; his whole job is to cause infraction and strife. He is constantly plotting and on guard; and as of late, he is almost always with Ribbit and Kaufmo. Jax was more or less used to it. But the thing was...

They only spoke when the colors were swirling.

And the sounds-

(Screaming. Gut-wrenching, bones shattering. Almost as horrible as the hands- they're on his face, in his mouth, they're tucking into the corners of his eyes and pulling-)

It's inescapable.

But Jax knows he won't die from this. No. Jax doesn't get to go out doing something nice. Jax has to haul Caine up and over the brim- has to throw him to safety like a trash bag, the AI deceptively light for a god that could inhabit any size he pleased, before scrambling up after. None of it would be possible outside the circus. It's cartoon logic. (It's conjuring- though Jax doesn't know it by that word, he knows it from following Caine's rules and making good use of the tropes.)

Then he has to carry him, bridal-style, down the endless hallway. Jax doesn't know where to go, exactly; just that he's got to store Caine away until he felt well enough to use his own power, at the very least, and use that time to his advantage. When Caine got better, the circus would return. When Caine got better, the cage would be clean. Everyone could finally stop staring at him, and he could look into finding a specific key.

He pauses, uncomprehending, at the door of a familiar chess piece. Jax often forgot that the pillow fort wasn't his Caine-given room; and for just reason, honestly, as he doubted Kinger himself remembered he had it. It felt like the closest thing to a safe hiding spot Jax could reach. He grabs a key out of his overalls- taking a second to look at the pink and blue and yellow and wow, eyes, right- and jams it inside.

The room inside is practically barren. Insect-print on the walls and a nice king-sized bed; a few old notebook assets that didn't actually open. There was a number of chess boards in the corner- and Jax vaguely remembered seeing them before, early on into his time here. Caine's obsession with perfection had applied to the pieces as well. He'd worked tirelessly to make some glass, and some that would look and feel like wood, and some that glowed in the dark, on top of 'novelty' sets that looked like insects. Kinger had done his best to teach them how to play, but no one felt comfortable using them for long. Gangle dropped one once and Kinger had held it for a week straight, unblinking, cradling the broken queen like a delicate moth leaving its cocoon. Catatonic. It was one of the few times they'd all managed to agree on something- namely, never touching them again.

It'd brought on the same unnerving feeling that he saw on Ragatha's face when she saw stuffed toys; that Caine's attempt to bond, albeit well-intended, felt a bit like a guy grabbing a pig carcass and saying 'it's basically like you, right? That makes it a great gift!' It was good meat, but did the effort belay the insensitivity? Jax tried really hard not to care about that sort of thing in general- that didn't stop everyone else for bitching about it around him over the years.

Jax tosses Caine onto the bed like a sack of potatoes. Pauses. Grabs a blanket to cover the AI- it's instinctive, not to warm but to hide the sickness from view. Jax stares down at Caine- and he is still sobbing, eyes buried behind his teeth as he trembles like a leaf- and tries to remember what his next actions should be. He's panting and wheezing from the effort and the strain. His jaw is stiff, his eyes sting. He might've been screaming with them.

(He misses Ribbit's voice so much.)

(It's a shame they never sound like her.)

"Stay here," Jax pleads. "I'll be back when they're all asleep."

Caine is shivering now, almost feverish with exhaustion. He doesn't answer, just grabs and yanks the blankets to wrap them around his head like a child. Jax hates the quiet more than he does yelling- at least, when Caine's ranting, he can follow his thought process. He wasn't sure if the ringmaster was simply having a breakdown or slowly gathering his rage while he recovered. He just knew that leaving his fate to chance was a great way to get wrecked by a vengeful god.

He lets Jax poke him with a few of those cubes from Pomni's room, though. The pixels chew through them like a marshmallow over a stove- Jax hot-potatoed them out the door and to the hall, creating a break in the floor behind him. Wide enough to make him nervous about crossing, but just so. He'd need a running start. Stupid, probably. Which. Jax felt, as a precaution, he should probably cover his bases. He doubted anyone would be wandering that direction in the desolate hell of space for a bit yet- and he extra doubted any of them were interested in hurting Caine at all.

He doesn't know, exactly, why he's hiding Caine. After years of pulling shit to get yelled at, Jax just assumes no one will believe him. Or that, even if they did, they would find a way to make it all his fault. He wasn't sure what, exactly, would get him in trouble about this- just that it probably would.

Jax returns to the living space just in time to watch Zooble and Gangle struggle to set down the magical changing booth. Jax had assumed going outside the tent at all was a risk. "You can't be serious."

"Spontaneity is good for us," Zooble says simply, but there's something strained in his voice. "We won't be getting as much of it as we used to."

"You seriously wasted your search dragging in an overhyped Polly Pocket wardrobe?"

"Of course not. I conjured it."

"You what?" Jax says, somehow even flatter.

"Kinger said basing it off stuff we already knew might make it easier, so I figured it's as good a place to start as any."

Jax rubs his face. He feels ancient and childish all at once. Like he needed a nap but had restless spirits ready to haunt his dreams. "Are you losing it already? What are we talking about."

"You really need to stop running off," Zooble advises him. "You missed out on all the exposition."

The others are returning as they catch him up to speed. He only half-believes them, thoroughly shaken by the concept of them having that level of autonomy in their lives. Caine kept them dependent on him, intentionally, and was throwing a temper tantrum that they weren't appreciative enough about it. It makes a lot of sense. It's infuriating.

Jax is too terrified to try it; he didn't know what, if anything, he would bring out.

Zooble gestures to the tent with their claw-hand. "Assholes first."

Jax's shoulders bunch reflexively. "Just because you all want to get girly for a slumber party doesn't mean I have to."

"You can't tell me you want to sleep in your overalls."

"I do it every night," he points out. Calling their outfits clothing was practically a misnomer- they were painted onto their digital avatars like war paint. "I make overalls look good."

Zooble rolls his eyes, exchanging a knowing look with Gangle. "I knew you were too scared."

"Hey. I'm not scared."

"You sure about that?"

Jax's face turns red as he struggles to find a response. Zooble's figured him out, in a way- there's criminally few responses to such childish reasoning, which drives him up the wall. He can't back down without being called a coward. He can't pretend fake jeans are more comfortable than fake pajamas. He's in a corner, torn between what little remains of his pride and his inherent distrust of anything not made by Caine.

"Bitch," he grunts, and steps into the changing booth. Jax squeezes his eyes shut and balls his fists- the changing room jolts and warps and shifts before throwing him out onto the linoleum- Jax had never tried the other booth, but this had felt less like a changing sequence and more like a loading animation. A momentary lapse in memory and poof. He's wearing a blue shirt- a big shirt, even, the kind his scrawny limbs swim in- and ugly green camo shorts. Something every teen boy has worn to bed at least once.

(He can't explain why, and he refuses to think on it further, but he'd held his breath and prayed for nothing feminine. Jax had gotten in trouble once when he'd tried to sneak one of his mother's nightdresses into his closet- he knew better now, of course, that he wasn't allowed those sorts of things, but something in him yearned for the gentle fabric and long skirt from time to time to this day. He wouldn't put it past Zooble to have that combine into something truly humiliating- because he would've done something like that, when he'd had the energy to be vindictive.)

He stares at his hands a moment. Ungloved. He felt more naked than he had in overalls or even in that maid outfit.

The nice thing about being a social pariah is that Jax doesn't have to be an active participant to the nonsense. Jax doesn't have to exist for a little bit as anything other than a random lump on the couch- all the voices overlap and intermingle; every time Jax thinks he's figured out who is who, they all shift all over again.

On the bright side, the scare seems to have reset Jax's brain for a bit. He's finally, blissfully alone in his mind- and Jax sleeps like the dead.

Bits and pieces filter through. They're all pretending this is a normal sleepover. Gangle is waxing poetic about NaruSasu again- the little liar, he's seen the NaruKaku notebook. Ragatha manages a lukewarm chuckle that does the opposite of soothing. Kinger, removing the bucket, needing a break from sanity. Pomni, perched beside his head, occasionally brushing when she jolts or leans back. Cool ribbon hands on his own- Jax assumes he's dreaming for that one. Gangle wouldn't touch him for fun.

Time sure seems to be passing, anyway. It's a shame nothing looks any different. His thumb rubs the smooth shirt fabric over and over, self-soothing.

"Oh, yeah, it was mostly cyber bullying," Gangle is saying. Jaxs head turns slightly to listen in. "Kids don't go around shoving each other in lockers anymore- they're too small to fit most of them. It was just easier to make a troll account and tell me to die than it was to steal my lunch money."

Who the heck actually has lunch money they bring to school? Jax scoffs under his breath and rolls over to face the back cushions.

"That's awful, Gangle," Ragatha says- and she means it, sap she is- with the energy of a woman who's just discovering bullying. "I'm sorry you went through that. Did the school know?"

Gangle shrugs. "My mom got mad and told the principal about it. So I got sent to the counselor, who sucked eggs, and it was just easier to pretend it'd stopped after that."

Zooble snorted derisively. "Sounds about right."

"And they seriously punished both of you? It's not like you were doing anything wrong."

Must be nice, to know schooling before 2010.

"They made me pinkie swear with the guy who broke my nose." It takes Jax a few seconds too long to realize HE said that. His face tightens with poorly concealed embarrassment. "You got me talkin' in my sleep."

Zooble tilts their triangle head a little, blase. "What'd you do- call him a slur?"

"Afterwards, yeah. I'll have you know I was the innocent party." Jax stares up at the ceiling rather than check their faces. He's too tired to give a damn how they feel. "All I ever did was smile at him."

"Uh-huh," Ragatha says, unconvinced. "And what'd you do to his best friend?"

"Nothing," he whines, throwing an arm over his face. "You suck a dude's dick one time and his cousin thinks you're the inventor of being gay." There's a quiet but noticeable pause. Jax is too mushy-brained to work through why. "What?"

"We thought you had queer cooties," Zooble says, with something like amusement. "What happened to all the gay jokes at the bar?"

"Pot and kettle." His face scrunches a little. "And I'm not gay- just a really good friend. Bro wasn't getting any and I was bored."

(The twenty bucks had been nice, too.)

Gangle's staring at him like the big bang- something enormous and incomprehensible. "You're really out here mocking my taste in yaoi when you've got one-on-one experience?"

"Yaoi's different," he says. He's being too honest again. "It's all gushy and got kissing and crap. Nobody actually likes sleeping with men. That's like..."

Jax pauses, awake enough now to know he needs to shut up and maybe throw himself off something. His hand had reached out on its own, gesturing vaguely about as he explained how being around men and being with men and being a man were all things nobody enjoyed. Being close to abstraction had made his lips a lot less stiff as of late. He was waiting for that shoe to drop- for the ammo to be fired.

He turns his wrist and catches sight of neon yellow.

Reality jerks to the left. Hard.

Jax can barely hear the assorted voices exclaim as he scuttles up the couch like a guy who just saw a spider, breathing fast and heavy. He needs to hide this. He can't let them see. If anyone ever saw that part of him he didn't think he could survive it. Like flying too close to the sun.

(Ribbit, in front of him. Ribbit, hands around his neck. Ribbit, staring, unblinking.)

"Jax?"

His eyes skitter around the room. Too bright. Too dark. He can barely comprehend the shapes swimming just beyond the couch and Ribbit. A red glove, waving like a flag to catch his attention.

Pomni. Looking at him like he's a scared feral dog.

"Jax," she repeats, slow and quiet. "What's going on?"

Jax tries to say something. Can't. He looks down at his hands, nauseated all over again by the yellow. A spot on each purple finger. Not his skin- realizing too late now, he's already made a jackass of himself- but nail polish.

"...what the-?" he croaks out. "I don't even have nails."

"None of us do, genius." Zooble has spots on their claw hand. Zooble's easy to make out, being shapes. "Get off the back before you fall."

Jax doesn't. His breathing is distorted around a familiar green hand- and it feels generally safer getting choked out by an apparition than sliding into arms reach of these people. At least the apparition was just his brain freaking out.

Pomni's doing that creepy thing where she watches him like he's a math problem she's actively deciphering- Jax felt stripped bare by the jester on a good day, and this was, again, not that. Every twitch of his hands was giving her answers he doesn't have for himself. Her hand vanishes below the couch for a second before returning with a bottle of nail polish. She held it up like the antidote to an evil poison- it's video game logic bright red, matching the glove. "Will this help?"

He finds it in him to scowl at her like a bug on his foot. "What's wrong with you- why would I want-"

"Jax," she repeats again, and it feels like acid down his spine. Like she knows something he doesn't. "The world isn't going to end because you wore some stupid nail polish."

But it might. Is the thing.

Jax's laugh is shrill and unconvincingly cruel. "'Gonna' end? Have you looked around, Pom-Pom? This stupid flash drive of a universe is dead. We're the water getting poisoned by the carcass as it rots. All that's left for us-"

"OKAY, WE GET IT," Zooble says with more force than necessary, patience running thin. "You don't get to treat us like shit right now. We're ALL freaking out- and if you talked to someone about it, maybe you'd be able to learn how to cope like a normal human being."

"I'm not a human being," Jax replies, plain and simple and flat, and is still too flustered to understand why everyone looks a little nervous about it. "What? Don't act like this shit is news. I'm purple."

"Is this you being witty, or is this some disassociation?" Zooble asks, baffled.

"Little of both," Ragatha butts in, making Jax flinch. They'd all forgotten she was here. Jax glares at her, more furious than he's been in his entire life at her, and Ragatha looks right through him. "Jax, you told me you had this handled."

"It's not my fault you bought that."

Shame darkens her face. It makes him feel good, and that's just further proof that Jax is not human. There's a line in the sand, somewhere, where 'human' stops and 'monster' starts. They talk about it all the time in war movies, documentaries. It'd been his mantra now more than ever; I'm not human, I don't have to feel bad for acting as such.

"He does this sometimes," she mutters to the two girls and Zooble. "It's like he loses touch- and you told me you were doing better about it. I trusted you to tell me if this was happening."

"I don't have to tell you shit, Raggy. You know that."

"Jax," she sighs, a song so familiar it's grounding. Right. He's acting like a maniac. Jax can't even pretend this was a joke- well, he could definitely try, and he'd gaslight as hard as he could if given the chance- unless he wanted to pretend to be really bad at being funny. "I've been around here a long time. I've noticed the patterns- nobody is ever, like, perfectly okay mentally after appearing here, but there seems to be some branches of mental issues that make abstraction happen quicker than others. It's why Kinger can walk around with amnesia for two decades and be just fine, but I'll have a little OCD spiral and have to spend a week recovering."

It's Jax's turn to snort derisively.

There's a cold sensation on his hand- he whirls his head to stare as Gangle has the limb in a gentle but surprisingly confident grip, dipping the paint brush again into the bottle before returning to work on his middle finger. She seems nonchalant about the whole thing. Like she does this every day. And Jax can't do shit about it- his decision to slowly sit down is made from a lack of other options and not actual comfort.

(Sure, Jax could hurt Gangle. It's not like it's hard to fling her around. But breaking her mask simply gave better dividends- Jax knew well that beatings became mundane after a while, while emotional turmoil is like a centipede wriggling and biting every inch of skin it can find. That left Jax with... what? Punching her? Kicking her? He'd get one blow in if he was REALLY lucky, and then Zooble would be on top of him in a very unsexy way.)

He watches, unblinking, as she coats the yellow over. Maybe, if he sits very still and says nothing, they'll all forget about him.

"Jax," Ragatha repeats, something dark and troubled in her voice. "I've been... really worried about you."

"News to me," Jax says. Is it news to her too?

She acts as if he hasn't spoken. "I know we don't get along. I know you probably... hate me. But disliking your choices doesn't make you not a human- and I think every human needs support sometimes."

(He can't help but feel a little surprised. Jax didn't think his emotions towards Ragatha constituted as hatred. At least, he'd avoided thinking of it as such. Hatred was human. Jax isn't supposed to be made of human emotions. Jax is supposed to be funny. But it's not like he indulges in self-reflection on the regular, either.)

"You've been acting in ways that aren't like you." Ragatha's hands bunch up her dress as they scrunch on her knees. She stares at that rather than him. "And it's happening more and more often."

"Would you stop with the savior shtick?" he entreats, bitter but also begging. "I'm never gonna be some goody two shoes- I do what I love, and I love what I do."

"You're hurting people and being more violent in general. It's like you're on a hair trigger." Finally, she looks at him, eye shiny with unspoken worry. Her chin wobbles a little. "I'm worried about you, Jax."

Jax has the sudden and very disgusted realization that this is setting up to be an intervention. He doesn't want an intervention, he wants to sleep and not wake up. "Oh, so everyone else is allowed to let their mental woes eat them inside out, but I'm being punished for taking my lumps like a man?"

"We talk about our problems," Gangle says, wielding their emotional maturity like an aluminum bat to the shins while switching to his other hand. "It's not going to get better if you ignore it."

"Agree to disagree," Jax says, desperate to move the topic away from him. He's not inherently lying, either; the way most people with suicidal ideation feel, that self-aware lack of self-care that they know isn't good for them but simply don't have it in them to pretend. Jax doesn't want to die, but he'd jump at the chance to exist somewhere quieter and softer and where he didn't have to think about it anymore. Stewing in this anguish seemed the more appropriate option than enduring the humiliation of being known when it's too late to save him. "Can you guys stop acting like you care? We literally just killed Caine. There's no reason to be pretending."

Zooble's claw reaches into frame- Jax tries to lean away but is too slow, getting clocked dead between the eyebrows with a devastating flick. "This might come as a shock to you, bunny boy, but most people don't want to watch people die. It doesn't matter if you're a saint or if you're dogshit- it matters that you're a human being, struggling to make it just like we are, and we LITERALLY have nothing better to do."

Ah, thinks Jax, master of reading between the lines. They want to do it to me themselves.

It's frustrating, being so tired. Jax has spent so long now thrashing against the tide- he just doesn't have it in him to paddle anymore, adrift under the eyes of the other cast. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to hear Ribbit's voice again.

He's wimping out. Being a sensitive little girl. Every admission was a knife given to these people to carve their revenge into him- like a new-age version of picking out the switch dad was gonna use on his hide. And Jax recognizes, distantly, that he deserves it- that they deserve the closure of kicking him while he's down in the same manner he's done to them day after day.

He's crying. Sobbing, really. Desperately, watery inhales rack his scrawny frame he scrambles to put himself back together. Their eyes are like brands on his skin.

"Fuck you," he hiccupped. "I fucking hate you all. I want my last cigar."

Zooble rolls their eyes. "This is therapy, not murder. You're not gonna die. We can't, remember?"

"Not with that attitude I'm not." he snaps, disoriented and feeling more and more like a child against a herd of adults. And he hates it- Jax works hard to feel nothing because his feelings are simply too big, messy, and obnoxious for him to want to face. He's always struggled with all or nothing syndrome. It didn't help that, despite being a liar to his core, Jax hated being lied to. Especially when it feels really obvious. "Look, if you losers want to buy into the idea that you're human, no one's stoppin' you. Whatever gets your engine running. Just leave me out of it."

"Jax..." Ragatha starts, and he knows where this is headed. They've done this song and dance before, from screaming matches to deep philosophical debates. One good days, Jax can believe in his humanity- if only as a nice pipe dream to keep him going. It just never lasted long. "Our consciousnesses-"

"Don't." His voice is flat, in spite of the wet on his face. Jax was torn between the usual forces- the urge to tear it all down, to deserve their ire even more, and the blinding rage that came whenever someone touched that last nerve he'd been ignoring. "Caine's been in our heads for years now. We've all felt it. None of us can prove for sure that he didn't just make that shit up for us too. We can't even prove he didn't make us. Ever think about that? That maybe Caine made me just to make you all suffer?"

They're all exchanging more and more glances. It's creepy. Jax's mind races too fast for him to understand why. Every quiet second feels like an eternity of them plotting right in front of him and him being unable to predict it.

Finally, softly, Ragatha says, "You're right, Jax. I'm sorry. Let's just go to bed, okay?"

That stupefies him. "What?"

"It's like Gangle said. We could fight and hurt each other about this all night, but nothing's going to change from it. I think... we're all just really tired, and stressed, and we need to stop and recover from everything before having some long, complicated talk."

Jax doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't. He just stares. They all drift slightly away, collecting whatever object they intended to sleep on for the night before returning, piling around his couch like jailers outside a cell.

Finished, Gangle caps the bottle. Her voice is soft. Gentle. "We're here for you, you know. If you ever want to talk."

His lips drew back into a sneer at the idea even as he snorked back snot in the most humiliating noise he's ever made. "Why would I ever want to talk to you?"

And still, she seems calm. It's got to be the proximity of the others doing it to her. Gangle shrugs, and says, more damning that any disapproving yell of his name, "There's nobody else here."

Jax sleeps. It's hard to quantify time in the circus, even when all the lights and tech are working- so he doesn't bother, drifting in and out over a prolonged period of time. He thinks it might be days- hears everyone moving around once or twice, even, while he impersonates a coma patient.

He doesn't mind much. His sleep is empty of dreams, or stress, or the nagging memory of Caine in Kinger's room. (Putting it off feels like a great way to draw his ire, but Jax can't find the energy to care enough to do anything about it.)

Kaufmo and Ribbit are back, though in a more gentle sense. Kaufmo pets his head and hovers like an ominous reminder. Ribbit is always far away, always watching- reminding Jax that he killed her, more or less. It's a strange relief; he's been stressed for so long it feels weirder to not be catching things out the corner of his eye. The quiet between bouts of mental illness freaked him out more than the hallucinations these days.

Finally, after being bedridden like a Victorian rich woman with hysteria, Jax's ability to think starts to come back. He starts looking back at the things he said while out of it. He starts cringing; he's given them enough to make fun of him for the rest of his life, short as that life may be. It's certainly not the finale he'd hoped for- like a sick barn cat, Jax had planned on finding a nice little hole to curl up and abstract in without intervention, like the one-key room of his dead best friend. Now he's fundamentally on suicide watch by people he's treated worse than dirt. They all hate him, but they hate him too much to let him go. He hadn't realized that was even a possibility.

(Jax has been hated as far back as he can remember. He's got a knack for pissing people off. He's never been tolerated like this before.)

He finds it dingy and dark and empty when he's finally up to propping himself up on his elbows. Kinger's fiddling with his hands on a giant foldout bed they definitely didn't have before, shoved up against his couch like a mishappen footrest. Guys night.

"You back to bein' crazy yet?"

Kinger sighs and shakes his head. "It's dark enough now that I don't need the bucket at night."

Great. So they're both equally uncomfortable with his sanity. Perfect.

Jax cracks his back in four separate angles and rubs a sore hip joint. Only Caine could be so determined to make things realistic as to give his superstars arthritis. "Riddle me this, deux-ex-dementia. What kind of idiot makes a giant game map without an escape hatch? Or a restart button?"

"I didn't make this place, Jax. Caine did." Kinger mimed an explosion- a big bang. "We came into work one day to find his program holding so much memory it siphoned off all the other computers and bricked them."

"Sounds like a horror movie."

"It sounds like life. Like sentience," he corrected gently. "I made Caine's original base program, but he made everything else- the circus, his avatar, every NPC and interactive object. And he did it based off of a handful of images and no internet access. It took him years of hard work."

It also took lives, but hey. At least daddy was proud of him.

Jax remembered the object stuffed into his pocket and dug it out. It'd been a case of sticky fingers more than actual thought- a quick snatch for fear of Caine spotting it and spiraling. A crystal queen, head snapped clean off. He'd made sure to get both pieces. "And he wasted it on junk no one liked."

Kinger takes the queen, cradling it close. Jax had hoped seeing the glitched object would help the guy calm down, or at least move the topic to something else. He trailed a big finger down the crown.

"Maybe," he said, softly, and oh godddddd are HIS eyes watering now? "But he was… He was always trying his best, and…"

Kinger cuts himself off with a strangled sob. Whereas Caine had been deep and wounded, Kinger cries like a hyperventilation attack- wheezing between short but painful expulsions of grief, up and down the register. He was trying to say something. Probably to reassure Jax that it's not his fault- that sounded fairly Kinger-y to him- but ultimately gives up and buried his face in his knees.

Jax is, frankly, even MORE out of his depth with this one. At least with Caine he'd had something to keep his mind off it- namely the agony of that weird, digitized abstraction- but here and now Jax is alone, utterly clueless, and as shitty at handling emotions as ever.

He's well enough now to be mean. But he doesn't want to be. Jax didn't like messing with Kinger beyond the occasional potato beard; most of the insults went right over his head, and the ones that landed didn't seem to sting that much. It also netted him a LOT of trouble, five stars GTA on the run from Zooble levels of danger. He is acutely aware of how fucked he is if someone walked in right this second. That prey animal instinct to flee is back in full force.

Jax doesn't flee. Jax does what he apparently does best: stare at Kinger like he's grown three heads. Kinger, to his credit, recognizes that Jax isn't exactly someone he can lean on and sets about wiping his eyes and the wood you could call his face.

"I... I wish you could've met her," he says. Despite his lack of nose, he sniffles like any other human. "I think you two would've gotten along."

"Your dead wife?" Jax asks, trying to keep up with the fifteen or so new tropes Kinger has gained in the past days. It's not even intentionally cruel, in spite of the way Kinger flinches.

"Yeah. She loved a good debate. I think you two would've been thick as thieves."

Jax doubts it. He's never been likeable. Most days, he doesn't even like himself.

"I'm sorry," Kinger adds, giving Jax emotional whiplash. Jax couldn't remember the last apology he'd gotten that wasn't filled with at least a little spite- even Ragatha couldn't keep her disgust out of her voice. "I'm freaking you out."

It slips out. It's hesitant. "Everything you do freaks me out. You killed god wearing a bucket."

"Worse," he says, hollow and scraped out. "I killed my son."

Jax isn't going to touch that with a ten-foot pole. "Do you... think Caine could make an exit? And he just didn't?"

Kinger shakes his head so hard his bulbous eyes jangle like loose change. "No, I really don't. He wasn't built to be able to affect the outside world- I can't say enough just how in beta we were with Caine. AI was almost completely sci-fi when I was... out there. And I really don't think Caine would keep us all here intentionally. Not forever. Not all of us. If he could toss people out, I reckon he would've tried with Zooble by now. Or me."

He made an acknowledging noise, a half-laugh to show he was listening. It slips out of Jax and it feels strange even as he does it. He's staring at his purple hands. They don't look natural anymore. They look digital. "Who'd wanna be a crummy human, anyway?"

He shrugs. "I don't think there's anything else he couldn't be."

It's with great trepidation that he retraces his footsteps down the hall of rooms. Jax is critically aware of time, and especially that he's definitely late to getting back to Caine, and Caine is deeply unstable and might just kill him on sight.

Jax's hand hesitates on the doorknob. He's still in those stupid pajamas. It feels like he's lost some of his armor with the overalls- he's human again, somehow, without him even realizing it'd happened.

It's too late to worry about that now, he decides on a whim. Zooble and him have a running bet on whether Caine was tracking their avatars or their voices, but they both agreed tracking was happening. If Jax walked away now, it'd be an even bigger bomb radius later. He twists it and squeezes in through the crack, locking it behind him. As if locks have ever mattered here.

"Caine?" he calls, voice creaking from disuse. Turns out multiple days disassociated will do that to you. "Hey, man, I didn't mean to-"

Caine's arms burst from the confines of the blanket nest situated on the bed, pulling him inside with an unmanly yelp. Caine seems infinitely smaller now, wrapping his rubber hose limbs tight around him. His eyes are somehow still red rimmed and soggy, like he's just stopped crying.

"Jax," he says, and he says it like it's a relief. Like anyone has ever been relieved to see Jax. "I- I thought you weren't coming back."

"The gals and Zooble tied me up for a few days. You know how it is." He shrugs with practiced nonchalance. "You, uh, you have any idea why the circus is going down?"

He slowly shook his head, chewing on his lip. "I'm… I'm weak. Or ill- whatever you call it. It's like the ceiling of my power dropped multiple stories."

"So we need to downsize?"

"No. Maybe? We'll see. I've kept backups of fan favorite adventures saved for a while now- maybe purging them will even things out?" He sounds just as lost as Jax feels, trying to work out data allocation while barely able to move. "I… I was never enough, was I?"

He stares up at the ceiling. He misses his glowy stars. "Nobody's ever enough for anyone. That's why they tell you not to care about that- saves you some heartache."

"Heartache," he mused. "Is that what this is?"

"Hell if I know," Jax says, and immediately regrets the swear as Caine flinches and starts to scrunch up. "Hey, hey, hey! Let's save the waterworks for later, alright?"

Caine's hands bit into Jax's arms as he tried to hold on like a tick. "You… won't leave me, will you? You picked the good ending. You love m… my adventures."

Jax had honestly forgotten about the buttons by this point. Or maybe he just hadn't wanted to think about it. "Wait, is that what all this was about?"

Again, Caine says nothing. He just holds on tighter.

"Caine," he wheezed, wishing he had a few less ribs. "You know we would take you with us, right?"

He blinked up at Jax with something akin to wonder. "You… What?"

Jax flicks the closest tooth he can reach, ignoring that it hurts him more than Caine. "If there was some magical way outta here. Maybe we couldn't, like, make you a body, but we'd take the headset. Heck, we'd grab the whole computer, just to be safe. Plug you in and visit and junk. Who knows? Maybe we could get you some wifi."

He's lying out the ass, but only kind of. No one's exactly spelled this all out to him. But that would be like saying the sky is blue, or the earth is round- basic, common sense. Ragatha had been here for over a decade- and she'd mentioned Kinger being there when she arrived. Humans, who could pack bond to anything and everything, were the perfect choice in suckers to carry around a shoddy vr headset.

"But… Kinger…"

"It was an accident, I swear. He's been crying about it nonstop ever since." He's lying, sort of, because Kinger has only cried once that Jax has seen. "We were just trying to calm you down a little. You really freaked us out, Caine." Why is he defending him? Jax didn't know, exactly. Just that it felt necessary; and that he had to hurry, correct the wrong, with a single-minded desperation. "Look. If there's anything you need to know about humans, it's that we're ungrateful little shits. We always want something more. It's, like, animal hindbrain, for survival. So even though we can't leave- even though we won't leave- part of us will always think about it. It's like seeing lava and wanting to chug it."

Caine is listening to him for once. Like actually listening. The AI is nodding along with hands bunched up in his shirt. It's freaky. "So, what you're saying is… My job is incompletable?"

"Maybe," Jax replies. "Buuuut, if you think about it, it also means we're all on the same page. We all want to be happy. And we didn't know you were unhappy before. So now we can, I dunno, figure it out?"

"You… didn't know?" Each question belays more surprise. Caine had downspiraled hard about this.

"Caine, when's the last time you hung out with any of us? Not counting the Abel thing."

He paused, calculating. "It always seemed like I was not supposed to do that. Like it was a human thing to be together, and I'm… not that."

Jax shrugs. He's so out of his depth he's shocked he hasn't fucked up yet. "Wild concept, but… who cares? Things wouldn't be much different no matter which you were."

"You all care! You care a lot!" Caine's squeezing again, some of that manic intensity returning. "I'm supposed to make you happy, to keep your minds stimulated- but nothing I can do seems to be half as effective as human contact. No one ever… picks me. No one but you."

"Well," he says, trying to divert the oncoming explosion. "You ever try learning from them?"

Caine stares at him, blankly. "What?"

"Learn how humans interact. I'm sure Ragatha and Kinger would love to give you lessons-" he's absolutely throwing them under the bus for this one, Jax barely constitutes as human anyway- "and maybe you could help us learn how to conjure better. Equivalent exchange or something."

"But what if… what if you don't need me anymore? What can I offer once you all know how to do what I do?"

"Uh, duh? Adventures? Just because we can make some sparkly butterflies doesn't mean we can change the entire map." A little gift to Caine's ego, but equally true. Caine had been their all-in-one alarm clock, day planner, menu checker, and more or less the only thing keeping them active most days. "Without you we'd all rot in our beds until we abstracted." Jax grit his teeth for the last truth. Something too vulnerable for his comfort. "We need you, Caine."

"Promise?" he asks, like Jax is not confined to him and therefore able to refuse.

"Pinkie swear."

Later, when pressed, he won't be able to explain why he didn't tell anyone sooner. It never even occurs to him. Jax has always made messes, and messes have always made people mad. Telling the others felt like telling an adult the truth after they promised not to be mad. It's a risk. It's likely not true. In most cases, they have little to offer other than snide judgement. Caine was on everyone's shit list, minus Kinger, and Ragatha's people pleasing hadn't been able to calm him down. Pomni could crack him open like a walnut emotionally, Jax didn't doubt that, but it seemed like kicking a puppy. They were kind of the only other options.

You wouldn't know it when Jax returned, ringmaster awkwardly walking behind him. He didn't know if it was for his comfort or if Caine was simply unable to return to the air, and he didn't really care. The man was fiddling with his bowtie and trying to look confident.

Ragatha's eye welled up with tears. Pomni managed to crack a smile and wave. Kinger falls back onto the sofa from the sheer relief, and the immediate sobs thereafter. Zooble is up and over to them in an instant; Caine goes to say something, probably to try to talk them down from violence, but Zooble flings her arms around him tight.

"You're… not mad?" Caine's voice is painfully small.

"I'm fucking furious," Zooble says, triangle head buried in the crook of his shoulder. "And I'm so, so sorry."

Now everyone is crying, except Jax, who is staring off into space and pretending they don't exist. He catches Kinger's eye. The chess piece lacked a mouth, but somehow he could tell he was thanking him. Jax smiles a little- catches his fake ass gaf-ing and stops, rolling his eyes. Gross. He's being gross.

Kaufmo, out of the corner of his eye, holds up the middle finger. His brain pictures it slathered with the censor.

Jax had a new punchline forming: watching how much better Caine was at loving and being loved than him. He's the biggest liar in the room, pretending he had any right to play human. With any luck his mental crack would be forgotten in a week with the deluge of work ahead. Reality was ants on his skin that would surely eat him like a corpse. But this would keep him busy for a while first.

This, at least, was funny enough to stick around for a bit longer.

And that was probably the same thing as hope.