Chapter Text
It was 4PM on a Friday and Jaiden Mateo, formerly known by the stage name Jax, was once again wondering if she was a real person.
Really, after spending so long playing her part as a cartoon character, her flawed human body replaced by lines of code and colored pixels and her brain a million miles removed from reality, how was she supposed to say? The others who had escaped told her that she was human now and always had been. She'd learned to nod like she believed it just to skip out on yet another fight.
Ironically, the thought that Jaiden had always been a real person was even scarier than the thought that she'd only been reborn as one upon her return to the physical world. If she wasn't real, it all mattered a lot less: her thoughts, feelings, the things she'd experienced, the things she did. The nightmare became a lot less crushing.
Really, it wasn't fair! Jaiden hadn't thought she'd have to think of all of this because she hadn't expected to be around for all that much longer, let alone to be dragged back to reality! She really wished she could've been warned that was a possibility before she'd screwed around in lala land for the last few years of her life, but, well–
What's done is done, and Jaiden couldn't let herself forget it.
Jaiden figured she was a bad person, she just couldn't decide how bad. If she were to say it was 1 to 1, then she'd have to be up there with some of this world's most deranged serial killers on everything but the fact that her victims could not die. The people that Jaiden hurt still hung out with her willingly, so it's not like that was true, but still, sometimes, when she spoke to them she could see them brace themselves for a second like they expected to get hurt.
Jaiden had never, ever, since she was a child getting into stupid playground fights, even hit anyone on purpose in the real world before the night she'd ran away.
Thing was, Jaiden had bought in so hard for so long to all that wacky pixelated nonsense that she was pretty sure she had irreparably fried her brains. She wasn't completely dumb and she swore she understood the set of rules the human world operated on, unfortunately that didn't cancel out the fact that her impulses had been overwritten to follow a completely different code. And so her body didn't move the way she commanded it to, and nothing felt right, and she couldn't stop thinking about people getting hurt.
Okay, that sounded bad. It was bad. Jaiden hopefully wasn't going to do anything because she didn't actually want to, it's just that her brain was full of worms because she'd been literally living in a video game where slapstick cartoon violence was her thing! Moral implications of that aside, she knew very well that she could absolutely not do anything of the sort irl, since people could, like, actually die. Sure, it was funny for approximately 5 seconds to imagine pushing someone off a balcony only for them to emerge from a crater fashioned perfectly in the shape of their silhouette, but it became a lot less funny when she thought about what a fall like that could actually do to the human body. Jaiden wasn't a total monster, and it's not like she could just go around attacking people and expect to get away with it, she wasn't a white male celebrity! She was very aware of the lack of leeway someone like her would be granted, it's not like she was stupid.
Truly though, Jaiden might as well get a lobotomy. She was sure no one else in the whole wide world had problems as specifically stupid as hers. Mental issues brought on by behaving like a literal cartoon animal for an extended period of time? absolutely ridiculous! It was such a dumb, made up sounding disorder that surely no one would have it, but nope, it was now Jaiden's actual real life, yay for her!
With all that, well, Jaiden figured it was understandable that she wasn't quite convinced of her personhood, that she-
Nope, enough of this.
Damn, Jaiden was really up her own ass these days. Embarrassing! She did not need all this philosophizing to complete the task at hand. Rolling her eyes, Jaiden tapped a check box on her cracked phone screen to confirm that yes, she was a human, before submitting her application for the honor of being a Dunkin Doughnuts barista.
It was now past 4 PM, and Jaiden was lying on a cheap mattress on the floor of the utility room in an apartment owned by one of her few friends, a girl she'd met as Pomni and now knew as Abigail. After they'd all left the circus about 6 months back, Jaiden had yapped her mouth a bit too much and gotten herself stuck in the hospital a few days longer than the others, and, when they'd finally let her out, Abby was the one who picked her up and took her home.
Luckily, Abby still had a job and an apartment that her parents had paid the rent on for the few months she'd been gone, and Jaiden had an untouched college savings account with enough money in it to toss her a couple hundred a month, so she'd somehow ended up not leaving yet. For the record, Abby would like it to be known that she did not force Jaiden “into the closet,” she was offered a spot on the couch or in Abby's own room and chose that instead so she'd be have a solo room with a door. Plus, it's not like Abby had a washer and dryer taking up the room anyways, and Jaiden was used to being in a closet! (Okay, maybe that one was getting old…)
Oh yeah, Jaiden was a girl now too!
The final days in the circus had been crazy for everyone, but Jax especially. She was falling to pieces, and somehow she'd gotten broken badly enough that a secret she'd kept from even herself had come tumbling out. Lucky her! She'd screamed, and kicked, and fought, but, in the end, when she was lying limp on the floor, the secret would still not fit back inside, and she felt more alive and terrified than she had in a long time. She hadn't been ready, of course she hadn't been. But, then again, she almost certainly would have died before she was.
Jaiden had gotten just enough hope to let herself be pulled along behind the others, and that's what she needed. For a dangerous, blindingly bright moment, she had been able to imagine a future that she could bear living in alongside people who would support her, and she had stepped back from the brink of oblivion.
Still, it was hard to learn how to live.
“Ugh,” Jaiden clutched her head. The space behind her eyes was starting to ache after too long spent staring at a screen in the dim closet. The string of star shaped lights she tacked to the wall did not not make up for the lack of windows. At least she felt way less shitty than she could've, considering she'd stayed up until 3am winning at Fortnite and nursing a bottle of hard strawberry lemonade.
Deciding that she'd had enough of larping as a responsible job seeking adult for the day, Jaiden took her phone off of do not disturb so she could see if any of her favorite losers had tried to contact her since last night.
The amazing digital server #general
Jax🐰✨ 3:11am
heyy guys yoknow I care u riiiights :D Im like sorryee but yeh :3
Zooble 7:48am
You are so drunk, Jaiden
Ragatha<3 8:02am
Is everything alright?
Jaiden let her phone slip from her hand.
Horrifying. Yuck.
If there was one thing Jaiden hated but had become increasingly good at, it was embarrassing herself in front of her friends. It was already bad enough that she'd been the one to have a total meltdown at the end of their circus era, not to mention the hospital incident, but these days she was feeling her feelings a bit too much and hadn't gotten her shit together fast enough, making her far closer than she'd like to becoming the token lame crybaby trainwreck.
Jaiden wasn't sure “friends” was even the right word for what her fellow escaped performers were to her, it felt too light and too heavy at the same time after everything that had happened between them. Maybe “group of people who tolerate me to various degrees after enduring immense shared trauma even though they should all hate me,” would be more accurate, too wordy though.
Jaiden was different than every other guy at her school, given that she was seemingly the only person who was both distinctly eggy and darker than a peach colored crayon to be found in her lily white suburban district, and was afflicted with a perpetual, lifelong knowledge that there must be something wrong with her, so she hadn't exactly fit in. She was a lot quieter then, and mostly kept to herself. Eventually, she heard that enough people at her school were saying that she either looked mean and scary or acted gay that she started a campaign to get recast as somewhat of a class clown. After that, people stopped looking away when she passed them in the hallway, some of the guys would even invite her out to hang sometimes. Still, she could always feel the distance between her and her “friends,” palms pressed flat to each other's chest to keep the other at arm's length. No one really talked to her in the months after she graduated, and she was gone soon after.
She wondered when goofing off had gone from a way to appear nonthreatening to a type of aggression.
She wondered if life would have felt more bearable if she'd known people like the ones she knew now.
Ugh, whatever.
Deciding to ignore last night's humiliating slip up altogether, Jaiden went to scroll to another channel, where Riley was announcing that they were about to start their second job in 6 months, this time at a piercing shop.
The amazing digital server #employment😔
Jax🐰✨ 4:23
tsk tsk seems that Riley isn't leaving any dyed hair and pronouns jobs for the rest of us 🙄
When Jaiden didn't immediately get a response back, she x-ed out the app, pulling up her emails instead. Looks like she'd already gotten an email back, definitely automated, thanking her for her application. She wasn't particularly jazzed about her prospects. What did she have? A high school diploma and a several years long gap in her employment history? Sure, the guys in the 2 interviews she'd actually managed to land seemed to find the “laminated copy of her missing person's poster” bit amusing, but apparently not enough to add her stellar sense of wit to their team.
Jaiden sighed. She couldn't even go to the store successfully last week without there being issues (that kid had been hit by a cart in a very visually comedic way, God forbid she laugh a bit), how was she supposed to hold down a job if she did get one?
Jaiden's phone beeped again, this time from a text.
Dollface: Hey girl, thinking of you. :)
Mute.
They'd been fighting less, but their relationship just had new ways to feel weird in the human world, where it was clear that the already “mom friend”-ish Suzie was actually 8 real years older than her. Jaiden feared she was dangerously close to being cast as her annoying little sister.
Besides, there were some things that Suzie wanted to talk to her about that Jaiden certainly didn't.
Jaiden's eyes stung. It was time to come out of the closet. (yeah, definitely getting old.)
Blinking from the sunlight that was streaming through the blinds, Jaiden strode into the kitchen, managing to hit her shoulder on the doorframe on her way out. Out of other things to do, she decided to start cooking dinner so it could be ready when Abby got home. After all, Jaiden had plans for the two of them, and she saw no reason for her secret scheme to be delayed.
Since she didn't work and was better at it than Abby, Jaiden had taken over as the primary cook in the apartment. It did help her remember that she had to eat food around here. It had felt so weird the first month or so back, having to get reaccustomed to opening and closing her mouth in order to eat and talk, and she still wasn't quite on track with consistently finding food multiple times a day. It was much more convenient when she didn't have to do all that, but alas.
Jaiden pulled her bowl of sliced pork out of the fridge, where she'd left it to marinate in a bath of assorted sauces, seasoning, and a healthy dash of red 40. She added a couple shakes of red pepper flakes before moving the meat to the frying pan. A month ago, Riley had told her that her white side took control when she seasoned her food and she was still pretty pissed off about it.
After firing up the rice cooker, Jaiden decided to find a YouTube video to occupy her attention while she cooked. She'd been getting into true crime lately, and had spent too many a day watching videos about the world's many sad missing or dead girls until her eyes ached or teared up. She was a former missing person herself after all, she couldn't help the fascination.
Jaiden actually had looked into her own case once. Turns out the police had immediately marked her as a runaway and, since she had technically been an adult, they didn't even investigate her disappearance until over a month later when her car was found abandoned in a ditch. Her mom had talked to the media a couple times, but nothing much seemed to come of it, and she didn't even know if her dad knew she was missing or just assumed that her absence was due to her mom no longer being court mandated to let her call once a year. She wondered if there was more she was missing behind the scenes, if her absence had left a bigger empty space in this world than she could see. She wondered if there was anyone out there she was haunting. At least her mom was still alive to ask for her return, and she'd almost sounded genuine in the interviews. At least there wasn't a warrant out for her arrest.
No one had made any videos about her.
When she started to get a bit too romantic about the idea of a reality where she'd become a tragic mystery, Abby had to remind Jaiden that she would have never have been recast as a missing girl if she'd not come back. She would have just been some guy a few people went to school with, one woman's son who she seemed to be doing perfectly fine without, always represented by that stupid picture of her in high school with her baggy hoodie and her blank, dead eyes. It felt too real like that for the idea to compel her anymore, leaving only the cold, dark feeling that lingered behind her interest in the myth and mystery.
There were a lot of girls like Jaiden who were missing, maybe she should be more thankful that she was one of the few that got to come back.
Sometimes, Jaiden wondered if her mom had been notified when she'd taken herself off the missing person's list. It would be fair, probably. Jaiden got to know her mom was alive, and the same in reverse. Still, she half hoped that her mom hadn't been told. The person her mom was looking for was never coming back.
Compared to some of the others, Jaiden may as well have been born fresh out of the digital womb and punted out into the world a completely different person. New name, new look, new friends. Almost nothing of her previous life remained, not that she wanted to go looking for it.
See, some of those other unlucky bastards had ended up in the circus by pure accident, but Jaiden was likely headed out when she left the real world, one way or another. She couldn't have known what would happen when she put the headset on, but she supposed she probably belonged there. There was simply far less tethering her to the earth than most. Sure, the five she'd come back with were more detached from their lives than your average person but, even among them, Jaiden stood out.
Jaiden's video ended. In the recommended tab, another one hovered, the red bar on the bottom marking how far Jaiden had gotten the last time she'd tried to watch it. Leah Santos, a missing young adult from the same general area Jaiden, Abby, and the others were from. There was a picture of her in the thumbnail: short hair that was shaved on the side, too much eyeliner, and a button down with suspenders and a red bowtie. Jaiden would be hard pressed to picture a more stereotypical late 2010s nonbinary person, but, in family interviews, the only one who referred to them as anything other than “she” was their older sister. Right where the ruby red marker stopped, there was a video clip Leah's sister shared of them reading a poem they wrote for a college showcase, but Jaiden felt like she'd throw up if she watched to the part where Leah started talking, afraid of any confirmation or lack thereof.
Jaiden wasn't looking for anything. Still, someday, when she could force her shaking fingers to send the message before turning her phone off for the next 24 hours and spending the night sobbing into her pillow, Jaiden knew she'd send Suzie a link, a timestamp, and a request to tell her whose voice it was that she heard.
Jaiden's phone screen timed out, fading to black as she finished placing the eggs she'd just fried next to the already cooked pork. The rice would be done soon too, if the look she got through the steamy glass lid was any indicator. She pulled out a juicy tomato from the fridge, washed it, and began to methodically chop it. When was done, Jaiden grinned at her work and spun the knife around her fingertips in an approximation of some fancy little trick that she remembered seeing in a video once.
Losing her grip mid spin, Jaiden watched as the knife bounced off of her bunny slipper and clattered to the floor. She stared at it for a minute, eyes blank, before swiftly picking it up and depositing it in the sink.
Glancing at the clock, Jaiden realized she had about 10 minutes until Abby would be home. Time to get dressed.
After stopping by her room to riffle through her storage bin for a suitable outfit, Jaiden found herself in front of the bathroom mirror, quickly touching up her eyeliner wing before tending to her messy hair. Said hair was fried and splotched bleach blonde and purple from an impulsive dye job which she definitely should've asked a professional or a Zooble for help with before trying, but whatever. Sighing, she pulled it into a half up ponytail.
Jaiden's hair wasn't even much longer than it was before the circus, everyone who'd gotten out had to cut off a decent amount of hair that was matted beyond saving, and hers was just now reaching beyond shoulder length again. Her mom had pitched a fit back in the day when her hair had first neared this long. She didn't appreciate Jaiden's flimsy excuses all that much, and somehow always managed to spin things around so she could act like Jaiden was the one attacking her if she let so much as a sliver of emotion into her voice. Her mom was just like that, everyone always told Jaiden how nice and good and respectable her mom was, which she knew meant that she would always be the evil one for any defiance she showed.
Turning her back to the mirror, Jaiden slipped on a graphic tee and black cargo shorts, belting them tightly at the waist to give the illusion that she wasn't built like a ruler before ruining it by covering the outfit with a plain black hoodie. Slipping off the fingerless gloves she'd been wearing, Jaiden replaced them with plain black ones.
Jaiden fiddled with the cuffs of her sleeves, annoyed that they weren't fitted enough to stay in place when she moved. She'd cut thumb holes into some of her hoodies, but not this one apparently. It felt weird to be wearing normal gloves instead of the long fingerless ones she'd taken to wearing since her return.
Chancing a look back at the mirror, Jaiden rolled her eyes. Definitely not her favorite outfit, but it was all in service of her schemes. She added a pair of saggy black leg warmers for a dash of flavor.
Jaiden was just thinking about adding thumb holes to her hoodie when she heard the sound of keys turning in the door knob. She dashed to the living room, managing to artfully splay herself across the arm of the couch right before the door opened.
“Splendid evening, my magnificent mademoiselle,” Jaiden announced in a stupid voice, “have some dinner and enjoy your mandated decompression hour, because after that we are going on an adventure.”
“Hi to you too, Jaiden,” Abby replied, putting her briefcase down “but what?”
“Remember how I suggested last week that we could hang out after work this Friday and like, actually leave the house this time like you've been asking for? Well, that's what this is.”
“So you're taking me on an adventure?” Abby asked.
“Of course,” Jaiden purred, “I'm your personal manic pixie nightmare girl.”
Abby laughed. “Are you going to tell me where we're going?
“Tch, trying to ruin the surprise”— Jaiden wagged her finger back and forth— “it's something you'll enjoy, wear some of your old urbex clothes.”
“Okay okay,” Abby sighed, ”but, if you've somehow tracked down some Caine level dangerous nonsense irl, I am the one with the car and I will turn us around.”
“Aw, c'mon,” Jaiden said as she placed a hand over her heart, “I know you don't like that stuff, but you've seemed bored lately. It'll just be a bit of excitement, not a murder house or something, trust me!”
“Alrighty.”
Running a hand through her hair, Abby left her shoes by the door and fully stepped inside. Sliding off the couch, Jaiden padded along behind her to the kitchen. Abby pulled the lid off the pans, then the rice cooker, looking pleased with the offerings.
Creeping up close behind her, Jaiden made an exaggerated biting motion over the top of Abby’s head, complete with fake chewing noises.
“I just got home and you're already trying to mess with me,” Abby complained lightheartedly.
“What, you don't want me to chomp on you?”
Abby laughed. “Being annoying, huh?”
“I just get away with it cause’ I'm sooo cute,” Jaiden said, pointing at her face.
Abby raised a brow at her.
“Tough crowd?”
“You always say you're cute in a way that makes me feel like it's supposed to be ironic, it, like, doesn't work,” Abby replied.
Jaiden clicked her tongue. “Dang.”
“You do know that you're like, really cute, right?”
Jaiden stared at her roommate, every cell in her body frozen solid. After a good minute, she forced herself to smile.
“Of course!” Jaiden exclaimed, pointing finger guns at Abby.
Abby raised an eyebrow at Jaiden as she pulled a plate down from the cupboard.
“Anyways, I'll leave you to it,” Jaiden said, already backing out of the kitchen, “breakfast for dinner, enjoy!”
After an hour and a half and a lot of Jaiden tapping her toes by the front door, she finally had her ass seated in the passenger seat of Abby's secondhand SUV as the city passed by around them. The radio was up, blasting some 2000s pop hit that the two girls were singing along to, their voices loud and slightly off key.
Abby laughed, taking one hand off the steering wheel to rub her eye. “You know how the gang keeps saying that we should do karaoke but we never do?”
Jaiden nodded.
“Well”— Abby twirled a piece of her hair around her finger— ”it should actually happen this time and we should sing a duet. We'd, like, totally crush the competition.”
Jaiden laughed. “I don't think karaoke is a competition.”
Abby reached over to jab her on the shoulder. “C’mon, it could be!”
Jaiden laughed, and the two drifted off topic into some random conversation which eventually tapered off into a comfortable silence. She glanced over at Abby, taking in the other girl watching the road with a calm look on her face. It was nice to see her not be on edge, her warm brown eyes soft and her brow lacking its usual furrow. As she often did outside work, she was dressed in a comfy, tomboyish fashion: her cargo pants and T-shirt paired with a Sherpa lined, acid wash jean jacket. She wore it so easily that Jaiden didn't dare challenge whether it was appropriate for the activity at hand.
Running a hand through her bangs, Jaiden turned to watch the scenery out the window. Daylight had almost fully leached from the sky, and the city lights faded too as they drove further and further out of town. Anticipation crackled like electricity around Jaiden, setting her hair on end.
Around 40 minutes away from the apartment, Abby finally turned off into the lonely strip mall parking lot Jaiden had directed her to. Gravel crunched under their shoes as they hopped out of the car, shaking their legs out. There was a slight cool breeze drifting through the late summer air, and Jaiden tugged her jacket closer around herself.
“So,” Abby drawled, looking back and forth between cracked pavement and flickering neon signs, “what exactly are we doing here?”
Jaiden breathed in deeply, tracing the toe of her purple converse on the ground.
“We just needed somewhere to park, our actual destination is a bit further down the road.”
Abby gave Jaiden a look that she really hoped was puzzled as opposed to disappointed.
For some reason, a part of Jaiden had always wanted Abby to like her, terrified as she was of actually being her friend. And, for some other reason, Abby, smart, kind, fun Abby who could have anyone as her friend, was dead set and determined to have Jaiden close to her. She refused to leave Jaiden behind no matter how the other girl tried to push her away. Jaiden didn't get it, yet she was certain it was the reason she had made it this far.
Out of everyone, Abby was the one person Jaiden could say was her friend without hesitation, a distinction Abby had long fought for. Jaiden had finally relented when they'd moved in together, figuring that, with everything she'd done, Jaiden could at least let her have that one thing.
Jaiden really, really hoped her plans for tonight were a hit.
“Abby, you're never going to guess this,” Jaiden said.
“Hm?”
“The reason I told you to wear urban exploring clothing… is because we're going urban exploring.”