Archive of Our Own

A kaleidoscope of light. Searing heat scorches through his body, and he thinks he's wailing, he thinks he's crying, he can't tell. It all blends into an obliterating overload of white-hot agony.

Arms loop around him and squeeze.

Through the miasma of anguish, he hears Pomni screeching—it's a high-pitched, wild sound, like an animal with its leg caught in a trap.

She's choking the life out of him and she wrenches him back, away from the light, away from his promise of safety and salvation. Her feet scrabble against the ground as she suplexes him off the floor, howling her fury into his back.

He feels like his skin is being torn. Jax can hear himself screaming.

Pomni's sense of balance falters, and Jax feels her fall to the floor. He falls onto her with a punched out sob. He flails, trying to regain his composure as he stumbles out of her arms, and twists to face her, panting and weeping. He slams back to the floor ass-first, and tries to crab-walk away from her as fast as he can. He's shaking too hard to even dream of standing up.

His whole body throbs and aches. It feels so real.

Pomni's hand slams to the ground as she braces herself against the floor. She's panting as she turns to look at him. Her eyes are wild. They soften when they meet his. Whatever she sees in his face kills her intensity.

"Jax," she starts. It's that imploring, worried tone that he's come to resent, just more breathless than usual. There's a note of horror in it.

Anger slams into him all at once. He tries to open his mouth to shout at her, to tell her to stop, stop it, but it only comes out as a small, croaking wheeze. It makes him feel very aware of how exposed he is right now. How vulnerable he is.

"Holy shit!" That's Zooble's voice.

They're turning the corner, locked in on Pomni. They drop to their knees next to her, reaching out to help her up. Pomni raises a hand and shakes her head, her face severe. Her body is glitching. Jax wonders if his is too.

"Shit, shit," Zooble hisses instead, "are you okay?!"

"I'm gonna be," Pomni growls, resolute.

Ragatha and Gangle poke their heads into the hall next, with Kinger on their tail. Jax's eyes dart around the hallway as he tries to find a route of escape.

"We were so worried, we heard you—" Ragatha starts, and then looks up. She meets Jax's gaze dead-on, and goes silent. Tears brim in the corner of her eye. Her hand flies up to cover her mouth. He can't tell if the look on her face is relief or fear.

Gangle's staring at him like she's seen a ghost. Pomni slowly raises to her feet, brows furrowed. She winces as every movement jars her wavering form.

Cowered on the floor, panting, confused and disoriented, with everyone standing above him, taller than him… it reminds Jax of something deeply unpleasant. They're all staring at him. They're all seeing him.

Jax knows they're not going to like what they see.

His breath quickens until his head is spinning, and he feels like he's going to vomit. He forces himself upwards with a frustrated cry, swaying in place, and then turns and bolts towards his room as fast as he can.

"NO!" Pomni screams.

Jax only barely slips on the carpet. Pomni gains on him in seconds and grabs his wrist, yanking him hard enough that he stumbles in place, and she uses all of her might to body him to the floor. He howls in frustration and tries to kick out.

"You're! Not! Leaving!" she shouts, ragged and animalistic. She loops her arms around his waist again. She's ugly sobbing already, squeezing him as hard as she can. "You're not leaving me! You're not gonna go and abstract on us again, you're staying right here and we're gonna fix this—!"

"Let GO of me!" Jax wails. It sounds purely defensive, cornered. He's falling apart. "Let go let go let go let go of me! LET GO!"

She doesn't. She's panting through gritted teeth. Jax thrashes, tries to kick out at her, but his body isn't working in the way that he wants. He can feel himself glitching, and it forces a miserable moan out of him.

Tears are streaming down his face. He can feel them cling to the soft layer of fur over his skin. He can feel his muscles clenching with every glitch that rips through him. His entire body throbs with his heartbeat. The fabric of his overalls scratches him uncomfortably. Pomni's body is warm against him. He can feel her heaving chest against his back.

Real, it all feels so real. He doesn't want it to be real.

He wants to die. Abstraction was a kinder fate than this. He's utterly humiliated.

"Let me go," he says, weaker. It's less like a demand and more like a childish plea.

Pomni sniffles, but doesn't respond. She's shaking hard, but she holds him steady.

Jax twitches, and then finally lets himself go limp. He tries to return to the headspace he was in when he abstracted, but he finds it slipping away. His breathing calms against his will as the fight drains out of him. His gaze finds the far wall, and remains there.

They're laid in front of Ribbit's door.

Pomni shifts, and sits up. She gives Jax an opening to run, and sighs in relief when he doesn't seize it. He feels like his insides have been hollowed out.

"I don't get it." Ragatha's voice is quiet and weepy. A small part of him feels shame on her behalf, and then anger that she's in any way pretending to care. "He was- he was gone, we saw him. He was gone—"

"Well he's not now," Zooble responds with surprising softness. "Apparently he wasn't as far gone as we thought."

"I-I just," a sob punches out of her as she works herself up into hysterics. "I'm just. When Kaufmo abstracted, I thought maybe, maybe… what if Caine could fix him? And I knew it was dumb, that's not how it worked with—" she inhales a sharp breath, "—but… could we have fixed him? Could we have—"

"Hey, hey," Zooble stops her. "We shouldn't- we don't know that for sure. We don't fully know how this works."

"You shouldn't get caught up in that," Pomni says. Her voice is soft and steady. She's mostly pulled away from him, except for a hand she's placed on his back.

"It's not your fault, Ragatha," Kinger adds. "Come here."

Jax can hear Ragatha sniffling. He's sick of the noise, of them being around him. He curls up into a trembling ball on the floor. The shame feels utterly heart-rending. Pomni rubs reassuring circles between his shoulder blades.

"Is he gonna abstract again?" Gangle's voice asks.

Jax can't read her tone. He doesn't care anyway. He shouldn't, at least.

"We should bring him somewhere dark," Kinger says. "I don't think he's fully back to himself. It might calm him for now, at least. Pomni, do you think his room would work?"

Pomni's hand stills. "I," she starts, and then stops. "Jax… wouldn't want any of us seeing it. And- I'm… I don't think we should leave him alone right now, he might just— y'know."

"Yeah, we saw," Zooble sighs. "The idiot's probably just gonna run off and do it again the second we leave him alone."

"I'm… it really hurts right now," Pomni's voice goes even quieter. "I don't know if I can chase him like that again. Not unless we find a way to- yeah. Yeah."

Jax hides his face in his knees. The way they're talking about him like he isn't there makes him want to lash out like a wild animal, just bite and scream and shove until they all get the hint and leave him alone.

Any attempt to put the mask back up wouldn't even work, he knows that. They've seen him now. Just like she had, and look at how that went.

"You can use my room," Gangle pipes up again. "It's pretty dim."

"Are you sure?" Zooble asks, near-immediate. Typical of them. "It's gonna suck if you have to sleep in the same room with him."

Gangle stifles a teary giggle. "I can just stay with you. It's… okay, Zooble."

Zooble's limbs clack as they move. Jax peeks out from the cover of his knees and watches them press their foreheads together, Zooble wiping her tears away. His stomach rolls with disgust. If he watches them get lovey-dovey on each other for any longer, he's going to actually vomit.

"Jax?" Pomni asks, like she's talking to a wounded animal. "You think you can stand on your own?"

Why the hell do you care?—Just give me a second, just let me breathe—I told you to let me go, so let me go—Aww, are you worried about me or something? You're such a creep—Leave me alone, just leave me alone, I hate you—I'm sorry, just don't look at me, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—

His head lolls to the side. He stares blankly at the wall, and thinks about how comforting it felt when he finally abstracted. Ribbit's portrait stares down at him, judging. Maybe he'd get to be with them again if he'd gone through with it. Maybe he'd get to say sorry. What a stupid thought.

They're speaking over him. The words are muffled under the ringing in his ears. If they're addressing him, he doesn't notice. He doesn't care.

Pomni shifts to give him space, and he feels disgustingly bereft as her body heat retreats from him. His body sparks as he glitches on the floor, and it feels similar to the throes of fever. He wants to run again, but he can't find the strength.

Unfamiliar hands lift him off the ground. Jax jerks in shock, reality crashing back down on him as he twists to shout at whoever's intruding his personal space.

His breath catches at the look on Kinger's face. Even past his stupid, unreadable avatar, and under the stupid bucket, the grief in his eyes is very clear. Jax thinks he would feel very, very bad if he were to yell at him now. He hates himself for listening to his conscience.

"Sorry, Jax," Kinger says, cradling him carefully. He's holding him away from his chest— so the glitches don't spread to the rest of his body, most likely. He's using a tone Jax remembers coming from him in his first days arriving at the circus, when he would jump at his own shadow and spent most of his time crying and panicking. "Try not to think about it."

Jax opens his mouth to spit out whatever with as much venom as he can manage. Instead, what comes out is a disgustingly meek, trembling, "okay."

"Doesn't that hurt?" Ragatha asks.

"I'll be okay, don't you worry about me," Kinger assures. "Although I won't be able to conjure for a bit. Pomni, will you be able to walk? You can hold onto me if you need to."

"I'll walk," Pomni says. "I'm… okay, Kinger."

"You can ask for help if you need it," Kinger reminds her.

Jax's brows press down hard on his closed eyes. A headache begins to throb in the back of his skull. He wonders if it's psychosomatic; he'd stressed himself into migraines constantly back before he'd come to the circus. Although it's not like any of those memories are real.

"I'm not the one who almost abstracted," Pomni reminds him back. "But I'll ask if I need to."

"Gangle and I are gonna go set up the room," Zooble says. "We want to push the bed up against the wall, so Pomni can sleep in front."

"So he won't be able to leave without waking her up," Ragatha says. "That… that makes sense."

"I still think one of us should sit with him, though," Zooble's voice is fading with their footsteps. "At least outside the door for now, until we figure out how to fix them."

"Caine could do it," Kinger says imploringly, "so it might be a matter of figuring out how to conjure it. It sounds like a good chance for you guys to practice."

He can't listen to this anymore. Jax tries to jump deep back into the safe, murky recesses of his own mind where he doesn't have to think about reality. Maybe he just tells it to himself enough, it won't be real at all.

Jax blinks. His eyes are open. He thinks they may have been open the whole time.

He's in a bed, facing the wall. It's not his; the photos aren't there.

The covers are soft. The lighting is dim. He looks at his hand. Glitches arc off of his glove like little sparks of lightning. He can feel it hurt, but in a distant, fuzzy way, like it's happening to someone else. His whole body is throbbing.

He curls his hand into a fist. It's shaking.

He swallows. It's dark.

He rolls onto his back. A canopy has been hung above the bed he's laid in, casting him in shadow. He stares up into the darkness, and wonders how long he's been out.

He's never completely checked out in front of other people before. But he hasn't actively tried to kill himself in front of people, either (or been semi-successful in doing so), so he may as well have thrown himself into the deep end. It makes his chest tighten with anxiety.

"Hey," Pomni says.

Jax blinks. He turns his head. She's curled up at a considerable distance from him. She looks about as bad as he feels, but the smile on her face is soft. There's genuine worry and affection there.

A thought flashes in his mind, about smacking her until she learns to never look at him like that again. It's deeply unpleasant, and he closes his eyes in an attempt to dispel it. He doesn't want to hurt her.

He looks back at the blanketed ceiling, because it's easier than looking at her.

"Are you with me?" she asks.

Jax has to steel himself before he speaks.

"Don't think I ever left," he grinds out. His voice is flatter and raspier than he wants to be. He doesn't even have the energy to pitch it up and down in the way he usually does. How pathetic of him.

"I've been trying to talk to you for… a while," Pomni replies. "So that's not true."

Jax wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn't think he can move at all.

"Who cares."

Pomni takes a deep breath. "I do," she says. "I'm- I'm not saying you, uh. That you have to be completely honest with me about everything. I know it's not— I know it's hard. But I don't want you to shut yourself away again, like you did before. With me or," she sucks in a sharp breath, "with pretty much everyone else."

He doesn't even have the energy to be angry, like he should be. Her patience almost feels infantilizing. Jax hates the wounded animal voice. He hates it on Ragatha, he hates it on Kinger, he hates it on Pomni. Sometimes he hated it on Ribbit, too, even when he felt disgusted with himself for resenting it. It makes him feel small.

He stares up at the darkness of the canopy. His hands are folded over his chest. It's the kind of pose someone would have when they're being laid to rest in a coffin.

"I'm not going to abstract again," he says, after a long moment. He thinks it may be a lie.

Pomni is quiet for a long, long moment. He doesn't want to look at her imploring, worried face, as she likely pieces everything together. Jax knows he's already said and shown things he can't take back, but it was easier to be vulnerable knowing he was going to be gone for good. He hates having to sit with it.

"You're right," she says, calmly. "You're not."

She says it like she's certain, like she'll make sure of it. Jax wants to get up and run, but his body feels so heavy. He's tired, and it's the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that only comes after crying for a long, long time. The past few days have just been a blur of that.

His skin itches. He remembers how it felt to have it torn off.

Jax can't refute her. He has no option to escape, not with how determined she is. Not until he's healed, at least; for now, he can at least play her game, lay here until she says it's okay for him to be on his own, and then finally put himself to rest. He'll wait for as long as he has to.

He feels like a prisoner. He may as well already be in the cellar.

He drifts. His eyes remain open.

He can see shapes in the shadows. Maybe his eyes have been open too long. He doesn't actually, technically need to blink, just like he doesn't need to breathe, but it still hurts after a while. His tear ducts must be collecting dust.

Pomni is asleep at his side. Maybe she got bored waiting for him to get himself together. Her brow is furrowed like she's having an unpleasant dream, although it may just be the pain she's in. Jax watches her in reserved silence.

The last time he'd been curled up on a bed with someone…

He blinks. Time has passed. Pomni's moved in her sleep, faced away from him. Her back is rising and falling steadily. There's a trembling shape in front of the bed, half-hidden by the canopy curtains.

He recognizes the shape of coily hair, and the sound of Ragatha's voice. She's sobbing.

Anger stabs at him, and then regret. He wants to go back to where he was before, but she's caught his attention. He doesn't think he can drift until she's left the room. The idea of being so exposed in front of Ragatha is especially painful.

Jax sits up. The bed creaks, but he's careful not to jostle Pomni. Ragatha's head whips around, and she looks like she's expecting to be screamed at. He doesn't have the energy to scream, or needle her, or even tell her to go away. His ears have pulled so far back they're brushing down against his shoulders, like limp pool noodles. He hates the sensation.

He stares at her with bored, half-lidded eyes.

"This is my fault," Ragatha weeps, softly. When Jax doesn't respond, she buries her face back in her knees. "I should've known, I knew you were just scared, I knew you were grieving but- but I just let you get worse, Jax, I failed you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

A part of him wants to say yeah, it was, even though it wasn't. He knows it'd hurt her. But he doesn't know if she would leave if he said it, and he has no method to effectively pull away. He'd just listen to her blame herself until he was allowed to get out of bed.

"Why do you think," Jax starts, his voice low and raspy, "you have any power over me?"

Ragatha jolts. Maybe she wasn't expecting him to speak. He knows he's been quiet.

"Jeez, can I not make my own choices?" he snarls. The sides of his mouth twitch like he's trying to force a smile, but he can't manage it. "Why does it have to be your fault that I chose to do something? Why does it have to be about you?"

Ragatha's eye blows wide with horror. "I'm not trying to be selfish," she insists, voice trembling, "I promise, I-I—"

"Here we go with this again," Jax growls. "I don't want to hear this."

"And look at what happened when I stopped saying it!" Ragatha hisses back.

Pomni shifts, and Ragatha rears back, clenching her teeth. Jax watches her face change. It's anger, and then despair and grief, and then reserved exhaustion. Neither of them speak until they're sure Pomni's still asleep.

"I don't know anything anymore," Ragatha warbles. "I don't know when you're saying things because you mean it, or when you just want to hurt my feelings. I just— should I have pushed more? Shouldn't I have known?"

"You were pushing too much," Jax replies, devoid of any emotion. "I'm tired of you thinking you just—" his hands curl into fists. He wants to smack himself, but his body still barely cooperates with him. "You don't know me."

Ragatha's face twists up with despair.

"You don't know me," Jax repeats, and his voice shakes. It feels more like he's begging her not to.

He sits on it for a moment. It feels like the crux of the issue, one that Ragatha just doesn't get, no matter how much he's tried to scream it at her. He knows she hates him. He knows she's scared of him, even, and that's not the part that bothers him. It's the part of her that tries to pry past him and see the weak, whimpering thing that he's spent so long trying to squash down. The person he was when he'd first arrived.

That's not him. It can't be. She doesn't understand she's clinging to a ghost. Doesn't she get that he's sick of it?

Because he doesn't have many other choices, he says candidly, "There's nothing you could've done."

Ragatha responds like he'd just said something reassuring. She nods sharply, but the flow of tears don't stop. She sinks back down to pull her knees to her chest, staring at the far wall instead of at him.

"I'm sorry," she says, again.

"I don't care," Jax responds. He wants to stop talking about this.

Ragatha takes a deep breath. "I do care about you," she whispers. "I- I don't know if you thought I didn't, but I do. It's— I don't know how I feel, but I don't want you to feel like- like this. I don't want you to push everyone away."

"What, do you think saying that is gonna make me not want to abstract?" Jax turns to look at the wall. He's only now fully registering he's in Gangle's room. He thinks they'd been talking about it earlier. "Because it won't."

"I guess it's progress that you're talking about it at all," Ragatha says through a wet laugh, more to herself than to him.

Jax clams up. His eyes blow wide. He feels like he's been doused in cold water.

Has he been opening up?

He sucks in a loud, heaving breath, and Ragatha whirls around to look at him again. Whatever she sees makes her eyes widen with horror. She stumbles to her feet, backing away and shaking her head.

"I'm sorry," she says, reaching for him before thinking better of it. "I don't— did I say something wrong? I'm- I'm sorry—"

Jax clutches his chest. His heart is thundering. His ears ring. He's coughing up dry sobs as he futilely attempts to breathe. The bed seems to tremble with him. He claws at his fur, and something inhuman comes out of him— a high, keening whine. His skull rattles with it.

Pomni's eyes shoot open. She winces in pain, but she forces herself up to look at him.

Jax makes a punched out sound and kicks out as he tries to back away from her. Ragatha looks horrified, cupping her mouth with both of her hands. He can see light. He can't breathe, he can't breathe.

"Jax," Pomni whispers. He stares straight through her. "Jax, you need to breathe."

He shakes his head. He doesn't know if he can.

Pomni sucks in a deep breath, and she jumps forward to wrap her arms around him again. He flinches as she traps his arms at his sides.

"Pomni, you shouldn't—" Ragatha starts.

"It's not gonna get any worse," Pomni shoots back. "Hey, hey. It's gonna be okay, nobody's going to hurt you."

"Don't touch me!" Jax snarls, thrashing in her hold. His voice is glitching so hard that the words are barely comprehensible. He doesn't have the strength to push her away. God, he can't.

Pomni lets go immediately. There's a flash of hurt on her face, but she buries it under the appearance of resolve. Jax raises his chin towards the ceiling, folding himself into the wall the best he can and breathing so fast and hard that he feels like he's going to explode.

He hopes he does, now that he's aware it's possible.

The canopy suddenly feels so bright.

"Should I go get Kinger?" Ragatha asks, her voice thick with tears.

"I don't know," Pomni sounds scared. "I don't know how to make it stop spreading."

Ragatha's footsteps retreat. Jax gags on his own air, his whole body rattling with every shuddering sob. He can't hear Pomni's voice, but he knows she's trying to talk to him. It hurts so much, he just wants to die.

Fingers lace through his. The touch is light and reluctant. It's so much easier than a hug, and Jax leans into it in blind desperation, crouching forward until his forehead hits the sheets and his back arches in the air.

The hand squeezes, and continues in a rhythm. He tries his best to breathe with it. His free hand claws at the blankets as he tries to grapple onto something to ground him. He can't tell if the person he's holding onto is shaking, or if it's him.

He heaves and heaves and heaves, until exhaustion finally begins to win over, and the tension in his chest begins to unwind. Sweat drips down his face. He didn't even know he could sweat before now, so that's great. He's hot and overstimulated, even though the room is silent outside of his crying and panicking.

Pomni's thumb is brushing his knuckles tenderly. The motion is more reassuring than it should be.

"You should lay down," she says.

Her fingers unwind from his, but only by a little. Her other hand cups his waist to help him back down, and he follows without protest. He's too tired and terrified to do anything else. He can't even muster up the strength to feel shame.

"How are you feeling?" Pomni asks.

Jax thinks he's been asked that way too much lately.

"At this point I'm just happy I didn't puke," Jax complains, as his eyes fall shut.

Pomni chokes on a wet laugh, and swallows back her tears. She doesn't keep pressing him; she's probably gotten so good at understanding his tells that she doesn't need to. Jax's eyes roll up to look at her face, and she's staring out at the doorway of Gangle's room, sat up like she's guarding him.

He wants to mock her for caring so much. He doesn't think it'd make her stop, so he doesn't. He doesn't even know if he wants her to.

He lets his eyes fall shut. He doesn't think he sleeps again; at this point it's getting harder and harder to tell.

"It's not your fault."

Kinger's voice. Jax thinks he might be dreaming, because he's never heard him sound so soft and gentle. It sounds like the kind of thing his brain would make up when he's especially homesick. He doesn't have the energy to try and check.

"It's— I could've killed him!" Ragatha sounds back, clearly upset. "I don't know what I did wrong, I don't know how to fix this— he thinks I'm selfish, he hates me, he—"

"Ragatha," Pomni pipes up, "you didn't— it's not like that. I know he was terrible to you for a long time. You don't have to forgive him for this just because— you know. There's no excuse for that. If he blamed you, he was wrong."

"He— he didn't. He seemed to hate the idea, actually. I just— I don't want him to abstract," Ragatha weeps, "I don't want him to die."

"We're working on making sure that doesn't happen," Kinger responds patiently, "but no matter what happens, it's still not going to be your fault."

"Everyone reached out," Pomni says. "I know you tried so hard. I tried so hard, and— he just didn't want to talk about it."

"You can't force it," Kinger adds. "You did everything we could. We all did. Sometimes it's just not that easy with people. You're not responsible for him or his feelings."

Ragatha bursts into sobs.

"Okay," she cries, "okay."

Jax doesn't like this dream. He lets the dark swallow him whole again, and with it comes a steady kind of calm.

Time passes. He thinks it does for a while. It's all a blur.

His body feels hot. There's a hand on his forehead.

It's too rough to be Pomni, her gloves are more plush. But its glitching like he is, so it's undeniably Kinger. He wants to push him off, tell him to leave him alone, but the contact doesn't feel uncomfortable. It's strangely cool, actually.

"I didn't even know we could get sick here," Pomni is saying. "I thought—"

"Caine did say he could add temporary modifiers to us…" Kinger says. "I'm sure we can also do that to ourselves. I'm guessing it's the same as when we hold our breath, or blink, or feel tired. It may just be the stress, and I'm sure the glitching doesn't help."

"So it'll go away?" Pomni asks.

"Hopefully with time." Kinger's touch is so gentle. Jax leans into it without thinking. "It really just depends on him."

He opens his eyes.

Pomni is absent from her spot on the bed. Instead, Zooble's sat down on the mattress, as far away from him as they possibly can be. One of their arms is draped on their raised knee, their other leg is splayed out. He wouldn't be able to run away without climbing over their legs, and he supposes that's by design.

They don't seem to notice him stirring. They stare at where the light pours in through the drapery, looking contemplative.

"Oh, great," Jax quips, the best he can. "It's you."

Zooble doesn't startle. They barely even blink, like they were expecting his ire.

"Pomni's out with the others," they say. "They're trying to work on a way to reverse the glitching. We don't know how Caine did it, and Kinger can't conjure right now, so we're working backwards. It's probably gonna be a bit. Hope you don't mind being stuck here."

They don't say anything else. They look away again.

Jax bristles. It feels like they're quiet just to get a rise out of him, and he hates that it's working. He wonders where his composure went. He's dizzy and hot.

"What, that's it?" he snarls, "you're not even gonna go on and on about about how stupid you think I am?"

"I know that's what you want," Zooble says with practiced calm. There's an undercurrent of frustration there, but they don't let it show on their face. "And I don't want to give that to you. I'm not really in the mood."

"So you feel bad for me, then?" Jax sounds more desperate than angry or defensive. "Is that what this is about? You're just gonna look down on me because I tried to—"

Zooble's eyes narrow, and Jax stops in his tracks. He's saying something a little too vulnerable, now, and that's dangerous. They're a lot meaner than Ragatha. He doesn't want to give them any ammunition for the next little verbal slap fight they end up in.

A part of him hates that he's thinking about the future, and the idea of messing with Zooble again. He's supposed to be dead. It was supposed to be so easy for him to just go and die.

"Whatever," Jax grumbles. He turns away from them, trembling with every glitch that wracks his body. If Zooble does really pity him now, just like Ragatha does, he doesn't want to see it on their face.

"I know you care about how I feel," Zooble says, "because I know I've hurt your feelings before. But I cannot for the life of me tell if you're scared of me."

"I'm not scared of anyone," Jax grumbles, disinterested in whatever they have to say.

"I saw what happened when Pomni pulled you back," Zooble snaps. "I was there, you idiot. I saw you crying and running from us. You were scared, Pomni certainly thinks so. Secure people don't abstract, and they especially don't run off to do it alone."

"I'm not scared," Jax repeats, glaring into the wall. He pulls his knees up to his chest.

Zooble pauses for a moment. He can feel their eyes on him, burning into his back.

"I'm not saying it's a bad thing," their voice softens a bit. "I mean, I'm not surprised you think it's wrong to be scared, considering how you treat Gangle. But it's not, and someone should tell you that. Even if you're never gonna believe it."

"Good thing I'm not scared," Jax insists. There's no strength in it.

"You're such a child," Zooble scoffs. It doesn't sound as barbed as it usually would. Not affectionate, but not disgusted, either. "Who are you even trying to convince right now?"

He grabs a pillow and buries his face into it instead of responding. It probably only proves their point about him being childish, but if he can't act above it all, he can at least be petty about how little he wants to talk to them right now.

Zooble doesn't speak for a while. Jax doesn't either. He starts to feel like he's going to cry as everything sinks in. He doesn't think he's ever felt so powerless in his life, or at least not since Caine had peeled his skin off.

"I've lost people to suicide," Zooble says, carefully.

It's so sudden that Jax startles a little.

"I know you're probably gonna throw it back at me," they continue, "and you know what? That's fine, I'm choosing to take the risk. But I, like… I know the signs. I actually feel a little stupid, because I saw it coming. You weren't exactly subtle. I saw you pull away, I saw you stop trying. And I've watched that happen to people, and every time it felt so sudden when I lost them anyway."

Jax clutches the pillow he's holding. He trembles. He thinks of her.

"I'm queer," they say, "I knew a lot of queer people, and that shit isn't easy. So many people just never end up making it, and it felt like they got younger every year. Sometimes I just— ugh, I sit here and wonder, are they even still alive out there? And now that I know I'm still out there, I have to wonder if I'm doing enough for them, or if I even could. I don't know anymore. It fucking sucks.

A lot of those people, I— I didn't even know them that well. Some of them I didn't even like, but I still cared. Because I don't think anyone deserves that, especially not people who got a bad hand in the first place. And I know people can change. And I think you're an asshole who was awful to people I care about, but I don't think you deserve to die. None of us do. Gangle doesn't even think that, and she'd have every right to."

"Stop," Jax pleads, softly.

They do, without question.

"I'm not going to throw that back at you."

"Well, shit," Zooble huffs an incredulous laugh. "I guess that's a start."

Jax buries his face as far as he can into the pillow. He knows Zooble won't leave, that he won't be able to escape them, not with eternity ahead. He can already fantasize the exact point they decide they've had enough with him; that he's too broken, too dirty, and too difficult to be worth getting close to.

He doesn't like the idea of this softness carrying their dynamic, like it carries their relationship with Gangle. Their anger was something that was safe, something he knew how to coax out and control. It was structure in a world of aimlessness, as was everyone else's archetype, and his own. And now he doesn't even know anymore. He's learned he's less real than ever before, but it's only made him feel more grounded.

Can he even abstract again, feeling like this?

The despair comes bubbling out of his chest in the form of a broken sob. The mattress shifts as Zooble tenses in surprise, but Jax doesn't even care, he doesn't even care anymore. Maybe it's the delirium, maybe it's all the time he's spent having to think about this. He's crying into his pillow like a little kid and he doesn't even care.

"Hey," Zooble says, imploringly. It's kinder than it should be.

"I hate you," Jax snarls. It's whiny, and it's toothless, and obviously just him posturing, but it's all he has, and he's scared. "I hate you, you bastard, I hate you."

Zooble's breath escapes them as a shaking sigh.

"I know," they say. They don't sound relieved by it, or comforted by his consistency. They just sound like they feel awful for him.

"I hate you," Jax insists, tears dampening the pillow. Hiding his face isn't doing much when the tears are so evident in his voice. His voice rises into a scream. "I hate you!"

"Sorry," Zooble sighs, voice taking on an edge of polite sarcasm. "You're stuck with me now, and you're not going anywhere. So I guess we're just gonna have to work with it."

He hears Pomni coming back at some point. Her voice is especially strained, so he guesses their whole conjuring thing wasn't working out. Her and Zooble share a few words, whispered like they don't want him to hear.

"Last time I saw, it was looking a little better," he catches Zooble saying. "He's not really letting me see. I don't even know if he knows about it. I think— I don't know. I never know when I'm pushing too hard."

"Hey, it's okay," Pomni responds, trying to smooth it over the best she can. "I'm sure you did your best, let me worry about him for now. You should go talk to Gangle."

"She okay?"

"Just stressed." Pomni's quiet for a second. "I think she's just, um… processing everything. You know her better than I do."

"Yeah," Zooble sighs. "It is a lot to process. I'll talk to her. You should sit down for a bit."

"I'm kinda pooped," Pomni admits, with a shy laugh. "I probably shouldn't have been up this long, but I'll be okay."

"See you around."

"Yeah..." The curtains shift, and Zooble's footsteps slowly fade.

The mattress dips as Pomni flops back down on the bed next to him. She doesn't touch him, giving him space. He doesn't hear her lay down, so he assumes she's just staring at his crumpled shape.

He hasn't moved from his position at all, curled up against the pillow and facing the wall. The inescapable shame has only been building and building, and he's at the point where he can't look anyone in the eyes anymore. At least he's stopped crying.

"You guys sure do love talking about me like I'm not here," he complains.

"Sorry," Pomni says. "You just kind of— we don't mean to—" she trips and stumbles over her words. It's almost reassuring to listen to her not knowing what to say, for once. "You aren't always here. It's hard to tell sometimes."

"Hm," Jax replies. It's all he can manage.

"Do you, uh… do that, often?" she asks. "Dissociate, I mean."

Jax doesn't respond. He doesn't know what there is to say; he knows the meaning of the word, and he knows that he definitely does it. It almost feels like she's trying to get him to admit it, and he doesn't want to give her that power.

"I do, sometimes," Pomni admits. "So it's not like I have any place to judge. You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"You've already seen everything," Jax snaps. "I don't know where you're going with this."

Pomni's quiet for a bit. He wonders if he's hurt her feelings. He's not in a position where he feels like he has to, so it doesn't make him feel any better. There's nothing he can really keep hiding from him; she's seen it all, and it hasn't changed much about how she feels.

Not yet, at least.

He's trembling. Hard, actually. His body feels hot, and he hisses in pain, sinking deeper into his only anchor of comfort. Pomni still doesn't say anything.

"I guess it makes sense that it's getting worse," she says. "I'm just worried about— you know, you're sick. Kinger told us to treat you like you're sick, because that's what it is right now."

"I'm not sick," Jax snaps. If she's trying to do what Ragatha did, acting like he was some poor helpless victim because she felt bad for herself— "This was my choice. I did this to myself."

"I don't mean emotionally," Pomni says, frustration creeping into her voice. "I mean you're like. Literally, physically sick right now. We think you got so stressed out you gave yourself a fever. I mean, that and—" she cuts herself off.

"Greeaaat," Jax growls. His voice is all anger and edge, but he's hiding brimming tears in the pillow. "Just another embarassment to heap onto the pile. I should just take the hint and abstract again. I don't wanna deal with this."

"Jax," Pomni breathes.

"I don't—" He remembers I guess it's progress that you're talking about it at all, and stammers to a stop. He makes the effort to take deep, measured breaths.

His head is throbbing again. His mouth has always been closed—it's just a part of his stupid avatar—but suddenly he's more aware of the sensation, like he's always been clenching his jaw. Always tensing in preparation.

"Sorry," he settles on. He feels like he's apologizing for a lot of things.

Embarrassment heats his cheeks, but he doesn't know if he wants to take it back. Pomni doesn't verbally forgive him, but the mattress shifts under him, and she reluctantly cuddles up to him. Her body feels slightly formless, and she's shaking, but she's warm all the same.

She doesn't wind her arms around him. She just presses her torso against his upper back, and doesn't force herself any closer. It'd be easy for him to push her away, or ask her to stop, but he doesn't.

He turns away from the pillow, wraps his arms around her, and buries himself under her chin so he's still hiding his face. Pomni jolts in surprise, but immediately relaxes in his arms. She carefully places a hand on his back, splays it out to feel his ragged breathing, and then pulls him closer, wraps herself around him and presses her cheek against the top of his head.

Despite their height difference, it makes him feel impossibly small.

"I don't wanna deal with this," he repeats, softer.

Pomni's hand drifts up and holds the back of his neck. He twitches at how vulnerable the gesture makes him feel, but he doesn't push her away. It's a big leap in how affectionate they've been, and he knows he should be scared, but he has been so, so starved of positive contact for so long that he couldn't even dream of letting go.

"When I was in your mind," Pomni whispers, "you— you told me you didn't want to go. I keep thinking about it. You were so scared. It seemed so real."

Jax's eyes slip shut. Pomni's breathing has calmed, despite the weight of her words. She's rubbing soothing circles into his nape, and he's feeling some of the tension unwind, even through the pain.

"But I don't know anymore," she admits, soft like she's confessing something awful, "I don't know if you meant it."

Jax doesn't hesitate. He says, truthfully, "I don't know either."

He has a nightmare later that day, wrapped up tightly in Pomni's arms; it's a blur of disjointed memories. His mother on the floor, her biting words. Ribbit and Kaufmo, their hurt faces, and the ghosts they left behind in his chest. Standing under the lamppost, panting out sobs, as Pomni drags him away from peace with an agonized scream. Cowering with his skin peeled to his stomach as the only people he ever considered trusting, even for a moment, howl with laughter at his expense.

Jax startles awake with a sharp gasp. The tactile memories disappear in an instant, but the nauseating shame and humiliation doesn't. His face is still buried in Pomni's collarbone, her arms still gently cradling him. She's handling him like he's especially fragile.

Clarity crashes down on him in a wave. What the fuck has he been doing?

His breath catches, and then he can't seem to make it come out. The wheeze that ends up escaping sounds more like a deflated balloon, and he has to cover his mouth to stifle the ensuing sob of frustration.

He tries to pull himself away from Pomni as gently as he can, but he still violently jostles her as he stumbles out of the bed and into the floor. She immediately wakes up at the soft thud of him falling on his elbows, turning around and blinking with groggy confusion.

"Jax?" she asks, rubbing at her eyes.

He can barely hear her anymore. He whirls around to face her, clutching his chest, trying to steady himself but finding himself unable to. His breath comes out in a crackling wheeze, and then another, and then he can't breathe at all. He's coming undone.

Pomni shoots awake, tripping over blankets as she scrambles to get to him. But Jax doesn't want her, he can't take it anymore. He throws himself backwards in a blind attempt to just get awayawayaway, hitting one of Gangle's canvases and not even processing it clattering to the floor. He doesn't want her to hurt him; he doesn't want her to care about him this much.

He can see her understanding that on his face.

"Please don't leave," she begs. "Please don't go."

It's the worst thing she could have said. A sob bursts out of him unbidden, and then two more, in succession. Pomni's still reaching out for him, and her stubbornness strikes him deep into his core, in places that'd been left untouched for so long he'd forgotten how to guard them.

Tears are welling up in her eyes again.

"Please," her voice trembles dangerously. "I love you."

Jax wails.

It's a short, haunted sound that he quickly bites down on to stop, but it bounces off the walls, it echoes through the whole circus, it rattles through his chest and skull. He struggles to draw in a breath, to calm himself down. He glitches again; it's a lightning strike of agony, worse than it's been since he'd been put in bed. His entire right side burns. His fist thumps against the floor so he doesn't shout in pain.

Pomni's already started crying. She's frozen in place, hands hovering. She wants to touch, but she doesn't know how, or if she can; and she looks so much like Ribbit did for a moment that it forces another guttural cry out of him.

She opens her mouth to speak again, to plead him to stay. Jax's chest jumps up and down as he works himself up into hysteria.

What a fucking sissy, an old, familiar voice hisses at him.

He can't stay, even if that's what she wants, even if that's what he wants. He hasn't learned his lesson, he needs to learn that he's— he can't.

Jax gets up and runs.

"JAX!" Pomni screams.

He's stumbling dangerously. He definitely won't be able to keep his center of gravity, but he doesn't care. He doesn't even want to go to his room— he just wants to get away. From prying eyes and hands and hidden laughter and Pomni's gentle voice. Running is the last thing he thinks he can manage. It's his emotional death rattle.

He makes it past the hallway. He hears doors swing open, overlapping panicked voices. He slams into a wall when he hurriedly rounds the corner, and hears the mirror on the wall dislodge from its place and shatter into pieces on the floor. The sound catches him off guard, and with a surprised shout he stumbles away from it, slips on the floor, slams on his side and cries out in pain. He can't even brace himself up properly, he's glitching so badly.

It's still so dim and gray now. The color has been completely drained from the circus since Caine had disappeared. There's nothing to grapple onto, nothing to ground himself with, he just scrabbles at the hard floor and pants and cries and thinks of the light, and—

Someone's speaking to him. Several people are, and they're all watching him, trying to talk him down. There's a hand braced on his back. It feels so much like when he first joined; he remembers it so clearly, how awful it felt. He thinks that maybe, this is worse.

He makes out Kinger's voice. It's smooth and gentle. "You need to breathe," he's saying, "Jax, can you hear me? I can count for you if that would help, but you need to try to take a deep breath."

"I-I can't—" Jax stammers. He doesn't know how to handle it. He's still struggling to process the idea that Kinger ever cared for him at all.

"You can, you can," Kinger assures, rubbing between his shoulder blades. Distantly Jax wonders how much his hands must hurt. "You're safe here. You're not in any danger."

He knows that. It makes him burn with frustration. He hates how they've already started to talk to him like he's a kicked puppy, or like a war veteran who doesn't even know where he is half of the time. It's one of the many, many reasons he'd always made sure to panic in private, but now he doesn't even have the space to.

Jax looks up. Ragatha is knelt in front of him. Her eye is huge and sad, but she's not reaching out— maybe she knows it's better for her not to, for her own sake. She's trying to block his view of the mirror. He searches her face for ire or frustration; he finds none.

"Jax," she says, with forced, smooth calm. "You're gonna be okay. Just don't look."

Don't look at what? His brows furrow in confusion. His eyes flash to the broken mirror behind her, trying to get a glimpse of his reflection.

"Don't look!" Ragatha exclaims, with escalating panic.

He looks.

The entire right side of his face is marred with dark scarring. It's climbing down his neck, to his shoulder and below his overralls. He watches it begin to crawl its way into his arm, spreading like spilt ink. Vibrant abstraction eyes blink back at him from the darkness in a way that makes his stomach churn, like they're tracking every moment he makes. Every part of his body the abstraction has consumed is glitching erratically as it tries to spread.

Jax's chest heaves. Terror crawls its way up through his chest and up to his throat until he's curling down with his face pressed into his knees and screaming in horror, shaking uncontrollably.

He's abstracting, he has to be, he's coming apart in front of his own eyes. It didn't feel like this the first time, he wasn't so scared the first time.

He doesn't want to die.

"It's okay," Kinger's trying to soothe him. "It's okay, it's okay. We're pretty certain this won't abstract you if you're careful. We're in a bit of an unprecedented situation, we just need to make sure you stay calm and don't—"

"Shut up!" Jax wails, desperate to make it stop. "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"

"Okay," Kinger says. He doesn't sound hurt. Why aren't any of them hurt? Why does it mean nothing, when he screams and cries and begs for them to leave him alone? "That's okay, you're in a lot of pain right now. Just try to breathe."

He doesn't think he can. He doesn't know why Kinger is trying to make it seem like it's so easy. Every breath is shallow and painful and punched out; it'd be easier, at this point, if he'd just held it, even though he knows it'd make him (not his avatar, him) look stupid. His eyes are glazing over, and he can't see anything through the blur of tears. He can't see himself, but he can make out the colors of himself in the mirror.

Kinger takes one of his hands, like Pomni had before. Jax desperately reaches out and grabs the other, and the older man obliges, letting him squeeze. It's the only way he can brace himself from falling completely to the floor. He's utterly delirious. He doesn't know who's watching and who isn't. He barely even knows where he is.

Arms loop around his torso from behind. He twitches angrily for a moment, thinking it's Ragatha, but Pomni's trembling breaths and smaller shape is unmistakable. She's standing behind him, holding him. The fight drains out of him in an instant; he can't imagine a world where he keeps fighting her, not anymore. Running was the only thing that felt safe.

"No," he blubbers, not even caring how embarassing his voice sounds. He's well past that point. Kinger's hands feel like shackles. His head is hung. He can't even see the floor, it's all so blurry. "No, no. I can't."

"Breathe," Pomni reminds him. She doesn't sound like she's breathing well herself. "It'll go away, just breathe. Please."

His body rattles with a broken sob. He may as well gutted himself from chest to stomach and torn his entrails out for everyone to see. There's a visceral kind of shame rending him from the inside out. Tears carve their way down his face.

"I killed her," he weeps, uncomprehending of anything else. He has to face the truth one way or another. He deserves this, he deserves to die, no matter what he wants. "I killed her, I killed her."

Pomni's arms tighten around him. Kinger's hands squeeze his gently, silent comfort as he spirals and cries. He knows Ragatha's watching him—he can hear her soft, hitching breaths—but he doesn't know if Gangle and Zooble are there either. There's no way they haven't heard him screaming by now.

He wants them to understand. If hurting them isn't working, he can turn it on himself. The truth about his actions hurts worse, and that was what he'd spent so long running from. It's what he'd been so scared of. It's not like he has anything to lose, now.

"I killed her!" he cries. It's more like a plea than a declaration.

"Shh, shh shh," Pomni whispers into his back. She's not refuting him, because she must know it's true. Every moment he's been conscious, he's wondered why it hasn't changed anything about how she feels.

"I pushed her too ha-a-a-rd—"

"I know," Pomni whispers. Jax knows she knows; it's not a statement made fully for her. He wants Ragatha to know the most, for reasons he can't really explain.

Pomni doesn't keep speaking. She doesn't say it's okay, or it's not your fault, or any other useless platitude that Jax doesn't want to hear. She just leaves it there; she knows. And she knows it's his fault, and that it's not okay, but she still doesn't want him to leave. She's never really told him why. Maybe she's just as in the dark as he is.

He wants to elaborate. To draw the anger she should feel out of her, to fling everything he possibly knows at her so she'll take the hint, but he just can't. He can't even dream of doing it to one of the others, right now. There's no one to hide from when they've all seen him, except for himself.

He can't look at the mirror, but he feels it, the scars from his abstraction creeping their way through his body. A parasite he can't tear out, because it's a part of him, because it's him. There's holes in him that he can never fill, and he'll have to spend the rest of eternity staring at them.

He trembles, squeeze's Kinger's hands tighter, and then leans forward, coughs up a grieving sob, and vomits all over the floor.

Huh. He deliriously stares down at the black puddle of his mess. Maybe he is sick, in more ways than one.

Someone's carrying him.

Maybe he fell asleep on the couch again, he doesn't know. He's not ready for the inevitable earful he's gonna get from Mom, about how long he stayed out past curfew without warning her. She's probably going to complain about how thin he's starting to look, how easy it's getting to carry him even though she should be smaller than him, how much it looks like she's starving him, and that anorexia is a girl thing, does he think he's a girl?

He's set down in bed. He feels warm and buzzed, and his throat burns like he'd puked. Maybe he's drunk, he doesn't know. He hasn't been to a house party in a while. He usually just ends up standing in the corner and watching everyone have fun, until the alcohol kicks in enough for him to assert himself.

A hand grazes over his forehead. He hears voices, multiple of them. He can't put them to names, much less make out whatever they're saying, but they feel familiar, so he isn't all that worried.

His brows knit together as he tries to figure out what's happening. There's inexplicable pressure on his chest, like his body is telling him he's meant to be anxious. Someone tucks him in very carefully, and places a pillow under his neck, and it's enough to make him stop wriggling in place. He plays dead, passively accepting it. He must've really messed up if she's being this attentive with him. It always predates a screaming match.

And then the mattress dips, as someone crawls into bed with him.

He jerks, disoriented and confused. He tries to kick the blankets away, to snarl and lash out and get them away from him, because he doesn't know who they are or where he is or what his name even is or what's happening— he—

His limbs aren't working in his favor, and he just manages to flail uselessly like an idiot, tangling himself in the blanket. Maybe he's been drugged. His friends used to joke about doing that to him, and he'd always laughed along with it, even despite the visceral fear it'd ingrained in him. But then they'd laughed at him for covering his drinks, so he'd stopped. Was he wrong to?

"Hey, easy," someone murmurs, like they're talking to a spooked horse. The voice sounds male, which doesn't inspire confidence. "You're alright."

His breath hitches. He doesn't think so. He can never know that for sure.

He wants Mom. He's crying, even though he knows it's inappropriate, and he's not supposed to. Someone gently brushes his tears away.

"You lied to me," Jax is snarling. He's trembling with pure red-hot fury. He can't even lift his head off the mattress. "You lied to me, you lied."

"I didn't know," he hears Pomni sob. "I thought you knew, I didn't know."

"You lied!" he shouts through tears. For some reason, in his fever-addled brain, it feels like the most important thing in the world. It's the worst thing anyone could ever do to him.

"I didn't want to bring it up and freak you out!" she cries.

"You lied!" he screams, hysterically, over and over again, because it's too much, he just can't take it. He'll never trust anyone ever again. Why would Pomni ever? Why her? He loved her, so why? Why, why? "You lied! You lied!"

"I'm sorry!"

The anger turns into hurt. He sobs into the pillow, and Pomni drags him into her arms, fierce and desperate. He thinks he's still screaming it into her chest. How could she?

"I'm sorry," Pomni whispers, desperately trying to calm him down, shaking apart right with him, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—"

He checks out again, for what could be a long, long time. It's just easier than being present, at this point.

There's a part of him that feels bitter and angry. They've stripped him of every bit of dignity he's scraped together in the last few years, all of his power and control. They've been keeping him trapped here against his will, not allowing him to put his walls back up so he can recuperate. His sickness gets worse and worse, until he can barely open his eyes at all.

It's their fault. If they cared so much about how bad he was, they should've let him abstract. He's not the kind of person who can be fixed, or saved. They should've just let him kill himself. It would have stopped this, they wouldn't be forced to sit around and talk about him all the time, and lie to him about the physical scars his attempt had left behind—

They should've—

He should've—

Someone's put a cold compress on his head. It may have been there for a while, and he just hasn't noticed. He doesn't really understand the mentality; the fever can't kill him, it's purely self-inflicted. The worst it'll do is hurt him and make him feel overheated and disoriented, until he manages to will it away. Any traditional attempt to heal it won't do much of anything.

"That's already bad enough enough for me," someone says, in a tone almost chiding. "I know it won't fix it, but I don't want it to keep hurting you."

Jax hadn't realized he'd spoken that thought out loud. A part of him shrivels in on itself; that line of thinking is almost too self-deprecating for his own comfort. He can at least act like he's taking this better than he is, even if they all know it's a lie.

He cracks open his eyes to take it back, to tell Pomni that he doesn't think she's accomplishing much by worrying about him like this, only to see the unmistakable shape of red coily hair through his blurred, feverish vision.

He feels himself fading before he can form an opinion on it.

Pomni's gone again. He desperately pats around to look for her, but he can't reach her, he's alone. His breath catches, and he sits up quietly, opens his eyes, swings his head around in hopes to find her, but there's no one in bed with him.

He hears the scratching of a pencil. He blinks. He looks down.

Gangle's sat in front of the bed with her legs criss-crossed, drawing in her sketchbook. She's not caging him in like Zooble was, with the way they'd put their legs between him and his method of escape. She's just existing there.

Jax quietly lays back down, and settles into the pillows. He doesn't know if he should speak, or if even has the right to, this time. She probably knows he's awake, but she doesn't seem interested in starting the conversation. There's no way to tell if she's looking at him in her peripheral.

He doesn't even know what to say. He'd thought about it so much in the time leading up to his abstraction (and inevitably decided to die due to cowardice, instead), but now that he's come back, he realizes he's barely thought of it at all. He'd been so caught up in his own misery.

There was a point where even seeing her happy without him made him furious. But he never hated her; Gangle was exactly what he was afraid of becoming, and now he's already become that.

Right now, he's the untrustworthy suicidal one who can barely move on his own, and she's gotten closer with Zooble, can walk around with her happy mask more often than not, and doesn't immediately stammer at the sight of him. Jax's mask is permanently broken, and he has the scars to prove it.

She could hurt him if she wanted to.

"You don't have to apologize," Gangle says in a small voice. She's stopped drawing a while ago, but she still hasn't looked at him. She's curled up into herself, revealing how affected she actually is by him watching her. "Not if you don't actually mean it."

"Is that what you want from me?" He's sickened to ask.

"I don't know," Gangle whispers. "Everyone's told me I don't need to talk to you if I'm not ready. But I don't know if that's how it works… I was always ready. I just… I didn't know if you were. I still don't know if you are."

Jax deflates back into the pillows. He pulls blankets over himself, even though they make him feel stuffy with the fever. The urge to fall away begins to tug at him again, and it's an effort to actively resist it. He doesn't want to check out right now.

"I wasn't happy when you abstracted," Gangle continues. "I don't know how I felt, but I know I don't hate you. I don't know why I don't hate you."

I don't know why I don't hate you either, Jax thinks.

"You don't have to feel sorry for me," he says. It comes out flat. Bitter, almost.

"I think we were friends." Gangle talks like he hadn't spoken at all. "I thought we were friends, even if you weren't nice to me. Because I could tell you wanted to hang out with me, and after a while I just thought… maybe it's my fault? Maybe it's my fault."

The pencil scratches again, for a moment. And then it stops. He doesn't know what she's drawing, but he doesn't ask. He doesn't know where the line between them is, and the uncertainty makes him want to draw away completely. It's always been easier to go all in or all out. Hot or cold.

"I don't know what you wanted from me," Gangle admits. "I don't know what I was doing wrong, I don't know what's wrong with you, or why I was making it worse. But I… I know you're not okay. I don't want to keep making it worse."

"Even if I deserve it?" Jax asks. It's not even a question, really. It's an offer. You can hurt me, because I deserve it. Because he can know what to expect, he can hate her, and give her closure in her retribution, and he can never think about it again.

Gangle sniffles a little, arms draped over her knees. She's staring at the easel Jax thinks he'd knocked over in his rush to abandon everything, to run to the safety of his loneliness. Jax stares at it too. The canvas is blank.

"You don't deserve it," her voice wobbles more and more as she speaks, but she keeps herself together. "And everyone's gonna tell you that you don't. And you're always gonna feel like they're lying, but they mean it. Even if you did something bad. Even if you were a bad person, and you hurt people."

Jax sucks in a deep breath.

"And- and sometimes," Gangle continues, sounding increasingly more upset, "it's gonna make you want to die. It's gonna make you want to die so much that you can't stand it. And you're gonna look at everything you did, and you're gonna think, I don't know how normal people live with this. I don't know how they live like everyone else when they do bad things. I wasn't supposed to live this long. I was supposed to die as a kid, 'cause then at least I'd get to live on as an angel, and not someone who failed to be a person when I should've known better. And everyone can lie that they loved me, even though they all laughed at me, and they'd be sorry forever, and—"

She chokes on a sob, and hides her face behind her ribbon hands. Jax doesn't reach out for her. He's not sure he'd be welcome, and he doesn't want to take the risk.

"You just have to live with it," Gangle weeps, panting desperately, "even if you know people would be happier without you. Because they keep telling you that they'll miss you. And you'll never know how that's true, how they can stay with you after everything you did. You're never gonna know if they're lying or not, or when and if they're ever gonna forgive you. But you live with it. Because maybe— maybe it'll get better."

"Maybe," Jax repeats, and his voice has never sounded softer. He hopes it's just the fever causing him to sound like that.

"Maybe," Gangle echoes through her sobs, in agonized agreement. "You just have to live. You just have to live."

Do you even want me to? He wants to ask. But does it even matter?

Deep down, he knows it's obvious that she's trying a little too hard to care about him. To see a bright spot in him, where there's only a black hole of misery. But Pomni had done the same, and she'd made it so clear she thinks she'd somehow succeeded. Even when he'd screamed, and fought, and tore apart their relationship and tried to run. She'd still won.

Maybe it's easier to look at what he'd done to her when she knows he had some kind of deep-ridden reason, that he wasn't some kind of mindless, cruel animal. Jax guesses he might just never understand that, because he had to convince himself that's what he was to keep himself from abstracting for a long, long time.

He doesn't know how to stop. After all, he's a killer. If he keeps this up, he's scared he'll kill them too. He doesn't know what the right option even is anymore.

"Okay," he says.

"Are you gonna keep hurting me?" Gangle asks.

"No," he says, immediately. There's no going back. It'd never feel the same.

Gangle wipes at her tears. She stares down at her notebook for a long time, and then continues drawing. It's hard to tell to read her body language, with all the ribbons, but Jax thinks her shoulders have slumped. She looks at ease with herself.

"I'm sorry," Jax calls.

"Okay," Gangle responds.

And that's that. Jax curls back up, and faces the wall.

He lays there in silence, grounded to reality by the sound of Gangle's pencil scratching against paper, and waits for Pomni to come back like a dog.

"You're not glitching anymore," Gangle says, after a long period of comfortable silence.

"Hm?"

Jax lifts his left hand. Sure enough, it's not so formless anymore. He lifts himself up, still feeling fatigued and overheated, and feels around his body. It feels normal. He pays extra attention to his right side, but it's just as present than the rest of him, if not a bit softer.

"Is the abstraction stuff gone?" he asks.

Gangle glances at him nervously. She shakes her head.

"It's not moving anymore," she says, sounding a little mystified. "It's just… there. It looks kind of like a scar."

"Are the eyes still there?" he asks, shakily.

"No," Gangle says, and Jax lets out a big sigh of relief. "Do you still have your fever?"

Jax swallows thickly. He nods, because the idea of saying he's technically sick out loud kind of disgusts him, even though that's an objective reality. Gangle watches him like she's trying to figure out a difficult problem, and he withers under the look.

"It looks cool, though," she says, politely changing the topic for him. "It's not bad."

"Yeah," Jax mumbles. A distant part of him feels flattered, but he's too tired to let it show. He guesses he won't really know if she's lying until he looks at it himself. "Cool."

It might be the closest thing to a mutually positive conversation they've had in months. Maybe even longer than that.

They both jolt at the sound of approaching footsteps. Zooble throws the door open and tumbles through, nearly falling over in their haste.

"Can't keep your balance, huh?" Jax needles. There's no energy in it.

"Shut up, stop talking," Zooble snaps, similarly halfhearted.

Jax's mouth pulls into a grin. It may be the first smile he's managed in a long time, and it isn't even that sarcastic or fake.

"Gangle," Zooble says, "You should come out to the common room."

Gangle lifts herself up, looking hesitant.

"What?" she asks. "What about Jax?"

"I don't know if we should bring him here for this," they say. "We can talk about it on the way there. I don't want to—"

"Shouldn't I make that choice for myself?" Jax cuts in. "You guys gotta get better about talking like I'm not here. I didn't suddenly become an insecure little wallflower overnight, Christ."

"That's not what I'm trying to do," Zooble shoots back. Their eyes sweep over the scarring, and Jax's face twists into reserved anger at the worry that appears there. "Look, it's complicated. I don't want you to get involved in this while you're still recovering. Stress is just gonna make your fever worse."

Jax narrows his eyes. "Really," he grumbles.

"Pomni told us not to leave him alone," Gangle's similarly insistent.

Zooble stops from where they're already half out the door, and takes a deep breath. "Jax," they say. "Do you really wanna deal with Caine right now?"

"What?" Jax asks, incredulous.

"What?" Gangle echoes.

"He wants to talk to all of us," they clarify. "I don't know what's going on, or how he's even alive, but if I tell him you don't wanna see him, I think he'll be fine with it. He feels bad enough that he won't push, at least."

Jax's eyes narrow in suspicion. "He said that?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Zooble taps their foot nervously. "He's not snap-summoning you either, so I know he's pretty serious about it."

Caine and serious are words that only have negative connotations when they go together. He'd spent a long time certain that Caine hadn't been capable of being malignant, and he'd been proven very wrong very quickly. There's a big part of him that feels hopelessly betrayed, because he was the one person Jax didn't see it coming from. But he's also uncomfortable being the only one being given the choice not to see him at all, even though he's so angry he doesn't want to talk to him ever again.

"Look," Zooble says, catching his attention. He wasn't aware he was zoning out again. "I'm just gonna assume you don't wanna see him right now. You can come if you want. But if he tries to force you, none of us are gonna be happy with him."

"Gee, Zoobie," Jax's voice comes out strained, as he cups his face in his hand, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were being protective of me."

Zooble rolls their eyes. "Must just be the fever fucking with your brain." But there's no venom in it. "Don't abstract in the ten minutes we're gone."

"Thanks for having faith in me," Jax jokes.

Gangle waves on her way out the door. Jax watches them leave in silence and falls back into the bed. He stares up at the dark canopy. Now that he's more conscious, he finds it uncomfortable that he's just laying in Gangle's room. Maybe he'll move back to his own, or Pomni's.

He takes a deep breath, and squeezes his eyes shut. Despite Zooble bringing it up, he doesn't even think about abstracting the whole time he's alone, even though it's absolutely longer than ten minutes.

It's been a while since he's been able to do that.

He's not surprised to see Pomni slip through the door again, although he thinks it's been a bit. He's never had the best sense of time.

She looks calmer than she had the last time he'd seen her. She's walking with more confidence, her form just as stable as his. She looks proud and content with herself, her shoulders drawn back and her face determined.

"Hi," Pomni says.

"Hey," Jax mumbles in response.

Her smile softens. She holds out a cup of the hot cocoa from the café. Jax watches it for a long time in stunned silence, and then takes it. He sits up on the bed, crossing his legs and staring at it.

She's seen him with it before, when they'd gone to recuperate there while Caine was losing his mind. But he knows the real reason she's giving it to him; it's a quiet reminder that she knows about everything. It's her opening for what he thinks is going to be a very uncomfortable conversation.

Pomni sits down next to him. She's holding a cup of her own. She lifts it like she's trying to make a toast. When he doesn't do anything but stare at her, mystified and wistful, she just shrugs and takes a polite sip of it, and doesn't ask anything more of him.

The mug is warm in his hands. He blinks, slow.

"How's the fever?" Pomni asks.

"Oh, you know," Jax mumbles. "Feverish."

Pomni watches him, waits for him to elaborate. She doesn't look frustrated with him, just calm and patient. Affectionate, even.

"It's fine," Jax says, a little defensively. He takes a slow sip, and watches her completely unwind in relief in the corner of his eye. Warmth pools in his chest. It really does all feel so real. "It's not any worse than it was."

"It was pretty bad before."

"Yeah, well," he runs his thumb across the cup, refusing to look her in the eyes, "then I guess it's getting better. At least I can actually think clearly."

"Yeah," Pomni says steadily.

Frustration begins to bubble in his chest. She's so serene it almost feels like a mockery of him, with how frayed and scared he's been.

"You don't have to keep me here, you know," he snaps. "I don't need someone watching over me every second I'm awake. I can just— I'm not gonna run off and abstract the moment you just- just—"

Pomni flops over on on him. Jax flinches, but he doesn't move. She squishes her cheek into his arm, and hugs his waist. She takes another sip of her cocoa. Jax's ears fall down to his shoulders, and he jerks his head away so she won't see the embarrassment on his face.

"It's okay," Pomni reminds him.

Jax inhales shakily. His exhale is more steady. Pomni looks at him with big concerned eyes, but it's in a distant, more trusting kind of way. He shifts, to drape his arm over her back. His hand is trembling as he lifts the mug to his mouth.

"Caine showed us what we're doing out there," Pomni says. "Or… maybe it's not us, I guess. It is and isn't, but. He showed us how your life's been going too."

Jax hums. The information makes him feel empty.

"Do you wanna hear about it?" she asks.

"I'm honestly just surprised I'm alive," Jax sounds more bitter than he is. Or maybe the bitterness just hasn't fully caught up to him yet. It's also a yes without him having to say it, because he's scared to.

"He's doing okay," Pomni tells him, her voice soft and bright. "He's out there rooming with a friend. He has an apartment. He has a job. He isn't homeless anymore."

"Right, I forgot you knew about that."

Pomni hugs him a little closer. "He's safe," she says, and her voice wavers a little in relief. "He's okay. He's alive. I think he's friends with Zooble, actually."

"Really."

"Yeah," Pomni stifles a laugh against his side. "I can't believe it. That we're out there, and all so close to each other. I wonder if they all even know about us, even if they know about each other. It's… I don't know. It's hard to wrap my head around. I'm just thinking about it. I know it's a little stupid."

Maybe he shouldn't have asked. If anything, the information that he could be better, and he just isn't, only makes him feel worse about himself. His eyes find his arm, still marked by inky darkness.

He knows he's wanted to kill himself since before he ran away from home. In fact, admitting it out loud back then had been the cause of one of the worst things that'd ever happened to him. He wonders if that version of himself also attempted, or if there's just something wrong with him. If the circus just broke him, because he couldn't get over himself.

He remembers Ribbit saying that he probably didn't kill her, if the cops didn't come looking for him. Jax can never know that for sure, but if he knows anything now, it's that the circus undeniably made him into a murderer. And apparently he just has to live with that, forever.

There's no justice for him beyond what he does to himself. He doesn't know what justice even looks like anymore, because his idea of it certainly doesn't align with everyone else's. He thought absolution was supposed to be brutal, and he'd been ready to inflict it on himself before anyone else could. Because at least he could control that.

"Stay with me," Pomni pleads.

"I'm still here, unfortunately," Jax tells her, even though he's not absolutely sure he was.

His hands are still shaking. He has to pull away from Pomni to set his mug on the floor, because he's definitely going to spill it if he doesn't, and that'd be embarrassing.

"Sorry," Pomni says. "I just— I almost forgot where I was going with this. I'm not just being sappy for no reason. I did want to say, like… I don't know. That if he can be happy out there, maybe you can be happy here, I guess."

"If he's still anything like me," Jax informs her, "then he probably isn't happy at all."

"I guess you can't know that," Pomni rests her hand on his scarred forearm. It's looser, more comfortable contact, even as she begins to rub reassuring circles into his skin. She leans down to place her own mug next to his. "It's… kind of the point I'm trying to make. You can't know."

Jax blinks slowly at Gangle's wall. The easel has been set back up. He hadn't fallen asleep between his talk with Gangle and now, and he has to wonder if she'd just set it back in place while she left. While he was looking away.

"But I'm glad you're being honest with me about this," Pomni whispers.

Jax rips his arm away, violently.

Pomni jerks back in surprise. She doesn't say anything for a while, like she's expecting him to speak. Jax doesn't have much he wants to say, or much he could say to justify it. At this point he's just being carried by blind, animal fear.

"Don't do that," she finally breathes, after a long moment. She sounds frustrated with him again, and it's almost reassuring to get a rise out of someone for once. "You said it yourself that I've seen everything. I—I… According to you I don't need to push, so why do you need to hide?"

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" Jax snarls. His forearm burns where she made contact.

"It's literally okay to be honest," Pomni reminds him, her voice wavering in her restrained anger. "That's what I want from you. I—I mean, you don't have to, but that's what I'm trying to say. I'm not gonna say anything behind your back. I haven't told them anything I saw in there, because I know you wouldn't want me to."

Jax cups his hands together on his lap. His knee is bouncing.

"I want to know how you're feeling about everything," Pomni begs, her anger fizzling out in an instant. "I feel like I've spent most of my time here since I brought you back, and you're like— the only one I haven't been able to talk to about it."

"Thought you'd be reassured by how quiet I am," he tries.

"No," Pomni laughs. "It's kinda freaking me out."

Jax waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn't. She just watches him again, satisfied to have made her point. Either he opens up, or their conversation ends here. He could change the topic, but she'd have to bring it up later.

He tries to feel the same defensiveness he'd felt before. He can't really scrounge it up. It's hard to imagine Pomni would ever bring up the stuff she already knows when she's made it clear it doesn't affect her opinion of him. That, and because everyone else has a pretty good impression of what happened to him already.

So he takes a deep, shaking breath. He picks up his cocoa again, because it's something nice to look at while he speaks, something that isn't her concerned face.

"You guys— you keep telling me that I'm supposed to just. Live," he grinds out. "That I just have to live with everything. And like, yeah, I hate that. I don't want to, I don't want to deal with it. Abstracting felt better, it—" he hisses through his teeth. "It feels like everyone wants me to go on some stupid apology tour so they can milk closure out of me. And I don't want to be alive for that. It'd be easier if I just—"

He stops to restrain himself, staring at the ceiling. It's easier to think about than articulate, he's realizing. He doesn't know how to put it into words and make it sound right.

"They do care about you," Pomni says.

Jax doesn't say, I know that, even if it's the first thing he thinks. He just wants to dismiss it instead of confronting it, but he doesn't know if it's true. Gangle said it best herself; he can never really be sure. He knows people are selfish, even if they're compassionate. Sometimes people love him, and then they slowly get sick of him. Sometimes people only want him because they're looking for something or someone else. Sometimes they laugh at him, and scream slurs at him, and then hug him anyway because they still need a punching bag to keep around for later.

That's how his life has always been. It'd been easier when he was able to file everyone away like that. When he could pre-emptively grieve, because he already knew the ending; he'd been able to hide it then, because he'd processed it on his own, far far before it'd happened. It may be why Caine lashing out had affected him so deeply, even if he was never all that close with the guy.

(It may also be why Pomni staying affected him even deeper, because he had to look back at the people he pushed to death and wonder if they would have similarly promised eternity to him, had he not been afraid to run.)

"I think it's the nicer thing to do anyway," Pomni says. "If you really want them to feel better. They wouldn't feel closure if you were gone. When you abstracted, they… they really did blame themselves for it. They really just thought they weren't good enough."

Jax doesn't respond. He takes a sip of his cocoa— he's almost finished with it, and he doesn't know what he'll do then.

"Ragatha said you didn't like the idea of her doing that," Pomni adds. "So I guess that probably doesn't make you feel better."

"It doesn't," Jax admits. "It's— I don't even know—" he stops for a moment, frustrated with the way his voice shakes and stammers. "It's not because I feel bad that they're blaming themselves. It's not like that."

"Okay." There's no judgement in her voice.

"It's." His knee is bouncing harder. "Like. If they want to act like I'm— I don't know. I want them to know it was me because it was my fault. I did that because I was in control of myself, because I had power over myself. It's what I thought I wanted. It's not even like they—God. For years I've just. I've looked ahead at my future and I keep thinking that there's just. No way I'm going to live that long, not like this. With this stupid body, with— I couldn't even imagine myself as an adult when I was fourteen, because I thought I already knew. I already knew."

Pomni scrutinizes him carefully. He's surprisingly not on the verge of a panic attack, this time. He's just frustrated. There's no proper way to word this that isn't too revealing, and no way to run from it either. It makes his head spin. Although it could just be the fever doing that.

"Like, I guess being here made it worse," Jax says with a sigh. "But Ragatha of all people didn't make me want to kill myself."

"You should tell her that," Pomni says.

Jax doesn't know what it'd change. He doesn't even know if he wants it to change, because there are things about Ragatha he just doesn't know how to be okay with. But he's discovering that the seething animosity he's been reckoning with isn't doing much for both of them, either. He's not sure yet.

"Maybe."

He takes a final sip of cocoa; it's still warm. The mug is finally empty.

Pomni touches his arm again. Jax tenses, and she stops in place to watch his expression. When he doesn't immediately pull himself away, she keeps her hand there, squeezing reassuringly. Some of the tension in his muscles unwinds.

"If you can't see yourself in the future," she says, in a small, gentle voice, "maybe it means you need to be something else."

Jax pulls her into a hug without looking at her. Pomni sinks into the touch, clutching his back like she never wants him to let go. It's so much like the one he had when he was abstracting that it makes him want to sob again, but he doesn't. His heart is fluttering fast, but a part of him feels numb.

He wonders if she knows the truth about him, the most deeply buried one he doesn't think he can ever embrace. It was mostly a blur of memories before she found him under the lamppost, and any number of them could've been accidentally revealing.

"I'm not ready," he admits. "I don't think I'm ever gonna be ready."

The last time he was this honest about it, he'd lost Mama for good.

"As long as you're alive, there's still time," Pomni tells him, her voice carefully steady. It sounds like something she's wanted to say to him for a while. "And nobody's gonna hurt you for it, no matter what changing's gonna mean."

He's not even angry about the wounded animal voice she's using, this time. This may be the only time in his life where he feels like he needs it, the only time where he feels he's as fragile and scared as the voice implies.

"Just live," Pomni pleads.

Jax thinks that's been asked of him a lot lately, both directly and indirectly. He's only realizing now that, for some reason, Pomni doesn't want him to live so he can repair what he's broken, or make up for what he's done. She wants him to live for himself, learn to make positive choices for himself. And he doesn't know if he deserves that yet, but he's starting to think he wants to be worth that good faith.

"Okay," Jax says, hiding tears in her hat. He keeps his voice as steady as he can, but he thinks she knows he's crying. "Okay."

"Do you want to know his name?" Pomni asks, at some point.

Jax just replies; "No."

That name isn't his. When he looks back at everything, there's a good chance it really never was. He doesn't know if he's ready to let those memories go, even if he's never ready to talk about them again—but he wants nothing to do with the name his mother gave him. He wants to define himself by the parts he gets to choose, whatever they may be.

His fever fades with time. The scars don't.

He gets to properly see himself in a mirror again. He only looks a little stupid this time. Jagged stretches of black, shaped like he'd been splashed with acid, encompass his right side, streaked with little veins of neon lights. His fur has fluffed up in uneven clumps, but only at that side of his body, and it's strange to explore with his hands. He feels more like an actual living animal would.

It's weirdly grounding. It makes him feel more real. He's always been fuzzy, but in a way that's more smooth like a velvet pillow, or a fancy plush toy. It's something he's always quietly been a little disgusted about.

He expresses this, more to himself than to his quiet observer. Pomni tells him that it's fine, he actually gives pretty good hugs. He looks at her with shock and reserved disgust, and it wrings a delighted laugh out of her that makes him feel a little embarrassed.

He has to take a moment to process it, and how he feels about the idea of it leaving a mark on him. It's a physical indicator of how close he was to the brink (how close he still feels to it), and he hates the idea of them looking at it forever and seeing the kind of person he was after he'd been pulled back. He doesn't want to be that forever. But what can he do?

They move to Pomni's room, and take the canopy with them. Jax is initially pretty sure that he's fine and can go back to his space, but she doesn't agree. In fact, the idea makes her so nervous that he's content to quietly drop it, at least at first. It was the room that he died in, after all.

And then, after a little while of being in his right mind, without crisis or fever or glitching or the fear of abstraction, the clarity finally starts to set in again.

Suddenly he's hyper-aware of everything that's happened. Panicking in front of everyone, sobbing while Zooble watched over him. How he'd opened up about his years of ideation, how he was too sensitive, too weak, too terrified to be honest with anyone close to him.

The shame starts to return the more that he dwells on everything he remembers, as does the agony of being perceived by everyone. It's like all his worst fears have come to light. He's horrified.

He insists that he's okay, over and over and over. He just needs to go back to his room. He just needs to get it together. They never have to talk about this again. Now that he's better, they never have to think about this again. Promise me we'll never talk about this again.

Pomni gets so furious with him that he's surprised she doesn't attack him (again). She's patient at the start, and then frustrated, and then utterly outraged that he thinks it's going to work on her.

She yells.

Jax yells back.

He snarls that he was just lying about being suicidal, as a cruel joke.

She laughs in his face; it practically shatters him.

Jax spends that night laying on his back, catatonic staring at the ceiling, randomly dissolving into long episodes of hyperventilation whenever he tries to think about it. Pomni lays fully on top of his chest, hugging him tight. The pressure is the only thing preventing it from getting worse. He never pushes her off, he never speaks to her, he never cries. He just wheezes and trembles uncontrollably in bursts.

He thinks he hears Ragatha come in at some point. She asks—quiet, like she doesn't know if she's allowed to—if they're okay, she heard them shouting, did something happen? Pomni's responses are purposefully vague. She says that he was just scared again. He hears her sniffling.

He wants to yell at her for it, but he can't find the strength to work his aching vocal cords. He's almost angry, because a part of him thought Pomni would immediately try to keep the fact that they fought secret. But maybe she knew everyone would see right through it.

He can't keep up his anger, because it makes him realize something awful; that nothing like what happened to Ribbit or Kaufmo is ever going to happen again. He can't cow anyone into silence, and they won't drop it or take him at face value when he pushes them away, even if they don't accept his disrespect. They're all closer with each other than they are with him, and they talk about him when he isn't there.

He has no power left to throw around. What kind of man does that make him now?

(He's certain he already knows the answer.)

It finally draws tears out of him. He's betrayed, and he's furious, and he's still terrified of how open he is for them to just hurt him, now that they know. Deep down, horrifyingly, he's a little relieved. He's lost any faith he possibly could have had in himself.

Pomni turns her attention back to him, the moment he coughs up a quivering sob. She squeezes him tight and whispers assurances, but not apologies. It's always the same thing, that he's safe, he's safe, he's safe.

It's gonna be okay. It's gonna get better. Ragatha's mitt brushes his forehead, like she's looking for fever. Maybe that's her excuse, so he doesn't get upset with her. Her hand lingers there for a long time; he doesn't push her away. He doesn't know how to feel anymore.

He can't help but wonder what Pomni thinks he's thinking of. He knows that people usually don't panic like this unless they feel unsafe. He also knows that maybe Zooble was right, when they said he was afraid. He doesn't think he'll ever be willing to admit it out loud, but he knows its true. Jax thinks he's been afraid all his life. He remembers being meek and distant even as a child.

He wakes up in the morning, immediately ashamed. He apologizes to Pomni, because he knows he should. She forgives him on the spot, without hesitation.

She gives him some sandwiches Kinger had brought them while he was still asleep. Apparently eating, even if they don't need to do it, just does good things for the brain, and it's better if he does it more.

He eats it. He feels better.

It takes him a while to realize he's been curled up in a bed for… what must have been a long time. It makes him feel especially flighty, rooted in place and vulnerable.

His last memories before the circus were of a time where he was especially paranoid about that. He was always looking back, hiding from the cops in fear of being spotted, sleeping only in small, three hour bursts. His abstraction has felt like somewhat of a hard reset for him, and now its weighing heavily on his mind again. It's muscle memory to move.

Apparently Caine has also established a more substantial day and night cycle, which makes it more obvious how little he's been doing. He can actually feel time passing now that there's structure to it. Sitting in place and sleeping most of his hours away for no physical reason makes him feel like a depressed person, and he's not—

Jax thinks he misses the adventures.

He asks, with a flat, frustrated voice, if he's allowed to leave, or if he's just going to be crowded every single day of his life. It's rude, but if he isn't rude he's going to sound shy instead, so this is far preferable.

Pomni chuckles, undeterred. She's been sitting elsewhere to give him space, reading a book that Caine extracted from the internet. "I think everyone's out in the common room, if you wanna head there for a bit."

"Works for me," Jax grumbles with a stretch. He swings his legs over the bed. "Just starting to get sick of laying around and doing nothing all day."

His legs wobble more than he expects, and he stumbles the moment he tries to stand. Pomni's at his side in seconds, grabbing his hands to steady him.

"You okay?" she asks.

"I know how to walk, Pomni," Jax snaps, pulling away from her, and then he catches himself, intentionally softening his voice. "I walked from Gangle's room to here, didn't I? Just gimme a second."

He falls back on the bed, breathing hard. It's not like he's exhausted, that's not how his cartoon body works. It feels more like the physical symptoms of an oncoming panic attack, except he's not really nervous at all.

"You don't have to push yourself. You can take your time if you're not ready to see them," she says, still levelheaded. "Caine especially. I know you haven't yet, he's— I mean, he's trying to be better. He tells us that a lot. It's not hard to believe, it's just… after what he did…"

"Yeah, I get it," Jax puts his face in his hands, and takes calm, measured breaths. He's angry with himself and he's trying to take it out on Pomni, and he knows that's just going to drive a wedge between them that he doesn't want. "Why are you sittin' around here all day instead of going out there, anyway?"

"I don't want you to be alone," Pomni says, simply.

"So take shifts again," Jax says. "If you're really that worried about it. For Christ's sake, just sicc Caine on me or something, he's the one who doesn't know what privacy means. You're gonna have to get sick of this eventually." He gestures at himself.

Pomni opens her mouth, and then closes it. Jax watches her face change. She looks suspicious of him for a moment, and then contemplative. The side of her mouth twitches, and she rubs the back of her neck. She looks away from him.

"I just," she takes a deep breath. "I can't stop thinking about how I should've reached out to you. I saw you reach for me back then and I didn't even think you'd just go off and— even though I knew."

"It wouldn't have stopped me," Jax reminds her.

"Yeah, I guess," she sighs. She sits next to him on the bed, planting her shoes on one of the blocks on the floor, and she starts to repetitvely roll it around. "I just know asking for me when you need me is really hard, and that's— I don't want to force you to."

Jax's shoulders slump. "I'm trying to say you're allowed to be sick of me. I'm not gonna take it personally. I don't like the savior act any more than when you're an asshole to me. You're not my handler."

"But—"

"You sound like Ragatha when you talk like this," Jax complains, "I hate it when she- when you— you can't feel for me. I don't want you to decide when I can and I can't handle things, and when I need to 'ask for help', okay?!"

"You killed yourself the last time I tried to back off!" Pomni cries.

"It's like you're not even trying to listen to me!" Jax's voice is raising into a shout. He's trying to keep it quiet so no one hears, but he's starting to feel real frustration, real indignance. He stands and backs away from her, turns to face her, and he's steady this time. He's not shaking and nervous. "Is everyone just gonna forever insist I try to be more nice and selfless, and then get mad at me when I do?! God, Pomni, what do you even want from me?!"

Pomni flinches. Understanding dawns on her face.

"I'm sorry," she croaks. She hasn't looked this shy and uncertain in a while. "I didn't realize you were just trying to be nice."

Jax's brows furrow. He suddenly feels self-conscious like this, looming above her and yelling at her, but he doesn't know if he's said anything wrong. Sometimes it's hard to tell, especially when Pomni's been so cagey about what her boundaries even are recently. It feels wrong when she's not pushing him, and she's not unless he's purposefully awful.

He wants to sit down, but he doesn't want to be next to her right now. All of the touching and affection is starting to get to him. Considering the way she'd been really particular about boundaries before, he assumes she has to feel the same, at least a little. He settles down on the floor instead, sitting across from her.

"Don't hang my abstraction over my head," he demands.

"I don't want you to lie about being over it when you're not," Pomni says, staring at the block under her foot. She accidentally kicks it a little too far away, and it bounces over next to Jax's knee. "I'm not saying I don't trust— well, maybe I don't, I don't know. I just don't want you to lie to me."

Jax's glare is cold. She's not meeting his eyes.

He purposefully bats the block back over to her. "I don't want you to lie to me either."

She catches it with her foot. She stares at it for a moment, and then picks it up and puts it in her lap. She braces her arms on it and leans into it, like she's relieved to have something tangible to hold.

"Okay," she sighs, with a sarcastic smile. "Maybe I'm a little exhausted."

Jax tilts his chin up.

"Maybe," he starts, slowly, "I'm sick of you trying to coddle me."

Something in Pomni's eyes shifts. She meets his gaze dead on.

"Maybe I'm a little tired of all the cuddling," she says.

"Maybe it's too much for me too."

"Maybe I'm a little upset because you don't trust me, and because it kinda just feels like you just went back to before you opened up to me."

"Maybe I'm tired because I think you don't care about my personal space, and you treat me like I'm going to explode at pretty much everything."

"Maybe I got so close to you at first because you- you— you were the only person who seemed honest to me about how much this sucked, and now I'm kinda, like, a little mad that you're trying to protect my feelings by pushing me away."

"Maybe I'm mad that you still somehow think I'm not just trying to protect my feelings!"

Pomni's shoulders slump. The fight drains out of her, but she doesn't seemed worried about him, just drained. She looks more frustrated with herself, if anything.

"Yeah," she mumbles. "Maybe."

Jax swallows, still feeling inexplicably nervous. "Maybe," he echoes.

They sit in the silence for a bit. It feels less heavy than it probably should. Jax picks at some of the new fur poking out of his 'scarred' elbow. He tries to find something to say, but he can't think of anything.

Pomni speaks up first. "Sorry."

"Yeah," Jax says. "Me too."

"I forgive you."

"Same."

Pomni traces her fingers over the block she's holding. She looks sad, but he can't really tell why.

"I promise I'm talking to them," she says, "about everything, what's going on. It's not anything bad, it's just been… how worried I am about you, and- and them. I'm not just keeping it to myself. I just didn't know if you were ready yet."

"Mhm."

"And I know I'm doing the thing you just asked me not to do by saying that," Pomni clarifies quickly. "I guess I know better now. I just… I don't know if you know how you were. I don't know how much you remember. Nothing we said got through to you."

"I don't know how much I remember either," Jax says. He doesn't think he wants to remember everything. It's all in broadstrokes, but he doesn't know how long he was sick, and there's stretches of time where he can't remember anything at all.

Pomni sets the block back on the ground. She wrings her hands, her brows pressed down on her eyes. Her mouth pulls into a line as she visibly contends with something. Jax has to wrestle down the urge to play off the conversation and run, because it means she's probably going to say something revealing.

"I…" she takes a deep breath. "Do you remember when I told you I loved you?"

Jax stares at her. His face goes carefully blank.

"No," he says, numb. It's the truth.

Pomni's face scrunches as she sniffles, and swallows back a wave of tears. "I just… I didn't know what else to say," it comes tumbling right out of her, like she's confessing to murder, "maybe it was too much, maybe I said it too early. Maybe I shouldn't have said it, I don't know. You were going to leave me again, and I didn't want you to. And— and all I did was scare you."

Jax's mouth is flat in a line. It's just static in his brain.

Pomni's face scrunches up in pure grief.

"You didn't say anything back to me," she sobs brokenly, "you just screamed."

Sitting down on the floor, with Pomni on the bed, makes Jax realize she's on a higher level than him. He feels as small as he must look to her right now, having to look up slightly to meet her eyes. The completely unreadable expression on his face seems to make her look more upset.

"You just screamed," she repeats, smaller.

He's not moving. He breathes slow and shallow through his invisible nose. His eyes slowly drift from Pomni's face to the floor, to the bottom of her bed, as he tries to process it. It's like his brain is trying to block what's happening right in the moment, but that's not what he wants. He's had a pretty good streak of staying conscious, and he doesn't want to break it.

"And you ran," Pomni says. "You ran away. We only got to you in time because you couldn't stand anymore, and- and you were so scared. It was— it was different than when I first pulled you out. I didn't even know what was wrong. I don't know what I did wrong."

Jax is struck with a memory; of being hunched on the floor, seeing his broken form in the mirror, and the abstraction sparking off him. He remembers Ragatha had been there, but that's it. Everything around it is so hazy.

"And you just," Pomni's tugging at her fingers. She's trembling down to her feet, he can see it. "When I held you, when Kinger— you just… you went somewhere else. And you kept screaming, I killed her. Over and over."

He knows he's supposed to panic here. But he doesn't.

"And everyone heard me?" he asks, icily calm.

He looks up at her face again. She nods.

"I didn't tell them," Pomni says. "But I think they kind of got the idea."

Jax closes his eyes. He hangs his head, and doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what he's meant to say, or even how to begin to address it. He doesn't think there's anything he can do to take it back or play it off as a joke, short of abstracting so he never has to.

They're both quiet for a long, long time.

Only then does Jax remember he'd intended to leave, that he's allowed to not be shackled to Pomni. He doesn't have to confront this right now. He grapples onto the opportunity like it's the only thing he has left.

He takes a deep breath. He buries it all deep, because he doesn't think he's ready just yet. And he stands, and smiles.

"Well, I'm gonna go hang with the gals and co," he says with a forced, dramatic flair, even though he's backing away from her at a frantic pace. "You can go back to your nerdy little book club, I'm not gonna get between you and your love of loserdom—"

"Jax—!" Pomni snarls, because she's not an idiot.

"So, you know. Ciao!" he exclaims with a salute, hurriedly shutting the door behind himself.

He panics internally for a second as he stares at the closed door. Ciao? When the hell has he ever said that in his life? But if he stays here and keeps thinking about it, it's probably going to get worse. So he turns and walks towards the common room, picking up the unconcerned, cartoonish gait he'd used to take before... everything.

The door opens quietly behind him. He picks up the pace the best he can, while he tries to walk in an unaffected manner. It's not really working.

Pomni bolts after him, shoes slamming against the ground, because she's completely uninterested in seeming like she has any grace or composure. She snatches his wrist before he can get very far, wrenching him back and making him stumble.

He turns on her with a snarl, intending to snap at her, because they'd made a point about mutually respecting each other's boundaries—only to stop at the look on her face. It's a haunted one. She looks like she's mentally gone somewhere else, trembling with wide eyes. She's staring at the floor.

He's fighting a losing battle to keep his act up already, which doesn't make him feel confident about maintaining it in the future. Great.

"Are you mad at me?" Pomni asks.

Jax stares down at her.

"No," he says, honestly. "It's not about you."

Pomni pauses for a moment. "And you mean that."

Jax shrugs. "Yeah, I guess."

It's the closest he can come to an unambiguous yes. Of course he means it. Pomni's already cleared up pretty much every issue he's really had with her, somehow. He didn't even know that was possible.

There was a point in his life where he'd loved Ribbit so fiercely that it'd consumed his every waking thought, but even then he'd been deeply terrified of disappointing them, and he'd always thought they were some kind of complicated exception, before he'd ruined it between them for good.

After losing her, he'd started to just think that maybe he wasn't a people person at all, even if he put up the front of being one. Pomni had proven him wrong.

She watches his face for dishonesty, and then nods when she doesn't see it. She still has to visibly bury down the hurt.

Jax expects her to just turn and leave, but instead she lets out a sigh and leans over, bonking her forehead on his arm like an attention-starved cat. He stares down at her, unimpressed.

"Not really in the mood to hug you," Jax warns her. He reaches out and flicks at a bell on her hat. "After everything, I think we're gonna have to work up to side hug privileges again."

Pomni sniffles, and giggles against his arm.

"Sorry," she says, a little muffled.

"Go relaaax," Jax insists, starting to get desperate for a taste of freedom. "Go be alone for a little bit. I'll come back in like, an hour. But I'm not gonna take over your bed again, so maybe we'll just make a new one or something."

Pomni freezes. Jax does too.

He thinks about taking it back, but he doesn't.

"Okay," she says, after a long moment. She draws away from him. Her eyes are brimming with tears, but they don't look like they're about to fall. "I'll go back to my nerd club."

"Yeah," Jax agrees, a little flustered and winded. Apparently he has an official roommate now. That's new. "Go be nerdy, you loser."

She waves him goodbye. Her smile still looks a little too tight and scared, but there's nothing he can do about that now.

There's one, brief moment in her absence where his heart flutters, and he feels like something good has truly happened to him. His chest swells with happiness, and he's airy and on top of the world.

And then he remembers why he left, the conversation they'd just had. The feeling fizzles out, and shame and misery resurfaces in a wave.

It takes an exhausting amount of effort not to sit down and rock on the floor for the hour he'd promised he'd give Pomni. There's a chance he still might, but he can at least do that on his favorite couch.

Admittedly, Jax is nervous to enter the common area. It's one of the reasons he's been bedbound for so long, outside of recovering from his little prolonged mental break, and Pomni's aggravating separation anxiety; he struggled so hard to face most of them one on one. He doesn't even know if he can face them as a group, especially if they want to talk to him about everything.

He also just doesn't know what he's going to see. He knows things have changed. He's been told Caine is making an effort to give them more control, let them do whatever they like, and that means the whole place is probably different now.

He has to steel himself for a long time before he looks.

It's… fine. The colors of the circus have softened, so they're easier on the eyes. The place is more personalized and decorated, and he can see splashes of their personalities practically everywhere, instead of the consistent technicolor aesthetic from before. The couches have been moved closer to each other, and almost everyone in the room is playing a game of cards.

Well, all of the couches except for his have been moved. It's more distant from the circle in the room. And everyone's personalities shine through, except for his.

It's dimmer in the hall, compared to the rest of the circus. He watches in the shadows like a stupid edgy cartoon villain, and deliberates giving up.

And then, Kinger notices him. He smiles with his eyes, and shouts, "hi, Jax!"

All heads turn to him. He almost expects confusion or ire, but they only echo the sentiment, waving and shouting their hellos. Ragatha looks too nervous to speak, but she smiles for him, and Caine sounds especially shy compared to the last time Jax had seen him.

But they sound happy to see him. When was the last time he'd had that?

There's a very, very good chance they're playing it up because they don't want him to feel left behind. It could just be an effort to make sure he doesn't run off and abstract again. The uncertainty makes him feel frozen in place.

Jax stares at them. He knows he must look like a scared, kicked puppy, but he's not sure how to control his face. He steps out of the dark, towards them, like he's reaching out.

And then he backs away a bit, turns his head away, and makes a nervous beeline for his couch. They don't keep their attention on him, lapsing back into easygoing conversation. He notices a few worried side-eyes in his direction, but he pretends he doesn't see them.

He sinks into his usual spot, crosses his legs, and rests his hands over his stomach. His ears flop over the arm of the couch. He looks over at everyone, and watches them in silent interest. They're laughing, poking at plates of food as they play. Ragatha's laughing like someone had just told the funniest joke in the world. Caine's sputtering indignantly at something Kinger's said.

He can't even find the momentum to feel bitter. Even if they tried to include him, he doesn't think he'd be able to keep up with their energy. He'd rather remain in his old archetype forever than be nothing more than the miserable, suicidal sadsack to them. He finds the idea of being hated easier than being pitied.

His vision blurs. His ears are ringing again. He thinks about what Pomni told him before he'd run from her, what he'd said in front of them all. He wonders how often they think about it, what they think it means. He imagines them all talking about it behind his back, crafting weird messed up theories about his stupid little tragic backstory, and it makes him start to shake.

"Hey," Zooble says.

Jax jolts in surprise.

They're standing over him. They look worried, in a more obvious manner than the last time they'd spoken.

"You're blocking my light," he complains. It's the first thing he comes up with, even though he knows it's not very good samaritan of him.

Zooble doesn't look very hurt. "Here," they say, holding out a plate of cake to him. "Kinger had this whole lecture about food and dopamine, or something."

"Yeah, I heard it secondhand," Jax says, suspiciously. He takes the plate from them. It's café food again, and it makes his throat inexplicably feel tight. "Are you all just gonna try to befriend me by giving me food, now?"

"Hey, if it works," Zooble says with a shrug, not even disagreeing with him. It doesn't inspire confidence. "If you're gonna act like a feral cat, we're gonna feed you like one."

"What, you get that from Gangle?" he asks, tauntingly.

Zooble rolls their eyes, undeterred. They sit down on the floor in front of the couch, instead of on it. "Just eat your cake, dumbass."

He eyes them warily. He's instinctively expecting hostility or suspicion, but he doesn't find it. They're watching everyone from across the room like he was, and they mostly just seem calm and unbothered. It's weird to see them that way, especially around him.

He stares down the cake. He doesn't remember the last time he's eaten it, if at all, and he'd been up there dozens of times. He's blocked a lot of those warm, positive memories out, just because it was easier to.

He takes a bite. It tastes good, and immediately he feels a little brighter. He's almost wary to keep eating, wondering if Zooble's watching him do it. Maybe he's eating in a way that they could judge, and that's why they're doing this. Is there a way to eat wrong as a man? Maybe he's just overthinking it.

"I thought I'd see you out here with Pomni," Zooble says, faux-conversationally.

"Well," Jax grumbles, "guess I'm full of surprises."

"She's been really attached to you lately," they press, and it's getting more and more obvious they're kind of nervous. "You're pretty much all she talks about when she's out here. You know that?"

Jax's hand trembles. "I don't think there's a lot to talk about." Covertly, it's an accusation. Don't lie to me about this.

Their eyes narrow at him, but they look away. Maybe out of respect for his dignity, he can't tell. "I don't think that's true," they say. "But if you don't want to talk about it all, it's not my business. I don't know you like Pomni does."

Jax takes another bite, but only when he's certain they're not looking. "I think I've said enough," he admits, and his voice wobbles a little.

Zooble doesn't try to fight that claim. Jax relishes in the silence between them. He hears Gangle giggling from across the room, and his quivering hand tightens around the fork. He feels watched, even though he knows that logically he isn't.

"Trouble in paradise?" Zooble asks, eventually.

Jax doesn't even feel mad at what they're implying. "Oh, you know it," he grinds out, with biting sarcasm. "Do you actually care about this, or are you just projecting? You're over here instead of being with your girlfriend, after all."

Zooble snorts. "Gangle can live without me for ten minutes," they say, "I don't think I can say the same for you and Pomni. You've been shaking like you think I'm going to stab you ever since I sat down."

Jax hasn't even realized how bad the shaking had gotten. He suddenly feels incredibly ashamed, but he doesn't think he can express that, considering he did just try to pick a fight. Zooble notices his face fall in the corner of their eye, and their gaze darts away quickly.

"I'm not judging you," they say, frustrated. "You know, a few weeks ago I could've been as mean as you and I both wanted, and it's like it all slid off you like water. Did something change, or did it always hurt you, and you just knew how to hide it?"

Jax scoffs. "You're doing it again."

"Don't—"

"It was fine," he snaps, without thinking. "You weren't hurting me with anything I cared about. You didn't know anything I cared about, you didn't know me. You didn't get me. So it worked. I was having fun, but clearly you guys weren't, and apparently that's the problem."

He's surprised to realize that saying he was having fun almost feels like a lie. Maybe it's only because he's looking back on it in retrospect, now that he has time to feel regret and grief. He's starting to note a pattern of being disgusted by his own happiness.

Zooble pauses, and stares at him. Jax doesn't think he can stomach the rest of the cake, so he shakily sets it down on the couch beside him. He knows it'd make him feel better, but he doesn't think he even wants to feel better right now.

"Is that why you told Gangle you weren't gonna fuck with her anymore?" they ask. "Do you think she's just gonna throw that back in your face if you try?"

Jax's brows twitch downwards. He stares up at the ceiling again.

"Do you really think that little of her?"

"No," he admits, frustrated. "No, I don't."

Zooble lets out a ragged breath, and slumps in what looks like relief. They act like they've just wrung some kind of big confession out of him, even though it all feels pretty obvious to him. Although he doesn't know what they mean when they say 'that'; it could mean any number of things that he's said over the past— he doesn't even know how long it's been, that he's been gored for them all to gawk at.

"I'm not going to hurt you," they say, eventually. Their voice is resolute, like they're swearing to protect him. "Not with anything you care about. Not with your abstraction, or your panic attacks, or whatever the hell you were screaming about when you were out of it that night."

It's almost funny how much it hurts to hear, even though it's meant to be a positive affirmation. It's even funnier how scared he is to push them away. It's so funny he wants to laugh and laugh, until they decide he's not taking it seriously and finally get away from him.

Yeah. It's funny. It's so funny he wants to cry.

"Why?" he whispers.

"Because it wouldn't make me feel good," Zooble rasps. "And it wouldn't make you feel good, or anyone feel good. Not even the people who shouldn't be around you right now. And if I'm gonna preach to you about how you're supposed to act, I better try and set a good goddamn example for you first."

They sound unbelievably passionate.

Jax's chest hitches, but he doesn't cry. He has nothing in mind to refute it. The only information he has against Zooble that he hasn't already leveraged is something he'd said he wasn't going to hurt them with, and he doesn't want to go back on that. It'd be too far for him.

And why would he use it anyway? This feels like their way of promising they're never going to leave him, just like Pomni had. Maybe they had a while ago, when he was crying into the pillow and screaming at them that he hated them. It suddenly feels wrong to leave that hanging in the air, not without resolving it.

"I don't hate you," Jax whimpers, like a stupid baby, with his stupid prey animal avatar and its stupid fluffy face.

Tentatively, Zooble reaches out to touch him. Jax doesn't flinch away, so they take his scarred forearm and give it a reassuring squeeze. They're looking at him with real softness. Its not the kind they give Gangle—there's something harder about it—but he doesn't think he'd ever want that from them, anyway.

"I got the idea, yeah," Zooble says. "And I don't hate you either."

It doesn't feel like absolution. He doesn't think anything ever will. But he has no other choice than to accept it.

He finishes the cake. It was pink on the inside.

He lays there for a while. Zooble gets up and returns to the crowd after a while, seeming to understand how wrung out and exhausted he seems. He still feels bereft in their absence, watching them play from a distance, but he knows he's done this to himself. He probably looks sadder about it than he feels.

They compromise, and bring the play to him.

The whole setup moves, and suddenly the couches are sliding back where they were, with Jax far closer to the activity. Ragatha and Kinger are laughing at the sudden joyride. Caine leans back in his seat, bracing his hands on the knee of his crossed leg and puffing out his chest, like he's childishly proud of himself.

He looks to Zooble. They're trying to look coy without meeting his eyes, so there's a good chance it was their idea. He doesn't have the energy to speak, and he can tell the look on his face is more shyly appreciative than anything else. Nobody pushes him to talk about it.

Gangle sits down on the couch, next to his legs. Jax tenses and pulls them up, closer to his chest, to give her more space from him. She's not really meeting his gaze, but he knows it's her way of reaching out.

She silently hands out a plate of food to him, just like Zooble had. It startles a laugh out of him, because come on, seriously, and she looks proud of managing that. It makes him recall something that he doesn't want to, a warm and affectionate memory waterlogged by grief and shame, and suddenly he's dizzyingly nervous. He gently takes it from her.

Gangle looks scared for a moment. She can tell he's been upset by something, but she doesn't ask him if he's okay. Maybe she knows that even if she caused it, it's not her fault. He's grateful for it, because he doesn't really want to talk about it. Ever.

It feels like a gesture of trust to let him in, even if they don't expect him to be that social. Usually in a situation like this, he would have been forcing his way through their barriers, playing himself up, and taking the reigns of the discussion, but right now it feels like something that'd take a momentous amount of energy.

He wonders if the exhaustion is similarly psychosomatic, like the fever was. It dredges up something old and awful he'd tried to forget; how he'd physically make himself sick before and during school, because of the anxiety he used to feel stepping into classrooms. The nurse complaining about how often he ended up in her office. Being taunted and harassed so badly by the other boys he'd hide in the stalls during lunch, and having to go home because he'd vomited out of pure stress. Getting bad grades in P.E. because he'd refuse to enter the locker room, after what'd happened in there. His parents being disappointed in him. His father calling him a sissy and a hypochondriac.

They don't invite him into the game, but they ask him questions sometimes, and try to ask for his opinion in friendly debates. Jax just hums in response, when he has the energy to. Kinger acts like he'd spoken full sentences, and he's surprisingly on the mark in the assessments he makes. Jax is honestly a little ashamed he can't play off that, because it is very funny.

Some of them leave, and some of them stay. They come back, they talk about other things, they keep him company. He isn't alone for a moment, and he knows that's by design. The time crawls to evening. Jax doesn't think about abstraction once. He drifts off.

Pomni comes and finds him later. She looks a lot calmer than she did when he left her.

"Hey," she says, softly. "You were gone for more than an hour. I was kinda worried."

"Whoops," Jax mumbles, his eyes half-lidded.

"Were you really serious when you talked about moving in?" Pomni asks. "You can sleep here for the night, and I can go set everything up with Caine."

"That works for me," Jax says. "Not really raring to go back to my old room, I guess."

"Yeah, me neither," Pomni admits, with a nervous laugh. "Is there anything you want me to like, get? From your old place? Or do you not want me to go in there?"

Jax pauses. He knows Pomni had seen it in his mind, but that's not the problem. It's that right before he'd abstracted, he'd tried to tear his room to bits. He'd just been so hysterically upset, that he'd screamed and ripped everything apart and trashed it like a lunatic. The final straw was when he'd torn a photo of him and Ribbit in two, and then he had—

It'd been a blur.

There might still be something left to salvage there, though. And he's well aware that Pomni knows he was unstable, and she won't judge him for the mess he'd left behind. He can hide behind the plausible deniability of his own abstraction, at the very least. The monsters do normally tend to be destructive.

"There's photos," he says. "I think some of them are still— they're not all gone. I don't want you to look at them, I just… if you can go get them, put them in a box or something—"

"Yeah," Pomni says. "Of course. I'm not gonna judge."

"I know," Jax replies quickly. He's surprised to realize he means it.

Pomni stops to watch him for a second. Jax doesn't look back at her, but he can see it in the corner of her eye, something clear-eyed and somber written on her face. A lump forms in his throat. Being honest feels like he's surrendering himself to her. It makes his stomach flutter.

"Thank you for trusting me," she says.

He doesn't even feel the immediate strike of shame and regret that he's been feeling. He only feels a wave of relief. He turns to meet her eyes, and she doesn't look away. It feels weirdly meaningful this time.

And then she seems to break out whatever spell she's in, blinking quickly and shaking her head. She gives him an awkward thumbs up, and turns to speedwalk away.

Jax blinks. He kind of wants to make fun of her for being so awkward after days of being so relentlessly confident with him, but he doesn't. He just rolls back over to face the couch, exposing his back to the air, and he drifts back off.

He spends a while in a weird place between dreaming and wakefulness, where he knows what's going on around him, but he's not really processing it. It's a lot more pleasant than dissociation. He hears passing voices, footsteps. Someone throws a blanket over him (he thinks it might be Kinger), and he barely even flinches at it. He just obligingly wraps himself in it with a sad little sniffle.

He doesn't think he's ever been taken care of like this before. He's still conflicted about how it feels, but he doesn't think it's bad. He doesn't think it hurts. God, at least it doesn't hurt anymore.

He wakes up, slowly, in the middle of the night. The common room is dark, and warm like it's being lit by firelight. He thinks he was having an unpleasant dream, but he doesn't remember many of the details.

There's a pull in his eyelids that makes him want to just go back, but then he hears someone shifting beside him, and he reluctantly peels his eyes open.

Ragatha's sitting across from him, on the other end of his couch. Her hands are curled into fists, shaking in her lap, but she's not crying, and she's not watching him. She doesn't even look that upset or scared. Jax doesn't know if he wants her to feel that way, although he's a little irritated she's in his space.

"You guys don't have to keep playing chaperone, you know," he mumbles groggily, wiping at his eyes. "I don't think I'm gonna abstract when I'm asleep. Don't even think that's possible." He realizes he doesn't actually know, but he hasn't been having any extreme nightmares that could cause it.

Ragatha doesn't startle. She blinks, slowly, at the far distance. "It's hard to tell when you're sleeping." She recedes a little further into herself. "When we first— you know, you weren't—"

"Yeah, I know," Jax says. He's been told this, likely multiple times by now. He sits up, but he doesn't let go of the blanket. He realizes, childishly, that he's holding onto it for comfort. "I'm not doing that anymore."

Her eye darts over to him, and then away. She looks like she's trying to figure out if he's lying or not, but she doesn't verbally call it into question. She wrings her hands in her lap, her lips pursed in thought.

"What?" Jax snaps, irritable.

Ragatha looks like she doesn't know what to say.

Jax realizes, slowly, that he's very rarely directed ire like this at her before, even though he's made his contempt very clear; he's always laced everything with meanspirited, dismissive humor, and waved everything off with a light, unbothered voice, and ran off at the first chance he got, especially when she tried to pry deeper. He bothered her, he bullied her, but he very rarely allowed himself to lose his composure or act bothered himself, and he always made her regret it when she managed to drag it out of him.

This may be the most honest he's been to her in a while, outside of the conversation they'd had when he was still bedridden. It's not very vivid in his mind, but he knows he was pretty nasty to her. He starts to feel a little bad, because he sees she's been trying. He looks away from her, and clutches the blanket tighter.

"Can we talk?" she asks, softly.

"We're gonna have to eventually," Jax admits. He's talked to pretty much everyone else he's hurt at this point. "So I dunno. I don't see why not."

Ragatha nods sharply. She looks especially solemn, like she's trying to make herself smaller. Jax thinks he might look the same way right now.

"I never meant to be selfish," she says, eye darting around as she tries to think of what to say. "I-I— it's not really that I think you're not… responsible for everything that happened. That's never what I mean when- when I say I think it's my fault. I know I'm not responsible for your feelings. I'm not trying to control you, I," she pauses. Stops to think. "I just didn't want you to hurt anyone else."

Jax's shoulders slump. He knows what she's trying to imply. He knows she knows about the mountain, and a lot of the events leading up to it. He doesn't even blame her for putting that on him, because he's very aware it's his fault. He knew it was from the moment it happened.

And it's his fault he didn't say anything, didn't reach out when he was given multiple chances to. He just shut down and convinced himself he was a worthless, hopeless monster, and it was better if he stayed away.

And then he killed her.

Ragatha's eyes well with tears.

"I broke my promise," she admits, in a small, warbling voice. "I told Pomni about them. But I thought you were dead. I thought you were gone, and I thought it was my fault for not saying it sooner. I'm- I'm so sorry."

He wants to feel hurt and betrayed and furious, but he doesn't. Maybe he will, when he has more time to think about it. "Guess she was gonna know anyway."

"Is that what she saw?" Ragatha asks. "In your mind?"

Jax leans back over onto the arm of the couch, and pulls his knees to his chest. He feels like a murder witness in a shock blanket. "That and a lot of other things I don't really wanna talk about," he grumbles. "I think she remembers more about it than me."

"She won't tell me," Ragatha says. "I've asked. I know you like your privacy, I just— maybe I'm too nosy. Is that— has that been the problem?"

"I dunno."

She falls silent. He knows she's watching him, searching his face. She's looking at his left side, his unabstracted one. He doesn't really know how he must look to her right now. He just hopes it's not pathetic.

"Can you tell me?" she asks. "What did you tell Ribbit?"

It's the first time he's heard their name out loud in a long, long time. He hugs his blanket tighter, and tries to keep himself from falling away. He doesn't think hiding from it has ever worked in his favor.

So he takes a deep breath. "What, before or during the fight?"

"I kinda know— before the mountain," Ragatha stammers. "She never told me what happened, but I saw everything change, saw you— you know. I watched you change too. Maybe It was something she said, but. It wasn't just her. It really scared me."

"It's personal," he says. "Like, it's… it had to do with my life, my stupid and complicated baggage. And I just… I couldn't—" he stammers to a stop, immediately frustrated. "I couldn't take her knowing about it. I told her I lied, I told her nothing happened— they tried to reach out and I just—"

He can't go on any longer. He's too close to saying something he's going to really regret. Maybe he'd keep going if it were Pomni, who saw everything, who knows that personal information he's keeping close to his chest, but it's not.

"You pushed her too hard," Ragatha whispers.

Jax's blood freezes in his veins. He knows she doesn't know what that sounds like. But it still grazes far too close to something he's deeply terrified of ever talking about. He squeezes his eyes shut, and nods sharply. He feels exposed again.

Ragatha sniffles.

"I'm sorry," she says again. "I thought— when you started teaming up with Pomni, I thought— what if I lost her already? What if I've already failed her, like I failed you both? What if you're gonna do the same thing?"

I tried, Jax thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud. It almost feels disrespectful to admit. That Ribbit died trying so hard to love him, but Pomni somehow managed to survive. It feels a lot like the many many complicated ways he relates to Ragatha, and how she's come out capable of talking about it, and he hasn't.

It feels like admitting to some kind of inherent weakness; understanding that she definitely had it worse, but he was the one who crumbled. He was the one who died, and Ribbit was the one who died.

"You're talking about it— everything now," she snivels. "At least— you kind of are, I guess. So can you be honest with me about this? Do you think it was unfair? How I felt about you?"

Jax thinks about it.

"To you, maybe," he says, after a while. It comes out more gentle than he expects it to. "Or, maybe to me too. I don't— You're the one who said you weren't responsible for me. And I already told you that. You don't have— I don't know, I've told you this. You don't have this stupid power over me that you think you do."

Ragatha wipes at her tears, watching him intently. Jax wants to disappear. He doesn't know if he's angry, or defensive, or scared, or grieving. Maybe all four at once. A part of him just feels numb. His heart is beating fast.

"This is what I hate," he snarls. "You just want me to feel like- like— everything's always already okay. Like there's some dumb charming spin on everything that happens to me. You think you have this control over me, and you don't. You don't! And you lie to me, over and over again you just tell me that you're okay with it, with everything, even though you're not. And it's not okay. And I know you hate me when you say it. I don't care if it's selfish or not. It just—" he stops with a dry, wheezing sob. He's panting, he realizes, but it doesn't feel like it's about to descend into a panic attack.

Ragatha doesn't look as hurt as he thought she would. She still is, and it's obvious, but she doesn't look like she's about to burst into tears. She's just staring at his face, mostly confused and trying to analyze him.

"It hurts," Jax chokes, finally. "It's not okay. I'm not going to be happy, you're never going to make me happy, because nobody can anymore. That doesn't— it never happens— it didn't happen to me, I didn't want it to. And then you go and act like it's your fault, like nothing I did ever mattered, it's just you. And you don't even act like you're a person," his voice quavers. He knows it's hypocritical, he knows he's probably just projecting, but— "I swear I knew nothing about you this whole goddamn time, how you felt about anything. How was I supposed to tell you how I felt when you weren't even trying?"

"Jax," Ragatha breathes.

"I just wanted you to leave me alone," he spits. He forces all the heat into it that he can, but there isn't much of it left.

He regrets it the moment it comes out of his mouth, how evil it feels. He'd killed them by pushing them away, both Ribbit and Kaufmo, because he couldn't even fathom the idea that they possibly ever loved him like they said they did. People only love him as a joke, because he's funny. He knows his entire existence is ridiculous. The only thing he could do to protect himself was make other people's misery the butt of the joke, instead of his own. He didn't even realize it was possible that it could have been different.

And a part of him hates Ragatha so much it tears him from the inside out, and a part of him just wants her to love him, without him having to say anything real to do it. He wants to be loved like a concept, a character. He wonders if that's how she feels.

Maybe they really are more alike than he thinks. Maybe that's the problem.

Ragatha's head tilts as tears run down her cheek. Her shoulders shake. Her brows knit together in agony.

"I'm sorry," she cries, again. She buries her face in her hands, and she looks embarrassed, now, to be so upset. "I don't know how to be a real person. I'm not- I don't think I even am— I'm sorry."

He stares at her as she cries. He doesn't think he's so bitter about it anymore, now that he's said it out loud. There's already a hint of regret coalescing, a small part of him that doesn't want to hurt her feelings anymore. Just like with Gangle, it'll never be normal to him again.

It was wrong to make her keep Ribbit to herself, because it was wrong for him to do the same thing to himself. She loved them like he did, and it killed him, little by little. He has to wonder, would it have killed her too?

"Yeah," he admits, instead of saying the many things he could in the moment, poking at a loose thread in the blanket. It feels more real than he does. "Me neither."

Ragatha lurches forward and throws her arms around him. He goes completely frozen, his eyes wide. His ears pin back. He's expecting her to squeeze, but she doesn't. It's gentle enough for him to push away without shoving. He doesn't hug her back, but he throws half his blanket around her shoulders, and decides not to comment on it.

"You didn't kill her," Ragatha sobs. "You didn't kill her. I promise, I promise, you—"

Jax doesn't know if that's true, but he doesn't want to start a new argument about it right now. Considering how much her self-blame pisses him off, he doesn't think his own would do much to improve the situation.

(She might be perceptive enough to point out how much of a hypocrite he is. He knows Pomni would, if she were having this conversation with him. God, he can practically hear her voice in his ear.)

"You didn't kill me either," he says back, grumpily. "So just get over it already."

She squeezes him tighter, and butts her head under his chin. Jax plays dead instead of getting her to stop, looking down at the hand sticking out from under the blanket. He has the couch cushion in a death grip. He hadn't even realized. He lets go.

"You're so soft now," Ragatha comments, mystified.

A shiver of something unpleasant crawls up his spine. "Okay," he says. "Get off."

She gets off. She doesn't look offended by him trying to express boundaries—he thinks he knows her well enough to know that's progress—she just sits back on her knees. She's not smiling, but she looks a little less like she's about to implode in on herself. Her tears are starting to dry up.

"I can't just get over it because you tell me to," she admits. It makes Jax realize he's being hypocritical again, which is frustrating. "I can't stop thinking about it. When I saw you, I… I just looked back at everything and I thought—"

She stops, swallowing back another wave of tears.

"What can I do for you now?" she asks. "How do I make it better?"

She's leaving it in his hands. This may be the first time he's been given control back since he's abstracted, because even when he'd decided to split off from Pomni for a bit, it hadn't been without a fight. It's the biggest sign of trust anyone's given him, and it's from Ragatha of all people.

He doesn't even really know the answer. He's never thought of a better. That idea died with him the moment he pushed away his best friend. Hearing that there's a version of himself out there who's secure doesn't automatically give him an idea of how he can achieve that, even though he's been told over and over again that it's possible.

Well. Okay. He has a few ideas. But they're all incredibly personal, and even more overwhelming, in ways that he doesn't think he's ready to confront yet. They're not really about his social life, his relationships. He doesn't know with those. He's just been stumbling in the dark, he always has.

(He didn't really have any real friends before Ribbit and Kaufmo. Only surface ones who laughed at him, and lied about him, and pinched at him in the locker room because they thought he was gay, and made secret group chats behind his back. Every online one hadn't known what he truly was.

He wonders to himself constantly, what kind of person saved the real him from homelessness out there? Should he have bitten the bullet and asked for his own name?)

"I don't know," he admits, sharp and suspicious. "You don't have to do that for me."

"I want to," Ragatha insists, and there's a sudden wave of anger when he realizes he can't tell if she's lying. He doesn't want her to be guilty just because he abstracted. He's almost angry with her and himself that they weren't able to have this discussion before. It makes him feel like such a loser.

Jax takes a deep breath. "Okay, fine," he sighs. "Well, I guess, if I have to…"

Ragatha perks up like an attentive dog. It makes him want to puke a little.

"Chill out," Jax mumbles, "Stop thinking I hate you, because I don't know, I guess I probably don't right now. I don't know. Trust me when I say I'm, just— I'm not gonna go back to before, I've got myself handled, I know it's not gonna work for anyone and it'd be stupid. Stop apologizing to me for everything, just at all. I hate it. And…" he winces before he says it. "Just. Keep being mean to me when I deserve it. Y'know, so I know I do."

Ragatha blinks, confused. "When you deserve it?" she echoes. "When's… when do you think you deserve it?"

Jax tilts his head. He pulls the blanket completely over his body. "I dunno, when I'm being a jerk," he grumbles. He's uncomfortable, but this direction of conversation is significantly better than what they opened with. "When you think I deserve it."

I'm sorry, he's saying. I won't do it again. He knows she knows it, just by the look on her face.

"What if I'm wrong?" Ragatha asks.

"Then I guess you're wrong," Jax says, dismissively. It's hard for either of them to come up with a good system when neither of them want power anymore, he's realizing. But he's not ready to wrench back his grip on control. He doesn't know how. "Whatever. I can take it."

(The hardest realization for him to come to terms with, is that he thinks she never was wrong about him.)

He can't tell if Ragatha's forgiving him with her expression, but there's a glimpse of real warmth there. "What if you can't?" she asks.

Jax shrugs. It's getting easier and easier to be honest. "I guess we'll figure it out when it happens."

There's no way it won't happen at least once, the more he thinks about it. And deciding that he's just going to have roll with the future, no matter what it is, feels like the first substantial plan he's made for himself, that isn't just don't die again. It may also be a decision born from real, slowly developing trust, that if Ragatha hurts him, she won't mean to. He thinks he's okay with that.

He goes back to Pomni's room in the morning. When he enters, he exchanges a glance with Caine as he exits.

Caine waves at him, a plea for peace. Jax very reluctantly waves back with a neutral expression, silently telling that he still needs time, but he doesn't want him to worry about it. It makes Caine brighten, and for once doesn't make a big deal out of it. Jax thinks he can hear him humming to himself as he floats away.

The place is bigger, so Jax has his own personal space. Pomni's changed her side of the room a bit too; she's softened the colors like the rest of the circus, added plushies and posters and a shelve of books and decorated it with fairy lights. It feels like a room a real person would have. It's pretty similar to what his dream room would've looked like when he was a kid, actually. Softer than he knows he should ever want.

His side is emptier. It's just his bed and a box. Pomni's moved the canopy to his bed, even though they definitely don't need it anymore. He's at least a little relieved that nobody would be able to see him when he sleeps.

"Guess I'm just stuck with the princess bed now," he grumbles.

"Does it just bother you because it's called that?" Pomni asks, knowingly.

His foot rapidly, repetitively thumps against the ground. He doesn't respond, crossing his arms. It makes her chuckle, endeared with him. She gets out of her own bed, and steps up to his side.

"Sorry," she says. "I don't really know a lot about what you like. I didn't wanna just guess that. But you can ask for stuff if you want, or— conjure it. You can do that, you know."

Jax hadn't even thought about it much. He doesn't think he's ever even tried, not consciously anyway. He'd always worked within Caine's rules, but he'd gotten so into it that it felt like the world did bend around him and his desire. It's why he'd stayed in his archetype for so long.

He immediately thinks of several ways he could use this new information for mischief, now that he's aware of it, and then he shelves them all away for later to blunt into something kinder. He's on thin ice, after all.

"Caine has internet access now," she says. "He can go and get PDFs. So he can at least get you some books if you want."

"I don't think I've read a book in years," Jax comments, wistful. He sits down on his bed and lets that process.

"You read a lot?" Pomni asks, with a teasing undertone to it. He knows it's just because he called her a nerd loser yesterday, but it still makes him feel a little self-conscious. He has to swallow back the urge to deny and lash out.

"Eh, not really," he says, forcing smoothness into his voice. "More when I was younger. I kinda stopped after a while. I had to get out of my head sometime, y'know? Be more rough and rugged, or whatever."

Pomni steps back to sit on her own bed, kicking her feet. "No offense, but that's kinda stupid," she replies. There's no malice in it.

"Got less interesting when I graduated, since I didn't need to have a distraction from the losers all day," Jax waves it off, because he knows what she's trying to imply, and he doesn't want to dig into the meat of it. "And then after that— I guess a lot just happened, with— you know." He knows she knows. "I ended up here not long later, so, ppbt. Never really thought about it much."

Pomni goes quiet for a long moment, staring into the distance. The silence weighs heavier on them than usual. Jax doesn't know if he's said something wrong.

"How…" she visibly scrambles for something to say. "How old are you?"

Jax tilts his head, his eyes narrowing. "Uhh." He's confused. Did it never come up? He thought she would have at least seen it when she saw the other him, or whatever. "I think I counted this with Zooble when they got here. We were the same age when they came in '16, sooo. Twenty-one?"

"Twenty-two now, then," Pomni clarifies.

"Yeah! Twenty-two. Means I've been here for, I dunno. Five, six years now? I think five. Ragatha's got like, nine on her belt, so that's not much."

It's weird that that's the truth. To him, it's been an eternity. He never compared years with Gangle, so he doesn't even know the year that Ribbit died, or how long it's been. It's a haunting thought.

Pomni looks haunted. "You were seventeen," she whispers, like the thought makes her want to throw up.

Jax's walls clamp up immediately. "Hey, I was at least eighteen," he snaps, still trying to force lightheartedness into it. "Actually, maybe nineteen. I didn't really— I don't know how long it was between— my birthday could've passed and I didn't notice. But I was an adult, I was outta highschool."

"You were a teenager," Pomni breathes.

Jax scoffs, and falls back to lay on his bed, so he doesn't have to look her in the eyes. "Sounds like the kind of pretentiousness only a twenty-five year old could have," he grinds out, irritated, "sorry I ever tried to call you a baby, I guess."

"Please don't try to blow this off," Pomni snaps. She huffs out a frustrated sigh, and pauses for a moment to gather herself. Her breathing is ragged. "It's— I'm not trying to— it just sucks."

"I think we've all noticed that my life sucks," Jax replies, unamused.

"I just can't imagine coming here when I was eighteen," Pomni says. "I hated being eighteen. I didn't really knew how to live. They— it's not like they taught me that in school. And everyone wanted me to just get up and do everything the second I graduated. Everything was about my future. I didn't even know what that was."

Jax taps a nervous rhythm against his right arm.

"But I guess I figured it out," she continues. He looks over at her. She's not looking at him, but she's wringing her hands, and gesturing very animatedly as she speaks. "I moved away from my— ugh, my parents. I still got a job, I did stuff for myself, I got to live. I had friends— not close ones, but still. We all had... something. We all had dreams."

"Except for me," he completes, completely calm, because he already knows this.

"I mean, I wasn't gonna say that," Pomni finishes, "but it's kinda what I was leading up to, yeah. I just can't imagine it, especially with— with how things went. Y'know, for you. But I guess it makes sense, with what you've told me."

Jax hums in assent. He's starting to feel tired again.

"Coming from highschool to here." A hysterical laugh bubbles out of her chest. "I'm only laughing so I don't cry right now."

"Please don't," Jax demands.

Pomni purses her lips, lost in thought. He lets her take a moment to process everything, because he doesn't really know what to say. He never really thought about how depressing it all was until she laid it out for him like that. He'd never even imagined having dreams.

It's funny, because she's already working herself up without knowing how highschool actually was for him. On average, Jax's time there was worse than most other people's, and he knows that. He only hasn't admitted it to anyone because it'd be admitting how much he'd tolerated from his friends, all in desperation to be liked. To be a boy.

Pomni's quiet for a while, and then finally she asks; "Would it be bad for me to make a joke about how I'd also probably kill myself?"

Jax howls with laughter. "No!"

He's struck with the realization that, while trying to organize his side of the room with Pomni, he doesn't actually know what he really likes anymore. He remembers shows he watched, books he read, and video games he played, but nothing that captured his interest for a long time.

And he certainly can't think of anything he'd be willing to express in his personal space. Someone knowing what he cares about gives them power they can exercise over him. Nightmare scenarios are already forming in his brain, where he openly expresses love for the anime he used to watch, and it resulting him being socially eviscerated because he'd made fun of Gangle for it before. He thinks he'd rather die than have to admit his old love for Naruto out loud to anyone ever. Ugh.

Pomni seems to understand, so she suggests something more neutral and unopposing. Eventually he just accepts the idea of his side of the room aesthetically matching hers, because it's easier than making any substantial, self-expressive decisions so far, ones that could be open to anyone's judgement. He just needs a lot of time to work up to it.

"It's so… girly," he comments, at some point, sitting down on a beanbag chair they'd put in there.

It takes every bit of effort he has not to curl into himself, and make it obvious how afraid that makes him. His mom would hate him for a room like this. He hated his own Caine-assigned room for similar reasons.

"So?" Pomni asks, simply, as she hangs up fairy lights. She doesn't even look at him when she says it.

Jax stares down at his lap, at his stupid newly-fluffy avatar, at the soft red beanbag he's sitting on. He looks up at how unbothered and confident Pomni seems with herself and her own decisions. He realizes how unconfident and afraid he's been to everyone lately, and how everyone has been telling him it's okay to start anew, even if he's afraid to believe it.

And he thinks about how Pomni isn't even that girly. He doesn't think he's ever seen her express her love for anything feminine in her life. Being a girl is just a neutral state for her, something she just is. Jax doesn't think being a man feels that way for him.

So?

"I should probably pick up reading again," he says, changing the topic. He's forcing himself to speak, despite the way his voice wavers unconfidently. "You got any recommendations?"

Pomni's face brightens in excitement.

He knows he's sleeping more than not. It's the only coping mechanism he has left, that doesn't force him to lose himself in his head again. Pomni's more willing to come in and out instead of sitting around him, growing steadily more confident with how placid he's become. He knows she's worried about him, though.

It's not like he's avoiding leaving his room. He does come out sometimes, although he mostly keeps a comfortable distance from everyone. He's even managed to read with them around, which is a development in his crippling fear of being perceived, although he's gotten defensive the few times they've tried to ask him about it.

It's just hard. It's not a fear of being undeserving. Or maybe it is, and he can't tell. He's just struggling to understand what the new normal is supposed to be, and how he's supposed to slot into it. It's easier to sleep, because then he doesn't have to think about anything.

"I'm just worried," Pomni mumbles, sitting on the side of his bed, while he lays curled up and faced away from her. They've brought a fan in here for white noise, and it's been a lot of help lately. It's weird how human everything is starting to feel. "You know I can't really help it. I'm not trying to be pushy or anything, or tell you what I can and can't do, but—"

"Yeah, I get it," Jax says. He's facing away from her. "It's— whatever. I'm just tired."

"All the time, though? We don't really get tired here."

"Well I am," Jax bites out, wanting her to drop this topic indefinitely. "If you think I'm stinking up your room, I can go back to mine. Is that what you want?"

"No!" Pomni snaps back. "Don't do that."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're so— ugh," she sighs. "I like it when you're here. Please don't just shut me out."

"I'm not," Jax admits, his voice softening. For once, him trying to close himself off from her was something he wanted to do for her sake. He doesn't want to make her feel guilty just by existing in her space. "I'm not trying to."

Pomni's quiet for a bit. Jax shifts to look at her, and she looks frustrated. With him or herself, he can't really tell. He's not sure how to properly tell her that it's stupid for her to be upset. Sleeping for so long doesn't really hurt his body, because that's not how it works. He can bedrot all he wants with no consequences.

"I just want to sleep," he says, his eyes fluttering back shut. He's so exhausted and worn out. It's the closest thing he can get to being dead without pissing anyone off, although he knows that's something he shouldn't express. "I'm tired. Just let me sleep."

"Okay," Pomni mumbles, turning away from him. She's using that carefully level tone she had before the first time she attacked him, when he'd lied he wouldn't care if she abstracted. It's a memory that feels like it belongs to someone else. Something that happened to him a lifetime ago.

He tenses in preparation for her to snap. She doesn't. He can't see her face.

"Yeah. Yeah," her voice is breathy. She stands, and Jax watches her calmly step out of the room. It's extremely uncomfortable to not know how she feels. "Okay."

The door clicks shut behind her, leaving him alone. He sits up and watches it, like he's expecting her to burst back in and throw things at him, but she doesn't. Eventually he gives up, trying to force himself to feel content with the victory.

His stomach squirms with discomfort, but he curls up into himself and closes his eyes again. He lets out a big, beleaguered sigh.

He realizes he's started to hug himself like a scared little kid, and unwinds a little. Even though nobody's watching him, and it doesn't matter, he hates the idea of looking like that at all. He's an adult who isn't in trouble, Christ.

He's overthinking everything again. He was supposed to go to sleep.

Yeah. Sleep. He's just going to go back to sleep…

The door slams open.

Jax flails, scrambling as he tries to sit up. Zooble storms in with the confidence of a wrecking ball. They grab his blankets and tip him over so he falls off his bed and straight onto the floor. He shouts in surprise.

"Hey! What the— hey!"

"Come on, you absolute baby," they snap at him, their antenna twitching in their frustration. "Stop sulking and get the hell out of your room already."

He's too shocked to even think clearly. "Wuh— huh?"

"We tried this the easy way, we tried to be nice about it," they growl, "but if you're gonna be this stubborn about it, I guess we're doing it the hard way."

Jax's brain catches up with him, and he snarls back at them. "Since when did you give a crap?! I'm not hurting you or anyone, so just—"

"Are you gonna freak out if I grab you?"

"—No, I don't care—let me sleep, you—!"

Zooble grabs him by the ankle. He shouts in surprise when they wrench him forward and away from the corner. It's not enough for it to really hurt, but it does make him thrash wildly in a way that's humiliating and childish.

"Get up, or I'm dragging you the whole way to the common room," Zooble warns. "You don't even have to talk to anyone. You just have to be literally anywhere but here."

Jax tries to flip around to his stomach to get away from them, but they just readjust their grip to keep their hold.

"I hate you," Jax barks into the floor.

"No you don't," Zooble reminds him.

Jax tries to make an aggravated noise, but it just comes out more like a miserable little sob. A nonverbal way of saying, please don't make me do this. He doesn't care if it's good for him, or if it'll make him happier. He's just so tired.

Zooble still doesn't let go of him, even though it's half his best attempt at a guilt trip, so he does the next best thing and goes completely limp like a sack of potatoes, out of pure defiant spite.

"You'd seriously rather embarrass yourself than accept you're depressed and being an idiot about it?" Zooble asks sharply.

He doesn't respond.

"Guess I'm dragging you," they sigh.

Jax shakily raises a middle finger at them.

Zooble does actually drag him down the hallway by the ankle. His face scrapes against the floor, but it doesn't really hurt like it would if they were in real life. It mostly just makes him feel grouchy and embarrassed.

"Hi Zooble," Gangle says at their arrival, not even phased by the predicament they're in. "Hi Jax."

"Hey," Zooble says, similarly unbothered.

Jax groans very angrily into the floor.

Zooble shakes him a little. "You gonna get up, or are you just gonna lay here all day? 'Cause we can work with that."

Jax peels his face off the ground, still squinty-eyed and angry. Pomni and Ragatha are sitting on the couch, both pretending not to look at him. Pomni's visibly trying to stifle a laugh, and he glares especially hard at her. This was her idea. Traitor.

"Fine," he snaps. "But I'm not gonna talk to any of you guys."

"Works for me." Zooble lets go of him.

He's actually not that mad, just stubborn. He picks himself up and prepares to go to his couch, only for Pomni and Ragatha to wave him over, closer to the action. Ragatha's smiling at him, patting the space between her and Pomni. He rolls his eyes dramatically and obliges, flopping down with crossed arms.

He's close enough to both of them that their legs are touching his. He finds he's not as uncomfortable with it as he should be.

"It's good to see you out here again," Ragatha says, earnest. "I think it's been days."

"Days?" Jax asks. He hadn't known. "Really?"

She shrugs. "I was just… starting to get worried."

"Hey," Zooble says, catching his attention. They're holding out a bowl of soup to him. "Eat something. It'll make you feel better."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Jax spits, because it feels like they only have one trick in the book for placating him. He takes it anyway.

He used to have issues with eating, before he ever came here. It wasn't on purpose, or because he wanted to mess himself up. He'd just hated how filled out his form started to look as he grew into his height. His shoulders felt too broad, his legs too short, and his waist too thick.

He remembers his mom had kicked up a huge fuss about it, and practically forced him to sit at the dinner table as she watched him eat, complaining about how ungrateful he was when his face twisted in repulsion at every bite. Even though he knew it was objectively good for him, he hated it. He felt the same desperate hopelessness as when she'd held him down to cut his hair, when he'd grown it out too long.

It's easier, now that he knows it's not going to change anything. He's going to look just as stupid as he always is, no matter what he does. Although maybe his scarred form indicates that he can alter his avatar with his mental state, at least to an extent. He just has to make sure he doesn't think about it too much.

"You okay?" Pomni asks, bumping his foot with her own.

Jax startles. "Yeah," he says, too quickly for it to sound convincing. He takes a bite, so she knows he's trying, and that he's not upset.

"You think we're back to side-hug priviledges now?"

He snorts. "I guess."

He opens his arm without looking at her, and she slumps into his side. He throws his free arm loosely over her shoulders, taking another bite of the soup Zooble gave him. They're talking around him, but he's not paying much attention.

Ragatha slumps onto his other shoulder with a sigh. He tenses, but allows it. He doesn't open his arm for her—they're not there yet—but he lets her use his shoulder as a headrest without a word of complaint. She looks exhausted, but happy.

"I'm glad you're okay," Ragatha mumbles.

"Mhm," Jax hums. His face feels hot. Neither of them comment on it.

The next day, he rises all on his own.

They all cheer when he sits down with them, like it's a gigantic leap of progress he's making. He laughs when one of them shoves a plate of food in his hand, because he thinks it's becoming a running joke. He sticks his tongue out teasingly at Zooble when they playfully shove him. He actually works up the courage to talk to Caine again. Him and Gangle keep a comfortable distance from each other, but it doesn't make him feel in any way upset. She still smiles with reserved pride every time he cracks a joke.

As the activity dries up, and everyone goes to hang out elsewhere, he finds himself actually gossiping with Ragatha. She's the one to start it, to break the brief lapse of awkward silence between them, when they're the only two left behind.

She just says, so, um. Gangle and Zooble, huh?

It makes him cackle like a hyena. It makes her laugh too.

At some point, they all go stargazing again.

It's Pomni's suggestion. Jax is pretty certain of why; it's an excuse to get him out of the tent for a bit. The idea of being outside around fresh air is soothing for their brains, even if it isn't technically real.

He actually hasn't been here since they'd had that little mini-adventure on the grounds. Looking back on it, it might've been the first time he really got to have a conversation with her, or at least one where he wasn't posturing the whole time. A lot has changed since then, about both of them. About everyone, really.

They're all sat in the wooded area on the grounds, with the lake within viewing distance. Jax socializes for a bit. He really makes the effort to talk to everyone, and engage with them in a calmer enviornment, and act like he's normal for a bit. It's actually pretty hard. It feels like he's trying to work muscles that have atrophied over time.

It starts to get exhausting. When he thinks no one's looking, he pulls away from the group, and steps out to go sit by the lake. He watches waves lap on the shore with distant fascination, drawing shapes in the sand.

He hears the bushes rustle behind him. He tenses, frustrated to be bothered, turning around to snap at what's probably going to be Pomni or Zooble that he's fine, he doesn't need a babysitter—

But it isn't. Kinger's standing there, drifting behind him.

"Hi," he says. "Can I sit?"

Jax's shoulders slump.

"Free country," he says, which means yes.

Kinger walks over, and sits down on the sand next to him. He stares out at the shoreline, his eyes clear and kind. Jax catches himself watching him, bristling and trying to read his face for malice, and it makes him jerk his head away.

"I haven't really gotten to talk to you," Kinger says, in that gentle voice he always has when he's lucid.

Jax found it revolting the first time he heard it, because the idea of someone that old being that kind just made his skin prickle. Maybe he does still feel like he's stuck at eighteen, with nothing and no-one in his life, unsure of how to ever learn to make decisions for himself, bristling at every little figure of potential authority.

"I guess I haven't been sure what to say," Kinger continues, wringing his hands nervously. "And it's kind of hard to imagine having a serious conversation with you when I had a bucket on my head."

Jax scoffs, pulling his legs up to his chest. "You still look stupid." It's not meant to be rude. It feels more like objective reality.

"I've gotten used to it," Kinger chuckles. "I don't think I'd want to look like anything else, even if I had the option to." He stops for a moment. Jax glances over him, and his eyes are sad. "My wife looked a lot like me, when she came here. It's how I'll always remember her face."

Jax hums. He's not sure what he's meant to say about that.

"She's still alive out there," Kinger says. "Me and her, together. But… it's not her, in a way. It's beautiful to know there's a version of her out there, but we must have grown differently from them, in the years we were here together. We're real in a different way, but we're still real."

"I guess," Jax mumbles.

Kinger goes quiet for a long while, staring up at the sky. Jax keeps his eyes down, towards the lake. He thinks there's a simulated breeze going, and it's reassuring. He likes when the air doesn't feel so still.

"I'm doing something for the abstracted," Kinger says. "We're coming up with a system that's better than the cellar, Caine and I. Something that really honors them. I haven't been able to handle the idea of them staying down there."

"Right." He's so tired.

"I guess I just really thought about it because," Kinger stops to visibly think, "I tried to imagine you ending up down there, and I couldn't bare it."

Jax's muscles jump. He looks at him in wide-eyed alarm, and it makes Kinger hesitate, searching his face in distant concern. Jax doesn't know what he's looking for, and he's not sure if he wants to.

"Pomni's never talked about what happened in your mind, when you were gone," Kinger continues, more carefully. "But I saw the way you were when you came out. I was there for most of your fever. I've been told you don't remember a lot of it, but…"

He clenches his hands into fists. Jax just stares at him with wide eyes.

"...I didn't really think about the headspace required to abstract. How awful it'd feel, and how there's a small part of them that must be so afraid in there." Kinger's voice shakes. "I lost everyone in my life, one by one, and I'd never even thought about it. Not until I saw what happened to you."

His eyes search Jax's scars. Jax is facing him with his left, and he twists his torso to hide that side of him, feeling exposed. The breeze starts to feel less comforting and more like a cold draft, and he feels like he's naked.

"I'm sure if you talked to Caine, you could find a way to change your body back," Kinger informs him. "I don't know if you want that, but it's an option."

"I don't know either," Jax admits. He's not sure if he wants to live with the reminder, but a part of him is almost starting to like it. The way the darkness contrasts against purple, the sparks of neon color, the way his fur is starting to feel. He thinks the rest of his body is starting to fluff up too, becoming less geometric, but he doesn't know if he's making it up in his head or not. "It doesn't really bother me. Just sucks how you guys all look at it."

"I get it," Kinger soothes. "I don't mean to make you feel insecure about it."

"I'm not really—" Jax stops before he can snap at him, takes a deep breath. "I'm not insecure. It's not like it hurts, it's just. There. I'm not being treated like I'm one bad day away from killing myself again, so it's fine."

Kinger looks sad.

"It's fine," Jax repeats, to get him to look away.

Kinger obliges him, falling silent and turning his gaze back towards the lake. Jax feels bad for almost snapping. He knows it's never done a single good thing for him, and Kinger's never really ever wronged him.

He's been kind to him over the years, but always in a distant way that he didn't ever have to feel afraid of. Kinger never deviated from Jax's idea of him, never tried to challenge him. He never asked him if anything was wrong, and Jax never had to push him away.

It'd been harrowing when he'd learned that there was more to him, and it'd been the first time in years that he'd had to confront that everything he'd done wasn't just some distant dream, especially after Caine had already broken that worldview. He didn't know anyone, and anyone could be hiding what they knew, and they could do anything to him.

Kinger's begun to trace shapes in the sand, like Jax had when he'd first sat down. Jax watches like it's the most interesting thing ever, because it's some kind of visual distraction from that line of thought.

"It's so hard to remember the details," Kinger says softly, "but I think I killed my wife."

Jax gawps at him.

Kinger laughs with an edge of hysteria. "We'd already lost everyone else," he says. "She needed me more than ever. She was so… she was so upset, about everything. We were the only ones left, but I… I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to confront the situation. I'd closed in on myself. I'd made her feel unloved, and there was no one else to do it."

He takes a deep breath. He lifts his hand like he's going to try to cover his mouth, but he doesn't have one. He leans forward, refusing to look Jax in the eyes. He's never looked so vulnerable to him before.

"It's always been my philosophy," Kinger continues. "I just put it away for later, I didn't think about it. I didn't want to grieve, I was too afraid to. It's the only way I know how to handle it all, because there's so much of it. So much… everything. And I watched her fade, and I didn't even realize. I didn't run after her, I never got to apologize. She abstracted before I could."

"I…" Jax starts. He stops before he can say anything too revealing, and opts not to say anything at all.

"I got to hold her abstracted form," Kinger's voice dips somewhere lower than he's ever heard it, "one last time. I got to cradle her in my hands. Maybe for a moment I saw her mind, like Pomni did with you. But we didn't get to speak. I had no way to properly say sorry."

Jax's chest heaves, but he doesn't speak. He knows where Kinger's going with this. He doesn't know how to say it isn't the same, because it very well might be.

"And that was just it." Kinger's voice breaks. "I'm the only one responsible for it. I'm the only one who could have been there. I know it was the situation too, and the grief. She'd always been so kind, she'd always felt responsible for it all. And I know she wouldn't want me to feel responsible for her. But— but— maybe I could have done something. Maybe she would still be here."

His hand goes up to rub at his neck, as he goes somewhere softer, and more pleasant.

"I think you all would have loved her. And I'll never be able to know if that's true. I really think she would have loved you especially, she," he laughs, his shoulders shaking. "Some of her closest friends were so much like you, and you make me think about that so much. I know how you feel about yourself, but I don't think you would have been so hard to love. Not for someone like her."

Jax trembles. He wants to run away, but his body isn't working. "I don't… I don't…"

"I knew I didn't deserve to abstract," Kinger whispers, "because I know she didn't deserve to, for who came before. All this time, I refused to. I couldn't do that to her, even though she wouldn't know."

"It's not—" he's struggling to get a breath in, to articulate the overwhelming swell of emotions in his chest. "I was so—"

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about Ribbit," Kinger soothes. "I don't think it was your fault. There was a lot going on for all of us. They were hurting in more ways than one. It was their choice, not yours. People make bad choices that aren't entirely their fault."

He's panting into his knees. "I didn't want her to die," he finally admits through a heaving sob. He can't even tell if he's crying, although he probably is. His entire body feels like it's gone asleep.

He thinks about Pomni, about her stupid blind persistence. Zooble and their vow to make him feel safe, despite everything. Ragatha's quiet, gentle forgiveness. How Gangle's slowly beginning to accept him into her life, even though he doesn't think he'll ever deserve that kindness from her. It hurts him so much, how safe the future is starting to feel. He's alive and his best friends are dead.

"I could've knocked on her door," Jax cries, both desperate and furious with himself. "I should've just knocked on her door!"

And if they weren't ready, he could have known better. He had the key to her room. He could have unlocked it, and apologized, and been honest about why he was so scared, why he was stupid enough to try and destroy both of their lives over so what should have been so little. Why he was so scared to get close.

He wanted to tell her. He wanted to, but he couldn't at the time. And now he never will.

"But you didn't," Kinger says steadily. "And maybe that's your fault, but you didn't kill her. Do you think she'd want it to hurt you like this?"

Jax is sobbing, because he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything anymore. It's loud and shrill and horrible and humiliating, and everyone can probably hear him, but it hurts so fucking much, he can't stand it. He doesn't know how much longer he can stand any of it.

Kinger reaches out. He places a hand on Jax's head, but doesn't move it. It's a silent offer that he takes, lurching into his side and tucking himself into him the best he can. If he doesn't try to hug someone he's going to explode, he thinks he'll just go and abstract again.

"You're not a killer," Kinger tells him, sliding his hand down to cup the back of his head. "You're a kid."

Jax doesn't believe him. Any age is old enough to know better, and he was an adult. He knew about abstraction, he'd been told about it. He knew about suicide. He'd thought of it as an inevitability for himself, ever since his father left and every bit of his life had come crashing down on him. But even then it didn't feel like something that happened to people that were close to him, and he couldn't fathom the idea of it being his fault.

It should've been him. Ribbit abstracting was the beginning of him realizing that. Losing Kaufmo, despite the distance they'd taken from each other, was only a reminder. Hurting Pomni in the way that he had had been the final nail in the coffin. He had to put himself down, so he'd never hurt anyone else kinder and brighter than him again.

He doesn't say any of this to Kinger. He doesn't know how. He just cries.

"I promise it'll get better," Kinger whispers. "You'll never stop thinking about it, and it'll never stop being a part of you. But you can be happy. You can grow, even here. I'm already watching it happening."

Jax cries and cries and cries, until he's fresh out of tears, and he slumps himself against him. Kinger's stroking his head, like he's a scared dog. It doesn't even feel all that infantilizing.

Jax isn't dead, despite it all. They don't even want him to die. Why couldn't they just have wanted him to die?

He hears footsteps. He doesn't think he'll able to pry away his face from Kinger's robe, because doing so would be showing how wrecked he looks, and he's already deeply ashamed of how badly he's broken down.

"Is he okay?" Pomni's asking. "We all heard— yeah."

"Just tired," Kinger replies. Jax thinks he might sound a little choked up himself. Maybe. "He'll talk about it if he wants to."

He hears Pomni sit down in the sand. She rests a hand on his back, to feel the steady rise and fall of it, as Jax's breathing slowly evens out. He calms, little by little.

"It's okay," Pomni says, quietly like she's not sure if she's allowed to. "I love you."

Jax feels himself falling asleep.

He thinks, in the privacy of his own mind, as his eyes slowly flutter shut, I love you too.

Pomni's away, having fun and laughing with everyone else. In the safety of their warm, dimly-lit room, Jax finally gathers the courage to open the box of photos sat beside his bed.

He looks through them all, one by one. Every day he'd curled up in his old room, they'd hung over him, lined out on his wall. He'd had to turn them away in a desperate attempt to forget, but he'd always been too scared to take them down. To stop grieving.

At the bottom of the pile is the photo he'd destroyed before his abstraction. It's one of him and Ribbit, laughing together. Kaufmo had taken it when he wasn't looking, as living proof that Jax could feel joy around them, no matter how much he denied it. It was something to lightheartedly flaunt whenever Jax was being especially miserable or closed off.

He remembers being so caught off guard by the camera flash. Being scared, just for a moment, that it was a joke at his expense; and then accepting it with a roll of his eyes, after seeing the warmth in their smiles.

(Where had that strength gone?)

He'd ripped it down the middle, but not perfectly in half. He remembers the mentality he'd had when he'd torn it off his wall. He'd tried to tear a hole in his face, but he'd been gripping it so hard it'd severed Ribbit's visage, instead.

Jax's thumb brushes the photo tenderly. He closes his eyes, and conjures on purpose for the first time.

When he opens them, the photo is repaired like it'd never been broken. Ribbit is still laughing like they have nothing to lose.

He stares at it for a long time. He places it back in the box, at the top of the pile, and gently closes the lid over it. He pushes it under his bed, where it's always accessible to him, but he doesn't have to look at it every time he steps into his room.

He rises to his feet. He goes to join the others.

When Jax finally realizes something has to change, it isn't in the form of a big, horrifying revelation. It isn't words shouted during an argument, or confessed quietly in the comforting secrecy of the dark. It doesn't come with a fresh wave of terrified tears, or make anyone freeze in awestruck horror.

No, it's one where Jax walks past the mirror in their room, going for the bookshelf to pick up something new, and it's one where Jax stops in front of it quietly to stare.

Big eyes stare back. A fluffy, scarred, colorful face. A shy, earnest smile. It's an almost completely unrecognizable form, compared to when Jax first entered.

It's living, tangible proof that change is possible here, despite everything.

(That Jax can be something else.)

She reaches out to touch her own reflection, and she wonders.