Chapter Text
It had been a while since the circus became home.
It was unclear how much time had passed. Not very long, she knew that, but at the same time, it felt like a lifetime.
The circus was not home when Pomni first arrived. It was more akin to a prison. Maybe it was still a prison, but she was taking a glass half-full approach to life (?) these days.
She was full-time Pomni now. She has Abigail Brooks’ memories, but she wasn’t really Abigail anymore. She is just Pomni, colorful jester with pinwheel eyes.
Knowing Abigail had helped. Maybe. She wasn’t sure sometimes. She felt a lot less despair, but a lot more willingness to let go. She is fine. Happy, perhaps.
The circus became home when she was willing to let go of Abigail Brooks.
------------------
“When are you visiting Jax today?” Ragatha was eating a croissant while waiting for her coffee to be ready. As she sat next to Pomni, she offered the jester her second croissant.
Jax had abstracted the day the circus became Pomni’s home. It was cruel, really. She should have been able to help him. Reach out to him. Cure him. Maybe it didn’t quite feel like home without him here to make her laugh.
“Probably after breakfast. Weren’t we going fishing today?” The adventures were more, well, normal now. It was refreshing but also getting tiring. She did want a bit more excitement, but her friends were not that adventurous. Can she blame them?
“Yeah, that’s part of why I asked. We wanted to make sure we accounted for your daily visit.” Pomni had taken to visiting Jax everyday. Yes, he was abstracted, but, since she was able to visit his inner mind then, she was hoping she could do that again soon. She had made progress in communicating with his abstracted form. At first, he could only growl. Now, he could say very short sentences, and his abstracted eyes were able to indicate his emotions more clearly. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He was there, Pomni knew it.
“Alright, let me finish this, and I’ll head to his place.” She felt uncomfortable calling it a tent, even though that’s what it was. A tent within a tent for the most vulnerable member of their found family. Maybe she just wanted him to have his room again.
Pomni finished her breakfast and walked towards Jax’s pillow fort. She passed her friends and said hi to them, all of them well aware of where she was heading.
As she entered the pillow fort, Jax perked up. It seemed he was asleep before she arrived. He had been sleeping a lot these days, but he always woke up for her. She found it rather endearing.
“Hi Jax, how’s it going?” Pomni still had a cup of coffee with her and pulled a pillow to use as her chair. She had also learned how to touch Jax’s abstracted form without glitching, so she can use his abstracted form as a couch of sorts. He seemed to like it.
“Good. You?” His voice was still his, but Pomni wasn’t sure that others could hear him or make sense of his speech. Nobody had brought it up, so she figured it was only her for now. She kind of liked that. She loved everyone in the circus, but her one-on-one time with Jax was always the most fun.
It was not fun when he was suffering, though.
“The usual, you know. The gang is heading to the beach for a fishing adventure. Kinger and Caine have worked on a couple of fish NPCs that should add some excitement to it. Not like fishing is all that, well, exciting.” She had drawn her knees to her chest, while making circles with her fingers on her coffee mug.
Jax lowered his torso to be near Pomni’s face. She touched what she interpreted as his face, and she saw the eyes in that area closing.
“Why go?” Jax’s voice was somehow disembodied when he spoke. It came from within him but not from any specific place. He didn’t have a proper mouth, after all.
“I do like to hang out with everyone, you know? Even if it’s fishing.” She gave him a small smile. Although he didn’t have a proper face, she liked to make eye contact with the top of his abstracted body.
It took her a couple of days to figure out how to address him in this shape. He was clearly there, and he didn’t want to leave. Even though she found solace in knowing what happened to Abigail, she still felt empty without Jax there, enjoying their new-found freedom.
When Ragatha suggested the abstracted mural, there was a debate among them about including Jax. On the one hand, not including him felt as if everyone was missed more than him. How would he feel if he saw that? On the other hand, he was there with them. He wasn’t gone. He was aware. Alive. Or so she liked to believe.
She wasn’t sure everyone agreed with her approach. It was clear some (maybe all) of them had moved on. She couldn’t hold that against them, though. Jax was her friend, and she knew everyone in the circus cared for him in a commiserating way, but she was also well-aware of how unpleasant he could be. She saw a whole lot of it in his mind.
“Because boring.” She could hear the disdain for fishing (damn, she could relate to it) while all his abstracted eyes were rolling. She had to laugh at that.
“Alright, I get it. Fishing kind of sucks, but still. It’s mostly for the vibes with the others.” She didn’t really want to discuss fishing or any of that with him right now. “Do you feel up to trying getting me in again?” She had turned around and was now staring at him, while kneeling on the pillow.
Jax perked up, and she could tell he was considering it. They had tried to get her inside his mind a couple of times since he abstracted, but to no avail, even though Pomni tried to use her conjuring abilities in different ways.
“Sure.” Sometimes, she wondered if he was just entertaining her delusions.
Pomni wanted to try something different today. She had tried to conjure objects that could help with the mind connection, such as jump cables or copper wires. They had no luck with that approach. So, she decided to try something a bit riskier.
“I know you won’t like it, but I need you to think of something that you’d prefer that I didn’t know.” She truly hoped her gamble would pay off.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like some of the stuff along the lines of what I saw in your mind last time? Just know that I will probably see it.”
Jax was staring at her with his head eyes. He had to be skeptical. Hell, she would be incredibly skeptical of that request. She saw him closing all his eyes momentarily and then opening them, all glowing with a blue hue she doesn’t remember seeing in their past attempts. This had to be it. Please, let this be it.
“Alright, I’ll touch you now. Let me know if anything hurts.” She placed her hands on him and tried to conjure her feelings of hopefulness, care, and concern for him.
She felt a pull as if she had been sucked by a vacuum cleaner. She was spinning in a psychedelic void, completely disoriented, but seeing flashes of the circus all around her. This felt different from her first venture into his mind. More abstract, less linear, more raw. More him.
She fell on her butt by the lamppost she had last talked to him. Next to the lamppost sat a tired-looking Jax on a park bench, giving her a weak but gentle smile.
“You took your sweet time, didn’t you, Pom-Pom?”