Chapter Text
Jax felt like he was permanently in the process of waking. The edge point between deep dreamless sleep and consciousness. Thoughts came slow, and when they did they were not always coherent. When he tried to see it was like looking through a kaleidoscope, he could only piece together the closest of objects.
He remembered his conversation with Pomni. How they had held back, even in those final moments. Sometimes the thought caused what he was currently to act out, for a moment, before the darkness pushed him back into the liminal point of wakefulness that had become natural for him now.
He couldn’t keep track of time, it could have been days, weeks, years, since he became… what he is now. But one thing pulled him from this strange coma, consistently, though through his addled state he couldn’t tell whether it was daily or weekly; Pomni would visit him.
When she did she would press up against him, even though it must have felt like standing in a pit of fire, so close that even through the kaleidoscope he could see her face clearly. She would tell him about how things were changing, what they had learned, how nice everything was… How much she missed him.
He could never respond, even when he wanted to, something must have been special about that first meeting; when Pomni practically took a step into his mind. At first his usually sarcastic deflections bubbled to the surface, but soon the inability to voice them dampened their influence. He wished he could get a second chance, at least to say how much he’d love to truly hang out in this better world Pomni had helped make.
Sometimes, rarely it felt like, the kaleidoscope would clear; but it would only reveal a mirror. He was always alone when it happened. Jax would find himself talking to the Jax in the mirror. At first it was distressing; they would taunt and belittle him. But soon, after so much time to think, he saw how silly these masks were. The irony poisoning, the dissociation, and the comedy; he saw through them all.
He wished so badly for a second chance, not even at life, just to talk to Pomni one more time. Tell her that she was…
NO.
The kaleidoscope burned him now. Even in the dark, it was hell. He thrashed and screamed and wailed. Inside him a locked door pounded like a heart, beating faster and faster as the adrenaline shot through him. Something needed to end.