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There was no music in the circus anymore.
And it should’ve been a relief!
Pomni had hated it when she first joined. The mocking bright songs and soundtracks. A constant reminder of how detached the circus was from reality. How detached she was from reality.
So when Caine was deleted and the circus finally fell silent. Pomni didn’t expect to miss it so much. Kinger still hadn’t figured out how to reconstruct it, although that might've been because he had a dozen other things on his plate.
She missed the cheerful tunes filling in the gaps in conversation that would otherwise be awkward silence. She missed the high-energy beats during the intense and action-heavy moments of adventures (her lucky shot against Zooble came to mind). She missed the vibrancy of the circus. She missed the soothing ambience at night.
But never did she miss the music more than now as Jax walked up to her. Alas she never seemed to be able to get back what she lost. Her second day in the circus briefly came to mind (her first experience with an NPC may or may not have scarred Pomni for life).
They stood there for what seemed like forever. Just staring.
He opened his mouth to say something. But no words ever came.
That always seemed to be the pattern didn’t it? He’d open up and then without warning shut down. He’d reach out to you just to immediately pull away the second you reached back. It was like he was constantly switching an on and off button in his head. Never being able to fully commit to one thing.
Pomni continued to stare at him. Waiting for him to say something. Anything.
He sighed, almost deflating, “Nevermind.”
She watched as he turned around and started walking away. Too many ideas and thoughts swirled in her head at once. All disagreeing and arguing with one another. She was paralyzed in an ambivalent state.
On the one hand, this could finally be the time when Jax would open up! This was the opportunity Pomni had been waiting for. Wasn’t it? But on the other, much more logical hand in her opinion, she had been burned by that belief, more times than she could count.
Pomni wasn’t stupid. Or at least she liked to think that she wasn’t. She knew Jax was a massive jerk but… he was still a person. Being friends with Jax was a paradox. An unsolvable puzzle where she kept trying to string the correct syllables and actions together to make it work. She knew deep down that she was probably clinging to false hope.
But annoyingly enough she cared about this insufferable jackass. Pomni knew there was more to Jax than he presented, Hell, she saw it with her own eyes during the gun adventure! She knew he cared about her too (as much as he could care about anyone in the circus anyways). Or at least she hoped she knew him well enough.
God, this was maddening!
This was why she hated the silence so much. It gave her too much time to think.
What if this became the last time she’d ever see him?
Pomni’s stomach twisted into knots just thinking about it.
“Wait!” She called out, solidifying her resolve.
Pomni would never forgive herself if she didn’t try at least one last time. Jax kept walking as if he hadn’t heard her.
She huffed and followed after him asking, “What did you want to say?”
Jax groaned and pressed his hands to his head, “Just forget it, okay? I was being stupid again.”
“Jax, please.”
He stilled, lowering his arms. She stood only a few feet away from him. The silence stretched on and on until it felt suffocating. Pomni internally decided right then and there that she was going to make returning music the number one priority on her (and Kinger’s) very lengthy list of things to fix with the circus.
Pomni could hear her own pulse pound in her head. Pomni never gambled a lot before she got trapped in the circus. She preferred playing things safe–she was an accountant for crying out loud–but she imagined this must’ve been how it felt. Always chasing after an unobtainable and impossible goal, yet still finding yourself holding your breath while waiting for the result.
““Why?” He whispered, breaking the suffocating silence, staring at his hand.
He turned sharply, now facing Pomni.
“Why do you still care about me?” He asked, voice rising as frustration clawed at his throat, “I’m a horrible person! All I ever do is mess things up an-”
“Because you’re my friend, Jax!” She shouted.
Jax froze.
Welp, there was officially no going back now.
She continued on, “And I know you’ve done bad things but you don’t deserve to feel like nothing. No one deserves that!”
“I liked hanging out with you!” She confessed, shifting her gaze towards the ground, “It was the most fun I’d had at the circus since I first got there!”
If Pomni had looked up in that moment she would’ve seen the expression of absolute shock Jax wore on his face from her confession: mouth agape, like a deer caught in headlights.
She paused, lowering her voice and blushing as she remembered they were still out in the open, “I still would if you didn’t shut me and everyone else out.”
“So please don’t push me away this time.” She pleaded, shutting her eyes, not wanting to watch his reaction.
God, she was such an idiot! She’d tried this before and it resulted in a world record speed run of imploding a friendship. Wasn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome? She laid all her cards out and now she had nothing left to give. There was obviously a reason why playing things safe had been her thing when she was in the real world! How could she possibly be this nai-
Her thoughts were cut off as she was suddenly enveloped in a hug.
She stiffened–eyes wide open in surprise–before melting into the embrace.
Jax had hugged her. Jax was on his knees just… hugging her.
The jester was too stunned to speak.
They rested there like that for what felt like a millennia. Neither saying a word. Pomni should’ve loathed every second of it. And yet for some strange reason, she never wanted it to end.
As her adrenaline faded, she felt tears of pure relief well up in her eyes. She clung tighter to Jax, as if afraid he’d disappear or run away. If Pomni didn’t know any better, she would have thought she heard a few sniffles coming from him.
The hug was… nice. Really nice, actually. During her time living on Earth, Pomni never really got the hype around hugging and hand-holding and all that physical closeness jazz. But at long last, she finally understood the obsession.
A few minutes passed and they were now sitting side by side leaning against one of the giant cubes with Pomni’s voice filling the air.
“...so I personally think that just trying to convince yourself that it’s already there is the best way to make it actually appear,” she explained, while reaching out a hand and conjuring a black square, “At the start it helped a lot to have my eyes closed and that seemed to work the best for the others as well.”
Jax observed quietly and then created a daisy roughly the size of his palm.
Pomni blinked, “Wow you picked that up… fast.”
“What can I say, Pomni?” Jax winked, “I’m just a man of many talents.”
Despite everything, she couldn't help but giggle.
They lapsed back into a comfortable silence.
Maybe no music was secretly a blessing in disguise after all.
“Hey Pompom?”
“Yeah?” She responded, trying (and failing) to ignore how flustered the nickname made her.
“Thanks,” he said, glancing down at his hands, “for not giving up on me.”
A beat passed and her heart skipped it.
“I think I’m ready to talk now.”