Archive of Our Own

Ever since she was little, Pomni had liked to take walks.

The suburbs she'd grown up in sat right on the edge of the nice side of town. Close enough to the freeway and its noise to keep rent from getting too expensive, but far enough from downtown that she felt safe in her neighborhood. Ever since she was little, she liked to squint at the big, red-bricked houses a few streets down with her dad after dinner. They'd point out the Christmas trees sitting in wide windows, the fancy cars parked in the driveways, the perfectly mowed lawns and all the potted plants they held.

So it'd quickly become part of her routine at the Circus to start her morning with a walk around the grounds, starting with the tent and looping around to the lake. The Sun was always sleepy enough at this hour that she wasn't too much of a menace and it gave her the excuse to get moving, even on mornings where all she wanted to do was to stay in bed.

Sometimes, she'd hype herself up enough to jog a bit in the more downhill parts, but she tried not to push herself. Besides, Caine had been trying to get her to train for a marathon with him for a while now. She wasn't totally sure how that was going to work, as neither of them exactly had muscles to strengthen or diets to stick to, but he was determined enough that she was actually sort of looking forward to it.

She came to a brief pause by the carnival. Kinger had been trying to fix up some of the rides, starting with the rollercoaster, which wasn't the smartest idea, in hindsight. Last week, Gangle had mustered the courage to test his newest patch, and though she'd been a good sport about it, no one had enjoyed scraping her off of the wrong side of the Moon.

Speak of the devil, Pomni just managed to pick up a soft, rumbly tune from underneath one of the carts. She drifted off of the beaten path to crouch down and knock on the hood of the cart. "Good morning, Kinger."

One of his disembodied hands reached out from underneath the coaster, absently patting around until it found her and gave her palm a squeeze. "Oh! Hi, Pomni. On a walk?"

"Yep. I've been considering branching out to one of Caine's open worlds, but hey." She shrugged. "This way, I get to run into you and the others."

"Aww, that's very kind of you. Say, mind passing me the wrench?"

She glanced around for it but didn't find a tool box, much less a wrench. "Uh, where would that be?"

"Oh, right." Kinger snapped his fingers and a steel wrench popped into existence. Pomni caught it and passed it to him. "There we go. You know, I think that I've really got it this time. The engine belt sustained a lot of damage last time, but it's nothing some elbow grease can't fix."

She smiled. It was good to see Kinger work on a project like this. Some of the others had been confused to find him toiling away at the same coaster, day in and day out, for months now, but she got it. Slowly solving a low-stakes, high-reward problem was its own kind of relaxation. Never mind the fact that any one of them could conjure an entire amusement park in the blink of an eye. Once Kinger finally finished, it'd be leagues better than any half-baked, half-thought slop that might've taken its place.

"That's great to hear. Let me know if you ever want a hand out here, okay?"

"I sure will. Ragatha actually said she'd help me out this afternoon. She used to fix tractors with her sisters and I thought she'd bring a great perspective." With a little hum, Kinger poked his head out from underneath the cart. They were both underneath a couple of shaded trees, but the day was bright enough that he'd probably need to go back sooner rather than later. "You're visiting today, right?"

She squared her shoulders. Kinger wasn't the most against her weekly visits, but she still wasn't in the mood to get into another argument. "I am."

"Caine's got your back?"

"He does."

"Okay, then."

"That's it?"

"That's it," he said with a nod. "You're a very capable young woman, Pomni. I'm sure that you've got everything under control. Besides, I've got a nose like a bloodhound. If you go missing on us, we'll find you before supper."

She cracked a grin. "You don't even have a nose, Kinger."

"That's how you know it's the real deal." With that, Kinger rolled back underneath the cart. She heard the sound of him tinkering away under there. As she turned and began to walk back toward the tent, she heard him still for a moment before calling out, "Good luck! And give Jax my best!"

Pomni quickened her pace. "I will."

Caine was already waiting for her when she got back, staring intently at the oversized watch ticking away on his wrist. When she waved at him, he kicked his feet excitedly and flung the timepiece over his shoulder, where it exploded in a mess of pink and blue confetti. "Pomni! You're right on time!"

"That's good. I'd hate to keep you waiting."

Without hesitating, she snapped the safety harness on over her shoulders, just like she'd done every week. It was the kind someone might use to go rock climbing or skydiving. At least, that was what she assumed. She'd never actually done either of those things, but they looked like the examples she'd seen in movies, at least.

"I've had a great morning!" Caine answered, despite the fact that Pomni hadn't actually asked him how his day was going. "Zooble's been working on brunch mimosa combinations and let me taste-test their ideas! Let me tell you, whoever invented the strawberry should be swimming in chocolate gold coins. Ooh, and later, Gangle said that we could draw fursonas together!"

Pomni smiled. "That sounds really nice. I'm glad that you're branching out and exploring new hobbies. You've been practicing your anatomy, right?"

"Sure have! But I've gotta say, it's such a pain to remember how many appendages you humpty-dumpty humans have." He gave a melodramatic sigh, complete with a theatrical post that he'd surely learned from one of Gangle's drawings. "You're sure you didn't have six fingers in the Macroverse?"

"Yeah, Caine," she giggled. "I'm sure."

He crossed his arms, pouting. "Well, if you say so."

"I do. Now, if you're ready, you mind securing the anchor?"

"Yes, sirree!" With a flick of his wrist, the end of the rope attached to her harness looped around a pillar holding up the tent. They'd tested it already and it was as secure as could be. "We're still using the same warning system, right?"

Even though she knew that it would hold, Pomni wrapped her hands around the rope and gave it a big yank, just in case. It held fast. "One tug means repeat, two means watch out."

"And three comes right before your exit," Caine recited. His expression was unusually serious. It always was, right before the visits, which made sense. This was one of the only parts about their world that he didn't have even a sway of control over. "Try to keep it on the shorter side, will ya? It makes it safer to fix you up after."

"Got it," she said, only somewhat meaning it. Maybe it was an unnecessary risk, but she couldn't justify cutting this short for something so trivial. It'd be fine. And if it wasn't, she could deal with it. "Thank you again, Caine. I really do appreciate this."

He lightened up a bit at that. "Don't mention it. It's, uh — It's the least I could do."

She frowned. Caine had spent hours upon hours trying to reverse Abstraction, pulling every trick in the book for even the slightest improvement. Not to mention the attempts he'd made long ago, back when the humans of the Circus first began to crack. A limitless would-be god of his own world, and still he ran into barriers.

When she'd told him that she'd managed to make contact with Jax, Caine hadn't believed her. It'd taken a set-up not unlike this one to prove that she could still communicate with him and not end up Abstracted herself. She supposed that everyone had assumed that'd be it, but once she realized that Caine could essentially act as a lifeguard, Pomni had made visiting Jax a regular occurrence.

Still, even though he was the only reason why the others deemed it an even remotely safe venture, Pomni still suspected that Caine harbored more than a little guilt about the whole issue. After all, for years, it'd been his sole purpose to keep the Circus's humans enriched and content with their newfound existence. Losing someone had to sting, especially given how truly awful he'd been at his job.

"Seriously, Caine. Thank you."

And with that, Pomni stepped into the pillow fort.

The outer layers were packed tight with blankets and quilts, so that not even a speck of light made it through. Kinger had helped out with that part, as he'd had quite a lot of practice. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust as she blinked at the inky darkness. Around her, there was the sound of shuffling and a glitchy crackle.

"Hi, Jax," she said quietly, keeping her hands low. Sudden movement startled him, though that wasn't a development that'd come with Abstraction. "It's good to see you. Kinger says hi."

Something stomped around a bit to her right. Carefully, she turned toward it until she was met with countless sets of multicolored, biolumiscent eyes, each trained on her as they glowed in the abyss. They weren't fixed with any particular expression, merely staring at her in what she had to assume was interest.

She kept her lips pressed together as Jax leaned forward, resting his stomach against the floor the way that a dog would as it laid down. He tucked his legs away, tilting his head just so. He almost looked curious. Although no one had been able to prove it, Pomni liked to believe that he recognized her when he was like this.

"I'm going to reach forward very slowly," she said, soft as she could be, "and we're going to have a nice conversation. Sound good?"

He blinked, long and lazy, and she took that as a yes. Moving at a pace that would embarrass even a turtle, Pomni brought her hand out and resting it on one of his legs. He keened, loud and pained, but didn't move away. Even as her palm stung with angry code, Pomni held fast, until the rest of the world slipped away.

When her vision cleared out again, she was standing in that same hallway. Sketchy, messy portraits of Jax lined almost every door. She knew what she would see if she opened them. During one visit after her first, she'd checked behind them again, just in case there was some angle she was missing. Weirdly enough, they'd changed since the last time she'd seen them.

The overall theme was the same — an especially aggressive Jax harassing one of the other humans, an over-the-top Jax pulling someone else's pigtails, a grim and silent Jax stalking his prey. But the specific content was never the same twice in a row. It seemed that there was no shortage of dark, fucked up fantasies in this place.

But Pomni didn't open any of those doors today. Instead, she fished a key out of her pocket, one that always seemed to reappear whenever she came by, and slipped it into the lock of an unmarked door. It swung open under a bit of pressure, and though she was hit by the sound of desperate wails, she went through.

Jax stood in ankle-deep water, slowly sinking, and didn't face her.

Fuck. She sprinted towards him, as fast as her stupidly short legs could carry her. "Stop being emo!" she yelled, and from what she could tell, the sheer shock of her voice had him turning toward her. Jax's pupils were wide, bloated shapes that trained on her as she grabbed his arm with both hands and yanked him out of the water, until he was on the surface level with her.

He wildly coughed into his elbow as if he'd been drowning, inky liquid dripping out of his mouth. "Ugh, gross," he rasped and scrubbed his face with the heel of his palm. Then he straightened and groaned. "Goddamnit. I didn't realize that I was so far down."

Pomni watched him, weighing her options. With almost anyone else, she would offer an impromptu wellness check, lending an open ear in the hopes that they'd speak their mind. Jax, however, was about as likely to open up as Zooble was to burst into song, so instead she balled up her fist and slugged him in the arm.

"You've gotta take care of yourself, man! The others already don't think it's safe for me to come here once a week. If you start sinking, I might not be here to get you out."

They'd realized that, wherever Jax was now, it wasn't the final stage of Abstraction. As best as they could figure, even this version of him was impermanent. If he let his mood get too low, if he wallowed and sulked and did all of the awful things that had gotten him here in the first place, there was a more finite end for him. He could plunge into dark water and drown in his own mind, and that would be it. A death beyond death.

No one had said it, but they all quietly wondered if it'd already happened to the other Abstractions. Kinger had tried to reach his wife, but he hadn't been able to figure out which one was her, much less how to connect with her the way that Pomni had done with Jax. Most likely, that window had closed when Caine had forced them into the Cellar, cold and alone, with no one knowing that there was even another option.

Kinger had cried when they'd put it together, but he hadn't given up hope. Neither had Pomni.

"Ouch!" Jax scowled, rubbing his arm where she'd hit him. "Jeez, respect the dead much?"

She rolled her eyes. "I didn't hit you that hard."

"No response for the dead part?"

"You're not dead," she said with a frown. "Not yet, at least. You're just — indisposed."

At that, he gave her a long look as his mouth narrowed out into a little line. Then he sighed quietly. It wasn't the way he used to sigh, with dramatic posturing that begged the attention from anyone even remotely listening. It was small. Tired. Reflexive. Then he sat down with his knees to his chest, glaring into the dark water. The only light here, a single streetlamp, glowed weakly.

"Denial is an ugly color on you. Clashes with your stupid hat."

"Jax — "

"I'm gone," he snapped. His voice echoed in the abyss. "Don't you get it? No one comes back from Abstraction. You're not saving me, you're not helping me grow. All you're doing is keeping my body from rotting." Jax's hands worked their way up to his head, squeezing as he growled, "You're talking to a ghost."

She bit down on her tongue, resisting the urge to storm out of wherever they were. All her life, it'd been up to her to be the bigger person. With her sister, with her classmates, even with her immature coworkers. It pissed her off like nothing else to be stuck in this position again, but then again, it had given her a frankly impressive amount of practice in this field.

"We almost brought you back," she gritted out slowly. It was as calm as she could manage. "You felt that, didn't you? If we'd just had a bit more time, we could've brought you back. We can do this, I just need — "

He shot her a withering look. "You just need more of my tragic, deplorable backstory, you mean."

"What?"

"That's what you're after, isn't it? You don't care about me. You don't care about bringing me back. All you want is more dirt on me!" He shot to his feet, fast enough that Pomni found herself stepping back. "You're gonna tell Ragatha about my poor, dead mommy. You're gonna tell Gangle about how I had to sleep in my car. You're gonna tell Zooble about my — about how I'm — "

Jax couldn't seem to finish his own sentence. His eyes were tiny pinpricks, flitting around in a frantic haze as he grabbed onto his own ears and pulled. Pomni felt her own hands shake as she watched Jax sink under the water again, first his feet with his calves quick after that. Her breath caught in her throat and she did the only thing she could think of.

She bounded forward and tackled Jax, hooking her legs around his waist for purchase as he stumbled backward, pinwheeling. When he inevitably tripped over his own feet and crashed into the ground in a splash of water, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him as hard as she could.

"You think I'm risking my life for some gossip?" she yelled. "I care about you, dipshit! And that's not because you've ever done anything to warrant it, but because you're a human being and human beings deserve someone who cares about them! And you've pushed away everyone else who might like you, so I guess it's my job now." She was standing over him, she realized. A few of his fingers had dipped below the water's surface, but he was otherwise buoyant. "You told me," she said, quieter now, "that you didn't want to die. So why are you so determined all of a sudden?"

There was a time where he'd been happy. She'd seen it. He'd had friends and a life that he seemed to care about. As she'd stared through his eyes, she'd felt it in her chest. But then he'd gotten stupid. Or maybe he'd always been stupid? No, not stupid, that wasn't fair of her. He'd gotten mean, though, and pushed people away who hadn't deserved it, and here they were, with bodies in the Cellar.

He looked up at her, tiny tears in the corners of his eyes. He might not even have known if they were there. Then his eyes shut and he leaned back, head dipping into the water, and just breathed. Wearily, with the voice of someone much older than their years suggested, he mumbled, "I never figured out how to live, even when I had the chance. How am I supposed to learn now?"

She didn't blink. "Be kinder to women," she said, "and to queer people, and to yourself. That's kind of the bare minimum, dude."

When she got off of him, he didn't sit up as first. He just grumbled, "Same fucking thing," before scrunching his face like he'd tasted something sour. Then he rubbed his eyes with his gloved hand and sighed. Louder, he went, "I didn't say anything. You didn't hear shit. You're crazy."

It came out robotically, like he was going through the motions. Neither of them believed it.

"You're not off to a great start, calling me crazy and all."

He opened his eyes and squinted at her. "We're all balls to the walls bonkers here."

Pomni huffed out a laugh. "Can't argue with that one."

There was a phantom weight on her chest, pulsing three times. Caine's heads-up. Damnit. She glanced behind her, as if she could see the safety harness about to take her back to the surface. The abyss stared back, dark and unending, and she really couldn't fault Jax for slipping when he was stuck in a place like this, could she?

"I have to go. Are you gonna be okay until I can come back?"

"Yeah," he said, quick enough that she knew he hadn't even thought about it. "I'm always fine."

"Clearly, you're not."

He glared at her, probably for being caught out on his lie, before balling up his fists. With deliberate, visible effort, he stood to his full height, pulling his legs out of the water. The liquid slid off his skin in sludgy trails. "I'll be here next week. Now go enjoy your happily ever after. The dragon'll still be here later."

"You're not the — "

And then she was gone.

Pomni cracked a smile as Caine whipped his head left and right, ankles swinging over the ledge as he patted his knees to a rhythm no one else heard. Beside him, Gangle rested her head on Zooble's shoulder, which was a zebra-striped coil today. Kinger and Ragatha were down below, chasing after butterflies with a comically oversized net. They'd said they'd come up here, to the top of the tent, once they'd tired themselves out.

Caine tugged on the sleeves of his coat. "Am I doing this right?"

Gangle didn't even open her eyes. "There's not exactly a wrong way to do it."

"I know, it's just — This was one of the most-requested suggestions for adventures, so I know it must be something great! I want to make sure that I get the full human experience."

Zooble took a long, satisfied breath. "Are you having a nice time?"

"I — think so?"

"Then you're doing great. The point is to take in the moment. As long as you're at peace, then you're alright."

Caine nodded quite seriously at that, like he was committing their words to memory. He probably was. Pomni decided to give him a break and tap him on the shoulder, pointing toward the horizon. At the edge of the little golf ball they called home, the Sun was clocking out as a dreamy Moon floated in.

The sky was beautiful. Even though she'd been here for countless nights, Pomni had never bothered to catch the sunset. According to the others, it was a quick and rare thing, but a gorgeous occurrence nonetheless. She understood it now. A human sunset was a lazy, melting thing. The sun's rays would turn pink and orange as it rested, leaving the sky looking like sweet popsicles.

Here, though, it was something entirely different. Pomni struggled to describe it. The entire world was coming anew, brighter and bolder than before. She swore she could see every pixel streaking through the air like a shooting star. That was what it was like — The best way she could explain it was as if the entire night sky was made of blazing comets and sparkling lights. Or, if she was being a bit less poetic, like a photo carousel on an old desktop computer, switching from one picture to the next.

As fast as it started, though, it was over. Pomni looked over to see literal stars in Caine's eyes as he rocked back and forth, turning to Zooble and Gangle to tell them his favorite thoughts. Pomni was about to jump in, offer her two cents, but got distracted by Ragatha and Kinger climbing up the ladder to join them.

"Did you get a good view from down there?"

Ragatha settled in next to her, Kinger on her other side. "Not as great as we would've up here, but the butterflies made up for it! They change colors too!"

"Except they have a cooler pallet," Kinger added. "More blues and greens. It helps them camouflage."

Down below, she could just barely make out the sight of twinkling aquamarine and teal lights. They were just as stunning as the sky. "I'll have to check it out from the ground next time."

Ragatha smiled, one hand absently tucking a yarn of hair behind her ear before it popped back into place. Pomni really should offer to braid it one of these days. She used to fix up her sister's hair all the time. "How was your day?"

Pomni's heart warmed. That was one of her favorite things about Ragatha, how she always asked how her day had been. Even if they'd spent it together and Ragatha could conceivably infer how it'd gone, she still asked. More than that, when Pomni responded, she listened in a way that not everyone else in the world did. It meant more than Pomni could say.

"It was pretty good. I went on a walk, went swimming in the lake, helped Caine cook dinner." She paused, hesitating, before addressing the big one. "I saw Jax today."

To her credit, Ragatha didn't react too much. She just nodded, cloth lips pressed together as if she hadn't already known that. As if Pomni hadn't been doing the same thing every week. "How was he?"

In all honesty, Pomni wasn't sure if it was smart to mention Jax's near drowning or not. On the one hand, transparency was something they all had been deprived of for so long, and Pomni being deceptive would likely not go over well. Plus, it might make the others understand why she was so willing to put herself at risk for Jax's safe.

However, she also understood very well how much Jax would hate for her to broadcast his business like that. Jax kept his secrets close to his chest, and if he found out that Pomni had let everyone know, he might just plunge into the depths of the dark water, right then and there. So that put her in quite a shitty spot. The others finding out that she'd been less than truthful sounded about as bad as Jax finding out that she'd been more than truthful.

So she aimed for a happy medium, one that would inevitably screw everyone over, but at least it wouldn't fuck everyone over. 'Cause that was where the bar was, these days. "He's doing about as well as you would expect. It's rough, being there. We definitely need to get him out sooner rather than later."

At that, she expected Ragatha to pipe up with a can-do bit about sticking to it and everything working out, but her friend just stayed eerily silent. She was staring at her hands. It might have been a bit selfish, but Pomni had always been morbidly thankful for her own Circus form, compared to the others. At least she was mostly human, even if she was shorter than she had any right to be and missing a finger on each hand. Ragatha, by contrast, just had two felt mittens that broke off in clumsy sections.

"I really do appreciate your determination," Ragatha said, her words a bit stilted, as if she was picking them carefully. "Everyone does. But, Pomni, you were the first one to call it quits when we needed to abandon the idea of leaving the Circus. You're a realist when all I want to do is live in comfortable optimism." She turned to her, gaze hard. "I'm not sure if we can get Jax back."

Great. This again. Zooble had already had this conversation with her, pretty early on. So had Caine. If she had to bet, Kinger would probably follow, and then Gangle after that. "Nobody knew we could even communicate with the Abstracted until I tried," she pointed out again. It felt like she'd said this a thousand times by now. "There's just something that we're missing. I know that I can figure this out if I just keep trying."

"Why?" Ragatha swept out a hand, gesturing toward the night. "We're finally happy. We found fulfillment in a world that we initially saw as just a prison. I've told you before that chasing an unattainable goal can make you lose it. Why are you so willing to risk it all for Jax?"

Pomni's gloved hands balled up into fists. Impossibly, she thought about the only time she'd tried to peel the gloves off. To look at the skin underneath and find out if it was the same eggshell white as the rest of her, or if the red and blue seeped down that far. She'd dug her nails into the spot where the glove should have ended, but hadn't found so much as a seem. The gloves were part of her, whether she liked it or not.

"When I got here, I thought that I'd Abstract in no time," she said quietly. Ragatha's expression fell. "I've always been an anxious person if I don't have control over a situation. That first dinner, all I could think about was how much time I had left. If I had died the second I'd put that headset on."

"But you didn't die," Ragatha murmured. "You were born."

"Yeah. I was. Listen, I know who I'm dealing with. Jax is an asshole on a good day and a downright menace on a bad one. But I found life when I thought mine was over, and if there's even the slightest chance, I need to do my best to give that to him too."

At that, Ragatha turned pensive. Pomni watched her look out at the horizon, deep and blue now that the Moon had risen to her full height. She was absently smoothing out her dress, kicking her legs softly as they swung over the ledge. After a moment, she turned back toward her and said, "Can I talk to him?"

"Can you — What?"

"I'd like to talk to him, I think. No, I know. I want to talk to him."

She tried not to sound incredulous. "Why?"

Ragatha shrugged. "I don't think I can make it worse. And isn't that what you do when you're stuck and can't find a solution? You get a different perspective."

Well, she had a point. Pomni looked over her shoulder, taking in the sight of the others chatting about the constellations overhead. Ragatha had said that they were finally happy now, but that wasn't entirely happy. Not all of them were happy, and Pomni could do something about that. She had to do something about it.

"Okay. I'll ask."

"No."

"What? Come on, think about it for more than, like, two seconds."

"Fine! One, two, no thank you."

"You're seriously not even going to — "

"If you press this shit, I'm canon-balling into the water."

"You wouldn't — Okay, okay, I'm dropping it! Get out of there!"

"He, uh — He said no."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"No, it — It's fine. I'm just — gonna go on a walk. See you later, Pomni."

Pomni dragged her finger over the water's surface, drawing simple shapes. Triangle, circle, square. Maybe she'd get really crazy and go for a rhombus. That'd surely shake things up. It didn't seem like anything they tried these days did. They'd pulled out every trick in the book. Meditation and introspection, running to the end of this infinite abyss, conjuring digital apparitions here. Nothing stuck.

"How'd you know that I could play piano?"

She looked over to him. He was laying starfished on the ground, limbs spread like he was making a snow angel. "What?"

"I never told you that I could play the piano. How'd you know?"

"There was, uh — A lot of versions of you. Of parts of you, I guess. One of them was, like, shackled to it and playing." A thought popped up. "Wait, do you not remember that?"

He made an absent gesture with his hand. "Eh, kind of. Things were fuzzy before you got here. I wasn't totally sure that all of that was real."

"Oh. Well, it was." She thought about the other Jaxes she'd seen from behind the other doors. She'd seen glimpses of them before, when Jax pulled an especially mean prank or got particularly nasty. It'd been disconcerting to get them in such an unfiltered, potent package. "Those fake scenario things. You remember those too?"

Jax frowned, something dark passing over his expression. "Nope."

"Liar."

"And?"

"We have to keep trying new things to get you out of here."

He sat up, glaring daggers at her. "What, you think the secret to fixing my sanity's hidden in my nightmare fantasies?"

Pomni glared right back at him. "Yes. 'Cause remember, you're stuck in here because you have shitty coping mechanisms. So maybe if you, I don't know, work on improving them, you'll feel better."

"You suck."

"At least I'm still alive."

At that, Jax snarled and splashed water at her. She hissed as it landed on her skin, cold and slimy all at once. Because she was a mature and responsible fucking adult, she didn't get him right back, because dunking him would only worsen their situation. Instead, she just stuck out her tongue.

He flipped her off. She fought to urge to retaliate. If they kept going like this, they wouldn't get anything done before Caine had to pull her back. When all she did was stare at him with what she knew were cartoonishly big eyes, he sighed and laid back down, squinting at some meaningless point in the difference.

Dryly, he muttered, "You ever look at someone and think, What's the worst possible thing I could say to them right now?"

Pomni blinked. "Not exactly."

He huffed out a laugh, brittle and unamused. "Of course you haven't. You're all nice and shit. You never see someone and wonder what sort of thing you could do to them to make them hate you. That's the tricky part, 'cause once you got it in your head what exactly you'd do to ruin everything, you can't stop freaking out that you'll do it. That you'll call them something horrible instead of their name or stab them as soon as you stop paying attention."

"Those," she said slowly, "sound like intrusive thoughts."

He shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm just rude and mean and when nobody likes me, it's my fault and my fault alone."

"Well, yeah. Sort of. People don't like to be friends with someone who's an asshole to them. You can't blame them for that." Pomni glanced over at Jax, whose pupils had doubled in size, taking up almost the entirety of his eyes. "But that's not, like, a moral failure. If people dislike you, it's not because of anything inherently wrong about you. It's 'cause you're being mean. Stop being mean and maybe people will start liking you again."

"What if I don't want people to like me?"

Pomni instinctively moved to stick her tongue out at him again for the snarky question, only to hesitate when she realized that it wasn't actually as snarky as she'd initially figured. His tone was quiet and somber. Against all odds, she thought that the question might have been genuine.

"If you don't want people to like you and you don't want them to dislike you, then what do you want?"

Jax just gave an empty, exhausted sort of shrug. "That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I'd tell you that I want to be dead, but, well. Tried it and didn't like it."

"Why — "

"You can bring Ragatha," he cut her off. She closed her mouth without really meaning to. "Next time, I mean. Show her how to get here without looking through the doors, but don't come in. I only want to talk to her. One-on-one, or whatever." Jax crossed his arms. "And if you ask why, I'm gonna take it back."

Pomni bit back on the very question she'd been about to ask. She considered adding something else, before waving it away. Progress was progress, even if she couldn't quite make out its final shape just yet. "Okay. I'll bring her."

Ever since she was little, Ragatha had known not to rock the boat.

It had taken her a little while to understand how to accomplish that feat, of course. When she had been especially young, it had felt like every step she'd taken had sent her bumbling into someone else, leaving them snippish and pissed off. But she remembered looking up at her mother and feeling her own lips press together, as silent as could be. Best not to say anything if she was unsure how it would go over.

After a certain age, however, silence wasn't acceptable. She couldn't just duck her head and wait for it to be over. According to everyone, she was developing into a mature, responsible young woman. That meant picking her words carefully, smiling at every opportunity, and remaining pleasant at all costs. Palatable, that was what she aimed to be.

And you know what? She was damn good at it.

Boorish, unruly coworkers never had anything rude to say toward her once she killed them with kindness. Noisy neighbors found ways to quiet themselves after a quick talking-to. Spoiled clients left glowing reviews, all because Ragatha knew how to keep the water still. Confrontation wasn't in her nature, so she kept things civil, even when war raged inside of her.

It'd worked, was the thing. For as long as she could remember, it had worked like a charm. Even in the Circus, of all places, being friendly and excitable and warm had gotten her by. Up until it hadn't, that was. Until Jax turned sharp and jagged, a trio turned a pair turned a solo act. In a blink, she wasn't charming anymore. She was fake and artificial and disingenuine, and everybody knew it.

So when Ragatha stepped through the door and was met with a quiet abyss, it took effort not to force a smile onto her face. Not because she wanted to wear one, but because it was sheer muscle memory at this point. It sounded silly, but she felt naked without one.

She walked toward Jax, her shoes making rippling puddles in the otherwise still water. He was sitting next to a streetlamp, leaning back against it with his eyes closed. Was he asleep? More than that, could he even fall asleep in a state like this? She briefly wondered what a dream, much less a nightmare, would look like in this place.

Then he cracked an eye open and scoffed. "I'm not a corpse. Quit looking at me like I am."

Reflexively, she moved to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't — really know what this would be like. I'm just a bit confused, is all."

"Confused? Over what?" He made a vague gesture toward their surroundings. "I lost my marbles and cracked like a shitty teapot. Typical Abstraction."

Slowly, she made her way over to him and took a seat on the other side of the lamp, tucking her legs underneath her dress. One of these days, she'd ask for a set of trousers instead. Maybe even jeans, if she was really feeling bold. "It wasn't," she said softly.

"Wasn't what?"

"It wasn't a typical Abstraction." She thought about the nervous glances Kaufmo had been shooting at invisible foes, mumbling about some sort of exit. The way Ribbit had pulled away until she was just a slip of pixels, and then not even that. "You were here one day, and then you weren't. I mean, I'd never claim you to be the most stable Circus member, but you didn't seem that off. As far as anyone could tell, you were as casually unsound but otherwise fine as ever. What changed?"

He sighed, long and woefully exhausted. "I thought about all the work I'd have to put in just to get back to where I was before, 'cept where I was before sucked. And I just couldn't handle it, I guess. I dunno. It was hazy toward the end."

Ragatha leaned her head back against the streetlamp. It was cold and hard, a sensation she'd only felt on rare occasions since entering the Circus. "This wasn't the first time you got close to Abstracting," she said. It didn't come out as a question. "Was it."

There was a beat where he didn't say anything. It sounded a lot like Ribbit's funeral, where she nudged him and whispered that he had the floor, and he just stood there and stared before walking off. Then, finally, he mumbled, "It wasn't. The other times didn't stick, but this time, well. Clearly, it did."

She wrapped her hands around strands of her yarny hair and pulled until it hurt. "Why didn't you tell anyone?" she hissed. "We care about you, we could've helped! We could've done something."

He just huffed out a dry laugh. "Please. Gangle, Kinger, Caine, they couldn't give a shit if I live or die. Zooble probably threw a party. You and Pomni, you only say you care 'cause you'll feel bad if you don't."

"You can't honestly believe that."

Out of the corner of her non-button eye, she saw him shrug. "I don't got any reason to believe otherwise."

"Yes. You do."

"I do?"

"You do. Because if you believe that there are people who care about you, then you get to come back. And if you come back, Jax, you get to live. You get to feel the wind on your skin and share a meal with friends and watch the sunset. Isn't that the whole reason humans exist?" Ragatha turned to him, her heart pounding in her sewn-up chest. "We used to be friends. I want to be friends again. I want you to live so that you can be my friend again."

Ragatha didn't even get to read his expression before he was twisting away and she was met with the back of his head. In a dazed, distant voice, he said, "It's all fake. Just like you."

"Jax — "

"You don't even know if I can come back! All of this, your whole smarmy speech and holier-than-thou attitude, it's bullshit. It's manipulative."

In an instant, Ragatha felt like she was back on that mountain. Cold, frigid ice seeping through her socks. Snowflakes dusting her hair. The sounds of Jax and Ribbit screaming at each other, just around the bend. She couldn't make out the whole conversation, only the sound of their voices and the occasional word, but she knew it was bad.

Then it all melted into water and she was back and there was anger in her lungs for the first time in a while. Not frantic frustration or sparking irritation, but genuine anger. "I can't make you want to live," she forced out, tasting battery acid on her tongue as she let true disgust seep into her tone. "I can't make you believe me when I say that I care about you. All I can do is hope that you find a way to love yourself, because I want my friend back. I want my friend to be happy."

With that, she marched away.

"How'd it go?"

"Fine."

"You don't seem — "

"I'm fine, alright? Lay off."

"…Okay. You're fine. And in an absolutely peachy mood, I can tell."

"Shut up."

"Jax. Don't tell me to shut up."

A sigh. Then, quiet as could be, "Sorry."

"What was that?"

"I'm not saying it twice! Get your ears cleaned."

"I will when you brush your teeth. Your breath reeks."

"Ha ha. Very funny. You should — Wait. Jeez, it does."

"Yeah, I wasn't joking about that part."

"I want to see Ribbons."

"What?"

"Gangle. I want to talk to her."

"Alone, I'm guessing?"

"You sure are smart."

"I'll ask. But, to tell the truth, I don't know if she'll agree."

"She will if she knows what I'll tell you about that shoebox underneath her bed if she doesn't."

"Jax, I'm not saying that. I won't be a mouthpiece for you to threaten her."

"I — Fine. Just ask her normally, I guess."

"Okay. I will."

"…Thanks."

"No problem."

Ever since Gangle was little, she'd been fascinated by the dark.

Other kids had been scared of it. Her cousin had cried whenever he'd slept over at her apartment, begging her mom for a nightlight that he'd forgotten to pack. She'd gone to sleep-away camp once and when the campfire had gone out, everyone else had screamed loud enough to rival the howling coyotes. Even the occasional power outs in their neighborhood had made her parents nervous.

Gangle hadn't feared it like the others had, though. If anything, she was drawn to it. It was comforting for the dark to wrap around her like a second skin. Her teenage years had been spent in her dimly lit bedroom, staying up until the early hours of the morning scrolling or reading or drawing, kicking her feet under her covers all the while. She'd started in fast food on the graveyard shift, shuffling chicken nuggets to stoned college students before the sun came up. The dark was her friend, as few as she had.

But when she saw the long, black expanse of space, lit up by a single streetlamp and the cross-armed form that stood under it, she felt so terrified that she thought she might vomit.

Jax's eyes slid over to her. "Already break your comedy mask?"

She couldn't pick up her feet. "Zooble's holding it for me."

He scoffed. "Afraid I'll break it?"

"Maybe." Yes.

"Yeah," he mumbled, so low that she had to strain to hear him. "That sounds about right."

Trudging forward in the dark water, she couldn't help but notice that Jax was shorter than he should've been. Not by a lot, maybe just an inch or two. She was an artist, so she noticed these sort of things. His proportions were off. When she studied him, she noted that he was, impossibly, standing underneath the floor. It looked like he was standing in quicksand, everything below his ankles hidden and slowly sinking farther.

He must have caught her staring, because he bristled and snapped, "What? Upset that I haven't bitten it yet?"

"Huh?"

Jax opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He sent a furtive, suspicious glance her way, one that would've made her skin crawl if she'd still had any. "Pomni didn't tell you." Before she had the chance to respond, he was nodding to himself. "Good. She's less of a blab than I thought she was."

Gangle felt like she was going to scream. It was just the two of them in here, the very scenario she'd fought so hard to escape, time and time again. You'd think that Jax would ease up on her when there was no audience to entertain, but that had never been the case. If anything, he just got worse once there was no one to hold him back. "Why did you want me here?" she croaked. "I don't understand."

He glared at her, and that actually sparked a bit of anger in place of the all-encompassing fear. He glared at her for speaking when he'd asked her to come here. As if she wasn't doing him a favor that he didn't deserve just by being here. Zooble had told her that she didn't need to come, that she didn't owe him anything. They'd been right, yet here Gangle was. Two inches tall and terrified, just like always.

"Everyone keeps telling me that I need to want to live," he said, and her stomach just about fell out of her body. In front of her, Jax's hands were balled up into tight fists, his body coiled impossibly tight. "That it's never too late to grow or change, or whatever. But I don't want to live and I don't know if I have what it takes to change."

She swallowed. "Why am I here, Jax?"

He sighed. He sounded tired, in that way he'd rarely ever let them see. When the bravado and cartoonish antics drained away and they remembered that he was as much of a prisoner as the rest of them were. Even before he answered, a part of Gangle knew what he was going to say. Not the exact words, but idea of it. The point to why he'd asked for her.

"If I sink below that water, I don't think I come back. I don't think any part of me does." He looked at her, pupils huge. She'd never understood how he did that. "You want me gone? Here's your chance. No murder weapon, no body. Just drown me in my own head and you won't have to deal with me anymore."

And the thing was, in the back of Jax's mind, Gangle didn't immediately refuse. She'd considered it, once or twice. Quietly asking Zooble for a permanent solution to the source of her misery. Letting him get swept away and buried in an otherwise normal adventure. It'd be so easy to just step forward and force him under dark water.

"Why?" She needed to know. She wasn't folding just because he was more forceful and assertive than she was. Not again.

Jax shrugged, deep eyebags marking craters in his face. "'Cause I deserve it and you want it and there isn't much of a reason not to."

"Do you feel — guilty for anything that you did to me?"

"I think I feel guilty for every shitty thing I've ever done, so whatever I did to you doesn't even make a dent by this point."

She felt her ribbons tremble. "That's — That's a horrible thing to say to me."

"Yep," he agreed, casual as could be. "Now, are you sticking my head under or what?"

Gangle pictured how it'd go. She'd twist her ribbons around his neck. The cold water would seep into where her bones would be. He might even struggle, once the oxygen deprivation truly set in, but she wouldn't budge. Then, once it was over, she'd let his body slump to the floor and just walk away. She could play it dumb, act like she didn't know what had happened, and confess it all to Zooble later that night. Zooble wouldn't even blame her, she knew that they wouldn't.

But then she thought about easily he'd set it all up. How simple it was to let water enter your lungs instead of waking up in the morning and getting out of bed. They'd hold a funeral and Ragatha would say nice things about the person that he used to be and Pomni might even cry, despite the fact that he hadn't shown up for Kaufmo's funeral. It'd be so laughably painless.

"You want to die? Do it yourself. I'm not making it easy for you." She turned and began to walk away, barely keeping back the tears. As much as she loathed to admit it, she didn't want him dead. Gangle wasn't the kind of person to wish that on another. Refusing was as much for his sake as it was for hers. She didn't want to look into the mirror and see a murderer glaring at her.

A hand wrapped around her wrist. She jerked away, her breath coming out tight at the sight of Jax, eyes barely more than checkerboard squares. "Wait, wait. Let's talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about. I'm not doing your dirty work."

For a beat, he just stared at her, his expression getting more and more frantic until it smoothed out and a cocky grin took its place. "Come on, Ribbons. You're seriously whiffing your shot just 'cause you don't like the layup? I might be mixing my metaphors, but that's not how you win a championship."

She didn't bother with a response.

When she'd made it a few more steps, Jax spoke up again, his voice tighter than before. "There's no way Zoobie thinks it's sexy when you act like a coward! Don't you want to come to bed with a story tonight?"

There were tears rolling down her mask now, as quiet as she could manage, her back to Jax.

"Gangle! I'm talking to you!"

The edge of the world shuddered, its reality stretched nearly to beyond what it could manage. Every footstep was more difficult than the last. Around where her shoulders should have been, she felt the safety harness adjust, as if it was about to pull her out. Good. She didn't want to be here anymore. Hell, she hadn't wanted to be here in the first place.

"You're fucking dead! If I make it out of here, I'll never leave you alone!"

Finally, Gangle turned around. Jax was panting, his chest heaving as he stood at the very edge of the streetlamp's light. Both of his hands were clutching his head in a way that was sure to bruise. The water had sunk to his calves, but with his height, he still had a way to go. Impossibly, she could've sworn that she could just barely make out tears in the corner of his eyes.

"You'll never leave me alone if I kill you either," she said, and then she was gone.

"How was Gangle — Oh shit."

"What."

"You're — Jax, you're knee-deep in there."

"I know."

"Then why haven't you got out?"

"…"

"Oh. You can't."

"Ding-Ding-Ding. A prize for the lovely lady."

"Jax. That's really bad."

"You don't think I know that?"

A beat. Then, "What do you want to do about it?"

"Pomni, I don't think there's anything I can do."

"Does Kinger want to see me?"

"I can ask."

"You don't have to. I dunno why I asked."

"If you want me to, I will. Don't worry about it. It'll take, like, two seconds."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks."

"You're all good."

Kinger couldn't really remember being little.

He couldn't remember what his office cubicle looked like, other than the fact that he'd always meant to bring a lava lamp to work. He couldn't remember where he kept his car keys, only the spare — underneath the lavender pot, by the way. He couldn't remember how he'd spent his last day in the real world, and there was no delightful little caveat to that.

But he did remember liking kids and wanting them, and while he wasn't sure if he'd had any before he got here, he did remember that he'd always enjoyed hanging out with his neighbors. So when he found himself in a dark void illuminated by a single streetlamp, he didn't waste time. Out of a space that didn't quite exist, he took out a box of crayons and two coloring books, handing one to a dumbstruck Jax as he laid down on the floor and got to work.

"You — We're coloring?"

"Yep. I got you the good crayons. Comes with a sharpener and everything."

He blinked. "Alright, then."

And that was how they spent the afternoon. Kinger didn't make any speeches, didn't try to give out advice he knew Jax wouldn't take. He just shaded in the wings of a truly spectacular monarch butterfly with a burnt orange and took solace in the coziness that the dark always brought him.

Jax didn't say anything either. He flipped around in his pages for a while before settling on a mountainous range, free from pesky things like clouds. He used the same colors as Kinger, deep reds and rich yellows, and more than a few times, they had to share like little kids. It was quiet and it was peaceful and it was all it needed to be.

Then, when he felt a tug that meant it was time to go, Kinger turned to him and said, "This was very nice, Jax. I hope we get to do this again."

He looked at Kinger like he'd never seen him before. It was a sight Kinger was used to receiving. "Y — Yeah. This was cool."

"I very much enjoy spending time with you, Jax."

Jax's eyes went wide. Tiny and near silent, he murmured, "Thanks."

Kinger smiled, as much as he could with the perpetual lack of mouth.

"How was hanging out with Kinger?"

"It was — Uh, it was whatever."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

"Cool."

"Zooble wants to see you."

"…"

"But you don't have to. If you don't want to, I mean. Nobody'll force you. Caine won't let them in if you're not cool with it."

"Caine's dumb as a box of rocks. Zooble doesn't even need to try to get in."

"Yeah, but — You still don't need to. No one's gonna force you to do anything that you don't want to do."

"You know what? Fine."

"You're sure?"

"Why not?"

"That's not why I asked."

"I know."

Ever since they were little, Zooble had always felt like there were too many eyes on them.

It was probably the product of growing up in a stuffed house, they supposed. Two kids to every room, a perpetually busy bathroom, thin walls that never covered secrets the way they were supposed to. Whenever they so much as breathed, it'd felt like there'd been half a dozen people measuring the expansion of their ribcage. They blinked wrong, they walked with the incorrect foot forward. Everything was always up to scrutiny.

That was what had freaked them out so much about the first Abstraction they'd seen. The others had described its mammoth presence, the way it pounced and stalked its prey, but they hadn't mentioned the hundreds and hundreds of eyes. They remembered initially hoping they were just stationary decor, like a weird tattoo. Zooble could handle tattoos.

Then those eyes had all trained on them and blinked in horrific unison, and Zooble had felt skin that they no longer owned crawl in revulsion.

So when Zooble realized that they'd appeared in the hallway Pomni had described, they eased out a breath they hadn't known they'd been holding. No more Abstraction to carefully approach, pretending like they weren't seconds from being sick. Good. They weren't sure how much longer they would've been able to keep their cool.

They moved toward the parlor that'd take them to Jax, supposedly, but paused before they went in. Almost every door looked identical, with the same sketches of Jax's stupid mug, except for one. Standing on its lonesome was an almost unmarked door, locked up with cartoonishly thick chains. Completely alone and unwatched, Zooble had to admit that they were more than a little tempted.

But then they remembered what Pomni had said laid behind the doors, how it was horribly private thoughts that Jax absolutely wouldn't want them seeing, and they thought better of it. Out of anyone, they understood the importance of privacy. If their roles were reversed — well, let's be real. Zooble didn't expect Jax to award them the same courtesy if they were the one zonked out of their mind, but that didn't mean that they had to stoop to his level.

Inexplicably, there was a key in their hand when they approached a door by a piano. It slipped in neatly. When they opened the door, they almost thought that whatever trance they'd been in had broken. It was dark and dreary, just like the pillow fort they'd built. But then they caught the tiny streetlamp at the edge of the abyss and they stepped through.

Jax wasn't hard to spot. None of them ever were, really. Their models were designed to be eye-catching and brilliant, the kind of stuff that must've been a pain in the ass to animate. Zooble had known a few friends in art school and had looked over their projects sometimes, so they knew a bit about the rigging that must've taken place to build a life-sized purple bunny on this plane.

Rabbit, they absently corrected themselves. Jax hated when they called him a bunny, for reasons that Zooble had never been able to understand.

They stepped into the abyss. "Hey."

Jax, cross-legged in the lamplight and slumped in a way that preceded scoliosis, just nodded absently. His expression was flat, his mouth barely visible. That'd always bugged Zooble, his facial design. They didn't like how much focus his teeth took, only to all but vanish whenever he was upset.

"What do you want," he said. He sounded rough, and that was being more generous than he deserved.

"Gangle told me everything."

He didn't even look surprised. "You here to finish the job?"

"You look like you've got that covered."

It was true. The water was up to Jax's waist. Not by a lot, but by enough, and they could see tiny waves lap higher at their very words. When they pointed it out, though, Jax bristled, bearing his teeth at them in a way that he'd never done before. His ears stuck out in odd angles, almost like bedhead. If they were in the real world, Zooble would bet that his hair would be manic, as if he'd been up for hours longer than he should've been.

"You came to gloat, then."

They hadn't, actually. When Gangle had shown up by their door, crying in a way that was distinctly separate from her mask, they'd felt furious. It'd taken everything they'd had to stay with Gangle and hold her as she tried not to unravel, rather than take out the gun they'd stashed under their bed. But then they'd thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it some more, and realized that they wanted answers more than they wanted baseless revenge.

Besides, the way it looked like things were going, Jax was a foot and a half out of the door anyway.

"You're an asshole," they said.

"Thanks."

"I wasn't finished. You're an asshole. You prioritize your own self-satisfaction over anyone else's well-being. You push away everyone who gets close and lash out when it comes back to bite you. There hasn't been a day since I've gotten here that you haven't gone out of your way to make someone else miserable. Your Abstraction was the product of the consequences of your own actions and even now, it threatens everyone else's safety."

"I'm sorry," he spat, "that my suicide wasn't convenient for you."

"But even though you've been rude and cruel and awful to me in countless ways," Zooble continued, more than practiced at ignoring him by now, "you never misgendered me."

He blinked. "What."

"You've called me grumpy and grouchy, but you never called me a guy or a girl."

"I — I just — "

"You've always referred to me with they." Zooble shrugged. "I use any pronouns. You could've used she or he the entire time, and you'd be kind of a dick for that, but I wouldn't have said anything. Yet you used they."

Jax's hands balled up into fists. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Maybe it doesn't," they agreed. "But then again, I've stared at a mirror until all I could feel was hate and anger. Let me tell you, it never stays contained. It bleeds through, into the rest of the world, until the way you feel about your body isn't special, because you loathe it the same way you loathe everything else."

Jax glared at them with more raw vitriol than they'd ever seen from him. "I'm nothing like you."

"You're a little bit like me. Only a little, though, because I learned to breathe past the hatred and you still haven't. Jax, it doesn't go away. It doesn't sit well with being ignored. It festers and it bubbles until it consumes you."

At that, he actually snorted. Zooble watched as he gestured around them, toward the infinite abyss in the darkest corner of the back of his mind. "Look around, Zoobs. Too late."

"You're not dead yet. Stop acting like we've already buried you."

Jax laughed again at that, off-kilter and wheezy. "You might as well." His hands reached up, grabbing at his head. "I can't do it. I can't, I can't, I can't. I'm already dead, I'm already gone, I can't change — "

They thought about hips that didn't fit in jeans the right way. Skin that stretched wrong, never fitting over bones the way it was supposed to. A crooked smile. Curls that never coiled well enough. The way that the mirror seemed to hate every part of them, from their too-big shoes to their gangly arms.

"It's never too late. There's always time."

His head snapped up, pupils so small they were almost gone. "Get out," he hissed. "Get out, get out, get out!"

"Jax — "

"I don't want you here! I don't need you!" Jax scrambled to his feet, his bottom half completely under the water by now. Unimpeded by the physics that should've been there, he lurched forward, barely within the lamp light's circle. "I don't need anyone! Go away!"

And then he grabbed at their arm and Zooble saw stars and comets and snowflakes and, impossibly, a tiny pink bow that just about made them vomit on the spot and the world spun and their palm crackled and glitchy pixels ran up their arm and they looked like beady eyes for the first time in years, their own body terrified them in a way that it never had before and by the time they realized that they'd ran, the door to the abyss was already closed and locked.

"Shit," they breathed.

"Why are you staring at me?"

Jax just blinked, slow as could be, and didn't take his eyes off of her. Pomni glanced behind her, not really expecting to see anything. If anything in this corner of the world had changed, she would hope that she'd have apt enough perception skills to notice it. Just as she'd figured, there was only shadows, shadows, and more shadows.

Slowly, with a sluggish quality that made her wonder how present he really was, Jax said, "You haven't asked yet."

"Asked what?"

He shrugged. "About the thing."

Pomni forced herself to chuckle, although it came out far more nervously than she'd meant it to. "That's not super helpful. Be more specific?"

"You saw me be weird with Ribbit and haven't asked about it."

Fuck. That. The elephant in the room that she'd been wisely ignoring until Jax brought it up. Pomni winced. "You mean when you told them about your past?"

"I mean with the bow."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I want to talk about why you haven't asked me about it."

She fiddled with the tops of her shoes, wishing she'd had sneakers right about now. When she was anxious, she liked to work the laces out of their clasps and weave them back in. "I didn't mean to see any of that. If I'd known that I was going to watch your memories, I wouldn't have done that, I mean. So as far as I'm concerned, unless you want it to have happened, it didn't."

"So you're just lying, then?"

She squinted at him. Usually, she'd have to look up to do that, but Jax had sunken so deep under the water that when she stood up, she was at his height. "I wouldn't call it lying."

"Did you tell Zooble?"

"What? No, of course not."

"How come?"

Slowly, because she really didn't understand why he was asking, she said, "Because it's not of their business. None of mine, either. If you want me to tell the others, I will, but I'm not going to spill your secrets just because I can. I'm not an asshole."

Jax looked down at his palms, his expression blank in the way it'd been for the last few visits. "I am, though." He turned to her. There wasn't a damn thing on his face for her to read. "When you look at me, do you see a girl?"

Fuck. This was important, she could tell that much. For weeks now, Jax had been teetering at the edge of a ledge, letting the wind sway him as he dangled. Handling this wrong would be practically shoving him with two hands. Treading as carefully as she could, Pomni forced herself to be honest. "I see Jax. I see whoever Jax wants to be." She swallowed. "Forgive the weird third-person of it, but — does Jax want to be a girl? Does Jax want to be Jax?"

It came out awkwardly. Jax didn't tease her over it the way that he should've, and that itself was a huge red flag. She watched as he laid down, each movement taking ages, until he was flat on his back, limbs splayed like he was making a snow angel. Impossibly, Pomni thought about being young and stupid, laying on the grass with her eyes closed while her friends made speeches as her pretend funeral. It was a horrible game, but it was the kind of game that little girls played because little girls had a special way of being horrible that was actually kind of beautiful.

"I don't want to be anything. I don't want anyone to see me and think anything about me. I want to be a ghost."

Pomni laid down too. As soon as her eyes were off of him, Jax let out a breath. She stared up at the sky, which looked the same as just about every other angle. "We saw pictures of the you on the outside. Leeroy." She bit down on her lip, trying to handle this as delicately as she could. "Leeroy had long hair and baggy clothes, and in every photo I saw, I couldn't catch sight of Leeroy's face."

To be fair, it'd been difficult to see anyone's face. All the pictures had been messy and candid and undeniably human, with stray elbows and shoulders accidentally covering their faces. But with Leeroy, it'd felt different. It'd felt different, the way they held up a middle finger or cup at just the right angle, every single time.

"I want baggy clothes," Jax murmured, so softly that Pomni almost missed it. "I hate these overalls. They're so bright. So loud. Everyone always looks at me. And I want to wear makeup, but not the kind that models wear. I want eyeliner that smudges, like I barely even remembered I was wearing it. I don't want a body, but if I need to have one, then I want one that no one pays attention to."

She thought of the maid dress. The others had laughed about it, because why wouldn't they? It was one tiny victory, especially after all the bullshit Jax had put them through that day. When Jax's face had heated up and had gone into a state of outrage, it'd been even funnier. It was a maid dress and it was fucking stupid, except to Jax, it wasn't.

"I don't mind being Jax. I mean, the name. I don't care. It's short and that's cool. But the other stuff, I don't like."

"What kind of stuff?" When Jax didn't say anything, she gently probed, "The he stuff?"

Even quieter than before, Jax whispered, "Yeah. I don't like that."

"Do you want to try she? Or maybe they?" At the beat of silence, she continued, "There's other options too, if those don't fit."

"I don't know. I don't know if I want to try anything. I think I just want to die so I can finally be a ghost and nobody'll talk about me at all."

Her eyes burned. She didn't want to look over and see how deep under the water Jax was. "You can always Abstract later," she said carefully. "If it gets to be too much or too hard, you can always come back here. But if you let go now, you can't come back. You'll never get to wear your eyeliner."

"I don't even know how to do eyeliner."

"I can teach you. I'm not very good, but that's okay. You said you liked it smudgy anyway."

"I guess."

There was a weight on Pomni's shoulders. She sat up, hands grabbing for a rope that she knew she wouldn't be able to reach. "Shit. Caine's pulling me back."

Jax's eyes slipped close as the water rose and rose. "That's okay."

"No, it's not. You're not — You're not going to be here next time, are you?" She felt it in her soul. There wasn't any deeper Jax could sink without drowning. Even now, it was now, it was a wonder that it wasn't over yet.

"Probably not."

"Jax. Please, just hold on. I'll come right back, I won't wait a week." The abyss began to get hazy. Pomni dug her heels into the ground, but it didn't do shit. "Fuck!"

"Pomni?" Jax's eyes slid open, barely focusing on her. She felt water rushing in her ears, even though she wasn't the one about to submerge. "At my funeral, can you think of me as the dead girl? You know, instead of the other thing."

There was acid in her lungs, burning like a motherfucker. All Pomni wanted to do was rip off the safety harness and stay for just five more minutes, but that was attached to her physical form, so all she could do was swallow her scream behind her teeth and nod as she was torn away.

Ever since she was little, Jax had wanted to disappear.

She'd always been good at hide and seek. Best in the neighborhood. The secret was crawling underneath the cars, sucking in her stomach so she'd fit. No one else was brave enough to risk getting squashed, which was dumb, 'cause the wheels wouldn't have hit her anyway. She'd laid in the middle, obviously. But the other kids never caught on, so she'd spend hours and hours safely tucked away.

When her parents' spats had turned from squabbles to arguments to full-on fights, she'd learned quickly the best way to drown out their explosive screaming matches. She'd shove her shitty earbuds into her hand, the kind that only worked right if she held up the cord at the right angle, and crawl into the back of her closet. The trick was keeping her eyes on her bedroom door. If Mom or Dad came in, she'd need to climb out quickly, before they caught on. She was too young to be hiding away, after all.

The real magic act had started once it was just her and Mom. Their new house was smaller than the last. Thinner walls. Less nooks and crannies to vanish into. So she'd gotten creative. She could spend entire hours in the attic if she pretended that she was looking for old clothes. It was worth the gas to take the long way back home after school. The bathroom always needed cleaning and Mom didn't like the way the chemicals smelled.

Then she'd pulled the greatest vanishing act of all time. No more coming up for air, no more begrudgingly coming back home when all she wanted to do was run and never look back. For the longest time, she hadn't even thought there'd been a body. She'd put that headset on and whoosh. Nothing was real anymore.

Now, though, she had to admit that she'd impressed herself yet again. It wasn't enough to get her consciousness copied and pasted into this freak-fest. She'd disappeared into the tiniest, darkest corner of her mind, so remote that she hadn't even realized she'd been there until Pomni showed up.

She couldn't beat this one. That meant that she had to stop trying, she was pretty sure. As Pomni's voice faded away, she let the cool water wash over her. It was more refreshing than it'd been in a long time now. It almost made her wish that she'd actually taken advantage of that beach adventure Caine had designed for them.

Abstraction had been pleasant. Peaceful, even. Jax hadn't expected that one. Kaufmo's manic, crazed scribbles had made it seem scary, but that wasn't even close. When she'd finally stopped fighting, the weightless had actually made her smile. For the first time in her life, she hadn't needed to tread water.

Drowning was a much easier practice than anyone made it seem.

As she sunk, inch-by-inch, she thought about how her funeral would go. This wasn't time the first time she'd entertained the possibility, both before and after her Abstraction. However, she'd never considered that Pomni would be aware of who she actually was. That part was a surprise, to tell the truth.

There'd be some hemming and hawing over having the funeral in the first place. After all, Jax hadn't gone to Kaufmo's or — or the others'. Ragatha would propose it and when Gangle and Zooble would hesitate, Pomni would insist. Jax was one of them, so she deserved a proper send-off.

It'd be small. They always were. In all honesty, Jax wasn't even sure if she had a photo of herself to use. There was that small printout in her room, but that wasn't a solo, so she wasn't totally sure if it counted. Caine had probably recorded countless hours of security footage of all of them, though, so they could probably just use that.

Ragatha would speak at the service. It'd be generic and vague, more of a formality than anything else. Kinger would say something absent that didn't make all that much sense. She didn't really expect Zooble or Gangle to make a scene, but she knew they wouldn't go out of their way to talk either.

Pomni, though. Pomni would be interesting. She'd seen sides of her that no one had witnessed in a very long time. When she spoke of Jax, the others wouldn't really get it. The confusion would become even more twisted when she danced around all the things she'd seen in her mind. But then she'd inevitably finish it, and that'd be it.

They'd forget her soon after. That was the drawback of disappearing — people realized that they liked it better when you were gone than when you were here.

It'd be like a sitcom, the adventures they'd go on without her. Visiting digital museums of wonky art, commenting about the artists' skill as if they hadn't all been made by Caine. Walking through the park and coming across carefully planted flowers and sprouts. Sitting at the top of the tent was watching the Sun dip behind the trees —

She faltered. Pomni had told her about that one, actually. For once, she'd lost sight of her mission to bring Jax back and had lost herself to the snapshot. It'd been such a vivid description that Jax had nearly seen it herself. The way that the sky itself had shifted in a wave of pixels, each a miniature radiating gradient.

Jax opened her eyes. She wanted to see the sunset.

The water began to recede, draining out as if someone had pulled the plug out of the bathtub. Despite herself, she sat up, blinking the stars out of her eyes. Above her, the streetlamp glowed as weakly as ever. The light was the only warm thing in this whole world, and even that barely got the job done.

Then, for the first time ever, she saw herself walk out from the shadows.

There were three of her, except they weren't her. She could tell just from seeing them. One stalked toward her with wide, soulless eyes and an empty energy to him. Another skipped merrily, practically clicking his heels, while the final strutted forward in that fucking maid dress.

"Where are you going?" the first said, tilting his head like a dog.

"You're dead!" the second said brightly. "You don't get to walk out of your grave just like that."

The third one just grinned at him, twisting his finger around a lace ribbon in a way that made Jax's skin crawl. "Get back in the water, alright? Make this easier for all of us."

Her shoulders hiked up as the three of them walked in lazy circles around her, one of them out of her vision at all times. "Go away. You're not real."

"And you are?" One of them laughed, his ears sticking out at odd, almost wacky angles. "What makes you any more real than the rest of us?"

"We liked hurting those people," another said somberly. "It was fun. That was all real."

Jax felt her heart pounding in her chest. She just wanted to see the fucking sunset. She wasn't sure if she wanted to live, if she wanted to put each foot forward for the rest of this sorry Circus's existence, but she knew that she wanted to know what it was like to watch the Sun dip down below the trees as the Moon reached her apex.

"If I live," she tried, "you'll all live too. If you kill me, you'll be killing yourselves."

But as soon as she said it, she realized her mistake. That wasn't a reason for protection, not in any way that mattered. Suicide had never been the deterrent that it was for other people. If anything, it was an incentive.

Nodding along as if she'd said that all aloud, the other Jax smoothed out the ruffles of his dress. "Yeah, we're willing to make that sacrifice if it means that you'll never fuck us over again."

Then they hurled themselves at her.

It wasn't anywhere close to a fair fight. Three on one, with her legs still stuck underneath the surface of the water, they attacked her. At first, she was able to hold her own solely through their own bumbles as they got in each other's way. But they coordinated themselves fast, one locking his arms around her ribcage and another working on pinning down her arms. When the last one swept her legs out from underneath her, it really was over.

Each holding onto one part of her, they muscled her to the ground, shoving her head against the water. Jax coughed on dark water as they tried to submerge her. It didn't work like normal water. There was a resistance as the surface itself seemed to refuse her presence, but even that didn't stay. Their sheer combined strength began to force her underneath, and all she could think about was the Sun, the Sun, the —

There was the sound of a cartoonish spring, and then the hands were off.

For a beat, Jax couldn't process that they'd stopped. Then her mind caught up to her body and she was scrambling to her feet. Her whole system felt shaky and the feeling only got worse when she spotted another her, standing in front of her with an oversized, Bugs Bunny-esque mallet.

Except, she couldn't quite if this one was a her too or a him or maybe something else entirely. They looked more similar to her than any of the others had. There was no concerning look in their eyes or stylistic divergence. In fact, the only real difference she could find was the manacle clamped around their ankle.

They didn't say anything. They didn't even try, so neither did she. Around them, the other three Jaxes were unconscious on the ground, two-dimensional birds circling around one of them. The two of them just looked at each other for a moment, and for the life of her, Jax didn't have a clue as to who they were or what they were supposed to represent. Then they slowly raised their hand, pointing to a nondescript spot in the distance.

She felt like she was going to be sick. "How do I go back?"

And it hit her, in what was likely a more casual manner than it should've been, that she was going back. That she wanted to go back. Not because she had the slightest hope that she'd be able to fix her life or change into a different person, but because she wanted to see the sunset. Everything else, she could figure out later.

Softly, they said, "You haven't tried to leave yet. Sometimes, all it takes is one step."

She understood what they meant. If Pomni was here, she'd probably be more frustrated than she'd be willing to admit that she hadn't suggested this. There was a part of Jax that had suspected that this was the way out for a while now. She hadn't wanted to check, not for fear that she'd be wrong, but because she just might be right.

For the first time, Jax walked out of the safety of the streetlamp's light and into the darkness.

As soon as her foot landed outside of the lamp's radius, a door came into existence, as if it'd always been there. It was the one that the others always came through, the one that always left when they did. Behind her, she could hear the others stirring. She grabbed the handle, sucking in a breath, and threw the door open.

Then Jax did what she did best and disappeared.

It was dim when she opened her eyes. For a beat, she wasn't sure that she'd made it out at all. For all she could tell, she was still stuck in her own mind, seconds from drowning. But when she stumbled forward on clumsy legs, her hands brushed a soft surface and she realized that, against all odds, she was in a pillow fort. A massive pillow fort, at that.

The pieces began to connect together, haltingly at first. Around her were tens, if not hundreds, of Zooble's various snap-on arms and legs. They were littered around her, each clasped onto another in a way that almost made up a long chain. Pomni had mentioned how they'd managed to gently guide Jax's abstracted form into a quiet place, rather than force it into the Cellar.

Up ahead, there was a prick of light from the opening to the fort. Jax's stomach tightened. She didn't need to do this. She didn't need to face them. It would take nothing to just sit with her own thoughts until she cracked again and fizzed out into buzzing pixels. Or she could turn around and run away, living the rest of her days at the bottom of the lake until she — well, until she cracked again and fizzed out into buzzing pixels.

But then she heard voices, just out of range, and she found herself walking forward.

It was really fucking bright out, that was the first thing she noticed. No wonder Kinger was always blinking so furiously when they coaxed him out from his hideaway. She found herself rubbing her eyes as she stepped out and the voices got louder. When she felt the artificial lights of the tent head her skin, she opened them and saw the others, staring at her like she was a ghost.

"Holy shit," she heard Zooble mumble, eyes wide, and Jax realized, oh. They really hadn't expected her to come back from this.

Ragatha already had tears brimming in the corners of her eyes, her hands clasped over her heart. Her jaw was dropped into a little o-shape. "You're okay."

Then, in a red-blue streak of pure color, Pomni was barreling toward her, launching herself into a back-breathing hug. She was short enough that her feet dangled as she hung off of her. "You fucking scared me!"

Jax just stood there, not even raising her hands to reciprocate the hug as she took it all in. She felt herself numbly blink as what she'd done finally set in. She was alive. She was alive and she had a body that she needed to lug around from place to place until the maggots consumed her. Again.

Then she felt one of Kinger's gloved hands rest on her shoulder, giving it the softest squeeze as the man beamed at her. "I'm very glad that you found your way back, Jax. We were actually just about to watch the sunset, if you'd like to come with us. I noticed that you colored one earlier."

She swallowed. "Yeah. That sounds — That sounds nice."

The others had questions, she could tell. If she were to wager, she'd bet that they were just dying to ask her how she'd reversed the Abstraction, if it was replicable, what she'd seen on the other side. But she must've looked as bad as she felt, because they all held their tongues and quietly shuffled out of the tent.

Gangle and Pomni held back, as did Caine, who was good again, apparently? Pomni had mentioned that but Jax honestly hadn't had the capacity to really think about that until now. But when Zooble turned and said something into Gangle's ear — or, where her ear would be if she'd had one, at least — she just shook her mask and said something back. Then Zooble left with Kinger and Ragatha.

Voice hollow even to her, Jax heard herself mutter, "Regretting that you didn't finish the job?"

As soon as it was out of her mouth, she wished she hadn't said it. Fuck, why did she do this? Rock the boat, poke the bear, call it by any pretty name and she'd still be addicted to it. Hell, she'd literally met that part of her brain and he was an asshole, yet here she was, giving into him again.

Gangle didn't glare at him, though, or cry, or react any way that she thought she might've. She just looked at him with that somberness of hers. "I'm happy for you. I'm happy that you found a way to want to live." She took in a breath. "You have a second chance. Make good use of it."

Then she walked away.

Be kinder to women, she remembered Pomni saying, and to queer people, and to yourself.

That really was the bare minimum.

Caine kept it short and sweet, even in comparison. He just walked over, because he walked around now, instead of zipping from place to place. Fingers drumming nervously on his ringmaster's staff, he said, "I'm sorry. For, uh. Losing it on you." Then, before Jax could say anything, he added, "I like your makeup" and left.

Jax turned to Pomni, her heart beating fast, and said, "I'm wearing makeup?"

She nodded. Then she took her hand and brought her over to the mirror in the hallway, standing far enough back that Jax only saw herself in the reflection. Caine had been right. Tiny, almost invisible eyeliner wings peaked out, thin enough that they could be explained by shadows if someone wasn't looking for them.

Not only that, but her clothes had changed too. She was wearing the same cut of overalls, but they'd deepened into a dark enough purple that was just shades away from being black. The cuffs were embroidered with silver threaded designs of stars, and over her shoulders hung a leather jacket.

She looked cool. More muted. Casual, not begging for thousands of eyes to train onto her every move. It wasn't a look that would attract everyone's attention, making connections for them that she wasn't ready to face. To everyone else, it was just a redesign. To her, it was what she'd wanted for longer than she could remember.

"You know, I wasn't surprised when you told me my name. Isn't that weird? I couldn't have guessed what it was in a million years, but as soon as you told me, it made sense. Like, yeah. Of course that was my name." She fiddled with the ends of her sleeves. "I remembered how I always wanted people to call me Lee."

"Do you — want me to call you that?"

She shook her head. "Nah. Lee's out there. I'm in here. 'Sides, Jax has more aura anyway."

Pomni smiled. "I agree." She looked over her shoulder, toward the exit of the tent. "Sun's almost down. You still want to catch it?"

Jax took one final look of herself in the mirror. Tomorrow, it'd probably be harder to be brave. An entire eternity would be waiting for her, one where she had to swallow the horrible habits that had festered for years now. That was the real reason why she'd never tried, because she knew just how much work laid in front of her, and the more she procrastinated on it, the worse it grew.

But that was tomorrow and this was today, and Jax wasn't sure if she had what it took to live forever, but she knew she could make it to the end of today. After that, well. One step, and all of that. So she turned away from the mirror, resting her hands behind her head as she left the tent behind.

"Sure. Why the hell not?"