Chapter Text
The light is blinding, scorching, and every part of it that touches her feels like it is burning from the inside out. Still, she clings tighter. She thinks she might be crying, but she can't hear it over that screeching wail, over the ringing in her ears. "Please stay with me!" She cries, but she isn't sure he can even hear her; she can barely hear herself.
There is a tugging, and it's hard to tell if it's mental or physical. The boundaries between the two are so thin in this world, this place where Jax is part of everything, and now maybe she is, too. Pomni feels grief, and she isn't quite sure it's her own. She buries her face further into the glowing ball of light, and it almost feels like his synthetic fur, a brand against her forehead. "Let go of me." The words are so startling, so unexpected, that she almost releases him to try and get a better look. But that's exactly what he wants, he wants her to leave him here to this, and she can't. She won't. "I won't do it," she says stubbornly, and the body hums against her.
The pain only grows, and she clenches her eyes shut tight. "I won't do it!" She repeats again, fighting against his push and that unknown external pull. "Let go! I said let go!" He doesn't sound like himself, his voice more static than human, and it only makes her try harder. She wants to hear his voice again, his real voice. This can't be their last meeting. This can't be the last thing she has to remember him. Not now, not when she finally understands.
"Have you ever done something you regret?"
"Then she went off on me...and-and it didn't stop. Personal, degrading insults that felt like it went on forever. And despite all that, the thing that bothered me most was...at the end of all of it, she hugged me. I-I didn't know what to do, so I...I panicked, and I pushed her off me with all the force I could."
"If you ever tell anyone about this, I'm never speaking to you again."
"You know none of that was real, right? What, that corny backstory out of a Hallmark movie? Nah, really got you though!"
If- No, when, they get their second chance, she was going to do things differently. She wasn't going to let anything like this happen again. Not to him, not to anyone. She wasn't going to let anyone walk away, or shut themselves off, or destroy themselves in this place. They were all going to get a second chance to do it all right. She had to believe that. "I'm not letting go of you, I promise!" She means it to sound reassuring, but it comes out more like a bark. There is something like an animalistic wail that comes from the core of light, and suddenly her feet are sliding back. With a grunt, she tries to force herself still, but her feet keep sliding out from under her.
"I hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! Just let go of me, I said let go! Let go of me!" It's the keening wail of a child, the desperate tone she's come to know and hate, and it aches. She can't stifle a sob in time, and it only seems to distress the figure further, releasing more and more shrill shrieks. "I know, I'm sorry," she whispers into the light, face burning as much as her eyes, digging her fingers in hard to ground herself. "Please try, I know it's hard, but please try."
She has no way of knowing if she's doing the right thing. He had said he didn't want to go, but what if he'd changed his mind? What if he wanted to go after all now? Was it her place to make him stay? Tears run freely now, and she doesn't even try to stop them. It all hurts too much, inside and out. She wants to wail right alongside him. "Please," he finally pleads, cornered, "If you don't let go of me, you're going to die with me."
It wasn't a thought that hadn't occurred to her. She knew there was a risk in even confronting the abstraction, let alone embracing it, but she went anyway. There wasn't enough time to explain the thoughts that led her to make that choice, and there might not be enough time in the world to convey to Jax how willing she was to risk that for him. How she would try for any of them, and he was one of them. Instead, she only says, "I'm not leaving you alone, Jax. I'm sorry."
The tugging at her waist only grows more insistent, but the pushing has stopped. She falls to her knees, and the core of light is merely quivering in her arms, much smaller and less violent than before. "Don't do this," he begs, "I will never forgive you if you do this. You can't do this. I can't do this to y-" The voice breaks off into a sharp, robotic whine.
"What's it going to take to make you realize that I'm never going to leave you alone?" She says, hoarse from yelling, strained from resisting. "There's nothing that is ever going to make me let go of you. Nothing. So there's nothing you could do to stop me."
If she is going to die with him, it makes her furious, seething to think that he could somehow find a way to make that his fault. It makes her so angry, so horribly, terribly sad to think that he will always find some new way to torture himself. That maybe there is nothing she or anyone else can do to make it better, that he has to try, and that he refuses to. She clenches her teeth, pulling backwards.
Jax releases a miserable, glitchy moan, like it physically hurts. It might, for all she knows, but she has to try. The pulling around her waist is helping, but Jax is so stubborn, so steadfastly dead weight. "You're going to come with me," she grits through her teeth, "You're going to come with me, and neither of us is going to have to die. It's not too late. Try!"
Her voice rises at the end, sharp and biting, and she can only hope it gets through to him. "I can't," he whines, sounding so sorry that it almost makes her stop. "You can! You said you didn't want this, so don't do it. For the first time, make a different choice. Make the hard choice. Please."
She feels arms wrap around her, his whole body one of blinding light, but it's starting to gain back its familiarity. They squeeze the breath from her, but she just keeps pulling. She keeps pulling until she almost loses her footing, then keeps pulling some more. "What's going to happen to me?"
She isn't sure if he means the abstraction, or what will happen if he leaves with her, but she's not willing to discuss the former. She doesn't know the right words to convince him. If she should beg, or scream, or cry, or something in between. She refuses to let that hopelessness win, not while she's still alive. Even if alive only means existing in here, never escaping.
"You're going to finally see that you're a part of this group, of our family here. You're going to realize that you've never been alone, not one second of being here. You're going to see that I have always cared about you," she swallows hard, choking back a sob, "Probably a lot more than I should. You're going to see that you can be the person that you want to be, even if it takes a long time to get there. You'll see...You'll see that who you are, and every part of that, is worth trying for. And that you should have done that for yourself a long time ago. And you'll be so happy that you did it now, someday. I promise." She lapses into tears, almost too weak to keep tugging at all. "I promise, Jax. I promise."
The next thing she knows, she is airbound. There's a moment of brief confusion, a pause in her mind, where she's not sure if she's dead or alive. Then she hits the ground hard, and a heavy weight is on her chest. She blinks drearily, the circus seeming so dull in comparison to the blaring light she'd been faced with a moment before. Everything hurts, everything is too quiet and too loud all at once. She meets the concerned, bloodshot eyes of Kinger first, then Ragatha, hand clasped over her mouth, then Zooble and Gangle, both standing back a bit, matching looks of horror on their faces. She opens her mouth to ask them what's wrong, what's happened, before it all goes dark.