Work Text:
In the vast juggernaut of time, Jax wonders what he is meant to do.
He isn’t quite sure how it came to be like this. How it was begot from nothing like an afternoon dream; foggily and haphazardly and embellished with a thousand little secrets when he had suddenly nothing left to lose and the entire world to gain. He isn’t sure when he came to realize there is no world for him to gain.
Yet, the entire time he stood like this beneath the air of all that he knew: eyes astute, defiant; spine tall like a gratifying tower and he was shed of it all at once. What remained of him underneath that skin could have never been warned of the chemicals in the ruins, the atoms and the truth. What leaked from between his teeth were always lies and he would defend himself: well, so is everything else.
Even then, why can he feel his bones now?
I think… I think it’s working.
He does not know if he has eyes yet, but the first thing he sees is a blinding light; fulgent kaleidoscopic cells drip from mouths as drool does, like slits in skin running veraciously with blood. He thinks this is warmth filling his body and he yearns to map out the source, tug onto more of it, allow his senses to flood with it. Gain the world.
Holy shit, you did it.
The first breath comes like the eye of a storm. It fills his lungs so graciously he begins to cough it up and he feels it to be almost unnatural. He learns slowly that it belongs with him nonetheless.
When he tries again, he sweeps air into himself and forces it to stay.
Okay, okay. This is—should we—I just don’t want him to get overwhelmed.
This time, it doesn’t escape. He fights and fights with nothing but want as his weapon to keep it between his ribs.
Then, you guys go. I’ll stay and—
Tinnitus weaves its heavy way into the air and once it stings in his ears, it gets lost to the clamor of other fretful voices; altogether, they tail away and he is left to his recovering perception, overbearing wafts of silence. Velvet textiles form the sense of touch around his body.
He opens his eyes.
Soft pillows are steepled in the darkness and he is in the midst of their balmy embrasure, lying on his back, awake in the quarters of tranquility.
A blur of red and blue blooms into vision like the vignette of a curing memory and he hears a voice croak into the dusky climate of the space between, familiar and endearing like it shouldn’t be. It is almost nostalgic to hear.
“Jax… You’re—you’re back.”
He lets out a breathless chuckle. He isn’t sure what for.
As if on the cusp of a harrowing cry, he verges on relinquishing everything he’s ever been to stay in this moment. To relish in it and not kick away what blossoms in his aid.
For the first time, a juvenile sweetness punctures the air between two bodies. For the first time in so, so long, he lets it.
“You—” he breathes, trying - his voice is a small glow in the gossamer dark. He thinks at the igniting sight before him, he will learn to use it again quickly. “Pomni…”
She’s cared enough to give him that chance. He clings onto that, lets it motion his body forward - despite the fragility of his bones, despite everything, he makes it his catalyst. He springs up and when he binds himself to her, watches the sleeplessness drip from her earnest eyes, he feels she has always been this close to him. A thousand fleeting colours brush against his fingertips; he gives her everything through a wish and he wraps around her like the tide.
He crumples into her further, sobbing like the sea.
“What was it like when you were abstracted?”
“That’s a tricky one. Running short on questions, aren’t ya?”
“Yeah, and I know how to use ‘em when it matters most. If it’s only adding to your plate, you don’t have to answer.”
“Listen. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”
The listening starlight strings out the quiet and it is so silver in his world. He looks skyward as he lays flat on his aching back, grass featherlight to the touch as it sways along his skin in the gentle breezes and in the corner of his eye, he spots a wisp of Pomni.
He turns to uncover more.
She sits upright beside him and she’s staring distantly, piningly into the stars. She falters to catch his gaze on her and he whisks his head toward the ground, letting the sear roost over his cheeks. Before he thinks of excuses he thinks of her breathing; how he hopes the sound will never go.
Alright, fine.
“I mean, I guess it’s like…” he halts. He never knows where his words end up. “Like stars exploding, at first.”
“Stars exploding, huh?”
“Yeah. And, like, colours kind of mesh together until you get so overwhelmed you start to lose your thoughts to it. Then yourself. Then there isn’t really anything left of you.”
“That…sounds like a lot.”
Sure is, he thinks as he blinks foreboding tears away.
“But, y’know. Somehow, you were there before I got to that stage. So before I, like, fully lost it…”
“What?”
He clicks his tongue before closing his eyes, leaving heavy lids awashed in the argentine glow of moonlight. “Doesn’t matter.”
One eye slips open and he sees her staring at him hard. Red and blue pinwheels of eyes swell and careen with something sharp in them; the inky lance of a pen that jabs into him as it writes: your old habits are going to die hard, and I’ll make sure of it.
“...Fine.”
It feels to him when he speaks, he is encumbered beneath the weight of a thousand suns. He strains as he sits up and hopes some of it abdicates. Rest assured, when he goes to catch one more glimpse of her, the suns feel lighter.
“I just…felt like it wasn’t all that bad. I was full of regret, sure, but for the hell that it was, I felt like everything was going to be okay for a second.”
He stills. His hands grow cold and clammy as the silence stretches out in tight ropes before his ears and he thinks it’ll catch him at his throat by the end of it. He stares far out beyond the stars.
(How does one say that another’s presence shines a light on even the deepest crevices of their world, even when hell’s gates pour with the stark darkness of acid?)
The words feel too sodic. So, another takes the stage:
“I think that it could’ve been okay. I felt okay enough with leaving everything behind to go with you. And, ‘cause I didn’t get the chance to, I spent most of these months just…in the tent. Waiting to see if you’d ever come back.”
Jax feels like a mummy - something ancient coils deep in the bilges of his stomach, something like lava rocks. Of everything he’s ever lived for he knows this is not what he wanted to happen, what he wanted her to feel.
“I wanted so badly to save you,” she says, a cry biding its time in the fringes. He looks at her and hopes in the gracious gaps of their words his heart won’t unravel itself too quickly this time.
“I mean, you ended up doing just that.”
“Heh. Well, Kinger’s the one who fixed your code.”
“And I bet it was you who forced him to.”
They are static figures seated on the grass beneath stars pinning down on them. Jax discovers this upon watching her tears as they perch along the waterline, then slip down the curve of her face through a thread like an aurora borealis. He discovers, as his gaze follows down even further, her pinkie finger eased upon his.
“I think you saved yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“What made you abstract in the first place, Jax?”
“I—you know what? You’re all out of questions.”
“You were alone. Brain scans or not, we’re humans, and we think like them. We survive because we have each other.”
“What are you getting at, Pomni?”
Pomni allows the last of her tears to fall. Jax feels like his first ones rest upon the edge.
“Nobody here is content with themselves. We’ve all done things we regret, but what do we do with it?”
“I got rid of mine the easy way.”
She doesn’t bother wiping the wetness of her face. Warily, she takes his hand in whole. “I don’t think you mean it was easy.”
“Well—what do you suppose I was meant to do with everything I felt? Everything I went through?”
“You know the answer. And do you really think the regret just went away?”
The silence treks far into the sky, and he finds a bitter coldness unfurling across his skin; his flesh returns at her words, exposed to the fraying shards of night’s breath.
“I thought I could fix you.”
Something of her words twist something inside his stomach.
“Don’t think anyone can.”
“Because you only have yourself to fix.” She lifts her sight to the stars, squeezing his hand in hers. “I was…an idiot. For thinking it was my place to bring you back.”
“Talked to Kinger recently, huh?”
He takes in how her head wrenches his way, pretty mouth splitting into a wobbly little smile and to him it is an entire ocean on its own. Through the thundering of his boundless thoughts, he would like to photograph it into memory to paste on dull and paltry walls.
“I guess I’m saying I shouldn’t have tried to pry so hard. I just…didn’t wanna be without you, and I ended up pushing you further and further away each time I tried to make it better. But you’re only this way because you haven’t made good on yourself. There’s not anything I can do about that. You have to choose on your own who you are, and what you want to make out of it.”
Their gazes fix on each other and he watches her pinwheels of eyes rove over him with ruthless candor, and the longer he stares into them the more he thinks he understands what she is talking about.
“If you wanna know what I mean when I say ‘you saved yourself,’ take a look around you.”
“Uh, stars are nice, I guess?”
“You’re looking up at them because you’ve given yourself another chance,” Pomni juts an elbow into his side; he winces, returning her brashness with a glare. “You’re here because you wanted it enough. I know you want to change. I know you wish you could’ve in time.”
His glower falls to his knees and he sighs, flopping himself onto his back once more; he doesn’t ever let his hand fall from hers. Pomni observes, soon promptly meeting him in position and Jax watches her softly, wondering if his eyes are alight as his heart. When they reside on the cool grass he slots his fingers with hers, accepts her proposal, stares up at the stars as they burn with arson and leave ash to blanket upon their tired bodies. He watches them light up and die and repeat across flightless skies and he thinks, hand in hers, that the day his voice comes out clear is not so far away.
“You know, we’ve been here before.”
“We can be here many times. You don’t have to reminisce, Jax. You’re here to stay.”