Chapter Text
It had been a long time by now.
She hardly looked at the date anymore when they bothered to access the internet. Time was too funny in the circus—before the collapse and now—and it sort of made her feel more disoriented than less. But it had been a better long while than she might have expected at the very start, and for that, she usually managed to be pretty grateful.
She tried to keep the days of the weeks straight, at least. That had always helped her stay grounded on more difficult days, which this was maybe shaping up to be.
It was Thursday, and it was raining—and Pomni was going to see Jax.
It was a hike, and one she'd kind of created for herself; she and all the others had abandoned their old bedrooms and the big top in its entirety years and years ago, and with it they'd moved everyone who'd abstracted as well. It'd seemed like a good idea at the time, or even a thoughtful one, but in practice it hadn't suited many of them well when it came to feeling nostalgic.
So. Her visits had been growing fewer and further between, and had been leaning in that direction for some time. She wasn’t sure when the last time had been that she’d gone to see him. But last night, she and the others had had a campfire, chatting and laughing, and Caine had helped to roll some stars in above them and Pomni’s heart had quaked upon seeing it. Remembering him. Sometimes the longing was an ache—other times, it was sharp and unbearable. And she knew she had to go.
She buttoned her raincoat right up to her throat, the large golden buttons shining like coins. Looking upon herself in the mirror, she ran a hand over them. Thinking that maybe if he was calm, she’d stay the night by his side. She’d done that once before, but it had been a long time. If memory serves it had been shortly after losing him, on a night where the ache grew so deep she was worried she’d wake the others with her heavy sobs. So she’d done it beside him instead. And she was recalling now how those many eyes had watched her do it, calm and slowly blinking. He had been still enough for her to worry he might have understood what was happening.
It was awfully gloomy outside. Ragatha knew where she was going, because Pomni had told her the night before. So when she stepped onto her porch and saw Ragatha beside her own, tending to a batch of flowers in her garden, she understood the solemn smile.
She waved before she went, and Ragatha waved back.
It only took a couple of hours to reach it. She knew she could have gotten there faster if she’d decided not to walk, but part of her enjoyed the journey—traveling was something that still felt normal to her, and she figured it probably always would.
They’d never really named the place where they’d moved everyone, but Pomni supposed it was most like an aquarium, whatever that said about the situation. Long removed from the big top, the majority of them had been released into a similarly shared tank, though it was large enough now to function almost like a lake. They’d worked together to try and include environmental elements that each of them would have appreciated in life, though that became a chillingly bleak task after some time, when they’d worked their way down to names that only Kinger or Ragatha had very little memory of.
Jax was separate, though. Equally as bleak, it was only due to the timing of it that they were able to tell him apart from all the others, and something about losing track of that always made her stomach turn sour. So she’d argued for it. And no one had really put up a fight.
So. He had his own sanctuary of sorts, on the far end of where the outdoor part of the others’ tank opened the ground up. Pomni saw the cave-like nature of his enclosure when she arrived and went in that direction. Puddles were littered all over the ground here, and her reflection stared back up at her with each one she passed.
The whole of the grounds looked nice. They’d tried to make it as lush as possible before caging it all in—as pleasant to be in as possible. It was about as effective as a graveyard with a view, but that was an opinion Pomni kept firmly seated on her tongue. Not even for the others’ sake; though, she had to wonder what Ragatha might say if she heard her really say it.
Backpack heavy on her shoulders, Pomni stuck her hand beneath her raincoat and fumbled for one of the pockets on her cargo pants, feeling for the key. Procuring it, she came to the walled edge of the enclosure and unlocked the door that rested there, stepped in, and pulled it shut behind her.
Immediately beyond the door was a small mudroom—only big enough to hold a few of them at a time. It had wide thick windows that looked into where Jax was kept, and so it was dimly lit always. The soft light within the pool was making everything glow blue when Pomni stepped in, and now she was drying her shoes on the welcome mat, letting her hood down. Letting her backpack off of her shoulders and setting it on the ground, propped against the wall.
In the quiet dark mudroom, Pomni turned toward the innermost door and her heart dropped as hard and as sudden as if it had turned to lead.
Because, through the glass—there was Jax. Jax was there, sat and leaned up against the lip of the pool they’d built for him, and he was looking at her. And noticeably not through his usual mess of eyes and static.
It took her mind a second to process the shape of him, because at once what she knew as fact to be impossible was wiped away like chalk.
“Oh my god,” she said. It was in her head, too: oh my god.
Jax was blurry around the edges. Jagged and dark, like he’d been partially dipped in black tar, and his eyes were wide and terrified—but otherwise, he looked just as she remembered from before. Lanky and soft-purple and rabbit-eared.
She said it again: “Oh my god.”
Her hands felt numb. Was she still holding the key? She glanced down to confirm it and saw it clenched there in a grip that had turned her knuckles pink with irritation. And she had a thought for a second that when she looked up he would be gone, and she would have imagined him, and the real Jax would come swimming up out of his pool and she’d have a real good cry about this while he watched her with his endless blinking eyes.
But when Pomni forced herself to look, Jax remained. Not only that—he was standing now, though he looked no less shocked than before to be seeing her. He was sort of hunched over, and he had one hand pressed to the edge of the pool, as if to assist in hoisting himself. She wanted to help him, and her mind was demanding it, but her body wouldn’t move. She felt numb all over.
Jax was saying something. Her brain supplied the knowledge to her another time: his mouth was moving, he was saying something. Pomni jolted and nearly did drop the key, but went on unsteady legs and unlocked the door with shaking hands instead. It swung open, and Pomni stepped down into the space.
He was already coming to the edge of the mudroom in long, determined steps. They stared at each other for a second as he slowed to a stop a few paces in front of her.
Jax’s body had defaulted. Her mind supplied the orange-pink color she remembered of his clothing, but they were nowhere to be found. His body was blank and smooth and she could see all the places that he had gone black with abstraction. Or un-abstraction. Is that what happened?
The tips of his ears. A patch on his knee. Oh, god. Had Jax really—?
“Pomni,” Jax said.
And Pomni replied, “Oh my god.”
He’d woken up. And she had to be imagining it. Out of all the flimsy boundaries and limits Caine had set that had long ago been thrown out the window, the only one that remained was the sole circumstance he actually had no bearing on. Because abstraction couldn’t be undone.
But there was Jax in front of her, golden-eyed and breathing. He looked just as stunned as she felt. “What the hell is going on?”
She folded her arms over her chest in an attempt to quell the shaking in her hands, tucking them close to her ribs. Her mouth felt so dry. Was she in shock? She didn’t think she’d ever been in shock before.
“This is a dream,” she heard herself say. She swallowed, nodding to herself, trying steadfast to keep the growing lump in her throat at bay. “It’s a dream.”
But Jax remained no matter how she blinked, how she pinched herself—her nails were digging crescent moons into her palms and still he was there before her, regarding her with wide eyes.
He laughed, though he wasn’t smiling. “Oh yeah?” He asked, “Yours, or mine?”
Pomni was kind of panicking. “I mean it isn’t happening.”
“It’s happening to at least one of us.”
She felt manic. She said, “Maybe we died.” It sounded more absurd out loud than it did in her head. “I mean, actually died. Maybe that somehow happened and we’re meeting in death.”
“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said,” Jax informed her, wide-eyed still. “Right now is when you choose to say that crap?”
“You’re right,” Pomni admitted, reaching up to cradle her face. She thought maybe she was just panicking. Everything felt like it was moving in fast-forward. Her cheeks were so hot. “No, we’re not dead.”
“What a relief,” Jax said flatly.
“The afterlife would be a lot worse than this.”
“Okay, apparently you know something I don’t.”
He couldn’t just be back, Pomni thought, though as soon as she did she regretted it and felt terrified, as though bringing the idea back into existence might make it true again and he’d disappear altogether in front of her.
“Pomni.”
“You can’t just,” Pomni started to say, but once she got going she had to admit she had no earthly idea where she’d meant to end up. She stumbled back a step but then recovered it, gauging his every expression. “No—you’re gone.”
“Pomni,” Jax said again. His voice sounded strangled.
Her heart clenched. “I need a minute,” she said, and turned back toward the mudroom.
Jax spluttered and threw his arms out, eyebrows raising. “Don’t just leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” she assured him, her heart hammering. “I just need a minute. It’s—this is … it’s a lot.”
“Oh, is it?” Jax asked, shoulders lifting. He was starting to look deeply irritated, which she considered fair. “Is it a lot for you, Pomni?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m sure it’s more for you, but it’s been a long time,” she whispered.
Jax was silent for a while. His gaze became searching, and after another beat, his shoulders sunk. “How long?”
“… A long time,” Pomni repeated. Desperate, “Please, I can’t breathe in here.”
Jax looked at her and seemed expectant, but didn’t push. Instead he clicked his tongue. “Alright,” he said, in this very solemn voice like he was compromising seriously. He threw a hand toward the exit, dramatic, and bent forward, emphatic. “Lead the way.”
Pomni nodded, and when she went for the door he silently followed.
Even with all the grey, the contrast of the brightness outside made her wince, and her stubborn brain suggested again that when she turned he wouldn’t really be there now that the light of day had likely snapped her out of whatever delusion she was suffering. But when she did turn he was ducking his way through the door behind her, wincing at the sunlight too, and something within her seemed to understand their situation a little better than she was able to fully grasp before.
At once she crowded up close to him, and Jax looked so startled by it that he stumbled back a few steps.
“When did this happen?” she demanded, hit with a bolt of urgency she couldn’t entirely explain. “How long have you—”
“Not long,” Jax told her with distrustful eyes. His back was against the sealed door of his enclosure, and Pomni was hit with a thought that was bitter and funny and lots of other things, that they’d built it to be permanent and now they’d maybe never need to use it again. “A day, maybe.”
“You could have left.” Pomni said. “The doors … you can unlock them from the inside, and your pool’s connected to—”
“I know,” Jax replied, squinting. “I tried that right away. You think I knew where the hell to go?”
Pomni bit her lips together until they formed a hard line. She shook her head.
Jax eyed her. “We’re not close to the big top, are we?”
“... A lot has changed,” Pomni told him, then took a ragged breath. The emotion was beginning to creep up on her now that the adrenaline, or whatever bizarre equivalent they had to it in here, was wearing off. “It’s … I …”
Jax watched her scramble for something of substance to say and quietly wrapped his arms around himself.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I haven’t even …” She swallowed hard. “It’s just that I don’t think I can explain to you what it feels like to see you again.”
He seemed to take a breath. “Well, that would explain this wildly bipolar reaction.”
“I am happy,” Pomni assured him. “I promise that’s in there. I-I'm so ...”
The words caught like a lump in her throat. Her hand twitched outward as if to reach for him but he noticed and looked at her hand like it was equivalent to a red-hot whip and so she arrested its journey and held it against her stomach instead. The rubbery texture of her raincoat squeaked quietly when she ran her thumb across it.
“Okay,” she said evenly, making a decision. “We’ll find someplace to camp for tonight so you and I can … process this. As much as possible.”
“Camp?” Jax repeated, looking less than thrilled.
“And tomorrow,” Pomni continued, ignoring him. “I’ll … tomorrow we’ll get you home.”
Jax just looked at her. “Home, huh?” he asked in a low voice, and his eyes moved gently away from her in an arc. “Guess it has been a while.”
Pomni swallowed. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’ll be saying that a lot?”
The muscle memory was starting to scare her. It was there on the tip of her tongue, the urge to scold him with a quiet snap of his name. It wasn’t like she hadn’t said it, or even that she hadn’t said it recently—but calling him by his name when he was in front of her to hear it felt precarious. For some reason, for no reason. Nothing about the last five minutes was making any sense to her. Her insides felt all rearranged.
“I promise I’ll tell you everything,” she said, though privately she told herself she didn’t have to do it all at once. “Let’s just focus on the most important stuff. You probably haven’t eaten anything, right?”
Jax’s gaze remained gently suspicious. “Do we need to eat now?”
“No, but you always made a habit of it anyway.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said decidedly, turning his face away. It seemed a little petulant. She figured he was probably lying.
“Okay,” she said anyway, turning toward the openness of the sanctuary, her eyes finding the far end of the gate. “Let’s just get out of here for now. We’ll set something up on the way back.”
“What?" he asked, darting his eyes from her to the enclosure and back again. "You mean this place isn’t making you all warm and fuzzy?”
Graveyards were hardly supposed to, she thought. She sighed. “Just … come on.”
He was silent as they exited the area, arms still locked around himself the whole way. Maybe his nakedness was starting to bother him, which might have struck her as funny under any other circumstance. But she wasn’t sure if she had the capacity for funny right now.
She closed and locked the gate behind them when they reached and past through it. The path beneath their feet was gravel and she winced for him.
“Hold on,” she told him, slipping her backpack off and letting it fall to the ground. “We should get you some clothes.”
“Oh, should we?”
Pomni ignored him. “Is there anything you’d, um … prefer?”
When she glanced up at him he was looking at her like she was a crazy person. Maybe he was in shock, too.
She waved a hand. Never mind. “Give me a minute.”
It didn’t take very long for her to conjure some boots for him. Simple, brown, just enough to get him comfortably through some of the rougher terrain and the mud. She slid them over to him and he looked at them like they were going to burn if he put them on.
“They won’t bite.”
Jax said, “You’re a natural at that, huh?”
Oh. Right. The conjuring. She stupidly hadn’t considered that that would still be a newish concept for him. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“I’ll say,” Jax said, his eyes very far away. In fact it was occurring to her now that he was actually looking, eyes scanning in all directions. It was impossible to see all they’d created from any one point now but she had to imagine he was noting that the big top in particular was nowhere to be found from here.
Pomni was feeling a little distressed and chose to focus on the rest of the clothes he’d need. That was easier—she conjured a copy of her cargo pants, a copy of her t-shirt, a simple copy-paste of the code, finagled to be a bit larger. They were each draped over an arm when she stood and she handed them to him.
“Put these on.”
“Being awfully bossy,” Jax told her, with a faint air of hilarity, though she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He took the clothes from her, slinging the t-shirt over a shoulder, and she began conjuring a copy of her raincoat next. As he dragged the pants on he made a snorting sound. “Not very creative, are we?”
“I’m just trying to be quick about it,” she told him. “We can worry about getting you your own things later.”
Jax opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but shut it again quickly. Shaking his head once.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She had half a mind to make a comment on how ironic it was for him to be closing up so quickly, but she knew it wouldn’t be fair. And she was still kind of in awe of him. It felt insensitive to think, but it was almost like she was seeing a ghost. She felt dumbstruck and amazed and gently horrified.
“Okay,” she said, handing him the coat as he pulled the shirt on. He was a bit awkward doing it—how long had it been since he’d gotten himself dressed? “Do you need—”
“I’m fine,” Jax said, pulling it down around himself. He took the coat from her outstretched hand but didn’t put it on. “Now what?”
“We walk, I guess,” Pomni said. “I think we should stop halfway back to set up camp and just …” She gestured vaguely. “Talk about things. About—this.”
Jax bent down to put on the boots at last and scoffed. “Great,” he said at length, “something to look forward to.”
“It’ll take about an hour.”
“Even better,” Jax sang, tying the laces. “You guys keep my room the same, or have you turned it into some weird memorial?” He paused. “Or, like, rage room?”
Pomni was turning the answer she knew to be true over and over in her mind. “We’re,” she said after a beat, “not going back to the circus. The big top. Actually.”
A crack of thunder made her flinch, but Jax and his gaze were unmoving.
“Why not?”
Pomni shrugged, drawing her backpack up onto her shoulders again. “Because none of us live there anymore.”
Jax blinked at her. He seemed to be getting stuck on something, like he’d only heard half her sentence. “You don’t.”
Pomni shook her head. There was a shudder through the puddle at the base of her feet, and she felt something wet hit the back of her hand.
“So, what exactly am I—”
“You’ll stay with me at my house for now,” Pomni interrupted, and if she was wrong to guess what he was going to ask, he didn’t correct her. His eyebrows lifted a bit. “I’ll tell you about it when we settle down somewhere.”
“Your … house,” he repeated. A raindrop hit his shoulder and darkened the fabric of the shirt.
“I’ll explain.” She didn’t want to admit that she wanted to get him as close to the others as possible, just in case he tried to run. “It’ll still be really early when we get there. We’ll have plenty of time. You can ask me whatever you want.”
Jax tipped his head. “Whatever I want, huh?”
Pomni sighed. “Yeah, Jax. Whatever you want.” She made a helpless gesture. Trying to communicate to him, however she could, that she had no fucking idea what to do with this either outside of what she already said they would do. “And I’ll do my best to answer.”
“Alright,” he said. He made a sort of quarter-turn toward the road and glanced back at her. Grinned. “Ladies first.”
As the sky opened up, it occurred to her she had no way of knowing what he remembered about the end.
Maybe that didn’t have to matter. Jax was here. It had been long enough that she was beginning to realize he felt like a stranger and he was different, almost uncanny, and she knew she had to stop her spinning mind lest she start to get emotional, and then she really might scare him off. Which was the opposite of her goal, she remembered. She thought of Ragatha’s wave earlier, and that somber, calm feeling sobered her even now.
Jax was here.
She might have still felt slightly queasy, but her footsteps carried her past him and out into the cold bleak morning anyhow.