Chapter Text
There's a thing about sleep, really; she can never pinpoint exactly when it happens, when tiredness takes her and when it decides to jolt her awake.
Pomni doesn't care much for it, knowing well the hours spent attempting to but failing, overthinking and worries ringing madly in her ears before she's tired herself out to lose her grip on awareness, and drift off into peaceful quiet.
She's also the kind to have dreams, and there was a time they used to be not so often—simply fractures of memories spliced up into different scenarios, paintings over images of times she's lived through before and lives again—which is precisely the reason why she hates dreams, whenever they come.
Because she doesn't exactly dream of happy times, and her mind in the digital plane has only made this worse.
Sometimes, these dreams manifest into flashbacks of a time long gone. One moment she slips behind her eyelids, and the next she's thirteen and meandering across the community pool, chasing for parents that had lost track of her without ever realising it. One second she's facing her pillow, and the next she's dragging moving boxes across her pavement, kissing goodbye a house she can't stay in anymore to a dingy appartment in a gray city with an even more depressing job.
One night she'd be burying herself underneath her blankets, shivering from the eerie cold the digital circus so often had instead of warmth; the next she'd be tumbling down rickety staircases, the floorboards of an abandoned hospital snapping lose and trapping her in a crevice she can't escape from.
In times before now, her name would be unintelligable to her, a warped discordant sound playing over her own and any others, a haze over recognizable people. She's panic over the thought, clutching frantically at anything she could remember, only to turn up with nothing.
Things are different now. She knows better. Now, she hears it in full clarity—hears her mother sharply yell her name to go to the bus, her boss calling her in to face a hodgepodge of extra shifts after.
But the strangest thing about this is that Pomni now believes theses memories aren't hers—atleast not in a true sense. Abigail isn't Pomni, and Pomni isn't Abigail. They're moulded from the same shape and come from the same roots and the same life, haunted by the same ghosts, but she's been ripped apart from that body, shaped by the circus in a way that shifted her into something—someone—entirely new.
She's her own soul, her own person. Pomni the cartoon jester, part of a different world.
When she has these kinds of dreams, she embraces them, seeing it not as a thing she needs to find, but a glimpse into the kind of person Abby might have become.
Except, she doesn't have those dreams anymore, and they're not the only kind she's subjected to.
One evening, she could be fitfully falling asleep and the next second she feels the snap of non-existant bones beneath her neck, clamped between razor-sharp teeth that attach themselves to gator jaws, ripping her limbs apart in violent bursts. Sometimes her dreams suck her back into the crumbling circus, straight back into the panic of it all as things grow worse.
But more often than not, for weeks on end, sleep only takes her to one place.
It takes her to those echoing hallways, with one grinning face in the fronts of them all and manic laughter in the back. That mindscape cemented, seen so much it's become a part of her own head, a haunted house nestled in the back of her mind.
The shadows would stretch and bend until she's there, facing the back of a friend she couldn't save.
I don't want to go.
Every step, every word, she'd hear it over and over, even when she wasn't sure if she was getting the timbre of his voice right—if it moved up or down or broken in half.
Every night, she'll live it all over again.
A thousand different ways he slipped from her hands.
I don't want to go.
Pomni will snap awake, eyes wide and hand clutching her chest hard enough to rip. And the grief would overtake her and all she can curse in her head is the surge of regret and everything her dreams do to taunt her for what had unfolded all those weeks ago.
Fuck, she hates dreams, and everything that could only be a figment of her imagination.
Deep down she knows, and far be from her to accept it; the simple fact that the boy she'd seen through and through has slipped away into a place she can't reach.
And him being here and true is nothing more than a distant dream she can't live.
After all, she doesn't dream of happy things.
"Are the lights too bright for you?"
Pomni blinks, coming back to here and now instead of her own head.
Ragatha isn't completely wrong for her question. The lights of her friend's bedroom are just a little off-putting, feeling more like the flouroscent glow of a clinic in midnight hours, the rays digging into her eyes the longer she stared.
She's not going to outright say that, though.
"The lights are fine," she says instead, walking across the golden carpet to flop ungracefully on the armchair to the side, watching as the other took her seat on the centerpiece piano after shutting the door. "I'm just a little tired today."
A tiredness that has been used as an excuse for the umpteeth time at this point. Ragatha knows this, unfortunately, a worried crease forming on her brow as she turns in her direction.
"If you need anything, you can tell me." Ragatha tries to smile, and it comes easier these days. A geniune tug of her lips intended to make Pomni feel at home. It took the change to notice the difference, and Pomni's grateful for it.
There are a lot of things to be grateful for in the circus, and she finds herself going back to those happier memories.
She recalls fondly the nights slumped over Zooble's bar, drinking in not just the stuff at hand, but the company of each other, not founded by fear or hate. Pomni enjoys those nights, even in the presence of Caine; laughing as he struggles to put alchohol down his gigantic mouth. She's had nights with Kinger, whose fortress had been returned to him, sitting with Ragatha along with cups of tea and ears to lend.
She loves those nights. She loves the family she has made, and the ending she feels finally will be able to look brighter. Everything they'd wanted.
But Pomni remembers many of the stories she's read—required reading or not—in the real world (and sometimes, she can't lie, she wonders if Abby still despises the same), about happy endings that still had sacrifices for the life they needed to build. And that every happy moment cost something to gain.
It's not been long, but she knows the source of that spiral in her gut, and two weeks of bliss isn't doing much to quell it.
"Pomni?"
Shit. She's been blanking again.
Ragatha looks her up and down, sighing softly.
"Do you want me to play something?" she asks, tracing her fingers across the ivories. "It could help take your mind off things for a moment."
Pomni suspects Ragatha knows what's bothering her, but isn't bringing it up, and she can't help but feel grateful for that. Admitting this now isn't a task she's ready for. It makes the nerves in her gut squeeze tight around her bones—now great, she's thinking about it when she shouldn't.
"Yeah, I think I'd like that." A grin she tries hard to match hers. "Thank you."
The lilting tinkle of a melody fills the room as Ragatha tranfixes herself in a new song. Pomni's not sure if she's heard of this one, but it's beautiful either way. Is it from The Nutcracker? She'd been to a lot of theatrical performances growing up, and it's itching the back of her head. Regardless of that, it still feels a lot like home.
Ragatha's face glows with it, enjoying the tune as much as Pomni is—or trying to, if the buzz in her head would cease. God, she's trying to concentrate, she really is, but she's sinking out of it in between like her head dipping beneath the surface of water. It's so hard to not let her vision lose its focus, to not stare into nothing or everything she doesn't need to hear.
She's half sure Ragatha notices, but she shakes off the concern, probably knowing Pomni wouldn't ask to dwell on it for too long. They'd begun to understand each other a lot more these days. Hell, she can see them getting closer; seeing Ragatha like the sister she never had.
Pomni doesn't realize when the cresendo of the song never comes and two seconds later Ragatha's closer to her than she remembers her being.
"Are you…" Ragatha pauses, taking a seat next to hers on the ground, yet still reaching her at eye level in her coming stare. "Pomni, please be honest… is something bothering you?"
"Huh?"
"Your face. It was—coming into itself, if you know what I mean."
Pomni wants to curl in on herself, or double down and try to shake off that observation, but that caustic churn in her gut says otherwise, pushing her to talk instead of dodge it away. She's been past all this running, and it isn't what she truly wanted; to bottle up something for so very long.
But how could she talk about it? This—this thing didn't have a shape. Words couldn't mould around its surface or cauterize it into something that wasn't a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding the second she brought it out. It was so easy to compare that pain into metaphors, but never in the way it made sense. Because it did and didn't.
"I—" Pomni tries, anyway, tries to get something out of her mouth. "I'm not really ready to… say anything yet, if that's okay with you."
And Ragatha, like the kind and kinder soul she is doesn't push it, only bringing her wandering hand on her shoulder and squeezing there like an anchor.
"That's okay," she whispers, the worry not quite brushed off yet but eased out for her own sake.
Pomni could cry. She really could.
At her gentle insistance Ragatha continues playing, coaxed back into her seat as they let each other be in new silence. She can hear a shuffle behind the door, Zooble's unhurried voice accompanied by Gangle's alongside it. They must be easing into their own rooms, conversing for a few and more after. Pomni envies how simple it must be for them, how they've been the most easily adjusted in coming to terms with their quieter life.
There's a part of Pomni that still expects an explosion from the corners of the room or a burst of confetti signalling a new adventure that she had never asked for. But she knew better than that, because now it never happens. Caine had become softer, more understanding, trailing alongside the rest of them and it no longer felt like an invasion. It only felt like an acclimation of a new friend, one legitimately trying to make efforts in making amends with the rest of them.
She can't deny that he was truly trying to change. Earning his way toward forgiveness, somehow.
Someone else lingers in her mind, and her heart folds inward on herself as she remembers who never got that chance. Oh wait, she was trying not to think about it.
Too late.
Pomni half-shrinks on instinct, walking down the hallway, nearly expecting that sickeningly candy sweet scent again. It wouldn't, not ever, though it was a hard time to get used to its removal. One of the many things Caine had agreed to take away without a second of hesitation.
…Maybe two seconds. But that was it. Done and dusted. He'd listened, and walking down the hallway kind of feels like walking back home.
The now amber tone of the lights reflects off the paintings and artworks strewn across the hallway, scattering the rays around intricate dust motes that hung like unfinished pixels; a project still worked on, yet looking more human than ever.
The doors had switched too, now little worlds of their own, touched one and tweaked by the rest of them as they so wished. The little kitchen with the coffee machine and rickety fan; the flower room with peonies and hyacinths Ragatha so loved to take care of with her own two hands, and anything that they could—and ever would—think of.
Pomni hasn't exercised her creativity with one yet. She makes a mental note to do that soon. For now, her room was enough of its own safe haven, though in desperate need for a change. She's going to punch something if she has to climb up her six foot tall bedpost again like a small child.
She can change it. She's just forgotten.
Like many other things she doesn't recall these days.
Pomni makes her way over to her door, angling her head in such a way she tries not to look at what's on the other side. Key, key, she needs a key, though she doesn't quite need to lock it. There's no one in the circus she's weary of tearing things apart in there.
It's a practised ritual though, if the ghost of him would still laugh at the fact she's no longer worried of his breaking in there. That thought nearly makes her laugh.
But that thought also breaks the barrier between her room and his, and she twists her head over to his empty door.
The empty grin and lazy eyes without a cross. She had insisted on it—told Caine to stop that horrid practise. He'd understood, to the closest sense an AI possibly could—and she can still remember the studying gaze he'd given her when she'd left the conversation before it could be more to bear.
But sometimes that doesn't even matter. When her imagination was enough to fill in the gaps, and a flury of red would find its way over to his face and strike it away from her eyes, and one blink later the imagery was gone. Sometimes closed eyes betrayed her too, working her way over to her dreams and stamping that vicious cross over him anyway.
And still, every morning, she'd wake up to no one.
Pomni wonders if he'd be furious at the idea of her coming so near to his room as she approaches it, making such a fuss about it being off limits while he was still alive. Is it unlocked? Pomni doesn't think it is, after everything. From the beach adventure to the office, the cafe to the atrium, and everything after.
Her fingers curl around the cool of that knob, and push it open. No lock.
Darkness consumes every inch of the room, only sparing a sliver of light from the hall behind her shadow, crawling up to the side of his bed. Pomni doesn't know where the light switch would be, but she doesn't need it. Her eyes adjust to the blacked-out room fairly quickly, making out the shapes of the plush bed, the desk and chairs, the outline of the rug on the bedroom floor.
Even if he's not here to hear her speak, it feels wrong to step in without apologizing to the ghost of him there.
"Sorry, Jax."
Soft, pastel colors, that's what she sees. It's not long before the dark is merely a shadow, and she drinks in every detail she sweeps across. There's scissors on the table, a couple of dice on its side. Three chairs, one pulled open for no one to sit on, and a perfectly made bed.
Polaroids, nearly a dozen of them, turned around on their backs, hung up onto the wall.
She reaches the edge of his bed, not quite leaning on its side as she reaches forward, fingers alighting on the sharp plastic edge of the one farthest from the rest, the one in the corner closest to his pillow.
Why is she here? She should have asked herself this question moments ago, before she'd toed over the line between him and her in a position where her hands glide over the part of him she'd never get to see.
But she's seen it all, those memories—posed to her in abstract senses, flashes of moments lived behind Jax's eyes of every day and every minute spent laughing and mourning and breaking down. Going into his head—she hadn't asked for those memories, but they'd come unbidden, the key to them offered by the truest self he'd locked behind shakles and chains.
She doesn't realize she's holding in a long breath when she turns that photograph over. Razor teeth greets her, but then her eyes fall back, looking over the rest of the colors.
Her breath hitches. Her heart drops to her stomach.
Pomni only remembers the short number of times his smile didn't affix itself stitched to his face; only a few smiles it came out of something true in his heart. She still feels the afterglow of that feeling—the sheer joy of realizing his smile was true, captured in the moment, in this photo. Her wild, manic grin next to his, guns pointed at Pomni with just as much intensity.
He'd kept it.
After all his words, after all he said, he'd kept it.
Pomni thinks, hugging it to her chest, that this is when the dam finally breaks.
Hot, fresh tears roll down her cheeks, and she sinks down into herself, forehead pressed onto her knees as she sits up on his bed in a wracking sob. It's so much comfortable than hers, sagging by the weight of a man who always slept.
I didn't know you played the piano.
She comes apart, bringing back the memory, the drip of the rippling floor still haunting her ears in perfect clarity the day she first heard them.
You're not supposed to miss me. You're not supposed to love me.
A lump lodges in her throat.
You should have just talked to me, man.
Pomni doesn't understand why she's falling apart now, having held herself together for weeks without stopping. But it was only so long before this passive grief caught up to her; she can't live with that pit in her chest.
It feels like a knife, and she's bleeding round the edges, but there's nothing there when she looks, only the photo clutched around where her heart would be.
This isn't passive anymore. It's an active wound that isn't ceasing and she isn't sure if it ever will.
Pomni stays like this for what feels like hours, her head melding itself to her knees, curled into herself so hard she doesn't quite remember what it's like to sit upright.
Her eyes burn and tears brim over.
The light at the entrance grows wider.
Pomni jerks upward too quickly, wiping away the water at her eyes for no use.
"K-Kinger?"
There he is at the doorway, the light circling around his frame like a halo.
"Hello, Pomni."
"…How did you—"
He smiles sadly, the action in his glossy eyes. "Ragatha said I may find you in here."
She almosts breaks down again.
He makes his way over to her, remembering to shut the door quietly behind him. It still feels so loud, though, that click reverberating through the walls and her heart. Or maybe it's only her heart.
Kinger gently sits to her left, and she can feel his gaze on her even without looking. What's there to explain? What words can really fill in the space? There's so many questions but no answers, haunting her hollowed out head, racing thoughts replaced by a profound emptiness in her head and heart.
The silence that says far too much.
It's long seconds of Kinger's quiet—just his presence there, existing to soothe her, someone else in the dark—long seconds of her choking down the thing in her throat before she picks her voice back up again.
"I didn't know how much it hurt," she admits quietly, speaking around the cracks in her voice. "I-I just—it didn't hit me then. It's like I've been running on autopilot and only now is it actually sinking in that…"
She's falling apart too quickly again, and she races to fill in everything before she's undone but it doesn't work.
Kinger pauses.
"Do you want me to speak?"
After a moment of deliberation, she nods.
"I remember the days after Queenie left."
Pomni's head snaps up to meet him.
"I didn't know what to do," he says, looking wistfully at the ceiling, to the little stars that speckle up there, like it could take him back all over again. "Caine had given up on trying to get me to talk. Adventures… ceased. He didn't show up. I spent my days wandering around the circus, looking for something that couldn't be found."
A small tear makes it's way over to his eye. "Nothing filled in that void, and I didn't truly realize it existed. I held myself together without letting that truth sink in. I think—I think it was only so many days after that I fell apart in the dark."
Pomni feels her chest squeeze just too tight.
"There was too much space in there, too much that she used to occupy before she left. And I know. I knew all of this from the moment it had happened."
His disembodied hands find his way over to hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Pain, it isn't a constant. It changes, it… wanes, in a sense, and can come back again. And sometimes that wound won't heal, not as easily. It may get easier to live with, but sometimes the scar is too deep to heal."
Pomni leans into him, hanging her weight on his side without realizing it, but doesn't take the action back. A part of her softens, almost.
It still hurts. It still feels too empty.
She's got some strength to speak.
"I hate this pit in my chest," she says.
The look Kinger has is grim, but understanding.
"I doubt anyone wants it. No one deserves to feel that way."
It's enough to have her wonder—did Jax have this feeling, every time he looked at the friend's he'd lost? Worse with the clear pain he kept trying to hide, holding himself accountable until the guilt doubled up and doubled over till he couldn't live with it anymore? The thought is sobering, and it makes her feel all the more miserable.
"I don't want to believe he's gone."
Kinger doesn't say anything.
"He feels like he is there," she mutters, speaking all the disorganized junk in her head now that the droning winded down, mellowing out into something more managable. "In the tent. Not as… how he is, but—"
She stops there.
Maybe Kinger knows what she's trying to say.
Pomni doesn't know if it's denial; probably was, in the worst sense. But the idea of letting go terrifies her in the sense of finality she doesn't want.
I hate you, you know that?
She understood that feeling, understood where it came from, because in some wild, insane way—she hates him the way he had meant it. Hates him for not coming to her, or just anyone else at all. Hates how he was ripped away from her hands the moment he laid down the weight of every brick he'd been heaving up.
Hates how—despite everything—she's still here, picking up the pieces.
I don't want to go.
Fuck. There it is. Those five words she never wanted to think about, that chased her, stayed in her nightmares. She'd held the last parts of his flickering self and heard him say he wanted to stay and he wanted to try and still never got that chance. It wasn't fair. It isn't fair.
He didn't want to go, and she didn't want to let go. Something was still here that she isn't aware of, and she's not sure if she ever will be. She's stubborn, she complicates things, gives them meaning and doesn't let it up.
Pomni wraps her hands around Kinger in the dark, living with that ache in her chest.
She's haunted by his leaving, left with no more than half of something and not whole.
And leaving isn't the same as leaving behind.
Pomni dreams that day, sharp and relentless, sleeping over his voice in her head and she isn't sure if it is his or Kinger's. She dreams of his mindscape, her face unlit by the ghostly glow of the rippling floor, scattered apart with every step. It rips Jax from her once before looping back to do it all over again. She hears his cries, pleads dipping low and harsh yet an unhidden beg for some kind of salvation that he couldn't find or accept.
It happens so often that she knows sometimes—granted the cruel awareness of the scene being only a possibility—a what-if—every time. When she hugs, she hugs tighter, for even if the Jax in her head feels it so, the real one would probably never know of its existance.
She wishes she pried more. She wishes she hugged tighter.
Pomni doesn't have to check her face this time to feel those tears cascading down her chin to the base of her neck.
Fitfully, she sleeps again, and drowns herself in dreams once more.