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Gangle utterly hates Jax. There’s a home in her home, a kindness constructed in a place she knew for so long as torment. It’s sick, the irony of Jax being safely led into her new home. Gently, found and loved to rest. It’s not Jax, the abuse is gone, there’s light shining on the soft covers of the tent. She’s missing, gone, abstracted, and Gangle hates that too.
Gangle wished her dead, wished her dead so many times. Wanted to crush her underneath her ribbons and walk over her grave, to leave crumbled grass beneath her steps. Hating her was easy then, made her feel comfort in her wishes. Gangle can’t find that visceral anger, she can’t harbor those feelings now. The dark tent stares back at her, calls to her like that empty street did. She almost died too, she knows what it’s like to feel free and regret it.
Jax is an ugly thing now, she wants to look away but there’s a choke in the air that suffocates her to stay. She wanted her gone, wanted the pain to go with her. Gangle should laugh and mock her as Jax probably would have had it been her. Twirl her ribbons, put on her comedy mask, dance and loudly remark,” oh look! I lived when you made my life insufferable! Look who's weak now!”
She can only stare. There is no win, her anger has taken her nowhere. Jax is gone, and she misses her. Jax should be with them, building their new home, not being coddled into a pillow fort. She should have gotten to become a better person, to find something to make her less mean. To find the missing piece that bullying Gangle gave her. Jax should have been able to remember what it’s like to be treated like a person.
Jax is dead, and Gangle will never hear her utter sorry. Jax is dead, that should be her reparations, Jax’s karma for her treatment, and yet it gives her no relief. She knew it was coming, knew all the signs. There was a glee in watching Jax become as small as she felt. Maybe if Gangle told Pomni she knew what was happening to Jax, she could still be here. Maybe she’d never say anything, just watch Jax become so small no evidence of her ever existed in the world.
Gangle triumphed, she's alive, and Jax is dead. There’s nothing to show for it, nothing to come from it. It wasn’t fair. She missed Jax, missed the shape she took in the circus. The tent felt like a statue made wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be here, the tent settling on unsteady land. Gangle never got to say goodbye, ask her if she was okay, never got to demand for the apology she was owed. She had been looking to find an answer in the entrance of Jax’s new tent, and instead found it staring back at her. There was nothing but Jax’s stunning absence.
She screamed then. Her grief demanded its attention. It had been long since she cried, a long and loud thing, bellowing from the bottom and top of herself. A cry for herself, a deep personal lament. The unexpectedness makes all the other circus members turn their heads, but Gangle swipes the tears trailing down and runs to her room. Her pain was hers, a self inflicted thing, a confusing mess like a pile of scattered ribbons.
It was hers, the grief she couldn’t harbor weeks ago now evident as the tears soaks her ribbons. It’s her own irony now, real tears flowing from her mask.
In the dark of her bedroom, she knew Zooble would come to her, like the sun after a thunderstorm. The knock still jolts her, surprises her to remember she is loved. She wants to tell Zooble to leave her alone, to let her grief be hers alone. To let this ache be lonely. But there’s Zooble, the light shining behind them as the door creaks open.
“Having a lot of complex thoughts?” They ask, a slight tilt as their eyes soften at the sight of Gangle.
The grief she felt was so profound no sentence would fully give it meaning. They slowly walk to each other, like the moon pulls to the ocean. Gangle wants to confess everything, bare trial to hating Jax, to wanting her back, to knowing Jax would do this to herself, wishing she had said something, and yet knowing she never would have. Gangle looks at Zooble, and knows Zooble already knew all of this.
Zooble wipes a tear from her eye, a touch so kind it heals old wounds. Gangle wishes this was enough to be able to forgive Jax, she wants more, to let Zooble’s touch heal every poison in her. They stare at each other, a million thoughts stream past the pair like the stars entering the earth's atmosphere. Too fast but reflections from the past. Zooble stares gently at her, and Gangle wants to fall in their arms and be held forever in their kindness.
“We’re still human.”
Another tear is wiped. Gangle knows she can’t forgive Jax, that she’s grieving her past self and for Jax. She's here today, and Jax is not. Gangle found Zooble, who makes her grief tangible, to make her feel like a person once more. Jax should have found that, away from her, but she should have. No person should find a lonely path and decide that was better than being alone. Jax was gone, and Gangle was here. Zooble leads them back to the group, where ideas are made on how to memorialize Jax and everyone else who has abstracted. Zooble makes sure Gangle is okay with each idea before plans are set. Gangle can't forget Jax, not the pain she caused, but she should still get treated with her humanities. All she could do was to turn her grief to metaphor and give it some meaning. All she could do was live.