Chapter Text
He needed time to rest, time to be alone. The great beast that once was Jax still had, in what little remained of his original mind, pangs of fear when he would approach the entrance to the aquarium. Down there were the eyes that knew him, knew he had done them wrong. He feared them as much as he longed for them. That longing made him restless, even in the soothing darkness that was his new home he would pace about for hours. Kinger, who frequented the aquarium more than the rest, was the first to notice and in one of his lucid moments brought it to the attention of the other players.
The creature trusted Pomni most of all so she was the one who gently led him into the waters of the aquarium. He hung close by the window where Pomni was stationed. Though cautious and tense at first, he became more relaxed as he floated in the warm dark waters. On land he was an overlarge and clumsy creature but down here he swam about gracefully. He would spin about and for a moment forget his dread before turning around to see he had drifted away from the glass and hurry back, but each time he’d go a little further.
It was while playing about that he blindly bumped into another shape. Lighting fast he tensed up and he sprouted spikes to defend himself. This other shape, this other abstraction, did not respond in kind but shrank away. The sight of the cowering abstraction sent a flurry of images through the kaleidoscope of his mind. A hand he no longer possessed. A red ribbon. A street light. He retracted his spikes. Something inside told him to stop. Something, or someone, inside his mind told him that this had never helped him before. He wanted to dash back to the glass and climb out of the water and return to the solitude of his pillow fort but he did not. That too had never helped him, had never protected him like he felt it would. So, instead he stayed still and looked at the other creature.
Slowly, the other abstraction relaxed and reached out one of its amorphous appendages towards Jax. Jax watched the limb come closer and the compulsion to slink away grew. So too, did the urge to fight this compulsion grow. The beast’s aching need for others overcame his fear of them and he forced his own limb to reach out and meet the other. Two small black tendrils lightly touched and then wrapped around each other. Both creatures’ eyes pulsated in rhythm as waves of emotion and fuzzy memories flooded their alien minds. It was too powerful for either being to endure and they both retracted their respective limbs but they did not flee from each other. Instead the one that Jax bumped into swam around him and then came to the window where Pomni had watched the whole altercation. The abstraction looked down at the small clown and then spread out like a disk and spun in place like a pinwheel. Then the abstraction returned to Jax and lightly brushed along his body with its tendrils. The two locked eyes again and then swam together, dancing through water in a double helix design, each entranced by the movements of the other. Pomni smiled as she watched the couple drift away becoming small flashing lights in her vision.