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Pomni was onto something when she brought up thrill-seeking. Jax is realizing now more than ever that he was made to be a total loser in his manufactured backstory. Just a nobody who sat around all day feeling sorry for himself. Thank god none of that is real and he doesn’t have to hold himself to anything that sucker felt. Elsewhere, he may never have experienced the rush of free-climbing up the side of a cliff, as he is right now.
Of course, the fact that death is inconsequential in the Circus might have something to do with his zeal. Or the fact that this rock face is literally built for them to be able to scale it successfully. But that doesn’t seem to have crossed anyone else’s mind. The rest of these cowards are a few dozen feet below him at least, clutching onto each other and deliberating over each little movement like they’ll explode if they’re separated. The only one who’s even remotely keeping up is Pomni, who’s carved out a decent path for herself, but she can’t be expected to keep up with someone double her size. And then there’s Kinger, who just gave up entirely and walked around the side before the adventure even began. Great. Now he’ll have to wait even longer when he inevitably beats everyone to the top.
“Can you guys go any slower?” Jax calls down to the others, demonstrating his superiority by letting go with one hand and dangling from the side of his perch. His voice begins echoing through the canyon until it’s repeating itself thrice over before it reaches its destination. Four heads tilt up to look at him before furrowing their brows in various levels of annoyance.
“We’re doing our best, Jax!” Ragatha yells back, the echo rendering her sentence just as fragmented as his. “Not everyone is as tall as you!”
“Or has as much of a death wish,” Zooble chimes in. “You’ve almost fallen, like, four times now.”
“You guys are such wusses. It’s easy if you put your mind to it.” To prove his point, Jax launches himself off his current rock and latches his fingers onto another just above him. He swings like a pendulum for a moment before reaching his legs out and planting his feet on another ledge. “See? I’m just better.”
“Guys, quit it. Now’s not the time to be fighting,” is all Pomni has to say, turning her attention back towards her own climb.
“You’re not doin’ so great yourself, Pom-Pom,” Jax retorts, noting the thick beads of sweat dripping down her face. “Are you sure those noodle limbs of yours can hold you up?”
This seems to have gotten her attention. Her gaze snaps back towards him with a piercing glare. “Jax, I’m serious! Stop shouting!”
His signature Cheshire grin remains. “I’ll shout as much as I want if it gets you to hurry up!” His volume mounting, he turns his focus back towards the group on the bottom. “What was it Zooble said the other day? That I get off to the sound of my own voice? Maybe if you don’t—“
The rest of Jax’s sentence is swallowed by a ferocious rumbling that shakes the entire cliff. He has to lurch forward and clasp for dear life to keep himself steady. His head squished into the wall, he can only hear the panicked exclamations of the others, and see Pomni’s face adopting a pale shade of blue as her breath hitches in her throat. The shock almost wears off enough for him to make a quip about getting their butts in gear before it gets any worse, until he sees Pomni’s head tilt upwards, frightened, expectant. Only when his gaze follows hers does he realize his insults wasn’t the danger she was worried about.
The rest seems to happen all at once. The rumbling stops just in time for chunks of the upper rock face to chip off and start hurtling towards the group. Using each other as anchors, the other three are able to scramble back onto the larger indent they just left and press against a wall. With a bold enough leap, Jax is able to swerve away from where the wreckage would hit him. That should be enough to stop the nauseating hammering of his heart in his chest, he thinks. Until he hazards a glance towards Pomni, searching frantically for the same escape, but she’s out of time.
An expletive slips through Jax’s mouth, one he doesn’t even process before the censor and the sounds of colliding rocks drown it out. He feels his heart lurch into his throat as he watches a boulder slam into Pomni’s torso and yank her from her perch. She goes plummeting with it until they crash into a crevice a few feet below, the surface barely big enough to hold her whole figure, her body crushed beneath the debris as it rolls off her and continues its descent.
“Pomni!” Gangle yelps before she’s frantically shushed by the other two. “Is she okay?!” Ragatha tries to ask without shouting, but the sound is barely comprehensible by the time it reaches Jax.
He can infer what she’s asking, of course. She’s worried about Pomni. A simple “she’s fine” will suffice. But it doesn’t even occur to Jax to answer the question, when all he can focus on is the sound of his heart pounding ferociously in his ears. Once the static in his brain has cleared enough for him to realize he’s been standing there frozen like a useless statue, he suddenly feels so queasy that he’d prefer to see all his organs escape through his mouth than let this stupor take hold of him any longer.
“I’m coming up there,” Zooble declares as they hobble into view. They’re quickly restrained by Gangle. Ragatha inches towards the edge of the platform and runs a plush hand across the rock face. “The avalanche really did a number on the wall,” she calls up as clearly as she can. “I-I don’t think we’ll be able to get up this way. We’re gonna have to take this path until we find something more sturdy.”
“Oh, fantastic. So it’s gonna take you even longer.” The remark that leaves Jax’s mouth brings relief with it. At least he hasn’t lost his charming snark.
“Yeah, ‘cuz of you!” Zooble snaps, but their anger is impossible to take seriously when they’re waving an oversized back scratcher in place of a fist. “Sorry we’d rather you don’t come close to getting anyone killed again.”
The end of their sentence hangs in the air a little longer than Jax would like. “Jeez, I thought Gangle was supposed to be the dramatic one,” he quips, but the corners of his mouth are weighed down by an uncharacteristic frown.
“Seriously, is she alright?” Ragatha chimes in, and it’s a little pathetic how much her voice is quivering. “She’s fine,” he finally gets to answer, but she just plants her hands on her hips. “You didn’t even look,” she says with a pout, and she keeps glaring at him, even when he darts his eyes to the side and repeats himself, as if she’s expecting something, from him of all people.
“Because I don’t care!” Jax throws his arms out in exasperation, until he remembers where he is and latches them back onto the wall. “If it bothers you so much, go check on her yourself! She’s coming back to the Circus either way, so why should I undo my hard work when it doesn’t matter?”
Again, the silence in the air is heavy. The other three stare up at him with expressions that would read as disbelief if they weren’t so blank.
“I don’t know why I even try,” Ragatha eventually mutters through gritted teeth. “Come on, guys, let’s go.”
One by one, the lollygaggers disappear around the bend with hunched shoulders.
And finally, Jax can breathe, because if he had actually tried to think about what he saw with other people around, he thinks maybe he really would have started hacking up organs.
Even his dismissive glance Pomni’s way was enough to catch the shades of her face getting alarmingly bright. Which doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t need to breathe. And even if she did, death means nothing in this hellhole. The fact that he’s still human enough to feel sinking dread as he watches her shift through the rainbow like a gaudy decoration makes him wish death did mean something, so he could step off his foothold and let the fall claim him.
Nothing’s going to change whether he leaves her there or not. All bringing her with him would do is weigh him down and make his life harder. For zero benefit. It’s as pointless as this entire adventure is.
Which is why he finds himself groaning in exasperation as he starts climbing back in her direction, completely against his own will.
Ragatha got one thing right, at least: the falling rocks had knocked a lot of the safe holding spaces clean off. Jax finds himself having to extend his muscles in ways he didn’t before just to shift one hand or foot. It allows him to focus, to forget about anything except the rush of the wind against his face and the smell of the sediment mingling with his sweat. If he had abandoned Pomni, he would have just continued his mind-numbingly rudimentary climb without even attempting something more challenging. That’s why he’s doing this. Because it’s more fun this way.
And he’s learning more, too. About halfway through his detour, a crevice does something it’s never done before and crumbles beneath the weight of his foot. He begins plummeting with a shriek, slamming his hands against the wall and curling his fingers until they grab hold of something and leave him dangling parallel to Pomni’s little nook. He has to take a moment to let his burning fingers and erratic breathing regulate themselves before he’s lucid enough to flail his legs around and find resting places for his feet.
“I almost get you killed, you almost get me killed. Thanks for returning the favour, Pom-Pom.” Jax’s jab is dripping with sarcasm. But he moves a little faster when she doesn’t even twitch in reaction.
The rest of the journey is decently trivial once he learns to test if a rock can hold him before leaning on it. By the time he’s made room on the platform and crouched beside Pomni, her face is shuffling through colours so fast that they’re becoming indistinguishable. He grabs her shoulders and tries to shake her awake, but her head just jostles around limply before slumping forward. One ragdoll in his life is enough; he doesn’t know what made him think it would be a good idea to deal with another.
“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” he mutters to no one in particular. He kneels down and slings Pomni over his shoulders with a forceful exhale. “God, you’re heavy. Did Caine put rocks in your breakfast?”
As if to mock his futility, a chunk of the rock wall beside him crumbles into pebbles. The irony is almost enough to distract him from the fact that the air feels empty without an equally witty rebuttal from her.
Luckily for Jax, once he navigates past Pomni’s landing spot, the rest of his journey upwards is unscathed from the earlier avalanche. Even with an insultingly predictable path marked out by grooves in the cliffside, he finds himself considering the benefits of letting his dead weight drop and just making it up as fast as he can. But that would make him a quitter, no better than the others, so of course he soldiers on.
“I’m doing this to prove I’m better than everyone else,” he wheezes through laboured breathing, though no one but his unconscious cargo is around to hear him. “Not that that’s a particularly high bar.”
Despite his confidence, he doesn’t shy away from the relief that hits him once the peak of his climb becomes visible. Turns out, carrying another person on your back wears down on your limbs, until even reaching them out to continue climbing becomes a grand feat. The moment Jax makes contact with another larger ledge, only a couple dozen feet from the top, he flops onto his stomach with a forceful breath out that morphs into a scream halfway through.
Once his burning muscles have had a moment to breathe, he allows Pomni to roll carefully off his back so he can sit up and settle into a more comfortable position. A cursory glance her way reveals that her face has returned to its normal hue, almost mocking in its unchanging paleness. He flicks his gaze up to the sky so he doesn’t have to think about the implications of this, because they don’t matter.
Asymmetrical eyes meet his from the goalpost above. The harsh summer sun is obscured by a cross-shaped headpiece and a disjointed hand waving cheerily down at him. “Hi, Jax!” says a voice that he always seems to forget until it sneaks up on him at the most irritating times. Like now.
Jax can’t stop the squeak of surprise that escapes his mouth at the sight of Kinger above him. The humiliation sends heat rushing to his cheeks that makes him wish he could rip his face off. Preferably Kinger’s as well.
“How did you of all people get up here first?!” is all he can manage to sputter out.
“Oh, did you guys not see the gear I left you?” Kinger points a thumb to the right, which Jax’s bewildered gaze follows towards a chess piece-shaped harness hooked up to a pulley system. “Bummer. It was a real help!”
Few things have the ability to leave Jax so stupefied that he can’t think of a single thing to say. Unfortunately for him, this is one of them. He’s acutely aware of how idiotic he must look with his jaw hanging open like it is, but for once, he thinks such a reaction is warranted.
“Oh, you brought Pomni!” Kinger exclaims with his hands clasped together. “That’s nice of you!”
“What? No!” Jax begins to argue before he realizes how stupid it’ll make him look when she hasn’t moved an inch since he put her down. “I-I was just… for the challenge, y’know? It’d be too easy to just get up here myself. ‘Cuz I’m so much better than everyone else.”
How he managed to make his leading argument sound so ridiculous is beyond him. Kinger just stares back at him with his uncanny, bloodshot eyes that are impossible to read.
“Look, if you tell anyone you saw this, I’ll give you more problems to deal with than just your memory!” Jax snaps, in a tone that was maybe too threatening to play off as nonchalant.
“Saw what?” Kinger asks, and Jax despises that he can’t tell if he’s being genuine or not until the older man’s eyes widen. “Ohhh, you mean Pomni. That’s okay, I get it. You wanna keep your true character for when no one’s watching. I’ll let you have that.”
With that astounding misread of the situation, Kinger turns and slides down the cliff face until he lands beside Pomni. He props her gently against the wall and turns her head towards the canyon surrounding them, despite her eyes being shut. Jax can’t think of any appropriate response to the nonsense before him except to finish his ascent after a few moments of despondent staring. Kinger looks happy enough admiring the view with someone who can’t even see it. Who is he to ruin an insane man’s fun?
That is a saying, though, isn’t it? About your true character being what you do when no one’s watching. That’s all Jax can think about as he pushes himself past the final foothold and onto the top of the gargantuan cliff he just scaled. When he should be celebrating how brave and cool he is, he’s just making excuses for why that wouldn’t apply to him. Why it doesn’t matter what he does when no one’s around, because his actions are what endanger people in the first place. He hurts others because it makes things interesting. He’s the funny one. There’s nothing more to it.
His emotions should be able to reflect his archetype. But the melancholic weight in his chest is anything but funny.
With a resigned sigh, he dangles his feet over the edge of the cliff and watches the sun disappear behind a patch of trees in the distance. None of this is real, so none of this even matters. And because none of it matters, he doesn’t have to waste his time thinking about it. But because none of it matters, maybe he’ll lay off on Pomni for a little bit, as an apology. Only when no one else is around to tease him about it.