Chapter Text
Pomni is at the end of her rope.
The circus has fallen into a dark, colorless wasteland, left with only the harrowing lights of the void peeking in through the cracks. Devastation wracks her as she takes in the state of their world, what she’s done to it. Bleak and desolate. Guilt twists deep into her chest, and she loses herself for a moment, lost between memories of the circus and her life in the real world like she had been after her first few days of arriving. Maybe if she rejects her reality hard enough, she won’t have to deal with the aftermath, she won’t be left to sweep debris from a felled building.
But the circus is her reality now.
And she’s completely dismantled it.
To add onto it, her friends are still looking to her for guidance. Looking with what little hope they have left at Pomni, hoping that the person who destroyed their home can mend it, bring it back to life. Expectant eyes turned to her, hoping she’ll guide them like the beam of a lighthouse to sailors lost at sea.
And it’s taking everything she has left to stay positive, to uplift everyone else’s spirits, burning herself at the the fuse to keep them warm. On top of it all, there was the troubling truth that they’re nothing more than copies of their original selves; she could be out there living her life right now— her real life— but she’s the version of herself that’s gotten stuck here and it’s…
A lot.
Too much at once.
Her mind weighs heavy with too many thoughts at once, swarming her and infesting what remains of her rationale, but Pomni’s given no time to process when the sound of angered yelling cuts through her. Snapped back to reality, her eyes dart up, mortified when she finds Jax lashing out at Kinger and Zooble.
Without hesitation, she comes in between them, forcing Jax to step away. She doesn’t want to deal with confrontation, not when the fragile threads of her remaining patience and sanity are snapping one by one, but lashing out like this won’t solve anything.
“Hey— we’re not doing this,” she cuts in. Jax balls his hands into tight, shaky fists at his side, and Zooble glares coldly at him, wing twitching with aggravation. Kinger calmly puts some distance between them, watching with worry. Pomni turns to look up at Jax, taking a deep, unsatisfying breath. She’s tired of Jax’s constant outrage, and her approach borders on tepid, but she tries to make it work.
“I know you’re hurting, Jax, but taking things out on everyone else isn’t the way to go about this. We all need to stick together—”
“Look at what good sticking together has done for us!” Jax shouts, his grin feral, cracking at the seams as he gestures wildly to the crumbling circus around them, “Gee, way to cheer everyone up, Pomni. If you had just kept your mouth shut to Caine, things would still be normal. All of this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t even showed up here in the first place.”
He prods a finger into her face and Pomni stumbles back, wounded by his cutting words. Her expression is troubled when she looks up at him, an uneasy silence stretching uncomfortably between them. The circus crumbles somewhere far beyond, deep echoes of its destruction bellowing throughout what’s left of it. Quite frankly, in her time here, Pomni’s never felt more defeated than she has right in this very moment, and Jax echoing the dark whispers of her deepest worries like this only breaks her spirit harder.
Pomni swallows thickly before finding her voice, and it takes a near insurmountable amount of effort to compose herself again. Even on an unsteady foundation, she has to keep it together.
The others still need her guidance.
“I— This isn’t the outcome I was trying to achieve, Jax. But we know more about the circus now than we did before,” she reasons, though the effort to keep her voice steady proves to be challenging when he’s glaring at her with such profound enmity that it corrodes her already wavering confidence, ”There has to be something for us to be able to piece it back together.”
He scoffs, and the sound pierces through her.
“What, you wanna piece it back together so you can break it all over again? You get a kick out of knockin’ us when we’re already down, or somethin’?”
His words are gutting, born from understandable outrage at their situation, but when they cut so deeply into Pomni, it’s difficult for her to empathize. No, all she can focus on is that this is her friend telling her that all of her efforts to get them out of here are brewed with malicious intent, that she’s sadistic for even trying.
God, is she?
Pomni blinks, taking a step back as she avoids eye contact. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and she rubs at her arm. Then, she narrows her eyes, outraged and hurt and sad all at once.
“I— I… I was only trying to help,” she snaps, but the trembling of her voice hardly gives it the impact she would’ve liked.
“When’re you gonna realize that you’ve ‘helped’ enough? All you’ve done is more harm than good.”
Silence falls in the air like miasma, sounds of his voice echoing off of the walls, right back into her ears. Echoing like droplets in a cave. Jax grits his teeth, leering down at her with an animosity so unrestrained that, for a second, Pomni really does believe that they’d never even been friends in the first place. Something inside of her begins to break, cracks cutting through her like glass, straining and groaning as the last of her will comes undone.
He’s told her worse than this before, back when they had their first fallout. Being told that her abstracting wouldn’t impact Jax in the slightest cut deep, deep enough to leave her sleepless on some nights, wondering what she could’ve done to deserve hearing such cruel words.
And maybe it’s the weight of their collapsing digital world resting on her shoulders. Maybe it’s the pressure of having caused such a mess in the first place, even if her intentions were good. Maybe it’s the stress of everything all at once.
But Pomni crumbles.
And she cries.
It starts with a soft inhale of breath, her throat tightening. Then, the tears sitting at the corners of her eyes run down her cheeks. A whimper escapes her as she brings the heels of her palms up to her face, swiping away the hot tears. Her legs feel weak, and she feels like her heart’s just been shattered, like the last ounces of her willpower in this bleak situation have just been scraped from the depths of her soul.
Jax’s fists clench tighter at his sides, and he’s fast to avert his gaze.
Ragatha is the first to console her, her hand coming to rest at Pomni’s shoulder. She glares up at him.
“What is your problem, Jax? Do you— Do you think the rest of us aren’t hurting as much as you are? Why do you always do this?”
“Pomni’s done more for us than you have, asshole,” Zooble marches up to him, shoving Jax by the shoulders, able to cuss freely without Caine's censor in place. He stumbles back, expression mixed with hurt and the fading embers of his outrage. “At least she’s making an effort to change things. What have you done aside from make our whole existence here more miserable for us than it already is?”
Pomni’s breathing becomes strained, anxiety spiking at the rising conflict. Ragatha tries to comfort her, and though her intentions are good, the hand on Pomni’s shoulder only adds to her growing, visceral unease. She can’t make out Ragatha’s words, the song of her kindness drowned out by the harsh cacophony of wrath.
The hand on Pomni’s shoulder trembles for a moment and, through her tears, she looks up to see Ragatha glaring at the argument taking place between Jax and Zooble, as if talking herself up into confrontation. She takes a deep, unsteady breath, moving to come between the two.
“Guys! This has to stop already. We… fighting isn’t going to do anything for anyone right now. We’re all we have left of this place.” She clasps her hands over one another, thumb rubbing nervously over her wrist, like she’s afraid that she’ll be the next target if she’s not careful with her words. Then, in a quieter, pleading voice, “Please. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
The silence that follows after is suffocating. Jax looks as if he’s about to say more, cutting himself off when he looks to Pomni, still drying her tears. A difficult expression befalls him for a moment, something that looks to be a wicked twist of guilt, shame, and anguish. He tsks irritably, clenching his hands into fists once again before turning his back to her. His fingers tremble.
“God, whatever,” he seethes, walking away.
“Where are you going?” Zooble demands, horn twitching with outrage, “What good do you think wandering off will do for you?”
“Way more good than bein’ stuck here with you people,” is all he says, heading for their hallway of room.
Pomni sighs with defeat, collecting just enough of her bearings to keep the tears from falling. Tired pinwheel eyes watch Jax as he leaves. Even after that verbal lashing, she doesn’t want him to go. Part of her hates that she longs for him like that, to the point where it clouds her judgement. She should be angry with him, and yet, she’s still worried for his wellbeing.
All the good that it’s done her.
“Are you alright, Pomni?” Ragatha asks, concerned, “I’m really sorry that happened, he can be so—”
“I- It’s fine,” Pomni dismisses weakly, though it’s anything but ‘fine’, “I think, um…”
She takes a deep breath when her voice wavers, her throat tightening once again when the concern on Ragatha’s face deepens. Kinger, Gangle, and Zooble look to her, visibly distraught. Anxiety throbs painfully in her gut, this maddening pressure to compose herself quickly, because these people still need her at her best.
With a small, but unconvincing smile, Pomni carefully continues.
“I think I just need a minute,” she says, taking a step back, “Just, uh, y’know. Gotta get it together before we do anything else. I’ll be back in just a few.”
Maybe a moment alone to put herself back together is what she needs. Deciding the next course of action will be easier after she’s had some time to fully digest this intense overflow of emotion, what she’ll do for the others, for Jax. She rests a hand over her head, a migraine throbbing behind her eyes.
Ragatha and Kinger glance to eachother with worry before looking to Pomni. The ragdoll offers a small, gentle smile, stepping closer to her.
“W-Well, uh… You know if you need me— or any of us, we’re always here,” she offers.
“…Thanks, Ragatha,” she mutters, offering her best smile.
It’s a kind offer, but God, Pomni just doesn’t have the heart to tell them that she doesn’t know what to do anymore. She’s completely at her wit’s end with this place, and the last thing she wants to do is stress out her friends even more by telling them that has no idea what the hell she’s doing and doesn’t even have a plan. Without Caine, their world will only continue to fall apart, and they have no way of putting it back together. Not without him.
But, Pomni will figure it out.
After she has a moment to get herself together.
She just… needs a breather, that’s all.
And then she’ll be okay.
She has to be okay.
Ragatha watches Pomni make her way to her own room, worry etched into her features. She rubs her hands against one another, unable to shake off the cold dread clinging to her. But, she trusts Pomni, and she trusts that she’ll return to them in due time. As much as Ragatha wants to follow her and offer her help, she also wants to respect Pomni’s privacy and not stress her out even further by insisting.
“Do you… think she’ll be alright?” Gangle timidly asks, as if reading the script of Ragatha’s thoughts.
Ragatha watches Pomni turn the corner, watches the red and blue of her outfit disappear out of sight with a somber look. Then, she manages a smile, a strained and weak thing. “I’m… not sure but, Pomni has a way of bouncing back from these things. I think she’ll… come to us when she’s ready. We just need to give her space.”
Gangle rubs at her arm, glancing over to Zooble with a look of uncertainty.
“So, then… what should we do in the meantime? There’s just… so much to process at once, and the circus… how’re we even supposed to fix this without Caine?” she trails off, her expression utterly hopeless as she gazes at the home they once knew, now in ruin. Broken windows lead to the void further beyond, coming apart at the seams. It peeks in, its light bright and ominous, stretching into infinity. If they don’t do something, their world will come entirely undone, and they’ll be lost to the void, too.
Kinger takes a step forward, lifting the bucket on his head up a little higher so he can see properly.
“I think I might have an idea on where to get started,” he says. Then, he scans the area, gaze catching on a large hole in the floor tiles, light pouring in. A cold chill whistles through his robe, an unwelcoming coldness creeping into the circus from so many exposed areas. He holds both of his hands out, a dark crackle of light sparking from his fingertips, and then, a small, flat triangle is produced, hovering in the air. He lowers it down over the gap, mending it together. It overlaps on the tile, not quite big enough to seal the gap entirely, but it’s a start.
The others approach, eyes wide with surprise. Gangle rests her ribbons over a mouth slack with shock, sharing an incredulous look with Zooble.
“Have we, uh… always been able to do that?” Zooble asks from behind him, bewildered.
“We have,” Kinger nods, “The only problem is that it’s… not easy. It may take a lot of time and effort before it does what you want it to do. But, I can… teach you all, if you’re willing to learn. If anything, it’d be our best bet to keeping this place intact. It has a hard time functioning without Caine, but it’s not completely impossible.”
Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle look to eachother, chests filling with some amount of warmth. Though small, it’s been their real first spark of hope since everything came crashing down. Ragatha feels a little lighter somehow, and she smiles with hope in her good eye, moving to stand beside Kinger.
“I’d love it if you could teach me, Kinger. After everything that’s happened, I think this would be… a nice way for us to just… process,” she laughs lightly, though it’s strained. Ragatha’s smile doesn’t last long, and she directs her gaze down the dark, colorless halls. It wouldn’t feel right, learning this new, literal game-changing feat without Pomni or Jax to be here for it.
“Should we… maybe invite Pomni and Jax to help before we start? Maybe they’d like to—”
Zooble cuts in, placing a hand on Ragatha’s shoulder.
“I think for now it’s better to just leave them to their own devices. Pomni said she wanted space, and Jax is probably still cooling off from being all pissy, too. They’ll come back to us when they’re ready, and if not, then we can go check on them later.”
Ragatha listens carefully, expression still ripe with worry. She thinks back to her and Kinger’s conversation in the aquarium, where he told her that she puts too much pressure on herself to be there for people. Maybe she does. Maybe she needs to stop doing the “heavy lifting,” like he said. If Pomni needs her, then she’ll be there for her. Ragatha trusts that she’ll come to her on her own terms.
“Besides,” Zooble continues, “the circus is falling apart all around us as we speak. We shouldn’t wait on them if we know that there’s something we can do about it right now.”
“I… yeah. You’re right,” Ragatha mutters, unable to argue when logic is thrown into the mix. Her gaze lingers down the halls for another moment before turning to Kinger, watching as Gangle and Zooble hesitantly step closer to the edge of the hole in the floor. Eerie, shimmering light from the voice dances over their faces, and they look to the chess piece expectantly.
Ragatha tears her gaze from the halls, positioning herself beside Kinger and peering down into the void, watching the shifting lights and cubes drift by them. Just gazing into it is giving her vertigo.
“Breathe, and just try to stay focused,” Kinger explains, bringing his hands up once again, “It can be easy to feel discouraged in the beginning, but don’t let it get to you. I’m not the best at it, either, but we can all learn something from eachother.”
They nod in understanding, observing him quietly. Light sparks at his fingertips.
“Follow my lead.”
- - -
Pomni quietly clicks the door shut, her chest feeling as if it’s about to cave in.
She just needs a minute to recuperate, needs a moment to breathe without feeling the eyes of others on her, awaiting her next move, her next breath. Exhaustion settles over her with all the weight of the ocean.
She needs to get it together.
These people are counting on her. They’re expecting her to find some way out of this, but all she can do is draw blank after blank, too overwhelmed. How did she get the short end of the stick where she’s stuck in this reality and not the real world? What are they supposed to do when Caine isn’t here to snap his fingers and put everything back into place? Why the hell can’t she make things right with Jax— why does he despise her so much, after all they’ve been through?
Pomni moves to sit at the edge of her bed, legs feeling as if they might fail her. She drags her hands down her face, mind at war with itself.
She needs to focus. She should be composing herself, but her mind is stuck on Jax’s cruel words. Pomni’s strength and patience was a lit fuse, and Jax only accelerated her inevitable detonation.
At the end of her rope, Jax approached with scissors.
Pomni groans, letting her head fall into her hands.
What the hell is she doing wrong? Every time she moves closer to him, tries to cross through this barrier he’s put between them, Jax only moves further and further away.
God, he’s such an asshole. It would be so much easier if she could find it in herself to hate him, to turn away from him and just let him deal with whatever it was he was dealing with on his own. All of her attempts to reach out to him have proven fruitless, and though Jax doesn’t necessarily owe her his companionship, the repeated sting of rejection doesn’t hurt any less. Some cruel, small part of Pomni wishes she could just let him go.
But she just can’t.
Jax is the first real friend she’s made here, the only person who made her feel a semblance of normalcy in this place. Pomni can’t help it— she doesn’t have it in her heart to hate him. Even after everything, she wants Jax to stick with her and the rest of the group. Of course she does.
But can’t he see that he’s not the only one affected by this?
Pomni sighs, tiredness settling behind her eyes. She rubs at her temples and pinches her eyes shut, her headache only growing in intensity. All the bright colors of her room have been stripped of their saturation, leaving it dull and grey. Hopeless. The way things are looking, she can’t help but feel the same way. The freedom she fought so hard for had been waved in her face like a piece of fresh meat to a caged lion, dangling with promise, but forever out of reach.
Even if Jax was just lashing out, maybe he was right in some regard. None of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for her. She’d been too bold, too eager to leave from this damn hellhole that maybe she lost sight of her goal. She antagonized Caine and lost him because she wanted to go home, losing the only thing that kept this fragile snowglobe of a prison intact.
Now, the glass is cracking, its contents leaking out, and Pomni is left jamming her fingers over every crevice, desperate to keep this shattering world together. She caused this mess— she has to be the one who can fix it.
Her breathing turns unsteady. Each breath becomes more unsatisfying that the last. Her headache pounds ceaselessly.
But— can she even do such a thing? She already tried once, and that led them exactly where they are now, at their most hopeless. Will she just make things even worse? Is she better off not doing anything at all? God, it’s just too much.
It’s too much.
Pomni clutches at her chest, her breathing becoming difficult. Something as simple as taking a single breath of air turns into a battle. She tries to tell herself she doesn’t need oxygen in this digital hellhole. It won’t hurt her.
But the craving for it is still very much real.
She’ll make things worse. She’ll damn them to this eternal hell.
What if she already has?
Bile erupts from her gut, boiling and vicious, burning beneath her skin like venom. Her vision turns blurry at the edges, reality slipping through her fingers like sand. She’s losing herself— she can feel it. Her skin burns terribly, running hotter and hotter. Unable to stave off the agony, Pomni claws desperately at her arms, breathing frantic. Her skin feels like it’s going to start sloughing off in chunks. Fear grips her in a vice. She doesn’t know what’s happening.
Pain explodes in her left arm, and her hand trembles violently. Pomni gags, choking on her own saliva as she fights to breathe. Her vision’s failing. Lightheadedness disorients her. She grunts, trembling as she digs her fingers into her arm and rakes hard, fighting to get out of her own skin. The pain of her fingers scraping at herself hurts, and she cries out in agony. Black, glitchy lines erupt from her arm, hot like magma. Pomni doubles over, falling to her knees. Saliva dribbles uncontrollably from her mouth, panic overtaking her.
She gasps sharply when her hand comes into view, blurred and glitchy. A deep black crawls over her, starting at her fingertips. A brightly colored eye opens over her palm, staring directly at her, and her stomach drops.
She’s abstracting.
Pomni screeches. With her other hand, she claws desperately, as if she can tear the abstraction off of her. Visions of her nightmare where she abstracted overtake her— it’s even happening on the same arm. The cold talons of fear grip her, and she screams for help, maniacally digging into her own skin in a poor attempt to stave off the abstraction.
It accelerates. Eats her arm whole like maggots in a festering wound, consuming her all the way to her shoulder. Multicolored eyes ignite her in an ominous light.
Saliva runs down her chin as she gasps, dizzy from the lack of oxygen, dizzy from pain.
A weight’s been tied to her ankle, and Pomni sinks to the bottom of the ocean, watching her final breath bubble to the surface.
She loses consciousness.
- - -
Jax lays flat on his bed, staring vacantly at the glow-in-the-dark stars decorating his ceiling.
A familiar, heavy ache settles deep into his chest, the sting of regret and biting loneliness. It seeps into the rubbery skin of his character model, all-consuming and numbing, ever present with no intention of leaving. The flames of his rage have long since been reduced to cinders, extinguished by the sight of Pomni’s tears falling. Now, all he’s left with are the ashes of guilt and exhaustion, always there to greet him.
He’s certain that he’s finally done what he sought out to do.
He’s finally pushed Pomni so far away that she’ll likely never want to talk to him again.
Ever since their fallout, he’d found it annoying that she kept trying to reach out to him, extend the olive branch his way. He’d lashed out at her, bitten and bruised her when she tried to fight for their friendship while he tried to deny it. It was for her own sake; after seeing the ‘X’ on Ribbit’s door, he’d been brutally reminded of that fact that he pushed them to that point. Jax ruined them.
And even after their fallout, Pomni still welcomed him with her marred, bloodied arms. Why she did in the first place was beyond him. As far as Jax is concerned, reaching out to someone like him is a waste of time and effort. All he does is ruin the people he gets close to, and Pomni is incapable of seeing that, too blinded by the fleeting bits of good she finds in him, if any at all.
Jax would rather spare her the agony.
But God, that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
He furrows his brows at his ceiling, idly tapping a finger over the back of his palm. The sight of her tears lingers in his mind like a brand and makes his stomach twist with something vile.
Though Jax accomplished his goal of pushing her away, he certainly doesn’t feel the fulfillment that comes from accomplishing a task. No, he feels hollow. Defeated.
Above all, guilty.
He turns to lay on his side, head feeling much too full with shitty melancholic emotion. Jax pinches his eyes shut, as if doing so will shut out the reality of his world, the consequences of his actions, what they’d done to Pomni. To everyone.
He doesn’t want to think about it.
It won’t matter, anyway.
Because Jax has a single destination.
It’s a destination he’s had in mind for a long while now, yet the path winds and changes with every step. Some days it’s closer, merely a few inches away. Other days it’s as if a canyon’s been placed between himself and where he wants to go. Wobbly legs take him step by step, moving as if on autopilot, trudging onwards no matter the distance.
The path to abstraction isn’t one that’s been particularly kind to him, always just out of reach, grazing the tips of his fingers before slipping away. It teases him, entices him with its wonderfully comforting embrace and fond memories of Kaufmo and Ribbit.
And yet, he’s always somehow, somehow narrowly avoided abstraction. Sometimes something unpleasant happens in his dream that startles him awake. Sometimes the doorbell rings. Sometimes Caine would drag him out for an adventure.
It was always something getting in the way. Something impeding his path.
But maybe now, without Caine, Jax can put himself out of his misery without anymore interruptions.
It’d be better for everyone.
And when Jax lets himself drift off into his sweet, sweet dreamworld, away from his worries in his real life, he finds peace. Peace when he sees the smiles he misses the most, the smiles of Ribbit and Kaufmo as the three of them sip their hot cocoas together and their cafe melts into place. They laugh over a joke he can’t recall, and their voices are inaudible when they speak to Jax, but they don’t need to be audible for him to enjoy himself.
Just being here is enough.
Warmth fills his chest as he watches them speak to him, their lips moving but their words silent. They share a smile with him, and they clink the three of their glasses together. This escape has always been his most comforting slice of heaven in this horrible circus.
Or it would be, had he not picked up on the distinct sound of a quiet sniffle.
Jax furrows his brows, wondering if maybe his ears were playing tricks on him. He turns his head, looking for the source, and when he finds it, a chill runs over him.
From the opposite end of the cafe, he sees it, a flash of red and blue. Pomni’s back is turned to him, and she sits on one of the stools all by her lonesome.
She’s never made an appearance in any of his dreams.
She has her head in her hands, shoulders trembling as her quiet sobs are the only thing ringing clearly in his mind. The sound snags at his heartstrings, and he stares blankly at her, leg bouncing anxiously beneath the countertop.
Something about her soft sniffles and cries disrupts his peaceful fantasy. He tries to ignore her, tries to focus on Ribbit and Kaufmo, but he can’t stop looking over at her, at war with himself. She uses her arms to swipe away at her tears. Those things he said to her— he never should have said them at all. Guilt stings at his chest, a terrible, persistent pain.
Then, Pomni turns to look at him.
A bone-chilling terror overtakes Jax when he sees abstraction warping her face.
With a sharp inhale, Jax shoots up from his bed, blinking away the glowing light of near-abstraction from his eyes. He pants hard, clutching at his chest as he curls his knees in on himself, utterly shaken by what he just saw.
That’s never happened before.
Pomni has never been in his dreams, and no one has ever abstracted in them, either. It’s like the guilt that seeped into his very being manifested itself. Guilt from lashing out, guilt from their fallout, from repeatedly pushing her away despite the deep, unignorable yearning that begs, pleads for Jax to just make things right with her.
With a heavy sigh, Jax manages to get his breathing under control, dragging his hands down his face.
Again, it’s something getting in the way.
He doesn’t want to linger on the guilt and regret, the aching loneliness all over again. All it does is consume his every waking thought and fill his mind with a thick fog, leaving him to spend every day moving in autopilot. Every moment spelt suffocating, constricted by one too many feelings of hopelessness at once burning him up from the inside out.
It’s unbearable. He just wants for it to all come to an end. Finally find a moment of respite in the maw of abstraction.
However, with what he’s just seen, Jax doesn’t know if he can stomach the thought of ending himself, knowing he’d left Pomni in tears. Knowing she’s a door away from him, that it’d be so easy for him to at least check if she’s okay. Give himself some peace of mind so he can abstract.
But… would it help anything? Is she better off on her own? Or would seeing Jax again only make things worse?
Jax rubs at his head, conflicted. His bed calls for him, serenades him into laying back down and surrendering himself to its comfort, but he resists, if only barely.
Really, all of these questions spawn from one place— a part of himself he’d rather not look at: his deep-rooted cowardice.
When this happened to Ribbit, all Jax did was talk himself out of checking on them. He wanted to, but his fear of facing the consequences of his actions far outweighed the urge to check on her wellbeing, and she paid the price. Both her and Kaufmo. Running was the safer option for him— always has been— though it wasn’t necessarily the right one. Maybe knocking at their door could have saved them, or having that difficult conversation that he’d always been too scared of to initiate.
And when it happened a second time with Kaufmo, Jax feared the exact same thing. He didn’t want to knock at his door, didn’t want to ask him what was wrong— no, it was easier to pretend everything was fine. They’re all just cartoons in the end, right? At least, that’s what Jax would think to make himself feel better.
But, he’s done rejecting reality.
There’s no point anymore, not when their reality has been completely torn asunder.
And Jax has never seen Pomni cry before.
And he hates that the first time he ever does, it’s because of him.
Jax drags his hands down his face, limbs feeling heavy and weighted.
For his own peace of mind, he won’t put himself out of his misery— not yet.
He wants to make sure Pomni hasn’t met the same fate. Knock on the door and reach out, the way he wasn’t able to in the past. He doubts it’ll make much of a difference, and though the fear is gripping and all-consuming, he knows that, once he has that peace of mind, he can let himself abstract without any further issue.
But first, he needs to know if she’s okay.
With a heavy sigh, Jax peels himself from his bed, opening his door to the gray, monochromatic hallway. Of course, Pomni’s stupid, sad little face plastered over her own door greets him, and Jax drudges over to her room. With a quick glance, he ensures that the hall is empty, free from judging eyes. He raises his fist up to knock, but something stops him.
A shift in the atmosphere, small and imperceptible. He stands up a bit straighter, a cold dread suddenly overtaking him. An empty silence hangs in the air, charged with a strange, unsettling pressure, a foreboding sense that something isn’t right. Jax remains frozen in place, fist hovering just next to the door as every bone in his ridiculous, cartoonish body screams, begs, and pleads for him to turn around. Turn around and run from whatever the hell this damning feeling could be. It feels as if the very arms of their collapsing world grasp desperately at him, trying to tear him away from where he stands.
With a shaky breath, Jax knocks at the door, finding his voice.
“Hey, uh… Pomni. You, uh… good in there?” he quietly asks, hoping maybe she won’t hear him or that she’ll just ignore him and he can pretend this never happened.
But the door creaks slightly ajar of its own accord when he knocks, the room pitch-black. The pressure in the air suddenly skyrockets, a weight sinking into his stomach. With trembling fingers, Jax musters just enough of his courage to open the door fully.
And he’s paralyzed by what he finds.
Pomni stands before him, tall and imposing, twisted by abstraction. A surplus of brightly-colored eyes flick about, bathing her dark room in shifting colors and dancing over Jax’s wide eyes like fire. Black, glitched lines jut out from her massive body, pulsing with something sinister. A low, animalistic growl vibrates through the floor, up through Jax’s feet, and petrifies him to the spot.
His breathing picks up.
His vision blurs at the edges.
A multitude of rainbow eyes look to him in that moment, swirling with vitriol.
With everything left in him, Jax runs.
The abstraction gives chase. Her footsteps pound into the fragile tiles of the crumbling circus, and though Jax doesn’t have a heart in this cartoonish hell, he hears its echo pumping in his ears in tandem with her vicious steps. He darts through the hallways, moving as fast as his legs will carry him, wind rushing past. The abstraction growls once more, and Jax swears he can feel the static pressure of her body creeping down his back.
He doesn’t dare look back.
He won’t.
Jax’s legs carry him far, adrenaline shooting through him as weighted footsteps hammer mercilessly behind him. He darts past the rooms, down the hallway of abstracted faces, seeming to stretch endlessly. He’s hyperventilating, static threatening to overtake his vision, but he pushes through, running faster.
Finally, he makes it to the end of the hallway.
Turning the corner, Jax presses his back against the wall, watching Pomni ram clean through the railing. Wide eyes watch in terror as she falls from the second floor, slamming down hard onto the tiles. He runs for the railing, worried that she’s hurt— or worse, completely fallen through.
When Jax looks down, he finds the others standing in shock, visibly shaken. The abstraction had fallen in the middle of them, right over an oddly mismatched tile, one that looks out of place from the rest of the circus. Their faces are pale, and they stare in stunned silence, slowly backing away from the disoriented abstraction.
“Oh my God, no…” Ragatha weakly begins, voice trembling like a leaf in the wind, “I- Is that…? Um, J- Jax, or…?”
With a low growl, the abstraction slowly picks itself up, damning light of the void flickering between cracks in the floor from where she’d fallen. She’s unsteady on her feet, still disoriented from the fall.
Kinger grabs her hand, but Ragatha remains frozen in place, eye fixed on the abstraction.
“We need to run,” he frantically orders, pulling her by the arm. The others follow closely behind him, running in the same direction Jax had just gone. The abstraction shakes itself off, eyes fluttering open and just narrowly missing the others.
Jax heaves for air, careful to stay out of her view. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead. Reality distorts at the edges of his vision. Bile lurches in his gut. Dizziness threatens to lead him into unconsciousness, and he grips tightly at the railing to ground himself, world spinning. His breathing is fast and shaky as he gazes down at her.
The abstraction runs off, glitching, vivid eyes flittering about, searching for its next target.
His legs give out.
Jax gasps as he falls to his knees, limbs entirely boneless. He can do nothing but watch as the abstraction aggressively darts about, growling incessantly. Time feels as if it’s come to a complete stop, world halting on its axis as he realizes what’s just happened.
Pomni abstracted.
Because of him.
The abstraction running throughout the circus feels utterly surreal, and for a moment, Jax wants to believe that it’s not her. That it’s someone else, that one of the abstractions from the cellar somehow escaped. It can’t be real. If he rejects this hard enough, it won’t be real.
But it is her. Denying it won’t help anything.
Jax’s throat tightens. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He grasps desperately at the railing, needing it to ground himself. It’s a flimsy beam in his crumbling building, but it’s the only thing offering him any kind of support right now. He feels like he’s going to throw up.
This was exactly why he pushed Pomni away. People who become his friends only ever wind up like this. It’s like he’s cursed, inflicted with something no prayer or wish could ever cure, something that will doom his friends all to the same exact fate. No matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries to save them from himself, he’s already sank his teeth into them and filled them with venom.
Jax watches with empty eyes as the abstraction runs throughout the circus, tiles cracking beneath its every step. Numbness settles into his limbs, cold and unwelcoming, but all too familiar. A thin, hazy veil rests over his eyes, vision unfocused as he disconnects himself from reality, stares blankly at the tiled floor below. A maelstrom of thoughts, loud, belligerent and angry, bounce off of the walls of his mind and echo endlessly. He feels lightheaded.
And when the tears fall, he doesn’t try to stop them.
He brings the heels of his hands up to his face, sobbing quietly.
It should’ve been him.
Anyone but her.
A soft, plush hand rests on his shoulder, and Jax turns slowly, robotically. Ragatha looks down to him with an expression he can’t put to name; it’s a mix of everything. Horror. Disappointment. Anguish. Maybe anger, deep down. Anger at the realization that abstraction is Pomni and not him. Jax can’t say that he blames her.
Even after everything, the way he’s treated her, he really doesn’t know why Ragatha still bothers with him. He looks away, gazing down at Pomni, watching her abstracted form slink throughout their colorless circus. His chest constricts terribly when a tile gives way beneath one of her feet, and she trips, foot nearly lost to the void. With a stagger, Pomni pulls herself upright, continuing her rampage. If she continues like this, she’ll slip into the vacuum of the void.
Jax pinches his eyes shut at the thought. He doesn’t want to think about it.
“…I did it again,” is all Jax can muster. A weak, pathetic, and obvious statement.
Ragatha shakes her head, terror in her eye as she looks down at Pomni. Tears well up, running down the side of her face.
“Jax, why did you—”
“I don’t know!” he shouts, throwing his hands up in frustration, all of his mounting emotion erupting in that moment. Ragatha flinches, removes her hand and steps away from him. Jax pinches his eyes shut, presses his hands against the sides of his head as if doing so will contain the onslaught of guilt, but it’s no use.
“I was— I was just pissed off. Pissed off at everything. At myself,” he snaps, slamming his hands on the railing and gripping tightly. The tears fall faster, dripping onto the tile beneath him, and the dam holding everything inside collapses. “I just… God, I- I just wanted to fix things with her. But I was just so mad, and- and I pushed her away again.”
And he pushed her too far. This time, there’s no coming back from it, he’d pushed Pomni completely over the edge. Now, he’s left her to plummet into the abyss, no tether to keep her in place, no safety net to break her fall, no wings for her to fly.
And worst of all, no way of saving her.
“Why does this keep happening?” Jax quietly asks, voice broken. He looks down at his own hands, all the good they’ve done him. Though it’s only his gloves covering them, they feel dirty, like they’re caked with grime and unable to ever truly be cleansed.
“I just keep… messing things up. Messing people up.”
“Don’t… Don’t do this, Jax,” Ragatha softly orders, her voice soft but firm, wavering as she swipes away at her own tears. She takes a breath to control herself, hands balling into shaky fists at her sides as she grips the fabric of her dress. Difficult emotions flash over her face, like she wants to be upset with him, but just can’t. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Once you start, you just… never stop.”
Then, she releases her dress, crossing her arms. Her bottom lip quivers.
“God, you…”
Ragatha trails off, shaking her head and turning away from him. There’s something else she wants to say, but doesn’t. Then, only barely loud enough to be audible, he catches the bitter muttering of words she doesn’t want him to hear.
“…you’re really awful.”
Jax swallows thickly, words piercing through him. His breathing turns heavy, vision blurring as tears drop onto his palms. Another good person in this place, lost because of him. This is what he feared the most, losing her. And yet, he didn’t seem to fear that fate enough, as it still wound up damning her. All this place does is swallow the people he cares about, and Jax, the provider.
“Jax— listen to me,” Ragatha says, expression grim, serious when she turns to look back at him. Despite her being right in front of him, she sounds distant, like her voice is muffled. She’s only pushing aside her resentment towards him just to keep things moving. “We… maybe it’s best if we get out of the open. Let’s go find the others, maybe we can at least, um… get Pomni somewhere safe.”
He looks to her, gaze empty. Unshed tears prick the corners of his eyes.
What’s the point in going?
They’ll hate him. They already do, but after something as catastrophic as this? Jax can’t imagine that any of them will want to look him in the eye. He doesn’t want to think about the anger that will cross over their faces when they realize that it wasn’t him who abstracted. And really, he’d rather be alone to process all of this; he already knows he’s irreversibly fucked up, he doesn’t need to be reminded of it over and over again.
And if losing Pomni isn’t enough of a reason for him to want to abstract for himself, then Jax doesn’t know what is.
He shakes his head with a heavy sigh, casting his gaze through the bars of the railing once more. The floor crumbles at the edges further with every step. Guilt eats away at him like termites to a well-lived home, feasting on his unending misery and greedily consuming what’s left of his small, meager reservoir of hope in this digital hell.
He just wants to give up.
“Jax?”
He turns his head to Ragatha, visibly irritated.
There’s something desperately pleading in her gaze, a deep, deep worry that he doesn’t ever recall seeing on her before.
“Please come with me.”
It’s small and uttered so pathetically that, had it been any other day, Jax would’ve laughed in her face for even thinking that something like that would persuade him.
But this isn’t any other day.
And somehow, somehow Ragatha is the only one reaching out to him right now. She has every reason not to, and yet, she’s still here like an abused animal crawling back for scraps. Crawling back like Jax isn’t a scared animal himself, like he won’t lash out if she gets too close. Crawling back like she hopes something in him has changed, that maybe this time, it won’t be in his nature to push people away.
Maybe something about that reminds him of Pomni, how she kept extending the olive branch for him. How she still had hope for him.
Jax sighs.
“Let’s just make this quick,” he mumbles coldly.
She smiles warmly, and he’s fast to look away, despising the way such a tender look makes him feel even worse about himself. He doesn’t deserve to be looked at like that, not after what he’s done.
“The others are hiding up in the cafe,” Ragatha explains, her expression tired and defeated, “I think maybe Kinger might know something about… how we can get Pomni somewhere safe. Or at least, on what we should do next.”
Jax looks down through the bars of the railing once more, watching Pomni run, chasing aimlessly. Stripped of her mind and being. His chest feels heavy, stomach lurching terribly when another tile gives way beside her, though she’s able to narrowly avoid it this time. A timer ticks down above her head, and he doesn’t know what number it’s at.
He wishes it had been himself instead of Pomni; she has so much more going for herself than he ever has. She has friends who care about her. Jax already lost all of his. He doesn’t have a reason to be here anymore.
He rubs at his arm, chest aching. His eyes fixate on Pomni’s abstracted form, not once leaving her.
As much as he wants to go back to his room and give in to the same fate, he doesn’t think he can let himself go peacefully, knowing the world will eventually give out beneath Pomni and she’ll be left stranded all alone in the void. He already failed to be there for Ribbit and Kaufmo when they needed him most, and now Pomni, too. And without Caine, the cellar is out of commission. Maybe the least he can do is help provide her with somewhere safe.
He’s already pushed her into abstracting.
God, he can’t bear the thought of losing her for good.
A timid hand rests on Jax’s shoulder. He pulls away from it, forcing himself to stand from the floor. His knees shake.
“Jax…?” Ragatha asks, her voice quiet, concerned.
“…I’m comin’,” he responds flatly.
It takes a monumental amount of effort for him to leave, every part of his body pleading for him to go back, watch over Pomni.
But there’s no point.
Reluctantly, Jax follows Ragatha to the cafe.
All he has to do is get Pomni somewhere safe.
After that, he’ll march down the path to the same destination.