Archive of Our Own

Tucked snugly in her bed in the dead of the digital night, Pomni stares intently at her ceiling and counts her glow-in-the-dark stars.

She lets her mind wander to darker places. She always does these days. Tonight, though, she’s taking an especially troublesome train of thought.

It’s the eve of The Anniversary.

It has been exactly 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes since Jax abstracted in a beautiful, radiant explosion within her iron-clad embrace. 

Although it’s unusually quiet in the circus tonight, Pomni’s thoughts are unbearably loud. They ricochet off her skull like bullets looking for soft flesh to lodge into.

She replays that moment in her mind more often than she’d like. She can’t control it. It’s involuntary. Whether she’s at the dining table surrounded by smiling faces, or laying on the warm sand by the lake, even when she’s playing board games with the others, laughing up a storm, that thought comes to the front of her mind before she hurriedly shoves it back down. She still always ends up feeling sick.

He was so scared. 

He wanted to stay. 

She wanted him to stay.

In the end, her efforts were no use. Her hands dug into his back, into his trembling form, and he still managed to slip right through her fingers. She took on all the pain of his corruption, all the stabbing jolts that resulted from contact with an abstraction, and it was all for nothing. 

What else could she have done? What if she held on tighter? What if she pushed herself further? What if she fought Zooble’s grip and let him take her down, too? 

What-if. What-if. What-if. All Pomni can do is ponder the what-ifs. 

She can’t change anything now. Jax left her and everyone else behind and sealed himself away in a cage of abstract darkness. She can visit him in his blanketed tent, yes, but he’s… different. Not the same. Even if he is calmer, even if he is in there, he’s always so far away. Refusing to even look at her. She would ask him if he recognizes her if she could. If he’s okay.

No shit he’s not okay. He’s a shell of his former self, a fragmented memory that’s barely hanging onto its previous form by a frayed thread about to snap. He can’t talk. He can’t leave the tent. He can’t do anything.

Jax is trapped in his own mind and there’s nothing she nor anybody else can do to pull him out. At least not that she knows of. She had tried to re-enter his mind so many times to no avail. None of Caine’s extensive de-abstraction research has proved fruitful. Not even Kinger’s assistance has helped, and everyone knows he wants results more than anyone else in the circus. Nothing’s worked in 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes.Who knows if anything will work in the next 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes.

Pomni’s head is pounding. Her chest is tight. There’s a burning feeling in the back of her throat that swells up behind her eyes and threatens to spill over.

She’s beating herself up. She’s been over this. She shouldn’t beat herself up about it.

…She knows how this goes, though. Everyday and every night she ends up beating herself up about how she should have done more, even if she’s not exactly sure what more could have been. As long as Jax is corralled in that tent, a literal shadow of his former self that looks at her with eyes like an apprehensive animal, she will continue to beat herself up again and again and again and again.

Like right now, on the eve of The Anniversary.

Jax is in the tent. 

Should she go lie down with him…?

No. That would make her feel so much worse. 

Instead, Pomni does what she can bear. She grabs her pillow and hugs it tight, maybe tighter than the moment she lost him. She wouldn’t be surprised if it exploded like he did, only into puffs of cotton instead of brilliant pink beams. She imagines how that hug felt, the moment he finally let her in. It went as quickly as it came and took Jax with it.

She imagines she saves him. 

He comes back to the circus and learns about who he really is. Maybe he takes it well, maybe he doesn’t. But he’d still be here.

She could again feel his facsimile of a heart beating against her own. 

Thmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmphmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmp.

It’s so fast. 

It’s fast because he’s scared.

That’s the only way she’s ever felt it beat.

Why? Why couldn’t he just accept the help that was so often offered to him?

Why’d he have to leave?

She hates him for it.

Pomni rolls onto her side and clutches onto the pillow even tighter, burying her face in the plush to muffle her sobs. 

She cries herself to sleep.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

When Pomni wakes up, it’s still dark. The back of her throat burns.

Water.

She pushes herself off the bed, rubbing her eyes, and blinks away the sleep as she throws the covers off. She’s about to swing her legs over the side of the bed, but pauses in a mixture of horror and curiosity.

There’s someone at the foot of her bed, looming halfway over the board like they’ve been watching her.

Is she dreaming? She blinks once, twice, believing that maybe she’s seeing things and this is a remnant of a nightmare she’s unaware she was having.

Refocusing, she realizes they’re still there.

“Is this a…prank?” She half-whispers like (a) she’s going to get in trouble for being awake and (b) she knows who this is.

Wait.

She does know who this is.

The shadow has two long ears. Rabbit ears. Eyes that she can see even in the dark with pupils blown out to the point of nearly swallowing up yellow sclera. A pair of pink overalls that look purple in the lighting. A pink glow emits from their chest and dimly illuminates their face, giving away the intruder’s identity.

It’s Jax. 

It’s really him, complete with that stupid cheek-to-cheek grin he wears.

Pomni wills her room's lights on without thinking. She flinches from the sudden change in lighting.

“You’re back?!” She half-exclaims and half-questions. She launches herself off the bed and onto him in a burst of eager excitement. She has to make sure he’s real and not a figment of her imagination.

Pomni’s normally not so fond of touch, and she’s always made an effort to provide the same consideration for others’ personal space, but she can't help herself in the heat of the moment. She lands on him in a tackle-hug and squeezes – he’s tangible. He’s real and he’s here and he’s better. She doesn’t know how but he’s here in one unabstracted piece and that’s all that matters.

“You’re really back!” And she hugs him tighter.

He doesn’t answer.

“You-you’re okay!” She exclaims through tears that begin to brim over her eyes. She buries her face into the crook of his neck, prodding for a response, any response.

Still no answer.

Pomni pushes herself off him, each hand firmly gripping either side of his shoulders. She gives him a little shake and he gives off a cartoonish rattling noise, like an empty tin can with coins inside. 

“Jax?”

He blinks at her, quizzically arches an eyebrow, and tilts his head as if to say yeah? without actually saying anything.

“Are you…are you doing a bit? You came back and…you’re doing a bit?” Pomni poses the question like she’s begging him to say yes. 

He’s an asshole. Of course he’s doing a bit after coming back from basically dying. He’s an asshole and this is a bit. Yes, this is a bit, an act. Classic Jax!

But he shakes his head, no. 

She lets go of him and falls back on the bed. Something’s wrong. He’s sick or something. Maybe this is a side effect of the abstraction? They can go get Caine. Caine can fix him in this state, for sure. Unless…

The tent. She has to check the tent.

She has a feeling it won't be empty. He could still be in there.

Which means this thing would be…

Pomni’s heart sinks to her stomach. It’s that same feeling as when you’d trip on your own feet right before crossing the finish line in a race. So close. So far.

“Wh-what…how did you…did Caine…do something? Did he bring you back?” She mutters, slumping over. She wants to believe that could be true. Caine brought himself back from deletion after all. Maybe this was a surprise? Maybe his research produced results after all?

...No, everything is too off. Even now, as mellowed out as the ex-ringmaster is, he wouldn't waste the opportunity to show off an accomplishment of his. But would he sneak a de-abstracted Jax into Pomni’s room? On the eve of The Anniversary, no less?

Pomni continues to struggle to gather her bearings. This just feels like a poor, but well-intentioned, attempt to cheer her up. It’s gotta be a case of Caine not understanding that copy-pasting a late friend isn’t appropriate for the anniversary of their death. They’d all blow up at him. He’d apologize and then make things worse by popping this thing into confetti. They’d laugh about it later and let the trauma of it all roll right off their backs.

Right?

As if to answer her racing thoughts about how he could have materialized in her room, Maybe-Jax crawls over to Pomni, propping himself up on the plush comforter with the palms of his hands. Slowly, as though he too just realized how he got here himself, he lifts a gloved hand up to Pomni’s chest, and gingerly taps the left side with an accusatory pointed finger. Her heart.

Pomni’s cheeks burn at the contact. It’s like it’s really him. Only…it’s not. Even if it all feels so real.

But then he gives a soft smile. It reaches his eyes, too, a vulnerability real Jax never allowed himself to indulge in. All those phony smiles that made up his mask, spread so far yet failing to reveal any signs of real joy. She knows them well, and this one’s too soft, too genuine. 

The jester wilts. “I couldn’t have-”

Knock knock knock!

Pomni scares so badly that she bangs her head on her wooden headboard, creating more of a ruckus than she already had up to this point. She had definitely gotten too loud when she saw this…thing on her bed a few moments ago.

“Pomni? I heard shouting, and at this hour, well…I don’t want to assume the gloinks got out again, but you know, haha.”

Ragatha. Shit.

Pomni feels panic setting in. Ragatha’s such an understanding person, she’s not really sure why she’s starting to freak out. This just feels so unreal and wrong it’s inherently anxiety-inducing, and the way Not-Jax is looking at her is making her want to crawl out of her own skin.

“Um…Pomni?” She knocks again. The door creaks, telling Pomni that Ragatha’s put an ear up against it. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah! Just had a, uh, nightmare!” She fumbles over her words and tries to mask the abject horror in her voice. “Sorry, I’m going back to bed now!” And she falls flat on the mattress, tugging the sheets over her head as if to also convince herself she’s telling the truth. She struggles to get them over her giant head with “Jax” planted firmly across from her at the end of the bed and settles on having the sheets pulled up to her eyes.

“Uh, okay!” Ragatha answers, giving pause only to question the tremble in her friend’s tone. “You sound a little sniffly, maybe I could bring you some tea or water-”

“That'sokayI’mgoingtobednowthanksgoodnight!” The words fly off her tongue faster than she can process she’s uttered them. 

“Oh. Um. Alright!”

Ragatha must have taken the hint, because Pomni hears the faint turning of a doorknob down the hall and the click of a door being open and shut. Was it so obvious she had been crying? There’s no way Ragatha didn’t suspect Pomni was struggling on the eve of the Anniversary. Either way, Pomni could relax a little knowing it was just her and…”Jax”, now.

…No, that won’t work either.

She’s not in the right headspace to have a carbon-copy of her dead friend staring through her all night. Just there, right across from her. 

“Nope!” 

She hops off the bed, gathers her blankets in the crook of one of her arms, and grabs Not-Jax’s wrist in her other. She shivers a little at the contact and realizes this lanky arm she’d grabbed onto doesn’t feel quite right. It feels too smooth, too artificial. She swears she felt a layer of fur when Jax last hugged her. Right before he-

“Nopenopenopenope, I can’t deal with this right now!” She whisper-shouts to herself. Maybe recognizing the fact verbally would make this easier to comprehend.

She takes Not-Jax to the corner of her room diagonal to her bed, and he hobbles on over without protesting her lead. She plants the tangle of lanky limbs firmly in place and pats his shoulders as if to bolt him down to the floor. Her next objective is to get him to stop staring at her, and so she turns him around to face the wall.

No dice. Not-Jax cranes his neck around so he’s still peeking at her, only from the corner of his eye now. Goddamnit, that’s way creepier. Pomni grumbles her discomfort and directs his head away from her this time, to no avail. It swivels back over, like an owl’s. 

She didn’t want to do this, it feels so dehumanizing, but she’s out of options. She just needs some shut eye. Maybe if she gets some sleep this will all go away. She’s hallucinating in her grief or something, she’s just having a hard time. That’s it. Yes, that’s all.

She hesitates a little before what she was planning to do next, then sighs and throws her striped comforter over Not-Jax. He looks like a cloth stalagmite protruding from her carpet, but it’s as good enough of a solution as any.

“There,” Pomni proclaims the same way she would after lugging a piece of furniture up several flights of stairs. Only in this case she’s emotionally drained rather than physically drained.

She’s going to go to sleep now. And when she wakes up, she’ll be under her blankets, and it’ll be gone. She’ll breathe a sigh of relief that everything is back to normal. Ragatha won’t remember visiting her in the middle of the night. This never happened.

The jester tries to have confidence in her self-assurance that she just needs rest. Turning the lights in her room off with the snap of her fingers, she crawls back into her blanket-less bed, lies on her back, and neatly folds her hands over her stomach. She’s positioned like a corpse in a coffin, and she feels just as cold without her covers.

Even as she attempts to keep her eyes locked on the ceiling, counting the glow-in-the-dark stars to try and lull herself to sleep despite it all, she can still see the faint, pink glow from across the room. 

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Morning comes too soon.

Pomni didn’t have enough time to really contend with what happened in the middle of the night. She could barely spare the energy to acknowledge the dread she felt when she saw that, no, the Jax-stalactite she erected in the corner did not disappear overnight. That was all very, very real.

Still, she managed to drag herself out of bed and show up to breakfast, even if being greeted with the red X on Jax’s door outside her room did nothing to calm her racing mind. What else was she supposed to do? It’s not like she had time to prepare herself for this situation. If she didn’t show up, everybody would be able to tell something was wrong, especially on a day like today. Then they’d show up at her door.

What would they think? Would they also freak out? Would Caine…get rid of the problem again? 

Shove it down.

She sort of blanked, and now finds herself seated at the dining table with everyone else. Apparently she made small talk with the others, too, and well enough that nothing seemed off. The only thing she can’t fake at the moment is an appetite, and so she pokes at her pixelated pancakes with her fork. She doesn’t recall being served to begin with but she needs to keep it together. For now, at least.

…How can she, though, with Jax’s tent beckoning her over from where she sits? Does it really have to be so close? It’s just a few feet away. He’s just a few feet away.

Stop staring at it.

…She should check.

No! 

How could she not tell if it’s him?

…It’s not him.

It’s not.

…But she could still take a peek…

Pomni looks down. Plays with her food. Doesn’t eat any of it. Kicks her feet. Waits for breakfast to be over. Wants to go back to her room. Wants to curl up into a ball until the day is over. Wants to ignore the false Jax in her room until it goes away.

“Pomni?”

She’s brought back to her senses. “Huh-yeah?”

Zooble gives the jester a concerned look. They can tell today is going to be extra hard for her, because Zooble can just read people like that. 

“I know this is a stupid question, but are you feeling okay?”

Pomni pauses in a way that screams noooooooo but gives Zooble a thumbs-up anyways. “Yep, doing alright! It’s just…a big day, you know?”

Zooble lets their own fork clatter onto their plate. “I know. Remember, you can talk to us.”

I know, I just don’t want to.

“Thanks, Zooble,” and Pomni goes back to prodding at her food even though she doesn’t plan to eat any of it.

Pomni can feel Ragatha share a worried glance with Zooble. They’ve become quite the tag team when it comes to sniffing out others’ troubles and having them talk it out. They’ll probably intervene on her day of wallowing later.

Pomni had so far managed to tune out the sounds of Caine scarfing down his own plate (which she’s gotten pretty good at, because pondering on how his food gets around his eyeballs isn’t something she likes to think about). What she can’t ignore is his exaggerated throat-clearing once’s finished, clearly leading into an announcement. It’s proven to be one of the habits from his ringmaster days that he still can’t let go of.

“SO-” He starts loudly, then quickly corrects his volume when the others, save Kinger, glare at him like he should know how to conduct himself. 

“So, as you all know, today is-”

“The Anniversary,” Pomni interrupts. “I think we can all agree it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

She’s left the rest of the table utterly confused. Again, save for Kinger, who forgot to wear his bucket on his way out of his pillow fort.

Ragatha starts with an airiness to her voice that signals she’s considering her words more carefully than she usually does. “Um…Pomni, you really don’t have to-”

“No, I mean, Jax is right there, right guys?” Pomni points at the tent. She’s trying everything in her power not to break. “Sooooo…he’s still here. We didn’t have a funeral for him either.”

Caine looks horrified because he didn’t consider asking if they wanted to have one last year. “Did you…want to have one…?”

“Caine!” Ragatha chides him.

“Sorry,” he mutters under his breath, and shuts his gums. He’s still not well equipped enough to handle this kind of conversation, it seems.

“Pomni, we know today is especially rough for you. We’re here for you. You don’t have to act like today is like any other. I think we’re all feeling…a way. About today.”

She feels a plush hand on her back. Strike one.

“Yeah,” Zooble chimes in. “We’ve got you.”

A plastic claw pats her on the shoulder. Strike two.

Even Gangle adds, “No matter how you feel.”

A flimsy ribbon curls around the crook of her arm. Strike three.

Nope. She can’t act like nothing’s wrong. She just can’t.

“There’s something in my room I need to show you guys. Right. Now.” Pomni admits, getting up from her chair and pushing away from the table. That secret didn’t last very long at all.

The others react about how she expected them to, with many raised eyebrows and quizzical looks. They still follow Pomni, no questions asked as she leaves the table without further explanation, heading straight for her room. Her silence serves as an open invitation for anybody to follow.

(Everybody follows, of course. Even Kinger, because while he’s not sure why everybody is going in the same direction he wants to know what the fuss is about.)

Now at her door, Pomni is suddenly very hesitant to turn the knob despite her brazen, matter-of-fact attitude just moments ago. She’s got everybody huddled around her in a wreath-like formation, too, making her feel trapped. She can’t back out now.

She turns the doorknob and pushes it open.

The oddly-Jax-shaped lump is still under the sheet she laid over it. He stands eerily still, not even idly swaying like a real person would. His feet poke out of the bottom of the sheet, though, a dead giveaway that this is Jax. A copy of him, anyways.

The others don’t seem to notice right away, though. It just looks like there’s a blanket-spire in the corner of her room. 

“Uh, Pomni, what did you want to show us, exactly?” Ragatha asks. “This…thing?” She’s careful about her tone, as always, even if she is more relaxed with expressing more negative emotions nowadays.

Wordlessly, Pomni plods over and pulls the sheet off Not-Jax without warning. It’s like ripping a bandaid off. It’s a fast, painful motion that reveals something underneath that probably should have been kept hidden.

Gangle shrieks.

Several of Zooble’s parts fall out of their sockets in shock, clattering to the floor.

Caine gasps dramatically in a way that feels half-genuine and half-theatrical.

Ragatha goes quiet, but Pomni notices her hand reach for Kinger’s instinctively.

For a few seconds, nobody dares to interrupt the oppressive silence. It’s just them and Pomni and Jax. Not-Jax, that is. A sort-of-dead friend standing in the middle of the room, close-enough to the real thing, wearing a wide smile and staring right through them with pupils devoid of any sign of life. The anomaly is separated only by the divide between the hallway and Pomni’s room.

“Caine. Did you do this.” Pomni doesn’t ask. She accuses. She’s been marinating in her own uncertainty and anxiety for enough time at this point that she's begun to believe it’s just like him to spawn in the likeness of her late friend to cheer her up. As a surprise no less! All his progress in understanding the humans trapped here be damned.

Gobsmacked, Caine looks even smaller than he already is once he realizes Pomni’s insinuating he had something to do with this. He holds his hands out as if to protect himself. “No, no-no-no-no, I wouldn’t do something like this! N-not anymore!”

Pomni stands firm, still unsure. She taps her foot, expecting further explanation, and the others await his rebuttal.

“I-I admit I maybe had an extensive list of events and activities for team-building and processing human-grief planned for today-”

Pomni groans, “Caine!”

“-that you all could CHOOSE from, but I swear, this wasn’t on there!” Caine is impressively bad at hiding how he truly feels about anything, so Pomni has to cut him some slack. He’s probably telling the truth.

But she can’t think of anybody else who would be cruel enough to do this. Stumped, Pomni turns and stares at Not-Jax like he’s a statue on display in a museum. He’s a piece of abstract art she can’t quite figure out, so mysterious it’s unnerving her.

Not-Jax’s eyes glance over at her, sending her heart somersaulting in a bad way.

“Then who?” She asks, fed up. “How did this even happen? He just…showed up last night!”

Ragatha perks up. “That’s what all that noise was? Pomni, you know you could have told-”

“I wasn’t ready!” The jester exclaims more harshly than she would have liked to, harsh enough to surprise the others. She clears her throat and corrects herself. Ragatha’s just trying to be kind. To help. 

“I wasn’t ready,” Pomni repeats herself, calmer this time, and hugs her arms as she turns away from the others. She’s never been so temperamental with them before. It’s making her feel ashamed.

After a few seconds of quiet discomfort, Caine takes a step forward towards Not-Jax. He observes the copy for a moment, taking in everything that it is. It’s an echo of one of his former circus members. It’s scarily accurate, especially given that Kinger is the only person here who has more than a year of experience conjuring. Caine himself relied on his brother so heavily for his asset-creation, he had to recuperate his skills from the ground up.

So this has to be the work of someone with a very, very intense desire.

“Pomni, I think you might have…done this,” he says hesitantly.

Pomni stares at him in disbelief. She takes a couple steps back, the accusation now pointed back at her like the barrel of a loaded shotgun aimed right at her heart. “Me?”

Caine nods his denture-head. “You knew him pretty well, and it’s not like you haven’t tried conjuring NPCs before, so if you want, I can get rid of him-”

“Don’t-!” Pomni snaps. She doesn’t want to think about the Gummigoo incident. He came back all wrong, so wrong, they had to get rid of him the quickest way they could, and the whole thing only reopened a wound for her. So much confetti. She didn’t look at or speak to Caine for a week after that. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“Right, sorry,” Caine apologizes and shoots a nervous glance at the others, who encourage him to keep talking by waving him over at her. This is his responsibility to bear, after all. He had previously made this place so suffocatingly frustrating to live in, it’s no wonder so many people have abstracted. It’s just that he’s only now learning there’s consequences to the harm he’s done, consequences that affect not just the abstracted, but those who knew them, as well.

Caine gulps down his unease. 

“I think we’ll have to wait for this…copy…to dematerialize on its own, then. It’ll probably take some time, but eventually the data used to make it might be recycled elsewhere,” He takes his top hat off and holds it to his chest, a genuine show of apology and remorse. “It’s hard to say, but it’s all I can really offer as a more…humane…solution.

Pomni shakily exhales the breath she’d been holding in. She turns away from everyone again, shutting them out like she’s never done before. It’s not healthy, she knows it’s not. She just can’t deal with them all at once right now.

“I need some time alone. I’ll watch him.”

The others don’t utter another word, instead offering silent understanding. One by one, they shuffle away from her room, until someone shuts her door gently so she’s left with only her thoughts and Not-Jax. 

She allows herself to look at him. Not-Jax is still staring at her. He grins even wider, if that was possible, as if to invite her to be just as happy as he is. Isn’t this what she wanted?

This is going to be a very long day.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Pomni could only stew in her dread for so long before an idea crossed her mind. Staying cooped up in her room all day with the Jax-husk wasn’t going to do her mental wellbeing any good, she has the common sense to know that. Historically, talking these things out is better than keeping them bottled up, and there is somebody in the circus who she thinks might be able to help calm her nerves.

She anxiously hurried herself over to Kinger’s pillow fort, Not-Jax in tow. It’s more trouble lugging the fake around than if she just went alone, for sure, but she honestly can’t bear to leave “Jax” behind. Not again. It just…looks so much like him.

So with the husk at her side, she stands before the pile of cushions arranged into an igloo formation. Fortunately, ever since Caine decoupled from his brother, Kinger’s mind seems to clear up much faster than before. At this point, he should have been in the darkness of his fort long enough that he’s well and lucid. He might even be sensible enough to talk some sense into her.

She clears her throat, glancing nervously back at Not-Jax, who waits patiently behind her with that eerie smile still plastered over his face, arms hanging limply at his sides.

Eugh.

“Hey, Kinger? Do you have a second?”

There’s some shuffling from within the fort. The pillow-door flies open, revealing Kinger sat hunched over his computer. There looks to be about a dozen tabs open on the monitor filled with code she doesn’t understand. He’s hard at work and definitely in his right mind. Good.

“Morning, Pomni!” He greets her in a gentle tone. “I was just working on coding that new world we were brainstorming. What brings you on by?”

The jester sheepishly rubs the back of her neck. She steps aside without a word and nods her head over at Not-Jax, who’s standing a few feet away. “I thought we could talk about…it.”

Kinger’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Right! I’m sorry, it’s coming back to me now. I got so swept up in this project-”

“No worries,” Pomni reassures him. “I shouldn’t have come on short notice. I know it still takes you some time to remember things, but you were the first person I thought of to talk to about…you know,” and she gestures to all of Not-Jax.

A look of realization crosses Kinger’s face as he comes to understand what Pomni’s getting at. His eyes soften with understanding and he beckons her in with his gloved hand. “Come on in. You can bring him, too.”

Pomni lets out the breath she’d been holding in. “Thank you, Kinger.”

She tugs at Not-Jax’s hand and leads him into the pillow fort. It’s pretty cramped with all three of them and a colossal computer console inside, but they make it work. Not-Jax, who’s bent forward at a near-90 degree angle, doesn’t particularly seem bothered by the close quarters, either. Pomni isn’t exactly certain he has the capacity to be bothered, anyway.

Kinger gets straight to the point. “Rough day already, huh?”

Pomni’s eyes brim with tears. It’s so easy to lay everything bare in Kinger’s presence. She misses her parents so much, but Kinger’s been as good of a father figure as she could wish for in the circus, and probably the closest person she’ll have to one ever again, so it’s hard not to let herself be vulnerable in his presence. She knows she has to.

She sniffles and fights the breakage in her voice. “Yeah!” She half-chuckles, half-cries, unable to fight off the smile creeping up on her that contrasts her tears. “It’s just, this is all so absurd, and you’ve been here the longest out of any of us, I thought that maybe…maybe you’d have experience with something like this.”

“With…?”

“With…conjuring someone up again.” She feels guilty for saying it, for bringing Queenie into this.

“Ah,” Kinger closes his eyes and nods like he understands immediately, putting Pomni’s concerns about a negative reaction to rest. She shouldn’t have expected anything less, really. It’s Kinger.

“Pomni,” he starts, “I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never seen another one of us bring someone back like this.”

“Oh,” she can’t hide the disappointment in her tone. She was hoping her hunch was correct, that he too had been so deep in the throes of grief he would conjure up a copy of his wife. It’d make her feel less conflicted about this, at least, if she wasn’t the only one. “Well, I’m sorry I assumed-”

“But that doesn’t mean I never thought about it.”

“Huh? Really?”

Her interest re-piqued, Pomni leans in closer to hear what Kinger has to say. Not-Jax leans in, too, as if to mimic her behavior, his face right next to hers. Pomni can feel his breath on her cheek and now he’s too real again. She squirms away from him a little bit and hopes Kinger didn’t notice.

“Sure I did. I spent so much time alone, it became hard not to think about it. I mean, I knew how to do it, after all. I just couldn’t bring myself to. I didn't know if I'd feel better or worse after seeing her face again.”

Pomni shrinks in on herself. She definitely feels worse right now.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to decide.” Kinger gingerly places a hand on Pomni’s shoulder, rubbing soft circles into her shoulder blade with his thumb. 

She sniffs and wipes away her tears, patting his hand. “It’s not your fault. It’s my idiot brain’s fault.”

“Oh?”

She sighs and glances at Jax’s copy from the corner of her eye. He’s still stuck craning his neck over to engage in the discussion. “I think about him more than I’d like to admit. I don’t know if it’s noticeable. I try not to,” she admits. “I just can’t help it. I miss him alot.”

“I know the feeling,” Kinger assures her in a hushed tone. He’s grown quieter than Pomni’s ever heard him speak. “Still do.”

Pomni feels silly for any hint of doubt she had that Kinger would understand. Of course he would understand, how couldn’t he? He’s grieved more people for longer than anybody else still standing in the circus. “Is it…normal to feel angry and sad at the same time? Mad that he left but sad that he’s gone.”

“Well, I certainly felt my own mix of emotions back then,” He looks down, like he’s thinking of something shameful. She can’t imagine level-headed Kinger teeming with anger or bursting into tears, at least not the Kinger she knows. 

“Just know that you’re allowed to feel whatever you’re feeling, Pomni. Especially considering…your situation,” he nods over at Not-Jax and chuckles.

She can’t help but giggle, nervously, too. “This whole thing is absurd, isn’t it? It looks exactly like him.”

Kinger ponders for a moment, then snaps his fingers in revelation. “Why don’t you give him his own name? It might help you mentally separate the two.”

Give the copy a name? Pomni considers the suggestion. It feels sort of wrong, re-naming this carbon copy of Jax. What would she even name it? Anything other than “Jax” feels disrespectful, but then again she can also imagine Jax in her ear telling her to name him something ridiculous like Gertslaw or Poiloy. So she thinks of a name…

“Um…Ajax?” She cringes at the name she’s thrown out there. It’s a real name, sure, but it’s so basic. “No, that’s not good enough-”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, Pomni,” Kinger reminds her. 

They both look over at Not-Jax, who’s been staring at the two of them from his own corner of the pillowfort this entire time, eyes darting between them like he’s actually taking in what they’re saying. If Pomni hadn’t already surmised he can’t talk, she’d have expected him to join the conversation with his usual snark by now.

Pomni, that’s so lame! All you did was put an “A” before my name. Is that really the best you can come up with?

Okay, what would you suggest, since you’re so sure you have a better idea?

…Ajax!

That was my suggestion!

Yeah, but I suggested it this time, and this thing looks like me. Logically, I get to decide what to name it.

And Pomni would bat at his shoulder playfully. And they’d both laugh and laugh at the absurdity of two Jaxes in the room, only one’s less braindead than the other.

“Ajax it is.”

Kinger exhales as if he’s been holding his breath this entire time. Pomni understands. Abstraction isn’t an easy topic of discussion. For her, the wound is fresh. For Kinger, it’s scarred over, but opened every time it’s brought up. 

She can sense the tension’s melted away, and decides it’s probably time to leave. She wouldn’t want to leave Kinger to dwell on any resurfaced memories, so it’s best she drags Ajax out of here.

“Well, I’ll get going, Kinger. Thanks for lending me an ear.”

“No worries, Pomni! Remember, you can talk to any of us, okay?”

She knows that. That’s not the problem.

“Of course, Kinger. Thanks.”

She bids Kinger goodbye with a wave and hurries out of the pillowfort, stepping out of the cozy darkness and back into the blinding neon circus. She sometimes forgets how nauseatingly bright everything is in here.

“Come on, Ajax,” she hesitates to say the name, fearing that it’ll make her grow attached.

Evidently, it’s too late to worry about that. As if acting on its own, her body has directed her to take Ajax’s hand, fingers firmly clasped around his palm. She tugs at his arm to follow her, pulling the husk along to the café for a bite.

His hand in hers feels just like she remembers.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Pomni fights her anxieties and makes her way to the cafe, leading Ajax to the lounge just below. She skipped breakfast, and as unable as she is to feel real hunger her brain is telling her that she’s hungry. She’ll grab a snack just to tell it to shut up.

Stopping in front of one of the couches, the purple couch, Jax’s purple couch, she pushes Ajax’s shoulders down so he’s seated firmly. He looks up at her, pupils shrunken down to a less-eerie state, still grinning wide. Maybe this thing’s programming senses Pomni’s put off by his unwavering smile, because as soon as she presses her mouth together in unease he drops the giddy expression for a deadpan one.

God, this is so odd, seeing “Jax” sitting here again. The couch has rarely been sat on since the incident. Pomni sometimes wipes the dust off and indulges herself, feeling comforted knowing she’s lying where he once did, but it’s still very weird to see his effigy sitting there. It’s so wrong. It’s creepy.

She takes a step back to see if getting the whole picture will make anything better, and it does. A little bit. It removes her from the immediate situation, and it’s kind of like she’s looking at a snapshot of a time before now. Jax is sitting on the couch and looking out at her, behind a camera. 

Pomni can’t help but smile softly.

She’s pulled away from the moment when she hears an undulating drone from…the tent nearby. That’s right.

She drops her smile and shakes off her delusion, walking back up to Ajax. “I’ll be right back. I don’t think it’d be a very good idea to bring you up with me. Gangle’s usually up there drawing after breakfast.”

There’s no response from Ajax. He just keeps staring into her eyes with that petrifying gaze of his. Pomni hesitantly grabs his chin with her thumb and forefinger, gently moving his head in a nodding motion.

Oh yeah, Pomni, I’ll stay right here.

He’d say it in a way that told her he’d be doing anything but.

Pomni chuckles under her breath then catches herself. Her face grows hot.

“Get it together,” she chides herself, then leaves Ajax without another word.

The spiral staircase to the cafe takes forever to climb, but once she’s at the top she takes a peek inside to see if Gangle really is there. Sure enough, she’s seated at one of the booths, papers strewn about and pencils all over the table. She’s in her sketching groove and nods her head along to music playing from a pair of cat-eared headphones.

Not wanting to catch her off guard (Gangle always freaks out when someone catches her drawing), Pomni knocks loud enough on the cafe wall so Gangle can hear.

Gangle perks up, dropping her pencil and sliding the headphones off her mask. “Hello?”

Pomni waves from the door. “Hey, Gangle!”

“Oh, Pomni!” Gangle rises from her seat. “You come by to grab a snack? You didn’t really eat anything earlier.”

“Read me like an open book, haha!” Pomni points finger guns at Gangle. It’s always been so awkward between the two of them. Things have gotten a little easier in the past year, but she’d be lying if she said she was particularly close to Gangle, even now. They’ve just barely made it past the small-talk stage. More than acquaintances, not quite friends.

As Pomni walks over to the cafe counter, eager to think of what she wants from the menu to materialize before her, Gangle puts forth a suggestion.

“Well, if you’ve got nothing else to do, wanna sit and draw with me?”

Pomni’s a little surprised. Gangle usually prefers to spend her alone time, well, alone. Maybe she feels it’s the polite thing to do given the day.

“Ah, no, I’m no good at drawing-”

“You don’t have to be good at it. It can be relaxing even if you’re not! Let’s draw together.”

Pomni looks to the side like she’s in trouble, staring at the Cafe’s entrance. It begs her to get out of there and back downstairs. She’s getting anxious about leaving Ajax down there by himself. Gangle doesn’t mention him, and Pomni knows it’s the considerate choice not to mention him, not around Gangle. 

Since Gangle’s being so insistent, it’d be rude to say no, she thinks. “You know what, sure,” and she seats herself in the vinyl booth next to Gangle. 

The papers she’d been scribbling on make no sense to Pomni. They’re a jumble of boxes and crude sketches that resemble stick figures with basic expressions. “What are you working on, anyways?”

Gangle’s face lights up. She always gets so excited to talk about her projects, given she’s the one inviting the company in. “My webcomic! I figured since I’m out there working on it, I should see it through here, too. It’s just thumbnailing, but progress is going good! Zooble offered to do backgrounds, and…”

Gangle goes off on her rambling that Pomni knew she would when prodded about her passion. It’s admirable, she thinks, to care about something so deeply here. Everything’s going to cease to exist here, eventually, so Pomni hadn’t put much effort into creating anything long-term in the past year. Not that she had many creative hobbies to begin with. Urban exploration was her main interest, and creating buildings to explore isn’t as enjoyable as finding ones that existed already and uncovering their past by just digging around.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah!” Pomni lies. It seems Gangle caught her zoning out.

“You looked like you were thinking about something else.”

“I-I’m just feeling a little weak from not eating. I should grab my food and go.”

“Really? Pomni, we don’t really feel hunger like that, you know.”

She wishes she wasn’t such a shit liar.

The jester groans, clawing her hands down her face and plopping her chin down on the table, sending some of Gangle’s drawings flying over the surface. “I’m sorry. I’m just feeling a lot of stuff today.”

A worried look crosses Gangle’s mask. “Because of Jax, right?”

Pomni turns to Gangle, shocked that she’d bring him up first. “Well, yeah. I didn’t mean to make him a part of our talk.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t know if you’d be okay talking about this morning, actually. But it’s okay to talk about it. About Jax.”

“I just feel so…upset. Angry. Weirded out that there’s a clone of him here for some reason. I didn’t think I’d feel so strongly to conjure one up. I know it’s not right.” She hesitates before uttering,”And it’s not fair to you, Gangle.”

Gangle rubs her chin in thought with her ribbon-hand. “I mean, it was subconscious, right? It’s not like you meant to. It’s okay.”

She’s too nice, Pomni thinks. She remembers how snappy Gangle got all that time ago in Spudsy’s and finds it difficult to believe this Gangle is the same person.

“Losing Kaufmo was rough for me. I didn’t know we could make stuff back then, so I’m not sure if I’d have felt strongly enough or not to make a copy of him, but I know if I did Ragatha wouldn’t get mad at me. Or Kinger.”

Pomni narrows her eyes in uncertainty. She’s a brick wall, letting Gangle’s reassurances hit her and bounce right off. She doesn’t really know Gangle well enough to absorb anything she’s saying, as true as her words might be. Logically, Pomni knows they are. How could she predict she’d conjure up a clone overnight?

“And I feel a little sad today, too. Even if he was…mean to me.”

“He was awful to you,” Pomni interjects, then wishes she could stuff those words back into her mouth.

Luckily, Gangle just hums. “Yeah…I don’t know. It’s a complicated feeling to explain.”

Pomni doesn’t know how it could be complicated. Gangle clearly feels safer without Jax around, and she’s right to feel that way. There’s probably a discussion she should have had with Gangle between then and now so she could better understand what was going on between them. Zooble probably knows.

What she does know is that she feels bad about feeling worse now, in Jax’s absence, than when he was here. He seemed to cause everyone else so much misery she should feel just fine, glad even. So why does she want him to come back? Would she be able to get him to change his ways? Apologize? What amount of apologizing could undo the hurt he constantly inflicted on everyone, especially Gangle who’s sitting right next to her?

…Why is she so goddamn miserable? So irrational? Why isn’t she happier?

“Pomni? You’re, uh, zoning out again.”

Pomni abruptly slaps herself, causing Gangle to jump back in her seat. She leaves a comedically bright red mark on her cheek.

“Pomni?!”

“Ugh, sorry. I needed that,” and the jester shakes her whole body down as if she’s shaking off fleas. Annoying little fleas that make her feel guilty instead of itchy.

“Maybe you do need to eat something.”

Pomni sees Gangle’s suggestion as an out. “You’re right. I think I’ll take it to go,” and she gets up to leave.

“Wait! Pomni, I made you something.”

“Huh? What for?”

“For today, silly,” Gangle gives her an apologetic look. 

“Oh.”

She sorts through her papers with her flimsy ribbon hands, then pulls a sheet from below several others. “Here,” she offers the paper up to Pomni. “I always make art for the occasion, but we didn’t have a proper funeral.”

Pomni carefully takes it in her hands. It’s a pencil drawing of Jax and Pomni, standing side by side as if posing for a picture. The gentle crosshatching makes the drawing look almost 3D, like a portrait sketched from life.

“It’s a little more personal than the mural,” Gangle adds. “You can do whatever you want with it, but I thought you’d like to have it.”

“Gangle,” Pomni is trying her hardest to fight back tears, stunned by the thoughtful gift. “Gangle, it’s amazing,” she squeaks out as she involuntarily wrinkles the paper with her unsteady hands. “Thank you.”

Gangle just nods towards the cafe entrance and gives Pomni a soft smile, signalling she'd be okay to leave if she needs to. 

Before she heads out, Pomni swipes two croissants from the cafe counter. She has a skip in her step as she heads down, thinking about how she can show her gratitude to Gangle in the future. Maybe she should gift her a new art set? Or program a world built for a school romance, just for Gangle and Zooble? She’d have to make something as equally as thoughtful.

She’s about halfway down the spiral staircase when she sees something that interrupts her wandering thoughts. Over the railing, she spots Ajax still seated firmly in the position she left him in. Curiously, though, he’s got one ear pointed attentively up at the cafe, and his head turned to real-Jax’s tent. He taps his foot impatiently. Pomni hurries her pace.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Eager to dig into her brunch, Pomni settles herself down on the couch right next to Ajax. Sitting next to Jax’s carbon copy brings her back to that time between their suggestion box adventures and when everything fell apart. They’d spent a lot of time just hanging out back then. Lots of talking. Lots of teasing. Lots of Pomni thinking about how maybe everything was going to be okay, even if she really was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future.

She pauses her reminiscing and leans over to get a better look at Ajax’s face. It’s still unreadable and laser-focused on the tent set-up beyond the lounge. Whatever he’s sensing, whether it’s something inside the tent or the…absence…of something in there, Pomni’s too nervous to check. 

Waving a hand directly in front of his face seems to do the trick. He snaps out of his trance and flits his eyes over to Pomni.

“Hey there,” she greets softly, like she’s meeting a whole new person. She holds out a polygonal croissant to Ajax. “Take one. I grabbed two, uh, in case you wanted one.” Saying it out loud sounds ridiculous. Can this NPC even eat?Still…Pomni can’t help but play pretend in little ways today. She gives the croissant a little shake to try and encourage him to take it. He doesn’t, and instead just stares at her like she’s stupid.

…She’s not sure what she was expecting.

I could have gotten it myself, you know.

So? Just take it. 

Oh yeah, I forgot it’s serious work for you to go up all those stairs with those little legs of yours. I guess I will take it. Thanks, Pom!

Oh, har-har. Shut up.

She’d punch him in the shoulder and laugh. 

Pomni grumbles out her dissatisfaction with Ajax’s reaction.

“Haha, hey! You don’t want it?” She continues to wave the pastry around in front of him, like that’ll entice him to take it. She nudges it at the corner of his mouth, exposing his teeth a little. Could she just…feed it to him? If she could shove some food into his mouth and help him chew, then it’d feel a little more real-

Pomni stops when she fully realizes what she’s doing. She suddenly feels very exposed. Anybody could see, and the others are already so obviously concerned for her. Trying to make believe wouldn’t be doing her any favors towards convincing the others that she’s moving on.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes even though she’s not sure he’s listening to her. She lets the croissant fall to the floor, having lost any desire to eat at all.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆

By the afternoon, Pomni’s really feeling the effects of staying cooped up inside for the past couple of days. Her stir-craziness has only been worsened by Ajax popping up. It feels like she’s stuck between the past and the present, unable to move forward. She decides she desperately needs some fresh air to clear her head and bring her back to her senses.

When she steps outside the tent, Ajax behind her, she finds the grounds have been blanketed in spotty snow under the blazing sun. Somebody’s gotten experimental with weather conjuring, it seems. Not that she’s complaining. The chill of the snow blanket coupled with the pleasant warmth of the sun is refreshing. She takes a deep breath of cool air, trying to convince herself the rush of cold will reset her brain. She closes her eyes and imagines she’s back in St.Louis, sitting on her porch and enjoying the crisp air of the snowy season.

“Hey, stupid! Didja forget how to breathe or something? I can make you quit breathing altogether if you’d like! I’ll melt all your skin off!”

The Sun starts screaming threats at Pomni, and she’s right back in the circus. Caine never did get around to reeling in her more violent tendencies. Maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he can’t anymore. Either way, it does feel kinda wrong to mess with her mind since she’s about as sentient as the Moon. Pomni ignores the Sun’s rambling and makes her way through the hills that surround the circus tent.

“Come on,” she waves Ajax over as she hops down a grassy ledge. The copy follows her without protest. She’s still not sure if he can think for himself, but she allows herself to believe she’s actually guiding him and he’s not just programmed to follow her around.

The further they get from the tent, the heavier the snow blanket becomes, sparkling under the (still screaming) Sun. It’s pretty, Pomni thinks, even if it’s not real. A smooth, fluffy expanse of glittering white. It’ll be nice to have a guaranteed snow day around Christmas again.

The thought is nice until she realizes she’s thinking about living long-term in the circus again. She gave up the idea of leaving so long ago, but she still feels immense distress when she thinks about how long she might be stuck here. Maybe forever. It gets harder every day to believe Kinger’s praises about her quick adjustment to life here.

She feels someone’s hip bump her shoulder roughly. It’s Ajax, who else, who ran into her as she abruptly stopped in her tracks while lost in thought.

“Sorry,” she apologizes out of habit. “Come here, there’s a grove with a hammock we can sit down in.” She takes his hand, not caring about putting a boundary up between the clone and herself anymore. She tried to hand feed him for Christ’s sake, this couldn’t possibly get weirder. 

But it does, because in the assumedly empty hammock lies Zooble, lazing away between two trees with a leg swung over the side of the netting. They perk up at the commotion, their eyes widening when they see Pomni clasping Ajax’s hand like a lifeline.

“Woah, uh, hey there,” Zooble greets her, trying to downplay their shock. “You brought him with you out here?”

Pomni yanks her hand away from Ajax’s. “Haha, yeah, he doesn’t really follow so I have to…drag him around.” A lie to save face. Pomni’s not sure it’s convincing, Zooble’s eyes tell all and what they’re telling her right now is that they don’t buy that at all.

“Uh, yeah, alright. Did you come outside for some sun?”

“Oh! Yeah, something like that. Fresh air, you know?” Pomni kicks at the snow, trying to distract herself from the awkward situation she’s walked right into.

“Ah, well, sorry about the snow. Thought it’d be nice. Always did like the cold.”

“Well, I like it too. Hey, I’ll find another place to wind down-”

“Nah, come sit here. Let’s hang, yeah?”

Pomni doesn’t budge. She looks back at the tent, like the sudden offer’s making her want to turn tail and run away back to the circus. 

Zooble seems to catch on. “You don’t have to, though. It’s…a heavy day. I get it.”

Pomni bites her lip. She feels a little embarrassed that she’s failing to practice what she preaches, being there for each other and all that. She just wants to isolate herself, even if she knows it’s not good for her. By the tone of Zooble’s voice, they know that she knows it’s bad, too. It’s like they’re pleading with her to sit and talk.

Zooble stares uneasily at Ajax, who’s still standing idly by. There’s not a single readable emotion behind his eyes, it seems. They can’t get a read on him. Not like they could the real Jax. Zooble found it surprisingly easy to bash down those iron walls. Messing with him was like guessing the plot points to a book they already knew the ending to.

“Come, sit down,” Zooble insists. “Let’s chat. I’m trying to brush up on my conversational skills, anyway. Installing that mini-bar made me realize how rusty I’d gotten.”

Pomni chuckles. “You really got in over your head with that bartender-rush challenge, huh?”

“Are you kidding me? I couldn’t keep up with the amount of NPCs Kinger and Caine conjured up. Brought me right back to Saturday nights at one of my old gigs.”

The two laugh at the still-fresh memory from a couple of weeks ago. Caine letting go of the reins did give everyone the opportunity to explore the mundane more often, but there was always the usual dash of absurdity that comes with being stuck in the circus.

Zooble pauses, then sits up and pats the spot in the hammock next to them, gesturing their head to beckon Pomni forth.

The jester relents. If nothing else, she’d like to enjoy the snow simulacrum for a little while longer. And Zooble has plenty of experience in armchair therapy, having been a bartender and all, so it can’t hurt to test their skills, can it?

Still hesitant, Pomni walks over to the hammock and takes a seat next to Zooble, who scoots over to make room. Ajax follows her like an imprinted duckling (immediately disproving her lie) and plops himself down on the snow-laden grass without much protest. Maybe he needs a rest, too.

To Pomni’s surprise, Zooble doesn’t immediately ask questions about the elephant in the room. They just leave Pomni to sit and stir in her racing thoughts, probably waiting for her to ask them a question first. She just sits and stares at the clouds slowly floating by in the sunny sky, letting the brisk air cool her down.

“This is nice,” Pomni thinks aloud.

Zooble sighs,”Yeah? I should make it snow more often, then. Didn’t know you were a winter weather-enjoyer. Everybody else seems to love the heat.”

Zooble waits for Pomni to say something else straightforward about the weather, the topic of choice when there’s nothing else to talk about. But she doesn’t. Instead, Zooble hears the unmistakable sound of sniffling. All that’s missing is the bar counter and a glass of whiskey on the rocks.

“Hey, hey, you okay?” Zooble reaches out for Pomni’s shoulder with a clawed hand then retracts the gesture immediately, remembering Pomni usually doesn’t like to be touched, not unless she’s asked first. “The day’s getting to you?”

Pomni wipes away her tears, feeling very small and very pathetic like the sad little clown she is. “Yeah…yeah it is. At least it’s almost over.” She looks down at her feet, sullen. “I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.” She groans, obviously referring to Ajax’s very presence.

Zooble can’t imagine it’s particularly easy leading the visage of a dead friend around all day. They hadn’t felt the loss of Kaufmo nearly as intensely as the others did back when he abstracted, and they only knew Jax for, what, a year? It wasn’t a year where he was particularly friendly, either. Still, he was one of them. Trapped here. And clearly, Pomni felt and continues to feel very strongly about him, in whatever way that is. 

They wonder what it’d be like if it were Gangle. If it were themselves.

“He was a hardass, wasn’t he?”

Pomni looks over at Zooble in befuddlement. She sniffs, rubs her tears away with a balled up fist one more time, and sinks further into the netted hammock. “Oh, yeah. It was so difficult to talk to him.”

“I’m not surprised he pulled what he did, honestly,” Zooble rests their knobby, plastic elbows on their springy knees, resting their triangular head in their hands. Every movement is a reminder of their body and its slapdash anatomy. “That time before Caine came back wasn’t easy.”

“...He tried to reach out to me. Then he just…walked away. And I didn’t go after him,” Pomni grips the hammock’s netting tightly in her fists, her anger building. She’s been so angry these days, it can’t be healthy. It’s certainly making her feel like shit to bottle it all up.

“But that wasn’t your responsibility, Pomni. You’d reached out so many times,” Zooble lies back in the hammock, gazing up at the sunny sky peeking through the leafy canopy. “You couldn’t decide for him if he was gonna accept your help.”

Pomni lies back, too, and is a little awed at how pretty the ever-violent sun’s light looks through the foliage. It takes her back to her childhood for a moment, lying on dewy playground grass, waiting for Mom to tell her it’s time to go home.

“I know, it’s just…hard to accept. There had to have been something else I could have done-”

“Lingering on it is gonna kill you from the inside out, Pomni,” Zooble shuts their eyes, inhaling deeply. “You did your best. Jax didn’t take you up on your offer.”

They know they’re right, and Pomni knows it too. She just wishes they were wrong. She wishes there was an alternate reality where she pulled Jax out of the light and back to the circus, where he apologized for everything and came back without a hair out of place on his head.

“You know, I saw a lot of myself in him. Hate to say it, but I did.”

Pomni snorts involuntarily; she can’t say she believes that. “Seriously? I don’t really see it,” she admits.

Zooble gives Pomni a look of disbelief, like the similarities were obvious. “Think about it for a moment. You really couldn’t see it?”

“Hmmm…”

“Well, being in this body sucked for a long time is what I’ll tell you. Caine really didn’t account for all the things we hate about ourselves also being in our minds when he slapped our new bodies together.”

Pomni can feel herself begin to shiver now, as pleasant as the cold was a moment ago. What Zooble’s saying is true. She can’t say she enjoyed feeling like she was stuck in life out there. Every attempt she made to disrupt the banality of it all was met with failure. She felt so insignificant when speaking to anyone, really, and found it exceedingly difficult to just talk to other people without feeling like a laughingstock.

“What I’m saying is maybe Jax wasn’t as unbothered as he always made himself out to be, y’know? I know I was angry, like, all the time. Unlike him, I was just really bad at hiding it. Still am, actually.” 

Pomni thinks on it as Zooble sends the hammock gently swinging again. She thinks about what she saw in the recesses of Jax’s mind, that incident with his mother. What caused him to run away that night, to cut ties with her forever. How much better Jax, no, Leeroy seems to be doing on the outside. Surrounded by the right people, at the right time, with room to grow and an entire world of opportunity out there. Endless opportunity and warmth and love from and for those people. Love Leeroy had the capacity and courage to accept.

She looks over at Ajax, who hasn’t seemed to look back at her this whole time. Instead, he’s got his head tilted up at the sky and his eyes closed. He seems to be enjoying the cold to whatever extent he’s capable of.

Pomni feels a twinge in her chest. 

“I guess what I’m getting at is it’s totally normal to be upset, but don’t be upset with yourself, Pomni.”

Pomni’s not listening. She needs to stop thinking about him out there or she’ll start crying again.

“You good? I think I lost you there,” Zooble interrupts Pomni’s ruminations.

The jester springs up from her spot in the hammock, lessening the pressure on the netting and sending Zooble bouncing up from where they had comfortably sunken in. “I’ve been doing that a lot today. I think I need to lie down.”

Concerned, Zooble stammers, “Uh, sorry if I struck a nerve there. Didn’t mean to.”

“No, no, you’re good,” Pomni insists. She’s already hopped off the hammock, and has taken Ajax’s hand in hers, ready to lead him away. He stumbles over his feet as he stands up from where he sat. Pomni could have sworn he grumbled in annoyance at her rushing him away like this, but she’s too flustered to care. “Thanks Zooble, see you later!”

She speed-walks away from the grove as fast as her comically short legs will take her. It’s rough when Ajax, who’s just as tall as Jax was, has to take equally-comically tiny steps to match her pace. Pomni curses her short stature as she makes her way back to the circus tent, her talk with Zooble replaying over and over in her head like a warped record. 

She really needs a nap.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Napping would have been a perfectly sound idea if Pomni wasn’t fighting off one very big issue. Ajax keeps looking at her.

Emotionally spent, she had crawled into bed and pulled her blanket over her, ready to get a good half-hour rest in. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching her. The cause of that feeling was very quickly identified when she cracked open an eye.

Before she lied down she shoved Ajax in the corner. He was turned away from her like he was put in time-out, sure, but she can still make out the tiniest sliver of his eye staring her way. Now they’re locked in a strange staring contest where Ajax doesn’t blink and Pomni’s too afraid to. She’s scared that he’ll vanish into thin air if she closes her eyes for even a second. Or maybe he’d lunge at her, like in that vision she saw deep in Jax’s mind. Her hand subconsciously goes to protect her throat.

And then another thought crosses her mind. A selfish one.

…Pomni’s made her decision as soon as the idea pops into her head. She gets to be selfish today.

She hoists herself up, throwing her covers off, and hops off her too-tall bed. Ajax doesn’t react, but his eyes still follow her as she makes her way across the room towards him. 

“Come on,” she takes his hand in hers and leads him back to her bed. He trips a little as if the force with which she tugs him along is too eager to keep up with.

Is it?

Pomni sets him down on the bed and lifts herself up, resting on her knees once she’s settled. She hadn’t really considered that this would be more like moving a Jax-sized pillow around than actually inviting him to nap, or cuddle...or whatever, but it seems it’s gonna be that way.

She awkwardly wraps her noodly arms around his waist, and with all the strength she can muster, she pulls him back as if she’s lifting a large box. She then falls flat on her back because, like Jax, Ajax doesn’t actually weigh that much. He might even weigh less than the original, actually.

She crawls out from under his beanpole body, which looks physically incapable of crushing her, and huffs out in frustration. She’s a woman on a mission, though, so she wordlessly grapples him and sets him up on his side so he’s pulled close to her chest. It feels a bit like trying to wrangle a giant stuffed animal, only nowhere near as fluffy and warm. Ajax is cold, smooth, and lanky. That doesn’t deter her from gripping onto him tightly, though.

Out of breath, Pomni holds the corpse even tighter like he might get up and run away if she lets up. She’d be a little more embarrassed about going through the effort for a goal so utterly hedonistic if it didn’t also feel so…comforting. There’s no other word for it. Hugging Ajax so close feels comforting, even if a little wrong. The jester tries to ignore the guilt welling up inside her.

…What would Jax say?

…

She doesn’t know what he’d say in a situation like this. 

So she doesn’t think about it.

Instead, she loses herself in the feeling of holding a cold imitation of Jax in her arms. The make-believe sensation of him so secure in a vice grip that couldn’t be broken this time, not even by him, deludes her to sleep. As she drifts off, she really wishes there was a heartbeat to feel. Even a pounding heartbeat would do.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

Pomni musters up the courage to knock on Ragatha’s door. 

The ragdoll’s gentle portrait gazes back at her as soft piano notes play on the other side. It took a while before Ragatha revealed she could play. Apparently she needed to ease back into it because of some nasty memories associated with piano practice and her mother. Finding out about Suzy was the last push she needed to embrace her old talent again, it turned out.

Had they ever tried to play piano together?

The thought barges in, Pomni wants to slap herself awake.

…Stop. Relax. Refocus.

She can’t take her self-condemnation seriously. She’s got some gall to bring Ajax here, after all. He’s the spitting image of a person who caused Ragatha so much grief, but Pomni’s being pulled in more directions than her heart can handle. Parting from him makes her feel uneasy. But bringing him into a place as private as Ragatha’s room would definitely be overstepping. So she compromises, as selfish as it is. She’s being exceedingly selfish today.

“You,” she points at him for emphasis,”Stay here while I talk to Rags, okay?” She asks like he’ll suddenly decide to answer.

What, you got something you can say to dollface and not me? 

She can hear him now, tone thick with sarcasm and maybe a twinge of jealousy. Maybe.

Ajax only blinks at her.

Rattled by her thoughts, Pomni inhales deeply, and exhales a little too-loudly. The piano-playing stops abruptly on a sour note. She now realizes that her attempt at a discreet entry has been thwarted because she feels the presence of somebody against the door. Ragatha’s waiting for her to knock.

No point in psyching herself up anymore. “Hey Ragatha. Can I come in?”

Not even half a second later, the ragdoll opens the door and puts on a sorry smile for her friend. “Sure Pomni I-oh!” Ragatha stares off over her head.

“Hm?” Pomni pauses, then she realizes what’s got Ragatha’s attention. Ajax is standing right in the middle of the hallway, arms limp at his sides. “Shit! Sorry, Ragatha, I should have moved him out of the way. Here-”

“No, no, it’s okay, come on in.” And she heads back into her room.

“Oh? Uh, okay, sure,” Pomni steps through the door. She reaches for the knob to shut it, but Ragatha stops her.

“You can, ah, bring him, too. If you want,” she offers, seating herself back at her piano. She plays a single note as if to test if the instrument still works.

Pomni senses Ragatha’s not really asking so much as she’s insisting she bring Ajax in. So she steps out of the harsh fluorescent lighting of the dormitory hallway and into Ragatha’s cozy, ranch-style room. For the Jester, it’s a reprieve from the frankly garish colors of their usual common areas. She knows that for Ragatha, though, it’s a reminder of home and the pain that came with living there.

There’s an awkward moment of silence between the two…three…of them, where Pomni’s waiting for the right thing to say to come to mind, and suddenly the ivories are very interesting to Ragatha. Ajax plops himself down on the floor like a sack of flour, landing ungracefully with a jarring whump! He looks dead ahead at the carved bedposts on Ragatha’s bed, each engraved with little horses.

“So-” they both start at the same time.

Pomni chuckles nervously. “You first.”

Ragatha sighs and stops feigning interest in her instrument. She looks over at Ajax in all his duplicated glory, and involuntarily twists her face in a way that clearly shows how just not-okay she thinks this is. “Pomni, are you…doing alright?”

She’s caught off guard by the question. Not because she isn’t constantly being asked it by everyone around her, considering how close she was with Jax, but because this time there’s a deep seriousness to Ragatha’s tone she hasn’t heard in quite some time.

Pomni looks down at her feet, ashamed. “I think so? I don’t…really know…”

“You could have told me last night. I wouldn’t have freaked out or anything.”

“I know. Like I said, I just…wasn’t ready. I didn’t even know what was going on.”

Ragatha doesn’t respond. She silently accepts Pomni’s explanation, however valid it is, and rips her gaze away from Ajax. It’s best not to fixate on tiny misgivings and let things fester into anything worse anymore.

“It’s a lot, right? Today.”

The jester can’t find the words to articulate just how “a lot” today has been, even if she’s been asked it a million times at this point. She nods, “Yeah.”

“Every anniversary was hard for me, too. When the loss was recent, at least. Some still kind of feel like they are.” She idly runs her mittened fingers over the keys. Playing the piano proves to be even more of a challenge with only six fingers. “I lied for a long time. To myself and others.”

That’s right. Ribbit.

Pomni feels her stomach flip when she remembers Ragatha didn’t really get the chance to properly grieve some of her friends. She’d been too caught up in her own pity-party to consider this situation must seem unfair, to say the least. Even in digital death, Jax is making a spectacle of himself and making it everyone else’s problem.

“It was a really awful time. We all lose people, we’ve all lost people, and I mean it was a total nightmare here back then but…all the pretending Ribbit never existed just made things worse. I felt like a total scumbag.”

“Ragatha…”

“I just never understood why he made it so difficult…I still don’t.”

Pomni doesn’t dare to say anything. It’s not her place.

Pomni twiddles her thumbs, continuing to feel awful about missing this person who tormented the others for so long before she arrived. Before she became Pomni instead of Abigail. 

“He reminded me a lot of my mom, you know?”

Pomni’s taken aback. She hadn’t thought of the possibility. There had been many talk sessions between the two of them where Ragatha would let slip some of the more unsavory details about her childhood, then quickly walk it back when she decided she didn’t feel comfortable with sharing more quite yet. 

“There was some good at the start, when I was younger and everything was fresh and new. Then there was a lot of bad, but the good times I remembered made the bad parts easier to forget. Even if everything else she did hurt me so much. I guess I saw a lot of that repeating when Jax sort of changed after we lost Ribbit.”

As if she has to apologize for his actions, Pomni blurts, “I’m sorry, Ragatha,” and places a hand on Ragatha’s plush shoulder.

The ragdoll gives a reassuring, faintly sad smile. “You have nothing to apologize for, you know that. I’ve just been letting my thoughts run wild, and, well, I’ve been thinking a lot about Suzy today. Feeling a little nostalgic about everything.”

“Oh,” Pomni backs away and leans against Ragatha’s flowery wallpaper. “No, no, I get it. I think about…Abby, a lot, actually.”

“It’s weird, right? They’re all out there, living their lives. It’s like there’s a fork in the road where she kept being Suzy and I started being…me.” Ragatha takes a long look at her burlap palms, flexing her lacking fingers. She drops them into her lap, defeated. “But they all seem better off out in the real world, even Jax,” she stops herself.

Jax is here, not out there.

“Leeroy, I mean. I think there was always a chance he could turn out okay, but…”

Regrettably, Pomni has nothing to say. She’s carried the weight of everyone’s troubles for so long, but today of all days she feels especially unequipped to help them cope. She can’t even cope herself.

The ragdoll senses it’s not a good time. She clears her throat. “So, how’s your day been with this, er…fella?”

Pomni snaps out of her discomfort. “Oh, Ajax?”

Ragatha’s eyes widen, and a little grin creeps up at the corner of her mouth as if she’s caught Pomni red-handed. “Ajax?”

Pomni feels her face flush. “Ahaha! Just a little name I came up with. It felt weird calling him Jax, you know? Considering…” She gestures beyond the door. The tent.

“Right,” Ragatha’s expression softens, her voice going gentle. She’s always been very good at soothing others, often to her own detriment. Pomni allows herself to indulge in her abilities this time. She kind of really needs it.

“It’s been okay. He doesn’t really do anything but follow me and look around.”

As if on cue, Ajax looks Pomni’s way, tearing his attention from the bedpost carvings. His mouth morphs from a flat poker face to a faint frown. It’s like she upset him. Can he be upset?

“Like that,” she adds for emphasis. “It helps to remind me it’s not actually him. He always had something to say.”

Ragatha tuts her tongue. “Sure did.” Then she considers her next words with extreme care. “Are you..planning on visiting him? In the tent, I mean.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Well, I always had little traditions I’d do on anniversaries. When she was still in the cellar, I’d go by Ribbit’s door and have dinner with her. I went to the aquarium this year. It can help, you know?”

“I know,” Pomni answers truthfully, even if she also knows she doesn’t have the guts to do it. She hasn’t so much as poked her head through the tent for the last few weeks, knowing that doing so will send her into a spiral and have her in a mess of tears at the end of the day. She doesn’t even know where to begin planning “little traditions,” considering this is her first real “anniversary” she’s had to go through.

“I think you really did save Jax, Pomni.”

This startles her, sending a chill through her body and a sinking feeling twisted deep into the pit of her stomach like a red-hot knife. “Whuh?” She blubbers, her tongue suddenly going numb. As much as Pomni had always wished someone would humor her with the thought, it’s more reassuring when said out loud than she imagined it.

“At the end, last year,” Ragatha starts up a song on the lower keys. It’s a remedy to the nuclear missile of a statement she’s just hit Pomni with. “None of us had ever had the, I dunno, courage to throw ourselves at them in that state before. And I saw what it did to you. If Caine hadn’t come back…”

Pomni bites her lip, not wanting to cry again. 

“Well, I swear he’s still in there. And it gives me hope that the others are, too.”

“I hope so,” Pomni mutters, voice breaking.

She beckons Pomni over to the cushioned stool before her piano. The Jester sits lamely next to the ragdoll, resting her head on her soft shoulder. It’s only the afternoon, but she’s so tired. They both are.

Ragatha begins playing another song on the keys. It’s a familiar tune. “You like this one, right?”

Pomni laughs softly, like it’s ridiculous to even ask that question.  “Of course I like Daisy Bell,” she closes her eyes and exhales deeply, soothed by the music.

She lets Ragatha’s piano-playing soothe her, ignoring the feeling of Ajax glaring daggers at both of them from behind.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

It’s nearing sunset.

With the day coming to a close, Pomni suddenly finds herself very afraid to find out what’s going to happen to Ajax in the approaching hours. Will he just…blip out of existence? Will he explode into confetti? Will he stick around? She can’t bear the thought of having to look into the eyes of a husk that looks so much like him for the foreseeable future. A painful reminder of who she doesn’t have anymore. It’s like her own heart’s betrayed her in conjuring him up.

It all makes her feel sick. She skips dinner, because the thought of stomaching any morsel of food, even if fake, makes her unbearably queasy. Instead of sitting at the dinner table with everyone else, she opted for some fresh air to hopefully clear her mind. She brought along Ajax, of course.

After aimlessly walking along the circus grounds, the snow from earlier having melted away, she eventually found herself at the shore of the digital lake. It’s as good enough of a place to watch the sunset as any, and she never got to do that with Jax, so…

She sits with Ajax. Staring out at the synthetic sunset (its beauty is diminished only by the Sun yelling profanities at the Moon as they swap places for the night), it’s almost like it’s real. Sitting here with her best friend. Maybe more, if Jax wasn’t such a hardass. Refusing to let her in. Building walls on top of walls that were already crumbling and insisting they weren’t. Then bulldozing the foundation and denying there were walls there in the first place.

“Fuck,” Pomni blurts out, and flinches at the sound of her own voice, wanting to take her interjection back. Ajax looks over at her without moving his head and she doesn’t have to look back to feel his stare.

“I-I’m sorry. Today’s just been overwhelming.”

As expected, Ajax doesn’t respond.

“I thought I’d be okay after….well, after everything that happened. This place finally started to feel like a real home. Even if I’m…we’re…copies of people roaming around out there. Everything feels real enough  so…I thought I was okay.”

Pomni keeps running her mouth.

“I was for a while. Ragatha, Gangle, Zooble, Kinger, they’re all great. Supportive. Caine tries so that’s an improvement since you’ve been gone. It’s not so bad here.”

She grabs fistfuls of fake grass and can’t ignore how it clips through her hands. Intangible.

“But I started to think, y’know? About Abigail. How she’s just out there, oblivious that I’m here. That I’m her. Part of me’s glad I’ll never have to do laundry or walk into an office again,” and she chuckles a little at the mundanity of such a statement. “But part of me is jealous too, I guess. That she gets to do all those things. Life gets to be boring for her.”

She stares at the Moon so long that she catches her eye. The Moon gives her a comforting look that, while sincere, fails to make her feel any better. 

“I never thought I’d miss feeling real hunger. Or getting real sleep. It’s always been kind of ‘off’ here and I still haven’t gotten used to it,” she looks over at Ajax, who’s still staring intently at her from the corner of his eye, his head directed at the lake.

He’d know what she means.

“...Caine and Kinger are working on it, at least. On making everything feel more real.”

Pomni lets go of her knees, which were firmly tucked into her chest, to loosen up. “I dunno. I’m really jealous of Abigail. Sometimes I think I might…hate her,” and she sounds more sad than angry when she finally says it out loud.

“At least she knows there’s an end to everything. She’ll die, eventually. Go to heaven or whatever, if there’s an afterlife. At least she can be comforted by the idea of one. But we’re stuck here. And maybe things won’t end, ever. Maybe one day everything’s going to shut off and we won’t know. We’ll be gone. Quickly. We’ll go nowhere, though, right?”

It’s a rhetorical question, one that makes her chest tighten with anxiety.

She turns to look at Ajax now. She was afraid to look him in the eyes before, but now she wants a glimpse of her late friend’s face, even if it’s all an illusion. A fake.

“I need to see you,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “I need to see you one last time before that happens, but I don’t know if it’s even possible!”

She grabs a stray rock and throws it across the lake with all her strength. It skips an impressive eight times before sinking below the water.

Ajax doesn’t verbally retort, but his reaction is just as unexpected as he starts to clap half-heartedly at her rock-skipping feat.

Nice one, Pom Pom!

Pomni can feel the tears burning up in the corner of her eyes, ready to flow and expose just how much she’s been hurting all this time. She turns over on her knees and scoots closer to Ajax, dangerously close. She grabs his hand and interlocks it with hers, taking her free hand and holding on tight in an iron-grip as if he’ll clip right through, like the grass. Like every other asset in this program they’re stuck in until the building’s power runs out or they all lose their minds, whichever comes first.

“Talk to me. Please. Please talk to me.”

Ajax doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t. Maybe Pomni’s not able to conjure his copy saying anything she knows the real Jax would never utter.

I miss you, too. 

I’m sorry. 

I’ll come back.

I don’t wanna go can’t be the last thing she ever hears him say. It just can’t be.

She grips onto Ajax’s fingers tighter, hurting her own digits in the process. If she had blood running through real veins she’s sure her fingers would be purple by now, all circulation cut off.

“Can you say something, please? Please, Jax?”

Nothing. He just continues to glare at her with his dead eyes. A mask of a memory of someone else’s mask. A reminder that she didn’t have time to commit what lied beneath to her own memory.

She droops and lets go of the husk’s hands. “Sorry,” she apologizes, even though she was only hurting herself in the moment. At a loss for words and too tired to keep begging for a response from the copy, she just stares at the grass below, at the seam where it crudely turns to sand before it hits the lakeshore.

Without thinking, Pomni mutters, “Just a hug, at least. Please?” It’s a selfish request. She’ll be writing over her only memory of the real thing.

Before she can take the words back, it’s too late. Ajax has decided to honor this ask of all the others, leaning over and taking Pomni in his arms. It’s an uncomfortable position, sitting all twisted on her side and suddenly wrapped up in a hug, but her own arms act on instinct and she tightly wraps them around his back.

Jax wasn’t very comfortable to hug. Pomni still feels bad that the thought even crossed her mind the moment he fell to his knees and embraced her for the first and last time a year ago today. He was so lanky, though, it doesn’t come as a surprise. That part she seems to have gotten correct in his ghost.

It turns out her subconscious handiwork isn’t so true-to-life elsewhere, though. She remembers well the feeling of short fur when she hugged him back, and the plasticky smell of a stretchy toy left out in the sun. The coarse texture of overalls that, despite looking so smooth up close, apparently felt just like the real thing on contact.

And there’s still no heartbeat. No rapid pattern like a cornered prey animal, scared of its impending demise, drumming like crazy inside his chest. She couldn’t, or rather didn’t want to, imagine that again. It only serves to make the moment more inauthentic.

“You’re so confusing,” she sniffles. “I hope you knew that.”

Again, no answer. Ajax just hugs her back tighter, which shocks Pomni, sending the floodgates completely open. She throws everything out there and lets it dissolve away into thin air. Not even the Moon can hear her with how quiet she keeps herself despite her explosive grief.

“I don’t know if you can come back. Please come back. I hate seeing your face up on that mural all the time…your crossed-out face every morning when I wake up…your tent…what else could I have done? What else did you need me to do? You came up to me, why didn’t you just talk to me! All we have here is time, time to talk! Time to work things out! I should have done more, I should have, but I don’t know what else I could have done! I should have went after you, I should have, I should have-”

Ajax squeezes her even more firmly, making her feel ready to burst. Partly because her buried emotions are coming to a head and partly because he’s gripping on so tightly. Is she doing this? He’s a product of her mind, right?

She gets angry. 

“I didn’t even know you for that long.”

She digs her fingers into his back. Hard enough to bruise him if she could.

“Why, why did I click with you?”

If she had fingernails she’d be drawing blood.

“You’re doing so well out there, too! If you had just been more patient, we could have shown you! We could have helped you, I could have helped you! It wasn’t too late!”

Pomni’s not sure if the drivel pouring out of her mouth in broken, sob-wracked syllables even qualifies as proper speech anymore. She’s turned into a blubbering mess. She knows better than to bottle these kinds of feelings up but she did, and now she’s feeling them all at once.

It’s so sappy. She can imagine his snark now.

Hey Pomni, stop crying! You look suuuuuper ugly when you cry, you know?

You’d know what ugly looks like, wouldn’t you?

And they’d both laugh their asses off knowing neither of them really meant it. But also sort of. But also not. Just enough of both, probably.

“Goddammit,” she croaks out. She needs to get out of her head before it kills her. She pushes him away finally, for the sake of her already too-fragile heart. Any longer and it would have been crushed in the crossfire of their embrace. 

She looks him directly in the eyes upon parting, which was a grave mistake.

Ajax is smiling.

It’s a real smile again, like from last night, but it’s also…different. It meets his eyes and turns them into gentle crescents. The upturned corners of his mouth are crooked in a way she never imagined they could be. There’s actual light in his eyes right now, too, which had been absent the entire day. Is the soft glow of the moon playing tricks on her? Is she only seeing what she wants to see?

“....Jax?”

In a moment, he’s gone. Like a file being deleted. There one moment and vanished without a trace the next. She’s brought right back to where she was a year ago. 

That void.

That pink light.

Those skinny, trembling arms. 

Jax gasping for breath right in her ear.

He could tell he was leaving.

That rapid heartbeat.

Thmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmphmpthmpthmpthmpthmpthmp.

Brilliant, shining beams of light that blind her and hurt her and pierce through her fabricated skin like photon swords.

It’s too similar. Similar enough that she sort of feels relieved the make-believe moment didn’t last forever. 

Alone again, Pomni slumps over and sinks into the ground. She wishes it would swallow her whole, even if she’d be missing out on a night that’s particularly lovely. Especially because it is, actually. How can a night so unforgivably and confusingly bitter be so pretty? The stars twinkle against the cool, deep-blue sky, the moon gives her an apologetic look.

It’s cruel.

But Pomni doesn’t waste more than a second dawdling on her thoughts, because she swears by her digital life that she heard Ajax say something on his way out.

See you later.

Skipping dinner didn’t matter. She still feels sick. Hollow. Empty. Sad, to put it plainly. It’s about the truest way she can describe how she feels. Stupidly simple, but true. She’s sad.

There’s no tears left to cry. It’s time to go home.

⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ 

It has been exactly 365 days, 2 hours, and 33 minutes since Jax abstracted in an agonizing, brazen, blinding flash within Pomni’s desperate vice grip.

The others came to check on her before bed. Upon realizing she had skipped dinner, their worries worsened. They were right to be concerned, of course, because Pomni truly wasn’t feeling okay.

She lied, though, and said she was perfectly fine. She doesn’t like to lie, but she did. She just wasn’t ready to crack open that can of worms with each of them again. But it seemed the others could tell what had happened given she came back to the circus tent with one Jax copy less than she left with.

And she was so exhausted, too. So she hurried over to her room and collapsed onto her bed, ready to sink right through it, even if isolation goes against her best judgement. It’s a bad habit she might be picking up from someone she knew once. At least she’s self aware enough to admit it’s a bad habit.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. She’ll allow herself to indulge in loneliness tonight, even if it’s going to be a very long one, because she can’t sleep. Again.

Not even counting the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling works. It doesn’t help that she took them from his room before it was sealed off. They were supposed to be a comforting memento. Instead, like many other things, they’ve turned into a painful reminder of who left them behind.

…She could go to the tent.

…

She shouldn’t go to the tent.

…

She wants to go to the tent.

…

Pomni goes to the tent.

She slips out her door, careful to crack it open just enough so she can creep through, and closes it gingerly so as to not make a sound. She also makes sure to look anywhere but at the door directly in front of her. She hates looking at that eyesore red X.

The circus feels so empty at night, with everyone holed away in their rooms. It’s hardly a shock, how much of a ruckus can six people make on any given night, and in such a big space, too? Still, she can hear someone playing oldies far off in the distance. Caine’s probably brainstorming. Maybe with Kinger. Who knows?

She makes her way down the hall lined with rooms of people still here and people long-gone.

Ragatha’s room is silent. She’s probably fast asleep. She’s always the first to wake up and greet everyone in the morning.

Gangle’s room emits a soft glow from the crack under her door. She’s probably busy drawing into the dead of night. Always losing track of time.

There’s dialogue from a movie she doesn’t recognize playing from Zooble’s room. They had mentioned Caine was trying to reconnect to the Internet so he could provide everybody with new media to enjoy. Maybe he succeeded? 

Once she’s out of the dormitory hallway, the tent isn’t a far walk off. It’s just by the dining area and it’s impossible to miss, over a hundred feet tall and draped in glittery fabrics that shimmer even in the dark. There’s a soft, multicolored glow coming from inside. Pomni’s feeling brave enough to investigate further. 

It’s probably Jax. Exactly what he’d look like…she hasn’t thought about it yet.

There’s no time like the present, and Pomni’s out of options. She just wants to rest. Even if she doesn’t have to, god she’s so tired. She just wants to not exist for a moment. Just for a little while.

So she peeks through the tent’s entrance. Her heartbeat quickens at what she sees.

As expected, it’s him. Only…a little different. He’s still curled up in on himself, smaller than when they had brought him there. But his body ripples with jagged edges rapidly, near-violently, that flash in vibrant colors. It reminds her of those as-seen-on-TV nightlight pillows.

Jax’s many eyes are going crazy, too. They’re all closed as he’s sleeping, but beneath their lids the same light darts around wildly, trying to break free of the confines of REM sleep.

The light should make it harder for her to sleep. If she touches him, she could get hurt, too. And it’s so painful, touching an abstraction. Like little knives stabbing at the skin over and over and over.

She doesn’t care, though. She walks over to him and plants herself in the crook of what feels like his neck, scooting closer and curling up into herself so she slots comfortably into his side. Even with her eyes closed Pomni can tell her presence must have calmed Jax down. The glow through her eyelids becomes a little less harsh, and there’s a rumble reverberating through Jax’s form that wasn’t there before.

It doesn’t hurt like she thought it would. Not like it did the last time she spoke with him. In fact, it’s just warm, like the static warmth of a laptop or television.

She feels a little embarrassed that she ran her mouth in front of his copy earlier. She felt so…safe, for lack of a better term, practically talking to herself. But being so snug against real Jax reminds her that he’s still here. Buried underneath all that corruption somewhere. Alive but not living, but that’s arguably better than dead and gone, especially if there’s a non-zero possibility he could come back. It’s what she tells herself to feel better about it all, at least.

Pomni feels self-centered taking that as something that comforts her. Who knows what Jax is thinking or feeling in the state he’s in. He could want to be dead for all she knows. She feels gross thinking about it.

“...I miss you,” she whispers so quietly that it’s near-unintelligible, even to her. Her body feels so heavy. Fitted against Jax like a jester-shaped puzzle piece, she lets go of the tensions of the day and allows herself to fall asleep…

…then wakes up immediately after lulling off.

She’s in a familiar place. Too familiar, too exact for her to be dreaming.

She’s standing in a pitch-black room. There’s a piano in the corner. There’s a radiator against the opposite wall. There’s a door, previously chained and bolted shut, that is now busted open. 

There’s also a table in the center. Three chairs are sloppily arranged around it. Two are empty. One is occupied.

Huh?

A purple rabbit sits with his head to the table, refusing to look up and meet Pomni’s eyes. This is a person she knows. Only now there’s a pink bow pinned to his ear.

“...Jax?”

There's a long silence. 

“No, it’s Xaj, Jax’s long-lost twin.”

Pomni cracks a smile, lets out a mix between a wail and a hearty laugh, and without hesitation she races over to the table. She leaps straight across it and crashes right into his arms, sending both of them toppling over onto the floor. She hugs him with enough force to choke him out, which she really should considering how he left without a proper goodbye.

This time, he doesn’t push her off. Instead, he hugs her back, and it’s so different from the husk. It’s so different from a year ago, too. It’s a different feeling, a different context, a different Jax, a different heartbeat.

Thmp. Th-thmp. Thmp. Th-thmp. Thmp. Th-thmp. Thmp. Th-thmp. Thmp. Th-thmp. 

It’s so calm. So normal. As she hoped she’d one day hear it.

Pomni could cherish that sound until every component of the computer they live in rots away, but there’s no time to waste. She can’t stay asleep forever, and she and Jax have so much catching up to do.