Archive of Our Own

Pomni had to thank whatever divine force had apparently been listening to the desperate pleas of a handful of cartoon characters trapped inside a computer in the middle of an abandoned building because, somehow, the circus had become significantly less of a pain in the ass to live in.

For starters, they could swear now. That in itself was a huge improvement.

They were also no longer being forced into adventures they'd had no say in. Which might have actually been the bigger one.

Caine had changed for the better. Whatever he’d been through after Kinger had accidentally deleted him had changed his perspective in how he saw humans. He didn’t hover over them as he used to, didn't talk over them with his nonexistent ears closed to whatever they had to say. He gave space. Respect. It was refreshing, knowing he wouldn't be teleporting them somewhere out of nowhere for no reason other than to launch them into some random, overwhelming adventure.

The cellar had been replaced entirely by the aquarium. The abstracted didn’t feel forgotten the way they once had, as they could be visited now, any time, by anyone who needed to. Pomni knew Kinger found comfort in being able to see his wife again. And so did she, in her own way, when she went to see Jax. The thought of the rabbit still hurt in a way that only losing a friend could. But she'd made a quiet promise to herself that she wouldn't be forgotten. None of them would. Little by little, abstraction had stopped being the unspoken taboo that everyone agreed not to mention.

Gangle and Zooble had started dating. Apparently the confession had come in the form of a love letter in a sealed envelope, heart stamp and everything. Full anime style. When they told everyone else, the reaction was less “oooh how wonderful “and more “wait you weren't already?” Neither had been able to stay more than two seconds apart for a while now. It had only ever been a matter of time.

Then, there was Ragatha and Pomni.

The two of them had been finding themselves together more often than not. They made good use of the free time they now actually had, exploring the circus grounds and the new islands they’d suggested Caine create. Pomni had come to enjoy the other woman’s company more than she really knew how to articulate. Before she'd even fully realized it, Ragatha had become one of the best friends Pomni had ever had, in here or anywhere else.

And, more often than not, she found herself looking at her. 

There was something about that doll that pulled at her attention in a way she hadn't quite worked out yet. Maybe it was the yarn of her licorice-colored hair, the delicate stitching across her face, or the faint blush sitting permanently in her fabric cheeks that seemed to deepen whenever Pomni got too close. She hadn't figured out what it was yet. She was in no rush to do so.

Thing is, she’d started noticing the little things in the way she acted. Like the way her face would light up whenever someone remembered some tiny detail about her. How easily flustered she would get whenever she received the simplest compliment. The way she would politely cover her mouth every time she let out a laugh. 

And lately she’d noticed something else.

A firm pat on the back from Zooble, and a pained expression so brief that the jester almost convinced herself she'd imagined it. The ragdoll didn't acknowledge it beyond that. So Pomni let it go.

Until it happened again, with Caine swooping in with a back hug. She yelped, apologizing immediately after, insisting she’d just been startled. But it hadn’t been a surprised yelp, Pomni knew the difference. That’d been a pained one.

There were a few more moments after that, enough to confirm she wasn't losing her mind. Once during the cave adventure, when Ragatha jumped between rocks and landed wrong. Another time when she broke into a run trying to get away from the creature Gangle had chosen for her D&D form. Small, brief, but enough moments for Pomni to catch on.

And eventually, she’d had to ask.

“Are you okay?”

Ragatha looked up. 

They were in the center of the stage. Ragatha knitting a blue and red blanket, Pomni with a book open in her hands that she'd been staring at for the better part of an hour without retaining a single word. Gangle and Zooble had been with them until a few minutes ago, leaving to have what was very obviously a date in the carnival. Pomni had been waiting for them to go away, as Ragatha's tendency to deflect increased considerably the more people were in the room. For reasons beyond her understanding.

The question caught the doll off guard, the way that specific question always seemed to when it was aimed at her specifically.

“Uh, yeah! Are you?” Ragatha asked, concern for the wrong person creeping in her voice.

Nope. They were absolutely not redirecting this to someone else.

“You’ve been wincing a lot lately, like something is bothering you. The thing with Zooble the other day, and then with Caine.“ Pomni elaborated, hoping she didn’t have to spell it out any further than that. “What’s up with that?”

Ragatha blinked, then quietly muttered, “I’m… surprised you noticed that,” like it had started as a thought she hadn't managed to keep inside.

Normally, Pomni would have prided herself on her observational skills. This time, she had to admit, it had been pretty obvious. Two pinwheel eyes stayed on Ragatha, waiting for a proper response, though the doll seemed to be spacing out.

“Are you hurt somewhere or…?”

“Ah, no, it’s nothing, don’t worry about it!”

Pomni frowned, knowing exactly where this was heading. 

“Yeah, no, we’re not doing this again.” She placed her book on the floor, stood up and walked over to her friend. “Look, Rags, I can tell something is wrong, so there’s no point in lying. You can either tell me now or I can keep bugging you until I know for sure you’re okay.”

Ragatha stayed quiet for a moment, then surprised Pomni by standing up as well, her half-knitted blanket forgotten on the floor. 

“If I tell you, will you promise not to tell anyone?” She was gesturing a pinky swear, though it looked a little strange, considering three of her fingers were sewn together.

Pomni completed the gesture anyway, with her own pinky that wasn't quite a pinky, given that she only had four fingers.

“I promise.”

Ragatha gestured the jester to get closer. Then glanced around the tent, making sure there was no one else around like she was about to reveal the most guarded secret in the circus, and whispered:

“I have a candy heart.”

Pomni blinked.

“You are… a sweet person.“ She concluded, feeling like she’d just stated the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course.”

“No, no.” Ragatha shook her head. “I mean I literally have a candy heart inside of me. It’s one of my avatar gimmicks.”

Pomni tilted her head as the doll pressed her left hand against the spot where a real heart would be. Where, apparently, she had one. “Oh! Huh.” 

“I can feel it when I’m going through a strong emotion. It shrinks when it’s a bad feelings, aches like I have an imaginary wound, and it leaves this sort of pleasant tickling sensation when it’s good. Everything’s more intense. For better or worse…” She looked away, pensive for a moment. “I can also feel it physically. If get squeezed I can feel it pressing against my cotton.”

Pomni took a second to process all that. So this whole time, every emotion Ragatha felt, she'd felt twice as hard. Every time she’d made her happy, every time she’d upset her. Pomni had always known her as someone who felt things deeply, but man, this was another level completely. 

"So you’ve been accidentally bumping it these past few days? Is that why you've been hurting?"

"Ah... well, sort of." Ragatha shifted in place, suddenly very interested in a loose thread on the back of her hand. It was clear this wasn't a topic she was used to discussing. Pomni waited patiently, letting the silence stretch, the way she'd learned worked better than pushing. "The thing is, it's not supposed to hurt when I move or even get squeezed. I think it's, uh..."

She trailed off.

"It's...?" Pomni prompted gently.

She sighed, giving up on trying to hide it. “I think it's broken."

The jester gasped, alarm flashing across her face.

"It's okay!” She was quick to add. "It's not broken in the metaphorical way. And it's definitely not broken in the literal way, because, uh, I'd be dead.” A nervous chuckle. “It's broken in The Amazing Digital Circus™ way, I guess? Like... I think it split into two pieces, and now it just sort of... aches. All the time. Even when I'm not doing anything. Like a constant heartache that won't go away."

Pomni took a step forward and placed a hand over her chest, careful not to apply any pressure. The doll tensed at the contact but didn't pull back.

“When did this happen?”

“It was some time ago, I don’t really remember when exactly.” She looked to one side, avoiding eye contact as she always did when she lied. “Sometime during the whole collapsing circus thing, I think.”

“That long ago!? Why didn’t you say anything!?” Pomni elevated her voice, making the other flinch and retract into herself, ashamed.

“There was just so much going on, everyone was dealing with so much already.” She muttered so softly that the jester barely caught the words at all. Then, trying to falsely brighten the mood, she spoke louder, “Don’t worry about it, I’m a tough dolly, really! There was no need to burden anyone with this! It’s not like it’s a real heart.” A forced laugh at the end. A plea to downplay the issue.

But Pomni wasn’t taking it.

“No, it’s not fine!” She made her flinch again. She should probably lower her voice, but it was hard when her frustration had spilled over. “Ragatha. We’ve been over this. You’re not a burden for needing help.”

No matter how many times she tried to get it over her head, Ragatha kept slipping back into those same servile little patterns. Realistically, it wasn't something Pomni could blame her for. Old habits die hard, and who knew how long Ragatha had been keeping up the act since she got to the circus. Probably long before that. 

Nor was it personal. Pomni knew she wouldn't be having this conversation with anyone else, not even Kinger.

Yet it still hurt, because after everything they'd been through together, after everything Pomni had opened up about, whenever it came to the things that truly bothered Ragatha she would always hit some kind of wall. It felt like  trust only went in one direction, like Ragatha didn’t trust her in the way Pomni did.

Trying to get any closer then they were, to really get to know always seemed to lead to a dead end, and it hurt bad because her own heart was twice as sensitive when it came to Ragatha.

“Right. No, yeah, I know. I’m sorry.” It hadn’t gotten over her head, they were both painfully aware of that.

That familiar awkwardness crept in between them, the one that showed up whenever one of them wasn’t being entirely honest. Which, for the record, was almost always Ragatha. Hadn’t she learned by now that shutting people out only led to the worst possible outcome? Just like it had with…

She couldn’t take losing Ragatha. She might as well kill herself and everyone else in the circus if that ever happened. Which brought her back to what actually mattered right now, the heart that needed to be fix. Like, right now. A heart whose condition this discussion was likely only making worse.

“Okay, let’s just… Put a pin on this.” A sigh. “I’m sure Caine will be able to-“

“No!”

The jester jumped, now it being her turn to be surprised at the other's rise in volume.

The doll apologised silently, fidgeting in place before trying again. “Look, Pomni, this is not something he can just snap away. He needs to take it out of me to fix it and…” She rubbed the back of her neck nervously. “It’s not that I don’t like him! I do! It’s just that… this is a really sensitive thing for me and he can be a little…”

“Tactless?”

Ragatha nodded.

That was the lightest way to put it. ‘Brute’ was the way Pomni would’ve described him when she’d first arrived at the circus. Although he had been trying to understand humans after he’d escaped from the recycle bin, he was still all new to the whole ‘human empathy’ thing.

“So what, then? We can’t just leave it like that…”

Ragatha looked down at the floor. It was clear she had no intention of asking Caine for help. Gangle and Zooble were probably off on their date somewhere, and Pomni knew the doll would rather throw herself into the void than let herself be the reason that got interrupted. And even if she accepted Kinger’s help, they’d need to get him in the dark and hope he stayed sane long enough to fix her up.

Which left only…

Maybe it was too much to ask of someone who shield away from opening up to her. They hadn’t even known each other for that long, logistically Pomni knew that. Even if it felt like she’d spent half her life in this circus by now. Even if that logic didn’t apply to the way she felt about that doll.

But there was no one else, and Pomni would be damned before she walked away without trying.

“What about me? Would you let me help you?”

She watched Ragatha's eye carefully, and what she found there wasn't the kind of hesitation she'd been expecting. There was trust there. Whatever was making her hold back had nothing to do with Pomni at all.

“You really don’t have to. I don’t wanna be a…” She stopped herself, realizing she was repeating the exact words the other woman had just asked her not to say.

She stayed stuck in place, her pupil flickering endlessly over Pomni's face, either trying to see if she really meant her help, or searching for an excuse to get out of the situation.

“Ragatha. I want to help you.” The jester insisted, hoping she could see as much emotion in her gaze as she did in hers. “Please.”

Ragatha held her eyes, quiet for a moment, one hand moving absently up and down her arm. Then, slowly… 

“Okay, Pomni. You can help me.”

They didn’t cross paths with anyone on their way. Whatever it was they had to do, Ragatha didn’t want to do it out in the open. They walked in silence down the hallway until they reached the entrance to her room.

The doll so politely held the door open, stepping aside to let her friend in first. The familiar scent of clean fabric hit Pomni’s nonexistent nostrils. She always loved how tidy it was in here. On the left sat a piano, with its slightly worn keys, next to a toy box that doubled as both seating and storage. Beyond that, a small library with its shelves filled with books, knitting supplies, spools of yarn, and a gloink that Ragatha had kept from the Spudsy’s adventure. On the right, a big bed sat against the wall, piled high with soft, fluffy light blue blankets, a small bedside table standing beside it.

Ragatha stepped in after her, locking the door softly behind them, and crossed the room toward the library. She ran her fingers along the spines of a few books before pulling something out from behind them, hidden like she didn't want it in plain sight, and carried it over, placing it gently into Pomni's waiting arms. A small jar of…

“Sugar glue?”

“It should be enough to fix it up.”

Pomni inspected it for a moment. The jar had a transparent liquid and was one third empty. Seemed like it’d been used before. “So… how do we do this? Do you have to spit it out or…?

“You’re gonna have to open me up.”

“Oh.” The color drained from Pomni’s face, despite her skin already being pure white.

Ragatha, who had uttered those word in an absolute neutral expression, caught the look immediately and spoke up. “It’s not as gory as it sounds, I promise! I don’t have plush organs or jello blood or anything. All I’ve got is stuffing. Cotton, mostly. It’ll be like opening a plush toy.” As she turned to grab her knitting supplies, she asked over her shoulder: “Did you ever fix a doll when you were younger?”

Pomni thought back. She'd had a few, sure, but had never played with them enough to wear them down to the point of needing repairs. Plastic figurines had always been more her thing, anyway.

“Not really, no. I’ve never had much interest in dolls, if I’m being honest.”

Ragatha seemed… slightly dejected at that? “Aw. Well, I had a Raggedy Ann doll when I was little. Had her for a long time, she’d needed to be fixed now and then. It’s how I learnt to sew, actually.” She placed her knitting supplies on the bedside table. “It may seem scary, but a bit of cotton is nothing to be afraid of.”

Well, that hadn’t been convincing at all. Ragatha was a person, not a toy, no matter what her avatar was built out of, and the idea of… essentially dissecting her and ripping her heart out didn’t sit too well with her. But Pomni swallowed the protest, because the thing that was bothering her the most was something else.

“Will it hurt you?”

The question hung in the air for a second too long.

“Juuuust a little bit. Not more than what I’m used to.” Ragatha let out a small, dismissive laugh, waving her hand like she was swatting the question away. But Pomni saw the emotion that flashed her face that confirmed it. It would hurt more than she was letting on.

“Okay. I don’t think it’s ideal, but if this really is the only way, I’ll do it. Do you need to take off your... uhhh.” Blushing and unable to push the words out, she just gestured vaguely at her own clothes, hoping Ragatha would catch her meaning before she had to actually say it.

Ragatha got equally embarrassed, red tinting her cheeks.

“Oh, no, no, no, that won’t be necessary, um, the dress is kinda stitched to my body? I can’t even take it off if I wanted, I need to ask Caine whenever I want to change clothes. I mean I suppose with the whole conjuring thing I could do it now, but uh-”

Pomni’s blush deepened “I just thought you had to- nevermind, forgot I asked!” 

Mortifying silence. Pomni wanted to abstract. Preferably now.

“Right, um.” Ragatha cleared her throat. “I’m gonna sit on my bed now.”

“Yeah! Okay!” She answered tensely. A couple of popping sounds escaped her mouth that she was fairly convinced passed for casual and nonchalant, but which in reality sounded closer to the panicked noises of a fish that had just realized it was no longer in water. She stood frozen for a moment, rocking slightly on her feet, her limbs apparently having collectively forgotten how to behave like they belonged to a normal human being.

Finally moving her eyes from the floor (the wooden planks were very interesting), she realised Ragatha was already lying back on the bed.

With an oversized knife pointing right at her belly. 

Replacing her awkwardness with panic, she immediately did a full speedrun of leaving the sugar glue on the bedside table and getting next to the doll.

“Woah! Is stabbing yourself in the chest really the way we’re gonna start this?

But as she got close enough to actually see what was happening, she realized the knife wasn't pressing down at all. Ragatha was carefully scraping the edge of the blade along the waistline of her dress, like she was trying to scoop something out.

“I need to get the… aha!” Pulling at a thread that had come loose, a clean line began to open right down the middle of her chest. White cotton began spilling out from the opening, not stopping until it reached the base of her neck.

Pomni's expression must have been something to see, because Ragatha let out an awkward chuckle at the sight of it.

“Yeah, it’s not fun when one of my threads gets snagged on something during an adventure. But this is not the painful part. More uncomfortable than anything, really.”

Pomni had to actively resist the urge to, once again, compare the real world to this digital reality she was living in, because her friend had just cut a giant hole in her chest in order for her to take out her candy heart and put it back together using freaking sugar glue. 

What even was her life at this point.

Unsteady limbs climbed onto the bed and settled onto her knees beside Ragatha, staring down into the hole she had already realized she would have to dig through for the object (organ?) they were looking for.

“Alright. Okay. I just need to put it in. MY HAND. I need to put my hand on your chest. INSIDE YOUR CHEST. Not in a weird way, just in a… weirder way. Uh…” Oh, man, what was she even saying? She had absolutely no idea what she'd signed herself up for. She wasn’t the right person for this, she was an accountant, not a surgeon. She sat out the frogs dissection day in high school, heck, she almost didn’t pass biology-

A soft, plush hand closed gently over a trembling arm. 

“Hey. If you’re not confortable you don’t have to do this.” Ragatha held a serious tone and a worry that should be reserved for the only person in the room with a broken heart.

She held onto her oh so caring gaze. The thought of hurting her friend was the last thing she wanted. She'd done it before, she was aware of that. She had kinda, sorta shot her at some point. It hadn’t been like this, though. And just the idea of doing it again made her sick to her stomach.

However, she also knew that not pulling the bandage off only ever made things worse. Ragatha couldn't do this alone. Wouldn't even ask, if left to her own devices, would just quietly carry this ache around forever rather than ‘be a burden’ on anyone. Someone had to help her. 

She took the plush hand and held it gently between both of her own, giving it a small, reassuring squeeze. “I can do this, Ragatha.”

In return, the doll squeezed the hand back. “If you’re sure…” She hesitated. “Can I just ask you something?”

A nod.

“Once you get my heart out, I won’t really be able to move. It’s a bit scary for me… I know you will, but please be careful with it.” She asked for such a simple thing like it was a lot to ask, like she wasn’t sure she deserved even that.

She deserved that and so much more, Pomni thought as she held her gaze and answered in a tone more serious than she felt:  “I promise you I will.”

Only then did Ragatha let go of her hand, letting her arms fall to her side, though Pomni caught the way she was quick to grab onto the sheets right after, fingers curling into the fabric. Bracing herself for what was coming.

Before any of it could be overthought further, the jester exhaled, and dipped her hand in the doll’s open chest.

Ragatha's face scrunched up in pain. “Ungh…”

Pomni mouthed a ‘sorry’ as she moved her hand around the cotton. It was soft, not that different from touching Ragatha herself, uncomfortable only because she knew the person it belonged to was hurting. She was palming through the stuffing almost blindly, trying to feel for something that wasn’t cotton. She couldn’t avoid some of it spilling out over the sides.

“Are we supposed to like... pick this all up and get it back into you later?”

“It’s fine. Caine can replace it later.” Ragatha spoke through gritted teeth. “It won’t kill me, if that worries you. If I lose enough I just start to get really dizzy and unable to focus, like my brain is trying to simulate some kid-friendly blood loss.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah…”

After a few more seconds of palming through nothing but cotton, Pomni attempted a joke to ease the silence that was starting to feel uncomfortable. “This feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

Ragatha chuckled, much to the jester’s amusement. “We actually did that in an adventure once.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.” Ragatha nodded. “One needle in a space the size of an Olympic stadium.”

A pause.

“We, uh. Didn’t find it.”

Figures, Pomni thought. She wanted to ask whose idea it had been, Caine's or Bubble's. Both made sense to her. But before she could open her mouth, the doll let out a pained groan.

“I can feel it close… Should be a little bit more to the left.”

Following Ragatha’s instructions, her hand moved more towards her left.

“I meant my lef-“

“Got it!” Pomni blurted out the moment her fingers brushed against an object hard and smooth, a completely different in texture from everything around it.

She pulled it free and blinked at the object that was now in her hands and not quite what she expected. Not shaped like a heart at all, it was a small, gray, circular box, with a tiny speaker on the front.

“Is this a…”

“Oh no.”

"♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ YOU ARE MY BEST FRIEND! ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬"

The toy voice box activated at the slightest squeeze from Pomni in exact same voice as Ragatha, albeit a bit more muffled. Pomni turned surprised to a very caught in the act doll, shock rapidly turned into delight.

“No way. You’ve been laughing at my squeaky sound when you’ve had this all along?” To which Ragatha just shrugged sheepishly in response, her face back to red.

Pomni gave it another experimental squeeze.

"♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ LET'S BE FRIENDS FOREVER! ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬"

Another squeeze.

"♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ YOU'RE DOING GREAT, SWEETIE! ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬"

Another.

"♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ LET’S HUG! ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬"

This was, without a doubt, the cutest thing the jester had discovered all day. Possibly all week. Possibly in the entire time she'd been inside this circus.

Ragatha, for her part, seemed to have given up entirely on dignity, using both her arms to cover her face. "Pomniiiii..."

Pomni let out a laugh. “Just one more, just one more.”

“♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ I LOVE YOU. ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬”

The L word. Spoken it in Ragatha's voice. Exactly Ragatha's voice. Warm and soft, the same voice that said good morning to her every day, the same voice that had just asked her to be careful with her heart. And for one full second, Pomni's brain completely failed to process that it had come from a box and not from the doll currently hiding behind her own arms.

When her brain finally restarted and was able to come back to life, she was reminded of why exactly she was on the doll’s bed with her chest cut open in the first place.

“Uh- sorry! I’ll put it back, hold on-”

“Just leave it outside. I’ll throw it in the digital lake later.” Ragatha muttered, finally freeing her face from her hands.

Pomni let out a small laugh, though she wasn't entirely sure she’d meant it as a joke. 

“Don’t say that. It’s a part of you.” She answered, softly placing it amid the cotton. “I think it’s adorable that you have one of these.”

Ragatha let out some strange high pitched sound at that. “HA. Aw. Sucks. Thanks, Pomni. I think you may be the first one in the circus to know. Er, other than Caine. Please don’t tell anyone about that, either.”

She acted as though people finding out would have her hanged for the crime of having a doll avatar with a doll voice box inside it, but Pomni wasn't about to argue.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.” Now moving her hand around Ragatha’s left side, her fingers brushed against something else firmer than cotton. 

Ragatha inhaled sharply thought her paper teeth. 

“There.”

Pomni palmed it carefully, feeling the flat surface that was, indeed, a heart shape. Though it wasn’t the realistic, biologically accurate kind, but rather the simple, symmetrical shape you'd see on a valentine. And, just as they'd suspected, she could feel a crack running straight down the middle, splitting it into two halves. Careful to keep her grip on both pieces, she closed her hand around it and pulled it out.

Followed by a small cry of pain. 

“Shit. Are you okay?” Pomni asked, concerned.

“Yeah, it’s just...” A groan. “Just as painful as I remembered.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can.”

With now shaking hands Pomni climbed off the bed and carried it to the bedside table. She opens her palms and sees it. A pink candy heart, large crack splitting clean down the middle. That’s wasn’t the only damage, though. There were many, many more smaller cracks. Not deep enough to break it apart into more pieces, but there nonetheless. And right in the center, there were two words written on it. Though between the cracks and the wear, it was completely unreadable.

Not wasting time on the details, Pomni grabbed the sugar glue and applied it generously along the largest crack, then pressed both halves together between her palms, holding them firm.

And waited.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”

She slowly opened her hands. Both pieces immediately fell apart again. The glue hadn't done anything at all.

“Ragatha, it’s not working…” She turned to find the doll exactly where she'd left her, frozen in the same position on the bed. Right. Couldn't move without her heart. “Are you sure this is the right way to do it?”

“It worked once before.” She answered weakly. “Although…”

“What?”

“Uhhh, it hadn’t been broken, broken. More like scratched. Slightly.” 

"Seriously?" Pomni had to bite down hard on the frustration rising in her chest. The fact that this piece of vital information was only surfacing now, of all times. She had no idea what she was doing anymore. They'd hit a dead end. "Ragatha, we're gonna have to get help.”

"Please, don't!" Ragatha's voice cracked, desperate. "I don't want anyone else seeing it.”

Her mind was struggling to grasp why it scared her as much as it did when she felt a buzz in her hands, realizing some seconds later it was the heart shaking. Trembling with fear. 

A wave of protectiveness hit her, sudden and overwhelming, and just like that it didn't matter that she didn't understand. She would shield it from any prying eyes with her life if she had to.

“Hey, hey, calm down, Rags. I’m not doing anything you don’t agree to.” She came closer to her slowly, very slowly, like she was dealing with an injured animal. “We’ll find another way, okay?”

That seemed to calm her down. The trembling decreased somewhat.

In reality Pomni was scared herself. Her friend had finally accepted her help and she had no idea what to do now. It wasn’t like they had all the time in the world, she doubted having her heart sitting out in the open was any more comfortable for Ragatha than it was for her to be holding it.

An idea popped into her mind.

“Maybe… it would help if you could tell me how it happened.”

Like many things in this circus, it all seemed to lead back to their minds. Their conjuring, their rooms, and, of course, their avatars. That included their gimmicks. If they could get to the mental root of the problem, maybe they could fix it from there. What’s a heart without its mind?

“I’m… not sure how it happened...” Damn it. Well, Ragatha was not that keen on getting there. Making it much harder than it needed to be.

Still, Pomni wouldn't lose her nerves this time, she told herself. She would be patient. Slowly, she sat down on the bed beside her friend.

“Then let’s start at the beginning.”

“The beginning?” Ragatha repeated.

“When do you think it started to break?”

Ragatha kept quiet, thinking to herself for a moment. She let out a tired sigh before speaking again.

“I think it’s been breaking for a while.” She looked back at her friend, but the jester was waiting for her to continue. “I didn’t take it any better than you did when you first got here, you know? Actually, ha, took me so much longer to adapt. There wasn’t anyone here other than Kinger. Not that he’s a bad company! But he was already not doing so well with his mind, even then.” 

Pomni felt sick at the idea of herself arriving and having close to no one. No Ragatha, no Zooble, no Gangle and no Jax. Of course it would’ve taken her longer to adapt with no support and barely any human connection.

“On the other hand, there was Caine, and… he was scary.” Ragatha continued. “I'm sure that's everyone's first impression when they get here. But he was the only other relationship I had.” A pause, genuinely considering. “Unless Bubble counts.”

“Definitely not.”

“Ah. Well. It was Caine who took out my heart for first time. I hadn’t been here that long, still getting used to the wacky logic of the circus. Um, I asked him about the sensations I kept feeling coming from my chest, and he just… ripped it out with no warning. I dropped to the floor, unable to move like I was an actual ragdoll. And Caine… he didn’t mean anything by it, I know that. He just wanted to play, he wasn’t seeing it as something that was… a core part of me. He juggled with it for a while until he dropped it by accident."

Pomni inhaled sharply. “Ouch.”

"He put some glue on it and placed it back. I'm not sure if it ever properly healed, honestly, but I was too shaken to bring it up again." A weak laugh, the kind that wasn't really a laugh. "It's stupid. With everything we've been through in this place, that that simple moment got to me so much."

It's not. The words sat right at the tip of Pomni's tongue, pressing to get out. She swallowed them down, afraid that interrupting Ragatha would break whatever thread had finally come loose enough to pull on.

"It got worse with time. After that, there were a few people who joined and couldn't stay more than a few days before abstracting. Then Ribbit, Kaufmo." A pause, quieter now because this one was still raw for both of them. "Jax…”

Pomni winced at the name. She knew Ragatha had complicated feelings when it came to the rabbit. Someone who had gone from a friend when he first arrived to someone who knew exactly where to hurt her, and did so with little hesitation. 

They didn’t view her in the same light, Pomni knew. Ragatha had years more resentment accumulated, as much as she tried to hid it. Still, she'd seen how hard Jax's abstraction had affected her. For a moment, Pomni wondered if that had been what finally pushed her over the edge.

“But… that wasn’t the thing that split it in two…”

Pomni’s mind quietened.

“It was right before Caine got deleted.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. The jester remembered perfectly. If she let herself think about it too long, she could still feel the phantom pain of the animalistic beasts that had meant to represent Gummigoo and his mates. There had been nothing of him, apart from an eerie resemblance. Just an instinct to bite, to scratch, to tear, to rip Pomni apart piece by piece and not stop until there was nothing left.

The worst thing Caine had ever put them though. By far. How terrifying it was that he had known their biggest fears to this degree all along. Or maybe it hadn’t been him directly. Maybe it was the circus itself that retained that information from their brain scans.

Either way, none of them had properly talked about it afterwards. She had no idea what any of the others had been through. Only that it’d been bad.

“What happened?”

The doll gave her that remorseful look, the look that meant that none of that information would be coming out of her mouth, and Pomni couldn't help the disappointment that crossed her own.

They’d gotten far, but this was where the limit of her trust ended.

Pomni dropped her gaze to the heart in her hands, still sitting there as cracked and damaged as when she'd pulled it out. All that, and nothing to show for it. She’d failed. Ragatha had let her in, quite literally, relied on her for help and she’d couldn’t to do anything useful with it. She’d hurt her for nothing. No wonder their relationship was bound the be stuck, not getting any closer like Pomni’s own heart desired so bad.

She was still staring at it when the candy seemed to darken and shrink, just a little. She almost wrote it off as her imagination.

A sniff cut through the silence.

“I’m sorry, Pomni.” The doll with the open chest had started to tear up. “I know you think I don’t trust you. It’s not that, I swear it’s not, Pomni. I trust you completely. More than I trust myself.” Her pupil had expanded, wide and unguarded and more readable than Pomni had ever seen it. 

And there it was again. That same trust she'd glimpsed back in the tent. Plain and complete and slightly terrifying in how unconditional it looked.

“It’s me. I’m the one who won’t- can’t go beyond certain places in my own head. The darker ones. So I ignore them. I don’t even think about them. Because, if I do… if I let myself go there, I feel like I’ll get lost in them. And I won’t be strong enough to pull myself out.” 

By the time Pomni processed Ragatha was crying, a tear was already running from the back of her eye.

I did that. The realization made her chest go cold.

She'd gotten so caught up in trying to get Ragatha to open up that she hadn't stopped to wonder whether doing so might only make things worse. 

“Hey, hey, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Pomni leaned over and wiped it away carefully, knowing she couldn't do it herself. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. You don’t owe me anything.”

She should know better than anyone that pressing too hard wasn’t any better than keeping it repressed. She'd seen a situation where that exact thing had happened, and it hadn't ended well for either of them.

“You don’t have to think about anything you don’t want to. It's just… not sharing things, keeping it all locked up… it almost destroyed me once. And it’s not an excuse, but it’s why I can get so frustrated when the people I care about do it.”

Ragatha blinked up at her, something shifting in her expression. "Really? You seem so in touch with your emotions.”

“Heh… I was a very moody teenager. Gave my parents a lot of trouble.” She had been so angry then that she’d started closing in on herself, pushing everyone away. Had her parents not helped her when they did, her mental health may have declined much more than it did. “Had some pretty bad anger issues for a while. Actually, those didn't quite leave all the way.” She had a feeling Ragatha already knew that.

“Sometimes I forget that not everyone is the same, though. What helped me back then doesn't mean it'll help you. I shouldn't have assumed it would. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay…” Ragatha answered softly. 

And there it was, that familiar awkwardness creeping back in between them. It took Pomni some time to realise that, this time, she was the cause of it. The one who hadn't been entirely honest.

While her own terrible defense mechanism had certainly played a part in it, there was another reason she'd been so desperate to get through to Ragatha. One not quite so noble.

“That’s not all, though.” 

Ragatha looked back at her. Her eye wasn’t as watery now.

“Truth is, I’ve been trying to get closer to you.” Pomni confessed, feeling her cheeks warm up. “And the way that feels natural to me is by opening up, sharing things, letting people in.” She shrugged one shoulder. “But I know that's not everyone's way. It's not your way." A pause. "So what is? Yours, I mean. How do you get close to people?"

Ragatha stared up at the ceiling. She opened and closed her mouth a few times.

"I've never…" she started, then stopped. Swallowed and tried again, quieter. "I've never really been close to that many people."

Something in Pomni's chest tightened. Not the answer she’d been expecting. 

“That’s okay.” She said gently.

Ragatha didn't answer. Silence settled over the room once more, one not awkward anymore. Just quiet.

Slowly, Pomni let herself lay down beside the doll, leaving just enough space between them that her head wouldn’t touch her arm.

She supposed it was time that she returned the heart. They would… find another way. Somehow.

“On the day of my 5th birthday, my mother took me to the city center.” Ragatha started abruptly.

Pomni’s head snapped towards her.

“I know it seems silly to get excited about that, I just never got out of my farm much. We stopped at this little store and she bought me my own Raggedy Ann doll. Did you ever read those books?”

“I’ve heard about them.” Pomni answered.

“They were my favorite in the whole world. I used to read them over and over. And… Aw, man. I really loved that doll. She had a candy heart sewn into her chest. I took such good care of her. I'd brush her hair every day, wash her whenever she got dirty, and stitch up every tiny rip that appeared over the years.” Her eyes were fixed on something Pomni couldn’t quite see. “She served as a reminder. Yes, my mother could be harsh. She could berate and yell at me over the smallest mistakes, but at the end of the day, she’d given me something I loved so, so much, so surely that had to mean…”

Her voice grew quieter. She didn’t finish that sentence.

“When I got old enough to ‘grow out of dolls’, my older brothers decided it was time to get rid of Ann. So, they fed her to the dogs while I was outside with my horses. When I found her, she had been torn to shreds. 3 out of 4 limbs had been ripped off her body, so was her candy heart. I did try to put her back together on my own, I really did. God, I wish I had. But you can probably imagine the sewing skills of a 10-year-old. And the heart… I didn’t know how to put it back. So… I asked the person who'd given her to me in the first place.”

Silence.

“This is dumb.”

“No, it isn’t.” Pomni said immediately.

“I was a very dummy child. Still am, remembering something so small this vividly more than twenty years later..”

“Ragatha. You’re not dumb at all.”

She swallowed before continuing.

“She held the doll in one hand, heart in the other. I- I don’t even think it was on purpose, she wasn’t being cruel this time. She just wasn’t careful enough. However it was, the heart broke. And the doll wasn’t worth fixing anymore.” A tired, long sigh. “Maybe if I’d cried and begged for it she would’ve given her back, if only to shut me up. But, no. I just stayed frozen there, unable to move as she threw the doll away.”

“I guess it hit me, then. She hadn’t taken me to the city because it was my birthday. She had errands to run, and the babysitter was sick. She didn’t even pay for the plush. They gave them away for free when it was your kid's birthday.”

Ragatha kept staring blankly at the ceiling.

“All this time, I’ve been ignoring it, same as I always do with every little thought that I feel will surpass me. How can it hurt if I don’t talk about it, don’t even think about it?” 

A shaky exhale. Pomni didn’t dare to move.

“But it does hurt. Because no matter how much I’ve tried to avoid it, I've always known.” Ragatha continued. “My mother didn’t really love me. Outside of the bare minimum care a person is obligated to feel for someone they've raised. Which didn’t feel like enough.”

The air felt much heavier now. Ragatha’s expression was tired and defeated in a way Pomni had never seen from her before. A far cry from the usual happy one she was used to seeing.

There was no smoothing anything over now. That was it. The words that hadn’t been spoken before. The thoughts she didn't even want to think about.

The worst part is that it made sense in the worst way. It’d been written all over the way her friend acted. The way she would deflect whenever a conversation got too personal. The way she seemed almost disoriented whenever someone showed her too much affection. The way she could give and give, yet seemed to have no idea what to do whenever someone tried to give something back.

Because if you're a child who never learns what love feels like, how are you supposed to learn how to receive it as an adult? If the first person who was supposed to love you unconditionally doesn't, how are you even expected to expect that anyone else will?

Dang. 

Pomni felt stupid for having thought she simply didn't want to get close to her.

“Listen to me, Ragatha.” Pomni spoke, sitting up on her knees on the bed. Her next words would need to be thoughtful, and delicate. “Your mother was a massive bitch.” Oh, was she glad that stupid filter was gone. “And I’m overjoyed that she will never get here so she can never, ever hurt you again.” She paused. “Actually, scratch that. I hope she does put on that damned headset so I can personally beat her ass.”

As expected, the sudden insults directed at her mother were enough to snap her out of whatever depressive spiral of thoughts she’d been sinking into.

“…thanksssssss….????¿¿????”

"Seriously, though." Pomni’s expression softened again. "I'm so, so sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of that. You deserved a real home, with a mother who loved you the way a parent’s supposed to. And a Raggedy Ann doll! Hell, you deserve a million Raggedy Ann dolls if that’s what you want!” She threw her arms in the air, exasperated. “If she couldn’t see your worth out there, that’s her problem. Here, we can actually see you for the treasure you are. We all love you. I-“

She had to avert her gaze now, far too embarrassed to say any of this while looking directly at Ragatha.

“I…” care, like, adore, cherish, want to spend the rest of my digital days with you. “Love you. A lot. So please… get better.”

As she said her own words, Pomni barely registered her own hands lifting the candy heart.

And planting a small kiss.

Brave enough to return to the doll’s gaze now, she looked back at her.

To find the skin of her face blending into her red hair, eye bigger than she’d ever seen on anyone and overall what could only be described as a pretty shocked expression.

Which was more than enough of a wake up call for Pomni to finally process what she'd just done.

“OH MY GOD, I am so sorry, I don’t know what came over me!” She asks her to be careful and she starts fooling around with her heart? Why on earth would she even do that???

She felt very nervous now, her hands starting to shake. The heart itself was moving like crazy, bumping against the closed palms.

How much stupidness does it take to freak out a candy heart, of all things.

“I’m sorry, I’ll put it back now!” She rushed out.

“No, wait!” Ragatha’s voice stopped her just inches away from the cotton in her chest. She appeared just as nervous as Pomni felt. “It actually, um… stopped hurting as much?”

Slowly, her gaze dropped to her hands as she loosened her grip, releasing the caged heart from her closed palms. 

Miraculously, the breach had closed. The crack was still there, but both sides had been pulled back together.

Oh.

Oooooh.

Before she could think better of it, Pomni leaned forward and kissed the heart again.

She watched it carefully now, as it seems to glow faintly for a moment, after which the cracks started fixing by themselves, the pink deepening into a more vibrant hue.

It worked. In the most corny, embarrassingly cliché way possible, but it worked. Pomni let out a relieved breath that was almost a laugh. Well, only one thing left to do now.

She lost little to no time in smothering the heart in kisses.

“Pffft- Pomni!” Ragatha’s laughter broke across the room. “That- haha- that tickles!”

“As long as it doesn’t hurt, and it’s working, that’s something you’re gonna have to deal with.” Pomni answered, pretending to be dignified. “And my biology teacher said I'd never make it as a heart surgeon..."

“I don’t think- ha- this is what they normally do- hahaha.”

“Eh. Close enough.”

As much as she felt like she could do this all day, she had to let the poor girl breathe eventually. She leaned back, lips carrying the faint aftertaste of strawberry, and held the heart up to examine her work.

It wasn't perfect. The large crack could still very well be seen, as well as some other were cracks that, Pomni had a feeling would never fully close. But it was whole. In one piece. So much better than how she’d found it.

And now, with the surface clearer and the color restored, the phrase carved in the center could finally be read.

‘Needs love’.

“What is it?” Ragatha asked when she noticed Pomni staring at it a little too long, suddenly, and rather amusingly, very self-conscious about her own heart.

“Nothing.” Pomni reassured her. “Just admiring what a pretty heart you have.”

The noise that came out of Ragatha had certainly never been produced by a living creature before.

With one last peck and the uttermost care, Pomni finally placed the heart back where it belonged. As soon as it settled back inside her, Ragatha lost no time in sitting up and throwing her arms around Pomni, seemingly not caring about the cotton spilling messily over the sides of the opening.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, I feel so much better now!” And she sounded better, too. There was a lightness in her voice that hadn't been there before, something that had been quietly missing this whole time without Pomni even realizing it until it came back.

The jester carefully closed her arms around her in return, mindful of the open chest between them. “You’re welcome. But we need to stitch you up.” She was kinda, sorta touching her friend’s insides with most of her body. Which wasn’t how hugs were normally supposed to work.

The ragdoll leaned back, breaking the hug while keeping her hands on the jester’s shoulders. “Ah, no worries. I can do that myself, you’ve done enough.”

Pomni raised an eyebrow. As if this was asking for anything in comparison to what they'd just been through. “Rags, it’s really not a big deal. Lay down for me, yeah?”

“Okay, okay...” She reluctantly let go and went back down onto the bed while Pomni reached for her knitting supplies.

Setting them down on the bed, she sorted through the threads until she found the right blue and threaded the needle with focus.

“You seem very happy to patch up a doll for someone who doesn’t like them.” 

Pomni looked up, surprised.

Had Ragatha just teased her?

Sure enough, the doll was looking at her with a sly expression, one that wasn't all that common to see on her face. Pomni found that she rather liked it. She also had a feeling Ragatha wouldn't be letting her forget the doll comment for a while.

“I may or may not have found one I really like.” Naturally, she couldn't pass up the opportunity to tease her back. 

Worked like a charm. Ragatha went completely silent, her face slowly turning red as Pomni returned her attention to the stitching, smiling to herself.

She went slow, knowing sewing wasn't exactly her greatest skill yet determined to do the best job she could. When she tied off the last stitch and snipped the thread, she set the needle aside and helped Ragatha sit up on the bed.

“There we go. Sorry, my stitching isn’t as good as yours.” Pomni said, offering her the hand mirror that been sitting on the table.

Ragatha took it and held it up, studying her own reflection. Her free hand came up slowly, fingers tracing the new stitching along the seam, following the line carefully from one end to the other until they reached the center of her chest, where they stopped.

Pomni swallowed nervously. She wasn't sure if Ragatha would like it.

Right in the middle of her chest was a little heart-shaped patch. Ragatha stared at it for a few seconds.

“Pomni, I…”

“If you don’t like it, we can always-“ Pomni stopped herself seeing that she’d started tearing up again.

“It’s perfect.” She smiled so warmly that the jester had no other option but to believe her.

Ragatha kept the eye contact, rubbing her own arms up and down, and  Pomni knew exactly what was coming. 

“Is it okay if I hug you again?”

“Ragatha I was just inside of you. NOT the way it sounds but… yeah, you can hug me.”

Didn’t need to be told twice. Her arms were around Pomni before she'd even finished the sentence. With all her cotton back and no open seam to worry about, the doll hugged her properly, strong enough to get the iconic squeak out of the jester. 

Ragatha giggled, as she always did when she got to hear it.

“Hey!” Pomni complained, although she didn’t really care anymore. She now knew how to get her back.

She wrapped her noodle arms around the soft blue dress, and squeezed back.

“♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ I’M SO HAPPY TO HAVE YOU IN MY LIFE. ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬”