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‘He’s…sick? What do you mean? I didn’t think we could get sick in here.’
Ragatha sighs. ‘I thought so too but…it’s been happening since he got here. Every year he just…disappears off to his room for a few days and comes back saying he was sick. I tried to ask more questions or see if there was anything he needed but…’ she trails off.
Pomni looks around at the others, chilling on the couches after a long adventure.
‘Shouldn’t we go check on him?’
Ragatha rubs the back of her neck, sheepishly. ‘We just kinda…leave him to it? It's not like he lets anybody in his room, anyway.’
Gangle is wringing her hands in her lap, not meeting Pomni’s eyes. ‘He can be so mean if you try to help him.’
Zooble leans back. ‘It's nice to have a break, honestly.’
‘Okay.’ She’s not surprised at their comments, but there’s a spark of worry in her chest anyway. Maybe this is par for the course around here, but it's still new to her.
She sits with them all a little longer, trying to focus on the book she’s reading. When she realises she’s just reading the same passage over and over again she sits up.
‘I’m gonna go check on him. Just in case he needs a glass of water, or something.’
Zooble looks up from where they’ve been watching Gangle draw. ‘Good luck, I guess.’
__________
This is the third time she’s knocked. No answer. She presses her ear to the door, listening for any signs of movement. Nothing. It’s so unlike Jax to be quiet. She stares at the picture on his door for a long time, tapping her foot.
‘Jax? Are you okay?’
Silence.
Of course she cares about his wellbeing. Of course she does. But she’s also deeply curious. And the force of her curiosity has always driven her farther than other people.
That night she lies awake, imagining the room across the hall from her. What is he doing in there? Is he faking it? What if he’s really sick, and in pain, and unable to ask for help?
The following day, she asks Caine for a key to Jax’s room.
She stands outside for a while, arguing with herself about the wisdom of this. He might never forgive her, despite the fact he's always invading their privacy on a whim. It must be relaxing for the others to get a bit of respite from it.
She puts the key in the lock. Time for him to get a taste of his own medicine, she supposes. If this is a huge betrayal, so be it. She opens the door.
The lights are off. She takes in pink walls, three chairs, a table, turned around polaroids on the wall.
Jax is curled up on the bed, facing away from her. There's an empty bucket on the floor within arm’s reach of him, a pile of keys tipped out and discarded nearby.
‘Jax?’
She watches his shoulders tense.
‘G'way,’ he mumbles.
She steps forward. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Headache,’ he grunts. ‘G'way.’
He doesn't move. He looks like a rag doll, discarded, the covers tangled on the bed. She frowns and walks over to him.
His eyes are shut. He's panting a little, like he's been running. His fur is soaked with sweat, a flush across his face that carries down onto his chest.
‘F***, Jax.’
He turns his head and squints at her, struggling to focus. There's a glassy film across his eyes like a sick animal. He grabs the edge of the bed, squeezes them shut again.
‘Ghhh.’
She moves forward in alarm. ‘What?’
‘Spinning,’ he mumbles.
She doesn't know what to do. This isn't supposed to happen, in here. Caine should have fixed it. Doesn't he at least know?
Jax's hand relaxes. He turns his head and presses it into the pillow, trying to steady his breathing. He looks wretched.
Pomni straightens up.
‘I'll come back. Don't - don't worry. I'm just going to speak to Caine.’
If he gasps out a protest as she leaves, she ignores it, her sights set on Caine's office. If they have to be trapped here, they might as well not have to deal with human illnesses. It's the least he could do to fix it.
__________
After yelling for a while, Caine finally comes to get her. She stumbles as she's zapped into his office, her pupils rotating cartoonishly in her head.
‘Ugh.’
Caine is all up in her face immediately.
‘What can I do ya for, Pomni? You wanna brainstorm a new adventure? Learn to tango? Bake a cake? Go spelunki-’
‘-Caine!’
He freezes mid air.
‘Jax is sick. Really sick. I need you to fix him.’
Caine stares at her. ‘Huh. That's not nearly as interesting as my ideas!’
Pomni sighs. ‘Apparently it happens every year. Can't you - I don't know. Troubleshoot it? or something?’
‘No can do, Pomniscient! It seems to be a corruption in the brain scan itself, nothing I can do about it.’
‘Well there must be something!’ She's frustrated now. She's not willing to just accept everything. Maybe she's naive, or too new to this. Maybe her feelings for Jax are different than the others. (She doesn't examine that one too closely).
Caine is scratching his horrible gum head. In a much calmer voice than she's used to, he says: ‘Well. I guess we could take a look.’
He snaps his fingers and huge concentric rings of glowing blue waveforms burst into existence and surround them, like they're standing at the centre of a great tree. The rings tick round at different speeds, and she can see the variation in them like the audio frequency images on her old hi-fi at home. She stares.
‘This is…Jax's brain?’
Caine nods and floats up into the centre of the rings, reaches out and turns them slowly, moving his hand lazily like he's browsing. The brightness and motion of them plays tricks on her eyes. He shrugs, makes a sudden motion so that they start spinning wildly.
‘Not sure what we're looking for here, Pommo. It all looks ship-shape to me!’
She squints, trying not to fall over with the wild motion around her, a blur of electric blue whizzing past her eyes. She tries to make out any discrepancies at all. Sure, there are areas where the waveforms distort wildly like someone shouting into a mic. Areas of distress, areas of quiet. But it's all the same uniform blue. Until -
‘-Wait! There.’ She points. On one of the middle rings there's a corrupted patch, the lines broken, glitched and dark.
Caine pauses. ‘What?’ he says quietly. With a snap of his fingers he dismisses the other rings, and casts his arm to the side sharply so this one spins again. His eyes bluescreen briefly, reading the code.
‘This is his eleventh year of life.’
He stops the spin, places a finger either side of the corrupted section, careful not to touch it. ‘This is…a section of about six days. Starting February seventeenth.’
‘Can you…read the memory? Find out what it means?’
He turns his head to her. He looks apprehensive. Slowly, he reaches for the corrupted memory, grazing it with the tip of a finger.
Immediately, his body glitches out, his head spinning around wildly, eyes flashing like fairground lights. Pomni darts forward.
‘Caine!’
Caine grabs his spinning head, closes his jaws so his eyes are shut. She can see him willing his form to reset. There's a tense pause, and then a ding like a microwave. His head snaps up, his whole being back to normal.
‘Well, that was weird!’ he shouts.
‘What…happened? Are you okay?’
‘Uhh…’ he looks towards the dark piece of waveform again. ‘I couldn't see much. That memory is all messed up. It's mostly darkness, with some flashes of…wires and, uh. White walls. A bed? Charts of some kind. With St. Louis written at the top.’ He scoffs. ‘Who's that? Why's he got his own paper?’
‘St. Louis Hospital,’ she breathes. ‘Can you check the admissions? From those dates, for an eleven year old?’
‘Sure thing! Boy, this is some fun detectiving!’
He pulls his hand backwards like he's drawing a bow, and hundreds of sheets of ghostly blue cascade in its path. He plunges a fist into them, grabs for a particular page. He pulls it out, his digital eyes reading what, to Pomni, looks like a blank sheet of light.
‘Hmm.’ He scratches the underside of his gums. ‘There were a few kids his age in there. No way to tell which one is the right one.’
‘What were they in there for?’
‘Appendicitis, broken femur, pneumonia, asthma, measles, head injury…’
‘Wait! Stop. The head injury?’
He pauses. He draws out a long blue strip of light, pinches it to expand it.
‘Leeroy Mateo. Eleven years old. Admitted February seventeenth.’
Something strange happens in Pomni's chest. Leeroy. She doesn't know why she'd expected his real name to sound like Jax.
Caine expands the page further.
‘The cause was blunt force trauma to the head and face, following an assault!’ he reads cheerfully. ‘Well that sure would explain the corruption!’
Pomni goes still. ‘...What?’
Caine taps his finger at the bottom of the page, like he's opening an attachment. Something flies out from it, unfolding in front of her.
It’s a photo. A skinny kid, asleep or unconscious in a hospital bed, dark hair curled over the bandages wrapping his head. There’s an angry bruise covering the entire right side of his face, his eye swollen shut and his lower lip split.
Unthinkingly, she reaches for the photo, her hand passing through it. ‘Oh,’ she says. She doesn't know what else to say. That’s Jax, or at least the person who became Jax. He was hurt, badly, and Jax is sick because of it.
She doesn't want to know. Does she? She does.
‘Caine?’
‘Hmm?’ He’s folding the other admissions records into little origami cranes.
‘Can you find out what happened? To Leeroy?’
‘Oh! Uh. I can certainly try! You are curious today, eh Pommo!’
She winces, but he's already moving towards Leeroy's sheet of light again. It seems he's trying to reach through it, until it flashes red and makes a loud buzzer sound. His teeth narrow into a squint.
‘Restricted access. There's all sorts of stuff in here. Hold on…’
He reaches through it again and grabs at a spherical matrix of red light that floats out just beyond it, pressing and tapping at its junctions like a puzzle box until pieces of it come off, then casting the pieces down towards her. Fragments of ghostly text drift by in front of her as he tears the information free. Pomni has to turn to follow them, catching headings and half-sentences as they pass.
…02/17 - admitted to St. Louis Hospital…
…Patient presented with significant blunt-force trauma to the head and face…
…neighbour reported hearing shouting from the residence for approximately fifteen minutes…
…Father taken into custody at the scene…
Her stomach twists. For a second the electrical hum of the waveform is deafening.
‘...His dad?’
‘Sure looks that way!’ Caine calls from above.
Another fragment drifts down to her.
...witness reported hearing Mr Mateo refer to the child as a “pansy” and “sissy”...
A wave of anger seizes her. ‘Okay. Enough.’ She waves her hand across the text and it dissolves into pixels. She takes a breath, turns to look at a slightly more intact fragment.
…Child Protective Services: Case assigned 02/18: Caseworker - Julia Moreno…
…02/18: Hospital visit. Leeroy was not able to participate in interview…
…02/19: Leeroy appeared confused and distressed on waking. Remained with child until he fell asleep…
…02/21: Leeroy recognised this worker on arrival…
…02/24: Leeroy asked that I remain…
Relief washes through her as she reads, a deep gratitude to this social worker she will never see or meet. At least someone was there.
Caine is still reaching into the network.
‘There's a lot more! Interviews, reports, case notes, medical -’
‘No.’
His hand stops. Pomni swallows. She looks at the photograph again.
‘We know what happened.’
Caine snaps his fingers and the whole mess of bright data spirals into nothingness like it's being sucked down a drain. The office feels suddenly darker as her eyes adjust.
‘I suppose significant head trauma is the cause!’ Caine announces, clapping his hands together. ‘Great sleuthing, Pomni!’
She feels sick. ‘Th...thanks, Caine.’
She turns away before he can pull up anything else, and is out the door before she hears what he says next. Her hand is over her mouth, her eyes wide.
But. She's nothing if not a problem solver.
__________
She fetches extra sheets and blankets and goes to the kitchen to fill one of the large mixing bowls with cold water. She grabs some soft washcloths from her bathroom, piling everything outside Jax's door.
If the image of the kid in the hospital bed flashes in front of her eyes as she works, she only flinches for a second.
She drags the pile into Jax's room, not bothering to knock this time. He's curled up on the bed in the half darkness, still facing away from her, like he hasn't moved at all since she's been gone.
She goes to the chest of drawers to search for fresh clothes. When she opens the second drawer, she's surprised to see the maid dress from the softball game shoved in the corner. She stops. She didn’t know he still had it - she’d thought it’d disappeared.
The words from the police report echo in her mind. She closes the drawer carefully and quietly, tries the next one, and emerges clutching a fresh white tee.
She climbs up onto the bed, taking a moment to sit and ponder her next move. Looking at his shoulders, she can barely see him breathing. His ears are wilted down his back. She's never seen them like that before.
The issue is - she's never really touched him. The last time she tried, it went horribly wrong, and as much as she doesn't want to freak him out she can't deny that that rejection still stings. She isn't a huge hugger. It was a big deal that she went to hug him in the first place.
But now - it's not like there's anyone else, is there? There's no one else who would be willing to help, she's almost sure of that, and although Rags might do it out of people-pleasing, she doesn't want to put her in that position. Maybe Kinger would - but no, she barely sees them interact, in fact she thinks Jax actively avoids him. It's her or no one.
She breathes out, shuffles over to him, assesses the situation. The first thing she notices is that the buttons on his overalls aren't real, so she can't unclip them, and she feels a flash of irritation for Caine's lazy avatar design. Very carefully, she reaches out and pulls down one strap of his overalls. It’s damp with sweat. He doesn't react at all. She takes his arm gently out of the strap, and feels how burning hot his skin is under the fur. She turns him to lie on his back. His face scrunches in pain.
‘Sorry,’ she whispers.
She grabs his hand to pull his arm through the other strap. He's not wearing his gloves, and the fur on his hands is shorter than elsewhere. It feels shockingly intimate that she now knows this.
As she pulls the overalls down, leaving him in plain black boxers, he whimpers in pain. She whispers another apology from where she's ten miles down the bed trying to get them off his feet. As soon as she manages it she crawls back up to him. He's still lying on his back, one hand beside his head, the other resting on his stomach.
He's so thin. She can see his ribs, the sweat-slicked fur only accentuating them. If he'd been eating less in the days or weeks leading up to this, she hadn't noticed. She’s always so distracted by his bluster and antics.
‘Jax? I'm going to have to - um. I have to sit you up to put the shirt on. Don't - don't hate me. I'll try and do it fast, okay?’
She doesn't expect a reply. He doesn't seem to be fully conscious. She'd almost take one of his snide retorts at this point, over this chilling silence.
She shuffles around so she can sit with her back to the headboard, pulling him up onto her so his back is resting on her chest. She pulls the soft white t-shirt over his head, careful not to catch his ears, and brings his arms through as gently as she can. He makes another soft grunt of pain. She pulls the shirt down, places his head carefully back on the pillows, and pulls the fresh sheets over him. She wipes her brow, his body heat having radiated into hers.
She takes a moment to look at him. Despite his changed form and the lack of injuries, the image isn’t so different from the photo of Leeroy. He still has the look of someone cast out, discarded, hurt. His mouth presses into the same tiny line of pain. She sees his eyes move beneath his lids, but he doesn’t make a sound.
When she presses the cold compress to his forehead she's met with nothing but a twitch of his eyebrows. She's pulled one of the strange colourful chairs up to the bedside so she can reach. She's totally out of her element here - she's an accountant, not a nurse - and yet since she arrived here she's been finding herself capable of so much more than she thought.
She huffs out a sigh, wringing out the washcloth and dipping it back into the water to cool it.
‘This sucks, man. It really does. I hope…I hope you feel better soon.’
His face is impassive, his arm draped over the edge of the bed, hand hanging open. She remembers the dates on the corrupted brain scan. Six days in the hospital. He can't die from this, can he? They just have to get through it.
She settles down in the purple chair, her feet barely touching the floor. There was the first day that she didn’t check on him. Then today, when she did. Four more to go. She reaches out to hold his hand, then loses her nerve, clasping hers together in her lap instead.
When she crawls up onto the bed later on to sleep, he doesn’t seem to notice.
__________
That night he starts throwing up. She’s woken suddenly when he bolts upright, leans over to grab the bucket, and retches into it with practiced aim.
She rubs her eyes sleepily. ‘Jax?’
He's twisted away from her, his shoulders shivering. He pitches forward again, throws up again. She moves towards him but he waves her off with one hand. She slips out of bed to get him some water and give him some privacy. She knows there can't be much in his stomach at all.
When she comes back he's lying back down, taking deep breaths. She offers him the water but he bats it away.
‘You should - take small sips maybe? That's what I do when I get sick.’
He shakes his head wildly, which seems to make him dizzy. He reaches for the bucket again. He's gasping with the effort of vomiting. She feels lucky to not be one of those people who gets sick when someone else is.
She waits it out, until his hands are shaking so hard he can barely hold the bucket. She tries to take it from him but he won’t let go.
‘Jax, let me take care of this. Um - here.’
She grabs the now empty mixing bowl and nudges it towards him until he lets the bucket go, eyeing the bowl blearily.
‘Ragatha'll kill you,’ he rasps. She smiles.
‘I'll risk it.’
As she leaves the room she hears him retch again, and winces.
The whole next day goes on like this. She manages to get him to drink some water, and eat some bread, but he can't keep it down. It's pretty scary, honestly. Other than a nasty case of food poisoning in her early twenties, she's never been this sick. In between bouts he stays very still, and she tries not to jostle the bed at all, not wanting to make the vertigo worse. Eventually he drifts into a restless sleep out of pure exhaustion, and she's able to get up and go and clean things up. Luckily, it's night, and she can be sneaky about it.
As she's fixing herself some food she remembers that conversation under the stars.
‘Do you…have any actual friends?’
It had been a cruel question. But her irritation with him, combined with her curiosity, had won out.
And Ragatha's ill-considered response: ‘Not anymore.’
At some point Jax had mentioned he'd been here for six years, meaning he'd come in as a teenager. Of those friends who had once been here, she hopes one of them was here to help him. That he didn't do this six times, alone. She hopes someone else once knew, and held him, and gave him water. She has no way of knowing. But she thinks down to the poor souls in the cellar, and she hopes one of them was there.
She's so lost in thought that she doesn't hear Ragatha come into the kitchen, in her nightgown, clutching an empty glass. They both jump.
‘Pomni! Is…is everything ok? We haven't seen you. Did you hear from Jax?’
Pomni's eyes widen.
‘Uh. Yeah, actually. He's got a cold! I thought I might…hang out with him for a while. In his room. Just til he's better. So he isn't…bored.’
Ragatha blinks. ‘A cold? Won't you get it too?’
‘I don't mind!’
She's such a terrible liar. All at once, she sees Ragatha come to exactly the wrong conclusion, a small smile appearing on her face.
‘Oh.’
Pomni blanches. ‘No. No, it's not -’
‘You don't have to explain!’ Ragatha says brightly.
‘But -’
‘I'll tell everyone you're busy.’
‘Ragatha -’
‘Have fun!’ She disappears hastily around the corner, her water glass still empty.
Pomni just stands there for a moment, her face burning but Jax's secret intact. If it buys them some time, she guesses it’s okay.
It doesn’t matter that a part of her wishes Ragatha’s assumption was true.
She finishes her food, grabs a change of clothes and her toothbrush, and goes back to Jax.
___________
She sleeps in his room again. The next day his headache seems to intensify and the delirium sets in. His eyes roll in his head, and she's not convinced he knows who she is.
‘Jax? Can you hear me?’
He mutters under his breath but she can’t make it out. She strokes his ears, talks to him quietly about nothing at all. She can’t seem to bring him back to the present. He’s miles away.
Eventually the confusion intensifies into fear. He gets more and more distressed, startling at any sound but lacking the strength to push himself up and out of bed. It’s at this point that Zooble knocks loudly on the door. Jax freezes, holding his breath, hunched under the covers. Pomni swears.
‘Hey guys? Are you in there? I know you said Jax isn’t feeling great but we’re gonna watch a movie and -’
‘-We’re okay!’ Pomni calls quickly. ‘Thanks, Zooble. Maybe later.’
There's a pause.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah! Thanks!’
‘...Alright.’
She waits until she hears Zooble’s footsteps recede, then turns back to Jax. She finds him pulling on his ears, hard, dragging them down over his face, curled up under the covers and panicking. When she tries to move closer to him, he cries out in fear.
‘No, no, no, no, no!’
‘Jax, stop -’
‘I’m sorry,’ he chokes out, fists tightening on his ears despite her scrabbling fingers. His whole body is tensed like a live wire, and it takes her a moment to realise he’s crying, in a way that seems like he's swallowing his own sobs, cutting them off before they can break free. It's awful. It's too quiet.
‘Jax, please.’ She finally gets his fingers to loosen. There's a dark bruise already spreading over the base of his right ear.
‘Please stop.’ She can't think of what to do. She tries to hug him but he flinches at her touch like she's a stranger. He wraps his arms around himself instead, like if he can make himself small enough he'll disappear. She feels his shoulders shake as he cries in this horrible silent way. Her eyes blur with tears as she tucks the blankets around him, tries to comfort him, more out of her depth than she's ever been.
After the delirium comes the dissociation. After some restless sleep she wakes in the night to find his eyes as big as saucers, the pupils taking them over almost entirely. He's still as a doll, as a corpse, staring out, entirely gone. She watches moisture bead at the corner of his eyes until there's none left.
‘Jax…can you blink? I need you to blink. Or…close your eyes? Please. Can you hear me?’
Nothing. Can his eyes be damaged like this? She doesn't know. They're in uncharted territory. His blank stare scares her.
‘Come back,’ she whispers.
For a while she just paces around the room. There’s no way she can sleep when he’s like this. The darkness and silence feels ominous and oppressive, like she’s trapped with him wherever he’s slipped off to. She’s noticed his tendency to check out before, of course - but never like this, and never for this long.
It continues for what feels like hours until his head lifts suddenly as though he's heard someone enter the room.
‘Who's there,’ he mumbles.
She takes a wild chance, clutching at straws.
‘It's Julia.’
She watches his whole body relax. He pulls the blankets over himself until he’s fully tucked in. She creeps over and sees him blink a few times, screwing up his face.
‘’kay,’ he murmurs, his eyes slipping shut.
She sits down heavily on the floor and breathes a sigh of relief.
__________
That night, she dreams of the hospital. It’s Jax on the bed, his face drawn and pale. The room is all endless white floors and walls, the wires attached to his body drawing out into nothingness.
She tries to talk to him, but he doesn’t answer. There’s no one else around.
She wakes to find his breathing shallow and uneven. He twitches beneath the blankets, never fully waking, and by morning his form has begun to flicker.
___________
The fifth day brings waves of painful glitching that ripple across him from head to foot.
He's sick all the way down to the code. His avatar can't take any more, and starts to break. Today is the day that she really thinks he's going to die.
He's too exhausted, by now, to cry or make any noise at all. He endures it in silence, flinching occasionally as another wave rolls over him.
She can't think of anything to say. She can't do anything but watch. Sleep is trying to take her, so she grabs his hand so the shock of pain will wake her up. The glitching hurts her but doesn't spread to her. He's in his own lonely universe of pain, and all she can do is bear witness.
His eyes are slivers of yellow in the darkness. She just watches his face, knowing he doesn't know she's there, wanting him to know. She squeezes his hand, and another wave of glitching makes her gasp. She's worried that if she shuts her eyes for a moment, he'll just blink out of existence.
It's a long day that turns into a longer night. She's lost track of time anyway now, the darkness of the vast pink room making a whole world with just the two of them in it.
Jax chokes as another wave rolls over him, his form incoherent and glimmering in the dark. She squeezes his hand again.
‘I lied before,’ she whispers. ‘It's not Julia. It's Pomni. It's just Pomni.’
__________
On the final day, he recognises her. Her eyes flutter open to find him sleeping soundly, his form solid and real again. They're face to face in the tangled sheets, the room dead silent except for the sound of their breathing. A thin ray of sunlight is cutting down over the bed and onto the floor. She looks at him for a long time.
Before this, she knew absolutely nothing about him. Nothing. He knew so much about the others, picked up over years of adventures and meals and conversations, but somehow they'd learned almost nothing about him. Now she almost knows too much. She'll never mention what she saw in Caine's office, not unless he brings it up. But there's a hurt in her heart for him now that wasn't there before. The pain of it is sharp. It breaks down whatever walls she had built up against him. He could use this new softness against her so easily, but she doesn't care.
Most of all, she doesn't want him to be alone any more. He can try to push her away, like he's pushed away all the others, but he's met his match with her. She's too stubborn, too interested, too curious. She'll keep an eye out for him whether he likes it or not.
Jax stirs next to her. His eyes crack open blearily, his pupils unfocused. He looks at a random spot on the sheets, then at his arm, then at her. She braces for that blank stare of unrecognition.
‘Pomni,’ he breathes, tilting forward to press his forehead to hers. The deliberate contact feels incredible. Without thinking she brings her arm around his back, rubbing at the tension in the base of his neck.
‘Hi,’ she says tearily. His eyes drift closed under her touch.
It occurs to her, not for the first time, how striking he is. She fights the urge to kiss him.
As he falls back to sleep in her arms, she presses a kiss to his forehead instead.
__________
Three days later, he's up and about. He paces into the seating area, a key twirling on his finger, his trademark grin back on his face. His ears are dead straight and upright, like that's just part of his model.
‘What'd I miss? You guys must've been bored as hell without me.’
Ragatha straightens up. ‘Jax! Are you feeling better? Pomni says you had a nasty cold! Glad you're on your feet again now!’
His pupils snap smaller. ‘A guy can't take a break from you losers without getting the third degree! Sheesh, you must have missed me.’
‘Desperately,’ Zooble says flatly, paging through a magazine.
His overalls are hanging off him. If anyone notices, nobody mentions it.
They do an adventure (vaguely shepherd themed), set on rolling hills under a big sky. Pomni notices how out of breath Jax gets as they climb, sweat beading on his brow. She knows better than to hang back or ask the others to slow down. She knows how fragile the mask is, how desperately he needs it.
After dinner, she follows him as he enters the corridor and turns a corner out of sight.
‘Hey, um, I'm glad you're doing better. I just wanted to - to say that. We don't have to talk about it, or anything, I just-’
Suddenly she's up against the wall, his long arms bracketing her, his face lowered to hers. She yelps in surprise. His eyes have a desperate question in them. She gives a breathless nod and then he's surging forward to kiss her. She returns the kiss fiercely. It's like water in the desert, like taking a breath after holding it.
He pulls back, sinks to his knees, wraps his arms around her.
‘Jax-’
He shakes his head into her chest, his voice muffled. ‘Listen. Just. Thanks, okay. Thank you.’
She pulls him close, kisses the top of his head.
__________
The following year, she's ready.
On the sixteenth, Jax is spiky all day. He snaps at Ragatha during the adventure, picks at his food at dinner, throws things at Bubble. Pomni eyes him nervously. When he slinks off to bed early without saying goodnight, she follows him, rounding the corner to find him staring into the open door of his room.
She's proud of her handiwork - the den set up around the bed, the dark canopy twinkling with soft fairy lights so the overhead light can be avoided completely. She's made a nest of cushions inside, pulled from her bed and all around the circus. There are supplies on the desk, enough to last six days. She's laid out soft clothes for him to change into.
His hand is on the doorframe. She hears him swallow, hard.
Wordlessly, he crosses the room and gets onto the bed, curling up under the quilt. She can see his eyes, shining with tears, darting around to take it in.
She closes the door, turns off the light, and holds him.