Chapter Text
Pomni knew that Jax didn’t like talking, not really. Looking back, it was kind of obvious in hindsight. The one through line in all their interactions since she had come to the circus was that Jax dropped information at his own pace. Usually, she learned more about him through what he didn’t say than what he did.
But after their last real adventure, even getting a joke or two out of Jax when the both of them were alone was a rarity. Sure, around everyone else Jax could keep up the charade, but Pomni suspected she had seen too much– at least, according to him. When their friends were off hanging out with each other, leaving the two of them with a stretch of time all to themselves, she could feel the tension he was carrying. He was so close to twitching, like he needed to fidget but was fighting the urge in front of her.
So, all of that considered, when Pomni heard a knock at her door late at night, the last person she expected it to be was Jax. He wasn’t smiling, which was enough to signal something was off about him.
She shook her head a little, deciding against trying to read in any further, “You wanna come in?”
Jax’s face soured for a moment before his expression flipped, “Eh, I mean, if you’re offering.”
Pomni didn’t really invite people into her room, even though she assumed everyone could be trusted in it. The only exception would have been Jax, but clearly her guidelines were drawn in the sand. Jax looked mildly uncomfortable inside her space, slouching even though his head was nowhere near touching the ceiling.
She sat at the edge of her bed, and Jax settled down on the carpet in front of her. She wanted to insist he sit at the desk instead – because that’s how having guests over worked – but she didn’t think Jax would really care.
But more than anything, Pomni wanted to ask him what was wrong. She wanted to get the question out there so bad, it felt like it was burning a hole through her. She felt even more anxious, knowing she’d have to plan out the next thing she said or did, because if she pushed too hard, Jax would just walk out. She couldn’t let that happen. If he took initiative to seek her out in the first place, he must have needed something.
“Hey,” Jax started. Pomni tried to school her surprise as he continued, “Is Caine acting off to you, or is it just me?”
“No, yeah,” she said with a tremor. That had not been anything close to what she’d thought he’d say. “He just seems so angry lately. Was he ever like that, you know, before?”
Jax shook his head, “Nope. He’d mope every once and a while, ‘specially when Zooble got in a real pissy mood, but he was never this bad.”
“Huh,” Pomni said, bringing her hand up to her mouth, wanting to chew her nonexistent thumbnail on instinct. “What… What does that mean, then? For all of us here?”
“Beats me,” he shrugged, leaning backwards until he was lying flat on her carpet. “At least the place is still holding together. Well, mostly.”
“Uh, mostly?”
“Oh, come on!” He turned his head so she could see his smirking face. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. The glitching? If we’re placing bets, I say we’re going to see some serious cracks show within the next few days. Think about it. When you first got here, Caine made us roleplay through the lore-edition of Candy Land, and now, the second I decide to shoot Rags, he just gives up the whole adventure?”
“Yeah,” Pomni frowns. “That is weird. So, like, say he does start to lose it. More than he already has, I guess. What’s our plan? How– What are we even supposed to do?”
“You really know how to cut to it, Pomni,” Jax smiled as he feigned defeat. “Yep, we’re dead. Dang, and after you were just starting to like it here, too.”
She narrowed her eyes and thought for a moment before responding, “But if there’s really nothing we can do about it, what’s the point of telling me?”
She almost regretted saying it, knowing that it might discourage Jax from talking to her again, but she decided it wasn’t worth stressing over anymore. She’d thought their friendship had dissolved after their fight post gun adventure, but considering he was still talking to her now, it looked like they were going to be okay.
Jax’s pupils grew bigger as he stared at her, placing an arm under his head and shifting his body to lay on his side, “Worth getting a second opinion, to see if someone else sees what I’m seeing.”
“I do,” Pomni stared back. “See it.”
The two of them held eye contact for a moment. Jax broke away first, turning to look up at her ceiling.
He let out a huff, standing up in one fluid motion before turning his back to her, “I’m beat. Sleep tight, Pomni.”
Before Pomni could even register he was leaving, he took the few steps he needed to reach the door. It was pretty dim in her room with only a lamp on, but even in the dark she was mostly sure he’d turned the doorknob as soon as he got to it. But even though Jax had been ready to head back, he was still standing in front of her door, staring at it.
“Something wrong with your door, Pom?” he said, and although Pomni couldn’t see his face, she could tell his voice was off.
“Uh, no?” she said, jumping down from her bed and walking over to Jax. “I mean, there shouldn’t be.”
She stepped in front of him and turned the doorknob. It wasn’t like the thing was stuck. It still turned when Pomni wrapped her hand around it and forced it to, but the door wouldn’t open. It was less like the door was jammed and more like the doorknob itself was resetting back to the moment before it was turned. It was like her room was frozen in time.
After her realization, she turned to look at Jax, and she saw her own thoughts mirrored in his expression. Trying it one more time, out of desperation more than anything else, the doorknob just reset to where it was again.
“Shit,” Pomni said.
And at first, she didn’t know why Jax shivered. Obviously they were stuck, but they sort of figured that out already. Was that just setting in for him now?
But then Pomni played back what she’d just done. Not moving the doorknob, but using her voice. The word she’d just said. It was uncensored, as crisp and clear as it was when she thought it in her head.
And Jax’s brain evidently worked a lot faster than hers, because she could make out the soft sound of his fingers digging into his arms and the slight rock of his body back and forth. Something was seriously wrong in the circus. The objects around them already weren’t functioning correctly, and now the censors were down.
If even the censors – the thing Caine had been adamant about enforcing since the second Pomni showed up in the circus – weren’t running anymore, something terrible must have happened to Caine.
It reminded Pomni a little of something she felt when she was younger. The moment she questioned whether god truly existed or not, she knew the answer in her heart. What bothered her most about god not being real was less that there was no heaven, but more that there was no one, not a single entity, watching over her. She was unsafe, alone in a cold, empty world.
Jax moved first. He started banging on the door with both fists, cursing over and over again when the thing didn’t budge. The more he cursed, the more panicked his movements got as he heard the words aloud. Pomni placed her hand on his arm, trying to get him to take a second to pull himself together, but he shook it off and went back to attacking the door.
“Jax!” Pomni shouted. “Jax, stop! There’s no point, it's not gonna open!”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes, I do! We literally just talked about it! The circus is screwed, we know that. I don’t get why–”
“‘Cause talking about it and seeing it happen are two different things! Like, what the fuck am I–” Jax needed to stop to take in a few hurried breaths. As he did so, he lost his train of thought. Pomni stared at him, unsure of how to respond, but when he looked at her again, his eyes filled with vitriol. “Oh, I’m sorry, Pomni! Is my freaking out at the world around us breaking down making you uncomfortable?”
“I– Uh…” Pomni said, chewing on her bottom lip.
At her lack of response, Jax exhaled. He briefly looked around her room, his expression growing more tense the longer he stared at his surroundings. Eventually, his gaze landed on an empty corner. Before she could say anything else to him, Jax brushed past her and sat in it, his arms and head resting on his knees.
Pomni couldn’t stop her face from twisting. She thought the two of them were going to fight, or at least have some more heated conversation before he’d settle down. But right now, Jax was deceptively still. Somehow, the danger they were in felt more real when it was affecting him so deeply.
She walked over to try the doorknob one more time. At the short clicking sound it made, Jax’s ear twitched, but he looked over to spot the door still closed. Pomni, not knowing what else to do, found herself stepping over to his corner. She sat down next to him, leaving about a foot of distance.
“What,” Jax said. His voice was low, like it wasn’t even coming from his mouth. “What are you doing?”
“Just sitting here. Is that okay?”
Jax’s eye twitched, “You have a whole bed, go sit on that.”
“You could sit on the chair at my desk instead.”
Jax shook his head, his eyes popping out above his arms to glare at the floor next to him, “You don’t have a closet.”
Pomni’s eyebrows scrunched together, “Sorry, what?”
Jax rolled his eyes, as if being forced to elaborate was too much effort for him right now, “Your room, it's all one open space. You don’t have a closet with another door in between or anything.”
She tilted her head to the side, trying to figure out what Jax was getting at. Pomni’s mind wandered, and she tried to think about him. About what he was always doing, how she never really knew what he was feeling unless he’d tell her. How difficult it was to get him to say something directly.
“Were you going to lock yourself in there?” Pomni asked. It felt like a shot in the dark, but trying to puzzle through Jax always seemed like a lost cause.
Jax didn’t say anything. She would question whether he’d heard her or not, but there were no other distractions in the room. Pomni couldn't feel anything except the quiet fear bubbling up inside her.
She spoke again, “You don’t have to– I mean, it’s just me in here. You don’t have to hide away somewhere.”
Jax’s face morphed from afraid to angry to exhausted, like no emotion could stick even if he wanted it to. After a few moments of chewing on her words, he settled on rolling his eyes.
“Whatever.”
Jax pushed off the wall and laid down on the carpet like a starfish. Pomni, following his lead, mirroring his position on the carpet, their heads being close to touching.
The only noise in the room was the sound of their breathing. Jax’s breaths were faster and shallower, even though he must have had larger lungs. There was heat radiating from him, and at first, she didn’t find that strange. But bodies in the circus didn’t generally feel warm. It just wasn’t a sensation that usually registered– she guessed it might not have been a priority for Caine to replicate. But in comparison to the body heat, the room itself felt chillier than she remembered.
“Does it feel cold in here to you, too?” Pomni asked.
“Huh,” Jax said, staring off at a blank wall. “Yeah, actually.”
So now the temperature in the circus was going out of wack? As time ticked on, there’d only be more ways the world around them would lose its few established rules. If that was the case, any moment now could be the last one they’d have their full ability to function during. There was no guarantee they’d still be able to think or move the very next minute. Time was more precious now than it had ever been.
Pomni turned to her side and whispered, “Hey, Jax?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
Jax’s ear twitched, “What’re you sorry for?”
“I think I might’ve… pried too hard. Last adventure. It–” She fiddled with her hands, picking at the gloves that could now be removed. Almost on cue, she could feel the tiniest switch go off inside Jax.
“Can you stop?” Jax’s pupils shrunk as his gaze bore into her. “I don’t– You wanna apologize, Pomni? Save it for the next time you see someone who wants to hear it.”
The unsaid answer to that sentence hung in the air, but she wanted to avoid speaking it aloud. And even though Jax’s voice had grown in intensity, Pomni decided not to match it, “Okay, then let me just say this. The time we spent together? It might have just been talking or screwing around or whatever, but it meant a lot to me. It was pretty fun. And– And even if it might’ve ended sorta badly earlier, that doesn’t take away how I felt before, you know?”
“And Jax? I don’t know why, but I’m not mad at you. Well, maybe sometimes. I guess I have been mad at you. But over our… fight? When I think back to it, I just feel… sort of empty. Like I lost something important,” she sat up to get a better view of his face. Jax was staring at a fixed spot away from her. “But I’m not mad.”
He wouldn’t say anything, not for what felt like an eternity. When he turned around, his face was neutral, but there was energy contained inside it. It was like his expression came with intention behind it, instead of the thing just being plastered on his face.
“You should hang out with Ragatha more,” Jax said. “You guys would seriously get along, you could chat about all this Freud stuff and everything.”
Jax’s eyes flickered, like he had just gotten an idea. That meant bad news– for everyone that wasn’t Pomni, generally. But since she was the only one here, she knew it’d be her that got subjected to whatever thoughts were running through Jax’s head.
“Freud stuff? Is all feelings-talk just Freud stuff to you–” And before Pomni could finish by glaring at him, she felt a warm arm wrap around her shoulder.
There was slight, nearly imperceptible trembling coming from him, but Jax still didn’t pull away. Even after a few seconds, past the point where Pomni could understand the jagged noise was his unsteady breathing, Jax was still loosely holding onto her. Even though he initiated the contact, there was a part of her that felt like it was forced. Like Jax was making himself go through all this for her benefit. It was a shockingly kind gesture coming from him, but Pomni guessed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Jax always knew what other people were feeling. It’s what made the fact he was so willing to hurt others that much worse.
Pomni pulled away.
“Finally,” he groaned in mock exhaustion. “If that went on any longer, I think my spine would’ve cracked straight in half“
Pomni looked up at Jax before mentally cataloguing their height difference. Bending down that distance did look painful, but she wasn’t going to admit that, “Okay, I am not that short.”
Jax smirked, “Keep telling yourself that.”
And even though the circus might have been falling apart as they spoke, Pomni had somehow gotten Jax back. She wasn’t even sure how she got through to him, but now that she had, they’d be ready to face anything Caine would throw at them. If this was the end, they’d deal with it together.