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They’ve long lost their humanity.
That’s what living in the Circus does to people—it strips them of their complexity by assigning them a role. An inevitable fate for those unfortunate souls that set foot into this world. It’s only a matter of time before the system claims them, before they all become another pawn of an unbeatable game of chess.
Jax considers himself lucky. At the very least he was given the chance to decide what kind of pawn he wanted to become, what role he wanted to play. At the very least he still has some control over his body, over his mind.
He laughs at the others’ obliviousness, pities their helplessness against the system that has been unknowingly thrusted upon them. He’s witnessed with amusement how every new member eventually fell into an archetype countless times in the past. It happened with Gangle, it happened with Zooble—and it will happen with Pomni. It has to. It’s simply how things work here. No one can escape it.
And yet, no matter how many times he tells himself this, he is unable to shake off the uneasiness that blooms in his chest whenever he interacts with her. Her lack of a defined role unsettles him to end. He could tell what type of characters Gangle and Zooble were bound to become the moment he had spoken to them, but Pomni is giving him a hard time figuring out what part she’s supposed to play in this fictional mess.
She’s still too complex, too unpredictable.
She’s too human.
And she had used that humanity to read him like an open book, had used it to see through his carefully constructed façade.
That’s just wrong. That’s not how it works, not how it’s supposed to go. Humanity has always been a weakness here, not a weapon.
It’s only a matter of time, he reminds himself over and over again, until his leg stops bouncing, until his heart stops pounding, until the ringing in his ears has faded and his clouded mind has cleared. It’s only a matter of time.
Caine’s boisterous voice fills the entire circus, reaching even the most remote, unexplored corners. Jax drags himself out of bed, half eager to occupy his reeling mind with whatever bizarre, nonsensical adventure Caine has planned for them today, and half dreading the unpleasant idea of facing Pomni after everything that happened yesterday.
He freezes, hand on the golden doorknob, a sudden realization hitting him so hard it almost knocks the hypothetical air out of him. He’s dreading the unpleasant idea of facing Pomni? Is he scared? Scared of her? Is he intimidated by her ability to see through him?
He shakes his head with more force than intended, as if chasing the idea away. He scoffs, just what in the world is he thinking? There’s nothing for her to see, there’s no veneer for her to look under. There’s nothing he should fear.
His ears perk up when he distinguishes a distant ‘where’s Jax?’ and he rushes out his room and down the hall before a certain someone comes knocking on his door with a pathetically concerned look etched on her features.
“Desperate to see me, are we?” He asks as he reaches the lobby, that characteristic playful lilt he’s grown too used to using present in his voice, as always.
He can see Zooble roll their eyes, can hear Ragatha sigh, and his grin widens. At least some things haven’t changed; he can continue carrying out his role with no further apprehensions. Except for the pair of eyes that have fallen on him and refuse to look away. Except for the restlessness that grows with every second those eyes continue to observe him, following his every move, analyzing his every expression. They scrutinize him. They insist on seeing something that isn’t there.
He ignores them.
Caine goes on about how this adventure will differ from the previous ones, how The Favorite Character Awards had inspired him to make one that brings forth each member’s unique individuality. They’ll all be put in different rooms from where they’ll have to escape. A perfect opportunity to ‘showcase their mental and physical abilities’, or something like that—Jax isn’t really paying attention to Caine’s rambling. His five senses are too focused on that prying gaze.
He cringes at the way his tail twitches, and he suddenly feels like a prey being hunted down. It’s a repulsive sensation, so much that he has the abrupt desire to tear at his own skin, tear at this virtual, cartoon, unrealistic rabbit avatar.
He must have let his sudden disgust show on his face, because he can basically feel the slight shift in those eyes’ intensity, he can feel them soften, and it’s precisely that what causes him to snap.
He turns to face them, hand on hip, smile too strained. Pomni stares back at him.
“Do you need anything?” He asks, voice dripping with venom. Surprise flashes through Pomni’s eyes, drowning out that softness Jax abhorred. Her gaze hardens, brows knitting together as she opens her mouth to fight back.
However, Caine, for better or for worse, interrupts them with an excited clap of his hands, and before Jax can decide whether he feels relieved or annoyed at the interjection, six different portals open up.
“Break a leg, my scrumptious Dubai chocolate labubus!”
…
When Jax steps back into the circus, the first thing he notices is the unusual quietness and unnerving stillness that have befallen the place. He looks around, forcing his eyes to adjust to the overly colorful realm after having spent the last two hours in a poorly lit room.
“Huh. Seems like I made it out first,” he mutters to himself. Not even Caine is here, he notices with a frown. Odd, considering he’s always got something to say whenever they finish an adventure. Perhaps an inconvenience arose with one of the remaining members. He snickers at the thought of Caine having to go out of his way to help whatever idiot wandered off too far and ended up who knows where. He not-so-silently hopes it’s Ragatha.
With a sigh, he slumps down on the couch and stares at the tent’s ceiling. It really is too silent. For a fleeting moment, he wonders how Zooble is able to endure such heavy quietness each time they decide not to play along with Caine’s adventures, but he quickly smothers the thought.
However, to his dismay, the taunting silence and lack of stimulation bring forth dozens of other thoughts, some similar, some different, but all equally stupid, and his mind jumps between them all like a devious bunny, heedless of his complaints.
Thoughts are then replaced by memories, and he remembers. He remembers yesterday’s argument with Pomni, he remembers what she’d told him, what he’d told her. He remembers when she first arrived, remembers wondering what intriguing archetype she’d fall into. He still does, but it is with anxiousness that he wonders instead of interest.
He remembers older times, way before Pomni. Times when the circus felt warmer—or as the closest thing to warmth anyone could feel in this virtual hellhole. Times when his smile wasn’t so strained, when his laughs weren’t so staged. He remembers…
He sits up, suddenly feeling light-headed. His breathing has become uneven, his pupils have shrunk, and that all too familiar ringing in his ears returns. He doesn’t wait for it to quiet down, body moving on its own as he rises to his feet and begins heading to the hallway.
He walks past every room, not bothering to spare a single glance at the pictures carved into the wooden doors that stare back at him spitefully. If this hall disturbed him before, then now, with the lack of noise, he finds it absolutely terrifying. After all, it isn’t much different than a graveyard, crossed-out images of previous members—some Jax knew, some he didn’t— gravestones, and their uninhabited rooms their graves, left untouched and forgotten.
Perhaps one day, they’ll all become part of this graveyard too.
Jax halts in front of a door that’s not his. He doesn’t know why he’s here, doesn’t know what he came here to do, what inspired him to walk all the way over here. And yet he doesn’t move. He simply stands there, staring at the picture of a frog-like character he once knew, a red cross drawn across their face cruelly.
A very, very small part of him fumes at the sight, a part so small he successfully ignores it, but fails to completely extinguish. A rage born from the ancient realization that, to the circus, they’re all nothing more than passersby; playthings that, when broken, are thrown into a dark pit and never mentioned again, the only trace of their existence being that crossed-out picture in the hall.
Mere playthings. Not humans. Never humans.
None of them are…
“Jax...?” His heart drops to his stomach when he hears that voice uttering his name. “What are you…?”
He freezes like a deer in headlights. When had she returned? How come he didn’t notice her arrival?
He can hear her take a tentative step closer, then another one, movements careful and calculated as if approaching a wild animal. The change in his expression happens so automatically it’s nothing short of creepy. He snaps his head at her, his pupils blown wide and that typical teeth-baring smile of his full-on display. Pomni frowns, and he almost groans with exasperation.
“Well, well,” he scoffs, fully turning to face her. “Didn’t think you and that little brain of yours would make it out this fast. Maybe you were made for Caine’s adventures after all. Or maybe the others really are that dumb.”
He can feel his smile falter when Pomni completely disregards his mockery, can feel his chest tighten when he notices how her eyes oscillate between Jax and the door behind him. He knows it won’t be long before she connects the dots.
“What is…?”
“A-ny-way,” he cuts her off brusquely, earning himself a suspicious look. He tries to position his body in a way that fully blocks their door from Pomni’s view, then heaves an exaggerated sigh. “All this adventuring sure made me sleepy. Come fetch me when the other freaks make it back. Or don’t. I don’t really care. Unless Zooble comes back in more than one piece.”
He barely bothers hiding his hurry as he rushes past her, too worn out for confrontation. Too tired to have someone who possesses no knowledge of this world question his knowledge. However, this wicked circus seems to be rebelling against him, because he’s only able to take a few steps when Pomni opens her mouth.
“Is this what Ragatha was talking about?”
Jax stops dead in his tracks, and good lord is he glad he’s facing away from her, because the expression he makes would have been enough to confirm all her suspicions and, even worse, invite her to interrogate him further.
His vision starts blurring, and he panics. He can’t have what happened in that bathroom stall happen here, not out in the open, not in front of her. His mind starts spiraling, flooded with so many loud, messy thoughts Jax feels as if it’s gone blank. He’s between running away and making some half-assed joke in a desperate attempt to stay in character when an idea suddenly pops up in his head. And his mind does what it does best: defend itself. Feed his delusion.
With his back still facing Pomni, he blinks repeatedly, eyebrows arching as he arrives at a very, very sought answer. He tries to ignore the way an odd sense of relief washes over him at the realization. Finally, he’s found it. He understands now. He still has control over the situation.
He puts on the cockiest smile he can conjure as he dramatically spins around to look at Pomni.
“You suuure like playing therapist, don’t ya?” He teases, walking over to her with carefree steps. Pomni stands her ground, but Jax can see the surprise in her eyes, the confusion in the way her body moves. She had not expected this type of reaction from him. Good.
He drops the smile and scowls in feigned puzzlement. He raises a gloved hand to his chin and pretends to be deep in thought. Then, as if he’s been enlightened by a superior being, he snaps his fingers and beams, all the while reveling in the way bewilderment swims in Pomni’s bicolored eyes as she witnesses his act, those same eyes that had previously looked at him with unwelcome worry, prying into his personal business.
“Aah, so that’s it!” He exclaims happily, bending down so that they’re face to face. “You, Pompom,” he points a finger at her, not missing how she visibly winces at the nickname. “Are the insightful one!”
Pomni frowns. “What?”
Jax straightens back up, arms raised in the air as he continues. “Yeah! That’s your purpose in this circus, to fix everyone’s dumb, insignificant problems so that they don’t break character!” He places both hands on his hips, and his grin widens. “There you go, now you’re finally one of us.”
Yeah, that’s it. That has to be it. It’d explain everything that’s been happening. It’d explain why she’s been trying so hard to break him down and analyze each piece of him. There’s no other logical explanation.
Three different emotions flash through Pomni’s features in just a matter of seconds. First is confusion—something she had rapidly grown used to feeling ever since arriving at the circus. Soon after comes understanding, and when that fades, all that remains is anger. The same anger she displayed yesterday.
She takes a step back, continuously shaking her head. “Oh no, no, no. No, you don’t.” She snarls, glaring at him with such intensity he has to resist the urge to flinch. “You don’t get to do that with me. You are not pulling that archetype bulls[BOINK]t with me.”
Jax amused smirk falters. He attempts to laugh her accusations off, and physically recoils when he notices the tremble in his feeble chuckle. Get it together.
“Darn Pomni. I go through the trouble of finding you a suitable role here and this is how you thank me?” He says, feigning offense. “Maybe you’re just the ungrateful one.”
“Stop that!” Pomni bellows, pointing an accusative finger at him. She looks him directly in the eye, and Jax does his best to dismiss that familiar bitter feeling that gathers in his chest when he discerns the raw fury swimming in her eyes. “You’re not going to use me to feed your delusions, Jax.”
He scoffs, and the breathy sound is so loud, so forced it leaves a sharp pain in his chest. He cringes at the obviousness of it all. “I’m not the delusional one here.”
To Jax’s dismay, Pomni pays no heed to his pathetically half-hearted insult. “Can’t you see? Are you really that blinded by this stupid belief of yours?” She confronts, and Jax knows what’s coming. He knows what Pomni is going to say next and he’s terrified. He has to run, has to run before—
“You’re not the funny one, Ragatha’s not the cheerful one, Kinger’s not the crazy one… we’re none of that. You don’t get to water us down to a single trait, Jax. You don’t get to dehumanize us,” her voice softens, and so does her gaze, and the sudden gentleness in her eyes when she utters the following last two words makes Jax nauseous, “dehumanize yourself.”
He stands there, frozen. Her words reverberate through his mind endlessly, yet he does not bother to decipher the meaning behind them, he doesn’t need to. He knows she’s wrong.
“What are you on about? I’m not the one who dehumanized you, this… hellhole was. I was kind enough to help you gain self-awareness. Just accept it, Pomni, this is all we are now.”
“No, that’s what you think we are. That’s what you’ve grown to believe we are to keep us all at arm’s length.”
He clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. “You’re insane. I’m not sitting through your nonsense again.” He spins around and starts striding down the hall, not looking back, not wanting to look at those eyes so full of human emotion. He can hear her sputter as she thinks of what to say next.
“How long will you keep running away from reality?!” Pomni calls out from behind him. She takes not a single step forward, confining herself to the door that once belonged to them, yet there’s not a single waver in her strenuous voice. “Until we’ve all abstracted? Until you’ve abstracted?”
Jax clenches his fists and grits his teeth, but doesn’t spare a single glance over his shoulder as he gets further and further away. Just how long is this god damn graveyard hallway?
“Is this how you acted when they abstracted?”
It’s as if he’s been stabbed with a hundred daggers right through the chest, as if he’s been dropped in the icy depths of a freezing river. His legs stop moving beneath him, forcing him to halt in the middle of the hallway, right by Zooble’s door. He stands there, eyes finding the colorful floor as the question Pomni threw at him echoes in his disastrous mind, bouncing off its walls and awakening memories he had long buried away.
His shoulders start shaking with the beginnings of a dry, humorless laugh, a wry sound that reverberates in the silent hallway. It grows louder with each passing second, until Jax is clutching his face maniacally, brows knitting together almost painfully.
When he’s finally calmed down, his arms fall limp on each side of his torso. After taking one final deep breath, he turns to look at Pomni, face devoid of emotion.
“You think you’re so smart, don't you?” He drawls. A crazed smile breaks the expressionlessness, and, with eerily slow steps, he makes his way back to where Pomni stands. “You think you’re so special—foolishly thinking you can fix everything and everyone with your oh-so-admirable wisdom, meddling in other people’s business like a nosy hero.” There’s a mocking lilt to his voice as he does a theatric jazz-hand motion next to his cheeks. A wry chuckle follows, and his eye twitches as his forced smile morphs into something more hateful. “But this,” he jerks a thumb at their door— Ribbit’s door —, trying to ignore the sensation of their dead eyes roaming his body, “is low even for you, Pomni.”
Pomni flinches at the sharpness in his voice but doesn’t retreat. She looks up at him defiantly, but Jax can see a subtle glint of slight regret and guilt in her face as she casts a hasty glance towards the door beside her.
“I’m not trying to fix you,” she says, quieter now, but still firm. “I just don’t want to watch you destroy yourself the same way… your friend did.”
The words cut through him like glass. Jax’s smile falters, the edges twitching, unable to hold their shape. For a moment, his bravado looks paper-thin— if she pressed just a little harder, he might crumble.
“Don’t you dare use them against me,” he hisses, voice low and quivery. “You know nothing about them. Nothing!” He takes deep breath after deep breath, fighting to maintain the control he’s long lost. “You’ve been here for, what, two weeks?” His chest heaves up and down as he exhales breathy chuckles between each painful word. “You’re just a… naïve jester with a pathetic savior complex that tries to help others to feel good about herself. So quit acting like you know everything, like you know me.”
His voice breaks and his whole body shakes violently as he pants those last words out, unable to bear the overwhelming mix of emotions that has gathered within him, enveloping and crushing his heart like a wild hurricane. He tries to focus his blurry vision on Pomni, who’s basically glued to the wooden door behind her, cornered. And yet, despite the tight spot she finds herself in, she’s looking up at him boldly.
But then, her confrontational expression falls, and concern takes its place.
Her arms twitch, like she’s holding herself back from reaching out towards him.
“You’re crying, Jax.”
His frown vanishes in an instant and his glare dissipates, brows arching in utter disbelief.
“Wh—” He instinctively reaches up to touch his face and quickly recoils when he feels something wet staining his cheeks. His head spins and his stomach churns, threatening to send back whatever digital shit he ate a few hours ago. He stumbles backwards, legs dangerously wobbly. His eyes find Pomni’s, and the raw fretfulness that swims in them is enough to send him spiraling. He cowers away from her like a wounded animal, like a wounded prey.
“This… This is not…”
His back hits the door opposite Ribbit’s, and his legs finally give up on him. Dark spots dance in his vision as the world around him fades, engulfing him in a familiar darkness, one he had seen multiple times whenever someone was sent to the cellar. He panics.
His chest tightens agonizingly, squeezing the air out of his lungs. What a terrifying thing, the human mind—they don’t have lungs to fill oxygen with, and yet the sensation of drowning doesn’t feel any less real.
He shuts his eyes tight, not wanting to look at the colorful world around him, not wanting to look at the images of those who are no longer here, not wanting to look at her. She, who has rushed to his side, who has dropped to her knees right beside him, whispering words that do not reach him. She, who refuses to give up on him for whatever reason. She, whom he had pushed away by spitting out hurtful nonsense because she had wandered too close, had seen too much.
He can’t even bear the thought of looking at her, out of shame, out of anger, out of fear. He can’t look at those same eyes that have been following him all day and are now flitting all over his body as if he were a fragile little thing, seeing him in his most disgustingly vulnerable state.
And yet, through the cacophony of ringing and static that clouds his brain and floods his ears, he starts hearing her gentle voice stained with preoccupation. He hates it, but he can’t stop listening to it, for it’s his only anchor to reality.
“Jax, I need you to breathe,” she implores, clearly growing more desperate the longer he spends sitting there choking on air, unresponsive to the world around him. “Focus on my voice, on the cold floor beneath you. Focus on something.” Her hesitant hands hover all over his body, not knowing whether to touch him or not.
He is trying to focus, he really is. He is chasing that voice as if it were the only ray of light in this maddening obscurity, but the walls he’s so gingerly built threaten to block it. Those sturdy walls he had put up to defend himself are now falling on him, crushing him.
“Jax, breathe.” Pomni pleads, voice feeble and quivery. Maybe she'd have to be the one to bury him in this graveyard. He'd be okay with that. “Please…”
He shakes his head vehemently, ears flopping around with the abrupt movement. The darkness his closed eyes provide allows his reeling mind to play tricks on him. A spectacle of lights plays out behind his eyelids, formerly shapeless lights that slowly morph into something more recognizable: eyes, lots of eyes. The eyes of the abstracted, coming to claim him.
And somewhere among those eyes, he sees Ribbit’s.
He shoots his eyes open and violently bends forward, folding his long body in half. He distinguishes a distant yelp as he does so, but he’s too focused on ridding his mind of those images to dwell on the sound. He grabs his ears and yanks hard, trying to find anything that will bring him back to the present, that will ground him to reality, and pain has always been a trustable anchor.
However, he is stripped of that anchor when two gentle hands wrap around his wrists and pull them away from his ears.
“Hey, hey, stop that,” Pomni’s gentle voice says as she slowly lowers his hands to the ground and holds them there, not letting go. He reacts to her touch, so she tries again. “Jax, I need you to breathe. Can you hear me?”
He can. And he hates it. He despises it.
He despises the tenderness that taints her words of concern. He despises the way she handles him with the same carefulness one would use when dealing with a defenseless animal. He despises his vulnerability, and his inability to keep it hidden. But most of all, he despises the way he instinctively leans towards the warmth her hands provide his shivering body with. He catches himself wanting to cling to that warmth forever, or at the very least until his body feels his again.
For the first time in a while, his body’s need for contact rises triumphant over his mind’s apprehensive nature, and it succumbs to the desire to escape this endless maze of darkness that threatens to swallow him whole.
Defeated, exhausted, and scared, he lets his slumped body fall to the side, knowing more of that warmth is waiting for him there. Pomni catches him in an instant with a surprised yelp.
“Woah, okay. It’s okay,” she whispers, and Jax would have laughed at the clear doubt that seeps through her words if he wasn’t in such a deplorable state. “It’s okay.” Her arms hover over his body as she debates whether wrapping them around him would be a sensible course of action or not. He curls into her chest, guided by nothing but fear and the need for comfort. He can feel her tense against him, very obviously taken aback by this sudden openness.
He’ll regret this, he knows he will —if he manages to make it out of this breakdown, that is. The memory will haunt him every night, a bitter reminder of his helplessness against his vulnerability. How he’ll face Pomni after this, he doesn’t know, and for a fleeting moment he thinks abstraction wouldn’t be that bad of a fate if it saves him from having to acknowledge this moment of weakness in the future.
That thought is incinerated by the warmth that suddenly envelops his body as Pomni finally pulls him in, awkwardly at first, then with a firmer grip as though she’s afraid he might slip away if she doesn’t hold tight enough.
“...It’s okay,” she murmurs yet again, although there’s more confidence in her voice this time. “You’re okay, Jax.”
He wants to tell her to stop saying that, wants to tell her that things will never be okay in this circus, but the thought alone takes too much energy, and he catches himself wanting to believe her.
His chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven breaths, every exhale coming out as a faint tremor against her clothes. He focuses on her embrace, focuses on her reassuring words, focuses on the human warmth that envelops his cold figure.
Pomni feels it, feels every shiver, and it shakes her in return. “I’ve got you,” she promises, soft and tender. “And I’m not letting go.”
Jax doesn’t answer. His usual biting remarks, his sharp humor, his sneers—all gone. What replaces them is silence. His fingers clutch at the fabric of her sleeve, almost unconsciously, as if anchoring himself to the only real thing left in this world.
Pomni exhales slowly, trying to quiet her own racing heart. “So let’s just… stay here for a while. Don’t fight it.”
For once, he doesn’t.
He allows himself to be held. He allows himself to feel.
She truly is the insightful one, he thinks.
One terrifyingly insightful human.