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Jax groans with his head in hands as he feels the world around him spin, an annoying buzzing sound circling his head as he tries to get a grip on his surroundings.
Caine's latest adventures did not disappoint with the amount of craziness he’s been stuffing in them, as if the amount of wacky had been the deciding factor whether any of his adventures were fun or not. While Jax himself prefers these types of adventures, things had started to get a little too chaotic even for him.
The goal of this latest adventure was to find a specific object Caine had placed in a random room, and the only way to reach it was to go through various other rooms. The only problem was that some of the rooms, well, most of the rooms, had different physics that you wouldn’t be able to predict going through it. Sometimes it would be smaller things, but most had large, impactful, noticeable changes. It was one of Caine's attempts at team bonding or something (since the last one worked soooo well), with them having to help each other navigate the changing of the rooms to get to the next one.
Not that Jax cared in the least, but the dramatic changes in each room were starting to get on his nerves, his pranks often malfunctioning or backfiring on him.
When the digital members had come across a room that gave them an option of three separate doors, leading to three equally bizarre rooms, they had all agreed that splitting up would be the best considering the circumstances.
Crybaby had gone running back to Zooble, which didn’t feel right. Jax and she were supposed to team up, they always teamed up. How was he going to bully her, break her mask? It was his whole shtick.
The only option left was Dollface, the crazy king, and Pomni…
He certainly couldn’t deal with any fake cheer right now, and he didn’t want to give any notion in that clown's head of being a team she was so obsessed with or that he’d even want to hang out with her, or give any sliver of hope that they could be friends. She was just going to be wasting her time, and he didn’t need to waste his with her, and no more reason than that.
So he gladly took Kinger, if not because he didn’t have a chance to mess with the chess piece properly before, it was that he was too out of his mind to talk about feelings or otherwise.
They had just come out in a room that had caused them to spin uncontrollably at varying speeds depending on the objects they encountered laced around the room, coupled with the bright colors, it had not been fun for the rabbit's digital brain, or stomach.
The buzzing was starting to get on his nerves, and he swatted what could have been a firefly, but he couldn't really be sure, as he gained his senses back.
Now stabilized and taking a good look around, Jax couldn’t see much of anything except for some balls of lights dashing through the sky in what could be considered beautiful displays of greens, blues, purples, and reds, not that they illuminated much. The second thing he noticed was that he was sitting in a puddle of water; actually, it seemed like the entire floor was covered with a thick layer of it, judging by the damp smell in the air and the reflection of the sky circling around him, almost like a faint spotlight.
Looking around more, the third thing Jax noticed was that Kinger wasn’t in his line of sight.
“Hey Kingface!” His shout echoed on unseen walls as he tried padding his way through the barely illuminated darkness. Not that he was worried, in fact, it would have been hilarious watching a very confused Kinger running around this room, his shriek echoing as his dark purple coat held him back.
If only I could see. He thought bitterly, now getting to his feet and wading through the shin-high water that stuck to his lighter purple ‘coat’, even though he didn’t have real hair. Or knew where to go.
One of the green lights swooped down and passed suddenly, as if answering his prayer, speeding away, its tail glimmering behind it as well as leaving him a path to follow. With no other option, Jax follows the ghostly trail of the light.
Soon, he is led to the ball of light circling, almost happily, around the other circus member, sitting delicately on what Jax makes out to be a lily pad, inching forward steadily. This surprises him only slightly before putting on his largest smile and crashing onto the large leaf, which, instead of having the desired effect of flopping and sinking or shooting the rider off into the water, stays stabilized.
Jax hid his disappointment by exclaiming, “King-man! Why are you trying to float away, not enjoying my company?”
He isn’t really waiting for a reply, mostly expecting some high-pitched shriek or incoherent nonsense. Because of this, Jax is surprised by a calm, steady reply of “I have to say, lately, your company can… get chaotic at times.”
“Could it be, the Crazy King’s finally sane?” Jax throws out, hiding his surprise.
In all his years in the circus, Jax has never seen him like this. Even his pose is calmer than usual, sitting on his knees, hands clasped in front, staring up at the inky sky, the green light having long abandoned them to join the kaleidoscope of colors above.
“There's a lot you don’t know about me.” Was calmly stated back.
“You're no fun.” was lamely pelted back before the pair lapsed into silence.
Jax kept opening his mouth in attempt to crack a joke or funny comment to fill the room with something, but he was getting nothing; nothing from the deposition of the member sitting next to him or the scenery around, and with Kinger not acting like Kinger, Jax wasn’t sure how he’d react anyway so instead he went for absent mindingly playing with the edge of the lily pad. It seemed like this was one of the more normal rooms, and Jax supposed the silence was nice, but as the minutes stretched, Jax wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t take his chances with the water when "I remember when you first arrived at the circus.”
At the comment Jax stilled; he wasn’t sure how to react to that, but he cringed in reflex. He was so optimistic then, determined there was a way out, limited by his view of humanity. He tried not to think about that time.
“You were just as crazy then as you are now.” He continued to pick the leaf as the silence stretched.
“When I lost my wife, I was devastated.” Kinger finally spoke, as if taking a different path. “I blamed myself initially, I still do, in a way.”
This grabbed Jax’s attention. Ever since Pomni brought up Kinger's wife that one time, Jax had been inadvertently intrigued, wanting to know more. Had that been why he was so crazy, spacing out all the time? The rabbit had noticed that one of the x-out doors had a matching chess piece, but he never gave it much thought before.
“We’d been through so much together, I thought everything would be fine, and we’d get through it and yet…” Kinger trailed off, but Jax knew what he was going to say.
If anything, Kinger’s story only made Jax’s way make more sense. If Kinger became the way he is because of his wife's abstraction, then Jax’s mindset is the only proper one to survive this place. You can’t mourn an archetype.
You can’t mourn if you're not supposed to mourn.
“I know it was hard, and the easiest thing to do is trying to distance yourself from it all, but-”
“Why are you telling me this?” fake annoyance clipped his tone as he turned sharply to the other.
A pause. “If you're pushing people away, so what happened to Ribbit doesn’t happen again-”
“Oh, not you too!” Jax groaned, real annoyance lacing his voice this time. Maybe the water would be better than this.
“I know his abstraction hit you hard.” The older player trudged on, ignoring the others' unsettledness. “It’s natural, after all, you did arrive in the same time.”
Jax knows. Jax remembers, no matter how hard he tries not to.
Despite not knowing who he was, his name, where he was, or the face of the person next to him, he knew them. They had this bond, this friendship.
The same sense of humor.
Similar avatars.
How, despite being friends both inside and out, he hadn’t noticed the signs, or not soon enough, and couldn’t save his friend.
He hadn't noticed his best friend going crazy.
He remembers not going to the funeral, believing he failed.
Ragatha trying to help him, fake kindness coating her voice.
The moment when he decided to be the funny one.
He remembers it all, and here was Kinger, who doesn’t even know who he is most of the time, trying to what? Get him to talk about his feelings, he thinks not.
“If this is an attempt to try and ‘help me’,” He puts up exaggerated finger quotes, “you're no better than Dollface and the newbie.” Jax scoffed, “I don’t need help. There's nothing going on with me! I’m perfectly fine!”
He makes eye contact, and though the light is low, the king's gaze seems to pierce his suppressed, flattened out core, and Jax feels just a little bit smaller.
“You don’t know anything.” He concludes weakly before flopping forward, knees to his chest, arms crossed over them.
But Kinger does not let it go. Instead, he asks softly, “So, then, what happened between you and Pomni?” Jax's ears popped up (when had he lowered them?) and gave a sharp glare.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you seemed to have fun killing me together, then the next thing I see is you avoiding her.”
The argument flashes in front of him once more, and he mentally cringes again, but doesn’t show any discomfort on his face.
A part of him (perhaps a large part) still regrets saying all those things, every mean-spirited word that fell out of his mouth, words that seemed to stab back at him every time he thinks back to the subject, which was often. But it was necessary, for him and for her.
Saving her from a worse pain that would eventually happen, him from a worse pain.
He just hadn't meant to hurt her that much.
“She just realized how much of a jerk I really was.” Was all he provided.
From the chess piece's face, Jax could see that he didn’t really believe him, and Jax felt even smaller. “What?” he said accusingly. Kinger didn’t blink. “Just because we both lost someone to abstraction doesn’t make us similar.” They can’t be, their archetypes don’t overlap. “And so what if I don’t go to funerals?” He recalls another part of the argument. “It doesn’t mean anything more than they're a waste of time. I’m not scared of sharing emotion!” He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince, Kinger or himself, not that either believes it.
“This isn’t real life, so excuse me for taking advantage of the fact that there are no actual consequences for anything we do. People like Pomni just don’t get it, don’t get me!” He hits his hands to his chest, and it jolts him out of whatever rant he found himself in and clamps his mouth shut instead, deciding brooding in the darkness was better. His eyes, though, trail upwards to the light show above him, getting closer but still a respectable distance away. Many patterns and colors were dancing in the air, so many that Jax wasn’t sure which ones to look at without getting dizzy, but he snags at one particular one, reds and blues circling each other, creating a pinwheel effect as it crossed the sky, bouncing like a ball on invisible barriers in the sky as it sharply changes direction. He couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain short jester.
She had such lovely eyes.
Why was this so hard! Sure, it had been nice, hanging out with her, talking to her. Maybe his jokes were less cruel and his nicknames less harsh (Pom Pom just had a nice ring to it), but it didn’t mean anything!
Did it feel good for a genuine smile to be directed at him because of him? That wasn’t the point. He was just trying to get to know her, to see what made her tick, what got on her nerves; it’s not his fault he got more than he bargained for. It’s not his fault that he got lulled into a space where he felt he could share his feelings on things. But that was all for the fun of the game, making it funnier. All he was looking for was something new to spice up the adventures.
Did he feel more… It's not important.
Except he knows this isn’t true. He’s not stupid, and maybe Ribbit's abstraction did do something to him, but Ribbit was just a wake-up call. It's harder for people to mourn you if they didn’t like you in the first place. It's easier not to mourn when you have no one to mourn in the first place.
“Just because there's no physical damage-” Kinger starts bringing Jax back to the conversation at hand. “Doesn’t mean there isn’t an emotional one.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Jax interrupts. “Even if I went and reevaluated my life, it doesn’t mean everyone's going to automatically forgive me.”
“They definitely won't if you don’t try,” Kinger counters, “especially Pomni.” and all Jax does is roll his eyes but the fight is out of him.
The ride finally comes to an end, and Jax gratefully jumps up, ready to get out of this weird twilight zone room, and grasps the door handle with so much force he's surprised it doesn’t fly off when he pulls, the brightness on the other side almost blinding him, black spots coat his vision. Before he can go through it, Kinger's words stop him in his place. “If you keep going with this mindset, you will abstract, and we will have a funeral for you.”
“Waste of time.” He simply shrugs, but is still standing in place.
“You want to honor Ribbits' memory, don’t let her be the reason you went the same route she did then.”
He doesn’t know why that comment gets to him, but it's enough to get him to look over his shoulder, at Kingers' pitying face, and he wants to say something to deflect it, but the other has already glided past him into the light of the next room, and Jax is still standing there, stupidly. Why did he have to pick Kinger of all people?
Once again, the rabbit's eyes are drawn to the sky and watches the beachball of colors crashing into, as well as mixing, with a pair of green and purple that were revolving around each other, turning into a mess of lights fighting for each other's attention.
He shakes himself, letting his eyes grow into their fake happiness, ears that have drooped a bit perk up, and being so glad that Kinger can’t remember their conversation as he grows into the funny guy he always was and forever will be.
4 rooms later, all members teleport to the main room instantly as a banner pops out of nowhere above them, bolded letters spelling out “Congratulations!”, sprinkling confetti all around. Pomni and Ragtha found the object, a tinny shoe made of cantalopes, and Jax is grateful for that cause a mountain lion made of bees was just about to chomp him in half, stingers outward. Why was Kane so against swearing and yet let those things exist? He was still shaken up by it.
“Welp, this has been fun, but I think I’m going to hit the hay.” Jax proclaims, arms stretched out and passes a fake yawn, unsuccessfully trying not to look at Pomni. The insignificant jester was successfully ignoring him, though, instead talking to Gangle, who surprisingly has her comedy mask still intact, how many had he broken by now, 50, 80, 120?, waving her ribbon hands excitedly with whatever she was talking about.
He should go. But as he turns away, Kinger's last words echo in his head, and he can’t shake it off. Turning back to Pomni, it hits him how much he wants this, an actual connection. He’s already falling back into the habits he had with Ribbit, looking for a reaction, private jokes. With her, he doesn’t feel the need to make things as violent to have fun. It feels like every bone in his body is buzzing with the need to bond; it’s harder to push away than last time because after so long without it, just the taste of it is enough to make him crack.
So, despite his better judgment, he walks over to her.
“You were right Pomp-ni, Kinger isn't so bad.” He tags onto the end of her conversation, and the shorter member spins in surprise, then her eyes scrunch in suspicion as she replies, “I’m glad you think that.”
S^&% He didn’t think this far. “Oh yeah, crazy as always, you should have seen his face whe-”
“You can’t pretend it didn’t happen.” Pomni cuts in, and Jax can see this whole reconciling thing is going to be harder than he thought.
Except he can’t quite apologize, so instead puts out a “What didn't happen?” causing Pomni to roll her eyes.
“Oh come on, that whole thing, you know that was a whole thing…” He’s going for nonchalant and really hopes Pomni can’t see how much he’s panicking cause why the f*^& was his brain trying to find excuses, this is quite the opposite thing he needs to do. Stupid habits.
“Look, I’m up for being friends,” She hesitates “or acquaintances, but if your going to just-”
“You were right last time,” He blurts out “we did make a great team. Maybe we could do it again next time.” darting away before she can respond, or he says something to dig him in a deeper hole, but can’t help but throw a “This rabbit needs some beauty sleep!” behind him as he tries his best not to run to his room.
He feels jittery, and he doesn’t know why. Surely, he's not that bad at this.
As he slams the door to his room, leaning against it, and though his heart feels like it's about to beat out of his chest, he feels a little lighter. Sure, he hadn’t apologized, he can't, not yet.
At least he’s acknowledged he has a problem (Isn’t that what all the therapists say is the first step in ‘healing’?)
…
Now what?