Chapter Text
Pomni knows what a liar sounds like.
She knew when his voice shifted its texture, turning into living blades from the back of his tongue; caught when he had averted his gaze, that perceivable shift in tone and action. That change, that difference—it was more than enough.
'I'd move on. And probably forget about you.'
She knew when his voice had grown sharp, and pierced her with it.
Here she is, a crumpled heap on the ground, still staring at the spot he'd last stood on. She sighs, staring up at the ceiling, hoping that her welling tears could crawl back into the crevices they seep out from. She is not crying. She will not allow herself to believe the mess that Jax had become, or the words he had chosen to say.
Because Pomni knows what Jax didn't say, and she will not allow herself to hurt from lies.
Her chest heaves from the effort it takes to pull herself to her feet. Something aches in there; pits of exhaustion from something she suspects isn't just physical movement.
Her steps are almost robotic, the way they move in the same rehearsed direction they know how. Her mind is unmistakably quiet, yet she's aware of it's deception—the lingering buzz playing in the back of her head, festering from unanswered questions she swears she'll think about only when she reached her room. Not before.
Or she might just collapse on this cold, hard floor.
The hallways are too bright, yet she tries to focus on the pattern of her steps. Even looking down at the floor reflects back light too harsh and clinical. The circus is always this vibrant, too colorful—like it kept demanding attention. It is tiring. Really, really tiring.
It isn't long before the dead eyes of her portrait burns through her own, plastered across the door that is practically the only place of solace she has in this digital cage.
Her fingers curl against the cold metal of the doorknob, and the door opens a crack in response. The dark is comforting; not the kind that carried imaginary monsters but the kind that felt… peaceful. A dark veil shielding her from everything else she worried of.
The last noise she hears is the soft click of the door, and her eyes narrow to make out the jagged shapes in the dark. Her room is a mess; an unnatural one—she was never the most organized person that roamed these halls, but any rooms she inhabited can hardly be called a pigsty. Turns out her memory recalls wrong, she didn't clear up the room after the mess she'd made. It was funny; the place where time was infinite and the urge to find something productive to do isn't enough motivation to get her tidying up. Or maybe that's what this place did. Offer the facade of unyielding time, sucking out the burning drive in your mind, the restlessness of being human.
Large cubes that to Pomni's memory must have been colored blocks are strewn all across the room in no discernible order, accompanied by those silly toys. All the ovals from the stacking rings she had earlier dismembered from a corner of the room remain thrown around in nearly every corner, looking like little donuts in the dark.
She takes a step forward, her muscles tensing. She takes another. Then three. Until she stands only an inch away from her mattress.
She lets herself hit the bed face first.
Bad idea.
Her forehead slams against the hooks of a spiral notebook, sending an annoyingly sharp string above her eye and across her temple. She hisses, grabbing the stinger ungracefully, eyeing in the dark the purposeless scribbles she'd drawn across its wrinkled surface, an unconscious act done out of sheer boredom. She chucks it wordlessly, the shadows too long and dark to see through swallowing it whole.
Groaning, she rolls onto her back. Her gaze wanders to the tens of stars plastered on her ceiling, a would-be-nice addition if they didn't shine that putrid green, neon and unsettling, too big to be sweet and too janky to be soft. Her body feels too cold, and gripping her unnaturally cold fingers on her elbows doesn't help at all.
Gripping the side of her pillow and pressing her cheeks against it, she screams.
Hope is a fragile thing, and she had allowed herself to grip it so tightly it cracked in her hands. She'd seen it, the real Jax, and he'd locked it away just as quick as it had come.
What makes it so much worse was that this adventure might've been the first time she actually had fun. Pomni does not remember a moment where she had allowed herself to cut loose like that; where she could snap out and send those waves of pent-up aggression out in a manner that actually allowed her to calm down. Questionable at best, of course, but it worked.
And then it didn't.
This feeling bubbling up in her heart—it can't…it can't be anger. It shouldn't be. She'd rather jump into the digital lake than say that Jax meant what he said.
Pity is the feeling that dredges up from the tangles in her train of thought. Broken, unyielding sympathy. How great must this digital realm have broken him, to the point he's terrified of giving the bare minimum of care to… well, anyone? What had he loved; what had he lost? She doesn't see a manic villain when he gave her that heart-shattering monologue, she saw a man desperately trying to fit into an archetype that didn't match him at all.
The silence in her room has a shape, whispering questions in her head, the bitter cold of the room enveloping her in an uncomfortable embrace. Since when did the temperature drop so low? Pomni never had a problem with the atmosphere for her own room, yet her fingers were so cold she thought they'd snap off any minute. Perhaps it was a byproduct of the tornado running around her head, the coldness of the argument manifesting itself in a physical form. But that doesn't make sense. Don't you feel hot and angry over something like this?
Sighing softly, she looks over to the blanket thrown haphazardly on the other side of the bed. If it were not for that draining tiredness in her limbs, she would have pulled it over herself before she could blink.
A silly idea manifests in her head as she inches herself downwards enough to touch the duvet with her toes. Pressing her heels together, she tries to nab the thing between her soles, snapping her feet together like a crab's pincers. It takes more effort than she assumed it would, her knees silently protesting against the action. Pomni is so glad no one could see her right now, waddling like a duck in the darkness.
Her feet finally snags a corner of the sheet, and with one fluid motion she yanks the stupid thing in her direction. It lands uncomfortably on her side, slapping a side of her cheek while it was at it. Everything really wanted to get to her today. Even the [@!#$!@#] blanket.
This feels too mundane. She feels too normal. Everything feels too sharp and blunt, every action she made felt blurring, like she does everything through a foggy camera lens. Her chest stiffens like ice, the way it stills like stone no matter how tightly she wounds the blanket around herself, gripping it tightly as if it would do for a makeshift hug. Pomni's touch averse—never found herself comfortable with an external grip, yet the idea of sinking into someones warmth as they comforted her… she could really use that
Her mind unhelpfully adds the fact that she never minded it when Jax came close. Hell, she'd even gone and hugged him. She wants to mentally slap herself for even allowing herself to give him that much vulnerability.
Honestly? She really doesn't want to hug anyone again for a long time.
Part of her wonders if what had happened is her fault. She had surely hit the nerve of his back there. Gone was any opportunity to de-escalate the situation when his smugness dissipated, retorting to her by no less than yelling at her to calm himself down.
Pomni trills bilabially, sinking herself into the mattress, silently wishing she could drown herself in its god-awful strings. Despite it all, she still curses herself for letting her mind wander off to Jax when the static in her head clearly screams to let him go. It is a silent panic, wondering she is going to move on from this, because with no time to run from, there is no hoping she could never see his face again—not because of persisting rage from their feud but the pure hurt that stabbed her throat when it cruelly reminded her how it went down.
She wonders if Jax was going through this kind of turmoil in his head.
She shifts to her side, idly watching the thin line of light illuminate a thread's worth of the floor, somehow sneaking through the cracks. It's an okay thing to concentrate on; anything to dispel the ever present fear in her chest, or the frost of her room.
It occurs to her that there hasn't yet been a declared victory for today's challenge, nor the usual dramatic announcement from their ringmaster. Was it originally obligatory that one partner had to shoot the other at the end, even if Pomni had initially suggested the idea for fun? Caine is nowhere to be heard, and if she has to guess correctly, the rest of the cast must still be languishing in the corner they might have been banished to after losing their lives.
The most likely conclusion might be that because she and him had simply bailed, it will take a while before their eccentric ringmaster would notice that the circus grounds had died down to a tremendous amount of inactivity. Which means that she could be holed up here for a while, and the thought surprisingly doesn't console her as much as she assumes it would. Because lying here purposelessly means thinking of something, and pondering in the silence would allow her mind to keep circling back to Jax, and she absolutely despises that idea.
So maybe she can attempt to get herself some shut-eye, even when time never dictates when the supposed sun would set or rise. Caine did an ass job making the room seem like the comfort of a night sky, might as well play onto the fact and allow herself to shut down, ignoring the nagging of her gut and the spinning of her tired head.
Even if the persisting frigidness of the room continued to latch itself onto her skin.
She's beginning to think this discomfort might be more than just emotional replay.
Pomni has tried to pay no heed to the pins and needles poking around her skull, but the glaring presence of that headache refuses to leave her be. She doesn't… get those things, not since she entered. With no clue of how much time had passed, her body had stayed there, stiff and aching more with every moment.
She tries to right herself to her feet, but the drive to do so doesn't outweigh the exhaustion keeping her on the bed. Her breath comes out like icicles; taking a concerning amount of effort to let each one out despite the uselessness of that human cycle.
Till now, none of the prior drawbacks to staying human had affected her in the circus—feeling a void where she would have been feeling ill, an ache, or a pulse in the back of her head. But just as she began to adjust to living without those things, they hit her as gently as a train at this moment, drilling into her very bones as she curls into herself uncomfortably.
A hand inches up the nape of her neck, determined to find the root of the out-of-place dampness crawling behind her dark excuse for hair. Her palm rubs against the anomaly, blinking at the realization she might be sweating, a sensation that had long grown distant to her since her arrival. Did someone program that? Or is she actually hallucinating?
She tries to cajole herself into believing she was making too much of a fuss about it; she knows herself well enough that she gets anxious for the most humdrum things. But the panic remains, heart twinging at the thought that something might be wrong.
Seriously, is she making a fuss because she might be sweating?
But that isn't the only reason, she tells herself. Pomni has never felt this worn out, not even on her first day coming to the Digital Circus. She can settle on the fact she might be sick, but she knows that isn't possible.
Once again, she has no clue of the hours she could have spent up here or where Caine must be. It can simply be a consequence to staring at the walls in the dark, but something shivering out of panic in her heart keeps insisting it is not.
Long has it been since her blanket had been kicked to the floor, doing little to alleviate the growing tension in her. It was too hot, the blanket was too hot—she is cold but somehow sweating—more and more proof of an ailment she doesn't have.
More morbid fear overtakes her, and she allows her panic to take the steering wheel and grips the head of her bed to hoist herself upward.
Her palm explodes with pain.
She is not prepared for the stabbing ache that erupted from the simple action, a burn that sends shockwaves reeling through her entire arm.
Pomni recoils, losing her balance and plummeting to the ground. She hisses, pressing it against her chest, a guttural sob escaping her chest without permission. Even the tears that almost immediately springs in her eyes aren't of her own will, the only thing clouding her head white hot pain.
Her back curls and her forehead presses to the ground, trying desperately to focus on the pressure on her head, not the agonizing throbs from her palm.
She snaps her head up to find what caused it.
Her breath stutters, not quite a gasp. A light emanated from her bed, shining lights across the once dark room. Her bed-head glitches, quakes of 1s and 0s traveling up and down in blue hues, flashing in angry bursts, fizzing out from its source.
Did… did she cause that?
She doesn't recall when she started inching backwards from sheer terror, still unable to grasp what the fuck just happened.
It is primal instinct that makes her stumble across the floor, begging her tired legs to allow herself to get up.
Fresh. Air.
She needs to leave, and prays to whatever could be above Caine that these are only digital hallucinations created by her not-okay brain.
She's really going to collapse on the cold, hard floor.
The doorknob isn't nearly as frosted as her fingers were, each second she fails to twist the handle instilling more fear in her heart. It is a miracle she got the stupid thing open.
The lights hit her far too quickly.
She clutches the door frame to prevent herself from stumbling back, her eyelids struggling to perceive the abundance of color after being plunged in shadow.
Her body feels like shutting down.
Taking in a gasp of air, she coaxes herself to release her support and step forward. And then takes another tentative step. Anything to keep walking so she wouldn't pass out. Something's cutting into her chest, tortuously breaking her into pieces.
Shades of fluorescent and flashing colors blur into an iridescent haze the greater she stares, warping into ribbons of murderous light. It takes great effort not to slam into the tile, and her fingers hunt for something to lean on, the door-frame now miles away from reach.
She rubs her eyes wildly, attempting to make out the lines in her fractured vision. Shades of shapes eased into darker strokes. Images of people cleared into her aching head.
Her mouth tries to move, but finds it near impossible to utter a cohesive string of words. Her lips babbled a cacophony of noises, shrieking terribly into her ears.
The last remains of her sight register the cobalt glitching traveling across her arm. Streams of binary fester across the skin, and the terrible conclusion that she is abstracting takes root.
Some part in her notes the lack of twisting eyes and inky black, but fear interprets the conclusion better than her mind did. A gravelly cry resounds in her eyes that might have come from her. The glitch had spread across her arm and began to fester in her legs.
Her burning hands hold out in front of her eyes as she stumbles through colorful sprinkles and muted brown. She doesn't remember where help lay. No, right, silly Pomni, they remain waiting in their loser corner for their Caine to set them free.
There was no calling him, no hope at all.
He knows where to put her where no one can find. The company of pitch dark monsters growling at her with their thousand eyes, her fading away into a distant fear.
Pomni runs into the wall in the hallway as the room lurches.
Noodle fingers grip against something in the darkness, the only thing keeping her upright. Ghosts howl in her eyes. Her eyes catch an image in the murky shine.
A purple bunny with a sadistic grin.
Jax.
The world tastes like bile and ashes when her need for survival surpasses common sense.
"Jax!" She pleads, slamming the wood with a fist too powerful to possibly be her own.
He can't possibly be willing to respond; she felt so desolate that she had to lose the last of her dignity to the person who probably wouldn't open the door.
A thunderous crash from the other side of the door reverberates a head-splitting echo down her skull. Somewhere in the nowhere, she hears the familiar hiss of something she cannot place.
Nothing graces her with an answer.
She careens gracelessly across the wall, her feet finally giving way. She lands on the floor with a sickening thud, the wind racing out of her lungs in an instant. Ribbons of color fade, the rest of the circus swallowed by an even greater dark.
Her arms and legs are gone and she is following.
The door remains shut. Her vision blanks, enveloping her in one last bright before it fades away.
Yet, she insists she's dreaming when she hears the creaks of hinges, and a purple hand reaching out towards her face, shimmering in hissing static.
It's the last thing she registers before a heavy veil of black snuffs out her last light.
Dark. Quiet. And her slipping down, down into it.
Pomni really believed she was dead.
There's no warning for the flash-bang of images that ram into her eyes, familiar figures standing in a rigid semicircle around a glittering stage. A circus stage.
Her imagination paints this as a weird depiction of the afterlife. No, don't be ridiculous.
A hauntingly familiar voice snaps her out of it.
"Now, now, you know what they say about assuming," Caine says, "It makes an "ass" out of "u" and a Ming!"
What?
Zooble's—wait, Zooble?—eyes narrow. "Ming?" Their presence startles Pomni enough, even more so when she realizes everyone's here. Ragatha, Gangle, Kinger, Jax—
An eerily striking blue figure creeps up next to the abstract, googly eyes shaking in apathy. "Hi, I'm Ming. And I really don't appreciate what your assumptions have done to my reputation."
She silently begs for a pause, and the request to halt everything gets lost in her throat. What the [@!#$] was going on? What sick prank was this?
She must have done a horrible job hiding her horror, for Ragatha was looking at her from the corner of her eye, in concerned shock over her plight. She mouths something, an "are-you-okay" kind of look, searching Pomni's features for an answer.
Like the lot of happenings was perfectly in schedule, and she wasn't shaken by this insanity. Her breath comes in ragged stretches, and she has to look away from Ragatha's face to calm herself down. The phantom ache from her now clear arm lingers.
Nightmare. No, daydream. Was this wild enough to be a daydream, or was this expected of this place? Did her overactive imagination finally choke her, or is she finally going insane?
It is only then that she allows herself to catch Jax's expression.
The smug, callous prankster is gone—vanished into his spiraling eyes and tattered breaths. No one notices the panic radiating from his bent frame. Or the censor bars that flood out of his moving lips.
Suddenly, his eyes snap to Pomni, burning her with the force of his panic.
An unspoken revelation passes, a silent conversation traversing through the distance.
Any doubt that this was not a mere nightmare fizzles away in the background noise, muting every other distraction except the declaration loudest in Jax's eyes. That wasn't a lie.
Something he recognized. A fear, a panic, that wasn't there before.