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Sometimes, when Jax is done eating with the others and can’t stomach even the virtual sensation of the food sitting inside of her, she finds a secluded spot in the circus and puts all of her energy into conjuring a bathroom. She has no idea how it works — nor does she particularly want to know — but she’s gotten rather good at it since the first time she screwed her eyes shut in despair and begged for respite.
When Jax steps inside this time, the walls don’t rattle with glitches and the door thankfully remains in place as she swings it shut. She reaches out a gloved hand and twists the tap experimentally. Water spurts out. She turns it off again, heaving a sigh of relief. Being able to freshen up afterwards is always appreciated.
The floor is cold and hard as she drops to her knees before the toilet bowl. With the lid already up, she’s forced to confront her own face in the unrealistically reflective water pooled at the bottom. It’s a slightly jarring reminder that none of this is real, and that the food technically never even entered her digestive system because her stupid digital avatar doesn’t have one, and that she’s doing this for no fucking reason. They’re all fairly useless observations, since she already knows she’s going to keep torturing herself regardless.
The girl — or rabbit, or thing — staring back at her is visibly despondent. It isn’t unfamiliar; at one point in her life this look of exhaustion had been her default state. She’ll never forget the dreadful few weeks that followed after she’d found Ribbit, replaced by a mass of blackness and vibrant eyes, scampering around her bedroom like a scared dog. It was enough to put Jax off communal dining for a good while, her only solace hiding in cups of bitter hot chocolate which seared her throat as they went down. Eventually she would rediscover how much she liked the second-hand burn of it coming back up.
She’s digging into her mouth with yellow fingers. This is the part Jax hates: the horrible, sliding sensation of rubber on smooth plastic. It always feels so far away from herself, almost muffled, like her nerve endings are being interfered with — probably because she’s clipping through her own avatar. The food warps and changes shape as it erupts from her. Some of it drips onto the floor and coagulates. Most of it splatters across the toilet seat. She knows she just vomited, but she sort of feels sick all over again.
Just as she’s moving to stand back up, a tinny voice calls from outside the door. “Jax?”
Predictably enough, it’s Pomni. Jax goes stock-still, trapped in an awkward zigzag with her knees bent halfway, overlooking the infantile mess she’s made with newfound clarity.
Well, shit. Okay. Fine.
“Jax?” Pomni tries again. Her tone is light — audibly worried, but holding itself back from sounding overly prying. From this, Jax can deduce that Pomni really wants to break the door down but is attempting to respect her privacy. God.
Jax clenches her jaw. Her hands grip the sides of the dirtied seat as the pace of her breathing accelerates momentarily. She’s all but ready to resign herself to yet another panic attack, lithe limbs going slack in defeat, before a second realisation washes over her: she is genuinely too exhausted to spiral. It’s comforting, in a weird way. Her body may be useless for the time being, but at least her heartbeat has regained its regular rhythm. She knows she’s taking the piss now, and the exasperated huff of air she hears from the other side of the door suggests Pomni ran out of patience about five minutes ago.
Jax decides that she’s a big girl and can face this fluke of embarrassment head-on, until Pomni pipes up again. “I’m…I’m coming in, okay?”
“...Yeah, okay,” she croaks, her vocal chords strung out from having just hacked up her guts. Pomni’s entrance is signalled by a triangle of light falling over Jax’s hunched frame. Although she can’t view herself in this position, she’s certain it’s a sight to behold: her quivering back and shoulders, the oval-like appearance of her head as her ears droop down towards the toilet, coupled with the surrounding floor caked in puke. How lovely.
“Jax, what the fuck?” Pomni asks, which is fair. Jax doesn’t really have an answer.
There are slight taps against the tiled ceramic as Pomni gingerly steps closer. This definitely isn’t the most pathetic Jax has ever felt, so there’s that. Once they’re right next to each other, Pomni reaches forward and splays her fingers out over Jax’s arm.
A look of disbelief crosses her face. “Seriously? You’re still going to touch me when I’m…like this?”
“What, did you want me to stay over there and stare at the back of your bald head?”
Jax swats at her. Pomni’s resulting laugh is full and bright, alleviating some of the tension. She plops down onto the floor in that exact spot, using her outstretched hand to gently guide Jax into a proper sitting position as well.
When Jax finally turns her head to meet Pomni’s gaze, she finds an unmeasurable warmth there, tinged with a kind of concern born from deep care rather than pity. It’s the way Ribbit had looked at her on that eternally regrettable night, moments before placing her bow on Jax’s head in response to a confession that would later ruin everything, and it feels just as undeserved now as it did then.
But Ribbit hadn’t known, truly, how little Jax was deserving of it. Pomni knows. She knows better than anyone else that Jax’s behaviour shouldn’t warrant such tenderness, yet she extends it anyway. There is nothing — no amount of running, or avoiding, or rejecting — that Jax can do to erase Pomni’s memory of this achingly vulnerable display.
Pomni appears to have realised this as well, and she’s prepared to take full advantage of it. “Are you ready to explain what this is?”
There’s a beat of silence before Jax responds.
“...I started doing it a while back. Before the circus, even. I had a lot of…issues…going on at home. Issues that I had no control over. Which then made me feel like I didn’t have control over anything.”
“And doing…this…made you feel more in control?” Pomni asks, starting to sound like the therapist Jax’s mother sent her to as a preteen. Of course, at that age she hadn’t yet been plagued by the desire to make herself throw up — not that she’d dare confide in a stranger about it even if she had.
No, instead she was poked and prodded with endless questions regarding her hair and why she always cried while getting it cut, or her name and why she hated having to sign it on her papers at school, or her body and why everything about it just felt confusing and wrong. Her knee-jerk reaction was always to lie, or underexaggerate, or simply shrug her shoulders and pray it wouldn’t be pressed further. Eventually, her mother grew convinced that her outbursts were merely a temporary symptom of early puberty and ended these therapy sessions altogether. Jax had tried to make her internal discomfort less obvious after that.
She knows this situation isn’t the same, though. For one, Pomni isn’t going to snitch to Jax’s mother as soon as their conversation is over. And, more importantly, Pomni is someone that she can trust — which is an observation she’ll never vocalise, but also one that she doesn’t have to, because it’s already mutually understood by both of them.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” She isn’t giving Pomni a lot to work with, which is more a force of habit than anything else. It’s just that she never really knows where to begin. Especially with something like this, where there’s so many things she could say or not say, and the things she needs to say in order for Pomni to fully understand are the main ones she doesn’t want to admit. The little tidbits she’s given already feel like far too much. She’s so lost in her head that she doesn’t notice when Pomni clears her throat to ask something new.
“What issues?”
Jax wonders if she’d accidentally spoken her thoughts out loud. “What?”
“You…you said you had issues at home,” Pomni repeats nervously, her eyes flicking between Jax’s confused face and the vomit-covered floor. “What kind of issues?”
There’s another beat. Something seems to shift as Jax remembers where she is and who she’s talking to. Immediately, she tenses up, shrugging off Pomni’s grasp on her arm with an abrupt coldness. “It’s not important.”
She hopes Pomni might leave it there but, of course, that’s not what happens. “You made it sound pretty important.”
It’s during this moment that Jax realises she’s taken a fatal misstep within this conversation: Pomni now has an insight into the person she was out there, before everything. The person who struggled, and whose weaknesses couldn’t easily be overcompensated for, and whose transgressions impacted others in a way that couldn’t be denied. The person who Jax killed her closest friend trying to conceal. The person Jax wants nothing to do with.
Somehow, this is more mortifying than Pomni witnessing her coated in her own bile. Like anything that goes on in the circus, there’s still room for Jax to employ her absurdist philosophy and pretend an awkward encounter in the bathroom didn’t happen. It’s much harder to ignore someone staring at a digital copy of you and seeing the vitality underneath.
“Haven’t I already told you that you should stop looking?”
Pomni’s own expression is hardening now. Jax can tell that she’s tired — almost as tired as the rabbit is herself — and that she probably doesn’t want to go through the motions of this all-too-familiar argument for a second time. It feels sort of inevitable, though, as if Pomni’s reaching the summit of something much bigger than this isolated exchange, or even that she’s already reached it and Jax needs to shove her back down before everything is ruined again.
“I thought…I thought we were past that.” Pomni attempts to shuffle closer to Jax, who promptly contorts herself in the opposite direction. “Hey, come on. At least face me—"
“God, stop!” Jax yells, whipping back around and jutting her arm out with the intent to push Pomni onto the hard floor. She freezes in place, then, her gaze dropping to the sight of her own flexed hand. Almost all sound in the room seems to go on hold, leaving only the soft pattering of water from the tap as it drips into the sink. They’re both surprised to find that they’ve been hearing it the entire time.
Now that she’s standing at her full height, Jax’s towering stature casts a slender shadow against the wall. It fails at being intimidating — Pomni’s eyes remain fixed on the rapid rising and crumpling of Jax’s chest and the way her breaths fall out of her in stuttering, laboured heaves. Jax is still laser-focused on her hand, turning it over slowly to study the yellow palm of it. Her blown-out pupils and absent smile act as silent communication.
“Jax?” Pomni calls for a third time that evening before forcing herself to look away. The weight behind it is gone, her voice hollowed-out to reflect her waning energy. It’s just something to say, really — she doesn’t even expect an answer anymore. When she glances upwards again, Jax’s arm is back hanging limp at her side, and she’s returning her stare tenfold.
“I’m sorry.”
Well, okay, she certainly wasn’t expecting that. It’s far from a phrase Jax utters often, at least not with any sincerity. The shaky, half-collapsing tone of it hits Pomni directly in the gut, and she feels a sudden urge to fix something that wasn’t even her fault in the first place.
“I know,” she says, and finds that she really does know just how sorry Jax is.
“And I’m sorry that I can’t do this.” Jax looks like she’s resisting the desire to curl into a ball on the floor again. “I can’t handle you just thinking you want to know me — to see me — when you really don’t.” She’s hanging her head in a last-ditch attempt to hide. Pomni isn’t having it, though.
“I do. I want to see you. All of you,” Pomni tries. There are fat globs of tears rolling down her reddened cheeks, surprising even herself. “Please, Jax. Just let me see you.”
She should probably be embarrassed about how much begging she’s been doing lately, and for a moment she’s even afraid Jax might spit out a mocking laugh and end the conversation altogether — which prompts her to start wiping frantically at her still-leaking eyes — but that’s not what happens. In actuality, Jax’s own shame is written quite plainly on her face, or at least on the sliver of it that Pomni can make out from where she’s standing. She’s seemingly resigned herself to the fact that Pomni has her cornered.
“Fine. You wanna know what kind of issues I had?” Jax still won’t look at her, which isn’t very reassuring. Still, Pomni nods wordlessly, to which Jax scoffs before continuing. “Well, I’ll let you in on how pathetic I was: I couldn’t even cope with the changes in my own body!”
When Jax doesn’t elaborate immediately, Pomni lifts a quizzical brow. “What do you mean?”
"Everything kept changing,” Jax spits out, her voice taking on an angry, bitter edge. She starts to pace up and down in a short line. “New muscle. Broader shoulders. Taller. I was always getting fucking taller.” She huffs a weak laugh. “Y’know, the other kids…they used to say I was girly. But, to me, I always just looked masculine. Painfully, undeniably masculine.”
Pomni still doesn’t really understand. “Isn’t that…what you want?” With each word, she sounds gradually less convinced.
“Sure, yeah.” Jax’s sarcasm is void of its usual lilt, leaving only the bite. “I wanted it so much that I stuck my fingers down my throat after every meal, because I figured that the only way my body would stop changing was if I deprived it.”
That’s when it clicks, and Pomni’s hands fly to her mouth. “I…Jax—”
“That’s why I did it. Out there. Or, well, that’s how I got into it. And then it was just…the thing to do whenever I felt stressed, or stupid, or — like I said — out of control.” Her head rises slightly, and Pomni can see that her face is wet and shining. “I stopped for a while when I first got here. Things seemed…better…with her around. I felt happy. Then she was gone and, of course, I went right back to my old ways. Stupid. So stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Pomni interjects definitively, “and neither are you.”
Jax grits her teeth. “Yeah, well…you didn’t know me back then.”
“Doesn’t matter. I know you now, and I know…this side of you now, and it’s not stupid.”
It’s growing increasingly difficult for Jax to deny the sincerity beneath Pomni’s words, her defences surrendering themselves without her permission, and she finds that she’s utterly exhausted. Her body melts into a long, drawn-out sigh.
“Honestly, I’m not sure why I haven’t stopped yet. I mean, it’s not like I can actually do anything about…this.” She gestures vaguely to her own avatar. “You’re lucky, y’know. You, and Ragatha — hell, even Gangle got a better luck of the draw in this department. She’s a goddamn pile of ribbons, but…it still hurts. The difference hurts.”
Another lightbulb seems to go off above Pomni’s head. “Is that why you…”
“...Always act like a dick to both of them? Excellent skills of deduction there, Sherlock,” Jax says, her mouth splitting momentarily into a mocking grin — and, God, does Pomni miss seeing a genuine smile from her — before dropping back to a flat line as her expression sours. “I know it’s selfish. And it’s not an excuse. But…every time I look at them, all I can think is: how is this fair? How come they get to be that way, and everyone recognises them for what they are without them even having to try, but I don’t? Is this my punishment for…how I was out there? Do I deserve to be trapped in this vessel I don’t want?”
“No. No, you don’t.” Pomni notices belatedly that she’s tearing up again. “No one deserves that. I’m sure, if Ragatha and Gangle knew, they wouldn’t want that for you either. And I’m sorry you ever felt like this was something you had to keep secret. I don’t…I may not know everything you did before the circus, but I know that you would’ve been…just a kid, who was scared — I mean, you’re younger than I am now, and you’ve been here for a decent while longer than I have — and I don’t think you’re being punished for that. I’m not gonna pretend like I understand how our avatars work, but…maybe yours doesn’t reflect who you are inside because you were still suppressing yourself out there, before you joined? It’s nothing Caine can’t fix. Just trust me. We can figure this out.”
Giving into her urges, Jax folds herself back into a sitting position on the floor, her knees tucked tightly into her chest. “Thank you. I think I needed that.” She laughs softly. “It’s funny…I’m always showing you the worst sides of me on purpose, so you’ll see I’m not someone worth your care, but it never works. You’re so stubborn.” It should be insulting, really, but it’s muttered with such unadulterated fondness that Pomni feels her heart swell instead.
She crosses the small distance between them and slowly envelops Jax in her arms. “Looks like you’re finally learning. The more you try to shut me out, the more I want to understand you.” Then, she breaks the embrace to regard Jax up close, coaxing the rabbit to meet her eyes. “When you push, I pull.”
At last, Jax glances up at her, but with a strange expression. “Okay, this is definitely you coming on to me.”
“Oh, shut up,” she snickers, holding the side of Jax’s head in her palm. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.”
“Maybe? Rude. At least be decisive about it.”
The corner of Pomni’s mouth curls upwards into a playful smirk. “Well, you know what I am decisive about? The fact that you’ll make a very pretty girl.”
She expects to be swatted at again for that one, but — to her surprise — Jax’s hand comes up to clasp around her own. The light dancing in her eyes reveals a new and different side of her that Pomni hasn’t seen before. It makes sense that Jax wouldn’t have been eager to show this one off, as it’s hardly conducive to successful self-isolation: the raw, exposed beauty of it makes Pomni want to just sit and stare at her forever.
“Thank you,” Jax whispers. “Seriously.”
The weight of the words combined with her intense, unblinking gaze throws Pomni off. “Uh, you’re welcome—”
“No, I mean…for everything. For not leaving me alone, even when you had every reason to. For not giving up on me like everyone else did. I understand why they gave up, and I would understand if you did, too, but…you didn’t. And thank you for being willing to accept the hidden parts of me, even when I can’t bring myself to say them out loud. That means more to me than you could ever know.”
“Oh…um, it’s okay,” Pomni chokes out, practically melting from the feelings that Jax’s impassioned speech has stirred within her. She swallows thickly to compose herself before trying again. “Haha…I didn’t expect you to say all of that so openly. But I appreciate it. I really do. And I hope you know I won’t be leaving you alone anytime soon. Mostly because I’ve come to like your company, but also because I know there’s still some things you haven’t shared with me yet. You don’t have to share them right now — or ever, if you’re not comfortable — but just know that, when you’re ready, I’ll be here. Okay?”
Jax’s resolve buckles completely, her back shaking as it becomes wracked with sobs. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”
Pomni falls into a rhythm of comfortingly stroking Jax’s arm and wonders how many things she’ll come to learn about her. Whether Jax lets her in on the full truth or just a quarter of it, she’ll finally be closer to understanding the girl who’s been plaguing her thoughts since the day she got here.
She just hopes she can keep being the listener that Jax needs.