Chapter Text
"So, you gonna shoot me, or what?"
Jax's smile widens, his eyes locked onto the jester woman standing before him. A friend, she calls herself, but she can call herself whatever she likes. She could call herself anything, everything, his one and his only and it would not change a thing.
"What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?"
Jax stands silent a moment. What would he do? Lose another one? Lose what, even? If she is a friend, he would lose everything again. He can't let that happen, he could not ever let that happen. He widens his smile at first, his eyes narrow. He can't let her know what he is thinking, to do so would risk everything, to risk that for even a moment, another person could crack their way back into his shell and squeeze their grubby, little fingers into his heart. Squeeze his brain, mess with his mind, his thoughts. Jax could never allow that. Jax could never allow a hurt so deep again as to lose a friend. His smile shortens, he shows concern, a level of seriousness on his face he reserves for rare moments. His tone levels out, he wants her to know this, to believe this, he believes it and so will she.
"I'd move on. And probably forget about you."
"Okay." She pauses. The jester turns slowly, her shoulders shake. "Okay. I understand."
Jax looks down on Pomni as she moves the gun from out of his view. His heart skips. Another person here he's pushed one too many times. She got too close, he convinces himself. She started to get in, to see the cracks, to read the lies between the lines and find the truth hidden under them.
"She's going to do it and it's my fault." He thinks. He turns his head, turns half-around. He doesn't need to see this. The gun goes off, the game ends and she hates him. That's how the story goes, that's the character he chose to be. Maybe, he thinks, he can save this. Save their friendship. He couldn't tell her that, couldn't risk it too much to let her know so quickly.
"Jeez, you really can't take a joke, can y-" Crack.
His eyes dilate, small squares quickly turning his body around to check on her. What even is there to check on? She will just get sent off to wherever Caine has been sending the losers. Even if that is true, even if that is so, he would have lost her. His friend. His only friend, even. He just lost her and she sealed that with a gunshot.
His fear of losing her is quickly washed away as he sees her standing there, his panicked eyes twitching back and forth on every detail of the jester's disappointed eyes as she stares back at him.
"Liar."
Pomni drops the pistol, the way it clatters to the ground hits like the falling of a guillotine. "You did it, Jax...you lost another one." His words echo through his head, burn through his head with the chorus of a thousand devils screaming back his own twisted thoughts.
"You did it."
"You did it."
"You did it."
And he knows he did it. Jax stares at the smoking pistol on the ground, his square pupils dilating, tilting, shaking as his frown becomes a scowl. His eyes move up, he sees the slow saunter of his friend, his only friend, as she walks out on him. Walks out and leaves him just like everyone else. This was her doing, her choices, she got too close and it was her, of course, who ruined this, ruined everything.
"This proves nothing, Pomni. I don't care about you. I don't care about anybody in this circus. I heard a loud noise and-"
"-tell yourself that tomorrow, Jax. I don't want to hear it." She turns a corner, her words cut through the hall like a death knell. Every syllable rings in his ears, ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing until he realizes that the ringing was his breathing.
"I don't care about you, I don't care about any of you. You're all fucked, all of you are fucked and you know it. This game, this game of ours is over, you chose this." His smile pulls wider at every word, every thought, the only place that god Caine can't toy with. "You're all fucked." The words echo around emptily in his head, his breathing slows back down.
"This wasn't your fault," he tells himself, "the toys don't understand the toybox as well as I do."
His eyes fall back onto the pistol.
It could have been her and she wouldn't have seen him like that.
Maybe he needed to be seen. How can he lie his way out of this now?
He cracks his smile wider, teeth separating as he feels the weight of the circus finally upon him. He begins to laugh. He can not stand, he kneels. He can not kneel, he collapses. He can not breathe, but the laughter does not end. No longer could Jax hide the truth. She played him, read him like a book, caught him in a lie, and now even he has to face the truth.