Chapter Text
Pomni stares at the message on her phone with a tired, unimpressed, groan as she arrives home. And an eye roll to herself as she toes out of her shoes and shoves them against the wall with the side of her foot.
This shit again.
Hey, Christine. I’m not sure how you feel about your other name, so, yeah, I hope it’s alright that I'm using this one. I was so happy to have found you! There’s no real easy way to go about this, but I was in the circus with you.
She pauses to shrug off her jacket, abandons it on the surface of her small kitchen tabletop. Instantly rolling her shoulders and massaging the knot near the base of her neck. It doesn’t budge. Because of course it doesn’t. Exhaustion takes over her posture and she carries herself to her bedroom, unbuttoning her formal attire along the way.
The first time she received a message like this, she nearly had a heart attack. Read with bated breath through every syllable sent to her. Heart quickening, stomach dropping, eyes a little watery. Hope and fear. A true roller coaster of emotions.
After the fifth one, her view of people shifted towards disgust.
By the time she traverses the measly few feet of her kitchen to the living room to the bedroom, she’s already stripped of her blouse and working on her pants.
This messenger is going with the classic ‘I was in there with you’ angle. Which, bold, if you ask her. That’s a lot of bullshit you need to conjure up to make a claim like that believable.
Despite the fact that the concept of The Digital Circus is now public knowledge, very few people actually know what went on inside. They don’t know how long it really was.
She throws on an oversized shirt and climbs into her bed. The phone screen is much brighter in the dimmed room and she squints reading the next few lines, unsure why she’s even entertaining the random number.
Usually they are sent to her email. Maybe that’s why.
Would you be interested in catching up? I have so much to say. So much to ask!
No. She wouldn’t be interested in ‘catching up’. Getting grilled by a stranger about her time in the digital world is the last thing she wants to do.
There’s a local bar downtown. A little hidden in the wall type of establishment. Not many people know about it. We could talk without stress or worry. Plus! There’s a few other people here I think you might be interested in seeing too! Let me know!
Her thumb hovers over the red delete button, but the next text is sent separately. Its own small bubble, missing proper capitalization and grammar, like it was added on as an afterthought. Not just one, but a series of them. Sent only seconds apart. It peaks her interest enough to finish reading.
oh! i almost forgot
its
um
ragatha btw
i hope to hear backfrom you soon !!
you can say no!
i would prefer you didnt though
-
Trying to find her way into the bar reminds her of one of Caine’s convoluted adventures.
Thankfully, there’s no imminent death anywhere in sight. Only a possible existential crisis that has her rethinking the past few months of her life.
The picture Ragatha sent clued her in on a poster that had a small painted arrow that pointed towards a dumpster, that had a picture hint that led to her checking behind a brick she was just barely tall enough to reach. On the back was the silhouette of a cat in black ink.
She doesn’t hear any meows. Doesn’t see any fur.
After a few minutes of listless searching for her next clue, she peaks her head back out of the alley and looks down the line of the city, which is fairly empty of public. Makes sense for the time her presence is being requested.
About two blocks down, she spots the same cat symbol on a sign just barely visible from where she stands.
Nerves fuel her steps, wind sweeps her brown hair around wildly, and, as she gets closer, her hands grip the strap of her shoulder bag tighter and tighter. Her knuckles ache when she arrives at the front door. A cat cafe. Since when did they have one of these?
Kit-Tea.
Hm. Clever.
The light is off. She can barely make out the frilly decorations. There doesn’t seem to be anyone inside. No people at least. Only a few cats napping throughout the room. One’s tail sways back and forth at her teasingly from atop an empty pastry display.
She tries the handle and sighs.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be that easy.
Under her, a path leads to the side of the building. Grey, circular, stone, bricks that get mossier and mossier with each of her steps, until there's no more bricks and the ground crunches softly under her as she arrives at yet another dead end.
There’s vegetation on every side of her. She tries pushing and yanking at random sections.
Nothing.
The urge to scream bubbles in the back of her throat.
Why couldn’t she have just sent her an address?
Suddenly, the wall to her right shifts with a grating noise that's entirely unpleasant. Concrete sliding against concrete. She takes multiple steps back, a small pulse of fear knocking through her.
“Christine?” A voice asks before she can see its owner. She recognizes it so harrowly she nearly drops to her knees. A dark curl pokes out first, then an unknown face. It smiles grandly. “You made it!” She rushes out and wraps her arms greedily around Pomni.
It’s warm, almost suffocatingly so. She swallows down her nerves and returns the hug, squeezing her tight. Her fingertips plant themselves in soft, dark, red-brown hair, and she pulls them back for fear of messing up their pattern. “Your hair is a lot, er, longer than I imagined.“
Ragatha giggles, pulling back to tilt her head down at her. “Yours is… kind of exactly what I expected?”
Pomni purses her lips at that, a mixture of feelings swarming around inside her. “I guess it was pretty similar to my avatars.”
“Come inside!”
The light turns from natural to artificial and a rush of A/C blows her bangs away from her forehead, sending a small shiver through her.
Ragatha hurries forward down the connected hallway, a pep in her step, and Pomni takes a moment to just look around as she follows a few paces behind.
There’s not much light. Two lanterns hang near the center of the long room, closer to the ceiling than the floor, but they’re not lit.
Brick walls and ceilings, connected in an arch. Barely decorated besides a few choice paintings on the walls. Some bricks are cracked, split in half, or completely missing all together. Their holes are filled with very strange, out-of-place pops of colors.
A few tiles ahead there's an intersection. A branch of hallway to the left and to the right. A weird chill phases through her body like a thin, invisible, wall as she scurries past and grumpily wishes she had brought her jacket with her.
Her and A/C have never mixed particularly well.
The interior is much more… noisy than she was expecting. The decor. Rather than something modern and sleek, or even horses and country, it's bright and obnoxious. Purple and blue and red and yellow. The wallpaper is more an explosion of shapes and colors than anything else.
Complete opposite to her last drink experience with Ragatha.
All the seats are empty. Actually, most of the chairs are still upside down on the tables. The floor is as clean as one can expect from a place like this.
Gentle clinks steal her attention. Someone stands behind the bar, wiping at empty glasses and organizing them by size. Their hair is mostly dark, save for a few lines of a familiar pink at the very front.
What do they call it? Raccoon tail hair?
It looks cool even if she doesn’t think she could ever pull something like that off.
“Zooble?” She guesses and grins brightly when the figure looks up from their work.
“Alex.” The correction is light and friendly. Leaving behind their busser towel, they hurry out from behind the bar and gather Pomni up in a gentle embrace. “Hey, Pomni.”
It’s been months since someone has called her that. The sound of it dries her mouth, her tongue, and her throat instantly.
“Hey.” Her smile is genuine even through all her confusing thoughts.
Zooble rounds back to their spot. Wordlessly, Pomni reaches for her ID.
She needs a drink.
“The same?” Zooble asks, placing a short glass on the counter in front of her.
Pomni nods once, flips one of the stools over, and takes a seat. Ragatha follows in suit and Zooble sets a taller, narrower, glass next to the other without request. They quickly scan her ID and hand it back to her, a smirk with it. “Christine, huh?”
“Yep.” She responds awkwardly. She takes her own look at the cool plastic. Her own eyes stare back. Brown and nervous. Naive, as much as she hates to admit it. Freshly graduated and blissfully unaware of her future to come. “That’s me.” Still 25. Should be 26.
The argument ‘I spent months living inside a virtual reality ’ probably wouldn’t hold up very well in court.
“Okay if we call you that?”
She swallows, feeling anything but nonchalant. “Sure. Whatever is fine.”
Ragatha glances around the room. “Where’s Lily?”
“Feeding the cats.” Zooble replies, mixing together the first of the alcohol. “Should be out soon.”
Pomni takes a stab in the process of elimination dark, “Gangle?”
“Yes!” Ragatha says. “Oh my gosh, sorry. Alex is Zooble. Lily is Gangle. And I’m Genevieve.”
“Don’t call her that though, or she’ll get pissed.”
Her face grows in color and she gives Zooble a frown. It’s weird that her emotions are still so animated. Her hair even bounces as she moves her head. Perhaps she’s always been a very emotive person. “I don’t get pissed.”
“Your cheeks always say otherwise.”
Pomni smiles at their antics, “What should I call you then?”
“Oh.” Ragatha’s anger falls and she settles back in her seat. “Jenn is fine.”
Their drinks clink down in front of them. Tan hands leaving them swiftly. Pomni is happy for the distraction, immediately moving to take a small sip. It burns all the way down. Ragatha simply pulls hers closer.
There’s a few moments where no one speaks. Zooble goes back to work, just a few feet away, and Pomni swirls her drink, the ice loud over their thinking.
What now?
She didn’t really think that far ahead.
She has a million questions—a million thoughts—but nothing she really wants to say.
“I’ve had your number for a while.” Ragatha confesses.
Pomni sets her drink back down. “Huh?”
Nervously, her fingers tap around her narrower glass, leaving prints in their wake. “I was, admittedly , a bit nervous about reaching out to you.”
Her brow furrows in surprise, “Why?”
“I wasn’t sure you would have wanted to talk to us.” She laughs awkwardly, her eyes gazing off towards some empty liquor bottles that line the walls. Her shoulders bunch up towards her ear as she casts a stray curl behind her ear. “You were always… I don’t know. You enjoyed being alone. Especially when you were sorting through internal troubles.”
What would she have done if Ragatha reached out a few weeks earlier? Months? Just how long has Ragatha known who she is?
She likes to think she would have taken her up on her offer.
She certainly would have felt less alone.
“I understand.” Pomni replies. Because she does. She was never the most receptive to help in the circus when she was spiraling. And this was certainly a spiral event.
But the circus and reality are two entirely different things.
A subtle cough. “So.” Ragatha tries. “What have you been doing? Anything exciting?”
“Not really.”
The woman sits up a bit straighter. Her disappointment a rod in her back. “O-oh.”
Pomni sets her cheek on her hand, elbow resting on the cold bar surface. She feels really lame. She hasn’t really been doing anything different than before she entered the circus. Business went on as usual.
Work, home, sleep. Repeat.
In the beginning, she enjoyed it. Normalcy. The quaint, sad, life that she had been returned to. Practically right where she left it. Only three days missing. But as the weeks went on, the restlessness settled under her skin like a bug. Jittering through her veins. Forcing her to take late night walks and side-eye packs of gum from the convenience store like stealing them would send it into hibernation. “I guess I picked back up exploring?”
“That’s fun!” Ragatha jumps at the chance for conversation. “Upload any videos?”
“A few.” It was the only thing that helped scratch the itch after she re-entered reality. But it was nothing new. She didn’t really feel like talking about it. “What about you?”
“Well, I’ve been hunting down you guys. Catching up with my parents… not that much time passed for them…” Her smile goes wry but bounces back twice as big, “Riding horses. Traveling a bit. You know.”
“How are they?” When Ragatha squints, clearly not understanding, Pomni is more specific, “Your parents.”
“Oh! They are good. Same ol’ same ol’. Just as I remembered them.” She throws her head back as she takes her first drink. It’s half emptied before she continues. “I almost forgot how suffocating parents can be sometimes.”
“How much time did you miss?”
Ragatha tilts her head away, rotating her legs to face the wall of alcohol. Her hands join in front of her. It’s hard to tell if her silence is her thinking or her not wanting to answer the question.
Guilt trickles through Pomni. She shouldn’t have asked that. Not so soon.
Just when Pomni opens her mouth to apologize and give her an out, Ragatha murmurs, “Seven days.” Another pause. Another drink. Then, “You?”
“Three.”
Zooble doesn’t look up from their idle tasks, “I think I missed four, might have been close to five.”
The admissions hang over their heads.
Were they really only in there a few days? To her, It felt like months.
She hadn’t even been there that long.
Pomni casts a small side-eye over at the other two, trying to be subtle. They look serious. Like two strangers she’s never met.
How long did it feel like to them?
They sit in silence for a little while longer.
Only broken by Pomni mumbling, “You always did like horses.”
Her eyes brighten at that. “Yeah. I could show them to you sometime.” Her hands fly back and forth. “If you want to, of course. No pressure.”
“Sure. I’d like that.” She smiles, but horses have never really interested her. She’s just relieved to have successfully moved on. She raises her cup for another sip. “Where did you travel?”
“I went to Europe for a few days around this time last month. France, specifically. Actually, it reminded me of the time we had to-”
“Pomni!” Arms enclose around her from behind suddenly. Pomni coughs, flinching away a bit from the touch and name instinctively. She relaxes, sets back down her drink, and pats Gangle's arms, the only bit of her she can reach to return the hug.
She really snuck up on her. “Hi, Gangle.”
When she pulls back and Pomni turns to face her, her first thought is: wow, her smile is pretty. It grows, pushing away the pre-established picture in Pomni’s mind of a mask adorning tears. “How have you been?”
“I’m,” Pomni hesitates. “good.”
Not a single soul looks as though they believe her.
“As good as I can be.” She corrects, though, it still feels like a lie to her.
Gangle lets her shoulders fall, a heavy breath going with them. “That’s as good as I can ask for.” She maneuvers herself a spot next to Pomni and wiggles as she gets comfortable. “Plus, now you have us. I know things got a lot easier for me once I reconnected with everyone else.”
Pomni straightens at that. Everyone else. Does that everyone actually include everyone ? Kinger, Caine, Bubble? Jax?
His name being a separate entity weighs down her chest.
They never really did make up before they all managed to get out.
“J-Kinger?” She asks, tongue a bit tangled, words coming out unsatisfactorily. No one seems to notice her slip, and she takes far too long a drink in her own confusing embarrassment.
“Kinger is…” The pause hangs in the air far too long. Gangle looks from Ragatha to Zooble, glossing over Pomni in the middle. “Busy.”
Worry makes an instant appearance. He was never fully there. Who knows how the Circus affected him when he came back out. Is his memory still touch and go? “Is he okay?”
Even when he wasn’t fully aware of it himself, she always appreciated his presence. It was comforting.
“Yeah! Yeah.” The echo is less convincing than the original. Ragatha’s nods are overzealous, they do nothing to help the growing concern. Dark red curls bunch and unravel as they turn to shakes. “He’s.. he’s fine . Just has a lot going on.”
“Okay.” The word is harsher than Pomni intends. “I know we just got back in touch. But I’m not dumb.” Never have been. “What is wrong with Kinger?”
“Really, don’t worry about it.” Ragatha grins, awkward, all teeth. “I’m sure you’ll see him next time.”
A frown takes over her face. She does not need to be protected.
Zooble gives her an even look. “It’s nothing you need to stress over. We’ll let you know if it amounts to anything substantial. Promise.”
It isn’t what she wanted to hear. Not by a long shot. But if she is being asked to trust them right now, she’s not going to fail their first test.
“Alright.” She agrees. “But I’m here if you guys need any help.”
“And we are here too!” Ragatha responds. “If you ever need to talk or need any help, or have any questions—anything like that.”
Have you spoken to Jax?
“Thanks.”
A little under an hour later, she checks the time on the clock on the wall. 3:12. Work starts at 7. There’s no food in her fridge. Nothing of actual sustenance anyway. She’ll still need to stop on her way home. She needs a shower too. And maybe a 30 minute nap so she doesn’t keel over at her office desk. She sighs, the frown on her face heavy, never having fully left. “I should probably get going soon.”
“Aw.” Lily sulks slightly, but flips her mood upside down with a small crinkle in her eyes. “You have to come again. Next time you can play with the cats.”
“A very tempting bribe.” Pomni replies. “Might just have to take you up on that.”
“We have to open soon anyway. I’m sure you wanna dodge all the crack-of-dawn drunks.”
Chrinstine looks around again. Taking in the heavily decorated room. Since arriving, Zooble has gone around and put down all the chairs, which really helps open up the place. It looks less of a vomit of color and more deliberate. The subtle placements of grey along the bottom half of the walls and running down some of the pillars are nice.
It’s still not exactly her favorite. But it’s better.
A door with kitten paws painted on the floor leading up to the bottom stands tall from across from the bathrooms. It draws her attention. “Do you guys own, like, a cat cafe speakeasy duo or something?”
“We don’t own it—”
“—But it’s super cool, right?” Gangle leans back on her stool. A light brown and pink apron with paw decals and ribbons is tied around her waist. “Oh! Have you seen my uniform? Isn’t it cute?”
-
No one greets her when she enters one of the only diners open this late into the night. (Or is it this early into the morning?) No customers. No workers. But there’s a pair of cars outside and the lights are on. As well as the stove. So she’s pretty sure they are open. The times listed outside back her theory up.
She fiddles awkwardly at the door, looking around and trying to figure out if this is a seat yourself situation or what.
A man pushes through a swinging door behind the counter and, honestly, Pomni is surprised he even fits through it. His muscles must be the size of her head. Once he catches a glimpse of her, he turns to shout back into the room he came from, “Felix! Customer!”
After a second of no response, he shouts again. “Felix!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” The words are muffled and abrasive. Tired, even through their attitude. “Who the fuck is trying to order waffles at—”
She knows she probably looks a bit worse for wear. Her chest is currently paging through waves of emotions by itself, her head refusing to help until it gets a few bites of something to eat. Her stomach having been neglected since early the morning before. Almost a full 24 hours at this point. The drink she had earlier definitely didn’t help. And is most likely the cause of the minor headache building in her temples.
And yeah, there’s probably bags under her eyes. So what?
But to look bad enough that she stops the random worker in his place?
His eyes widen (a pair of eye bags of his own, thank you very much) and his mouth drops just barely open when he sees her, a pure panic in his expression. It shifts from panic to disbelief to something sad to something mad, back to something that is completely unreadable.
Pomni glances around nervously, a finger pointing towards a booth, a question on the tip of her tongue.
She’s just trying to get some food. It’s been a long day.
“Dude, what is wrong with you?” The shorter man scowls at the taller man as he spins on the spot and runs back through the door he came. The sentence is hushed, but she can still hear it. He takes an annoyed breath and turns back to Pomni with a forced smile. “Sorry about that, sit wherever you’d like.”
As thanks, she smiles weakly, still a bit confused, and takes over a booth in the far corner. There’s some distant chatter, nothing she can make out the words too, so she scans over the menu and tries to keep herself safe from unwanted thoughts that swarm like flies trying to distract her.
It was nice to see them again. Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle.
Is she really okay with cracking all of this open?
Should she get waffles?
What’s wrong with Kinger?
Mm, maybe pancakes.
Jax?
Did he make it out?
Frustrated, she runs her hands up through her hair and hangs her head in the small cave her arms create. God, she should have asked earlier. Maybe not gone at all. Now she’s not going to be able to stop wondering.
A few minutes later, a pair of lanky legs appear at the end of her table, snapping her out of the start of her inevitable spiral.
He’s very tall , Pomni notes immediately. Her neck cranes to look up at him from her seat and she swears she hears a small crack in her upper back.
The server doesn’t look back at her, book shoved in his face and pen clenched in a death grip in his hand by his ear. The only thing she can see is tufts of brown hair.
The notion almost reminds her of Gangle, back in the circus, and her stomach sinks. But then he grits out, “What do you want?” And he’s too angry to be anything like her, shattering the resemblance.
His voice sounds lower than when he was shouting earlier, like he’s purposely trying to sound manlier or he’s nursing a sore throat. Impatiently, his foot taps on the tiled flooring. A dense thump thump thump thump .
At her lack of speedy reply, he snaps, “Can you hurry up?”
“Oh. Yes, sorry.” She picks the menu back up and points at the breakfast sandwich. It’s for nothing, he’s not looking. She clears her throat awkwardly. “Uh, the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich…”
He’s gone before she finishes her sentence, leaving her to sit with her thoughts, her confusion, and her hunger.
Minutes later, he comes fuming back, eyes cast off towards a window past her. She barely gets a glance at him. The plate is dropped off in front of the seat across from her in half a millisecond and its harbinger has already whipped around, growing distance between them like she is the bearer of the black plague.
She drags her plate in front of her. It smells good. “Can I get—”
The waiter freezes mid-retreat. Irritation is clear in his posture.
She takes his silence as an okay to continue. “A fork?” For her side of hashbrowns, “And, maybe a water too.”
It feels weird, watching him fulfill her requests. But his actions are so choppy and uncomfortable that she can’t look away, a furrow slowly nesting itself in her forehead.
“Are you… okay?” She asks when he returns.
He rears back, meeting her gaze for the first time since she’s sat down. Water splashes out of the cup in his fright, landing on his sleeve and hand. It goes ignored, eyes boring straight into hers.
They burn her with the intensity.
Then, he scoffs a little scoff that almost seems incredulous. Like he can’t believe she’s asked him something as insane as a question . If she knew it was going to offend him so vehemently, she wouldn’t have. “Of course you would ask me that.”
“Wha—”
Her water, silverware, and bill slam on the table. “Eat your fucking food.”
He doesn’t come by again.
Twenty minutes later, Pomni digs a pen out of her purse.
She thinks about leaving the tip line blank for a long, hard moment. Or, at the very least, leaving only a small few dollars equal to no more than 10%. But when she looks back up and spots a blur of brown hair darting down out of the circular kitchen window she thinks you never know what people are going through and leaves 25%.