ph_logs | [Closed] Well, well, look who's inside again

[Closed] Well, well, look who's inside again

Who: Jax (

jeveuxpartir), & Ragatha (

raggedydamn) (and potentially other CR!)

What:Reconnecting after the fall of King Eligos

When: The days following the incidents on March 15th

Where: Jax's townhouse, Downtown Hollow

Warning(s): Suicidal ideation, past gore, and everything that goes into that :)

If it weren't for the knocking at the door that echoes throughout his home, Jax still wouldn't have found a reason to pull himself out of the bed, even at the sun-shining hour of 3PM.

Maybe it isn't the most mature choice, to hide away in his house, or the "responsible" thing to do. Nor is it probably up there in the choices he could've made that might've been filed under "considerate of others." But considering that he got his skin ripped off, got impaled, and accepted his death all in the span of a few hours, then proceeded to have to claw his way desperately through bones and monsters and continued terrors.

Yeah, maybe he should've gotten in touch with the people who give a damn about him. But he distinctly did not do that.

In fact, the note on his door, left to potentially deter visitors, reads:

DIED.

COME BACK LATER.

But, when the knock comes, within a few minutes there's footsteps on the other side of the door nonetheless, and a familiar voice that pipes up. He sounds hazy with sleep, the way one might after a nap that was supposed to be twenty minutes turns into a three-hour one. (That's not entirely off, either, but does it count if you've been in and out of sleep for an entire afternoon?)

"So, can you not read, or are you here to try to do a seance or something? Because I'm not really feeling up to that kinda thing right now."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That... worked. She really didn't expect that to actually work. A mix of surprise and relief washes over her, face and body, and she doesn't dare say another word before she slips inside the open door. Just in case. (She doesn't want him to change his mind.)

"It's... it's good to see you— alive." Okay would be the wrong word. He's not okay. (None of them are okay.) "Pomni was... she was very upset."

An understatement (distraught, that would be the better word) and a half-truth that dodges the shape of her own, complicated, grief. Scared, still, to scare him off. Still unfamiliar with the shape of whatever the things they've done and said in the last 24 hours mean.

"Yeah. Good to see you... alive, too."

After all, that's all that anyone can ask of them right now, isn't it? After something like what the whole town went through, alive is the only guarantee that anyone's going to get. Jax wouldn't be shocked if dozens of people had marched up to that dock, demanding the ferryman to take them right back to that office, and tell the goddess that let them in that the deal was off.

(Perhaps, if no one had showed up, he'd be on that very dock, turning tail and setting right off to whatever void was waiting for him. Let the first death and the indignity suffered after it be the final one he'd ever have to deal with.)

Pomni being upset gets a nod out of him, and after a beat, a humorless scoff of a laugh, his hands finding his pockets. He turns on his heel to lead her further into the home, dim as it is, to turn on some lanterns. It's quaint, not quite so colorful as Jax's old room, but comfortable.

"Just Pomni, huh?" Jax asks behind him, joking tone betraying the furrowed brows that face away from her as he turns on a hanging lamp. "She wasn't in it long enough to be relieved, I don't figure. Must've been nice to get... what, six? Seven years worth of a thorn in your side out? I stopped keeping track after a while, honestly."

Maybe that's harsh. Harsher than she deserves, for being glad to see him kicking, for even coming here at all. But he can't imagine her being upset to see him go. It's not cruel, and he doesn't say it like a jab. If anything, his remarks are given like simple facts, not all that different from the weather, or what's on the menu for dinner.

"Make yourself at home. Didn't get crazy with the groceries this week, but I've still got wine out, if you want it."

Wine out is an understatement; two already emptied bottles sit by the bottom corner of a counter, and another one, still lightly chilled, sits on the kitchen island. His plans for himself to see how "drinking to forget" works in this world for digital cartoons faces only some minor interruptions.

Ragatha flinches, but— it's not like it feels unearned. She's doing it again, after all: choosing her words so carefully they circle back around into carelessness. How does she always mess this up? It's a miracle she didn't upset Pomni worse, when they were still in that horrible room.

"That's... that's not what I meant," she murmurs, as she follows after him, eye on everything but him. It's a nice enough place. (Still odd, thinking about how each of them have a place.)

What did she mean? Find your words, dammit.

She stares at the bottles, extra lines in her brow, and her fists ball at her sides. Firmer, and louder, she speaks again: "I wasn't relieved, Jax. No matter what's happened between us, I would never have been relieved to watch you die. Not like that, not by abstraction, not... any way at all. I— honestly figured you wouldn't even believe me, if I said I was upset, too. But I was. I meant what I said, before you... did it. It should never have gone like that. We— should never have ended up like this."

"Maybe I wouldn't have. But it might've been nice to hear it."

Is nice to hear it, currently, goes unsaid. He drops himself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, elbow slumped against the table, and he eyes Ragatha for a moment. Words don't usually get stuck in his gears like this, but here he is, having to untangle his head like a wad of unmanageable wad of yarn. (Of course it had to be yarn that came to mind.) He frowns, attention flickering away for just a thoughtful moment, before he lets out a sigh.

"Used to be easier back then, didn't it? We'd argue, you'd get pissed, somebody'd storm off. It was sort of a script. And then, after long enough, I'd go nuts, and nobody'd say it, but everybody would be relieved. You'd have your dumb funeral for me, and nobody would have to sweat it anymore. Nobody got invested, it's just a sad thing that happens, and it'd be over with."

A beat, and he finally looks back her way.

"Then it got complicated. And now we've gotta do stuff like think about how things should've gone. And how they're gonna go. It doesn't just stick to the script anymore. You know what I mean?"

"I... I think so. Even if I wouldn't say all of it like... that."

She hesitates a moment longer, then slides into one of the other chairs, hands clasped nervously beneath the table and alternating between staring at the wood grain and glancing toward him in flickers of motion.

"...I don't— actually know how I made it as long as I did. Not— abstracting, I mean. Kinger's... Kinger." She laughs, humourless but fond. "He has his tricks. And now we know... how everything came to be, i-it makes sense he held out, even as... fractured, as he was. But I— I was the first, after him, and so many people came and went. Better people than me. People who... fit in, better. And still, eventually, they'd abstract. And I'd still be there. And I— don't know why. I kept— waiting my turn."

Some days, parts of her feel broken. Before Pomni (even... after Pomni, some days) she felt so disconnected from everyone. Kinger was so rarely coherent and the others were... nice, but they didn't think she was genuine, did they? Even Jax still had Kaufmo, until— he didn't. (It's wrong to feel this way, she thinks. No one but Jax ever really... did anything, not specifically. It's not a crime not to want to be her friend in specific. But— ugh.)

"...sticking to the script never helped me. I did— everything that I thought should have got me closer to people. That should have kept them from abstracting. And it never worked. You all thought I was a phony, and— and maybe I was. Am. Maybe we both just played our parts too well."

Played their parts too well.

And here he'd thought that he'd been the only one who had been making any kind of effort to fit nicely right in his place. The key difference between them is that playing the part of not caring is a hell of a lot easier than playing the part that does. And the longer she goes on, the more pieces start to fit together, past incidents that frustrated and agitated now making more sense.

So she wasn't trying to force things to be okay when they weren't. She just wanted to lie to herself as much as anyone else was lying to themselves about escaping the circus, their lives not being over, things being okay eventually.

Often, when Ragatha got going, unless Jax was looking for something to make a dig at her about, his wide eyes would roll, and he'd tune out. This time, though, besides letting his attention find something especially interesting on the wood grain below, he actually listens this time.

"...Maybe you're right. Maybe the scripts weren't doing anybody any favors," Jax relents, leaning back in his chair and sighing through his teeth. "But at least we knew what to do, and what to say. Now we're stuck somewhere where we gotta be real people again. Or, worse, actually, we're real people stuck on Horror Island in the middle of the great universe's Nowhere Pit. It's a headache, right? Worst of it before was a crappy adventure, or some new guy getting dropped in. Now it's a million new guys and all they wanna talk about is the weather, and why we look like freaks. Talk about exhausting."

His ramble's all over the place, but at the very least, and perhaps the most shocking part of it, is how sincere it is.

"...yeah. Exhausting."

She shouldn't admit it. She should be able to be— helpful, and positive, and adapt quickly, but for every odd look or polite curiosity she becomes more and more aware of her body in a way she thought she was long, long past. She's been like this for... who knows how many years, and now it all feels new again. The equal footing of everyone around you being in the same predicament is gone.

Rag dolls are meant to be able to take a beating. But rag dolls also aren't meant to be alive.

"I don't want to be back there. I just— wish we could skip ahead to where things stop being— a novelty, again. And—" a huff, "maybe to not have had such a horrible first 'adventure'. That would have been nice."

"...You wanna know what my first 'adventure' here was?"

Jax shifts again to lean forward, folding his arms on the table, his foot softly tap, tap, tapping on the floor, anxious energy getting let out one way or another.

"Not counting the UFO that tried to eat me while I was taking a walk... nightmare castle. Stairs that drop off into nothing, mutant animals that want to tear you to pieces, and, on top of everything—"

He sputters a disbelieving laugh, even at recalling it.

"Caine was there! And he said he sent me on a solo-adventure. And everybody on the island was an NPC. Told me to get out there, have fun, do whatever. And you know what the dumbest part of that whole thing was? I believed him! I believed him, just about lost my mind, and..."

He trails off. Maybe she doesn't really need the gorey details. The last thing she needs to do is think about anything else like that when she looks at him.

"...Basically, I dunno if there's ever gonna be one here that wouldn't have been awful. That's just how it goes. Better that you got the worst of it ripped off like a band-aid, right? Now everything else is gonna be easier in comparison."

In some strange, Jax-typical shape, that almost looks like reassurance.

Caine was—? That's— that's what? ...she resists asking the obvious question of what that means and if he's still here, somehow, because Jax said 'nightmare castle' and surely if he was here in town itself, Jax would say, but it sets her nerves on edge regardless.

She rubs her hands together under the table and tries not to think about it.

"I suppose that's one way to look at it," she says, trying very hard to believe it'll be the case. "...it was such a— cruel trick. All of it. Making us fight like— that, in front of Pomni and— for what?"

"Just for their own sick kicks, probably."

Says the guy who hurts people for his own amusement. On another turn of a coin, he'd probably have been in there, a demon or something like that, inflicting that kind of pain on other people. The irony of it isn't lost on him.

"...Why were you gonna throw in the towel like that, anyways? You went this long without abstracting, even if you got no idea, like you said. Why punch out there? You know you were gonna be better at dealing with Pomni and all the emotional junk, right?"

If it were the other way around, he would've found a way to make it fall apart worse, he's sure. And after it turned out to be a trick, the lasting damage would've been so much worse for it.

She's not proud of the dismissive sound that falls out of her on some unbidden reflex. "Like I got better at dealing with— with Gangle, or Zooble, or anyone that came before them? I— only ever push people away in the end, Jax. Only, unlike you, I'm not even trying."

The wince is immediate, regret sharper than needles. She exhales, loosens the tension in her shoulders.

"...sorry. That— that was uncalled for. But you don't— know, what would happen. You think you do, but you don't. She— she likes you a lot more than she likes me. Whether you think she does or not. And after what had happened earlier..."

She can't even look at the table. It's too close to him.

"...I didn't want you to think that was a lie." Helping him. Caring what happened to him.

"I push people away, you're delusional. There, we're even."

A push right back against an apology. They've done this song and dance for years upon years now, so long that it's almost a natural reflex. But that doesn't stop him from lingering on the flickers of recollection of everything that happened, and any glimmer of a sardonic smile that'd pulled at his lips is gone just as quickly.

"...Worst thing I thought is that it wasn't worth the effort," he admits, after a reluctant few seconds. "But it's your effort to waste, and I know I'm not gonna talk you out of it, so there wasn't any point sticking around on it."

He hates that something like that, something that would've been so easy to say and write off, now leave a bad taste in his mouth. So, he pushes past it, letting out a sigh through his teeth, before speaking back up, a tentative mutter. Sincerity from him is like stepping on shaky ground, and each word is placed with just as much effort. "...Thanks. By the way. For that."

It all slides off her so easily, today. Even the barbs that would have stuck so easily any other feel like next to nothing after what happened. That numbness won't hold as armour for long, she knows it won't, but she'll take what she can get.

They're... both not quite themselves, right now, are they? Not the versions of themselves they put forward to everyone else. Not even the versions of themselves that usually butt up against each other like pinballs, flying away again after impact.

"...I could never have left you like that. You should never have been— made to feel, like that. The kinds of people who— who make someone else feel like that..."

She doesn't count Jax in that number. For all his hurtful words and cruel intentions, she knows worse people than him. She lived with one for almost her entire life.

"So— you're— welcome, I guess." What an inadequate thing to say. She winces at herself again.

There's something underneath that, some kind of gnarled wound that's covered up by a sentence trailing off. Jax knows it all too well, but his personal version of it replaces the silence with a shove in another direction, all but turning someone's head to look away. Maybe that's why he can see it so easily, when she does it. Maybe that's why he wishes she would turn his head away from it, and talk to someone who can hold something like that with a careful touch.

It'd be so easy to just let it pass by. Pretend he doesn't see it. Haven't they dealt with enough from the hungry shadows beneath the life-raft they've both found themselves in?

There's so many shadows between them, at this point, that it's starting to feel a bit like they're being circled by sharks. It's so nauseating that, were he as committed to his personal world falling quiet and alone, he would've shoved her out the door so she could take her own with her.

Instead, he caves in. He reaches for one of those shadows that sears his mind with bright, technicolor eyes.

"...Speaking of all that, you probably figured out by now that, y'know. That wasn't... actually... Ribbit." Getting her name out of his mouth is an effort. Everyone who said it would get easier with time was lying. "Got my ears talked off down in the pit. Whoever it was made sure I knew they were having a great time with it. Fun times, down in the spike-pit. I knew 'em well enough to know it was bull

, at least. You would've tangled yourself up about it."

Better me than you, he doesn't say. A new shadow crowds the room.

She can feel it too. So much unsaid. So many dark shadows, looming. She can't look at any of them.

"It— it wasn't?" falls out of her mouth first, stupid as it feels. In the exhaustion of the end of the day, the long hours keeping herself busy at the farm so she didn't explode until she'd given Pomni enough chance to talk to Jax, she... hadn't come back to thinking about Ribbit at all.

(Horrible. That's horrible. You should have known it wasn't them. (But you don't know what abstraction— (No, you know it's not that, don't you?) you never cared to think about how—) Pomni even asked. Are you so— (Jealous, you were always so jealous and—))

(Way to prove him right about how tangled you'd have gotten.)

"...of course it wasn't," she says on a breathless, bitter laugh. "I— I should have known. She was never... like that. Even if they abstracted... why would they have turned into... that."

Stupid. How goddamn stupid.

"Another part of the trick."

"...I wasn't convinced until they admitted it."

Of course he didn't. Always looking right through the truth, wanting to believe anything but it. It's amazing he's made it this far in life without walking into traffic, just because he didn't want to believe the cars were there.

"Bet the abstraction-goop or whatever it was wasn't even real, either. ...Didn't wanna test that, obviously, but—"

He has to try not to wince at himself. Vulnerability glanced at, and pulled back. Obviously it was all fake. Obviously they would've found that out either way. It doesn't matter that thinking about testing it puts all his nerves on end.

(She didn't worry about him not dying on impact of those spikes. That's good. It shouldn't cross anybody's mind except his own. He plays it on loop enough for everyone in this goddamned town.)

"Enough tricks to make a

ing magic show out of it," he jokes, bitter and flat. "Heard that the guy running it got axed, so at least we've got that going for us, right?"

"I suppose one dead torturer is better than none," Ragatha says with a quiet bitterness, a combination of tone and words she second guesses so quickly it could give her whiplash.

Always easier, in the circus, not to think about what was really happening. Not to label it something so obvious. Take the adventures as they come and deal with whatever new torment it involves like it's just... harmless fun. She clung onto that ridiculous false optimism until the end, until Caine... got worse, and somehow it still feels horribly wrong to let it crack now.

But even discounting the circus, what about the woman from the ceremonial hall? Or the demon they were preparing the space for? They're not entirely free.

Her mouth presses into one of those tight, uneven lines and she exhales. "...we should take our blessings where we can find them. Better whoever running it is dead. Better it wasn't really Ribbit. Better we're... both still here."

"...Y'know, I used to hate when you did that after adventures," Jax mutters, taking his turn to drop his attention away from her, finding something very interesting across the room, frown so small that it practically looks like he doesn't have a mouth at all, until he speaks again. "Like there was anything good to find in any of that. You'd do it after some of the worst

we ever saw, and that's where I went from thinking you were delusional to just lying to our faces to try make everybody feel better."

Were he feeling a bit more fiery, that might've been a jab, angled and meant to cut like a well-poised knife. Now, it's... flat. Tired. A simple fact, from his perspective that he'd kept so blatantly unreadable that even he wasn't certain of it half the time.

"...Think you're right this time, though. We're both... still here. We've got one more demon down. At this rate, the demon problem'll be figured out in no time, right?"

It feels wrong for him to be the one offering an ounce of optimism, but strange times call for strange solutions, don't they?

Her fists curl beneath the table, again, restraining any feelings she may or may not be having about the admission to... varying effect. It's not unexpected. She knows how everyone felt about her. But what was the alternative? Did they want her to just— just—

"...trying to make you all feel better was better than letting everyone slip into despair. I— I still believe that." Mostly. Some days. Her tactics obviously didn't help, in the end, did they? Like she said, they just made everyone think she was a phony.

It's harder, now. And so— odd, to hear Jax offering anything of the same.

"...but— you're right, about the demons, maybe." How long has it taken the town to down— three of the four? She doesn't really know. This is all so new. "Probably... sooner than the circus, at least."

Sooner than the circus. Jax lets out a short, bitter laugh.

"It better be shorter than the circus, because if we have to spend however many ing years on this, getting thrown into a dozen different types of stupid torture scenarios, I'm gonna abstract and knock this stupid rock back into the ocean."

That might've come off as a bleak joke, were that simmering anger that threatens to boil over and seep venom into the words not so obvious with every single thing he says.

He looks away sharply, and curls his hands, still laying on the table, into firsts, and draws in a deep slow breath, letting it out between his teeth. He fumes, but he doesn't know at what anymore. Maybe against being trapped, all over again, but he can't even confidently say that. Maybe it's just the same, directionless anger that he's had in him all his life.

For once, he doesn't make it her problem, he doesn't lash out like he'd always been so primed to before. Even if it'd show her that there's no point in patching him back up, after he gets torn down to his lowest, he can't bring himself to do it. (Weak. You're losing your teeth. What'll you lose next?)

"...Maybe it was better. But did you ever think that some of us wanted to 'slip into despair' or whatever, and got tired of pretending we didn't?"

He instantly regrets saying that, and sinks back into his chair, letting out a deeper sigh.

"Whatever. None of it matters anymore. It's over with."

It's the most concerning thing he could have said, and the one she least knows how to respond to. The one she's never known how to respond to, the few times she's... dared to consider it, about any of those who abstracted. How many of them let it happen? How many of them knew it was coming and didn't want to prevent it? How many of them really just... gave up?

Without her say so, her arms draw up to hug herself. She still can't look at him. Can't help but think of the way Pomni described him, how getting too close, too genuine, just risks making him pull away behind his own mask again.

"...it still matters because we're still alive, Jax. And we're still— us. And what we felt in there doesn't just... go away now that we're inside a different set of walls."

Even saying that much feels dangerous.

Jax eyes her for a moment, brows furrowed and frown tight. It's hard to tell what's on her mind. She won't look at him. He can't blame her for it. If he didn't have to, he'd sure as hell not look at him, either, especially when he's like this. He's got to get a grip.

"...You ever think that that's a bad thing? That whoever went into that stupid computer, and whatever happened in there, should've just— stayed in there?"

He sits with that for a moment, before he grimaces, shaking his head and glancing away again. His own arms fold over his chest. He doesn't know why he keeps going on like this. How many years was he able to get by, without even so much as giving her an inch, and how it just keeps spilling out of him? All over, what, a few pins and an apology?

(It was more than that. He hates that he can't force himself to think it was anything less than it was.)

"Eh. Too late to worry about that now. We're still making it a problem for each other, and everybody here, so it is what it is, right?"

"No, Jax, I don't. Or— not most of the time." It would be a lie to say that the worst of what happened, in those damned hallways, didn't make her wonder if this was all worth it. She doesn't doubt Pomni felt the same, in her grief. What was the point of another chance—with all the unique difficulties such a thing comes with for people like them—if within days of being given it, Jax ended up dead?

But it can't be true. It can't be better to accept that they should have given up entirely. Not just on escaping—no, Pomni had very good points about how... damaging, holding onto that idea had been—but on anything mattering at all.

"If I thought like that, I'd never have even made it to the circus. Life— life has to be worth something. This all has to be worth something. Maybe it is what it is, but that doesn't have to be... just a bad thing."

She's doing it again, probably. But she means every word.

Every time he's ever told her, as long as he's known her, to not worry about it, it's practically like asking her to do the complete opposite. Jax doesn't even know why he tries to get her to wave any of it off anymore. But then she slips in there that, maybe, he's not the only one who's thoughts drift that way. Who almost wonders if they had it easier, in their personal digital hell.

But then she goes on, and manages to stick two things in his mind, barbed in just such a way that he can practically feel his racing thoughts picking two new points to tangle around.

It has to be worth something. Maybe what it is isn't a bad thing.

He wants to throw it back in her face. To take digs at her, to laugh at her for believing that anything matters after they got turned into cartoons characters. But it doesn't come out nearly so forced as the desperate positivity always did. It's almost like she really thinks that. Either actively, or maybe she's just trying to convince herself of it, just as much as she's trying to convince him.

Jax watches her face, uncertain, like he's looking for any sign of deceit. He doesn't find anything even a little bit like that there, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

What does it mean for him, if his life is worth something like this?

He's not ready to think about that.

"Dunno why you're bothering with farming or whatever. Listen to you! You should've gone into life coaching or something." He tries to joke, but it doesn't land. He doesn't have the energy to make anything out of it, much less divert it meaningfully. He glances away from her for a moment, before his attention flickers back. "...Well, while we figure out what it is, if it is anything, you want a drink or something?"

He's already getting up for himself. Having something to focus on will hopefully make him less fidgety. (If nothing else, it'll give him a brand new thing to stare at that isn't her.)

It's odd. This is the longest conversation she thinks they've had in... years, and by far the most in-depth. The most... the closest, to honest. Every other sentence or so she expects him to either flee his own home or try to shuffle her out the door, something she'd have no real choice but to allow both to not drive a deeper wedge and because she's simply been— raised, that way. When he stands, she half expects that the time has finally come.

And still, he stays. Lets her stay. Expects continued conversation—or, at minimum, continued company.

(...she can never tell how much he hears, when they talk. Today less than any other day. Is anything she say sticking in his skull, or is he pushing it all right out the other ear?)

There are smart answers, here. Water, or something. Instead she find herself saying: "Well, you did make a point of having that wine out."

It's, notably, not a direct request. Plausible deniability. (What a joke.)

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