Archive of Our Own ^beta

It started with a headset in an empty classroom at the start of a long day. The door was wide open, it looked like the expensive ones on the billboards, and there’d been too little hesitation.

It ended with the very same headset, four years later.

Jax opened his eyes and yanked the thing off as fast as he could, collapsing onto the floor. His hands splayed out on the cold tile behind him and he gasped for air as if he hadn’t been getting any this whole time. Maybe he wasn’t. No one had to breathe in the Circus; they just kind of… did.

A lot of information processed through his mind at once. Jax lifted his hands in front of him, tan and human and trembling harder than they had in a long time. They weren’t the terrible yellow gloves, reminiscent of Mickey Mouse and absolutely glued to his hands. His nails were too long, his skin cracking because he hadn’t been bothered to replace his lotion in weeks.

Weeks. But, he’d been in the Circus for… years. Jax-- not Jax, he realized. He knew his name. Holy shit, his name was Dylan. Holy shit, he was out.

Had it been years? The Circus had lasted years. There was Kinger and Ragatha and-

He remembered. He remembered all of it. Years of information, all processed into his brain in an instant. The world was too dim, suddenly devoid of colors and shapes designed to overwhelm. So much had happened. Ribbit, Ribbit from the moment that headset went on, and then years later Pomni asked Caine that question once he came clean about everything; she asked him what would happen to all of the people who abstracted. Caine said, with none of his usual flair, that they wouldn’t remember any of this at all.

Caine helped them get out. As Jax-- no, Dylan’s eyes focused again, he saw the logo on the side of the headset: Caine & Abel. That was odd, since they now knew that Caine was far from the person who trapped them there. He was merely the malfunctioning AI who gave them the skills to leave.

It was a shame they didn’t have more time to prepare. One second, they were still scheming, thrown on an adventure to distract… whoever needed to be distracted. The next, out in the void, screaming names of people who might not even remember him.

Jax felt like throwing up. It wouldn’t be black goop. He felt a little more like getting up and running far, far away. That, however, would require facing the building that he hadn’t seen in years, but that he’d apparently been in for all of this time. Slowly, nervously, with hands that weren’t behaving, he pulled out his phone.

October 19, 2025; 3:23 P.M.

Dylan’s last class of the day ended at 3:15. That gave him just enough time to run to the bathroom, take the stairs because the elevators got too crowded, and spot a random classroom that he could be nosy in. His classes went from October to December. No time had passed.

There was so much information in his head that it hurt, twisting and turning as he recalled that he’d tracked his time in the Circus as four years. He never pretended he aged, remaining twenty two from the day he got there to the day he left, but four years had passed while he remained stagnant. No time had passed. He might as well have just pulled on that headset and taken it off, throwing himself on the ground for fun. He was going to throw up. His mouth filled with saliva as his head split open.

As if he hadn’t already gone through the worst things life had to offer, as if being trapped in a digital hell for what he thought was four years wasn’t bad enough, he had work tonight.

“Sir?”

He jolted, hearing a real, human voice that wasn’t filtered through a headset for the first time in… five minutes. He never thought that anyone sounded different, not when the Circus seemed so real, but they did.

Shit, he must have looked insane, sprawled on the floor with crazy eyes and shaking hands.

Jax-- Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, for God’s fucking sake, pulled himself up like the ground burned, dusting his hands together and throwing on a massive grin. He felt too short. He was tall and lanky, had been told that his entire life, but not the way he was as a fucking purple rabbit. His mouth was a real mouth, not the stretch of teeth that he’d have drawn when he was eight. There was a chance he looked grotesquely exaggerated. He almost put his hands on his hips.

“Hello! Sorry! Bit of a detour and I got caught up. I’ll get out of your hair now, alright?” He sweet talked, experienced with such a thing both from within the Circus and outside of it.

Caught up was a terrible understatement. He felt like four fucking years had passed. Dylan didn’t let his smile drop until he was past the professor, walking through familiar halls like he’d been in them yesterday-- he had. They were dull and empty, the morning classes having ended and the night classes not yet beginning. He had less than two hours to get home, change, and run to work. Fuck his life.

That was life, though, wasn’t it? He used to crudely throw it in the other Circus members’ faces. There, they didn’t have responsibilities like work and money. They had Caine and his weird, usually miserable adventures, and then they had each other. Jax didn’t like each other. He didn’t before he went in, he was convinced to let that guard down, and then he recalled enough of his life to lock it all away again.

He thought of Ragatha’s animated doll face, eyes wide as they floated in the digital void as it all fell away. He wasn’t sure why she was the last one he saw. Was she with her horses now?

Everyone must have gotten out. He hoped they all did. Could he find them? It felt like he’d spent a lifetime with them. Hopefully Ribbit was already up, but if Caine was right, they wouldn’t remember anything. Jax didn’t want to think about that. Dylan, fuck, he corrected again. Ragatha seemed like the type to be bad at the internet, and she lived somewhere in hicksville America. Pomni… Why did she ask Caine that question? She didn't know anyone who abstracted. Jax hadn’t looked at her, too afraid to see big eyes staring at him.

Would she return to her corporate america job just like Dylan had to go serve tables of rich assholes and Ragatha would be berated by her mom? Was Kinger with his wife again? If there was anyone he could find, it’d be Gangle, as chronically online as she had to be. Zooble… hell, for all he knew, Zooble was a bartender at the restaurant across the street from him.

He shouldn’t care. He pretended he didn’t care. Life was easier that way-- the digital hell was easier that way. It all carried over. It’d been so real that the same rules applied.

Dylan-- not Jax, not a purple rabbit, but Dylan Garcia, alone in this world and roommate to two other dumb fucks, taking stupid community college classes because he couldn’t figure anything else out and he didn’t want to be a server for the rest of his life. He didn’t know anyone with a name as stupid as Gangle or Zooble and chess pieces didn't walk around. He had five fingers. Five.

He shoved his way through the doors, real sunlight hitting his skin. He had a jacket over his hoodie, both worn into the ground, but his face wasn’t immune to the real, hot sun rays. Weather didn’t exist in the Circus. He used to wonder if that was its digital limits, the thing to remind them all that they’d put that damned headset on.

It felt so good. It’d only been a few hours since he was outside, but in his mind, it had been years. He stood there like a moron, staring up at the sky and letting the warmth hit him. It made him hot in his jacket.

He wiggled his fingers, suddenly remembering that he was going to need to use his hands and feet properly to drive. He was low on gas. Four years of information in his mind, and he still remembered that he had to fork out his tip money for gas. He didn’t even know how much he had.

Where had he even parked?

Fuck, Jax thought to himself, cursing indefinitely. His name was Dylan. He’d just been trapped in a headset for what he thought was years and was really five minutes, and someone must have done that, whoever was behind the AI that they called Caine. Maybe it was Abel. Hah, he chuckled to himself, wishing he had time to laugh hysterically. It was fucked up either way. He made friends and lost friends and knew people’s secrets and held his own close to his chest. It was all gone.

It was all gone, left in a digital world that they’d somehow broken their way out of, and now he had to go to fucking work.

Miraculously, he didn’t crash. He didn’t crash on his way to work, either. He honked his horn at people who didn’t go within two seconds because he’d wanted to honk so many clown horns in the Circus as if he was back in Atlanta traffic. He didn’t even think he’d known he was from Atlanta, not really, not if anyone had asked; not that he would have told them.

His roommates hadn’t been in his apartment, thank god. He didn’t look at the shitty posters on the wall or his bucket of oatmeal still on the counter. He didn’t look around his room, didn’t open his laptop, didn’t do anything that would make him think about who he was.

He. Didn’t. Want. To.

Not tonight. He had a five to three shift that he wouldn’t be getting out of early. He’d have to smile at rich patrons and people who would pretend they could afford the restaurant only to tip five percent. He worked with his least favorite coworker, who almost reminded him of Caine with his erraticness.

He didn’t get gas, he didn’t check his mileage, and he sighed with relief at the lack of notifications on his phone.

Nothing else… happened.

After pulling off the headset and ending it all, life simply resumed. It never paused in the first place. Dylan had bills to worry about again and a tattoo appointment he didn’t even remember his idea for. He didn’t touch the video games he used to spend his nights with, and he never gave an explanation to his roommates for why he seemed to be ‘in a mood.’ The statement reminded him of Zooble. Jax would never miss Zooble. Nothing mattered in that world; it wasn’t real. It was what he’d told himself to get through it all those years, and it rang undoubtedly true as the world kept turning. There was no point in missing something that wasn’t even real.

Three days after escaping, he looked in the mirror. He hadn’t let himself yet. He remembered the first time he saw himself in the Circus, a purple rabbit in a world he thought he would still be leaving at the day’s end, and burst out laughing. It kind of made him want to leave then and there. He’d been told he was tall and lanky enough as it was, that he wore girly colors, that he’d probably turn out gay-- and if he had a little pink, purple, and blue sticker on the inside of a dresser drawer, that was his business, not all of the assholes who his roommates hung out around who said that bullshit.

His reflection was nothing like that, not anymore. His hair was an untamed curly mess when he pulled off the beanie that he only pulled off for work and sleep. He had a mole on his cheek and weirdly long eyelashes. It felt like looking at a stranger, or at a very old photo of a parent, if either of his meant enough to him for that. It was him, though. He’d never been able to conjure an image in his mind.

Dylan’s dresser drawers were filled with jeans he’d been wearing since high school and t-shirts he’d acquired over the years. He had two pairs of sneakers and a pair of boots that he wore to work and concerts. There was a slew of hair products on his dresser that an ex-girlfriend made him buy to try and get his hair together, in which he’d buzzed it instead, letting the products fester as his hair grew back after she was long gone.

He had a whole life, and mentally, he’d spent four years in the Circus. The two… weren't meshing well.

It made him irritable-- when he was already an irritable person-- and bitchy-- when people already ignored him if he didn’t walk in with a smile. He got less tips and his manager gave him a frown and for fuck’s sake how had Gangle not posted anything about a Digital Circus that he could find her through?

Life went on. He wasn’t a purple rabbit anymore.

He wondered, in the depths of the night, if any of it was ever real at all. Maybe there was no heinous crime committed in the form of keeping people trapped in a digital hell. Maybe, in those five minutes, his brain finally cracked from his busy schedule, conjuring up something to make him think there was more to life.

If that really was the case, he’d gone and fucked that up too. He’d spent the whole time deciding that none of it mattered.

He hoped he wasn’t crazy. He hoped it was real, even if he couldn’t say it aloud.

It was a little hard to bounce back after such an odd experience. Over a month had passed, and Dylan was still moody and irritable, still sleeping in too late to be able to do his homework at a reasonable time. That meant that tonight, he had to do his homework after work. At three in the morning.

He was slouched on the couch, because if he was in his bed he’d fall asleep. His laptop was on his raised legs and his notebook had fallen to the floor beside him. Currently, TikTok was his strategy to stay awake. He was moody enough that he didn’t care what he watched and tired enough that he’d accidentally ended up on the LIVE tab. He hoped it was boring enough to get him to look at his notes instead; realistically, it would just make him fall asleep on the couch.

There was some girl cooking onions. He already knew how to do that. Then, a guy with ridiculous face makeup on, playing some sort of game. Dylan hated TikTok; he wasn’t sure why he still had it on his phone. Some group of friends were exploring a ‘haunted mansion’ that was really just one of their sheds. He scrolled. More cooking, more weird makeup, a few really weird rituals that almost annoyed him back to his notes.

He landed on another video exploring some haunted building, the camerawork terrible and the only viewer being him. There was no talking. This person clearly had no idea what they were doing. He lifted his thumb to the screen to scroll again, even though it really should have been his final straw to refocus, when he was interrupted by a voice.

“Well, this place is still a dump. This is what I get for going back to the same places, I guess.”

It was absolutely unremarkable. Some girl talking to herself as she explored a building that she was clearly bored of. Nothing special.

He… knew that voice, though. It made all of the difference. He sat up in an instant, his fragile laptop nearly falling onto the floor as he held his phone screen with both hands and zeroed in on the shitty footage. He wanted her to say something else-- he needed her to say something else. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He could hear a jester-looking girl laughing at something stupid he said.

There was no way. There was simply no way. Those odds were too great, not when there was a whole world and a whole audience of insufferable TikTok users. He mentally begged her to speak again, refraining from using the name he so desperately wanted to.

“Oh! Hello! Sorry, bad timing, I guess. Eh, you’re probably gonna scroll off.”

His laptop slipped into the space between the couch and his legs. Dylan breathed out as if he’d been drowning since he pulled off that headset, rather than vice versa.

Nothing in the whole world could make him scroll away right now. He typed out a frantic hii like he was any of the stupid users on this stupid app. What if he’d imagined it? What if this was a total stranger?

“Oh, hi,” she repeated. Was it nearly four in the morning for her, too?

Jax-- Dylan, fuck, he hadn’t done that in a while-- hit the little plus button that followed her. He couldn’t lose her. Pomni… that was Pomni. It had to be. She sounded just as nervous. He laughed to himself, undoubtedly sounding insane to his roommate and the girl he had over if they could hear him.

She was right there. Her account displayed the name June. June. It was so simple, but it fit her, fit the smiling face in the profile picture. She had brown hair and messy looking bangs in real life, too. He smiled to himself like an idiot. It was a good thing she couldn’t see him.

“Um, I’m exploring this… mill. I’ve been here before, though. It’s nothing special.”

She fumbled with her phone to read his message. It was dark, but the light of her own screen illuminated her face. He could see her bangs and big brown eyes and a nose that was realer than anything he’d seen in that whole Circus.

Even after everything they'd been through, she was still exploring stupid haunted places and posting it online?

you’re kinda bad at livestreaming, he typed into the chat, reverting back into making fun of her. It was too fun. Fuck, he’d actually missed her, he realized. She wasn’t even there that long. Maybe three seconds out of his five minute stay.

She was the reason they got out.

She looked at the messages again, pulling the phone further from her face. Her hair was in a bun atop her head, strands going in ten different directions. She was in a turtleneck, as if she was somewhere colder than the southern east coast. Did she remember where she was from back when they were in the Circus? Did she remember the Circus? Did the Circus even happen-

“Okay, don’t be an asshole, now,” she frowned at the phone as if she forgot people could see her. “I usually just take videos and put them on youtube. That’s just… a lot of work. We all get lazy sometimes, okay?”

It was her. It was so, so, so her. Dylan wasn’t going to get any work done, not when he couldn’t stop smiling at his phone and Pomni’s eyes as she scrolled through whatever she had to scroll through.

He typed out another message: i never get lazy

His homework was another story, but she didn't have to know that, just like she didn’t have to know anything about him in the Circus. He kind of… didn’t want that, though. He wanted to know where she lived and if the reason she was lazy was because she was also reeling from the Circus. He wanted to talk to this woman, June, who was also stupid enough to put on a headset. She was cute. No, no, he didn’t think that, he told himself.

“I didn’t go live to be ridiculed by you,” she proclaimed in a way that was only a little bit serious. “And, I’m bored. I have work tomorrow. Thanks for the, like, three cents. Bye.”

The live ended, Jax suddenly unbelievably thankful that he’d clicked the stupid little plus button as she disappeared from view. He went to his following and looked at her page, at her barely smiling face in the profile photo, her name with a little star at the end.

There was only one video, which was probably the best case scenario. There was one on his account from three years ago and a second that was only about six months old, taken at work behind the bar after the patrons had all gone home. He didn’t know anything about being a purple rabbit back then. She wouldn’t look at his page and think anything of it; Pomni probably didn't care enough about the stranger following her to even look.

He watched the one video on her account. It was a video with a nice indie song of some sort behind it, little snippets of her life from… two weeks ago. There was no caption, no hashtags, just Pomni posting for a nonexistent audience. The first snippet was a city street with orange leaves on the trees, the second a pier, the third featuring her and a big old smile that he could almost recognize from the Circus. She was in a puffy jacket and holding a paper, biodegradable cup in her hand, cheeks pink from what must have been cold as she held the phone out for nothing in particular.

The rest of the clips carried the same ambience, with only two actually catching his attention. One was a fluffy white cat stretching in the sunlight and the second was Pomni with the fluffy white cat in her arms, kissing its head.

He shouldn’t be analyzing it so closely.

He clicked the little square button that took him to her Instagram anyway. This was Pomni. It was one of the six other people who were with him at the end of the Circus, and he could now admit to himself that she was one of the most fun ones to be around. She felt… real. Like they could be friends.

Her Instagram told him more about her than anyone’s ever should. He got the urge to make fun of her for it. Her full name was June Young and she lived in Portland, Oregon, which meant it was in fact much earlier for her than it was for him. He didn't know the difference, just that it had to be. It was probably colder, too. Way colder. Her birthday was on August nineteenth and her friends all gathered around her with a tasty looking cake. Her hands were over her face for the entire video, shoulders hunched with discomfort.

She had a tattoo below her elbow of dice-- she’d really rolled the dice on that headset, he snorted to himself-- and two sweet looking parents that she had multiple photos with. She was still super short. He wanted to laugh at her about it; she was still short and he was still tall. Some things never changed. Her cat appeared at least once every post, it seemed.

Eventually, when the clock hit five, Dylan stopped his stalking. He wasn’t a kid anymore.

It was just… hard. It was Pomni. She was real. There was a chance she didn’t remember anything, and all he technically had as confirmation was her voice, but he knew it had to be her. All of the pieces fit.

He could barely fall asleep, but when he did, it was to memories of a jester, a ragdoll, ribbons, shapes, chess pieces, conscious mouths, and just once, a two-legged frog.

When he woke up, Pomni’s account was still there, unchanged and untouched. Dylan did his homework before class half because he absolutely had to and half because his roommates wanted to convince him to text some girl he'd never met and he needed an excuse to get out of it. He went to class, barely paid attention, and then ran to work with a halfway full tank of gas.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Thirty minutes before he got off, he got a notification from TikTok for the first time in his life. Junebug19 has gone Live! His heartbeat sped up. If he could have run into the bathroom to watch and further confirm that this was another person from the Circus, he would have. Instead, he had to finish out his tables, sweep the floor, and then drive himself home.

By the time he was in his car, the last thing he wanted to do was waste more time driving home. He cracked a window and opened the godforsaken app, happy to find that Pomni was still streaming.

He remembered when she told him about this little hobby. She told all of them, really, on one of the less terrible adventures. It nearly reminded him of his job, to the point that he had content to laugh at Zooble over which no one even understood. He’d made fun of Pomni back then, and he would now, too.

Her voice came to life on the live.

“Maria said the walls are covered in poison ivy,” she said as if willing herself not to touch the walls. “But so far all I see is spray paint.”

He grinned to himself in his car, pulling the phone close to type a message into the chat: why don’t you touch them and find out? She didn’t look at it for a long moment, the camera instead flickering around as she muttered random things to herself and stepped over fallen pieces of debris. This definitely was not his thing, and she didn’t seem like the type of girl to be into it, but he could see it. Having gotten to know her, it made sense, even if her TikTok was one aesthetic video and her Instagram was messy, genuine photos of her and the people she cared about. And lots of photos of that cat. There were layers to Pomni, and he liked that.

Before he could backtrack on the internal thought that absolutely no one else was hearing, he heard her make a noise of attention.

“Oh, you’re back,” she said without much excitement or feeling at all. “Yeah, I’m good, no thanks.”

boooooooring, he responded, as if this was a show just for him.

What was he supposed to do here? Type into the chat ‘I’m Jax’ and watch her freak out in the middle of this abandoned… whatever? What if she didn’t even know what that meant? Pomni wasn’t there that long, either, so there was a chance it was merely a minor experience for her.

Pomni didn’t seem like the type to find anything insignificant. June didn’t seem like that type of person. He should probably be calling her that instead. He didn’t know how to do that.

He didn’t know how to confront her about their… shared experience. He didn’t know if it was shared at all, or if he was just crazy, harassing a poor stranger.

“Sure, whatever," she said, undoubtedly to his message. He could imagine her in the Circus rolling her eyes. “If you’re gonna keep joining these, I do have a youtube, which I like a lot more than this. I don’t really care about viewers, this is more for me, but, you know.”

He smiled at his phone, this stupid app is just how you find annoying people like me.

“Yeah, I’ve learned,” she said flatly.

By the end, he got her youtube, subscribing while the live remained in a little box in the corner of his phone. She was basically just talking to him, talking to herself when she saw something cool. She nearly touched the wall once. He laughed out loud and was thankful she couldn’t hear.

He’d been off for an hour when his coworker, Jessica, the last closer of the night, appeared in his window with a look of annoyance all over her face.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He jumped, nearly closing the app but refraining so that Pomni didn’t think he disappeared like that.

“Weirdo,” Jessica said, walking away before he could say anything in defense of himself.

He couldn’t really blame her. If he thought about it, with her skill behind the bar and her flat humor, she was a little like Zooble.

Dylan looked back at his phone, at the grass Pomni was now walking through to get home, camera pointed at her boots so that she could read his chats without displaying her whole face. She clearly didn’t trust him as a human, and he couldn’t really blame her.

night, bye, he typed, closing the app before he could hear her response. She’d probably scrutinize it and call him a stranger for the second time.

If only she knew.

If only he would man up and tell her.

Dylan finally drove himself home, his phone dying just before he could get through the door. He wanted to text Pomni. He wanted to talk to her. He needed to tell her who he was.

He collapsed in his bed, absolutely exhausted, hair reeking of bread and chowder. He never had to worry about that in the Circus. He wondered if the others ever noticed that-- if June, with her cats and her friends and her parents and her need to get out of the box she lived in, noticed the difference in smell in the real world versus the Circus. She had to. If she remembered at all.

Right before he shut his eyes, he remembered the youtube account he’d subscribed to, the various videos of various places in Oregon that she’d explored. All of them were from before the Circus. He skimmed through some of them, enjoying the lack of quality. It really was just something she did for herself, as she’d said back in that fake bar in the fake world. He almost felt guilty for intruding on it, but his insatiable need to know was alive and well.

The last video was shorter than the others; a livestream. There were only three of those out of twelve videos. He wasn’t sure why it wasn’t the first one he clicked on.

Pomni’s smiling face appeared before showing the building she was going into and what she’d heard about it. It didn’t look as rough as all of the others. Something felt wrong in Dylan’s chest watching her walk into that abandoned office building, knowing it was the last video she made before the Circus. He didn’t really want to know. He skimmed through the first twenty minutes, getting to a point where she walked into a seemingly unharmed office room.

A computer sat along the wall, a headset atop it. Jax wanted to stop watching. He could only imagine what he’d looked like. Pomni talked to herself as she picked it up, confused about the state of the room. She didn’t read the logo on the side of the headset.

She put it on. She inhaled sharply. The phone fell to the floor, the screen glitching out completely. When Jax checked the date, it showed October nineteenth.

His name was Dylan. Bile came up his throat. He barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up, a roommate two feet away in the kitchen. He wasn’t going to give an explanation.

It really, really was her. There was no doubt to be had now. June Young from Portland was Pomni, and her stupid knack for exploring haunted places was what got her into the Circus, several years into the rest of their time there, for some godforsaken reason.

He sent her a text in TikTok DMs. A simple ‘so, how do you find these places?’ as if he had any interest in it. He could have simply called her Pomni. There was a chance she’d find him to be a creep.

He couldn’t get himself to say it, but he wanted to talk to her anyway. When he slept, he dreamed of a ragdoll and a frog beside him as he proclaimed them to be his friends.

Pomni-June answered as he was rushing to class, having given himself thirty minutes to change, drive, park, and then run into his classroom. Considering this, and his knack of ignoring anything TikTok, he didn’t see the notification until he was walking the halls after his second class. If he was still a purple rabbit, his ears would have straightened and he’d have bounced to stand straight up like a rubber band suddenly pulled tight.

June: You seem reallllyyyy interested. Kinda creepy

Five minutes later, she added, The internet ofc.

If he was her, he would also find him a little creepy. He could fix that pretty quickly by revealing how he knew her. He almost typed it out, but his heart was in his throat, and he couldn’t help but recall that the headset was merely a hallway away from him.

Dylan: a guy can’t even be fascinated anymore

He put his phone away for the sake of paying attention in class. When Jessica saw him typing on his phone at work, she rolled her eyes. Dylan flipped her off.

The conversation wasn’t particularly productive. It consisted mostly of him finding ways to twist her words and make fun of her, all whilst putting in considerate effort not to sound like a creep or be so rude she stopped answering altogether.

Within two days, they miraculously moved it over to actual messages, which meant he didn’t have to rely on TikTok anymore. He’d never been so relieved in his life. Pomni-June was the one to give him her number, which made him feel a lot less like a creep.

He was getting groceries when he spotted a Raggedy Ann doll on the shelf. It probably shouldn’t have captivated him so much, but he was pulled in, absent staring at the string hair and big smile. He missed Ragatha. He missed making fun of her. He missed having someone drill unwanted positivity into every scenario, because at least it made someone feel better.

In the end, he took a photo of the doll and made it his third TikTok post. It was simply the photo with the generic song the app gave it and the text ‘i knew a girl like this’ over it. He wondered if it’d make Pomni-June realize who he was.

Of course not, but he could hope. Dylan was nothing if not deflective. Then again, the same applied to Jax, and Pomni-June would know that.

He was having a hard time calling her June. It was too weird. Pomni-June sufficed well enough.

She was being nice by texting him. He mentioned that he lived in Atlanta and exaggerated the heat he dealt with on a daily basis. The conversation was no longer all about abandoned buildings that he really didn’t care that much about at all. Pomni-June was hesitant to offer up too much information, mentioning more than once that he could be an old man, but Dylan didn't mind.

The longer he waited to tell her, the worse it would get. He didn’t say anything. He leaned against the counter at work to text her back and tell her he couldn’t join her livestream, to which she said she was finally going to try to make a youtube video again. She said again that she’d been too lazy the last few months; he had to assume that meant since the Circus. Jessica kicked him in the shin to tell him to hurry up and serve his tables.

Talking to Pomni-June made him feel less miserable. It got his tips up again as he gave an overexaggerated smile to customers who had no idea he’d perfected it as a purple rabbit. One of his coworkers, Devon, gave him a high five.

It was stupid that finding Pomni made him feel so much more human than he had since pulling off the headset, but he couldn’t change it.

On the fourth day, off from work and sprawled across his bed with Southpark playing on his laptop, June sent Dylan an unprompted photo of her cat. He followed her on Instagram now, so he didn’t pretend like this was new information. She wasn't shy about it. He was surprised she’d never mentioned it in the Circus like how Ragatha mentioned her horses. Jax was thankful he didn’t have a pet to worry about while he was in there; he’d have been so mad if he woke up after worrying for years only to find out no time had passed and no one was abandoned.

Pomni-June named her cat Scuba, and he was never going to let it go. Scuba was a cat she rescued from behind a Walmart dumpster and who scratched up her brand new dice tattoo. He ruined the curtains her mom gifted her and cost her an extra seventy dollars a month in food. For some reason, June loved him more than anything. It made Dylan smile.

He wanted to know if she remembered her cat from inside of the Circus. He wanted to know if she remembered the Circus at all. Unfortunately, he was growing guilty, feeling as if he was leading her on without telling her the whole story. It wasn’t like he wasn’t enjoying talking to her, but it wasn’t fair to only give her part of the story. Everytime he tried his throat clogged up and he felt like he was crazy, had made it all up. There were still no posts from Gangle on Tumblr anywhere.

It was all in his head all of the time, but it was like there was a wall keeping him from saying anything. He felt worse with every day that went by. It wasn’t like they talked that much, but it wasn’t fair. He wanted to tell her.

In the end, it was a photo of her and her evil cat with its stupid name that tore the wall down. She was still in formal work clothes, leaning on a red couch that had to have been covered in cat hair. He didn’t know why she sent it to him. Her smile was small but real and the cat was perched on her head, messing up her hair.

Jax-- Dylan, or Jax, too, maybe he could be both, just this once, finally typed out the text. There was no easy way to say it. His heart reacted to her adorable cat-human photo and typed before the bile in his throat could stop him. He couldn’t deflect forever, not even if she’d expect it from him.

Dylan: by the way i probably need to get this out, i found your tiktok because i recognized your voice. you’re pomni, right?

He knew she was, knew it without a shadow of a doubt, but he had to ask the question. He pressed send and launched his phone across the bed, hands going over his face. He dragged his beanie down until he was breathing into it, balling it into his hands in his lap as he leaned forward and resisted the urge to scream.

He couldn’t resist for long. He grabbed his phone, seeing no notifications on the screen. Pomni could have been distracted with Scuba. It suddenly felt wrong that Jax-Dylan knew her real name when she didn’t know his, knew where she was from and what her youtube account was.

At the very least, it shouldn’t be hard for her to figure out who he was. He had to hope that she didn’t mix him up with Kinger. That felt like a worst-case-scenario situation.

That wasn’t true; she could laugh in his face or she could be angry he’d waited this long. He’d made Pomni mad before. Hell, he’d been a real asshole to Pomni, one that she should never have been nice to again. He never even properly apologized, not the way she deserved.

Hesitantly, heart beating in his chest, he opened messages. The message had a tiny seen beneath it, listed for the very time he sent it at. It had been two minutes.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was stupidly terrifying. He never thought he was getting out, so he never really considered this a possibility, never planned how he’d tell someone he knew them from the digital hell they were trapped in. Pomni and Scuba stared at him from above his message, and he noticed that their eye color was about the same; brown. June’s eyes looked darker in other photos, but not the one she’d just sent him.

He fell backward on his bed like a kid, hands still balled in his beanie. He wondered why she’d been texting him so much when they really didn’t know each other. He lived across the country from her. Pomni never seemed like the type to do that, never seemed like she’d send a near stranger a photo of her and the cat she never yearned for aloud.

Time felt like it was stretching on forever. Hell, it could have been four years, at this rate. When he checked his phone again, terrified, there was still no reply. The tiny seen was four minutes old. There was a chance she’d just block him.

He felt a little like a purple rabbit, filled with misery and fear and fucked up experiences, smiling wide with those stupid digital eyes.

Fuck.

His phone buzzed. Dylan was afraid to look. He reminded himself that he was real and a human and had five fingers; he had to do that sometimes, but it had been a week or so. He didn’t want to be the stupid purple rabbit again.

Instead of the buzz remaining isolated, another one came through, and then another. He realized it wasn’t just a text.

God, she was crazy. She was crazy in the Circus too. No one else realized it, but he did. A digital gun thrown at his stupid digital head was enough to prove that-- even if he deserved it ten times over. He picked up his phone, and sure enough, the name pomni-june was displayed over the black call screen. Would she hate that he’d made that her contact name? It was a little stupid.

He had to answer. He’d kept her waiting for this long. The call would end if he didn’t press the little green button.

If he didn’t answer, she might never call again.

He pressed that green button like his life depended on it, phone encased in both hands like it’d been the night he found her.

There was a slight wind coming through the mic, proving that she was there, but she didn’t speak. He couldn’t blame her. His mouth felt like it had dried up of all the moisture in the world, his tongue as heavy as lead. If he spoke, she’d know. He wanted her to know. It was still terrifying.

Jax was never supposed to get out. That stopped being a possibility when he accepted his actual circumstances, and that was a long, long time ago. Then again, it all happened in a five minute span in the real world. It couldn’t possibly be a long time ago.

It felt like it. Pomni was the only person in his life who’d understand that, and there was a hefty chance she wouldn’t be in his life much longer.

The silence continued, and Jax had to rationalize with himself that even though Pomni was crazier than anyone realized, he was, too. Ragatha knew. Kinger would’ve, if he remembered anything. Thank fuck that Zooble didn’t. He could see the animated faces in his mind, the personalities they brought into the Circus and how he’d interpreted them for his own sanity; he made them less than human, treated them like the NPCs they met on Caine’s adventures. Pomni was… different. It was hard to do that with her. He thought it was simply because she was new, but then, she fucking got them out. It wasn’t all her, but it wouldn’t have happened any other way.

“I’m really gonna need you to actually say something,” she snapped, her voice realer and crisper than any of the videos Dylan found.

His heart was going to burst out of his chest. She had to know who he was. He imagined her, the jester, in front of him. He was the purple rabbit. He was the funny one, he’d always been the funny one, before and inside of the Circus. He hadn’t been very funny lately.

“What, and ruin all the fun?” He managed, trying to channel that purple rabbit and failing miserably. Keeping the tremble out of his voice made it sound frail.

He almost expected more silence. Instead, he heard the muffled murmur of something alongside rustling. As if she was physically processing this revelation; he would be, too. His beanie was going to be wrinkled from how he was squeezing it, so they weren’t that different. She didn’t need to know that.

“Oh my god, Jax,” she said, breathy and still muffled, but audible this time. “I couldn’t find anyone. I thought it could all have been fake. Oh my god. I see it. Jax.”

A laugh bubbled out of him, cool air crashing back into reality. He could imagine her with her hands over her face like in that birthday video on her Instagram. He knew this feeling, had felt it when he stumbled upon her stupid TikTok live. It was like fresh air.

“You have a weird knack for texting strangers, you know that?” He wondered if she’d still recognize a smile in his voice.

“Oh, don’t start,” she scoffed, “I’ve never done this in my life. Something just… told me to. I should’ve known. I can see it all now.”

She didn’t sound mad at all. Was the shock too much to consider how he was rude by not telling her? He turned her words over, the idea of something in her head telling her to keep texting him even when she usually wouldn’t. It was as if she still knew it was him, somewhere deep down.

He laughed, setting his phone on the bed in front of him and letting his hands go over his mouth. There was a decent chance she was imagining a purple rabbit as they spoke. He didn’t like that, but he also couldn’t do anything about it, not now.

“It’s good to know you listened for once in your life.”

“God, you’re still such a jackass,” she said, the curse not blocked by Caine and his weird ways. “It was all real? Really, seriously, real?”

It was so much easier to simply joke and tease her, but by textbook definition they’d both gone through something traumatizing. They had serious things to get out of the way. Dylan… didn’t really want to do that.

He considered not giving her a straight answer. He really, truly, almost made a joke out of the question.

She deserved better than that.

“It must have been, since here we are. Remembering each other, and all that other crap.”

There was a beat of silence in which he thought he might have lost her. He told the truth, exposed the fact that he’d also been scared out of his mind, but he still couldn’t talk like a normal person. That had applied since before the Circus, and he couldn’t change it now. The Circus had only made it worse, if he really thought about it. It was why his tips still sucked-- even if Pomni-June had raised his mood enough for them to get a little better.

“Did you try to find everyone too?” She said quietly, and he could imagine her big jester eyes looking up at him, mouth nearly invisible in her solemn state.

He wondered how June was looking at her phone, if she’d set it down to cover her face like he could imagine. Was Scuba with her?

Again, he considered lying. Why would he try to find the cartoon characters he had the misfortune of living with in their fake world? The cruel words died as soon as they entered his head, because here he was, talking to the real Pomni with her real name and real phone. She’d never believed his whole schtick in the first place. He kind of hated her for it. Anyway, it made a lie useless.

“I made a fucking Tumblr account to find Gangle, what do you think?”

She barked out a laugh, one that he hadn’t heard in her livestreams or youtube videos. He remembered it from the Circus. It was almost like he had stupid yellow gloves and moronic purple ears, saying something funny enough to get her to laugh like that. He wanted to do it again.

“I didn’t even think of that,” she laughed again, quieter this time. “So, you just accidentally found me? That doesn’t feel realistic.”

“I was a purple bunny. I’m past needing things to be realistic. But, yeah, I was on that stupid app-- which I hate, by the way-- and heard your voice. Distracted me from my homework real badly.”

He shouldn’t have said that.

“Homework?” He could hear her smiling. “You’re in school?”

That wasn’t why he’d been embarrassed, but it was a whole new reason. He scowled, almost wishing that she could see it. Actually, whenever she knew anything annoyed him, she only did it more. She was annoying like that.

He groaned, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“No, I’m serious, I never thought about that! You never mentioned that.”

“Well, I was trying not to freak you out. I was a total stranger. Just ‘cus I wanted to… uh… talk to you… about all of this, I didn't want to make you think I was some creep.”

He wanted to scream. This didn’t feel real. It was the realest thing he’d felt since pulling that headset off.

“I did consider that possibility. Like I said, I don’t usually text strangers. But, I dunno… maybe it’s because you’re, well, you. I could just tell, even if I didn’t think of it.”

“What, you didn’t think ‘oh this jackass really reminds me of that stupid rabbit?’”

She laughed again, not loudly, but a small chuckle.

“I figured there was a decent chance that, if any of you really existed, you were on the other side of the world.”

“Eh, I don’t think so. We all had American accents.”

“But, you know how in some shows, all the characters from different places are given the same accent and language? There’s no telling what was messed with, you know? I didn’t even know if it was real.”

He wanted to sympathize.

“Well, Ragatha is definitely midwestern, if no one else.”

She laughed loudly again, as if she hadn’t even considered the idea. Dylan didn’t want to hang up. She hadn’t reacted to his real name or location or anything of the sort, but he supposed it was a lot to process. He wondered what she’d latch onto once she was past the overall shock of the Circus being real.

Some part of him feared that, after this call, she’d be satisfied. She’d never want to talk to him again. For that reason, he didn't want to let it go. It was a good thing that he didn’t work and it was only eight.

He didn’t stop talking. Luckily for him, neither did she.

June Young was as much Pomni as Pomni was June Young, even if she hadn’t remembered her name. She was the exact same, and she commented that he was, too. She mentioned how he looked, which meant she’d looked at his page the way he looked at hers.

He found out that she did not in fact remember her cat in the Circus. They spent about ten minutes theorizing that it was because Scuba seemed to be so intertwined with her identity-- he made sure to make fun of her for that.

She asked the story of how he woke up, quiet and hesitant as if it would carry some great truth. Apparently, his story was incredibly anticlimactic compared to her experience; he was thankful. When her phone fell in that Youtube livestream-- which he told her she should probably delete and she’d apparently completely forgotten about-- it shattered, hence why the stream cut off the way it did.

This meant that when she woke up with several months worth of information in her head, she couldn’t check the date, the time, or how much time had passed. She had to run from that building on her own, panicking about whether Scuba starved in her apartment and if she had a life to return to, assuming that months had passed. Her voice was flat and quiet as she described it, and Dylan made sure not to make any jokes that’d serve to upset her. He was suddenly incredibly thankful for how quickly he’d been able to confirm his surroundings.

After telling such a grueling story, she asked what he was studying at school. He groaned. He didn’t want to talk about it, he said, but Pomni had never been good at leaving him alone. She kept pushing until he revealed his useless Associate of Science that had taken him three years to get to the end of.

She was bored and dissatisfied with an accounting job, and he was bored and dissatisfied with being a server. Unfortunately, he had no idea what else to do, so school had taken forever. It would only open a few low-paying doorways once he finally finished. The Circus felt like it delayed it all even more with five long minutes.

Dylan learned that June didn’t like exploring abandoned places anymore, too afraid that she’d end up somewhere like the Circus again. She needed something, though, she said. Some sort of outlet for her life. Something to do for herself, even if it was extenuating her newly worsened insomnia and made her anxious as all hell.

She didn’t say that. He could infer it, though. He tried to make her feel better about it by explaining that he’d just been a massive jackass since coming back, to which she asked if that was unusual.

It was weird, and they were technically strangers, but Dylan hadn’t been so happy since he took that headset off. It was odd for someone so intertwined with the horrible experience he’d had to make him feel so much better, but she did nonetheless. She was just like that. She called him Jax a few times, always giving him an opportunity for a joke.

They theorized about the company Caine & Abel. They’d both found absolutely no leads in their independent research. She explained what she was cooking for dinner-- and Scuba’s elaborate food process-- and she inquired about his roommates after one popped in to ask if he wanted Taco Bell.

He learned things about her. She was from the suburbs outside Portland and moved there for her work. She had a car that she kept at her parents’ house several hours away. She had friends, all scattered around from various parts of her life. She did not have a boyfriend, which didn’t matter at all. She posted that stupid aesthetic TikTok because she needed some way to enjoy her life again; it didn’t work. He tried his best to teasingly comfort her by saying that it was how he saw Scuba for the first time.

He didn’t want to hang up. It was a good thing he’d already done his homework today, his phone on the charger beside him from where he laid in bed. Empty Taco Bell wrappers were on his dresser, ready to be taken to the trash.

Naturally, he didn’t reveal as much about his life as she did hers. He didn’t mind describing school, he talked about work a lot, but he wasn’t jumping to tell her all of the stories of the past. She didn’t inquire, accustomed to this knack of his, even if the past being referenced was different than the one in the Circus. He didn’t even know how to unpack those layers within his brain; neither did she.

It wasn’t merely nice because it was someone else who’d gone through what he did. Sure, that was really fucking comforting, and it made him feel sane for the first time in too long. Yet, it was also just… Pomni. June. Whatever he was calling her. She was just like that.

“You sound tired,” she said before the call could hit five hours.

“I work until three in the morning five days a week. This is nothing.”

She huffed the way she always did at his antics, “Okay, but you’re not working now. You should go to sleep.”

His eyes were closed against his pillow, but he didn’t want to stop talking to her. There was a chance they’d never talk again, that this had fulfilled the invisible quota he’d made up in his head. He didn’t remember the last time he talked to someone for five hours straight.

“Well, I missed Jeopardy for this. I need to catch up. We can talk tomorrow, or whenever you’re free.”

He blinked his eyes open.

A delayed sense of relief filled him as he processed the nervousness in her voice. Did she think this would be the only call, too? He smiled.

“Okay, go watch your Jeopardy, Pom Pom.”

She was quiet for a long moment before huffing out a laugh.

“Thanks. Night… Dylan.”

The call ended at four hours and fifty eight minutes. Despite being halfway to falling asleep, it didn’t come easy. Maybe her insomnia rubbed off on him after talking for so long.

They did call the next day. It turned out that there was a perfect gap of time while she was getting her morning coffee and he was between classes, the timezones working out perfectly. She complained about Scuba trying to run out the door and he made her laugh by describing how he almost got stuck in the elevator that his laziness made him take.

Then she had to go to work and he had to go to class. By the time she was off, he was rushing plates to tables. He still glimpsed a notification of a photo of Scuba.

He decided not to tell her the way Jessica said, “Careful everyone, Dylan’s in a good mood, the sky must be turning red.”

She didn’t need to know she was influencing his mood like that.

They made a routine. They called on the days he had class while he walked in the hall and she got her coffee. He learned her coffee order and she learned what class he had in the morning. They texted throughout the day, but that was their guaranteed call. She didn’t need to know how important it was to him. It reminded him of their walks in the hall back in the Circus, although those could never be scheduled with how erratic everything was in there. That would’ve shown that he cared too much.

It turned out that she was still trying to find the others, even more now that she knew it was real and he was confident they were all simply american. None of them had made posts, but then again, neither did they. They laughed themselves to tears as June posted the same raggedy ann doll photo he’d posted, hoping that somehow one of them would find it and see the signs.

Over the weeks, turning into months, they became more than simply two people who survived the same traumatic digital hell. He’d barely say it to her face, but they were friends. June was easily his favorite person to talk to. His roommates made fun of him, trying to dig for information, but he wanted this to himself. It was too special.

By the time June brought up the elephant in the room, Dylan had already thought of it a thousand times. He simply didn’t know how to say it.

He learned, as with most things, that he wasn’t alone.

“I can fly you out here, you know,” she said one morning when she didn’t have work and he didn’t have class.

He was leaning against the counter in his kitchen, waiting for water to boil, when she said it like she was still telling him about the weather. She probably wouldn’t have to go into the office the following day, not when her apartment was surrounded by more snow than he’d seen in his entire life.

She continued, giving away her nervousness, “We could put our heads together for a weekend and try to find everyone. If you wanted. Just a suggestion.”

He was glad no one was around to see the smile on his face.

“Hm. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Screw you,” she fired off immediately, seeing through his joke. “I can afford it, though. And you can stay on my couch since it’s just me here.”

He was still smiling. The water was beginning to bubble.

“Uh, yeah, I’d… that’d be nice. I can foot the ticket, though.”

“No, it’s no problem-”

“Pom Pom, I got it. That’s very nice of you, or whatever. My tips have been good lately. I’ll be fine.”

She was quiet in the way she tended to be when she smiled, not when she was upset about something.

“Okay, when?”

Within a few days, they had a date, and he had a round trip ticket. It’d be two short days, in which he could leave early in the morning after working until three, and then go back the morning before his next shift. He’d said to her at least three times that he couldn’t wait to see how short she really was.

He was stupidly, embarrassingly excited. Almost as much as he was nervous.

He’d only ever seen June in the Circus, and that was a different animal altogether. He remembered how they’d run around with guns, laughing and working together. It was fun to taunt her anytime, but that was one of the best days he’d had there in a long time, no matter how it ended. Real life wouldn’t be like that, but talking to her on the phone made him feel the same way already.

It was weirder than anything he’d ever been nervous for. It wasn't like she’d never seen him in person, not technically. However, she’d only seen him as an exaggeratedly tall purple rabbit. He’d only seen her as a jester. This would be the real deal, a weekend at each other's sides, being humans in a way he was so unaccustomed to.

He boarded the plan with a million nerves and a smile he could barely tamp down. He was pretty sure his leg bounced for the whole five hours, nevermind the fact he’d only been on a plane twice in his life.

It was a little surreal-- a lot surreal, actually. There was no easy way to explain it to the people in his life who’d been there before the Circus, meaning that every reaction served to annoy him. He wondered if June-Pomni, who apparently never did anything like this, was getting similar reactions. Maybe he’d find out when he went there.

He wondered, as he failed to doze off on the plane like he really needed to for his sleep schedule, if this was all a false reality he’d conjured up. If the Circus wasn’t real, the friends he lost weren't real, and the friends he thought were scattered around the country weren’t real. June could be a stranger, or she could be fake altogether. There was no telling what five minutes of a headset could have done to him.

She had a cat, though. A cat and a job and the same coffee order every single day. She’d told him about things he’d never heard of in his life, and he’d done the same. He’d made a photo of her and Scuba her contact photo; Scuba had on a pair of almost purple bunny ears she’d found in the pet store, and her smile betrayed exactly how proud she was of the discovery.

He looked at the photo, just to remind himself she was real. He’d have to make sure she didn’t see his camera roll, not when he’d saved every Scuba and every June photo she’d sent.

If he knew anything about her, which he now knew he did, he was willing to bet that she was nervous too. The plane landed, and his text was received with a photo of the terminal he would find her at. They’d ride the train to her apartment, making a stop at her favorite coffee shop because it was still early in the morning in Portland.

He held his hands together as he made his way out of the airport, unable to imagine anyone except for the little jester he knew in the Circus. She was always nice to everyone, even him, even when he didn’t deserve it. She was just that kind of person. Ragatha was right.

He spotted her before she saw him.

She was standing on the side of the train platform facing the airport, looking at her phone. His hoodie-jacket combination did little to protect him from the Oregon air, and he suddenly wished he’d taken her advice of getting a scarf; at the very least, he knew it made him look cool. She had a raincoat over what must have been a turtleneck, brown hair falling over her face as she tapped at her phone. She was so short. He bit his cheek to keep from smiling. He’d tried his damn best to use all those fancy hair products to tame it, even beneath his beanie.

She was nothing like she was in the Circus, yet also everything like it. That was Pomni, and June, and his current favorite person.

“Well look who it is,” he said once he was halfway across the street, his smile practically splitting his face in two.

She startled, looking up with wide eyes and pursed lips; the same expression she made in the Circus. Within two seconds it changed, eyes widening even more and a smile crossing her own face. He felt like he was on the front of a stage being observed, but it wasn’t that bad when it was her.

Her mouth opened to form words, but none came out. Their height difference was different than in the Circus, him shorter and her taller, but it was still extreme. He chuckled.

“You’re short.”

She pursed her lips, looking up at him. Fuck, she really was cute. He wanted to hit himself in the head.

“And you’re stupidly tall.”

He laughed mockingly in a way that he now knew didn't bug her.

It was awkward for a brief second, a period of time where neither of them knew what to say. He stared at her, smiling like an idiot, trying to take in the fact that she was right in front of him. She stared back; he yearned to know what was going through her mind. Anyone who saw them probably thought they looked ridiculous. He didn’t care.

“Okay, I’m hugging you now,” she said flatly in her June type of way.

This happened in the Circus. Never with so much communication and understanding, but it happened. She wrapped her arms around him as his eyes tripled in size, something in his chest doing flip flops in a way it hadn’t in a long time.

After about three seconds of delay, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed her just as tight as she was squeezing him. He bent his neck to shove his face in her shoulder, breathing in the smell of perfume and cleanliness.

“You smell good,” he said, apparently having lost all of his filter and common sense.

She laughed into his chest, the sound vibrating through the flip floppiness he already felt.

“Thanks for coming.”

Again, his eyes widened like an idiot. At least he wasn’t a purple bunny with big eyes that gave away everything about him— he just had brown eyes and a not-jester girl that he liked way too much for his own good.

“Don’t be stupid.”

He felt her smile.

That was all he really needed, right now. Later, he’d try her favorite coffee. He’d make her try his sweeter coffee and watch her wrinkle her nose. They’d spend the weekend trying to find their friends, and they’d post their own hints so their friends could find them, if they were looking. It was terrifying, but it didn’t seem so bad, not when he was hugging June.

That was good enough for Dylan.