Pomni walked up to the stage. A box had been set up with a tablecloth and a portrait of Jax between two vases containing flowers. She turned to face the remaining four Performers, plus Caine. She sighed and swallowed hard before beginning to speak. "Thank you all for coming. I know that Jax wasn't the easiest guy to get along with..." she gestured to Zooble, "and I know that a few of us even would say that we hated him. But, I got to know him pretty well near the... near the end...
"I saw private times of his life here and outside the Circus that I know he wouldn't want me to talk about openly, so I'll just say that he had a hard life. He really regretted driving a wedge between him and Ribbit, and then between him and Kaufmo. Believe it or not, Ragatha, he actually regretted driving you away too. He couldn't help it. In his past life, he had a hard time trusting anyone.
If you can hear me right now, Jax, I hope you don't hold this against me, but I have to say it: he loved Ribbit. But the life he came from taught him that love is an exploitable weakness, and he didn't want to be exploited again. To be honest... I was kind of starting to fall in love with him, myself. I knew there was good in him, but I also knew that he would never allow anyone to see it. That's why he was such an asshole most of the time. If he made himself out to be the quick-witted comic relief character, he could hide every emotion he was feeling behind an insincere smile and a joke.
Caine, you showed us that Jax's real-world self was capable of finally dropping the pretenses and learning how to love, and I wish..."
Pomni had been fighting back tears so far, but was no longer able to contain them and spoke in a tearful crescendo,
"I wish that he could have done it here too. I cared for him! I told him I cared for him! I've only loved anyone like that once before in my entire life! And if he didn't want me as his girlfriend, I could have been his platonic friend and I would have felt just as satisfied.
Even though he didn't consider me a close friend, I'll still miss him. I'll miss him everyday. I'll miss his sarcastic jokes, his pretending to break the fourth wall, and his carefree attitude toward whatever life threw at us here. I'm sorry that he'll miss the new era. It's probably a stupid thing to hope for, but I hope that I can talk to him again, even if he can't answer back."
She stifled a sob and made one final comment before stepping down, "I love you, Jax." Once she was off the stage, she ran back to the living quarters, unsuccessfully trying not to cry en route.
Ragatha began to walk after Pomni. "I better make sure she's okay."
Caine looked on in astonishment. "You guys all really do care for each other, don't you?" he muttered. "You've done this for everyone who's Abstracted?"
"It's been a little less tearful most of the time," Kinger replied, "But, yeah. I don't remember Queenie's funeral very well, I was pretty out of it for the most part."
"Why?"
He sighed, "She was my wife. Not just here in the Circus, but in real life, too. I miss her, but I'm grateful that we're still together outside the Circus. We have two beautiful daughters together, we're happy."
"You never wondered what we were doing?" Zooble asked Caine with an edge to their voice. "Why we were all so out of it during the next day's adventure?"
"Well... no," Caine admitted, "I was too busy planning adventures. You know, making assets, programming NPC AI, that kind of thing."
"I miss Kaufmo," Gangle whimpered.
"Me, too," Zooble hugged her.
"Why?" Caine asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Zooble shot back, "Kaufmo was our friend!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound unfeeling. It's just, I don't know anything about grief. I've never really experienced it before."
"Well, having this big show about sending Abstracted people to the cellar sure hasn't helped much!"
"I think what Zooble's trying to say," Kinger offered, "is that it's hard for us to wake up one day and find one of our friends has turned into a big glitchy monster. We say good night to each other never knowing if, the next day, that person won't be there anymore."
"You form attachments to each other?" Caine sounded genuinely surprised, "Even in these forms? I, uh... I never expected that."
As Ragatha approached Pomni's room, she could hear wailing sobs through the slightly-open door. She gently pushed the door open a bit further and knocked on the doorframe. "Pomni, are you going to be okay?" She saw Pomni on her hands and knees on the floor, as though she had simply collapsed there without thinking about it.
Rather than answering, Pomni screamed, "Why did I fall in love with him?! Why did I have to love him?!"
Ragatha knelt on the floor next to her and softly put her hand on her back. Pomni suddenly shifted position and leapt into a hug instead, continuing to cry great streams. Partly out of concern for her friend, partly out of grief over Jax, Ragatha began crying as well.
After a minute or so, Pomni said, "I saw you there, too."
"Where?"
"In Jax's memories. You offered to help him... deal with Ribbit's Abstraction."
"Yeah," she sighed.
"I felt something... or he felt something," she admitted, "When you said that, I felt love for you, or he felt it, ugh! I'm getting so mixed up!"
"You could feel Jax's feelings as well as see his memories?"
"I felt love, and then a second later I felt terror." Pomni separated to look Ragatha in the eyes. "He was terrified that you'd find out that he loved you."
Ragatha was rendered speechless by this revelation. She always thought that Jax hated her, a feeling corroborated by his continuous bullying toward her.
"He was also guilty," Pomni added. "He loved Ribbit, too... but when Ribbit Abstracted, he started loving you instead."
"That explains a lot," she breathed. "He wasn't as good at hiding his emotions as you think... at least, not from me. I got pretty good at reading him, mostly because of those big eyes of his.
"I feel like there's something else I should mention," Ragatha added, new tears welling up in her eyes.
"What?"
"Ribbit didn't Abstract."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean..." she gasped suddenly and brought her hand to her mouth as though reliving a terrible memory.
"Ragatha?"
"Ribbit... died."
Pomni looked confused. Heretofore, she had accepted "Abstract" as a synonym for "die".
"The way she Abstracted... how she... made it happen..."
Pomni suddenly felt a pit in her stomach at what Ragatha was describing.
Ragatha was trying to avoid crying until she could get her entire sentence out, "As Caine was about to put her into the cellar... her body f... fell apart. She just fell... into pieces onto the floor and... vanished."
Pomni spoke softly, "How did she... die?"
Ragatha began to cry, "I don't know. All I know is that she locked her door and cried all night. She sounded a lot like you did when I came in just now."
"Oh, god, that's what it meant..." Pomni looked distant, "Jax thought a sentence as he was talking to you that day-- 'she died alone'."
She looked Ragatha in the eyes again, "That's how Ribbit killed herself in the Circus. We can't be hurt by anything except our emotions, so she let her feelings for Jax consume her until she Abstracted! Since her door was locked-- oh, god..." now Pomni was the one to gasp.
Ragatha finished her sentence, "Ribbit wanted to stay isolated... so me and Kaufmo couldn't..." she made an anguished squeal and fell to her side against Pomni's bed, beginning to sob herself. "Oh, Ribbit... I'm so sorry!"
Pomni hugged her as she continued repeating, "I'm so sorry."
Pomni realised what Jax meant when he said that she was "making it so much harder". He had been trying to commit suicide as well, but Pomni being there prevented it and he simply Abstracted like Kaufmo and the rest had. For him, the idea of an afterlife as a glitch monster in the cellar was probably more hellish than his existence as a Circus performer, especially as it would not contain Ribbit. All she could do was hope that she got through to him that, if no one else cared about him, she did. If no one else would memorialise him, she would. If no one else visited him in containment, she would. And, if no one else loved him, she did.
After a while, she spoke aloud, "That's how we prevent each other Abstracting. We care for each other. If we need each other, we come together... like you and me."
Ragatha looked at Pomni through tears for a moment then hugged her tighter. "Oh, Pomni, I love you so much."
"I love you, too, Ragatha."