Chapter Text
When the real world made itself clear to Pomni again, it almost seemed like a dream.
It was weird. Pomni had only dreamed about the world she was originally born into when she resided in the circus. She would have never guessed she would be able to clearly use all five senses in it again.
The first thing Pomni noticed was the smell; the stale odor radiating from the old carpet beneath her lying body.
For a few seconds, all she could do is simply lie there, allowing her body and mind to take in her surroundings without opening her eyes. She’s almost afraid she’ll go into shock if she stands up and opens her eyes too quickly. That, and she’s also completely and utterly exhausted.
She finally gains the courage to open her eyes, and she opens them to see not a vibrant, colourful ceiling, no, not at all. Instead, she sees a beige, plain ceiling. A normal ceiling. Normal.
She quickly sits up as her brain is attempting to process and understand what’s happening.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the computer attached to the headset that brought her into the circus shut off. She turns her head to see the desk looking the exact same as the first time she visited it. This desk looks a bit too clean for residing in an abandoned building. Why did it shut off anyway? Before she could think about it further however, she puts her hand swiftly up to her head as she sucks in her teeth.
God, her head hurts. She always got migraines in the real world, but she must’ve forgotten the effects of them considering this one is hitting her like a brick. This is most likely her body reacting to her travelling from this world to a freaking video game and back to the real world again. She honestly feels like she could throw up this instant.
It’s also awfully quiet. She’s noticed the fact that nobody else seems to be here.
Wait, did the others get out then? But where are they, then? Pomni doesn’t remember seeing any other headsets within the building. Unless the headsets were in other buildings, which she hopes isn’t the case.
She wants to reunite with the others, oh god she does, but if the headsets were to have been in other buildings which could have been in other cities let alone provinces or even countries… finding them will be next to impossible as if them living in the same city isn’t already terrible.
Though, she would prefer that to the possibility they just haven’t made their way out at all. That thought is one that makes her anxious and makes her head hurt more than the agony it’s already in.
In fact, it makes her hurt head so much, she might just…
Pomni stands up as quickly as she can and runs over to the nearest open window within that room and barfs. Not the black goop she was used to spilling out, but the more disgusting, realistic kind.
Fortunately, it helped ease her migraine a bit and made her feel a bit less uneasy.
For a second, she just stays there letting her head fall helplessly over the ledge, taking in the breeze. It’s the first time she’s breathed in actual air, and it’s safe to say she’s missed it. Simple things like this were things she never would’ve thought she could have lost like she did in the circus. In the circus, air did technically exist, considering she could breathe and hold her breath, but the fact it wasn’t real ruined it. Not to mention the fact it felt…artificial, almost, if that’s even possible.
The circus had ways of altering things from real life and making you miss them when you didn’t even realize they were there in the first place. It was hard losing those little things, to say the least.
Pomni slowly raises her head and walks back into the middle of the room and just stands there.
She raises her hand slowly and just looks at it, counting her fingers. She has five fingers. Five. Not four, five. She’s actually real, and she’s here. She’s not in that stupid computer. But what about the others? Are they here? Did they make it out?
“Is…is anybody here??” she says to the silence. After a few moments, she feels obligated to try again. “Hel..HELLO???” she calls out a bit louder.
She leaves the room she’s currently in, in hopes that perhaps someone is in the building, just not in the room she’s in. She roams the halls while yelling, and progressively speeds up every time nothing answers her calls but the heavy sound of silence.
“GUYS?? ARE YOU THERE?? IT’S ME, POMNI!!”
She checks every room, being met with disappointment every single time she opens a door.
“R..RAGATHA?? GANGLE??”
Somebody has to be there, they couldn’t have left her.
“JAX?? ZOOBLE?? KING–”
She stops herself from running.
She forgot about Kinger. He left himself in the circus. Meaning while everyone else is out of that virtual hell, he’s still in there, trapped. With presumably a very unhappy Caine. She’s only seen bits of what Caine is like when he isn’t happy. The entire circus starts glitching, and when that’s your reality, it’s terrifying.
Then another unhappy thought pops into Pomni’s mind.
If she’s the only one in the building…what if the others didn’t get out? What if she’s the only one who got out? Meaning, they’re all trapped in there still, while Pomni has the privilege to be back in the real world? To be in her actual body? To breathe actual air? To have a real reality instead of one built by something unreal?
Slowly, she turns around and starts walking back to the room with the headset. These thoughts continue to plague her mind until she enters the room. That’s when she notices something. She never saw it before, but because her eyes adjusted to the light, it seems someone else had been here. She knows this because the backpack she had brought with her to go exploring all that time ago had been opened, and all of her belongings are out on the floor.
And there’s one thing Pomni does not remember, and that’s rummaging through her bag before putting that headset on. In fact, a key memory she has is having her bag on her just in case a nosey squatter came in and wanted to take something while she was distracted.
She goes to her bag and starts to check to see what’s missing. She starts to put her belongings back in her bag, checking off a mental checklist. She sighs slightly in relief to see her very dead phone and wallet, but can’t seem to find her keys.
She did drive her car here, right? It wouldn’t necessarily make sense for her to have not, considering she generally avoids Uber’s and isn’t even in her home city currently.
Right, she’s visiting Vancouver for vacation. She’s in Vancouver.
But that still doesn’t explain her missing keys. She still would have used her own car regardless if she was at home or not. Maybe she dropped them on the way in? That could explain it. But someone could have also…
Nah. That would be weird..
Unless…
No freaking way someone actually…
Pomni stands up swiftly and runs to the window. Yep, someone stole her freaking car keys and took her car.
However, as annoying as it is, she’s also finding herself a little hopeful. This could mean at least one other person got out of the circus, and chances are, if two people got out, all of them got out. Not to mention they could be in the same city as her! But wouldn’t they have seen her on the ground if it’s confirmed they were in this room?? Why didn’t they wake her up then? Did they forget about her?
Pomni shakes the thought away. Of course there had to be a reasonable reason for them to have done that. They wouldn’t just leave her. Not after everything they’ve all been through. Right?
Right?
Okay, she needs to focus. How long has she even been gone? Are there missing reports about her?
She needs somewhere to sleep first. If she remembers correctly, she hadn’t even checked into a hotel yet before she put on the headset. So, first things first, call an uber and drive to a hotel. With her very dead phone. Shit.
She walks back over to her bag and rummages through it again to hopefully find some sort of charger.
And it seems that staying in a digital world for God-knows-how-long can make the universe pity her enough to find a just-over-half charge portable charger. She silently thanks herself and immediately plugs in her phone.
After she plugs in her phone, she decides to leave the building. She finds herself feeling uneasy residing in the same room as an item that has brought her more than enough trauma, and the building itself holds no place for Pomni, so she waits outside for her phone to charge, curled up against the building.
While she waits, she finds herself steeping in her own thoughts once again. She can’t shake the thoughts about the others; where are they? Did they seriously leave her there and take her car? Do they not care about her enough to even bother trying to take her with them?
A bright light shines from her phone and that drives Pomni away from her thoughts. That light coming from the phone she’s holding.
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The date read October 26th, 2023.
Almost 2 weeks.
It had been almost 2 weeks since her arrival in the circus.
On one hand, she’s relieved it hasn’t been that long, on the other, it felt like forever.
She wonders how the others must feel, considering they’ve all been there for several years. They must not be doing so well, especially assuming some of them must really not know what’s going on.
She wonders if any of them were gone long enough to not know what a cell phone is. She then remembers her car has one of those screens on the inside and she pictures Jax struggling to figure out how to change the radio station which makes her chuckle a bit.
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The drive to the hotel she was planning to stay at was relatively normal, except for the fact she had to silently pinch her leg every few seconds to prevent herself from falling asleep. All she wants to do right now is fall asleep in whatever bed closest to her.
Luckily for her, the driver didn’t seem too interested in pursuing a conversation with her (thank god). She’s worried if he was the chatty type, she would seem like a bitch for barely speaking.
However, she almost forgot that she’s going to need to interact with the hotel receptionists. This is going to be the first time she properly interacts with another person outside of the circus in weeks, and she just wants to sleep.
She leaves the uber and gives the driver a quick thank you and walks into the hotel.
It’s your average hotel, nothing really special of the sorts. There’s a complimentary breakfast section in the lobby, and Pomni finds herself looking a little forward to having a proper meal that will actually fulfill her. The receptionist’s desk is also the most average desk you will ever see, with two girls.
“Um..hello. I would like to book a room for three nights?”
One of the girls looks up at her and smiles warmly.
“Hello. Of course, just for one?”
“Yes please.”
“Okay, and what’s the name?”
“Po- um…” Right, her name isn’t actually Pomni. What is her name? “Sorry. The name is Christine. Christine Lee.”
Christine. Her name is Christine. Not something as stupid as Pomni. Christine. Christine. Christine. She feels a shiver run down her spine.
“Alright, your room will be 167 on the 4th floor.” The girl says as she reaches down her desk and hands Pomni a keycard. “Enjoy your stay!”
“Oh..um..thank you.” Pomni reaches for the keycard as she tries to keep her bubbling anxiety down. Jesus Christ. Who would’ve thought hearing your own name coming out of your mouth would cause you to almost have a panic attack?
She supposes it’s hard to hear something you never thought you would hear ever again is difficult.
She never thought forgetting her own name would be so terrifying. It’s like a part of your identity just being ripped from you and there’s nothing you can do about except adopt another ridiculous name instead. She tries not to think about the feeling too much.
But it’s hard not to. It was absolutely terrifying to her that everyone was already accustomed to something that terrible happening to them. That it was just “oh another person” and nothing else to it.
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Yeah, she fell asleep almost immediately.
She didn’t even have pyjamas (because her damn suitcase was in her stolen car), but she still found herself easy to fall asleep. She almost thought she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep considering everything that’s happened to her in the past few weeks, but apparently being stuck in a video game for that amount of time can make you utterly exhausted.
She’s not complaining, though. She’s quite grateful for the fact she could just fall asleep. What she wasn’t grateful for, however, were the dreams that followed.
There were multiple, and they were all about the circus. She can barely recall anything that happened within those dreams, but they all managed to leave her with a lingering anxiety of “what ifs”. She woke up in a sweat.
She does remember vaguely majority of it was about her fight with Jax.
She really really wants to talk things out with Jax. She actually found herself able to be comfortable around him, and she knows he doesn’t consider what they had a friendship, but it definitely was at least close to one. She doesn’t want to lose that, especially since they’re out of the circus now.
She feels bad for provoking him, to be honest.
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After she got the complimentary breakfast from the hotel (which was fucking delicious), she went back to her room immediately and brought out her computer (which she so kindly packed in her backpack for a reason she can’t remember) and started searching for absolutely anything about the others.
Which, of course, was not successful.
Searching them just by their names obviously won’t work, she doubted from the beginning any of them would use their circus names, which she was correct, or she was just absolute dogshit at searching for people.
Her second thought was to search for missing person cases within Vancouver, which didn’t narrow it down that much. She must’ve been stupid to think she would just be able to tell if it was one of the circus members by “their vibes” or something. Not only that, but there are a LOT more missing person cases for Vancouver than she would have ever expected, but she guesses it is expected for a large city. The closest she got to finding one was seeing a person that reminded her slightly of Zooble considering they had pink hair, but Pomni doubted that actually meant it was Zooble.
She then tried to see if there were any recent mysteriously solved ones on the news or something, like somebody’s son or daughter mysteriously disappeared for 80 years and reappeared one day looking the exact same. (She didn’t find anything. She could only hope something would miraculously pop up…)
After that, she basically gave up. She doesn’t even actually know if they live in Vancouver. Some random stranger could’ve found her keys and taken her car, and finding the others will be basically impossible, that is if they managed to get out.
Stop thinking like that, Pomni.
She closes her laptop and goes to the washroom in her room for a break. She hasn’t actual used the washroom in weeks. She almost forgot the feeling of needing to go.
But when she walks in, she almost jumps out of her skin to see a stranger in the mirror. That is, until she realized that was her.
She hasn’t seen herself in her normal body in so long, she almost didn’t recognize herself.
She looks a whole lot less cartoony and full of life in this form, she’ll admit. The only thing that can even be considered similar is her hair and maybe her height being slightly shorter than average, sitting at a 5’0. Her eyebags are quite noticeable…she remembers them always being like that, though. Something she can be thankful about is that she doesn’t have to wear that ridiculous jester outfit. Now, she’s wearing a plain zip-up hoodie with a white tank top underneath and sweatpants. And instead of large eyes, her eyes were normal sized and dark.
She puts a hand up to her cheek. It feels real. That comforts her. She looks real, not like a cartoon. Real.
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She’s happy to discover that she was in fact not fired, because she was on vacation for a little over 2 weeks. Which means, she’s going to need to be back at work the day after tomorrow. Because she wasted all her vacation days in the fucking circus. Thank you so much Caine!! That’s exactly what she wanted to use her FUCKING VACATION DAYS ON!! YAY!!!
However, she does have the choice to work at home if she doesn’t have any meetings, and being an accountant, she almost never has any meetings to attend. The only reason she usual likes to show up in person is because she finds it easier for herself to focus while in an office. Lucky for her, it seems she’s free practically all week, with only having one next week and then being free again for the entire month.
So, here’s her plan; continue her search for her friends non-stop for the next week, then if that doesn’t work, she’ll continue her search back in Vernon while working from home again. And if she still can’t find them (which isn’t an option) she’ll just pray to whatever god is willing to hear her prayers until her friends find her eventually.
Of course, her plan isn’t the best. But it’s something, which is better than nothing.
But she also can’t devote her entire life to some people she only knew for a few weeks. She’s more than aware of that. She has a life outside of the circus. But she knows if she doesn’t at least try to find them the guilt will eat her alive. She doesn’t want to just simply forget them, especially when some of them may need her help.
That being said, she also really misses them.
Sure, they were an…odd group of people. But she got pretty close to them all in the time she spent in the circus with them.
She also wants to maybe apologize to Jax for that…fight they had. And to Ragatha for not trying hard enough to be friends with her when that’s all Ragatha was doing. She also wants to see if Jax and Ragatha will make up now that they’re in the real world. Pomni almost doubts that will happen, but can’t a girl hope a little?
So she’s going to try her hardest to find them all, even if it may take years.
But what about Kinger?
Shit, she forgot Kinger didn’t get out.
Okay, new plan; find the others, THEN save Kinger, then they can all party and be happy and skip into the sunset or something. She doesn’t really know.
She just hopes this will all end up fine.
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Not a while later, she decides that she needs to go out and get some clothes. She’s still wearing the clothes she used to explore that building AND as pyjamas, and she’s starting to feel a bit gross. While she’s out, she decides she might stop by a convenience store to get some snacks to live off of.
So she tries her best to brush her hair with her fingers (she should get a hairbrush, too) and set off.
Everything she needs is in the same block thank goodness, she doesn’t need even more people to see how much of a mess she looks right now. Her fingers didn’t necessarily give her hair much justice.
Something else she missed dearly was the rain-against-concrete smell. That easily had to be one of her favourite smells, which was a smell that always lingered in Vancouver every time she visited, even when it wasn’t raining.
Her first stop is a clothing store. She just needs a few shirts and a few pants, and she’ll be fine. Her main priority is changing out of her gross clothes she’s wearing right now; she’s practically sweat through her hoodie at this point from anxiety.
She quickly ran in and got some random shirts and tank tops and sweatpants with some pyjamas, and she’s gone.
Her next stop was a a convenience store, and she may have spent a little too long looking at all of the different selections of shampoo and conditioner. She may have also seen a bottle that had colours that reminded her of her previous form.
“Well, that’s certainly comforting..” She mutters.
In return she simple flipped the bottle around so the label isn’t visible.
In the end, she just chose what she always got because she can’t be bothered enough to change what she always uses in the situation she’s in currently. She also got a shit ton of snacks, because she doesn’t have the motivation to eat anything else other than absolute junk food.
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The lobby of the hotel looks the exact same as she left it, with the scent of breakfast still lingering in the air despite being finished hours ago.
“Wait seriously..?” A whisper comes from behind the desk.
“Yeah, listen, she was nice, but she was definitely on something. She couldn’t even pick up the keycard properly and kept dropping things on her way in. Not to mention she acting so…animated or something?? I don’t really know.”
Pomni doesn’t really pay any attention to what they’re saying and makes her way to her room.
When she got back to her room, she immediately went and had a shower. She needed to wash that building off her right away. She feels disgusting having remnants of that building that caused her much unnecessary feelings.
Afterwards, she changed into proper clothes and just spread out on her bed. She feels so clean.
Okay, she might just doze off again. Sure, it may only be 2:00pm, but she’s just so tired. And this bed is just so comfortable. She’ll just have a little nap. Then when she wakes up, she’ll be right back to finding her friends. Just a little nap. Just….a little….
In the back of her mind while she’s falling asleep, she repeats her friends names over and over again in a silent plea for them to hopefully find her.
Yeah, she slept for a little longer than that.
She’ll find them tomorrow.