Work Text:
Gangle looked at the tent that housed Jax, or what was left of him. She didn't know what to feel. Should she feel sad that a person she had spent so long with was dead or relieved that the person who made the circus her torment was gone?
At the moment, she felt indifferent to it.
She sat down by the entrance of the tent, keeping her wits about her just in case the abstraction still wanted to cause her torment. When not even a stir came from within the tent, Gangle peeked inside.
There it- he was. The abstraction's legs were tucked under his body. He seemed to notice her and the abstraction's multicolored eyes fell onto Gangle, but he made no move to her.
Gangle brought her head back outside the tent, fully leaning back against the fabric.
"Hi Jax," she finally spoke. She opened her mouth to say more, but she couldn't think of what else to say, so she just sat there in silence for a moment, her brain formulating on what she could even say. Would he even hear her or understand her?
Well, the least she could do is try.
"You made my life here hell, you know that?" Gangle looked to the entrance at her side as she said it, as if that would make the abstraction hear her.
She trailed off, as if expecting a response from him. For him to defend himself, to play it off as just a joke, to say that she's being too sensitive. But not a sound came from the tent. Gangle continued anyway.
"Things are gonna be different without you here."
Better, she wanted to say. But that seemed too cruel. Too much like him.
"I believed things weren't going to change, that I would always be your plaything until I-," Gangle cut herself off and closed her eyes, reminiscing those times; the despair, the hopelessness, the voice that told her to just give up. "I'm happy it didn't turn out that way."
She thought that she would want to say more; to yell, to scream, to cry at him. This was sickeningly calmer than she thought this would go. Then again, she imagined Jax would still be here. That she wouldn't be talking to what was basically the equivalent of his corpse.
With nothing else truly to say, Gangle stood up. "Goodbye Jax."
She didn't look back as she walked away. Maybe she would visit him again with more to say, but what she's done today was enough for now.
She looked back at the tent after getting a considerable distance away. The tent had so much care put into it, and she thought about Jax himself.
Jax, who was cruel and made this place hell-adjacent place actual hell. Jax, who made her think that she was nothing.
And yet, he was mourned. He was being mourned by most of the members in the circus.
Abstraction was an inevitability, everyone, some small part of them, knew that.
Jax had convinced Gangle that no one would mourn her, that Jax would be the only one who would notice her absence, and he wouldn't care. Just move on and find some other victim to torment relentlessly as he had done to her.
People had started caring for her though, Zooble, Pomni, even Ragatha and Kinger have started to become people she could trust.
They would mourn her. They would care about her.
They would treat her with the same care as they had done with Jax.
The realization struck, and she felt tears form in her eyes as she processed.
If everyone could mourn Jax, a tormentor, then they would mourn her. It felt…
She didn't know how she felt.
Sad that they would feel that way? Happy they would care?
She couldn't decipher that right now.
She just felt the tears coming down, and she went to her room