What if Jax has to deal with seizures now?
Stay with me—
Ep 9 spoilers below!
AU idea I've been cooking up.
Jax has abstracted.
But, he hasn't been abstracted for too long, making his code capable of repair.
Unlike the older abstractions, who their corrupted codes had been sitting there for far too long, made it impossible to fix it or even access it.
Now that Kinger and Caine are on equal footing, it'd be cool if they'd work together and find a way to restore Jax's code before it's too late.
And, they actually did it! He's back!
But, with problems that come with it.
They restored him, but his code is still damaged from what had happened.
He experiences glitches often, one of them being that he has a speech impediment, a stutter.
The more anxious he gets, the worse his stutter gets.
He now also has to deals with seizures pretty often.
Sometimes he can go weeks without it. Just like sometimes the following weeks could be hell.
From short seizures to long ones.
The others suggest to Caine that giving Jax a service dog npc is necessary. This way, he can alert the others and Jax when an episode is about to start. Caine is capable of sensing one coming, too. But, without his all seeing eyes now, he can't always warn Jax or be there for him. So yeah, service dog is useful.
Jax has an obvious fear of vulnerability. But because of now having to deal with this illness, he's constantly experiencing exposure therapy on having to be vulnerable while an episode happens.
Despite almost everyone not being on good terms with Jax, some of them would still help Jax whenever he needs it.
One day, after a bad episode, he's left in a daze. His eyes dull and exhausted, his body trembling weakly from the intensity of the seizure he just had. Gangle is next to him on the ground from having just helped him not hurt himself since she was the only one who happened to be around.
Sluggishly, he speaks to her in a weak voice, his half lidded eyes fixated to the ceiling.
"I'm sorry..."
His eyes shone with unshed tears, too exhausted to even cry.
Gangle's expression falters, surprised for a moment. Her mouth opening then closing, in thought as her expression slowly fell flat again.
Silence fills the room, when her small voice breaks the quiet. "I hear you..." She's not accepting his apology. But she acknowledge it. She gets up slowly. "I'm... going to go and ask Caine to come and help you go back to your room..." she adds before leaving, her face unreadable.
Jax doesn't react to her response. He expected something like that, anyway. He's not throwing himself a pity party internally either, in fact, he finds it understandable that she's not accepting his apology. And he's okay with it..
...
I also view Caine as being his nurse/caretaker. Or at least, tries his best to be one.
Since he is the core of the circus, he obviously values his humans very dearly. So of course, he'll tend to the sick.
...
What I'd like to see from this is just Jax wanting to become a better person the longer he remains sick.
Having to deal with these glitches and seizures often, half of the time he's just too tired to be wanting to keep his mask up. Or being mean in general. He still has moments where he splits, and tries to push people away.
Especially at first. But again, the longer he's sick, the more he just gives in to the help.
And he can't help himself but to lean into the help because deep inside, he's terrified.
They all already saw him be pathetic. Drooling while he would seize. The loss of control over everything. Slowly, but surely, he starts apologizing to everyone he has harmed. Some do accept his apologies, some didn't. Perhaps they will, or not. Either way, it's not now. I also want to see him get haunted by Ribbit and Kaufmo. I want to see him throw up out of guilt. I want to see him face his mistakes, and feel awful for it.
I want him to realize that just crying over how unlovable he is won't change anything. That he needs to apologize, lock in and better himself in order to not make the same mistake again.
