AN: A kind of dark story that may become lighter as time goes on. I would like to say that this idea came from my habit of making depressing characters, and may have some sad moments as it goes on, with the Sadness Meter spiking occasionally, so be warned. Unless I fail at making things sad, then don't.
I'm only saying this once, Inside Out and its characters belong to Pixar. That'll be all for now!
They say that the girl by the far wall was once experimented on to make her emotionless in order to make her a child soldier, others say that she lost her heart and now feels nothing. No one dared approach her, thinking that her emotionlessness would allow her to kill them without a thought or mercilessly torture them into the same type of being she "was." But as much as they thought they knew of her "past," they didn't know how far from the truth the rumors were. Then, someone decided to approach her, not by choice, but by virtue of the girl's table having the only empty spot during lunchtime.
Setting a plate of air-cooled tater tots and chicken nuggets on the table, a blonde girl in a rainbow, long sleeved shirt and blue jeans sat beside a silver-haired girl wearing a black, sleeveless hoody, white tee and gray pants, their respectively green and black Converse shoes lightly touching the hard schoolyard ground despite the latter's greater height. The blonde looked up into the corner of the emotionless girl's red and blue eye, taking in the pale skin around it as well as the sorrow behind the unmoving orb as it stared down into a second plate of the day's lunch. After a while, the blonde looked at her own food, then at a few eyes that had turned in their direction once the students noticed the quiet scene.
Turning toward the blonde, the silver-haired girl looked at her in mild bewilderment, her eyes showing a glint of joy so small, the sorrow washed it away not a moment after. The blonde noticed and faced her once more, now seeing the full extent of her hidden pain and seemingly knowing what had caused emotionless façade to dominate the girl's features. At the gasping of everyone, the blonde presented her hand to the taller girl, her desire to comfort her growing with every moment she stared into those eyes that had lost so much, yet shined with the saddest of emotional lights no one could've seen unless they looked.
"Hi," the blonde said, forgetting her meal and the small crowd around them, "I'm Riley." The silver-haired girl stared at the gesture presented to her, internally weighing her options and past experiences, but ultimately deciding on returning it, knowing that in order to heal her wounded heart, she would need to give it to another once more.
"Alice," she introduced herself as, taking in Riley's hand with her own, slightly larger one, the smallest semblance of a smile manifesting itself on her once unmoving mask. Riley took in the pale appendage, feeling the pain it once felt through empathy alone and almost knowing every sorrowful moment of the girl's life in that one touch. They stayed like that for a while, the crowd around them returning to their lunches long before they themselves faced their plates. Inside both of their minds, their respective Sadness were alone at the consoles, the other emotions giving them space within their own Headquarters, one making the blonde as empathic as she could be, the other letting her past flow freely, knowing the path to healing like her own blue skin.
-3-
The next day, there she was again, alone, at the far wall, her meal of stew left to cool and her dessert separate from her tray. Alice waited as routine repeated itself in endless loneliness, yet not as sad and outwardly emotionless as usual. Just like yesterday, Riley sat beside her, yellow jacket and black pants contrasting the taller girl's white dress and blue vest. The two looked at each other in silence, turning to their meals after a quiet exchange of feelings. Even as whispers rose from the schoolyard of the strange scene, they tranquilly ate in the presence of one another, preparing themselves for a sad, yet recovering conversation as soon as they finished.
Riley was the first of the two to finish her meal, the ninth-grader pushing her tray forward and resting her head on her arms. She glanced at the silver-haired girl, spotting a curious aura around her for just a moment before noticing the discarded dessert. She eyed it curiously, her blue eyes taking in the red gelatin in its small cup and wondering why it was left out. Beside her, Alice pushed her own tray aside and, from her bag, procured a small red box and a flask.
Pulling the top off and using it as a cup, the sad girl poured herself a milky substance, filling up to half the stainless steel cup before turning to the box and removing the lid. Within the red box were small squares of chocolate, each one unsweetened and naturally bitter, each one fresh and homemade. Dropping two pieces into her beverage, the silver-haired girl offered the blonde a piece of her own little treasure, yesterday's small smile resurrecting itself with twice the force.
"Are you sure?" Riley asked, unsure of what else to say as Alice nodded in response, her usual mask returning rapidly. Riley took the small square and carefully inspected it, taking note of the small details engraved into its brown surface. At the top of the square was a rose, etched with a detail so fine that the Minnesotan could count every single petal, compare it with an actual rose and find both counts to be almost identical. On the other side, however, was a different story; a house set ablaze, a little girl crying in front of an open door, a woman's face in the flames, a sad story told with a still, monotone image. The scene on the chocolate square made Riley shed a small tear, knowing well who the child in the image was.
Wiping the tear off her face, Riley flipped the square back to the rose and took it to her mouth, stopping only when she heard a smooth, low voice from beside her.
"I'd like to warn you," Alice began, taking a small sip of the beverage, "it is a bit bitter." Riley looked at her, feeling as if those words applied to both the chocolate and to Alice's as of yet untold life. Slowly, she bit down on the square, feeling as the bitterness explained to her the scene displayed on its underside, from the powerful burn of the fire illustrated to the tears of both beings on the etching. In just one bite, Riley knew the pains of the girl beside her and almost began to cry as the chocolate placed a huge pressure upon her heart.
Swallowing, Riley turned back to Alice, to the eyes that wanted to cry so much, yet couldn't simply because she'd run out of tears for the day, maybe even her life. She wanted to comfort the larger girl, allow her to wash her with her sorrows so that she could recover from the pain that she carried without the help of others. Alice, in return, wanted just then and there to drop the mask she had placed on herself to keep from collapsing, from breaking every moment into an eternal river of dried tears and sorrow, but knew that if she were to do that, she would never stop crying; she knew she must recover before she ever took the mask off.
Soon, the bell rung, drawing all students back into the building. All except the two by the far wall, whose feelings weighed over them so much, their feet felt stuck to the ground. Riley opened her mouth to try and say something, but the sound of a light sob stopped her. Instead, she opted to hug the larger, silver-haired girl, thinking of ways to help her. Inside her mind, Riley's Sadness gently pushed a lever, then looked toward Joy, who was searching through the Idea Shelves for anything and everything that may help. In Joy's hand were several blue Idea Bulbs, with some yellow ones scarcely spread among the growing pile. Sadness walked over to her, deciding to ease Joy's load by taking half of it and bringing it to the console.
"How do you think we can help her?" asked Joy, whose voice was filled with a worry opposite of her usual free-spirited demeanor. Sadness looked at her while taking her half of the Bulbs in her arms, slowly shaking her large blue head.
"I don't know, Joy," she replied before walking back to the console, where Anger, Fear and Disgust calmly waited and added but the smallest of their influences unto Riley. She set the Idea Bulbs by Anger, inspecting the top-most one closely. It was a bright blue Bulb, the idea within involving the help of Riley's friends. It may have been the right idea to help Alice out of her sorrow and possible depression, but Sadness knew that they had to consider others first.
Meanwhile, inside Alice's mind, her Sadness was approached by Fear, who had been the only one to note the sound of the bell. The tear-like emotion turned to the nerve-like one, large tears mounting up on both of their eyes as blue memories recalled themselves as they had had before, whenever Alice lost someone. They both turned to Joy, the star-like emotion's glow having faded long ago, when the explosion consumed the life of their friends. The blue-haired emotion looked at them, his demeanor matching Sadness on a really bad day rather than what he should be, and made his way up the ramp to their living space, knowing that Alice had little need for him now.
As Joy walked up the ramp, Anger walked down, toward Alice's own Idea Shelves, and started searching for an Idea she saw the day before. After a quiet moment of solemn shuffling, the red emotion found the blue and yellow Idea Bulb, hidden below the rest. She took it upstairs with her, remarking that they may need some time before implementing that one idea and reminding Fear to keep an eye out for Suicidal Thoughts Island.
"I know it's on its last legs," she said, opening the door to the living space, where Joy played with the remnants of Figments from Wonder Island, "but it could repair itself at any moment, given our current feelings." She walked inside just as Fear pulled at a lever and pushed a few buttons, urging Alice to go to class before she was late. Slowly, Alice pulled herself from the embrace, her vest stained in tears and her dress ruffled heavily. She looked at the school building, sighing away the heaviness as much as she could and whispering a quiet "Thank you" before walking toward her class. Riley stayed seated for a little while longer, feeling every emotion packed in those two words for all of two minutes before she too went for class.
-3-
About a month later, Riley found herself back at the far wall, staring at the empty spot where she had met Alice every school day ever since that quiet morning. The bell had rung a while ago, and Riley's friends were calling out to her, yet all she heard was silence, like a quiet static that blocked out the world, white noise covering even her own thoughts. Sighing, she turned to the school building and slowly made her way to class, joined by her worrying friends.
-3-
Meanwhile, a girl walked down an inclined street, phone in hand as she uploaded a video to a video-sharing site, were she earned most of what kept her alive by posting videos as part of a group that called themselves the Wonderland Kids. The video in particular was an unusual one, considering the groups Modus Operandi, a "Face-Reveal" type of video the sad girl had recorded yesterday after finding herself actually smiling for longer than a minute. Under the username SaneinMadness, she watched as the video finished uploading as she stopped to wait for a car to pass by.
Despite her small glint of happiness, the girl could still feel the weight of her depression eat away at her Joy and slowly begin with her Anger, her only feeling at nearly every moment being a dry Sadness that constantly and unwillingly made its presence known much more than ever before. Sighing, she crossed the street and continued her way downward.
-3-
At the Andersen house, Bill, with a blue buttoned shirt and jeans, shuffled through a video-sharing app, searching for anything to bring the boredom out of the workless day. Earlier, a meeting he had scheduled was canceled because everyone else had called in sick, leaving him with little to do other than surf the channel of a "Let's-Player" one of his co-workers told him about, a young girl named SaneinMadness who always seemed to play with a default feeling of sadness, yet somehow seemed to carry some energy behind it all. He looked for a video that would catch his attention, one that he could enjoy and lift the boredom off of him.
Suddenly, the message tone of his phone sounded, a small notification telling him of a video that had just been posted by non-other than SaneinMadness at that very moment. As he tapped the notification, causing his phone to load the video, Jill passed by him, dressed in a green blouse and cream pants, her eye catching the curiosity in his. She stopped what she was doing, his curiosity becoming hers as the video loaded up with an intro featuring a silver-haired caricature of a girl, dressed in a black dress with a bright white apron, letting herself fall into a rather deep rabbit hole. Images of past videos whooshed past the girl, each one of a different genre or sub-genre, but mostly of the horror or sad kinds.
"What're you watching?" Jill asked, nearly startling her husband. She watched as the girl in the video landed on her naked feet and opened her large blood red eyes with oceanic blue centers and looked around with a nearly blank wonder as a white rabbit bounced by her, dropping a rather large screen before her, which then zoomed in and turned on to reveal the channel's icon.
"A new video by a user named SaneinMadness," Bill answered looking at his beloved for a moment before turning to his phone.
"Isn't that the girl Jason told you about?" Jill inquired, her eyes focusing on the image of a girl with long silver hair covering her face, the divide of the roots over the far side of her left eye. The girl's skin was pale white, as if no pigment existed beneath it and her clothing was but a black hoodie over a white long sleeved shirt.
"The same one," Bill answered again, his free hand scratching his semi-permanent stubble as he inspected the unusual video before him and his wife. They fell in silence as the girl on the phone started introducing herself to the audience she knew she would receive, mostly subscribers but maybe someone new.
"Salutations, everyone," the girl started, awkwardly waving a hand in the direction she thought the camera was before turning to her left, asking someone out of frame whether or not she was facing the right way. After getting her answer, a mad sounding "yes, my boy" from a voice belonging only to HatterofMadness, she turned back to the camera and finished her introduction, "Sane here. Today, we're going to do something different, something Madness and the others declared "bloody mad" before telling me to go for it in their own curious way."
Just then, a knock was heard from the front door, causing both viewers to turn to its direction as Sane began thanking someone from her life, a girl who had helped her over the past month. Bill stood up and handed his phone to his wife, telling her that he'll get the door and could watch the video in a minute.
"Are you sure?" Jill asked, eyeing her husband curiously. Bill just looked at her sheepishly, mentally forming an excuse, thinking that a package he had ordered a week ago had just arrived, a surprise for his loving wife for her coming birthday.
"Yeah," he said, "you watch it. You seem to be interested in it as much as I am. Besides," his excuse finally formulated, "I think that's Andrew at the door. He said he was coming by to leave some files." Turning around, he mentally both sighed and slapped himself at forgetting to redirect the package to his workplace. Behind him, Jill looked unconvinced, but continued to watch the video, where the girl had picked up a brush and began removing hair from her face.
At the door, Bill found himself in a light panic, nerves jumping at the timing of the package's probable arrival. He counted himself lucky that he was at the house, lest the surprise may have been ruined. Steeling himself, Bill grabbed the knob of the door and slowly pulled it open, finding himself both relieved and surprised that, instead of a mailman, he found a rather tall girl with pale skin, white hair and red and blue eyes. He looked at her, from her nearly expressionless face to her paper white skin, from her black dress to her shoeless feet, then, finally to her sad eyes, which carried with them a question and a pain, a plight and a hurting, a past that never seemed to stop haunting the owner of the eyes. Suddenly, Bill felt both sad and alone, further lost in the girl's sorrow the more he looked at those eyes.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually a few seconds, the girl looked down, releasing Bill from his trance and leaving him confused. Inside Bill's mind, his Sadness was being consoled after the experience, his blue frame quivering in sobs and pain that seemed to have passed from the girl at the monitor directly unto him. Joy and Fear were the first off their seats, having felt the pain in subdued amounts. Right after them was Disgust, who had gotten some tissues out of some place or another and offered them to everyone who needed them, especially Sadness. Anger just turned to the scene, his faces a mixture of pain and confusion, with a slight dab of curiosity as to how they felt that way just by looking into someone's eyes. After a moment, when a voice came from in front of them, he called them back to their seats as calmly as he could.
"Alright, everyone," his gruff voice called, the small group of comforting Emotions looking at him with an unusually low amount of energy, "we need to get to work here. We just froze up on a girl at our doorstep and we need to concentrate." He looked directly at Sadness and continued, "Sadness, I need you to compose yourself. We need you to come up with the proper questions here, this time. It seems we may need it." Sadness nodded and everyone around him took their seats as he slowly came up with the questions.
"We need to ask her to repeat herself," Joy said, noting that they missed the girl's words. Anger agreed and turned to Fear, who pressed a button to his left and carefully pulled a lever from Anger's part of the console. Outside, Bill recovered from his confused daze as the girl before him finished talking. He looked at her, taking note of how she held herself and feeling more of the sad pain from earlier, but kept strong against it.
"Can you repeat that, miss…?" he asked, trailing on the last word as he noticed he never got her name.
"Alice," the girl responded, refusing to make eye contact, lest the full onslaught of her transmitted emotions take over the man before her again. "I asked if Riley's home? She told me to come by." Her voice seemed low and filled with a strange expectancy, one made up of mostly sadness rather than excitement or happiness, making Bill wonder what had happened in the girl's life to get her to that point. Shaking his head, Bill carefully thought of his next words as he saw the girl looked a bit crestfallen at the answer.
"She's at school, probably wondering where you've been," he explained, finally coming up with the right question of the moment. "Are you alright? You look a bit disappointed." Alice found the courage to look up, into the eyes through which she accidentally inflicted pain to her friend's father. She thought about all the possible answers to the question, most of them lies she had repeated over and over again in the past, even to herself, and decided on going with the truth, as she had done with Riley after their third meeting.
"Not really," she said, restraining her sorrow and wondering whether or not her mind had skipped a day as had happened in the past, "but at least I've got help for it." That last bit was sort of true; although not professional, Riley's presence in Alice's life had had a slow healing effect over the last month, albeit a bit too slow for the tall girl's mental health.
"That's good to hear," came Bill's response as another question formed in his mind. He took a look inside, towards the dining room, where his wife was, before turning back with a small offer. "Wanna come in? It may be a bit chilly out there." The girl nodded and carefully stepped in, taking note of the quaint interior and how the house looked a bit smaller on the outside. Bill took her to the dining room, where she seated herself in front of Jill, who had just finished the video Bill left her with. They looked at each other, Alice noting how Riley got their recessive genes, as both parents had brown hair, while Jill stared in light shock at the girl who was before her. Before she could speak, Bill asked Alice his second question.
"How have things been going between you and our daughter, Alice?" he said as he sat down beside his wife, the air in the room turning both lighter and actually happier by a small degree. Alice analyzed the words spoken to her, asking herself just how much they knew of the situation. She looked between the two adults, feeling what they felt and almost hearing their thoughts before coming up with a proper way to explain things.
"She's helping me with my sorrow," she said with the smallest of smiles, "helping me go through my depression, which I now admit I have. She told me to come here, to meet up with her group of friends so that they may help me further." She looked at her hands, at her visible veins, thinking of the entire month, of every lunchtime she and Riley spent getting to know each other even though she felt, at the time, that the blonde could've been anywhere else. She thought of the tales of her past, the scarring stories that she slowly shared with the girl, of the fire that consumed her mother, the plane crash that took her uncle, the explosion that stole the lives of her only friends and left her with only a minor bruise and a light burn, and her expression fell.
"I-is something wrong?" Jill asked, concern written on her features. Within her mind, her Joy had found the one thing that could contain her own excitement at one of the greatest coincidences in her life, which was mixed with Fear's own surprised shock, the sudden change in someone's state of being. She looked over to Sadness, who had noticed the shift in Alice's posture; the lost smile, the slouched shoulders, the misty eyes about to release tears. Even the air around the girl seemed to cool sharply in sorrow. She worriedly waved in her coworker/meta-sister's direction, getting her attention faster than she could even form what to say.
"W-what're we gonna do, Sadness?" she finally said after recollecting her thoughts. The other's watched as Sadness went deep in thought, formulating responses to what the girl before them would say. She looked at her companions, taking note of their expressions, before answering.
"Whatever we can, Joy?" She then, along with the others, waited, their gazes concerned beyond the word, as if Alice's Sadness was transmitting to them. On the other side of the table, that statement couldn't be any closer to the truth. Alice's Sadness manned the large console, alone, waiting for the others to return from the City, where Joy had left to earlier in the week, his glow gone and his mood more bitter than their chocolate. The blue emotion danced to and fro, pushing as many buttons as she could, pulling all the levers as fast as possible, trying to make Alice respond with the proper words, to say a fragment of the truth, clue them in on the girl's pain, giving them a small feel of it, even if Alice's relative "small" was colossal to her hosts.
When she heard the rushing of wind behind her small, round form, the black vest wearing emotion turned to face the small search party that were her companions; Anger, her flame small and her face frustrated, Fear, with his posture low and defeated, and Disgust, with her silent expression about to break, all walked into Headquarters emptyhanded once more, as all previous searches went. Joy had evaded them yet again, his knowledge of the City being far greater than the rest of theirs combined. Sadness sighed as she turned back to the console and pressed one last button, their host finally responding to the question asked.
"A lot of things, actually." That said it all, held all she could place on it. Alice let the words hang over the room in silence for a few seconds, measuring their reactions, trying to feel and hear what they thought of them before continuing. She lifted her gaze and looked straight into Bill's eyes, the brown-haired man uncertain of what to say and the Emotions behind the eyes as quiet as space. Soon, the silver-haired girl could almost see a blue speck behind the eyes press down a button that brought about a response to her words.
"Want to…?" Mr. Andersen hesitated, not knowing what to expect from one who may be the saddest person he had ever met. He looked at his wife, who looked just as hesitant as him, but determined to help to the best of her abilities, and found so determination to continue, himself. "Want to talk about it?"
Alice looked at him, relieved to find that they wanted to hear her out, to help her like Riley did, and would've found herself internally smiling at their compassion and empathy. She closed her eyes, thinking back to the many horrors of her life, the traumas that brought her there, to the reason she came to the abode in the first place, although finding a strange comfort in the fact that the people she was with were not who she intended to be, yet where just as good as the bright alternative that was her friend.