Sorry for the slight delay on this chapter! As some readers already know, some revisions are taking place to my rough drafts; this chapter was officially split in two. :c whomp.

A few mild spoilers for the film in this one!

Thanks a million times over to those who are still following the story's progress - we're nearly there! I really appreciate your encouraging support. Y'all are awesome and if you're enjoying this at all, it's because of you c':

~KQSimply

"…riley…!..."

She was sitting up somehow.

"Riley…!"

Her eyes and ears were utterly useless to her at first. She had to force herself to tune in.

Mom and Dad were in front of her. Her forehead dripped from the wet cloth they'd placed against it.

Slowly, she blinked and came to. Her tongue moved clumsily inside of her head as she attempted to speak.

"Oh, Riley. Thank God."
"There we go. You with us again?"
"You had us worried sick! What happened?"

Riley blinked and raised her eyes up to theirs.

"...I fell down."

Mom and Dad exchanged apprehensive looks with one another.

"I was crossing the road," Riley continued, speaking mechanically with lips that could have been made out of lead. "A car came…and…I fell down."

"A what?" Dad took her sternly by the shoulders, trying to make meaningful eye-contact with her, which seemed, for the moment, impossible. "You mean to tell us you were hit by a car?"

Riley slowly nodded.

Her parents were horrified by her hollowness. It was perhaps even more terrifying than it had been to discover her unconscious in her bedroom in the first place.

"Are you hurt?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"Where? Let me see."
"No. I'm okay."
"Riley, please."
"I'm okay, Dad."

Riley looked down to her pillow, and back to her parents.

"…I just want to lie down."

Her father was ready to throttle her – anger always overrode his panic. Quickly he removed his hands from Riley's shoulders, lips twitching as a thousand questions balanced eagerly on tip of his tongue.

License plate! Street name! Model of the car! Time of day! Face of the bastard that hit my daughter and ran!

His wife, willing to approach any situation with tact and understanding, settled a hand on his shoulder. "Just let us have a look, sweetie. If it's bad enough, we're going straight to the hospital. Okay?"

Riley hesitatingly nodded. If letting her go back to sleep, where she was safe from having to feel, was about to be as simple as shifting the waistband of her skinny jeans aside, that's what she was going to do.

The bruising down her hip and her outer thigh was quite extensive, painting her flesh in unsightly shades of purple and green. It felt very tender, though thankfully, nothing was out of place, nothing was broken. Not on the outside.

She didn't recall being struck…she couldn't remember just how forceful the blow had been. She did recall her anger, and for a brief instant she remembered the ache of her broken heart…and then…well, that brought her to this very moment, where she felt…

…where she felt…

. . . ?

"…Oh, Riley…"

Her mother started to cry.

While her father suspected a concussion, her mother suspected something worse. Something was wrong with her. Something was very seriously wrong, and Riley wasn't telling them.

Riley sighed.

"…Mom…Dad…Can I please just go back to sleep now? Please?"

Disgust bit her lip, counting down the seconds with silent, steady nods of her head. Her hands were still spread out in the air, preventing her two remaining colleagues from touching the Console.

The Monitor shut down. The lights in Headquarters dimmed.

Finally.

This horrible day was over.

With a loud sigh, she dropped her hands to her sides.

"…I hate seeing her like this." She half-crossed her arms, requiring one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. "The Console might as well be dead. It's not like we're going to improve the situation without Joy around anyway – we're only going to make things worse."

Anger grit his teeth. "Joy," he spat.

Disgust glared at him.

"We're not the ones who forcefully shut-down the Console. We're not the ones who cost us Fear, AKA Riley's sense and accountability. We're not the ones who literally broke EVERYTHING. And you're worried about our driving? What the hell is wrong with you people these days? You and Joy must have the combined IQ of a rubber tire."

"Do you really think this lousy attitude of yours is going to get us anywhere? Joy's aware she screwed up Anger. She's on it."

"Oh, sure. Excellent. I'm just positive she'll come whistling back into Headquarters with a perfect solution to our problems any second now. Not." He moved to the lever on the floor, sending the day's Memories down to Long-Term storage. "Joy has no business going about a solution alone. Just look at what happened the last time she tried to accomplish something on her own, Fear's partnership notwithstanding. Refusing to take any advice from me is what got us into this mess in the first place."

Disgust waved a finger in his face. "Umm, let's not forget how many bright ideas you've had in the past, genius. Joy's not the only one who's ever messed up Riley's head." She stared pointedly at him.

Heat waves distorted the air surrounding Anger's head. "Gonna fight dirty now, are we? You wanna dredge up all of the mistakes we've made throughout our stint up here? Because as I recall, Little Miss Princess, you were with me on that last one."

"So? Running away from home was still your plan in the first place, and at the time, it was the only choice that seemed better than Fear's idea to get himself out of here."

"…Fear…"

Disgust and Anger spun around, and their brows softened.

Sadness was seated on the sofa, staring up to the blank Monitor, waiting for Riley's dreams to settle over top of the darkness. Her head was held low so that her hair fell and hid her round, caring face from Disgust and Anger's view. She sighed audibly, now that the squabble had paused.

Sadness studied her fingers as they twiddled softly within her palms. She took a slow, deep breath. "…Somehow? I just know he'd know exactly what to do if he was here. He'd know how to fix this." She sniffled. "I just want things to go back to the way they were. I want Riley to remember what it felt like to feel. I want her to accept us again. All of us."

Disgust and Anger looked up to one another, their shoulders sagging. An implicit apology to one another drifted between their eyes.

Sadness cringed. "...I just wish Fear was still here."

The other two joined Sadness on either side of the couch, drawing their arms across both of her shoulders, letting her cry, but unwilling to let her cry alone.

It was so easy to forget about Sadness sometimes. She was so good at supporting the others that more often than not, they forgot that she needed support at times as well.

The team thought of her as one of the strongest influences Riley could have been blessed with, even if she was utterly helpless now. Sadness was the keystone that kept them all together, even during times as dark as this.

It was because of this unspoken understanding that seeing Sadness spill genuine tears came with humbling moments of silence, such as the one the three of them shared on the couch that night.

- • -

Joy told him everything.

She started from the beginning, explaining to Fear that if Anger hadn't sent the Memories of the accident down to Long-Term Memory so suddenly, she honestly would have attempted to forget the day in one blow. She told him that once she'd enlisted his assistance to send the Memories to the Subconscious instead, she'd only sworn her certainty to him in desperation, not in all honesty. There had been zero research executed on her part; having visited the Subconscious once when Riley was eleven had made absolutely no difference in her knowledge of this place.

"The only thing I can assure you of now," she continued, forcing herself to maintain eye-contact with his eyes as they darted across hers in odd, nervous spurts, "is that I had no idea how disastrous my plan was going to turn out. I didn't know how much harm this was going to cause. Really, I didn't. And Fear—if I had any inkling at all that you were going to be punished in my place…if I'd known how badly this was going to affect you…I never would've—I couldn't have brought myself to…"

Once again, to her dismay, her eyes were beginning to water, and she had to take her eyes away from the blend of distress and confusion from Fear's haggard face as he began to shift with discomfort before her.

"I'll never forgive myself for this. Never. I'll understand if you never speak to me again for as long as I—"

Fear's fingers fell delicately over her lips, silencing her. He gulped, subtly shaking his head. "Oh, please, Joy, don't cry. I'm just so glad you're here. I'm so happy to see you. I was starting to think no one would ever come." His airborne brow softened as he leaned back into the wall, taking his hand back with him.

Joy smiled sadly and dried her eyes on the backs of her hands. Her presence seemed to be all that mattered to him. She began to wonder if he'd so much as listened to her tale, or if it had been worth telling down here. She'd never seen him so severely distressed.

All at once, he proved that in spite of his inability to keep his eyes on her, distracted as he was by any invisible sights or sounds that seemed to surround him, he had, in fact, been listening. His eyes, enormous and alert, struggled to lock on to hers as he opened his mouth to speak.

"…I knew that if there was anybody out there who might be crazy enough to come down here, though, it would be you. You'll do anything for Riley. Even if it means having to fess up to a – to a big…" He recoiled, trailing off.

"…mistake?"

"Y-yeah." Fear swallowed, forcing himself to continue. "That's why I trusted you in the first place. I figured that even if your idea was going to get us in any sort of trouble, you'd be the first one to try to fix things. For Riley's sake. That's what you always do. You're so good at fixing things." Joy wasn't so sure she could agree. But she let him continue anyway, relieved to hear him speaking coherently. "Once they brought me down here, and I realized that you'd…y-you'd maybe…miscalculated a few things, I just…I just waited. Deep inside, I think I knew you'd come all along."

He blinked, and with that, the disturbing glow from behind his irises returned as he suddenly panned his eyes over Joy's shoulders, searching the background for some noise he thought he'd heard. "B-but at the same time, a part of me really wishes you never came at all, Joy. You don't belong here. The Subconscious is a terrible place." He flinched pitifully, wincing his eyes. "I-I…I'm so scared. I want to go home."

In spite of Joy's objections, Fear began to aggressively gnaw his fingers. She took his wrists again, pulling his hands away from his jaw. "You don't belong in the Subconscious either," she insisted. "I'm not leaving you here. You're coming back to Headquarters with me."

She tempted him with a smile, trying to stir up a little hope, but he simply refused it in his state, and he bowed his head. The eerie glow in his eyes seemed to temporarily override all of his reason, all of his sense, and all of his accountability; he took it out on himself with these strange new behaviours of biting and clawing. This seemed to be how the Subconscious had chosen to mutate him.

"But I can't," he panicked, tossing his eyes all about him, "I can't go home. I don't have a home to go back to. Riley doesn't want me anymore. She wants me to stay here. Here in this horrible, horrible..."

Joy had to issue her next words through her teeth. "Riley has no idea how badly she needs you."

Fear's whimpers quickly died away in his throat. He blinked up to her.

"…It's been awful without you, Fear. Just awful. I had no idea how crucial your role was in Headquarters until you were gone."

His brow rose inquisitively as he listened to her chilling words. The lights in his eyes died away; Joy suddenly had his rapt attention. "…Is Riley okay? Is she hurt?"

Joy couldn't be brought to so much as soften the subject, after all of the damage softening subjects had done. She simply shook her head no.

He drew away from her by a degree, his eyes dancing on the invisible air before his nose, no doubt imagining all of the terrible things that could have gone wrong in his absence. He screwed his eyes shut, shaking his head. He didn't want to dream up worst-case scenarios – he wanted to know what they had actually been. "What happened, Joy? What happened to her? Please, tell me."

Fear listened as Joy reluctantly spoon-fed a series of details to him. The little daily things Riley paid little to no attention to. The minor to major injuries she'd been sustaining. By the time she had reached her account of being struck by a vehicle on her way to school, Fear's stomach was quite sick.

Joy cringed, watching as his pupils contracted into quivering specks as she made herself explain to him that Riley had begun hurting herself. Here, he gasped sharply, clapping both hands over his mouth, shocked and repulsed. His gaze began to sink, coming to stare directly through Joy's abdomen where it hovered indefinitely.

"I've never seen Riley do anything so horrible to herself. None of us are able to stop it. Not even I have any control over it. She's left these terrible marks all over her shoulders, and she pulls her hair, and sometimes she bites herself. I had to knock her out to keep her from—"

"Stop! Oh, s-stop. Please. I can't take it anymore." He clutched the sides of his head. "Riley…oh, poor Riley..."

Joy nodded and began to stand up. "…So you see? You have to come back to Headquarters. You just have to. Riley may not understand how badly she needs you, but the rest of us do."

She offered her hand to him. Fear studied it apprehensively, his fingers itching to take it, but in the end, he softly shook his head. "…But Joy…even if she really does need me up there, I don't think it will matter. If she doesn't want me up there, then…then I'll just end up back down here. Right?"

Joy frowned. She regretfully considered his words and saw that he had a valid point.

"The Console wasn't working for me. Remember? Riley wants to take care of herself, whether that's the way it's supposed to be or not." His eyes began to mist over. "As soon as they find out that I'm not where I'm supposed to be, they're just going to bring me back to the Subconscious. I don't think I could bear to be dragged through those doors again, after catching one more little glimpse of Headquarters. I'd completely lose my mind. I'll go insane down here."

Joy fell to her knees again, obliged by Fear's piteous eyes to be patient with him and the situation. She wouldn't let him lower his head – she settled her fingers beneath his chin and lifted it back up, directing his eyes to hers. "…Listen to me. You belong in Headquarters. Do you remember what you told me, the night before they took you away? You're meant to serve a purpose. It was thanks to you that Riley did all of the things that kept her alive, healthy, and therefore happy, before she saw the accident at the rink. You belong in Headquarters. Not here."

Joy drew her hand back and turned around, studying the drawstring bag which still lay in a little heap where she'd dropped it, a few feet down the hallway.

"…We need to find a way to prove that to Riley."

Fear hopelessly shrugged his shoulders. "But how? If being struck by a car didn't do the trick, Joy, I can't imagine what will."

Joy lowered her eyes. "…Well…I had half an idea when I first came in here. I'm sure you're through listening to me – I wouldn't blame you – but I was thinking: if sending Memories of the accident to the Subconscious basement was the first step in creating this mess, maybe the way to undo it is to let them back out." She paused. "...What do you think?"

Fear lowered his eyes. They began to dart back and forth, as though he was reading an invisible transcript of the suggestion Joy had offered to him. Or, perhaps, as Joy suspected was more likely, he was reading through an unseen series of negative outcomes.

"…It really was a horrific thing that we saw," he said slowly. "I guess it only made sense to send it away to a place where Riley could ignore it, because it was so traumatic, and I think it hurt her even well before it was first sent to Long-Term Memory. But I wonder what could've been different if we'd all had a chance to try to process it instead?" He folded his arms across his chest. "…Maybe Riley needs to experience the rest of us in order to better experience…you?"

Joy's eyes softened.

...He was absolutely right.

"…But what'll happen if you just bring those Memories back out with you? You don't think it will hurt her, do you?"

There wasn't a positive answer to that question yet. Joy pressed her lips together.

"And…and what about all of the Memories I created? They make up the majority of our recollection of the accident, don't they? Purple Memories won't stay in Long-Term, and Riley won't accept them in Headquarters…What did you have planned for those?"

Finally, Joy sighed. "I'm sorry, Fear. Coming here to find them in the first place was the only part of the plan I had worked out. I'm really not sure what will happen, and…I have no idea where to start."

Fear wrung his hands.

"…Maybe it's really not such a good idea," Joy continued. "It was just the only thing that made sense in my head. It still does, to be honest…but I don't even know where they are. I've been looking for hours, now…I just kept getting lost. I don't know where to find them."

A dense, heavy silence fell upon the two of them.

It left Joy with no other choice but to contemplate giving up once and for all.

The two of them could remain prisoners in the Subconscious forever.

"…I-I do?"

She glanced up, surprised to have heard his voice speak first. "…Huh?"

Fear began to tremble. "I…I think I know where they are. The Memories of the accident. I..." He pinched his eyes shut for a moment, as though someone had just thrust a terrible image up to his face that he wanted nothing to do with. In fact, it was exactly what had happened. "...a long time ago, I found the part of the Subconscious where the thing representing them is kept. I...I think I remember how to get back to it."

A tiny spark of hope flickered to life in Joy's eyes.

"…Fear?"

"Yes?"

"...I know this is a lot to ask of you...and please, I don't want you to say yes simply to appease me…" She drew a deep breath. "...Do you think you could take me there?"

Fear was very hesitant to reply. Quickly, he cast his eyes down to his hands, tugging them furiously. He was frightened, he was unsure, and he was well aware he had already been used once. Joy knew she didn't deserve a second chance from him and she had no right to ask for any more favours.

Therefore, the slow, wary nod of his head left Joy completely dumbfounded, for she'd been steeling herself for a silent decline.

Fear closed his eyes for a moment. Attempting to forge together any scraps of courage was visibly painful for him. It went against who he was. That he was willing to so much as make an attempt at bravery in spite of his name made Joy's eyes well up all over again, but for an entirely different reason.

"…I think you're right, Joy," he whispered, looking up to her again. "I think you need to get those Memories out of here if you're ever going to fix Riley. I'll…I-I'll take you to them."

An earnest, ecstatic smile, the first of its kind after such a long span of having to force anything similar, rose from the fallen confines of Joy's heart, spreading itself across her face, igniting new life in her eyes.

Then, slowly, she stood once more, bending to take both of Fear's trembling hands into hers. His eyes, suddenly wide and filling with terror, locked tightly onto hers as she carefully guided him him to his feet, giving him time to compose his balance. She was sure he must have been crouched on the ground for days and days.

Before she let him take so much as one step from the security of the corner he had found, Joy threw her arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides as she whispered her gratefulness, her sincere remorse, and her familial love to him, to which Fear could only coo in response. He wanted to smile for her once she released him, but he couldn't manage it, terrified as he was to subject himself to the vulnerable corridors of the Subconscious and the horrors that festered beyond every shadow.

He seized Joy's hand in his own and gestured ahead with a shaky finger.

Together, Joy, Fear, and their abiding friendship headed vigilantly in that direction, collecting Joy's little sack as they passed it.

For Riley, Fear thought, in a fruitless attempt to bolster his own beaten and battered spirits.