Chapter Two

They/Them

After a tense moment filled with Virgil's intense aura, Anya came back into the room with Joan at her heels.

"Thomas are you-" They stopped cold in the middle of their tracks. "What the fucking hell?" They breathed. Thomas cringed. "What the fuck Thomas, you told her before me?" They asked.

"Actually… I wasn't going to tell her." Thomas said awkwardly. "Or anyone. Ever. Logan convinced me that I needed to because of some stuff that was going on."

"And I was correct. As usual." Logan added, adjusting his tie. "The situation became instantly less stressful the moment you were no longer worried about hiding it, correct Virgil?"

"Yeah… I guess so." He replied.

"See? Primary source. I was right." He said smugly.

"Maybe he really is okay." Virgil said.

"Hold up, what the fuck happened to Roman?" Joan asked.

"Oh him? He died." Tom said excitedly, sounding similar to the duke. Remus, in turn, smacked Tom upside the head with his mace, which he pulled out of nowhere.

"Hey! Only I'm allowed to be glad about my little brother's suffering!" He said crossly, swinging the mace back over his shoulder. Roman's sword made contact with it, causing an enormous clang to ring out through the room.

"You almost hit Virgil." Roman said in a voice that chilled everyone in the room to the bone. Indeed, Virgil had jumped back away from Remus's mace, which, by Logan's calculations, would have barely missed grazing his shoulder.

"Holy fuck, he's scary." Joan said. "Is this why you haven't been able to come up with ideas at all lately?"

"Most likely, yes." Logan cut in. "Now, I have a theory I'd like to run past you, because the others are doubting me."

"Wait what?" They laughed. "But he's the smart one isn't he?"

"Yeah, but something happened to him. He was kind of in the middle of explaining it, and we all got in an argument." Virgil shrugged in response. "He thinks someone cast a spell on us."

"The fuck?" They looked at Logan strangely.

"His explanation makes sense." Winston said fairly.

"Pardon me," Joan said to him, "but who the fuck are you?"

"Wisdom." He replied.

"Falsehood." Logan mumbled.

"Yeah so who is he then?" Joan asked the logical side, confused.

"That remains to be seen, but the idea of anyone having a side that encompases only wisdom is redicculous, so either way he's a liar." He replied stiffly.

"Maybe we don't ask Logan questions right now, I don't think he's feeling well." Patton said gently.

"You don't trust me." Logan said blankly.

"We- no, of course I trust you kiddo… I just don't-'' Logan held up his hand to silence Patton. Some sort of fleeting show of emotion flashed in his eyes as his face slid back into the listless expression he typically sported before he had gone missing.

"It's fine." He said flatly. "Don't hurt yourself thinking too hard, I don't care." And he sunk out. Logan went straight to his room and shut the door gently, locking it tightly. Why the hell was something this trivial making him feel like this? He already knew his idea would go over badly, and everyone else had voiced their concerns and doubts about it, either verbally or on their expressions, so why was it that when Patton expressed doubt it made him want to reach down his own throat and pull his own goddamned vocal cords out so he could never embarrass himself like that again? He threw himself down on his bed, and felt a small shock of pain shoot up his leg. He had left something in his pocket and forgotten about it. He knew what it was, though, and he didn't want to look at it right now. He took it out and blindly threw it across the room, noting listlessly that it landed somewhere near his bookshelf. He let his eyes travel around the other side of his room, trying to find something, ANYTHING, to distract him from the sensation filling up his chest. Now was not the time to be feeling strong emotions, he was fine!

"It's fine." Logan said flatly. "Don't hurt yourself thinking too hard, I don't care." And he sunk out, and he was gone. Patton shot a horrified look out to everyone else.

"I didn't mean to hurt his feelings." He whimpered. "Should I go find him?"

"No way." Remy scoffed. "You're not going to want to see him when he loses control."

"What?" Virgil snapped at him.

"Oh yeah, he's a mess right now, babes."

"Because you didn't let him out when you were supposed to." Caesar snapped violently at him. "I only agreed to any of this because you said no one would get hurt."

"Yeah, and no one did." He replied.

"News flash, Logan was hurt! In a lot of ways! And he's probably never going to be the same again!" He growled sharply. "You're a monster!" And he too left. Remy crossed his arms.

"What did you do to him? It wasn't just one escape room." Nate challenged.

"You're sure as fuck right about that." Remus agreed, nodding so rapidly his head appeared ready to literally fall off. Thomas looked to Joan and Anya.

"While they sort this out, you want to take this to another room so we can hear ourselves think?" He asked nervously. Anya nodded, and led them out of the living room.

"I'm only going to ask you one more time." Virgil snapped. Winston watched with a cool disdain as Nate, Virgil, and Roman cornered Remy, Roman's sword centimeters from his throat. Remy's stance became even more defensive and upset.

"I don't have to stand here and take this bullshit." He sneered. He was still for the moment, then looked down. "Wait, why can't I sink out?" Winston scoffed, standing up from the couch, and making his way over to the circle.

"I believe that's Logan's way of seeing to it that justice is served. And I, for one, agree. Remy, you and Caesar both need to face up to the consequences of your behavior, there is no excuse for what you did." He said serenely, gaining an appreciative look from both Virgil and Patton.

"You don't even know what-"

"Yes I do." Winston interrupted sternly. "And there is no excuse."

"There is though! We were helping him!" Remy snapped, setting his coffee down on the small table that was next to him. This simple act, just setting down the beverage, had both Nate and Virgil throwing themselves backwards out of his way. Even Roman had shifted his position to a defensive one, and Patton was shuffling backwards ever so slightly by the time he was standing up. "Logan," He began, "Was crying for help, and none of you heard him. We did, and we did what was necessary to help him, whether he realizes it yet or not." Picani, who had shot to his feet when the others were backing away, approached Remy slowly, his hands out as though he were approaching a wounded animal. When he spoke, it was with a soothing, calming voice that Winston longed to someday achieve.

"Remy, sit back down, please." Remy turned his furious glare on the therapist figment.

"Do not try to talk me down from this." He sneered. "I'm not wrong!" Picani gently began steering Remy away from the others and to a large armchair a few feet away.

"And we're going to listen to you, I promise. Just take a breath. You can't fight your way out of this situation, it'll make everything worse." He said, as Remy sat down in the chair with a huff. Picani gently placed the cup of iced coffee back in Remy's hand and perched himself on the arm of the chair. "Take a breath, and I promise we'll give you the chance to explain, okay?" He soothed him. Remy followed his advice and took a deep breath, letting it out in a quick, irritated puff. "There you go. Now why don't you explain to us your version of what happened?

"Fine." He took a sip of his coffee and started his story. "Logan was telling you the truth about what happened. I mean, of course he was, I don't know if Logan can purposely lie, I mean facts right?"

"So you aren't denying you kidnapped him?" Virgil asked slowly.

"No of course not." Remy waved him off. "I'm not aboutta call him a liar." Virgil visibly relaxed. "Anyways, like I was saying, yeah, Caesar and I kidnapped Logan, but what happened before that is just about as important as what happened after. Did any of you guys think to ask yourselves where the hell Caesar could have possibly gone after the light rejected him? Think for a second, there's a total of two places that aren't controlled by either the light or the dark. One is the grey domaine and you sure as hell know he didn't go there. So where do you think he went?" The gathered sides looked around uncomfortably at Roman, then back at Remy.

"Into a butthole?" Remus blurted, getting swatted by Virgil. Remy gave him a look of incredible unamusement.

"The carcass of a decaying wildebeest." Tom said seriously.

"That doesn't even make sense." Virgil said.

"What about you Sensei Wise-ass?" Remy asked, looking at Winston over the top of his glasses.

"I would assume he would have gone to the chaos rift, but the likelihood of him surviving there would be minimal on his own." He replied.

"I have a whole ass rift in Thomas's head?" Tom leaned forward, putting his chin in his hand.

"No asshat, it's my rift actually. You didn't even really exist then." Remy snapped. "Anyway, yeah, he went to the chaos rift. I guess he could've hidden somewhere in the inbetweens, but I don't think he has that kind of power, so that was kind of his only option. And you're right, he should've died, but I found him before the others did, and I decided to take a chance on him. I brought him up to the dream spire and-"

"Hold on a second." Nate interrupted.

"What the fuck Nate?" Remy asked.

"Where the hell is the chaos rift, what is it, who are the others, and why the fuck would they be strong enough to kill Caesar? He was our strongest guy before he left, and what the ever living fuck is a dream spire?" He asked in rapid fire succession.

"Chill, babes. I'm getting there." He said, holding up his hand and making a shooing motion. "I don't know how you guys don't know what the chaos rift is, but it's kind of like if there was just a rip in the sky and it's just basically outer space. There's ground and stuff, but like, you can't tell the difference between that and anything else around you unless you find a building. The sides that aren't really sides, like me and probably Logan, come from there originally. Deceit could probably survive there too, but most can't. You'd most likely be ripped apart, and if you still had any sort of meat on your bones it would be torn off by the solar winds so… yeah, not a great place for normal sides. The inbetweens are probably worse to try to live in. Only the rulers of Domains have the power to create anything in the inbetweens, or use powers at all. Emotions can't really survive in the chaos rift. Like at all. The solar winds would rip the flesh right off your bones. Only things like me or Logic would be able to survive there. You know, the things you're automatically born with. We change and grow and all that shit, but we can't go away, not even in the chaos rift."

"Then how did you block off Logan?" Patton asked, tilting his head to one side.

"He wasn't fully blocked off." Remy shrugged. "Thomas could still open doors and use silverware and all that stuff you teach yourself as a baby. The only way to get rid of logic is by your literal physical brain being destroyed. Stuff like dementia will do it I think. You'd have to ask Logan, but I think some parts of logic survive even that."

"So… Logan can't go grey?" Virgil asked slowly.

"Kind of… but not the way you think. He's been his equivalent of grey for a long time." Remy said, crossing his legs and sipping his coffee again.

"What do you mean?" Virgil asked, allarmed.

"I'm pretty sure he committed suicide, but I don't know what happened. We couldn't get him to talk about it. Even towards the end. One of you might be able to get through to him though." He shrugged.

"What are you talking about?" Virgil snapped.

"I think we would have known if Logan died." Patton said slowly and softly. "I know Logan, I would have noticed a difference even if he doesn't go full grey."

"But you didn't." Remy said. "Maybe you were too concerned with Deceit's first appearance to Thomas. Maybe you just didn't know him enough by then. But Thomas got more confused, and Logan stopped smiling. He became prone to violent outbursts with almost no warning. He became angry or frustrated easily, and showed almost no other emotions. Ever. And Thomas almost never has any idea what's going on anymore. Was Logan still doing his job, even in death? Yeah. He was. He's cool like that. But a ghost of Logan isn't Logan, and Thomas was suffering. So was Logan. Before Caesar came to the dream spire, I didn't know what to do about it. I was overworked already. Want to know why I'm gone all the time? I'm doing my jobs. I control Thomas's energy levels, I make him sleep, I design his dreams, run them through, keep him alert. I do everything you guys don't. I didn't have time or the ability to help, and you were doing nothing. There was no way to fix anything. And then Caesar showed up. His powers had somehow become raw, moldable, so I gave him the job of creating and managing Thomas's dreams. That gave me enough time to figure this shit out. I realized that if Logan was to feel extreme emotion for a long period of time, it could bring him fully back to life again, even if it was negative. I found out about Caesar's maze, and we went from there." He leaned back, sliding down in the chair a bit. "If you try to find fault in either of us, I'll fight all of you." Roman's arm shot protectively in front of Virgil. "But especially if you try to do something to Caesar. He owed me a life debt. He didn't have a choice."

"Okay, fair enough." Nate said. "But that doesn't explain what happened to him at all."

"Ask Remus. He went through the maze before, I haven't. I don't know what it's like." Remy shrugged. "I only know what the maze does. It gets in your head, reads your thoughts, takes the things closest to you and turns them against you. But I don't know how far it goes. I didn't even know the first room was a kitchen until Logan told us all. Caesar did, I guess, but I never saw." Remus shivered.

"It was so long ago." He said quietly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. His eyes were wide, but their usual manic gleam was gone. His mouth was still open in a smile, but he wasn't happy. "I don't- It was real, some of it. Not all of it. I don't know. It was so long ago."

"You okay Dukey?" Nate asked.

"Clearly." Judas bit sarcastically.

"Remus, kiddo, how about we bring you back to your room?" Patton took ahold of his upper arm gently. "You can even stay in my room if you like, I just think you should lie down for a bit." Remus nodded absently. "I'll talk to him." Patton said softly to everyone else. "Logan, I mean. If he went through whatever did this to Remus. He needs just as much support. Maybe more if he really did kill himself before." Virgil nodded. Hesitation flashed across his face for a moment before he clenched his jaw. "Bring him to my room." He'll be more comfortable there, and the anxiety aura is mostly with me now so it won't make either of you panic. It might hurt him to be in your room right now." Patton nodded in agreement.

"Thank you Virge, I know how hard that was for you." And he and Remus sunk down, away from everyone else.

"Even if that brought Logan back to life… do you really think it was worth it?" Virgil asked darkly, getting to his feet. Roman followed suit. "I think both Remus and Logan both would rather have died then go through all that. I don't care if you were trying to help. You're a monster." He too sunk out.

Anya had brought Thomas and Joan to the second downstairs sitting room (It really was a big house) to talk things over.

"Thomas," Joan began, "Thanks for telling us about this. I know it's weird and scary as fuck, yeah?" They smiled at him.

"Yeah." Thomas agreed nodding.

"Oh, hi Virgil, hi Roman." Anya waved at the corner of the room. Virgil and Roman were standing there quietly.

"Get overwhelmed?" Thomas asked.

"A little." Virgil admitted. "Not why I'm here though. I would've just gone to the woods."

"Not your room?" Thomas asked.

"Nah, Remus is there right now. He's… not okay." Virgil took a seat on the window ledge nearest him. Roman chose to stand at his side.

"When is he ever okay?" Thomas asked with a slight uncomfortable laugh.

"I mean… worse than usual. Patton had him go lie down, I told him to go to my room." He brushed his toe across the carpet.

"Wow, Virgil, I'm impressed." Thomas said.

"Awe, good for you, getting out of your comfort zone." Anya said.

"Hey Joan, I've got a question for you." Virgil asked, and Thomas noticed the effort Virgil was making to take attention off of himself.

"What up?" Joan asked in response.

"You said you know it's weird and scary for Thomas to be dealing with us..." He hesitated. "Something Logan said earlier… well... do you know what it feels like, or are you just guessing?"

"What do you mean?" They asked, the confusion on their face didn't look quite right.

"Oh for fuck's sake, just tell him!" A second Joan popped into existence behind the first.

"Holy crap." Thomas jumped. "Sorry. Wasn't expecting that." Joan flinched slightly, making a face like he'd been hit over the head with a plastic baseball bat.

"Yeah… neither was I. They don't listen to me." They said awkwardly.

"Yeah I get that" Thomas said. "So who's this?"

"This is Creativity, their name is Austin." Joan gestured to them. Austin, who was dressed in authentic-looking silver knight armor and a long, deep purple cape. There was a large silver sword with purple and white worked into the hilt, hanging off his waist.

"Hi Austin." Thomas waved.

"Hi Thomas!" Austin beamed and waved back.

"Okay, I guess you all can come out." Joan called out. And then there were four. The two new ones were very clearly Logic and Morality. One was in a sharp-looking business type suit in shades of white and brown, with their hair slicked and combed back in a very unJoan-like and professional style. The other was wearing a large sweater that fell past their fingers in a very soft yellow color. They had a beanie on in the same color, and they were smiling brightly.

"Hi Thomas!" They trilled. "I'm Arden!"

"I like your name." Thomas said honestly.

"Thanks!" Arden gushed.

"Morality?" He guessed. They nodded excitedly. "And… Logic?" He guessed, gesturing to the other.

"Precisely." Logic nodded. They offered their hand to Thomas to shake. "My name is Aftan, pleasure to finally meet you."

"You too." He replied.

"Dang. Both of my best friends have like legit super powers, and I'm just kinda… here." Anya said, sounding almost just slightly bitter.

"Nonsense." Aftan said stiffly. "Neither Joan nor Thomas could properly function, or accomplish the things they do without the support of you and their other friends behind them. Human beings, loathe as I am to admit it, do run on emotions." Anya smiled.

"Thanks." She said.

"Speaking of not functioning, where's Adrian?" Austin asked.

"Did you really expect them to come out without being prompted?" Aftan asked. They shook their head. "They're most-likely busy stressing over how Thomas and Anya will react."

"So Adrian is your anxiety?" Thomas clarified.

"Yup." Joan responded. "They're typically pretty chill but this is scary shit."

"I believe you." Thomas agreed.

"Adrian, come meet Virgil!" Joan said. "You always said you'd like to." Slowly, ever so slowly, Joan's anxiety side rose up. And they were adorable. They had on an oversized, grey sweater and black, baggy pants. They wore a black and grey striped beanie and had just a swipe of black eyeshadow under their eyes.

"Hi…" They started uncertainly.

"Oh my gosh, you're so cute." Thomas squealed. They blushed scarlet.

"No." They protested.

"Uh, yeah you are." Anya agreed. Virgil snortend.

"What are you laughing about? You're just as cute." Joan poked at him. Virgil too turned red.

"I- pu- I'm no- I hate everything about this." He sputtered, causing most of the room to laugh. Virgil's head shot up. "Something's wrong." He said. Not half a second later, the door to the second sitting room swung open and Patton was standing in the doorway, looking panicked.

"Thomas, you have to stop him! Logan's trying to go over to the dark sides!"