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Here's Remus's thoughts. Once again, lots of potential triggers here.

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Remus felt like his heart was being torn apart by some kind of monster with sharp teeth and pointy claws. He wasn't really sure what kind of monster with sharp teeth and pointy claws since he wasn't exactly feeling very creative at the moment- but that wasn't important right now.

His best friend had not been doing well, and it was breaking his heart.

He'd thought that Janus had been doing better since the others started to really accept him. He had been doing better for a while, better than he had been in years, and Remus had hoped that maybe, just maybe, Dee would be happy and stay happy (and Remus knew that wasn't how these kinds of things worked, but he had been hopeful nonetheless).

But of course, that isn't what happened.

He could still remember the first time, the first time Dee got really sad and didn't want to come out of his room. It had been a little while after Roman had kicked him out, and Remus had gotten bored. He wanted to play something with Dee, but he realized he hadn't seen him in a while.

When he went to the other side's room, he'd found the door locked, but he hadn't really cared. He broke the door down without so much of a thought and waltzed on inside.

And he'd found Dee crying while he curled around a pillow.

And Remus hadn't understood then that something was seriously wrong. He'd just thought that Dee needed some cheering up, so he dragged him outside and made him play and showed him things he made until Dee looked like he was feeling better.

He'd started to find Dee like that more and more as time went on, though there were probably times it happened and he didn't notice (Remus had a tendency to get distracted, after all, so sometimes he didn't even realize how much time had passed between things).

Dee seemed happy after they found Virgil, but that was only sometimes. Other times, Dee was even sadder than before, though that probably had less to do with Virgil and more to do with them becoming teenagers.

But regardless of the reason, Remus kept finding Janus hiding away in his room more and more, and most of the times he broke the door down, he found that Janus either was or had been crying. And usually, his response to this was to pull Janus out of his room and make him do something to get him out of his head, even if it was something silly and stupid and pointless.

He usually wouldn't mention it, either to Dee or to Virgil. He didn't tell Virgil because he knew that Dee didn't want the other side to know, and he didn't talk about it with Janus because he thought Janus didn't want to talk about it. He thought that Janus's pride would prefer that Remus pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary, that nothing was wrong.

Maybe he should have at least tried to talk about it. Maybe his attempts to make Dee feel like he wasn't being pressured made him think he didn't care. But it was too late to change that now.

After Virgil left, though, things became even worse. Janus spent more time feeling bad than he did feeling okay, and Remus found himself breaking down Dee's door so often that, sometimes, he hadn't even gotten around to fixing it before he next felt the need to check on the snake.

That day he'd found Janus after he took all those pills would probably stay burned in his mind for the rest of his life. Virgil had only been gone for a month or two at that point, and at first, Remus just thought that Dee needed some time to himself. But Dee just continued to stay in his room, even after an entire month passed. Had Remus realized so much time had passed, he would have already broken down the door before then, but he hadn't. Then, when he started trying to force the door open, Janus started yelling at him, screaming for him to go away (and he tried not to think about all the hurtful things Dee yelled at him because he knew he hadn't really meant it), and even though part of him knew he shouldn't have, he decided to leave Janus alone a little longer.

But a month and a half was long enough, so that was when Remus barged in again.

When he did, he found Dee laying in his bed, his eyes red. He hadn't noticed at first, but Dee had been having trouble sitting up and staying upright. And so, this time, when Remus tried to pull him out of the room, Deceit ended up falling onto the floor, his unwilling legs refusing to hold him up properly.

And when Remus tried to hoist him upright, he found a bottle that had been knocked to the floor along with the man- a pill bottle, one that was empty.

And Remus asked him what it was for. He jokingly said that Janus shouldn't do drugs without him (even though the back of his mind was screaming about what he knew the pill bottle had really been for), but Janus only snapped that it wasn't important and that it was none of his business. And then Remus continued to press him for what the empty pill bottle was doing there, and Deceit told him that he just hadn't gotten around to throwing the bottle away once he finished it. He said that he had a headache and hadn't felt like getting up just to throw the bottle into the trash can. Except Remus read the label on the bottle, and he knew that these pills weren't the kind that Dee took when he had a headache, and Dee looked so sick, so he kept pressing.

And then Janus broke down into screaming sobs, telling him to leave, telling him that he should just go follow Virgil. He told him that he knew Remus would leave him eventually, so he should just do it already. And when Remus stayed, he told him that he wanted him to go, said he hated him and never wanted to see him again. Deceit tried to spew hateful lies at him again, hoping it would make Remus leave him alone, but even still, he stayed this time.

And Remus asked again, and finally, Janus yelled that it didn't matter because it didn't work anyway, and that was enough confirmation for him to accept what had happened.

He hadn't realized that Janus had just taken the pills a few hours earlier (or that he had only briefly awakened from unconsciousness) until the other side suddenly passed out in his arms while sobbing- until Dee started throwing up and convulsing and he wouldn't wake up. Before then, he had assumed that Janus had taken the pills a while ago, and he had already recovered (he had to shake himself to stop the morbid thoughts of his friend's corpse laying on his bed, motionless, motionless, dead).

And he hadn't really known what to do or how to help, and he didn't have anyone else to ask for help, either. The others weren't going to help (or at least, that was the way it seemed back then, and maybe then, it had been true), and he knew that Janus would hate for them to see him like this (and he was pretty sure that was the case even now).

All he had really been able to do was keep an eye on him and try to make sure he ate and drank a little until he woke up, and Remus still isn't sure how much time passed before he did. And when Dee did wake up, he was still confused and sick, but once he was well enough to do so, he asked Remus to leave him alone.

After that, Remus had tried to talk about it, but Janus never would. He seemed to prefer pretending that he had just had a really bad case of the flu. Remus wasn't sure how much of what happened Dee did really remember (he had been really out of it, even before and after he passed out) and how much of his 'amnesia' was pretend.

Remus hadn't been able to do anything else to help.

Janus wouldn't let him help.

All he could do was watch.

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