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Head's up: I recently edited part of 'Aftermath' so it fits with this chapter. It wasn't a big edit though.
Also, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.
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Deceit stole his trusted friend Snakey from the Imagination a few days after he started leaving his room again. It wasn't difficult. Back then, the imagination wasn't very contained, and the mind palace was a lot less of a house with defined walls and more of a shifting gradient back then. He was able to sneak in easily without Creativity or the others ever noticing.
He was glad to have someone to talk to, but if he was honest (ha), he missed having someone who would answer instead of just staring at him all the time. Of course, he loved Snakey, appreciated not being alone, but he still felt alone a lot of the time. Snakey could only do so much to fill the hole that Creativity's sword had cut into his heart, the hole that had already been starting to rip open.
He came across Dark Creativity when Thomas was around twelve.
And the thing was, Deceit had never been able to hate Remus, resent Remus, even though he quickly found out that Remus was half of the Creativity that banished him. Maybe it was because Remus was rejected, too. Or maybe he was just really that lonely.
"Hello!" the side had greeted him when Deceit found him loitering around his room. "I'm Dark Creativity, but you can call me Remus!"
Deceit had been surprised to see anyone, especially a new side. And that surprise made it take a moment for him to realize that the side in front of him was Creativity.
"What's your name?"
The other side, Remus was looking at him with a wide, exaggerated grin. Deceit glared back.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Me?" the boy questioned, tilting his head. "Ah, my brother and the others kicked me out. Apparently, they didn't like my idea for fire piranhas."
"Brother?"
"Yeah, Roman!" Remus replied. "He's such a stick in the mud!"
Deceit paused before asking his next question, but asked it nonetheless.
"... But if you're Creativity, what happened to…"
"Oh, I'm Dark Creativity!" he explained. "Me and Roman split! Like someone who got shoved in a knife fan!"
Deceit had an idea of why Remus had been sent away.
"So, what's your name, then?"
It was a long time before Deceit truly understood what Remus meant by saying that Creativity split, but at that moment, he decided to accept the other side in front of him. Remus had been rejected, just like he was, so maybe they could be rejected together.
"... Deceit."
He and Remus hadn't exactly started getting along too well for a while, though. Remus was difficult and sometimes scary, and apparently Deceit was too grouchy. But eventually, the two of them reached an understanding and got closer and closer. Still, even though it was a tough path to get there, Deceit preferred that over what he had with the others. Even when they didn't get along, Remus would listen to him, and he wouldn't accuse Deceit of being bad or call him a villain. And Deceit didn't do that to Remus, either, even as his ideas gradually became more morbid as Thomas grew older and started learning more about the darker parts of the world.
The two of them found Virgil sometime after Thomas had turned fourteen.
He had been crying in a dark corner of the mindscape, and at first, the sound reminded Deceit so much of Morality that he nearly left, thinking it could be him. But after a second of looking, he knew that this side couldn't possibly be Morality. No, sweet, perfect, little Morality would never dress like that.
And so, Deceit and Remus went over to him and knelt down, making the crying side flinch and look up at them.
"Hello," Deceit greeted neutrally.
"Yeah, hi!" Remus added. "What's up with the waterworks, buttercup? Did someone stab you with a really big knife?"
The new side started rubbing the tears out of his eyes.
"N-no…"
Deceit felt a hard stone in his stomach as he took a guess about why this side could be crying, especially once he saw that Remus's comment wasn't merely a random morbid thought. Memories of his own tears floating through his skull as he placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Did Creativity cut you with his sword?"
And that just made the side's crying renew itself with vigor.
"I-I… Th-They were so n-nice at first, and-and I thought…," he sobbed. "But then-then they s-said I was being s-sc-scary and m-mean and that I was h-hurting Thom-Thomas! And-and then he c-cut me with his s-sword, and…"
He cut himself off with unintelligible cries for a minute before Deceit next understood what he was saying. And those words were most definitely something he understood.
"I-I just! I just wanted t-to keep Thomas s-safe!"
And Deceit knew then and there that he would protect this side from the others. He hadn't felt this immediate need to protect with Remus- though he would have protected him if the need arose, Remus was more likely to be the thing someone needed protecting from- but as he watched this side crying, crying tears so similar to his own, he couldn't help but let his old protective aspects surge to the surface.
"Hey, it's okay…"
At the time, Virgil hadn't known that Deceit's words weren't completely true. He hadn't known that, by then, Deceit had started to mostly speak in lies and that he really didn't think anything about the situation was okay. But regardless, Deceit's soothing words eventually calmed him down. And eventually, he introduced himself.
"... I… I'm Anxiety."
And Deceit knew then that the three of them would always stick together, as the ones the others rejected.
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