XXX Chapter 3: The Search
Okay, so I really meant to update this days ago, but there's been a lot going on in my life recently (both good and bad), and I just really haven't had the time. And I've actually been waking up at a decent hour in the morning, so by the time bedtime rolls around, I'm too tired to post.
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They hadn't been searching for very long yet, but Roman could tell that Remus was getting antsier and antsier with every minute they walked, even though the man was being uncharacteristically silent. Roman knew they were going in the right direction- he could tell that Deceit was, in fact, somewhere in his half of the Imagination the moment they entered, but… something about that sense did feel a little weird. Usually, his sense of where the other sides were when they were here was pretty clear to him- that was how he found the others whenever they got separated- but this time, his sense of Deceit's location was a bit… blurry? He didn't say as much to Remus, but he could really only tell that they were going in the right direction, not exactly where they were going.
The walk ended up being rather long, though it was made shorter through his control of the space, Roman bending the land so that their steps covered more ground and brought them closer to the direction they were being guided in.
Eventually, they started reaching the farther stretches of the Imagination. Roman didn't come here a lot, mostly because the Imagination expanded pretty constantly, and he'd rather go adventuring and come up with new ideas rather than wander around at the edges of his creativity, where the ideas were more sparse. It wasn't like the farther reaches of the Imagination were empty, though- rather, there were still woods and flowers and an ocean- but the ideas here were smaller ones. Things repeated, and there wasn't really anything exciting. The gaps were filled in with simple concepts like 'flowers' and 'grass', and much of it wasn't designed intentionally. Going to the edges was something that was more likely to give Roman creative block than new ideas.
As they started getting closer and closer to the farthest reaches of the Imagination, Roman started to feel a little bit more concerned. He never let the others come this close to the edge, considering how close it was to the Unconscious part of the Mindscape. They were still a good way off, and he'd made sure to place some obstacles (a cliff, a forest, and an ocean with currents to send things back toward the shore) as safety measures, but it was still far closer to it than he would like for any of them to be.
The Light Side was the Conscious part of Thomas's mind, the part that he knew about and listened to. The Conscious's input was direct, and it was easier for Thomas to access its content. The Dark Side was the Subconscious, the part of the mind that tried to influence Thomas outside of his own awareness, hidden away but still there in many ways. It was hard for Thomas to fight against it because he didn't even know what he was fighting against most of the time. The Unconscious, however, was… nothing. It was the place forgotten memories were sent, the place where things faded away. It was also, as best as they could tell, where the sides had formed before emerging into their separate sides of the Mindscape, and it wasn't somewhere they should ever have to return to except under extreme circumstances. Past Roman's ocean, as the waves gradually shifted from water into something else (something far more murky and undefined), the Unconscious took over.
He knew Deceit couldn't have possibly gotten that far. There were too many things in the way for him to have ended up there. A side couldn't just wander into the unconscious. But the fact that Deceit had even come this close was unnerving (especially when he considered how much longer it would have taken Deceit to walk all the way here. How many hours had the man spent walking around in the Imagination, and why?). He could only hope that the deceitful side wasn't up to anything too sinister.
Now wanting answers himself, Roman continued to lead his brother in the right direction. Meanwhile, Remus started grinding his teeth again, swerving his head back and forth as he searched. With each step that brought them closer to the first barrier, Roman felt that sense of apprehension increase. It was like a rubber band waiting to snap, a predator lying in wait for its prey to wander within the range of its claws. Was this the feeling Remus had been describing earlier?
Then, almost suddenly, Roman realized that they were arriving at the first barrier- the cliff. And the sense of Deceit's location was much stronger than it had been, but he still didn't see him, and he could tell that Remus didn't see him anywhere, either. And he also didn't seem so happy about Roman bringing him to a random cliff, one without a snake in sight.
"Roman, where is he?" Remus asked sharply. "I swear, if you just brought me here to fuck with me-"
"Can you! Just. Shut up for a second."
Roman knew that snapping at his brother was not, perhaps, warranted in this situation, especially considering the fact that he'd been almost silent this entire time, but he could feel the edge of something pulling in his mind, like a piece of paper he was trying to grab, but it was stuck under an object too heavy to move. He pulled at the idea with a sharp tug and tried to focus on his sense of the world around him. At first, his hand slipped from the paper's edge, and then he ripped off the very tip of the corner, allowing it to escape his grasp yet again. Finally, he tried coaxing it out, sliding the page by fractions of an inch until he could get a better grip on it.
And that's when the feeling of a rock hit him in the stomach.
They were right by the cliff.
Deceit was somewhere close by, very close by.
There was nothing up here for him to hide behind, only wildflowers and tall grasses.
They were right by the cliff, and Deceit couldn't possibly be hiding anywhere nearby.
"Shit."
Without telling his brother his conclusion, Roman rushed toward the cliff's edge, knowing that Remus was following right behind him despite the lack of an explanation. Being just careful enough to avoid falling, he knelt down and started scanning the ground far beneath them.
And when he had found what he was looking for, he couldn't help but cover his mouth in shock.
The meadow they had walked through continued down at the bottom, but there was a line of rocky terrain immediately at the cliff's foot. The stone was a pale grayish-brown color.
Even from so high up, black and yellow stood out from it like a sore thumb.
"No," he heard Remus's voice next to him. "No no no…"
Roman still felt like he was in shock, his emotions put on standby, as if nothing was wrong. He was just on a walk with his brother, admiring the flowers and taking a break to sit for a while. Everything was fine, and there was absolutely no one injured at the bottom of a cliff. But he could tell that Remus's emotions had become a tornado in seconds, and considering his brother's track record, he wouldn't put it past him to jump down without thinking and get himself hurt as well.
And so, Roman slowly rose back up to his feet and faced his brother, putting a hand on each shoulder and leading him a few steps back, practically pushing him the entire way. He could see the horror, the real, unadulterated fear on his brother's face, and the quick rise and fall of the man's chest. He looked like Virgil, but he wasn't Virgil. If Roman wasn't being held in this state of icy calm, seeing Remus like this probably would have made him freak out as well- Remus didn't feel fear, he created it. But in that moment, Roman held his brother's shoulders in a firm grip and looked him in the eye.
"Remus. Remus, look at me," Roman ordered. "I'm going to take us down there, and we're going to check on Deceit. Do you understand me?"
Remus wasn't looking at him, his gaze focusing on the edge instead, but he nodded.
"Okay. I'm going to lower the ground. Do not move until I tell you to."
And in a few moments of Roman focusing, the ground around them began to slowly shrink down toward the earth below. Remus was agitated, and Roman knew his brother wanted to go faster, but Roman didn't want to risk collapsing the rest of the cliff by mistake by rushing things. So, he carefully brought them down, and before he'd even finished (let alone given him the okay to move), Remus had jumped off, albeit from a safe enough height. He immediately ran over to the collapsed figure before them, and Roman followed behind soon after.
He saw Remus drop to his knees beside him as he was still jogging over.
"JAN! JAN, WAKE UP!"
As Roman got closer, he realized that Remus had started shaking the other side.
"Hey! Don't- Don't do that. You could end up hurting him more," Roman told Remus as he reached them, kneeling down beside the two.
Remus had a wild look in his eyes and a shakiness throughout his entire body, and his breathing was beginning to grow harsh.
He was panicking.
"Remus, breathe in for 4, hold for 7, and out for 8," Roman told him. "I need to check the damage, and you need to calm down. Okay?"
He wasn't sure if Remus heard him or not this time, but Roman was quickly realizing that they had no idea how long it had been since Janus had fallen from the cliff. Possibly, he could have been there for days, but at a minimum, he must have been here for at least a few hours, considering the amount of time that they had been looking for him. And the fact that Janus wasn't healed enough to be awake by now was definitely a concern.
This was an emergency, and he had to prioritize. So, Roman temporarily tuned his brother out and focused on the figure on the ground in front of him.
Deceit was definitely not conscious, and therefore, not reacting to anything around him. He could already see bruises painting the man's face in reds and purples so deep they were almost black, combined with a multitude of bloody scrapes. Most of Deceit's body was obscured by his clothes, so he couldn't see the full extent of the wounds, but he was fairly certain that the same patterns repeated themselves beneath his clothes. Blood was staining one of the bright yellow gloves, while the other was obscured by the man's own body, as his arm was twisted beneath it. One of Deceit's feet also looked like it was bent unnaturally, and he had the (likely correct) suspicion that the man had a few broken bones.
And then he noticed the dark, flaking, dried ring of rust surrounding Deceit's head. And carefully, he tilted the other side's head a bit to see that the back of his skull was stained in gooey, half-dried blood, the mess clinging to his hair and making it hard to see just how bad the wound was.
Fuck.
Deceit wasn't waking up, wasn't healing, and he had a head wound, and he'd been here for who knew how long. Was he even breathing?
There wasn't much he could do for Deceit right there, and they had to take him back to the Mind Palace. But as he shifted some of his attention back toward Remus, he discovered that the man had started mumbling and pulling so tightly onto his hair that he was probably going to start pulling chunks of it out soon.
"Fuck, I should have checked on him sooner, I knew he's been acting weird, fuck fuck fuck, what am I supposed to do…?"
"Remus," Roman spoke sharply, much too sharply toward someone in so much distress, but sharp enough to catch his attention. "Deceit needs help. We have to bring him back to the Mind Palace, but I need you to hold him carefully while I bring us back. Can you do that?"
Remus blinked at him, his eyes glazed with panic, but after a few moments, he nodded.
"Okay. Pick him up, but very gently. He has a head wound and some broken bones, so you can't jostle him too much."
Once Deceit was securely in his brother's arms, Roman gripped the man's shoulder and focused on bringing them back. At the last second, he reached down and grabbed Deceit's hat, which had, of course, fallen off. It wasn't exactly the most important thing in that moment, but leaving it there felt… wrong, somehow. Now that he had an exact destination in mind, it wasn't hard to bring them to the right location.
They appeared in the living room of the Light Side, where the other three had apparently been sitting on the couch.
And a second later, everything went silent.
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