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In what was really a second but felt like an eternity, Thomas found himself back in the living room. A second later, the others appeared, and a moment after them, Janus was in front of him, still sitting on the floor. Now, though, he was blinking rapidly and looking around the room, turning his head from side to side.

"What just happened?!"

Thomas, who had still been standing in reality, knelt back down in front of Janus.

"Janus? Janus, bud, are you okay?"

The man stopped swiveling his head around and turned to face Thomas, though the blinking continued.

"T-Thomas?"

"Yeah, buddy, I'm here. It's gonna be okay," Thomas reassured him. "You're gonna be okay."

Tears started rolling down Janus's cheeks, and Thomas reached out to firmly yet gently grip his shoulder. Janus lifted a hand to hold onto Thomas's wrist, clinging to him like he was a lifeline.

"Thomas, I… I… I don't know what to do!" he exclaimed. "I can't- I-I can't…"

"It's okay, Janus. It's okay."

"It's not okay!" the man shouted. "How-How am I supposed to act now? I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore! Which one am I supposed to be?! What do you want me to be?!"

Thomas used his free hand to hold onto Janus's own unoccupied hand.

"You can be who you want to be," Thomas risked saying, hoping it didn't restart the problem. "You aren't only one thing, Jan. Each of the roles you've fulfilled is a part of you. And some of those parts might be bigger than others, and some of them might change, but they're still you."

"But. Which. One?!" Janus screamed, and the desperation in his eyes made Thomas flinch in guilt.

"They're all you, Janus. You soften the blows so I don't get hurt. You help me come up with lies to get out of sticky situations. You protect me. You do so many things," Thomas told him. "But you can still be a person outside of what you do for me."

"But-But I'm not a person!"

Thomas shook his head.

"You are," he denied. "You're all aspects of my personality, but each of you is a person too. You all have interests and quirks that are outside of what I make you do. Hell, Roman can even speak Spanish when I can't. You don't have to just do things when I tell you to. You don't have to sit and do nothing while you wait for me to need you. You can do things because you want to."

Janus just shook his head back at him.

"No! No, I don't have interests! I don't just do things! I can't!"

"You can, Janus," Thomas insisted. "And maybe you don't have any of your own interests right now, but you can find things you enjoy doing. You can be a person."

As Janus started to outright sob, he continued shaking his head, and Thomas let go of the man's shoulder so he could pull him into a hug.

He wasn't sure if he'd made the right decision or not. Maybe forcing Janus to act on his own volition all of a sudden was cruel. But he couldn't just let him continue to act, as Remus had put it, like a puppet. His sides had just started out as mere aspects of his personality, but by now, they were all people in their own right, even if they weren't entirely real, and Janus was one of them. He wasn't sure what made Janus different than them, why he was stuck following his whims, but Thomas wanted to fix it. He had to fix it.

And comforting Janus while he was overwhelmed was hopefully a good first step.

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Alright, that's the end of the first part. I'll start posting the next part soon, but you could probably also just leave the story off here (I was originally going to end it here).

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