XXX Chapter 9: The Clean-Up
Happy New Year!(?)
This isn't exactly a happy chapter (like any of them are), so idk. Still New Year's, though? Hopefully y'all are having a much better time than Janus or the others in this fic.
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Patton let out a small sigh as Logan and Remus left the room. Remus had a point about not technically doing anything wrong by taking Deceit back to his room, but… well, he didn't exactly trust Remus. Not that he thought Remus was going to hurt Deceit- it was more that, considering Remus's own admission that he couldn't even tell how long Janus was locked in his room, he was afraid that Remus would get distracted by something and forget to check on the unconscious side. He was afraid that Deceit would wake up while nobody was there, afraid that he would lock his room again, afraid that he would disappear, afraid that he might hurt himself.
But, well, they could still check on Deceit, right? That way, even if Remus lost track of time, Deceit wouldn't be left alone for too long.
"Well," he spoke, clapping his hands together. "Maybe we should go get Deceit's room situated, hm?"
Patton looked at both Roman and Virgil to let them know that he did expect them to follow him before he started walking, making his way toward the Dark Side of the Mindscape.
The Dark Side was below the Light Side, and in terms of layout, it was almost a mirror image, with the main difference being the number of rooms in the hallway (seeing as the Light Side now had four, while the Dark Side had two). Beyond the layout, though, the Dark Side was, well, Darker. Everything had a dark, desaturated quality to it that made it look like someone had applied a filter to the entire thing. It was warm, though, despite technically being a basement. Silently, Patton mused that Deceit probably liked to keep the temperature on the higher end, since he was a snake, after all.
It only took them about a minute of silent walking before they found themselves standing in front of Deceit's door, which was still mostly-open. This was probably the way things looked when Remus realized Deceit wasn't there and went to go find him in the Imagination. It was… kind of sad, really, seeing Deceit's room looking abandoned.
But, even still, Patton stepped forward and entered the room before switching the light on.
The first thing he noticed was how… grey everything looked. After that, it only took him another second to realize that pretty much the entire room was covered in dust, certainly much more than two weeks' worth. And as Patton quickly got rid of it all with just a simple wave of his hand, his heart ached. Deceit hadn't even bothered with waving it all away, something that would have only taken a few seconds. Instead, he'd just been living like that, which couldn't be good for his lungs (though, he supposed that breathing in dust was not, perhaps, at the top of the concerns list at the moment).
Other than that, the room wasn't exactly dirty. There wasn't any trash or plates or clothing lying around or anything, but that almost seemed worse. He had the sense that the lack of mess was more because Deceit wasn't taking care of himself than because he was cleaning up.
And then there was the bed. The blankets were crumpled up, and the sheets were partially coming off, and the pillows were strewn about, but that wasn't what caught Patton's attention. No, an untidy bed was easy enough to make.
But the dark brown stains on the bedding, ones he was pretty sure had once been bright red, just served as a reminder about why they were here, why they were doing this. And then he heard a choked gasp from beside him, and he turned to find Virgil staring at the bed with wide eyes, a hand covering his mouth.
Somehow, he hadn't realized that Virgil would probably be pretty upset about coming in here. Sure, he hadn't expected that they would find blood stains on Deceit's bedding, but really, he should have known that even the room itself was likely upsetting enough to the other man. But he hadn't thought about that. He'd just been thinking that giving Virgil a task would help keep him from getting too lost in his thoughts- he'd thought that doing something to help Deceit would soothe some of the guilt he'd been feeling and make him feel better.
God, Virgil hadn't even seen Deceit's cuts. Patton had only seen them by chance, and Logan was usually the one who changed the bandages (since Remus wasn't exactly the best at first-aid). Virgil knew about them, of course, since they'd told him, but seeing Deceit's blood like this… It probably made it feel much more real.
"Oh, Virgil, Kiddo-"
"I'M-" Virgil cut him off. "I'm gonna… go find some new sheets…"
And with that, Virgil spun around and left the room. Of course, they could just snap new sheets onto the bed, and both Patton and Virgil knew that, but… Well, the real reason Virgil wanted to leave was obvious.
He sighed.
"So…," Roman spoke up. "What are we supposed to do, exactly?"
"Just… look for sharp objects and stuff, I guess?" Patton answered uncertainly. "And… And we should probably get rid of the lock, too."
Roman frowned.
"… You know he can just summon something else, right?" he asked sadly. "We… We can take away his knives and whatever, but we can't stop him from just making more."
"I know," Patton admitted. "But… Maybe having them put away will help him not to think about it? And maybe he won't have enough energy to make more, at least, for a little while. Maybe we can convince him to stop during that time."
The princely side let out a long breath.
"I don't know, Padre…," he replied. "But I guess it won't hurt to try."
And with that, the two of them began to search through Deceit's things, forcing themselves to ignore the fact that Deceit would definitely hate them invading his privacy like this.
XXX
Searching through Janus's things was… odd, he supposed. Roman wasn't exactly one to snoop around in someone's stuff (he was a prince, after all), not unless he needed to, but perhaps this was a situation that warranted it. Deceit could get mad at them about it later, after he woke up.
He began looking through Deceit's bedside table, since it was the closest hiding place to the bed, and therefore, the most accessible to Deceit while he was likely spending a lot of time in bed (he'd seen the dust before Patton waved it away).
There were a handful of knives and razor blades thrown into the drawer, which he had expected. Some were slightly dull, while others were still dangerously sharp, and a few still had remnants of blood dried onto them. That made him feel more sick than the blood on the sheets did. With the bloodstains on the sheets, Roman could almost pretend that Deceit had been injured by something else (almost), and that made it a little easier somehow. But, staring at a bloody razor blade from inside Deceit's own drawer forced him to acknowledge the truth.
The rest of the drawer was a bit less expected. Sure, there was a bottle of normal over-the-counter painkillers, a chapstick, and a couple of other things one would usually store in their bedside table, but, quite frankly, there was a lot of junk in the drawer. Or, probably not junk, especially to Deceit, but Roman hadn't really expected the man to be the type to keep a bunch of odds and ends in his drawer like this. Rather, he'd expected something more utilitarian, with only necessary or useful things stored for later. Or maybe a pile of secrets and schemes. Instead, he found scraps of paper covered in words he didn't let himself read, broken pieces of old jewelry, a couple of pens that may or may not still have ink. He found a handful of little clay beasts that Remus probably made and an old pair of earbuds that looked a little too purple to be Deceit's taste. There were recognizable scraps of fabric in a ziploc bag, one of the pairs of gloves Deceit wore when they were younger, and a tiny wooden snake with paint that had almost all worn off.
At the very bottom of the drawer, there were a few old photos, the edges scuffed and bent, and a few scratches going across the images. Roman already felt more than bad about looking through the drawer, but he couldn't help but see what image was on the top of the stack.
It was a photo of Deceit, Remus, and Virgil sometime shortly before they were teenagers, all smiling into the camera. He couldn't see much else in the photo, since their bodies took up most of the frame, but he thought he could vaguely make out a television playing something behind Deceit.
When was the last time he'd seen Deceit smile like that? Or any of them, for that matter? Virgil's smiles, up until recently, had been becoming a more and more frequent occurrence, but it was hard to think of a time he'd smiled quite that brightly. Now, even when Virgil was practically beaming, there was still an edge to it, an edge of sadness and anger and doubt that still managed to taint it. But this photo was taken a long time ago, probably right before Thomas entered high school. Virgil hadn't been as, well, anxious back then. It's not like he saw him every day or anything, but the relationship between the Light and Dark hadn't been so bad that they never really saw each other until Thomas had been in high school for a while already.
He looked back at Deceit and found that his smile was the same. It was bright and happy, not sardonic or mocking or cruel. He was just a kid spending time with his friends.
When had that changed?
For some reason, he flipped the photo around and found neat handwriting adorning the back:
V + R + J BFFs!
Quickly, Roman put everything except the knives back in the drawer, doing his best to put everything back the way he found it, even though he knew Deceit was going to be able to tell someone went through his stuff.
He added the knives to the one's Patton had found, trying not to cringe at just how many there were.
XXX
