XXX Chapter 10: The Drag
Bringing Deceit back to his own room didn't help.
His leg healed, his arm healed, his wrist healed, his bruises faded and hid cuts slowly turned to scars. But still, Deceit did not wake up.
Logan had done some strange tests, and he didn't seem too happy about what he found.
And eventually, they started discussing what they should do if Deceit never woke up.
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It had been over three months since they found Janus, now, and still, he wasn't awake. He didn't even show any signs that he might wake up.
At first, he just looked like he was sleeping. They were making sure he drank and ate as well as they could, and they were moving him around a bit, so for a little bit, once the injuries started healing, he looked almost okay. Just sleeping.
But slowly, Janus started to lose muscle mass, and even though they were pouring food down his throat, he seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and it had an unhealthy quality to it. His hair was getting longer, and none of them were sure if they should cut it or not, so it just laid limp and shaggy against the pillow. His breathing started getting more shallow, and at some point, Logan had deemed it necessary to have Roman conjure up an oxygen mask to help him breathe better. Sometimes, he'd throw up the food they managed to get him to swallow, and they weren't sure if it was because they were doing something wrong or because he couldn't digest it.
He looked dead.
He looked dead, and sometimes, it was only the small amount of condensation on the oxygen mask that convinced him that he wasn't, because his chest barely moved anymore. Janus's body was shutting down, and Remus had to convince himself that it wasn't, even though he knew it was, had to convince himself that he wasn't going to wake up to find that the mask wasn't foggy anymore, that he would touch Janus's skin and find it cold, that he would leave the room and come back to find his door gone.
And at this point, maybe it would be better if Janus died. If he died, he would come back, and he'd be okay again. And yet, Remus couldn't help but dread the thought. If Janus died, he would be gone, and no one would know how long it would be before he came back. Remus had died a handful of times in the Imagination, and it seemed like the amount of time it took to regenerate was partially-dependent on how bad the injury that killed him was. Most of Janus's injuries had healed, but he probably had an injury in his brain (or whatever their equivalent of a brain was), and they had no way of knowing how bad it was. Would it take him a long time to come back? What if he was gone for months, or even years? He wouldn't even be able to see Janus in all the time he was gone.
And what if he didn't ever come back, or if he came back different? What if the brain injury messed up his memories, and he didn't remember anything, didn't remember him anymore, even after he regenerated? What if a brain injury was too much for the Mindscape to fix, and that's why he still wasn't healing, and the Mindscape still couldn't bring him back, even if he died? Or what if the Mindscape just decided to give them all a giant 'Fuck You' and decide that sides dying was permanent now?
Usually, Remus thrived in uncertainty. He loved not knowing what would happen, loved being spontaneous, and loved catching everyone off-guard. But he hated being uncertain about this. He hated not knowing if Janus would ever be okay.
And he hated that, despite his uncertainty, they were probably going to be forced to gamble anyway.
XXX
Virgil felt his feet taking him toward the Dark Side of the Mindscape, the route now familiar once again. At first, he visited Janus almost every day, despite Remus's glares, but it had been about 6 months now, and it wasn't like he didn't care anymore, but at a certain point, he had to do other things. So now, he would visit once or twice a week, still pretty often, but maybe not as often as he should, considering that he wasn't that far.
It's just… it was hard. To begin with, Janus's ability to run his jobs on autopilot was beginning to falter, and that left the rest of them to try to fill in the gaps. It still wasn't as bad as it would be if he died, but it was certainly becoming an issue. Thomas was starting to grow more careless in little ways, things like not really checking before he crossed the street or deciding he can stay up just a little longer just a bit too often. Right now, Virgil was the one to step in for a lot of it, since he would normally be the one to give Thomas a jolt of anxiety so he'd pay attention, anyway. But that only worked for issues of immediate self-preservation. He can warn Thomas to pay attention to his surroundings, but making him anxious about staying up late only made him too anxious to actually fall asleep. He couldn't scare Thomas into performing self-care, and with a weakened desire to take care of himself, Thomas was having a harder and harder time convincing himself to follow Logan's schedules.
And, well, then there was the fact that visiting Janus always made him feel like garbage. Remus hadn't spoken to him in a while now, just glaring and temporarily leaving the room while he visited, and Virgil didn't really try to talk to him, either. So, unless one of the others happened to want to visit Janus at the same time, he would just be left alone with the unconscious side.
Janus… really wasn't looking so great. He looked increasingly ill as time went by, and Logan kept adding little machines that were supposed to help him but didn't seem to make him improve at all. He didn't like to acknowledge it, but he knew that, along with Deceit's decreasing influence in the Mindscape, Janus's bodily functions were shutting down as well. And that… that wasn't good, he knew.
His heart thumped with the idea that Janus was probably going to actually die from this. He never told any of the others, but the fact was, Remus wasn't the only one who had died before. Virgil had died once when they were teenagers, a stupid accident when he snuck into the Imagination and tripped over a root and landed wrong. The thing was, it happened to coincide with one of Remus's accidental deaths, and the injury was minor enough that it didn't take him long to regenerate, so no one found out. The sudden loss of his influence was chalked up to Remus being out of commission, and Janus had been too focused on what happened to Remus to even notice he'd been gone (which stung, but it wasn't like Virgil wanted Janus to know about what happened).
Dying sucked. The actual event had been quick, or at least, it felt quick. He hit his head and fell unconscious almost immediately, and then he woke up in his room a while later. But in the time between falling unconscious and waking up, he was… somewhere. He didn't know where exactly, and it was hard to describe, but it wasn't pleasant. He felt like he was underwater, and yet not, the entire time, something filling his mouth and lungs until he suffocated, and yet, he could still breathe. His limbs were both gone and flailing, and his mind was filled with a confused haze that could barely hold onto anything for longer than a moment. His eyes were open (or were they?), but he couldn't see, and everything around him was both warm and cold at the same time, and none of it made sense.
When he'd woken up, he almost believed it was all just a nightmare- a terrible, confusing nightmare- but Remus had described similar things when he came back (albeit, with less fear about them).
He didn't want Janus to have to go through all that. Granted, he didn't want Janus to have to go through any of this either. If they kept waiting, Janus would either recover (which was looking less and less likely), or he wouldn't, and he would die. And even if he woke up, it would be a long time until he was okay again, if he ever would be. Neither possibility was good, and Virgil hated it.
And then, every time he looked at Janus, there was that guilt- that guilt that had been there ever since the twins had returned with Janus and Virgil realized that the man was actually hurt, but which had roared into a storm after Remus's accusations.
Part of him knew he wasn't entirely to blame for this, but at the same time, the fact that he knew his own actions had hurt Janus made it very hard to silence the thought that he had caused this. Remus said that all of this really started when Virgil left, and it seemed like the court debate had been the trigger (though he didn't know what exactly had been the last straw that made Janus try to kill himself, months after it happened). And Virgil didn't exactly regret leaving, but maybe… maybe he could have done something differently afterward. Maybe he could have tried to patch things up before Janus ever appeared in a video. Maybe he could have been a bit less angry when Janus did show up. Maybe he could have done a lot of things. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But he was also angry. At Janus. It seemed contradictory, but he was. He was angry at Janus for never trying to mend their relationship either, angry at him for trying to be the villain, angry at him for setting up a disaster that nearly broke them apart. And he was also angry that Janus had never tried to get help, that he decided to do this instead, regardless of the consequences.
Sometimes, he talked to Janus when he visited, even though he never responded. Other times, he would cry. Most of the time, he just sat there and stared at him in silence.
This time, when Virgil entered the room, Remus was there, but for once, he didn't leave. This made Virgil pause, taking a step back and having half a mind to just go, but instead, he forced himself to walk forward. Remus looked up at him, but he didn't glare this time. Instead, he just sighed and turned back toward Janus.
"… Hey."
Remus didn't respond, so Virgil just stood there awkwardly for a while. But then, he worked up the nerve to try again.
"Anything new with Janus today?" he asked.
"Don't call him that!" Remus spat, making Virgil flinch.
Virgil paused for a second, somewhat confused, before he understood what Remus meant.
"Dude, it's his name," Virgil argued. "And he was the one who told it to me."
"Well, that doesn't mean you still have the right to use it!"
Virgil crossed his arms.
"Ya know, if I wasn't allowed to use it anymore, he had plenty of opportunities to tell me that before all this happened," he pointed out. "So don't decide that just because you're pissed at me."
That was true; Janus hadn't ever exactly told him he couldn't use his name, and it wasn't like Janus held back from calling him by his own. So, at the very least, calling Janus by name was fair.
Remus snarled at him, but this time, Virgil didn't consider leaving. Instead, he stepped closer.
"Remus," he spoke firmly. "I get why you're mad at me, but for fuck's sake, aren't you tired of this?"
He gestured around at the room, not really pointing out anything in particular, but he was pretty sure his point was pretty clear.
"I get it, I left, and apparently, that fucked Janus up, but what exactly did you want me to do?!" Virgil yelled. "We were fighting all the time, and I just couldn't deal with it anymore! I didn't fucking leave the be an ass, I left because living together wasn't good for any of us anymore. Not me, not Janus, and not you either! And yeah, I was still pissed at him after, but it's not like he apologized, either!"
He received a sharp glare.
"Well, it's not like you ever tried!" Remus shouted back. "Do you know how many fucking times Janny tried to go see you so he could apologize?! He could manage to swallow his pride, but the part he could never get past was the thought that you wouldn't even listen to him! And then, when he revealed himself to Thomas, you really didn't listen to him! You just proved him right, so he stopped trying!"
Those words took him aback, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"How was I supposed to know that, Remus?" Virgil asked, trying to lower his voice. "I'm not a fucking mind reader. How in the hell was I supposed to know Janus considered talking to me when he never did? Do you think I never thought about talking to him? Do you think he knows whether I did or not? No- because no one's gonna know what you wanted to do if you don't actually do it."
"Why didn't you come back then?" Remus asked, his own voice growing a bit quieter.
"I don't know- I- Look," Virgil replied. "At first, I was just really angry at him. We were fighting a lot, and the others said they wanted me to stay with them. And when I told Janus about it, he flipped out. I… At the time, I thought he was just trying to keep me from being happy. And we got into that huge fight, and I told Janus that he couldn't stop me, and he told me not to come back. So after I left, I didn't."
"But he didn't mean it, Virgil!"
"Maybe not," Virgil accepted, shrugging his shoulders. "But I believed him. And then the next time I saw him, he was impersonating Patton and trying to get Thomas to lie to his friends. How the heck was he expecting me to respond?!"
Remus slumped into his chair.
"… I don't know," he admitted. "But he wasn't trying to hurt Thomas, Virgil."
Virgil didn't know how to respond to that. On one hand, Remus was probably right, but on the other, he still thought that a lot of Janus's ideas were not good for Thomas, mostly the ones involving lying. So, yeah, Janus probably wasn't trying to hurt Thomas, but that doesn't mean he wasn't going to, and it certainly didn't help that he presented himself as a villain.
"Well, we can't really try to fix anything until he wakes up," Virgil told him, somewhat changing the subject. "But for now… maybe the two of us can have some kind of a truce? Wouldn't it suck if he woke up, and the first thing he heard was us yelling at each other?"
He saw a strange glint in Remus's eyes, though he wasn't sure what it was.
"… Fine."
It wasn't until Remus agreed that he realized that, when he left Janus and the Dark Side, he'd left Remus, too.
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