XXX Chapter 13: The Funeral

So, reminder that this chapter is gonna be heavy. Personally, I feel like this is one of the most upsetting chapters in the whole story, so. Yeah.

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Thomas wished that none of this was happening. He wished that he could just will Deceit better again. He wished, and he'd tried, but it hadn't worked. And so, Deceit was still unconscious and slowly dying despite everything they'd tried.

He was… shocked, to say the least, when his sides told him that they decided to essentially euthanize Deceit. Maybe he shouldn't have been- after all, even if he wasn't able to visit Deceit often, he had seen him a few times in the past months, and every time, he looked so much worse. But he was. Even though he knew Deceit would be back, and that's why they were actually doing this, it was just so… upsetting.

He didn't really know Deceit well. He'd only really seen him during that lying episode, the court fiasco, and a handful of brief appearances. Hell, he hadn't even known that Deceit existed for the majority of the lying thing. So really, he didn't even know Deceit at all, despite the fact that he was part of his own personality. And yet… he felt like he finally understood something about Deceit. The wedding was awful, really. He'd been miserable the entire time, and he'd had to miss the callback. And Deceit had known that would happen- he tried to tell them. But none of them had listened, including himself. Thomas still felt lost on whether he should have made the selfish choice or not, but by now, he was pretty sure Deceit had been trying to help, in his own way. He wasn't just a villain to fight with or ignore.

He'd thought about that a lot in the past couple of months. It seemed almost obvious in hindsight, but Deceit really was a part of him. And like Logan said, he was a mechanism for Self-Preservation. So, even if his priorities didn't necessarily align with the others, he was still looking out for him.

In context of what happened, Thomas couldn't help feeling guilty about not realizing that sooner. Maybe, if he would have just listened to what Deceit was saying instead of being suspicious of his intentions, this wouldn't have happened. Even if he had still gone to the wedding, he was pretty sure things wouldn't have gotten this bad if he'd at least tried to take Deceit's ideas into account. Of course, all of his sides tried to influence his decisions one way or the other, and he'd learned by now that only listening to one side rarely ended well. But with the others, even if they were wrong about something, he didn't just plain reject them. And in Virgil's case, when he had continually rejected him, it went badly and only improved once he realized how important Virgil was.

He should have learned his lesson from Virgil ducking out, if nothing else.

But he couldn't do anything about that right now. He would have to wait until Deceit came back to fix his own role in all of this.

And he definitely intended to.

As he lost himself in thought, Thomas was brought back to the moment by Patton reaching out to hold his hand. He wasn't sure if it was more to comfort Thomas or himself, but really, it hardly mattered. He squeezed back lightly as everyone mentally prepared themselves for the reality of what was about to happen.

The others had prepared for this, as painful as it must have been. Aside from the potion, they'd all had to figure out how they could take over as many of Deceit's roles as possible. Thomas would be lying if he said that he wasn't a bit anxious on his own behalf, even though he felt bad about it (though, he did wonder if Deceit would have been pleased, either with the lying to himself or the selfish thoughts). He wasn't sure what would happen without Deceit. Because, even if he hadn't known him, Deceit had apparently always fulfilled rather important roles within the Mindscape.

But. He would be fine. The others would make sure of that, and once all of this was over, they'd all make sure Deceit was fine too. They could work all of this out.

They had to.

"Should… Should we say something?" Roman asked cautiously.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then, Virgil moved closer to the bed and carefully leaned down toward Deceit's ear. He whispered something, the words practically inaudible, before backing up and placing a hand over his mouth. Thomas was pretty sure he saw tears glistening in the man's eyes before he turned away from them all.

Patton was the next one to step forward. He let go of Thomas's hand and went over to the bed. Then, he lightly grasped onto one of Deceit's hands and patted it gently.

"I'm sorry, Kiddo," he spoke, voice wobbling. "I'm so sorry…"

Logan went after Patton. He didn't touch Deceit, but he looked down at him with a somber expression.

"We'll see you again soon, Deceit…"

Neither Roman nor Remus seemed particularly eager to go next, so Thomas found himself moving toward him. And once he was beside the bed, he felt his heart thump painfully at the sight.

The last he'd seen Deceit had been a few days ago, and already, he looked even worse. His face looked almost skeletal at this point, and even with the oxygen mask to help him, he barely appeared to be breathing. His thin limbs looked so fragile among the sheets that enveloped him- it was such a far cry from the sassy, sarcastic man he'd met close to two years ago. Even when Deceit had been enraged after Roman's ruling, he still looked so alive, so determined. But there was none of that visible now. If no one told him, he wouldn't even know that this person was supposed to be a part of him, let alone recognize him as Deceit. It was difficult to connect this image with the person he was before this, even if Thomas barely knew him.

He looked like he was already dead.

Slowly, Thomas reached out to put a hand on Deceit's shoulder. He looked closely for any sign that he had reacted to it, but of course, there was nothing.

He sighed.

"We're gonna figure this out, Buddy. I promise."

Once Thomas had finished, that only left the two halves of Creativity to say goodbye.

They walked up together.

"Deceit, we… we need to talk, when you get back…," Roman spoke softly. "About a lot of things, I guess."

He placed a gentle hand on Deceit's cheek, letting it rest there for only a moment. Then, he let out a short sigh and took half a step back to allow Remus to get a bit closer.

Remus didn't move for a long moment, almost appearing as if he was frozen, staring off into a world where none of this was happening. But then, he shook himself out of the brief dream and knelt down. Gripping Deceit's hand tightly in his own, Remus's voice came out in a choked rumble.

"I'm not letting you go, DeeDee," he began. "I wish I could just destroy something to make you feel better again, but I can't. I don't know how to help you. But we'll fix this, okay? You don't deserve to deal with any of this, and I'm not gonna let you. Okay? We're gonna help you get better somehow."

Remus brought the hand up toward his face, turning his head down as if he was praying. Then, in a voice so quiet they could barely hear, Remus mumbled one last sentence:

"I love you, Dee."

It was another long moment before Remus got back up. It was even longer before he took the bottle back out.

Remus gripped the glass tightly as twin streams of tears began to flow down his face, no longer able to hold them back. And yet, he was still quiet- that same unbearable kind of quiet that he had been the last few months, the quiet that Thomas knew was wrong, even though he barely knew Remus either. Time stretched long and felt even longer as the silence constricted their throats, weighing each of them down with cold shackles.

The silence broke when Roman put a hand on Remus's shoulder, a single sob shattering the air around them. The streams flowed faster, fat tears welling up in the corner of Remus's eyes like marbles of agony.

"I-I can't do it," Remus gasped out. "I-I-I can't."

With those pained words, Remus sank back down to the floor, sobbing openly. Roman almost immediately knelt down beside him, his arm shifting the wrap around the other man's back.

"I can't do it, fuck…"

Remus's hands were shaking, the tremors bad enough that Roman had to gently pry the bottle away from him so he wouldn't drop it. Then, he pulled his brother into his arms, letting Remus cry into his chest.

Thomas wasn't sure what they were going to do. They hadn't actually discussed who exactly was going to give Deceit the poison. It had more or less been assumed that Remus would do it, both because he was the closest to Deceit and because the man had a higher tolerance for this sort of thing. And Remus had apparently come to the same assumption, since he behaved as though it was his responsibility from the start. But, clearly, they shouldn't have assumed such a thing. They shouldn't have assumed that Remus would somehow be able to handle this better, not when he was the one who cared for Deceit the most.

But what were they supposed to do, then? There was no way Patton could do it. Killing someone directly, no matter how temporary and even if it was to help, would destroy him. As Morality, something like this went against his function too much. Then there was Virgil, who he suspected had been close to Deceit once as well. He could tell that Virgil and Deceit had a complicated relationship, but he had also seen how upset Virgil was these past few months. Virgil would be just as messed up by doing it as Patton, if not more. But on top of that, after Deceit came back, there was the chance that He would interpret Virgil technically killing him as being malicious in some way. Logan was probably the one seeing this situation with the most clarity, and he definitely understood the logic behind what they were doing. But he had also been hit pretty hard by the situation, no matter how much he tried to hide it. And then there was Roman. But Roman had been against doing this in the first place, and he was supposed to be a hero. Killing wasn't exactly in his nature, either, not to mention that Roman had been just as upset as everyone else, too.

So that left him.

Could Thomas kill Deceit?

He wasn't sure, but what other option was left? Should they just let Deceit shut down on his own after all? How long would that take? How much more damage would that cause?

"I'll do it."

Thomas was shocked out of his thoughts by Roman's quiet voice.

The air around them went still.

Remus's sobs hiccuped.

"Roman, Kiddo…"

Roman shook his head, pulling his brother closer.

"You guys won't be able to do it, will you?"

Thomas took a step forward.

"Maybe I should…"

"No, Thomas," Roman denied. "We… We're parts of you, and you have a lot more power over us than you know. If you do it, there's a risk that your mind will interpret that as you wanting Deceit gone. We shouldn't risk that."

Roman looked away from them all.

"And besides, Deceit already hates me, so it won't matter too much if he gets mad, right?" Roman continued, letting out a humorless chuckle. "I… I can do it."

Thomas knew Roman was blaming himself. He knew that, but he didn't know what to do.

And he didn't do anything. He just stood and watched as Roman took the bottle and got back up. He watched, they all watched, as the creative side pulled the stopper off the top. They watched Roman position Deceit so it would be easier to make him swallow.

And they watched Roman as he carefully poured the poison down Deceit's throat.

No one said anything. None of them had wanted to do it, but they had to. And Roman was the one to take on the burden, in the end.

Thomas felt like Deceit's death should have been more dramatic. It would have suited him better. But it wasn't.

No, Deceit died quietly and uneventfully. There was no struggle, not when the poison went down, and not as he died. Instead, they all watched silently as Deceit's breaths slowed, getting shallower and shallower. And they watched as Deceit's chest slowly stilled.

The entire thing only took a few minutes.

In a few minutes, Deceit was gone.

Logan stepped forward to check his pulse, and with a wordless shake of the head, he confirmed it.

They continued to stand there for a long time.

Then, eventually, Roman helped Remus stand and began leading him out of the room, his sobs now quietly replaced with a blank stare. And the rest of them followed.

And Deceit's door faded away.

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