XXX Chapter 14: The Return

There was nothing.

Nothing but endless darkness, shattering and melting and constantly reforming, like an amalgam of glass and wax. The forms shifted and frayed and wove themselves together in entirely new ways, only to reset back to what they once were, yet still changed forever.

It was warm. It was cold.

It was peaceful. It hurt.

And yet, there was nothing there.

Colors swirled in the blackness, phantoms of something, but nothing concrete. Reds and blues and color after color swept through broken parts, filling in the holes with nothing and everything.

There was silence and screaming.

There was a formless thought.

And for now, that's all there was.

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Things were hard without Deceit. As the others had predicted, all of the side's functions were barely present. Virgil had to scare Thomas into watching his step. He had to flood him with adrenaline to force him to pay attention. Logan had to lecture him to get him to follow even a basic schedule in an attempt to prevent the man from overworking himself. Roman tried to convince Thomas to want things, but getting him to feel even a spark of desire for anything was almost impossible. Patton tried to soften the blows when Thomas created a mess over a situation that could have been smoothed over with a simple lie. He tried, but all he could do was try to convince Thomas he was a good person, if nothing else. Remus wreaked havoc without even meaning to, his grief consuming him and making it ever more difficult to hold himself back.

Thomas… well, Thomas wasn't feeling too great. He constantly felt geared up, yet too tired to do anything (not that he even wanted to do anything). He was nauseous with the anxiety, and he felt suffocated by his own skin. Doing nothing made it worse, but the thought of doing anything felt insurmountable. He forced himself to watch TV as a distraction, yet felt a crushing guilt every second he wasn't achieving anything. He felt like he was doing something wrong. He felt like a bad person. His friends and family were worried, and Thomas couldn't say anything to make them worry less.

After all, he wasn't okay.

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He felt light.

But slowly, he grew heavier.

And with the weight, he started to feel more like a person, more like himself.

Sensations returned before thoughts. He heard nothing, but he could hear. He saw nothing, but he could see. He tasted nothing, but he could taste. He felt something, but he wasn't sure what it was.

The thoughts came back last, though even as they did, they remained jumbled and confused. They didn't start to sort themselves out until the black began to fade, going from black to increasingly lighter shades of grey.

And as white flooded his senses, the final piece clicked back together.

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Janus awoke sluggishly.

He blinked his eyes open to find that he was laying in bed, dressed as he normally was with the exception of his hat. And something about that felt wrong, but he didn't know why or how. He just felt like he should have awoken somewhere other than his own bedroom.

Slowly, he pushed himself up and sat cross-legged on the bed. Whatever nap he must have taken hadn't gotten rid of the crushing weight that had been on his shoulders for so long. Instead, the weight was joined by an odd ache, deep in his bones.

Maybe he needed to drink some water.

But to get water, he had to get up and leave his room, and despite having just woken up, Janus felt so tired. He was exhausted, and he didn't know if he could even keep up the minimal facade he'd been trying to maintain around Remus.

Maybe Remus would be in the Imagination.

Sighing deeply, he stood from the bed, his knees cracking as if he hadn't moved in a very long time. How long had he been asleep? Was it morning? When had he fallen asleep, anyway? He didn't know, so he turned to look at his clock.

1:19.

So, it was either afternoon or the middle of the night.

With Remus, that distinction didn't exactly matter.

He rubbed his temples for a minute, hoping to clear his head a little just in case Remus was hanging around. Then, he went to grab his hat.

It wasn't on his dresser.

It wasn't on the floor.

It wasn't under the bed.

He couldn't find it.

Janus frowned. He always had his hat- it was part of his villainous persona, after all (and he could use it to hide his face, even just a bit). He doubted he would have left it somewhere and returned to his room without it (and when had he returned to his room? And what had he been doing before that?). Chances were that Remus took it for one reason or another, possibly just to pester him.

Again, he sighed.

He could just conjure up a new hat and be done with it, but he really didn't feel like it. He was just too tired.

Well, it's not like it really mattered. Remus might not even be outside the Imagination, and even if he was, it's not like the man's never seen him without his hat before. And it's not like anyone else was going to see him (and besides, it was just a hat, right?).

So, sans hat, Janus dragged himself over to his door and stepped out into the hallway before making his way toward the kitchen. Something seemed… off as he entered the living room. Besides himself, both the living room and kitchen were empty, but the air just seemed so still, more than it should even if no one else was there. Everything looked the same as it always did, but it felt like nothing had been touched in a while. It felt like there should be dust coating the surfaces, but there wasn't any.

Hadn't Remus made any kind of mess lately? He couldn't remember the last time he cleaned something up, and he knew Remus wouldn't have.

Whatever. At least he didn't have to struggle between cleaning something and ignoring it so he didn't have to exert the effort.

With that, Janus revised his previous intentions of getting water to making coffee. If he was going to have to pull up the facade later, he was going to need as much caffeine as he could get.

The kitchen cabinet opened up with the same squeak as always, but he cringed at the way the sound broke the silence of the room. The coffee was still sitting on the left side of the pantry, the lid only halfway screwed on.

Janus let his mind drift a bit as he started scooping coffee into the pot. He just didn't feel right, but there was a new layer of discomfort that was somehow different than it had been before. He felt like he should be remembering something, but nothing came to mind when he tried to think about it. What day was it? What had he been doing? Should he be doing something?

Then, just as he reached out to grab the now-filled coffee pot, he heard a sharp gasp from behind him.

He turned his head, eyebrow raised, thinking it was just Remus about to pull some kind of prank.

But it wasn't.

Instead, he found two sides standing in the doorway that connected the Light and Dark sides of the mind.

Patton had his hands over his mouth, and if Janus looked closely, he could see tears beginning to well up in the corners of the other man's eyes. Beside him, Virgil was staring with wide eyes, which was surprising even just for the lack of malice in the gaze. He waited for one of them to say something, tell him why they were there or yell at him, or whatever, but they just kept staring.

And so, Janus rolled his eyes and turned back to pour his coffee.

"Would either of you care to inform me why you're surprised to see me in my own kitchen?" he asked sarcastically.

"J-Deceit," Virgil breathed out, but said nothing else.

Janus took a sip of his coffee as he turned around to face them, leaning back onto the counter. The liquid was hot, and it burned his tongue, but he didn't wince. He gripped the sides of the mug tight enough to feel the scalding heat through the fabric of his gloves.

"Yes?" Janus questioned, exasperated. "Are you two here for a reason, or did you just come to stare at me?"

There was another long pause of silence, and Janus was definitely starting to get annoyed.

"What."

Patton was, for some reason, actually crying by that point, and unexpectedly, Virgil's lip was wobbling as if he was going to join him. Virgil took a step toward him but stopped. Janus contemplated whether he should just go back to his room or not.

"You're- You're here."

And they still didn't answer him.

"Yes, I live here," Janus spat. "And in case you've forgotten, you two don't. So care to tell me why you're here?"

"Dude, you were fucking dead!"

Virgil's sudden shout rang throughout the room, echoing off the walls. Dropping his annoyance as surprise rolled over him, Janus blinked.

"Huh?"

Dead?

"K-Kiddo, do you not remember…?"

Janus didn't know what to say. Something was clicking into place, but it hadn't quite fit into the slot yet.

Something was wrong.

"Pat, go get the others," he heard Virgil say, the words sounding distant.

He blinked.

He was sitting on the couch.

He was walking.

Virgil was talking.

He was falling.

People were surrounding him.

He was dying.

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And Janus is finally back!

… But he has no idea what's going on quite yet.

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