XXX Chapter 32: The Offer

So, I was intending to update this a few days ago, but tbh, I've been hyperfixating on Care Bears super hard and didn't feel like leaving Care-a-lot to edit the angst bomb that is this chapter. But here it is now :3

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Roman woke up late and took his time getting ready for the day, making sure his clothes were crisply ironed and his makeup was carefully applied. As he brushed his hair, he sighed and looked in the mirror.

He had to keep himself together. Things still weren't perfect, but they were getting better, weren't they? And if things were getting better, then he had to be better, right?

He so desperately wanted things to be better. Before all of this happened, he'd had his own problems, and now, he had to deal with both those and the giant pile of problems Deceit was having (because even if Deceit didn't want his help or his worry, Roman couldn't help providing either).

Really, he couldn't just leave Deceit alone or let the others handle it, even if Roman had been hurt by what the man had done during the trial and otherwise. He'd thought they'd been something similar to friends for a while there, and those feelings didn't entirely go away. Instead, they'd just soured as the realization that Deceit had been manipulating him came over him. And now, those feelings had changed again, this time into something more like fear.

Because, as much as he put on a show, Roman was utterly terrified. He certainly wasn't the only one with similar thoughts, but he was terrified that Deceit would hurt himself again, or even try to kill himself. He was terrified that they wouldn't be able to do anything, and Deceit would just stay this way forever, and eventually, he'd end up back at the bottom of that cliff, and maybe, he wouldn't come back a second time. Even with so much time passing, he was still kept up at night by the images (memories) of Deceit laying there, limbs broken and bloody and unmoving, Remus grasping him desperately and screaming, Deceit's pale face getting thinner and more sickly as he remained comatose, the feeling of the poison bottle in his hands and the knowledge that he'd been the one to make Deceit drink it.

Sometimes the memories came to him as nightmares, and sometimes they came to him while he was awake, rising unbidden in his mind and refusing to be dispelled. Sometimes he cried until the early hours of the morning as his tired mind twisted those memories to be even worse than they were, and part of him wondered if he may be turning into his brother after all. Sometimes, the guilt of having chosen to go to the wedding made him feel like throwing up, because maybe this wouldn't have happened if he'd done something differently. Sometimes he yelled at himself for not thinking to check on the man, even just out of being a decent person, because he knew it wasn't normal for Deceit to disappear without a trace (because even before Deceit revealed himself to Thomas, he was always slinking around or subtly trying to manipulate things- he was always there in some way until the wedding).

Sometimes Roman wondered if he really was a hero.

After all, wouldn't a real hero help anyone, regardless of who they were, or whether they personally liked them? Shouldn't a true hero help people even if they were hurt by them, simply because it was the right thing to do? Deceit may have hurt him, but Roman shouldn't have let that turn him into a bad person.

He knew the others didn't blame him, not any more than they blamed themselves, at least, and his brother seemed to have blamed Virgil more than the rest of them, but that didn't make Roman blame himself any less. Sure, maybe the others hadn't done anything to check on the man, either, but that wasn't their responsibility. They weren't supposed to be heroes, and ultimately, they weren't the ones who decided to skip the callback.

Roman shook his head and took a deep, calming breath. Deceit wasn't going to die again. He wouldn't let that happen, even if he had to disregard the others and lock Deceit in his room until he got better.

But for now, he should go and eat breakfast, and maybe check on Deceit if no one had in a while, and everything would be okay.

It would be okay.

.

.

Except, as soon as he made his way to the living room and kitchen, Roman found that his attempts to comfort himself were lies.

Things were not okay.

Everyone else was gathered in the living room, and the tension hung heavily in the air. Deceit was sitting on the couch as close to Remus as he could be, practically clinging onto him. He had that seal Emile gave him on his lap, too. Most of his face was obscured in one of Remus's sleeves, but Roman could see the dark eye shadow, so dark it almost looked like it had been drawn on with a sharpie, and his expression was some strange cross between blankness and fear. Remus wasn't looking much better, his own expression displaying his worry openly. Virgil was sitting a lot closer to the two of them than usual, biting his nails instead of messing around on his phone. Patton and Logan looked similarly worried, but Logan was pretending to read, and Patton was trying to subtly glance away from the cartoon that was playing on the TV screen in front of them.

No one seemed to notice him, so he decided to be the one who spoke up first.

"What happened?"

Deceit and Virgil both jumped at the sound of his voice, while the other three turned to look at him.

"Well… Deceit's just having a bad day, Kiddo…," he explained vaguely. "Um, we're mostly just trying to keep him distracted right now…"

Roman looked back toward Deceit, who had shifted to hide his entire face now, as if he was embarrassed. Roman suddenly felt at a loss. Deceit had been doing somewhat better recently, and now, it looked like he'd taken a major step back. With another second of observation, he noticed that Deceit was wearing short sleeves for once, and there was a fresh bandage on one of his arms, along with a whole host of scars that, even if healed, still had to be relatively recent. How many times had he cut himself? Had he done it again today?

He wanted to yell. He wanted to make Deceit tell them what was wrong. He wanted to fix it, make sure it wouldn't happen again so he would get better. But looking at him now, Roman couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't like Deceit hadn't already been sensitive before, but for the most part, he lashed out at him if he started yelling. Right now, though, Deceit looked like he would break if anyone so much as raised their voice.

So, as much as he wanted to yell and charge in like the princely knight he was, he had enough self-awareness to know that he had to try a more gentle approach. Even still, that didn't mean he couldn't try to press for details.

"But what happened…?" he tried again.

"We don't know," Virgil answered, his gaze on Deceit. "Apparently, he just woke up like this and doesn't know why. So we're watching cartoons."

Roman felt confused. Why would Deceit be upset for no reason? If there wasn't anything upsetting him, then shouldn't he at least be neutral?

"Why don't you go eat breakfast, Kiddo?" Patton suggested. "Everything's under control right now, and we're just watching TV."

He wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to fix something, solve something. But he couldn't even try to be a source of comfort, because his brother already had that covered, and Deceit didn't even like him anyway. He couldn't do anything.

He couldn't do anything.

That realization hit him like a ton of bricks, and if he hadn't already had his feet planted firmly on the floor, he might have stumbled.

Sometimes, maybe there really wasn't anything he could do, and maybe trying to do something could even make things worse. But he was supposed to be a hero! Wasn't a hero always supposed to be able to save the day?

But looking at the man on the couch, the thought crossed his mind that the answer was 'maybe not.'

XXX

The next two weeks were, frankly, awful. Once he had gotten worked up, it seemed like hadn't calmed down since. As soon as Deceit managed to calm down even a little, it seemed that something triggered him again, and he'd just go right back to panicking. He paced a lot and cried a lot, and he seemed to be suddenly terrified of being alone. If there was even a single second when he wasn't with one of them, his panic would spike until they came back. He was barely even showering because he didn't want to be alone that long. It was an incredibly strange contrast with his more typical attempts to get them to leave him be, and Roman had never seen him like this before (and he didn't think the others had, either). He had also gone back to not eating much, only able to tolerate things like applesauce and rice without feeling nauseous, and even then, he'd take such small bites that it'd take him an hour to finish eating anything. He also seemed to be practically incapable of falling asleep, and when he did, he'd jolt up with a gasp just about every forty minutes.

Because of this, Deceit had more-or-less been camping out in the living room for the duration of it, with at least one of them staying with him at any given time. Remus stayed with him the majority of the time, with the rest of them essentially taking shifts. They'd tried taking him to Emile, and surprisingly, he'd actually brought Remus into the appointments with him, but it didn't seem to do much to help. Deceit didn't seem to understand why he'd gotten like this, and it didn't seem to have any obvious direct cause, so there wasn't any way to make him feel better by resolving the issue. Which mostly just left Emile attempting to teach him things like coping strategies and grounding activities, but Deceit didn't seem to be getting the hang of any of them. He barely even seemed to remember how to do them, and when one of them helped him through them instead, they only helped for a few minutes before he was once again back to the state he had been in.

Really, the only thing that seemed to do anything was sitting there and watching TV with him. And really, he could only watch children's cartoons (not that any of them were complaining about that particular aspect). Watching most adult TV shows was out because they tended to have more upsetting content. Things like cooking shows were out because the lack of a plot let Deceit's mind wander too much. Documentaries were also out because the majority of them were also too upsetting, whether it be because a predator killed its prey in a nature documentary or there was a tragedy being discussed in a historical one. So really, they thought children's cartoons were probably the best bet (and even then, they'd decided to watch Amphibia, which had apparently been a mistake, because the plot quickly started getting a lot darker than they'd thought it would, and Deceit ended up sobbing before they even got to the ending).

It was honestly a little exhausting, even though they were mostly just sitting there.

It was more of an emotional exhaustion, he supposed.

Of course, they were all afraid. This was yet another layer to Deceit's illness and they were caught off-guard by it and practically helpless. And then there was the fact that Deceit had confided in Remus and Virgil one night, telling them that he was afraid of what would happen if he was left alone. And Roman couldn't be entirely sure of what he meant, but he certainly had some theories that scared the shit out of him (but he couldn't try to bring it up because, in addition to not wanting to make Deceit any more upset than he already was, Deceit also wasn't aware that he had woken up while he'd been talking to Remus and Virgil).

Today, Roman was sitting on the couch with Deceit, while Remus slept beside him on the couch. Remus had gotten even less sleep than Deceit during all this, as he'd tried to stay with him as much as possible and generally tried to watch him while he slept so he'd be awake when Deceit woke up throughout the night. At that moment, the man's eyes were glued to the TV, now playing Ducktales, but Roman didn't think he was really taking much in.

The thing was, Roman had come up with an idea yesterday, and even though he himself wasn't quite comfortable with it, he brought it up to the others during one of Deciet's brief naps.

He'd known that Deceit used to wander around his side of the Imagination a lot, and upon thinking about it, he was pretty sure the man was just taking walks. And maybe taking a walk wouldn't be such a bad idea. If either he or Remus was with him, it would be pretty easy to stop him from hurting himself or running off in the Imagination if he had the urge to do so, considering they could practically shape it however they wanted and could move around much faster than him there.

And so, he'd presented the idea of taking Deceit on a short walk in the Imagination to the others, because it would at least be a change of scenery. Even still, part of him felt icy dread at the fact that he was bringing it up. The thought of letting him back there, where he had fallen off that cliff, made Roman's heart rate shoot up enough that he had to make sure he hadn't gained his own eyeshadow, but he knew he would just have to make sure he didn't let Deceit anywhere near that cliff. Which should technically be easy, seeing as it would take the man hours to travel there by foot again.

He just didn't know what else to do, and as terrifying as it was, Roman was desperately afraid that Deceit would be in more danger if they let him continue on like this than if they took a walk together outside of the house.

They'd discussed it, as well as running it by Emile real quick, and they eventually decided it would be okay. It probably wouldn't hurt anything as long as Deceit was being supervised, and it might help for him to have a change of scenery.

Technically, both he and Remus were intending to go with him, but this was the first time Remus had slept longer than a few minutes in about three days, and Roman honestly didn't want to wake him up. At this rate, Remus was going to end up breaking down as well, and no one wanted that.

So, it would be okay if Roman handled this on his own, right?

"Hey, Deceit," Roman called out quietly to catch the man's attention.

At this, Deceit jumped slightly but turned away from the television right after. He looked exhausted, and Roman considered putting off the plan entirely so Deceit could join Remus in sleeping, but he knew Deceit was unlikely to actually be able to do so.

"Hm?"

"Well, the others and I had a talk…"

He could see Deceit tense, most likely thinking he was about to be interrogated again or something.

"And we thought maybe you'd want to take a walk in the Imagination?" Roman continued quickly. "Just to get out a bit?"

Deceit stared at him for a minute.

"… I thought I wasn't allowed in the Imagination."

Roman was a little surprised to see that the suggestion appeared to have made him somewhat anxious, but maybe it shouldn't have. Deceit hadn't even been wanting to go to his own room lately, so maybe the thought of 'getting out' was actually scary at the moment.

"I mean, I'd be going with you," Roman explained. "So, you know…"

He didn't want to say it, but he knew that Deceit got the message. Roman was essentially going to babysit him. And normally, that probably would have made Deceit start yelling or at least get angry about them controlling him, but now, he almost seemed a little relieved.

He really didn't want to be alone right now, huh?

Deceit took a deep breath in, rubbing his arms.

"… Okay," he agreed.

Roman nodded.

"Okay, cool… I'm just gonna text the others real quick so they know where we're going," Roman told him. "Do you think you want to change clothes first or not?"

Deceit looked away, moving to hug himself, and shrugged.

"I don't know."

Not changing his clothes very often had gone hand-in-hand with not wanting to shower or return to his room. Roman was pretty sure it was an extension of not wanting to be alone again, but he did also remember that depressed people often had a difficult time maintaining their hygiene. It hadn't seemed like Deceit was like that most of the time he'd been back, considering he had still been showering, getting dressed, and brushing his teeth at least semi-regularly, but Roman did still remember the state of his room and how long he could have been locked in there. Deceit had always preferred appearing clean and put together- mostly due to pride and for maintaining his persona- but that didn't seem to be the case anymore. Or maybe it was, and Deceit just couldn't maintain it even when he tried.

"I could just snap you into a different outfit?" Roman offered.

Which was another thing. Since he was barely sleeping or eating, Deceit had once again been practically unable to summon anything. Which was good in the sense that he couldn't summon any more knives, but bad in literally every other way.

Deceit hesitated a bit before he nodded.

And with a simple snap of his fingers, Deceit was in a clean, black T-shirt with long sleeves and a pair of jeans.

"… Thanks…"

He could see a tinge of pink decorating the human half of his face, but of course, he didn't say anything about it.

"You're welcome," he said instead. "Let me just send that text and then we'll go, okay?"

"… Okay."

XXX

Janus had been having an especially terrible time lately. Granted, this wasn't the only time he got like this, but this specific combination of symptoms was more rare for him, and it usually didn't last this long.

The fact was that he really had no idea why he got like this. He was just terrified for no reason, and every little thing just made it worse. At times like this, he almost felt like he could take over Virgil's job (though, he genuinely hoped Virgil didn't feel like this). But he couldn't stop the waves of anxiety crashing over him, each one being followed by another until his body literally couldn't keep up with it anymore. It was exhausting, but it also kept him from getting any sleep. Whenever he tried, he'd feel another rush of adrenaline, and once he would finally manage to fall asleep, he'd jerk awake with a sharp gasp that would send him back into a spiral. He wasn't even having any nightmares (actually, he wasn't even sure if he was really asleep long enough to dream most of the time). It was more that, once he'd jerk awake, the thought of being awake was too terrible to bear. Because every second he was awake felt like hours of tortuous fear, and it was just so hard to tolerate.

And unfortunately, he still couldn't tolerate being alone, either. This, for him, was actually an entirely new symptom. During the previous instances when he got like this, he'd remain in his room alone, generally too terrified to open his door, or even text Remus to come to him. After all, he was more of a loner in general. But he must have gotten used to everyone pestering him 24/7, because now he couldn't stand being alone. But again, he didn't have much more of an understanding of the cause for that aspect than any other part of it. All he knew was that his mind was convinced that something bad would happen if he was alone, though he wasn't even entirely sure what. During any brief moments of being left alone filled him with yet more panic, and he was honestly starting to feel like he was going insane. His thoughts were just getting to be too much, and he didn't even think he could understand them, let alone cope with them.

As it was, he was really only alone when he was in the bathroom, and he practically (embarrassingly) rushed back to someone as soon as he was done. He'd only even attempted showering twice, and he spent the entire first time crying and scratching himself to stay calm, and he hadn't even managed to wash his hair the second time.

It was, on top of terrifying, entirely humiliating, possibly more than anything else that had happened. Yes, having everyone in his business was embarrassing enough, but being this ridiculously dependent on the others was mortifying. Whatever was happening to him, it wasn't normal, and he knew that. None of this was normal, and he hated all of it. But he didn't honestly think he would ever be able to get past the rest of it, and regarding these particular circumstances, he was pretty sure he was just going to have to wait it out.

And he didn't know if he could do that.

XXX

Yeah, so. Lots of angst going on here.

So, to explain a bit, most of this story has nothing to do with real life, but this particular section is inspired by when I had a mental breakdown. This story was largely written right before and after that, so it ended up in here to help me cope with things. But I still don't have a lot of answers about what happened or why, so there's not a gonna be a lot of answers here, either. I just know some people in the comments wanted to know what's happening here, but I don't really know either. So.

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