XXX Chapter 37: The Guilt

So, I decided I was gonna post the next chapter, like, seven hours ago and then proceeded to Not Do That until now because I needed some 'stare into the void' time.

And then I had to eat dinner and do the dishes lol.

But yeah, I remembered I was gonna post this, so here it is! And with this chapter, the word count is officially over 100K! Yaaaaaaay.

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Janus's mental health seemed to be varying almost day by day now. Some days, he was relatively fine and keeping up a facade of normalcy was easy, easier than it had been in years. Other days, he still felt himself slipping back into darker places, darker thoughts.

It was one of those days, when he couldn't quite manage to exert the effort needed to act normally, nor could he manage to keep himself out of his thoughts. Even though there was quite a bit of evidence suggesting that the others no longer hated him, he was still having a hard time convincing himself of it. And even when he did, he would then end up telling himself that it was worse if they didn't because he didn't deserve their friendship and was definitely making everyone else's lives worse.

Since he was doing much better than he had been, the others hadn't been quite as frantic whenever he so much as blinked, but that didn't mean they weren't still keeping an eye on him. They were still stopping by to check on him and asking how he was doing, and occasionally, they still had to help calm him down or treat his wounds. And every time they did, Janus was reminded that he was a burden upon them- which hadn't bothered him as much when he was pissed at them all the time, but only made him feel worse the better they got along. He felt like he was punishing them for his problems, even the ones that couldn't possibly be twisted into being their fault, and the guilt certainly wasn't helping.

He'd actually been able to force himself to tell Emile about it, and as he'd expected, the therapist had told him that he shouldn't feel guilty about his mental health. He'd said it was okay to take the others into consideration but that his consideration should be used on trying not to hurt them intentionally rather than on feeling guilty for relying on them a little. But wasn't he hurting them intentionally every time he chose to do something when he knew it would upset them? It's not like he was just sad and keeping everyone else out of it to deal with on his own. He was still choosing to hurt himself, still choosing to actually be honest and tell them things he wished he still knew how to keep silent. So wasn't it still his fault that they were upset, at the end of the day?

Even now, he was choosing to do it again, and he didn't even really know why. Yes, today was more of a low day, but in the grand scheme of things, it really wasn't so bad. He'd just ended up brooding for a while, and now here was with a knife in his hand.

This was ridiculous. He shouldn't be doing this- he knew he shouldn't be doing this, knew that any of the others could walk in on him and find him and get upset and ask him why but he wouldn't have an answer. And yet, he hadn't even bothered to put something in front of the door. He was more-or-less just hoping it was late enough that he'd be left alone.

This time, he'd pulled down the waistband of his pants so he could access the flesh of his thighs. He remembered Emile telling him that, if he was going to do it anyway, he should try to cut somewhere he was less likely to sever anything major, and he'd ended up deciding that his outer thigh was probably a better place than his wrists. Of course, everyone would prefer if he just stopped entirely, but that clearly wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

All it took was a few minutes and slashes of the blade for blood to bead up along a small series of cuts, like small garnets being strung across silver thread for a bloody necklace. He made sure to properly clean and bandage the wounds, not wanting any of the others to have to redo it for him this time, and once he pulled his pants back into place, no one would even be able to tell what he'd done.

It was almost funny that he had created this unintentional little deception. The main reason for switching locations really had been for the sake of risk mitigation- he was listening to his therapist's advice and trying to decrease the chances he'd accidentally bleed out or damage something important. But cutting his thigh over his arm did also happen to have a side effect of being easier to hide. There wasn't much risk for someone grabbing him there, and unless he pulled at the skin in a certain way, it was easy to walk without making any faces (though, it's location did make it so he could easily ignite the pain when he wanted to). And of course, no one would really accidentally see that area of his skin, since he'd have to be pretty much naked to reveal it, and unlike Remus, he didn't randomly show up without clothing.

Those were, in a way, 'perks' of changing his routine, and he was pretty sure the others didn't realize how often he was still cutting himself. They knew he was doing it, but he was reasonably sure they thought it was less often. And perhaps it was, marginally, but not by much.

It really wasn't on purpose, but he had found a new way to hide.

Janus sighed, running a hand across the hidden patch of wounds and pressing his thumb into the skin. He was met with a dull throb, the pain letting him breathe. He kept it there for a few more seconds as he stared at the wall, and then he fell backward onto his mattress, shifting his stare to the ceiling instead.

He was fine. He was doing better, and just because he was still doing this didn't change that.

He was fine.

(He was tired).

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The next day, everyone was eating dinner together: mashed potatoes, dino nuggets, and green beans. Janus was mostly sticking to the mashed potatoes and a few of the green beans, ignoring the handful of dino nuggets Patton had dropped on his plate. He didn't even like chicken nuggets on a good day, but he really wasn't in the mood for them right now.

"Hey, J-Deceit, did you want to watch a movie later?" Virgil asked. "Remus and I were gonna watch a new horror movie."

Janus, of course, noticed Virgil's little sip on his name. The others had been doing that occasionally, and Virgil was the worst with it (though, even he didn't really do it very often, just occasionally). He supposed it was because he and Remus had known it the longest, and between the two of them, Remus was more likely to call him by a nickname derived from 'Deceit' rather than 'Janus'.

Really, it was almost a joke at this point. Everyone other than Patton (and Thomas himself) knew Deceit as Janus by now. Even still, he insisted that Patton not be told until Janus wanted to tell him. He didn't think Patton should get to know his name just because the others did. He felt like the moral side had to earn it (even though Remus had, really, pestered it out of him, and Virgil had slowly figured it out years ago, he still felt like it had to be earned).

And so there they were at the table, everyone calling himself something that wasn't his name because one singular person hadn't earned the right to know it yet.

But, he was getting sidetracked in his thoughts again.

Maybe he should take Virgil up on his offer. It had been a very long time since the three of them watched a movie together normally (he wasn't counting the times they'd watched TV together while he didn't want to be alone, seeing as those circumstances had been anything but normal). Really, they hadn't had a 'movie night' between the three of them since long before Virgil left the Dark Side.

"Alright," he replied after a few moments.

Virgil nodded, and Janus thought that the conversation would switch topics. After all, a question had been asked and answered and didn't require any elaboration, so that should have been the end of it.

Instead, Patton spoke:

"Mind if I watch too, Kiddos?"

And suddenly, Janus's heart sank.

He didn't want Patton to come.

Janus had only recently 'gotten Virgil back', so to speak, and so much of their time together since then had been spent on trying to keep Janus from getting any worse or hurting himself. The three of them hadn't really spent much time just 'hanging out' with each other, and if Patton was there, he'd ruin it. It wouldn't just be the three of them, and it wouldn't be like before, and Janus still didn't like to spend a lot of time with the moral side if he didn't have to. Patton may have helped him a few times, but Janus still didn't like him. The past still hadn't been erased, and it still hadn't healed over, because Patton was constantly reopening those wounds without even meaning to.

He wanted to tell him no.

He wanted to tell him that he couldn't come, but really, it wasn't his choice. Technically, Virgil was the one who brought it up, and Patton was asking him, not Janus. And Janus knew that Virgil and Patton were pretty close, and Virgil loved spending time with him, so he'd most likely agree.

And that just made ice-cold dread fill his chest.

He didn't want Virgil to let him come, but if he did, he couldn't just rescind his acceptance of the invitation, either. That would just make it obvious that he didn't want Patton to be there (and then there were the memories of every time Patton used to yell and call him mean every time he did something the other side didn't like, crying until the others came to gang up on him and call him a villain, and he wasn't even usually trying to be mean, but Morality was the one who controlled right and wrong, so anyone who disagreed with Morality was bad).

What was he supposed to do?

If he couldn't tell him no, and he couldn't change his mind, would he just have to suck it up? Or maybe he'd be able to slip out of it at the last minute by saying he wasn't feeling well? But then again, that could make the others think that there was something wrong with him, and then he'd have to deal with them fussing and pestering him, and most likely, he'd end up preventing Remus and Virgil from watching the movie at all.

Maybe it would be best if he just sucked it up. After all, things weren't ever really going to be the same as they used to be, and a lot of that was his own fault. Maybe he didn't really deserve to pretend.

As he dragged himself out of his spiraling thoughts, Janus noticed that Virgil had glanced at him. He wasn't sure how long he had been doing so, but he was definitely looking. And then, a second after Janus noticed, he looked away and toward Patton and gave the man a reply.

"I don't know, Pat, this one's pretty gorey," he told him. "I think it might give you some nightmares."

"Ah, I guess I'll sit this one out, then," Patton replied, looking only a little disappointed. "Especially if there's spiders."

And that was that, and now, the conversation really did change topic.

Really, the entire exchange must have only taken a few seconds, but to Janus, it had seemed so much longer. And in the end, the answer had been rather anticlimactic. He'd already been planning how to get out of going before Virgil even gave Patton an answer, and it had all turned out to be a moot point.

Dinner just continued onward, with Janus's spiral being quickly left behind.

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Patton wished that he and Deceit were able to get along a little better. Recently, it seemed like the man's relationships with just about everyone else had all improved drastically, and despite a handful of times Patton had just-so-happened to be the person available when Deceit needed someone, their relationship hadn't really gotten any better. Not that he didn't want Deceit to get along with the others! He had just hoped that the relationship between them would improve as well.

Truthfully, Patton was well aware of their long history of not getting along, and he knew a lot of it was coming from his end. It was, as Morality, always difficult for him to get along with Deceit. Out of everyone, he really opposed Deceit's functions the most. And, especially when they were children, that had started a lot of disagreements (disagreements which, Patton had now realized, were almost always won by him). He just had such a hard time not calling Deceit wrong when he was trying to get Thomas to do immoral things. That was his job, after all.

But… He was starting to realize that he may have been too harsh at times, and he'd definitely been shown that Deceit did a lot outside of his less-savory functions. He was more than just selfishness and lies, so Patton really shouldn't treat him like everything he did was wrong.

And so, he'd been hoping to improve their relationship, and he thought that, maybe, having a movie night would be a good place to work on it.

Except Virgil seemed to think that the movie might be a bit too much for him, and really, he was probably right. Horror movies were far from his favorite genre, though he knew Virgil and Remus both enjoyed them. And that was fine; perhaps, he could try to invite Deceit to watch a movie with him some other time, and they could watch something other than a horror movie (though, he did wonder if Deceit should be watching a horror movie, either- couldn't that end up making him upset too? Well, maybe he wouldn't mind too much since it was fictional).

And so, everyone continued to eat dinner, though Patton noted with concern that Deceit hadn't even touched his chicken nuggets.

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Virgil wasn't an idiot. As soon as Patton asked if he could watch the movie with them, Janus's entire body had tensed up. He'd managed to keep his expression from changing, but it was easy enough for Virgil to see that Janus didn't want Patton joining them. Which wasn't exactly a surprise, since Janus hadn't liked Patton even when they were children. And really, it wasn't a movie that Patton would have liked, anyway. Remus had picked it out, which pretty much guaranteed an excess of blood, curse words, and gore. It wasn't even Virgil's (or Janus's) preferred style of horror, but the point was more just to have a movie night.

He'd intentionally tried to pick something that they used to do together as a sort of attempt to reassure Janus about where they stood, since their rekindling friendship was still pretty fragile. Honestly, even if they weren't watching a horror movie, he would have preferred to have the others sit this one out (though, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to refuse Patton if they had been watching something he would have actually liked).

Part of him wished that Janus and Patton would just talk things out, but he of all people knew why that wasn't just going to happen. If none of this had happened, Virgil and Janus would probably still be at each other's throats any time they shared a room, and something similar could probably be said for Roman. Having all this happen was a sort of wake-up call about what was important and how they felt to the two of them, but it was a little different for Patton. Janus and Patton hadn't ever actually been friends, or at least, not at a point that any of them could remember. There weren't any memories of positive experiences for them to build on, nor was there any motivation to return to something that hadn't ever existed. And from what Virgil could tell, Janus saw most of Patton's attempts to be kind as either insulting or disingenuous, and Patton was severely underestimating the amount of bitterness toward him that Janus had built up over the years. And that led to a repeated problem that happened every time Patton tried to fix anything: he'd try to be nice, sometimes accidentally slipping into something that could be interpreted as condescending or babying, Janus would start getting angry, Patton wouldn't realize just how angry he was and keep pushing, and then Janus would explode. It wasn't always a huge explosion- in fact, sometimes Janus would just leave the room. But no matter how big or little Janus's outward reaction would be, he would end up having his anger and bitterness cemented in his mind along with the thought that Patton didn't really care.

He knew that one of Janus's biggest problems with Patton was that the man didn't seem to be aware of why he got upset, and to Janus, the apparent lack of self-awareness gave him the impression that Patton wasn't putting any effort into actually trying to figure it out. And partially, some of that was because Deceit had a predisposition to see things in a more manipulative/deceptive light. But part of it was also that Patton didn't always reflect on things very much. He could worry and ruminate almost as much as Virgil at times, and he could be very in-tune with other people's emotions when he wanted to be, but when he thought he already understood, he wouldn't always take the time to make sure he's actually correct. In this particular scenario, Patton was mostly seeing Janus as someone who was in a crisis and needed help. He saw Janus being sad and scared and angry, but he was focusing too much on the first two components. Patton hadn't interacted with Janus directly much in quite a few years, so he was really underestimating how much anger was really at the core of a lot of things for him. Instead of seeing the anger as anger, he was seeing it as a manifestation of something else- if Janus was yelling at him, it was really because he was sad or lonely or hurt. And many times that was true- but the anger was just as real.

Patton wasn't an idiot, either, but he tended to look at things a little simplistically at times, painting the world into black and white and never even thinking that he might have gotten the colors partially or entirely wrong.

Janus, meanwhile, existed almost entirely in the gray, and he couldn't stand it when Patton looked at gray and called it 'black' or 'white'.

And he couldn't stand it when Patton refused to listen to him.

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