unsteady; episode tag ficlet
summary: Virgil sinks out and tries to deal with the aftermath of what just happened. Immediately follows the “Intrusive Thoughts” episode.
warnings: angst in droves, spiraling thoughts, negative self-talk, mention of nausea, mention of Deceit, mention of Remus, sanders sides spoilers for “Intrusive Thoughts”, open-ended conclusion.
A/N: I don’t usually write this much explicitly angsty stuff. Huh. Big shout-out to @randomslasher for their angsty Virgil thoughts that helped me bring some stronger shape/form to this fic. This is probably more a character-study-in-fic-form than a real fic with a plot, but here ya go anyway.
Because I was one of them.
The steady words had come from unsteady lungs. Virgil drags in a breath and lowers himself to the blurring floor littered with piles of clothes and journal pages and Virgil’s self-worth. He can’t erase the look of betrayal that had been scrawled in Thomas’s sunken eyes. The circles under them rivaled Virgil’s own and was a damning conviction of his inadequacy.
I thought that I would be able to… protect you from them.
Some bang up job he’d done. Instead, he’d lashed out against Thomas. Of course he did. Didn’t he always? Thomas was the punching bag that always got hit when Virgil got cornered and started swinging.
A lifetime ago, Thomas used to return the blows; he used to understand Anxiety’s role as something bad and was loud about it. Virgil thinks maybe it was easier then. It’s easier to accept hatred when you’ve known nothing else.
He wipes at his eyes, pretending he doesn’t notice the smears of black that streaks across his fist. Even when Thomas stopped returning the punches, Virgil still had moments where Thomas got caught in the crosshairs of blind panic. And Thomas… Well, he took the blows like a champ. He met them with acceptance and forgiveness—forgiveness that Virgil didn’t deserve.
But he had pretended to, hadn’t he? He’d convinced everyone that he had earned his “seat at the table”. That he wasn’t so bad, that he meant well, that he wasn’t… Other.
Why should you be held to a different standard than any other Side?
Thomas had asked him that question and Virgil couldn’t lie to him. Not anymore. Not after all the work that Thomas had put in towards being more honest with himself. That was what Thomas wanted. And Virgil would give Thomas anything he wanted, as much as he was able. He couldn’t keep lying. It was only a matter of time before Thomas found out anyway, right? Better to hear it from the mouth of the traitor himself.
At least nobody else would get caught in the blowback of Thomas’s hatred. Virgil could give that much to them.
And every moment of it had been terrifying. It was the right thing to do—Virgil feels rooted in that conviction even as the rest of him feels untethered—but the right thing has left a hole in Virgil’s chest that he doesn’t know how to fill.
You fit right in, Thomas had told him once. Patton had called him family. Logan had told him he didn’t mind his company. Roman had told him that he makes them better.
And he’d started to hear it so much that a part of him even… believed it himself. That he could somehow be one of them. Virgil had had everything he’d ever wanted. Thomas listened to him. Logan understood him. Roman respected him. Patton supported him. It was more than he’d ever dreamed of. It was more than he could have ever thought to ask for.
He needed them. He needed them so much it scared him sometimes. If Virgil was a tree, then Thomas and Logan and Roman and Patton were the soil, the rain, the sun.
But it had been stupid to think like that. Virgil isn’t a tree. He is a hurricane; powerful, destructive, dark. The sooner Thomas knew that, the safer it would be for Thomas. Even if it was laying bare the parts of himself that Virgil so desperately tried to deny.
Virgil promised to keep Thomas safe, and he’d failed. He’d failed when it was Deceit, twice. He’d failed with Remus. He’d failed, failed, failed. Everywhere he turned, Virgil was one step too late. Thomas was hurting and it was his fault. It had been his fault for far longer than Logan realized.
Thomas hates him again. It had been clear in the recoil when the words had fallen from Virgil’s lips with a weight as heavy as the one in his stomach. He’d felt like he was diving into an icy lake. He just wished his heart was colder, like it had been before, as if it would make it a little easier to manage. As if it would ease the splintering feeling he can feel in his chest, or the rolling in his stomach.
Virgil sniffles and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie. He stops. His hoodie. The one he’d created to signify for himself the acceptance he’d found in the others. But Thomas’s resentment had been so brutally clear. He hadn’t needed to hear it—Virgil didn’t think he could take that, not when the world was already going blurry and his eyes were stinging—but he deserved every part of it.
Virgil tears himself out of the hoodie blindly and throws it against his closed door. You’ve ruined everything.
He folds his arms over the top of his knees and buries his face into his elbow. He thinks of all the times Thomas smiled at him. The amused quirk of Logan’s eyebrows. Patton’s bright grin. Roman’s soft, sincere earnestness. For him. Because they’d all believed Virgil was good. That he had always been good.
It’s over and you’re never getting it back.
He’d dealt with their resentment before. He had practice shouldering that. Perhaps he could again.
He feel so unsteady without them.
Everything comes to a crashing halt when he hears a soft knock on his door.
