the shapes in the silence (15)
warnings: TSITS-typical heavy angst, mentions of self harm/suicide, misunderstandings/miscommunication, arguing, drug use, injury, mentions of gore, let me know if i forgot any!
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By the time Roman woke from his mandatory nap, he felt… not better, but at least a little less like death warmed over. At the very least, he was rested enough to generate new and promising ideas for potential solutions to their problem.
Not that he was calling Anxiety a problem, of course! Well. He supposed he was, but only in the way a tricky patient was a problem for a doctor. It wasn’t intended as a reflection of character, really!
Roman sighed, dragging a hand over his face and ignoring the way it made the cut on his forehead twinge. Even in his own head, he couldn’t seem to find the right words to address the Side he’d spent so long loathing.
What were you supposed to say to someone who’d tormented you regularly for ages, the two of you practically always at each other’s throats, only for it to be revealed that they’re also the very same creature that you adore? The same being that defended your life and dignity on more than one occasion?
It felt like an impossibility, the sort of contrived, ludicrous plot twist that Roman never would have come up with for a story of his own. How was he supposed to reconcile keen, kind, protective Puff with the Side who sneered and scowled and shot down Roman’s most exhaustive efforts without care?
‘You always come up with something better, don’t you?’ The memory of Anxiety’s voice echoed in the back of his mind, and he groaned.
He’d wasted nearly an hour arguing with Logan the previous day about precisely how long Deceit had been playing them all for fools, but even then, he hadn’t truly believed his own wild theories. Not when the truth had been laid out so undeniably.
With the gift of hindsight, he could see all the little instances that lined up to create the full picture: The constant disappearance and reappearance of Puff into places unknown, sneaking off into the mindscape and yet always returning before they got too worried. The way Anxiety had hardly even blinked in surprise at the sight of a doll-sized Roman, had treated it like such an unremarkable occurrence that he’d almost forgotten to feel self conscious. The sudden increase in the number of times Anxiety was willing to join them at breakfasts and meetings, as though the usually-reticent Side had found new value in spending time with them.
Or maybe, Roman thought with a pit in his stomach, he’d just had new hope that they might tolerate his presence.
He remembered the way Puff had trembled and hunched in on himself during their disastrous first meeting, shying away from Roman’s touch as though he thought Roman wouldn’t hesitate to slice his head cleanly from his shoulders. When he’d settled a hand on the tiny dragon’s head, he remembered feeling struck by Puff’s wide-eyed look of utter surprise, as though Roman’s offering of peace was incomprehensible.
And really, why wouldn’t he think that? Had it not been Roman who always faced Anxiety with hackles raised and sword drawn? Was he not the one who had flown into a rage and personally threatened to kill Anxiety, only a week or two before the Side had chosen to use Roman’s invention to quietly and unobtrusively disappear from existence?
From the beginning, Anxiety had assumed the worst of them, the same way he assumed the worst of the entire world. The most unbearable thing was that Roman had never bothered to prove him wrong.
No. No, the most unbearable thing would be losing the chance to fix this, all because Roman couldn’t come up with the cure to one measly little spell. If things continued on like this, Anxiety would discorporate in the most unstable state any of them had ever been in, with no guarantee that he would reform the same— or reform at all.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Roman could waste time wallowing about his own personal failings later. For now, he forcibly dragged himself free of his mire of self-pity, shoving the sleeves of his formal jacket up to his elbows without any care for how foolish it might look.
There wasn’t a second to lose; he had a curse to break.
—
The first attempt was simple: for a fairytale enchantment, one needed a fairytale cure.
Roman was more than familiar with the old reliable stopgap measures for curses, having fallen prey to a fair few hexes himself over the years. Rare elixirs, magical combs, and sacred fruits were standard fare, working often enough that he almost always tried those first.
Kisses were his personal favorite, because he was always a sucker for romance, but those weren’t applicable here for a number of reasons, including the fact that Anxiety had openly disdained that solution in a recent video.
(Of course, there were also the more antiquated stories, which frequently involved cutting off a beast’s head or tail in order to return them to their original human form. Roman had taken one look at the very Puff-esque tail that kept swishing happily behind Anxiety and firmly decided not to mention that particular solution except as a last resort.)
The only problem was that coaxing Anxiety to eat and drink meant waking Anxiety from his content dozing, and Roman couldn’t help but feel a nauseating mix of worry and apprehension every time the other Side was conscious. Patton was doing his best, but none of them had full faith that the Side’s oddly docile state would last much longer.
(What was he truly afraid of, a nasty little voice in the back of his mind wondered. That Anxiety might grow fearful and the curse would worsen? Or that Anxiety would regain full lucidity and hate him for what he’d done, and he would be left helpless in the face of it, unable to answer for the pit of guilt stewing in his stomach?)
He stalled by procuring as many potential cures as possible, flitting back and forth from the Imagination and his own room to pile flasks, apples, enchanted tools, and other odds and ends upon the living room table. Logan had swept his stack of books up and fled within the first half hour, and it ultimately took Patton losing patience and throwing a pillow at him to finally get him to settle tentatively on the last free cushion of their couch.
Of course, he then promptly got distracted staring at Anxiety’s lax sleeping face and wondering at how similar it looked to Thomas, minus the dragon-y bits, obviously. Somehow, he’d never seriously contemplated Anxiety as a part of Thomas just like them, rather than an opponent to challenge him and inevitably be defeated. The nauseous feeling grew.
“It’s your turn to look after him,” Patton told him, apparently unwilling to let Roman remain paralyzed by his own inadequacies any longer. Without a single further instruction, he hefted Anxiety up by the shoulders and reversed the angle of his lean so he was settled against Roman, instead.
“Padre—!” he hissed, only to shut his mouth with a click as Anxiety shuffled a bit further into his side, face only crinkling for a moment before sinking back into peaceful sleep.
Patton did at least have the decency to scoot the table close enough for Roman to reach the items without jostling his unexpected burden too much, but he still felt far too underprepared by the time the other Side departed to scour his own room for anything that could help.
There was a still, fraught silence as Roman contemplated the paths in life that had led him here, and then— a quiet snore. He glanced down at the source and found Anxiety making a truly ridiculous face, mouth slightly open and cheek squished against his shoulder.
His phone was in his hand and his camera app opened within seconds, his reflexes honed from years of prank wars, and he paused, guilt swelling for a moment. What if…
No, he finally decided. If he knew anything about Anxiety, he knew that the last thing he would want was to be treated like some delicate, blown-glass sculpture, prone to breakage. Kindness and pity were two very different things, and Roman certainly wouldn’t be the one to look down on Anxiety.
The other Side had faith in him, and Roman would return the sentiment.
Anxiety was more than strong enough to survive this trial, and once he did, Roman would tease him about his ungraceful sleep habits just as he needled Logan for always sorting his paints alphabetically after borrowing them and poked fun at Patton for manifesting kittens despite his allergies.
(Just… perhaps more gently. Their past exchanges hadn’t exactly been playful, and he certainly didn’t want Anxiety to feel targeted and bite back. Particularly not with his new, much sharper fangs.)
He lifted his phone up to angle it at the both of them, grimacing slightly at his bedraggled state but taking the selfie anyhow. They looked exhausted, he reflected as he checked that the photo hadn’t come out blurry. Once Anxiety was cured, they were all overdue for a very long nap.
Setting his phone aside, Roman reached out and swiped the nearest tangle of jewelry from the table, muffling the clinking of metal as best he could. These would be simple enough to slip onto Anxiety’s person without waking him, though he doubted that even ten times the amount of trinkets would be able to put a dent in one of the Dragon Witch’s spells.
Anxiety didn’t stir as Roman carefully slotted one ring after another onto his limp fingers, half of them ostentatiously golden and oversized, the other half overly intricate and mystical. Bracelets with inscribed sigils and necklaces with heavy jeweled pendants, tiaras so varied in size that Roman fit four of them on Anxiety’s head, and even a few clip-on earrings, for good measure.
It was this last element that finally woke the other, not that Roman noticed immediately; he was preoccupied with attempting to attach the clips to Anxiety’s oversized deer-like ears, fumbling over and over when they wouldn’t stop twitching reflexively away from his touch like a cat’s.
“Why do I look like a jewelry store threw up on me?” a raspy voice asked with genuine bewilderment.
“Gah!” Roman nearly jumped out of his skin, and was abruptly grateful that he hadn’t been trying to put any actual piercings in. The clip on he’d been holding had flown somewhere across the room, never to be seen again. “You’re awake!”
Despite still being visibly befuddled, Anxiety found the clarity to snark at him. “You don’t say. Someone better tell Logan that you’re stealing his detective title.”
It had never felt so heartening to hear sarcastic banter. Roman grinned a little despite himself, easing back to give the other some space. “Come on, now, Paramoan, cut me some slack. I was focusing!”
The beginnings of a frown were edging into Anxiety’s expression as he took in his surroundings, as though he was realizing he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. “On what? Making me into a display mannequin for a Claire’s?”
He shifted as though to lift his arms to gesture to all the bling, only for a sudden jolt to stop him short, a pained flinch rolling through his frame. More of the haze left his eyes, panic beginning to bloom in its place.
The dark marks that were creeping out from under Anxiety’s bandages began to twitch, and the Side was surely mere seconds away from turning and noticing the disastrous-looking curse.
“Oh, hey, thatremindsme—!” Roman half-shouted, hurriedly reaching out and swiping for the first thing within arm’s length. He promptly held it out. “Do you want to try some… marshmallow creme?”
Anxiety raised an eyebrow at the jar that Roman had practically shoved under his nose. “It’s glowing.”
“One of its many undeniable selling points?” Roman tried, wishing he’d grabbed one of the elaborate glass bottles or metallic-toned fruits instead, something more professionally fairytale. Who’d ever even heard of enchanted marshmallow creme?!
“Princey, if you’re trying to poison me, there are easier, less stupid-looking ways,” Anxiety said dryly.
“I wouldn’t poison you!” Roman replied, unable to prevent the offended slant in his voice. “I simply— I simply need a second opinion to help me test these items, and I know the others won’t give me the… constructive criticism that you will, that’s all.”
(Internally, he congratulated himself. Anxiety loved criticizing things, this was sure to distract him.)
Anxiety continued to look dubious, and Roman sighed before grabbing a spoon and taking a heaping bite of the marshmallow fluff himself. “Shee?” he said, and then nearly choked on how thick it was.
“So far, it’s mostly seeming like a very ignoble way to die,” Anxiety snorted, but still reached out to take the jar and a spoon of his own. “…I’ve never heard you call anything of mine constructive before.”
Roman inhaled sharply and then devolved into a coughing fit, fumbling around for one of the bottled liquids on the table. The one he finally grabbed and uncorked tasted strongly of orange juice, but was at least pulp-free. He took a few extra sips, trying to formulate a response that wouldn’t trod all over this tentative peace.
“That would be because you’re sort of terrible at it,” he said, and then immediately winced. “Wait, I don’t mean it like that!”
Anxiety’s face had already flattened out, but luckily, he had taken a bite of the marshmallow fluff and thus his mouth was temporarily glued shut.
“I mean, your criticism is always very… pointed,” Roman tried. “You tell me what’s wrong with things, and don’t offer any suggestions on what to do instead— because I don’t let you.”
Anxiety’s expression had been slowly darkening into a scowl, ears flattening, but at Roman’s last few words, surprise flitted across his face. The lashing of his tail eased.
“I suppose one could say I am a mite bit… sensitive, when it comes to my creative endeavors,” Roman managed to force out, graciously ignoring Anxiety’s snort. “I was biased against you from the start, and it only increased my unwillingness to hear you out on even the simplest matters. There’s no critique you want to hear less than one from someone you think of as your enemy. Even if that’s not the reality.”
Anxiety’s head jerked up slightly, staring at Roman more intently. His ears were perked up, sitting at attention. “What are you even talking about? I’m the antagonist, the— the villain. I am your enemy, remember?”
“You’re willingly helping me taste test foods from the Imagination,” Roman pointed out, passing over another bottle with elaborate gilded wiring wrapped around the neck of it. “Doesn’t seem particularly villainous to me.”
“I’m just hungry,” Anxiety defended, knee-jerk. Then, frowning deeper, “You think everything I do is villainous. What’s going on?”
“Is it that suspicious that I would hold a civil conversation with you?” Roman asked helplessly.
“Yes,” Anxiety said flatly. “Especially when I can’t figure out how I got here, or why my body feels so terrible. So. Spill it.”
Roman chewed on the inside of his cheek for a long moment, still able to see the curse marks from the corner of his eye, and then sighed. He reached out and lifted up a small vial that he’d left under the table, so as to not get mixed up with the rest of the bunch. He set it on the couch cushion between them, and the shimmering silver liquid inside swirled idly.
“This is a calming tonic,” he stated plainly. “I’ll explain, but I want you to promise that if you begin to panic, you’ll take it.”
“That doesn’t really make me feel not panicked,” Anxiety replied, glancing between Roman and the vial with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t think this could get more suspicious, but you’re really outdoing yourself.”
“I need you to promise,” Roman repeated, trying to convey his sincerity through eye contact alone. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have, but I need to be sure it’ll be safe.”
Something in Anxiety’s body language went tight and coiled. “Ha, I get it.” he practically snarled, lip curling. “You think whatever you’ve got to say to me is going to make me hurt someone. No wonder you were playing nice. You want me under control.”
His show of anger would have been more convincing if the dragon parts of him weren’t drawing in like a dog preparing to be hit. The mark pulsed visibly, and Roman choked down the terror in his throat, forcing himself to answer.
“Anxiety, you hurting someone else is the last thing I’m worried about,” he said, entirely honestly. “If you can’t trust that, trust that if I thought of you as an enemy or a danger, I wouldn’t resort to underhanded means like trickery. Historically, haven’t I challenged you to enough duels to prove that much?”
An idea struck Roman like a hammer, and he raised his hand like a knight swearing an oath. “On my honor, I shall not seek to hurt, imprison, or manipulate you. If you do need to drink the tonic, I won’t let anything happen to you while you’re under the effects.”
The promise had been enough of an olive branch for Puff, back during their first meeting, and though Anxiety still looked a little too hunted for his liking, he had at least paused to consider Roman’s words.
“Fine. If you aren’t lying, I promise,” he finally grit out. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“You got cursed rescuing us,” Roman explained, sacrificing his usual dramatic flair in favor of imparting the most important information first. “The curse feeds off fear, and so we’ve been trying to find ways to keep you from panicking before we break it, hence all the caution.”
Already, Anxiety was staring at him with wide eyes. “I’m going to freak out.”
“Do not freak out,” Roman replied immediately, and then cleared his throat unconvincingly. “I mean. There’s no need to worry, Edgar Allen Woe. We’re all working on it, so surely you’ll soon be as right as rain once more!”
“Why?” Anxiety asked, the question bursting free as though it had sat on the back of his tongue for a while now. “It’s none of your business, so why are you guys suddenly interested in me? You people have hobbies to indulge in and pets to pamper and family dinners to eat. I’m— I’m not your problem.”
The tirade had started vehement, but by the end, Anxiety’s voice had died down into something quiet and bitter. Roman felt another one of those miserable little pangs in his chest, and swallowed thickly.
“Anxiety, you saved our lives, and you… well.” He paused, trying not to stare too obviously at Anxiety’s new reptilian features. “We learned something important about you. Don’t you remember?”
“If I did, do you think I’d be asking—,” Anxiety started, only to stop dead as movement seemed to catch his eye. Slowly, he turned his head incrementally to face the purple tail lashing at his side.
Roman could see the moment the penny dropped; Anxiety’s ears went so flat against his head they almost vanished, his shoulders hunched and his hands came up defensively, and his breathing instantly grew erratic.
“You know?” he asked, the words coming out strangled, and then doubled over as the curse instantly began to pulse anew, much quicker than before. “Aggh—!”
“Anxiety!” Roman reached out, only to freeze, stricken, as Anxiety ducked away from his hand like he thought Roman was about to attack him. His hands hovered uselessly in the air, and he resisted the urge to cry for help, for someone more qualified to help. “Anxiety, the— the vial! The calming tonic, it’ll help stop the curse!”
Anxiety lifted his head enough to meet Roman’s eyes, scouring his expression, looking for something. His gaze dipped for a moment to the belt at Roman’s hip, and then he reached out and snagged the vial as another wave of pain wracked its way through his body.
“You swore,” Anxiety reminded him in a croak, and before Roman could respond, he flicked the lid free and tipped the concoction down his throat.
It took a few bracing seconds, but the nice thing about magic was that it worked a lot faster than pain medication. Roman didn’t realize just how much tension he’d been wound up with until Anxiety’s posture eased, and he let out a long sigh, practically going lax with the sudden relief.
“Sir Gawain’s trousers, that was stressful,” Roman complained, slumping against the couch. “The Dragon Witch’s curses are the worst.”
Anxiety’s hand had gone loose enough that the empty vial tipped out of it and tumbled right off the couch entirely, hitting the carpet with a small thunk. Roman felt a measure of nerves ratchet back up at the sight. “Anxiety? Are you alright?”
(Goodness, was this how Anxiety felt all the time? No wonder he perpetually looked two steps from death.)
Anxiety slowly uncurled from his previous pose, which could have been best described as “crumpled paper ball of agony.” His movements weren’t nearly as loose or unregulated as they had been while he’d been super out of it previously, but he wasn’t trembling or strung up like a musician’s bow, either. When he finally lifted his head, his expression wasn’t relaxed or fearful— just oddly… blank.
Roman remembered their whispered conversations about the anti-Anxiety bracelet and what it had done, what it could do. He’d destroyed the remnants of the invention, haunted by imaginings of what could have happened, but the lingering image of always-expressive Anxiety being reduced to an empty shell was still present enough to make his stomach lurch at the sight.
“Are… are you alright?” he asked, searching Anxiety’s face for any sign of what he was thinking.
The other Side’s face twitched briefly before smoothing out again. “The curse stopped.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer to his question, but before Roman could press, Anxiety had continued.
“What happened?”
It had only been a day or two since everything had happened. A question like that shouldn’t have felt so insurmountable to answer, and yet… “What do you remember?” he hedged, still half-expecting that the curse would kick back in any second.
Anxiety frowned, his eyes slowly shifting to the side in apparent recollection. “He— I— Puff was following a noise. It was… a trap? You were all there, in the Imagination, and things were dangerous enough that I woke up. I got hit by something, and it hurt— why am I not discorporated?”
“We managed to make it out of the Imagination thanks to Logic’s interference,” Roman explained, sort of wishing the Side in question was here to help now. “It’s been about a day since then, but I’m not surprised you don’t recall the last few times you woke up, you were fairly out of it.”
Anxiety just kept staring at him, as though he was still waiting for a proper answer to his question.
“We couldn’t— I mean, we weren’t going to just let you discorporate. Especially since we aren’t sure whether or not the curse could interfere with your reformation if you succumbed to it,” Roman tried, though honestly he found it hard to believe that Anxiety would prefer to discorporate and come back anew. It wasn’t exactly a speedy process, and going by his chronic eavesdropping habits, Anxiety hated being left out of the loop for any length of time.
“Oh.” Anxiety nodded slowly, processing. Then, he shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Roman paused, thrown off by the apparent certainty. “Really? No side effects at all? Have you dealt with a curse like this before, then?”
None of them had thought to ask Anxiety himself, though it seemed obvious in retrospect. Roman felt a little bubble of excitement growing in his chest at the possibility of a solid lead on breaking this curse.
Anxiety frowned a little harder. “No. I mean… reforming. It won’t happen. There’s not enough of me left.”
“What?” The individual words were clear enough, but put together in that order, Roman couldn’t seem to make sense of them. “Anxiety, what are you—?”
“I’m weak. I can’t do anything dangerous to anyone now,” Anxiety elaborated with a mild sort of impatience. “And I can’t reform, so you don’t have to worry about me coming back as an even bigger monster. There’s no reason to wait.”
“I’m not— I’m not worried about you being dangerous,” Roman spluttered, half of his mind still stuck on the gut-wrenching knowledge that if he didn’t fix this, Anxiety would be gone, “or monstrous, or—!”
Anxiety reached out and seized Roman’s hand, guided it down to touch the sword hanging from his belt.
“Listen, I want you to do it now,” he spoke quietly, without a single waver in his voice. “Whatever you gave me, it’s working. Like this, I’m not scared at all. I won’t make it difficult. I’ll keep still, okay? I’ll make it easy.”
Realization struck like a physical blow, and Roman flinched back, pressing his hand down on the hilt of his sword like it might somehow unsheathe itself. “No! What are you— No!”
“You swore,” Anxiety grit out, a sudden bitter anger steeping in each word. “You said you wouldn’t make it hurt. I don’t want to feel afraid while it’s happening. I just want it to be over with. Please, I know I lied, I know it was wrong— I’m sorry. Don’t drag it out. Please.”
Even now, the tonic did its work. There weren't any shuddered breaths or shaking hands, and the curse mark remained silent and stagnant where it curled over Anxiety’s shoulders. The fear and panic had been muffled down into nothing, leaving Anxiety hollowed-out, like a cored apple.
“I swore I wouldn’t hurt you!” Roman half-shouted, his heart racing in his ears as though it was trying to make up for the blank, exhausted way Anxiety was pleading for a quick execution. “Killing you counts as hurting you! Why would you— Do you want to die?!”
Anxiety blinked steadily at him, as though want had never factored into the equation. “I’m going to.”
“You’re NOT.” Unable to bear it, Roman stood up, tearing his sword from his belt and pitching it across the room like a javelin, ignoring the resulting crash. He wheeled around to point at Anxiety. “You’re going to stay here with us and drink strange glowing concoctions and wear gaudy jewelry and kiss even the ugliest of frogs for as long as it takes for us to figure out how to break this curse, and then you’re going to keep staying here with us until we can make up for everything that’s happened, and nobody is giving anybody any sort of death! Have I made myself clear?”
Anxiety looked back at him with wide eyes, and Roman realized quite abruptly that his face had gone all blotchy and hot. He reached up and found that his cheeks were distinctly wet.
Oh. How embarrassing.
“You aren’t allowed to give up,” he tried, even as his voice cracked and spilled into something much wetter, like a dropped egg. “You’re not allowed to convince us to give up, either.”
And then, because he’d already lost any possible pretext of pride, he lunged forward to latch onto Anxiety and squeeze, as though he could hold all of the other Side’s pieces together through sheer force of will.
Slowly, Anxiety’s hands came up to clutch at the front of Roman’s outfit, fingers digging in hard enough to leave permanent wrinkles.
“I don’t understand,” he admitted into Roman’s shoulder, muffled and hopeless. “I don’t know why the three of you are doing this. You hate me. …You’re supposed to hate me.”
“As if.” Roman clung tighter, stubbornly pretending he wasn’t leaving a growing wet patch on Anxiety’s own shoulder. “Since when were you one to follow such traditional narratives, anyhow? What kind of story would this be, if a dragon rescued the dashing adventurers from peril and got slain for it?”
“A tragedy,” Anxiety offered. “Or a parody, maybe. One big, stupid joke.”
“It can’t be a joke,” Roman told him. “Nobody would laugh at something like that.”
Anxiety hummed dubiously. “It’s an aesop, then. No good deed goes unpunished. Monsters should stay monsters, because pretending otherwise just gets people hurt.”
“Or maybe,” Roman suggested pointedly, “it’s a fable about not judging a book by its cover. Maybe the intrepid heroes assumed the worst of someone with good intentions, someone who was just a little rough around the edges. Maybe the heroes weren’t actually as valorous and noble as they thought they were, and… and someone innocent got hurt because of it.”
There was only a halfhearted mumble in response, and Roman realized that Anxiety was drooping to the side, nearly asleep once more. He wouldn’t be able to try any more of the edible items unless he was awake, and yet…
With a sigh, Roman reached out and snagged a burnished comb from the table, leaning back so that the two of them were stretched out on the couch, side by side. He hummed softly as he began to run the comb through Anxiety’s hair, an old, half-forgotten melody from Thomas’s childhood.
There was no miraculous change, no sudden burst of light to show that a random enchanted comb had saved them, and Roman wasn’t foolish enough to believe that any of the trinkets he’d brought would be any different. This wasn’t a simple ailment or minor hex.
Anxiety’s curse fed on fear, the terror that was wound down into the very bones of his being, and only an equally dedicated answer would be able to pry its vicious teeth free.
It was a daunting thought, especially now that he knew how important their effort was. Anxiety had been fading for weeks, and Deceit stepping in to patch over the holes had only distanced him further from his role as a Side. If they failed, if Anxiety was torn apart by the blow he’d taken on their behalf— that was it. They would lose him forever.
And he was fine with it. He’d accepted it with the same tired resignation that he’d worn when he’d offered to put the bracelet back on, to go back to that empty half-existence. He earnestly believed they wanted him gone.
The mere thought made his gut twist with horror, and Roman forced a shaky inhale through his teeth before continuing to hum. If they could just convince Anxiety that they truly wanted to help him, that a chance was all they needed to do everything in their power to fix this—
Except they didn’t have a single clue as to what was going on in Anxiety’s head, not really. If this disaster had shown Roman one thing, it was that willingness to help meant nothing if they didn’t know what Anxiety really needed.
The thought caught on something like a flint on stone, sparking a sudden idea. Unfortunately, it was one that immediately made him want to groan. Still, he’d meant what he’d said about not giving up.
This whole mess— all of them were entangled in it, and he suspected it would take all of them together to undo the knots that held them there. As much as Roman disliked it, there was undoubtedly someone who knew more about Anxiety than the rest of them. He probably had a better chance of convincing the emo to hear them out, too.
After all, who better to prove their sincerity than the one Side who could detect lies?
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