Red! Creativity, what exactly are you doing out there? 💬
Roman wiped his forehead off with an arm, leaning back for a moment to survey his handiwork.
“I’m doing what I do best, of course! Thomas needs ideas, inspiration, ingenuity, and Yours Truly is here to provide them!” he beamed as another series of potential projects sunk into Thomas’s mind, somewhat sporadically connected but all sound ideas nonetheless. “This is excellent, just like Patton said! I’ve never had so many good ideas so quickly.
“Normally, quite a few of them don't meet my standards, and even more get shot down by Negative Nancy before they even have a chance to fully flourish. Though, I suppose that won’t be a problem now.”
He paused, something in his mind catching on the idea of Anxiety. There was something about him that had made Roman feel… upset. No, worried? About Anxiety?
Roman frowned, trying to remember what he’d been planning on doing before this brainstorming session distracted him. His purpose took priority, but he’d been putting out plenty of concepts, so there wasn’t any harm in checking in on his guest.
Decided, he stepped out of the Imagination and was astonished to see that the fairy lights in his room had shifted into the soft lilac and silver of early evening. It had been a while since he’d been caught up in a creative fugue long enough to lose track of time.
He shook the surprise away, scanning the front of the miniature castle for Anxiety. No sign of him.
Ignoring the twist of unease in his gut as the glow of the Imagination faded away, he stepped forward and tapped the enclosure, watching as the rooms began to rotate, waiting for them to settle wherever the tiny side had hidden away.
The castle kept rotating, cycling through each room over and over with no results to show for it.
Roman stepped closer, and there was a crunch under his heel. He jumped back, panicked imaginings of a tiny body flashing through his brain before he registered the hunk of plaster on the floor. Even as he watched, the palm-sized bit of ceiling cracked in half, the orange portal he’d so carefully placed on it fizzling into nothing.
The portal that the moat led to. Which had been on the floor instead of inside the castle where he’d left it. The castle that was empty.
The realization seemed to clear the cobwebs from his mind, and he nearly bolted for the door before remembering himself and looking carefully at the floor around him. Nothing.
There was no way the tiny Side would have chosen to stay in Roman’s room after escaping, so he carefully stepped over to the door and into the hall, scanning every bit of carpet around him before moving an inch.
He couldn't possibly guess how much ground his quarry had covered while he was in the Imagination, so he kept his movements slow and quiet, hoping there were no convenient mouse-sized boltholes in their walls.
As he got closer to the stairs, he could hear Patton whistling away, which meant that at the very least, Anxiety hadn’t gotten the attention of that Side yet. Patton would definitely be acting differently if he’d found Anxiety, especially if he was informed of the many mistakes of the past few days.
Roman had thought the experiment would be easy enough to manage, but they hadn’t even made it to a week without losing the Side they were supposed to be monitoring.
A spot of dark color finally caught his gaze, and he did a double take at the sight of Anxiety, tucked against the wall and curled up into the smallest shape he could manage.
He wasn’t hiding, even though Roman’s steps must have been big enough to make the ground vibrate. He wasn’t running, despite the stairs to the kitchen (and by extension, Patton) being only inches away. He wasn’t even moving.
Roman felt another spike of panic and knelt, carefully using a curled finger to pull Anxiety from the corner. He was moved without resistance, and when Roman scooped him into a palm, Anxiety was unsettlingly limp.
Despite this corpse-like behavior, Roman was close enough that he could make out the slight rise and fall of Anxiety’s chest, the way his eyes were actually open, with a thousand-yard stare that seemed to look right through him.
“... Anxiety?” he asked softly, and got no response.
For the first time, there wasn’t any tension in Anxiety’s body when he wrapped his fingers around him more securely, not a single twitch as he turned and hurried back to his room, and nothing resembling a response when Roman continued to try and question him.
Throughout this entire ordeal, Anxiety had been full of motion and expression, raising his voice to argue with them and challenging their decision nearly every step of the way. Even when he wasn’t fighting, he was watching them with an intensity that would make anyone shudder. Big or small, Anxiety had never been shy about telling them exactly what he thought, often ready to escalate any disagreement into a fight.
Now, he didn’t fight anything, allowing Roman to position him on a seat and check him over for new injuries as though he couldn’t care less what the giant appendages around him were doing. As though he couldn’t care less what happened to him. His eyes were dull and faraway, making something in Roman’s chest twist unpleasantly.
In all aspects, it was like he’d just… given up.
What had happened out there?