#and also just a really cathartic fictional scenario for me to spend time in whenever life feels out of my control

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

i am lowkey kinda obsessed with C-53's current situation on like a conceptual level. it's like reverse Alphonse Elric. what if you had to hold onto your personhood and identity in a body that fundamentally makes it physically impossible for you to do and be all the things you like about yourself. what if you as a flesh and blood person spent sleepless nights wishing you could taste your favorite foods, hug your brother, feel emotions with your whole body like you were meant to, feel your heart beating to prove to yourself you're not a walking ghost. what if you as an artificial intelligence were forced to sleep, feel physical sensations, feel emotions through your whole body even though you were only meant to feel them in your head, if you were literally unable to access huge parts and processes in your reliable mechanical brain. what then?

[purple-emo]

Princess Lavinia: Chapter One

Description: Roman projects his feelings onto a fictional character. Things get out of hand.

Pairings: Platonic prinxiety has a lot of focus in this chapter, but the real pairing here is Roman x depression

Warnings: Suicide, suicidal ideation, dissociation(?)

Notes: Seriously, don’t read this if you’re not in the appropriate frame of mind to read about suicide. Also, first fic on the new blog! Yay!

Roman’s adventures with Princess Lavinia started off fairly innocent. He’d made himself a small kingdom in the mind palace in which to conduct magical adventures, and, with the other sides frequently too busy to join him in his exploits, it wasn’t long before Roman saw the need to create an adventuring companion as well. She was the archetypal fairytale princess: pretty, kind, and able to fill any role that the narrative required of her. Because she was created by Roman, Lavina lacked the capacity to do anything that Roman’s own imagination could not conceive, but, as the embodiment of creativity, he didn’t feel at all restricted by this limitation. Lavinia quickly became one of Roman’s favourite hobbies: when he needed a break from his work, he would excuse himself to his kingdom. There, he would act out a variety of stories with Lavinia: saving her from dragons; exploring ancient ruins with her; defending their kingdom from armies of hostile elves. The many enemies they slayed left no corpses behind, instead exploding into red rose petals. Death was messy, and Roman thought it best to avoid dealing with it too directly.

“You’re my best friend,” he had Lavinia say after one particularly eventful quest, “and I would slay all the monsters in the world with nothing but a hand fan just to keep you safe.”

“Oh, that’s good,” he replied, writing the line down in his notebook. His adventures with Lavinia were an excellent source of dialogue. Later, he had her do exactly the thing she had described, and then did it himself just to see what it was like. It was wonderful.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

Gradually, Roman found himself spending more time with Lavinia than with the other sides or Thomas. He loved his friends, but his interactions with them didn’t quite sparkle the way his stories did. Nobody and nothing was dramatic enough, or emotional enough, or real enough, except for that one little piece of the mind palace and the make-believe Princess living in it. Everything else in Roman’s life felt unbearably boring, and although his friends made things a lot more tolerable, they could never compete with the products of his own imagination.

One afternoon, while they were enjoying a picnic after a successful battle, Lavinia turned to Roman with a frown. “Are you okay?” She asked. “Your heart didn’t really seem to be in it today.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” He stared down at his untouched sandwich.

“It’s not nothing! You can talk to me about anything, Roman. That’s what I’m here for, I think.”

Roman sighed. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess the whole… fairytale adventure thing feels a bit hollow right now.” So does everything else, he nearly added. “I think right now I’d prefer something more…” he gestured vaguely, trying to find the right word.

“Mature?” Lavinia suggested.

“Maybe. I think what I want is emotional depth. Swordfights and dragons are fun, but I think I’m not really feeling it right now.”

“Hmmm…” Lavinia looked down and fidgeted with her hair, taking in this new information. After a few seconds, she met Roman’s eyes again, sorrow written clearly in her expression. “I’m cursed,” she announced. “Someone has taken my heart and locked it up in a faraway, secret place, so that I can never really be human again.”

Roman scribbled excitedly in his notebook, letting a wave of sorrow and pity wash over him. It felt beautiful. “That’s terrible. How can we break the curse?”

Lavinia stared at Roman in silence for a few seconds, and he suddenly felt as if she was looking directly into his soul. “I don’t think we can,” she said.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

For the next few weeks, Roman spent most of his time with Lavinia, fleshing out her backstory. He wrote it all down in his notebook for future reference: Lavinia’s villainous twin sister, exiled to a distant land for her crimes; her desperate desire to impress her father, the king—all of it was carefully summarized in neat, princely handwriting for incorporation in future creative projects. Roman felt genuinely passionate for the first time in a while. Meeting with Lavinia and learning more about her became the highlight of his day; the stab of sorrow he felt in his gut whenever she disclosed something particularly tragic was invigorating. It made him feel so much more alive than he had in weeks. And then—

“I shouldn’t be alive,” said Lavinia.

Roman had, on some level, seen it coming. After all, he was the one coming up with Lavinia’s lines, however passively. This did not prevent him from nearly dropping his notebook in shock. It hurt to hear her say that, and he loved it.

“Why?” He asked her.

“I’ve been thinking about the curse,” Lavinia explained, “and the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that I was wrong. It wasn’t a curse at all; I had no heart to take because I was never real enough to have one. This body,” she ran a shaking hand along her arm, “people like to make up stories about it. They imagine that it is a princess, and that her name is Lavinia, and that she is kind and cheerful and brave,” Lavinia was crying, “but it’s a corpse, and I am a ghost who has stolen it.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Roman. He noticed a small knife in Lavinia’s hand. How long had it been there?

“I don’t know,” Lavinia admitted, staring down at the knife. “Too many people think Lavinia is real. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

The knife quickly dissolved into rose petals, and Roman felt a strange sense of disappointment as he watched them slip through Lavinia’s fingers.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

It was three days before Lavinia went through with it. When she pressed the knife to her throat, Roman begged her not to do it. He didn’t mean it of course (the whole scenario was still his idea); he just felt like it would ruin the immersion for him to just stand around and do nothing. Inevitably, she cut her throat. Inevitably, Roman held her in his arms and watched blood flow from the wound with the detached voyeurism of an author writing a tragedy. Inevitably, she exploded into a shower of rose petals.

Roman stayed sitting on the floor for a while, blood on his clothes and rose petals in his hands. His heart was racing, and he felt like his whole body was soaked with sweat. That beautiful, overwhelming sword of pain was stabbing through his heart with an intensity he had never before felt. It was agonizing, and it was glorious.

Roman snapped his fingers, and Lavinia was back in front of him, unharmed.

She went for the knife immediately.

They went through the scenario five more times, trying out different lines, different actions on Roman’s part, different ways for Lavinia to hurt herself. Roman was preparing himself for another run-through when he felt himself being pulled out of the mind palace.

He rose up in his usual spot. “Roman—“ Thomas, who had evidently summoned him, cut himself off with a gasp. “Oh my gosh. Are you okay?”

Roman glanced around the room. Patton, Logan, and Virgil were all there in addition to Thomas, and all of them were staring at Roman with varying amounts of horror and concern. Roman abruptly remembered that he was covered in blood.

“Don’t worry,” he assured Thomas. “It’s not mine.”

Nobody looked particularly comforted by the clarification. “Do I want to know?” asked Thomas.

“Probably not. Anyway, what’s the situation?”

“Recently,” Logan explained, “Thomas has noticed that many of his ideas are much more melancholy in tone than usual. Remus swears that he isn’t the one responsible, so, logically, it must be due to your influence that Thomas is having these ideas.”

Panic filled Roman’s chest. “I’m sorry—“

Thomas cut him off. “I’m not mad. I’m totally fine with using darker concepts in my work if that’s what you think is best. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“You haven’t been talking as much lately,” Patton added, “and some of the concepts you’re giving Thomas are a bit… out of the ordinary for you.” He made eye contact, looking noticeably concerned. “We just want you to know that you can talk to us if there’s something wrong.”

Anguish returned to Roman’s chest, feeling more agonizing than cathartic. He’d failed. He’d let his feelings get in the way of his work, and now everyone thought there was something wrong, and they were all looking at him with those kind, worried expressions that he knew he didn’t deserve.

What would they think if they knew what he’d been doing all afternoon? Roman glanced down at the blood on his clothes and decided that everything was fine. It had to be.

Roman laughed, perhaps a bit too loudly. “Thank you all, but I’m fine, really. I just wanted to try some new ideas. On a scale of one to ten, how much do you love them?”

Virgil stared suspiciously at him from across the room. “Do your ‘new ideas’ involve you rising up covered in blood and looking like you just saw a serial killer? I saw the look on your face when Thomas summoned you. There’s something you’re not telling us.”

“I was having one of my adventures just now, and things got a little intense,” Roman said, his heart racing. “Not everything has some deep hidden meaning behind it, The Smell Jar.”

“That was childish, even for you,” said Virgil, “but I like the Sylvia Plath reference.”

“Ah, Sylvia Plath,” said Logan. “Did you know that, in addition to her writing, she also made visual art?”

Roman’s strange behaviour forgotten, the conversation moved on.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

Over the next several weeks, Roman found himself with less and less motivation to do anything but run through stories with Lavinia. He told himself that he was still being productive—he continued to write things down in case they came in handy for a future creative project, even though his “adventures” in the kingdom were all far too violent and depressing to ever be turned into something useful for Thomas. Roman hardly ever wanted to tell stories about anything other than suicide. It was, of course, only a matter of time before things escalated further.

One day, after around the eighth time Lavinia had died, Roman realized that his usual routine was starting to get boring. That dazzling anguish in his chest was diminishing in intensity. He needed something more real, something more personal. He needed—

Roman snapped his fingers, and Lavinia appeared looking much more alert than she had in weeks.

“I want to die,” he told her.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

That day, Roman attempted suicide nine times. None of it was real, of course, but he did his best to make it feel real. Lavinia pulled him close, kept him back from the windowsill, repeated over and over again every reason Roman could think of for him to stay alive. He told himself it was only acting. By the third time, he felt as if he was on the verge of tearing in half: one part of him, his body made of shaking, warm metaphysical flesh, stayed with its feet planted firmly on the ground. The rest of him drifted in and out of sync with his body, bobbing and pulling up to the sky like a balloon tied to his wrist. At the time, it seemed overwhelmingly important to Roman that he find a way to cut the string: it was strange, being only halfway outside of his body. He would have greatly preferred to drift away entirely, to break into pieces and sail through the sky to places unknown.

He told himself it was only acting.

It was fairly late in the afternoon when Roman remembered his notebook. Head still spinning from the previous several hours, he reached into his pocket and found it empty. He’d forgotten the notebook. In its place, Roman summoned a slip of paper and a pen. He’d copy his notes down later.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

Roman headed back to his room a few minutes later. He still felt somewhat disconnected from his body, but the feeling was fading fast. He made an effort to notice the colours of things. White walls. Brown rug. Black shoes. Roman was still naming colours when he opened the door to his bedroom and saw Virgil pacing nervously around the room.

At the sound of the door opening, Virgil turned to look at him. His eyeshadow was smudged, and he looked like he’d been crying. He was holding his phone in one hand and Roman’s notebook in the other.

There was a long pause. Roman internally braced himself for yelling, or crying, or deeply awkward emotional conversation.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” Virgil said finally.

Roman gestured to his dresser, where his phone sat partially obscured by a small stack of loose paper. “I didn’t have it with me.” He watched Virgil quickly type something. “What are you doing?”

“I’m texting Patton. I was worried, so I asked him to go look for you.”

“Oh.” Roman suddenly felt very nervous. “I’m sorry. Does he know about…?”

“This?” Virgil held up the notebook. “No. I found it when I was in here looking for my nail polish.”

Roman walked over to a nearby drawer and produced a bottle of black nail polish with a little Jack Skellington face on its lid. He’d ‘borrowed’ it a few weeks prior for some now-abandoned photography project, and subsequently forgotten about it. “Here.” He handed it to Virgil.

“Thanks,” said Virgil, slipping the bottle into his hoodie pocket. “I’d remind you to stay out of my room, but it looks like we have more important things to worry about right now.”

There was another pause. “You probably want to talk about that, don’t you?” said Roman, gesturing to the notebook in Virgil’s hand.

“Yeah. Can we go somewhere else��I mean, if you’re comfortable—”

Roman waved a hand, and suddenly they were in the castle he’d created for Lavinia. The light of a full moon streamed through a floor length window, illuminating the antique-looking couch that was the centerpiece of the room. An archway opposite the window led out to a pristine, wallpapered hallway. “Is this good?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Virgil said nervously. He walked to one of the couches and sat down with strained formality. Roman quietly took a seat next to him. “So, um… first question: who’s Princess Lavinia?”

“She’s a character I created. This,” he gestured to the room around them, “is where she lives. I come here when I’m craving adventure.”

“So, she’s like an imaginary friend?”

“Basically. She’s upstairs, if you want to meet her.”

“I…” Virgil glanced down at the notebook. “No thanks. I want to talk to you. Second question: what’s the deal with this notebook?”

“That’s where I document my adventures with Lavinia, in case they come in handy for scriptwriting or something similar.

Virgil nodded. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I guess what I have to ask is… why all the suicide? Like, at least half of this notebook is just Princess Lavinia killing herself in different ways. That’s not exactly an ‘adventure.’ It sounds more like you’re having some kind of mental breakdown that you cope with by standing in an imaginary castle and watching a fictional character die over and over, which is honestly pretty concerning.”

“I am not having ‘some kind of mental breakdown,’” Roman insisted. “I am acting. What, am I not allowed to tell stories with emotional depth?” That last question came out a lot more aggressively than Roman had intended, but before he could apologize, Virgil was already responding.

“This isn’t emotional depth! This is the same emotion repeated over and over for, like, forty pages!” Virgil paused. “Is this what you were doing that day you showed up covered in blood?”

“Yeah. That was basically when it started.”

Virgil paused, taking in this information. “That was a month and a half ago,” he said, horrified.

Roman felt sweaty. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. You don’t need to worry—”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” snapped Virgil. “Of course I’m going to worry! I’m Anxiety, and you’ve been roleplaying suicide fantasies with your weird self-insert OC for—” he stood up and flipped frantically through the pages of the notebook. “Have you been doing this every day?”

Roman nodded, very much wishing he could escape the conversation.

Virgil swore quietly. “This explains so much.”

Roman stood up and awkwardly extended a hand to comfort him. “It’s really not that big of a deal.” He was suddenly aware of an inexplicable sense of urgency.

Virgil stepped backwards, avoiding Roman’s touch. “Not that big of a deal? Are you kidding me? You barely talk to anyone at all anymore, you give Thomas either weirdly depressing ideas or nothing at all, and you literally spend all your free time thinking about suicide. If you actually think you’re in any way okay, then you’re either deeply in denial or a complete idiot.”

“I’m not…” Roman trailed off. Somehow, he couldn’t think of a rebuttal. He went over the past few months in his mind and realized that Virgil was right. “I haven’t been myself,” he admitted, sinking back onto the couch. “I don’t think I’m even real, actually.” Roman buried his face in his hands, fighting back tears. He was suddenly very conscious of how exhausted he felt.

The room was silent for several long seconds.

“What do you mean?” asked Virgil.

Roman looked up, and saw that Virgil had quietly taken a seat next to him. What did Roman mean? Of course he wasn’t real—none of them were, but Roman’s words had meant something more than that. Looking at Virgil, he got an impression of existence that he hadn’t gotten from himself in a long time. Virgil was Virgil, in a way that Roman could never hope to be Roman. It occurred to him that perhaps he’d been projecting onto Lavinia a bit more than he’d realized.

“I’m supposed to be better than this,” said Roman. “I’m supposed to be Prince Roman, source of Thomas’ hopes and dreams. I’m supposed to be Creativity. I’m supposed to be kind, and charming, and brave, but I’m just…” he trailed off. “If I can’t give him anything to look forward to, what good am I? Why should I exist?”

Roman hadn’t expected himself to say that. “This is a problem,” he said through tears, “isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Virgil. They sat in silence for a moment before he spoke again. “Look, um… it might not mean much, because our situations are kind of different, but I used to think that I didn’t contribute anything useful, and that everyone would be better off without me, and that it wouldn’t matter if I removed myself from the equation. Do you remember what happened when I actually left?”

Roman stared thoughtfully at the carpet. “Thomas became a complete fool with no inhibitions.”

“Right! Because I was wrong, and so are you.”

Roman considered this for a moment. The words were so simple, and yet, somehow, Virgil’s reassurance felt so much more comforting than any of the things he’d had Lavinia say to talk him down. “That… actually helps a lot. Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Virgil crossed his arms thoughtfully. “We should probably tell Thomas to see a therapist or something. If you’re… like this, he probably isn’t doing great either, whether he realizes it or not.”

Roman nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. Just…” he hesitated, “can we keep this a secret? The things I just told you about, I mean.”

“Are you sure?” asked Virgil. “It seems like something he should know about.”

“I’m sure.” Roman felt a surge of panic. He couldn’t let the others know. He wasn’t quite able to explain to himself why, but it felt crucial that everything he and Virgil had discussed should remain between the two of them. “I don’t want to have that conversation yet. Besides, maybe therapy will fix it. If Thomas feels better, I’ll feel better, and then we won’t have to bring it up at all.”

Virgil looked doubtful, but nodded anyway. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone, but I’m holding onto the notebook. If you ever seem like you aren’t safe, I’m not keeping this a secret.”

Fair enough. “Deal,” said Roman, holding out his hand to shake. Virgil started to reach for it, but paused.

“Wait,” said Virgil. “One more thing. Actually, two more things. Number one: I want us to stay here tonight, because I really don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone.”

Roman thought back to the day’s events, neatly recorded on the slip of paper concealed in his pocket. He had a feeling that if Virgil knew the exact details of what he’d been doing, he would be requesting a lot more than permission to supervise him for a single night.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Roman admitted. “What else?”

“This is more of an offer than a request, but,” Virgil nervously ran his fingers along a seam on his sleeve, “I could join you here sometimes, if you want. Just so you won’t be spending all day alone with your thoughts.”

Roman thought for a moment. “Are you open to the possibility of magical adventures?”

“Sure,” said Virgil. “But only real adventures; no weirdly-emotionally-intense-and-bordering-on-self-harm adventures.”

Roman had a feeling that he might regret this later, but he had a much stronger feeling that Virgil’s offer was exactly what he needed. “Perfect,” he said. They shook hands.

Virgil gave a small, relieved smile, which Roman returned. He wondered how long it had been since the last time he’d genuinely smiled. A few days? A week? A month?

They fell asleep on the couch, listening to the Death Note musical on Virgil’s phone.