#i read three series + two standalones so.. be proud of me i guess!! idk what to read now but it’s okay

[velvetbunniie-archive]

i’ve read 10 books this month………

[aliferous-ly]

The Setting Sun

yall. Yall. i wrote a fic im so proud of myself. This is Possibly a series, if y’all want it !! otherwise standalone /peace sign/ also, if you like a certain pairing then mention it bcos idk which pairing yet, if any, so :3c

Summary: “He... Logan wasn’t angry, at the events. He just came to a realization, like dust, sitting heavy in his lungs. If he coughed his entire life would go black and gray, and he wouldn’t be able to stop.”

AKA Logan realizes he’s not the best person to be Thomas’s Logic. So he makes a new one. 

Words: 3196

Genre: angst, some fluff. Logangst, of course

Warnings: implied character death for a moment (I promise, he does not die). deprecation, not showing all the sides in the most flattering light (like humans), disappearance.. if there’s anything else, please let me know!

writing tag: @sassy-in-glasses​, @rose-gold-roman​, @justanotherpurplebutterfly​, @echomist13​

Logan came to the realization like Roman might describe love: slowly, and then all at once.

He was increasingly perceptive of the other sides’ actions, though he wasn’t sure if this was a side effect of being Logic or if it were more... paying astute attention to their every move.

But he started noticing the little things, like when Virgil mentioned how certain long silences made him nervous and attentive to every single move.

And the word games of sarcasm that sometimes, used to, fly over his head.

But he’d gotten better.

And he’d gotten so much worse for it.

He noticed Roman’s roll of the eyes when Logan turned away, or sometimes in full view, turning to look at Thomas, get a load of this guy. He noticed the disdainful flick of his fingers, the push of his shoulders, the sneer on his lips that might disappear in moments time.

Of course he saw Patton’s strained smile, his frown at Logan’s exposition, just hold back a bit next time, bud, we don’t want any wounded feelings around here! The concerned jolt of his gaze, flipping between Virgil and Roman and Logan, uncertainty, forced delight, the simmer of it’ll all be okay, let’s just take a step back and talk about it! even though Logan knew “it” would always be feelings and not the actual issue at hand.

And Virgil’s candid nature hid such secrecy that Logan couldn’t miss the darkened expression, the gentle lean away, how Virgil would talk about how Logan disrespected him, or used to, and in the next heartbeat force Logan to shift for his means. The listen, dude, you might want to lay off a bit. Of course, Logan could do that, of course.

He couldn’t miss, then, Thomas wincing, the muscles in his face contracting into something (something) and he’d make eye contact with Roman or Virgil and they’d have that look. He couldn’t miss Thomas’s awkward stance, the way he’d shift when Logan stepped up to speak, the defense alighting in everyone’s eyes the moment Logan opened his mouth.

He... Logan wasn’t angry, at the events. He just came to a realization, like dust, sitting heavy in his lungs. If he coughed his entire life would go black and gray, and he wouldn’t be able to stop.

He couldn’t cough. He couldn’t mess up.

Logan massaged the center of his chest, staring into a shard of broken glass glittering rainbow in the light of the mindscape. Every side had one; they’re own personal escape into Thomas’s core, the centerpiece of his existence.

Too long spent in there, and they would dissolve into Thomas. And I wouldn’t want to lose you, Patton told Virgil. Please don’t go back.

Logan wouldn’t leave without a second thought. He couldn’t do that to them; Logic was a particularly important piece to discussion, and Logan knew that he... that Logic would be needed, for the pieces to fit together. For the code to run properly.

Viscous despair surged through his veins, slogging and clogging his throat and heart, and Logan knew he was no longer needed. Not as Logan. As a facet of Thomas’s personality, he’d failed, and grown too far from the center.

Logan exhaled, closing his eyes and ignoring the trails down his cheeks. Touching the cold surface, he slowly drew his fingers away, trails of electric blue and steel grey extracting from the glass. Logan pulled the essence of Logic from Thomas’s core, the very thought that had been used to make him – only, different, because Logan... Logan could not be a repeat, he could not be another stumble in the process of Thomas’s life.

He gathered synopsis, collected and connecting every (important) aspect of Logic into one humanoid figure. They were comprised of long strings like nerves, dark blue and gleaming.

One more thing. Logan took a moment, or two, to think. He couldn’t mess this part up; done incorrectly, Logan would cause the very problem he was seeking to repair.

One breath, two, and Logan tapped his index finger against his heart, wincing as he drew out a long strand of glowing silver, waving ribbon-like through the air. The world dulled a little at the edges, his connection to Thomas waning and dissolving like morning dew. He suddenly couldn’t remember what year Thomas graduated, or how long he’d studied to be an engineer.

(He remembered twenty Disney facts that Virgil and Roman had tag teamed in teaching him, he remembered Patton’s favorite tea and how much sugar he liked in his coffee, he remembered–)

Logan wove the silver through the blue, interlocking the two until he’d created a fully new being, complete with all of Logan’s capabilities and (Logan slid his fingers away from the silver) his connection to Thomas.

“You’re going to fix everything I’ve destroyed,” Logan said softly. He leaned forward, suddenly tired, rubbing at his temples. “I’m sorry for pinning you with the responsibility. But with luck, you’ll be just the right Logic for them.”

Logan cradled the blue strands shaped like a jaw, and pressed a single kiss to their forehead. “You’ll succeed where I’ve failed,” he said, as life and autonomy filled the shape of a human Logan had created. Skin stitched over blue wiring, eyes glowing the silver of Logan’s connection as they blinked open.

“You are Logic,” Logan said, exhausted and fading fast. “You know your purpose. There are others like you, but they do not know you yet.”

The new Logic stared at him, unblinking. They opened their mouth and said, “What are you?”

Logan smiled, brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “I’m nothing.”

“But you are here,” they said. “You cannot be nothing. Nothing does not exist.”

“Truly, I am,” Logan said. He reached out a hand, the skin and veins and bones disappearing, fading like a mirage. “You see? I am vanishing.”

They blinked once, then. “You are Logic.”

“No,” Logan said. He shook his head. “I was.”

His body finally got the cue, and Logan faded just like Roman had once explained love:

Slowly, and then all at once.

I was.

I am no longer.

—

Roman heard a whisper through the mindscape and looked up from his book, narrowing his eyes.

“Roman?” Patton asked, doing a jigsaw puzzle with Virgil. “What’s up?”

“I heard something,” Roman said.

Virgil snorted. “Like, a ghost? Are we haunted? Can we be haunted?” he sounded excited about the concept.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Roman said. They made faces at each other, a common “you’re irritating” that they exchanged.

“Maybe I’m the ghost, and you’re just now noticing my ghostly attributes,” Virgil said, wiggling his fingers.

“If any of us were a ghost, it’d be Logan,” Roman said, laughing. “From how often he holes himself up in his room nowadays.” He winced, then, because yikes, he forgot to watch his mouth again. He waited for Patton’s chiding be nice to Logan, Roman, that he’d always gotten with Virgil, and frowned when it didn’t come.

Virgil snorted before refocusing on the puzzle, evidently done with the conversation. Patton made a small noise of victory, slotting a piece into place. Virgil’s face softened with a smile.

Roman turned back around, leaning against the couch, brows furrowed. Something was wrong with the mindscape, something off. But if Virgil wasn’t noting anything, then it had to be solely in Roman’s realm.

Because... well, Roman couldn’t explain it, really, just a couple feelings thrown together with erratic stitching into a mismatched blanket that barely worked. But if he had to hazard a guess, something had been created, and shifted, and something – he longed to know what – added, to him, to his job.

The last part made him a little indignant because honestly, wasn’t his job hard enough? Which side decided well, this is a little much for me, Roman can take it!

Probably... well, probably Logan, but it didn’t seem logical for Logan to dump something else on Roman, not when Logan knew how stressed Roman could get, not when Logan was uncomfortably familiar with Roman’s breakdowns.

“Hey Virgil,” Roman said, throwing an arm on the back of the couch and turning to look at the table.

Virgil sighed. “What, couldn’t stand silence for more than five minutes?”

“It was three minutes and forty five seconds and I cannot, in fact, stand upon silence so no, I cannot,” Roman said, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could think. “Nerd,” he tacked on at the end, lamely and without heat.

Patton stopped moving, his and Virgil’s gaze stopping on Roman’s face, expressions twisted with confusion.

Virgil laughed uncomfortably, shifting in his chair. “You might be spending a little too much time with Logan, man.”

“I think it’s a good thing!” Patton said. “Logan can be a tough nut to crack.”

Roman frowned, because he wasn’t really, although he... he hadn’t really tried, as of late, to focus on him.

“I’m... I’m gonna go to imagination,” Roman said.

“Alright, kiddo!” Patton said. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just...” Roman searched for an excuse, half-standing, when an idea struck him. He trained his face into a cocky, pompous expression, drawing on Thomas’s ability as an actor, falling into his role easily. “I’m bored. Reading this novel has not been as stimulating as promised, and I need to fight something.”

Virgil rolled his eyes and Roman internally grinned. Ace in the hole. Patton laughed and said, “Go ahead, bud! We’re not holding you back!”

Roman stood fully, stretching and setting the book on the side table, careful not to bend any of the pages. His books were littered with dogears and highlights, but Logan’s were meticulously cared for, only the best of the best with perfect folds (favorite parts) and notes.

Roman sank out to the hallway they collectively called home, each of their rooms branching out. Patton’s, of course, was adorned with various positive imagery with the overarching pale blue theme. Virgil’s was pitch black, delicate engravings of purple, covered in Logan’s notes and Patton’s pictures and Roman’s odd stickynote varying from return my earbuds you heathen to a realistic drawing of a chicken.

He stood in front of Logan’s door, eyeing the straight white and blue lines. They really needed to paint over this, it didn’t encompass Logan at all. Roman had a few ideas... maybe he would tell Logan, while he was here.

Roman knocked. “Logan?” he called out, puffing his chest to make his voice sound bigger. “It’s time to emerge from hibernation!”

Nothing.

Roman blinked a few times. Was Logan not in his room? But then, where else would he be? “Logan? Look, I’m sorry I was going back and forth with you on the blue and pink colors, it was so much like the sleeping beauty dress that I couldn’t resist.”

A few more seconds, and Roman frowned. “Are you not in there? Hello?” He knocked a few more times, just to be sure. Maybe he had earbuds in, or something.

The door swung open, Roman’s fist poised, and everything tilted on its axis for three horrible seconds.

“Who...” Roman choked on his words, confusion-fear-bewilderment filling his veins. “Who are you?”

They didn’t move, eyes open and unblinking, a striking silver color. “I am not a who. I am a what. I am Logic.”

Something small and dark twinged in Roman’s chest and he shook his head. “No. No, you’re not. Where’s Logan?”

“At the present moment, I am uncertain.” A channel of silver lit up their cheekbones, like wires in a circuit board. “Logan did not tell me where he was going, only that he was.”

“Logan is Logic, you’re... you’re not Logic,” Roman said again, shivering. This was wrong, this was wrong. “Why are you here?”

“I am the manifestation of Thomas Foley Sanders’s Logic, intended to add reasoning to certain discussions.”

“No, Logan is,” Roman tried. They didn’t blink, which was really starting to unnerve him on a whole different level. “I don’t understand.”

They regarded him for a moment. “Very well. I will expound. Logan created me ten minutes and thirteen point three seconds ago. He used the mindscape to do so.”

Roman flinched. Logan created something. Logan created... he swallowed, throat thick.

They – Logic? – continued. “The former Logic said, ”You are Logic. You know your purpose. There are others like you, but they do not know you yet.“ When I inquired of his being, he stated, ”I am nothing.“ This is paradoxical situation, so I sought to remedy his flawed thinking. He said, ”You see? I am vanishing.“ His fingers disappeared into the air, of a way I am thus uncertain. I called him this ”Logic“, as you did, but he corrected my flawed verbiage and stated, ”No. I was.“ Soon after his statement, the rest of his body vanished. I have been standing in the room, collecting data for my success here. Evidently, the former Logic knew his job was being fulfilled incorrectly, and decided to find a solution. I was created as the solution.”

Roman couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “What?”

“Would you like me to repeat?”

“No, no,” Roman stuttered, out. “No. No, Logan wouldn’t... how did he make you? How?”

“From the data I have obtained,” they said, still not blinking or moving, as if they were a picture on a background, “the former Logic gathered the essence of Logic into a singular being from the data of the mindscape. He inserted that being with a silver strand – of which I am uncertain of the reason – and gave the being life.”

“The silver,” Roman whispered, realization dawning in his eyes. “The silver is the connection to Thomas, you need it to be one of his sides, I’ve never heard of... transferring, or whatever he did...”

Roman fell quiet, the silence deafening to his ears. Logic hadn’t invited him into Logan’s room, though Roman wondered if Logic knew common societal practices, or if he was merely... a computer. A vessel.

A thought struck him and Roman’s spine shot ramrod straight. He stared at Logic intently, just barely stopping himself from grabbing their shoulders and shaking (just to get some movement, some life). “The golden string. What did he do with it?”

A few seconds passed as they processed this. “I am in no possession of a golden strand.”

“But where – where–” Roman stopped, took a breath, and reworded his sentence. “What did he look like before he disappeared? Did he glow, or were his eyes a different color? His veins?”

Roman counted one, two, three, four, five before Logic spoke. “The former Logic had skin much lighter than a healthy human being, being transparent and pale. His veins were not red or blue but a copper, gold color. His eyes were brown, but the irises had lines of gold within them, which steadily took over the entire iris.”

Roman lost his breath and almost fell, holding himself against the wall with one hand. “He’s... he...” Oh my god.

“Is the golden strand important to my functions?” Logic stated more than asked.

“Not... not your functions, but it’s... it’s his entire personality, his memories, his feelings,” Roman said, the words thick and heavy in his mouth.

“Very well,” they said, and asked no further questions, a silence that gave Roman a whiplash he never thought he’d feel. His curiosity, his wit...

And then it struck him.

“Oh, no, Logan,” Roman murmured, eyes wide and unblinking. Logan hadn’t left any untied odds and ends, had he? The “essence” of logic in a different being, and his extra jobs, the ones that required a personality, that required feeling, he pushed... pushed onto Roman. And, undoubtedly, part of Virgil, part of Patton... they all carried a little bit of Logan in them, now.

Roman had Logan’s scathing wit, his quick comebacks.

He didn’t want them.

“The gold,” Roman said. “When he vanished, did he have a mirror on him? A shard of glass?”

“I am uncertain.”

“And you don’t have any desire to learn? To figure it out? Wrack your brain?”

“I do not have desire,” they said so plainly that Roman wanted to cry.

“Okay, I need to... I need,” Roman gestured a bit with his hand, thoughts running a mile a minute. “Mirror mirror on the wall...” his mirror appeared in his hand moments later, gilded with gold and an intricate handle. Roman clutched it like a parched man to water. “Show me Logan.”

The mirror swirled, disney-esque to his name, before revealing a vague fog with a shimmer of gold. One moment there, gone the next, leaving just... gray.

But it was there.

Roman was certain of it.

“He’s still alive,” Roman murmured. The mirror, if it had not been made of impenetrable thought, would have cracked under the pressure of his hands. “He’s still alive.”

“The former Logic did not erase himself?” the other Logic asked.

“No, he’s still there, just his personality and thoughts and memories,” Roman said. “He didn’t erase himself. He moved himself into the mindscape. He did the sides version of moving far, far away.”

“He should have. He cannot take up space in the mindscape,” Logic said.

“His personality isn’t much space at all,” Roman said. “The mindscape is neigh endless. You know this.”

“You make a valid point. I concede,” Logic said. Roman frowned. Agreement so fast?

“But that means he’s still there,” Roman said. “He’s alive. And that means we can find him.”

“Are you certain he wishes to be found?” Logic said.

“No,” Roman said. “But I... I can’t let him just leave. I can’t. The longer he spends in the mindscape, the more he disappears... almost like growing old. I need to... He shouldn’t have left. He’s logic, he’s our logic, and I... I miss him.”

“Very well.” No fighting whatsoever.

Roman took a shuddering breath. An actual mission, with real dangers. An adventure, the romantic side of his brain whispered. Save the damsel in distress. Only, Logan had chosen to disappear into the mindscape.

But Roman couldn’t do nothing. He’d... he’d have to, at least, find him, and talk to him. It wasn’t right for Logan to up and leave without telling the others.

Then it’s decided, then?

“Okay,” Roman said. “Okay. I’m certain.” He squared his shoulders, breathing slowly. “I’m going to get him.”

Logic said nothing, stare blank and emotionless.

Goosebumps rose on Roman’s skin. “But first...” he flicked the mirror, vanishing it into the mindscape. “First, I have to tell the others.”

Logic didn’t move as Roman sunk out. Roman wondered if he’d still be standing there, hours later.

He didn’t know why Logan had left. Why Logan had committed an act so much more thorough, so much more permanent, than Virgil ducking out.

I don’t know why you left.

Roman rose in the living room, drawing Virgil and Patton’s curious gazes.

But I know one thing.

Virgil shot to his feet, entire being buzzing with energy and fear-anxiety-nervousness.

You’re not alone. You’re never alone.

Patton stood slowly, a shaky sort of realization filling his face before Roman had even said a word.

Your family is behind you.

And we’re not leaving you behind.