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thesentientmango · 4 years ago

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We Dance My Love, Into The Night

A/N: This is one of my parts for the @sanderssidesgiftxchange for @dragonindigo245! This was a blast to write even though it turned into an absolute MONSTER of a project! Honestly especially since it turned into this monster of a project, that just made it even more exciting! I hope you enjoy it and hopefully it’ll make the end of 2020 a little better!

Read on A03

Summary: Roman is throwing his annual ball and this year a few new guests have been invited, although it was the day before and Roman might have not delivered one of the most important invitations yet, it would be fine! Everything was under control.

Rating- Teen

Word count: 17540

Ship- Roceit

Tags- physical fighting (it’s play fighting), swearing, food, fluff, cooking, dancing, Remus being Remus so some minor gore

Part 1, Part 2 (you’re here!)

~~~

Roman walked through the roads of the mindscape as he made his way back into his corner of Thomas’s mind. Roman had just finished delivering the final invitation to the annual ball he threw every year, well delivered was a strong word, he’d searched for Janus’s house for a few hours and then tracked down Remus instead. He wasn’t 100% sure Remus knew where Janus lived but Roman had confidence that Remus would get the news to him in one way or another, although he wasn’t quite sure in what state the physical invitation would be in.

Maybe Roman shouldn’t have put delivering it off for so long. He had delivered all the others weeks ago but for some reason, he couldn’t or hadn’t managed to deliver that one. Something in the back of his mind kept whispering that he wouldn’t come even if Roman invited him, so not inviting him was the best way to beat the rejection to the punch.

Roman kicked a small pile of leaves frustratedly and the wind quickly scooped them up and began to swirl around him before beginning to twist a path in front of him. Roman hummed before following them into the woods. Eventually, they brought him to a stone path which Roman began to follow.

As Roman approached the end of the path, he smiled as he recognized it as the pathway leading to Patton’s house. He heard the familiar giggling of children, the memories of children that Thomas knew or had known, and Thomas himself, or more literally, a personification of some parts of Thomas’s inner child. Roman passed by the backyard and jumped over the fence which had little painted handprints and flowers all over it. The backyard was constantly changing, and Roman loved to see what the kids were up to now and again.

“Roman!” A younger looking Thomas, who was missing a few teeth, slid down a pole from the treehouse that was occupying the backyard and ran over to him. He narrowly avoided tripping over his untied shoelace and grabbed Roman’s hand. “We’re playing pirates!” He glanced around before beckoning Roman to lean down, “and we’re hiding from the sea monster.” He said in a not so quiet whisper, “Shh!”

Roman glanced around, “Of course! Back to the ship, young buccaneer!”

Thomas nodded, although Roman was pretty sure he didn’t know what buccaneer meant, and began to tiptoe back toward the ‘ship’. Roman noticed with a smile that Tiny Thomas had a makeshift sword in his belt, it was cardboard with a pool noodle around it to prevent any actual injuries.

Thomas clambered up the ladder and waved for Roman to follow, but before he could he was tacked. Roman heard the playful shrieks of the children in the treehouse and he looked up at his ‘attacker’.

Patton was grinning down at him, his glasses were hanging from his shirt. “Hey!” He said before turning back to the kids and presumably making a face because they all giggled and ducked below the edge of the ship. “Are you just stopping by?” Patton asked.

“Yeah.” Roman said with a smile, “I was just checking up on you guys!”

Patton grinned and turned back to the kids, “This one’s mine!” Who shrieked various versions of ‘No!’ And ‘Ah!’ as Patton began to carry Roman back into the house.

“Go on without me!” Roman called up to the kids, “Be careful out on the high seas!”

Once they got a bit further away from the action, Patton set Roman back on his feet and hugged him. “Well, it’s great to see you. Are you coming later?”

“Of course!” Roman said, “I wouldn’t miss Family Dinner Friday!”

Patton smiled, “How’s the dance been coming? You’ve been working on it for months now.”

“It’s coming along marvelously, I can’t wait for you to see it tomorrow!”

Patton bobbed his head up and down excitedly, “This is going to be so much fun!”

Roman grinned, “Indeed it will!” He paused, “Patton can I ask your advice on something?”

“Sure thing!”

Just then, a little girl with pigtails ran up and presented her arm which was bleeding slightly, it looked like she had fallen.

“Look at that battle wound!” Roman said, immediately changing the subject.

The girl puffed out her chest slightly, “I got it while trying to catch the sidekick of the Wise Spider of the Deepest Darkest Lagoon!”

“The wise spider? What a coincidence we happen to be good friends!” Roman said while Patton began to clean her cut. “Do be careful with them,” Roman said in a fake whisper, “They pretend to be all tough, but they're a little fragile.”

“You’re all good to go!” Patton said as he finished putting on the bandaid.

She jumped to her feet, “I won’t forget Mr. Roman!” She said as she ran back to the ship.

“I should probably get going, stop distracting you, they seem to be quite capable of getting themselves into trouble,” Roman said as he watched her return to the ship, “seems to me like you’ve got your hands full enough as it is.”

“Alrighty, well if you want to talk to me about that thing later, we always have dinner!”

“Right,” Roman said. “If I’m still looking for guidance then I’ll be sure to come to you!”

“Thanks for dropping by!”

Roman waved as he walked out the front door and out the fence that surrounded the house. Time didn’t really exist there, Roman could simply choose to appear at his home if he wished, but something in his mind kept him wandering. Roman came to the base of a ranch-style house that was attached to a greenhouse, a huge laboratory, and an even bigger library. Roman smiled as he heard the melodic tunes of the violin from inside.

He walked up to the door, passing by the observation tower, and knocked on the door of the house, which looked quite out of place attached to all the extraordinary buildings of science and knowledge which surrounded it.

The violin halted and after a few moments, Logan opened the door. “Roman, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Nice to see you too,” Roman said as he walked in. “How's Avery doing?”

Logan smiled softly, “She’s doing well. I would like to thank you for creating her for me, she is very helpful.”

Roman grinned, “Aw! I love you too Specs.”

Logan huffed but didn’t protest, “Would you like to see her?”

“Yeah sure!” Roman said as he hopped up on Logan’s kitchen counter.

“Be careful,” Logan warned before turning into the house. “There’s a lot of breakable stuff on that counter.” A few moments later, a beautiful parrot flew into the room and began to cling to Logan’s shirt.

“You should have learnt to whistle!” Roman asked as Avery flew over to him. “I find it very effective to communicate with birds.”

“Whistling to birds is a very fairytale thing to do.” Logan said, “Frankly my way works just as well, it’s like summoning, she can choose to stay or come, but she knows I am requesting her presence, and it is quiet, and thus less obnoxious than whistling.”

“And you can’t whistle.”

“That’s not the point!” Logan huffed, “Whether I can or can not whistle does not impact the fact that my way of calling Avery is much more efficient.”

“Perhaps,” Roman said as Avery pressed her head into his finger he was using to pet her. “But you know, it’s nice to know that I’m better at you at one thing.”

“You’re better at many things. You’re much better at summoning and conjuring than I am.”

Roman waved him off, “oh that comes with the job, but whistling? That was something I did myself.”

“Well did you come here to talk about anything, or just to see Avery-” Logan cleared his throat as he said, “-and ‘flex’ your whistling talent on me?”

“Hey you didn’t even need your flashcards that time!” Roman said. “I’m proud of you!”

Logan fiddled with the knot of his tie, “Thank you. So you did just come for Avery?”

“Well I do love her, but I actually came to ask for your advice.”

Logan perked up, “Really? Well I will do my best to provide insight into whatever you need.”

Roman smiled and sent Avery back over to Logan, “In your objective opinion, hypothetically if someone didn’t come to the ball tomorrow, would that be a sign they didn’t like me?”

Logan squinted slightly as he looked at Roman. “In my purely objective opinion… it is not necessarily a sign of them disliking you. It is a possibility, yes. However, that would be jumping to a conclusion, that in itself would not be enough data to draw an accurate conclusion of the situation.”

Roman nodded slightly, “Okay, thanks.”

“This is about our new guests this year.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not very good at hiding things, am I?” Roman replied to which Logan laughed.

“No, no you aren’t. Perhaps you could ask some tips from Janus, he seems to be the person to ask when you have a secret to hide.”

Roman laughed nervously, “Secret? I don’t have any secrets.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t saying you did.”

“Right!” Roman said far too quickly, “Well thank you for all your help Logan.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Logan said, “Are you off so soon?”

“I have some business to attend to,” Roman said. “However I’ll see you at dinner.” Roman pet Avery, “and I’ll hopefully see you sooner than it was last time.”

“I think she’d appreciate that,” Logan said as he looked fondly at Avery. “Goodbye.”

Roman waved as he slipped out the door and leant against it.

That didn’t go very well.

It would be much easier if he could go to Janus for help to conceal the bubbling of nerves he got whenever Janus so much as looked in his general direction, but that was extremely not an option.

He didn’t know where to go next, but Roman just started walking, he was almost sure Logan would be watching, and he wanted to look like he had some sort of a plan. Roman began to roam(an) around the woods. Logan had said that it wasn’t a guarantee that he disliked Roman if he didn’t show up, but it was a possibility. And if it was a possibility then Roman needed to prepare for it.

Roman began to pace around a small clearing as he began to rehearse the different scenarios that might lead to him not showing up. In the middle of one of his disaster scenarios in which Janus did come but got accidentally burnt by the fireworks and was so mad that he never spoke to Roman again, he heard a voice behind him.

“Are you trying to start a fire?”

Roman whirled around, and frowned when he saw no one behind him, “Hello?” Roman said as he looked around, “am I going insane?” Roman mumbled to himself.

“Up here dipshit.”

Roman glanced up and saw Virgil sitting slouched on the crook of a branch. “Yo.” He said.

“What in Merlin’s beard are you doing up there?”

Virgil sighed, “Well the thing is, I was relaxing, listening to music just as loud as I possibly could, trying to fall asleep right? Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel so much emotional turmoil just in the middle of the forest. Good thing I came too, or else you might have literally created a forest fire with all your pacing.”

“Don’t you mean figuratively Dear Evan Heathen?”

Virgil snorted and sat up straighter, “No actually, I don’t. You’re literally sparking, creating flame, igniting the ground. I assume unintentionally, but that doesn’t really matter when everything’s up in flames does it?”

Roman glanced around and saw that where he’d been pacing there was a small ring of burnt grass. “What the hell?” He cried as he jumped and tried to scramble away from the sparks that now seemed to be everywhere.

“Fucking idiot.” Virgil mumbled before yelling down to Roman, “Stay still! What are you doing? It’s coming from you!”

“How do I get it to stop?!” Roman said as he flailed.

Virgil jumped down next to Roman and grabbed his shoulders. He flinched slightly as a spark burst off Roman and almost hit him in the face, as he said, “How am I supposed to know? But you have to calm down. You’re panicking.”

“No shit Sher-not!” Roman said as he sat down defeatedly on the ground.

Virgil snorted and shook his head, “That wasn’t even- you know what it’s fine, you’re struggling.” Virgil sat down a safe distance next to Roman and asked, “Why’d you come out here anyway?”

“I had some stuff to think through,” Roman replied vaguely.

“Well you’re gonna tell me. Cause this vague stuff isn’t gonna stop your fiery problem.”

Roman huffed in annoyance, “I suppose... if you must know... I’m a little bit nervous about the ball.”

“You’ve never burst into fire over it before,” Virgil pointed out. “So something’s different. Is it Janus and Remus?”

“Huh?”

“Well this the first time they’re coming. Is that it?”

Roman tilted his head slightly, “Yeah, yeah that’s it.”

“Well knowing them, and I do know them, they’re gonna be stoked. A chance to dress up all extra, and a party? Yeah they’re gonna have fun, don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“So they’re gonna come?”

“Is that what you're worried about?” Virgil asked, “Yeah of course they'll come. They can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but they’re not impolite, well...” Virgil paused, “calling Remus polite is a stretch, but he’ll come. Probably whether you want him too or not.”

Roman fiddled with his sash, wrapping it tight around one of his hands. “That’s good to know.”

“Hey, it’s gonna go well.” Virgil said, “Look I know I’m probably not the best one to be giving you advice about this, and no matter what I say I’m gonna be a fucking hypocrite, but I can tell that you’re brewing up a worst case scenario, and it’s clearly not doing you any good.”

“Yeah…”

“Just let it be, even as creativity, you can only control so much.”

Roman nodded slightly and looked through the gap in the trees, “Yeah, you're right.”

“Wow would you look at that,” Virgil said dryly, “you’re not a human firework anymore.”

Roman glanced around, sure enough the sparks were gone.

“You’re stealing my brand Roman. I’m the one who’s supposed to overthink myself into a fire,” Virgil said as he stood up to leave, “Next time leave it to the professionals okay?”

“Gotcha,” Roman said. “You should go back to your beauty sleep, you clearly need it.”

Virgil flipped him off, “Whatever you say Wannabe Human Torch.” Then he sank out leaving Roman alone again.

Roman huffed and looked around at the mess he’d made. The imagination was still a ways away, but as Creativity, Roman had some sway over the landscape regardless. It was much more limited than his limitless power in the imagination, but regrowing some grass was not a problem. He waved his hand, the grass instantly perked up again. Roman turned towards the direction of his castle, he’d done enough outside for one day. Perhaps he could find something else to work on before dinner.

~~~~

There was a knock on Janus’s door and he paused, he didn’t get visitors very often, by design of course, there was a reason he chose to live in the middle of nowhere.

Janus glanced through the peephole and immediately rolled his eyes, “Remus,” he greeted as he opened the door, “What are you doing here.”

“Just delivering a message!” Remus said as he waltzed into Janus’s house and tossed a wrinkled letter which was dripping with some sort of slime at Janus.

Janus peeled the letter off from where it had stuck to his chest and held it by the least disgusting corner, “Oh... thank... you. Who’s it from?”

“Roman.” Remus said, “I think it’s an invitation or some shit like that.”

Janus glanced up Remus who was inspecting a painting Roman had given to him as a gift a few years back. Janus looked back down at the dripping envelope and peeled it open, despite his best efforts his left glove was covered in the slime like substance in the process. After freeing the letter he took it out with his clean glove.

In Roman’s elegant calligraphy writing it read.

Prince Roman ‘Creativity’ Sanders the First would like to extend an invitation to the most honorable Janus ‘Deceit’ Sanders to the annual ball being held tomorrow, August the third, at the Castle of Dreams and Wishes. There is no dress code! Dress up as much or as little as you would like.

“Tomorrow?” Janus asked Remus.

“Yep!” Remus said as he picked up a vase to look at its carvings before shrugging and immediately dropping it.

Janus summoned a ghost of a hand which effortlessly caught the vase and placed it back on the counter as Janus huffed, “He’s so annoying, I swear. How long have you known?”

Remus hummed, “Uh month and a half?”

“Well I’m certainly not going to go dressed in this.” Janus said as he summoned a mannequin. “Remus if you wouldn’t mind,” Janus flicked a hand and the door swung open.

“Sure thing! If you wanna add a little something something, you know how to get a hold of me!” Remus walked out of the house before turning around and waving at Janus as the ground swallowed him whole.

“I swear if he messed up my garden.” Janus mumbled to himself as he peeled off his gloves and summoned a new, less Remus impacted pair before he began working on his outfit.

Janus was very good at lying, it was an aspect of what he represented after all. This, of course, allowed him to be incredibly good at detecting lies, and very good at lying to other people, but an absolute fool to think he could lie to himself.

“Really Roman is so obnoxious.” Janus mumbled and his own brain practically rolled its eyes. “I’m only going because it would be rude to turn down this invitation.”

Who did he think he was fooling?

Janus began to summon different sample fabric bases to work from.

“Alright fine whatever,” Janus said. “Maybe I don’t mind Roman.” He said as he selected a fabric. He wasn’t a Creativity, but anyone with any amount of power in the mindscape could construct clothing if they wished, that didn’t mean it would look good by any means, but they could try.

Roman always made clothes look good, Janus thought as he began to experiment with the fabric. It was truly one of the things Janus found astounding, that his ideas could just come to life like that. As he began to shape the base fabric, Janus wondered if he’d helped make any of the other side's outfits.

Janus shook his head and tried to concentrate as he summoned all his helper hands. He needed all hands on deck so to speak. Anyway, it didn’t matter to him whether or not Roman had helped the other sides! They were friends, it made sense that he would. He was just curious about what to expect, curious... yeah that was it.

Of course that was a lie, Janus knew he was lying, and he knew that saying that wasn’t going to change his actual opinions, but pretending was easier.

“Anyway,” Janus said, “No one’s getting hurt, besides perhaps my pride if I admit it to myself.”

“What exactly is going to hurt your pride?”

Janus almost jumped as the voice came from seemingly nowhere, and whirled around. Just his luck someone would walk in on him, but that’s what he got for leaving the door open and talking to himself he supposed.

Logan was standing just outside the house, and Janus faltered slightly. He hadn’t realised Logan knew where he lived. Logan was looking at Janus with a curious look in his eye, and Janus partly wondered if the curiosity was due to the hands which were still working on the dress as Janus walked towards the door, or if it was because of what he said.

“I don’t know quite what you’re referring to,” Janus said smoothly. “But do come in.”

“Let me remind you,” Logan said. “You were talking to yourself as I walked up, and you said, and I quote, ‘No one’s getting hurt, besides perhaps my pride if I admit it to myself.’”

Janus smiled tightly and nodded, “I did say that didn’t I... well I was just lying to myself, as I do, because I’m Deception, and I was just talking about how if I admit I’m lying it will hurt my very sensitive ego.”

Logan’s gaze was scrutinizing and Janus knew he wasn’t buying that being the full story. “Okay,” Logan eventually said. “Well the actual reason I am here wasn’t for that.”

“You mean you didn’t come just to eavesdrop on my conversations with myself?”

“No, although perhaps if you practiced closing your door I would not have overheard.” Logan said and Janus could hear a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Well what can I do for you?” Janus considered adding a quip about hoping Logan had another month late letter, but though better of it since Logan wouldn’t have understood.

“I was hoping you could assist me with preparing dinner, although I see you’re quite busy so I’ll-”

“Nonsense!” Janus said, “I was thinking of coming by to lend a hand soon anyway.”

As he walked out with Logan, he silently cursed himself for forgetting that it was Friday. This invitation couldn’t have come on a worse day.

~~~

It didn’t take anytime for Roman to arrive at the foot of the hill that led up to his castle. Since time was warped in the mindscape, he just willed himself to arrive sooner and not moments later he was there despite how far he walked away from his home.

Roman headed up the hill, and eventually arrived at a large drawbridge that started to lower as he approached, and by the time he arrived was completely down. After he got off the bridge he ran his fingers over the railing of the stairs as he walked to the iron gate and large wooden doors. The gate rose and the doors swung open on their own volition as he approached.

Roman entered his castle and offhandedly wondered if any of the figments were around. Many of them enjoyed spending time near the imagination, of course the children were outliers, but Roman guessed that was because unlike the other figments they had a home outside the imagination with Patton, so they rarely felt the need to go there.

Of course, some other figments, besides the children, had made homes outside the imagination, however it was much easier to build inside the imagination for anyone who was not Creativity, so most of them liked to stay inside the land of infinite possibilities.

Roman looked around the decorated ballroom, it certainly looked like a nice place to throw a party, hopefully it would turn out that way tomorrow. Roman snapped himself into a ball gown, (not the one he was going to wear tomorrow of course) and summoned a dance partner, who might have happened to be as tall as Janus, but that was purely coincidental. Music came from a piano as it began to play itself, and Roman and his dance partner began to glide across the room.

Roman wasn’t really thinking as his partner led him around the ballroom, his mind was wandering, although not to anything specific yet. As he bounced around the various corners of the ballroom, his thoughts too bounced around his head. Thoughts of what he might still have to prepare, there wasn’t much. Thoughts of dinner later that night. Thoughts of what his guests were going to wear, Roman had helped a few people with summoning outfits. However most people who were able to create using the power of the imagination and mindscape, could summon and make clothing.

As he continued to drift around the room, his brain began to focus on a thought, well to call it a thought was an incomplete understanding of the picture, but the idea itself had been bouncing around in his head for sometime and was now at the front of his brain.

It was fanciful, an unrealistic thought of a perfect scenario on the night of the ball. As the idea developed, and the details of what people were doing and wearing and saying began to take shape, his excess creative energy began to seep through his skin, causing his fingertips to glow.

Roman was standing in the middle of the ballroom, fireworks boomed outside, and Roman smiled as the multicolored bursts of light reflected onto the floor.

Roman heard the clicking of heels on the floor and glanced behind him, Janus stood, looking at Roman with a bemused expression on his face. “Roman, you didn’t join us?”

“It seems not.”

“And after all that work to get us outside too. What’s keeping you in here?”

“There’s a dance left,” Roman said. “It seems we’ve skipped one.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

Roman walked up and took Janus’s hand in his, “Ours.”

Roman snapped to as he suddenly realized his dress had changed from a simple red ball gown to a long black asymmetrical dress which glittered golden as it Roman moved. Roman was glad he didn’t start a fire this time. Although the new dress was certainly more constricted around the legs, it was kinda cute, certainly not something he’d wear to the ball though.

Sure, the idea was unrealistic, Roman thought as he spun out of the dance and walked towards the balcony. That scenario was most probably impossible, Janus would almost definitely not find him first.

Something more realistic then...

Janus spotted him from across the room and asked him to dance, and they danced all night, Janus was the only side who had any hope of keeping up with him in a classical dance anyway.

Roman sighed to himself as he stared up at the sky, imagining Janus coming out here with him at the end of the night, the fireworks going off in the background as they stared into each other's eyes. The tension grew and the music swelled from inside, and…

There was a loud knock on the castle door. Roman jumped slightly as he was pulled from his daydream, and Patton’s voice echoed throughout the castle, “Kiddo are you here?”

Roman stood up straight and began to walk towards the door, his clothes returning back to normal as he walked to the door, he swung it open exaggeratedly, “Patton! Why it feels like I just saw you yesterday! What can I do for you?”

Patton laughed and gestured behind him, “It’s dinner time! You’re still coming right?”

“Absolutely!” Roman said as he bounded out of the castle.

Patton grabbed his hand, and suddenly Roman felt himself being tugged to a new location. Roman gave in and let Patton take him to the community house. FamILY dinner Fridays were always held on neutral ground, each one of their houses were wonderful, but they each had home rule advantage to one side.

Patton came up with the idea of a neutral ground after Logan suggested the idea of having group bonding time, shortly after his debate with Virgil. He said it would be beneficial for them and Thomas for each of them to get to know the other’s better. And although Virgil had been invited every time, he didn’t come to any of them until after he had revealed his name.

As soon as Patton had offered the idea of a community building, Roman had jumped at the chance to be helpful and had created a building that mirrored parts of Thomas’s home. Of course it had Roman’s spin on it, he wasn’t just going to copy and paste Thomas’s house into the imagination, because how boring would that have been to create! But it was still a neutral place.

Roman glanced around at the Sides in the building he created. Virgil was sitting at his normal place with his knees to his chest as he scrolled on his phone. Logan was cooking something with the help of Janus, who was also wrangling Remus away from the food. Roman watched the way Janus moved, he was so fluid with every motion, it was like he was moving through water.

Patton tried to skip into the kitchen but Janus immediately stopped him, “Oh no I am not going to have two trainwrecks in this kitchen thank you very much.”

“Hey, I’m good at cooking!” Patton protested.

Janus raised an eyebrow, “You’re as good as Thomas at cooking. And seeing as you’ve burnt water before, and as we are five minutes from dinner, I think it’s an excellent idea for you to get involved.”

Remus, taking advantage of Janus being distracted, started to edge his way over towards the food.

One of Janus’s hands grabbed the collar of Remus’s shirt, “Nuh uh. We’re not doing this.” Janus looked over at Roman who immediately flicked his eyes away, embarrassed that he’d been caught staring.

Janus just smiled though, “You know what, Roman?” Roman looked back over, as Janus shoved Remus towards him slightly, “would you be a darling and take your miscreant brother out of the kitchen before he burns something?”

Roman wasn’t exactly sure what Janus said, he’d caught a few words, but he’d mostly shorted out after Janus said darling, but Janus tipped his head towards Remus and Roman assumed he knew what Janus meant.

“Of course!” Roman boomed, “Remus, come now! We don’t want to set anything on fire!”

Virgil snorted and Roman turned around as Remus snapped himself out of the kitchen, reappearing hanging upside down on the chandelier.

“What’s so funny?” Roman questioned.

“Yes, do tell!” Remus said. “We’re dying to know!” As he said that his skin began to rot and his skeleton began to expose itself.

Virgil wrinkled up his nose, “Really dude? Right above the dinner plates?” Virgil sighed, “Whatever. I just thought it was ironic that Roman was chastising you about fire. That’s it.”

Remus’s skin was back to normal as he looked over at Roman with a gleam in his eyes, “Arson? Did you do arson?”

Roman waved his hand dismissively, “Arson is a strong word. It was more temporary wildlife damage.”

This caught both Janus’s and Logan’s attention. “Roman tell me you did not attempt to burn down the forest.” Logan said. “I have a lot of ongoing experiments which would not withstand fire damage.”

“I live in there!” Janus said incredulously.

“Yes I’m aware, and I didn’t!” Roman said, “I would never burn down the forest!”

“Boring.” Remus muttered under his breath.

“Now if you would allow me to finish, you would see it was an accident that resulted in nothing more than a patch of burnt grass, which I fixed!”

Janus still looked unconvinced and was clearly on edge, but he rolled his eyes and turned back to the food.

“How’d it happen?” Patton asked.

“A burst of stray creative energy?”

Remus narrowed his eyes and swung himself off the chandelier, “What were you thinking of? It may have been stray, but it’s not random, and I doubt you were thinking of setting the place a blaze!”

Roman opened his mouth slightly before he closed it and looked away, “Oh, I don’t remember.”

Roman swore he heard Janus scoff in the other room, but Remus just shrugged, “I thought maybe you’d thought of something spicy for once!”

“Speaking of spicy.” Logan said as he walked in with a large dish, he was followed by Janus who was holding several other pans. “Dinner’s ready.”

~~~~

Janus liked to think he had pretty good timing. Well some might say his timing was bad but that was just because they were wrong, for his purposes he was always on time.

So Janus didn’t mention the letter throughout dinner at all. He didn’t bring up the ball either. He noticed Roman shooting Remus looks throughout dinner and he wondered if he was worried Remus hadn’t fulfilled whatever promise he gave to Roman.

During cleaning up, when everything was winding down was when he struck. He sat on the counter beside the sink and waited for Roman, who was washing the dishes, to acknowledge him.

“Hey Janus,” Roman said with a smile. “Can I do something for you?”

Janus ignored the way his heart skipped when Roman smiled at him and pushed on, “Why yes, I have come into the possession of a particularly peculiar item and I was wondering if you could identify it for me.”

Roman nodded, “Why of course! I’m honored you’d ask me, this seems more Logan’s territory but I can give it a shot!”

Janus summoned the slimy envelope and held it out to Roman who visibly recoiled. “This is it. Quite interesting, no? What’s even more interesting was what was inside.”

Janus summoned the letter and Roman’s face immediately dawned with realization. “Oh, that. I’m glad Remus got it to you! And it’s at least mostly in one piece?”

Janus smiled, “Yes it’s quite an accomplishment for Remus. One thing about it did bother me though.”

“What would that be?” Roman asked.

“The date, I mean you only gave me a day’s warning. Really Roman, if you wanted to be the best dressed, there are some actually effective ways to do that.”

Roman scoffed, “If I wanted to be the best dressed? My dear serpentine side, I am and will always be the best dressed, even if you have years to prepare.”

“Be careful Roman,” Janus cooed. “That almost sounded like a challenge.”

“And what if it was?”

Janus tipped his hat to Roman, “Then I would say see you tomorrow,” Janus hopped off the counter. His hand brushed Roman’s side as he whispered, “Prince Roman.”

Once Janus was out of sight of Roman he sank out, he arrived at his house and immediately collapsed against the wall in a fit of near hysterical laughter, “Shit-” Janus said as he pressed a hand against his chest where his heart was trying to burst out from. Janus exhaled slowly, “Oh I can’t believe I did that.”

Roman’s voice rang in his head, ‘My dear serpentine side.’

My dear serpentine side. My...

Janus pressed a hand against his face, “Ugh, he didn’t mean it like that.”

~~~~

Janus walked out after thoroughly flustering Roman, and Roman blew out a breath, “Oh my god…” he whispered to himself, “He’s trying to kill me.”

“Who’s trying to kill you?” Remus chirped.

Roman shrieked and turned around sharply, “Remus! You can’t just appear like that! What's your deal?”

“Deal? I don’t gamble! Maybe I should, do you think I could get a group together for strip poker?”

“No, I mean maybe. No! No! Nevermind, what do you want?”

“Well I wanted to know what that was with Jan, but then I heard you talking about murder, and that seemed more interesting!”

“There was no murder,” Roman said dismissively. “We were simply talking about tomorrow.”

“And there was still no murder?” Remus tsked, “Unrealistic, Jan’s definitely gonna kill you in the outfit department, and I’m always up for murder.”

Roman flicked some water at Remus, “You are not killing anyone tomorrow. It’s going to be a nice night.” He said, completely ignoring the first part of the sentence, it was partly true in a way, Roman was going to die when he saw whatever wonderful outfit Janus had thrown together for the ball.

The water hit him and Remus pretended to be mortally wounded by the drips of water. “You’ve killed me!” Remus screeched, “There was a murder after all!”

Roman rolled his eyes as he dried his hands off, “You know what, if you want we can duel tonight, if you promise to be relatively civil tomorrow.”

Remus sat up and grinned as he summoned his morning star, “Deal! But we’re doing it on my side this time.”

“I made a battle ground!” Roman protested.

“I can too!” Remus put two fingers on either side of his head and closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them and leaping to his feet, “All done! Now come look!”

Roman snorted, “Okay fine.” He extended an arm which Remus grabbed, “Are you going to sink out or disappear?”

“I don’t know how to sink out with another person! Also disappearing is just better and more fun!”

Roman groaned as he closed his eyes. “After I do this, you better not cheat.”

Roman felt a sudden jolt and he was brought down to his hands and knees. His head was spinning and Roman didn’t even want to consider opening his eyes for several seconds.

“You gonna puke?” Remus asked. There was a slight amount of concern in his voice but most of it was just interest in the situation.

Roman opened his eyes slowly and looked up at Remus, “No, I am not going to ‘puke’ thank you very much.”

Remus looked slightly disappointed as he shrugged, “Aw… well do you like it?”

Roman sat back on his feet, ignoring his spinning head, “Oh wow.”

The battle field was grand. It was a bit more… phallic than Roman would have gone in places, but it was also intricate, and Roman found himself amazed that Remus had created it in only a few seconds.

On each side of a large battle field, there were two large identical towers where they’d start, each had a rickety watch tower that was pushed out from the main part of the building, and Roman could see a spiral staircase heading up the tower. In between the two towers was a tangled dark forest, which had large roots sticking out from the ground and briars wrapped around the trees. None of the trees had leaves, instead the branches weaved together to create an uneven and unstable canopy.

“Is that good?” Remus asked.

“Yeah of course it’s good. This is awesome!” Roman said as he walked up to one of the trees and admired the way the branches curved.

Remus grinned, “Okay so standard rules?”

“Yep.” Roman said, “Same safeword?”

Remus giggled, “I’m so gonna make you say it this time!”

Roman rolled his eyes, “Oh you can try. Do you want to do the countdown?”

“Yeah I got it!” Remus waved, “see you when I’m kicking your ass!”

“You wish!” Roman replied, then Remus was gone.

Roman followed suit and sank out, glad to be able to sink out, it was far more comfortable.

Roman arrived in his tower and after a few seconds Remus’s voice boomed across the field, “5...4…3...2...1… Good luck~”

Roman immediately vaulted out of the tower window and his shoes grew wings and caught him before he hit the ground. Roman sprinted towards the forest, summoning both a sword and shield, as he counted in his head.

6…

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Roman had just made it to the edge of the forest when like clockwork there was the boom of the tower exploding behind him. He was blasted forward slightly, but like second nature Roman made the sword and shield disappear as he rolled the momentum from the blast out. As soon as he was to his feet again the sword and shield were back in his hands.

Roman looked through the dense forest, and summoned an orb of light and cast it in.

It illuminated everything within Roman’s eyesight, which was in fairness limited by the trees significantly, Roman lifted off the ground slightly and with as much awareness as one could have, began to move silently through the forest with the guidance of the light.

“Roman~” Remus’s voice echoed throughout the thicket, “Did the tower get you this time?”

Roman rolled his eyes before blowing his voice into his hand and throwing it away from him. He replied, his voice sounding distant, even to him. “No of course it didn’t.”

“Well that’s just too bad.”

Roman called his voice back and looked around, something was wrong. Remus sounded a bit too calm.

There was a moment of silence.

Roman was turning around, he had eyes all around him. It was too quiet. Then he heard a laugh, and his blood ran cold.

Roman threw his shield above him and braced for impact just in time as the morning star came down hard from above. Roman was thrown to the ground by the impact, but at least he hadn’t taken it in the head.

“Peek-a boo!” Remus cackled as he swung his morning star towards Roman again. Remus had taken a different approach to seeing in the forest, his veins were admitting a sickly green glow and his eyes were neon pink and green, swirling in a spiral.

As Roman landed on the ground, his sword had shrunk to the size of a throwing dagger which he threw directly at one of Remus’s eyes before scrambling to his feet.

Roman had excellent aim, however one of the branches from a nearby tree grew out and the knife bounced off it, harmless.

“Oh is that the best you can do?” Remus cooed as he subtly closed ground with Roman. “I almost feel bad at how easily I’m going to beat you!” As Remus said beat, he began to swing his morning star at Roman again.

Roman saw it coming though, he’d had made it too obvious, and Roman easily side stepped it, and used Remus’s own force against him to pull him to the ground. Before Remus could react, Roman drove his sword deep into Remus’s stomach.

Roman expected it to be over, sure it would have been the fastest match they had ever done, but Remus had just been impaled. However Remus just spit some blood onto the ground as he began to laugh. Roman watched in horror as Remus’s skin began to swallow the sword until the only evidence he had ever been stabbed was the cut in his clothing.

Remus pulled something from his pocket and threw it on the ground. The ground began to burn through Roman’s feet as a circle of roiling fire enveloped the ground. Roman hissed and jumped onto the air, the wings on his shoes kept him hovering a few inches off the air as the soles of his feet stung.

Remus was still firmly planted on the ground and if he could feel the heat, he was unbothered.

Roman looked around, he didn’t want to get close, but clearly he couldn’t throw anything, so perhaps he didn’t have much of a choice. Roman summoned a sharper, bigger sword than he used last time and closed ground with Remus, while he still hovered slightly off the ground.

His sword clashed with Remus’s weapon and sparks shot from the weapons as they collided. Roman managed to get the sword in a position so he could momentarily let go with his right hand. Roman summoned a second weapon, a short sword, and slashed it across Remus’s stomach.

Remus stumbled back, “Oh feisty!”

Remus swung at him, but his morning star was much slower compared to Roman’s swords, so Roman just closed ground with him and slashed him with his sword again.

Roman could tell Remus was trying to form a plan, and probably trying to figure out some quicker weapon to summon. Roman did his best to not give Remus any room to think as he made a wall of arrows appear behind Remus as he slashed him successfully with his sword again. As soon as he pulled away, the arrows shot fast and hard. Remus gasped, clearly taken aback by the sudden attack from behind, and was forced to a knee.

Remus huffed as he stumbled back to his feet, he usually looked a bit disheveled, but the barrage of arrows had clearly taken a lot out of him. Roman was sure he almost had him, especially since he felt a lot better than Remus looked.

Remus suddenly got a look in his eyes which sent chills down Roman’s spine, “I feel like mixing things up, what about you?” With a snap of his fingers the entire forest turned pitch black.

Roman screamed before quickly trying to summon a light source, but it didn’t seem to do anything against the impenetrable inky darkness.

Roman cursed under his breath and he flicked a hand towards the canopy to try and open a gap to escape. Remus‘s morning star collided with his leg, which immediately buckled, but a perfect square had already dissolved from the canopy, making just enough light seep into the forest for Roman to see where to go.

Roman didn’t need to stand to fly, so he began to escape up as he heard Remus’s laughter slowed, “What Roman, can you not handle a little darkness?”

Roman arrived on the top of the trees but didn’t land for several reasons: his leg was injured and Remus seemed to have some control over the trees. Roman didn’t want to take the chance of being trapped. Roman summoned a bow and arrow, fully prepared to ambush Remus when he came through the hole.

There were several seconds of silence, far too many. Roman almost wondered if something was wrong, and he had to stop himself from peeking over the edge.

Out of nowhere, Remus shot through the canopy, creating a new, Remus sized whole to Roman’s left.

Roman took three shots at Remus; all three hit. Roman wondered slightly to himself how Remus was still going. Then Remus began to shoot towards him at an alarming rate, and Roman suddenly noticed he had given himself tentacles which were pressed to his sides to help with aerodynamics.

Roman summoned his sword, but too slowly, as Remus scooped him off the ground.

His sword fell onto the tree tops and wedged itself in a few branches as Roman dropped it.

“Put me down!” Roman said.

Suddenly from all sides it felt like knives or very sharp spikes were stabbing into his skin. As the tentacles squeezed tighter, they sunk deeper. His entire torso and his arms were all being punctured. Roman felt light headed.

“Put you down?” Remus said, “If you insist!”

The tentacles let go, and as they did, the spikes slowly began to withdraw themselves from Roman’s chest. For a split second after they let go Roman was just hanging, looking at the ground because there was nowhere else to go, all signs led to down. As Roman began to fall he felt the spikes in his back all come out at once in a sharp stabbing pain, as they couldn’t hold his weight for any longer than a second he was suspended after Remus let go.

Painful, but impressive.

Roman frantically attempted to slow his fall but his brain couldn’t focus on anything but the stabbing pain from his torso, so he hit the ground hard.

Roman landed on his side and he gasped as something inside him cracked. Roman tried to get up but he couldn’t move, the only thing that filled his brain was agony as he lay there, his blood making the otherwise dry branches sticky with moisture.

“Nacarat-” Roman gasped, unsure if Remus would be close enough to hear him. It didn’t matter though because as the safe word was uttered fireworks went off signaling surrender.

“Yes!” Roman heard from the sky, “I can’t believe that worked!” Remus landed next to him and glanced down, “bet it hurts like hell though.”

Roman did his best to glare at Remus who, although was definitely in better shape than him, was pretty beat up too. “Yeah it hurts. Would you mind helping me out with that?”

Remus picked Roman up, “oh sure!” Roman had no time to brace himself this time as he was instantly teleported to the steps of his castle.

His injuries were gone, as were Remus’s. They were temporary wounds which fortunately only existed for an hour within the battle ground that they were inflicted in. Although Roman was physically fine again, he was very glad he was not standing, as his head spun from the instant teleportation.

Remus plopped him on the steps before sitting down next to him, “That was so much fun!”

Roman looked over at him fondly, “Yeah we should do this more often. I really thought I had you though.”

“Oh yeah that was a last ditch effort. I had no clue that would work! I thought you might have enchanted your skin against puncture wounds or some fantasy shit like that.”

“No it was very impressive.” Roman said, “I was at almost peak performance and you knocked me out of commission just like that.” Roman snapped his fingers.

Remus grinned, “You just gotta get a little more creative.”

Roman rolled his eyes, “Oh you were nearly down.”

“You don’t know that!”

“You literally just told me!”

“Semantics.” Remus said before standing up and stretching, “Okay! I’m gonna make sure Janus doesn’t need any help with his outfit!”

“You better not make it too good.” Roman said.

“Why, you worried Jan’s gonna steal the stage?”

“That’s not it.” Roman said, but Remus just laughed.

“Sure it isn’t. Bye dickhead!”

“See ya loser!”

Remus disappeared into thin air, and Roman stayed sitting on the stairs of his castle for several seconds before standing up and walking inside.

~~~

Janus had just finished making a base he was happy with when there was a knock at his door. Janus groaned, “What is it now?”

“Oh someone’s grouchy!” Remus said as he jumped onto Janus’s counter. “Need some help?”

Janus looked over his dress, it was bare bones at best. “I mean I’ve got it completely under control, but if you must.”

Remus grinned and flicked his hand towards the dress. Layers of fabrics started appearing and folding and attaching themselves to the dress.

“Chill—” Remus said, “I’m gonna make you look hot as fuck.”

Janus looked at the dress as a piece of yellow fabric began to fold itself up the left side of the dress. “Fine. I trust you.”

Remus grinned, “Oh I don’t know about that! You should never get too comfortable around me!”

Janus shrugged, “I’ll take my chances.” He settled down on his couch, “So Remus, what have you been doing?”

“Beating Roman up!”

“Just a normal Friday then.”

Then there was another knock on Janus’s door.

“Why and how is everyone visiting me today?” Janus mumbled under his breath. “Come in?”

The door swung open, Logan and Virgil were on his doorstep.

Janus threw his arms up exasperatedly, “What is the point of living in the middle of nowhere if you all just figure out where it is?”

Logan at least had the courtesy to look sheepish, “My apologies, however it is to my understanding that your house moves, and I knew that Virgil might be able to bring me here.”

Virgil, who had invited himself in, and was inspecting the dress nodded, “Yeah... don’t worry I didn’t tell him how to find it again.”

“Then how did you find it the first time?” Janus asked.

“Ah I asked Remus.”

Janus shot a dirty look to Remus, “I’m going to change the movement pattern if you just bring people here.”

Remus just shrugged, “He’s very convincing.”

“Falsehood,” Logan interrupted. “I just asked and you immediately brought me.”

“I didn’t say it took much!”

Virgil snorted, “Yeah it wouldn’t.”

“What’s that emo?”

“I said-!” The group began to engage in a more aggressive conversation of sorts. It was still friendly, but it just got louder and people began to talk over each other as they picked fun at one another.

Janus ran his hands over his face, he was going to go crazy if they didn’t stop talking over each other and Logan still needed to tell him why he was here. Janus flicked his hand and all three of them were promptly silenced.

“Ah the sweet sound of quiet,” Janus said as he focused on keeping Remus quiet, it was quite the challenge to shut the Duke up. “Now Logan,” Janus said as he released his hold on Logan. “Why did you come here?”

Logan nodded, “I came to apologize for eavesdropping earlier, and offer my assistance with your outfit, however it seems you have that covered.”

Janus paused momentarily, “there’s not much you could do to help with the actual construction of the outfit... but... there is one thing you could assist me with if you wished to be helpful.”

“Name it.”

Janus beckoned Logan over and began to whisper his request, as much as he trusted Remus and Virgil, they either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep it a secret, and that just would not do.

~~~

Roman headed towards his bedroom, he passed by a room which had a crackling fireplace. Roman paused momentarily before hearing the sounds of soft talking between a few people and deciding to walk in.

Roman walked in and as he grew closer to the fireplace he could see three people, Sleep, September and October, or Remy, Seth, and Toby as the Fandom had dubbed them. Remy was leaning against the wall by the fireplace, and was talking to Seth and Toby who were playing chess while they sat on the couches.

“Hello,” Roman greeted his unexpected guests, who immediately turned around. “I wasn’t expecting to see anyone here this time of night-”

“It’s only eight?” Remy said.

Roman continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “BUT I’m certainly glad to see you all!” Roman sat down on an armchair and looked over at what Seth and Toby were doing. “Who’s winning?”

”I am of course,” Toby said, “But I’m really surprised at how well Seth’s holding his own, you know because of my untouchable intellect?”

Seth was stifling laughter as he moved one of his pieces, “I’m pretty sure I’ve got you three moves to checkmate but okay. Your turn.”

Toby floundered slightly as he stared at the board, “No way— I mean I meant to do that.”

Seth snorted, “Sure you did.”

“I did! It’s all part of my master plan!”

Roman left them to their game and sat down next to Remy. Roman hummed as the heat from the fireplace rushed over him. “I see why you chose to sit over here, it’s nice.”

Remy nodded before glancing over at Roman, “Yeah, the warmth is really good for getting some sleep.” Remy tipped his thermos of something, probably coffee if Roman knew anything about Remy, towards Roman. “Maybe you should take advantage of that.”

Roman yawned, “Mmm… Maybe.”

“What did you even do to get tired this early?”

“I lost a duel with Remus?”

“If you fall asleep Roman, we could bring you to your room!” Seth said, “Ya know if you don’t want to sleep on the floor? Checkmate.”

Toby groaned, “Come on man, how do you do that!”

“That’s very kind of you,” Roman said as his eyes began to drift closed. “But I assure you, I won’t fall asleep. I’m not even tired!”

“Sure you aren’t,” Toby muttered and Seth stifled a laugh.

Remy rolled his eyes, “Well if you aren’t tired, would you like me to help you? You need your beauty sleep for tomorrow after all.”

Roman laughed slightly, “On a second consideration, I think I can manage something on my own, waking up is ten times harder when you help.”

Remy shrugged, “Suit yourself.”

Roman leant himself against one of the chairs and immediately his eyelids felt heavy. As Roman began to drift off to sleep, he felt something soft and warm drape over his legs before he completely lost consciousness.

Roman woke up the next day as sunlight peeked through his curtains and birds chirped outside.

Roman sat up and skipped down the spiral staircase that led down the tower that his bedroom was in with renewed energy as he remembered what was happening later that day. He peeked into the room he had been in last night and smiled slightly when he saw Remy curled up on one of the couches. Toby and Seth were both gone, presumably to their rooms in the castle or to their homes in the imagination, but Remy looked like he had crashed. Roman walked over and pulled the blanket that had slipped off of him back on before turning off the lights and walking out of the room.

To get to the kitchen, Roman had to pass through the ballroom which was decorated for the night’s festivities. Roman paused as he passed through to admire his handy work. The ballroom in the castle was all done up for the party, candle lit chandeliers hung from the ceiling, burning with the infinite power of the imagination which lived just next door. The center of the large room was clear for dancing and general socialization, and the floor was spotless. Around the perimeter were several tables each with candles of their own as well as beautiful bouquets of flowers that resembled the fireworks Roman had planned for when the sun went down.

Several balconies overlooked where the party was going to be and Roman admired the plants that hung down from them, which made the room alive.

Roman heard a note, B if he was not mistaken. Roman glanced around and saw Logan fiddling with the grand piano.

“Logan!” Roman said as he walked towards him. “You’re here rather early.”

“It’s nine o’clock, I’d hardly call that early.” Logan said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh pish posh, early late, it’s all the same!” Roman pointed at the piano, “I didn’t know you played?”

Logan looked down, “Piano? Oh I don’t.”

Roman hummed, “Well I do! Budge up!”

Logan moved down the bench and Roman sat next to him, he played a quick scale before being to improve a slow piece, he wasn’t warmed up, so there was certainly no need to do anything rash.

“We should play sometime!” Roman said, “I’m not sure how we haven’t done it before.”

“Perhaps we could make it a group activity,” Logan suggested. “I believe we all play instruments separate to those Thomas knows, and even if I’m incorrect, we can all sing and have Thomas’s natural affinity for music, so it might be nice to do something as a group.”

“Everyone plays an instrument?” Roman asked, “How come I didn’t know that?”

Logan shrugged, “Well Remus, like yourself, plays several different instruments, however drums is his favorite. Virgil likes the bass although he also can play the electric guitar.” Logan smiled, “He played acoustic for a while, but he said it didn’t fit his aesthetic... And um I believe Patton plays the tuba, and I of course play the violin.”

“What about Janus?” Roman asked.

“Right, of course, I believe he plays the oboe, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he knew how to play other instruments as well, he is quite good at hiding things.”

Roman sighed wistfully, “He is... He’s so talented.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, “Yes quite... is there something specific you’re referring to?”

Roman scoffed, “Is there something specific. Specs, have you looked at him? I mean besides his very obvious...” Roman trailed off and stared off into space, “... I mean there’s his clothes,” Roman mumbled dreamily, “Remus told me he made them completely himself. I mean his eyes too, gods, they are just so beautiful, the way they sparkle when he’s talking about that philosophy stuff.” Roman sighed, “It’s like looking into the stars themselves.”

Logan smiled and rubbed the back of his neck, “Oh.”

“And I know,” Roman continued, “I have this playful rivalry thing with him, but...” Roman got up from the bench and began to pace, “He’s just so amazing! Why did I ever seriously want to work against him? Oh I really hope he doesn’t think it’s serious now.”

“He certainly seems to be the object of your affection.”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Roman said as he bounced excitedly from foot to foot, “you could also say, I’m in deep, head over heels, under his spell, smitten, infatuated, enamoured.” Roman stopped pacing momentarily as a thought dawned on him, “and I’m going to tell him tonight.”

Logan stood up sharply, his hand accidentally colliding with the piano, creating a loud dissonant sound.

Roman looked over sharply and Logan snapped his hand away and composed himself by adjusting his tie, “My... apologies, I am being summoned and it startled me.”

“How?” Roman asked, trying to imagine how the gentle tugging of being summoned could surprise someone.

“Janus is summoning me.”

“Oh. Oh!” Roman paused, “Well go duh, but you can’t say a word! I reserve the right to lose all my vast amounts of courage and not tell him!”

Logan chuckled as he began to sink out, “I won’t say a word.”

Roman took a breath as Logan disappeared and slowly began to go over to the kitchen.

After he ate, Roman found himself making his way into the imagination, the preparations for that evening were complete so what else would he do? Roman wandered around, his thoughts drifting ever closer towards Janus, and how he could tell him. It had to be extravagant, no way around that one, Janus might even appreciate a grand gesture unlike the Debbie Downers on Valentine’s Day.

Roman didn’t notice how he was beginning to approach the neutral zone in between the two sides of the imagination, he didn’t notice the lighting darkening slightly or the sky turning ashy. If he had been paying attention he would have noticed the forest growing more unkempt, but as he had experienced the full extent of Remus’s forestry and his side of the imagination recently, it all went unnoticed as Roman continued to brainstorm.

~~~

Janus appeared at the edge of the imagination and dropped his disguise as he walked in. He only had to walk a couple of steps before the forest began to change into a canopy of woven dead branches that covered the sky. He sat down against a familiar tree and summoned a block of wood and a knife, as he got comfortable the snakes that lived there began to peak themselves out and coil and slip over his legs.

Janus twirled his knife as he tried to digest what he’d just heard. He hadn’t meant to hear that, he was just going to look at Roman’s outfit, see what he was up against. But... Could Roman have known it wasn’t Logan? Did he know it was him instead? Was this some sick prank Remus put Roman up to? It was possible. But did Remus even know? No if he knew everyone would know. He was way worse than Roman at keeping a secret, he was also pretty bad at detecting secrets. And Janus most certainly hadn’t told him outright.

As Janus took a chunk out of the wood he mumbled something which sounded a bit like ‘Fucking Roman with his perfect eyebrows messing with him.’

The only person who might know about his... feelings... was Logan, he was the most perceptive of the other sides, or perhaps Patton, feelings were his area of expertise after all, but neither of them would tell... or at least they would try not to tell Roman, right? Maybe not, they were closer to Roman after all. It was probably just a joke.

Janus huffed, “Who does he think he is. Playing with my emotions.”

One of the snakes curled around his arm and squeezed slightly, Janus laughed, “I’m not actually upset but thank you. I’m just... confused.”

Janus turned back to the block of wood and scraped a much more controlled segment off as he dwelled in his own thoughts. He didn’t want to take out his

emotions too much on the carving, he’d just end up with a pile of wood chips, although maybe that was what he needed. Janus very slowly began to dull the corners as he tried to decide what he was going to do about Roman. He couldn’t avoid him forever after all.

After a while of the only sounds being the far off cawing of crows and the creaking of branches rubbing against each other, it was peaceful. That was until an eruption of noises came from the snakes that surrounded him. It started with a couple of hisses, then they were all hissing and then the rattlesnakes were joining in the fun too.

Janus looked up and around to see what was causing all the fuss. Like his house, it wasn’t easy to get into the corner of the imagination he was currently in, and if you didn’t know the way it was nearly impossible. Of course Remus had helped him set it up years ago, but whether or not he remembered doing that was up for debate. Anyway the snakes didn’t respond like that to-

Janus locked eyes with Roman.

Oh.

Oh no.

Janus set down the wood and snapped the knife closed as he stood up.

“Roman.” Janus said carefully, “I wasn’t expecting company.”

Roman was staring at the snakes and although he seemed to know Janus was there, he was more absorbed with keeping track of them all than looking at Janus. Janus couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not.

“I-I was just passing by!” Roman said quickly as he finally broke eye contact with the herd of snakes and glanced around, “What is this place? It looks a bit like the battlefield Remus made.”

“I go here to think.” Janus said as he folded his arms. “Remus helped make it.”

Roman looked at one of the snakes that was slowly encroaching on his personal space, “Why?”

Janus rolled his eyes and pretended to misunderstand the question, “I’m not as good at creating as he is? Remus summoned those snakes too, but don’t worry, they’ve never bitten me.”

“Very comforting,” Roman said as he shifted his weight even further back away from the snakes, “but I meant more why are you here now? Also how did you get here?”

Janus considered Roman’s questions for a second, it seemed like he truly didn’t know. “One of the side entrances and because I wanted to. Is it so hard to believe that I have hobbies outside of my role as a side?”

“No it isn’t... Wait!” Roman frowned at Janus, “Logan said you were summoning him?”

Janus raised an eyebrow, “I did momentarily.” He said before deflecting, “Why were you speaking to Logan so early in the morning?”

“See that’s what I said!” Roman huffed, “but he was all like Roman it’s nine o’clock why aren’t you more productive with your time?” Roman rolled his eyes, “Well he didn’t really say that but I could feel the silent judgement.”

“The nerve.”

“I know right!?”

Janus snorted and brought his hand up to partially conceal his smile.

Roman looked at Janus with a fond smile before he shook his head and looked back at where Janus had been whittling, “I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

Janus toyed with a fold in his glove as he said, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me Roman.”

“But of course! It’s in your nature.” Roman said, and Janus looked him over curiously. “May I ask you a question though?”

“You may ask.”

It didn’t go unnoticed to Roman how Janus didn’t refer to the truthfulness of his answer. “What were you carving?” Roman asked as he gestured to the block of wood.

Janus regarded Roman for a moment, there was no harm in showing him, he hadn’t actually carved anything after all. Janus picked up the wood and tossed it over to Roman who caught it effortlessly. “I didn’t get very far.”

Roman turned the block over in his hands. “But what was it going to be? Or what will it be?”

Janus shrugged, “If you find out, do tell me. I didn’t go in with a very concrete plan, more a mix of thoughts and feelings I wanted to take out. Perhaps it was going to be nothing more than wood chips although that would be a little disappointing.”

Roman nodded and tossed the block back, Janus fumbled with it before getting a solid hold of it and regaining his composure. “Maybe,” Roman said, “of course only if you wanted to, you have every right to say no, but if you wanted to, maybe you could show me how you do it sometime, whittling that is. I’ve never attempted it before and it seems like a very interesting art form...”

Janus nodded as he sat down among his snakes again, “Why not. Do you have anything to do right now?.”

“That’s okay I-” Roman frowned as Janus’s words sunk in, “Wait you said yes.”

Janus nodded as he flicked his knife open and began to carve another chunk off the wood, “Mm-hm.”

“Oh.” Roman hesitantly sat down next to Janus, he was forced to sit shoulder to shoulder with him as the snakes were not exactly making a lot of room.

Janus’s heart began to beat out of his chest as Roman sat literally so they were touching. “You need gloves before I give you a knife.” Janus said as he attempted to ignore the fact that this was Roman and Roman was touching him, and Roman was warm, and Roman might actually like him.

Roman glanced down at Janus’s gloves, they were the same yellow as normal, but they were much thicker. “Why?” Roman asked, “We can just vanish the injuries.”

Janus clicked his tongue, “Safety first Roman! Anyway it’s not like you’re impervious to pain just because you can vanish an injury.”

“I know that quite well.” Roman said as he winced. He snapped his fingers and a pair of red gloves, similar to Janus's, appeared on Roman’s hands. “Alright! What’s next?”

Janus handed Roman a knife and a block of wood. “Now you carve something.”

Janus began to show Roman the proper hand positions, which involved more contact and they were even closer now and was Roman smiling? Janus would be the first to admit that he rushed through teaching him the basics, Roman was Creativity, he should be able to figure it out.

“I’ll try this lil guy!” Roman said as Janus instructed him to pick something to carve. Roman gently picked up a small snake, it began to curl around his wrist and looked quite at home.

Janus glanced over and smiled, “her name’s Eris.”

“Eris, what a lovely name for a lovely little beast!” Roman glanced around at the dozens of snakes, “Do they all have names?”

Janus laughed, “I mean possibly, but I know I don’t remember all of them, and it’s very likely I’ve named some of them more than once, I’ve been coming here since the middle school era.”

Roman hummed and began to carve the basic structure of the snake out.

“So... how did you get here?” Janus asked.

“I just stumbled into it,” Roman said. “Truly.”

“That’s not an easy task. Sometimes I can’t find this place even if I’m looking.” Janus mumbled before turning back to his carving.

Roman began to struggle with the knife, and after a few seconds Janus slipped one of his hands over Roman’s. “You’re trying to brute force it.” Janus said quietly. “Your problem is the angle not how much force you’re putting in. The knife’s sharp enough not to need much pressure.”

Janus readjusted the knife position and guided Roman though the first few strokes, “You of all people should know that life needs a little finesse sometimes.”

“Right.” Roman said, as he bit his lip and ignored the heat rushing to his ears. “Finesse.”

About an hour of struggling later, Roman finally had something that vaguely resembled a snake. Roman stood up and stretched, “Thank you for the lesson. See you tonight?”

Janus looked up, “I’m not one to turn down an invitation.”

Roman sank out and Janus turned his half finished carving over in his hands, if he didn’t know any better he’d say it looked an awful lot like Roman’s emblem. Janus sighed as a smile crept onto his face. Yes, he was a fool for falling for Roman, but perhaps there was a chance Roman was a fool too.

~~~

Roman stood in front of grand doors into the castle, it was time, this was it. He took a breath before making a gesture with his hands to open the doors.

Logan was the first to arrive as he arrived not thirty seconds after the door opened.

“Specs!” Roman greeted as Logan arrived, “Punctual as always.”

“I seem to be the only one with functioning time management skills.” Logan commented.

“I’ll toast to that!” Roman scanned Logan’s outfit which he had helped Logan create. It consisted of an asymmetrical dark blue skirt which dragged on the floor behind him. He had a collared black shirt on and an identically colored waistcoat with a flowery patterned tie. “You clean up nicely.” Roman said.

Logan sighed, “This is hardly that much of a divergence from my normal attire.”

“Oh but you’re wearing something I created so you’re instantly so much better dressed!”

Logan rolled his eyes as Patton and Virgil walked up. In the distance, Roman could see some of the figments arriving, although he knew many of them would come from the imagination entrance.

“Hi Roman!” Patton chirped.

There had been no dress code, Roman just wanted people to have fun, so he was unsurprised when Patted turned up wearing a fluffy multi colored layered skirt, and Virgil showed up in an outfit too edgy for Roman to even fathom creating.

“Well welcome to the ball all my honorary guests and you emo.”

Virgil snorted, “You said have fun with our clothes Princey, when else am I going to get to wear all of this at the same time?” He said gesturing to his outfit.

Roman actually really liked Virgil’s outfit, as edgy as it was, it all really went together and he liked how the skirt matched his usual hoodie patches. The only thing that made Roman a little annoyed was he had an eight inch stiletto heel on for the sole purpose of being tall but since Virgil had worn knee high combat boots he was still shorter than Virgil. He wasn’t really annoyed though, he’d just wanted to be taller than Virgil for once.

Most of the people had arrived by the time Janus walked up, Roman had waited at the door for this moment, determined to greet him when he arrived, he had said he was coming after all.

Roman tried not to let his jaw hit the floor as Janus arrived, although the smug look on Janus’s face clearly told him it hadn’t worked. Janus was wearing a pale yellow floor length dress with exaggerated folds from the waist of the dress, and see through flowy sleeves. There were yellow flowers which trailed down the folds on the left side and around the base of his dress.

Roman frankly couldn’t believe he’d done that in a day even if he’d had help.

“Oh honey I know I look good,” Janus said, as Roman tried and failed to say anything to greet Janus, “The drooling is much appreciated though.”

Roman snapped his mouth closed, “Uh welcome! Your dress is stunning.”

Janus winked as he brushed past Roman, “Why thank you. You look quite nice yourself.”

Janus tried to disappear into the crowd but Roman didn’t let him get away, “Running away so quickly?” Roman said as he caught up with Janus.

“This isn’t Cinderella, I wasn’t running from you Prince Charming.”

Roman ignored his heart beating out of his chest, “Prince Charming? Why if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were flirting with me.” Roman said with a slight laugh before extending a hand, “might I have the pleasure of being the first to dance with you this evening?”

Janus took his hand, “The pleasure is all mine.”

The first dance was to much more classical music, Roman had set it up so that when Janus arrived the music would shift into the more ballroom appropriate style of music, but all the other music was decided by what the feeling of the room was.

As they drifted around the room, their hands intertwined, their eyes occasionally made eye contact and electricity would spark in between them. They only made eye contact every few moments and would always glance away quickly as the tension threatened to snap.

Throughout the dance Roman noticed Janus loosening up, his grip became looser on Roman’s hand and his movements became more fluid. He was clearly relaxing, like something he’d been dreading turned out not to come true.

When the song ended they were chest to chest and smiling as they stared into each other eyes for the first proper time.

Roman opened his mouth to say something but before he could Janus had already pulled his hands out of Roman’s and was looking everywhere and anywhere but Roman.

“Thank you for the dance.” Janus said before fleeing.

~~~

Janus ran.

Well maybe ‘ran’ was a bit dramatic, but he certainly didn’t stick around to see what Roman was going to say. He probably would have just laughed in Janus’s face for believing him.

He tracked down Remus who was hanging upside down by his knees off the stair bannister as he talked to Virgil.

“There you are!” Remus said as he took one of his knees of the banister to wave at Janus with his foot.

Virgil cringed and looked at the floor, “I’m so worried you’re gonna fall, but if you do I swear I’ll laugh at you.”

“I’d like to thank you Remus,” Janus said. “Roman was quite literally speechless when I walked in the room, and I know I certainly would not have had an outfit this good without you considering the short notice.”

“Nice!” Remus said, “So he’s who you’re trying to impress?”

Janus blinked, “Um I suppose.”

Virgil bumped his shoulder against Janus’s “That wasn’t very confident, which means that you weren’t expecting that, and Remus hit the nail on the head.”

Janus opened his mouth slightly, “well yes, but only because I wanted to create a better outfit than—”

“You can fool them all day,” Remus said as he gestured out to the crowd. “But sometimes you try to hide your tells so much that it is a tell and it makes you the worst liar.”

Janus folded his arms, “What do you want.”

“Well I want to know how that dance went.” Virgil said, “Looked pretty heated to me.”

Janus rolled his eyes, “It was nice. It ended, he was going to say something, and I ran.”

Remus groaned, “Really? Just when it was getting good.” He let himself fall off the banister but grabbed the ledge with his hands before dropping the rest of the way.

“You’ve gotta talk.” Virgil said, “I mean you’re just dancing around the elephant in the room. Just ask him out.”

“Virgil you should know better than anyone that it’s not that easy.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, nerves whatever. But it’s not gonna go away until one of you does something!”

“Well it’s not going to be me.”

~~~

“Logan, I’m freaking out!” Roman said as he paced around Logan who was just watching Roman with a slightly amused expression.

“And what exactly is causing this?”

“Aren’t you supposed to like, remember stuff?” Roman lowered his voice and said, “You know... the crush thing on Janus.”

Logan blinked in mild surprise before saying, “Right. That. Now I’m not saying go to Patton, but he’d certainly be better at giving advice.”

“I don’t need advice.” Roman muttered. “I need confidence. I just need to walk up to him and say ‘Janus I like you, will you go out with me?’ But when he looks at me my words just shrivel up and die.”

“That’s a little dramatic. But I suppose difficult.” Logan said, he still seemed entertained by Roman’s dilemma.

“Yeah.” Roman sighed.

“Have you tried making a scene?”

“This is serious!”

“Sorry sorry, I was just thinking of things you were good at.”

Roman sat down at one of the tables and pouted, “Logan,” he whined. “Can you do it for me? It’s so hard.”

“Let me get this straight.”

“Please don’t.”

“You think the best course of action in this situation is for me, to go to Janus, and like a bunch of middle school children, you want me to tell him that you like him for you.”

“Yeah that just about tracks.”

“Roman that is quite possibly the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Just tell him yourself.”

Roman sighed, “but what if he says no?”

“Then it will hurt for a while, but at least you won’t be pining after an unattainable goal!”

“Ugh fine... I’ll tell him before the end of the night.”

~~~

Janus glanced over at Roman, “Why is he just standing there?”

“He’s talking to Logan?” Virgil said.

“But why?”

“Stop being so antsy, it’s only been an hour. Nothing weird is happening.”

“I’m bored.” Remus said, from his upside down position as he was doing a handstand. “Hey Janus wanna make a deal?”

Janus narrowed his eyes, “That entirely depends.”

“If or when Patton comes over, you have to go talk to Roman.”

Janus hummed, “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Fine.”

Remus grinned and stood right side up before immediately yelling, “PATTON!!!”

“Shut up!” Janus hissed, “I thought you meant naturally!”

“Well you should have read the fine print! PATTON!”

Patton poked his head out from the crowd and walked over to the group, “Hey guys! Did ya need something Remus?”

“Yes!” Remus said as he jumped to his feet, “Dance with me!”

“What?”

“It’ll be fun!” Remus began to drag Patton to the dance floor, and he glanced over his shoulder and winked at Janus, “I’m sure Janus and Virgil can find something else to do.”

“Fuck you.” Janus mouthed.

As Remus disappeared into the crowd with Patton. Janus sighed and grabbed Virgil’s hand, “Okay come on.”

“Wait what?”

“You’re coming with me and you’re not going to complain about it.”

As they walked over to the piano where Roman was hovering, Janus overheard Roman saying to Logan, who was toying with a violin, “You know you could just not practice now.”

“It’s not practice.” Logan said, “It’s fun. Anyway, you came and interrupted my practice with Avery, and you won’t let me play now, really Roman I’m starting to think you have something against either me or violins.”

“Well I can’t be responsible for interrupting you at a party! It’s a social event!” Roman spotted Janus, “Speaking of being social, hello Virgil, nice to see you haven’t crept away into some corner, and Janus good to see you too!”

“Why hello.” Janus said, “funny seeing you here.

Logan nodded to them, “Greetings.”

“I was wondering if I could steal the second best dressed from you.” Janus said to Logan, as he flicked his hand in Roman’s direction.

“Well I’m not sure how you can steal yourself,” Roman said. “But I, as the best dressed, would be happy to come with you.”

“I believe you misspoke-”

Logan interrupted Janus’s objection by saying, “Why don’t you both take a vote to see who the most fashionable is? Seeing as your quarrel will continue until a resolution is found.”

Virgil snorted, “I don’t know if I would trust him with that.”

“Pardon me?” Janus said.

“I was actually talking about Roman,” Virgil said as he scanned Janus, “but now that you bring it up snake face, I don’t think I’d trust either of you with the task.”

“Excuse you!” Roman gasped, “I resent that!”

“You’ve literally rigged votes in the past to get what you wanted.”

“Fair point.” Roman said, “I still resent it!”

“And Janus is the embodiment of deceit, so not exactly someone I’d trust not to cheat.”

“I too resent that Virgil,” Janus said as he sent a look over to Roman’s direction, “Frankly I would never cheat first, and I would only rig the vote if I knew my opponent had done so, therefore nullifying the cheating.”

Logan frowned, “Um that’s not how it works.”

Janus looked around before spotting Patton, “Patton! You agree right?” He yelled.

Patton glanced over before cupping a hand around his mouth and yelling back, “What was that kiddo? I couldn’t quite hear you over this rocking music!”

“This is in no way rock music,” Logan protested. “It seems classical, perhaps with some elements of jazz, but certainly not rock.”

Janus smiled slightly at Logan before calling back, “I asked if you agreed?”

“Oh! Sure thing!”

“See Logan?” Janus said, “it must be right if Patton and I are on the same side.”

“That’s a flawed perspective in multiple ways and we all know it,” Logan said. “But I will concede... for now.”

Janus offered an arm to Roman, “And with that, may I have this dance?”

Roman grinned and the music began to pick up as they walked into the grand ballroom dance hall.

It started relatively slow, a waltz, it felt more comfortable than their first dance, less forced in a way.

“As much as I’ve talked about being more fashionable,” Janus said. “Your outfit truly is stunning.”

“Thank you.” Roman said, “Yours is beautiful, and quite impressive considering the time you had to create it.”

Janus smirked, “I have a knack for details. Speaking of... On Friday, why did you start sparking? You never did say.”

“I didn’t remember!” Roman said.

“Right,” Janus said as he let go with his left hand to effortlessly transition into a spin, “I remember that’s what you told us.” Roman came back around and took Janus’s hand again. “However,” Janus continued, “you forget yourself Roman. I know there’s more there, and you can’t trick me like that.”

Roman blanched momentarily, if he hadn’t known Janus didn’t believe him, he definitely did now. “Um I was thinking about tonight, running through different scenarios.”

“I should really teach you how to lie,” Janus mused. “Not that it would matter to me regardless. But I won’t press you.”

“I’ll tell you soon!” Roman stammered out.

Janus just raised his eyebrow, ah, so it was about him.

Roman’s grip tightened around Janus’s waist as he twirled him around and fell silent again. Somehow the music seemed to get louder to overcompensate for Roman and Janus’s conversation faltering, but that didn’t make a lot of sense considering they were in no way the only ones talking or dancing.

“I like you-” Janus started to mumble, it wouldn’t have been audible over the music, but as he spoke the song abruptly ended, and Roman blinked in confusion not at the music but Janus. Janus took it in his stride, “-Tube. I don’t tell you enough how well a job you did guiding Thomas to his passion.”

“Oh!” Roman said as he rubbed the back of his neck, “Thank you, that’s very kind.”

Janus stepped back slightly, “Every word is deserved.”

“Hi guys!” Patton said as he skipped over with Remus, “Can I steal Jan from you?”

Janus tried not to seem too frustrated as he smiled at Patton, all he’d gotten out of this was a, ‘I’ll tell you soon’, what kind of progress was that? “Certainly, if Roman doesn’t have any formal complaints, speak now or forever hold your peace~” Janus said as he began to walk off with Patton.

~~~

“Be my guest, have fun!” Roman said as he waved them away. He turned away to walk off the dance floor and was met face to face with Remus.

“Ah god! Remus what are you-”

Remus leant closer to Roman and squinted, making Roman lean back and look off to the side.

“What’s your angle?”

“Forty five degrees with a slight head tilt.” Roman answered reflexively.

“No, I mean like you and Janus, why are you doing this thing?”

“What thing? I’m not doing a thing, you’re doing a thing!”

“Yes you are! You’re like dancing around him, and not saying anything at all when you talk.” Remus said, “Come on, are you into him or not?”

Roman glanced around slightly, “I mean yes,” he said in a half whisper, “Why does that matter?”

“Get a move on then.”

“What?”

Remus tapped his wrist, “You - move - faster! Or at least make some move since you haven’t even done that yet.”

“Why what when?”

“Because I’m bored of this,” Remus whined, “and you should just make a move, tonight!”

“I mean I was planning to, kind of, well, I was thinking of backing out.”

“Nooo,” Remus whined, “Literally don’t. What’s the worst that could happen? He spontaneously combusts? He hates you so much he burns the castle down? He kills you? He ducks out? He says no? He doesn’t say anything? Come on just ask!”

“Very reassuring Remus.”

“Oh come on only like two of those were realistic! It’ll be fine!”

“Why are you so invested in my love life?”

“Oh I couldn’t give less of a crap about your love life! I just want you to stop pinning, it’s boring! Maybe even confess in a fun way!”

“So you want me to confess my feelings for Janus because you just feel like it?”

“Yeah!”

Roman huffed, “If I promise to say something today will you keep your mouth shut?”

“I can’t promise that-”

“Will you just not tell Janus!”

“Oh!” Remus said, “Yeah sure.”

“Cross your heart?”

Remus plunged a hand into his chest and pulled his heart out, “Hope to die!” He said with a grin.

Roman cringed and nodded, “Thank you, I will say something I promise.”

“Nice, now you wanna show these amateurs how to really dance?”

A few hours after Remus’s conversation with Roman, it was dark enough outside and Roman began to gather everyone outside for the fireworks.

It was the kind of cold that was comfortable, just cold enough to want you to curl up next to the nearest person but not cold enough to go numb. The crowd from inside the castle began to spill out into the field, and little pockets of multi-colored dots spotted the hillside as they began to cuddle together.

Patton ran past Roman, who was standing in the doorway out to the backdoor, with Logan and Janus in tow. Roman watched with amusement as Patton tugged Logan to the ground as Logan stared up at the sky which didn’t have fireworks covering it yet, and Roman could see him pointing out constellations from the true to life night’s sky he’d designed.

Even from the castle, Roman could tell Janus was laughing. As Logan was pulled down at an awkward angle which left him a tangled pile of limbs with Patton who immediately seized the opportunity to grab Janus and tug him down too.

Roman sighed fondly as he watched Janus curl himself more comfortably against the other two. What he’d give to be down there right now.

As the final couple people began to trickle out, Remy and Virgil walked by bickering slightly about something inconsequential, but as they passed Virgil sent a knowing look in Roman’s direction which Remy most certainly didn’t miss, and he stopped mid sentence to raise an eyebrow at Virgil. Roman knew Remy would be asking about that, the nosy bitch.

Roman glanced back at the empty ballroom and gestured back as he stepped forward to the edge of the balcony. All the lights turned off in the giant castle and darkness fell over the field. Roman took a breath as the cool night air washed over him.

“Let the show begin!”

~~~

Janus curled up against Patton and stared wide eyed at the sky as fireworks blossomed against the sky, they were quiet, mostly for Virgil’s sake, but the colors were just as vibrant and beautiful. They whirled in spirals before exploding and scattering the sparks of color, the dazzling balls of silent sparks burst and Janus leant back against Patton as wonderment filled his chest. He’s seen fireworks before since Thomas had seen fireworks before, but he’d never seen them before. They were gorgeous.

Janus scanned the crowd as the initial feeling of amazement began to fade, Roman should be around right? This was his big night, he organized all this and it was the grand finale and he just wasn’t here? Uncharacteristic.

Janus sat up a little and looked back at the balcony. Illuminated by the multicolor glow of the fireworks, Roman stood leaning against the balcony, staring up at the sky alone. Janus shifted slightly as he thought about getting up, but Patton was pressed into his side and he didn’t want to disturb anyone.

So Janus just sat there watching the fireworks, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should do something about Roman, he looked so... lonely.

The fireworks eventually ended and for a little while everyone just sat quietly under the stars, there wasn’t any smoke since the fireworks were imaginary, so the sky was crystal clear, and stars shined brightly down on the crowd.

People eventually began to leave in small clusters, some got up and left through the imagination, others went out through the castle, Janus watched as Roman straightened and bid everyone who was leaving goodbye with a smile.

Janus vaguely noticed Patton standing up and Logan rubbed Janus’s shoulder, “Hey we’re heading out?”

“Good night,” Janus said. “I’ll head home by myself, you know my secret house, which hasn’t been that secret recently.”

“Right,” Logan said as he rubbed the back of his neck, “See you soon?”

“Sure.” Janus shrugged, “Take care.”

Janus waited patiently as everyone slowly disappeared. He stood up and stretched once everyone was gone and walked up by Roman and leant next to him on the balcony.

“Hey.”

“I thought you left already,” Roman said. He paused. “Why are you still here?”

“You looked lonely.”

Roman laughed slightly, “I just threw a party with all of my friends, and you think I’m lonely?”

“Mhm...” Janus said. “Well during the fireworks you stayed up here. It was weird, and you seemed like you had something on your mind and I’m not one to abandon a friend.”

Roman looked over at Janus and he swore a snake was coiling around his heart and squeezing it to keep it in his chest as it began to beat hard and fast.

“Friends huh?” Roman asked.

“Are we not friends?”

“We are! Of course we are!” Roman paused and Janus heard him mutter under his breath something about Remus. “Okay, can I talk to you about something?”

“Yes.” Janus said, now or never.

Roman glanced around and blew out a breath, “Okay, well I kinda have this dare thing with Remus.”

Janus’s heart sunk, that wasn’t a great start.

Roman ran a hand through his hair, “And- um fuck okay I’m doing this wrong. I had this whole plan, it was going to be all elaborate, but I just- What was the word you used? Finesse. Yeah I’ve got none of that. Okay maybe it would be better if I showed you?”

Janus frowned, “You were doing fine, but if you must.”

Roman laughed slightly, “You don’t have to lie to me Janus, I know that was a bad way to start any statement, we all know Remus’s dares.” Roman smiled, “But! Me being bad with words aside, allow me to show you, with hopefully a bit more finesse than my words can provide.” With a sharp movement of his wrist Roman summoned an extravagant bouquet primarily made of yellow and red flowers. Roman held it out for Janus, “how’s this for finesse?”

Janus took the bouquet cautiously, like he was afraid it was going to explode, “They’re beautiful... but this hasn’t answered any of my questions.”

“Right.” Roman rubbed the back of his neck, “I like you.”

“I would hope so. I was somewhat under the impression we were friends.”

“No I-” Roman huffed, “Yes again we’re friends! But that’s not what I was talking about. I was... I like you differently than a friend! I have a crush on you.”

Janus froze. Oh god, he must be dreaming, because there was no way Roman actually felt the same way he did. The heart and brain were cruel, he must have fallen asleep at the fireworks or something, or worse yet the ball hadn’t even happened yet and he was sleeping before or heaven forbid through it.

“Janus?” Roman asked quietly, “Please say something?”

Janus snapped back into reality but didn’t say anything, instead he pinched himself hard.

“Oh.” Janus said when he didn’t wake up and instead was just left with a slightly sore spot on his arm. “This is real.”

Roman winced, “Uh yeah. Sorry?”

“No no no!” Janus said as he panicked slightly, “Don’t be sorry, please don’t be sorry. I was just surprised that you felt that way about me too! Because never in a million years did I actually expect, I mean I just thought it was a stupid prank.”

“You thought what was a prank?”

Janus rubbed the back of his neck, “It’s funny, really you’ll laugh. I kinda maybe bribed Logan a little bit to let me disguise myself as him so I could look at your outfit to see what I was up against?” He blurred out in one breath.

Roman frowned, “What does that-” A look of realization flashed across his face, “Wait it was you at the piano?”

“Yeah...”

Roman snorted and turned to the balcony to look out over the field, “That is funny. We were really dancing around each other for no reason huh?”

“Well not for no reason, I just thought you were joking.”

Roman smiled as he shook his head in slight disbelief, “You know you still haven’t given me a straight answer.”

“I like you,” Janus said. “And I certainly can’t run from the fact that I have a crush on you too.”

Roman grinned, “I know.”

“So what happens now?”

Roman tilted his head, “What do you want to happen?”

“I want this night to last longer.”

“That’s a good start,” Roman said, as he opened the castle doors, “Because I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

Janus watched as the ballroom transformed in front of his eyes. It didn’t change too much, it didn’t need to, but the food and tables disappeared from the edges, the number of chandeliers were cut in half, so low lighting was draped over the entire ballroom. The entire room was completely empty now, besides the piano which had moved to the direct center of the room.

“After you.”

Janus stepped in, his clicking footsteps echoed around the room which had felt so busy and full earlier that night. Janus could hear Roman’s heels clicking behind him as he approached the piano.

Janus smiled as he caught sight of the oboe on the other side of the bench, he pitched it up and looked at Roman.

“We don’t have to play!” Roman clarified quickly. “Of course doing a duet would be amazing, but I could make them play themselves and we could have a dance, you know one without the... emotional dread?”

“Why not both?”

Roman snapped, “I like your thinking!”

“Come on pretty boy,” Janus said as he gestured to the piano, “We’ve only got all night.”

~~~

Epilogue

Janus woke up at what felt like the crack of dawn, which happened every time he slept at the castle, the birds chirped far too loud for what should be possible for their little lungs. The first few times this had happened Janus had gotten quite reasonably upset, but he’d grow used to the little rascal’s constant conversation.

Janus could feel the rise and fall of the duvet from Roman’s steady and still very asleep breathing. Janus took a breath before slipping out of bed, his feet burnt against the cold wood as he stood up carefully and began to expertly maneuver around the floorboards which were horrendously creaky.

In all honesty, Janus wasn’t sure why he was bothering to be so quiet. If Roman woke up it would be purely on his own terms and no one else’s. Roman would and, knowing Remus, probably had effectively slept through a hurricane.

Once Janus cleared the landing around Roman’s room, he practically ran to the stairs and slid down the excessively long banister instead of waking down the stairs because how often were you given the opportunity to actually slide down a banister?

Janus was in socks, so after sliding off the banister he hit the ground and started sliding against the ballroom floor which had been waxed for the ball. He slid across the ballroom floor like ice as he made his way over to the kitchen. Usually Roman summoned something, but today Janus wanted to make it special. There was no particular reason, he just felt like it!

That was as good a reason as any, Janus thought as he arrived at the kitchen and began to take out the supplies for pancakes he’d snuck in yesterday. The mixing went off relatively without a hitch, besides almost dropping the bowl, but luckily the helper hands were true to their name.

As the pancakes began to cook, Janus smiled as the smell began to drift around the kitchen. It smelt good. Meaning Roman would probably be down soon, the one, and seemingly only thing that was able to wake him up was food. Janus hummed to himself as he drifted around the kitchen, chopping fruit, getting out plates, glasses and cutlery, all hole keeping an eye on the pancakes.

True to prediction, it wasn’t long before Janus heard Roman’s slow morning footsteps approaching the kitchen. Roman arrived in his red checkered pj pants and t-shirt with a crown which read, “This is real Royal-tee!”

Roman yawned as he wrapped his arms around Janus’s waist and nestled his head into Janus’s shoulder, “S’methin smells good.”

“Is it me?” Janus asked jokingly, “I can’t imagine you can smell much else but my shirt right now.”

Roman took an exaggerated breath in, “Mm- you do smell so good, like pine and maple syrup.”

Janus snorted, “Uh-huh maple syrup? I think you might be hungry.”

“Always. Speaking of the food, is this because of something? Wait is it Thomas’s birthday?”

“Is it Thomas’s birthday? Roman, darling come on, please tell me you're not serious.”

“Just answer the question, it’s too early for braining.” Roman said as he took one of his hands from Janus’s waist and gestured vaguely at his head.

“No it’s not Thomas’s birthday, that’s not for months.”

“Okay whatever it was a good guess.”

“Was it?”

“Anyway!” Roman said. “Why the cooking food breakfast stuff?”

“I cook all the time! I’m really the only one of us who can cook.”

“What about Logan?”

“Logan can’t cook. Logan can follow recipes. It’s different. But this isn’t because of anything. I just wanted to.”

Janus felt Roman smile against his shoulder as he mumbled something about Janus being a sap, and Janus felt his heart flutter happily as he smiled down at Roman.

Roman squeezed Janus’s waist and hummed melodically, “Can I help?”

Janus looked around the kitchen where his helper hands were hard at work, “I don’t think there’s anything to do.”

Roman kissed Janus’s shoulder, “Mm fine, I guess I’ll let you pamper me.”

About five minutes later they were sitting on the stools in the kitchen eating breakfast. Roman wiggled around as he ate, “This is so good.” Roman said, “Oh this overshadows summoned food by tenfold.”

“Thank you,” Janus said fondly. “I’m glad you like it since I made it with you in mind.”

“Like it is an understatement, this is a-freaking-mazing!”

“They’re just pancakes,” Janus said with a laugh. “You really need to eat more actual food.”

“Yeah I guess- hey! We should totally cook together sometime! Oh we could make a date out of it and then we would take it into the imagination for a picnic and-”

As Roman began to plan their next big date, Janus half zoned out as he watched Roman’s excitement, his eyes were alight with ideas and he flailed around his fork like he was drawing them into existence. Janus always loved seeing that passion in his eyes, it was truly stunning. Roman’s fork flew out of his hand as he clearly got a great idea, and Janus huffed in amusement.

“Be careful Roman you don’t want to set anything on fire!”

“That was one time!”

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meta-squash · 4 years ago

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Brick Club 1.8.4 “Authority Gains Its Power”

“Fantine had not seen Javert since the day the mayor had saved her from him. Her sick brain could not grasp anything except that she was sure he had come for her.” This makes me wonder about Fantine’s grasp on time while she’s been ill. It’s been two months since she first fell ill, but it seems like she thinks it’s been almost no time.

“Javert did not say “Hurry up!” he said, “Hur-up!” No spelling could express the tone in which this was said it was no longer human speech; it was a howl.” FMA really doubling down on the wolf imagery here translating “rugissement” as howl instead of roar. I love it.

“To him Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious and intangible antagonist, a shadowy wrestler with whom he had been struggling for five years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end.” This line and the one from the beginning of the chapter about Fantine thinking Javert has come for her secures him once again as a sort of Angel Of Death for both of them. This arrest is the literal end for Fantine and the symbolic end for Madeleine-Valjean.

Also this line establishes just how much Madeleine’s real identity has consumed Javert’s thoughts in the past 5 years that he’s been a major community leader. It hasn’t just been a passing “huh, this guy really reminds me of that convict Valjean from Toulon” type thing for Javert. It’s been a sort of conflict and, probably since the cart incident at least, an obsession. It’s also interesting because it seems to establish Javert as believing that Valjean was his responsibility, and coming to that belief as soon as he learned about Valjean’s theft of Petit Gervais’ coin. Like, Valjean is not an antagonist he’s struggled with only since Madeleine became mayor and this person Javert maybe suspected suddenly became more high-profile, it’s an internal conflict he’s had since the robbery was reported, which probably wasn’t more than 6 months after its occurrence (I would assume). Javert’s wasn’t just obsessing over Madeleine possibly being Valjean because maybe finding a wanted convict would be good for his name or whatever, he was obsessing over it because he fully felt it was his responsibility to find this wanted man.

Jean Valjean is no longer Madeleine to the reader. Hugo’s narration only calls him Jean Valjean, the full name, this entire chapter. His old identity has been pulled away and he can no longer wrap M Madeleine around himself. And he’s only going to be Jean Valjean or Madeleine for another chapter; the next time we see him after that, he’ll be Prisoner Number 9430. For a long time in the narration he was Madeleine, then he was just “the man” and variations thereupon, then he was both “Madeleine” and “Valjean” and now he is only Valjean.

The weirdest thing in this chapter is that Hugo blatantly states that Sister Simplice is in the room with them this entire time. She is here and she does absolutely nothing. I mean, this is understandable. Not only is she a woman, but she also doesn’t have any sort of leverage over either of them in any other way. She’s just a nun, just a woman of the church (and not even a woman, according to Hugo, she’s something else entirely), and she can’t really do anything to stop Valjean’s arrest or appeal to Javert or anything. But in the next chapter Javert is literally stopped from entering by Simplice’s Authority of Religiosity. So why isn’t he stopped by her religiosity here? Because this is a mirror of Fantine in 1.5.13, begging Javert for mercy and Javert telling her that “The Eternal Father in person couldn’t help you now.” Again, the law is above god here, and again he will not be moved to mercy, even by god.

“She saw the spy Javert seize the mayor by the collar: she saw the mayor bow his head. The world seemed to vanish before her eyes. Javert, in fact, had taken Jean Valjean by the collar.”

This is pretty obvious, but Madeleine is literally turning into Valjean before Fantine’s eyes. I love the way that Hugo says it though. I get the sense that it’s not just that Javert is seeing Valjean as Valjean now, but that Madeleine’s entire demeanor has changed. So he’s literally not taking Madeleine by the collar, because his demeanor would have been Madeleine’s; he’s taking Valjean by the collar, because he’s dropped the Madeleine act (at least at this very moment).

“Aloud, speak aloud. People speak out loud to me.” Ugh god this line is just so self-serving and shitty. This isn’t Javert being morally righteous via the law or acting as society personified. This is just Javert being petty and shitty because he was humiliated by Madeleine before, and now he wants that personal power reversed.

“Javert stamped his foot.” Is this meant to be as childish as it sounds? This is a really intense moment, but Javert is weirdly powerless as both Valjean and Fantine start talking back in their own ways, refusing to go quietly.

“Miserable town, where convicts are magistrates and prostitutes are nursed like countesses! Ha, but all that will be changed, high time!” It’s so interesting that Javert says this now, because it’s revealed later that after Madeleine left, Montreuil-sur-Mer’s prosperity crumbled. Which means that the town will go back to being like any other poor, garrisoned town, with a prostitution trade and plenty of depths of depravity. And I think we’re supposed to think that without Madeleine there to run a system that helps to uphold the morals and productivity and prosperity of the town, it’ll just fall back into corruption. Except that all of that depravity already existed under Madeleine’s leadership, it was just hidden better than maybe it would be if the whole town was failing. So once he leaves, yes, probably the prostitutes and criminals etc will be treated the way Javert wants them to be treated, rather than with any sort of sympathy or willingness to listen and mediate that Madeleine maybe offered to some but not all.

Fantine’s death is, I think, the only death in the book that gets such a visceral description. M. Pontmercy is already dead when we see him, Eponine just puts her head on Marius’ knee, Gavroche’s death is fairly poetic, all of Les Amis get their deaths described but they’re all so quick it’s like a montage, Javert’s actual death isn’t described. Mabeuf’s death might be the closest in terms of intense description, but Fantine’s definitely is the most detailed. Also, we get more drowning imagery. If Javert is the personification of the Law and the justice system, he is part of what tosses the unfortunate into the night-sea of prison and the mud of poverty. She is drowning because what killed her is also what drowns the poor. And I think it’s interesting that she looks to each of them, trying to speak, but she can’t reach anyone. She can’t speak to Jean Valjean (note that he’s not Madeleine here) because she doesn’t know Jean Valjean, and he’s no longer her savior, she can’t speak to Javert because he will not bend and has no mercy, and she can’t speak to the nun because currently authority will not bow to religion and she knows that because it didn’t bow to religion the last time. Now that Valjean has no power to free her, she can’t go to him. Also, I want to know the significance of her head hitting the headboard. Hugo doesn’t have her just fall back onto the pillow; she bangs her head first, like a strange sort of last injustice.

I also feel like the actual actions of Fantine’s death as well as Valjean whispering in her ear afterward have some sort of religious parallel that I’m not catching because I don’t know enough?

Also just ugh. Fantine dies knowing that Cosette is not out there, that Cosette is not anywhere near here, and that she will not see Cosette. It’s just such a horrible, blunt betrayal after she was so full of hope. I wonder if that’s why (later) Valjean can’t talk to Cosette about her? He doesn’t know how to confront the fact that, intentional or not, he had a hand in this betrayal? It makes sense that it is at this moment that she dies. She has been holding on for Cosette, the hope of seeing Cosette has been keeping her alive. Now, she has the realization that Cosette is not in M-sur-M, and then almost immediately after has the realization that Madeleine is not going to be able to go and retrieve Cosette.

“Jean Valjean put his hand on that of Javert, which was holding him, and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a child; then he said, “You have killed this woman.”

There’s so much child-behavior in Javert in this chapter, and I’m not sure what to make of it. The stamping of the foot, the sort of loud, frustrated insistence of respect, this opening of his hand, the way he yells at Valjean to listen to him or it’s the handcuffs and Valjean just ignores him. Javert is so impatient here and Valjean is so grave and calm. But that’s how it seems to be from now on. @everyonewasabird talked in his last post about how this is actually where Javert’s fall is, or at least where it begins. I totally agree with that, because it’s also where his grave, stable behavior starts to falter. In the last chapter, he was gleeful. In this chapter, he’s impatient. In Paris, we won’t see him display behavior this extreme until he’s at the barricade, but his behavior still seems different from the Javert we originally met. Much as I adore the “Would you like my hat?” line, it’s so dramatic and, I don’t know, sort of smug? Which I could see this current Javert doing, but not Javert from 1.6.2 or earlier. This whole episode has caused, as Hugo said, an inner earthquake for Javert, and I think it literally changes his entire personality. Not drastically, nothing crazy, but it does what an earthquake might do: it shifts some things around, changes his inner terrain just enough that it looks totally familiar but the ground he’s walking on is just a little rougher than before.

I’m so glad my post from a couple chapters ago included that comment about Javert and Valjean’s back-and-forth conflict because! This shift in power! Now it’s Valjean who is righteous and Valjean that is terrifying and Valjean that has the control! This chapter is just a fencing match between the two of them. Valjean starts off mildly more powerful: Javert doesn’t touch him while Fantine’s eyes are closed; it’s only when she opens them again that he again has the power over her and over Valljean. He takes Valjean by the collar and Valjean doesn’t attempt to struggle or get free. Once Fantine is dead, Valjean again assumes control and opens Javert’s hand like it’s nothing. I sort of feel like he still kind of retains the upper hand (at least morally) even at the very end when he gives himself up to Javert’s disposal. (Also, it’s interesting that Valjean has the control when Fantine isn’t looking, but Javert has control when she is. Not sure what to make of that.)

Javert’s retreat to the door is so odd. It feels so calm and detached. He doesn’t actually seem frightened or threatened by Valjean’s diy truncheon. I wonder if this is Javert’s version of the way that Valjean does things on autopilot when he’s in shock. Everything that’s happening is just so stunning that when Valjean moves away from him, Javert just automatically moves to the door. And his decision not to call the guard feels like he’s making excuses? It’s pretty obvious at this point that Valjean isn’t going to move from Fantine’s bedside until he’s ready. Except that at this point, Valjean is the one with the control, and the conflict is between him and Javert. Calling the guard adds another element and upsets the balance.

“His iron bar in hand, Jean Valjean walked slowly toward Fantine’s bed. On reaching it, he turned and said to Javert in a voice that could scarcely be heard, “I advise you not to disturb me now.” Nothing is more certain than the fact that Javert shuddered.” My first thought is: I don’t know what to make of this? Is Javert scared? Overwhelmed? Confused? Feeling Valjean’s authority? My second thought is: this is the start of Javert’s eventual change at the end of the novel. He cannot admit it to himself here, but he’s seeing Valjean act with the same selflessness and mercy that he’ll see with himself at the barricades and Marius at the sewers. His inner change can’t happen until then, but I wonder if this affects his later ability to change how he sees Valjean.

Fantine does get, like, the closest thing to a happy ending that any of the dead people in this book can get. Whatever Valjean tells or promises her, her spirit seems to hear and smiles. She suffers so much at the hands of society, at the hands of everyone, and she dies in betrayal and misery. It’s like the least Hugo could do was give her soul some sort of happiness after the fact.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.8.4 #les mis #les mis meta #i'm sorry if some of this is weird or only kind of comprehensible i am in a MOOD tonight #also Valvert shippers I'm truly starting to understand you

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dyonisia96 · 5 years ago

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Jane Eyre’s ghosts

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s most famous work, has been influenced by the “female gothic” genre, which focuses on heroines faced with dangerous situations.

The source of danger in Jane Eyre is ambiguous: even if some happenings are presented as supernatural or unexplainable, most of the time they are an expression of the subconscious or a way through which horrible deeds committed by flawed human beings are illustrated.

The gothic tones present in the novel underline how under the facade of everyday life, women’s lives at the time were characterized by anxiety and fear for their fates, together with anger for their limited condition.

Jane’s ghosts, the traumas that will torment her for her whole life, are born in the Red Room, where she is unjustly locked in by her aunt. This room represents all the injustices, cruelties and social isolation she was and will be subjected to further in the novel. And here, for the first time, she experiences an unexplainable event:

“I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.”

Ghosts in the novel can be seen as “personifications of unconscious processes and of vital energies undergoing change, conflict or integration”. They are not ghosts in a literal sense, but residues of the past, of unsolved problems that keep resurfacing in Jane’s life, getting stronger and more concrete every time she suppresses her inner traumas and anger.

The apex of her ghostly experiences is the encounters with Bertha Mason in Thornfield Hall.

“Most important, her confrontation, not with Rochester but with Rochester’s mad wife Bertha, is the book’s central confrontation, an encounter […] not with her own sexuality but with her own imprisoned “hunger, rebellion, and rage,” a secret dialogue of self and soul on whose outcome, as we shall see, the novel’s plot, Rochester’s fate, and Jane’s coming-of-age all depend.”

Bertha is not a ghost by the literal definition of the term, however she is a ghost of the woman she used to be: Rochester’s first wife, gone mad after leaving her land and marrying someone she did not love. She lives confined in the attic - in literature often a symbol of the mind -, and she behaves like a ghost, lurking around whenever she is able to escape Grace Poole’s watch and haunting Thornfield Hall.

Jane often hears Bertha’s laughter and noises coming from the other rooms, and she initially cannot explain these occurrences, attributing them to Grace Poole. However, according to Gilbert and Gubar’s “Madwoman in the Attic”, “Bertha […] is Jane’s truest and darkest double: she is the angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self Jane has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead.”

And it is curious to observe how every time Bertha acts in a violent manner or makes her presence known - by either laughing or screaming, or even when she tries to set fire to Rochester’s bed -, this is always linked to an episode of Jane trying to repress her anger towards an event that has hurt her.

This will all culminate in the destruction of Thornfield Hall, “the symbol of Rochester’s mastery and of her own servitude”, and in the destruction of Bertha herself, who will finally purify Jane from her anger and her darkest side, allowing her to live with Rochester.

“To free Jane, the demon-woman must die, which happens after Jane has left Thornfield and found her good relatives and sense of stability and belonging and identity she long have wished and searched for.”

However, Jane is not the only one Bertha Mason haunts: Rochester is the man to hold responsible for the very creation of this restless ghost, and, unlike Jane, he does not come to terms with his wife until she becomes so destructive she almost kills him and destroys the house.

Rochester at the end is saved - at the price of his eyes and a hand - only because he tried to save Bertha from the fire, having mercy on the ghost who haunted him and facing his guilt and responsibility linked to marrying someone not for love, but in order to have their money, social status and wealth.

Even though he is mutilated, he appears to be stronger, “for now, like Jane, he draws his powers from within himself, rather than from inequity, disguise, deception”. In fact, in the course of the novel, Rochester often disguises himself - an example is the moment when he dresses like a gypsy and pretends to tell Jane’s future, in the hope of taking a love confession out of her.

Only after surviving the horrors of the past and coming to terms with their own, respective ghosts, Jane and Rochester can finally be together as equals: the first after learning to value herself and not follow in Bertha Mason’s steps, becoming a ghost of herself and of a woman, and the second after reconciling with his past, deceiving self, who married for convenience instead of love and respect.

Bibliography:

- AA.VV., Il Libro dei Simboli, Riflessioni sulle Immagini Archetipiche, Taschen, 2011.

- Andersson, A., Identity and Independence in Jane Eyre, Mid Sweden University, 2011.

- Bronte, C., Jane Eyre, Project Gutenberg, 2007, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm.

- Gilbert S.M., Gubar S., The Madwoman in the Attic - The woman writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary imagination, Second Edition, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979, 1984.

#dyonisia writes #essay #jane eyre #english literature #academic writing

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years ago

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A LANDSCAPE WITH DRAGONS - The Battle for Your Child’s Mind - Part 2

A story written by: Michael D. O’Brien

________

Chapter II

The Shape of Reality — Seeing the True Form

Just a Fairy Story?

Shortly after our children’s exposure to dinosaurs, I began to read fairy tales aloud to them. As they listened over the years, they each heard the story on different levels. Interestingly, sometimes a five-year-old could grasp a subtle point an older sibling had missed, yet it was clear that they were all tapping into the mysterious power of Story. I rummaged through attics, library sales, and used-book stores in search of as much old literature as I could find. I even began to plunder the attics and box-rooms of my own imagination, inventing bedtime stories for them. This strained my imagination somewhat, and some of the stories were better than others, but a little goes a long way in a family. The children began to compose their own as well, and there were nights when bedtime became rather an elaborate affair. Telling “pretend” stories naturally stimulated a flow of accounts of real happenings. The children began to regard the day-to-day events of their fives as the material of their stories. Conversation grew; communication expanded. As we developed into a full-blown storytelling family, I noticed something interesting happening in our children’s play. First of all, they began to find playing more exciting. Also, they acted out the fundamental dramas of the cosmic struggle between good and evil, embellishing and revising them with startling ingenuity. I gradually came to understand the universal love among all peoples for “fairy stories”.

In his masterful essay “On Fairy Stories”,1 J. R. R. Tolkien describes the vital role played by these tales in the cultures of the world. They contain rich spiritual knowledge. The sun may be green and the fish may fly through the air, but however fantastical the imagined world, there is retained in it a faithfulness to the moral order of the actual universe. The metaphors found in the literary characters are not so much random chimeras as they are reflections of our own invisible world, the supernatural. Whether in dreams or conscious imagination, the powers of the mind (and one must see here the powers of the human spirit) are engaged in what Tolkien calls “sub-creation”. By this he means that man, reflecting his divine Creator, is endowed with gifts to incarnate invisible realities in forms that make them understandable.

For example, magic has been used traditionally in fairy stories to give a visible form to the invisible spiritual powers. But a crucial distinction must be made between the use of “good magic” and “bad magic” as they appear in fairy stories, because for us in the real world, there is no such thing as good magic, only prayer, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and abandonment to divine providence. “Good magic” in traditional fairy stories represents these very realities, symbolizing the intervention of God in the lives of good men put to the test. It is actually a metaphor for grace and miracle, the suspension of natural law through an act of spiritual authority, culminating in a reinforced moral order.

Bad magic in traditional stories represents the evil power that the wicked use in order to grasp at what does not rightly belong to hem — whether worldly power, wealth, or even love. It is also a metaphor for the intervention of the enemies of God, the evil spirits, in the lives of wicked men. As Saint Paul says, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Good magic and bad magic in truthful stories correspond to true religion and false religion in our real world. True religion is the search of the soul for God in order to surrender itself to him, the search for his will in order to fulfill it, the search for truth in order to conform to it. False religion is the inverse. It makes a god out of oneself; it makes one’s own will supreme; it attempts to reshape reality to fit one’s own desires. True religion is about surrender, while false religion is about control. Most of us do not learn about the nature of reality through theology, philosophy, or higher mathematics. But all of us readily grasp the language of a parable drawn from the universal human story. The forms may be dressed in elaborate costumes and enact impossible dramas, but they enable the lover of tales to step outside of himself for a brief time to gaze upon his own disguised world. What is the value of this temporary detachment? It is an imaginative withdrawal from the tyranny of the immediate, the flood of words and sensory images that often overwhelm (and just as often limit) our understanding of the real world. A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time his own worth. He is involved, not in a false or spurious world, but in the sub-creation of a more real world (though obviously not a literal one). I say more real because a good author clears away the rampant undergrowth of details that make up the texture of everyday life, that crowd our minds and blur our vision. He artfully selects and focuses so that we see clearly the hidden shape of reality.

Dragons in Myth, Legend, and Faerie

The term “fairy tale” is used rather loosely, for many of these stories are not about fairies as such but deal with a variety of supernatural beings and imaginative happenings. Ancient hero tales, nursery stories, riddle-songs, legends, myths — all have their place in what is really a very broad field of literature. There are countless tales from hundreds of races and language groups, many dating back thousands of years. With very few exceptions, they display a surprising uniformity in their depiction of good and evil: good is good, and evil is evil.

A rich treasure trove of such fiction grew with the passing of centuries. A pattern of symbols emerged that signified real presences in the invisible world. Beautiful winged persons represented unseen guardians and messenger spirits. At the opposite end of the spectrum, dragons (and a host of other monsters) represented the fiendishly clever spirits that sought mans destruction. These symbols were common to so many races and cultures that they were practically universal. But they were also well suited to the spiritual insights of Christian civilization. The shape of these symbols told the reader in a flash some essential information regarding the invisible realm — a realm that long predated Judeo-Christian civilization and was, even then, a spiritual battleground.

Dragons, for example, appear spontaneously in much of the literature of the ancient world, long before paleontology gave us knowledge of the dinosaurs. Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Roman, Aztec, and some Oriental mythologies are full of gargantuan reptiles, and their nature is almost always depicted as malicious and sly. They are frequently associated with “the gods”. In the Egyptian religion, Apophis was the great serpent of the realm of darkness, vanquished by the sun god Ra. In Chaldea the goddess Tiamat, symbol of primeval chaos, took the form of a dragon. A close relation exists especially between dragon myths and the mother goddess cults, which explains in part the persistence of human sacrifice in such religions. The dragon god devours human blood and is placated, which is a diabolical reverse image of Christ’s sacrifice.

The symbol is not perfectly universal: In some Asian cultures dragons are considered good luck, or at worst a mixture of good and evil. Even Greek and Roman mythology, though it bequeathed ample warnings about the terrifying brood of Medusa, the Gorgons, Hydra, Chimaera, and so forth, did at times regard the dragon serpent as a clever dweller of the inner earth, a knower of secrets, an oracle. This ambiguity is due to the blurred distinctions between good and evil in dualistic Eastern religions and in those early Western cultures influenced to a degree by the East. But in Western civilization, founded on the clearer vision of Judaism and flowering in the fuller revelation of the New Testament, the symbol of the dragon sharpened into focus, assuming its definitive identity. Thus, in the literature of the West dragons Have been regarded as powerful agents of evil, guardians of stolen treasure hoards, destroyers of the good and the weak (children, maidens, small idyllic kingdoms), and, on the spiritual level, a personification of Satan prowling through the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Some modern mythologists lamely attempt to explain dragons as an inheritance from the age of dinosaurs, a kind of fossil-memory lingering on in the subconscious. But this theory does not explain why the image of the dragon is so universal when, say, that of the mastodon is not—surely, the prehistoric mammoth would just as deeply impress itself on the mind of primitive man. Neither does the theory explain why there exists alongside the mytho-poetic legends another body of writings that discuss dragon encounters in the factual language of a news report. There are, for example, some forty medieval accounts of encounters with dragons in England. Several of them describe Catholic bishops and missionaries overcoming the dragons by spiritual authority. More frequently the sword is used.

With the rise of Christendom, the slaying of dragons became the crowning achievement of heroes such as Siegmund, Beowulf, Arthur and even Lancelot, the great ideal of medieval chivalry. Beowulf was the earliest English epic poem written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, sometime between the ninth and tenth centuries. It offers a stirring depiction of the battleground and can be read to children once they develop a taste for the heroic style. Through such tales, universal truths entered the world of literary culture and were passed down. If they functioned in some respects like ancient mythology, they were myths with a crucial difference. Actual dragons may or may not have existed, but that is not our main concern here. What is important is that the Christian “myth” of the dragon refers to a being who actually exists and who becomes very much more dangerous to us the less we believe he exists.

Perhaps the worst of the demythologizing in recent literature is the message that the basic stories of the Christian faith, especially the Paschal Mystery, are merely our variation on universal myths. It is suggested that many cultures have tales about a hero who is killed and then returns to life. G. K. Chesterton pointed out, however, that the demythologizer’s position really adds up to this: Since a truth has impressed itself deeply in the imagination of a vast number of people of varying times and cultures, therefore it simply cannot be true. The demythologizer does not consider the possibility that people of all times and places may have been informed at a deep, intuitive level of an actual event that would one day take place in history, that would be, in fact, the most important event ever to occur.

The dragon has a vested interest in having us dismiss the account of the battle as make-believe. It is not to his benefit that we imitating our Lord the King, should take up arms against him. He thinks it better that we do not consider him dangerous. Of course, the well-nourished imagination knows that dragons are not frightening because of fangs, scales, and smoke pouring from nostrils. The imagination fed on truth knows that the serpent is a symbol of hatred and deceit, of evil knowledge and power without conscience. If dragons do exist, it is not in the form of green steam engines or painted Chinese masks or overgrown lizards. The dragon that takes no form is the worst kind, and I would rather it not prowl around the neighborhood I call home. Most of all I do not want it infesting my children’s minds. I do not want them befriending it, either, nor do I want it calming their instinctive good fears and perhaps in the process taking possession of their very selves.

At this point I may sound somewhat contradictory. It seems that I do not want dragons in my children’s minds, I say, and yet at the same time I want them to read plenty of stories in which there are dragons that act like dragons and meet a dragon’s end. In fact there is no contradiction here. It is the real dragon against which I want my children armed. Their interior life has need of the tales that inform them of their danger and instruct them at deep levels about the tactics of their enemy. It is good that our children fear dragons, for in the fearing, they can learn to overcome fear with courage. Dragons cannot be tamed, and it is fatal to enter into dialogue with them. The old stories have taught our children this. There have actually been suicides brought about through the “Dungeons and Dragons” cult among adolescents. But it is very important to note that this tragedy is not the result of overheating the young imagination with too much make-believe. On the contrary, it is the result of not believing in dragons until it is too late, of thinking it “just a game”. It is the logical consequence of our ignorance of this principle: The imagination must be fed good food, or it will become the haunt of monsters.

I do not want our children to grow up believing in the actual presence of dragons. But the child who learns fairy stories knows that flying horses and fire-breathing serpents are not to be confused with the cows in our neighbor’s field. Some writers suggest that children do not grasp the meanings in symbol and allegory. This is simply untrue. They may not be able to articulate it in adult terminology, but the young, even the very young, are able to reach across the gap between the real and the sub-created world and find the truths within the mysterious events that are the cosmic drama. They have a natural sense that something mysterious, wonderful, and useful is hidden within the tale, not so much like those trick pictures in which they must find how many bunnies are hidden in the bushes. More like stepping into a marvelous new kingdom where they stand in awe before the fact that angels and dragons are there. The child then asks himself, “Why are they there? And why is it like that?”

Answering the Critics of Fairy Stories

Modern critics of the fairy story have sometimes objected that the world it presents is too simplistic. They maintain that beautiful heroes and heroines are too much aligned with good, and the physically ugly characters are used too much to represent evil. Such an argument is obviously the result of too cursory a glance at fairy tales. There are many stories in which bad characters have, a beautiful appearance. There are some in which ugly creatures have noble princes and princesses hidden inside of them. Generally, however, it is true that the exterior forms that many traditional authors give to the morally or spiritually ugly character tend to be ugly forms. Likewise, beautiful forms tend to express a beautiful interior life. This is a literary device that works well to reinforce the child’s budding awareness of interior ugliness and beauty. Children are not so colossally naive as to think nice-looking people are always nice or that unattractive-looking people are bad. My children know from infancy onward that their grandmother (bad teeth, liverspots, and a big tummy) is the most beautiful person in their life. She loves. She is kind. She listens to them. Also, in their short lives they have met more than one beautiful-looking person who is manipulative, sarcastic, and abuser, of others. They instinctively dislike such people, for their image is not consistent with their substance. Children know this is how the real world works.

We seem to have lost sight of a keystone that was firmly in place in the culture of classical civilization, one that has been crumbling in the West for a long time and at an accelerated rate since the industrial and the technological revolutions. We have lost our sense of the holiness of beauty, our intuition that at some level it reflects back to him who is perfect Beauty. If a bad character betrays that beauty by sin, this in no way negates the authenticity of beauty. By the same token, when exterior beauty is in harmony with a character’s interior beauty, then the sign value of the tale or the character is greatly enhanced. Similarly, when worship of God is done poorly, it is not necessarily invalid if the intention of the worshiper is sincere. But when it is done well, it is a greater sign of the coming glory when all things will be restored in Christ. Clearly God is better glorified by a humble hunchback mumbling badly phrased prayers in a ditch than by a proud aesthete singing hymns perfectly, solely as an art form. Yes, give us that poor, godly hunchback over the vain successful man, rich in his religiosity! But what if the beautiful heart of that hunchback were to dwell in the developed art of the aesthete? Would not a greater glory be rendered to God by the restoration to harmony of both substance and form? In literature we have a medium in which it is possible to express this and, more than that, in which it is possible to show our children that it is possible to live this.

Some modern critics have accused the traditional fairy story of being too fixated on punishment of evil characters. They maintain that children are being conditioned to want revenge, that violent instincts are being incorporated into their personalities, and that they will grow up lacking compassion. Such anxieties stem from the modern preoccupation with peace at all costs, from exaggerated fears about conflict, and from the mistaken belief that sin can be educated out of fallen human nature. Such people believe that children (especially male children) will grow up to be happy nonviolent adults if they are prevented from playing with toy weapons. This is naive. Little boys deprived of toy swords and guns will simply make their own out of anything that comes to hand (such as Lego, sticks, and even pieces of toast). I draw the line at buying plastic machine guns or bazookas for my children, but I do not consider it unhealthy to spend an hour in the woods with my son finding just the right willow sapling to bend into a bow for him. The principle at stake in this issue is not so much our laudable desires to raise compassionate children. The real question is: What approach will best raise compassionate and courageous children? Normal childhood play, riddled with joys and conflicts as it always has been, “educates” at a profound level. The secret is not to deprive a child of his sword but to make the sword with him and teach him a code of honor. In other words, chivalry. Responsibility. Character. Justice. It is a distinctly modern prejudice that holds that a boy with a sword will probably run it through his little sister. The truth of the matter is, most boys, unless they are mentally disturbed, quickly learn that it is far more heroic, exciting, and rewarding to protect a little sister with that very sword by chasing off dragons and bullies.

Unlike the sword or bow and arrow, the mystique of the gun is something of a different problem in the modern era, because it means different things to different people. The word stimulates immediate emotional response in everyone. For those who live in rural areas, where a gun is used for protecting livestock from predators or providing food for one’s family, it is like any other useful but dangerous tool. Is it reasonable to propose that we can create a safer world by eliminating references to guns? Can we clean up humanity by sanitizing literature? If so, should we also drop all references to cooking because sometimes an irate housewife will throw a rolling pin at her husband, or banish references to chain saws because sometimes people have accidents with them when cutting firewood, weed out every reference to automobiles because many people use them badly and even kill others with them? After all, a far greater number of people die violently as victims of car crashes than die at the wrong end of a gun, or a sword, or a bow and arrow. For the urbanite, however, guns conjure up images of Belfast, Bosnia, gang wars, and high school murders. But this, I believe, has more to do with the power of television than the influence of fairy stories—I suspect that terrorists and drug lords have read very few.

It has been suggested that fairy stories would be much improved if they were rewritten without references to weapons, violence, and punishment. Perhaps a few of the Grimm brothers’ tales would benefit a little from this, but to apply such “cultural cleansing” to the entire field of children’s literature is really a symptom of naïveté about human nature and about the role of literature. The point we must keep in mind is that the fairy story is a literary heritage, containing the imperfections that fallen human creators bring to their art. If we were to try to cleanse every work of traces of original sin, we would have to burn a great deal of the literature of the world, and a fair portion of the Bible as well. In the Gospels, for example, Judas does not end well. Neither does Herod, nor a host of odious characters in the Old Testament. “Where is compassion in those texts?” we might ask ourselves, “Where is mercy?” I think the answer, at least in literature, is that stories teach us, and this passing on of the truth is their chief act of mercy. Part of their task is to warn us, to posit the possibility of damnation. Furthermore, a literary figure is not in fact a suffering person but an image in the mind. And the dire image of a witch’s death may suggest in the mind of a child that witchcraft is so absolutely a violation of their souls, of their personhood, that a dire punishment is warranted. Even very young children realize that no one is going to make a witch dance herself to death in red-hot shoes (a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one). No, the modern witch will be left very much to do as she pleases—perhaps have an interview on a morning talk show, write a best-selling book, or gather a group of devotees about herself. At worst, she may have to suffer some insensitive comments from her critics.

The fairy story is not an incitement to violence; it is an incitement to reflection on the truth. It does not really propose violence against the sinner (the witch); it reminds us to do violence against the sin (in this case, witchcraft), but more importantly against our own sins, just as the Scriptures command us to do—“If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!” The merit of a bad end to a bad fictional character is that it imparts a warning about the act. There are worse things than turning into a donkey or dancing to death in red-hot shoes, eternal damnation and diabolical possession being two of them.

The concept of justice is not always easy to grasp, especially in a culture that has been conditioned to exalt rights at the expense of responsibilities, that suffers from the impression that punishment is always a cruel thing. One of law’s important functions is to instruct and to deter on an objective level those whose inhumanity (and they will always be with us) impels them toward the ruthless use of other human beings. There is great need for a return to objective warning signs strong enough to prevail over the massive subjectivization of the modern mind — a mind, by the way, that has abandoned the stern messages of right and wrong that one finds in traditional fairy stories; a mind that is instead pumped full of images that glamorize the diabolical. Without dear deterrents, the imagination will soon be influenced by, and eventually infested by, many demons. If that process is not reversed, the malformed mind, pacified by neutered concepts of justice and mercy will find itself without defenses; it may even in the end come to believe that evil is good, and good is evil.

The purpose of dragons in literature, and of the fascination children have for them, is to arm the soul with an ever-developing, discernment of spirits. The purpose of the fairy tale is not to breed superstition but rather to defend the mind against superstition. As I write this I am gazing out the window at an epic being enacted on our hillside. The children are galloping over a yellow carpet of birch leaves on this sunny afternoon, running through the woods with swords they have cut from branches and silver shields they have borrowed from the tops of our trash cans. They are stalking the shadows lurking in the forests and caves. They are armed with homemade bows and arrows, willow rods bent to the breaking point by twine, and wobbly shafts outfitted with chicken feathers and armed with arrowheads they have chipped from stone. Are we training them to be aggressive little militarists? Not at all. They seem rather kind and gentle children, until roused by a real enemy — dragons, for instance.

They do seem to be developing a great deal of character, and it might be important to note here that violent people, on the whole, tend to be lacking in character. The children’s play is filled with an implicit moral consciousness of natural and supernatural law, even when, on occasion, they break that law. The point is, they know the law — and the spirit of it.

It is encouraging for us to see how their friends are drawn magnetically to the fantasy life of our young tale-bearers. A community of questers is born on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. For a brief, burning moment they know that nothing is ordinary, least of all themselves. When the moral order of the universe is reinforced, as it is for these children, man begins to know who he is, where he is, and what he is for. When the moral order of the universe is corrupted, his perception of reality itself collapses. The collapse may be slow or rapid, but the end result is a mass submersion into a swamp, in which creation is radically devalued, life becomes meaningless, and man, no longer able to know himself, is driven to desperate escape measures.

________

1 The essay can be found in J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1988).

#a landscape with dragons

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the-signs-of-two · 7 years ago

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The East Wind: Understanding Eurus (3 of 3)

In the third and final part of this meta series, we will be looking at the events of TFP through the interpretational lens introduced previously, that is in the first and second part of this meta which can be found here and here. In those metas, I argued that the main conflict of the entirety of BBC Sherlock is the conflict within Sherlock to choose to be either a good man with John or a bad man with Jim. I also argued that Sherlock is well on his way to choosing the good man and John by the time of series 3 and that the ending of TAB shows him taking the final step in this process, metaphorically hurling Jim (and the side of Sherlock that Jim brings to the surface) down into the abyss. Finally, I argued that when Sherlock, rather than staying on the precipice with John, follows Jim into the abyss, he is literally following Jim into the deepest, darkest corner of his own mind to confront that bad man, that side of himself that Jim brings to the surface and in a way represents. And that side of Sherlock is personified by Eurus.

For simplicity reasons, I won’t go into minute details with every scene of the episode, but will merely be discussing the most important scenes as well as the overall interpretation and significance of TFP. Then maybe later I’ll return with more specific analyses of particular scenes or plot points.

The first scene I’ll be discussing is this scene, in which Mycroft gives some crucial information about Sherlock and Eurus. Mycroft has always represented pure logic in Sherlock’s mind palace and that is how he appears in this scene as well. Sherlock has buried his capacity to become a bad man so deep within himself that he has ceased to remember that it is even there on a conscious level. That’s a very emotional response. On a subconscious level, though, Sherlock has never allowed himself to forget what he is capable of and has thus kept a close eye on how well suppressed that side of himself has been.

Sherlock: So there were three of us. I know that now. You (logic), me (the good man), and... Eurus (the bad man). A sister I can’t remember. Interesting name, Eurus. It’s Greek, isn’t it?

John: Mm. Yeah, literally the god of the East Wind.

Mycroft: Yes.

Sherlock: “The East Wind is coming, Sherlock.” You used that to scare me.

Mycroft: No.

Sherlock: You turned my sister into a ghost story.

Mycroft: Of course I didn’t. I monitored you.

John: You what?

Mycroft: Memories can resurface. Wounds can re-open. The roads we walk have demons beneath... and yours have been waiting for a very long time. I never bullied you. I used, at discrete intervals, potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition. I was looking after you.

We also gain an insight into how Sherlock’s mind works and how it could have worked.

Mycroft: You realise I’m the smart one? (Mycroft = Sherlock’s logic/intelligence)

Sherlock: As you never cease to announce.

Mycroft: ... but Eurus, she was incandescent even then. Our abilities were professionally assessed more than once. I was remarkable, but Eurus was described as an era-defining genius, beyond Newton.

Notice how Mycroft seamlessly leaves out saying a word about how Sherlock’s abilities were assessed. That’s because the whole being that is Sherlock is split into three people in this episode and the side of Sherlock represented by Sherlock himself (the good man) isn’t a genius. The good man is the man who sacrificed logic for emotion. Sherlock as the good man is emotional (Sherlock) and his intelligence is “remarkable” (Mycroft). But if he had chosen differently, if he had sacrificed emotion for logic rather than logic for emotion, if he had chosen to become the bad man rather than the good man, he could have been “an era-defining genius, beyond Newton” (Eurus).

I’d like to clarify that I don’t think intelligence like the one we see Eurus possess is actually possible. I don’t think Sherlock would have been able to predict the next terrorist attack after an hour on twitter. But the important part is that Sherlock believes so. He believes that he can achieve a much higher level of intelligence without his emotions. And as we see throughout the entire series, especially in the beginning, that prospect has always held an enormous appeal for Sherlock.

Mycroft: You do remember her, in a way. Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today... is your memory of Eurus.

We are told that Eurus took Sherlock’s dog, locked it up somewhere and refused to tell where it was. We’re later told that this wasn’t actually a dog, but Sherlock’s only friend, Victor. And after a while, she started calling him Drowned Redbeard because she chained him to a bottom of a well and let him drown as the water rose. This had a dramatic effect on Sherlock.

Mycroft: Sherlock was traumatised. Natural, I suppose. He was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that he was different, so changed. Never spoke of it again. In time, he seemed to forget that Eurus had ever even existed.

Afterwards, Eurus burned down the house and we get a glimpse of the many images she has drawn right before she lights the match. In every image that Eurus draws, we see Sherlock somehow dead or dying beside other, unharmed members of the family. The obvious conclusion is that Eurus murders Redbeard and sets the house on fire not because she’s simply psychotic and has a desire to kill and destroy in general, but because she hates Sherlock in particular and wants to destroy him in every way she can. Mycroft and their parents escape, both on the pictures and in “the real world” (or as real as you get when you’re in the middle of a flashback within a mind palace within a mind palace with people who are personifications rather than actual people), unhurt.

Let’s translate. As I just said, logic and emotion are opposing forces in Sherlock. What we hear himself and others say time and again throughout the first couple of series is true - emotion stands in the way of logic, at least where Sherlock is concerned. Being an emotional man reduces Sherlock’s intelligence to “remarkable” when he could have been “an era-defining genius, beyond Newton”. That’s why Sherlock can’t be both a great man and a good man: being a great man equals being an unemotional man and therefore being a great man is only a small step away from being a bad man.

When Sherlock was a child, he was quite emotional and even had a friend, Victor Trevor. (Notice that Victor Trevor was a fellow student that Sherlock befriended during university in ACD canon, so the “friendship” with Victor definitely also have some romantic connotations.) This emotion, though, stood in the way of his logic and the side of him that wanted to be a great man thus wanted to rid himself of that emotion. Eurus killing Victor is a symbolic representation of Sherlock’s desire to get rid of his emotions. And he did so by shutting himself off from it and ending his friendship with Victor Trevor. I’m not saying that he killed the person Victor Trevor, I’m saying that he killed what he represented, that is, emotion and the capacity for friendship and love. And he destroyed the areas in his mind palace that contained his happy, innocent childhood (the ancestral home, where there was always honey for tea).

That is how Sherlock was at the beginning of the series in ASiP. A man shutting off his own emotions in an attempt to enhance his intelligence. The great man, equally likely to become the bad man as the good man.

Mycroft: Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today... is your memory of Eurus.

But not anymore. Sherlock has changed over the series and in TAB he’s finally accepted his own emotions. The person responsible for that change within Sherlock is and has always been John. So in TFP, Mycroft represents Sherlock’s logic and John represents Sherlock’s emotion.

And it’s time to face Sherlock’s inner demons. They’ve been waiting for a very long time.

Mycroft: There’s a place called Sherrinford, an island. It’s a secure and very secretive installation whose sole purpose is to contain what we call “the uncontainables.” The demons beneath the road - this is where we trap them. Sherrinford is more than a prison or an asylum. It is a fortress built to keep the rest of the world safe from what is inside it.

Sherrinford is an area of Sherlock’s mind palace designed to keep all his inner demons that he can’t stand to be confronted by away from his conscious mind. In there, he has locked the most unpleasant, self-destructive parts of himself away and thrown away the key.

I mean, look at it. Sherrinford looks ridiculous for a real life location, both inside and outside, but it makes perfect sense for the deepest, darkest corner of Sherlock’s mind palace to look like this. Sherrinford is just the bigger version of this room.

The name Sherrinford, a name that Doyle considered before settling on Sherlock, also points to Sherrinford being a part of Sherlock rather than a real life place.

Sherlock goes to Sherrinford along with John and Mycroft. At this point, in order to avoid confusion, let’s briefly examine what each of these people represent. Sherlock is Sherlock as a good man, but by this point in time, after TAB, Sherlock and the good man are one and the same and thus Sherlock is simply Sherlock - “remarkably” intelligent and emotional. Mycroft is Sherlock’s logic/intelligence (which is “remarkable” but not “incandescent” as it could have been). John is Sherlock’s emotion. The balance between John and Mycroft’s influence on Sherlock’s decisions in the following scenes thus represent the healthy balance between logic and emotion that Sherlock has achieved by this point in time.

Sherrinford’s governor, David, is, in my opinion, a Sherlock mirror. I was asked to explain why I understand him as such in my last meta, so here is a quick summary. Firstly, David is in charge of Sherrinford, which I understand to be an area of Sherlock’s mind palace in which he locks away “the uncontainables” of his own mind. It makes sense that the one charged with the security there would be himself. Secondly, the security of Sherrinford is compromised because Eurus was able to talk to David and get inside his head. Now she is running Sherrinford and is able to leave any time. It’s very over the top if taken literally, but on a symbolic level, it makes perfect sense if David is a Sherlock mirror. Sherlock has created Sherrinford as a place to store Eurus/bad multigenius Sherlock in his mind palace and he thinks he has it under control. But Eurus is an enticing prospect for Sherlock. He’s a good man, but he could become an era-defining genius if he just shut off his emotions and that has always been a difficult desire for him to master. Just listen to how David describes Eurus’ ability to manipulate people.

David: Everyone we sent in there, it’s... it’s hard to describe. It’s ... it’s like she...

Mycroft: ... recruited them.

David: Enslaved them.

David: She kept suggesting to Doctor Taylor that he should kill his family.

Mycroft: And?

David: He said it was like an earworm. Couldn’t get her out of his head.

David has been enslaved by Eurus as well. With David as a Sherlock mirror, the situation makes sense: David/Sherlock was meant to keep Eurus in check, but he was so fascinated by her (David: She’s clinically unique. We had to try.) that he couldn’t help listening to her and now she has control over him. Sherlock can’t listen to her without being “compromised” because he can’t listen to her without being tempted to shut off his emotions in order to further his intelligence.

While David, John and Mycroft discuss her ability to manipulate people, Sherlock finally comes face to face with Eurus. Sherlock wants to know how Eurus escaped in order to prevent it from happening again because she symbolically tried to kill Sherlock’s emotions (shot John) when she was not locked away deep inside Sherlock’s mind (Sherrinford). But notice how Eurus immediately begins enticing him. In fact, during the entirety of their conversation here, every single thing she says illustrates and is meant to illustrate that Eurus/the bad man is a thousand times brighter than Sherlock/the good man. Here are some of the most obvious examples.

Sherlock: How did you manage to get out of this place? How did you do that?

Eurus: Easy. Look at me.

Sherlock: I am looking at you.

Eurus: You can’t see it, can you? You try and try but you just can’t see. You can’t look.

Sherlock: See what?

Eurus is using the exact same degrading words that Sherlock usually uses when talking to people less observant than himself.

Eurus: What do you think?

Sherlock: Beautiful.

Eurus: You’re not looking at it.

Sherlock: I meant your playing.

Eurus: Oh, the music. I never know if it’s beautiful or not, only if i’s right.

Sherlock: Often they’re the same thing.

Eurus: If they’re not always the same thing, what’s the point in beauty?

Sherlock is emotional, he considers the music beautiful. Eurus is purely logical, the only thing she pays attention to is whether it’s right or not. And she berates him for paying attention to beauty rather than objective correctness.

By the time John realises that Eurus is capable of manipulating people Sherlock and tries to warn him, Sherlock is already too enticed to pay attention to John his emotions.

Sherlock: So clearly you remember me.

Eurus: I remember everything, every single thing. You just need a big enough hard drive.

John: Sherlock.

Sherlock: Not now.

John: Vatican Cameos.

Sherlock: In a minute. (breaks off the connection)

Eurus: Let’s continue. Did they tell you to keep three feet from the glass?

Sherlock: Yes.

Eurus: Be naughty. Step closer.

Sherlock: Why?

Eurus: Do it. Step closer.

Then Eurus gives some more information about Sherlock’s inner workings.

Sherlock: Tell me what you remember.

Eurus: You, me and Mycroft. Mycroft was quite clever. He could understand things if you went a bit slow, but you... you were my favourite.

Sherlock: Why was I your favourite?

Eurus: ‘Cause I could make you laugh. I loved it when you laughed. Once I made you laugh all night. I thought you were going to burst. Then Mummy and Daddy had to stop me of course.

Sherlock: Why?

Eurus: Well, turns out I got it wrong. Apparently, you were screaming.

Sherlock: Why was I screaming? (Pause) Redbeard. I remember Redbeard.

It is all too easy for me to imagine this mechanic in Sherlock’s mind. That Sherlock had a friend that he gave up so he wouldn’t care so much because he thought being clever would make him happy (Once I made you laugh all night), but really it only made him horribly lonely (Well, turns out I got it wrong. Apparently, you were screaming.).

And then Eurus and Sherlock are finally conjoined again.

Eurus: You think it’s a trick. You look so... unsure. You’re not used to being unsure, are you?

Sherlock: It’s more common than you’d think.

Eurus: Look at you. The man who sees through everything... is exactly the man who doesn’t notice... when there’s nothing to see through.

Eurus and Sherlock are both Sherlock. They are two halves of the same whole, the Sherlock that could have been and the Sherlock that ended up being.

Now compare that to the image we get when Eurus meets Jim.

Eurus is Sherlock, but Eurus is also a reflection of Jim. Eurus/the bad man is the part of Sherlock that Jim loves, just as Sherlock/the good man is the part of Sherlock that John loves. Just look at Jim and Eurus. Their faces are reflected in one another’s and they’re practically making love through the glass. And, as I’ve argued before, just as John has brought the good man to the surface, Jim brings Eurus/that bad side of Sherlock to the surface.

David: It’s obvious when it all started. Well, she was never the same after that Christmas. It’s as if you woke her up.

Eurus has been that dark little voice in Sherlock’s head all his life, but Sherlock was the great man, somewhere between the bad man and the good man, until he met John and Jim. John pulled him in the direction of the good man, but Jim also awakened certain sides inside of him. It’s those sides that he has to confront now and put back to rest.

But things don’t go according to plan. As always, Sherlock can’t quite control those dark little voices in his head and now Eurus flips the tables on Sherlock. So what we see is actually Sherlock fighting a war within himself because the two sides of him want different things. As they always have.

Sherlock wants to lock Eurus away so she can never get out again (he also wants to save the little girl on the plane, but we’ll get to that). Eurus wants Sherlock to give up his emotions and become her. It’s actually a perfect parallel to the actual plot. He wants to keep her locked up, she wants to get out. And the way to get out is to turn Sherlock into her by making him give up his emotions.

It’s difficult, but try not to think of her as a person. Try to think of her as that dark voice in Sherlock’s head, telling him that love is a chemical defect found in the losing side and that there’s no point in beauty if it isn’t right.

The first part of her plan is to make Sherlock choose between vilifying his emotions or his logic.

Eurus: You want to save the governor’s wife? Choose either Doctor Watson or Mycroft to kill the governor. You can’t do it, Sherlock. If you do it, it won’t count. I’ll kill her anyway. It has to be your brother or your friend.

Notice that if David is a Sherlock mirror, this first part of Eurus’ plan is actually a mirroring on a less significant scale of her overall plan. She is threatening to kill the governor’s wife, which if Sherlock is David then John must be his wife, and the only way to save her him (or more exactly Sherlock’s relationship with him) is for Sherlock to kill himself using either his emotions or his logic. And notice that David never hesitates for a second. He just accepts that he is going to die to save his beloved.

While they discuss what to do, Eurus states quite explicit what it is she’s putting Sherlock through.

Eurus: Withholding the precise deadline will apply the emotional pressure more evenly. Where possible, please give me an explicit verbal indication of your anxiety levels.

Eurus: I’m particularly focused on internal conflicts, where strategising around a largely intuitive moral code appears to create a counter-intuitive result.

Sherlock first chooses Mycroft (logic), but Sherlock is unwilling to use his logic to do bad.

Mycroft: I will not kill. I will not have blood on my hands.

This, we also see throughout the series. Yes, Mycroft might seem out of character, but Sherlock’s logic is perfectly in character. He’s always wanted to use his intelligence to solve crimes, not make them.

Instead, Sherlock turns to John (emotion). John is horrified, but as Sherlock’s emotions, he actually represents the part of Sherlock that loves John and therefore he tries to go through with it. Additionally, he tries to comfort David Sherlock and tell him that it’s the right choice.

John: You are a good man, and you are doing a good thing.

John: I know that you’re scared, but you should also be very proud.

In the end, though:

John: I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do it.

Sherlock: I know. It’s all right.

David Sherlock, though, isn’t prepared to live without his wife John and commits suicide entirely by his own hand in an attempt to save her him.

It doesn’t help, though, because now comes the whole point.

Eurus: Dead or alive... he really wasn’t very interesting, but you three... you three were wonderful. Thank you. You see, what you did, Doctor Watson (emotion), specifically because of your moral code... because you don’t want blood on your hands, two people are dead instead of one.

Eurus: What advantage did your moral code grant you? Is it not, in the end, selfish to keep one’s hands clean at the expense of another’s life?

What Eurus is doing is essentially turning the argument on its head to show Sherlock how illogical, vulnerable and, actually, how cruel he is because of his emotions.

Eurus: Enough for now. Time to play a new game.

The second part of Eurus’ plan is designed to do two things. First, Sherlock has to solve a case with the aid of both his logic and his emotion and see what actually proves useful to him. Second, Sherlock has to not just solve a case, but actually condemn the person responsible to death. He has to do it consciously and willingly. And here as well, Eurus have some points to make.

First:

Eurus: Please, make use of your friends, Sherlock. I want to see you interact with people that you’re close to. Also, you may have to choose which one to keep.

Sherlock: What do you make of it?

Mycroft: Am I being asked to prove my usefulness?

Sherlock: Yes, I should think you are.

Mycroft: I will not be manipulated like this.

Sherlock: Fine. John? John?

John: Yeah, I think I’ve seen one of these. It’s a buffalo gun. I’d say nineteen forties, old-fashioned sight, no crosshairs.

Mycroft: Well done, Doctor Watson. How useful you are. Do you have a suspicion we’re being made to compete?

Second:

Eurus: Now, as I understand it, Sherlock, you try to repress your emotions to refine your reasoning. Iâ€™d like to see how that works, so, if you donâ€™t mind, Iâ€™m going to apply some context to your deductions.

Eurus: Once you bring in your verdict, let me know and justice will be done.

Sherlock: Justice?

John: What will you do with them?

Eurus: Early release.

Sherlock: You’ll drop them into the sea.

Eurus: Sink, or swim.

John: They’re tied up!

Eurus: Exactly! Now there is context. Please, continue with your deductions. I’m now focusing on the difference to your mental capacity a specified consequence can make.

Sherlock: Alex.

Eurus: Say it. Condemn him. Condemn him in the knowledge of what will happen to the man you name.

Sherlock: ... I condemn Alex Garrideb.

And Eurus has a last point:

Eurus: Does it really make a difference, killing the innocent instead of the guilty? Let’s see. *drops Alex into the sea* No. That felt pretty much the same.

Into the third and worst part so far.

Sherlock has to convince Molly to tell him that she loves him before the time runs out or her flat will explode.

Sherlock: Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.

Molly: What words?

Sherlock: I love you.

Molly: Leave me alone.

Sherlock: Molly, no, please, no, don’t hang up! Do not hang up!

Eurus: Calmly, Sherlock, or I will finish her right now.

Molly: Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making fun of me?

Sherlock: Please, I swear, you just have to listen to me.

Eurus: Softer, Sherlock!

Sherlock: Molly, this is for a case. It’s... it’s a sort of experiment.

Molly: I’m not an experiment, Sherlock.

Sherlock: No, I know you’re not an experiment. You’re my friend. We’re friends. But... please. Just... say those words for me.

Molly: Please don’t do this. Just... just... don’t do it.

Sherlock: It’s very important. I can’t say why, but I promise you it is.

Molly: I can’t say that. I can’t... I can’t say that to you.

Sherlock: Of course you can. Why can’t you?

Molly: You know why.

Sherlock: No, I don’t know why.

Molly: Of course you do.

Sherlock: Please, just say it.

Molly: I can’t. Not to you.

Sherlock: Why?

Molly: Because... because it’s true. Because... it’s... true, Sherlock. It’s always been true.

Sherlock: ... Well, if it’s true, just say it anyway.

Molly: You bastard.

Sherlock: Say it anyway.

Molly: You say it. Go on. You say it first.

Sherlock: What?

Molly: Say it. Say it like you mean it.

Eurus: Final thirty seconds.

Sherlock: I-I... I love you. I love you... Molly? Molly, please.

Molly: ... I love you.

But Eurus always has a point to make.

Sherlock: Eurus, I won. I won. Come on, play fair. The girl on the plane: I need to talk to her. I won. I saved Molly Hooper.

Eurus: Saved her? From what? Oh, do be sensible. There were no explosives in her little house. Why would I be so clumsy? You didn’t win. You lost. Look what you did to her. Look what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions. I lost count. Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time.

And this is when Sherlock breaks.

I don’t really need to explain this part, do I? This is just too painful.

And now we’ve arrived at the final part of Eurus’ plan.

Eurus: You’ve still got the gun, haven’t you? I told you you’d need it, because only two can play the next game. Just two of you go on from here. Your choice. It’s make-your-mind-up time. Whose help do you need the most? John or Mycroft? It’s an elimination round. You choose one and kill the other. You have to choose family or friend. Mycroft or John Watson?

And just so there can be no doubt what it is Eurus is asking Sherlock to do:

Mycroft: There’s no question who has to continue from here. It’s us, you and me. Whatever lies ahead requires brainpower, Sherlock, not sentiment. Don’t prolong his agony, shoot him.

Eurus is asking Sherlock to choose between his logic and his emotions. This is the moment when Sherlock could become Eurus. But that’s not what he chooses. He can’t live without his emotions now.

Eurus: Jim Moriarty thought you’d make this choice. He was so excited.

Jim: And here we are, at the end of the line. Holmes killing Holmes.

People assume that Moriarty means Sherlock killing Mycroft. But his wording is made deliberately ambiguous and I believe the correct understanding is actually Sherlock killing Sherlock.

And it would be. While it’s obvious that Sherlock killing his emotions and becoming Eurus would be horrible, Sherlock also needs his logic. No matter what he chooses, he will live as an amputated human being. Both his logic and his emotions are such huge parts of him by now that he can’t live without either. Which is why he chooses to do what David as a mirror foretold. He chooses to shoot himself.

And Eurus panics. Because she is Sherlock. And if Sherlock shoots himself, it’s all over. That includes her. She can’t allow that.

Sherlock: Ten...

Eurus: No, no, Sherlock.

Sherlock: Nine... Eight...

Eurus: You can’t!

Sherlock: Seven...

Eurus: You don’t know about Redbeard yet.

Sherlock: Six...

Eurus: Sherlock!

Sherlock: Five...

Eurus: Sherlock, stop that at once!

Sherlock: Four... Three... Two...

And we’ve finally arrived at Musgrave Hall. Whether this was actually Sherlock’s childhood home, I couldn’t say, but at least it is the area of his mind palace he associates with his childhood and thus also where he stores his childhood memories. This is where he can find the truth about Eurus and himself.

This part will not be as chronological as the rest of this meta because everything is happening at once and it just makes it a lot easier if we go through this topic by topic. So I’ve separated the four main things happening in this scene and I’ll go through them one by one.

First plot point, Sherlock’s childhood and Victor Trevor. As I’ve said before, no, I don’t think Sherlock killed his best friend when he was a child. But what we see Eurus do is a symbolic representation of what Sherlock actually did. Victor was Sherlock’s friend and he drew out Sherlock’s emotions. But that’s not who Sherlock wanted to be.

Eurus: You were inseparable. But I wanted to play too.

It’s never directly stated in the episode, but I believe that even though Sherlock and Victor were “inseparable”, they were not as close as Sherlock would have liked. There are two reasons why I think that this is a possible interpretation. First, Eurus says that she wanted to play too, but wasn’t welcome. Second, the relationship between Victor and Sherlock is set up as an almost perfect parallel to the relationship between Sherlock and John - they are inseparable as friends, but Sherlock (and John, but that’s irrelevant here) wants it to be something more. And one of the main reasons why it hasn’t happened (yet) is because John didn’t see Sherloc’s emotions clearly.

Maybe Victor had other friends, paralleling that John has other romantic relationships. Maybe Victor never truly understood who Sherlock is and just wanted to play, paralleling that John only too late has realised that Sherlock is also an emotional being and started off only wanting to be friends and solve crimes. In any case, Victor and Sherlock were inseparable, but not enough so that some part of Sherlock didn’t feel alone.

Sherlock: You killed my best friend.

Eurus: I never had a best friend. I had no one.

So what do I believe happened when Sherlock was a child? I believe Sherlock ended the friendship with Victor because he couldn’t stand having his emotions laid bare and because he wanted to be more intelligent. But without that friendship, he was just incredibly lonely. So I believe that what Sherlock killed was that childhood emotion.

Mycroft: He was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that he was different, so changed.

And I believe that what he burned down was the area in his mind palace where he kept the memories of that friendship and of that period of careless emotion in his life.

Second plot point, John in the well. In the move from Sherrinford to Musgrave Hall, Mycroft is no longer present. That’s because everything is now boiled down to what it’s really all about: Sherlock’s emotions (John). Just as Victor is simultaneously Sherlock’s childhood emotion and a real person who was Sherlock’s first friend/love, John is simultaneously Sherlock’s current emotion and simply John, a real person who is Sherlock’s second friend/love. This means that what is at stake is both Sherlock’s relationship with John and Sherlock’s ability to feel his own emotions.

John is in the same well as the one Victor drowned in because there’s only two ways to go from here. Either Sherlock solves the Musgrave Ritual and saves John/his emotions, becoming the good man, or Eurus will drown John/his emotions and Sherlock will become the bad man/Eurus.

Eurus: I’m letting the water in now. You don’t want me to drown another one of your pets, do you? At long last, Sherlock Holmes, it’s time to solve the Musgrave Ritual.

Eurus: Deep waters, Sherlock, all your life. In all your dreams. Deep waters. (cue water=emotion subtext)

Third plot point, the girl on the plane. I’ve so far clumsily side-stepped the girl on the plane but now it’s all coming full circle and it’s finally time to discuss what this episode’s resolution actually is.

As I said before, Sherlock has two objectives throughout the episode. One is to recapture Eurus and make sure that she can’t escape again. Another is to save the girl on the plane. But Eurus is that girl on the plane. And that’s because, all along, Sherlock’s subconscious has been aware that just locking Eurus away again in the deepest level of his mind palace isn’t enough. She can’t be contained, she’s too intelligent and Sherlock is too receptive to the promises she presents. He can’t deal with his own darker nature by just shutting it away as he always has. He has to face himself. He has to save himself.

Sherlock: Does the river look like it’s getting closer?

Eurus as the girl on the plane: A-a little bit.

Sherlock: All right, then. That means you’re nearly home. (cue water=emotion subtext)

I am lost. Help me brother. Save my life. Before my doom.

I am lost. Without your love. Save my soul. Seek my room.

Because deep down, at the deepest level of the deepest level, deep down Sherlock isn’t two forces pulling in two different directions. Deep down, there’s just him. And he is a lonely little boy who was always too intelligent and too vulnerable and so he always wanted to be something he’s not: an emotionless thinking-machine free from pain, heartbreak, loss, death.

Eurus: You were upset. So you told yourself a better story.

And finally...

Sherlock: I’m here, Eurus.

Eurus: You’re playing with me, Sherlock. We’re playing the game.

Sherlock: The game, yes. I get it now. The song was never a set of directions.

Eurus: I’m in the plane and I’m going to crash. And you’re going to save me.

Sherlock: Look how brilliant you are. Your mind has created the perfect metaphor. You’re high above us, all alone in the sky, and you understand everything except how to land. Now, I’m just an idiot, but I’m on the ground. I can bring you home.

Eurus: No. No, no. It’s too late now.

Sherlock: No it’s not. It’s not too late.

Eurus: Every time I close my eyes, I’m on the plane. I’m lost, lost in the sky and... no one can hear me.

Sherlock: Open your eyes. I’m here. You’re not lost any more.

Look how brilliant Sherlock is. His mind has created the perfect metaphor. He’s high in the sky, too intelligent for his own good. He’s surrounded by people, all day every day, but he is unable to interact with them, get a response from them, get any of them to just look at him. He understands everything except how to free himself from being so very alone above everyone else. That’s who he really is deep down.

But now that he knows that, now that he is reunited with Eurus and is one whole person, he does know how to land. He does know who and what he needs.

Sherlock: Now, you... you just... you just went the wrong way last time, that’s all. This time, get it right. Tell me how to save my friend. Eurus... Help me save John Watson.

Sherlock being one whole being and choosing with his whole being to save his emotions and let them be a part of him is the Sherlock who is a good man. He is a complicated man, but now he has the emotional context he needs to be who he really is.

John: Well, you gave her what she was looking for: context.

Sherlock: Is that good?

John: It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s... It is what it is.

Fourth plot point, what happens to Eurus. Now, I could actually end it here, because that the whole point and meaning of this episode and meta series. But I thought it best to address what happens to Eurus afterwards, because it really brings it all full circle.

Eurus doesn’t go home. Because, sadly, that part of Sherlock is just not compatible with who he wants to be.

Mr. Holmes: Where is she?

Mycroft: Back in Sherrinford. Secure this time. People have died. Without doubt she will kill again if she has the opportunity. There’s no possibility she’ll ever be able to leave.

But something has changed.

Mycroft: She won’t talk. She won’t communicate with anyone in any way. She has passed beyond our view. There are no words that can reach her now.

Eurus was always dangerous because she talked. Yes, in the episode we also see her kill people, but in the context of Eurus as that suppressed, dark part of Sherlock, the reason she is dangerous is because she could manipulate him by talking to him and lure him in with promises of an incandescent intellect. Now she doesn’t talk anymore. Thus, she isn’t dangerous anymore.

And slowly, Sherlock gets her to respond to him through another medium. The violin. Slowly, these two parts of Sherlock, who have always been opposites, who have always been the good man and the bad man, who have always been an emotional man and an intelligent man, who have always been the Sherlock John loves and the Sherlock Jim loves, learn to play the same tune together. A tune that is both beautiful (emotion) and right (logic).

Because that is who Sherlock is. He will always live with the traumas from his young years, the traumas that created Eurus. They will always be a part of him. He is not all good or bad, all emotional or logical, he is who he is. But if he can live with his traumas without those traumas overtaking him and preventing him from being with other people, he can be one whole human being. And if he can be with John, who understands and appreciates everything that Sherlock is, he can also find happiness.

Thank you so much for reading this meta series.

#Sherlock #BBC Sherlock #Sherlock Meta #Series 4 #The Final Problem #TFP #Johnlock #TJLC #my meta

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