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infectedworldmind · 7 years ago

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I started reading DC Comics as the Bronze Age was coming to an end. Barry Allen stood trial for the murder of Reverse Flash. Guy Gardner was officially inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. R’as al Ghul emptied Arkham Asylum and Gotham State Penitentiary in an effort to force Batman to join his crusade to save the world from itself and Superman starred in a series of weird high concept imaginary stories.

Just as I started to develop an affinity for these characters and their delightfully messy universe, their stories ended.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was a celebration of DC’s 50th anniversary and an effort to create a jumping on point for new readers. Marv Wolfman and George Perez used Crisis as a vehicle to impose order and tonal consistency on a shared universe that had grown unwieldy and create an environment in which the publisher’s properties could be modernized. When I first read it at as a child (most of it between the ages of eight and ten), it just seemed like a deeply depressing book about death and loss.

Crisis was probably the first time I read a comic that featured the deaths of large numbers of people. It was a dark counterpoint to other books I read as a child that addressed death. While books like Charlotte’s Web taught me that death is a natural part of the cycle of life, the deaths in Crisis felt unnatural and unresolved, particularly since the event was mostly erased from the memories of the characters involved after it ended.

I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve always enjoyed the few DC books that explicitly deal with the pain and loss caused by the event, especially those that draw parallels between the experience of the characters in the story and that of the readers. One of them – the 50th issue of Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen’s Legion of Superheroes series – told a tale about vengeance that gripped my imagination. The fall from grace and redemption that followed over the next dozen issues and the opening arcs of the subsequent volume of Legion helped me appreciate the constant process of change in Marvel and DC’s superhero comics.

There’s a common misconception that superhero comics, particularly those published by Marvel and DC, are resistant to change. Readers and commentators talk a lot about DC and Marvel’s commitment to sustaining an illusion of change in terms of continuity and aging, but focusing on story details can be a distraction from the near-constant change in the ways that these stories are told. The shifts in tone and storytelling structure that frequently accompany creative/editorial turnover or changing publisher priorities impact the reading experience as much as any continuity disruption or character death. Ultimately, the changes to Superman’s history wrought by Wolfman and John Byrne after Crisis had less of a long term impact than the shift from self contained stories about a relatively static protagonist to a Marvel-style ongoing narrative about a dynamic, evolving character. Even after creators began to reintroduce elements from earlier eras, the only modern Superman stories that truly captured the feeling of the Bronze Age were procedurals like DC’s weekly Adventures of Superman digital series. Although the Superman depicted in Adventures of Superman appears to be the one featured in DC comics from 1987-2012, the self-contained story arcs that focus on his adventures and ignore his inner life evoke memories of an earlier era.

Crisis on Infinite Earths embodied both kinds of change – it marked the end of an era within the fictional world of the characters and the end of an approach to storytelling prevalent in DC Comics throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies. Almost all of the books that focused on the fallout from Crisis used the event as an opportunity to explore change in superhero comics. In Animal Man, Grant Morrison and Chas Truog reminded readers of the sense of wonder and possibility that was lost after the end of Crisis while examining the relationship between continuity and memory, and the anxieties of the Crisis survivors, at least those who still remembered (what if the apocalypse happened and everyone forgot?).

In the Last Days of the Justice Society, Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas and Mike Gustovich tied up loose ends while drawing a parallel between traditional superhero conflicts, Ragnarok and the European theater of the Second World War to remind readers that the “never ending battle” archetype will survive any ‘crisis’.

Levitz and Giffen’s approach to dealing with the Crisis in the Legion of Superheroes series was the one that had the most powerful impact on me as a kid. They turned a story designed to reconcile the Legion’s history with the changed DC Universe into an extended eulogy for two DC characters erased by the Crisis who played a central role in Legion lore: Superboy and Supergirl. Superboy played no role in Crisis, but vanished after the event’s conclusion. Supergirl died in one of Crisis’ most iconic moments. Levitz and Giffen use the Legion’s efforts to cope with their loss as a vehicle for examining the emotional impact of change in a superhero universe.

The Legion of Superheroes owed their existence in the Silver/Bronze Age DC Universe (and as an ongoing title) to Superman, who was both a core member and the primary inspiration for the team as Superboy. The team of teen superheroes from the future was introduced in a 1958 issue of Adventure Comics in which they recruited him onto the team.

The Legion were supporting players in Superboy stories for the next four years until receiving their own feature in Adventure Comics, and their own title (sharing billing with Superboy) in 1973. As the only DC title set in the 30th century,the Legion were allowed to age and grow in a way that wasn’t permitted in other titles, which was particularly fascinating when juxtaposed against the unchanging world of Superboy.

In the Legion narrative, Superboy was the unaging hero that all the other characters looked up to, even as they aged and married and died.

Supergirl joined the team in 1961 and was occasionally featured in Legion stories throughout the Silver and Bronze Age. She was the unrequited love of Brainiac 5, the team’s resident genius scientist. During the 1960’s and ’70’s, his infatuation was portrayed as the kind of weird crush that was typical of DC Silver Age comics. At one point, he even built a Supergirl robot programmed to love him in his sleep.

By the early 1980’s, Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen hinted at the possibility of a more interesting (and reciprocal) relationship between the two by positioning Supergirl as the more openly flirtatious of the two.

After Supergirl’s death, it was revealed that Brainiac 5’s reluctance to push their relationship forward was rooted in his knowledge of her impending demise. In the comics, the space/time gap between the two (Supergirl lived a thousand years in Brainiac 5’s past) was insurmountable. In reality, she was just more valuable to DC as a single character in the present than she would have been as a semi-permanent Legion member with a love interest on the team. At least she was until Marv Wolfman and John Byrne decided to simplify the Superman corner of the DCU by making Superman the last survivor of Krypton. Wolfman gave her a heroic death in Crisis and Brainiac 5 mourned her in the Legion series until she was written out of the DCU and those memories were lost.

Supergirl’s death was the defining moment of Crisis, even more than the demise of the Silver/Bronze Age Flash. Flash was a more iconic character – his introduction in 1956 heralded the start of DC’s Silver Age – but his death was more typical of hero deaths in superhero comics. He was replaced by his young protege, who spent the next decade struggling to live up to his legacy. He was mourned and fondly remembered by characters in DC Comics for years after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Supergirl, who was arguably DC’s second most beloved female character after Wonder Woman, was not remembered within the books or replaced. Her death was a reminder that the narrative that readers had become familiar with over the decades had come to a definitive end.

In a universe without Superboy or Supergirl, the Legion needed a reason to exist. Levitz’ solution wasn’t to replace Superboy with another teen hero, but to posit that the age of heroes that inspired the Legion was rooted in a series of deceptions orchestrated by the Time Trapper, an evil entity that embodied the concept of entropy. The Superboy who was the best friend and inspiration for almost every Legionnaire was from a pocket universe created by the Trapper to ensure that the Legion existed to prevent other powerful forces (Darkseid, Mordru, the Dark Circle, the Dominators, the Khund) from dominating the 31st Century.

After finding out that almost everything they knew was a lie and enduring the death of their ‘Superboy’, a group of Legionnaires joined forces to confront the Trapper at the end of time in Legion of Superheroes #50. It was the issue that would change the Legion forever, and the one that turned me from an occasional reader of Legion books into a full fledged fan (at least for a while). The story’s very cool for a number of reasons – Giffen tells a great ‘mighty heroes against force of nature’ story – but what always stuck with me was Brainiac 5’s brief expression of anguish.

In that moment, Levitz and Giffen set the stakes of the story and illustrated why the Legion were some of the more interesting characters in DC – the heroes had complicated, conflicting motivations, some of which were even a mystery to themselves. Brainiac’s lament was that of a man who lost his friend and inspiration, an ambitious scientist frustrated by the limitations on his work imposed by the Trapper (who was responsible for an ‘iron curtain’ preventing most time travel). He may not have remembered Supergirl, but his words sounded like those of a thwarted lover denied happiness. There was also more than a hint of rage – not only at their untimely death, but because the truth behind their existence perverted their legacy and his memories of them. He’s angry because he was inspired by and fell in love with illusions.

Brainiac 5’s pain (and that of his fellow conspirators) is a heightened, funhouse reflection of the frustration felt by readers who mourned the end of the Bronze Age at DC Comics after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, particularly those who were fans of the Superman family of titles. The near-omnipotent Superman, the idealized authority figure from the books read by young Boomers in the fifties, sixties and seventies, was replaced by a Superman who was downright ordinary, a kind hearted farm boy wearing a suit made by his mother.

In the new DC Universe, Superman played high school football as a teenager instead of moonlighting as Superboy. There were no other survivors of Krypton. No Kandor, no Krypto, and no young cousin named Kara. This was an entry point for new fans, but an exit point for many older readers, who weren’t interested in reading stories about characters that only bore a superficial resemblance to the ones that they fondly remembered from childhood.

I know, it’s weird to think about reboots – which are always accompanied by character deaths and the end of long-running stories – through the lens of loss and mourning. It feels silly, almost perverse. They’re just stories, after all. Moreover, it’s not like the older stories lose meaning just because a comics publisher stops referencing them. The publishers own the intellectual property, the creators have their moral rights (even if unrecognized by the law), but we get to decide which stories matter. Readers who feel some sense of nostalgia for a particular era can always read the books from that time. The comics featuring Superman from the Bronze Age didn’t vanish with the character after the end of Crisis.

Those of us who’ve read superhero comics for a long time also know that resurrections are inevitable and old versions of characters will always resurface as those who are nostalgic for a bygone era replace creators who were originally weary of the status quo. In 1986, DC creators reimagined Lex Luthor as a corporate villain for a materialistic era. The bald guy in the odd green armor was replaced by a heavyset man in an impeccable suit.

Oldtimers like us also know that resurrections are inevitable and old versions of characters will always resurface as those who are nostalgic for a bygone era replace creators who were originally weary of the status quo. In 1986, DC creators reimagined Lex Luthor as a corporate villain for a materialistic era. The bald guy in the odd green armor was replaced by a heavyset man in an impeccable suit. Fifteen years later, a new set of creators who thought that the armor was a crucial element to the character brought it back.

Barry Allen and Supergirl were killed in the Crisis mini series and were resurrected in the late ’90’s/early aughts. But it doesn’t always feel the same for fans who haven’t just built an attachment to the characters, but to a traditional style of storytelling. The characters that we see now may share a fictional history with the ones we remembered, but their stories are different, as writing and artistic standards have evolved in response to shifting expectations in the marketplace. Barry Allen’s struggle to balance his sense of duty with a desire for a stable romantic/family life was replaced with a desire to find his place in an unfamiliar world. Ethan van Sciver’s idiosyncratic sense of design and meticulously rendered pages are interesting, but his work would never be confused with the simple clarity of Carmine Infantino’s classic stories.

The impact of tone and structural choices on the reading experience is even more noticeable on titles that haven’t aged their characters or (significantly) altered their histories. Compare the current run of Marvel’s Avengers books (written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Jerome Opena, Dustin Weaver, Adam Kubert, Steve Epting and Mike Deodato) to the previous run helmed by Brian Michael Bendis (who worked with John Romita jr. and a rogue’s gallery of some of the best artists in the business). Even though Avengers stories have taken place in an unaltered in-story continuity for almost half a century, the aesthetic continuity of the precisely constructed sci-fi influenced epics created by Jonathan Hickman and his collaborators is a radical departure from his predecessor’s shaggy dog stories illustrated by a wide range of artists with diverse approaches to storytelling.

Fans of Bendis’ run who happened to pick up a recent issue of the Avengers or New Avengers would be in for a fundamentally different reading experience. They’d be almost as disoriented as readers of pre-Crisis DC Superman books who picked up John Byrne’s Man of Steel.

Even when the creators that readers associate with a classic run on a superhero book return, it’s not quite the same. When Chris Claremont returned to the X-titles in the early aughts, he was unable to recreate the perfect blend of melodrama, action, allegory and adolescent psycho-sexual weirdness that (along with John Byrne, Paul Smith, Marc Silvestri, and many more) made his X-books a highlight of mid seventies – early nineties superhero comics. You can’t recapture the past.In that light, Legion of Superheroes #50 (and it’s toxic after-effects over the issues that follow) can be viewed as a cautionary tale from Levitz and Giffen – a reminder of what happens when one refuses to resolve grief and accept change. The first half of the issue is dedicated to watching Brainiac 5’s allies within the Legion (Mon-El, Saturn Girl and Duo Damsel, all Legionnaires with a special connection to Superboy) finish preparing their complex, ethically problematic plan to defeat the Time Trapper. In the second half, we watch them struggle to survive the encounter. Giffen and Levitz’ Trapper is a literal force of nature. The Legionnaires can’t even touch him. It’s like watching people fight a snowstorm.

Brainiac 5’s plan to defeat a conceptual being whose existence is dependent on the theory that time is linear with another conceptual being that embodies the notion of eternal recurrence is pretty clever, but serves as a reminder that trying to kill an idea is a fool’s errand.

The Legionnaires think that they’ve won, but Giffen’s wonderfully rendered epilogue shows us the truth. All things come to an end.

The Legionnaires who return from the end of time are left physically and emotionally broken. The conspiracy is revealed and erodes trust within the group.

Some elements of the utopian vision of the future that we associate with the Legion – the technological marvels and Levitz’ trademark infodump “Encyclopedia Galactica” captions were still present, but the tone has shifted. A world that was simple had become complicated. Giffen’s figures started look old and exhausted. They have more wrinkles in their clothing and their world has more shadows and signs of wear. Giffen’s faces became fleshier and less idealized.

The team gets smaller with each issue. The team leader is buried by doubt and it’s most powerful member is barely able to walk.

Conflicts with super villains become messier and more morally ambiguous. In the last arc of this volume of the series, the team manages to defeat an entity that was seeking to end the ‘age of science’ at a crippling cost to the Legion and their world. After Brainiac 5 and his co-conspirators defeat the Time Trapper, it’s easy to mistake them for heroes, especially if you’re a reader who feels some regret at the passing of the Bronze Age. The truth becomes clear when you imagine the counterfactual – what if the conspirators sought the approval of their teammates? The Legion would’ve faced the Trapper as a team and may have avoided the physical and emotional injuries sustained during the battle. They would have avoided the confusion and uncertainty that hobbled their efforts during the final arc of the series – an epic struggle between the forces of magic and science (the “Magic Wars”). They could have been a symbol of hope that helped hold the Earth together between the end of the second volume and the beginning of the third. Instead, there is nothing. The consequences of their inability to accept loss and change were catastrophic.

The darker tone of the closing arc of the third volume (combined with the focus on loss/change within the story) helped prepare readers for the more radical structural and tonal changes to come in the fourth volume – in which a shattered team struggles to navigate a dystopian universe five years after the end of the Magic Wars.

Giffen combines a simple nine panel grid layout with storytelling techniques that make the reader feel enveloped (almost overwhelmed) in his story. Levitz’ Legion was always a book about a large team with a huge supporting cast filled with random tidbits of information about their corner of the DC Universe. Giffen doubles down on that idea by incorporating fragments of correspondence, interviews and other ephemera in the back of each issue to deliver more information and create opportunities for the reader to imagine a fully realized world.

Although Giffen’s layouts were not as visually innovative or challenging as Gibbons in Watchmen, Mazzucchelli in City of Glass or Campbell in From Hell, he used the simple format to help create an illusion of naturalism that further enveloped readers in his world. The tall skinny panels are filled with ‘realistic’ cinematic angles, ambient dialogue and in res media storytelling that give the reader the sense that they are in the rooms with the characters.

The most radical departure was Giffen’s decision to mostly abandon the superhero genre. Giffen’s Legion is more about family, friendship, loss and resistance than superheroes battling supervillains. The colorful costumes, code names and larger than life villains were replaced by ordinary uniforms, real names and monsters with recognizably mundane dimensions. He transformed Mordru from a proto-Voldemort supernatural menace into a Hoover-like wily sadist constantly monitoring the activities of his enemies. The conflicts between the remnants of the Legion and Mordru, Roxxas and the Dominion owe more to espionage/diplomacy, serial killer and resistance/revolution narratives than a traditional superhero one.

If the last dozen issues of the third volume were about unresolved loss, the first dozen of the fourth are about forgiveness and redemption. Giffen chiefly explores this theme through the arc following Rokk Krinn and Salu Digby (the former Cosmic Boy and Shrinking Violet). Both are traumatized veterans of a brutal war between their worlds. Krinn’s side lost the war and he lost his powers.

Digby was consumed by guilt from her involvement in the incident that resulted in Krinn’s loss of powers. When the story begins, Krinn is quarantined on his world and Digby is pondering her options after being discharged from her world’s military. Although neither hold a grudge, the logic of superhero narratives dictates conflict, so the tension builds as their paths get closer.

It’s heartbreaking when they finally meet and have the opportunity to admit their mistakes and forgive one another. It’s an expression of forgiveness, a moment of grace that’s a perfect counterpoint to Brainiac 5’s misguided crusade.

Legion of Superheroes #50 marked the beginning of a near-constant process of dramatic changes to the status quo and storytelling. It led to Giffen, who was later replaced by the Bierbaums (who took a more straight-forward, fan-friendly approach to storytelling in Giffen’s absence) and then by Tom McCraw. The title was later rebooted as a more accessible property by McCraw, Mark Waid and Sturart Immonen and taken in a more sci-fi influenced direction by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Olivier Copiel.

Mark Waid came back again to reboot the series with Barry Kitson as a commentary on youth culture and social reform.

Geoff Johns introduced another version of the team directly inspired by the pre-Crisis adventures of the group, and once DC rebooted its history again after the Flashpoint miniseries, Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen reintroduced another new version of the Legion. That book was recently cancelled, and will likely be replaced by yet another new take on the characters and their world from an entirely different (or even the same) creative team.

The creative turnovers and reboots have been criticized in many quarters (or presented as evidence of fundamental flaws in the “Legion” concept), but in my eyes, it’s always seemed like a dramatic version of what we see in superhero comics all the time, as creators depart and titles/universes are rebooted. There’s something appealing about that sense of impermanence, that the ground is always shifting under our feet and readers should never feel too comfortable with the status quo.

Nothing Will Ever Be The Same: Legion of Superheroes and Change I started reading DC Comics as the Bronze Age was coming to an end. Barry Allen stood trial for the murder of Reverse Flash.

#Legion of Superheroes

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nevertherose · 3 years ago

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One Hundred Seconds to Midnight- Chapters 14-17

"All Roman wanted to do was take Logan on a Doctor Who LARP within the Imagination.

But with Thomas's Sides at their figurative breaking point after the disastrous wedding, the Imagination may just have a few ideas of her own..."

Hello again! Now that the last chapter of this story has been posted, it's time to put up the rest over in this little corner of the internet.

If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

Chapters 9-13 are here.

Chapters 18-22 are here.

Chapter 14- Closing Time

“You could walk among the stars. They don’t actually look like that, you know. They are rather more impressive.”

Logan, clad in pajamas, padded down the upstairs hallway in the mindscape, heading towards Patton’s room. It was early, barely 7am; Thomas still slumbered in the real world. But Logan had a feeling…ugh… that Patton would be awake.

He had a feeling none of them were sleeping all that well.

It had been five days since Roman’s disastrous LARP.

Thomas, as expected, had tweeted about his “crazy dream” the next morning and hadn’t thought about it since, other than to interact with a few fans. Logan wished Thomas’s Sides could do the same.

Instead they’d all been tiptoeing around each other for one hundred and twenty excruciating hours, avoiding the common room, stammering and making excuses when they did encounter each other.

Even Logic could deduce that they needed to talk about it.

But nobody seemed to want to go first.

Feelings, Logan groused to himself. Why does everything have to be about feelings?

He reached Patton’s room and was surprised to find the door cracked, and voices coming from inside.

“…gonna get through this,” Patton said gently.

“I just wish I knew what it meant,” Virgil’s rough, low voice answered.

Logan peered in.

Virgil and Patton were perched on the edge of Patton’s bed, Patton with an arm around the other. The contrast between the two was stark.

Within the mindscape, Patton was the smallest and most soft-bodied of the bunch, with fair, curling hair, constellations of freckles, and guileless blue eyes behind round glasses. Roman had once proclaimed him the prince of hugs, a title nobody disputed.

Virgil, one the other hand, was the tallest; lanky, quiet, with dark, darting eyes and thin, nervous hands, and pale as the vampire he’d portrayed during the Embarrassing Phases video. At the moment, his arms were folded across his middle and his purple-hued bangs hung low, obscuring his face.

As far as Logan knew, Virgil still hadn’t told any of them where he’d been during the LARP, or what role he’d been made to play. Roman’s and Patton’s hesitant inquiries had been met with sullen silence; Janus’s with hisses. Logan, for his part, had refrained from foolish questions, knowing Virgil would tell them when he was ready and not a moment before.

Maybe him being here, talking to Patton, meant he was ready.

Logan knocked crisply on the door and let it swing open.

“Oh, good morning Logan!” Patton said in his usual cheery tone, waving. “Virge and I were just having a little chat.”

“I don’t wish to intrude,” Logan offered.

“It’s fine.” Virgil hopped down from the bed, hunching into his hoodie. His eyeshadow, which tended to ripple and shift with his moods, was particularly stark this morning. “We were pretty much done.”

He gave his trademark salute and sunk out before Patton or Logan could protest. Which, to be fair, was almost normal behavior for him…except for the deeply unhappy line between his eyebrows, and the moody set of his jaw.

And that dark, dark eyeshadow.

“Skittish as a feral cat, even after all this time.” Patton sighed.

Logan stepped further into the room. “I did not mean to scare him off. I would not have minded him staying.”

“He’s been having a time of it,” Patton admitted, fiddling with his cat hoodie strings. He was wearing it properly for once, instead of draped over his shoulders, and it made him look softer and smaller than usual.

“But he’ll be fine, I’m sure. What can I do for ya?”

The last was said with a bright smile that didn’t quite reach Patton’s eyes.

Logan’s mouth compressed.

Even after The Talk about nostalgia and moving on…even after everything Logan had said on the subject…Patton still tended to repress his negative emotions and put on a false, cheery face.

It made it difficult to know what he was really thinking, and Logan had enough trouble “reading the room” at the best of times.

“We need to talk about the LARP,” Logan stated, noting the way Patton’s face immediately fell.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about, kiddo.” Patton refused to meet Logan’s gaze. “It’s over, and—”

“Patton.” Logan ignored the other’s flinch and laid a hand over Patton’s rapidly drumming fingers. “Even I can tell that you are not okay with what happened. You never call me kiddo.”

Patton chuckled, and then dropped his head into his hands.

“He lied to me, Logan,” he said in a quiet, miserable voice. “He was with me the whole time and he lied and I thought by now, he would have maybe at least explained why, but he hasn’t even spoken to me, and I just…”

Patton trailed off, and Logan was alarmed to see a tear make its slow way down his freckled face.

“…I thought he had changed,” Patton concluded.

Well. This is not where I thought this conversation would start.

Logan was immediately out of his depth. Janus’s and Patton’s tenuous relationship was not at all something he felt adequately prepared to help sort out, but as it was clearly weighing heavily on Patton’s mind, he supposed he had to try.

“I think, perhaps,” Logan said slowly, moving to sit on the bed next to Patton. “This is something you need to discuss with Janus.”

Patton let out a sharp laugh. “Didn’t even have to ask who I meant.”

“It was not a difficult deduction? As you said, you were with Janus the entire time.” Logan frowned. “And he is the only self-proclaimed liar amongst us.”

“‘Self-proclaimed’,” Patton echoed sadly. “Because he’s not the only one, is he? He’s not even the worst. My mask is so good, the Imagination decided to make me a robot.”

Logan swallowed hard, remembering his thoughts about Patton’s false cheeriness from earlier.

“But gosh…I’m being so selfish right now.” Patton laid a hand on Logan’s forearm. “You came because you wanted to talk, and I turned it around and made it all about me.”

“Believe it or not, your grievance is not unrelated to mine,” Logan said. “Roman’s LARP has pushed all our relationships to the breaking point, and put further stress on Thomas’s mind.” He sighed. “I know he had good intentions, but everything he does is so unbelievably extra.”

“Now, I’m gonna have to disagree with you there.” Patton held up a hand. “First of all, none of what happened was Roman’s fault.”

“I know that, but—”

Patton hushed him with a finger to his lips.

“Secondly, Roman’s little adventure didn’t create any new stress for us. I think it just shined a light on what was already there, and maybe…” He sighed, and his gaze skittered away. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that means we really, really need to talk about it. Not just you and I, but all of us.”

Logan couldn’t argue with the truth in that.

Patton nudged him.

“And you know, as crazy as it was, it was kind of...refreshing? Having us all work together on something a little less high stakes than Thomas’s real life problems.”

“But we didn’t work together,” Logan pointed out. “Roman had to practically drag me along when I lost my glasses, and you already said Janus deceived you the entire time. The only consistently helpful party in that game was Remus, and if that isn’t a damning statement I don’t know what is.”

To Logan’s surprise, Patton nodded eagerly. “But that’s just it, see?”

“I…do not?” Logan frowned.

“Roman’s LARP illuminated all those pesky issues we, as a group, need to work on.” Patton’s hands waved as he spoke. “Like me: I know I have a problem letting myself feel the ickier sorts of emotions. And Janus, well, tells lies.”

“I suppose Roman is terribly insecure,” Logan added, feeling that now-familiar little pang in his heart. “And I am often unwilling to listen to opinions besides my own.”

Patton narrowed his eyes.

“Mmm-hmm. And we all now know that Remus actually does have the capacity to, well…”

“Not be a complete and utter agent of chaos every second of the day?” Logan said wryly.

“I was gonna say focus on a problem, but sure.”

Patton’s smile was almost genuine that time.

“Well,” Logan reasoned. “If Thomas was once able to work through his issues using, of all things, puppets.”

He side-eyed Patton, who smirked.

“Then I suppose there is merit to the idea of channeling difficult topics and emotions into a relatively harmless role-play environment,” Logan allowed.

“Exactly.” Patton nodded. “I don’t know about you, Logan, but I learned a lot about myself during that adventure.”

His face darkened.

“Being in that body, with all that false, cold anger ready to burst out at the slightest trigger; it was scary, not being in complete control of those kind of emotions. And, those are exactly the kinds of emotions I tend to repress until they get, well…explosive, and green, and froggy, as it turns out.”

“And even though I’m still upset with Janus…” He sighed. “I learned a lot about him, too. More than I think I would have, just standing around Thomas’s living room trying to debate him.”

Logan nodded, lost in his own memories.

Roman’s fierce, smiling face from that night flashed through his mind, hair all disheveled and damp with sweat from running and defending them both, his strong arm holding Logan so gently. Not being able to see would have been so much worse without him.

For once in my existence, I was forced to rely on someone else’s courage, someone else’s strength, and I think…we were better for it.

Logan knew he would have to ponder this more later, preferably back in his room with its calm, rational influence.

Patton gently elbowed Logan’s side.

“No offense, Logan, but that attitude you tend to have? That singing and acting and roleplaying are wastes of time? It makes you underestimate Roman’s creative intelligence. Just because he isn’t smart in the same way you are, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know his stuff.”

Logan bit his lip, stung, because the words were true.

He might be Thomas’s smarts, but Roman was his loyalty, and bravery, and…and all sorts of admirable traits that Logan often dismissed as impractical, or unimportant.

I am blind like that, sometimes, aren’t I? he thought, and drew in a sharp breath.

Blind.

“Patton, I…I think I do understand,” he said, his eyes wide. “Our roles and situations within the LARP were crafted to exacerbate our own shortcomings, and force us to rely on each other to work around them.”

Patton hummed, and nodded. “And I think the Imagination wasn’t finished.”

“Wait, what?” Logan blinked.

“Well, think about it, Lo.” Patton shrugged. “It’s like when you clean a room that’s full of hidden junk. At first you have to make the room even messier, because you have to take all the junk out so you can sort through it. And if you get interrupted, it looks worse than it ever did before you started. That’s where Thomas’s head is right now, and yeah, it’s cluttered and uncomfortable.”

It was Logan’s turn to narrow his eyes.

The things Patton said were usually so full of cotton and rainbows and foolishness that whenever he got serious like this, Logan was often left astounded at the deep emotional nuances Patton could wrap his mind around.

“You think we need to complete the story arc,” Logan guessed. “In order to figuratively finish cleaning the room.”

Patton merely shrugged.

“Well, for one, we never found Virgil, and I feel like that’s important. And like you said, the mindspace has felt more high-strung than ever. We’ve dug up the issues and left them scattered all over the floor, and now we’re all tripping over them. We weren’t done.”

Logan hummed, drumming his fingers on his leg.

“I do not know if Roman has the ability to recreate a specific dream. And assuming he could recreate it, my experience has taught me that Doctor Who is enjoyable to watch, and exhausting to reenact. I, for one, do not relish the thought of going through that whole scenario again.”

He shuddered, and Patton shuddered with him.

“Yeah, the only relish I want is on a hot dog!” Patton quipped.

Logan rolled his eyes, but fondly.

“But if it would help us, and by extension, Thomas; perhaps we should consider it. Whatever we decide, I feel…pssh, listen to me, feel…I feel better, having spoken to you, Patton.” He stood up. “I will, as they say,” he whipped out his stack of vocal cards and rifled through them, “‘get out of your hair’. Thank you for listening.”

Patton giggled, and held out his arms. “Aww, bring it in here, Lo.”

Logan’s mouth twisted, but he allowed himself to be embraced. He disliked hugging on principle…as the Twelfth Doctor said, it was often just a way to hide your face…but he knew Patton thrived on physical affection, and at least the moral Side had learned to ask first.

“I would advise you to talk to Janus,” Logan reminded Patton as he prepared to sink out, then chuckled. “You know, before the wedding, that was not a statement I would have ever imagined myself saying.”

Patton chuckled, briefly, but the smile didn’t stick.

“Sure,” he said in a soft voice. “I’ll talk to him.”

Chapter 15- Midnight

“We look upon this world through glass, safe inside our metal box.”

Patton had gone downstairs, fixed breakfast, eaten, washed all the dishes, cleaned the counters, and watched an episode of Owl House with Roman before finally working up the courage to trudge to Janus’s door.

He raised a hand to knock…then lowered it, wringing his hands…then raised it again…

“Patton, I can hear you dithering out there,” Janus called sharply from inside, making Patton’s stomach swoop.

The door was pulled open and Janus’s face appeared, all narrow-eyed and pinched. Patton’s eyes were drawn to iridescent scales, to the riot of yellows and greens in his slitted snake eye…and to the large green lizard perched on his shoulder.

“Uh, hey,” Patton stammered, rubbing his arm awkwardly.

Janus said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow, the scales on his forehead shifting with the motion.

They were really quite distracting…and…

“Pretty…”

“I’m sorry?” Janus’s eyes widened, and Patton realized he’d blurted that last part out loud like a doofus.

“The…the lizard, I mean! Is pretty.” Patton cleared his throat, knowing his cheeks were probably flaming. “I, I thought you only had snakes.”

“His name is Geb. He’s an Asian Water Dragon.” Janus let the creature climb from his shoulder to his forearm. “They eat mostly insects and as the name implies, they like to swim. When properly socialized, they can be quite friendly.”

“Right.”

Patton bit his lip.

He’s not being cold on purpose. Surely he’s not. It’s just…been a couple days and we still don’t know each other all that well, that’s all.

“You know, it’s kind of nice, coming upstairs and seeing your door with all of ours.” Patton forced a cheery smile. “It’s probably nice for you, too—”

“Do you need something, Patton?” Janus interrupted. “Or are you simply here to make inane commentary about my door?”

Patton shut his mouth, stung, and backed up a step.

“You know what, I think I’ll just go,” he whispered, turning, fully expecting to hear the door slam behind him.

Instead he heard it swing further open, and a gloved hand fell gently on his arm.

“Wait.”

Patton turned and Janus immediately dropped his hand. He stared down at Geb, who sat placidly on his arm, and sighed.

“I am, as Remus would say, being a butthole.”

Patton waited.

“Thomas has been playing video games all morning,” Janus went on after a moment, “which isn’t the problem. The problem is, he keeps telling himself he’s just taking a little break, or just finishing one last level; every lie and excuse to hide the truth: he’s burnt out and lacks the motivation to get any actual work done. Virgil has already been here twice to complain.”

“He came to see me, too.” Patton frowned. “Maybe that’s why he’s been so agitated.”

“To sum up, Thomas is feeling extremely guilty about not being productive, and frankly between Virgil’s fretting and trying to keep Remus from taking advantage of the situation, my morning has been rather stressful,” Janus admitted sourly, stroking Geb’s head. “But…I suppose that’s no excuse to be surly with you.”

Patton disliked that Janus automatically defaulted to “mean” when he was upset, but…at least he’s aware of it, and trying to do better? And besides, doesn’t Roman do the same thing, sometimes?

“Would…would you like to come in?” Janus added, gesturing at his room.

Patton nodded, his heart skipping, and followed Janus across the threshold of his unfamiliar room. He’d seen glimpses of it, of course, but he’d never been invited inside before.

All the Sides’ rooms resembled Thomas’s bedroom to an extent, but like their faces, each room contained individual quirks. Janus’s room was cooler in temperature than the rest of the mindspace, and darkly lit; a sharp contrast to Roman’s ornate, bursting-with-color space, or Patton’s own hazy yellow memory cove.

This room had an old fashioned gramophone where Thomas’s dresser would sit, and shelves along the wall that held several large, heated reptile habitats. Janus put Geb away and gestured to a chair.

Patton sat; Janus perched on the bed, facing him.

If Patton didn’t know better, he’d have said the snake Side looked nearly as self-conscious as Patton currently felt.

“I sort of assumed you were the one pushing Thomas to be lazy today,” Patton admitted.

“And I assumed you were the one making him feel guilty about it,” Janus countered.

Patton flinched. “Not…not directly.”

Janus raised both eyebrows that time, and Patton held up his hands.

“I promise! But I’m still Morality, you know?” Patton sighed. “I can’t help it. Thomas needs to put out the content he’s promised to his fans. He needs to be productive, but…but breaks are okay. Our kiddo has been pretty burnt out lately; I know that now.”

Patton dared to meet Janus’s eyes. “I’ve been trying not to push so hard.”

“I know you have.” Janus’s gaze skittered away. “It is appreciated.”

“The thing is, Janus.” Patton twisted the sleeves of his hoodie. “I think Thomas needs me to work with you instead of against you, and…and I want to. I want to be able to trust you, but…” he trailed off, and sighed. “But that’s really hard for me to do when you lie to me.”

Janus’s lips compressed. “This is about the LARP, isn’t it.”

“You should have told me!” Patton cried. “You knew I wasn’t…perceiving myself properly.”

“Patton—”

“I had guns in my arms, Janus, and every little thing kept making me angry for no reason.” Patton interrupted. “How many times did I almost, almost shoot someone?”

Janus pressed his lips together.

“Twice,” he admitted. “That I saw.”

His face was so pinched and guilty that Patton wanted to shake him and just…just make him do better. Why couldn’t he just be better? It seemed like he wanted to…and that honestly made Patton more sad than angry.

And disappointed.

“Look, Janus,” he said quietly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and there was no reason to keep it a big secret. In fact, me having a Cyberman body could have been an advantage to us, with the nano cloud and all, remember?”

Janus’s jaw worked, but he said nothing.

“I think I understand why lies are sometimes necessary,” Patton admitted in a small voice. “I don’t like it, but I get it. You…you’ve had an influence on me. I guess I was hoping I’d had at least a little bit of an influence on you.”

“Patton—” Janus’s normally smooth voice sounded pained.

“But lying to my face about being a Cyberman felt like something the old Deceit would do.” Patton’s voice sharpened. “I wanted Janus to be better.”

I can’t love someone I can’t trust.

Patton’s heart turned over in his chest at the realization.

He studied Janus’s deliberately neutral expression, the tightness around the eyes and a set to his jaw betraying more than he probably knew. Those cynical, deeply intelligent eyes, that cutting wit that could be so easily turned into a weapon…but was that so different from Logan’s temper, Roman’s snark, Virgil’s sarcasm, or even Remus’s…Remus-ness?

All of them had traits that could be turned against each other.

“At first,” Janus said slowly. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you’d believe me. I was afraid you would assume I was lying just because I could.” He chuckled, bitterly. “Fat lot of good that did me, because here I am, dealing with that exact accusation.”

Patton frowned, prompting Janus to wave a hand.

“I don’t say that to blame you. Ironically, in trying to avoid an accusation of lying, I have come to deserve said accusation.”

No, Patton decided. I don’t love him yet. But…I want to. I think I could.

“The longer it went on, the more I feared your inevitable anger at me for keeping it secret.” Janus huffed. “I told myself we couldn’t afford to stop and have an awkward conversation; we were always in too much danger, or too distracted, or the LARP would end soon and there simply wasn’t a point anymore.”

“It got away from you.” Patton nodded. “Lies do that.”

Janus shot him a deadpan look that seemed to say, “who do you think you’re talking to?”, almost making Patton crack a smile.

“I didn’t know…” Janus added, “that you were struggling, or I would have…”

He looked away.

“You might be pleased to know I almost broke several times,” he admitted. “Out on the snow, in the escape pod—”

“In the teleportation chamber.” Patton’s eyes widened. He knew Janus had been hiding something in those pretty words!

“Did you mean what you said, then?” he added aloud, looking away. “Because if you were gonna tell me about the Cyberman thing, and decided to say the other thing instead…”

“Mean what, Patton?” Janus cut in, sounding confused.

Patton took a deep breath, fighting the blush he felt creeping up his cheeks.

“When you said nothing in the universe could take away the love in my heart. Did you mean it, or was that a lie, too?”

A gloved finger caught his chin and turned his face up. Patton’s breath caught at the soft expression in those mismatched eyes.

“You have every reason to doubt me.” Janus enunciated more than he usually did. “But I would never say a thing like that if it wasn’t absolutely true.”

Patton touched the gloved hand, his heart jumping like an excited puppy in his chest, but there was still that little uneasy voice in his head saying no, this is what he does, don’t let your guard down…

“A truth in service to a lie,” he pointed out quietly.

Janus dropped his hand, and Patton hated to admit he missed the slight warmth, and softness.

“A truth, nonetheless.”

“Lies break trust, Janus.” Patton sighed. “Even lies meant to keep you from getting hurt. Sometimes, in a friendship,” and he hoped Janus considered them friends, he really, really hoped, “you have to tell the truth even when you know it will hurt, because that trust, once broken, is so hard to rebuild. Remember that whole dilemma we had after Thomas forgot to go to Joan’s reading?”

“When I impersonated you?” Janus said dryly. “No, do remind me, it had completely slipped my mind.”

“Janus.” Patton folded his arms.

“I am Self-Preservation, Patton!” Janus threw up his hands. “Keeping Thomas from getting hurt is literally my job, and lying is often part of that. I swear I am making an effort with all of you, but self-preserving lies are who I am; I cannot simply turn it off because it makes you sad. It is not fair to expect that from me.”

Patton opened his mouth, but Janus kept going.

“Had I not lied my way into that conversation about Joan,” he said, “I would likely still be locked away in the depths of Thomas’s mind, ignored, while he self-immolated his way through burnout and depression or possibly worse! The only reason I don’t have to lie to you all now is because of the lies I told to get you to listen to me in the first place—!”

Janus stopped mid-rant, frowning, cocking his head as though listening to something. A mixture of anger and resignation twisted his mouth…and he vanished with a faint “pop”.

“…Janus?”

Patton blinked in shock at the now empty room, trying and failing not to feel hurt. He didn’t just leave; he was obviously summoned. By Thomas, most likely; Janus probably would have ignored anyone other than their Source. If only it hadn’t happened when he was getting so angry…I could have…

But Patton honestly wasn’t sure what he might have said or done to make it better.

He watched Geb creep placidly around his habitat for a few moments before sighing, standing up, and sinking out himself. Janus was an extremely private Side, and he’d only just invited Patton into his room; Patton still being there when he returned might not be good for their extremely fragile peace.

Why would Thomas summon Janus, though? If he’s just having a casual day in…

Patton checked the deserted common room and kitchen. Not finding Janus there and not daring to ask any of the others, he went to his usual spot next to the blinds, took a bracing breath, and rose up into the real world.

Only one way to find out.

Chapter 16- Turn Left

“Your life could have gone one way or the other. What made you decide?”

“I just did.”

What is he doing?

Janus grumbled to himself from his place by the blinds, arms folded, a scowl flexing his forehead. Thomas stood by his front door, talking, his words so steeped in tiny pleasant lies that Janus’s skin practically crawled with them.

He felt movement beside him as Patton rose up, curls flattening into Thomas’s trademark swoop, blue eyes deepening into brown, freckles fading.

The Sides always more closely resembled their Source in the real world…Janus had felt his own scales shift to makeup, his fangs recede when he’d popped in…but at the moment, the transition only served to annoy Janus more. It reminded him of the LARP; Patton’s smiles and sunshine crammed inside an unfeeling metal shell. Patton’s true face was a delight to look at, and Janus was quite ready to tell circumstances to quit hiding it from him.

“What’s going on?” Patton asked, jolting him from his thoughts. “Why’d you leave so sudden?”

“For some reason, Thomas felt the need to start white-lying up a storm.” Janus gestured towards the door. “I was pulled in and promptly ignored; the usual cognitive dissonance our Source employs when he requires me and pretends he doesn’t.” He chuckled. “I’m surprised our resident storm hasn’t made an appearance as well, if only to hiss and spit insults.”

He nodded toward Virgil’s usual spot on the stairs.

“Well, I guess that means whoever’s at the door, can’t be stressing Thomas out too much,” Patton reasoned. “But if he’s not stressed, why would he accidentally summon you?”

“Thanks,” Janus said wryly.

Patton’s eyes widened. Even brown and identical to Thomas’s, they were disarming.

“I…I didn’t mean it like—”

Janus sighed.

“I wasn’t joking and you’ve definitely hurt my feelings.”

Patton narrowed his eyes…and to Janus’s relief, attempted a smile.

“I think your sense of humor is, uh…” Patton’s lips curled into the tiniest smirk, “not gonna take some getting used to.”

“Beautiful. Bravo.” Janus gave a mocking round of applause, but inside his heart was tripping over itself.

Patton had mimicked him to try and make him feel better!

He was not ridiculously flattered, and he was certainly not blushing.

“Cool, come in,” Thomas said from the front hallway, opening the door wider. Two people entered, carrying bags and an orange jug. “We could also do something else, if you don’t want to play,” Thomas stammered, following, “video games…”

Janus instinctively stiffened as they approached, even though he knew perfectly well that nobody could see them except their Source. Thomas made eye contact with both Sides for the briefest second before looking back to his guests.

“Uh, just crash on the couch for a minute while I get some glasses?”

Thomas turned into the kitchen.

The couple came fully into the living room, and Janus’s eyes widened when he saw who it was.

“It’s Lee and Mary Lee!” Patton half-whispered, half-squealed.

“Mmm. So it is.” Janus frowned. “But why, I wonder?”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Cynical.” Patton elbowed Janus’s gently in the ribs. “They’re Thomas’s friends. Maybe they just wanted to visit.”

“Of course, because they put so much effort into visiting with him at the wedding,” Janus snarked.

Patton huffed, and fell silent.

“I hope you don’t mind plastic.” Thomas came back to the living room carrying a few plastic cups, paper plates, and a corkscrew. He set them on an end table and scrubbed his neck. “I, ah, wasn’t exactly expecting to have anyone over, so I hadn’t done dishes yet, and I know the place is a little messy—”

“Thomas, sit down, it’s fine.” Mary Lee pulled a few clear pastry containers from the plastic bag she’d brought.

Patton gasped softly again, and grabbed Janus’s elbow. “Brunch Tuesdays!”

It was Janus’s turn to huff, and roll his eyes…but he also left Patton’s hand where it was on his arm.

And missed its warmth, when Patton moved it to clap excitedly.

Lee took the corkscrew and worked on opening the champagne bottle.

“Really, it’s us who should be apologizing,” he said. “It’s been so long since we’ve all just hung out, with all the wedding planning and stuff, and we really wanted to make some time for you.”

“Awww,” Thomas and Patton said in unison, causing Thomas to glance at the pair of them again.

Patton gulped and clapped a hand over his mouth.

Janus had to swallow a smile.

The trio talked about the pastries, and the wedding, and finally Kingdom Hearts…at which point Thomas dragged his friends over to the TV and booted up his game…as Patton and Janus stood side by side, watching.

Well…

Patton watched Thomas, and chuckled, and cracked a pun every now and then over something Thomas or one of his friends said.

But Janus…Janus watched Patton.

The unfinished argument from his room still echoed in his mind. Lying was always going to be a part of who Janus was; it was, ironically enough, the reason he’d been summoned so suddenly in the middle of discussing it. Patton needed to understand that if this…whatever this was…was going to work.

But Janus was also starting to realize that he’d never seen Patton truly in his element; not like this. Thomas…and by extension, Patton…needed time with friends, possibly as much as Logan needed to be listened to, and Roman needed validation for his ideas.

Before the callback, before his own begrudging acceptance, Janus had seen Patton as nothing but a source of puns and silliness; an annoying rival for Thomas’s attention. He’d been so easy to impersonate, so easy to lead and manipulate with slick words and quick thinking.

He hadn’t known Patton at all, and he hadn’t wanted to.

“Do you know what this means?” Patton said to Janus suddenly, touching his sleeve again.

“Do tell.”

“Maybe it wasn’t all in vain.” Patton gestured at Thomas and Lee, who were now plugging in a second controller while Mary Lee nibbled on a pastry. “Going to the wedding, and all. You called it a net loss, because we assumed that Lee and Mary Lee didn’t really care if Thomas showed up or not.”

“They basically ignored him, Patton,” Janus argued. “After what Thomas sacrificed to be there, I don’t think that was an unreasonable assumption to make.”

Patton smiled softly.

“But look at them now. They obviously still care about Thomas very much. They are happy he came; so happy that they came all the way out here to rekindle a tradition that means a lot to them.”

Janus’s mouth worked. Patton probably wasn’t trying to make him feel guilty, but all the same, the words felt a little accusatory.

“Well,” he said at last in a biting tone. “Seems like things worked out after all.” He made a mocking gesture with his hands. “Guess I was wrong about everything.”

Patton’s smile faded a little, and he snuck a sideways glance at Janus.

“You and I both know…” he said, his dark gaze moving slowly to stare at nothing. “That’s not true.”

Janus guessed that Patton was remembering the aftermath: Thomas’s near-breakdown, his own rather traumatic transformation. And he hoped this was Patton’s way of acknowledging that Janus…wasn’t all wrong.

That sometimes, Patton needed him.

And watching Thomas smile and interact with his friends made Janus realize that maybe he’d been wrong, to call friendship a boogeyman and dismiss it as unimportant. Sure, it wasn’t a callback to a freaking Alfred Hitchcoppalucas movie…but it meant a lot to Thomas.

Maybe…maybe Janus needed Patton too, sometimes.

The corner of his mouth lifted into a soft half smile, and he nodded.

“Oh, hey!” Thomas called from the kitchen. At some point he’d gotten up, and was now rummaging around in a cupboard. Lee and Mary Lee followed.

“Did I tell you guys about getting fricking Leslie Odom Jr. to be in one of my videos?”

Lee gasped. “Shut up!”

“It was so cool!” Thomas gushed.

“…think Odom Sides would be cool.” Leslie sauntered casually into the living room. “I would watch Odom Sides, do what he can do.”

Janus stared.

Leslie wasn’t really there, of course; any more than Janus and Patton were “really there”. But Thomas must have been daydreaming very strongly in that moment, for it to manifest to his Sides…

“What is up, everybody?” Imaginary Leslie said in a louder voice, attempting the hand gesture Thomas always used to open his videos.

Thomas watched the scene from the kitchen, a Tupperware container grasped loosely in his hand. Janus’s heart skipped; he’s so easily distracted, they’re going to notice and ask about his mental health and he’s not ready to talk about that yet…

“That was scary,” Leslie muttered. “But, I feel that…”

“Thomas, are you all right?” Mary Lee waved a hand in front of Thomas’s face. “Earth to Thomas?”

This daydream was getting out of hand.

“Okay.” Janus dismissed the illusion with a firm wrist flick. “That…okay. Gosh.”

Thomas shook himself out of his daze, and made eye contact with Janus. ‘Thank you,’ he mouthed, and turned back to his friends.

Janus felt like he’d been knocked breathless.

Thomas…had never thanked him before.

The sensation thrummed like the satisfying snap of one puzzle piece clicking into another. Like he’d been viewing the world through a blurry lens all this time, and that one look had wiped it clean.

“Janus?” Patton touched his elbow.

“Is that what it feels like?” Janus said softly. “To…to work with him. Instead of…”

“Against him?”

Janus turned to find Patton giving him a smile so bright it was practically blinding. He felt the light all the way down in his suddenly weak knees, and oh, he really did have it bad, didn’t he?

“Yeah,” Patton breathed. “Yeah, it’s like that. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Janus pressed his lips together and nodded.

Thomas laughed at something Lee said, another sound like little sparks of light in his nerves. No lies, no pretense…just joy. It had been so long since Thomas had laughed like that.

Because of friends.

Maybe Patton was right.

Maybe the wedding hadn’t been a net loss after all.

“I don’t know about you,” Patton said. “But I think he’ll be okay without us now. And we have some more talking to do in the mindscape.”

Janus nodded again, still unable to say a word.

They both sank out together.

Chapter 17- World Enough and Time

“This is not an exodus, is it? More of a beginning really, isn’t it?”

“I’m just saying, Logan.” Roman twirled across the kitchen, a bag of tomatoes in hand. “Grouping vegetables by flavor category instead of growing habit just makes more sense.”

He dumped them on a cutting board and grabbed a knife.

Roman had jumped at the chance to help Logan fix supper for them all, as Logan often did when Patton was preoccupied with Thomas.

“The fruit versus vegetable debate is arguably meaningless once you have put them into your dish.” Logan was passing sheets of dough through a pasta maker, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to give Roman the stink-eye.

“For instance, you don’t make a ‘vegetable’ salad; you make a salad, which is mostly vegetables but can occasionally have fruit and even meat or eggs on it.”

Logan waved a hand for emphasis.

“If the debate is meaningless, why do we have salad and fruit salad?” Roman pointed out in a sing-song voice.

“Whereas growing habits determine which plants can be planted next to each other,” Logan argued in a louder voice. “How much water and sun they need, etcetera etcetera. A fruit tree has very different needs than a bean bush, and thus they are classified differently.”

“Then why are tomatoes grown in vegetable gardens?” Roman turned, his knife dripping tomato juice on the floor. “They don’t taste like fruit, they don’t go with most fruits, and on top of that, you don’t even grow them like fruits! So why, pray tell, are they fruit?”

Logan glanced over his shoulder again, dark eyes flashing behind his glasses. “You are making a mess.”

“You are not answering my question!”

“Well, I suppose technically, you are correct.” Logan shrugged. “While the tomato is botanically a fruit, it is considered a culinary vegetable due to its lower sugar content.”

He opened a lower cabinet and dug around for a pot, his neatly tucked-in polo riding up in the back.

Revealing the tiniest slice of bare skin…

Roman exhaled, turned back to the cutting board, and focused on his chopping. Logan’s deep, steady lecturing voice was already having enough of an effect on his concentration; his slices were horribly uneven.

Oh well. It was all going into a sauce.

“The tomato, you might be interested to know, is actually a berry, from the solanum lycopersicum plant,” Logan went on, filling the pot from the fridge water dispenser. “And it is not the only backyard garden plant with this ambiguity. Bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, and squashes are all botanically fruits, and culinary vegetables.”

Roman blinked. “Wait…really?”

He finished cutting the last tomato and dumped the chopped pile in a saucepan. The move brought him shoulder to shoulder with Logan, who nodded.

“Indeed.” Logan flicked his hand and held out a green bell pepper. “Spaghetti sauce is quite an…ambiguous…dish.”

Roman narrowed his eyes, fighting a smile.

“So what you’re saying is, I was right all along and you were just arguing for the sake of arguing,” he said, moving closer to take the vegetable.

Logan smirked, holding it back.

“Arguing? I thought we were having a rather enjoyable discussion.”

The two were inches apart now. Roman’s heart was pounding; he had no idea what was happening here, but he didn’t think he wanted it to stop.

“Arguing, discussing,” Roman said lowly. “Tomato, solanum lycopersicum.”

He could have sworn Logan’s eyes dilated. He grabbed for the pepper and their fingers brushed, which Roman felt like electricity down his spine.

His gaze unconsciously dropped to Logan’s lips…

“Oh my fricking god, would you two get a room already?” Virgil’s aggravated voice called out from the living room, causing the two to spring apart.

Logan cleared his throat and turned back to his pasta, dumping it in the now boiling water with little ceremony. Roman chopped up the bell pepper and then an onion and added them to the saucepan in silence.

Was that…did he…what…?

Even his brain couldn’t form words.

Virgil hissed from his position on the back of the living room couch; Roman glanced over and saw Patton and Janus rise up together in Patton’s spot by the blinds.

Roman set his jaw and looked away.

I’ll never get used to seeing Deceit standing side by side with one of us…even if he isn’t quite as bad as I once thought.

“Hey guys?” Patton called. “Can we all meet in the living room for a minute?”

Roman and Logan exchanged a glance. He better not have done something to our little puffball.

“Patton does not sound upset,” Logan said lowly.

Roman grimaced. “Am I that easy to read?”

“Or I have become more skilled at it.” Logan set a timer on his phone and walked out of the kitchen. Roman, shaking his head, followed.

They sat on the couch, on either side of Virgil’s purple-socked feet. Patton took Roman’s usual beanbag chair, and Janus sat primly at the far end of the sectional.

“So.” Patton rubbed his hands together and smiled much too widely. “Gang. And Janus.”

“Yes, do single me out,” Janus muttered.

“I think we need to try the LARP again.”

Roman sputtered in shock, but surprisingly he was drowned out by Virgil.

“Are you kidding me?” Virgil’s eyeshadow crept down his face, deepening his eyes. “That’s a horrible idea, Patton, what the heck?!”

“Whoa, Surly Temple, no need to be insulting,” Roman cut in. “Besides, why would you care? You weren’t even in the last one.”

Virgil’s lips turned up in a snarl. “I was in the last one, dipshit!”

“Language!” Patton protested.

“But you guys never even tried to find me!” Virgil went on, undeterred.

“Exactly!” Patton shouted, causing everyone to look at him again. He sighed. “There was a whole part of the story that we never even got to. I just feel like whatever the Imagination was trying to show us was left unfinished, and that for Thomas’s sake, we need to finish it.”

“I agree with Patton,” Logan piped up.

Roman stared at him in shock.

“What? Why?” Virgil hunched into his hoodie.

“We have all been at a figurative precipice since the wedding decision and fallout,” Logan said, unperturbed. “And clearly that state of affairs cannot continue. Thomas’s mind will not sustain our tumultuous relationships indefinitely without fracturing.”

Roman’s gaze was drawn toward Janus, only to find that the snake already staring at him. Janus’s scales rippled as he scowled, and his cross-armed posture grew more rigid.

“I think it likely that Thomas’s subconscious is attempting to bring the various parts of himself together and reconcile them, before his mental health deteriorates further,” Logan went on. “That is, us. If such is the case, I have a suspicion that the Imagination will keep thrusting us into scenarios until we have figuratively,” he flicked his wrist and snatched a vocab card out of the air, “‘kissed and made up’.”

Virgil made a face.

“Ew,” Janus deadpanned.

“Who’d want to kiss you anyway, scales?” Roman scoffed.

Patton coughed quietly into his cat hoodie sleeve.

“I…I do not think it means to literally kiss.” Logan frowned at the card he held. “Did I employ the phrase incorrectly? There should be no actual kissing involved.”

If the word kissing came out of Logan’s mouth one more time, Roman was going to blush so hard that blood would surely come out of his nose…no no no, ew, that’s such a Remus thought, ugh.

He was sure his face must be flaming.

Patton’s and half of Janus’ face sported awkward color as well; only Virgil seemed immune to embarrassment.

Lucky asexual emo.

Thankfully Logan’s timer went off, breaking the moment. He stood up, rather quickly, and walked into the kitchen to check the food.

“So, Roman!” Patton’s voice came out a bit too loud. “Do you think you could recreate the LARP?”

Roman chewed his lip.

It had taken him weeks to perfect the last one, but most of that was fretting over getting every detail correct for Logan. And if the threads of the old dream still existed within the subconscious, he could pull upon those rather than building an idea from scratch…

“Maybe,” he allowed at last. “But I honestly have no idea how much of what happened in there was me, how much was Remus, and how much was the Imagination. Besides…” he trailed off for a moment, hands twisting his lap. “You all hated it.”

Logan returned from the kitchen, eschewing Virgil’s legs to sit directly next to Roman.

“The noodles are done and your sauce is almost ready,” he reported. “Also, hate is a strong descriptor. The attention to canon detail was exquisite; even the ‘extra’ bits were cleverly woven in to fit the narrative. It felt like a genuine episode of Doctor Who.”

“I…” Roman opened and closed his mouth a few times, touched nearly beyond words. “That’s uncharacteristically complimentary of you.”

Logan shrugged, but a corner of his mouth turned up.

Out of the corner of Roman’s gaze, Virgil made a gagging face.

“Honestly, the worst part was being forced to participate against my will,” Janus said. “And being cast as a villain, of course. And—”

“Janus,” Patton cut in, shooting him a dad frown.

Janus waved that away.

“The point being, Patton is right. Thomas’s subconscious clearly wants us to play nice with one another, and has employed the Imagination in its…quest.” He shot Roman an unreadable look. “I vote for letting things play out in a somewhat controlled environment that we are all, now, somewhat familiar with.”

The snake looked at Patton, who shot him another patented “dad look”.

Roman couldn’t help but frown. He’d known those two were almost, well, friends now…but them having conversations with only their eyes was new.

Janus sighed, and stood, and walked to Roman, who unconsciously tensed.

To Roman’s utter shock, Janus tugged off one of his gloves and lay a bare hand on his shoulder. But unlike the time in Thomas’s presence, this was his left hand; the back of which was covered in patches of olive green scaling, with random scales scattered down to the first knuckle of his fingers.

“I would like to apologize, properly this time. With words, not just implication.” Janus drew in a deep breath. “I am sorry I called you the evil twin.”

Roman sat, stunned.

This…this has to be Patton’s influence…

Remus popped up from behind the couch, prompting Virgil to scream and launch a pillow at his face. The chaotic Side caught it, grinning, and promptly ripped out a mouthful to chew.

“You called?”

A few feathers puffed from Remus’s mouth.

Janus frowned. “I did not.”

“Oh, but you did.”

Remus dropped the pillow and leaped over the couch, never moving his head, graceful like a contortionist.

“You said evil twin, and here I am.”

He straightened up in front of Janus. There was something sharp behind his maniacal smile, something glittering in his acid green eyes that had Roman reaching for the hilt of his sword.

“What I want to know, Jan Jan.” Remus’s expression dropped into something stony, the white streak in his hair drooping over his eyes. “Is that really how you see me? Because I thought we were friends.”

At the word “friends” he dropped his hand and casually summoned his morning star.

Janus’s gaze darted wildly between Remus and the rest of them, and he licked his lips. Roman, for a moment, genuinely feared what his brother might do if Janus didn’t say exactly the right thing, right now.

Luckily, saying exactly the right thing was something natural manipulators tended to excel at.

“I have been unfair to a number of people lately, it would seem.” Janus looked down at the glove he held, and lifted his hands. “Remus, in a moment of anger, I used you to score a cheap shot against your brother at the expense of you both. That was wrong of me, as your friend. I’m sorry.”

Remus shifted his weapon to his shoulder and cocked his head, his mouth a flat line under his mustache. Roman’s fingers tightened around his sword hilt, though he had no idea who he’d be defending, if he did decide to intervene.

Janus, to his credit, stood up and stood his ground, his scaled face a mask. Being the third tallest Side (next to Virgil, and then Logan), had a full two-inch height advantage over Remus, not even counting his hat.

Remus studied him, absently picking his nose and then wiping his finger on Janus’s cape. Janus’s nostrils flared.

He said nothing.

“Aww, Jan, who could stay mad at that creepy snake face?”

Remus dismissed his morning star with a hand flick and threw both arms around Janus’s waist, bowling them both back into the seat cushion.

“Ugh, get off me, you trash rat!” Janus sputtered, shoving at the chaotic Side. “You smell like week-old rotten tuna fish.”

“Thank you, I’ve been trying a new scent.” Remus allowed himself to be pushed away. He stood, clapped his hands together and rubbed them together like a plotting villain.

“All right, Roman,” he said, abruptly turning. “Shall we?”

Roman blinked as every eye in the room swiveled to him. He was suddenly acutely aware of his hand still around his sword hilt, and released it.

“Shall we…what?”

“Reboot the LARP, ding dong!” Remus rolled his eyes, and smirked. “Say, did you know that ding dong is a slang word for—”

“Nope!” Patton cut in, plugging his ears. “No sir! We are not talking about anyone’s…anything that needs to stay zipped up in their pants where it belongs!”

“So you’re…you’re helping us?” Roman stammered to Remus, confused. “Just like that?”

A small silence fell, the other Sides all looking at each other. Roman felt very small, very awkward, and very, very exposed. Had he said something wrong?

Again?

“He did help with the last one, kiddo,” Patton pointed out gently. “And…we need you both.”

“Indeed, Remus’s aid was instrumental in overcoming many of the obstacles we faced during that adventure,” Logan added.

Roman stared at them, all the facets of Thomas’s mind, standing here together in the same space. He realized that this might be the first time he’d ever seen them all united about something, instead of picking fights with each other.

And as usual, it was him, Roman, who was holding them back.

He’d gotten so used to blaming “the Dark Sides” for the strife in Thomas’s mind that even when he knew better…and he did know better, now…he still defaulted to that faulty mindset. He expected Remus to work against them because that’s what Dark Creativity did, despite current evidence to the contrary.

He expected Janus to betray and manipulate them, because that’s what Deceit did.

Current evidence to the contrary.

The realization hit him like a thunderclap: it was how he once saw Virgil.

And the way through the strife Virgil caused, he thought as his gaze unconsciously sought out the purple-clad Side, wasn’t cutting him down and excluding him. It was lifting him up, and making him part of the family.

Virgil raised an eyebrow, clearly uncomfortable with Roman’s staring.

“Look, I don’t necessarily like it either,” he spoke up in his low, gravelly voice. “No offense, Rem, but you are chaos incarnate and you know I’ll never be completely okay around you.”

“Aww, love you too,” Remus tittered, waggling his fingers.

“But Patton and Logan are right,” Virgil went on. “If we’re doing this…and for the record, I don’t see how going back into that LARP is really gonna help. There are a million things that could go wrong, and what if we can’t even—”

“Virgil, breathe,” Logan interrupted.

Virgil paused, and took a deep breath.

“But if everyone else thinks it’s a good plan, then I guess I don’t have any better ideas,” he finished, sighing. “If we’re doing it at all, then we’re all doing it.”

Roman swallowed as everyone looked at him again.

Geez, normally he liked being in the spotlight, but this was excruciating.

“Look, what if I can’t recreate it?” he blurted out. “What if I mess it up? What if my stupid LARPing idea isn’t strong enough to hold…” he gestured at the group of them, “whatever this is? What if we try and it just makes things worse?”

“Catastrophizing, Princey. Totally stealing my job.” Virgil made a sarcastic thumbs-up.

But it was Logan who came forward, and laid a hand on Roman’s shoulder.

“Roman. It has come to my attention lately that I do not say this enough,” he said lowly. He set his other hand on Roman’s other shoulder.

Roman felt the warmth of those hands burning even through his thick tunic.

“I believe in you.” Logan’s deep voice was firm, his dark eyes solemn, his long fingers digging into Roman’s sleeves. “If…if that helps.”

“Face any and every challenge with courage and honesty!” Patton piped up.

Warmth rose up in Roman’s chest and spread through his body, becoming tears on the way to his eyes. He blinked, rapidly, barely holding back from throwing himself into Logan’s arms.

“Okay,” he said shakily, scrubbing his face. “All right. All right, let’s do this!”

Remus whooped.

Roman took a breath, and shook his hands out…

“Um.” Virgil raised a hand. “Not to be a wet blanket here…”

“When are you anything but?” Janus deadpanned.

“Hee hee, you said butt.” Remus giggled.

“However…can we, like, eat first?” Virgil said. “I would rather not come back to a blazing fire in the mindspace because someone left the stove on.”

Roman gasped, and it was his turn to grab Logan’s shoulders.

“My sauce!”

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