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This might have been a mistake.
Remus sunk out a minute or two ago, but he has yet to report back. And by the time Janus got to his room, he was inexplicably back Up There, leaving the amateur chess-master with no choice but to pace outside the door until his friend returns.
Though his heart has settled, the echoes of its frantic beating from the brief window where he had lost track of the chaotic gremlin still rattle his ears. The sense of serenity he’d gotten used to in his absence has already perished; now it’s just a matter of waiting for the killer to show his face.
Or, he could eavesdrop. But even the idea of checking in and noting the general vibes from the center of the action, as he’s been diligently doing for the past half hour or so, heightens his pace ever so slightly.
“It’s fine, totally fine,” he mumbles. He alternates between adjusting his gloves and rolling his shoulders while his feet follow their automated path. “Really, if he went back, that can only mean he’s following up on one of my, stipulations, surely - or, even better, Thomas wanted to see him again, for, some, reason. And, if not, well, we’ll know soon enough. No need to be so worked up over it, no need to be parano-”
He bites down hard on his tongue before the word and all its associations can catch alight. Blood soaks into the unpunctured taste buds.
As if drawn to the scent, the green menace flings open his door.
“Whew!” Remus exclaims as he saunters out. “That sure was- Oh, hey, looks like someone missed me.”
“Yes, that’s exactly how I would put it.” Janus turns to face him. His calculated coldness evaporates. The other side is practically vibrating from head to toe, his eyes like fireworks.
“How, um, how’d it go, Remus?”
“I’m so glad you asked! To quote the sexiest cereal mascot I know, it went ‘grrrrreat!’” He closes the gap between them, his grin as wide as the tiger’s. “At least from where I’m standing. I certainly left an impression on our main man Thomathy. You really should have tagged along, it was a hell of a lot of fun!”
After a moment of processing… that, Janus sputters out, “Oh, I, I’m sure; but I wouldn’t want to take away from your spotlight during your big premiere. You can fill me in on all the juicy details later. For now-”
Remus snickers. “Juicy… juicy buttholes.”
“…I’d just like to know whether your introduction was in line with what I laid out as part of our deal.” He waits for the toddler’s giggles to expire before proceeding. “Did anyone get hurt?”
“…No,” Remus drawls, “no one was negatively impacted in any real way.” His wandering eyes zip back to Janus, accompanied by a smirk. “That good enough for ya?”
The snake’s eyes narrow, but not (entirely) out of malice. In the time it takes him to blink, he plugs into his network, the thousands of lines he’s laid in Thomas’s system, and he finds the general atmosphere surrounding the others to be… tense, but not negative. Not unusually so.
However, he does pick up on something potentially troubling. A tugging at one of his more recent clusters of roots, guarding a secret he’s tucked close to his heart.
He puts a pin in it. “Yes; moving on. Does Thomas acknowledge that you’re part of him?”
“Took him a while, but yeah. They weren’t nearly as thrilled about it as I am. Started going around in circles over whether it made him a ‘bad person.’” Remus scoffs. “Honestly, going by their standards of what a ‘bad person’ is, I wish it did!”
Janus rolls his eyes. “I can’t say I disagree.”
“Right?! Ugh, it’s like they didn’t even listen to my intro song!”
“Your… of course,” Janus groans. He needs to stop having any expectations. For anyone. “Now, tell me, does he know why you exist?”
Remus pauses humming. “More or less.”
“Good. Did you explain to Thomas the value of your contributions?”
“Huh, you know, that’s the word Logan used. ‘Contributions’.” He leans in to nudge Janus’s shoulder. “How about that dork, ey? Total buzzkill… and yet, it woulda gotten boring real quick if he wasn’t there. Rest of those goobers, it’s too easy to under their skin.” He pulls away, then cocks his head. “Hey, that reminds me of a song I heard recently-”
“Anssswer. The quessstion.” Janus hisses, bristling.
After giving him a look, Remus states, “Yes. Repeatedly.”
“And?” He presses.
“…And what?”
“Did he agree?”
“Eh?” Remus shrugs. “Once they got over the ‘bad person’ thing, they spent the rest of the time trying to get rid of me. Didn’t get the chance to circle back to that.”
Janus’s adamantine expression softens as he turns his inquisitive gaze inward. “So…” Data points and implications whirl before his vision like snowflakes in a blizzard. “If you had to sum up how Thomas feels about you at present…”
Instead of cobbling together a response, Remus studies his friend: his darting, unusually clouded eyes; his slight frown and bit lip; the hand he’d been gesturing with now paralyzed in front of his chest, wracked with microscopic twitches…
He’s reminded of something; an encounter he’d only understood in retrospect.
“Oh,” he says with a pitying smile, “you wanna know if I pulled a Virgil.”
Janus jolts in place. His eyes home in on Remus, pupils wide. Before Remus can properly sort out the traces of emotion bubbling within, Janus forces himself to blink, and when his eyes are visible again, they’ve frozen over. His face contorts back into his standard smug disdain, a look that radiates the message, “What? I’m fine, fine. Are you just going to stand there and stare, or…?”
Remus lets out a half-laugh, half-sigh. “You really thought I could do all that in one sitting? Gonna have to say to no to that one, chief; you’re still stuck with me :) ”
Janus exhales. “Wonderful.” Another second passes before he notices and corrects his compressed posture.
The tugging sensation persists, intensified. He flexes a fist to strengthen his hold, then suppresses the feeling as much as he can. He only needs a minute.
After taking a few more moments to complete his mental calculus, he concludes, “I suppose progress is progress.”
Remus’s cartoonish smile shifts to something more genuine. His gaze remains unnaturally focused, making the snake’s soul squirm.
“What?” Janus snips, more harshly than intended.
A wave of disappointment crosses the duke’s face, but he shakes it off. “Oh, nothing. Just figured, since I brought up Virgilicious, you might want to hear how he reacted?”
“…No,” Janus chooses to answer, “I-”
“Bullshit. Let me tell you, it was weird; at first he tried to downplay my existence, but then the second I implied that he was being boring and denying the truth, he was suddenly all, ‘Actually, this guy being here DOES mean you’re fundamentally broken Thomas, what are we gonna do about that?’ Until Logan talked him down, anyway. Like, he’s clearly still the same old Virgil, but also, not? His priorities are all…”
He trails off when he notices that Janus has turned away.
“That’s enough,” he says, his voice distant and airy. “I think I’ll need to speak with Virgil on my own.”
His ears are tuned in to a different conversation.
“Isn't that kind of unfair?”
A sudden yank. His teeth clench down. Pain flickers on his face - but it’s followed by excitement.
Turning back around, he sharply inhales, then says in his standard tone, “Not to cut this delightful reunion short, but would you mind-”
“I get it. No problemo, Neg-ini. I gotta recharge my *creative juices* anyhow.” He gives a playful wave as he re-enters his room, calling out while swinging the door shut, “Have fun with your mysterious nefarious agendaaaaa~!”
“Huh,” Janus exhales in relief once the lock clicks. “That was, arduous.”
Right on cue, another pull sends his hand flying to his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, digs in his heels, and properly plugs back in, to trace the disturbance back to its source.
“Why should you be held to a different standard…”
At the other end of the tug-of-war, clawing at the interlocking roots with equal desperation and apprehension, he finds an old friend.
Janus smiles. He pauses, takes a breath, savors the moment. Then he lets go.
The protections unravel and fall away.
A sudden shot of confidence surges through Virgil’s veins. He locks eyes with Thomas, and he tells him the truth.
“Because I was one of them.”
Alone backstage, Janus can’t help but laugh.
⁂
That was a mistake.
It’s the thought screaming on loop in Virgil’s head as he stands in the center of his dreary room. Clouds of smoke fume from his pores, and shrieking winds whirl in a frenzy around him. The stupid tears he used every ounce of energy in his muscles to hold back are now bursting forth, thick and gross and ugly and stupid, soaking up eyeshadow and leaving muddy trails behind on their way to staining the carpet. Usually, such outpourings would at least also result in the release of all his built-up tension, letting him collapse onto his bed, the couch, or whatever flat enough surface was in range. But here he stands, bound by threads of his own rambling mind’s making.
A vision replays before him on loop: Thomas, the person he’d do anything and everything for, condemning him; sometimes with flaming fury, sometimes on the verge of tears, sometimes both. He still feels the searing look Thomas gave him, branding his soul. He sees him turn and walk away, the light fading with him. Then the ground opens up, and Virgil falls, into the dark, into the cold, into the pit of snakes.
Through the froth and the screams, his inner Patton offers reassurances. “You did the right thing,” the parental voice coos, “he deserves to know.”
“And now he’ll do the right thing,” growls the devil on his shoulder, in a voice like thunder, “the only sensible thing, and throw you back, erasing any pitiful progress you’ve made-”
“But he wouldn’t! He’s already accepted you - and even if he didn’t know about this, the others did and they-”
Virgil bites down as the devil digs his claws in. “Well, maybe they shouldn’t-”
“Don’t start on that,” his inner Logan interrupts. “There’s no need to retread an already settled matter.”
“Yeah,” chimes in not-Patton, “you know they love you. They need you. Why are you lying? Why are you doing this to yourself?”
The cacophony begins to die down, the winds petering out. When the devil speaks again, he doesn’t roar. He hisses.
“I can’t sssay.”
“Fuck off!” Virgil yells, whipping around to face… oh, right. No one.
He blinks a few times to force out the straggling tears, then roughly scrubs them away with his sleeves. Stupid, stupid, ssstupid-
“That’s enough self-deprecation,” the remnants of not-Logan chide. But then his tone softens. “You know, if you want to know how he feels, there’s an easy way.”
As he lowers his sleeve, his eyes readjust to the dissolving smog. They land on the outline of his door.
“Well?”
He huffs, the air shifting his bangs.
Across the room, the lock clicks. The knob turns. It creaks open on its still-broken hinges.
Deep breath in. “Okay.”
He shuffles out, pulling the door closed behind him, his gaze set dead ahead. His feet drag and his shoulders rise the closer he gets to the threshold, the tension lessening only slightly after he crosses it. No signs of anyone else in his limited cone of vision.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he takes another breath, then pivots slightly toward the ‘light’ end of the hall. He pictures the obsidian gate looming over him, back where it had been for years and years and years. Protecting Thomas from the things he can’t (yet) accept. Implicitly judging those on either side.
With his eyes closed, he sees it perfectly.
When his eyes open, he doesn’t.
Breath caught in his throat, he slowly spins to face the other end of the hall.
Relief floods his system. There the gate stands, as it has for nearly two years.
A quivering, joyful exhale burbles out of him, and a smile sprouts in its wake. He shakes in his shoes as the stress spills out. Overwhelmed, for a few moments, his vision zones out, and then-
A gaze from the other side of the bars petrifies him.
His eyes snap back into focus. His smile withers. The snake’s grows.
“There you are.” He pushes himself off the wall he was leaning against and glides up to the gate. “Tell me, how was Remus?”
Virgil glowers back at him, teeth bared. When it fails to drive the shadow off, he grunts, “He was Remus.”
The faintest chuckle rolls off Janus’s forked tongue. “Of course. Silly me. Thank you for the invaluable insight.” And, with a flutter of his capelet, he turns away.
Virgil could let him go. He should. His night will only be further ruined if he doesn’t.
However, as the silhouette of his once-thought friend fades into the dark, a long-brewing need builds up in his throat, and gets spit out as a vitriolic question:
“Are you happy?”
Janus pauses. With his back still turned, he says, “I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific.”
“I…” Virgil inhales, sucking up some snot, then commits. “I did it. Are you happy?”
With no hesitation, Janus spins around and slithers back to the gate. “Now why would I be? You’ve only, let’s see, further opened Thomas’s eyes to the idea that this whole ‘light side/dark side’ categorization isn’t a rigid binary, if not an entirely meaningless distinction, which is what I’ve been pushing him toward this entire time. I certainly wasn’t waiting with bated breath for you to make good on your new stance that ‘honesty is the best policy’, and permit me to pull the wool from his eyes.” Face inches from the bars, he grins like a predator who’s found prey in his trap. “No, I’m absolutely miserable.”
When he realizes Janus is done, Virgil shakes the befuddlement from his face, then mentally combs back through the word salad. Amongst the jibber-jabber, one phrase sticks out.
“‘Permit me’?” He turns the words over under his breath. “Permit you to… what?”
Janus sighs. “Come on, Virgil. I know you don’t think Thomas is as… oblivious as he’d have to be to have not put the pieces together himself by now.” He smirks as he asks, “The question is, are you going to give me my due thanks, as you so rudely neglected to previously?”
Virgil figures out the first half of what Janus is insinuating with no effort, but the second half, the ‘previously’, takes some rummaging through his catalog of memories to understand. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to go back far.
“And do you know who’s responsible for making it so that Thomas doesn’t look at you now and instantly recall every reason he has to despise you? For giving you a chance to prove you’re something more than all that?”
When first uttered, these jabs left hardly any impact; they came on the tail end of a firing squad’s worth of resurrected mistakes and failures, ceaselessly rattled off by a silver tongue. And to say Virgil’s been reluctant to return to the memory of that night would be a grave understatement.
Now the words echo in his ears; and, combining them with this new revelation and everything else that’s happened between the two of them in the intermedium, they give rise to more questions.
Does Janus want Virgil to prove he’s more than a ‘dark side’ to Thomas? Or does he want him to admit that he hasn’t ‘evolved’, that he’s still the same as the other ‘dark sides’? Is he trying to sabotage him, use him, genuinely help him, or, is he just screwing with him?
He strides up to the gate, staring Janus down the whole way. However, even as his facial features become more defined, the intent lying beneath remains unreadable.
So Virgil pushes. “I didn’t ask you for any charity,” he snarls. “If it was such a burden on you, why’d you bother?”
“Well, in this instance, I wanted you to be the one to admit to it,” he responds. “For you to take responsibility for it.” The upturned corner of his mouth flattens. “No other reason.”
It’s a lie. The last few words, at least. Catching Janus in the act has always been easy for Virgil, and more often than not, he can reverse-engineer his true feelings from there. However, in open-ended matters like this, working out what’s being left unsaid, what the greater truth at the root of it all is, is practically impossible. And these days, it’s only gotten harder.
Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his assessments were off the mark just as often, if not more so, back then; and it took taking a step back to realize how incomplete his picture of him was.
“It’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it?” He mutters. “You live with someone for, what, twenty, twenty-five years? You’re literally two parts of the same whole. But, neither of you ever learn how to understand the other person. You never really know each other.”
Well. Janus was not expecting that.
His first instinct is to say that he knows Virgil, of course he does. He may know him better than he knows himself. In fact, if he really wanted to, he could know everything about Virgil, with just a flick of his wrist or snap of his fingers.
But such a back and forth would be a waste of this opportunity. “There’s still time for that to change,” he says instead. “If you’d give me a chance-”
“You’ve had chances,” Virgil interrupts, “and you’ll have plenty more. You should start using them.”
Janus’s eyes narrow. “What do you think I’ve been trying to-”
“You tell me. If you’re more than just Deceit, why can’t you straight-up say what you mean and what you want?” He asks, with equal rage and pleading. “If you have good intentions, why do you blatantly manipulate people to get them on your side? If you want them to like you, why do you conduct yourself like an old-school Disney villain? If you want me to like you, why are you still acting like the same stuck-up preppy bully, as if that isn’t part of why I wanted to leave?”
While Virgil pauses to recover his breath, Janus scrambles for a retort. The best he can think of with thunder still echoing in his ears is, “Come now, are the others really that much better?” But the ebony pillars between them already confirm the answer.
“Just,” Virgil resumes, “why are you like this?” He grips the bars as if they were his adversary’s throat, as if to wring an answer out of him. “Can you not help yourself, even when it hurts your own cause? Or is it that you want the whole world to change around you, without you having to change at all?”
Janus gives him another moment, attempting to temper the flames in the prosecutor’s eyes with his artificial nonchalance. “You make it sound so easy,” he then says in lieu of an answer, “so simple. ‘You want to be respected? Just change everything about yourself!’” He lowers his raised arms as an earlier seed of a rebuttal finally blooms. “And, you know I’m not one to call out hypocrisy, but let the record show that-”
“No, you stop right there,” Virgil interjects, jabbing a finger through the gap before pointing it back at himself. “I wasn’t trying to prove myself, I wasn’t trying to be liked. They were just…”
He catches himself this time. Not-Logan would be proud.
“Forget it.” He drops both hands and shoves them into his hoodie’s pockets. “The point is: if you want their trust - Thomas’s trust - my trust - you’re gonna have to earn it.”
“Oh wonderful, another thankless job on top of the one I’ve been performing for literally my entire life.” Janus leans back against the neighboring wall. “Is being part of Thomas not enough to convince the lot of you that I’m here for Thomas?”
“Even if it were, wouldn’t mean you don’t have room to improve.” As words rush to mind, Virgil suppresses the urge to pace. “Maybe start by not acting like you know better than literally everyone else, as if you’re somehow above the rest of us. Or, prove that you do and that you are; be a better person than them, than me. Take some responsibility for the ways you’ve fucked up. Don’t be so reluctant to share with the group, you know?” He swallows the bile generated by his disgust at his teacherly tone. “Sure, it’ll suck at first; guess you gotta suck it up and deal with it.”
“So you want me to put on a show for you?” Janus seethes. “You want me to be my own prosecutor and hand over all the evidence to the clearly impartial jury, probably in the hopes that they’ll sentence me to the lions’ den. Why would I? Why ssshould I?”
For a few seconds, Virgil stares dumbly at Janus, as if he’s seeking clarification that he really did overreact that severely to the concept of being honest. “I-I dunno dude, why should I have had to tell Thomas what I used to be? Because-”
“Honey, you’re the only one who cares about that factoid at this point. Clearly he doesn’t.”
Virgil’s tongue goes limp. Janus isn’t even looking at him, too preoccupied with his gloves.
“You insisted to me that you’ve changed,” he continues while rubbing his fingers together. “Let’s say that you have, that you’re on the right track now. As long as you’re honest with yourself about who you used to be, then, why should your past matter to anyone else? Why let it get in your way? Why not let your actions speak for themselves?”
“Are, are you serious?” Virgil’s hands fly out of his pockets. “You know I had a whole thing with them about it, it’s literally why you -” He inhales sharply, fingers twitching with frustration. “Look, it’s, it’s because - because…”
He lowers his head so he can give his eyes a break. Before raising it again, he runs a hand down his face and discreetly shakes some tension out of his shoulders.
“Think of it this way: if you were in my position right now, you wouldn’t just let me, Anxiety, waltz in there with my bad attitude and demand to be listened to without acknowledging any of the shit I’ve done. You’d go to any lengths to protect Thomas, right? You’d be challenging me, pestering me, fucking with me, same as always; same as I’ve been treating you.”
“And if you were in my position at this time,” Janus responds, marching back up to the gate, “could you stand it? Would you just let them-?”
“I wouldn’t have a victim complex about it, that’s for sure,” Virgil scoffs. Then his expression wilts. “I’d at least have the sense to know that I deserve it.”
“ ‘Deserve it?’ ” Janus frowns. “Oh, you definitely wouldn’t deserve it.” It comes out slathered in sarcasm, his default setting.
Virgil gives no rebuttal. His glare withers further, making the faint cracks beneath more visible.
Janus recognizes that look. “Virgil-”
“I don’t want your pity,” he grumbles to the floor.
Janus’s face contorts like he’s been physically struck. Any sympathy leaves him in a heated exhale. “Then what do you want from me?”
The air crackles. “Isn’t it obvious?” His voice rumbles. “I just. Want. The TRUTH!”
The tempest packs enough force into those last two words to shake the gate to its foundation. The tightly packed shades that compose it disperse into a curtain of smoke. After stumbling back, Janus raises a hand and flicks his wrist, condensing the particles back together. No problem.
It only occurs to him after that he could have used the opportunity to briefly pass through.
Oh well.
He refocuses on Virgil, who seems surprisingly unrattled, and ponders his request. “Would you mind… elaborating?”
“…Look,” he sighs, “I’m doing my job here. And I’m trying to be less, hardline about it, but I just, can’t with you. Not after you’ve impersonated two of my friends, not after everything-” He pauses to reign in his volume, then reconsiders his approach. “No, scratch that. You know all that, you’re not the one who needs to hear it.” Oh, but when that day comes… the thought almost makes a smile flicker on his face. “Let me just say this: You’re not a good person, Janus.”
Janus gives no attempt to stifle a snort.
“I know,” Virgil says. “Thing is, as much as you hate it, as much as you deny it, that matters to Thomas. He wants to be good, to do good. Try all you want, you’re not gonna change that. So if you’re here for him-”
“What if I can?”
It takes Janus a moment to realize that he spoke the thought aloud. He has no clue how it slipped through his defenses; he certainly wasn’t feeling pressured by Virgil, feeling like he might be correct and know it, feeling that he needed to cut him off with something, anything, even the truth, just to take control of the conversation again. Certainly not that.
It doesn’t matter, really. Not when Virgil is standing there, his pale face twisted in disgust and contempt, irises quivering like flames, while the way the rest of his body is leaning back, every muscle tense, suggests genuine fear. The kind of fear spurred by the unearthing of a terrible truth.
“Not that that’s what I’m doing,” Janus stammers, a half-truth. “I’m just questioning whether your confidence is… misplaced. Uninformed, even.” He might have overcompensated for his initial flustering with the threatening tone at the end there, and now that he thinks about it, isn’t that more likely to make him think he actually-
Virgil relaxes. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he admits with a shrug.
Then something crosses his face.
When he looks back at Janus, his eyes have dimmed. “But what about you?” He stares through him, beyond him, with a paralyzing gaze. “If you try, if you show him all the worst of himself, unfiltered, uncompromising, but you can’t change his mind… I won’t be the one casting you back into the dark. Won’t be Patton either.”
He’s standing right up against the gate, leaving less than a foot between them. In his black mirror eyes, Janus sees a projection of this future: the person he cares for most, the one he does everything for, on the verge of tears, because of him. He sees him turn and walk away. Between them, a threshold of his own design, one he is no longer denied to cross.
A door slams in his face, cutting off the light. Stranding him. Suspended in space, dark and cold, where no one can hear him. Locked away like a shameful secret.
“It’ll be your worst nightmare.”
And then he’s back in the hall, as quickly as he left. Well, “left”.
Virgil is rapidly blinking the ink out of his eyes.
Janus is busy remembering how to breathe. “Are you…” He begins sooner than he should, and it comes out horribly frail. After masking his failure with a cough, he does a proper inhale and gets back into character. “Are you trying to intimidate me?” He throws a little laugh in there for good measure.
“Just being honest,” Virgil answers, already over it. “And here’s some more honesty: I don’t want Thomas to be hurt like that.”
Janus arches an eyebrow. “Like-?”
“So here’s my advice: play it safe. Follow the rules, just this once.” He takes a couple of steps back, but his stare and tone remain just as serious. “And, you’re gonna have to give me what I asked for: something true for me to work with. Some shred of integrity, some show of sincerity; something better than, than-” he puts a hand to his chest and adopts a more sultry voice, “-‘I’m Thomas too you know’ or, or, ‘I thought we were friends’, as an answer to the question of why, the hell, I should trust you. With no strings attached.
“If you can convince me, then you’ll be able to work things out with Thomas. Only then.”
Janus leans back on his heels, arms crossed. “Because that’s your job.” Virgil, the gatekeeper. Not Janus, the one who made it his purpose to hide the ‘bad’ sides away, the one literally named after a god of gates. That’s what it’s come to?
“Yup.” Virgil’s hand returns to tearing at the inner lining of his pockets. “And if you can’t do it, don’t blame me.”
Well then.
Janus considers these terms; taking them to be non-negotiable, as arbitrary as they are.
He can be honest. Bluntly so. Destructively so. When it’s someone else in the spotlight, he can see through their armor, through to their softest parts, and rupture it with hardly any effort, almost as a reflex. Tact, finesse, was something he had to learn still hasn’t learned.
But he can’t wield all truths with the same ease.
In particular, when he’s holding the sword to his own throat, he can’t help but feel that the sentiments produced under such duress have no value.
With time to plan, perhaps he can come up with something that will please Virgil, that he’ll actually believe. Preferably, through actions rather than words. Preferably, something that won’t just be a distraction from more important matters.
Perhaps-
“You still there?” Virgil snaps his fingers. “You know, I’ve got time.” He leans against his door. “Here’s a chance for ya. You got anything?”
Janus blinks, then gulps. “Oh.”
There are things he could say right now. True things. Things he could say and then abandon, fleeing to his room if he’s really that pathetic, to be judged in private. Things he, on a night like this two years ago, broke down over potentially never getting to say to the one standing before him; the one he, for those few dreadful hours, thought he’d lost.
Short, simple sentences. That’s probably what Virgil wants. Something he won’t have to puzzle over, inspect from every temporal angle, dissect like one of Remus’s experiments, to feel safe trusting. He needs something simple.
They’re there, dancing on the tip of his tongue. Sickeningly sweet, easily retched up, sentences; short and simple.
…But, they aren’t simple. If there’s one thing Janus knows, it’s that nothing is ever simple. Especially anything to do with himself.
Most days, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now, it means anything he says will surely insight a full-on interrogation. And who’s to say what truths will come to light then?
He’s tired of it.
“…I-”
Down the ‘light’ end of the hall, a door opens.
Janus’s entire body locks up. Virgil’s does the same. For the first time that night, their thought processes are practically the same, and they know what the other is thinking without having to ask.
Virgil won’t say any more (not to him, not to one of them) with someone (one of his friends) watching. So he turns to his door.
Janus won’t can’t say any more to him while someone else (one of them) listens in. He tries, but no effort makes it past the blaring sirens stationed around his stupid, frail little heart.
Virgil grabs the handle (Janus flinches, despite himself) and opens his door, only realizing as he does that the doorplate bearing his proper name was all the confirmation he needed all along. He softly groans.
Just before charging in, his eyes drift back to Janus; he’s standing stiff as before, gaze somewhere else.
The fact that, at this moment, Virgil might feel the slightest bit sorry for him, further boils his blood.
Not knowing which of the two drives is at the helm, he calls back a message over his shoulder, just for the side on the other side of the gate:
“Good talk.”
The door swings into place and locks behind him.
Janus remains frozen in place, staring down the distant silhouette.
An eternity seems to pass before Patton retreats to his room.
The trance wears off, and Janus turns away. A low hiss slips through his lips. Of course it was Patton, Morality. The one who’s always stood in his way, no matter his intentions. The one responsible for getting Thomas, and Virgil by extension, caught up in this existential dread over whether he’s a “good person”; the reason Thomas even cares about “being good” and “doing good”, even at his own expense. To the extent that, sometimes, Janus can’t help… but wonder…
“Is being part of Thomas not enough to convince the lot of you that I’m here for Thomas?”
He pivots back in the direction of the baby blue door.
He’s not dumb enough to think that one side is the source of all of Thomas’s problems.
But if this specific problem isn’t just something he’s concocted out of nothing in his fatigue, then…
…It’s something he’ll have to deal with on a later occasion. For now, sleep.
At least, that’s the plan. But when he turns back in the direction of the dark, one of the shadows leaps out at him, landing inches from his face.
“Heyo, not sorry, but I forgot to tell you something.”
“…Can it wait, Remus?” Janus requests, rubbing his temples. “Thomas needs his sleep, and it’ll be easier for him if we all-”
“It’s only one thing, J. Just, listen.”
Janus lowers his hand, and he sees that the other side is looking at him with that same stare as before, without the smile. The unnaturally focused gaze that seems to be expecting something from him. Almost asking for something.
“Fine,” he relents, “what-”
“I told them my name.” Remus grins.
“Oh.” Janus’s voice remains steady, and his expression unchanged. “Okay.”
Yet deep down, for some reason, there’s a part of him screaming that it’s not.
“Did they ask?”
“Not directly,” Remus replies, “but I figured, why not? It’s a way of breaking the ice.” He gives the most dramatic wink, bouncy eyebrows and all. “And, ya know, sharing something like that, it makes it easier for them to trust me, doncha think?”
That bastard.
The part of Janus that was screaming a moment ago now howls like a pack of wolves. His stomach churns. His eyes are burning.
It’s a silly thing to be so upset by. He knows that. But Janus is a living testament to the fact that knowing and understanding are two very, very different things. It is, in fact, the very reason his name was such a sore spot for him for so long.
He thought he was well over it, but. Here he is. On the verge of vomiting, or worse, crying, over the mere prospect of sharing it with anyone else.
He shakes his head as minimally and inconspicuously as he can. Enough of that kind of thinking for one night. The core of what Remus is suggesting is good advice. There are other things he could use as “icebreakers”; he just has to think of some. Something true, but light; easy to share, and easily believed. Something… simple.
What if he just, can’t do simple?
He’s yanked off that train of thought by Remus aggressively patting his shoulder. “Ya still there, J.D. Sanders?”
Janus nods. Before he can verbalize anything, Remus says, “Good. Good talk.”
He retracts his long black nails and pivots on his heels. However, before he steps back into the dark, he adds, “Oh, and, I lied. I wanted to make a robust first impression, as I’m sure you understand; so, I, bashed Roman over the head with my good old morningstar.” His head twists back around. “Couldn’t help myself, ya know? Knocked him out for a solid half-hour. …Well technically it was the finger flick that did it, but-”
Janus cuts him off. “No need to clarify further.” His hands knot together, and he glares with all the energy he can muster. “I. Understand.”
Remus twists the rest of his body back around. “Really? Do you not want me to get into what I did to Logan?”
Janus responds with the demeanor of an overworked parent giving their child a final warning. “Do you think that’s the wisest decision on your end?”
Remus takes the cue. “You’re right, I’ll save it for when you’re in the proper headspace, so you can savor all the, mmm, juicy details.” He spins around and heads down the hall. “Nighty night Jan Jan! And, thanks or whatever! It was fun!”
Janus waits to hear Remus’s door open and close (why didn’t he hear it before? How long was he listening in?).
When it does, he gives a final cursory look down both ends of the hall (If he and Patton were spectators for part of it, then-) then ducks into his room.
He doesn’t bother turning the lights on. He’s more than used to the dark.
(Dark and cold, where no one can hear him-)
God, is this what being with Virgil for any significant time does to him now?
He tries one of Thomas’s breathing exercises to calm his rambling mind, but it keeps rattling off questions and observation, spiraling back through the night’s events, until…
“Are you happy?”
What an icebreaker that was. Certainly not one that has a simple answer.
Then again, are there any that do?
Is it ever safe to break the ice when you’re standing in the middle of a frozen lake?