#mvu

A low thrum of panic in his gut chased the lingering sleepiness from him, and he pushed himself into a sitting position as quickly as he dared, figuring that he might as well test the boundaries of his lack of stab wound pain before he snuck over to check that the core parts of Thomas had all made it through okay. Or before he encountered Remus again.

The first thing he registered was that there wasn’t any pain, none at all.

The second thing was that everything was proportionally huge around him.

The third thing was that these absolutely were not the Dark Side commons.

His heart rate spiked immediately as he whipped his head around, staring at what could only be the Light Side common area. He’d only caught a glimpse of it before, with the whole ‘bleeding out’ thing, and it looked impossibly different from where he stood on the living room table. Now that he was paying attention, he could feel the way Thomas was so much closer here than in the Subconscious, like the difference between shallow water and the depths.

He shook himself. Now wasn’t the time to get caught up in how much easier core Sides had it. There were bigger things to worry about, literally. He hadn’t discorporated, he was in the Conscious part of the mind, and he was tiny-- through no doing of his own.

Oh. They wanted revenge.

Virgil kicked away the assortment of tiny blankets around him and got to his feet, blood rushing in his ears. He’d been an asshole to them while they were stuck in the Subconscious, so they were returning the favor. Why else would they have healed him and turned him pocket-sized? It was the only explanation that made sense.

The commons were just shy of completely disorienting while empty, so he certainly wasn’t going to stick around for something as overwhelming as a Side to appear. He hurried to the edge of the table, eyeing the drop with no little trepidation. Was he lighter like this, or would he land heavily on the carpet below and break half his bones?

He shouldn’t risk it. No point in doing half the work for his captors.

If he could get a running start to the other end of the table, he might be able to make the jump to the couch, though. From there… maybe pushing a pillow to the ground. Could he even move a pillow at this size?

Another shudder worked its way through him, something small and terrified in the back of his mind shrieking at the way everything around him had changed. Had this been how the others had felt? He shook his head, stepping back from the edge and turning to face the other end of the table. He couldn’t freak out yet. Not until he was safe.

There was a distant phone alarm, the generic sort that Thomas had come to resent after using it for his morning alarm for months on end. Virgil felt a chill of foreboding pass over him, and a heartbeat later, he heard the telltale woosh of one of the core Sides rising up next to the table.

Their shadow fell over Virgil, impossibly large, and he bolted.

There was a voice, but he couldn’t pick out the words past the blood rushing in his ears, his own breathing, and the panicked rush of thoughts that came with picking flight. He focused on the jump ahead instead, the length of table ahead of him growing shorter and shorter until he was nearly to the edge, muscles tensed to leap.

The light around him being blocked out was the only warning he got before his view of the world was suddenly cut off. Half a second later, his momentum was halted by a collision with something soft, warm, and alive. He recoiled as sharply as he could, but there were already what could only be fingers curling around him, his stomach dropping as he was lifted clear off the table’s surface, his center of gravity shifting against his will.

If he hadn’t been panicking before, he certainly was now, his breaths coming shallow and shaky, barely bringing in any air as black spots started to dot his vision.

He was in someone’s hand. They could do anything to him, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it, would probably deserve it, but it would hurt and couldn’t they have just let him discorporate--

The low, calm voice that had been rumbling in the background paused for a moment, and then they were moving again, his nausea growing as everything moved too fast around him, like a car someone else was driving but a hundred times worse.

And then, abruptly, there was solid ground under his feet again. The hand opened around him.

Virgil dropped to his hands and knees immediately, pressing his forehead against the table to both quell his dizziness and find something to ground himself. He was hyperaware of the warmth emanating from the hand that still bracketed him on one side, like a shield or a threat.

The Side was still talking, though Virgil still couldn’t quite parse the words. Despite his incoherence, the hand didn’t even twitch, no underlying threat to whatever it was they were saying to him. His breathing settled a bit despite himself. The implied promise that they weren’t going to outright attack him shouldn’t have been so reassuring, but it was.

His head slightly clearer, he slowly pushed himself back up to sit back on his heels, looking up to see who had found him.

It was undoubtedly Logan, though he’d never seen those glasses and tie at such a warped scale before. He could have figured it out earlier, if he’d just been listening; neither Roman nor Patton tended to be so carefully enunciated with their words.

Logan’s words, right. He was counting, which confused Virgil for a moment-- was this an experiment? Something to see how long the local idiot spent caught up in a panic attack when he was supposed to be a survival instinct-- until he caught on to the way Logan’s chest rose and fell along with the numbers. A breathing exercise.

He was kind of surprised, in that pleasant ‘pessimist-proven-wrong’ sort of way, but it figured that the Sides up here would offer even their captive literal time to breathe. He let himself follow along with the pattern for a few more moments before clearing his throat roughly and forcing himself to speak.

“Hey.”

Logan paused, looking down at him. “Hello.”

There was a short, slightly awkward pause, in which Logan seemed to flounder while Virgil refused to apologize for being kidnapped and reduced to doll size, even if he’d just had a completely image-ruining breakdown over it.

“Are you alright?” Logan finally settled on, his gaze piercing as it swept over him as though searching for injuries. “I apologize for not warning you, but I needed to stop you from recklessly endangering yourself. I didn’t intend for my actions to trigger a panic attack.”

“Yeah, who would freak out over some little old thing like being picked up by a giant hand,” Virgil snapped back sharply, his sarcasm coming out a little less biting than usual after such a draining attack. “It’s not like I’m the embodiment of Anxiety or anything.”

“You are Anxiety, though.” Logan shifted, the motion jarring his hand slightly, and Virgil barely managed to contain his flinch. “And as such, I’m surprised that you would entertain the idea of unnecessarily trying to fling yourself off of a considerable height at your size.”

Virgil squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. “Unnecessarily?”

“Clearly? I cannot imagine why your first solution would be to attempt something so risky, though it’s possible I’m missing some vital context,” Logan replied, his face scrunching up slightly in confusion. “Perhaps the others--,” he lifted a hand.

“Wait!” A surge of panic forced Virgil to his feet, but it was too late. The summons registered, and Creativity and Morality wasted virtually no time in rising up, both of them instantly looking to him instead of Logan.

“Anxiety!” they both cried, and they didn’t sound mad, but that didn’t really mean anything, did it?

They crowded forward, and Virgil couldn’t keep himself rigid this time, his whole body jerking back and bumping into Logan’s hand.The mixed signals-- hide versus get away-- left him frozen, cowering under that pitiful defense.

“Anxiety?” Patton tried, and the concern in his voice was enough to convince him to look up and meet the other Side’s gaze. “Are you okay, kiddo?”

“I’m stuck in a room with three giants, what do you think?” he spat automatically, his shoulders hunching up like they could protect him.

Patton’s mouth twisted in a sympathetic sort of way, and he moved to sit, scrunching his body down slightly so that he was more-or-less level with the table. “It’s all kind of overwhelming, huh?”

With a simple glance from the moral Side, Roman followed suit and Logan settled back on his heels, having already been kneeling. Virgil stared between the three of them, his skin prickling with nerves.

Behind him, Logan’s hand moved. Virgil immediately crouched, ducking his head down and lifting his arms in an ineffective attempt to ward off whatever was happening. There was a beat of silence, and when he glanced up, he found that Logan had simply retracted his hand, apparently convinced that Virgil wasn’t planning on a repeat of his escape attempt. Or that the three huge Sides surrounding Anxiety was enough of a cage in itself.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Jack and the Beanstalker,” Roman lied, doing an impressive job of sounding confused and harmless. “You’re not in the Subconscious anymore.”

A bitter laugh bubbled up in Virgil, one that he didn’t bother to stifle. “Yeah, right. I’m not an idiot, Princey. Remus got you all twisted up over what he did and I was an asshole and now you’re paying the favor forward, I get it. You don’t have to lie about it.”

The three of them exchanged complicated glances, ones that admittedly looked more upset and horrified than conspiring, but Virgil refused to buy the act.

“We’re not lying to you!” Roman insisted, making Virgil scoff. Patton’s face started to take on that kicked-puppy cast, and Virgil averted his gaze, feeling hot anger bubble up in him at Patton’s involvement. How was any of this right and moral?

“I live with Deceit, you’re not going to fool me. Just get whatever you’re going to do to me over with,” he forced out, grimacing when his voice wobbled slightly at the end.

“Anxiety.” Logan leaned forwards, meeting his gaze with utmost seriousness. “Perhaps it will help if you understand our motives for your current state. Can you tell me how much you remember from our escape?”

“Remus found us and turned me into a pincushion,” Virgil deadpanned, a hand moving to settle over his gut. He knew now that he probably hadn’t discorporated, but he could still barely believe that there was no pain there. Core Sides could just do that? “And then you three decided to turn me pincushion-sized, I guess. How is that not revenge?”

“It was to save your life!” Roman cried dramatically, looking very put-out. “And to keep you from going back to the Subconscious and my brother, y’know, the guy who was tormenting us for fun!”

“To save my-- we can’t die!” Virgil snarled, pushing his complex feelings about Remus down in favor of twisting the fabric of his hoodie in his hands. “You trapped me up here, no room, no powers, no height, and you expected me to be grateful?!”

“We weren’t trying to trap you,” Patton interjected, looking between him and Roman worriedly. “And we aren’t going to hurt you, I promise.”

Roman, who had drawn himself up in outraged offense, visibly deflated. “Patton’s right. You know he wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.”

Virgil hesitated despite himself.

“The problem of your current stature is one that we know how to fix,” Logan took the opportunity to add, fiddling with his tie. “Once you summon your room to this level of the mind, you will be able to find security and power within it, and we won’t bother you while you recover your lost energy.”

“Woah, woah,” Virgil held his hands up to stall further explanation, feeling thrown off. “Who said anything about putting my room up here?”

Roman raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “What, you want to be that size around a vengeful Remus?”

“I wouldn’t be this size if you hadn’t meddled!” Virgil snapped, scowling fiercely

“We weren’t going to just let you die,” Patton burst out, looking downright distraught. “You saved us. You didn’t want to rise up and you knew it would make your friends upset, but you did it anyhow. It wouldn’t be right, to just… not try to save you back!”

Virgil gaped for a moment, his next prepared retort completely upended. “No, I… that’s my job. Of course I did that. You don’t owe me for it.”

“Anxiety, Roman prevented your discorporation because he wanted to help you. Not to repay a perceived debt,” Logan informed him, his words stiff but genuine.

Roman shot Logan a look, heaving a dramatic sigh before turning back to Virgil. “All of us wanted to help, Gloomy B. Jones. Who wouldn’t choose to revive a party member who nearly perished heroically on a quest?”

In what universe was Roman calling him a hero? Inside his hoodie pocket, Virgil pinched himself, his confusion rising when everything refused to turn out to be a dream. Even a terrible plot twist like that would be more understandable to him than whatever was happening right now.

For that matter, they couldn’t really be implying what he thought they were implying.

“You really want me to pull my room up here. And be a… a core Side.”

Looking from face to face, he found no trace of anger or mockery, only earnestness. A genuine offer. He shook his head, his heart somehow racing even harder.

“What about when I have to do the other part of my job? The part you guys all hate me for?” he reminded them harshly. “I bet you won’t be so keen on my presence then.” He could easily imagine how well that would go over. Could a Side be cast out from both parts of the mind?

Patton shuffled forward a bit, his hands flapping like he wanted to reach out reassuringly but knew that Virgil would absolutely lose his shit if he even tried. “It’s like you said, kiddo. You want to keep Thomas safe, and we want that, too!”

“You’ve more than proven yourself willing to compromise when it counts,” Logan said, and then added wryly, “Statistically, the three of us already spend a fair amount of our time arguing before we come to a decision anyways.”

“Seriously?” Virgil asked, and Logan gestured to the necktie emphatically.

“That’s right! You may be as contrary as your jittery little heart desires, and you’ll still be in excellent company,” Roman piped up, gesturing to himself magnanimously. After a moment, he let the posturing fade into something more serious. “Anxiety, we don’t have to agree on everything for you to deserve better. Won’t you at least give us a chance?”

Virgil scrubbed his hands through his hair roughly, turning away despite his misgivings. Apart from that first incident with Logan, they hadn’t grabbed him, hadn’t even touched him despite knowing that he couldn’t do anything to stop them. At some point between that first disastrous meeting and now, they’d stopped treating him like an enemy.

He’d have to go back down there and explain at some point, but he couldn’t deny that the idea of not being repressed was one that seemed almost too good to be true. Deceit wouldn’t be happy, but maybe this would be the proof they all needed, that separating the Sides and hiding some of them from Thomas wasn’t working as well as they pretended it did.

It could be an opportunity. It could be… good.

“Alright,” he said, turning back to where they’d all been waiting, “I’ll pull my room up. I’ll-- I’ll try. That’s the best you’re going to get.”