They feel darkness closing in, hearing their own voice - voices? - echoed back at them in confusion and fear and rage, and they fist their hands in their ginger hair, collapsing to their knees. The accusations and vitriolic words are oppressive, loud and unrelenting, mixing and pooling and stretching and melting, forming something horrible and at the same time, it is home. The voices stop. They can feel their body shaking but they are unaware - who is shaking, who? - and they curl in, retreat, embrace blankness and seek solidarity. "Tom." "Matt." "Tord." Three voices, say your name, say it so you know you're there. Where is he, the fourth, the leader, the stabilizing force and they can already feel their body pulling, their very minds pulling apart. They want to scream, red and blue clashing like blood and water, lavender streaks flashing like light, the fourth is gone and then- "Edd." All at once he is there, encircling them, a cloud of green as deep and comforting and forbidding as the jungle, but their jungle is their mind with skies of black and creatures stumbling and snarling in the dark, like monstrous copies of their faces, their voices - hunting for weakness and preying on anxiety. They tear them apart like a thin skin. "What is our name," the green force asks, pushing, healing the bonds and putting them back together like a puzzle whose pieces have scattered. They continue to clutch their head, eyes squeezed shut as he brings them in, red to blue to lavender to green, mixing into an amalgamation that is equal parts terrifying and comforting. They begin to uncurl, but not unravel, with hands on their shoulders - voices, others, like them but unlike them. The accusations, the voices, the cruelty of their sharp stinging words; they all subside in the presence of others, others forced together unwillingly but surviving - no, thriving - all the same. Safety in numbers. Safety with friends. They smile, genuine but still cracked. Green fills the cracks, and blue, and red and lavender; whole once again. Wavering, yes, but whole. "We are Tomatoredd," they say with uncertainty. They feel the closeness as they push closer, now no longer four parts but a single solid being, a heartbeat with a steady cadence. He says it again, firm this time. Affirmation. "I am Tomatoredd." ------------------ @bad-idea-factory here's the thing I said I wrote!
