#sidneyjames

Schneep woke gradually, trembling and confused; as soon as his mind registered all of the sensations he was feeling, he wished that he could have stayed confused. Every part of his body was stiff and tingling with pain and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t turn over; a vague pressure on his chest kept him in place. Blinking blearily against the green fringe hanging in his eyes, he peered down to see that the weight on his chest was a pile of blankets.

As he turned his head to look around, his stomach turned in the opposite direction, forcing him to slump down and breathe shallowly so he wouldn’t gag. There wouldn’t be much to bring up if he vomited; the last thing he remembered eating was a quarter-helping of potato soup, leftovers from what he had cooked for Marv.

Hot soup in his stomach. He was hungry…

Startling awake a second time, Schneep instinctively flinched away from the fingers touching his forehead, his sharp breath catching in his throat and transforming into a coughing fit.

“Whoa, whoa, hey,” a disembodied voice soothed, the fingers belonging to it brushing at his hair a second time. “Calm down, it’s just me.”

“Jack?” Schneep ventured faintly.

“Nah, bro, s’Chase,” the younger Ego corrected with more sympathy than apology. He finally managed to plant his hand firmly on the doctor’s forehead, though he pulled away just as quickly. “Jeez, Marvin wasn’t lying. You are burnin’ up.”

Schneep blinked at him a few times, echoing blearily, “Marvin…?” Potato soup. Hungry. When had he last seen the magician? He didn’t remember seeing him after the soup.

“Oh, yeah, you weren’t exactly all there for that bit,” Chase recalled, a shadow passing over his features. “Marvin went lookin’ for you about twelve hours ago, but you weren’t in your lab. He looked everywhere else before finding you passed out in here. You were pretty out of it, no matter what he tried…I’ll admit we went to pieces for a while there and then Jackieboy had the idea of grabbin’ Dr. Iplier.”

Groggy as he was, Schneep was having trouble keeping up with all of this new information. “Wh—? Iplier? N-No, you didn’t have to bother the Dr. Iplier…” he groaned, already regretting the amount of trouble they had gone to. Of course he was glad they cared enough about him for it all, but if there was one thing Henrik von Schneeplestein never wanted to be, it was a burden. He definitely wasn’t feeling well enough to rise, but he did his best, propping himself up onto sore elbows and willing them to hold steadily. Chase leapt to his feet with agility that Schneep could definitely be jealous of right now.

“What’re you doing?!” he demanded incredulously, holding his hands out to stop him. “Lie down, would you? You haven’t rested in days!”

Swallowing hard, Schneep detangled his legs from the mass of blankets and swung them over the side of the bed, wishing he could ignore how dizzy the movement made him. “I sleep for twelve hours,” he countered, pinching the bridge of his nose as his headache returned.

“And do you feel peppy and happy again? Huh?” Chase challenged. “Iplier said you have pneumonia! That’s serious stuff, okay? You need to rest!”

“Pneumonia? I don’t think so,” Schneep grunted, without as much confidence as he might have hoped. Gripping the bedside table, ignoring Chase’s incredulous stare, he pushed himself to his feet, only to topple forward as his legs malfunctioned. Instinctively jumping to intercept, Chase nearly collapsed himself as he took the brunt of Schneep’s weight; while he didn’t weigh any more or less than Chase, the younger Ego was still regaining his own strength.

“Ugh, for all of our sakes, don’t be a stup, Schneep!” he complained, steering the doctor back onto the edge of the bed.

Schneep had heard Jack use those words before, he realized as he willed his vision to stop spinning. Clever, but unfair of Chase to pull the creator card on him; he knew how much Schneep cared for their creator and was using his words against him.

Scowling lightly, he countered, “I’m doing better…” Another rebellious coughing fit cut through his reassurances and Chase raised his eyebrows dubiously, planting one hand on his hip and shoving a thermometer in Schneep’s face with the other. Doing his best to stifle the indignation tightening his stomach, Schneep reluctantly accepted it, though he couldn’t resist batting Chase’s hands away after the beep, grumbling around the device that he could look himself.

“…37 °C,” he announced at last, guiltlessly meeting Chase’s expectant gaze.

“Okay,” Chase huffed, unimpressed. “What’s it really?” At Schneep’s startled blink, he offered a bitter half-smile. “C’mon. With my married life, I know when someone’s not bein’ straight with me. Let’s get it.”

“40.2 °C,” Schneep mumbled, as if he hoped Chase wouldn’t hear and would just forget about asking again.

“I need to go tell Jackieboy; he said to let him know if you went above forty again,” Chase told him, pointing an authoritative finger from which Schneep couldn’t help but reel back slightly; his depth perception was a little off. “This one’s called ‘Trusting You Not to Crawl Away While I’m Gone.’ I don’t think you’d get very far anyway.”

With the way his legs were shaking, Schneep couldn’t fool himself into disagreeing. He stayed where he was as Chase disappeared, tightening his hands over his knees. Before he knew it, he was trying very hard not to fall asleep again. He shouldn’t be this tired after sleeping for so long, but by the thermometer’s account, he was generating enough heat to keep himself thoroughly drowsy. Just as he reached that middle state between conscious and unconscious, lolling backwards toward the pillows, he sensed them: cold fingers along the side of his neck and a grating whisper behind his ear.

L͘͝etting ̵y̡̛our g̵͢uard d̴own  ̶̛͢n҉ow?

Hollering hoarsely in alarm, Schneep flung himself sideways, landing in a heap on the floor just as the door opened. Chase made a noise of disappointment as Jackieboy skirted past him, grabbing one of Schneep’s arms and patting his back carefully as he resisted the urge to throw up.

“Bro, I told you not to move!” Chase scolded, throwing his hands up. “Now see what ya did? Your face matches your hair!”

“I heard him,” Schneep hissed in a strangled voice, resisting the nausea to clutch at Jackieboy’s arms. “He was just here…” As the others shared a concerned glance, he sank more heavily against the other Persona in dismay. “Y-You do not believe me!”

“Well, I know Anti can be anywhere he wants,” Jackieboy admitted. “But there’s not much we can do about that except fend him off when he actually makes an appearance we can see.”

“You…” Schneep trailed off, unsure of what to say. Jackieboy took advantage of the silence, pressing the back of his hand against the doctor’s cheek.

“Let’s just focus on gettin’ your fever down,” he suggested, not quite as soothingly as he hoped; even though his mask was back in place, his eyes were troubled. “Anti’s in for a whoopin’ another day.”

Schneep opened his mouth to—what could he do? He wanted to beg for another solution, any kind of reassurance that the Glitch wouldn’t be there with a knife at his throat when he blinked, but there wasn’t any. There couldn’t be any. As he settled back into the bed and Jackieboy rearranged the blankets for him, he did his best to hide his face in them. It was pathetic; he was starting to cry again for no reason at all. This was why he despised being sick; it always made him act ridiculous.

“Aw, no, don’t…What’s the matter? What’d I do wrong?” Jackieboy asked, aghast.

Schneep would have answered that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that all of the blame was on him for being weak and helpless, that he hated it more than they could ever know, that he was more frightened of Anti than he ever had been before—but his throat didn’t want to cooperate anymore. Swallowing bile, he tucked his chin against his chest, wishing he could shrink.

It was then that he felt a gloved hand on his shoulder. He cringed just a little, taken aback by the sudden touch, but then the hand moved to his hair, smoothing it back from his clammy forehead and running fingers through it, and he appreciated that a bit more.

“You did this for me,” Jackieboy pointed out in answer to his unasked question. “Just returnin’ the favor.”

“You do this because you are the hero,” Schneep informed him in a small voice, blinking glassily. “I…I don’t want to be saved.”

“Sure, you do,” Jackieboy countered matter-of-factly, though not unkindly, as he looked for more tangles in his counterpart’s green fringe. For a minute or two the only noise was Chase puttering around the bathroom, cleaning up the mess Marvin had made while searching for the thermometer. Gradually Schneep’s headache started to fade and his breathing evened out as he concentrated on the prospect of warmth…comfort…family.

“Everybody needs to be taken care of once in a while, Doc,” Chase stated as he reemerged to lean against the bathroom door. “Nothing wrong with that.”

Schneep couldn’t really bring himself to believe that, but he didn’t object.

“You can sleep,” one of them suggested; he couldn’t tell which one. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Why was that thought so comforting? Schneep wondered hazily as he started to doze off again.

Maybe he didn’t need to know. Anti had sworn that he would wait, bide his time before trying again. The respite, however brief, was a comfort that Schneep could latch onto, something…brave, loving, and loyal. Most importantly, those last words were true.