#taost

He’d presented his argument, twisting at the insecurities he knew Thomas needed to mind better, and ultimately was convincing enough (scary enough) that he got his way, even if it meant enduring the nasty and frustrated looks that the others sent his way.

Distracted as he was by the unlikely victory, he hadn’t thought twice before sinking out early like he always did.

It was only once the Mindscape manifested around him— a reflection of the same house layout he’d just stood in with Thomas— that he recalled with a jolt where he’d been standing, and thus where he’d end up in their little constructed world.

The kitchen had a section of counter that was covered in unopened and unsorted mail, and he’d planted himself on top of it because it was better than standing around all hunched over, and also it gave him a few inches to loom over Princey.

‘A few inches’ was an apt way to describe his problem now, one that he could only blame himself for, since he’d been subject to the unique way that the Mindscape affected Thomas’s more repressed sides ever since he’d crossed out of the subconscious. He should be used to this by now.

On Deceit’s half of the Mindscape, all they’d had to deal with was a few extra features to their appearances, ranging from slithery to nightmarish, but here things were different. Getting an inhuman transformation right out of a Disney villain sequence wasn’t enough, apparently, because he also ended up about the size of a mouse.

There was a careful hidden door cut into the front of one stair on the staircase, which Virgil was well-practiced in slipping into. He’d appear in front of Thomas looking totally normal, say his piece, and then sink out before the others and scurry into his tiny room without anyone the wiser.

There was no convenient hidden door on the kitchen countertop that he’d just popped into existence on, only wide open space, towering cabinets, and no simple way down. Dread pooled heavy in his stomach, his hair standing on end as his instincts began to shriek.

Some days, the others would hang around and chat with Thomas or each other for a while, giving him ample time to waltz back into his home.

Today did not seem to be one of those days.

Virgil had just enough time to recognize his situation, go even paler than usual, and then bolt for the ceramic jars lined up against the back of the counter.

They were each labeled with their contents, and he barely managed to slide behind the larger one— flour-filled, apparently— before there was the distinct hum of the others rising up into the kitchen after him.

“—and look, just as I said, the coward flees!” Roman’s voice snapped into existence mid-sentence, sounding worked up in a way that would normally have Virgil glancing over to see how red his face had gotten.

Now, he kept himself pressed firmly between the wall and the jar, his body and especially all his limbs held carefully still.

“I doubt it has anything to do with cowardice.” That was Logan, who hadn’t been particularly invested in today’s crisis one way or another. “Historically, Anxiety hasn’t ever lingered in the Commons after our discussions, regardless of whether or not he was able to affect Thomas.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen him down here a single time,” Patton added on helpfully. “Not even when I sink out right after him. He must anxieflee the moment his feet touch the ground!”

If only his feet were touching the ground right now.

“That’s not the point!” Roman retorted, air whooshing as though he was gesturing expansively with his arms. “I’m saying he’s never around afterwards because he knows that I would run him through for tormenting Thomas so!”

Virgil resisted the urge to wince, knowing that Princey’s katana would practically shish-kabob him at this size.

“My personal hypothesis would be that statements like that are a contributing factor to his avoidance of us,” Logan replied dryly, accompanied by the sound of the fridge opening.

“He thinks we’re going to hurt him?” Patton sounded dismayed, as though Roman hadn’t clearly and literally stated his malicious intentions less than thirty seconds ago.

“Our hypothetical pain is just as imaginary as we are,” Logan offered absently, unscrewing a jar.

“Cowardly, and hypocritical to boot!” Roman announced. “I mean, he can certainly dish it out, but then he can’t take it?”

Virgil scowled. He had never threatened to stab Thomas, thanks. He wasn’t trying to hurt the guy, he was just… making him aware of how much could go wrong. Refusing to let him live in Princey’s little fantasy world.

“Who ate the last of my jam?” Logan asked, the irritation thick in his voice for someone who claimed not to have feelings. “We’ve had this discussion before, and—“

“Oh, we’re imaginary, just summon some more,” Roman replied, a nervous edge to his voice that absolutely meant he was the perpetrator.

“It’s about the principle of the matter—,”

“Oh, so now it matters, but when I get mad about my paintings being color coded—,”

“You can hardly blame me for intervening, the organization of your room was—,”

“I have a delicate and intricate sorting system, and you—,”

The argument continued, big and dramatic and bouncing off the walls enough to make his head ache.

The two of them were so annoyingly loud that Virgil almost missed the way Patton was humming nervously to himself, in the way he always did when tensions were high and he was about to start stress-baking.

… Oh shit, he was going to start baking.

As though summoned by the realization, two sets of fingers wrapped around the flour jar, AKA the only thing between him and discovery.

Virgil froze as it was tugged away from the corner, hoping beyond hope that staying still would prevent any stray eyes from wandering his way. Patton was a total airhead, right? Maybe he would just scoop some flour out and then shove the jar back without even glancing at the wall behind it.

A few feet away, still mid-argument, Roman threw his hands up in exaggerated dismay. The motion felt much, much bigger when Virgil was this size.

Completely against his will, one of his extra limbs twitched nervously.

Like a metal dragged over by a magnet, Patton’s eyes immediately locked onto the motion, and every bit of color vanished from his face.

“SPIDER,” he shrieked, and Virgil immediately bolted with every limb available to him, hands clapped over his ears, his whole mind full of nothing but flight flight flight.

The kitchen descended into chaos instantly, Virgil only registering brief glimpses of it as he scrambled over the counter at full speed, not even sure where he was trying to go other than away.

Patton was hysterical, skipping back and throwing an entire wooden spoon with enough terrified force that it chipped the wall’s tiling where it made impact a few inches above Virgil, all the while chanting ‘kill it kill it kill it kill it’ at the top of his lungs.

Roman had automatically summoned an entire sword into one hand and then a can of hairspray with a lighter taped to it into the other, and was now looking torn between trying to stab a target the size of his finger or lighting half the kitchen on fire with an improvised flamethrower.

Logan took two steps forward, slammed an empty jar over Virgil with enough force that his soul nearly left his body, and said, “I’m not done talking about the jam.”

Silence descended upon the kitchen, Virgil included. He was convinced for a moment that Logan had caught the edge of one of his limbs— human or spider ones— under the jar’s lip, and wasted a long, tense moment waiting for the pain to hit.

When he opened his eyes to check, however, he found that he was entirely intact, the jar having very neatly sealed him off from the world without actually bisecting any of him in the process. Thank fuck for Logan’s precision.

The Side in question was in full lecture mode, taking advantage of the way he’d swiftly halted all the tension in the room to vent his indignation at the very notion of jam theft.

Patton was using Roman as a human shield, looking one step away from outright frothing at the mouth, and Roman was clearly not paying attention at all, instead squinting sideways at the jar. The jar Virgil was trapped in. Uh oh.

“Wait, Specs, what is that?”

Logan looked vexed at the interruption, but his gaze flickered down, no doubt intending to categorize the species at a glance.

Virgil pulled his limbs in closer to make himself into an indistinguishable ball of fuzz and legs, a terrified shiver running down his spine as Logan’s gaze swiftly turned into intrigue.

“I… am actually not certain,” he admitted, leaning over to be more eye level. “I thought it was a tarantula of some kind, but the structure of it hardly looks like an insect at all. Where’s the thorax? The mandibles?”

“Can we tell it mandi-bye?” Patton requested shrilly, peeking over Roman’s shoulder. Virgil flattened himself down a little further, wary of the cartoonish level of violence Patton felt towards anything remotely spider-shaped.

Logan hummed distractedly, fumbling around in a nearby cabinet before pulling out a deep glass bowl. Virgil had exactly enough time to think up a swear vulgar enough to make Remus proud, and then the jar was being slid forward over the counter, and he was pressing his back against the furthest side even as he lifted his spidery limbs up so they didn’t catch.

His motion elicited a little shriek from Patton, and even more curiosity from Logan. Even Roman was studying him with his head tilted to the side, squinting as though that would bring the truth of Virgil’s existence into focus.

At this size, it didn’t matter if he pushed his entire weight in the other direction. Logan’s hand dwarfed him, and so he was unceremoniously slid right off the counter and into the glass bowl. It was held just below the counter, but the impact still knocked some of the breath out of him, and he struggled to flip back to his front as the bowl was set on the counter, his legs twinging slightly with pain.

“It looks almost… humanoid,” Logan murmured from where he was now hovering over the bowl.

Virgil hissed furiously, the noise low and guttural, and backed himself up as far as he could before he started to slide down the curved glass surface.

He knew what he looked like. Apart from the extra four spider legs protruding from his back, he also had eight slit-pupil eyes, a mouthful of fangs, a soft deep gray fuzz covering most of his skin, and fingers that tapered off into a set of wicked inky-black claws. Shadows gently swathed him, which did wonders for keeping his more human features– and therefore his identity– obscured, but didn’t help him escape his current predicament at all.

Sure, he could appear in the real world. But the others would see him disappear here, and besides, he was no Janus when it came to subtle appearances. They could all feel it whenever he rose up, Thomas’s heart rate spiking unmistakably. For all that he called them idiots, he knew they’d put together the pieces with ease, and then he’d be even more screwed the next time he tried to enter the Mindscape.

For now, they didn’t know ‘it’ was Anxiety, and he definitely wanted to keep it that way.

Roman snapped his fingers with an ‘aha!’, drawing Virgil’s attention sharply back to the present. “I’ve got it! It looks like one of those Nightmares, from the dark side!”

Virgil recoiled, a bit offended. It was hardly accurate to compare him with the manifested creatures that wandered the subconscious. They were way cuter! Charlotte, for example, had the littlest mandibles anyone had ever seen, and a surplus of adorable gleaming puppy-dog eyes. She was about the size of a dog, too, now that he thought about it.

“Aren’t those usually, um, bigger?” Patton asked, looking as if he was recalling one of his few experiences trying to venture into the subconscious before a combination of the creatures and the company scared him off.

Roman brushed the contradiction away. “Perhaps, but just look at how singularly sinister that shadowy little sneak is! It’s unmistakably something from their end of the mind, is it not?”

“Perhaps venturing into this side of the Mindscape reduced its power, and by extension its manifested size,” Logan mused, brushing far too close to the truth for Virgil’s liking.

He then proceeded to reach into the bowl, which Virgil liked even less. He flattened himself down and hissed again, flexing his claws in the clearest display of ‘Back off, I will cut you!’ he could manage.

Between one blink and the next, though, a falconry glove appeared over Logan’s fingers. Even as Virgil’s claws sunk into the leather, he didn’t hesitate to wrap his hand around Virgil in a firm but not quite crushing grip.

If all of his instincts had been shrieking before, they’d now reached a pitch that was too high to hear, leaving his mind full of an empty buzzing as he realized just how screwed he was.

“It is humanoid,” Logan marveled, thumb pinning Virgil against his palm as he shifted him around to look at him from every angle. He succumbed to the urge to curl up, his breaths still on the edge of too-shallow. “Some traits are arachnid in nature, while others seem almost cat-like, but there’s a distinctly humanoid spinal structure there as well. What a curious amalgamate.”

“Cat-like?” Patton echoed, sounding bewildered at the idea of something he loved being intertwined with something he loathed.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s totally piquing your nerd interest, but I’m more interested in how it got here,” Roman cut in, inching closer to watch Virgil with a narrow-eyed gaze. “This is no time for the scientific method– We could be facing an invasion of shadow beasts!”

“This is the perfect time for the scientific method,” Logan retorted, still trying to pry Virgil’s limb from the protective little ball he’d huddled himself into. “If you’re truly concerned about the possibility of an infestation, it’s always best to know the nature of the pests you’re dealing with.”

Pests. It was like something out of one of his nightmares, the vivid ones he’d started having as soon as he realized just how much vulnerability being in the conscious mind would entail. He’d always hoped that he’d been overthinking it, his purpose driving him to come up with the worst of the worst case scenarios.

He should have known better than to hope. Janus had been right to try and stop him.

“You’re keeping it here?” Patton asked, eyes wide with alarm. “What if it escapes?”

“I will take plenty of precautionary measures,” Logan reassured him, already shifting the bowl into something more terrarium-like. “It’s not truly a spider, Patton. It might even serve as a useful method of exposure therapy, you could finally overcome that compulsive fear. Regardless, rest assured, it won’t be escaping.”

With that, he set Virgil down in the newly-formed glass prison, and then slid his fingers over the sides of it, encasing it with the sort of metaphysical protection that would prevent even a mental construct from passing through the walls.

Or a Side from escaping to manifest in the real world. His last resort method of escape, yanked away, as easy as that. Virgil hadn’t thought it was possible for his heart to sink even further, but apparently he was wrong, because it felt like all his organs had dropped right to the center of the Earth.

Part One: 

Part Two:

Part Three: