Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all begins because of Prince. Go figure. They’re all having one of their little meetings—they being Prince, Morality, and Logic—while Anxiety curls up in his bedroom and does his best to leave them alone. It’s better that he doesn’t start criticizing Prince’s ideas until after he’s had a few, or else they’ll be too busy arguing to get anywhere, and he wants Thomas to have an idea. He really does.

Because if they don’t have an idea, they don’t have a video. And if they don’t have a video, they don’t have people to watch the video. And if they don’t have people to watch the video, they don’t have a job. And if they don’t have a job, they don’t have money. And if they don’t have money, they don’t have a house, or a car, or food, or anything. And if they don’t have anything, they die. So basically, if Prince can’t come up with an idea, they die.

Seems legit.

But even through his bedroom wall, he can hear them talking, and he can hear Prince’s ridiculous ideas and all of the abhorrent flaws in all of them. He wants to go and point out all of those flaws. Logic’s doing an okay job of keeping Prince in check, but Anxiety could do better. Then again, he could also give Prince creator’s block, and that would be hell for all of them.

Groaning, Anxiety rolls over and slides his headphones on, blasting Fallout Boy at full volume. It drowns out the others’ voices, and slowly but surely relief sinks into his chest. He doesn’t have to deal with their flaws right now. Not yet. He only has to deal with his own, and even that seems easier with music.

And then at last he’s called into the commons and Prince, puffed up and strutting, begins to lay out his ideas. “We’ve narrowed it down to three choices, and Logic insists that we should run them by you before we choose, although I don’t know what good it’s going to do.”

Anxiety bristles, opening his mouth to say something scathing, but Prince barrels on without a single pause to breathe.

“Nevertheless,” he says, straightening his sash, “I appreciate the fact that you’ve stayed away for this long, and I could never deny one of my—my, er, people—”

Anxiety arches an eyebrow.

“Okay, my subjects—”

Anxiety scowls.

“Whatever. I figure you should hear my ideas too, because they’re awesome. Now, our first option is a challenge video. We could—”

“No,” Anxiety says.

Prince whirls around, indignant. “No, no, no, rude. You can’t say that before you’ve heard what I’m going to say.”

“It’s already a bad idea. Challenge videos are cliché. There’s, like, a million of them. Everybody does them. Do you want to just hop on the bandwagon? Is that who we are now?”

“They’re cliché because they’re good, they’re entertaining, unlike some people—”

“Tell him the other ideas before you start arguing,” Logic says. “Maybe this can take less than nine years to figure out if you do.”

Prince huffs. “Fine. The second choice is a day in my life kinda thing—”

“Nope.”

“Are you serious?” Prince straightens his shoulders, scowling. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, for starters, it’s cliché, too. It’s also going to be difficult to make. We’ll have to walk around with a camera all day, and if we want it to be interesting, we’ll have to actually leave the house. That’s terrible on its own, but think about what people would think if they saw you walking around vlogging. They’d think we were narcissistic, and weird, and—”

“And the last idea is a dream analysis,” Prince says, interrupting him.

“A what.”

“A dream analysis.”

“It’s where we record some of our dreams and go back over them to figure out what they mean,” Logic says. “I’ve been researching some of the most common symbols in dreams, and it’s actually fairly interesting.”

Anxiety pauses, mulling it over. Maybe it would be a good idea? Hm—“No.”

“What?” Prince demands. “What? Are you kidding? What could possibly be wrong with that?”

“It’s clic—”

“It is not cliché.”

“It’s been done before.”

“That doesn’t make it cliché.”

“He actually has a point,” Logic says. “Cliché generally means overused, and statistically there aren’t that many dream analysis videos on YouTube. Not from large channels, anyhow. So I think it’s a reasonable idea.”

“It would be cute, too,” Morality says. “And our viewers could get to know us better!”

The three of them pause, glancing at Prince for his next defense—but Prince is staring hard at the wall, a rare expression of intense focus on his face.

“Uh, Princey?” Anxiety says. “That’s a pretty interesting wall there, but—”

“That’s it!” Prince says, spinning and throwing his arms wide. Anxiety jumps at the sudden movement and Prince draws back into himself—consciously or unconsciously, Anxiety isn’t sure. He’s willing to bet on unconsciously, though. Prince doesn’t typically give a shit about how he feels.

“What’s it?” Morality looks around as though expecting something to have suddenly appeared.

“What’s one of the most popular videos we do when we want the viewers to know us better?” Prince says, eyes sparkling, and even Anxiety can admit that he’s kinda sorta stunning when he looks like this, bright and elated and enthusiastic. “The videos with us! So what if we did a dream analysis, but with our dreams?”

Anxiety hesitates, confused, and glances at Logic and Morality. They glance back at him, and to his relief, they both look equally baffled. Prince is watching them expectantly, but his broad smile is fading as their silence stretches.

“Well, Roman, that sounds like a fantastic idea,” Morality says finally, beaming at him. “Only, only, um—well, kiddo, I don’t have dreams.”

“Neither do I,” Anxiety says.

“Nor I,” says Logic.

Prince stares at them, and now he looks as confused as they were moments prior. “I—you don’t have dreams? At all?”

Morality shakes his head. “Nope. Sorry, bucko. That’s your thing. But hey—Thomas still has dreams, right? Your original idea was really good.”

“But—but you guys don’t have dreams? You’ve never, ever had one in your entire lives?” Prince asks. When all three of them respond in the negative, he rests the back of his hand against his head. Anxiety thinks he might be about to swoon. “How do you—how can you not—I don’t understand.”

“We don’t either, Mr. Melodramatic. Chill. Let’s just get back to arguing,” Anxiety says.

“Do you even know what dreams are?” Prince asks.

“Of course,” Logic says. “They’re experiences generated by the unconscious mind, most commonly during an REM cycle. Theories vary as to why, but most researchers concur that dreams may help to integrate emotions and memories into our subconscious. Of course, there is also speculation that dreams are symbolic—which is what we should be discussing now, actually, if we want to get anywhere with a dream analysis video.”

“Yeah, but—” Prince drags a hand down his face. “Dreams.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Anxiety says, sighing. “Listen, I guess the dream analysis idea is fine. It sucks, but at least it’s better than the other two. Call me when you’re done having a crisis and you want me to nitpick the video script.”

With that, he slinks back to his bedroom. There he gets a solid two hours of peace before there’s a loud, demanding knock on his door. Oh, he wonders who that could be.

“What do you want, Princey?” he calls, not looking away from his phone.

“I have an idea,” Prince says, his voice mercifully muffled by the door. “Come listen to my idea.”

Anxiety frowns. “You never want me to listen to your ideas.”

“Anxiety,” Prince says, his voice a whine. “Come on. This one’s really good. Even better than most of my other ones, which is saying something, because all of my ideas are the best.”

Rolling his eyes—Prince is such a toddler sometimes, honestly—Anxiety rolls off of his bed and opens the door. “What?” he asks, putting on his best scowl.

“So I was thinking—”

“That’s never good,” Anxiety says, voice laced with sarcasm.

“—that if I touched you guys while you were sleeping you could dream.” Prince actually smiles at him, as though he genuinely thinks that’s a great idea.

“You’re kidding, right?”

And there goes the smile, falling away into Prince’s familiar why do I bother with these peasants expression. “No, I’m not kidding. I wouldn’t do it with you, of course, because you’d just have nightmares, but—”

Anxiety doesn’t flinch at that. (But he might wince a little.)

“—you’re the one who knows the most about what’s dangerous and what’s not, so I thought I would run the idea by you before I tried it with Logic and Morality,” Prince says. “I’d be sleeping in their beds, I think, so I wanted to know if you thought it would mix us all up too much.”

“You know what I’m going to say,” Anxiety says grimly.

Prince’s eyes jump away from his, but not before Anxiety sees the disappointment in them. “Yes,” he says, after a pause. “Of course I do. Forget I asked. It won’t be affecting you, anyhow, and I doubt it will do any real harm to Thomas, if he’s sleeping.”

“There’s nothing I can do to stop you?” Anxiety asks.

“Not unless you tell me you think I’ll be killing us.”

Anxiety hunches his shoulders and keeps his mouth shut.

“As I thought. Well, thank you anyway, I suppose. Goodbye.”

Anxiety shuts the door behind him and leans against it, glaring at his bedroom floor. What a stupid idea. He’d bumped hands with Morality last week, reaching for the salt shaker on the kitchen table, and it had taken him ten minutes to shrug off the absurdly optimistic feelings that pervaded him. Just brushing up against each other gets them all mixed up, so he can’t imagine what it would be like to sleep together. Not that he wants to imagine that. Not that he wants that. At all. Ever.

(Only he kind of does, a little bit.)

(A lot.)

At least Thomas will be asleep for Prince’s experiment, Anxiety supposes. And it’s only Logic and Morality and Prince who’ll be screwed over, so it’s not like it matters to him. What does he care? They can do whatever they want in their spare time, and if that involves mingling their separate aspects, then hell, why not?

He doesn’t care.

(He really, really does.)

He goes to sleep that night brooding on Prince’s idea—did Logic and Morality agree? Are they sleeping together tonight? Are they dreaming together tonight?

If he’s honest, he is interested in dreams. They’re fascinating. He’s been privy to a few of Thomas’, when he’s been stressed out, but he’s never had any of his own. And, if Prince’s vehement denial was anything to go by, he never will. Whatever. If they’re something Prince controls, they can’t be that cool.

Morality’s exuberant chatter the next morning does very little to support that idea, though.

“It was so cool,” Morality says, chewing enthusiastically on a waffle. His eyes are bright and sparkling, and something unfamiliar curls and coils in Anxiety’s chest as he talks. He thinks it might be envy. “I went to sleep with Prince, and then all of a sudden I was in this house. It was kind of like a mix between Thomas’ house and the mindscape, but it was all orange and yellow.”

“That sounds nonsensical,” Logic says.

“It was,” Morality says, swinging his legs and beaming. “It was totally ridiculous. And then we went into the kitchen—Prince was there, too—and made waffles with powdered sugar and sprinkles, which is why I really wanted waffles this morning! But when we went back out of the kitchen, the rest of the house had become a castle.”

“My fault,” Prince says, through a mouthful of cereal. He swallows, then adds, “But it was pretty awesome.”

Morality nods earnestly. “It was. There was gold everywhere, and bowls of fruit, and lots and lots of tables—”

“I thought you’d left the kitchen?” Logic asks, looking bewildered.

“We had. I guess this was a dining room or something. And there was this big fireplace and this big chair, so me and Prince sat in it and cuddled. It was wonderful!”

Anxiety scoffs. “Sounds boring.”

“It wasn’t. It was like being awake but anything could happen,” Morality says. “It was so cool. Dreams are so cool.”

Prince lifts his chin and preens. “It was pretty cool, wasn’t it? Logic, do you want to try tonight? For science?”

Anxiety leaves before he hears Logic’s answer. Something is boiling low in his chest, and he thinks that if he doesn’t get away and stop listening to their utter delight with each other he’s going to explode. He hides away in his bedroom again, breathes into his sheets until he feels safe and closes his eyes.

He sleeps again, but he doesn’t dream.

He doesn’t fucking dream.

He wakes up more frustrated than he was when he fell asleep. Energy hums through his body, and he knows he’s got to do something with it before it turns into anything more destructive—like, say, a panic attack.

He takes a walk through his realm of the mindscape. The path forms itself under his feet, and he lets it lead him where it will. He walks for an indeterminate amount of time—he thinks it might be two or three hours before he finally feels settled and hops back to his bedroom. Once there, he finds himself able to relax, if only for a short while.

Then it’s nighttime, and he can hear the other sides going through their evening routines—showering and brushing teeth and Prince’s singing and their low voices overlapping each others’. For a brief second, he wonders what it would be like to be with them.

Well, that’s a distant dream, anyway.

He sleeps, and he tries not to think about whether or not Logic is dreaming tonight.

The next morning, however, it’s all the others can talk about.

“It was a fascinating experience,” Logic says, and even his eyes are twinkling. “It was like a game. Prince and I were in a room and we had to figure out to escape. There was a puzzle, but it was a word puzzle—which I could have solved easily, mind you—but we couldn’t read it. Did you know you can’t read well in dreams?”

“Really?” Morality asks, leaning forward. “That’s so cool. What did you do to get out?”

“Well, we actually did something quite advanced,” Logic says. “We manipulated the dream to make a door.”

“Dream control,” Prince says. “Logan can do it. Congratulations, Logan. It took me years to learn.”

“Ahh, that’s awesome!” Morality says. “I wanna do that. Can I do that, Roman?”

“I don’t see why not. We could practice some more tonight,” Prince says, and goddamn fucking shit he winks.

Anxiety stops eating breakfast with them after that, but it doesn’t let him escape completely from their stupid talking—I dreamed this and I dreamed that and tonight I’m going to try to dream this and yada yada yada. He loathes it. Dreams are stupid. They don’t matter. They’re unnecessary.

(Like him.)

“And then, Anxiety, you were there in our dream,” Morality says, one day, when he’s managed to cross Anxiety’s path despite Anxiety’s efforts to avoid that exact thing. “We were arguing about something—I don’t even remember what—but we were having so much fun. And then you and Prince got into a pillow fight and you tore open one of the pillows and there were feathers everywhere— do we even have feather pillows?—and Logic made us clean them all up, which sucked, but then we all got to cuddle so that was great.”

“Really great,” Anxiety says, unamused, glancing over Morality’s shoulder to the kitchen and wondering how easily he can get there without bumping Morality. “Can you…?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, bud.” Morality hops out of the way, light-footed and earnest, and Anxiety slips past him without another word.

Prince catches him a few days later when they have the misfortune to make lunch at the same time. “You and Logic solved a puzzle together last night,” he says.

“No. We didn’t,” Anxiety says, slathering peanut butter onto a piece of toast.

“Well, you didn’t. It was more like Logic and his perception of you—I must admit, of the various Anxietys that have appeared in our dreams, his is the most accurate. Mine is the cutest, of course.”

“Keep it in your pants, Prince Pervert. I don’t want to hear about your wet dreams.”

“‘course not,” Prince says, and he doesn’t look the slightest bit flustered. Dammit.

But that brings a burning question up to the forefront of Anxiety’s mind, and it gnaws at the edges of his thoughts as he slips out of the kitchen and leaves Prince behind. Do—do they share dreams like that? Are they—are they fucking each other now? Just in their dreams, or…?

As though to rub salt in that particular wound, and to confirm his pathetic fears, all three of them begin sleeping together in Prince’s room. He can hear them there, bickering and laughing before they sleep, and that horrible, awful well of envy surges up in him again. He swallows it down—it’s a bitter, cold taste—and refuses to acknowledge why he feels it.

He doesn’t want what they have.

He would only cause nightmares, after all.

Although, it is some consolation that, evidently, they have nightmares without him, too. “We were trapped in the same room as we were during my first dream,” Logic tells him once. “Only this time I couldn’t figure out how to make a door, and none of us could read the puzzle. We were all terrified that we were going to be stuck there forever, and the walls began constricting, but then you appeared.”

Anxiety snorts. “Your fear summons me, ye cowards.”

A smile flickers around the corners of Logic’s mouth. “So it would seem. You pointed out a back door that none of us had noticed—you are very good at finding ways out of difficult situations, you know, although it would have been much nicer if you had actually been there, rather than merely a figment of our imaginations.”

Anxiety feels a flinch bite at the muscles in his shoulders and arms and suppresses it. There’s no need to let Logic see how much his stupid comment hurt. He can’t dream with them, he knows that, so why does Logic’s taunting still sting? “Yeah,” Anxiety says. “Sure.”

“No, I’m serious. If you would like to dream with—”

God, why doesn’t he just rub it in a little more? Anxiety shakes his head, and Logic, mercifully, snaps his mouth shut. Their conversation drifts to safer, more meaningless topics, until they can make their awkward goodbyes and go their separate ways.

Anxiety wants that to be the end of it. He can swallow the fact that they’re, to all appearances, in a relationship. He can swallow the fact that they’re all dreaming together. He can swallow the fact that he’s not.

At least—at least he thought he could.

But he sees them getting closer over the next few months. He sees them snuggling on the couch. He sees the kisses Prince presses to their cheeks. He sees the gentle, curious way Logic holds their hands. He sees the warm hugs Morality bundles them up in. He sees them making doe eyes at each other, wide and wondering and unbearably fond.

He sees them falling in love, and he hates it.

(It, not them. He could never hate them. Never in a million years.)

And then, one day, his hate and his envy and his (miseryterrorlonliness) isolation catch up to him.

Of course they do. They always do.

Chapter Text

The other three are working on the script for a new video—not a dream analysis, thank god, only a Q&A—when Anxiety slinks through the commons to get to the kitchen because he’s starving, dammit. But they can’t just leave him alone when they see him, can they? They have to chatter at him like a flock of senseless birds, so consumed with their own happiness they can’t be bothered to consider his.

“Morning, kiddo,” Morality says, waving happily at him. “The script should be done this afternoon if you wanna go over it with us.”

“Cool,” Anxiety says, even though it’s really not. He doesn’t want to go over the script, doesn’t want to be around the three of them any longer than he has to, doesn’t want to mar their happiness, their relationship, their whatever the fuck it is.

“Can you meet us here around one?” Logic asks, glancing over at him.

“No.”

“Oh—well, then, what time would work—”

“I was being sarcastic, Einstein. Get with the program.” Anxiety’s voice is sharper than it should be. Their banter isn’t fun anymore, he realizes. That—that wasn’t fun.

It hurt.

And, judging by the startled look on Logic’s face, it didn’t only hurt Anxiety, either.

He probably would have backed off after that. Mumbled some shitty apology and gone to wallow in self-loathing for a while because his stupid emotions do not give him the right to hurt others. None of them owe him anything—not their kindness, not their dreams, and certainly not their love—so he has no right to expect it of them and to lash out when he doesn’t get it.

But then, he always has been a piece of shit, hasn’t he?

He’s not so much a piece of shit that he’s going to stick around and insult them anymore, though. Not when they’re not having fun. Not when he means it.

So he turns to go, and that should have been the end of the story. Would have been the end of the story, had a certain knight—excuse him, prince—in shining armor not felt the need to come to Logic’s rescue.

“What is up with you, man?” Prince asks, pushing his laptop off of his knees and onto Morality’s so he can stand up. “You’ve been acting like a total jerk lately. Even jerkier than usual, which is honestly really saying something.”

Anxiety bristles, folding his arms across his chest and clutching his own elbows with a white-knuckled grip. He should say something self-deprecating, make a joke of it all like the uncaring asshole he is, but—but he’s angry, all of a sudden, and this is Prince. He’s always been able to lash out at Prince, so he rolls his eyes and sneers and says, “Oh, piss off. It’s not me who’s been acting like a jerk, it’s you guys.”

“How the hell have we been acting like jerks?” Prince asks, stepping over Logic’s legs to face Anxiety. They’re less than three feet apart now, only a couch separating them. Anxiety’s heart bubbles with a sickening blend of fury and fear. He doesn’t want Prince to be this close to him. He doesn’t want Prince anywhere near him. (But—but maybe if Prince were to hug him, or press a kiss to his forehead, or—or nothing. That’s never going to happen.) “You’re the one who’s been slinking around and avoiding us for the last three months.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Anxiety mutters.

“I do too,” Prince says. “So why don’t you tell—”

“Roman,” Morality says, and when Anxiety looks he’s giving Prince fucking puppy-dog eyes, shoulders down and head tilted and god Anxiety kind of wants to cry. Why won’t Morality look at him that way? Why can’t he be—be one of them, whatever them is? Why—

Why is he such a self-centered, envious bastard? They’re happier without him. Why can’t he just accept that and move on? Why does he have to be so angry about this? Why does he have to feel so—so lonely?

“No, Patton,” Prince says, shoulders drawing up into a stiff line. “It’s annoying when he’s acting like this—like a narcissistic bastard who’s got his head so far up his own ass he can’t tell when we want him around.”

Anxiety grinds his teeth. “You never want me around.”

“Of course we do. I thought you knew that. I thought we had, like, a thing,” Prince says.

“A thing?” Anxiety narrows his eyes.

“Yeah,” Prince says. “A thing. An arguing thing. You come out here and argue with us and we have fun. That’s how it’s always been.”

“I still argue with you.”

“It’s not like it used to be.”

“No,” Anxiety says. “It’s not. But that’s not my fault, is it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Prince’s hackles are all the way up now, too. That’s fine. Anxiety’s ready for a real fight if it gives him an excuse to get rid of all these terrible, too-big emotions writhing in his chest.

“It means that ever since you’ve started—started dreaming together or whatever the fuck it is you do, the three of you are the ones with ‘a thing.’ It’s all you ever talk about and all you ever do. ‘Oh, I dreamed that I made out with Prince last night,’ and ‘Oh, I dreamt about dating you guys,’ and ‘Oh, I dreamed that Anxiety wasn’t here.’ Well aren’t those just fucking dreams come true.”

This last ends on a snarl, the words tearing his throat as they leave him. His skin feels hot and flushed, his hands shake, and there’s a monster rearing its ugly head in the forefront of his mind. He hates it. He hates this, he hates it, but most of all, he hates him.

He’s just a stupid fucking nightmare.

The three of them are staring at him now, wide-eyed and silent. He’s shut them up. For once in his goddamn life, he’s managed to shut all three of them up at once. What a feat. What a fucking feat. He pulls in a deep breath, feels it tremble in his mouth and throat and lungs.

“Anxiety, if you—what the hell are you saying? Are you—are you jealous or something?” Prince asks the question as though he doesn’t already know the answer. Hell, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s only Anxiety who’s blown this whole thing out of proportion.

When Anxiety answers, his words are spat like acid, and they taste just as sour. “No. Why the fuck would I be jealous? Have you given me anything to be jealous of? All you guys do is kiss and cuddle and fuck, why the hell would I be jealous of that? I’m doing just fine without all of that shit—actually, I’m doing great. Watching you guys is like watching a goddamn romantic comedy. I’ve having the time of my life over here.”

And maybe—maybe if he had been anyone else, maybe if he had been a person instead of a side, he could have actually been fine. Sure, their rejection would have hurt for a while, but he could have moved on. There would have been other people to move on to. But here—here, trapped in the mindscape as he is, there is no one else.

They are the only people he has, and they don’t want him.

He deflates suddenly, all of the anger washing out of him on a wave of shame and—and exhaustion. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He doesn’t want to feel this way anymore. He’s just making everyone miserable. They’re going to have to live with each other for the rest of their lives, so they may as well just get on with it. Fuck how Anxiety feels.

“Allow me to rephrase Roman’s question.” Logic’s voice is calm. Anxiety’s eyes flicker to his, and Logic looks back, steady and piercing, until Anxiety finally has to tear his gaze away because Logic’s is pulling him apart. “Jealousy is considered to be the fear of losing something you have already obtained, whereas envy is wanting something you have not yet obtained. Would you consider your emotional state to be more akin to envy than jealousy?”

Anxiety stares hard at the floor, at the shadow he casts on it, bulky and dark. Should he deny it? Probably. It he going to?

No. Not anymore. What does it matter if they know how he feels? He’ll be disregarded either way.

“Oh, Anxiety, no.” Morality is looking up at him with wide, heartbroken eyes. “Kiddo, no. We never wanted—”

“I know.” Anxiety’s voice sounds dull even to his own ears. “You’re so sorry, you never wanted to make me feel this way, but—but that’s your right. You get to make your choices about who you spend your time with, and if it’s not me, that’s fine. You’re allowed to do that. I shouldn’t be throwing such a fit about it. So—so I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Let’s just forget about it.”

Some weary, too-hopeful thing is cracking inside of him, shattering into little irreparable pieces, because he’ll never have what they have and now he’s sure—he’ll never have their unconditional love, he’ll never have their little kisses and warm words, he’ll never share their dreams. He’s the bad guy, right? Bad guys don’t get happy endings.

His eyes suddenly feel hot, and there’s a lump growing in his throat. Prince is staring at him with unmasked confusion, Logic’s gaze has darkened and turned away from him, and—and there’s the gleaming gloss of tears in Morality’s eyes.

He hurt them. He hurt them again. He’s always hurting them.

So he does what he always does—he takes the coward’s way out and runs. He doesn’t even bother bolting back to his room, although it’s just down the hallway, but sinks down and pops back into existence on his bed instead. He locks his door without getting up, twisting around what control he has over the mindscape to flip the bolts.

And then, in the safety of his solitude, he sobs.

He claws at his pillow, gasping in breath after miserable breath. Snot floods his nose, tears slick his cheeks and stick the ends of his hair to his jaw. His whole body shudders with the force of his sorrow—his pathetic, envious sorrow. He squeezes his eyes shut, feels hot tears force their way out and drip onto his pillowcase and trail their way down to his mouth. He tastes salt. He tastes sorrow.

And then there’s a knock at his door.

“Anxiety?” Logic’s voice, solid and steady. “Can we come in?”

He breathes and swallows his sobs and breathes again. “No.”

He doesn’t want to—can’t—face them now. Not like this. Not when he’s acting so horribly and they’re only going to pity him and send him away again. Not when he’s just going to hurt them.

“Okay,” Logic says. He sounds sad. God, Anxiety’s managed to make even Logic feel sad. “Okay, just—we want to talk, whenever you’re ready. We can wait.”

And they do, goddamn them. When he pulls himself together—when he scrubs dried tears from his cheeks and settles his breathing and fits all the broken pieces of his heart into some semblance of functionality—and drags himself from his room almost six hours later, they’re all still sitting in the commons. He doesn’t want to talk with them. He doesn’t want to look them in the eyes.

But even he knows that he can’t avoid them forever, much as he might like to. They are, quite literally, separate parts of a whole. If he were to turn away from them completely, it would ruin Thomas, and that—

That is something he will never do.

So he pulls himself together as best he can and prepares to face their condemnation. It is nothing less than he deserves. Guilt is a vice around his chest even as he thinks it. He’d snapped at them, he’d insulted them, and that’s something they will never deserve, no matter how he feels.

It’s some consolation that Morality will want to let him down gently, at least, and Logic will ensure that it’s a straightforward conversation, unmarred with too many emotions. Prince might be a problem, but what’s new? And maybe, just maybe, after all is said and done (and what a small and powerful hope it is) things will go back to normal. They can all have their own happiness, separate from his, but maybe he will be able to get over it. He’s Anxiety, right? He was built to destroy relationships, so surely he won’t pine over one forever.

Surely.

When he enters the commons, they’re curled up together on the couch, murmuring amongst themselves, but when they notice him they fall silent. He is grasped with the sudden and violent urge to retreat, despite his determination, and he almost does—but then Morality beams at him and—and that makes everything a little softer and safer. He stays.

“Hey, kiddo,” Morality says. There are wet, red rings around his eyes and Anxiety hates himself. “Can we talk?”

Anxiety steels himself, nods, and perches on the back of his armchair, hugging his knees to his chest and watching them all with wary, tired eyes. “Sorry for snapping earlier,” he says, voice rasping unhappily in his throat. “It won’t happen again. I think if we all just—just ignore what happened we can forget about it and get back to normal. For Thomas.”

“Before that, I’m going to ask a question,” Logic says, folding his hands together in his lap and staring hard at the interweaving of his fingers. Anxiety wants to reach out and runs the pads of his fingers over Logic’s knuckles and—and nothing. He can’t think like that anymore. He won’t. “Please answer as honestly as possible and understand that, whatever you say, we will—we will care for you no less.”

Anxiety doesn’t respond—they care about him at all?—but Logic doesn’t seem to need him to, because he carries on when his pause is met with silence and he asks one awful, dreadful question: “Do you want to be in a relationship with us?”

Anxiety freezes. No jumps to the tip of his tongue, cramming itself up against his teeth in its hurry to get out, but he bites down on it, because it’s not—it’s not exactly true. Is it? What does he want?

(To dream with them.)

(To love them.)

(Is that a relationship?)

“I—I don’t know,” he says, and the words are terrifying in their obscurity. What does he want? What does he want?

(What can he have? He didn’t think he could have anything and he certainly doesn’t deserve anything, but—but he’s a selfish bastard, and if they’re offering he knows he’ll take it, regardless of what’s best for all of them.)

Logic nods, and the other two don’t freak out, and that’s—that’s good, right? They’re probably disgusted and furious, but at least they’re keeping it from him. He doesn’t think he can handle their insults right now, although that’s terribly hypocritical of him.

But then the silence stretches for a moment, and that’s too much. He can’t stand it.

He backtracks.

“That’s not—I mean, I don’t want—I don’t care. I don’t care about your relationship or whatever the hell it is. I guess I just want us to be the way we used to be,” Anxiety says. That’s okay, right? That’s better than I don’t know, which is kind of like maybe, which could eventually be yes, and what a horrible position that would put the other three in. Nobody would want to be in a relationship with him. “Before you guys started dreaming.”

Logic pauses, then meets his eyes. “That may be difficult. The three of us have no plans to terminate our relationship or to stop dreaming together. If there’s anything else we can do to make you feel more comfortable, however, please let us know.”

That’s not—that’s not what he meant, but he can’t fault Logic for not knowing that, when he himself doesn’t exactly know what he wants. He wants normal? Normal? What’s normal, now that the three of them are all together?

God, he hates it when things change.

“Anxiety,” Morality says, his voice soft. “What we’re trying to say, is—is that we would like you to be in a relationship with us, but only if that’s what you want. Don’t make your choices to please us, but know that if it would make you happy, we would be delighted to have you.”

Anxiety’s breath stutters in his chest. Are they serious? They can’t be serious. “What?”

“We want to love you, Anxiety.” Prince leans forward, every bit of him open and earnest and inviting in a way Anxiety has so rarely seen. “We want to hang out with you and talk with you and—and dream with you, but only if that’s what you want. If you don’t do sex, that’s fine. If you don’t want us touching you or dreaming with you, that’s fine. If you don’t do the whole romance thing, that’s fine too. We just—we just want to love you, in whatever way makes you the happiest. We don’t want you to be sad anymore.”

“I’m not sad,” Anxiety says. It’s the only thing his mind seems to be able to latch onto at the moment. What Prince is saying is impossible. It has to be impossible.

“Hey, bugaboo.” Morality’s eyes are wide and unbearably tender when they meet Anxiety’s. “It’s okay to feel sad.”

Anxiety’s breath comes in stumbling, hitching gasps. They can’t be serious. When are they going to pull the rug out from under him? When are they going to start laughing? Oh, gee, Anxiety, we really had you going there! “You said—you’d want to dream with—with me?”

“Of course,” Morality says.

“Certainly,” Logic says.

“We would love that.” Prince, for a moment, almost looks—looks hopeful. “I thought we had been fairly obvious in our advances, but perhaps I overestimated our abilities.”

“But you said—you said that I would cause nightmares,” Anxiety says, his voice cracking. “You said.”

“Nightmares?” Logic asks, frowning.

“Nightmares.” There’s horror dawning in Prince’s eyes. “I—oh, shit, Anxiety, I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean it that way.”

Anxiety stares at him, confused and conflicted and tearing at the seams.

“I—I thought that since you reacted so badly to my idea you were scared of dreaming,” Prince says. “And I thought that if I gave you dreams they would be nightmares, and I didn’t want—I didn’t want to put you through that. I was upset at myself, not you, because I couldn’t give you good dreams.”

“What do you mean?” Anxiety asks, voice wavering.

“I mean—I mean that because you do contain a lot of Thomas’ negative emotions, if I were to share dreams with you there’s a high probability that they would be nightmares, and I’m just not—not strong enough to control others’ dreams.” Prince’s shoulders slump with something like defeat. “But! But if you shared a dream with all three of us, I doubt even you would be strong enough to turn it into a nightmare.”

Anxiety stares at him, trying (and failing) to choke down the hope rising in his chest. He could dream with them without—without fucking them all up? He could—he could share what they share? They want him to?

No. No, that’s impossible. They can’t want him. Nobody wants him.

But—but—

“We can try tonight,” Logic offers. “All four of us. If you don’t like it, we never have to do it again. If you do like it, then—then we can figure out where to go from there. If you want.”

Anxiety twists the drawstrings of his hoodie around his fingers, swallowing hard. Some terrible, frightening blend of emotions is building beneath his ribcage—hope and denial and beneath it all fearfearfear. He opens his mouth to speak, although he has no idea what he’s going to say, or what he could say, and what comes out is a tiny, timid, “Really?”

Morality’s face crumples and he makes one of the saddest sounds Anxiety’s ever heard. He opens his arms, making grabby hands at Anxiety and saying, “Yeah, really. C’mere. If you want. If you like hugs. I wanna—but only if you want, I mean.”

Anxiety hesitates—a hug? He’s not good at hugging. He’ll probably make Morality uncomfortable. But—

But he kinda really wants a goddamn hug.

Prince scoots over and pats the space between himself and Morality on the couch. “Come on. Even if you don’t want a hug, you can sit here and watch Steven Universe with us. There’s also lasagna in the oven. It’ll be done in like half an hour.”

Lured by the idea of food and TV (and company, alright, fine, he’ll admit it) Anxiety cautiously lowers himself to sit between Morality and Prince. As soon as Anxiety’s given him the okay, Morality curls around him. He loops one arm around the back of Anxiety’s neck and winds the other over his stomach, twisting to the side and swinging a leg across Anxiety’s lap. Anxiety’s not quite sure if it’s a hug or an attack maneuver, but—

It’s nice. It’s really nice. Morality nuzzles into his hair, humming happily, even though Anxiety’s certain he can’t see the TV when he does. Prince keeps a respectful distance between them, although he keeps darting glances at them instead of the TV screen and Anxiety’s not blushing, okay? Definitely not.

After a couple episodes have played, Logic serves out their dinner and manages to nudge Morality off of Anxiety, saying, “Patton, dearest, Anxiety doesn’t need to be get crushed whilst he eats. Here—yes, it’s alright, we can hold hands. Settle down, pay attention. Look, this episode has Sadie in it.”

Anxiety, fed and warm and surrounded by, impossibly, the other three sides, finds himself momentarily content. He knows that the feeling will disappear quickly. As soon as this last episode is over, he’ll peel himself away from them and hide away in his room again. He’ll think about what horribly terrifying thing he’s going to do tonight. He’s going to dream with them, and that’s—that’s wonderful and awful at all at once, and he can’t help but wonder what he’s really gotten himself into.

But for now—for this brief, impossible moment—he feels almost hopeful. He feels as though, for once, things might work out okay. It’s an aburd feeling, but he finds himself enjoying it, savoring the overwhelming idea that things could be good for once in his life. If he can just get this right, if he can just dream with them without fucking everything up, maybe he can be—be happy.

So, predictably, everything goes wrong.

Chapter Text

Anxiety pries himself away from the other three after dinner, mumbling excuses, and they let him go. A part of him wants to think that they don’t try to make him stay because they understand—he needs space to breathe, time to think, and he won’t get that around them, much as he wishes he could.

A larger part of him knows they don’t try to make him stay because they don’t care. They want him gone. They always do.

But they said they wanted to love him, they said—

He grits his teeth and shoves away that silly optimism. Morality had been careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact while they were—were cuddling, holy shit, they cuddled—but for some reason, Anxiety still feels strange and unlike himself. He still feels as though he could be happy, if he really tried. (But then he doesn't want to try, and what an ugly feeling that is. He savors his misery, guards it away because it’s his and it’s one of the few things nobody can take from him, and that’s just pathetic.)

Anxiety spends the rest of the day pacing a hole into his floor, pushing down that stupid happiness and instead focusing on the fearful, sour energy bubbling in his chest. What is he doing? What if he fucks up and gives them a nightmare? What if he scares them more than he already does? Then they’ll really hate him.

But on the other hand—what if he doesn’t? What if they all actually like dreaming together? What if they all like him? What if they’re serious and they really want to love him and tonight works out and they do?

No. That’s another fanciful thought—get rid of it.

But then it’s almost nine o’clock, and where the fuck did the rest of his evening go? Time seems to have moved faster, shoving him brusquely towards his inevitable fate, and oh god why did he agree to this he’s going to die. His heart thunders a familiar, too-fast tempo in his chest, and sweat springs up on his palms and the back of his neck.

He runs through his evening routine for what little comfort it gives him. He showers, brushes his teeth, carefully reapplies his eyeshadow, bundles himself into his hoodie, and feels ridiculous all the while. It doesn’t matter what he looks like. It’s not like they’re having sex. They’re not even going to kiss. Right? But—but still. He’s going to be sleeping with them, so he should at least smell good, shouldn’t he?

Oh, who is he kidding? They’re going to hate him no matter what.

He stalls for as long as he can, flicking through his social media and examining himself critically in the mirror, but he knows that if he waits too long they’ll come looking for him, and that will be worse. So he summons what little courage he has and goes to Prince’s room. He knocks tentatively, and the door is flung wide open by Morality.

“Hey, kiddo. It’s great to see you,” he says, beaming and ushering Anxiety inside. “We’re just finishing up the script. Wanna look over it before we sleep?”

Anxiety can do no more than agree—he’s in their bedroom, trespassing in their relationship, so there’s no way he can say no to something they want to do—and Morality leads him to sit on Prince’s bed, an enormous affair complete with heavy red blankets, gold tassels, and a canopy. Prince and Logic greet him politely, both of them already leaned back into the utterly absurd mound of pillows at the head of the mattress.

When Anxiety comes to sit next to them, folding himself up stiffly on the far corner of the bed, Logic hands him the laptop. “This is what we have so far,” he says. “What do you think?”

Criticizing is something safe, something familiar, and Anxiety jumps at the chance to do it. They spend the next hour poring over the script, rearranging scenes and reconstructing dialogue until even Anxiety’s demanding standards are momentarily satisfied. At eleven, Morality declares them done with work for the day and snaps Logic’s laptop shut, setting it on the bedside table.

“Wanna watch Sense8 with us?” Morality asks Anxiety. “It’s what we usually do before bed, but if you’re already tired, we can skip it.”

“Skip it?” Prince straightens his back, affronted. “We were at a good part.”

Morality levels him with A Look.

“But I suppose that if it would trouble Anxiety too much, we could skip it this once,” Prince says, sighing.

“By which he means that your comfort is of the utmost importance to us, and that if you would rather go to sleep at once, we will certainly oblige you,” Logic says.

“Yes.” Prince fixes Logic with a baffled look. “Is that not what I just said?”

“Certainly, dearest. So, then, Anxiety, would you prefer to watch Sense8 or sleep?”

“We can watch Sense8,” Anxiety says, hunching his shoulders and staring hard at the smooth red of Prince’s blankets. He doesn’t want to fuck up their nightly routine—and in truth, he’s not that tired, yet. He’s used to staying up far later than this.

So Morality curls up next to Prince, and Logic sprawls out beside him, and Anxiety—Anxiety scoots closer to the headboard but doesn’t lay down. They watch a couple of episodes, and to Anxiety’s surprise, by the time they’re all ready for bed, even he’s tired. Morality’s eyes are already half-shut, and he murmurs sleepily when Logic nudges him under the covers. Anxiety watches the tender care Logic moves him with, and it makes something simultaneously warm and envious twist in his chest.

That warm and envious thing is quickly startled away when Prince asks, “Would it bother you too terribly much if I took my shirt off? Not to improve my appearance, of course—I look quite dashing in my pajamas, although I’m also dashing outside of them—but it’s easier to maintain skin-to-skin contact throughout the night if there’s, you know, more skin showing.”

After nearly choking on his spit, Anxiety manages to force out a rather squeaky-sounding, “I don’t care.”

As Prince strips off his shirt, Anxiety’s more than glad that he remembered his foundation, because he can feel a blush burning behind it. He definitely doesn’t oogle Prince for a brief second. Definitely not. After tossing his shirt into the far corner of the room, Prince flops down in the middle of the bed, making a show of yawning enormously.

“Are you ready?” Logic asks, looking at Anxiety.

Anxiety hesitates and Prince lifts the blankets and pats the space next to him. “C’mon. Sleepy time.”

Moving slowly and gingerly, as though any one of them could suddenly snap at him, Anxiety lowers himself to lie next to Prince. Logic moves to curl up on the other side of Morality, near the opposite edge of the bed, and then pauses. “Logistically,” he says, “how is this going to work? We all have to touch you, Roman.”

“Like this.” Prince rolls over, curling himself around Morality and resting a gentle hand on Logic’s neck. “And then—Anxiety, yeah, you’re gonna have to get closer.”

Cringing—this has to be the most awkward thing he’s done in his life, and that’s saying something—Anxiety scoots over until his arm brushes Prince’s bare back. The skin there is warm and soft and oh, god, he’s going to die of embarrassment, this is it, this is how he goes.

And then—then he feels it. A cool, powerful rush of something unfamiliar and foreign and—and Prince. It settles itself throughout him, and for a moment he feels his fears stutter to a halt. Is that confidence? Is that what confidence feels like, crisp and bold and strong? Beneath that first overwhelming rush of it, though, there’s something else—something energetic and untamable. That he recognizes—has some of it himself, in fact, albeit a twisted version of it—creativity.

“That’s good,” Prince murmurs, and—and yeah, Anxiety thinks it just might be. “Night, everyone.”

“Goodnight,” Logic says.

Morality mumbles wordlessly, and Anxiety bites his tongue. He shouldn’t say goodnight. That’s for their group, not him. He’s been allowed into their room, into their bed, into their dreams, but he’s not foolish enough to think that he’s been allowed into their relationship yet, and if anything goes wrong tonight, he certainly won’t be.

That should be terrifying. He should feel sick with fear. But—but with that pleasant, addicting thing called confidence settling into him, he doesn’t. He closes his eyes and he breathes in without being afraid to breathe out, and he’s okay. He’s going to be okay. They’re all going to be okay, after tonight.

When he wakes up, he’s trapped in darkness. For a moment, he lies completely still and quiet. What happened? Did they dream? He reaches out, feeling for Prince’s back, but his hand meets empty air. Where are they? Did they leave him? Or did he imagine the entire evening? Was he ever in bed with them?

Now that he thinks about it, this doesn’t feel like Prince’s bed. It doesn’t feel like his, either. It feels like—like a couch? He fumbles to stand, blinking rapidly as though to clear his vision. Where is he? The living room? He stumbles across the floor, groping blindly for a wall. His palm meets wood, and he runs his hand across it until he finds a light switch. He flicks it on.

He’s in the commons. That’s weird. Why would he fall asleep in the commons? And if he did, why does he have such a vivid memory of falling asleep in Prince’s bed? (He stolidly ignores the sting that comes with the idea that he didn’t fall asleep in Prince’s bed.)

Frowning, Anxiety rubs his eyes and moves towards his room. It’s still dark outside, so he might as well go back to sleep and try not to think about how hopeful his little, fucked-up imagination had made him. Why had he thought about going to bed with the others? Is he really that desperate?

When he gets to the end of the hallway, he notices with some confusion that his door isn’t there. What the fuck? He’s sure he went the right way. He rubs his eyes again and glances back down the hall and—and where did the others’ rooms go? There are no doors in this hallway.

His heart begins to pick up, and he pulls his phone from his pocket—that’s a mistake. The clock at the top of the screen makes absolutely no sense. There should be numbers there, right? He blinks, squints, rubs his eyes. The gibberish on his screen does not resolve itself. He unlocks his phone and looks, baffled, at the nonsense in front of him. His app names are meaningless and his notifications might as well be written in Greek for all he can understand them.

What is happening?

And then, in a flash of memory, he hears Logic’s voice. Did you know you can’t read well in dreams?

Oh, oh my god— is this a dream? That’s so weird. Of everything he thought a dream could be like, he didn’t think it would be like this. It feels just like being awake, only everything is subtly off and, well, he can’t read. But if this is a dream, then where are the others? Prince, at least, definitely has to be here.

Curiosity momentarily overriding his fear, Anxiety stuffs his phone back into his pocket and moves back to the commons. “Prince?” he calls, his voice echoing strangely in the house. “Logic? Morality?”

“Try again, Roll Call,” a familiar voice says from the far side of the room. Anxiety jumps and spins around to face it. “I’m sure they enjoy your nagging.”

“Who are you?” Anxiety asks. Shadows obscure whoever—whatever—is speaking to him, and it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. Sudden, senseless fear is working its way into him as he looks at it.

“I wonder.”

Two dark, malevolent eyes stare at him from the shadows, and in a wrenching second, Anxiety knows— he knows even though the thing is a monster, a demon, a freak, he knows— “You’re me.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Did I make you up? Are you—are you one of those figments of imagination Prince talks about?” Anxiety asks, attempting to peer into the shadows to see himself.

“Sure. Although, I do believe you’ll find me less…benevolent than the others’ figments. See, this isn’t a dream. You know what it is. You knew what it was going to be, and you did it anyway.”

“It’s a nightmare,” Anxiety says, his voice suddenly falling flat. “Of course it is.”

“Of course it is,” his nightmare says, its voice high and mocking. “Of course it fucking is. You knew it was going to be—you knew, you knew, you knew, and you dragged them all into it. Oh, they’re really going to hate you now.”

Anxiety curls into himself, self-loathing rising like bile in his throat. “I didn’t mean to,” he says, but the defense is weak to his own ears.

“Didn’t mean to. You didn’t mean to. What a worthless excuse. Actions matter, not intents. Oh, you can claim to love them all you want, but you never really do. If you loved them, you wouldn’t drag them down with you. You’d let them go on and be happy, even if it tore you apart. But because you had to be a selfish piece of shit and force yourself into their relationship, into their dreams, they’re out there suffering now.”

“I don’t—I didn’t—I can stop it.”

“How?” his nightmare demands. “How are you going to stop it?”

“I’ll—I’ll wake up, I’ll—”

“Go on. Do it.”

Anxiety looks wildly around himself. He has to wake up. He has to wake up so the others don’t suffer through this nightmare with him. But how? How? Desperate, he curls his fingers into claws and rakes them down his own arm. It stings, but it doesn’t throw him back into the real world. Something else, he needs something else—“I don’t know how, I don’t—”

“Of course you don’t know how. You’re an idiot. You walked into this unprepared and now you’re going to pay the price—and so are they.”

“No, no, they don’t deserve to pay for what I did. You have to let them go.”

He sees the flash of a smirk and it’s achingly familiar—it’s bright and haughty and it reminds him painfully of every time he’s looked that way towards the others. “Why? Am I doing a bad thing?”

“Yes, you are, you fucking are.”

“Well, now, that’s not fair. I’m just doing my job. And if my job’s a little shitty, hey, so what? You do the exact same thing.”

“What? No, I don’t, I—” But he stutters off, running his fingers through sweaty strands of his hair. He does do that, doesn’t he? He does. His job is to cause fear. He’s as much of a monster as this nightmare ever will be.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? You and I are one and the same. We’re both shitty people doing shitty things and trying to convince ourselves otherwise. What a tragedy.” The dark humor in his nightmare’s voice suggests that it doesn’t find this very tragic at all. “Oh well.”

“What do you want?” Anxiety asks, desperate. “What do I have to do to get this over with?”

“Mm, let’s see: suffer for about seven or eight hours and I’ll consider letting you wake up.” His nightmares flashes him its wicked grin again. “In the meantime, enjoy yourself.”

The shadows rear their ugly heads, whipping into a frenzy around his nightmare, and Anxiety lunges forward. “No, no, wait—”

But his nightmare is gone, and he is alone again. He drops to his knees, breathing hard and trembling. What is he going to do? He doesn’t matter, but to have the others suffering because of him, it’s—

It’s a nightmare.

But maybe his nightmare was lying, right? How can it have control over the others? What if it’s just saying that to freak him out? He’s the one who always tells Prince that dreams aren’t real, and a nightmare is a kind of dream, so nothing that happens here can really hurt him, and—

And that’s when the crying starts.

He hears it distantly, at first. Weak, gut-wrenching sobs. He wants to cram himself into a corner and clap his hands over his ears and pretend that he’s fine, but he—he can’t. He has to know. There’s some inexplicable, powerful thing pulling him forward, deeper and deeper into this awful place.

So he follows the sound back to the hallway, dread curdling in his heart, and—and Morality’s door has reappeared. With a sinking, awful feeling in his stomach, Anxiety moves to stand in front of the door. The crying is louder, now. It’s definitely coming from inside, and that’s—that’s intolerable. Nothing can be allowed to make Morality cry, real or not.

But what if it is real? His nightmare isn’t real, but it still freaked him out, so what if Morality’s facing his own nightmare? What does it matter, that their nightmares aren’t real? They are, and that means that they can still be hurt—maybe not physically, but emotionally? Yeah, definitely.

So—so they really are in danger, and that means it’s time for Anxiety to go to work.

Despite his determination, shudders work their way down his spine as he throws the door open. Whatever’s hurting Morality, he has to stop it. He’ll face any goddamn monster, demon, or devil—he’s fear, but beyond that he is self-preservation, and the vein of steel that runs through him demands nothing less than for him to lay down his very life (were that possible) to save the other parts of himself.

But when he enters the room, there’s nothing there—nothing but Morality, curled up in a corner and sobbing his heart out. He doesn’t look up when Anxiety enters. He doesn’t even move. He only continues to sob, tears sticking messily to his face and wobbling precariously on his chin. His breath is coming in uneven gulps, and—and—

Morality’s ribs are broken open like a cracked cage. There’s something sticky and black and wrong where his heart should be.

“M-Morality?” Anxiety asks, his breath lodging in his throat. Suddenly it doesn’t matter what’s real and what’s fake because Morality is hurt, Morality is suffering, and oh god oh god oh god. “Patton? Oh, god, are you okay?”

Morality doesn’t respond, and Anxiety drops to his knees in front of him.

“Pat? Pat, Mo, come on, please. Talk to me. What’s—what’s wrong, what can I do, what do I do—”

Morality looks at him, then, eyes wide and wet and bloodshot. “You,” he says, his voice a weak rasp. “You did this.”

Anxiety recoils, horror shredding his heart. “What? No, I never—”

“You ruined my heart.” There’s something in Morality’s eyes that Anxiety has never seen before—something horrible. Something hateful. Then he flicks those eyes over Anxiety’s shoulders, glancing towards his open door. “You’ve ruined his head.”

Anxiety whirls around, eyes wide. Logic is standing in the open doorway, a book clutched tightly in his hands.

“I can’t think,” Logic says, accusation glittering in his eyes. “I can’t think.”

Revulsion snakes down Anxiety’s spine and twists around his ribs until he thinks they might snap, just like Morality’s. The top of Logic’s skull has been shattered, leaving a gaping maw of the same black wrong that was in Morality’s chest. It drips in oily globs through Logic’s hair, gluing the strands together, and trickles down his face to curl around the angles of his jaw.

Gasping for breath that just won’t seem to come, Anxiety scrambles away from the both of them. “No, I didn’t—I didn’t do that, I didn’t—”

“You did,” Morality says. “Lying isn’t nice, Anxiety.”

“I didn’t mean to do that, I didn’t want to.”

“Actions,” Morality says, and Anxiety hears the rasp of the nightmare’s voice behind his words, “not intentions.”

Anxiety runs his fingers through his hair and yanks savagely at it. He wants to bolt, he wants to run and hide and stop looking at what he’s done, but he can’t. He can’t leave them. He has to witness their suffering, if only to punish himself with it later.

And then—then he hears Prince’s voice. “Anxiety?”

After that he does bolt, although he’s certain he’ll return to Morality and Logic as soon as he’s seen what misery he’s wrought on Prince. He skids to a stop in the hallway and sees Prince standing there, sword drawn. Oh, god.

But it’s what he deserves, isn’t it?

“How could you?” Prince asks, voice shaking with fury. That sick black wrong dribbles from his mouth, coating his teeth and his chin. “How could you do this to us?”

Anxiety bows his head and shakes. “I’m sorry,” he says. It feels like the only thing he can say now. He has no defense. He has hurt them, and he deserves nothing less than Prince’s absolute wrath. It is an irrefutable truth.

He hears the sound of Prince’s footsteps as he draws nearer. Thump, thump, thump. He can see those heavy black boots in his mind. He can see them spattered with his own blood after Prince slits his throat. Is his blood red? Or is it that awful, thick black goop inside of the other sides?

He supposes he’ll find out.

“Stop!” Prince’s voice, a whiplash crack, and—and behind him? “Get away from him!”

He hears the clash of swords, metal shrieking against metal, and the thunder of boots against the floor. He tears his gaze from the floor in time to see Prince and—and Prince squaring off against each other. Their eyes are bright, their shoulders straight and chests heaving, mirror images of absolute wrath.

As though by some silent signal, the two of them lunge at each other again, colliding in front of Anxiety. His nightmare’s Prince—the one with black liquid foaming in the corners of his mouth—immediately swings his sword at the other Prince’s legs, but Prince jumps backwards and feints a swing towards the left. When Nightmare Prince twists to deflect the blow, Prince kicks a leg out, hooks his boot behind his opponent’s knee, and pulls forward.

Nightmare Prince’s leg buckles beneath him, and he quickly pushes his sword out to the side to keep it from impaling himself. His eyes feverishly bright, Prince jumps at the opening, lifting his sword up and driving it remorselessly towards Nightmare Prince’s undefended back. At the last second, however, Nightmare Prince rolls out of the way and stumbles into an unbalanced crouch. Before Prince can react, Nightmare Prince springs forward, slamming the tip of his sword into Prince’s thigh.

Prince howls, stumbling backwards, and his sword drops some. Fear leaps into Anxiety’s throat and he moves forward. He has to help, he can’t let Prince be hurt, he can’t—

But—but he isn’t hurt. Prince pauses for a moment, eyes wide and staring at his injured leg, but there’s nothing there. There’s no blood, no injury, and Anxiety watches as a delighted grin spreads across Prince’s face. “Ha!” Prince says, eyes sparkling victoriously. “This is my dream, and you can’t beat me.”

Prince moves forward, slamming his sword down before Nightmare Prince can retreat. Nightmare Prince’s sword blocks the blow, but it sends him stumbling again, crashing into the wall. Eyes blazing, Prince presses his advantage, pushing the flat of his sword against Nightmare Prince’s to keep him from striking.

“Get it? This,” Prince says, his voice dropping into a rough and terrifying rumble, “is my dream. You do not belong here, and you never will.”

And Nightmare Prince, he—he quails. There’s terror in his eyes.

“You will leave us alone, or I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Nightmare Prince nods, trembling hard enough that Anxiety can see it.

“Do you understand?”

“I understand.” Nightmare Prince’s voice is a weak, horrible rattle. “I understand, yes, I understand.”

“Good.” Prince moves backwards, lowering his sword with what Anxiety thinks is a ridiculous amount of confidence. “Then go.”

Nightmare Prince vanishes in a flurry of shadows, and for a moment Anxiety and Prince are frozen, staring at the place where he’d been. Then—then Prince is dropping to his knees beside Anxiety, and Anxiety sees the glint of light off of metal. He flinches, and Prince drops the sword and kicks it towards the wall. Fear is creeping back into Prince’s eyes, even though Nightmare Prince is gone.

But why? He can feel fear because he’s touching Anxiety outside of this nightmare, that’s right, but why is he scared now? What’s—

“Anxiety? Oh, god, are you alright? Look at me, here, let me see.” Prince nudges Anxiety’s chin up, looks frantically at his throat and his chest and his limbs and Anxiety stares at him, confused and terrified. “Okay, I think you’re alright. You’re not hurt anywhere, right? Anxiety? Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

Anxiety’s teeth are chattering, he realizes. Huh. That’s—that’s weird. He doesn’t feel cold. His mind moves as though it is cold, though, sluggish and uncomprehending. What’s happening? Why isn’t this Prince attacking him for getting them into this fucking mess? “I—you—what are you doing?” he asks.

Prince stares at him for a long moment, then lunges forward and engulfs him in a tight hug. Anxiety tenses, half expecting a blade to be driven through his stomach. When there’s no sudden pain, however, he feels something different flood through his body—relief. Oh, god. Prince is here. Prince is here and Prince isn’t mad and Prince isn’t hurting him and oh, god.

A sob catches in his throat, and he brings his arms up to clutch Prince back.

“Shh, shh, Anxiety, it’s okay, you’re okay. Easy, relax, there you go. That’s it.” Prince rocks them on their feet, running a warm hand over Anxiety’s spine. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Shh-shh-shh.”

Anxiety’s fingers grasp convulsively at the back of Prince’s shirt, just as mind is grasping at the concept that Prince is alive and safe and here. “I’m sorry,” he says, through his tears. “I’m sorry, Prince, ‘m so fucking sorry—”

“No, no, no,” Prince says, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Anxiety’s head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Absolutely nothing.”

“I f-fucked up. I ruined your dream and your relationship and your lives and I—”

“Woah, you did nothing like that,” Prince says, attempting to pull back so he can meet Anxiety’s eyes. Anxiety presses closer, hiding his face in Prince’s neck. He can’t look at him. He can’t. “Anxiety, look at me.”

Anxiety makes a miserable noise and refuses. He can’t meet Prince’s eyes—not after he’s fucked everything up so terribly. Not after he’s acted like such a worthless coward.

“Anxiety.”

“What?”

“Can you look at me, please? I’m not mad, or upset, or anything. I’m just glad you’re okay, so let me see those pretty eyes, huh? Let me see how you’re feeling.”

Anxiety wants to refuse again, but—but there’s something soft and worried in Prince’s voice, so he takes a deep breath and braces himself and meets Prince’s eyes. They’re nothing like they were when he was fighting Nightmare Prince. All of the terrible, angry things have fled his gaze, and now there’s something warmer and kinder and—

And Anxiety doesn’t want to think about what it could be, or if it could really, actually be meant for him.

“You didn’t ruin any of that stuff, okay? Not our lives or our relationship or anything,” Prince says, cupping his face. “You made it better.”

“The dream?”

“Okay,” Prince says, smiling ruefully. “Maybe not the dream. But hey, we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”

Anxiety scrubs a hand over his watering eyes. “Good part?”

“Yeah. We just have to get rid of this nightmare and—”

Nightmare. Oh, god. “Prince, the nightmare, it’s—it’s a monster, it planned all of this, we have to get away before it finds us,” Anxiety says, looking wildly around them. Where is it? Is it coming for them? Prince had managed to get rid of Nightmare Prince, but Nightmare Prince had just been a figment, and the actual nightmare has to be something more, something incredibly powerful, in order to control all of the other figments this way. “It’ll separate us, it’ll hurt Morality and Logic again, it’ll—”

“Hey, easy, easy,” Prince says, running a thumb over Anxiety’s cheek. “Morality and Logic are fine. What you saw were just figments. And if any monster shows its face around here, I’ll protect you. That’s my job.”

“No it’s not. Protecting people’s my job.”

“Ah, you’re right.” Prince smiles at him. “Inspiration’s my thing. Well, I’ll inspire the monster to get very far away from us, ‘kay?”

Anxiety almost wants to laugh—almost. “‘Okay, but now—”

“Well, isn’t this just heartwarming?” His nightmare’s voice curls around him, cold and poisonous. “You just keep putting your friends in danger, Anxiety.”

Anxiety freezes, his heart stuttering in his chest. Oh god, oh no, oh no no no—

“Oh, yes,” his nightmare sneers. “We’re going to have fun now, aren’t we?”

Chapter Text

Anxiety freezes at the voice—no no no no this can’t be happening— and Prince holds him more tightly, looking warily around them. The hallway is swallowed in shadows, the air cold and heavy, and Anxiety can’t see the nightmare anywhere. He shivers helplessly—what if it’s going to lunge at them out of the darkness? What if it rips Prince from his arms? What if it—

“Poor lil’ Princey,” his nightmare says, its voice bouncing hollowly off of the walls, and Anxiety hears the rasp of its footsteps against the floor as it nears them. His breath comes in shallow, panicked gasps. “He just wanted to have a nice night with his boyfriends, and you had to butt in. He only extended the offer to dream with you to make you feel better and stop acting weird, you know?”

“That’s not true,” Prince says—his voice is firm, but it isn’t angry. Not yet.

“Is it not? Then why did you wait so long to offer? You were hoping he’d just accept the fact that you guys didn’t like him and move on. When he didn’t, you did what you had to do to be polite. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll have to tell him that it just won’t work out. Nightmares are pretty miserable. You wouldn’t want to suffer through them every night, would you?” his nightmare says.

“We won’t have to, after we’re done with you,” Prince says, lacing his fingers with Anxiety’s, picking his sword up, and standing. He doesn’t pull Anxiety to stand with him, so Anxiety huddles next to his legs and doesn’t stop shivering. He hates this, he hates it so, so much. Prince doesn’t deserve to put up with Anxiety’s stupid nightmare.

“Such confidence.” His nightmare’s voice drips with malice, and the shadows in front of them shift and coalesce into a dark silhouette of—of Anxiety. Its teeth and eyes flash as it grins and says, “You can’t get rid of me with brute force alone, you know.”

Anxiety can almost hear the smirk in Prince’s voice when he says, “Who said anything about alone?”

“I did. Anxiety’s certainly not going to help you, I don’t believe Morality and Logic are anywhere to be found, and you, so far as I can tell, don’t know how to destroy by using anything other than arrogance and a sword. So, yes: the only weapon currently at your disposable is brute force. Alone.”

“Humor me for a minute,” Prince says. “You made the figments, right?”

“I did. Although, if you think about it, Anxiety made me, and I made the figments, so in all actuality, Anxiety made—”

Prince holds up a hand. “Woah, woah, back up a minute, Mickey Grouse. You’re telling me you’re the one who made that weak-ass figment I just defeated?”

“I—well, technically, Anxiety—”

“No, no, no, you, big guy. Did you or did you not make that figment?”

“Well—I did. Mostly. And it wasn’t weak, it was—”

“No, you’re right. My apologies. It wasn’t weak at all. In fact, it’s one of the stronger figments I’ve met,” Prince says. “And I defeated it. That’s kinda weird. I’m totally awesome, but like I said, I can’t control others’ dreams. I can only participate, and participating usually doesn’t involve actively altering them by creating or destroying figments, so I have to think that something’s changed.”

“Something?” the nightmare asks. “Something’s...changed?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Prince scuffs his nails on his sash and examines them nonchalantly. “And the one big difference between this dream and any of the others I’ve had is obviously Anxiety. So I think I’ve figured it out. I felt fear. Ha—I knew that figment couldn’t hurt him, but I still freaked out, and guess what?”

The nightmare rumbles warily, the walls shifting. “What?”

“Fear made me braver—well, perhaps selfless is a better word. Imagine that, me being selfless! But I was so terrified for Anxiety that I forgot to think about myself and I fought the figment and I won. I never could’ve done that before. Except—except I could, y’know? I just never knew it because I never had a real reason to know it. But you, buddy, you’ve really opened my eyes. This dream isn’t yours. Hell, it’s not even totally mine. It’s ours.”

The nightmare snarls, and Anxiety squeezes his eyes shut. He feels Prince’s fingers tighten around his.

“That means I can control this dream, which is wicked cool. It means I can do this—” Prince snaps his fingers, and the wall beside them twists and bends into a portal of dark blue light, out of which steps—

Steps Logic, whole and healthy and—and powerful. Anxiety feels the nightmare shudder when it sees him.

“It’s about time,” Logic says. “It was really irrational to keep us waiting so long merely for the sake of dramatics, Roman. I thought we agreed—”

“—and this,” Prince says.

This time it’s the ceiling that opens onto a lighter blue portal, and—and down falls Morality, crashing into the floor and yelping.

Prince pauses. “Oops.”

“Oops,” Anxiety breathes, wondering whether or not he should worry about broken bones in a dream. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Hey, man, I’ve never done this before. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, he’s fine. You’re fine, right, Patton?”

Rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, Morality sits up and looks around. “Fine and dandy as ever. I gotta say, though, your revelation of sudden dream-controlling abilities has me floored.”

Anxiety’s—Anxiety’s not sure whether he wants to laugh or cry.

Unfortunately, his nightmare prevents him from doing either. It cackles, the sound ricocheting horribly around them. “Are you serious?” it asks. “You think you three are going to defeat me? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Maybe we can’t defeat you entirely, but I think we can take you down a few notches,” Logic says, helping Morality to his feet.

“Indulge my curiosity for a moment—how the fuck do you plan on doing that?”

“Easy.” Logic adjusts his glasses. “We’re going to argue. You love arguing, right?”

“Obviously. And what are we going to argue about?”

“Anxiety.”

“What about him?”

“We love him.”

Anxiety freezes in Prince’s arms, and he hears his nightmare cackle. “You’re kidding, right?” it says. “You’re fucking kidding. That’s ridiculous. Look at him.”

Logic glances in Anxiety’s direction, and Anxiety curls into himself. Fear feels like it’s choking him, pressing down on his ribs and tightening around his throat. What do they see when they look at him? Someone worthless, someone cowardly, someone—

“I’m looking,” Logic says, “and I love him.”

“Me too, me too,” Morality says, beaming. “He’s adorable and nice and good!”

“And I love him, as well.” Prince reaches down to ruffle Anxiety’s hair.

Anxiety is—is—he doesn’t know what he is, he only knows that whatever he’s feeling keeps his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and his heart hammering. They’ve said they wanted to love him, but now they’re—they’re saying they really do love him, and that’s—

“Impossible,” the nightmare says, scoffing. “He’s unlovable. What you feel must—must be pity. I will concede that he is pathetic enough to garner that emotion from you.”

“Why?” Logic asks.

“Why what?”

“Why is he unlovable? Why is he pathetic?”

“Lots of reasons,” his nightmare says, and it actually sounds fucking rational. “He’s, hello, Anxiety. He causes constant fear and stress. He ruins Thomas doing it, too. If you cared about Thomas at all you would hate Anxiety, naturally.”

“Don’t you dare suggest we don’t care about Thomas,” Prince says, stepping forward. “All of us do—all four of us. Anxiety’s the one who protects Thomas. He’s the one who makes sure Thomas keeps himself safe. Maybe he can be a little bit overzealous, but that can be worked on. It’s definitely not enough to make him unlovable. I don’t think anything could be enough for that.”

“Oh, but I haven’t even gotten started yet.” The hallway expands, the walls bleeding away into the darkness, and the nightmare starts to circle them—its eyes are predator’s eyes, bright and focused and hungry. The other sides move to surround Anxiety, forming a protective circle. “He’s also horrible at communication and social interaction and emotional control. That makes him worthless in any sort of relationship.”

Morality frowns, folding his arms over his chest. “Now, that’s not true at all, and it’s not a very nice thing to say, either. He’s not the best at any of those things, but he’s not horrible at them, and even if he was, that doesn’t make him any less loveable.”

“No, no, that doesn’t, but once you’ve started loving him he’ll fuck you up because he’s not good at any of that stuff. He’ll ruin your relationship, he’ll make you all jealous of each other, and then you’ll break up with him—or worse, with each other,” the nightmare says. “He’ll ruin your whole relationship.”

“Wrong,” Prince says. “Sure, we’ll have issues—but that’s on all of us, not just Anxiety. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Relationships are seldom easy. They require hard work and dedication and compromises and—and lots of difficult stuff, but look at us. We’re all totally awesome, so don’t you dare think that we can’t pull this off if all of us want to—if all of us are willing to try.”

The nightmare sneers. “Spoken like a true romantic. Fine—even if all of that were true, why would you want to be in a relationship with him? There’s nothing good about him. He’s ugly—”

“Incorrect. Besides the fact that beauty is merely a social construct,” Logic says, folding his arms across his chest, “I appreciate the way Anxiety looks. Very much.”

“—and personality-wise, there’s nothing attractive about him. He’s always complaining, he’s constantly sarcastic, he’s bitter and cowardly and—”

“No, no, he’s brave and selfless and he’s always nice,” Morality says, and there’s something like genuine anger growing in his eyes. “Stop saying those things about him.”

“Nice to you, maybe, but what about the other two? He’s always so hateful towards them.”

“Again, incorrect. We may argue sometimes—” Logic begins, but the nightmare is quick to interrupt him.

“Sometimes? Sometimes, seriously? How about all the goddamn time? You can never agree on anything. I don’t see why you want to put up with him.”

“Because we love him!” Morality shouts, his hands curling into fists. Anxiety stares at him, torn between terror and the need to help because Morality is furious, and that’s—that’s wrong, that’s bad, that means something dangerous is happening and Anxiety has to fix it. “So stop being so mean and leave him alone!”

The nightmare falls silent. The darkness around them trembles. For a moment, Anxiety thinks that maybe, just maybe, they’ve won. For a moment, he can breathe without shaking. For a moment—

And then the moment passes, and the nightmare snarls—a low, horrible sound from all around them—and says, “No. He belongs to me. He always has and he always will.”

The darkness swells around them, pressing in, pressing down, pressing pressing pressing. Anxiety feels it wrapping around him, crushing him, tearing through his thoughts and flooding his mind. With it comes panic, surging in hot and cold flashes that make his entire body shudder. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe he can’t breathe hecan’tbreathe—

they hate you you’re worthless you’re always causing trouble just look what you’ve done

He claws at the ground—is it the ground? Everything is black. Which way is up, which way is down?

how could you be so cruel so selfish if you had just settled none of this would’ve happened and now you’ve hurt them and they’ll never love you nevernevernever

He’s drowning. The darkness is pooling in his throat, his chest, his stomach, and he’s never going to be able to escape it—nevernevernever.

nobody could love you look at you weak and pathetic all you can do is wallow in your own self-loathing you selfish awful thing everyone hates you

Bile rises in his throat, hot and sour, and he’s choking on sobs and spit and gags.

logan hates you patton hates you roman hates you thomas hates you i hate you

Then there’s a rush of air in front of him as Prince’s sword cleaves through the darkness around them. It’s not enough to drive it away completely, but it is enough to allow Anxiety to breathe. Then he hears it—a distant, startled cry. Logic.

His breath is stolen again immediately, and he scrambles to his feet. “Logic?” he calls, his voice raw. He can’t see the others—there’s only Prince, pressed up beside him and shivering, and the darkness. “Logic, where’s Logic, where’s Morality?”

Anxiety hears Morality’s frightened yelp from somewhere in the distance and then—then there’s silence. Oh god oh no no no fuck no—

“He can’t even protect them, he can’t do anything right—” his nightmare snarls.

“Logic! Morality!” Anxiety shouts, running his hands wildly through his hair and moving into the darkness.

“Anxiety, wait,” Prince says, setting a hand on his shoulder. “They’re—”

The darkness closes in again before he can finish, and Prince whirls to face the foremost part of it, driving it back with his sword. He’s panting, his eyes wild, and Anxiety hates it, he did this, this is his fault—

“Monster!” The nightmare’s voice is shrill and all-consuming, wrapping itself around Anxiety’s spine and pulling tight. “Look at what you’re doing to your friends!”

Prince whirls around desperately, dropping his sword and racing to Anxiety’s side. He takes Anxiety’s face in his hands, drawing his attention away from the darkness that thrashes furiously around them. Anxiety tries to pull away from Prince, to turn and look—he has to see the darkness, he has know— but Prince doesn’t let him. “Hey, no. You’re alright,” Prince murmurs. “Let me take care of this for a minute. Let me take care of you.”

Anxiety swallows hard, hears his throat click and tastes leftover bile on his tongue. He brings his hands up, wraps cold fingers around Prince’s wrists, and—and breathes. Just for a minute. Just a minute. Then he’ll be back to fighting—a never-ending fight, ceaseless, exhausting.

“Of course you’re not a monster,” Prince says, and he’s not looking at the nightmare anymore—he’s looking at Anxiety. “We haven’t always been the best at showing it, but—you’re our friend. You’re part of us.”

Anxiety shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut, unable to meet Prince’s warm, unyielding gaze.

“That’s not true,” his nightmare says, its jaws snapping angrily. The air around it feels cold and wild, whipping the shadows into a frenzy. “You—you all love each other, you don’t care about him. That’s why you never asked if he—if he wanted to hang out with you, if he wanted to dream with you.”

“And for that we’re sorry,” Prince says, his thumb running along Anxiety’s jaw. “I was a coward. I thought—I thought you hated the idea of dreaming with us. I didn’t want so scare you away by pushing the subject. I would have rather had you remain a friend than—than be disgusted with us for trying to pursue a relationship with you.”

“You’re lying,” his nightmare says.

“Prove it.”

His nightmare snarls, the sound grating against Anxiety’s ears. He shudders. “He didn’t act that disgusted when you suggested dreaming. All he said was ‘You’re kidding, right?’ You just took it and ran with it as an excuse to leave him behind. Not that I blame you for that—it’s nothing less than he deserves.”

“Anxiety. Look at me.” Prince’s voice is hard, and Anxiety reluctantly opens his eyes. Prince’s gaze meets his, fierce and bright. “You don’t deserve to be left behind. You deserve attention, and affection, and love—”

“Shut up!” his nightmare shrieks. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! He doesn’t!”

“Yes, you do.” Prince presses their foreheads together, and Anxiety can feel tears welling in his eyes again. He’s torn between terror and the faintest, awfulest bit of hope. “You’re an intelligent, creative, wonderful person, Anxiety. Let us show you that. Please. We can’t defeat this nightmare for you. We can help you, but only you can get rid of it. So let’s try, okay? Together?”

Anxiety hesitates, and his nightmare seizes its opportunity. It lunges forward, wrapping its cold claws around the two of them. “You can’t get rid of me. You’re not strong enough. You’re not good enough and you never will be.”

“Yes, you are. You’re strong and you’re brave and you’re good, Anxiety,” Prince says. “But you have to fight for yourself, okay? Please.”

Something twists inside of Anxiety at that—something bitter and angry. Fight? For himself? Impossible. He opens his mouth to tell Prince that, but just as he does the darkness surges forward. It curls around Prince, pushing its way between him and Anxiety and driving them apart and—

And taking Prince.

The darkness takes him. He’s there one second and gone the next and Anxiety is completely and entirely alone.

“No! No, give him back!” Anxiety howls, stumbling backwards—away from one wall of darkness and straight into another. Panic is jumping in his chest again, making it hard to breathe and hard to think. “Give them back!”

“Pathetic,” his nightmare rasps. “Why would I give them back to you? You can’t take care of them properly.”

Fear boils in Anxiety’s stomach, hot and fierce, and his shoulders begin to shake. Tears—frustrated, terrified tears—begin to fracture his vision. Not that it matters. There’s nothing to see here. It’s only darkness.

“You have one job, Virgil.”

Anxiety flinches—the name hits home because it’s his. When he wants to be someone better, when he wants to be happy, when he wants to be something other than Anxiety, that name is his, and now it’s—

Now it’s being used against him, too. This nightmare is ruining it, just like it’s ruined everything else. There’s a flicker of something in his chest at that—some hot, seething thing.

He thinks that it might be rage.

“One job—protect them, keep them safe, and you can’t even do that right.”

And his rage grows—it spreads out from his chest and into his stomach and shoulders, tingling at the tips of his fingers and tightening his muscles. It’s ruined everything. It ruined their dream. It ruined what could have been a nice night. It committed an unpardonable crime—

It took the other sides from him.

“Yeah,” Anxiety says, his voice trembling. “Yeah, that is my job. You know that. You know everything about me.”

“Of course I do. I am you.”

“No. You aren’t. You’re—you’re contradicting yourself. My job is protect them, but you—you took them. You aren’t protecting them.”

“And neither are you,” his nightmare hisses.

“Yes,” Anxiety says, his voice chilling into something cold and hard, “I am.”

“And how are you doing that? Princey couldn’t even get rid of me, and he can control all dreams now, so what are you possibly going to do that he can’t?”

“You’re—you’re—I created you. This dream is ours, but you’re mine, so I can get rid of you. I just have to—to—”

To fight for himself. The thought sends a shudder curling down his spine.

“To what?” his nightmare spits. “Love yourself? Ha! You can’t even stop hating yourself, you can’t even like yourself. It’s not that easy.”

That’s—that’s right. It’s not that easy. It’s not simple, it’s not quick, and it’s certainly not happening overnight. So what can he do? He only knows that he has to do something. He has to protect the others, and if that means getting rid of his own self-loathing, or at least limiting it for a little bit of time, just long enough for them all to wake up, then—

Then he’s at least gotta try.

“No, it’s not easy. I don’t even know if I can do it, but—but I’m going to try,” Anxiety says, narrowing his eyes. “So let’s go. Come on. This is all your fault, so if I get rid of you—”

His nightmare snarls and the air around him grows colder. “You idiot. You can’t possibly blame me for this—I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

“That’s—that may be true,” Anxiety says, trying not to flinch. “But I didn’t want you to be here. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“So what? It still happened, and you’re still responsible. And now what are the others going to think of you? They’re going to hate—”

“No,” Anxiety says, forcing the word through his teeth even though the nightmare is probably right, god, he knows it is. “They’re not going to hate me. They’re not like that.”

“Oh, specifics, specifics. Fine. They’ll pity you, they’ll—”

“Not—not that either. They said—they said they’d—”

“What? Love you?” His nightmare cackles, and Anxiety shrinks into himself. It is a ridiculous thought. Them? Love him? But—but—

“Yeah. They said they’d love me and—and I believe them.”

His nightmare is silent for a moment and Anxiety holds his breath. Then, a growl bubbling beneath its words, it says, “Of course you believe them. Naturally. They’re so much better than you, why would they lie? But is that what they deserve? To be saddled with you? They don’t deserve that, and you certainly don’t deserve them.”

“No, I’m—I may not deserve them, but they—they want me. Stupid, right? But they said it, and I don’t think they’d lie to me, so—so it must be true. They want me.”

The darkness around him shakes. “You know that’s not true.”

“We just agreed that they wouldn’t lie to me.”

“But it’s not true! It’s not! It’s so obvious. No one can love you. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I do understand that,” Anxiety snarls, stepping further into the darkness. “I’ve understood that for years. I’m trying—I’m trying to stop understanding it, so—so fuck off!”

His nightmare is silent.

“The others, they want me, they—they love me, so I must be worth more than you say. I don’t know how. I don’t even know where to start considering it, but—but it’s true.”

“You won’t think that tomorrow.” His nightmare’s voice is quieter, now. “You won’t think that five minutes from now.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a start.”

“It’ll never last. We’ll be right back here the next time you decide to dream with them.”

“No. I won’t let that happen. I’m—I’m going to fix this. I’m going to get rid of you.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Maybe. Probably. But I’ll deal with you. The others, they’ll—they’ll help me.”

There is no retort. His nightmare is finally silent. The darkness is fading, morphing into the familiar shapes of the apartment’s hallways, and exhaustion floods suddenly into Anxiety. He drops to his knees, trembling, and buries his face into his arms. His breath comes in frantic, hurried gulps. He wants the others. He needs to know that they’re alright. He needs them, he needs out of this dream, he needs—

He’s awake. The change is sudden and sharp, and he opens his eyes with a gasp, sitting bolt upright on the bed. The others are moving beside him, scrambling to untangle themselves from the blankets and sit—three others, safe and sound and whole. With that knowledge, Anxiety feels something cracking inside of him, and for once—

For once, he’s okay with shattering.

As soon as the first sob leaves him, there’s an arm wrapping around his shoulders. Prince pulls him into a bone-crushing embrace, his voice a low rasp as he speaks. “Anxiety, dearheart, it’s alright, you’re alright, we’re safe now.”

“Bring him over here, please, Roman,” Logic says, and his voice doesn’t sound as put-together as it usually does. In fact, it sounds suspiciously wobbily.

Prince loops an arm under Anxiety’s legs and lifts him, depositing him into the center of the bed. Morality latches onto him immediately, silent save for sniffles, and Logic grabs his hand.

“Are you alright, Anxiety?” Logic asks. “Do you need anything?”

Anxiety shakes his head and buries his face against Morality’s shoulder, tears streaking his face. Morality grips him more tightly, rocking him back and forth.

“Are you sure you don’t—”

“Lo.” Prince reaches across Anxiety to cup Logic’s face. “It’s okay. Can you bring us some water and a wet cloth, please?”

Anxiety looks away from the comforting blue of Morality’s pajamas just long enough to see Logic’s face morph with relief upon being given something to do. He’s loathe to let Logic leave so soon after the nightmare, but—but if it makes him feel better, then Anxiety’s not going to protest.

Once Logic’s slipped out of the bedroom, Prince wraps his arms around Anxiety and Morality, murmuring, “Darlings, darlings, we’re okay, everything is okay. Settle, now. Shh-shh.”

“‘m sorry,” Anxiety mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut. “‘m really sorry.”

“What did I tell you?” Prince asks, voice firm. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“No. Don’t blame yourself for this.” Morality pulls back enough to look at Anxiety, his eyes wide and damp and furious. “Don’t. It wasn’t your fault, and you’re the one who saved us—you’re the one who woke us up, so don’t you dare be mad at yourself for that.”

Anxiety hesitates, taken aback by Morality’s adamence. “I—I don’t—”

“You don’t know how not to be. It’s okay,” Prince says, running his fingers through Morality’s hair until he relaxes some. “We’ll—we’ll help you, if you’ll let us.”

“Anxiety, can I—can I—” Morality says, stumbling to a halt and looking beyond frustrated with his inability to communicate what he wants.

“Can you what, Patton?” Prince asks.

Instead of answering, Patton leans forward and presses his lips to Anxiety’s forehead, then holds perfectly still. Anxiety sees his chest rising and falling too quickly, sees the fine tremor in his hands, and he knows it’s his fault—his fault for giving them a nightmare, his fault for allowing them to feel fear—but for a moment, he doesn’t feel guilty.

For a moment, he feels—he feels liked a whole fucking lot. (Maybe—maybe even loved.)

“Yeah,” Anxiety says, his voice cracking. “Yeah, Mo. You can.”

Morality’s breath hitches and he moves, pressing chaste kisses to Anxiety’s chin, the edge of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth, murmuring softly all the while, “Virgil, Virgil, Virgil, I love you, I love you.”

“And—and can I, too?” Prince asks. His voice is uncharacteristically vulnerable, and when Anxiety turns to look at him his face is flushed and wet with tears.

Anxiety nods quickly and Prince presses forward, scattering kisses through his hair and over the back of his neck. Anxiety is so caught up—in Morality and Prince, in their little kisses and whispered affections, and in his emotions (happy and sad and terrified all at once, god)—that he doesn’t notice Logic’s return until he’s sitting down on the bed beside them, a glass of water in one hand and a soft cloth in the other.

Anxiety doesn’t hesitate before reaching out to Logic, inviting him into their huddle. Logic sets his things aside and inches forward, allowing them to bundle him in with them. He doesn’t kiss Anxiety, but he does lean forward and nuzzle their noses together, saying, “You did wonderfully.”

Morality nods earnestly. “Yeah, you did—you did great, you did fantastic. Saying those things about yourself couldn’t have been easy, but you did it and—and oh my goodness, I’m just so darn proud of you, sweetheart.”

“As am I,” Prince says, brushing Anxiety’s bangs back. “And while those things may not have been easy to say today, and you may not believe them, I think—I think that maybe someday you will. That is, if you’re—if you’ll try. We’ll help you as much was we can, but you have to help yourself, too.”

“Try?” Anxiety asks, uncertain—he’d told the nightmare that he would, and he wants to, he really does, he’s just—he’s just not sure if he’s strong enough for it to matter.

“Yes, try. Try to love yourself,” Prince says, and a repulsed shiver works its way through Anxiety at the words. “All of the shit that monster said, it’s not true, none of it, and I don’t want you to think for a second that it is. But—but you’ve been thinking it for a long time, and I know it won’t change overnight. It won’t change at all if you don’t try, though. I mean, it’s your life, so it’s your choice, but I don’t—I don’t ever want you to feel the way that monster made you feel tonight.”

“No one deserves to feel that,” Morality says vehemently. “Especially not you, Anxiety.”

“And you can stop feeling that way, if you’re willing to try, as was proven by tonight’s venture,” Logic says. “I think it would be in your best interest to attempt to get rid of this—this self-loathing. I will look into ways to help as best I can, if you would allow it.”

Anxiety looks between the three of them, torn. He wants to. He really, actually wants to. He’s never wanted to before, but now—now that he knows he can, he wishes he would. And these three incredible people are here and offering to help and he knows that even if he can’t defeat his self-loathing alone, with them—with them, he can do anything.

“No promises,” Anxiety says, fiddling nervously with the bottom of his shirt. “I’ll probably fuck it up.”

Prince pulls him closer and plants a kiss on his cheek. “That’s okay. That’s okay, fuck-ups can be fixed, as long as you’re willing to try.”

Anxiety swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and says, “Yeah, I—I’ll try.”

Morality surges forward to kiss his face again with a happy little cry, and Prince nearly crushes him in a hug. Logic combs his fingers through Anxiety’s hair and offers him a small, fond smile. They don’t sleep again but spend hours curled up with each other, trading affection and kisses and words of love with equal fervor and sharing comforting stories long into the night.

It isn’t until dawn that Logic stretches out from his spot wedged between Prince and Anxiety and asks, “For the sake of clarity, I must know: does this mean that all four of us are in a relationship now?”

Prince and Morality look to Anxiety, who squirms and says, “I mean, I guess. If you guys still wanna be.”

“Of course we do,” Morality says, looking at him with eyes that are starting to water again. “Oh, goodness, that would be the most perfect thing in the whole entire world ever.”

“We certainly do, Peter Panic,” Prince says, patting his hand affectionately.

“I would be—” Logic pauses, tilts his head as though looking at the world from a different angle will bring the correct word to his mind. “—unequivocally delighted to have you in our relationship.”

“Then—yeah, okay. I’m in,” Anxiety says.

“Oh, thank you thank you thank you thank you!” Morality says, and Anxiety thinks he could die happily if he got to see the smile Morality bestows upon him then every day.

“Indeed. You have my gratitude.” Logic laces their fingers together and squeezes gently.

Prince—for once—doesn’t speak, but scoots impossibly closer to Anxiety and hums happily. For now, it’s more than enough.

“Okay. Are you ready?” Prince murmurs gently. He’s lying in bed, Logic and Morality sprawled out next to him. Morality is already asleep, chest rising and falling steadily, one leg slung over Logic’s. Logic doesn’t seem to mind—he’s too busy blinking sleepily at Anxiety and Prince.

Anxiety swallows and nods. It’s been several weeks—several blissful weeks of sappy feelings and activities that Anxiety thinks are fit more for newlyweds than people who have known each other for twenty-eight years. They’ve shared movie nights and dinners and the others have even invited him to their book club (they have a book club , how fucking nerdy is that—but seeing how happy it makes Logic, Anxiety’s not going to complain) and their date nights.

He’s learned a lot, like  how to play chess (kudos to Logic) and how to make the best chocolate chip cookies (Morality’s fault) and how to blend paints to make the perfect shade of lonely and depressing gray (credit goes to Prince for that one). More importantly, he’s learned how to get along with them—how to fit himself into their relationship, how to become a working part instead of an outside observer, and he thinks he might actually be succeeding, for once.

But even so, he hasn’t dared dreaming with them again. Not since that first disastrous attempt. If he’d had his way, it never would have been brought up again at all, in fact—but the others insisted.

“You deserve to see how good it can be,” Patton had whined. “It’s fun and it’s silly and it’s way better than just—just sleeping all night.”

“What, like a normal person?” Anxiety asked.

“Yeah, exactly! It’s not fair that you keep missing out. And beside, we miss you.”

“You see me all day long,” Anxiety murmured, flushing and trying his best to ignore the pleased little squirm in his stomach. They missed him. “Do you honestly need to see me in your dreams, too?”

“Of course we do,” Logic said, and that was that.

Now, crawling into bed beside them, he’s fairly certain that he’s making a mistake. What if they have another nightmare? He’s not sure he’s strong enough to go through that twice. He’s been working on—on his self-loathing, and it’s gotten better, but only by a minuscule amount. Sometimes he wonders if it’s even improved that much.

But—but Logan’s smiling at him as he lays down, sleepy and unguarded, and Prince’s eyes are glittering with joy and—

And they’d asked him to join them. Even after that awful night, they want him here. After seeing one of his deepest fears, after seeing him flayed open and raw and hurting, they want him. He can’t find it in himself to deny them that.

(He can’t find it in himself to deny them most anything, really.)

Anxiety falls asleep wrapped up between Prince and Logic, and that—that’s almost enough to make him forget his fears. He hasn’t been able to sleep anywhere close to Prince since that night, and he hadn’t realized how much he’s missed it. It’s warm and comfortable and he—he feels safe.

That’s nice. That’s really nice.

But when he opens his eyes to find himself in a dark hallway, that feeling of safety, fleeting and precious, is immediately torn from him. Where is he? Where are the others? He whirls around, eyes wide.

This place is—it’s different. It’s the same hallway, and it is dark, but it’s not as dark as he remembers it being. It’s more like the darkness inside of a hastily boarded-up house in broad daylight. There are thin streamers of sun coming in from gaps around a door at the far end of the hall, and dust motes dance goldenly inside of them. It smells familiar—it smells like a childhood home, warm and old.

Slowly, Anxiety’s terror eases and allows him to move towards the door. His footsteps rasp loudly on the floor, but beyond that noise he can hear another—a low, pleasant rushing sound, like wind through grass. This place, it’s—it’s old and it’s dilapidated and when he looks for too long at the shadows in the corners they move and grow—but it’s not bad. He wonders what it could look like if he works more on it—if he finishes dusting the shelves and sweeping the floors and driving out the dark that hides here.

He thinks he’d like to find out, one day. He thinks maybe, with the others’ help, he can.

As he nears the door, he notices a lopsided picture hanging above it. It’s of them, of Thomas and Logic and Morality and Prince and—and Anxiety. He reaches up, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth, and straightens it. Then he grabs the doorknob, the metal warm and welcoming under his palm, and turns it.

The door opens onto a wide, sunny field. It’s dotted with wildflowers and stout trees, and there’s a glassy pond near the center. Anxiety can just make out two figures lounging beside it, and another standing beside them, peering around. The breeze carries the sound of their laughter to him, and Anxiety feels whatever remains of his terror drop away.

“Virgil!” Prince waves enthusiastically at him, motioning him towards the pond. “Come down here, come hang out with us.”

“Come look at the fish, they have wings!” Morality shouts gleefully.

Anxiety picks his way down to the pond, the grass rustling gently around his knees as he walks. When he looks back, he expects to have left a dark, flattened trail—but the grass he’s walked on is as tall as the grass he didn’t, and that, he supposes, is another one of the absurdities of dreams—yet another being, he supposes, fish with wings.

“Look at them, look at them, they’re so cool,” Morality says, grabbing his hand and tugging him towards the pond.

“Wait a moment, Patton. Perhaps we should ask Anxiety if he’s alright first? You weren’t here when we entered the dream, so we were worried that—that maybe something had happened,” Logic says.

Anxiety glances back over his shoulder, at the worn-down house on the top of the hill. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m alright. I’m actually, uh—I’m actually pretty good.”

Logic offers him a small smile. “I’m glad.”

“So this is a dream, huh?”

“It is,” Prince says, clapping his hands together. “Do you like it? I think it’s Morality’s—the scenery looks like his.”

“It’s—” Anxiety looks around them, at the bright field and endless sky. “It’s wonderful.”

Prince beams at him like the fucking sun, and Anxiety—Anxiety leans forward and presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. “I—you—what—” Prince stammers, one hand coming up to touch his nose as though that will give him some sort of insight into Anxiety’s behavior. It isn’t often that he initiates affection gestures.

“Thanks, Roman,” Anxiety says.

“Aww, that is just the gosh-darned cutest thing I’ve ever seen, but—” Morality lowers his voice, looking conspiratorially towards the pond, “—are you gonna come look at the fish or do you want me to bring one over here? Because like I can do that, I can—”

Anxiety laughs and shakes his head. “Okay, okay, let’s go look at the fish. Why do they have wings?”

“Because they’re flying fish,” Morality says.

“Incorrect. Species of flying fish live in oceans, not ponds,” Logic says. “The fish in there are simply nonsensical.”

Anxiety has to agree—but then, this is a dream, and most things are. After he’s observed the winged fish for what Morality evidently believes to be an appropriate amount of time, Anxiety goes to sit next to Prince as Logic takes to teaching Morality the names of the wildflowers around them.

“So,” Prince says. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you about something.”

Ordinarily, those words would terrifying Anxiety—but right now, in the midst of the dream, they don’t seem scary at all. “Oh, yeah? What about?”

Prince takes a deep breath. “Right, so I know you already said no but hear me out—”

Okay, that’s a little scary.

“And like maybe it’s a little bit out-there but I think if we just take all the right precautions—”

“Princey?”

“—then it won’t be so bad, honestly, and I think everyone would like it—”

“Prince—”

“ —because I just really really really want to do a day in my life video, okay, can you at least maybe consider—”

Anxiety bursts into laughter, flopping back into the grass and folding an arm across his eyes. “Oh my god, are you serious?”

“What? Yes, I am? Why are you laughing?” Prince asks, laying down next to him and peering through the stalks of grass.

“I thought it was going to be something horrible, jeez.”

“Well, you acted as though it was horrible, quite honestly.”

“That was weeks ago.”

“Yeah, and I still wanna do it,” Prince says, pouting at him.

Anxiety peeks out from under his arm and meets Prince’s eyes. He’s quiet for a long moment, and Prince squirms uncomfortably.

“What?” he asks.

“I love you,” Anxiety says. The words are foreign and unfamiliar on his tongue—he hadn’t managed to work up the courage to tell any of them that, in the last few weeks, but now—

Now, yeah. He loves them, and what’s wrong with telling them so?

Prince stares at him, and Anxiety is surprised to find tears welling in his eyes. When he speaks, his voice cracks. “Yeah. Me too. So, uh—day in the life video?”

Anxiety grins at the sky and pats Prince’s hand. “Yeah, Roman. Day in the life video.”