Chapter Text
Anxiety wasn’t quite sure on the how, the why, the when, or even the what, but he suddenly found himself trapped inside a large glass bottle. The suddenness of it, combined with the lack of knowledge on how it happened, led to the only natural conclusion: panicking.
Frantic, he looked for a way out. His brain felt fuzzy, and it was hard to think straight, but he looked around in the hopes that a solution would present itself. The bottle was lying on its side, and at one end, there was a cork. Since the bottle wasn’t big enough to stand up in, Anxiety crawled over to the corked opening. He tried shoving with his shoulder, but he didn’t have enough space to really do anything. Then, he tried moving so he could kick it, which put all his weight on the sloping edge, which tipped the bottle, which made him lose his balance. He crashed against the side of the bottle, and it rolled a bit before running into something else with a clink.
Anxiety sat up, and saw that he’d hit another bottle. The other bottle was upright and contained a hopeless-looking but still wearily-smiling Morality. The other gave a small wave as Anxiety finally noticed him.
“What’s going on?” Anxiety shouted at him. “How did we get here? Who did this? Is this Roman’s fault? I’m going to kill him if it is! How do we get out of here?”
Patton pointed at his ear and shook his head. He couldn’t hear Anxiety through the bottles. Anxiety tried to think of a solution. He searched his pockets, but he didn’t have anything to write with. This was stupid. He was just as useless as Ariel was, trying to communicate with the prince.
Wait.
He’d already discussed this. Learn to write. Or use sign language.Thomas knew a little bit of sign language! Therefore, so did his sides!
WHAT–Anxiety signed, before realizing he didn’t know the other signs for what he wanted to say. He thought a minute, trying to get his brain to focus, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He decided to spell it out instead. H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D?
Patton looked up thoughtfully, like he was also trying to think of signs they knew. Then he quickly looked back at Anxiety and fumbled through some clumsy signs. T-O-M, he started, and then he made a ‘Y’ sign and shook it back and forth, pointing the outstretched fingers at himself and Anxiety. SAME. Then he made a cup with one hand, seemed to pull something out with two fingers on the other hand and slapped his palm on top of the cup. SODA.
Well. That didn’t make any sense. Patton was probably more confused by the sudden change than he was. Still, Anxiety tried to gain understanding. He shook his upturned palms gently again and raised an eyebrow. WHAT?
Patton scowled in frustration. Then he tried again. T-H-O-M-A-S, he signed, and then stopped, looking at Anxiety as if to ask if he understood. Anxiety nodded. P-U-T, he stopped. Another nod. He pointed at Anxiety, mouthing ‘you,’ then pointed at himself, mouthing ‘me.’ Anxiety nodded again. Then Patton knocked on the wall of his bottle.
So apparently this was Thomas’s fault. But that didn’t make any sense. Sure, Thomas probably jumped at the chance to get rid of Anxiety, but he had zero reason to trap Patton anywhere. Patton was his source of joy. It had to be something else. Probably Roman’s fault. He hated Anxiety, and since he’d teamed up with Patton more and more in recent times, Roman probably had decided to get rid of both of them. By trapping them in sealed bottles. It was a creative solution. It couldn’t be Logic’s doing, because the logical solution would just be to kill him, and leave Patton out of it because keeping Thomas happy and moral was a logical way of ensuring a good future.
Anxiety suddenly had a thought. They probably put him in here to die. The bottle was sealed. There were no holes in the top. They meant for him to run out of air and die. He started panicking worse. He knew he should control his breathing, conserve oxygen, but he couldn’t control his short, ragged breaths. He started desperately kicking the walls as hard as he could, hoping to break free. The walls instead seemed to close around him, making the bottle smaller. Sobbing in terror, Anxiety started throwing himself against the glass, hoping that the full impact of his weight might shatter it. He did this until he was too exhausted to get up. Then he laid there, thinking Oh, God, this is the end, I’m going to die I’m going to die I’m going to really die in here over and over.
Time passed, and the panic eventually wore itself out. He may have also fallen asleep at some point, he wasn’t sure. What he did know, however, was that he was still alive. Somehow, there was still enough oxygen in the bottle to breathe.
However, there was no longer enough room to move around very much. The walls had closed in, or at least gotten thicker. Glass now cocooned him in rippled waves, and he couldn’t even see where the cork had been or out to where Morality’s bottle was. The rippled glass gave the whole experience an eerie feel of being underwater.
Anxiety wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. Minutes? Years? It was impossible to tell, and he didn’t have a phone on him to check. He wished he could teleport to his room and get it. Then, realizing that, in theory, he could, he closed his eyes, focused on his room and willed himself there.
Agonizing pain everywhere told him that he could not. He opened his eyes to find that not only was he still in the bottle, but the walls had closed in again. His knees had been pressed toward his chest, arms pinned to his sides, all of him curled up painfully and no room to move at all. He lay there thinking, but no solutions presented themselves. The pain made it hard to think. He waited, taking deep breaths, hoping it would subside. It got worse with each passing second. He had to teleport again. Either he would get out, or he would die. Either way, he couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Since his room was out of the equation, he thought of somewhere neutral. The living room in Thomas’s apartment. He squeezed his eyes shut and put all his energy into getting there.
He heard a shattering noise.
He felt himself falling.
Anxiety opened his eyes just in time to catch himself from falling onto the pieces of some glass figurines that he’d just knocked over in Thomas’s living room. What–?
“Ugh, seriously Anxiety? You’re gone all day, only to show up and break things?” He looked up at the sound of Princey’s voice. At first, he saw only Patton, who, for some reason was looking at him with great concern. Then he turned to spot Roman, who just looked annoyed.
“I was sleeping,” he said. Was he sleeping? He couldn’t remember, but he felt exhausted and his brain was feeling sluggish, so probably. “Where’s Logan?”
“He’s calming Thomas down from an anxiety attack that you just brought upon him,” Roman said.
“Well it’s clearly your fault because I never show up without a reason,” Anxiety snapped.
“Your entire existence is without reason! He was doing fine all day, no stupid feelings, not worried about anything–I don’t see why you had to come along and ruin it!”
“Enough!” Patton snapped. Great, now Dad was mad at him too. “Roman, take a walk. You aren’t helping the situation either.”
With a huff, the royal disappeared into the mindscape.
“Are you okay, Anxiety?” Patton asked gently. Was he not mad?
“Like I’m going to let Sir Stinks-a-Lot ruin my mood,” Anxiety scoffed, keeping how shocked and mildly alarmed he was at Patton’s concern hidden.
“Are you hurt?” Patton asked. Oh, right. The figurines. Patton was probably worried that he’d cut himself and was going to bleed onto the carpet.
He checked his hands. They weren’t bleeding. “I’m fine,” he said. Patton was still looking at him with concern. “…but I am tired, so I think I’m gonna go back to sleep. Bye!” He sank out, unnerved by how concerned for his welfare Patton was.
Once the darker trait had disappeared, Patton sighed and walked over to start cleaning up the broken glass. It seemed as if Anxiety had forgotten about the bottles again. With as often as it happened, one would think that he’d remember the experience at least once. Someday he’d like to get the bottles broken open immediately, instead of waiting for Anxiety to figure out how to warp the bottles once more. At the very least, the boy could tell him the trick to doing it. He never knew what happened after Anxiety started kicking the glass, since the bottle always went rippled and opaque.
Oh well. There was always next time.