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The sound of retching filled the bathroom as Deceit curled his upper body over the porcelain bowl, flower petals and blood dotted his lips as tears ran down his cheeks. Tears of both pain and grief as his body seized and jerked with another wave of sickness passing over him. A strangled whimper bubbled up out of him as the sight of the pure white flower petals stained with his own dark blood only served to remind him of just what a failure he was.
White Anemones. He wistfully thought to himself, in the past week he’d done some research on the flowers that were eventually going to take his life from him. The flower itself had many meanings when it came to positive ones, however, it was the negative that stuck out to him so much more. Fading hope and a feeling of having been forsaken. Something that pretty much summed up his entire life's story, a shuddering sob wracked his entire body as he pulled himself back from the toilet. Scrubbed his hand over his eyes, he wiped away the stubborn tears that came and just kept coming.
“Deceit…” A mournful voice whispered through the door, he knew the presence that lingered on the other side. The only presence that made his tears bubble up faster and the wail of grief that much harder to suppress. “Deceit, I’ve made you some coffee and soup. It’ll help.” Despair murmured on the other side of the door, Deceit could practically imagine his constant aching and heartbroken expression present as he spoke.
So stumbling back up to his feet, he precariously wobbled a little bit before stumbling his way over to the sink after flushing the evidence of his own feelings down the drain. His mouth tasted of nothing but blood as he spat out the water in the sink, ensuring that for now, no other petals would be making the rounds up his throat.
“I..I’m better now.” He choked the words out, it was a lie, it was a lie and they both very well knew it too. Nevertheless, he allowed Despair to crack the door open, long greasy hair obscured the other dark side’s face but even so, he could practically feel the others sad expression as he looked back at Deceit.
“No, you’re not, come and sit down Dee.” The melancholy side simply said, before taking Deceit’s hand leading him back over to his bed. The scent of warm freshly brewed coffee and chicken noodle soup was a welcome one, and tasting those two things had never felt better. As he laid back on his bed briefly shutting his eyes for a moment.
The silence stretched thin between them. Until...
“Deceit,” The end of his bed dipped as Despair rested a hand on Deceit’s leg, giving it a gentle squeeze. Deceit felt his toes twitch as soon as he felt the droplets of tears raining down on his foot. “You can’t keep this up for too long...I implore you..please...please stop this. I’ll help you...like..like how you helped me with... him . Just stop this, I can’t bear to see you torture yourself over someone like him.” Deceit’s eye cracked open, Despair was always reluctant to talk about the cause of his own sickness, the sickness had him puking up orange roses like there was no tomorrow.
Deceit hadn’t been able to stand seeing Despair pining over someone who would never love him back, just as...just as Deceit was doing now.
His bottom lip trembled, and Despair flinched back his fingers curling up as he drew his hand back to his chest. “I’m sorry,” Deceit whispered out, wiped away at his eyes to prevent the tears that had yet to fall, “But I can’t..I can’t do it. I love him.” The truth, a truth that was tearing him apart from the inside out, and a truth that Despair knew all too well.
“But...I don’t want you to die. Thomas needs you, whether those light sides know it or not, and...and I..” Despair felt himself falling apart at the seams, it had been so much easier to get over Spite with Deceit there, and it had been so easy to show Spite that he was no longer infatuated with him after Deceit had helped him carve his own heart out. It the vines of roses, full of thorns, and petals running all through it, and it remained in his room to this day. A reminder for him and for Deceit, of what would happen if they waited too late.
“I know Des..I know, but…” Deceit patted Despair’s hand, a crestfallen smile curling upon his lips even as the tears rushed down his cheeks. “But, I can’t do it. I can’t live and lose the love I feel for him, to me...it’s better to love and have loved, than to never love at all or ever again.” Even so, Despair found himself shaking his head, he understood, truly he did, or perhaps he didn’t. He didn’t understand love, he didn’t understand the woeful glances that Spite sent him every now and then, he didn’t understand it...but he did understand Deceit.
A hand grasped his, and Deceit’s fingers intertwined with Despair’s.
“He doesn’t deserve you.” Despair confidently said, and to him..in his mind such a thing was true, Deceit’s love didn’t belong with someone who couldn’t even see it, let alone appreciate it. Yet still, the lying side continued to love him, no matter how much it hurt him and no matter how many of those white petals were stained with red.
“Maybe so,” Deceit conceded, his grip growing rather lax. “But promise me, promise me Des...that when I go. You’ll be there, Thomas cannot go on with a Deceit, promise me that-”
A harsh ragged cough interrupted him, and a deep ruby red bubbled up past his lips, even so, Despair knew exactly what he was talking about.
“No,” He whispered, his eyes widening behind his long hair as a look of abject horror came over his face, “No! That’s your title! I can’t be you! I can’t do your job.” He blurted out as the other side leaned over the side of the bed snagging his trash can as blooded petals fell from his mouth, Deceit’s entire body shook and trembled as he retched. The sharp smell of blood filled the air, matching in tandem with Despair's racing heart.
“Promise me!” Deceit forcibly rasped out his eyebrows furrowing, as his hand extended for Despair’s. There was a long moment of complete silence between them, only broken between the gasping gagging sounds of Deceit. Despair’s eyes flicked back and forth from Deceit’s hand and over to his face, blood dripped along the lying side’s bottom lip, dropping into the trash can tucked under his chin.
A cold numbness spread along Deceit’s hand, regardless he felt his entire body relax at Despair’s cold touch.
“I fear that I won’t be as good as you,” Despair confessed, squeezing the other side’s hand just a little bit tighter as tears of relief snaked their way down Deceit’s face. “But...I will do it, for you.”
-V-
“Deeeceit!” Roman’s jovial voice called from the living room, as the other three sides stood there. Logan’s foot tapping away as he checked his watch for the third time, Patton as he swung his arms peacefully back and forth, and Virgil as he looked as grumpy as ever waiting for the snake-faced side to show up. Thomas was even there, looking just a touch awkward and out of place as they waited and waited.
“Perhaps it would be prudent to move on if he isn’t going to show up.” Logan offered, gesturing to where Deceit would normally show up. It usually took nothing at all for him to pop in, normally just a mention of Thomas telling the smallest white lie and he was there. But lately...they’d seen less and less of him as time went by. To the point where calling him in had taken a couple of minutes.
Virgil refused to act as if he was worried, the less that Deceit was around the better for all of them. Still, he couldn’t push off the slight feeling that something was wrong, that something ate at him and ate at him. Deceit normally didn’t outright ignore a summons, no matter who it was from.
“Deceit?” He snappily called out, and finally, there was movement, as a dark figure rose up, only…
“You aren’t Deceit.”
It was Thomas who spoke up as the figure who’s greasy hair was tied back in a messy yellow ribbon revealing his face that had a speckling of scales that looked like they could have been freckles at one point as he outright glowered back at Virgil, he was wearing a long-sleeved black sweater with small yellow striped running down. His ripped up jeans hugged his legs, all while his yellow-ish green eyes stared the anxious side down.
“You are correct, I wasn’t Deceit.” He sneered, his upper lip curling back to reveal a sharp set of fangs. “But Deceit is gone, and he passed on his title to me now. So from this day forward...I very much am Deceit.” Despair snarled, his forked tongue flicking out as he made an obvious look over to Virgil.
The one who’d held Deceit’s heart, and the one who’d let it wither and die.