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Virgil hadn’t been sure, at first. He’d chalked it up to his paranoia -cognitive distortions- ; his heightened sensitivity to things slightly out of place, dropped stitches in the tapestry that was the oddball existence they all led. He knew the others, their rhythms, their patterns. Movie nights and breakfast coffees and exaggerated banter and screaming tantrums and sullen silences and heart-felt resolutions followed each other in an ever changing, ever stable cycle. As varying as it was predictable.
The trouble was Roman. Or rather, the dissonance ratcheted up a notch around Roman. Virgil couldn’t be sure it was Roman’s fault yet, and certainly didn’t wish to point the finger unnecessarily (but the smart money certainly seemed to be inclined that way, just in case).
Normally Roman, upon encountering something or someone that knocked him off kilter, would take to dramatically monologuing in the common area on top of any piece of furniture that suited his mood. Generally the higher the better. He’d been spotted waxing lyrical on the sorrows of his life from the coffee table to the lofty reaches of the kitchen counter.
If Virgil was feeling particularly antsy about heights (specifically; individuals falling from them, more specifically; one damn fool Prince taking a swan dive from the back of the sofa and spilling what little brains he had on the floor and thoroughly ruining the carpet and the chance of getting the bond back from the landlord when they were inevitably forced to move out after said sofa-carpet-brains incident and never being able to find another place to rent and being homeless forever and- “Holy shit Virgil it’s the mindscape. We clean the carpet by snapping our fingers. We don’t even pay rent. What on earth was that???”) he’d grab a broom and attempt to shoo Roman down like a particularly large and stubborn moth. Roman tended to respond by evacuating to another piece of furniture (usually higher), still continuing his fretting on the miseries of his life.
The whole thing looked like a weirdly competitive game of “the floor is lava”, interspersed with cries of “Alas, the death of my dreams is at hand. My poor dear friends, who have to carry on in this dreary world without the guiding hand of their glorious muse.” (Roman) and “Holy fucking shit Princey GET DOWN FROM THERE if you get blood on the ceiling again I am not cleaning it off NO DAMMIT NOT THE BOOKCASE!!!!!” (Virgil, in case that wasn’t clear).
If Roman was more than off kilter he spared the furniture his attentions and instead swooped away to the mindpalace theatre, where he channelled his griefs and frustrations by reciting poetry. Under a solitary spotlight. To the darkened and hollow theatre. It was all very appropriately dramatic, and, purple prose or not, Roman was a very good actor.
His clear, resonant voice would hold any listener enthralled. He was by turns beseeching, poignant, enraged, elated, and heartbroken. Dizzying peaks and depths of emotion were expressed with the utmost sincerity, pleas for understanding following relentlessly on the heels of declarations of unwavering fortitude. Logan would occasionally stop by if Roman were dipping into some of Logan’s personal favourites. He never sat in the audience (to cheapen such honesty with mere applause was unthinkable), but would instead loiter quietly in the wings, watching Roman’s profile in rapt attention. (Roman was luminous under his single spotlight, his hair haloed radiantly about his head, his skin glowing, his eyes clenched shut or a piercing golden fire. He was a tall flame against the inky dark.)
Either way, Roman’s equilibrium would be restored, and he would return dusty and exuberant. Things would go back to, well, “normal” was a bit much to ask for, but a tolerable level of dramatics, shenanigans, and other tomfoolery. For the benefit of everyone, including Virgil’s blood pressure (which really should be a character in its own right).
So, Virgil initially ascribed the Roman centric dissonance he was feeling to Princey’s many eccentricities and wacky habits. Surely everything was fine (fine enough for the literal embodiment of anxiety, anyway).
If only. Things refused to add up. Roman still experienced his usual bouts of melancholy or creative despair, followed by his usual enthusiastic recovery. But the standard broom accessorised “the floor is lava” hadn’t occurred in weeks, and Logan had taken to strategically abandoning compilations of sonnets around the mindscape commons in an effort to prompt Roman to return to the theatre.
The final tip-off was the smell. Roman always smelled like whatever he was working on. Paint or glue fumes hung around him, or the dust of whatever sets and props he’d been rummaging through. If he’d been exploring some corner of the Imagination he’d come back smelling of campfire smoke and dirt and whatever else he’d rolled in while he’d been gone. (Patton was unfailingly glad to see him, unceasingly delighted to hug him upon his return, and unrelentlessly adamant that he shower before dinner and have a specific pair of boots that never left the Imagination.)
What Roman did not typically smell like, was damp. It was a very specific sort of damp too. The kind of damp that rolls in off the sea and penetrates clothes down to the skin; damp that a mere towelling off cannot hope to remove. Virgil found the new smell deeply unsettling, and very quickly resolved to find out just what the Prince had found to roll in this time.
The next time Roman stormed upstairs to his room in a towering melancholic rage and barged into the Imagination, Virgil quietly followed.
The first place he looked was the theatre, hoping against hope that the old pattern would resume and he would find Roman pouring out his soul in the cavernous space. But the hall was empty and lifeless.
So Virgil turned his steps to follow the Prince’s trail, and theatre boards gave way to grassy meadows and a clear blue sky arching up over him like a dome. As he walked the light became dim and muted and fog rolled in around him. Virgil pulled his sleeves down over his hands and his hood up over his head and continued, while the grass became scratchy bracken and spongy lichen and stones that turned under his feet with an almost metallic clinking sound.
He could hear seabirds calling out in front of him, and smell the faint scent of saltwater and open air. All at once the wind sprang up and snatched his hood back off his head and shredded the fog, and Virgil could finally see where he was.
He was standing on a stony cliff top, with stunted plants clinging to the rock outcroppings that dotted the landscape. The air was filled with the cries of gulls and terns, and he could see swallows darting furiously about in the updrafts before the cliff face. Before him was the sea. Grey shadowed and trimmed in white lace, it raced forward to dash itself on the rocks at the base of the cliff before exploding in plumes of spray and retreating to try again.
A movement to his right caught Virgil’s eye, and he glanced over to see a figure perched upon one of the stone formations. It was Roman. His face was turned into the wind at just the right angle to toss his hair artfully, and he’d clearly thought a great deal about how to stand so his greatcoat (an actual fucking greatcoat what the fuck) billowed out behind him. He was clutching a small paperback book in one hand, and, upon closer inspection, had been using the other to loosen his cravat with an almost scientific precision designed to create the maximum amount of broodiness. His traditionally garish white/red/gold attire was gone, replaced by muted beiges and dull bronze. The coat was grey and hooded, his boots unshone. The only splash of colour was the maroon cravat at his throat.
Virgil was outraged . Utter betrayal filled his every vein, and seething fury poured from him. The anger rose in waves of heat from his skin, his eyes narrowed and his lips drew back in a feral snarl.
He stormed towards Roman, and when he judged himself close enough proceeded to make his feelings known.
“WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK ARE YOU DOING? ” he definitely said calmly.
Roman didn’t reply, but instead gazed down at him with unspeakable sorrow in his eyes. After a long moment, he again lifted his chin and focused on the grey horizon, while using the hand that had been fiddling with his cravat to draw the greatcoat’s hood up over his storm-tossed hair.
Virgil gasped. Such a small sound, but it contained within it a wealth of heartbreak, loss, and the shattering of entire worlds.
“You little shit,” he breathed. “Are you actually wearing a hood?”
And then he charged forward and tackled Roman around the knees, knocking him off his perch and into a conveniently placed patch of bracken.
“Virgil! What-” exclaimed Roman, who was rather startled by this abrupt interruption to his moderately damp musings.
Virgil gathered two fistfulls of the front of Roman’s waistcoat and proceeded to explain himself.
“WHO AM I???” he roared, in a reasonable tone of voice.
“Virgil I don’t understa-”
“WHO THE HELL AM I???”
“You’re Virgil? Is this another existential cri-”
“WRONG!”
“You are Virgil? Also please stop shaking m-”
“NOPE!”
“But you are Virgil. You like black and purple and brooding in corners and hoodies and- and- oh shit.”
“Oh shit indeed Princey. I do like those things. Angsty literature, muted colour-schemes, brooding, staring pensively into the middle distance, sitting on surfaces not meant to be sat on, hoodies… I come looking for you, out of the goodness of the small dark and empty place where my heart would be, and I find you here. Brooding . Wearing a grey hoodie , of all things. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice if you just straight up stole my entire aesthetic?!? My entire character arc?!?!?”
“Shit Verge I am so sor-”
“Like, this is what everyone knows me for! You’re the dreamy fantasy guy, I’m the angsty can’t-stand-anyone-except-Patton guy! We have a thing! The thing works! Wh- just why would you do this???”
“Virgil I am truly, truly sorry, and I swea- wait did you drop me in bird shit? Dude that’s gross! I just put my hand in i- Get off me and let me up! Look what you did to my coat! You know how long it took me to design this?!! I’m going to wash my hands, so gross …”
“Ha! Nice one, Mary Wollstonecrap .”
“Like you’re one to talk, Percy Smelly .”
~
Patton is always glad to see his kiddos return safe and sound. He also instigates a blanket rule that any shoes worn in the Imagination stay in the Imagination.
Logan deviates from form and chooses Frankenstein for the next movie night. (“Recent events indicated that broody monologuing on top of stone geological features beside large bodies of water should be popular. Did I make an error?”)
The pattern resumes, in time.