Chapter Text
Story One - Blossoms of Sorrow
Remus felt like the world around him was twisting and turning in circles, waves of nausea crashing down on him over and over again.
But instead of vomit, he threw up dark blue flower petals.
Blood and saliva stained his sleeves as he tried to remove the petals from his mouth, only to cough up more, just a few seconds later.
After what felt like an eternity to him, the nausea was replaced by a sharp pain – his chest felt like it was growing tighter and tighter.
Clutching his torso in agony, Remus stumbled out of his room, having to pause every few steps in order to not fall over. Finally, he reached his destination.
“Roman?” he choked out, his voice sounding strained and weak.
The door opened.
Roman flinched when he saw his brother standing in front of him.
Granted, he’d seen him in worse states before, after all, Remus was more than happy to get injured for “fun”, as object impermanence made his injuries not only unpainful but also a lot less intimidating.
This, however, didn’t seem like Remus was enjoying it. At all.
He was suffering.
“Remus, this is…this is not funny! You shouldn’t joke about those kinds of things. Stop it!” Roman said, trying to assure himself that this was simply another one of his brother’s stupid jokes.
However, his hope for seeing Remus laugh at him for being concerned and run away was shattered the second Remus started coughing.
Tears were streaming down his face as bloody petals fell to the floor.
“What is happening to me?”
He sounded like the scared child being dragged away into the darkness he’d been so long ago. Confused. Terrified. Longing for someone to reassure him that everything would be okay.
Roman tried to hold back the tears that were rushing to his eyes.
It was as if a switch had been flipped in his head, and all of a sudden, he was able to make sense of something he desperately wished he couldn’t.
Because this? This couldn’t be happening!
This was just a nightmare. A nightmare he’d wake up from in a few seconds and-
Another cough interrupted Roman’s spiralling thoughts.
More flower petals. More bloody flower petals.
Remus’ face was pale, even paler than usual, and his eyes were glassy.
He looked sick, vulnerable. Defenseless.
Not at all like himself.
Roman grabbed his brother’s arm, trying to stabilize him so he wouldn’t fall over.
A part of him hoped it’d reveal this disturbing image as only an illusion.
It didn’t.
“Sit down, okay? I promise that you’ll be fi-“, Roman looked down to the floor. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t lie to his brother. Not now, not about something this serious.
“I-…I’ll try to fix this. I promise that I’ll try to fix this.”
With that, Roman closed the door behind them and sat his brother down on his bed. He sighed and sat down next to Remus, not saying a word for the next few moments, not sure how to put into words what he had to say.
“Remember this, uh, story about people being killed by unrequited love we wrote together?” Roman eventually broke the silence.
Remus nodded in return, speaking seemed way too painful.
“It seems like, uhm, certain stories we write can, well, influence what happens to us. They can make an impact on our lives, so to speak, and not just a metaphorical one.”
Remus seemed to think for a moment.
“So I’m going to die?”
His hoarse whisper was more of an observation than it was a question.
The tears falling from Roman’s eyes and down onto the bed were enough of an answer to him.
Roman tried to think of something to say but there wasn’t a single thing that could make this nightmare any less horrible.
He looked at the flower petals and cursed the flowers that would soon take his brother’s life.
Dark blue:
the painful irony he wished Remus didn’t have to bear.
Why had he chosen not only to involve Remus, the embodiment of repulsive ideas, but also Virgil, who at the time had practically been made out of teenage angst in writing this story?
Why had they all agreed on connecting the petals to the person whose lack of interest would be powerful enough to kill a lovesick fool by making them choke on their own unrequited love?
Dark blue rose mallow.
The flowers that had been everywhere in the mind space the day Logan had married Patton, the love of his life.
Everywhere. And for the first time, without anyone knowing, the blue blossoms had been in Remus’ lungs, slowly starting to grow.
“I think I want to be alone, Roman,” Remus said.
There was an unspoken “I couldn’t bear to have you watch me die.”
And with that, he stood up and staggered out of the room.
Roman sat on his bed without moving, his mind trying to grasp what had just happened. It seemed so surreal. The only thing there to prove that he wasn’t imagining this, that this conversation was real, were the flower petals on his floor; the flower petals that were soon hit by the tears that started to fall from Roman’s face.
Remus hid away in his room, unnoticed by anyone.
He lied down on the floor, giving in to the exhaustion.
The flowers in his lungs started to grow even more as he drifted off into a heavy sleep he no longer had the strength to fight. A sleep he would never wake from again.
And as Roman spoke to Virgil, his eyes red from crying and his hands shaking even though Virgil held them tight in his own, the flowers started to make their way up Remus’ trachea.
Finally, when Virgil was close to falling asleep on Roman’s bed and Roman himself was staring at a blank page, trying to get himself to write something, Remus’ body gave up.
Flowers started to bloom everywhere in his room, filling every last bit of empty space with dark blue blossoms.
Remus’ death overcame the mind space like an explosion.
Roman felt like he was being ripped apart – it was as if he was reliving the unbearable pain of when King Creativity had been separated into two, of when he had been violently ripped apart to never be one again.
But this was worse, somehow. This felt like having the very culmination of his entire existence break apart into smithereens; like he was burning and yet freezing at the same time. He scrambled to his feet, knocking over the chair he’d been sitting on, and started screaming. A scream that expressed misery and grief and pain; unimaginable pain. A scream that Roman wasn’t sure if he could ever stop it if he wanted to.
Virgil’s breathing sped up, his body going into fight or flight mode.
Every last bit of tiredness was suddenly gone.
His fingernails dug into his palms as stumbled towards Roman, the only clear thought his brain was able to produce was to somehow comfort his boyfriend.
Seeing Roman like this - his arms wrapped around himself, bending over in pain, screaming and crying – made his stomach turn and his heart break.
He held Roman close, keeping him from falling apart as they both shook and cried.
Neither of them were to see Remus ever again.
Logan felt like his head was being crushed. The figurative weight of a thousand tons was crashing down on him and he sank down onto the floor. He had experienced migraines before, of course he had, but they were nothing compared to this. Nausea and dizziness overcame him like a flood, a flood that made his head spin and that brought tears to his eyes. A sudden burst of colour flashed up in his vision, all he could see was a dark green.
Something was very, very wrong. And suddenly, Logan knew what he had to do.
Almost as if he was under a trance, he stood up and made his way to Remus’ room.
When Logan opened the door, he was immediately overwhelmed by an image of Remus that’d forever be burned into his brain.
Remus was…so many things at this moment.
“Alive”, however, was not one of those things.
He was…overgrown, certainly.
Logan had never seen that many flowers in one place.
They were beautiful and Remus would’ve hated them; would’ve absolutely despised every single one of those flawless blossoms.
But he didn’t, because another thing he was, was “dead”. Very much so.
He was unable to know of their existence and therefore unable to hate them.
Remus lied there, completely still – unmoving in his flowery grave.
And then, Logan noticed that Remus and all of the flowers around him were slowly beginning to fade.
He was starting to become transparent, just enough so that Logan could start to see through him. It would only be a matter of minutes before Remus and all that was connected to him would be truly gone.
Logan wasn’t able to process any of this.
Couldn’t comprehend how any of this could be happening.
He just stood there and helplessly watched as Remus became less and less visible.
Remus – his friend. One of the people who had helped make Logan’s and Patton’s wedding day as perfect as it had been. Truth be told, Logan hadn’t believed in perfection until he had seen Patton standing in front of the altar, smiling at Logan like he was the only thing that mattered; they had been surrounded by their friends – no, their family.
And Remus was part of that family. He was family!
Someone who didn’t question any of Logan’s experiments, someone who made Logan laugh with his crude humour…and he was dead!
He looked nothing like himself at that moment, surrounded by the flowers that had been everywhere on Logan’s perfect day. The only thing left of Remus was an empty shell of what he had once been.
He was pale and seemed so small and broken and he was- he was…gone. He was gone.
Where there had just been an open door, mere seconds ago, there was now only a blank wall. Nothing left to indicate that Remus had ever existed in the first place, but the memories the remaining sides had of him.
Remus’ death inflicted a wound on his family that would never fully heal – a scar they would bear for the rest of their lives.
And though Logan and Patton found comfort in each other’s presence, holding each other through the pain; and though Roman and Virgil had each other, cried together while also being able to fondly smile at the memories left behind by Remus, they knew that something, no, someone, would always be missing.
Deceit wandered through the hallway that had once connected his and Remus’s room, alone, and miserable, as he would always be from now on.
He took a moment to pause at the empty space where Remus’ room had once been. His hands were shaking, his human eye was glittering with tears.
He kneeled down, lighting the candle that he had placed there after regaining his power to move. Remus’ death had hit him like a blizzard – for days he had been frozen still in his room, scared and alone – as he would always be from now on.
Remus’ death had made him shut down.
He stopped spending time with the other sides, the people who meant so much to him. Even though something inside of him longed for them, wishing that their company could be a light in the darkness to him, a shimmer of hope in the void he was trapped in, just the thought of leaving his room or this empty corridor was too…bright. So bright, it was blinding him; it made his head throb with pain.
Deceit placed a vase with thistles and withered roses in it next to the candle.
“This is for you, Remus. I hope you like them.”
He was too exhausted to lie. And anyway, no one was there to hear him speak the truth, and no one would be ever again, so it didn’t matter. And it wouldn’t matter ever again.
“I know that this is way too late…I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you… I lo-“, his voice broke, “I miss you. I miss you so much.”
There was no answer. There never would be one. The only thing that would be there for Deceit from now on was solitude. Solitude and sorrow.
And as tears started falling onto the thistles, a cough shook Deceit’s whole body.
And finally, when wilted rose petals, Deceit’s very own blossoms of sorrow, swirled through the air, Deceit knew that his own demise would soon arrive.