Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Thomas didn’t know what he was supposed to do. 

Lately, he’d noticed that something was… off about Deceit, about Janus. It wasn’t anything big, really, just little things that stood out to him and set off little alarm bells in the back of his mind.

To start with, now that he had accepted Janus and the deceitful side was spending more time with him like the others, he was noticing that Janus seemed to almost… shut down(?) whenever he wasn’t being directly involved in something. He would just sit there and stare off into space, his face blank, until someone caught his attention. Then, he would blink and just start acting normally again, as if he hadn’t just been staring at Thomas’s wall for twenty minutes straight. And beyond the staring, which was the most obvious, Thomas noticed that Janus had also been altering his behavior around him. 

First, now that he was officially ‘accepted’, Janus had suddenly dropped his antagonistic behaviors, which was great and all, but it seemed like the change was too jarring. Sure, he was still sarcastic sometimes, but it only appeared to be when Thomas questioned him about it. It was just… how did someone go from acting like a ‘Scooby Doo Villain’ to suddenly acting like he and the others never had any issues with each other, even when the other sides got mad at him? He didn’t even rise up to anyone else’s antagonism- unless Thomas somehow indicated that he expected him to (or sometimes, even when he just thought about it, and he would see Janus do that strange blink again before suddenly responding with more hostility).

And it wasn’t just that. There were other, more specific, changes as well. For example, Thomas had mentioned something about snakes being cold-blooded to him, and ever since then, Janus had started to act cold all the time. He’d started wearing more layers (in addition to those he usually wore) and using heated blankets and even sitting in patches of sunlight . Which wasn’t a problem in itself, but Janus hadn’t done any of that before he mentioned it. And then, when Thomas made a comment about how he thought Janus was warm-blooded, he suddenly stopped. 

Then there was the time Thomas asked Janus to cook with him, and for a whole week afterward, Janus showed up and tried to help every time he cooked- up until Thomas told him he didn’t have to. 

Altogether, it was making a picture that Thomas didn’t like.

Did Janus really think that his acceptance was so conditional that he couldn’t act like himself anymore? That he couldn’t defend himself when the others were being (admittedly) mean, or that he couldn’t warm himself up when he was cold, or that he had to help Thomas cook in order to be useful? And the staring thing… He didn’t really know how concerned he should be about that.

Thomas knew that it would take time to gain Janus’s trust, just like it had with Virgil, but this seemed like a bit much. He understood why Janus would be uncertain, but it had been months , and the only things that seemed to change were the behaviors that Thomas said something about- or (again) sometimes, even some things he only thought about, which made him think that Janus must have some way of (kinda?) knowing what Thomas thought, at least in regards to himself, which was a whole other can of worms that he didn’t feel like digging into too deeply right now.

And now, Janus wasn’t responding to a summoning.

Thomas had wanted to discuss this with Janus and reassure him that it was okay for him to act like himself, but Janus just wasn’t appearing. And maybe Janus really did know what Thomas was thinking and was avoiding him intentionally so they didn’t have to have this discussion, but if that was the case, shouldn’t he know that he didn’t have to pretend? 

He really didn’t know how it worked, but he did know that he had to talk to Janus.

But, since Janus wasn’t responding, he decided to summon the others.

The five other sides rose up, with Virgil on the stairs, Logan to the side, Patton by the blinds, and the twins standing in front of the TV. They all appeared surprised, and they probably were, because Thomas didn’t have anything planned for today, and they likely hadn’t expected to all be randomly summoned like this.

“Ooooh, are we having a slumber party?” Remus exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Here’s a reminder that I sleep in the buff!”

Roman rolled his eyes

“Remus, it’s 2 in the afternoon, so I doubt that this has anything to do with sleep,” Logan reasoned.

“And literally no one wants to see you naked, so,” Virgil chimed in.

“Technically, we do have the same body, though, Virgil.”

“Don’t… remind me, Lo.”

“Is something wrong, Kiddo?” Patton questioned, seeing Thomas’s more serious expression.

“Well,” Thomas started. “Do you guys know if something’s wrong with Janus?”

He saw the others briefly exchange a glance. 

“I don’t believe so. Why?” Logan replied. 

“He’s been acting weird for a while now, and I want to talk to him, but he isn’t responding to my summoning,” Thomas explained.

“Really?” spoke Roman. “That’s weird. Hey, Snakeface, are you taking a nap?”

But when Roman gestured to summon Deceit, it didn’t do anything more than when Thomas tried.

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“You... don’t think he… ducked out, do you?” Patton asked, his voice sounding concerned, but really, more confused than anything else. 

“I mean, I can still lie, so I don’t think it’s that,” Thomas told them. “I just think he’s avoiding talking to me, which kinda just confirms that something’s up. So I wanted to ask if you guys knew anything.”

“Hm, I doubt that, Thomas,” said Logan. “If you want to talk to him, I don’t think Deceit would disob-”

“Logan,” Virgil hissed.

“Oh. Right.”

“Wait, wait,” Thomas spoke, holding up a hand. “What was that? Do you guys know something?”

Everyone looked between each other.

“... Should we tell him?” Roman questioned.

Virgil sighed.

“Look, Thomas, if you really want to know something, you can, but…,” he said. “I don’t know if you really want to know this one.”

“Know what?”

And then Remus raised his hand up in the air.

“Oooooooo, I’ll tell him!” he declared. “Janus is like a puppet or something, so he does what you want, so it’s really weird that he isn’t responding to you summoning him!”

“Huh?”

“Remus!” Virgil exclaimed.

“What? He asked! Didn’t you, Tommy?”

“Hold on, what does that mean?” Thomas asked. “What do you mean, ‘Janus is a puppet’?”

At this, Virgil ran a hand through his hair, messing up his bangs.

“Wanna take this one, Lo?”

“Certainly,” Logan replied, his tone sounding matter-of-fact, though his expression showed he was a bit uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t say that calling him a ‘puppet’ is entirely accurate. Janus has… some degree of free will, but… not quite as much as you currently believe.”

For a moment, it felt as if time had stopped.

“ What? ”

“What Specs is saying is…,” Roman clarified, looking away from his host. “Is that Deceit is… different from us.”

“But what does that mean?”

“Well, Kiddo,” Patton started. “You know how Janus pretends to be us sometimes?”

“Yes?”

“He’s Deceit, so a big part of what he does is act in different roles,” Patton continued. “It’s... kind of like how you might have slightly different roles as a son or a performer or a friend. They’re all different, but they’re still you. In Janus’s case, he’s… Well, he’s a bit more malleable.”

“‘Malleable’?”

Patton nodded.

“When you switch roles, there’s still a core sense of something that’s you ,” Patton told him. “You’re a continuous person. And even though we’re aspects of your personality, we’re pretty continuous, too, unless something like the split of Creativity happens.”

“Haha, yeah, that sucked.”

“But Janus… Isn’t like that. He fulfills whatever role he thinks you need him to be, and when you don’t need him, he… just doesn’t have one,” Patton continued, voice becoming increasingly uncertain. “It’s like… if you had a doll that could move on its own? You know how you can use the same doll for different things? One day, you might want to play house, so they’re the dad, but the next day, you want to play doctor, so they’re a patient. And they can act differently each time, and when you’re done playing, whoever they were during the game disappears because the doll was only that person for the sake of the game. The difference is mostly that Janus will do things without you directly controlling him.”

“Yes, that’s about right, though I don’t think referring to him as a doll is much better than a puppet,” Logan intercepted. “Before his appearance for the show, Janus rarely left his room or acted outside of his job as Deceit. He’s… not quite the same as a function because he has a form, but he’s not the same as us other sides, either.”

“And he has less of a personality than the shorts characters, so,” Roman pointed out.

“He just… He acts how you want him to, Thomas,” Patton picked up. “And we’re not even entirely sure how much of… well, of a ‘person’ he is. He doesn’t really interact with us… or, most of us, when we’re in the mindscape, so it’s hard to tell if he actually thinks on his own or not. Whenever he isn’t doing his job, he mostly just sits there and doesn’t talk, so…”

Thomas wasn’t sure he could believe this, even though it was his sides telling him. Surely, they had to be wrong about this, right?

“But… If he acts the way I want him to, why was he being all villainous when he was introduced?” Thomas asked. “I mean, I didn’t want him to do all that, and I definitely didn’t tell him to.”

“You did , though, Thomas,” Virgil denied. “You needed a villain for the show, so he slipped into that role. Even if you didn’t tell him to, or you didn’t direct every little thing he did, your mind directed him to the role you wanted… Ugh, this… this is why I can’t get along with him, you know? Sometimes I think there’s a person behind the role, and then he just does something to show that none of it was real!”

Choosing to ignore Virgil’s mumbling at the end for the time being, Thomas continued his questioning.

“So, I made him act like that?”

“Yup!” Remus confirmed. “And then, when you wanted him to act like a fluffy little marshmallow bunny, that’s what he did! No more villainy, which is kinda boring.”

“But that’s…,” Thomas stumbled. “He… He talks to us, spends time with us. How… How can all of it be fake? I don’t think I can believe that, guys. Sure, he acts kinda weird sometimes, but…”

Patton sighed. 

“I know it’s hard to think of him that way, Kiddo,” he spoke softly. “And maybe he does have something underneath the roles, and he’s just lost. But for as long as we’ve known him, he hasn’t ever really done anything without some kind of direction from you.”

“...Oh.”

“Really, the bigger issue at hand is why he didn’t appear to your summons,” Logan pointed out. “He shouldn’t really be able to do that. It’s hard enough for one of us to resist it, and he’s practically certain to respond if you want him to. Something might be wrong.”

“Wrong?” Thomas questioned. “Like, beyond the stuff I noticed.”

“Yes. Though I don’t know what.”

“Maybe we should go check on him?” Patton suggested. “He does sleep, so maybe he just hadn’t noticed. And if something’s up, we’ll figure it out.”

“Sleepover!”

“No, Remus.”

“Okay, so, I guess we’re going to Deceit’s room, then?” Thomas asked for confirmation. “I just need to think about lies, right?”

“That should suffice, yes.”

And so, Thomas closed his eyes and prepared to enter the mindscape.

Chapter Text

When his eyes reopened, he was faced with a completely blank, white room. There wasn’t any furniture or decorations or personal effects, and there was barely even a layout. There were only four white walls, a white floor, and now that he looked a bit closer, a white door that practically blended into the walls. 

“Oh, this isn’t good,” Virgil mumbled.

“True, his room isn’t supposed to be blank. It changes a lot, but it’s not supposed to have nothing in it,” Logan mused.

“Where’s Janus?” Patton asked.

“Door.”

Thomas stepped over to the door and looked for a handle. He couldn’t find one, so he just placed a hand on it and lightly pushed it. Even with the slightest touch, it swung open. More surprisingly, however, was that it suddenly started flickering and appearing as if it was glitching out, with strange squares and lines of static flitting about it.

“I’m… guessing that isn’t supposed to happen, either.”

“Ah, shit, this is a bad idea.”

But Thomas still stepped through the doorway, entering a narrow, black hallway with a low ceiling. It was still high enough to stand and bright enough to see, but it was just as plain as the room they’d left. It seemed like they had to walk for a full ten minutes before they reached the door at the other end.

This door was glitching even worse than the other, but it had some color, at least. It was a bright yellow the same color as Deceit’s gloves. So they were probably in the right place.

“Ah,” said Logan. “That first room must have been Janus’s ‘public’ room. This is probably his bedroom.”

“Public room?”

“It’s the room we appear in when you need to go to our rooms during videos,” Roman supplied. “Usually, they look like your living room, but they can vary. Deceit’s was the courtroom when you visited it last. But we also have bedrooms that we actually sleep in.”

“ That was the courtroom?!”

“It was ,” Virgil confirmed unhappily. “But right now, it should be his version of your living room, and it isn’t, and that is. Very. Bad. ”

That just renewed Thomas’s resolve to get to the bottom of whatever was going on, so he once again held a hand out to push open the next door. This time, however, the door didn’t budge. Instead, it just glitched angrily for a moment before settling back into its original pattern.

“Woah.”

“Thomas, step back!”

And he did so, even though the door didn’t make any move to attack or anything. 

He glanced around at his sides.

“What now?”

“Perhaps we should-”

“HIT IT WITH A MORNINGSTAR!”

And before anyone could stop him, Remus summoned his weapon and slammed the spiked end of it into the glitching door. The door immediately shattered into a thousands pieces, as if it was made of glass, though the pieces quickly faded into the floor.

“Remus!” hissed Roman, unhappy with his brother’s hasty antics.

“Hey, it worked!” he excused. “Let’s go see what Double Dee’s up to, hm?”

This time, Remus led the charge into the next room, with Thomas following close behind, albeit a bit more cautiously.

As soon as they entered the room, Thomas saw a side curled up in the middle of the floor. They were wearing a plain white shirt and pants, but even with the non-descript clothes, he knew it had to be Deceit. Janus had his forehead touching the ground, and his arms were curling protectively around his stomach. He didn’t move, aside from the same glitching that had affected his doors. And just like the other room, this room was mostly blank and empty, except for a large spool of tangled, golden thread sitting in one corner.

“Oh no.”

Thomas stepped forward and fell to his knees next to the glitching side, who didn’t seem to notice that anyone had joined him in the room. Now that he was closer, he could see that Janus’s eyes were screwed tightly shut, and he could hear him breathing heavily. 

“Janus? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

But Janus didn’t respond, and when Thomas looked to his sides for help, Patton stepped forward as well. He reached out and touched the deceitful side, hoping he would react to that, but he was surprised when Janus’s body only briefly flickered to look like Patton before settling back to the plain outfit. 

“Oh dear…” 

“Oooo, I wanna try!”

And sure enough, When Remus touched him, Janus once again flickered to look like him for only a moment.

“Neat!”

“Do… Do any of you have an idea of what we’re supposed to do?” Thomas asked. “This isn’t normal, right?”

“No, it isn’t,” Logan answered. “But maybe… Try giving him a command, Thomas. Instead of asking if he can hear you, tell him to listen to you.”

“O… Okay,” Thomas agreed. “Janus, please listen to me.”

And suddenly, Janus’s eyes opened, the pupils darting in Thomas’s direction.

It looked like it worked.

“Janus, can you sit up? Sit up,” Thomas requested. 

And Janus immediately did so, and when he did, Thomas was shocked to see that the snake-like side of his face, which had previously been facing away from him, was completely covered in glitching squares so that none of his scales or his snake eye were visible.

That… did not look good.

“Janus, what happened?” Thomas asked, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

But Janus only blinked at him, his one visible eye lazily shutting and opening. The action reminded Thomas of what he saw when Janus snapped out of his staring, but this time, Janus just returned to the staring, looking right at him but not seeming to actually see him.

Thomas swallowed uncomfortably.

“Janus, tell me what’s wrong.”

He blinked again, but this time it appeared to have worked. 

“I can’t-”

Janus’s voice was barely a whisper, and his face remained blank.

“You have to tell me what’s going on, buddy,” Thomas tried again. “I want to help you.”

Another blink.

“What am I supposed to do?”

The question was spoken a bit louder, and Thomas took that as a good sign.

“You’re supposed to tell me what’s wrong,” he tried yet again.

Blink. Blink.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

And Thomas didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that answer. But it seemed like Logan had an idea.

“Oh. Role Confusion,” Logan spoke suddenly as he came closer, his voice holding both realization and thinly-veiled concern. “Thomas, I think there’s some kind of conflict in whatever roles you need him to fulfill, and he can’t do both, so he’s shut down. To resolve this, I think we need to identify and negate the conflicting demands.”

“But…,” Thomas argued. “I don’t want him to follow my demands, I just want him to be himself!”

At this declaration, Janus suddenly tensed as the glitching got worse. 

“What-”

“Thomas.”

Roman joined them, kneeling down to put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder.

“I… I think that’s the problem.”

“W…”

And then Virgil was by his side as well.

“He acts the way you want him to, Thomas. That’s who he is,” Virgil reminded him. “So telling him to act like himself, while also wanting him to act outside of what you want, is a paradox for him. Because acting like himself means fulfilling the roles, but you don’t want that from him.”

Thomas shook his head.

“No. No, there has to be…,” he mumbled. “There has to be something beneath all of that. He can’t just be a blank slate.”

“Thomas…,” said Patton, placing a comforting hand on his other shoulder. “Even if there is, we won’t be able to find it when he’s like this.”

Thomas looked at each of them, taking a long look at Janus last. 

Patton was right. He had to fix this first, and after that, he could work on trying to get Janus to be able to be himself.

So, he reached out and took Janus by the shoulders. He didn’t flicker to look like him. Instead, he briefly looked the way he usually did.

“Janus…,” he spoke softly. “I need you to go back to normal, okay? If you… If you have to fulfill a role, that’s fine.”

His heart was filled with hope for a moment as Janus’s normal outfit returned again, but it was quickly replaced with dismay as the glitching worsened even further and Janus’s blank expression shifted to pain.

“Janus!” he exclaimed fearfully.

“Thomas, he can tell what you really want!’ Virgil shouted. “He knows that you’re lying when you tell him it’s okay for him to just fulfill a role!”

“Then what am I supposed to do?!”

But no one seemed to have an answer, and Janus was starting to whimper from the pain, curling back up again slightly. 

Thomas’s mind raced as he tried to come up with something that would at least keep Janus from being in pain. And right after he came up with a way to do that, he came upon an idea for how he might be able to resolve the situation.

“Janus,” he called out, forcing Janus to sit back up. “You aren’t in pain right now.”

And just like that, the side’s face smoothed back out into blankness and his body went slack, as if he hadn’t just been in incredible pain a second ago. The demonstration of the sheer amount of power he had over him made Thomas feel sick to his stomach. 

But even still, he took a breath in. 

“Okay, buddy, I really need you to listen to me for this next part.”

He checked to make sure Janus was looking at him before he continued. 

“I need you. I need Deceit, and Self Preservation, and Denial, and any other roles you fulfill,” he continued. “But I also need Janus , and Janus can be all of those things without needing to switch himself off.”

He braced himself for what he was about to do, desperately hoping it wasn’t going to cause an even greater problem. 

“Janus, I need you to combine your roles.”

And then everything around them, like glass, shattered.

Chapter Text

In what was really a second but felt like an eternity, Thomas found himself back in the living room. A second later, the others appeared, and a moment after them, Janus was in front of him, still sitting on the floor. Now, though, he was blinking rapidly and looking around the room, turning his head from side to side.

“ What just happened?! ”

Thomas, who had still been standing in reality, knelt back down in front of Janus.

“Janus? Janus, bud, are you okay?”

The man stopped swiveling his head around and turned to face Thomas, though the blinking continued. 

“T-Thomas?”

“Yeah, buddy, I’m here. It’s gonna be okay,” Thomas reassured him. “You’re gonna be okay.”

Tears started rolling down Janus’s cheeks, and Thomas reached out to firmly yet gently grip his shoulder. Janus lifted a hand to hold onto Thomas’s wrist, clinging to him like he was a lifeline. 

“Thomas, I… I… I don’t know what to do!” he exclaimed. “I can’t- I-I can’t…”

“It’s okay, Janus. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” the man shouted. “How-How am I supposed to act now? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore! Which one am I supposed to be?! What do you want me to be ?!”

Thomas used his free hand to hold onto Janus’s own unoccupied hand.

“You can be who you want to be,” Thomas risked saying, hoping it didn’t restart the problem. “You aren’t only one thing, Jan. Each of the roles you’ve fulfilled is a part of you. And some of those parts might be bigger than others, and some of them might change, but they’re still you .”

“But. Which. One?! ” Janus screamed, and the desperation in his eyes made Thomas flinch in guilt. 

“They’re all you, Janus. You soften the blows so I don’t get hurt. You help me come up with lies to get out of sticky situations. You protect me. You do so many things,” Thomas told him. “But you can still be a person outside of what you do for me.”

“But-But I’m not a person!”

Thomas shook his head.

“You are ,” he denied. “You’re all aspects of my personality, but each of you is a person too. You all have interests and quirks that are outside of what I make you do. Hell, Roman can even speak Spanish when I can’t. You don’t have to just do things when I tell you to. You don’t have to sit and do nothing while you wait for me to need you. You can do things because you want to.”

Janus just shook his head back at him.

“No! No, I don’t have interests! I don’t just do things! I can’t!”

“You can, Janus,” Thomas insisted. “And maybe you don’t have any of your own interests right now, but you can find things you enjoy doing. You can be a person.”

As Janus started to outright sob, he continued shaking his head, and Thomas let go of the man’s shoulder so he could pull him into a hug.

He wasn’t sure if he’d made the right decision or not. Maybe forcing Janus to act on his own volition all of a sudden was cruel. But he couldn’t just let him continue to act, as Remus had put it, like a puppet. His sides had just started out as mere aspects of his personality, but by now, they were all people in their own right, even if they weren’t entirely real, and Janus was one of them. He wasn’t sure what made Janus different than them, why he was stuck following his whims, but Thomas wanted to fix it. He had to fix it.

And comforting Janus while he was overwhelmed was hopefully a good first step.