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Remus sighs, dangling his legs idly over the wall between his side of the Imagination and his brother's. The sky is a beautiful blue, a chill in the air that seeps through the laces of his outfit.
A deep heaviness sits in his gut, the kind of boredom that makes him want to set things on fire.
But today's not the day.
He turns his face up to the horizon of Roman's Imagination, wishing at least his brother would pop over to give him some grief. Inhaling rose-scented perfume and being assaulted with Dinsey references and songs be damned.
The walls of the mindscape twist and tumble into themselves as Janus's shoes resound on the hardwood floors. His capelet, noticeably, is missing from his shoulders, so is his hat, and a glove. He clutches the remaining glove in his other fist, running a hand over the flowers blooming over the walls.
Something was spilling out from the twins' Imaginations again.
He sighs, rubbing at a split-open scratch on his face, one earned from an unexpected battle with carnivorous yellow lillies he'd found waddling down the mindpalace hallways.
Time to pay the twins a visit.
Given the nature of these apparitions, he wasn't sure which brother to check on first.
Deciding he'd go to the Divide and figure the rest out as it come, he continues his stomp down the halls, passing by the light sides' living room among the myriad of doorways that open up along the hallway. Patton seemed to be putting out a fire, and Logan...
Janus stalls, sticking his head in.
"What's the matter here?" He almost snarls, his patience long-since run thin, definitely not in the mood for fixing another disaster on top of the one he was investigating.
The rug was on fire, a low smoke hanging over the room, and he could see no one besides Patton and Logan-- Logan, now looking shell-shocked and staring off to space as he sits in the carpet, staring out the balcony.
Patton, who'd been frantically lugging a half-filled bucket of water from the kitchen sink to the growing fire, looks at Janus with wide, frazzled eyes, framed by pretty blond curls.
Logan's spine suddenly straightens, as if he's coming to.
"Roman hit me," Logan says, as if still in disbelief. He does a motion through the air. "With the blunt part of his sword?" And then he looks over at Janus. "I thought he was you, but you should've heard the idiotic things he was spouting. It couldn't have been."
"Be nice," Patton yelps at Logan, dumping the water into the flickering flames. And then, looking up at Janus, "Kiddo, I have to agree that you went too far, even for a prank. Logan's all torn up over it--"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Logan says, expression ever-frozen in a state of shock.
"Roman, erm," Patton's cheeks pinken. "Well, he flash--"
"Patton," Logan says, almost snapping. He adjusts his glasses. "I think it hardly matters what Roman did."
Janus's expression twists further and further at the picture the two paint for him, and though his capelet would've usually hid the way he twists his hands together in anxiety, he no longer had the thing, and he catches Logan's eyes flick to the motion.
He tucks his hands to his chest as he folds them instead, which is a standard defensive pose, and really, he shouldn't have bothered. "I see what's going on here."
Patton dumps more water onto the fire, causing the flames to spit and flicker at him, rising higher as the smoke worsens. Patton waves his hand through the air to cover his stinging eyes, coughing, though he looks up at Janus's words. "You do?"
"Have either of you seen Remus without his mustache?" Janus asks, voice flat.
Patton and Logan exchange glances.
"No?" Patton says.
"Well, now you have."
Janus grabs a nearby blanket to start beating the fabric at the flames, which helps a little.
Patton's face goes through a range of emotions, "Well, I think we would've noticed if Roman had been-- well, you know."
Logan, now finding himself yet again, stands, crossing the living room to the kitchen. A few seconds later, he's hauling over a huge bag, which he flings into the flames. The baking soda explodes as it hits the fires, the powder flying every direction in puffs of white clouds that have everyone coughing again, just as the flames die down.
Logan is heaving for breath between hacking coughs, leaning heavily on the table by the kitchen. "Well that explains a lot."
"Does it? Patton asks, seeming unsure, as Janus turns, leaving the room. He knew where to go, now.
He was lying through his teeth, and he needed the light sides to believe it, even if just for a moment.