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hiya! guess who’s craving more angst?? me!! So, since bruised ego, creative block, and shackled creativity has already been done plenty times, what if Roman had literal burnout. like maybe he’s got a high fever or he feels like he’s literally being burnt and he doesn’t realize it. Maybe another side smells the smoke and follow it to Roman who is just working away and he looks exhausted and sick and stuff. And then the sides take care of him and give him comfort. - lio-the-chaotic-nonbeanie-weenie
The first time Roman noticed it, he thought it was a new power.
In his defense, he was still young! Creativity still reigned supreme in the Imagination, how was he supposed to know what it meant? The Imagination was wild and free and he was the only one who could tame it! He and his brother would craft wondrous things the other Sides couldn't hope to imagine, and they did it every day, all day, until Thomas had to go to sleep and they could slip into his dreams and play all night long.
So when he saw a spark curling up from the tips of his fingers, he thought he'd created something new.
It was so cool to have fires burning in his fingers, wasn't it? Fire at this point was still dangerous and scary and all the adults told you never to go near it because it was so scary. So if Roman could have fires burning in his fingers that made smoke and sparks, that was cool.
"Maybe you're gonna be like a dragon," Remus had suggested, his tentacles flopping around. It was at this point that the—well, the Sides that would become the Dark Sides had started to show their more animalistic features. Janus's scales had begun to show, his extra arms making him a menace when it came to movie nights. Virgil's voice was doing this weird thing now that made his ghost stories extra scary. And Remus, well, Remus smacks Roman's arm. "That's cool! I'm a Kraken, you're a dragon!"
"I thought Logan said you were an octopus."
"A Kraken is just a really big octopus."
"No, it's not!"
"Yes, it is!"
Roman reaches out to push Remus over but another set of sparks comes from his fingers and Remus shrieks. "Ow!"
"Oh, god, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't—I forgot—are you okay?"
"Yeah, 'm fine." Remus gives himself a good shake and grins maniacally. "See?"
Roman lets out a breath of relief and looks at his fingers again. The sparks are still curling from them, drifting down on the grass. Everywhere they land, the grass fizzles and snaps and turns black.
"Maybe I shouldn't be here right now. I don't wanna burn everything."
"But you don't wanna burn the Mindscape either."
Roman sighs. That is true. "Maybe—maybe we can just—sit? So I don't burn anything?"
"Fine by me. You can tell me what ending you came up with for the story if you want."
He goes to do that but instead yelps at the sudden pain in his fingers. "Uh, maybe not."
"Do you wanna go…tell someone about this?"
"What? No, no, it's fine. Besides," he declares, puffing his chest up, "I'm gonna be a proper dragon when they all see me!"
"Bet I'll finish transforming first."
"Bet you won't!"
"Bet I will!"
2.
The first time Roman figures out what it is, he almost destroys every single project he's been working on for the last month.
It hadn't been the…easiest of months, that's for sure, but it wasn't like it was the worst one he'd ever had. Sure, he had a lot of projects to do for Thomas but that was his job, he couldn't complain about being able to do his job. It was hard enough convincing everyone that it was worth taking the time to do these projects, he couldn't exactly start complaining about them now. And sure, it wasn't like it was gonna be a one-and-done thing, he had to submit them for everyone to talk about before he could officially pronounce them done, but still.
He's fine.
This is fine.
He's just come from a meeting where Logan was…not too enthusiastic about the amount of time he'd been spending holed up in his room working on things. Well, 'working' on things as Logan put it, was a core element of his, ahem, 'evaluation' of Roman wherein he described exactly how unproductive Roman's time-spent-to-product-shown ratio is.
Two weeks for just one chapter, Roman? In the past, you have managed to complete multiple chapters in the same day. Why have you decided to decrease productivity?
"It's not like I can just push a button and this stuff comes out," Roman grumbles as he goes back to sorting through his desk, "I'm not a machine. Do you know how much braining it takes to make the words go? No, all you care about is whether you can tick the little box that says 'Roman's Dumb Project' off your to-do list."
The other part of it, one that Roman argued for during the meeting, is that he's better now. When he was younger—when Thomas was younger, it was just a matter of getting things down on a page. He wasn't worried about language or narrative or characters, didn't have to hold himself to higher standards because he hadn't made those yet. He's worked to get better at what he does and so now it takes more time.
The problem is that Logan's type of work is the kind that becomes easier when you're better at it, so Logan argued that because he was better, it should be taking less time.
"We're not the same," Roman mutters to himself as he had said downstairs, "you can't hold me to the same degree you hold yourself."
I can, Logan had said as everyone else looked away in silent agreement, and I should. If you don't increase productivity, perhaps we need to reevaluate how we approach projects like this in the future.
"I'll reevaluate your face, how about that?"
He goes to pick up the sheaf of paper that represents all the work he's put into the past month with Logan's comments on it and his fingers twitch.
A single spark touches the paper.
"What? No, no, no!"
It races along the edge, curling into a blackened, ruined husk in a matter of moments. Roman rushes to put it out, get that piece of paper away from the rest, but more sparks keep catching and soon the flames begin to lick at the entire stack. In a blind panic, he flails for his water bottle and empties the contents over the burning pages. The fire dies with a wet sizzle.
Panting, he looks down at his hands. His fingertips are smudged with ash.
And the entire project with Logan's careful annotations sits in a wet, soggy mush.
"Thank god, " he mutters to himself, "I took notes."
He waits a few more minutes to ensure he's not about to set fire to anything else and carefully disposes of the now-ruined stack of paper. It slides into the trash with a desolate squishing sound. He decides it's probably a good idea to wait before touching his notebook too.
3.
The first time he sets fire to a canvas, he knows this isn't a superpower.
Granted, he hasn't really thought that since the Split. The only Sides that had animal-like features and such were the Dark Sides and Roman was Not a Dark Side. He was a Light Side and that meant that he shouldn't tell anyone else about it. But still, privately, just for himself (and maybe a few times in a corner of the Imagination no one but Remus knows about) he pretends that he can summon flame as a superpower.
Not in a 'back now, ye villain!' way or a 'let's see you defeat me when I can do this!' way, but in a quieter way. Maybe that's why he doesn't tell anyone about it, because it doesn't fit with his big arrogant Princely persona.
He pretends he's an old man in a quiet little cave, far away from his kingdom. His cave is filled with soft moss and warm rocks and in the center is a little firepit. When weary travelers come from far and wide, looking for a place to spend the nights, he takes them in and lights his fire, offering simple meals that taste more filling than anything you could ever dream of, and stories to help you fall asleep.
It's a selfish dream, but it's his favorite.
It's been a long week. He's had projects piling up on top of each other and everything seems to need an emergency last draft because apparently people don't understand that when he says I'm finished, that's not an invitation for them to come in and say oh, can you fix this, this, and this? 'Finished' means 'no more edits.' It means 'you've missed your window to tell me there are things you want changed.' It means 'you're the asshole who set this fucking deadline so you don't get to give me more work and then complain that I'm missing deadlines.'
He's a bit upset over it.
The point is he's been working overtime recently trying to get his work in and done and out of the way so he can focus on other things. Namely, all of the other goddamn projects they keep giving him. And finally, finally, he's at the end of the week and everything is done and now, now it's the weekend. Which means it's time for him to do the things he wants to do.
Remus has claimed the Imagination for the day—they each have to go through every month or so and do a spring cleaning of sorts—and so he's in his room, toying with all the things he could work on. He could keep working on that short story he's been putzing around for a while, he could do that crafting thing he's been meaning to do forever…
He looks down at his fingers. They've gone black again. They've started to do that more often now. He absentmindedly rubs them together and they smear across his hand with a slight sting of tender flesh. It reminds him of the ashes in his little firepit and he smiles.
That's what he can do. He can paint his little safe haven.
He summons a large blank canvas and paints, carefully mixing up the colors he wants to use and reaching for a brush. The moment his fingers touch it, he yelps in pain.
The metal rim around the base of the bristles cracks and warps from the heat of the fire. He frowns, trying again, only for the wood to start to smolder and he quickly drops it.
"Alright," he mutters, "maybe different brushes?"
The plastic ones just start to melt and smell horrible. The better wood ones just get way too hot to hold and he has to let them go with stinging palms. Even the littlest ones that he can pinch between two fingers aren't working.
He tries switching mediums. The colored pencils just snap. The markers start to smell so toxic he has to stop for a good ten minutes to fan the fumes away. The oil pastels melt all over his hands and it would be cool if it weren't so frustrating.
In a last-ditch attempt to just do something, he drags his fingers through the paint and grins victoriously when it stays on there. He reaches out to smear it across the canvas and—
He watches in horror as the flames eat through the canvas in a matter of seconds.
The empty wooden frame clatters hollowly to the floor.
4.
The first time he gets a fever, he knows this is how he experiences burnout.
He's put it together by then. It's oddly poetic—at least it would be if it weren't so infuriating.
But when he wakes up one day with his head pounding and his entire body sweating and feverish, it goes from infuriating to downright torturous.
The fever is relentless, burning him alive one moment—not literally, thank all the gods that have ever been invented and a few that haven't yet—and freezing him the next. He sweats through all of his clothes in what feels like two seconds and half his blankets to boot, and then he's forced to curl back in up in the gross sticky sheets because he feels like he's going to freeze to death. His head has sledgehammers beating against it from all sides and he must start crying from it at one point because he's got tears on his cheeks and a stuffy nose on top of everything else.
He wants someone here. He wants someone to take care of him. He wants someone to kiss his forehead and tell him it's all gonna be okay so bad.
Immediately, his mind goes to the Imagination. Of all the selfish things he indulges in there, the people he's conjured just to take care of them are right near the top of the list.
He thinks of the castle steward, the slightly too-flirty young man with curly hair and a wicked smirk who softens at the first sign of genuine discomfort. He wants him to come and find him like this with some off-hand pickup line about getting even hotter before he calls for a bath to help get his fever down.
He whines as the fever suddenly flares hot again and he shoves the blankets down around his knees.
He thinks of the sweet no-nonsense woman who makes chainmail in the town square and how he just wants her to come say oh, it's alright, love, you'll be alright. He wants her to come make sure he's got enough fluids in him and sit with him, stroking his brow and keeping him focused on resting, not how awful he feels.
The pounding in his head gets worse.
He thinks of the kindly old knight who is one of the few people that actually remembers and how he looks at Roman like he's so proud of him. He wants him to come and just be here, maybe if he's feeling particularly pathetic, he'll cup his face with one gloved hand, kiss his sweaty temple and murmur this too shall pass, my dear boy.
He doesn't realize the ash has spread to his arms until he tries to wipe his face and sees the burning sparks.
It's cruel, he decides in one of his last lucid moments before he succumbs to the fever, that the very things that bring him comfort in his worst moments are the same ones he is to be punished for by the flames.
5.
The first time the ashes spread to his face, he thinks he might die.
It's not been good. He feels chained to his desk, fingers bound to the keys of the keyboard churning out word after word after word. He's not even sure of their quality anymore, only sure that the number in the corner keeps getting higher and they won't be happy unless it reaches four digits. The work isn't even fun anymore. It's just a chore. The ideas that once ran around his brain with boundless energy have vanished.
Burned to a crisp.
He's stopped wearing his prince costume. The ash just gets on the white immediately and it's so hard to clean. He wears ratty old T-shirts now because no one will notice if they're a little more threadbare than they were when he started. The ash trails all over his pants, his desk, his computer, up his arms and across his torso.
He thinks hysterically that he can see his fingers getting shorter with the amount of ash he keeps losing.
The fever never really goes away. He keeps a hot water bottle and a bowl full of ice next to him as he works, either to put on his lap when his fingers tremble from the cold or to stick in his mouth when he can't breathe from the heat. His typing will grow clumsy and he has to force himself to go back and fix his typos, lest he forget and accidentally submit them to the others.
It hurts. There's nothing poetic or glamorous about it. It just really fucking hurts.
When he drags himself to the bathroom too many times for how few words he's written, he stops.
There, in the mirror. His face…
He's run out of words to describe it. He just looks at his face covered in ashes and cries.
That hurts too.
+1.
The first time the others come to take care of him, he thinks he's dreaming.
He thinks he's dreaming when he hears Patton quietly go oh, sweetheart, and gentle hands reach for him and adjust the covers around his head. They tuck back the blankets just enough so he can breathe easier and the softest kiss presses to the tip of his nose. It's okay, sweetheart, we're here now.
He thinks he's dreaming when he feels Virgil's arms hook under his and lift him up so he can carry him to the bathroom. Easy, Princey, it's okay. We're gonna get you in the bath, okay? You're a mess right now. The strong chest next to his cheek feels soft and he can't help trying to nuzzle into it. Shh, it's okay, bud, I gotcha.
He thinks he's dreaming when he hears Logan's voice instructing quietly how to make him better. The water will feel cold to you but it isn't. You've got to let it do its work and help break that fever, alright? Strong and sure hands wipe the tears from his cheeks and he just keeps crying. Hush now, little one, it's alright. We're right here.
He thinks he's dreaming when he feels a soft washcloth brushing against his face, his neck, down his arms and legs. The smell of Janus's favorite body wash fills his nose as an almost hypnotic whisper fills his ears. Shh, shh, my prince, don't you fret. We'll take care of you.
He thinks he's dreaming when it apparently comes time to get him out of the bath and Remus is there, tentacles and all, drying him off with a soft fluffy towel and getting him into a clean shirt and boxers. You're such a mess, Roro. I love you so much.
He thinks he's dreaming, but then he remembers that it hurts to dream right now.
He thinks—he thinks—
"…Re?"
"Roro? Ro-bro, can you hear me?"
"'S that you?"
"Yeah, Roro, it's me. I'm right here. Oh, fuck, I'm right here, you're doing so good, okay? It's gonna be okay, we're right here."
"Easy, Remus, you're gonna freak him out more. Calm down, bud."
"Don't fucking tell me to calm down, Roman's—"
" Still not out of the woods, so shush."
He blinks, trying to figure out what's going on. Someone with glasses leans over him.
"Roman? Can you hear me, little one?"
"L'gan?"
"Yes, that's me." He can't be imagining the relief in Logan's voice. "Your fever's broken but we need to get you to drink something. Have you been able to keep things down?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Janus—"
"Right here." A cool hand supports his head and another guides something to his lips. "Your favorite flavor, sweetie, we need to get your electrolytes back up."
He drinks. A hand strokes his throat to help him swallow. By the time it's pulled away from him, he feels a little bit more human.
"Good," Janus whispers, his hands still cradling Roman's body, "good job, sweetie."
"Kiddo? Can you look at me?"
It takes a moment, but Roman manages to open his eyes, turning his head to try and find Patton. Patton smiles when he does it, reaching out to stroke his cheek.
"You're gonna be okay," he says in that firm voice that brokers no argument, "you will. I know it might not seem like it right now, but you're gonna be okay."
"…yeah?"
"Yeah, sweetheart," he promises, "you're gonna be okay."
For the first time, in perhaps a very, very long time, a different spark flares to life inside Roman's chest.
Hope.