Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dr. Emile Picani had truly been having the worst day.

While it certainly wasn't the first time that an unexpected event had managed to throw off his day—or even an entire week—he couldn't remember the last time that a simple social encounter had left him this out of sorts. If he called it that. He didn't know how else to think of it, because on the surface that was all that it was. Just a snippet of conversation overheard, the debate of two strangers speaking about- He couldn't actually remember at the moment, but he must have heard it, because whatever it was had left his heart racing, and things just hadn't been...quite right ever since. He didn't remember leaving the coffee shop, and his hands were empty so he must have left without getting what he came for, but he must have been on autopilot for a while now to get as far from where he was so quickly. He only had to make it to his office, after all. Just two blocks and three floors worth of steps—or the elevator, this was certainly a valid excuse for him to take it!—and then he would be able to take a moment to breathe. He shouldn't have anything scheduled for-

What time was it? At least an hour. He thought? Yes.

At least an hour before he would be forced to...interact with people and think again...

Because he had been trying not to think about it ever since- Oh, oh yes, he did remember, didn't he, and for some reason he was trying not to- But of course, that sort of approach never truly worked, did it? No matter what he did to try and snap his mind back into focus, to think about other things, his thoughts kept being drawn back to-

He was trying not to think about it.

And perhaps he should have known better, but every time his thoughts brushed up against the memory he practically whited out from a sudden, disorienting terror that had left him gasping more than once already. That wasn't normal. That definitely wasn't normal. He had only been a couple of blocks away from the building where his office was located when...when all of his trouble had begun, and normally it wasn't a difficult distance for him to cover on foot. He did it nearly every day, weather permitting, with minimal trouble. But- But today, after...after just whatever it was he had seen and heard, it was like whenever his thoughts strayed his mind began fading out of awareness-

Or into awareness. As if the world in front of him was-

He didn't know when he had reached the elevator, but the button in front of him was already lit. When had he entered the elevator? When had he entered the building?

Was he losing time, or was it...was it somehow worse than that?

He knew that something was wrong. He knew that he should call...someone. In fact, Emile thought he may have been having some kind of an attack or crisis, and he knew the right answer was to reach out for help- Only every impulse that might have had him reaching for his phone somehow failed to fire. Every attempt he made to decide who he should reach out to for help came up terrifyingly blank...

What Emile thought at first was a wave of dizziness turned out to simply be the elevator coming to a stop. The doors opened up into the hallway. Emile stepped out and his feet kept going. A turn. Left. Past the intersection. Right. He could do this. He was almost there. He-

With a sudden spike of urgency Emile reached for the doorknob and pulled the door open, and-

Light. Flashes of color. Voices. A man. A man talking to himself. No, it was a pair of men talking... The voices were familiar. They almost sounded like the men he had seen in the coffee shop that morning. And they almost sounded like-

Color. Light. Noise. And two pairs of eyes watching him.

Staring eyes. Identical eyes. Eyes like the men in the coffee shop. Eyes like-

It almost felt like he was watching everything from behind a pane of glass. Like he was standing there. Like he wasn't standing there. Like his body was being moved outside of his control like a puppet. The terror he was starting to feel was like a storm of frantic static in his brain but his body refused to tense, refused to turn and run away. Because it felt like the men looking back at him were also there, and also not, and they, and he-

He wasn't supposed to be here. In the terrified snarl of thoughts scrambling through his brain that was the single, solid, clear one that managed to make it through. He wasn't supposed to be here.

A voice spoke. A voice that was his, a voice that wasn't, a voice speaking words that felt like someone else was pulling them from his throat. His voice, but naked of all the terror and the confusion that had him feeling like he was about to fly apart.

"Oh, I am in the wrong office..."

He turned. He blinked. The world blinked around him.

Emile was standing in the hallway, and the hallway was empty. The door in front of him was closed. His hand was still resting on the doorknob, now shaking and damp with perspiration.

The hallway was empty. Shouldn't someone else have come here by now?

"Hey, Doc."

"Zoinks!"

The word left his chest like an explosion, the sudden sound echoing oddly in a hallway that should never have been as quiet as it just was before-

Dread still clutching at his chest, his hand also clutching at his chest, Emile turned around to face the speaker. And it took him a moment to process the face in front of him with any recognition, but once it did relief flooded his body so completely that it almost took him out at the knees.

"Elliott," Emile managed, "I, uh- I didn't see you there."

The words came out remarkably evenly, all things considered, though Emile wasn't able to keep the shaken flutter out of his voice. He didn't think he had ever felt more relieved to see a patient in his life.

"Yeah, sorry," Elliott said. "I know I'm a bit early..."

"No, no," Emile insisted quickly. "It's fine. Perfect, in fact."

"Is it?" they asked skeptically. "I mean- Are you...doing okay? You seem a little..."

"No, yeah, I'm- I'm fine!" Only for his resolve to shatter pathetically as Elliott lifted a doubting eyebrow. "Yeah, okay. Maybe I'm a bit-"

The word rattled sat just on the tip of his tongue. While it certainly would have been accurate, for some reason he couldn't quite name it felt like a poor choice of words nonetheless...

"I guess I'm a bit out of sorts," he admitted. "I'm having...a bit of a day. I-"

He grasped for a moment to find the words to describe what he had been experiencing in the moments before Elliott arrived. No words were forthcoming.

"I...stepped into the wrong office," he finished at last.

And that...somehow felt accurate too. As if the words somehow carried a much deeper meaning than what it seemed like he had just said.

Elliott watched him for a moment, their expression one of concern.

"Would you- Do you want to talk about it?"

"I thought that was my job," Emile chastised playfully.

"Well, since I'm early," Elliott argued, "technically you're not on the clock yet, right? And you kind of look like you need it."

And Emile knew it would probably have been wiser to turn the offer down, but...in all honesty, he really did need it. Besides, what else were he and Elliott supposed to do with the time?

"Alright," he relented finally. "Let's head into the office."

Because the empty hallways, and the strange, almost unnatural quiet of the building around them, was still...unsettling to say the least.

Emile wished that he could have said he felt any more secure once they were both inside his office with the door closed behind them. But something in the air just didn't feel right—hadn't felt right for most of his day—and though he couldn't put his finger on it, there was an overall sense of foreboding that didn't seem prepared to let up any time soon.

"So," Elliott said, settling in on the couch. "Where do you want to start?"

They leaned forward with their hands clasped, elbows resting on their knees in an exaggerated show of interest that couldn't help but make Emile smile just a little. Though it was unhappily rather short lived. Emile sat down in his chair and took a breath.

Where to start? Where had it started?

"The day started out normal," Emile said, as much to himself as to his patient-turned-confidant. "I got up. I started my day the way I usually do. I stopped at this coffee shop on the way to the office, like I sometimes do, and..."

That was true, wasn't it? That it was part of his routine? It had certainly felt familiar while he was there. Except now, as Emile thought about it for a moment he...couldn't remember a single instance of having visited that particular coffee shop before. He couldn't remember what any of the staff looked like, or what there names were. He had this vague sense of the decor, the smell, the arrangement of the tables, but it was all...extremely generic. And he couldn't remember what any of the other customers had looked like either, except-

Except there had been two men sitting at the chess table in the corner, and they had somehow caught his eye. In the midst of their game they were engaged in a conversation—or a debate, more specifically, and one that they each seemed in their own manner to be passionate about. It was something on the topic of-

(He had been trying not to think about it. It wasn't safe to think about it. It hurt thinking about it-)

But it had been interesting to listen to while he was waiting for his order. The conversation had honestly struck him as fascinating. It seemed, at the center of it, to be a philosophical discussion about the merits of fantasy versus the concept of objective reality. It had apparently circled around to the topic of the subjectivity of perception—the collection of unreliable sensory information through which a person ultimately came to define their "truth", and the man in the bowler hat was defending his stance that this meant that no truth, as perceived by a living being, could never be absolute. And the man in the spectacles and tie, who had been waiting patiently, had moved his piece on the board and hit his timer before starting in on his rebuttal. And-

And there hadn't been anything about it that had seemed particularly odd to him, not at first, except then the man in the hat had leaned in to listen, resting his chin on a gloved hand. And as Emile's eyes were drawn by the flash of color, bright yellow against black, and then to the face it supported, and...

"Doc?"

Elliott's voice startled him back to himself.

"Sorry, I- Well, it's going to sound odd, but I think...I think I saw something I wasn't supposed to."

"What do you mean?"

"When I was in the coffee shop," Emile said, "there were these two men talking to each other. And they looked-"

They had looked normal at first, but the longer Emile had watched—hardly even aware of the fact that he was watching—the more he had a sense that something about them was... Wrong wasn't the word. In fact, if pressed, he might even have said it was the opposite. Everything about them had seemed perfectly fine at a first glance, but in a way that had made the cafe and everything else around them seem...just slightly off by comparison. Thinking about it now, it put him in mind of those early cartoons where the saturation and motion of the characters cut such a stark contrast against the dull, static colors of the background that they never quite seemed to match...

And then, of course, he had looked at their faces and from there it had seemed like everything about his day had suddenly gone haywire.

"One of them looked like a high school chemistry teacher," Emile said finally, feeling oddly certain of his description. "And the other one kind of looked...like if Bill Cipher was a Sneople."

From the blank look that Elliott gave him, the latter description was probably barely comprehensible. Which, in his defense, it hadn't made much sense at the time, either. Because while there was no doubt an entirely reasonable explanation for the second man's appearance—that there was a convention nearby that Emile somehow hadn't heard about, or perhaps that he was on his break from a local theater—somehow the scales on his face and the yellow, piercing eye hadn't managed to be the most disconcerting thing about him. About both of them, really. Because Emile had let out a soft sound of surprise when he noticed those strange features, which had prompted the men to notice him. At which point he had noticed-

And, as Emile sat there turning it over once more in his head, he had to admit that it probably wouldn't be the wisest idea for him to continue unburdening himself to one of his patients. Honestly, he thought having a patient come to him freshly alarmed and with a story like this to relate might even have been just a little bit above his pay-grade.

"You know what, never mind," Emile excused quickly. "Maybe we should just get started. What time was your appointment supposed to start?"

Emile reached over to his desk and brought out his schedule book, flipping through the pages. He soon frowned in confusion.

"Wait... I don't think I have you on the calendar for today, Elliott. Are you-"

Only, when Emile looked back toward the couch it wasn't Elliott that was sitting there.

Instead, Emile found himself looking into the strange, mismatched eyes of the stranger from the coffee shop. The man with the scales—the snake, his mind supplied with an unsettling certainty. He sat where Elliott had been only moments before, leaning forward slightly, gloved hands resting on the top of a the twisted, glossy black crook of a cane. And just as before, it wasn't the strangeness of his gaze, or his unusual attire, or the anomaly of his scales that had Emile staring back, dry-mouthed and frozen with a confounded horror. It was every other feature of the man's face—the features that the man had shared with his otherwise mundane companion, whose attention had left Emile no less terrified. Features that were shocking in their familiarity-

Because they were his.

Emile stared at the man with the scales, the snake, terrified because somehow the face beneath those features were nearly identical to his own.

"Dr. Picani," the man said, his voice slightly smoother, deeper in its inflection, but still so similar to his own. "I think that you and I need to talk."

"Who are you?" Emile asked, startled. "What-"

Emile was starting to feel light headed. He wasn't breathing right. He needed to breathe, but-

"I know this is probably...distressing, Doctor," the man said, "but you are going to be alright. Well. Hopefully. Just...take a moment to calm yourself. Take your time."

And it took time—oh, it took a lot of time to calm himself and bring his breathing under control with this man watching all the while.

"What is happening?" Emile managed shakily.

"That's what I'm here trying to find out," the man answered wryly. "My compatriot and I seem to have caused quite a fuss by mistake, and I'm here to fix the problem. If it's not too late."

Oh, that sounded...ominous. He really did not like that at all.

"What problem?" Emile demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, to put it bluntly, Dr. Picani...you are. All this," the man gestured to Emile's...well, everything, which he thought at its most charitable interpretation might perhaps indicate his state of distress. "You're really having a time of it right now, aren't you?"

Emile couldn't stop the helpless laugh that startled out of him.

"You think so?"

"Hmm, yes," the man acknowledged, sounding amused. "But I think it's important we see just how badly this situation has gotten. I'll need to ask you a few questions."

"Alright?" Emile managed warily.

"You've told me about our earlier encounter already," the man said, "at least as you remember it. But right now I need you to tell me: What do I look like to you? What do you see when you look at me?"

"I- I think I said that already too, didn't I?"

"Ah, yes, the...Gravity Falls. Right," was that amusement or annoyance? Emile couldn't quite tell. "But no, I need you to tell me in detail. I need to know exactly what you see."

"I- Well. To me you look..."

The way he had phrased it, it seemed like the man expected some elements of his appearance to be subjective. Which was...an alarming thought, from one perspective, yet a strangely calming one from another. If what he was seeing was potentially influenced by...some unknown factors, then perhaps-

Oh, right. The man was waiting. Patiently? He hoped...

"Male, or male presenting," A man, Emile's thoughts had been supplying confidently all this time, with the same certainty it had also supplied snake. "White. Mid-thirties. You're dressed in black. With a black bowler hat and yellow gloves- Only, the left side of your face-"

"Go on," the man encouraged when he hesitated.

"You have...scales on the left side of your face, and the eye is...slitted. Like-"

"Like a snakes'," the man said unperturbed—he sounded almost bored. "As you said earlier. I know you've seen that much, Dr. Picani, but what else?"

"You-" Emile continued haltingly. "You, and the man that was with you at the coffee shop... You looked almost identical to each other. Different, but the same. Like twins. Or..."

"Or?" the man encouraged when he trailed off. "Doctor, I need to know if that's all you saw. It's important."

"You look...you look like me," Emile admitted in an agonized rush, because he was still trying to wrap his head around it. "You both looked like me. Why- Why do you look like-"

"Easy," the man cautioned him, holding up a gloved hand, "just...take a moment. Take several, if you need it. I'll answer that question, I promise you, but I need you to try and relax, for a moment. That was hard to face, I'm sure, but I need for you to take the time to calm back down before the rest. Because if I try to explain any of this before you're ready, it's only going to get much worse-"

Emile didn't challenge that. He certainly didn't want to think about how this situation could be worse. Because he was sure that he could, but he was just as sure that knowing how it could would probably be doing him negative favors just then. He took a moment, dropping his head down to take several long, slow breaths.

"Alright," he said—to himself, to the man, to it hardly mattered who at this point. "Alright. This is...it's a lot."

"It is," the man agreed. "But you're doing well. You're doing very well, all things considered."

"I- Thanks?"

When Emile looked back up, the man had taken a more relaxed pose on the couch across from him, half a lean with the cane now resting on his shoulder.

"I...I think I'm ready," Emile said carefully.

"Alright," the man said. "Then here's what I'll tell you to start: there are two ways to try and handle this, and one of them is going to be very hard to pull off, but it's probably going to be the least distressing of the two. However, it does mean that you don't get the majority of the answers that you've no doubt got running around in your head. Though you won't feel lacking. In fact, if all goes well, ideally you wouldn't even have to remember having this conversation—or our initial encounter—in the first place."

He paused a moment, letting the weight of it sit in the air between them for a moment before he continued.

"The other is easier, by a certain perspective," the man said. "In a sense, it's like a trust fall. Instead of trying to climb our way out of the situation we're in, instead we would be choosing to go with gravity and just...see where it takes us. And that may be very hard on you, because a lot of the answers I have to give...may not be easy for you to accept. And I can't promise you'll be happy with it, in the end. Are you following so far?"

"I- Not entirely," Emile admitted, "but I think I get the idea."

"Good," the man said. "If we start with the first one, we can always circle back to the second, but if we do it that way, it may simply be prolonging the inevitable. On the other hand, if we take the second route, it's not a path we can double back on. And if we do embark on that road together, I can't promise in the long run that you'll ever be certain it was the right choice. But you'll have all the answers I'm able to give. I can't offer you more than that. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I think so."

And he did think he understood, in the broadest sense. It was a pretty classic scenario, after all, in a lot of ways. Facing the truth and whatever it would entail, or walking away from it to live...whatever life he might have lived if none of this had ever happened. But...that wasn't the choice one typically chose in any story, was it? Down one path was something familiar, something that was perhaps even a lie. Down the other, knowledge he couldn't possible guess at ahead of time, but which he would most likely never have the chance for again. And with a choice like that, it was hard not to feel just a little bit of excitement creep through, in spite of all of his fear.

Maybe it wasn't the smart choice, or the safe choice, but as frightened by all of this as he was, Emile knew there was only going forward from this. He didn't think he could ever have the strength to choose otherwise.

"I- I think I'll choose the truth, please."

The man in front of him gave a chuckle.

"A tall ask, in this case," he said, mouth pulling in a smile, and with the odd crease at the left side of his mouth for a moment the expression looked distressingly inhuman. "I don't have much truth to offer you. I can offer answers, I can explain this, and those answers will be accurate. But I'm afraid truth really isn't my department, and in this case it doesn't even apply."

"I don't understand," Emile said.

"I know," the man said, somewhat dismissively. "Don't worry about it right now. Eventually it will make sense. Approximately. But if you're certain of your choice, I can give you the first of your answers. If you're ready."

"Give me whatever you've got."

"Well, to start, you asked me what I was," the man said. "And I can tell you that what I am is Deceit."

"Deceit as in lies?" Emile asked, uncertainly.

"Deceit as in the capacity for lying," the man—being?—said. "The capacity for embracing untruth. For secret keeping. For the deception of others and the deception of the self. For denial. Compartmentalization. For belief in the absence of proof, whether it exists in the form of faith or as willful ignorance. And, most material to our current circumstances: the willing suspension of disbelief."

"I...see," Emile managed, confused.

The...Deceit entity—no, it sounded like a bit like a title, he'd go with Deceit for now—gave another slow smirk.

"You don't, actually," Deceit said, sounding amused. "I can tell that you don't. And that's alright, but this is the easy part, Doctor. The rest, alas, is the part that is going to be difficult."

Emile took that into consideration, along with the rest, and thought over it more carefully. And then it dawned on him. The conversation from the coffee shop...

"Embracing untruth..." Emile repeated, weighing the words slowly. "Reality versus Fantasy. That's what you two were talking about in the coffee shop. So... This has to do with believing something—or disbelieving something."

Deceit gave an encouraging nod.

"Yes, I suppose it does," he acknowledged. "Although perhaps not directly. My...colleague and I made a mistake choosing to have our debate where we did. In order to be a balanced discussion, we needed to have it in...I suppose you could call it neutral territory. But given our topic, as well as the nature of his role in contrast to mine, it was bound to get...involved, and we wanted to avoid any interruptions or outside arguments."

"His role," Emile wondered. "If you're Deceit, was he Truth?"

Deceit let out a snort.

"He'd certainly like to think so," Deceit said. "But no. He is Logic, or so he styles himself. Reasoning, critical thinking, the accumulation and utilization of knowledge, so on, so forth. Other rigid and boring things."

He flipped his hand dismissively.

"Don't get me wrong," Deceit said. "His job is very important and I respect him for it, but he can also be a bit self important... It's hard for him to see from the perspective of others when it isn't rooted in his own brand of strict reasoning, but we've all of us been putting effort into developing our working relationship. Hence our little meeting. Unfortunately, by leaving the others out of the discussion, we both failed to...well, imagine that there could be unforeseeable consequences."

"Consequences meaning...whatever is going on with me," Emile reasoned out.

"Yes, exactly."

"I...think I'm following along so far."

"I'm glad," Deceit said, "because this is the part where it gets...both more complicated and less. And also where we start coming up against the parts that might be difficult for you to swallow. Because neither of us, myself or my colleague, constitute absolute manifestations of what we represent. He is not the embodiment of Logic anymore than I am everyone's capacity for Deceit, but rather...that of one person in particular."

"You don't mean..." Emile said slowly. "Is that why you look like...?"

"No-" Deceit was quick to interrupt, though he seemed to reconsider it slightly. "Well, yes in a sense it is why we look the same, but for the most part, no. We're not yours the way you're thinking, though that's an understandable misinterpretation to make given the information available. But no, and...that's sort of where the problem lies. And where we come to the hardest part of all this..."

"My colleagues and I are all mental constructs," Deceit said. "Personifications of the processes going on within a human mind. And as such, we're all thoroughly metaphysical in nature. Immaterial. Imaginary. And therefore-"

"Huh."

Emile was barely aware of the sound leaving him as he made a realization, but somewhat regrettably it stopped Deceit's monologue in its tracks.

"What is it?"

"Sorry, it's just..." Emile fumbled somewhat apologetically. "This...sounds an awful lot like the plot of Inside Out."

Deceit gave a sigh that sounded nearly as tired as it did...mildly embarrassed.

"Well, you're not wrong..."

And perhaps it should have been bothering him more, because Emile did see the direction where Deceit's words had been heading, of course he did. Maybe it was still too much for him to face the whole of it just yet. But having stumbled upon a way of framing his situation in a familiar way, of putting it at a certain distance, it managed to make it just a little bit easier for him to look at all of the smaller parts of it on their own. His day so far had been disorienting and frightening, and he hadn't understood anything that was happening to start. But for right now he was just...sitting here, having a conversation. For the moment, nothing especially threatening or uncomfortable was happening, and Deceit, though certainly menacing in his appearance, had at least been helpful enough so far with his answers. And...

And the start of his day had been terrifying, but...Inside Out was a children's movie, and that wasn't so scary.

(Well, most of that movie hadn't been scary, anyway...)

"So, if you aren't my capacity for Deceit then whose are you?" Emile finally asked. "Because I assume the answer to that is...probably going to be pretty important."

He was bracing himself, really. Hoping that whatever the answer was, it was an answer he would be able to handle.

"It's...immensely important," Deceit stated firmly. "He's..."

Though Deceit paused, seeming reluctant in a way that struck Emile as almost bashful, and, for the first time since his dramatic arrival, he appeared at a loss for what to say.

"He's an...actor," Deceit said, slowly at first, his voice soft with what Emile felt was a sort of adoration. "A performer. Incredibly talented. He could be in movies—would be, if not for...circumstances. But he's gained a fair amount of popularity by playing a few characters of his own creation in short-form videos on the internet-"

"You mean, like a YouTuber?"

Deceit's eyes narrowed in irritation.

"Is that a problem?" he asked, almost defensively.

"No! No, no. I just-" Gosh, why was this suddenly so awkward? "What's his name?"

"His name is Thomas Sanders."

"Wait...the guy from the vines?"

The vexed exhalation Deceit let out as he sat up straighter was practically a hiss.

"Yes, the guy from the vines," Deceit answered testily. "Again, is there a problem? We're still talking about the individual to whom you owe-"

"No, there isn't, I promise!" Emile defended quickly. "Sorry, I was just...surprised, alright? I mean, now that you mention it- Huh. Why haven't I ever noticed the resemblance until now?"

"Probably because you only technically came to exist properly during our first encounter," Deceit answered. "I'd imagine it's rather difficult to notice something when you're not actually there to notice it."

Which...was certainly a sobering thought.

"Yeah, I- Wowzers," Emile managed a little breathlessly. "I guess that would kind of explain it..."

"Listen, Dr. Picani-"

"Emile," he offered somewhat off-handedly, still feeling a bit dazed.

Deceit paused, lifting a curious eyebrow.

"I mean...you obviously know my name," Emile commented, "but if we're both existing within the same mind, then you might as well call me Emile, right?"

Deceit, for his part, seemed oddly reluctant to respond for a moment. His eyes traveled over Emile, unsubtle in their naked assessment, as if he were weighing some decision carefully.

"Janus."

Which, given the lack of context that was offered, Emile hoped he could be forgiven the amount of time it took for him to understand properly. And for the stare of empty confusion he inflicted on the other before the pieces fell into place.

"Oh? Oh," Emile fumbled finally. "I like that. It suits you."

And Janus, who had seemed just on the edge of becoming defensive again, at least seemed somewhat mollified by his words.

"Well," Janus said, a little tartly as he straightened his gloves. "It's nice to know someone around here has taste."

Neither of them spoke for a while after that, Emile taking the time to absorb everything he had just been told at this point. It was all so...strange. And frightening, he supposed, but the strangeness of it seemed to far outweigh the fear. He found himself...oddly at ease with it so far. Again, perhaps it would hit him more solidly later. And perhaps he could have spent more time interrogating the motives and the potential agenda of a man who had literally introduced himself as Deceit before trusting in his answers. But...it hardly seemed fair to make such an assumption based merely on the name of his title. And so far had he been given any other reason not to?

"So...if I didn't exist before the coffee shop," Emile asked him, "how was I even there?"

"The whole scene of the coffee shop was something more or less equivalent to a daydream," Janus explained. "The location could have been anything, but my companion and I wanted to choose somewhere a bit mundane to discourage unwanted curiosity from our other colleagues. And when a location is imagined, the expected atmosphere usually accompanies it. So a business during open hours is going to have its staff as well as its customers. And as long as the identities of those people aren't important to the scene, they generally just fill themselves in quietly. Sometimes they're people Thomas has seen in real life, often just in passing. Sometimes they're just undefined shapes moving around in the background. Sometimes they're fictional—you probably didn't have the chance to notice, but the barista that took your order was actually Steve Harrington from Stranger Things."

"Really?" Emile said, surprised. "So I was just...part of the background, then? For you and your friend?"

"More or less," Janus said. "You were there because it made sense that you might visit a coffee shop, and you're a reasonably familiar entity to Thomas's subconscious. Because he created you, and because he has performed as you, he has a reasonable grasp of how you would act in simple situations. As piece of the scenery, that puts you in possession of more animation, more complex reactions, which places you closer to the foreground as it were. And, unfortunately, that means that not only were you close enough to overhear us, but you were complex enough to begin to react. And perhaps because of our topic, perhaps because of our roles within Thomas's mind, that left a door open for you to...come about as you have."

"I...alright."

Emile meant the words when he spoke them, even if he realized he was gripping his knees almost painfully tight at the same time.

"So, uh. What happens now?" he asked, a little helplessly.

"You know, I'm really not sure," Janus admitted. "It isn't as if this exact situation has ever happened before."

"I suppose we'll have to play it by ear until we figure it out," Emile said. "Right?"

"You're really taking all of this very well, you know," Janus commented, sounding, Emile thought, both approving and surprised in equal measure.

"I- Thanks," Emile said, genuinely. "It's...a lot to unpack, don't get me wrong, but it's also...I dunno. I mean, the whole thing of you guys being sort of a metaphor used to personify the abstract, but also your own thing at the same time and that's...actually kind of inventive and cool if you think about it. Overall it...doesn't sound so bad."

"Well," Janus hedged, "I'm afraid I can't take...much of the credit for that part. I just suspend disbelief, after all. The actual imagining is...also another department."

"You know..." Emile said, standing from his seat. "If I don't have any actual appointments today, I could really use some caffeine. Never did get that coffee..."

"I can't imagine why," Janus said with a smirk.

"Would you like to join me?"

Janus looked back at him in surprise.

"I...suppose I have an opening in my schedule," Janus said, standing up to join him. "Did you have somewhere in mind?"

And Picani did, because he had thought about it before. Even if it was a little silly. And technically he hadn't actually thought about it, because he hadn't truly existed before, but he supposed that his personality, his nature, must have dictated that he would have thought of it before if given the chance. Which apparently amounted to the same thing...

"I mean, if all of this is imaginary and it really could be anywhere..." Emile reasoned. "There's this little tea shop in Ba Sing Se...?"

Janus gave him a slow smile that now no longer looked so sinister.

"I think I know the place," Janus said, offering his arm. "I can show you the way."

Returning the smile, Emile took the arm that was held out to him, while in the other Janus held his cane, and yet another had opened the door for them both, and-

And it was at that point Emile thought it was really just best to stop counting...

Chapter Text

It was nearly half past 3 am and Thomas was stuck lying awake in bed, staring at the blank canvas of the ceiling. Beside him, Virgil lay on top of the covers doing more or less the same.

Neither of them knew why Thomas had been having so much trouble sleeping of late. Most of the time, if Thomas was losing sleep it was because Virgil was doing his job—when it wasn't Remus or Roman's fault at least. On the odd occasion it would be Patton, though usually only by virtue of his being the one to get Virgil so wound up in the first place. Yet as it stood, none of the other sides had stepped forward to take responsibility, which had in turn only served to make Virgil even more uneasy. For a while they had considered blaming Thomas's dreams—because while sleep had become hard to come by, when he did manage a few hours his dreams had been a little...strange. But the twins had both insisted that they weren't doing anything too out of the ordinary, so that had been something of a dead end. Which wasn't to say that Virgil didn't have his theories. Only that it was the sort of vague gut-feeling that it was hard to explain to Thomas or the other sides, and considering his potential biases in the matter...

"I still think it's Janus," Virgil said. "Whatever it is. If he's up to something, of course he's not going to cop to it-"

"Virge."

Virgil sighed.

"Sorry. I just-"

Only, Virgil never got the chance to say.

"Hey babes, someone forget to invite me to this party? Rude."

Two screams followed, one of which, being imaginary, went more or less unheard. The other managed to wake the neighbor's dog, who immediately started barking, waking up almost half the block...

Suffice it to say, no one was getting any more rest that night, and Thomas got a great deal more Sleep than he was prepared for.