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A throat cleared, and nearly a dozen pairs of eyes began to open at once, adjusting to the brightness of the room before settling on the figure in front of them.
It would be an unnerving sight for anyone else, but the woman simply smiled. “I’m guessing you all have questions,” she said as she adjusted the clipboard in her lap.
“Hera?” a few voices echoed, each wavering in fear.
“Guqqie?” said a couple others, in equal parts reverence and disbelief.
“Sola?” the final person whispered, voice small and wounded.
The side of Hera’s mouth twitched slightly upward, eyes twinkling in thinly veiled amusement.
“Well,” a voice spoke up, and all eyes turned to greet the perpetrator: an enderian prince dressed in clothes that appeared to be a few sizes too big, wearing a crown that looked as if it was seconds away from falling off his head. His arms were crossed, and he rather daringly glared daggers at Hera as he huffed, “My first question is: how the fuck did I get here? Is this, like, some sort of secret society or super exclusive club or something? Because, if so, you have a strange selection process. I swear, I can smell the poverty coming off of these freaks in waves.”
Hera simply grinned in response, displaying what appeared to be just a few too many teeth for comfort.
“Wait,” the enderian continued, gasping. “Have I been kidnapped?!”
Hera chuckled. “While I’d love to answer all of your burning questions,” she drawled, “I’m afraid that’s not why you’re here.”
The group muttered to themselves in confusion, glancing around the room in varying degrees of uncertainty and concern.
“Then, um,” began the person visibly covered in blood, fiddling with what appeared to be a wedding ring on their finger, “why are we here, then, Hera?”
Hera’s smile widened. “Well, dear,” she crooned, “welcome to your first group therapy appointment.”
A shocked silence fell upon the room.
“This is going to be such a PR disaster,” the enderian muttered.
Hera clapped her hands suddenly. “Alright,” she announced, cheerily. “Firstly, to make things easier, I’m going to refer to you in terms of your respective universes.”
“Respective what?”
“Wait-”
“Huh?”
“Wha-”
“Universes?”
“Um-”
“What the fuck?”
“Uhhh-”
“Pardon?”
“…”
Ignoring the onslaught of questions, Hera directed her attention to one of her patients: they were a bit older than the others, dressed comfortably, in all brown, and, interestingly, held a daisy in one of their hands. “You will be called C!Aimsey.”
“I- what? What does the C stand for?” C!Aimsey managed to ask despite the fact that bloom looked as though she’d seen a ghost.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hera responded with a wave of her hand before turning to face her wife. “And you, darling, will be referred to as ARG!Aimsey.”
Though faun clearly had questions, ARG!Aimsey simply nodded, as she’d learned throughout the years that it was best not to ask too many questions.
Hera smiled as her eyes met a familiar gaze. “And you—”
“Fuck off,” they interrupted before she could finish.
Biting down a laugh, Hera finished, “Will be AU!Aimsey.”
The one-horned demon flipped her off in response.
“You will be referred to as O!Aimsey,” Hera said to the enderian prince.
“Ew,” O!Aimsey sneered, mouth twisting in disgust.
Hera paused for a second as she looked at one of her patients, brows furrowed as she flipped through the papers on her clipboard, but only faltered momentarily before pursing her lips and making a tsk sound as she regarded the person with tattered wings. “I’m not entirely sure how you got here,” she began, “but I’m going to refer to you as Q!Aimsey.”
Q!Aimsey frowned. “Do I know you from somewhere?” moth asked.
“I… don’t think so,” Hera responded, and quickly moved on, only to be caught off guard once more.
“You… are also a bit of a mystery,” she admitted, as she looked at what appeared to be another prince, but a human one. “I’ll call you A!Aimsey.”
“So you don’t know who I am, either?” A!Aimsey asked, looking rather distraught.
Hera ignored gem and turned to face the final two patients. “And, finally, we have the pirates.”
A squeak sounded from the corner of the room. “What about me?” asked the bunny, and Hera breathed out a sigh.
“You’re R!Aimsey. Or whatever,” she said, fully intending on moving on.
“Oi! What about me?” asked yet another patient, this time fully dressed in a police officer’s uniform.
Hera glared. “You’re Cop!Aimsey,” she spat out. “And, somehow, I hate you more than everyone else here. So, congrats.”
ARG!Aimsey silently raised a fist in the air before pulling it down just as fast, glancing around the room shamefully.
“Okay, so, pirates. You’re P!Aimsey,” Hera said, pointing to the pirate dressed in green, “and you’re S!Aimsey,” pointing to the pirate in tattered clothing.
“And you’re… what the fuck are you? A gardener?”
The patient looked around nervously and shrugged. “Yeah…?”
Hera sighed. “We’re really losing the plot, aren’t we? Whatever. You’re GH!Aimsey. Don’t ask.”
GH!Aimsey gave a reluctant thumbs up in response.
Hera took a deep, steadying breath, and did the best she could to regain her composure. “Alright! Now that we’ve done introductions, let’s get right into it. Who’s got something they’d like to get off their chest?”
The silence that followed was heavy as each Aimsey variant glanced around the room at the others, waiting to see who would crack first.
“Come on, guys,” Hera urged, “I already know what most of you have done, and I can’t imagine how much of a burden it must be to carry it with you.”
A beat. And then, “I killed someone.”
Most of the Aimsey variants gave sympathetic glances toward the patient who spoke up, having been in a similar boat.
“Okay, Q!Aimsey. Do you want to elaborate on that?” Hera prodded.
The moth shifted uncomfortably in their seat. “Well, I kind of killed a lot of people. It, um, I think it started by accident? I accidentally killed someone who looked a lot like you, actually.”
Hera’s eyes widened a bit in surprise as she jotted this down.
“And then it was for survival,” Q!Aimsey continued. “It was life or death. But I-” moth took a shaky breath, “I did some… I did some unholy things. Unnatural. I was- I was forsaken by my god. I- I couldn’t come back from it. I couldn’t repent. But I… I swear I thought I had to…” Q!Aimsey broke off into sobs, wings closing in around xim.
A!Aimsey gave them a comforting squeeze. “I don’t remember much about who I am or where I’ve come from, but I think that I’ve killed people, too.”
A few other Aimsey variants murmured in agreement.
“Alright. We’re off to a good start. Who else?” Hera asked, making pointed looks at a few of her patients.
“I’m… not really sure what to confess,” said R!Aimsey with a shrug — well, as good of a shrug as a bunny hybrid could manage.
“Me neither,” echoed a couple variants.
Hera sighed, massaging her temples. “Well. If no one is going to speak up, you wouldn’t mind if I chose, then, would you?” she asked with a strained smile.
ARG!Aimsey and C!Aimsey gulped.
“You’re not getting shit out of me,” AU!Aimsey nearly hissed. “Only thing I regret is not killing you.”
Hera’s smile turned menacing as she fixed it on the demon. “Oh, yeah? Well I regret not breaking your other horn when I had the chance.”
AU!Aimsey stood from his seat, eyes full of fire. “Ohh, you’re gonna regret that—”
ARG!Aimsey pulled him back. “It’s not worth it,” faun said, eyes pleading. “Please just sit back down.”
AU!Aimsey whirled on them. “And why should I listen to you, then? I know who you are. You’re literally covered in her blood.”
ARG!Aimsey recoiled as if they’d been, well, stabbed. Hera grinned.
“Settle down, boys,” she sing-songed. “No use fighting yourselves.”
“Now,” Hera continued once they’d both settled back into their seats, albeit begrudgingly. “Who’s next?”
“I stabbed my wife,” ARG!Aimsey said, raising his hand.
AU!Aimsey scowled. Hera smiled, all teeth.
“And how did that make you feel?” Hera asked, staring unblinkingly into faun’s eyes.
“Are you really going to make me do this?” ARG!Aimsey asked, and sighed when Hera’s expression remained unchanged.
“I regretted it as soon as it happened,” they began, and both Hera and AU!Aimsey scoffed.
“And I’ve been trying to make up for it since,” ARG!Aimsey finished, and Hera simply rolled her eyes.
C!Aimsey gave ARG!Aimsey a sympathetic look. “I think that I accidentally killed my girlfriend.”
Hera’s eye twitched slightly but she said nothing.
“Well. Almost girlfriend,” C!Aimsey admitted sadly. “I… I left, and I knew she was struggling, but I had to leave and figure out who I was and I left her behind without telling her how I felt. When I came back, it was too late, and I left again without making things right. She… she jumped from a tower after,” C!Aimsey admitted, head lowered and eyes watering.
AU!Aimsey’s eyes widened in recognition, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I asked Beyoncé to follow me back on Instagram even though I knew she only follows Jay Z,” O!Aimsey admitted, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.
A few people groaned.
“Who’s Beyoncé?” P!Aimsey asked, and O!Aimsey gaped.
“What do you mean, ‘Who’s Beyoncé?’ Have you been living under a rock?!” O!Aimsey nearly screeched.
“Well, I’ve been stuck in a cave where time doesn’t seem to pass,” S!Aimsey offered, hand raised weakly.
“I’ve been stuck in a burrow,” R!Aimsey piped up.
“I’ve been stuck in a war zone,” Q!Aimsey muttered, peeking out from behind their wings.
“I died while in a weird town on a strange purple island,” P!Aimsey added.
“You know, O!Aimsey,” Cop!Aimsey started, and everyone turned to her in confusion, having forgotten that she was there, “I assisted in the arrest of Jennifer Coolidge once.”
Every other person in the room groaned.
O!Aimsey stared at Cop!Aimsey in disbelief. “Did you really think that would make me like you?”
“Um,” Cop!Aimsey replied, stupidly.
Hera sighed, long and heavy. “This is not as enjoyable as I thought it would be,” she murmured, closing her eyes for a moment and counting to ten before bestowing a wide, disarmingly menacing smile on her patients. “Well, this has been lovely so far. Very illuminating. Now, I have another question for you all. After hearing what the others have done, who do you think is the worst person here?”
With little to no hesitation, every variant pointed to Cop!Aimsey, who hadn’t decided who to point at yet.
“I walked right into that one didn’t I,” Hera muttered, putting her head in her hands. “Aside from Cop!Aimsey,” she amended.
“Ohh,” the variants murmured, sizing each other up.
“I feel like we don’t know enough about some of them,” GH!Aimsey commented, and a few variants hummed in agreement.
“Fine!” Hera said, tone menacingly cheerful, and cleared her throat.
“A!Aimsey murdered an entire planet as well as countless innocent bystanders.”
A!Aimsey gasped and began to ask questions, which Hera promptly ignored.
“AU!Aimsey came from a family of evil, royal demons, who would torture innocents and treat them as their minions. He also murdered a bunch of pets for fun, lied a lot, and made all of his friends jump into a portal to another world without knowing if they’d survive.”
AU!Aimsey rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and gave a shrug.
“Q!Aimsey quite literally killed and ate countless people.”
Q!Aimsey buried themself further under their wings.
“C!Aimsey abandoned her post as the self proclaimed Town’s Knight, effectively breaking her promise of protection as well as leaving behind all of bloom’s friends and her visibly unwell best friend, who then jumped off a tower to their death.”
C!Aimsey frowned, shameful.
“O!Aimsey used to be a prince but was exiled from home, though he still pretends to be royalty — but not as much as he lies about being friends with countless celebrities” — O!Aimsey let out an offended gasp — “and, not to mention, is consistently discriminatory towards the lower class despite wearing hand-me-downs.”
O!Aimsey seethed. “Why I outta—”
“R!Aimsey called me gay and pushed me down the stairs.”
R!Aimsey gasped in offended surprise. “I never did that!”
Hera barreled on.
“P!Aimsey has lied, cheated, stolen, and killed people without remorse. He also called me gay and pushed me down the stairs.”
P!Aimsey guffawed. “Okay, some of those things are just because I’m a pirate. But you definitely made that last part up.”
Hera cleared her throat. “I can assure you that this is all true,” she assured them, gesturing to her clipboard. “See? It’s in a clipboard. It’s official.”
A few of the variants murmured in reluctant agreement.
“S!Aimsey also has lied, stolen, fought and killed people, called me slurs, abandoned their family and their super cool siren girlfriend because he couldn’t match her freak —”
“She let me stay with her without telling me it was some weird time bubble where time passed exponentially faster outside while it stood still for us! I also don’t know what that means!” S!Aimsey argued, and Hera shook her head in disappointment.
“Likely story,” she said, and then continued. “GH!Aimsey hasn’t had the chance to do anything yet, other than kick my puppy and call me ugly, but she’ll definitely end up killing her girlfriend or something.”
“What?!” GH!Aimsey exclaimed.
“And you,” Hera said, tone sickeningly sweet as she turned to face ARG!Aimsey, “oh, ARG!Aimsey… where should I start?” She tapped her chin, pretending to be in deep thought. “Oh! I know,” she gasped, as if an idea had just come to her, “how about when you made vows to love and protect me, only to quite literally stab me in the back once I had gathered up the courage to tell you that I was an alien?”
ARG!Aimsey said nothing.
AU!Aimsey took this as an opportunity to pounce. “You,” he hissed, turning on faun with wild eyes. “You don’t have any clue what you’ve done, do you? You really don’t know that this is all your fault.”
ARG!Aimsey shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Are you sure we haven’t met before…?”
“Luckily for you, we haven’t until now,” AU!Aimsey responded, voice eerily calm.
ARG!Aimsey gulped.
Hera smiled, pleased, and sat back to watch the show.
The following are some of Hera’s observations during what she had decided to call “The Aimsey Variant Group Therapy Experiment,” or, more simply, “AimseyGate”:
- P!Aimsey and S!Aimsey had a lot in common, as previously hypothesized.
- AU!Aimsey was a wonderfully entertaining inclusion to the group, as xe picked fights with nearly every variant present.
- Some highlights of AU!Aimsey’s interactions with the others were: giving ARG!Aimsey the humbling of a lifetime; nearly getting into a fistfight with O!Aimsey; punching Cop!Aimsey in the nose “just because” (which no one was upset about); chewing out C!Aimsey but, inevitably, recognizing that she was regretful and had taken time to heal; planning to somehow go out for drinks with P!Aimsey and S!Aimsey (who’s gonna tell him?)
- C!Aimsey, after realizing bloom could not effectively act as a mediator in the ongoing conflict between AU!Aimsey, ARG!Aimsey, and O!Aimsey, proceeded to sit in a corner with GH!Aimsey and R!Aimsey. (There were many discussions about flowers and gardening. Boring but expected. Interestingly, though, C!Aimsey and ARG!Aimsey later seemed to bond over their shared experiences despite being wary of each other.)
- A!Aimsey and Q!Aimsey both rocked back and forth in their respective seats, having mental breakdowns, most likely, before C!Aimsey invited them to come sit with the other boring variants.
- Almost every variant, at one point or another, asked me (Hera) why they were here and when they could go home. I (Hera) told them they’d know when, even though they wouldn’t.
- Cop!Aimsey spent the entire time trying desperately to be a part of the others’ conversations, going as far as to offer bribes in exchange for being allowed into the “group chat”.
- Most interestingly, a few hours in, GH!Aimsey approached me (Hera) to ask about “the wall that seemed to be breathing” —
“Wait, what?” Hera asked, “Are you tripping?”
GH!Aimsey spluttered. “No! I don’t grow those plants, I promise! I swear, there’s a brick wall over there that doesn’t match the other walls and it keeps, like, breathing.”
Hera blinked, slowly, and rose from her chair to the area GH!Aimsey had pointed out.
“Um, hi?” the WALL said, a bit awkwardly. “I was sort of hoping no one would realize I was here…”
“What the actual fuck,” Hera exclaimed, and immediately sent everyone back to their respective universes without warning.
Overall, she’d call it a success.