Chapter Text
Hopes, dreams, creativity, and beauty. That was what it was like to be the Prince. He was the never-ending passion and joy for travel, singing, dancing, and acting, all wrapped up in a stunningly energetic and radiant package. He was like the sun— fiery, and seemingly eternal. Brilliant.
Sometimes, Anxiety wondered what things would look like through Prince’s eyes, or what it was like to glow with happiness for no other reason than life itself.
But then he was always struck with reality, and he remembered who he was, what he was— Anxiety. Dark thoughts, fear, that gut-wrenching feeling whenever something would (or could) go wrong. He was knees-pulled-up-to-chest, can’t-speak-can’t-breathe, he was chest-constricting-mind-spiraling, he— well. He was the tears shed in the dark, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ of the pure and bright being called Thomas Sanders.
And right now, he wished he was anyone else.
“Prince? Oh god. Shit. Uh—” the darker-clothed trait reached out to touch the feverish Prince, but quickly pulled his hand away, not even letting his fingers brush the other’s aura. Who knows what effect his venom-filled touch would bring to this, this trait of light and life?
“What are you doing here, Anxiety?” the lighter but dimming trait coughed in such a way that Anxiety was half-expecting a lung to come up. He winced. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“What? I… I didn’t do this…” but honestly, it had been a thought eating at Anxiety ever since Prince’s aura began to darken weeks and weeks ago.
“Oh, please.” Prince scoffed. It sounded like his throat had been replaced with sandpaper, and oh god, how would he ever sing again?
“Tell me: how else would I be… dying... but because of your strangling influence on Thomas? If you didn’t make him so afraid to be himself—”
“…But I am a part of Thomas.” Barely a murmur, and it was drowned out by Prince’s terrified rant. Anxiety wasn’t really listening anymore, though: it just felt like wave after wave of horrid grey emotion crashing over him.
He could almost physically feel every word Prince threw at him drag him closer and closer to the edge… and this was so, so not the time.
An attack.
“So there. I’m going to be dead in the span of a couple of weeks, and it will be your fault.”
“How… how… can I help you?” Anxiety could barely force the syllables out of his mouth, almost as if he were choking in reverse, gasping for air every couple of words.
“Just— just leave.”
And Anxiety, though he wanted more than anything else than for Prince to survive this… this whatever-the-hell disease your fault, he bolted, sinking into Thomas’ mind faster than he ever had.
He didn’t have much time to think between the endless loops of self-created vitriol, but as he sat in the darkest corners of Thomas’ psyche, he swore to fix it. Fix whatever was wrong, whatever was literally killing Thomas’ hopes, dreams, creativity.
Even if it was himself that must pay.