Point of View: Virgil, First Person
Timeline: Present Day

I pulled my headphones down, quickly cutting off the music pounding in my ears. I'd been lying here for hours now, just drowning my anxiety in loud bass notes. But this was not something I could ignore forever.

I sat up, rubbing my cheek tiredly - which was red from lying face down on the couch for so long. I'd finished off the rest of the Oatmeal Raisin cookies while I swallowed in self-pity. Time to go eat some real food, I guess.

I slowly got to my feet, stretching my stiff muscles from being in that position for so long, wincing as a went.

"Hiya, kiddo," Patton said, popping up from seemingly nowhere. "Are ya hungry?"

"Um, nah. I... I just needed to stretch for a second," I said, my appetite suddenly gone at the sight of him. What would Patton think of me when he found out more about... my past?

Patton's smile dropped a little at that. "Kiddo, I dunno what's bothering ya," I immediately tensed at those words. "But if ya wanna talk bout it, don't feel... anxious bout comin' to me, m'kay?"

I squirmed under his gaze. "Um – yeah, okay," I agreed, rubbing the back of my neck impatiently.

"Then come here and help me clean up a bit while I make dinner, kiddo," Patton said firmly, leaving no room for me to try and sneak into my room.

I followed Patton to the kitchen, dragging my heels all the way. If I followed, he could ask me questions, if I followed he could trap me, if I followed he could –

"Virgil?"

I turned to find Logan in the kitchen already. "Salutations," he greeted, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge.

I just nodded in response, yanking up my hood – digging my hands harder my jacket pockets, every part of me tense. Patton either didn't notice my uneasiness or he just ignored it (I suspected the second) and simply handed me a sponge – by yanking one hand out of my pocket setting the wet thing in my hand. "Countertop," he merely said.

I turned my head to Logan, confused. We could just... well, wish something to be clean. Why was he making me do it the old-fashioned way? Logan didn't say anything in response, simply smirked from his chair and pulled out a book.

I sighed, rolling up my sleeve so that it wouldn't get all wet. Carefully, I started cleaning the counter, going back and following over it with a paper towel to gather all the remaining water.

Once I was done, Patton nodded at me in approval.

And then he shoved a broom in my face.

Roman, who had walked into the room while I was manually cleaning the counter, actually started choking on the blueberry muffin he was eating at my expression – in a sad, desperate attempt to not completely burst out laughing.

Serves him right for eating while Patton was making dinner. Impatient much?

I groaned, frowning at the broom. "Why?" I whined.

"You need to get out of your own head.  This will help," he explained simply, not swayed in the slightest by my pout. "Now sweep."

I blinked at that, realizing it's truth. While I was cleaning, I had steadily been relaxing and becoming less tense. I wasn't even worried about Patton jumping me with questions anymore. Huh.

I took the broom from Patton and started cleaning, slowly and taking slow, deep breaths, calming myself. By the time the floor was swept, I was calm, or rather as calm as Anxiety can be.

Patton only nodded firmly as I finished, gesturing for me to give it back to him, which promptly disappeared and went back to... wherever it stayed when it wasn't in the kitchen with us. Maybe I'd ask him about it later.

"Dinner's ready!" Patton said, spinning around, holding...

Pancakes?

"Patton Pancakes!" Patton exclaimed happily, giggling a little as he set the many, many pancakes in the center of the table.  "Pattoncakes!"

He's the biggest creampuff. I rolled my eyes, glancing at the others to read their reactions as I sat down at my spot at the table. Roman, who sat to my right on the circular table, met my eyes - also amused. But Logan –

Logan was frowning.

I felt my small smile falter at that. What was he concerned about?

"Well? Whatcha waitin' for kiddos? Dig in!" Patton said happily, digging into the big stack of pancakes he'd served himself.

Collectively we reached in for some pancakes, but Patton easily had the most – there were at least six pancakes on his plate. I looked down at my own plate of three, also noticing that the others had also served themselves more... reasonable helpings. Logan had two and Roman had one, considering that he'd eaten the blueberry muffin earlier.

I quickly ate my pancakes in silence quickly getting up when I was done. I tried to urge Roman to do the same, gently tapping his shoulder as I passed by him to put my plate in the sink – grabbing his own, as to not raise suspicion. Logan was almost finished, but he was hardly eating, more pushing pieces of cut up pancake around his plate rather than eating them.

I all but dragged Roman out of there.

"Ow! Anx – OW -MmPH!"

"Shh," I said, covering his mouth with my hand, cutting him off. "Listen," I said, hiding around the corner.

"So," Logan started, wrongly assuming we were long gone by now. "What's bothering you?" he said bluntly.

Roman and I shared a look at that.

There was a small pause before Patton responded.

"I – I," Patton sighed. "I don't wanna talk 'bout it Logan."

"Patton - you promised that you would stop ignoring your feelings," Logan argued. "Patton Pancakes are your comfort food – you eat them when you're feeling something you don't want to. What's wrong?"

"Please, Logan. Please stop," Patton said quietly. "Please... just stop."

Logan fell quiet at that.

There was the sound of plates sliding together – Patton cleaning up I assumed.

"Please tell me," Logan said quietly after the plate shuffling had stopped. "Please, Patton. I want to help you."

"Logan - I asked you to stop," Patton said sharply, voice colder than I had ever heard it. "And you know what Logan? If you really wanted to help me, you'd back off and stop sticking your nose in my business," Patton snapped.

Roman gave a small gasp at that, eyes widening.  I'm sure I looked the same.

I could only imagine that Logan was surprised too. You could literally feel the tension in the air.

"Okay then," Logan said quietly.

"Golly gee... I- I'm so sorry, Lo. I -I don't know exactly what came over me-"

"It's fine, Patton," Logan said objectively. "Do you feel a bit better now, getting that off your chest?"

A few seconds of silence.

"Yeah," Patton admitted. "A little bit."

"Then I'm glad that you felt safe enough to take your... feelings out on me," Logan said simply, no blame in his voice whatsoever.

"That doesn't make it right," Patton argued softly, voice low with shame. "I'm really sorry, Logan."

"No, maybe not right. But you didn't mean any harm by it, Patton. It's all well and done."

"I'm sorry. You were only trying to help," Patton said quietly.

There must've been some silent exchange because for the next couple minutes there was only the sound of plates and silverware banging together and occasionally soft footsteps.

"Do... you want to talk about what's bothering you now?" Logan asked, tentatively.

"No," Patton answered swiftly.

"Then is there anything I could do to assist you in the meantime?"

There was a long pause where I assumed Patton was thinking.

"Can you read me a story?"

"Very well," Logan said, and I heard some shuffled as they moved from the kitchen to the living room. "Do you have any preferences as to what?"

"UM... something with a happy ending."

"Okay," Logan acknowledged. "How does Harry Potter sound?"

There was another small silence, in which I assumed Patton nodded because Logan startled reading aloud. ""Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of Number Four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much..."

I felt a small tugging at my arm and turned to see Roman, silently asking me to follow him. I nodded. There was.... a lot that happened there.

I followed Roman to his room, considering that his room had much less consequence than my own. His room gave the people inside confidence, which was much than better than the mental breakdowns my own provided instead.

Roman pushed the door open and held it open for me, grinning wide at me. I rolled my eyes in response, but walked through.

I flopped casually onto Roman's bed, leaning back on his big mass of pillows and waiting for him to start talking. He always got real quiet before he started his little rants – better to wait for him to get it all out of his system. Roman started pacing, muttering to himself, too low for me to hear.

After about two minutes of Roman gathering his thoughts, he turned to me.

"Bueno, sabemos que no es inusual que Patton oculte sus sentimientos, pero sí prometió comenzar a decirnos -"

"You're speaking Spanish," I corrected. Another typical occurrence. When Roman got deep into thought, he tended to fall into Spanish – unsurprising considering that Spanish was Roman's first language.

"Désolé, comme je le disais -"

"Still not English. How many languages do you know?" I interrupted lazily, but curiously.

Roman's hands twisted into fists as he made the conscious effort to speak English. "F-four," he said finally, looking up at me hesitantly, not sure if he was speaking English or not.

"What languages, specifically?"

Roman came over and joined me on his bed, sitting down at the end of it. "I learned Spanish first. Then English. After that, I took to learning some other ones as well - French and Roma-"

"You did not learn Romanian," I deadpanned.

Roman smirked. "It's the fifth language of love," he reasoned.

"Yeah sure – let's go with that, you narcissistic fool."

"Well this fool knows three more languages than any other sides here so who's really the fool?"

"Still you."

Roman rolled his eyes. "As I was SAYING... we know that it's not unusual for Patton to hide his own feelings, but he did just promise to start telling us when he was struggling. Perhaps he's just adjusting poorly to all of asking if he's okay all the time."

I shook my head. "That sounded too big for it to be something minor. I think it's something a bit more serious," I admitted, twisting my hands together with nerves. I hated the thought of anything hurting Patton, anything at all –

"Hey," Roman said, magically sitting in front of me, holding my hands still. "It's fine, everything's fine. Patton would come to us if it was that serious."

"...I wish I could say I agreed with you," I admitted.

Roman gave me a small look of pity and started to say something –

BANG.

Both of us, frowned - momentarily confused. Then Roman's eyes lit up in surprise, mouth forming a small "o"and he realized what had happened.

Confused, all I could do was stare as Roman opened the door to his closet.

AND SOMETHING FLEW OUT OF IT.

I let out a small yelp of surprise, jumping to my feet. My eyes focused on the thing that had come out of the closet.

"No need to fear, Fair Anxiety," Roman said, smirking at my reaction. "It's just Blue."

The small blue bird spun dizzily around the room as it adjusted to the light. After a second, the creature flew over to Roman, who held out his finger so the small bird could land. The bird settled immediately and started chirping rapidly.

Roman froze – face going pale. "Tell them I'm on my way," he said firmly, voice too serious for it to be anything other than good news.

The small bird almost appeared to nod before rapidly flying away, disappearing back into the closet.

Roman snapped his fingers, and suddenly he was in his white fighting gear, expression grave.

"What's going on?" I said, tense.  "What's happened?"

"I need you to go tell Patton and Logan and, if you can come, I could really use your help," Roman said quickly, taking large steps towards me and pulling me into a quick – but passionate – kiss. Too soon, he pulled back. "If they let you – the mirror in my closet leads to the Imagination. It shouldn't be to hard to find me from there," he said, wings rising slightly – so he was intending on flying then.

"Roman - wait! What's going on?" I pleaded as Roman started making his way to the closet.

Roman's eyes softened in pity.

"The Sides in the Imagination are under attack... the Hell hound is back."

___________________
2092 WTD
That's my apology for dropping off the face of the Earth ;)

And *gasp* the Hell hound is back!

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Still not the comment, I know but i just spent 45 minutes doing the voters for Chapters One and Two and I need sleep XD - But next one - back to normal! I pinky promise :3

So Wattpad has been acting really weird lately and that's part of why I haven't been posting much because it's just been frustrating over to use lately.  Plus I've been tossing out all my own writing... like every piece of writing I've ever done andmybrainkindafeelsthesamewaythesewordslook.

How's your day going? Well? Bad? Lemme know.  I'm curious.

- Max :)

For anyone who couldn't read the chapter the first time I posted it... I don't know. I really just don't know. I literally stayed up until I felt certain it was posted - I don't know. Ugh. Well hope it was. Worth the wait :)