Unfamiliar

Chapter TWO

Fear was something Anxiety was familiar with, it was the only constant in his life. He was always afraid of something - exploring, change, Him, people - but he was always afraid of being alone, of being abandoned. But he was familiar with being alone, with the suffocating feeling in he chest and the hand clawing at his heart that told him of his loneliness, and he wanted to stay alone despite his fears.

Being around people would be worse, it was worse. He couldn't go through that again, never, it was too much. And being where He had lived, before He had left him to be alone again, was so much worse, the memories of what He had done to him - onetwothreefourfivesix breath onetwothreefourfivesix breath - out of anger and sadness haunted his mind.

So he fled the forest that he was hardly allowed to leave to the unfamiliarly familiar field of grass, where he had lived before Him. The anxiety and panic still crawled beneath his skin, it always would, but after leaving that place it seemed to calm a little, there wasn't any pain or fear associated with his little patch of emerald grass other than the fear that he radiated constantly. It was refreshing.

Which may have been why the anxiety and fear bubbled and burnt his skin when new people showed up in his space, his little oasis, shouting and yelling like they feared nothing. He was a little jealous at their confidence, but flinched at the amount of noise that they made.

Noise was never good.

He ran behind a tree and curled into a ball, covering his ears to block out the noise, so that they wouldn't see him. His breathing stopped as they got closer, hoping that he would be lucky for once and that they would walk past him. But the universe hated him, and the three stopped after seeing the small boy curled up and hyperventilating.

"Are... are you okay?" One of them asked, his voice soft and almost parental - not that anxiety knew what a parent was meant to be like, he had never had a parental figure after all - and his polo-shirt a light, calming, blue.

Anxiety shook in fear, unable to answer the simple question he was asked. People where bad, badbadbad, that what He had taught him and a rule that Anxiety had lived his whole life - or his life since knowing that other people existed - abiding. These people barged into his safe-space voices blazing and wide hand gestures making him flinch into himself and curl up protectively, and expect him to answer them and break one of the only rules he had for himself, well he had two words for them:

No way.

Unfortunately the others took his silence as an invitation to sit with him in order to "help him through his anxiety attack." Which was the exact opposite of what he wanted them to do. The world really hated him.

"Try and breath with us, please. One, two, three, four, inhale. One, two, three, four, exhale," someone said, "Good. One, two thr-"

The breathing and counting worked, calming him down enough that he could see through a hazy mess of tears in his eyes. It was nice, not having to just sit threw his attacks. But it wasn't familiar, and unfamiliar was bad... right?

"Name five things you can see," the one wearing a shirt and tie said, whilst the one with a cardigan smiled at him in encouragement.

"You, Cardigan, Red, trees, grass," Anxiety listed off after a brief pause.

"Three things you can feel," he said again, trying to ground Anxiety.

"Grass, bark, tears," Anxiety choked out. Why was it so hard to talk?

"Good, now two things you can smell." The commands - where they commands? Anxiety wasn't sure he wasn't used to anything other than orders, and insults, being thrown at him verbally - where oddly calming, helping him through his attack.

"Grass, flowers," his breathing was normal again, but his head spun and his eyes hurt.

"Good, one thing you can taste,"

"uhh.... spit?"

"How about the last thing you ate?"

"...uh...? Spit?"

"When was the last time you ate?"

He couldn't voice his thoughts as everything went black as his attack finished, but instead of hitting the ground he was caught by the man in the red-sash. He didn't know if he could answer even if he didn't pass out.

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Panic. That's what he felt when he woke up in an unfamiliar - yet painfully nice, good, right - room, the people from the forest - my forest, my home - sat around him, looking at him with something unfamiliar in their eyes. He backed away from their expecting gaze, the prolonged eye contact making him even more anxious, his back hitting something hard and wooden.

Is this a... bed frame? Depression would sometimes mention these...

He flinched back as soon as he thought about Depression, and one of them - blue shirt and something tied around his neck - reached out to him and he flinched back further. The panic sized complete control of his mind, a crushing wave of pure fear drowning him as he remembered all the times that Depression had reached out to him like that, false sympathy in his eyes, before punishing him.

His fragile body couldn't survive another punishment, his bones likely to break at the slightest change in pressure. Tears stung his eyes, which where squeezed shut in terror, as he frantically tried not to cry in front of these people. Crying was bad, crying wasn't allowed.

"Are... are you okay, kiddo?" he heard someone ask as he managed to calm himself down. He didn't, however, respond except for pulling his knees impossibly close to his chest. This was all unfamiliar, unfamiliar was dangerous and bad.

"Why should we care? He is obviously bad, why else would he hide from us?" Someone said. Anxiety turned around to face the speaker and his face paled. It was the man with the red-sash that caught him after he passed out, but the man had a sword resting at his hip. That couldn't be good, weapons were never good. Anxiety started to panic again, his too-quick breathing alerted the others to this.

"Prince leave." One of them said - black shirt, blue tie - with such finality in his voice that Anxiety was compelled to follow the order himself. The man with the red-sash - Prince, he mentally stored the new information - walked out of the room and Anxiety let out a small sigh of relief. The relief was short-lived, however, because as soon as Prince left Blue-Shirt started babbling on about how "sorry I am for Princes attitude, he isn't normally like that" and the strange emotions in his voice was making him uncomfortable. Blue-Tie seemed to notice his discomfort once again, and requested that Blue-Shirt - Morality, his name was Morality - should also leave.

That left him and Blue-Tie alone.

"It just occurred to me that we did not introduce ourselves. I am Logic," Blue-Tie said.

Okay, correction, that left him and Logic alone.

"I-I'm.... An-Anx-A-Anxiety," he stuttered out, he had calmed down since the other two had left. Logic was much better, much less like Depression. Depression was always emotional and moved a lot - most movement ended up with him in pain - whereas Logic was calm, collected, and he wasn't openly emotional.

His eyes began to drop, his adrenaline from his near-panic attacks leaving him and he slowly fell asleep again.

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HOPE YOU LIKE THE ADJUSMENTS I MADE TO THIS CHAPTER Jinxed-Unicorn