The Impossible Death

CHAPTER 4 - OLD FRIENDS (part I)

The first time it happened, Anxiety was probably more scared than Deceit was.

All he really remembers was Deceit screaming and his own pulse pounding in his ears.

They were only ten.

From then on, Anxiety began to sleep with Deceit.

He helped more than Deceit would ever really admit, helping him calm down after waking up.

However, as they aged and Anxiety started to to get more and more stressed out, he was able to convince him that the nightmares had stopped.

In reality, he was doing worse than before with at least four nightmares a week. However, by not sleeping for a week, he was able to convince Anxiety to finally go back to his room.

It normally wouldn't have been enough proof for Anxiety, but his own desire to have some more space made him overlook a few small details that countered Deceit's otherwise perfectly concocted story.

He overlooked the bags under his friend's eyes and the cracks in his usually calm and cold demeanor that showed fear and pain.

He didn't so much as directly ignore these signs rather than just not notice them all together.

After all, he should be able to trust his only friend, right?

So he left, back to his own room for the first time in four years.

From there, Deceit set a sound proof barrier around his room so Anxiety wouldn't come running at the sounds of his screaming in the night.

It was here that Deceit also realized how much Anxiety really helped him.

When Anxiety had been sleeping with him, he only had maybe four nightmares a week.

In the weeks that followed Anxiety's departure, he was lucky to not have a nightmare every night.

Not to mention that now, without anyone to help calm him down afterwards, he never really calmed down, making him jumpy and scared all the time.

And hopeless. Oh, so hopeless.

At the age of sixteen was when he experienced his first bout of numbness after a particularly bad dream.

He woke up screaming, but the fear he'd usually feel was gone. Replaced instead with nothing at all.

At first, he thought it a good thing. He was getting over his nightmares, yes? He was no longer afraid, no?

That's when he realized he didn't feel anything.

He thought about how that should scare him, but he wasn't.

He wasn't anything.

Keeping up his friendship with Anxiety was difficult.

Anxiety had been so used to the semi-cool, semi-jumpy Deceit that when Deceit became so emotionless overnight, he wasn't sure how to act around him anymore.

They stopped being so friendly with one another gradually from there on.

It ended when they were seventeen.

Deceit had been going through his worse patch of emptiness yet, simply wishing he wasn't with Anxiety, when he felt a sharp pain across his cheek.

Suddenly, as if being pulled out from under water, he saw Anxiety standing in front of him with tears streaming down his face.

Absentmindedly putting a hand up to his cheek, feeling his warm and tingling skin, he realized that Anxiety had slapped him.

He slowly realized Anxiety's mouth was moving, that he was talking, but Deceit couldn't make out anything he was saying for some reason.

Upon seeing the blank face Deceit was giving him, Virgil felt more tears spring to his eyes.

Of course he wasn't listening. He never did anymore.

Overflowing with a pent-up frustration he had built slowly over time, Anxiety stood up. Grabbing Deceit's arm, he pulled him towards his door and threw him out.

"Just get out, I don't even know who you are anymore!" he shouted, letting go of his arm and slamming his door shut.

Deceit looked at the door that had just been slammed in his face and back down at his arm that had three crescent moon shaped cuts that were filling with blood.

Pain. He felt pain.

Feeling a smile break out across his face, Deceit realized that with the pain he felt happiness. Actual happiness!

He could've cried tears of joy right then, and that fact alone made him ecstatic.

It had been so long since he had felt this good, he immediately went to go knock on Anxiety's door to tell him the good news when he paused.

Anxiety didn't want to see him. He threw him out. He slapped him. He made him bleed.

He was mad at him. Anxiety was mad at Deceit.

Appearing back in his room and collapsing on his bed, Deceit felt like the world begin to crash around him and he was once again left with the numbness he'd grown so accustomed to.

As he stood back up and walked over to his wall, he figured at least one good thing came from his interaction with Anxiety as he smashed his elbow into the wall over and over again until he felt his elbow shatter.