The Impossible Death

CHAPTER 15 - FAULT

The stunned silence that followed Deceit's outburst and disappearance was short lived.

Virgil was the one to break it.

"Oh, nonononono this is bad, this is really really bad!" he exclaimed, grabbing both sides of his head and spinning in a circle as if hoping Deceit might reappear behind him.

Thomas wasn't much better off.

"Oh God, what do we do what do we do? We can't just go after him, can we? Will that make this worse? Maybe he'll never return, what do we do then? I'm pretty sure I need him or else—"

"Thomas." Logan said, promptly cutting of Thomas's rambling.

"This was my fault. I tried to get him to open up to soon. I should have known better. Therefore, I should be the one to find him and apologize for—"

"Why bother?"

Everyone turned to look at Roman who sat on the sofa with his legs brought up to his chest.

"What do you mean?" Patton asked softly and Roman looked at him with sad eyes.

"I mean, why bother? He wasn't wrong about what he just said to Logan. We didn't care until now. But why do we care now and we didn't care earlier? He's right. We're afraid of losing our villain. We just want to make him better so that we can view him as the bad guy again. So why go after him and apologize for him being right?"

Silence ensued in which no one looked at each other. They knew Roman was right.

Virgil clenched his fist.

"No. He wasn't right." he said and Roman looked at him with curiosity.

"He said he was fine and that's clearly wrong. He said we didn't care earlier and that's not true. I've always cared. He was my first and only best friend for years. I used to help him with his nightmares, but he told me they stopped. I knew I shouldn't have believed him, but I wanted to. I wanted to think he was better. So I left him. I never truly viewed him as bad. How could he be?"

Virgil couldn't say when he started crying, but he could feel the tears dripping down his face.

"And then I turned my back on him. I thought he wasn't listening to me. That he didn't care about me. But now I see that it's the other way around."

Virgil looked at the ground.

"I'm the one who failed him. He needed me and I wasn't there."

Wiping the tears off of his face, Virgil looked back up, shocking everyone with the determination on his face.

"But not anymore."

And with that, Virgil was gone.