Blurred Lines
Prompt: Deceit has disguised himself as Patton multiple times off camera as well but it's gotten to the point where Patton's started to forget his identity and not believe he is himself
(credit to @bug-infested-demon for this prompt which you can find here<3)
Ship: platonic moxiety
CW/TW: derealization, a quite literal identity crisis, mention of past panic attacks in detail
Summary: a few weeks after “Can LYING Be Good??” Patton starts to have an identity crisis after Janus disguises himself as him again.
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Patton was swimming. No, not literally. In his thoughts, in his head.
He had laid in an unmade bed with unkempt hair wearing the same black and white snoopy shirt and black shorts for two days straight, stuck inside of his mind while the others attempted desperately to care for Thomas.
He stared at the ceiling, watching the ceiling fan spin around and around and around, the cool breeze brushing against his face every so often.
He listened as the others argued in the commons. Janus had disguised himself as him again for the fourth time that week.
“Shut up!, you…you…” Roman blanked on an insulting nickname.
“Oh Roman, no need for the name calling today, can’t we all just have a polite discussion?” Janus said, voice as smooth and soft as a rock in a creek.
“Your chance for a polite discussion was thrown out the window when you decided to contribute by lying, again.” Virgil quipped, his voice becoming as sharp as a knife at the end of his sentence.
“Now now, Virg. No need to get snarky. I can practically see the malice on your tongue.” Janus replied, voice still soft, though sarcasm reeked off of it.
Virgil’s voice dipped an octave, sensing a disturbance in the environment. “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that.” He spat firmly.
Janus just chuckled, loving how easy it was to get to the anxious side standing next to him.
“Janus, you have to know by now that—“ Logan began.
Patton didn’t hear the rest, he didn’t want to. He grabbed the pillow next to him and folded it over his ears, muffling out the sound.
That was until they started getting louder. No, not the others, his thoughts.
I’m not real. Am I real? Am I me? Do I exist?
The thoughts swirled around in his head, boiling up for weeks like an awful stew.
He sat up, staring in the mirror bolted onto his door. Photos of him and the others were carefully slid into the open space between glass and wooden outline, holding them in place so he could see them every time he’d get ready. He ignored them, looking into the mirror. He was so lost in thought it was almost as if he was staring past himself.
There were slight bags under his eyes, indicating he hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time in the last 48 hours. He looked as white as a ghost, considering he hadn’t left his room or gone outside for any other reason than to use the bathroom.
In conclusion, he looked like a total wreck, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care enough to do something about it.
He raised a hand up to his face, touching it lightly.
…What if Thomas has no Morality?
Virgil appeared next to him, arms folded across his chest. Instead of his usual demeanor of dark edginess, he looked oddly..sympathetic, more worried than anything, really.
Patton didn’t bother looking at him, just gazed in the mirror, internally panicking. He was shaking a little.
Virgil couldn’t stand seeing Patton like this, all broken and with no one to defend him against himself.
“Pat..?” The name came out as a whisper. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Patton?”
Patton still didn’t make eye contact, but tears welled in his eyes. If he didn’t exist, then neither did Virgil, or any of the others.
Virgil sat on the bed next to the Moral side, looking at him intently. “Hey, what’s going on?”
Patton tried to speak, he wanted to. He hopelessly wanted to tell someone the thoughts in his head, but all that came out was a whimper with tears falling down his face.
Virgil gently turned Pattons head to face him. “Deep breaths, ‘Kay?” he said, compassionately.
Patton nodded, breathing in, then out. in, then out, until finally he had a grip on his emotions. Not that it mattered if he did or not, he wasn’t real.
“Don’t leave. I know you aren’t real but, please. I need this, you don’t understand how much this family means to me.” Patton begged, voice wobbly.
Virgil’s face scrunched in confusion and concern. “Not re— Patton, what are you talking about?” he held the side close to him, making sure his breathing stayed even.
“None of this is real,” he squeezed out, throat tight from holding back tears, “I don’t even think I’m me. And if I’m not me, than that means Janus is, and if Janus is me then that means that Thomas had no morality in the first place and I’m probably something Roman just conjured up in the imagination and—“
“Patton, oh my god, no, no.“ he held him tighter, “you’re real. This is all real, okay?” He said frantically, cutting off the others spiral.
“You are not something that was just made up, Pat. Do you feel the carpet under your feet? That’s real. It’s okay, I promise.”
Patton nodded, “you’re sure…? Because Janus—“
Virgil shook his head, “I couldn’t care less about Janus right now. We’ll definitely be talking later, but I’m more focused on you, and yes I am extremely sure.”
He wanted to laugh at the word he used, ‘talking’, as if it wouldn’t be a full on screaming match.
Patton sniffled, “thank you.”
“Any time, bud” he responded, “and hey, Thomas does have a sense of Morality, or else you wouldn’t be here.”
Patton nodded, gripping on to the Anxious side a little, as if he was still unsure of what he was saying.
“I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.” Was all he could think to say.
and apparently it worked, Patton eased up his hold a bit, noticing how neither of them had magically faded into thin air. He laughed at himself for thinking something so unrealistic.
“…I’ve been there, you know.” Virgil quietly admitted, to which Patton raised a brow in question.
“Thinking about the whole not being real thing. It was the cause of a lot of my…outbursts, to put it lightly.”
Patton understood what he was trying to get at, the massive panic attacks he used to have. He would find him in the bathroom curled up in the shower in the middle of the night, sobbing. He didn’t like to think about it.
“I know, I’m sorry.” He said timidly, almost as if not to disturb the sadness of the memory and their conversation, a tiredness in his voice.
“Hey, it’s okay. I just want you to know that I get it.” Virgil rushed out, not trying to upset Patton further.
“Do you want me to go so you can sleep? Not to sound rude or anything, but it looks like you need it.” He asked, eyeing the bags under Pattons eyes and the exhausted look on his face, like he could barely keep his eyes open.
Patton said nothing, having gone limp in the others arms. He was as tired as Virgil thought.
He blew air out of his nose in amusement. “I’ll be here, don’t worry.” he whispered to the sleeping person in front of him. “I’ve got you.”
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I'm rewatching Embarrassing Phases and honestly gotta say,
Frankenstein's monster was a more fitting choice for Logan.
In the original novel, Victor Frankenstein isn't even a doctor. He's a college dropout, who very stupidly decided to play god and try to create life. He never took notes about his experiment, or did any amount of research, the dude literally went graverobbing and decided to create a human being in his college dorm.
And then when the creature turned out to be a little inhuman and scary looking, he immediately abandoned the creature, and decided to mope and moan about the wretched life that he himself had created. He did nothing to stop the creature or protect people from it.
In fact, when he realized that his experiment didn't turn out quite as good as he had hoped, literally the first thing he did was to go and take a nap and let the creature make its way out of the house and cause chaos.
Not to mention, when the creature asked him to create a female creature so it could have some company, instead of simply not giving his new creation reproductive organs, Victor decides to throw a fit at the very last moment because he was scared that the two creatures would reproduce and make monster babies.
This absolutely does not sound like a character Logan would want to dress up as. If he actually met someone like Victor Frankenstein in real life, he would not hesitate to deck them in the jaw full force.
Meanwhile, Frankenstein's monster proved to be not only physically strong but also very intelligent. He quickly learned how to speak, light fire and try to support himself. He learned how to speak French from some books he had found while traveling, and he tried his best to understand and help people. He was curious about the world he was brought into, and was interested in learning more about it. He even tried to reason with his creator, asking him to understand him, only turning "evil" when he truly felt neglected.
This actually has a lot of similarities to Logan who is constantly neglected by Thomas and the other sides. Like the creature, Logan's efforts are ignored and his feelings invalidated. And like the creature, he lashes out when he is repeatedly shut down or overlooked.
While we're on the topic, I do wish Logan had dressed up as the book version of the creature, instead of the pop culture version. In the book, the creature was actually extremely good looking, it was over 6ft and had long luscious hair. Frankenstein had made sure to give it the best features because he wanted to create a perfect human being.
The only problem was that the creature looked a little off, a little uncanny; its skin was pale and yellow (obviously, because it was made from corpses), and it's eyes were also a somewhat unsettling shade of yellow. This is the only reason it is described as ugly and horrendous, mostly by Victor himself.
The creature was not green with bolts on its neck and weird hair. And like I mentioned earlier, it could speak quite eloquently, unlike the pop culture Frankenstein which only communicated in creepy groans.
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