Chapter Text
“Hey, handsome. Do you come here often?”
Helmut doesn’t respond. He finds that his attention is taken elsewhere—but the acoustics in this place are incredible, he has to note that. Bittersweet, given that he is absolutely never going to come here again.
Closer now, Bob clears his throat. “Uh. I don’t know why I said that. That was, uh. That felt bad to say. Hey, honey.”
His boyfriend joins him at his side. Bob interlaces their fingers together. That helps more than Helmut thought it would, honestly. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted anyone down here at all. Ford had insisted that they bring someone along, but if Otto could argue his way out of having a trip buddy, then Helmut is sure he could.
In the end, he’d agreed because it would have made Bobby sad. Which is maybe not the best reason to do things, he knows. He just doesn’t like Bobby being sad.
Bobby’s head rests on his upper arm. “It’s okay,” he promises. “I know it’s hard. It’s normal, you know. That it’s hard.”
“Why does your voice have to be so soothing? It’s not fair.”
The smile that Bobby flashes him is so heart-meltingly dorky that Helmut’s spirits raise even further. He swings their intertwined hands together.
In the depths of Helmut’s mind, they stand in a dark cave. Cave might not be the best term—it is massive, with low stony ceilings that stretch as far as he can see. Lights flicker against the walls every few feet before they disappear into nothingness. When Helmut first walked in here, he didn’t realize it was a cave. The dim lighting, the low ceilings—reminded him of some of the theaters he used to play at. He’s played in theaters as empty and dark, but never as cold and quiet.
He found the only point of distinction in this whole wide cave: a pit.
Four small streams have trickled from the walls, over the floor, and into the gaping stone chasm. Despite their relative shallowness, the resultant waterfalls echo so loudly that they each have to raise their voice to be heard. Suffice to say, he can’t see very far into the pit. He isn’t excited to find out.
“You’re really brave, by the way. For going second.”
“I haven’t really gone second. Lucy’s also delving right now. I could be third, for all I know.”
“Please, Ford’s going with her. They have to fool around for an hour before any work gets done.”
“Oh, that was a good idea,” Helmut sighs in mock sadness. “Why didn’t we do that?”
That earns him another smile, and maybe this won’t be so bad. It doesn’t entirely quiet his racing heart, nor the heat in his face. Just—it’s nice to know that Bob is slightly desperate to comfort him”. That Bob cares about how he feels.
He looks down in the pit again, like he might be able to see something writhing at the bottom. Nothing. “D’you think the water means anything? Maybe I’ve got latent hydrokinesis. That’d be cool.”
“That’d be greedy. I think it’s just the echo.”
“You’re the psycho-philosopher. What’s that mean?”
“I’m not the psycho-philosopher just because I wear a tie, honey,” Bobby answers patiently. “That’s way more Cassie’s area. I just think… well, it’s cold in here, dark. Predictable stone surface. Pretty much sensorily null… except for the echo. Just hearing yourself, over and over and over. I can see how that might hurt you. Make you, um, worse.”
Okay, he’s starting to squirm again. He regrets asking for Bob’s advice.
Part of being a Psychonaut is this raw vulnerability. Expanding the limits of human consciousness. Et cetera, et cetera. A lot of things that Helmut only understands halfway. However, he understands his powers very well, and the experiments have been giving him greater and greater power.
This is the first time where Helmut’s wondered if they’ve gone too far. They’ve been opening every door in their minds, leaving no stone unexamined. And this might be the deepest door of them all.
Behind lies their fight-or-flight instinct: the worst version of themselves. The version of themselves that come out for means of survival. Sure, that’s survival in the physical sense—and survival in the psychological sense. Whatever you need to justify to keep yourself afloat.
It isn’t going to be pretty, fellas, had been Ford’s word of advice. Lucy had looked shaken upon exiting Ford’s mind. That ain’t some nicey-nice antihero bullshit in there. That’s some real dark stuff.
Helmut isn’t sure if people were meant to see the worst version of themselves. He’s almost positive that their boyfriends aren’t meant to see it.
“You ready? We can take some time if you’re not. Go on a walk.”
That’s extremely tempting, actually. Except if he leaves this cave, that means he has to go back. He doesn’t want to return to this cave. So, instead, he just sighs and shakes his head.
“No. No, I just—I can do this, Bobby. I just wanted to say, before we see what we’re about to see, that I love you. More than the moon and stars and the sun and every color in every flower in the world. Okay?”
Why does saying that feel so damning? Like he’s about to toss Bob into this pit. He shakes his head, squares his shoulders. Just as he extends out a hand—
Bob stands in front of him. Like he’s ready to be thrown into the pit.
No trace of amusement lingers on his face. He reaches up for Helmut’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. With his other, he points toward the pit.
“Helmut Fullbear, there is not one thing in that pit that could make me love you one percent less than I do now. Do you understand?” he answers. “That problem—” Again, he points towards the pit. “Is our problem, and we’ll deal with it together.”
Okay. Okay. He’s—
Well, if anything. He always has one fan in his audience.
Helmut barely remembers telling this story to Bob, but he never received flowers before a performance. He’d always had a (silly, little) dream of that one day. Whether he’d get a note of admiration in his dressing room, or flowers tossed at him from the stage while he performed? The dream had gotten sillier and littler as time went on. Helmut had started hoping for any fans, much less fans bearing gifts.
Ever since then, Bob has arrived with a bouquet every time he workshops the Psychodyssey. Different every time, equal only in how stunning they were. Each flower had a different meaning. Bobby painstakingly explained them after every show—it helped, when Bobby didn’t always know how to put his feelings into words. Helmut so rarely had that problem.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Bob Zanotto,” Helmut says reverently, and starts a fire.
The little ball of flame falls neatly into the pit. For a millisecond, it reflects perfectly against the waterfalls—then it, like everything else, tumbles into the darkness.
Ford was pretty vague on… all of this, if he’s being honest, but especially the part where they’re meant to antagonize their worst selves. Would fire do? Or is it something specific to their character that would bring them out? If that’s the case, Helmut isn’t sure what he’s going to do. Throw one of his bad reviews down the pit? Or just—
“Brrrrr…”
The ground starts to shake beneath Helmut’s feet.
Instinctively, he grabs onto Bob. Bob grabs onto him. The tremors only grow worse, and each tremor richochets across the walls. Soon, it becomes hard to think when it feels like the cave is earnestly trying to shake his bones apart. Helmut’s starkly aware of the smelling salts in both his and Bob’s pockets. Surely this would be enough to satisfy Ford Cruller. Surely he knows that whatever’s down there is big and dangerous and—
“Brrrrrr…”
Helmut acknowledges, maybe belatedly, that he’s putting a lot of his faith in the others. He doesn’t know the nuts-and-bolts of what they’re doing. For the first time, it occurs to him that they might be wrong. Going this far into his own mind, knowing this much about himself? What good could it possibly lead to?
“Brrrrr…”
Silt is starting to fall from the ceiling. Helmut shrieks like a child when pebbles bounce off his head. Even worse, Bob gives out a starker cry and his legs give out. Immediately, Helmut gets on his knees. The lights are shaking too badly to see anything, but his hands shoot across Bob’s beautiful head, his face, his neck, no, no blood, maybe just a lighter wound…
“Brrrr…. BRAINDEAD!”
The roar that bellows from the depths of the pits bounce across every surface, and stomps extra hard on Helmut’s eardrums for good measure. Even with the sheer volume of it, the voice is unmistakably—and horribly—Helmut’s.
Oh no, oh no, oh no. I shouldn’t be here, I don’t want to be here, I-I-I—
“Helmut.” Bob’s lips are pressed against his ear. “The pit.”
The pit…
A golden light radiates from the bottom of the pit. It’s getting brighter and louder every second. Something lurches inside of Helmut. He puts both arms around Bob and scrabbles backward, enough to give a healthy distance from the precipise. Helmut thinks he might be making noise—there’s a tugging at his throat—but everything bows to the noise that’s coming from the pit.
“NORMAL! TASTELESS! MUNDANE! AND BORING, BORING, BORING!”
Then—
Helmut sees himself.
The worst version of Helmut Fullbear rises from the depths of the pit.
Immediately, and momentarily, Helmut regrets ever coming here. He regrets joining the Psychonauts, he regrets throwing his lot in with Ford Cruller, and he regrets agreeing to this little experiment. To know that this is the version of himself that he has to fear, that this thing lives inside him—
This Helmut Fullbear is at least three times as tall as him. Every shade is a dizzying, sickening kaleidoscope of color—it changes with every angle, every blink of the eye. The coat is a million shades of rainbow vomit. Staring at Helmut hurts, bad, and pushes against every lobe of his brain.
Helmut’s skin is radiant gold, sparkling against some unknown lightsource. All of him, except for his eyes—he can’t stare at Helmut’s eyes too long, or else the entire room goes fuzzy. That’s exactly what he can’t manage right now. Even the momentary glance he took tells him nothing, only that it’s too much, too much, too much all at once.
Behind him sits a crown of psychedelically colored peacock feathers. The eyes of them are constantly shifting, constantly stretching, but nevertheless always somehow focused on him. Helmut is frozen to the spot, and it takes a second before he even drags his gaze to his worst self’s face.
Oh. Oh, the bad Helmut is pissed off.
“Never understood my heart!” Each word carries with it an undercurrent of sound—bad sound, rough sound, sharp sounds. Nails on chalkboards and screeching tires and firework, firework, firework. “Never undrstood my dream! I’m the real visionary! I’m the talent! And if you’re all too, too, too stupid to see my genius, then I’ll make you understand it! I’ll make a world that can appreciate my genius, and all of you will see!”
There’s so much. Too much. Bile rises in the back of Helmut’s throat, he earnestly thinks he’s about to throw up. There is a smell to the bad Helmut—the worst part of the perfume department and every soup in the world at once. All of it’s too much to take in. The idea of fighting back is a joke, he’s having a hard time just keeping the halves of his brain together.
The bad Helmut roars, a terrible monster’s roar, and readies his arm.
“Everything boring will be destroyed! And I’m starting with you, Bob Zanotto!"”
The projectile is a large ball of flashing light, with all the colors of a gumdrop. Fear stabs at Helmut’s brain—god, if the person is hard enough to be around, then he’s genuinely terrified to be hit with an actual weapon from him. This sensory overload is enough to drive someone insane, it’s enough to make their brains leak out their ears, and Helmut can only weakly grope for Bob—to try and shove his boyfriend behind him—
Another smell overcomes all else.
Smelling salts are shoved underneath his nose, painfully acrid and sharp. Then, the bad Helmut fades, and the cave goes out with it.
***
He awakes to a beautiful wildflower meadow, green grass and yellow daffodills. A pleasant breeze tickles across his face. The sun is only partially visible through the clouds. As Helmut cracks his eyes open, he sees his boyfriend staring over him. Helmut’s head rests lovingly in his lap. Far off, the Feel Mobile putters away, a sound that could wake him up from a coma.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Bob teases lovingly. “Welcome back.”
Right. Right, right. “Thanks. Good call with the… smelling salts.”
Even the memory is overstimulating, streaked and cloudy with colors, smells, sounds. Helmut has to squeeze his eyes shut to even hold the memory in his hands. Soon after, he wishes he hadn’t. “Ugh. Bobby. I can’t believe my worst self is a… is a diva. That’s so embarrassing.”
Helmut had been half-expecting a fearsome warrior of some kind, maybe with an axe. Or something… something cooler. “And he was tacky,” he finishes with a whimper. “That kind of maximalism hasn’t been hip for twenty years.”
“I don’t know, I thought he was kind of cute.”
Helmut’s eyes fly open to see Bob’s soft, warm smile.
“I’m kidding. Relax.”
Honestly, Helmut isn’t sure if he’s recovered enough brain capacity to joke. He lets out a soft whine and focuses on the chattering call of birdsong. So much of him still feels raw, vulnerable. It’s like he’s been turned outside out and left to rot in the sun.
That felt too… real. So far, it’s been a lot of experimental work, a lot of theoretical work. A lot of cool work. Knowing that his mind has that capacity? It sucks, pretty bad.
“You know what Ford said. It was never going to be pretty.”
“I wasn’t expecting pretty,’ Helmut grumbles. “I was just hoping for not pathically desperate.”
“Hey, put it this way. The further you are from him, the better. In a way, it’s a compliment,” Bobby muses, “That my boyfriend’s worst self called me boring.”
Ugh. Ugh, he was going to try his best to forget about that. Like there’s any version of himself that would be better off without Bob. Sure, okay. Maybe Bob wouldn’t have fit in with the travelling-musician lifestyle, maybe Helmut has some old friends that would ask why he’s dating someone with a pocket protector. None of those people really appreciate art, if they’re willing to cast a masterpiece like Bob Zanotto aside.
“You’re not boring.”
“I’m pretty boring.”
“Bobby!”
He makes a move to try and get up, but he feels as weak as a kitten. Bob’s gentle hand is enough to push him back against the grass. Still, he insists. “You’re not boring, Bob. That thing didn’t know the first thing about art. And I… man, I just don’t like to think…”
“Hey.”
The solemnity is enough to capture Helmut’s attention. Bob looks at him so intently from behind his glasses. “You did the hard part, okay? You saw your worst self, and we got out before things got too bad. Just… know that I’m never going to let you feel so scared, threatened, and alone that you ever turn into that. Okay?”
Don’t let me get so terrified of everyone I lash out. Don’t let me be hurt so badly that I freak. Don’t let me become someone who wants to get rid of you, Bobby.
He isn’t sure how much Bob can promise that. Helmut doesn’t know. Before all this, he would’ve laughed at the idea it would get that bad. Somehow, seeing the worst version of himself existing in his mind—
Made this more real. It’s a little scary.
“For as long as we both shall live,” Bob finishes with an awkward chuckle. Same old normal Bob, who still gets shy around him, for some reason. Helmut tries to relax. Bob is right, after all. That version of Helmut lives at the bottom of the pit. When he’s with Bobby, he’s never felt lighter.
“Thanks, hon,” he croons, with a sad sigh. “Please let me keep my style intact.”