Chapter Text
Logan had his doubts of Thomas’s future turning out like he’d hoped. There were so many things that could go wrong. The fickleness of a career in entertainment was an ever present threat. His difficulty keeping to an update schedule made it even more perilous. He also wasn’t the most active or ate the most healthy, increasing the odds of a health related issue. Really there were ten thousand things that could go wrong. But in the end he couldn’t even say what happened was at the bottom of the list. It was too far out to even be ON said list.
There was nothing to herald it. Nothing to forewarn Thomas. Nothing he could have done differently.
In fact there was nothing that stood out about that day at all. It had been a normal day of working on scripts, arranging shooting schedules, and finally eating pizza while watching The Office Bloopers. For the eighteenth time.
One moment everything was normal. The next it felt like every nerve in Thomas’s body was being electrocuted while something cold was being flooding directly into his soul. Thomas struggled to move, struggled to breathe. He was only dimly aware of the Sides panicking around him as he tried to figure out what was going on.
The pain was like nothing any of them had felt before. Burning, freezing, and numerous other sensations not of the Sides could name. Then it crescendoed into a sharp lingering pain in Thomas's chest and Thomas fell over, his eyes rolling back into his head.
"Was that a heart attack?" Logan asked out loud as he ran forward and pushed his hand to check Thomas's pulse point. Nothing. "He's gone." Logan whispered as shock settled in.
"No!" Roman screamed. "Not...not like this!"
"We need to call 911!" Patton tried to grab Thomas's phone, but the touch screen didn't react to his fingers.
"We can't call anyone, we're imaginary!" Logan snapped. "I don't even know how we're still here."
"It takes time for brain death to be finalized." For once there was no glee from Remus. "We're the last bits of Thomas's thoughts. A final hallucination as his brain suffocates." Where Logan was angry, Remus sounded empty and lost.
"Fuck that!" Virgil straddled over Thomas's supine form. "Roman, I need you to sing 'Staying Alive!"
"It this really the time?" Roman shrieked. "A horrid joke of a death ballad."
"It's not a death ballad, it's to time chest compressions." Virgil laced his fingers and started to push down. "Logan, handle the breaths, on my mark."
"We don't have breath to give. Thomas is DEAD. We Are Imaginary! There is nothing ANY of us can do! This is just denial"
"Then it's my territory." Janus stepped forward and leaned over Thomas's face. "On your mark." he said to Virgil.
"Roman, ⱤⱧɎ₮Ⱨ₥!" Virgil called, his voice slipping from his control.
"Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, no time to talk," It was nowhere near Roman's usual singing quality, but the rhythm was perfect. “Music loud and women warm, I've been kicked around since I was born. And now it's all right, it's okay. And you may look the other way. We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man. Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha-"
"₮₩Ø ฿ⱤɆ₳₮Ⱨ₴!" Virgil barked, stopping his chest compressions just long enough for Janus to inflate Thomas's chest twice.
"-ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive" Roman continued, humming through the instrumental part to keep the beat. Well now, I get low and I get high And if I can't get either, I really try. Got the wings of heaven on my shoes I'm a dancing man and I just can't lose."
"฿ⱤɆ₳₮ⱧɆ!" Virgil ordered again. Janus bent over to give Thomas more breath, but right as Roman hit "I'll live to see another day Thomas shot up gasping.
"Oh thank the gods." Janus slumped over.
Virgil went completely backward, just flopping on the floor and breathing deeply. "I don't think I can do that again."
"Whaaaat is happening?" Thomas asked, trying to figure out why he was on the ground.
"You appear to have suffered a heart attack." Logan explained.
"We're going to live!" Remus yelled, jumping in the air.
"I tried to call 911, but I couldn't use your phone." Patton was crying. "So Virgil and Janus did CPR."
"Which shouldn't have had any effect whatsoever." Logan interrupted.
"Yessss, because sitting and waiting to die wass a much more efficient use of our time," Janus said with a slight hiss.
"Why don't we call the hospital now and deal with that and the thing with Thomas's hair later." Roman suggested.
"Wait, what's with my hair?" Thomas asked.
"It's, well, white."
Virgil craned his head up just enough to see. "Oh. Like Jonathan Harker's in Dracula. Cool." He then flopped back down, uncaring of anything that wasn't life or death.
"Can we stop focusing on imaginary CPR and hair and please get Thomas to a hospital before he dies again!" Logan snapped.
"Oh, uh sure." Patton handed Thomas his phone.
Thomas grabbed it and began to unlock it when his hand began to shimmer and suddenly the phone fell through it and thudded on the carpet. Thomas stared at it. "So everyone else saw that, right?"
“Saw what?” Virgil asked, not even lifting his head this time.
“A hallucination.” Logan stated. “Given that we are in your head, it stands to reason any distortions to your reality are shared among us.”
“Logan. Unless you have something useful to add, shut up.” Janus sneered.
Thomas tried to pick up his phone, but his shimmery hand just kept going through it and into the floorboards below. “Guys! I don’t think this is a hallucination!”
“Thomas, you need to calm down.” Logan instructed.
“I can literally feel my hand going through the floorboards.” Thomas whined.
“What?” Virgil sat up again and blinked rapidly as if trying to clear his eyes. “Okay, is it just me or is anyone else seeing through Thomas. And I do NOT mean figuratively."
Thomas let out a small whine as he realized it wasn’t just his shimmery hand, but his whole body that was becoming translucent.
“Maybe he DID die and turned into a ghost!” Remus suggested excitedly. “Maybe we’re ALL ghosts!” He giggled. “I thought death was boring, but this is so much fun! We can do things forever!”
“Don’t be a fool. If Thomas had died, there would be a body.” Roman pointed out.
“Then what is happening to me!” Thomas wasn’t even trying to reach for the phone anymore. He tried to reach for his throat, but stopped, afraid his hand would pass through his own flesh just like the floorboards. "Can someone check my pulse?" Thomas asked nervously, closing his eyes and offering his hand out.
Logan rolled his eyes and took Thomas's non-shimmery hand into his own. Then he frowned and reached for his neck. "Again, as a part of you, I feel the need to remind you that any hallucinations are shared between us."
"There's no pulse, we're ghosts, baby!" Remus pumped his arms into the air.
"No body!" Roman reminded him harshly.
"Maybe we died a while ago and it's just catching up to us. Maybe we are in a hospital and the life support just cut out." Remus was bouncing around like a demented bunny.
"There is a comfort in that, I suppose." Janus mused.
"What about being dead is comforting?" Thomas demanded.
"Heaven's the best case scenario, and Hell the worst. That's the common thoughtline, at least. But the one that always frightened me the most was nothingness. That your thoughts, your emotions, us, you...that they would all simply cease to be. If we are indeed ghosts then the worst has happened and yet we are still here. Yes, I do take comfort in that." Janus stated.
“Sorry to say I’m not feeling very comforted right now.” Thomas made another grab for his phone and let out an inarticulate yell of frustration when his hand once again failed to make contact with it. “What if I am a ghost and this is just it? Stuck in the world where I can’t actually touch anything. What if no one can see me or hear me and all I can do is just watch my loved ones mourn me and move on? What if I can’t even do that and I’m stuck in the house and have an unending parade of new people I can’t interact with just coming in and I’m stuck here!”
“That does sound frustrating.” Janus admitted. “But why borrow trouble? We don’t even know if you are a ghost-”
“We know he’s not, because ghosts don’t exist.” Logan said heatedly.
“Or if any limits like being seen or stuck in one place apply.” Janus continued as if Logan hadn’t spoken. “Let’s take this one step at a time and figure out what our new reality means for us.”
“I’m sorry, but are we not going to address the hair?” Roman asked, pointing.
Janus pinched his nose. “I wasn’t completely trying to avoid that point so as not to worry Thomas more.”
“I don’t think white hair even belongs on the least of worries list right now!” Thomas snapped.
“It’s not exactly white anymore.” Virgil admitted. “Though I can’t say I dislike it.”
“What?” Thomas raked his hair through his bangs, dragging them down like he was trying to emulate Virgil’s hairstyle. And maybe he really was, because the hair in front of him was purple. Not even the more magenta-y color he had dyed it previously. A deeper purple, like Virgil’s jacket. What’s more there was a glow to it, like his hair was a fiber optics cable or something.
Thomas took off running for the bathroom, not even stopping to note whether he opened the door or went through it. He stared at his reflection, glad it was there, but horrified by it all the same.
In the dimmer light of the bathroom he could see his skin was subtly glowing, like there was some light underneath shining through. Matching the purple light from his hair, no doubt, and making his features hard to make out. His eyes were purple too and his clothes were…backwards? He’d been wearing his white jacket with the black sleeves, only now it was a black jacket with white sleeves. The shirt underneath it seemed to invert as well.
“What is happening?” Thomas whispered.
“Thomas, this isn’t real.” Logan tried to get through to him again.
“How do we know this isn’t real?” Thomas snapped. “Maybe I did die. Maybe I had the heart attack days ago and my ghost just woke and my corpse is in the morgue because it’s just a rotting pile of meat.” The color of the bathroom shifted as Thomas’s hair and eyes changed to glowing green. “What even is this? Why am I an undead kaleidoscope?” Thomas was kind of surprised he wasn’t hyperventilating. Oh wait, it was because he wasn’t breathing. And hadn’t been for a while. “Oh my god, I am dead,” he whimpered, his hair and eyes returning to purple.
“It’s us.” Roman observed.
“What is?” Thomas cried, seeming seconds away from total breakdown.
“The colors. When you are feeling afraid and anxious, your hair turned purple, the color we associate with your Anxiety. Yet when you were thinking of a corpse rotting in a morgue, the kind of disgusting details my brother thrives in, it turned briefly green. Your hair reflects, well, us.”
“Great, that’s just…something. But it doesn’t do anything about me being Dead!”
“We are not entertaining this any more.” Logan grabbed Thomas and spun him around.
“Since when could he do that?” Patton whispered.
Logan ignored him, “You are not dead. You are not a ghost. You are having a hallucination after suffering a heart attack. We are parts of you, so we’re just as vulnerable to distortions in your reality. You need to get a grip and stop feeding the hallucination. Calm down. Get your phone. Call for help.”
“Calming down is a big ask, Logan.” Thomas admitted.
“Deep breaths. In for four.”
“I’m not breathing.” he pointed out.
“You can’t perceive yourself breathing. There’s a difference. In for four.” Logan repeated his instruction. “Hold for seven. Out for eight.”
Thomas closed his eyes and forced himself to repeat the motions, even though he couldn’t feel the effect. Then a strange feeling started to build under his skin. He opened his eyes just to see light escaping from underneath his skin, kind of like the scene from the end of *Beauty and the Beast*. What’s more, he could see black sleeves on his arms.
A quick look in the mirror showed everything was back to normal. His hair and eyes were brown, his skin wasn’t glowing, his clothes looking normal, and air felt normal in his lungs. “Thank goodness,” he said, patting himself down just to make sure he was solid.
“Good. The hallucination’s effects have ended. Now if you could call for help?” Logan snapped.
Right. Thomas ran back up to the living room and grabbed his phone off the floor. The weight of it in his hand felt more comforting than he could have imagined. He quickly unlocked it and dial a familiar number. “Hey Joan, it’s me. Sorry, I know it’s late, but I think I need a ride to the hospital.”
~
Joan had made record time to Thomas's apartment. Which, you know, fair when one of your best friends calls to say he's had chest pain, fell unconscious, and was hallucinating.
"So walk me through what happened." Joan instructed as they helped Thomas to the car. "In case I have to be the one to explain to the doctors." In case Thomas passed out again was unsaid.
Not that Thomas needed the help to the car at this point. He felt fine, if panicked. But he could appreciate Joan wanted to be careful with him. Steadying him so he didn't slip and fall through the ground.
"It came out of nowhere." Thomas started. "No lead up like discomfort or even nausea. Just one second I'm eating pizza, the next it's just every flavor of pain at once, especially over my heart, until I black out. Then I wake up to two of my imaginary friends doing CPR on me while a third is singing 'Stayin' Alive'."
"And that was the hallucination?" Joan asked, making sure Thomas was safely buckled before going around to the other side of the car.
"Say yes!" Janus ordered from the backseat, where all the Sides had packed in.
"Actually that’s pretty normal for me." Thomas admitted, as Joan started the car.
"You normally wake up to your imaginary friends doing CPR?" Joan sounded skeptical as they put the car in drive and started towards the hospital.
"Not the CPR, but you know how Tumblr users play with JPEGS like dolls? I kind of do that with parts of my mind. So I'm used to them being around and MST3King my life, cause that's just how my brain works. I think the CPR was my brain trying to save itself." He wasn't quite ready to explain how real the Sides were to him yet. "The hallucinations afterward were of me being a ghost, I think. I didn't have a pulse and kept passing though things. And my hair was white except when it glowed purple when I started freaking out about being a ghost. And I'm starting to feel really weird. Do you smell oranges?"
Thomas was worried he was having olfactory hallucinations too. But apparently that one wasn't a concern as Joan had wrinkled their nose. "Yeah it's really strong, like someone put three orange-scented car air freshen-" Joan cutoff as they slammed the brakes.
Thomas felt a weird tingle, like pins and needles, as he was brake checked, and then thrown back by his seatbelt. The manic looking figure didn't seem to care that he'd nearly become street pizza. He just continued riding his unicycle into traffic, a python wrapped around each arm, and cackling.
"There's a Florida Man article," Joan muttered. "Thomas are you-?" They looked to the side and saw the bucket seat empty, but the seat belt still buckled.
"Joan," Thomas called weakly from the backseat. Joan turned around to see Thomas sprawled in the backseat, glowing slightly and shifting between solid and translucent. "Joan, I think I'm hallucinating again." Panic was settling into his voice and a purple sheen began to reflect in his eyes.
"Good news, you're not hallucinating." Joan gulped. "Bad news, I don't think a hospital can help you."
~~~~
Tempest Tongue Translations
ⱤⱧɎ₮Ⱨ₥- RHYTHM
₮₩Ø ฿ⱤɆ₳₮Ⱨ₴! - Two Breaths!
฿ⱤɆ₳₮ⱧɆ! - Breathe!