Wake Me Up When It's All Over

Chapter 5

A/N: warning, some internalised arophobia and slight destructive thoughts this chapter

It was a few days after Frog had shown up. He hated to say it, but Roman had gotten used to his captivity. He had thought about escaping, of course he had, but he knew that that would practically be a death sentence. Everything seemed to have grown since he had slept, the trees, the animals, the plants, everything.

Heck, he barely knew how to survive on his own when everything was normal, but now, he had about a hundred times more of a chance of death then back then. Besides, they were feeding him, giving him shelter, helping him to survive, and his parents had taught him that that was something that he should've been eternally grateful for. He didn't have to get taken care of, they could just as easily have left him for dead. Both his parents, and the giants.

It would certainly be less of a hassle then, he supposed. Maybe he should've escaped, saved them the job of looking after him.. He blinked back the tears and looked out to where the three giants were sleeping. He knew that only Blue actually lived there, and that him just being there was keeping the others away from where they lived. It seemed that looking after him was a full-time job.

He hated that as well. He hated the constant surveillance. The middle of the night was the only time that he could get some privacy to let out his emotions without them all crowding around him and worrying that something was wrong with him. He left his house to look up at the stars, only to find that they had changed as well

He let out a sad laugh before sitting down and burying his face in his knees. Maybe if he was better, he would've been woken up by true love's kiss, if he was less annoying. If he wasn't broken.

Instead, he was trapped in a world too big, too different for him to ever hope to navigate effectively. He looked at the stone walls in front of him and sighed. He was tired of being boxed in like an animal, maybe he could climb it and sit in the open for a while. He wouldn't try to escape, he wasn't stupid, but he wasn't gonna stay in that stupid circle any longer than he had to. They had already named him like an animal, he wasn't gonna carry on being caged like one.

The wall was only a few inches taller than him, it wouldn't be that hard to climb, and climb he did. He sat outside of it for about an hour before falling asleep.

He woke up to the sound of frantic hissing and groaned, bringing his hand up to his face to rub at his eyes. Yellow was staring down at him with what looked like concern, and he realized that he hadn't gotten back into the circle. Yellow reached down, hissing something to him, before attempting to grab him. Roman panicked, running closer to Blue and Frog, who were still asleep. Yellow hissed something that he was sure was supposed to be what they had named him. Roman didn't want to be picked up, it made him feel even more powerless than he already felt

Blue started waking up, and seemingly took in his surroundings. He looked at Roman for a few seconds before hissing at Yellow, curling his tail around the human in a way where it was merely circling him, not touching him, but trapping him nonetheless. He sat down and brought his legs up to his chest.

He should've realized that getting out of the circle wouldn't make him any less trapped. He was trapped by the giants, by his own fear of the unknown and he was trapped by the circle. Maybe he should've stayed in his crumbling palace and waited for it to collapse on him. It would've saved everyone a whole lotta stress.

He never had the chance to say goodbye to his friends, he had just collapsed mid-conversation and then he hadn't woken up. He wondered how long people knew of the sleeping prince in the palace before they forgot him, before they left him there to wake up on his own. Did they stay there until they died? Until he was the last human officially? Or, did they leave when it became obvious he wouldn't be waking up anytime soon? It felt like a matter of seconds to him, it was still hard to imagine that it had been ten millennia