Plenty of Treasures

Non-Hero

Pairing(s): Platonic Remy/Thomas, platonic Remy/Virgil, brief platonic Remy/Roman, and briefly mentioned (implied) Prinxiety

Warnings: Strong language, mention of injuries, mention of family issues, brief mention (of implied) abuse, very brief suicidal metaphor, and arguing (?)

Note: This is the fourth part to my circus au! There's going to be a part two to this oneshot. It will probably be posted on my AO3 first. Thank you for the support on this series so far! Hope you enjoy! Also, yes, the title is a pun.
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What causes the feeling of one’s heart dropping into their stomach?

Remy was never good at science as a kid; constantly botching even the most simplest of experiments, completely giving up on tests half-way through, and unintentionally giving his teacher a hard time. He found it interesting to an extent, but his three minute attention span made it rather difficult for him to concentrate on retaining the information he needed for exams.

Surprisingly, he didn’t fail the class. Most of the exams, yes. But for the final exams, he used one method to focus fully on the questions in front of him. Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could create mini stories and personalities for the words cresting the questions.

For example, the word ‘Volume’ was a stubborn moron, usually taking control of a situation and manipulating others into following their ideas. However, these traits made them an amazing leader. This was the exact opposite of ‘Water’; a shy personality, capable of adapting to all conditions and environments, but also allowed others such as ‘Volume’ to walk all over them.

Remy doesn’t tell people this. It’s weird, he knows that. But in the end, it got him to the start of college. Not that he stayed for very long.

There was one question’s story that, for a reason Remy could never quite figure out, had stuck in his head since high school. This question was nothing special, and still isn’t, but its story was. Maybe.

‘Which of the following is a non metal that remains liquid at room temperature?’

For rather obvious reasons, ‘Which’ was a terrible villain terrorising ‘Of’, ‘The’, ‘Is’, ‘That’, and ‘At’. But, as always, a hero was created to save the day, ‘Non’ and their best friend ‘Following’. However, the thing that made this hero different was that they didn’t want to be a hero. They didn’t want to get involved with the villains evil plot, but they were dragged into it by, not only ‘Following’, but ‘Metal’ too.

‘Metal’ wasn’t a bad personality, they were just very... convincing and subconsciously manipulative of weaker people. They convinced ‘Non’ and ‘Following’ to defeat the villain with them.

Remy can remember snickering a little to himself as he thought of how ‘Remains’ and ‘Temperature’ would make it extremely difficult for ‘Metal’ to get another word in during conversations planning attacks and such. This is what made the two of them and ‘Non’ get along so well.

To make a startlingly long story short, ‘Liquid’, an assertive but understanding personality, helped the five of them take down ‘Which’.

At the end of their story, ‘Non’ decided that being a hero was too overwhelming and stuck to doing stupid shit with their best friend ‘Following’ and the newfound friends they had made along the way. And Remy still remembers ‘non’ being his favourite word for a while after that.

Returning to the present, Remy feels bile in the back of his throat as Virgil’s fingers slip from his grasp. Even that made up hero in his mind has frozen from where they are making daisy chains with their friends.