Bad Moon Rising | Sanders Sides

The Last

Deceit had one last card to play, one last plan to spring to life. It was going to hurt - and he was sick of things hurting, he really was - but he was willing to hurt for Virgil. Because that's what this all came down to. Not bringing Virgil back to them, not because he was theirs. It was about following him into the light, about redemption for Deceit and Remus.

Because even the bad guys were good guys once, and every bad guy has the potential to be good again.

So Deceit picked himself up, put himself back together, told Remus to wait, and walked into the shadows where something Evil had once lived. Nothing lived there anymore. The Abyss was empty, the Wall was together again. And perhaps the wall was stronger now, not weaker, because Deceit had put more than his power into fixing it. He had put more than shimmering darkness.

He'd put light into it - purple, green and yellow - because he was tired of the seething, writhing darkness that he'd had to grovel and live in. He was tired of pretending that Virgil belonged only to the Dark Sides, because Virgil had found happiness somewhere else and Deceit-

No.

Janus had every intention of following him into those arms of comfort and safety.

"Don't do it," Remus said quietly, following Janus into the shadows. They wriggled to make space for him. Janus didn't dare look back at him, not yet. "Not now. We can go home."

Janus shook his head. "At what cost?" He asked desperately, squeezing his eyes shut. "What's left for us there?"

The shadows brushed along Deceit's face, hissing along the scales that hadn't been there, once. Janus had hated them for a long time, had even once tried to rip them off, but they soothed him now. He'd grown his own armour, he'd protected himself. He didn't need whatever hollow support the Dark Sides could offer him.

"Remus," he whispered to the shadows. "Please."

Remus's hand landed on Deceit's shoulder and spun him around. 

My, how they'd changed. In a moment of introspection, Janus could see them both as they'd been - eyes full of anger and pain and loss, blood fizzling with the need to not be alone, the need to stop watching their friends leave them behind. Wild things, that's what they'd been. Wild things that lashed out and screamed and pretended to be bad, when they were really just hurting.

"You can't go," Remus said through gritted teeth, even as indecision warred with regret in his eyes. "You can't just leave. You can't go back to Virgil, again and again and again. One day, you have to stop."

And yes, one day, Janus would. He would stop running, and he would stop fighting, and he would stop trying to be everything that he knew he wasn't. But Thomas needed him not to be a Dark Side. Janus needed himself not to be a Dark Side. There was so much more to him, so much more that he could be doing. 

"Please," he said again, one last time. Because if Remus didn't go with him now, then Janus would leave him, like Virgil had left him, and they would only ever see themselves as enemies. "Please."

And Remus's hand lifted off his shoulder.

The loss of that touch resonated through the shadows, resonated through Janus's body as Remus took with him the last strand of Deceit. Because Deceit had been a Dark Side, and Deceit had been bitter, and Deceit had wanted so much more for himself and for his people, and now Janus was something Grey, at best, and nothing at all, at worst.

"Goodbye, old friend," said Remus, his composure and cunning and emotion restrained and moulded into something dangerously close to affection. It would be the last time that Janus ever heard such a thing.