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snowdice · 2 years

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742 (Full 2022 Big Bang Fic)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Virgil/Patton (romantic, but could be read as platonic)

Characters:

Main: Virgil, Patton

Appear: Janus, Logan, Roman

Mentioned: Remus

Summary:

Virgil Sanders died alone on a hill at the edge of town by his own hand near the end of his senior year of high school. Patton had never known him; he was also the last person to see him alive.

Despite having barely ever talked to Virgil, Patton never could get over the boy’s death and he could never get rid of the sketchbook Virgil had pressed into his hands before running off that day. It didn’t matter that the number of drawings of Patton himself was… a bit creepy given the context that they hadn’t really known each other. The sketchbook was always somehow a comfort to him.

When Patton is mortally injured, he finds himself reaching for that comfort and suddenly ends up in his old high school with a dead boy standing front of him. Now, it’s a race against the clock to survive a danger Patton had no memories of being in last time with a boy who knew more about him than he really should. If they’re fast enough, maybe this time, no one has to die.

Notes: temporary major character death, suicide (temporary and self-sacrificial, not because of mental health reasons), a bit of gross out stuff (a character walked through what is in essence digestive fluid of a giant slug monster)

This fic is 4 chapters + an epilogue which you can find all on this post. I am posting it all as one lump today for the @ts-storytime Big Bang 2022 event and then will post them by chapters later down the line on my blog and on AO3.

A special thanks to @kiapet2 for being my beta reader and to @easy-meta-knight for the artwork. It was fun working with you!

Check out the awesome artwork for this fic here!

Chapter 1 Coffee Lemonade

“Uh. Could I try the iced coffee lemonade, please?” Patton asked, pointing to a small chalkboard to his left. It was sitting on the counter next to the cash register and had all the seasonal drinks written on it in impressively neat cursive.

“Sure.” The girl working the till must have been a new summer hire, because Patton didn’t recognize her from last spring. Her fingers still seemed a bit hesitant on the cash register buttons and she referred back to a slip of paper taped behind the counter a few times while punching in his order.

“That’ll be $5.32,” she said, looking back up at him.

Patton made sure to smile at her extra wide even though he’d honestly been interested in one of the brownies in the display case and hadn’t wanted her to push the total button quite yet. It didn’t matter. He’d be sitting here for a while anyway; he could just get one later.

“Lemonade coffee,” Patton mused while handing over a couple of bills. “That’s an odd one.”

She glanced at him while counting the money. “Yeah, people seem to be divided on whether they like it or not.”

“I don’t usually get to try the summer specials here,” Patton said. “They usually switch them out around when classes start, and I always just miss them.”

“Yeah,” she said, handing him back his change.

He stuck a dollar in the tip jar.

“I think the owner is changing them out next week at some point,” she said.

“Guess I’ll have to come back a few times this week to try the other specials,” he said, gesturing to the board. “Don’t want to miss my chance.” It wouldn’t be a hardship. He loved this coffee shop, and he was living closer to it this year than he had been the last.

Logan had said taking his favorite coffee shop’s location into account when choosing an apartment was ridiculous, but Patton knew having to walk by his favorite study spot to get home every day would increase his productivity in the end (even if it would probably be a drain on his wallet). Logan, who would drink crude oil thinking it was his coffee and thought the periodic table was enough decoration for his classroom given it was colorful, did not understand this concept.

“Mmm,” the cashier replied dismissively. It was not in a rude way, but she clearly wasn’t interested in continuing to talk to him much more. That was fair. She didn’t know Patton yet. She probably would get to know him if she continued to work at the coffee shop through the school year.

Shooting her one last smile, Patton stepped away to find a table.

The coffee shop felt eerily empty for this time of day. Patton wasn’t used to being in town when the university was not in session. Up until this year, he’d lived in the dorms and wasn’t allowed to move in until a predetermined date and time the week before classes started. This year, he was able to move into his apartment at the beginning of August.

Logan had helped him move in over the weekend but had had to be back in their hometown by Monday since it was the last week of the summer class he was teaching. So, now Patton was alone in a city that was a whole lot emptier than he was used to without college students crawling all over it.

He was used to this coffee shop being filled to the brim with students studying. Today, however, there was only one guy with a laptop in the back and a mom with two young children taking up one of the two couches.

Patton chose to sit at his favorite spot near the window. From it, he had a perfect view of a small park to the left of the coffee shop. Bunnies and squirrels frequented the little grassy area. He had a tally table in his planner from last year where he’d always count how many of each animal he could spot during his hours at the shop. That… had not been the intended purpose of the planners Logan always got him for each school year.

Doodling was also not the intended purpose of the planners, but doodling in the new one was Patton’s plan for the afternoon. It wasn’t like he had any coursework yet! (Not that he ever actually wrote assignments down in the things.)

Reaching into his bag, he pulled out his new planner as well as a blue pen. Logan had handed the planner to him yesterday right before leaving. It was a gift he had been giving Patton every school year since Patton was 8 and Logan was 16. Things had changed a lot since then. Logan had gone off to college and started a doctorate program, their parents had died, and Logan had come back home and done his best to take a more parental role towards Patton, which had been awkward and hard. And yet, Patton could always count on getting a planner gifted to him every August.

It was fundamentally a Logan sort of gift, but he’d taken Patton’s tastes into consideration when picking it out. It was a cute little thing that looked nothing like the planner Logan toted around for himself.

The spirals holding it all together were larger than necessary and painted a bright shiny gold. The paper inside was sturdy, but colorful. Each month had a different color scheme, and the pages were littered with inspirational quotes. The cover was a light pink and had a bunch of flowers and cute cartoon bees on it. In curly letters right in the middle of the front cover there was a quote that read, “You will never ‘find’ time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”

It was pretty. Patton appreciated how much thought probably went into picking it out.

It almost made Patton want to use it for its intended purpose.

He cracked the planner open and flipped to the page with the day’s date. The page was meant to be a spot to write down his class assignments and general daily tasks, but Patton always preferred to just remember those things without a planner, or maybe to use cute sticky notes for the most important things. (He had cupcake and animal shaped sticky notes for this purpose.)

Instead of using it to plan, Patton used it as a mini journal/scrapbook/sketchbook. He wrote his thoughts down where assignments were supposed to go, glued flyers or ticket stubs from events he went to in the ‘Goals’ section and filled the rest of the empty space with doodles.

He wasn’t sure what to write about his day yet, but he was thinking about bunnies, so he started doodling a bunny next to the word “Monday”.

After a minute, the cashier, having forgotten to ask his name to put on the cup, awkwardly waved to grab his attention and called to him that his lemonade coffee was finished.

Over the next half hour, Patton sipped on his drink and continued his bunny doodle. Intermediately, he glanced outside to see if there were any real bunnies hopping about. He didn’t see any, but he did see two squirrels. He marked both down in his new tally table at the front of the planner.

The lemonade coffee was pretty good. He would miss it when it disappeared next week, but alas, time must march forward. Surely at least one of the fall specials would be just as good.

Patton had always loved their fall specials, ever since he’d found this coffee shop halfway through the fall of his freshman year. Though he’d found love for the winter and spring drinks as well, there was something special about the fall.

He finished his bunny doodle and took a sip of his drink, looking at his sketch. It wasn’t a perfect drawing, but Patton had been improving ever since he’d decided to start learning to draw. It at least looked like a bunny. He couldn’t have said the same thing if he’d tried to draw one a few years ago.

Looking at his okay bunny made his brain itch to look at another drawing though, and he found himself reaching down to grab his backpack. His hand brushed over the only other thing in his bag, and he felt himself smile slightly as he grabbed a proper sketchbook.

He shoved his planner to the other side of the table and moved what was left of his drink to the window ledge, just to be absolutely sure there was no chance of anything spilling on the sketches.

It was one of those fancy sketchbooks, the sturdy kind made for real artists who made art that people would want to preserve. It looked exactly as it had when it had first come into Patton’s possession despite Patton carrying it around in his backpack every day and flipping through it often. Its preservation wasn’t just the effect of how well it was made; Patton also was very careful to take proper care of it. It was the least he could do.

He reached for the cover with reverent fingers and carefully opened the sketchbook. It was instinct now to flip to his favorite drawing in the collection. He drew a finger down the side of the page, not touching the actual drawing for fear of smudging it.

He knew it was just in his head, but the page felt warm to the touch, like the late afternoon sunlight perfectly captured on the page bled into the paper and transferred to his finger.

This was one of the few drawings that took up an entire page. Most of the pages held an average of 4 distinct drawings, and some held up to 10. It was enough to squeeze 742 different drawings into the 100-page sketchbook. Patton knew the exact number not because he’d counted (though he had looked at each and every one of them multiple times), but because each picture was labeled with a number from 1 to 742.

Patton’s favorite was number 37.

Some people might say it was vain for his favorite picture in the sketchbook to be one of himself, yet it wasn’t about Patton thinking highly of himself, not at all. There was something… else that drew him to this drawing in particular.

It was done entirely in colored pencil. Patton hadn’t known until he saw this drawing that one could do that with just some colored pencils.

In the picture Patton was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch in the living room of the house he’d grown up in. He was bent over slightly, with a small smile on his face and glancing off to the right. There were 8 cards in his hands, and his favorite mug was sitting on the table next to him. The sunlight hit the left half of his face, glinting slightly off the metal part of his glasses.

He looked happy in the picture. He looked comfortable and at home.

Some people might say the picture was creepy considering Patton had never invited the artist into his home. He’d never shown him his couch or his favorite mug.

It…it probably was creepy. The whole sketchbook was probably creepy, especially with how much Patton himself featured in it. Especially with how it came to be in Patton’s possession.

And yet… and yet, whenever he touched its cover, whenever he looked at the pages within, it didn’t feel creepy. It didn’t feel wrong.

He’d never been able to get rid of it. He’d never even considered getting rid of it. He hadn’t ever even told anyone what it was.

He didn’t know how to describe what he felt when he looked at the drawings. They made him feel sad, but also somehow warm, like a hug from a loved one on a really bad day. Even though he didn’t have any memory of the situations he was drawn into, they somehow felt familiar. They were like photos you might find in your grandparents’ house from when you were much younger. You might not remember the picture being taken, but it felt right, like it did indeed happen to you. It felt nostalgic.

Looking at the pictures in the sketchbook, flipping through its pages, made it feel like the book was alive-unlike the person who had filled it.

Virgil Sanders had been a tragedy in Patton’s hometown of Kairos Hill. One night in Patton’s senior year of high school, the 17-year-old boy had climbed the hill on the outskirts of town in the middle of the night and proceeded to slit his own wrists.

His body had been cold by the time he’d been found the next day, after his foster family had reported him missing and the police had found a stolen car at the base of the hill. Rumors said there wasn’t even a bit of blood left in the body, all of it having been absorbed into the earth before the cops found him.

What people didn’t know was that earlier that same day, as school was getting out, Virgil had shoved this sketchbook into Patton’s hands and had run away before Patton could get a word out. It was very likely that Patton had been the last person who saw him alive. He hadn’t told the police this. He hadn’t told anyone this.

It wasn’t until after Virgil was already dead that Patton had actually cracked open the sketchbook. He’d found hundreds of beautiful, detailed drawings, including over three hundred of Patton himself, though not all were as grand as number 37.

Patton had never known Virgil, at least not for real. The boy had transferred to Patton’s high school at the beginning of their senior year, and Patton would only retroactively know he’d come to town because his parents had died in a fire, and he’d been placed with a foster family.

He’d been quiet from the accounts of people who’d known him better than Patton had, including Logan who had taught him. He’d never talked without prompting. Patton’s friend Roman had even been partnered with him for a history project the day of his suicide. Patton vaguely remembered Roman being mad at him because he’d refused to work on it at all. In fact, he’d apparently pretended to have to use the bathroom during class and then never came back.

Of course, why would you work on a history project when you planned to be dead long before it was due?

That was really all Patton knew about him. Yet for some reason, he’d cried the first time he’d flipped through these pages. As soon as he’d hit picture 10, he’d had to stop, because he’d been hit with a wave of sudden melancholy and had broken down in tears. It had just been a simple blue butterfly, but something about it had made him sob so loudly that Logan had come to check on him upstairs.

He could look through the pictures without sobbing now, at least. Patton let himself look at picture number 37 for a few minutes before beginning to flip through the other pages.

He wasn’t sure how long he was absorbed in the pages of the sketchbook. He didn’t pay attention to the sound of the door behind him opening with the soft tinkle of a bell or the sound of the girl at the counter and a man speaking to each other.

It wasn’t until Patton’s name was spoken that he looked up.

“Patton Heart,” the voice said, making Patton jump. He put his hands over the picture he’d been looking at defensively as he looked up.

He immediately recognized the man, though it had been over a year since they’d last met.

The man tilted his head. “You draw?” he asked.

Patton slammed the sketchbook closed immediately at the inquiry. “Yes,” he said.

“It’s very well done,” the man said.

“Thank you.”

After a moment, the man slid into the seat across from Patton without asking if it was okay. Patton pressed his lips together.

Janus Lial had always unnerved Patton, but he’d never been able to pin down exactly why. He didn’t seem… bad. Patton liked him in the way one might like a poisonous snake when it was behind a glass wall at a zoo. As long as it stayed back there away from him, he could appreciate it. Unfortunately, Janus often did not stay away from Patton enough for comfort.

He had a weird aura about him, and he always seemed to know more than what he was saying. He always seemed to know that Patton knew more than what he was saying.

Janus was a police officer who had come to town to investigate Virgil’s death. Maybe it was just because he was from out of town, but he’d always been one of the few adults that seemed to care that Virgil had died. The boy’s foster parents hadn’t seemed to care. Most of his teachers didn’t seem to care. Yet, for some reason, the man who, as far as Patton knew, was a stranger to the boy did.

…

Then again, Patton had been a stranger to Virgil too, but he still cared.

Janus had stuck around the town longer than the other investigators. He’d also tended to look at Patton more than the other investigators had. Even after the investigation into Virgil’s death had been officially closed, he’d still shown up in Patton’s hometown every so often and like a magnet, he always seemed to somehow run into Patton whenever he was within 20 miles of him. At least that’s how it seemed.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Janus said.

“Mmm,” Patton replied.

“What are you doing in the city?”

“College.”

“Ah, yes,” Janus said, leaning back in the chair. “That makes sense. How is university life?”

“Semester hasn’t started yet.”

“Hmm.” He waited for a long moment. The silence was familiar from their many interviews after Virgil’s death.

From what Patton had gleaned, because Virgil had been a ward of the state, special agents from out of town had needed to do an independent investigation of his suicide just to be sure. The town had been crawling with the agents for almost a month. They’d interviewed everyone in town whether or not they’d known him.

Janus had been the one to initially interview Patton. Then he’d interviewed him again. And again. Despite the fact that there wasn’t any record Patton had ever interacted with Virgil, Janus had kept wanting to ask him questions. Only Patton had known about the sketchbook, but it was like Janus had somehow known Patton was holding something back. Perhaps Patton had just been a bad liar and he’d picked up on that.

Eventually he’d stopped calling Patton in for formal interviews, but even then, Patton had noticed the man’s eyes linger on him the rest of the time he was in town. Every time they’d spoken then or in the years afterwards, it had still felt like he was being interviewed.

Like right now.

“Could I see that?” Janus asked, looking at the sketchbook with curious eyes. He was reaching forward before Patton answered.

“No,” Patton snapped, a curl of defensiveness in his chest. Janus’s hand retreated from where he’d just touched the cover as though he’d been burned. He shook out the hand with a grimace.

“My apologies,” he grumbled.

“They’re private,” Patton said.

Janus stared at him for a long moment, calculations going on in his eyes. It made Patton want to squirm. “Yes, of course,” he said.

“Did you need something, Officer Lial?” Patton asked coolly.

There was a long pause. Janus seemed to be waiting for something from Patton, but Patton did not fill the space in the conversation left for him.

“No,” he finally said and got to his feet, “but if you ever need me…” He set a business card down on the table next to Patton.

It wasn’t the first time Patton had been given that exact business card. He was pretty sure the first one he’d gotten from him was still tucked in the back of Virgil’s sketchbook right now. He and Patton met eyes for a long moment. “I like your rabbit too,” he said.

“Janus,” the girl behind the counter called. She’d remembered to ask for the customer’s name this time, Patton noted. Janus turned away without another word and grabbed his coffee from the counter. The sound of a bell followed him out of the coffee shop.

Patton reached over and closed the planner with the bunny drawing on it.

He’d planned to stay in the coffee shop a little while longer, but he didn’t really feel like it anymore. He just wanted to go back to his apartment and watch something on Netflix. Maybe he’d order something for dinner.

He carefully slid the planner and sketchbook into his bag. He threw the bag casually on his back only using one strap. With one last smile and wave at the new cashier, he left the coffee shop.

His apartment was only a few blocks away. He was thinking about his plans for the rest of the week as he walked. He’d been out of town for three months, and there were a few restaurants he wanted to visit that he’d been unable to go to for a while.

Logan had helped him unpack most of the things for his new apartment, but he still had some clothing he had to put away and some posters to hang on his walls.

He also needed to get more groceries than the bread, milk, and peanut butter he and Logan had picked up at the corner store.

Maybe he’d order some pizza from one of the local shops tonight. When he was with Logan, they always had to compromise on something boring like sausage or pepperoni, because they had very different tastes. Now that it was just Patton, he could get as many green olives, banana peppers, and globs of spinach on his pizza as he wanted.

He could see his apartment when it happened, though he wasn’t able to figure out what “it” was exactly. His mind provided the word “earthquake,” but the city was nowhere near a fault line. The sidewalk under his feet crumbled out from beneath him suddenly and he toppled forward, smacking his head against the ground before he could do anything to prevent it.

He lay there stunned for a long moment, vision blurry and very confused. The world was still rumbling around him, and he could hear screaming and something… else.

Was there a bomb or something? He didn’t know. All of the air had been pushed out of his lungs and it was difficult to suck anymore in. His glasses were no longer on his nose which might have explained at least some of the blurry vision. He tilted his head to look around for them and decided that probably wasn’t the only reason his vision was blurry with how his head ached.

He didn’t see his glasses when he looked, but his eyes did catch on his backpack. It was still hanging on one of his arms, but it had otherwise been flung away from his body. There was a hole in the bottom that he was sure hadn’t been there when he’d packed it at the coffee shop. The hole also had black edges to it, making it look like the hole had been burned into it.

He could just see the edge of the sketchbook poking through the hole.

Without knowing why, maybe just because he was used to reaching to the sketchbook for comfort, he stretched out a hand towards it. His fingers landed on the familiar warm cover and…

“Hey Patton,” a voice said, and to Patton’s surprise, he was suddenly standing up. He took a startled moment to take a breath, something that had been difficult a moment before. “This is for you,” the same voice said. Patton blinked as the same sketchbook he’d just been reaching for was shoved into his arms.

Patton looked up in surprise only to see the face of a boy who was supposed to be long dead looking back at him. He turned away just as he had almost 3 years ago.

“No!” Patton yelled, and he tackled Virgil Sanders to the ground.

Chapter 2: Here Again

They smacked into the ground hard, though not as hard as Patton had hit the ground only moments before when the sidewalk had crumbled underneath him.

Wait…

What was happening?

His mind was having trouble catching up to what was going on, trying to draw a logical line between the last thing he remembered and what was happening now.

He’d gone to his favorite coffee shop, had started to walk home, and had fallen because of… something. Now he was in an empty hallway. Not only that, he seemed to be in an empty hallway in his old high school.

He hadn’t even stood up from the first time he’d fallen. Yet, he’d just fallen again. He was on the floor. He… He was…

“Huh?” Virgil Sanders sputtered. Patton shouldn’t recognize his voice. He’d seen his picture thousands of times at this point, but he didn’t know his voice. Maybe Patton had heard him speak once or twice when a teacher had called on him, but he couldn’t have recalled what he sounded like only 5 seconds ago. Yet, at the same time, somehow the voice was familiar despite the fact that they’d never held and actual conversation before he’d died.

Virgil was dead, but he was also talking to Patton.

“Patton?” Virgil continued when Patton froze. “What?”

Patton looked down at his shocked and confused face. He looked exactly like the school picture they’d put in the newspaper after he’d died, down to the frown on his face. Patton had cut the picture away from the rather impersonal obituary on impulse one day. He still had the photo hidden in a book on his nightstand. He’d never been able to bring himself to throw it away. Not when the person in the photo was dead.

The person in the photo was laying under Patton and staring up at him.

The person in the photo was dead. And he was laying under him.

Patton didn’t know how those two concepts could coexist, but he did know one thing. His hands turned to fists in the front of Virgil’s shirt. “You can’t!” he cried.

“Can’t… what?” Virgil asked, his eyes darting over Patton’s face.

“You can’t die!”

Virgil’s mouth opened a bit, making him look like a very confused fish. It’d be funny in any other situation.

“H-how do you…?” He trailed off, studying Patton for a long moment. “Do you remember something?”

“I remember everything.”

“How do you…” He paused, biting his lip. “What exactly do you remember?”

“I remember you die,” Patton said.

He looked confused. “You mean you remember I’m going to die,” said Virgil.

“No, I remember you dying!” Patton said, grip tightening even more in the front of his shirt against his will.

“But I… haven’t died,” Virgil said, face twisting into a frown.

“But you’re going to!”

“But I… but I haven’t.”

“Yes!” Patton looked down at the clearly not dead boy. “…No…?” He grimaced. “I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty confused too,” said Virgil. “I feel like we’re having two separate conversations. What exactly do you mean by ‘I’m going to die’, or have died or whatever?”

“I…” Patton said. He took a breath and gathered his thoughts for a moment. “Today’s March 15th, right?”

Virgil nodded.

“You died… die today,” Patton told him. “You give me your sketchbook and then no one sees you ever again. They find your body on the hill at the edge of town tomorrow morning.”

Something funny flickered across Virgil’s face.

“Tomorrow?” he asked like he’d never heard the word before.

“Yeah,” Patton said. “You died today, and they found your body tomorrow.”

Virgil still seemed lost for a second, but then he seemed to shake himself. “Wait, so then, are you saying you’re from the future?”

“I,” Patton said, stopping to think for a moment. “I guess I am.”

“Like, the real proper future, not like from 10:37pm tonight?”

“Yeah,” Patton confirmed. “I have no idea how it happened, but it’s been 2 and a half years since you died for me. I… something was going on. I don’t know. I hit my head and then you were here and giving me the sketchbook. Again.”

“You’re from the future.” Virgil leaned his head back against the linoleum tiles with a clunk; his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

Patton winced at the noise.

“What even is my life?” Virgil asked. It did not sound like he was talking to Patton.

“Worth living,” Patton immediately said.

Virgil’s face scrunched up; he turned to squint up at Patton.

“Look,” Patton began to blabber, “I know we don’t exactly know each other, but I’m sure many people do care about you, even if you can’t see it. Even if for some reason no one does right now, I’m sure many people will care about you in the future. You seem like a nice person. I could be your friend. You don’t need to-”

“I’m not suicidal, Pat,” Virgil sighed, cutting him off. “Not really. Not like that. I am planning to die today, yes, but it’s not like… I don’t want to die.”

“You don’t?” Patton asked.

“No,” he breathed. “I really, really, don’t. Don’t get me wrong, life’s not great right now. I miss my mom and dad. My foster parents are kind of cold. I’m a bit behind in school and I don’t have many friends in town, because I wasn’t in the best headspace when I moved here. I don’t want to die though.”

“Then why do you?” Patton asked.

“I’m just,” he said; there was a hitch to his voice. “I’m really tired, Pat. I’m not getting anywhere. I literally can’t keep going anymore.”

“That… sounds suicidal,” Patton said.

“It’s not,” Virgil said. “It’s… you have no idea how much I’d like to see tomorrow right now.”

“Then why are you going to die?” asked Patton.

“I don’t have a choice. I’ve tried so many different things so many different times. I literally don’t think I can go any more rounds, and I’m scared of dying, but I’m more scared of what could happen if I run out of energy to keep this up.”

“Keep what up?” Patton asked. “Rounds?”

He sighed, and finally moved to push Patton off himself and sit up. He looked to the side and reached out an arm. The sketchbook had fallen and skidded to land next to him when Patton had tackled him. However, he froze the second he touched the cover.

“What the hell?” Virgil pulled the book into his lap, looking down and staring at it like it was an alien.

“What?” Patton asked, looking at the book himself. It looked the same as it always had.

“How did it-? When did it-? Why?” Virgil sputtered, sliding his finger along the cover.

“What?” Patton repeated more insistently.

“It’s become a praetectio somehow.”

“Uh,” Patton said. “What’s that.”

Virgil glanced at him and then back at the book with a frown. “It’s a type of protection charm,” he answered, “one of the strongest types.”

“A protection charm?” Patton asked, confused.

Virgil turned to blink at him. “Right,” he said. “You wouldn’t know about any of that today.”

“Huh?”

Virgil exhaled heavily. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s do the spiel one last time. My name is Virgil Sanders. It’s a little hard to believe, but please hear me out. Magic is real, and I’m what’s known as a mage. Except I’m not really a mage, because you have to study a certain amount to be considered one, but both of my parents were mages. I have magic in my blood and some amount of knowledge about how to use it.”

“This town,” he gestured with one hand to the air around them, “is currently in danger. It will be destroyed, and everyone will die at 10:37pm. I don’t know how to save it. Or, at least, I don’t know how to save it permanently. The only thing I am able to do is a band-aid. When the town was destroyed the first time, I panicked and my magic responded, putting the entire town into a time loop. It takes me back 12 hours before everything ends. The only thing that persists through the time loops are my memories and…” He held up the sketchbook. “This. This is a time anchor. It was the closest object to me when everything went to shit, and my magic latched onto it. It’s what keeps the time loop stable. It also helps me keep track of the loops. Every day before 10:37pm, I make sure to draw a picture to remind myself of that day, and I label it with the number of loops it’s been. The picture I draw remains even when the loop resets. Currently, there are 742 drawings. We have gone through 741 versions of today before this one. Yes, we have had this conversation multiple times.”

“You’re stuck in a time loop?” Patton asked, alarmed.

Virgil smiled slightly. “And you always are the only one who believes me, first try. Though,” he added, “if you just time traveled yourself, it’s probably even easier to believe.” He paused with a contemplative look on his face. “That brings up the question as to how you time traveled. What happened to get you here?”

“Hmm,” Patton said. “You said something’s weird about the sketchbook, right?”

“Yeah, it’s not a time loop anchor anymore. Or, well, I think it still is, but it’s not just that.”

“Well,” Patton hedged. “I had touched it right before I ended up back here. I’d gotten knocked over and was dizzy and confused, but I saw the sketchbook in my bag. There was a weird hole burned into the bottom of my bag that hadn’t been there before. I reached for it and suddenly was here.”

Virgil looked down at the sketchbook. “Oh. “His eyes widened in realization. “It must be… the praetectio, it must be for you.”

“For me?”

“You must have been in danger in the future. The book was trying to reach you to protect you.”

He looked over at Patton, something funny in his eyes.

“I must have… when I gave this to you, I somehow charmed it to protect you. I don’t know how. I don’t even know how to make one. I didn’t even think I had enough magic left for anything, let alone something this powerful.”

“But why did it send me back in time?” Patton asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess since it was also a time anchor, time travel is in its repertoire of how to protect you. It apparently saw that as the best option in that moment.”

“So, it protected me from whatever was going on in the future?” Patton asked.

Virgil scowled down at the book at that. “Well, it didn’t do a very good job of it,” he scolded the cover. “You were supposed to protect him, not take him back in time to a time where he was almost eaten by a giant slug!”

“Giant… slug?”

Virgil stopped glowering at the book to look up at him with a grimace. “Yeah. We’re currently in the… well, it’s not really a mouth. It’s a stomach, kind of, but it’s not in the slug. It’s like an outside stomach… thing. We’re in the that of a giant magic slug monster.” He shuddered a bit and then seemed to gather himself at least somewhat. “It’s gross,” he said. “It’s a horrible death. For everyone. Everyone in town dies. Except for me for some reason. Parent death magic things, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t actually studied any of this for real.” He sighed. “I know more about it now than I did 700 rounds ago, but there is literally one beginners magic book in this entire town and it’s the one that I brought with me. I have read it so many times and it is not sufficient for this situation. Honestly, your brother has been more of a help figuring out what’s going on than that book, despite him having a maximum of 11 hours with the knowledge that magic even exists.”

“You know my brother?” Patton asked.

“At this point, I probably know everyone in this town better than they know themselves.”

“So then,” Patton said, “all of those drawings in your sketchbook. Those were real? You knew me?”

Virgil’s cheeks suddenly flushed a bright red. “Oh right,” he coughed. “Uh, well, see…”

He curled into himself, his shoulders hunching and his hands coming up to hide his face.

“I was not expecting to be alive to see a version of you who had seen those pictures.”

“They’re very good,” Patton said.

“I have literally never shown anyone my drawings before except my mother.” He curled up even tighter; his goal seemed to be to become part of the floor, “and there are so many pictures of you.”

“Well, I really liked all of them,” Patton said.

“Ahhh,” he softly screamed into his hands. Patton couldn’t help but be amused at him with his reddening face and form trying to disappear into his hoodie. He’d pulled his hands into his sleeves to make sweater paws which were pressed to his face.

“Sorry,” Patton said, trying and failing not to smile. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

“No,” Virgil said into his hands. “I wanted you to have it. I just did not expect to have time to face the mortifying consequences.”

Patton’s smile faded at the reminder of what he’d planned to do. “Why are you planning to die today?”

Virgil breathed out, his shoulder slumping instead of hunching now. “Like I said, I’m tired.” A hand rubbed over his face. “I only have so much magic, and since I’m the one keeping the time loop stable, my magic reserves aren’t resetting when time does. They’re basically empty at this point.”

His fingertips tapped against the sketchbook lightly in an anxious pattern.

“I may have reversed time hundreds of times for everyone else, but that doesn’t give me unlimited time. I’ve tried everything I can do from within this town, and everything to try to get out of town. Nothing has worked, and I know if I keep going, eventually the loop will fail. And eventually… eventually is really soon. I may have even been pushing with this one, but I…”

His voice broke then, and this time his sweater paws were not hiding a red, embarrassed face.

“I wanted a chance to say goodbye, and then to reset it all one last time, so you wouldn’t have to live with it afterwards.”

Patton felt his heart drop. “Oh.”

His hand reached out and he brushed a knuckle across the hands still hiding Virgil’s face. Virgil peaked teary eyes at him when he did.

The lurch in Patton’s chest didn’t feel like just casual empathy for a stranger. “Oh, honey.”

“I’m protected from being killed by the slug. It doesn’t even really know I’m here because of the protections around me,” Virgil said, “but if I do it myself… well, with my magical heritage, my magical essence is worth about 5 towns filled with normal people of this size. I don’t know a lot about the monster trying to feed on us… on you, but I know it feeds on innate magic in blood. I’m pretty sure if I bleed out on that hill and it feeds on that blood, it won’t have enough room for the town and it’ll just go. At least, that’s what I’d hoped would happen. Even if it doesn’t work, at least I did everything I could.”

He shot a half smile at Patton.

“And it does work, apparently,” he said, gesturing at him. “That…that’s nice to know.”

“No,” Patton said at his resigned tone. “No, you can’t. You’re not allowed to give up.”

“Patton, there is literally nothing I can do. I have nothing left.”

“Well,” Patton said, “well, you did that!” He pointed at the sketchbook in Virgil’s lap. “You made that, didn’t you? You thought you had nothing left when you started this last loop, but then you did that.”

“I don’t know how I did this, Pat,” he said, tapping his fingers lightly on the cover again. “I don’t know enough magic to even know if the magic used to make this is different. It could be coming from another source and if it is, I can’t consciously tap into that. All I know is I can feel myself draining, and that the time loop has been getting unstable these last few times. It’s been taking longer to reset.”

“You have to keep trying,” Patton stressed.

“No,” he said firmly.

“Yes!”

“We’ve had this conversation before,” Virgil said, frustrated. “I’ve made up my mind. You and your brother and Roman, even my foster parents who barely care about me… everyone in this town are not worth risking just for me. It’s the only thing that could work and it will work. If you’ve seen tomorrow, then you’re proof of that.”

“I won’t let you!” Patton snapped.

Virgil just sighed, tiredly. “This is why I didn’t tell you today,” he said wistfully.

“Please don’t give up,” Patton begged. “You’ve already come so far.”

“And gotten nowhere,” Virgil argued, turning his head away. “Literally, nothing I’ve done has changed anything.”

Patton watched him for a moment. His face was impassive, but his fingers were still tapping that anxious rhythm on the sketchbook.

“But,” Patton said slowly, “but that’s not true anymore. You have done something that’s changed things. Things are different right now.”

He reached out and put his hand on the sketchbook next to Virgil’s. “I’m here. I’m from years in the future with extra knowledge that didn’t exist in this loop until right now and we have this sketchbook charm thing. That has mean something. It has to give us something else to try. You can’t give up when, after all of these tries, something has finally changed.”

Virgil didn’t respond.

“You made this book to protect me. It’s not going to bring me back here just for you to die on me again.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably a stupid protection charm,” he spat. “It’s from my stupid magic, so it’s not like it has any idea what it’s doing.”

“Mister, you’ve held this loop together for what’s functionally years. Don’t you think it’s time for you to give yourself some credit?”

That got Virgil to finally look at him; he slowly turned to face him, a pinched, almost annoyed, expression on his face. “Really?” he asked.

“What?” Patton asked innocently.

“Do you know how many time puns I’ve heard over the past 12 hours times 742, Patton?”

“Puns are never a waste of time,” Patton said.

“Stop.”

“What?” Patton asked. “Is it ticking you off?”

Virgil put a hand over his face, but Patton could see his hidden smile.

Patton smiled too and let his hand slide across the sketchbook to cover the hand Virgil had left on the cover. “You made this protection charm,” he said, “and it sounds like you made it because you care about me a lot. Enough to befriend me over and over despite the time puns. Would any part of you have made this in a way where it could hurt me?”

Virgil looked at him and swallowed. “No,” he said softly.

“You know, even the first time around, when I didn’t know we knew each other, it still hurt me. Even when you were just a name in the local newspapers and a few sketches in a sketchbook, it hurt. My memories of whatever happened through all those loops might not be up here,” he tapped the side of his head, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve always known deep down that I cared about you. Even years later, I suddenly saw your face again and…” he trailed off and to prove his point, a wave of feeling washed over him. He had to bite his lip to prevent tears from spilling down his cheeks.

“Patton…” Virgil said. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I did this to you.”

“Don’t be,” Patton said. “Don’t you dare be sorry. I should be sorry for not figuring out a way to fix it the first time.”

“It’s not your job to fix it,” Virgil said.

“It’s not your job either,” Patton said. “You’re, what? 17? You didn’t deserve to have to go through all of this and you don’t deserve to die. It’s not your job to keep a time loop going to try to save the town but…” Patton paused and squeezed Virgil’s hand that was still laying on the sketchbook. “I’m asking you to try one more time anyway. One more try for me. With me. Please.”

Virgil looked at him for a long few moments, almost like he had all of the time in the world, when in reality the clock was quickly ticking towards its end. He turned the hand under Patton’s over, so their palms met and then squeezed his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “One more time for you.”

“Thank you,” Patton said, squeezing his hand back.

“Okay,” Virgil said again. “If we’re going to try this again for real, we need to do a couple of things.” He glanced at his watch and hissed out a breath. “We only have seven hours.”

“Well, then,” Patton said with a smile, “we’d better move fast. What do we need to do?”

Chapter 3: Magic Book

“Logan!” Patton said, bursting into Logan’s classroom.

Logan was seated at his desk, two neat stacks of student’s papers in front of him and a red pen in hand. It was a familiar sight even though Patton hadn’t seen it in the 2 years since he’d graduated high school. It was a little strange to see him younger. Logan hadn’t aged too much in the last couple of years, but the sudden jump back was still a bit odd.

Logan jumped at Patton’s abrupt entrance, looking up sharply.

“Ah,” he said after a moment, adjusting his glasses. “Hello, Patton.” He glanced curiously at Virgil who was hanging back in the doorway. “Are you ready to go home?”

“No!”

Logan blinked at him. “Pardon?”

“We need your help,” Patton said.

Logan glanced at Virgil again and set his pen down. “With what?”

“With Virgil,” Patton said, reaching back to pull Virgil fully into the room.

“Hello, Mr. Sanders,” Logan said with a nod. “Did you need help with the class content?” Though even as he asked it, his brow crinkled in confusion, obviously knowing that didn’t quite add up.

“No,” Virgil answered.

“Then what do you need my assistance with?”

Virgil sucked in a quick breath through his teeth like he was bracing himself to stick his hand in boiling water. “I’m in a time loop,” he said.

Logan just stared at the two of them for a long moment, seeming to be trying to figure out if this was some elaborate joke of the youth.

“I have proof,” Virgil said before Logan could gather himself to say anything. He pulled the sketchbook out from where he’d tucked it under his arm and set about flipping through it. He landed on a page that had drawing number 102 on it.

It was a sketch that Patton recognized, of course, but he’d never paid too much attention to it. The picture was one of the simpler ones in the book, though it took up an entire page. It was a simple blue bird sitting on a tree branch larger than its own body. It was looking to the left with a string in its mouth.

Virgil took a few steps forward to plop it down on top of the papers Logan had been grading and then quickly retreated back to Patton’s side.

For some reason, after looking at it for a few seconds, Logan nodded. “Oh,” he said. “Then what is it that you need?”

“I need your big brain to help us figure out what to do,” Virgil said. Then, he paused. “Please?”

“Very well,” Logan agreed. “Close that door behind you.”

Virgil did so, and then turned to start digging through his backpack.

“Here,” he said after pulling out a textbook sized book with a dark blue cover. He nodded at one of Logan’s desk drawers. “May I?”

Logan pushed back his chair slightly to give Virgil access to the indicated drawer. Virgil immediately pulled out Logan’s collection of sticky notes and set down the textbook. He quickly started flipping through it, sticking different colored notes in what looked like random places from what Patton could tell.

Logan watched him intently the whole 5 minutes it took for him to flip through the book. Virgil then exchanged the sketchbook still open in front of Logan with the now sticky note-riddled book.

“We’re being eaten by a giant slug,” Virgil said. “That should get you caught up.”

“Ah,” Logan said, still seeming a bit bewildered, but he did dutifully turn to the book and opened it to the first marked page. “Alright.”

“What was that?” Patton asked when Virgil stepped away.

“Me pre-notating the book with his color system takes his time to get all of the relevant information down from 1 hour to 20 minutes.”

“You memorized how Logan takes notes on your magic book?” Patton said, honestly amazed. He’d lived with the man his entire life and Patton still had no idea how his system worked.

Virgil shrugged. “I’ve done this a lot of times,” he said, looking very, very tired.

“Do you want coffee while we wait on him?” Patton asked, waving at Logan who was reading intently by now.

Virgil smiled. “Sure.”

Patton hadn’t been in Logan’s classroom for a few years, but he still remembered where his brother kept the good coffee supplies locked up and safe from students and coworkers.

Virgil tried to help, obviously knowing just as much about Logan’s coffee stash as Patton, but Patton shooed him into a seat. He looked like he needed to conserve as much energy as possible.

Patton filled the coffee pot all the way up, planning to give Logan some as well.

“I had a lemonade coffee earlier today,” Patton said as he watched the dark liquid start to dribble out of the machine and into the pot below.

“A lemonade coffee?” Virgil asked. “Like a warm one or…”

“Iced,” Patton said. “It’s, er, it was August. There’s a coffee shop I like near the university I’ve been attending. They have specials and that was one of their summer ones. I was about to start my third year.”

“Sorry,” Virgil said.

Patton turned to him. “Why are you sorry?”

“My magic dragged you back here,” he said. “You had a whole life going and it just plopped you back here in my mess.”

“It’s not your fault,” Patton said. “Besides I…” he trailed off for a moment. “I think I was probably dying there. Everything was weird and confusing, but if the sketchbook resorted to time travel, I think me almost dying is probably why. So, being back here is better than the alternative, slug or no.”

“Still,” Virgil said. “Even if you survive today… again, you’re probably trapped in this time. You wouldn’t be able to go back to the life you made.”

“I’d be able to get back,” Patton said, cheerfully. “Just the long way around.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“And what about you?” Patton asked. “With 742 pictures and 12 hours per picture that…”

“I really don’t want to calculate the number,” he interrupted.

Patton looked at him sadly for a moment but didn’t push. Virgil didn’t offer anything else to break the silence, so they stayed quiet until the coffee pot finished running.

It wasn’t until after he was already handing Virgil a cup of coffee that he realized he’d automatically added 1 spoonful of sugar and a dash of coffee creamer to Virgil’s cup.

“Sorry,” he said, reaching halfway back to the cup he’d just set down, unsure if he should take it back or not. “I didn’t ask how you like it.”

“It’s fine,” Virgil said, his eyes lingering on Patton’s hand as he withdrew it fully. “That is how I like it.”

“Oh,” Patton said. “Uh, okay.”

He turned away and quickly put 2 spoons of sugar and a bit more creamer into Logan’s cup before walking it over to his brother. Logan was flipping through the book at an alarmingly fast pace, a sort of awed look on his face that he only got when reading about new dinosaur fossils being discovered.

Patton poked the back of his hand. “Coffee,” he said, and Logan’s hand automatically came over to take it without him looking up.

Patton stepped away and returned to Virgil. Virgil had his eyes closed and he looked almost like he was napping in his chair, but his mouth opened when Patton drew near.

“Coffee’s one of the few things that never gets old,” he said.

“Is it?” Patton asked, amused.

Virgil nodded. “You learn to appreciate things like that.” He opened his eyes to look at Patton. “Most things can’t retain their beauty forever. You start to see the flaws in your favorite painting in the art room. Your favorite song on the radio starts to get boring. Your favorite snacks you pack in your bookbag get old. Even the sunset gets boring once you’ve seen the same one so many times.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Some things don’t lose their beauty though, no matter how many times around you go.”

“What are some others?” Patton asked.

Virgil tilted his head up to look at the ceiling for a moment before saying, “Birds.” He nodded to himself. “There’s a couple of birds that have a nest outside the history room. I think one of them is going to lay eggs soon. The nest looks like an actual wreck. I’m pretty sure they’ve used gum wrappers for it and the male bird’s chirping is off. It sounds like it’s shrieking half of the time.”

He tapped his fingers against the desk, thinking for a couple more seconds, eyes still on the ceiling.

“And the song they’re learning in third period band,” he continued. “To be honest, it did start to annoy me at one point, but it ended up coming full circle and I enjoy it again. I could probably pick out each instrument’s part by now. One of the clarinets is always flat and the drummer misses the beat during the reprise, but that almost makes it more fun.”

Then, he tilted his head back down to glance at Patton.

“And you,” he said.

“Me?” asked Patton.

“No matter how many times I’ve met you,” Virgil said. “There’s still something more to learn about you. You’re always surprising me and they’re always good surprises.”

“Oh,” Patton said, face warming just a bit.

“Except for the fact that you like pickles,” Virgil said, looking away. “For that you are a creature of darkness that should burn in hell.”

Patton giggled a bit and Virgil smiled back.

“That’s why so many of my drawings are of you,” he admitted. “You always manage to inspire me.”

“I, uh, yeah, I guess that… makes sense,” Patton said, stammering a bit at the sentiment.

“Also, Roman’s about to barge into the room.”

“Wh-”

The door to the classroom slammed open half a second after Virgil spoke, causing Patton to jump despite the warning.

“Patton, where have you been?!” Roman asked, dramatically flinging his backpack onto the nearest desk. “I’ve been waiting at the flagpole for hours.”

Patton didn’t remember this day perfectly, but considering school had let out less than 30 minutes ago, he doubted the validity of the complaint.

“You and Logan are supposed to give me a ride home since Mom went to the city to see Remus’s art exhibit”

“Ah, sorry Roman,” Patton said. “We’re a little busy…”

“You?!” Roman said accusingly, pointing at Virgil. Virgil’s head hit the desk with an audible thunk. “What are you doing here? You ruined my entire day by abandoning me and our history project, you know that?”

“God, if I knew I’d have to talk to him sometime today, I wouldn’t have done that,” Patton heard Virgil mumble into the desk.

“Roman, could we possibly use our inside voice?” Patton asked, patiently.

Roman turned to pout at him, pointing at Virgil again. “He…”

“You know the movie Before I Fall?” Virgil asked.

“The one where the girl dies and ends up in a time loop?” Roman asked.

Virgil pointed to himself, his cheek still on the desk. “My life.”

Roman’s nose scrunched up. “You expect me to believe you’re in a time loop? He scoffed. “That’s why you abandoned me this morning? What game are you playing?”

Virgil just groaned. “I could never convince him if I left history class,” he grumbled.

“He’s telling the truth, Roman,” Patton said.

Roman turned to him. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

“I 100% believe that,” Patton said, reaching forward to pat Virgil on the back.

“What makes you so sure?” Roman asked.

“Well, I don’t remember the time loops like Virgil here,” Patton said, patting him again, “but this morning I woke up in my new apartment getting ready to start my third year of university, and this afternoon I ended up back in high school right next to Virgil who’d been dead for years. So, I’m not going to question when someone tells me funky time things are going on.”

“What’s this about you being from the future?” Logan inquired, looking up from his desk.

“What do you mean he’s been dead?!” Roman asked.

“Giant magic slug monster,” Virgil said. “Going to eat the town. Magic sketchbook helps me time travel. I was planning to die to save the town. Patton got the magic sketchbook. Patton time traveled.”

“What?” said Roman.

“And this giant magical slug would be the stellmax creature in this book, yes?” Logan asked, ignoring Roman.

“You’re verifiably the smartest person in this town, Logan,” Virgil said.

“I presume you do not happen to have the next book in this series?” Logan asked.

“Nope,” Virgil said, popping the ‘p.’

“Ah.”

“And before you ask,” Virgil continued, “there aren’t any other magic books in town, and we’re currently trapped in town with no way to contact the outside world.”

“And I suppose…”

“Yes,” Virgil said. “We spent a whole 7 rounds in here coming up with every possible solution until you ran out, and I’ve tried them all. Except…” He trailed off, glancing away, “the last one.”

“Which is?” Logan prompted.

“The one where I slit my wrists to put it in a magic food coma.”

“And that’s the future I’m from,” Patton interjected.

Logan thought for a few long moments. “So, we’ve apparently exhausted every avenue with Virgil’s knowledge,” he said, pressing his fingertips together, “and the knowledge available within our physical constraints. So, there’s no use attempting to go down any of those paths. I will not come up with anything new with those limitations. Therefore, any chance we’d have to fix this issue would come from your knowledge, Patton, as you are the only new variable.”

“Sorry, we’re all just blindly accepting emo boy’s magic slug story?” Roman asked Logan. “Even you?”

“He had the code,” Logan replied.

“The code?”

Logan turned away from Roman without any more explanation. “What information have you acquired since the last time you experienced this day?”

“Uh,” Patton said, biting his lip. “Well, a lot. It’s been years. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“I’d imagine,” said Logan, “that the more pertinent data would likely be temporally near the relevant incident.”

“Uh…”

“What happened directly after the end of the time loop?” Logan clarified. “The future where Virgil dies?”

“Well,” Patton said. “I didn’t know there was a time loop or that anything,” he waved his hand at the book in front of Logan, “magic was going on. Plus, it’s been years, so I don’t really remember things exactly.”

“Anything you can remember is more information than we’ve had up until this point,” Logan pointed out, sitting forward.

“Right,” Patton said, closing his eyes and attempting to cast his mind back as far as it would go. “Okay. So, from what I remember hearing, Virgil’s foster parents called the police after he was gone all night. That’d be tonight. They ended up finding him on the top of the hill outside of town. He’d, uh, slit his own wrist and bled out which I guess was the plan to overfeed the slug.” Patton twined and untwined his fingers with each other. “It was a big story,” he said. “Everyone was talking about it. Since Virgil was a ward of the state, special investigators came into town to investigate his suicide.”

“Special investigators?” Logan said. “State police? FBI? CIA?”

“Uh,” Patton said with a frown. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if they ever said.”

“And how did they investigate?”

“Er,” Patton said. “They came in trucks the next day. There were a lot of them, actually.” He paused to think. “Actually… I think I remember Ms. Jenkins, our neighbor,” he added for Virgil’s benefit even though Virgil might already know her, “saying she saw them earlier in the day before the news of Virgil’s death broke.”

“Interesting,” Logan said, “but it’s also possible the news had just not broken publicly.”

“Yeah,” Patton agreed. “I don’t know.”

“And what happened that next day?”

“Hmm, well, they interviewed pretty much everyone in town who’d ever looked at him once.”

“That’s quite the investigation for the supposed suicide of a teenage boy, ward of the state or not,” Logan mused. Patton let his eyes flicker open as Logan turned to Virgil. “You know far more about magic than the rest of us, do you know if there could possibly be a magical organization that would help in issues such as a stellmax attack, or at the very least one that would clean up the damage after one?”

“I…” Virgil said. “I mean, maybe. I know there is a magical society. Mom and Dad used to talk about basically a council of people that acted sort of like a governing body.”

“A governing body implies there are very likely people working for them. Considering the general public is unaware of magical goings-on, it is even more likely there is some sort of clean-up crew that came into town to investigate what had happened and ensure no one knew anything was amiss with Virgil’s death.” He thought for a moment. Then he looked at Patton. “Did they interview you?”

“Yeah,” Patton said. “Actually a few times, more than most people.”

Logan titled his head. “Why?” he asked.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Patton said. “There was one investigator, Janus Lial. He seemed to think I knew something about Virgil or was connected to him more than I was letting on which was, sort of true, I guess.” He glanced at the sketchbook sitting innocently on the desk next to Virgil’s hand. “I didn’t know how much at the time, but it was true that I was hiding the fact that Virgil had given me his sketchbook right before he'd died.”

“Ah, yes, the sketchbook,” Logan said, following Patton’s gaze. “I assume since you marked the section on ‘time anchor’ that this is your time anchor.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said, his hand reaching over to flip idly through a few pages before letting it close again. “It’s the only physical object that remains unchanged through the loops.”

“Wait,” Patton said, an idea slowly creeping into his mind. He wasn’t sure if the sketchbook remained the same only within the time loops or with time travel in general but… He grabbed the sketchbook from Virgil’s grip.

“What?” Virgil asked, startled as Patton started to flip through the pages.

“Janus gave me his business card in case I remembered anything else after my first interview. I stuck it in the back of the sketchbook in case I ever decided to come clean about it. I don’t know how the sketchbook works, but if it can keep things like pencil markings and paint through time travel, maybe it’d also keep that.”

He flipped to one of the last pages where the business card had been stuck and basically forgotten about all of those years ago. The business card was there, though it wasn’t a business card anymore. It looked like an image that had been printed on the page, but it still had all of the information the card had once had.

“It’s here.”

“So,” Logan said. “If he really is a part of some agency that cleans up magical messes, we could contact him, and perhaps he could help.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Slight problem. He’s definitely outside the city and any message trying to go out of town will be blocked.”

“Right,” Logan said. “So, we would have to somehow get out of town in order to call him.”

“Which I’ve already learned many, many times is not possible with what we have in town,” Virgil said.

“But,” Patton said, “we have something extra this time.” He gestured to the sketchbook laid out in front of him.

“The sketchbook?” Logan said. “I understood that it had been here the entire time.”

“Yeah,” Patton said, “but Virgil accidently gave it an extra magical boost when he gave it to me.” He looked at Virgil. “It’s a protection charm basically, yeah?”

“It is,” Virgil said, his eyes starting to narrow.

“And it’s for me. So it’d work best with me.”

Virgil’s lips pursed, clearly not liking where this was going. “Well, yes.”

“How’s the slug keeping us in town?” Patton asked. “You said it basically swallowed us, right, so we’re in something.”

“Yeah, it’s like a membrane covered in stomach acid.”

“Would stomach acid burn me if I was holding this?”

Virgil narrowed his eyes at him “Absolutely not,” he said. “You are not doing what I know you’re thinking about doing.”

“It sent me back through time to save my life once,” Patton pointed out. “I think it could get me out of the mouth of a slug monster.”

“There’s no way we could know that,” Virgil said, standing up from the desk. “Magic interacts weirdly with magic. The slug eats magic! For all we know, it’d just swallow you and the book whole, and we’d all be doomed, without even a time tether.”

“The sketchbook was enough to undo the damage the slug did over and over again. Why couldn’t it get me through once with the extra boost?”

“That’s not how it works!” Virgil said.

“Sorry, what is this protection charm?” Logan interrupted.

“It’s called a praetectio charm. I’m not even sure how they’re made, let alone how I managed to make one, but I did for Patton.”

“Well,” Logan said. “The stellmax is a formidable threat from what I discerned from the passage I read on it, but it is by no means a cosmic horror or undefeatable.” He looked at Virgil who looked quite cross at that statement. “Perhaps it seems so at this point to you based on your inability to defeat it permanently with your current knowledge and resources, but if this protection charm is truly powerful, it might work.”

“I’m not risking Patton for a chance.” Virgil argued back. “I agreed to try one more time for Patton, but not if it risks him.”

“Could someone else use the book to get out?” Roman asked.

“Volunteering, Princey?” Virgil asked skeptically. Roman narrowed his eyes and Virgil snorted. “Leave your hero complex at home. It only works for Patton.”

“Even if it doesn’t work, can’t you just undo it?” Roman asked. “Isn’t that how time loops work?”

“Even if I have the magic for another round,” Virgil said, “there’s no guarantee that the time loop will still work the same on him when he’s from the future. Or if he manages to get out of the town, I’m not sure if resetting time would bring him back into town or if he’d get trapped outside. I don’t know what memories he’d have or what could happen. Not to mention if the time anchor gets destroyed.”

“We have to try,” Patton said.

“No,” Virgil said, blankly. “We don’t.”

Patton decided he was done sitting at a desk and looking up at Virgil. He stood himself and grabbed the sketchbook, clutching it to his chest. “I have to try,” he decided. “Come along and help if you want.”

Virgil frowned at him. Patton frowned back.

“I am a scientist,” Logan said, interrupting their frowning contest. “We will not throw him directly into stomach acid and see if he explodes. We could perhaps just have him stick a finger in and see if the proposed plan is even viable.”

“It’s not worth the risk. I should just handle this in the way I know will work.” Virgil looked directly into Patton’s eyes. “The way we know will work.”

Patton scowled at him.

“You mean, you die?” Logan confirmed.

Virgil clenched his jaw. He nodded decisively.

“Have you considered,” Logan said after a moment of thought, “that you are not the only autonomous person here. I know it is hard to remember in the best of times, let alone when you have repeated the same day so many times that people begin to appear like computer programs, but outside of this time loop, people are people. They grow and change and make their own decisions. Patton is the only person outside of this looping day you have met in a long time. You should listen to him. It is his choice to risk possible harm when it could save lives, just as you have made that choice yourself multiple times.” Logan titled his head, peering at him from behind his glasses. “It’s his choice to try, and I think the person he’s trying to save is worth the risk.”

Virgil stared at him, clearly surprised. “…When did you become a philosopher, dude?”

“People can always surprise you,” Logan said with a small smile.

“Apparently,” Virgil agreed, still clearly a bit thrown. He looked back at Patton, who did his best to look determined. Virgil sighed after a moment. “We test to see if it’s even possible,” he conceded. “If it’s not, we go back to plan A.”

“If it’s not, we try something else,” Patton insisted.

“Sure, Pat,” Virgil said, clearly not agreeing, but not arguing. That was enough for now.

“Just so everyone knows,” Roman butted in, “I still am not 100% believing this, but let’s see what I think when I see the giant slug mouth.”

Chapter 4: Hill to Die On

The party of four loaded into Logan’s car to drive towards the hill at the edge of town. Patton let Roman sit in the front seat, wanting to sit in the back with Virgil. Virgil looked nervous, though really, Patton had never known him to not look nervous. There was a soft itch in the back of his head that said he’d known this for much longer than Patton could actively remember. Patton slid his hand over and let Virgil hold it during the ride.

Roman spent the first half of the ride fiddling with his phone. “Okay, so,” Roman said after a bit. “I’m still not sure if I believe the whole giant magic slug thing, but I tried to call Remus and both of my parents, and they won’t pick up. Remus hasn’t answered any of my texts all day, but I didn’t think anything of it. Though now that I think about it, he’s chronically on his phone.”

“People don’t question the phone lines being down unless they already know something’s wrong,” Virgil explained, squeezing Patton’s hand. “It’s part of the slug’s magic. It doesn’t want its prey to realize anything is wrong, so it projects a light mental field. It’s also why you can’t see it.”

“Or maybe Remus is just being flaky.”

Virgil shrugged. “I’ve honestly never met him. I wouldn’t know. All I know is what you’ve told me about him. It doesn’t sound like he wouldn’t text you back for a whole day.”

Roman went back to fiddling with his phone, a bit more nervously this time.

“He’s starting to believe me.” Virgil leaned over and spoke softly so only Patton could hear him. “If he’s starting to question the phone lines, he’s starting to think the story’s plausible.” Virgil sighed. “But, he’s so much more stubborn when I’m a jerk to him in history.”

“He can hold a grudge,” Patton said, amused.

Virgil half smiled, but then the smile dropped a moment later. “I don’t like you risking yourself,” he said softly.

“Well,” Patton said, “I don’t like you risking yourself.”

Virgil frowned. “It’s different.”

“How’s it different?” Patton asked.

“I’m already dead,” Virgil replied. He looked down at his and Patton’s entwined hands instead of looking Patton in the eye. “For you, I’ve been dead for years.”

“You’re not dead though,” Patton argued. He squeezed the hand in his. It was a little chilly, and Patton wasn’t sure if Virgil was naturally cold or if the origin of the chill was the same as the origin for his pale face and tired eyes. Yet the hand was still very obviously attached to a living boy. “You don’t feel dead. You never felt dead even when I didn’t know you.”

Virgil didn’t have a retort, and they spent the rest of the ride to the hill in silence, though they never let go of each other’s hands.

They had to park at the base of the hill and make the trek up by foot. Virgil carried the sketchbook in his arms. Patton couldn’t help but think about how Virgil had once walked up this hill without anyone else by his side. He knew the Virgil beside him hadn’t taken that walk, but a very similar version of him had. Patton wondered what he was thinking when he climbed over the fallen branches on the footpath. He’d probably been scared, Patton thought. Scared and alone.

There was nothing clearly wrong with the landscape to Patton’s eyes when they crested the hill. Yet still something seemed… off. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something wasn’t right.

“So, where’s this giant slug monster?” Roman asked.

Wordlessly, Virgil bent down and picked up a small stone. He threw it a few feet in front of himself. Yet instead of falling in a typical arch and bouncing down the hill, it stopped suddenly in midair. Then, it started to slowly slide down.

As Patton watched, the stone seemed to pull away whatever illusion there was around them. As it slipped down an inch, it revealed a slimy, greenish-yellow, pulsing wall behind it. Gravity fought against a sticky web-like substance keeping the rock attached to the wall. It slowly continued its descent towards the ground, revealing more and more of the wall as it did. When it hit the ground, the reveal didn’t stop. Now that Patton could see the wall, more and more of it came into focus with every blink.

It wasn’t a wall. This was the stomach of the slug, and it stretched far left and right and curled over their heads.

“That’s the slug,” Virgil explained, though he really didn’t need to. “Or at least its mouth/stomach thing.”

“Stomach,” Logan said. “It’s an everted stomach. Very few animals have them. Even less use them to eat and not to expel inedible food. It’s similar to how a starfish eats clam shells. It will pull open the shells until there’s a slight crack, before forcing its stomach into the shell. Then, it will partially digest its prey alive before sucking it and the stomach back inside its body.

“Ew!” Roman said. He’d already been looking a bit squeamish at the slug being revealed, but now he looked on the verge of throwing up.

“In this case,” Logan continued. “We are the clams.”

“Thanks,” Roman said. “I’ll be sure to have nightmares about that for the rest of time if I survive to dream again.”

“I’m guessing the webby stuff is the stomach acid?” Patton asked. His nose scrunched up. The longer he was able to perceive the slug stomach, the more and more a putrid smell started wafting from it.

“Yeah, it burns like hell,” Virgil confirmed. “I only tried to touch it a few times.”

Patton nodded determinedly. “Hand me the sketchbook,” he said to Virgil.

Virgil clutched the sketchbook closer to him. “I’m not kidding,” he said. “Touching it really hurts, and you most likely won’t get a reset.”

“I’ll just go pick up the rock and see if that works,” Patton promised. “It’s probably already somewhat dry by now, so I’ll just get a taste first.” Patton internally winced at his own phrasing. He did not want a taste of the green goop coming from the slug’s stomach wall.

“What if it still burns you? What if the stuff on the rock is too dry and then you’re overconfident and get burned when you touch the actual stomach? What if it works for a small amount of the acid, but then when you’re halfway through it starts eating through the protection spell and you die anyway? I’m not powerful. I’m not even technically a mage. What if my magic fails you?”

“You are plenty powerful,” Patton said. “Your magic hasn’t failed me before, has it?”

Virgil stared at him for a long moment.

“Come on,” Patton said. “One step at a time. Let me pick up the rock.”

Virgil looked away, but he did hand over the sketchbook.

“Thanks,” Patton said, grabbing it.

He took a breath and turned towards the wall. If he’d thought the smell was getting bad a few feet away, it was nothing compared to how horrible it started to smell as he approached. He swallowed back bile and was careful to maintain his balance as he crouched down near the edge so as to not accidentally fall against the stomach wall. He carefully reached out with the arm not holding the sketchbook and picked up the rock that Virgil had thrown. It was still covered in slime and felt… very unpleasant against his skin. He felt a slight tingle and the sketchbook warmed under his touch, but it didn’t hurt at all. He held up the rock for the others to see.

Virgil was frowning despite Patton’s skin not burning, probably because it wasn’t burning. He knew that meant Patton was going to try more. In fact, Patton turned to the slug’s stomach wall and cautiously put his hand against it. He was able to push his fist slowly through the slimy wall like it was a particularly stiff, very, very gross wall of Jell-O.

“Patton!” Virgil scolded.

“I’m fine,” Patton said, drawing his hand back. The stomach wall closed in around the hole he’d made almost instantly, with a wet squelch. Patton’s hand was now covered in the slimy stomach acid and smelled distinctly of vomit. “Ew,” he said, holding the hand as far away from his face, and in particular his nose, that he could.

Virgil came towards him, and Patton put his slime-covered hand behind his back, remembering it was supposed to burn anyone who didn’t have magical protection. Virgil grabbed Patton by the arm clutching the sketchbook and dragged him back away from the wall towards the others.

“It’s fine,” Patton promised. “It doesn’t hurt at all. I think this will work. I think I can get out.”

Virgil looked very distressed by this. “I still don’t think… this isn’t a good idea.” His eyes traveled to the already almost closed hole in the stomach wall. Then, he looked back at Patton. “You shouldn’t… You don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” Patton replied simply. “I really think I do.”

“He will be fine,” Logan assured.

“You don’t know that,” Virgil snapped, turning to Logan.

“Perhaps not 100%,” Logan conceded. “I know very little about magic, but logic says if the spell on the sketchbook is holding for now, that it should continue to hold long enough for Patton to get outside. The stellmax’s stomach, while difficult to get through because of its acid, is not particularly thick. Honestly, putting his fist through like that likely went about a quarter of the way. It will hold, Virgil.”

“And it’s a better chance than the alternative,” Patton said. “You have to let me go.”

Virgil said nothing.

Logan leaned forward past Virgil, who was still clinging to Patton’s arm, and in an unusual show of physical affection, kissed Patton on the forehead.

“You’ll be fine,” Patton’s brother declared.

“I will be,” Patton said, nodding decisively.

“Don’t forget to take off your glasses,” he said, “and here.” Logan offered him a handkerchief. “Put it in your pocket for once you’re through.”

“Thanks,” Patton said, taking the piece of cloth and stuffing it completely in his pants pocket. He more carefully put his glasses in his shirt pocket. “I wouldn’t have thought about that.”

Roman went in for a hug then, and Patton screeched, turning away and curling to keep away the side of his body covered in acid. “Side hug Roman! Side hug!”

“Oh… right,” Roman said. Patton slowly uncurled and Virgil released his not goopy arm to let Roman awkwardly side-hug him.

Then Patton turned back to Virgil. “I’ll be right back,” he promised. He leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“You…” Virgil said and then trailed off. “You really have to come back,” Virgil said. “Tomorrow isn’t worth it without you.”

“I know the feeling,” said Patton with a ghost of a smile and an ache in his chest he couldn’t quite pin down, and then he turned away, back towards the wall. He took a step away from the group, towards where he’d been standing before.

He took a deep breath and grimaced at the putrid smell but held it anyway. He clutched the sketchbook in one arm and put the other up in front of him to try to somewhat clear a path as he walked, not that it did any good; the gooey substance swallowed his arm as he pushed up against it. With one last internal “ew,” he closed his eyes and forced himself to step inside the wall.

The worst part was it was warm. It felt like he’d stepped into a vat of warm nacho cheese, but this was something that he definitely did not want to open his mouth and taste. When he took a second step forward, the substance around him seemed to solidify even more, turning from feeling like walking through Jell-O to walking through warm peanut butter. Crunchy, warm, peanut butter.

He was almost afraid he’d get stuck as the substance became more solid and sticky, squeezing in on him from all sides. However, just when he thought he’d either have to turn back or risk getting actually stuck, he felt the sketchbook start to radiate warmth up his arm. The substance gave way abruptly and Patton fell straight on his face, rolling slightly downhill before he managed to stop himself.

Not willing to risk opening his eyes or mouth yet, he blindly reached for the handkerchief Logan had given him. He wiped off his mouth the best he could, which was honestly far from as much as he would have liked, before he was forced to take a breath. He gagged, wiping at his mouth more and doing his best not to breathe through his nose.

He eventually gave up wiping around his mouth and started scrubbing at the goop around his eyes. It was hardening, unfortunately. When he thought he’d done the best he was going to, he peeled his eyes open. He grabbed his glasses from his pocket and stuck them on his face.

He glanced at the wall he’d just walked through. He could not see the other side, but he could see a black Patton-shaped mark that looked like a burn. The wall was slowly trying to fix it, but it seemed to be struggling with that more than it had when Patton had just pushed his arm through. Patton patted the sketchbook in thanks, still not letting go of it. He didn’t doubt that if he let go of it the acid would still try to eat him alive, even outside the slug’s stomach.

The sketchbook, for its part, also had some goop on it, but the slime had rolled up into little balls like water droplets might gather on car windshields during the rain. He was able to flick them mostly off and turn to the page that had Janus’s business card embedded into it.

He awkwardly tried to wipe off his free hand with the already dirty handkerchief, the other hand still clutching the sketchbook, but eventually just decided to grab his phone out of his back pocket and hope the protection of the sketchbook extended to a device in Patton’s hand.

The screen lit up like normal when Patton tapped at it, so it at least hadn’t instantly broken. He unlocked the phone, silently thankful that he never did get around to changing the lock code he used even when he changed phones.

Now that the phone was no longer in his back pocket, he carefully settled on the ground with the sketchbook in his lap. He dialed the number on the business card and put the phone on speaker so he wouldn’t get it messier putting it up to his ear. He settled it on top of the sketchbook.

“Hello. What?” The voice that came over the phone was snappy, but also familiar. Patton had never been so relieved to hear the man’s voice.

“Is this Janus Lial?” Patton asked, just to make sure.

A pause. “Yes. Who is this?”

“My name’s Patton,” Patton said. “I’m from Kairos Hill.”

There was a sharp intake of breath which prompted Patton to take a much more relieved breath. If the town name got that reaction, that was a good sign.

“How are you calling me?” Janus demanded.

“I got out,” Patton said. “I used a sketchbook. Virgil, my friend, made a protection charm thing out of it, and I was able to walk out of town.”

“Okay,” Janus said, voice just a touch frantic. “Alright. Where are you right now?”

“I’m at the top of the hill on the west side of town, right outside the, uh, slug stomach if you’re able to see that.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Janus said. Then Patton heard him saying something muffled to someone else. “We’re just a couple of miles from there on the main highway. We’ll be there in a minute. Okay, Patton, was it?”

“Yeah,” Patton confirmed. “You have until 10:37pm.”

Other sounds could be heard in the background now, voices and the sounds of vehicles. “Can you tell me what’s going on in town?” Janus asked.

“Virgil made a time loop,” Patton said. “The town’s been looping over and over again. I managed to get ahold of your business card in the future. That’s uh, even more complicated than the time loop, but I got your business card. We thought I could probably get through the walls of the slug thing’s stomach if I was holding the protection charm Virgil accidently made me, and we were right.”

“A time loop, huh?” Janus asked. “That’s a lot of magic. Very impressive.”

“Yeah,” Patton said softly, “but he’s getting really tired.”

“I’d imagine he would be,” Janus said. “It’s okay though. We’ll get it sorted.”

Patton nodded even though no one was there to see it. “What are you?” Patton asked.

“We’re called the MIU. It’s our job to deal with things like this. We’ve been trying to get through to Kairos Hill since this morning, but the outside shell of stellmax’s are hard to crack. We tried to find the mouth but couldn’t. That’s usually the only chance you have to get in or out. I assume that’s where you are.”

“Probably,” Patton said. “I don’t really know too much about it.”

“We did check there,” Janus said. “I’m surprised we somehow missed it. It seems like a slightly different species than what we’re used to. It’s still something we’ll be able to deal with if we can get inside though, I’m sure.”

Patton could already hear a few vehicles approaching, though it was a bit difficult to see when he was sitting, and there were a few trees about.

“We’re almost there,” said Janus.

“Okay,” Patton replied. He forced himself to his feet and looked in the direction of the noise. He waved with the hand clutching his phone when he saw a line of black cars.

Despite the hill not having a road or good terrain for a car, the vehicles seemed to have no trouble pulling up to the top of the hill. Janus was the first person to get out of one of the cars. He beelined straight to Patton. However, he hesitated, not getting too close.

“I assume since you’re covered in digestive fluid and holding a sketchbook and cellphone that you would be Patton,” Janus said.

Patton nodded.

“Someone get him something to clean off with,” Janus barked to the other people getting out of the cars.

They spent about 10 minutes cleaning Patton off, first with a hose thing that made the goop ball up like it had on the sketchbook. They also made him drink some horrible tasting milky liquid just in case he’d accidently swallowed any of the acid. (Patton was thankful for it no matter how bad it tasted; at least he knew it wasn’t slug digestive goo.)

He was able to put the sketchbook down after that and they let him into the back of one of the trucks to take a real shower. He was given a clean hoodie and some sweatpants that were too large afterwards.

When Patton stepped back out of the truck, Janus was staring at the still slowly healing Patton-shaped burn mark on the wall.

“That’s where I got out,” Patton said. He’d grabbed the sketchbook after his shower and was holding it against his chest again.

Janus nodded and turned to him, looking Patton up and down. “You are absolutely covered in magic,” he commented.

“Well, I did just walk through a magic slug,” Patton pointed out.

Janus shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’ve definitely been around a mage for quite some time.”

“Virgil said he’s not technically a mage yet,” Patton said.

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I think he qualifies if he managed to pull off what you said he did.” His eyes darted to the sketchbook then. “That must be a very powerful protection charm.” He tilted his head. “A praetectio if I’m not mistaken.”

“It is,” Patton confirmed.

“Those are very powerful things. It burned away the stellmax’s shell,” Janus said. “To be fair, it’s weaker near the mouth than other areas, but it’s still impressive. Would you mind trying to use it to get back through? With the appropriate equipment this time, of course. It will cut down on the time it takes to get us in.”

“Sure,” Patton said, even though walking through the horrible sludge again didn’t sound especially fun after having just gotten clean.

Luckily, it turned out that the equipment Janus had mentioned meant that Patton wouldn’t have to get all gross again. A little box was clipped to his shirt by a woman at Janus’s bequest. When the box’s button was pressed, a suit came out to encase Patton. It looked kind of like an astronaut suit but was a bit slimmer and missing an oxygen tank on the back. It also somehow adjusted to account for the sketchbook clutched to Patton’s chest, covering the book as well as Patton’s hand.

He was told that if he tapped the button three times, the suit would fold back up into the box automatically in a manner that would keep the liquid on it from getting on anything, which was a vast improvement over Patton’s clothes from before.

“You’ll go first,” Janus told him, also outfitted with one of the packs along with a case Patton didn’t know the use for. “That protection charm will only really work if you’re holding it. You burn a path and I’ll follow.”

“I can do that,” Patton agreed with a nod.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

Patton still closed his eyes when approaching the slug’s stomach wall. He pushed against the still struggling to close hole burnt into the side, and it gave under pressure. The same warmth from the sketchbook from earlier started up, and the stomach wall gave even more. He could feel Janus’s covered hand grip onto his arm as he followed Patton into the hole he was making.

Walking through seemed quicker this time. Patton couldn’t tell if that was because he wasn’t agonizing over the goop pressing against him, or if it was because he’d already forced a hole here once. The further they went the easier it began to be to move through the wall, going back to that Jell-O consistency from the inside.

Patton stumbled out onto the other side of the wall after a few slow steps, Janus coming quickly behind him. He opened his eyes, but the entire front visor of his suit was covered in the goop. Blindly, he felt for the button that would make the suit retreat and pressed it three times. There was a startling snap and whirring sound as the entire suit folded up back into the pack, leaving Patton completely clean.

“Patton!” Virgil exclaimed. He was already right in front of him. Logan and Roman were hanging back a bit still. “Are you alright?”

Patton shot him a grin. “Still a bit nauseous from…” he waved his hand at the wall and continued to try to forget the bit that definitely went in his mouth, “but I’m good and I brought back up.”

Virgil turned to face Janus who had also deactivated his suit. “Janus, I’m guessing?” Virgil asked.

“Yes, and I’d presume you are Virgil,” Janus said.

Virgil nodded.

“I hear you made a stable time loop to save this town,” Janus said with a head tilt, his eyes scrutinizing the boy in front of him. “I’m impressed.”

“Uh, thanks,” Virgil said. “It was more instinct than anything.”

“Well,” Janus replied, “that’s what magic is a lot of the time.” Janus took a step forward to clasp him on the shoulder. Virgil wavered under it, and Patton didn’t think it was because Janus was particularly strong. Janus seemed to come to the same conclusion. “I’ve got it from here though,” he said. “You can sit down and rest.”

“How?” Virgil asked, shrugging off the suggestion to rest.

“It’s actually relatively easy to get rid of a stellmax,” Janus said, though then he paused. “At least, it is from the inside with the correct equipment and knowledge. Basically, I just need to inject it with a toxin to make it release the town and then my team on the outside will work on containment.”

“Oh,” Virgil said.

“I’ll tell you more about it once the threat is gone,” Janus promised, “if for now you sit.”

“Come on, sweetie,” Patton said, tugging on his sleeve. Virgil let Patton guide him to a small patch of grass. Patton pulled him down onto it while Roman and Logan stepped over to stand over them and watch what Janus was doing.

Janus opened the case he’d brought and pulled out 6 metal triangles about the size of Patton’s hand. He set them all up near the slug’s stomach wall and then backed up towards their little group. A few seconds later, all 6 of the objects shot up like fireworks and exploded near the part of the stomach that curved over them.

There was a weird shrieking noise on the wind, and then the walls of the slug were suddenly gone, revealing the same group of cars Patton had seen on the other side and the sunset in the distance.

Virgil slumped against Patton as soon as the slug disappeared. “Is it really gone?” he asked.

“It is,” Janus confirmed.

“It’s over,” Patton said.

“Cool,” Virgil said, and then passed out cold on top of Patton.

Epilogue: A Brownie in a Coffee Shop

“Don’t be boring,” Patton complained.

“I’m not boring,” Virgil replied, taking a sip of his own coffee. “Coffee is good.”

“Coffee is good,” Patton agreed. “I have coffee, but having the same coffee every day is boring.”

“You don’t have coffee,” Virgil said. “You have an abomination.”

“Just try it!” Patton insisted.

“No.”

Patton pouted, but Virgil just avoided his gaze, so he didn’t give in and try Patton’s coffee lemonade. Patton had been trying all month to get him to try it, but he wouldn’t.

It was the middle of July, and it was a month before Patton and Virgil started their third year of university. It had taken Patton a lot longer to get to that third than he’d expected.

He and Virgil had ended up getting an apartment in their first year, Patton not wanting to do dorm life again with a bunch of freshmen and Virgil not liking the idea of showering with a bunch of strangers.

They didn’t usually go home to Kairos Hill for the summer. Virgil didn’t care to visit his old foster family, and Logan traveled a lot since he’d gotten a job with the MIU.

“Their summer specials are really good,” Patton said when Virgil gave him no attention.

“So is their plain coffee,” Virgil said with a snort. He was still avoiding Patton’s gaze, bending over to grab his sketchbook out of his backpack.

The sketchbook he pulled out was almost full, but not quite. Logan would be coming by in a few weeks to wish them well for their next year at college and would doubtlessly bring by a fresh one just as he’d get Patton a new planner. Virgil usually took a year to fill a sketchbook if he gave himself a whole page per drawing instead of cramming multiple onto one page.

The sketchbook with 743 drawings crammed into it was in Patton’s backpack at the moment, even though it had long been finished, with one last drawing made 24 hours after the giant slug monster’s eventual defeat.

“Roman will drink your abomination when he comes to town,” Virgil said, twirling a pencil between his fingers as he studied a blank page.

“But I want you to drink it!” Patton insisted.

“Mmm, sucks.”

He still would not look at Patton and Patton’s puppy dog eyes, even when Patton loudly huffed.

Roman was coming to town in a few weeks along with his twin brother Remus. Both of the twins were working with the MIU these days. They’d ended up joining up independently, since apparently some of Remus’s ‘behavioral problems’ that had gotten him expelled from their high school had been magic-related.

Janus was coming too. The MIU initially hadn’t been able to figure out what had happened in this city in the original timeline. Yet, after moving here for university, Virgil had spent a good amount of time researching and by the end of their first semester, he’d found a moth dragon egg in the city sewers. Janus had been impressed as no one else had been able to catch it. Virgil had been deemed the ‘bug expert’ to his and Logan’s chagrin. (Logan’s because a slug was not a bug.) It would have hatched to disastrous results in a few years if they hadn’t caught it.

Even though the threat that they assumed had almost killed Patton once was gone, there was still going to be a MIU presence in the town through the beginning of September.

Now it was still July though and when Virgil still wouldn’t give him attention, Patton sighed and reached for his planner.

They worked in silence for a bit. Patton peaked at Virgil’s drawing ever so often and couldn’t help but forgive the slight of Virgil not trying Patton’s coffee lemonade when he saw the sketch coming to life on the page. It was of Patton once again.

Virgil was invested in his drawing, not even pausing to sip on his coffee which was saying something for him. Patton felt his heart squeeze looking at him and instinctively reached for the sketchbook in his own bag.

The first drawing Patton could fully remember watching Virgil draw (though sometimes when he was on the verge of sleep other memories of the same thing drifted across his mind just out of reach) was the last one in this sketchbook.

It was a picture of the sunset the day after the time loop broke, and it was a perfect rendition from what Patton could remember. Most of the page was dedicated to that sunset, but in the corner, he could see a somewhat vague shape that he knew was Patton himself.

He’d watched Virgil sit in the grass drawing that picture. Virgil had looked at it for a long moment once it was finished and then closed the sketchbook. He’d given it to Patton permanently then. Patton had a lot of other drawings everywhere in their apartment to look at these days, but he still found himself opening this sketchbook often. The protection charm still buzzed merrily under his fingers.

“Are you going to eat that brownie?” Virgil asked curiously after looking up from his sketchbook.

“Yes, I’m going to eat my brownie!” Patton said with narrowed eyes. “Don’t even think about it mister.”

Virgil looked at him, and Patton did not look away quickly enough to avoid Virgil’s puppy dog eyes that were somehow even more potent than Patton’s own.

Patton sighed. “We’ll split it,” he said. “But only this time, mister.” It was a lie. It wasn’t the first or the last time.

Virgil grinned.

#sanders sides #moxiety #virgil sanders #patton sanders #tsss #logan sanders #roman sanders #janus sanders #adriana writes #742 #temporary major character death #temporary suicide #not pieces fic #gross out stuff

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