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The painful irony of the whole thing was they knew it was a bad idea. Both of them would have told everyone else, explained the flawed logic. They were the only ones who had ever been fused, they knew more than anyone!
Both of them knew fusing would be a bad idea- a bad bad bad idea- but they didn't have a choice they weren't given a choice! They didn't want to! Please don't make us! Please please, please!
But no one asked them.
Regardless of what they had wanted, they were one person. Melted down for scraps, hoping to be reformed into a golden boy. A replacement for them, whoever they were.
Now “they” were “he” and he barely understood what came before himself. He had journals and such, but all his old memories had the consistency of a slippery drowned rat.
He didn’t know even know why they had forced the twins to fuse.
He was just the result of the decision.
The King had been slowly coming to realize that he didn't want to be himself just as much as Remus and Roman hadn't wanted to become him.
He's been unstable the last few months, which is to be expected, he's two people in one! He's a package deal! Two playdough figurines smushed together with a hydraulic press!
Logan said he would be off-kilter at first, for a week or so. Logan isn't usually wrong but the King's been dazed and sore and confused for months. The other’s notice, but either they don’t care or they're too chicken-shit to bring it up, because even as his health plummets, he’s never been offered a single goddamn thing. Not help, not compassion, not even a break from his constant work with Thomas.
It all comes to a head one day.
He found a leaf against his lower back one day. He assumed it was just sap sticking it to his skin, a remnant of one of his adventures in the imagination. He'd been spending hours in the expansive forests. Both sides of the imagination had fused, like the sides that built them, creating some interesting scenery. Mostly he couldn't stand being in the house, being with them.
He gently poked at the leaf, it's stem was weak and a pale green. He feels a weird tingle when he touches it, and when he pinches it between his finger and pulls it, he sees blood well up around the stem.
It was growing out of his skin.
He pulls it out and it’s simply replaced with a fresh sprout three days later.
It's not the last sprout either.
Word can't describe the repulsion of finding a foreign organism taking over your body. Unlike the thousands of bacteria that occupy every nook and cranny of your mouth and eyes and feet, this isn't passive. It was destroying him from the inside out.
He was damaged goods the moment he was fused, he’d figured that out. But he was cursed too. Curses have symbolism, right? A dramatic end to a pitiful life? He can't figure out what the plant means, but it’s quite telling that as he wilts(is it the death puns is that why they don't care why do they never care-) away, everyone stands by and lets it happen.
To his growing terror, he finds more and more stems and leaves growing out of him. And he can never escape the feeling of things growing under his skin. He considers tearing off all his skin and letting them bloom, beautiful and bloody.
He briefly and desperately convinces himself it's just Hanahaki. Simple disease, vomit some flowers and blood up, confess your love, then BOOM it's over. Right?
But this isn't because of love.
It's because of him.
That's the worst part.
The King, the fusion as he exists now, is such a horrible contradiction of his own existence that it's killing him. Or some dramatic nonsense like that. Or maybe this is normal? He’s not the expert on anything.
It's just simply not to be, he quickly realizes.
It's too late to unfuse, and if he did, how would he explain why? To the people that forced him like this in the first place. Just go “Oh yeah, I wanted to become two bitter rivals again, instead of one, functioning, well-adjusted adult.” They must have done it for a reason. They wouldn't do this for no reason, right? It had to have been good, otherwise, they wouldn’t have caused their friends so much pain, right?
Can he even unfuse?
He's been avoiding them for months now, and they know that they know he won't hang out with them. They won't apologize and they went as far as saying they want him to apologize, some nonsense about attitude. The King is pitiful but even he won't stoop that low.
He slinks past Janus’ and Patton’s knitting sessions and ignores Virgil and Logan's debate in the living room.
He only interacts with Thomas from a distance, to inspire him. He doesn’t know if Thomas had anything to do with their refusion, but he’s afraid of the answer.
He cuts off the last weathered ties he had.
And now he lies here.
King knows he should leave his room, but he can't bring himself too. Even if he had somewhere to go or anyone to visit, he couldn't. The noise is overwhelming, and it gets worse every day.
Pain is a constant companion, thanks to the stems pushed and pushed until they shoved his lungs through his shattered rib cage. The flowers blossom, acidic, and itchy against his skin and bones. Their sap and his blood mixed and dried, leaving him dirty and sticky all over. Their perfume is overwhelming.
If he did leave his room now, he'd be met with shock and horror and who-the-hell-knows-what.
He lays still, not breathing, not sleeping, just tense, twitching, and crying.
Eventually, he realizes that the door is fused shut, unable to move from the wall. Hell, at this point that's a wall. No hope of rescue now. Would they ever have bothered?
He thinks he's past saving as the vines in his lungs press through his muscle, coming out his back.
They press back into his skin a few hours later, and he realizes it's twisting around his spine. How much goddamn plant was there at this point? Was it still just one plant? How was it getting fucking sunlight? He thought the curtains were shut. Does it even need sunlight? Or does it just need him?
There are a million questions as he lies here, and not a single one matters.
At some point, the vines squeeze too hard and his spine snaps like a toothpick.
He giggles. Fear and pain and hopelessness are constant here, but he briefly humors himself with the thought that he’s a literal beanpole.
His head is torn off a day later. Thorns grow up his throat.
He would give anything to go back to just coughing. He'd go back to them, the people who got him in this mess, but he can't move.
He stays like that, eventually, the plant stops growing. He thinks the other sides must have given up by now, with the door that turned onto a wall, with the utter silence that his room has, with the fact that Thomas is still content and happy.
He'll continue on for the rest of his life like this, unable to move, torn apart, working hard to inspire Thomas.