Joy's Discovery/Sadness' Acceptance v1.1

Official paste theme, because it's just not the same without it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l436MSlivQ

Dream Productions had quite possibly outdone themselves this time.
After a spate of dreams not quite up to their usual standards, Dream Productions had come up with an absolute gem, with Riley as a fighter pilot, looping over her parents' house, rolling over her school and even an astounding sequence in which she flew the jet on it's side through the golden gate bridge to a fantastic score.
Joy chuckled to herself a little: Had Fear taken so much as a peek at this he would be screaming like a banshee right now.
With a quick little movement, Joy tapped one of the buttons and registered a response, generating a memory and making Riley smile in her sleep.
The music, sound and visuals in the dream were all just so magnificent that she found herself utterly enveloped in what she had saw in front of her, to the point that she didn't hear the footsteps behind her until a soft little voice from her left chimed in on the events in the dream.
“Oh she's so high up, and the controls are all so complicated, when did she learn how to fly a plane? This is going to end in a crash, isn't it?”
Joy jumped a little when she finally realized that Sadness had come down from her room and had been watching the dream with her, possibly for some time.
Immediately, Sadness' face went down when she realized she'd startled her, but Joy extended a hand and touched her shoulder before Sadness had the chance to slump off.
Slowly, Sadness looked back up at her.
“Hey, what brings you down here? Can't sleep?”
Sadness nodded.
“Come on.” Joy continued, “What's on your mind? There's plenty of room on the couch if you're interested in watching 'Riley The Fighter Ace' with me.”
Sadness' face all of a sudden lit up, “O-oh, thank you” she said, taking herself off to the couch, but after about three steps, she stopped again and looked up at the screen, her expression sinking once more, this time for reasons Joy couldn't quite fathom.
“What is it?” she probed, heading over to the couch herself and motioning for her to sit down next to her, which spurred Sadness into motion once again.
“Oh, well it's just… I don't think I should be watching this movie.” she replied as she got comfortable on the sofa, motioning to the screen.
Joy gave her a look of confusion and Sadness now seemed to shrink into herself more than ever, as if something were upsetting her way more than what was on the screen but she was holding back from just crying for whatever reason.
“Well...” She stopped again, taking a deep breath “Well, this is your kind of movie and I don't want to ruin it for you. I don't want to make Riley sad.”
Joy took a moment to digest what Sadness had said. She'd never been prohibited from dream duty, just she'd had a strict don't touch anything rule – now they were past all that she thought Sadness would be perfectly happy watching something like this.
It didn't seem to make sense. Sadness was rational for the most part – if a bit melodramatic – but she'd never reacted like this to something as inconsequential as a dream.
There was something up with her. She could see that as clear as day now she watched Sadness sink so far into the sofa as to practically disappear into the folds, her timid nature now clearly getting the best of her.
“Say, Sadness, are you alright? Come on, this isn't like you, is something troubling you?”
As discreetly as she could, Joy shuffled closer to Sadness and put her arm around her, nice and gentle so as not to startle her.
Still, Sadness stayed in her little huddle, completely silent now she'd given her reasoning.
Perhaps the dream really was bothering her, Joy wondered: after all, she tended to like more somber plots anyway, so perhaps the sight of Riley spinning an aircraft on its axis was just too much for her.
With a little smile to Sadness, Joy got up and headed over to the control panel where she pressed a couple of buttons, causing the screen to go black and the sound to die out.
"Eh, they'll probably run that again some time" she said with a shrug, heading back to the sofa, where Sadness had now at least stopped trying to bury her entire body in her turtleneck.
She looked confused for a moment as Joy sat back down "You were enjoying that. You don't have to turn it off on account of me." Then she put her hands on the sofa and went to get up. "Actually, you just go back to your movie and I'll go to bed, I'm sorry for dis..."
She didn't get chance to finish her sentence before Joy put her index finger over her lips and took a gentle but persistent tug at her sweater, motioning for her to sit back down.
Now it was as clear as day that whatever was bugging Sadness was something to do with her and in a flash of inspiration, threw open her arms, gesturing with her fingertips for Sadness to accept her embrace.
After a few seconds of looking at her through her thick glasses, Sadness finally accepted the hug and Joy made sure to be soft with her touch.

Slowly, she felt Sadness cozying up to her, going from an unusually guarded little ball of nerves to a far more relaxed form, becoming more and more like her normal self the longer she stayed in her arms, until finally, Sadness looked up at her and cleared her throat.
"Joy, have you ever fallen in love with any of the others?"
Now that was a personal question.
She'd kept quiet about that sort of thing for her whole life, truth was, that wasn't something she liked to think about and so she just focused on something much more cheerful whenever the thought came up.
She cuddled Sadness a little tighter and chuckled a little as she thought about it "Well, I thought about Anger once; that lasted all of about eight seconds and then I saw the flames coming from his head. Never hug somebody who can incinerate your face, trust me, it's not a good idea."
She didn't notice Sadness' expression change slightly, with something approaching a glimmer of hope flickering across her eyes.
"Then I tried going out with Fear a couple of years later but work got in the way." Again, Joy chuckled, with a little less conviction than she had earlier "I mean yeah, he scrubs up remarkably and bless him his heart's in the right place, but he's married to the job. Little guy never has any downtime, always pouring over all the audiovisual data for threats and working on emergency countermeasures and whatnot."
Joy didn't realize that Sadness had begun hugging her back.
"We even managed to go on as much of a date as was possible within the bounds of headquarters once but he just heard a beeping sound from a car reversing or something and woke Riley up thinking it was a bomb."
Sadness looked up to Joy, who was by now absorbed in her reverie and felt guilty. She knew that Joy liked to hide away anything that upset her, but the question she asked had just been vague. all she'd wanted was for Joy to open up a little bit, not go deep into an obviously painful memory.
She hugged Joy tighter as she continued, snuggling up even closer as to better share what comfort her body could give.
"All I'd wanted was for him to just dedicate just a minute to me, but in the end I just had to break it off after a couple of weeks. Oh sure he was sorry and I felt really awful for doing that, but it was probably for the better."
Then she sighed heavily and laid her head on top of Sadness' burying her face in her hair.
"Would you believe I even tried it with Disgust last year?" She lamented, her breath becoming irregular as she let all her woes out on Sadness "Yup. Me and Disgust, that worked just about as well as you'd expect."
Finally, Sadness felt Joy's chest convulsing as she finished her tale, forcing the words out in between sniffles "She had shot me down before I'd even told her that I liked her. Said I was just too vapid, said I was no good, said she only had eyes for deep and complicated men."
She couldn't even finish her tale. Sadness could tell she would go on about Disgust at length if she could, but now Joy was caught in the midst of overpowering despair and all she could do was to offer her comfort.
Putting Joy's head on her shoulder, Sadness patted her back and whispered in her very quietest voice as Joy's sobs were drowned out in her sweater.
"It's okay; I know how it feels. I'm sorry I mentioned it, it's just..." Sadness stopped herself momentarily before finally forcing herself onward "Just I was scared you'd reject me if I just told you I loved you so I asked a vague question to see how you reacted. I was so scared I couldn't think straight."
Now she felt herself beginning to cry and buried her own head deep in Joy's neck "Oh Joy, I'm so sorry, I was scared, I was stupid. Please forgive me."
Still with tears creeping down her face, Joy lifted her head up looked deep into her eyes, seemingly unable to quite comprehend what she'd said.

"You love me?" Joy asked, wiping a tear from her face.
"I've loved you for so long I stopped counting. Every day when I see you at the console, pushing those buttons and making Riley happy, I see somebody who cares deeply. I just wanted to be happy with you."

Seeing Sadness looking up at her like that made Joy feel strange.
In all her life, she'd never even considered Sadness a potential lover. As far back as she could remember, she had only ever been hostile to her: pushing her away from the console, trying to surreptitiously get rid of the memories she made, even going as far as to try to leave her in Long Term Memory.
And through all that, she'd still been quietly looking up to her.
And now, she felt as if some kind of a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. The longer she looked into Sadness' big round eyes, the more she felt like some kind of demon had been exorcised.
"You really wanted me to make you happy?" she asked, shaking off the weakness in her voice for her while still reeling from the shock of the revelation.
Sadness nodded.
"All this time?"
She nodded again.
"Just me?"
Sadness nodded again.
Joy felt momentarily lost. In the instant she registered Sadness' gesture, she felt like some kind of trapdoor had opened beneath her and internally, she was plummeting into the deepest recesses of her own feelings.
She felt happy now, and she felt happy because of Sadness. She wrestled with her own feelings as Sadness hugged her again: some shred of her old self told her that Sadness wasn't the one for her, but every rational particle in her body screamed one single conclusion at her.
Sadness cared about her like none of the other emotions could. She wasn't as pretty as Disgust, as powerful as Anger or anywhere near as suave and confident as Fear, but unlike the others, she helped her.
The tears had helped. She needed to get those feelings out, get rid of those sour feelings about the other emotions.
Yes.
Finally, after a few seconds that felt like an age, her mind was made up and some wild volition took her.
"Stay here" Joy whispered in her ear, before giving her a kiss so brief and so light as to be possibly mistaken for an insects' wingbeat.
She got up and marched to the console and, with gusto, slammed her fist down on the control panel, which brought up a little microphone into which she bent over and spoke.
"Hello Imagination land, get me two mugs of the thickest, coziest hot chocolate you can dream up and somebody send that memory of the movie where the dog dies up. Scratch that, send the hot chocolate up with the memory. And go nuts with the marshmallows!"
She glanced over to the couch, where Sadness now sat forward, with a huge smile on her face.
"Hey, it's the least I could do." she said, shrugging.
But no sooner had she raised her shoulders, than Sadness got up from her seat and ran at her as fast as she could, wrapping her arms around her so tight as to constrict her.
Hand in hand, she and Sadness walked over to the couch, mugs of hot chocolate in their spare hands as the memory slotted into place and the lights dimmed.
"Hey, thanks, I thought you hated this movie?" Sadness whispered, to which, Joy just smiled and gave her an affectionate, light little punch in the arm. "Shh, film's starting"


























...Tripledent gum, it'll make you smile, Tripledent gum, it lasts a while...
Original: http://pastebin.com/QmBkvXeS