hadriel_logs | Event Log: Keepsakes

Entry tags:

Event Log: Keepsakes

Who: Everyone participating in the event!
What: The event log for the Keepsakes event!
Where: All around the city
When: October 15th-October 19th
Warnings: A bunch of random crap.

Well, Hope and Delight are messing with the door again, but at least this time dragons aren't involved, right? This attempt goes a bit better - sure, no one gets sent home, but if everyone will just look under their seats, they'll find a FREE [INSERT SOMETHING YOU MAYBE DIDN'T WANT AT ALL HERE]! Awesome! So nice! Yup, throughout these few days people will be finding things from home - something they loved, something they used all the time, something they hated, something they totally forgot they even had. All sorts of cool stuff!

Well, they might not actually find it. Their neighbor might, or a complete stranger. And who knows where it could turn up? At the park, half-buried? In the Silent Hill zone, kept safe by a horrifying monster? Or hey, maybe in somebody's underwear drawer. Awkward. Better try to find your stuff, or find the owner of whatever weird crap you found. It could be something important.

► This log covers October 15th-October 19th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you somehow manage to die in this event, please let us know here, and also what the hell?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Her mind is whirling as he talks to her, trying to think of ways to brush this under the table. She could... eat the note. Yeah. He'd see her do it but there'd be no proving what it was. She desperately wishes she was back in Hotland all of a sudden, where she could just chuck it out the window and into some lava and never have to deal with it again.

Time is passing. She has to say something. But god, she doesn't want to talk to him about this again. Doesn't want to get into another fight about what happened and who said what and who's fault it--]

Fine! Uh, j-just fine. I'm just, uhm, still not used to other people be around, uh, i-is all.

[Sans slows considerably until he halts entirely, a couple feet away. He might not always be the best at readin' people, but he knows it's one of the few skills he's got to his name, unfortunately. And right now Alphys has, in addition to "encroaching panic" (somethin' of a baseline for her, admittedly), "abject terror" written all over her features. Not just the spiking of anxiety, but a whole, whole new mess of stuff that he ain't really sure he knows the etiology of. Not sure he wants to.

But he also knows her too well to know he can, in good faith, leave it at that. Permanence, he's gotta remind himself tiredly. Everything about him, everything about this place - it's all about permanence.

Things stick.

The lights in his eyesockets flick down, briefly, to whatever she's holding. Looks like something written on a piece of paper. Might look innocuous enough, but there could be lots of things written on it. Written words can be lethal.

And worse.

His tone is as lazy as he can make it - not a difficult feat for a guy like him - and deliberately nonchalant.]

What's that you got there? Letter or somethin'?

[Her eyes flick between him and it, and once to the sides of the room to see if she could make a run for it. But she knows, deep in her, it wouldn't matter if she had an escape route. She's... living with them now. There's no locked lab, no 'confidential' secrets she can brush them off with, no business to cover her shame.

The worst thing, she thinks, is that she still can feel a glimmer of hope from her clenched SOUL. That maybe this time it'd be different. They could... talk. And not quietly shame each other into a pervasive silence based on guilt.

She doesn't know if she has the strength to do this again. She doesn't know if she has the power to deal with him again.]

It's, uh... k-kind of? I found it. In the wall.

[That part's not a lie. But she... she should say something. She always should.]

Hey, Sans, does... d-does the door ever bring in things from unknown worlds? Or...

[She gulps, quietly.]

Outside t-them?

[Feeling of being watched?

Nah. That ain't it. And that question is one that he'd describe as - concerning. And, uh, not even in the sense of the distant acknowledgment of "boy that sure sounds like an interesting problem I don't care one bit about," 'cause right now he's wishin' to god that's all it was.

Unknown worlds.

Outside them.

He fixes her with a strange look, and even if his smile don't slip, he don't look real pleased to be here right now.]

Why're you askin'?

[She doesn't know how to say this. Doesn't want to say this. But there's no out, and she has so few friends here, so few people who would care if she was around.

But she looks scared. So scared. She... doesn't think she can lie her way out of this one.

With shaking hands, she pries the paper from her chest. Shows it to him, so he can read the text.]

It's... it's b-been a long time. Since I h-had to read wingdings.

[...god damn.

Hands. It's written in hands. So that means it's gotta be - yeah, it belonged to him. The doc. Goddamnit. Still ruinin' shit, even when he was never really here.

Sans peers at the paper, his grin fixed, almost frantic. How the hell does he spin this? Does he spin it? Or does he not fuckin' bother?

It's Alphys. She of all people would -

No. No. Okay. Let's start over here.

He looks at her quizzically, intently.]

You can read this?

[She doesn't want to look at him directly. Doesn't want to have this conversation again, about things half-remembered and truths half-said. But what he says isn't what she expects to hear.]

Not... w-well. Not anymore. You were always b-better at it than I was, I think.

[Because she can't trust her own memories. Maybe this is why he's confused. Because she's remembering something different and this isn't translating right and it's another leak, somewhere, that she's never known how to plug.]

It was e-easier when he spoke. Or however you describe what he, er... did.

You remember him?

[His tone sharpens into something uneasy. Good - good god she - she remembers? Not like they ever talk about this shit, not all direct. He's a regular champion of evasion. He knows a little about the lab, and the, uh, "lab" that dovetails into it, but they might as well not talk about this at all, the way they sidestep the questions on a semi-regular basis.

Up until...heh, the reports. She'd charted 'em. She could see things startin' and stoppin', until everything ended. And that was when they knew that if there was any way the kid would commit to bringin' things to an end, there'd be no comin' back.

No comin' back at all.]

But he wasn't...[There maybe the tiniest hint of desperation in his tone when he fixates on her again, even if he knows she hates it.] Alph, what do you remember?

[This doesn't make sense. Why is he suddenly so interested? He's always known this is how it went before. Why is this different, why does he care?

She remembers, blearily, her first day here. When Sans talked about timelines and Papyrus swore the barrier broke and... maybe this is different, too. Maybe this isn't her fault this time.

Alphys presses her back to the wall, fold her arms over her chest, looks away from him. Anything to feel like she's safe. Anything to not have this conversation.]

We w-worked together with him. I got pulled from my division after nearly blowing up h-half the lab, but finding the answer to some really complex thing in the process. I don't remember a-anymore. You were already there when, when I got moved.

[Part of why she'd worked so hard to get back to being the Royal Scientist. Trying to find what's left of him, but even that comes and goes. It's easier to pull specifics when she's looking at a page of his work. When she can't forget entirely.]

We were w-working on SOUL power, or, it might have b-been time travel, or... s-something else, I don't remember, but I kind of do, but I don't. After, a-after he disappeared, we talked about it, but nothing I r-remembered was the same as you. I don't know what really happened. I remember n-near the end trying to stop him from doing... whatever it was. I don't know if we d-did.

[She's still holding the paper roughly in her hand, balled into a fist as she moves them to her head. God, it hurts to think about this. Hurts to think about anything about him. Small memories leak through easy, like the time she suspects was near the beginning when she accidentally put his coffee cup through his hand. Another time, much later, the feeling of grabbing his coat as he ran, and the tears she suspects were hers falling as it tore.]

I'm sorry. I know you d-don't like talking about this and you don't like that I don't remember enough to... to h-help with anything. Back home, we haven't talked about this f-for a long time, because I don't, I d-don't know what's real anymore. I don't know if any of it was.

[She's still not looking at him, but sinking, just a bit, like she just wants to fall down on the kitchen floor and curl into a ball until this is all over.]

I'm sorry. I'm s-sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

Woah, woah. Slow down.

[Shit. The stories don't align. They don't align. Just kinda - kinda radically, drastically, insurmountably different from the way he remembers it happenin' but hey. Maybe that's just a bonus side effect of rememberin' a thing that didn't happen. They didn't talk about this. Not at any kinda supreme length, no.

This is -

Heh, well. It's just another one of those things that ends up on him, ain't it? He doesn't talk about this, not any of it, and instead he shoves to the posterior and compartmentalizes it and stashes it somewhere no one will ever look, just 'cause he he don't wanna think too hard on how it did and didn't alter him.

You don't look into the eye of a hurricane and come out unscathed. You just, uh, don't.

Alphys is learnin' this the hard way, assumin' she hasn't already.

He puts out a hand onto her shoulder, steadying-like, supraorbital ridges vee-ing down slightly in what, on him, approximates a look of concern.]

Hey. Look. Alph. This ain't your fault, all right? This ain't on you. This is - [His grip adjusts slightly and he chuckles, hollow and mirthless.] I mean, hey. If it's on anybody, it's on him, right?

[He can feel her seize up as he touches her, but only for a second, until she remembers where she is and who he is and that he doesn't seem mad at her. Which is surreal. Then again, maybe he was never mad. Maybe he's just good at hiding it. She knows he's good at hiding everything.]

I'm sorry. I didn't, w-want to talk about all this, because I didn't want to, because I... I c-can't help. You always seem so hurt b-by all this, I just... I want to help, and I don't know how. I don't remember. I never do.

[She doesn't want to look at him. Doesn't know what to say, ever.]

I didn't mean to h-hurt you. I know this is hard and I'm not making it better.

[She twitches faintly, and he kinda wishes he'd maybe - asked or somethin', before just up and goin' for it. She's twitchy, jumpy, even on her best days, and he can't rightly blame her for that. Can't blame her for much, honestly, 'cept for the, uh, obvious. And he's pretty sure she blames herself for that enough already. So.]

Can't be hurt by somethin' that don't exist.

[The words are wry, his chuckle soft and resigned. Guess they really are talkin' about it. He don't know how much she remembers, how much she knows up to a point. What little he knows tides back to him in whispers and fragments. Nothin' makes solid sense. He remembers bitterness, resentment, guilt - and he can't for the life of him remember why. Whether he's got it all misplaced or no.

No way to tell now.]

I don't think anybody remembers this stuff, Alph. There's, uh...not a lot you could do that'd make this worse than it is. It already is what it is. Or what it isn't, heh.

[Yeah. Probably not the best time for jokes, huh?]

Let's just, uh...look. You haven't hurt me. All right?

[Despite herself, she smiles a bit when he jokes around. Reminds her it's the same ol' Sans. Feels a little bit less like this history between them is going to tear them apart. But he's still here and trying to comfort her and she's making it worse by making a big scene and forcing him to take care of her. So she breathes, shoves her pain and guilt and panic down. Hold it together. Hold it. It's hers to bear.]

O-Okay. I'm sorry.

[She finally, finally looks back down to the now pretty rumpled paper in her hands.]

How... d-did this even get here? I've never seen this note before. There was so little l-left in the lab. Can Hadriel... pull in things from anywhere? Or, d-did more survive, in your world? In somebody's world?

[See, there's something. She smiles. A little easier, lightening the burden on both their shoulders incrementally. Even if it's, uh, not really the most ideal set of circumstances right now. Looks like the old man's research has started leakin' through, apropos of - apparently nothing.

Sans drops the lights in his eyesockets to survey it with a sort of grim resignation.]

I got no clue. I didn't think it was, uh...

[He scratches the crown of his skull with the quiet rasp of ivory on ivory, chuckling helplessly.]

Well, looks like "impossible" is kinda the order of the day, huh?

[And he was hopin' to have a nice, quiet morning. Figures.]

Heh. Y-Yeah.

[She looks down at it again in a way of reading it, remembering individual symbols more clearly than others, some not quite together but readable through context. She goes through the first line or two before she catches herself, pulls away. It's not important. He's not here. But she is, and Sans is. It's... rough. It's very rough.]

I'm sorry for f-freaking out, I just, I didn't want to stress anyone out over this. The you back home, or, in m-my timeline, it was... really complicated.

What's there to talk about, right? What d'ya talk about when the guy doesn't exist?

[Doing his best to lighten the mood somewhat, if possible. Only that's, uh, real hard, it turns out, when the mood is so dreadfully, impossibly...dark. Just feels like it's gettin' darker all the time.]

Either way, looks like these pages right here are, uh...well, they're here to stay, I'm guessing.

Heh. I guess, uh. More than we t-thought.

[She looks at the page again, and then holds it a bit out from herself, towards him like an offering.]

Do you... w-want it? I guess we could just throw it away, or uh, put it in the stove or something.

[She sure as hell doesn't want to keep it.]

[He goes ahead and takes it from her, folds it up and stashes it away in his pocket. He's always got just enough room in those pockets of his. Benefits of knowing what he knows, remembering what he was able to remember. Can't quite negate space and time the way the old man could (should? would? is? fuck but if there isn't a real proper syntax to refer to stuff like this), but he can bend it around a little. 'Bout all he can ask for. Anything more would be, uh...not good, he's thinkin'.

His grin twists slightly, ruefully.]

Ripped up across space and time and still makin' life hell for us, huh?

Something like t-that.

[She wants to do something, to thank him, but also to apologize. It feels like she's passed off a burden. That now she can safely forget, pretend it didn't happen, sweep it under the rug, but he has to remember. Like she has forced him into possession of a terrible secret she no longer wants to keep.

She picks at her fingernails for a few seconds before continuing.]

What was he like, for you? Do you remember?

[Maybe an inevitable question. He looks away for a moment so she don't have to see his sockets darken with memory, with not-memory, with fractured imaginings of things he can't recall.

What was he like?

Does he remember?

Ain't that a question.]

He was...

[Heh. Weird. It's...hard to talk about, almost. Not just almost, either. It's like the words get clotted up in his skull, sticking fast to the contours of his mind like bits of bubblegum, or pebbles caught in the mud.

What can he say about the doc? Most of it's just a haze. That might be the worst part of all this - knowin' that the doc frustrated him, outraged him, made him angrier and more prone to caring than almost anyone, but not being able to know why.]

Smart. And, uh, kind of an asshole. Liked to lord everything over ya. Always had to be right.

[He remembers that well enough.]

Yeah.

[He repeats the word grimly, almost mournfully, as he bows his skull.]

He always had to be right.

[She wants to laugh, because she couldn't tell him why, either, but that seems familiar. Snatches of feelings, between worry, and happiness, and his pride. Always his pride.]

Yeah.

[She closes her eyes for a moment, remembering the note, keeping him in her mind as she speaks.]

He was always trying to... be this idea of what he s-should be. Make us what he wanted, but parts of him would... slip through. Like one day you'd see him laugh, just once, and you'd realize, h-he was lying to himself as much as he lied to you.

[Hitting the cup stuck in his hand with a hammer. Sans is laughing. She's laughing. She sees him smile, for what she thinks now might have been the first time.]

I don't think he ever wanted us to know.

[And then the fractured glimpses he catches of the stern, unsmiling figure he remembers and doesn't remember - he can see it on his face, a perpetual rictus curving upwards, nearly bisecting his skull in its arcing crescent, frozen always in a smile he never wore in earnest.

That just seems like an additional shot of cruelty, one last parting blow to the doctor he knew, in rendering him into something that flew in the face of what he was. Isn't.]

He never wanted us to know he cared more than he actually did.

Yeah.

[This is... on one hand, it sucks, because he continues to worm back into her life, even now. That he continues to break her bonds, hold her back, percolate into her every movement. But on the other hand, they're... talking about this? Actually having a conversation? Sans is talking to her?

It's the persistent thought, of... well, at least she's not entirely alone.

She thinks about asking if the Door might ever bring him here, and decides against it. She doesn't want to think about that, and she bets Sans doesn't either.]

I sort of... always hoped he d-did, you know? Like, he just, was waiting for the right time, or didn't know how to express it, but. Heh, well, I guess it's t-too late.

... I'm sorry. That he's s-still following you, now.

[Still followin' him around now. Yeah, that's kinda one word for it, he guesses. He laughs, but it's an empty, effortless thing. His best shot at amusement in the face of somethin' he still has trouble lookin' at, even now.]

Y'know, uh. [He chuckles again, as if that'll make what he has to say next any more bearable.] Y'know the worst part of all of it is - I can't even remember why I got so mad at him.

I can't remember a single damn thing about what he did.

[Maybe it's real telling, real goddamn telling, that the only thing that sticks is his reaction to it - whatever it was. Reactionary, never proactive - that's the story of his life, ain't it?]

Event Log: Keepsakes

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