hadriel_logs | Event Log: Fourth Wall, Part One

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Event Log: Fourth Wall, Part One

Who: Everyone in the city + Fourth Wall visitors!
What: Part one of the fourth wall event, hosted by Fear, Confusion, and Delight!
Where: All around the city
When: October 24th-November 1st
Warnings: Visitors from other worlds!

If you're not from around here, you may be wondering what's going on. You've woken up out of the blue in the colosseum, or near a temple, or in one of the numerous other locations in the city. You're somewhere underground and it's dark, cold, and maybe a little unnerving.

Luckily, shortly after your arrival, the road below your feet begins to light up in a gentle, warm glow. The light points you in a set direction and, if you choose to travel that way, will lead you toward the center of the city, where there is a large gathering of others who are lost here like you, people who might know their way around a bit more, and even some of the gods who rule this place.

There are lights strung up on poles throughout the large clearing, casting a comforting glow onto the tables beneath them. The tables are abundant with lots of food that looks simply delicious- though, none of it tastes quite like it should. The tarts taste like green beans, the mashed potatoes like cheesecake, and the chocolate seems oddly reminiscent of steak. In addition, there are decorations artfully placed around the meeting point. If you see them moving, don't worry- that's probably just your imagination.

Also distributed along the tables are shot glasses, filled with a sludgy, yellow substance. If you're brave enough to consume them, they taste strongly of mint and will give you a much needed energy boost, circumventing the need to eat or sleep for a full 24 hours! After that, however, everything hits you all at once, so use them wisely. Some of you may remember these shots from our How Delightful event earlier this year!

In addition to all of the above, there are also party poppers strewn around the area. Each popper can jet out some strange objects- glitter bombs, seashells, plastic dinosaurs, maybe a live lizard or two- so be careful! Feel free to use your discretion on these, but remember to keep it small!
_

Of course, you can always not travel that way. The rest of the city has plenty of places to explore- maybe you'd like to stumble in our Silent Hill zone, have a quick look around the alien orchard, or check out any of the god temples that can inspire their chosen emotion. Be careful not to get lost in the tunnels leading away from the cave- none of them can actually move you above ground, but you may run into a few monsters on the way.

For those of you who have been with us awhile, please bear with the gods while they try to adjust around these new folks! Join in on the festivities if you like, or try to orient as many of the others as you can. Start a community outreach program, start a fight club, introduce your parents to your weird cave girlfriend- nobody's judging!

Well. Some of us might be.
_

Enjoy the fourth wall event at Hadriel! Once you're settled in feel free to explore the rest of the city! Find a house, find a new monster, or simply scavenge for supplies.

Fourth wall characters do not enter with phones so they cannot reach the network- however, if you'd like to handwave that they somehow got ahold of Mello's Newcomer guide to avoid the 'where am I/what is this' sort of questions, then feel free!

Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers October 24th-November 1st.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well! Fourth wall characters will not have posting access, so grab an in-game friend if you wanted to do anything separate from the main log.
► Fourth wall characters will be in the city for at least one week, though they can stay for longer. The party will go on throughout the entire week, thanks to Delight's boundless energy!
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He knows it's not sentimentality. Or--well, okay. It's certainly not all sentimentality. Sentimentality's a real small part of it. The rest is because someone has to remember. Someone has to be ready. Someone has to be there. Put in even the barest modicum of effort.]

[Be the stumbling block for when the anomaly comes around.]

[Can't do that if you cut yourself off from all of it.]

[Can't kill that science mind anyway, so what's the point in trying?]

yeah. no one deserves...

[He's not even sure he was going to finish that sentence. He shakes his head. No one deserves it. No one deserves to have their mind scrambled by something so thoroughly out of this world. Or any other world. No one deserves to come up against a guy like that without any warning.]

heh. last one was, uh. exhausting.

[It was just non-stop. One thing right after another. If it wasn't his own Mirror trying to kill him, it was someone else's. Whole piles of kids running around, both kinds, from wildly different worlds. A Chara who came last. A Chara from a world where Sans is the king, for some ungodly reason.]

[Then, yanno, there was the whole thing with teleporting into a swimming pool to escape a crazed robot, getting thrown sideways through spacetime, finding out far too late that Frisk was in trouble and needed help, talking to that impossible so-and-so and being utterly certain for a moment there that the other guy was going to kill him.]

[Dying at the hands of someone who looked like his brother. Papyrus holding him while he went to dust.]

[His right hand curls into a fist in his pocket. That nonexistent, phantom pain in his left shoulder. It's not real. Wonderland fixes you up good as new. Stupid. Should be past it by now.]

[Exhausting.]

best you can do is just ride it out. like we do. gotta end sometime, yanno? heh. any advice i could give you'll be stuff you were gonna do anyway, so. won't waste your time.

So. Do what guys like us always do, huh?

[Yeah. Sounds near enough like it. Doesn't sound like a fun time, and it don't much look like the other him over there is havin' a good time of it either. He looks tired. Hell, they probably both do. How a skeleton manages to have bags under his eyesockets, don't ask - it's probably magic. All he knows is that those bags are scored in darker and deeper than anything. A lifetime of sleepin' and he still feels exhausted as all hell.

You get used to seein' some pretty wild stuff, when you live like they do. After a while your mind just plateaus. Accepts everything at face value simply 'cause you might as well. Too much effort to scramble your system of belief and draw some new arbitrary line every time somethin' new comes along. So why bother rearranging anything at all?

Desensitized. That's the word for it.]

Well, hey. Was cool of ya to give me the starter pack. Ain't comin' so far outta left field, so that's nice.

[Nice, and nice of him.]

heh. it's like you read my mind.

[What a pair they are. One has to wonder just what sorts of things stay constant across the multiverse. What sort of traits every iteration has. What makes a Sans a Sans? The eternal exhaustion? The nihilism? The height, the color scheme? At least him and this guy seem to have more in common than they don't, but there's probably vastly different Sans-es out there. Literally anything is possible. That's a problem with the whole concept of infinity. Literally anything is possible, and has to exist somewhere.]

[It occurs to him suddenly that there might be a Sans out there who's just a Moldsmal.]

[Yikes.]

[Existentialism is a real trip.]

well, i know how much we hate to be caught off guard. wouldn't want...

[He wouldn't want the kids to get hurt. Wouldn't want any of them to get hurt. Wouldn't want another Sans to go through what he went through. Not if it can be prevented.]

[He gives a languid shrug.]

call it looking out for number one. taking some me time.

or call it, uh. actually looking out for the people that need looking out for. for once.

Well, y'know how it is. We Sans-es are very intelligent cowards.

[Just about the only good thing he's got to his name. Which, uh, makes it kinda difficult when you make a promise to a nice lady. A nice lady with integrity, who might've been the only thing keepin' the kid in line, 'cause god knows Sans ain't enough to. It wasn't anything he said that seemed to get 'em to stick with whatever trail they chose, no. It was her.

Her and her promises.

Heh, right. Like he's any good at keepin' eyesockets out for anybody, even the people that actually do need lookin' out for. He laughs, but it ain't real happy. It's about as dulled-down and empty as he feels right about now.

Sounds about right.]

We really screwed up with those kids, didn't we?

kind of a crap combination, isn't it?

[Being smart enough and observant enough that the cowardice ends up being a choice about ninety percent of the time. Sure, there's the whole 1 HP thing, the whole needing to stay out of the way and take it easy because, yanno, he could literally die otherwise. But that don't make it okay the rest of the time. There's a line you have to draw between poor health and laziness, and the line ends up very faint, very fuzzy most of the time.]

[It makes giving up easy. Makes it easier to say that maybe you should just be out of the equation, nowhere near the equation. You messed up, and you're garbage for messing up, and since you're garbage, there's no reason to try and fix anything, because what's the point? Even if it doesn't all go back to square one, even if it doesn't matter, any attempt at fixing things would probably just fail anyway, because that's what you are. A failure.]

[Giving up becomes something of a habit. You can't fail quite as bad if you never try in the first place, only that's complete bullshit. Those kids are proof of that much.]

well, yanno...

[He scratches the side of his skull needlessly.]

thing about screws is, you find the right tool for the job and you can try to unscrew 'em. just takes...effort. heh.

...wasn't just the kids, anyway.

[They--he--screwed up, period. Screwed up with everyone. Screwed up on everything. And he's trying to unscrew things, but he, heh, never seems to have the right screwdriver.]

[Yeah, yeah. He knows. Kids are just the start, the first visible thing to come outta his long, long string of mistakes. Just about the only thing in his life he ain't messed up irrevocably is - well, they both know. And they both probably got no clue how they came to deserve a brother like Papyrus. He asks himself the question more times a day than he can count, and he can never come up with an answer. How a guy like him manages not to bleed his toxic apathy and weariness and emptiness all over his bones, how Papyrus is still able to look to the future and have a spring in his step.

How the hell's he tolerate a guy like Sans, even jokingly? Fuck if he knows. He stopped tryin' to crack that one a while back. Don't stop him from marveling at it here and again.]

Yeah, I know. They're just the latest collateral.

[And why's he the one that's still here? Why's he the one who's gotta pull it all together? Keep the kids on their feet, tryin' to parse whatever the hell their partnership is, who they both even are.

Why Frisk climbs a mountain.]

Why do they put up with us, huh?

[Immediately after he says it, he laughs, shakes his skull. Let's not double up on the self-pity here, yeah? That'd just be in poor taste, and the next thing y'know, you just get a positive feedback loop of the same shit you think to yourself every day. Who's got that kinda time? Well, sure, technically he's got plenty of time, but he don't got that kind of incentive.]

Well, I gotta pretty good clue. Determination's a hell of a thing, ain't it?

[He has failed at every turn, on every conceivable level, and half the time trying wasn't even involved. He's a disappointment. A let down. He doesn't deserve their kindness, especially not from the kids, and especially not from Papyrus. The sad thing is that Sans is pretty sure the only reason Papyrus hasn't just out and ditched him is because Papyrus is just that much better a person. Just that good a person.]

[He doesn't deserve it. None of them do. So in a lot of ways, maybe he did deserve to die at the hands of a version of his brother. It's appropriate, right? The guy he has disappointed more than anyone else gets the chance to free himself from a burden once and for all. And the guy in question seemed very keen on the idea.]

[He...needs to stop this. They both need to stop this. This is the problem with Sans-es, with putting more than one Sans in the same space. It's like a singularity of self-pity and self-doubt and self-loathing. Awful focused on the self, isn't he?]

where those two are concerned? ain't just determination. frisk in particular is...

[He pauses.]

might...not be my place to say. feels like an invasion of their privacy. but on the other hand, those two...they don't open up so easy. for every one thing they say, there's a thousand things they're not saying. frisk in particular. chara's got that eloquence to 'em.

[He should say something. It took him almost a year to start figuring this shit out, and if this guy can get there faster? If he can figure it out a bit faster, do right by them before he can completely let them down the say Sans did? That's probably worth a spoiler or two. Not for another Sans's sake, but for the kids.]

[It just feels an awful lot like a case of "the adult knows best," some asshole like Sans deciding what gets to stay private and what doesn't, and that has bitten him hard in the past. So he has to be careful.]

they're like us, is the thing. both of 'em.

[His grin is wry and mirthless.]

on multiple levels. hard to see sometimes, cause we don't like lookin' in the mirror too much, do we? not just...why a kid climbs a mountain like that.

[This guy gets it. He has to get why someone, anyone, would want to...]

[Well.]

they do the same thing we do. they'd ask that same question. "why do they put up with us?" they put themselves on the very bottom. put everyone ahead. think they deserve all the bad and none of the good. kinda funny, isn't it? you see that in someone else and say it's wrong, tell 'em there's plenty worth to 'em. but someone else says it to you and it's unbelievable.

[He grips his left shoulder and his eyesockets close for a moment.]

no one likes lookin' in the mirror.

[It's a sort of hypocrisy, but that's appropriate. He's always been a hypocrite.]

[Might not be his place to say, huh? Funny time for a guy like him - like them - to grow a conscience where the kids are concerned. But that goes both ways. They say nice things, they do nice things, they'll take the kid out for lunch, for dinner. They'll turn an easy conversation into an oblique threat, the kid's endless, unenviable deaths into a stupid punchline, casually sliding insult after insult into the kid that shambles about with dusty hands and a set jaw, squared shoulders and a gleam to their glare. Sets 'em up, knocks 'em down. Asks 'em to let down their guard, opens his hands in a hug, and lets his ribs skewer them to him, pinned like a bug to corkboard.

The hot sticky flood of red had been a shock, the first time. Or at least, the phantom echo of that first time was. Humans are so messy, and it hadn't occurred to him until the second that he had to watch 'em get gashed open, bleedin' out and pantin', hair slicked to their neck and their cheeks with tears and blood and sweat. An ugly sight, the way the wet seep of blood darkened the gold tiles to crimson.

They never tell ya that in the storybooks. They say lots of things about humans. How determined they are, how resilient. How much stronger and more imposin' they are compared to monsters.

They never tell ya how goddamn messy they can be. Not just in the physical sense, either, nah.

One way or another, little by little, both of those kids have bled their way into his SOUL, and he can't for the life of him figure if that's a good or a bad thing. If he wants to scrub at the dark stains there. Maybe he's doomed. Maybe they're all doomed.

Ain't a departure from the norm. That's all he can say.

Point is, the other him's words - they're an extrapolation of what he's been contemplating at length. Don't come as much of a surprise.]

Should'a figured. For the both of 'em. Should'a - yeah.

[Nah, it's - he's absolutely right. He nods once, a choppy, weary jerk of his skull, his sockets liddin' at half-mast.]

The other day, Confusion gets voted into the city. Makes our powers go all over the damn place. And Frisk? They were dyin' - over and over, just kickin' the bucket and comin' right on back.

Y'know the first thing they say when they wake up?

"Sorry."

[He laughs, and it's just a hair less contained than it is typically, 'cause fuck if that image is still branded in his mind's eye. The kid bleedin' out, goin' still, and him just - just smilin', smilin' like he always did, and thinkin', over and over again, that this is what he did to them. 'Cause he didn't keep his promise. 'Cause he didn't keep an eyesocket out.

'Cause he let 'em down, and they didn't even blame him.]

Sorry! Sorry for - I dunno, for bleeding on me. Like the whole dyin' thing was just secondary.

So I start thinkin' why they'd...y'know, why they'd climb a mountain. Asked 'em point-blank, no strings attached and, uh. [He laughs again, shakin' his skull.] Well, they didn't like that question. Didn't answer. Would rather go out and face a couple'a dragons than talk about it.

[This guy gets it. Even if he's just starting to wade into the mire, he still gets it. Has a different perspective, doesn't he? Which has to make it a thousand times harder. Makes it practically a goddamn miracle that he's willing to even try, willing to see past numbers. Sans isn't too sure he has that in him, not if he came directly from that particular timeline. But then again, maybe this guy is evidence that he's not a complete write-off. That even at his worst, he's still capable of trying, even if it's only a little.]

[Which begs the question of why the hell none of them tried sooner, but heh. We all know the answer to that one, don't we?]

[He winces slightly as the other Sans tells his story. Powers going haywire. He can imagine what that would be like for both Frisk and Chara. Hell, he has a pretty good idea of what that would be like for most monsters. Especially for Sans. That, uh, yeah, that can't have been a good time.]

[Dying, and coming back to say sorry.]

[Sorry for dying, sorry for making a mess. And all at once he's reminded of--]

[His left shoulder hurts, except not really, and he doesn't reach for it this time. Because he's reminded something else as well.]

we got things like that in wonderland. call 'em "events." based on memories--so, someone's memory of a thing or place becomes our reality for a few days. couple months ago...we had these tunnels. just endless tunnels, all kinds of stuff down there, and everyone and their mother wanted to explore.

only, no one bothered to mention there was a...some kind of curse down there. like a disease.

[Should be common damn courtesy to warn folk of something like that, but apparently courtesy is like sense--not so common.]

frisk got sick.

[And Papyrus did too, but that's not the point of any of this, and this guy doesn't need to hear about yet another time his brother died, no more than he needs to know all the details of Papyrus's Mirror, or what happened in September.]

they hadn't saved. too sick to reload. just... [He opens his hand, thinking of a small, bright red heart shattering to pieces.] it's not permanent in wonderland. determination don't factor in. all of us get five before we start to come back a bit wrong. everyone knows it ain't permanent. but it don't change how it is. how it looks. never seen anything like that.

[He lowers his hand.]

one of the last things they say before they go? please don't kill me again.

[He can't really...talk about this. Hasn't been able to talk about this with anyone. That's how it usually is with Sans-es. They don't talk about things, they won't talk about things, they can't talk about things.]

you know, you be rational about it. they're delirious. they're from the best version, same as me. they don't mean it all the way. doesn't change the fact that it's the first thing they think when they hear my voice.

[Doesn't change anything at all.]

i'm...i'm thinkin', yanno, considering all that, once they come back i should give 'em space. leave 'em be. shouldn't force 'em to put up with the guy who'd killed 'em. turns out, heh. turns out that's just dodging responsibility. turns out that's just abandoning them. had to have chara of all people talk that sense into me. heh. it's always chara.

[Over and over and over. Since the moment they showed up, they've been there to tear him a new one. They say that children always grow up to be like their parents.]

[Still stings, days later. Months later.]

[He sighs heavily.]

first thing frisk says when they get back is "sorry." sorry for making people worry. sorry for inconveniencing everyone. sorry for sayin' something they don't mean while they're sick and dying. all they ever think about is other people and it's, god, sometimes it's almost infuriating. you keep--keep telling them you care, you're sorry, it's okay now, and they just don't believe it. and why should they? cause how can they trust anything? how can they trust us? but it's not even just us, they don't believe it no matter who it comes from. they'd rather throw themselves on every available sword than ever admit they're worth...anything. and it's frustrating, no matter how much i understand it. it...

heh, god, this must be how papyrus feels.

[Events, huh? Sounds not dissimilar to the way things go here. There was that lady who dragged everything in from her world, filled the place with mist and fog and things that slunk through the shadows lookin' to take a bite outta whoever passed by. And there'd been that...thing that oozed behind him, never all that far off, a horrifying conglomerate of Papyrus and himself.

Yeah. He can imagine the horror there. Maybe not exactly all the minutiae of it, but he can conceputalize it near enough. Near enough to understand how it is.

Please don't kill me again.

God.

God.

He almost starts laughin' then and there. He almost starts laughin' just 'cause no other impulse strikes him right away, the sound just boilin' up and outta him like sweat, rank and dark and inescapable. Please don't kill me again. 'Cause they look at him, loomin' and large and grinnin', and that's what they see. They see death, they see their own death, playin' out countless times. They see the thing that murdered them, explicitly or implicitly or anywhere in between. They see the goddamn reaper. Bein' irresponsible with that special power of theirs, that makes 'em a murderer by default. But him, though?

That's the question. What about him? Is he any less suspect, when he watches 'em with Shyren, hummin' their little heart out until the bullets strike their SOUL and the world - well, the world don't do much of anything. Far as most people are concerned, the world stays where it is. There ain't much to it. A skip, a stutter, a souring jolt. A half-remembered recollection, the prickle of familiarity in his marrow. Nothin' special. But somewhere, a flag ticks up, and somewhere, a number increases, and somewhere, a tally gets added to the collective, the litany of how many how many how many peters to a close before it revs on up again.

Is it murder if he watched 'em die, and he must've, he must've damn near a thousand times, and did nothin' to stop it?

Well, by his definition...

No wonder the kid looks at him like they don't really know what to do with him sometimes. Like they're nervous, like they're scared. Like they're desperate for his approval.]

Yeah. Guess it must be.

[Chara, though. They keep him honest, in a sense, don't they? They call him out. They don't let him sit on cold judgment, nah. They drag it outta him. They tell him to get his shit together and stop treatin' Frisk like they're some infallible being, some powerful god that goes jerkin' monsters around for the hell of it. 'Cause maybe they are, but here's the thing he don't always realize - maybe they aren't.

Maybe they're just a sad, scared kid, and maybe he's just takin' whatever issues they have and makin' them a dozen times worse.]

I dunno. I dunno how to get through to 'em. The other day they tried to give me somethin'. Pie, I think. Somethin' from home.

I told 'em they needed it more than I did. [1 HP is 1 HP, and you can't fill a glass that's already full, no matter how small that glass is.] Damn near snapped before they'd let me walk away without it.

Actually, uh...shouted, a little bit. And they - it was like it spooked 'em. Scared 'em, that they could even make a sound like that.

[That had been what had really stuck with him, worse than anything. The startled, leaping reaction, the way they shrank and shrank and tried to make themself stand as small as possible.

That had been the worst part.]

[This is what happens when guys like him take it easy. This is what happens. Because inaction isn't much better than holding the knife yourself. And--sure. He has reasons. Perfectly legitimate reasons. Have to let the kid make their own decisions, have to wait and see, can't risk it until the very last moment. It's not even necessarily selfish, not even a desire to save his own worthless bones.]

[There are three people in the Underground who can stop the anomaly when it's the worst timeline. Only three people; one with Mercy, the other two by being unstoppable or unmovable, respectively. Papyrus and Undyne are simply not equipped to deal with LV 19. Not that Sans really is either, but he's the only one who can. If they kill him too early, then no one's gonna be there at the very end.]

[The script can only handle so much deviation, after all.]

[Perfectly logical. Perfectly reasonable. Sure, he probably tells himself that over and over as he watches them cut down every last monster, stands there and watches and does nothing. He wonders if that eases his conscience in the slightest.]

[What would be the point of doing it any different, anyway? He probably has. Nothing he has ever done, nothing he has ever done, has ever affected the outcome. Because at the end of the day, there is only one person in the Underground who can stop the anomaly. And that's the anomaly themself.]

[His eyesockets slide closed as his other self talks.]

butterscotch cinnamon. [There's something almost wistful in his tone.]

it's their favorite. t... [Spoilers.] the lady behind the door made it for them. might've been the first bit of kindness they'd seen from anyone at that point.

[He might not know the details of their life on the Surface, but he doesn't need to.]

yeah. they're...quiet. real quiet. there's...this human saying i've heard around. "kids should be seen and not heard."

[He shakes his head, just one quick jerk. It's nice at least to direct some of that loathing somewhere other than inward, even if it's just for a moment.]

doesn't make sense. who'd say something like that? kids should be loud. loud as they want.

[But he's seen it all over, heard it all over, and it's right there, isn't it? Right there in Frisk's low tone, right there in Chara's infinitely polite demeanor. Right there in the fact that Frisk becomes so much more real when they raise their voice, whether they're laughing loud or shouting; and how Chara becomes so much more real when they can be a little hellion without actually harming anyone.]

...that's so like them, though. with the pie. get something they love from home, immediately try to hand it off. bet they told you you needed it more, yeah?

[That's just like them. Like how Frisk decided living in the library was better than making Toriel think Chara was in some kind of danger.]

you...did you tell 'em about...?

[He makes a sort of vague motion in the vicinity of his sternum.]

Lady with integrity. Told 'em to be good.

[And that had stuck with them, he thinks. Stuck with them more than tacit threats and hollow-socketed warnings ever did. Don't kill 'em with a frosty indifference, a thin drape of cheer over a sickly, cold desperation, an empty grin. Kill 'em with MERCY. With kindness.

Maybe Papyrus had it right all along.

Who's he kiddin' though, really? Papyrus is usually right.

Butterscotch-cinnamon. Somethin' familiar there. Tried makin' a recipe like that. Came out kinda botched - more like custard with a crust than a pie you could cut and slice, and she'd told him not to go so hard with the wet ingredients, or maybe find a way to let it set a little better. He'd suggested stickin' it in a snowdrift. Snow problem, right?

Naturally, she'd laughed like it was the best one she'd heard in years.

The lights in his sockets darken by increments, a hollow recognition. Kids should be loud. Kids should be allowed to do what kids will, to screw up and learn from it, rather than be warned to not ever fucking dare. 'Cause that, that's what makes 'em scared. Scared to raise their voice, scared to do a single thing that might incite...what?

Some kinda judgment.

Some kinda punishment.

If he wasn't sick with himself, he sure as hell is now.]

Yeah. That about covers it.

[A grim acknowledgment of the thing he don't wanna look at, but does nonetheless. He does that. Looks at things as they kill him. He'd joked with it like an old friend, and when it happened, he'd twisted his own gruesome end into its own punchline, just like he did with damn near everything in his life. Sucked a bottle of the real thick stuff down, not the magic stuff, nah, but the stuff that he would feel inside him, heavy and inconsolable. And it came tumblin' out, starkly red, shocking against the yellow-gold backdrop, and the look on their face when he burst like a balloon, like overripe fruit?

Worth the last laugh. Worth every second of it.

He traces the diagonal line with a phalanx, sockets half-lidded.]

Y'mean my unfortunate demise? I, uh...I dunno how much they know. Dunno how much Chara's told 'em, 'cause they, uh, they sure remember it.

[Another weak chuckle. LV 20 ghostin' around the city. That was a fun realization to come to.]

[He bobs his head. Nice to know the door and Toriel are a common thread, too. Trading jokes and recipes with a lady with integrity. That's good. One of the more positive things in his life, honestly.]

[But so it goes. He can't help but think of Neverland. Can't help but think of what Chara told him and how...how some things you just can't see until it's too late. Self-analysis is hard without defaulting to all the usual standard fare of self-loathing and such. Not easy to see your own learned behaviors.]

[Should have seen it, though. Should have seen it back long before Wonderland, back in the look on Frisk's face when he told them they'd be dead where they stand. He'd been trying to spook them, sure, and boy had he gotten what he'd aimed for. But it'd been more than just fear. He should have seen it.]

about covers it.

[What more is there to say about it, really?]

[He almost wishes he hadn't asked. It's gotta be a thousand times fresher for this guy than it is for him. Half the time he doesn't have to actually think about it, because it's back there buried under mounds of Resets and True Resets. Only really makes itself known when he sees a knife. Or when one of the kids moves too suddenly, or he turns one of their souls blue.]

yeah. that. if they've only been through the one time, they probably don't even know it's possible. if chara's further along than them, that's, heh. probably a mess waiting to happen.

[Just so long as they don't start questioning about who is the "right" or "wrong" version of each other. Hah.]

guessin' that's why they offered you the pie, then. instead of someone else. must've thought there was...heh. something to improve on. something to fix.

[Good monster food like a homemade pie? Gotta be a lot of HP regain in something like that. Trust Frisk to be sentimental and practical at the same time. Too bad it wouldn't do much for a guy like him other than taste good.]

the two back in wonderland never got past their sans. mine back underground did. don't think any two of us are from the same point in the cycle, except the kids. kinda...kinda heartening, though, in a sick kinda way. knowing there's a sans out there who...knowing they quit, sometimes.

LV 20. Heckuva thing.

[And it don't seem to mean much here, that was the thing. That took him by surprise, a fraction - inasmuch that a guy like him could even get to be surprised anymore. He don't feel much of anything most days. It all dulls down to a worn gray, his reactions subdued and his capacity to care all but nonexistent.

So they saw him split open. Made it happen. And for the first few months here, that seemed to be their agenda. To try and goad him into trying again, gettin' that rise outta him, ranklin' him to the point where he might say or do somethin' about it. Deliberately proddin' those Achilles' heels of his - his brother, mostly, who hadn't even been in the city at the time so it weren't like the vague threats were things they could follow up on proper. What were they gonna do, make him deader?

Well, he shouldn't tempt fate. Or kids with knives and a general confusion regardin' where they stand in the universe.]

Think that might just'a been them. Frisk being...Frisk.

They don't let themself have a single thing. Not a single damn thing. A nice thing falls in their lap, and what do they do? They give it to someone else. Say that you need it.

[Honestly, he ain't even sure they kept the pie. Wouldn't be shocked if they gave it to someone else. Chara, maybe. He could see that happenin'. The two are practically joined at the hip most days.]

Dunno how many times they've gone through. Just know that it was only that time that they didn't hurt anyone. Wasn't enough.

[Never is, maybe.

Maybe they're just stuck like that, forever. Accepted it as their lot in life and it just - beat 'em down. Wore 'em to pieces, conditioned 'em to just accept things as they were. Certain constants. Constants like how Frisk dies and dies and dies and dies, how monsters are fragile, so goddamn fragile that one touch can just send 'em shattering.]

Heh. Yeah. Or maybe they just quit and leave it like that. Forever.

[Nothin' like a Sans to shine a little perspective on the topic, huh?]

19's bad enough.

[He's never even seen 20. Never wants to. Can imagine it, though. The true point of no return.]

[Although, heh, that's contradictory. Because there's no such thing as a point of no return. It goes on and on, and that photograph he mentioned, where only one person was smiling--yeah, pretty definitive proof that 20 isn't a point of no return. It's a chapter break.]

they're gettin'...they're gettin' a little better about it. mine is. took a long time.

[It's slow, for all of them, for everyone in Wonderland. Every one of them is being dragged kicking and screaming toward...something. On the whole, maybe one could say things are getting better, but then something happens and suddenly everyone's three steps back. Someone says or does the wrong thing, or Wonderland comes up with a new event. It's always something.]

you learn habits as a kid and then they stick with you. damn near impossible to break.

[He certainly knows what that's like.]

no real way of knowing. [He shrugs.] you try to keep track and it's just impossible. memory's good, but it just ain't that good.

[No telling which tally mark is a Reload and which is a Reset. No telling where the flower ends and Frisk begins. No point in trying. And looking at all those tally marks gets kinda, uh, depressing.]

[His grin is bitter.]

they do. sometimes. no such thing as forever, but sometimes they leave it and it might as well be. probably feels like it. probably, heh. like i said--memory's good, but not that good.

[Sometimes they're gone for days, and by the time they get back nothing even feels real anymore. Or they leave it, give him time to think about things, think about all of it, and then the Reset hits and it all turns into mist.]

[That's the funny thing about it. About LOVE. At least for this kid, this iteration, this place - whatever it is that's keepin' it from burnin' away every scrap of every emotion they've ever had, it might as well not exist. It might as well be nothing, zip, nil. 'Cause the kid feels, he knows they do. They worry about Frisk. They tell him they're willin' to try, if not in so many direct words. They...they do try. It's the damnedest thing, but they do.

LOVE at the roof, full to burstin' at 20, and they're still willin' to do more than he ever did.

And they never really answered him straight for that. For askin' that question of why. Not just satisfied with the hypothesis of because they can, they have to, he'd asked 'em why, point-blank.

What made 'em feel like they had to? What happened to a kid, a kid, that told 'em that they needed that barrier, somethin' to burn away the pain. What hurt them first?

How else does a kid just do a thing like that?

It ain't really a question of thinkin' the worst person can change. It's takin' the worst person and lookin' at 'em direct, askin' why they got to be this way. 'Cause kids ain't born rotten, he's pretty damn sure. He was a kid with an eagerness that shown, a voracity, a hunger for learning like nothin' else. The lights in his sockets once glinted brightly, dulled for no one and nothin'.]

Doesn't matter much anyway. We're here now. We're here, and they're here.

[And goddamn if it ain't eatin' away at him a little more each day. More and more of him wanting, wanting to understand and then questioning that want because - where the hell did it come from?

Cripes, but this was so much easier when they were just a₁ and a₂. Nameless. Unidentified. Not real, true objectivity, 'cause he lost that the moment he met 'em - nah, actually, scratch that; the moment he made that goddamn promise in the first place - but the illusion of it. An illusion he knew was an illusion but chose to hold in place anyway, 'cause reality is paper-thin as it is so what's a few more lies draped on top of it?

Turns out they can mean a lot, 'cause Frisk asks if they were kid #1. And somehow, he thinks that if he hadn't thought to ask, they would've just left it at that. Kid #1. Forever.]

'S funny. All that time we spent askin' why - why, why was the anomaly doin' this? And we figured we knew the answer. 'Cause it thought it could. 'Cause it could, so it had to. And everything we saw just fed right into that.

[He chuckles, softly.]

But, heh. That's the thing. Thinkin' like that, that kinda confirmation bias, it's just - it's bad science. And maybe our, uh, objectivity was shot to hell way before the kid even entered the picture, but we could'a done...better.

God. We could'a done so much better.

[He honestly isn't sure what he would have done, personally, if Chara or Frisk had showed up in Wonderland with 20 LV. These days he knows better, but back then? He doubts he would have given them much of a chance. It's a survival thing, maybe. You spot the worst thing and you just...don't have the time or capacity to think things over too much. You can't let yourself think or feel too much, because there's a job to do.]

[So maybe objectivity, even false objectivity, is just another form of LOVE.]

[Either way, at the end of the day, Sans just isn't so great at being objective.]

were never all that good at science. not good enough, at least.

[And that's his own fault, and it's also his fault, because he instilled that in Sans, at least to some degree. Didn't help that he never had much integrity to begin with.]

[He looks sidelong at his other, studying him for a moment in silence. Yeah. Yeah, they coulda done so much better. At every point in their lives, at every stage, on every level. So goddamn many mistakes and failures.]

yeah...well.

[Well, what? Yes, they're terrible. They're garbage. Sans-es are just, heh, objectively terrible people, across the board. This isn't news to anyone. But. But.]

[But hey, isn't it his hero who says that even the worst person can change?]

it's kinda, uh. places like these, with this whole...heh, unfamiliar forward march of time. kinda like a second chance. or maybe a hundredth chance. not just for us, but uh--for the kids too. for all of 'em. and we don't deserve it, but some things don't come down to deserving. it's just there, and it keeps being there, cause we keep on, uh. we keep on sticking around. been a year for me. almost a year for both kids.

[He shrugs. He's not entirely sure where he's going with this.]

there's that, at least. you're trying. i'm trying. kind of, uh. kinda wild, right? us. trying. and the kids, they're always trying--it's what they do. even chara. i dunno. maybe that all counts for something.

maybe papyrus had a point.

[That's the thing that burns most of all, really. The fact that, yeah, it was shitty science. It wasn't even Sans doin' his best most of the time. Sure, he chose to stand in that hall and try and do somethin' right, do his job for once even if it was a self-appointed one. And he didn't even do that properly. Couldn't even gauge a human correctly. Just ended up makin' things worse and, hell, maybe even bein' the one to push them off and over that edge. Look at themself and not think human, but simply think demon, and decide that if they ain't really human, they shouldn't keep pretending to be one, should they? Why not go all out?

He's never deserved a second chance. Not in any of his life. But somehow, incredibly, unfairly, he keeps getting 'em. All of 'em do.

Failure, he's used to. He's always born the burden of his mistakes, and that's just how it is for him. That's simply a solid truth he's come to accept. He's always been somethin' of an accident, a failure, a problem to be fixed. So failure, that ain't new.

But when it starts to leach into other people like a virus, like something transmitted, when his failures and failings start to rub off on everyone else, that's when it crosses a line. Maybe he's just too used to Papyrus, who might as well be immune to that kinda thing, who's bulletproof, invulnerable to the pall of apathy that's long since settled itself along his shoulders like a funerary shawl.]

Heh. Suppose you ain't all that wrong. Trying. Weird how that worked out. Here I thought I'd sworn off trying.

['Cause if you never try, hey. You're never disappointed, are ya? Nope, you're unshakable, and nothin' can touch you. A whole 'nother different kind of bulletproof. And he knows, god, he knows that even that is its own lie. 'Cause when he saw 'em standin' there, knife in hand, ready and willing to cut him down, he'd told himself he didn't care. That it was inevitable. That this is just what was gonna happen, what was always gonna happen, how things were always gonna end up.

Lying to himself, even then, 'cause just seeing 'em there for the first time was enough to generate something buried deep beneath the thick bones of his ribs, a shiver in his SOUL.

A sting of betrayal.

Some part of him holdin' out hope that they wouldn't cross that line. Sure, he'd rationally expected it, hadn't he? He'd known it was a possibility, he'd been resigned to it, he'd seen all the warning signs when they started creepin' into alignment, but havin' to face it down?

He'd felt betrayed.

Because, despite himself, despite everything he was tryin' to hold himself to, he'd already cared.]

But I guess if things're gonna be permanent, maybe for the first time ever...heh, might as well give it a shot. Right?

[They don't deserve all these second chances. Don't deserve all these people who are still willing to put up with him after all this time, even after they see the worst of him. It's not even just Papyrus these days, and with Papyrus he can no longer default to the mentality that Papyrus is family, his brother, and he's obligated to love Sans. Obligated to keep putting up with his worthless brother. Cause that was always there in the back of his mind, and how could he not think so, knowing the sort of garbage he is? But it's not obligation. Never was.]

[Not for Papyrus, not for any of the people who still keep Sans around.]

[He chuckles a bit, real quiet.]

yeah. we tell ourselves that a lot, don't we?

[Just give up. Why even try? He wonders if this guy even knows those words. Doesn't really matter if he does or not, because the sentiment is there either way. But even that isn't fully true. If it was true, he'd just let himself Fall Down at the start of every new timeline. He's given up on a lot of things, but he hasn't given up on everything. Go figure.]

we pretend we accept it, i guess. but if we did, we'd never bother at anything at all.

[The thing is, it's easier. Falling Down is always a thousand times easier than getting back up.]

[But he doesn't anyway. Some left over scrap of stubbornness, maybe.]

[He lets himself smile a little for real, a bit lopsided as he shrugs in the general direction of his other.]

for what it's worth, i'm rooting for you.

[Wow. Someone believing in him? Another him believing in him? That's a new one. Gotta be a joke too, right? No one would, 'cause it ain't like he's done a real great job of trying or ever has. A shitty track record and not a lotta reason to believe it.

Won't fall for the same trick twice, says Chara, practically screaming it in that awful red voice of theirs. How many times can you say to someone, I forgive you, or at least you tried, or you did your best, before it just gets to be too much, and you ain't worth the effort anymore.

Weird hearin' it from himself, no less.

Sans chuckles.]

Thanks, pal. Means a lot.

[For the first time in a long while, he thinks he means that too. He can see his own exhaustion reflected in his doppelganger's face, in the bags beneath his sockets, and he can think, hey. They're in the same boat, huh? Same miserable, dreary, sinking boat.

So maybe he's talking to the one person who'll get it.

In the grand scheme of things, that ain't so bad.]

[It's easier when there's that separation, when it's clear that this guy isn't exactly the same as him. Hell, if anything, this guy's the same as Sans was a few months ago. Just on the edge of starting to try, on the edge of accepting that he still cares about things. That he always did. That it never fully went away.]

[If it had, he probably wouldn't be here. That's just how monsters are.]

[But yeah. It's weird. Weird that he's sort of looking at something like a past version of himself and telling him to...keep going. He always assumed that if he had the chance to deliver a message to a past Sans he'd tell him to just, heh, quit while he was behind. Quit before he can try and face disappointment after disappointment, failure after failure, loss after loss.]

[Nice to know that wasn't the case. That's kind of a messed up thing to do to someone, even yourself.]

heh. don't mention it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event Log: Fourth Wall, Part One

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welp i'm dead

same!!!! fuckin same

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it's been 84 years...

pats gently

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