hadriel_logs | très fantastique excess, fluxthrough caching [closed]

Though he now finds himself with a foot in each, the symbiotic relationship between clinic and psychiatric practice that Rosen has been hoping for hasn't exactly manifested itself yet. Rosen even has reservations about whether or not it is going to at all. If true cohesion is in fact coming it has been delayed in its arrival by entirely predictable concerns, i.e. lack of supplies, high demand on the clinic, and a general wariness of two strangers coming forward with an offer to pick apart your thoughts and behavior. As such, Rosen is careful to defer to the clinic as first and foremost authority here in this space and in an effort to keep himself out of the way as best as possible he's confined his working space to a small side table tucked in the corner. It serves his needs well enough. He can be available as physician or psychiatrist as the moment sees fit.

And this is where Rosen finds himself moments before Sans' arrival. He sits, back arched and head between his hands as he debates with himself what to say and how to say it when the skeleton gets there. Is this an official meeting? Unofficial? Is it an intrusion? He distractedly prods a molar with the tip of his tongue as he rolls the thoughts through the clutter at the back of his mind.

Whatever the official or unofficial status of this meeting, he knows he needs to do something.

When he hears the knock, muffled by his fingers and his hair, Lee lifts his head and proceeds to unfold himself from the chair. No turning back now. He deftly crosses the room and tugs the door open.

"Good morning. Thank you for coming, Sans."

Edited 2017-03-23 15:04 (UTC)

Hey, running a place like this has gotta be pretty stressful, right? People've been stuck down here for months at a time, over a year at the longest, and by the time two people actually qualified to deal with their manifold issues drop in, everything's been festering for god knows how long.

"Festering" is really the best word for it. For what's been goin' on between him and Frisk, for what's been goin' on between him and Chara, for how interacting with Asriel still feels like treading on eggshells concealing hot coals.

"No problem." For all his misgivings, the skeleton himself looks about as perfectly as ease as is typical for him, if also just about as tired; skeletons can, evidently, look pretty damn tired. Someday the bags beneath his eyesockets are gonna become mattresses. "Things been quiet 'round here?"

"I don't mind quiet." Rosen steps to the side, gesturing with a slow swing of his arm for Sans to come in. "And for the moment it is pretty much just myself. Though I can't promise that we'll have the place to ourselves for long."

When Sans is inside he shuts the door behind them and leads the way towards his 'desk'. He keeps it tidy, so there is a stack of papers, the ones with notes separated from the ones yet to be scribbled on, and a tin cup of pens and pencils each in varying stages of use. His new laptop from Tranqulity sits nearby, closed.

Lee eases himself into the chair in the corner, nodding at another just across the table. "Please sit." He then folds his hands in his lap, long fingers interlocking.

"I'll be honest with you, Sans, I'm not exactly sure how to start this conversation. But Frisk has mentioned you before so I didn't know who else to speak to."

Welp, 's nice to lay things out clean. Not like there's a sorta manual for this thing, right? It ain't much like he's gotta clue where to start the conversation either. So they can start with the basics.

"We're from the same world," he says, dropping into the chair opposite, one elbow hooked over the back with the other draped across the girth that he - somehow possesses, despite bein' made of bone. Probably best not to question it.

And yet, still profoundly complicated, ain't it? Can't say he's exactly any kinda expert on the subject of Frisk, given how much he's gotten wrong.

"The Underground." Lee remembers asking Sans about it before. On the day he had arrived here actually. Has it really only been about a month since then? "You told me there had been a war. One that ended with monsters sealed below the earth. Was Frisk one of the humans on the surface?"

His tone stays soft, eyes intent on the skeleton's nonplussed expression. "And am I correct in understanding that, at least for some time here you and Frisk lived in the same household? Or am I mistaken about that?"

"Lotsa time passed between then and now. Years." Hard to say how long ago the War really went down. Asgore would be the better guy to ask for a specific timetable; linearity started bein' overrated a long time ago. "They were just a kid who fell."

Far as he can tell, anyway. "Fell" might not even be the best word for it. But he ain't in the position to say. He made a promise, and he'd rather not start breakin' that in record time.

"I stayed at their place for a bit." He tips his skull in a faint nod. "Mostly 'cause of extenuating circumstances."

Fell.

"From the surface to the Underground, you mean?" He leans forward, now sitting so his body is angled off to the side, back bowed and elbows resting on the tops of his legs while his head remains turned in San's direction.

"This is one of those situations where I need the 411, Sans." His brows furrow. "If you don't feel its my business, I understand, and I don't blame you for it. But I think you know why, or at least part of why, I'm asking these questions. So any information you could tell me, something that might help me better understand the world you both come from, or what has happened in the time since you've been here together..."

His voice trails a bit, lips pressing together tightly in response to an aching in his throat. Children. Children are an Achilles heel for him. After a moment he breathes in deeply.

"I want to help."

Edited 2017-03-23 17:12 (UTC)

He hums a quiet affirmation. From the Surface to the Underground. Even if "fell" might not be the best word for it, he's made - he made a promise. God, but this is why he hates promises.

His sockets lid at half-mast for a moment. It'd be helpful if he could give him what he knows. 'Cept he made that goddamn promise, and if there's gonna be any hope of mending things between him and the kids whose trust he's ruined, he's gotta do a damn sight better than he has been.

"I know." His tone is quiet, the words even. "And they need it. But it ain't really as simple as that. The things that've gone down are - complicated."

Really, really complicated.

Rosen wrings his hands. The truth is he has also made Frisk a promise. He even put it in text: I promise to keep your secret. Such a statement leaves very little wiggle room on the subject. But he had made a miscalculation due to the fact that, as it is very clear to him now, he doesn't entirely understand the secret he is keeping.

He cants his head towards Sans. "Alright."

A pause follows. These situations are always complicated, but he will trust that Sans is implying a whole new level of complication than Rosen is familiar with.

"Then maybe we should first focus on what you can answer for me: Do you feel comfortable with my involvement in this issue? What I am trying to say is, do you, knowing what you know, think that I am someone who could potentially help? Or am I more likely to make the situation worse?"

Doc complicates things. There's no denying that. Things that're already complicated to begin with. How, exactly, do you talk about a kid that's technically a metaspatiotemporal anomaly, that's completely tipped over the working reality of the world and thoroughly screwed the concept of linear time on top of it? A sorta finite god, 'cept nobody ever told 'em how to put on the brakes. No one ever gave 'em a manual.

Not that he's real sure anyone could. Just adds a whole 'nother layer of fucked to all of this, really.

"On the contrary, Doc." He leans forward, elbows draped across both kneecaps so he can fold his bony hands, phalanges interlocking. "I think you're exactly what the kid needs. I don't think - "

He trails off, reevaluating. Slows, re-ascertains. Continues.

"I think they could use an adult in their life who's willin' to do right by them. Who doesn't mean to hurt them any."

Lee sets his chin in one hand. "I'm more than willing, Sans," he murmurs against the flesh of his palm. "The last thing I want to do is add any more hurt or burden to that child's shoulders." His fingertips tap against his cheek in thought. "But niceties aside, I want to prove it with actions not platitudes."

Between the way his back is arched over and the deep lines form beneath wisps of white hair fall ing across his forehead, Rosen looks much older in this moment. Gaunt and wiry, veins like strings along his arms seemingly knotting him together.

"And, Door willing, I would readily be in it for the long run."

Edited 2017-03-23 21:19 (UTC)

Human ages seem pretty arbitrary, in the eyes of a monster. Monster aging lands all over the damn place, in terms of spectrums. There's some that live indefinitely, provided they don't have kids, some that just have a sorta unique longevity. And then there's skeletons like him, who...hell, what's it matter? Ain't gettin' any older back home, right?

But you don't have to be familiar with human aging to pick up on the fact that the doc's tired; weary right down to his bones.

"That's more than most people've ever given 'em, Doc," he says quietly. "The fact that you're willing, and you're ready to prove it." Not that Sans has helped his task any. Probably scored a line through any of their compulsions to trust anybody who ain't roughly their age, though he could be wrong.

"And I figure I should lay it out there now: I haven't helped any. I've done...heh, well." He slides an eyesocket shut in a lazy, deprecating wink. "They got no call to trust me, and I can't exactly blame 'em for that."

It sounds to Rosen like Sans isn't exactly up to snuff at the moment either. What a pathetic sight they must be, sitting here hunched over a tiny table in the corner of a cobbled together clinic and neither of them able to offer anything more useful to the issue at hand than 'its complicated'.

Lee's gaze, which had fallen to his feet as Sans spoke, slid back at that last confession, a trickle of light from a side lamp catching hazelnut irises. In the light they are almost like watered down paint dripped too heavily on a pad of paper, pooled, deep, and wavering as though the skeleton's words had managed to strike some new agitation or worry within him.

I haven't helped any

"What do you mean, Sans?" The question is quiet, hesitant.

What does he mean?

Well, that's a pretty multi-layered question, and an even more multi-faceted answer; one he's pretty sure he don't have all the pieces to lay out.

"Back home," he says, slow and even, "I made a promise. I hate makin' promises, but the lady I made this one to...well, she had an integrity I couldn't exactly say 'no' to."

A shade of warmth slides into his tone, unbidden, before he continues.

"She asked me, see, to keep an eyesocket out for any humans that might pass on through there. And asked if I could watch over 'em. Protect 'em. I told her - sure. I would."

The lights in his sockets remain fixed on the spot, locked on the doc's gaze, even as the cut edge of his grin deepens, the shadows in the hollows of his sockets darkening with a bitter twist to the words.

"I screwed that one up pretty quick, turns out."

Rosen's mouth opens, a sound escaping that might have been intended to form a word but that instead crumples in on itself and dies in the air between them. His mouth then closes again, muscles tight in his cheek as the jaw locks to trap whatever he had been about to say.

After a moment he breathes out in a low sigh. "You made this promise before Frisk fell, didn't you?"

Lee's eyes narrow but remain locked with Sans'.

"You wouldn't be sitting here with me if you didn't care, Sans."

What happened?

He dips his skull briefly in a tiny nod of affirmation. He made a promise long, long before he knew to draw the line between the human and the anomaly.

How's it feel to be the subject of someone else's judgment? Chara's thrust it his way often enough for him to adjust to the sensation, skewed as it is. Most people take a little longer to get sick of him; to realize that he's far from just an easy laugh and a quick punchline.

He's been workin' on being a little better than he has been. So these, then - these are his consequences.

"Yeah, well." He laughs. There ain't a single note of mirth to it. "I tried real hard not to. And they knew it."

Kids are smart. They pick up on things.

The proverbial spotlight, the undercurrent of a threat. The inherent contradiction in claims regarding judgment and the lack thereof. The lessons they take away from said judgment, and just how much he taught them compared to what they'd already learned.

Kids are smart.

Way smarter than he maybe gave 'em credit for to begin with.

Or maybe he just didn't bank on their heart being as big as it really is.

"Tried not to care? In my experience it never works. I promise."

The doctor's expression softens, though the weary weight tugging at the corners of his mouth never really disappears. "And with kids it is all the more difficult. And all the more difficult not to make mistakes."

Rosen knows. And that knowing seeps into the way he now watches Sans with a painful recognition. He's fucked up too. There were consequences. And there's no fixing that now.

Kids are smart.

"Help me with this, Sans."

He tried like hell, only that never gets you anywhere, 'specially when you ain't exactly predisposed to trying at anything in your life. Set himself up to fail from the get-go. Can't say it was all that surprising. The repercussions, though - those were maybe a little more far-reaching than he first assumed.

But if you gotta special power, isn't it your responsibility to do the right thing?

Gee, Sans. Isn't it?

"Yeah, figured that bit out kinda late. The kid shows up here, a couple months after I do, and our stories - they don't match up." He shakes his skull in the absence of having any better way of defining it. "We come from two different points in our lives, see. Two different points in our potential...futures. Timelines. Whatever you wanna call 'em."

Bottom line, things don't match up. They only remember a certain side to him.

And the last he ever saw of them, they were cutting him in two.

There is the faintest of sounds as Rosen reaches for a piece of paper followed by a subsequent 'clink' as he grabs for a pencil from the tin cup. He proceeds to write down the words 'timelines' and 'potential futures'. Lee won't pretend like any of this is within his realm of experience, but that is not going to stop him from doing his best.

He adds an underline underneath the word 'potential' then looks up expectantly, for the moment content to be in the role of the student.

"Can you tell me more?"

Edited 2017-03-25 14:40 (UTC)

"Bit hard to explain." Not in the least 'cause he ended up havin' to throw all his research out, largely outta necessity, in keepin' the kids from using them to their own existential ends. "I'll, uh...give you the footnotes."

He never made any promises about keepin' that off the table. And he wouldn't be eager to share stuff like this, not in general, not if circumstances weren't sincerely fucked thanks to recent involvement. Why even try? was his life motto for a reason, for a real damn long time.

Only that won't play out so well. Not 'round here.

"Picture...a loop." Almost on a whim, he produces a small notebook from his own pockets, along with a lead-streaked stub of a pencil. Draws a circle. And beneath it, an equation.

t₁(c(t₁ - t₀))

"How familiar are you with causality, Doc?"

"I, um," He clears his throat, "I had a patient back home whose particular condition required me to familiarize myself with it. The interplay of cause and effect and what that looks like when pulled out into the much larger scale of a human life, so to speak." He tip toes around any further detail on the subject of Marcus. When someone tries to kill you and throw you off a bridge only to end up going over themselves, its not exactly pleasant to talk about.

That part also has nothing to do with the current issue at hand.

"But I think it would probably be best, given how important this is, that you start at the beginning if you can. What you mean by causality based on your world may or may not be what I mean when I say it."

So he's got an elementary familiarity. Or - maybe more than that, but for the purposes of the explanation, he'll have to start from the beginning. For a certain value of "beginning," anyway. There's seldom a beginning to stuff like this, much less in terms of a circle.

He makes one point at the circle's left - his left, anyway, Rosen's right - and marks it as t₀: anchor. One point, isolated, but whose location seems pretty arbitrary.

Well, no metaphor's perfect.

"How 'bout tautology?"

"I assume you mean tautology in logic rather than grammar," Rosen scribbles hastily on his own paper '((A -> B) and (B -> C)) then (A -> C)' before holding it up for verification. "Something along the lines of 'if every valuation that causes proposition X to be true also causes proposition Y to be true it implies a tautology', yes?"

In the back of his mind he's remembering sitting in the park near the trestle bridge, Marcus laying out before him in absolute minute detail the ways in which everything down to the smallest phenomenon in nature, could be traced back through a web of catalysts rendering all things, at least to his mind, part of a greater, organized plan. He remembers how to Marcus a true coincidence was a logical impossibility. No event in life was untethered from those thoughts and actions that had come before them. And Marcus's mind had been designed to read those threads in ways the average human mind could not perceive.

Edited 2017-03-26 19:26 (UTC)

"More or less, yeah." He nods his skull, wearily. "But there's also kind of an echo of the concept when it comes to time."

All purely hypothetical. Right?

"Imagine that you got this one point in time, yeah? We'll call it t₀. It's somethin' of an anchoring point, keyed to a very particular set of events. Like, say, a kid falling down a mountain, and ending up at the bottom of a hole."

Time's a funny thing.

"Suddenly, there's this singular moment in time that's a little more important than all the rest. That's our origin point."

Rosen eases back in his chair again, eyes firmly set on Sans as he processes what he's being told. He cannot pretend to be any sort of expert on temporal variations, so he needs to be certain he's actually following this step by step, otherwise by step 11 or 12 he's going to be lost and even more useless than he already is. He rubs a hand roughly over his chin before giving a slow nod.

"Alright. And, for my personal clarification, is there something objectively more significant about this moment than any other given moment or is its significance dependent upon the fact that we are choosing it as the origin point?"

Edited 2017-03-26 19:50 (UTC)

He's got his theories. The kids knew each other, all three of 'em, but there's a reason Chara refers to Frisk as Partner, and a reason the pair of 'em functioned nigh-seamlessly as a team within moments of Frisk's arrival. A reason they're joined at the hip. Frisk is a sympathetic kid, sure, but there's a familiarity there that can't be fabricated. That couldn't have been manufactured, wholesale.

a₁ and a₂. Two anomalies in the same host body. Two humans with natural quantities of DT, sandwiched together against all laws of the way the world should work. But, hey. That's the nature of anomalies, ain't it? And with that excess of DT, a spike skewers the timeline into submission.

It's a theory, sure. But he's got no call to drag Chara into this. He's done enough damage where they're concerned. Wouldn't be breakin' that promise of his, no, but it'd be trespassing on the sentiment of that olive branch - so soon after it was extended.

Nah.

It's time to do a little better.

"Possibly." He taps the tip of his pencil against the spiraled ridge of his notebook, sockets lidded. "All we really got are theories. Nothin' solid enough to go workin' off of."

Nothing he feels he's the right to go spoutin' off about, at any rate.

Edited 2017-03-26 20:03 (UTC)

If there were an award for being the most vague about extremely specific things Rosen would be inclined to give it to Sans. Despite years in academia and the sciences pouring over papers and research reports whose final summations were essentially "In the end we spent the majority of your grant money on the printer paper to write this report about the experiment during which we learned and achieved nothing," , Rosen can't recall ever encountering anyone else who could be so spectacularly evasive in so few words before.

And if it weren't for two simple reasons, Rosen would have ended this discussion by now: first, his pressing need to help Frisk and two, the simple fact that, whether or not it is advisable, Lee has become fond of Sans.

And it is with these things in mind that Rosen resists the urge to throw his hands up and instead he puts pencil to paper once more. "So, can you draw a connection for me between this tautology and Frisk?"

Solidering on.

It's a gift, honestly. It's what he does. Evasion, dodging the subject, skippin' about the core of the matter, the marrow of the situation - it's what he's always been good at. The only real good thing about him, other than his memory. A memory that's always been too sharp for his own good. For anyone's own good.

The bone between his supraorbital ridges creases for the moment in something approximating a frown, despite his perpetual rictus of a grin.

"We got this origin point. Time progresses pretty linearly from that anchor." For a certain definition of linear, at any rate. "Only it turns out there's something with the power to regress to the origin point."

He draws a straight line. Marks the beginning as t₀, and the end as t₁.

"Something has the power to pull things back to the start. Wipin' the slate clean."

Tabula rasa.

A closed circuit.

His grin goes to an angle askew, wry and almost cheeky if it weren't so deprecating.

"Tautology."

"A reset....," Lee murmurs, talking to himself mostly, before suddenly shaking his head, frown deepening. "No. Not exactly a reset...When something is reset we assume it will take the same pre-allotted course. Like a tape or a track..."

Lifting a hand he reaches across to San's notebook dropping his pointer finger against the anchor point. Then slowly he traces the tip of that finger along the course of the circle, "There's no guarantee that this always happens in the same way," his finger returns again to the anchor, "so if you go back to this point, it could be endlessly different. Couldn't it? The 'track', so to speak, disappears altogether and gets replaced by a new one?"

After a moment he withdraws his hand. His eyes peek up at Sans.

"Or have I entirely misunderstood?"

Not just a reset. A RESET. An important word, underscored with an all-caps emphasis. Unique, detached from time, and a power privy only to an anomaly.

Or - two anomalies. Three, even, if his discussion with Asriel held any weight at all. The very same three who now live contentedly with Asgore.

So the doc nails it pretty much immediately.

"Depends on how much people remember." The course ain't necessarily always the same, no. But there are certain landmarks. Certain actions that always occur. "Once you gotta defined track, there's no reason it'd change, right? Not unless someone's able to remember. Not unless there's one variable effecting change."

And he circles the origin point.

"An anomaly."

Rosen chews at his lower lip distractedly, "So are you trying to tell me that Frisk is connected to one of these, er, anomalies? Or--"

His voice gutters. Lee is dancing around a thought but his mind seems reluctant to grab at it. Shifting uncomfortably, he sits upright and reaches up to push his grey hair back out of his eyes.

"--Are you trying to tell me that Frisk might be one of these anomalies?"

...yeah.

That's about the kinda reaction he had once he realized that little promise he made, that one where he said he'd protect the kid that came on through the Underground - directly conflicted with his goal in tracking down the anomaly and putting a concrete stop to its machinations.

Only to realize the anomaly ain't some distant, malevolent, all-seeing force.

It was a kid. A scared, curious, lonely human kid.

He didn't lay it out for him clean. But he laid out the pieces for the doc to put together, and sure enough - well, he's a smart guy. He drew his own conclusions.

He don't confirm or deny. He simply proceeds, nice and easy.

"Back home, maybe. Things are a little different here." He spins a phalanx in a sloppy, lazy circle. "I think we'd notice if time was goin' through iterations."

Rosen lets the flat of his back thud dully against the chair as his body goes slack, gaze slanted off to the side and mouth neither frowning nor smiling, nor even drawn tight in the usual pensive expression. Were his eyes not open and slowly blinking now and again he might have even be mistaken for someone asleep.

Then there is an abrupt twitch, an involuntary clenching of his stomach as he breathes in sharply, the awkward inhale colliding with a muttered "god" and he clenches his eyes shut against a sting.

God. Dammit.

Lee's not cut out for this. He's sure of it deep into his bones.

Rolling his head back so that he's blinking up at the ceiling, he steadies himself. "Thank you for telling me," He finally manages, his voice a soft murmur before he lowers his head to look Sans in the eye again. His throat is tight and aching but he fights it with forced slow drags of air through his nose.

"Is there more?"

There it is.

Speaks to how much innately better of a guy the doc is, that he sees a thing like that, slots all the pieces into place, and immediately reacts. Understands the horror of what it is, the pressure that would exact on someone so young. He don't just look at it for all its intricacies and complicated interlocking pieces and shrug and think, welp.

He's far, far better a guy than Sans ever was. Than he'll ever be.

Far better, and lookin' about as worn out as you'd expect someone like him to look. That's the thing about caring. It's exhausting, just the very practice of it. It hollows you out, and leaves you with nothing more than an empty acknowledgment of your own failure to do anything to help in earnest.

Because once you care, you're fucked.

"Them's the basics." He tosses the notebook onto the desk. His hands sink back into his pockets, and he leans back. "Only person with full mnemonic retention is the anomaly. Everyone else...well, maybe they remember somethin' here and there. Maybe they feel like something someone did is familiar, or like they've seen this kid somewhere before. Maybe they get that weird old sense of déjà vu, y'know?"

He shrugs.

"And maybe not. Maybe you just keep livin' your life, not knowin' you're livin' the same day, over and over."

"What about you?" Rosen's voice has taken on a touch of hoarseness though its regaining its original strength. One of his hands has settled at the crook between his neck and shoulder and rubs with little purpose over his collarbone, driven by some subconscious want to ease a hurt but unable to access it at its source within his chest.

"You know all of this. You've even tried to deconstruct the science behind it. You must remember at least enough to--"

To what? To observe? To effect some influence? To...?

"Are you an anomaly as well?"

Edited 2017-03-27 01:33 (UTC)

What about him?

Well, that's the question, ain't it? If someone like him has a special power, ain't it his responsibility to do the right thing? To do more than threaten and socialize and curry favor with the thing that's the cause of all this?

"Not so much." He reaches up to tap a phalanx against the temporal region of his skull with a series of dull clicks. "Only good thing about me's my memory. Just had enough research to figure what was goin' on as it happened."

Said research which is now, thanks to everything that's gone on in the interim, moldering away at the bottom of the lake.

A finger drums idly against his clavicle. "So of those of you who are currently here from the Underground, does anyone have matching timelines or do all of you have inconsistent memories?"

He's met another, Asgore, and Frisk has mentioned others from their world in passing or in vague, bewildering explanations, but Rosen still has no solid sense of what the situation with the inhabitants from the Underground actually looks like here in the cave. Their living situations. Their relationships. At best he's an outside observer peering at their world through cracked and fogged glass.

"And, now that we are talking about it, how many of you are here?"

He's gotta count it out to make sure he's got the number down. Hard to keep track sometimes, with people comin' and going. Papyrus was here, and Undyne was too, but eventually the Door swallowed 'em up as quickly as they arrived, until the latter bounced back.

Those bizarre weeks with the malfunctioning Door didn't help manners any.

"Nine, counting the humans." Didn't realize the number'd climbed that high, but there you go. "And...yeah. Just about everyone's gotta different story."

"You are all consistently inconsistent," Rosen chuckles to himself half-heartedly, sounding more than a bit tired.

"I can't remember the exact words but an author back in my world wrote that when someone says things like "it shouldn't be this way" its as if they have some vision or knowledge of another plane of existence. Another parallel "right" universe. One where what they think "should" have happened happened and the fact that it didn't in their current timeline is evidence that time has somehow been "put out of joint". " Lee's fingers fumble with the buttons of his cardigan as he tries to remember. " 'put out of joint' were definitely the words he used. I remember that part clearly for some reason."

It was Rushdie, if he remembers correctly. Some book Gary's mother had lent to him that he had nosed through on the subway. After a moment Lee makes a distracted gesture with his hand. "Never mind. Its not important."

He's wandered away from the point.

"Sans. Is it always Frisk?" Rosen nods towards Sans' notebook, the drawings of circles and lines. "Is the child that falls always Frisk? Or has that ever changed?"

If the timeline changes do the people involve change?

He won't contest that much. It's a pain to keep up with on the regular, and that's if you don't stop to consider the outliers like Mettaton, who have a completely separate set of experiences to contradict everyone else's stories. Or, rather, to supplement 'em.

Inconsistent, consistently. Hilarious, right? Maybe it would be, if it weren't so damn true.

"Other humans fell before them." Six, to be exact. All kids. "But none of 'em skewed things the way Frisk did. The anomaly...like it or not, it was always centered around 'em."

Why Frisk? Chara was the first human to fall, the very first, and yet - their SOUL must'a lingered after their death. If they had prime pick of every human that fell below, what made Frisk special enough?

Being the seventh, maybe.

Having a SOUL as red as determination.

But, hey. It's just a theory.

Six.

Seven including Frisk.

All kids and all falling from some godforsaken mountain. Bit by bit as he gathers information about this place, Rosen begins to feel that the world Sans and Frisk hail from seems more like an allegory than a reality. Some message about the innocence of youth perhaps or a warning about the failures of society. Whatever it is, it is appearing distinctively more and more grim.

He pauses and notes those numbers down, circling 7 to emphasize Sans' point about Frisk being different.

"And can you tell me what became of the other 6?"

Heh.

He leans back in his seat, eyesockets smoothing shut as his shoulders hitch in a minute shrug. He probably looks just about as weary as he feels.

"Breakin' the Barrier that kept monsters trapped Underground...well, it was a pretty powerful spell that sealed us all down there, y'know? Took the power of seven human SOULs. Or so they say."

Funny thing, regret. His grin, for whatever little it's worth, assumes a somber edge.

"Takes seven to break it."

"Sans."

Rosen's gut tightens in an uncomfortable knot of unease.

He doesn't like where this is going. He likes it even less than where they have just been.

"Please.... please tell me the way to get a SOUL is not exactly what I think it is."

He regards the guy evenly. Not exactly what one would call real forthcoming, ol' Sans, but it's high time he got to owning his sins. They ain't going away anytime soon, and he's stopped stamping down on the implications.

On where that places him.

"I don't wanna lie to you, Doc," says Sans, tiredly. That rictus never slips; it may as well be locked into place. "Told you I did a real shit job of keepin' that promise, huh?"

He's a smart guy. He'll put it together.

Regardless of whether or not Sans can claim he cares any, he sure as hell didn't act on it. 'Cause once you care, you're fucked.

Its a quiver in the jaw first, the muscles in his cheeks growing taut as they try to restrain it, but its only a matter of moments before the trembling has spread to his shoulders. Then Rosen simply seems to crumple. His head drops into his hands, his mouth falls open in a struggle for breath, and what wins out is just a guttering sob.

'Six children' plays on a constant loop in the back of his head as he feels hot drops of tears beginning to leave stinging, salty tracks on his cheeks behind his fingers.

Six children.

or.

...Seven...? or...? Could it it be that...

Lee's mind flares against any new thoughts, trying to in fight or flight desperation to shut everything down to haze and numbness.

six children. six children. children. child....

Air. Rosen becomes intensely aware of his need for air. His breathes feel like they've caught in his throat, digging claws in and refusing to go in or out around the heave of sobs. Without signal and with great clumsiness he gets himself to his feet and makes a bolt for the door. He grabs at it, fingers splaying against the wood before he finds the handle then when he finds it he yanks the thing open so roughly the hinges whine.

He then drops himself to the ground, knees in the dirt, and head bowed. All of him has wilted.

Misstep.

Should'a figured, honestly. Not everybody's gotten so sickeningly desensitized to child murder that they can talk about it, easy as you please, simple as discussing the weather. Maybe the guy's lost kids. Or maybe - maybe he's just got enough basic decency to be appropriately horrified.

Probably for the best he didn't bring up Asgore in the slightest. Things're tough enough for him as it is.

Whatever it is that galvanizes him into finally getting up, fumbling with the door until he exits, Sans, uh.

Sans stays right where he is. Slouched over in his chair, skull bowed, regarding the floor without really seeing it.

How's it feel, then, to know that even when someone's askin' to know the details of your own problems and everyone else's, it's still too much for 'em? This is what you get. Step outta your comfort zone, and get burned. End up burning damn near everyone else in the process.

Why even try?

The temptation to get away is almost unbearable, in the tightening of his fists in his pockets, in the minute shifting of his weight, rocking to the balls of his feet in a preparation to stand - or, possibly, to simply slip through space and end up on his couch for the remainder of the day.

There's not a thing he can say that'll make any of it better. So he don't say anything at all. In the next moment the chair is empty, and the room is vacant.

He's done enough damage.

Rosen stays in the doorframe for a long while. Until his shoulders go still. Until his breathing becomes even. Until its just himself and the dull thudding in his head.

He can't remember the last time he's be so undone by something. Most likely over a decade ago when his marriage fell apart. No. Fell is the wrong word for that. He had stood at the side and watched it in its death throes and done nothing, then had had the audacity to shed tears for himself.

He knew he wasn't strong enough for this. He's not Strong.

At long last he gets himself onto his feet and pads gingerly back inside. Lee isn't surprised to find Sans gone. Only distantly confused as to how, in the literal sense, did he leave? But he doesn't have the energy for it.

He doesn't blame Sans for leaving. He had asked him to come. Had said right to his face that he was in this for the long run. And then he had been broken. Rosen rubs a hand over his face. "Go to hell, Rosen," he murmurs to the shadows in the corner.

Exhausted he drops back into his chair. Takes out his phone. And with no ceremony he sends Sans a simple text:

"I'm sorry."

Then a moment later he sends one more:

"But I'm not going to give up"

Rosen doesn't expect a response.

Edited 2017-03-27 22:37 (UTC)

très fantastique excess, fluxthrough caching [closed]

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