entrancelogs | It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you!

Entry tags:

It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Friday October 27th - Tuesday October 31st
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch all for the Horrible Memory Truth Event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, everyone's entire room will be replaced with a memory playing on loop. They will likely recognize the moment as soon as they see it – it is a moment they remember as the worst moment of their entire lives. It could be a memory from home or something that happened in Wonderland. Lengths of the memories will vary, but they will find that these are not memories they can merely watch – they can step into these memories and attempt to make changes to them, and the memories will be long enough that they have time to make changes (though no more than 24 hours). However, anyone who tries will find that it is futile. No matter what you do or how hard you try, the outcome is always exactly the same somehow. No changes you make will prevent that horrible outcome. It just happens over and over and over again no matter what you do.

On top of that, perhaps complicating any attempts to make changes, everyone will be forced to be honest for the duration of the event. No lies or half-truths are allowed, and filters will be gone for the entire five days. If something bothers someone then they will blurt it out, regardless of whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, and no one will be able to simply keep quiet when they have something to say. They must be truthful and honest with every word they say.

This is a catch-all log for all of your Worst Memory needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and Room Number + Floor for character rooms, or just location if you're making a top level for a public place in the mansion (like the tea rooms or the kitchen) so people can see if there's already a thread available. And here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...oh."

That forward march, like he had somewhere he needed to be. Sans had a feeling, for a long time now. Remembers thinking months and months ago about passive vs. active, the way people look when they're looking over the edge of something.

This isn't even the first time. He saw Frisk's room. It's all fresh in his mind again. And before that moment, back when they were all just trying to corral Frisk before they could get the Extractor set up. Give it what it wants.

Not just them. Napstablook on the beach. Mettaton out in these same woods. Hearing too late about kids--in these same woods--and looking up what a narcissus was, putting it together over the course of days, only figuring it out long after he could have been of any use.

Not that he would have been.

It keeps happening. It keeps happening, and for some reason Sans is the one who ends up here. The worst possible person to stand between someone and what they want.

"don't."

He is tired. He's so tired, all the time. His whole life.

please, just. don't."

"It's not you." Right. Like that's even a fucking comfort at this point. Hey, he's just gonna walk out into the dark and murderous woods and wait for the chills to set in properly and close his eyes and let himself spiral out for the next twenty-four hours, but it's not big, because it's not Sans's fault, right?

"And I know that doesn't mean anything, but I don't know what else to do." He's a liar. He is a liar, and now that he's been stripped of that, what's left?

The coward, the hypocrite, the freak.

No one anybody would miss.

"I'm a liar. I can't - " He breaks off, throat convulsing in a swallow, painful and pained. "There's a reason for that."

"...for once, i didn't think it was."

Doesn't help. Doesn't make him look too good, either, does it? The fact that when people are upset or want to do things like this, that it must somehow be his fault. Because he always has to make it about himself. Selfish bag of bones.

He's quiet as he listens. He takes a careful step closer.

"same."

Isn't that the same goddamn thing? Just making it about himself?

"there's this...spot nearby that not many people know about. pretty outta the way, private. quiet. you could...you could wait there till this is over. instead. i won't bother you.you'd be--"

Not safe. None of them are ever safe in Wonderland.

"...the closest approximation to safe that i can think of."

"Jay would find me."

And there it is. There's the words leaking raggedly out, and he has to reach up to drag hands through his hair as he grimaces, mouth twisting, looking away because he can't fucking bear to meet Sans's eyesockets over this shit. Because now that he's on the subject of Jay, there's no escaping it. It'll come churning out.

And it does.

"There's stuff he doesn't know, that he can never know. But he'd ask anyway and I'd have to tell him. Do you understand?"

Jay.

Sans gets it. There's always that one person who you believe can never know certain things. The truth can slip out to other people, and you can weather it. But if that one person finds out, then...

Then it might as well be the end of the world.

"yeah. i understand."

He takes another careful step closer.

"but...take it from me. secrets aren't...they aren't worth dying over. and don't you think...i mean, i might not know him as well as you, but he's not stupid. don't you think he'd...figure this out? you just disappear for a day, after everything that happened at movie night. i think he'd...know what happened."

"They would kill him." He spits the words out venomously. "I don't mean stuff I don't want him to know! I mean stuff that would legitimately put him in danger, and everyone else that was supposed to have gotten out of that hell he dragged us all through! That I'm responsible for!"

He wouldn't figure it out. He wouldn't know. Not about Jessica. Never, never about her. He's kept her safe from this. He's kept her clean from all this. God, but he's tried.

He is never putting her through that again. If anyone deserved to make it through - let it have been her.

"That's how this shit spreads," he growls out, pressing one index finger to his temple. "Knowing it. That spreads it. There is no escaping that once it's in you, and - and if Jay hears that anyone got out, y'know what he'd do? He'd drag his fucking camera over to them and pull them back in, all the hell over again!"

He doesn't know about any of this. Barely understands what Tim is saying. There's so much that must have happened that he doesn't know, and he refuses to ask. That was always the unspoken agreement between them. They didn't need to know all the gritty details of each other's life. It was enough that there was that one thing they could relate on, that one thing they could talk about.

That's how this shit spreads. Knowing it.

He can't help but think of...

Of Frisk asking how he managed to do it. Frisk telling him that Asriel had been reduced to near-catatonia. The flinch every time Frisk or Chara tried to think about something that didn't exist, that couldn't be thought about.

And the other thing. The bigger thing. The thing none of them will say out loud. Some kind of file name. The bones of the world. The code. The way Frisk's whole self tore itself to pieces, shredding into bright static and wrong colors. How that sort of thing doesn't happen in the real world to real people.

"so you're going to die to protect him."

He's quiet for a moment, trying not to think about it, trying not to say what he's going to say next.

"you remember what i said, back when you absorbed asgore's soul? how people who do that sort of thing are...selfish isn't the right word. i know it isn't. i just can't think of the right one. you just...you get caught up in this idea of protecting someone and you don't...think about what it's going to mean to that person. you don't think about..."

He grits his teeth, he hates this, he hates it.

"being the one who has to survive--the one who gets to live when you don't--you know you don't deserve it, you know it should have been you instead--it's--it's the worst thing. it's the worst thing in the world. but people just...they get caught up in it. they don't think about that. they die, and it's over, and then everyone else has to keep going, and just. live with it. i know there's something wrong with me that this is...this is how i think, that i'm like this, but..."

You don't even get that option here. You don't get to just--disappear, and have it be over. You have to come back a day later and deal with the fallout. You have to see firsthand what you did to someone.

"...besides. anything he learns in wonderland he won't remember when he leaves. and maybe you're...maybe you're underestimating him."

"There are people," he says, with a low, violent tremble to the words, the tremor of a man who can only barely hold the weight of his own dismay into something clipped and silent, "that I need to protect. People here, and people who might show up here."

He knows. He knows it's selfish, or whatever word means selfish but isn't quite. It doesn't matter. It's what Jay would have wanted, right? It's the one thing he can do to honor him. Keep her safe. Protect the person Jay gave everything to try and save from the screaming abyss he himself introduced her to. If he knew the whole of it -

If he knew the whole of it, would it matter? Neither of them are the least bit reliable. Rabbity, jumpy, nervous, paranoid. Might as well be fucking schizos.

"Don't say - " The word breaks. He swallows back something that sounds, feels, suspiciously like a sob. "I can't lose him again. Not again."

He spreads his hands, though it's more of an exhausted shrug than anything placating. He doesn't know what to do. He never knows how to do this.

"then...have some uninvolved third party. someone to keep the two of you separate until this is over. hell, i'll do it, if you want."

Tim sounds so goddamn tired. Completely lost, completely at the end of his rope.

"yes you can."

He winces and hisses a breath through his teeth.

god, that's. not what i meant to say. i--you can, though, that's the...worst thing. you can lose someone again and again and again. and you keep surviving, and you wonder how. it stops meaning anything. everything stops meaning anything."

He scrubs at his face with one hand, bone rasping against bone.

"i'm sorry, i'm. this is the fourth...maybe fifth time i've tried to talk someone out of this and you'd think...you'd think i'd...know what to do by now. that there's some...s-some combination of words that works like a magic spell. that fixes it. but there isn't. doesn't help when i can't even fucking--lie.

He sinks back against a tree.

"i don't...want to lose you either. jay probably doesn't. clem probably doesn't. lotta people here that don't. thing is, i know i...can. i know i can. i just don't want to. it's goddamn selfish. it's not about me. but i don't know what to do. i never do."

He's trying to inject sense into a situation that doesn't allow for it. Not when he's already so fucking close to that edge, lipping the very ridge, always on the verge of tipping right the fuck over. The same reason he huddled in his room and shivered and waited for the end to come while the air got thinner and the water lapped outside the closed doors. The same reason he didn't run as fast as he really should have, back in Quor'toth. The same reason he trembled, knocking back a handful of white capsules in one toxic handful as he gagged and coughed through the long, slippery swallow of them.

Yes, you can.

He knows it - it's true, too, huh? He says that he can't, but what he means is that it won't really be living.

"I lost him twice now," he says quietly. "And it was my fault the first time, I - know it was. And I've done everything wrong where he's concerned and he's a jackass and I know that, I know I can't - I might not ever forgive him for that. But he's...like me."

Even if he won't admit it.

"He's the only person who - it felt like he was actually kind of a friend for a little bit. At first I thought that maybe he wanted to be friends. Came at me outta the blue, asking about some stupid old student film." One corner of his mouth trembles. Like he wants to smile. Just for an instant. "And it was wrong, but he still - he was the second person who ever bothered to pretend. He just - he wanted to help."

Was Brian pretending, all that time?

There's no way to know now.

"It should have been me. It should have been me back there. But it wasn't."

And he can never -
never
forgive himself for that.

"What'd be so terrible about it, huh?" He almost sounds ready to laugh at that. Like it's hilarious. "What's so terrible about twenty-four hours?"

He has no idea what to do.

He never knows what to do. Every time he's managed this before he's had to...cheat. Teleported Frisk and Chara back to their room before it could get worse. Put himself between the two. Didn't even try hard enough with Napstablook, because they went and tried anyway. Held onto Mettaton so he wouldn't keep going, knowing Mettaton wouldn't risk Sans.

Dumb fucking luck, that's all it is. Being rational doesn't work. Being manipulative doesn't work, plus it's unbelievably fucked up. He could just tell Tim that if he goes, Sans will just follow him, but that's such a fucked up thing to say and do. He could just grab Tim and teleport him and risk some kind of breakdown, and Tim would hate him, and then he might just try again.

It almost sounds like him and Frisk. Complicated. Something you can't easily name. How he never knows what to do with them, how when he tries, he gets everything, every little thing, completely wrong. Couldn't save them in Quor'toth. Couldn't save Chara. Couldn't just...be a good enough person that Frisk wouldn't need to cut him out of their life like a tumor.

"i get it."

Should have been me.

"i don't...know what to say that'll...keep you here."

He has to try, though, god, he has to keep trying. He can't do this again. And isn't that hilarious? Didn't he just say that of course he can? He can, and he will, keep losing people, and he'll keep on living and surviving and trying to deal with it, because the world, one way or another, never lets him be the first one to go. The one time it did was one of the worst things he has ever, ever done.

"it's not."

It's not so terrible. That's the problem.

"dying is easy. being dead is easy. but then--you wake up."

You wake up in Snowdin, wondering why your chest aches so much, wondering why it feels like your ribs were cracked open and fused back together all wrong. And you think about how there's only really one reason why it would feel that way.

You wake up in your room and your brother stares at you with a look you have never seen before. You check the network and you see your brother using that word, vacation, and he got that from you, didn't he, because you lied to him, you created a code word that only you really knew, but he picked up on it somehow, because he always does. He's always so much more clever and observant that anyone expects.

"you wake up. and then you have to live with it. you have to be alive again. everything aches. your skull--your head is pounding. you breathe and it hurts. you're whole and intact, but something--you can feel something missing. and you have to just keep living. you keep living, and you have to remember what it was like. you have to see the looks on people's faces. you have to live with the fact that i'll know what you've done. and i'm sorry. i'm sorry i did that to you. you'll have to live with the fact that jay will probably find out, because he's...well, he's nosy. they either find out way later, months later, and they look at you like...i mean, death is so commonplace around here, you'd think no one would be freaked out about it anymore. but they are, and that's probably a good thing. that death still has meaning to people."

"they find out a few months from now, and it's this secret you were keeping from them. and every time someone finds out, they look at you the way clem looked at me at movie night. or--they know it while you're gone. and they sit there. they count hours. seconds. they hold a jar of your dust. and then you wake up, and they were waiting for you. you can see it on their face right away. they burst into your room begging you to do something inane and silly so that neither of you have to think about it for a minute. they say how sorry they are, that that happened to you. and if they know, then there's that extra layer. they know you were willing to do that to yourself. they wonder if you'll do it again. they watch you. it's in the back of their heads from then on. they're constantly waiting, constantly on guard, and they tell themselves they won't let you do that to yourself again. they'll take all the sharp objects out of the room and put plastic covers on all the sharp corners, like that'll really dissuade someone with so much determination. they treat you like a bomb that could go off at any time. like you're fragile."

He slumps against the tree. Talking too much. Speechifying. Doesn't he always? This isn't going to change anything. Like he said--you can't really stop someone with that much Determination.

"you wake up, and it's so, so much worse."

He says it like he's been there.

But there's a flaw in that explanation. There's a flaw in that diatribe about how it'll be even worse, if he goes. There's a flaw in how he goes on and acts like Tim hasn't thought this through, like this will be some new and terrifying experience for him. He huffs softly, once, a wry rush of sound exhaled sharply through his nose.

"I know."

Maybe it means something.

Maybe it means something that, of everyone who he could have spilled this shit to, Sans is maybe the one person he knows might mind the least.

He lifts his left arm. It's dark, but he can still see them. The faint and faded white marks across the underside of both arms. He draws one long, slow path down from wrist to elbow with the tip of one finger. The skin beneath trembles and pocks with reflexive gooseflesh.

"Ten years old. Sedated, put on watch for seventy-two hours. They stopped giving me mattresses with bedsprings after that."

Another finger, drawn along the lip of his clavicle. Just underneath the throat. Beneath his shirt, there's another white line that runs and runs and runs like a crack in cement.

"Thirteen years old. Sedated, put on watch for seventy-two hours. They took away my window for that, after the fourth time I ran away."

Right arm now. The same place as the first.

"They stopped letting me use pencils after that one. Pencil sharpeners too. And, hey," he says, bitterly, sweeping one hand in a sharp jerk of motion, "those are just the ones you can see."

His arms fall to his sides.

"You know Jay had a copy of my medical files?" He can't even sound angry about that one anymore. There are worse things, right? "He posted them online for everyone to take a look at, just - whenever they felt like it. I scored a fourteen on my risk assessment tool, and he knew it. Caught me overdosing on film, once. That should've been the end for me. It should have."

But it wasn't.

"But I woke up after. Couldn't remember how. Couldn't remember why."

Because - that thing.

It won't let him go.

"So trust me, okay?" His tone cracks slightly, a faint rasp of something pleading and desperate. He's weighed the costs. He knows the costs. He knows the benefits. He knows that this is stupid, and it'll fuck him up in the long term, but right now? Right now he just - he just wants out. Whatever the damn cost. "Trust me when I say - I know."

He knows.

Tim already knows. And he explains.

Some part of Sans expected it. He'd never thought to look for scars. Never thought too much about the ones he's seen on Frisk, on Chara. But some part of him still expected it.

Passive, and active. Taking the initiative, and...thinking how, well, if it happens, that wouldn't be so bad. That'd be fine.

He always had to stay alive, though, because his brother would be sad without him. But sometimes, Papyrus isn't there. The thoughts get worse then. They keep getting worse the more people die. And then it goes in reverse, almost. Suddenly no one's left, and Sans has to stay alive because he's the only one with any sort of chance of stopping the inevitable.

Even though he knows it's inevitable.

You get to a point you stop thinking about the long term. You stop thinking about the future. You think about now. A few minutes from now. It has nothing to do with Resets. Resets just makes that worse, too.

He just also can't...he can't imagine it. He can't imagine the active side of things. Maybe because of how he is. But the idea of just...of doing it instead of just letting it happen, accepting that it's going to happen anyway, it feels so...and hell, even just letting go. He's held so goddamn tight to that 1 HP for so long, and the one time he did just let go...

He hated it.

There's a difference between wanting to kill yourself and wanting to just be dead.

"i'm sorry."

And it's exactly like he said. The way people look at you. All those I'm sorry's. Fucking useless.

He stands upright, pushing back from the tree.

"back home i...made it my job to stand in the way of people who were...too determined to destroy something."

He looks up at Tim with eyelights so dim they might as well not be there.

"so...i'll...do it again, i guess."

He teleports, and reappears between Tim and the edge of Wonderland, still in the distance.

"i'm sorry, tim. i have to at least try."

That's his answer. That's his answer?

It's the same answer that he knows he must have expected. That, on some level, he must have anticipated. The kind of muted horror of someone catching him in the act, or the businesslike swiftness with which gloved hands subdued him and cleaned out the blood and lectured him for being very lucky they caught him before he went in too deep and caused permanent nerve damage.

Because he doesn't want Tim to go. Because he can't let him slide out from under the radar for just...twenty-four goddamn hours?

"It's twenty-four hours," he says, desperately. "You can't tell me this is worth it."

You can't tell him that he's worth it.

He looks Tim in the eye, stuffing his hands in his pockets and planting his feet.

"you are."

Selfish. Selfish like always. Making it all about him. The parasite can't let his hosts just go off and die, after all.

"i'm just...tired of losing people."

That's the worst part of it. He knows that he believes it. He wouldn't be saying it if he didn't. He believes that somehow, incredibly, Tim is worth this effort. That twenty-four hours of him being down for the count, of him getting what is likely to be the only good rest in his entirely lifetime, if it even counts, is just too steep a price for him to pay.

"You said that you can." He can. Doesn't want to, but can. "Just let one more slide. I - I can't go back there. I'm not going back there."

He's always been poised on this edge. It's only now that he's met this kind of immediate resistance, in the actual act itself, that he realizes -

He has no idea what he's supposed to do.

"of course i can."

The words come out in a ragged exhale. Of course he can. Of course he will. He'll keep losing and losing and losing.

"but i won't. not this time."

For once, the human won't get past him.

"you don't have to. i'll stay with you. we can go somewhere else."

"I know I don't have to. But I don't - don't - "

It was easy to pull a knife on a kid he didn't know. The kid took one look at it and bolted, and Tim didn't have to do anything beyond posture. And a good thing he didn't stay, either, or Tim doubtless would've let that slip one way or another. But - this? Someone standing here, planting himself between Tim and twenty-four hours of absolute peace?

Somehow he doubts he's going to spook him with a knife and nothing else.

"The longer you, or anyone sticks around me, the more danger you're in. There's stuff you can't know. That no one should know!"

It's the one thing he's ever consistently good at--being an obstacle. Being an annoyance. A thorn in a human's side.

It's never been enough before. But it has to be enough.

"i told you already. i've been in danger my entire life. this, whatever it is...whatever that tall thing means...it's just another thing on the pile. it...doesn't make things any worse. it just makes it--more."

He gives a vague, half-hearted shrug.

"so that stuff i can't know...i just won't know it. that's fine by me."

"You have no idea! It isn't worth it, you just - you have to trust me!"

His voice tears at that. He has no idea. He has no idea at all and no matter how well Sans supposedly takes it, he isn't the garbage disposal for all the fucked up shit the universe has to offer and he never should be. No matter how much he says it's fine, that he can take it, that it's just business as usual, it isn't fair.

"You don't have to drag yourself through the fucking dirt for everyone else's sake, and I'm telling you not to!"

"i do trust you. i don't...know everything. for all i know, whatever ends up happening could be worse than anything i could imagine."

And with his luck, it probably will be. Tim is screaming at him, his voice breaking, and Sans doesn't know what else to do. He knows he's doing this wrong, that Tim might end up hating him for this, but he just--doesn't know what else to do.

"it's not some kind of martyrdom, tim. i'm not gonna just stand in the path of an oncoming train because i--think i deserve it. i'm--i'm too selfish for that. i'm just gonna stand here instead. because i don't want you to go."

"It won't even be for that long."

He could tell people anything. Tell them that he tried. Tell them that there was no hope. Tell them, tell three or four of the people who still give a damn about him, for reasons unknown to him, that there was just no point, it was hopeless and a doomed fucking endeavor.

Only he can't, can he? That'd be a lie.

The same reason Tim is rooted here, frozen to the spot, screaming as he tries to convince Sans otherwise instead of trying to take the physical action he wishes he could.

But doesn't.

"My best friend died. Because of me." And that's the danger in it. That's what worms out from behind his teeth, gritty and resistant to his every effort to gnaw it back. "Please. I can't - I never want to lose someone else. Not because of me."

"yeah. but time is funny. to me more than most, i think. i can't even really...describe it. time just doesn't even--feel real anymore."

Twenty-four hours is the same as a few minutes, or a year, or an entire timeline. Time is meaningless. The only thing that matters is that Tim will be gone.

Tim's voice quiets, goes raw and halting, the way it does when people try not to say something and can't help it.

His best friend. Because of him.

Yet another thing that Sans understands too well.

God, he wishes he could just lie. Just tell Tim that he won't lose Jay or Sans or anyone. But he can't. It's a lie. Sans doesn't know the future. And neither does Tim.

"how is dying now going to keep you from losing someone later? how is that protecting us? just--take it from me. giving up doesn't...save anyone."

“It lessens the risk. The chance that someone will ask and I’ll have to answer. It means Jay won’t find me. No matter what. It keeps everyone - safe.”
Just for a little while. But a little while is worth it. It’s spread too far already. Too fast. To everyone he failed to protect, because that’s what he does. He fails.

Just like he failed Alex. Just like he failed Brian. Just like he failed Jay.

Like he won’t ever, ever fail Jessica.

He’s sacrificed too much for her sake.

"why don't i just stick with you and keep anyone from asking? i can keep you and jay separate. it wouldn't even be that hard."

He can teleport. So long as he warns Tim beforehand and has his okay, it'd be downright simple. Barely any real effort.

Not that effort matters right now. Not even to Sans.

"you're not going to talk me into letting you go, tim."

cw: continuing

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cw internalized ableism

:(

aaaand cw suicide ideation too while we're at it lol

goddd

cw more in-depth discussion of suicide

continuing

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