entrancelogs | you're not broken, just a little bit chipped 'round the edge [closed]

Entry tags:

you're not broken, just a little bit chipped 'round the edge [closed]

Who: Frisk and Sans
Where: The Rabbit Hole
When: 4/09, after this conversation
Rating: PG but tbd since this might get heavy
Summary: The last event was a MESS, everyone's emotions are a MESS, and now Frisk is trying to fix it.
The Story:

True to their word, Frisk shows up at the diner, the Worn Dagger in their pocket. It feels uncomfortably like expecting a quiet conversation to abruptly break out into a brawl when every encounter with Sans has been nothing but utterly placid, for the most part, but they also don't want to break their promise to Chara. Hence, right now their pocket is the safest place for the Dagger to be.

It's not technically the weapon that killed Undyne, but it feels close. It might as well be. They'd apologized to her as best as they could too, even if what happened was only peripherally their fault.

It's time to start turning over a new leaf. Stop wallowing in guilt, and start doing something about it. That's what reaching out to Sans was all about. That, and they're not one hundred percent on that, but they feel like a lot of what they said those past few days could have really hurt him. He might be good at hiding it, but - but they were callous and cruel, right to his face. And that's something they're going to have to address, like it or not.

The place is empty when they get there, so they slip into the nearest table and wait.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"wasn't really your fault. you weren't thinking. but i'm sorry, kid. if i could forget it, i would."

There's a lot he would forget if he could. Just take some steel wool and scrub the inside of his skull until it's all gone, until he can just be Sans, whoever the hell that is. Sans without a lab in his basement, without the awareness of timelines, without feeling the stumbling sensation of a Load or a Reset.

Sans sans.

Heh. Funny.

"he did? ah. i see."

On the one hand, good riddance. The flower isn't Asriel. The flower has done exactly what Frisk and Chara have done--but unlike Frisk, and maybe unlike Chara, the flower is incapable of regret. Incapable of feeling anything.

But on the other hand, that's going to make things very dangerous if the flower ever shows up here again.

There are an awful lot of things Frisk wishes they could forget. They understand the desire, but they're destined to just know these kinds of things, aren't they? Remember between RESETs, and always know they're the one behind them.

"Chara...it was hard for them. Losing him."

They look in their eyes as they'd come to a horrible conclusion, to just go to sleep for a whole day and not worry or care, because that would shut things off for a little while, a brief respite from everything. Because even if it wasn't personal, it felt personal, it must have.

"I think that helped them remember who they were, a little bit," they add, acutely aware that they need to watch how much they say. Chara and Frisk have reached this tentative truce, and they don't want to ruin it by making the same mistake again. Telling someone something they shouldn't.

Just like Sans is destined to know things he doesn't want to. Or at least that's how it would be if he believed in fate.

"i...can imagine."

He might not have been technically Asriel, but the flower still remained a real connection to Chara's past. Proof that they had once truly been human, had tried to do good--had once had hope.

Sans can hear the hesitation in Frisk's voice. Another thing they feel they need to be cautious talking about. It's understandable. Chara doesn't seem to like it much when people point out that there's humanity left in them.

yeah. makes sense."

Again, Frisk hesitates. If anyone would understand this next part, it would be the monster who told them about how it is the Underground world really worked.

"The more they kill, the harder it's going to be to reach them," they say at last. "Dying doesn't set them back. Their LOVE. And neither of us can RESET."

Should they be able to set themselves back? Isn't that what LOVE is meant to symbolize, your sins crawling on your back, so you can feel the weight of every horrible thing you've done? Dispelling that just makes it easier to forget and start over again, but how do you stop once you've accumulated enough LOVE, to the point where nothing matters? How do they stop it from building up to the point where it's no longer sustainable? They'll just come back. Again. Again. Again.

Sans makes a face, though it's not directed at Frisk. He's staring into his cocoa.

"yeah, i know. trust me, i know."

Simple numbers. Simple math. Reach a particular number and the anomaly can no longer be reasoned with. Sans tries all the same, but it makes no difference. Never does.

"makes sense, i guess. this place doesn't seem to like external forces messing with it. at least not permanently. as long as they can save, they'll be able to retain whatever LOVE they gain."

"What happens if it...if they get..."

Frisk can't finish the question. They falter, fall silent. Hitting the LV 19 mark, that ecstatic rush of power to their fists, that was what it was to be truly unstoppable. They'd had Flowey trembling, sweating, pleading for them to stay back. They'd had everyone in fear - those that still remained, anyway.

A brief image of Wonderland, desolate and empty but for scattered heaps of dust, flits through their head. Could Chara really tear everything apart? Everyone comes back, true, but...but that just means they can keep killing, really keep killing, whenever they want.

"They just come back. Everyone just comes back." And right now, what's been holding them back? Frisk's goodwill and earnest desire to help them seems to have been keeping them from committing any other atrocities, but how long will that last? "Is there a limit to how much LOVE one person can have?"

Something occurs to him, far too late. Something he should have thought about days ago.

It hasn't been lost on him that all the people here from the Underground aren't necessarily from his Underground. Papyrus certainly isn't. Chara isn't. Alphys doesn't seem to be. That implies that Frisk and Undyne might not be, either. It also implies that every single one of them could be from slightly different timelines.

And it isn't until now that he realizes what that could mean.

"frisk."

Something about the questions they're asking, the way they're asking them. Sans knew how dangerous Chara could be the moment he found out they were in Wonderland. And if he's honest, Frisk is the same way. It's an endless supply of LOVE. Five deaths, and presumably even more beyond that. Some hundred or so people here. Bad timeline after bad timeline, except that here, all that LOVE and EXP is cumulative. It keeps increasing until...

He looks up at Frisk.

"there's a limit. at least we--i think there is. there's a point at which...well. at least that's how it is back home. it might be different here. but, uh. frisk, i have to ask."

Sans grips his hands, fingers laced together, thumbs fidgeting.

"i was talking to chara the other day and i learned something. they've never gotten past me. i guess that's the point wonderland decided to take them from. so, they haven't seen anything that happens afterward. but i gotta ask--and i'm not judging, since, heh, from my perspective this has already been answered. but, uh.

do you remember if you've ever killed me?"

They realized very belatedly that their friends aren't necessarily the exact versions they've come to know. It started with little deviations, like Frisk learning that they told Undyne that anime wasn't real, and widened into larger ones. Papyrus dropped early on, crushed by a force that even his idealistic sincerity couldn't halt.

But there's a few things of which they're extremely, extremely certain. The question inspires that faint little thrill of guilt, as it should, and they can't quite meet his eyes when he says it. They duck their head, again fixing their stare on the contents of their mug.

"We got stuck at you," they admit. "We never managed to get past."

Knowing the gravity of a situation that would inspire Sans to stand up to something so hopeless, they're of the mind that this was probably for the best.

"Chara and me, I...I think we're from the same...place." The same point, as it were, in time.

They say it, and there it is. Just like that.

They've never killed him.

They and Chara. They've never gotten past the golden hallway. They've never Erased the world, only to set it back again. And again, and again.

The whole time, he's been thinking of Frisk and Chara in those terms, as an anomaly who has done literally everything, up to and including Erasing entire worlds. Yet he can't judge them that way, because it's not true of this Frisk and this Chara.

His hand trails to his chest, one finger idly tracing a line, across and down.

It makes sense. He could almost laugh. He's the one who remembers things that others don't, after all.

"okay."

Okay.

He takes a breath.

"sounds about right. the two of you from the same timeline, but different points in it." He remembers Frisk saying they'd come from after the barrier came down, once everyone was on the Surface. Or maybe he's misremembering, or Frisk was lying. Doesn't matter.

"20. that seems to be the limit. some reports suggest that there's a number far, far beyond that but those reports...they don't make too much sense. they tend to contradict each other."

They come from the middling timelines, the ones that are in-between. Something big happens, though Sans has no idea what. Whatever it is, it completely skews all the data, turns it into a nonsensical jumble.

"that seems to be a unique event, though. something a bit different from the anomaly, but still kind of...really messes up the timeline. so i don't know if that's achievable by, uh. conventional means. and if that's the case, if chara were to just gain LOVE by killing...it would just be 20."

He snorts a little. There's something that's both calming and existentially horrible to be able to quantify your own life. To know that there's an exact number for how much you're worth. Enough to make the jump from 19 to 20.

He won't say that out loud, though. That's way too morbid.

"so. for now, considering wonderland probably doesn't want something to exist that could break it to pieces...i'd say 20 is all this place would allow. it's enough to do a lot of damage. it's enough that there's no coming back after that."

He pauses.

"don't...tell chara about this. or...actually. if you want to, go ahead. won't ask you to keep a secret. i figure there's been too many of those. heh. though that's real hypocritical of me to say."

Reports. They remember those lines of dialogue, again and again and again and again from the moments where they faced him. Something about being able to track the timeline, the effects an anomaly has on it, and how it was somehow their fault. Or...Chara's fault? Or was it more of a result of the gestalt of the two of them, formed and fused together so irreversibly that they simply defied logic and basic explanation? How does someone chart something like that, and how do they keep track?

His hand paints an invisible line down his front. The place where a knife bisected the whole of him, maybe?

They're glad they can't ever remember getting that far.

"I'm not sure if they would be happy or upset that there's a limit," Frisk says after a pause laden with their own indecision. "I don't know if that'd make them kill more or...less, because there's no point."

Isn't that what they wanted, at the end? To kill, to keep absorbing that EXP and building their LOVE to catastrophic levels, so they could make humanity in this and every other timeline pay. Just...a mindless existential destruction upon everything for the sake of it, because nothing else matters to them. Or so they keep saying.

Back home, the anomaly was simply Frisk. Before that there was the flower, but the flower never brought about the sort of total end that the true anomaly did. Sans just assumed it was always Frisk, or just something that happened to look like Frisk. Here, well. Here he knows better.

He shrugs at the comment.

"everything has a limit. worlds, timelines, people. it's basic physics. something can't keep growing and growing forever. eventually something has to give. everything breaks down after awhile."

Entropy. Things slow down, break down, decay, end. It's just the natural order.

"heh. there's never really a point. even erasing doesn't have a point. they've said they want to erase themselves, but they can't. though i don't think they believe me." He polishes off his hot cocoa. "i'm pretty sure they hate me. it's kinda funny. you'd think it'd be the other way around. that i'd hate them and they just wouldn't care one way or the other about me."

He's not sure which he'd prefer. They might be less inclined to torment him all the time if they just didn't care. But "not caring" would mean they had enough LOVE not to feel something like hate anymore.

Yeah. The hate is probably for the best. It's not like the two of them are ever going to be friends.

"They say they hate a lot of things," Frisk says dubiously. But in this particular instance...well, this they suppose they could believe. They'd felt Chara's building frustration and rage at being stymied by a skeleton that should be, by all accounts, the easiest enemy.

They know Chara doesn't trust him, and it's pretty doubtful he trusts them in turn. Then again, that's fairly justified. There's a lot of baggage there, emotionally. A lot of attempts to kill one another. A lot of successes, and a lot of failures. And somewhere, in the midst of it, Frisk bounced between the two of them like an unknown variable. Until finally they reached the endpoint. The RESET. Things were different, but those were the consequences. Flowey scolded them for aborting their run, Toriel remembered their preference, Sans told them not to even bother fighting his brother with that hollow-eyed stare he usually reserved for his most intimidating moments.

Their cocoa's getting cold under their fingers, and they hasten to finish drinking it. It's good, rich and chocolate-y. Chocolate. Chara's favorite. They can't not think of that these days.

"You say everything ends. But...Chara didn't." There's that prickle of guilt again, at talking about someone who wouldn't appreciate being talked about, especially to Sans. "Even they don't know how they've managed to keep going. Why they're still here."

"heh. so i've noticed. they keep acting like they can't taste or feel anything. pretty sure it's not true."

In fact, he's almost certain that most of what Chara is is some kind of act or mask or facade. He has to wonder how much of it is conscious--how much of it is some kind of learned response to...to whatever their life must have been like, to lead a person to become like that.

As far as hating Sans is concerned, though, Sans knows that's genuine. Not that he can really blame them, all things considered.

"nah, i guess they didn't. and i doubt there's anyone who knows why they're still around. or why any of this keeps happening. but still. if something ends, then starts over, then it didn't really end in the first place. it just paused."

He doesn't know any more than Frisk does, or Chara. Not so surprising. They really are an anomaly, whether it's Chara or Frisk or the gestalt of the two of them. An unknown. An unpredictable variable.

"That's why they wanted to hold onto the Knife," they explain. "They told me it was kind of like...a reminder that they were alive. That they're not going to just disappear."

With Asriel gone, it really was one of the few anchors they had. That and the Locket.

"I think that whole...thing, with them still being here? I think that bothers them a lot more than they want to admit to anyone." Even Frisk.

Sometimes Sans actually does wish that he knew more. Most of the time he wishes in the opposite direction. Being stuck in between--able to remember some of it, but not all of it, everything always vague and hazy--it completely sucks.

"if you trust them with it, i'll trust your judgment."

He doesn't comment on Chara's need to...essentially feel real. Sans gets that. It doesn't need commentary from him.

It would be nice if their method of feeling real and grounded didn't involve a knife, though.

"yeah...it's...heh. i think people instinctively want some kind of...purpose or reason. something easy to define. world doesn't really work like that, though."

Shit just happens. You play the cards you're dealt. Try to make the best of it. Or try at least not to make the worst of it.

It'd be nice if it did. But if it did, where would Frisk end up? Their purpose was always malleable. They always had a choice. Did Chara ever? They don't get to affect their own story anymore. They only get a say in Frisk's ending.

"For now, I do." It feels good to say it aloud. "But the next event that starts to mess with us...I don't know. That's when things go wrong."

The gnomes. The LOVE. They're starting to wrack up quite a list of mishaps that can mostly be traced back to Wonderland's inopportune timing. But it's not as simple as that, and they know it.

"But I guess that can't be helped, can it?"

Maybe Frisk's purpose is to simply be unpredictable. To be an agent of change for the Underground, for better or worse. The seventh human, the seventh soul, the arbiter of their future. Sans knows now that Frisk didn't technically bring the barrier down, but that doesn't really change anything. Frisk's presence, no matter the timeline, changes absolutely everything.

As for Chara, well.

Everything would be so much simpler if it was just one timeline. If things ended when the barrier came down, if Asriel and Chara were finally allowed to rest permanently. It wasn't fair to anyone that those two don't get the sort of ending they require. But everything always Resets, and both of them go right back to wreaking havoc through the Underground.

"yeah, well." Sans props his chin in his hand. "that's the problem with these events. it's not just chara. everyone here can be a threat given the wrong sort of event. they can turn us into people we're not."

He sighs and shrugs.

"but yeah. just gotta deal with it."

"Is this...how it felt?" Frisk makes an uneven, scared little sound as their head sinks deeper into their shoulders. Ha-ha. That's their fault. Guilty as charged. "Going through everything Underground?"

Greeting them like an old friend, because they were, in a matter of speaking. Doing very little to affect the general narrative, because there's a script and everything's all rote, so why bother? Involving himself only when necessary.

Frisk doesn't think they have that kind of restraint. Or...apathy, or whatever it is. They'll throw themselves in harm's way in a heartbeat. And that's the problem.

He considers the question in silence for a minute, looking away from Frisk. He doesn't exactly like making them feel so guilty and nervous, but...

"kinda. i guess. this place is more unpredictable."

Any kind of event. Anything from a sudden influx of cats to everyone turning into an insane killer. In the Underground there was a set number of variables, based mostly on who Frisk interacted with and how.

He shrugs. "it's different when you're not sure what to be preparing for."

When it came to the end, it was always going to be one thing or the other--he would either fight the anomaly or not.

Frisk digests that quietly. That makes sense. The Underground had a lot of deviation to it, but ultimately it was a fairly linear path. The main variables that would change were who lived and who died, and the minute shifts in what Frisk would choose to say to someone else. Here, the possibilities are endless. The idea is both exhilarating and terrifying.

"Why you?" The question leaps out before Frisk can assess whether or not it's a good idea, and their face reddens consequently. "I mean - why were you always the one to explain EXP and LOVE to me? Was that...your job?"

He had that kind of awareness, they learned that by coming back again and again and whispering his..."codewords". But Asgore remembered that he killed them too, hadn't he? They wish there was a clearer picture of how this worked. But they're the one setting all the SAVEs, and they don't even understand it, so they can hardly expect someone else to.

It's probably a good thing that they're able to speak frankly with each other. Everything in the Underground was always layered with so much secrecy. He could never directly ask Frisk what they were doing, what they were planning, not at the risk of giving away what he knew and making himself a target before it was necessary. And likewise, Frisk couldn't ask questions like these, couldn't let on what they knew and what they were going through. It had to be difficult, learning that you could rewind time, could just go back and fix mistakes or escape consequences, skip ahead to see how things ended.

Would anyone else in the Underground really believe them? Did Frisk ever try to tell other monsters what was happening? In Sans's experience, telling people that you're sort of a time traveler doesn't really go over well.

"i sorta made it my job." No one asked him to. He'd had a few conversations with Asgore and with Alphys--he wasn't the only monster aware that something odd was happening. Sometimes he's pretty sure that Asgore in particular knew a lot more than he ever let on, but neither of them, none of them, ever explicitly remembered previous timelines.

"i guess i figured someone had to." He pauses, debating how much to say. "not every monster really understands how that all works. the average monster isn't gonna gain EXP or LOVE unless there's some kinda accident. or unless they go bad. most of us can raise our HP or ATK or such in other ways. heh. most of us."

Not Sans, of course.

"but all that stuff...it isn't widely known. you don't really need to know about it unless you're studying that sorta thing."

It's like how the average human doesn't know all the details of how their own bodies work.

Sans fidgets with his cocoa mug, turning it slowly.

"might make sense to tell you about all of it sooner. but...i dunno. always figured you had to make your own decisions. even in the best timelines, seems like you just make your own path. by the time i tell you what LOVE is you've either figured it out on your own or it's not relevant anymore. and telling you about it sooner...heh. always just seemed like tempting fate."

That would certainly be a quick way to switch a good timeline into a bad one. Tell the anomaly there's an easier way, that they can gain incredible power just by making a few moral compromises...it's not worth the risk.

It would be a lot simpler if Sans could get to the anomaly before anyone else did. By the time he meets Frisk, they've traversed the whole Ruins, have already made decisions as to where the timeline is heading. But even if he could be there the moment Frisk fell, he doesn't think it would matter. The other thing about the anomaly is that, for better or worse, no one can really tell them what to do. There's no point to Determination if someone is telling you exactly how to proceed, holding your hand the whole time.

LOVE is shared by little white friendliness pellets, says the flower that meets them at the beginning every time, a round and friendly face that had no reason to lie to them. And it wasn't a lie. In a lot of ways, that is exactly how LOVE was shared. Do monsters know the power of a *Check?

It took them a while to work out how much Sans actually did behind the scenes. The laziness, the laid-back air, the seeming inability to do any work whatsoever - all that would inevitably come crashing down by the time they rounded the final corner and entered the golden hall lined with pillars. Always seemed to know more than he should. Always seemed to show up when he was needed. Looking out for them on the best runs. Watching from afar on the worst.

"And nothing else changes," says Frisk, sitting back in their chair with a slump. That's what it is, to truly not be surprised by anything different anymore. The snow falls in exactly the same way. The puzzles are solved by script.

"Chara...seemed to know about LOVE before I did." Their eyebrows nestle down in another frown. "I don't know how. I guess...no one would."

The only person that would is gone now.

Checks are perhaps a little different for monsters, though Sans probably wouldn't be able to explain just how. Not when there's someone providing flavorful commentary every time Frisk met a new monster.

He shrugs again.

"it is what it is."

And they've already discussed all that at length, after all.

"maybe they learned it from the king and queen. or maybe they just figured it out after they died."

"Yeah." Frisk pushes their empty mug across the table. The first time they traversed the Underground, they couldn't have known the meaning of LOVE or EXP. But like every other rendition on that same theme, they don't get a free pass after their first encounter. They're owning up to it, piece by piece.

"Thanks," they say quietly, dropping their stare. "For, um...telling me about all this, I guess. I should've talked to you sooner. Before..."

Before Wonderland forced them to talk, and say all the worst things in the process.

"no problem. honestly..." He pauses and shakes his head, looking even more tired. "i should have just talked to you. before the event. before even coming here. back in the underground. heh. i'm so used to keeping secrets, you know? playing it safe."

And maybe in the Underground there's always going to be a reason to continue keeping those secrets. But here, all those reasons and excuses are starting to look...rather hollow.

you're not broken, just a little bit chipped 'round the edge [closed]

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