lostcarnival | ⇨ HOME AGAIN

Entry tags:

⇨ HOME AGAIN

Who: Anyone!
When: Day 68 - Day 72
Where: Carnival grounds.
What: Everyone makes it back to the carnival after their adventure in hell. The Ringmaster makes a new lake to celebrate, apparently.
Warnings: A notable absence of torture.

TO HELL AND BACK↴

The rescuers and the liberated captives will emerge from the portal like bats out of hell. Much like their previous return, this arrival will be met with a flurry of medical activity as everyone gets their injuries seen to, particularly those that had been held prisoner within Morningstar's hell fortress. It will still be night when they arrive, and the rest of Day 68 will be clouded over completely, for the benefit of the new vampires as they get settled in. After the immediate panic is dealt with, the Ringmaster will disappear into the forest until the morning of Day 69. It will be raining off and on during her absence.

► RECOVERY: Unlike the last time, the Ringmaster will be supplying the carnival workers with some healing potions from her private hoard, given that most of the healers are already wounded or spent. Damage caused by iron poisoning will not be cured by healing magic or healing items though, unfortunately, and those who have spent a lot of time in contact with iron will take at least a week to fully recover. However, regular healing remedies like bandages and herbs may help speed things along if the patient is suited to them.

► A BRAND NEW LAKE: On the morning of Day 69, the Ringmaster will return the forest to announce that she's built a new lake into the carnival grounds, only a short trail's distance from the backyard. Unlike most of the forest, this area won't just lead you in circles when explored, meaning that it can actually be modified and developed as the workers see fit. The water is always clean and just the right temperature for swimming, though it gets a bit cooler the deeper you swim. At the far side of the lake, there is a warm, stone pathway leading up the side of the mountain, that will eventually take you to some bangin' hot springs. Brought to you mostly because the Ringmaster doesn't know how to say sorry with actual words. At least it gives you something to play with while you try to shake off the trauma.

► FRUITS OF VICTORY: On Day 70, all the workers who came to hell for the rescue mission will be given a gift from the Ringmaster. Each of them will receive a bright green, glowing seed, about the size of your thumbnail. She will tell you that, when planted, the seeds will swiftly grow into a small citrus tree, which will grow fruits with regenerative properties. More details about these plants will be written up in a separate post, but for now your characters can ogle them and decide if they are going to plant them or not.

► TAKE ME TO CHURCH: Staring on Day 71, the Ringmaster will be starting to work on removing the vampirism from those infected with it, which apparently involves a lot of... meditation? She will take the newbie vampires out into a shady area of the forest and encourage them to look inside themselves and attempt to separate themselves spiritually from their demonic beasts. How well you character masters her teachings over time will determine whether or not she is ultimately capable of stripping out your demon soul and returning you to life. Of course, not all demons are made equal, and some will be more difficult to separate than others...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What an excellent domino chain of comfort. Papyrus providing the dog with comfort, the dog providing Sans with comfort... or at least trying to, which was the important thing! With these thr---these two here, also helping, Papyrus wouldn't need to choose between his carnival job and his familial job.

"It certainly was. Really, going to help was the least I could do. After I first failed to rescue you..."

Papyrus wipes at his skull, which somehow got a little sweaty in this conversation, and glances away himself. Without Sans leading the way with bad jokes and obfuscation, it's somehow harder to know how to proceed here. Especially with such a difficult, painful topic, where dwelling on it won't do anybody any good... but, he thought, they weren't just not saying things anymore. What was he supposed to do?

What a question. Be himself, of course.

"Well, that couldn't stand! Much better that you be here, where it's much less bad."

Actually saying thing. Right. What a novel concept. He's having an especially difficult time with it at the moment - while usually he chooses not to say things, right now he doesn't feel like he even can. He can't think of any words. It's too painful.

Papyrus had no hope of rescuing him in that initial situation, and he could say as much. But does he really want to minimize his brother's agency like that? He doesn't know.

"Is that... demon kid alive?" he asks, hesitantly. He remembers chewing on him a few times. "I don't remember anything from, uh... after my head exploded, I guess."

He sounds like he's going to leave it there, but then something else rolls through.

"Look, I should have said something about that spell sooner. I didn't... I guess I didn't think it'd blow up in my face like that."

A first sad attempt at a joke. He tried. He hates feeling like he's leaving Papyrus hanging.

It's awful, and it's morbid, and it reminds them both of things they'd rather not think about, but... Papyrus can't help but snort, and grin for a second, anyway. Not least of which because the joke is a sign of normalcy, or trying, which is really just as important.

"To your first question: yes, everybody else got back alive. Everybody!" Like he said before, but maybe it's hard to follow along so soon after sleeping so long. One irritation-free repeated answer per fight coma. "If the demon kid is the one who stabbed th--your head... then yes. Rin's fine."

He moves back into his chair while he gives Sans a chance to take that in, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"I still haven't wrapped my head around it. That was you in the woods! What kind of spell gives you a second body around your body??"

Sans looks at Papyrus, sort of baffled for a moment. Then, his grin cautiously widens. Papyrus has always been blessed with the ability to misinterpret just about anything.

"It was shapeshifting," he clarifies, with the vaguely academic tone he gets when he legitimately tries to explain something, usually in small doses. "It's just that it takes a lot more dust to make a monster that big, instead of a monster this big." He gestures at his diminutive self. "So, when I don't have enough magic to maintain it anymore..."

He shrugs a shoulder.

"What's left over turns to dust, and what isn't turns back into me."

It's a gift, and a curse. Nonetheless, Papyrus nods along to Sans' explanation, understanding enough to get that Lambert's idea of the whole situation had been more accurate than his own... and one inescapable detail.

"So, I was walking around in your dust... That's pretty disturbing." Walking in anybody's dust was bad enough, but it was to get Sans. And, he'd figured, if the giant wolf could come back from the dead once, it could surely do so again.

"Does that happen every time you shapeshift? I don't know if I can handle... sweeping all that up. Or just disposing of the dust like it's any other mess. But how do you have a funeral, if the person's still alive? What a conundrum."

Papyrus loses track of watching Sans' expression, too busy talking to himself about these important questions.

Edited 2017-03-29 02:18 (UTC)

"Yeah, actually," Sans admits, putting his fist to his mouth as if he's coughing awkwardly. He's sort of gotten over it by now. It was pretty eerie the first few times, but he's since come to regard it more scientifically than emotionally.

"It usually just kind of... blows away or something. When I do it in the woods." Which he has, plenty of times. He pauses, his thoughts flashing back to when the vampires has shot him the first time, and then when Rin had put a blade through his skull. As Papyrus is distracted, Sans starts to look and feel sort of dizzied. He puts as hand to his skull as New bumps their nose against him in concern.

"It was... a pretty bad idea. All of this."

It's taking some time to sink in, but there it is. Even though he's theoretically safe, all of this still happened. And there's no excuse for it.

Edited 2017-03-29 04:00 (UTC)

Puzzling over those questions makes him miss his brother's dizzy spell, New's concern. But that tone of voice, that admission, those stand out too much. Papyrus peers at him again, knowledgeable enough to be suspicious.

"All of... what? Tousling with vampires, sure. But, I suspect... that's not what you mean."

If he means all of this, being in the Carnival at all, then... Will Sans try to go back, home away from all this, and risk losing his memory of all this stuff in the time loop?

Papyrus shivers, and readies himself to put on a brave face if his brother says anything like that. It might take a lot longer, but somehow he'll find a way. Even if it's just him searching!

It's both not what Sans means and is also sort of what he means, simultaneously. Mostly, Sans is confused and increasingly frightened. Blue tinted sweat is already forming on his skull, making it more obvious than it would have been otherwise, and he keeps running his hand over the surface of his skull in some kind of nervous gesture.

Even though he just got up, he feels kind of like passing out all over again. Anything that would let him avoid this feeling for just a bit longer. But Papyrus is here, and he can tell Papyrus notices and expects something to be wrong, but...

His arms move to wrap around his chest, like a full body cringe at something he's imagined. Or remembered.

"I gotta go check on something," he says weakly, a half formed excuse which comes across more like a plea. He feels like he's starting to break down, and he desperately doesn't want to do that here.

"What? Right now? Um, okay..." Papyrus glances around them, noting where his things are. Nothing essential, nothing he can't come back to get, when Sans looks like he might teleport out of sight the moment his brother really turns away.

He pushes himself back to his feet, and tries to smile reassuringly. At least the height difference between them is back to normal, that's... something.

"How about, I come with you? Two sets of eyes are better for checking on... things."

"That's cool," Sans will wheeze, only really managing to get up with the support of the two dogs that are getting up with him. They whimper in confusing and concern, sensing the stress in their master's mental state. It's difficult for a dog to process.

He wants to teleport, absolutely, but his magic still feels unfocused, and he's so damn tired. He more or less just ends up teetering out of the tent in a daze, not so much walking with Papyrus as he is just wandering away without objecting to Papyrus following.

As soon as the prying eyes of the central carnival are gone, Sans starts to crumbled completely. He staggers back down onto his knees, his arms wrapped around his rib cage, a hand pressed over his mouth. His bones start shaking worse, and he doesn't have anything he can say.

The dogs are intent on helping shield Sans from the world, or maybe Sans is intent on hiding from the world and they're helping. Either way, Papyrus barely starts to offer a hand before they're hobbling up and out. He follows a short distance behind, looking around and listening for some hint of what exactly they're checking... and they don't get all that far.

"S-Sans..." He crouches down, reaching a hand to rest on his brother's shoulder. Collapsing and rattling, in the open like this... If Sans did this back home, it was more in the privacy of his own room.

"Would you like to be somewhere else? Like, your trailer? Or mine??"

Lambert isn't in there all that often either, and he'd probably leave if it was an emergency. Which, this might be.

His head is starting to swim, which actually makes him more cooperative than he might have been otherwise. He's not capable of over thinking this when his thoughts are just starting to scream with wordless anxiety and shame.

He doesn't know where he's going or how to get there. So when Papyrus asks, he nods numbly, staring straight ahead like he's barely recognizing that his brother is there.

"Yeah."

New looks up at Papyrus and circles around to stand beside the younger skeleton, nosing at Sans's shoulder. Apparently they would be eager to do this themselves if they were more bipedal.

So they would. Well, at least that offers an idea of how Sans has been getting along, without his supporting and inspirational brother around. The dogs following him around instead, tugging him out from the worst situations.

"That was a yes to a question where, yes wasn't really an answer," Papyrus starts to say, complaining reflexively, before remembering the current situation. "Uh, but that's okay! I suspect you'd like to go to yours."

He wraps an arm around Sans, available for holding, leaning on, or even being picked up with. Just like particularly roudy nights at Grillby's, and carrying his hungover brother home. Just like that. Except with vampires and hell and temporary comas.

They better figure out some way to fix the time loops back home, because the occasional thought that they might not are awful. Sure, as Papyrus he can simply brush those ideas back to the needlessly doubtful depths where they belong, but the fact that they keep rising in the first place...

Sans interacts with Papyrus's attempt to support him like he doesn't really know what limbs are for. He tries to stand but falls weak at the knees, nausea filling him as he turns himself around and clutches at Papyrus's arm as if he's desperately hanging from some kind of precipice.

"Ngh..." The spines raise beneath his shirt again, and the fingers of his grasping hand will crack as they abruptly grow longer and sharper. His whole body is tense, and his tail thrashes with the flood of anxiety.

"God," is all he can manage, and there are tears at the edges of his sockets. "Oh god."

Papyrus jolts at the sudden cracking sound and scratching of claws on his arm, looks and stares at they visibly grow. That sounds and looks painful. The crystals grew over a few hours, and they itched something fierce for a day or two. Speeding up that feeling, he doesn't particularly want to imagine what that'd be like.

"H-hey, Sans? Are you with me?" He pats his brother's arm with his spare hand, crouching down to see him better. "Is this... your spell? There's no need for that, is there? You're already tired out."

Sans gaze finally levels on Papyrus face, and the lights of his pupils seem to focus for a moment - enough to take in what's actually happening. Papyrus's words are the only thing that clue him into what's actually happening, what he's actually beginning to do... it catches him off guard, and he pulls his cracking hand away from his brother's arm, clutching it close to his chest.

He's never done this by accident before. The idea only panics him further, with memories of what had happened before. The idea of taking on that form and losing his mind are too closely wound, and he can't separate them. It terrifies him.

"Sorry," he manages, back to shivering. "I didn't... meant to. She..."

His shoulders shake with a sudden sob, and it arrives so suddenly. He hates what he's feeling as much as he'd hated those iron chains.

"She's dead," he reminds himself. "She's dead."

Papyrus hovers, not sure what's going on or what to say. Again. This is getting to be a pattern. No wonder Sans' first response was to hide and say I'm different, I'm not who you remember, or something like that. Trying to pretend they're the same people they were years ago, as if these awful things that they'd never lived through underground aren't coming up... Sometimes, it just makes him feel so helpless.

He shakes his head at his own thoughts. Feeling like he can't fix his brother, that's nothing new! Sans has always kept secrets, even ones that seemed to hurt him, selfishly refusing to let anyone help. But feeling helpless, that's a completely different and unrelated thing! Helplessness is thinking he can't do anything. And the great Papyrus, now temporary king because so many people recognized his greatness, can do a whole lot of things! The question is whether those things will have the effect he wants, and that, there's never any guarantee! Feeling helpless because he can't control the outcome... What a joke. He can control himself into continuing to try.

"I don't mind! If you need claws, then I'm of no mind to stop you," Papyrus offers. "But it would be a lot easier to comfort you, if I knew which 'she' you mean."

He'd been mostly speaking to himself in feverish worry, so being asked for clarification gives him a pause. He look up at Papyrus, trying to focus - its a good thing that skeletons don't need to breathe, or he'd by hyperventilating right now. The surges of magical energy in his body are being distracting in a similar way.

"There was a vampire," he says, trying to piece together his thoughts quickly enough to articulate them. "She got into my head - I couldn't stop myself."

With all the things he'd lost in his life, bodily autonomy was one of the few things he felt as if he'd maintained control over. He was unappealing, he was fragile, but his body was his and he'd had some degree of power over it.

In hell, he'd lost that completely.

Papyrus can at least see the alarming brightness of his eye lights, the way Sans keeps talking in a way he ordinarily never would. Something isn't right here, on top of the obvious, that much is clear.

"Ohh. I think I understand that. She tried to mess with all of us... If she had longer, she might..."

Well, she might have done to the rest of them exactly what she did to Sans. Aside from the whole pushing him to transform, and be big and scary and almost unrecognizable, thing.

"Lambert didn't like that. She's very dead now."

His gaze falls away from Papyrus's, the shame finally catching up with him. The way that statement makes him feel is humiliating - a mixture of relief, anger, and terrible loss. Loss for what, he wonders? Nothing he had felt had been real.

He folds down over his knees and Times whimpers, bumping his shoulder. He stays folded up.

"I know," he manages, finally. "I felt it. It was my fault."

The last part slips out like a compulsion, those feelings of desperate need overwhelming him even though he's technically free of her control. It sounds like his abuser being stopped is something he actually feels guilty for.

Guilt and regret that someone's dead, regardless of how they'd hurt him... Papyrus just sorta nods to himself. It makes sense to him, to feel like that... even if Sans is beating himself up about it more than he needs to. But that's Sans for you; in public he laughs off everything, and in private he's always hurting himself in ways that make it harder to do anything.

"It's too bad, we couldn't convince her to be friends," he says, as if that was why Sans is sad. "But... she just wanted to hurt people. It was hard enough, keeping those guys from killing everybody."

He'd probably feel friendship for the the human even if he could remember them killing him.

Papyrus's words fill him with an immediate revulsion - a feeling of dread and disgust that makes him physically recoil. It's a flood of emotional in direct conflict with his feelings of regret and longing towards her presence, a sense of nostalgia that fills him with desire and simultaneously memories of the terrible fear of being completely unable to stop someone from having their way with you bodily and spiritually.

That conflict makes it so hard for him to explain to Papyrus what's wrong. It makes it impossible to describe how badly that rationale hurts him, and how much it reinforces the bad thoughts he's been having already. Papyrus still doesn't understand. He was trying so hard to make the words come out and Papyrus still doesn't understand. He doesn't understand anything about him!

Along with a flash of irrational anger, he's left with a feeling of utter loneliness. No one understands what he tries to tell them and nothing he says makes a difference.

"No," Sans snaps - frustrated, desperate. He doesn't want her anywhere near him. He doesn't want anything from that place near him. New growls at Papyrus, sensing Sans distress and interpreting it as a threat that Papyrus is ostensibly causing. Times just sinks down against Sans's side hopelessly.

"Huh??" Papyrus exclaims, confused and surprised. The growling, the snapping, the dejected slouching...

It's funny, but Sans and those dogs never seem out of tune, never in conflict like most people sometimes get. Like he and Sans are getting right now... Guess that kind of synchronicity's what happens when they're with him all the time, or something. But he can take a hint when it's in size 80, underlined and lit on fire.

"Okay, no." Something's bothered his brother, right after Papyrus spoke. Nothing he said was hurtful, which could only mean... "I misunderstood something?"

His blue eye is starting to glow more brightly, the tingle of his magic in the air. It's much weaker than it would be, any other time - all of the energy he'd reserved was wasted when he'd been transformed. It probably wouldn't even be capable of affecting much, in this state, but the aura of it clings to Sans and all of their surroundings - that familiar, blue magic.

He can't stop thinking about what she did to him. Now that its all back on his mind, it doesn't feel like it'll ever go away.

"She..." The words come out, staggered and forced. "She..." One of the tears building around his sockets finally plummets, and he presses his palm over the eye, like he's trying to force it back in.

He tries to teleport, and what would normally be such a simple and familiar trick flares up and burns out uselessly. A final expenditure of effort, his head swims, and he pitches forward into the dirt.

Well, shit.

"Oh my god, Sans," Papyrus protests, crouching down to check that his brother hasn't hurt himself by topping over like that. "You just woke up from... falling down! What are you trying to use magic for? ...You can't even hear me, can you."

He huffs a sigh, gathering his brother into his arms, and looks around. They'd already been going towards the trailers, so should he finish that, or bring Sans back to the medical tent? While it makes sense for sick and injured people to be in the medical tent, it didn't seem to be helping Sans. With how disoriented and scared he'd been, waking up, maybe somewhere familiar would be better. He might be less likely to do aggressive, energy-exhausting things on waking up in his own bed. Maybe.

...Honestly, who even knows. Papyrus sure doesn't. What's going on with his brother anymore is a mystery to everyone. But somebody's got to make the call.

Nodding decisively to himself, like it helps his confidence to hear his internal narration describe it as decisive, Papyrus strides toward the supervisor's grove... Towards the familiar mystery of Sans and Amethyst's trailer.

He isn't supposed to go in there and clean, so maybe... he shouldn't stick around? But aren't you supposed to have somebody watching when you're sick? What a headache. Maybe he'll luck out, and Amethyst will be in there.

⇨ HOME AGAIN

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