lostcarnival

The shape Foster's in is 'terrible.'

Fighting Sans was, objectively, a stupid idea, but his goal in that had never been to win. It hadn't even been to survive. It had simply been to make things harder, to push Sans, to test him--he owed Sans nothing less, after all!

Well. He had owed Sans nothing less.

To answer the question: he looks a bit like hot shit. Thanks to his own acquired mushi infection, one eye had grown over entirely with dull, dusky-purple shelf mushrooms, but those had been damaged in the aftermath; now it (and its mushrooms) was crusted over with a kind of dark ichorous blood. The other eye, still vampiric red, is raw and wet, but there's no sign he's been actively crying.

He has, however, been sitting with his forehead against the cool, moisture-smooth stone, the heel of one hand pressed hard into that exposed eye.

Psi startles him out of his deep, plunging memory-reverie, and he hunches his shoulders but doesn't actually look.

It's absurdly hard to concentrate. Twelve years old, right? He was twelve. How old are you in seventh grade? He can't figure out who Psi's voice belongs to for a second. It's obviously not Sophie.

Or the Ringmaster.

Not Sans.

Na--

No.

He just.... everything reminds him of something else, which reminds him of something else, and none of it feels like his, none of this is actually him, these memories don't feel like his. But they are his--? He knows they're supposed to be him! That was him! It's him! It isn't? Then who is he??

Oh--fuck. Right, the Psiionic.

"You're not... Sophie. Why are you here?" He doesn't take his head away from the wall.

It's a question Psionic isn't fully prepared to answer. Foster looks bad, but he doesn't look terrible. He has all his limbs, he wasn't an object or an animal. He could hear and talk and presumably see. Honestly, it's better than he was hoping for considering the Ringmaster had gotten involved. For a very brief moment he feels relieved. Then Foster speaks.

He doesn't move to look at the Psionic, but that's fine. His question has an edge of acquisition to it, but that's fine too. There's a lot he could say like, this is where stealing gets you, or something else trivial and snide, but even if he doesn't like Foster he doesn't want to kick someone while they're down. Not too hard anyway. He sighs, struggling to find the words for an answer that's more a feeling than it is any kind of logical reasoning.

"...I was worried... About you. I didn't know what happened."

Not the details anyway. He hadn't really wanted to ask the Ringmaster or Sans as he was sure whatever it was, it was going to be bad.

Worried.

Worried?

Foster's lone visible eye narrows, the corners of his mouth pulling down in disgust as he turns his back on the Psionic by way of response.

Worried.

The idea of someone worrying about him, especially after... that.... it makes his skin crawl. Now moreso... oh, God, he remembers so much. Way too much. He wants to crack himself against the wall, scrape his face off on the stone. People being invested in him, even hinting at it, makes him... he wants to disgorge his organs and choke on them. It's such a visceral revulsion and antipathy, there's no nonviolent expression of it. 'I was worried about you." It's less a sentence and more like an act of violence.

"I'd planned on being dead by now," is his reply. It's probably obvious that he's referring to his designs on Ginko and the carnival. It had been a suicide attempt, with the carnival his hostage. Ginko... the beneficiary of his will.

It's less obviously also about... existing, living in general. When he was twelve, the medical verdict was that he'd have made his final rapid decline by the age of twenty. Over time, that estimate, that haunted number was lost somewhere--his own attempts to project for his future, attempts to prophecy what he had left, to milk time itself for seconds and minutes to make something last, had scrambled everything up in all the rot and everything he was losing. But now he was twenty-five.

"So much for the hope that I'd get it over with."

He visibly flinches at the comment. He can't know what Foster's thinking. He doesn't know about memories his lost and now had returned. The only thing he has to go by are Foster's gestures and his words. Seeing the human turn away, he assumes he's mad. Foster's words only reinforce that judgement. Still it's not the anger that bites at him, it's the apathy.

The bored tone Foster used to comment on his life and lack of death, it said more to the Psionic than the meaning of the words themselves. He's more than intimately acquainted with the desire for things to stop, for someone else to end it because you're too unsure or too scared. He can only guess that's the reason Foster's still here.

The human in front of him was confusing. He did and said things that the Psionic didn't understand. Maybe Foster's feelings were completely different than what the Psionic assumed. He knew that could be a possibility, but how could he view Foster's situation through a lense other than his own? So he makes his assumptions, and those assumptions mean that he has been acting like a total piece of shit.

"I'm sorry I said that to you. I didn't... I thought you were just trying to look sympathetic."

Edited 2017-05-05 00:02 (UTC)

"No!" It's so strong it almost rings off the cold stone walls. Almost. "No!" He spits the word, expelling it forcefully from his body as one purges a poison, a parasite. He hunches tightly into the corner, simultaneously protecting himself from the limited light in the cave and abjuring the Psionic, with all the violence of his good intentions.

But not three seconds later, he turns on Psi, his sole visible eye burning wetly. If he wasn't angry before, he is now. But he's not yelling--he's laughing. Compulsively. Repulsively.

And how...!

"How disgusting--to curry sympathy for myself right before my death!" And now that it's out--

If only Foster weren't so reflexively conditioned to recoil and reverse on his own anger, perhaps Psi wouldn't be faced with hysteria instead.

It's hard to describe how distressing it is to see someone just start laughing completely unprompted. Especially after an angry outburst like the one Foster just had. It's confusing and upsetting and he'd really like it to stop.

"Why are you laughing?"

He wants to understand, he wants to believe the Ringmaster wouldn't force someone who is too sick to function properly to work under her. Then again, what did the Ringmaster understand about this kind of illness?

"Nothing about this is funny!"

Define 'properly.'

Foster would say he functions just fine--

"It is, though!" His being alive is a joke, and this--this right here is its punchline. He keeps laughing, saliva down his chin, losing his mind completely at Psi.

"So go ahead, hate me! Please--feel free! Hate me, hate me!! I'm trash! I'm garbage! You saw it, just hate me!!!"

He's split between the compulsive, uncontrollable hilarity and something that he can only guess is rage or--or something, something horrible, maybe even the urge to cry--except that last one is already impossible and he knows it.

He couldn't feel strongly enough for tears even when he wanted to. For it to happen now is--is--!!

He closes his eyes, because it's too upsetting too watch. Hearing that heaving laughter in the dark is too much though. In the end he simply looks away. It's as though Foster is having a complete and total breakdown. Psi doesn't really understand how any of his words would trigger something like that. He most definitely doesn't know how to fix it.

"I don't hate you! I just don't understand you!"

Foster is only seconds done with his outburst and he already hates it. Hates himself for it. For that... that. What kind of feeling was that? No.

Psi's reaction caught him off guard, but now that the temporary 'feeling' has evaporated, he's flooded with a different one, just as fleeting but no less unpleasant: absolute disgust. Not for Psi, no--but his eyes lid partway, going surface cold while his voice drops in contempt.

"Don't you think that's a bad idea?"

He doesn't understand him. Why would he even want to? Hasn't Foster made it clear enough that he's unpleasant by nature? That his very soul is nasty, untouchable and unattractive?

"If you're really trying to understand me and you don't hate me, then you're not doing a very good job."

Psi just scowls, so fed up with Foster's know-it-all condescension. Still, storming off won't accomplish anything. He doesn't even know what he wants to accomplish, but it isn't that.

"Maybe once I understand you I will hate you, but I'll decide that once I do."

He may have stopped laughing, but that doesn't make his mental (or 'emotional') state necessarily better. He's... shaky. Precarious. Unstable. He's still struggling to process the existence of a life, his unsuccessful dream of suicide, his failed attempt to grasp the ghost of meaning for his worthless existence.

Psi's desire to understand him is as contemptuous as it is frightening. Absurd. Incomprehensible--?! He wants to snap again, to--to break, but this time he can't even manage that. Whatever emotion is required for that kind of response is locked away now, as though it's on the far side of a chasm--ephemeral and concrete simultaneously, reachable by anyone but him.

"..... okay." It sounds... fake. Weak. What does Psi want him to say? Fuck you? He can't even manage that, honestly. He stares at Psi flatly for a moment. "....but there's nothing to understand."

He breaks eye contact, pressing the heel of his hand into his one visible eye--not to relieve the pain, but to focus on it.

Edited 2017-05-09 16:20 (UTC)

The sudden flat tone to his voice catches him off guard. He had expected Foster to argue more, or to begin laughing again. Instead all the Psionic gets is a look. It leaves him with a lot of aggression and no place to direct it. He closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath and then slowly letting it out, releasing his anger along with it.

There's nothing to understand. But there is. He's not sure if he's ever met someone as confusing or contrary. Surely there must be some reason for it, even if that reason only exists in Foster's own demented mind.

"Why do you think you're trash?"

He doesn't remove his hand from his eye--grinds it in deeper, pushing the pain into his nerve for relief. That punishing sensation of agony and relief.

"Because I am." How is that so difficult to understand? How much can he say it? How long will it take until the world acknowledges it? His voice strains, like even thinking about Psi's question is so onerous that--agghh, the light still hurts more than his hand.

"What do you do with trash except throw it out? Even if you haven't disposed of it yet, that's its destiny. It's something inherently nasty. It's already worthless."

He can hardly see any more?

"But what makes you worthless?" he asks with particular emphasis on the 'you.' He wants to understand Foster's thinking, not just be told the same thing over and over again.

Edited 2017-05-10 04:01 (UTC)

"I--what?" Foster is so absolutely blindsided by this question... his face is honestly pathetic. What does that mean, what makes him worthless? What... doesn't make him worthless? He's a volatile waste. A rotted mind waiting to be extinguished! A dead end, a waste of space! Born diseased, born rotting! His very existence is--

"......."

Oh.

He feels disgust.

"I'm just a disease."

The amount of contempt and loathing--self and otherwise--dripping from his words almost surprises even him. But there's a kind of excitement to it, remembering who and what he is. Affirming it. Asserting it. There's a sense of accomplishment that comes with that moment, the tangible effort of explaining the impossibly obvious. Whatever precarious sense of anguish--

He's smiling now.

"That's what I mean. There's nothing to understand."

Edited 2017-05-10 15:24 (UTC)

Psi frowns, rolling his eyes (not that anyone can tell).

"You say that like it will make sense to anyone but you." He throws his arm out as though to emphasize the amount of details Foster has yet to address. "How are you a disease? What do you do that is disease like?"

Just some sample questions pointing out the irritating vagueness of Foster's responses. He's grateful Foster is responding at all, but he wished the human could be a little more demonstrative in his explanations.

Edited 2017-05-10 17:11 (UTC)

Irritating vagueness?

There is no 'irritating vagueness.'

There is only the Psionic, hearing a collection of words coming out of Foster's mouth--answers to questions he asked--and not listening to them at all.

Which is--well, it's not the exact reason he received Psi's claim to want to understand him with such confusion, with such alarm and resentment--but it's less terrible to approach, so it is now. His dread of the inevitable. All he can remember now, and he remembers nothing but more of it, growing worse and worse and worse. This is what he hates... he hates talking to anyone, he hates it, he hates the results, he hates the process--

He buries one hand in his hair, trying to push his fingers back through it, and instead gets tangled in a knot of crusted blood.

"No. No! I'm just a disease! I'm just a disease! I am... just... a disease."

Both hands buried in his hair, clenched tightly with fistfuls of filthy blond locks--

He cannot say it any more literally! He always says exactly what he means, and no one ever hears it at all.

Edited 2017-05-12 03:32 (UTC)

"Well you don't look like one!" he says, voice raising in volume at least a bit. He wants to understand, really he does, but Foster is so difficult and so irritating. But he absolutely doesn't want anything like this to happen ever again. None of the people here should be trapped like this, in a cage. It made him sick.

"You can make your own decisions. Disease can't do that and it can't argue either."

It was stupid and pointless to get angry, he knew it. He knew getting emotional here was entirely counter-productive, and yet how could he help it knowing what Foster had done? He wasn't Signless with his infinite calm and patience no matter how much he wished he could be. He sighs resting his forehead against the cold metal bars and closing his eyes. He just wished there was a way he could understand.

One of the biggest problems Foster has with communication, besides everything, is honestly the vague, intuitive fashion by which other people navigate the process. He struggles enough to articulate things within himself; his thoughts are disorganised, language elusive. Ideas and concepts shift and warp.

Psi may not have meant to, but by antagonising him so specifically, he's actually helped Foster narrow down what he's trying to say, error by error.

"It's my brain. It's in my brain, the disease is in my brain!"

Everything you are is inside your brain; your thoughts, your feelings, the very concept of the self is in the brain. Everything you do begins first inside the brain; everything you've done or not done is stored inside a few pounds of fat and blood.

His brain is diseased; he's diseased. His brain is diseased; he is a disease. It's rotting, he's rotting, rotted--

Anger is fine, anger is good! He can take anger! He wants Psi to raise his voice louder, to escalate this, to grab him by the throat and slam him to the stone floor, where he can only choke out broken syllables past the saliva and claws.

Then he could say what he really thinks, he could think and speak clearly at last--!

"Having a disease doesn't make you a disease." he says back, not with the shouting of before but looking just as irritated.

"You have to at least know that much."

"Wrong."

He's talking with his hand covering his one eye, his head tilted back so the back of his skull is pressed against the hard, smooth stone, saliva flecking his lips, wetting his chin. His fingers are cracked over his eyes, just enough to let the light in--not to see by, no, but to hurt.

"Oh, people have diseases. People are born! They're alive! You were born you." Foster knows nothing about trolls. But the manner of Psi's entry into the world wouldn't change his argument in the slightest. "They thought I was me. I thought I was me. That I was born normal. Born healthy. That I was going to be alive! But they were wrong. I was born rotting--born dying. And when they were growing up, were reaching their full potential, I--

I--!"

It all comes bubbling up to the surface. Not like a living creature, but like the deadly gasses of an undersea vent, rising in silent premonition of death.

"I was lied to."

Anger--real, cold, ugly anger flashes its teeth for the briefest second. Then suddenly he's backpedalling away from it again--retreating, talking faster; as though the more he talks, the further away from that feeling he can get. They lied to him, they lied to him and wasted him, his entire life, his entire chance, and now--

Even now--

"I told you--I know you can't understand! I know! But don't lie to me. I know what I am! I know what I'm like. There's no difference! When you talk to me, you're talking to a disease. When you touch me, you're touching the body of a disease. Don't fucking lie."

He doesn't know what Foster is talking about. There's too much, to many words that have so much meaning to the human that don't mean anything to the Psionic. He doesn't know about human diseases or rotting or who lied about what. He at least knows though, that he isn't a liar, and if that's what he has to focus on to continue this conversation he will.

"I'm not lying." he says the last word spit through his fangs. Foster's emotional display is effecting him, making him tense whether he understands the reasons for the feelings or not. He feel's like he's cornered a wild animal, and it's chosen to fight for it's life rather than flee.

"Lots of people have diseases, that does not make you a disease, it's just... It's just logic! Common knowledge! Fact!! Disease is caused by something, people don't have a cause."

Edited 2017-05-24 01:18 (UTC)

"Shut up!!" Foster snaps suddenly, commandingly--his teeth bared right back. It's a rare act, so transparent, so defensive, so borderline hostile that it's outright uncharacteristic. And it's gone in a flash--a flash of white, that is, of prehistoric teeth, before his mouth clamps shut, jaw clenched against a fleeting emotion, his face fixedly impassive.

Psi is more correct than he knows. Foster feels cornered, feels that wild animal pain and anger and fear, Psi's impatience backing him further and further into the corner until he's trapped there, trapped in a place he can no longer give up in, not any more.

"I....." Psi asked for answers and Foster's given them. But they're the wrong answers, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Every answer he gives will be wrong because he's wrong, his disease is wrong--

Every reaction is wrong. You are not responding properly to the situation.

And then, suddenly, with a flash of clarity, of viciousness, of farcical hilarity and divergent anger, he understands why.

Psi doesn't want Foster's answers at all. Psi wants answers that fit his reality. He wants answers to make him feel better--because he is afraid.

It suddenly makes sense.

Truth, reality, are not absolute--not concrete, not stable. An honest answer will never satisfy Psi, because his truth is too unpalatable, it simply cannot be digested. Because there is no truth in Foster that is not riddled in rot, not soaked in his own blood. There is no state of mind free from it, no freedom of thought in the face of disease. That's what's so horrifying--so appealing--so grotesque. Its power is the power to consume. How frightening! How disgusting! How... how....

"You say you don't understand, but you do. You just don't want to. Or maybe you can't. But I... I've deserved every awful, horrible, wretched, miserable thing that's ever happened to me! Even this--no, especially this!" He leans forward, one visible eye glinting, his breathing ragged, saliva wet on his lips. "That's all you need, right? To know that it's not unjust? To know you're safe! Something like this... could never happen to you!"

Is he smiling?

He's smiling.

That's normal.

"I was born dead, and I will either die rotting or live forever. It's all been planned."

The way he shouts, pulling his lips back to show his teeth, it's such a surprisingly troll like display that it forces the Psionic to step back. There's no hissing growl and there are no horns angled the Psionic's way. Still, despite the cage that's separating them, it's abundantly clear that Foster views Psionic as a threat and that is startling.

But why?! What threat do his words present? what is he doing that is making Foster feel as though his very survival is at risk!? If questioning Foster's logic pushed him to this level of anxiety... Was there something about him being a disease that he viewed as integral to his very being? If his brain was the part of him that was sick it made a sort of sense that he would view the sickness as an identity. A person's mind was the source of their thoughts, of their contagiousness, in a sense a persons mind was their very identity.

But having a disease just didn't make you a disease and why would anyone want that to be a part of their own identity? Some parts of a person they were born to, others they constructed as the result of their experiences. Which was this? A construction, some kind of sheild? Or was it just innate. Did it even matter? Could it be both?

Foster's words shake him from his thought process. The look on his face as he watches Foster happily explain how he deserves this, a mixture of fear and pity. It's terrible that someone could live this way. Maybe Psi really can't understand, but if that's the case it's only because he really doesn't know anything about Foster. And it's now clear to the Psionic that this just isn't a way he can learn about him. He needed to do something else.

He watches Foster as the silence lingers between them. He has no idea what to say. He wishes he could say something to make this better, but he fears everything he could say would only make things worse. It's as though Foster spoke a completely different language than him, there's no way he could attempt to communicate with the human without also risking making some sort of grave offense. It was frustrating, it was frightening. What would Signless do?

"...I'm sorry to have upset you."

JAIL

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This icon's keywords whoops

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SORRY ITS SHORT

I actually never thought he'd make this connection himself, thanks Psi

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Self-defence, feat. Foster getting crazier instead of getting mad

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