This tirade, this anger with Papyrus for all he doesn't know, for all he's chosen not to know or find out or deal with... It's much, much too familiar. Much more real than the shrugging, napping illusion encountered the other day.
There's a family resemblance, and memories of arguments, people simmering with complaints that he'd cheerfully choose to believe what he likes instead of doing something more worthwhile, like learning all he can. Achieving something. It stings, it hurts. It's the kind of anger out of fear for another's wellbeing, painful-but-caring words that he hardly ever hears anymore... held back too long, and thrown like a gauntlet at his face.
And then. That human.
Papyrus flinches back, taking a half-step away before he catches himself. There's no question which human Sans means. The second human, the one Papyrus never met, whose sighting heralded some of the worst days of his life, and certainly the worst of his reign. Months and months of work and worry, striving and encouraging, making a bright visisble example of himself doing things, in the face of so many who didn't even muster the effort to smile anymore. Those last couple days, when he'd finally heard genuine cheering and sincere hope again, what he'd worked so hard to rekindle... but. It came, not from happiness but, from monsters who cheered for him to murder somebody. And then, hiding in the garden, where nobody else would come to pressure him, hoping for an escape... until the way to the carnival showed up.
"How do you...? Even the reflections don't know about that!" he blurts out, already realizing the answer as he speaks. Papyrus hardly mentioned it to anyone, save the Ringmaster when they made his bargain. Sans, who didn't even mention Papyrus until he showed up, surely wouldn't have told anybody. Another simulacrum Sans shouldn't know anything about the last human.
...But Sans would know. This is his brother, changed by changed employment and some terrible new freedom (?) to be unkind.
"You... you don't say things like this to me. You never have!" Even as he says that, it sounds and feels false. "Except, except... when you were an angel. When you... weren't my brother."
His tail, already drooped as low as it can go, curls itself around his ankle and hides a slight tremble in the folds of his pants. He clenches his hands, holding his arms crossed and digging phalanges into sleeves. Confusion and shame are terrible feelings, and it's so much easier to push around them with anger.
"Is that why you're with the Prince now? You're angry with me?!"
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There's a family resemblance, and memories of arguments, people simmering with complaints that he'd cheerfully choose to believe what he likes instead of doing something more worthwhile, like learning all he can. Achieving something. It stings, it hurts. It's the kind of anger out of fear for another's wellbeing, painful-but-caring words that he hardly ever hears anymore... held back too long, and thrown like a gauntlet at his face.
And then. That human.
Papyrus flinches back, taking a half-step away before he catches himself. There's no question which human Sans means. The second human, the one Papyrus never met, whose sighting heralded some of the worst days of his life, and certainly the worst of his reign. Months and months of work and worry, striving and encouraging, making a bright visisble example of himself doing things, in the face of so many who didn't even muster the effort to smile anymore. Those last couple days, when he'd finally heard genuine cheering and sincere hope again, what he'd worked so hard to rekindle... but. It came, not from happiness but, from monsters who cheered for him to murder somebody. And then, hiding in the garden, where nobody else would come to pressure him, hoping for an escape... until the way to the carnival showed up.
"How do you...? Even the reflections don't know about that!" he blurts out, already realizing the answer as he speaks. Papyrus hardly mentioned it to anyone, save the Ringmaster when they made his bargain. Sans, who didn't even mention Papyrus until he showed up, surely wouldn't have told anybody. Another simulacrum Sans shouldn't know anything about the last human.
...But Sans would know. This is his brother, changed by changed employment and some terrible new freedom (?) to be unkind.
"You... you don't say things like this to me. You never have!" Even as he says that, it sounds and feels false. "Except, except... when you were an angel. When you... weren't my brother."
His tail, already drooped as low as it can go, curls itself around his ankle and hides a slight tremble in the folds of his pants. He clenches his hands, holding his arms crossed and digging phalanges into sleeves. Confusion and shame are terrible feelings, and it's so much easier to push around them with anger.
"Is that why you're with the Prince now? You're angry with me?!"