⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 178 - B1: Day 6
Where: The Carnival and sometimes on top of the Heart of Stone.
What: Now that the Prince is dead and gone, there's a lot left to sort out. As the remaining servants are liberated and those captured by the Prince are tended to, it's time for recovery and goodbyes.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

HOME GROUND↴ At long last, it is over. The Prince is dead, and all of his stolen Names have been restored - all that's left to do is treat the wounds and move on. For the first day or two, the Ringmaster will be arranging passage for the servants that are left, all of which have remembered their names for the first time in years. The earth elemental that had been trapped and forced to serve as the Prince's manor, the Heart of Stone, is happy to help for the moment. It appreciates the Ringmaster's mercy, and is free after untold eons of imprisonment. Yet, there are plenty of aspects that are far from simple. There are still servants left mad and transformed into beasts, with no easy way to change them back. The Prince's spells outlive him, and those bearing his poison and his curses will have a difficult road ahead of them. Though most of the bestial servants have been rounded up, and a large number that had been reduced to unmoving statues returned, even the Ringmaster can't return them to normal so simply. The next week is for rest and for settling remaining affairs. If you want to bid farewell to any particular NPCs, or assure care is given where it's needed, now is the time to do it. ► A CURE: The Ringmaster will tell everyone simply - there is no simple way to undo another fae's magic. The Prince's powers were essentially on par with hers, which means that those who have been transformed to stone and those that were cursed into beasts and driven insane are not something she can trivially fix. It will take the work of the carnival and a couple weeks of treatment to shed the curse of stone, and the maddened servants are an entirely separate matter. She will do what she can, but for the most part she is arranging for the Prince's servants to be cared for elsewhere. At least for now, the Ringmaster will be animating the stone portions of people's bodies with magic, though those portions will still be a bit clumsy and numb feeling. ► THE NEW HEARTSTONE: In the absence of the prince, the Heart of Stone will be taking over the remains of the Prince's realm and preventing it from collapsing into void. As it turns out, the manor had been an earth elemental all along - a form of Wyld Fae almost on par to the Prince and Ringmaster themselves. How the Heart of Stone was enslaved is a long story presumably, but the Ringmaster considers it to be a sign of the Prince's own depravity. The Heart will be allowing visitors for the first couple days of this period through the portal, but keep in mind you are essentially just walking around on its body. At least the realm has a floor, now, instead an endless abyss surrounding it.

Comments

[osteothropy]

Papyrus's answer... well, it's more or less what he would expect, from his brother. Avoiding directly talking about the things that must have eaten away at him personally - Papyrus never liked acknowledging or internalizing other people's insults or critique. Even if saying that it didn't matter at all was probably ingenuine.

Sistina, though, she doesn't hold back. It catches him off guard for a moment, until he remembers. With Helvetica, she tended to just say whatever Sans was thinking, in plainer terms. While she was probably less emotional than Sans at the end of the day, she also had basically no filter. Whereas Sistina... she seems worried in a way that Papyrus would never dwell on.

She has a question he doesn't really know how to answer. The fact that it hurts a little to hear is obvious, as he flinches slightly. Not because it's uncalled for, but having that inner anger reference as something that could hurt people. As true as it probably is, it's not how he wanted to think of himself.

"I don't want you to leave," he says quietly, making it plain for both of them to hear. Yet, at the same time, he doesn't look at them as he says it. "It's just..."

He spends a long moment trying to phrase it, even gesturing with a hand like he's about to begin some grand explanation, but it never comes. Instead, his soul throbs with despair.

"It wasn't... how I really felt. But... it's all rooted in something, y'know?" His attempt at lightening the tone just results in him smiling in a way that looks more pained than happy. "What I said about... about our dad..."

Even saying it out loud seems to hurt him, when it's been locked away so long. A confession he never thought he'd make.

"He's really gone. And I couldn't bring him back. No matter what I did. No matter what I tried. I just... couldn't do it."

[spaghettimonster]

"Oh." Sistina stills her fussing, moves enough to watch Sans out of the corner of her eye. It's not exactly an answer to what she asked, either, to what they could do to help him not be cruel again. But... his answer is to describe a kind of lonely helplessness.

And they know a feeling like that.

Papyrus has failed to get answers from Sans for so long, and largely given up on it, to focus on the help he could give. He knew he knew too little to know what to ask, and all his attempts seemed to get dismissals and jokes and false reassurances. That helplessness, that distance...

Sans accused them of choosing to be ignorant and abandon him to pain, and it'd been a shocking hurt, but hadn't they? One of the parts that rang really true, the part he's been waiting days to try to remedy, was: he'd never asked about their father, their unusual family structure. Other things, mundane complaints and questions, to a degree. But not that one.

Papyrus feels the wet prickles of sweat and shame, and looks away away from his brother. Glances around the increasingly familiar mess, settles on looking back at Sistina. She slowly nods, and he gathers words to confess some things.

"I had... no notion. Of what you were struggling with, or... him? I didn't remember him, having a father, at all?" He talks slowly too, stepping through the ideas like irregular stones over a river. "I don't... think I even wondered, about only having a brother. It's like I forgot the idea of having more family."

"We had nightmares, of being forgotten," Sistina realizes, thinking about that aggressive dream back in that Dream destination. "But Papyrus always ignores them and rushes to do something else."

"Better than laying around in bed being sad!" he says defensively, close to heated enough for it to be snappish. He slouches and looks back at Sans. "And, while I still don't know what happened to him, I'm sure... it wasn't your fault."

Even if Sans was right there, even if he'd been aware of the risk. After all, Papyrus did very little to stop the human and Undyne from fighting, and he could have done more, but that doesn't make it his fault that they fought. They both had their reasons, and their own choices. It just means he grieves, and feels enormous relief that there's a way to undo it all.

[osteothropy]

Part of him wonders if he should try to bring out Helvetica, to level the playing field a little. Yet... he doesn't want to. Not yet. With how much of his life this secret has controlled, he doesn't want to cheat when he shares it. Papyrus deserves to hear it from him, directly, and not through a mediator who was never the face of the struggle.

"I don't... know how it started, anymore," he tries, his shoulders sagging in defeat. "It was part of our work, in the labs, and... we messed with something too big and screwed up, and then... I was the only one who would remember anything about him. And even that... it was just a little. Enough that... maybe I could have convinced myself it never happened, if I'd tried hard enough. Maybe I should have."

"I couldn't tell you... I thought I would be able to make things right. But I was wrong, and I couldn't, and by the time I accepted that... I dunno. I just... I didn't see the point. It was too hard, and I'd already quit, so..." He looks at Papyrus, and then away again, knowing he can't hold his gaze. "...So what was the point in hurtin' you, when it would never get any better. And by the time the timeloops started... I couldn't make anything stick, even if I wanted to."

And that's it. That's the reason behind all of this, behind what a mess he is, why he's been such a disaster of a person and a household burden for all this time. Even now, he can't help but wonder if maybe it would have been better to say nothing at all. To say that he'd been lying, that there was no mystery. Anything but to confess mistakes that were far too old to fix.

"I didn't know you remembered him at all... even stuff like that. Until..." His arms close around his body as he things back to the event. "That night, after you turned up at the carnival... when you fell asleep near the Realm of Dreams... He..."

He chokes on his words and falls silent for a few moments, before he can get it back together.

"He came out of your dreams as a nightmare. I thought I was gunna lose you, too."

[spaghettimonster]

They both listen in rapt silence, the goose reassured and curious enough to waddle closer and lean against Papyrus' side. Avoiding earnest expressions of their own feelings, by talking through their daemons instead... it would be easy, and all too plausible for them.

But while Sistina's occasionally adding to the conversation, interjecting or questioning things Papyrus just isn't doing enough for her... Ultimately, she's here right now because Papyrus needed somebody to hug, while sitting and waiting for signs of Sans' wellbeing. They got to talking, because talking things out aloud is easier than thinking them when a daemon's out... and then Sans got to waking up, and she's not about to leave now.

"So it was him," she concludes, ducking her head against Papyrus even harder. "You talked to it, like you knew it. But we didn't, even though... we remembered bits of the fight."

"Not much, it was very fragmented, and full of trying to hurt you, and... I didn't think about that part many times. Anyway!" Papyrus says, wiping at the moisture on his forehead, and collecting on his cheeks below his eyes. "I'm not lost. You saved me, I was right there and very saveable, with blasters."

Face dried, he tries to smile encouragingly. Tries, doesn't really succeed. Because Sans is still confessing things like it's all a horrible forgotten weight they can do nothing about, like he'd confessed about the time loops, about the giant wolf form, about... well, any of his secrets. But there's something he doesn't know, and...

"Maybe... I have something to say that might help."

"Or hurt. It might not mean anything, and... please, don't get your hopes up."

Papyrus presses a hand on Sistina's back reassuringly, and looks at his brother. "Sans... he was the Royal Scientist, right? I... do remember, some things. More things than I did, ever since, uh, Portland, and... my father in that life..."

[osteothropy]

The Royal Scientist. Sans looks up, meeting their gazes fully for the first time. He wasn't expecting him to know that.

"...Y-Yeah," he says, taken back. "He was the Scientist, and I spent most'a my teenager years in the labs with him. He's how I got into that stuff, and... how I stopped."

It's a terrible kind of nostalgia, and Sans is filled with it. Every time he thinks about those days he's drowned in sorrow and longing. Even his own memories are fragmented enough to not be entirely sure how good or bad life was, objectively speaking. But he remembers being happy, which is more than he can say for the rest of his life.

"I guess we were hoping to fix thing for the Underground, once an for all. He was the one who invented the Core." His remembrance looks fond at first, but it quickly becomes somber again. "I can't... I can't even remember his name."

With recent events, that realization strikes so much more deeply. Sans's hands wander up to his neck, clutching the bones there, his eyes going wide and distant again.

"We all just forgot about it. Like what the Prince did to me."

The pain of it is overwhelming.

"I can't stop thinking about how... what if that's... what it felt like to..." He can't get the rest out.

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus's initial triumph, that he did remember rightly and piece things together, shows on his face. At least until Sans goes more sober, and says worse and worse things.

It's fair that his brother didn't expect him to know any of this. Underground, he hadn't - or it'd been so slight and fragmentary and forgettable that he'd relegated it to dismissed nightmares and made a point of sleeping less. Even right after that nightmare, when he was made aware something was wrong... he'd been more distracted by his brother's changed appearance and attitude. Would he have particularly cared about the mystery, if Sans had pressed?

...Maybe. But now, listening to the idea Sans is describing...

"No," he denies, but she whispers, "oh, no."

Because it's easy to imagine, after seeing Sans nameless and frightened, after seeing the transformed Julien go motionless. Fading, frightened and forgotten, alone. How can they possibly reassure him, reassure themselves, when they don't know... anything, about what happened?

"No, it can't have been like that," Papyrus shakes his head. "We didn't forget the same way, I swear. With you... I remembered you. Not your name, and everything I tried to call you wasn't right... but I didn't forget. It's worse with our father."

"The forgetting is worse, not him!" Sistina insists, flaring her wings in discomfort at the terrible impression of that last sentence. "He... Sans, most everybody had the same names in Portland. Yours was, Papyrus' was... Maybe his was, too?"

She's unsure, hesitant and hopeful. Papyrus just lights up at the idea.

"Oh my god! Right! We tried everything with you. Rereading those letters, writing out every font we could think of, but none of them... it didn't get any better, until your name was back. But we're remembering things about him! It's not the same, Sans, I promise. Maybe it's just us that forgot, and he..." Well, there's no saying this truly cheerfully. But he can manage a sad relief. "Maybe, he died okay."

[osteothropy]

He can't help it. He laughs.

It's not a mean laugh, or a mocking one. It's just compulsive and helpless, in a way that isn't particularly surprising from Sans. The rush of having said all this for the first time, and the pain of facing down something that had hurt him so much... it all just comes together into helpless wheeze of blackened humour. He covers his face in his hands.

"That's what we've gotta hope for, right?" he asks, amazed at how that can be where they're at with this situation. Where someone being only dead is preferable. Maybe he really just needs to accept that, too. He's not angry, he just doesn't have any control. What can he do?

Yet even as he's snorting his way through this terrible thing, there's some release there. It's been such a long time.

"Feels bad, man," he says, with another wheeze of laughter, his eyes still watery. With his arms over his face and his tail curled around his legs, he's folded himself smaller and smaller. But, he gets it.

There was no way this was going to be easy.

[spaghettimonster]

"Would a hug feel better?" Sistina offers, immediately realizing how impulsive that was, how the thought of hugging Sans herself is... repulsive, painful, in a way that it never could be from Papyrus.

She twists her neck, demanding with her expression and some wordless communication that Papyrus do something. He's already getting to his feet by the time Sans starts memeing at them, notices her and nodding agreement back. With their brother curling up like that, it looks like he's trying so hard to hug himself. And he's probably done that more times than they realize, over the last... however many years. This time, he doesn't need to be alone.

"I think it is," he says, sitting on the bed a foot or so away. "It would be... nice - if horrifically painful, in ways I can't imagine - if he was out here, like you were. Where... we could rescue him, and remember him, and all. But, you said... he isn't."

Right now, Sans saying so is enough for him to believe it. Their father is dead, hardly remembered, and the best thing they can hope is that it wasn't a long and painful death. They don't even have his dust... At least they have each other. And he can be here, and remind his brother of it.

"I'm sorry, Sans." Papyrus says, lowly, and offers an open arm to lean against each other.

Below them, whether they hug or not, Sistina sighs and leans against Papyrus' dangling foot. "I do wish we remembered better... Maybe the Ringmaster can figure it out, she did for all that time loop stuff, and that seems harder."

[osteothropy]

And that's all there is. It's all that can be said. Yet, it's something he's been waiting for, for what feels like decades now. Just someone to give him condolences. For someone to mourn alongside him, even if it's for a half-imaginary person that they can't possibly know like they did before.

Sans curls into Papyrus's offered hug, accepting the offer more readily and desperately than he ever has before. Instead of just leaning against his side, Sans wraps his arms around his brother in turn, his tail curling close to their bodies. He's also been fine with Papyrus touching him above anyone else, but physical affection has never been something he eagerly sought out. Right now, though, it's something that he viscerally needs, if only to make him feel like he's still there.

"I'm sorry, too," he says quietly, closing his eyes. Papyrus lost something here, too, and Sans remembers the frustration of having forgotten so much. Maybe he's sorry for not telling him sooner. Even now, though, he's not sure what the right decision was.

Yet, Sistina's suggestion can't go unnoticed. Part of it makes him afraid - to know this is something Papyrus is considering. Maybe it's only fair, that they be on equal grounds, but...

"It's... it's a lot. I dunno if even she could. But..." He trails off. He doesn't know what to say. "Being down this rabbit hole... it's not a good time. Sometimes... you gotta be careful what you wish for."

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus finishes his one-armed hug, and rests his head on his brother's.

Before now it was strange, to feel the edges of grief and mourning when there's so little he remembers. Like those emotions shouldn't belong to him without a context.

And for all their time in Portland gave him more context, it muddled the feelings further. Tangling up avoidant shame, his human counterpart's defiance and avoidance, having wrecked his life in the months prior and continuing the lonely spiral... then wanting to reach out, sure it was impossible... waiting until he missed the chance, and that family was lost to him. Regretting it.

Now, though, there's so much more he gets. Remembering something of the person who's missing, the person he was to them... And grief itself, just imagining the feeling of family with the fear and loss in that time Sans was absent, present-but-broken...

It's enough to understand.

It's enough for him to consider canceling the very idea, saying 'never mind, it's no good' and sitting quietly as his brother tries to protect him some more.

Sistina nods her head, hidden beneath the edge of the bed, leaning against Papyrus' humerus.

"You're... not well. We can see that," and she pulls far enough away from the bed to look up at Sans. "I don't want that for us, but... isn't it worse because you're alone? You've... been alone?"

"There's months to go before I could ask, anyway," Papyrus offers, like the time until it could happen is reassuring; plenty of time to convince him not to. "And all of what you remember is... too much for me? All I really want is my childhood, our father."