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[meatbrained]

( five + one )

how it works:

i. post a comment with the characters you play.
ii. go around and prompt other players with a 5 + 1 prompt (e.g. "Five times Hope said sorry and one time he didn't")
iii. write a fic for the prompts people leave you!
iv. enjoy your fic? we hope?

Comments

five times sans lost hope (cw suicide ideation like woah)

[skelebro]

i. were you looking for a reason?

The thing about this, uh, this whole "deal" is that there's no real threshold, no perceptible point where things go from bearable to not. There's the slow, inevitable decline, sure, but even that isn't really charted out in a strictly linear fashion. You don't wake up one morning and realize you're not okay. It doesn't hit you like a sack of bricks, or a sack of anything. There's never a suitably dramatic event to dovetail into it. You just maybe catch yourself thinking, as idly as you would consider a craving for Popato Chisps, that it'd be real nice not to be alive anymore.

He's sitting next to the fishing pole stuck in the snow, the part of the surrounding Snowdin area that nobody really goes to, when it occurs to him that maybe this ain't such a normal thing to be thinking. Thing is, there's no tactful way of mentioning this to anybody. To run low on hope, run dry on it, that can be a death wish for some monsters. Has been for several others. When you're made up of magic, when intent is everything, the wrong bad thoughts can send you plummeting down a one-way track to Falling Down. What a damn pleasant, polite, neat-and-tidy euphemism that is, huh? Falling Down. As if it isn't horrifying. As if it ain't the end-all-be-all it is. As if it doesn't leave behind dust and a string of worried loved ones and so much worse.

But that's monsters for ya. Dressing up all their pain in something nice and neat and brightly-packaged so it's all a bit easier on the eyes. Wouldn't want their grief to be an inconvenience, now would we? Nah. Gotta make that kinda thing palatable. For everyone.

And hey, it's not like he's actively raring to snuff out that little light of his. He's not that far gone, weary and wrung-out little lump that he is. Too much effort, for one. Even if it's 1 HP, takes little more than a trip on the steps or a misplaced bullet or just plain not moving outta the way fast enough, the fact of the matter is that, ultimately, it don't matter. That's the thing about time being a flat circle and all that good stuff. Only thing to come of dying is the host of unpleasant memories that come from remembering what it was to die, on the off-chance that he does, which is not a set in stone thing but either way, either way.

Either way, it just isn't worth it.

Story of his damn life.

And, hey. Besides.

Hasn't he got a job to do?

ii. maybe she's not feeling anything at all

"Go to hell," he says into the receiver, clicks the call off, and tosses the phone onto the bedspread. The bedspread Papyrus lovingly made this morning, and...hah, nope. He's not goin' there.

He blips to Hotland instead. But the lab's empty, the lights off, the computers dead, everything unplugged and empty. Like whoever lived here was thinkin' of maybe going on a real great vacation. From the thin layer of dust starting to accumulate atop the monitor and the surface of her desk and the figurines she never...well, by the looks of things, he's guessing she's already embarked on wherever it is she plans on going.

As if he don't know perfectly well.

He doesn't even stop in Waterfall. The people there are still mourning the loss of their fallen hero. He'd watched her cling to life gamely, refusing to acknowledge it as her body had drifted apart, thick droplets of...of her sliding off down her head until she decoalesced completely and her SOUL went with her.

Last stop, though. Last stop before things maybe go a new direction, assuming they do. He shouldn't assume that they do, really he shouldn't, 'cause one of these days he might just get caught in something he can't shake, and then where would he be? Not there, in an ideal world. Heh heh. Not there.

He rests the palm of his hand against the smooth stone door separating the RUINS from the rest of the monster world. Doesn't knock. Doesn't need to know. He knows what he'd find, should he cut to the chase, so to speak, and end up on the other side. A whole lotta dust, mixed with a whole lotta nothing.

He grins, hands shoved in his pockets. That t₀ is gonna roll around and this'll all have never happened. Not in the conventional way that things "happen," anyway.

"Any day now," he says softly. "Know you got it in ya, buddo. This can't be what you want, huh?"

But hell, maybe it is.

Maybe they just wanted to see him suffer.

iii. you won't remember this

It stands there, and it has no conception of what it is, just that it, evidently, exists, and there is something it should be fighting. So it fights. It fights because it has to, because it is ordered and expected and required of it, and as it exerts a gravitational force on the SOUL in front of it and weighs it down with blue magic, it realizes it is saying words, dull and shaking with a tension it does not understand.

"Just give up," it says, the words trailing limply from between its hollow, hollow grin. "I did."

There is a shape standing beside it, pronouncing happily, "I must capture a human!"

It is familiar. It is...distantly, familiar. It thinks it should know it. It almost wants to turn to it, say something inane, but it...

It would not matter. This is not its function. Its function is requisite, and it is to seed the SOUL with magic and strike at it until it breaks.

But it does not break. It persists. And its owner...its owner as a face that it cannot put a name to, a warm look that it does not understand, as it says something, something like...

I'll think about what I've done. I promise.

Aw, kid, don't you know how much he hates p̈͊͋̆͌҉ȑ̥̰̪̹̫̿̒͊̓͢óͨ̒ͫ͌͑̚҉̹mî̃͐̽ͧ҉̠̱s̙͙͙̮͖̃͑͂́̈̽̕è̷̓̔̋̀s̥̗̤͙̈́͗ͥ̌͋?͚̜̖̩̔̋

He...it. It does not...it does not...it does not does not does not does not it is not accepting this because it does not make sense, it does not have any strong feelings about promises one way or another, it does not have strong feelings on anything because it is not a person or even really a thing, it is nothing, it is nothing, it is ɴ̶̷̲̅ᴏ̶̷̲̅ᴛ̶̷̲̅ʜ̶̷̲̅ɪ̶̷̲̅ɴ̶̷̲̅ɢ̶̷̲̅.

It seems like it's trying to remember...

Its mind snaps away from whatever trend it is trending toward. It does not know what it said, what it did, why the words snagged at the edges of its SOUL (it does not acknowledge its nature) or caught at its laminar non-thoughts like claws in cloth (it does not acknowledge its nature), and it does not care. It does not care because it is not made to care and that is not its function.

It does not care.

So it does not say anything but the words that come to its mouth, that spring up mindlessly and without conscious thought.

"Why even try?"

iv. it's snow problem

No one really bothers with the Snowman. Sans ain't even really sure if they're a monster or just a heap of ice that up and gained sentience one day, the same way one can never be sure if which rocks are monsters who're being real quiet and which ones are just rocks.

(He makes the mental note, for the umpteenth time, to feed his pet rock, just in case the thing is sentient. He's never actually checked to make sure.)

(Not like it really matters. He knows he'll forget by the time he heads home again, but it's the sentiment of the thing.)

Anyway. You didn't come here to read about rocks. You came here to...well, let's be frank, you came here to indulge in some masochistic fantasies regarding one existentially depressed yours truly. But at this particular juncture, you're here for the Snowman. Because that's who Sans is here for, even if he doesn't do much of anything but sit down with a bump beside them and offer them a hotdog, fresh from the collapsible grill he's got set up at his sentry station. The sentry station he's currently neglecting to all hell but hey, union-regulated breaks and all. He'll take what he can get.

No thank you, the Snowman says, politely, and Sans shrugs as he tucks in.

"Suit yourself."

He munches on his 'dog, and the Snowman says nothing, as they are wont to do most of the time, and Sans, well, he says nothing, partially to keep in vein with the companionable silence they've got goin' here but mostly because his mouth is full of 'dog.

Do you ever think of the Surface? the Snowman says, out of nowhere, slow and wistful.

Sans finishes his 'dog in one final, decisive bite and wipes the grease off on his jacket, leaving streaks of char smeared against the blue to join the months-old patina of the stuff left there, as he thinks long and hard about what to say.

I think everyone does, the Snowman amends, before Sans can think of anything of real substance to say in response. The sun must be terribly nice up there. Hot enough to melt snow, don't you think?

This would typically be the point in time where Sans would ask something to the effect of, "hey, uh...you okay there, buddy?" Because, uh, in his experience (his experience is atypical, but nobody needs to know that, now do they?) people don't generally long to embrace the thing that will kill them.

(But Papyrus sure did, didn't he? Didn't even bat an eyesocket when he got gutted for it, huh? Heh, yeah, no, he just took at face value, looked at the thing that would kill him, and spread his arms wide, affirming the goodness that must be inside them even as he dissolved into dust on the ground.)

Yes, says the Snowman quietly. I think the Surface must be nice.

Sans, uh.

Well, Sans is a real jerk, and he thinks everybody knows it. Everybody knows it, but is too polite to say anything. But at some point he reaches the nadir of his tolerance for this conversation, for the note of longing in the poor bastard's voice as they lament about a Surface they will never see, even as they wish obliquely for their own death in the process, for the photograph left in a drawer in a room at the back of the house, locked away where no one can see it, where everyone is smiling and on the Surface and happy and, heh, boy, that sure must not've lasted very long, huh, 'cause here he is, back in Snowdin like always.

What do you think? the Snowman asks.

The empty air does not respond.

Like the real jerk he is, Sans is gone.

v. but you already know what's coming don't you?

The words have been said so many times that they're all but meaningless noise at this point, an atonal collection of noises that ain't foolin' anyone, that the kid's heard dozens, maybe hundreds of times before. They could tell you better than he could. But they don't. They never say much of anything. They just keep coming at him with that red-stained Knife cutting red arcs in the air, always missing, always always always missing. They don't say much, as a general rule, but he knows their look. The set of their shoulders, the tightness of their jaw, the glint of those dark eyes. They're real bent on this end goal. Real stalwart. Real, real Determined.

He looks at them with a hollow bilateral blackness bored into his skull. "Survive THIS, and I'll show you my special attack."

And then he takes 'em for the ride of their life.

The corridor they're in stretches, distorts. A veritable slalom of ulnas spurt from the ground, twisting, twirling, and the kid has to plot their course down to the pixel - oh, I'm sorry, down to the centimeter. Better? Not as on-the-nose, maybe? We'd hate to have that, wouldn't we?

Space stretches. Maybe time does do. He pulls out every stop, every trick, everything he's got to his arsenal of pitifully-low damage output that he optimized because he had to, because even if feeling helpless sucks, even if knowing he's helpless sucks, it sucks a whole lot more if you don't try to do something about it. This he knows plainly and without thinkin' too hard on it. That's just one of those things you pick up after a time.

They reach the "bottom" of that poorly-defined space, don't even miss a beat before they're bracing hands and feet against the ground and springin' upwards - sideways, whatever, their x-axis is skewed to hell and back at this point - to dodge the clawing wave of femurs that spring up to impale them. Not a spot of KARMA on their SOUL, and then he digs the tip of one phalanx into the bright curve of space and tugs and oh, lookie here, we're not where we were, are we? Nah, the whole layout has changed, and he's altering their trajectory, indexing values faster than he can calculate them (but to hell with it, right? Not like it matters, hah) and the kid's staying on top of every shift in their personal gravity, every direction their blue SOUL gets yanked, riding out each switchoff with effortless abandon.

That's when it all settles in a little more completely.

'Course, he'd known it was an inevitability. Known that ultimately, they'd get to him. They'd learn every trick, get him to play every card so they could predict each unpredictability. And from the way they're movin', swift and businesslike and unerring and reflexive, he knows that it ain't the first time they've done this.

He loops four, five, nah, better make it six times with those canid skulls of his, firing off vibrant streaks of energy, staggering the otherwise unbroken rhythm by increments in the hopes that it'll trip 'em up, if marginally. All he needs is one mistake and their SOUL gets seeded with the cloying, thick pinkness of KR seeping into their flesh, their veins, the marrow of their bones.

They're gonna make it.

He already knows it before the last cycle of blasters has finished firing off, and he seizes their SOUL in a sort of rank desperation, left eyesocket flaring with that burning spike amber-and-cyan that always feels like someone's holding a hot coal to his socket.

They crash into the walls but the knife might as well be welded to their hands, and deep, deep somewhere in that impassive glare, he can see the undeniable gleam of victory.

They've already won.

They know it, and so does he.

But he rattles off the lines of the script anyway, lets that dialogue tree unfurl in white-on-black inflorescence, and pulls the last, interminable trick outta his sleeve as he waits for them to cut him down.

...and one time he didn't.

[skelebro]

"So," says Sans brightly, startling her out of whatever reverie had her standing there, spellbound, watching garbage trail off the edge of the cliffside, carrying scraps of trash and detritus down, down, down to wherever stuff like that goes. "Come here often?"

Alphys clasps a claw to her chest and stammers out something, but he simply shrugs and plashes nearer until he's standing beside her, overlooking the yawning, cavernous abyss that opens beneath them.

"Really somethin', huh?" he says softly. "Ever think about where it leads?"

Alphys manages to shoot him a look that's both withering and terrified, which is an impressive feat unto itself, and Sans laughs.

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"I wasn't, wasn't g-gonna," says Alphys, with a spurt of something resembling courage before abruptly losing momentum.

Sans grins at her.

"Yeah," he says simply. "I never do either."

Alphys looks back at him for a long moment, scaly brows knit together, the concern and the full knowledge of the sheer hypocrisy of her concern written all over her too-worried features, until finally she tears her gaze away, looks back at the fragments of torn magazines and old tires and whatever else gets bundled up and thrown down here, only to spill off the lip of the dump and into the empty blackness below.

"D-do, um," she says, halting and slow, her claws wringing in nervous asynchrony, "do you maybe wanna...go back to the lab and, and watch something stupid for a few hours?"

"How stupid are we talkin' here?" says Sans, without missing a beat, his eyesockets dark and empty as he looks out across the emptiness and wonders if ͈̿ͨͩ̊ ̡̬̫̣̤͎̫ ̻̇͛ͫ͑̇͒̾ ͔̥͚̋́̽̌̍͑ ̼͚̳͈̓͆ ̼̳ͧ͐͆͛̚ ̫͉̪ͭ̾ ͕̫͉̲̹̻͔ ̗̯͛̋͆̋ͧͅ ͓̼̹̺ͬ̓̐̈́ͧͩ ̜͓̠̻̦̥͜ͅ ̯̜͙̞̩͓̀ ̸̗̘̖̳̞̘̐̽ͯͅ ͇̘ͧ̓́ ͖́̄͜ ̱̲̼̯̂̚ can see him.

"W-well! I found this really, um...it looks like it might be the n-next Plan 9, really."

Sans stands there, his knees too stiff, his slippers growing soggier and soggier as the water flows evenly over them, cool and filthy and laminar, staining the pink fuzz with brown and green.

One step forward.

"We could order something r-really bad for us," Alphys continues softly, almost to herself, "a-and be the erudite garbage cans we are for a little bit."

With more effort than Sans thinks he might have in him, he turns away from the looming dark and grins at her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I'd like that," says Sans, and the edges of his smile have softened almost imperceptibly, and for a moment he lets her see just how tired he feels. He waits for her to gasp or stammer or say something appropriately appalled about how he looks just...just so goddamn worn out and tired and defeated, but she doesn't.

She just holds out a hand, and he takes it.