castle_perrault | tossing and turning

dustless posting in

It seems that human food doesn't really do much for the SOUL.

Well, maybe it would if it had been special food. Frisk vaguely remembers hearing about food made by dear loved ones can help heal heartbreak, and that might be close enough to count.

But they don't really...have that right now. They just have castle-made candies and cakes and fruit, and while that was better than nothing, none of that stops the uncomfortable ache settled in their chest and pulsing through their body.

They also recall a little rabbit child talking about how sleeping could help with that. Well, sleeping in hotels specifically, but that rabbit had been in a hotel, and the castle could probably be called a hotel, albeit one filled with unwilling residents.

And so they quest to find a place to take a nap, without having to worry as much about being found by a particular troubled skeleton. They haven't given up on him, nowhere near it, but they'd like to be healthy when they meet again just in case. So their usual resting spot of "in the garden" was discarded, since it's right in the middle of everything.

As nice as it had been to be outside during it, their original plan--to hide out on top of a tower and catch a nap there--was foiled by the rain that came with the storm.

So Frisk carefully steals through the castle towers until they find one with a mostly-empty bedroom almost to the top, and try to rest there.

Key word: try.

The bed is very soft and comfortable, and they hover around the hazy edges of sleep for what feels like hours, but they never quite make it there. They're too worried about...sort-of-Papyrus. And Sans. And their friends they left behind, and their friends here, and just--everyone. They can't focus on a goal until they feel better, but they can't rest unless they stop worrying, and so they just cycle through thoughts over and over and over. And their low HP only distracts them even more.

So eventually, Frisk gives up and collapses into a soft-ish chair by the tower's window instead, watching the sky turn oranges and pinks, and a handful of stars appear between swaths of cloud. Maybe they'll be soothed to sleep by the prettiness of it.

[backdated in the castle's nebulous timeframe of after their 'fight' with S4 and meeting Thor, but before everything else.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sansational

S4 is...settling. Or so it seems to Sans. Or so Sans is desperately hoping. Mostly thanks to Gaster. Sans hadn't thought he could possibly be more grateful to have his older brother back, but S4's arrival had proven him rather staggeringly wrong, even if it had also revealed some rather staggeringly worrying things about Gaster.

It kind of helps that Sans has been kept remarkably busy because one thing Gaster is never short of is ideas. If they're ever going to find a way out of here, it's going to be because of him. He believes that. He has to believe that. In the meantime, he's always known how to work with the guy.

But one thing has piled on another and another, and Sans has responded by getting especially sleepy, even for Sans. The rain has helped. Rain wasn't really a thing, in Snowdin, but he's come to find it quite soothing here. And he claimed a room for himself early on, and it's to this room that he returns now, at a lazy shuffle accompanied by the faint rattle of bones.

He actually passes right by Frisk's chair before his wits catch up with him. He looked back at the kid, puzzled, and raises a hand in absentminded greeting before the rest of his senses catch up, too.

"frisk...?"

Something is...very definitely not right here. Sans' eyesockets go dark for a moment. He can't really *CHECK as easily as Frisk can, not outside of a fight, but he knows the feel of the kid's soul pretty well by now. Enough that the damage is obvious, to his mind.

"...what happened?"

From:

dustless

And they're out of it enough that they don't notice Sans, either, until he says their name. The chair actually moves from how hard they jump.

They turn and...stare at him for a minute. The question replays in their head a few times meaninglessly as they struggle to figure out how he found them and what his expression means before it visibly clicks--the fact that he's worried, at least. Frisk doesn't know the exact capabilities of monsters regarding their sense of soul power. They suppose he's never seen them this exhausted, either.

And then they realize they have to tell him what happened and they look afraid, just for a second, because they don't know what happened to sort-of-Papyrus afterwards and they should've tried to find Sans first and they didn't, and now they can't tell him if his brother's really okay. But they won't not tell him, that would be a million times worse.

"...I met...someone kind of new," is what they manage to spit out, long after the silence stretched into actually feeling uncomfortable.

It's not really subtle, the 'kind of' implications, but their thoughts are still too fuzzy even with the edge of worry for something like that.

From:

sansational

And Sans looks concerned, as Frisk jumps. The kid looks worried, and he feels his own soul ache with sympathetic worry. But more than that, now that he's getting even a vague sense that something has happened, Sans finds himself starting to feel angry. That's...almost reassuring. Anger is still more familiar than worry, to this iteration of Sans. But if someone really did hurt Frisk, that someone needs to be dealt with.

It's not really subtle, the "kind of" implications, but Sans can be rather creatively dense in very specific ways, where his brother is concerned. Not to mention the fact that even if they're from the same world, Frisk has still lived a completely different life from the human in Sans' time. So for a moment, he looks back at Frisk in blank incomprehension. Of course they don't mean Papyrus. Papyrus would never hurt Frisk, even if he wasn't Papyrus yet. Right?

"there's, uh, there's been a lot of new people around."

From:

dustless

"It's...I'm okay. Just, I just need to sleep. Right? I don't need to really, a lot, but now I think is my best...the best plan, 'cause I didn't fight, so it's okay," they ramble (well, it's rambling for Frisk), trying to shuffle their thoughts.

They can't blame him for thinking like that. After all, they had. That's why they're so messed up in the first place. They were vague that he might've been able to think of anyone from the Underground, and they don't realize he knows his brother's there yet anyway.

They consider carefully prodding him for more information so they can prepare him, or something like that, but once again their exhaustion screws up their words. "Is, is, was your name always just Sans the skeleton?" they ask bluntly.

From:

sansational

"y-yeah. yeah, sleep helps. even better if it's at a hotel or an inn, which i guess this qualifies as." Sans casts a somewhat helpless look around the place. There have been extensive academic writings done on the nature of souls and why, specifically, sleeping at an inn is better for healing damage than sleeping in one's own bed. But he knows none of that will interest Frisk at all. Monster food would be best, of course, for both of them. But everything here is so physical.

His thoughts on the subject are derailed once more by what is, under the circumstances, a rather staggeringly direct question - though less so than it might have been even just a little while ago. "what." It's not a question, it's just a placeholder of a word while he tries to understand what's really being asked, but at last Sans is able to put two and two together and get something greater than three.

"y-yeah. I was always just sans, papyrus..." Here he hesitates for a moment. "...was always papyrus, gaster was always gaster. or, uh, 'wingdings gaster'. but i always just call him gaster." Sans is his brother, though. That's allowed.

He doesn't have to ask if Frisk has met Gaster, since Gaster told Sans that they had. Though whatever his brother got around to telling the human, this is still the first chance Frisk might have to confirm any of that. "i mean, i kind of inadvertently lied to you about some things about my past, but not about that." And that was more out of a sense of self-preservation, than anything, given that Sans has had to filter Gaster out of any conversation at all for years now.

"but the number of timelines in existence approaches infinity. so sometimes, we take strange paths to get to the same place."

Wait. Wait. Setting aside the technobabble for a second...

Sans presses his hands over his mouth as the apparently full reality of the situation dawns at last. His voice, when he speaks again, trembles audibly, despite his efforts to suppress it. "wait, s-so, uh...so what you're saying is...'S4' did this to you?"

From:

dustless

"...Wingdings Gaster?" Frisk's hands twitch a bit of the "W" sign. It sounds weird, even in this serious situation. They kind of understand why he introduced himself as W.D at the start.

Sans knows him? The realization that they're actually family sort of flies over their head. And the entire lying thing, beyond "inadvertently" which means "accidentally", they're pretty sure, and that's probably better than what Alphys had lied to them about before, so...so...so they're going to ignore that for now and focus on the more important things. Try to.

(The "number of timelines" thing slinks into the back of their mind. Even on the verge of and very much wishing for passing out, they feel that's going to be important to remember.)

And what's important is how Sans sounds, and what they're talking about. He's never looked like this before, and their face is blind panic and slow to smooth out to its usual calm-ish neutrality.

They consider standing up, and slide forward until their feet tap to the floor. Then decide against it when the entire room decides to move around like it was floating on waves. One arm of the chair is given a death grip until it stops and they can refocus on how Sans looks and get back to rambling.

"...maybe? Maybe. You saw--did you see--well, yeah--that's what he's called? I mean. I think? Met someone who might've been Papyrus, might be, but his name was long and--and not a name, actually," they only remember the Sans-Serif part, but there were probably four of the letter S in there. "and he didn't look okay, his arms were all--all--not really...looking...very good. You saw him? 's he--how is he?" Because that's what they're worried about most. He was not okay, at all, and they hadn't helped that.

From:

sansational

Frisk makes to stand up, and Sans quickly realizes that that is potentially a very bad idea. He reaches out a hand to steady the kid - fortunately, they see sense before potentially hitting the ground. He's panicking and Frisk is panicking and that's probably the most unproductive possible thing. But he's going to try to help.

"he's...not bad? i mean, the point in time he came from looks to have been pretty terrible. as far as healing, i think we're having the same problem you are. and, uh, i think i kind of freak him out, due to being...upright, and talking, and not fallen down. but gaster tried to explain things, and he's trying to get it, and in the meantime we're just...y'know. trying to keep him safe."

But the bitter truth of the matter is that Sans doesn't know, and that's starting to leave him feeling a little unraveled at the seams. He sighs to realize it, somewhat helplessly, looking lost. He wants to help, but given how starkly different he is from "Sans-Serif", Sans has been treading a fine line in trying not to leave S4 even more distressed.

"and you're right. 's4' is not a name and some awful people told him that it was but i can't exactly tell him differently."

i keep actually replying to this while half asleep. hopefully it adds to The Authenticity or smth

From:

dustless - Date: 2015-12-22 01:03 am (UTC) - Expand

I haven't noticed any problems!

From:

sansational - Date: 2015-12-22 01:37 am (UTC) - Expand

:'D good

From:

dustless - Date: 2015-12-22 06:24 am (UTC) - Expand