For the people who are still alive
Feb. 18th, 2016 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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castle_perraultThe nightmares come the night after the funeral.
He escorts S-4 and Sans-Serif back to the castle. Makes a couple of attempts to apologize to his other self that don't make it past his mouth. Tucks them both in, reads them both a story, returns to his own room just next door.
Barely an hour later, Sans wakes up blind with panic and crying out in terror. It leaves him huddled in the far corner of the room, his hands over his head, nails digging into his skull, teeth chattering and tears pouring from his eyes thick and fast enough to blind and choke him. Nightmares of what was and what could have been. Dreams of melting smiles and sharp teeth reaching and clawing for him, dragging him down and under and into and come and join the fun.
He resolves not to sleep again, after that. Eating also comes to seem...less important. He's not hungry. What good does food do him, anyway? It doesn't restore his HP. He's always at his best. It's just that his best isn't nearly enough.
One murderous human is dead. Another might arrive. He has to be ready. He has to protect everyone. He can't let those nightmares of dust (or maybe they're visions of timelines yet to be) come true.
Sans immerses himself in his lab. He buries himself in his work, and when he exhausts his old avenues of search, he makes up new ones. Anything to keep moving. Anything to not think of the past, here and elsewhere. When he emerges, it's usually to be found in the library, or outside, armed with his telescope and a notebook. And a pair of boots - the echo of bloody squishes from his old ones had led to Sans tossing them under his bed in disgust, along with his hoodie Otherwise, he gathers seemingly random ingredients from the gardens with an expression of fierce concentration on his face. There's probably no way to get this doseage exactly right.
But he can get close. Perhaps he can even do better.
It's like walking in on the wreckage of his own life. It's like waking from another nightmare all over again.
His brother, exhausted (that was never supposed to be the plan). His other self, lost (and Sans was supposed to show him better). His friends, worried or in some cases so far past worried that they had hit anger (he never asked them to care but of course that's the point).
So much is a mess, he knows he's done wrong and needs to fix it, but sleep isn't coming any easier and he doesn't know where to start. The raging uncertainty and the press of problems leaves him tempted to just curl up in a ball on his bed again and just...tune it all out.
But for others' sake, if nothing else, Sans is good at carrying on. It's just a matter of...shifting focus from what it had been before.
What Sans does know is that, for the first time in days, he's hungry. His soul feels hollow for the need of some proper food. And he's opened his eyes enough to properly see that S-4 and Sans-Serif are both looking a little more spindly again. Lucas' stew had done him some good the first time around. He'd even remembered to take some hasty notes on the recipe.
Maybe he can do it justice, if only for his family's sake.
So anyone who ventures down into the kitchens a day or so after Frisk returns will find a corner of it something of a mess. A pot of hot water is simmering on the stove, Some rather messily chopped vegetables are cooking away inside, along with an admittedly pleasant array of seasonings. A mess on the table testifies to Sans' attempts to continue adding ingredients...
...but, more than likely, visitors will find him dozing right there at the table, half a carrot or potato still waiting on the cutting board.
Anyone worried about his welfare can at least take some comfort in the fact that both the slippers and the hoodie have returned to their rightful place.
((ooc: Replies are likely to be slow as other threads progress. Just consider this Sans putting down a tether to the admittedly busy timeline around here. Either way, just note if you're tagging him before Frisk's return or after.))
He escorts S-4 and Sans-Serif back to the castle. Makes a couple of attempts to apologize to his other self that don't make it past his mouth. Tucks them both in, reads them both a story, returns to his own room just next door.
Barely an hour later, Sans wakes up blind with panic and crying out in terror. It leaves him huddled in the far corner of the room, his hands over his head, nails digging into his skull, teeth chattering and tears pouring from his eyes thick and fast enough to blind and choke him. Nightmares of what was and what could have been. Dreams of melting smiles and sharp teeth reaching and clawing for him, dragging him down and under and into and come and join the fun.
He resolves not to sleep again, after that. Eating also comes to seem...less important. He's not hungry. What good does food do him, anyway? It doesn't restore his HP. He's always at his best. It's just that his best isn't nearly enough.
One murderous human is dead. Another might arrive. He has to be ready. He has to protect everyone. He can't let those nightmares of dust (or maybe they're visions of timelines yet to be) come true.
Sans immerses himself in his lab. He buries himself in his work, and when he exhausts his old avenues of search, he makes up new ones. Anything to keep moving. Anything to not think of the past, here and elsewhere. When he emerges, it's usually to be found in the library, or outside, armed with his telescope and a notebook. And a pair of boots - the echo of bloody squishes from his old ones had led to Sans tossing them under his bed in disgust, along with his hoodie Otherwise, he gathers seemingly random ingredients from the gardens with an expression of fierce concentration on his face. There's probably no way to get this doseage exactly right.
But he can get close. Perhaps he can even do better.
It's like walking in on the wreckage of his own life. It's like waking from another nightmare all over again.
His brother, exhausted (that was never supposed to be the plan). His other self, lost (and Sans was supposed to show him better). His friends, worried or in some cases so far past worried that they had hit anger (he never asked them to care but of course that's the point).
So much is a mess, he knows he's done wrong and needs to fix it, but sleep isn't coming any easier and he doesn't know where to start. The raging uncertainty and the press of problems leaves him tempted to just curl up in a ball on his bed again and just...tune it all out.
But for others' sake, if nothing else, Sans is good at carrying on. It's just a matter of...shifting focus from what it had been before.
What Sans does know is that, for the first time in days, he's hungry. His soul feels hollow for the need of some proper food. And he's opened his eyes enough to properly see that S-4 and Sans-Serif are both looking a little more spindly again. Lucas' stew had done him some good the first time around. He'd even remembered to take some hasty notes on the recipe.
Maybe he can do it justice, if only for his family's sake.
So anyone who ventures down into the kitchens a day or so after Frisk returns will find a corner of it something of a mess. A pot of hot water is simmering on the stove, Some rather messily chopped vegetables are cooking away inside, along with an admittedly pleasant array of seasonings. A mess on the table testifies to Sans' attempts to continue adding ingredients...
...but, more than likely, visitors will find him dozing right there at the table, half a carrot or potato still waiting on the cutting board.
Anyone worried about his welfare can at least take some comfort in the fact that both the slippers and the hoodie have returned to their rightful place.
((ooc: Replies are likely to be slow as other threads progress. Just consider this Sans putting down a tether to the admittedly busy timeline around here. Either way, just note if you're tagging him before Frisk's return or after.))
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-25 01:35 am (UTC)It's not until the door has almost closed behind her that he rouses himself to speak once more.
"welcome. you, too."
He does try to eat. The next time he's out in the garden digging for materials, Sans makes himself stop and grab a few random pieces of fruit off the branches. One time, he grabs a lemon without thinking about it. He stares at it for a long moment, torn between throwing it away as hard as he can and simply bursting into tears again.
In the end, he does neither, and ruthlessly devours that, too.
The fruit isn't much, but it's all he can make himself go looking for and it does, ultimately, prove much better than nothing.
He does try to sleep, but it's a mercy if he makes it more than an hour before waking up a whimpering, shivering mess again. Maybe it would be easier if he slept in his room where S-4 could find and reassure him. Sans still doesn't want to inflict that on his brother again.
Either way, if Tauriel tries to find Sans in that tower lab again after that encounter, she'll discover that absolutely everything in it has been spirited away with barely a trace.