spaghettimonster | Canyon: Inbox

[Sans's wings curl, just a little. If he wasn't holding himself so deliberately still, they might curl around him entirely. But he's good at holding still, always has been.] I made Dylan confess. [It had been easy. He'd hardly exerted himself, using his magic like that. And he doesn't feel bad about it, even now, but that doesn't mean he'd wanted everyone to know he'd done it. If Papyrus had his full emotional range, how would he be reacting right now? Even like this he's shaking.]

[Papyrus nods, very slowly. From where he's sitting, that... seems like a good goal. Especially for the emergency call that Sans rushed off to, probably saving some peoples' lives. Even if it didn't save Dylan's. Or, actively put Dylan in harm's way?]

Didn't he... have a breakdown. Confessing. And nothing else? [Admittedly, he died shortly after, which was probably from all the claw wounds and not complications from whatever Sans did to his emotions. Maybe he would have recovered from the confessing thing.] ...Are you sure you can stop it? [Who else did you do this kind of thing to.]

He had a breakdown because I made him feel guilty about what he did. I was standing behind him while that was being recorded. [So while Sans might be partially responsible, as far as Sans is concerned Dylan put himself in that situation. But also, that was a recording where Sans was actively using the ability, not an aftereffect of it.] That was the second time I did it. The first time I did, he recovered enough to try and kill someone. [So yeah, he went back to normal. There's a hint of bitterness there, if Papyrus is paying very close attention--Sans considers that a mistake he made. He should have gotten it done before anyone else got hurt. But hey, what else is new with him?] If I did it with you it wouldn't be something negative.

...So it wore off. [That's not exactly the same as proof that Sans can cancel it, not exactly what he asked. It might be the better answer - if Sans were to do something while not in his right mind, it'll fade away eventually. At least somewhat. But the bitterness, like Sans is frustrated with himself for letting it wear off, for giving Dylan the opportunity to do better... That's concerning.] What if... I say no. And look for a different way of doing this.

Then I don't do anything, and you look for some other way to do it. [His grin quirks just a bit, his gaze somewhere else in time.] I'm great at doing nothing.

[He notes the smile, its proximity to the comment about doing nothing... But then, he has some very recent evidence of Sans doing things when it would have been easier to do nothing. Some things, he wants enough to act. Cause enough for Papyrus to have some doubt.]

...And... if... I don't do anything? [Would Sans want him back to normal, or trying to be, enough to make him want to try?]

Then I'll get used to it. [He already decided he'd do that. It was under the circumstance of can't do anything, rather than won't, but it still has to be the same answer. If he isn't on his brother's side, who even is he?] Whatever happens next is up to you.

...Okay. [This time, the single word is less skeptical, more a cautious hope. It doesn't bring him real reassurance or comfort to hear, anymore than it brings real annoyance or suspicion, but it's the answer he preferred to hear. The one he can more easily build from. Sans would support his decision, whatever it might be.

He takes his time to think. Putting the sensing test off until morning had given him time to do some high priority backups, and he doesn't regret that decision. He should disengage from monitoring the analysis of metadata, disconnect from his phone and network access altogether - no sense sending weird network messages while under the influence of whatever Sans might do.

After all, it doesn't take any real thinking about. He had already been searching for an answer and solution. Tracking the new port's functions had partly been for the satisfaction of knowing his body and his capabilities, but partly a search for what was changing, and how, and why. His emotions had gone numb around when the antlers formed, and the ports had grown from those spots, and his first point of suspicion had been that it was finally too much robotics, or that something about the ports themselves were the culprits. He hasn't finished carving through to actually access the second one, but the findings would likely be the same... Especially if Sans's finding is correct, and most of his emotions are tied up in these perfect memories.

...He wonders whether they're still influencing him, if in understated ways. If his inclination to wait is shaped by the curious probing analysis he'd felt during the eclipse and beyond, if he's testing Sans's willingness to do nothing by waiting. If his willingness to carve into his skull has anything to do with the irreverence for life he felt, while influenced by Hannibal's personality. There's benefits to being unemotional, but is he, actually? And what might he do while Sans influences him...?]

...Hey. You said, you wouldn't use something negative. What are you thinking of trying...?

[Sans hangs onto that single word that isn't outright skepticism. Papyrus hasn't completely lost faith in him. It's selfish to lean on that when he doesn't deserve it, but he can't refuse when it's offered to him. He doesn't move while Papyrus thinks things over. It's in Sans's nature to expect the outcomes he would have the most trouble dealing with, so further inquiry into Sans's offer is a little surprising. He isn't going to get his hopes up, though.]

I figured happiness was pretty safe. Unless you want something else. [He guesses he could let Papyrus pick, as long as it wasn't some really complex emotion.]

Safe...? Maybe. [Right now he's largely unemotional, and sometimes forgets to monitor others' emotions, wellbeing, and so on - memorization isn't active attentiveness. He's not sure which mistakes exactly led to Sans's suspicions, but that conversation hadn't started in a friendly way. If experiencing a happiness powerful enough to overwhelm the theoretical lock on his emotions, would he be anywhere near as attentive to that monitoring? Would he find himself too cheerful to care about the impact of his actions...? It is, he realizes, something of a worry. Worrying about not worrying. Best to cap that recursive tendency.] It seems... better than guilt. Or a lot of other options.

I'm not going to use something negative. [Which he said already, but it bears repeating. No guilt. No sadness or anger or anything like that, either. However...] I have to be able to imagine the feeling, though. [So focusing on, say, optimism probably isn't going to work. Negative emotions are easier for him to picture, but for Papyrus, he can work up some happiness.]

You have to...? [Papyrus's focus centers on him again, intense. He hasn't actually answered Sans's offer yet, for all that the ongoing questioning clearly implies a potential willingness, but. This changes things, a little.] So. It would be... the other side of it. I'll feel your feelings.

Yeah, kind of. [It's not as direct, in that Sans can work with an imagined feeling rather than having to feel it directly, but still.] You won't feel all of them. Just whatever one I'm focusing on. [He isn't going to give Papyrus depression cooties.]

That's... not what I thought would happen. [It's better than he thought, when he imagined Sans forcing thoughts into peoples' heads. It's easy to imagine how Sans might have found feelings of guilt to force into Dylan - especially when he'd taken helping the ghosts so personally. It's concerning that Sans, presumably in possession of all his feelings, thinks there's some he couldn't feel enough to do this with...

But not as immediately concerning as this potential solution. He does a doublecheck of things. Phone disconnected, network quiet beyond the ambient radiowave chatter. No ability to broadcast. No easy access to anyone but Sans, and Sans is volunteering for whatever comes of this. No real way to reliably anticipate what the fallout of this will be, and... something like impatience to find out. He nods, slowly, again.] ...Okay. Give it... Give it a shot.

Okay. [Okay, they're doing this. Sans would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous. Good thing he's so used to lying.] If you want to stop, just say so. [He reaches out to touch Papyrus's arm. Not a handshake; the last time Sans did that, it didn't go so great.

It doesn't happen immediately. Sans is trying to be careful, and he's thinking about the process now instead of just doing it, so the flow of magic is hesitant at first. Just a hint of happiness. Nothing explodes, nobody is hurt. Sans thinks back to Gyftmases spent at home, to making the battle body with Papyrus, to sitting around on the couch watching Papyrus go on about how great Mettaton's newest show was. The magic pours in then, a flood of emotion that Sans is pushing Papyus's way.]

[Papyrus nods at the instruction about stopping if he wants, and keeps some of his attention on his own comfort with the situation. The delay isn't a reason to stop, but it's enough for him to wonder whether anything's going to happen. The initial mild happiness is easily mistaken for relief nothing's going wrong.

Then the flood starts. His lingering concern, doubt, unease, even the irritation over the knife are overwhelmed by happiness as his system tries to process the emotion with the available functionality. After the relative numbness of the last several days, it's a boggling intensity - but it's not enough to process everything of the external command to feel happy pressing on him.

It's just as well Papyrus isn't gripping Sans's hand - his hands clench tightly as internal errors flare up like a wave of pain, until the existing directive to record everything gives way. The confrontation with Hannibal, the rude men on the street, the moment of paranoia when he first discovered a text in which Sans addressed him as bro... As the ongoing emotion processing abruptly shifts to the current happiness, the memories fragment and corrupt with random errors. Papyrus starts to laugh.]

I don't... Nyeh heh heh, I don't remember everything, I don't... I don't remember exactly what your face looked like, a few seconds ago! [It's not overwhelming happiness anymore, nor hysterical laughter. It's funny, now that it's happened, what a relief it is not to be remembering those things so vividly. It's disconcerting, alarming, scary to have parts of his mind just up and disappear - but it's hardly the first time that's happened. There's other emotions starting to fill in the spaces that were left in stasis so long, with the happiness is taking center stage, framing his reactions to everything happening. He slouches back against the couch, still grinning to himself.]

[Was Papyrus memorizing his face in particular earlier? Well, that's not really the point; if it's started interfering with Papyrus's memories, it's time to stop. It'll have either worked or not by now anyway. With Dylan, Sans had just pulled away and left him with all those emotions swirling around. With Papyrus, Sans pulls the magic back, trying to leave Papyrus in a more normal emotional state. Ideally one that isn't muted, but he's not going to have any expectations there.]

Okay, stopping. [He pulls his hand away, keeping an eye on Papyrus.] How d'you feel?

[The happiness is lovely, full of feelings of comfort, home, family. He basks in it while it lasts, still giggling with the relief that he isn't trying to memorize every detail, that the machine directive could fade away. But the happiness abates too, and he's left hiccuping as he very much does not calm down, but gets overwhelmed by other emotions instead.]

I'm, feeling too much? [So many strong feelings, disorientation and shame and guilt, irritation and relief. Everything's loud, and he wants to hide more badly than he's wanted anything for more than a week, but that want is jostling with a dozen other strong feelings. He'd forgotten his brother's existence, and dying, and his resolution to not hurt people. He'd flitted about in some pattern of disdainful, angry impulses and whatever artistic whims occurred to him...? And then, hadn't been feeling even that much...?

Papyrus leans forward to bury his head in his hands, and fingers catch in the scraped grooves on the sides of his skull, reminding him of that part all over. He flinches, ducks down lower, and unconsciously leans towards the comfort of his brother's presence.] Oh my god. What... What was I doing?

[It worked. At least, Sans is pretty sure it worked. When Papyrus leans toward him, he reaches to touch Papyrus's arm, though only his fingertips brush against Papyrus as he wonders if Papyrus is going to flinch away thinking Sans is trying to pump more feelings into him.]

You made a cool robot arm. [Not at all what Papyrus means, of course, but Sans doesn't really know where or how to start.]

[He startles at the touch and glances up, long enough to see what it is, before hiding his face again - but he doesn't pull away. Let Sans decide when he wants to escape this situation, if he does. Papyrus's loneliness aches too much to want to go hide by himself, even if he wants to make something to cover the gaps in his skull, even if he's sniffling with tears trickling out his eye sockets now. (He didn't know he could cry so much, still. Thank goodness his body hasn't shown signs of shorting out when wet, the way others complain about happening.)]

You saw those...? No, no, I showed you one, didn't I? [He's unsure, and that's disorienting and horrifying. It's familiar too, comfortingly so, to have to stop and think to remember things instead of instantly drawing back the full memory of the moment. He's feeling too much, contradictory things, and he wipes at a wet cheekbone.] It's... p-pretty cool, of course, because, I built it.

[Sans freezes when Papyrus startles, but when he doesn't pull away Sans lets his hand rest on Papyrus's arm again. No doubt Papyrus has his emotions back, but that doesn't mean Sans really wants Papyrus to be crying.]

Everything you make is cool. Is your memory working okay? [That had seemed important to Papyrus before they did this, after all.]

[Papyrus doesn't immediately answer, leaning a little more as he wipes at the other cheekbone. He half wants to just sit here and weep, letting his suddenly strong reactions to the last couple weeks splash around for a while, before attempting any conversation. But he's already feeling the embarrassed discomfort of crying so openly, and Sans is here and asking concerned questions, and... he still doesn't want to be alone.]

I'm... I'm, a little, confused. [He admits it in a halting, downplaying way as he tries to settle down, tries to think back. What does he remember? What doesn't he? The last few moments, he recalls pretty coherently, in a normal way. Or, the new normal since all these transformations, where with effort he can piece memories back together enough for pictures and videos - not the continuous, thorough recall he's had for a while. Had for a while. No longer has? They're in pieces of vivid detail, but the pieces don't line up right, and some of them are obviously nonsense. He makes a frustrated noise.]

It's dreamlike. Nightmarish. [He hopes he remembers some of it wrong.] I remember you took my tool. I... think I'm glad you did? More than I'm mad. [He's feeling very much both. Wants to yell about it, wants to thank his brother, wants to lie down and cry that he damaged his little remaining bone like that, wants to finish the job before anything else cracks on him... He settles for scrubbing at his face some more.]

[Sans winces a little when Papyrus brings up the stolen knife. He's still not sorry about taking it, but that doesn't make talking about it easy.] Yeah, it seemed like kinda a bad time to leave that sitting around. [For multiple reasons. Papyrus leaving it there like that and only acting mildly alarmed to find it there in full view of Sans is its own issue entirely. But maybe that part of it is solved, at least for now.] Sorry, I was hopin' it wouldn't mess up the memory stuff too bad, but I guess when you dislodge some of it other stuff breaks off too. [Which is not really a programming metaphor, exactly, but it's not as if Papyrus is all programming.]

[Papyrus makes a frustrated noise at 'sitting around,' since he very much had been using it - he thinks. He'd intended to use it, later, when he discovered it missing. But he doesn't know what he wants to actually do about it now, when he's feeling so conflicted about the situation. Sans shouldn't secretly take things out of his workshop, and he wants to yell about that - but he's grateful and embarrassed about the rest of this help. He reaches up to gently trace the outline of the hole to the new port, where sensitive bone is more aware of the chill of the air. Put a pin in it, come back to it later, and keep listening to his brother's apology.]

...It felt like... too much. It all feels like too much. But it had to be? [His voice is mostly rhetorical with his uncertainty, as he tries to pick apart the conversation leading up to this. Sans admitting to a power with emotions, and the idea that a strong enough emotion would force the others to reset to normal. That it wouldn't be Sans making him feel just whatever way, but sharing his own feelings. Something about that tipping Papyrus towards agreeing with the idea, and that overwhelming happiness that ended in tears he remembers more clearly.] ...I don't know why it worked like this. I've copied other things. And trimmed them down, to just pictures and sound. They didn't break. [Is it comforting, that he's more complicated and delicate than the bits he can copy out of himself?]

You've always had better control than--well, everyone, basically, but better'n me, too. [Sans doesn't know if it was his fault, but it was at least related to the magic he pumped into Papyrus. Maybe if he'd used that power more before this, gotten in some practice... But he really doesn't like it. There must be some interplay of magic and technology, Papyrus's soul mixed in with wiring and programming and robotics, but that's hardly Sans's department. Yet again, he wishes Alphys were around.]

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last tag was as i was falling asleep - want to emphasize, he did feel happy there! did

that came across! sans was just overthinking it

as he does

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what if I just steal that icon

crimes! but yeah it's a good one, an uncommon scene but important mood

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