[Sans has been putting his avoidance to work; it's the only thing he works at regularly. (Okay, that's not true. It's even less true lately. Seems a shame to drop a good bad joke, though.) If it was just that one incident, just the television, then maybe that would be one thing. But as time goes on, Sans realizes he just keeps walking around. Flying around. Taking the stairs. He should be teleporting. He wants to be teleporting. He isn't.
It's weird. It's a problem. So, as he walks into the kitchen in the morning for breakfast--walks, instead of just appearing either in the kitchen or somewhere nearby--he decides he should probably bring it up. He's been trying to do that more.]
[With how quiet Sans's teleports are these days, Papyrus has come to more than half expect no warning at all before his brother turns up just about anywhere. (He suspects it hasn't helped him with calming down lingering fears of that light spreading to reach into him, in fact. But with the way their minds can get changed on them... There's not much point asking Sans to promise not to.) In that regard, his brother's antsy physical activity has been a help - at least he can hear footsteps and crutches approaching.]
Yeah, but I still can't prove it.
[Not that Sans asked him to, or expressed any doubt in Papyrus's claims about them. But despite the last couple days of silent avoidance, the complaint isn't that kind of defensive. It's more frustrated than anything, petulant irritation with effort that's gone nowhere - or at least not given him results he can show. At least whatever porridge-resembling mush he's experimenting with is something tangible.]
Yeah, something weird's going on again. [He'd rather have a break after last month, but he doesn't expect that here. He saw Papyrus asking around on the network about strange happenings, and Sans does believe Papyrus's mirror issue even if there's no actual evidence for it, but he hadn't noticed anything in himself until now. Might as well provide another data point.] Y'know how I keep going on walks and stuff? I don't actually want to be doing that.
[Sans not wanting to do extra exercise: not a shock. Sans doing it even when he doesn't want to: the actual issue here.]
You... Have been moving around more than usual. [It's a slow concession, especially as Papyrus takes a few full seconds to consider the rather confused flag the tracker had sent him a day ago.
More than 300% increase in physical activity compared to all those months of monitoring, not to mention whatever it retained of his summary of Sans. But it is the first time his brother's injured a leg quite like this, and there's a difference between choosing not to walk around and being unable to do so... Papyrus figured it finally goaded his brother into choosing activity for the sake of choosing. Apparently... not?]
Not walking my hot dog cart all the way into the city. [That one was really a big hint to Sans that something was wrong, happening just the other day.] I want to just go back to taking shortcuts. It's faster. But I can't. [Not most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he can convince himself, but it's getting harder to get his body to do what he says, exercise-wise, as the days go by.]
...Your shortcuts aren't working? [That's a worry, if their new kinds of magic start faltering on them. Papyrus has a lot of things he's juggling on the basis of his mechanical skills, some of which would be hard to stop - like his job - and, well... Knowing that Sans can usually get himself out of any manner of emergency is a big factor in his ease of mind.]
They're working. [When it's in the name of demonstration rather than getting somewhere, the magic comes to life easily; Sans vanishes and reappears on the other side of Papyrus, easy as he always has.] But when I want to go somewhere, I just... Get up and walk. Can't convince myself to just teleport.
That's... strange. [Baffled, rather than disbelieving. Sans has very visibly been active, while injured, and that's not really prank material. Not to mention, he can return the belief in things they can't prove.] That's so the opposite of normal, it sounds like someone flipped a flag on you.
[Just one flag, the decisions about physical exertion. The rest of Sans's programming - the rest of Sans's mind, and mannerisms, and behaviors, he means - seem to be about as normal, looking at it from the outside.]
They should un-flip it. [That Papyrus is using a term like that, even to describe Sans, is hardly even worth thinking about at this point. It's just how Papyrus speaks now.] You're not supposed to walk around on a broken leg anyway. [Of course, for this place, it's a pretty benign issue. For now. He doesn't trust it at all.] Has the mirror thing just been staying the same for you? Like, it's not... I dunno, spreading, or getting worse?
[Papyrus hums agreeably, because yeah, the antsy-seeming walking probably hasn't been helping the slow healing process, not if there's chances of jostling and re-injuring things. But what he knows about bones is... starting to fade, without ongoing personal experience, so who knows.]
No, not for me. I don't know if it's spreading... Nobody's mentioned anything like that. [Another worrying thought, one he flags to follow up on with coworkers and neighbors and other places he's visited the last several days.] But for me it's the same. Drippy mirrors... Outdated reflection.
[He's torn over whether to call it his real reflection or not. Outdated works, sort of - acknowledges the once-realness of it, acknowledges the updates and revisions since.]
Other reflections look like they should? Like, I still look like--how I look now. [A brief expression crosses Sans's face, a here and gone shadow, because he almost said "I still look like me", and this isn't the best time to try and work on what "like me" is supposed to mean. Better to just put that entire issue aside.]
[Papyrus absolutely catches that shadow and hesitation, because it's the same one he's made a couple of times since this started up. It's the notion that's outright haunting him in reflections, the conflicted feeling of a reflection that's no longer the right kind of familiar and the dysphoria of it. It's not a feeling he wants to be spreading.]
Uhh. You did before. [When Papyrus first discovered it and tried to show his brother, first with a mirror and then with pictures of his memories.] I haven't... seen your reflection today. But we could check!
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spaghettimonster) wrote2021-07-31 02:32 am
a few days later
It's weird. It's a problem. So, as he walks into the kitchen in the morning for breakfast--walks, instead of just appearing either in the kitchen or somewhere nearby--he decides he should probably bring it up. He's been trying to do that more.]
Hey, are mirrors still being weird for you?
no subject
Yeah, but I still can't prove it.
[Not that Sans asked him to, or expressed any doubt in Papyrus's claims about them. But despite the last couple days of silent avoidance, the complaint isn't that kind of defensive. It's more frustrated than anything, petulant irritation with effort that's gone nowhere - or at least not given him results he can show. At least whatever porridge-resembling mush he's experimenting with is something tangible.]
no subject
[Sans not wanting to do extra exercise: not a shock. Sans doing it even when he doesn't want to: the actual issue here.]
no subject
More than 300% increase in physical activity compared to all those months of monitoring, not to mention whatever it retained of his summary of Sans. But it is the first time his brother's injured a leg quite like this, and there's a difference between choosing not to walk around and being unable to do so... Papyrus figured it finally goaded his brother into choosing activity for the sake of choosing. Apparently... not?]
What... do you want to be doing?
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[Just one flag, the decisions about physical exertion. The rest of Sans's programming - the rest of Sans's mind, and mannerisms, and behaviors, he means - seem to be about as normal, looking at it from the outside.]
no subject
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No, not for me. I don't know if it's spreading... Nobody's mentioned anything like that. [Another worrying thought, one he flags to follow up on with coworkers and neighbors and other places he's visited the last several days.] But for me it's the same. Drippy mirrors... Outdated reflection.
[He's torn over whether to call it his real reflection or not. Outdated works, sort of - acknowledges the once-realness of it, acknowledges the updates and revisions since.]
no subject
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Uhh. You did before. [When Papyrus first discovered it and tried to show his brother, first with a mirror and then with pictures of his memories.] I haven't... seen your reflection today. But we could check!