For Lack of a Better Title (Ch. 8) Watery Introspection
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AO3
The last place he expected to find himself was back in Waterfall.
There was an immediate environmental shift as his boots went from crunching to clacking, and the wind that seemed to reflect his turbulent state of mind no longer tore at him from behind. He walked on absently, unaware of trivial matters like distance and location.
He passed the waterfall, narrowly avoiding being swept away by a falling boulder.
He passed the bridge flowers lined neatly in place, sturdy beneath his scrambled thoughts.
As he made his way through the cavernous walkways, his mind played and skipped like a broken record, jumping from one thought to another but always coming back to how terrible of a brother he was.
He passed the tiny, worn shop that belonged to the old turtle, who didn’t appear to be present.
Several paces more and the room opened up, blindingly bright. His feet dragged on, scraping across the floor, heavy and leaden.
It took him a while to realize he was muttering to himself, but unlike the previous time, he didn’t start or even react when an echo flower sent his voice back at him. He glanced briefly at the field of ruined flowers that he was responsible for. Just another beautiful thing he’d damaged beyond repair.
Because that’s what Sans was - beautiful, amazing, a light where there were none - and he’d snuffed it out without thinking twice. He could barely recall the feelings of elation and utter joy that surfaced whenever Sans would praise him, would look at him with such unbridled adoration, like he was the coolest thing in the underground - no, in the world. Could scarcely recall how Sans would simply be there, was always there. Somewhere along the line he’d forgotten that feeling, forgotten just how amazing his big brother was. And what kind of brother had he been in return? Selfish, bratty, ungrateful for the hundreds of sacrifices Sans made for him every day.
“What am I doing?” he sighed to himself. Better yet, what should he be doing? Making amends with his drunk brother who so clearly hated him, and justifiably so? Certainly walking away wasn’t doing any good. But what, then, was he supposed to do?
There was no outlet for petty emotions in their world save for violence, and that, majority of the time, ended in at least one casualty. Talking was proving to be just as ineffective what with his inability to do even that properly. He let his constant anger get the better of him and the only way he knew how to deal with that was violence. It was a vicious cycle he didn’t know how to escape.
“I messed up, I know,” he said, dragging both of his hands down his face. He was out in Waterfall doing who knew what, going who knew where. “Just apologize, damnit. But … I don’t … “ For goodness’ sake, he couldn’t even talk to himself properly.
He poured on speed, stalking briskly along the path until he approached the walkway that lead into a room of inky blackness. He finally began to concern himself with his location, coming to the realization that he’d almost stepped into completely unfamiliar territory.
Anytime he needed to visit hotland he took the ferry, and now that he was standing before the cavern he could distinctly recall Sans warning him not to wander around there as a child. Every day when Sans would reluctantly leave Papyrus to his own devices, he did his best to encourage Papyrus to stay in one spot. However Papyrus was a restless monster, so Sans often had to settle for the best thing he could provide: a warning. Papyrus could explore all of the nooks and crannies across Waterfall that a monster his size could hide so long as he never did either of two things: get on the ferry, or go into “that dark place,” to give it a simple name a kid could understand.
He’d adhered to those rules for the most part, excepting one time when he’d gone twenty paces in on a dummy dare (only dummies refused, and Papyrus was no dummy) from Undyne. The details of the experience had for the most part escaped him, but the one thing he would never forget was the strange chattering he’d heard just before something furry had brushed by his legs. He’d bolted, leaving a guffawing Undyne at the entrance to brood back at his and Sans’ hideout.
Standing at the entrance now, the only thing keeping him from simply walking in was the rationalization that if he were to die now, he’d never give sans the apology he deserved.
For a while he stood there, unmoving, mind devoid of thought. The light emitting from the room behind cast a deep shadow before him. He took his time tracing all of the sharp features made soft by the image, but even that was only distracting for so long. Once the outline began to tremble with faint light, he made the decision to turn around and leave.
He dragged his feet back through every section of Waterfall, purposefully letting the minutes surpass him, prolonging his arrival and inevitable confrontation. As he passed the waterfall and approached the unmanned sentry station, something subtle in the corner of his vision caught his eye. Veered off to the left was a narrow tunnel that blended effortlessly into the path.
Just the sight of it sent old memories resurfacing. There was a time when Papyrus would spend nearly all of his time hiding out in the room beyond the tunnel. There was no solid ground, nothing to keep him from falling over the bridges that made up a path in front of the waterfall, but as a child the safety hazard hadn’t concerned him in the slightest.
He was larger now, filled up a lot more space, but he liked to think he wasn’t any less agile. A glance to either side of him confirmed that no monsters were in sight or headed his way, so he ducked his way into the corridor.
It was a much tighter fit than he remembered, even taking his growth into account, but he managed to pull himself through and onto the other side.
A voice at the back of his head kept nagging, reminding him that he had something more important to be doing, but for a moment this was a welcome distraction. Maybe afterward he’d be ready for a confrontation, or so he told himself.
As he stood back up to his full height, Papyrus took in his surroundings. The wood beneath his feet was slicker than he recalled, and he made a note to tread carefully. The room itself felt smaller, less grand and less echoey. The air felt damper, it seemed darker, and the sound of the waterfall was a lot more deafening. In fact, the only things that still seemed the same were the spray of the waterfall’s mist and the lone echo flower that sat and the far end of the path.
He’d never thought to question its presence, never wondered who placed it there or how it survived on a wooden platform. It mattered as little now as it had all those years ago.
Placing one careful foot before the other, Papyrus made his way across the platforms to the other side of the room. The closer he get to the flower, the clearer it became, still standing upright and glowing soft as ever.
If he nudged it, he wondered, would he hear his own juvenile voice echoed back at him? Or would another monster have since come through and spoken over it. He couldn’t even begin to guess at the last thing he might have said, assuming it was still his words recorded in the flower.
In the end curiosity wasn’t enough to override the sinking in his gut at the prospect of being reminded yet again just how far he’d fallen since his youth.
He turned instead and gazed up at the ceiling - where there was presumably a ceiling, anyway. The expanse above him was just as dark and unrevealing as the expanse below. He peered over the edge and wondered for perhaps the first time how far down it went.
He voiced his musings to himself, completely ignoring the echo from the flower behind him. As he inched closer to the edge, instead of apprehensive he felt rather drawn to the darkness below him. There was no way to tell when it stopped, if it ever did. Was that even possible? It had to end somewhere, surely. But wouldn’t that be fascinating, just an infinite void with no destination …
No destination, no expectations, no pressures. No thinking.
His entire life, he was always searching for something to prove, for a purpose and an end goal.
He walked back to the center of the room, his back to the waterfall, and sat down gingerly on the edge.
Right now, not having to think sounded rather nice. If he had nowhere to go, no social pressures or obligations weighing on his back, he wouldn’t have to worry about letting anyone down. It was a quite a thought.
It would be so easy, too, to slide just a bit further and let himself tip over the edge. Something like curiosity curled around the thought, compelled him to do just that, to slip over the side and find out what was waiting in the earth below him.
He closed his eyes. Spent a minute breathing in the earthy scent of the cavern, concentrating on the pricks of water hitting the back of his skull, listening to the crash of the falls and trying to follow its sound as far down as he could.
As peaceful as it was, the gnawing at the back of his mind had turned to biting, and he could no longer ignore that there was something he needed to be doing. Reluctantly, he scooted back brought one leg up beneath him, trying to draw as much calm from the atmosphere as he could before he was thrown right back into the heart of anxiety.
The sudden rustle behind him was so faint he almost missed it. Almost.
But it turned out that second of hesitation was all his assailant needed to get one good shove on him.
Ordinarily, he would have stood his ground with barely any effort. The push he received wasn’t even particularly hard, but he was perched unevenly on the platform as it was, right leg hanging over the side, the other folded beneath him as he prepared to stand.
In the split second before completely losing his balance, the only thought to cross his mind was that they should have pushed more directly if they wanted him over the edge. It was a panicked push, however, their chance to act likely coming to a close as he get ready to rise. As a result, he fell somewhat diagonally.
His reflexes were one thing he could always rely on. This moment was no different. The hand he was using to keep himself steady was still rested on the platform, and unlike before there was no hesitation in the way it darted out to take hold of the edge.
He could feel the point the rest of his body caught up with gravity, a jarring sensation when the magic that held his joints together threatened to break, all the strain isolated in his left shoulder.
A more diligent assailant would have broken his hold on the platform immediately, and although he couldn’t see them from his angle, he heard the panicked gasp that indicated their surprise. It was all the time he needed to swing his other arm around the side and take hold.
His next action should have been to hoist himself up immediately and face his attacker, but instead of rising over the side swiftly, he was stopped abruptly mid-rise. His first assumption was that the assailant was pushing him down, but it was a pull, he realized, that kept him stuck in limbo.
He only had a moment to confirm that his scarf had caught on a nail sticking out of of the platform. The monster above him finally gathered their bearings and darted down to break his grip. The scarf wasn’t coming off without some effort, but he only had one hand to spare and he needed it to keep his attacker at bay. Never before had he found himself in such a compromised position, and for the first time since his childhood, tendrils of fear began to take hold.
Thank the stars the assailant didn’t seem to know what they were doing, their plan obviously didn’t include him fighting back. The way they pushed at his head, angled backward without any leverage whatsoever, Papyrus would guess they were trying desperately not to be seen beneath their hooded cloak.
He had half a mind to reach for the cloak just to pull it off. It was that anger, that incredulity at the idea of a monster with so little dignity attacking anonymously, that fueled his next actions. The claws of his right hand dug into the wood as hard as they could before he left go of his left to swing down. With enough momentum, he came back full force, this time swinging his leg over the side to hook his heel on the platform.
The assailant was either smart enough or scared enough to step back as he did, for Papyrus’s next move was to grab for the loose fabric of their cloak to haul them over the edge behind him. His fingers just barely grazed the front of it, not close enough to get a real grip, but their new distance gave him the opening he needed to quickly rework the scarf around his neck.
The faint thought to simply rip it crossed his mind, but for reasons he wasn’t able to focus on, that wasn’t even an option, survival instinct not enough to override the irrational value he held in the red piece of cloth.
He always wore it loose for this very reason, though. If he couldn’t leave the house without it, he had to at least make sure that no one he fought could take advantage of its hold. It took a bit of effort from the hand still holding onto the platform to reduce some of the pull before he was able to slip the scarf from around his neck.
The tail end of it tumbled down as he let it go to free his hand. The part of his mind that was neither calm instinct nor ever-growing panic broke through just enough to scream for him to catch it, to get the scarf and make sure it was safe, even though the more rational part knew that it was still caught on the nail, still hanging quite literally by a thread.
The moment he got his left band back onto the edge of the platform was when the odds slipped even further from his favor.
If not for the slick surface of the aged wood, he might have made it up and over the edge without a hitch. But, as his luck would have it, as soon as he tried to pull up with the foot that was still hooked over the side, instead of holding its ground his heel slipped and came right back down with the rest of his body.
The assailant seemed too petrified to get any closer, but it didn’t even matter, gravity doing all the work to make sure he didn’t climb back up. The sudden drop was enough to pull his left arm down with the rest of his body, leaving once again only one hand to support the weight of his body, armor included.
The toll the encounter was taking shouldn’t have been so great - ordinarily it _wouldn’t _have been so great - but the lack of sleep or sufficient nutrients was making itself known. His magic was significantly diminished, and unlike fleshy monsters who could build muscle, magic was the only thing holding his entire body together. If it was weak, if it failed, there was nothing in his body to compensate. In fact if his magic stores got too low, there was a point where he might even begin to fall apart. He didn’t know what it took to cross that threshold, but now was about the worst time to find out.
In the end it was too much. His arm was on fire, it felt like his shoulder would be torn from its socket any second, and the magic leaking from his skull in the form of sweat wasn’t helping the fact that he couldn’t muster up enough energy to get his other arm back up, let alone pull himself up if he succeeded.
The other monster must have sensed his plight, for it was then that they chose to approach again. This time the fight had drained out of Papyrus. He was panting hard, his entire body ached, on the verge of collapse.
This, it seemed, was it for him.
He didn’t even give the monster a chance to step on his hand before he let go of his own accord.
The last thing he saw of them was a glimpse of yellow, so quick he might have just imagined it. Either way it didn’t matter.
He felt oddly at peace, free falling through the air. Everything around him seemed to go silent, and if he closed his eyes it almost felt like he was floating.
The farther he fell, the more the light above him faded, until it was nothing more than a pinprick in the center of his vision as the space around him grew dark, darker, yet darker.
Finally, he gave in, shut his sockets for good and let the air embrace him.
Perhaps Sans would be better off without him now.
