sciencelizard | « [IC Inbox- Hadriel]

[It's morning, she thinks eventually. It's probably morning. Time has likely passed, at least. Regardless, she slides out of her room quietly, moves to the couch. Sits and plays with her phone until she sees him emerge from his room again, whenever that is.

She doesn't wait, or stop, or say anything. She just gets up, approaches him directly, and tosses her arms around his neck. Presses him close, cradles his head in her hands.

For however long he wants.

You're important too.

Good morning.]

[So, full disclosure - he kinda never wants to drink again. Turns out mixing ketchup and alcohol and downing...three? Consecutive bottles? - is never a good choice for anybody. He kinda lost track of how things went with Shadow. Pretty sure they went better than he expected, but he pays the price with the sickening pressure of a headache that'd ordinarily be the kind drilled into his skull after turning something or another blue, along with the additional sluggishness to his limbs when he shambles outta his room, nearly trips over the step, and -

Walks face-first into an armful of lizard.

Or does the armful of lizard walk face-first into him?

It takes him a second to cobble together what's happening, and by the time he manages that - okay, nope, things still aren't comin' together with any kinda reassuring clarity. All he knows is that Alphys is there and giving him this - hug, and it's nice, it's nice to know that she cares, but he's also got no clue where the -

What did he do last night?]

Uh, [says Sans, eloquently. Manages an awkward pat on the shoulder.] Morning?

[It hits her, like the moment he speaks, that maybe he has no fucking idea what he did and she's been up for the last like, what, six fucking hours for absolutely nothing.

Well.

Regardless, she pulls back so she can see him, but she's not letting go quite yet.]

M-Morning.

I, uh... got your messages, uhm. Last n-night. I thought you might, uh. Need that? But I'm realizing that maybe you don't even remember calling me and you look nervous and I'm sorry I just, uh, yeah.

... Yep.

[Messages...?

Oh.

Fuck.]

[That trickles on back to him in a glaring rush. Words - spilling endlessly from his stupid, gibbering grin, just confessing every wretched thing wrong with his life and with himself to someone who'd had more than enough problems to deal with. He was a mess. A wreck. An absolute wreck.

Can't ever let that kinda thing - do that to him.

He's better than that. He's locked up tight. He's implacable. He smiles, he smiles, he smiles, he doesn't - he don't open up the chinks in the armor like that, easy as you please, and just expect it to go well.

But.

It's Alphys.

His shoulders creep upward in a faint shrug, his skull tipping downward.]

Heh...so. Uh...

[What's he say to that. She doesn't - hate him for it. Even if she should, should be tearin' him five or six new ones for dumping his nonexistent guts on her door step and then fucking off and expecting her to just deal with it like it's no big deal.

What's he say to that?

Same thing he always says.]

Turns out that, uh...some of that stuff Delight stocks 's pretty strong.

[She worries at her lip for a bit while he pauses, thinking she shouldn't have been privy to all that, maybe it wasn't on purpose and he accidentally invited her somewhere too personal. Like he didn't actually want to talk to her or let her know anything but...

He seems nervous. Like... he's worried what she'll think of him.

As if, somehow, he could do something to ruin what she thinks of him.

Well, she can relate.

She searches his features for a moment after he speaks, opens her mouth to talk, and just... laughs. All her words get lost in her throat to a flurry of laughter, where her anxiety spills over the top, where her fear of judgement or intrusion melts into nothingness. She just ends up putting her head on his shoulder, shaking her shoulders with each giggle, before finally pulling it up to face him.]

Well, it, uhm... s-sounds like you needed it, at any rate.

[She's smiling. She actually feels... a little better, for some stupid reason. Maybe she's just spent so long thinking of what to say and wrapped up in it that any kind of release is catharsis.]

Do you... feel any b-better?

[Default to the easiest common denominator. Default to the joke, the stupid aside. Never goin' out drinking again, am I right, folks? End on a stinger, close on everyone's smiling, laughing faces. Roll credits.

Only it don't work like that at all. Sounds maybe like he needed it, but he either didn't have nearly enough to drink or too much. If he'd gotten to the point of black-out drowsiness, maybe he never would'a bothered her at all.

He chuckles faintly, rubbing at the back of his cervical vertebrae with one hand with the rasp of bone on bone.]

Heh. Uh. Feelin' pretty lousy. Hangover's not worth it.

[That's what it's called, right? He don't drink nearly enough to get all the proper terminology down.]

Sorry I - must'a woken you up a dozen times, huh?

[She laughs just a little more, mostly out of embarrassment this time.]

Not, uh, r-really... I slept right through them. All of them. I had passed out with my computer on and uh, d-didn't hear a thing.

[One day Hadriel's gonna get hit by a fuckin meteor and she won't know until she's damn good and ready to be awake, apparently.]

Do you, uh... want breakfast, or something? I've just kinda been up for, uhm, a while now.

[So instead he...must'a given her a real heart attack when she checked her messages and, for once, found herself to be the one overwhelmed with a smattering of several consecutive messages, a big long string of 'em.

Great. Good on him.]

Sorry 'bout that.

[Feels redundant, but he did kinda...lead things to this point. Did kinda make her beholden to helpin' him feel like he ain't a smear on the foot of whatever cosmic irony set things playin' off like this.]

But, uh, sure. Sure thing.

[He seems... so tense, now. She should've expected this. He was drunk. Like, super drunk. He's usually dodgy and not wanting to talk about himself.

She's still hoping he'll want to say something, though. Or at least he feels... somewhat better? Or that it helped?

Regardless, she digs around the kitchen for some cereal, or just whatever the heck is in there at the moment.]

So, uhm... w-who were you, uh, drinking with? It sounded like, uhm, a good friend.

Shadow? He's, uh...

[He ain't real sure what to call him at this particular juncture. An acquaintance? An ally? A once-time enemy, those differences now resolving into something he ain't real sure what to call?]

...short. He's real short.

[That buys him time, at least. Torque the exchange into a joke, as is his only skill in life. He slides into one of the kitchen chairs and resists the urge to simply drop off right then and there. It'd be so easy, and never has the prospect felt more tempting.]

I, uh...dunno what we are, actually. Weren't real fond of each other until kinda recently. Or - I guess he weren't real fond of me. Somethin' like that.

[She does feel a little laugh in her chest at that description; they're all short, Sans, if he got on her shoulders they'd barely equal like One Mettaton.

Eventually, she ends up finding some dry pancake batter. That's good stuff. She's even getting better at not like, burning all of it. So she grabs a pan, starts heating it up on the stove, roots around in the fridge for milk and eggs.]

So you... w-went out and like, talked and stuff?

[Went out and talked and stuff. That's an accurate descriptor, if a pretty...well, it don't really encapsulate exactly everything that happened.

Don't she deserve to know?]

More or less, yeah. Some stuff kinda...

[She's making pancakes. The bizarrely domestic picture takes a second to adjust to.]

How much d'you know about why Frisk...uh, why we ain't really talking?

[She's never been good at cooking, but this gives her hands something to do while she listens. Keeps her from just staring him down. But when he speaks, she almost wants to, mixing the batter idly while leaning against the counter.]

Not, uhm... not much at all. Frisk c-contacted me afterwards but all they said was, uhm, something happened to make your relationship, uh, worse.

[Gonna tactfully leave out the 'we were never really friends' part of that message.]

[Yeah. He figures - she ought'a know some of it, right? No point in keepin' her outta the loop like this. Even if it ain't exactly what he'd call prime bonding material. But beggars can't much be chooser, now, can they?]

You remember those pages? Back when...things from home were fallin' through.

[He's pretty sure she does. Stuff like that - no matter how much you try to forget, it sticks to your skull like cobwebs, clinging there despite all efforts to scrub it clean.]

[She does everything she can not to slow her movements, but she knows he'll know her too well not to see the shifts, the sudden stiffness in her joints.]

... Yeah. W-What, uhm, about it?

[That sure was a fantastic thing to happen in like, her first month of Hadriel, god Damn.]

[It's plain that the words shook her. The memories of things he tries not to bring up. The things he tries not to burden her with, 'cause god only knows she lives with enough. This thing, this openness thing - it ain't easy stuff.

For either of 'em.]

My, uh, evil twin? Yeah. He got ahold of 'em. Figured...hey. Why not hand all that stuff over to a couple of kids, right?

[What could go wrong?]

[She bites at her bottom lip, pouring some of the batter into the pan, and it sizzles to fill the silence.]

Oh. So...

[She doesn't know what to say here. There's gotta be more to this story.]

... What happened? After t-that?

[What does she think happened? It's...well, he ain't real sure how much she's pieced together. About what leads a couple of kids to climb a mountain. About why one of their doubles bragged about, if he wanted to do right by Chara, he should've gutted them on the spot.

Might be she has her suspicions. She's intuitive when she wants to be.

No point in hiding it, yeah? Can't burn the bridge more than he already has. He already posited it anonymously to the cave at large.

God but they hate him for that.

They should.]

They figured they'd take a leaf outta the old doc's book.

[She's quiet, painfully so. Doesn't want to believe the things she had put together, wants herself to be wrong, but she always ends up right when she doesn't want to. She turns to face him, letting the pan sizzle in the background as she searches for the right words.]

... I guess it's good we, uhm... don't have a CORE here, or, a-anything. But that's still... I'm sorry. That all of that, uhm, h-happened, with you, and... everything.

[And that, for the most part, she did nothing about it.]

[Good thing, right? Yeah. Real good. Knowing the two of 'em, he's got no doubt that they'd figure a way for it to work at some point or another. Real determined. The way humans are.

The space between them is quiet but for the hiss of heating batter. He's just...takin' up all her time with his story, his problems. Again. This is why he has that policy of his, see. The one where he don't tell anyone anything. 'Cause you get "sorry," you get apologies, you get pity, you get - wasting people's time, just 'cause you're not the best guy for the job. Just 'cause you are the way you are. No fixing it. No changing it.

No cure for that.]

I cleaned their place out.

[The words are clipped, dull. Why the hell's he still talking, anyway? May as well be on autopilot.]

Took away the only hope they had.

[She wears at her lip as he speaks, flipping the pancake as he does, but her response is almost too immediate when he finishes.]

That's not... h-hope, Sans. Erasing yourself to get away from your problems isn't hope.

[She should know.

Really, they both do.]

... You didn't do something wrong in stopping them. It's not... what they wanted, I mean, just b-because they wanted it doesn't make it right.

[That's...kinda the bottom line. Right? Good for the long term, but for the short term, he ain't gonna get anything from either kid but grief and betrayal. They'll hate him for it, no question.]

Yeah. Yeah, I know. But they don't.

[That had to be it, didn't it? The last. The final, sustained action. The one that took them over the edge and scrubbed away any need to do, to be, anything else. If failure's the only option, they might as well extrapolate that, take it to its logical conclusion.

He ever given 'em a reason to stick around?]

I dunno if they'll ever...

[Stupid, right?

Who the hell is he to beg anyone's forgiveness?]

[She's quiet, for another few beats. Just long enough to slip the pancake onto a plate and to take the pan off the burner. She needs to be looking at him for this. Not distracted. So she turns, tries to force herself to meet his eyes.]

It's not your fault, what... what t-they feel. You did what you had to, to.... to save them. That matters.

[And... she knows they'll see that. Eventually.]

Whether they forgive you, or, o-or not, it's... what you did was important, and good. Dying isn't the answer. No matter what.

[What's he doing.

She's got enough to worry about, don't she? She's got enough on her plate, figuratively and literally. And here he is, addin' to her pile of problems with his own whine-worthy whinging.]

...thanks, Alph.

[The words're quiet, and his hands drop onto the tabletop.]

Sorry. Shouldn't'a...you gotta enough to worry about.

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