[open] do you know why the body is a prison?

[skelepun]

Who: Sans and YOU! Open to literally everyone
When: Between this and the final judgment call on this.
Where: The Hold.
What: There's a skeleton in the dungeon, come let him rattle his bones at u
Warnings: Probably some mention of murder/death/etc! But mostly pretty tame, I imagine. Will edit if that changes.


The hold was incredible. Three solid walls, one semi-solid wall, a bench-bed hybrid that wrecked havoc on his back, and all the down time a skeleton could ask for. It was perfect. The best vacation he's ever had.

It'll be a real bummer once all of it goes away again.

Whatever the kid is up to, they're biding their time. And the few times a stray unpleasant thought passed through his skull, Sans is able to wave them away easily enough. He didn't care for thinking about Chara's dead body, so he didn't think about it. The worrying notion that, perhaps, this reality experienced time differently from what he knew...

Again: not thinking about it. The perfect cure, really.

Of course, he couldn't exactly stop people from visiting him here. With news spreading throughout the ship of what happened, more and more people were reaching out to him with why spelled out across their furrowed brows. Sans wished he could help them, sincerely. It would be a load off both their minds.

Too bad the answer was just too damn huge.

( ooc: feel free to visit sans in the hold any time, either before or after your character has 'cast their vote (or not)' on his fate. woo! )

Comments

[neveroutwrenched]

You forgot. [Ratchet echoes back the words with disbelief, not because he believes them but because he can't believe how cavalier Sans is being. It's annoying. It's past annoying. Against all better judgement and against his own promise to keep a cool head, Ratchet feels anger creeping in instead.]

Did you also forget that Chara isn't going to stay dead? They're probably bringing them back to life as we speak, with all their memories intact, probably pissed off as hell, and in case you forgot, you're stuck in here. [Ratchet gestures at the cell angrily. Maybe Sans hadn't known that. He didn't care; it was common knowledge on the ship, and whether he'd known or hadn't known didn't change the fact that it was happening.]

How are you going to keep them from hurting- from killing your brother from inside the hold? Killing him again?

[He'd only halfway promised Papyrus he wouldn't bring that up, but it was out of his mouth before he'd even had a chance to think about it. Typical, really.]

[skelepun]

[That sure is a cavalcade of information. Sans blinks once, twice, trying to parse the deluge of information with what he already presumes to know. People come back -- not something he should be so surprised by. After all, the captains were able to drag him from his own time after death. Who's to say they couldn't do it again.

Still. Sans wasn't exactly expecting Chara to return through... traditional means. It didn't make Ratchet's laser focused accusations sting any less, though.]

--Oh. So you know about that, huh? Heh...

[Sans sucked in a breath, trying to forget the sensation of his brother's dust falling through the gaps in his bony hands. It didn't work.]

It's a gamble, I guess. [For all he's keeping up a casual air, there's some tension that wasn't there before. Sans shrugs it off as quickly as it came.] Between you and me, man, I'm not a very good brother.

[neveroutwrenched]

Yeah, well, you're not a very good friend either.

[That was...not entirely true. He was being melodramatic. Anger and misplaced betrayal, and guilt were dragging him down. He barely knew Sans, it wasn't anyone's fault but his own if things didn't turn out the way he expected. Especially since it was becoming the holding pattern.]

Whatever your reasons, your gamble involved people's lives. [It takes an extreme force of will not to look away then, and there's a painful knot in his chest that's making it hard to talk. He could criticise Sans all he wanted, but now he knows how bad it looks from the other side.

He takes another breath, his expression and tone taking on a hard edge, barely maintained.]

When Chara comes back, stay away from them.

[skelepun]

[So this is what Link'd Inc. thinks of soulmates. Sans has the decency to not laugh. Even if he did, it would be a bubbling, nervous sort of chuckle that betrays just how bone deep the numbness went.

Is this why he waited so long to act? Why he watched all of his loved ones die before finally acting as he should have from the start? To dodge the disappointed looks and glaring demands?

Who knows. Rubbing at an eye socket with the heel of his palm, Sans finally does laugh. It's not a pleasant sound.]

Is this 'cuz I stood you up that one time? 'Cuz I'll make it out to you, bro, I swear.

[It's a stupid and inappropriate joke, but as long as he's detonating relationships, why not go whole hog. Everyone's always bothering him about putting effort into things, after all.]

[neveroutwrenched]

[Ratchet stares at Sans, his expression rigid, caught somewhere in that worse place between anger and hurt. Fine.

Fine. ]

Glad one of us can still make jokes. [It's said with as much venom as he can muster, which, all said and done...isn't that much. He's tired of being angry. It's exhausting. The tension he'd been carrying in his shoulders since he'd walked in is seeping out, and all the confrontation is gone from his expression as he turns away from Sans.]

I'll see you later.

[Not so much a promise as a noncommittal stopgap. What else was he supposed to say? It felt wrong to leave it like that - accomplishing worse than nothing - but he does anyway.]