entranceway | Entry #90

action;

[Everything goes white.]

[It's slow, and it's immediate. It's an eruption of snowy white fur across his forearms, along his back, to contrast the black-brown of the hair on his head. It's not painful, but it blazes in a way nothing else can. The weight of stubby horns on his head, the white-hot torquing of the barbed wire of his nervous system as it rearranges itself, as his organs howl in accommodation of something a human body was never meant to endure. His shoulder blades prickle with an eruption of thorny growths, stark and black as the skeletal branches that always rake the sky in his dreams. A startled, agonized noise wrenches out from the back of his throat, sputtering into an abortive gagging when he discovers that his canines have abruptly sharpened into fangs.]

[That's when the memories begin.]

[He doubles over, hands snapping around his middle. He's taller than he was, larger than he was, and there's a bright sizzle of something in the palms of his hands.]

[Can't think. Can't do anything but - ]

[* ACT.]

[An eruption of white-hot flame bursts from his hands - his paws? It coils up and around, wreathing the Frost Giants in a fiery nimbus. They begin to shriek as the heat starts to melt their blueish skin into slurries of clear, watery runoff. It curls his lips upward into a snarl. His eyes are wet, blinding him with the heated prickle of his own inability to fucking cope. His nostrils are thick with dust. He's breathing in, sitting in, FIGHTing in Asgore's own fucking remains.]

[The interleaving of dualed memory digs into the posterior of his skull like a fingernail prizing away a scabbed over wound. Warm scents of butterscotch and cinnamon, of a crackling fire in a hearth, soft white fur smoothed beneath a large, heavy paw, the twining of horns in with tree branches and the musical chatter of a child's laughter at the sheer silliness of it. The bitterness that clenched in a Boss Monster's gut that left him bedridden for days, and the deep-voiced plea that begged the bedraggled, bleeding, sweating shape on the bed to * Stay determined.]

[Watching one child crumble to dust, so soon after the other stopped breathing.]

[He can no longer tell whose tears are burning in wet runnels down his cheeks.]

[...]

[He no longer cares.]

video;

[If Tim could have his way, he'd be issuing this announcement over text. But he can't - having learned, very far after the fact, that the new, clawlike shape of his hands makes inputting text commands rather impossible. It seems Asgardian technology doesn't account for impromptu goat-human hybrids. So instead, people get something different.]

[Something...very different.]

[On day four, a watery scarlet iris stares hollowly at the screen for several moments before Tim pulls back. If the presence of thick white fur and rounded horns and branchlike protrusions doesn't cement that something has gone really, horribly, terribly wrong, then the tremor in his voice and the glisten of tears down his cheeks certainly should.]

I, uh...

[Maybe it's the eyes - the eyes that, though they've changed in color, undeniably belong to one Timothy Wright.]

Asgore told me - he said that I had to, I had to take it before anyone else did. I didn't know this would - god - I didn't know.

[He's trying not to break down. He's trying not to. He can no longer tell whose guilt is swelling like a tumor in his chest, whose grief is eating at his heart. At the soul he allegedly, apparently possesses.]

I'm sorry.

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[He's ready to give up. Hang up. Let someone better suited manage this, because he's pretty damn sure any word he says is just going to make things worse.]

[But then Tim practically breaks down.]

[Wonderland makes you live with your choices. Eventually you have no choice but to start cleaning up your own messes.]

[Another thing Sans is no good at.]

no, that's not--that's not what i meant.

[God, he ruined this, he fucked this up so badly.]

tim--tim.

[Can Tim even hear him? God, what does he do? This is his fault, how does he fix this, how does he even begin?]

that's not--that's not what i meant--tim, you couldn't have stopped him. you didn't let him. he's a boss monster. there's no way you'd have been able to stop him.

this isn't your fault.

[Quit freaking out, right? Quit being so goddamn - quit acting out, like you can't control yourself, like you can't get a handle on yourself. Take your meds, pipe down, and sit like a good kid. Don't twist yourself out of shape. This isn't real. It isn't real. Take a breath, because ,i>it isn't real.]

I could've - I spend all this time looking for a way to blame him, and I'm the one that started it!

[He really is a despicable person, isn't he? A sickening, sickening human. Chara was right. They were right.]

[He's always the one that starts it. He's the source. The source.]

They were all right.

[Alex was right.]

[At this point, Sans is getting the sense that Tim isn't really talking about Asgore, at least not entirely. Like he's conflating two different things.]

[There's so much Sans doesn't actually know about Tim, or his life. He never bothered to find out. Things were fine when they were just--chatting about what they did have in common.]

tim...breathe. just...breathe, okay? in and out. count backwards slowly from ten.

please.

[He knows how to breathe. He knows how to fucking breathe. He's not some kid. He doesn't need to be talked down to, like he doesn't know what the hell is happening. He's done this before. He knows what it means. He's done it before. He's - ]

[He's - ]

[Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.]

[He knows. Fuck, he knows. Brian doesn't have to be lingering there over his shoulder, hissing words into his ear. He knows what he did. He knows that this is just what he does - curses people with his presence, until they can't cut him out.]

I did this.

this isn't your fault. it isn't. come on, buddy, please. you gotta try to breathe. come on.

[Feels almost like he's begging.]

I should've just -

[The device jostles, and lands in the sand. For a moment, it's not clear what just happened, other than the immediate understanding that he must have dropped it. But then there's the hot gutter of flame, and a blazing line of it rips across the ground, hissing over the sand and steaming in the cold air.]

[He doesn't have anywhere else to put the adrenaline that's bubbling in his chest, in his lungs, in his heart, and it's boiling out in the only way he knows how.]

tim--

[Then the device falls. Sans isn't sure if Tim dropped it or if he threw it.]

[Then there's fire. Boss Monster fire, completely overpowering.]

[Sans stays quiet, straining to hear if Tim is even still nearby.]

...tim?

[Come on, Sans.]

[Don't pretend you don't already know the punchline to this one.]

[ * But Nobody Came. ]

Entry #90

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