thisavrou | [video] Feb 17th

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[video] Feb 17th

[It's either very late at night or very early in the morning. Papyrus grins at anyone watching as he usually does, but this time around, something's off. His usual cheer seems forced, and there's a subtle, constant background rattle and the screen never quite seems to stay still.]

Hello again, everyone! This is the great Papyrus speaking, and... and I...

...

[For a moment, he seems at a loss for words. Then he rallies again and holds up his other hand. He has Sans's jacket in a tight grip, and clinging to the inside is an odd, distinctive sort of dust.]

I seem to have lost track of my brother!! That lazybones... now he's managed to slack off on naps! Is there no end to this?

So! If anyone has any idea where he is, please let me know! He probably just... fell asleep somewhere weird! There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

[He starts to switch off the feed, then hesitates.]

Also, could someone bring some cleaning supplies to Sans's room? There's so much dust in here... I've been trying to get it all up, but it's just... getting everywhere.

[For a moment, he looks distressed, then he pastes the smile back on.]

O-once again, this is the great Papyrus! Signing out!!

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There's a brief pause, and when Papyrus answers again his voice sounds a bit distant. There's an odd quality to it, a tone of voice he doesn't often use -- a sort of gratitude, perhaps? "Yes... I think that might be the best way to go about this." And then he's back, bombastic and, if not exactly cheerful, at least a little peppier. "I'll be sure to have the laundry ready when you get here! See you soon!"

The tone in his voice, the subdued gratitude, is enough to tell her that Papyrus is in no way oblivious. He's refusing to face the reality of what's happened to his brother. Willfully optimistic isn't at all the same thing as stupid or ignorant. Rosethorn sighs. She isn't sure whether that's better or worse. She's never been especially optimistic. She saw some of the worse parts of human nature in her own house, growing up. Papyrus' worldview is so alien to her own, even if she is an idealist.

It isn't long before she's rapping her knuckles at the door, the soft hitch still audible in her breathing when he opens it evidence that she did hurry here. Rosethorn isn't made for hurrying anymore. She speaks and moves slowly and deliberately by necessity, not by choice.

"I'm sure his roommates are grateful you came." Rosethorn is too, especially since said roommates might have cleaned up this dust without ever knowing what it came from. "Are you ready to go, or is there anything else you need here?"

Papyrus meets her at the door, holding a laundry bag full of dirty clothes and looking a bit better than when he made the first announcement on the network. Most of the stuff in the bag is just Sans's weekly clothes that he's neglected to clean, but sitting on top is his jacket, lovingly folded with the arms tied tight. There's still dust smudged on Papyrus, and traces of it linger in places he couldn't quite get to, but he's done a pretty good job for a guy whose hands aren't built to handle the stuff.

"I'm ready to go," he answers, trying to sound cheerful in the face of everything. He's been here long enough, and even with people checking up on him and helping out, he's had enough of being here and dealing with this. "Don't worry, I won't make you deal with my brother's gross laundry! Just the company would be nice."

Rosethorn raises her eyebrows when she sees the jacket, but it makes sense. She's glad Papyrus found something to do with that dust. To keep it safe, though she has no idea what funeral customs skeleton monsters have or whether Sans' death will be any more permanent than the last one on board. She hopes for Papyrus' sake that it isn't.

Waving a hand at the notion of helping with laundry being disgusting, she tells Papyrus, "There are machines to clean it on board. It's much more work back home, where all of it needs to be washed by hand. Of course I'll keep you company, though."

Even if she still isn't used to most people seeking her out for company as much as Papyrus tends to.

"Really? Why do you wash it by hand?" He looks genuinely curious, glancing at her from time to time as they head to the laundry room. "Is there no reliable sources of power in your world?"

The company is great, and the distraction is even better. It's hard to tell, unless a person looks closely enough to note the occasional rattle or odd expression on his face. that anything might be wrong.

Rosethorn would laugh, if she weren't so worried about Papyrus. Instead, he just gets a distant smile. "We don't have whatever power sources exist on the Moira and most of the planets we've visited, no. No machines as advanced. We still have water clocks, and our sailing ships use the wind. My world has a lot more magic than most of the others I've heard about since I came aboard, though."

Once they get the clothes into the washing machine, she'll find some way to bring up what happened to Sans, though she has no idea how.

"That's not too different from how we lived, at least until the Core was built! Fortunately, that was before Sans's time, or mine. And as I mentioned before, we always had the resources from the dump. You could find practically anything in there!"

With the machine closed and running, there didn't seem to be much else to do. Unwilling to sit down or rest, Papyrus fidgets a bit. "I hope this won't take too long. This is most of his clothes, and it never takes him too long to mess up whatever he's wearing!"

Rosethorn nods, processing all of the information with half of her attention, the rest of it on Papyrus and what she's about to say. She'll remember it all for later.

Gentle is not her strong suit, but her voice is soft and even when she says, "Papyrus, I don't know how soon he'll need those clothes. You told me monsters are fragile, made of magic and dust." She avoids the word death for now, but that won't last long.

Dust. Of course. If Papyrus were the type to need oxygen, his breath would have caught in his throat. He looks down at his hands, at the telltale particles still clinging to his gloves, and brushes them against each other.

He didn't want to let himself think about it. Thinking about it was as bad as admitting as he was sad, and if he dragged down the mood, Rosethorn probably wouldn't want to hang out with him anymore. He was finally starting to make friends, he didn't want to go back to how things used to be.

"W-well... that is true, we are. But I'm sure he'll turn up, and when he does, I'll have his things ready!"

"Papyrus, you can't tell me no one on board would try to hurt Sans." Rosethorn suspects Chara. She won't be surprised when the news of the next trial comes through, but she isn't going looking for them until she's finished with Papyrus. "I hope that his death won't last, because it does seem to be a more temporary thing here."

If Rosethorn were someone, anyone, else, this is where she'd reach out, lay a hand on Papyrus' arm, wrap an arm around him, take his hand, something. But she isn't someone else. She just watches him with sympathy and concern as she continues steadily, "You can't find your brother, and there was a pile of dust in his place. That isn't the kind of prank someone who cares about you would play. We need to assume he's gone."

"But... he can't be gone." He finally looks back up at her, sadness filling in the cracks in his cheerful armor. He might complain and fuss, but he doesn't want Sans to be gone. Sans is the older of the two, the one who's always, always been there. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if anything really happened to him. "If he's gone, then whose messes am I going to clean up? Who am I going to carry home from the bar and strongly encourage to get back up in the morning?"

Rosethorn winces. She felt like she ought to do this, but she doesn't have the answers to any of those questions. The questions themselves tell her more negative things about Sans. Now is hardly the time to indulge in criticism, though. It doesn't matter what Sans was like, not with him gone literally to dust. What matters is how his brother felt about him.

"You keep getting up in the morning, and eventually something will make you smile again," Rosethorn hasn't lost family, at least not through death. Finally giving up on her father, her brothers, and the illusion of love that she'd let them build up around her? That was an entirely different sort of loss. It hurt, of course, but it was a loss that she chose because it was what she needed. She's had friends, research partners, torn away from her without warning, but never anyone as close as a sibling. Those feelings, and the things Lark has told her over the years about her children's deaths, are the only basis she's going off of.

Here, at least, there's the possibility he'll return, but it isn't one she wants Papyrus to dwell on unless they have some reason to believe it's likely. Sans doesn't even have a body anymore, nothing to be revived.

She's silent for a moment, close enough to Papyrus that he can reach out if he needs to. Rosethorn's own hands twitch briefly toward him, then fall back to her sides. "Papyrus, humans have a lot of different traditions for honoring our dead, remembering them and saying goodbye. Do monsters have any? If you'd like to do something for Sans, I'll help you."

That... wasn't bad advice. Papyrus had never been the sort to spend more time in bed than he absolutely had to, and getting out there and making himself stay active, stay busy, occupy his time no matter what, sounded like the best advice. He felt lost, a ship without a rudder, and getting things back under control seemed like the best way to make it all start to make sense.

He glances at her hand as they twitch toward him and reaches out, then hesitates.

"Oh, are you... were you offering me a hug of comfort?" It's hard to tell sometimes, with humans. Not that he didn't trust Rosethorn, but it seemed better to ask than assume.

Not everyone wanted to be hugged by a skeleton, after all.

Rosethorn freezes at the question. She was, and yet she wasn't. It just isn't in her to offer that lightly, not to anyone. Her family, perhaps, Lark and the children, get a little more by way of affection from Rosethorn, but even they know just how many boundaries she draws around herself. Lark gently ignores many of them, immune.

Papyrus is hard to resist on any day. Today, she simply can't. Finally she nods and answers, "If you want one."

If Papyrus asks her for a hug, she'll wrap her arms around him right away. Rosethorn's hugs, on the rare occasions she gives them, are good ones. Comforting, sincere, and as long as the person she cares about needs them to be.

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[video] Feb 17th

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