The Smile Has Left Your Eyes 4/8?

[ramblin_rosie]

Previous | Master Post

Chapter 3
Past and Present
“Ahuhuhu! What’s the matter, dearie?”

Sam looked up from his menu, which ran the gamut from spider doughnuts to spider tarts, at the giant purple spider who was using four of her six hands to pour tea for him and for Papyrus at the same time while watching him with all five eyes. “Uh, nothing,” he lied as politely as he could. “Just gonna need a few minutes to decide.”

“I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN!” Papyrus stated. “EVERYTHING LOOKS TEMPTING TODAY, MUFFET!”

“And smells amazing,” Sam added, which wasn’t a lie. He almost wished he hadn’t seen the menu.

Muffet used one of her free hands to cover her fanged smile as she giggled again, making her black pigtails bounce. Then she slid the now-filled cups of tea to her two customers. “Well, then, take your time! I have plenty of wares, and they’re all piping hot!” Then a buzzer sounded in the kitchen, and she hurried off to deal with it.

Sam looked back down at the menu and asked through his teeth, “Are there really....”

“SPIDERS IN EVERYTHING,” Papyrus confirmed in something approaching a stage whisper. “BUT YOU CAN’T TASTE THEM.”

“It’s more the principle of the thing. I don’t mind spiders much when they’re alive, but we don’t normally eat them.”

“THE BREAD USUALLY DOESN’T HAVE QUITE SO MANY SPIDERS IN IT, IF YOU WANT TO TRY A SANDWICH.”

That suddenly reminded Sam of a Monty Python sketch involving rat tart, which made eating spiders seem far more appealing. “Good idea. Thanks.”

“I APOLOGIZE IF I WAS RUDE CONCERNING GRILLBY’S,” Papyrus continued at a more conversational volume. “IT’S JUST THAT SANS EATS THERE ALL THE TIME, EVEN WHEN HE KNOWS I’M COOKING. AND... WELL, HE DOESN’T ONLY GO THERE FOR THE FOOD, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.”

“Yeeeah,” Sam replied. “Dean gets the same way sometimes.” And so did Sam, if he were honest-one of the perils of being raised by a functional alcoholic was developing the same terrible coping mechanisms-but he wasn’t going to admit that to someone like Papyrus, especially since the skeleton seemed to be in a mood to commiserate over brothers who made bad life choices.

“I NOTICED THAT THEY SHARE A SIMILAR SENSE OF HUMOR.”

“If you can call it that. He thinks he’s hilarious.”

“YES! AND DOES HE DO THINGS ON PURPOSE TO ANNOY YOU?”

“I think all big brothers do that.”

“NYEH-HEH! I DOUBT HE IS AS MUCH OF A LAZYBONES AS SANS IS, THOUGH.”

“Eh, depends. He spends a lot of his spare time working on his car.” Sam decided not to mention Dean’s more... adult pursuits; Papyrus seemed pretty innocent, though Sam couldn’t quite tell how old he really was. “Especially when the job starts getting to him. Couple of times he’s had to rebuild her from the frame up, and it was like... well, no, he actually said once that there were so many bad things happening at the time that he couldn’t fix that he was going to focus on the car because it was the one thing he knew he could fix.”

Papyrus looked a little startled, then looked down at his menu with a worried air. If he’d had lips, he probably would have bitten the lower one. “DO YOU SEE... A LOT OF SCARY THINGS WITH YOUR WORK?”

“More than most people. But that’s why we do it-so other people don’t have to. We save lives.”

Papyrus looked up again, plainly uneasy; he had an oddly expressive face for a skeleton. “DO YOU THINK WE’RE SCARY?”

“Not... really? I mean, I’m having lunch with you, aren’t I? And even if the menu’s... not what I’m used to, it’s still better than the stuff Leviathans were putting in the food supply to try to make people too fat and stupid to realize they were being preyed upon. We had to go vegetarian for a while in self-defense. Dean hated it.”

Papyrus’ eyes had grown saucer-wide, but before he could respond, Muffet came back to take their orders. Sam took Papyrus’ suggestion and ordered a club sandwich; that seemed to break Papyrus’ shock enough that he could order cinnamon buns for himself.

“But no, honestly,” Sam continued as Muffet went back to the kitchen again. “After facing down some of the most evil creatures in the universe... well, I still have trouble with clowns. But talking skeletons? That’s just Friday.”

“NYEH-HEH-HEH! WELL, I FOR ONE AM GLAD TO HEAR IT! I AM ALWAYS HAPPY TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS, BUT OF COURSE ONE DOES OCCASIONALLY HAVE TO WORK PAST ASSUMPTIONS BASED ON APPEARANCE.”

“Boy, do I know how that goes. We moved around all the time when I was growing up, and we didn’t have much, so I was always the new kid, always in weird clothes....”

“YES, BUT EVENTUALLY, OTHERS LEARN TO APPRECIATE OUR GREATNESS, CORRECT?”

Sam couldn’t help smiling. “The people who matter do, anyway.”

“AND THE REST STILL HAVE TIME TO SEE! NYEH-HEH!”

The conversation paused again as Muffet delivered the food and a cadre of smaller spiders delivered a bag of ‘chisps’ (!) that had fallen from Sam’s plate en route. Sam thanked them all and manfully tucked into his sandwich, deciding to pretend that the little black things on the bread’s crust were poppy seeds.

Papyrus made short work of one cinnamon bun, but then he stopped and sighed heavily. “HUMAN SAM, I DON’T KNOW WHY I FEEL I SHOULD TELL YOU THIS, BUT... I AM WORRIED ABOUT SANS.”

“Oh? Why?”

“PERHAPS I SHOULD BEGIN BY EXPLAINING THAT WE WERE NOT ALWAYS ASSIGNED TO PROTECT EAST EBOTT. I WANTED TO JOIN THE ROYAL GUARD, YOU SEE, BUT I HADN’T YET ADVANCED BEYOND THE RANK OF SENTRY. I JOINED BECAUSE I WANTED TO HELP MY FELLOW MONSTERS AND PROTECT KING ASGORE.” Papyrus paused. “SANS... I DON’T KNOW WHY SANS JOINED. MAYBE HE JUST DIDN’T WANT ME TO BE LONELY.”

Sam suspected there was far more to it than that, but all he said was, “I see.”

“UNDYNE WAS CAPTAIN OF THE ROYAL GUARD-WE DON’T HAVE IT ANYMORE NOW THAT WE’RE HERE-AND SHE ASSIGNED SANS AND ME TO PATROL IN SNOWDIN FOREST. WE WERE TO CAPTURE ANY HUMANS WHO CAME OUT OF THE RUINS AND HAND THEM OVER TO HER. THE ONLY ONE WHO EVER SHOWED UP WAS FRISK, WHO TURNED OUT TO BE A VERY NICE PERSON AND A VERY GOOD FRIEND.”

“Well, that’s... that’s good, I guess.” Sam wasn’t sure where this was going.

“BUT UNTIL FRISK SHOWED UP, OUR PATROL AREA WAS REALLY PRETTY BORING. I MADE MY ROUNDS AND SET UP PUZZLE TRAPS, AND SANS... WELL, I THOUGHT SANS SLEPT A LOT. BUT HE ALWAYS GAVE WEIRD EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THINGS, LIKE, ‘OH, PAPYRUS, IT DOESN’T MATTER, IT WON’T BE THERE TOMORROW.’ AND HE SAYS STRANGE THINGS TO FRISK SOMETIMES, AND TO ALPHYS, TOO. AND AFTER WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT DEAN... I... I WONDER IF SANS SAW SOMETHING SCARY AND DOESN’T WANT ME TO KNOW ABOUT IT.”

“Huh.” Sam wiped his hands, narrowly missing a crumb-hunting spider, and reached into his jacket. “Maybe it has something to do with this.” He pulled out the photo and passed it to Papyrus.

It shouldn’t have been possible, but Sam could have sworn Papyrus actually blanched.

“don’t ask me how i know this,” Sans began, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “because i genuinely don’t remember where i heard the story. we might have to ask frisk or tori to confirm it.”

“Roger that,” Dean replied.

“i also can’t be certain of the timeline because there were so many loops and so many anomalies that resulted. like you, i’m not even sure what year it’s supposed to be.”

“Gotcha.”

“gerson already told you about the barrier. some time ago-before my time, apparently-a child named chara fell through it. first human anyone had seen in centuries. chara was about the same age as tori and asgore’s son asriel, and they got along well. plus, there was supposedly a prophecy that an angel would fall into the underground and free the monsters from the barrier, and everyone thought at the time that chara was that angel. so tori and asgore basically adopted her, and everything was hunky dory... for a while.”

“But Chara was no angel.”

“exactly. there was some sort of mishap with the kids trying to make asgore a butterscotch pie and putting in buttercups instead of cups of butter.”

Dean frowned. “Buttercups?! Buttercups are poisonous!”

“which no one knew until they tried to eat the pie. asgore got sick. chara got sicker, and nobody could figure out what to do about it. finally, since chara was about to die anyway, she convinced asriel to absorb her soul and carry her body back to the human village-a monster who’d absorbed a human soul could pass through the barrier.”

The Winchesters had dealt with far too much traffic in souls for Dean to think this story was heading anywhere remotely like a happy ending.

“asriel was only too willing to grant his best friend’s last request. but once he got outside, the humans assumed he’d killed chara and attacked him. he made it back into the underground before he died, still carrying chara’s body. asgore was furious and decided to take the souls of the next seven humans to fall into the underground in order to destroy the barrier and get his revenge for asriel’s death. he was even willing to kill children if that was what it took.”

Dean grimaced, both because of what Asgore had done and because the whole thing was beginning to sound like a deliberate plot on Chara’s part. “That why Toriel left him?”

“yeah. don’t get me wrong; asgore’s not a bad guy on balance. he’s always been nice to paps and gave alphys a shot when most people couldn’t see past her stammer and her obsession with anime. and he practically adopted undyne. but i’ve got a feeling you know better than most what revenge can do to even nice, gentle people.”

“Oh, hell yeah.” It wasn’t the time or place to tell those stories, but Dean did have a million of them, the case of his own family not the least.

“anyway, tori took chara’s body and buried it in the ruins in the spot where she’d originally fallen. apparently, that’s precisely where frisk fell, too.”

Dean raised his chin. “Disturbing the grave can cause the ghost to become active even after a long dormancy. And if a human couldn’t get out of the Underground without a monster’s soul, her soul was probably still tied to her remains, at least until she latched onto Frisk.”

“we’ve got a few ghost-monsters in the underground. mettaton’s one of ’em; alphys built him a body to possess. that’s what brought her to asgore’s attention, actually. can human ghosts do that?”

“Not exactly. They can be tied to an object and unable to move beyond a certain distance away from it, but it takes a lot of concentration or a lot of rage even to move a piece of paper. But they can possess another human, especially once they’ve gone vengeful. May have to have the object they’re tied to nearby. And the telltale sign?” Dean reached across the table and tapped the picture. “Ectoplasm coming out the ear.”

Sans rubbed the back of his skull. “don’t remember ever seeing that before, but it may not have happened, or only on a loop i’ve forgotten, or not at all until we got here. i’ve heard a few of the neighbors talking about subtle changes in their magic since the barrier fell, and we can eat human food without more than a dash of magic added-before, it would have gone right through us.”

“I was wondering how that worked. How’d you find out, trial and error?”

“nah, tori tried it first with frisk. i just....”

“... didn’t have the guts,” Dean chorused with him. “Yeah, I saw that one coming.”

Just then, Grillby delivered their burgers, which were every bit as good as Sans had claimed, and the conversation turned to the intricacies of diner food and such exotic menu options as breakfast tacos and shrimp on grits. And from there it turned to the problems of keeping little brothers fed and out of trouble, which revealed that the pair of them had a whole lot more in common than just liking the same kinds of jokes.

“Getting back to the problem at hand,” Dean finally said after Grillby cleared away their plates. “Did anything happen around New Year’s that could have set Chara off?”

Sans leaned back and considered. “not that i can think of. but tori has been pretty worried about frisk the last week or two, although she hasn’t said why. frisk’s supposed to spend the weekend with us; i’m sure paps would love for you and sam to come for supper, and you could talk to the kid then.”

“Good idea. Thanks. What bothers me, though, is the way Chara’s behaving at the crime scenes. She’s taking care not to let Frisk get hurt, but she’s also doing things like looking straight at security cameras, like she wants to get caught. Sounds like she was trying to provoke a war between monsters and humans when she poisoned herself. This could be more of the same, if she wants a hunter to come after her. Question is... does she even know about hunters?”

“IT’S POSSIBLE,” Papyrus replied when Sam asked the same question. He hadn’t remembered any specific stories about the humans who had fallen into the Underground before Frisk, but he’d accepted Sam’s explanation of the signs that one of them had ducked his or her Reaper after the Barrier fell and was now up to no good. “FRISK WAS SLEEPING NEARBY WHEN HIS MAJESTY TOLD US ABOUT HUNTERS. HE EVEN TOLD US YOU WERE THE ONLY ONES WHO WERE LIKELY TO BE ABLE TO FIND US.”

“Because Dean’s fae-touched?”

“RIGHT. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, BY THE WAY?”

Sam sighed-there were some awkward memories attached to that incident, thanks to the fact that he’d been soulless at the time. “We had a case a couple of years ago where Dean was captured by a group of fairies who were abducting first-born sons. He fought back until they let him go, but after that he could see them even when I couldn’t. And he’s immune to whatever glamour the Tuatha De used to hide this place-he could see it from town, but I couldn’t see it until we drove past the welcome sign.”

Papyrus nodded. “HIS MAJESTY WAS AFRAID THAT WOULD HAPPEN. WE ALL AGREED THAT WE NEEDED TO KEEP OURSELVES HIDDEN JUST IN CASE. BUT IF THE GHOST IS TIED TO SOMETHING THAT FRISK WAS CARRYING....”

“It probably overheard. Which means it’s using Frisk to get to us, trying to provoke us to attack you.”

“AND WHEN IT FINDS OUT THAT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO, IT MAY DO SOMETHING WORSE TO FRISK!”

“Exactly. So we need to find the object, get it away from Frisk, and destroy it before the ghost can do anything else.”

“DESTROY IT?! BUT CAN’T WE HELP THE POOR GHOST UNDERSTAND WHAT IT’S DOING?”

“Destroying the object does help the ghost. Even if we can convince it to stop, it probably won’t be able to let go on its own. But if we destroy the object, it will be able to move on to the afterlife.” Sam decided not to add that talking the ghost down almost never worked once it had gone vengeful-in fact, he could count the exceptions he’d encountered on one hand.

But Papyrus seemed to accept the explanation as it stood, just as Sam had when Dean had used it on him many years ago. “OH, I SEE. WELL, FRISK WILL BE AT SCHOOL UNTIL SOMETIME AFTER 5; HER MAJESTY HAS STARTED A CLUB FOR TEACHING THE CHILDREN ABOUT HUMAN CULTURE, AND FRISK IS HER ASSISTANT. BUT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO COME FOR SUPPER, SINCE FRISK IS SPENDING THE WEEKEND WITH US.”

Sam nodded. “The ghost’s trying to keep its activities hidden from Her Majesty, so there’s not much risk of anything happening while Frisk’s at school. We can wait for supper.” He paused. “Uh, that is, if you don’t mind-”

“OH, NO, WE’D LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN US! WELL, AT LEAST I WOULD. DO YOU LIKE SPAGHETTI?”

“Love it. Sounds awesome.”

That was apparently exactly the right thing to say, as Papyrus brightened considerably. “NYEH-HEH-HEH! I TOLD SANS YOU WOULD! AND I MAKE EXCELLENT SPAGHETTI, IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF. EVEN FRISK SAYS I’M IMPROVING!”

Sam had sudden misgivings about the quality of Papyrus’ cooking, but he stifled them and looked at his watch. “It’s almost 2. That gives us some time to plan.”

A squad of spiders had carried Papyrus’ plate away when it became clear that he’d be too distraught over what was happening to Frisk to finish his buns. Now they returned with a take-out box. Papyrus accepted it gratefully and handed the spiders several gold coins in payment, then called a farewell to Muffet and ushered Sam outside. Woshua was still scrubbing merrily at the now-sparkling Impala-using a toothbrush to get the dirt out from between the tire treads, it looked like-but neither Sans nor Dean was anywhere in sight.

Sam checked his phone and found neither missed calls nor texts. “Guess they’re still at Grillby’s.”

Papyrus grimaced. “IS THERE ANYONE ELSE YOU NEED TO TALK TO BEFORE WE GO THERE?”

“Y’know, actually... do you know if anything weird was happening before New Year’s? The ghost may have waited this long to start attacking humans because it was adjusting to being in this universe, but there’s a chance it would have started with smaller things to test its power.”

“I HAVEN’T RECEIVED ANY REPORTS, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN NO ONE NOTICED ANYTHING. AND ALPHYS DOES HAVE SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS AROUND TOWN; SHE’S NO LONGER THE ROYAL SCIENTIST, BUT SHE STILL HELPS US SENTRIES WITH TECHNOLOGICAL STUFF. THE CAMERAS MAY HAVE RECORDED SOMETHING. IF THEY DID, I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL FIND OUT FOR YOU! NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH!”

“Awesome, thanks. You start with Alphys; I’ll check with the Ebott police to see if anything’s been reported to them.”

Papyrus nodded and got out his own phone, and Sam ducked back inside the bakery where it was both warmer and quieter to make his call.

Sans had been listening intently as Dean expounded on the properties of ghosts and the methods for dealing with them, but suddenly he slumped back in his seat with a huff, and the lights in his eye sockets dimmed almost to the point of going out.

“Am I boring you?” Dean jabbed.

“i don’t see you holding a drill,” Sans jabbed back bitterly. “hey, grillbz?”

“You need another ketchup like you need a hole in the head, dude.”

“then i’ll upgrade.”

“Man, I am the last person who should be lecturing others on sobriety-”

“you’re the last person who did.”

“What the hell is bothering you? And don’t say ‘nothing’-I know that game. I’ve played it myself.”

“look, it doesn’t matter, all right? none of this matters. even if... if we get rid of chara... we’re due for a reset any day now. and when it happens, we’ll be back in the underground, and none of this will have happened, and everything will go back the way it was.”

“That won’t happen.”

“how do you know?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way here.”

“what makes you so sure?”

“We’ve tried. And every time we go back in time and try to change things, we fail. Hell, we usually end up causing the event we were trying to stop. And the one time we know someone managed to change something major, the Fates forced him to change it back. Not that I buy the idea that the future’s predetermined; we’ve thwarted our so-called destiny too often for that. But the past is what it is, and we can’t change it.”

Sans shook his head. “i wish i could believe that. that any timeline is fixed. that anything i do even matters. i just... i gave up on making a difference a long time ago.”

“Dude, I have been there. You think you’ve had it bad trying to save all your friends? Try knowing the fate of six billion people depends on you and your brother and feeling like you’re not good enough, like you can’t stop the world from offing itself no matter how hard you try. Every time you stop one catastrophe, something else goes wrong. Hell, I can’t even save my own family. Believe me, I’ve tried to quit. To numb the pain, to drown the nightmares. To let the world dive off the cliff if it wants to. To let myself die.”

“let me guess. sam won’t let you.”

“And if it’s not Sam, it’s somebody else. See, guys like us, we don’t get to give up. Nobody cares if we’re broken, for one thing. For another... even if we do give up and get out, there’s always something gunnin’ for us. So like a friend of mine said, you gotta find your motivation somewhere, whether it’s ‘love or spite or a ten-dollar bet.’ And you gotta always keep fighting. Frisk, Papyrus, Toriel... they’re counting on you.”

The unfamiliar song that had been playing on the jukebox came to an end as Sans sighed and ran a hand over his face. Then the door opened with a chime-and the jukebox switched over to “Carry On, Wayward Son.” Sans sat up straighter in surprise, and every monster in the room stared at the jukebox.

“WOWIE!” Papyrus exclaimed as the opening instrumental riff began. “I’VE NEVER HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE!”

Sam nudged his way past the tall skeleton and walked over to Sans and Dean’s booth. “Hey,” he said as he approached the table. “How’s it going?”

Dean held up a finger to his mouth and scooted over to let Sam sit down beside him. There would be time to catch up after the song. Right now, Sans needed a shot of Kansas encouragement-and honestly, so did Dean.

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