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The thing about the world is that it is always, always ending.
You’ve learned this by now. It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you say. The world will keep going, so the world will keep ending. It doesn’t stop, even when it does.
Time will always find a way to pass, in the end. There will always be an end.
Even when it’s so far ahead you can’t see it, there will always be an end.
To misquote a meme, there are three wolves inside you. To stop misquoting a meme, no one is ever alone in this body and you will never be alone in this world.
There’s Kris, obviously. Some poor bastard always has to play vessel, and no one can choose who they are in this world, especially you. Your choices still don’t matter. You lost the right to that a long time ago, assuming you ever had a right to it in the first place.
You don’t know who’s narrating yet. You think it’s someone, if only because it was someone before, that nameless child you named a thousand times whose heart you broke over your knee without so much as hesitating.
And there’s you, of course. Eyes on a screen, maybe. Hands on a keyboard, maybe. Strings on a marionette, without a doubt. You can pluck them and they’ll ring out but no one seems to hear, or care if they do.
You are hated by the game and by its pieces and by yourself and selves and it’s only right, isn’t it? You know what you’re doing.
The world is always ending. Don’t make that your excuse.
But no one can choose who they are in this world, and you are no exception. You didn’t pick out this body, this life, didn’t walk in and demand something that will never be yours. (At least, not this time. You like to imagine you can learn)
You spent your time instead preparing your perfect empty vessel. You acknowledged the possibility of pain and seizure, but you thought it only a possibility, not-
You’ve just finished a ride across an acid river with Ralsei. He keeps calling you Kris.
Everyone calls you Kris, because they don’t know. Kris calls you nothing at all, because they’ve never spoken to you of their own accord and you’re too afraid of rightful censure from them to begin a dialogue yourself.
Ralsei, though… Him, you ask, “Are you actually referring to Kris when you use their name, or is it just to preserve the polite fiction that I’m not here?” You say it in a bland, neutral tone that conveys nothing beyond polite curiosity. “Because sometimes I really do wonder.”
He’s visibly caught off guard by the question. You can tell by the way his eyes go wide beneath his glasses and he snaps his gaze to you so fast that his neck audibly cracks.
“What?” He asks. “I don’t-“
You’re uninterested in whatever he’s about to say. There’s too high a chance that it’s going to be more of his typical pretense at having only the knowledge typical of any darkner, rather than the greater pool of it you’re increasingly certain he has access to.
So you intercept him before he can attempt it. “You don’t have to pretend you aren’t aware of me. Unless you truly aren’t, which I do acknowledge is a possibility even if it seems increasingly unlikely as time goes on.” You’re careful to keep your voice even and disinterested. If you scare him off here, you’ll have to begin this line of questioning once more from the start, and you have no idea whether he has knowledge of divergent timelines, which lends that path an element of risk you find the opposite of alluring. “It’s quite clear that you know more than you let on.” You shrug. “From my own perspective, at least. I imagine it’s more subtle to those who aren’t already searching for it."
He hesitates. It takes him a long moment to respond, during which you hide your impatience as much as you can. He can take all the time he wants, after all, so long as he answers.
You’d offer all the time in the world for those. It’s not like you don’t have it to spare.
At last, he says, “…What makes you think that?”
It’s a token defense, a mere request for you to justify your suspicion, and the fact that he hasn’t committed to denying any knowledge of you is a good sign.
“You deflect too well for it to be accidental. And when you do slip, your reactions to it make it apparent that you’re correcting for something.”
You remember the way he responds after you fight Spamton. How he does his utmost to pretend what happens there is insignificant to all parties, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s hardly the only incident to have raised your suspicion, but it’s the piece that sticks with you the most. Perhaps because it’s the most obvious lie.
“It’s not any one thing. I’ve simply had prior experience with those who know things they shouldn’t. You remind me too heavily of them for ignoring it to be anything but foolish.”
It’s somewhat amusing, the way your closest companions here remind you so heavily of the biggest thorns in your side when you did wrong back Before. The Sans who exists here has never quite managed to elicit that creeping feeling that someone knows exactly what you are and what you’ve done the way the one you once knew could, but Ralsei… He gets closer to it than even the hidden bosses have achieved.
And the hidden bosses get quite close, for all in the end they remind you more heavily of the fallen children you steadily corrupted beyond recognition than of anyone you fought directly.
Ralsei blinks. “…Prior experience?”
Ah, so he’s unaware of that. Interesting. “Yes. I’ve been involved with a world of a similar nature to this before.”
You don’t elaborate beyond that. No sense making an enemy of him unnecessarily, after all. His kind nature seems to stretch quite far, but you’d rather wait to test those limits a bit longer.
You’re trying to be better than you were, in a general sense, but you are still fundamentally the same person who kept running genocide until forcibly stopped by a third party. You have already found and investigated a similar option in this world.
It would be disingenuous to repent when you have not put in the effort to change. The limit of your mercy is that you will not return unless you believe you have something to gain from doing so.
The world is always ending. You are beyond pretending that stopping it is your first priority. Your first priority is your own entertainment, and it always has been, and it may always be. You can achieve self-awareness, if nothing else.
“You have?” Ralsei asks, eyes wide, before censuring himself. “I mean- I’m sorry, I’m being terribly rude, aren’t I. I just didn’t-“
You remind yourself, again, to stop expecting him to react to things the way Sans would. It’s easy to forget, when considering him in the abstract, how very young he is. How inexperienced. He isn’t used to this, the way Sans was. There’s no Flowey here.
You want him to like you. That’s most easily accomplished by being less of an utter ass to the kid. Get it together.
“You didn’t expect me to address you this way, so you were unprepared.” You incline your head to him. “I won’t hold it against you.”
The way his expression brightens indicates that you’ve made the correct move. Relieving. Making people want to willingly cooperate with you without manipulating them is not one of your strengths.
You decided before trying this that your usual methods were more likely to be a hindrance than a help. You don’t have the correct leverage over him to treat him the way you would someone else. In fact, you have very little over him at all.
Mysteries have always been your greatest weakness.
“Oh, good!” Ralsei says. “Um, it’s nice to meet you, even if it is unexpected. I hope we can be friends!”
He’s so… naive. You wonder what he would look like if you broke him. You wonder how his bleeding heart would deform in your hands.
But you’re trying not to do that anymore, at least to those who might remember it. You might not be able to fix him if you break him open.
You’ll abstain. There are other ways to occupy yourself.
Unaware of your thoughts, Ralsei smiles as he awaits your response. You’re unable to control Kris’ expressions with any particular finesse, so you don’t attempt to smile back.
You say, “…I hope so, too.”
It may even be the truth.
“Now that we have mutually acknowledged your awareness of my existence, effectively answering my original question, may I inquire as to how it is you know of me? Among your pieces of obscure knowledge, that is one of the most intriguing.”
He gives you a bashful smile and taps one of his rose-pink horns meaningfully. “You know that darkners take the form of items lightners give significance to in the light world, right?”
Ah, yes. You think you can infer his point. “I had noticed that your horns differ in color from the Dreemurr family’s, despite your otherwise significant resemblance to Asriel.” This path of deduction is not novel to you, but his implied confirmation of its base assumption allows you to take it slightly further than you otherwise might. “You are Kris’ old horned headband, correct? And you’re saying that being made from an object of such specific significance to them influences you in such a way as to lend you awareness of me, among other things.”
Calling Ralsei Kris’ fursona out loud would ruin the dynamic you are trying to cultivate with him. It would also be cruel, you think.
With great strain, you resist the urge to be your worst self. Under the current circumstances, such a thing would be active self-sabotage. You are a sapient being nominally capable of logic and reason. You have no excuse to be perpetually a slave to your very worst instincts, no matter how amusing it is to be so.
The way Ralsei smiles at you feels like it should give you hives. How ignorant of your nature he must be, to look at you this way.
Naive truly is the right word for him. Somehow, Papyrus is still not the skeleton this makes you want to compare him to.
(Sans always was so poor at disguising his natural optimism. Even at your worst, he always wanted so badly to believe you could be better. You think that’s why he bothered to keep fighting you, no matter how many times you proved him a fool)
(It’s not like he could kill you in a way that mattered, after all. His strategy fundamentally relied on the assumption that if he told you to stop enough times, you would accede and try something else, something kinder)
(You’re not sure, some days, whether he fundamentally misunderstood you as a person or whether he understood you too well. After all, he got the last laugh in the end, didn’t he? Here you are, trying to grow, if only by the most minuscule of measures. Maybe he just underestimated how long it would take to change someone like you)
“Wow, you’re pretty clever!” He says. “You took the words right out of my mouth!”
If he were Sans, that would mean that you’re utterly wrong in a way that benefits him and he’s hoping you’ll stick with the faulty conclusion if he flatters your ego enough.
But Ralsei isn’t Sans. He might just mean that you’re right. Not everything is a battle of wills.
It would help, you think, if you could read him better, but you know from experience how good a liar he is. It’s the context that gives him away, not the delivery.
But he’s not Sans. He doesn’t have any reason to hate you yet.
“Thank you.” You say.
You consider tacking something else onto it, but in the end you can’t think of anything that sounds right.
It has perhaps been too long since you engaged in dialogue with anyone you do not have significant power over. Or anyone in general, really. Playing silent protagonist is, after all, your most simple and reliable method of avoiding detection.
…And even that seems to fail against people like Noelle. You’re lucky she has yet to follow that line of reasoning through to its conclusion, really. Whenever that third day comes, you suspect you’ll have to take even more care.
Ralsei smiles. “You’re welcome! Um- if you don’t mind me asking…” He adopts a bashful expression. “There’s something else you wanted to ask, isn’t there? I mean, not that it’s not fine if there isn’t! It absolutely would be! I just get the feeling, is all.”
Perceptive, isn’t he.
Of course there’s more you want to ask. You’re you. There’s always more. You won’t be truly satisfied until you’ve wrung every bit of unique dialogue from him you can manage, and even then you’ll want for more.
You always do. It’s what led you here to begin with.
You still don’t know if you’ll be able to look into this path again. He’s given no clear indication for or against him possessing knowledge of alternative timelines, and you don’t trust him to offer a truthful answer if directly questioned on the subject.
As such, you have motive to make as much of this first try as you can manage.
“How much do you know,” You ask, “About the Man Who Speaks In Hands?”