#{}{} plot post

The laboratory is a short distance from his landing spot. He has a corridor to proceed toward. It matched the layout of his lab in life, and he saw no need to alter it.

His footsteps are silent; any sound that might have been is swallowed up fast by the ever-looming entropy of this empty space. He moves with purpose -- at least until he nears the threshold.

The door is already open.

The door is never open. It is locked with a key code. He is the only one who knows the code.

Immediately the rate of his soul-beat quickens, and he presses his back against the wall. His eyes are wide, and the pricks of light in his sockets wild.

He is more careful now. His footsteps are silent, but fear can be heard in the smallest things. It can be picked up in scent, in sight, in sound.

He knows this well enough. He listens. He watches.

He wonders if the beast has somehow made its way in. He does not yet reach for a weapon, or call upon any magic. He simply edges along the wall, closing distance toward the threshold.

The shadows obscure most everything, but the light of many monitors can still be seen. They glow clear and true, like a beacon in the dark.

Some of them - he knows there are more than he can see - are obscured, by a shadow. A silhouette.

It does not seem beastly. He inches closer.

The shadow moves. He stops, and pins himself to the wall. He cannot help but peer around the corner to stare...

Something stares back at him.

A shiver of cold runs up his spine. He feels himself sweat. His head swims.

The shadow doesn't move toward him, but does not take their eye off of him, either.

There is something familiar. It hurts. It hurts.

It does not take long for him to teleport back to the café.

"HEY-- ARE YOU OKAY?? YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST... AND NOT LIKE, THE MONSTER KIND." Sunny seems perplexed: Tokaku is back, much sooner than he expected, looks panicked, and is also very much without a 3DS.

Something must have gone wrong.

Tokaku swallows hard, staring forward and stuck with his back still against the wall. He can't move his jaw to speak, or move his hands to sign.

Shadows shifted along the wall, growing longer and then shrinking again, with a muted sound barely breaking the silence. Llyr's sockets opened suddenly as the sense of something amiss crept up his spine, making each of the sharpened processes along it phase through his sweater and stand on end.

The silence fell again, though his form did not, arched upward and wound tight with tension. He scanned his eyes across the room, this way and that, trying to find the change in atmosphere, the piece that did not fit.

It was only when his gaze turned back in front of him, at the foot of the bed, that the piece revealed itself.

"—Sans?"

Two frowns of very different nature met one another, as the fearful sea-green light from one small skeleton bounced dimly from the clean white skull of the other. Just as Hound had snuck into the café to tear through Hope's heart, it seemed Jitters had snuck into their refuge to tear through his. Albeit without rending claws at the ready. But he hardly needed them with that weight of disappointment on his brow, and at the corners of his mouth.

Jitters fixed his gaze squarely upon Llyr, noting how he shrank. His stony expression was immovable, shielding how his heart was not quite so.

"sup dad. how's dr. pepper doing?"

Of course the storm wouldn't come without a breeze. Llyr spared a slight glance over his shoulder, toward the slumbering form, still fearing to remove his eyes from the other waking monster for too long. But seeing that, despite the intrusion, despite his distraction, Hope was still alright, was something of a relief to him.

"He is mending," he answered with a sigh, "though it may take some time yet. Webs was a great help."

"can't say the same for his son. gave him a pretty nasty crack, didn't ya." Jitters hardened his gaze. It took effort, but he wasn't about to let on to that.

Llyr, as one might expect, visibly flinched: the mere mention brought back that flash of memory that he'd tried to bury, and all the anger and fear that came along with it. He struggled to turn his gaze back, and did so with some reluctance.

"I am sorry." It came as reflex.

Jitters felt something in his expression flinch, too, but he suppressed it. He needed to remain as stone; he needed to be firm about this.

"sorry for going at him like you were gonna dust him? or sorry that i saw it?"

Llyr was silent for a good while. The answer was obvious, he knew it already, but the weight of the question was too much to simply let the answer leave him without thought or struggle.

The smaller skeleton did not wait for the answer. "yeah, i know he tried to kill nero. i know. i was there, i saw it. but i thought you were-- i thought you were trying to be better."

Jitters' stumble didn't go unnoticed, but Llyr didn't remark on it. He could understand. He knew, in the moment they locked eyes, what about this had upset his son so much.

"... I only meant to protect him. I know I took it too far, I was taken over by fear. I feared that… that if I did not do something about it, enough about it, that I would lose him entirely."

Llyr swallowed hard, and his gaze dropped. "I do not want to go through that again."

Some of the harsh stone in Jitters' face smoothed out, and he spent a moment, studying his father's body language, studying the way his eyes moved as he spoke. He knew Llyr was full capable of lying: it was something of a genetic predisposition. He didn't sense it here. No lies, no deception. But no real explanation, either.

"go through what? what happened?"

He'd never been much for dancing around the subject, so he simply asked.

"A long time ago," Llyr began, as so many stories did, "there was someone important to me, above all else. I could not save her. And I could not find the ones who killed her and make them pay for what they did."

"so you freaked out."

"Yes."

"would you have killed him if someone hadn't stopped you?"

"What?"

"hound. would you have killed him."

"... Yes."

This time, Jitters swallowed hard, and dropped his gaze. His fists balled in his pockets. He knew Llyr was being honest, and he appreciated that he was, but—

"you can't do shit like that. you can't. it's not up to you. yeah, he might come back to finish the job, but-- it isn't just you looking out for nero."

Llyr sank a bit with the guilt, but Jitters pressed on.

"i'm not mad that you attacked him at all. he probably woulda put his hand right through him if you hadn't. i'm not pissed that you hit him once or twice. i mean damn i kinda like the dude and see where he's coming from but he needed a few punches. i'm disappointed that you kept going. and that you would have kept going. that you started yelling at him. you can't do that."

It took some effort, but Jitters managed to step forward to the edge of the bed, so that he could place a hand on Llyr's shoulder, and face him proper. Gone was the stony face; his frown now held back tears instead of feeling.

"you're not that person anymore, dad. we all believe you're better. i know you're trying. but don't let one asshole throw you off. okay?"

He couldn't keep his head low anymore, not with his son in his face as he was. Llyr found himself staring right ahead, frozen, for a moment, as the words truly sunk in. He had never really recognised his own improvements, simply accepting his own changes in attitude as part of the change in environment. Having people he could trust, and love, and not being surrounded by enemies and closed-off souls, had brought out things in him he had either forgotten, or thought long-dead.

He had honestly spent just as much time moping over how he had regressed and struck a child so much like his own, as he had moping over his injured partner. He had to accept the disappointment, learn from it, and move on. Else Hound would have managed to strike two down with one blow.

Llyr took a deep breath… and reached out with both arms, to lift the smaller skeleton up onto the bed and pull him into a tight hug. His exhale hitched some, though the cause was well hidden, as his face practically buried itself in the furs at Jitters' hood.