#failure?

Look, he would not have a good time, let’s be real. That boy has a lot of Not Good memories.

We wake in the dark and start getting ready for the day’s trek, rubbing sleep from our eyes with the stars still overhead. I can never eat much when I first get up so I settle for a few packets of oatmeal with pumpkin seeds stirred through. My bitter instant coffee, to which I add a healthy dose of cardamom, doesn’t get me going either. Sometimes the only way is to walk.

So we start hiking uphill with the watch’s first digit still reading “4.” Past a natural waterslide in the heavy forest in the eerie half-light, into a clearing some 500 feet up by just after 5:00, when the headlamps we’re wearing become comically unnecessary. It’s an odd thing to be sweating so early but the switchbacks do the trick. There’s no wind. 

The sun creeps over the ridge to our east, casting a pink glow onto the red rocks above us where the treeline ends. The trail ceases to be much of a trail and instead becomes a wild scramble up an endless steep dirt hill. Over and under how many blowdowns we climb and crawl I have no idea, but by 6:00 I’m coated in red dust and have more than a few new scratches on me. 

As we follow the course of a thin stream to our left and cross into the brush, there’s a low whunk whunk whunk whunk emanating from someplace we can’t see. We think it’s the wind, then a bug, but it’s too regular and deep and carrying. I still don’t know what animal makes that kind of sound. It stays with us as we climb. 

One last washed out gully brings us to the mountain’s lower snowfield, a narrow path that stretches up past the end of our sightline. Accompanying it is an arctic blast of air that can’t be felt if you step five feet backward down the hill. Strange things, mountains. 

We skirt the snowfield on the left side, staying on a rocky path designated by the odd cairn or length of ribbon twisted into the boughs of a sapling pine. There’s a narrow crossing up above; after a long few steps we’re back out of the snow and into the rocks once more. For the next twenty minutes we pick our way upward through the rocks, knowing the reprieve from the snow won’t last. 

True to the reports we’ve read the rocks lead us to a narrow snow chute that can’t be avoided. I put on my microspikes and take out my ice axe, which I’ll use for purchase on the way up. But it’s been two years since I’ve had to do this and I’m rusty to a degree I didn’t imagine until my feet go out from under me and I’m left hanging by one hand from the head of the axe. I’m laying on a 45 degree slope on snow that will sweep me back down the mountainside 40 or 50 feet into rocks if I’m not careful. 

I pull myself up to my knees and sit there for a few minutes waiting for my hands to stop shaking, my bowels to settle. The fall wouldn’t have killed me but it would have fucked my day up pretty good, and I have to let me brain and body resynchronize as I work past the fear of it happening again. 

Fingers starting to numb with cold, I pull myself up and try again. Maybe a minute passes before I’m down again, hollering in frustration. Will, my stalwart hiking partner, hollers up that I’m not kicking in hard enough. We left early so the snow would be hard-packed and easy to traverse; I’m not taking advantage of that condition and am paying for it dearly. 

To my right there looks to be a way up through the rocks--I don’t see any other way of going on from here. I mean, I can see the way just fine, I just know that it would take all morning for us to haul ourselves up the snow that far. Desperate to get out of the snow I make a mad scramble across the mouth of the chute and make the short leap onto the rocks. I have to cling to the face of the cliff to stop myself from going over backward into a narrow gap between snow and rock, but even that heart-stopper is infinitely preferable to what I just left behind. 

I’ve made my choice which cuts off some of ours and opens up a few others. We scramble up through the red-brown rocks, scraping through scrub pines and stumbling on scree, losing the way completely more than once. Fortunately when you know the real trail basically just goes up and up you can just keep aiming that direction and eventually you find it again. 

After perhaps an hour of this we see it: The Hourglass, the last long snowfield of the trail, above which we can see the summit twisting out from behind one or two false peaks. We opt to slide and slam and scrabble our way up an adjacent field of basalt scree, staying out of the snow as long as possible given our track record. But all things must be met eventually, and so Will goes across in a perfect pistoning form that opens up veritable shelves for me to stand on as I follow. We go across and up, clear a small island of rock in the middle of the chute, and then stomp our way up and through the final few dozen feet of snow. 

“After you,” Will grins. This whole thing was my idea, and despite his competent leadership he wants me to be the first to summit, for which I’m eternally grateful. I fly straight up through the rocks, refusing to let myself stop to think about what I’m doing--if you stop, fear has time to catch you. One particularly harrowing move, which I don’t let myself even think about until later, involves hugging the crumbly face of the rock and stepping around a blind corner looking for a foothold, from which I then haul myself up to the next level. Given everything--the ice axe sticking out from my pack that catches on everything, the trekking poles dangling below it, my general clumsiness--the fact that I don’t tip backwards into the void forever feels like a small miracle. 

Yes, he really is talking about that. Since Papy was born with flaws instead of being the “perfect” being like he counts himself to be, he helds a grudge against Papy.

Gaster is a typcial “rich, successful” parent who expects his child to be at the top of everything. So he beliefs that Pup easily could do better than just what he does. Like this, he is only a shame to him that he doesn’t want to show in public.

He doesn’t really see that Papyrus actually has a lot of success because he is hard-working. Gaster rather ignores that fact, being focus on his own ideal of a good PERFECT heir.

He’s storied in a way that belies his youth, and as he guides Tim through the nascent Promethean Atlas facility, he’s so enthralled that he almost doesn’t notice the stares.

Rhys does, however, and a brief, grim look flashes over his face as he sharply guides Tim pass the sparse Atlas employees and towards his office.

“Now, um,” Rhys starts as he sits at the edge of his desk, folding his arms, “the whole employee living facilities thing is kind of a work in progress, proper life support systems are throwing us for a bit of a loop and the Promethean atmosphere is a little uh….well, pretty less than ideal.”  Rhys lets out a tinny laugh. “I mean you’ve probably already noticed that so um.”

He rubs his cybernetic with his other hand, and again Tim’s eyes flick to that ring.

“We’ve converted some of the office space into temporary beds, not really a lot of privacy but it’s good enough for now. Most people haven’t been complaining.” Rhys shrugs. 

“Huh....where do you sleep?” Tim asks. “Wait uh, sorry, is that a weird question?”

“N-No! Not at all.” Rhys waves his hand dismissively. “I just kind of uh, sleep here. I’ve got a little pull out bed for now…it’s not as uncomfortable as it looks, I swear.” Rhys shakes his head. “No one told me being a CEO would be so glamorous, am I right?”

A small smile crosses Timothy’s face, and he chuckles.

“Right.”