Royal Blue

Schrödinger (Chapter Twenty Five)

There was a dark, cold feeling imbued in all loneliness.

Papyrus curled up under the blankets. There was no warmth to be found; no feeling besides a soft and sallow emptiness.

The longer Papyrus sat there, tucked under the cool covers of one of the Castle's many guest bedrooms, the more time he had to think.
Think about all had happened. the last two days and what little he could truly understand about what was going on.

There was no remaining sense of normalcy-

Normalcy.

What even was normal anymore?

Two days. Two days was all it took for everything to flip itself upside-down and inside-out.

Two days, and Papyrus felt as though he himself were torn in two.

There was a part of him filled with grief and anguish, a part that wished with all of his being that he could go back in time.

And there was another part that wondered if this had been inevitable.

If it had only been a matter of time before these dots connected.
But how was he to tell which dots were the right ones?
And what kind of picture was this beginning to form?

It was like slowly chipping a form from a marble block; fearing with every move that it may all fall apart... but unable to stop.

Desperately needing to reveal whatever lie within.

And so more he thought about it, the fuzzy, faded puzzle pieces began to fall in place. Slivers of information; infinitesimal things, all adding up to... something far larger.

And the more he thought, the more aware he became.

And the more aware he became; the more he wondered why he hadn't thought about any of it before.

Surely it was abnormal.

His life, for one, but moreover; his memory - or lack-thereof. 

He had gleaned as much off other children when he was young. They spoke about their memories of youth, their parents, their lives.

But Papyrus... all he had was a blankness where a lot of childhood memories should have been.

No. Not a blankness...
That wasn't quite right.

It felt more like... fog; a deep dark fog that he did not want to face.

A tumultuous cloud he had been avoiding ever since he was a kid.

Papyrus knew that memory, any particular memory, could not simply be... erased; the soul was far too entangled within itself that to erase a single sliver would cause ripples... even causing irreversible damage to the soul. 

Memory could be repressed. It could fade with time, or it could be shunned away to the dark corners of one's mind.

But it could not be truly Erased.

Few things could be.

So, over the years, he'd tried to convince himself that he did not remember; because remembering was... Confusing.
Painful.

Because what little he could remember called into question everything he thought he knew about his brother.

He closed his eyes.

And with nothing left to loose... he dared to recall it all anyway.

The sound of the hollow rung in Papyrus's head, empty and cold.