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[ A cannibalistic murdering monster who who betrays her friends? Yeah, that's one of the worst things to be in her mind. So it's probably best he doesn't go there because he's not going to be able to convince her anything is 'worse' at this point after the things she's done and suffered through. ]

No, [ she admits, softly. ] But I'm starting to think I will anyway. This place is testing me, dude.

You're aware of the Point A and the Point B and don't wanna end up crossin' that asymptote. That's further than most people get.

[Further than he ever got. He never set a line of standards for himself; just kinda had a vague awareness, as he continued to slip into a complete and genuine cloud of apathy, that maybe what he was doing weren't real okay, but without any earnest desire to alter his trajectory.

You think, upon becoming aware of your own flaws, that that'll somehow make you impervious to their effects. Only pretty soon it just turns into an advanced form of denial.]

Doesn't feel like enough, most days. Maybe being aware is, like, good in theory but in practice... Doesn't always stop you from doing the same stupid shit.

[ You think. That's the main key here. ]

Done good so far, but... It's getting harder.

How so?

[Only took him a year to go from knee-jerk judgment to questioning the etiology of thoughts like that. Maybe he's grown.]

[ There's a pause as she debates telling him or not. He'd shown that he could keep a secret before, obviously, but... All the people that have known have left through the Door. All that people that could have helped her are gone.

She doesn't think Sans can, but. Maybe. It wouldn't hurt for him to know, if nothing else. ]

Starvation tests a person's willpower, I guess. Been doing alright for almost a year now without feeding, but... I can feel it, sometimes. Driving me a little crazier as the days go on.

['Fraid that yeah, he can't help her much there. Even if he had HP to spare, it's doubtful that a whole lotta bone dust would do anybody good, no matter what her double thought.]

Seem to have been keepin' a pretty good lid on it for a while now.

What's changed?

[ 'Seem' being the key word here. There's a lot that Rose seems to do well with, but... ]

Everyone left.

[ Newt, Hermann, Faith, Kate... Wade might as well have been gone, too, for how much she fucked whatever they had up. She never did figure that out. Maybe she never will. ]

Starting to feel a little more pointless, I think, to try and fight it.

So it's other people that're keepin' you from goin' rogue, so to speak.

[It's other people who ground you. It's Papyrus, it's a pair of scientists who bickered and fought. It's Alphys, shy and stammering and smarter than anyone he's ever known. It's a pair of kids with dark red eyes, who finally got him asking why.]

Don't suppose I'd be the first to tell you that it's a little risky, hingin' everything on one person.

[And don't that make him the biggest hypocrite in the cave, just by saying that.]

It's not one person. It was... a pack, but.

[ They're not here anymore. What's the saying? Better to have loved than lost to have never loved at all?

She calls bullshit, honestly. ]

Maybe I should've just stayed a lone wolf. Things were a lot simpler then.

That a choice you can make?

[A lotta this seems to boil down to choice, ultimately. Choice, and the lack of. It's easy to say that being objective is just real damn simple, and for the best. Harder to implement in practice.

He sure as hell didn't choose to get attached. But lo and behold, looks like he did anyhow.]

[ She used to think it was. But people have a way of worming into hearts no matter how much you choose against it, seems like. ]

I don't know. I thought it was for a while, but then... Haven happened. Now here.

So why get bent outta shape over what you can't do?

[Sure, it ain't really that simple. But what if only helps for as long as it's still tenable. And right now, it sure don't look like it is.]

Could ask that of a lot things people get bent outta' shape over.

I dunno'. Just don't like putting people at risk, which they always are knowing me. Never have.

Lots of people're are a risk to other people. 'S what you do with it that really matters.

[ 'What if you always seem to do the worst fucking thing without meaning to,' she almost says. But that seems... pointlessly pessimistic. ]

Yeah, alright, [ she concedes, after a thoughtful pause. ] Fair enough.

It's just hard sometimes, I guess. Knowing that you being gone would mean people wouldn't even be put at risk in the first place.

Like I said: everyone's a risk.

[Sounds like that might'a been the reasoning that the kids succumbed to, back when they...got a hold of something. Something that would've wiped them clean from the face of the city. Can't quite remember what it was.

Weird.]

You're here now, and you're not gonna be able to change that by tryin'.

So I should just not try?

That what I said?

[There's a faint scritch of ossein against bone as he pauses to scratch at his head.]

Look. I get that you're talkin' to me, and not trying is pretty much just kinda how I do. But I guess I learned a thing or two since I got here. Funny how that shakes out.

[Funny how it was a pair of kids that taught him that.]

So I gotta question for ya:

What can you change?

[ It's what he has said, without always outright stating it. Figured she'd take a page from that book and then it's re-written. The feels like her luck these days. ]

I don't know, [ she admits. Feels like she's tried just about everything at this point. Well. Everything but feed, which sh swore she wouldn't when the Haven to Hadriel adjustment initially happened. ]

Guess that's my problem.

Well, you got some pretty fine control over what you do and don't end up doin' to other people on a good day.

[No one's ended up eaten - and if they have, it looks to be a casualty of one of the many nameless, faceless beasts roaming the caves rather than a product of Rosie's, uh, issues.]

Or you're real good at fakin' it 'till you make it.

It's a lot harder than anyone realizes. There's a reason I ain't been half as affectionate as I used to be with people. Kind of hard to when, y'know, everyone is a meal option and you haven't eaten in so long.

[ Yet, is the caveat there. It feels like it's only a matter of time. ]

But I haven't... My double tried to, which I guess I still see as me, but even then we didn't succeed.

She weren't you.

[Let's make that clear here. One hundred percent.]

Would y'say that anyone else's double was just some kinda extension of them?

[...cripes, he hopes not. Or the things his double did might reflect real strangely on the monster he was purportedly based on, and he's not sure how far he's willing to dig on that one.]

[ She was. A past version of Rose resurrected to cause havoc upon Hadriel; she's not that person now, but... she was. No one will ever be able to convince her that it wasn't some small part of her that still lived in the depths, still lurked deep down within. That was still entirely capable of clawing its way back to life. ]

No, [ she says, but, ] I think it was the versions of us... we do our best not to be. So, I don't know, that it was possible to be them. Under the right circumstances, with different outcomes in life. They weren't us, but they could have been. In another lifetime, another reality, whatever you wanna' call it.

[Well, maybe she's right. Maybe she would've been that.]

But they're not.

'Cause last I checked, that ain't you. Last I checked, no one's going missing to get chowed down in secret.

[ Maybe she would've.

Maybe she will. ]

No one has. Trust me, you'd know. I was pretty messy in Haven.

But that's how I found my set-up, too, which... Wish I could go back to that, but. That ship's sailed.

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voice; cw: suicidal ideation

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