Chapter Text
Once everyone had regrouped at the bottom of the mountain, the camp was set up. The arrangement was for two people to share a tent with the extra tent serving as a general storage and medical tent. It had gotten late in the day and everyone had settled. Toriel, with the assistance of Frisk, managed to put together a lunch for everyone.
As Henry finished the last of his lunch, he scanned the area. Everyone was gathered around and talking but there were a few noticeable absences. He knew Alphys and her girlfriend were in the medical tent doing a checkup on the chief’s soul, but there was someone else missing from the crowd. His boss.
Henry wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t see Right. The man was polite and introduced himself to everyone and was able to make pleasant conversation, but whenever he got the chance he isolated himself. Right wasn’t usually the social one to begin with, but this was more extreme. Henry followed his instinct to go into his boss’s tent to check on him. When he went in he found the man sitting on his cot, head slumped and staring at his hands.
“Sir, are you ok?” Henry asked calmly, slightly surprising Right.
“Oh! Yes, I’m fine Henry…just thinking.” The older man answered. “Hey, mind telling me a bit more about the special magic stuff you mentioned earlier?”
“Yeah, uh, it can get a bit complicated and I’m no expert so…maybe not.” Henry explained as he sat next to his boss. “Although, maybe I could teach you how to remember timelines? Like see if you can recall a previous one?”
“You sure it won’t be too hard? Sounds complicated.” Right asked.
“Eh, it’s pretty much the only thing I can teach you without needing a book on it or something.” Right nodded in response. “So, it can be a bit tricky at first. Pretty much, after your first save you’ll automatically remember new timelines made, but remembering past timelines is a bit weirder. You’ll need to focus on specific points of your life where it seems things would’ve changed majorly. Not like, ‘what if you had something else for breakfast?’, something bigger. Let’s try…uhm…what if we never met?”
“So I just think of you destroying the airship and just pretend like it never happened?” Henry chuckled nervously and cleared his throat.
“Something like that…anyways, try it.” Right stared off and thought hard. He could easily picture Henry being absent but nothing seemed to stick.
“I don’t think it’s working.” Right sighed.
“Fine, maybe we can try something else…I got it! Maybe I can try to show you a different timeline I experienced and it can jump start your memories!” Henry exclaimed. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Player giving him a firm head shake of disapproval. He ignored the spirit and pressed a hand to his chest. As he removed his hand, his soul appeared, glowing a bright red. He drew a few circles over the soul with his finger and images began to show of previous timelines. Right stared in awe at the images shown, trying to connect the images shown. Two things stuck out though, firstly there were a lot of moments where Right was half robotic, his right arm, legs and half his face were metal, it felt uncomfortable how many times images like these were shown. The second thing was…
There was an uncomfortable lack of Reginald for Right’s liking. The man could live without his boss for a few minutes, sure, but it was enough to trigger an internal panic alarm. It also didn’t help that some of the images depicted Henry wearing a dark top hat with a familiar gold chain donning it. He reached and hand to Henry’s soul and touched it gently. Instantly, the images came flooding into his head, stitched together like a movie reel, showing exactly what happened.
When Right touched his soul, Henry panicked.
“Sir, you’re not supposed to do that!” Henry backed up and removed his soul but Right stayed frozen with his hand reached out. His eyes glowed a dull red as the albino man hid his soul. “Shit! Shit! Shit! What do we do?!”
“This is not my problem. I knew it was a bad idea, but noooo you just had to see what would happen. Idiot.” Player snarked.
“Can’t you do something?!” Player groaned and moved in front of Right, waving their hand in front of his eyes.
“Hellooooo, Mr. Cranky pants~ You there?” They said obnoxiously. Eventually, the red glow from Right’s eyes dulled and he blinked a few times. Once he regained his full vision he immediately backed up in a panic, eyes bolting around at everything in front of him. “Hah! It worked! And you think you’re the smart one Hen~”
“What the- who the ‘ell are you?!” Right shouted in his panic. His eyes were locked on the spirit and dread set in.
“Ooh, he can see me now, can’t he?” Player said slowly.
“Sir, are you ok?” Henry asked, dodging the ghost and getting close to his boss.
“You…what the fuck did you do?! Who is that?! You- you hurt him!” Right yelled. Henry began to reach his arm out to grab Right’s shoulder, but realised it would upset him more so he stopped. He turned to Player who just shrugged.
“You are such an idiot Henry.” Played snarked. “Hey big guy, chill. What you saw may have happened, but that’s in different timelines. Plus, in all fairness, you were kind of a dick in those timelines too.”
Right Hand Man slowed his breathing as he listened to Player talk. He eventually just stared down as the other two looked at him in silence.
“So, I should probably explain some things, huh?” Henry asked. Right nodded, looking up and directly at Player. “Well, it all started when I was a little kid…
I was pretty much alone. But, then I met a kid from down the road who went to my school. Their name was Desdemona, their favourite colour was red, they were a lonely kid like me, and they never shared their soul. We met during lunch and talked a bit, but we bonded over a lot of things and got really close. A few months passed and I was excited about having a little sister, so much so that I didn’t notice how quiet Dessie was. They started wearing clothes that covered them up more and would miss days of school. Once I noticed, they said they would tell me on our playdate that afternoon.
Time came for our playdate at their house, we were in the backyard playing and I asked them to tell me. They basically broke down and told me everything, their soul, their terrible home life, experiments done on them. They were sobbing on me, clinging to me. Once they were done, they begged me not to tell their dad. I obviously agreed but…
We had a playdate scheduled for the next day and they didn’t show up. I went to their house to check on them but they were gone. The whole house was empty, no one was home. Then I checked the backyard, and that’s where I found Desdemona dead.
The blood was still fresh and…and I panicked. I wanted to save their soul but I did something bad.
The next morning, I woke up with Desdemona sitting at the foot of my bed. They were a ghost.”
“And that’s how I was born! Well, reborn, but you get the gist.” Player laughed when Henry finished.
“But…how?” Right asked.
“Something I can’t explain. But, that’s what happened. The rest of my life was dull until I experimented with timelines. I wanted to test the limits to see what I could get away with. But I made mistakes, and I had to make sure that I went with a path where I felt at home.” Henry responded. The three sat there silently while Right processed what he had just been told.
“Then what’s behind that mask?”
-
All Hubert felt was something metal hitting his face before he and the rest of his team seemed to transport to a snowy tundra. Once they all had calmed down and recollected their sense, they worked on locating where they were. No one had any source of connection and there were no landmarks in sight. Only snow and mountains for miles. The group luckily had some supplies to last them until they found a town and a compass that was able to point them south.
They had walked for a while, Rupert leading them with the compass in hand as Hubert stayed a bit further back. He kept his eyes focused on the device that brought them there in the first place. It looked fine apart from a few scratches from seemingly previous events. There was no sense in trying to mess around with it and try to get it to send it back, it would only seem to result in failure . As he pondered the device a bit more, he felt a hand on his arm. Looking up he saw the face of his nephew, Charles, giving him an encouraging smile.
“We’ll find our way out of this, I just know it.” He said.
“I’m sure your optimism won’t let us down Charlie.”