fulllifeconsequences

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Speak.

[Wow okay cool voicemail there Chara. Voice/text/video away to your heart's content.]

[They inch forward a half-step, Frisk inches forward a half-step, and the two of them hover indecisively in an in-between space. The familiar state of close-but-not-touching, because neither knows if touch is wanted or allowed.]

I wish I did know.

[Wish they really could know everything, wish they could have actually known how things would have turned out, instead of just... pretending that burning the bridge down had always been the plan. Wish they could...

Well. Maybe that's not actually what they wish for. The power to undo mistakes, to make sure they could do things perfectly... had it really made things any easier? Did they ever feel more secure and loved because they could do that?

Maybe what they're really wishing for is this: the acceptance of mistakes. Hearing that they will miss up, and not... not freezing in terror at the thought. Not recoiling like even a moment's imperfection will be filed away and weaponized against them at any moment.

Frisk, too, must want that. Wouldn't it be nice to not feel like you've already started off an intruder from the moment you arrived, and every second has to be spent proving yourself? Justifying your existence. Making sure you're useful enough to be allowed to take up space. Like you don't have the right to just... live.]

I want to know a way to not hurt you. To take away from your suffering, not add to it. Wonderland has given me... the guidance here has been very different from the world we once knew. I think there are a lot of very fundamental and basic things I should have learned a long time ago. I think... I may struggle. Try as I might, I'll continue to be myself. But at the very least, I would like to be a self that can make existing easier for you to bear.

[They think of the punching bag Shepard gifted to them. The peculiar feeling of knowing that no longer could they cram all their worldly possessions into a single backpack and vanish, that they couldn't truly keep their corner of the room looking like nobody lived in it. Remember testing out how yielding yet weighty it had felt. They're not sure it would grant Frisk much solace, though.

* You lightly tap the dummy. You feel bad.

So instead, they offer another hesitant half-inch of closeness. Look down at their hands.]

...If you want to be touched, you, um, might have to ask me. I don't know what helps and what doesn't. But... but I'll offer it willingly. Nothing more extreme than a hug, but I'll offer it.

I...I won't mind if you don't want to. But I've missed...this.

[This. They've missed being able to just be, simply existing in the same space without feeling encroached upon, without feeling like they should be bracing themself for the whirl and impact of a strike, or the shape of someone's thumbprints bruising their wrists.

They've missed being able to feel like it's something freely given between two people, and not an imposition. Not a selfish or manipulative thing, that necessitates owing someone for giving you a fraction of their time and energy and comfort.]

I want to know how to not hurt you. I think maybe we...

[It feels so stupid, to say it aloud like this. It feels stupid, and it feels obvious, and they want to laugh, but that would be mean.]

I think we're pretty terrible at saying when something makes us feel bad. We just...we say we deserve it, and we let it happen. And then it keeps happening until it just...

[It eats away at you until at last, at long last, it erupts, and it sears everyone around you, and you can say a tearful sorry and move forward and pretend it didn't happen, and no one gets helped.

Talking is...difficult. Weren't able to cry at Undyne's feet when she killed them, over and over again. Weren't able to get a word out to Papyrus when he hauled them back to his shed and left them there, dazed and shivering. Weren't able to call out to Toriel, to Mettaton, to Asgore.

Weren't able to tell them no. Because...what would be the point, right? Why would it matter? Humans are the real enemy.

But things, as always, can be - different here.

It's high time they started being different, maybe.]

[It stirs something in his soul, like kicking up dust in a long-empty room. The first prickle of something cold and frosty. Something like anger. Just the barest hint of it, because they're right. Who would do this to a kid?]

probably a mirror. right? none of them exactly like us much. and seeing as the core is on the mirror side...frisk's a smart kid. they'd know that if anyone could tell them where the core is, and maybe where the rabbit hole is, it'd be a mirror.

plus. queen would probably see it as a victory, right? getting a real to erase themself. bet that's major mirror brownie points.

That's the guidance the last world gave to us, is it not?

[The phrase they both know by heart:
* But nobody came.

Talking to their parents changed nothing. Got them ever-so-sincere tearful confessionals about how they had it so much worse when they were kids, about how they're the scum of the earth, how you must hate them, how they should just die if you hate them so much. Sorry you don't understand, sorry you can't recognize you'll thank me someday, sorry you feel that way. And maybe there will be a respite, for a while. Just long enough for you to start getting too exhausted to tiptoe, just long enough to think maybe you can breathe, and then the shoe drops and it starts all over again.

Talking to other people changed nothing. Runaways get taken home to their parents. This is all part of god's plan for you, it's happening to you for a reason. I'm sure your parents still love you. I'm sure it won't happen again. Are you sure that's how it really happened? Those are dangerous accusations to level at someone, Chara. You could ruin your parents' lives, Chara. Do you really want to put them through that, or is this about getting attention?

So you swallow every word you're fed down, don't you? Accept the futility of "I didn't do anything wrong" and "I don't like this" and "this is going to kill me someday." Stop repeating phrases that keep only being met with averted eyes and excuses. Start thinking it must be right, then, when they say they're doing this to you because you made them. Start thinking it really is happening because you're bad. Start buying into the idea that this is what God wants your life to be, and who are you to say that's not good enough for you?]

Nobody ever listened. Nobody ever explained it to us, did they? We were never told that it wasn't just, wasn't fair, wasn't right. We were never told to expect ourselves to be a factor worth weighing. We just had to listen to their justifications as to why it was right that we were hurt. We had to figure out for ourselves why it was happening to us.

[So is it so surprising, really, that the conclusion they stumbled toward was "I deserve it?"]

I'm... still afraid, even now, that I will not be able to escape this cycle. That nothing I do will spare anyone from the fact that caring about me ruins their lives.

[Once bitten, twice shy. Four times bitten... eight times shy? Maybe the saying doesn't hold up.]

It just made so much sense to... do as the world told me to do. If we're really friends, you won't come back. You're not welcome. Kids like you should be burning in hell. Let them go. Let Frisk be happy. I had already seen that everyone I had ever - had ever cared about... they were all able to move on. They found something else to fill their lives, so that there was no empty space left behind by my absence.

[The world doesn't stop without you. A fact they'd slowly come to accept. Asriel had made it clear enough that it was better to be able to move on, hadn't he? How strange it is, then, that Frisk should treat them like they're so important. That Sans would ask whether they wanted to keep living, when it had already been made so clear that living would be nothing but an imposition, an intrusion, a sword of Damocles hovering over all these perfectly happy people.]

We've been here so long, but... even so, do either of us truly have any frame of reference for what it's like to exist outside that circle of hurting?

[What it's like to just... be normal? To exist without the looming shadow of we just weren't ready for the responsibility or we never wanted you here, no one did coloring every thought? To not have a fresh start marred by a knife scraping against Sans' sternum or an arm held down as a rock was raised? To not think of yourself as a land mine, a time-bomb, something just waiting to repay a selfless gift with a broken SPELL or sharpened stake driving through flesh?

...Frisk doesn't mind. They close the last bit of distance, press forehead to forehead, a seamless blend of darker and lighter brown bangs cushioning the two.]

I'm so afraid that we're already ruined, Frisk. That we've been... broken. Doomed. That we cannot be anything but what our pasts have bent us into.

[Like a LV that you can never reset. Violence leaves a mark, and it disqualifies you utterly from deserving a happy ending. Everyone you meet will only be set back by you. Hurts, doesn't it?]

[It's sickening. It's sickening because it makes sense, and because every single mirror here is safely beyond their grasp. They can do nothing about this crime. The guilty ones will smile smugly and go about their lives unfettered.]

Why would Frisk ever trust a mirror? After what their own mirror did to them, why...

[Their stomach twists just thinking of it. Broken fingers and hateful words. Things that had belonged on the Surface, things that never should have had to hunt them down here, too. How could Frisk put themselves completely in the hands of one of those creatures after finding out that was how they were willing to act?]

How could they possibly shun us and embrace one of them?

They didn't fill their lives.

[It's an immediate refutation, and they can't bite back the thrill of guilt at how swiftly they pounce on it. But they can't...hear that sort of thing.]

Toriel kept chocolate in the fridge. Always looked for another person to hold onto. Asgore still kept your beds. Your photo. The date you came there.

[Asriel...well, they don't need to get into that again. That's not something they've earned the right to retread, and they've brought it up enough, how desperate he was to claw Chara back into his life. Even if he didn't exactly know how to let go, and let go awkwardly, with words that were cruel and painful to the specter of the child who heard them.

Chara was never really erased, scratched away into nothingness. But for someone who's felt as though nothing they've done has ever left any good and lasting meaning, the fact that there's no chocolate in the fridge means he must have forgotten. The fact that she'll find another kid, and instantly forget about you...means something.

The fact that Chara wasn't the greatest person means something.]

But it's easy. It's easy to hear someone say something like that, and think...oh. It's true. It has to be. Because everyone else who's known us thinks the same thing, eventually.

[Don't track mud across the floor. We feed you, clothe you, pay for the roof over your head, and this is how you thank us? By making a mess? You know that if you'd never come along, Mommy and Daddy could be living a nice happy life right around now, don't you? Now why couldn't you have been a nice, good, normal child?

They let Chara close the last bit of distance, their foreheads bumping together softly, their hands still interlinked. Close. Real. Here again.

They don't want to let go.]

Maybe that's why we always feel...better together.

Together, it's like we almost make one whole person.

[It's a weak joke. A poor one. They feel the need to retract it at once, eyes screwing closed with a pang of guilt, again. They've gotten so, so very good at guilt. Can't let it decide everything.]

I don't think you're broken. I think the people in our lives...the people we knew on the Surface - they made us think that. But that's not...

That can't be our fault.

[Children are knives. They don't mean to, but they cut.

But maybe...maybe they are never born that way. Maybe they are sharpened. They are polished into that edge, until they feel like that is all they have to be, all they're meant to be.

It's not the fault of the knife. It's the fault of the person holding it.]

frisk erasing themself aligns with the mirrors' interests.

[He pauses, thinking. Not thinking about how horrible it is, not thinking about that chilly anger in his soul and how foreign it feels. Set it aside. Think logically.]

frisk probably knew that. probably knew one of them would benefit from helping erase a real.

[And who would benefit the most? Frisk has no enemies on this side of the glass, so it has to be a Mirror, right? And it would be one who knew Frisk, or knew them through their Reals. Frisk's own Mirror, since hell, maybe the kid is just as suicidal as Real Frisk is. Mettaton's Mirror, out of some obsession over Mettaton. Chara's Mirror, maybe if Frisk pressured them enough. Sans's own Mirror of course, though he hasn't heard from the guy in months now.]

[It'll be hard to pin down. It's not like he or anyone can just ask, since they can't trust a single thing any Mirror says.]

[He shakes his head.]

cause that's...kinda what you do. when you're trying to punish yourself.

[He remembers.]

you push aside the people who care. embrace the things that hurt you instead.

[Besides, it's not like someone who actually cared about Frisk would help them Erase themself. Right, Zacharie?]

[A laugh! A sad laugh, but a laugh all the same and Mettaton laughs a little himself. They are holding hands and it's doing him more good than he thought it would. He cares about this human so much and it feels sudden, but he's not holding himself back for once, for one glorious moment in time, he's letting himself show the affection he wants to show.

There's no one else but him and Chara and the curtain is drawn. The audience has gone home and all there is left to do is to clean up the stage.]

Sometimes, when bad things happen between two people who just want the best for each other, both sides get hurt. Sometimes you may think you have no right to be injured, but that's not how it works. You're hurt because you care, because you never wanted the bad thing to happen. No one is perfect. No matter how much you may want to be.

[Is he speaking to himself or Chara? Does it matter? A ghost, left alone to tend to a farm of snails, devoid of family. A robot, taking a new life, alone with his guilt. A scratching, gnawing feeling of something missing, of something wrong, losing your, haha, "other half".

A dark forest, moonlight creeping through the branches and leaves. Scratches on the chassis, on his legs, paint job in order. The dim shimmery luminescence of a ghost, floating towards the edge of the tree line to the abyss, tears falling

falling

falling]

So long as you are alive, Chara, you can make up for your mistakes. So long as you have the ability to reach out to others with any intent to repair, you can fix things.

[They had both been quiet during that slow walk back to the mansion.]

Luckily for you, poetry is one of the best ways to express yourself for apologies. Maybe you could write an entire book of haikus and use that.

[The joke is wearing thin, but he keeps it up, because he knows. He knows it helps.

He hopes he is helping.]

[...They missed this, too. Want to be consumed by this feeling of closeness without expectation or threat. Want to just exist, without the tense knowledge that there's a Chara already lurking inside there, some being within their thoughts who's LV 19 and wields their creepy, melting smile like a knife. Without the jealous wariness of someone else scraping away bits of Frisk and leaving shavings of himself scattered in their soul, without fear that reaching out means this Zacharie will creep across their outstretched fingers too.

Just wanting... wanting to melt together again, for all the horrible problems that had been born of being an amalgamate. Wanting the warm shelter of "just us."]

And yet it follows us still.

[It's... easier, in a way, to think it is their fault. That makes what happens just. That makes what happens make sense. There's a cold iron comfort to that, a bitter solace that "the world is just that senselessly cruel" doesn't offer. Easier to swallow if they can still believe there is justice somewhere.]

It's hard to surrender. It's the only way I ever found to... to give meaning to our suffering. What else are we supposed to do if this never ends? If we just keep up this cycle of tricking ourselves into thinking we can be safe and getting people hurt for it?

[Are they so safe together because they both - know this? They both just know they'll eventually bite into the flesh of anyone who comes near and they've both accepted being bitten as part of what love is supposed to feel like?]

It's hard to surrender, but... it's not what I want for you, either.

[It makes sense. It might sound backwards on a purely theoretical, logical level, but it makes the visceral and soul-deep kind of sense that they know from personal experience. The way Sans knows from personal experience, too, they think, because surely someone who didn't get it would never suggest it.

It's... it's just the kind of thing that claws its way into you, they think, when you really learn what it means to think "but nobody came."

You deserve it. You deserve people who hurt you. At your worst, you become almost obsessed with your misery, almost find a sort of strange vindictive, sadistic pleasure at shouting yourself into submission. You lose sight completely of everything outside that cocoon of jagged, rusting misery.]

I don't want to just let this rest. I can't just let this rest. I do not care if they are out of my reach.

[Can't get to that side. No police in Wonderland. No law. No church to hear your confessions. No clear concept what they even mean when they say they need to see justice, only the sickening feeling that no child should have to suffer through that ever, ever again.]

I refuse to allow anyone to steer a child toward the abyss and walk away utterly unburdened. It sickens me to even think they might be satisfied by an outcome like the one they pushed for.

Do... I suppose it is a slim chance, but do you suppose Frisk would tell us who?

[They doubt it, somehow. Frisk is good. Frisk forgives you. Frisk would... protect the people who did this, wouldn't they? That's what a good victim does. Thinks about the discomfort they would put the people who harmed them through if they told the truth.]

You have control, if you say it's your fault. Or you can say you do. You're the one deciding if things are terrible.

[And there's an appeal in that. There's a hideously fitting appeal in it. You give yourself meaning, meaning to your suffering. You suffer because you bring it upon yourself, because you deserve it. You suffer because you acted out - you said something wrong, did something wrong, and now you're being punished for it. You suffer because you stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop, and instead took it into your own hands so you could throw it at the walls, destroy the semblance of tolerance and peace with your own raw and blistered fingertips before anyone else could take that away from you. You suffer because you brought it upon yourself, but it's better this way, it has to be, because at least this way you decided when and where and how it happens.

They'd be lying if they said there wasn't an appeal in this.]

I don't want it for you either.

[So what's the solution? Stop hurting people? Stop opening their heart? Maybe it should have been, would have been, but when has that ever worked out for either of them?]

I don't think...it's ever really safe, to know anybody. Even the people who are safest can hurt us.

[Even Toriel, who smells of cinnamon and piecrust and warm flames that can't hurt you, will turn on her heel and shut you from her life, sear you with flames to keep you at her side until your flesh crackles and the skin burns. Even Asriel, your very best friend, the most important person in your life, can say that you're not the greatest person, that you weren't the kind of friend he wished he had.

It didn't work when Chara ran. It didn't work when Frisk ran. It's harder when there's nowhere to run to, and it's harder when there's just so many people - so many people - who care. Because you MADE them love you?

Or maybe because they chose to?]

I guess now we know too many people to get away with doing that now.

You're not a lost cause. You never were.

[Because they're not. Maybe it's foolish to imagine she can save everyone, when she knows full well that she can't, that she hasn't. But it matters to the ones she does. The people who send her emails thanking her for just taking one minute of her time to say something to the right person so their ship could get clearance as a refugee, the communications tower officer that relayed her positions of the enemy and caused a distraction as she fought her way there to get them out, a little girl waiting at the Citadel for her parents that will never arrive that she could push towards an officer. Bit by bit, person by person, the universe is saved. People are always quick to give that title to her, that mantra, but a lot of what she does could be done by anyone with a willingness to choose kindness, just that once.

If she can impart that, that's all she needs to do.]

When I was 18, I joined the military because I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I was a real upstart. Causing trouble for the sake of doing it, because then maybe something would change.

And... one of the COs came along. Took an interest in me. I think I punched him in the face. It's kind of a blur. They wanted to discharge me, put me back at nothing, and he vouched for me. Told them to give me one more chance. He pulled me aside once they left, and asked me if I wanted to stay. And when I said I did, he told me that he was gonna help. That there was gonna be somebody looking out for me.

So... maybe I feel like I owe it to the people who came before me to try. Maybe I just damn like you, kid. I like you a lot. And small issues, unsolved pains and hurt can build up to a lot.

[She takes a breath, lets the words sit in the air a moment.]

So I'm gonna look out for you. It doesn't have to be a promise to you. It's a promise to myself.

[*Stay determined.]

Edited (THERE'S A FUCKING TYPO FUCK ME) 2017-01-20 21:24 (UTC)

[It's the lesson learned when bad things keep happening to you that are out of your control. No one can ever hate you as much as you hate yourself, and things are somehow easier to deal with that way. It's like some kind of modicum of control over the situation.]

i agree. whoever it is can't be left unchecked.

[It feels empty, though, because how do you stop a Mirror? Like Chara says, they're out of their reach completely. There's nothing they can do but get upset about it. And what would he do anyway? Go punch a Mirror in the face, stand by while Chara reaps LOVE from them?]

[Justice would be nice. Justice so rarely actually happens.]

they might. when...if they ever start trusting us again. then they might tell us.

[They had never imagined being like this around an adult. Can't remember the last time they fell apart in front of anyone except Frisk. It feels like they'd be swept away completely by the force of this torrential outpouring if not for the hands anchoring them here.

But they can't believe in any of that, can they? They never made up for any of their mistakes. Just stood back and watched as better, less wrong people came along and fixed the mess they left. They're not really alive. Their time stopped! Their story is over! What right do they have to let themselves forget they've been gone for a long time?]

That's going to be a pretty long book.

[Just keep laughing. Keep those syrupy, wet sob-chuckles going, because they're not at all gross-sounding, ha ha. What a shame they can't be a robot too, just find some switch deep inside them that shuts their ability to cry down forever.]

How many times do you say "sorry" for it to actually make anything better? It's just... it's just a word. A stupid, empty word that won't undo any of Frisk's suffering. I've made a mistake so awful, they'll never be the same. So awful, they wanted to die.

Just saying "sorry" doesn't make anything better, it just - it just forces them to forgive me, because it's their job to forgive everybody! I can't even apologize without putting more weight on their shoulders! How do they know I mean it... and how do I know they really feel better if they just tell everyone "I forgive you" because they have to?

It's not even... I can live with getting hurt. Getting hurt's old news. It's... how do other people only manage to hurt each other just a little?

[An argument about who takes out the garbage, or some stupid cartoon plotline about two girls liking the same boy. The kind of silly argument where yelling "go to hell" gets you tattled on and grounded, not the kind where it makes a person literally go seeking hell.]

When things go bad... why do they go so irrevocably bad?

[Toriel and Asgore will never get back together. Asriel will always be a flower. Frisk's brown eyes are gone forever. Six children lie in coffins in a basement, never having been given the chance that monsters once gave Chara. It can't possibly be normal, inevitable, just the cost of everyday living, if it leaves everyone Chara had wanted to protect wishing they could stop existing.

It's... ha. It's the exact same ache. Clinging to Frisk months ago, crying out about having given up on "okay" completely, just begging for the world to at least let them have "survivable."]

I keep looking and looking for a reason why we have to - why it has to be so much more extreme. Why we're stuck on this precarious bridge of fraying rope. Is it just like this for everyone, and I've been too unsympathetic to notice?

[They hardly know which is a more terrifying prospect to entertain, really. That life is genuinely that painful and relentless no matter what, and they've just been so selfish and overdramatic they tuned out everyone's suffering, or that they're right back to struggling with the prospect that some people can just be singled out for... for no reason at all. Not because they deserved it, not because of anything they said or did or thought, but simply because there is a random, unjust cruelty innate to the universe.]

How are we supposed to endure if the fact is just that love means calamities striking at any moment? That it's just an inevitability of having connections that occasionally you'll devastate them to the point of suicidal ideation? I don't... Frisk, I don't know how we can survive a life as unstable as this.

[Will it always be like this? They'd wondered that, they remember, in those interminable hours they spent in Room 12, staring at the card that was slit in half and shoved roughly beneath the door, and then improperly mended. They'd spun thought after aimless thought over and over in their head, unspooling all of them in treacherous circulation without any hope of termination or conclusion. Are we all just doomed, they'd asked?

They may as well have been shouting into the void. Crying out in the darkness. Calling for help. And someone was there on the other side, but nobody came. Nobody came because it was...best, wasn't it? Best if that bandage was ripped from the wound while it was still fresh and pink and learning to scab itself over.

Are we all doomed?

They shut their eyes for a moment, and let the synchronization of their breathing lull their thoughts from nascent panic to something calmer, eddying into pooling gold. The color of flowers, the color of a Locket chain, the color of the sun-drenched pavement that ran past the gas station.]

I don't think it matters if we love or don't, [Frisk whispers at last.] I didn't have to feel anything to be hurt. Bad things are always gonna happen.

But good things are gonna happen to.

[There are wars between humans and monsters, born from misunderstandings or jealousy or whatever the reason may have been, and there are declarations of hatred stemming from impulsive lapses of judgment, moments of rage and regret. There are terrible plans whispered between children, and there are fistfuls of flowers that pump the blood from a fragile, pale little body. There are peals of stuttering laughter that skip like a corrupted tape, and there are moments where it's all just a bad dream...and you're NEVER waking up.

But, still.

Still.

There are monster kids who stand up to their idols. There are exiled queens who trek through an Underground so that no more children have to die. There are opened doors to other worlds, where your memories can be tinted in gold-spun threads, where flowers can make you incredibly sad and where Christmas stockings can contain strange photographs. There are movies about the true name, and there are gifts of licorice and chocolate, and there are books left beneath your pillow because an old friend thinks of you when he reads them.

There are songs coaxed out from beneath bandaged fingers and strings of a beautiful instrument. There's the reddish light that warms cupped fingers, a pair of SOULs that bob idly in unison, one dark and fragmented and the other sound and whole.

There is still HoPe.]

I think... [They say the words slowly, carefully, picking them as delicately as if they were picking around a briar patch.] I think that...that if the world we live in is going to be cruel sometimes, we can't always stop it.

But I think it's better if we're not alone when the bad things happen.

[She's... too sharp, too used to... to a certain kind of thinking. Understands "it was a lost cause" is "I am a lost cause," even if they took care to use the more palatable wording. The kind that gives people permission to not think about it too much.

And she just keeps... going. She always keeps going. Says things like that she likes them, that little things can build up, that she knows what it is to lash out at people, to play "anywhere but here," to be a no-future problem child, to be dead and buried and yanked out of your sleep. Things that they - they don't even know how they feel, and that's just disquieting, isn't it?

They... they think they hate it, on some level. Immediately shy away from anyone who says "I get it," because how can anyone understand an incomprehensible inhuman blight like you? The surface had been right every time their parents grabbed and pulled and touched and whispered that nobody would understand this, nobody would understand you, nobody but them. Some other part of them feels - feels some way that they don't know how to define, how to put into words, how to comprehend at all. It's something to do with that vague, formless idea that someone can experience that and still... survive. Grow up. Be something.

A quieter but firmer part of them recognizes something, at least. The lion-hearted protectiveness that is born of having suffered. The will to ensure no other child goes through what you did. The conviction, the vicious heartful prayer that you will be the last one.]

I suppose it's no good to remind you that I will not be a very satisfying or rewarding cause to invest in. You're too determined for that, aren't you?

[She might not understand the finer points of that inner redness, but it's easy for Chara to recognize within her all the same. Souls who don't know when to quit. Souls that overflow with the resolve to change fate.]

...Commander... I made a promise too. Please - don't... don't spread it to anyone. Don't take it the wrong way. Just... understand why it is not your fault I did not make it out in one piece.

[They start to talk without thinking, immediately regret it, can't find a way to claw it back. Hadn't laid down a SAVE. You can't just - tell people these things, Chara. You can't bare that kind of ugliness. That's not normal. That's not cute or pleasing to look at. You just climb a mountain that people simply happen to vanish on. You just happen to get ill out of nowhere. You just happen to be picking flowers by a pond, telling harmless stories about Narcissus.]

[They need... they need to think. To plan. To quash down this helpless anger at the inescapable reality, the unsolvable problem of - how do you make someone who will never be sorry feel what it's like to suffer the way they made someone else suffer? How do you make them care what they did?

Helplessness is not who they are. They're the one who plots. Who makes things happen. They just - they just have to think.]

If they ever start trusting us.

We took choice away from them. Wouldn't give them what they wanted. I don't think they're going to let that go so effortlessly.

[They've had choice taken away from them enough as it is, haven't they?]

[It's so... contradictory to their nature, isn't it? Flying in the face of the coping methods they'd been clinging to for so long. Staying is the hardest thing in the world. Believing you're welcome here, believing you can do better by being here than by removing yourself... it's not as easy a notion to entertain as it should be. Climb a mountain. Leave your SOUL behind like you're just playing organ donor, like it'll just be fuel Asriel can burn up, like you'll live on with him in the same poetic metaphorical sense that a monster's essence lives in the things their dust is scattered over. Accept that you have to let them go, have to let Frisk live their life. Quietly pretend you weren't even there, weren't even listening, that the memories Frisk saw were somehow theirs and not yours, that there's no meaning behind a bed so comfortable you may never get up.

All they've ever really known how to do, really, is distance themselves. Accept they can only help through their absence, can only do good from arm's length away, too far to contaminate things with their touch, to taint it with their name.

But Frisk... they deserve so much better than being the lone saviour, singlehandedly and inexhaustibly saving each and every hardened, suffering heart from itself. They deserve better than being there for everyone who cries out, but having nobody answer their own pleas. They deserve to never, ever, ever have to feel like a quiche left under a bench. Not an afterthought, not a lesser priority, not only worthy of acknowledgement when they have resources to offer someone.

Frisk is not a burden.

So they stay, forehead to forehead, fingers linked, anchored to each other. Two halves being pulled together, as they always are. Refusing.]

Then... shall we begin again? Try... doing it a little different this time? Try, for all our charming and irrepressible quirks like perpetual self-isolation, to do it together?

[Together, not the extreme and insincere impossibility of "I'd never doubt you, Chara." Not that sort of "and we'll do it together, right?" Not the kind that speaks over itself, not the kind that tries to back out when the suffering inflicted already cannot be undone. Not the kind that vanishes without a trace like a startled bird.

Not that sort of together. The kind of "together" that they're still only barely beginning to grasp, one struggling pace at a time.]

We can do a little bit better.

[It's too much to hope for, at first. That maybe they could be together again, and that they could regain what they'd lost. That they don't have to spend their days thinking about what the other must be doing or hoping, and instead - knowing that they're there, and they're safe, and that they could send Chara a stupid text at two in the morning even if they're in the same room, and they could sneak out downstairs to do something silly and childish, like have a snowball fight when the sun hasn't even risen.

They can't just magically have things back to the way they were. They can't. But maybe, with what little power they have -

They can do a little bit better.]

Together.

[A quiet affirmation, the word nearly breaking with a swell of emotion they want to FIGHT to keep contained. But they don't have to FIGHT, do they?

Not...not anymore.

They can stop.]

Th-thank you.

[Sans is gonna do some investigating on his own. They'll have to come back to this. He gets the feeling that Chara isn't going to give up on this easily.]

yeah. "if."

[Frisk forgives everyone, but forgiveness isn't the same as trust.]

taking their choice away was my doing. they can blame me for that.

[He's the one who teleported them away against their will. He's the one who had basically a prison cell all set and ready for them. He doesn't regret it, because it means Frisk still exists, but at the same time he's absolutely certain that he could have done better. There must have been a better way. There always is.]

[His laughter this time is bigger, more heartfelt. Oh Chara, he understands. He may not completely know the extent of everything they have done but having enough to write pages and pages of a book to apologize for, the pages overflowing and bleeding ink, is something he knows.]

You know, I've wondered that myself plenty of times; If apologizing is really "enough". It really does feel useless at times. But just short of doing the impossible and fixing every problem in the world, it's most of what we've got.

[How can justice truly be dealt if nothing completely solves the problem? Is it really healing if the wound doesn't close? Forgiveness and acceptance is a rocky road filled with pitfalls and setbacks and it's hard to know the best way forward.]

Unfortunately, when it comes to things like that, that's not something you can truly stop. That's on Frisk to change about themselves. When you apologize to someone who feels they have to forgive everyone and everything, it always comes with that risk of making them feel obligated. But it's better than saying nothing. You're acknowledging that you hurt them and that they deserve the apology.

[He smiles a bit sadly. He doesn't even have to pretend why he understands this here. They know. Chara knows how Napstablook is. How Alphys is. But it can change for the better. He knows this. He only got a small taste of it on the surface (three months was not enough) but he knows.]

You can help them along with that, at least. You can help them understand what you mean and help them learn to only accept apologies when they actually want to, rather than all the time. It's hard work. But it is doable. I was making some headway with Alphys on that front back home before coming here.

[He gives their hands another comforting squeeze and a soft splaying of fingers to gently stroke their skin.]

And with time, you can eventually come to forgive yourself too. Because that is another important part of the process.

[He hasn't gotten there yet. He doesn't think he has a right to be there yet, not when he spent so long convinced that he did nothing wrong. But maybe one day.]

[They close their eyes and pretend not to see the last vestiges of the wall of rigid self-containment crumbling. That way, it isn't weird when they don't say "crybaby."]

Don't thank me yet. We're just starting, aren't we?

[It's... not going to be as easy as just saying they'll do better. Maybe they're just lessening the moment by thinking that. It's just... it's easier for them, to keep to checklists, objectives, goals. Things that they can do.]

You'll... er. Would it be too pushy if... would you prefer I returned to Room 12?

[There's been a comfort in staying with Toriel. It feels like... a little bit like being home again. Her gentle presence and the stability of her reminders to eat, get out of bed, her invitations to come read together... in a lot of ways, they were one of the only things keeping Chara from doing something even more drastic than they already were.

But when Frisk leaves this cell... they don't... they don't know what it's supposed to look like when Frisk leaves this cell, honestly. Will there be a bike lock on the closet again? Maybe it's nosy, pushy, heavy-handed, but... they think it might be easier for Frisk if there is someone in Room 12 with them, right? If they aren't just - not unsupervised, but alone.]

I SAVEd so they could not. I LOADed every time the outcome was not to my liking. I can't disregard my role in what transpired, Sans. To unload it all onto your shoulders would be morally irresponsible.

[They're not very dark blue, but they aren't above consequences. They know what they did.]

Nor would it be right of me to let your relationship be sabotaged. You and Alphys were the ones who saved them when my magic ruined them. You were the one who found them before they could cross to the mirror side. You... for all the mixed feelings tied up in "for your own good," you did strive to create a safe place for them.

[Don't thank them. They don't enjoy convention - thank yous and sorrys that have no weight when one doesn't try and change things, when there's nothing to show for their words. But all the same - they can't keep that break of trembling gratitude that shivers in their throat, the way their heart compresses and feels like, impossibly, it's grown slightly lighter.]

Thank you for talking to me.

[Then they can thank them for something objective. For clearing the air, somewhat. Gaining back a little of what was lost.

The question is - it's more, infinitely more, than they could have hoped for, but all of this was. All of this, every piece of it, was never an outcome they'd come to expect, after the way their conversations with Chara have gone. It's a shift. It's a change. It's an adjustment for them both. Chara's just been...living with Toriel all this time, alone, haven't they? Not alone, but - deliberately keeping themself isolated from everyone else. It's easy to imagine. They've done it before.

They'll get through it, the both of them. They'll have to.]

I would... [Don't choke on the words. Swallow, and continue.] I would like that. Very much. If you...if you would like to.

I think it still looks the way it did.

[Maybe it never expected them to leave. Frisk certainly didn't. Even when they were empty, all the walls of their solidity scraped clean, there were two beds, and one side of the room upon which Frisk did not encroach.]

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