[It's an abrupt shift of subject matter, and one that leaves Frisk feeling...disquieted, they suppose is the term. They shift there on the spot, weight moving from foot to foot as a multitude of emotions shutters across their ordinarily blank features.
It's a strange and discomfiting sensation. They'd been brought to services like that, a few times. Not like anyone they knew on the surface was especially religious, but they got the feeling that it was something that was done because it was simply what people did on big holidays, like Christmas or Easter. There was stained glass, and there were the colored shapes cast against the floors and walls that Frisk liked to watch, letting their eyes glaze over as they stopped listening to the Important Man at the front orate at length about the importance of suffering and martyrdom and dying for people's sins. It always seemed to be the same speech every time they heard it. Maybe it was. Maybe it was written on the inside of his hand - only it had to be too long for that to be the case. They'd been too young to receive the communion of flesh and blood - bread and wine, they knew it was meant to be, really, but all the adults seemed so bent on pretending otherwise that it just felt rude not to play along too.
Too young, the priest had said, smiling at the small, squat child with their arms crossed obediently over their chest as the adults instructed. Too young to receive these holy gifts of flesh and blood that would help cleanse you of your natural sin.
Too young, they all said, as if Frisk didn't know the real reason, that they were simply too impure for something as sacred as that to touch their corrupted flesh. Where does a thing like you get off, pretending that you deserve salvation? You haven't even really suffered. You are a mistake and you were born of a mistake, and something born of sin can only yield more sin.
Remember that, unclean thing.]
I think it's stupid, [Frisk announces flatly, after a moment. And then they pause, almost imperceptibly, practically ritual at this point, awaiting the inevitable bolt of righteous anger to strike down their blasphemous words.
It doesn't come. But it never came before, so they hadn't really expected it to.]
I mean...we suffered, didn't we? We kept getting hurt. By monsters, by humans, by each other, by - by ourselves. I don't feel any...any better for it. Any purer.
[The last word they almost spit out like a curse. Pure. As if a thing like them -
Well.
They've never been able to scrub themselves clean, have they?]
cw more self-harm references
It's a strange and discomfiting sensation. They'd been brought to services like that, a few times. Not like anyone they knew on the surface was especially religious, but they got the feeling that it was something that was done because it was simply what people did on big holidays, like Christmas or Easter. There was stained glass, and there were the colored shapes cast against the floors and walls that Frisk liked to watch, letting their eyes glaze over as they stopped listening to the Important Man at the front orate at length about the importance of suffering and martyrdom and dying for people's sins. It always seemed to be the same speech every time they heard it. Maybe it was. Maybe it was written on the inside of his hand - only it had to be too long for that to be the case. They'd been too young to receive the communion of flesh and blood - bread and wine, they knew it was meant to be, really, but all the adults seemed so bent on pretending otherwise that it just felt rude not to play along too.
Too young, the priest had said, smiling at the small, squat child with their arms crossed obediently over their chest as the adults instructed. Too young to receive these holy gifts of flesh and blood that would help cleanse you of your natural sin.
Too young, they all said, as if Frisk didn't know the real reason, that they were simply too impure for something as sacred as that to touch their corrupted flesh. Where does a thing like you get off, pretending that you deserve salvation? You haven't even really suffered. You are a mistake and you were born of a mistake, and something born of sin can only yield more sin.
Remember that, unclean thing.]
I think it's stupid, [Frisk announces flatly, after a moment. And then they pause, almost imperceptibly, practically ritual at this point, awaiting the inevitable bolt of righteous anger to strike down their blasphemous words.
It doesn't come. But it never came before, so they hadn't really expected it to.]
I mean...we suffered, didn't we? We kept getting hurt. By monsters, by humans, by each other, by - by ourselves. I don't feel any...any better for it. Any purer.
[The last word they almost spit out like a curse. Pure. As if a thing like them -
Well.
They've never been able to scrub themselves clean, have they?]