Chara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fulllifeconsequences) wrote2036-02-05 12:12 am
fulllifeconsequences) wrote2036-02-05 12:12 am
* IC Inbox
Speak.
[Wow okay cool voicemail there Chara. Voice/text/video away to your heart's content.]
[Wow okay cool voicemail there Chara. Voice/text/video away to your heart's content.]
no subject
[They actually stomp their foot, grinding their heel into the rug out of escalating frustration.]
I know you hurt me. And I know you didn't mean to. And I know you're sorry for doing it. And I forgive you! I don't - you know that's not the same, that's not the same as what we talked about at all!
[Their arms cross across their chest, bottom lip jutting outward in a defiant pout, brow scrunching down in their imminent frustration. Like Chara is anything, anything at all like the people who left them there, who left them there and told them they'd be right back, who knew how to pinch hard enough so their skin went almost black, and called it love. Like Chara is anything like that. Maybe those people deserve none of their time, none of their thoughts of patience or forgiveness. But that's because they've devoted nothing to Frisk in turn.]
What? Am I not allowed to forgive you? Because you're the exception to the rule? You're not. You don't get to decide who I forgive or why I do. I just do. And you're forgiven. So there.
[And, for good measure, before they can muzzle the impulse, Frisk sticks out their tongue.]
no subject
[They don't even understand why they're just getting more and more upset about this! They could understand this horror and trepidation on the surface, where they knew they'd get punished when they made someone unhappy, but they can't even start to comprehend why it snowballs on itself like this when they're confronted with the complete utter extreme.]
I could have ruined you. I could have done to you what I did to...
[Do they even have to finish that sentence? A pie with buttercups instead of cups of butter. An empty, dusty photo frame and a box of shoes. A flower who stays behind as the Underground goes empty. The kind of corrupting touch that does worse than just killing. That ruins irreparably, that reduces them to a state that can barely be called living anymore.]
You can't be okay with that. What if you didn't come back? What if you came back broken?
[An empty flower, faking cheer and compassion. Doing everything to solve everyone's problems perfectly, and finding out that it does nothing to fix the hollow, shattered feeling inside of you. A few trembling, broken fragments of SOUL, walking around Wonderland and masquerading as a whole person.]
What if I hurt you again?
no subject
[That's what Chara's so good at. What they've always been good at. Punishing themselves, endlessly hurting themselves for perceived injustices. For imagined slights. For making people love them, and forgive them, because no one could possibly see something worth loving and forgiving in a demon, could they? Destroying those bridges so no one else can.
Because no one will love them the way they are. Right?
* Is your flesh as rotten as you?
Frisk almost says something else. Something about how things that are broken cannot possibly get more broken, as if there is a metric for the level of broken that is acceptable - they emerged this way, they know they did, and there's no taking that back. No making it better, or more bearable.
Their tone softens, gently.]
It's okay. It's okay. You don't have to ask like you're those - those people that did those things, who - who did those things to me. You're nothing like them.
[They can feel their SOUL again. Red, warm, and whole. Uncorrupted, they thing. The same as it always was. SAVED, perhaps.]
You're like me.
[Can you feel it beating, partner?]
no subject
Even without a Reset, there's no moving forward. There's no changing fate.
Why did this happen?
They sit back down on their bed. Sink into it heavily. They just... they just feel devoid. They feel every inch like their broken SOUL. Incomplete, not right, in pieces. Straining without closure. Disjointed shards trying to reach out, but... but not enough of them exists to achieve a secure, comforting gestalt.]
I'm nothing like you.
[Similar fashion choices, and that's it. Ha ha, isn't that right, Asriel?]
It's... funny, is it not? I cannot seem to have anything unless I take away from you.
[They weren't the one who carried the Locket and Knife to Wonderland, but they're the one who wears them. Frisk had to go and offer half their room to a walking consequence. Frisk can never call Toriel "mom" again, because Chara steals away the love Frisk deserves, forces them to play scapegoat for all the horrible violent will that Chara was responsible for.]
I'm just like monsters, but not in the way I want to be.
[They'll never be made of love and compassion. It was stupid to get their hopes up about magic that could communicate, could warm but never burn.
They're Toriel's shrill, betrayed giggles, the manic agony as she crows that they really are no different from them.]
I expect you to pay the price for my happiness.
no subject
[You're the only person who understands me.
Maybe...maybe that's not what they should have said. They didn't mean to strike that fresh parallel there, that thing that ached and still aches to think about. But it's - they know it's true. They know it is, it is because Chara is the person who walked with them for every step of the way, who shared their SOUL and their every experience. Their partner. Their SOULmate. The person that is, that always will be, the last and first and most important relationship in their life.
The most important person in their life.
Someone they never could and would let go of.]
You came first. Everything I have I owe to you. I just happened to come along at the right time.
[They shrug, tiredly. The rest writes itself, does it not? A child in a striped shirt, the latest in a long string of them, replacements for children Toriel lost, reflections of the hope Asgore saw in the first human's eyes - the hope that cuts Frisk deeper and deeper than anything, because that hope must have dimmed like a dying star somewhere down the road, and they still don't know at what exact point it did so.]
You're not forcing this onto me, Chara. You're not making me love you. You - you have to know that. I need you to know that. 'Cause I know you're not always perfect, just like I'm not either, and I don't care. You wouldn't be the same person if you were perfect. You wouldn't be you, and you're - you're who I wanna be with, remember?
[We made a promise. Clasped hands. Said we'd never go back.]
That doesn't change. It never did.
no subject
Really are two peas in a pod, aren't they?]
It's not being perfect I'm worried about.
[That's a lie.
The surface taught them what happened when they made mistakes. Even the smallest slip-up brought on catastrophic punishment, yelling and mockery and pinches and slaps in places where nobody would see welts or red marks. The Underground taught them they were supposed to be the future of humans and monsters, the angel that had seen the surface, their only hope - they had to be as perfect as Asriel thought they were, and when they failed to be that... well, look what happened, right? Even in the perfectly happy ending, where every problem came to a tidy conclusion, there was nobody saying "I forgive you, Chara."
...Even Frisk didn't get spared from that. Their every action was judged. They only deserved to be happy when they didn't make a single mistake. Didn't fight back at all. Didn't avoid the people who'd hurt them, because that wouldn't be very friendly of them, would it? They got their praise at the end, but it was only "you're so good," only "you're a softhearted weenie," never an "I forgive you" for them either.
Ha. Is it any wonder neither of them knows the first thing about how to react rationally when they make mistakes?]
It's... you got hurt.
[They don't know how to say it, how to find the right words for it. That they don't care about intentions or accidents, they care that they're just perpetuating this pattern where the people who love Frisk end up hitting them.]
It's not - I'm not saying "I'm sorry," because that doesn't even mean anything.
[They're so sorry it hurts, but the word is never enough. They hate "sorry."]
It's not "it won't ever happen again," because... what if it does, right? No matter how much I... you know, don't want to hurt someone -
["Love" is no easier to say, especially not at a time like this.]
- I don't know for sure I won't hurt you. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll say something stupid or I'll get mad and awful or it'll be another accident, but maybe it'll happen again. It's...
[What is it? They don't have a script to pull from for something like this.]
I wish you hadn't been hurt. You didn't deserve that at all. You were just trying to be nice to me.
no subject
[But the words are just a formless, hopeless litany, as pointless and endlessly spiraling as a circle. Useless in stemming the flow of whatever self-blame Chara must be heaping upon themself - and Frisk knows they've got to be, because Frisk would be doing the same in their place, they know without question.
They do all they can do, all they ever do, and stand there patiently, and smile.]
I've hurt you too. I've broken promises, I've, I've done terrible things to you. You've always...you've still stayed with me. Still my best friend, my family.
[Despite everything, right?
Despite everything.
And they do mean everything.
They've broken promises. They've thrown Chara's words back in their face. They've taken things from them, taken away a family, taken away an object that was theirs and that proved that they existed, treated it like garbage. They've hurt them. They've deliberately taken every vulnerability Chara has displayed, every moment in which they've expressed guilt or pain or regret, and knotted it into a ball to fling into their face with all the energy and disgust they can muster.
But still.
There are promises they've broken, and promises they've kept.]
Why's it okay when I hurt you, but not the other way around, Chara?
[The words are soft and even and patient, as if Frisk doesn't already know the answer. As if they don't already know what Chara must be thinking in response, what they're about to say.]
no subject
[Frisk already knows the answer.]
When I get hurt, it's karmic justice. When you get hurt, it's martyrdom.
[Chara hurts people. It's fair. It's what their actions earned them.
It's the answer Frisk knows: Chara deserves it.]
I've got a whole lifetime more of crimes to answer for than you do, Frisk.
[For all the timelines they followed, Frisk sure never ruined their sibling's life, sentenced six more children to death, made their parents stop loving each other! No, Frisk hasn't done anything bad that Chara didn't have a hand in.]
I'm the one with LOVE.
[Not LV1, 0 EXP, 0 ATK, 0 DEF. Not going out of their way to be harmless, giving up whatever they have on them to prove to other people that they're not a threat at all.]
I'm...
[Your humble servant.]
Not bothered by you hurting me at all. You're about as vicious as a flea! You, what, might call me a name? You couldn't even offend that lizard kid. I've got thicker skin than anyone knows what to do with. HP to spare. I'm almost halfway to bulletproof!
no subject
[Their frown is thunderous, as pointed as their insistence. They almost grind their foot into the rug, arms folded firmly across their chest.]
We talked about this, didn't we? About...about getting hurt. About how we don't have to act like it's okay. How we don't have to say it's fine, and, and - doesn't that matter? I don't just mean it for me, Chara, I mean it for you too.
[Allowed to be angry. Allowed to say something other than "I forgive you." Allowed to protest, to push back, to not be reduced to suffering for someone else's pain and someone else's ending and someone else's guilt.
Because Chara can claim it doesn't hurt them all they like. They can claim that they're bulletproof, they can claim that it doesn't ache like a spear to the SOUL, but they know better, don't they?
Your humble servant. Your humble servant!
It still hurts, and it's worse when every hurt feels like a betrayal. Is one.]
You don't deserve it, Chara. If I don't, then you don't.
[It's what they've learned, isn't it? They're partners. Partners.]
I know I've hurt you. You don't have to pretend I haven't!
cw self-harm in a religious context?? how do i tag this
They don't want Frisk to talk about this anymore. It's nauseating. Trying to soothe someone who's completely fine, who doesn't want an empty roll of it's-okays and pitying pats on the head so they don't have to think about one more person they trust harming them.
So they ERASE it. Shove it away. Pull out some snail facts. Something close enough to seem relevant, but not actually talking about them at all.]
Back in the middle ages, I heard people believed in mortification of the flesh in a very literal sense. Flagellants, they called themselves.
[A fact from a dusty old book, too advanced for a kid their age - but they always were so grown up, and age is just a number, isn't it?]
God will forgive you for your sins, but you must suffer to reduce the punishment that sin carries with it. So they'd journey around from town to town, reciting psalms and whipping themselves until they bled. They touted suffering as a pious act. Something that made them closer to Christ, I guess. Like the way he suffered was an example he set for everyone.
[A recitation that feels like standing in a golden hallway, listening to distant bells and staring up at stained glass.]
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?]
no subject
[The barrier only came down when Frisk refused to fight back, didn't allow themselves to be afraid of or unhappy with the people who had harmed them. Became their best friends, solved their problems.
The barrier only came down because Asriel suffered for humanity's sins. Smiled and did nothing as he was beat to death by strangers. Endured countless loops of numbness, isolation, ennui. Sacrificed the ability to feel, to love, the right to be loved, all to undo the punishment humanity inflicted onto them all. Had nothing left, in the end, but an endless future of emptiness, all alone in a hollow mountain.]
Asriel suffered, and he's an angel.
[Chara suffered, and they're a demon, because there came a point where they decided they didn't want to suffer in silence anymore.
Why did the world teach them this, if it's not... how it's supposed to be?
Why did the body laid on a halo of golden flowers just look filthy and blistered and awful, not radiant or holy? Isn't that how saints are made? By sacrificing themselves for the greater good? Wasn't all that agony the least bit redemptive?
...If you kill yourself, you don't go to heaven, do you?]
Hell isn't supposed to be pleasant. Purgatory isn't supposed to be restful. You're not really repenting unless it's hard and painful, right?
no subject
[Maybe it was a certain kind of death, their electing to remain here, in Wonderland, to never return to the Underground. They cannot simply slide their smiling face into a photograph and accept it as truth, accept themselves as belonging to a family that would be safer without their presence staining the glass.
What constitutes good suffering and bad? Why does Asriel suffer beautifully, and why is that okay? He's - it's not, though, is it? It can't be.
Kill or be killed.
Don't kill, and don't be killed.
Is that really all there is? If you kill you're bad, and if you don't kill, you're good. If you suffer for everyone else's problems, this is acceptable. This is allowed. If you lash out, strike back, even by accident, you should be smited down like the evil and dirty and wrong thing that you are.]
We're not going back there. We already said we weren't.
[The words are even and simple, a statement of fact, a fundamental aspect of their world and their universe.]
So it doesn't have to be like that anymore. Maybe we're still learning, but...but I don't want it. I don't want you to feel like you have to suffer to be okay.
no subject
[Does it even make any sense at all to be getting annoyed with being comforted? Is annoyance what they even feel? It's something frustrated and unsettled, they think. They don't want to talk about themself. It's not about poor Chara and their precious little problems. Nothing that happened here tonight involved Chara getting hurt.]
I just... Frisk, are we really sure that it's not like that here, too? Even if it's a different world, I've still got LOVE. Even if it's Wonderland, I still... I make things go wrong.
[Buttercups instead of cups of butter. A plan Asriel tried to stop far too late. A stream of raw brokenness pouring from their outstretched hand. Not small mistakes, not inconsequential. Things that feel calamitous, ruinous, unnatural and awful and demonic.]
I mean, science tells us that if repeated experiments yield the same conclusion, that's sufficient evidence that a theory is valid. How am I supposed to believe something when the facts certainly seem to suggest that I just contaminate whatever I get my hands on, right?
no subject
[Determination vs. Determination. And we all know how this game ends, don't we?
It's useless, Chara. You're never getting rid of them. Even with all the LOVE in the world, you will always be their partner, their SOULmate, the one person they will always value above all others.]
It's...easier to blame yourself. I know it is. It's easier, because you get to have control over it.
[And you can tell yourself that you're the one who can control the change that happens. You're the one with the special power, so it's your responsibility to do the right thing. To fix everything. To change things. To change fate.]
You get to make it all your fault, and then you know who to hurt.
no subject
[Isn't that the grown-up thing to do? To own your wretched decisions, instead of trying to push the blame onto someone else? You get told again and again that what happens is your fault, your fault, why are you like this, you horrible brat? You're not worthy of being included with the wife and child someone wants to see again. You're not exactly the greatest person. You're not even human, you're just pretending to be one. You're not welcome, kids like you should be burning in hell, you're the one standing in the way of everyone's hopes and dreams.
How long is it going to take, they wonder, until they think the way Frisk wants them to think? Until they can tune all of that out.
How long until they even progress to the "you sort of know it's not your fault but tell yourself it is" stage that Frisk seems to be suggesting now? It does feel like their fault. Of course it does. Nobody made them accept something that could be as dangerous as magic. Nobody forced them to coerce Frisk into starting an encounter. They could have waited. Could have considered the potential to do magic satisfactory enough and never try to experiment. Could have answered in a way that would make Frisk feel better, instead of twisting this into a drawn-out, frustrating exercise in trying to fix someone who doesn't even want to be comforted right now. Nobody's going to come out of this feeling accomplished.
They try to think of more snail facts, more diversions. Nothing comes to mind.
So they just... sigh. Hollowed out, defeated, devoid.]
I just wanted fire magic. Not... not this. I thought maybe if other Charas had earned it somehow, maybe I could earn it too. What are the other Charas doing that I'm not? Why am I the only one who messed it up?
no subject
But their hands are open and waiting for theirs, should they require them. They're bandaged a little, and broken. But they still work.]
Why's "someone" gotta be you?
[Logically, they know why. Consequences, and so on and so forth. They're meant to hold people accountable. They remind people of their promises, tell people when they've gone astray. So why should they skirt their responsibilities? Avoid ascribing the same consequences to themself?]
You didn't mess it up, Chara. And it doesn't matter if they did something differently. They're not you.
[Frisk's SOULmate. Frisk's partner.
Frisk's Chara.]
Why does one Frisk get to be a Boss Monster and I don't? Why does one Frisk fall first and I don't? I don't know if that's...our fault. If we can really be to blame for that.
no subject
What did they hate most about humanity? "Not my problem." Crying out for help, and nobody comes. "Are you sure you weren't leading them on?" Like they must have been asking for it. Imposing a barrier on a people who did nothing wrong, purely out of fear for what they might, hypothetically, do. Expecting them to be the ones to take up the task of fixing that barrier, instead of surrendering SOULs in willing repentance. Shifting blame to whomever happened to be powerless enough that they couldn't protest it. If it's not them, it won't be anyone.
Besides, Frisk knows what they've both been taught. If you've got some kind of special power... well, they get it, right? If they've got the gall to not even be human, to just walk around masquerading as something that's supposed to be here... there must have been a reason for it. There must be some role they were meant to fulfill. Otherwise... why are you even alive? They shouldn't exist. They're supposed to be dead. They should be burning in hell.]
Falling first isn't the luxury you might expect it to be.
[Being a boss monster, though... they can't argue that. Ha ha.
They tell themselves to stay still, to bunch their hands up into tight fists and use every second of ache as their nails dig into the meat of their palms as a chain-link fence. Don't touch. Don't touch. They don't want comfort, they don't need it, they hate touch, they think this is stupid.
But they reach out and seize Frisk's hands with a desperation they don't understand.
They regret it almost immediately. Hate that they could clamp onto bandaged, fragile fingers with all the abhorrent, vicious strength their fists are so full of. Hate that they're so clingy, so attention-starved, so dramatic, so manipulative. Have some self-control, Chara. You're supposed to be in control, are you not?]
I'm just - I'm sick of it being like this.
[The worst human who fell, the worst Chara, the worst sibling. The worst.]
How else do we make it any better?
[It has to be them that can make it better, right?
Otherwise... otherwise the answer is that nobody will make it better. That it's always going to be this, and that's inescapable.]
no subject
Falling first doesn't seem to end well for anyone, much less that other Frisk. It all still ended in blood and dust and pain, didn't it? Asriel still died. The first human was still chained to the eighth's SOUL. There was no escaping it. No escaping fate.
Anyone who would claim that Frisk would not have made Chara's mistakes, that they wouldn't have fallen just as hard and hurt just as much. Shattered the Dreemurrs apart, the spear that drove them all apart, that tore away monsters' hopes and dreams. The future that darkened everything.
* Still just you, Frisk.
They work their fingers between Chara's, folding them over their knuckles, holding them tightly, palm to palm.]
I know. I know.
But it's not...all bad, is it? Sometimes it hurts. But sometimes it - it doesn't.
[And it doesn't hurt as much, when they know someone else is here with them. Someone who understands.]
You're it, Chara. You're the Chara that's always been here, with me. We're partners, right? SOULmates.
That's the best thing I could ask for.
no subject
They focus on the bridge of their conjoined hands. They breathe. They try to let go of whatever has clenched itself around their hollow chest.
Sometimes it doesn't hurt.]
I am happy that you tried to give me this.
[It didn't... work out as planned, ha ha. This pie didn't have butter in it. They wish it could have been more satisfying for Frisk, more fulfilling, a better payoff than a lot of pain. But...]
I'm happy you thought of me.
[They aren't even supposed to be feeling at all, but Frisk still thought of how Chara might have been feeling, didn't they?]
no subject
We can try again later.
[They're not giving up on this, and they're not giving up on Chara. It can work, they know it can. With enough determination, you can do just about anything, can't you? And they're not just like any other human. They're Chara. They're special beyond measure.]
Ask Toriel about it, maybe. I think maybe she could...teach you for real.
[You didn't get this far by giving up, did you?]