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're not so sure. Surely if you swear you're going to do something, you should stand by it, right? Surely people have to know you mean what you say, or isn't that manipulative? It's better to assume "no" is "no" even when it's not very convincing or loud, right? They learned the hard way that "I don't like this" should have been enough to make them abandon the plan.
Maybe they're just not as good at recognizing which "no" isn't a "no" as normal people are? It's... not so easy, they think, to live in a world where "no" is supposed to mean "yes" sometimes.
There are some things they still need more time to figure out, despite how much they've come to learn. Someone who died so young surely wouldn't know, but maybe that's what it means to live.]
No. I don't think they would.
[There's a difference, they think, between sort of comprehending something on a theoretical level and understanding it in the very core of your being. Feeling it in the pit of your stomach, prickling at your arms, breathing down your spine.]
Asriel was kind, and he wanted me to be happy, but... there were things that I never told him for a reason. You can't burden someone who's never had to grasp anything like it with... with things that are too dark and hurtful, you know?
[They'll just tell you "well I'm sure your parents know you love them," even if you yourself aren't sure if you love them. They'll ask if you've tried eating more fruits and veggies and drinking water. They'll suggest you try just not hurting yourself or just try being good. Do literally anything but fight, right?]
I don't actually know what the difference between sympathy and empathy really is, but it's probably that.
[They laugh, just a little. Should know, if they're so smart and well-read and eloquent. Should, but don't.]
Maybe there's a certain kind of sympathy-empathy-whatever that you can only get from understanding bitterness like that. Not just vaguely hoping people will be happy, but...
[Maybe this is just them trying to romanticize their own defects, their own vindictive grudges?]
A fierce, lion-hearted protectiveness that wants to ensure nobody else will ever have to suffer what you went through.
no subject
There are nice things, still, aren't there? There are flowers. There are stars. There's the warmth of a rising sun, the pale cat's claw of a moon hung in the sky, the smell of salt and the littoral sting of the sea on the breeze. The crashing of waves against rocks, the bright crinkle of leaves underfoot as the air chills and puffs in your lungs in the autumn.
There are nice things on the Surface. But that wasn't to keep either of them from scaling that lonely summit.
Frisk stirs their soda with their ridiculous purple straw, sipping here and again. It fizzes under their tongue, sweet and tingly, but it's difficult to swallow. It's difficult to focus on anything but the words.
Chara's shirt is green. And they saw the child, the ungrateful little brat that landed on their grave, disturbing the golden blooms, stirring up motes of pollen and dust and wisps of a long-dead magic, and they saw the scuffs, the purple blotches of bruises. They saw a child who hunched their shoulders, scared, and maybe that was enough. Maybe they recognized the lines of parallel scratches up the lengths of their arms when they unequipped the Bandage.
Or maybe they could just...tell. In the whispers of their brain, maybe they could hear what it was the child was running from.]
I was...angry. When I fell.
[It feels like a sin to admit that much. Curling up on the golden petals, rubbing away the grubby streaks of dirt and tear tracks as they ached all over, it feels wrong to say it - to say that they were angry.]
The first time...it was excusable the first time. You hit a monster 'cause they hit you first, and you're scared and frustrated.
[And then you learn how it goes. You learn what LOVE means, and you learn, once again, the meaning of disappointment, the sting of tears down your cheeks when you realize you've messed up again, again, again. A selfish child, and that's all you'll ever be.]
I was scared to say it. Scared to think it, even here. But I started it, didn't I?
[Once upon a time.
Once upon a time, a child climbs a mountain. They peel a filthy bandage away, move it from cut to scrape to bruise, having to use it again and again because they have no other. Once upon a time, a child stands at the very edge of the hole at the mountain's peak, peering over cautiously.
Once upon a time, a child took a careful step, hovering their foot over empty air as they thought - How good.]
Monsters, wanting to reach a Surface full of people who'd hurt them. A Surface full of people who...kids. Kids who go to bed hungry. Or hide in their backyards, scared of tomorrow.
[Once upon a time, a child was frightfully, terribly angry.]
What good is a world full of people who hurt other people? What good is...
[What good is hoping and dreaming and wishing, if it's only for the thing that will kill you?]
no subject
[Even Asriel, who was so pure he would rather perish and drag Chara down with him than defend himself. Even he was sure they would have only started a war, that humans answering with violence would be inescapable because humans are wicked at their core. The better way, the good way, the way where everyone was perfectly happy... it wasn't about freedom without lives being lost, because those six souls were still necessary. It was better, wasn't it, because all the killing was done away from human eyes? Peace and prosperity were only possible by hiding the things those vicious, cruel beings would consider worthy of punishment.]
I... was angry too. I'd been angry long before we met, but I found whole new ways to be angry.
It... wasn't fair, was it? All those villagers slew a child who did nothing to them, and they got away with it. Patted themselves on the back for it, like they were the righteous ones. Six more children climbed the mountain, and nobody asked them why. My name and their names... they're all lost. We're just footnotes. Cautionary tales. Even in a place with people made of nothing but love, we slipped between the cracks.
Makes you wonder... is there really a point to holding on to something so painful? Wouldn't it just be so much easier to scour everything clean? Give up on forcing a smile for people who kicked you and slapped you and threw things at you. Give up on trying to be good for a world that has never been good to you.
...I have 8 LV even when given a fresh start. I am still a very far cry from rising above the temptation to give up on "wait until it gets better" and settle for "it will always hurt me, but I can fashion armour for myself."
It feels... so much more practical, doesn't it, than tender-hearted vulnerability? Than hope? So much more achievable. Almost like... a cheat code. One that lets you skip right to the only ending you've ever believed to be possible.
no subject
Is it wrong to look at the world and hate it? To think...would it not be better, to wipe it away? Clear it off? The world's never treated a child well; never given a child a reason to smile as they ran from spears sluicing through the air, or a reason to forgive the hands that locked around their neck and squeezed until their vision erupted with glossy white fireworks, phosphenes scattering weakly across their flickering sight like breadcrumbs cast out to pigeons.
What did the world ever do, to make you feel as thought it had any right to forgiveness?]
If you never feel, you never hurt.
[How can they say any of this was Chara's fault? How could they have claimed, thought, felt -
A thought they'd had, remembering it clear as day. Searching, pausing, considering -
They were never very fair to their Partner, were they? The divide had been...easy. Your bed. My bed. Your clothes. My clothes. Your path. My path.
Your dust. Your FIGHT. Your ERASE.
My MERCY.
And then they think of six. They think of six children - nameless, all of them, with nothing to their names but a list of colors and virtues, scattered remnants of tools and clothing. They called for help, and they came. They called for help, and something of them, enough of them, survived long enough to pull through and sweep to Frisk's aid.
And then there were none. And then Asriel pulled their SOULs together and forged the metaphysical spear that pierced the Barrier, and that was the end of them. And no one would be there to care, no one would be there to wonder aloud, no one would be there to ask - why did they climb the mountain? Why did they all fall? Did they fall at all?]
It doesn't feel worth it. It didn't feel worth it when I was...
[They have to talk about this. They have to try.]
When my determination was...it was just starting to come back. Piece by piece. And I could feel it all over again, and I didn't want it. I was scared. And - scared to admit I was scared.
[And they were who they were when they fell, all over again. They were angry, and desperate to feel nothing at all. Score away the names and faces and aspects of themself that gave them a reason to be, because it all hurt so thoroughly and completely that they didn't care if it meant losing the good parts too. HoPe was secondary; dreams meant nothing.]
It felt like it did when I first fell.
cw self-harm allusion
There are words they cannot possibly forget, despite never making it far enough to hear them.
Please don't kill me.
They had been devastated that Asriel should be afraid of them. That he recoiled away from a horror even deeper than the buttercup plan, that he, too, saw a threat.
Did they really have it in them to go through with that?
Could they willingly cut him down in a way that was somehow far worse than the times "FIGHT" was chosen over a shattered, battered MERCY? Something more frightful than his manic glee as he sent down vines and lasers and meteors?
What would Frisk have done, they wonder, if the FIGHT and SPARE buttons had hovered before them and Chara had bled and smiled and wheezed a soft "please don't kill me" to them?]
When you... wake up again.
[Bolt upright from your grave gasping for air like a drowning victim. Start to sort of get used to living with this strange family of goat-people, and stop completely locking all emotion out as survival mode starts to wind down. Sit up on a bed of golden flowers knowing you'll have to listen to Flowey jeering your life choices yet again. Feel the DT that was drained from you finally start to restore itself after a month's blankness. Whatever.]
Having to Continue feels so daunting, does it not? When you consider the amount of pain and tribulation that you will have to put into making amends for your mistakes... and when you realize that nobody will even recognize or appreciate how hard you tried? It begins to feel utterly futile.
[Maybe... the truth is... Chara wasn't exactly the greatest person.
And so it feels easier, more right, more just to simply accept that they had no part in breaking the barrier. To resign themselves to the truth: they had no power to finish what they started or make amends. Because the alternative... isn't the alternative crying out to your best friend, and not being heard at all?]
Maybe it would be easier to not make amends at all. To just keep destroying instead of repairing until nothing is left.
But maybe... this feels a little more bearable than alone felt.
[How could two months possibly feel so long? They'd been safe, utterly "safe," but it didn't... this time, it hadn't worked out like it was supposed to. People kept knocking on their door. A single unexpected kind word brought an ache so fierce that they were reduced to barely choking down pathetic tears. Knives, not scissors, because scissors hurt in a way that didn't release, didn't empty out, didn't grant control.]
I don't know. What do you think, Frisk? Do you... regret that you didn't kill? Do you think this locked room and another death were the better choice?
no subject
The world shudders, and you die. A stick pierces your SOUL, a bullet comes too close. Flames lick up your sides and singe your hair and your skin crackles, flaking away, and Toriel's hands flew to her mouth in shock. A spear goes through and through and through; a swing of a trident reduces a face to a concave incident, the skull smashed in. And of course, always in their nightmares, a line of bones, femurs shredding through their SOUL and their limbs and the crawling, sickening pinkness of KARMA shackled over their back.
The world shutters. Cut to black. GAME OVER.
The whisper of words in your ear - borrowed words, a borrowed memory. And you get back up, and the world spins on. You don't get a choice. You don't get to QUIT. You have only the choice to Continue. Continue or, should you try and ESCAPE - you have the option to RESET.
And even then, you wake again on a bed of golden flowers, your sins not ERASED, but simply - left at the wayside. Abandoned, like a Quiche beneath a bench in a strange room in Waterfall. Like a child who hugged their arms around themself at a bus stop, outside a fire station, in a police station, at the park.]
I don't regret that you stopped me.
[They look to the bubbling liquid in their glass, stirring it a few more times. Their mouth is too dry to sip from it again, right now.]
I regret that I felt I had to. That I saw that as the only option.
I regret that I said what I did. I regret that I attacked you. I regret that I almost killed you, and then - put Leonard in that position. He'll never forgive himself, I don't think.
[And they raise a hand - forestalling anything that Chara might have to say on the subject. Their glance up in their direction is quick, their smile fleeting and pained. He visited them, but they doubt Chara wants to hear that. The doubt Chara wants to see the flute, whittled and carved from wood, that they've been trying to learn to play in little puffs of air. Without sheet music and a closet to get it from, they can only manage shaky renditions of Hot Cross Buns. Silly, small things like that.
And they're hardly in the mood to do something like that, most days.]
He didn't mean to. I know that doesn't make it right. But I don't think we need to punish him any more than he's already punished himself.
no subject
Frisk might be a good enough person to forgive and comfort those who cut them down, but that doesn't mean Chara's quite that good. They don't like Leonard, can't fathom being on a first-name basis with an adult like him quite that easily. Doubt he's been punished at all for what he did, really.
Not worth getting into another argument about, though. Frisk will always forgive, and there's no use trying to persuade them to be someone else. Leonard, dear beloved friend Lennykins? He's not worth making this frail tether snap all over again.]
I don't care about him. He's not worth thinking about. It's you I'm thinking of.
Is it... over? Have you punished yourself enough?
[Is it just going to be normal for them to live in this sterile cell? Is this just a temporary respite, one last little reminder of what's never coming back, and they'll sink back into isolating martyrdom? Forgive Lensy-wensy because that's what people expect of them, stay quiet because that's all people are interested in, keep being good because deep down, all any of them want is that angel who didn't know suffering enough to SAVE?
They can't... tell anymore. Can't tell what's sincere and what's "have to." Do they really know Frisk so little? One or two little months (felt like one or two little lifetimes) and they've lost so much. Lost the ability to hold the realization of "you don't have to forgive everyone" up and detect what's a saviour's obligation and what's sincere.]
cw self harm mentions
It's not their story to tell. Not their words to share. So they don't. They smile at the ground, staring again into their soda without seeing it, eyes half-hooded.]
I don't know.
[Isn't that extraordinary? They don't know how things will go. They can't even begin to predict. They've had everything twisted, torn, upended so ruthlessly in those past two months, that they can't even say they'll know what anyone will say, or think.]
How do I come back from this?
[They open a hand, trembling faintly, to gesture at the room they've been stuck in for days on end. Their smile wobbles at the corners, but they don't crumble and cry. They think they've been drained too dry of that in recent times.
How do you pick yourself up, begin again? How do you scale that mountain after too many people know what it is you're capable of, what you'll do given half a chance? Will they, too, hide the knives? Blunt the tools? Cast their gaze over Frisk with a careful, watchful eye, seeking out the imprint of a small and sharp object concealed on their person? Go through their room from time to time, fetch out the serrated edge of a soda can with red crusted around the edges, and quietly discard it?
How do you go back, after everything?
Things really can't be magically how they were again. Chara was right. RESET is - no longer an option. Can't scrub away your sins and begin anew. So they'll have to live with them, and everything that entails.
They never gained LOVE, but they gained...something. Regret, maybe. Remorse. A sense of reality.]
Do I really deserve to be trusted with anything after this?
no subject
[They can laugh about that much, at least. The timelines full of murder sprees of varying degrees of thoroughness probably took care of that, huh? Ha ha. Badum-tssht. Murder is a great punchline.
...
It's easier to focus on, somehow, than the reality of... a life where you don't know how to come back from this. A life where Toriel never had to hide the knives for Asriel, but suddenly sharp things become harder to find and the edges have been sanded off of things. You have to carry your knitting out of the room and find Mom and pretend you need help weaving in your ends, when the reality is that you need supervision to cut the working yarn free. It's a plan that failed horribly. It's Asriel never having the blurred lines that Frisk did when Chara melted into him. Him knowing with concrete certainty that Chara did the bad parts and he did the good.
How do you come back from that? The truth is, Chara doesn't know. They didn't really come back from it at all.]
But... I want to try a little harder to not want an angel.
[Still hugging their middle. Looking away. Squeezing tighter so they don't fidget or muss up their hair with their nervous toying or do anything else untidy. They don't know how to say things like this.]
Do you think we could...
[Over and over, we begin again. Not a reset, but rising when another heavy grey morning arrives.]
If we could keep the lines less... that is to say, if we could... I have - trouble, sometimes. Believing I'm... myself. Believing I'm real at all. If we could be... Frisk and Chara, separately - not separately, but... two people, for all the ugly things that being a whole person means you can't hide. If we could do that, and... if you could perhaps - this is not an ultimatum or demand. You can say no. But if you would be willing to... not use Asriel's words against me. They...
[Still hurt. Shouldn't, not with all the armour Chara wears. Asriel shouldn't feel like such a fresh wound, like a bleeding, visceral ache that will never truly scab over. Not an excuse to be so cruel, not an excuse to drive Frisk to really go and seek hell. Not an excuse for their behaviour at all. A moment's anger has ripples that last far, far longer.]
If you would be willing to go to that much trouble, then I... well. It's only fair that I try not to be so quick to distance myself, is it not? If you needed me, I should have supported you. I'm beginning to think that perhaps I have a propensity to be a little bit quick to bear grudges. To treat the very first infraction as indelible proof that I'll just... get hurt, I suppose.
[Again, they laugh. It's funnier when it's an understatement of the obvious.]
If we're willing to pick ourself up off this flowerbed and try to do a little better, then... you wouldn't have to come back alone, if you wanted.
no subject
If things hadn't fallen into place in that way...what would that have meant for the other six that climbed and fell? What would that have meant for trust, for the way Asgore may have treated a child that used petals from his own beloved garden to end their life, for the way Toriel would not have wanted them out of her sight, even for a moment, for fear of what they may do? Once they know it's what you're capable of - what can you possibly do to claw your way past that?
What can you do to prove you're no longer a liability? That you're safe to leave the room, and wander about outside? They're not to be allowed to go alone, they're almost certain. It won't be a seamless transition, if it should ever happen. And there will be the worry, the fear, always the fear, that they could take their life into their own hands once more. The fear of flowers, of sharp objects, of anything that could be used to shave the edges off their existence, curl away the wisps of their SOUL, waft into the breeze piece by piece and, after a fifth and final time - choose a fate in which they may never return, if it's possible.
They've lost trust - fractured it into pieces, and they did so with their own clenched fists. To earn that back will be a slow and arduous process, and it's not to be certain that it'll even succeed. They can't RESET that away. Their sins will always weigh down their neck.
Frisk's eyes drop closed for a moment, and the pang returns to their chest, constricting painfully about their throat. It's difficult to swallow.]
What I've done. The things I said. I should never have...turned that against you. Asriel isn't...he's not meant to be a weapon. I knew better, and I did it anyway.
[It wasn't just that either, was it? That could hardly be all the damage they'd done.]
To push you into...answering, even if it was just to hate me for what I said. To hang that over your head. It was wrong of me.
You don't have to forgive me for that.
[They say the words gently. It's not an entreaty, and it's not a steadfast ultimatum either. It's a simple fact, stated for the meaning of it. Chara is not obligated, nor should they feel obligated - to forgive them.
The ache to lurch forward and collapse into a litany of formless sobs is almost overwhelming. And yet - they bite down on the wall of their cheek, swallowing again and again, attempting to FIGHT the lump in their esophagus into submission, so that they may speak again.
To not be alone again.
It's more than they deserve, than they've ever deserved.]
And if you...I want to do better. I want to learn to do better, and not just turn to someone else's words and someone else's guilt when I don't get my way.
I want to learn to be someone who's loved for being worthy of love. Not just for being loving.
[It's difficult to meet their eyes. Difficult now, the way it's red to red, scarlet to scarlet, just a few shades darker on Frisk's end but still - still, they match.
Yet they try. Even with their lids hooded, and the corners of their mouth trembling, they try.]
I want to try again. And be...better. Than I was.
If you'll have me.
no subject
You dummy. You've always been worthy of love. You don't have to change anything to...
[They just talk without thinking, and immediately regret it. Weren't gonna say mean things to Frisk anymore. No more "go to hell," because they won't take it as a stupid idiot tantrum, they'll take it to heart, they'll make it a literal command. Just stop hurting them, Chara, just stop hurting them for once.]
I didn't - the "dummy" part was... that was stupid. I was being stupid. Forget that part. I only mean the part about you always deserving love. I... really ruined the atmosphere of that line, didn't I?
[Probably would have sounded real deep without the awkward backpedaling. Laugh, go pinker, do all the things you keep doing. Not like their sweater can get any more wrinkled or creased than they're already making it.]
I...
[So, so bad at saying these things. So bad at saying things without wrapping them up in dismissive too-cool-to-care namecalling, like "idiot" or "dummy" or "crybaby" could ever be affectionate when they're insults at their core. So bad at admitting this stuff without protecting themself behind the shield of a joke, of not taking it too seriously, of not really being vulnerable.]
I miss you so much. I don't know how to love gently or moderately - I don't think I know how to love at all - but everything is so empty without you. I don't know how to make it any safer or less painful for you, but I...
[Don't want to let go. Don't hate you. Am so sorry for hurting you, isolating you, ignoring you. Would give anything to make sure you didn't have to feel so alone and unwanted and lost ever again. A hundred tangled hungry thoughts that just form an incomprehensible knot in their throat, that they can't force out no matter how hard they try. Want to - to reach their hands out. Want to offer their shattered SOUL, even if they recoil at the thought that trying to resonate again will mean their broken self colliding with a fragment of some strange man's soul, now mixed deep within the pit of what Frisk is made of. Quiver with dread at the thought that now that Frisk has given their SOUL to someone who's just as whole and can match their endless compassion, they'll find this scabby shipwreck of a person too dusty and sickly and unsatisfying.
Don't know what to do. Laugh again, because it's better than silence.]
When did alone start being so hard, anyway?
[They thought they were prepared for alone. Thought they had adapted to alone flawlessly. Thought they wanted alone, because they hate humanity, because they hate being touched.]
Will you have me? After all the things I said to you?
no subject
It's okay, it's okay. But if they say that, are they just being too forgiving again? Too eager to brush things aside so they can all be the way they were? Where's the line to be drawn anymore?]
I know you didn't mean it.
[They try to laugh it off, (like you did) but it comes out staggered and feeble. Their laughter was never an exultant thing, and they could never wield it like a weapon.
Their hand shifts for a moment, digging into their pocket. It was clumsy of Sans, and everyone else who set this up, to not check their pockets for whatever they might have been carrying. They could have secreted more knives away on their person. They could have used their shoelaces, or they could have put a sewing needle in there, or anything. But there's nothing of the sort.
They may have planned ahead, but they didn't plan that far ahead.
All they have is that little lump in their pocket that's been something of a talisman, carried about for a month in silence.
It's a bracelet. And Chara will recognize it.]
It got harder when we forgot how. It's been so long since we were really alone. And I didn't know...I was lost. I got so lost.
I don't think I know how to love either.
[They know how to LOVE, yes, and they know how to hug someone tightly and offer words of comfort, and they know how to forgive someone for hurting you, deliberately or mistakenly. They know how to prove love in hard facts, in the placing of yourself in front of a bullet, in the reaching out and hauling someone from a terrible, long drop, in the refusal to give up. They've never been one to love gently.]
I've given up on...I know I'm not supposed to. But I give up sometimes, and I gave up before, when I thought I should just be gone.
[They hold the bracelet out, a quiet, beseeching gesture.]
But you know I'll never give up on one thing. Not on you.
Never on you.
no subject
What they pull out, though, isn't sharp.
It's familiar braided string. A little wooden charm, the red paint starting to rub off at the edges from months of always being worn, from repetition upon repetition of restless anxious fingers toying with the smooth surface instead of scratching, picking, digging nails into skin.
* The Bracelet.
Did they keep it, even when they were empty...? Set it in a gift box, waiting in a room full of dusty toys until their friend came home?
It's so much more than they could ever think to ask for. They gave up on Frisk, after all. Returned an earnest, handmade gift. Slid the word "partner" back to them like they were simply handing in a badge. It aches to think that Frisk could still patiently wait for someone who bolted like a spooked horse, who fled from their side when they needed someone to lean on.
The intensity of it aches. For all the eggshell-caution and uncertainty and empty spaces between them now, it still roils underneath, in the hollow of their chest. They miss Frisk. "Alone" has been a scavenger eating them away piece by piece, and it hurts so bad they can't stand it anymore. On their knees, they inch forward, reach out to Frisk's offering hand. Clasp it in both theirs. They're holding too tight - so tight, they're going to press a little heart-shaped imprint into both their palms - but they've never known how to be anything but not gentle enough, too bright red and forceful and spilling over with a burning devotion they keep pretending doesn't exist.]
You kept it.
[Didn't bury it in the sand or throw it in the ocean to rust or - or whatever string does - or give it away to someone else. Didn't cast it aside like Chara did, as if everything it represents can actually just be set down and left behind like a quiche on a bench. As if it really is possible to distance yourself from this. As if they hadn't forever altered their destinies, hadn't resolved to never truly go home, hadn't sworn to follow if Frisk were to disappear, even for a day or two.
Frisk kept it.
One promise, despite everything, Frisk can know they kept better than anyone.]
Still...
[Friends. Best friends. Twins. Family. Partners. All the words they tentatively reached for, one at a time, over tenuous and uncertain months. A dozen thin threads, all woven together.]
Still soulmates...?
no subject
[They can't take all the credit for that, of course. They'd left it on the table, abandoned and empty, like a Quiche beneath a bench. Like a child outside a fire station. Like some dusty toys that sat beside a bed slept in by six, seven, eight children, forgotten but laden with memories that no one could even begin to understand.
Would they have picked it up and carried it with them, if Sans hadn't? There's no way to know. But part of them thinks, achingly, that - no. They wouldn't have. It wouldn't have occurred to him that something like that could be important.
But Sans, for all his profound exhaustion and emptiness and the way he'd felt after everything, after having to dredge up old pieces of himself and work on something like the DT Extractor, after reliving nightmares such as that alongside Alphys, had remembered. He'd known that the bracelet was important, and he'd known that they would want it back eventually. One or both of them would. And he'd picked it up and he'd kept it until they remembered to ask him if he still had it.
And of course, he still had it.
Chara's movements are painfully uncertain, agonizingly irresolute, and for a moment their fingers brush again.
They turn their hands over, palms up, lifting their gaze with the same pleading shyness as before. They can't, don't have the right to beg anything from Chara, make them feel guilty for not reaching out once more, but they've only every brushed up against one another in rough motions, in fierce, crimson-washed clashes that shook the both of them to their very bones.
There's still softness there. There has to be.
Something beads in the corners of Frisk's eyes. Their smile is as watery as their vision.
Still soulmates?]
Always.
no subject
The word "crybaby" creeps up the back of their thoughts, and they forcefully stomp it down. Pretend not to see the glimmering in the corner of Frisk's eyes. Don't say anything bad. They might feel like it's their fault Sans had to pick up the slack. He's been doing a lot of that lately, hasn't he? Trying to hold these two prepubescent disasters together when they're almost single-mindedly focused on falling apart.]
It's not a good sign when Sans is the most together one out of all of us, is it?
[They try to joke, even if joking about Sans being lazy is probably mean. Slip their hands into Frisk's. Gently, be gentle, don't be too rough and too forceful and too much. Just... resting their hands against Frisk's.
Just... resting.]
It feels like it's been so long since we... I've been trying so hard not to think about it. Not to register how much I - I missed this.
[Take shelter behind LOVE, for all the good it's been doing them so far. Do everything they can to keep it at arm's length, to shut emotion out entirely. Hurts less if you never actually get close enough to it to process it, right? But it's a hurt that time hasn't dulled. They just... kept on eroding and eroding, huh? And now they look at Frisk's hands, and remember...]
Remember the times when we were so - so safe that we didn't even have to ask before we touched? And now it's like I... I hardly even know how to come near you. It's strange, isn't it?
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There's no part of them they haven't dug into at some time or another, it feels like. That, or someone else picked up Frisk's slack. Hair a mess, even after showering, because there's pieces of hair that have been torn out and smoothing strands over the pale bald spots makes it look like you just woke up.
Chara has a - a bluntness to them. Or perhaps that's the wrong word, too callous and harsh. Not blunt, but perhaps - direct. Frisk sidesteps, evasive, dodging the question, dodging the answers, dodging the issues at hand. But Chara has a solidity to them that they've ached to hear again; the willingness to say and do what needs saying and doing, no matter how unpleasant, no matter how poorly it may be accepted.
And they call to attention the obvious. The strangeness of touch, and the way that something so familiar can feel so foreign after so long.]
I'm afraid to hurt you.
[That prompts a laugh, one of their hiccuping, quiet little chokes that could almost be a sob. Ridiculous, right? Only not so much, not anymore, not when they did such a great job of it before then.
In every way it was possible.]
I'm afraid that I forgot how. How to...hold onto something nicely, without hurting it. It's not like I've ever, um, practiced very well with myself.
[A rueful edge, then, the first to enter their tone since the conversation's beginning. Something approaching humor, even if it's of a dark cast.]
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I hate you, Frisk had spat, and the words had sliced through the fog of pain and breathlessness as keenly as if they'd had 99 ATK.
...So they don't say Frisk can't hurt them, because that would be a lie. There is nothing to gain by pretending there is no edge to this knife. Frisk would see through it as clearly as Chara does.]
I know. I've... not practiced much, either.
[They had wondered once, in that morbid way of theirs, if the two of them were just so perfectly made for each other that the thin pale lines etched into their hands might somehow fit together, form uninterrupted unbroken lines when their fingers locked together like this. Like they weren't shameful, ugly signposts marking them as a defective person, but - but constellations, just waiting to form a cohesive whole with a half they hadn't yet met.
A twisted thing for them to think, isn't it? They should hate the marks that Frisk disguises under bandages just as much as they hate their own ugliness. Nobody should love broken skin on a broken person. They don't even match anymore, ha ha, because Frisk's had nothing but blunt fingernails, and Chara's had all the scalpels they stole long ago, the paring knife that hides between mattress and headboard even when they live right under Toriel's carefully observant nose.
...They try not to think about it as they gaze down at their shared hands. Inch forward a little - an awkward shuffling on their knees, the friction of soft carpet itching against their kneecaps. Lean in just a fraction or two, tentative, still shy and wraught with the uncertainty born of long absence and strife. Don't dare to presume any more touch than these mingling hands. Headbutts or leaning on each other or even the consuming audacity of an embrace, it all... they no longer know if it is allowed. No longer know if they're safe enough.]
We'll have to relearn, won't we? I can't imagine it will be very graceful or effortless. But...
...I went about it horribly. I refused to listen to you. I just set my mind on the conclusions I had drawn without ever questioning them. But... all I wanted was to stop hurting you.
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[This is...good, isn't it? It's better than "sorry," than apologies that mean nothing whatsoever. Frisk will say "sorry," and they can say it as often and as much as they like, but it wouldn't mean anything if they keep doing it, won't it? Sorry that I threw this at you, dear, but you were in the way. Sorry that you felt that way. I'm sorry that you felt upset, or alone. I'm sorry you didn't understand what I meant when I told you "no."
No wonder Chara hates "sorry." They've had the word thrown at them without any meaning, time and time again. You have to work on it. Work to be...better. And maybe they've been going about it all wrong? Maybe "better" doesn't mean...making people not look at the things that hurt you, and not know them. Maybe it just means...telling people what hurts you, and making sure they know, so they don't have to hurt you again?
Is that selfish? Is that wrong?
They can want...this. They can want to not be alone. They can want to not be frightened. They can want to feel safe.
It's not a sin to want to feel safe.]
We'll mess up. It's always...harder when we don't have infinite tries. Have to live with what we've done and that's...the hard part. Living with it.
[It's not a matter of "if" but "when." They make...mistakes. Humans make mistakes. People make mistakes.
Kids make mistakes.]
You were hurt, and I was hurt, and...
[Frisk leans closer, wanting to bump forehead to forehead, gently, but that would be...too brutal a parallel, wouldn't it?
That guilt has been their shadow since the day they ended up here. It's...January, isn't it? It's January. And the day they came here is almost a year off. Another week, and it will be a year for Chara, too.
Maybe it's time to put that guilt to rest.]
I think...hurt people hurt people. Not 'cause we want to, or mean to. But 'cause we're angry, and scared, and there's nowhere else for it to go. We don't know where else to put it.
[Another thing to learn, then. Where to place something like that so it doesn't devastate you from the inside out, so it doesn't ravage you, so it doesn't burn your SOUL char-black with the searing heat of your own hatred for yourself and for everyone else.]
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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.
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[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.]
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[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?]
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[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.]
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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.
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[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.
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[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.
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