fulllifeconsequences

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

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.

[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.

[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.]

[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.]

[Protect them and watch over them, will you not? Someone has to take care of these flowers.

It just seems natural, for all their reservations, to come back to Frisk. They can never be a Toriel, can't quite slice enough bits of themself away to mold themselves into the shape of something safe and sheltering, but no matter how much they'd bungled the job, they'd still strove to be a guardian all along, hadn't they?]

After all these months? You might need a new interior decorator, Frisk.

[They crack a joke, of course. Laugh it off. Try not to think about how much it aches, recalling a room that had been empty for a long, long time, but still had drawings on the wall and dusty toys resting against his bed. It'd have been better, they think, if the room had reverted back to Home, back to the way Frisk had molded it before. Scrubbed of all trace of its original inhabitant, reduced to boxes of strange shoes and empty photo frames. Not fair to impose their ghost on that room, not fair to deny Frisk what they'd once remembered as a room of their very own.

Maybe their image of a room that's theirs has simply changed, over the months.]

I guess it won't be that big of a change, at least. I can't imagine the unoccupied version of my half was that different from the occupied version.

[There's almost a note of pride behind that, behind the acknowledgement that they'd carefully preserved the blank canvas. Kept their room tidy and orderly, like a good kid should. Kept every last vestige of identity hidden, unspoken, tucked under the slats of the bedframe or in the gap between wall and mattress. Stayed unknowable, stayed negated, stayed invulnerable, and always had the willpower to keep the illusion up. Don't let a space become recognizably yours, because that means things can be taken away. Reduce yourself only to the handful of items you can cram into a backpack, so you can vanish at a moment's notice. So that same risk of losing something can't anchor you down to a space.

...Not that the fact that whole "vanish at a moment's notice" thing came to pass is something Frisk is probably very delighted about, though.]

[They are more Toriel than they seem to want to admit. But if they won't be her, maybe they can be Asgore. He's...safe, in his own way. Ironic, in how those who have hurt them are those that feel safest. Sans. Asgore. Alphys. Toriel. Leonard.

Chara.

But they've hurt them too.]

I guess it knew I missed it.

[They'd say "we" but...they don't want to make that assumption. Don't put words in Chara's mouth. There's still a card, clumsily taped together, lying atop a bed with dusty covers. There's still an utterly blank side of one room.

Not very surprising. Perhaps, like its occupants, Room 12 grew accustomed to being frequently abandoned without a moment's notice.]

One day I'm going to make you a drawing to put up on the wall.

[It's not a promise. It's not even a wish. But it's an offer, maybe. Something that's less of a threat, the concern that placing down roots may make it more and more difficult to tear oneself away. An offer to put roots down together, like the potted plant that sits at the sill of their prison.

There's words in the back of their mind. One day they're gonna ride the train. They'll climb this mountain and...

They just want everyone to be happy.]

Running out of space on your side already?

[They continue taking it too lightly, always laughing it off, because it's so much easier than being sincere. Easier to be roundabout and blasé than to be vulnerable, than to acknowledge being tied down to a place instead of a transient ghost. Instead of something that knows it will only drift from one world to the next, belonging to none of them.

Funny how they can become known for their bluntness, yet have so much difficulty just saying an honest "thank you."]

Frisk. There is... one thing you could do for me.

[They hope to god it still comes across as a request, not a demand, not an ultimatum. That it doesn't sound like something a manipulative person would say. That it isn't just Chara forcing, deceiving, always taking. That despite everything, they can still be secure enough with each other that Frisk can understand.]

One thing that would help more than a picture would.

[It's a common tactic, and so quintessentially Chara that they find, for now, they can't mind it as much. It's easy to uproot oneself when you have no roots to put down; when the locks are changed, and your room is filled with boxes so there's no bed to sleep in, and there's nothing to do but close your eyes and hope real hard - maybe sprout wings, and go on an adventure. A Stick as your sword and a Bandage as your cape, and an unexplored mountain where travelers are rumored to disappear.

Make a joke and pretend.

One thing they can do for their Partner, and they haven't done nearly enough yet - they haven't even begun to make up for all they've done and said and used.]

I'm not so good with promises.

[But for you, Partner...]

But I want to get better.

[Their smile tilts, faintly, uneven and at a crooked angle. Knowing that it'd be easy to think - it's a promise, it's a demand. They know how they are with promises. Their thumb rubs faintly over the edge of Chara's hand, over the bump of a knuckle.]

I would do about anything.

[A gentle tickle over one knuckle, over a faint scar where a fight on the playground split the knuckle open and the scabbed-over wound was picked and picked and picked until the thin, flexing skin simply healed with a mark. Chara wants to avert their eyes shyly, to turn away from affection, to fear anything as hyperbolic as the word "anything," because what could go wrong? What if it's like "I'd never doubt you?"

But they keep their eyes on Frisk. Even with all the aversion they have toward using those creepy eyes of theirs, even if it still aches a little to see their beautiful brown eyes scribbled over. Frisk deserves that much, at least. Frisk deserves their full attention. Frisk deserves to be seen.]

...I don't think you just happened to stumble onto the Rabbit Hole all on your own.

[Even for someone determined, it seems far too impossible. An entrance that constantly moves around, with no particular hint or pattern that anyone could use to guess where it will materialize next. Whatever strings and flags make up Wonderland's base parts, they keep themselves out of Chara's reach; they cannot dig here. Cannot find out things they should not know.

Is Frisk just so much more capable than they are? Are they such a dirty hacker that they can even bend Wonderland itself to their whims? Did they root out their pathway by...

No. Chara doesn't think so. (Chara doesn't want to think so. Chara wants to believe in Frisk.)

Sans thinks so, too. If Frisk found the Rabbit Hole, they probably didn't do it alone.]

Would you tell me who helped you? When you were looking for the path to the core, I mean.

[A crinkling of the edge of their smile, askew as it is, is their only initial response. They've always been perceptive, observant, good at pulling all the pieces together. Frisk had a lookout, it's true. And they had...help on both sides of the glass.

They can't turn the knife on Zacharie. They can't, not after he helped them the way he has. They didn't stay in their coma, but maybe they simply weren't meant to. They have miles to, now, and it will be its own End, when it comes.
If it comes.
The Rabbit Hole is one specific, isolated piece of world in a vast spread of it. It stands to reason that one child, no matter how Determined, would not be able to pick it out from the soil on their own.

And they didn't.]

I had help.

[They won't be happy to hear it, but - they asked. They wanted to know, and they would do about anything. They have no need to protect a Mirror that would not enjoy protection. Or anything.

Their eyes lid faintly. Chara doesn't like looking at them, at their eyes, do they? There's a difficulty in meeting their gaze now. Maybe the red reminds them too much of themself. Something...something they'd consider ugly, maybe.]

On the other side of the glass.

[You have to trust your partner. I'd never doubt you, Frisk!

They're trying to reconcile. Trying to do a little better. Be better at trusting, be better at opening up, be better at being there for each other. Be better at being honest. It won't work if Chara is suspicious right away. It won't work if Chara does what they always do, and analyzes and questions and probes and turns the words over in their head, picking through every possible fault before they dare accept it.

But Frisk says their help was on the other side of the glass, and it... well, it's odd, isn't it?]

We found you out in the hills, Frisk. There are no hills on the mirror side.

[How could a mirror possibly know that the Rabbit Hole was surfacing there? They couldn't scour each checkered square themself. Nor were there any mirrors on the walls outside the mansion, were there? If they had to look for the hole, instead of just... innately knowing somehow? If it had taken that much time between Frisk laying down their ultimatum and actually attempting to cross over, then it must have been because there was searching involved, right? So if they were looking, then wouldn't that mean somehow finding a place that doesn't exist, then sprinting from the nonexistent hills back to the mansion to jot something down on a pane of glass?

Unless... a mirror crossed over to this side, and nobody noticed it but Frisk? They could roam this side's hills to their hearts content, steal a communicator, send a text. But that's utterly self-defeating. If mirrors crossing over was in the equation, then surely Frisk's mirror would have switched with them, no Rabbit Hole necessary. Hard-pressed to think of a reason they wouldn't just do that - they'd surely relish the idea of their Real vanishing.

Unless Frisk refused to cooperate with their mirror? After what their mirror did to them, it's hard for Chara to fathom that Frisk would trust them more than anyone else. But... on the other hand, if they had crossed over to find the core, wouldn't they be unleashing their mirror on this side anyway? They'd be giving the mirror carte blanche to do as it pleased with their friends, whether they cooperated or not. So therefore, a moot point. If they're willing to do that, then they are willing to cooperate, after all. Surely a resident would have made some comment, as well, if mirrors were crossing over and roaming this side for days on end. That's not something that's supposed to happen, is it? Not unless an event opens the floodgates, grants permission.

Chara's brow furrows.

They look away.]

I don't believe you, Frisk.

[They cannot reconcile this gap. This contradiction. The logic does not flow.]

Tell me the truth.

[Their lips purse together tightly for a moment. That tenuous thread, breaking already?]

They told me it was in the hills, and I went. I didn't ask how they knew.

[They're not lying. Zacharie wasn't the one who told them; their Mirror was, underlining the word twice. Hurry. Eager to see things play out, maybe, or eager to be ERASED themself. The Queen wouldn't be happy with them. They didn't care. They would've appreciated the chaos in seeing the world crumble around the hole Frisk would have left behind - or maybe they would have simply wanted to see what would happen, should Frisk have failed. Granted a chance to wreak havoc on the Mirror side.

It stings.

A selfish brat who doesn't deserve MERCY or understanding or the infinite patience they've been granted, and still it feels like the worst slap to their cheeks. I don't believe you, Frisk. Tell the truth, Frisk. Don't lie about your parents, Frisk. Everyone here has better things to do than listen to you spin tales, invent stories about things that never happened.

They don't believe you, Frisk.

Why should they?]

You don't have to believe me. But it's what happened.

[And it is. They're omitting the others they had searching for them, but it was the Mirror that told them what the Rabbit Hole looked like and where to find them. It was their word, their means of opening the door to the cauldron to hell.

They were the gatekeeper, and they let Frisk through to the other side.]

[They wait for the explanation. The obvious thing they're missing that will make them slap their head and laugh about how they always have to think too much, don't they? They're such a weirdo, so paranoid and unreasonable and so quick to shy away from things that are perfectly easy to explain. And Frisk will giggle about how Chara's so needy, maybe, about how they always need reassurances and the security that simple logical facts can offer to something as frail and hurtful as "just trust me." They wait for a thoughtful silence, maybe, a "yeah, that is a strange contradiction, that shouldn't have happened, why don't we ask about it" or "well, the mirror was yours or Sans' or someone else's who would totally lie and use my friendship against me, so maybe they tricked me" or - or something that doesn't slap down the hand they raised.

They get "because I said so."

They get "you're not getting an explanation," because normal people can just immediately accept whatever they're told as true without trying to reason out if they're being misled or not. Normal people won't ruin this. Normal people aren't like this.

...They get "it just happened" because they don't deserve the truth, do they? Take this mysterious mirror, this anonymous "they" - no names attached, of course, have to carefully defend the people who want Frisk gone from dangerous things like Chara. If they were given any more than that, they'd do something destructive with it. In fact, maybe this is a test, right? Make sure Chara hasn't gotten too cocky, too complacement. Don't let them get any lofty ideas that they can get away with being pushy, with asking for more than they're generously handed out. All they ever do is take too much, too fast, and spill the whole candy bowl.

You know what happens when you don't accept what Frisk wants, Chara, right? They've only just stepped back from the ledge. Don't force them to hand out another ultimatum. Don't make them remind you they hate you. You can see it in the way their lips press into a dissatisfied, thin line.

A humble servant doesn't get to question their master like that.

You have to trust your partner, Chara.]

Understood.

[They let go, untangle, stand up.]

I'll inform Toriel that effective immediately, I will be watching over you once more. I'll do my best to have Room 12 tidy and prepared for when you are ready to return to it.

[They ruined it.

Of course they did. This is supposed to be a new beginning, and they've already made things difficult again. Refusing to be obedient, to do as everyone says. Refusing to be complicit, to be a good child who does as they're told. Refusing to trust even the person that should be trusted completely and utterly.

They really are the worst possible Frisk, aren't they? The worst possible iteration, and they had to convince Chara that they're the Partner they're meant for. They had to force Chara to love them, to care about them, because they certainly didn't when they first arrived, did they? How could they? Why would they? Why would they trust someone who looked at them with vague suspicion, who made them form a truce about no killing each other in their sleep, who talked about them to others with a lowered voice, like they were something to be ashamed of? They didn't earn anyone's trust. They were never the right Frisk, not one of the countless ones that would have loved and cared for Chara unconditionally and without hesitation.

Instead they got someone paranoid and untrusting, and convinced themself they cared for this broken, twisted-up little thing that pushes them harshly away and then cries that they've been abandoned.

What kind of selfish brat are they?

They could struggle. But...nothing would happen. Nothing ever happens. Drop hands down to their lap, and bow their head. Acquiesce.

Be good, won't you?]

Okay.

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