* IC Inbox

[fulllifeconsequences]

Speak.

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

Comments

[LOAD SAVE POINT 1]

[buildmeup]

Deja vu.


Good one, right?

[fulllifeconsequences]

[They know what's going on here. They just don't know which one of them Flowey wants to see suffer.

And herein lies a choice. He will find out eventually. Frisk will explain it, or Sans will bring up the anomaly, or any of the people that Frisk has warned about Chara, tried to justify Chara's existence to... someone will tell him eventually. If he doesn't figure it out for himself.

But it's tempting, is it not? To let him have it his way. Let him just have the friend he actually wanted to have, without Chara's parasitic, muddying presence to sour it. Let him stop projecting. Let Chara erase themselves from existence again, because that's the ending they both want for Chara, right?]

I've heard better.

I suppose it's my turn to tell a joke, then. Right?

[buildmeup]

[He brought this upon himself.

It's not Chara's fault. At the end of the day, he'd attempted something, and the conclusion- for now...is that he'd been wrong. Wrong in this direction.

But there was a stark difference between the child who fell into the Underground and the one here now. He didn't need the conversation with Sans to understand that.]

Knock yourself out.

[fulllifeconsequences]

[A choice.]

I know what's going on here. I just wanted to see you suffer.

[Badum-tssht.]

1/???

[buildmeup]

[



Aha.



Ha.


]

[buildmeup]

[There's hows and whys; a litany of them. Too many to cover in a single text. How? How much? Why? Why didn't you tell me?

But hey. Nothing he can't get from other sources. He has just the person in mind for that conversation, and it's not Chara.

...]

I pretended this was gonna be long and it's not forgive me.

[buildmeup]

Good one.

[He's not done here.

But he's done. There's no extra text to accompany it; just those two words.

The only thing I wanted was for you to come back to me.

And here you are.






Good one.]

[fulllifeconsequences]

Oh. Are we done telling jokes already? I haven't even told the funniest one yet!

[The only thing I wanted was for you to come back to me. A riotous one-liner in and of itself.

The real punchline was all about how he wanted something better. A friend who solved all the problems without having to do all the icky dirty work. A sunny, fluffy happy ending. Aw, is he realizing that he's bitten off more than he can chew? That maybe his perfect friend and his perfect ending aren't what he thought they were?

What happened to not having any regrets?]

You got exactly what you wanted, Asriel.

[buildmeup]

[He gets it. This is his penance; this is what happens when he decides to play God. The world plays God with him, in turn. Back up on the surface, back to the two people he wants to have around.

And they know all of his dirty secrets. Did he really think he was above the consequences?]

You've got a sick sense of humor.

[fulllifeconsequences]

[That's not right. That's wrong. He doesn't know, but he jumps right to the end of the script.

Backing out. Giving up on them. Fearing them, doubting them. Asriel came back to them, and what shone through, what he felt toward Chara... was horror and regret.

Was he the one playing games? Playing dumb? Had the True Reset he tried to offer been a trick all along? Was this all just to send the reminder that whether that fallen human tried their best to be good or tried their best to be bad, he would reject Chara either way?]

I'm laughing harder than ever.

[buildmeup]

[Hey Chara. Remember that punchline?

But nobody came.

It's just as funny as it was before.]