entrancelogs | Though the shell may belong to Great Britain...

Entry tags:

Though the shell may belong to Great Britain...

Who: Open mingle log!
Where: The gardens
When: July 4th
Rating: G
Summary: Having explained to Ben that Independence Day is remembered and celebrated, Elizabeth decides to throw a party for it when the day arrives
The Story:

The gardens are festooned in patriotic bunting, and the sound of a brass band floats through the air, punctuated by the crackles of Elizabeth's gramophone player, which the records are being played on.

Elizabeth is standing near a long table covered in red, white and blue food, dressed appropriately for the occasion, though still in the style of the era she comes from, trying her best to be a good host and make sure everyone is enjoying themselves.

Once it gets dark, Elizabeth will guide everyone over to the lake to watch fireworks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

All things considered, being accosted by a weird little goat kid is not the weirdest thing Tim's endured since ending up here. He doesn't really want to attend any parties, mind; Brian was always the more social of the pair of them, and what few college parties he could coax Tim into attending always saw him retreating after little more than an hour, unable to tolerate the heated atmosphere, the acidic bite of alcohol he couldn't drink, the press of bodies and the pounding music with lyrics he couldn't discern between the heavy bass and overwhelming chatter.

As far as parties go, this one's probably much more - refined. Tim still doesn't wanna be here, exactly, but Elizabeth organized it, and he might as well attend to show his solidarity, or some shit. He's already made a mental note to conveniently retire to his room once the fireworks kick up. He's had enough of encountering loud noises to last him a lifetime.

He doesn't quite smile at the kid reaching for a plate of cake, but his lips twitch faintly as he plucks at one of the plates and hands it to him so he doesn't have to reach.

"It's...Independence Day," says Tim, at this point trying to discern how much of American history a goat-child-thing would be aware of. Looks a bit like a miniature Asgore, come to think of it. "You have that where you come from?"

Asriel's eyes light up as he's handed the festive cake. Red and blue were interesting color choices for a cake (and the whole party was decorated in them), but why not use a bunch of other colors?

... A rainbow cake. Now that would be cool.

He's almost too distracted by cake colors to hear Tim's explanation.

"We don't have any day called that. Is that a holiday on the Surface?"

Maybe monsters do now? If what Mettaton says is true, Asriel wouldn't be surprised if monsters came up with some kind of holiday celebrating their new freedom from the Underground.

"Yeah. Fourth of July." Which is, uh, obviously the date anyway. So that's helpful. "It's this whole...human history thing. One country broke away and got to declare its independence, and so people celebrate that with fireworks and stuff."

Which he's gonna pointedly avoid, if he can. Loud noises seldom if ever go over well for him, since the school.

"Human history's kinda complicated, though." To put it mildly.

"Oh... I think I understand."

Sort of. He had asked questions before, about what the Surface was like before the war. Asked Chara what it was like before they fell. And he understood that there were many different lands out there, filled with all kinds of different humans that fought each other and not just monsters.

"So um, I'm still not really sure why it's blue, white, and red though."

"That's the colors of the flag. Or, uh...the one people eventually settled on." It's not entirely clear if the kid really gets it, but he's doing an impressive job of trying to understand. He can give him that much, at least.

There's no large ram-like horns and he's definitely smaller, but the similarity to Asgore is, frankly, uncanny. He's pretty sure Asgore's mentioned family before, but only in the context of loss.

Then again, he's been reunited with someone he's lost too. So anything's possible.

"Hey, uh." Probably overstepping, isn't he? Probably. "Are you related to, uh...Asgore?"

Asriel nods, as if he does understand, but it becomes pretty clear how different the Underground is from the Surface world. Well, whether he understands or not, there's cake and festivities so he isn't going to complain about it.

"Oh um...! Asgore's my dad."

There's no use lying about, considering how similar he looks to his father. Still, there doesn't really seem to be any reason to lie.

"You know my dad?"

"He saved my life, actually." People...like to hear about their dads being heroic, right? That seems like something that people, kids especially, would like to hear about. He wouldn't know - he's never had a dad, or anything approaching a dad, unless you count Asgore, which he doesn't because that would be weird, so he's kind of making a guess here - but he'd imagine that'd be something that would make a kid...proud? Happy?

"First time we met. Swam through a flooded hallway just to get me out."

Asriel's feelings about his dad are complicated at best, wrapped up in layer after layer of guilt. It didn't really help that his last memories of his father was his father collecting SOULs of fallen humans, which he later stole to become a god.

...

Uh, well. Families are complicated sometimes, right?

"Oh wow! Really? That's so cool!"

Asriel isn't entirely insincere, though not entirely genuine. It was kind of impressive to hear that his dad swimming through a flooded hallway to save someone else. He figures childish enthusiasm is the best way to react to a story like that though.

"You were stuck in a flooded hallway?"

Well, technically the first time they met, Asgore was dressed as the Monopoly Man and Tim was on the verge of goddamn panic, but he's not entirely sure how much of that night was hallucinatory and how much wasn't, and at this point, so much time has elapsed that he feels a little awkward having to ask. Broaching the subject that your grip of reality is tenuous at best isn't one for conversation starters.

"Yep." He can leave out the part where George and Shaun were reduced to underwater zombies, slavering incoherently in the water as he swam desperately away from them. A kid doesn't need to hear about zombies; doesn't need to deal with them at all, if he can avoid it ~~HA HA~~.

"The halls were all flooded. Rooms all had air, but they only lasted a few hours before you had to keep going. And I was...stuck."

He was panicking.

And he was taking the only alternate route he could think to take - the one that would leave him high and dry, so to speak, little more than another corpse to revive when his time was up.

Asgore had other plans.

Don't worry Tim, Asriel will get his zombie experience soon enough. Still, that situation sounds pretty awful. People have dropped hints now and then about Wonderland not being the safest place, but it's just hard to see it.

"That sounds... awful. Were you okay? ... Was dad okay?"

Or did his dad get trapped in a room with no air, no way out and slowly - Asriel tries to push that grim thought down.

"He was fine." Well, Tim punched him, but that wasn't exactly - he's just a little human, compared to the King of All Monsters, so Asgore just kind of shrugged it off. Still, though. Best not to get into the part where he decked Asriel's dad in the face.

"He got me out and everything. Made some tea with a, uh...portable...kit, I guess he had."

Somehow, the fact that Asgore carries around the means to make tea at any moment is no longer surprising to him.

Portable tea kit...

"That sounds like something dad would have."

He feels a tiny bit of relief, but he wonders what else has happened to him here. Asriel hasn't bothered asking him, but even if he did, he's not sure his dad would really tell him anything.

"Is that one of those 'events' I keep hearing about?"

Tim nods with a tired little hum of assent.

"Kind of a twofer, I guess. The other part was something about a time loop or something but I...I dunno. I didn't really understand it." He's not the smart guy. Not the kind of guy who grasps stuff like that with any ease. He didn't even finish college.

"So you had to deal with flooding, no air, and time loops?"

Asriel's still having a rough time wrapping his head around this event business, but he's had a tough time wrapping his head around Wonderland in general. Getting whisked away by some kind of magic, having time freeze on you, and Asriel still isn't sure where Wonderland's barrier is though everyone's telling him there's no way to leave.

"This place is so incredibly weird. I don't get it at all..."

He can't really blame the kid for not really adjusting. Hearing about the kind of events here probably isn't helping any. He has the right to know what he's up against, even if it's confusing.

"You get used to it." And then, realizing that's not exactly the most comforting thought for a kid, he adds, "I mean, they're not all bad. Last one wasn't."

"Mm... I don't... really want to be here long enough to get used to it."

He can't. This can't last. Maybe it could last for the rest of him, but the thought of starting a life here only to have it ripped away at some point was kind of painful to think about.

He's going to ruin everything if he stays, if he hasn't already.

"But you're right, the one where it snowed was kind of fun, wasn't it?"

Except for the snowstorm and deep personal confessions and finding out your dead sibling was actually hanging out while your poured your heart out to the person who saved you, but hey.

Well, he can't blame him there. The past few events have been...they could've been worse, he could just say. The ski resort wasn't terrible, though it's not as though Tim was in any state to enjoy it. He still ached from the long stripe of someone's blade nearly severing him in two, Jay's feverish attack that ripped the stitches open.

"No one chooses when they come or go." That's the sad truth of it. No one chooses that, and no one gets to choose when. "You just have to make the best of being here."

Easier said, of course, than done.

No one chooses when they leave. Asriel knows, but knowing doesn't really make him feel any better about being whisked away back to the Ruins at any given time.

Then again... that's what he wants, right? Haha.

"Mmm... it's not really about me making the best about it. It's more about the people I'll hurt when I leave."

Or who he'll hurt by staying here, more like it. He snaps out of his somber expression, looking a little embarrassed.

"O-oh! I'm sorry... that's a weird thing to say to someone you just met, huh?"

Tim, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. His concern is largely the people he's going to be hurting by staying. Not that either of them can do a damn thing about something like that.

One of his shoulders hitches slightly in a shrug. Kid's got baggage. Must be a family thing.

"Your dad's mentioned...I mean, I'm guessing since you're his kid, you're the one that he, uh, lost." Wow, this is great. Transitioning from a potentially awkward spot in conversation to talking about the kid's death. Great stuff.

"... Yeah, that's me."

The one dad lost, the one mom replaced, and the one who came back when he shouldn't have. Asriel keeps a weak smile on his face. His death isn't really an easy thing to talk about, but seeing how his dad already told Tim about it...

"I guess I got lucky coming here, huh?"

It makes him want to laugh.

It's not really funny.

In the same way Jay was lucky, saved from the kind of fate he might have been stuck with if he'd been made to...linger like that. There was no way of knowing for sure if he was -

(The man from the tunnel, who he flipped over, whose head was reduced to a concave mass of glittering, crimsoned black, even months after his death - )

(Jay's stillness, the way the blood was still fresh despite it being weeks, weeks since he saw it - )

It's hard to believe that he's being sincere in that pronouncement.

Tim's brow furrows faintly as one hand creeps up to the back of his neck, thumb pressing along the place of where his spine begins. He recognizes that - that forced cheer, because that's what's expected. Anticipated, even.

"I dunno if 'lucky' is the word a lotta people here would use."

"I mean, if I'm gonna be honest... I wouldn't say 'lucky' either."

He's not lucky. Nothing about this feels right, and his fellow monsters and his family don't deserve to be stuck here. They don't deserve to have something that used to be "Asriel" dangled in front of their faces, only to have it eventually ripped away.

"What about you? Would you use that word?"

Might be too personal of a question? But hey, it's not like Asriel has anyone else to really talk about his own death with.

Kids shouldn't understand what he means by that. Kids shouldn't understand the permanence of death. Shouldn't wonder and agonize over the meaning of use may be fatal, or violent episodes.

Kids shouldn't understand what stuff like that means.

But kids do anyway.

Hiding from it has never benefited anyone. It never benefited Tim, not knowing what was wrong with him, capable only of conceptualizing the fact that something was.

"In some ways," says Tim. And for once, he means it. "There's people here I'd never have met if I hadn't. But they're people who - " Who would've been better off never knowing him at all. But even that's a little too morbid for this conversation. " - they could've met anyone."

Maybe Tim thinks it's too morbid, but Asriel would find it entirely too relatable. There's people he'll hurt if he stays, there's people he'll hurt if he leaves.

That's all he can do, really.

He should just smile and nod, and let Tim get on with the party. He certainly didn't come up here, give him cake, only to hear about why Asriel kind of hates being here.

But instead he opens his mouth again.

"... Doesn't it hurt, getting to know people here? We can't stay here forever, can we? So when this place ends, all the people we've met will just... go away, won't they?"

That answer pretty much confirms what he's already suspected - that there's a hell of a lot of baggage weighing on this kid's shoulders, regardless of the fact that he's far too young to be bearing any such thing. Doesn't it hurt, knowing that people will leave? Knowing that you'll leave?

(He thinks of Jay. The first time. His fist had crashed into the other man's jaw and brought him thudding to the ground and he'd howled at him, and then when he was gone barely two months later there was nothing more than a gaping hole in his wake. And Tim smoked on the roof, and he brushed the angry moisture from his eyes with the back of one wrist and wondered how long it would be before Wonderland or that thing stole the memories away and spared him the pain of it.)

So, what? You tell a kid that you're left quietly hoping that your amnestic tendencies rob you blind of that pain?

Yeah. 'Cause that's a good idea for everyone.

"A lot of stuff is gonna hurt." His tone is - it's as gentle as Tim can make it. Admittedly not much, but maybe it's something. "We've all...we lose people. That's how life is. But it's like, uh."

His tongue and fingertips are itching again, for that soothing bite of nicotine. He muzzles the urge, biting the wall of his cheek as he tries to conjure up some appropriately non-morbid metaphor.

"It's like watching a movie, y'know? Or - picking up a book. You know you're gonna get to the end eventually, and it'll be over." Maybe not a perfect metaphor. "Doesn't mean it's not worth reading through the whole thing to get there."

Though the shell may belong to Great Britain...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

1/2

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)