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Who: Souji and you
Where: The diner
When: 12/15-12/25
Rating: PG-13 at most
Summary: Souji's catch-all for the second half of December
The Story: When not having crazy Mansion dreams, Souji can be found...

The Diner
The diner has been decorated just like everything else in the Mansion. Of course, like every year, Souji's made his own additions, like the Colonel (plus twinkling fairy lights). This is the fourth annual KFC Christmas in Wonderland and he's pretty sure he's gotten even closer to the 11 herbs and spices recipe (it took a lot of practice and many days eating nothing but fried chicken).

Inside the diner, visitors will find plenty of fried chicken, a few appropriate sides, and plenty of Christmas cake complete the menu. Cocoa, coffee, tea, and various other drinks are available.

Souji's there, of course, to greet anyone who comes in and to hang out with folks, especially the others who work there when they choose. Regardless of which category people fall into, he will try to feed them. (He'll even make any non-fried-chicken-or-cake foods people might want, but seriously, what more could you want?)

Outside
Now that there's finally snow, Souji can be found outside playing with his very fat, small pet dragon and a gray and white bunny, which remains mostly bundled up inside his jacket, its head peeking out under his chin. He plays with the dragon, coaxing it to run, as well as making rather distinctive snowmen, each of which Tefra (the very fat, small dragon) immediately pounces on. He never seems particularly bothered by that.

He also takes his little troupe down to the beach, though that's less to play and more to just stare out at the horizon. He did that at home in the past, though it wasn't usually during the winter. It makes him feel nostalgic.

Around the Mansion + Gifts!
Souji spends time at various tables around the mansion working on his Christmas gifts. He can be found in his own room, the library, diner, tea rooms, even the dining room working on them as well as their very nice packaging.

He makes enough of these gifts to give to everyone he knows, even those he's only spoken to a handful of times. He delivers them on December 24, giving them in person if he can, and leaving them at peoples' doors along with a "Happy Christmas" note if he can't.

Of course, there are a few people he has special gifts for.

Dreaming
Here is Souji's dream thread!

Wildcard
Choose your own adventure. c:

[ooc: Feel free to use prose or brackets. I'll match style. If you want something to be on a specific date, just put it in the subject line along with the prompt name. :3]

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Chara... they like kitchens. Like the coziness, the security, the intimate homey warmth. And diners have always been ingrained in the back of their mind as safe places to hide, as one of the few shelters a runaway can exploit on a cold night, if only for as many hours as they can loiter with refill after refill of disgusting coffee.

It's probably not surprising that they end up gravitating to the diner after a long, uneasy night. The minute they step in, they can catch the pervasive aroma of fried food filling the air.

* Smells like skin and seasoning.

They let themself behind the counter, help themself to a cup of coffee. Do their best to smother it in cream and sugar, in hopes of drowning out the awful bitter taste of the Death Sludge. It'll wake them up more than tea would.

"It smells good in here," they announce. "What are you making?"

Souji, in the middle of battering chicken for frying, glances up as Chara comes around the counter to get some coffee. He's perfectly happy for them to make themselves at home, though he hasn't seen much of them since that last event. He's not entirely sure whether or not that was a relief.

"Fried chicken." He sets aside a drumstick and starts on a thigh. "It's traditional where I'm from."

"Fried chicken... for Christmas? That's a Japanese thing, isn't it. I think I saw that in an anime once," they blurt, then immediately redden, because that is quite possibly the lamest way to discuss culture ever. "It's a marketing thing, isn't it? Like diamond rings for married couples."

Commercialism, right? The true meaning of Christmas, if you're bitter and miserable and also a ten-year-old who's trying really hard to sound knowledgeable and cool. They take a drink. It's still too hot and it tastes awful. It's exactly what they expect from coffee.

But hey, it's warmth and energy. That counts for something.

"We celebrated Christmas back home, more or less, only it was Gyftmas," they quickly redirect the topic. "It didn't have any religious connotations. Just a guy dressing as Santa and gifts under a decorated tree."

Souji isn't surprised about the admission of learning from anime. He's learned about America mostly through TV and books. It only comes up in school occasionally.

"We don't have the religious part either." Well, most people don't - there are some Japanese who are religious about it, but they're quite the minority. "Lots of stores decorate, but it's mainly for chicken and cake and going on dates, if you have someone to go with."

He wipes his hands on his apron, turning to face them fully. He leans back against the counter where he's been working and puts one hand on his hip.

"New Years is a bigger thing at home."

New Year's. They wonder, passingly, what year it is for Souji. What year it actually is back home. If it's even still 201X, or if a new decade has arrived. A new century, even. Not like they could tell.

"Does Wonderland do anything?" They venture. It never felt like a big deal in their experience. Their parents on the Surface would go out for some party, but Chara would stay home. Stick to their room. Underground, the passage of time was harder to keep track of. No changing seasons, no sunrises or sunsets. No way to tell if they'd forgotten to scratch a day off the calendar, really. "I haven't paid much attention to holidays. To the passage of time in general, really. But... I suppose I'll almost have been here for a year, in either case."

"Wonderland doesn't do much, if anything, for New Years. It doesn't mean much if the year has no number, I guess." He shrugs, ignoring the chicken behind him for now. He'd much rather talk. "Time here is like that. It's on purpose, I think."

Sometimes, he feels like his five years has been decades. Other days, they feel like just months. It all depends on what's going on, who's there, what he's doing.

Watching them suffer through their coffee, he pushes away from the counter.

"Do you want some cake?"

"Makes sense, I suppose. Does time mean anything at all if you aren't actually getting older?"

They perk up at the mention of cake, their sweet tooth immediately taking precedence over things like the illusory nature of time. Nothing goes better with a cup of boiling Yuck Mud (how do adults actually enjoy this?) than something sweet, after all. Desserts are comforting. The sort of comforting that they associate with kitchens over anything else.

"Golly, before dinner? Won't I spoil my appetite?" They joke, but the smile on their face suggests anything but hesitance. They'll take anything to look forward to that they possibly can, honestly. "Well... I suppose Santa won't mind if I'm not perfectly good. Doubt I made the nice list this year, anyway."

"Do you ever?"

Souji moves to another area of the kitchen and cuts a slice of cake. He sets it in front of Chara on a plate, along with the necessary fork.

"This is traditional, too."

"Nope," they answer, laughing, "and it'd be a shame to break that particular Christmas tradition, wouldn't it?"

...It feels a lot like a real laugh. Those have been few and far-between ever since Halloween.

The cake, too, is... it's almost too nice. It's so pretty that it feels like something out of a show or a storybook to them, somehow, even if it must not be all that special to someone used to Christmas cake. There's almost a sense of formality, of trying to savour it, behind the first bite.

"This is... it's good," they offer, somewhat underwhelmingly. "Maybe we should add cake to Gyftmas, too. I think I'll pass on the 'couples' part, though. Too many cooties."

'Cooties.' That's not a term Souji's heard in awhile, and that's even with a cousin in first grade. He smiles to himself with a feeling that borders on affection. He's never known someone quite like Chara - and he can't say now that he knows them - but he's known others who were strange in their own rights. If he builds on the link he feels forming, he can hopes he can see them a bit more clearly.

"I think cake is one of those things you could add to any occasion." Even funerals would probably benefit from something like cake. "I'm glad you like it."

They're eating it, and that's sign enough. Though, if he thinks about it, he's pretty sure they don't like coffee and they still drink it whenever they show up here.

"Do you actually enjoy Gyftmas?"

"I don't enjoy anything," Chara laughs, as they delightedly shove their face full of cake, "mostly on sheer principle." Just a giant black hole of negativity and hate, that Chara. The cackling, devious villain we all wish to never meet on a dark spooky night. The cake is, uh, clearly part of the act. A cunning deception.

...They've had a very long month of resigning themself to the inherent toxic destructiveness of their mere presence. They've needed a break for a long time now.

"Gyftmas isn't awful, though. I mean, it probably sucks for the Gyftrot. Those teenagers have been pranking it for ages. But Asgore dresses up as Santa, and it used to be a nice excuse to visit Snowdin. It's nice to be able to have a garden year-round, but you do start to miss the snow eventually."

Souji's not buying it, not as long as Chara's wolfing down cake. But he doesn't call them on it - trying to argue that point would just be exhausting after not too long.

"What's a Gyftrot?"

Or would "who" be the better word?

"And who is Asgore?" That one he's sure is a "who" just from context.

"A Gyftrot is a type of monster. Sort of resembles a reindeer, but with trees for antlers and a sort of sideways mouth, like mandibles. Some teens got the idea to decorate its head, as a joke. People felt bad for it, so they started decorating regular trees, too. Charming little tradition, is it not?" They don't bother to bring up the obvious "why didn't anyone just help the Gyftrot undecorate itself" hole in the concept, nor do they point out "they probably lifted the idea from Christmas-themed garbage they fished out of the dump, honestly." It takes away from the fun.

"As for Asgore, he's my-"

...

My dad.

"Asgore is the king of all monsterkind," Chara says, instead. "He's here in Wonderland, as a matter of fact. You may run into him sometime."

Souji is wondering, too, why they didn't just undecorate the monster, but he doesn't ask. Things don't always have to make sense.

"I'll have to keep my eyes open for him."

The monsters weren't that easy to miss, so it shouldn't be hard to find him eventually.

What interests him more was that slight slip. "My-" Your what, Chara?

"You were going to say something else, weren't you?"

What's that? Time to vehemently avoid even the faintest hint of attachment or emotional vulnerability? Oh, goody!

"Was I? I've forgotten," Chara immediately lies. Not like it's the kind of secret they can really keep buried - every monster in the Underground knows the sad tale of the royal family and the fallen human they took in, and Frisk would probably gush all about -

...Frisk. Ha ha. Well, maybe Frisk wouldn't want to talk about them, after all.

They can use that, at least, to change the subject. They look away, buy a few seconds with another mouthful of cake.

"Have you spoken with Frisk recently?" They blurt.

Of all things, Souji wasn't expecting Chara to bring up Frisk. He nods.

"Yeah. Not that long ago."

Since Chara is done with their cake and since they hate coffee, despite their attempts to have people believe otherwise, Souji gets them a cola and puts it in front of them.

"Why?"

He's Very Interested in their response, but wants to be delicate about his interest. He never knows when Chara will be willing to say things straightforwardly or if he'll have to take circuitous routes to get them to talk.

Souji is friends with Frisk, right? Souji likes Frisk. Everybody likes Frisk. There's not a single person here who dislikes them, who uses the wrong words to refer to them, who would do the sort of things the Surface did to them. So... everyone here will watch out for them, right? Take care of them.

Let Frisk be happy.

"Not for my sake, but for theirs... protect them and watch over them, will you not? They've been... they put on a brave face, as always, but since Halloween, they have not been doing well." Chara doubts that's a secret. "I fear they're going to hit a breaking point soon, and it will not be loud and easy to notice. They will crumple in on themselves, quietly and unobtrusively. That is why I... would prefer it, I suppose, if people who cared about them could let them know that they have people to lean on."

Souji doesn't think he's ever heard Chara say that much or sound that sincere. He's quiet as he listens, then nods slowly. He had a feeling something like that was going on, but now Chara's confirmed it. It's not just him. He hopes hat his last conversation with Frisk might serve to do exactly what Chara's asking of him.

But then there's Chara themselves. Who looks out for them?

They probably don't think they need it.

"What about you?"

What about them?

They start to think of a polite lie to dance around the fact they're trying to keep their corrosive influence out of Frisk's life now, but it occurs to them that it wouldn't be necessary. Souji isn't asking why they aren't looking after Frisk themself. He's asking if anyone's looking after them.

Which - which just strikes them as utterly absurd. "I'm the one responsible for the problem. Why would I need anything of the sort?" They point out. You comfort the victims, you punish the bullies. It's not supposed to be the other way around.

They look away. Stare down at the cola he brought them, instead. ...Ha ha. They don't like soda. Frisk does. They remember the surprise of finding out, of being able to sift a bit of individuality out of a tangle of blurred identities. They remember how being around people made Frisk feel better. They remember the way sugar and staying up late had made Frisk giggly and rowdy. They remember trying to dance, but not quite knowing how. Remember Frisk playing tricks. Remember how scared they'd been that they might have hurt Frisk. Remember... remember feeling like kids. Running through crowds of adults and only seeing them as background obstacles, not threats. Being messy and noisy and playing and ducking under tables.

There's no party to make Frisk feel better after this death.

Try as they might, they cannot tune out the ache.

"Frisk is the one who needs somebody. They're hurting, not me."

"You're hurting."

Souji could have guessed that, but it's obvious now. That Chara is letting him see that...that seems to attest to just how much.

He won't say he can look after them both - looking after even one of them would be too much for him on his own. But he can certainly be there - here - for both of them.

"Will you tell me what happened?"

There's a lot he doesn't understand about the situation. Maybe he doesn't need to. He can still look after his friends without knowing the details. But Chara knows a lot more about him after that last event than he wants even his close friends to know. He'd like to think they can - or will - confide in him as well.

Edited 2016-12-21 18:21 (UTC)

Hurting? Them? Pfft. Laughable. You don't get to call it "hurting" when you bring it on yourself. When you make things be like this. You call it "just desserts." You call it "karmic retribution." Calling it hurting would just be - it'd just be manipulative, wouldn't it? Making it all about poor Chara, like they're some helpless innocent baby.

They shove the thought aside. Stare down at the counter.

"It's a long story. It'll probably bore you," they attempt to joke. But... they're long past the point of trying to hide their mistakes, aren't they? Completely given up on making it a secret of what a horrible creature they really are.

"It started on Halloween. Frisk became... me," they begin. He probably remembers people turning into their costumes. Try to sound disinterested, offhand, like it's as easy for them to comprehend as it is for everyone else. Like they can actually grasp whether they were real or the Chara within Frisk was, or if they're both fake, or if that was actually them inside there, and the shell walking around here now is nothing but a - a hallucination. The kind of thing crazy people like you would see, right, Chara? Ha ha. "The real me. LV 19. Seeking to destroy anyone and everyone it saw."

That's what they are, after all. A parasite dwelling inside of Frisk. A demon, summoned to slaughter indiscriminately. "I... felt I should take responsibility. Stop it before it killed." It had always been the right thing to do. Pull out all the stops to kill the demon. Save the world from an invader that would obliterate it.

But that's not right, is it? Sans had pointed out what they were really doing. Being so eager to hurt themself that they hurt someone else. Someone innocent. "I... ha ha, that charming little phase where Frisk was broken? My fault. My doing. Sans and Alphys cured them of it eventually, but it reduced Frisk to the hollow shell they have been for a month or so. They have not been themself for so long entirely because they were trying to recover from the damage my influence left."

Several things pass through Souji's mind as he listens. The first is that it really isn't Chara's fault. But they're not going to listen to that mess - it's too much of a platitude to mean anything if he should say it.

The second is that it borders on arrogance to think that they are the sole cause for whatever's going on with Frisk. Frisk certainly plays a part in it, willingly or not, and Frisk is the one who chooses their own actions, events notwithstanding. So to think that all responsibility lies with Chara is self-centered in that it's egoistical. But he doesn't think saying that will help, either.

Then again, he's fairly certain that nothing he says is going to help. He probably isn't in a position to provide real help in the first place.

Then what can he do? What can he do other than speak his mind and make sure he's there when he's needed?

"I think you're giving yourself a little too much credit." He leans one hip against the counter, arms loosely crossed over his rib cage. "Frisk also has something to do with their situation."

Frisk has determination, which means that they aren't simply a passive player in their own lives. At least, that's how Souji understands determination. There are a lot of things in their world that don't mean what they mean in his.

"That's what Frisk says, too," they answer dully. "Yet they do not want anything they said or did after they lost their determination to count. That wasn't really them. They couldn't help it." Isn't supposed to count when they agree to sever their partnership. Don't hold them to their word, because Frisk wasn't responsible for their choices. That was you tricking them, Chara. Manipulating them. Forcing them to do bad things they would never otherwise do.

"I don't know what anyone expected from Halloween, either. Suppose I, through some miraculous act of God, did not attempt to destroy myself. Or I did the responsible thing and let myself kill myself. What then?" A little more EXP for that LV 19 abomination. It continues to seek the only thing it is there for. More kills. More LOVE. "If I were to run into you and kill you, then what would you think when you came back?"

Unnatural red eyes. Creepy smile. Green and yellow sweater. Couldn't even plead the subtle differences that other Charas had back when visitors had flooded Wonderland. No changes in facial features or height or build or hairstyle. It had been them. Exactly them. "I have already killed before. Would anyone really believe it at all if I said it wasn't me? Even I wouldn't be able to convince myself that wasn't me. It's impossible to pretend I couldn't possibly be at fault for Halloween."

"You don't know where Frisk ends and you start."

That was Souji's best guess. Frisk had told him once that the two of them had shared a body for awhile, but all Souji could liken it to was the many Personas who shared his consciousness - were his consciousness.

"Do you think this was inevitable? If Halloween hadn't happened, then what? What if Frisk had had a different reaction? What if you had?"

It was just what ifs. But it feels to him, who wasn't there for the entire situation, that what Chara's saying is a lot of what ifs, too.

...They don't. They should know, they should have an easy time of it. The one person who knew them better than anyone sure did.

You're nothing alike. Chara wasn't really the greatest person. While, Frisk... you are the type of friend I wish I always had.

But even so, they're still falling back on that uncertainty. That confusion. Wondering if there were really two people inside of that one body, wondering if they really did divide back into their own former selves. Who are they, if there's still a Chara dwelling somewhere within Frisk? Can they really be sure they're Frisk's Chara, and not one of the million other interchangeable Fallen Humans? If you answer to any name that's called, six letters or less, then what gives you the right to say you belong to one identity in particular?

...It shouldn't be this hard. Just... break away from them. Sever the threads. Let Frisk be content with whatever's still within them, whatever lurking whisper that turned their eyes redder and made them speak in a red voice.

"It still would have come to this," they insist. "I've got no shortage of evidence. A real solid pattern. There's - there's nobody I've gotten close to that hasn't been ruined by it. I'm not exaggerating or being dramatic. Everyone who convinced themself they cared about me just suffered for it."

A family up on the surface who didn't ask for a child, who didn't want a child, who could have followed their dreams or gone on exotic vacations or afforded so many nice things if they didn't have this little burden ruining their life. A family underground who was broken into pieces by this venomous little parasite. A shattered marriage, a mother who lost too many children, a father with blood on his hands. A brother who died, who became trapped in an isolated, empty nightmare, longing for some sense of purpose behind his endless existence.

...Frisk.

They - they toss in a laugh. Seems like the right time to laugh. It's funny, right? You're doing fine if you can still smile. You're okay if you can laugh about your circumstances. "I wasn't kidding when I told you I'm a villain, you know. I've made a lifelong career out of being the conflict in everyone's stories. Why would Frisk be different, right?"

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eatsyourscience - 2016-12-26 21:06 (UTC) - Expand

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Open!

Diner, 12/16

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