entrancelogs | It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you!

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It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Friday October 27th - Tuesday October 31st
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch all for the Horrible Memory Truth Event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, everyone's entire room will be replaced with a memory playing on loop. They will likely recognize the moment as soon as they see it – it is a moment they remember as the worst moment of their entire lives. It could be a memory from home or something that happened in Wonderland. Lengths of the memories will vary, but they will find that these are not memories they can merely watch – they can step into these memories and attempt to make changes to them, and the memories will be long enough that they have time to make changes (though no more than 24 hours). However, anyone who tries will find that it is futile. No matter what you do or how hard you try, the outcome is always exactly the same somehow. No changes you make will prevent that horrible outcome. It just happens over and over and over again no matter what you do.

On top of that, perhaps complicating any attempts to make changes, everyone will be forced to be honest for the duration of the event. No lies or half-truths are allowed, and filters will be gone for the entire five days. If something bothers someone then they will blurt it out, regardless of whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, and no one will be able to simply keep quiet when they have something to say. They must be truthful and honest with every word they say.

This is a catch-all log for all of your Worst Memory needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and Room Number + Floor for character rooms, or just location if you're making a top level for a public place in the mansion (like the tea rooms or the kitchen) so people can see if there's already a thread available. And here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I could. But I didn't know them best."

No.

No.

No, no, no, don't you dare. Their eyes widen subtly, almost imperceptibly, a flash of deep scarlet tinged with absolute terror glimmering just beneath those hooded lids, and swiftly, they redirect. Seize upon the nearest thing, the central truth that's wholly dependent on them, because their secrets are the only ones they're allowed to spill. That's how it is.

"I killed you too, you know."

He still doesn't know. You know this, though. You know what he lacks.

"I know, you have told me. More than once. Dozens of times? Hundreds? Some number, one which defies counting. And then you... rework the timeline and you haven't done it, and then you may not kill me, as my encounter with you, when you spared me after my attempts to kill you, which as you say, I have successfully done, although I have no recollection of having done it. Am I right?"

"Yes." It's nearly silent but for the hiss of their closing teeth, the s slipping out beneath the shadow of lowered gaze and the fringe of bangs and the shivering stillness of shoulders on their miserable, sloped, downward axis.

"You never live." They know - know that in the very worst one, too, he doesn't make it. Who would? They haven't seen it. Just the dialogue, peppered with percentage signs and sputters of code they don't understand. But the ending there is...inevitable. Isn't it? "Not except in the very best one. There's no ending where you make it out unless everyone does."

Asgore takes the teabag out of his teacup and sets it, in a sad little lump, on the saucer that (of course) he is using.

"Well, that seems fair. I could have left. Any time I wanted to. But I didn't. I stayed. To eek out murder by inches, instead of at once. The six died by my decree. My hands. Through my denial of Mercy. It seems fair. Of course I should be the last one out."

"You kill yourself."

They can't seem to shut up. They can't even do the one thing they should be good at. They can't even shut up. Just stop talking, Frisk, if you can't do anything right!

"Sometimes I Spare you. And you say it's okay, because we can live like a family. And then you say...no. It's just a fantasy. You'd rather give me your SOUL than pretend."

"Ah."

Ah.

"Ah."

He takes the cup and carefully takes a sip, then sets it back down again. There's a delicate chinking sound of china tapping against china.

"That sounds like something I would do. Who ever could stop me from doing whatever destructive thing I set my heart out to do? You, the once. Toriel, perhaps, but she abandoned me. I did not make that decision, although I know the me who would have very well."

“Does it bother you?”

They’re not sure it would. Not if he just...expected it. If he knew what he was capable of. And he did. There’s hardly any surprise there at all; just s calm acceptance for what can be, and what was.

“Are you worried you might do it again?”

"It bothers me less today than it might have when I first arrived here. I have already died once here. It was not purposefully. I did not intend it. I would not wish to repeat the experience, especially with the knowledge that... at least from reading things on the network, that multiple deaths may result in a total loss of control, that I would go on living, but not be the one in control of my actions. I recognize that much that has happened in my life has been out of my own control; I can control my reactions to these events, however. I choose to continue to choose."

He pauses slightly, considering a sudden thought, and then continues, because he must.

"Are you worried that you are likely to murder everyone in Wonderland just because you feel like it?"

"Sometimes," says Frisk.

It's not really that simple, they know. Are they likely to murder everyone just because they can? Maybe not just because they can. But...because of the siren call of LOVE, of the desire to not have to think or feel that which might press over their SOUL and stifle them into stillness.

That seems preferable, at times, to feeling anything at all.

"I think that's a good thing," says the large goatish father-type Monster.

"Unlike me, you, the you here, have been the one to make that choice. I have only had the one opportunity to do so, and did not. But you've had... dozens of times? I am not certain. A great many number of times, and sometimes you choose that path. So, you are worried. It means you are aware of the... whatever the attraction is for you... but are also concerned about its consequences. It's too much to ask you to bear, but bear it you must, for as long as we have here."

They're tired of consequences.

No one likes consequences. They know that. That doesn't make them special. It doesn't make them anything but another human who runs away from facing the truth of what they are and what they've done. How is it a good thing, that they've made that choice? Couldn't they just...always choose to do the opposite?

"But I might choose wrong," says Frisk, slow and drawn. "What if I choose wrong?"

"... death is not permanent here. You would likely draw the ire of all whom you killed, and their friends, once they knew you had done this. You would have to kill everyone, more than once, without dying the five times yourself. You would almost certainly fail."

He holds his teacup in his hands, not drinking from it.

"So, there you are. Remain in some semblance of peace, or come to a violent end. I really see little else."

"Sometimes I think I deserve that too."

A bit more candid than is typical, but Wonderland has elected to have them speak their mind. And so, for once, they aren't silent. They aren't standing there solemnly with their head bowed, letting other people talk. They aren't able to shuffle it aside with blanket apologies and forgiveness that they apparently don't mean.

God, but why don't they mean it?

"You probably do," says Asgore.

"But you are not the only one who does. I, also, deserve that end. Many others as well, if we were to know more about them, would probably likewise deserve it. But we rarely get what we deserve. I think if we did, the world would have far fewer Monsters or Humans in it."

Asgore finally drinks from his cup of tea.

The look he receives in turn is one of muted alarm, one eye peeping out from beneath the heaviness of those lids to regard him in startled indignation. It's almost like...no. No, he's -

Is he right? Is he right? Or have they just gotten so used to hearing people argue that they don't deserve it that they simply don't know what to do when someone finally agrees?

"So what do I deserve?" It's too much of a plea, and it isn't fair to him. It isn't fair to put the weight of this concept of judgment on someone like him.

But better it be him.

Better it be someone like him than someone like Sans.

"Nothing," he says, after several moments of awkward stillness. "Everything."

"I kill you; you kill me. You kill nobody. You kill everyone. Nearly every Monster in the Underground kills you. You escape alone. Everyone escapes with you."

Asgore looks down at the strangely fixating child in front of him; he feels a sort of sympathy with this human -- a familiarity of purposes at cross-ends.

"The wheel is come full circle. You deserve both nothing and everything. You are a product of the environment I created. I am a product of the environment created by my son's murder. I am guilty. You are guilty. I am the plaything of fate. You are the plaything of fate. You deserve to be free. You deserve to die. Whatever it is that you truly deserve, I cannot give it to you."

Some part of them wants to rail at that. You're cheating. Isn't it too simple to say - to say that you can't really know what you deserve, because it's so varied, because everything spun apart and fragmented in a way that makes it impossible to truly blame someone for what happened?

Or are they just too eager to find someone to blame?

The back of their hand creeps up to the corner of one eye, rubbing at the streak of warmth that his words have engendered, intentionally or no.

"Then - " The word stutters and clips into silence, and they have to try again. "Then what...can we give each other?"

Asgore sets the mug of tea down on the counter top, and looks at the child across from him. "The only thing I can give you is my apology for everything I put you through, without expectation of anything given in return. I am sorry for having hurt you, and for having created a world where Monsters wished to harm you and other humans like you, Frisk."

It seemed somehow a relief to say it, but also as if it were a fait accompli, the thing he had to say no matter what the situation demanded. He supposed, perhaps, it was. He seemed unable to speak half-truths and falsehoods over the last few days.

It's not really his fault, in the end. It doesn't all boil down to the actions of one monster. Perhaps he sparked that aggression, but...maybe it was always going to end up that way. There are all kinds of words that nearly get tangled in their throat, about Chara, about the tapes, about a plan, about the way it all went wrong, but there's a lump there, swollen and heavy, that makes speaking all but impossible.

They swallow, and try to breathe.

And try to answer.

"I'm sorry too. For proving you right, some of the time."

Asgore walks over to the marshmallow nubbin and sets his hand down gently on the nubbin's marshamallow-shaped shoulder.

"Shh, it's alright, child. I forgive you. It's... a hard place the two of us are in, isn't it?."

I forgive you, he says, and he means it. He means it because everyone says what they mean. The weight of his hand, the great fuzzy paw closed over their shoulder, is gentle, and it's almost...it's almost exactly the way Chara says it is. It feels the way a dad should feel.

They reach up, unconsciously, to grasp at it, and squeeze tight.

"Thank you," Frisk whispers. "Thank you for being sorry, too."

When Asgore says the words a feeling comes over him that he can't quite... put his large, fuzzy finger on. He's not sure what it means. It feels relief-adjacent. A bit like, somewhere, a door opened. Or it shut. One of the two. Maybe both. He blinks away a tear or two.

"I'm... usually sorry, you know. About many things. It's hardly a new feeling for me. I have had many years to practice it, and you few... though we've both seemed to learn it the hard way, haven't we?"

"Not a lot of people were. Back home." There's no way to prevent it from rising out from their throat once they've thought it. "Not a lot of people were ever sorry. Or...not a lot of people said it. Just you. You and, and Alphys."

Is that why they've had such difficulty falling away from the pair of them? Is that why they couldn't quite succeed in levering their sins against their backs? Because it's hard to pile the weight of someone's transgressions on their shoulders when they've lived with those crimes for longer than they have with you.

"Ah, well, I had taught them to not be so... sorry... out of my own bad example, and by not speaking what I truly felt. But, I believe that there were probably many monsters whom you met along your journey who did not wish to fight you. The, uh, the Temmies... probably did not really fight you... and others? Surely others did not fight you. It wasn't... everyone in the Underground, was it?"

Asgore does not know for certain how far the madness born of his inaction went, but he had to hope that it hadn't totally infected the Underground.

"Almost everyone." It's true, there were people who didn't, here and there. There were monsters who apologized, monsters who felt sorry for their actions. There were monsters afraid to FIGHT, like Whimsun. Monsters who regretted FIGHTing, like Toriel. Monsters who didn't FIGHT, but just...put them in the position to get hurt easily, like Alphys.

Those who didn't had their reasons. Very few of those reasons were out of any sense that they were Sparing the human for their SOUL.

One kid with a striped shirt and an eager grin, they...

One kid.

"Most of them felt bad about it after, but a lot of them tried."

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cw mention of suicide

cw: Undertale

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oh hi I'm finally off of hiatus

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Re: \o/

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