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

Entry tags:

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

"We live in a world with prophecies, Frisk. Some of us surely do exist on purpose." Hard to argue fate doesn't exist when your power is built entirely on the resolve to defy it. Hard to claim there's no such thing as preordained roles when there are only a finite number of outcomes you can have. Only two choices at this junction: FIGHT or MERCY? Yes or no? Befriend or don't?

"Asriel did." The angel who has seen the surface. The one destined to make the Underground go empty. The true prince of this world's future. Even in a world where Frisk falls first, the role he plays in the universe's machinations doesn't change. He can certainly say that nobody ever told him he was an accident, ha ha!

Well, except maybe Alphys.

"I just... want something that I can believe in," they admit. "I want just one thing that can be... secure. Absolute. Real. I'm so sick of the rug always being yanked out from under our feet. Maybe it's unreasonable, but I don't want to be a series of blanks strung together by hints. I don't want to be pieces."

Is it unreasonable? They've gotten this far without stability or security or anchors. They endured a surface life that was senseless and chaotic, fraught with shifting goalposts and fluctuating rules and tempers that exploded with terrifying randomness. They got through the underground as a faceless, unwelcome whisper, as a self-proclaimed avatar of progression. They cracked open the bones of the world and saw for themselves just how constrained and finite their choices truly were, but they kept going regardless.

"I know we're both terribly desperate to have one thing, at least - just one! - that we can hold onto. It's not fair to keep asking you who Chara is, who I am, because I know the only answer you can give is 'I don't know." Even so, despite that..."

They still... don't want to be an unknowable nothing, ha ha. Don't want for none of it to mean anything at all. They aren't bandaged fingers or a talent for the ukulele or a room that's halfway plastered with notes and drawings. They aren't a tendency to go for the hands first, or eyes that have lost their precious brown warmth. They're... what? Magic that still, after more than a year, is nothing but absence? A tiny white scar on the shell of one ear? A third of a room that still, two years later, looks as blank and uninhabited as it always did. A template that has not deviated from that blank slate at all. No wonder this is the conclusion the world provides. No wonder the answer to "what am I" is "nothing, so don't think about it too much." The monkey paw curls one of its fingers in, and you get what you've been wishing for!

"Well... so be it. It's childish petulance to try and argue the fundamental reality, is it not? We just have to find strength in our hollowness. Surely there can be comfort in chaos, if you try hard enough. We can shape just about anything to appeal to us."

It's not unreasonable. And this isn't...it isn't fair, really, that they can't do more. That they can't give them more. They're supposed to be Partners, Soulmates, hands clasped as they stand at the edge of the cauldron of Hell, and they're supposed to always be together in all of this. They're supposed to be...

...they're supposed to be getting better at this "supposed to be" stuff.

Where one of them pulls desperately at every interest they can to fill the blankness they know must be there, the other works so very hard to sustain that blankness and smooth it over everything that might define them. A chocolate bar pinned between the corners of a mattress. A rocket launcher hidden away where no one can see it. A chemistry set that they're...what? Too ashamed to let anyone see?

"There are a lot of people that care," they say at last. "Shepard. Mettaton. Dipper. Mabel. People who do love you, and care about you, and didn't know the person you were before you died. Do you really think they're just in love with nothing?"

Their smile is weak and fluttering like a candle's stilling flame.

"I don't know how to give you an answer. I'm still learning it myself, and even if I did know...I'm twelve. Fourteen, I guess, but even that feels like a lie sometimes."

What else do they say that won't be something simpering and saccharine, the kind of thing Chara said they'd hate? Liking chocolate. Liking puzzles. Liking to learn about things like stars and chemicals and the way the world works. Liking to learn big words that Frisk stumbles over. Isn't that the kind of answer they'd hate?

"If I'd never put on that sweater," says Frisk, quietly, "and if I'd never...if none of what happened on Halloween even happened...would you be asking this now?"

Would this be plaguing them the way it is now? Would this be ringing in their skull? Would this be some kind of inconsolable nightmare?

Is this all your fault?

Are they in love with nothing? Did Shepard love the LV19 Chara that tried to kill her? What does anyone even see in... whatever they are? They've never been that great at recognizing any redeeming qualities within themself whatsoever, even at the best of times. Look at all the trouble they've been pouring out onto Frisk's shoulders! They're not that great at recognizing any qualities within themself. Everything's still mired in a white haze, obscuring the true shape of things, muddling things with its endless static.

It's time to sit up again. Lying on the ground in a public space, too, is childish petulance. They have no excuse to not act appropriately, not when Frisk is...

They ask Chara a question.

A cruel question to ask when neither of them is capable of anything but the raw truth, that one.

They bite the inside of their cheek. They can feel an answer in the pit of their stomach. Can't be sure whether it's the objectively right answer, or the objectively wrong one - the one that will just hurt Frisk, will just feed back into that poisonous idea that they had to vanish so a better Frisk could come take their place. Can't assume they'd have the luxury of an "I don't know what I think," given how rarely they land on that particular answer. Can't dodge a straight answer like Frisk can, but then... they were never the one that was best at dodging, right?

Silence is starting to burn. They'd rather burn than risk a truth that might hurt Frisk, but for all their determination, can they just ignore the iron band branding itself into their throat forever? Chara bites their lip. Chara ducks their head, hides behind the veil of their bangs. Just... they just have to reach for a truth that they can say. Try to move laterally.

"I," they begin, delicate, careful, deliberate, "was beginning to buy into the idea that things were different here." True. Toeing a line, but still not dangerous. They respond to the guidance that the world places before them. They always have. External forces are what define Chara - literally, ha ha! Name the fallen human!

"I... wanted to get better." Also true. What makes the idea of being doomed so scary? Hope. Lack of resignation. Even if they hadn't always known how to go about it or really always tried their utmost or completely believed it possible, they'd wanted it. A Chara who's allowed to admit they can taste chocolate. A clock that begins to move again. A Frisk and Asriel who can grow up happy, can move beyond this aching, unknit wound. A Chara who, greedily, starts wanting to be more than a cautionary tale, a sword of Damocles, a Jacob Marley. Someone who's certain that being caught yearning for things outside their role is weakness, but then actually lets themself start pining for stability, identity, the luxury of being certain they belong somewhere.

Always were a rank hypocrite at their core, huh?

"I think I still want to," they add, trying to keep pushing their answer along this tangent, away from the question. Their voice wavers, and that invisible band of iron clamps harder. Wonderland, perhaps, knows what they're trying to do.

Try again.

"You were never the problem. The truth would have made itself known eventually, one way or another. Not like I can - we can't really be positive what I would be doing right now, anyway! Any answer I give will just be baseless speculation." There! Found it! Took longer than they should have, blabbered out an utterly unnecessary number of words reaching for it, but it's a safe, solid truth. "We can't reset, so we don't know what we'd be doing if we'd tried things differently!"

They're trying. They know they are. They're trying not to lever the words so they hurt, trying not to press them in too sharply and too harshly and too painfully. But the underpinnings of the way they speak, slow and deliberate, too deliberate, too careful, have made themselves clear regardless.

Look at what you've done.

It was an error. They know it was. It was an error, and it was one they never should have committed in the first place. It was something they never meant to have happen. It was something that made blame difficult - that made it hard to sort a guilty party upon which everyone could happily pin the blame, and be done with it. A dark voice humming in someone's skull, a fallen child, a demonic presence extolling the virtues of LOVE and EXP. Mark the divide, and mark it well. Separate the fire and brimstone from the waxen wings, and surely that will make it all better. The sins will come home to roost and someone will come away with the consequences and everyone can walk away happy, pleased that there is justice in the world, that a set of scales exists and that the wicked were punished for their misdeeds.

Who's the wicked there? Frisk, for putting on the sweater? Chara, for hating what they saw? Sans, for trying to interfere? Alphys, for building the machine that sucked them dry? Wonderland, as a collective entity, as a sentient loci, for facilitating the event in the first place?

It doesn't matter, in the end. It doesn't matter who is truly guilty. What matters is that they were starting to believe that things could change, that they were not merely a set of blank dashes upon which someone could input a name pulled from the depths of the world's marrow, that things could truly get better.

They were starting to think it, and that night - that threw everything out of balance. It affirmed what Chara had finally begun to believe wasn't wholly true. It bled corruption into the one thing they could hold to themself, and of course, of course they would take that as a sign they felt they never should have ignored.

The tip of one fingernail digs into the rusted red of a scab at their kneecap - some bash or scrape another that healed clumsily, improperly, one whose etiology they can't recall, and they pick at it slowly, absent, unthinking.

"You can tell me that I made a mistake," says Frisk. "I'm supposed to be okay with making mistakes now."

They're supposed to see a mistake, an error that they've made, and account for it and learn from it instead of deciding it makes them - irredeemable.

It doesn't make anything better. None of it does. But - "If I'd known that it would do this to you...I never would have done it."

But that's the hardest part of being what they are now, right?

The not knowing. The not being able to predict the best course of action. The not being able to mitigate the damage they themself inflict on others.

The not knowing.

"I know," they answer quietly. "You've never enjoyed hurting people. You never wanted to. You just... you keep being put into situations that push you into it." And isn't that a fun, delightful quirk of fate too? Isn't it just so zany, the way the world takes the most good kids they know and railroads them toward pushing back, then uses that exact reaction to tell them that they're not good anymore? Don't think of it as really me, or I'll never be deserving of love! If you can't be an angel, then why even exist at all?

"Please don't pick," they mumble, knowing full well that, too, is rank hypocrisy.

"I don't want this to be something you flagellate yourself over. I don't want you thinking that this is because of you. It was Chara, not Frisk, who was LV19 and hungry for more. It was Chara, not Frisk, who used a SPELL. It was Chara, not Frisk, who made you think we wanted you to disappear. All you did was put a shirt. You said it yourself: your only crime was wearing a costume." They don't blame Asriel for the plan, after all. His only crime was picking flowers. He's not guilty of anything else - it was another party entirely who had control when he stepped across the barrier. Frisk, surely, can understand. You're not a bad person because a bad person took you over for a little bit, right?

"If you're already over this... if you've moved past it... then it's important to me that you remain over this, Frisk. I don't want to drag you down again. I don't want my inability to move past where I started to hurt you or sabotage the growing up that you've done."

"That isn't fair to say that. It's not fair to me and it's not fair to you." They sit up a little straighter. Obligingly, they let their knees drop so the temptation to paw at the scabs there falls away somewhat, and their hands drop to their sides to brace against the roughness of the rug underfoot.

They hate that they can be like this, now. Gaze sharper, more astute. Direct in a way they never were before. It's pointed, and it's pointed in a way that always hurts people.

"We've both done bad things. It wasn't just you or just me. It can't have been. Not knowing what we know."

No chocolate. (You took the key and put it on your phone's key-chain.) (I unlocked the chain.) You felt your sins crawling on your back.

Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.

A little bit of carelessness? Or something more?

"If we're both doomed," says Frisk, the words dropping in pitch, in volume, until they're almost whispered, paired with thin crimson slits peeking out over the ridges of their cheeks, "then we're both doomed."

Ha. Red eyes, open and resolute. A voice with the spreading sharpness of an asterisk, like its words have the power to make things reality. Directness that borders on defiance. Would the Frisk who woke up in Wonderland two years ago look on this and recognize it? Would they see Frisk, or would this rattle them like a red voice Chara pretends they can't use? Somehow, in the span of just one day, that bed felt entirely too small for them now. Maybe growth sneaks up on you. (Asterisk-you.)

"Golly, I hope this doesn't turn out to be unhealthy," they answer, with that wry little self-deprecating smile that lets the world know they're in on the joke. "I suppose if Halloween made one thing clear, then it was that you're never truly going to be separate from the vengeful ghost rattling around in your head." It, apparently, can still peel their fragile identity away at any moment. It can still scribble their name out. It can take the brown from their eyes and leave a vile stain behind in its place. "Best friends forever, with emphasis on the forever part, no?" Inseparable in the sort of sense you wouldn't really expect people to be.

"...You really were over it, though, weren't you? You were getting better." The hard lesson they'd taken from this obstacle had already been figured out. They'd come to terms with the idea they didn't need to be perfect, that mistakes just sort of happen sometimes and it's nobody's fault. It hadn't splintered their identity. But then... not being there must be easier than being in two places at once? Hm, no, that's not a very funny observation at all. Can't get a punchline from that. Doesn't really lend itself to jokes the way a doomed friendship does.

"I don't know if I'm getting better." That's the sad truth of it. They're not sure if there's a beter for them. It doesn't feel like it, most days. The kind of desperate haze of optimism they once clung to has faded to shreds, to torn-through tatters, like a dusty curtain letting in too many fingers of sun.

"I don't know if I ever was. I've learned to stop thinking about things sometimes, but that doesn't really make them go away. It just means they come back later."

Like now. It doesn't fix them. It doesn't make them better.

It just separates them, isolates them. Becomes another bad, dirty thing that they shouldn't be turning over and over in their head, so they sequester it, pile it under the proverbial bed, and stop thinking about it. Just stop thinking about it.

"I think..." No. They have to say this right, this time. Stop being so stupid that they can't string the words together in the right way. "I think it...it really could have been anyone. If I'd dressed up as anyone else, it would be...some fake person. Something that had all those pieces pulled out and stretched and, and - 's like the, it's the funhouse mirror. I'm not good at..."

They don't have the words for it. They're not making any sense. Just shut up, Frisk.

That's... not what getting better is, huh. Please don't think about this anymore. Let them go. Chara's been gone for a long time. That's... hm. That's just turning it into one of those Surface things. You're not supposed to talk about them, or you'll make people mad at you. Have they been making that worse, they wonder? Using "is this a Surface kind of don't talk about it" as an excuse? Letting things stay bottled up instead of giving Frisk someone to share them with?

"You are getting better," they say, and because they can say it, that proves it's true, right? "You hold your head higher than you used to. You say no more often. You're getting better at telling people it's not okay when things aren't, well, okay." They... Chara isn't sure, in truth, if they can see that. It's hard to notice things about yourself sometimes, ha ha. Growth sneaks up on asterisk-you.

They're... focusing on the first half of what Frisk said. Kind of glossing over the second part, the part they're really struggling to get across. Frisk is probably aware of that. But then, they're probably aware, too, that Chara takes action into account far more than words. Anyone can just say things, right? Anyone could be lying. Anyone could be totally convinced the contradictory, fake thing they're saying is true, because you tricked them into believing it. They can claim that any costume worn would have been an untrue, exaggerated form of what it was really meant to be, but... Chara didn't turn into a hellish, violent version of their stupid embarrassing fursona, right? Frisk didn't turn into a wrathful, blood-hungry parody of a ghost when they donned their first costume. Should they assume that for some reason, because it was Chara instead of a generic ghost, it's suddenly an exception? It's just that one time was mysteriously fated to be inaccurate, no matter what costume it was, for no reason?

It's just words, with no real evidence at all.

But they don't... they don't want to keep hurting Frisk with this.

"I think you don't have to worry about this so much," they answer. "I think what's important to me - to both of us - is that you don't have to resign yourself to being doomed, Frisk. You don't have to linger on regrets. You've come so far already. You have it in you to keep moving forward. You've overcome everything that's tried to drag you down so far. Despite the world's best efforts and despite the occasional setbacks and relapses, you survive. You progress. You have learned from this, and because of it, you have more faith in your ability to be loved despite your imperfections. Is that not the most important part of this? Maybe... it's the only part of this that really matters?"

It sounds unspeakably after-school-special to phrase that as a question, good god. Nonetheless, they phrase it as a question, because they don't really want to test if someone as stuck in the past as them believes that's really true or not.

They're doing better. Chara thinks they're doing better. They're...they really believe it.

That in and of itself is enough to lift the corners of their lips slightly, a warmth like another SOUL cupped around theirs blossoming in their chest with an unfurling scarlet light. Their eyes hood, crinkling at the edges, and their hand clenches at the material of sweater at their chest in a scrunched-up moment of something almost like pride.

They're changing the subject. But they don't have any reason to keep clawing open the old wound like this, do they?

"It's not enough that I'm just...supposed to be untouched from this." Their hands drift to their kneecaps. The motion stops, abortive, and creeps over to the threads of their sweater instead, picking at the fraying edges of their sleeves. That's better. Less destructive.

"I want you to be too. I want you to know that you can be loved, too, despite your imperfections. That you are."

"I might have to work on nailing down 'you' before I'm ready to establish the rest," they joke. What's even "their" imperfection, and what's just a narrative function that avatar had to fulfill? If they can be replicated down to the last memory and mannerism, then those imperfections... what's even yours at all?

"You've got a bit of a head start on me, Frisk, but that isn't something to feel bad about. It's the opposite, in fact." It's the warm moment of a sincere smile, it's the switch to toying with the hems of your sleeves instead of picking scabs open. It's a SOUL that's still whole and radiant and unblemished, despite everything. "You shouldn't have to feel like you can't be secure in something until everyone else is. You should be able to celebrate your successes without feeling guilty that you're celebrating yourself."

Why, after all, wouldn't Frisk be worth celebrating? The crowded red wagon that had been brought to a padded room months and months ago had been full of those wonderful, beloved things, hadn't it? Gifts from people who taught them that it was a mistake to hate humanity. A copy of a beloved DVD. A package of twizzlers. Soda (which isn't sickly liquid at all, it turns out) poured into a glass and garnished with a curly straw, because cans can have jagged metal edges. The supplies needed to draw and write, to produce more of the creative works that had been painted on the walls with dear friends, to bring home more things to make their side of the room uniquely theirs.

Bandages. The Rainbow Connection plucked out on ukulele strings. Rolling a human character for DD&MD. (Putting up with the least creative member of this wretched trio of determined kids drawing a stupid immature furry fancharacter for them, because it's no fun if they aren't represented too, and look, one of their ears has a heart-shaped mark.)

"I can't... necessarily promise that I know that, Frisk. I have a lot of catching up to do before I reach where you are." They were never quite the example who shows how it's supposed to be done. Not too surprising that the Shittier Knockoff of Frisk would be a bit behind them on the stairway to self-actualization, right? Maybe that's inescapable narrative function, too. Maybe they're just being bitter. They kind of do that a lot. "I haven't grasped any of these ideas about - that maybe loving can be a bad thing. I haven't made sense of what happened like everyone did. I'm starting at a bit of a lower bar, but... if you start at the bottom, at least it isn't hard to figure out which direction you need to go."

Can't stand still forever. A strange voice starts insisting you're the future of... the future of something if you try to lie in bed and ignore that box of assorted shoes.

Maybe they can't be better, but they can be... less worse. Maybe they can't understand themself, let alone accept themself, but... "No matter where I stand, I know, at least, that my life is less hollow with you in it."

Is this another painful jag of someone else's expectations, foisted across their neck, a throat just parallel enough to be their own? Is this wanting them to be something they don't want to be? The future of humans and monsters, the demon that comes when people call its name, his best friend, the increase of a number, something that isn't really human and therefore just pretending to be one, someone who won't EVER be happy...a long, long list of things people keep telling Chara they are, and not enough asking who Chara wants to be.

Is wanting them to be okay, an acceptable version of okay that isn't just moldering in the dirt, another hurtful expectation they won't ever be able to separate themself from?

"Do you think someday you can get there?" To...wherever there is? To a point where they can be a little more okay with being here, and a little less guilty over the way the world has spun its tale around them?

Do things really get better?

"I've never been very good at visualizing the long-term." Is that being morbid, considering their life story? Even with no choice but to tell the truth, they can't seem to just deliver an answer that isn't dark or sharpened into that self-deprecating, jaded edge. "I don't know what I'll end up being at all."

It'd been daunting enough to think time might start moving again. It's daunting enough to try and find a definite answer for who Chara is now, let alone someday.

"But I don't think anyone can say where I'll end up, can they? You can't define that for certain. I tried to force you to supply an answer for me, and that was... it was pretty unfair of me, actually. I'm not surprised that "I don't know" was the only answer you could give, too." It's a pretty elusive concept, existence and the role you're meant to play in the universe, so it's not exactly a light burden to just drop on a person's shoulders. Can't expect folks to just be carrying the meaning of life up their sleeve or something!

"I... went this long without gaining more LOVE, though." The EXP they've gathered won't be going away. There's no easy out from those consequences. You wear the lives you've taken for the rest of your days. But they're not... they're not LV19 yet. "I think I care about you, so I know that I do care about something other than... you know. Senseless mass murder. Sans told me the lesson I was supposed to take from it. How I was so busy only thinking of myself, that I didn't care that I was hurting everyone else. I let that be more important than caring about you, and it just... I... I don't want any of that to ever happen again. So, I know that I've learned from this."

Those are good things. Right? That's some evidence of somewhere to start. There's a foundation to build from, right there. This isn't all self-pity and tragedy and flagellation.

"I won't get worse. I have not forgotten I promised you that I would try."

Is it patronizing to say something like...like I'm proud of you? Is it fair? They've learned from this and taken things away, and taken lessons away from Sans no less. They've not advanced any further than they have, and the advancements they have made - those were made in self-defense, or for Frisk's protection, weren't they?

"I wish I did have an answer." That, too, is just as true as everything else they've been made to say. "I wish I could tell you that...this is how things should be, or that you're someone who's too special to be copied and made into something else. I don't really know for sure."

But if they could begin to be even half of what you think of them...

"But I do know that I'm glad that you're here. I didn't treat you fairly, when you first came here. I treated you like something to be afraid of, like you were my responsibility. I didn't understand what you meant to me then."

They didn't understand a lot of things, it turned out. It took time. And it wasn't easy.

"But I don't ever want to forget what you mean to me now."

Maybe then they could learn how to love
like you.

"Well, on the bright side... even though I am a completely hollow, replicable nonperson, if Wonderland ever does destroy me completely and replace me with another of its summoned copies, you won't have to say goodbye any of that, right? You won't actually lose me at all."

Maybe that's... laughing it off a little too hard? Not funny. The kind of humour that actually just makes people feel worse. Instead of conveying "see, this isn't such a big deal, we can get over this," it might just convey "I'm mocking your efforts to fix the problem." They never were too great at knowing when to QUIT.

"If it can make a Chara who has all my memories, then they'll remember getting to know you, too, I mean. If I ever..." If they disappear again, then you won't have to miss them or go through the trouble of starting all over again on the "not treating them like a terrible consequence" thing!!

Okay, yeah, that's definitely not going to cheer anyone up.

"They'll probably love you, too."

Every Chara that Wonderland has summoned, they're positive, has loved Frisk, for all the fearful weight that word may carry.

"Maybe it is just narrative function inherent to every fallen human ever named, but I think if there's one thing that's always been constant, then it must be that "Chara" is always trying to look out for you. It doesn't need a definition of its own. It doesn't need things to be arranged so you can't live without it. It just... it's enough that you have memories that you can cherish, you know? It's enough if your journey was a little easier to bear."

So why keep going in circles looking for lofty concepts like proof of identity or a reason to live? You could probably spend your whole life vainly pursuing things like that. It's enough to have this, right? To know you'll be remembered by someone. To know you were there. To just be able to be someone who was their friend for a little while.

Edited (be arrange) 2017-11-29 03:33 (UTC)

"I don't think you're a copy."

It's not a very strong selling point, is it? Not a very winning argument at all. I don't think. There's no indelible proof that they're something incredible and unique, really, aside from what another child thinks in their own SOUL, in their own beaming heart of hearts. They think you're special. They think you're extraordinary. They think that you're someone who deserves to exist in your own right, without ever feeling like you should doubt the validity of your very being.

Things get lost. People get erased. Sometimes they're erased over time, rubbed out bit by bit. A name peeled away like the fading backing from a sticker, a favorite food that just becomes a permanent fixture in someone else's fridge. A best friend who becomes an ideal memory, because the person remembering them misses them so very, very much that all he can recall is the good. Murmurs and whispers of a child long dead, and a name engraved on an empty coffin. Pieces of them get lost over time, and little by little, they fade.

Some people are erased, not because they're forgettable, but because they weren't memorable enough to merit thinking about in the first place. Some people never get a chance to fade, because no one thought to imprint them in their mind. Mist and shadows, slipping in and out of the cracks of whichever lifetime this is or isn't, sliding like oil to the bottom of a pan. Unremembered. Unremarkable.

They don't think they're that easily replaceable. If they are, then - then why would anyone else be any different?

"And I don't want a copy, either." Maybe objectively, it makes things easier, the idea that you could fade away and no one would miss you.

But haven't they lived that reality enough times over?

"What do you want?"

It might be a more helpful question to ask than to keep going in those answerless circles. Pointing out that a copy would be indistinguishable - that maybe they aren't even Chara at all, let alone the Chara that accompanied this Frisk through the Underground - won't go anywhere good. Pointing out that even Chara can't trust that Frisk's Chara hasn't been destroyed and replaced multiple times already, because these worthless memories are effortless to replicate, kind of just gives them an uncomfortable head-spinning unreal feeling if they actually let themself think it too much. Telling Frisk that... maybe they'd have an easier time. Maybe it'd be as instinctual and effortless to figure out as everything else around that recreated Chara had been. But it's just better not to risk it. Better not to fray those fragile threads even further.

So... what do they want?

"What is the Chara you want like? ...What is the Frisk you want like?"

If they're just... if they're nothing, then maybe that just means you can be anything? Strength through negation of self. If they don't have answers already, then... in a perfect world, what would they want for those answers to be?

Maybe that, too, is an "I don't know" kind of thing. Maybe they're still handing Frisk questions it's impossible for anyone to answer.

"I want you to be happy." Is that an impossible ask? Is that an I'm always okay kind of answer? It's a lie that won't work, in a scenario such as this one. "I want you to know that you can't be replaced. That you never could be. I don't know how to make that happen, but..."

But that is what they want. No one ever said it had to be a realistic goal, really.

"I want you to feel like it's okay if you want to be something that isn't nothing. You don't just have to have an empty bed, or pretend that you didn't like the chemistry set Mettaton gave you. I want you to be able to feel like you can learn to use magic without being afraid of hurting anyone."

Maybe those goals, too, are unrealistic.

But they've always lived on a plane askew, haven't they? An optimism slightly out of phase. Too sanguine, too unnatural, too unobtainable.

"I don't know how, but I know that I want you to be...you."

Like it's okay if you want to be something that isn't nothing.

They had, once, forgotten what chocolate tasted like. They knew it was something good on a theoretical level. They knew they were supposed to like it. But they had forgotten the experience, had forgotten the why, had been oblivious to how much they'd lost hold of, all until Frisk pulled a chocolate bar from the kitchen and handed it to them.

Their throat had constricted under the weight of a warm, safe memory, and they'd lied and pretended they didn't taste anything at all.

"Demons don't sleep," they'd told Frisk later that same day. Their arrival here had been an endless refrain of I don't need, I don't need, I don't need. Everything had been hidden out of sight, pressed between the wall and mattress or concealed behind drawers, because things you aren't allowed to have will always get taken away.

And now Frisk tells them that they want it to be okay if they don't want to be nothing.

That they've noticed all the hiding places. The conscious grooming of a tidy room, hair an utterly unchanging length, the static, manufactured clean slate of a doll on a shelf. They don't call it out as ridiculous. They don't mock it as tiring edgelord pretension. Of course they don't buy into the thin illusion that Chara cares about nothing, has no ties to speak of, is nothing but function and LOVE and pragmatic purpose.

Chara has to duck their head suddenly, because their throat feels as tight with a welling emotion as if they were remembering chocolate for the first time.

"I don't want to be hollow," they choke out, softly. They can't lie about it. Not here, not now, not like this. "I want to know who Chara is, too. I don't want to be resigned. I don't want it to be such a hard question."

Of course it's not as simple as then don't be. If it was, they would have already done it. It's not as simple as requiring someone's arbitrary permission. It's being backed up against a wall, with no option, with no choice but to tear into yourself to escape the corner you forced yourself into because it was better that way, neater that way, cleaner that way. Perpetual denial about what you are and what you need to function, because no one can attack you if you leave no part of yourself open.

Just a blank slate, and a lot of pieces of Chara Dreemurr sequestered away. Pressed between mattress and wall, hidden in drawers, buried somewhere that can't be easily seen. Blank white walls, and a silly little cupcake backpack they still turn to, when it's time to run away again.

It's only when there's no room for anything but the flinted truth that the admission can come to light.

"Then let's find them." A small, simple declaration, for a concept that is neither small nor simple. "We can. You can. Because..."

Because you can, you have to?

No.

"Maybe because you don't have to, you can."

Sounds easy, right? No, actually, not at all. Three scabby, dull fragments of SOUL and nothing more. A name on an empty coffin. A drawing of a flower taped to a wall, no signature in its corner. Fragments, tiny and elusive. The parts that were lost are never coming back. Your LV never goes down, because there's no convenient loophole to exploit. The distance you've gathered can't be removed. You've retreated a little further into that pitch-black emptiness. How can you expect to be found?

But despite everything, it doesn't... it doesn't sound impossible.

Chara laughs softly. It's very Frisk, to turn the rules on their ear like that and make their impossible optimism actually seem achievable. Do they even realize how Frisklike their answer is? How distinctive and precious a person they really, truly are.

"I would never get this far without you," they observe, soft laughter still in their voice. There's no change without a catalyst. Someone so used to leaving what they are in other people's hands doesn't know how to start without a push. As hard to convince as Chara is, as skeptical and resigned and stubborn as they are, Frisk is still trying. An irritated, dismissive demand that Chara must just want to be proven right, that nothing's good enough for them, but...

But they deserve more credit than they've gotten. From Chara, from the world, from themself.

"Even if you say you didn't treat me fairly at first... from the very start, you never totally believed that stuff about not tasting or sleeping, did you? You were always looking for something more in me."

There's a lot that wants to come out, at that. They're too quiet, too uncertain, too unable to find a means of truly verbalizing everything at length to truly track it and put it into pieces. Things that aren't easy to name, things like - like how Asriel tore apart the world and built it back together again for their sake, and they wanted to know what kind of person he would have done that for. Things like wondering about why Asgore said they had the same feeling of hope in their eyes. Things like not knowing anything about them besides a handful of tapes they were never supposed to watch and a mess of contradicting threads that never really came together.

Or the relief of finally realizing that a piece of the puzzle had slotted into place; a gap in the narrative they hadn't even registered until it was filled.

"I didn't always understand what you did," they admit, because they must. "Or even...why you did it. But you were someone who saw a happy ending that could only happen without you in it."

Call it obligation. Call it guilt. Call it responsibility. Call it consequences.

Call it love, or LOVE. Or both.

"I guess I don't really know what either of us are yet." It's a bit rueful, paired with a faint lift of one shoulder, a duck of their head, a twitch of the corner of their lips. "But I don't think I would ever have realized any of it without you, either. And - and I'd like to find out with you. If that's okay."

"Of course it's okay. I could never do it alone." Maybe neither of them could. Certainly, neither of them want to do it alone. Haven't they gotten this far by being two halves of a whole? By leaning on each other when they don't have the strength to stand? If they can't see the good and worthwhile things in themselves, then they can at least trust in what their partner sees.

"Isn't that sort of what we do when our SOULs connect?" They ask, fingertips gliding over the smooth painted surface of a tiny wooden heart bound around their wrist. "You can see yourself through my eyes for a bit, when we're tangled like that. God only knows how insufficient words alone are, when it comes to trying to name all the things that make up my soulmate."

Even just calling it "things" feels vague and inaccurate. It's more than objects, than shallow preferences. It's the whole, complete worlds they see within Frisk. In things like this, in the way they can keep pushing through the unknowns and the I-can'ts to find something to hold onto. Again and again they suffer; again and again they get back on their feet. They will not be defeated. They won't let their spirit be destroyed.

"Maybe, for now... those glimpses are enough. Until we have ground under our own feet, maybe it's okay to keep each other afloat like this? Even if I can only start by defining myself as your friend, that's better than silence. I may have nothing if I have to picture who Chara is, but I doubt I could ever run out of things to say about who Frisk is."

In that moment, they wish. They wish they'd thought to suspend their SOULs in parallel, just so Chara could sense it - that rush of undeniable affection and fondness and love that glistens like droplets of dew on a spiderweb, jewel-bright. They're no good with words. They're not eloquent and endlessly talkative the way Chara can be, who knows all sorts of big words or at least can ACT well enough to give the impression that they do.

"I'd like that." They'll help each other out. They might not know what they're doing, what they're saying, what they're learning, at all hours of the day, but they can do this, can't they?

They can find their feet together.

"I don't know if I've ever thanked you for that. For being...for, um." There's a faint tint to their cheeks now, something embarrassed, almost shy. "For being the first person who wondered about who, who Frisk is."

A quiet little laugh. "That's not something you have to thank me for." How could it be? It's never been hard or an obligation, finding out who Frisk is. Someone as endearing as them, as charming and lost and conflicted and contradictory and fascinating and wonderful as Frisk... getting to know them has never been a burden.

"It's just one more way the world has done you an injustice. It should have happened much, much sooner. Everyone should have been aware just how special this human was." There's no other word for them. Special. Not just because they were SOUL number seven, not just because of their relation to the barrier or their unblemished EXP, not just because they'll play along with cooking lessons or indulge someone who really, really wanted to solve problems through Roleplay, Obviously, but because they're Frisk.

"I know, without a doubt, we have all loved the person we finally got to know. I can only hope... you, too, fall a little bit in love with the person you discover you are."

Is that pretentious? It's probably pretentious. They're a pretty pretentious person, after all. Cringy every time they open their edgelord little mouth. But it's... it's still an earnest sentiment. There's been enough blame. There's been enough self-loathing. Their partner has spent so, so long being told who Frisk is supposed to be, without being allowed any say in the matter at all.

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determinedest - 2017-12-13 04:35 (UTC) - Expand

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