entrancelogs | you are what you love [ open ]

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you are what you love [ open ]

Who: Tim Wright + your beautiful self, and/or Frisk + your beautiful self!
Where: All over!
When: April 7th - April 10th
Rating: PG-13 probably though I'll warn if it goes higher
Summary: Maybe, with what little power you have...
The Story:

[Starters are in the comments. Let me know over here or at

arrpee if you want a closed starter or anything! I will match prose or brackets!]

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Some decisions make you older, they say. She doesn't know what that makes her. What was added to her from the fear of Mindoir, the three days of heart pounding hiding and lack of sleep and the minutes she was captured and thought about death, thought it was over? What climbed onto her back those years before the military in dark rooms and razors on thighs, what in the Skyllian Blitz wrapped around her throat and told her this was the only way she could survive? Does she count the years she spent dead? Does she count the years she wasn't since then, wheezing back into existence without those scars to remember herself by?

She's thirty three. In a few short days she'll be thirty four. Her body is four. The scar re-carved on her leg should be seventeen, but its barely three. Her mind, by that math, is endlessly, unfathomably old.

A matriarch, of almost a thousand, once told her she was the wisest person she had ever met.

Where does she go from here? What time does she track? How much life will she live, when she leaves this place, when she now knows she isn't heading for absolution?

"... Then what do I go back to?" The words finally slide out, feeling more like throwing up than speaking. "I can't... heal. There's nothing in me that isn't broken. I'm just gonna be this. Forever. Until someone finally lets me die."

"You don't fix it. You can't." It's something that took them RESETs to learn, and years to understand. They're not even altogether certain if they understand it now. There are some ghosts that are never gone, and some hurts that never heal. Some things don't ease with a simple pronouncement of forgiveness, crushing everything else down like crumpled paper in a garbage can, underfoot.

"You learn to be something better with it."

Is any of this reaching her? Will she remember? Will she simply forget?

It's a stupid idea that occurs to them, but it bursts out from their chest regardless:

"Have you seen, um, a...mosaic?"

Learn to be something better with it, they say. She's tried, or so she thinks. Tried to make themselves into this soldier, into a fighting force to protect others from this pain. But she's just been taking the hits instead of them. It's not a perfect system, or even a good one, because all she does is disregard herself. But it works.

All she knows, in the end, is sacrifice.

She's ready to slip further into that pit when they speak again, and her mind latches onto the words, trying to puzzle through their line of logic. It's enough to hold on for. She wants to know the answer.

"Uh... nothin' comes to mind, so guess not. What're you getting at?"

Edited 2018-04-21 01:22 (UTC)

"It's all broken." That's what mosaics are; torn-up, shimmering fragments stuck together and glued onto a canvas. Pieces of other things compiled and squeezed into forming something beautiful and distinct, something that is more than just parts of other people and other shattered works of old art.

One way or another, those things become smashed and fragmented. But if someone happens along, someone who cares to pick up the pieces, something good can be fashioned from it.

"But it's still pretty. Sometimes it's prettier than the pieces that made it."

They speak, and she can't help but grin. A small shake of the shoulders, a bit of a curve to her mouth. She doesn't move, but her eyes slide over their direction.

"I don't know if I've ever had to worry about being pretty, kid." But it is a pull, it is something, like a tether thrown from a lifeboat, something to grip at and hold on to. "You think you could find... something useful, in that? Something you had to spend all that time to put back together? You think it's worth it?"

"I like things that're broken," says Frisk.

They can't fix things, really. They can make them so they weren't ever broken, but that doesn't let anyone learn from them. Maybe things are going to get broken either way, and trying to keep them from breaking only prevents what's always going to happen.

But being broken doesn't mean it's all over. They're still here.

"They're like me."

She puts a hand to her head, another hopeless sort of sigh on her lips. "What was it you said, kid? We're the same? You're makin' good on that now."

Shepard lets the hand move up through her hair, trying to raise her shoulders, pull herself up. But it still presses heavy, the truth of her situation, that she has to go home eventually and keep-- living, past it all. When did the thought of just being alive get so hard to process?

"So what's the... purpose, then? Just to exist? Look pretty for someone? What... future is there gonna be, you know?"

"Does it matter?"

There was something they said, once. They can't remember the exact words behind it, but they can recall the sentiment. Something about happiness not being something you just get to be, and then it's all over. It's opening your SOUL so it glows warm scarlet between someone else's fingers, or making a cake at the early hours of the morning.

Whatever purpose there is, they haven't found it. They're not sure they ever will.

So, they shrug.

"I'm happier with you here. And I'm not the only one."

Does it matter? It's a good question. She'd figure it does- having a purpose, a drive, something to push towards when all else seems lost. But that... doesn't seem to be the core of their sentiment. It matters. They both know it.

But Shepard thinks, maybe, that not knowing- not knowing why it matters, not knowing that purpose, looking for meaning in the journey- maybe that's the thing that matters. Why does she have to know everything now? What security is she chasing? Why does she have to control it all?

All she's ever done is grapple with forces she doesn't understand and failed to master. But can that be... a good thing?

"So... find meaning in the journey, huh?" She mulls it over in her brain, tries to think on how it manifests here and now. "Not fixated on the what, but the... how? Or... just letting it happen."

"I don't know where I want to be, or where I want to go." They don't know where their direction is, or who they're supposed to be. They've been a lot of things, far too many words for one small person to be carrying up inside them. Our enemy. Punk. Buddy. Kiddo. Human. The future of humans and monsters. The friend I wish I always had. Someone who SAVEs people, or maybe someone who can break them back to front.

Two steps forward. Two more. And then, simple and easy as opening a door or sitting on a chair, they're no longer standing across from her. They have two arms wrapped snug around her middle, cheek up against waist. They barely come up to her middle, but that's okay.

A hug is still a hug.

"But I don't think it'd be so bad, if it was with you."

It's unexpected. Shepard has always been a touchy person- the military doesn't give much space for hugs, and having no life outside the service meant her physical contact was usually restricted to handshakes and shoulder bumps in the field. She had to train herself not to mess with the kids- her first meeting with Frisk was equally disasterous in that right- even if she's always wanted it.

So they step forward. Two, two, together. And she blinks as they snuggle into her stomach, and she looks down at them for a few seconds.

And then, Frisk can feel it. The way she grins and laughs, a chuckle into her stomach as she leans down to gently pet their hair, kneels so she can take them into a proper hug. It's a little more desperate than it's been before, something clinging and reaching for another well of hope, of determination going forward.

"Kid, I wanna be wherever you are." She wants to imagine it, for just a moment- her and Toriel, in a quiet house somewhere in a grassy field. Frisk, Chara, and Asriel, alive and well, getting to grow up and thrive. No more of this. No more of the cruel but inevitable future.

"Thanks, Frisk. Really."

It’s a rumble like a cat’s purr humming up through her bones and tingling on their cheek. It tickles. The silly urge to laugh wells up like a fresh cut, and an abortive rasp of a half-giggle chokes itself off in their throat. There’s still the same tension there, that might always be there - the blood-roar of not safe not safe they’re lying not safe they’re lying they’re LYING - but they breathe and it lessens, just slightly, unclenching that heavy fist around their heart.

“Me too.” It’s not fair to say it, and place that expectation where she now has to deal with it. She said it first.
And for the first time maybe ever, they feel safe.
It’ll be okay, says everyone who’s never been okay even once in their lives, but can’t bear the idea that someone else might feel the same. It’ll be okay.

The candy red of her hair is familiar in the way few things are - like snowy-down fur, and snickering scarlet eyes. The curve of arms around them, in something as simple and kind as a hug. Be good, won’t you?

They’re trying. They really are.

“Thanks, too.”

She has never been gentle. Shepard, by necessity, is fire and blood, is gunpowder and strength, a storm of a person not to be held. But in this moment, she lives in the eye of it, pressing her lips in a gentle kiss to their forhead. It's an odd sensation, for someone who doesn't know how to quantify the feeling, but her soul feels full. With them pressed close, physically and through magic, she feels less alone than she ever has.

She'll let them go when they're ready. But as she lets just a tear or two fall, right now, she knows that she is loved.

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