it's hard to lose a chosen one [open]

[determinedest]

Who: Frisk (+ potential bonus Chara) and YOU!
Where: In your room. Yes, your room.
When: August 21st - August 23rd
Rating: PG? PG-13? these threads always end up bouncing all over the place. Will adjust if needed.
Summary: There's a small child in your room. Maybe they're going through your personal effects without any regards for privacy. Look, this is perfectly socially acceptable behavior in an RPG, all right?
The Story:

The past few days have been a gross unbalancing of their equilibrium, and Frisk has made the unilateral decision that they need something to help them reach that sense of stability again. Too much time has been spent lying on the floor of their room, sometimes with Chara, sometimes alone, enjoying the nonexistent fruits of Napstablook's patented "Lying On The Floor And Feeling Like Garbage" coping technique.

Eventually, they get to their feet. And then they begin to wander.

They try random doors along every hallway. Step inside the room if the door should be unlocked - or they may recruit their partner to open the door if they so choose (Do you want to see how many rooms we can break into? Frisk may or may not have asked while they lay on the floor and contemplated the ceiling paint job. And, Sure, Chara may or may not have answered, because it meant doing something other than simply feeling like useless trash for days on end.)

The point is, there's a kid in your room now. There might even be two. They're going through your stuff, looking through desk drawers, reading diaries, opening dressers, checking under beds. It's not like this sort of behavior was ever really criticized back in the Underground. People had no problem with them walking into their rooms and taking their sweet time poking around.

So, you know, don't even worry about it.

[ooc: feel free to specify the date you'd like this child to enter your room and whether or not you'd like the Frisk-Chara bonus combo! PM me here, message me on AIM at arcaneswearwords or contact me at arrpee if you want to discuss what Frisk may find if you want them to go through your character's private belongings - they won't discover anything you don't want them to!]

Comments

[determinedest]

Never did one good thing the whole time they were alive. That can't be true. But it's...it's so easy to believe, isn't it? They'd decided the world was best without them in it.

"I know," says Frisk, inclining their head slightly in acknowledgment. "I know. I'm not planning on going back. I don't really want to, if it means I'm just gonna take away people's happy ending. I just...it makes me sad, to think about it. To think about him. If I'd known about him sooner, I probably would've tried to SAVE him too."

But that might not have even been possible. How do you SAVE someone who doesn't exist?

"I know it's not much," says Frisk, slowly, after a long moment. Don't want to overstep their bounds again. Don't want to bring him into this when they shouldn't. "But I think you...I think you did do good when you were alive. You gave Asriel a friend. You gave monsters hope. You...the story would never have happened without you."

And Frisk?

Ha.

Frisk is just the catalyst. They didn't break the barrier and they didn't open the world to anyone. Anyone else could have filled their shoes just the same.

[fulllifeconsequences]

"None of that happened because I was me. It just happened because there was a SOUL around. It could have been anybody filling that space, as long as there was a body filling it." It would have been ideal, in fact, if it had been somebody else. Someone who could live up to what Asriel had wanted. Someone who wouldn't mess all of it up because they thought they could make things even better. If they could change more than just the name attached to it... then everything would have gone right the first time. There wouldn't have been any need for six children to fall, for Asriel to suffer, for a marriage to fall to pieces.

"But we've already thought about this, haven't we?" They offer, quietly. "If we changed it, if we took ourselves out of it... we'd never know each other." Maybe Asriel, Toriel, Asgore had been able to move on to something happier by replacing Chara, right? Their child, their future, the friend they really wished for. But... "I can't replace you with anyone."

Chara laughs, presses their drawing a little harder to their chest, even if they're crinkling the paper. "When Sans told me about... all that stuff about us not being constants at all? I... it makes sense if I'm not. It makes sense if I'm not anything at all." Not really a child, not really a part of the world, just a nameless virus spreading across worlds, universes, whatever they exist within. "But there's only one Frisk." They couldn't even begin to imagine it. "I can't imagine a you that's - that's disposable. Interchangeable. I don't want anyone else, even if it's Frisk, if they're not you. If they don't remember wrestling for a stupid list of stuff I like or watching Spirited Away or trading chocolate for licorice... or any of that stuff, then I've lost something I can't ever get back."

[determinedest]

They cannot offer a rebuttal to that. They cannot insist that no, Chara is special because they are Chara, because they don't know every detail, every moment of it. They only glean whispers and memories of a time long gone by, and no matter how many times they reset the clock, they will never put together something that was shattered before they even arrived on the scene.

They can only pick up the pieces and hope they find some kind of solace.

"Yeah. And I think that's...that's what keeps me from doing it. From looking for that way out now. It...it's not so bad if you're here."

Let it go.

You don't need to be erased. You don't need to give in.

Just breathe, and let it slide away. Forget him. Forget the man from the other world. He is not your future. He will never be your future.

"He can't - I mean, he can't know though, can he?" The thought is one they find unquestionably disturbing. "We're the only two that...we're the things that change everything. How can there be more than one of us? I don't - I don't - "

Their shoulders curve a little more, their body hunching into a concave arch as they consider it.

"I wouldn't want another you either," they decide, without really needing to think about it at all. "You're you. You're my partner, no matter what anyone else says, or thinks. No matter what Sans says. You're different because there's no one else like you in the whole world or, or in any other version of our world."

[fulllifeconsequences]

"How can he know Resets are happening if he isn't determined? How can he know about the man who speaks in hands if everything's supposed to function perfectly without him, because he's erased? I think Sans is kinda like you," they offer, a wry little smile tugging at their lips. "He just knows impossible stuff whenever it's convenient to know it for no real reason."

Though... maybe it is telling? That they just accepted what he told them as true, purely because he's the kind of adult who's an All-Knowing Absolute Authority? But... Wonderland backs that up, right? Two Asriels, and they maybe weren't just the same Asriel at different points in time. Something about Papyrus that makes him the wrong Papyrus, that makes him not fit with Sans.

They maybe don't want to think about this anymore.

Chara hasn't... really touched Frisk, not ever since the day of the narcissus leaves. But they shift their drawing aside so they can stretch out a hand, fall back on the familiar gesture. Let it hover patiently in the air, to either be taken or declined.

"Then... everything we learn about the CORE. It has to be in theory, not in practice. You're irreplaceable, nothing can fill the empty space you'd leave behind, so... you can't. Ever. We can't make each other try to live with a piece missing."

At least... not here. Not where they still have all these memories of being friends, being partners, being us. Not in a world that's... that's maybe actually telling them they're welcome in it? Right?

[determinedest]

They suppose there's some truth to that. That Sans must...something about him is just fundamentally improbable, and enough strange things happened to him to warp him in just the right ways, bend him out of shape with reality and into an inconsistency.

They wish there was some way to access whatever bastion of knowledge there is about their world and all the faults and impossibilities about it. Why they are the way they are, and why Sans is Sans, and why Chara is Chara. Why some things can be changed but others must remain ever the same.

To live in the tail end of the bell curve is a precarious, unrewarding, unsatisfying thing.

It's hard to admit. Hard to say that they had been exploring that option, just because they were...because they "could," maybe? No. Because they saw an out. An out that would allow them something absolute, something irreplaceable. A solution that would grant them total piece and the complete cessation of existence.

And they hesitate.

But only for a moment.

They take the hand offered to them for the first time since that horrible, despair-riddled day where they'd betrayed trust again and put a stop to something that might have taken away the only person who understood them. Hold it tightly - not too tightly, they hope.

"I did go asking around about it," they confess softly. "The CORE, both Wonderland's and the one at home. Just...to see if there was anything to it. But you're right. We - we're in this together. I don't want to leave you."

Not ever.

[fulllifeconsequences]

...Haha. Totally on the same wavelength, aren't they? Even with Chara's lips tightly sealed, Frisk asks about Wonderland's CORE entirely on their own.

That's a little bit terrifying.

"It's just asking. It's not against the law to think things or ask things," they say, and they don't know if they say it for their own benefit or for Frisk's. "But acting on it is... just because you know doesn't mean you have to use it. Acting on it is a whole other choice entirely."

Chara just locks their gaze on their tightly interlocked hands. Two sets of bony fingers wrapped together. One thing that fits, has always fit, always will fit. They've got that. It trumps any thoughts of being the wrong Chara, or not being Chara at all, or searing frustration at the irrational, nonsensical nature of everything around them. Anchors them away from the edge of a CORE. Both of them.

Frisk's here.

That's what matters.

* It's us.

They smile faintly. "Are... we okay now?" It's not quite the right word they want, because "okay" and all its various synonyms have all become weighted with irony and self-deprecation, but they don't know a better word to use. They're probably a far cry from okay, all things considered, probably always will be. But... this much, at least? No tears, no trembles, no anger? A decision to let it rest, focus on something more comprehensible and binding?

[determinedest]

They're right. Or maybe they're just trying to make them feel better? Either way, it's working. They know. They know it was just a thought. Just...asking questions, maybe worrisome questions. And they'll have to apologize to Alphys and Dipper. For scaring them. For making them panic, maybe. Or at least making Alphys panic.

They're always scaring people.

"As okay as we ever get," says Frisk, with that equivocal shrug, that shred of irony they don't even try to avoid anymore. Don't even pretend it's not there, because there's not a lot of comfort in lies anymore.

"I guess I should just stay out of that...world," they add, an apologetic note to their tone. "I don't think I'm supposed to be there. I don't understand it. And it kind of hurts to think about it."

[fulllifeconsequences]

"I'd certainly prefer it if you didn't meddle with it," Chara agrees, perhaps a little more firmly than is necessarily comforting or accepting. Whether they trust or not, whether they even intend to go back to that world or not... they intend to keep the few weapons they have firmly up their sleeve.

If they're going to reach the end, they want to make sure it truly is the end.

Nobody should be above consequences.

"If we remember one thing about the man whose name escapes me, then it should be that hubris can be a dangerous thing." The looming CORE. Recovered blueprints for the DT Extraction Machine. A broken machine behind a curtain in a small back room. Disconnected pieces of a puzzle, all of them far out of reach now, but relics that suggest enough to form a warning. "Icarus did the impossible, just like Orpheus, but neither of them got the ending they hoped for."

They fold the rumpled sheet of paper up, tuck it into their inventory - into their pocket. Sort of laugh a little, because they can hardly believe how hypocritical that bit of advice is when it's coming from them, of all people. The very walking incarnation of not being satisfied with whatever you're tossed! Should've taken their own advice before they started coming up with grand schemes, huh?

[determinedest]

"Icarus was just a kid," Frisk points out gently, though they don't disagree. "That man...the one who spoke in hands? He wasn't. Maybe that's a bad analogy."

It's not as if their Orpheus analogy had been completely applicable to their situation either. But at the time, Frisk hadn't cared, and the thematic consistency was enough to pull them through, they think.

But for now, they think they'll let it rest. (Ha-ha, "rest," the thing neither of them will ever get.) This conversation has been disturbing on too many levels, they think, for them to get into something more.

"...do you want to go poke into some other people's rooms?" says Frisk after a moment, rubbing at their drying cheeks with a shirtsleeve, glancing away.

[fulllifeconsequences]

Their smile goes wry, a little lopsided, tugging further at one corner than another. Gosh, everyone's a critic. Better come at them with the airtight analogies. Airnalogies.

"Yeah," They mumble, letting it go. They've argued enough, they think, for now.

Chara rests a hand over their pocket momentarily, thinking about trying to leave the room exactly how they found it. Cover their tracks. But... nah. There's no un-ripping a torn page, and there's no reason they should be above consequences. They made a choice, they can own it.

"Let's go be bad," they offer, smile growing symmetrical and at ease again. "Just for a little bit."

[determinedest]

"Okay." And they smile, just a little bit, faint and flickering, but they're...maybe they're not better. Not yet. But they've reached an understanding, they've touched on something neither of them want to look at for any length of time, and they're - they think they're okay with leaving it like that.

No erasing. No COREs. Just being here, with their partner, maybe forever.

They can live with that.

Can't hurt someone who can match you, determination for determination.