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]

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.