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

Entry tags:

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

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!]

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"If it never stops.... To me, if it stopped, that would mean they're really gone."

From his inner world as well as the real world. Even if it hurts, he can keep that person close to him. But then, Souji has a habit of clinging to the people he's finally managed to amass around himself. After such a long time alone among others, he's grown almost obsessive about not losing what he's found.

Edited 2016-09-03 06:20 (UTC)

So life just continues to be...pain. All the time. Hurting, all the time. Loving people and hurting because of it, and losing people and hurting because of it, and it seems like that's just the common denominator! They always hurt, and that's just how things are!

Well gosh, no wonder Chara wants to die all the time. No wonder they want to die, all the time.

"It never stops." They feel, for a moment, far older than they should. Far older, and far more tired. "Not ever. And we just...I guess we just stay determined."

This isn't going as Souji had intended. Most people, in his experience, gain hope from the idea that loving someone is worth the pain of losing them. But...maybe he can understand this way of thinking as well. It was how he'd been for most of his life. He'd never wanted to kill himself, but he'd been pulled along by time toward a vague future that he didn't care much about.

"In your journey, you've found people to care about. But in order not to hurt, you could never have found them."

Would that have been better? Humans weren't meant to be alone. With few exceptions, they were fundamentally made to form webs of relationships.

"You'd be alone." Though he objectively believed what he was saying, his tone lacked the certain level of conviction he needed to show his own determination.

"I know," Frisk whispers. "I know. I've felt that. It's - there's something about it, about being alone, and not feeling anything, that's - it still - I still want it. I still think it'd be better, sometimes. Better not to care, not to hurt at all."

Even once they had known what LOVE stood for, what that acronym really meant, they had sought to acquire it. Sought to gather it. See all the possibilities. And the more distance they achieved, the more clarity of thought they had. The less they ached. The power to feel nothing, nothing at all was - it had been -

They understand why Chara had been so desperate for it immediately after Asriel's disappearance. Desperate enough to attack a friend, someone who unquestionably cared about them.

"...Right now, you remind me of someone I knew at home."

Normally, Frisk reminds Souji of himself, or at least that there are parallels between them. But right now, it's someone else who springs to mind.

"The difference is that he wasn't really capable of caring. You are."

They're not sure how to interpret that, eyes flicking up fearfully and then down again. Their arms reach up to wrap around themself, small, drawing inwards.

"I am," they admit softly. "But I know how to get rid of that. There's a way to do it, where I come from. They call it LOVE, actually." One corner of their mouth twitches, their expression contorting briefly, an agonized cross between a humorless grin and a pervading disgust. "It stands for Level Of Violence. The more you get, you...the less you hurt. The easier it is to hurt others. And you feel nothing. You feel nothing."

They open their hands and close them again, staring at their palms and remembering the spread of dust over the fingertips, a dusting of faint gray and white over their clothes, their hair, their eyelashes.

They had felt nothing. And it had felt so much better.

"Do you want to hurt someone?"

That was the next logical question. Souji had some ideas about how to proceed, based on the answer.

"No." That answer is slipped out too quickly for it to be true, too immediate, too hasty. Frisk sighs and amends it into, "yes."

Their hands close again, fingernails sinking into the heels of their palms for what feels like the millionth time. Might even be the millionth time. They could open the array of minuscule cuts with very little effort.

"No one important."

"You can hurt me."

Souji doesn't know if he falls into the category of 'important,' but he does have solid reasoning behind it. It's solid to him, at least, and he shares it with Frisk.

"I can heal myself. Even if you killed me, I'd come back. So if you have to hurt someone, make it be me."

This isn't really bravery on his part. He doesn't particularly like being hurt, and the idea of being purposefully hurt by someone he sees as a friend makes him feel a bit sick. If Frisk can hurt a friend, Souji doesn't like to think about what they might do to strangers.

His own hands are tense at his sides, but not clenched. Whoever's sake he's doing this for, he's not going to back down from the offer now that he's made it.

Edited 2016-09-04 02:38 (UTC)

Their eyes widen, their head jerking at the offer. The offer to - to what? Make him their punching bag? They open their mouth to say something, verbalize their disgust or their fear or their alarm at such an option but -

But some part of them wants to do it.

LOVE. EXP. GOLD. The increase of a number. The satisfying surge of that new strength to their limbs, the distance and the inability to hurt and the power to feel nothing, nothing at all as they ground out everything, reduced it all to dust, to dust, to dust -

"No!" They fire the word out sharply before they can prevent it. "No, not - not like that. I don't hurt...not anyone. Not ever again. Not ever."

No one that matters, anyway. No one aside from themself.

And, apparently, their friends, even if they don't actually mean to. But they're getting better and better at hurting the people they love, aren't they?

Souji's relieved to hear that, but it doesn't show in his stance or his expression.

"Then who?"

His questioning is probably more hurtful than helpful now--if it had ever been helpful--but he doesn't ease up. Frisk is conflicted, he can see that, but something has to be done so that these feelings don't ferment and become stronger. To get them out through action, since speaking didn't seem to help, could alleviate some of the pressure.

They try not to cry. They really do.

It wells up, burns at the corners of their eyes, but they blink fiercely, shake it away. Hands drawing up to brace against their elbows, fingernails sinking into arms, scoring little red lines across the skin. Hardly noticeable.

"Myself," they say, the word barely a whisper.

"You shouldn't."

He says that the way he might tell his little cousin not to go out into the rain without an umbrella. It's a reminder rather than a command or a protest.

Frisk smiles bitterly, though it comes out as more of a pained grimace.

"Okay," they say, voice cracking as they say it a little too loudly, too brightly, sparking with a hysterical edge. "Okay, so problem solved! Guess I'll just QUIT, huh?"

Immediately, a hand goes to their mouth, then to their face, as if that might shield it, protect him from the awful, false cheeriness that just broke out of them.

Souji has never dealt with this kind of situation before. Never. Out of all the people he knows and the links he's forged, he's never seen someone this badly off. It's like he can feel the link reversing, and it hurts, the kind of hurt that makes you nauseous.

He moves closer to them, sadder than he's felt in a long time.

"What can I do?"

He hopes they won't say "I don't know" or "nothing," because then he doesn't know what else he can do but just let them go and do as they're saying they will.

Edited 2016-09-05 19:27 (UTC)

They keep their hands over their face for a moment, trying to mangle some measure of control over their facial expression, trying not to break down in Souji's room that they just broke into like it didn't matter. They hate this.

"Sorry," Frisk whispers after a moment. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just - I'm still figuring it out. I'm still learning how to - how to not be the one in control all the time."

How to be something, anything, other than what they are.

Souji embraces them again, gently this time, like he's afraid of startling them. He wonders if this isn't how his Shadow might have been, if he'd had one; confused, without an identity of its own, empty and despairing and...

"There's hope. You can take as long as you need to figure it out."

They tremble slightly at the touch, unfamiliar and immediate, even if it's gradual. They're not accustomed to it, to receiving this kind of affection from people who are bigger than them, stronger than them, adults and humans and it's terrifying.

"I know. There's still hope." Whimsalot said that, didn't they?

* This relentless future gets brighter and brighter.

"I guess we've got all the time in the world here!" they say, a little too dryly to count as optimistic.

"It's easy to think so."

For some people, it definitely seems that way. Souji's been here so long he's thinking he might just stop keeping track altogether.

"It's enough time, anyway."

No need to say that it will all be lost when they leave. He can't let himself believe that anymore. What he has to do at home is too important to forget, and he at the thought, he forces himself not to hug Frisk that much more tightly. There's no reason for his own concerns to add to their's.

"Yeah." They sniff a few times, and nod, trying not to completely fall to tears. Mostly succeeding. The corners of their eyes are too wet. They do their best to smudge away the incipient tears as discretely as they can.

"Things've - they've gotten better," says Frisk, trying to infuse a sense of certainty to their tone even as it wavers. "Better than they were back home. In a lot of ways."

It's not much. But it's something.

Souji thinks back on when they talked in the diner during the event with the zombie infection. Things had seemed okay at that time, but Frisk has seen many people from home come and go since then. That has to have changed things.

"How is Chara?" He hopes it's not too abrupt a question, but Chara seems to have a big influence on Frisk's state of mind. For good reason.

"They're okay," Frisk says automatically, and it's not a lie. Chara's "okay," just...not the best possible state of "okay" they could be. That's all. "Still...adjusting. It's been hard since Asriel disappeared."

This had been one of the few things they thought might take Chara's mind off things for a little while. And it wasn't a long-term solution by any means, but it might've diverted their thoughts for a little while, and that's the best they could hope for.

"I should probably find them," they say after a moment, with a little sigh. "We were breaking into people's - I mean, we were exploring the mansion together for a while. I just gotta check in on them every now and then."

Souji nods and moves back again, releasing Frisk.

"I understand." Though very different from Chara, Souji has at least one friend at home who needs checking on every now and then.

"Remember, you can come here or come by the diner if you need anything." A beat. "Or if you're just hungry."

"I know." They rub the back of their wrist over the corner of their eye, but it comes away dry. They do better at holding some things in, they suppose.

"Thanks, Souji." Their smile is thin and frail, but the sentiment is genuine. "Thanks for...for listening, I guess."

"Any time." Souji offers a smile back, wishing he could do more. But his link feels stable again, and he thinks he may have actually done something for Frisk.

He moves around them and gets the door. The dragon lifts it's head, but then puts it back down. No one is petting it so what's the point?

Souji doesn't have the same disinterest and puts a hand on their shoulder for a couple seconds as they go.

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

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