entrancelogs | black then white are all i see in my infancy [closed + open]

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black then white are all i see in my infancy [closed + open]

Who: Frisk and a few closed prompts + a few open ones!
Where: Alphys's lab, by the vendors, maybe more?
When: 11/01 - 11/08-ish (may be subject to change)
Rating: PG-13 for children in peril, suicide ideation, depressive mindset, and bad decisions
Summary: Shit happened. Someone give this cast an intervention.
The Story:

[A hot oil-slick of numbers running through their mind in a burning cacophony does not lend itself to anything but pain, bright and blazing. It cuts into their teeth and their tongue and the inside of their cheeks - or maybe that is simply them biting deep into the flesh in their mouth to taste the warm tang of it to remind themself that they are not simply numbers they are not simply numbers they are not simply numbers they are real.

It crests in a burgeoning wave. There is no tide there is no pattern there is no regularity there is no respite it simply is and it tears through them, every jerk and wrench of their body shuddering in its place like hot marks shearing them open.

They can taste blood.

Is it yours?

Or mine?

It does not matter.]

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[Decisions must be made. A deal must be struck.

Who is the lamb and who is the knife?]

[Only once the blueprints are acquired and the deal is made can construction truly begin. But you know those blueprints quite well, Dr. Alphys, do you not?

I do hope you can finish on time.]

[I am gone, and inside it's...it's just you. Only it's not just you, not really. Numbers still spill into them in broken cords of text, lines of numbers and words and ones and zeroes that they can't possibly parse. It aches. They're used to that, but they're not used to how everyone stares, how they're a thing that's dangerous, uncontained.

It's a constant string (const string:) tearing them inside and out. Sometimes it's the small things. The color of their shirt, the color of their eyes. Sometimes it's LOVE, sometimes it's GOLD, rocketing up and then down again, like riding some sort of absurd metatemporal high. Sometimes their LOVE spikes, sickeningly, and it hits 20, and they feel nothing at all.

Sometimes they end up ripping away from the space they occupy. They end up on the roof, starting to fall before they're decoupled from space again, landing on the ground in a soft whump of flesh hitting grass.

Their HP has been frozen on -99999999999/10 for some time now. They're not sure they can hurt what's already been broken.

Not sure if they can hurt anything that doesn't already ache beyond the telling of it.

It probably wouldn't hurt as much as this does now.

People try to watch them, but it's easy to get away when they only half-exist. As the week progresses they start to try and fix things their own way. Wading out into the water of the beach, snapping themself up to the roof, only for something to invariably shred their resolve or - no, actually, not their resolve.

* Something else.]

[They're not ready.

They're trembling. They don't want this. They don't want this. But they - they do, don't they? It's best. It's best if they're able to live, everyone says. Maybe it'll stop the worrying, the concerned looks everyone thinks they don't see. They don't mind those so much. It's the others that make them hurt. The ones that are nervous, wary, watching them like an animal about to snap at them with unbridled ferocity.

What hurts most is that they're right.

They're not ready.

But they focus everything they are into holding each string of their body in place as they step forward toward the thing that looms over, the thing that can and maybe will unmake them, and try not to imagine what it would feel like to dissolve into a pile of fleshy goo.

Maybe there wouldn't be a coming back from that.
Maybe that would be best.
They close their eyes.

They're not ready.]

[And then it's...

Done, they suppose. Ripping through the world is something of a distant memory, almost, or something so close to it, the ache so dulled away and eroded into nothing that it might as well not exist at all. If it's strange, it doesn't seem that way. Mostly it doesn't feel like much of anything.

They pick up the ukulele they remember learning to play. They put it down again.

They wander around the hallways without direction, without purpose.

They pull out paper and crayons and color looping pictures of golden flowers.

They break a corner off a bar of chocolate and try tasting it, simply to see what it's like. It doesn't taste like anything. They leave it on the kitchen table.

For the most part, Frisk is listless. There's no real meaning to any one thing they settle upon. There's simply things that occupy their time and things that don't; things that are marginally less faded and colorless that are therefore slightly more meaningful compared to the things that are cast in strokes of gray or sepia. Occasionally something stirs in their chest, like the ghost of a strong opinion they once held, but they lack the will to chase after it, and sooner or later it fades.

Everything fades.]

[They've never been to the vendors before. Nor have they spend so much time alone with Alphys since she struck them down for her crimes, unless you counted moments where the universe itself became something different.

Maybe they should be nervous about it.

They don't really feel anything at all.

There's nothing but numbness and ringing in their ears as they walk toward their destination, seeing but not really perceiving the crowded bazaar-esque stalls. They stop mechanically, blink hard like they're trying to clear something out of their head, breathe deep. Frisk needs this. They look around aimlessly, like they've forgotten where Alphys is, like they've forgotten people exist at all.

Focus.

Frisk needs this.]

I don't know what it looks like. I'll pay, but you have to get it.

[Blueprints in hand, sprinting into action, her door practically kicked down. She throws out a lot of material, stuff she can regain later, literally chucking scrap metal and extra pieces out the window and clearing tables, space. Thank goodness Wonderland expands to accommodate what she needs. Otherwise she might've just taken a sledgehammer to the wall, because there's one adjacent room she knows is empty. The other is Sans', and she doesn't want to bust his wall down.

But she's desperate. God, she's so desperate.

Desperate enough to actually do this, to touch determination again, to build this machine into existence and to look at these blueprints and remember. She sends two, desperate and shaky texts to Sans and Ford.]

I need you in my lab, asap, please
2nd floor room 18
I need help. A lot of help.
Door is closed but unlocked.

[She drops her phone after sending, gets to work on pulling what'll be needed from the closets. Panels and panels of sheet metal. Welders. Hammers and nails.

For once, her hands aren't shaking. For once, she knows exactly what she needs to do.]

[It's not until Frisk is here that it's all hitting her. She's been in a panic the last week, just trying to get something done, do something she knows. The extractor never seemed to harm the SOULs. All of their readings were fine, despite the DT she was drawing out. But having a body in the way might harm that. Being in Wonderland might harm that. She might've missed something in her calculations, she doesn't remember if she needed to tweak certain parts she didn't. There's always a chance she forgot something. And this falls on her, they need her, and the responsibility makes her feel like she's going to fall apart.

But it's here. It's finished.

She's not ready.

She tries to smile for Frisk. For all of them. Offers her hand if they want to take it.]

It's... it's g-gonna be okay, okay? We're gonna make it okay.

[They've had time to think.

Their existence has been nothing but time to think about what they've done, ha ha.

They know what the right thing to do is. The most right person they ever knew already warned them about this, already begged them to do what they're supposed to.

Let them go. Let them be happy. Let Frisk live their life.

They know they can't vanish. That hurt Frisk. They've hurt Frisk enough already. They have to keep existing, can't make it into some kind of melodramatic tiring attention-seeking. Can't cut themself out completely. Have to linger at the periphery.

They find Frisk nibbling a square of chocolate. Don't understand, because Frisk doesn't especially like chocolate. Worry, for the thousandth time, that some hateful little vestige of Chara still lurks within them, incubating like a disease.

They sit down at the opposite end of the table. They fold their hands neatly on top of it.]

Frisk. We are not friends anymore.

[Something about it might have called to them, a memory or something similar. They chew slowly, mechanically. When Chara enters the room, they -

They feel one of those pangs again, the flutter or something familiar and warm that strikes them with the importance of this person, this person who must love them very deeply. They try, actually try, for a moment, to hold onto the remnant of it, but not hard enough.

It slips away, and they watch Chara seat themself down opposite. Set the chocolate bar down, because it is impolite to eat while someone is talking to you, talking with your mouth full. Don't want anyone to box those ears.

They blink slowly, like a cat, as they watch Chara without any particular expression.]

What makes you say that?

[He was expecting this. Hasn't slept. Has been sitting, pacing sometimes, and he does not pace. He's Sans, he's not supposed to--]

[Sure, yes. He's freaking out, but that's really nothing new. Easy enough to hide when you're on your own and no one's there to see you coming apart.]

[His phone buzzes. He was expecting this. He answers immediately.]

omw

[Doesn't even bother walking. He just teleports to the door and goes in.]

[He knows what this is. He was expecting this after all, and they've been over the plan. They all know what needs to be done, what it's going to mean. If the idea of building it again is sitting heavily in his soul, it's irrelevant. If the idea of having to stand in its shadow again terrifies him, it's irrelevant.]

[Funny, almost, almost, that this is what gets him back into science.]

i'm not an engineer. [He says it before she even has a chance to look up.] suck at it. so treat me like an intern. anything you need. anything at all.

[She's still running off of pure anxiety, over the things she's seen, over what's been explained, over what she needs to do. It's something she's uniquely qualified for, which is ridiculous, because in her mind she's never been qualified for anything. But, haha, she's here now! Here, with them, because Frisk needs this. Because they're all put where they don't want to be but they have to.

So she swallows, looks fervently around the bazaar, tries to lay her eyes on anything, trying to find it in the display.]

Okay. Uhm, here. W-Walk with me. I can find it.

[It's probably the most certain they've ever seen her, but she walks, eyes darting back and forth, starting and stopping a few times for plans, but not plans that are hers, until she sees them, in the back of a stall, puts her hands down on the table in a way that she hopes looks authoritative and not desperate, pointing mostly for Chara's sake.]

T-There! That's them. I know it.

Edited (what the FUCK is an html) 2016-11-06 07:25 (UTC)

You know why.

[Stupid question. Unnecessary. It's obvious. One glance at a 100% failure rate at loving something without ruining it, and that question answers itself.

Some things are too harmful. There comes a point where holding on is selfish. They're not even capable of loneliness, so what reason would they even have to continue to cling so insidiously to someone who could do better?

* If we're really friends, you won't come back.

If you're serious about wanting to be good, then you'll repent. You'll do the right thing.

They know Frisk's nature, though. Know they love to throw themself on every sword. Know that the truth would just stir up that obligation to be a saviour, would have them insisting there's no such thing as a lost cause, would manipulate them into not accepting this.]

You're no longer any use to me.

[They also know there are many ways to be merciful. Beat the will to fight out of someone. Heckle until they slink away in tears, utterly crushed. Ignore them until they leave.]

Your SOUL has been damaged. Tainted. I will not gain anything by taking possession of damaged goods.

[Their objective has been located.]

We'll take that.

[Chara announces to the vendor, in a tone that brooks no argument. The vendor raises their eyebrows, leans on the counter.]

Will you? Stock from your own world is very expensive, you know. This isn't just some common scrap of paper. This is something that should not be here.

[Chara's expression does not change.]

Don't care. We'll pay.

[Apparently, exactly what the vendor was hoping to hear. They smile.]

We don't deal in money around here, you know. You want these plans? You pay for them with something more valuable. You pay in Wonderland currency.

[A muscular impulse indicates that their brow might have dimpled into a frown at that, in another time. A memory of what they might have done when they were still...you.

They don't feel very you at the moment. Or even very me. They just sort of feel empty, and that's all right. They've no strong feelings on their emptiness. That's the nice thing about being empty.

They consider their words.]

Okay, [says Frisk, as easily as one might agree to see a movie, or to go for a walk as proposed by a pair of adults who loved them and knew best for them.

They're damaged, evidently. Tainted. That seems okay too; just like with the chocolate, with their words, with everything, it's hard to feel much of anything in response.

Something's not right there, but they don't have the desire to pursue it. Instead they push the chocolate bar across the table with their eyebrows lifted expectantly.]

Want some?

[She's a little bit thankful they're united under such a common goal, because she'd have no idea how to talk to them otherwise. How to do anything about this at all. But she speaks just after the vendor does, her mind still going a mile a minute.]

Memories. You... you w-want memories.

[She looks to Chara, fearful.]

A-Are you sure you want to do this? I can find something, or. M-Maybe we can both give something smaller, or...

[She doesn't know how this works. Doesn't pretend to know how any of it works. But she has a lot of experience in not remembering. Doesn't want to add this burden to Chara if she doesn't have to.]

[Okay. Easy, effortless, like it doesn't matter at all.

Exactly the ideal Chara should be striving for.]

No.

[They decline, face impassive. It wants to go back to pretending it can't taste anything.

It instead fiddles with its wrist, trying to pick apart a knot of red thread without tugging the sleeve up. Unties the friendship bracelet. Slides it across the table to Frisk. Makes it official.

Finishes the job.]

I have no desire to live with you any longer. It sickens me to see you claim a side of the room that has never belonged to you.

[Asriel's bed is on the right side, they'd once told Frisk in those gleeful taunting tones. Don't you think it hurts him to be relegated to the windowsill while a newer, better child takes his place?]

I will see if Toriel or Asgore will take me in, depending on if you'd rather I stay with the one who isn't next door or the one who avoids you.

[Too partial. Wait. Wrong, bad. Revise.]

...Or I will simply pick a room for myself. That would be the most efficient. I have a single backpack's worth of possessions; I can be moved out in an instant.

[She knows it's worked, everything should be-- will be -- fixed, going to be better. Frisk isn't falling apart, she has a vial of Determination locked up, all her readings show they're going to bounce back. Their SOUL will generate more. They're... they're very determined. Always have been. But all the SOULs restored at different rates, and she has no idea how much time it'll be. How much she'll have to wonder if she's made them like this permanently, if she's messed up, if she's robbed them of a piece of themselves.

But she goes to visit. As much as she can without being overbearing. Keeps her sensors, reading levels she used for the DT levels, sees if she can track their rate of growth, but only if it's okay.

So she tentatively knocks on their door, sees if they're in. If they want to see her.]

Frisk?

Like Old Times

[He's working tirelessly. That's a lie. He's working tiredly. There's never been anything tireless about him.]

[He does whatever Alphys needs. Does calculations. Runs simulations. Makes coffee. Screws things in. Whatever is needed. He's not an engineer, and he's not exactly cut out for manual labor, but that's fine. There's enough people here who can do the literal heavy lifting. He's doing anything else that needs to be done.]

[Days drag by and the DTE comes together, and with every passing hour as Frisk glitches across Wonderland and back, as Alphys and Ford work tirelessly, Sans wonders how much time they have left. How long it will be before the corruption is permanent. If this will actually fix anything. If maybe he was wrong, if they were all wrong. He has kept the drawing on him at all times since the kids found it, and he finds himself looking at it far too often. The DTE comes together and looms above them just like before. Like a skull.]

[He sleeps in fits and starts, snatching a few hours hear and there, usually at a desk or slumped in a chair. The nightmares are intolerable. He doesn't thrash or cry out, nothing dramatic, because he's not one for dramatic. He just wakes with a bit of a start and looks more tired than when he fell asleep, and goes and gets more coffee.]

[It's the hardest he's worked on anything in years, he thinks. Papyrus would be proud.]

[He doesn't feel much other than exhaustion and doubt.]

Closed to Chara

[He's been keeping an eyesocket on them, giving them space but watching them from a distance. The way they shrink small and don't move and stare at nothing and say nothing. They're waiting. They lost something to the Vendors and lost something with that Spell of theirs, and neither thing is exactly definable.]

[He's not sure they've eaten much or at all. So eventually he sighs to himself and makes them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The sort of thing kids like. As an afterthought, he cuts it into triangles. Sets it on a paper towel and brings it to them. Puts it on the floor in front of them and sits down a few feet away, back to the wall, nursing a cup of coffee. They can eat if they want. He won't force them. No one's going to force them to do anything right now.]

so.

Shut up, [Chara tells Alphys, helpfully.

Like they have the luxury of refusing. Like they can make Frisk suffer like that, then decide that sacrificing something it too much to bother with. They've sunk to subhuman, disgusting lows, but they will not make themselves into a hypocrite where justice is involved. They made this happen, they accept the consequences.]

I'll pay.

[Again, the vendor raises their eyebrows, palms flat against the counter as they eagerly press in.]

You realize, of course, that I hold all the cards here. Blueprints for something this potent... I think it's only fair I get my pick of memories for that, hm? Of course, if you don't like that, you could always look for some other bluepr-

[Chara cuts them off. Unnecessary dialogue. Skip. Don't hesitate, don't think fleetingly of a memory, a Memory, of small white paws helping them up and showing them the sort of kindness nobody else ever had.

Forgetting wouldn't hurt anyone. Everyone's moved on. Found a newer, better future, the friend they always wished they'd had. If it's to protect that future, to try and compensate for rending it asunder, then anyone would say it's worth it.]

I said I'll pay, and I'm going to pay.

[They don't have any use for memories anyway.]

...Alphys. Don't tell Frisk about this.

[Something in them lurches oddly at the sight of it, the bracelet pushed across the table with its little red heart. They like red. Their favorite color, they told someone once. Reminds them to be strong. A pity they don't feel strong now.

They don't feel...much of anything. Not much of anything at all, except something that, dimly, protests. Maybe it's simply so rooted inside them that they can't say anything to that end at all, but -

But their memories are perfectly intact, aren't they? Hundreds of memories, carding neatly through their mind. Holding hands while accosted by gnomes. Pushing a juicebox and a chocolate bar across a tabletop. A wool hat with soft horns and soft ears, painstakingly knitted. A birthday party. A glass orb of a present.

A heart that ached with a warmth and resonance, SOULs blending together effortlessly.

Frisk looks up at them with a question in their eyes, and they say what they say because it seems like it is something that should be said. That, theoretically, a determined child would think to say.]

But aren't we still SOULmates?

[Does that...not change? It wouldn't, would it? Your SOUL cannot change, no matter how you try to change it. No matter how they've tried to break it. It never worked.]

[Frisk is, indeed, in. They have been picking up books, a trio of them stacked atop one another with a sticky note on the topmost one reading, in a child's untidy scrawl: for Zacharie.

They remember Zacharie, and they remember these were for Zacharie. They pick through one of the books idly, but nothing about it seems especially interesting now. They're not sure why they bothered. They set it down when the door exhibits a timid knock. They get up to open it because that's the thing that polite kids do. It opens a crack, and they look at her blankly.]

Alphys. Hello.

No. We are not.

[Spoken flatly, distantly, as offhandedly as if they're just confirming they're out of milk. LV 8. They're LV 8. More than enough to see people as forgettable, not worth talking to, in my way.]

I may have manipulated you into thinking otherwise, but I am clearly not your Chara. The LV 19 one, the one who was able to claim your SOUL... that is your Chara.

[Wonderland must have brought them in, somehow, for the duration of the event. It wouldn't make sense to assume that Chara met their past self. That the same person somehow existed twice over? That the shambling LV 19 beast was what Frisk had in mind when they donned a green-and-yellow shirt and told everyone they were this Chara?

Or is that just a poor excuse for being cruel?]

I'm not the one who can claim dominion of your SOUL. We are nothing more than strangers who convinced each other that we have a connection.

Edited (TYPO) 2016-11-06 08:15 (UTC)

I heard it was Halloween.

[They have an awful lot of reasoning, neatly laid out like cards, face-up, but they're only barely paying attention. It's hard to focus at any sort of length. All of it muddies together, a big brownish-gray blur like a blob of paint on a canvas, and two little pinpricks of red for their eyes. And green-yellow stripes for the shirt.

Maybe they should draw it. They like...drawing, don't they? Or was that Chara?]

I still think I'm you sometimes.

[It's a frank admission. They're thinking about it now. Chocolate, and pianos, and flowers, and knitting. Interests that Chara tried to deny where there in the first place for...some reason. It doesn't seem important now.

But then, nothing does.]

Which of us can play the piano?

[It does not know how long it has been here. The clock has stopped moving, the calendar is irrelevant, it feels too disconnected to even really count as "here."

There's no point to them being here anyway. Watching Frisk would be pointless when they cannot blip all over the map, and they think they should not be trusted to be alone with Frisk anyway. They are the one who did this. They are not the one who can clean up their own mess. Cannot make amends for their mistakes. Can only watch other people pick up the pieces. They're not smart enough to build a DT Extraction machine. They're not good enough to be useful.

It registers something in its proximity. Sandwich. Doesn't know when it last ate, but doesn't feel hungry anyway. Never wants to eat again. Bad kids don't deserve supper. It stops looking at the sandwich.

It registers a voice instead. A single syllable. Sans.

He must be here to judge them.

They've done something unforgivable, after all, and it is his duty to make their sins crawl. He must hate them for this, surely. It must ring far too closely to someone who is not here and never was here, someone who fell into his creation. He must resent having to work this hard while Chara sits around doing nothing. He hates hard work.

Their eyes flick up to him briefly, but drop back down.

It doesn't know if it's hoping (ha ha, we all know what happens when you hope) that not emoting at all will make people give up and leave them alone, or if it's trying to tell him that it will accept whatever sentence he passes down.]

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Page 1 of 16

black then white are all i see in my infancy [closed + open]

ALPHYS + CHARA; VENDORS; as below, so above and beyond, i imagine

ALPHYS + FORD + SANS; ALPHYS'S LAB; over-analyzing separates the body from the mind

FRISK + YOU; EVERYWHERE; to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human

DT EXTRACTION; feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines

FRISK + YOU; POST-EXTRACTION; EVERYWHERE; reaching out to embrace whatever may come

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WOO

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i have no self control

Sans for the Soul (catch-all)

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pats shoulder

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