entrancelogs | because they took our LOVE and they filled it up [open]

Entry tags:

because they took our LOVE and they filled it up [open]

Who: Frisk and YOU
Where: All over Quor'toth
When: 12/2 - 12/5
Rating: PG-13 for suicide ideation, self-harm, and child endangerment THIS KID IS IN A ROUGH SPOT
Summary: After being empty and dull for almost a month, Frisk has begun to feel things again. Since feelings are dumb and sad and difficult and they want to continue feeling nothing, Frisk embarks on a quest for LOVE. Chaos ensues.
Story:

settlement; so don't stop, don't stop until your heart goes numb

The air is raw and arid, bright against their skin. The lack of moisture reminds them fleetingly of Hotland, but they press the association numbly aside. Numbly because - because they continue to feel nothing at all, don't they?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Frisk gathers sticks from the withered and stark black skeletons of trees so they can use them to reinforce the roofs and walls of the simple huts. They don't say much, not even to the resident monsters that seem friendly and amiable enough, and seem to appreciate the help. They tuck their chin low to their chest and work quietly, diligently, staying out of the way, always out of the way like they're meant to.

Every so often they break away from their work to scan the skyline, the bleak and bone-dry horizon, with an expression that's not so much disturbingly blank as it is almost contemplative.

acid river; i'm just a problem that doesn't want to be solved

[A small child crouches at the bank of a river. The river is not what you would call a typical one - it is, in fact, a frothing, bubbling current of acid that drifts sluggishly along. Frisk occasionally drops a stick or a leaf within and then watches the fluid eat into its defenseless victim. Their features are blank. Their face is empty.

Frisk unwinds the bandages from around their one hand. And then, slowly, almost curiously - they skim the surface of the liquid with the tip of a finger.

They watch the skin blister and redden impassively. It doesn't feel like anything.

Then they reach forward to dip their finger into the acid again.]

* flee; i said one day the valley's gonna swallow me whole

The further out Frisk wanders, the more they begin to glimpse things that defy common explanation. Something that looks like the malformed product of a badger and a great scaly lizard-beast. Things with tentacles, things with too many teeth, things that should inspire thrills of terror in the pit of their chest. Mostly, however, Frisk feels that, if they were still Frisk, they'd be trying to wiggle their hips and ask all the monsters if those claws were natural.

But they're not really still Frisk anymore. They're just a hollowed-out SOUL of a human with nothing but a vague sense that, upon being faced with a horned ram-thing with a string of pinkish intestines trailing from its jaws, its fur soaked crimson, they are better suited to run.

And run they do. They aren't very fast, nor is their heart truly in it. The thing bounding after them will soon catch them. That's not enough to get them to run any faster.

* fight; i am your worst, i am your worst nightmare

[It's while Frisk is scrambling over charcoal-streaked hills and weaving around copses of shriveled-looking trees that something occurs to them, a sparking idea. There's still something shivering in their SOUL, the scabbed-over remnant of a sense of remorse or regret that won't go away. And then, as they gaze out over the twisted landscape, their eyes alight with the closest thing to life than they have in almost a month.

They reach over to one of the trees and snap a stick off. Actually, they snap off several sturdy, thick boughs. A round rock lets them sharpen the tips, muscle memory from their time in Neverland lending a studious ease to the movements.

They rebandage their slightly burned hands and set off with their makeshift spears until they come across something that hisses and chitters and resembles a spiky, oversized beetle.

Without hesitation, Frisk brings their first stake down in a swift arc, severing one of its segmented legs from its body. It bellows at them with a shrill wail and rears up, clearly ready to impale them on the spot.

Frisk braces themself for the FIGHT. If they kill it, the LOVE will bubble into them and fill their SOUL with the hollowness they miss, the emptiness they crave. If it kills them -

Well, it feels like sleep anyway.

wildcard; in the truly gruesome do we trust

[Got a prompt and an idea? Hit me up at arrpee or with a PM! I'll match prose or brackets, no problem!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Everyone's got to follow them. Everyone's got to make sure they're not doing anything foolish, anything untoward. That wouldn't be acceptable. That would be such a shame.

He catches up to them easily. Frisk hunches their shoulders and dips their head, hair veiling their face partially from his view.]

Why? Why's it matter to you?

[Why?

Why?

He comes up empty. He's used to empty, but not when it comes to words. He has to have something to say to keep them close to him.]

We're friends.

[That's the easiest answer. It's such a cop out, even he can barely keep himself from cringing when he says it. But it's true, isn't it?]

[We're friends. Right. The adult says so, so that just has to be how it is. They have to remember that. They have to remember to be...to let it happen. They don't feel. They can't feel. None of it matters, and none of it will.]

You won't let me get any LOVE.

No one will.

Love?

[He doesn't know what they're talking about and can only guess based on the homonym he does know.]

Can't I give it to you?

[That's what protagonists do, isn't it? They give everything to everyone else.]

Level of Violence.

[They could...how much would he be worth, they can't help but wonder? They're not sure how hard it would be, though, to beat him. They've been stripped of their determination, their means to SAVE, and he's human too - full of determination, probably more than they.

It'd be a hopeless endeavor.]

That's what LOVE is.

[Level of violence. LOVE.

Love.

He wonders if there isn't a link between them. He fights for the things he loves, and fighting is by its nature violent. So he can give love by giving LOVE can't he?]

Does it work if I don't fight back?

[Is he...offering?

Frisk eyes him carefully, almost warily, uncertain. Why would he offer that? He shouldn't be. Everyone's been telling them that it's wrong, that they're acting wrong, and they know they are, but - but it'll hurt less, in the long run.

Better this way.]

Only works if I kill you.

Do you want to kill me?

[Protagonists died for other people. Souji knew one who'd died to save the entire world. He could at least die for one person, especially here, where death meant nothing.]

[Yes, they almost say. But they bite their lip. Because they're not - supposed to want anything. And they don't. They don't.

They look away, across the unfamiliar landscape, scarred with the twisting stumps of withered trees.]

I don't want anything.

[There's an inherent contradiction there. Souji tilts his head, peering at them, momentarily distracted from his own thoughts.]

You want LOVE.

[They're not making a lot of sense, are they? No. They're denying their own words all over again, and they'd be frustrated but they - they don't get frustrated anymore. So they don't look back at him at all.]

Humans are harder to kill than monsters.

[Yeah. That's a good justification. Something rational and reasonable and rooted in logic, not any sort of - of emotional grounding.]

That's not related.

[Souji can push them. He helps other people grow. That's how he grows himself.]

You were killing that. [He gestures at the hell beetle thing.] Because you want to get something out of it.

Maybe it attacked me first.

[Like all the monsters did Underground. No shame in protecting yourself, right? Just defending yourself from all the cruel and dangerous things that want to take your SOUL. There's no harm in it.]

Maybe I was just defending myself.

[Souji doesn't think so, but he holds back his words to the contrary. He's not Frisk's parent or even their older sibling. He's always thought of Frisk as an equal, so why is he acting so patronizing now?

Why is he acting like this?

He swallows and looks at the charred remains of the beetle thing.]

Do you still get what you want if I fight with you?

You'll win.

[They keep looking away. That's just the blunt truth of it. They can only win through trial and error, mostly error, and without the power of their own missing determination on their side? They're lesser than even the feeblest of children.

They have nothing. No drive. No means to succeed.]

I mean if I fight alongside you. If you and I fight monsters together.

[He could have left Frisk to their own devices, but he worries. He recognizes that as a true emotion of his, not something forced on him by the mask he associates with Frisk.]

Because I'm too weak to do it myself?

[No one seems to trust that they can. Either that, or they seem to insist that Frisk must not really want this. That they're just confused, or broken, or plain wrong.

So maybe they are wrong. They have been for a month now. That's not really about to change.]

Because you're my friend.

[Because he worries. Genuinely worries, he thinks, and not just worries because it's what's expected of him in his role.]

Most of my friends keep trying to stop me from killing anyone.

[The latent challenge is buried in the words, in the way their eyes flick up to meet his. The irises, once brown, have been a rusted maroon ever since their overhaul of DT. The color of drying blood.]

[...Something important happened and he missed it. Guilt settles in his mind like a cat, circling, making itself comfortable before tucking in its paws and closing its eyes.]

Do you want to kill people?

[It might be a stupid question, but there's a distinction to be made here between "people" and "creatures," like the one he burnt up moments ago.]

I don't want anything.

[A repetition of the words and a fresh emphasis laid on the last, for the first time since they've begun this encounter.]

I can't want anything. I don't have determination.

Then why are you doing anything?

[He isn't trying to quiz them or Socratic-method them. He's confused about what they're telling him. He sees an inherent contradiction in it, but they don't, so there must be something he's missing, right?

It doesn't occur to him that for the first time in awhile, he's feeling like normal, like whatever darkness inside him is clearing up in order to understand his friend.]

[If they had the capacity to be frustrated, they would be right about now, they think. Or he should be. They're not making any sense at all, and it shows.]

Because I...I can. So I...have to.

[There's a faint note of defensiveness to the justification, scant as it is. That's - that's their type, isn't it? Someone very determined. Who doesn't know how to QUIT.]

...What happened to you?

[Something happened. He missed it.]

I don't have determination anymore.

[The words are quiet, barely audible over the hellish ambience of Quor'toth, and they have to look away again.]

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