He is not gentle when he reaches out again; adults are never gentle. A hand to their arm, and then to their leg, and the panic had been distant up until this point, rifting and tepid, a dulled-away acceptance of death as it would come to them, because it always does. They've never drowned before. Some fragment of their mind is morbidly curious as to how it would feel. Impalement, burning, stabbing, crushing - they've lived the spectrum of all of them, and yet the closest they've come to drowning is the cascade of their body as it tumbled into the inky dark of the garbage dump, landing with a dull thump upon a mat of golden flowers.
Memory may as well be rooted into those flowers as completely and intricately as pollen. The flooded mansion halls are nothing like the smell of sea grass and the soft squish of mud underfoot as they tread through Waterfall.
Adults are never gentle.
They're pulled to him, and the grip of someone else's hands, ironclad over their wrists, is what prefaces the bruises in the shape of fingerprints on their neck and on the small of their back and on their shoulders. Hold still hold still if you won't hold still I will have to make you hold still - and yet they thrash, persistently, their struggles nauseatingly weak despite the adrenaline bubbling in their bloodstream, because a darkness has already begun to wreathe their vision.
Sans was right, you see.
They never did learn how to QUIT.
So give them, please - Give them what they deserve. The chance to repent. To set things right. If the timeline withers with them, then they'll know, they'll know for certain, that it's their fault. They'll fix it. Please, just let them fix it. They'll be good. They'll be good.
cw for allusions to child abuse
He can SAVE someone who does not deserve it.
He is not gentle when he reaches out again; adults are never gentle. A hand to their arm, and then to their leg, and the panic had been distant up until this point, rifting and tepid, a dulled-away acceptance of death as it would come to them, because it always does. They've never drowned before. Some fragment of their mind is morbidly curious as to how it would feel. Impalement, burning, stabbing, crushing - they've lived the spectrum of all of them, and yet the closest they've come to drowning is the cascade of their body as it tumbled into the inky dark of the garbage dump, landing with a dull thump upon a mat of golden flowers.
Memory may as well be rooted into those flowers as completely and intricately as pollen. The flooded mansion halls are nothing like the smell of sea grass and the soft squish of mud underfoot as they tread through Waterfall.
Adults are never gentle.
They're pulled to him, and the grip of someone else's hands, ironclad over their wrists, is what prefaces the bruises in the shape of fingerprints on their neck and on the small of their back and on their shoulders. Hold still hold still if you won't hold still I will have to make you hold still - and yet they thrash, persistently, their struggles nauseatingly weak despite the adrenaline bubbling in their bloodstream, because a darkness has already begun to wreathe their vision.
Sans was right, you see.
They never did learn how to QUIT.
So give them, please -
Give them what they deserve.
The chance to repent. To set things right. If the timeline withers with them, then they'll know, they'll know for certain, that it's their fault. They'll fix it. Please, just let them fix it. They'll be good. They'll be good.
Show some MERCY, human.]