Chara Dreemurr..? (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
achievementhunter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lifeaftr2017-09-13 01:35 pm
achievementhunter) wrote in lifeaftr2017-09-13 01:35 pm
Entry tags:
- final fantasy xv: ardyn izunia,
- hyper light drifter: the drifter,
- marble hornets: tim wright,
- mushi-shi: ginko,
- pokemon sun & moon: guzma,
- pokemon sun & moon: luna,
- undertale: chara dreemurr,
- ✖ fallout: the courier,
- ✖ fullmetal alchemist: edward elric,
- ✖ pacific rim: newton geiszler,
- ✖ the adventure zone: lup,
- ✖ the adventure zone: taako,
- ✖ the walking dead (game): clementine,
- ✖ undertale: frisk,
- ✖ undertale: muffet,
- ✖ undertale: sans the skeleton
I’ll take my throne, lay it on a mountain
Who: Our volunteer mountaineers
What: Two parties split up to scale the mountain from two sides, planning to meet at it’s peak. Shenanigans occur along the way.
When: September 13th to 16th
Where: Group 1: G3, H2, G2 || Group 2: F3, F2, G2
Warnings: Please note any warnings in your subject headers!
Word spreads quickly in a small community such as this. What was originally intended to be a small party turned into something much larger- and on the day Chara planned to leave for the mountain, it’s not one, but two parties that make off for it’s peak.
OOC: Welcome to the mountaineering open post! Keep in mind the following;
What: Two parties split up to scale the mountain from two sides, planning to meet at it’s peak. Shenanigans occur along the way.
When: September 13th to 16th
Where: Group 1: G3, H2, G2 || Group 2: F3, F2, G2
Warnings: Please note any warnings in your subject headers!
Word spreads quickly in a small community such as this. What was originally intended to be a small party turned into something much larger- and on the day Chara planned to leave for the mountain, it’s not one, but two parties that make off for it’s peak.
Group 1, led by Chara, moves off during the early hours of the morning, seeking to search the furthest part of the mountain by following the river upwards. The path is longer and more winding- however, they are unhampered in when they can travel.
Group 2, led by Ardyn, takes off after the sun has set- due to the needs of multiple members to avoid the sun’s harsh glare. Their route takes them up the closest side of the mountain, which provides an easier path- however, they may only travel whilst the sun is set.
OOC: Welcome to the mountaineering open post! Keep in mind the following;
♆ RNG was happily done blind by our wonderful Guzma mun, with our animals RNG'd by Wade Wilson's! Thank them both for all your misfortune.
♆ Prompts have been provided for each group below! Simply toplevel wherever you wish and treat this like a normal open post!
♆ Since each group will generally be in close contact with one another, consider asking others if you can threadjack here and there; nothing says team-building like being a nosy parker.
no subject
Don't.
I'm not supposed to think about those things anymore.
[They turn away, fixing back their hair with a guilty sort of restlessness. They know Tim is just trying to help, trying to... be nice to them. They're not ungrateful for that. It's more that they know their own limitations, and that if they allow themself the indulgence of that rabbit hole, there may be no coming back out of it.]
[They'd rather live through another Reset than let their Partner down like that.]
... sorry. I'm okay. Thanks for asking.
no subject
[If you think about them, does that make them real? Does that bring them through to your side of the story, and manifest them in a way that makes them too immediate? When they're couched in the abstract, it's easy to avoid thinking about it. Maybe he should feel - proud, he can catch himself thinking bitterly, for coaxing that kind of reaction out of a sweet-tempered someone so quickly. Got a talent for getting under the skins of the well-intentioned, doesn't he?]
[Don't.]
[So, don't.]
You don't have to think about those things for them to hurt, F -
[No. Scratch that out.]
...Kittu.
no subject
[Something that hurts, even when you're not thinking about it. They guess they never thought about it that way before. And Tim... most definitely seems like someone who would know. They finish restoring their bun and cup their palms over their bent knees, becoming very small in the large and empty room.]
[It's sad, but it makes sense. For something to hurt even when you aren't aware of it. Cuts still bleed, beneath sleeves. Poison still creeps through sinew. That's a new way to think of it, but really, it doesn't change all that much.]
[Frisk glances up to Tim again with a knowing, serene smile.]
I don't mind hurting.
no subject
[These kids are a step up, in that regard. It doesn't color their souls deeper, because their souls are already wine-red and darkling-deep with things that have hurt and hurt and hurt again. Is a scab still a scab when it's been picked so many times that it leaves something more indelible than dried blood and clinging skin?]
[One can cut the body, and it will heal.]
[But do it over and over again in the same spot, and you will scar.]
[The soul cannot be so different.]
[And it isn't.]
I know. [Soft words. The tip of one thumb grazes the crescent edge of the hatchet blade. Duller than he'd like. Or - duller than someone else would like. He doesn't know anymore. He didn't know what he was before he got tangled up in someone else's soul, in the souls of two someone elses. He's got no clue what he's meant to be now.]
[Other than safe. And that, in and of itself, is laughable. He's the furthest thing from safe. He corrupts people's heads and robs them of their sanity. And here he is. Safe.]
...but it doesn't mean you have to.
cw: implied self harm mention
[He tells them that they don't have to hurt, but what point is there in that reassurance? If they don't hurt -- if people like Frisk and Chara and Tim don't hurt because of what they did to everyone else, or because of what others have done to them, then they'll hurt because of what they do to themselves. In the ways they can't help, so just pretend that they can.]
[The distinction of that control, maybe, simply lends the illusion of it hurting a little less.]
[Frisk's smile doesn't fade; they rise to their feet and glance towards a boarded window checkered with sunlight.]
Remember what I told you? About picking consequences?
... I picked wrong. So I deserve to.
cw suicide ideation
[They chose this. They chose...an ending that he glimpsed in someone else's soul, coal-hot and burning with a purpose that was impossible not to see, because it was so thoroughly beyond what was possible with a man who didn't trust himself with a gun, who had a history with fire, who came so fucking close to that knife's edge without truly crossing it.]
[Like a coward.]
[It's what he is. Coward and liar, and he's still all they've got. And what kind of cosmic irony is that? They have dozens of people who'd stand by their side, if it weren't for the insurmountable crime of being what they are, and what they are is incurable.]
[You can cut away the cancer. But you can't fill the hole.]
I think the world likes to punish us all enough without us needing to do a little of it ourselves.
[But.]
[Let it never be said that Tim takes his own advice.]
no subject
It's going to hurt anyway.
[That's the bottom line. That's the point, and Frisk is good, now, at getting to the point. It doesn't matter if they deserve it or if they don't, or if they think about it or if they don't. It doesn't matter who does it to them, or who they do it to. It's going to hurt. So why don't they do the same thing every grown-up they've ever known does, with every injury, mental or physical?]
[Scars don't matter, anyway. It still stops the bleeding.]
[They think they know what Tim is trying to do, and they appreciate it. There's no way they can't. He doesn't owe them this conversation or those kind, gentle ways of trying to ease Frisk off a hook or two. But they have no more promises to keep, and they think, when they read some of the lines in his face, some people should be more concerned about counting their own miles.]
But thank you for trying to talk to me about it.
1/2
I used to see things as a kid.
[It's a story he's not sure they'd know. Chara tells their Partner everything, but there are innumerable words that also unspoken between them. The non-sequitur might be out of place, at first, but he swears there's a point to it. A point - even if he's the one bearing the edge, weighted in his hands with old sun-warmed metal.]
Doctors didn't know what to do. What were they supposed to do, huh? Just...a kid, always crying about things that weren't there. [That were there. But for the purposes of the story, for everyone else...they may as well not have been.] And they wanted to help. I know they did. They did everything they could think of to do to make it...to make me - better.
[Implying that he's fixable, in any way.]
[That's a joke, right?]
2/2
[That's the long and the short of it. He was just born the way he was, cursed at the cradle, turned out wrong. A carrier for a virus he didn't even know existed until he started to see it, and when the doctors asked why he always drew a man in the room with him, he gradually learned to stop drawing it at all, if it made them happy. If it meant they thought he was getting better.]
Maybe - someone else was always gonna hurt there, too.
I can't change that now.
[That's one thing, at least, that he has going for him. One illusion he never quite succumbed to. He could never change that; it was buried in stone, written into his atoms, burned into his skin. He could never change what he was. He could only change what he did with it.]
But I can try to make sure no one ever feels like that. If I can.
1/2
[A non-sequitur that might seem out of place, but it isn't. Instead, there's a childish sort of keen awe that blooms up inside them. The kind that never really believes that adults were once children; children who scrape their knees and cry and sit shadowed in the MERCY of those who have clawed out their authority from the passage of time.]
[When Tim was a kid, he saw things, and he hurt, and he cried. Frisk listens carefully. To every word. And doesn't pretend they understand that full, special hell. They don't comprehend being sick in a way that forced a reliance on the goodness, the wisdom, the availability of adults. If that was Tim's world, they can see why he was always going to hurt.]
[Why, as an adult himself, he hurts still.]
[They don't see a reason to argue with him, on this. Can't find one. He knows he can't change his own hurt, not with the only tools he was ever given (the tool that rattles like teeth in Chara's pocket), and not with the knowledge that someone, someone out there with the best of intentions, had once done everything they could to make him better.]
[He can try to make sure no one else feels like that ever again, he says.]
[if he can.]
no subject
[Frisk moves to sit on the floor, drawing their knees up, crossing their ankles over one another. Checkered sunlight scores against their face; a warm, dusty bronze.]
[There are things they shouldn't think about anymore. Things that are going to hurt whether they do or they don't. But some of those things feel cooler to the touch, now, charred where they were once molten; ashen and dirty and black, but Frisk can pick them up and turn them in their palms and not get burned.]
When I was little, my dad would talk to me sometimes. He'd try to help. He'd say not to cry so much, or to FIGHT back. If I was tough, I wouldn't get hurt all the time.
[Their lips purse.]
People who hurt are always trying to teach others how not to. I don't think there's a way. But I do think that caring enough to try is good.
no subject
[It's not the kind of thing he associates with the good parts of his life, few and far between as those are. He lived with silhouettes cutting prison bars over his face, casting him in perpetual dark. He lived with doors opening to tall figures with white coats who wouldn't tell him what was wrong, leaving him to press his ear to the door while they whispered. And he knows, because the memory doesn't belong to him, that some children live with silhouettes far more visceral than that, because they were real. Because it wasn't some unknowable nightmare, but something that loomed regardless.]
["He'll kill me."]
["Don't let him kill you."]
[He crouches so he's at their level. Not next to; just across. Gapping that distance between them, allowing that cushion of space and breath.]
It's okay to cry.
[The words are quiet. He's the adult here, between the three of them, tied together by a frayed shoelace of a secret that wasn't meant to be a problem in the first place. He's the adult, and they're the children, and yet - he's maybe cried more in his life than either of them. He's done it too frequently. Messily, between panicked gulps of breath while Jay filmed him and stood there not knowing what to do.]
[Chara smiles too much, and Tim, not enough.]
[Tim cries too much. And the kids...]
[If you're tough, you won't get hurt. If you're tough, you won't cry.]
I mean...Kidwun can tell you that I do it all the time. [It's not perfect, in terms of levity, but - maybe it's something.]
no subject
[But Tim is coming down to their level to be nice. To be different from the exact clench of familiarity in their middle. They appreciate that.]
[He tells them that it's okay to cry. They don't appreciate that quite as much.]
[Because it's stupid, it's stupid, why would permission from an adult -- out of nowhere, when they were just fine -- make them want to do exactly that?]
[Hugging their knees tighter, Frisk gives a mute, harried shake of their head. It's a moment before they can unglue their tongue from the roof of their mouth. The first response that leaps to their mind is the one they say -- even knowing that it's as good as taboo these days.]
... so does Asriel.
no subject
[He knows. He knows, because he's seen it - been privy to memories that weren't his to peer into, yet another invasive spike of someone else's head unfurling through a child's soul. He hasn't seen him since they showed up - is he even still here? Does it really matter? He's got no clue what Chara said to him, but whatever it was, it must have been effective in getting him to stay away.]
[He's still not entirely certain how he's meant to feel about that. Relieved, maybe. And then guilty for that relief, because it means the explanation he has no idea how to pull out of his gut doesn't have to come.]
[Pulling tighter around themself, referencing a name and a face that they probably aren't meant to be referencing - ]
[Chara's easier, in some ways. They're easier, because he always knows, with them, what it means when he's said the wrong thing. When he's made a misstep, they make it obvious. They don't tolerate his bullshit.]
[Frisk tolerates entirely too much bullshit, and something's taught them to shut up before they can make it as obvious as Chara does.]
Crying doesn't make you less tough. Just means...[He almost seems to lose his momentum for a moment, lost in a recollection of something he doesn't enumerate.] It's not on you, if things get to be too hard for a bit.
[It feels obvious once it's said aloud. But it still needs to be said.]
no subject
[Frisk doesn't laugh. They can't laugh when LV presses up into their throat, hot and smoking; when the horrible thing inside them that looks like a heart but feels like a clump of barbed wire twists itself up, scraping the insides of their ribs, digs holes through their lungs until everything in them feels deflated. They're not like Chara, who laughs and smiles to let others know they've done wrong.]
[All Frisk has learned to tell is when Frisk has done wrong. And that, these days, they aren't too sure of anymore, either.]
[Like how they can't look up at Tim. How he's being so nice to them, so soft and... tolerant. Of them and the fact that they're talking about things they're sure Chara would ban him from mentioning to Frisk, if they haven't already. They don't understand. Why is he acting like he owes either of them anything? Like he isn't just some adult with his own life who got wrapped up in them? Like he's really, truly obligated to tell some eleven-year-old that they can cry if they're sad.]
[Why is he being so nice to them?]
[...]
[Frisk swallows. It sticks down in the barbed wire, like they knew it would, and their vocal chords quiver with the pain of it.]
I don't know what you want from me.
But I don't want to cry.
no subject
I don't want anything. I just...figured that it's okay. If you need a reminder.
[There's every chance they wouldn't really believe him. Why should they? He's just some person - some adult fogging their life and making things more complicated than they have to be. Why should he be the deviation from the norm, the person that doesn't want something from them? What reason would they have to believe that?]
[He wouldn't have. At their age, at his point in time - he wouldn't have.]
[He'd have gauged the advice for some kind of subversive backdoor. He would've suspected it for a ploy. Someone trying to worm their way into his head and get a look at the workings there, to see if he's really getting better or if he's just telling lies again. Wrong answer means an adjustment in the hot burn of whatever medication they pick to go down his throat, and the weeks-months of jittering nausea and grayed-out vision while his body acclimates to the shift in the chemistry of his brain.]
[No reason to trust something like that, is there?]
[No wonder they're looking for an ulterior motive.]
I just know it's tough to feel like you always have to be way stronger than you feel.
no subject
I don't.
[They don't need a reminder.]
[That someone as nice as Tim knows how it feels to be like this -]
[or that he doesn't want anything from them, this is really just -]
[that they don't have to be strong.]
[Or feel anything.]
[That they're alive, that they have to think about this because they have to be reminded]
[Frisk stands, and the barbed wire stretches inside them, tugs all of their insides like stretched sinew. They turn away from Tim, their face red, and they don't want to cry. They don't.]
[They don't.]
Sorry.
[Tugging their knapsack, Frisk shuffles towards the door.]
no subject
[Either way.]
[If it hits with any kind of impact, it doesn't show in anything besides the slow contracture of the muscles in his throat. Slowly, he straightens, and he grips his hatchet, and he stands.]
You got nothing to apologize for.
[Whatever it is they're afraid they might've effected, whatever they think they might've said that drilled into him, that could leave some kind of lasting mark - ]
[He's had worse.]
[He's always had worse.]
I'm the one who's sorry. [For intruding, yet again.]
no subject
... you don't, either.
[Have to apologize, they should elaborate.]
[Have to be tough, they should say.]
[But the barbed wire is making it hard to breathe in a way that doesn't hurt. It's a signal to Frisk that it's time for them to do one of the few things they know how to without ruining everything.]
[They shut up.]
[So just like that - without showing the kindness of someone who was really sorry - Frisk pushes open the door and leaves.]
no subject
[They're like their Partner, in that way. Too quick to adjust to what others think, or say of them. Maybe it's expectation. Maybe it's consequence. Maybe it's something else entirely.]
[Maybe it's the fact that it was an offer and not a command that threw them. Maybe it was the fact that it opposed everything they've come to accept.]
[Maybe it was just the wrong thing to say.]
[Maybe it's the fact that they're still here at all, and that they have to sit around and listen to adults, to people who can't know very much at all, tell them how they ought to think and ought to feel, as if someone else knows better than they do, what Frisk thinks and feels. What Kittu thinks. What Kittu feels.]
[You'd think the decoupling from the title would save them from that. But with what little power they had, maybe they chose for it not to.]
[He can't fix it, and he can't say.]
[He just sighs, and lets his ruination of what should've been a reprieve come to pass.]
[That's what he's good at.]