Work Text:
i. chara
There’s a word you found, once, when you were picking through a Japanese-to-English dictionary because sometimes the reference section of the library had interesting things in it and you were loitering where the staff wouldn’t think to look for you and throw you out. Sakanagi—it stood out to you because you liked the sound of it, mostly; it felt good to whisper under your breath. You don’t remember what the individual characters looked like, but you remember the meaning. Backlash; literally reverse flow. The consequence for handling magic that should be beyond you.
Maybe that’s the other reason that it’s stuck with you for so long. You have always liked when consequences affect everyone, no matter how powerful, like natural laws, like justice.
It isn’t exactly the same, but—you think that this closed circuit between you and your host is a little like that.
(It is nothing like that.)
ii. frisk
The monsters of the Ruins aren’t scary anymore now that you know how to deal with them—be kind to Froggit, comfort Whimsun, let Moldsmal go about its business, don’t bully Loox, let Migosp be itself, accept snacks from Vegetoid. It’s nice; fun even, like the schoolyard games you always used to sneak glances at from afar but were so rarely allowed to actually join. When you and the monsters part ways, you always feel like you’ve made a friend somehow.
But when they appear before you in groups of threes or more—even when you know they’re just curious, not really hostile—your vision starts dimming. You stop being able to breathe.
The memories that aren’t yours leak into your head like tar, thick and oozing. Screaming voices. Blood welling up into your mouth (that isn’t your mouth, that couldn’t possibly be your mouth because it’s the wrong shape, the tongue is longer and thinner and the teeth are sharper). And pain. Horrible, horrible pain, so vivid and visceral and immediate that you have to frantically pat your stomach and chest and arms to remind yourself that nothing’s really skewering you, there are no bullet wounds on your body.
Please, please, someone is crying, and it makes your ears ring, makes your skull throb. You can smell the smoke, the blood, the sickly sweetness of flowers trampled underfoot. The stench of something like death gets stuck in your nose and you can’t get rid of it.
There’s nothing you can do to make it pass on its own, so you flee as soon as there’s an opening and try to find a safe corner to hide in—to curl up and hold your achy head and breathe. Steady, until the urge to retch recedes.
You’re shaking, or maybe they are. This is the fourth time that this has happened and you still don’t know how to stop it.
iii. chara
It’s awful to think like this, maybe, but the flashbacks you don’t mind. The flashbacks are all you. And you can’t help them—as soon as the two of you are surrounded by enemies, your brain or—or your mind or your soul or whatever it is that stores your consciousness now that you’re like this, it sends you back to you and Ree and that awful moment all on its own. You’re not doing it on purpose, and Frisk isn’t going out of their way to look, and it’s not something that they would want to see anyway because it’s terrifying and painful for them too.
The problem is the rest of it.
They skip across the cracked-floor puzzle in light steps that don’t match their usual careful gait and they breathlessly hum Toriel’s old lullaby and they miss all the exact same pitches and it’s too much, it’s too much.
What’s wrong? they think at you. Their concern and uncertainty seep syrupy and horrible into all the wounded parts of you and it’s only then that you realize your helpless panic and rage must be bleeding into them the same way.
You want to tell them nothing but it’s too raw and you can’t, so: You scream instead, curl up and rage. You’d cover your ears if you were corporeal, if you had a hope of blocking them out. Stop looking, you howl. Cry. You want to throw things and stomp your feet and punch the wall and grab something sharp and slam it through your brain. Frisk flinches. You want claws so that you can dig them into wherever your minds connect and tear yourself away.
I’m sorry, they say, and they’re miserable and you’re miserable and you hate it, you hate it. I’m not doing it on purpose.
Figure out a way to STOP doing it! you shriek at them. You’re aware that you’re not helping, that in general it’s not going to do any good to throw a tantrum like a ten-year-old, but—but you ARE just a ten-year-old. So are they. You’re just a couple of stupid kids. It’s funny. It’s just—so funny.
Frisk ducks into the next room and sits down against the wall there. They wrap their arms around their own body like they expect you to feel it (you do, and you want to run away) and this time when they hum the old melody to themself it’s deliberate, hesitant.
You feel comforted. You feel violated.
iv. frisk
The view of the city over the parapets wrenches jagged sobbing out of you and you don’t know why.
Or, you do. Because Chara knows this skyline. Because the city is empty, because the people they want here with them aren’t at their side, because they’re sad and scared and alone and they don’t know what’s happening and they hate it.
Old nausea roils up in you when you stand on tiptoe and look down. For a second you see the echoes of a cheering crowd—in the memory you, or Chara you think, are looking from much higher up—from a woman’s, a monster’s, Toriel’s arms as a tall man with a gentle voice proclaims that monsters no longer have anything to fear, that it is safe to explore the whole underground at last, that here is proof that good exists in humankind.
There’s someone else there, too, but their outline is a gaping void of grief and guilt in Chara’s head and it’s like their afterimage has been scribbled out in black crayon. Your head hurts so much.
The hope of humans and monsters, they called you—no, Chara—and it makes you—no, Chara—sick to your stomach because humans are horrible, they’re trash and disgusting and don’t deserve to live and neither do you and god, god, you just want to stop.
You sink down onto your knees and smack your head against the purple brick. Your teeth rattle and pain rips through your head like an egg cracking, but it clears your mind, so that’s fine with you.
Don’t tell her, Chara whispers in the back of your head. They’re crying again. They’ve barely done anything except yell and cry since the two of you woke up like this. If you tell her, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll take over this body and I’ll come here and I’ll jump. Don’t you dare tell her I’m here.
I wouldn’t anyway, you say. You’re tired. You don’t want me to.
Their presence probes at your side of the mindspace, you guess trying to figure out whether you mean it or not. The feeling like being a cabinet somebody’s rifling through roughly ceases after a few moments, though, and Chara draws back, mollified and—you think ashamed.
Good, they tell you in a small voice. And again, more assertive now: Good.
v. chara
There’s only one thing worse than their prying into your head, than their saccharine tenderness pouring down on you in a deluge with no way to shield yourself.
Frisk sits on the bed—on the bed you and Asriel used to share before New Home was built and you moved there, on your bed—and holds their head in their hands.
The outside of a convenience store. It’s night. The outside smells like piss and cigarettes but it’s closing in an hour and the cashier is giving you dirty looks for loitering. Your knees hurt and you don’t know what to do and they’re still not back yet—
Park at sundown, sitting on the bench because you’re not Allowed to go play on the jungle gym with the other kids and if you break the rules and they see you they’ll leave you here all night. Some parent who’s been looking at you for a while comes up and asks you where your mommy and daddy are, sweetie. You don’t answer—of course you don’t—but she keeps bothering you and bothering you so you sign for her to go away and she frowns and takes her phone out of her purse and the next thing you know there are police dragging you down to the station and you’re going to get in trouble, you’re going to get in so much trouble even though you tried and you did what they said, they’re not going to let you have dinner for a month this time and you’re running out of the Halloween candy you’ve been saving from the school party and school lunches taste terrible and there’s never enough and they’ll hit you but never anywhere anybody can see—
Frisk whines out loud and claws at their head. Their hair catches between their fingers and pain shoots through their scalp and you die a little inside, you want to be dead, properly dead and unfeeling and not awake, because their stomach is seizing up and that part is you and you don’t know if the pain in their chest is yours or theirs or what.
It’s too easy to knock them aside and steal control of their arms and legs, and that scares you, but all you can do is get up out of your room and run outside because freaking out will just make it worse for you both. You throw up in the leaves until nothing comes up but bile, the ground painful on their scraped hands and knees. They’re crying, or maybe you are. That’s all they do when they’re not bumbling through puzzles and making friends with monsters, is cry.
You ask Toriel for a glass of water when you get in. Their voice is so creaky already and their throat so raw from vomiting that you can barely make yourself understood. She gets one for you, and offers to take Frisk’s dirty shirt and wash it, and you let her because they’re just curled up wailing. She leads you back to your room, tucks you into your bed, hands you one of Ree’s stuffed animals that you liked but Frisk doesn’t care about. But Frisk isn’t in control of the body right now, so you hold it to your chest fiercely and don’t let go. You’d bury your face in it if you weren’t all gross with tears and snot, and if you didn’t already know that any trace of his scent will be long gone.
When you fall asleep, you don’t want to wake up.
You have to, someone says, gentle, from a long ways away. You would think it’s Frisk, but they’re still a ball of bad memories packed into the same too-small mindscape with you.
vi. frisk
It’s you, says Chara, with mild curiosity. Then: That’s me?
You squint at the mirror—it’s a little bright here in the hall—but there is a blurry figure over your reflection’s shoulder where there’s nothing in reality. (You wave your hand around to make sure, but you don’t make contact with anything.)
The figure is of a child your own age, pale-faced with reddish-brown hair and red eyes. Their shirt is green and yellow. In the mirror, they’re up on tiptoe, peering over your shoulder with their hazy face bright and inquisitive.
It’s me, Chara concludes. Then: This is weird.
You agree, and you know that they’ll know already, so you don’t say it.
It helps to have a face to go along with the voice and the jumbled-up emotions and memories. You already know, a little, what kind of a person Chara is—a hurt and angry person who’s a lot kinder than they think they are (No I’m not, they think crossly at you)—but it makes them more concrete in your head to know what they looked like.
You’re cute, you inform them.
They sputter, and you giggle, letting your affection well up in you like an armful of treasure so that they won’t be able to doubt you.
vii. chara
Toriel blocks the way.
She looks through you. Through Frisk.
“Prove to me you are strong enough to survive,” she says.
Frisk is crying, and you think that you are too. You remember lit candles being held against your arms and rough hands yanking you by the hair, and they flinch, and they think of dodging swung frying pans and being shoved against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of them, and you tremble. Toriel, who was kind to you, who took Frisk in even if it was just to replace you and Ree. You don’t want to believe it. You don’t know what she wants of you or what to do.
Frisk tries to tell her that they don’t want to fight, signs rushed and shaky and barely intelligible. Toriel hurls fire at them; they cover their face with their hands and dodge.
They can’t think of anything else to try to say. It doesn’t seem like talking is going to get you out of this situation.
But your panic and grief and theirs are on spin cycle, a Mobius strip of anguish with no exit.
It will be all right, someone says, quiet. I know what to do.
Who are you talking to? Frisk cries after you. I need your help right now!
You take their arms, and wrap them around their body to still their shivering.
You take their lungs, and breathe in and out to a steady count from one to seven.
Toriel waits, impassive, for your next move. You stay as you are for several moments more.
Is that better, you ask Frisk, easing back.
A little, they say, puffs of gratitude and shame emerging through the murk of their despair.
We can spare her, you tell them. We’ll do it together.
Frisk bites their lip, and nods.