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Liar.

[You know what green stands for, Chara.]

I said I don't want them. Please don't make me

[Ha ha, no. Shut up. Don't do that, don't make people feel guilty. Learn your lesson, Frisk, learn your place. You're in here for your own safety. Shut up, sit down, and accept what's put in your lap like a good child.

It's for your own good.]

Frisk... realistically, what is it that you want from people? You know that they're not going to show their support for you by letting you destroy yourself.

[Is that even "support" at all? They're still... they're too young, maybe, to really grasp it. To understand whether a clinical, sterile room with bars over the window is what being a good friend is. If keeping someone from getting what they want, even if they scream for you to fight back, to just take six, to defend yourself from them - if keeping someone from something that will only trigger an avalanche of harm and destruction is being a good friend.

But they do know that kids don't always know better. They know being a kid means Toriel gently chiding that you won't be excused from the table until you eat at least three bites of everything. Even if the part of you that's like this sinks its viper fangs into you, hisses that good children don't waste food, that you should be grateful you even get to eat at all today, you brat, they know that parental insistence still means they're eating something instead of starving themself. They know being a kid means sometimes Toriel looks at you with understanding, gets what you mean when you say you don't feel well, lets you wear your pyjamas and lie in bed all day and sniffle. But they know that it also means that eventually, you will be told you cannot lie in bed with the curtains drawn forever. You have to get up, read a story together, get dressed and have a bath even if would feel easier to wallow where you are.]

Is there no room in your heart for people to try and apologize, try and make up for their lack of support here and now? You have been wronged. You are suffering. You are surrounded by tense, worried faces that no longer know how to help, and it is easy and satisfying, is it not, to say that is punishment for making them worry at all? Easier to surround yourself in a blanket of blame. Their faults for not wanting you enough. Your fault for being flawed. You get so mired in the trench you have sunk into that digging yourself out sounds herculean, sisyphean, impossible. Burying yourself deeper, digging the misery in like a needle, it... somehow, it almost seems satisfying in comparison, does it not?

I know how that feels.

But you must know this cannot last forever. You must know that nobody really wants you to resign yourself to no chance of ever feeling better. What is it you need to hear from people - to pick yourself up and begin again, not to beat yourself up further?

What is it YOU want?

[They can believe what they want, that Frisk will blame everyone else, as if that makes any sense at all. They're not surprised to discover that people don't want them; that people hate them, and despise them. They know exactly whose fault all of it is, and all they can do to atone for that is try and be good again.]

I know it's not everyone else's fault. Even if it was I forgive them. I forgive you.

So get someone to say all those things to you. You must have needed to hear something like this after the last two months.

Maybe you'll listen to someone you love.

[GOD THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!! They just keep picking and choosing which parts they even hear and twisting it all into this agonizing self-martyring "nobody loves me and nobody wants to be there for me I guess I'll never be good enough!!"

Good thing Chara never does any adolescent shit like this. Ever.]

no offense but like. what

As I am fortunate enough to have never said I loved anyone, ever, I'm just gonna keep going, and maybe you'll read this over sometime later.

If you forgive us, why are you pushing us all away? If you forgive us, why are you telling us we don't care about you? That's not "it's forgiven." That's "I'm still hurting, like, a buttload." That's "so hurting that the ache has manifested itself into a cocoon and I have utterly forgotten anything exists beyond this echo chamber of kicking myself in my own butt."

I'm loading the presents in a wagon. I'm bringing crayons and a coloring book. I'm going to ask Toriel to cut up some fruit. I'll bring a copy of Kitchen, and one of the stuffed animals from the room, even if toys don't interest you at all. You have to do something besides pick at your arms and lie in bed alone with your thoughts.

I'm not hurting. I'm learning to be good again.

[They'll do just as they're asked every day. They'll love everyone nicely and wear striped shirts and smile so everyone knows that they're happy.

They're being reminded, re-conditioned. They've fallen out of practice, ha ha. This is what happens when they think for themself, speak for themself. Got to learn to be the puppet again. Obey and do as everyone tells you. That's why you're here. Thinking and speaking freely like that, acting like that - it's dangerous for everyone. Just gets them all hurt.]

You love lots of people. You love your mom and your dad and your brother. You love Shepard. You love Sans and he loves you too I think. You love Mettaton and I think he loves you back.

I told you I don't want them.

I'm telling you no

You don't have to open them. They can gather dust in this room instead of room 12, for all I care. Call up everyone one by one and hand them right back unopened, if that's what you want. But they're not going to vanish into thin air, and someone's going to step on them accidentally if they sit here for a month.

I genuinely don't comprehend what end result you're hoping for here. If I do this, then I only want an angel. I'm not making some feeble miserable attempt to come to your aid when you are hurting, I am only forcing you to internalize and hide all your unpleasantness. If I don't, then I am abandoning you like everyone abandons you, leaving you when you are anything less than flawlessly happy.

What does loving even look like in your eyes anymore? Should I bust down the door and let you kill yourself? Is THAT love? You're sticking everyone and yourself into a lose/lose situation, with no hope of redeeming themselves - yourself - anyone. There are only extremes, only black-and-white. Not wanting you to erase yourself means not wanting you to be unhappy around us, right? Wanting you to be happy doesn't mean wanting to lift you up from this, it means we expect you to keep being miserable, but less visibly so, huh?

I mean it, Frisk. How am I supposed to be there for you now?

I know you hate me. I don't expect to get a free pass out of that. It is better, in fact, that you continue hating me. But that does not mean I cannot want to lessen your pain, even a little. You're welcome to continue refusing to believe it, if that is what you choose, but I

What I wanted was to make things stop getting worse for you.

[They take a long moment to stare at the words as they appear. Lots of words. Lots of things that make sense and then don't make sense. How are they supposed to be there for Frisk? Well, they...they don't. They shouldn't feel like they have to be all the time. That's the problem.

They shouldn't force themself to try and be around someone they hate, someone they can't love, someone who's hurt them time and time again. That's not good for anyone. That's not what anyone wants. Isn't it?

The answer takes several minutes before it comes.]

I don't hate you. I told you. I forgive you.

I think you should take your own advice.

If I cannot take back anything I said. If I should not be allowed the excuse of "I didn't mean it" or "I was angry" or "I was lying." If I am not allowed to apologize.

Then shouldn't the same thing apply to us equally? We are both beings with a special power. Both people who climb mountains for unhappy reasons. Both anomalies.

You hate me. You sank a spear in and told me so yourself.

Now please, Frisk. Stop deflecting the question. Answer. Tell me what I can do for you to ease this burden.

You can apologize if you want. And I forgive you.

Begin again. Go and be a family with Toriel. Knit a new sweater for Asgore. Find something on the beach to shoot with Shepard. Learn to pilot her tank. Work at Souji's diner. You like kitchens, don't you?

Be happy. Remember how to smile without using it to hurt yourself. Find a world where you don't have to carry so many knives.

That's what you can do.

I will let you live your life.

Already did. Didn't help. You just tried to kill yourself again.

Or is that what "I forgive you" is supposed to look like? Even more blood on my hands? Even more lives scattered in my wake?

["Sorry" never makes anything better.]

If you're really going to twist the script at me, then you really ought to recall the context. I do not know how you even heard it. Flowey was asking me to let you live your life, not the other way around.

[He certainly never called Frisk the last threat to everyone's happiness. Can't comprehend how they can hear conversations they were not there for, can't comprehend how they can hear "let Frisk be happy" and interpret it like this.]

I refuse to be a sword for you to fall on, Frisk. Maybe all of that sounds pretty, but we both know it won't change your situation at all.

Why should it apply one way and not the other? You can call yourself a parasite, but what was I? I walked into an old house and opened wrapped boxes meant for someone else's children. I slept in an old bed. I took comfort in words that were never spoken to me. I stepped into a story that wasn't mine. I stole your mother, your family, your best friend. I did such a good job of it that I convinced everyone I was much better than the original. I stole your life.

You see, how easy it is to blame yourself? It makes you feel like you're in control, doesn't it?

If you're looking for something you can do, then you can do this.

I want you to forgive yourself.

You want me to stop falling on swords, but you should stop looking for swords to fall on as well. Stop looking for reasons to twist everything around so it's your fault. Stop finding a way to blame yourself for me doing and thinking things that you could not possibly have any control over.

It's hard to admit you were never in control. I know it is.

But that is what you can do for me.

[Different. That's different, is it? Chara can't live their life if they're already dead. A corpse in a dirt pile can't reclaim a locket, a knife, a family. Can hardly call it stealing if you're taking from someone who you assumed went to rest or something once your job was done.

In fact, the whole thing was just... ha, probably a life lesson, right? See, Chara? This is what a good person would have done if they'd been in your situation. In fact, Frisk had it way worse than they ever did, because they fell into an Underground that was nowhere near as welcoming - all thanks, by the way, to Chara's actions. Frisk can't try and act like that part was their fault, try as they might. They fell into the middle of those wretched aftershocks, and, like a good person should, just flirted and joked and hummed and hugged their way across everyone who lashed and kicked and burned them. Behaved so well they didn't even have to sacrifice any part of themself to watch the barrier fall. Did it all the better way.

See, Chara? You weren't really the greatest person. While, Frisk... they showed you how it's supposed to be done. This is just karma. They've earned the family you never earned, the friend you failed to live up to, the perfectly peaceful surface you could never give to monsterkind. It's only fair they get to enjoy the spoils of it.

...But they don't bother to say so. Is there any use arguing when they know that Frisk can cherrypick only the parts that align with their worldview? Is there any use talking more circles about my fault and no it's actually my fault and...

They don't bother to say so, because some buried aching bitterness in them agrees. Why did Frisk get to try and try until everyone loved them and they didn't make any mistakes? Why did Frisk get the mercy of "it doesn't really count" and "you weren't really yourself" when Chara remains accountable for every sin they committed without a soul of their own? Being the bigger person, the gracious loser, the person who can accept a hard life lesson, who can pretend they're as selfless as all the good people around them... it isn't easy to do.

They take a long time to answer, and when they do, it's brief:]

As always, you remain the example I follow. My guidance.

Do you forgive yourself?

It's funny. We still can't seem to figure out who was guiding the other.

[My path, Chara still calls it when it suits them. Their way. Must have taken control, steered Frisk down that dusty, brutal road, even if Frisk has LOADed and RESET plenty of times before, taking different avenues, sparing and killing different people, just to see what things were different. Even when there's little signs, little moments. You can feel it beating. Not me, but you can.

And then you reach out, and you call their name.

Slips of words, seemingly inconsequential? Hah. What a joke. Inconsequence, that's not something at their disposal, not for either one of them.]

Not really. But you already knew that. But then again, I'm the one who did the wrong thing here. Suicide is against the law, you know.

But you shouldn't let me hold you back.

LMAO FRISK

You are talking to someone who is dead back home because they COMMITTED SUICIDE

My most recent Wonderland death was a big fat illegal ol'

SUICIDE

[They shouldn't be laughing. Hard to gauge over text, but Frisk is probably aiming for a very noble, heavy, touching atmosphere. Trying to be deep. But Chara just bursts out laughing, types without thinking, because the conversation suddenly veers into something that just - just feels absurd. Against the law! Someone better come dig them up, slap handcuffs onto their moldy corpse! Off to the big house with you, buster! A few years in juvy ought to set you right!]

No offense but if that's grounds for not being forgivable then I don't have a snowball's chance in HECK
I'd be holding MYSELF back!!

And mine wasn't?

[They could have fought. Could have...done a lot of things. But they'd known it'd be easy, and their HP was low, and Leonard was there and willing and he wouldn't gain LOVE for it.

They knew.]

But it's wrong when I do it. Not allowed to think about it or want it. I'm not allowed to be broken in that way am I?

[That's not very funny, Chara. But they've lost the right to say things like that. Can't pass judgment anymore, even jokingly. No more joking. Strictly business. Chara can...do as they like. They always do.]

Ha ha. No.

It wasn't, as a matter of fact. You were murdered, and there is a man who will live the rest of his life knowing he has a child's blood on their hands as a result.

[He'd better, anyway. Chara refuses to let one more person cut Frisk down and shrug it off. They're not going to encourage Frisk to blame themself for being stabbed, or whatever the hell method he used. They don't much care for the spiralling abyss of "it's my fault they hit me, I could have prevented it if I was more good, he's not to blame, I am."

Not suicide. Killed.

But they doubt Frisk is willing to listen to that, either.]

What do you want me to say here, Frisk. "Ha ha, yeah, it was really good and admirable when I did it, I'm the perfect role model?" Or maybe just "you're right, the kind-hearted thing for me to do is totally encourage you to go and up and slit your wrists again, that's great and everyone should do it."

Did I say I was not wrong, or bad, or guilty of a sin? Did I say that it's good when I do it and bad when you do?

[...Why are they even trying, for that matter?

Frisk's going to twist their words no matter what they say. You can't force someone to get better if they're (ha ha) determined to sink deeper. Chara can repeat, yet again, over and over, that this isn't them deciding Frisk isn't allowed to be damaged by what they went through, that it isn't them declaring that all those traits are perfectly okay when Chara does it and a mortal offense when Frisk does.

They can scream until they're blue in the face about how all this ache is valid, they're just trying to ease the weight Frisk has to carry - how there's a difference between "I want to help you feel secure and content" and "It annoys me when you're visibly upset in my presence, how dare you." Like it's a reprimand when people to see that Frisk is wildly distressed and want them to not have to feel crushingly miserable. Like comforting is the same thing as criticism.

Maybe the better thing to do, then, isn't comfort. Stick to the original plan. They wanted to keep Frisk safely away from their corrosive influence. And now Frisk most definitely wants it that way. Doesn't want Chara's inadequate and awful attempts at comfort. They're just manipulative. Hypocritical. Cruel. They're more punishment than anything. Making it even worse, twisting the knife.

Just like your parents, Chara, aren't you.

It's foolish to try and repair a relationship you broke in the first place. It's doubly foolish to try and repair a relationship that the other party clearly doesn't want to repair.]

You know what? Fine. I 100% support the idea you should be miserable, forever. I believe in you and your power to only ever feel bad. I tenderly and encouragingly hope that you never stop wanting to die. You can follow your dreams! That's what you want to hear, isn't it? That's so much kinder, huh?

Your stupid care package is in the hall. Have one of the many visitors who definitely aren't here to try and be there for you or anything bring them in.

I made him. He didn't want to.

It fixed me anyway.

[They won't let him be punished for a mistake. He'll punish himself for it brutally. He doesn't need someone else haunting his steps and reminding him of something he knows he's done, and hates himself for.

Of course, then, things turn and go the way they always do. You're so miserable, Frisk. It's like you want to be upset. It's like you don't even want to feel better. You just want to wallow in your self-pity forever, don't you? It makes a convenient excuse for when you make mistakes. Wasn't you at all. Just the horrible angry thing you're feeling that makes you act that way.

Chara will leave again, and the ache in their chest will renew, and...they'll be okay. They'll live because they must. They'll live because - no, not because they must. Not out of any want or need to. They'll live because, quite simply, that's what things that are alive do. They live.

Until one day they don't.]

I told you I don't want them.

[For just a moment, there's a nauseating twist in their gut, and they wish they could rip the words away the moment they type them.]

Or do you not understand the meaning of the word "no"?

You made him, just like I made you seek LOVE in the first place? You're getting better and better at picking and choosing when your wise advice gets to apply.

Fine. Fine! I'll take all your stupid presents and toss them in an incinerator. God only knows I've learned what happens when I don't do what Frisk wants, right?

[They just drop their phone into the stupid dumb wagon full of stupid dumb garbage. Go haul this unwelcome mess down the trash chute, like they should have done in the first place.]

It was very easy. I almost made Sans do it too.

Children are very fragile.

[Children are very fragile, but it can take so long for them to die. Their little bodies hold onto life for so long. Maybe children have more determination than adults do. Maybe there's something about them that's literally unwilling to die, even when it suits them.]

Give them to someone who needs them. Do what you want with them.

If you don't, I will.

Edited (my worst enemy, john html, we meet again) 2017-01-01 08:37 (UTC)

So we're right back to "everything people do that's hurtful, we MADE them do it." Cool.

See, what I "wanted" was to bring them to you, in the useless misguided hope that tangible physical evidence people care about you might help, or that even a half-second's distraction of ripping off paper and looking in boxes might entertain you more than clawing your flesh off.

But ha ha, that's sure off the table, huh? So I'm dumping them. Not your problem anymore. You're free. You can even tell everyone who gave you things that I did it, if you're so hellbent on being perfect.

No thank you. They'll know it was me.

You give very good advice for someone who doesn't follow it.

[Perhaps that can be something else they have in common. Only they shouldn't be thinking that. Shouldn't be talking to them at all. Supposed to be ripping the band-aid away, or something. Bad for each other and just making things worse, and this is, once again, the proof.

Are you happy now, Frisk? Have you gotten what you wanted?

They can't want anything.]