thisavrou_log | Ours is just a little sorrowed talk [Closed]

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undertale: frisk

Ours is just a little sorrowed talk [Closed]

Who: Kaworu Nagisa and Frisk
When: August 29
Where: Moro deck halls
What: Still upset about the loss of Chara, Frisk breaks a rule. Kaworu opens up to them about Shinji Ikari.
Warnings: Emotions, I guess.

It's not like Kaworu has any reason to return to his room. He hasn't, not in weeks. Not since late July--but he still finds himself walking past its door every couple of days, sometimes multiple times the same day. Like he's on autopilot, and the memories steering him through the halls are unable to let go the faded ghost of familiar comforts.

Comforts?

Mm. The familiar, anyway.

But he pauses, as he usually doesn't, his hands in his pockets, and looks at the door for a moment before continuing on. He wonders who sleeps there now. Is it the same people who were there when he left? Do Jasper and her kittens still occupy the floor at strange hours?

Do any of them care that he's been gone?

He assumes not.

Maybe tomorrow he'll remember not to walk by here again.

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They've been getting better, slowly. The first few days are still hazy in their memory, a blur of tears and pain and utter loneliness. But slowly, the presence of others had started to filter in. The pain of cracked glass is gone, and their chest no longer glows with the light of the only thing that ever mattered about them.

Chara is gone, but...everybody came.

Frisk had gotten back out of bed, started eating without being prompted. After a week, they felt stable enough to resume their job around the ship, though their mask isn't tied on quite so tight. Asriel had nearly blown up when they'd tried to keep that up, and Toriel even expressed concern about how tightly Frisk bottled up their hurts. There's no RESET here to make that knowledge go away, so...maybe it's okay, just for a little while.

Frisk is heading down the hall towards their room, scrolling through the network feed when they look up--and stop short. They hadn't specifically been avoiding Kaworu's presence--he'd done a good enough job of that himself over the past few months. Really they'd been hoping for little chance encounters, excuses to break that rule Toriel had set--they've been so worried about him being on his own. Not that Frisk had expected Kaworu would be suffering, of course; they know very well he could happily spend all of eternity in a void without any care. Really they had been worried about...well, the exact sort of thing that had happened with Mettaton, to be honest. His learning curve is rather steep.

But now...

Frisk knows Kaworu better than anyone else on the ship does. They've learned how to read his expressions, what his unique values of 'normal' are, even to an extent they can understand the alien way his values function. But this is...

They've seen that look on his face one before...only once. And even then the expression had been brief, and quickly replaced by his usual serene mask.

"He's not here."

It's instinct, really. Frisk doesn't think as they start moving, breaking out into a sudden run, reaching out and slamming into Kaworu to wrap both arms around him tightly, bury their face in his chest. Rules, consequence, they don't matter right now. Not when their friend is hurting so badly that even he would show it.

Kaworu had done an exceptional job of isolating himself. So much so that even he could all but forget that there were people on the Moira who would rather he not--even if still others understood it might be better for them that he do.

Over the past weeks, Frisk had managed to drift away from a constant presence and into the far orbit of his thoughts; he avoided them, they were forbidden from him, and whether or not he had the power to change that... well, anyway, he lacked the knowledge how.

As usual, he was powerless to truly affect the events around him.

Which makes the sudden sight of a child barrelling down the hall towards him a shock--one he has a only a couple sparse seconds to react to. Frisk all but knocks him over, the force of their short ten-year-old's frame colliding with his narrow body more than enough to knock him back as they wrap their arms rightly around his waist.

For one stupid, paranoid moment, he thinks they're trying to attack him.

But there's no attack, no sudden shift from MERCY to FIGHT. Just one simple ACT, one Frisk has selected so many, many times.

But not so often, they realize now, for Kaworu.

He claimed he never needed comfort. That he is a being whole and complete, that isn't fractured and seeking out the missing pieces of itself the way everyone else is. But that isn't the only source of pain, even if it is the only one Kaworu seems to focus on. The pain of a desire denied, of helplessness, of confusion, of losing something you thought would be a constant presence...you don't have to be Lilim to suffer something like that.

Frisk sniffles, and they hold Kaworu tightly. Their tiny hands ball up into his uniform, and their shoulders hunch up by the slightest amount.

"What...what happened? What's wrong?"

Not so often, no. This is, in fact, only the third time he's ever received a hug. Both previous gestures were also from Frisk; this consistency is what allows him to figure out what's going on before either of them get hurt. Or just embarrassed.

"....what?"

He doesn't understand... why is Frisk asking him that? What do they want him to say? He's frustrated. And tired. And... sad.

And--

"You shouldn't be talking to me." It's curt.

"I don't care!"

Their voice very nearly cuts off on a sob at the end, but as it is the shout holds enough emotion to make it superfluous.

"You're...you're hurt. An' I'm not making it up this time, I can see it!"

Frisk looks up at Kaworu, tears stinging at their eyes, but their sight is clear. Clearer than it has been in quite a while.

"I...you're my friend. I wanna help."

Edited 2016-08-31 01:55 (UTC)

There is silence in response.

And slowly, wordlessly, Kaworu reaches down, gently detaching Frisk's fists from his uniform, his expression flat and and unreadable.

And with uncanny care, he pushes Frisk away from him. Just a couple inches.

"....one day the Ingress will be fixed." He will still be forced to obey SEELE, bow to their whims and serve their interests. But there will be at the end of it the hope of a face he longs to see again. Perhaps he will again see the smile that he holds forever in his mind, and feels in his heart.

If not...

"Don't cry. It will be all right."

Frisk doesn't...quite fight the distance Kaworu puts between himself and them. There's a little resistance at first, fingers that clench a little harder into the fabric before his greater strength wins out. They take that half-step back, but their eyes don't leave his.

Their heart has hurt so much lately, it almost seems to be growing numb. Like that first series of RESETS, with no time to enjoy the happy ending; just the pain and fighting and hoping over and over and over. And the look on Kaworu's face...it just adds on to everything else that's happened. Another weight on their shoulders.

But they can't break.

"...you're still hurting now."

Frisk is Determined.

"I know...I can't help about th' Ingress. But there must be something else t'...t' make it a little better, at least." They frown, looking at Kaworu closely, trying to think...that pain is an old hurt, one they've both known about for a long time. But...it feels like this is different, somehow.

"...you weren't like this before we got attacked."

"....."

Kaworu doesn't evade eye contact. He doesn't hold it, either, though. He just meets Frisk's eyes shortly and says, "No."

Then: "But I don't care about that." The attack was an annoyance. Moreso once he encountered Sans, and later when Ginko lashed out at him over his own guilt. But an annoyance.

"You are also in pain." Pain they are projecting onto him--if they can cure his pain, will it cure theirs as well?

He is an Angel, not a monster.

"What happened?"

"I--"

For a moment, a stricken look crosses Frisk's face. The empty feeling in their mind nearly swallows everything, and they have to remember to breathe, to feel, to exist.

"It's okay... We'll just--we'll fix this in the next reset. Okay?"

And then it passes.

They're shivering a little bit, when they bow their head. Of anyone on this ship...he has the best chance to understand.

"...Chara's gone."

"Gone?" He echoes the word. Then bows his head.

"....I see." There is not much he can say about it. No words will comfort, or they would have already been said. No action may recover what has been lost.

What is he supposed to do?

He cannot heal people of their emotional ailments. He can't even understand them. Nor is he certain he wants to.

Wordlessly, again, he bends down, and wraps his arms around Frisk--a careful, purposeful gesture meant to emulate what Frisk taught him to be a hug.

It's kind of funny.

Frisk has hardly been lacking for comfort from their family. Physical, emotional, it's been heaped on them in spades. It was what pulled them out of that miserale fog, what let them start moving forward again.

But none of that had touched the core of their pain. None of them knew how truly deep this loss cut to Frisk's very SOUL.

But Kaworu...

They don't know if he's only mimicking what he's seen done for others. What they've tried to do for him. Or maybe he really does understand, and this isn't just an empty gesture.

Slowly, Frisk's arms wrap around Kaworu's body again. Their head lowers to rest gently, almost hesitantly on his shoulder.

Even if they never said it out loud, in so many words...he knows, right? That they lost the other half of themself when Chara left. That being without them means being alone in a way that they can barely stand. It was hard enough that they were in a separate body, but this...

The tears start to fall, and Frisk's wail echoes up and down the hallway.

It doesn't matter. Kaworu's hug remains tight around Frisk--holding them, supporting them as they cry out their grief and agony and incompletion into his shoulder. Tears are such a strange thing. He knows what they feel like, physically. Something welling up inside, something coming out, running down your face.

A sharp, intense agony inside?

He isn't sure.

Frisk's tears are warm and wet and uncomfortable and stick their face to the fabric of his uniform. His hold on them--calculated though it is--tightens, as though trying to squeeze all the tears out of their small body, all the wailing cries and trembling gasps. But that is, of course, impossible.

Impossible, to be certain. But Frisk's tears do eventually reach an end.

It takes nearly ten minutes. Ten minutes of sobs and whimpers, of despondent wails that nearly physically tear out of Frisk's tiny body. Ten minutes of tears and snot and all the other disgusting things the human body expels when the mind is so wracked with grief. When the only response it can formulate is to scream and scream and scream in the hopes that someone will notice, reach out, make the suffering end.

No one can, this time.

Slowly, the fit dissolves away into sob hiccups and sniffles, Frisk's whole body trembling from the intensity of emotion. They haven't cried like that in...they don't even know how long. Timelines and timelines and timelines...possibly not since before they fell.

How long has it been since they really let someone else take care of them? Let out all their burdens, without worrying about saying too much?

They feel numb. As if something has been drained out of them, something they had become so used to that they had forgotten that it was hurting them. A poison, finally drained out of a wound that Frisk never quite let heal.

They lean against Kaworu in silence, saying nothing.

Kaworu lets them cry. And cry. He's not bothered by the byproducts of human emotion--snot, spit, tears... blood. He keeps his arms around them, wordless and ready for when they need him to speak, or move... but content to remain exactly as he is for as long as Frisk needs him there.

He bows his head into their hair, closing his eyes out of something like weariness.

It's fine. He has all the time in the world.

Eventually, though, Frisk is cried out. Their screaming has left Kaworu's ears numb; their sobs have rendered a large portion of his shirt heavy and wet with fluids.

After another minute of waiting silence, he asks a question.

"What will you do now?"

Edited 2016-08-31 02:20 (UTC)

Frisk sniffles a little, their hands clenching a little tighter onto Kaworu's uniform.

"...I dunno."

What can they do?

"I don't...I gotta get home. So I gotta stay. But I don't...they weren't ever gone b'fore. ...'m not strong like you."

It hurts. It hurts so much and it's the one thing they can't dare to tell anyone else. They have to swallow that pain and keep moving, even if it tears them to pieces inside.

Not strong... like him...?

There is a short silence while Kaworu digests that sentiment. Even he can sense there's something wrong with it.

"Of course you do. What else would you do? Die?" His mouth twists a little--somewhere between amusement and displeasure.

But he makes no effort to detach Frisk from his front. Instead, he stares down the hallway, over Frisk's head, his brow furrowing deeply as he stews on that thought and ignoring the snot and spit smeared across his chest and shoulder.

"Lilim suffers to live, but will do anything to survive. Mankind clings to hope, living off the memory of past happiness. But it is new experiences through which hope is born and happy memories can be made."

So... you might as well live, is what he's saying. Poorly.

They flinch a little when Kaworu points out their lack of choice. They know...they know that. They've always known that.

"I wasn't ever able t' die."

Not really, not the way they'd wanted to so long ago. Not the way they've pondered in brief moments of despair, before they remembered it wasn't just their life that the SOUL in their chest carried with it anymore.

Their life isn't theirs any longer. They have no right to be so selfish.

The rest of it...Frisk hears it, mostly. It's hard to understand in their current frame of mind, but Frisk has becomes used to Kaworu's quirks. The unique way he says things, the habit of listening carefully and thinking over the words he chose, it makes his meaning a little more clear.

Live, and find more people. There's still a future waiting for them.

Stay determined...right?

"I...I'm tryin'. I-I really am, I know I c-can't...I can't go back. But it hurts so much...!"

Frisk pulls back finally, wiping at their eyes and nose before looking up at Kaworu with a desperate expression.

"How do you...th' boy you're waiting for, he's th' most important, right? A-an' you--you never even had him here, I couldn't even get you b-back to him...an' this timeline's so long! How do...h-how..."

Their head bows, and Frisk shrinks in on themself.

"'S it 'cuz of who you are? A-am I...'m just broken, right?"

At those words, Kaworu stiffens.

Frisk would have done better to simply draw a knife and bury it in his gut.

Kaworu pushes Frisk away from him, his red stare suddenly full of hurt and confusion and something else, something undefined--a flash of almost human emotion. But then--

"You still don't understand." His tone is cold. He knows how long it's been. He knows too well. And it was fine, was even actually tolerable--even with this impatient, clinging itch, this cloying ache, this empty feeling in his hands--until Frisk shoved it in his face. A reminder to make it flare it up bigger and more tortuous--a feeling that once brought up, can't be forgotten.

"You suffer, and you can continue suffering. But you can also change. You can seek new experiences and build new memories. In time, you can create a new happiness."

That's what being human is.

Edited 2016-08-31 02:28 (UTC)

They realize a second too late just how badly they've mis-stepped. The tension, his expression--Frisk freezes still for a moment before they're shoved roughly away. They stumble backwards, shrinking away and frozen for a moment in terror (shouts of anger, a shrill scream, jeers and taunts as they're driven into a corner)--

But nothing further comes.

Frisk's eyes are wide, tears brimming yet again at the corners, but they don't move. They just stare, the pain Kaworu shows etching harshly into themself with fresh pain and guilt. Of course they just assumed, just thought because they didn't see it that it wasn't there, didn't think that he would show his pain differently, that he could be hurting so badly and still seem 'normal'. He's been hurting the whole time and they never did anything. Disgusting, selfish, horrible...

And even still, he tries to help. It's clumsy, the medicine bitter, but he still offers them a way out. Points to something they can still strive for, still hope for. Even if it doesn't fix things or entirely fill the gaping hole left in their heart...

Frisk sniffles, trembling, and bows their head.

"I...I'll try."

Kaworu's fingers twitch, like his hands are to clench--but instead they simply close and then open again. Like he's trying to hold something, but there's nothing to hold.

"You will." Not try. But do. "That's why you're alive, isn't it?"

It's not even rhetorical. It may be relatively supportive, yes--but it's very, very literal.

Another tiny flinch, seeing his hands twitch, and Frisk slowly looks back up at him, hiding their eyes behind the lower fringe of their bangs.

"Mm...mmm."

Determination. It's what fuels them, drives them, what has kept them moving forward their whole life. Whether to take care of their Mama, or survive home after home after home, or climb a mountain no one returns from, or to come back from death itself until they find a happy ending...it's etched into their very SOUL, glowing red and strong.

Their pain...it isn't important. Not when they have something waiting for them to return to.

"........."

Frisk's nonanswer is not very edifying. He and Frisk stand, unspeaking, for several seconds in the long and vacant hallway, staring at each other as if each is waiting for the other's initiative.

For a minute, the silence hangs between them. It is an empty silence in an empty hall.

Then Kaworu does something he's never done before.

He volunteers information. About himself.

"... do you know what it's like to be loved?" His voice is quiet.

He is wearing a new expression, one that is subtly unlike his usual penetrating stare, his familiar knowing gaze and understanding looks. But it is knowing. And tired. And bitter. And sad.

Maybe it's even human.

"When I was alive... everything was a new discovery. But I didn't enjoy any of it." He is looking down at Frisk still. His eyes are partially lidded, but he is looking down at them, reflectively... without looking through them, or past them. His heart is right here, held between them right now. In the invisible space between his form and Frisk's, his true heart hangs suspended--and yet it is very, very far away.

"There was no meaning to living, and so the experience of living was empty." His gaze finally drops off Frisk to stare, intently, into and through the floor. Then he looks back up at them--and an intense sincerity slowly grows in his red eyes. And a faint smile grows out of his barren expression.

"That is why I want to see him again." His smile grows, wide and strange and knowing, just as Frisk is used to seeing on him. "To meet someone like that again... it is my fondest and only wish." To feel the way he felt before. Like he mattered. Like he was loved. Like he was alive.

For that one final second, held tightly in Shinji's merciful hands--his life was not painful or empty after all.

As that initial silence stretches on, Frisk folds slowly, bit by bit, back inward upon themself. Their gaze lowers, then their head bows, and their shoulders curl as if to shield themself from judgement.

But then he speaks.

Frisk startles, ever so slightly, and their head raises slowly. The expression that meets Kaworu is timid and vulnerable, as if they expect to be struck or shouted down at any moment, but still open, reaching...

This time, there are no barbs to strike deeply.

They step forward slowly, once, then twice. Start to reach, pause. This time when they move to embrace Kaworu, it's slow and deliberate. Not a desperate clinging, but sympathetic, understanding.

"...yeah."

Their face bows down, and though the dampness left on his shoulder from their crying fit is uncomfortable they make no protest of it.

"I...I didn't have anyone, 'til I fell. Mama was...was gone, an' no one at the houses ever cared. They jus' yelled 'n blamed me, 'cuz I wasn't...I wasn't good enough." A small sniffle, and they hold Kaworu a little tighter. "But then, all th' monsters...they were so nice. Mom, an' Sans an' Papyrus...even though I'm a human, an'...an' they needed my SOUL t' be free, th-they still..."

A quiet sob escapes them.

"I didn't have a reason t' live, b'fore then."

A sense of...something goes through them. Strength, resolve, it bolsters their tiny frame just a little bit.

"We...we can do it. We will."

Kaworu wasn't expecting a confession in response. He wasn't expecting anything. He'd never done this before--never bared himself without a prior motive, never explained himself without asking something in return. And even that had never gone well for him. Only once had he gotten anything--anything at all except disappointment or frustration or deeper suffering--out of the deal. Once.

That once was everything to him.

Frisk's hug is not timid, and their cheek presses damp and warm against the sticky wetness of his uniform. Again, he is being embraced, held; again Frisk reaches out to him instead of pushing him away, his pain acknowledged, and their determination rings off his own forced helplessness like a tolling bell.

It's not the same. Kaworu knows it's not. Frisk had a mother, had someone who loved them and wanted them to live.

But Kaworu reaches out--awkwardly at first, to be sure--and wraps his arms around Frisk's shoulders in an embrace that quickly grows tighter, surer, stronger. It's not a very good hug, to be honest, squeezing the back of their head and smashing their face somewhat against his ribs.

But it's another first: he hugs Frisk back.

He wonders if this feels like hope.

Frisk makes a strangled little sound, somewhere between a squeak and a wheeze, when Kaworu mushes them uncomfortably hard against his body, but they've taken tighter hugs from Undyne before.

And suplexes.

But they hold on, squeezing Kaworu tighter in return, taking comfort in his embrace and hoping that maybe he can do the same from theirs. It's so hard to tell, what they can give back to him, but maybe...

After a few minutes, though, they pat at his back to try and get his attention.

"U-um, you're smushin' my nose..."

--oh. Uh.

Kaworu lets go quickly, and every bit as awkwardly as you'd expect from someone who had never given a hug in his life.

"...sorry." He at least sounds genuinely apologetic, but also glances to the side in saying it, clearly uncomfortable now.

He feels... weird. Light, but also warm. Also dry-throated. And nauseous.

Frisk laughs weakly when he lets go, reaching to take Kaworu's hand before he can pull away completely.

"'S okay. You didn't mean to."

They watch his expression with a muted, curious expression. That look...

"Are you okay?"

Kaworu shrugs noncommittally. He doesn't really know if there's an answer to that. He lets Frisk take his hand, but without reciprocation; he doesn't really know what Frisk wants with it.

After a second, he takes his hand back, but instead of letting it drop to his side, he lifts it and turns it palm up, looking at it. Then he looks at Frisk. He's smiling again, at least--that same wide, eerie, static smile he so often wears.

"Are you?"

Part of them had hoped he would hold them again, maintain that connection of support and comfort and sympathy, brief and imperfect as it had been. But they aren't surprised when he simply lets it happen, like he does with so many things.

When he pulls his hand back they let their hand drop, for a moment worried that maybe they had some something wrong again...but no. He's just...they're not sure what. But they're pretty sure it isn't bad.

They blink, considering his question for a few long moments with a quiet, calm mask. Both of them wearing a face that their worlds expect of them.

Frisk's breaks first, with a smile that has more feeling than they've been able to muster in quite a while.

"'M better."

Kaworu's smile warms in response--a brief concession to the bond of trust between them. But it is, as all things with Kaworu, fleeting.

"You should go. We can talk later--for now we shouldn't be seen talking."

Frisk and Toriel both live on Moro deck, after all. The chances of getting caught talking are not inconsequential. And while he is reasonably certain that Toriel could not be persuaded like him any less for that...

Suddenly, it matters a lot more to him.

"O-oh! Um, right."

Frisk steps away from Kaworu hastily, looking embarrassed, and starts to hurry past before turning back to him.

"Um...thank you, Kaworu."

And with that, they hurry off once again.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Ours is just a little sorrowed talk [Closed]

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