thisavrou_log | youll all be glad to know that my soul has undergone some much needed healing [closed]

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youll all be glad to know that my soul has undergone some much needed healing [closed]

Who: Chara and Mettaton. AGAIN.
When: 4/28
Where: House in the shape of Mettaton's face
What: Mistakes have been made, two kids with wild abandonment issues consequently suffer, and Chara's here to make the quo more status.
Warnings: Chara. Potential discussion of trauma. More to be added if necessary.

As if they needed to ask, when faced with the overpowering duo of both Frisk and Asriel's jointly distressed looks, what just went wrong. How Mettaton chooses to interpret their judgment falls to him, but evidently they were not quite clear enough about the nature of consequence, and what owning up to that entails. Because fleeing from his problems is apparently infinitely more tempting than actually facing them.

Consider them both unimpressed and unsurprised.

One of said consequences is at his door the following day. They forgo knocking, instead thrusting a sneakered foot directly at the base of it with a ringing, hollow thock.

"Are you going to come out," they can be heard calling, sounding, for their part, utterly exasperated about this entire ordeal, "or do I have to break a window?"

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Mettaton hears the sound of a dirty hypocrite at his door and, unsurprisingly, elects not to open it. He's been spending some quality time with his robot intoxicants. A lot of quality time.

So color him unimpressed that Chara is still trying to take away his temporary euphoria. From his spot on the living room sofa, he lets out a sigh, before calling out:

"Go away. If you break a window, I'm going to kick you," he says loudly, loud enough to be heard through the door, but only just.

There is a brief, prevailing silence.

Followed by the unmistakable smash of a heavy object being lobbed through the window, the tinkle of glass, and a low sound of exertion as a small child levers themself up through the direct route to Mettaton's living room and drops into it.

Even with their sleeves yanked down over their palms, their fingertips and the heels of their palms well with red.

"You can bill me later," says Chara, sedately. "I believe we need to have a discussion."

Of course.

Of course they smashed his window anyway, it's Chara.

The child is presented with the lovely view of a large robot man splayed on his couch...but upside down, as if he was trying to see the world from a less skewed perspective than normal. Who fucking knew at this point. He just wanted to try and enjoy himself.

It wasn't working.

"Of course you know I'm going to have to kick you," is all he says. "So as I don't turn out to be a hypocrite."

And yet he's not moving to do so.

"If you remember to do so in the next year it takes for you to move, I'll be sure to stand still to give you a good shot at it."

It's nicer, in a way. Easier, looking down on him like this with their arms folded neatly across their chest. He always was one of the tallest monsters in the Underground, just shy of the towering heights of Asgore or Toriel, the metallic shine of his successive limbs building him so very tall that they found it to be a muted shock that he could even pass through doorways.

They are taller and equal in height to so few. It helps, being able to look down on him.

It makes things so much cleaner.

"Asriel spent most of last night crying," says Chara, without preamble. "Frisk was no better."

The glare they level upon him smolders with a quiet, narrowed-eye disapproval.

"Start. Talking."

"I'm removing myself from the equation. You have already made it clear to me that apologizing, trying to do good by Frisk, or even being friends with Asriel is not possible.

What else do you want from me? For once in your life, why not answer something devoid of that aggravating condescension you always express? Or is that too hard for you? Maybe next you'll have me move out of this region?"

Mettaton doesn't care about the look Chara's giving him. It wasn't as if he told Frisk he wouldn't talk to them because he wanted to. And he wasn't ignoring Asriel because the young boss monster did anything wrong.

The blame for this sits squarely on Chara's shoulders. Though he doubts they'll take responsibility for that.

They lean forward incrementally, their expression stony.

"I'd assumed you possessed some talent for critical thinking," the child hisses, disdain etched in every clipped consonant. "For someone who has apparently come to realize the consequences of his own actions, you are doing a poor job at addressing said consequences."

They pause, for a moment. Inspecting the paneling of his floorboards, the halation of glass sprayed across the carpet.

"They wanted to know," they continue quietly, "what it is they had done wrong. What it is they had done to upset you."

"It's an easy mistake nowadays, assuming that I have talents anymore. I guess I can't blame you for that," he says flatly, and he actually does mean it. He's not stupid. He doesn't have the energy to expend such effort anymore.

"But maybe, instead of breaking into my house, you should tell them who upset me instead. Novel idea, I know."

Mettaton glares up at Chara with his one good eye, the other a gaping hole with trailing cracks revealed due to his inverted position.

"For someone who tells me I'm not owning my actions, you don't really own yours."

"Perhaps because I am not attempting to run from the consequences of my actions." The implication being that this is precisely what Mettaton has been doing for the past day and a half, and evidently he has chosen to do that while blitzed out on some robotic equivalent of dopamine or whatever passes for self-medication around here.

The thought brings a knife-edge of a smile to their lips, cold and as bitter as their own form of self-medication, once upon a time. The taste of flower petals against their tongue and the tacky cling of blood to the roof of their mouth; a more recent recollection, now, thanks to Deslora.

"Whatever sins you bear, Mettaton, I assure you - they are nothing compared to mine." They narrow the entirety of their stare and all its weighted intensity onto the single point of light that is his working eye, their expression, for all intents and purposes - quite blank.

Blank, but no less rife with purpose.

"I ran, once."

He had to attempt to carry them, if he recalls.

"Do you see me running scared from the pair of them now?"

Mettaton holds Chara's stare for a long moment, as if he's thinking over what they have to say. And maybe he is, for about half the time.

"If you're trying to guilt me, I'm already used to that, and I'm getting a little tired of it. Not that I think it matters to you."

He rights himself sluggishly, looking more than a bit disoriented as what little balance he can boast is shifted back upright. One hand comes up to slowly comb his hair back into its usual style, as if he's got no interest in this subject. But...he can't help but inquire:

"If you're not running scared, then did you tell them why I'm upset? Or did you not? Because that is actually your fault."

"Golly," says Chara, drawing the word out with a dryness to match their flat look. "If only Asriel or Frisk knew why you stopped talking to them. If only there was some way to inform them in person. If only there was a way to communicate precisely how you feel about them instead of deciding to blame whatever enabled you to come to your senses."

So to speak. He's chosen, apparently, to counter that by drowning his senses in synthesized bliss. And by footing the blame to someone who has always shouldered that burden rather well. It always has to be on someone. It can't ever be on him, now, can it? That would be a little too immediate for dear old Mettaton. A little too on the nose.

"The bottom line, Mettaton, is that it does not matter, what it is I say on your behalf."

It is, perhaps, an improvement - the fact that they can speak to him directly, instead of at an awkward angle. He looks, in a word, wrecked, and it's entirely apparent that they are to blame for that. They could apologize, they're sure. They could, but it would mean nothing. They are not sorry. They lost the capacity to be sorry a long time ago, and apologies seldom do anything to mend what has been made irrevocably wrong.

They can be as hypothetically sorry as they like. It will fix nothing.

"It is not my job to mend your relationships for you. I could not possibly care less about what it is you do in your spare time, except that you seem stricken with an inability to understand that what you do and say to a pair of children has an impact." The last word curls into a snarl. "If you care so very much about them, if you are truly sorry for what you have done, then it is your responsibility to fix it. It is your responsibility to admit to what you've done and work to make it better instead of hiding away and feeling sorry for yourself."

Because how dare they. How dare a child experience an adverse emotion. How dare a child feel hurt, or lost, or abandoned, or deserted by a friend they evidently hold quite dear. How dare a child not interpret his reticence correctly, or understand with perfect clarity what it is they did wrong.

"I am not about to play courier to your internal drama, Mettaton," says Chara, coldly. "I am not about to fix your incompetence when it comes to basic communication. Yet I feel obliged to suggest that, if it really matters at all to you, that you do something about it and talk to them."

Mettaton actually doesn't pay attention to a lot of what they say, though that's less because he's high and more to do with the fact that he doesn't want to. Just listening to Chara prattle on sickens him, because he knows...knows they aren't going to take responsibility for the mental anguish they put him through with every single conversation.

They'll never understand that his actions towards Frisk and Asriel could be lain bare at their feet. Not the past, no. That was his fault.

But this present misstep, the one which he took out of desperately wanting to do right...it was their fault.

Chara's fault.

Too bad they didn't care. Too bad they were too busy twisting words into daggers that drove so deeply into his heart and SOUL that he thought he might die of the pain.

"You're already playing courier for them. Good on you. How about you don't. You're shit at it."

The blunt words don't so much tumble from his lips as they're ejected like the venom of a particularly aggravated cobra who has been forcibly sedated.

He won't look at them.

"I'm not leaving my house. However, if you're so inclined, I'll ask you to play courier just one last time, little human. Tell them to come here if you want me to fix it. If you care for their well-being so much as you insist. And if you really do, not only will you bring them, but you will stay to hear what I'll tell them too. Unless you're a coward, which I am starting to believe is the case."

It's on them now. What will they choose?

Of course. Why not make it Chara's fault? Everything else is! They'll be not the greatest person. They'll be the horrible reason that Asriel adopted that stunted view of the world. They'll be the dirty brother killer, the smear on the foot of a skeleton's slipper. They'll be the fulcrum through which Mettaton's misery is funneled, the backlight of his failings, because that's what he wants, isn't it? To savagely press and tear and strip apart and destroy the thing that shines a lamp on the faults of monsterkind, because blaming the mechanism is always, always better than genuinely enacting some manner of self-reflection!

"Because you're never about to take the blame for your own actions, and when you do, it's to lament that you'll never be good enough."

They're not about to be the mechanism, again, for what makes things right in his world. He's proven well and truly how he treats the mechanisms in his life. He's proven what happens to those who dare to be even remotely honest about the hypocrisy of his kind.

"A word to the wise, Mettaton: if you are truly sorry, if you are truly remorseful, if you truly feel the weight of what you have done and genuinely wish to fix it - then do so."

Little human, he calls them. That's nice. Hilarious, really. They always did attract pet names.

"Let me guess. You find me intolerable, generally terrible, and utterly irredeemable." Their look is both bladed and unimpressed, almost bored. "If you'll recall from our first meeting, I have never pretend to be anything less."

"Keep assuming this. Assume everything you like. Assume it of me, assume it of what I think of you. That's what you're good at, Chara. And that...that is something that I will always assure you of."

Mettaton glances away from them, but his hand moves to his TAB, sliding it off its usual spot on his outer thigh. He grips the device in his hand, almost tight enough to break it. The other hand goes to his neck, and his fingers dig in hard, visibly denting the metal plating near the back.

"Get out of my house."

They note, with a faint degree of satisfaction, that he's more mobile at the moment than he has been in apparent hours. Good. So this little pep talk and the expense of the broken window is worth something, in the end.

How quaint.

"Pot," says Chara, indicating him with a subtle inclination of their chin. And then they sweep a hand up to their chest.

"Kettle."

If no one will remember his attempts to murder a child on the behalf of a manipulative plan to elevate Alphys on some personal level, then they will have to remember it for him.

Even if he would prefer to forget, because he would always prefer to forget. And thus, it falls to them. The convenient outlet for his accumulated frustrations.

They twist neatly on their heel and take their leave.

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youll all be glad to know that my soul has undergone some much needed healing [closed]

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