thisavrou_log | points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]

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points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]

Who: Chara and YOU
When: 11/23 - 11/24
Where: Literally all around Avagi this child is wandering in a disoriented post-fight daze
What: Chara fought in a trial. Chara got a prize. No one is happy with this.
Warnings: Emotional distress probable, in addition to the usual Chara warnings.

The temples began to sing.

They emerged bloodied and ragged along the edges, one hand clasped around the rust-brown stains fringing every tear in their clothing. One side of their hair has become uneven where a hank of it was roughly and sloppily cut away mid-combat. They limp. Their eyes are glazed with hunger, with emptiness, with exhaustion. Their motions are stiff and automatic. Whenever someone draws near to them, they flinch and hold ready, a blade of red steel gleaming in their hand. A smile tears over their features in a blaze of forced and painted-on glee.

They emerged from the Trial of Life victorious, in a manner of speaking - in a very loose manner of speaking. They emerged from the Trial of Life, having not died or fled, and thus are eligible for something of a prize.

That is when the temples began to sing.

They ignite with a soft blue glow, ethereal, illuminating their surroundings in a cool sweep of runic light. The light takes root inside them, nestling like a seed in the center of their chest; not patience-blue, not integrity-blue, and certainly not determination-red, but something else entirely. It aches in solemn acknowledgment of itself. The child's eyes squeeze shut. The blood has begun to hammer in their ears anew, as if rejuvenated enough to feel like it ought to redouble its efforts to spill out from their torn veins.

The hum pressing across their ears has begun to vibrate in their bones.

As they cross through the portal's bridge of light back to Avagi, the whispers and fragments of other people's thoughts begin to trail after them, silver-tinted specters of other people's thoughts.

[Chara scored the empathy reward for their participation in the Trial of Life, meaning that, to quote the info post: others stay inside their body, but gain a sense of those around them. This manifests not as telepathic knowledge of their thoughts, but an empathic resonance—ghost-vision showing their emotions in stark clarity.]

[This more or less gives them the ability to know and feel anything your character is experiencing emotionally so that's you know fantastic. Feel free to tag in with prose or brackets; I'll match you! Let me know here or over at arrpee if you want a closed starter or something more specific!]

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[Of all the things out of Chara's mouth, somehow, he doesn't expect that question. He blinks. Genuine confusion in his face and thoughts. It has never occurred to him not to.]

I... never really thought about it.

[Because caring just seemed natural. It was just what you did. And maybe, in some weird, slight way, he's reminded of someone lost. But he'd cared even when Keith was here. So it changes nothing.]

You just seemed like you needed it, I guess.

[But he's still baffled. Literally no one has ever asked that question of him before. About anyone.]

[Does it have more to do with him than it does them? Does it have more to do with a sense of righteousness, of concern for a general everybody, for shades of memory keyed to an unrelated name and an unrelated face? Does it matter at all, who they might be?]

[Are they asking this now because they know he cannot lie to them when the undercurrent of his every fluxing emotion is bared to them the way it is? Taking advantage, taking what they can - taking too much, too fast.]

Because of who you are.

[And not for who they - ]
[Well, who would?]

And yet, you are always your own lowest priority.

Maybe that's it. I don't know. Maybe I've always been like this.

[Always looking after others. Always throwing himself into harm's way for them. Because someone had to. Someone had to drag his first team to safety, someone had to make sure a handful of teenagers survived, someone had to be the one to take charge or else they'd fail.]

[... someone had to look out for Chara.]

[So he did.]

I feel like we've had this part of the conversation before. [And not much has changed. There are more scars, now. More grey in his hair and more memories uncovered, but... he's still running himself ragged.]

[Because someone had to.]

[So he did.]

I'm sorry -- I know this probably isn't answering your question, but I don't know if I really can.

[He's tearing himself apart at the expense of others - ungrateful, selfish, undeserving others such as they who have done nothing but generate more frustration and more hoops to leap through and more pain and even if this must be the truth, objectively, he tunnels through that regardless and still has it in him to be concerned for their well-being, as if that matters.]

Why is that? [Why can he not prioritize himself? Why can he not exhibit that typical selfishness all humans ought to possess?]

Anyone ever tell you you've got a career in philosophy?

[It's stalling. He knows it. He's not going to deny it if they call him out. But also, he's got to gather his thoughts.]

[Why is that.]

[He's wondered it, too. So many times. And more recently, when Hunk confronted him. The little comments the others make. Why is it so hard to just... take something for himself? Anything?]

... I don't know, Chara. [Lost faces, lost lives, sacrifices, it can't ever happen again, he can't ever let his guard down.]

[hardest thing I ever lived through was not saving someone]

It's complicated. That much I do know. Even if I explained it, I don't think it'd make sense to anyone else.

[How to Engage in Existentialist Discourse in Ten Steps or Fewer.]

[The subdued swirl of his thoughts breaks through at the hot jag of something far more potent, splitting the muted exhaustion that mantles everything else, slamming up against their shallow defenses with all the subtlety of a ballistic projectile.]

[hardest thing I ever lived through was not saving someone]

[On the contrary, they are in the very unique position to make perfect sense of it all. And they choke it out, even as it catches in their throat.]

The hardest thing you've ever lived through was not saving someone.

[His head pops up from where he'd lowered it, rubbing at his temples as the headache started setting back in.]

[hardest thing I ever lived through was not saving someone]

You remember that? [Or--] You... How did you know I was thinking that?

[Has Chara always known these things? Is that why -- why they are the way they are? Is that what they meant? Seeing things?]

I did say I've been seeing things.

[There. A flicker of their old humor, but it's ever so slightly off; wry, deprecating, paired with a tired slant to their shoulders as opposed to the rigidity that so typically straightens their spine and bolts their shoulders back.]

I still am.

... Chara.

[Maybe he should feel bad about this. Or at least upset -- unnerved. Someone reading his thoughts should terrify him. And maybe, honestly, if it were someone else, he would be.]

[But Chara?]

[Now he's just worried an apologetic. Like they've got enough to deal with -- they don't need his garbage on top of it all.]

I -- hey, would it help if I gave you some space right now? I can. [I will and I won't like it, I hate walking away but if it helps--]

[He's a confusing person.]

[He's a confusing person, because what he wants is so stark in opposition to what he's willing to do. His own needs, consistently undercut by the needs of others, and so swiftly and so simply and so easily that it is nothing more than instinct at this point, the immediacy at which he channels that shift - ]

Why do you continue to do this? [It emerges almost plaintively, their brow creasing in exhausted confusion.] Are you incapable of considering yourself in any one of your decisions?

I am considering myself. And... I know that what I want... isn't going to always be the right thing.

[What he wants may not help. What he wants -- Allura's hand in his, Diana's arms around him, Maine's lips, Lucio's eyes are warm and deep, North's smile is genuine, the team in a house in safety laughing talking like everything is fine, Matt laughing -- isn't always something he's going to be able to have. May not be something possible, or something that will, ultimately, help.]

[It isn't fair, to do what he wants. When things like Shay's people in the sun for the first time, freeing prisoners unjustly held, fighting, stopping encroaching darkness -- Chara's comfort are more important.]

[He is something other than himself, now. And there's no going back.]

This is what I have to do. Comes with the job.

You don't have a job here. You only have people whom you consistently place above yourself, even if -

[Contentment, genuine, warm smiles from those he calls friends pulling at the corners of his own lips and the glow of absolute relief when someone else walks free from the chains he cuts; his arms forever full of swords he keeps taking from people so he might fall upon them himself, in his own time; his SOUL forever full of the burdens he tries to carry for other people, smoothing their corners and rounding their edges, not for his own benefit, but simply because he must.]

It's not fair.

[It bursts from their throat like a bubble of light, tremulous.]

Humans aren't supposed to be like you.

I always do. It's not something I can just put down -- it's ... what I am now.

[He almost laughs when they say it isn't fair. A depreciating, tired sound that isn't anything like humorous. No amusement. Nothing. Just something dry and tired.]

[Always in control]

[The smile he gives them is just as tired. Just as frayed at the edges.]

I might not even be all that human anymore. So... maybe they're not.

Human enough.

[Human enough.]

[Human enough, the way Shepard is. The way Lucio is. The way these people are, these people who are all so far removed from what they have ever known humans to be that they cannot help but regret - ]

[Cannot help but envy, cannot help but hate, that these are the humans they met before everything was set so irrevocably in fate, in stone.]

You cannot control everyone else's pain, Shiro. [Does he know that?]

But I can keep myself from adding any more.

[More to Pidge, who's lost her family. To Allura, who lost her whole world. Hunk and Lance who lost any chance at being normal. Keith who lost his future. Himself... well. He'd lost everything already that day on the ice. That day it became clear he had to do anything he could to make sure Matt made it back alive again.]

[He can absolutely keep himself from putting more hurt into the world.]

You're included in that, Chara.

[He can't fix whatever's happened to them. He can just make it so he's not part of the problem.]

You can't.

[He can't control what it is that hurts and helps others. Someone with the best of intentions can tear it all apart without meaning to, without wanting to, because they just wanted to help and be the future of humans and monsters and set them all free and they could do that because they had a SOUL and they had the resolve to change fate, and even the best of intentions can be so, so - ]

[Why. Why them.]

...why?

Why are so adamant in this? [In me?]

Maybe not... but...

[But.]

[Maybe he can't save everyone. Can't make it so no one he loves, no one he cares for, ever hurts again. But he can try. He can try and isn't that what matters? Aren't moments like a first sunrise for the Balmerans important? That little scrap of footage proving Pidge's family wasn't totally broken important?]

[Isn't pulling kids out of a spider-filled jungle, so they didn't have to keep suffering, so they could survive, important?]

[Why are things like what he wants, those little desires, in comparison to all that?]

... I don't know why, except what I've already told you. Except...

[Anyone is capable of doing nothing. I just hate it.]

I can't not try.

You can. You just don't want to.

[Does that make him better or worse, in the end? Does that paint him in the same false, unveiled optimism that inflicts a child braving a hostile land for the very first time, shouldering every responsibility, solving every problem, until the notion that there were certain problems they could not solve turned into a personal failing on their part.]

...absurd, is it not?

[A cracked smile, feeble and flickering and pained.]

Even with a direct line into your thoughts, it seems evil cannot comprehend good.

You're not evil, Chara.

[It comes out as steel. As something almost an order. Echoed in his thoughts, his feelings. They're not evil. Evil is... he's seen it. He's fought against it. It's the thing crawling around in his head, the dreams and nightmares. The monsters who ripped Allura and Pidge's families apart. Who literally tore him apart.]

[This child... isn't that.]

[They can call themselves evil, they can call themselves monsters. But he remembers the forest. How much Asriel had cared. How Frisk worried. How they had fought for their sibling.]

[He can't call that evil.]

I don't think you are.

[And yet again, they can tell that he means it. That he is completely genuine and painfully earnest, when he says that he doesn't think they're evil.]

[They ought to FIGHT back. Grind against that expectation until the wall bursts and they cross some line and they generate the Level Of ViolencE they have come to expect, watch the world fragment as every good thing anyone can claim them to be ceases to be relevant. They ought to force it to happen, because it will happen, one way or another, and it is simply a means of controlling the when.]

[But they]
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[They can't.]

Then what am I?

[What does that make them?]

Chara...

[He wants, very much, to try and comfort them. To do something. More than just sit here, passing words back and forth. But he can't do what he would for the others. Can't even put a hand to their shoulder. He'd promised he wouldn't forget.]

[Instead, he'll hold himself quiet, restrained, as steady as he can be.]

I want to tell you "anything you want to be". But... I know how little that can help.

[Because he wouldn't know. If someone handed him a choice like that.]

I will say... you're Asriel's sibling. You're Frisk's friend. Is that enough to go on, for now?

[Are they?]

[They don't feel very much like that, really. Asriel has a better sibling, one he wishes he always had. Frisk has friends who do not make them feel confused and unwanted, who do not drag them through the dirt and call it LOVE.]

[A giggle bubbles up and out from their throat, a silly puff of sound that they can't seem to suppress.]

I have no idea. I don't feel very much like either of those things, at present.

... then how about this. You're a kid. And you're one I care about. Does that help anything?

[He can't speak for Frisk. Or Asriel. But he knew Frisk cared. Frisk cared enough to be shocked Chara remembered them, to not strike out when whatever happened to Chara made them attack. He knew Asriel cared too. Enough to look out for their well-being, even when he was suffering.]

[And. He knows himself.]

[Knows he cares. Even after all their conversations, all that shadow crap. He still cares.]

[They'd ask again. Why? Why? Why? Why does he still insist on this?]

[But they already know that he means it. They already know that he means it, and they cannot take it back now. There's a wealth of retorts they ought to dredge from the sludge of their thoughts, the admixture of everyone's emotional soup slurried together with theirs.]

I can't understand.

[They just can't understand.]

I have done nothing but continue to hurt you, and those you hold dear. Have I not?

It's okay. I'm not asking you to.

[It wouldn't be fair to try. If they say they can't, then... he accepts that. He accepts their words. Their admission.]

[As for the rest...?]

I'm not really hurt, Chara. I haven't been. None of us were.

[He means it as a reassurance. That they might not be as "evil" as they seem to think they are. With the exception of their shadow, all that's happened between them were words. And maybe their words have stung, but in the greater picture... when they're lined up with the words he's never failed to hear, ringing in his thoughts --]

[a monster like you]

[-- it's not that painful.]

You also asked me to look after someone important to you. That meant a lot to know -- that you trusted me to keep an eye on them.

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