entranceway | Entry #90

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Entry #90

action;

[Everything goes white.]

[It's slow, and it's immediate. It's an eruption of snowy white fur across his forearms, along his back, to contrast the black-brown of the hair on his head. It's not painful, but it blazes in a way nothing else can. The weight of stubby horns on his head, the white-hot torquing of the barbed wire of his nervous system as it rearranges itself, as his organs howl in accommodation of something a human body was never meant to endure. His shoulder blades prickle with an eruption of thorny growths, stark and black as the skeletal branches that always rake the sky in his dreams. A startled, agonized noise wrenches out from the back of his throat, sputtering into an abortive gagging when he discovers that his canines have abruptly sharpened into fangs.]

[That's when the memories begin.]

[He doubles over, hands snapping around his middle. He's taller than he was, larger than he was, and there's a bright sizzle of something in the palms of his hands.]

[Can't think. Can't do anything but - ]

[* ACT.]

[An eruption of white-hot flame bursts from his hands - his paws? It coils up and around, wreathing the Frost Giants in a fiery nimbus. They begin to shriek as the heat starts to melt their blueish skin into slurries of clear, watery runoff. It curls his lips upward into a snarl. His eyes are wet, blinding him with the heated prickle of his own inability to fucking cope. His nostrils are thick with dust. He's breathing in, sitting in, FIGHTing in Asgore's own fucking remains.]

[The interleaving of dualed memory digs into the posterior of his skull like a fingernail prizing away a scabbed over wound. Warm scents of butterscotch and cinnamon, of a crackling fire in a hearth, soft white fur smoothed beneath a large, heavy paw, the twining of horns in with tree branches and the musical chatter of a child's laughter at the sheer silliness of it. The bitterness that clenched in a Boss Monster's gut that left him bedridden for days, and the deep-voiced plea that begged the bedraggled, bleeding, sweating shape on the bed to * Stay determined.]

[Watching one child crumble to dust, so soon after the other stopped breathing.]

[He can no longer tell whose tears are burning in wet runnels down his cheeks.]

[...]

[He no longer cares.]

video;

[If Tim could have his way, he'd be issuing this announcement over text. But he can't - having learned, very far after the fact, that the new, clawlike shape of his hands makes inputting text commands rather impossible. It seems Asgardian technology doesn't account for impromptu goat-human hybrids. So instead, people get something different.]

[Something...very different.]

[On day four, a watery scarlet iris stares hollowly at the screen for several moments before Tim pulls back. If the presence of thick white fur and rounded horns and branchlike protrusions doesn't cement that something has gone really, horribly, terribly wrong, then the tremor in his voice and the glisten of tears down his cheeks certainly should.]

I, uh...

[Maybe it's the eyes - the eyes that, though they've changed in color, undeniably belong to one Timothy Wright.]

Asgore told me - he said that I had to, I had to take it before anyone else did. I didn't know this would - god - I didn't know.

[He's trying not to break down. He's trying not to. He can no longer tell whose guilt is swelling like a tumor in his chest, whose grief is eating at his heart. At the soul he allegedly, apparently possesses.]

I'm sorry.

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[Much as Max would hate to admit it, that's exactly the sort of voice she's using. Laden with a soothing tone, trying to calm down the dangerous man...

Fingers already twitching, preparing to rewind...

But he's calmer. For now. She breathes a sigh of relief.]

Maybe it's... temporary. Have you asked Asgore about it? It might not, uhh... ["be a big deal," she almost says, but is suddenly aware of how insulting that might be.] Uh, permanent.

It's never happened before. It's never happened, and I just went ahead and -

[Like some kind of impulsive moron. He went ahead and grabbed it when he could've let it go, let it shatter, just broken the news to everyone or simply sat and kept his mouth shut and let Asgore do it on his own.]

What if he can't come back?

[Though he can't see it, Max's expression slips first into confusion, then into a dark seriousness.] Did he die...? He probably will be back, Tim, it's Wonderland. [But he already knows that.] What never happened before?

His soul.

[It's - he has one. And so does Asgore. And it's so fundamental that maybe it bled over into him, in part, because what twisted sort of god would grant a soul to something like him?]

I have it. It's why I'm...that's why I'm like this. [She doesn't see the fluttering, uncontrolled gesture down at the whole of him, but she can probably hear the tremble to the words.]

[What?

...What?

Well, shit.

You don't know anything about soul stuff.]

Okay. Okay. Uh. Have... have you talked to Sans? He and Asgore are both 'monsters' right, so...

He doesn't know.

[His voice breaks - again. Stop it. Stop acting like some sort of fucking child, so that people don't feel like they have to treat you like one.]

It's never - this has never happened before.

[Max reaches for calm amid the panic, and finds it hard. If Sans doesn't know what to do... how could Max? This is totally outside of anything Max knows, but that doesn't help Tim at all.]

Maybe... when the event ends...

[She's reaching, and she knows it.]

[He could have fucked this up irrevocably, for all he knows. Asgore might not even come back. His soul is...in him now. A part of him. He can't just get rid of it.]

How can he come back without a soul?

I don't know.

[Maybe he'll take it back, for all she knows.]

But... nobody does, right? Maybe there's no point worrying about it, and we should focus on... making sure you're okay.

I'm not the one who's dead.

[Never mind the absurdity of the statement; that the dead aren't the ones who need worrying about anyway. Because nothing, nothing, nothing will make this better, in the short term or the long, because none of it is going away. The residue will always remain.]

[It always does, for things like this.]

[Well, shit, Max knows that's a big deal. Someone's dead. But damned if Tim's tone and his words don't annoy her- and she reaches for that, forces her voice to take on some force, some measure of command.

MegaMax mode.

Shush.]

That doesn't mean you don't need to be taken care of. I hate the idea as much as you, but Asgore's... there's probably not much we can do for him right now. Okay?

[She leaves a moment- but only a very small one- for him to absorb that, before going on.]

Just-... This is an accident. You're just as much a victim as him.

[Right? She's not sure about the details, so she's guessing based on his vague comments so far. But it certainly doesn't sound like Tim hunted down Asgore and ate his soul or something.

...

Right?]

[Is there? He's not alive, but is he...his soul is still here. He's still there on some level that Tim can't detect, or maybe just can't comprehend. The entirety of it utterly eludes him, even with the borrowed knowledge from the king's memories.]

[This is an accident.]

[Breathe.]

So why -

[Why do I feel like this?]

[He knows why.]

I should've done something. I got in the way, and he did it - to keep me safe.

I guess he liked you. [Max takes a deep breath, lets it out in a sigh. This is a better line of thought than Tim's earlier distress.] Survivor's guilt is a... a thing.

[She tries to remember what she can of Asgore's network posts. The times she's glimpsed him in the Mansion.] He was a tough guy, right? Big... He knew what he was doing.

I...he thought he was.

[He must've liked you. He must've, or he wouldn't have done it. Or maybe - hell, maybe he's just the sort of person who gives himself up to anyone who comes his way. He might've been anyone. And Tim can't tell if the thought makes him feel better or worse.]

[Nothing feels better. Mostly he just feels sick.]

He didn't act like anything was wrong until I got in the way. And he had to drop his guard to make sure I didn't get hurt, and they -

[He follows with a jerky wave of his hand that doesn't show up on the audio feed, trailing off.]

...Not your fault. [Whatever might have happened, Max is certain Tim didn't shove Asgore into danger, in the hopes that the monster would be killed.]

You should... go somewhere safe. It still might not be safe where you are. Okay? [She tries to make her voice firm, a stable thing Tim can follow without fear.] Think about that first. About the event. Then you can worry about Asgore.

[She's making sense. That's...that's right. He's supposed to be the sensible one who can decide what to do next, to contrast Jay's complete lack of common sense and self-preservation. He'd kept waiting for a shitty suggestion he'd have to check, in the days after. He'd kept waiting for Jay to say something stupid that he would have to roll his eyes at and amend into something a little less liable to get them caught or killed or both.]

[What's he do when he's the one who did something stupid?]

[Go somewhere safe. That's right. He nods shakily, again forgetting that he's not showing up on video.]

...yeah. Yeah. I just...I have to get his dust.

For his -

[My? No, his.]

His kids.

...Okay. [Dust. She remembers that's important somehow. For monsters.] Right. Then, then safety.

[She breathes a quiet sigh of relief. Did she actually do it? Calm him down and convince him to get moving? She has so many questions. So many things she wants to know. But she can't screw up the progress she's made so far.

So she keeps the questions to herself. She's getting better at that.]

You're handling this really well, Tim. Just... focus on that. We can figure it all out some other time.

I'm not handling anything.

[His voice sharpens abruptly, that rifting edge of his panic polishing to an edge sharp enough to cut. Diplomacy with humans is always doomed to failure. He should know! He should know after the War, that this kind of thing was inevitable - ]

[Fuck.]

[Fuck, no, come on.]

[There's an undeniable strain to the words when he speaks again, but at least that's familiar.]

You can't...make this better, Max.

[And there it is.

Should've just shut up when I had the chance.

Tim can't see her eyeroll and exaggerated (but silent) sigh on the other end of the phone. But if it was possible to ever feel that sort of thing over radio waves, then hell he can probably feel it.]

Yeah, I- I know. That's not what you and I do. [There's a small pause, like giving him space. And her next sentence is clipped, a promise that she'll leave him alone if he answers correctly.] Just get to safety, okay?

[That's not what you and I do.]

[What do they do? Fumble and flounder over one another, incapable of separating themselves from the shadow of a man who was here for a year, maybe less than that - still trying to reconcile their memories of him with the fate that inevitably claimed him.]

[Just get to safety, Tim. Stop wasting everyone's time.]

...fine.

[If there's nothing else to add, he'll cut the feed there.]

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Entry #90

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