[That's the tempting thought, anyway - and in the dark, washed and changed into a set of night clothes that chafe at their skin like fire ants, Frisk can't come up with a good reason to argue it. Except for the reason that always is. Determination. That same old force, beating inside them with a familiar rhythm that still feels sideways. They feel too small for it, now. Like it doesn't belong.]
[In the dark, Frisk breathes into a pillow. Breathes. Can't remember how they got there beyond the faded recollection of an embrace marked by hard bones, a blurred skull with a crack in the ocular ridge. The twin drops of gold they could feel beating, always just off their periphery. Vision fading in and out like swatches of light in a dark hall. An attic. A room. Gravity, careful and deliberate and far from their SOUL, laying them carefully down in a bed of golden--]
[No. That didn't happen.]
[Stay determined, a king in the mountain rumbles. A low-throated sound as Frisk rolls to their side, propping themself on their elbow to shake him off. To shake off the ache deep in their bones, nothing like the pain of a toxin drilling wire into their blood, but the Queen's dark court must not have been kind to the shells of its subjects.]
[OK. They're up.]
[They're determined.]
[Frisk pushes themself into a sitting position, blankets falling from their shoulders and pooling around the small of their back. Frisk sighs, rubs the heel of their palm into their eye. The other hand strays automatically for the lockets around their neck, and it's a cold reminder when their fingers close around empty fabric instead of metal.]
[Twin snaps of tension before a black portal. A monster with his phalanges twisted in the chains, in their collar, because he didn't want to let go.]
action;
[That's the tempting thought, anyway - and in the dark, washed and changed into a set of night clothes that chafe at their skin like fire ants, Frisk can't come up with a good reason to argue it. Except for the reason that always is. Determination. That same old force, beating inside them with a familiar rhythm that still feels sideways. They feel too small for it, now. Like it doesn't belong.]
[In the dark, Frisk breathes into a pillow. Breathes. Can't remember how they got there beyond the faded recollection of an embrace marked by hard bones, a blurred skull with a crack in the ocular ridge. The twin drops of gold they could feel beating, always just off their periphery. Vision fading in and out like swatches of light in a dark hall. An attic. A room. Gravity, careful and deliberate and far from their SOUL, laying them carefully down in a bed of golden--]
[No. That didn't happen.]
[Stay determined, a king in the mountain rumbles. A low-throated sound as Frisk rolls to their side, propping themself on their elbow to shake him off. To shake off the ache deep in their bones, nothing like the pain of a toxin drilling wire into their blood, but the Queen's dark court must not have been kind to the shells of its subjects.]
[OK. They're up.]
[They're determined.]
[Frisk pushes themself into a sitting position, blankets falling from their shoulders and pooling around the small of their back. Frisk sighs, rubs the heel of their palm into their eye. The other hand strays automatically for the lockets around their neck, and it's a cold reminder when their fingers close around empty fabric instead of metal.]
[Twin snaps of tension before a black portal. A monster with his phalanges twisted in the chains, in their collar, because he didn't want to let go.]
[...]
[What a mistake.]