Her words are hollow; a singular attempt that doesn't so much fall on deaf ears as it just falls; fails to fill in the silence that follows as they both attempt to regain what they'd lost in those seconds- composure, the fortitude to keep standing, however or whatever she wanted to call it, Chara wasn't going to argue.
Her cheek presses against the top of their head and the heat in their eyes builds as they remember the last time someone had held them like this- several months at least but probably more, so much time lost between now and that October that they can't tell if it's only been seven months or a year or five since Wade nuzzled his cheek against theirs and quietly told them it was okay, you saved me, kid. You're my hero.
And for all the world they can't help, collapsed in her arms as they are, but feel every inch of that agonizing loneliness at the blinding nostalgia for the second family they'd managed to lose, before they'd even had the time to consider them as such. Sans is gone. Wade might as well be gone. Rin was never here in the first place.
It's just them, and Frisk, and Tim. Three people who should never be left on their own, but it's all they have. It's enough, simply because it must be.
Quietly, Lup's voice intrudes on their thoughts, refocuses them as they shift across her front, sniff against a runny nose and open their eyes to red that is too familiar and hurts, but they won't close their eyes to it again, not right now. She wants to do this again; she wants to try- for a better song. Similarities that don't hurt, and they find that their pessimism doesn't truly stop them from the hope that somehow, there is something in them that might, if only barely, replicate the burning sense that there is still something worth having faith in.
She uses their name and they don't even notice, because like Frisk and Tim, it doesn't sound foreign when she says it.
"I wouldn't be averse to that." Chara eventually responds; and as they do, they pull away. Release her robes and sit upright, eyes red-rimmed and exhaustion clear, but it takes very little, right now, for her to see the mask rebuilding. Too determined to do anything but, even now.
"...But I would appreciate-- if you would keep this from Frisk, for the time being. My--"
no subject
Her cheek presses against the top of their head and the heat in their eyes builds as they remember the last time someone had held them like this- several months at least but probably more, so much time lost between now and that October that they can't tell if it's only been seven months or a year or five since Wade nuzzled his cheek against theirs and quietly told them it was okay, you saved me, kid. You're my hero.
And for all the world they can't help, collapsed in her arms as they are, but feel every inch of that agonizing loneliness at the blinding nostalgia for the second family they'd managed to lose, before they'd even had the time to consider them as such. Sans is gone. Wade might as well be gone. Rin was never here in the first place.
It's just them, and Frisk, and Tim. Three people who should never be left on their own, but it's all they have. It's enough, simply because it must be.
Quietly, Lup's voice intrudes on their thoughts, refocuses them as they shift across her front, sniff against a runny nose and open their eyes to red that is too familiar and hurts, but they won't close their eyes to it again, not right now. She wants to do this again; she wants to try- for a better song. Similarities that don't hurt, and they find that their pessimism doesn't truly stop them from the hope that somehow, there is something in them that might, if only barely, replicate the burning sense that there is still something worth having faith in.
She uses their name and they don't even notice, because like Frisk and Tim, it doesn't sound foreign when she says it.
"I wouldn't be averse to that." Chara eventually responds; and as they do, they pull away. Release her robes and sit upright, eyes red-rimmed and exhaustion clear, but it takes very little, right now, for her to see the mask rebuilding. Too determined to do anything but, even now.
"...But I would appreciate-- if you would keep this from Frisk, for the time being. My--"
...
"My Partner has enough to consider as is."