[It takes Pokey a moment to recognize just what he's looking at. There had been a time where just finding severed limbs was a monthly occurrence for him, but those years were so behind that he's taken aback from the sight of the hand.
He stumbled back into his house momentarily, hands gripping at the door frame to keep him from falling entirely back. He leans back in and, for a moment, just stares at it. There's no urgency to him at the moment, no realization that he should probably pick the thing up, hide it, do something with it.
Just a constant beat in his head, matching his heart, like some long thin thread being pulled tight and loose again and again. Here we were. Was he really surprised at this? Every time he opened up anything about himself, tried talking, tried doing anything, he hurt someone. He should have just let the accusation run off his back, shouldn't have even fought it, hell. Everything was true right? Here he was, thinking he was just the king of fucking everything, and now one of those girls had their hand cut off because of him and
Stop. Shut up for a fucking moment. He doesn't have time for this. He already went through this last night as to how this was fucking stupid. Hating himself isn't going to get him anywhere and he wasn't the one who cut another person's hand off.
Pokey takes the hand up, moving back into the house. He looks around a bit, finding one of the grocery bags from his last visit to the shop. He wraps the hand gently in the bag before putting it in his fridge. Keep it wrapped, keep it cool. That's all he knows in the basic ideas of preserving the limb and, fuck. It might not matter anyway. But he had to try, at least do something about it.
Don't just sit and wallow in the failure. Adjust stupid.
Pokey crashes on his couch afterwards, running a hand through his hair. He'll need to tell someone else about this. That isn't really a question, to tell someone about this just to try and see about getting medical advice but fuck. He has no clue who he's even going to burden about this.
He thinks, not for the first time after facing adversity, of letting this just stew with him. Of just sitting here and letting it crush him utterly, destroy him. Like he deserves.
It thankfully doesn't take long for him to decide whether going witch or facing up to this is more appropriate.
He heads back out to the porch, trying not to shake as he lights a cigarette. And looks on down the street.]
That's how you want to play? Fine.
We can play that way.
[His voice rasps for a moment as he tries to talk between his teeth, forcing him to take a minute to realize he bit through the filter of the cigarette.]
Trapped in the elevator. The robot who came with me was going to march off and do this on his own. I couldn't let him do it alone and the options were either still go or try and fight him and probably get the crap kicked out of me and possibly send him wounded to do this.
The best was to readjust and try to take her by surprise by pretending we were fighting. We were hoping to jump her or do something to surprise her, but I guess no dice. ...From her message, I'm honestly wondering if she bought it because of how angry she is and how she mentioned Mettaton as the main person who dragged us here.
Pokey had honestly hoped that of all the terrorshow shit to come out of last month, Asriel might manage to avoid this at least. But here we are. And he's unsure how to even address it. You don't really tell a kid "it's just a head", even a kid who apparently went through as much trauma and shit before getting here as Asriel.
Well. Here goes nothing.]
Asriel.
I'm here now. It's okay.
Do you want to talk about this in person or over text like this?
[Asriel opens the door shortly after, taking a few silent seconds to look Pokey over. It was silly, maybe, to get upset over something that happened when the both of them were dead. Pokey was clearly here and in one piece, and had been for some time.
The entire conversation with Mettaton starts to replay itself in his mind, and there's a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Asriel doesn't say anything, just reaches out to hug Pokey and assure himself that he's really there.]
[Pokey is surprised, taken a little off guard, by how immediate the request for a hug is. He scoots inside a bit, then gets to his knees to hug the little goat child. To hug him close to make sure that reassurance is there and that, yes, he really is here.]
[Asriel's grip tightens, and he tries not to cry again. Maybe he could channel all this hopelessness into anger? He finds himself biting his lower lip, and his eyes get watery anyway.]
You didn't deserve it. You don't deserve it have something like that happen to you, I-I...
I'm so angry, and I want him to hurt. Why should something like that be okay just because they're still mad at us?!
[... That's not the reason Dito did it, nor does everyone feel that way. But Asriel wants to direct all of his hurt and anger onto something, and it's hard to let go of his feelings from the past couple of months.]
[There's a lot there, just listening to the little goat's emotions, feeling him hug him, that start to set things off in Pokey. It'd be easy, so easy, to just get angry himself at all this. To get angry at something that was insulting, that hurt at least some, even if in the long run he knew it didn't matter and didn't care too much about it.
To let his own fears and desire for forgiveness cloud what he should be doing here. To try and interject what he wants to make the conversation go a comfortable route for himself. To put himself first, instead of Asriel.
He needs to push that aside.]
Hey. Asriel, buddy.
[He wipes Asriel's eyes softly with the sleeve of his shirt.]
I know it hurts, but I'm here. I promise I'm okay, alright?
Let's sit down and talk. Just-
[Again so many ways to steer the conversation. To insert his own perspective on how he feels before it's even warranted and without letting Asriel fully get everything out.]
Talk with me a bit on it, okay? Tell me all of the reason that you can about why you're angry and want him to hurt. I know that sounds dumb as crap, but. Just let me hear everything, okay?
[There's a moment of quiet, anger that gives way to confusion when Pokey asks him why.
Why was he angry.
No one's ever asked him a question like that before. And he stutters for a moment as all of his messy, pent-up emotions claw their way to the top. All the emotions he was afraid of showing, because he's awful and he'll become even more awful and he won't be himself anymore-]
B-because! Because he... he deserves it! Right? Because everyone got so mad at us for what we did... so he should get punished too, right?
[But there's more to it than that. Pokey probably knows, and Asriel knows - but he doesn't want to dig deeper.]
Because I'm... just so sick of all this. Fighting, fighting with each other and hating each other, and doing stuff like that - you dying was punishment enough, wasn't it? And then he had to go do that...
And it's just okay that everyone hates us now. And it's okay that they hate Mettaton because he's not human and I'm not human and we're just... awful monsters.
[Is he even making any sense? The words are spilling out too fast for Asriel to even think much about what he's saying.]
We're just... monsters. And if we hurt humans, we deserve to die. At least that's what the world thinks.
[... Asriel mmmaay not be talking about the magi of Nyoi-Cho anymore.
[There is a lot to unpack from what Asriel just said.
The first thing he needs to do is detach, and to do that he needs to tell his self-loathing to shut the fuck up for once. If he keeps thinking about his own feelings on this, keeps getting waylaid in feeling about how he probably did deserve it, or worse, he's going to get nowhere. And Asriel is going to get nothing out of this.
He takes a small breath, blowing it out through his nose as he tries to think on what to actually say.]
...I'm tired of it too. I don't think that everyone hates us. ...I think most are angry at us. They will be for a while, and some of them will hate us, even to the end of this. But I think a lot of them are really just tired of it too, Asriel. And I don't think most people were cheering him on for taking my head.
[He pauses a moment. Needs to, before he can even begin to think of how to approach that last bit. There's too much temptation to speak more on it. To give advice. But it would be advice he doesn't know anything about.
It's best to let the little goat drive this.]
...Monsters were treated really badly where you're from, right? You're afraid that's what's happening here too, that sound right?
[But they're sorry. They've been sorry for what feels like a really long time now. And he didn't know how to fix it, he didn't know how to make people not angry at them anymore...
Pokey's words do calm him somewhat, and he continues.]
Mm...
Monsters were sealed underground by humans a really long time ago, after losing a war.
[Asriel thinks he's told Pokey this. Certainly, every monster in the Underground knew of this story. It was the reason for their imprisonment after all.]
And the first time I stepped onto the surface, I was holding onto Chara's body after they died, and the humans of the village... they thought I...
[Asriel chokes out a weak, barely audible laugh. But it hurts.]
I told you how I died, right? If everyone finds out more about me, it's so much worse than those girls... they'll...
[Pokey nods as Asriel spoke. He told him about it before, after the shitshow that was August. ...God. Had things really been slowly going downhill steadily for that long?
There it is again. That feeling of empathy because of how similar he feels to Asriel on this. But the truth of the matter is that it probably couldn't be much worse at this point. Honestly, the people here are likely to be far more forgiving of it because Asriel is a kid. But that doesn't mean much right now. Doesn't help, for sure.
Because right now the important part is obvious.]
...It's possible a lot of people would be angry Asriel. But I think the people who matter, who actually talked to you, would know better.
...There are people who are going to hold being a monster against you. That's what you're worried about a lot, right? ...I'm not going to lie. Some of them are here for sure.
[Stay away from Bonnie is something that comes immediately to mind. ...He pushes it down. For now. Bonnie is trying to cooperate with others. Whether there's anything genuinely 'good' about that, he doesn't know, but she's not starting fights or shit. He'll attempt to trust her in that for now.]
...But I don't think people are going to be prejudiced against you as they were back home. To a lot of them here, you're one of them. ...That's part of why they're so pissed at us. But I think a lot of people know you're also one of the least to blame for what happened.
This place isn't like your home, Asriel. A lot of the people are going to be more accepting of you then they would back there.
[That does get him to cry. There's big, gross tears forming at the corner of his eyes it's hard for him to understand. He didn't mean to hurt those girls, Mettaton and Pokey didn't either...
But he did mean to hurt Frisk. He did mean to hurt everyone in the Underground. That's... much worse? He meant to do those things.]
... I killed a human back home, when I was Flowey. I used all the power I had to trap and hurt them.
And the funny thing is? They always came back. And when they had the chance to kill me, they didn't. They forgave me, regardless of how much I tried to hurt them or hurt the people they cared about. I thought it was so strange that a human would care so much to something so awful.
And then they reset everything, turned everything back to zero, and killed every monster in the Underground. At least, that's what Mettaton remembers, h-hahaha...
[That's no good. Well. It's good that goatboy is getting it out, but the tears...Yeah. Let's take care of that for the moment.
Pokey hugs Asriel again, moving to wipes his tears away again so he can look Asriel in the eyes as they talk. But with those descriptions of what happened, of the changes that Asriel was talking about....
Something doesn't make sense. Who the hell would go through that much to be good, only to turn back and just be the biggest psycho they could be. He'd done some awful shit, would do some awful shit, but even he's taken aback by that.]
...I'm not. Are you sure? You're sure it's the same human and just not. Some other weirdo, or an. I dunno. An alternate timeline version of them?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ACTION (cw: gore)
All fingers, save for the middle one, have been curled up into a fist.]
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He stumbled back into his house momentarily, hands gripping at the door frame to keep him from falling entirely back. He leans back in and, for a moment, just stares at it. There's no urgency to him at the moment, no realization that he should probably pick the thing up, hide it, do something with it.
Just a constant beat in his head, matching his heart, like some long thin thread being pulled tight and loose again and again. Here we were. Was he really surprised at this? Every time he opened up anything about himself, tried talking, tried doing anything, he hurt someone. He should have just let the accusation run off his back, shouldn't have even fought it, hell. Everything was true right? Here he was, thinking he was just the king of fucking everything, and now one of those girls had their hand cut off because of him and
Stop. Shut up for a fucking moment. He doesn't have time for this. He already went through this last night as to how this was fucking stupid. Hating himself isn't going to get him anywhere and he wasn't the one who cut another person's hand off.
Pokey takes the hand up, moving back into the house. He looks around a bit, finding one of the grocery bags from his last visit to the shop. He wraps the hand gently in the bag before putting it in his fridge. Keep it wrapped, keep it cool. That's all he knows in the basic ideas of preserving the limb and, fuck. It might not matter anyway. But he had to try, at least do something about it.
Don't just sit and wallow in the failure. Adjust stupid.
Pokey crashes on his couch afterwards, running a hand through his hair. He'll need to tell someone else about this. That isn't really a question, to tell someone about this just to try and see about getting medical advice but fuck. He has no clue who he's even going to burden about this.
He thinks, not for the first time after facing adversity, of letting this just stew with him. Of just sitting here and letting it crush him utterly, destroy him. Like he deserves.
It thankfully doesn't take long for him to decide whether going witch or facing up to this is more appropriate.
He heads back out to the porch, trying not to shake as he lights a cigarette. And looks on down the street.]
That's how you want to play? Fine.
We can play that way.
[His voice rasps for a moment as he tries to talk between his teeth, forcing him to take a minute to realize he bit through the filter of the cigarette.]
mirror | after the march kagaku message
mirror | after the march kagaku message
The best was to readjust and try to take her by surprise by pretending we were fighting. We were hoping to jump her or do something to surprise her, but I guess no dice. ...From her message, I'm honestly wondering if she bought it because of how angry she is and how she mentioned Mettaton as the main person who dragged us here.
We're going to try to get out of the elevator.
Re: mirror | after the march kagaku message
This is the best chance to make a move against her. Get to it.
Don't announce your plans to us- she can use the mirrors.
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Hope to see you there when we put this bitch on the ropes.
This is going to sound dumb, but since she's already put it out there, tell people to give calling out to Arabella for help a try.
I know this sounds dumb...but the way she phrased it to us.
It's worth a shot.
text
i triedd to talk to mettaton i think i made everyting worse
i'm so sorry pokey i didn't know about dito i shouldn't have asked im so sorry
Re: text
Pokey had honestly hoped that of all the terrorshow shit to come out of last month, Asriel might manage to avoid this at least. But here we are. And he's unsure how to even address it. You don't really tell a kid "it's just a head", even a kid who apparently went through as much trauma and shit before getting here as Asriel.
Well. Here goes nothing.]
Asriel.
I'm here now. It's okay.
Do you want to talk about this in person or over text like this?
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i'm at home
[He doesn't really want to be alone right now, even if he thinks this conversation won't be much better in person.]
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[And it isn't long before he's gently rapping at Asriel's door.]
Hey Asriel. It's me. I'm here, okay?
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The entire conversation with Mettaton starts to replay itself in his mind, and there's a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Asriel doesn't say anything, just reaches out to hug Pokey and assure himself that he's really there.]
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I'm sorry, Asriel.
I'm sorry you had to find out about that.
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You didn't deserve it. You don't deserve it have something like that happen to you, I-I...
I'm so angry, and I want him to hurt. Why should something like that be okay just because they're still mad at us?!
[... That's not the reason Dito did it, nor does everyone feel that way. But Asriel wants to direct all of his hurt and anger onto something, and it's hard to let go of his feelings from the past couple of months.]
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To let his own fears and desire for forgiveness cloud what he should be doing here. To try and interject what he wants to make the conversation go a comfortable route for himself. To put himself first, instead of Asriel.
He needs to push that aside.]
Hey. Asriel, buddy.
[He wipes Asriel's eyes softly with the sleeve of his shirt.]
I know it hurts, but I'm here. I promise I'm okay, alright?
Let's sit down and talk. Just-
[Again so many ways to steer the conversation. To insert his own perspective on how he feels before it's even warranted and without letting Asriel fully get everything out.]
Talk with me a bit on it, okay? Tell me all of the reason that you can about why you're angry and want him to hurt. I know that sounds dumb as crap, but. Just let me hear everything, okay?
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[There's a moment of quiet, anger that gives way to confusion when Pokey asks him why.
Why was he angry.
No one's ever asked him a question like that before. And he stutters for a moment as all of his messy, pent-up emotions claw their way to the top. All the emotions he was afraid of showing, because he's awful and he'll become even more awful and he won't be himself anymore-]
B-because! Because he... he deserves it! Right? Because everyone got so mad at us for what we did... so he should get punished too, right?
[But there's more to it than that. Pokey probably knows, and Asriel knows - but he doesn't want to dig deeper.]
Because I'm... just so sick of all this. Fighting, fighting with each other and hating each other, and doing stuff like that - you dying was punishment enough, wasn't it? And then he had to go do that...
And it's just okay that everyone hates us now. And it's okay that they hate Mettaton because he's not human and I'm not human and we're just... awful monsters.
[Is he even making any sense? The words are spilling out too fast for Asriel to even think much about what he's saying.]
We're just... monsters. And if we hurt humans, we deserve to die. At least that's what the world thinks.
[... Asriel mmmaay not be talking about the magi of Nyoi-Cho anymore.
He always did project a little too much.]
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The first thing he needs to do is detach, and to do that he needs to tell his self-loathing to shut the fuck up for once. If he keeps thinking about his own feelings on this, keeps getting waylaid in feeling about how he probably did deserve it, or worse, he's going to get nowhere. And Asriel is going to get nothing out of this.
He takes a small breath, blowing it out through his nose as he tries to think on what to actually say.]
...I'm tired of it too. I don't think that everyone hates us. ...I think most are angry at us. They will be for a while, and some of them will hate us, even to the end of this. But I think a lot of them are really just tired of it too, Asriel. And I don't think most people were cheering him on for taking my head.
[He pauses a moment. Needs to, before he can even begin to think of how to approach that last bit. There's too much temptation to speak more on it. To give advice. But it would be advice he doesn't know anything about.
It's best to let the little goat drive this.]
...Monsters were treated really badly where you're from, right? You're afraid that's what's happening here too, that sound right?
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Pokey's words do calm him somewhat, and he continues.]
Mm...
Monsters were sealed underground by humans a really long time ago, after losing a war.
[Asriel thinks he's told Pokey this. Certainly, every monster in the Underground knew of this story. It was the reason for their imprisonment after all.]
And the first time I stepped onto the surface, I was holding onto Chara's body after they died, and the humans of the village... they thought I...
[Asriel chokes out a weak, barely audible laugh. But it hurts.]
I told you how I died, right? If everyone finds out more about me, it's so much worse than those girls... they'll...
no subject
There it is again. That feeling of empathy because of how similar he feels to Asriel on this. But the truth of the matter is that it probably couldn't be much worse at this point. Honestly, the people here are likely to be far more forgiving of it because Asriel is a kid. But that doesn't mean much right now. Doesn't help, for sure.
Because right now the important part is obvious.]
...It's possible a lot of people would be angry Asriel. But I think the people who matter, who actually talked to you, would know better.
...There are people who are going to hold being a monster against you. That's what you're worried about a lot, right? ...I'm not going to lie. Some of them are here for sure.
[Stay away from Bonnie is something that comes immediately to mind. ...He pushes it down. For now. Bonnie is trying to cooperate with others. Whether there's anything genuinely 'good' about that, he doesn't know, but she's not starting fights or shit. He'll attempt to trust her in that for now.]
...But I don't think people are going to be prejudiced against you as they were back home. To a lot of them here, you're one of them. ...That's part of why they're so pissed at us. But I think a lot of people know you're also one of the least to blame for what happened.
This place isn't like your home, Asriel. A lot of the people are going to be more accepting of you then they would back there.
no subject
But he did mean to hurt Frisk. He did mean to hurt everyone in the Underground. That's... much worse? He meant to do those things.]
... I killed a human back home, when I was Flowey. I used all the power I had to trap and hurt them.
And the funny thing is? They always came back. And when they had the chance to kill me, they didn't. They forgave me, regardless of how much I tried to hurt them or hurt the people they cared about. I thought it was so strange that a human would care so much to something so awful.
And then they reset everything, turned everything back to zero, and killed every monster in the Underground. At least, that's what Mettaton remembers, h-hahaha...
no subject
[That's no good. Well. It's good that goatboy is getting it out, but the tears...Yeah. Let's take care of that for the moment.
Pokey hugs Asriel again, moving to wipes his tears away again so he can look Asriel in the eyes as they talk. But with those descriptions of what happened, of the changes that Asriel was talking about....
Something doesn't make sense. Who the hell would go through that much to be good, only to turn back and just be the biggest psycho they could be. He'd done some awful shit, would do some awful shit, but even he's taken aback by that.]
...I'm not. Are you sure? You're sure it's the same human and just not. Some other weirdo, or an. I dunno. An alternate timeline version of them?