FW09: So...it has come. LOL I've been reading Undertale fics for some time now and I can't get enough, man! After binge-writing all those chapters for "Breaking Walls", I've been looking for ways to get back into my other fics - but it's still not hitting me. So, for now, I'm channeling the creative flow into doing an Undertale thing.
I do know that I've been feeling a lot better about getting back into doing my Corpse Bride fic - the next chapter's about 50% done, but I'm still a bit stumped on my Ladybug fic. I think it's the first-person narrative. It's not my forte, and I prefer third-person, so it might've literally sapped my enthusiasm for it. Nonetheless, once I'm done with the next chapter of this story, I think I'll jump back on "In Another Life", then work on finishing the "Bedtime" chapter that's still waiting for me.
Note: There is synesthesia in this fic, specifically the kind that creates colors, shapes, and flashes in the vision according to the sounds you hear. And at the same time, Frisk is blind. So...yeah. There's going to be a lot of color-play here, so I hope you all like Crayola-box descriptions!
ALSO: There are some depressing elements to this tale, such as thoughts of suicide and racial discrimination. Please do not read if these things offend you, but if you are still willing to give this fic a shot, please know that I do not condone discrimination, nor do I believe that killing yourself is an answer. You are a beautiful person, and your life is precious - even if you don't know it or don't think it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale, that would be the amazing Toby Fox.
Door #0
The Story of the Girl
Once upon a time, there was a little girl.
She lived on the outskirts of a city, in a quaint village that was far enough from civilization to breathe, but close enough to still enjoy its wonders.
She had a mother, and a father, and a pet goat named Orwell, who enjoyed eating golden flowers.
They lived in peace and harmony, and taught their daughter many things - such as how to stay determined in the face of adversity, and the virtue of kindness.
She grew up happy and loved.
Never once did she question why they lived in that village, or why they rarely saw other people.
She only knew her mother, her father, and Orwell.
But one day, Orwell disappeared.
Concerned, the little girl wandered from her home in the village, and followed a trail of broken flowers up a mountain.
Hoof prints and boot prints marked the trail, but the hoof prints turned into drag marks.
The little girl was frightened, but pressed on.
Soon, she found Orwell.
And the strangers that had took him - some of them, fellow villagers.
They looked at her, and she could not understand.
Why did they look at her like that?
She could only understand how it made her feel: scared.
Words she never heard before were uttered.
Abomination. Freak. Muddied. Half-Breed. Mixed.
She didn't understand.
Then she saw Orwell.
He had been hung from a tree at the entrance of a cave, by his neck.
She pushed her way past the strangers.
She put a hand on Orwell's furry chest, but could not feel a heartbeat.
What was wrong with him?
She turned to the strangers to ask, but they remained silent.
Why are they looking at her like that?
Then, one of them pushed her.
Straight down into the cave.
...Down...
..Down..
.Down.
.down.
down
...
Crunch.
...
...
...
She had fallen.
And she could not get up.
She cried for help.
But no one came.
...
She could not see.
...
She could feel sunlight on her skin, but it was dark.
She could not see.
She could hear someone...above her.
She could not see.
It was her parents! They'd found her!
She could not see.
Their hands were on her face, and their kisses.
She could not see.
"Frisk, baby, we're right here...you can open your eyes now."
She could not see.
"Honey, what's wrong with her?"
She could not see.
"Oh my God...her eyes are...oh God, no...no, no, no, no...oh my poor baby, God, please no!"
. .Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee. .
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee. .Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Why...itssowrong.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Somuchpainbut...Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Ithurtssosomuch.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Suffocatingmeso.Shecouldnotsee.
Thedarknessit...Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee. 'tI...see.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
...itssodark.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
Shecouldnotsee.Shecouldnotsee.
...
...
...
She can't see anything...but she can hear.
...
...
...
And the sounds make colors.
...
...
...
There are so many colors...so beautiful.
...
...
...
"Ms. Fox? Ms. Fox? Are you with us Ms. Fox?"
The sound of her teacher, Mrs. Donahue, woke her up. Dusty clouds of grey puffed lazily, and dully in front of her. Frisk rubbed at her eyes slowly, clearing away the sleep. They remained closed as she gained her bearings.
What time was it?
Her right hand searched for the phone on the wooden, flimsy desk, remembering that she'd put it off to the right side. Every little scrape was a sliver of brown, discordant and plucky. Her lithe fingers found the device, the base of it rooted to the desk by suction cup so she wouldn't knock it down. Glad it was still there, she found the button that turned it on and pressed it twice.
"3:23 PM," it told her. Chunky green blocks appeared in her vision boldly, but it didn't form numbers - just blocks. She frowned at the time.
It was nearly the end of the period, and she'd slept through most of it. A quiet tittering of giggles and chuckles reached her ears, little flying shapes of brown-orange fuzziness flitting across her vision. And the quiet, insistent tapping of her teacher's foot - a dark gray staccato line - didn't make her feel any better.
"Ms. Fox, time and time again I've told you that just because your eyes are closed for medical reasons, doesn't mean you can go to sleep and think I won't catch you!" Mrs. Donahue croaked in exasperation, sending more choking clouds of grey at her, "And this is the second time you've dozed off this week! If this keeps happening, I might need to have a talk with your parents."
Frisk shook her head in a panic, her bobbed hair whipping to and fro in the frantic shaking.
"Then I suggest you keep your head out of the clouds and back in class," the teacher warned, and Frisk nodded numbly, "...Troublemaker."
The hushed insult didn't go by unnoticed, and the rest of the class burst into quiet laughter and nasty gossip - spiked balls of brown and orange bouncing and colliding, sometimes melting together in gross harmony. Frisk, on the other hand, remained silent, and her fingers drifted over the keys of her computer instead, letting her head duck into the laptop for a time. Mrs. Donahue continued her lecture, but the teenage girl could still feel the crone's watchful and hawkish gaze on her. Still, Frisk remained strong and nodded to herself.
Today was almost over, and she had her computer on "record" so she could re-listen to the lecture after class. Everything was going to be all right.
Stay determined.
"Frisk, it's me, baby. C'mon, you fell asleep again."
Soft purple swirls were the first thing she saw, dull sparkles flashing in the galaxy-pinwheels.
A soft touch to her cheek, and Frisk leaned into the warm touch. She felt the lifelines in the palm, counted each one, and confirmed that it was her mother's hand. Frisk listened quietly to see if anyone else was around, and the telltale, heavy-set breathing of Arnie the janitor huffed to her right. The huff was a deep forest-green, bushy and hard to see amid the darkness.
"I can't keep doin' this, Mrs. Fox," Frisk stood up and slid her backpack onto her shoulders as the adults continued, "The board's already lookin' to lynch me from the job ever since the riots started, and I can't have anythin' go on my job record before I - "
"I know, Arnie, but...my job always keeps me so late, and this is the only school in a mile that's willing to look after my baby's education," Frisk turned towards her mother's voice, and it paused before continuing in a whisper, "And with Wally gone, I'm...it's just been so hard..."
The purple swirls of her mother's voice turned into a silvery-purple, dimming to a soft glow, and the sparkles disappeared nearly altogether.
Arnie gave a sigh before Frisk heard his worn workman boots squeal against the linoleum floor sadly. They were a blue-green ripple, syncing in time to his steps.
"Mrs. Fox...Kathy. Can I be...frank?"
"...No, your name's Arnie."
"Heh! You and your sense of humor," he chuckled (a lighter, happier shade of green, just a flash), and Frisk smiled with him, "But seriously...I know you don't want me sayin' this, but you should get away from here, Kathy. You and her, both. This place ain't safe for people like us no more...not with all these riots, and fear. Even this school...I can feel it in my bones, ma'am."
"And go where, Arnie?!" her mother's hands came up to turn Frisk around and against her, keeping her close, "I can't go back there...not to that place. And we barely have enough money to afford rent here, as is. We have no choice...we have to stay here. It's the only way to keep her in school, and I'm not going to see her waste away like those...those..."
Frisk could hear the disgust and sad pity in her mother's voice, lacing the neutral purple with tints of blue and green, a noxious but smooth wave of color. And the girl didn't need to hear the rest of those words - she knew what her mother was talking about. She could hear the sound of smoke as it passed through the lips of girls that had decided to ditch school, coiling columns of hissing acid-green as she walked by the street-corner hookers and prostitutes. Not all of them ended up like that, but there were more than enough from her neighborhood to understand that it was a common occupation that girls took up when they had nowhere left to go.
"I know, Kathy, I know..." he went quiet for a few moments, and Frisk could feel her mother put her hands on her ears.
Muffled words were exchanged, and wisps of purple and green slipped in between, darting like fish. When Mrs. Fox finally released Frisk's head, the girl tilted her head in question.
"...Frisk, baby?"
The girl felt herself turned around, and her mother pressed a soft palm to her cheek. She reached up to put her hand over her mother's, smiling as best she could despite the tense atmosphere.
"Do you...like this school?" she asked, a bit of frayed nerves tinging the purple color with kinks and bumps, like a heart line monitor.
"..." Frisk thought for a moment, then answered, "Uh-huh."
"Do you 'like' it, like it?" Mrs. Fox pressed onward, her thumb tracing her daughter's petite cheekbone lovingly.
"...It's okay," she replied softly, with a touch of honesty.
Frisk didn't mind learning. She had a soft spot for music class as an extracurricular activity (the colors were so pretty), and history was fascinating to her - especially when they got started on the Monster Re-Emergence of 1856 and continued from there. The teachers were as accommodating as they could stand, she supposed, which was better than her last school. And being able to hear people moving around her was an improvement over the quietness of their own home, which was deathly-silent when her mother would leave to get to her next job.
And being in a place with no sound was terrifying.
"Why 'okay', baby?"
"I don't have any friends."
Mrs. Fox was quiet. And Frisk cringed inwardly at the way she reacted - she hated silence. Maybe she shouldn't have told her, but her mother had taught her that it was okay to be honest with her. Even when the things she had to say weren't pleasant.
"Well, maybe that'll change," Kathy seemed to have made up her mind, and Frisk felt her mother pull her into a hug, "Honey...what do you think of going to one of those new...integrated schools?"
Frisk's head popped up from her mother's shoulder, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
Integrated School.
It was a word whispered in the halls of Prentiss High like the name of a disease. Integration was nothing new, per se, but it had been a long fight that spanned over 50 years and counting. And one of the newest ways they decided to try to integrate was putting children of all colors and sizes into the same environment.
White.
Black.
Asian.
Hispanic.
Monster.
Frisk had overheard stories that people who went into integrated schools often didn't come back. And if they did, they were like pariahs. Outcasts. As though they might've caught something, just by brushing up against one of them.
...Well, that wasn't anything Frisk was a stranger to, though.
Being blind, and a half-breed mix between an African-American mother and an Asian father (some had mistakenly assumed her father was white) had made her enough of a "freak" in the eyes of the community. And the children and teenagers were the same.
Frisk chewed on her cheek, afraid that her thoughts were on her face. Her mother would wash her mouth out with soap if she said what she was thinking out loud. Mrs. Fox, however, only seemed to stare at her, and the silence was beginning to get unnerving.
"You don't have to go," she continued in absence of her daughter's answer, letting her go to address her, "It was...just a suggestion, baby. I know that moving to a new school will be scary, but we'd be moving with Arnie. He said they offered him a job not too long ago, and there are some affordable places around that area now..."
Because it was inhabited by every kind of race, even monsters.
"The school is...I've heard it's something else," Mrs. Fox tried an uplifting tone, and Frisk appreciated her mother's attempt, "They got facilities that...would make your head spin! And things you ain't even heard of before!"
Because it had magic.
"...Arnie says they could take care of...someone like you," Mrs. Fox breathed and a quiver of tears broke her voice, shards of icy blue piercing the once-strong swirls of beautiful violet, "They have braille - actual braille, so you can read just like those other fool-kids! And special teachers, too! Even the...uh...the other kind."
Monster teachers.
"I know it's a long-shot, baby, but...maybe you could even find friends?"
"...Monster friends?" Frisk whispered out loud, and her mother's words died in her throat.
Again, silence. She could feel air breeze past her, and acknowledged the quick turn of her mother's head, probably in Arnie's direction.
"Y-You could," Mrs. Fox seemed to be struggling with the idea, "You can have w-whatever friends you want at this school. At least they wouldn't be lacking in diversity, haha..."
"Frisk," Arnie coughed and spoke up, his dark green-tinted voice much closer now, "There's a scholarship comin' up, for that school. I managed to snag a flyer for ya on the way out o' the interview. It looks pretty good - a full ride, a dream come true for folks like us. I'm going to put in your hand now..."
He reached out and took one of her hands slowly, trying to be gentle to her. Frisk nodded with a small, numb smile as she tried to process what her mother said and Arnie's new information. A regular sheet of paper, a bit crumpled, was pressed into her waiting hand.
"Go on...read it."
Frisk looked in his direction with confusion. She rubbed her hands along the surface of the flyer, certain that it was smooth, but...in a second, she could feel bumps magically form under her fingers. Frisk nearly dropped the item, and she could hear her mother gasp. On the flyer, it detailed several scholarships, but the best one was the "2017 BRIDGING GAPS - AMBASSADOR PROGRAM" scholarship.
"Do you...have what it takes?" she repeated some of the information out loud as she read the flyer with her fingers, "To bridge the gap? Write an essay...to show that you are...looking to the future...to equality and peace...shared by all races...even monsters..."
"And you have a way with words, Frisk," Arnie piped up, his forest-green voice showing bursts of white light in optimism, "I've read some of your...uhm...well, you threw 'em out, so I just..."
Sounds of him unfolding and un-crinkling something caused her cheeks to flush bright red. She'd thrown out numerous short stories and essays, but to think Arnie had been reading them this whole time...he pressed them into her hands, too.
"I know you can win that scholarship, Frisk," his hopeful words were also bashful, "Some o' the things you wrote here are just wonderful. Maybe you can use 'em to...you know, make that essay somethin' extra special."
"Frisk...this is still your choice," her mother butt in unexpectedly, and her hands were on Frisk's arms again, "I can deal with just about anything, but you, baby? I want this choice to be your choice."
Stunned by all of the information she'd just received, Frisk was quiet and pensive. She looked down at the flyer and read the scholarship once more, her fingers marveling at the bumps that clearly weren't there before.
Something warm hummed inside of her. As if it were calling her.
She had always strove to be what her parents wanted of her, to be a normal person in spite of her limitations. Aspirations for anything higher than to keep her head above water were dropped, in favor of surviving. The most basic dream was her dream: a good education, a good job, a good partner, a good marriage, a good family, a good end...but never happiness. Never greatness. Never more, and if it was less? So be it.
And yet, she had always had a small part of her that never gave up. Something that kept pushing her forward.
It was this same something that kept her from ending her dismal existence - suffering between discrimination from her classmates and her community, from the darkness that consumed her vision, and her own feeling of utter uselessness. Her mother worked hard at 3 jobs a week, and one of them was a cooking servant in a wealthy woman's home (Kathy would say chef, but Frisk knew better). Mrs. Fox kept a knife...a sharp, sharp, sharp knife in her kitchen, and Frisk had more than once touched its steel with apathetic wonder.
But she never did use it. Not in the way she knew she shouldn't. Her mother said that Frisk was all she had left, after her father passed.
It would hurt her so much...
So Frisk settled. She wished for good, but not more.
She stayed strong, but just enough to keep ahead of the bad.
...
But that part of her that never gave up?
How it ached now. How her body grew light and her head started floating towards those clouds Mrs. Donahue kept warning her about.
A full-ride scholarship. Magic. Friends.
Frisk raised her head in the direction of her mother, and she felt that secret part of her awaken and thrum in hope. It grew like a sunflower, finally nourished by healthy rays of light and cool, refreshing water. Second-hand doubts and fears flitted out of the way, like bats shying from the sun.
"I want to go," she stated with a shaky, hopeful, wonderful smile, "I want to go to this school."
Arnie and Mrs. Fox gave sounds of relief and excitement, pops of light-green and vibrant violet flashing in tandem.
Frisk turned her attention back to the flyer, to her dream, and her smile grew.
Despite all the bad things, and the worse things, reading the flyer and wishing for the future filled her with...DETERMINATION.
FW09: Hmmm...how did y'all think this chapter went?
I feel like I could work on some parts, but at the same time, this is an introductory chapter. I didn't want to overwhelm anyone with exposition just yet, so I kept details to a bare minimum.
There will be an explanation of what time Frisk is in, and what's going on around her in the next chapter, but I guess this is more a "test" chapter than anything. Testing the waters to see if anyone would be interested in this. The rating for this fic also might go up in time, depending on what happens and the responses (I am not opposed to Undertale smut, LOL, and I know it's out there).
I'm also not posting pairings yet. Not until I feel like this fic is going anywhere. I will post this on AO3, however, so if a pairing tag pops up there...LOL well, we'll just have to see.
Until next time, lovelies, I hope you enjoyed reading and I'll see you in the next one!