Chapter Text
You woke up in a sweat, and sat up way too fast for comfort, chest tight and painful tingles in your limbs. You heaved as you saw nothing but the outlines of certain spots of your room that were kissed by the moonlight passing through your window.
It's been two years. Two years that you escaped the Underground, and the nightmares... They were still far too real to your liking. It was like... you were still down there.
It took a good minute for your breathing to steady, and for that sickening, painful sensation of needles in your limbs to die down. You wiped the sweat or.. the tears from your face on autopilot as you hugged your knees. From hot, you suddenly felt cold... Ah, right. Your clothes were damp from profusely sweating in stress. You were too shaken to even feel gross or smell your stinky ass at the moment, the images replaying in your head. God, you hated it... You still remembered how its hands were holding onto your wrists, the spot that stung strangely at your awakening. Like... someone actually held you down there, painfully tight until your blood stopped circulating. Your fingers and feet were cold. Ah... The terror... You noticed you were sniffling and the thought of going back to sleep to those nightmares was enough to send you back into an episode of torpor. Even looking around your room was source of fear, for your ill mind would start drawing shapes in the dark, look out for the thing that was harming you so viciously in Morpheus' domain.
You had no idea how long you sat there, hugging yourself with short breath and eyes bulging out of your skull until you realized that it was no use to remain there. With a shaky hand, you patted around to find your phone and check the time ; 3:15 in the morning.
It was too fucking early to deal with today... but also, now that your tormented mind was finally slowing down, you took notice of how uncomfortable you were, from the smell, to the touch and everything in between ; you felt like utter shit. Sleeping was off the table, so reluctantly, upon feeling the wet sheets under your butt and around your feet, you thought that you'd at least self-care. Perhaps a shower would do.
And that's what you decided to do. Finally, you turned on the light and was relieved to see the suspicious shapes reveal the furniture of your bedroom exactly the way that you last saw them. That'd help ease your mind tremendously. You were safe here, in your bedroom. The Underground was only but a distant memory.
The warm water prickling your skin washed the remnants of the terror away, down the drain it went along soap bubbles and foam while you stood there under the showerhead, lost into space, lost in a timeline that no one but you remembered. You were so exhausted and yet, you couldn't sleep at night, leaving you in this state. The soap stung at the scabbing cuts on your forearm, which eventually, brought you back to the present. It hurt... Good. You even picked at some of them. The longer the wounds stayed, the better, you thought.
Someone knocked at your door. That made you perk up and quickly, you turned off the water.
« __? » A voice called. You felt a pang of anxiety hit you out of nowhere.
« I'm in the shower... » You replied from your standpoint.
« Is that true ? Can you come out ? »
You hated this. You felt violated in your privacy, but that's what happened when you were admitted into a psychiatric facility. You quickly squished your hair to get rid of the water trapped in there before throwing a provided clean towel on your head, and cover yourself with another much bigger.
« A minute, please... » You replied, and turned towards the bathroom sink where a large mirror stood. You looked... horrendous. Underweight, pale with terrible dark circles under your eyes, and those fresh wounds on your arms brought out the red color of your eyes... The color of DETERMINATION. Your gaze... was nothing but resentment and disgust at your own sight.
You're a failure. Cannot even succeed in killing yourself.
You grimaced at the voice that spoke behind your left ear. Shut it.
There was no time to waste. If you weren't exiting this room now, the nurse would come in and the last thing you needed was her seeing you in such a vulnerable state... You'd rather die. So even if your skin was still damp, you threw on an oversized plaided shirt. The rest can wait. You rearranged the towel around your head as you opened the bathroom door, and here the nurse was, right in front of it with a suspicious expression on her face.
« What were you doing in there ? »
« Taking a shower... ? »
She studied your face, and didn't seem to believe it or at least not entirely, for she stepped past you to look around the small bathroom. The smell of soap and conditioner was potent, and the room was misty enough for the mirror to be blurry with little droplets running down it... And of course, a little cluster of bubbles at the drain.
« Why did you take a shower at this hour ? » She asked.
« I had a nightmare... » You replied with a small voice. « I... just felt gross. »
She scrutinized you for a while. You couldn't bear to hold her gaze, let alone look at her face. You'd only meet her eyes for a split second before yours would dart somewhere else like the empty space was suddenly interesting to look at.
« Why so ? » She pressed you with a curious tone.
« I sweated a lot... Even the bedsheets are wet. » You replied, still quietly, but this time, you took the opportunity to look at the undone bed. She went to place a hand where you once laid and sure enough, she seemed to feel it.
« Alrighty then, I'll call someone to bring you dry sheets. » She finally said with a smile. Probably that she finally believed you, and was reassured by the reason of your late night shenanigans. « Do you need anything ? Pills to help you sleep ? »
« I'd... rather not. But... can I go and get a can of apple juice, please ? I... don't feel like going back to bed right now. »
« I'll go with you. »
That was sweet of her. Appreciative, you nodded and fetched your tiny purse where you kept some change, grabbed your old phone and now ready, you both walked outside of your patient room. The hallways were deathly quiet and dark as it was night, with only a few lights here and there to offer bearings to the staff of your wing. The nurse with you stayed by your side while you made your way to a little cozy spot for inpatients to spend time together, from getting snacks, to reading magazines, to watching TV if not to observe outside the large windows. That's where the drink dispenser was and so, you selected your drink while the nurse walked towards the staff room to call for a colleague to care for your bedsheets, while you patiently waited by looking out the window into the dead of night. The psychiatric hospital was further away from the main city, which you could see the lights like an artistic landscape. It's like this place was cut from the rest of the world while somehow still being a part of it. Just like you've been cut away from people while standing in the middle of them like an outsider of life itself, watching them grow, build relationships and build a life for themselves through an invisible glass cage while you... you were frozen in place, unable to move, unable to breathe nor blink. Frozen in time as fear engulfed you and left you with no where to run. Nowhere except...
Death.
You couldn't understand why you were still here, breathing, fighting. There was no point trying, you were too damaged, too... mentally ill, as they say.
Psychotic episode, dissociative fugue, suicide attempts... Those were certain terms that they used around you among a bunch of others that described further how fucked in the head you were, in attempts to explain why you found yourself here in the first place. You weren't so sure about some of them, but upon learning more, it kinda made sense, at least from their point of view ? But hearing them talking about you, showing you things that you had done in the past... You couldn't bear it... You refused to believe it to be true. You couldn't accept it.
The silhouette of a familiar woman reflected off the window, and you jumped out of your dissociative state at the sight of your dead mother approaching you. You spun in a gasp to look at her, your heart in your throat, when it was just the nurse that looked startled in turn.
« It's me, you're alright. » She reassured you at the sight of your hands up in defense and your terrified expression. You needed a few more seconds for her face to come into place with battered breath. « Everything's okay. They're taking care of your bed, yes ? »
Oh... Right, the bed... Your gaze slowly wandered off again as you released tension. You didn't notice how she reached behind her at your reaction, nor the way she looked over the shoulder once you turned your back on her.
« ...I'm sorry. » You muttered.
« You're okay. You'll soon be back in bed and have proper rest. » To that, you nodded in silence and eventually sat down and thought that you earned your drink. Perhaps this would calm the whispers that rose in the back of your mind...
« How long am I supposed to stay here ? » You finally broke the silence after a few minutes.
« Until we deem you recovered from your episode. » She said. « And no longer a threat to yourself or others. Once your condition has improved, you'll be a candidate to enter a rehabilitation program. We have yet to know what happened before your reapparance, as you had been reported missing until your admission here. The police said that you were a cold case until then. »
« So what... They think I did it ? »
Silence.
« If that can reassure you... now isn't the time for investigations. You're under our care until you're considered stable enough to answer their questions. Until then, you focus on your recovery. They waited over two years or so, haven't they ? They can wait a little more. »
« What will happen to me ? If... If I'm the one who did it ? » You couldn't help but ask. « If I really... If I really killed her... But I don't remember.. I don't remember a single thing... How can I even answer their questions ? I can't remember, I-I can't- »
« __, it's alright. That's what the rehabilitation program is fo- »
« Can you stop calling me that ? My name is Frisk. » You cut her off, your tone suddenly more snippy than panicked. « Hearing that name makes me want to kill myself more. » You spoke lowly with disgust. That shut her up for a moment.
« Why ? »
« … I hate it. I simply hate it. That's not me. I'm Frisk. That's my true name. »
Another moment of silence. You didn't want to talk anymore. All you wanted was to rip your own throat and bite chunks of flesh off your wrists and you had to keep that secret, bite your tongue through that trigger, lest you wanted them to sedate you and even worse, restrain you or say hello to the padded room if those still existed. If she spoke, you were too far gone to even hear her. You were Frisk. You were Frisk and you returned from a cave filled with monsters. You were Frisk, and you killed the King of Monsterkind to make it back to the Surface. You were Frisk, a human that survived through the sheer power of DETERMINATION when you should have died from the fall.
Not __. You didn't know __ or what they did before you awoke. All you knew was that you didn't belong up here, not even down there.
You belonged nowhere.