Sooner or Later You're Gonna be Mine

Chapter 26: Family Time

"My dear, look at our child.  She seems too invested in her new toys to be interested in a bath tonight.  Let's spoil her a little more tonight and give her a bath tomorrow morning, bright and early.  Chara always loved taking a bath in the morning."  Asgore gently cooed at his wife.  "It always helped wake them up."

With her stomach still screaming in pain over the excessive amount of food Toriel had spoon-fed her during their dinner, and her legs immobile, Frisk sat crossed legged near the overfilled toy chest in "her" new room and held her breath, silently pleading to whatever god who was watching over her that Toriel would agree with Asgore. 

Perhaps her prayers were answered because after a silent few seconds of Toriel looking a little uncertain, the giant goat lady begrudgingly nodded, agreeing with Asgore's plan.  Of course Frisk couldn't kid herself into thinking it wouldn't happen tomorrow but at least it wasn't happening tonight and as far as Frisk was concerned she had one less thing to sob about when she went to sleep for the night and she felt like she could have sobbed forever after the day she'd just had. 

Up until today, Frisk hadn't thought there could be anything as humiliating as the day ten years ago when she'd frozen up on stage in front of her classmates, her friends, her teachers, her beloved music tutor and her parents during her first solo concert, but oh had she been mistaken.

In the small amount of time since her talk with Asgore in his beautiful garden, Frisk must have done thousands of things that easily put her embarrassing stage fright memory to shame.

For starters, Frisk had to change the way she talked.  When his wife left the two of them alone to refill their drinks while they were having lunch, Asgore had quietly voiced his displeasure of Frisk's extensive vocabulary and ordered her to dumb it down.  And not only did Frisk do it, she did it without hesitation and with the biggest of smiles frozen on her face. Sure, she could limit her vocabulary.   No problem, she had thought.

She was surprised to find out that it was a lot harder to intentionally limit her vocabulary than she thought.  Every word, every sentence, every little sound she made was studied and broken apart and revised in her mind before she even spoke. It was a mentally draining activity. 

Then there was game time after lunch, or to be more specific, Toriel wanted to play hand games with Frisk and so Frisk gave every game they played her full attention and with as much concentration and determination as any child would have done. The games were simple enough, some had Toriel teaching Frisk songs and clapping patterns while another game had Toriel try to lightly slap Frisk's hand and then Frisk would try to do the same. Frisk even made sure she got excited every time she won, proclaiming she "beat mommy" whenever she managed to slap Toriel's soft paw. 

And as Frisk played she tried her hardest not to think of her real mother who had played similar hand games with Frisk when she was just a child and as she thought back to her mother and her mother's own silly expression, Frisk couldn't help but feel like the goat lady was intentionally trying to pervert a wonderful childhood memory of her's, and Frisk had so few good memories to begin with.

Just keep the crazy goat lady happy, that little voice inside her head had continually told her whenever a childhood memory popped into her head throughout the day. Everything is okay. They haven't taken away anything from what your mom and dad did for you so there's no need to cry or get upset. They can NEVER take away what they did for you so just go with the flow.

It was some good advice, but unfortunately tainting Frisk's memories were only one form of torture.  Lunch and dinner may not have been as bad as the sudden memories that attacked Frisk throughout the day, but they had been a whole other type of misery that outweighed her limited vocabulary.