#also those shelves took a While to lineart please appreciate them

[floating-far-from-earth]

hi, so remember that one odile looping au where she was instead in sasasap? yeah, I thought more about it. There's some writing accompanying the art under the cut~! (though uh, warning of. self-harm implications at the end?? our dear odile is Not Doing Well!)

It's been a good few loops since you'd been in the House with the rest of the group. After an... event you're not going to think about, you'd spent a good amount of loops going through the Dormont library, reading through any and all books you could get your hands on.

(No familytales, which you feel bitter about. You're stuck in this hollowed out state, not allowed to progress further, but not allowed to end, and you can't even have that. You came here to try and connect with a part of your own heritage that was taken from you, tried to learn more, to hope that maybe you'd find some sense of belonging that you'd been missing. And now… Now, you're barely even living. Barely even-)

…Returning to your original train of thought, it's been a while since you made your way through the House. You hadn't seen much point in it, to be quite honest. It's not like you can beat the King.

(After all, you've tried so many times already, and nothing you did worked. Not trying to hone your skills through fighting the sadnesses scattered around the House, not through a thorough inspection of all the rooms, not through trying to outsmart the King, nothing you did worked. There's that one attack, just that one attack that the King uses, and maybe if you'd just be able to avoid it you'd be able to defeat him-)

(But you've tried. You've tried, and he always uses it, always kills you before you can even tell the Child to run. You should have never let yourself agree to bring them with you, but you can't bring yourself to try and spare them of this now. They're a part of your group, and you promised that they could come, and you don't want to disappoint them, even if you can't even beat the King, even if the first time around, the Chosen was-)

You take a deep breath. You are not facing the King this loop, you will not see it, so it doesn't matter.

(You don't know whether he kills the Chosen so brutally when you're not around. After all, in the last loop you faced him, he hadn't wasted waste any time in dispatching you at all.)

(…You're unwilling to find out how things play out when you're not there, but for her sake, you hope it's quick.)

(And it's not like it matters, when you're the only one to remember.)

(…The only one. The only one. The only one the only one the only one gems who even are you at this point something jagged and pulverized to small bits until everything feels like a blur and you can barely hold your thoughts together you don't want to be here please someone anyone get you out of this hell you don't want to see them die again you-)

You hold back a sigh. Annoying. All these thoughts and feelings are so annoying. There's something else you should be focusing on. After all, there's a reason you neglected to wrestle the lead from the Trapfinder, letting yourself trail behind the Chosen. A reason you hadn't pushed, hadn't reached for the control of deciding where to go (even if it caused the Trapfinder to feel useless, even if it made them feel unneeded, you couldn't bring yourself to care, to regret, not when you were losing your mind having to see them examine the exact same rooms, the exact same things every time like clockwork, not when you knew exactly where to go to progress and had specific things you wanted to check-) There's a reason.

After all, you know that, even without your input, the Trapfinder will find the way through the House. You can trust them to do that, at least.

This, in turn, gives you time to think. And you need that. Because for this loop? You're planning to go to the House library for the first time.

And you have to figure out a way to get your group to let you do that. Because, despite everything, you still care what they think of you on some level. You don't want them to worry about you. To know that you couldn't figure this out. To-

You do.

So you wonder. Because, you'd heard them talking about you on the way up to the House. You may not care to bother with trying to decipher what exactly they're planning to do, how much they've figured out, but you're sure they've noticed how off you're acting. And you don't think they'd allow you to stay by yourself in the library, not without having a Talk, and that's not something you can afford to have.

The Trapfinder runs into another sadness, and you don't even notice until a stray scissors attack cuts into your side. The Chosen quickly heals you, sending you a worried glance as she does so, but you don't pay it any attention because…

You think you just found your way through.

(You wonder how badly you'll have to injure yourself so they let you stay behind.)

(It's not like it'll last anyways.)