“Are you… Chara, are you sure you want to do this?”
You hold the flowers in your fist and can feel the oil on your fingers from where you’ve crushed the stalks already. You remember the blisters on your hands from when you kneaded the pie dough that made Dad so sick.
“We need seven human souls to break the barrier, Asriel…” You say, “Even if six more fell down here, they probably wouldn’t help…”
“W-why not?” He looks dubious, and nervous standing in the buttercup field in his bare feet.
“Humans are evil, bro,” you say, and tighten your grip on the flowers, “There are not seven humans kind enough to band together and break the barrier in the whole world, and even if there were, there’s no way they’d end up here… We have to do this ourselves.”
“I-I just… Chara, I don’t- do you really need to- to d- die to-”
You grab his shoulder with your free hand and give him a serious look.
“Asriel. Do you trust me?”
“Y-yeah…”
“And I trust you. I trust you with my life, Asriel. You and mom and dad… You’re the only family I’ve ever had, and I… I know that you’ll use my soul to free our family.”
He looks like he might cry, and opens his mouth to respond, then shuts it with a toothy clack and steels himself with a nod.
“I’ll never doubt you, Chara,” he whispers, “We’ll do it together. We’ll save everyone.”
You shove the buttercups in your mouth.
“I need to tell her.”
Frisk looks up from their homework, completely startled. They hadn’t been paying attention to your train of thought until you spoke up and you’d caught them off guard.
“Now?” They ask, folding the math textbook up with your homework bookmarking the page. You shake your head.
“No, um, actually, I- can I walk around a bit first? I need to- I need to talk to someone. And you’re not allowed to laugh about it.”
Frisk cocks an eyebrow at you, clearly concerned, “Yeah, sure. All yours. Are you okay?”
You can physically feel them stepping back. You’d both fallen into a comfortable sharing routine where some days you started to lose track of what was you and what was them, but you needed to be you to do this. Asriel was looking away from his gameboy on the table, leaning against the lip of his pot, and up at you, but he was trying to be subtle about it.
“Did you wanna come?” You ask him. He looks at you, then back at his Pokemon game.
“Don’t talk to her without me, I guess,” he says, and mashes his face back into the buttons, “but do whatever ‘till then, I guess.”
You shrug and take his cell off the charger and put it in the soil of his pot so he reach it if he needs you, “Lights on or off?”
“Off, I can’t see the screen with this fuckng glare.”
“Swear jar,” Frisk pipes up.
“Bite me,” Asriel says, grimacing.
You grab your backpack from beside the door where you and Frisk left it and step out into the living room.
“Hey, Mom, I’m going to Sans’s, alright?”
“Invite him over for dinner, then, would you, my child?” She asks from the other room, “I’m making lasagna!”
“Kay,” you say, and turn toward the door, before thinking better of it and turning around again, “I love you!”
There’s a pause, and she dips around the corner to where you can see her, beaming, “I love you, too, Frisk!”
Your whole heart closes up like a dying animal and you want to blurt it out now, but you don’t. You force a smile and drown out Frisk’s sympathies in your mind and open the door with a wave. It’s a cold day, far into winter now in late January, with snow on the ground. You crunch through it in your steel toed leather boots, your favourite. Frisk would rather wear those slippers Sans keeps buying them, but you unfortunately have skin and would get cold, and at least one of you has to try not to catch hypothermia.
Sans’s apartment is a short walk, maybe ten minutes or so away and by the time you knock on his door your cheeks are red and your breath is frosty. Your ears have taken on the characteristic inner soreness of true winter and you belatedly wish you’d brought a hat.
“hey, kiddo,” he says, opening the door. You wave and he steps aside. You immediately go to his freezer and dig out a chocolate chip eggo waffle.
“ah,” he says, “haven’t seen you in awhile."
“I’ve been here,” you frown, “I’ve just not been talking to you, on account of, I hate you.”
“that’s cool,” he says, and plops down in a chair at his half-junk covered table, “i hate you, too. not you, Frisk, kiddo, I love you.” He says hastily, before tapping at his phone idly. You pull your waffle from the toaster and wish mom would buy you these things. You sit down across from him.
“Chara, be nice,” Frisk scolds you. You frown.
“Come on, that bordered on like, playful teasing, that wasn’t even half mean,” you retort, and bite into your waffle. Sans is giving you a weird look. “It’s not like he thinks I like him, anyway, that would be stupid.”
“That’s not the point! Come on, you asked to come over here, don’t be a jerk about it or we’re going home.”
“do you usually do that?” Sans interrupts. You look up at him.
“Huh?”
“that… talking thing. do you usually do that.”
“I mean, not when people are around,” you say, confused, “It’s not like you think we’re talking to ourselves, though, so.”
“So you’re not, like… Split down the middle, or anything? you’re both just sort of… around, or whatever, at the same time?”
“I guess? I mean, come on, if they were really mad at me they could take control back, easy,” you emphasize your statement by taking another bite. The chocolate is really gooey and soft, “it’s just like… I dunno. Not copiloting, but copiloting.”
“huh.”
“Yeah,” you shrug, and swallow, “Whatever. Anyway, that’s not what I came to talk about.”
“and what did you come to talk about, huh?” He’s leaning back casually, but you can see the tension in his bones.
“I’m gonna tell my mom.”
“tell her what? that you’re a murderous little shit?”
“Sans!” Frisk snaps, and he looks startled.
“No- I mean, maybe? Ugh- I mean- how old are you? Come on, I only died like, fifteen years ago, seriously-”
“died?” He says, looking taken aback.
“Wait, seriously?” Frisk asks, getting side tracked, “I thought it was like a hundred or something.”
“You- you’ve literally seen my mom and dad’s nose-nuzzling championship trophy,” you say, frowning, “it’s from '98, how could you- how could you have possibly thought I’m a century old, I don’t talk like that. I don’t talk like a freaking old person, do I?”
“wait, seriously, go, uh, go back to the dead part-”
“I dunno!” Frisk says, flustered, “I never thought about it! Are you telling me that- that seven humans other than you fell down here after your buttercup plan inside of two decades?”
“It’s a big mountain covered in holes, Frisk, people go missing on mountains all the time!”
“But you- Chara, seriously, you killed yourself for that plan, and seven humans did fall down there, does that not bother y-”
“Oh my god, Frisk, can we please not discuss my suicide in front of the skeleton?!”
“suicide?”
Shit. You just yelled that. Frisk doesn’t even pinch you.
“Past,” you say, hastily, because he looks really worried all of a sudden, “no danger. I’m not- look, we’re getting off topic.”
“what, uh- what is the topic?” He asks, visibly unsettled.
“Look, I know you’re old enough. You remember when my M- when the king and queen’s kids died?”
He looks down in thought and back up, “Vaguely. I was a teenager."
“Okay!” You say, exasperated, “Yes. Well. That was me.”
“wait, you’re that Chara?” He says, jerking to his feet.
You finish off your waffle and feel disappointed. You’re still hungry. You want another one.
“Chara, we’ll get fat,” Frisk comments when you turn away to look back at the freezer.
“We exercise plenty…” You mumble, but Sans looks at about the end of his rope of confusion so you drop it. “Hey. Chill.” You wave at his seat. He sits down, hesitantly.
“can you two- can you like, gesture or something so I know which one of you is talking? this is really confusing,” he says, resting his forehead in his palms, elbows on the table. He looks tired.
“Oh,” Frisk says, “Yeah, sure.” They hold up your left hand a little bit off the table, “Left for me-”
You hold up your right hand, “and right for me.”
He gives you an exasperated look in silence.
“Oh. Shit, um, left for Frisk, right for Chara,” you supply, and he bobs his hands a little bit in a vague gesture of gratitude.
“Swear jar,” Frisk says, holding up their left hand.
“Seriously?” You say, halfheartedly flipping your right up. They shrug.
“swear jar?” He repeats and you groan.
“Okay!” You say, and take a deep breath, putting both hands on the table. You flip your right one upward and look at him. He nods, “Okay. So. The reason I am here today is not because I enjoy your company, but because I’m telling Mom.”
“oh,” he says.
“And not just that me and Asriel aren’t… I guess, dead, anymore.” Frisk is listening intently, “I’m… I’m gonna tell her everything. Even about the resets.”
“oh.”
“Which means I have to tell her about you.”
“oh. shit.”
“Wait, you’re gonna tell her about the resets?” Frisk says, barely moving their hand. They feel alarmed.
“I have to, dude, if I don’t the explanation isn’t going to make sense.”
“That’s… Chara, I don’t know if I want Mom to know I’ve seen her die…”
“He knows you’ve seen him die,” you say, gesturing at Sans, who frowns, “and he still thinks you’re the bees fu- freaking knees.”
“that’s- that’s a whole other story, I still hate you,” he says, making a noncommittal gesture toward you.
“Well, yeah, but I mean, you’re an asshole. This is my Mom we’re talking about.”
Frisk claps their hands over your mouth and you roll your eyes. You pry your fingers away. “I’m sorry, Jesus, okay?”
“this is very weird and I don’t like it,” Sans says, and stands up, “i have no idea why you came over here to tell me about this, but i’m gonna go take a nap.”
“What? No! I need your help, numbskull!”
“Okay, that’s it!” Frisk cries, and shoves you out entirely. They stand up and wipe your waffle crumbs into their cupped hand, “You promised me you’d be nice, or at least not mean, to him. We’re going home.” They step on the button at the bottom of the trash bin and hesitate, because it’s full. They dump the crumbs on a part that looks less bulgy and grab the plastic tabs at the sides, hefting the trash bag out.
No! I need him. Mom isn’t gonna believe me unless he backs me up.
“Why wouldn’t she believe you?” Frisk asks, tying the straps of the garbage bag and setting it on the floor.
Why would she want to?
Frisk pauses, one hand under the sink. They sigh, and grab a new trashbag from the box, before popping it open and putting it in the bin, “Chara…” You can tell Sans is watching you.
Tell him I said I’m sorry, okay?
“Are you?”
Yes. No? I’m willing to apologize if it will make him help me, isn’t that close enough?
They frown, clearly unimpressed, but they turn to look at Sans anyway and snap the bin shut, “Chara says they’re sorry.”
“They did not,” he snorts.
“Well, they did,” Frisk says, “But they didn’t really mean it. I do, though. Chara is…” You’re quiet, listening, “Difficult, at times. But they’re not as bad as they want you think they are.”
He looks dubious, “frisk…”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” they say, leaning across the counter to cover his hand in theirs, “but I think they’re right. I think she should know.”
He gives them a really soft, broken look that makes you uncomfortable, “I don’t want her to know.”
“Sans…” You pull back as far as you can, trying to remove yourself from this sickening display, “She already knows about the night terrors, she just… Doesn’t know why. She worries about you, you know.” Sans doesn’t respond. “She’s not going to hate you.”
“She might,” he sighs, “She’s going to ask why I know.”
Frisk pulls back, “Wait, you know why you know?”
He swallows and chuckles, “yeah. yeah, I do. alright. yeah, you’re right, as always. if alphys can come clean, so can i.”
Frisk hesitates, then nods. Sans grabs a jacket from the back of a chair and Frisk shoulders the garbage bag.
You mostly just try to breathe.
There’s a creeping warmth between your legs and you know what it is, because it’s sticky- it’s blood, and you’re too embarrassed to mention it, because it’s hardly the most irritating thing you’re experiencing right now and you’re afraid of what Mom’s face will look like when you tell her you’re peeing blood again and you can’t hold it. You pat blindly at the pillow Dad put under your lower back, but it’s definitely still there even though you can’t really feel it and you curl inwards, rolling off it, even though it hurts worse to do so.
“Chara- you’re awake!” You turn, panting hot air. Your throat is filled with blood that makes you hack and you roll onto your side to look at him. He’s crying, again. You reach up with one heavy arm, wobbling a bit beneath your own weight. He catches it in both hands and holds it, hiccuping.
“You don’t gotta…” You pause, forgetting what you were saying and blink, “cry. It’s… Okay.”
“It’s not okay, Chara, it’s not, it’s not-” he’s whispering, hissing under his muffled sobs, “y-you’re dying, Chara, I don’t- I don’t like this plan anymore, why don’t- why can’t we find another way?”
Your hand is limp against his paws, which are as blistered as your scrawny fingers. He feels cold, at least to your own overheated senses. There’s blood in your mouth and between your legs and your insides are all screaming fire and begging you to stop and listen to him. You open your mouth, eyes wet.
“I-”
“Chara!” Dad’s voice is almost as broken as Asriel’s when he steps inside of the door of your bedroom and sees you. He puts the broth he’s brought you, warm and thin and easier to choke down over the scabs in your throat, and Asriel moves out of the way so he can kneel by your bedside. “You’re awake, young one.”
“Dad…” You say, weakly, exhausted, and you pap weakly at his hands. He holds it in one giant paw and wipes your sweat-soaked hair away from your eyes with the other.
“I’m here,” he says, softly, “You’re going to be okay.”
Your eyes somehow burn hotter than the rest of you, because you’re not, “Dad,” you stammer, voice cracking, “I’m sorry-”
“Shh, no, no, no, don’t be,” he says, smiling pathetically, reassuringly, fakely, gripping your hand a little too tightly. You aren’t sure you can really feel it so much as see it. Your vision is blurry, and unfocused around the edges. The colours are all wrong. “You have to stay determined, Chara…” He says, still adjusting your hair. Asriel’s gone to his bed and curled up in the fetal position. You think he’s crying.
“Determined…” You repeat, frowning.
“That’s right,” he says, “Chara, you’re the future of humans and monsters. This is all just… This is all just a bad dream. You’re going to be okay. You can’t give up, okay?”
You stare at him and the oddest emotion bubbles up in your aching chest: pity. There was no worse way he could have possibly phrased that. But you’re doing this for him, and for Mom, and for Asriel, and for everyone. You’re even doing this for yourself. Everyone dies, eventually. You would rather die young, like this, before they knew that human potential for evil inside you, and save your family than old and hated in a hole once they figure out, like your old parents, exactly what you are. You’re the future of humans and monsters, either way. You have to stay determined.
You can’t give up.
“Azzy,” you croak, “Will you get me a cup of water?” He doesn’t move at first, because “cup” is the codeword for “go pick more flowers while Dad’s here and not in the garden.” He sits up, he looks at you. His eyes are red and puffy, but Dad’s words clearly had the same effect on him as you, because he nods, teeth grit as he sniffles. He stands. He leaves the room.
“It’s okay, Dad,” you wheeze hoarsely, and he leans in to hear you better, “I love you, and I'm going to prove it.”
Mom’s already started on dinner by the time you and Sans get back to her house. She’s humming in the kitchen and you can smell fire magic under the scent of tomato sauce and baking snail pie. Your heart sinks. You’ll have to wait until after dinner to do this, you can’t interrupt her now. You glance at Sans and he’s clearly got the same impression.
It’s okay, Frisk thinks, and steps into the kitchen while you take a backseat, thoughtful, We can eat first. It’s okay.
It’s really not, but, whatever.
“Hey, Mom,” Frisk says. Mom smiles warmly at them and glances at the dish in her hands, which are spitting tiny licks of fire against the metal.
“Dinner’s almost done, my child! Did you want to set the table?”
“Sure!” Frisk says, with a nod, and scrambles to the dishwasher to make sure they’re all dirty before opening the cabinet to find a stack of plates.
Sans helps them pour the milk because it’s a new jug and kind of heavy and you usually do stuff like that, but you’re a little distracted right now and Frisk is giving you some space, which is really bothering you for some reason. You hate it when they’re nice to you.
You can’t eat it. There’s something unsettling about the red sauce with what’s on your mind and even though it looks nothing like your blood you can taste it in your throat and your stomach rolls. Even Frisk can’t eat, feeling your nostalgic nausea in the pit of their gut and you both stare at Mom’s lasagna on your plate without touching it, hands shaking and stomach pitching fits. Sans eats the tomato sauce between the flat noodle layers with a spoon and watches you anxiously, which just makes you even more nervous. You spill your milk trying to pick it up and clap your hands over your eyes, wheezing like an asthmatic. Seven, six, five, four, Frisk counts down in your head and you mouth the words as you breathe until you calm down.
Mom’s got a towel and she’s mopping up the mess already when you open your eyes, which immediately makes you feel a hundred times worse, with an unexpected burst of self-hatred you can’t contain or stop. You can’t do this. You can’t tell her. There’s no way she’d be this patient with you and your uncontrollable outbursts and your fits and your “moments” if she knew everything you’ve done. Frisk is the one she picked, Frisk is the one she loves, you’re someone else’s long dead kid she mourned and moved on from. You can’t tell her. You couldn’t even save her, you can’t tell her you’ve been here the whole time while she grieved you, you can’t tell her you know what her dust feels like between your fingers- she can’t ever know, because her not knowing is so, so much better than her inevitable and justified hatred if she did.
Frisk is yelling at you to stop but you’re so overcome by panic that you can’t and you don’t realize what you’re doing until you realize you’re trying to ineffectually suffocate a skeleton, clenched fists wrapped white knuckled around the bones of his neck, wrists rubbing against his harsh jawline, and yank your hands back like you’ve been burned.
“Shit,” you say, but he doesn’t look mad so much as annoyed and you shove your hands into your armpits and scoot back along the floor. He sits up and adjusts his collar to fix it. Mom’s staring at you in the same typical concern she always has when your own bullshit seeps through and overcomes Frisk’s passive nature. You can’t do this. You don’t want to do this.
“Frisk…” She says, kneeling down in front of you and you slap her hand away when it reaches for you. She doesn’t say anything else, but she moves back and away.
“What am I missing?!” Asriel calls from your open bedroom door, “I hear fighting! I wanna fight!”
“Shut up, Azzy!” You shriek, before ripping your hands from your armpits and covering your mouth.
“Azzy?” She asks, frowning.
“Nice going, idiot,” Asriel says from the other room. You scrunch your eyes shut and bite into your hand, counting backward from seven over and over again. Frisk lets you, even when you break the skin, gently counting with you. It takes a few minutes, but finally you let yourself go slack, one muscle at a time. You open your eyes.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing you say, and she shakes her head and goes to hug you when you move to let her know you’ll let her. Her fur is soft and warm and very Mom-y. You hope she’ll hug you again later. “I have to- I have to-” Frisk, you think, tense, please.
It’s okay, Frisk thinks, and lets you pull back and close off a bit. You close your eyes to the world and count down from seven, until you don’t need to anymore. You open your eyes and you’re in your room.
“I told her I’d be out in a minute,” Frisk says, recognizing your consciousness paying attention, “She’s waiting.”
Why didn’t you stop me? You think, swallowing.
I couldn’t. You wouldn’t let me.
You stare at your hands in silence and imagine you can still feel bones under them.
“Are we gonna do this or not?” Asriel asks, putting his gameboy on the table next to his pot. You take a deep breath and nod, before picking him up with unsteady hands and opening the door.
“Asriel! Asriel, please!”
“No!”
“They’re killing us, Asriel!”
“No!”
“Everyone’s counting on us, Asriel, please!”
“I won’t! Chara, I won’t!”
“You said you wouldn’t doubt me!” Another spear sinks into your gut between the fur, splitting you open like a fish. You and Asriel both choke out a sob because it hurts, it hurts so badly, and even still he’s crawling along the ground like a worm towards your empty corpse. “You promised! You promised, Asriel, you promised!”
Asriel just sobs, hands knotting fists into your body’s green, sweat stained shirt. You’ve always hated humans, but in this moment you hate him, too, and everyone.
And everything.
You sit down next to her on the couch, and she’s looking at you expectantly, but you think better of it and stand up instead, pacing to the door of the hall and back, before snapping your legs still and standing in the middle of the room. She’s watching you. You take a deep breath and open your eyes.
“Once upon a time,” you start, feeling silly, “there was a little kid who climbed Mt. Ebott and didn’t have any intention of coming down.”
She looks afraid, like she thinks she knows where this is going. She can’t, though, but you wonder what she thinks you’re going to say.
“They tripped and fell down a hole and fell into the Underground. And when they did they met a lot of amazing people- people that became their family very, very quickly. People like you.”
“Frisk-” she starts and you shiver at the name.
“Stop. Please. Let me finish.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it, nods, and folds her hands in her lap. Sans is watching you from the doorway.
“And they would have done… Would do, anything, for their family, so they came up with a plan. A bad plan. And no one ever found out. And a lot of people died.”
You’re definitely not hyperventilating yet, but you’re on the way there, hands fists at your sides, “and one day many years later, another little kid named Frisk climbed a mountain they didn’t intend to come back down.”
You don’t dare crack your eyes open, but you didn’t miss the sharp intake of air through her fangs or the crinkle of crushed fabric as she tightens her paws grip around her dress. You are very observant. “Where are you going with this?” She whispers. You don’t stop.
“And so that first little kid,” you’re rushing through the words now, trying to get them out before she throws you out, “woke up inside Frisk, even though they were dead, and they made them do bad stuff because they were always a bad kid and they wanted Frisk to be a bad kid, too, and- and- and- I- I didn’t get sick, Mom- the buttercups, I- I-” you force your eyes open and expect fear but you see nothing. She looks tense, eyes wide, teeth grit, but she doesn’t look anything.
“That’s not funny,” she says, barely a whisper, “This is not funny,” she says, looking at Sans. His eyes are dark.
“I’m- Mom, I- I’m sorry, I- me and Asriel wanted to break the barrier and-”
“Yeah, and you got us both killed,” Asriel spits, finally piping up. That’s what breaks her, you think, because she stumbles to her feet and nearly trips backward.
“You are not Chara-” she says, eyes like dinner plates, “and you are not Asriel- my children are dead, I buried them and mourned them, you are not my-”
“Mom,” you say, pathetically, but you’ve fucked this all up and done this all wrong because she shakes her head hard.
“Frisk! No- you do not- Sans, what have you told them?” She’s furious when she turns to him, and he looks resigned, “If you’ve convinced them they’re some kind of reincarnated Chara, Sans, I will never speak to you aga-”
“they’re tellin’ the truth, tori,” he says, resolute. He looks tired. “I never met your kid. there’s more than one soul in that body.”
She looks at him, then at you, brokenly, and for a moment you think she’s going to hug you, but instead, she turns and bolts into her room. The door slams shut and it feels like every bone is broken inside itself and you don’t know what to do but follow her and press your hands against the wood and beg her to come back out and let you explain and please don’t hate you, you’re sorry, you’re sorry, you take it back, you’re sorry.
You swear you could prove it if you could just show her you’re there, too, under Frisk’s skin like a soul sucking parasite, feeding off her attention and Frisk’s patience and if you could just cut yourself out you could show her you could show her-
Frisk snaps your arms around each other, locking them against your chest and lets your legs buckle. You trip against yourself and hit the tiled kitchen floor with a thump and you kick your legs and yell but Frisk doesn’t let go.
“Sans-!” They say, and you bite your tongue to make them shut up and you expect coal-and-sugar magic but get bony arms instead, and you kick and you struggle but he holds you against his ribs like a vice until you kick slower and grow quiet, your screaming becoming silent tears and a snotty nose.
“c'mon, kid,” he sighs, hands still clamped around yours at your sides, “you had to expect this.”
“She’s my mom,” you sniffle, rubbing your face on his sleeve to get the mucus off, and he doesn’t stop you, “she’s my mom.”
“yeah, i know. give her a minute to think it through, okay?”
“She’s my mom,” you sob again, voice breaking, and you bury your face in his sleeve. It’s not comfortable, his bones hard, but you rarely find comfort in others, anyway. He keeps holding you even though he clearly doesn’t need to anymore.
“Sans,” Frisk says, nudging their left elbow against his side where it’s caught, “let me up.” He pauses, considers it, and lets his grip go slack. You stand up, next to the cutlery drawer. Frisk walks back into the other room and kneels down next to Asriel, who’s sitting morosely in his spilled pot where you dropped him. They scoop back in as much of the dirt as they can and help him silently situate himself once more.
“Are you okay?” They ask. He nods, pathetically, sniffling. They put him on the coffee table where he wraps his leaves around himself, petals closing in over his face.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” he says, looking down, “I told you.”
You want to draw your knees up to your face and bury your eyes in your sleeves, but Frisk has other plans and stands up and goes to her door.
“Mom,” they say, knocking lightly, “you have to come out and let them finish.”
“I- I just need a minute-” she says, shakily.
“No,” Frisk says, firmly, startling you, “You need to come out now.”
“I-”
“Toriel,” they say, and her name feels so strange in your mouth. You haven’t called her that since you had your own body. Since before you called yourself Dreemurr. You don’t like it. There’s a pause, and the door opens. Her eyes are red, but she wavers for a moment, before kneeling down. She looks like she wants to hug you, but she’s afraid to, and Frisk steps back and lets you have your legs again. You bury your face in her shoulder and wrap your arms around her neck and sniffle like a crybaby, and eventually she picks you up and carries you back to the living room and Asriel, who still won’t look up.
“Asriel?” She asks, hesitantly. Asriel looks up at her, just a little bit, and she almost looks ready to break again. She puts you down and sits down in front of the table, before putting both hands on his face, rubbing her thumbs softly against his cheeks. He leans into the motion, mouth wavering between sad and angry, eyes scrunched shut. He looks upset. “Azzy?” She says again, and he chokes out a sad little noise.
“Mom,” he says, and all the breath goes out of her. You curl up on the couch and cover your face and wait until she’s finished.
She pries your fingers away from your puffy eyes and runs her thumbs over your face, “Are you really in there, Chara?”
You sniffle, and nod, “I’m sorry.”
“No, shh, don’t be,” she says, and shifts you into her lap. You bury your face in her chest and breathe in the scent of fire magic and pie crust, her soft arms around you and her chin on top of your head. “I should have noticed.”
You can’t even answer, but you peak your eyes open to look at Asriel, who looks happier than usual, in a sad way.
“How?” She says, finally, rocking you. You shake your head.
“It’s a really, really long and complicated story,” you say.
“Chara killed themself,” Asriel supplies matter of factly, and the rocking stops with your heart, “and then a bunch of humans killed us, and then Doc Alphy did a bunch of screwed up experiments on human souls and monster dust, and managed to bring me back to life inside of a stupid flower.” You glare pointedly at him, and he shrugs leaflets at you.
“You did what?” She asks, looking down at you, confused. Of course that’s the point she wants further context on.
“The… I didn’t get sick,” you say, slowly, looking down again, “I overheard some people talking about how to break the barrier, and I did some research and… And everyone said you needed seven human souls to break it,” your breath hitches in your throat, “but that all you needed to pass through it was one human and one boss monster and me and Asriel were-”
“Chara-” she says, and you don’t dare look up.
“The buttercups,” you stammer, “from Dad’s garden, that made him sick-” you’re laughing and you don’t know why- “I ate them, Azzy picked them when you were distracted and I ate them and they-”
“The buttercups,” she repeats, slowly, still processing, “you ate them…”
“I’m sorry,” you say again, but you’re still laughing.
“You…” Mom says softly, “You knew,” she looks up at Sans, whose eyes light up white and startled, “and you didn’t tell me!”
He snaps his hands up placatingly, “tori, hey, okay, look- there’s a really good reason i didn’t tell you and i didn’t even find out about the suicide thing until like an hour ago-”
“What possible reason could there be to not tell me my children were alive?” She actually yells, grip tightening around you.
“i- uh- shit-”
“Swear jar,” Frisk says, before you can stop them. They seem almost surprised at themselves, like it had been thoughtless, but Mom looks away from him and back down at you in confusion.
“Frisk,” you say tersely, “we don’t even have a swear jar.”
“I, uh, yeah,” Frisk says, swallowing, “I know.” They push out of Mom’s slackened grasp and stand up, running their hands through your hair.
Chara, I don’t think we should tell her about the resets.
What? We have to, now!
Frisk looks at her and then at Sans and then down because they get a little nauseous and nod solemnly.
“Okay… So, here’s the thing…” Frisk starts for you, “Me and Asriel, we… Stuff got…”
“So after Doc Alphy did all her experiments,” Asriel supplies from his pot on the table, “I woke up in her lab. And I didn’t know where I was. But I had all this- stuff, inside me, whatever makes human souls so strong, and I realized pretty quick that if I didn’t like how stuff was going, I could- undo it. Like, I could go back, and do it again. And again, and again, and- I told you, a few times,” he says it shakily, “and Dad, too, but it… Everything was so messed up and it just… It… And then one day, I wanted to know what would happen if I-”
“Mom,” you interrupt and she looks back at you, “we did some really bad stuff we undid, but we- I-”
“that’s why i didn’t tell you,” Sans says, leaning on the doorframe, cutting you off. His eyes are dark again, “no one wants to tell someone they’ve seen their kid do the things yours did.” You look at the ground.
“My children…” She says, softly, looking between you and Asriel, silent, “What have you done?”
You can’t bring yourself to say anything at first, and then it all comes spilling out, like a river of blood- no, that’s incredibly macabre and an unnecessary simile, like a river, and Asriel joins in and even Frisk, adding context and corrections. You tell her everything. Every timeline, every death, yours and hers and everyones, all the times you spent years in the ruins with her, the times you told her and the times you didn’t, the times you shoved a plastic knife into her chest and the times you cut Sans open like a wet paper bag, the times her flames pushed your soul from your body begging for mercy, the times you sat outside the ruins door and cried until something came along and killed you. She sits like a stone, without interrupting while you tell her stories about buttercups and bedposts and dead flowers and Heroines and judges.
And then you go silent.
Even Sans is staring at you in shock- you’d always expected he remember less than he pretended to, but you’re even more certain now. Your hands clench and unclench around nothing at your sides.
“…You have suffered so much, little one…” She sighs, breathless, eyes moist, “Both of my little ones, and I… I did not even suspect, I… I am so sorry…”
“Mom,” you say, and your voice breaks again.
She buries her face in her hands and you grip your elbows in your hands, crossed over your gut tight.
“But if- if you remember these ‘resets,’ then why do I not do so?” She asks, looking up, eye brows furrowed together. Sans looks down.
“it’s a long story.”
Your legs are starting to get tired so you pick up Asriel’s pot and sit next to Mom, curling into her side. Frisk sighs.
“i guess… it’s about time i told it, huh?” Sans frowns, which is utterly unlike him, scratches the back of his head, and grabs a table chair, spinning it around and sitting down in it backwards.
“so,” he says, eyes dim, in an uncomfortably familiar way, “once upon a time, there was this little kid that made it out of graduate skull in the capital with enough honours to paper his apartment. his resume was so impressive, in fact, that the royal scientist at the time, doctor gaster, saw potential in him, and gave him a job. that kid thought pretty damn highly of himself, so he ditched his kid brother, and he took it.”
“and that was the point,” he says softly, “where i really fucked up.”
The first time you meet Dr. W. D. Gaster, it’s during the presentation of your doctorate essay. You only notice him because there are three professors judging you and he is not one of them, a dark figure lurking in the back of the room observing you. Your first thought is that he is handsome in a weird, mysterious way that feels like an old movie, and your second is that you were too busy to pay attention to him.
The second time you meet Dr. Gaster, he’s offering you a job. You probably “officially” graduated five minutes ago and he’s already breezed in like the wind, students and teachers all scrambling to get out of his way like he’s important, before he smiles at you and does something weird with his hands you don’t understand. Another student translates for you that he’s offering you a job, assistant to the royal scientist. You accept and spend the rest of the night on the undernet practicing sign language from video tutorials.
The third time you see him, you’re wearing a labcoat and a name tag, and he takes you to a warehouse on the outskirts of the Capital he says he’s had the King purchase to be renovated for special research, and then takes you back to the current research facility he works in, near the castle. He makes strong black coffee and his hands linger near yours on the mug and you hope they’ll touch, but they don’t.
“Dr. Sans?”
You snap your attention up and away from your notes, “Hm?”
“There’s a call for you on line two, sir,” the intern says, pointing at the red blinking light on your desk phone.
“Ah,” you say, reaching for it.
“He says he’s your brother, it sounded important, so I-”
Your hand stops, and you frown.
“He can take care of himself,” you say, making a point of returning your hands and eyes to your notes and away from Alphys, who’s still staring at the light like it matters, “That’s not my job anymore.”
“Ah, you’ve miscalculated the mass-dependent cyclotron resonance frequency here, Doctor,” Gaster signs, leaning over you from to point delicately at your spreadwork on the computer screen. His hands are like yours, bony, but smoother than yours, like porcelain. You can see equations through the holes in his palms.
“Oh,” you say, realizing your mistake as he points it out to you, “damn. Thanks, Gaster.” He smiles at you, loftily, and stands up to his full height again, before stepping to the side to adjust the stack of notebooks on your desk.
“You really should keep your workstation tidier, Doctor,” his hands say, before neatly rearranging your printouts in the plastic divider you’d haphazardly shoved them in, “It can be difficult to maintain optimal productivity in this sort of environment.”
“I’m sorry!” You stammer, “I’ll clean it up.”
“No rush,” he smiles at you like one might smile at a particularly expensive pastry.
You are on your eighth month in his employ when you, and it is you, make the breakthrough that allows your team to build your first prototype. It takes many hands, bony ones, scaly, yellow ones, soft orange paws, gooey claws and spindly fingers but together, you do it. It’s real. It’s happening. A real production unit of simulated determination. To create enough would create a creature that could break the barrier. To get this right would free everyone, would make you a hero.
It would impress him.
“Something, I fear, is missing.” Dr. Gaster hovers over the prototype, pinpricks in his eyes flitting up and down as he scans it thoughtfully, decisively. Your heart sinks.
“Missing?” You say, stepping forward just so, “No, no, I- I ran the equations myself, it’s- it has to work.”
He looks at you from the corners of his eyes, mouth shut, smooth porcelain you’d like to touch, “And yet, it does not function within necessary perimeters. All it creates is unstable, incalculable, quickly lost. A mere fraction of the power we could ever possibly require. As it stands, it is a failure. I fear it misses something we cannot quantify with science.”
“What? What could it possibly lack that we can’t- that we can’t measure?”
His smile peaks, just so, and he straightens his back, “It’s own soul.”
“Why, Doctor Sans, it’s really quite simple,” Gaster elaborates, straightening. He picks up bottle and tips it just so, the liquid inside sluggishly moving to adjust itself with gravity. “Your machine… Produces limited quantities of determination. Not enough to break or… Even pass through the barrier, unfortunately, but- it should be enough to make a soul powerful enough to split in two.”
“In two?”
“Yes,” he signs, pointing to where his heart would be, “to create a sort of… Ghost, like a clone, or a sibling, perhaps. It will function like a perpetual energy source- creating the determination from which to siphon more.”
You look at the bottle, and back at his gentle smile.
“I… I don’t know,” you say, finally. The liquid is glowing.
“Do you trust me?” He asks with his hands. You hesitate. He sighs, softly, “think about it, won’t you?”
He hands you the bottle.
You’re in your apartment when you get the call. There’s early-morning dewfrost on the windowglass and you’re spinning the bottle deftly in one hand, thoughtless, idle, terrified. It’s heavy against your palm, cool, soft plastic filled with liquid like blue aloe vera. You’re thinking about returning it, quitting, and going home. No, that’s a lie. You’re thinking about getting a new job, but not about going home. You’d never do that.
“I regret to inform you that your brother has passed,” She says, formally, like it’s nothing. Like it’s just words. Your breath catches in a throat you don’t have.
“What? How?!”
“He was a casualty, the only one, in an altercation with a human. If it is a comfort, he died in the progress of freeing Monsterkind.”
“It’s not a comfort!” You yell, and punch the wall you’d been standing by, hard, hard enough to crack the knuckles, “What was he doing near a human!?”
“He- he was in the royal guard,” She says, faltering somewhat, “Did you not know?”
You don’t move for a few seconds, and then you swing your arm and throw the phone against the far wall. It doesn’t even break, but you sink to the floor anyway, hands on your face, “No, no, no no no no no no no…”
You don’t know how long you sit there before you jam the end of the bottle in between your teeth and squeeze.
“Why, Sans,” he signs, when you return. You’ve still got your hood pulled over your face, peeking at him through your fingers. He cocks his head at you. The lab is dark. It’s hard to read his hands. “I did not expect to see you back again so soon.”
“Gaster,” you pant, ripping your hood off. Even he seems startled by the way you know your eyes are glowing, a burn blue-cyan that’s giving you a migraine, “I’m ready.”
He pauses momentarily, and cocks his head to the side questioningly.
“I’m ready!” You say again, stepping forward. There’s furniture rattling around near you, reacting to your presence. You aren’t sure what you are anymore. You aren’t sure what you’ve made.
“Are you?” He signs, sliding toward you like he’s stepping on ice, but with the balance and poise of a cat on a rafter, watching a mouse.
“Please,” you say, teeth grit, “I don’t- it feels like I’m going to explode, it’s too much, it’s like I’m falling apart at the seams as is, I don’t- I don’t know if I can last-” You hiccup blue magic like coal-and-sugar and it burns inside of you. His eyes glimmer watching you.
“Very well, Doctor,” he smiles, “Do step forward. Just put your hands- here, yes, to power the machine.”
“It- this isn’t my machine,” you say, blearily. Everything is tinted blue, confusing.
“No, it’s mine,” he signs, “Perfectly safe.”
You look at it, and look at him, and something magic snaps in your head. You can feel it on the inside of your skull and it hurts- a table in the room flips somewhere. You put your hands on the machine. Gaster chuckles.
“You were always so trusting,” he sighs, speaking without moving his mouth in words you feel certain you shouldn’t understand, and puts a hand on your shoulder. “Trusting, and brilliant. A perfect martyr.”
“M-martyr?”
His touch trails along your shoulders and back to your other arm. You try to yank your hands up as the machine whirrs in a way it shouldn’t be able to, but they won’t move.
“Mm, yes. A ghost? Really, Sans, you’re brighter than that. Not too bright, though, no, clearly. I knew you would do well here.” You yank your hands back but they won’t come undone- panic grips your chest and the machine is unfurling like petals in your direction.
“It’s an extractor,” Gaster says, softly, beneath his breath.
“Nn- ah! Stop!” You press both feet against it and push, and succeed in doing nothing but maybe breaking one of your wrists.
“I can’t now, Sans, don’t you see? You’re going to further our research by decades- centuries, perhaps!” he laughs in an airy, breathy way.
You scream and tug against your wrists and the machine clicks into place. There’s something inside of you- anger, fury, grief, you can’t be sure, but it swells up in your ribs and you scream and something- you, somehow, but not you, like gravity itself, grabs Doctor Gaster and throws him toward you. He slams head first into the extractor and you slam your skull into him, stunning and pinning him. You think you feel something in the right side of your head snap, and it hurts, again.
“What are you doing! It won’t work if it’s not you, you fool- I won’t be enough, it has to be you!”
“Burn in hell!” You shriek. The machine goes off and for a moment you swear you can actually see your own soul- white and grey and flickering like a dying animal, like your dead brother. You reach for it, you miss, and the world bursts open like a watermelon against warm pavement.
“so i grabbed for it, i missed, and everything just- sort of exploded, i guess,” he sighs, looking at the carpet, “that was my first reset.”
Your breath catches, “You reset?”
He frowns, “not… not like you do. did. it was different, like- things didn’t just go back a ways and get redone, it was like i totally restarted from scratch, my whole life got redone, and i found out pretty quick gaster didn’t… either he did- doesn’t exist anymore, or he never did, or- or he’s very, very good at hiding, i don’t know. it’s like i’m living in this… entirely different timeline where everything is the same, except gaster doesn’t exist and i’m the only one who remembers.”
Mom is staring at him with this broken look you hate immediately, “You were in love with him.”
“Sans…” Frisk says softly, and you can feel the empathetic hurt in their soul like it’s your own, but it isn’t.
“or maybe i’m just crazy, i dunno,” he laughs, sniffling, ignoring Mom and standing up, running his hands over the top of his head with a raspy broken chuckle, “and i was never really sure what the hell exactly happened until one day, this kid walks into my life and stabs me in the chest! And you know what i found out?”
You freeze. You can’t say anything. He’s looking at you.
“i’m not real,” he says, and his voice cracks through his smile, “i don’t have a soul. he took it. it’s just- gone, and i’m still here, nothing but dust and whatever fucked up magic is holding me together. you gutted me like a damn fish and i bled like a living thing! like i’m not magic at all! but there it is, magic!” He says, and his eye flashes as gravity throws a chair across the room. You flinch and gasp and he’s yelling now, “so what am i then?! how come you get a soul and i don’t?! i miss my friends, asshole, i miss my life, i miss him!”
“Sans! Calm down!” Mom is on her feet, in front of you, but he’s clearly overwrought and he grabs at his face and groans and sobs and the furniture is all jittering like he’s barely containing himself. You’re shaking.
“i hate you,” he sobs, brokenly, without looking up, “i hate you.”
“Sans-” Mom starts, and you can see she’s angry at him, and that’s the straw that snaps the camel’s back like a toothpick and you scramble out of your seat, gasping for air and bolt for the door, through it and out into the snow in your socks with Frisk screaming in your head to stop, but you can’t, you don’t, you won’t.
“Chara.”
You stumble another few steps, but your feet are wet and they hurt- it’s snowing.
“Chara!”
You stop abruptly, panting, and look around for who called you, before you realize the word came from your own mouth.
“Frisk?” You say, hesitantly, and you feel their relief wash through you before you realize you’re standing in the middle of the snow-covered woods in your socks and a light sweater, and you have no idea where you are or how you got here.
“Oh, thank God, I thought- Chara, let go.” You’re confused for a moment until you feel them struggling for control you were refusing to give them without even noticing and relinquish your grip on your insides like you’re on fire. Frisk shivers violently and looks around.
“Where are we?” You ask, disoriented. Frisk hugs their arms tightly around themselves, teeth chattering.
“You had a panic attack,” they say, and you can tell they’re trying to be patient but their pretty pissed at you, “You ran away.”
“A panic attack?”
“Yeah. You get a lot of them.”
“I do?”
Frisk actually stops and narrows their eyes, “Did you not… Know that?”
“No?? I don’t have panic attacks.”
“Chara, what did you- what did you think was happening? You- all the time you get overwhelmed or upset and you pretty much black out freaking out, what did you think that was?”
This upsets you, because when they phrase it like that it’s clear they’re right, but you had never even considered the notion before, “I just thought I was crazy.”
They sigh and you immediately feel a pit of guilt for the burden of your own self deprecation, but Frisk doesn’t feel mad so much as they pity you, which is somehow worse.
“Are you okay now?” They ask, walking in the direction you came from, following your footprints. You nod. “Okay. Okay, good. That’s priority one.”
You’re both silent while Frisk jogs through the snow until they stop on a dime. “Chara?” They ask, voice quivering, and you blink, listening, “I can’t see my footprints.”
You look at the ground and they’re right. You can see where you’ve just come from, but not the messy path you ran first, covered now by fresh snow.
“Do- do you- know where we are?” They ask, shaky.
You look around and nibble your lip, “No.”
“Me neither. Okay…” You can feel the worry bubbling up in their chest and your legs and arms hurt, really hurt, frigid- your fingers are stiff and moving them feels like grabbing a stress ball made of sewing needles. “Okay. We need help.”
You pat your pockets for your phone and Frisk shakes their head, “We didn’t bring it.”
There’s something colder than the snow in your chest, “Frisk… When was our last save?” They’re silent. “Frisk?”
“He already hates me,” Frisk whispers, “I can’t…”
“He doesn’t hate you, idiot, he hates me,” you snap, a little mean, but they’re being a brat. Frisk picks up their pace.
“He was looking at me,” they say, “I always know when he’s looking at me.”
You frown. You’re starting to lose feeling in your toes. “He doesn’t hate you.”
“He’s not a liar,” they say, pathetically, and your stomach flips. You don’t know what to say and they can sense your hesitation. They’re jogging again, heading in a direction they seem to have picked at random. You really have no idea where you are. The wind is howling.
“Chara- if- if we don’t-”
“Shut up,” you growl, cutting them off before you clamp your hands over your mouth and refuse to let them continue. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Your ears hurt. Your feet don’t hurt anymore. Your arms feel like they end at your elbow, your fingers cold against your lips. You’re fine.
You smell coal and sugar.
Frisk’s eyes widen and you tense. You both whip around together, but you don’t see him.
“Sans!” They yell when you aren’t paying attention and you shove at them, clenching your mouth shut and bolting in the first direction you see. Coal and sugar. Coal and sugar.
They try to lock your legs up which makes you stumble, but you fight them with everything you have and you think they more let you have control out of surprise than you’ve actually overpowered them, “Chara- what are you doing?!”
“I’m saving your life! He’s trying to kill us, Frisk!”
“Are you insane?!” They pause for a stab of guilt/regret at their wording you ignore, “He’s not that mad!”
“He’s never tried to kill you before,” you snap, “I’m the one with the experience in gauging when Sir Grinsalot is feeling particularly murdery.”
“He wouldn’t!” Frisk yells, and wrestles back your legs. You struggle, taking a few slow steps forward as they fight to keep you still, “Not over this! He’s my best friend and he loves me and you don’t get to judge him like that just because you’re in a pissy mood, Cha-”
A wall of bones comes rocketing out of the ground in front of you and Frisk barely manages to stumble backward and out of the way. You still can’t see where he is but you can feel Frisk’s cold panic in your cold throat.
“He’s trying to kill us,” you reaffirm when the bones recede, and Frisk lets you grab your arms and grab a stick from the ground that you hold against yourself defensively, “I won’t let him, I won’t, Frisk, I promise-”
Frisk is silent. You see a blue glow in the treeline first and then him, one hand up. “kid-” he starts, eye glowing, but you hate monologues and broken promises so you raise your stick and scream and charge.
You swing the stick like a sword for his legs, but he jumps up and over it, dancing back out of the way, other hand still clenched in his pocket.
“stop!” He yells, and raises a bone wall between you, “i’m not here to fight you."
“Then why are you here?” Frisk asks. They’re afraid of him, voice quivering and it makes you angry. Your hands tighten their grip around your stick.
“i- i was worried, it’s cold and- and- no. i- frisk, look, i need a favour, i’m sorry, i- she can’t know, frisk, i changed my mind, i don’t want her to know anymore-”
“My mom?” You both ask, confused. He nods, pathetically. He's wringing his hands and he won't meet your eyes.
“please- just- i need you to go back a save, only one, ok- please-”
Frisk’s breath catches in their throat, and they shake their head, “Sans, no- that’s not the way. We’ll- we’ll get through this! Together."
He laughs, grimacing, and slams his hand down, sending you flying backward. You barely manage to right yourself at the last minute and your feet skid across the sharp, frozen ground. It yanks off one sock and tears the other off halfway. You step on it with your bare foot and finish the job.
“i know how, uh, to make you reset, you know,” he says. His voice is shaking. It strikes you quite suddenly that you think he’s having a panic attack. “please- please. don’t make me. i don't want to."
The wind is howling. His arm is up. Frisk’s heart is racing, “Sans…” They say, but he’s done talking. A skull fizzles into existence on your left and you wrench Frisk forward and out of the way of the beam that vaporizes the snow you’d been standing in.
I can’t fight him! Frisk sobs in your head and dances out of the way of a bone wave.
You don’t have to, you think back, sternly.
I won’t let you kill him either-
I don’t want to kill him, you think, and surprise yourself by realizing you mean it. You imagine a younger Sans holding a blue bottle the way you used to hold buttercups- dead brothers taken for granted and determination to win by dying, He’s wrong. He’s wrong about his soul. I won’t break any of my promises. I won’t kill him- the two of you handspring back under a flurry of ulnas, and he won’t kill you!
Frisk stares at him, uncertain, before your resolve becomes their own and they grind their stance into the earth on bleeding feet. They grit their teeth, nodding, Together?
“Together!” You both yell, throwing the stick down, and the next time his arm snaps down and sends you flying back, Frisk spins your feet and catches your body, and you whip their arms out for balance and your combined momentum loops you back around and you dive behind a tree as a storm of tibias buries itself in the trunk.
“You aren’t missing your soul!” You scream, rolling under a wave of femurs.
“If you were,” Frisk cries, freezing just in time for a blue bone to fly harmlessly through your face, “You wouldn’t be upset! You wouldn’t feel anything!”
He throws you to the side and you turn your shoulder so that your body lands into it, taking the least amount of damage it possibly can and Frisk scrambles back to your feet, “You act like you don’t care about anything, like you gave up, like you don’t think anything matters, but that’s bullshit!”
You tuck Frisk’s arms in and they spin like they’re dancing through the hail of skullblasts that melt the ice and burn the ground, “If you didn’t have a soul, you wouldn’t love me!”
“shut up!” He sobs, and you dive through the opening between a helix of blasts and bones to the other side and safety.
“You never bled, dumbshit! It was fucking ketchup! That shit you’re always drinking! Your dudt reaked of the stuff!” He winces at your voice and still won't look at you.
Frisk ducks backward under a shot of bones and clenches your fists, “Monster food turns to energy as soon as you eat it! If you’re really from a different universe, Sans, then you probably aren't converting it, same as me- you're still a monster!”
His attacks are faltering, panicked, rash, not his usual calculated type, and you stop-move-stop for a wave of blue-white-blues. “You’re not soulless, and I’m not a demon!” You’re almost overwhelmed by the sheer wave of delight that goes through Frisk when you say that, but Sans is still throwing magic like a child’s temper tantrum, so you can’t dwell on that just yet.
“Sure, you lost something-” Frisk says, “Your determination, maybe, but not your soul!”
It’s time for drastic measures, though, and together, you skid to a halt in front of him and shout, “A monster’s magic is powered by their soul, Sans! If you don’t have one, then what the hell is this!” Your fingers lace together inside your hands in a fluid motion neither of you have to fight for and snag a bone out of the air. The effect is instantaneous and you can feel your HP draining, unbuffered by LOVE.
He gives this sharp little intake of breath and jerks his hand. The bone vanished- and you with just one HP left. He wavers like paper in the wind and buries his face in his hands.
There’s a moment of silence before his voice comes muffled through his fingers, “this is why i can’t care about anything. it always ends up like this."
You soften and tug his face out of his hands. His eye sockets are moist. “he made me feel like i mattered.”
Frisk doesn’t know what to say. They’ve dealt with some tough stuff in their life, but not like this. This is grown up stuff and you feel like maybe you sort of get it, maybe, but not enough to help.
“Can we be friends?” You ask, without really thinking. He gives you a weird look.
“we are friends, Frisk.”
You shake your head and raise your right hand a bit, “No. Me. I don’t want to hate you anymore. Can we be friends?”
He keeps giving you that look but you know he understands. Instead of answering he offers you and Frisk his hand, and you both take it. Home fades in around you, and relief and warmth fill you at the same time as you scramble for your phone to call Mom and tell her to come home. She sounds worried but not mad and you don’t expect Sans to even be there when you come back in the room but he still is, fixing the furniture he tossed around like paperclips.
You don’t see Asriel anywhere so you think Mom must have taken him with her and you’re curious to hear his opinion on the whole soulless thing. You guess you will, when he comes back. In the meantime you help Sans push the table back against the wall.
You’re in the bathtub, soaking in the warm water in your clothes minus your sweater when you hear the front door open.
“Frisk?!” Mom’s voice calls. You feel a little hurt she didn’t call for you, but Frisk sniffs anyway, nose runny, and calls to her that you'de in the bathroom. Footsteps. The door opens. Her eyes are red.
“Oh!” She cries, and you wave, “My child, are you hurt?” You turn over your palms and show her the cuts where you scraped your hands on the ice, starting to scab, and she takes them in her own to heal them. You scoot back so she can get to your knees and the pads of your feet, which are still bleeding and turning the bath water an ugly colour.
“Where’s Azzy?” You ask, while she runs her pawpads over your pulpy knees, the skin knitting itself back together.
“The living room,” she says, distracted, “He wanted to speak with Sans.”
“…Don’t be mad at him,” Frisk says, looking down. Her hands pause, and resume.
“I’m not mad,” she says, “But his reaction… Put you in danger, and I am upset.”
You consider that fair. “He brought me back, you know.”
“I know,” she says, but otherwise is quiet.
“Mom?” You ask, and she looks up at your face, “I’m sorry.” Frisk squeezes your fingers around your arm where they’re resting reassuringly.
“Oh, no, shush, little one, do not be,” she says, and rubs your cheek with her thumb gently, leaning over the lip of the tub. You scoot forward to rest your head against her shoulder.
“Do you hate me?” You whisper, not trusting the stability of your voice.
“I could never,” she says softly.
“I got Azzy killed. You and Dad hate each other now. I… I ruined everything,” you say, and she takes your head in her arms in a weird half hug on the floor over the lip of the bathtub, “Mama always said I was a monster, I- I’m sorry, I can’t- I don’t know how to be good and I’m sorry, you didn’t- you don’t deserve this- I’m sorry-”
She cradles your face against her chest and pets your hair, chin on top of your head, “Shh, shh. It is okay. My child, and you are my child, I do not regret finding you. I regret only that I did not know the true level of pain you had suffered, to push you to such limits. I am so sorry I did not save you, little one,” she whispers into your hair, breath hot on your neck, “I failed you as a mother, you did not fail me as a child. You could not. You can not.”
You sniffle silently and let her hold you until the water begins the cool and you feel warm enough to stand up and let her hand you a towel. You shuffle back to your room to put on some dry pajamas (You let Frisk pick and they choose their favourite glittery Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PJS, green and blue and covered with phrases like “cowabunga” and ninja swords) and a blanket from your bed like a snuggie and shuffle back downstairs and into the living room. Mom is on the couch with Sans, speaking in these hushed little whispers that make it clear you’re not supposed to hear. Asriel is on the table and he catches your eye when you walk into the room and snorts.
“And the prodigal child returns,” he says, shifting in his pot. Frisk waves with their left hand at him, and almost thoughtlessly, he waves back. Mom and Sans shift away from each other quietly and you climb up in between them.
“yo, kid,” Sans says, and you look up at him, “yes.” You smile.
“Anyway,” Asriel says, clearing his throat, “As I was saying, Frisk’s right. Soulless? Don’t make me laugh. Even if yours is missing, or some shi-” Toriel gives him a sharp glance and he coughs, “something, it’s clearly still working.”
Sans frowns and worries his hands together, “i guess you would know.”
Asriel nods pointedly, “Yes. Yes I would. And I dunno if Frisk mentioned, but you don’t have, like, blood, in you, or whatever.”
Sans’s face lights up like Christmas and he mumbles, “yeah, they mentioned.”
“It’s ketchup.”
“yeah… they mentioned.”
“Which you drink like they’re about to stop making it.”
“yeah! they mentioned!”
“Why do you drink so much ketchup anyway, it’s completely disgusting-”
“ughhhhhh,” Sans groans and buries his face in the hood of his jacket. Mom titters with laughter, smiling sympathetically. Asriel rolls his eyes.
“In any case,” Asriel continues, “You’re being dumb.”
Sans just groans again. You pat his back consolingly.
“It is not dumb,” Mom says softly, and reaches over you to do the same thing you are, “I can hardly believe you have contained such a painful secret for so long.”
He sighs, “i’m sorry, tori.”
“Apology accepted.”
He looks up from under his hood and there’s this near reverence in his face- he’s looking at her the way you looked at the sun when you and Frisk made it out of the Underground for the first time without hurting anyone.
“Hey, Azzy,” you say, hopping to the floor, “We’re sleepy. You ready for bed?”
He looks at Sans and grimaces, “Yeah.”
“Oh-” Mom says, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Frisk says, faking a yawn, “We’ll see you in the morning, okay, Mom?”
She pauses, and looks at Sans and looks at you and Asriel and smiles, gently, like she used to, “Alright. Goodnight, Asriel, goodnight, Frisk. Goodnight, Chara.” You swell and smile and pick up Asriel and hug her and Sans goodnight and pad out of the room and back up the stairs. The door clicks shut behind you and Asriel groans under his breath.
“I bet they’re gonna bone,” he hisses, sticking his tongue out and Frisk giggles.
“Gross, Azzy!” You whisper at him, but you’re smiling, too, because it was a pretty good pun and Asriel was always kinda shit at them, so you’re proud.
“I wanna play Pokemon,” he says, and you set him back on the nightstand and pick up his gameboy. He grabs at it with leafy hands and pretty much immediately begins to ignore you. You and Frisk pick up your long abandoned homework from that morning and scoot back against the headboard.
“You think they’re gonna be okay?” Frisk asks.
“Probably,” you say, “but I dunno.”
Frisk taps the pencil against your textbook thoughtfully, “You said you weren’t a demon.”
Your face flushes, “Yeah. I guess I did.”
“I’m happy.”
“Why?”
“It’s just nice to see you like yourself. I like you.”
You laugh and worry your lip and sigh, “Thank you. For being patient with me.”
“Thank you for trying.”
You both smile, and then go back to algebra. You’re much better at this than them, so you do most of the work, but that’s okay. You don’t mind.