red as the blood you didn't shed - Your name, a long time ago, was Frisk. AU.

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1. I

Rachel named you Bam, after the night sky in her language. She named you after a number, too, before you knew what numbers were, before you knew what the sky was. She named you, but it never settled right in your skin. But no names really do, you realize, like you were something else a long time ago and you don’t know how to handle that fact. But you cannot word this. You don’t know how.

She called you a boy back then too, and that had never settled right either. It wasn’t wrong but it wasn’t right. But you didn’t want to scare her, to hurt her, to upset her and make her go away forever (it often felt like forever when she was gone) so you didn’t tell her this, and let her think what she wanted. It seemed to make her happy to do that, so you let her keep doing it.

Your name isn’t the name you choose either, in the end. You know it isn’t but you liked the sound of it, the feel of it swiping your fingers in a certain way. You like having a lot of ways to talk. There’s not enough water here, so you’re often thirsty.

The ghost at the end of a tunnel teaches it to you and then when Rachel shows you how, you learn twice as fast. She pats your head. This is what love feels like to you. Conditional. Earned.

Rachel is your light, you think, often. Light is not always good, but you don’t know this yet. At that time, her light is enough for you to live off of, even though your body and heart deep down yearns further. You delude yourself. You think that you’re content. You think that you’re happy.

(You have never been happy until now.)

You’re determined to keep her. You’re determined to stay with her. The ghost isn’t like that, you don’t want to bother the ghost, so you let it come to you instead. It can’t replace a real person, not at first.

And then she leaves for too long, and you’re hungry.

So you wander off in search of food. You’d been hungry before, starving, thirsty, a lot of things. The sensations are nothing new. It’s the loneliness that makes it hurt. Hunger is more than physical, you think, in not so many words.

Rachel had told you about fighting the other day. She’d warned you that people do it when they’re angry, when they’re sad, when they don’t want to be hurt, and that it is wrong to fight without it being for someone else. You believe her, despite the word fight making your chest warm and your stomach clench with anticipation.

But you understand the idea of fighting for something more than fighting at all. You think you would fight for Rachel. You know you really can’t, but if you had to, you could probably do anything for her if you tried.

But you aren’t fighting for Rachel when you fall down, deeper into the caves. You aren’t really fighting at all. You’re too tired. You’re much too tired by then.

The flowers are comfortable. Your body hurts, but these plants are comfortable and warmed by something far over your head, over the roof of the cave. Another light from much further up.

Is that the sun? You wonder. Is it one of the many stars? Rachel never told you that the stars were warm.

The ghost from the end of the tunnel shakes your shoulder and you open your eyes to them. Their big round eyes, rusty red from the light, the pink that dusts their cheeks forever because they’re dead. They taught you what death is like, with big words and solemn promises to not be as stupid as they were. There are things scarier than dying to you, and they know it. They think that’s pretty dumb, but they were like that once so they get it. But in turn they make you promise to try to not die anyway, because the people you love more than fear dying for will be heartbroken if you do not return. Rachel will be sad.

You promise them because they look at their shoes when they ask, and it clearly means a lot to them, and they let you stand up and call for help.

“Nobody will come,” they say after a few calls, preparing you to start walking. “Nobody ever —”

They are surprised when she does. A voice that is not Rachel, a voice that is concerned without hesitation, no shock, no sorrow, no other things. Just a single minded drive.

Your heart fills with something like hope and it’s not yours. It’s theirs, but you like the feeling and keep your discomfort to yourself.

“Mom…” they say in your ear, wistful. Bitter but wistful.

You call for help again and instead of her, a flower rises from the rest.

“Howdy,” it says. ‘You don’t have to be so loud there buddy! Let’s be friends.’ They hold out a leaf like a hand and you tilt your head. “My name’s Flowey. Flowey the Flower! Let me show you around!”

“Don’t,” says the ghost and the hope has faded to heartbreak. “Don’t, please.”

You shake your head immediately. The ghost knows well.

The flower doesn’t like that.

Whatever he hits you with hurts like hunger, but smaller and pointed. You gasp, but you dodge the second attack as the flower chirps out. “You really are an idiot.”

Your first moments in the Underground are nothing but pain and laughter. Well, at least one of these is familiar.

You bend your knees to jump for a third time but then flames shoot past your eyes and knock the flower away. It shrieks in irritation and vanishes in seconds. You frown, but then your heart jolts. The ghost is whimpering, almost impossible to hear. But you have always heard the ghost. You reach out behind your back and loop your wrist against theirs, so it doesn’t look weird, so it can’t be seen.

“Do not be afraid, my child,” she says after tutting away the flower. “My name is Toriel. It looks like you’re quite lost.”

She doesn’t understand that you do not feel fear. You feel loneliness and that is much worse.

You nod because yes that’s true. You want to shake your head because you don’t really understand the idea of being lost, just of losing things. But you are not in a place where Rachel can find you and call your name, so you suppose that she isn’t wrong.

“Come with me,” she says, offering her hand to you. “I’ll help you through these dangerous ruins.”

It’s significant, this moment you’re sure it’s significant, but you can’t place why. So you take her hand and hope you’ll find an answer.

(This is your first experience with dissatisfaction and knowing it. It fills you with determination, though you don’t know what that is either.)

But you will. Because the ghost knows and he often tells you a lot of things you don’t know.

You’re always grateful to them, even if they won’t tell you their name.

Well, you won’t tell me yours, they say to you and you smile. Because you would. Just nobody’s asked.

---

Miss Toriel (not mom, for some reason that word makes your heart ache and you think of Rachel but even that isn’t quite right either) guides you gently, lets you try a couple of things. She encourages you to take a candy and you do. You don’t eat it but you want to. Who knows when you will get another chance later? Who knows if you’ll ever see it again? You want to share it with Rachel.

She lets you press your bare, hurting feet into the “leaves” and they tickle, brushing in the gaps between your toes in a way that softens your heart and makes you breathe easier.

You’re still hurting. Miss Toriel doesn’t notice. She just seems… anxious, hopeful, things that Rachel is but isn’t whenever she’s in the cave with you. She hurries with you because the cave is dangerous, the ruins have traps that could hurt you. You don’t tell her that you’re quite hurt already. She probably won’t listen. It’s like being hungry. Besides, maybe you can stop hurting when you get to where she wants to go.

You miss Rachel. You should return to her soon.

Still, she takes you to her home. She takes you and feeds you and gives you clothes. You don’t put them on. It feels wrong for some reason.

You think you should be happy. She asks you what your favorite pie is. You don’t have a favorite thing of any kind, except a person. You miss her. You should go see her soon.

These clothes are warm wool, she says. A bit scratchy, and she’s running her claws gently through your hair like a comb.

“Would you like a bath, child?” she asks.

Bath? Bath is… cleaning. Bath is water and soap and eye stinging. You’re not sure if you want it, but you feel scratchy, so a bath might help.

It does until she sees you are hurt. Then she nearly cries, tracing your bruises and bumps and the dried blood with guilty fingers.

You wish she wouldn’t. Rachel crying twists your stomach. This twists your heart.

You need to leave soon before both turn into knots, you think.

But you don’t say so. Instead you watch her place the ointment on and memorize the sensation, fumble through how to tie knots for two times until you’ve mastered it and smile when she looks at you because people seem to like that. All three people you know prefer when you draw up your mouth and don’t bare your teeth.

You’d bared your teeth at Rachel once, you think. She’d fled. You’ve never done it again. You don’t know why it’s bad.

Rachel’s weak and you are frightening, murmurs the ghost and you wrinkle your nose. None of those things make sense. You’re not even sure if they matter.

But Miss Toriel carries you easily. She looks at your body, disapproving of something.

“Really now child, you’re much too small and thin.”

You fail to understand the significance.

(You don’t know what kindness is you know what light is and Toriel is not your light.)

(You have always needed many lights. You are the night you are the night itself and the night is supposedly full of stars but even so you do not want her to be your light. You don’t know why but you do not.)

(Maybe, like Rachel does, she belongs to somebody else. So you are not going to hold on. Rachel is not yours, you realize but you are hers. You don’t know if you are ready to be anyone else’s.)

You don’t say so. You sleep on your first bed, in your first pajamas and she is humming as you sleep.

And she is watching.

You don’t know why this unnerves you, but it does.

You are filled with something like fear.

You don’t like it.

---

You decide to leave after some time.

Not because Miss Toriel isn’t kind and loving and good because you think she is all those things (you can’t really explain the concepts, but she lets you sign and sound out words and is more patient with you than Rachel, but you think that’s because she’s older. Rachel said older people sometimes did know better and this helped a lot in confirming that.) but because you feel an itch of restlessness. These clothes don’t belong to you, you think.

Children wear stripes here, supplies the ghost who won’t say their name. They sound bored now, the more time you spend with Toriel the less interested they become. Do you want a knife?

No, you don’t. You’re not even sure why you would need one.

You know why, says the ghost, but they shrug it off anyway.

You think you know why. The idea niggles in the back of your mind, red as the blood that’s seeped from your fingers, red as the color of your eyes in certain lights.

You do not want to do that.

You don’t think you have the courage.

So you refuse to do that.

Toriel, though she is kind and loving and good, nearly doesn’t give you much choice.

She attacks you with fire, her eyes steely and set, and she doesn’t hesitate. But maybe she means differently, maybe she doesn’t want to hurt you because even though it hurts, she starts making them easier to avoid, better for you.

But you don’t attack. You keep the toy knife in your new pockets and you don’t attack. You keep your hands in your newfound pockets (your hands are so warm now.) You’re getting better at dodging, you think, until you see the look of horror on her face as white hot red burning pain fills your body like peppered kisses of heat except so much worse and then you die.

It sucks but you die.

And then you’re alive again in your bed, gasping for breath, clutching your chest as tears fall down your face. She killed you.

She didn’t mean to but she killed you. She killed you, the nice person hurt you and fought you and killed you. They weren’t supposed to do that, they weren’t—

You sob and sob all night, but quietly, because you know what death is like now. You know why people fear it.

And you know why Chara the ghost is so hurt.

Their fingers fold soothingly over your own.

Just get past her, they tell her. Don’t gotta hurt her. Just gotta pass her. And then you’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out one step at a time.

You nod. It’s for Rachel. You’ll do this for her. She is probably worried that you aren’t here.

That is enough to fill you with determination.

2. II

You do get past her, eventually.

She doesn’t seem to realize that she’s killed you but she cries when you have to go like she did. She hugs you like she hurt you. She hugs you like she is sending you away, rather than you leaving because you’ve decided to. You don’t hug her back. You should, you think. But you think if you do, you won’t leave. So you reach out and pet her snout instead. She laughs, a little sadly, and sends you onward.

You forgive her immediately. You can’t help it. This is the same person but it isn’t. She really just wanted to be sure you would take care of yourself. That’s what she says and you have nothing else to go on, so you believe her.

Chara laughs bitterly and shrugs it off. She’s said that to other children before you, they tell you. I don’t believe it anymore.

You don’t mind.

But what you do mind is the cold. In comparison to the heat. There is wet cold on the ground (snow, says the ghost) and you are suddenly grateful again to Miss Toriel and her offer of shoes, even if they are uncomfortable for your long calloused bare feet. (You like the word, calloused.)

The cave has always been cold, but not like this. This seeps into your bones like a scolding, rather than a lack of warmth.

You miss Rachel, but you feel like you shouldn’t. Like that’s a right for different people, a person who has not been living in a cave covered in darkness or someone who hasn’t died and come back.

Maybe death is making you sad. Maybe dying is making you upset. You should try to die less often.

So you turn your thoughts away from that and keep pressing onward. Because you should still go back. You don’t want her to be scared because you’re gone. You don’t want her to be lonely. You don’t know if that’s your responsibility, but you’d like to hope you can repay her someday for being kind to you.

Chara scoffs.

The flower is back, you realize. Saying things. You square your shoulders and you ignore them.

“What are you going to do when you come face to face with a relentless killer? You’ll die and die and die and then you’ll have to fight! Then you’ll get it!”

You look at the flower and ask, “Why do you care?” and keep walking. Because you don’t understand, but you think he won’t answer you anyway.

But then he does, pops up in front of you and scowls. “Don’t ignore me!”

You stare at the flower. You stare and stare and don’t look away.

Perhaps it’s because death can no longer scare you, now that you’ve lived through it once, so you ask, “Why won’t you kill me? You had a chance and you didn’t.”

Your ghost laughs. You’ve got him there.

Flowey gapes at you. Then he smiles, thousands of teeth in a flower carpels. “You dare to mock a prince?”

“I’m not mocking you,” you say because you aren’t.

You get stared at yourself. You don’t shiver even though it’s cold.

Then the flower says, “You’re a monster yourself, aincha? Most people’d be scared.”

Chara hisses. You frown and keep walking. It’s hard to keep calm with the sensations roiling through your gut but —

You manage. After all, somehow, you don’t think he’s wrong.

---

You’re being watched.

No, you’re being followed.

Don’t speed up, Chara warns. It’s too obvious. And he’s an idiot. He doesn’t mean you any harm.

So far you’re one for two on monsters who actually want to hurt you. Rachel’s explanation on conflict makes less and less sense the longer you’re here. You will have to ask again when you see her.

You pause at what you think is called a bridge. It doesn’t look like it can handle your footsteps.

Then something prickles down your neck. You turn and there is a skeleton staring at you. “Human,” it says. “Doncha know how to greet people? Put ’er there.” And it holds out its hand.

You blink, baffled and unruffled, and reach out to shake it.

A horrible wet sound bursts from where your hands meet and you squawk, leaping over the bridge itself. Then, when you realize nothing’s happened, your palms aren’t bloody and nothing’s hurting, you manage a timid giggle.

“Funny, ennit?” asked the skeleton, who hasn’t stopped grinning.

You giggle again, louder and a bit higher. Like it’s escaping from somewhere that’s not your lungs.

The skeleton grins at you. “Good to know you like a good joke kid. I’m Sans, and you’re a human right?”

You blink and nod, even though you don’t know.

“Cool,” he says, and that grin is starting to be uncomfortable. “So like, I don’t care about humans. But my brother Papyrus, he’s been trying to get one for ages. Wanna play a trick on him?”

You frown and reflex tells you to shake your head no, but… “Is it a mean trick?”

All tricks are mean, idiot, said Chara. You ignore them.

“Nah. He won’t notice a thing. Go hide behind that lamp over there.”

You do, and you listen, while trying your very hardest not to shiver and shrivel up. It’s cold.

Soon another skeleton arrives. He is very loud and very energetic. He feels bright, bright in a way Rachel isn’t, but bright never the less.

And yet he sounds… kind of lonely. He has no friends? None at all? You feel that, feel that in your skin. He should have a friend.

Don’t fall for sad tears, Chara tells you. Some of it’s a buncha bunk. And if it’s not, he’s trying to hunt you. He could even hunt Rachel if you’re not careful.

“Why do you care,” you mouth, rather than say.

Chara is quiet for a while. I wish someone had cared about me like people care about you.

You tilt your head, left so it doesn’t hit the lamp. “Is it too late for me to care about you now?”

… I dunno. Probably. I’m pretty dead.

That’s true but they’re still here, so you’re determined to care about them anyway. And you’re determined to care about this new person too. It just seems right.

…Thanks.

You smile.

---

Three weird puzzles and a dog in a suit of armor later (they are very fluffy and being with them made you quite warm), you are petting one more dog as you reach the side of a bridge.

Things you don’t understand appear from nowhere, all directed at you. Even from this distance, you think that they’ll hurt quite a bit.

You can’t really hear the big guy’s words, because all of it is very loud, but you instead see a little yapping dog held by one of the… you think they’re called ropes?. It’s spinning around in it, looking pleased with itself.

You are filled with the urge to pet.

It barks and the weapons… go away. You’d never seen so many weapons in one place before.

I’m just glad you knew what they were.

Chara is mean.

Sans winks at you as you cross. You wink back. It feels weird. You don’t want to do it again.

But you do have to face Papyrus anyway. He doesn’t want to. You don’t want to. But you go and face him because Rachel will be upset if you’re not there.

Who cares? asks Chara.

You care.

It takes a while. He’s easy to dodge and terribly friendly. But then your SOUL falls

Down.

And it isn’t moving. It’s stiff and heavy and your limbs feel like they’re weighed down with a thousand thousand pies.

And then you lose.

“You’re blue,” said Papyrus without a hint of smugness. “That’s my attack.”

This is going to take a while, you realize.

---

I hate him, Chara tells you after your fifth time in what is apparently like a dog house. You’re getting colder and colder. Your clothes are wet from being tramped in and out of snow and near heat. The constant changes hurt your skin and make your teeth chatter and asking the other monsters help is met with earnest bewilderment. Some kindness, you’d found gold that you can spend and they give you food (it tastes good) and some woolen things, but all the nice things Miss Toriel gave you feel like they’ll fall apart like your sheet did.

“You’re very sweet,” say a couple of monsters. “But we don’t want to get in the way of the Royal Guard. Thank you for not hurting us though.”

Or they talk about things that you don’t really understand because while you’re playing with Papyrus, he doesn’t seem to understand that his idea of play can hurt. You want to tell him so. He doesn’t mean it. That stuff doesn’t matter right now.

They’re such sheep, says Chara dismissively. Don’t worry about it.

You wish you had your sheet back so you could sleep. You could sleep if you could cover your face and hands and then being blue wouldn’t be so bad.

You give up and doze, you’re so tired. Everything hurts. Tears fill your eyes.

You can do this. I believe in you.

“You do?” you mouth at Chara, huddling against the side of the building that’s the least cold.

Someone has to.

You smile. You’ve heard the words before, you’ve never understood them up until now, but they fill you with determination all the same. You want to live up to Chara’s expectations.

You open your eyes to the sound of a yapping dog. (You’ve learned so much so far, and it can’t be the end.) The dog waggles and whuffs and you feel a rush of warmth from Chara and into you. You weakly open your arms to it, and it yaps eagerly, rocketing to your side. It climbs onto your knees and settles. You rest your fingers on its fur and stroke.

You cry and you don’t know why you are crying.

Chara huffs at you but doesn’t seem mad.

I want to be friends with Papyrus, you think. And the thought fills you with courage.

You think someone is watching you when you drift off to sleep, but Chara is with you. They would tell you if it was a bad thing or a bad person. That’s what they do. They warn you as best as they can, help you as much as they can and correct your attempts from Rachel’s teachings.

If Rachel is your light, then Chara is your guide in the darkness.

You awake freezing, but more determined than ever.

But you refuse to fight Papyrus. You dodge, you make soft comments that stumble out of your mouth as Papyrus giggles and insists you have to be taken to the king.

Your SOUL clatters to the floor with your exhausted, aching knees but you refuse to stay down this time. Slowly you manage to jump. You manage to step to the side of bones. And slowly, it gets easier. You collapse a few more times into the snow, into the steam, so you shut your eyes and you give up on them.

“Chara,” you whisper. “Please see for me.”

“I gotcha.”

And you make yourself relax. You can do this. You can wait it out. You just have to be patient.

And your SOUL thrums cyan and warm and reflective.

You are filled with Determination.

3. III

Papyrus, you think, is really nice.

I think he’s kinda dumb, honestly, but nice is close enough I guess.

You don’t protest because you don’t know what to say to that really.

You are laying on the skeleton’s couch. Your body aches horribly from all the moving it’s had to do. Sans is by your feet, your hands splayed out like you were pretending the stars were real. Sans is asleep. You ache too much to sleep.

Dates are a strange concept but Papyrus is nice about it. You couldn’t conceive what he meant, but he figures you’re friends, so you go along with it.

You drift off eventually. Being awake hurts too much.

You dream of Rachel. Her voice, the book with the name she gave you and her advice for you in it every day. You dream of her patting your head and telling you things.

You dream of her dead. You dream of her blood scattered on the grass of the Underground, held down by blue light.

You dream of a skeleton — of Sans — with a single glowing blue eye. You dream of him standing over her, grinning without grinning, happy without being happy.

“Was it worth it?” he asks the corpse that can’t answer. “Was this all worth it, kid?”

She doesn’t answer and he may not be looking at you, but you feel like he might be asking you anyway. Around you, you realize, are piles and piles of dust

Then she wheezes. Her face twists, and Rachel pushes herself back up.

“I’ll know when I get there,” she coughs and she smiles red, a bloody sick red. The single shining eye goes wide and you hold out your hand —

You open your eyes to the smell of something cooking and the blur of Chara’s face in front of you.

That was one messed up nightmare, they say to you and you nod.

You hope that’s all it was.

You turn your head to a sleeping Sans and you hope that’s all it was with all of your heart.

(You’ve never had hope before, it doesn’t seem like it should feel this slimy.)

---

“Thanks for playing along with my bro, kid,” Sans says as you fiddle with your shoes. You end up stuffing the laces under your feet. Chara laughs at you but doesn’t push. “He’s the coolest, right?”

You nod because he is cool. He’s cool as much as you know what it means anyway. And agreeing is better than being hit.

The grin widens. “You bet. He’s amazing, my bro. Even let you down gently.”

You blink. You still have no idea what you were let down out of.

You don’t wanna know.

Sans takes you to Grilby’s. You manage three bites and stop. You miss the looks the patrons give you, listening to Sans instead. Something about Sans makes your skin crawl and yet want to hug him tight. You don’t think he would appreciate that though, so you don’t do it.

Eventually though, you remember Rachel (how can you forget her, how do you stop thinking of her, you just dreamed of her, how how how) and you feel the urge to go. So you do, with the eyes trailing you the entire way.

Where you enter next isn’t as cold but it’s… beautiful.

And fake, says the ghost. Those aren’t stars at all. Just lights in a ceiling that’s been poked through by time. You can’t even make any constellations now.

You’ve never heard the word constellations before. Even so, you spend a lot of time staring up at that sky, fake and pretty and mesmerizing.

Rachel ought to see it. Maybe you can bring her back here when you’ve fixed things.

You pick yourself up at that thought and you keep walking.

It feels fine, everything feels fine.

Then a chill creeps up your spine.

Run! Chara shouts.

You run.

Your cheek is cut, your clothes are ripped. But you continue to run. The only way is forward. The spears fly after you.

Death is behind you. And yet you are not afraid.

There is something that frightens you more.

Right!

You duck into the grass which is taller than you anyway, but you duck and then go very, very still. You’ve had practice at this. When things hurt too much, hunger and thirst and lack of sleep hurt too much, you’ve gone very very still and let the yawning caverns in your body do all the movement for you. This is easier because someone is beside you.

The monster gets picked up instead and she grins so hugely you think her face will shatter. But they aren’t hurt. No spears, no pain, nothing. Lucky.

It’s cause she’s a monster, Chara supplies. Probably.

You don’t really care what the reason is, you’re just glad you weren’t turned into cheese.

You keep walking once the sound of the hulking footsteps fades away.

There are plaques on one wall you pass. I don’t wanna look at those, Chara tells you and you nod to yourself and don’t look at them, any of them. You do get some nice cream though. All this gold is going to waste with you otherwise. Rachel can use whatever you don’t need but… this feels better. It helps the monsters.

Sap.

You don’t say that that doesn’t make sense because you are not a tree but you think it hard enough that Chara laughs anyway.

Besides, if the monsters like you a bit more, maybe they’ll attack you a bit less and you can leave them faster.

The monsters tend to stop fighting without much fuss too. Onionsan seems lonely, but you can’t swim, so you couldn’t stay with them anyway. And it would probably get lonely for the both of you.

You keep walking.

Water falls on your skin from above. Rain, supplies Chara. They probably have umbrellas up ahead. You nod and pick one up. Then you take another, and walk back the way you came. You set the spare one inside the statue’s hand, open to catch the rain.

A music box begins to play. Your legs feel weak and you sit down to rest them. You rest there for a long time. You’re soaked, but your things are safe so you feel fine.

Then, with a yawn, you rise and keep walking.

The monster kid walks with you, chatters eagerly about things you don’t understand. But you like them, and the company is nice. They aren’t even hurting you, which is different. They even help you up a ledge. You smile a little as they run off, falling a couple of times.

The happiness doesn’t last.

This time, Chara doesn’t have to tell you to run. Actually, they don’t get a chance to.

You wake up by a waterfall sobbing.

And it happens again. And again.

You get faster.

You get more careful.

You die less.

It hurts every time.

The monster in its armor looks at you, a cat yellow eye and shining in the light of pale flowers.

They cut the dock.

You.

Fall.

Again.

---

You dream.

You dream of a voice. You dream of soft fur on your hands pulling you up from a field of flowers. You hear a name in the distant tickles of your brain. You dream of something warm and far away. You dream of a thing called sunlight.

You dream of Miss Toriel smiling at you. My child, she says and something in your heart aches.

Then you wake up, on flowers and dreadfully sore. Chara is holding your hand as best as they can.

You’re okay?

You manage to shake your head.

Eat something, they say, and you realize.

That was Chara’s memory.

You say nothing and pull out a cinnamon bun wrapped in paper. You eat it slowly and surely, your energy begins to recover. But you are so so tired, a bone deep sort of tired that makes your name waver in your head and your heart struggle.

I guess even monsters can be unkind, says Chara. Even while being kind.

You don’t know what to say to this, you can’t know, you can’t. Everything is so much. Everything is going numb.

You don’t even know if seeing Rachel will make it better anymore.

I don’t think lying here will help much either, Chara tells you. And they’re right. You know that they’re right and you pull yourself up because of it. You start the trudge again.

---

You like Napstablook.

Mostly it’s because they make the weird mean dummy stop attacking you and yelling at you (your ears are starting to ring the more it goes on and it should be funny but even Chara’s not laughing now, they’re just looking at the dummy with voids for eyes and red pinpricks in the center and chewing over something in their mind) but also because they find some cushions and let you sleep and they look so happy that you’re present the entire time.

But mostly you think it’s because you get to sleep safely.

And when you cry for some reason they cry with you and you’re not sure why but it helps.

You wake up, not refreshed exactly, but it hurts less. You’re starting to accept that “hurting less” is probably as close to happiness as you’re allowed to go down here. Or ever, really.

Maybe you should fight back, Chara says after a moment.

You consider it for a moment. The toy knife is still in your stuff. But ultimately you shake your head. You’re too tired. It wouldn’t do any good. It’s better just to not fight and get out.

Chara nods, resigned. I thought that you’d say that.

“You don’t have to watch,” you mouth, not wanting to disturb Napstablook and the tinny spookwave noises.

Chara regards you and then pats your head with spectral fingers. It’s not like that blondie of yours is here to keep an eye on you. Besides, I’m already here. Might as well stay.

It doesn’t feel like Rachel’s affection at all. For the first time, something feels better than Rachel.

And that starts your tears all over again, with a pain in your chest that’s much, much worse. You didn’t know things could be better than her. You didn’t know things could be worse than not having her. You didn’t know. You didn’t.

Chara simply continues to pet your head. That’s how the Dreemurs made me feel too.

You don’t understand, but you don’t think you’re ready to understand either.

You pull yourself to your feet and thank Napstablook for being kind.

You didn’t know ghosts in sheets could blush, but they do. A small smile covers your mouth.

You are learning so, so much in this world.

You dunno if it’s worth it.

(at least the temmies are cute)

---

“I guess that makes us enemies now, huh?”

You’re numb again, you didn’t know you could be this cold. It must be all the rain. You just shrug. You don’t know monster kid very well, but you don’t think she hates you enough to be your enemy. But that doesn’t seem to stop anyone in the Underground from hurting you except for like: Papyrus, so. And even Papyrus had to talk himself out of it.

“Man… this sucks. Yo, say something mean so I can hate you.”

You just stare at them and shrug helplessly again. You don’t know anything mean to say so.

They wiggle their tongue behind their sharp teeth. “Man, yo I… I can’t believe I said that. I’m… I think I’m gonna go home. Undyne said not to talk to the human but… man I dunno. Later, yo.”

You wave half-heartedly.

Then they trip and fall and horror grips your throat, breaks the numbness and you run and grab them with all your might and tug them off of the edge of the cliff.

And right when you do, the stomping of metal footsteps reaches your ears.

Chara says a word that you think might be bad but it feels really fitting right now.

Still, monster kid’s legs are shaking as you wheeze for breath. She’s turned towards the footsteps. Her grin is shaky, eyes huge and she won’t stop trembling. But she says,

“Y-yo, if you, if you waannaa… get my friend, you gotta go through me first!”

Your heart blooms with warmth.

And… the monster leaves. The knight leaves.

We’re keeping her, Chara says.

You nod, weakly.

MK leaves after this, with the word friend on her tongue. When you wave goodbye, it feels much lighter.

Maybe she can be friends with Rachel too. And Rachel leaving won’t hurt so much.

The thought of just a little less pain fills you with determination.

So you keep walking now.

---

“Seven human SOULS and King Asgore will become a god.”

What have the gods ever done? Chara says under their breath, tired. I prayed to God a lot, and all they did was things people should have done. That old fluffball won’t be any different.

You say nothing. You watch Undyne, for that’s who she is. You watch the hero of monsters justify it all.

“We’ve collected six. You understand? With yours, the world will be transformed.”

If you die, these monsters will all be free.

Good luck with that. Chara’s bitterness grows like bile in your throat.

Then Undyne screams, a bellow of rage that makes you wince.

“You’re standing in the way of everyone’s hopes and dreams,” she shouts and it hurts. She hurls words at you that you don’t understand and screams. “You know what would make everything better? IF YOU WERE DEAD!”

You don’t flinch. You say nothing. Your hands curl into fists slowly. You swallow the lump in your throat.

It’s not true, Chara says wearily. But you can tell the words hurt them way more than they hurt you. Because you don’t really have worth anyway. You don’t have much anyway. All you are is useful to Rachel, and therefore it doesn’t really matter what she thinks. And you’re not useful to Rachel dead.

(It does, it does, it cuts deeper than any knife, than any spear to be hated like this.)

She’s still screaming, still talking, but all of it feels irrelevant.

“You’re… in my way,” you finally say, and you’re not sure where the urge comes from. ‘I have to go back to where I came from… and you’re all in my way!’ You’re not angry, but you’re upset and tired and hurt and something is going to give. “Someone is waiting for me, someone is worried about me! I just want to go back to her!”

There’s something sparkling at your sternum, something heavy and weighted and filling up your soul.

This is determination.

She laughs. The wind is howling.

“No more running away,” she barks, like a dolphin.

You swallow and Chara’s spectral form slides into your physical one.

Let’s give it a shot.

You both mess up hard. Your soul is supposed to be red, not green.

It hurts but you wake up where you were before, and try again.

This time you manage to get away, forming the spear in hand and deflecting others speeding around you. It’s hard and you wince in pain, but you throw a candy into your mouth with your fumbling fingers as Chara bounces your feet about to get the rhythm.

She reaches you again. Your legs are too short.

“Killing you is a MERCY,” she tells you. You want to laugh and you have no idea why. Probably because Chara is laughing.

Anime heroism at its most crappy! They shout, right as a spear goes right through your spine and you die.

“Ow,” you say when you wake up again.

It’s not the last time you die, but the patterns get easier. Or maybe she gets more predictable, you have no idea.

Then one of the spears moves starts curling in the air and you find yourself learning how to backflip.

Chara, at some point in the many times you die trying to not die, starts wheezing laughter.

You’re gonna wanna try parkour when you get outta here.

It shouldn’t be funny but for some reason hearing that makes you let out hysterical giggles. And you die again.

Crap, sorry, Chara says and you know they are and you know this is awful but you just cannot stop laughing because this is awful, this is all awful how is this place okay with this? How are they fine with this?

(It doesn’t occur to you for a long time that they might not be but how would it now?)

Papyrus calls you at one point and she stops, she actually stops and you listen to him while screaming internally because your body is running a thumping high adrenaline and you’re trying very hard not to giggle. So you make appropriate noises of agreement and interest and contain the urge to cry and laugh at the same time and the two impulses scare you a lot.

But you manage to get away, dodging and leaping and running. She’s starting to slow and you’re not.

Armor, Chara wheezes. Keep going!

You do, until finally, with the blazing heat and weird stuff below you, she collapses on the bridge.

And… you almost keep walking. You almost do but…

But you just can’t.

You go to the water cooler and grab some water and dump it on her. A few times even.

And she gets up slowly, looks at her surroundings, and just… walks away.

You collapse onto the ground once she’s gone.

… Okay that was awful but also super cool right?

You can’t even nod but they’re right. Undyne is nuts and mean and terrifying… but that whole thing was kind of awesome.

Except the dying.

(Something is wrong with you, something is very, very wrong with you.)

4. IV

Your point is not proven wrong at her house. In fact, it’s kind of proven more right.

That’s not how you cut things, Chara whispers in a mix of amazement and utter horror. That’s definitely not how you cut things. I would know, I cut things.

You say nothing. You can’t.

You’ve never punched a vegetable before. You’re not sure if you want to repeat the experience.

You’re still not sure how everything is on fire now either but… she seems happy. She seems to not want to kill you so… there’s that right?

It’s kind of all you have to go on right now.

She asks you to hit her with all you’ve got. You try to imagine hurting her, try to imagine making her feel what her spears did to you over and over and over again — and… you can’t.

You just can’t. So you punch her weakly, not like when you broke the stone at all. Because you don’t want to hurt her.

And… she doesn’t want to hurt you either.

All right good, because we couldn’t do that again.

They’re not wrong.

---

You have to fight Asgore.

Or at least talk to him.

He’s a pile of mush, Chara tells you. It’s all clicking into place a little more for you but you can’t think about it.

You hope Undyne is right and he’ll just let you go through but…

If there were six others here like you and they couldn’t go through, you don’t think he will either.

Why does everything have to be resolved like this?

People don’t always get along, Chara says simply.

And you know they’re right.

You know.

But you want to see Rachel. You can’t quite remember why anymore but… you want to see her.

---

You like Alphys, you decide. She seems kinda… not quite understanding of what she’s doing but you like her.

Though you have to agree with Chara, she’s uh… acting weird.

Mettaton breaks the wall and you try to remember if you made a safe place before coming here. You think you did. This will suck.

And it does. It sucks a lot.

Though he does keep complimenting you all of the time? Which is… kinda wacky?

You’re learning a bunch of new words. It’s neat.

Or maybe you’re, in Chara’s words, starting to disassociate. That sounds bad.

… You don’t know what a train is.

Chara makes a face and points at Alphys, who makes the symbol of a D with her clawed hands.

You consider crying. You really think it’ll help. But it may just give you a headache.

Everything is very very loud. Ugh.

Hey at least we know the fish and the lizard want to smooch.

You giggle hysterically at Chara. You don’t even know what it is and you know it’s true.

---

She’s lying, Chara says at one point. Dunno about what but she’s lying.

You don’t really understand this, but then, Chara’s usually right on these things. You’d just been thinking that she was scared.

You can lie and be scared.

There is that.

You feel that terrible urge to jusst be scared when you have to run around and defuse these weird moving things. Chara informs you that they’ll kill you if they go off, which? Doesn’t? Help?

If you have any fear of anything left in you after this, you’ll be surprised.

You manage it and… Alphys kind of helps.

You miss your cave all of a sudden. It was lonely and terrible and yes Rachel was there but it was lonely but at least nothing was actively trying to kill you in it.

You’re getting more steel as this goes on, I love it.

Actually you just want to break down but you don’t. You’re too determined to get back to do that.

Do you think she’ll believe you went on an adventure full of monsters?

… You doubt that.

---

(You love the spiders. When they aren’t thinking you like to hurt them, they’re all very sweet and even make you a tie for your hair.)

---

That dress is sparkly, you think. Rachel would look nice in it maybe. In a different color?

Less sparkly, more dodgy.

You’re not disagreeing with that one. At least Mettaton has a nice voice.

“You’ll be incinerated by these jets of fire.”

You’re gonna need so much therapy after this one.

What’s therapy?

You do get incinerated, as a matter of fact, because you trip. But you dust yourself off at the saved spot and get up again. At this point, you’re not sure if you’re running on determination to get through all of this anymore.

Use spite.

You have no idea what spite is, but the more this keeps happening, the more you think you start to understand it.

This time you actually don’t trip and still run out of time and —

Yeah you can see what Chara means by them lying now.

And… honestly? You don’t care all that much.

Five seconds later you can’t help the whoop that leaves your throat. Chara is howling laughter because now you can fire bullets. It’s all fake, you feel the lies seeping into your bones but you don’t care because finally you have something.

(It won’t last, you’re starting to realize you having things will never last so you have to enjoy it, you must.

---

I never thought I’d be happy to see Sans.

You protest, tokenly. You like Sans. He’s funny.

He’s weird.

… Everyone here is weird.

… Ok so?

You follow Sans and his shortcut.

“You really wanna get to the surface doncha kid?”

The surface?

Outside here but better.

Oh. You don’t think you lived on the surface but you don’t say anything.

“Is what you’re going back to really worth it? You have food, drink, friends… think about it.”

You don’t have to. And you don’t really have friends. “It doesn’t have Rachel,” you say, and you don’t know if that’s enough of a reason to go back, but you think you need to go back and apologize. And you want to in any case. You think she’d come back for you.

You hope she’d come back for you.

He looks at you and then grins a bit. It’s a grin he doesn’t seem to mean. “Let me tell you a story, kid.”

And he talks. It’s about Toriel, you’re sure it’s Toriel. It sounds like her, warm and kind and happy and caring and bulldozing. It puts a funny sensation in your stomach, that someone cares about you willingly, at all. Not just that person not being Rachel, but at all. Because Chara has cared for you and done more to help than Toriel did, but you don’t think that means Toriel doesn’t care.

“You know,” Sans says slowly. “You get it right? If it weren’t for that promise, that you’d be dead where you stand.”

You look at him. You want to muster up something, something worthy of those words, and… you can’t. You just, you just can’t. There’s not much in you left that hasn’t been stomped on this place. You don’t hate it here, he’s right, there’s plenty of things here, you and Rachel could live here but…

You shrug your shoulders and shake your head.

Sans grins. “C’mon, lighten up. Haven’t I done a good job so far? You’re still here an’ all. Still alive.”

You swallow something fuzzy. And you get up from the chair slowly and just walk away. He doesn’t call out to you, and you’re glad.

It lets you keep the hot furious tears in your eyes and your eyes alone.

Chara squeezes your shoulders and you smile. It hurts to smile.

But you do it. As long as you can smile, you might just be okay, all things considered.

---

You make it to the core.

And you’re right. Well, Chara’s right. It was all fake, all an act. Alphys… didn’t like you either.

No one here really ever liked you. No one here actually truly cares about you. They just want you for something, like a machine, or something.

It hurts. To think that hurts.

Chara rests their head on your hair. You smile, because it’s all you have left.

You’ve died so much in the past twenty minutes that you’re starting to forget Rachel’s face.

You don’t want that. So you grit your teeth and get up again.

“So what if a few people have to die?” Mettaton asks. “So what if you have to die?”

As if it doesn’t matter. As if none of it matters.

You swallow and then a new expression comes on to your face. You don’t think you like it much because it hurts to wear. And you follow Alphys’ advice one more time. It doesn’t work.

Instead, the room changes. The music starts. You take your Soul with a grim determination and your expression turns into a smile.

“Just try and hit me then,” you boast and you don’t mean it because you don’t feel anything. “I’ll dodge it all!”

The new Mettaton, with eyes and a mouth and a nose and everything, does a funny face at you and it all starts on fire.

But the funny thing is: you’re right.

And you keep dodging. You grin a bit, tie the ribbon you’d found onto your neck. You take the toy knife and deflect the lasers headed your way.

Woo! That’s it! Chara shouts.

You fire at the heart shaped core and eventually you watch his arms fall apart. You wince at the image because there should be blood and there’s not.

But he doesn’t give up.

And then a familiar voice talks, quiet, solemn, but certain. You take those moments to catch your breath, you take the moments to listen to their voices. You exhale, and then you smile a bit.

“They really love you here,” you say, and it hurts.

“They don’t love me here, but they love you,” you continue, and it hurts more. “And you love them. I think leaving them would be the worst pain in the world. Wouldn’t it?”

Mettaton grins at you. “Yes, darling, it just might.”

Eventually it ends, and you flop down. You ache all over again. Alphys’ words are a dull roar in your ear. You don’t hear it. You pick yourself up, the adrenaline fading, and start to walk away.

She follows you and then says, “You need a human soul and… and a monster soul to get through the barrier. You need to take Asgore’s soul. You need to kill him.”

Chara makes a noise that reverberates through your whole chest.

And you… you… look at your hands, bruised and filthy, your own blood dried in the lines. You say, because this doesn’t surprise you at all, “So it’s been the same for him and me all along.”

For some reason that makes you feel better. It’s the same stakes.

She apologizes and leaves. You don’t know what she’s apologizing for to you about. You’ve never been a person to them from the beginning.

5. V

Chara starts crying.

It’s quiet, you can only tell because the breaths they don’t need hitch and their internal monologue grows fainter and fainter, but you feel tear tracks down your own face. And you put the pieces together again. Or you try because you don’t understand families or anything like that.

“Do you want me to stop?” You don’t think you can at this stage, but if Chara, the only person who has thought of you this whole time, is hurting, you have to think about it.

I want this to be over, they say, and it’s not an answer but it’s the only one you think that they’ll give.

You nod, and walk into the castle. It smells nice, like herbs and flowers, but it feels… sad. Lonely. Hollow. Maybe there was happiness here once but you don’t think it’s here now. Like the cave.

But you cannot stop. You must keep walking. There is nowhere safe to sleep. The inside of the castle is warm and welcoming, gentle to you. But you’re not sure if you can believe it. You want to believe that it is gentle.

As you wander, monsters whisper a story of a kind boy and his sibling. The monster who watched his sibling die.

Chara is silent as you enter a room, soft and lit with yellow, like sunlight. You pick up a locket and put it on. Chara lets out a broken sob. You look in the mirror and see you alone. You thumb the worn dagger in your left hand, left on the bed, then sheathe it.

You swallow the pain in your throat and head down the stairs.

The monster who tried to grant their last request while brimming with power.

The monster who also died that day, dusting a garden of flowers.

“Aren’t you excited? You should be happy! You’ll finally be free.”

And you remember that day where you’d tried to climb up to where Rachel was and failed.

No matter what happens here, you will likely never be free.

But Rachel might. And she dreams of the stars and a blue, real sky. Maybe you can give them to her with this, if nothing else.

You’d like to, if only for your own sake. Because for all you know of her imperfections, you also know you like to see her happy too, and all this death makes you think you should think of that more.

You meet Sans.

He talks about LOVE and EXP and all sorts of things that escape you. But then he says, “You could have done any of that, all of that, but you didn’t. YOU refused to hurt anyone. YOU refused to kill anyone. You were beaten down and beaten down all this way, and heck, you went back and befriended a few of those people who hurt you. You’re incredible, kid. You did all this just to go home or whatever, but you still did it. I’d have thrown in the towel by now.”

Your eyes water. You’re so tired, you want to tell him. You want to tell him that he’s wrong, that you’re not incredible. That you’re just scared and tired and hurting and want to sleep. You want to hug Rachel and tell her that you’re sorry for being such a bother all of the time and you will bear all the loneliness if she needs it. You want to tell her that dying hurts and you don’t want her to anytime soon. You want to see the stars she wants to see. But most of all you want to set her free.

“This battle will be different, kid,” he tells you before you can muster up the courage to be that honest. “This will determine all of our fates, all of our happiness. All of our prayers. Whether they’ll be answered or not, that’s up to you two. But, hey, you’ve been determined this whole time and got this far. As long as you follow what’s in your heart, I think you’ll make the right choice. Now, go on. The King is waiting.”

You lift your head and smile at him, and then you walk past him. Once you’re in the doorway, you stop and wait for Chara. Their ghostly fingers, shaking, grip your palm tightly.

You don’t let go.

---

By the time you reach the garden, Chara, who doesn’t need to breathe, is hyperventilating. You squeeze their hand again and smell the flowers instead of stepping forwards. You’ve never seen so much color before. Rachel’s books don’t do it right. This is beautiful. It’s not as important as maybe it needs to be, but… she’s right. The world is beautiful.

A great goat man towers over the flowers, humming to themselves as they work. You don’t clear your throat. You watch him as he works, as Chara falls apart beside you. You hold them up without moving.

Asgore turns and looks at you. His eyes go wide and he looks away. You can’t see his face. You cannot imagine what fills him, but it seems to be more than resignation and pain.

Then he looks up at you and smiles.

Your determination doesn’t waver, but Chara hiccups.

“Hello,” he says softly. “I’d like to offer you a cup of tea, but well, you know how it is.”

Something grips your throat and you pause.

“Actually,” you say after taking a deep breath. “Dreemurr-ssi, I’d… I think I could really use that. I, we… we’re really tired Dreemurr-ssi.”

You don’t tell him it’s not you and he you are referring to because the relief on his face is enough.

“Give me a moment,” he says.

You nod and he rushes off on padded feet.

You sit on the ground and Chara finally wanders away, inspecting, exploring, sniffling. Your eyes follow them until they’re too heavy to follow anymore.

By the time Asgore has returned, you are sleeping peacefully in the flowers, but dreaming of spears gouging into your skin. Dreaming of falling into endless water.

You don’t dream of Rachel and when she’ll return anymore. You don’t think you deserve to think of her much anyway.

You awaken later to the smell of bread and sensation of Chara beside you. They’re not shaking but they are watching you. They float up and you sit up.

“You must have been tired.”

You blink at Asgore, who offers you bread with honey. You take it and eat it slowly.

Tears fill your eyes. You watch his face fall. You want to reassure him, you want to tell him that it tastes good, but you just continue to cry and cry and cry. It feels like your body is draining of tears, replacing them with a steady center of red.

The man hesitates, reaches out, then pets the top of your head. His paw swallows you down to your shoulders and you giggle wetly. It feels so strange, so unfamiliar. You must have been held gently once. You must have been cared for. Did Rachel care for you?

“I will give you a moment,” he promises gently and rises to go.

You sob and sniffle and crack apart. But you don’t break. You refuse to break.

Chara squeezes around your fingers, also cracking, also shaking.

You take comfort in that.

“I…” you say, as Asgore departs. “I want for Rachel to see her stars.”

Chara nods.

“And…” you hiccup. “When she can I… when she does I… I’ll be alone again, with you this time. And I…” You sob a little more and it hurts to breathe. “I’ll be okay with that. I will make myself okay with that. I’ll go out into that world with her and I’ll go… somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Somewhere where I… where a murderer like me can’t… where I can’t…”

You can’t finish the sentence, you just curl up on yourself because this man was kind and trusting to you. You have the dagger. You could have stabbed him, you could have hurt him and you are causing him pain and he is being kind to you. He is the first monster to be kind to despite what you represent and not because of what you represent. You are the freedom of all monsters, you realize, maybe all of the people in the world. Maybe everything and everyone ever.

And you won’t give up your stupid life. Because you want to see Rachel again. Because you are so, so scared of the loneliness more than the dying.

There’s something wrong with you. Surely she’d know anyway. Surely she’d guess.

Chara sits with you. They don’t talk. They let you wind down and hiccup and get it out of your system, the droplets falling through the crack in you.

Do you still want to do this, they ask, once you find the bathroom and wash your face with water. Their voice is quiet and sad and knowing your answer.

You take a deep breath and clench your fists. You nod.

You know it’s wrong. You know it’s selfish. You know it’s bad.

But you are filled with determination nevertheless. If there’s a way you can find to stop it, to stop Asgore and you from doing this, you’ll take it but you won’t know until you get there.

You nod.

Let’s go together then.

You nod into the mirror again and you go to Asgore.

He’s muttering something when you approach this time. You can’t make it out, but Chara flinches and holds your hand tighter. There are six souls in the jars by his feet. Most of them are placid, hovering up and down with practiced bobs. The yellow one is not, twisting and jerking and shaking at its container. You wonder for a moment, as a strange light fills the room around you in an endless expanse.

When he turns to look at you, his eyes are dry and calm and pitying.

The possible end to your journey fills you with determination.

“Human,” he says softly, smiling sadly. “It was nice to meet you. Goodbye.”

He summons a trident and as he smashes it down, the world quakes. You cannot run, you cannot give him mercy. Because you, truly, are getting none.

You don’t want to fight him, but, considering he kills you in seconds, you end up having to anyway.

You tell him this the second time you fight, when it’s less surprising. His hands tremble and fire bursts, but he attacks you anyway.

You keep telling him every time you die. Every time, it hurts. Fire chars your skin and bones. The trident skewers through your skin. Every time.

You keep saying it. It hurts, but you keep saying it. He’s crying too much for you to think of hurting him.

You come to meet him again.

“I don’t want to fight you,” you say. Sometimes you dodge, but mostly you die.

It stops hurting after a while, or you stop noticing just how much it hurts. The look on his face doesn’t. He seems to only grow more and more ashen the more you lift your head and face him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you tell him. You don’t let go of Chara’s hand. You don’t let go of the knife, but you never raise it. You continue to try to meet his eyes. Asgore doesn’t let you. He simply swings the trident.

He… misses you.

You exhale. Relief in your gut

Chara nods a bit, sadly, brokenly. All right, Bam, they say. It’s okay. Let me try.

You had almost forgotten your name, in all of this, the name Rachel had given you, let alone the one you keep to yourself.

You nod to yourself almost, and open your other hand. Chara almost sinks into you, not like a second skin this time, but like a warm blanket wrapped around your shoulders. You close your eyes. Your body thrums. You open your eyes.

Asgore’s breath hitches when he raises his weapon to you again.

“Dad,” you say, in a voice that is yours with a feeling that isn’t. “You can stop, dad. It’s okay. You don’t have to do this.”

His breath hitches again. Something flashes in his eyes and he swings.

It kills you but it’s weaker. It takes too many swings.

You manage a smile.

We can do this.

Yes, you think, we can.

We will have to hurt him. We will have to stop him. But that’s okay, because you don’t want to kill him. Because, you think, he’s no different from the others, in the end. He doesn’t want to hurt you, not really. Not on purpose with pain, but he’s oh so willing to. He’s willing to end you for this. So, you will stop him.

The worn dagger warms in your hand, shifting under something greater than the two of you, something stronger and sharper. It slides into a more comfortable grip in your palm, turning into what Chara whispers about in surprise as a real knife.

We have to be careful, Bam.

You nod together, and you go in again.

You start to dodge in earnest now. There’s a lot of fire, so jumping up helps, You grab the trident when he swings it and you throw yourself over it and swipe. He jumps and the fire recedes.

You are calm.

Chara is singing in your veins. “Dad,” they say with your mouth. “Dad. Does this child deserve to pay for what I did to you?”

You die and get up again. Your head is clear.

“Dad,” they say after a few more attacks. ‘Why are you punishing yourself like this? Weren’t we enough suffering for you?’ They swallow with your mouth and you wonder what the two of you look like to him, with messy curls of hair and red and gold eyes (you think) and blood and bruises everywhere caused by him and the people he loves more than himself. You wonder if you look as human to him as he looks to you. “Aren’t our deaths enough? Why are you doing this to yourself? You and Mom… why do you hate yourselves so much?”

The man makes a terrible croaking noise. “Ch-Chara we… we failed you.”

“We failed you!” you both shouted. “We failed you! We could have saved you! We could have saved all of you with my life! And I would give it to you again and again and again! Because you were kind to me!”

Your slice down is at his leg and he grunts but you spin from his fire. You feel everything. You feel nothing.

“You loved me!”

Another stab, swiping up to the wrist in the second step. Fire hits your eyes and you can’t see, but you stuff food in your mouth and can see again.

“You wanted me to exist! Even if it was just as a puppet god! Even if it was just as a vessel for your prince, you treasured me!”

He stumbles and you duck under, your hair dancing in the fire and singing at the ends. You sing a few sounds to ease your throat and his breath stutters. You cannot push him, you are small, and he is mighty, but you can nick his fingers and you do.

Eventually you slip and fall — in the blood you’ve shed of yours actually. He doesn’t bleed. And you struggle. The day is still hard on you. But you push up as Chara shouts from your throat.

“You were more than I ever could have wished for… but they aren’t. This child is small and young and broken and hurting! How can you be all right with making it worse? How can you take their choices from them? It was my choice, more mine than Asriel’s, and I made it! Let them choose!”

And you push a bit more from your bones and you push your soul out as far as it can go from you and it smacks Asgore to the ground. You both wheeze and pant as the king takes a knee. Chara is weeping, you are crying blood, but you stand. You have to stand.

Asgore stays there for a long while, almost a statue. Then he says, “I remember the day my son died. Hours after Chara. Hours after crying fate and cursing it, he took that child’s Soul and went up. He slipped past us, they often did. The entire underground was devoid of hope. Our future had once again been stolen by the humans. I… I had never felt anger like I had then. I had declared war, I had decided to kill any human who approached, and then, when godlike power was in my hands, I would return to humanity and destroy them, much like those strange wanderers had tried to do to us. My wife was disgusted with me for it but… it gave my people hope. Who was I to take it from them?

“But it all cools in the end. Anger, shame, fear, hope, joy. It all cools. It was not enough to sustain me. It was not enough to support me. So many children came down here and died. Defending themselves and harming us, but died all the same. I…” He stops. “I do not want this anymore, Chara. I want to see my wife. I want to hold my children. I want to apologize to them and to you. I want peace again.” Finally the king looks at you.

“Child,” he says. “Whoever you are. Please. Take my soul and leave this wretched place behind. Be free of us, from the burdens we have put upon you. Let Chara rest.”

You both look at him. You slip the knife into your pocket. Then, you reach out and kneel onto the floor. You gather up the pieces of mercy scattered on the pristine tile and set them back together, one by one. They scrape your fingertips and blood soaks into it, but it holds. You lift it up and walk towards Asgore. You press Mercy into his hands and shake your head no.

“We’re gone, dad,” says Chara, steady and practiced. “All that is left of us is echoes now. But… this child isn’t. The people and things they treasure are still here. Why not try again, with them? They want to leave, yes, we want to leave, but —”

You swallow. You drop your shoulders. You exhale. “I can’t do this,” you admit. “I can’t kill you. I can’t. Rachel would never forgive me, I’d never forgive me. I don’t think I’d be free if you died… I can’t do this.”

And he looks at you, looks at you both and whispers. “After everything I have done to hurt you, you would rather stay down here and suffer…”

You smile again and you nod. Because you wouldn’t mind. If you can just get Rachel here, even this ending would be all right.

Asgore finally smiles, through tears, through pain and says, “I promise, human, that we will, my wife and I will —”

You don’t know what he and his wife will do because bullets float into view and kill him where he kneels. Then, they destroy his soul.

Chara screams inside your head.

You don’t scream. You are numb again as the flower, as Flowey, comes into view. “You idiot,” he says. “You haven’t learned a thing.”

The six souls float in a swaying loop around him. His vines drag themselves up into view as the yellow Soul shakes, and a familiar form, drenched in red and wearing a dress is pulled into view. She does not move. Rachel is not breathing.

“In this world,” Flowey says gleefully as you feel something snap inside you. “It’s kill or be killed!”

The thing inside you snaps and suddenly, you understand why people would kill each other.

Flowey laughs at you and the world blossoms white.

6. VI

“Howdy!” greets the void. “It’s me, Flowey! Thanks for being dumb as a box of rocks! Without you, I’da never been able to get past that old coot! And here was me thinkin’ if I dangled your little girlfriend around I’d have just made you kill him! It’s good to know you’re just an idiot.”

You don’t speak. Rage has left you muted.

“Now I’ve got all the human SOULS. And they’re all wriggling!” Flowey giggles. Chara hisses. “She acts like she can do something with her dirty, ugly SOUL.”

Your fists clench.

Flowey notices and cackles. “You’re feeling left out, aren’t you? Aw! Don’t worry, your pal Flowey has just the thing for you! Once I take your soul, I’ll have all I need to become God.”

I have never wanted to not believe in a higher power so much in my life, says Chara with a thick voice. As if they’re feeling betrayed. As if they have lost something precious like an eye or a heart piece.

You nod once.

Flowey says something. It doesn’t scare you. Nothing scares you now. Your worst fear has come to pass.

There are things you fear more than death.

You decide in this moment to become one of those things.

You step forward.

Flowey pauses. “What… you think you can stop ME?”

You stare up.

“You really are an idiot.”

Your knife burns red in the darkness.

Something emerges from the void. With strange teethed mouths, twisted eyes, pipes, and a screen that dwarfs you, it smiles at you, and the eyes open and turn red.

It… laughs.

You smile back.

And hell unleashes itself upon you both.

You dodge. There is no reason to hold back. There is no reason to pause. You run and dodge and fight. Everything you’ve done to live a thousand thousand times before, you pull out of you. It does little. It feels like nothing.

But Chara is with you, and you have nothing to fear in this world, in this universe, in this life.

You will become more terrifying than death.

You promise Rachel this. You promise her SOUL. You promise yourself.

Then the screen changes. It flickers, glows, a cyan blue heart floating on screen.

And suddenly you are pulled from your body, yourself, your SOUL popping into —

These ruins are cold and dry. There is only grass, and it’s not helping. You have your knife, but it can’t cut anything. You’re forced to rip up the leaves for water and steal from the candy jar. But it gets harder. Your legs get heavier. So you stop. You wait.

It’s easier to do things like that. You’ve always been waiting after all. Waiting for a love that won’t come, waiting for new bandages, waiting for people to slip up and fall so you can take their place. Waiting for the bus that takes you away from one place to another.

It’s easy to wait for the feeling to fade in your mouth, for the strength to come back to your legs. You’ve called for help, you’re sure someone will come.

You’re sure.

You’re sure you can rest. Nothing has hurt you here. In fact they all look at you with horror and fear. And you don’t know why.

You don’t know.

You’re cold.

You’re cold.

It hurts. It hurts.

You wait for it to stop. You wait and you wait. And you wait.

Then warm fingers close over your own and you lift your head.

You are met with eyes full of fire, like a hearth blossoming from their body into yours. Except… you don’t have a body.

You’re dead. You died waiting. You died waiting for something that would never have come for you, for someone who had never bothered to look for you.

And somehow that hurts more than the act of dying.

Help me, they say to you. You hesitate, because no one helped you. No one cared for you. That’s why you’re down here.

The vivid eyes do not look away from you. They are bruised, you realized, bruised skin like overripe peaches, blood on their mouths and tracks down their eyes. I will care about you, they tell you. I care about you. I just wish I could have cared about you sooner. I think… if you were with me, it would have been less lonely. Or not lonely at all.

You waver. You swallow. Because you feel the same way, and maybe you always have. You promise?

I promise.

You are warm with life. You reach into your pocket with sudden strength, and wrap your ribbon up into their hair.

Kick his butt, you tell them. They smile and gently, ever gently, tug you to them. You meet a person with red eyes who grins.

It’s nice, isn’t it?

It shouldn’t make you laugh, but you laugh.

And, body thrumming, you’re launched back into the fray of battle, dodging blows and striking small swipes of your knife that is humming a steady blue color now. You don’t question it. You simply keep on.

You fight.

You FIGHT.

The orange soul gleams brightly on screen, burning like a sun and —

You punch another monster and crow out a laugh. You don’t mean it of course. You don’t really want to hurt them, but you’re not scared either. What’s there to be scared of? They’re walking, talking dust bunnies! And they’re obsessed with you.

You’re not tired either. You can keep going all day and night.

Except that… it’s getting cold now. Your clothes are wet. You are getting just a bit hungry. You haven’t tried to buy anything from people. You don’t really want to fight innocent shopkeepers after all.

You’re starting to flag a little, fists clenched.. Your gloves are tearing a bit at the knuckles. There is yelling behind you and in front of you. You trip and fall. You trip and a spear reaches your face and —

Someone grabs it. They are paler than you and panting, and they look at you with red-gold eyes. I wish I could have done this for real, they say, and you realize you have no fists to throw punches or clothes to be wet. You have nothing. There’s nothing left of you.

Despite this, you do manage to smile. You tie your bandanna around their neck. No fuss buddy, you say and you mean it. Just get the big guy trying to get upstairs for me, ok?

They nod to you and you —

Feel your SOUL shoved in one direction. Like you’ve been loaded somewhere.

Bastard, shouts Chara and the orange SOUL together. But you move anyway. You are still not afraid, and your knife is now orange and cyan and bright bright red.

This is a lot though. It’s getting hot. Your blood is slick and tacky on your palm.

And there’s another pull. You’re ready for it. You fall —

Into the mud. You swing yourself about, kicking up with all of your strength. It’s harder in the muddy ground and pouring rain, but you manage.

You manage another blow and you can’t help it. You laugh. You laugh until you cry and you splash into the water. You are wrong, you are all wrong. No one will help you here. No one will save you. You have done too many bad things. There is nothing that can be done for you.

They are chasing you. You leap off of the bank and you dodge the echo flowers and you fight and fight and fight —

And then you meet nothing but air and you fall.

They catch you, with fire in their eyes and a sad smile on their face, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve still fallen. You’ve still crashed into the ground. You are still bleeding out and dying, coated in dust. You will not run from this. You will not scream or cry or flee. You do not falter. You are dying here, you have died here.

I promise I won’t let this be how it ends, says the child with the fire eyes. You’ll get something better.

Not if you don’t win, you tell them, and remove your ballet flats. You swap shoes and then you’re sucked in. There are —

Three others inside of you now, along with Chara. You are finding more strength to stand again. You dodge. You fight. You fight you fight with all that you have nd some of what they have and it feels so warm. You feel not alone. You feel… light.

You get the sense that Flowey is still laughing at you.

He’s so weird, you can’t help but think through the hellish rain of death on your shoulders. This can’t be all there is.

He’s an idiot, Chara reminds you. Focus.

You do and you get pulled —

Into an endurance match. The old turtle cackles at you as you hide and scramble behind boulders, as the ghosts box you in. I warned you to purchase carefully, kid, he tells you, not unkindly, but still wheezing laughing as the spiders come and come and come, running over you. You squish one when you fall and they all scream.

The head spider swoops down, smiling her rage, hurting in pain, hurtling and hurtling. Spider after spider, dried food after dried food, baked goods, sweet smells.

Your glasses are covered in dust.

Your hands are grey with it.

My pet is hungry, she coos at you. You’re just in time for breakfast!

You try to run. You call for help —

Nothing happens.

You decide to endure it. It’s all endurable. You have extra moments. If you just keep looking, keep pushing. You will find the way out. It’s forward!

The teeth of the spider reach your leg. It gives out immediately, slack, and you fall. You crawl, kicking with your other leg, you crawl and you —

Call for help again.

Two arms pull you away before another snap of the jaws. You meet fire eyes and a sad smile. You meet their gaze evenly because all of a sudden you know —

They ate me.

The fire eyes nodded. I’m sorry.

I didn’t want to give up.

You didn’t.

You find yourself smiling. You find yourself warm again. You press your glasses onto their face. You can’t give up either, then.

They nod at you and you slip and fall.

The cyan soul nudges you into place beside them and you are —

In motion, flurrying in it, the dagger is sharper than ever and you are fighting. It’s so little damage, so little, but you’ve realized that’s how you’ve lost before. The attacks seem sudden, but they aren’t. It’s over time, little scrapes. Beating someone in one blow is something else. Everyone, everyone, must push a bit more every day.

The bullets fly, the missiles fall but you are not afraid of the death around you, you are not afraid of the death in you.

You are burning up with —

Fear. Pain. You run, you run, you run. You clutch your burnt pan in your hands. Cast-iron, good work, strong metal. You’d never thought, you’d never imagined it could be such a useful weapon. A shield even. It didn’t work against every spear, but as long as your feet could run, as long as you can spin, you can block.

She follows you. The Monster follows you.

They’re all monsters here, and they’re all intent on killing you. But this one really can.

So you fight back, of course. You’re small and starving, but you’ve always been fast and clever, always known where knives go and places to hide and how to hold your breaths quiet. You have always known. You’ve known the difference between honey and vinegar and it’s saved you before. You’re under the awareness now that, well, there are people that don’t care which is which.

You swing out and the yellow spear that had curved around to your blind side flies home and the monster following you screams. You are weighted down by your arms and the pan, but you flee anyway. A spear hits you in the back as the monster screams its rage again but you keep running. You have to run. It feels like your skin is melting.

Another spear, a dead end, and the clanking armor approaches.

Another spear —

They deflect it, a child made of fire, smaller than you. They look at you with a set expression, the fire weary but burning, and you don’t know why. The pan falls from your hands. You feel light.

Then again, that may be because you don’t have hands.

Ah, you understand now.

She’s not so bad, they tell you. She’d have liked you. Like one of her heroes.

If I was a hero, I’d have lived. You tell them before you can stop yourself. You shift. She’ll die if I don’t help huh?

Everyone will die, they tell you, solemn. Or have already died. I don’t know. I think we can fix it.

I see. You swallow, because really, what do you have to lose? You’re already dead. You look like you could use some help. But I expect to get something back, got it?

They smile. It’s sad. Sure, they say. Let’s meet again and I’ll pay you back.

You stand with light feet and walk around them. You untie your apron from your front and tie it to their back.

You look like the lamest superhero ever, you say. But every hero needs to look the part.

They tilt their head and you —

Sink into a colorful void.

One left, says cyan. She’s noisy.

Won’t shut up, agrees indigo. They bob at each other as if in disbelief.

You’re not surprised at this. This is Rachel. Rachel always has something to say, something to teach. She’s never been much of a fighter, but she’s always been focused on something, even if that something isn’t you. Even if that something is the sky.

You think you understand her better now.

Another round of missiles and monsters. Another rasping distorted laugh. He hasn’t talked much during this, the thing that Flowey’s become, too busy attacking you and using SAVE files of his own. Maybe it takes him more concentration. You’re not sure. Or maybe he’s been talking and you don’t care. Whatever it is, it’s not important.

Rachel is waiting for you for once. You call out to her and you —

Hit the next safe spot running, rolling into an undergrowth. No one’s been chasing you for a while, except for that thing. That flower. That monster that cackles after you. It’d offered you friendliness pellets and you’d dodged, you’d fled. It’d laughed after you crying,

You’re sure smart unlike that other kid!

Bam, you think. Bam is here. You’d not been able to find him, you’d looked everywhere in the cave and then on, only to realize —

You’d not left him with anything, in your haste to return before you were caught again. You hadn’t thought about it because he was rarely hungry, rarely thirsty. He often found his own food and water, somehow. He always eats when you do but you never get the sense he actually has to. You haven’t questioned how because he was always waiting for you to return.

Had that flower killed him? Impossible. That could never happen. Bam couldn’t die, not now, not when you still needed him, not when he still smiled so brightly at you like you were —

Someone. A light. A shining star.

You run and you run and you reach —

Her. Fear fills your guts and you raise your hands and the one weapon you always keep with you just in case and she just hugs you tightly. You poor child, she says. You must have been so afraid. It’s all right. I’ll look after you.

You want to twist and jerk away because it’s another monster, it could kill you, it could kill you and then you’ll never find Bam or see the stars but her hand runs through your hair and it’s just like Arlene but better and you can’t help but fall apart because you are scared, you are so so so scared and you just want your friend back and you don’t know where he is.

She feeds you and it’s warm unlike their other food, it’s warm and filling and through that you tell her about Bam and her eyes light up.

Yes, that child passed through here, she says. They were very insistent on going through, they said they had to get back as soon as possible to not worry someone. They’re likely in Snowdin now, I imagine.

Your stomach lurches. You. He was looking for you. You need to go to him. Before something happens.

The woman looks at you imperiously. You court danger if you go.

You know that. You know that but…

You have never felt brave. You have never felt strong. You just want what belongs to you. That’s all you’ve ever wanted. If anything, you’ve felt like none of those things but… He’s all I have, you say instead of those ugly ugly feelings.

She looks at you and nods. Then, it would be remiss of me not to join you.

You smile in relief.

The smiling is short-lived. You’re separated by vines, thick and weighty. You follow her directions until you stumble and fall.

It hurts. Your ankle drags. It hurts.

You, says the flower. It’s no longer giddy, no longer happy. It looks at you with irritation. Why do they only look at you?

You whimper in pain.

You’re useless, sneers the flower. You’re ugly. You’re no good, you don’t even care, why do they only look at you? I WAS HERE FIRST!

The stones shake with the shriek. It pants.

I don’t even know why I care, it grumbles when it catches its breath. Can flowers breathe?. You’re just a stupid human. You can’t even kill anyone. You’re worthless! Why do they care? I can kill people. You can’t even kill monsters with a gun. I can prove they were right all along. I can FIGHT. What can you do, you stupid girl? Nothing! Just be a power source!

You hate these words. You hate them. You’re not chosen. You’re not special. They’re not true, it’s not true, it’s not. You can, you will, you—

Then it smiles at you and your thoughts drain from your head because you know that smile. It’s worse than Arlene’s ever was, worse than the fake stars in the fake sky, because it is very real and he will kill you. This thing is about to kill you. You’re about to die. You don’t want to die.

I know, he says, like a child on holiday mornings. I’ll bring them your body. That will show them how little you matter. That will show them they’re mine! Mine first. Mine only. And don’t worry! Your SOUL will be used for greater things. But just to be sure, I’ll —

K-I-L-L Y-O-U A-S S-L-O-W-L-Y A-N-D P-A-I-N-F-U-L-L-Y A-S I C-A-N!

And your world is now an unending pain. You think you will break. You think the tiny stems won’t harm you, that the leaves won’t make you bleed. You think the teeth won’t rise from the green flowers, you think and you think and —

Fire scorches the vines away. The thing doesn’t stop, but you can’t feel it. You are staring up at Bam, who is in front of you, arms outstretched, blocking them all.

I’m still dead, you tell him, oddly calm. You don’t know why you’re calm. You want to be angry with him, with everyone. You want to hit him and call him an idiot. You want to scold him and tell him many things. But you’re calm.

I know, says Bam. He doesn’t look embarrassed or upset, or guilty. He just looks at you with fire in his eyes and a sad look, an expression that seems to know more than you can comprehend. I’m sorry. For everything. I… I must have sounded like this once.

A little, you say, but the other words bubble up in your throat. But I’ve left you hungry, so.

I think I can save you, he says, ignoring that, looking at you still, like you’re the new one here. Please help me just a bit longer, Rachel. I think I’ll be able to save you and everyone else.

He holds out his hand to you and you think of him, lost looking and alone in the shadows of the cave. You think of the word monster rung in your ears like a bell.

You take his hand and you are pulled down down down —

And you settle. The six — seven — of them, settle within you, clinging on and on and on — and your knife is burning with them.

You feel them, how much they’d wanted to live. How much they’d done, how much they hadn’t. How much they’d wanted. How much they’d hoped and dreamed.

And your knife burns brighter, pulls longer, like a sword.

A hero’s weapon, says orange.

They’re not much of a hero, green protests.

They’re alive and we’re not, cyan says with infinite patience. We’re going along with it.

Chara says something, a prayer soft and discordant.

Can’t leave your roots either, says indigo.

Could you, asks purple, who gets a scoff.

Hurry, says yellow simply. Make him pay.

You are filled with determination.

You dodge and cut and stab and pierce. You’ve done this before, you realize, a thousand thousand times, a hundred slices. And it feels like the first every time.

Because you love, chorus the SOULs. You don’t LOVE.

Ah, that is it. Suddenly Sans makes sense. You throw yourself forward.

But it doesn’t feel right. His defenses are low, though his attacks are growing more frantic. The six pipes that hold -held— the six souls are dark but he doesn’t seem to notice.

Something is coming.

He is waiting for something.

He is waiting.

And then, when the shining knife is glimmering high and you make the final blow, he starts panicking.

“No!” He shouts.

“No!”

You brace yourself.

“This can’t be happening! It — you —”

He grins madly and his wounds fade away.

And you die.

And you live.

And you die.

And you live.

Over and over. The pain is immeasurable. Over and over you die. Over and over you’re brought back. And Flowey laughs the whole time.

You don’t cry out. You don’t make a sound. The SOULs rage.

A sliver of life pulses in your skin and soul and bullets surround you.

“Did you really think you could stop me?” Flowey cackles. “I am the GOD of this world.”

You smile through bloody teeth and with fire eyes. “The stars are prettier than god then,” you say.

The SOULs inside you start laughing, a tad hysterical.

“You’re just helpless and alone!” spews Flowey. “Go on, call for help! Who will come for you? No one! I KILLED THEM ALL!”

You continue to smile. Because you have never been alone. And you never will be. Because of Flowey. Perhaps someday you’ll thank the flower.

“GO ON!” he roars, an edge of hasty fury to it. “Cry out into the darkness! See if anyone will save you!”

You take a deep breath. Chara breathes with you. You both call for help.

There is silence.

“Nobody’s coming,” Flowey says gleefully. “Isn’t that a shame? No one cares about you enough to help! N-O O-N-E I-S H-E-R-E T-O S-E-E Y-O-U D-I-E!”

I’m here, says Chara with the certainty of long death. And you’re not coming out of here dead, Frisk.

You smile softer.

Flowey laughs because he can’t hear. Flowey laughs because he doesn’t understand.

The bullets fire at you, and you heal. Your body is warm. You can see. You raise your knife up, its glowing form clear and bright.

“How’d you—” Flowey stops. “Well, I’ll just —”

Nothing happens.

He tries again. Nothing happens.

“Wh… where are my powers?”

You swing down with all of your might.

Now, shouts Rachel and the SOULs burst free from your knife. The six of them hover in front of you, and you can make out vague forms, vague children, an arm here, a hairstyle there, a smile too proud for words.

The only one remotely clear is Rachel, but that’s only because you know her.

“The souls?” Flowey croaks.

Hey there, says orange. We don’t like you.

Indigo bobs. Our deaths aren’t your playthings.

Be ready, warns cyan.

Green chortles. This is nothing.

I dunno, says purple. I think we’re pretty something.

Yellow flickers. Be ready, Bam.

You nod.

The SOULS move in frightening tandem. Flowey screams as everything is ripped away, the power, the hope, the joy. All of it is ripped away from him.

The three of you are left in a void with rumbling sounds. He looks pitiful and wilted, weak and small.

You step towards him, and sheathe your knife. You gather up your mercy and you hold it out to him.

He lifts his head and glares at you. “What… what are you doing?” You stare at him. “You really think I’ve learned anything from this? No. I haven’t. So kill me.”

“I don’t care,” you say together. Because this is not enough. It will never be enough.

“Sparing me won’t change anything,” he spits. “Kill me.”

“No,” you say again.

He lifts his head higher. “If you let me live I will come back.”

“I know,” you say.

“I’ll kill you!”

You shrug.

“I’ll kill everyone you love!”

“You’ve already done that.”

“… why?”

You offer mercy again.

“… why are you being so nice to me?”

“Mercy isn’t nice,” you say. “This is not a kindness. I know that, you don’t.”

“I can’t understand.”

“Most people don’t.”

“I can’t understand!”

“That’s okay.”

Flowey runs away.

You exhale. You’ve done it.

This isn’t all of it, says Chara.

You nod. But it’s the two of you together again. Together, you will SAVE them all. You will. You want this feeling back. You want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything.

Until the end, Chara assures you.

Until the end, you agree.

Behind you are the voices of the monsters. Behind you are the voices of a time that is happening, a time that will carry out unhappy. Ahead of you, you can smell sweet grass and flowers, a taste to the air you’ve never felt before and something chilly.

Before you is the unknown. Seeing the unknown, the answers just out of reach, with Chara’s hand atop your own.

The sensations fill you with determination.

You walk into the void, and prepare to Reset, this time, by your own will.

7. VII

Don’t you realize that being nice just makes you get hurt? If you had just gone through that door, without caring about anyone, you wouldn’t be as unhappy as you are now. So I don’t get it. If you really did everything the right way, why are things the way they are now? Is life really that unfair?

It is, you want to tell Flowey as you stir. It’s very unfair. But that’s okay. Fair doesn’t necessarily mean good.

You open your eyes to a familiar spot, the heat of the caves on your skin. Chara hovers beside you.

Look at the knife, they tell you, and you do. It’s a glimmering rainbow of light. You sheathe it before it can hurt your eyes.

The world resets to before the bad things happen (to others, bad has happened to you and has since you were aware), but you can’t seem to entirely erase the good. Good. You will save them too.

You decide to go to Alphys then.

But then you get a phone call. You suppose you’ll go to Alphys afterwards.

The rollercoaster you run through after that is adorable, but Rachel’s death, the deaths of the other souls, Flowey’s face, linger too long for you to really enjoy it. But you try. You smile and you try because this is all fake really but they don’t have to know that. They don’t have to know that you know the worst has come to pass and your reason to leave is currently decaying and will be gone forever if you can’t make a miracle.

Still, it’s really cute, watching Undyne and Alphys flail around like that. All of it escapes you but…

“You need to tell her,” you say after a moment of silence.

Alphys jumps, as if she’s forgotten you’re sitting on a garbage pile. “Oh no I-I-I—”

You shake your head. “You need to.” Lying or hiding things only makes them harder to bear,

Look at the baby gays, Chara whispers in wonder. So young and so stupid.

You really want to know what they mean but you think you can guess. “Go on a date,” you insist.

“S-Sh-She’s out of my league.”

“Go,” you insist again. “Happiness is good. Try to be happy if you can.”

Because you tried to do that with Rachel. You had both tried your absolute best, but now, knowing what you are at the lack of her, at the blurry images that come up whenever you close your eyes and think of her, you can’t be sure how much of it is actually real.

Alphys talks about lies, about lying to Undyne, about all the horrible things she’s done. You seat yourself on a piece of the dump, legs swinging and say.

“Rachel lies to me a lot.” Alphys pauses, and you pretend the knowledge of Rachel’s dead body being somewhere isn’t making you want to throw up. “She has to leave a lot and leave me down there, and I think she lies about why. I think she lies about things she doesn’t know because she’s a kid like me, but… But she’s still my precious treasure. She’s very plain and teases me and makes jokes, but she’s still precious to me. I think Undyne will think of you like that, if not better. But she won’t do anything if you don’t let her.”

“It’s better to live a lie where both are happy,” Alphys insists.

You shake your head no. “She’s… Rachel always ends up feeling better when she stops having to lie. Sure, it hurts sometimes but… I’d rather have a relationship with someone that we built up ourselves. With the truth.”

All everyone else’s lying has done has made you exhausted, all the lies that your body is wrapped up in without any truths is exhausting.

You don’t know if you’re doing the right thing here, but you’re tired. You’re very tired.

But at least Alphys is willing to try and practice being honest with you, even if it’s not about the things you want to ask about. At least until Undyne shows up again.

Chara is laughing quietly but it’s a happy sort of laughter, a fondness that you didn’t think the ghost knew how to give. You don’t push however, you just watch peacefully on your trash can chair.

Did she just dunk her future girlfriend into a trashcan? They guffaw at some point, practically in tears.

Despite it all, you’re grinning. She did.

Undyne, you have to agree, is really, really cool.

Everyone here is really nice when they’re not trying to kill you for your SOUL. When you’re not useful to them, they grow kinder.

Isn’t it supposed to be the opposite of that?

---

You start to head to Alphys’ Lab, hours later. You sleep in Mettaton’s hotel with money beforehand. You dream of awful things.

She’s not there.

That’s okay, you’re willing to wait, until you find her note.

God you wish you could read. Or at least read this.

Chara reads it out for you and you go to the room in the north and enter the lift. You’d thought this was a bathroom. You press a button and then you fall.

“Ow,” you mutter when you’ve crashed and can get up again.

Ow, agrees Chara. How are you not dead?

Honestly, you have no idea. Still, you twitch yourself slowly up into something resembling movement and shuffle towards the exit. The doors open easily.

Either that elevator was broken or we’re haunted.

You kind of expect to be haunted at this point because Chara’s here.

You step outside. A chill runs down your spine. This place feels unhappy.

Chara shrinks into you. There are screens, and they turn on at your curious fingers. Slowly, Chara reads and your stomach turns queasy.

“Soul power can only be derived from what was once living,” says one.

“I’ve done it. Using the blueprints, I’ve extracted it from the human SOULs. I believe this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. The will to keep living… The resolve to change fate. Let’s call this power…” Determination.”

Suddenly you throw up. It comes up hot and fast and feels worse than the missiles aimed for your skull. Chara shakes beside you and you wipe your mouth.

Dragging yourself upright, you keep going. Chara keeps reading them to you in a numb voice. You turn it over in your mind, over and over.

Eventually you reach three sinks. Something comes out of the third one. You want to scream but your voice is caught in your throat. It’s smiling but, even though it’s smiling, you feel like you’re going to cry. It hurts.

Your cell phone crackles with three voices, come join the fun, they say. They keep whispering and you drag your voice up and say “No” in the firmest voice you can. They all make varying disgusted noises and hang up on you, leaving a red key behind.

What was that? Chara whispers.

You don’t want to know, but you think that they have a good idea anyway.

You go into the next room and slip the key in. It glows red.

You swallow and continue to wander.

A room is full of beds. They’re not clean anymore, but looking at them, you feel like they were once, less dusty, less dead.

Hey, says Chara softly. You’ve probably never seen it, but monsters turn into dust when they die.

You swallow and think of the many dusty items you’d found. The items of the dead children.

You keep walking. Another monster comes out of your reflection in a mirror, a giant bird. You smile at it timidly. You aren’t afraid of them exactly, you realize after a while. You just can’t understand them. And that’s what scares you. The way they attack you almost feels like talking. So you smile and try to bear it.

This one goes too.

How are the flowers still alive down here you wonder?

There’s another monster shaped like a dog. They have a thousand tongues and a hundred paws and more keep forming as they pin you to the ground. You laugh because you have to, because these children, you realize, cannot see your fear. That will only hurt them.

You see cats between its legs.

… It’s adorable. You pet them. You play with them using a stick you’ve been carrying for a while.

Eventually you stop and they stop and leave you be.

You keep walking. Chara reads the screens absently now as you walk.

Looking at the machines makes your eyes mist over but you look at them anyway. You look at the TV (you know what it is now, you know what so much more is now) anyway and you watch.

The first one is cute. It’s a little strange but it’s cute.

Mom liked puns, Chara says quietly. Like Sans said, she’s always thought of funny things.

Another thing clicks into place.

You play the next video. You listen. You listen to all of them.

Something in Chara gives and they fall apart on you again, sobbing and sobbing through the end, like they’d never been all together in the first place.

It’s my fault, they tell you. I did this, didn’t I? I did this to him. I hurt him like this. I broke him like this. He’s hurting you because of me.

You don’t want to lie.

I hate humans Bam, Chara says. And you knew this. You knew. But it’s different to hear it said outright. They hurt me, Bam. They hurt me and the people I treasured. They hurt me and they laughed. They always laughed because I cried. I wanted that village to pay. They killed. They killed and would have killed me. But then I ran away down here. And I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happier than the stars in the sky.

But I couldn’t forgive them. I can’t forgive them. Even now I can’t. I know monsters aren’t the best either. I know monsters aren’t great now, look what they did to one who didn’t try and hurt them, but I still hate them. I hate that village. I don’t ever want to go back. I want to watch it burn and let the monsters trample on it.

Okay, you say. I don’t think I could do it, but I think it’s okay to want to.

Chara sniffles, then laughs. I don’t think it is Bam.

You can call me Frisk, you know, you remind them. You don’t really know what to say, you’re not even entirely sure if you understand Chara’s feelings, but you understand they are very very strong and very much full of pain. You don’t want to abandon that pain or turn away from it, just like you can’t turn away from the fact that you’ve died a lot, even though nobody remembers it. Besides, you can’t turn away from your willingness to destroy everything when seeing Rachel dead.

Those are bad thoughts, Frisk, Chara tries to tell you.

You think my thoughts of Rachel are bad, you tell them. But you’ve never told me not to think that way.

All of these things are bad.

There can’t be nothing good.

It feels like it.

They’re not wrong, it kinda does.

We’ll just have to make it happy, you tell yourself. And them.

Chara says nothing. Then they say, Rachel reminds me of me and Flowey and Toriel and Asgore and everyone. But you don’t remind me of anyone. It’s like you’re still being put together, even though you’re still you. Does that make sense?

No, but I’ve been in a cave for a long time. I don’t think I’m ever going to make sense. That’s why I have to leave Rachel.

You didn’t kill Asgore or Flowey. I don’t think you’ll have to now either.

Maybe not but… You take a deep breath and wipe your eyes. I don’t think I’m going to do anything if I stay with her. I think I’ll be happy but I don’t think I’ll do anything. And I need her too much. What if she makes friends who like stars? I don’t like stars. I’ll just drag her down.

What about what makes you happy? Things you like?

I dunno if I have many of those, you admit. I don’t know much about myself, or much about things. I didn’t know what pie was or how to dress myself or anything. I think… I think I need to learn those things.

Chara is quiet. Then they flop back on the ground. Dying makes living seem really weird, doesn’t it?

You don’t flop back, but you nod. You massage the crack in your heart.

… Thanks Frisk.

Thanks Chara.

Another peaceful moment of silence. Then Chara says, Frisk… I want you to promise me something, when this is over.

You tilt your head.

It’s not going to be a happy promise, they tell you. It’s not going to be nice or good or anything like that, but I want you to promise me anyway, if you’re up for it.

You swallow, but you listen.

All you can be for Chara is a listening ear. You think that’s okay for now.

---

You find the power source eventually.

You wonder how Alphys feels dealing with this every day, this lab where she hurt and failed a lot of people. You wonder if she knows about Flowey being around, or if he avoids her like he seems to do his dad and mom. You wonder a lot as you turn on the power switch.

Then the creatures come back. And you’re cornered, definitely.

Alphys then calls them away, saying, “The-They get a little sassy when they’re not fed on time.”

That sounds… terrible. “Were they why you thought you weren’t gonna come back?”

You watch her face turn ashen and pale and scared. Then she shakes her head and says, “No I thought I’d run away again or…”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, as if suddenly realizing that you are very young and impressionable. You frown at this. Monsters are stranger than humans, and you’ve only met a few of them. The SOULs’ imprint upon you flutters.

She struggles a moment and explains it all to you. You listen and you nod, but you’re growing numb again. The time is coming. It’s almost time. You swallow you spit as Alphys says quietly,

“I’m ready to tell the truth now. I’m ready to face it now.”

You’re not sure if that’s true, but you don’t know what ready looks like.

So you smile in encouragement, and watch her lead the monsters away.

“Chara?” you say softly.

Yes?

“I promise.”

Chara smiles. Thanks Frisk.

You smile back.

As you walk out of the power source room, two of the panels glow red and smile at you.

You look at them without fear.

You reach the lift. Your phone rings. It’s a voice you’ve never heard before.

“Chara? Are you there? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Chara doesn’t answer. You squeeze where their hand should be.

“But you’ve done well. Thanks to you, everything has fallen into place. Chara… see you soon.”

And the lift closes on you and you both rocket upward. It should be dramatic. It should feel worse to you than it does. But, it doesn’t.

You leave the lift and it wraps itself in vines. No turning back.

Not that you were going to anyway.

You walk past the way to the throne room and you see the coffins. All of them are closed but one, which is half built.

There is Rachel, all the way at the end..

Her body is not pristine. She has a horrible amount of wounds and her dress hasn’t been stitched up. You won’t lie and pretend that she’s ever been that beautiful by her own admission (you don’t know of any other), but she used to shine to you with the light coming from above. You take a deep breath and you exhale. You reach into your inventory and pull out the items the souls had given you and place them on each coffin, climbing them with care. You place items on each of them, the faded ribbon, the apron, the ballet shoes. You reach into the inventory and pull out your old, tattered, battered sheet. You place it over her and tuck her in like she’s just sleeping. If this works, she’ll be confused, yes, but she’ll be alive. And that is enough for you, now.

Seeing these coffins, seeing what awaits you up ahead is unknown and unfathomable…

You finally understand what it means, truly, to be filled with determination.

8. VIII

You meet Asgore again.

It starts all over again. This time, however, Toriel stops it, firing at Asgore with impunity. She tells you not to be afraid.

You don’t say anything to this. You can’t. Your heart is in your throat. Everyone is coming here. Everyone is running here to stop the fight because you don’t have to fight, do you?

Except, you realize, you do. Your fingers curl around the rainbow knife, but you don’t unsheathe it. Everyone looks happier, talking to each other and smiling a little. Your heart aches for them. Chara squeezes your hand. You let go of the knife and let it rest at your side. You’ve only had it for a short time, but it comforts you.

We all have our safeties Frisk.

You smile at everyone and pretend like nothing’s wrong. Sans notices, but he’s still grinning like nothing’s wrong. They have to, you think, or it’ll all fall apart.

Frisk! Chara hisses. The gays are gonna smooch. Look away! Look away!

Why? It’s not a big deal, and even now, Chara seems to find it funny.

Toriel interrupts whatever that was going to be and places her hands over your shoulders. “Child, I was separated from a friend of yours.”

You nod slowly.

“If you’re willing to stay here a bit longer, we will help you find her and you can stay with us, your friends.”

You nod and smile obediently. You watch Sans out of the corner of your eye.

“Say Papyrus,” Alphys says and you turn your head. “You gathered everyone here and I got here before you. How did you know to come here?”

“A tiny flower helped me!” Papyrus chirps at once.

You can’t help the urge to drag your hand down your face from forehead to follow it and sigh.

Chara’s right. Papyrus is an idiot. The best idiot ever.

Flowey pops up and says, “I GOT THE HUMAN SOULS CHARA!”

“That’s great,” you say before your brain catches up with you and multiple pairs of eyes go wide. “I’ve got a knife!”

He laughs. “You think a puny human knife will stop me?”

“No but I think we can.” Chara settles once more in your skin and you feel a steady, puzzling warmth. Perhaps with the knowledge that this is the end, you are comforted with their death.

Flowey screeches laughter. “This is all your fault either way. You made them love you. You made them care about you. And now they’re mine.”

Funny how everyone thinks that but me. You smile and say, “Don’t be jealous you don’t know how.”

The rage on his face is harsh and sharp and you smile at it. After a moment, he smiles back and says, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m doing this?”

“It’s not going to be an interesting answer,” you reply. Chara grins and your teeth feel sharp.

“I’m still playing,” he shouts like you didn’t answer at all. “If you win, you’ll leave and you won’t play. I can’t allow that!”

This should be terrifying, but it isn’t.

There are things you fear worse than death.

He’s not one of them.

He tries to kill you, of course. He’ll try to kill you one million times.

You simply stare at him as he tries. You do not fear death. He’s made sure of that.

But then you are surrounded by fire. It protects you. You blink in surprise. The others, they keep protecting you. You wish they wouldn’t. You are not afraid of Flowey. You are afraid for him.

It makes something hurt inside you though, that they protect you. It feels like it hasn’t been earned.

Chara says nothing.

They believe in you, they expect things from you. And you don’t know how to tell them that even if they come true, it’s at the cost of someone else.

Once, you were a lonely child, trapped underground in the dark, fighting to breathe air and see light. YOu spent a long time clawing your way out of that, and then you fell stagnant in the little light you grasped.

You are still angry for what Flowey and the monsters did to you and Rachel, but you think that, in the end, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve something worse than this.

So you wait. You smile at your friends, you smile at the hopes on their faces, and you wait. Because this is how Flowey works. He is only good at pretending. He is only good at playing games. This isn’t real to him, not yet.

You both must find the moment to make it real. Only then, will you win.

He shrivels away from them, shrinking in on himself and still pelting you with pellets that can be easily brushed aside.

“Feeling lonely, Flowey?” you ask softly, SOUL trapped in a box. “It’s okay. I’m always alone. It gets better.”

IT doesn’t, and you know he knows it. You know he knows the isolation in his petals.

“No,” he grits out. And then he smiles.

And this isn’t the moment, but this is one of them.

“I just have all of your idiot souls in my hands!”

And the world is awash in white.

Then a child stands in front of you. Like you now, they wear a striped shirt. They’re shorter than you by a good amount. They flex their hands, shake themselves a little. Then they exhale.

“Finally,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. “I was so tired of being a flower.”

You watch him turn to look at you and smile, a bit shyly at that. “Howdy,” he says. Asriel looks a lot like Toriel, you think, and you hunger for a moment in your guts. “Chara, are you there? It’s me, your best friend.”

And year hear the name in a thousand tongues, from a thousand voices, from a thousand alternate lives.

“Asriel Dreemurr.”

You swallow and get ready to dodge.

Because what forms is someone who looks like Toriel but sharper and colder, stronger and angrier.

This is going to hurt.

The six SOULs aren’t with you this time, but you feel them anyway, stubborn and strong and as determined as you are. You buoy yourself with it.

Ready, Chara? You ask.

Always, they say. And you run like hell.

---

Once, Rachel called you a cynical child without any hopes or dreams. Looking back on it now, she may have been right.

But things, you think, holding on to the hope that you can save everyone, that even an unchosen one like you are can do something, are different now.

You tug on the dream of a world where this doesn’t have to happen.

The world burns with color and sears your eyes. Wow that’s hurt more than everything else done to you.

Chara snickers but it’s half in pain.

And then you’re dodging stars. After one flays your cheek open, you decide that sorry Rachel, but stars suck because they hurt.

They’re not real stars, Chara tells you half-heartedly but you ignore them because right now you need to have hopes and dreams and you suck at that so it takes more effort out of you to not die.

“I don’t care about destroying the universe,” Asriel declares and there is a part of you that wants to tell him that is dumb but you are busy dodging the chaos saber or whatever Chara is helpfully warning you about it being with this dumb grin on your face. “I’m gonna reset everything!”

“That’s nice,” you say, spitting blood. It’s really hard because all this light is hurting your eyes. This is why your name means twenty-fifth night, not twenty-fifth day.

You duck your head and dodge another blast of lasers.

I cannot believe I’m saying these without cringing, mutters Chara as you clasp your hands and dream of a happy future with all of your might. You don’t really know what it looks like, you’ve never been able to really envision the sky, but you think it’s the people you’ve met beside you, like Chara and Monster Kid and Rachel, and no longer being killed for their sake.

Your body warms, the light softens, and you can breathe more easily.

Hm. Good enough.

“You’ll keep doing it anyway,” Asriel crows. “Because you want a happy ending! Because you love that stupid girl and your stupid friends! Because you never give up! You’ll be my plaything forever!”

You bite your lip, the words in your throat. And then you softly say. “At least I’m not a bully.”

He doesn’t hear you, but Chara smiles with your mouth. Asriel shakes his head at you, smug and superior.

“It’s time to purge this timeline once and for all!” he declares and you grit your teeth.

Hold on, you and Chara whisper together.

The goat head laughs. And it pulls you back. You plant your feet and you grit your teeth again and you refuse to move. It sucks in the world.

You refuse to move.

Debris hits you.

You refuse to move.

Finally it ends, and he’s staring at you with a modicum of respect. (You like that new word.)

“Even after all of that you’re still here?” He laughs. “Fine, I guess you deserve to face me at full power after all.”

God he’s a sore winner, mutters Chara as the world warps around you.

You agree.

The void opens to what looks like a fallen angel. It grins at you with a heart in its chest and giant wings that dwarf you with ease. You can’t move your body. Heck, you can’t feel your body. You look down at it.

You’re still here Frisk.

Despite everything, you’re still here.

You struggle. You can’t move your body. You’re hit, and the little bit of energy you have gives and you drop.

But, even so. You refuse it.

And your body warms to life again, Chara humming softly.

More deadly little flames. Concentrating, your soul twirls away from them. “Every time you die,” whispers Asriel, “Your grip weakens, your friends forget you a little more.”

You don’t feel like they’re your friends, but even so, you don’t loosen your grip.

I can hold on for eternity except for my lack of fingers, Chara assures you. We can’t LOAD though, so.

“Your life will end here, in a world where no one remembers you.”

I remember you, Chara promises, and you hold on tighter. I’ll always remember.

You struggle on knowing that. You struggle on believing in that, if nothing else.

They could be good friends to you someday, Chara tells you. You aren’t like me. You forgive. I don’t. I can’t. That is what makes you different from me. That and I’m obviously smarter.

You huff out a laugh. You try to reach your SAVE. Nothing happens. You try to move your body. Nothing happens.

Seems saving is impossible after all but… if Chara is right. If that is what SAVED the souls before… maybe there is a way to make this happy ending after all.

Maybe, like Rachel did, you can SAVE someone else.

It won’t make up for your mistakes, or the time you have spent together, or everything you saw inside of her and yourself but… she still saved you.

So you’ll save them. Maybe like this, they can change things.

You reach out with your hand and call out for help. A single green light pulsates and your soul flickers —

“Humans are our real enemy,” Undyne declares as she rushes at you. Her voice is so monotone. You hate it. You raise your spear and block her attacks as they fly. You grin back at her. “You’re keeping us from the surface!”

You dodge again and tap your soul against her shoulder, before dodging once with a giggle. Like this, she’s not so scary. Just a big, muscly mush pile. A cool one but still.

Another spear rises up to smack you in the eye but Undyne’s scaly hand lands on your shoulder. She grins down at you.

“Eh,” she says, “You’re not so bad I guess.”

You offer two thumbs up and you’re propelled forward as Chara laughs, falling into Alphys. She doesn’t attack you. She shrivels away from you, not crying, but you can’t see her face to be sure. It might be worse than crying.

“You hate me,” she says, and there’s a flash of yellow sparkling in the corner of your eye. “Everyone hates me. I lied. No one likes a liar. But I have to do keep doing it or you really will—”

You nudge her shoulder and ask about her favorite cartoon, dodging bullets with ducks of your head.

She stops, struggles in place for a moment. She almost slumps over in defeat and then you ask her another question. And another. Because you don’t know anything, not really. But if anyone can tell you, it’s likely her.

And the answers burst out of her mouth. You keep asking, keep smiling because you don’t blame her. You realize you can’t blame her. Or any of them. You cannot love them, but you cannot blame them either.

“You do like me, don’t you?” she asks in a teary voice.

You nod. You see her glasses through the fog.

“My friends like me,” she repeats as if in awe. “And I like them too!”

You exhale in relief and fall backwards into a jail of bones.

“Just give up,” Sans says behind you. “I did.”

“You just need to take a break,” you tell him. “I could use one too.” You pat the ground that doesn’t exist. He regards you and you realize finally, that you’ve actually always been taller than him.

“Everyone will love me if I capture a human,” Papyrus insists from your right.

Idiot, says Chara fondly.

“Everyone does love you,” you say instead. “We do. Show me a recipe. I want to cook something!”

Papyrus wavers.

Chara takes over your mouth and says something, you don’t know what it means. But Papyrus groans and Sans laughs out right so it must have been bad. But the two of them are grinning at you. Papyrus picks you up in a squeezing hug.

Dizzily you flop away and fall in front of —

Asgore and Toriel.

You think of fire. You think of pain. You think of buttercups and dead bodies and screaming.

And you smile a bit as the flames come again.

“This is for your own good,” Toriel tells you gently. You leap out of the way and hug her instead. She trembles. You take her hand. And then you pull away gently and look at Asgore, who looks so forlorn and solemn despite you being unable to see their face.

“I won’t hurt you,” you promise. He tilts his head and sends a giant fireball in your direction.

“This is my duty,” he tells you.

You shake your head. “I won’t let you fulfill it.”

Slowly, you continue to dodge their fire, it’s waning now. You’re feeling more energized.

Chara takes a deep breath and you both say, “I’m sorry.”

Something in them relaxes and they see you. Not another fallen human, not the hope of the world. They see you.

It hurts.

“Don’t be sorry,” Toriel says to you. “We’ll meet again, my child.”

“You are our future now,” Asgore says.

You smile, but it’s flimsy.

Just a little more.

You’re facing Asriel again.

“Ready, Chara?” you say.

Chara nods.

Asriel freezes as you slowly suck in a breath and wrap your fingers around your SOUL. You clench tighter, the other six souls struggling to wake again, struggling to breathe again.

“Asriel,” you say together, steady and strong and unafraid. There is one more left.

He freezes up again. “Wh-What are you doing?”

You push with all of your might. You push your save forward with everything you have. You push the past forward with all of your strength. The past that you lack, that Chara has, it’s… it’s time.

I’m ready, Frisk, Chara says steadily.

You nod. Your face hurts.

Chara’s existence has always been, you think, apart from yours, distant from yours. Even the merging was incomplete. Their voice with yours, their mind along with yours. This… this is becoming yours.

I’m pretty sure it’s the only way for me to move on, they’d told you in the dusty lab, when you’d both laid out the promises. And to save Ree. There’s something up with your body. I think it can do things humans and monsters alone can’t do. One last time Frisk, please help me. Then help yourself, okay?

And Chara’s memories flood into you, raw, sterile, fire-hearted and bloody-minded.

You remember being born, something Chara’s mind doesn’t recall, the sterile smell of the birthing place — hospital, hospital, hospital — and blurry faces above you that you’ve never seen before. You remember being held, the sensation of being cherished and cared for —

You remember trying to swipe at something with your fingers.

You remember scorn.

It speeds through you, barreling and burning through bruises and blood, the smell of a butchery, the taste of the rain on your tongue, you are suddenly full to bursting of things that must belong to you now or they will be lost forever.

And then you see — Asriel.

Fretting over you — Chara — helping them back, helping you to the hands of the kind king and queen. You quail, you smile, you bury your face in flowers and you burn you burn you burn —

Asriel isn’t smiling now.

You reach out again and call his name.

“What is this…” he croaks.

You call out to him again, louder this time, stronger this time.

“No!” he shrieks. “I don’t need anyone! I don’t! You left! You don’t get to come back!”

You just want to save the person in front of you, so you call out again.

You can’t dodge these bursts of energy so you don’t try. You twist your soul around a bit and it relaxes you enough. You can move your arms and legs properly now.

Just like before, you offer mercy. You don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. You honestly don’t care. If you can help the person hurting in front of you, isn’t that enough? If you can do something to make up for the sin you must have been created with, isn’t that fine?

You call out again, urging a little more power from your fingertips.

This time, all of his attacks miss as Asriel screams at you both. Then he weeps fire, he weeps and weeps and babbles on about things that hurt Chara — you — a little more. But you continue to call out. You continue to reach out to save him.

“I’m doing this because I care about you more than anybody else!” Asriel screams in effort to stop you, to fill you with more guilt than determination. You can feel your legs. The hold of impossibility is weakening. You push off of the ground into the void. Asriel quivers and tries to float away.

“No!” he shouts. “No you can’t. I’m not ready for this to end! I’m not ready to say goodbye! You can’t make me! You can’t!”

What if this was you, you wonder. What if this was what you became? You don’t want that. You definitely don’t want that now.

“Let me win! Let me do this and just let me WIN!”

You continue to push yourself forward even as he raises both arms and fires a rainbow laser at you. You can’t see, you can’t hear, you can’t feel, but the two of you push on. Closer and closer, further and further. Your Soul throbs but you touch it against Asriel’s chest.

“Ree,” you both say. “I’m sorry I left you alone here. It must have hurt a lot. I’m here now, okay? We’re both here.”

Something gives and the form, the godly, almighty form, shrivels away and once again you’re looking at the child. The child who died sobs in front of you, sobbing hard and long and loud. You watch, frozen with concern.

“I’m so sorry,” Asriel sobs. “For all of it, I’m so sorry.”

After a few moments, he collects himself. He giggles wetly. “I was always such a crybaby, wasn’t I Chara?” He pauses and looks at you. “No… Chara’s gone, aren’t they? They’ve been gone a long time.”

“Close,” you both say. “Been waiting a while, Ree.”

Asriel stiffens. “What?”

You don’t step back, but you gingerly lift the knife from where you’ve kept it. “Look familiar?”

Asriel stares at you for a moment, then you’re tackled to the ground and sobbed on all over again. You reach out and pull Asriel tighter to you and hold them close. You aren’t Chara, but you can do this.

“How?” he sobs. “How?”

“I’ve been haunting this place for a long time,” Chara says through you. ‘Cause I was stupid, mostly. I saw everything, every reset, every change, every suffering.’ Asriel stiffens. “I think it was my punishment to watch, like I made you watch as I was going to make you kill people. And now you’ve done it. It’s all kinds of terrible, isn’t it? But… I think… now, from being here, I think it was worth it. After all, now I can save you.”

Asriel trembles. “You can’t. I haven’t got a Soul anymore. I don’t have any compassion or anything!”

“That’s why we’re here.” Chara sounds smug. “You have the whole underground’s souls in you now. And you have the human souls. And you have me. Us.” They push Asriel off of you gently.

“Let’s make one more miracle,” Chara says. ‘Once more, together.’ Your body shifts, your curl your fingers around the knife. “Hold Frisk’s hand, Asriel.”

Asriel does so, looking puzzled. “Your name’s Frisk? That girl’s soul says it’s Bam.”

“She named me Bam,” you say quietly. “I also like Frisk.”

“Oh. Okay. Those are… nice names.”

You smile. “Thanks.”

Your knife glows red and you feel the sound of hundreds of voices at your ears, the cadence of a million lives at your breath. You feel and you hear and you are —

You, truly, are able to reach further.

You must, Chara urges you and you reach and reach without hands nor feet nor eye and you gape at the enormity of the universe before you.

The power thrums, beckoning, calling your name.

You ignore it, its beautiful blue likeness, sharp and fierce.

You ignore the many voices but you don’t drift. For a moment, you think you will. You think of the promise laid bare on your impression of yourself. You think of the broken tears, the many promises, you think of the things left behind on the souls. You think of why you’re here right now. You think of who you are here with right now. You think of the dream that is beginning to etch itself into your heart.

And you are filled with determination.

With a strength you didn’t know you had, you push. And out it flows, the souls the life the death, the darkness of the cave you’d been left in, the warmth of the hands that left you there, the blood that wavered around your skin, the voices of the people who’d loved you —

“Violet.”

“What a strange name for a dead child.”

Of the people you’d lost but never met.

Of the lives you could have lived but didn’t. For a moment, you understand the power that must have been feared when the underground was sealed. It is thrumming, boiling, thriving within you.

But you do not fear it.

You reach out and grab once more at the ability to save and you tug on it with the last dregs of yours and Chara’s power. Chara laughs as the souls come loose from Asriel, as the world seems to crack and crumble and something, the last bit of what they have, of what you have, slips into Asriel like water.

You fall backwards and with a squawk, Asriel catches you. “Frisk?” he yelps, worry in his voice. You smile and with a shaky hand, you point forward. Asriel turns his head and finally, finally, you both can see your ghost in the shadow. “Chara…” he whispers.

The ghost stands there, the six souls floating by their hands. They really are paler than you, cheeks permanently flushed and dark hair wilder. Their eyes are a brilliant ruby red like stoked coals, something you know and understand now. Your eyes, you realize, must be the same. They are dressed in green and yellow and black and their smile is much rounder.

Chara smiles over at you and lets go of the yellow SOUL. Rachel’s soul darts away to your hands, quivering, but you pass her to Asriel. They both make varying vibrations of confusion, but you ignore it, looking firmly at Chara.

“You don’t have to keep it,” Chara says.

You nod. “But I’m going to.”

You see a brief flicker of mist in the dead child’s eyes. But then they nod and straighten up. “Then, we’re going now.”

“Goodbye Chara,” you say, and you’re proud that you don’t choke on it.

Asriel makes a horrible, sorrowful noise. But then he swallows and smiles. “Bye, Chara!”

Chara doesn’t waver, they just turn and walk slowly away with the other five souls, deeper into the darkness, and soon out of sight.

You take Rachel’s SOUL back and hold it gently, and you let Asriel have his moment. You can see it under Asriel’s fur, without looking very hard, the thrum of determination, real and human under his monster body. The solidity is there.

“Asriel?” you say softly. “It’s time to go.”

Asriel flinches. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

You take their hand in yours, the other cradling Rachel’s SOUL. “You need to make up for what you’ve done. Okay?”

Asriel swallows and then he finds his courage. “Yeah… okay. Let’s go, Frisk.”

And so you do.

9. IX

You open your eyes and everyone is around you. Everyone except two. One SOUL pulses anxiously on top of your chest. And one is gone for good.

At least, from here. You ache with loneliness anew. But you sit up and everyone looks relieved at you. They care and it’s frightening. Then they look back at Asriel, who is sleeping peacefully at your side.

The king and queen, for that’s what they are, it occurs to you that they’re really royalty and you look at them and think —

“Something’s wrong with dad!”

And you shake it out of yourself.

“Kid,” says Sans seriously, well as seriously as Sans ever gets, you’re aware. “Your eyes are looking banged up.”

You tilt your head at him, uncomprehending. Your world is spinning with another’s life in your soul, another’s memories in the core of yourself, so you draw from it, smile and lie properly for the first time and say, “I’m fine!”

He doesn’t believe you. You’ll have to practice.

The others notice you again and you smile at them too, even at their confusion over your eyes that you don’t understand.

Asriel is still held tight in his parents’ arms as he opens his eyes, big eyed and dewy and frightened. You’re filled with the urge to hug him, but you do not. You resist. Because you know it doesn’t belong to you.

“Welcome home!” you tell him, and you mean it. Then you pick yourself up and start to wobble about. You don’t want to hear everyone’s cries of joy or concern when you have one last thing to do. When Rachel’s SOUL is with you. You don’t really want to tear the king and queen from their child, you don’t, but you don’t know how to heal and what you remember of Rachel’s body is not good.

You nervously tug on Toriel’s hem. She remembers herself and looks down at you with a smile and says,

— “Is there something you need, my child?”

And your first instinct is to cower, your second to reassure her that you’re fine, it’s just a question and she needn’t worry but you —

Pull yourself out of that and quietly hold out Rachel’s SOUL.

“I think we can save her,” you say, as her face falls. “But, I uhm, I dunno how to heal so…”

“Of course, my child,” she says and pulls away immediately. Asgore’s eyes go solemn, as if he too remembers himself, and Asriel flinches. “Let me help you now. Do you know where she is?”

She and not it helps you stay grounded, the words keep you present. You nod, and hurry towards the line of coffins. She follows you easily, but you see her twitch the further down you go.

“I gave Asgore the blue soul,” she says softly after a while of walking.

You hum in confusion, then your knife flickers cyan and you think of a hunger stuck in your bones. “Oh,” you say. “Where I found the toy knife.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “I found the body on my morning rounds. They were still warm and their soul was floating there. I… I couldn’t help but wonder if I had added an extra check before falling asleep, I could have saved them. The other monsters never said a word to me, I’d wondered if they’d killed them, but…” She exhales. “All signs pointed to the contrary.”

You know how they died, but you won’t say so. You don’t want to tell her that all of the souls are with you forever even though they’re gone, that the whole underground has marked you irreparably now. “I think they’d forgive you, Toriel-ssi,” you say instead. They wouldn’t have helped with the barrier if they didn’t.

“Perhaps, my child.” She wipes her eyes. “Perhaps. I hope Chara has, since we’ve been blessed with our son’s return. I hope they have.”

“They did,” you say simply, hoping it sounds like how a child is sure of things and not how truthful it is. “I bet they loved you all a lot. They saved Asriel after all.”

“You saved Asriel, my child,” Toriel corrects.

You hum and don’t disagree. You can’t. She wouldn’t understand that you’re both right.

You reach the coffins and Toriel gasps softly. They’ve all opened and the air stinks. You look into Chara’s first, quite without your eyes’ permission. There are only wrappings left and the rest are… well.

The less you look at it, the better you feel. But you don’t want to look away all the same.

Rachel’s coffin is the furthest back and the cleanest.

“Allow me,” Toriel says softly, voice steady. She picks you up in one arm and you don’t flinch. Rachel’s SOUL is vibrating steadily now, shaking to break free of your cupped hands. “You will have to hold her in, Frisk. Her body will need to remember it can be alive. With a monster SOUL, it doesn’t remember to be solid any more you see. It sees very little point.”

You nod and reach for Rachel, steadily keeping the SOUL pushed in at the sternum as Toriel works. You wish for her return. You wish for her life. She had been everything to you, once. She should be able to become anything again. You burn red for a brief instant. Color flows back into her face, things knit and mend close with ease and slowly the soul stops vibrating and begins to relax.

Rachel opens her eyes, and you smile at her.

“Bam,” she croaks as if in surprise.

“Hi Rachel,” you say, and your original goal crackles in your arms, in your skin and seeing her breathe makes it all come back again. But you remember yourself and say instead. “Welcome back.”

You jump as she hugs you and cries. “I’m sorry,” you tell her and you hug her back. It feels empty now.

“Me too,” she says.

For the first time, you’re not sure if she means it or not, but you’re okay with that.

It won’t be long now.

---

It takes Rachel time to be able to move. Asriel apologizes to her in a shaky trembling voice that even she seems to melt at. You think they’ll be fine. Then they’re talking about going up to the surface. You don’t beg off, it’d be strange if you did. But your heart trembles. What if you can go through?

You’re afraid to find out, if you’re honest. But you will and you must.

“We must see it,” Asgore insists gently. “We need to be sure.” He’s carrying Asriel, likely afraid to let him go.

You nod. You gently push Rachel ahead of you. She falters. “Bam…?”

“I’m tired,” you say. “And you’re hurt more. I’ll go behind you and catch you.”

She squints at you, and then reaches out with both hands to muss up your hair. “Don’t act tough.”

“I’m not,” you protest, laughter squirming in your throat. “I’ll let people know if I need help.” She squints at you a bit harder but then lets it go, lets the others lead.

You follow. Sans is the closest to you, the furthest from the door. He stops a moment. “Yo, kid.”

“Yeah?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Good job. You found the right answer.”

You smile because he’s a liar still. “I wouldn’t have found it alone.”

He chortles. “I dunno, I think you did a good job.” And he steps through the doorway.

You make to do the same.

Then the world falls to black around you, and you can’t see, hear, or feel anything for a long time.

You come to and see Rachel in tears, Asriel also in tears, and everyone looking down at you. You blink at them fuzzily, confused. “What’s wrong?” you ask.

They all look at each other and then Sans replies, “Kid, you went through the exit and your heart stopped beating. We’d thought you’d just passed out.”

You blink slowly. “Oh… so that’s it.” You feel remarkably calm about this, even for you.

“That’s a bad thing, Frisk!” Asriel shouts. “You didn’t tell me that’s what would happen.”

They all look between you two, baffled, as you watch Rachel’s face turn stormy. You shake your head slowly. “I didn’t know.” And it’s not even a lie. You’d figured that you’d just bump into something and not be able to get past and have to wait for them to notice. Death seems… weak in comparison but simple enough. “I guess I won’t be able to see the stars, will I?”

Rachel’s face is unreadable. You don’t need to read it though.

The room erupts into chatter, euphoric and sad and bending and twisting and impossible to track.

“I think…” you say eventually. “We need to change the story. I can’t be the one who represents monsters for the humans, if I’m still stuck here. I think Rachel needs to tell that story and convince people.”

They all gape at you.

“But… but I didn’t do anything.” Her voice is weak. She is disbelieving.

You shake your head. “You’re the reason I could do any of this at all. And you’re much more educated and used to people than me. You’re clever. I think that people would listen to you. And you know of the people where you play at, the chosen people. They could come through too, and we could empty out everyone.”

“Everyone except you, nerd,” Undyne says, uncharacteristically somber.

“You can figure that out when everyone’s out,” you say. “It’ll take a while anyway. It gives Alphys plenty of time.”

“Me?” she squeaks, utterly shocked.

You nod. You feel you are being watched. Then you notice a crick in your neck. “Sorry, uhm, can I go rest?”

No one is sure what to say to that, so you slip away and return to Asgore’s castle. You settle under the blankets before anyone can actually catch up with you. You’re so tired that even the sound of heavy thudded footfalls don’t wake you when they come.

You’re right and they know it. They don’t like it though. They never would. But that’s okay. It’s not your concern.

You have a promise to keep. You have work to do.

Even if your eyes are no longer simply gold.

---

The hardest part is, apparently, convincing the humans with Rachel to help.

Apparently, because you’re not allowed to see them. Or you try, but the sheer amount of sight and sound is physically overwhelming for you, so you hide and watch. You stay in Waterfall, mostly. The Riverperson floats around you sometimes, but mostly you’re stuck with the little white dog. Very nice and quiet.

Rachel sometimes seeks you out. Not often, but you can tell it’s when the lines on her face are the most scrunched and the dress Miss Toriel had made her is wrinkled heavily.

You can’t bear to call Toriel and Asgore parents. You don’t even know where to start. You’re barely certain that you have parents and are uninterested in them.

She seems to like these two, so you’re okay with it. “Is it hard?” you ask when she sits beside you. You like to stay by the water. It’s soothing.

“The adults are useless,” she says with a grunt. “The monsters are willing to catch them and everything.”

“Do you think they’ll fight?”

Rachel snorts. “No one in this dumb place has the determination to fight.” She looks at you, and you look back. “You want to play a game, for old times’ sake?”

You think about it, and then shake your head no. “I thought you’d want to rest.”

She flops back into the grass. “Kinda do.” You flop down beside her and it feels softly nostalgic. “I saw the stars, Bam.”

“You did?” You smile.

“Well, I saw the stars out there. I still dunno if they’re real. They say there’s classes I can take and proof and stuff where I can find out.” She sighs. “But I have to do all of this catch up with Asriel first.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’d better be.” She smiles as if to push off the feeling of her words, which is good because, well, you’re not particularly sorry. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she says after a while. “It’s nice for people to listen to me. And being outside is great when I get to be there. It’s hard to come back in.”

“I probably wouldn’t come back if I could go.”

“Bam!” she protests.

You smile at her. “This place reminded me of how much I was desperate not to be lonely. And then I had you. And now, well… I think I went a bit too fast.”

You watch the water fall beside you both.

“Maybe a bit,” she admits after a while. “I thought about that sometimes. When I heard stories about the tower, or when you once asked me to bring you up. It would have probably freaked you out if I could have.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“… I still wish you could see it.”

“Alphys will figure something out. When she and Undyne aren’t busy.”

“Look at you sounding all grown up.” she teases, poking your cheek.

You both laugh, and you don’t say a thing about it.

You can’t. You don’t want to see her face if you do.

It’s rather cowardly. But so is the admission that wasn’t spoken. She would have left you anyway. And it hurts to be certain of that now. But you have experienced so many feelings in the span of time since you fell into the underground that parsing them all and trying to understand them is more effort than trying to express them anymore. You have to think about it later.

When you’re alone.

---

Someone makes a habit of finding you wherever you are in the Underground. You haven’t been back to the place where you slept since, because there are people running through it, but there wasn’t much there anyway.

Usually it’s Sans, popping up beside you and sleeping. Rarely it’s Alphys, asking for a bit of your blood. Once in a while it’s Asriel, who is small and warm and lays on you like a blanket. It’s sometimes someone else, but you tend to tune them out eventually. The encounters start to blur together. You have to be careful.

You think they notice but you can’t worry. You’re piecing together Chara’s memories and your dreams. They haunt you, Chara’s enraged screams and the horrible ragged coughs of buttercup flowers, the sensation of love and the smell of smoke from a fire. You dream of yourself being locked away, of voices murmuring and a terrible pain in your sternum.

Those dreams leave you shaking.

Perhaps that’s why you’re not being left alone.

Eventually, the other humans seem interested in working with the monsters. People begin making inventories and creating systems to pull useful things out. People are packing and working. You help sometimes, because they don’t notice you at first.

Then they do. You lie and tell them you’re someone from outside who stayed with the monsters. With Chara’s memories, the lie comes easier. And they don’t know you well. So you help. It’s a struggle. Your body is weak. But you manage. You manage.

That’s all you have. That’s all you can.

You feel everyone’s eyes on you, but that’s fine.

It only fills you with more determination.

Once you meet a woman while you’re watching. She drifts rather than walks on sandaled feet. It doesn’t look like she’s ever touched dirt. She looks up at the cracks of Waterfall with wonder and you watch her. She just seems ordinary at first, but the more you watch her, the more your hair stands on end.

And then her eyes, exactly like yours down to the shape and color, or what they once were anyway, rest on you.

Pain laces through your skin and bones and muscles and SOUL as she whispers, “My Violet. Your time is coming.”

You can’t move.

She smiles sadly at you. “Your time is coming, my little monster. My sweet little Violet. My little girl. Don’t fight it. Break it.”

Someone’s voice calls out in the distance, frantic, but you don’t hear it. You sway and the world sways to black around you. And yet, you feel a hand in your hair when your head touches the ground.

“Peace, child of mine,” whispers the woman from your nightmares. “Be at peace. Soon it will come. You just need to wake up a little more.”

Peace does not come for you, but something does.

You wake up and there is something in Rachel’s eyes you don’t like. You lie to her face when she asks what happens.

She believes you.

But all you hear is the word, a name, thundering in your ears. “Violet.”

Your scalp itches, your eyes hurt. And everything, everything, is cold.

You decide to knit a blanket.

Something in it makes you shrivel.

10. X

Time passes. You start seeing less and less of everyone. It can’t be helped, and you were never very close to begin with, in your opinion, but the Underground is slowly growing quieter.

Which is fine. Every morning you take a careful jog to warm up. You climb vines, you knit, you read one of the Dreemurr’s books. You cook. You keep busy.

You tinker.

Most of everything has been taken out, but scraps, things from the dump, anything left from above that people forgot, you take from it. No one is going to come and claim it, you think.

Alphys upgraded your phone years ago, the keychain compresses things, including your knife (it’s so cute now, a little rainbow knife but it’s much sharper now too), and you can store more in your phone now. And it has a touch screen and folds. It’s also nigh invulnerable. None of your falls have even given it a scratch thankfully.

Rachel’s gotten a bit taller than you. You’re jealous but you understand. Asriel is finally growing again. He will be terrifying someday.

They’ve stopped fighting. As much. As loudly.

And they’re there to greet you when you reach the edges of New Home. They come once a week with anything useful, anything they can find. It’s the only consistency of time you have now.

They’re glaring at each other. Sans wisely says puberty, Toriel says they’re like cute little siblings. Asgore, more and more often, just watches the three of you with worry.

You know it’s just that they’ve both seen the worst of each other and you’ve seen the worst of them too. Or you did once, you don’t know about now.

Asriel is holding a box. “Yarn,” he announces with a smirk. “For that blanket you said you were working on.”

You smile and take it with thanks.

Rachel doesn’t give you what she’s holding at first, looking you up and down. She looks happier now. At some point, she must have stopped believing this was a dream. “Those clothes we got look good on you.”

“Thanks.” It is nice to have new clothes though.

“You called him cute,” says Asriel accusingly. Some of Flowey’s petulance and jealousy is coming in more and more as he ages, like it grows with his horns or something.

If Chara was here, they’d laugh.

Rachel makes a face. “That isn’t what I said, Asriel what is the matter with you?”

You decide to derail this before it gets going. “How was the telescope?”

Rachel grins, full of the familiar light and intensity that she gives space. “It was amazing, Bam! I could have stayed there all night! There are some pictures in the box. Also we found this little model you can use.”

You beam. “Where are you going next?” Living through them is surprisingly fun because they usually visit more when they’re back.

“Mom wants us to see the sea.” Asriel grumbles. “Again. She says it’s a different one but I think I still have salt in my fur.”

Rachel snorts at this and you can’t mistake it. She’s happy. She’s free. She’s alive. It’s like a great burden’s off of her shoulders, barring a single chip.

You keep your expression happy.

“Will you bring back some seashells?” you ask instead. “And some stones? The shores of Waterfall are starting to sink in, so I want to make proper paths again.”

“I have a bucket for that!” Asriel assures you. He squeezes your knee and you swallow the pain in your throat.

Rachel just nods but she’s looking at you hard, a bit too close if you’re honest. “What about your stuff at Old Home?”

“I’m going to finish moving it all soon,” you assure her. “There’s not much left. Undyne moved most of it. I just need to plant the rest of the plants Miss Toriel gave me in the Ruins with the graves and that’ll be that.”

You’d convinced everyone to let you let the Ruins and the old home slowly go into plants and cave light. You’d buried the remains of the other children there yourselves with their things. They were the tragedies, and time would forget them, but for now they could be honored by being dappled in surface sunlight.

The only things you’d kept were Chara’s and that was because they’d asked you to.

“Hmm…” She looks you up and down again and then says, “It’s summer now, once we’re back from the water we should be around more. Everyone’s going on this one though.”

Except me. You try not to pout. “Rachel, I’m fine.”

“You’re alone,” she said. “That’s not fine.”

“Alphys is working hard to fix this. It’s okay.” Well, every time you tried to cross the way at New Home you stopped breathing but again, it was being looked into. “And you guys have lives now. The humans and monsters aren’t exactly perfect, right?”

“No,” she agrees. “But it still should have been you.”

“But it’s not,” you say before the envy rises in her eyes again, which it does a lot. “It’s you, and from what it sounds like, you’re doing great just by being yourself.”

She makes a face. “I guess.”

“It’s more me being cute than her being smart,” Asriel says to you, self-assured as a prince would be.

The look on her face will haunt your nightmares for days, so you don’t agree with it.

“Rachel, this wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t agreed,” you point out. “You helped your people and then extended it to the monsters. All I did was start things. You’re doing the real work.”

“… Yeah, I guess.”

You never realized how lowly she thought of herself until after you’d seen her SOUL.

But you hold none of it against her. You can’t. She was your light but she was still a person.

“Oh.” She rummages in the bag. “Toriel insisted on giving you pie and dinner again.”

You take the soup and the pie and laugh. “It’s not snails this time!”

Both Asriel and Rachel shudder.

You laugh again. It feels good to laugh.

You sit with them for a while. Asriel tells you about school and how people try to pet his horns and fail because he’s too fast, how Monster Kid brags about you and your fight with Undyne sometimes when she’s nervous (your heart warms at the thought of her still thinking of you), about how Mettaton is running some sort of show. Rachel tells you about the eclipse she stayed up all night to watch, gives you a SD card full of pictures and files you can look at on your phone. You tell them about what you’ve been finding in the lab, pass them the digitized copies of the videos that had been in the True Lab once, how you’re almost done finally transcribing all the research, including that from someone who seemed to no longer exist.

“W.D. Gaster existed once,” Asriel says eventually. “But that was like, timelines and timelines ago. He was around and then he was gone. At some point no matter what I reset as Flowey, he never came back. But his imprint was still there, like on Sans and Papyrus.”

“He was the one who made the CORE, right?” Rachel asks. She had taken out a notepad and started scratching at it.

Asriel nods. “Think so. I could never reset that far back to know what happened. Only up until I was revived with determination. I remember asking about him though. Sans’ eyes got real blue when Papyrus ever asked him.”

You nod. “I’ve never seen him here, and it’s probably a good thing. But certain places are chillier and the fog makes me feel watched. I think I’ve gotten everything I can from the True Lab though, so when everyone comes with you when you come back, it may be good to go through it and then close the lifts off.”

“Probably,” Asriel agrees. “I don’t wanna ever go in there again if I can help it. I don’t know how you can.”

“It’s better than staring at the ceiling,” you say, but that’s all.

Rachel winces again. You don’t know what she’s thinking.

---

Eventually, they leave. The sky outside from this distance is starting to get dark and even though they all know the worn path by now, it’s better to be safe than sorry. You watch until you can’t see their silhouettes anymore and then say,

“Aren’t you going with them Sans?”

Sans grins at you from the shadows. “You’re getting good, kid.”

“No one stands that still,” you tell him. He thrusts a greasy paper bag at you. You try not to roll your eyes. He’s been trying to get you to like Grillby’s for years. You suck it into your phone with the rest of the items though because you don’t want to be rude.

“Gonna be a while before we get back,” says the skeleton easily. He looks tired. Much as skeletons don’t have bags under their eyes, you think he could. “Wanted you to have something for the road.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you tell him, baffled.

“Well duh, but it’s not like Grillby’s is gonna come to you now is he?” Sans looks smug. “And you like it, you know ya do kid.”

“Not as much as you and his ketchup.”

“Well that bottle’s made just for me, so.”

“Go home, please,” you say, laughing. “I promise I’ll stretch it out as much as I can.”

He huffs at you. “You’re so rude to my old bones.”

You squint at him. Then you exhale. “Sorry I brought up Gaster-ssi.”

“Eh, it’s fine. I figured you’d find somethin’ on him eventually. Thanks for being nice about it.”

“Yes sir,” you say agreeably, and you wait.

Sans slips some ketchup out of his own bag and takes a gulp. Then he says slowly, “You sure you’re fine, kid? It’s not like Toriel didn’t keep to herself for a long time and she’s still workin’ that out. Her and ol’ Fluffybuns.”

You nod. “I was alone before this,” you say easily. It’s so much easier to say now. “Everyone comes and visits and worries and helps out so it’s much better than before. It’ll just be quieter for a bit. Besides, you can just call me if you’re worried.”

He chortles at you. “Guess so. Eat that before it gets cold.”

You smile and nod, but you don’t relax until he’s properly gone and you have Papyrus on the phone to prove it.

Then you hang up and exhale deeply.

You feel the tidal wave of feeling and existence coming and finally, after all this time of holding it together, of watching everyone come and go, of working and working for the sake of the promise, you let yourself break at the edge of the world Chara may have come from. Just for a while. Just because you truly need to breathe. You scream and scream and scream out all of your pain, all of your sorrow, all of the aches in your soul and weep until your throat aches and your voice is hoarse.

Then, slowly, you pick yourself up from the cave floor and trudge inside.

You have a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it in.

---

You finish your work one evening, and get a call from Asgore.

“Howdy, Frisk,” greets the man over the phone.

“Good evening Asgore-ssi,” you say softly in return. He lets out a huff of breath but doesn’t protest. You can’t call them your parents, you’ve never even experienced such things. They don’t make sense to you, even knowing in your head the intimacy of two pairs. “How is the sea?”

“About the same as the last one,” he says cheerfully. “Asriel is having a wonderful time. Not as much as Undyne though. I don’t know how Alphys plans to drag her back to shore.”

You smile. “That’s great.”

“The stars are beautiful too,” he adds gently and you wince because no one can see you. “It’s not as fun without you, Frisk. Maybe next time we’ll set up a picnic near the edge of the cave.”

“That’d be nice,” you say. “Did they tell you I need help with the true lab downstairs?”

“They did, and we’ll be there, the whole lot.” Asgore pauses. “I’m proud of you, child.”

Your chest doesn’t warm. “Thank you sir,” you say instead. “That means a lot.”

“The research is taking too long,” he says gently. “You deserve to see the sky.”

“I can see it from the doorway,” you tell him. “It’s very beautiful. It’s probably different out there.”

“You deserve the breeze, child,” he says gently.

You’ve heard this all before but you agree anyway. You know he’s being kind again. “I can’t wait to feel it.” Then you yawn, quite uncontrolled.

“You must be tired, I’ll let you rest.”

“Give Toriel-ssi my regards,” you say sleepily.

He promises he will and you hear the call end.

You take a deep breath and roll to turn off the light. There’s no point in fretting now.

The next morning, you make sure everything is neatly tucked away in its place. You’ve hung the pictures from the other day in New Home, varying non-perishables you don’t want to risk bringing left on the shelves. The dishes are washed. Everything’s clean. You lock up the garden to New Home carefully and leave the keys where you’d found them once years ago. Your phone is charged in your pocket and everything you need for it in your other pocket. Everything else is in the box.

You begin the journey back to where it all began.

It takes a few hours, but you’ve practiced for this, carefully jogging, testing your stamina, pushing your limits. You make sure to stop in Waterfall, where it’s cooler, after raiding what’s left of Hotland one last time. You stop and look at the Echo Flowers. You’ve left memos for yourself at these before. You can do something similar now.

“Thank you,” is all you say to the flowers. They echo your words back in warbles. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

And then you keep walking. You have a warmer coat this time, but you put a spare into your phone.

You make sure the remains of Sans’ and Papyrus’ home is locked up tight like Undyne’s was. The ball game is still in place but you ignore it this time.

You keep walking.

You can see your breath.

Finally, you reach Old Home.

It’s easy to travel the rest of the way through. Your limbs are longer and you are stronger. But now you reach the graves, and the hole that leads to the only home you’d known before. You grit your teeth but first you bow to the graves. “Soon,” you promise, and taking the rope that’d been tied to something above, you begin to climb. You’ve tested the weight repeatedly, and now you pull yourself up into the gloom. It’s dark compared to a lot of the places you’ve been but you’re named for the night. You like the dark sometimes. You keep walking, trusting your hands, your feet, your heart.

You reach the light again soon, the weak little filter of light up above where rock is in the way. Your tower is still standing strong. There’s another rope just near it, though Rachel had never needed one.

You regard it for a moment, regard the symbol of the three eyes on one wall. You take your phone, snap a picture of it, and keep walking. The path changes. It narrows, too big for you alone, but it narrows.

It seems like you will never reach the end.

You take another deep breath. You let it out loudly.

Seeing the unknown once again, with nothing and no one but you to meet it this time, you are filled with determination.

The world shifts for just a moment under your hands. Then before your eyes, great doors that dwarf the world appear before you.

You set your shoulders.

“I’m coming, Chara,” you say, and walk into them, pushing them open.

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