Chapter Text
The flurries drift lazily down, golden flakes of ice caught in the gleam of the phosphorescent gems overhead. Frisk, stiff at your side, flexes their hands into tightly balled fists. The cold air burns its way down your throat.
As Frisk spins around to clasp hands with Sans, the pitiful whine of a whoopee cushion echoes into the still of the woods, and you drag your hands down your face, hiding a wan smile behind your gloves.
“heh,” he says. “whoopee cushion in the hand trick. always gets ‘em. so, what’re two humans doing down here in the underground?”
You reluctantly turn to face him, expression once again bland and relaxed. Rather timidly, Frisk grasps at your cloak, the fabric bundling and creasing in their grip. Hesitantly, you raise your arm, then bring it down to pat their head comfortingly.
“We’re just passing through,” you say, skirting around the wary gleam in his eyes.
“cool. you’re not planning to stir up any trouble then, right? ‘cause my brother’s just up ahead. he’s a real human huntin’ fanatic, y’know?”
“Really,” you say, gaze never leaving Sans, even as your fingers run through Frisk’s hair, massaging their scalp. You’ve never had the chance to be this close to another person, a kid, even - especially to touch with your hands. Even through the thick fabric of your gloves, the wispy softness of their hair cards through your fingers, light and relenting to your touch. With careful self-control, you refrain from purposely tangling your fingers in it.
“yeah,” he says, eye-lights flicking to Frisk, now pushing up against your side. “you don’t need to worry about him, though. he couldn’t hurt a whimsun even if he tried real hard. he’s just a big softie like that.”
“Mm,” you hum. “I suppose we’ll have to say hi then.”
“are you sure?” Sans shuffles his feet, two pale pink slippers barely sinking into the snow. “i did say he likes to hunt humans, didn’t i?”
“You also said he’s a big softie,” you remind. “I’m sure we’ll be fine, right Frisk?”
They nod, pulling away. A moment passes before they flash a wobbly smile at Sans and disappear down the path. You call out a weak, “Wait!” that either they don’t hear or ignore.
“kids, am i right?” Sans jokes, making to elbow you in the side before realizing you’re both practically strangers.
“I guess we should catch up,” you say, rolling your shoulders.
“mmhmm. hey, have we met before?”
“What?”
Rather than stare uselessly at Frisk’s tracks in the snow, you turn to face him.
“you don’t gotta lie to me,” he says. “‘cause i’ll know.”
“Wouldn’t you know if we’ve met?” you hedge, quirking a brow.
“no,” Sans replies, “not really.”
“Hm,” you say, shifting your weight, snow crunching beneath your boots. “I guess I don’t leave much of a mark, huh?”
“nah. but i sure do.” He gestures to your back, where your cloak flutters in the wind, a hole torn directly between your shoulder blades.
“Oh,” you say.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Sans can remember resets?” you hiss at Frisk, careful to not let your voice be dragged off by the wind. They give a run and jump into a snow poff, giggling under their slow, misty breath. After a moment’s fidgeting, rather unsure hesitation, you shuck off your scarf and wrap it around their neck, tucking their hands into the fabric. “You’re going to freeze if you keep doing that,” you warn them, but they only smile and poke their tongue out at you.
The puzzles weren’t hard - far from it. Frisk blew through them with the ease of repetition, giving their solutions a childish, anxiously proud flair. Papyrus was always more than ready to reassure them of their mastery at the puzzles, melting their shyness away like the snow cupped in your palms. It’s magic snow, so it’s a little more stubborn, but it’s still snow - with a little nudge of your magic, it melts just as it should but tends to refuse to do.
“Sometimes,” says Frisk, startling you out of your reverie, voice far softer than yours, barely noted by the wind at all, “he remembers - in bits and pieces, like dreams that you forget but remember small parts of when something reminds you of them. Sometimes… he only remembers the feelings, and other times…” They don’t finish.
“It’s okay,” you tell them, patting their head. They flinch and duck, and rather like a snake rearing, you pull your hand back. “You,” a pause, “don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.” You shove your hands in your pockets, ignoring the inexplicable look Frisk sends you.
You hike up the collar of your cloak and hope your scar isn’t too noticeable.
Much of what Sans says - and he doesn’t talk often, but when he does, it’s making puns or throwing jokes, hoping to catch a laugh in return - is filler, conversation without substance. But then, out of the blue, you’ll glance to his face and he’ll be staring, one eye bright with that very same color - the shade his magic takes, the light that bled through his eye socket - and say something entirely too serious, completely off-putting.
You often feel like you’re left out of the loop. And you are, quite literally. (You also feel, quite often, that his sense of humor is contagious, and you mourn your quiet days of apathy.)
Frisk tentatively responds to his puns with terrible ones of their own, but is still unbearably stiff around him. It’s not a personal hangup, but a personal hang-up. That he only knows half the story of, if not less. You decide then and there not to get involved.
It’s easier than you expected to slip into the sidelines, letting Frisk take the main stage (which they had been doing for most of this loop anyway, with or without your reluctant participation) and seeping into the background. The others lose focus of you for a moment because of your rather weak tether to this timeline. You don’t let yourself disappear completely. The void still lingers in the back of your mind, tainting your memories.
You’ll sort that out later.
They’re not paying attention to you for the time being, however, and that… that was your goal.
To slip off, and not deal with other people even if only for a moment.
You watch, distantly - from both the surroundings and your thoughts - as Frisk faces Papyrus’ last puzzle, an admittedly intricate display of deadly force, wrapped up in the package of an atypical obstacle course. Your worry for them is distant and muted, as is everything else. You rely - you HOPE - on their memory of past loops to make it out alright.
Papyrus is shouting across the bridge at Frisk, explaining one thing or another - you can’t quite make it out. Their conversation (one-sided as it is) becomes static in your ears as your surroundings sputter and twitch. You blink - everything’s black - you blink - there’s an expanse of white, of snow - you squeeze your eyes shut, and there’s darkness.
You open them.
There’s white, but it’s nearly indiscernible beneath the mass of swarming, writhing colors that cover it. There’s black - smatterings of it that cling to people and ambient magic, despondent and desperate and clinging to a farce of existence.
You inhale sharply, shutting your eyes and wiping the scene from your sight.
It’s white.
At some point, Frisk takes your hand and drags you along with them on their way through Snowdin. Their grip is comparatively tighter than before, occasionally squeezing your hand through your glove. The sensation is dull, but the gesture is nice and steadying. It registers through the numb haze of your mind, and without it, you think you might drift off.
If they’re worried, they hide it well - a few monsters crop up, familiar from the time you were reviving most of Snowdin, and start rather friendly fights with Frisk, who smiles and banters back and forth with them easily, dodging and dancing out the way of bullets. None of them come towards you, surprisingly, but you might still be a bit more untethered than you technically should be.
It’s bittersweet - familiar.
An already distant, reclusive child, your bouts of dissociation had nearly cut you off completely from the world. Your mentor tried everything: cognitive therapy, incense - stars - didn’t she hire a hedge witch to do soul therapy? You’d nearly forgotten. Her frustrated tears were what dragged you out of your haze. Her long nights of working with you, even when everything seemed HOPELESS. In return… you PERSEVERED for her.
But she’s dead.
And you may as well be.
You have a duty, though, don’t you?
You can’t give up now. You can’t rest yet.
A little more, a little further - you will PERSEVERE. By your own will or not.
You blink awake on a musty couch. Were you sleeping? Did you dream? If you did, it’s long gone, barely more than an indecipherable impression rapidly fading. Your legs are propped up on the opposite armrest, boots missing. Your cloak is draped over you like a blanket. It may as well be, for how much time you’ve put into making it as comfortable and efficient as possible. So much thread magic. So many pricked fingers.
Your head lolls to the side like a doll’s. Frankly, it’s well within your rights to be utterly exhausted. How long did you sleep? Did you even sleep? It doesn’t matter, you suppose. Three days - edging on four, now, if you really didn’t sleep - is far from your longest or worst bout of insomnia.
Magic is truly a wonderful thing. A terrifying force to be reckoned with. Your limits are much different from a normal human’s… but not nonexistent. Case in point: the hallucination sitting across from you.
“you look like a corpse,” says the skeleton. His face is muddy, not truly, but in the sense that the features appear both familiar and not all at once, and your mind cannot keep up.
“Touché,” you quip back. His face grows murkier. Oh, you haven’t blinked. You do that. You think you do, and that’s good enough.
“the kid was practically stuck to your side. had t’pry them off, and only after promisin’ t’not let you wake up alone did they leave. you’re awake now, so i guess my job’s done. later,” he says, stalking towards the stairs. You’re pretty sure he’s still watching you, even with his back turned.
You should probably get up. Find - Frisk. Who? The kid, right. The kid that… Sans? was talking about. Thinking is no better than trudging through mire. Your muscles hardly even twitch at your command. Moving is even worse, it seems. Brain damage? Exhaustion? You try to move again.
The floor is unforgiving, but that’s fair. You hit it with all your unresponsive weight, after all. You raise yourself on your forearms, trembling so hard that your teeth chatter - not that you can feel it, but the lax muscles of your face certainly allow it, and you can definitely hear it, quiet as the house is.
You lay flat on the floor. Question the importance of getting up.
Try again, and again, and again, like a poorly puppeted doll.
When you make it to the door, you realize you’ve forgotten your cloak, but why does that matter? You struggle to open the door, watching your wrist curl and fingers fumble uselessly to exert the right amount of pressure to grab, turn, push. Snowflakes flutter in on an absent breeze. No, wait - there is a breeze, you think, watching how the stray strands of your hair (it’s short?) flutter recklessly.
It’s not cold. It’s not warm. It’s not much of anything outside, except white. White and cheery and shrill with the laughter of children. Is it nearing Yule? How much time have you lost?
Are you dreaming?
There are monster children tossing and kicking snowballs, ducking behind snow forts, and generally just having fun. An inexplicable grief slams into you, so potent and sudden that it must be someone else’s. You stare at the children, who are laughing, running, scattering, and Toriel frowns after them - who?
A human child joins the fray. That’s one of Kindness’ sweaters. They must be warm. Though their gaze is hooded, their cheeks are flushed, and for some reason you cannot merge those two distinct characteristics. The softness. The manic glow. The two shades of red, intertwined, nearly indistinguishable.
The child is standing before you. It’s quiet. The other children hang back, not quite wary but hesitant, still. Their parents, or simply watchful adults, linger at the sidelines. Your gaze doesn’t shift from the child, though. “Frisk,” your mouth says.
They look up at you expectantly. Or, you think they do. Are you supposed to say more? You’re not sure. You’re not sure. Why is everything so fuzzy ? The snow should be fluffy, a little damp, strikingly cold. You glance down. Your socks are sodden. Your breath doesn’t mist. Your legs are trembling with the effort to keep you up without recognizing which way is up or down or sideways.
The snow is all around you. Your gloves sift through it, but it’s not enough. You need - to feel it? To feel something. You peel off your gloves. No, you try to. It’s difficult. Frisk is gripping your hands. No, no, sweet child, you can’t touch my hands. They’re cursed, see?
Frisk is staring at you. No, Chara is. Who’s Chara?
“Snap out of it,” they say. Out of what? “You’re acting crazy. I think I would know it. What’s wrong with you?”
A lot, you don’t say. This time. You’re not sure which thoughts are being said; it’s hard to tell. They look strikingly like Determination with those eyes, hard yet bright. The momentary resemblance latches onto a memory and thrusts it forward: magic requires balance, an equal exchange; blessings and curses are merely two sides of the same coin.
It was a joint lesson. Your heart was threatening to beat out of your chest, pride warring with distrust. Why would you of all your soulmates be taught alongside the Chosen Child, even if only for this one lesson? Yet, you couldn’t help but burst at the seams with satisfaction. You were chosen, not anyone else. You were worthy.
Determination’s mentor was a stern woman with steel in her posture, her one good eye, her very demeanor. She could snap you like a twig. “You wonder why you are here,” she said, not asked, never asked. You didn’t know this woman. She was Determination’s mentor, meaning you rarely, if ever, saw her. She was a busy woman. A strong leader, with more important responsibilities than you. Even as your mentor nodded reassuringly at you, the cold crept into your bones.
“Determination. Perseverance. Opposite ends of the spectrum, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega; as you both well know, the spectrum is no mere line, but a circle, connected, a never-ending cycle. Determination and Perseverance are a mere frequency apart in Blessings. Why ,” she commanded, voice like a steel claw ripping the answer from your chest.
“Because we reach our goals no matter what, Madam,” answered Determination.
“Because we continue no matter what, Madam,” you answered.
She did not nod. She did not move in the slightest, her cold expression unwavering. “The divergence in your Blessings is the conduit. Determination draws its power from the absolution of its goals. Perseverance draws its power from the pursuit; not the completion, the success, or the failure, but the continuation. Under specific circumstances, either soul will persist past its boundaries. Carve this lesson into your memories. Brand it upon your soul. You will not give up. It goes against your very being. You will drain the magic from your veins. You will burn your soul to ashes. Do not put yourself in the path of the impossible, because you will tear yourself apart to make it possible. Understand. Remember. Heed. ”
“Yes, Madam.”
Once upon a time, you wished you were a Determined soul, rather than a Persevering. Then, at least, you could choose. You are dead, but you continue to live. It’s all you know. Survive. Persist. Persevere. The Determined obtain what they want. The Persevering make do with what they have. The Determined begin , and lead , and change . The Persevering continue , and remain , and are changed.
The Determined bend the world around them.
The Persevering -
(Your lungs shrivel and expand and wilt and blossom and your skin wrinkles and peels and deteriorates and smoothes and knits and pales and your heart stops and thickens and beats and thins, gossamer, frail, stubborn, PERSISTENT.)
You cup Frisk-Chara’s face and whisper, “I’m sorry.” They’re staring at you with something like horror. Right. You remove your hands. People don’t like your hands. Wretched things, they are. All you touch is death. All you touch dies.
“Are you okay?” A monster child has approached you. He has no arms, but this doesn’t stop him from living his life. To live is to persevere.
“No,” you reply, honest. “But I will PERSEVERE, as always.”