Chapter Text
If it pleases.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, these meetups always remind me of a single moment from my childhood. It’s not a particularly important moment contextually, but in terms of the feelings it keeps coming back. I don’t know when it was, but sometime when I was just learning to read (which took longer for me than other kids, admittedly) Dad took me and Asriel into the basement of our old house, and showed us the mushroom garden he’d been cultivating. From floor to ceiling the dank darkness shimmered in a starry sky of the glowcaps that he had raised carefully from nothing but dung and worms. Asriel and I marvelled, and Dad beamed, and I turned to him and asked what it had taken. He had tapped his snout, with a goofy grin.
“Hard work, and a little bit of secrecy, Krissy,” he rumbled low, “because if your mother found out that this was what I was wasting the basement space on, she’d kill me!”
Asriel and I would go down into the basement regularly, when Mum was away, and we’d sit together in the darkest corner, and I would nestle into my big brother’s reassuring frame, and we’d make up stories of the constellations Dad had grown for us down there in the dark.
Why Are You Telling Us This?
I don't owe you an explanation. You asked for a chat, I gave you something to chat about.
“Kris? You okay there honey?” The timid little voice to my right whispered, squeezing my hand in the dark. I squeezed back, and rubbed my head against the ridiculously green hat that he insisted on wearing, to let him know that I was okay. As I did so, he giggled, and I could almost see him blush, glowing like a little red star in the darkness.
“Lame.” Grunted the significantly less timid voice to my left, who’s grip on my hand was always so firm as to render it impossible to tell what was a squeeze. I got the feeling that my oafish queen was significantly more scared of the dark than I or my little sir.
“D-Don't be m-mean, Susie! Kris has to go early today, so you have to be extra n-nice!” the little voice said searchingly, looking for my face in the dark. You would think for a creature that spent his whole life in the darkness, my fluffy baby boy would be able to see through it for shit. In affirmation, I pressed my thumb into the backs of their hands. They knew my codes well by now.
“Oh, yeah...sorry Kris,” Susie said, leaning down to nuzzle the top my head, her self-consciousness shining in her hesitance, her excitement obvious in the pounding of her heart, almost deafening to my careful ears in the quiet of the supply closet.
If it wasn’t obvious to an observer, I don’t like to talk. I can talk. I do talk. I don’t like to talk. I don’t like noise, in general, but more than anything I hate my voice. It never sounds right in my mouth, no matter how I’m feeling. It never feels like my voice, it feels as though someone else is speaking through me. I prefer gestures, and my sweethearts know this. A squeeze of the hand. A peck on the cheek. A stroke of the hair...They understand it all. It’s rare that I am understood. The last person to truly understand me left me here alone, and though I am surrounded by people who love me…
No one understands.
No one but Susie and Ralsei.
My beloved heroes.