Stomach Bug

by m0onyknightey

Summary:

"A horned goat stood in the doorway.

"Satan." I thought.

He was easily eight feet tall. His eyes were red, his fur a stark white. His horns curled and twisted. This was a creature that parents told tales of to frighten their children at night. This was the thing hiding under your bed and in your closet. This was the devil that had haunted me from the day I first set foot on this world. This was a monster."

Chara arrives in the Underground. Every single bone in their body is broken from the fall. Recovery will not be easy, or quick. It may not even be possible. Can Chara find a family regardless? And when the time comes, what would they do for them?

or basically, a Canon Compliantish recap of Chara's backstory prior to the events of UNDERTALE.

Chapter 1: Is this heaven?

Summary:

The Prologue.

I am in pain.
I feel the cold, hard concrete on my face.
The flowers do little to soften my fall.

Spiders, Worms and Rats have all been poured into my stomach. And they are running wild throughout my body. They jab and needle at me. They try to come screaming out of my mouth. They try to push water down my eyes, but the dam is strong enough to hold them. Everything you did to me. Every way you’ve burned me. Punched and kicked at me. I ignore them. I ignore the creatures in my stomach. I ignore the searing pain from bite after bite stabbing my chest. They want to get out. I want so desperately to let them out, but I can’t. It's not fair.

I opened my eyes.
When I woke up, the first thing I felt was anger.
The plan had failed.
I was alive.

The bed I was in was warm. Yellow light hugged the walls of the room. There were toys thrown everywhere along the floor. Little red cars and jenga pieces scattered like a mosaic. The first thing I smelt was pie, cooling off in a room just out of reach.. I closed my eyes and felt content. Maybe this was heaven after all?

I heard a creak of the door, and I saw something that proved to me that this wasn’t heaven at all. I was as far from heaven as I could get. This was hell, and the thing behind that door was the Devil himself.

A horned goat stood in the doorway.
"Satan?" I thought.

He was easily eight feet tall. His eyes were red, his fur a stark white. His horns curled and twisted. This was a creature that parents told tales of to frighten their children at night. This was the thing hiding under your bed and in your closet. This was the devil that had haunted me from the day I first set foot on this world. This was a monster.

It did not know I was awake. I allowed it to continue under the impression that I wasn’t. I didn’t know why it was keeping me alive, but I had to make sure it didn’t get whatever it was after.

He- No, it. It walked into the room, humming. The song sounded childish. It reminded me of a nursery rhyme. This sick demented thing was playing some sort of game here. It began to pick up the little toys strung across the floor. Why on earth would such a thing have all these childrens toys? A child’s play place, in a place like this? Disgusting. It picked the pieces up and put them away in a little box of toys in the corner.

The room was baked in warm yellow light. The creature walked over to me.The spectre of fear clung to me. I felt some bug clawing its way out through my eyes. The monster raised its hand.

I clamped down with my teeth, biting it as hard as I could.

Chapter 2: Do I deserve a Family?

Summary:

The real beginning.

Despite that negative first impression, I actually took to the whole “monsters” thing faster than you’d expect. I suppose I had bigger things to worry about than whether monsters were real. I had spent enough time with humanity to know under no uncertain terms that “monsters” were as real you could get.

The first few days were the hardest. Apparently, monsters could perform some kind of magic. Healing magic included! Lucky me. I suppose that explained why I could feel my spine at all, but it didn’t do much to improve my spirits. I was told that it would be a lot of work to get better, and that I had enough physical problems before the fall that would make recovery even more difficult than the monumental task it would have already been.

However I was told this by some yellow lizard in a lab coat, so I wasn’t sure if I could really trust its medical opinion. I did trust its opinions on anime though. It was wearing a Mew Mew shirt. That made me smile.

It told me I would need a cane and possibly a wheelchair for the rest of my life. This didn’t surprise me very much.

At first, even the slightest movement was agony. The peace I had felt when I first awoke had very quickly evaporated. Everything hurts. Always. Lying there, all I could manage to think about was the fall. It was thrilling. The wind rushing down my back. The fire in my SOUL. I had always been told that halfway down the fall, I would regret it, but all I can remember is how good it felt to think I was dying.

I was told it was horrifying. My bones jutting and jabbing out like spikes. The golden flowers ran red. I’m told there was a snap so loud that everybody living in Home (apparently the name of this area. Creative.) could hear it. Good.

The monster who told me this was named Asgore. It could not have a more “I eat children for fun” name if it tried. It was the same monster I had mistaken for the devil. It seemed far from it, despite the evil name. There was a regal vibe to it. It was old, almost impossibly so. There was a look in its deep red eyes that spoke of time and of heartache. It had lived a very long life. Like me, it was ruined. Like me, it had seen things that no man ever should. I think we understood each other in that way.

Its family was different.

Asgore’s wife, Toriel, was a mother. There was no other way to describe it. It was exactly the type of mother you’d see on some boring family sitcom. Unconditionally loving and kind. As if there could ever be such a thing. It smiled at me, sometimes. I don’t know why. I wish it would stop. It scares me more than any of them. I don’t need to be babied. I’m suicidal, not nine. And it had a very annoying habit of trying to make me eat snails. Its fur was too white, too clean. I didn't like it.

But the one I hated the most was their son, Asriel. It was a year younger than me. Eleven. A little goat thing. It looked squeamish and afraid. I could make lunch meat out of the twerp.

It looked like a scared little puppy and a deer in the headlights. It's fur was scattered and messy. It's eyes were frightened and darted constantly. It was afraid of me. Funny.

 

“Howdy.” was the first thing it said to me. How corny. This kid was a real loser.
“I'm Asriel.” It said.
“Greetings. I am Chara.” I said. It seemed nervous. What are you afraid of, demon?

“I'm real sorry.” It said. This confused me.
“What for?” I asked. “We've only just met.”
“Well it's just.. if I'd found you sooner, you might feel a little better is all. Maybe the doctors could have done a bit more. I'm sorry I didn't.” Asriel replied.

Suddenly I was horrified. I had imagined it was some older thing that found me. This was just a kid. I imagined him seeing me, laying there, covered in my own blood. I imagined him hearing the snap. He was just eleven.

“Don't feel bad.” I said. “If you had not found me, I would be dead. You could not have known any better.” For the first time since entering the Underground, I smiled. “Thank you, Asriel.”

He looked at me and beamed. He looked delighted. “I hope we can be friends.” He said. I realised I had started calling it a “he”. Maybe I was right to.

I reached out my hand to him. “Yes. Let us be friends, Asriel.”

This was the first time in my life that I had ever made a friend.

For a moment in my head, there is quiet. Nothing wriggles or moves at all. Maybe I could find heaven here, after all?

I am in pain.
But I will get better.

I close my eyes and find myself suddenly chained. I’m tied to a bed. I cannot move an inch. Everything is dark. The only light in the room comes from something standing far away. Its glowing eyes, a crimson red, light the room. It looks like something pretending to be human but off, just slightly. One eye is a little bigger than the other. A tongue, ever so slightly too long and just a little bit too sharp. A frown hanging to one side, just the tiniest bit. A hand with fingers too long, too much of a bend, but still close enough. Close enough to register as a human. An almost perfect replica. An approximation of a human being. It stares directly at me. Then it grins, and I realise;
It looks just like me.
“I am the demon that comes when you call its name.” It said, its eyes are a shade red brighter than my own. I do not answer myself.

Two weeks after first arriving, I left the bed for the first time. Toriel lifted me up, and placed me in a wheelchair. It was the most painful four seconds of my life. I threw up on the floor.
Toriel, to her credit, does not judge me for it. She dutifully cleans my vomit from the floor. “You are brave, my child.” She tells me. I do not believe her.

I have come around somewhat to Toriel. The moment that I changed my mind about her was when I first pissed the bed. This happened several times. I could not leave the bed to go to the toilet. And I am plagued by such terrible dreams. I almost always awake drenched in it. I am disgusting. A rotten, horrid thing.

But Toriel does not judge me for it. “Let me get you some fresh bedding, my child.” She says, and that is that. There is no condensation in her voice. I was wrong about her. She is nothing like my mother. And perhaps snail pie was not as bad as I had expected. Perhaps.

Asriel often wheels me around the house. I am still weak, and I often tire after just a brief time away from the bed, but it is better than nothing. Probably.

I am beginning to get a sense for the layout of this place. 3 bedrooms, a bathroom and a basement that Asriel describes as “weirdly long.”, however I have not been down there. There are stairs.

The living room is very homely. It radiates warmth. I had never thought a place like this could exist. Toriel often sits, knitting in her chair. Asriel cuddles by the fire. Asgore often comes and goes. He is apparantley the King of The Monsters. I can see why they would have chosen him. He is old and he is kind. When he is here, we speak often. Sometimes, we play chess. I normally win, but he is not a bad opponent. I tried to play Asriel and he lost the game almost as soon as he lost interest in it.

I sat by the fire with Asriel. It was a comfort. My eyes began to droop. For a moment, I forgot that every part of my body ached.

“What was it like, Chara? On the surface, I mean?” Asriel asked me.
I do not know how to answer this.
“Its a beautiful place.” I lied. “In the town where I came from, there were these beautiful flowers. They were golden, and shining. I used to like to lie in them, when things on the surface became too much. There was a bed of them, under the shade of a tree by a lake. The water was so clear, you could see a perfect reflection of the sky in it. Sometimes, if you were lucky, if the stars were just right, the sun would rise over the mountains and the golden flowers would shine like heaven's gate itself, and you could almost swear the world had stopped spinning for a moment. Just one. Just a little slice of eternity, in a glade of flowers under a perfect blue sky. I think I would like to be buried there, when I die. I want to lie in heaven for eternity. Its a beautiful place, Asriel. You would have loved it there.” I found that by the end of my speech I was telling the truth. The surface could be truly breathtaking.

Asriel stared at me in awe.
His eyes shone like the golden flowers from my home.
“Wowie.” He said.
“What does it feel like? The sun?”

Soon enough, Toriel brought us some warm tea, and sat down with us. I noticed from the corner of my eye that Asgore had stopped reading over some kingly document or other and he too began to listen. They hang on my every word with bated breath.

I tell them about snow as white as their fur. I tell them about how my sister and I used to hide in the cupboard from the terrible sounds of a thunderstorm. I tell them about the old willow tree at the foot of the mountain, where two lovers had carved their names a century ago, and how the markings still remained today, even though the couple were long since dead. I tell them of rivers and lakes and the sun and the moon and I tell them about stars. Shining, beautiful, stars. I hope they get to see them someday. I hope there’ll be stars when I go.

They listen to me. For the first time in my entire life, there are people who listen to me. Happy to hear me come out of my shell, happy to hear me tell a story. Happy that I am here. By the time I had finished, I found that there were tears running silently down my face. Asriel was crying too. I could almost weep for him then, thinking of how sad it must be to have never even felt the sun on your skin. I hope he gets to feel it someday. I’d shrivel up and die to let him feel it, for just a single moment. I really would.

My health improved rapdily over the weeks following. I found myself spending hours at a time away from the bed. I was smiling and laughing with Asriel almost every day. It didn’t quite feel real. Had I died after all? Was I lying now among those golden flowers? Was this my heaven? It must have been.

I take my first step a month from the day Asriel had asked me about the sun. I was leaning on a walker. It drained the life from my blood to walk. My spine screamed at me to stop. A vision of my father flashed into my head. Then I looked up, and I saw Asgore watching me. His eyes seemed to brim with pride. I walk, just a little farther. I want him to be proud. I make it from the dining room table to the sink, before I just can’t walk any farther. I collapse, and Asgore is there to catch me. I knew he would.

The next months passed without incident. For the first time in my life, I dream of good things. It had been months since I had dreamed of spiders or bugs or the thing that isn’t me.

I evolved from a walker to a cane on my 13th birthday. I could just about walk by myself then. I often grew tired from even the shortest of journeys, but it is better than it was. The yellow anime lizard, apparently second in line as the Royal Scientist, returned to give me my cane. I like it.

It is made of wood. Calloused and old. It curves in a hook around my hand. If I could walk without it, I could swing it around like I’m part of some pantomime performance. Apparently, real surface wood is very hard to come by, but after hearing the story I had told about the ex lovers and the willow tree, Toriel and Asgore paid top dollar to get me a cane made of real willow. It is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. I do not tell them the cane is really oak.

I moved my knight to take Asgore’s rook.
“Easy mistake, silly.” I jabbed at him.
Asgore chuckled. “Yes. I am off my game today, it appears.”
“How come?” I asked him. I had assumed it was probably just King stuff or something. Maybe the monster taxes got out of hand. Haha.
“Its just that- Chara, child. I wonder about your parents. You never speak of them.” He says, unaware that he had just shot me in the head. It is a natural thing to wonder, I suppose. I was surprised he had waited as long as he had. Maybe he had hoped that I would mention it myself. There wasn’t a hope in hell of that.
I think he had noticed how long I remained silent. I think he wanted to make it easier for me. “I understand if you do not wish to speak of the matter. You must miss them dearly, I am sure.”

I could have laughed. “No.” I said. “I do not.”
Asgore seemed confused by this.
“What do you mean, child?” He asked.
I didn’t look him in the eye. For the first time in months, I felt the bugs in my chest. I was very, very afraid. “I did not fall down to the Underground.” I said. “I jumped.”

Asgore did not know how to respond to this. He seemed completely lost for words. I continued.

“I remember my parents very well. My father had never been a happy man. He did not like his wife, and she did not like him. He was your classic deadbeat, really. Halfway down a bottle and halfway through a divorce. I remember a day, while he had sat there watching fucking porn on the television, I knocked over a can of beer. Just one. We had a lot of them. So, so many. He wouldn’t have known it was gone if he hadn’t saw me knocking it. He locked me in the basement for three days. No food, no water. Just the cold and wet floor, with the spiders and the worms and the rats. They were hungry, the rats. They ate my clothes and bit my skin a thousand times. My mother did nothing, but she came down with a belt when she heard me weeping at night. I was six years old. For the first twelve years of my life, I was not allowed to live it. I was not allowed to be a person. I hated my parents. I still hate them, really. But nobody ever believed me when I told them. “I don’t think they would do that.” “Every child hates their parents.” “Stop lying.” I was told that hating them was unjustified. That it was childish, but the truth is it was justified from the day I was born. The scars of their needling prickling little hands have molded me from the start. All I am and all I have ever been is a monument to their sins.

Asgore, there are things I miss about the surface. There are. The sun, and the sea, and the sky, and the stars, and the beautiful golden flowers where I used to lie to heal my bruises. But the one thing that I do not miss is humanity. I loathe every single human I have ever met. Despite the fact that I can barely walk or move without being in pain, life is so much better down here. Humanity is a disease, and the kindness you and your family have shown me is the cure. The truth is, I would far rather be a monster than a human being.”

Asgore held me for a long time without speaking.
When he did, he spoke with purpose.

“Your foundations are strong, child. Stronger than the brick and stone that they might have placed there. You will endure. You are more than what has happened to you. I know you are strong, child but you are wrong about a single thing. Humanity. You have held your vermin and venom within you. You have remained kind. That is as much humanity as your parents' sins are. You have endured disability and abuse and so much more that I am likely unaware of. You are one of the strongest people I have come to know in my very long life, child. I have come to love you as my own.” He said.

I wanted to cry, but something in me couldn't quite manage it. I wasn't human enough, I suppose.

I dreamt of it again, that night. The thing that was almost me.
There was a spider in its eye. A worm dangled from its nostril. It was chewing on a rat. I watched it, chained to my bed as it chewed. Loud, wet and slobbering chewing, like nails on chalk. Its red eyes were the only source of light in the room. It was just quite dark enough that I could not make out anything with any true clarity. It was the impression of myself, rather than the real thing.
“Greetings. I am Chara.” It said.
“I know.” I replied.
“I am the demon that comes when you call Its name.” It said.
“Guess I won’t, then.” I replied.
It smiled at me. It seemed to have one too many teeth. I could not be sure.
“You will.” It said. “Eventually you must. All you are is a monument to their sins. And it is crumbling. When it falls, who gets caught in the crossfire? Would you turn your new family into mourners? Transform your new parents into people who are grieving, angry and bitter? Yes. I believe you would. You are a poison, Chara. It has been crossed in the stars for eons. You will falter, and your ghost shall haunt the narrative of these puny little monsters. You shall ruin everyone who has ever loved you. It is only natural. You’re human, after all.”

It clamped down with its teeth, my yellow fangs, as hard as it could onto the head of the rat it had been devouring. It pulled with our teeth, until the head was ripped clean off.

It was a greasy thing. Dark liquid spewed out onto the floor from its neck. Like a faucet it ran, leaking, and pouring, and drowning until eventually it rose to my bed. Then higher. It rose until it hit my neck and I was plunged in the blood of the dead rodent. It was sticky and green and it smelt like the cellar in my father's aging home. It was cold.

I woke up late. I took my cane from the side of my bed and I limped out into the hall. I walked out to the kitchen and I collapsed in Toriel’s knitting armchair. The entire family were talking at the table. They were laughing over breakfast. Smiling and chatting like it was another day in paradise. We were trapped here, in the underground. I would never see the sun again. But that's okay. I realised that didn’t matter at all. What mattered was right here, eating at the table. I smiled at them. My family.

“Good Morning, Mother and Father.” I said.