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You wake up, and your heart is thundering.
There’s a heaviness in the back of your throat that doesn’t go away when you swallow, pressure in your guts that increases when you roll to your side. Heat rises at the back of your mouth, the scouring acid of bile, and you swallow again. Any minute now your mouth is going to flood with that awful too-thick spit and then it will be too late.
You open your eyes and regret your decision instantly. Every tiny detail of your and Asriel’s bedroom seems to swamp your optic nerves all at once, a visual avalanche that sends your skull clanging with migraine warning signs. Fear and disgust roil through you. You close your right eye to try to cut down on the amount of input you’re getting. It doesn’t help much.
Fiery bile builds at the back of your throat again, and you’re reminded that you can’t just lie here frozen; you kick off the covers inelegantly and push Asriel’s arm off your side, staggering to your feet. The sheets feel scratchy on your bare legs; the wooden floorboards are sharp on the soles of your feet. In dancing awkward steps, you flee the bedroom and run down the hall through the foyer and living room until you’re in the kitchen.
Dread washes over your whole body, again and again and again, pounding you like the hapless shoreline; you brace yourself over the sink and fumble with the faucet. You’ve barely got your hair back in time before your body pushes out a mouthful of nasty heavy stomach acid; eyes and nose stinging, you stay hunched over the sink while you dry heave. Nothing else comes up, though hot sweat beads on your face and your chest and your arms and your back, dripping down your defenseless skin like something crawling. It’s the boon of monster food, or one of them; somewhere between your stomach and intestines your body absorbs it completely, leaving behind nothing solid. Keep it down for a little while and there’ll be nothing to throw up.
Your guts’ mutiny subsides as your headache spikes. Eyes half closed, hands shaky, you scoop water from the pouring faucet to rinse your mouth, then spit and repeat the process. The sense of dread won’t go away.
Reaching to turn the faucet off, you hear the click of Asriel’s nails on the floor behind you; shame and frustration join existential terror from nowhere at the realization that you must’ve woken him up in your messy flight.
“Chara?” Your partner’s voice is sleep-muzzy. You wipe your mouth weakly before you turn your head to look. Asriel is bleary-eyed and muss-furred still, but he pulled on a fresh pair of boxers before coming to chase you; these are dull purple with a garish pink star print that would hurt your eyes if their backdrop were any brighter. “Bad dream?”
You turn your body too, leaning against the counter to spare your shaky knees while you free up your hands to sign. Don’t remember. Your throat hurts too much to speak; words seem like so much effort, too, an insurmountable sheer cliff face. Don’t think so, you append. I ought to be having flashbacks by now if it were.
Asriel nods, seeming to take this in. “Panic attack, then?”
It’s likely, and it fits—you’ve been rudely woken by your neurons all choosing to fire on you at your most vulnerable before. So you nod. You feel scraped raw, worn down.
“Okay,” Asriel says. “Let’s get you cleaned up and dressed, and take it from there.”
You nod again.
The shower spray turns out to be too much for your overly sensitive skin, like pounding needles on your back, so you wet a washcloth and wipe the sweat off with that instead. You drink water only, and in small quantities; you pick your clothes for comfort: Soft boyshorts with the softest of your wash-and-reuse cloth pads you can seek out by touch in the drawer; boxers, and that nebula-colored t-shirt Prase gave you with the red dagger across the front and the spray of stars. You cram your gloves into your boxer pocket, and clip your knife in its sheath to your waistband. It’s not like you need them for anything, but it makes you feel better to be armed.
Mutely you pick your way through your medication, slow, careful to avoid provoking your innards. Then you pick up your mp3 player, put your earphones in, and clamber into Asriel’s lap to close your eyes and press your face and arms into his soft belly fluff while you let the steady rhythms and bass of your chiptune library forcibly shut off your higher thinking and blank out your other senses.
The sense of dread, of foreboding, that insistence that something somewhere is horribly wrong isn’t banished completely, which is odd, but the continued stimulation of hearing and touch has beat it back to a tiny kernel in the base of your spine.
You’re not sure how long it’s been when Asriel taps your arm lightly, but you pull out your earphones and look up at him anyway. (Your eyes don’t hurt when you look at him—at least there’s that.) He holds up his phone, which is buzzing gently in his big hand. Caller ID says it’s Asgore. You hit stop on your mp3 player and sit up, frowning.
“Dad?” Asriel is already saying.
“I apologize if I have woken you,” Asgore replies. (So it hasn’t been that long, you decide; he wouldn’t be apologizing if it were past noon, say.) “But I have important news that I think you must hear.” A slight pause. “Is Chara with you, my son?”
“They’re here,” Asriel affirms. “Dad, what’s this about?”
Your insides knot themselves in the silence before the former king speaks. “A few hours ago, another human child arrived in the old Ruins,” he says.
Asriel whistles as you press your mouth tightly closed, uneasiness mounting for reasons you can’t quite put a finger on. “That makes—seven now, doesn’t it? I’ll give Prase one thing, it sure didn’t take us much time at all to get as many humans as we’d need souls to break the Barrier. What are they like, Dad?”
“A girl,” he says, “perhaps slightly older than Chara when they first came.” He is silent for a while. “She is… in a state of heightened agitation, even distress. Your mother and I attempted to convince her to stay with us for the time being until she has her bearings living in the company of monsters, but she refused. We, ah, attempted to dissuade her. She would not listen. Tori and I tried to be careful in handling her—she appears to be under a great deal of stress—but she was not in a fit state to listen.
“She does not want to stay. She intends to leave.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s not too much of a problem,” Asriel says, blithe, obtuse. “There’s plenty of places here where she could find a place to live if she doesn’t want to stay in Home.”
“Asriel,” you say quietly. “Asgore doesn’t mean that the human wants to leave Home. She wants to leave the underground.”
Asriel freezes, then looks at you with an expression of unease.
“We attempted to stall her so that we might explain about the Barrier, but she would not have any of it,” Asgore admits readily.
The sense of foreboding in your belly gets stronger. “Why weren’t you able to block her way?” you ask. Something tells you that you already know the answer.
“She is armed, and though not outwardly aggressive, she is very willing to fight if pressed,” Asgore says. “She carries what our knowledge of modern human culture would have us understand is a ‘gun’.”
“Toriel,” you manage to choke out, certainty gripping you.
“She is all right,” Asgore tells you steadily. He’s not an adept enough liar to conceal something so serious from you, and for a moment confusion snakes around you like vines, your head throbbing. “As am I. We were with the human the whole way from where we discovered her among the flowers beneath the entrance; she has not harmed any other monsters, either.” He pauses. “But I knew that you must be alerted, so that you may explain the situation to the rest of the underground. She must be stopped, and calmed, and the situation made clear to her, before mistakes are made.”
“Dad,” Asriel says. “What aren’t you telling us?”
He is silent for a long while. In the background you hear Toriel’s voice saying Give the phone to me, Gorey, and while you hear the rustling of receivers changing hands, some of the knots tied in you undo themselves, leaving you breathing easier than you have all day.
“Hello, my children,” Toriel says, sounding tired.
“Hi, Mom,” Asriel says. “What is Dad not telling us?”
“The human is not to be trifled with,” she tells you. “She fired her weapon once—into the air, no one was harmed—to demonstrate her own seriousness, and your father and I stepped back because we both realized that she would attack directly if she felt cornered.” She pauses for a while. “She is a very young child, and so I do believe that the circumstances must be complicated, but… Asriel, Chara, you must know what it is you have on your hands here.
“This human has LOVE.”
Asriel looks up at you listlessly. “Chara, what are we going to do?”
It’s been several minutes since you got off the phone with your parents-in-law. Unable to stay seated any longer, and no longer so overloaded that the floor beneath your feet makes your skin crawl, you’ve gotten up to pace around the living room.
You take a deep breath. “Asgore and Toriel have sealed off the old capital,” you say. “The monsters there are safe. We’ll have to alert Undyne and the Royal Guard. Have Rufus stay in Snowdin instead of reporting for work in Hotland or Waterfall—she may respond better to a human than to a monster. Everyone knows well enough what humans look like to not mistake this one for a monster child, but just in case, send out a message for civilians to keep a safe distance and not aggress unless absolutely necessary.”
When you look up, Asriel is frowning at you. “Chara, are you seriously planning to put the whole underground on lockdown?”
“Not yet,” you answer readily. “Not unless she tries anything. But until we have this situation dealt with, I would rather get precautions in place.”
Asriel’s eyes fill with gentle reproach, prickling at your temper. “Chara, if this is about the human having LOVE—that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There’s all kinds of situations where she might not have had a choice. She might regret it.”
“She might not,” you retort, a little sharper than you might ordinarily.
“Mom and Dad have LOVE,” Asriel goes on, relentless. “Gerson has LOVE. It was a war, yeah, but they still killed people. They wouldn’t hurt anyone else if they had the choice. I bet she’s just scared and confused. Give her a chance, Chara.”
You sigh. “Asriel, when I was a frightened, confused, angry child, you and I planned a mass murder.” He flinches. “You gave me a chance. I didn’t take it. You were right to go behind my back and stop me then, because I did not intend to stop until that whole village was destroyed and everyone in it dead.”
Asriel is silent. He vaguely understood, you’re sure, what the scope of your plans had been back then. But this is still the first time that you’ve ever put it into words this bluntly.
“I want to be careful because I am also human,” you say, trying for gentleness. “We’re a rotten species, Ree. We aren’t as sweet and forgiving as monsters are—we’re many times more likely to lash out when we’re hurt. I’m giving her a chance, in my own way. I’m not ordering her death just because she’s a murderer, and I’m not locking down the whole kingdom until she gives me reason to. But she’s threatened violence already when your parents stood between her and getting her way. Guns aren’t weapons that you can have a friendly fight with. They’re a promise of death.”
Asriel rallies. “She fired into the air, Mom said. I think she must understand that as well as you do, if that’s how she decided to threaten.”
You take a deep breath and sigh. “I just don’t want anyone to provoke her until we have a chance to get things settled, all right? Maybe you’ll get to tell me you told me so, at the end of all this. But until then, I don’t want to take chances. I’m your personal guard, still; Undyne and the others answer to me as much as they do to you. I don’t want to hurt her if we don’t have to, but I also want our people to come out of this safe. Do you understand?”
Asriel makes a face and sighs too. “I guess I do. But I still hope that none of this will be really necessary. We don’t know where or what she came from, but this place can be a home for her, if she’ll let it be.”
That depends more on the new human than you would like it to, but you don’t say that. Instead you cross the room to Asriel in his mother’s old chair, take his face in your hands, and press your forehead to his. “I hope so, too. But we must be ready just in case. You have to make the announcement to the general public—I’ll contact Rufus and Undyne.”
Asriel reaches up to touch your face in return. “All right,” he says. “I’ve got it covered. Don’t push yourself too hard, though, Chara. Remember, you just had an attack a couple hours ago; you’ve got to take it easy.”
You smile weakly. In the worst case scenario, that’s not the only reason you’ll have to conserve your strength, but you don’t say that either. “I’ll do my best.”
“I know that you may be excited about our new guest,” Asriel says, gentle, “but she may be upset and confused. She has a weapon, and if she believes herself to be in danger, she might be tempted to use it. Let’s try to make it so that there aren’t any sad accidents. Hopefully we can clear everything up and settle down again soon.”
He hand-signals you, and you cut the broadcast. Throughout the announcement, his voice was so smooth and confident that even you can hardly believe he was sulking about your tactical approach earlier. You still get nervous on camera, sometimes; he has the charisma and the skill at public speaking to pull addresses like this off on little notice, though. Your teamwork may not quite be at the level of Asgore and Toriel’s, but it still makes you happy to fall into a similar rhythm—him supplying the social skills and good public face, and you playing strategist.
Your own conversations with the Royal Guard were texted, quick, and to the point, settled while Asriel was still getting his equipment set up to livestream his notice to the general public. Knowing that it won’t have taken you anywhere near as long, he looks at you expectantly.
“Undyne says she’s got the four RGs on standby in Hotland, and she’ll ask Alphys to persuade Mettaton to drag his old body out of storage to switch into if we have to.” While your local robotic celebrity adores his new, more humanoid form, its fuel consumption is still pretty heavy, and it’s much more vulnerable to attack. His first form—the one Papyrus likes to call a “sexy rectangle”—is all but immune to physical damage, and he might be able to stop the human if that comes to be necessary.
Asriel makes a face and nods. “How about Waterfall and Snowdin?”
You sigh and lean back, stretching. “Rufus stayed home with the Dogi—they’ve got Doggo and Lesser and Greater Dog with them too. He said he was going to ask Alphys to keep Endogeny in the lab today, though.”
Asriel cringes a little. “Yeah, that… might be a good idea. Endogeny scares you half to death more often than not, and you love dogs. The poor new human would probably be terrified out of her wits.”
You shrug and smile, self-deprecating, because it’s true. The huge, melty, hollow-faced dog amalgam, result of Alphys and her team’s very short-lived experiments as to whether DT could be used to make dying monsters’ souls strong enough to collect and make up for the extra soul power necessary to break the barrier, has the temperament of any other dog mostly but also an unfortunate tendency towards sudden sound and movements that on a bad day can reduce you to a crying shaky wreck.
Getting doggy kisses from a million heads rising from their shadow while you relax is always a perk, though.
“Papyrus may be on duty with them today, which may or may not be a good thing,” you go on. “He’s inexperienced, yes, but he has hairpin control of his magic and he’s learned the art of friendliness at your knee since he was a baby. He might make progress with our intruder where others wouldn’t. On the other hand, if anything happens to him, we won’t even need to worry about the human because Sans will kill us.”
Asriel laughs awkwardly. You let your smile go thin and tense until he clears his throat and falls silent.
“Undyne said that she and Innig will be standing guard in Waterfall—if Innig were to go to Hotland she’d be down a partner since Rufus is in Snowdin, and she and Undyne have been training to fight side by side since Asgore began teaching them in the first place. That should hopefully cover everything, with Home closed off.”
“Now we just… wait, huh,” Asriel says, sighing.
“I’m not steady enough to go out, and until we get things sorted, you’re in danger,” you remind him. “There is one way for the human to make it past the Barrier, you know; Asgore and Toriel are safe from her, but you’re not.”
Asriel looks stricken, as though this hasn’t occurred to him. “Chara, I’m—I’m sure it’s not going to come to that,” he says.
“I’m not sure,” you tell him. “But I really hope it doesn’t.”
The silence that follows your assertion is a long and awkward one. You pick at your nails for a while.
“We’ll handle this,” Asriel says, soft but resolved. “You’ll see. We’ve got to handle this. No one else but us can.”
You nod to your husband. His brown eyes are soft and troubled, almost exactly the same look he once wore when you were trying to convince him of the necessity of your death and many strangers’.
Guilt prickles at you, as it always does when you think of what you nearly did as a child; you shove it away impatiently. Now is not the appropriate time.
“We will do this,” you say, and reach out across the kitchen table to hold his hands in yours. “And we’ll get through it together.”
Asriel smiles slightly, and you feel a little bit better about today.
The nausea and the headache return almost the minute you’ve gotten your knee and ankle braces on and exchanged your boxers for your softest pair of jeans.
You don’t throw up this time, but it’s a near thing, and when your head begins to pound, bright color-shifting spots cross your vision like the swirls you see if you rub your eyelids when they’re closed. Even the comforting cotton of your t-shirt feels like sandpaper along your sides, and you curl up with your arms over your face, your every nerve screaming.
You must make some kind of noise—a cry or a moan or a whine—because Asriel finds you inside a minute, gently scooping you into his arms.
He walks. With your eyes shut you can’t see where he’s headed, but when he sits, you guess absently that he’s chosen his mother’s chair as his perch.
“Did anything set you off?” he asks, low, and you shake your head against his chest, eyes still squeezed shut. Even the open air is like dull razors on your skin, the pain in your head booms and rolls like a storm, and even if you try to crack an eye open, those neon patterns overlaid on your eyeballs block everything else out, preventing you from making sense of Asriel’s sweater right in front of your face. Something somewhere is horribly wrong, something bad is happening, but you don’t even know what it is, so what are you supposed to do to stop it?
“Fuck, this hurts,” you groan into your partner’s chest. “Don’t we have headache medicine somewhere?”
“I can go get some if I know you’ll be all right on your own,” Asriel tells you, gentle.
“Not going anywhere with this migraine.”
He nuzzles the crown of your head for just a moment and says “Okay,” soft and loving. Then he gets up and places you in his seat—you were right about the chair, you realize; you wouldn’t mistake its texture or shape. Click click click go Asriel’s nails, trailing off into near silence as he visits the kitchen. There’s a rush of water, briefly, and then he comes back.
You open your eyes a bare crack and squint at Asriel, holding your hands out; he deposits a pair of fat circular pills in your right palm and helps you fold your left around a glass of water so that you won’t spill it all over yourself and the cushion. Your belly’s still rolling weakly, so you take the pills one at a time.
“I really hope these work,” Asriel murmurs, “because you’re not supposed to take more than two doses of these a day anyway, and Mom’s notes say that more than one a day for you won’t play nice with your other medicine.”
You grunt as he takes the glass back, closing your eyes again. “Whatever these are, they need to go away now. You and I both have better to do.”
Asriel hmms at you, not even reacting to the old inside joke. “We’ve gotten a lot of stress handed to us today, and you know those and panic attacks don’t make a good combination.”
You make a face. “Don’t think these are panic attacks, Ree.”
“They look like one to me—what do you mean?”
“Sensory overload, nausea, migraines, paranoia. Doesn’t fit the usual ‘my brain’s having a fire drill and I feel like I’m dying of a heart attack’ pattern.” And you don’t think that the stress of the human’s appearance is the cause—you proved years ago with Astis that you can handle new humans without going to pieces emotionally anymore. Plus, the first attack was before you got the call from Asgore and Toriel.
Could be exacerbating things, though. It’s always hard to tell when your rickety piece of shit body and brain start acting up.
The pressure of being folded up in the chair still makes your stomach feel unsettled, but the throbbing in your head’s starting to recede, so you risk opening your eyes just a sliver again. The light hurts like a stab wound, but your vision’s not obscured by colorful blobs anymore.
But the sense of wrongness, that unshakable conviction that something horrible is about to happen—that’s not going anywhere.
Asriel gently butts your shoulder with his nose, and you look tiredly down at him. He’s slouched out along the floor, propped up on his arms like a seal. Maybe his huge biceps and broad shoulders can take that kind of punishment, but that can’t be good for his back. Yours hurts just looking at it.
Very gingerly, you slither off the chair and stretch out on the floor next to him so that he won’t have to pretend to be a croissant to look at you. It’s stiff and uncomfortable, but at least it’s cool, and the wood grain no longer sends warning signals off along your skin, so you trace its patterns with idle fingertips. There were only a few spots of blood on your pad when you changed clothes earlier, so you can probably lay here as long as you want without worrying.
Asriel settles next to you with a sigh, folding one arm over your chest so that he’s not touching your abdomen directly and tucking his head down so that his chin presses to the top of your head. You turn your face so that your forehead and nose press into his soft ruff.
“Anything I can do to distract you?” he asks, quiet.
You make a noncommittal noise. “I’m a little messed-up for that right now, Ree.”
He sputters briefly. “That isn’t what I meant, Chara.”
“I know. I was joking.” You sigh. His clothes smell like the strong soap he must have used to clean out the sink earlier; his fur smells like him, though, which you definitely prefer. “We have to listen for the phone. The human’s not going to wait on us.”
“I hope she’s alright. I hope no one’s been hurt.” Asriel sounds uneasy, and exasperated as it makes you that he won’t regard the human as a threat, his worry makes your heart hurt. This is no time for you to be lying around incapacitated. You’ve got to look out for your people.
You push at his arm, trying to sit up, and then your phone’s ringtone blares from inside your pocket, making you both startle. Asriel rises to sit upright, and reaches out to support you while you lift your butt awkwardly from the floor to free the phone from underneath you.
It’s Rufus’ phone. Heart hammering, guts all in a knot, awful conviction closing up your throat, you bat at the touch screen with fumbling fingers until the call accepts.
“Hello?” you rasp out, anxious.
“YOUR MAJESTY!” booms a voice that is definitely not Rufus’ from the other hand. “It is I, your humble servant and Royal Guard in training! The great Papyrus!! How do you do! Is the king there also!”
“We’re both here, Papyrus,” Asriel answers for you. “You’re on speakerphone. What’s happened?”
“I am here to report! That! The human arrived in Snowdin not very long ago! And also that she left very soon afterwards!”
“Is anyone hurt?” you ask, finding your voice. “Where’s Rufus?”
“Ah—” Papyrus’ voice goes awkward for a moment. “Ahem! That is to say there was a slight altercation with the human when we tried to stop her to talk! Perhaps there is something to Rufus’ tales of human police being much less friendly than the Royal Guard, and that is why she was so reluctant to accept our hospitality! BUT!! Everyone is none the worse for wear!”
“Where… exactly is Rufus?” Asriel presses again.
“He is paying off the human’s tab at Grillby’s! Truly he is an excellent Royal Guardsman and an example to us all.”
You look sideways at Asriel, who looks exactly as confused as you.
“What about what a good Royal Guardsman I am?” says Rufus, voice faint and distant.
“AH!! Here he is now!” Papyrus trumpets. “Excellent timing! Now we may make our report together!!”
There’s a great deal of shuffling and bumping, and then Rufus speaks again, much more clearly. “Hey, guys. How’re you holding up over there?”
“Previously worried, currently confused,” you reply. “According to Papyrus the human’s already been in and out of Snowdin?”
“Yup,” Rufus says. “Papyrus and me found her at Grillby’s. Mom and Dad and the other Guards who were stationed in the forest all reported that she didn’t pick a fight with any monsters—everyone was listening to Asriel and keeping a respectful distance. So you can imagine what a surprise it was for us to walk over and find her holding up Grillby’s.”
“Holding up…?” Asriel repeats, your own blank disbelief mirrored in his incredulous tone of voice.
“Like an old Western,” Rufus says. “She was even wearing a cowboy hat. It would’ve been totally and completely dorky if not for the fact that she was pointing a loaded gun at Grillby and his customers.”
You swallow hard. Asriel’s eyebrows come down, a haunted look in his eyes.
“But no one was injured?” you press.
“Indeed! No one was hurt!” Papyrus supplies. “Rufus and I intervened! We engaged in a lively skirmish! I used my blue attacks to keep her in place and impressed on her that holding up a restaurant is a very wrong thing to do!! She said she knew that!”
“So while Papyrus was keeping her busy trying to dodge his spells—and she was incredibly good at it, too, for all that this was the first time she’d seen both blue magic and his attack patterns—I asked her why she was holding up Grillby’s if she knew it was wrong,” Rufus continues. “She said that since she couldn’t pay anyway, she might as well be up front about stealing food instead of trying to eat and run. I distracted her enough kicking snow that Papyrus was able to stun her, and we told her if she was just hungry, we’d treat her. No need for anybody to get hurt. Took a little convincing, but we wore her down in the end.”
“Then what happened?” Asriel asks.
“Then we had lunch at Grillby’s, unbelievably enough,” Rufus says.
“And of course, I told the human that if she was worried about dinner, then there would be no need to fret! For I, the great Papyrus, am always more than willing to whip up a plate of piping hot spaghetti for my friends at a moment’s notice!! She could always come dine at the Gaster residence!!! Nyeh heh heh!!!!” There’s a brief moment of quiet in which you are absolutely sure that Papyrus is striking a winning pose, and despite yourself, you smile. “But… she told us that she could not stay. Not in Snowdin, and not in the underground either.”
“We told her about the Barrier,” Rufus continues for him, more serious now. “Or at least as much as a human with a loaded gun needs to know about it, which is that it’s keeping everyone stuck here. She wanted to go see it for herself, so she left.”
“We also asked her why she could not stay, but… she seemed reluctant to say. So we didn’t pry because that’s not a nice thing to do!!”
“And also because she has a gun,” Rufus adds dryly. “Speaking of, Chara?”
You tilt your head, mystified. “Yes?”
“I’m not an expert, but I do know enough about guns to tell you that the human’s weapon is an old-fashioned revolver,” Rufus says. “The kind with only six shots. Projectiles can cancel out bullets—she’s got a yellow soul, she can do it, and I saw her take aim a couple times during the fight—but she never shot. She looked like she was being careful with her ammo. I don’t think she’s got any extra on her. If she runs out of bullets, she’ll be a lot more harmless.”
“The problem being how to get her to do so,” you say. “But she fired a warning shot back in Home according to Toriel, so she’ll only have five bullets left in that thing as a whole.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Rufus says. “And, you guys? She really does know how to handle that gun. For her to have something like this when she’s somewhere between ten and twelve, someone’s definitely taught her how to use it. So she knows that you’re only supposed to point a gun at someone you’re willing to kill. Whatever weird sense of honor or action thriller oversaturation’s behind her trying to threaten her way into free food instead of stealing… I’m not sure how okay she is. She could be dangerous.”
Especially because she’s killed someone before. It hangs unspoken in the air. Next to you, Asriel grimaces.
“However!!” Papyrus adds. “Even if she isn’t doing okay right now, I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad human!! She still hasn’t hurt anyone yet. I think that perhaps once she understands the circumstances, she should calm down. And then we can all get together for spaghetti!!!”
Asriel chuckles. “Once she gets to have your spaghetti, she’ll never want to leave. You should let Astis and Undyne and me help, if we’re cooking for everybody—Undyne needs the practice so she can stop exploding her and Alphys’ kitchens.”
“Nyeh! But of course!!”
“You two did a very good job,” you tell Rufus and Papyrus. “You defused a potentially deadly situation, and you’ve set the foundation for solving the issue entirely and given us important information that will help us decide what to do from here on out. Thank you.”
“If there’s anything else you need us for, let us know,” Rufus says. “I still really hate sitting on my hands.”
“You can start by explaining the situation to everyone in Snowdin,” you say. “But if the situation changes and we need you to act, we will let you know as soon as possible.”
And, exchanging farewells, you hang up. You rest your phone in your lap and sigh; Asriel sets his hands on your shoulders and kneads them gently.
“It’s progress,” he says, hopeful.
“Is that a pun,” you ask him.
It takes him a second to get it. “Chara. I didn’t mean it to be one.”
You stretch, then slump against his front, letting the gentle rise and fall of his belly as he breathes shift your body. At least your headache and the other residual symptoms of the mystery attack have all but faded entirely.
“Now we just need to keep working on our plan,” you say, curling your toes and relaxing them. “I do wish I were better at playing defensively.”
Asriel wraps gentle arms around you and leans down to nuzzle your ear. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, as he’s been saying all day. “It’ll be okay.”
You close your eyes and don’t argue.
Asriel makes you toast and eggs while you text Undyne and Innig with Rufus’ new information. Your symptoms have subsided for long enough that your body reminds you how you haven’t eaten anything all day; with two attacks so far and their cause still unknown, you’re not willing to risk a large meal or anything that might irritate your stomach. Asriel is more than happy to oblige you with mild things, especially when it means getting anything into you at all.
(You remind him that it’s been several years since the last time you avoided eating for so long you wound up too weak to stand. Gracefully, your partner retorts that this is all the more reason to help you reinforce your better habits, and you shrug because he’s right.)
There are a couple of posts on the undernet about sightings of the human in Waterfall, but no reports of anyone being hurt, or of any fights. You stretch your wrists out and retrieve your current knitting project, doing rows to occupy yourself while Asriel checks his phone and refreshes threads.
You feel the third attack as a mounting rush of pain in your chest even before the headache hits and leaves you gasping. Your needles clack as your right hand clenches around them both, and you grip your yarn tight in your left, too desperate to care just now that you might be undoing hours of work.
Nausea has just started to squirm in your guts when a bright line of heat streaks over your forearm, right across the bulge of the muscle near your elbow. It cuts through the migraine, through your gorge trying to rise, through your senses threatening mutiny, through the worry and suspicion and the horrible thing in your chest that feels uncomfortably, terrifyingly like grief.
You open your eyes, confused, to see that you’ve pulled your knitting almost completely undone, and that your right fist has jerked so that the sharp tips of your knitting needles have opened bright scratches over your left arm.
The scratches start to bead with blood, not even stinging yet, and you look at them, calm and considering. Their immediate pain is far more bearable than the muddled awfulness of your attacks, so you shift your grip on your needles and clench your left fist, opening up three more rows of parallel cuts with the precision that comes of deliberation and experience.
You have only a few moments to look down at them in satisfaction before the first ones start to sting. The beads of blood that rise from them are bright red and swelling with your pulse, threatening to roll down the side of your arm.
Frowning, you lick blood carefully from the ends of your needles and set your mussed knitting aside, where you’re not going to bleed on it. The heat in your arm and the bright noisy pain of the fresh wounds still keep the distant pounding in your temples away, and your nausea and sensory sensitivity are all but gone. If you can avoid ruining your nice shirt, this will have been worth the pain, you think, and lift your arm to your mouth so that you might convince the cuts to seal up with saliva.
Asriel, returning to the living room with a tea tray, notices. Of course he does; he, Prase, Asgore, and Toriel always notice sooner or later when you’ve been self-harming, even when the wounds are a few days old, and these are fresh. To his credit, he sets the tea things down at the table before rushing to kneel before you, gently pulling your arm away from your mouth.
“Chara,” he says, concern and just a bit of reproach in his voice, his eyes wet. You frown at him. Just like his mother, he’s never going to understand why sometimes you need this, why it’s better than the alternative.
“This here was an accident,” you tell him, pointing out the first, deepest scratches. “I was holding my knitting needles when I started to have another attack. I found out that it helps.” You can’t quite keep the reproach from your own voice. “You know that when I’m doing this on purpose, I’m more careful.”
“I know,” Asriel says, sighing.
“Would you mind stopping the bleeding on this one? The others aren’t serious enough to need treatment, and the pain is useful.”
Asriel sighs again, but he traces the cuts with his right thumb, the pad barely grazing your wounds as they close. “This is the third time today,” he says. At least he’s not going to harp on you, even if he doesn’t like your grounding methods. “I’m starting to get scared here, Chara. Can you think of anything at all that could’ve set you off?”
“No,” you tell him. He wipes his bloody thumb off on your jeans, which you’d be annoyed about if there weren’t already-caking drops of blood on there already. At least your shirt’s been spared. “I was just minding my own business, Ree. I was just getting better after the last one.”
He shakes his big head, ears flopping; you reach up and hold them, stroking them lightly between your fingertips. You’re lucky to have a partner who likes getting pet and groomed and tickled, given how fluffy and irresistible his fur is. “I wish the human had picked better timing,” he says. “As soon as we get this settled, I’m taking you right down for Mom and Gaster to look at. Maybe they’ll be able to help somehow.”
You open your mouth to voice your doubt, then close it. Both Toriel and Gaster have done wonders for your varied and sundry health complaints; they may very well be able to do something about this, too. “I hope you’re right,” is all you say out loud.
Asriel leans in to kiss your forehead. “Are you sure you don’t at least want to bandage these up?” he asks.
You make a face and relent. “I still don’t think it’s serious enough to merit it, but I suppose there’s no harm in it.”
Your husband holds his arms out to you, and you scoot off the end of the chair, allowing him to scoop you up as he stands. You lean against his shoulder and nuzzle your forehead into the fur of his cheek as he carries you to the bedroom, only softly whining in complaint when he sets you on the bed to get out the first aid supplies.
His big hands are practiced, his touch gentle. He’s silent as he opens the kit and gets out disinfectant, gauze, bandages, tape; all materials for slow healings or times when no one can spare the magic, or injuries that aren’t serious enough to merit healing spells. For you, they’re also here for the times when you’ve hurt yourself and would rather take care of it on your own than bother Asriel and endure his disapproval.
When you were both much younger, you overheard him protesting to your mother that she shouldn’t let you have first aid materials readily available—didn’t that just encourage you to hurt yourself? Before your shock had even worn off, Toriel had sternly asked him which he would prefer—you being able to take care of your wounds in secret, or being unable to and still hiding them, risking infection. Shaming you and putting your health at risk would only hurt you, and wouldn’t at all help you find healthier ways to ground yourself.
You had thanked Toriel, red-faced and shaking, and then spent ten minutes weeping into Asgore’s chest. Asriel had waited until after you had calmed down to apologize for upsetting you, and then the very next day, he asked his parents to teach him how to use the first aid things.
Now, his touch is both gentle and brisk as he swabs disinfectant over your cuts. It stings, but that helps distract you, so you neither flinch nor whimper. You keep very still except for when Asriel needs you to hold gauze and bandages down; it’s meditative, watching him handle you carefully and competently. It seems calming for him, too, to look after you like this.
You flex your arm a little when he’s finished. The bandages don’t pull or slip. You nod, smiling, and lean in to kiss his forehead in thanks.
Asriel eases you gently off the bed to sit in his lap and kisses the corner of your mouth, cradling you in both arms. You relax into his chest, close your eyes, and listen to his heartbeat up against your cheek, the pulse vibrating through your skin, a steady rhythm to breathe to.
At precisely this moment, Asriel’s ringtone blares from the living room. You both jump.
You cast about to clamber out of Asriel’s lap, but he just lifts you up with him as he stands, rushing from the bedroom and down the hall in huge strides you couldn’t hope to match. He only sets you down when you’re at the table, lowering you in one arm as he picks up his phone with the opposite hand.
“Asriel?” It’s Liron on the other side, hir deep voice smooth but for a faint undertone of something like worry that you don’t like one bit. You grip Asriel’s sleeve.
“I’m here,” he says. “Me and Chara both. What is it? You don’t call me that often.”
“The human came through here,” ze says, brusque. “Undyne and my sister are both hurt.”
You don’t even realize that your legs have given out until Asriel yelps and reaches to bear you up, nearly dropping the phone in the process.
“Asriel?” Liron’s voice seems very, very far away, like the cell reception has suddenly worsened.
“Sorry—I’m still here, sorry,” Asriel says, setting the phone down on the table and lifting you back up into his arms. “Chara just—I think they fainted—Chara, are you okay?”
“I’m conscious,” you manage, brittle. You can’t feel your feet or your fingers, and your head is reeling, your heart feeling as though it’s trying to leap out of your ribcage like your soul does in battle.
“They’re alive,” Liron says. “I’m sorry. I should have said so right away.”
“Gimme the phone, punk,” you hear Undyne demand from further off, and you let your eyelids fall, sinking back against Asriel’s chest with heat building in your eyes.
“What happened?” Asriel asks.
“I fucked up,” Undyne says bluntly. “We decided to try to stop the human and hold her here until you guys could come see her on your terms, or at least escort her to keep her from starting shit on the way. She freaked. I shouldn’t’ve been pushing Innig. She said she’d been feeling headachey and off all day. I ought to’ve tried harder to bench her, but nah, she said she was fine and I left it at that. Stupid of me…” Her voice gets thick for a moment, as if she’s choked up. “That human would’ve dusted me if Innig hadn’t pushed me. Got me in the fin ‘stead of the heart.”
“Oh my god,” Asriel says. “Are you—okay?”
“Gonna have a nice scar to impress Alphys with, probably,” Undyne replies, laughing weakly. “Innig’s worse off. Got hit in the shoulder. No exit wound. Gerson’s getting the bullet out now. We really fucked this up.”
Asriel takes a long, deep, shuddery breath. “At least you’re both alive. The human left?”
“She should be long gone by now,” Liron confirms. “But it gets worse.”
“How does it get worse?” Asriel asks. Then his eyes go round. “She didn’t—”
“Nobody’s dead,” Liron interrupts. “But when Grandfather and I got back to the shop, it had been broken into. The human stole supplies and left the library in a mess—some of my books on ancient runes are missing, and one of the history books was left out on the table. The one with the translation of the runes in the public monuments all over Waterfall.” Ze pauses for just a moment. “The page was open to the part about the Barrier and Boss Monster souls. She knows that killing you is her only way out of here.”
It’s like flipping a switch. Instantly, your veins flood with heat like lava.
“That—that doesn’t… there’s no way that…” Asriel is stammering weakly.
“Liron,” you say in a hard voice that you can barely recognize as your own. “You did well, calling us and letting us know immediately. I’m going to send out a lockdown order. We can get Mettaton and the Hotland guard out. Get to safety and stay there. No heroics. Sit on Undyne and Innig if you have to. We’re not risking you.”
“I’m not letting Innig go out even if she tries to,” Undyne says. “She’s been sick. Liron has too. I’ll make sure word gets out through Waterfall and Snowdin. I will keep these people safe with my life.”
“I need you to stay in a safe place too, as soon as that’s done,” you continue. “We are not risking you. Alphys will have my head if anything happens to you, for one thing—she won’t be able to concentrate on her job overseeing Hotland’s security unless she knows you’re alright. And you’ll need to stay on the phone with her and the rest of the guard to give them orders while Asriel and I decide what we’re doing about the human when she gets here.”
“Fuck. You’ve got a point,” Undyne says. “But, Chara—you and Asriel have gotta stay safe too, you hear? The whole Kingdom of Monsters is counting on you. Our hearts are all beating as one! So you can’t die! You got that?”
You smile, thin and hard. “I have no intention of dying. I will do my best.”
“I’m sorry,” Liron says. “We should have been more careful.”
“It isn’t your fault that the human had the gall to break into your home,” you retort, and sigh. “You must not blame yourself. Take care of yourself, and your family. You’ll hear everything that happens sooner or later, but it is my hope that we will see you soon.”
“Take care,” Liron says. “And good luck.” Ze hangs up.
Asriel holds you bruisingly tight to his chest, staring into space. His breathing is shallow and choppy, his eyes round and glassy, unseeing.
With all the tenderness you possess, you reach up and frame his face in your hands, guiding his head so that he’ll face you.
“Chara,” he squeaks.
You shift against his bicep, leaning up to kiss his trembling mouth very softly.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Ree,” you promise. He quivers where he stands and holds you even closer, tucking your head under his chin for all the world as if you’re the one who needs protection.
You send out the lockdown order over video broadcast, and it’s never been easier to address the whole kingdom. Every time you so much as think of the sheer numbers of people who are watching you, you look at the fear and confusion in Asriel’s eyes and cold anger courses through your veins, a galvanizing force that keeps you upright and your voice steady.
Immediately afterwards, you call Alphys. She picks up on the fourth ring.
“C-C-C-C—Chara?” she sputters on the other end.
“I’m sorry to call you over voice,” you say first off. “I know you’d rather text. But that will take too long, and we can’t afford the delay.”
A brief pause. “O—of course,” she replies, and there’s alarm in her voice but you hear some of your own steadiness in her too. “What d-do you need?”
“Reactivate all the puzzles in Hotland,” you tell her, pacing in a circle through the living room, ignoring the crackles and pops of your knees. “Get your research assistants and monsters you trust to oversee the evacuation to shelters. If Mettaton’s not switched over to his older body, get him on that, and have Royal Guards 01 through 04 report to him. Undyne and Innig have been injured and Rufus is looking after Snowdin, so a lot of things are up to you now.”
“I-I-I see,” Alphys says. “Um—Chara, is Undyne… is she…”
“She’s fine—she said she’ll come out with just a scar,” you assure her. “She said she hopes it will impress you once it’s healed.”
“Oh!” Alphys squeaks. “Well. Uh.”
“I just don’t want to risk her when she’s already hurt,” you say, smiling a bit.
“Oh.” A pause. “I-I guess I’ll! Just have to do my best.” Another, longer pause. “H..how are you and Asriel holding up?” she asks, tentative.
“Ree seems a little shaken,” you explain. “I’m hoping that he’ll be all right soon, though. And I’m—” There’s an instinct in you to lie and say that you’re fine, but perhaps it’s better for you to be open. Alphys has Sans and Prase with her, and if the three of them are going to work with you to defend Hotland, shouldn’t you be up-front with her so that she can make informed judgments? “I’ve been a little ill today, I think. Whatever attacks these are seem to subside quickly, but I hope that they don’t incapacitate me when it comes time for me to act.”
Alphys makes a low, considering noise; it sounds a bit like Prase when they’ve noticed some clue or correlation in an experiment they’re doing, actually.
“Prase mentioned having migraines a few times today,” she says, and you raise your eyebrows.
“Come to think of it… Undyne said that Innig has been sick too.” You frown. “If there’s some sort of cold going through the underground, I don’t suppose it would be too much to hope for that the new human has it too, would it?”
On the other end of the line, Alphys laughs, snorting a little. “P-probably, but it w-would be nice, wouldn’t it? Um, a-anyway, is there anything in p-particular that you want us to keep in mind here?”
“We’re still not aiming to kill the human if we have that option,” you tell her. “Detain if possible, but simply disarming her would be a blessing.” And you pass on the information you had from Rufus about her gun, as well as the fact that she’s used at least two bullets out of six as far as you’re aware.
“I-I see,” Alphys says. “That d-definitely, um. I d-don’t know how much help we c-could be with that, b-but I’ll still d-do my best.”
She falls silent then. “U-um—Sans says he, uh, wants t-to talk to you or t-to Asriel.”
“That’s fine,” you tell her. “Put him on.”
There’s a pause while the phone is passed, and then Sans’ voice is harsh in your ear. “Are Pap and my old man all right?”
“They are,” you assure him. “They’re working with the Snowdin guard to oversee the evacuation right now, in fact.”
A heavy sigh from the other end of the receiver. “Good,” Sans says, sounding much more like himself this time. “That’s—that’s good.”
You shift the phone. “How have you been holding up?”
“Eh. Well enough. It’s not—it’s not, uh,” and a pause long enough to make you frown; “shit, I was gonna try to squish a joke in here, but I forgot it.”
You make a face and shake your head. “That’s all right. I doubt I would have been able to appreciate your humor as well as I ought to, anyway.”
“Heh. Fair enough.” Sans sighs again. “’M better now that I know the rest of my family’s safe. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Dad or my bro.”
“I’ll be doing my best to keep them safe,” you say, trying to keep your voice as gentle and comforting as you can make it. Involuntarily, almost, your gaze flicks towards Asriel. Your partner still looks so lost. Emotion clenches your chest.
“I know you will. Makes our jobs a lot easier, if I’m gonna be honest with ya,” Sans volunteers suddenly. “Me ‘n Alph will hold down the fort ‘s far as Hotland goes. And we’ll have MTT and the guards looking after things too, for what they’re worth.”
“I’ll send word for Gaster and Papyrus to get in contact with you when they’re finished with their duties,” you volunteer, and then you frown. “How is Prase? Would you be able to get them on? Alphys mentioned that they haven’t been feeling well, but…”
“Ah, nah, actually—soon as they recovered from their last headache they ran off down to the basement,” Sans says. “Said they got something they wanna look up. Apparently it’s that important. I don’t think I’ll be able to pry them away, but I can let ‘em know to ring you soon as they’ve got to a good stopping point.”
“All right.” You tuck your hair carefully behind your ear, thinking. “I’ll keep in touch with both of you, but don’t hesitate to call either me or Asriel if there’s something that we ought to know.”
“No problem,” Sans tells you. “Need Alph back for anything?”
You consider. “Not at the moment, no.”
“’K. I’m hangin’ up, then. We’ll hang in there, so you do your best too.”
You smile. “Oughtn’t that be my line?”
“Ehh, maybe,” he replies, suddenly cheeky, “but you sounded like you needed the encouragement.”
“Don’t tease your elders,” you chide, though you’re grinning too.
And, trading a few more gentle potshots, you end the call, stuffing the phone back into your pocket.
You take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and turn. Asriel is still hovering aimlessly in the kitchen. Your smile fades.
He doesn’t turn as you approach, and you clear your throat to announce yourself just in case he’s too far away mentally to have noticed you. “Ree?”
This was apparently a good call—Asriel startles before he faces you. “Oh—Chara.”
His eyes are still a little glassy. You draw closer, reaching up to cup his face in your hands. “How are you feeling?”
“I…” He looks away from you briefly, just a flick of his eyes to the corner. Then he meets your gaze properly, and settles his hands on your back, reeling you in close. You let him. It makes you feel better, steadier, to feel his warmth, the softness of his fur and his clothes. “I’m a little scared,” he says, holding you tight to his chest. You let your hands slide down so that you’ve got your left on his shoulder and your right arm around his waist. Your cheek’s just a little higher than his heart, and you close your eyes to allow his pulse to soothe you. “And I’m also really worried. Chara… what are you going to do about the human?”
“That depends a lot on what the human is going to do, I think,” you reply, working to keep your voice even. “If we can convince her to step down, and as long as she doesn’t do any more harm than she already has, I would like to avoid hurting her if I can. But if she intends to harm you, I can’t forgive that.”
Asriel holds you a little tighter. “I guess… I dunno. She’s just a kid, Char. And I can’t help but think about her like you were at that age, you know? I want us to help her if we can. I’m scared of bad things happening to our people. I’m scared of dying. But…”
You quell your irritation as best you can and make an encouraging noise instead.
“Chara, when we talked about this earlier… you said you meant to… to destroy your whole village, when we were kids. I dunno... I don’t think your feelings, the hatred and resentment that made you want to do that, are bad or wrong. But I’m still glad that I was able to stop you, because taking people’s lives away is… it’s a really serious thing. It’s bad, you shouldn’t do it unless you have no other choice.
“I stopped you then. I… Chara, you’ve made it this far without ever gaining any LOVE. Wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid that now, too?”
“It would be,” you agree. “It would be great if there’s a way to end this with no one killing and no one being killed. But just like you acknowledged yourself, there are some situations where you don’t have a choice. You’ve hypothesized that that’s how it may even have been for the human, haven’t you?”
Asriel huffs. “Well, yeah, but.”
“If the situation arises where it’s kill or be killed,” you say, gentle as you can, “I will kill. Because if it’s her life or your life, your life is more important. To me—to the whole underground. I won’t let you die, Ree. If the only way I can keep you alive is to kill someone, I’ll do it. I can live with that. I know it may not sit easy on your conscience. You’re a better person than me, after all. But even if it makes you hate me, I won’t let you die.”
Your voice wavers only a little on that last sentence. Asriel holds you tighter.
“I won’t hate you,” he says, soft and velvet. His nose presses against the crown of your head. “After all the talking I did about how having LOVE doesn’t automatically make somebody evil… golly, I’d be such a hypocrite to. I’d still love you no matter how much LOVE you gained, even if you did really bad things—the kinds of things I couldn’t forgive. I’m always going to love you, Chara. That was the choice we made—all the years we’ve put into this.”
You shiver a little. Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised that he saw through you, that he could see how scared you really are.
“But I still really hope that it doesn’t come to that, and I think you should try to avoid killing anyone if you can,” he goes on.
“I’ll give it my best effort,” you say into his chest.
His hold on you tightens still further, so much so it’s a little painful.
“Are you okay?” he asks, very quiet.
“I am,” you reply, and try to hug him more tightly too. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” he says, and lets his arms slacken. “We should eat something, even if it’s just little. We’ve got to keep our strength up, for everybody.”
You nod. The ribbed weave of his sweater tickles your forehead. “Once we have… I think we should try to sleep in shifts,” you propose. “Six hours or so each. So that someone will be awake, in case of anything happening—and so that we can wake each other up if that anything needs our attention.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” he says. “Who should go first?”
“I will. That way I’ll have time to do my stretches and things while you’re sleeping, in case I need to be limber.”
When you look up, Asriel is making a face, but he doesn’t argue.
You’re sure you’ve woken up feeling less rested before, but Asriel’s gentle hands shaking you awake just make you want to curl up into his warm body and close your eyes again. Only the thought that he has to sleep too gets you to sit up, and you groan all the way. You’re getting too old for this, you think, and then you try to banish that thought. Talking like you’re middle-aged can wait until this whole mess is settled.
Asriel slouches into the hollow you’ve left in the bedclothes while you sit flat on the bedroom floor and start your stretches. He’s breathing soft and slow not ten minutes later. It occurs to you to be jealous. This, too, is a thought you banish; better for him to sleep untroubled by worry. It’s bad enough that you yourself toss and turn so much.
Your knees and lower back pop when you stretch over them, your shoulders pop when you reach over your head, and your hands pop when you flex them. Stretching out your legs, your joints sound like cereal with milk just poured on. More than once you look guiltily over at Asriel, but he’s dead to the world.
It must have cost him, to stay awake all that extra time. Maybe your idea was the most efficient and practical, but it seems that it wasn’t as kind to your partner as it could have been.
You’ll have to apologize, when it’s time for him to get up. Hopefully you can get this issue taken care of soon; completely disjointing your and Asriel’s sleep schedules to handle the crisis will have lingering aftereffects, you’re sure.
Now. What to do for the next six hours? You need to be ready to spring into action at any time, so just sitting and reading and staring into space is probably not the best option. But that said, you don’t want to roam too far away from Asriel either—in case he needs you, or in case you need to wake him, or in case you need to look at him breathing and remind yourself that he’s alive and needs your protection.
Eventually you settle on making yourself tea and taking brisk walks to pace throughout the house to burn off energy. You consider walking around the ramparts too, and give it a try, but it feels too much like making yourself a target somehow. Besides, straying too far from Asriel feels wrong just now.
It’s been four hours into your silent vigil—four hours of picking up books and putting them down after getting stuck on the same page for ages while your thoughts distract you, four hours of stretching and pacing and brewing yourself more tea—when your phone beeps softly in your pocket. You draw it out. Someone has texted you.
You thumb open your inbox: It’s Astis.
May I call you, he says.
He still doesn’t like to write, still stumbles sometimes over difficult words, and verbose as you are, that can be a bad combination. But he still asks, not wanting to trouble you or anyone if a phone call would be inconvenient, or if your nerves can’t handle it today.
One day you’d like to be able to simply phone him as soon as you get a message like this. But you can’t, yet, and if you don’t allow yourself small weaknesses where others are willing to catch you, you’ll dig yourself into a hole again.
It’s okay to lean on people who aren’t Asriel or Prase. Telling yourself this, you take a deep breath and sigh and type back Yes, go ahead.
You step out into the hallway and close the door behind you, leaning on the wall next to one of the little tables that Asgore and Toriel left with you and Asriel. Still close enough to run to your partner’s side in case of trouble, but far enough away that you won’t bother him talking to Astis, either.
When the phone rings, you hit accept call before the first ring has even completed.
“I’m sorry to call at such a weird time,” Astis begins from the other end.
“No, no,” you interrupt. “It’s all right, I’ve been awake anyway. What is it?”
He takes a deep breath. You wait. “It’s about the human.”
You frown. “What about her?”
“She stayed with me for the night—she just left. I’m sorry that I didn’t call the Royal Guard—I didn’t want to scare her off when I’d just gotten her talking.”
You grab your locket hard with your free hand, trying to suppress the cold lurch in your chest. “Astis, you were supposed to evacuate with the other non-combatants.”
“I know.” He sounds like he’s smiling. “But the hotel staff decided we were going to go to the shelters last in case there were any stragglers, and I just sort of… hung around, just in case. If there was something I could do, I wanted to help. And I think it was right of me to.”
You sigh. This is all very like Astis. “Be that as it may, please take care of yourself first if anything like this ever happens again. There are a lot of people who are going to come to grief if something were to happen to you. Value them if you’re having trouble valuing yourself.”
“I know, I know.” He doesn’t sound repentant at all, but you can keep working on him later, you suppose. “But I wanted to tell you what happened. I think… I think you really ought to know, since you’re in charge of defending the kingdom.”
How quickly Undyne has been demoted, you think, smiling. But it’s true, too; you’re in charge of defending Asriel, and so the whole underground, as your husband’s safety is vital to your people’s survival.
“I do want to hear,” you say, resting your weight against the wall. “How did this happen? When did she leave—where is she now?”
“We spent the night in the hotel, so she’ll be headed for the Core,” Astis explains. He hesitates. “I found her trying to see if the hotel elevator to New Home would work. I told her it had been shut down and that she ought to rest for a while. She looked tired. She wanted to go straight on to the castle, but I persuaded her to sleep and eat something first. Maybe she only went because there’s only one of me, or because I’m human and pretty close to her age. Or because she thought she could take me in a fight if it was a trap.”
Despite yourself, you smile. “I guess she learned firsthand that you were genuine.”
“She watched me make dinner and we ate the same thing, so I guess that’s one way to prove you’re not poisoning anything, anyway.” You imagine him shrugging like oh well, his soft round shoulders sloughing off any sense of insult or hurt feelings at his guest’s suspicion. “Once she calmed down, I told her that she could stay if she wanted. She said she couldn’t. I asked her why—if she had something outside that she wanted to go back to.
“She said that everyone here is too nice and she doesn’t deserve it.”
You breathe in, quiet and sharp.
“She said the underground is too good for a bad person like her, so she can’t stay. She wouldn’t talk about why she calls herself bad, but… I’m worried about her. I don’t think she’s okay.”
“You did what you could,” you tell him. “You’ve been a big help to me and to Asriel already. And it’s up to the human herself whether she wants to accept your assistance when it’s offered.”
He laughs. The sound is a little sad. “It figures you’d be able to tell. I still feel like I should have done more. But I don’t really have it in me to try to hold her back by force.”
“You’ve done a lot already,” you repeat.
“Chara—I know it’s a lot to ask, but… if there’s something you can do for her… she seemed so unhappy. I don’t know what she’s planning, but I don’t think she likes this either. If there’s some way you can stop her and make her listen…”
“I don’t know if I can,” you answer. “All I can do is try. But no matter what, I will not let her harm my husband, or anyone else. The rest… probably depends on her.”
“I know.”
“I wish I could promise you more, Astis. I really do.”
“It’s okay.”
You think it probably isn’t. But even so, the leverage you have in this situation is limited. “She may already have left, but please go to a shelter now. We still don’t know what’s going to happen, and I want you to be safe until all of this is over.”
Astis sighs. “Okay. I know you’re right. And I think Mettaton and everyone else won’t be very happy with me if they find out I’ve been hiding here. I’ll go.” A pause. “Please be safe.”
You smile. “I’ll do my best. Thank you, Astis.”
He tells you goodbye and hangs up. You close your eyes, breathe out, and jam your phone back into your pocket.
A little less than two hours before it’s time to wake Asriel. Mettaton and the Royal Guards will be in the Core, doing what they can to catch the human, or at least slow her down or make her waste her bullets. All you can do is wish them the best, hope, and try to make sure that you’re ready.
You change into black leggings and white long-sleeved shirt; and set your royal tunic with the Delta Rune on its breast, your boots, your belt, and your gloves out before rousing Asriel with a gentle shake and a kiss. He groans in complaint and pulls you against him, his mouth finding yours for the kind of soft muzzy kisses that would in any other situation stoke wet warmth in you, have you melt down against him for cuddles or tender wake-up sex. But today there’s no time for that, so you tease his floppy ear between your knuckles, run your thumb over his sideburns, and ease back.
“You’ve got to wake up and change into your good robes,” you inform him when he whines in protest. “The human is in the Core. Whether Mettaton and the Guards capture and disarm her or not, you and I are going to have to go out on official business very soon.”
Asriel groans again and levers himself up, making a face. Satisfied that he’s not just going to roll back over and sleep, you pull your tunic on and get your weapons in order.
“I’m going to go make some tea,” you announce, and pick your phone up to take with you into the kitchen.
Being in your official monarch clothes makes the house’s silence feel stifling, pregnant, as if an emergency is about to happen at any moment. You catch yourself moving so as to create as little noise as possible, already breathing to a steady count of seven as you watch the teakettle and line up cups and spoons.
You turn to get your bearings, and your vision suddenly doubles and sways. You grip the edge of the counter and bend over the sink, gritting your teeth. Your innards feel like a geyser building; the pressure in your head makes it feel like it’s about to cave in.
“Chara?” Asriel calls from the hall, and oh, this is so similar to what happened yesterday. No wonder you feel like you’re watching an old familiar video from far away. It’s just like his old low-fidelity tapes, the ones he made over and over, the old—the video records of you killing yourself by inches while you plotted murder and ignored the boy who loved you most trying to hold you back.
Your husband holds your hair away from your face while you throw up in the sink. You pinch at the curve of your forearm, hoping the blunt pain will cut through the too-vivid colors and your headache and the nausea that keeps you doubled over like a drunken question mark. It doesn’t clear your head completely, but—it helps.
Fumbling, you turn the faucet on and rinse your mouth out, splash your face. Asriel supports you, murmuring.
“Is this the first one since yesterday?” he asks, soft.
You nod against his chest. “Thought for a while they were done.” And you make a face. “Alas. At least this time it’s clearing up quick.”
Asriel strokes your hair back. “Go sit at the table or something,” he croons. “I’ll clean up and get the tea.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” you tell him, and retreat to sink into Toriel’s chair.
Closing your eyes helps the vertigo and the visual overload. The nausea is fading. You pinch your arm some more. Your knife is a hard weight on your hip, obtrusive, but—that isn’t what it’s for, so you tamp down on the rising temptation.
Your phone rings from where you left it on the table. You take a deep breath and get up. Your hands only shake a little as you cross the room, and as long as you plant your feet firmly, your legs don’t threaten to give out beneath you while you answer.
“Chara, darling!” Mettaton trills from the other side of the phone without you even having to say anything. “I’m here to give you my report on our little guest!”
Even at a time like this, he’s as cheerful as a lit disco ball. You ought to be irritated, but instead, you’re heartened. “Please, go on.”
“Unfortunately, the human broke through our encirclement and is headed to the emergency elevator,” he says. “BUT!—” and the but goes full autotune with his exuberance— “In our scuffle, she fired her weapon once! The bullet bounced harmlessly off my dear old metal body, beautiful, so you needn’t worry about anyone having been hurt. After all, my hard shell renders me completely invulnerable.”
“So she only has half her bullets left—that’s good,” you say absently, running your fingers through your hair. Talking tactics makes you feel steadier, less likely to keel over. “Did she just leave?”
“That’s right, lovely!” Mettaton chirps. “If you need assistance, now, I’m just a phone call away! As it is, I think I’ll be seeing the Guards to the shelter first, though.”
“Make sure that Astis has really evacuated while you’re at it,” you suggest. “He stayed at the hotel all night, and I’m still not sure that he’s really gone like I told him.”
“Oh, dear.” A bit of the theatrics leave his voice. “Yes, that absolutely will not do. Thank you for the heads up. And—stay safe.”
“I will. Leave Asriel to me.”
“Chara?” Asriel’s voice comes from the kitchen as you hang up. “What was that? And shouldn’t you still be resting?”
You take a deep breath. “Ree, I’m sorry, tea is going to have to wait. Do whatever you need to in order to get ready. The human is on her way, and this is no place to deal with her. We have to lock up and get to the throne room.”
When you turn to face him, his eyes are round with alarm. You stuff your phone into your tunic pocket and step around the table to clasp his hands.
“We have to go, Ree,” you say, as gentle and soft as you can possibly make the words. He makes as if to say something, then shuts his mouth and nods.
While he goes to lock the front door, you return to your room to get a rubber band for your hair, pulling it back into a ponytail so that it won’t get in your way. Some is too short to fit, and stays around your face, but you can deal with that. The problem is your bangs—they’re too long on your left, and might obstruct your vision at a critical moment.
So you open your drawer and pull out one of the enamel pins that Toriel gave you on your wedding day. You lift your hair off your forehead and secure it with the flower-shaped clip. Tentative, then vigorous, you shake your head to make sure that it won’t dislodge itself with motion. It stays fastened.
All right, then.
You leave the bedroom and join Asriel in the foyer. Even in his best robes, he still looks uncertain, afraid. So you reach out and hold his hand tightly as you head down the stairs to the ramparts.
The walk is a short one, but it’s fraught with tension: The human could show up at any time, after all; the castle elevators allow one to bypass the royal living quarters. It’s possible for her to circle around ahead of you, if she’s further than you expect her to be.
But no one is there waiting for you when you and Asriel reach the Last Corridor, and even as you pull Asriel along with you as you walk, you let yourself breathe out a sigh of relief.
You’ve traversed the rows of golden windows and are at the door on the other end when your phone rings from your pocket, and you stop.
Digging it loose, you’re scowling at it—can’t whoever is calling you pick any more appropriate time? You kind of have better to do, here—until you see the caller ID.
It’s Prase.
You hit accept call and lift the phone to your ear, Asriel squeezing your other hand in his. “I’m trusting that this is good.”
“Yes, we got word from Mettaton, we know she’s headed towards you now,” Prase replies rapidly. “You need to know this before you face her, Chara. I’ve found out what’s been making all of us humans sick. It’s her. She’s been using her DT.”
“Using—?” you repeat.
“DT is literally determination, I’ve told you that before,” they go on. “It’s the overwhelming desire to change fate, the refusal to accept any ending but the one you want. I can go over the specifics of how it works later, but humans with high enough quantities of DT and awareness of their abilities can use it to turn back time itself. That’s what the human’s been doing. Monsters aren’t affected by it, because monster souls can’t handle DT in the same quantities as a human, but we feel the impact when she turns back time. The higher your DT, the worse it gets.”
“So she’s—she’s been manipulating time?” you repeat. It makes a horrible kind of sense, come to think of it. Your attacks always hit before she had fights with others, and so many times you’d have déjà vu or find yourself bracing for news that she’d killed someone. You feel cold. “How is this supposed to work? How am I going to stop her from killing us if she can just turn the clock back whenever she pleases?”
“No matter what, she can’t go back any further than when she fell to the underground,” Prase says. “She’s out of radius of any of her old save points.”
“You’re making it sound like some video game.”
“It’s the easiest way to think of it,” they go on. “The human makes a save state and returns to it if anything bad happens. Ordinarily we’d be in trouble—she’s well enough aware of her own abilities to use them pretty freely; your only hope would be to somehow persuade her to stop doing so, or to demoralize her, because our DT is tied to our emotional state.
“But you should have another way to fight back, Chara.”
You swallow hard. Prase is absolutely right, this conversation is vital. “Tell me.”
“Word from Rufus and the others is that her soul is yellow,” Prase explains. “Yours is red.”
“I don’t really understand the relevance.”
On the other end, Prase sighs. “Pay more attention when your foster parents and Liron talk magical lore. Human souls come in seven colors that correspond to our natures. Mine’s cyan, for patience. Yellow represents justice. Red souls indicate determination. You have the highest DT of any human here. You’re the rightful master of this timeline. If you stay determined, then when she tries to load her old save state, you can block her from doing it.”
“So all I have to do to make it out of this alive is to not get shot and keep some human kid from savescumming,” you confirm, laughing a little at the absurdity of it. “That sounds easy enough.”
“You can do it,” Prase says. “Your love for Asriel and for the underground is stronger than anything driving her.”
“You can’t guarantee that,” you sputter.
“Yes I can,” they reply, smug enough to make you blush. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, though. Good luck. I’ll see you again soon.”
“Right,” you say. “Thanks.”
They hang up first, and you return your phone to your pocket.
“What on earth was that about?” Asriel asks at last.
“The human is apparently cheating,” you explain. “Prase told me how to cheat back.” And you face him properly, reaching up to touch the side of his face. “Ree—I need you to go to the throne room now.”
He stares at you for a moment, uncomprehending. Then his brows come down. “You’re planning to stay here and hold her off alone.”
You smile grimly. “That would be the idea of things, yes.”
“Chara—no.” His eyes are wet; his big hands shake in yours. “I don’t want to leave you here to face danger alone. I could at least support you from behind—you know my magic’s the strongest in the underground.”
“I wish I could ask you to fight with me,” you tell him, and you mean it, and you hope that he can tell. “It would make me feel a lot stronger. But she’s human, she has a gun, and she means to kill you and use your soul to cross the Barrier. She could turn you to dust with a single blow. That won’t work on me. I’ve trained for this, Ree. Let me keep you safe.”
And you let your hand fall to your side, even as your partner begins to shake his head.
“If the worst should happen,” you tell him very quietly, “and if I die—take my soul and kill her. Her soul can go towards getting our people out of here. I’ll still be with you, even if I don’t have a body. It wouldn’t be so bad—being your heart.”
Asriel breathes in sharply, and you gently release his hand and turn around.
You have wrist braces on over your gloves, but it doesn’t matter that they’re in the way. You trace the rune on your left palm with your right forefinger, a motion you could make in your sleep with how familiar it is after a decade of training, and close both your hands over the long red haft of your trident when it appears before you.
Deep breath. Shift it to your left hand only, hold it at your side in rest position.
You swear you can hear distant footsteps from outside.
Asriel catches your right arm in both hands, holding you back.
“Don’t leave me, Chara,” he says, and he’s sobbing like you’re both children again, and the sound of his voice squeezes at your heart. “You can’t die. You can’t. I couldn’t take losing you, I can’t even stand the thought of going on in a world without you. I’d fall down in a day without you. I know we’re not supposed to—to think like this anymore. But you talking like this, like you’re going to d-die… I can’t handle it. I can’t. I’m scared, Chara. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.”
You smile a little. “There’s part of me that wants to tell you that you could live without me, even if it’s hard. You have your parents, you have your friends, you have your job. But at the same time… Ree, I feel very similarly. Even if I could live without you, I don’t want to. That’s why I’m doing this.
“I know I’m asking something very difficult of you right now. But I have no intention of dying here. This is our world, and we’ve worked hard to get to where we are. I want to live—with you, with everyone else I love, in this world. It’s taken me thirty-four years to be able to think like this. I won’t stand for all that time going to waste. I refuse to die, and I refuse to let you die.”
From behind you, Asriel pulls you to him. He folds both arms around your waist and bows his head so that the tip of his soft nose touches the back of your neck. He stays that way for a long while.
There’s a moment where you’re very afraid that he won’t ever let go of you, but it passes—with aching slowness, Asriel loosens his grip and straightens up.
“I love you, Chara,” he says softly. “Please come back to me safe. I’ll never forgive either of us if you don’t.”
You turn your head to the side and kiss his palm as he’s pulling his hands away. “I will. Now go, so that you won’t get caught up in this mess. So that I can be sure I’ll have someone to come back to.”
Asriel breathes in noisily and sighs just as loudly. He touches your arm just once, and you turn your head so that you can watch from the corner of your eye. He turns and walks slowly through the arched doorway, pausing to look back at you several times. Finally he disappears into the shadow of the corridor, the pad of his footsteps and the click of his claws fading away into silence.
Only moments later do the steps you weren’t sure you were imagining gain in volume, and through the door at the other end of the Last Corridor, the human appears.
She’s a slim child with strawberry blond hair tied under her ears in pigtails. Her skin is slightly lighter than yours but still darker than Prase’s, and her eyes are a dark color, probably brown; it’s hard to tell with the cowboy hat pulled low to cast a shadow over her face. She wears a brown bolero jacket over a red shirt with orange stripes over its breast, faded jeans, and high brown boots.
There’s a small silver revolver in her left hand. She holds it low at her hip, and her finger points down across the trigger instead of curled around it.
She’s staring directly at you, but she doesn’t even slow as she walks towards you.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you past here,” you tell her mildly, hefting your weapon to suggest you might hold it out to bar her way.
The human stops. She’s still a few feet out of your range. “I’m leaving,” she tells you. “I know that the Barrier is past here. I know that my way through it is past here, too. As long as you don’t get in my way, I won’t hurt you.”
“Hmm.” You tilt your head. “Sadly for you, I am not the kind of monarch who can be persuaded to allow their husband to be murdered with a promise to spare my life alone.”
The human stiffens, clenching her free hand into a fist. “You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she says. Her voice is trembling.
“I do, in fact.” You step forward. The human steps back. You’re more aware of the Last Corridor and its space than you’ve ever been in your life—the narrow passageway gives you enough room to wield your trident, but very little room for either of you to dodge sideways. She has nothing to block your weapon with, and you have only your weapon to protect yourself from her gun. The sheer size of your trident and your range provides an excellent blockade to keep her from moving forward as long as you’re still standing. If it comes down to a battle between you, the outcome will be decided by aim, accuracy, and footwork. “From what my people have told me of your journey, you’ve probably been too busy for anyone to explain it to you, so I will undertake the task. Here in the underground, we have a way of quantifying these things. EXP. Despite the association you might usually have with that abbreviation, here it’s an acronym for execution points. A way of putting numbers to the amount of pain you’ve inflicted on others. Kill someone, and your EXP increases. Get enough EXP, and your LOVE increases.
“LOVE is another acronym. It stands for Level Of ViolencE. LOVE, specifically, can be used as a yardstick to determine someone’s capacity to hurt people.”
The human stiffens, but she makes no move to interrupt or to attack. That’s very interesting. For now, you’ll move on with the lecture.
“The more you kill others, the easier it becomes to distance yourself. The further you distance yourself, the less it will hurt you to hurt others. In short, the easier it will become for you to do so.” You pause for effect. “Going by the way we measure things, your Level Of ViolencE is at two. You’ve killed someone before. Everyone in the underground is aware of this.”
This makes her flinch, but again, she doesn’t say anything.
“However.” You stare directly into her face to see if she’ll avert her gaze. “LOVE is a way to measure capacity only, and you are an interesting case. You have no more LOVE nor more EXP than when you arrived here. Despite everything, you’ve made it this far without taking any lives.
“You have options, human,” you tell her bluntly, and the confusion in her eyes vanishes as adroitly as if she’s slammed the shutters closed. She looks away. “You’ve made mistakes, it’s true, but none of them are so serious that you couldn’t find a place to live here. There’s plenty of precedent—I know you’ve met some of the other fallen humans. We are used to accommodating human needs. And no one here is a stranger to the fact that children never climb Mt. Ebott for happy reasons.” She flinches again. “It isn’t too late. Surrender your weapon and turn back. You have my word as a ruler of the underground that I will spare you if you meet these conditions. My husband and I will be more than happy to find you somewhere to live and help you acclimate.”
Unless you are very much mistaken, the human is biting her lip. She clenches her trembling hands, her shoulders taut.
“I’m a bad person,” she says at last. “Here I thought that I’d finally found someone who would understand that. You’re human, after all. The books all said that monsters are made up of compassion, so they can’t help it, but you understand human morals. You have reason to judge me. But you won’t. It’s funny. Even after all this, I have people offering to accommodate me. To make an exception because of the circumstances, or because I’m a child. Why doesn’t anyone understand?”
Her left arm swings up, finger still to the side of the trigger, and you sink automatically into your stance, shifting your hands along the haft of your trident. The human is smiling, but there’s something desperate in her eyes.
“I’m a bad person, Mx Dreemurr,” she says in a very mild voice. Your chest jolts unpleasantly to hear your name couched in such hollow politeness. “I’ve killed someone before. I can do it again if I have to. I can’t stay here. Your kingdom is too good for a person like me. My presence itself is a stain on this world. If my only way to get out is by stealing the king’s soul—” she shrugs, here, as if with pain— “I’m already a murderer, so what should one or two more lives matter to me? I can’t accept your mercy. I don’t deserve it. I’m leaving now.”
You sink to the left and swing your weapon up as fast as you can. Instinct has guided you correctly, and only the seriousness of the situation keeps you from smirking: The human jerks backwards from the recoil, the sound of the gunshot assaults your ears, and the bullet itself ricochets harmlessly off the spinning haft of your trident.
If you’d swung too early she would have been able to correct her aim, but there’s no beating a gun in a contest of speed: All she has to do is pull the trigger. But there’s no changing the trajectory of a bullet that’s already been fired, so a near-simultaneous feint and parry was enough to get her to waste her precious ammunition.
You concentrate your will on your trident. Unable to use magic yourself, you must rely on the innate powers of your weapon itself to fight like Asgore would, but the upside to that handicap is that you don’t have the same tells as him. You follow up your parry with a long sweeping strike: The magic crackling through the trident calls both your souls forth as if this were a monsters’ duel instead of one between humans. Your target’s stumbling retreat saves her from the broad wave of orange magic your trident trails, but the cyan follow-up catches her full-on, and she yelps.
You favor her with your most meaningless, insincere social smile.
“I think you’re full of shit,” you say, and press forward again with another sweep of cyan magic. She scrambles to put distance between you and cries out a second time as her movement sets off your spell. “If you were half the cold-blooded killer you’re pretending to be, you would have carved an escape route through my kingdom already, in dust and blood. You wouldn’t bother to go back and fix what you did when you murder someone.”
She freezes, eyes wide, and you sweep for her legs with the blunt end of your trident. Orange magic would wear at her soul, but better for you if she doesn’t grasp the trick of your spells. The strike connects; the human staggers. It’s a gentle tap compared to what you’re capable of, but she’s handed you a wedge to hammer, and you have to make at least some token effort to do so before you resort to lethal force.
“We know about the resets,” you tell her. Redundant by now, perhaps, but you need to drive the point in as hard as you can. There’s no such thing as overkill when it comes to this. “You killed Toriel, didn’t you, and then you went back and did it over so that you could leave her and Asgore alive. You did the same when you fought Rufus and Papyrus, and with Undyne and Innig. Every time, you went back so that you could erase what you did. You don’t want to kill anyone. If you make a mistake—if you lash out in anger or in fear—you still feel remorse, and now you have the power to fix it, you do so.”
She seems to recover from the shock, and takes your lecturing as a chance to swing her gun arm up again. You fall back, turning your trident in your hands, flashing blue as the haft twirls in case she tries to fire.
She doesn’t, but her dark eyes follow you as you circle.
“You don’t want to kill anyone,” you repeat. If you have to go on the offensive you won’t have the breath to lecture, so you must seize your chance now. “I am offering you an option where you do not have to do so. Having gained LOVE doesn’t bar you from a chance to live amongst us. The old king and queen have LOVE; so do all the other survivors from the war between humans and monsters a thousand years ago. I can’t pretend to know your circumstances, but it’s easy to guess from your behavior that you didn’t have a choice. What you choose to do going forward is more important than the things you can no longer change.”
“Don’t—” Her voice is trembling. So is the rest of her, and she steadies her left arm with her right. The attempt is useless; she can’t hold her weapon perfectly steady. “Don’t talk like you understand anything. You don’t. You don’t. I could’ve—I should’ve fixed what I did. I tried to! B-but I couldn’t stand it and I killed him again anyway and then I couldn’t go back anymore! I’m a murderer! Not even reloading can change what I did, anyway! I’m bad! There’s no use in trying to be good anymore when I’m just bad!”
You’ve heard enough. All possible scenarios that come to mind from her babbled confession make you feel cold and dead inside. From the grave of your memory, you can hear your father’s ugliest threats again. You can smell summer grass, feel unwanted hands on your body, pulling at your clothes.
“You aren’t bad,” you say wearily. Your own voice seems to echo from a long way away. “The person or persons who put you in that position in the first place are, were, bad. You took the best of very limited options, none of which were perfect.”
“Liar!” she shrieks, and despite yourself you flinch. “You’re no monster, so I’m not going to tolerate that out of you!”
A smile crosses your face, pulling at your cheeks. You feel quite sure that it’s not a nice one at all.
“True enough,” you say. “I’ve lived amongst monsters for long enough to have learned compassion, and I understand you well enough to want to offer you my mercy. But if you continue to reject it—well. We humans are a terrible, ruthless species, aren’t we?” Your smile grows; you narrow your eyes. “And whether you stand down or not, I have no intention of allowing you to murder my husband just because you feel guilty for defending yourself and want to self-flagellate.”
The human flinches. Her face flushes crimson, and her arm swings up.
You move—just a little too slowly.
Temporarily deafened by the gunshot, you feel the fingers of your right hand go slack before you notice anything else wrong. The end of your trident drops to the tiled floor with an ugly clang that you feel more than hear, and when you try to move your arm to pick it up again, something molten sweeps through your nerves, along with a vague stinging.
You glance down from the corner of your eye and see red spreading across your sleeve. She managed to graze you or something, then.
There’s no time to assess how bad the wound is, and either way your arm will be all but useless until you can have someone treat it. You cast your trident aside and draw your knife instead, flipping it in your hand so that the blade protrudes from the bottom of your fist, cutting edge aligned with your knuckles.
The human’s already pointing her gun at you again.
“Don’t hold it against me too much,” she says, her voice back to deceptively mild, barely shaking at all. “I told you to just let me pass.”
She pulls the trigger, but there’s no answering report—just a click as the barrel turns.
Her expression goes blank and dumbfounded for a moment, and she tries to fire again with the same result. You realize that you’re grinning. She’s out of bullets—she must have wasted another one on the way here, or only had five to begin with. You have her.
But even as you take a step forward, she closes her eyes and scrunches her face up in concentration.
Before you’re even fully aware of what you’re doing, you… you yank, is the only way you can describe it. This time the human girl whips her head up to stare at you, pallid with shock. She bites her lip, her eyes gone tight with focus again, and you yank harder.
“No, you don’t,” you say aloud. Something is roaring in your chest, drowning out pain, drowning out exhaustion and fear. Your vision blurs and refocuses oddly, but you feel more powerful than you’ve ever been. “This world is ours. It’s mine to protect. I won’t let you do as you please with it any longer.”
The muscles of her left arm move slightly, and then she’s rushing you, and you step forward and whip your knife up. The blade jams against the barrel of her gun, preventing her from bringing the butt down to club you in the head.
“Enough,” you say. She grits her teeth and struggles to bring her arm down: She’s young and desperate, but your muscles are solid with thirteen years’ worth of training, and you don’t budge.
“Enough,” you repeat. “I won’t let you reload. You’re out of ammunition. You don’t want to kill anyone else in the first place. This battle is over.”
Slowly—agonizingly so—the strength leaves the human’s arm, leaving her hanging limply against your block. Though doing so washes waves of agony over your whole right side, you grit your teeth and force your right arm up to prize the gun from her weak grip. She lets you unwrap her fingers without protest. You drop the empty gun to the ground beside you, and trace the rune on your palm again to summon your trident once more. You bring its prongs down on the gun with all the strength you still possess; the magical weapon goes through it like hot butter, breaking it into pieces.
You release the trident, allowing it to dissolve into the air, and shakily lower your arm to the side. The human, standing blankly before you hanging her head, sniffles. You slip your knife into its sheath.
It’s a good thing that she’s seemingly docile now; the adrenaline wearing off means that you’re finally beginning to properly feel the pain in your arm. It feels like your arm is on fire, and also as though it’s being devoured by ants, simultaneously. You plant your feet more firmly so that you won’t sway where you stand, and take a deep breath so that you won’t give yourself away by panting in front of her. There’s a faint pattering noise you begin to notice, rhythmic and irritating.
Belatedly, you realize that it’s your blood on the tile. No wonder you feel so lightheaded.
You clear your throat to get the human’s attention. She doesn’t raise her head.
“You wanted someone to judge you,” you croak. Hopefully it comes off as a question properly—your tone comes out a little flat.
But she nods, saying nothing.
“Here in the underground we don’t make black-and-white judgments,” you tell her. “We try to acknowledge when circumstances are difficult and have shades of gray. But I still respect that you want to repent for having taken a life, even in self-defense.
“So—as a monarch of the underground, I think—” You have to swallow and shake your head, because your vision is going fuzzy. “I think that your punishment should be to live with the knowledge of what you’ve done, and try from now on to be the best person you can be. And—you won’t be required to participate, but if you feel up to it, I strongly encourage you to help our Royal Scientist in her efforts to find a way to break the Barrier without sacrificing anyone’s lives. We will work this out. You’ll have a place to live with the rest of us, and you’ll go free with the rest of us, too.”
The human’s shoulders are shaking again. To your bewilderment, she slumps forward and rests her forehead against your chest. You aren’t strong enough to bear her weight up along with your own, and she sinks to her knees as you do.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asks thickly. “I tried to kill you. I would’ve killed the king. I just can’t understand.”
“Because,” you say, “I’m not exactly the greatest person either. Because I’ve asked the same thing as you just now, time and time again. I can understand.”
She sniffles again. It’s probably all right to relax now, you think, so you close your eyes. Just for a little while—just until the room stops spinning.
You’re so tired.
Someone’s crying.
It’s a familiar sound, and it’s also loud and you really don’t think you’ll be able to roll over and go back to sleep, so reluctantly you open your eyes and look around for Asriel.
You frown. This isn’t your bedroom. The ceiling is more distant and is lined with fluorescent lights, for one thing.
“Chara?” Prase asks from your left. You turn to look for them and then wince as vertigo assails you. Once the sudden pressure in your head dissipates, you open your eyes tentatively to look at them. They have their long hair tied back in a ponytail and their lab coat on over their t-shirt, and when they see your eyes on them, they hold up a hand. “How many fingers?”
“Four,” you rasp, and make a face. “What happened?”
“You passed out from blood loss,” they inform you. “It’s been about… twelve, thirteen hours since then? You are very lucky, by the way. Dad informs me that if you were a monster, you would have lost your arm.”
Reminded of your injury, you look down at yourself; your right arm is bandaged and rests on your chest in a sling.
“The human called for help,” Prase goes on. “Naturally, Asriel came running. He seems to have performed first aid before calling in reinforcements. It’ll take a little longer to heal, even with magic—there was some extensive muscle damage—and you’re going to have to rehab it, but you’ll be all right.”
“This is good to know,” you say dryly, and cough. Prase produces a glass of water from you don’t know where and hands it to you, helping you sit up so that you can soothe your throat. On your other side, Asriel sniffles; you hand the glass off to Prase and turn to him with an effort. “They said I’ll be all right, you big crybaby,” you tell him fondly.
Your husband is a mess. His fur is badly mussed, his eyes are swollen from crying, and his nostrils are pink as if he’s blown his nose extensively recently. He’s still wearing his formal robes; they look as rumpled as if he’s slept in them. The fur on his fingers especially looks almost matted, a sure sign that he’s been twisting his wedding ring nervously.
“I know,” he says, sounding as stuffed up as if he has a head cold. “I’m just happy.”
He reaches out, and Prase helps you lean into the warm circle of his arm and his chest. Asriel is blissfully solid, and his hold is soft and gentle as anything. You tuck your face against his robes and sigh.
“Thank you for staying where it was safe,” you tell him. It comes out a little muffled against his chest. “And thank you for coming to help me again when I needed it.”
He rests his chin against the back of your head. “I’ll always come running when you need me.” A pause. “Thank you for staying alive.”
You hum a little and reach up to stroke his ear and the side of his face awkwardly, and stay like that for a long time.
A thought occurs to you when you’re on the verge of going back to sleep, and you frown.
“What are you doing with the human?” you ask, doing your best to keep the reluctance out of your voice. You want to go to sleep here, where you’re safe and happy; you want to relax in your husband’s arms and leave all the difficult things for later.
It’s Prase who answers. “We have the Royal Guard keeping her in a room where no one will bother her and she won’t bother anyone, for now.”
You sigh. “I should go talk with her,” you admit. “See how things are doing, and if she’s still feeling cooperative. As soon as possible—now, if someone will help me walk.”
Asriel sighs too. “I’d rather just stay here and cuddle and wait for you to feel better, honestly, but I guess it is our job. I’ll walk you there.”
“I’ll help too,” Prase volunteers. “You’re definitely in no shape to walk that far on your own—and with your arm like that it’ll be too hard for you to go on a wheelchair or crutches. But you need to come back to rest as soon as you’re done, understand?”
“I can live with that, I think,” you say.
“I’ll carry them until they have to walk,” Asriel says. “After that they can lean on you.”
Prase sounds like they’re smiling as they reply, “Deal.”
Undyne and the entirety of the Hotland guard are, in fact, camped out in the hall outside the human’s room. Alphys is there too, and they’re grouped up into twos—Undyne with her arm slung around her girlfriend’s shoulders, Rufus fussing over the bandages on Innig’s shoulder, the dragon and bunny guards eating ice cream sandwiches that don’t look like they came from the lab’s vending machine, the cat and mantis ones holding hands.
“Well, if it isn’t the hero of the hour,” Innig proclaims. Everyone turns to look at you, and you can feel yourself turning bright red.
Asriel sets you down, and Prase helps you get an arm around their shoulders so that you can hobble over to the guards’ congregation.
“Is everyone doing all right?” you ask.
“We’re just fine, punk,” Undyne tells you, offering a huge toothy grin. There’s a tear in her fin that wasn’t there before, but it already looks long-healed. “Human’s been pretty quiet, too. Alphy got her some comics in case she’s bored—she’s hardly made a peep aside from saying thank you.”
“I need to get through to talk to her for a moment.”
“Sure thing,” Undyne says, and shoos everyone away from the door. “We’re gonna be here outside if she tries to start shit again.”
You smile at her. “I’m hoping that we’ve precluded any shit-starting, but that’s very reassuring to know.”
Like you and Asriel, the human is still in the same clothes she had on yesterday when you open the door. Her hat is hung on the corner of the bed she sits in, and she looks up from a manga volume that you suspect Alphys or Undyne supplied, hastily sticking a bookmark between its pages and setting it next to her as she straightens up. Under better lighting and without shadows, you see that her eyes are indeed brown—a darker shade than Asriel’s.
“Hello again,” you say, raising your hand from where it rests on Prase’s shoulder to wave.
“Um,” says the human, who then pauses awkwardly before adding, “Hi.”
“I have to return to rest before too long or else my friends here will yell at me,” you say, grinning self-deprecatingly to invite her to share the joke, “but I wanted to make sure to check in with you and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m okay,” she says. “Everyone’s been… almost too nice.”
“As soon as I’m well enough we can start working out where you’d like to stay,” you tell her. “You’ve been all over the underground already, so you can start thinking about that now.”
She makes a face and nods.
“This here,” you say, poking Prase in the cheek and making them laugh and swat at you, “is my friend Prase. The big one hiding behind us is my husband Asriel. And I know you’re aware of my name, but you may call me Chara. What should we call you?”
The human looks surprised for a long moment—and then she smiles.
“It’s Holly,” she says. “And, despite everything—it’s nice to meet you.”