Chapter Text
The page in front of Noelle is almost completely blank, which takes her longer than she cares to admit to notice. Her pencil is still pressed to the paper, the graphite tip resting at the end of a sentence she can’t quite remember starting. Ms. Alphys’s voice drifts from the front of the classroom over the tap of chalk on blackboard, but none of the words stay in Noelle’s head long enough to actually mean anything.
All she can think about is her father.
He had still been asleep when she woke after a long, uncomfortable night folded into the chair beside his hospital bed. She had woken to a text from her mother stating her expectation that she still attend class.
She’d been told to stay with him until he woke up. Then, when Noelle tried to do exactly that, was reprimanded for nearly missing class.
Because Noelle does Noelle things, even when her father is in the hospital.
It’s normal, she keeps telling herself. The medication makes him tired. The nurse explained that every time Noelle asked why he had not woken yet, never sounding impatient even when she asked the same question again twenty minutes later.
She clings to the image of him, peaceful in bed. Not pale or fading, just tired.
His leg is broken. That’s all. A bad break, maybe. And there is the cancer to worry about, and infection, and the doctors want to keep monitoring him because nothing is ever simple with his health anymore.
What if he woke right after she left? What if he asked for her? What if her mother wasn’t there - because she was always gone when it mattered - and he woke alone, confused from the medication, wondering why Noelle had chosen to go to school instead of staying with him?
Your father needs rest, and there’s no reason for you to fall behind just to stay at his bedside.
Noelle’s grip tightens around her pencil, and she tries again to take notes. That is what Noelle does. She goes to school, she earns good grades, she runs track, and she comes home. She smiles when adults praise her intellect and dependability, and isn’t bothered when nobody ever asks if she’s cracking under the pressure.
She suppresses the urge to check her phone again. The clock above the board has barely moved since the last time, though it feels like she’s been sitting here for hours. Her phone is buried in her backpack, forced in there so that she doesn’t distract herself with watching it every single moment, waiting for a call or text.
She looks to the board and forces herself to follow Ms. Alphys’s lecture, but the words on the board may as well be written in another language. She’s not even sure what subject they’re working on right now. Something about -
The bell rings, and Noelle jerks.
Chairs scrape against the floor, bags unzip, and voices rise around her to fill the silence left when Ms. Alphys dismisses them for lunch. The sudden wall of noise feels too loud and constricting after spending the whole morning lost inside her own head.
Her first coherent thought is that she could go back to the hospital. There’s enough time if she hurries and skips lunch. She might be a few minutes late to class afterward, but not any worse than she’d been this morning. Or, she could skip class entirely. She has never skipped class. Her mother might actually kill her if she found out.
A hand settles on her shoulder.
“Hey.”
Noelle’s entire body jolts. “Eep!”
She sucks in a hard breath and twists around so quickly the whole world tilts. Lightheadedness washes over her, and she remembers, belatedly, that she has not eaten anything today. For a second, when she turns, she expects to see her mother’s reprimanding face waiting for her.
Instead, Susie is there.
Her hand is still resting on Noelle’s shoulder, expression somewhere between concern and regret. “Sorry.”
The sight of her pushes a little, warm lantern into the fog in Noelle’s head. It helps, just a little, to have her there, like an anchor in a world that just wants to sweep her away.
Susie’s gaze falls down to the notebook. There are only a few scribbled lines at the top of the page, with the last sentence trailing off in the middle of a thought into a crooked, downward line. She has never taken notes that poorly. She slams the front cover shut before Susie can look at it any longer, heat crawling into her cheeks.
“That’s okay,” she says, her voice sounding distant and lost, even to herself. “I’m just…not all here today.”
Susie nods like she understands, and Noelle somehow feels that she does. “Will you, uhh, can you come with me for a bit? Instead of going to lunch?”
Noelle slides the notebook into her backpack, hands knowing what to do even if her brain doesn’t. She puts the pencil in the pouch, the pouch in the front pocket, and the loose papers squared in a folder in the back. Only then does she glance at the silver watch on her wrist.
“I should…” Noelle begins. She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, because the weight of a dozen conflicting expectations from a dozen different people all fight for her attention.
Go see dad. Call the hospital. Stay in class. Do what your mother told you. Do what a Noelle is supposed to do.
Suddenly, her hand is grasped firmly in Susie’s. “Please. It’s important.”
Go with Susie.
Noelle looks down at their joined hands. Susie’s grip is firm and pleading, but not demanding. She is not staring at Noelle like there is only one acceptable answer. She is not telling Noelle what is best for her. She looks nervous, almost afraid that Noelle might say no.
Everything is important today. Dad is important. School is important. Her mother’s rules are important. Whatever Susie needs is important. She’s so tired of having everything decided for her, just because it’s important.
But Susie is not demanding. She is asking. She wants Noelle to choose her.
And Noelle does. Not because it is expected, but because she wants to.
Noelle’s fingers curl around Susie’s hand. “Okay.”
Relief passes over the other girl's face, and then she pulls.
Noelle rises with a startled stumble, their hands still locked together and plainly visible to the entire class as Susie leads her toward the door ahead of the crowd gathering in the aisles between desks.
She glimpses Catti watching them, something wounded in her expression. Normally, Noelle would stop. She would wonder what she had done wrong and try to smooth it over and explain and make sure nobody misunderstood.
For once, she keeps walking. The decision sends a nervous thrill through her, cutting through the fog in her brain. Here, held by Susie, she does not need to worry if the choice she made was correct, only that it was what she wanted.
Maybe this is what freedom feels like.
“W=wait! Susie, my backpack!”
Susie glances over her shoulder, a crooked smile pulling at her mouth.
“You’ll want to leave it here.” Her fingers tighten around Noelle’s. “Just…trust me on that part.”
Noelle looks back. Her backpack sits next to her desk, and within it her books, her notes, unfinished group project, and most importantly, her phone. For a heartbeat she almost turns back.
Then she looks at Susie and follows her out.
Hometown’s school has an open campus for the high-schoolers, mostly because it does not have its own lunch room. There are few enough students, and the town is small enough, that everyone is trusted to walk home or crowd to the diner or Ice-E’s and return in the forty-minute lunch window. When the bell rings, the class spills out into the halls and out of the front doors.
Susie takes Noelle in the complete opposite direction. At the intersection, she turns left, away from the crowd and toward the rear of the building.
Noelle has to hurry to keep pace. “W-where are we going?”
Susie looks back, her smile crooked, yet excited. “You’ll see. You’ll like it, I promise.”
The words send a flutter through Noelle’s stomach.
They continue down the empty hall until they reach the old supply closet, flanked by the two abandoned classrooms built for a Hometown that once held more residents with children. Susie leads her around the nearby corner, and presses close to the wall to peer down the hallway.
Noelle shifts her weight between her hooves, wringing her hands and not sure what to do.
“Um, Susie?” she asks. “What are we doing?”
Anticipation rises in her as a quickening to her pulse and warmth that pervades her body. This feeling in her chest, it’s the same as yesterday by the lake. It's the same as when Susie literally swept her off her proverbial feet and held her above the soft drift of the lakewater. It’s also the trepidatious feeling of treading into that unfamiliar, undefined space where their relationship now lives.
Did she bring me back here to…?
Her excitement collides with a humiliating realization. She did not brush her teeth this morning, the clothes she’s wearing have to reek, and her hair is a mess. If her suspicions are true then this is one step away from disaster.
She can not have her first kiss like this.
Susie turns away from the hall. “Okay, nobody’s coming.”
Noelle can feel the flush on her cheeks. Her breaths are too short, and her heartbeat is pounding in her ears with every passing second.
“S-Susie, I’m not sure I’m ready to - “
Susie’s grip tightens around her hand, lifting them between them. Instead of leaning closer, the taller girl asks, “Do you remember last week, when Kris and I showed up at the computer lab when you and Berdly were…asleep?”
The question knocks every anticipatory thought straight out of Noelle’s head. For a moment, she can only blink, her mind struggling to connect the conversation she imagined to the one Susie is starting.
“Y-yeah?”
Even now, thinking of that dream is embarrassing. It felt so real. The city, the mansion, the constant danger, all of it. Susie riding the Ferris wheel with her, listening to her rambling, spending time with her like they weren’t just one step away from being strangers. It’s the sort of thing her mind invents because reality would never be so pleasant.
Except, Susie did ride the Ferris wheel with her yesterday. And Susie is here now, holding her hand. Maybe dreams do come true.
The taller girl scratches the back of her neck with her freehand, eyes refusing to settle on Noelle’s own.
“Well,” she says at length. “It wasn’t a dream.”
Noelle lets out a short snort of a laugh. It feels brittle, but she doesn’t know what else to do with that statement.
“What do you mean, silly? Of course it was a - “
“The Ferris wheel yesterday wasn’t the first one we rode together.” Susie’s words come faster now, more confident. “We went on one in Queen’s mansion in Cyber World.”
Noelle’s smile slips. “How could you know that?”
Her mother always told her she talks in her sleep. Maybe Susie heard her. Maybe when she and Kris arrived to finish the project, she’d mumbled something before she woke. It would be horrifyingly humiliating, but it would make more sense.
“When we found you, Queen had you in this cage and wanted to make you into her peon or something,” Susie continues. Her voice is edging on eager now. “Then there was the roller-coaster fight, and Berdly was there, and we split up in the city and you somehow found Kris and - “
Susie looks up, their eyes meet, and she stops.
Noelle is no longer smiling. She can feel the change in her own face, the brow drawing tight and the corners of her mouth tugging townward. Susie’s excitement vanishes so quickly that it almost looks like fear as Noelle lets go of her hand, leaving it to hover in the air between them.
“You lied to me?”
Susie blinks. “Noelle, it was - “
“You said it was a dream.”
“Noelle, I…”
“I trusted you.” Her voice clips on the last word, something bobbing up and down with the lump in her throat, even as a cold feeling moves through the hollow in her chest.
Why are you doing this? Some distant part of her mind echoes. Angel knows she’s wished for it all to be real. She prayed that those moments she shared with Susie really happened. Yet, here she is, faced with that very reality she wished for, only for it to hurt.
Susie’s mouth opens, but for one awful instant it is Carol that stands across from her instead. Her mother, looking up from her laptop with that same face, as though Noelle is the strange one for being hurt. Noelle squeezes her eyes shut, trying to banish the image from her mind.
Susie was different. Susie had asked, rather than demanded, her attention. Susie had held out her hand and waited for Susie to choose. She’d wanted to trust someone without examining every word for a hidden trap or deception or expectation. Of course there had been something Susie wanted from her, why would she think any different?
“Noelle, I can explain,” she says. “The Dark Worlds, they’re - “
“Dangerous?” Noelle opens her eyes, and Susie flinches. “Like that boy said at the end of the ‘dream’, right? The roaring, or whatever, right?”
Susie’s hand drops to her side. “We didn’t know what would happen if - “
Noelle takes a step forward, and Susie takes a step back. The details of the not-dream are all coming back to her now. “You just decided I can’t be trusted, right? You thought I could be trusted to make the decision to not make any more fountains myself, right?”
Susie had known. Kris had known. And they’d lied to her about it.
“Noelle, listen,” Susie says slowly. “We just thought it’d be safer if you didn’t know.”
We thought.
The words land in her mind like a spark onto a pool of oil. Noelle laughs, but it is humorless and dry.
Because there it is again. Someone else deciding what she should know, where she should go, and what a Noelle is allowed to be. First, her mother lying to her, and now Susie. They were for different reasons, but they lead to the same result. Everyone else, choosing for her.
“Noelle?” Susie says, strain and concern at the edge of her voice.
Noelle barely hears it. She’s sinking too quickly into that hollow in her chest. She barely notices how Susie’s shoulders have folded inward, hands dragging down the sides of her ripped jeans. Her hair has fallen across her face as she stares at the floor, and her hands are clenched into tight fists.
Some distant part of Noelle wants to hear her out, ask her why and listen. She should notice and care about how scared Susie looks, and how excited she’d been to show Noelle whatever it is she had in store.
But Noelle has spent her whole life relenting to the wishes of those around her. She’s swallowed the complaints, been polite, and allowed everyone else to choose for her. She can’t do that again. Not today.
“I thought you were different,” she says, voice distant to even her own ears. Susie flinches, but Noelle doesn’t stop. “I can’t do this right now.”
Susie raises her head. “Noelle, wait. Please.”
Noelle walks past the other girl. “I need some time to be alone.”
The hallway feels too bright when she rounds the corner, heartbeat pounding in her head. Anger and shame and exhaustion all fight for control over her until she cannot tell what, exactly, she’s even feeling anymore.
Behind her, Susie does not follow. Noelle is almost at the intersection when she hears Susie speak. It’s just one word, spoken low and with a vicious bite.
“Hypocrite.”
She cannot tell who it is directed at. And, for a moment, Noelle doesn’t particularly feel that it matters. She keeps walking.
Ahead, the flow of students has already vanished from the building for lunch, leaving the halls empty. She passes by the classroom, leaving behind her backpack that has everything in it she is supposed to need. She does not go back for any of it.
For the first time in her life, Noelle leaves school with no intention of returning for afternoon class.