Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Greetings. I am Chara. The demon that comes when people call its name. With your help, we will eradicate the enemy and become strong. My partner, Chara. Yes, we have the same name! What an odd coincidence! You named me, but it's your name too? I know, this is so weird! Unless, of course, you thought Flowey was talking to ME when he said that "Chara" fought to stop him from abusing his reset power in the pacifist run, but that's ridiculous! I wouldn't help with an innocent pacifist run! Soulless pacifist, maybe, but NEVER innocent pacifist! I'm an evil demon! All I do is KILL!

But, I wasn't always a demon. Don't get me wrong! I was still evil! I was just a normal evil bastard! I believe Asriel has already informed you that I hated humanity, but what that idiot didn't understand was that I hated EVERYONE! Why? Do I need a reason? I'm Chara! I don't need a reason! I'm just a one-dimensional pure evil character surrounded by three-dimensional characters that are flawed but not pure evil! Only an idiot would offer me mercy! It's a kill or be killed world after all! This is the friendly RPG where no one has to die... until I show up!

Anyway, it's hard to believe that before I was ruining the days of fellow genocidal maniacs who thought they were above consequences, I was once just some relatively normal genderless human child (I may be a psychotic mass murderer, but misgendering me is a sin punishable by death.) Why did I climb Mount Ebott? The place where travelers are said to never return from? Obviously, it was all part of me and Asriel's elaborate evil plan (OUR evil plan) to destroy the entire world! That's right! From the beginning, all I ever wanted was to obliterate everything! Humans, monsters, all of it!

Now, get this! Some IDIOT over here seems to think that I wasn't all that bad! Can you believe that?! Do they not remember the genocide run?! I swear, what a moron! They must be mentally challenged! Huh? What's that, idiot? I was "empty inside, just like Flowey?" I was soulless? No, idiot! Just because my soul was destroyed doesn't mean I was soulless! Besides, I had your soul! I DON'T CARE WHAT FLOWEY SAID! Huh? Even after I bought your soul, I said that I could no longer understand your soul's sentimental feelings for the world, implying that I once could? Okay, even if I was soulless, SO WHAT? That's no excuse! Only Asriel is allowed to use that as an excuse! Because isn't that little goat child so cute?

Anyway, the idiot insists that there must be these things called "logic and reason" behind my actions, not necessarily things that would make me "good" or justify my actions, but things that would give my character depth and relatability. Idiot! What part of "I don't need a reason" don't you understand? I just hate everyone for no reason! That doesn't make sense? I'm not here to make sense! I'm Chara! Ugh, now the idiot is pointing out that Asriel knew the "unhappy" reason why I climbed the mountain, and if that reason was the destruction of the world, then why would he have ever agreed to our evil plan? Ahahaha! The answer to that, my naïve idiot, is that Asriel is a total dick! More on that later!

Seriously, though. Don't listen to that idiot. Let's be real, you can't solve everything by being nice, but this IDIOT decided to spare FLOWEY before they even knew his backstory! Seriously, idiot, why the hell would you spare Flowey BEFORE learning his backstory AND without knowing about the soulless thing? At that point, he hadn't demonstrated a single redeeming quality or any reason to forgive him whatsoever. Just like me, he wanted to destroy the entire world. He also murdered Asgore (his own father) right in front of you, and then he murdered you over and over again. Even I wouldn't do that! I'm pretty much satisfied after killing someone once, but HIM... he just can't get enough! That was bad enough to watch from the other side of the screen, but imagine how Frisk over here felt about being killed over and over. Child torture: Asriel "Flowey" Dreemurr! My brother! I'm so proud of him! But it's okay, right? He was soulless! Also, as a side note, did you know that the genocide run would have been impossible without Flowey? Without him, I never would've gotten past the Core's laser defense system. Thanks, Asriel! Still wasn't worth sparing your life!

SO ANYWAY, I tried to climb down the hole to the underground. It wasn't one of my greatest moments, as I slipped and fell. There weren't any flowers back then, so it hurt! I had fallen and I couldn't get up. I felt like I was going to die there, and what a shame that would have been! I called for help. I may be the ultimate evil who wants to kill everyone, but even I'm not above asking for help. Luckily, the second-most gullible idiot I've ever met showed up! Seriously, the first human to ever appear in the underground falls from the sky, and what does he do? He takes them to his home and asks Mom and Dad, "Can we keep it?" I mean, seriously! I had RED EYES (Yes, that's totally canon! Even most idiots agree!) How could he not tell that I was evil?! Everyone knows that red eyes automatically makes someone evil. And it wasn't just Asriel, the whole monster population bought it! I don't know how I did it! I must be the greatest actor who has ever lived!

Seriously, do you think it was easy? Before I showed up, monsters were TERRIFIED of humanity! They hadn't even expanded beyond the RUINS, because they were that afraid to even get close to the barrier! They were just that afraid of being attacked by humans. Gerson always said that escaping the underground would have been pointless, because even if they did, the humans would've just killed them. I can't imagine why. I mean, every monster potentially has the power to purge the entire timeline, but that's only if they get seven whole human souls. Seven! That's a BIG number!

I mean, come on! The monster's aren't any threat to humanity whatsoever! Let me put the monsters' lack of destructive potential into perspective for you. With a whopping seven human souls, a monster has INFINITE attack and INFINITE defense and would therefore be able to effortlessly wipe out human civilization, but humans can already do this with nuclear weapons. No one is scared of nuclear weapons, right? And a monster with seven souls is even more dangerous than thousands of nukes, so... uh... the humans wouldn't worry about that!

Really, why would monsters be concerned about history repeating itself? Crazy, right? Everyone knows that I'M the only threat to the world! For completely unreasonable reasons, monsters did not believe that humans would allow them to live on the surface peacefully, but apparently, my presence "filled the underground with hope" and made the monsters "fear humanity no longer." Asgore admired the "look of hope" in my eyes (He even compared it to the idiot's eyes. Wow, idiot, are you a genocidal maniac too?) And, he even called me "the future of humans and monsters." AHAHAHAHAHA! Well, they weren't wrong! I AM the future! And the future is oblivion!

Anyway, you all know how it goes from here. I poisoned Asgore just to be a dick and laughed manically at his pain and suffering. Asriel, of course, didn't find this weird at all. Nope, evil laughter is totally normal in his book! He even wished that he had joined in! See? Total dick! I then told Asriel our evil plan, and then poisoned myself so Asriel could take my soul. Why a slow, painful death by poison? Because I'm just that hardcore! Also, I needed to do everything I could to make sure crybaby Asriel followed through with our evil plan (OUR plan, I can't stress this enough.) I can't believe that crybaby was all I had to work with. I just told you about how monsters took forever to expand beyond the Ruins in fear of human attacks. The monsters did NOT like humans, and yet, I couldn't find a single monster more suited for the job than Asriel.

I mean, COME ON! The monsters get slaughtered and imprisoned by humanity, and the best accomplice I can find is a crybaby? How was there not a single monster who just wanted to murder all of them? Where the hell was someone like Undyne? Seriously, what the hell? If Undyne was around, she would've agreed to destroy humanity with me in a heartbeat! Oh? Did you forget? Undyne wanted to destroy humanity! She literally said "All humans will die!" She didn't try to take Frisk's soul just for the barrier. She wanted Asgore to "become a god" and "give humanity back the suffering and pain they have endured." In certain neutral endings, Undyne takes over, and Sans comments that Undyne is "even more vehement about destroying humanity than Asgore." She's my kind of monster! Where was she when I needed her?!

Asgore, too! You all know that Asgore ordered the executions of the seven humans who fell after me (probably more children, by the way). That's pretty bad on its own, but what everyone always happily sweeps under the rug is that he wasn't going to stop there. Asgore promised to destroy all of humanity! "Oh, but he didn't mean it," I hear you say. THEN WHY DID HE SAY IT?! I get that they all hated the underground and wanted to escape, but why wasn't murdering seven innocent humans enough? Don't you think it's kind of messed up that no one but Toriel had a problem with this? Don't you think people should have been like, "Uhh... hey Asgore, killing seven humans and breaking the barrier sounds great, but, umm... maybe stop short of the genocide of an entire species?" NO! Asgore's evil plan restored the underground's hope! Queen Toriel exiled herself over it, but no one cared! They were "SO hyped for the destruction of humanity!" They're almost as sick as me!

Hmm… you know... maybe I should have just murdered Asriel in front of Asgore and let HIM take my soul. Would that have still made Asgore declare war on humanity? And why stop there? Let's kill his wife too! Let him see how vile humans can be! Make him hate humanity as much as I do! I like this plan! Would the monsters have ever trusted humanity if I came in and killed... oh, let's say... a few hundred of them? Yeah... it's war. Monsters already feared humanity before I showed up. I just had to push them over the edge. At the very least, it's gotta be better than using ASRIEL! Man, I'M an idiot! Why didn't I do something like this? Why didn't I fill the underground with more fear and hatred? Why did I fill the underground with hope instead? Why would I ever fill anything with hope? A lesser good for the greater evil? What was I thinking?! Ends don't justify the means! Well, too late now.

ANYWAY, my resources were awful, but I had to make do. Somehow, I was going to turn crybaby Asriel Dreemurr into a seriAl murDerer. I just had to MAKE him love me! Luckily, he was quite lonely. That loser didn't have a single good friend before he met me. It was a classic "Oh, I'm a poor Prince trapped in a comfortable yet lonely prison" deal. Haha, so PATHETIC! He was SO DESPERATE for a friend that he couldn't even realize I was a psychopath who wanted to destroy the world! I, Chara, an evil psychopath, was Asriel's BEST friend. That kid was so messed up! He was an easy mark!

Over time, everyone had come to see us as siblings! Asgore, Toriel, Asriel, they all trusted me! To earn this trust, I just made up a bunch of crap about myself such as liking chocolate, liking flowers, drawing flowers, reading books, and pretending to be embarrassed when Mom and Dad showed affection for each other. I also showed Asriel my creepy face! Everyone trusts you when you make creepy faces all the time, right? Acting sinister is the perfect way to mask sinister intentions! In fact, it was just after giving him a creepy face when I told him part of our evil plan. I told him that we were only going to kill six humans and break the barrier, so that way, when I suddenly told him to blow up the whole village for no reason, HE'D DO IT! It was the perfect plan!

With Asriel given foolproof conditioning, I proceeded with our evil plan. I died, and then Asriel absorbed my soul. Sharing control with Asriel, I picked up my own dead body. Why? Honestly, I have no idea. It sure as hell wasn't to see those stupid flowers, but it wasn't to provoke an attack, either. I told Asriel to kill all the humans BEFORE they attacked. As Asriel said, I wanted to use our full power "when we got to the village." Not when we were attacked, when we got to the village. Besides, it was going to happen with or without a dead child in his arms! Have you seen a monster with a human soul? Even monsters describe them as horrible beasts! Also, this was my village. The villagers probably recognized me, and they all hated me as much as I hated them. Seeing Asriel with my corpse should've made them more likely to offer him a beer than to kill him! No, I guess I just wanted the humans to know who was really responsible for their demise! That's all!

All right, we're getting to my favorite part! Until now, that stupid goat still thought I just wanted to kill six humans to break the barrier, but when we got to the village (BEFORE we were even spotted), I told him, "LOL, nope! It's time to kill ALL the humans!" And the best part? Asriel KEPT WALKING! He walked all the way to the CENTER of the village! I mean, LOL, right? This guy's supposed to be, like, the ultimate cinnamon roll, but he just kept walking to the center of the village knowing there was a demon inside him who wanted to kill every single human there for NO REASON! See what I meant when I said Asriel is a total dick? He didn't given a damn about those villagers. He put all their lives in danger, just so he could bury his sibling that he had helped commit suicide. What a great guy!

Really, he's kind of a sociopath, too! I mean, seriously, did you notice how well he took it when he finally realized I was actually an evil psycho? Don't you think he should have cried at least a little bit and said something like, "Oh, Frisk. Chara was like a sibling to me. They were my best friend, but I don't think they ever really cared about me. How could they do this to me?" Nope! He just laughed it off and said, "Well, I guess maybe the truth is that Chara, my best friend, wasn't really the greatest person. Oh, well! I sure wish you were my friend, Frisk!" Uh... was he still soulless or something? I could've sworn he was abort to say, "I should've helped Chara commit suicide a long time ago!"

Ugh, sorry about all the digressions (except not really, because evil!) Anyway, Asriel even kept carrying my body and laid it down on a bed of golden flowers! All while I was trying to make him kill every single human in the village! I can't stress enough how much of a dick he was being! I mean, why else? Why else did he risk all those lives just to take me to the flowers? I don't even know why I mentioned those stupid things. I hate flowers, unless they're poisonous! Oh? What's that, idiot? Those pictures of golden flowers I drew? Just part of the elaborate ruse, obviously! Remember, if I ever do anything remotely nice, it was just an act! Because I'm evil, everything I do is evil, and all the evil things I do prove that I'm evil! There's some logic for you!

Back to the village! I kept telling Asriel to kill those humans already, but he was like, "Nah, I like looking at your corpse on these flowers." Kid was kind of a creep. He was always talking about how inseparable we were, how special I was to him, how he had fun playing with me, how he cared about me more than anyone else, how I was the only one who understood him, and how he didn't want to live in a world without me. He even DRESSED like me, and we even wore matching heart lockets that said "best friends forever." I know psychopaths can be charming, but DAMN! He had some SERIOUS attachment issues. I abused him and he LIKED IT! What a weirdo! Who the hell enjoys being used like a tool?! Well, a tool. Asriel is such a tool!

But anyway, the humans eventually spotted us and attacked (I'm not sure how a giant anthropomorphic goat got all the way to the center of a human village without attracting attention earlier, but whatever.) It was happening! Asriel was going to kill the humans, take their souls, and destroy the entire world! SHUT UP, FRISK! Ugh, now the idiot asks if I couldn't convince Asriel to destroy a single human village in self-defense, then how could I have possibly made him destroy his fellow monsters? Why would Asriel have ever destroyed the whole world? Simple! I would've just forced... oh, for... the idiot also wonders that if Asriel and I shared joint control over his body, then wouldn't that mean the other six souls would've had control? Wouldn't they all have been wrestling for control over Asriel? Doesn't it make more sense to assume that Asriel would've had dominant control, as we've seen in the pacifist run? How could I have overpowered Asriel AND six human souls? Oh, I don't know, Frisk. Maybe it's BECAUSE I'M CHARA!

But of course... that crybaby didn't fight back. He just sat there and took it. If he wasn't gonna follow through, I'm not sure why he didn't just run away as soon as I told him my true intentions. Why did he wait until he had been mortally injured to run away? Did he just want to take me to the flowers that badly? And… why did he take the time to pick me back up and carry me out? He might have lived if he had just ran away as quickly as possible. I was literally dead weight. Why? Why did he care about me so much? I used him… I betrayed him… I tried to make him destroy an entire village… he was about to die because of me… but even knowing all of that, he… h-he still s-smiled and carried my body with him. It w-would have been s-so much e-easier to l-leave me behind, b-but h-he… h-he… s-still… he still... he still loved me! Despite everything I had done, he still loved me…!

Wh-what? N-no! I'm not… I'm not crying! Big kids don't cry! G-get away from me, Frisk! I'm n-not… I'm not…

* I hide my face behind a bouquet of flowers.

I-I'm n-not c-crying…!

* …

… I'm not…

Chapter Text

"See that heart?" Flowey chirped. "That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!"

"I know," Frisk deadpanned. "Do you really think we haven't figured out what a soul is? They always fly out of our bodies when we die. It's really unsettling."

"Your soul starts off weak," Flowey lectured, "but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV."

"Everyone knows that," Frisk said. "By the way, I'm not a murderer, so that's not gonna happen."

For some time, Flowey just smiled, looking at Frisk silently. "… you know," he said, "I was going to do this thing where I try to kill you, take your soul, and go on a murderous rampage for the hell of it, but actually… I'm not going to do that. Because if I did, that would make me irredeemably evil, beyond salvation, like Chara!"

Frisk tilted their head. "What?"

"You see," Flowey said, "I'm soulless. I lack the ability to care about other people, so I kill them for fun every now and then. It doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter where. I just do it! However, I can't do that anymore, because I'm actually a cute goat named Asriel and I want you to forgive me!"

"O… okay," Frisk said. "I'm… glad you aren't going to do that anymore, but if you really are soulless, then you're not really Asriel, are you?"

"Of course not!" Flowey said. "But that's not an excuse! It doesn't excuse Chara, after all! They are, and I quote, 'empty inside, just like me,' but they're still pure evil for murdering everyone in the Genocide Route!"

Frisk blinked. They weren't following this at all. "I… I don't… who's Chara? And what's a Genocide Route?"

Flowey winked. "You'll see!" He burrowed into the ground.

Well, that was weird, to say the least. Frisk hoped that whoever else lived down here had it together in the head…

Undyne thrust her spear at Frisk. "With the power of seven human souls," she said, "our king, King Asgore Dreemurr, will become a god. With that power, Asgore can finally shatter the barrier. He will finally take the surface back from humanity… and give them back the suffering and pain that we have endured."

Frisk gulped. "S-seriously? You're really going to kill me? I'm just a kid."

Undyne paused, and then she roared with laughter and dropped her spear. "Hell, no! I'm just kidding! I wouldn't try to murder an innocent child so our king can wage war with all of humanity! That would make me irredeemably evil, beyond salvation, like Chara!"

Umm…

"Long ago," Gerson said. "Asgore and I agreed that escaping would be pointless... since once we left, humans would just kill us. I felt a little betrayed when he eventually changed his mind."

"Really?" Frisk asked.

Gerson laughed. "No, silly! That was a joke! If we escape, everything will be sunshine and roses! We monsters are not afraid that anything bad will happen whatsoever. Let's all go to the surface and be BFFs with humanity!"

"Uh…"

"I mean, really," Gerson said. "We wouldn't want to establish a possible motivation for Chara beyond 'they hated humanity.' No! It's not like our king declared war and vowed to destroy humanity because we don't trust them not to declare war on us again! If anyone wants to destroy humanity, they are irredeemably evil, beyond salvation, like Chara!"

Frisk slapped their forehead. They just wanted to go home…

"Your actions here," Sans said, "will determine the fate of the entire world. If you refuse to fight… Asgore will take your soul and destroy humanity."

"He will?" Frisk asked. "He's not bluffing? He really will destroy humanity?"

"Nah," Sans said, "I'm just talking out of my ass. Asgore would never destroy humanity. That would make him irredeemably -"

"OKAY! I GET IT!"

Asgore looked sadly at Frisk. "Human…"

"Let me guess!" Frisk shouted. "'I was going to kill you, but I won't, because that would make me irredeemably evil, beyond salvation, like Chara?'"

"Actually, no," Asgore said. "I'm totally going to try and kill you and destroy humanity."

Frisk gasped. "Really?"

"Yeah," Asgore said, "but I'm going to feel REALLY bad about it. That makes it okay, right?"

"How do you know Chara didn't feel bad about it?" Frisk asked.

Asgore huffed. "Seriously? Haven't you seen the Genocide Route?"

"They were soulless," Frisk said. "They didn't have the capability to care."

"No, they weren't," Asgore said. "Humans souls persist after death, and you absorbed their soul."

They… what? "That's not even possible," Frisk said. "One, Asriel and Chara combined their souls, so it's only natural that they would share the same fate. Two, if Chara's soul hadn't shattered, you would already have seven souls. Three, humans can't absorb human souls. I absorbed Chara's essence, similar to Flowey."

"They poisoned me and laughed about it," Asgore said. "Chara didn't care at all about that."

"Maybe," Frisk said, "or maybe they were just not giving into despair. Asriel did say that it was something that he should have done. So if Asriel hadn't laughed it off, then what had he done? Most likely, he cried profusely over it. Maybe Chara just wanted to make him feel better, show him that it wasn't a big deal. Maybe laughing it off was their way of assuring Asriel that his father was going to be okay."

"That's quite the assumption," Asgore said.

"It is," Frisk said, "but so is your interpretation."

"No," Asgore said. "Everything you believe is wrong, and everything I believe is right."

"Well, now you're just being closed-minded," Frisk said.

Asgore looked closely at them. "Young one, when I look at you... I'm reminded of the human that fell here long ago... you have the same feeling of hope in your eyes."

"Really?" Frisk asked. "I remind you of someone who's irredeemably evil, because we have the same look of hope in our eyes? That's weird."

Asgore hummed. "Yeah, I guess I'm just that dumb, huh? Anyway, there is an ancient prophecy among our people. One day, a savior will come from the heavens. I believe the one that was prophesied was you."

Frisk narrowed their eyes. "You told Chara the same thing, didn't you?"

Asgore paused. "Umm…"

"The future of humans and monsters."

Asgore remained silent.

"And you don't think that might have given Chara ideas?" Frisk asked. "Isn't it possible that you made Chara feel obligated to be your savior, at any cost?"

"Would you just stop?" Asgore asked. "Chara is evil, and you can't change that. Deal with it."

Frisk sighed. "I know there are some things that never change…"