Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I think I’m dead.

But then I remember that dead people aren’t supposed to feel pain, and I reconsider.

Maybe it’s hell. Hell’s supposed to be painful, and you can be dead in hell. But hell’s also supposed to be made of fire, and I don’t feel hot.

Everything hurts.

If I’m not dead, maybe I will be soon.

But I lay there for a while, and I don’t die. I lay there, and I realize that I am laying there. I can feel the ground beneath me. Everything hurts, but I can still feel. Dirt. A little grass. Mostly dirt. Dirt doesn’t make a very good cushion when you’re falling.

Right. I fell, didn’t I?

I went up to the mountain. I found a cave. I tried to look inside. Then I tripped over a root or a plant or something, it’s not like I was looking at it, but then I was tumbling, falling, headfirst, flipping as I went down, I could see the ground getting closer and I …

… I don’t remember anything after that.

But here I am. I’m not dead. And based on how I feel now, I won’t be dying anytime soon.

So despite every instinct not to, I try to open my eyes.

Fuck that hurts.

I close them, squeeze them shut, then try again. It still hurts, but less. Everything’s blurry, and I don’t know if it’s from tears or just because my eyes are tired. I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious. I think I can see sunlight, so that means it’s still daytime. Or maybe I slept through an entire day. What time was it when I fell again? I don’t remember.

I hear something off to my side, and lift my head enough to look at it. I blink a few more times as I try to see what it is. It sounds like … footsteps. Yeah, that’s definitely footsteps. Coming closer, I can’t focus enough to see where it’s coming from, but I stare in its direction and I see something moving and I blink a little more and …

There’s a … thing.

It’s like … it’s shaped like a person, but it’s definitely not a person. It’s covered in white fur and it’s wearing … clothes, clothes like mine, and it’s got big ears and I wonder for a few seconds why it’s getting bigger before I realize it’s coming toward me.

My whole body stiffens. I put my hands on the ground, even though they still sting, even though every movement burns. I push myself up, tilting my head to look at it. It already knows I’m awake. There’s no point faking it now.

It pauses. It stares at me. Then it comes closer, then closer still, it’s not stopping, I don’t know where the hell I am and this thing is coming closer, is it gonna eat me, where did that damn hole lead to anyway, there wasn’t supposed to be a hole, I wasn’t supposed to fall in it, is this what people were talking about, is this why they said no one ever came back?

Is this thing what kept people from coming back?

Closer. Closer and closer and it’s right in front of me now, reaching out to me, it’s starting to open its mouth and—

I move before I have the chance to think.

It goes down easier than I thought it would. It’s not quite so big when I tackle it to the ground and pin it under me, it doesn’t fight like the kids back in the village, it just lays there and stares at me, and I barely have time to see its bright red eyes before my hands mash down into its head.

I bash my fists into it, waiting for it to fight back, it’s got claws, I can see that now, claws and sharp teeth and it could kill me, it’s going to kill me if I don’t fight it, why did I do this, why did I come here, why did I think things would be any better here?

I wait for it to fight back.

But it doesn’t.

It just lays there.

It’s crying.

It’s pushing against me, but it’s weak, it’s like fighting a three-year-old and then—

Then its body crumbles.

It … dissolves.

It dissolves, right there, like a bunch of sand, and it falls into a pile of white dust on the ground.

I stand there, huffing, aching, staring, and it just sits there. Perfectly still. Like it was never alive at all. I breathe, even though breathing hurts, my fists are clenched but there’s nothing to fight, it’s dead, it’s gone, but I … I …

I push myself up and run.

I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where I’m trying to go, I don’t know if there’s anywhere to go, if there’s even a way out of this place, but I can’t stay here so I keep running, faster, faster, away, get away.

I think I might run into a wall, but I don’t. There’s … halls and corridors and lots of stuff I have to jump and climb over but I’m barely even aware of it, I just know I need to keep moving. My legs hurt, my whole body hurts like hell, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Run. Run.

I don’t know how long I’ve been running when I get to the town.

Or … it’s not a town, it has buildings, but there aren’t people here, I think there might be people but there are more things. More of them, some of them my size, some of them huge, all different colors, like in the books I stole from the library at school, they’re all wandering around like people but they’re not people there’s more so many too many have to get away I can’t fight them all I can’t—

I duck behind a building. My heart is beating so fast it hurts, and my whole body’s shaking, I have to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. I still want to run, but that will only get their attention. I sit. I wait. I try to remember how to breathe.

It takes a long time for my body to stop shaking, and the second it does, I’m on my feet again.

I have to get out of here.

I peer around the edge of the building. There’s tons of them. All over the place. But … they’re distracted. They’re talking to each other, looking around, if I’m careful they won’t notice me I can get out of here find somewhere else to go there has to be a way out of this goddamn mountain I just have to—

I’m barely five steps out of my hiding place when the first one sees me.

And once the first one sees me, they all do.

I freeze, but they’re already looking, they’re gawking, tilting their heads, some of them look confused, others look alarmed, all of them look curious. My body’s shaking again, my heart’s pounding so hard it hurts, they’re staring and I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to do I don’t know what—

Then there’s another one coming up, it’s running, it’s pointing, it’s screaming, and suddenly all of them are staring again and their faces are different the curiosity is gone and now there’s fear, uncertainty, anger.

They’re making noise, they’re pointing at me, looking at me, they’re all around me I can’t get away there’s nowhere for me to move, they’re behind me in front of me they’re everywhere and they’re getting closer I have to get out one gets closer and I whack it away and another tries to grab my arm and I kick it and then something hits me and I barely notice it before something hits me again, god it hurts it’s like being punched I don’t even know what it is they’re not close enough to touch me anymore but—

Then I feel it.

Sharp.

Empty.

There’s something … something …

I look down.

There’s a glowing spear in my stomach.

It’s … it’s poking out of me, I can feel it, it’s inside me is that what it feels like to have something going through you it’s like a shot with a giant fucking needle it hurts but it doesn’t hurt and I’m falling I’m dizzy I’m hitting the ground and they’re surrounding me I can’t breathe I can’t move I’m lying on the ground choking on nothing there’s blood in my mouth but I can’t taste it I … I …

I close my eyes.

My choking stops.

And the world fades away.

*

I think I’m dead.

Because I should be dead. I just got stabbed through my damn gut, I felt it, I felt my body dying, I felt myself fading, I felt every single thing, it wasn’t a dream, it couldn’t have been just a dream—

I open my eyes and push myself up to look around.

It hurts to move. I don’t want to move, but I have to see. My vision is blurry, so I blink until it clears, until I can see everything around me.

And it’s the same.

My body hurts in the same places as it did before, just as strong, just as overwhelming. But it’s … familiar, like a pain that’s been there for a while and you’ve gotten used to it. I’m on the same pile of dirt, looking around at the same dirt and grass and now I see stone beams I hadn’t noticed before, like the entrance to an ancient city. My arms give out and I collapse, face-first, back onto the ground, groaning.

Everything hurts.

God, everything hurts.

But it’s the same. Everything’s exactly the same as the first time, so it couldn’t have been a dream, could it? But I died. I really died, I can’t be here if I really died.

So I wait. I lay there, because I can’t make my body move.

It doesn’t take long before I hear footsteps.

My head jerks up so fast I feel the pain in my neck double. But I don’t pay attention to that for more than a second.

Because even with my blurred vision, I can see it.

Maybe twenty feet away from me, but definitely there.

The same thing.

The same … whatever it is. Coming toward me. Exactly like it did before.

It doesn’t look like it remembers me. It doesn’t look afraid of me, it doesn’t look aggressive, it’s just … there.

I can still see the pile of dust in front of me. I can still feel its fur against my skin. I can still hear the moment it stopped breathing and crumbled under my hands.

It takes another step, and I almost fall off the hill—right, I’m on a hill, aren’t I?—trying to get back. It stops for a second, frozen, before it moves forward again, reaching its front leg—arm?—out toward me.

I scramble to my feet and run.

I swear I hear it calling after me, but that’s stupid, because monsters can’t talk.

Then again, monsters aren’t exactly supposed to exist in the first place.

I keep running. I run, and I reach the same place I did before, the place with even more monster-thing-whatever-the-hell-they-are’s, and I barely manage to duck out of sight before I’m spotted again. I drop to the ground, pressed close to the wall, breathing hurts, everything hurts, but I can’t move, can’t let them see me, I have to hide, I was stupid last time I got caught but now I’ve got another chance I don’t know how this is weird this doesn’t make any sense but I’m alive and I have to stay that way.

After a while, my breathing slows down. My heart’s still racing. It hurts. I wonder if I broke a rib when I fell. It feels like a broken rib. Sort of. I’ve only broken one once, and it was so long ago I barely remember it. I think they’re supposed to heal on their own. Either way, it’s not like I can do anything about it.

It’s not like I’m planning to move around anyway.

When it gets dark—it’s different than things getting dark on the surface, how do things get dark if there isn’t a sun—I sneak around until I find something that looks like an alley. I wonder who built this place the monsters are living in now. Can monsters build stuff? I think I saw them wearing clothes, but … that’s stupid. Monsters attack people, they don’t wear clothes and live in buildings and shit like that.

I don’t think about it for long. I find an alley and go to the very back, where I’m pretty sure no one will see me. Then I sit down and I wait.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t come.

I wait. I sit there and when the sky or the ceiling or whatever gets light again, I stay where I am, hidden in the shadows, and I try not to be seen.

I’m pretty sure I’m hungry, thirsty, or but I don’t care. It’s not worth going out for food right now. Who knows what monsters even eat, anyway?

The day ends, and this time, I sleep for a while. I’m awake before it’s light again, and when I open my eyes, I can feel the hunger eating away at my insides, like my body has decided to try and chow down on itself since I’m not giving it anything else. I never knew hunger could hurt this bad. Even if no one remembered to feed me before, I still knew how to get food on my own.

I think that maybe I’ll look for food that night, but after a few hours of sitting there, I think I might die if I wait any longer.

Yeah. I need food. And water. Water’s important, too. It’s hard to think about being thirsty when I’m so hungry, but you can live a whole lot longer without food than water, right? Yeah. Water.

My legs shake when I push myself up, and I stumble all the way to the edge of the alley. It sounds pretty quiet outside. If I’m careful, maybe I can jump around to another alley. I don’t know what I think I might find, but it’s worth a go. It’s the only chance I’ve got right now.

But before I can take the first step out of the alley, something steps in front of me.

And I freeze.

There’s a monster.

It’s purple and covered in scales with a pointed nose and long thick tail and there’s a monster right in front of me.

I can’t breathe. I can’t move. It’s only ten feet away, maybe, and it’s staring at me, I don’t know how it noticed me but it did and now it’s turned to face me and it’s opening its mouth.

It’s talking. It’s definitely talking. I’m not listening to what it’s saying, because goddammit it’s actually talking.

And it’s getting closer.

No. No no no get away.

I want to yell at it, tell it to leave, but I can’t make my mouth move and it’s getting closer and it’s still talking and I just want all of this to be over, I want to get away but it’s blocking my way it’s huge and it’s getting closer closer closer—

I don’t even realize when I move.

I know it’s stupid, I know the monster’s twice my size and I don’t even have a weapon, but I hit them anyway, punching, kicking, it’s still trying to talk but I’m not listening, it’s stopping me from leaving and I have to get past it, have to stay away, have to survive—

Then it’s not there anymore.

It’s just … not there.

Like the little white monster that turned to dust under my grasp. I look down and there it is. Dust.

It’s dead. I killed it.

It’s dead.

The thought has barely gone through my head before I hear the screaming.

I look up and see monsters, five, maybe more, they’re all staring at the dust and they’re staring at me and they’re coming toward me and I can’t move my feet won’t move I have to get out of here but my feet won’t fucking move and they’re right in front of me I can see something glowing around their hands, floating around them, I open my mouth and I don’t even know what I’m going to say—

Something hits me, and I barely have time to feel the pain before everything vanishes once again.

*

I’m not dead.

But I was.

I’m sure of it this time. It wasn’t a dream. Dreams don’t feel like that. Dreams aren’t that real. Dreams don’t tell you that many things that really happen.

Everything still hurts, but I push myself up anyway. This time, it takes a while for the footsteps to come. Or maybe it always took this long and I just never noticed. But this time, I’m expecting them when they finally appear.

I think about standing up, but I stay kneeling, hands on the ground in front of me, like I’m injured. The thing still approaches me, slowly, carefully. It says something, calling out as it gets closer. It holds a hand out toward me.

I take its hand.

Then I yank it to the ground.

Killing it is easier than it was the first time. I always thought it would be hard to kill someone. Maybe these things are different than humans. This one barely seems to know what I’m doing before it’s dead.

I didn’t notice it before, but there’s a little white heart that lingers after the rest of its body is gone. I try to touch it. But then it shatters, too, and there’s nothing left of the thing but dust on the ground.

I sit there for a minute, just looking at it, staring down at the dust and figuring out what I’m feeling.

I don’t think I’m feeling anything.

What good would feeling do right now?

I stand up, pick up the first stick I find, and start toward the town.

I don’t think. I wouldn’t even know what to think if I was thinking. I don’t think, I don’t feel, all I know is that I have to get out of here, and I can’t get out of here if they’re still here. I can’t get out of here if they stand in my way. There’s too many of them, there’s too many that might stop me, I can’t hide from them, I can’t get past them, not without fighting.

So I’ll fight.

If I can fight with my hands, I can fight a lot easier with a stick.

I don’t seek them out, but I can’t avoid them. The town isn’t very big, and it’s packed tight, and I don’t try very hard to hide this time. When one shows up, I don’t wait for it to come closer. I don’t wait for it to talk. I grip the stick and I strike, again and again, it’s easier now, I know how to do this, it’s easy, so easy, and it feels like only seconds later that it’s a pile of dust on at my feet.

More come. Faster this time. But I’m ready.

I hit them, too. I hit them, and I feel them hit back. It hurts, more than I’d thought it would hurt, but I keep going. I keep fighting, and I see some of them disappear, some run off, but others stay, trying to fight back. It feels like the life is being sucked out of me, this is weird, this feels wrong, it’s different than the strong attacks that killed me right away, these attacks are small, they shouldn’t be hurting me, but it’s like I’m a glass with a crack in the bottom and there’s water leaking out but I don’t care, I have to fight, keep fighting, I have to get out of here, have to get through, have to get away, have to get—

I don’t realize how much I’m hurting until a blow knocks me over.

The stick falls out of my hands, and then the blows keep coming, again and again, I can’t breathe, it hurts, I can’t move, I can’t—

It doesn’t feel weird to die this time. The loss of my energy was weird, but not dying. It’s familiar. It hurts, but it’s like getting punched in the face for the third time. You know it’s coming. You know what it’s like.

And you know what comes after.

Everything fades away.

I die.

Then I wake up.

*

I keep dying.

Over and over. I stop counting how many times.

But each time it gets easier. Each time I learn a little more about how to beat them. Each time I get a little further. Each time I can predict a little more about what they’re going to do.

They’re predictable. All of them.

The ones that didn’t attack me the first time never do. The ones that attacked me right from the beginning never stop. I cut them all down, one by one, sometimes I try to spare one but it doesn’t work and I just keep coming back and killing it.

After the tenth time—or what I think is the tenth time—I find that if I focus hard enough, if I “mark” a spot in my journey with enough feeling, I can come back to it, instead of going back to the beginning. It saves a lot of time, and a lot of work. It’s weird, but all of this is weird, and I don’t have time to think about it anyway. I just keep going, marking my place like dog-earing a page in a book, further and further and it gets easier and easier, I swear I can feel myself getting stronger with every monster that turns to dust at my feet.

It feels good.

It feels powerful.

I’ve never felt this powerful before.

In the rare moments of quiet, when all the monsters have run away and I have to walk forward before running into another, I wonder if I could have done this in my life before I came here. I wonder if I could have changed every bad moment in my life by doing this. It’s like living in a videogame. Once, I try to reset—because that’s what it feels like, resetting—back out of the mountain, back when I was still above ground, I try to go back to my old life and fix it that way. But I only ever go back to that spot lying on the ground, after I fell in.

In that way, maybe it is like a video game. If you’ve never created a save point, you can’t go back to it.

I just don’t know why the game began when I fell into the mountain in the first place.

I stop thinking about it after that. I see a monster in the distance, and I save, almost on reflex, before I go to face it.

I die. I come back. I die again. Then I cut it down.

I get stronger. I keep getting stronger. I love it. And I want more.

It gets easy. Easier and easier, every time I go through. Some try to fight back, some try to plead with me, but I never stop, I can’t stop, I can’t let them stop me, I told myself I’d get out of here and I will, no matter what it takes. I barely even recognize them now, I just hit them with one blow and they’re dust, all of them, no matter how big or strong they were, no matter how hard they fought, no matter how many times they killed me before, once I strike them down, they’re nothing but dust.

Nothing.

I’m powerful, and they’re nothing.

I’m strong.

I’m stronger than anyone in this whole goddamn place.

And I never, ever want it to end.

*

The monsters are dead.

All of them. Unless they’re hiding. Maybe they’re hiding. They seemed afraid of me. Good. If they’re afraid, they won’t fight back. If they’re afraid, they’ll let me go.

When I leave the town, no one follows me.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t even know if there is anywhere to go. But there’s nothing back there, no way out of here, and I have to find a way out of here, there has to be a way out of here. I leave the town and reach what I swear is a forest. Like … an actual forest. With trees. And fresh snow. In a fucking mountain.

I wonder if this is what being on LSD is like.

It’s cold, and even my sweater feels thin and useless, but I keep going. I walk, I keep walking, and eventually the snow begins to melt. There’s a river off to one side as more of the snow melts, and everything turns to mud and mush and plants. After that it gets hot, so hot that everything dies, there’s just rock and lava and once I try to jump over a pit only to fall in the lava and die but I keep saving and I keep reloading and I keep coming back. I’ve come this far. I’m not going to stop now.

I walk, and eventually, I find it.

Even from a distance, I can see the sunlight, poking through what looks like the mouth of a cave. My legs feel like they’re going to fall off, but I start running, faster, faster, I’m almost out, I’m almost free, I can find somewhere else to go, it was stupid to climb this damn mountain anyway, I can—

My body slams into something, and I tumble back onto the ground.

I sit there for a second, stunned, my nose aching like it’s broken, something warm and liquid dripping out of my nostrils. But I don’t care about that. My eyes are locked on the light, it’s definitely sunlight, shining in, I know what sunlight looks like and it—

I blink, and suddenly I can see it.

The wall.

Like … like a window. Or a sliding glass door.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much like a pigeon in my whole life.

I push myself up, ignoring the blood dripping over my chin. I stumble forward, hands stretched out, until I feel them hit something solid. I run my hands over it, all the way to the side, up and down as far as I can reach, searching for a latch, for something to open it.

But there’s nothing.

I press a little harder, and it doesn’t feel like glass. It’s … is this what a forcefield is supposed to feel like? It doesn’t feel solid in the normal way, but at the same time I can’t imagine going through it, any more than I could imagine going through a wall. When I push, it’s like it pushes me back. I push harder, and I feel like it’s going to knock me over.

It takes a long, long time for it to sink in.

This thing isn’t going to let me through.

And if this is the side of the mountain … it’s the only way through.

My heart is thudding against my ribs almost before the thought sinks in.

No. No no no no no.

This isn’t happening. I can’t be stuck here. I can’t be stuck here.

I made it all the way here. I made it all the way through this damn mountain, I cannot be stuck here.

I hit the wall. It doesn’t budge. I hit it again, and it hurts, so I kick it, slam my body into it, I can feel bruises forming, I’m tired and everything hurts but I hit it over and over again until I fall to the ground and just sit there, pounding it with my fists. I barely feel the warmth of tears streaming down my cheeks. Stupid. Crying won’t solve anything, crying won’t stop me from being stuck in this fucking nightmare.

Everyone’s dead. I got rid of everyone, I killed them, I beat them, I stopped them from killing me, I won, so why am I here now?!

After a while, even my fists get tired and I let my arms drop back to my sides. Maybe there’s another way. There has to be another way, another exit, I just have to keep looking, maybe there’s a big rock or something I can throw at the wall to make it break, I don’t know, but there has to be something. There has to be some way out of here.

But as soon as the thought hits me, one more time, I realize how wrong it sounds.

Maybe I could find a way out of here. Maybe I could escape. Maybe I could go back to the surface.

But I don’t want to go back.

That’s why I came up here in the first place. I wanted to leave and I never wanted to go back. I wanted something different. Something … better.

And I got something different, didn’t I?

I didn’t think it would be this, but …

I don’t know if it could be better. I’ve already lost track of how many times I’ve died here, and I never died even once back on the surface. I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do. But I haven’t really tried. And it’s not like it’s risking anything. Worst case, I just die again. And then … I don’t know what I’ll do then. But at least I’ll have marked it off the list.

I stare up the wall for a little bit, and it’s like I can feel all my anger draining out of me. It’s not a good feeling. It’s just … empty.

I’m done with this. If I come back and just die over and over again … well, at least it won’t be this much work.

Finally, I take a deep breath, turn, and walk away.

It’s funny, how little dying scares me now. It seemed so foreign before, so terrifying. But now it’s like … tripping. Tripping and knowing it’s going to hurt a little, but you’ll stand up again and be fine.

Even if it was still scary, I don’t think I have enough energy left in me to feel afraid..

I walk back to the cliff I saw on the way here, over the bubbling lava. I stare down into it, imagining what it’ll feel like, even though I know I won’t be alive to feel it long. I wonder if I’ll remember the pain of this, like I do being beaten or stabbed. I wonder if it will hurt more.

I don’t really care.

I think about jumping, or diving, or letting myself fall backwards, but in the end, I just take a step forward and let myself tumble down into the pit.

There’s a rush of the wind in my face and an agonizing splatter as my body hits the heat.

Then there’s nothing.

*

Waking up on that pile of dirt feels as familiar as waking up in my bed.

I open my eyes slowly, carefully. My body hurts, but I barely notice it now. I’ve felt it too many times for it to matter.

I push my arms up enough to keep my face from pressing into the dirt, but after that, I just lay there. I told myself that I was going to give this another chance, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to do now. So I stay, waiting. Hoping, I guess, even though there’s not much left to hope for.

Then I hear the footsteps.

I tilt my head, just a little, enough to blink open my eyes and stare in the direction the sound came from. It’s coming from past those stone pillars. They’re slow, but they’re coming closer, just like they came closer every time before. They sound small. Nervous. Curious. I wonder if they sounded like that before.

“It sounds like it came from over here …”

The voice sounds familiar, even though I’ve never really listened to it before. Was that what it said every time? When it was coming up to me? I wonder how I never heard it. I wonder how it didn’t stop me.

Then it steps into view, and I turn my head to look.

It’s … a lot smaller than I remember. Just my size. Maybe even a little smaller.

It’s white and furry and I swear it looked a lot scarier before. Now it looks like a teddy bear.

It looks at me, staring for a second before it seems to snap out of its trance.

“Oh! You’ve fallen down, haven’t you …” it says—or he says. It sounds like a he. He steps closer, careful, concerned. Not afraid. “Are you okay?”

He comes closer. I don’t move. Even though I’ve felt this at least twenty times now, it still hurts, and I’m tired. A lot more tired than I was the first time around.

A tiny part of me still panics when he gets close, but I stuff it down and stare at the hand he holds out to me. Even with the claws, it looks smaller and gentler than I remember.

“Here, get up …?” he says, soft, worried.

I stare at the hand, then, before I can convince myself it’s a bad idea, I take it.

He pulls me to my feet. He’s not very strong, and I have to do most of the work, but it’s a nice gesture, I guess. He puts his arm around me to hold me steady, and I let myself lean on him. I’ve run in this state before, but like I said, I’m tired.

I turn my head to look at him. He’s still staring at me, like he’s waiting for something, and it takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was asking a question.

He was asking for my name.

I hesitate. My old name, the one hardly anyone used, comes to my lips, but it feels weird there, like it doesn’t belong. I’m not sure it ever belonged. Maybe occasionally, but never for very long. Like the pronouns people used for me, which some days felt perfect and other days made me cringe.

As the goat kid stares at me, way too patient, I run over other names in my head. Names of people I knew, names I read in books, and a few names I made up. None of them sound right. None of them sound like they should be mine.

Then one hits me, like a brick in the nose, and my mouth is open almost before it’s settled in my head.

“Chara.”

The kid—he looks a lot like a goat, now that I think of it—pauses, just for a second, the same second I use to figure out whether that was really the name I wanted, whether that was my name, whether I liked it enough to want to keep it. Then his mouth curls up at the corners, his head tilted to the side, floppy ears dangling close to his shoulders, and it’s hard to believe I ever thought he was a threat.

“Chara, huh?” he repeated. The name sounds nice in his voice. Better than it did in my mind. It sounds … real. Hearing him say it makes all the doubt I felt slip away. “That’s a nice name.”

It is a nice name, I realize. It’s my name. My name.

He smiles a little wider and holds out his hand.

“My name is Asriel.”

Chapter Text

It’s weird, at first. Really weird.

Part of the reason it’s weird is because it’s so normal. Or, at least, what I’m pretty sure is normal. I don’t have much to compare it to.

The other part of the reason is because I’ve never heard of a family just bringing in another kid without any warning and treating them as their own, like it’s second nature. It’s weird, and I’m not sure if I like it. But it’s not bad, and besides, I already know what my other options are. I’m going to see this option through.

I recognize Asriel’s parents when he takes me to meet them. Sort of. I killed so many monsters that last run, so quickly, I didn’t take the time to really look at them. But they’re white and furry and hard to ignore and I swear, as they look at me, I can still feel their dust crumbling around my hands. They’re big, but they’re not scary. Not anymore. They’re dressed like an old-fashioned, but somehow very modest, king and queen, complete with crowns, but they don’t mention the fact that they are the king and queen until a monster approaches them with a call of “Your Majesty.”

I’m definitely not royalty, and I’m especially not monster royalty, but it doesn’t seem to matter to them. They take me back to their house, and it’s not a castle, it’s just a house. A pretty normal-sized house with a kids’ bedroom and a bedroom for the grown-ups and a living room and a kitchen.

And the bathroom. Except it doesn’t have a toilet. There’s a bathtub and a sink, and no toilet. I … I don’t think to comment on that.

It’s not like I have to go right now. I haven’t eaten in a while, and there’s a pretty big courtyard outside. I can always use the bushes.

They welcome me into the house like they might welcome a family friend, or one of Asriel’s friends. His mom—Toriel—notices I’m injured and puts her hands on my shoulders. I don’t even have time to ask what she’s doing before her hands begin to glow, and a warm, tingly feeling washes over me.

And I don’t hurt anymore. Just like that. All the aches and pains are just … gone. I hadn’t been paying much attention to them before, but now they’re completely gone.

I look at her, and she just smiles and runs a hand over my hair and offers me a slice of pie.

I think, at first, that it might be some kind of weird monster pie, but then she brings it out and it smells sweet and I bite into it and it’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever eaten. She brings me another slice after I finish the first, and I eat that just as fast. Asriel’s dad—Asgore—gives me something that tastes like tea, and I chug down three cups.

An hour after that and I still don’t have to go the bathroom.

That evening, they give me a bath. Or, rather, they give Asriel a bath and stick me in with him. I’ve never taken a bath with someone else before, and it feels vulnerable and awkward, being naked around someone else, especially someone I don’t know, especially someone who might not have ever seen a human without clothes, whatever their gender. But none of them stare. Toriel washes my hair and heals some of my smaller cuts and bruises, and Asriel takes out the bath toys and pours bubbles in the water and plays about a dozen bath games I’ve never heard of before.

When Toriel washes Asriel’s hair—or head fur, or whatever the hell it’s called—she takes longer than she needs to and rubs his head. She’s already washed mine, but after she finishes, she comes back and rubs my head, too.

It’s weird. I’ve never felt anything like it before.

But it’s nice, too, and it makes me sleepy, even though I hadn’t realized I was tired before.

I let her dress me in a pair of pajamas that are a little too big and way too comfortable. While she dries Asriel off and gets him dressed for bed, Asgore picks me up and carries me through the house. His arms are huge and could probably crush me like a bug, but they’re gentle and careful and his fur feels like a freshly-groomed cat’s. They lay me down on the couch, which has been covered with blankets and pillows I know weren’t there before. It’s a lot more comfortable than the couches I’ve sat on before, and I can hardly tell that it’s not a bed.

Asgore runs a hand over my hair, smoothing it down, and gives me a careful pat on the shoulder before he walks away. I watch him go through drooping eyes.

I know it’s probably stupid to sleep here when I barely know these people. I mean, just yesterday I was … well, that’s not really yesterday, is it? In any case, it doesn’t really matter what they do to me, if they do anything. I can always go back. Right now … right now, I’m tired. Right now, I want to sleep. Even if it’s not safe. Even if I’ll regret it in the morning. Right now … I guess I’m too tired to be scared.

My eyes close the rest of the way, and I barely make out the faint murmur of voices nearby before I pass out.

*

That’s how it was the first day. I didn’t think it was going to last.

I was just a guest. Maybe that’s how they treat guests here. If I’m really going to stay here, they won’t keep doing it. They’ll go back to normal, they’ll change, and I’ll see how they really are.

But they don’t change.

For one thing, I actually wake up the next day, on the couch, completely unharmed. I’m not as surprised as I probably should be. I wake up, sit up, check myself for injuries, and a minute later Toriel comes out of the kitchen and smiles at me and asks what I’d like for breakfast.

It takes me a minute to understand that I get to choose.

But even when she makes me exactly what I ask for—chocolate chip pancakes with extra cocoa in the batter—I still brush it off. Even when all four of us eat together, like I actually belong there, I brush it off. So they didn’t kill me. So they’re letting me eat with them. Great. That doesn’t mean I’m welcome here. I’m still a guest right now. Of course they’re being all courteous. It isn’t going to last.

Except it does.

They get me my own bed, my own clothes—I want to punch the person who came up with the idea of siblings with matching outfits, especially when this outfit makes me look like the guy from Blue’s Clues, but I can’t exactly protest, especially since I was already wearing a striped sweater anyway—my own toys, even though Asriel is happy to share his. They give me breakfast, lunch and dinner, and snacks in between, every single day, and we eat all the main meals together, even though they’re the king and queen and busy and important and they shouldn’t have time for silly stuff like that. They give me and Asriel baths with toys and bubbles and stupid bath songs and when I mention, without thinking, that I like the smell of one soap over another, they start using that one every time.

I’ve seen other kids with their parents before. It’s … always been different than what I’m used to, but it still isn’t like this. The biggest difference is that they don’t fight. Ever. Asriel gives his parents hugs and kisses constantly, and they do the same to him, and they talk and play and if they want him to do something they ask gently and if he does something wrong they don’t get mad. They don’t raise their voices. They don’t huff and leave the room or hit him or any of the other shit I’ve seen parents do.

They’re happy. The sort of happy I only would have imagined in a cheesy fairy tale, except there’s no way they’re faking it this long.

I think they must have been like that before I got here, too. Even if Asgore is in the middle of important paperwork, if Asriel asks him to come play, he’ll set it all aside and play instead. If Asriel asks to help with cooking, or have a snack while Toriel is busy in the kitchen, she lets him, even though he makes a mess and can’t cook half as well as she can.

If they notice I’m bored, they offer me a toy or ask if I want to play a game or read a book. If there’s something I don’t know how to do, they teach me, carefully, patiently, slowly, even when I intentionally screw up just to see what they’ll do. Sometimes they’ll just look at me and smile for no damn reason and I don’t know what to do so I just stare back.

Things change a little, I guess. The four of us take turns picking what to eat for breakfast, so it’s not just me every day—though if it’s something I hate, Toriel tells me I can always have cereal instead. They focus a little less on me and a little more on Asriel, so we’re more balanced, but they still do that thing where they’ll pay attention to me if they think I need it, even if it’s supposed to be Asriel’s turn, just like they’ll pay attention to Asriel if he needs it even if it’s my turn.

It’s weird. It’s really fucking weird.

But it can’t last forever.

Nothing does.

I know that, and every day, every hour, I tell myself it’s going to end soon. I tell myself not to get used to it. I tell myself that I can’t settle into this, because getting used to it and losing it is only going to hurt worse.

I try to appreciate it while it lasts.

But sometimes I can’t help but wish I never had it at all, because damn it’s gonna hurt, knowing that this is what I’ve been missing all along, and knowing that once it’s over, I’ll never have it again.

*

I wait for it to end. But it doesn’t.

It’s been a month, according to the calendar Toriel keeps in the hall. I thought maybe it would last a week, two, at most. I was pretty sure I could handle it lasting that long. I had already started to make plans for what I would do when it ended. Whether it would be worth it to stay here, or whether I should try to move on and do something else.

But it doesn’t end.

And every day that passes feels more and more like my gut is being twisted into a knot.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s weird, it’s wrong, it’s not how things are supposed to be, and I know it’s going to end. I’ve always known it was going to end.

It has to end, because this can’t be how things always are. It’s going to end, and every day that it doesn’t makes it worse.

I want it to end. Or, rather, I don’t want it to end, but it’s going to end and I have to deal with that, I can’t get used to this, if I get used to this then I’ll miss it even more and it’ll hurt and I don’t want to get used to something I won’t be able to keep.

It doesn’t end, so after the first month passes, I try to make it end.

I break one of Toriel’s vases, to start. I don’t think about it. I see it, remember that she really likes that vase, and just push it off the little stand it’s on. It shatters into at least thirty sharp little pieces on the floor. I stand there, staring at it, waiting, as I hear the thundering footsteps running through the house.

Toriel appears in the hall and stares. She looks at the vase. She looks at me.

Then she crosses the hall, carefully avoiding the broken pottery, kneels down in front of me, and asks if I’m alright.

I’m standing in front of her broken vase, and she asks if I’m alright.

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. She checks me over, makes sure I’m safe, then picks up the pieces of the vase and takes them to the kitchen to try to glue them back together. She manages it, and even though the vase looks really bad now, she puts it back up where it was before.

I decide, that night, lying in bed, that maybe she didn’t realize it was me. Maybe she thought it broke and I just happened to be nearby. It’s stupid, unlikely, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

So I break more things.

Things they like. Things I don’t know anything about, but I know they like. I break them in front of them, so they can see me doing it, so they know I’m doing it on purpose. When Asriel gets out his art supplies, I get paint all over the furniture and walls. I drop the dishes when I’m helping Toriel and Asriel cook. I sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and eat the dessert Toriel is saving for the next day. I tell them they’re stupid. I think about saying something worse, I know a lot of words most kids don’t know, I could out-insult anyone I know, but I can’t seem to go further than “stupid.” So I say it a lot, to make up for it.

When Toriel tries to give me a hug, I push her away. Then I slap her away.

I scream at them for no reason. I kick and punch and, once, bite.

I wait for them to yell back. I wait for them to hit me, to lock me in a room alone and leave me there, I wait for them to stop giving me food and toys and baths and smiles and gentle words that I’m not supposed to get.

But it doesn’t happen.

They look surprised. Sometimes they look completely stunned. Occasionally, they look disappointed, or sad, and maybe a little bit irritated. The closest they come to looking upset is the one time I call Asriel stupid, but the upset quickly changes to concern as they comfort their son.

They tell me, in gentle voices, that saying things like that hurts people. They usher me away from other people when I lash out—but they stay with me, instead of leaving me alone. They take the fragile, precious items off the shelves and put them somewhere where I can’t reach them.

They never yell. They never hit me. They never lock me up. They never stop giving me things, and they never take away anything they’ve given me before—except when I try to throw a toy at Asgore, and he slips it carefully out of my hand, only to give me a small pillow and tell me I can throw that instead. He gives the toy back to me a while later, when I seem calm. They keep trying to give me hugs, keep telling me that they’re there to talk, if I want to.

If I start yelling or hitting, they lead Asriel away from me to play somewhere else. They protect their son. They protect themselves, stepping out of the way of my blows or putting pillows between us, pillows that they let me hit to my heart’s content. But they never do anything back, and they never stop looking at me with those soft, concerned eyes, like they’re worried about me, no matter how hard I try to make their lives hell.

They don’t hate me. They never hate me.

They never even stop liking me.

I keep trying. I try for weeks, I try everything that I can stand doing. And they never change. They look sad, they look worried, but they never, ever change.

One day, I stop.

I try to think of something else to do, something that would make them respond, but nothing comes to mind. I’ve tried everything I can think of. Everything that I haven’t done in another timeline, anyway. I get up in the morning, and I get dressed and brush my teeth without complaint. I eat breakfast without throwing food. Toriel reads in her chair while Asriel and I play on the floor with our toys, and I don’t throw any of them, or yell, or hit. It feels weird, just playing. But it doesn’t feel bad.

I notice Asriel looking at me after a while. He’s smiling, with a bright gleam in his eyes that hurts to look at. He seems happy. Maybe relieved. I don’t need to ask about what.

Part of me wants to apologize to him. But I don’t know how to find the words, so I don’t say anything.

Instead, I draw him a picture of a flower and let him borrow my favorite toy. He takes both carefully, gives me a big smile, then pulls me into a hug.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Chara,” he tells me after he pulls away. Like I’ve been sick. “I like playing with you.”

I can’t think of anything to say to that, so I don’t say anything.

After Asriel goes back to our toys, I notice Toriel smiling at me. I can’t bring myself to smile back. I go back to playing and don’t say anything until lunch.

It’s weird. Everything is weird, and it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s not changing. It’s not going away.

So like it or not, I guess I’d better get used to it.

*

One night, a few months in, Asriel is late to come to bed.

I may not be much of one for routine, but Asriel sticks to his almost obsessively. At six, we eat dinner. At seven, he takes a bath. At eight, he gets into his pajamas. And at nine, exactly, he goes to bed. It’s weird, but I’ve gotten used to it.

So when the clock says 9:10 and he hasn’t shown up yet, I get worried.

At 9:15, I slip out of our room and wander through the hall. I look in the bathroom, even though Asriel has already brushed his teeth and it’s not like monsters even use toilets. I look in the linen closet, where he always hides when we play hide and seek. I’m about to go look in the kitchen when I reach the living room.

And I see them.

Asriel, curled up in Toriel’s lap as she sits in her favorite chair, humming and stroking his fur.

At first, I think he might be sick. He’s never done this before, and why would he be late to bed otherwise? But when I look closer, I see him smiling, the sort of quiet, content smile I wonder if I ever made when I was younger, his eyes closed as he snuggles against his mother’s chest.

He’s eight, just as old as me, but he looks completely happy to lay in her arms like a baby.

God, no wonder he still cries so much.

I don’t watch them any longer. It’s weird, it’s unfamiliar, and it makes something ache deep in my chest, even though I don’t know why. I go back to our room and lay in my bed, and after another ten minutes or so, the door opens again. Toriel slips inside, Asriel cradled in her arms. She gives me a quick smile—I don’t even have the chance to pretend to be asleep—before she sets him down on the bed, covers him up with a blanket, and gives him a kiss on the forehead.

Yuck.

She comes up to me after that and runs a hand over my hair, like she and Asgore still do a lot. I think she wants to kiss my forehead, but she stops herself and just smiles before wishing us both goodnight, flicking off the lights, and leaving the room.

I wait until her footsteps have disappeared down the hall, then I turn to Asriel, whose eyes are still open, though he looks ready to fall asleep soon.

“Why were you doing that?”

He blinks and squints to look at me, frowning. “What?”

“That,” I say, waving my hand toward the door like I might wave at a plate of broccoli. “That … her and you …”

He blinks then, then smiles and shrugs.

“Oh. I dunno. I just like it sometimes. It’s nice.”

“But you’re not a baby anymore,” I tell him.

He gives me a funny look, then giggles.

“That doesn’t matter. Mom says I’ll always be her baby.” I keep staring at him, and he pauses, his brow furrowing. His smile falls. “Didn’t your mom ever …?”

He trails off, like I should be able to fill in the blank myself. I blink. Then I frown and turn away, pulling the blankets up to my chin and staring at the wall.

He’s still looking at me. Even without turning around, I can tell he looks sad. I hear his mattress squeak as he shifts a little closer, like that would make any difference with all the floor place between us.

“Don’t worry, Chara,” he says, very quietly. His voice feels like a pat on the shoulder. “She can be your mom, too. If you want.”

I press my lips into a tight line and swallow a lump in my throat that shouldn’t be there. He’s stupid. All of this is stupid. I don’t care about it, and I don’t need it. I’ve never needed it, and I don’t need it now.

I want to tell him, but then I’d probably snap and if I snap he might get upset and I’m tired and I really don’t want to get into a fight right now.

So instead, I sigh, and let the blankets fall a little bit down on my shoulders.

“Goodnight, Asriel,” I murmur, so quietly he might not even be able to hear.

He shifts around for a few seconds, and I get the feeling he might say something else. But finally, he sighs, as if in defeat, and I can feel his eyes locked on me as if I were the saddest thing in the world.

“Night, Chara.”

*

We move a week after that.

Not just me and Asriel and Toriel and Asgore. All the monsters, or almost all of them, gather up their things and move out of the place I’ve come to know as Home.

They don’t tell me why, but I’m not stupid, and I overhear enough conversations to figure things out. They’ve been here for a long time, apparently. A really long time. It’s crowded, and old, and they need a lot more space than this.

It’s not hard to figure out why they’ve stayed here this long. Toriel doesn’t like to talk about the war around me, but I can read, and it’s easy enough to pull a book off one of the upper shelves. I know what the humans did, all those years ago. I know that even though most of the monsters that remember the war are dead now, all of them are still afraid. They came here, as far away as they could from the barrier—which I’m almost sure is that wall I ran into—so they could be safe from the humans. Because they were afraid that the humans would decide that sealing them up wasn’t enough, and come down here just to finish them off.

It doesn’t take me long to figure out why they’ve stayed here. It takes me a hell of a lot longer to figure out what made them decide to leave.

I follow them and watch as they make their way through the cave I can still remember walking through myself. Some of the monsters stay in the cold, snowy part. Others where it looks like a swamp. A lot of them, especially the ones that look like reptiles, stay where the lava is. I don’t question it by now. Monsters are weird.

The rest keep going until they’ve almost reached the barrier, and when they finally stop, they get started building a town.

One thing I learn very quickly is that monsters are really, really fast builders.

There’s no material for construction here, no trained construction crews. They just build, like it’s something they do everyday. They gather up rocks and make supplies for walls and within a few weeks they’ve already got really basic, single story buildings they start to move into.

Even Asgore and Toriel help. The king and queen help with construction.

I don’t know why it surprises me at this point.

I don’t notice what’s changed until the craziness settles down and we move into our real home.

I’ve never spent much time around monsters other than the three I’m living with. It’s … uncomfortable. Every time I see a new one, I swear I can remember what it feels like to kill them, what their dust looks like at my feet. I’m good at not letting it show, but it’s still not fun.

But Asriel likes to go out exploring the new “town” as it’s being built, and I usually go with him, and exploring the town means meeting other monsters.

I think it’ll be awkward. I mean, I know that monsters don’t like humans. The books make that kind of obvious. And they have way more reasons to hate humans than I would ever need to hate someone. Besides, if I hate humans, and I am one, then how the hell could I expect them to do anything else?

But when Asriel drags me up to random people and introduces me … they look pleased.

I think.

Monster faces are weird, and sometimes it’s hard to tell.

But they seem pleased, and when they talk to me, there’s no anger or fear. They don’t seem upset. They seem … happy that I’m there.

And no matter how hard I think about it, I can’t figure out why.

It doesn’t make sense. I’m a human. They shouldn’t want to have me here. They should want me to get the hell out of their town, away from their royal family. But they smile and wave at me just like they wave at Asriel, even though Asriel’s a lot nicer and talks way more than I do.

I let it sit for a week. Then two weeks. I watch them, and I try to figure them out.

It doesn’t work.

It takes a lot for me to ask Toriel, especially about something like this, but it’s better than spending every day this confused.

When I bring it up, Toriel laughs.

I know, logically, that she’s not laughing at me. She wouldn’t do that. But I still flinch, and have to bite back the urge to snap at her and run off. Instead, I wait, and finally she looks at me with a smile and a crinkle around the edges of her eyes. It makes her look just as happy as it does old.

“Oh, Chara,” she says, gently, softly. Lovingly. “You’re the reason they’re not afraid anymore.”

I blink once. I blink again. Then I just stare, my mouth a little open, my eyes wide, trying to convey “what the hell” without actually saying it.

She laughs again. It’s a fond sound.

“Chara, monsters haven’t seen a human in almost two thousand years. Many monsters never have. Until now, most monsters … feared humans. But … now they see you. They see you playing with Asriel, they see you as exactly what you are: a child, no different from any monster child. They see you as part of our family.”

She pauses, and her eyes get softer.

“And if you can be a part of our family, if you can coexist with monsters … it gives them hope that humans and monsters can live in peace.”

I try to think of something to say to that, but nothing feels right. I’m not sure if I could make my tongue move even if I had the words.

But Toriel doesn’t seem to mind. She reaches out and brushes a hand over my hair, pausing one second more before she heads to the kitchen to start on dinner.

I don’t move from my spot in the living room for a very long time.

*

I’m not sure when I start thinking of them as Mom and Dad.

It’s not like an actual decision. It just sort of … happens. I hear Asriel doing it every day, whether he’s talking to them or talking to me, and it starts feeling weird to think about them as Toriel and Asgore when I hardly ever hear their names.

I’m not sure when it happens in my head, but it’s impossible to ignore when it happens out loud.

I say it without thinking, so when everything pauses, when Mom and Dad turn to stare at me with dropped jaws and wide eyes, I don’t know why. Then Asriel gives me a wide smile, one of those weird, goofy ones that make him look years younger than he is, and I swear I can hear my own words repeating in my head.

My first thought is something along the lines of shit.

My second thought … isn’t really words.

It’s a feeling, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me until it feels like a pot boiling over. It’s not good or bad, it’s good and bad, it’s panicky and nervous and afraid but it’s happy and warm and I don’t like it and I want it to go away but at the same time I never want it to stop.

I should be used to weird shit like this by now. But I’m not.

They don’t say anything about it. Maybe they can tell that I really can’t handle words right now. They just smile at me, that smile that seems so simple to them but doesn’t make any sense to me. The same smile they give to each other all the time. The smile that makes me feel like … like I belong here. Like they want me here.

Like I’m their … family.

I don’t say anything else for a few hours after that, but they don’t seem to mind. They go about things as if nothing has changed, as if this is how it’s always been, even though it feels to me like my life has just been flipped on its head.

Or maybe it’s been like that for a while, and I’m just now realizing it.

Either way, eventually, the feeling fades. When I wake up the next day, I barely notice it.

I call them Mom and Dad at breakfast without thinking, and this time, there’s no staring. Just a smile and a nod and normal conversation.

After a week, I don’t even think of it.

After a month, it’s hard to remember ever calling them anything else.

*

Asriel is crying.

Not that that’s unusual. He cries a lot, and after all this time, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. But this isn’t crying because he scraped his knee or had a bad dream or even because I said something he thinks is mean. He’s crying because Dad is lying in bed, sick, his breathing all wheezy and funny, while Mom stands next to him, hands glowing with healing magic while she holds back the tears I know are there.

It was fast. Faster than I thought something like this could happen.

Dad tried one of our cupcakes and made a face I’ve come to call disgusted-but-trying-to-hide-it. I don’t know why he tries to hide it. Probably for Asriel, because I never buy it when he lies. I don’t think Asriel buys it either, but Dad does it anyway. He says that it’s delicious, and I hear him whispering to Mom that they taste a little off, was it one of her recipes or did we try a new one?

An hour passes.

Dad says he feels a little sick.

Another hour, and he’s in bed, and Asriel’s crying and Mom’s healing him and Asriel tells them everything we put in the cupcakes and Mom gets this look as she realizes what happened.

I never heard about buttercups being poisonous. Honestly, I only knew what those flowers were called because Asriel likes gardening almost as much as Dad.

Apparently not enough to know which flowers you’re not supposed to eat.

Mom tells us, after a minute, that Dad will be alright, but he’ll need to stay in bed for a while. Maybe a long while. I don’t think this happens very often. I’m pretty sure monsters don’t get sick like humans do. But apparently they can still be poisoned.

She goes back to healing him, and Asriel hugs himself and sniffles in the doorway, and I just stand there, looking at Dad, lying there, the mighty king brought down by a bunch of flowers.

Buttercups. Cups of butter. Buttercups.

It’s so stupid. It’s so stupid, and it’s hilarious, and I don’t notice I’m laughing until Asriel and Mom start staring at me, and by then I can’t stop, because it’s so damn funny.

Dad almost died because we fucked up a recipe.

And it’s even funnier because they’re not mad, not Mom, not Dad, Mom’s upset but she never got mad, she just thinks it was an accident, she just accepts that we’d never do that on purpose, and that’s hilarious because it’s so simple, so simple and I don’t even know how many times I would have used that little trick if I’d known about it before. If I’d known how easily I could get rid of the people ruining everything for me.

I could have made them hurt. Maybe I could have killed them, and been free of them forever.

It’s so simple. So easy. I could have done it so easily.

It’s so goddamn funny.

I don’t notice Mom leaving Dad and coming over until I feel her pull me and Asriel into a hug. In the back of my mind, I think she might be upset that I’m laughing at this, but I can’t stop, and I can’t bring myself to care.

She holds us, while Asriel cries and I laugh, and doesn’t say a word.

Dad stays in bed for a week, and spends the next week doing minimal work, sitting in Mom’s armchair and watching me and Asriel play on the floor. After that, he seems better. He insists that we all bake cupcakes together to celebrate. I think he wants to make sure that Asriel isn’t afraid to bake because of that one screw-up.

Everything goes back to normal, whatever the hell normal is nowadays.

No one says anything about me laughing, and I never bring it up.

*

“Chara?”

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to her saying my name.

Not because it’s a new name. I didn’t exactly have any attachment to my old one. I’m just not used to people saying my name, whichever name it is. I’ve heard it shouted or muttered in irritation or sighed in exasperation but most of the time I didn’t hear it at all.

Mom doesn’t say my name like that. She never shouts, for one. But it’s not just the volume. It’s … something else. Something I don’t have a name for.

It’s like she’s saying something else whenever she says my name. I still haven’t figured out what it is yet.

Sometimes I wonder if they all speak another language I never learned.

I take a second to look up. She’s sitting in her armchair, just as she was when I first sat down on the floor. It’s late. Not quite late enough to go to sleep, but it’s evening. It’s quiet. Dad took Asriel outside a while ago to work in the garden, and even though I was invited, I felt like staying inside. So I sat down in the living room with some crayons while Mom sat in her armchair and worked on her knitting.

She’s not knitting anymore. Her needles and yarn are sitting on the little table next to the armchair, and her attention is on me.

“Could you come here for a minute, please?” she asks, with that same nameless tone.

I stiffen, as much as I try to stop it.

This is it. It’s taken her a year, a whole fucking year, but she’s finally going to say it. Tell me how awful I am, how she doesn’t actually want me here, I don’t know where she’s going to send me but I’m not going to be here anymore she knew she knew I wasn’t worth it I knew she wasn’t so dumb as to keep believing in me even when I wreck everything I knew it I knew it I knew it so why does it hurt—

She’s still sitting there, looking at me, smiling at me, it doesn’t look any different than her usual smiles, even though I know it is. I swallow back the ache in my chest. I set down my crayons, stand up as tall as I can, and make my way toward her chair. I won’t let her get to me. I’m stronger than that. I’m stronger than her.

It hurts it hurts goddammit stop hurting.

I stop a few steps away from her. She motions for me to come closer. I hesitate, but take a step. Another motion. Another step. Another motion, and before I know it she’s lifting me up and into her arms and her hold is so gentle and her fur is soft and the fabric of her robes feels good against my skin and I don’t know when my head settles against her chest but it feels … it feels …

She’s stroking my hair. Rubbing little circles on my scalp. It feels … good. It’s … it’s quiet and it’s soothing and it makes my body relax but I don’t want to relax because this can’t last, it never lasts, it can’t be real, she can’t still want me around when I’m not worth it I’ve never been worth it I’ll never be worth it I don’t want to be worth it it doesn’t matter what they think I don’t need them.

She pulls me a little closer, and it’s only as she shifts away a second later that I realize she just kissed my head.

“I love you, Chara.”

It’s barely more than a whisper, and I think, for a second, that I must have imagined it. I’ve heard her say it to Asriel so many times, so many damn times, and it’s ridiculous, why would you say something like that every fucking day and it’s stupid and I don’t want it but she says it again and it’s my name she’s saying and why does my chest hurt it doesn’t make sense.

I want to run. I want to get up and leave and get away from all of this because it doesn’t make any sense but I can’t make my legs move. My eyes are closing, I didn’t even notice they were tired but now they’re shut and she’s still rubbing my head and now she’s humming, a lullaby I’ve heard her sing to Asriel fifty times but this time it’s for me.

It’s stupid. It’s so damn stupid but I love it, I love it so much and I never want it to stop it doesn’t matter what she’s thinking I don’t care what her voice sounds like she’s singing to me no one’s ever sung for me she’s holding me caressing me and I’ve never felt so warm and safe and it’s perfect I hate it I love it I’m crying I know I’m crying I’m not a crybaby I can’t cry so I bury my face in her shirt and breathe and I know she can feel my tears but I don’t care because she’s still holding on.

My breath comes out in sobs, her shirt is a mess of tears and snot I’m clinging to her so hard it must hurt but she doesn’t let go and she doesn’t stop singing she’s just there like a rock holding me up a rock that will never, ever go away.

By the time she stands up, my brain is all hazy, and even though the tears have stopped there’s enough left in my eyes to make it difficult to see. I can just make out the blurry yellow lights of the living room and the hall as she carries me to my bedroom. Asriel’s not there yet. It’s too early, and I can’t hear him talking or breathing, I never go to bed before Asriel but Mom’s setting me in the bed and covering me with the blankets and tucking them around me and I never want to move again.

She strokes my hair for another minute after that. She’s still humming, but softer now. Her hand pauses on my back, near my shoulders, and rubs a few circles. Then she leans down and kisses my forehead.

I can’t make out the words she whispers, but I don’t need to.

She leaves the lamp by Asriel’s bed on, but turns mine off, leaving the room just bright enough to make out a faint glow form behind my eyelids. I listen to her footsteps pad out of the room and hear the gentle creak of the door as she pulls it shut.

I’ve never felt so quiet. So … calm. So warm or safe.

I don’t know if I believe it’ll last. I don’t know what to believe about anything anymore. But it doesn’t matter. I’m with them now. And I’m … okay.

I’m okay.

I let out a long sigh and settle my head more firmly against the pillow, curling up under the weight of the blankets.

Just before sleep pulls me away, I reach into the deepest part of my soul and save.

*

I love them.

From what I’ve heard, it’s the sort of thing you usually notice over a while. Not me. For me, it’s like getting hit in the face with a sack of bricks covered in spikes and heated to about ten thousand degrees. Five times. In two seconds.

It hurts. I don’t know if it’s supposed to hurt, and I don’t realize what it is at first because I never thought it would hurt so bad. It’s like getting stabbed in the chest, and I know because I have gotten stabbed in the chest, and I look at them and I feel warm and cold and I want to be close to them and I want them to be happy and I want them all to myself and I never, ever want them to leave.

I’ve never felt it before. I don’t think I have, at least.

I don’t remember feeling this way before.

It hurts, but I don’t want it to stop. I feel it when Mom pulls me into her lap for a story, when Dad tosses me into the air as part of a game that makes me laugh even though it’s stupid. I feel it when Asriel shares his toys with me even though he knows I play with them more roughly than he does. When he lets me use his crayons even after I break them. When I have bad days and snap at them and no one gets mad, Mom just dims the lights and makes things calm and lulls me into sleep and when I wake up I feel a little better.

It’s still weird. I don’t know if it’ll ever stop being weird.

Even if it lasts forever.

Once the initial pain of it fades, I pay more attention to it. I pay more attention to them. Maybe that’s what you do when you love someone. I don’t know.

But I notice things, and I think about things, things that didn’t seem worth thinking about before. I think about how much work they have to go through to do things that are so easy for humans to do. I think about the things I did like about the surface, even if I don’t miss them, even though living down here is way better than anything I had up there. I think about the things they don’t have. Things a lot of them have never had. I think about the things they don’t know they’re missing.

I think about how long they’ve been down here. A lot of the monsters haven’t been alive that long, but Mom and Dad, the turtle guy Mr. Gerson, that skeleton guy Dad introduced me to who works in the lab and talks weird … they’ve been alive that whole time. Two thousand years. Way longer than I’ll ever live. And they’ve been trapped here, all this time, knowing what the surface is like.

Knowing that this isn’t all the world has to offer.

They’re stuck down here. They’re stuck down here because humans, the people I used to know, trapped them down here.

They don’t seem very interested in getting out.

They want to. I’m sure of that. I see the longing looks Mom gives the paintings around the house, the ones of sunny fields and flowers and weather and everything I once took for granted. I see the disappointment in Dad’s eyes when one of the monsters visits him needing something and there’s nothing he can do and I know it’s something a human could get. I don’t see it as much with Asriel, since he’s never seen the surface, but sometimes we’re reading books that have pictures of the sun or grass or the stars and he gets this sad smile on his face that makes me want to punch something.

They want to leave, but they’re not trying to leave.

Because there’s nothing they can do.

They can’t get out without a human. Without seven humans. Seven human souls. From what I’ve heard, I’m the first human to fall down here, and it’s been almost two thousand years. Unless a hiking group gets lost and stupid enough for all of them to fall into a hole, seven humans aren’t just gonna show up out of nowhere.

There’s nothing they can do. If there was, they would have done it by now.

But … now I’m here.

In two thousand years, not much changed for them, but then I came, and things … did.

They spread out. They stopped being so afraid. They made a new home for themselves, a bigger home, just because one stupid kid fell down the mountain.

Sometimes I wonder whether they’d still feel that way if they knew what I did.

But … that was months ago now. It feels like forever ago. I can’t imagine wanting to hurt them now. Mom says I’ve already helped them, but it’s not enough. Not even close. They’ve done way more for me than I’ve done for them, and I can’t let that go. I want to do more.

I want to make them happy. I want to make them feel like they make me feel. I want to … give something back.

I want to help them.

I want them to get everything they deserve, because god knows they deserve the surface way more than humans do.

I want to give back everything they lost.

I want to take it back, and return it to them.

I don’t know how, I don’t have any idea, but once the thought hits me, I can’t let it go. I can’t forget about it just because it seems impossible. I probably seemed impossible when I got here, but they didn’t give up on me. They … never gave up on me.

And I’m one person. Just one kid. They’re a hell of a lot more than that.

If they can stick with me, someone who never did anything for them, someone who never did anything to deserve how they treat me … I can do this for them.

The realization hits more slowly than the love one. It builds up until it boils over and spills all out in my head and I know, for sure, that it’s not going away. Not until I figure it out. Not until I do it.

And I will.

I’m going to get them out of here. I’m going to get them all out of here, and then I’m going to make the humans pay for what they did. I don’t know how, or when. But I’m going to set them all free.

One way or another.

Chapter Text

The idea’s been there for a pretty long time, even though it takes me a while to notice it.

I don’t really think about it until my “eighteen-month birthday.” That’s what Asriel calls it, anyway. Since I won’t tell him what my real birthday is, he says that he’ll just count the day I showed up in the underground as my birthday, and since I won’t tell him how old I am, he says that I’ll just have to start from scratch. So I’m a toddler now. Great.

It comes to me right after I start wondering if I can use my new eighteen-month-old status as an excuse to throw food all over the walls.

Then Asriel gives me a present, a very old dagger that’s been in the family for years, and I stop thinking about throwing food.

I leave it in the box he put it in, and a few days later, I give him a locket shaped like a heart that I special-ordered from a guy in Waterfall with my allowance money, and tell him that I wanted to get him something, too. It’s cheesy and stupid but he loves it so much he keeps it in the box, too.

Maybe it’s thinking about him that makes the idea finally settle.

Mom has a curriculum for us, since we’re homeschooled, and it’s pretty extensive—if really flexible and pretty entertaining—but there are still some things she’s never taught us. Things she doesn’t want to tell us, but things all the adult monsters know. Things that are easy enough to figure out if you spend enough time looking through the library at two in the morning when everyone thinks you’re asleep. If she’s been quiet about the war, she’s even quieter about this.

There’s one book in particular that I know Mom doesn’t want us to find. I’m not even sure why she has it. It’s hidden on a back shelf, on the very top, and I pull it out one day and read it and I try to show it to Asriel but after a few pages he gets upset and leaves.

That book doesn’t hold anything back. Not about the war. Not about what the humans did. Not about how many innocent monsters died.

And not about souls.

I put the book back a day later, and Mom and Dad never find out I took it. Asriel never brings it up, and neither do I.

But I know he remembers, just as much as I do.

The implications don’t even hit me at first. It’s just new information. I know a little about monster souls, and how human souls are different, because it’s kind of impossible to live down here, around monsters, as a human, and not know a little. This is just one more interesting fact, something to remember, not something that would actually be useful.

I guess it needs to ferment a little in my head before I figure out how to use it.

And even after it ferments, even after I realize the idea is there, I don’t say anything right away. I already know Mom and Dad won’t like it. I know they’d immediately sit me down and talk about how they would never, ever want me to do something like that, and probably hug me and tell me how much they love and shit like that. It’s … normally kind of nice, I guess, but I don’t want that right now. I don’t need that right now. Not for this.

Mom and Dad won’t like it, and won’t approve, and there’s nothing I can do to convince them.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no one who will listen.

There’s nothing in particular that makes me decide to bring it up. It’s a normal day. Asriel’s borrowed the video camera again and is playing with it, like he does sometimes. He’s trying to get me back for yesterday when I wouldn’t do my “creepy face” after he took the lens cap off. It’s stupid. It’s … cute, I guess. It’s just the sort of thing he would do.

It hits me again, like it does sometime, how much I love him.

Maybe that’s what makes me say it.

I don’t say it straight out, of course. I bring it up slowly. After all, the idea’s been in my head for a while, it feels normal to me, but I know I have to break it to him more … carefully.

I know he doesn’t like to talk about the buttercups incident. He looks sad when I do. Guilty, even though I know Mom sat him down to assure him that it was just an accident, it wasn’t his fault. I keep talking about it. This is important. This is more than either of us, it’s … everyone.

If I’m going to help him, he has to help me.

He looks sad, and he knows something is wrong. I know that look on his face as well as I know all the others. I know he’s worried. I know he wants to help.

I know that if I don’t bring it up now, I never will.

“Turn off the camera.”

I don’t look at him when I tell him. I don’t know why. It doesn’t scare me to look at him, but even without looking I can feel his eyes getting wider, his smile turning more and more into that expression of shock that reminds me just how naive he is. Because he doesn’t think like me. He’ll probably never think like me, and sometimes it’s not easy to remember that. So I don’t look.

I keep it short and simple, because it is short and simple, and when I’m done I stand there and wait for him to respond. He doesn’t. After a minute or so, I look up.

There it is. That shock. That pain. I knew it would be there, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

He opens and closes his mouth at least five times before he finally manages to speak.

“… what?”

“Well?” I ask, raising an eyebrow and crossing my arms.

He flounders again, longer this time, making vague gestures with his hands like that might help him find his words.

“But … you wanna kill people?”

“I wanna kill humans,” I tell him, a bit of a snap to my voice. I don’t know whether I’m angry because he talks about it like I would be killing monsters, or because I can still hear the screams of every monster I turned to dust.

He clamps his mouth shut and frowns. He tries to stand taller, like he does when he’s pretending to be brave, but his shoulders slump a second later.

“But … that’s still killing,” he mutters.

My stomach twists. I grit my teeth and clench my fists.

“They’re humans, Asriel.”

“So?” he asks.

“‘So’?” I almost spit back, forcing my voice quieter at the last second. He stares, wide-eyed and silent. “You read that book just like I did. You’ve seen the awful things they did to you guys.”

He looks away. There’s a flash of pain, of fear, in his eyes, just like there was before he finally stopped reading.

I can still remember the words on the page that made him get too upset to keep going.

My fists clench harder.

“And believe me, they haven’t gotten much better.”

He’s quiet for a long, long time after that. He stands there, fidgeting, clutching the hem of his shirt while I stand there and wait. I know I have to be patient. I want him to hurry up, but I know that pushing too hard will just make him get scared and run off. And I need him. If I could do it alone, I would.

Finally, he swallows hard, fidgeting a little more. I think I can see tears at the edges of his eyes.

“But … I don’t wanna kill anyone.”

I want to say that they aren’t anyone, they’re not people, not like monsters are. I bite my tongue.

“It’s six people,” I say instead. “Six horrible people who probably deserve to die anyway.”

He looks at me in horror. “Nobody deserves to die!”

“They all deserve to die!” I snap, before I can stop myself.

Asriel flinches, but I don’t take it back. I can’t take it back. I can’t lie about this.

He drops his gaze to the floor, and his grip on his shirt gets tighter.

“You’ve said that before.”

“So what? It’s true,” I shoot back. He doesn’t reply. I give him another few seconds, but he still doesn’t say anything. My stomach’s twisting harder now. “Well? Are you gonna help me or not? I can’t do this without you, Asriel.”

He swallows loud enough for me to hear. He starts to shake his head, but stops halfway. “… I don’t …”

Something’s boiling inside me, overwhelming, like oatmeal spilling over the top of the pan. I want to scream, but screaming won’t help.

He has to do this. If he doesn’t, it’ll never happen. If he doesn’t …

“You’re the prince of all monsters,” I say at last, slow and careful, enunciating every word. “Are you too much of a crybaby to help your own kind?”

Just like I suspected, his head snaps up, his eyes wide and indignant and there are still tears in them but he’s trying so hard to look strong and grown up.

“I’m not a crybaby!”

“Then prove it!” I all but shout.

He tenses again, but this time he doesn’t look away. He fidgets and squirms but he doesn’t look away.

“I … I …”

I stare at him, unblinking, unrelenting, and he stares back, and I think I’ve seen him look at me like this before but I can’t remember when. It doesn’t matter. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again.

“Chara! Asriel! It’s dinnertime!”

He snaps his mouth shut, and both of us turn toward the voice calling from inside the house.

I can see Asriel’s shoulders drop in relief, and for a second, I feel very, very uncomfortable. I push it away.

“We’ll talk later,” I say, and I try to pretend I don’t see him tense up again.

Dinner is quiet that night, but Asriel doesn’t breathe a word of what I said.

*

I let him think about it for a few days.

I think that maybe the extra time will make him come to his senses.

Four days later—four whole days later—I bring it up again. The second I do, he looks away, but he can’t hide his face falling.

I tell him the plan again. He has to understand it this time. He has to know how important it is. I tell him, and he doesn’t say anything. It’s not agreement. But it’s not disagreement. I try not to roll my eyes as I tell him to go pick some buttercups. Lots of them. I remember getting marks on my hands when I grabbed them for the cupcakes, and I don’t have fur like he does. I don’t want to risk Mom remembering what the marks looked like from last time.

He says he doesn’t like the plan.

When he finally looks back to me, he’s crying. He says he isn’t, and wipes away his tears so obviously I want to snort.

He’s a crybaby. He’s going to be a crybaby for a long time.

But I can’t do this alone. And I already know Mom and Dad won’t help me.

It has to be Asriel. He has to help me.

He has to help me, or I can’t help him.

He stops looking at me again.

“You’re doubting me.”

It comes out with a little more bite than I intend, but it works. Asriel snaps his head back to face me, insisting that he’d never doubt me. He’ll help me. He’ll definitely help me. We’ll do this together.

“We have to be strong, Asriel. We have to be strong if we want to get everyone out.”

He looks excited now. Or … something like excited. There’s still something behind his eyes that doesn’t look very happy at all.

At least he’s not crying anymore.

He’ll get over it. This is what we have to do. Both of us. We’re the only ones who can do this.

I watch him pick enough buttercups to poison Dad five times over, and for a second I can see every single one of those humans lying dead on the ground, monsters standing tall once again, free, happy, on the surface. Just as they always should have been.

And as determination fills me to the brim, I smile.

*

I eat the buttercups straight.

They’re probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten, and I have to use gloves to even touch them without leaving marks on my hands, but for some reason the thought of mixing them with sugar to cover the taste makes me nervous. I don’t want to think about it any longer. I don’t want to risk the chance that I’ll chicken out and change my mind.

I eat the buttercups, and they burn going down, and Asriel gets me ice water to wash it down. I take it without a word, and drink three more cups after that.

When I finish the fourth cup, I finally look at Asriel, and see tears in his eyes. I give him a long, hard look, and he wipes away the tears and gives a silent nod.

The thing about knowing you’re going to get sick is that you start feeling sick before the effects actually kick in. If that makes any sense. I thought I might spend my last hour or two playing, doing something fun, given that I’m never going to be able to do it again. But as soon as I’m finished with the water, I just lie down on my bed and wait.

It happens a lot faster than I thought it would.

And it hurts. Fuck, it hurts.

I hadn’t thought about it hurting.

I haven’t changed my mind. I’m doing this. But it hurts. I can feel it coming on, I’m expecting it, but that doesn’t make it easier when I first feel the chills and the heat and barely make it to the bathroom in time to throw up all over the floor. I don’t even have time to tell Mom or Dad that I don’t feel well before I throw up again, then fall over, barely missing hitting my head on the counter. That would have been a dumb way to die.

But at least it would have been quick.

Dying by buttercup poisoning … isn’t quick.

And it isn’t like what Dad went through.

Mom and Dad carry me to my bed, of course. They ask me what’s wrong, ask Asriel what happened, and he just stands by the wall, shaking his head, tears in his eyes, he’s still a crybaby but at least he’s not talking, good, he can’t talk, he can’t tell them, they might find a way to heal me.

They can’t heal me. Not now. We have to do this.

We have to.

My stomach cramps even after it’s empty, and only minutes after Mom gives me water I have to rush to the bathroom again. I stand there for a minute, frozen, before I run out into the garden.

It’s been so long since I actually needed a toilet that I forgot that monsters don’t have them.

I pass out a little while after that, and when I wake up, it’s to Mom trying to give me more water. I resist at first, I don’t want it, I feel sick, it’s not going to stay in me anyway, but she insists, gentle, always so gentle, and I drink it and I feel sick and I collapse twice trying to run outside this time.

This time, I catch a glimpse of Mom’s terrified face before I pass out again.

After that, Mom doesn’t try to get me water.

She tries to heal me instead. And when she’s used all the magic she can spare, Dad heals me. They don’t ask Asriel. I think he’s still crying.

I think other monsters come, but everything’s too blurry to be sure. They try to heal me. I hear them talking, hear the turning of book pages, murmurs about symptoms and illnesses and shit none of them understand because monsters don’t get sick like humans do.

None of them suggest the buttercups.

Not that I’m awake enough to tell. But if they had figured it out, I think they would be doing something different.

The other monsters stop coming, and it’s just Mom and Dad again, Asriel lingering on the sidelines. Sometimes they talk, to each other or to me. Sometimes they tell me stories or sing me lullabies. Sometimes Mom just sits there and pets my hair and it feels good and I let myself savor every second because it’s not like I’m going to feel it again.

I wake up from time to time, but I don’t talk anymore. Talking hurts, and it feels like I drool all over the pillow whenever I open my mouth anyway. So just watch.

There’s something that hurts in my chest as I watch them. It’s quiet, and I do my best to ignore it, but sometimes it comes through anyway. I look at the sadness in their eyes, I look at the tears they barely hold back. I hear Asriel’s scared voice. And it hurts.

But I push it away, and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

They’ll be happy soon. They’ll be free, and every damn human that ever ruined things for them will be gone.

It will be more than worth it.

*

The next time I wake up, it’s to Asriel sobbing on the foot of my bed.

I don’t think he knows I’m awake. He doesn’t lift his head, and he seems to be trying to keep quiet. He’s not good at it. The room is dim, and his head is buried in his arms, and his whole body is shaking.

I don’t know whether I want to call him a crybaby or pat him on the head.

I’m tired, and my throat hurts, so I don’t do either.

But when I wake up the next day—or maybe a day after that—and I see him standing near the edge of the room, staring at me as Mom and Dad go through the motions of trying to heal me in the same useless way they’ve already tried, I can see the change in his eyes.

It’s small. Quiet. Faint. Distant. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t know his face as well as I do.

But I do know his face, and it only takes a few seconds of meeting his eyes before I can see the thoughts in his head, as clearly as a picture book.

He’s not going to do it.

He’s not going to do it.

He doesn’t have to say it. I know. He’s going to chicken out, he’s going to let me die for nothing, it’ll all be for nothing, he promised and he’s not going to do it.

At first, I want to yell at him. But I’m too tired to yell, and my throat hurts, and besides, Mom and Dad are here, I can’t yell, they’ll know, and I don’t want them to know. Not yet. Not when there’s any chance they’ll try to stop me.

Instead, I think for a minute. I let Mom and Dad take care of me, let them tell me I’ll be alright, they’ll figure out what to do, they’ll find a way to make me better. I look at him, and I look at Mom and Dad, and I look at the ceiling.

And I look at the wall.

The wall … where the drawing I did almost six months earlier still hangs.

And it hits me.

I open my mouth, and Mom and Dad lean closer.

“I …” I croak out, and fuck that hurts, it’s like my throat’s been sandpapered down to nothing, I swallow and that burns, too, but I open my mouth and force myself to try again. “I … wanna see the flowers.”

It’s breathy, and barely louder than a whisper, but they’re close, and I know when they blink that they both heard me loud and clear.

“The flowers?” Dad asks.

I try to nod, but it makes me dizzy, so I just open my mouth again.

“Gol … golden flowers … in my town … they grew … patches … in the park …” I finish, a little louder than before, wincing against the pain of every syllable that pushes through my throat. “Wanna see them …”

Their eyes widen, and I go silent. That’s enough. They get it.

They know what I want.

And I can see the pain of the realization as it settles into their minds.

They’re upset. I can see every panicked, desperate thought flashing through their eyes.

I know they can’t get the flowers. And they know they can’t get the flowers. They’re helpless, even to grant my last request.

But when I flick my eyes to Asriel, I see something a little different in his eyes. Something more solidified. Something a little more certain.

I bite back a tiny smile.

That’s all I need.

Asriel wants to make people happy. He draws pictures and makes little knitting projects and plants flowers because he loves it, but more than anything, he loves to make people happy.

And everyone knows it.

Asriel will do whatever he can to make me happy, even once I’m dead, and no one will even question why.

Even if he chickens out of killing the humans, he won’t chicken out of taking me to see the flowers. And if he takes me to the flowers, to the center of town, where people will see …

Then he won’t have to attack them.

He’ll just have to fight back.

And the humans will die just the same.

Mom and Dad don’t say anything about the golden flowers, and I fall back asleep a minute later, drifting into pained, blurry dreams.

I hear Mom and Dad’s voices while I’m dreaming. They sound the same as they do in real life, just a little … blurrier. I’ve heard the words a hundred times now, I don’t need to be fully aware to know what they’re saying.

Chara? Can you hear me. We want you to wake up.

Chara, you have to stay determined. You can’t give up.

You are the future of humans and monsters.

Then I hear Asriel’s voice. It’s distant and fuzzy and my brain makes up all kinds of crazy shit he might be saying, and I don’t think any of it is true.

I think he’s asking me for something. I think he’s begging me for something.

He’s begging, pleading, crying, and then …

He sniffles. Pulls himself together.

And he sounds more determined than he has since he agreed to this plan in the first place.

His voice leaves, and in the rest of my dreams I run around with him, playing, laughing, in a field of golden flowers, not a human in sight.

When I wake up the next time, it’s to the sense of a clock ticking away in the background, even though I know there’s not one in the room.

I read once, in a book I found, that sometimes people know when they’re going to die. I thought it was stupid then. It’s still seems stupid. But I feel it now.

I know.

I don’t know why, or how. But it’s like I can feel my body giving up, I can feel my heart trying to beat, my lungs trying to breathe, and they’re barely doing even that, my body wants to live even though I don’t and it’s fighting but it’s losing, and it won’t be long now.

Mom and Dad are there. Sometimes I think they sleep in here now. They never seem to leave. Asriel’s there, too, and he’s closer now, he’s staring at me, he’s crying, but … his eyes haven’t changed from that look I saw before.

He’s going to do it.

He doesn’t want to. He hates it. He hates it more than anything he’s ever done in his life.

But he’s going to do it.

And that’s all that matters.

He’ll be fine. He’ll free everyone, and they’ll all be fine once I’m gone.

I close my eyes and try to relax.

Just a little longer. Just a little longer, and we’ll have everything we worked for. The monsters will be free again, and the humans will pay for everything they’ve done.

But as my heart begins to stutter and slow, as my breath becomes more shallow, I start to feel it.

The bubbling. The … tugging. Somewhere deep inside me.

I don’t recognize it at first. It’s been so long. But it’s not the sort of thing you ever completely forget.

It hits me all at once.

And the only reason my eyes don’t fly open is because they’re too tired to move.

No. No no no shit shit shit.

I’m an idiot. I am a fucking idiot how did I not think of this it’s been so long I forgot what it felt like I forgot that it was so automatic it’s not like I made a habit of dying before I came here. It’s not like I’ve died for the past year and a half.

But I can feel it now. I don’t have a name for it. It’s like the feeling when I save, but … different. It only ever happened for a few seconds before. The few seconds before my body gave out.

I know my body’s giving out now. And I can feel every part of me straining to reset.

I don’t know what to do. It was … automatic before, it wasn’t like I chose it, it just sort of … happened, it happened when I died, and I don’t know how to not make it happen. So I do what I always do when something is trying to force me.

I resist.

I shut my eyes and grit my teeth and I fight it. No. I don’t want to go back. I want to die, I have to die, that’s the only way this can work, if I don’t die then all of this has been for nothing, and I do not want to go through that again.

Fight it.

Die.

Die.

My breath stops.

My heart stutters.

My body seizes.

The world fades.

And as my brain dies, I cling to that hope that this time, I won’t come back.

*

I’m dead.

But … I’m alive.

I feel alive. I can feel … a body. There’s a body around me, a body holding me, but it’s not my body.

It’s … bigger.

Taller.

… and it has fur.

I have fucking fur.

Bit by bit, the memories return.

And at the same time, I notice the feeling of another person right beside me.

Not … normal beside me. But … beside me … on the inside. I don’t know how a person can be beside me on the inside, but they are.

He is.

Asriel.

He’s afraid. He’s terrified. He’s frozen.

And he’s there.

We’re both here.

I curl our fingers, and he doesn’t resist. I wiggle our toes. I take a breath.

I open our eyes.

And there are Mom and Dad. Right in front of us. Staring at us, wide-eyed, jaws dropped, they can’t even speak, all they can do is stand there and stare and try to figure out what’s going on.

But I don’t give them a chance.

I turn to the bed and I see me.

Or … not me, anymore.

God, I look awful. Pale and sweaty, my eyes still cracked open as a bit of blood trickles from my mouth. Mom and Dad have been cleaning me up whenever I threw up, so there’s none of the dried vomit I would have expected, but I’m still no pretty sight.

It’s weird. But I don’t have time to take it in.

I step forward, almost falling over from the awkward weight of my new body, and bend over in front of the bed. It’s weird, it’s unfamiliar, it takes all my effort to keep my balance, but I feel … strong. Stronger than I’ve ever felt. Stronger than I felt even after I killed everyone in the underground.

When I pick up my own body, it’s like lifting a piece of tissue paper. It’s probably about as fragile, too.

I was so weak. I was so frail. But now I’m …

Asriel squirms beside me in our head. I think he’s trying to say something, but I push him aside. Not now. Right now, we finish this.

Mom and Dad call for me—call for Asriel—as I walk out of the room, but I ignore them. I don’t think I could manage talking right now, even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. I want to get this done. We’re almost done. I clutch my slowly-stiffening, cold body in my arms and walk through the house, toward the barrier that had blocked my way more than a year ago.

I pause for a second before I step through, but all I feel is a tingle before I’m past it.

Out.

Outside.

I’m out.

Asriel’s squirming stops, and I can feel him looking around through our shared eyes, taking in the sights, the trees, the bushes, the sun … everything he’s never seen before. Everything he should have known his whole life. Everything the humans stole from him.

Everything I’m going to take back.

He doesn’t struggle as I walk down the mountain. Going down is a lot easier, a lot quicker, than climbing up, and my body’s so much stronger now, it doesn’t even wind me.

I can see the town even from a distance. It hasn’t changed much since I left it. Maybe a new building here and there. There’s that one skyscraper that I could have seen from miles away, but everything else is small. It hasn’t changed so much that I won’t be able to find my way.

It’s quiet when I slip past the first buildings, and I barely have to hide at all as I make my way toward the park. I know I don’t really have to go all the way. I’m in control now. The only reason I gave Asriel that stupid story was to make sure he would do it, he would go all the way into town where people would be sure to notice him. I know I could just make noise, get someone’s attention, or attack them on my own.

But I planned this. I didn’t think I’d have control, and now I do. And I want to do it my way.

So I walk around the back streets, keeping myself out of sight. It’s easy. I learned how to move without being seen years ago. I remain unspotted when I cross the last street and step into the grassy area that I’m not even sure counts as a park. There’s no playground, and only one bench. But it works.

I try not to think about the odd relief I feel when the patch of yellow flowers I remember so well is still there.

I approach it, more slowly than I’ve moved so far. I stop in front of it and pause, closing my eyes and breathing in the odd, familiar scent. It’s … calming, in an weird way. Even when nothing else here is.

I open my eyes. Then I kneel down and lay my body into the flowerbed.

It’s not as poetic as I would have imagined. My body looks disgusting, for one, all pale and sweaty with dried blood caked around my mouth. And the plants cling to our body as we stand back up, flower petals, seeds, I remember they used to get stuck all over my clothes and I would get yelled at for making a mess.

Yelled at.

Someone’s yelling.

I bite back a satisfied grin as I lift our head and stand again.

It’s a miracle they didn’t notice us before, but they certainly do now. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them, I almost forgot this was what other humans looked like. Grown humans.

Scared humans.

They’re murmuring, clinging to each other, some of them shrieking and running off but the others staying, lifting their phones to film us like a wild animal that’s escaped from the zoo. More and more of them come, closer, cautious, careful, there’s so many some of them I know most I don’t but it doesn’t matter because soon they’ll be dead.

All of them. Dead.

Gone.

For good.

I stand taller and push Asriel back in my head as he squirms again. Not now. Later. Later, once this is all done. We can talk when it’s over.

I’m so tall now. They towered over me before, but now I tower over them. I know I can take them down. It’ll be easy. Almost too easy. And once I have six more souls, they won’t have a chance.

I look through the crowd, taking them all in, every person I’m going to rid the world of, every person that’s been taking up space the monsters should have had for centuries. They stare back as my eyes flick from face to face, one by one, biting back the smirk that wants to form on my lips.

Then I see them. Standing off to my right, almost hidden behind the people at their sides.

Them.

I don’t know what to call them anymore. I know what I used to call them, if only because people thought I was being rude if I called them anything else. I’m not going to call them that now. I’m never going to call them that again. They don’t deserve those names, they never deserved those names.

Toriel is my mom, and Asgore is my dad.

These people don’t matter.

They’re staring at me. At my body, that is. Then they stare at me—Asriel—us, their eyes wide and horrified and they look at my body again and I can see the shock settle onto their faces before someone screams out a name.

That was my name. My old name.

I haven’t thought about it in over a year. I almost forget what it was.

It doesn’t feel like my name anymore.

And I never want to hear it again.

All of the humans are shouting now, pointing, staring at my dead body lying in front of what they must see as a beast. I can feel Asriel flinching next to me, and I smirk. Yes. Good. Exactly.

Some of the humans have run off, some of them are running back, carrying shovels, knives, brooms, a few with guns. They’re surrounding us. There must be several dozen of them now, and there will be more soon.

I can hunt down the ones that are hiding.

It won’t take long.

I let the magic build within our body, curl our hands into fists, raise one above our head, it’s amazing, it’s better than anything in the world, I’m powerful, I’ve never been so powerful, I knew what the book said but this is real, I can take them down, I can take them all down without breaking a sweat, I can kill them, I can kill every single one of them, I form the first blast around my hand and let a manic grin spread across my face.

Then I freeze.

Because something’s stopping me.

Because … someone’s stopping me.

Someone … inside my head.

I can hear it now, hear his voice, faint and muffled but it’s definitely his, shouting at me, holding me in place, can’t kill them, won’t kill them. I grit my teeth. What the hell is he talking about? They’re attacking us, we’re just fighting back before they can land a blow.

He doesn’t budge.

In the corner of my eye, I see one of the humans approaching, and barely manage to turn my head before a shovel whacks into my side.

I wince.

It doesn’t hurt half as bad as it would have in my old body.

But it still hurts.

I struggle, but Asriel holds firm, he’s forcing his way out now, he’s fighting me, I try to fight back, but he won’t let me go, I can’t focus, the magic fades from my hand as another human approaches with a broom, a gun goes off and something burns at my left and now they’re hitting me, hitting us, I kick and thrash but I can’t make my body move, and Asriel’s just holding me there, won’t let me go, they’re attacking us you fucking idiot let me go!

He doesn’t.

He won’t.

And they keep coming.

They surround us, beating, aiming frantic shots, none of them enough to kill but goddammit they hurt, stop it, stop it, let me go, let me stop them, he won’t, he holds tighter and I’ve lost all control now he’s taking over and he’s just standing there standing there letting them kill us.

I don’t know how long it takes before they slow down.

I guess their panic fades, or maybe they just get tired, or confused.

Asriel’s still standing there. We’re still standing there.

Beaten. Broken. And still not fighting back.

I can feel the matting of my—our—his fur, the parts that are coated in dust, the broken bones, the places that would have bruised if monster bodies worked that way. I can feel the energy sapping out of our body. I can feel the life draining away like a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

Asriel is smiling.

He kneels and picks up my body again, and the humans hit him more. He doesn’t fight, but he doesn’t let go of my body, either. He just turns around and walks away, away from the flower bed, away from the town.

The humans shout after him, some of them seem to want to chase him, to follow him. But they don’t. No one follows. And Asriel keeps walking.

Walking away from the humans who tried to kill us.

The humans we were supposed to kill.

I try to fight back, but I can’t, I can’t make myself move and Asriel won’t stop, I can feel us dying, I can feel our body fading, I scream, I cry, I beg him to go back and kill them, at least don’t let this end in vain, kill them, kill them all, but he’s still walking, stumbling, he’s barely able to stand but he keeps going.

Up the mountain.

Back through the barrier.

Into our home.

Mom and Dad are right around the corner, in the throne room, the new garden Dad’s been putting together. They’re staring at us. They’re not speaking. Their mouths are open, their eyes wide, but they can’t seem to get out a word.

Asriel smiles at them, soft and sad and full of apologies he’ll never say.

He drops to his knees in the garden.

My body falls to the ground in front of him.

He lets out one long, final breath.

And I finally understand what it feels like for your body to crumble into dust.

*

I go back.

I have to go back a lot further than I wanted to. I hadn’t thought I would need to save, because I hadn’t thought I would need to reload. It’s irritating—really irritating—to go through it all again, exactly the same as before, and it takes a lot of work to keep myself from just snapping out my lines and hoping Asriel won’t notice how weird I’m acting. Asriel’s naive, but he always notices things like that. So I don’t snap, and he gives me those sad looks before he picks the buttercups, and I swallow them even faster than before.

Dying somehow sucks just as bad even though I know what’s going to happen.

I make sure and save just before I feel my body shut down. It takes a lot of work, and I’m barely sure I managed it, but I’m not going to be that stupid twice.

I’m jittery—if a soul can be jittery—as Asriel absorbs my soul. I take control faster than I did last time, shove his consciousness aside with more force than strictly necessary, given that he’s still too disoriented to try to fight back anyway. I pick up my body, walk toward the barrier, and cross it in almost a jog. I can feel Asriel crying out inside our head, trying to figure out what’s going on, exactly what I’m doing, but I don’t even bother to respond.

I all but run down to the village, every second that passes feels like a minute, I have to get down there, have to hurry and do this before he can stop me, but I can feel him fighting, he’s scared, he knows something’s wrong, but I can see them now, the humans, and this time I make sure they see me straight away, make sure they’re alarmed, make sure they’re ready to fight back. Make sure I’m ready to knock them all down. Every single one.

And finally I calm, just a little.

It’s fine. Last time was just a fluke. Asriel panicked and got us killed, it was stupid, but it was just a fluke.

This time, it’ll work. This time, we’ll do it. For real.

The humans approach, weapons in hand, ready to knock us down with the first things they pick up off the ground. I bite back a grin and raise our hand, focusing the unfamiliar magic around it, ready to strike.

Then I freeze.

Because something is stopping me.

Because he’s stopping me.

He takes control so fast I don’t have the presence of mind to push back. He forces our arm down, forces the magic to fade away, he’s better with magic than me, he’s actually practiced, and he knows how to use it. I fight harder this time, I thrash, I move our feet and our hands but he’s holding me back, he’s still holding me back, it’s like he’s pinning me to the ground, I can’t move, and now the humans are coming they’re hitting us just like before they’re killing us I struggle I fight but he holds me down and this time he doesn’t even try to walk away he just falls to the ground and lets them hit us I can feel our life fading away and right before the darkness hits, I swear I see his face, staring at me, inside both our heads.

He’s smiling.

His smile has never looked more sad.

I go back again. And again. I must go back ten times, each time doing one thing a little different, hoping that that will be it, that will be the thing that’ll make him stop, make him let me go, let me do this, this is what I died for, Asriel, you can’t back out now.

Sometimes I get close. Sometimes I’m a second away from striking, sometimes I’ve got a human in my grip, ready to snap their neck and throw them to the ground and move on to the next.

But he always steps in.

Always.

Every. Single. Time.

I run faster. Sometimes I just drop my body and go straight to attacking the humans, trying to shock Asriel before he has the chance to stop me, but he always does. I have at least half the control over our body, half, but he has just enough that he can make me freeze, make us both freeze, give the humans the opportunity to beat us to death or shoot us or set something on fire and throw it at us or any number of the creative new ways they kill us off. Sometimes just bad enough to injure us, to give Asriel the chance to walk back to the mountain. Sometimes enough to kill us on the spot.

Over and over, I go back, I try something new, but he keeps stopping me. After all that’s happened, after what he promised, he still stops me.

After I died for him. Died for everyone.

He can’t keep one fucking promise.

And just before the world resets yet again, I find myself thinking that I was wrong. I thought the monsters were different. I thought the monsters would make everything better, they would listen to me, they would fix the world humans had ruined.

But they’re not any different. They make promises, and they don’t keep them. They make me trust them, then they betray me.

I died for them. And they make me die for nothing.

And in my last moment of life, before everything starts over again, for the first time since I took that little goat boy’s hand, I hate them just as much as the humans.

And I think maybe, just maybe, they deserve to die, too.

*

I try again.

And again.

And again after that.

I put too much into this. Even if it takes fifty tries, I’m going to see this through.

I try fifty times. I try a hundred times. I try a hundred different ways of getting Asriel to listen to me, I try every technique I can think of to wrestle control from him, to kill every single one of those damn humans who try to hurt us.

I fail, every single time.

He never listens.

He never keeps his promise.

He betrays me, over and over again.

I don’t know what makes me finally snap. Maybe it’s been building up the whole time and I just didn’t notice it. Maybe something happened and I just can’t put a name on it.

I guess it doesn’t matter.

But as I stand there, the humans coming at us once again, their weapons raised, the fury raging in their eyes, I feel something inside me break.

Without warning, I force my way forward, force my own will back into our body. I can feel him fighting, struggling, I can’t hold him back for long, but I hold on just enough to drop my body, push through the surrounding humans, and run.

This body moves so much faster than I’m used to, I’m not used to being this tall, I stumble a few times but I keep going, I sprint through the town, taking all the shortcuts I remember until I’m just past the edge, back near the trees, my legs are burning my chest hurts and I finally let my legs slow down.

Only when my huffing breaths begin to slow do I realize that Asriel hasn’t even tried to stop me. Not once, since I started to run.

I can feel him, right next to me in our shared head. It’s like he’s looking at me. Watching. Waiting.

I don’t know what he’s waiting for.

But I’m not going to sit around while he figures it out.

I grit my teeth and let my attention fade away from the world around me, focusing inward. It’s weird, but it’s not hard. He’s there, he’s right there, closer than he’s ever been, and it’s like I can stare right at him and let him see the burning in my eyes.

“Why do you keep doing this?!” I shout, and I don’t know how I can shout here but it doesn’t matter I don’t care. “I make it so easy for you, I give you every chance, but you still won’t do it!”

Asriel flinches back. I can see him now, sort of. Like I would see an image in my head. It’s like he’s in front of me, his arms tucked close to his torso like he does when I say something mean.

But a second later, he blinks, like something’s clicked in his head, and his arms fall back to his sides.

“What do you mean ‘keep doing this’?”

I curl my hands into fists and grit my teeth—our teeth. My teeth. I don’t even know anymore.

“Just kill them! You’re strong enough, you know you’re strong enough! You won’t even let me do it for you!”

He tenses and looks down. “I know, but …”

He trails off. The space in our head feels silent. It feels huge, like a big echoing room. Empty, even though it’s far too full.

“You said you’d do this,” I say, more quietly, but not more gently. I’m shaking, and I don’t know if it’s just in my head. “You agreed.”

“I know I did, but …”

“But what?!” I spit.

“But I didn’t want to!” he shouts back.

Silence. I didn’t know any place could be so silent. But I guess it makes sense when you’re inside your own head.

The humans are coming. I know they must be coming. But all I can see is Asriel, his not-breath huffing as it forces its way in and out of his not-lungs.

Nothing has ever felt more real.

He drops his head and shakes it, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I thought … you kept saying that I had to be brave, that I shouldn’t be a crybaby, but I …”

“You are a crybaby!” I snap, and my chest hurts when I say it and I don’t know if it’s him or me but it hurts and I can barely push it out of my mind. “You’re weak! They keep attacking you, they keep murdering you, but you won’t fight back!”

Asriel says nothing at first. He doesn’t even flinch. But slowly, he lifts his head to look at me, and instead of fear or sadness, all I see is confusion.

“Chara, what you mean they ‘keep murdering me’?”

I bite my lip—our lip—I don’t even know anymore. My whole body tenses and I’m running out of time, soon I’ll be dead, we’ll both be dead, he won’t remember this, it’ll all be over.

“Why won’t you fight?” I ask him, and I hate the way my voice cracks even though this is all just in my head. “They’re trying to kill you!”

He looks at me like I’m the crazy one, like I’m the one who’s going against everything that makes sense.

“They’re scared! They think I killed you! They … they care about you, Chara!”

“No they don’t!” I almost scream, so loud I can hear it echoing even though this place isn’t real, it’s just in my head, what’s real is out there, what’s real is the people who are going to kill us in just a minute, they’ll find us, they’ll hunt us down and kill us just like they do every single time. “They never cared about me, they never gave a damn about me, so why would they start now?!”

I pant, my chest burning even though I don’t need any air. Asriel stares.

“Chara, they …” He trailed off, and looks away. At first I think he looks ashamed, but I’ve seen Asriel ashamed, and this isn’t the same. This is just … sad. He grits his teeth and shakes his head, slower this time. “I can’t. If I kill them … even if we get enough souls, even if we break the barrier, they’ll hate us! They’ll all want to fight us, we’ll go to war!”

“And we’ll win!” I throw back at him. His head snaps to face me, his eyes blown wide, but I don’t care, I don’t care, he has to listen. “With seven human souls, you’ll be strong enough to win! All on your own! You’ll be strong enough to kill all of them!”

I’ve seen this look on his face before. I’ve seen it so many times, but it takes me a few seconds to put a name to it.

Well, not a name. I never had a name for it. But I know it. I got to know it way too well in those early days.

The look he gave me when I did something mean. Something to make Mom and Dad mad.

Not the kind of look I’ve seen some kids give me, the “you’re gonna be in trouble” look. Mom and Dad didn’t do “trouble,” and even if they did, I know Asriel wouldn’t be happy to see me in it. He just looks … sad. Concerned.

Caring.

“Chara … they’re people,” he says, as if he’s trying to make me understand.

And I hate it. I hate it more than I hate humans, more than I hate anything.

“They don’t matter,” I tell him, because he has to understand that, he has to. “You matter. Why can’t you just take care of yourself for once?!”

“Chara …” he breathes.

And suddenly he’s stepping toward me, I know this is in our heads but I can feel him getting closer, closer than us sharing a body, like he wants to pull me into a hug even though you can’t hug your own body, his arms are out and his eyes are soft and he looks so goddamn sad.

I jerk back and shake my head.

“No! No, just … just let me kill them! I can do it! You don’t have to do anything, I’ll do it!”

“I’m sorry,” he says, still moving forward, his voice so soft.

“Why?” I spit, and my voice is really cracking now, there are tears running down cheeks that don’t exist, my eyes and my throat burning even though they’re not real. “What the hell are you sorry for?!”

Asriel looks at me with tears brimming in his own eyes, like he’s just seen the world collapse and shatter in front of him.

“I’m sorry I let you die,” he replies, and the whisper echoes through my entire being like a physical blow. His lips purse as they stretch into a tight smile. “I love you, Chara.”

I choke. I try to speak, try to get the words out, everything I want to say, but my voice refuses. I’m shaking even though I don’t have a body, our real body is shaking just as hard, I’m frozen, I can’t … I want him to get away I want to run but I can’t run because he’s right there, he’s looking at me, he’s so sad and that’s the same face he wore before he went to pick the flowers, the same face filled with such care and loyalty he never wanted to hurt me I know that but it’s the only way the only way the only …

He never wanted to do this.

I always knew that. Deep down.

It didn’t matter before. It didn’t matter if he didn’t want to, it was what we had to do.

But now …

Now it feels like I’m standing in front of that barrier again. The barrier I know I’ll never be able to break, the barrier that keeps me trapped in a world of dead monsters, dead monsters I killed. Knowing that I’ve tried all my options, knowing that there’s nothing else I can do, knowing that I can go back as many times as I want and try over and over again and things will never turn out any different.

Unless I change what I was trying to do in the first place.

Killing the monsters was my only way forward, so that was what I did. Until it wasn’t my only way forward. Until I realized that it was always going to turn out the same.

Killing the humans is my only way forward. It … it is, it has to be, I have to save them, no matter how many times it takes, no matter how much Asriel protests, I …

I …

If I went back. If I … did something else.

If I didn’t do this at all …

If I tried the one thing I refused to consider until now …

Something moves in the corner of my eye. Not in my head, my real eye, our real eye. I blink, and I look, I really look, not at Asriel, but at the outside world.

At the thing moving to our left.

At the human standing just ten feet away, a gun clutched in his hands, pointed straight at our head.

I know Asriel’s body doesn’t have a heart, but I swear I can feel it stop.

“Asriel, move!”

Asriel moves with me, ducking out of the way on pure instinct, but the gun has already gone off.

It blows through our head before either of us have the chance to think.

*

When I wake up, this time, I’m in my bed.

For a while, I lie there, not sure when I’ve ended up. I know where I wanted to go before I died, but I’ve never tried to go back to an older save point before. I don’t feel sick, so it’s not my last one, the one I made right before I died. But I’m definitely in a bed, definitely in my bed, so I haven’t gone back all the way. That’s a relief. I mean, the past year and a half hasn’t been bad, but I don’t want to have to redo it.

So when …?

I turn my head to see Asriel already awake, playing with one of our toys on the floor. He has that thoughtful, pained look on his face again, the one he got in the days right after I brought up the plan, but before we went through with it. He’s still scared and unsure. I don’t remember it looking this bad. I wonder if I was really looking at it before.

When he sees me watching him, he smiles and wishes me a good morning, but it’s quiet, and it doesn’t have the same cheerful energy I’ve come to associate with him.

He’s sad.

I wonder how I could have missed that before.

He’s sad. He’s scared. He’s worried.

And I made him that way.

He turns to face me when I sit up. He tries to smile, but it’s small, tight, and I can tell he doesn’t mean it. I remember this now. I was taking a nap while he played on the floor. I remember looking at him, I remember him smiling, but … I don’t remember seeing his face like this.

But I also know I haven’t changed enough this time for him to react differently yet.

I made him feel this way before, and I didn’t even notice.

I kept going anyway.

I swallow a few times, feeling the ghost of a sore throat and achy gut. I squeeze my hands together, then lay them flat on my lap and take a deep breath.

“Asriel,” I say.

It’s barely more than a whisper, but he looks up immediately, his head snapping up so fast I wonder if it hurts his neck.

“Yeah?” he asks. He’s nervous. He doesn’t hide it well at all, and I can see it on his face just as easily as I can hear it in his voice.

I look down at my feet.

“I changed my mind,” I go on, before I can stop myself, before I can think better of it. I swallow hard, once, then once more. “I … don’t think we should do it.”

I wait a few seconds before I look back up. He’s staring. Blinking, like he can’t quite accept what I’ve said.

It only takes a few more seconds for his shoulders to fall, like he’s been carrying around a two-hundred-pound dumbbell and it’s just dropped off his back. He let out a soft sigh that he tries and fails to suppress.

“I … good. That’s … good,” he says, breathy, voice cracking, I can tell he wants to cry but for once he actually holds it back. He smiles at me, soft and shy and painfully relieved. “Thank you, Chara.”

When I don’t respond, he gets up off the floor, crosses the room, and hugs me, so tight it almost hurts. I can feel him shaking, but I can also feel his smile, wide against my shoulder. I think I should hug him back, but I can’t make my arms move. So I just stand there, letting him hold me, until he finally lets go and drags me off to ask Mom for a snack.

*

The next morning, I don’t want to get out of bed.

At first, I wonder whether I actually did eat some of the buttercups without remembering it. I’m tired, but I don’t feel sick, not like I did when I ate them the first time. Getting up just sounds like more energy than I’ve got.

When Asriel asks, I tell him I’m not feeling well. Mom comes in and checks on me, and Dad soon after that. I’m reminded that they don’t really know how to deal with humans getting sick. They don’t know enough about us. They’re worried. I don’t like them being worried, but I don’t know what to say to make them feel better, so I don’t say anything.

They keep coming in throughout the day. And the next day. And the day after that. They bring me food, but I don’t feel like eating. They bring me games and toys, but I don’t feel like playing. Once, Mom comes in, sits at the edge of my bed, and strokes my hair. I think that used to feel nice, but right now, I don’t feel anything.

I’m never going to get them out of here.

They’re going to be stuck down here for the rest of their lives, and a whole lot longer, all because I couldn’t set them free.

I try to blame Asriel again, once or twice. But it doesn’t work. All I can see is the pain on his face when I told him to kill the humans. He doesn’t remember me saying it, and I don’t want him to. I can blame the humans—it’s easy to blame the humans—but it doesn’t mean as much when I’ll never see them again, when there’s nothing I can do to get back at them.

So there’s just me.

I’m the one who failed.

I’m the one who couldn’t save my family.

And if I can’t save them … if I can’t get them out of here, if I can’t give anything back to them after all they’ve given to me … then what’s the point in me being here anyway?

So I stay in bed. Mom and Dad bring my food and drinks, and they sit with me and talk with me and even bring in healers to see if they can figure out what’s wrong with me. They never find anything, of course. They think it’s some weird human illness they can’t figure out. Maybe it is. It feels like an illness. It’s just not one I know how to get better from.

It’s not one I’m sure I even want to get better from.

One day, after three weeks—or was it four weeks?—I wake up to find Asriel sitting next to my bed, crying. He’s trying to be quiet, but he’s really bad at it, so he’s still sniffling as tears run down his cheeks. For the first time, I don’t even think of calling him a crybaby. I look at him, and he tries to say something, but his words break off into a sob.

I don’t know why he’s crying. I’m not dying. This version of him doesn’t even remember me dying. This version of him doesn’t even know how serious my plan got.

A part of me wants to call him a crybaby, but that part is a lot smaller than it used to be.

Most of me just wants to find a way to make him stop.

I don’t do anything at first. I’m too tired to do anything. Doing anything doesn’t seem … worth it. I hope that it’s just a phase, he’s upset and he’ll feel better tomorrow, like he usually does. Mom and Dad will give him a hug, and they’ll take care of it.

Mom and Dad do hug him. In front of me, so I know they actually did it.

But Asriel doesn’t stop crying.

He doesn’t say anything to me straight out, but he doesn’t need to. I hear him murmuring to himself when he thinks I’m asleep. Monsters don’t have the same idea of religion or god or whatever that a lot of humans do, but I’ve heard them talk about the Angel. It’s a stupid story—no one’s going to come from the surface and rescue them, no one is ever going to rescue them—but I think he’s talking to the Angel. I think he’s begging them to make me better.

He’s crying, but for once, I don’t feel irritated. I feel … sad. I think. Heavier. Like there’s a rock in my stomach taking up more space than it should, weighing me down even more than before.

Or a rock in my stomach that pulls itself out of my stomach to whack me in the chest.

I’ve felt it before, and I know it even before the thought hits me.

I love him.

I think that’s what this is, but I’m not sure anymore. Was I ever sure? I don’t know.

But that’s the only word I have for it, so that’s the one I’m going to use.

I love him, but I’m not good for him.

I’m hurting him. Or … I did hurt him, even if he only remembers some of it. And I’m still hurting him now, in a different way. Even if he’s too … can you still love someone if you want to call them stupid for being so naive? He doesn’t even realize how much I hurt him. He doesn’t realize how much I would have hurt him. How many times he would have died because of me.

He’ll never know.

I love him, and I’m hurting him.

I always thought you weren’t supposed to hurt people you love.

I don’t know if I’m going to stop hurting him. And I wonder if it would be better if I ate those flowers and then went off somewhere to die by myself, where he couldn’t find me and absorb my soul on some hope of fulfilling my “last wish” or some shit like that. Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here. Maybe it would have been better if I’d never come here at all.

But I am here.

And I’m not stupid enough to think that he won’t hurt if I leave now.

He’d look for me. He’d find me, one way or another. And if he found me, already dead … he’d be hurt by that, too. He’d probably cry even more than he is now. And I don’t want to hurt him when I know I can avoid it.

I don’t know if I can stop hurting him at all. I don’t know if I know how. I can spend years figuring it out, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good at being a friend as he is.

But … if anyone is worth trying for, it’s him.

So the next day, when I wake up to find Asriel’s bed empty and made, I force myself to sit up. I slip my legs out from under the sheets and touch my feet to the floor. I step out of my room on tired, wobbly legs that have forgotten how to walk. I make my way down the hall, toward the living room. I can hear three familiar voices ahead of me. They’re quieter than I remember. Softer. Solemn? That’s the word for it, right? Like someone died.

But I’m not dead. Maybe I’m not as alive as I could be, but I’m not dead.

Not yet.

I take the last few steps into the living room, and immediately, the conversation stops, and three heads turn to me. Mom is in her armchair, while Dad is on the floor, working on a puzzle with Asriel. They all sit there, staring at me. Waiting.

I don’t want to smile, but I force one. A small one. I don’t know if it will be enough.

It is.

As if they’re a single person instead of three, they get up, walk over to me, and pull me into a choking hug.

I can hear their voices talking, but I don’t listen to the words. I don’t need to. I can hear all those stupid feelings bursting through with every syllable, I can hear the cracks, the gentleness, the overwhelming care. I can feel the solid, soft warmth of their bodies around me, holding me like I belong with them. Like they want me here. Like they were afraid they would lose me.

And for the first time, I wonder whether they would have still missed me, even if I had succeeded in setting them free.

But I brush the thought away after only a second. No. Not now. I can think about that later. Now … right now … I’m with them. I’m safe.

I’m not happy. I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy again.

But I’m here, and so they are they.

And maybe, just for a little while, that can be enough.

Chapter Text

For five years, I try.

It’s not easy. It sucks, getting so close to succeeding and giving up. It sucks, knowing that there’s nothing I can do, that I’m letting the humans win, that I’m letting the people I love suffer, that even when I thought I could help I only ended up making things worse.

It sucks, knowing that they’re never going to get to see the good parts of the surface, even if I’m happy to leave it behind myself.

But I try. I try for them, even when I can’t try for me.

It sucks, but it gets better. Mom and Dad and Asriel do everything they can to make me happy. They … don’t get everything about me, and maybe they never will. It’s not like I ever plan on telling them. For now, I can live with just having our normal days together. Growing up, and pretending this is how things have always been, and how they’ll always be.

Then, a few months after the five-year mark, a human falls into the Ruins.

I’ve never asked whether another human fell before me. I didn’t need to. It was just … implied, in everything people did, in the way they acted, the way they looked at me. They look at me, and I can tell that most monsters have never seen a human other than me. Two thousand years underground, and not a single human has found their way into that cave—or maybe they just weren’t stupid enough to fall into that stupid hole.

It’s been almost seven years since I fell, and now there’s a new human.

He’s … young.

Like, really young. I was eight when I fell, but this kid can’t be more than four. Probably more like three. It’s only through luck that we find him—though how “lucky” that fact is is up for debate. Mom likes to visit Home sometimes, check on things, talk to the monsters who decided to stay, and she finds him. She leaves for an ordinary trip, and when she comes back, she’s holding this … kid in her arms. A boy, apparently, with short black hair and wide dark eyes and pale skin and tear tracks still running down his cheeks.

At first, I’m too shocked to think about it, and everything happens too fast for me to really process what’s going on. Mom heals the kid, but he’s still shaken up, and Mom and Dad—and Asriel, to an only slightly lesser extent—spend the rest of the day reassuring him that he’s safe, calming him down, and getting him fed and settled in.

I hear him asking for his family. For his Mommy and Daddy.

I want to scream at him, because how dare he not appreciate getting away from that place and landing somewhere a million times better.

But I don’t scream. I just watch.

It takes a few days for the hype to die down. Of course, the news gets out fast. Mom was discreet when she carried the kid back, but … monsters are observant. Everyone knows, and everyone wants to know, and Dad makes an announcement that calms them down for a little while, even though I know it won’t last.

And as the days go by, I realize that Mom and Dad have every intention of keeping him.

I push the realization away as long as I can. I keep my distance and wait for it to blow over, wait for Mom and Dad to realize they don’t really want him and … I don’t know. Give him to another family. I know they won’t hurt him, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay.

But though everyone is willing to give me my space when I need it, the house isn’t that big. The kid—Mom says his name is Heng—doesn’t stay in his room forever. He comes out into the living room, plays with toys Asriel and I used to play with—our toys—and toddles around, exploring his new environment. He’s … quiet, and prefers to sit and observe rather than butt into stuff he isn’t invited into. He is, by most people’s definition, an “angel” of a kid. I still don’t like him.

I try to avoid him, but it’s hard. Mom and Dad are so excited to have him there, and Asriel’s latching on to the “big brother” role like he was born for it, and they all want me to join in. Like the kid’s gonna be my little brother or something like that.

I don’t want a little brother. I don’t want anyone else here. It’s us. It’s been us for years, I was happy with us, us was fine, and now there’s … someone else.

I don’t like him.

I don’t want him.

And I don’t care whether they think he’s part of their family. Because he’ll never be part of mine.

*

He’s been here two weeks when I push him.

I don’t plan on it. But he’s been more and more curious about everything, and he’s been watching me when I watch him, and apparently he wants to know more about me. I’m just minding my own business, working on a puzzle, when he toddles over and starts trying to get my attention. He’s not loud, but he’s annoying, and he won’t leave me alone and then he knocks over some of the pieces and I’m mad because I worked really hard on that and before I know what I’m doing I shove him to the floor.

He sits there, frozen, for three solid seconds before he starts to cry.

Mom sees what happened. She’s nearby, distracted, but I know the second she comes over that she saw. I stopped being afraid of her years ago, but I still flinch, waiting for her to tell me off, but she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. She picks up Heng and comforts him, and before she even gets the chance to look at me I run off and lock myself in my bedroom.

I’ve only had my own room for about a year now. I’m still not really used to it. But Asriel and I were ready to try out separate bedrooms, even if we still had rooms right next to each other—and Asriel ends up spending a good chunk of time in my room when we’re not somewhere else in the house.

Right now, I’m glad. I don’t want to deal with Asriel. I don’t want to deal with anyone. I just want to be alone.

Mom comes to talk to me a while later. Part of me wants to scream at her, lash out, try to do anything to make her mad. I want her to be mad. I want her to yell, I want her to tell me I can’t play with my toys or have dessert or hit me or any of that other shit I know parents do.

But she doesn’t.

She sits down next to me on the bed and strokes my hair.

I hate it.

I hate it so much.

But I don’t push her away.

I lay there, limp and silent, as she pets my head, then rubs my scalp. I must seem a little calmer after a while, because it’s only then that she starts to talk.

“I know this is a huge shock for you. I can’t imagine how strange this must be. You must feel like your home is being invaded by a total stranger.”

I barely hold back a snort.

“I know that … you may not want to talk about it. But if you ever do, I will listen. Even if you think it’s something that will make me mad. I will never get mad at you for stating your feelings to me, whatever they may be.”

I clench my hands against the pillow, but say nothing.

“I won’t let you hurt Heng, but if you don’t have to be in the same room as him when you’re playing if you don’t want to. One of you can be in the living room and another in the garden, or you can play in your rooms. Just let me know where you want to play, and I’ll take Heng somewhere else.”

I think she wants me to respond to that, but I don’t have anything to say. She’s not mad. I know she can get mad, I’ve seen her get mad, but … she doesn’t do mad when it comes to us. It doesn’t make sense, but I’ve already accepted that it’s never going to.

She strokes my hair for a while longer, then kisses my head and leaves me alone.

I stay in my room for the rest of the day, and no one comes in. I know I’m not confined there. I know I can leave anytime. But even if Mom isn’t disappointed in me, even if she isn’t mad, I’m not ready to face them.

Dad brings me dinner and tries to talk to me, but I still say nothing and eat only a few bites before pushing it aside.

Right before I normally go to sleep, Asriel knocks on the door and steps inside. He looks at me, his eyes wide and soft and pained and he opens his mouth as if he’s going to speak, but then he just stops. He closes his mouth. He gives me a long, sad look.

Then he turns and leaves me alone once again.

*

“Chara?”

It’s kind of amazing, how quickly Asriel goes back to normal with me.

Or, at least, whatever normal was before I pushed Heng.

I know he doesn’t hold grudges. He forgives easily. Way, way too easily, in my opinion, but he’s not going to change, and in this situation, I don’t really want him to.

But things still aren’t normal. I know that, and he knows that. Everyone knows that.

There’s a three-year-old toddling around our house, and I still don’t want him to be here.

I haven’t pushed him again. Not that Mom and Dad have given me the chance to push him again—they’ve both made sure to stay close by on the rare occasion he and I are in the same room—but I don’t really feel like pushing him again. He’s about a third of my size and as much as I don’t like him, it doesn’t give me any satisfaction to hurt him.

Besides, I know he’s not going to leave. I don’t like it, but he’s going to stay. So there’s nothing to do but deal with it.

The only problem is that I can’t deal with it.

I don’t push Heng, but I don’t do much else. It feels a little like those few weeks after I gave up on the plan to reach the surface, just … not as bad. I can at least get out of bed now. I spend most of my time in my room, drawing or doing jigsaw puzzles or just staring at the wall and thinking about nothing in particular.

I feel … empty.

But at the same time, I feel so full it’s like I’m going to explode.

And when Asriel says my name, standing in the doorway, watching me with those sad eyes, it’s like whatever is inside me is about to boil over.

“What?” I all but snap.

He fidgets. He doesn’t do that as much nowadays, now that he’s older, taller, and starting to look less like a fuzzy teddy bear, but he still does it, and I hate how it makes my gut twist in something like guilt.

“Is there … something wrong?” he asks.

I stiffen, and the twisting in my gut shifts. My eyes narrow.

“Why? Does it seem like there’s something wrong with me?”

He doesn’t reply at first. It’s funny, how much he’s gotten used to my deflecting tactics. Once that would have made him back off, made him think that he had actually offended me rather than just poked at something I didn’t want to talk about. He knows me too well now. I don’t think anyone has ever known me this well.

“Do you … not like Heng?” he asks at last, still hesitant, even though he’s not half as anxious as he used to be. “I know you didn’t like him when he first got here, but I hoped … I thought …”

I purse my lips and turn away so I don’t have to look at his stupid sad face any longer.

“Well, you thought wrong. I don’t like him, and I’m never gonna like him, so just … deal with it, Asriel. Not everyone likes each other.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute after that. I don’t look back. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of being the one to look at him first—even though I know Asriel wouldn’t actually take satisfaction in something like that anyway.

“Are you … jealous?”

And suddenly it doesn’t matter that I’m trying to last longer than him. I spin around so fast I almost fall over, my muscles tense as rocks, my eyes wide, my lips pursed

“Why the hell would I be jealous?” I snap.

He fidgets again and shrugs. “Mom says that happens sometimes. When kids get new siblings.”

“He’s not my sibling,” I bite out.

“But you’re mine,” he says, without hesitation. I frown and grit my teeth. He chews his lip. “Did you have any siblings? Before you … came here?”

I didn’t think it was possible for my muscles to get any tenser. Apparently I was wrong.

“No.”

He pauses again, but this time he just looks at me, without fidgeting at all.

“I never asked you what your family was like.”

I want to look away again. I really want to look away again, but I force myself to look in his eyes as I open my mouth. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does!”

It’s so fast, so sudden, so loud that it takes me a few seconds to realize it was actually him that spoke. His breath is fast, shaky, and he looks as tense as I am, as if the words have been building up inside him for the past seven years and he can’t believe he finally let them out.

I stare at him, and he stares at me, and slowly, the tension dies town, but now his eyes are shining, and I know he can’t let this go. He swallows hard, shakes his head and grips the hem of his shirt, like he used to when we were little kids.

“They … I didn’t even think about it back then, but one day it hit me that … humans don’t just come out of nowhere, they have families like we do, they have parents, and when you fell down here, you were as young as me, you must have had family, parents, but you … if I got stuck on the surface without Mom and Dad, I’d be so sad, but you didn’t look sad at all, you never acted like you missed someone, you just … forgot about them.”

He peeks up at me again, biting his lip, hesitant and concerned. I swallow the tightness in my throat and look away.

“Well, maybe they weren’t worth remembering.”

He flinches, a full-body motion that makes me want to flinch, too.

“How can you say that?” he breathes, like I’ve just told him the most horrendous, unimaginable thing in the world. “They were your family! I … I can’t imagine forgetting Mom and Dad—”

“Not everyone has a family like you do, Asriel!”

He stops. He just … stops, completely frozen, his eyes wide and his mouth open and his expression locked in utter confusion.

But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. As much as a little voice in the back of my head tells me to shut up, just shut up, I can’t stop now, my mouth moves on its own, the words pouring out like I’ve punched a hole in a dam.

“Some of us don’t have parents that tell us they love us and hug us every day and give us stuff and actually care about us,” I spit out, stop it, stop it. “Some of us weren’t expected, weren’t wanted. Some of us weren’t even worth a look! We were worth as much as it took to keep us alive, as much as it took to keep the cops from getting involved, and that’s it! All we were was something else to drain the budget, another expense they didn’t want! Some of us didn’t have siblings to be jealous of, because we didn’t have anyone, no one who gave a damn about what we wanted and didn’t want, and it didn’t matter how much we hated our lives because as long as we didn’t go out every day covered in bruises it must mean our parents were doing an okay job! Some of us learned pretty damn early that it wasn’t worth it to ask for help because no one cared, because no one wanted us, because we were just a stupid kid who complained about their parents and oh but of course you love your parents you’re just being silly it doesn’t matter if they forgot you at the gas station every other week or went three days without saying a word to you and just locked you in your room when you were too loud because they’re your family and they love you and everyone always says that they always say it it doesn’t matter if it’s true it doesn’t matter what I say because it’s never gonna change so there’s no point staying here I can go somewhere else where it’ll be better and maybe s-someone there will give a d-damn about what I say and even if they don’t at l-least it’ll be b-better than … t-than …”

My voice hitches, and I have to swallow before it completely breaks. I squeeze my hands into fists, but that doesn’t stop them shaking.

Asriel is staring, just as silent, just as still, but now the expression on his face has faded into something more … sad.

Something a lot more sad.

His lips are pressed together, the line of them wobbling, and I only notice the shining in his eyes a second before the first tears slip out and over onto his fur.

I swallow again and glare, even though my eyes are burning, too.

“Stop crying, you crybaby.”

He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even blink. He just looks at me, and he’s definitely crying now, full-out crying, he’s holding back sobs but the tears are streaming over his cheeks and dripping onto the floor and I hate it I hate it I don’t want to see this I don’t want to be here I just want … I just want …

“I love you, Chara,” he says.

I grit my teeth.

“Stop it,” I snap. “Stop it.”

“I love you,” he repeats, and I stumble back, bumping into the bed.

“Stop it!”

“I love you,” he says again, stepping toward me, he’s so close now, too close, I want him to get away I want to run but there’s nowhere to run he’s right there looking at me so gentle so loving and it hurts it fucking hurts. “I should have told you that a long time ago. You’re my family, Chara. And I want you here.”

I shake my head, over and over, faster and faster, my breath trembling, squeezing my arms and biting back the whimper growing in my throat.

“I hate them … I h-hate them …”

“I know,” he says, resting a careful, gentle hand on my arm. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

My breath hitches, and I duck my head lower. “I hate them, Asriel, they’re still talking, it’s been seven years and I still see them in my head, they never go away, they’re still there …”

He moves, and suddenly his arms are around me and he’s holding me, like he’s held me so many times, like Dad holds me, like Mom held me in that armchair years ago, safe and secure and forever.

“I’m here,” he whispers, like it’s the only sound in the world. “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll help you, just tell me when you need me and I’ll be here, I’ll always be here, I love you, I love you so much, Chara.”

The words echo in my head, engraving themselves so deep I know I’ll never get them out. But for some reason, I don’t want to.

So I just cry.

I cry for a long fucking time, longer than I’ve cried … ever. It hurts. It’s messy and my nose is all full of snot and I’m soaking Asriel’s sweater but he doesn’t complain. My eyes burn, my throat burns, but I can’t stop, and even as it hurts like hell it’s also the best thing I’ve ever felt.

Asriel holds me. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t move. Just stands there and holds me, rubbing my back, occasionally rocking me a little back and forth, like Mom used to.

He’s a little taller than me now. I figure he’ll be a lot taller than me eventually, if he takes after Dad.

It’s a weird thought, but I don’t mind it as much as I once did.

Eventually, the tears stop. I guess even when I’ve been holding them back for as long as I have, there’s not an unlimited supply. I still feel a little like crying, just … without the tears. But crying kind of takes it out of you, so when the tears dry up, I just stand there, resting my disgusting face on Asriel’s shoulder and letting him hold me a little longer.

I know, deep down, it won’t be the last time he holds me. It’s a small comfort, but it’s still a comfort.

It feels like an eternity later that I finally let out a long, heavy sigh, and clear my throat.

“You’re stupid.”

Asriel stiffens, but doesn’t let me go, and I can feel his face working as he tries to think of something to say in return. “Well, you’re … you’re …”

He trails off, and I snort.

“You can’t even insult me back,” I murmur into his sweater, then cling to him a little tighter. “You’re such a wimp.”

The tension in him relaxes, and he holds me tighter still.

“Wimp sounds okay to me.”

I laugh again, humorless, and press my face even deeper into the fabric, feeling every one of Mom’s stitches against my skin.

“Yeah,” I breathe, a faint smile on my lips. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

*

It’s not easy.

One conversation can make a difference, but it doesn’t fix things. Not things that have been going on for this long. Honestly, I didn’t think it would really make a difference in the long run. But it does.

I still hate humans. I’ll probably always hate humans. Maybe that means that there’s a part of me I’ll always hate. I can live with that.

It doesn’t matter how much I hate part of myself, because Asriel loves all of me. Mom and Dad love all of me.

I tell myself that, and it gets easier and easier to believe it.

Heng settles in, and at the same time, everything else settles, too. People get used to having another human around, and I get used to there being someone else my family cares for, even if I’ll never think of him as my little brother. I talk to him, occasionally. I don’t flat-out ignore him, even if I try to avoid him most of the time. I hear Mom and Dad and Asriel calling me his sibling, and I don’t bother to correct them. I think Asriel must have said something to Mom and Dad—or maybe Mom worked it out for herself—because they seem to make a point to spend more time with me after that. Having tea and cookies together. Doing a puzzle. Playing a game. Silly, stupid things. But maybe silly, stupid things aren’t so bad if I’m doing it with them.

Asriel starts going back to the Ruins regularly, to check for other humans. He says it can be his first “royal duty,” but I know he’d do it whether he considered it a royal responsibility or not. Now that he’s seen another human fall, he knows that there’s a chance more will come—and he’s probably right.

Before I came, there was no one for two thousand years. And now, in the course of seven years, there’s been two.

I know, logically, that even though a human probably isn’t going to fall tomorrow, like Asriel seems to be expecting, that the chances that one will fall are far, far higher than the chances that one won’t. It might take a year, it might take twenty, but it’s going to happen, one day.

I know that Heng won’t be the last. But like everyone else, I ignore it. There isn’t a point in worrying about it now.

For the first time in my life, I actually believe that no matter what happens, I’ll have my family there to help me get through it.

*

I’m twenty-eight when the next one falls.

It’s a girl this time, pale-skinned and blonde-haired with a punch that I’m pretty sure could kill a monster in one or two blows. She doesn’t actually use it on anything but dummies, so I never find out. Asriel happens to be in the Ruins already when she falls, and is the first person she talks to. Apparently, he makes a good impression. By the time he brings her to us, she already knows a good bit about monsters, and hardly seems fazed meeting Mom and Dad.

Heng is almost an adult by this point, and he doesn’t remember his life before falling into the underground. He knows he’s a human, but in the same way that Asriel knows he’s a boss monster. It’s a fact, a name, but it doesn’t mean anything.

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t intrigued—and thrilled—to see someone else who looks like him.

I mean. I look like him, but he already know that I don’t like to talk about that fact.

He welcomes her in just as eagerly as Asriel and Mom and Dad. He even offers to share his room, through Mom is quick to set up another bedroom for her. In a matter of days, she has her own space, a set of handmade clothes, and a pile of toys, and every monster in the underground knows her name.

Helena is older than Heng was, closer to ten or eleven. Which means she isn’t quite as helpless as Heng, but it also means that she has a very clear memory of the people she knew aboveground. She remembers them. She misses them. And she doesn’t take it so easily when she realizes that she can never go home.

Heng cried when he realized he’d never see his “Mommy and Daddy” again, but only a few times. Helena puts on a brave face, but it takes her a lot longer to recover.

She does recover, though. In time. After couple of months, she only mentions them occasionally, and after six, she doesn’t mention them at all.

I know she still remembers them. I know she thinks about them. It’s obvious in those moments when she doesn’t think anyone can see her and stares off into the distance. But she’s seen the barrier, just like I have. She knows there’s no way to break it.

No way that she’s willing to try, in any case.

A very, very small part of me appreciates that she doesn’t seem to think going home would be worth someone dying.

I still don’t like her. But there are a lot of things I don’t like, and I’ve dealt with them so far. I’ll deal with this now.

I can handle one more human kid. I guess.

But two more is stretch.

Yeah. Two. It’s a surprise for everyone when it happens, because it’s only been a year, and even though Helena has gotten used to being here, and doesn’t talk about her family anymore, she still hasn’t really settled. Not like Heng did. She’s still a kid, and I’m used to having just one kid around at a time.

Especially since this new one is really damn small.

But it’s not like humans have ever done what I wanted.

Asriel’s surprised, too, by the look on his face when he brings her back to the castle. By her own admission, her name is Akilah, she’s six years old, and she needs to find her auntie.

Apparently she’s been asking for said “auntie” since Asriel found her lying on the ground in the cave, and though she’s quiet and patient, a lot like Heng, it’s clear she’s not giving up on it anytime soon.

She doesn’t give up on a lot of things, as it turns out. Mom offers her new clothes, since her current outfit is torn, but she hangs tight to her ballerina outfit, complete with slippers and tutu, insisting that it is the only kind of outfit she wants to wear. I barely hold myself back from asking her why the hell she was wearing a ballerina outfit while climbing a mountain.

After she’s been here for a week, and the ballerina outfit is stinky and full of holes, Mom makes her a new one. She hesitates, but finally accepts it, tucking her old one carefully under her bed.

I guess I can respect that. In a way.

She might be young, but she’s not as young as Heng was, and she cries for her “auntie” at least once a day for a while. Mom’s gentle and patient, as usual, and Helena steps up surprisingly quickly to give her a hug and whisper something in her ear.

I never hear what she whispers. At first, it does nothing to soothe Akilah’s crying, but as the weeks go on, slowly, it gets better.

She’s not going to forget the humans she knew. Heng did, for the most part. He has a vague knowledge that he wasn’t always here, but it’s just that: vague, without any real details. I guess that’s why Helena and Akilah bond so well. I’m pretty sure they talk about their old families when they’re alone together. It kind of pisses me off, that they can’t just appreciate what they have now, but when I mention this to Asriel once, he asks me how I would feel if I was suddenly forced out of the underground with no way to ever come back to us.

I tell him that’s a stupid metaphor, because I would always find a way back.

He keeps saying “but what if.”

I don’t want to think about that, so I don’t bring it up again.

I don’t like it, but I get used to it. These three kids—or not-quite-so-much-kids, in Heng’s case—aren’t my siblings, and they’ll never be my siblings, no matter what Asriel or Mom or Dad say. I’ll never want to spend time with them, or be their big sibling, or any shit like that.

But I can live with them.

And I guess … if they make Asriel as happy as they do, maybe there’s a tiny part of them that isn’t quite so bad.

*

It’s been eleven years since the last human fell. Not like that’s unusual, but I think it’s my best excuse for why it took me so long to find them.

Normally Asriel would be the one to check the Ruins, or send a message asking someone who lived closer to do it for him. But he’s been busy lately, learning things from Dad that he would need to know when he took over. He asked me to check for him. I told him I would. I don’t.

I can tell myself all I want that it was just because eleven years had passed, but frankly, I just don’t want to think about someone else taking away my time with my brother.

But in my defense, I still didn’t expect to find a corpse when I finally give in and check the Ruins three days later.

I stand there for a minute or two, just staring, before I step closer. It’s funny, how dead bodies didn’t use to bother me. How long has it been since I saw one? And most of the ones I’ve seen have been monsters. Monsters turned to dust.

I forgot humans didn’t turn to dust.

It takes me another few minutes after that to figure out what had happened to it. Them, I guess. I … don’t mind looking at them as much as I think Asriel would—Asriel would probably be sobbing his eyes out right now, for one thing—but it’s still not nice. I think I might not have minded at all a long time ago. I think, maybe, I might have liked seeing them there. They had landed on their head, by the looks of it. The flowers Asriel planted tend to cushion falls, but they can only do so much. And you don’t have to fall from that high to die if you land on your head.

Their neck was snapped. Their head is still attached, but … it’s still not pretty.

I think, if I had seen them a few decades ago, I might have been happy. I might have been relieved that there wasn’t someone new to steal my family’s attention away from me. I might have dug a hole and buried the body right here. Asriel wasn’t that observant. He probably wouldn’t even notice, and we could go on with our lives like nothing happened.

I consider doing that now.

I don’t consider it for very long.

I’m forty now. I don’t think about it very often, but it’s been more than thirty years since I fell. Thirty years. I’ll probably get gray hairs soon. And wrinkles. That’s what humans get when they get old, isn’t it?

Asriel doesn’t have gray hairs. He’s got fur, so wrinkles are a moot point, but even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get them.

Mom and Dad look a little older than I remember them being when I met them, but not by much. I know they’re aging. Boss monsters age when they have kids, and apparently Mom and Dad have gone a long, long time without aging. They complain about it now and then, but it’s light-hearted and I can tell that they don’t really mind.

I guess I don’t mind either. Getting old sucks, but … it’s just what happens. After all this time, I’m used to it. I’ve lived long enough to be used to it.

This human … I can’t see them very well, given that they’ve already started to rot—humans really do decay fast—but … they can’t be older than nine.

Isn’t that how old I was when I fell?

No … no, I was eight, wasn’t I? When was my birthday? The one I had on the surface, not the one Asriel gave me. Did I know it before? I can’t remember it now. It didn’t seem very important back then. It seems even less important now.

When I was fourteen, and Heng crashed into all our lives, that little three-year-old seemed like the biggest threat I had seen in five years. Even more than ten years later, with Helena and Akilah, it was like a stranger barging into our home—and I guess it kind of was, even if three out of four members of said home welcomed them in.

But now …

Now …

It doesn’t feel like that.

Now, looking at this human … it’s like I see me.

Me thirty years ago. Me before I found Mom and Dad and Asriel. Me when no one gave a damn about me. Me before … before the life I have now.

It’s not that it doesn’t bother me on some level, the idea of someone new coming into our home. But it doesn’t bother me like it used to.

And all I can think, when I consider digging that hole and stuffing the body inside, is the look on Asriel’s face if he ever found out.

I don’t even consider the chance that he never would.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve reset, or even reloaded. I’m not even sure if I remember how to do it anymore. But I still make a habit of saving regularly, just in case. I’m the cautious type. It doesn’t matter if it’s been thirty years. I know that something bad could happen at any moment, and if it does, if it’s something that really needs to be undone, I don’t want to lose all that time just to undo it.

Funny, how it used to seem like not such a big deal to lose some time, even if it was a lot. Back then, it was more about convenience, not having to go through all the same shit again.

Now … now I just don’t want to risk losing anything important.

I don’t know when that changed, and honestly, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to remember a time when it was different.

I look at the kid’s dead body, mangled and rotting and as small as I was before I ran through the underground and killed everyone. As small as I was when the king and queen took me in. As small as I was when I tried—and failed—to set everyone free.

If I looked that small then … maybe it shouldn’t surprise me so much that Mom and Dad were so willing to let me stay.

Before I can talk myself out of it, before I can remind myself of all the ways this could go wrong, I close my eyes and reload.

*

I lose a week. It’s not a very eventful week, but I still kind of miss it.

When the kid falls, there is a pile of pillows waiting for them, and though they still hit their head at a bad angle by falling, it just gives them an ache, rather than a snapped neck.

I do nothing more than introduce myself before I tell them to follow me, and they do, dazed, curious, and unsure. On the way, I send Asriel a text. He runs to meet us before we can even leave Snowdin.

The kid’s name is Elliott. They’ve got short black hair and light brown skin and a smile that could light up the entire underground, and they never turn down a hug. Asriel loves them immediately, and Mom and Dad are quick to follow suit. They fit in quickly with the other human kids. Akilah is almost an adult now, and Heng and Helena are already grown, so they’ve got plenty of support as they deal with the inevitable angst of “never seeing their family again.”

Apparently they liked their family. I don’t have much sympathy for that, not when their family was human, but at this point, I don’t say anything about it.

I never tell anyone what happened, the choice I made, the choice I could have made. It’s not like they know I have that kind of power anyway.

But in the weeks and months that follow, I find Asriel smiling at me even more often than before, and he gives me random hugs about twice as much. I don’t say anything about it.

But I guess I’m not complaining, either.

*

I was right about the gray hairs.

I don’t notice them at first. Maybe because I don’t spend a lot of time staring into mirrors. I never have—I’ve never really cared about my appearance. I still wear the same sweaters as I did when I was a kid, except they’re a little bigger, and they don’t have stripes, because apparently stripes are something only kids wear around here. I have several versions of the exact same outfit because they’re comfortable and fit right. I bathe, I wash and brush my hair, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t need much time in front of a mirror.

And I don’t care about the gray hairs for vanity reasons. Monsters don’t have the same sort of shame attached with signs of age like humans do, from what I can tell. Gerson wears his wrinkles like a badge of honor, and everyone respects him for it, even if they think he’s a little nuts.

I still try to comb them back so Asriel doesn’t notice.

It’s been two years since Elliott fell. I … guess I’m used to it by now. Asriel still spends more time with them than he does the others—or me—just like he always does when he’s helping a new human adjust to life in the underground. I think he still wishes I would join in. I’ve given up on wondering whether he’ll realize I never will.

But I don’t insult them or trip them or give them false information just to see them make an idiot out of themselves.

Except when I managed to convince them that kissing Froggits would make them turn into another kind of monster.

Apparently that story isn’t as popular on the surface anymore.

Asriel was annoyed, but Elliott ended up making friends with the Froggits, so it all turned out fine.

I had forgotten how easily he gets along with kids. Easier than I did even when I was a kid. He acts as young as he looks. I don’t know if that’s normal for monsters, or even for boss monsters. I haven’t worked up the guts to ask.

He hasn’t noticed me getting older yet. Maybe he thinks the little lines on my face are just a human thing.

Well, they are, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know the meaning.

He’s gotten older, in his own way. But he doesn’t look old. He’s taller than me, just like I always knew he would be, even though he’s not quite up to Dad’s height. His horns are fully grown, and though he’s still pretty skinny for a boss monster, he’s still big by human standards.

But he looks a little like I would expect a twenty-something monster to look. Not a forty-something.

I read once that boss monsters only age when they have kids, because they give that energy to their kids, and Asriel … well, he loves kids, but he’s never had a relationship, and I don’t know if he plans to have his own. And even if he does, aging for monsters is a lot slower than it is for humans. Gerson isn’t a boss monster, and apparently he fought in the war. He’s old, he’s wrinkly, he’s a little crazy, but he’s definitely alive.

I wonder sometimes if Mom and Dad have told Asriel that humans don’t live even close to that long.

I wonder once if they’re expecting me to do it, but I realize pretty quickly that they’re not that cruel.

But I’m also not sure whether even they would know how to break something like that to Asriel without breaking his heart.

For now, I’m fine with him not knowing. He’ll figure it out eventually. One day, I won’t be able to hide the gray hairs, or the wrinkles. One day, even someone as oblivious and naive as my brother won’t be able to ignore the signs.

But right now, he can stay ignorant. If he’s ignorant, he’s happy.

And even if it will probably make things worse in the long run, even if I know it’s not going to last forever … I want to keep him happy as long as I can.

*

The next one falls the day before my sixty-seventh birthday. Or what I’m pretty sure is my sixty-seventh birthday. I kind of stopped counting back in my fifties, but I’ve got a good guess, so sixty-seven works.

Asriel jokes that me and the new human can share our “birthdays.”

The jokes only get worse when we find out his name is Charlie.

He’s … not bad. He’s a little too friendly for my tastes, but he’s about the furthest thing from mean, so it’s hard to actually dislike him, even if I might never really like him. He reminds me a lot of Asriel, even though he’s much younger. He cries when we tell him there’s no way for him to see his family again. I think he might cry more than the others, but I’m not really sure.

He’s not … incredibly obnoxious about the crying, I guess. He’s sad, he’s devastated, but he seems to know that it’s not our fault. That if Mom and Dad could send him home—back to his human family—they would.

He takes a long time, probably longer than any of the humans so far, but he does adjust, eventually. Sort of. He stops crying as much, even though it’s clear that he still misses his old family. I’m still kind of pissed that yet another human can’t realize how much they lucked out by falling here, but I’ve long passed the age of saying so out loud.

He tells us about his family, sometimes. About his mom and dad, about his three little sisters. He gets the fondest looks on his face when he talks about them, and Mom and Dad look both affectionate and sad.

Sometimes, when he talks about his sisters, I catch Asriel looking at me, though he always looks away before I can point it out to him.

He hugs me more often for a while. I don’t ask why. He’s a hopeless sap, but I’m used to it, and it’s not like I mind.

Even though it’s been more than twenty years since the last one, I get used to Charlie within a few months. He carves his own little spot in the family, as if he’s always been here, even though both he and I are well aware that isn’t the case. He leaves me to my business, and I leave him to his. As long as I have enough time with Mom and Dad—and Asriel—without the other humans around, I can deal with it.

I’m okay. I guess. Everything’s … okay.

And for a while, I actually believe they’re going to stay that way.

*

Charlie has been here almost exactly a year when he gets the idea of cell phones.

It sounds stupid, at first. Or at least that’s what I say. Charlie deflates a little, and Asriel gives me a look, so I don’t say anything else and let him talk. Maybe I think it’s stupid because it’s so obvious, and certainly if it was actually a solution, we would have thought of it before now.

Or maybe we wouldn’t have.

I wouldn’t have.

It wasn’t like I actually wanted to get out of here.

But Charlie does. Charlie hasn’t been here as long as the other kids—who aren’t even kids anymore—and he still remembers his family. He likes his family. He talks about them all the time. No matter how good Mom and Dad and Asriel treat him, he still wants to go back home.

Up until now, I just said screw him.

In my head, not out loud.

If he can’t recognize how great he’s got it here, well, that’s his problem.

Even after he explains the idea more, it still sounds stupid.

“We have cell phones here, right?” he asks again. “And if they work here, maybe they would work to contact people on the surface. I mean, if they’re using the same system, or one that’s a lot like it …”

He trails off with a hopeful smile. At first, I think he wants me to break out into a grin and tell him what a great idea it is, but I’m pretty sure he’s too smart to expect something like that from me.

“That would require the humans actually wanting to help us,” I retort, crossing one leg over the other as I remain perched on the edge of my bed.

“I’m human,” he says, without missing a beat. He sounds sad, like he always does when I brush him off, but he doesn’t seem particularly surprised. “And I want to help you.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t need help.”

He stares at me for a long moment, his eyes burning into mine.

“Maybe you don’t,” he says. “But they do.”

It takes all my willpower not to snap at him. I know it won’t do any good. I want to anyway.

“They don’t want to leave,” I say.

He frowns. “Why would you say that?”

I look away. “I just know it, alright?”

I mean it to come across harshly, but instead it just sounds resigned. I sound old. I guess I am old, especially compared to him.

I don’t know why it feels so uncomfortable, having him stare at me like that. He’s a kid. Just a little kid.

But I guess I was, too. Back then.

“You don’t have to help me,” he says at least, and I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “But I’m going to help them. I’m going to get back to my family. I’ll figure out a way, me and Elliott and … and the other humans, and Asriel said he’d help us, too!”

He stands up a little taller, and he’s skinny and shaky but I can tell, just in that second, that he’s not going to give up.

“We can do this. One way or another, we can do this. We can set everyone free. We can go home,” he finishes. His eyes soften, just a little. “You’re always welcome to jump in, if you want to.”

It’s really fucking scary, how much he sounds like me.

And probably just as fucking scary how much he doesn’t.

He walks away without another word. I know he’s not trying to guilt-trip me. He’s irritated, but Charlie’s not the type to try and pressure other people like that.

He really is a lot like Asriel. Maybe that’s why they get along so well.

I wonder if Asriel would fight to get back to Mom and Dad, if he was taken away from us.

I wonder if he would fight to get back to me.

I wonder whether there really could be humans like Mom and Dad and Asriel, humans that Charlie loves enough to try so hard to get back to them, no matter how much time or work it would take.

I don’t wonder for very long.

It doesn’t matter. Even if he tries, he won’t succeed. Even if he somehow manages to get a message up to the surface, the humans aren’t going to help him. I know that. I know that for sure.

Yeah. It doesn’t matter. He’ll fail, he’ll cry, he’ll adjust and settle in, and things will continue just as they always have.

I just need to sit back and wait.

*

Asriel likes the cell phone idea.

So does Elliott.

Mom and Dad don’t seem to think it will work, but they’re open-minded about it, and offer to help out in any way they can. Which mostly just involves bringing in all the scientists available to help with the project while they sit around marveling at all this “modern technology.”

I don’t say anything else about it. I don’t think it will work. But they try anyway. First Charlie uses one of the old cell phones monsters lying around and dials his parents’ phone number.

It doesn’t go through.

I think that will be the end of it. But they keep trying. They’re determined, all of them, and soon they get even more monsters involved, and even if Charlie and Elliott give up, the monsters will continue it on their own. But Charlie and Elliott stick with it, and so does Asriel. They try, they fail, they try again.

Then, one day, Asriel runs into my room, all but slamming the door open with a grin so wide it almost breaks his face.

He doesn’t need to tell me that it worked.

It’s a weak connection, at first. But within a few days, they’ve figured out a way to strengthen it, and a week later, they’ve finally figured out how to make a call.

And suddenly the cell phone idea doesn’t seem quite so stupid after all.

It takes a long time. A very long time. Just establishing contact with humans seems exciting at first, but it’s the first step, and probably one of the easiest. They need to get in contact with Charlie’s and Elliott’s families, convince them that it’s really them stuck down there, and convince them not to send a rescue team, because it would only lead to more people getting stuck down here—and we really don’t need that.

At first, no one knows what the next step even is. It’s not like they’re going to throw seven humans down here just so we can kill them. Even if they threw down criminals already sentenced to death or something like that, I know Mom and Dad wouldn’t go through with it—the death penalty isn’t a thing down here, apparently, there aren’t even real prisons, and I’m not sure what they do with criminals on the surface now. They know we’re here, and all the humans with families who are still alive can talk to them, but it hasn’t gotten us any closer to getting out.

But the news spreads on the surface. There’s more connection, more talking, until apparently monsters are big news on the surface. Humans form groups dedicated to getting us out. Other humans form groups dedicated to keeping us in.

Then one day, an old woman, already on her death bed, sends a message that she wants her soul to be given to the monsters after she dies.

It’s not an easy process. Mom and Dad aren’t sure about accepting it at first, and even once they do, it’s not easy to figure out how to do it, since humans don’t exactly make a habit of pulling out their own souls or storing them after they die. But they figure it out, and soon enough, a team of humans is lowering a glass capsule with a soul in it down into the underground.

That’s when I realize that this is really happening.

It’s just the start, but I know, right then, that we’re going to get out. And so do all the other monsters. It’s a slow process, it takes years, it takes decades, but … one by one, the humans come forward. Terminally ill patients. Really old people. They’re hesitant at first, and usually want to send a few messages back and forth with Mom and Dad—or Asriel, since he’s taken over a lot of that stuff nowadays—before they make their decision, but once they see who they’re doing this for, they’re happy to help.

Mom holds memorial ceremonies to honor the humans who gave their souls. I think it’s a little stupid, since these people were going to die either way, and it’s not like we killed them. I don’t say that out loud.

After the sixth soul arrives, I start getting anxious. Scared. I tell myself it’s irrational. I tell myself this is what I wanted in the first place, to set the monsters free, to set my family free.

Except this isn’t what I wanted.

I was going to set them free into a world without any humans. I was going to set them free into a safe world, clean from the people who had ruined my life.

They’re going to be set free. They’re going to reach the surface. And they’re going to arrive into a world with billions of humans already living there.

And I can’t protect them.

I couldn’t protect them when I was strong enough, and I’m never going to get that power again. Besides, I stumble when I’m running across the room, I’m old, I can’t fight off billions of humans. The humans have sent down the souls, sure, they’ve helped us so far, but it isn’t going to last. It never lasts. We’ll go up to the surface and they’ll betray all of us cause that’s what they do and I won’t be able to do anything but no one gives a fuck what I think.

Well. Maybe they do. But not enough to stop.

Even before the other humans fell, they already liked to use me as “proof” that humans weren’t so bad. And now they’ve got five more humans that all get along with monsters perfectly well. Five humans and six souls, willingly given.

But eleven isn’t billions. Eleven okay humans doesn’t mean all humans have changed.

It’s like it’s happening all over again, even if I’m the only one who remembers it. It’s like standing in the middle of that town knowing that I could fix everything but I can’t because Asriel’s stopping me. Because he’d rather let himself be killed than hurt someone else.

Because he’d rather hold onto his stupid ideals than face the facts: humans never change.

He didn’t listen to me then, and I know he won’t listen to me now.

So I don’t say anything.

I don’t do anything at all.

I spend my time lying on my bed like a vegetable, staring at the wall and trying to think of anything I could do, even though I know that answer will never come. I find myself imagining all the different ways the humans could kill everyone—because there are a lot. I know that much from experience.

But there’s also a little voice in my head that wonders what will happen if the humans don’t kill them. If they … do what they say they’re going to do. If they help the monsters move up to the surface. If they … welcome them, like that group that’s been sending the souls has promised they’re going to do.

I hate that voice.

I hate it because it should sound like a good thing. I hate it because that’s exactly what everyone wants, what everyone expects, and in some vague way it actually makes sense but if they’re good to the monsters if they love the monsters but they hated me then …

… then maybe that means I just wasn’t worth loving in the first place.

I hate it because I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want the monsters to die, and I don’t want the humans to prove me wrong.

I … I don’t even know what I want anymore.

I just lie there, thinking, trying not to let my thoughts drift too far. But they’ve never done what I wanted. No one ever has.

“Chara?”

It’s really a testament to how bad my ears have gotten that I don’t hear Asriel until he’s standing right next to my bed.

I clench my hands in the pillowcase, but don’t lift my head. I don’t want to see him right now. I don’t want to see anyone right now.

Of course, it’s not like he’s ever done what I wanted either. At least not when it was to leave me alone.

“Chara,” he says again, stepping closer, and I can hear the worry in his voice. “Chara, what’s wrong?”

I look like an idiot. I’m old, I’m so fucking old and I must look like a little kid curled up on the bed with my face pressed into a pillow. This angle makes my joints hurt. I don’t give a damn.

I turn my head enough to look at him. His eyes are soft, pained, concerned. Exactly the same as they were more than eighty years ago, when he held me in this exact room.

I swallow and press my face into the pillow again.

“We’re going to get out of here.”

He lets out a slow, shaky sigh, and I don’t have to look to know he’s smiling.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are,” he says, with a little giddy laugh. “They said that the next soul should be sent down in just a few months, I mean, they don’t know for sure, the donor … I mean, she said only a few weeks, but I really hope she gets to live longer, she says she’s pretty old, but—”

“We’re going to live with the humans,” I cut him off.

Asriel goes silent. I can still feel him staring at me, and after all these years I swear I can see what his face looks like even without looking at him. The way he bites his lip, glances from side to side, and looks at me so deeply that I swear he’s going to bore a hole with his gaze.

“… do you … not want to leave?”

I grimace and press my face further into the pillow. I don’t give a damn if I look like a little kid anymore. I don’t want to deal with this. I know it’s happening, I know there’s nothing I can do, I know there’s nothing I will do, but I still don’t want to deal with it.

It takes almost a minute for Asriel to rest a careful hand on my shoulder. He rubs his thumb over my wrinkled, loose skin. I still don’t know if he notices the difference. I mean. He’s not stupid. He notices that I’ve changed. But he doesn’t touch me any different now than he did all those years ago.

It’s almost funny, how much I appreciate that.

“Chara …” he says after a long pause, his hand still solid and secure on my back. “Even when we’re with the humans … even when we meet all those new people … things won’t … I mean … things will change, but not the important stuff.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and clench my teeth. His hand rubs a little more.

“I’ll still be here,” he goes on, and it’s so quiet, but it feels like the only sound in the world. “We’ll still be together.”

My hands clench into the fabric, but my head is moving before I can stop it. I turn my head. I look at him.

His eyes are soft and warm and loving, exactly as they’ve looked every day for as long as I can remember.

“I’ll never leave you, Chara. I promise.”

I don’t say anything. But as he smiles, a small, hesitant smile, I guess I don’t need to.

The fear doesn’t go away. I still think about everything that could go wrong once we reach the surface. But the thoughts settle into the back of my head, just far away enough for me to ignore them. Asriel runs around like an excited little kid getting everything ready for the arrival of the last soul, making announcements with Mom and Dad as to how to prepare for moving to the surface, and I don’t complain.

I sit on the sidelines, silent, and I watch. I take in the brave, kind leader my brother has become, I take in the love he has for all those kids, for the humans we’ve never properly met. And for me.

Maybe I still don’t trust the humans. But I can trust Asriel.

After all he’s done for me … he’s earned that much.

I sit. I watch. I wait.

I know what’s coming, and as much as I’m not looking forward to it, I don’t try to fight it. Not when it will make my brother this happy. Not when it will bring the people I care about everything they’ve ever wanted.

And on the day before my ninety-seventh birthday, I watch the barrier fall.

*

I’m too old to be this bitter.

I am way too fucking old to be this bitter.

But I guess, on the other hand, I’m old, so I get to be bitter.

I’m not as open about it as I used to be. I know it’s not going to do any good to be open about it, not when everything is so fragile. Most humans know about monsters by now, because of what was apparently called the Soul Initiative, but opinions are still mixed. There are some humans, I’m well aware, that would love to stuff us all back under the mountain.

But there are also those that welcome us with open arms. And as much as I don’t like it, I’m not going to jeopardize that just because I’m not happy.

It takes a while for everyone to move, and there are a few monsters who stay, because the underground is the only home they’ve ever known and they don’t want to leave it—though Asriel makes it clear that they’re always welcome to visit, or change their minds. For those who choose to leave, they’re given small, simple housing that’s already been set aside by the humans. It’s even less spacious than it was in the underground, but no one seems to mind. They’re all too focused on being able to see the sun again, to experience the weather, the seasons, the fresh air.

When it rains, I always catch at least one of them dancing in it.

It’s cramped, and it’s a bigger adjustment than anyone expected. But they love it. They’re happy. And even with the protests and political tension, there are plenty of humans who work to make it better.

I still hate the humans. I always will.

I still wish that there were no humans. I still wish that the monsters got to settle into a new world, without having to worry about people who don’t want them there.

I’m bitter, but it’s the kind of bitterness I know will never turn into action.

It’s the kind of bitterness I’m just going to have to live with.

A little while after we’re settled, once it’s clear that things are going in a good direction, Mom and Dad get up in front of all the monsters to announce that they will be stepping down from the throne, passing it along to Asriel and myself.

They’ve already been talking to me about it in private, of course, but I still have to bite my lip to keep from cracking up when everyone breaks into applause.

I’m old. I’m really fucking old.

And I know that I’m not going to be around long to be a ruler.

But I accept the position, if only because I’m pretty sure Asriel will make that pitiful sad face if I don’t.

He knows I’m old. I mean, it’s kind of obvious. My hair is white and a lot of it is falling out, my skin’s all wrinkly, my voice is different, and I can’t walk around very much without assistance, and I think I finally understand what “old people smell” is like because I smell it all the time.

But he doesn’t get it.

He’s never seen a human get this old before. Even Heng, the oldest of the other humans, is still alive and doing pretty well for a guy in his eighties. He doesn’t know that humans getting old means getting closer to the end of their lives. Not this much closer, anyway.

He’s a boss monster. He’s probably going to live for hundreds, thousands more years. If he doesn’t have kids … maybe he’ll live forever.

By the logic of his own species, I should be right at the beginning of my life. I should have plenty of time to rule with him. Plenty of time to stand by his side and rule together, just like he used to say we would do when we were kids.

I don’t know if Mom and Dad have ever tried to tell him the truth.

But they know. They knew humans before they were shoved underground. Besides, I can see it in their eyes every time they look at me. They know I don’t have a lot of time left.

I don’t ask them if that was why they decided to step down now.

In a ceremony that’s at once way too grand and way too casual, Dad takes off his crown and places it on Asriel’s head, and Mom takes off hers and places it on mine.

Asriel is beaming, jittery and lively and a total dork, just like he always is.

I’m hunched over in my new throne, because my back hurts.

As Dad turns back to the crowd to make a speech about how he knows his children will lead the monsters kindly, with mercy and fairness, Mom pauses, looking into my eyes, soft and sad and filled with enough love to make me burst. She leans forward and presses a soft kiss to my wrinkled brow, just like she did that night when she carried me to bed and tucked me in.

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

I’ve seen that look before, decades ago, in a world no one but me remembers existed. The look of a mother who knows she is going to lose her child. The look of a mother who knows there is nothing she can do to stop it.

And for the first time, I think I have some idea of exactly how much she loves me.

It hurts like hell, but at the same time, I never want it to go away.

She looks away just as Dad finishes his speech, and begins her own, quieter, but somehow even more commanding of the crowd. Dad flashes me a sad, sappy smile, and a second later, Asriel turns around and beams, then crosses the stage to stand at my side, holding my wrinkled hand in his own.

I’m old. I’m so fucking old. They’ve all got long lives ahead of them, and mine is almost at its end.

But … weirdly enough … sitting here, next to all of them, looking out at a crowd of people who look at me with the same awe and adoration as they do my brother …

I’ve never felt more like I belonged.

*

I’m dying.

Only it’s for real this time.

I’m not a kid anymore. I know that dying doesn’t just feel like being in a lot of pain. Sometimes you are in a lot of pain, but it’s … different than that. All those times I died before, I was injured or poisoned, there was something wrong, and it hurt, more than I had ever thought anything could hurt.

This doesn’t hurt.

I just feel … tired.

I’ve been tired for a while now.

I don’t really know how long humans usually live, exactly. I know they don’t live as long as monsters, but the details have always been vague. But for a human, I think a hundred and five is pretty good. I mean, I’ve lived long enough to get as wrinkly as an old piece of tissue paper, my voice is all croaky like someone’s great-grandparent, what’s left of my hair has gone totally white, and I haven’t been able to move around unassisted for more than a year. I think that’s supposed to be the goal. I don’t know why, but if that’s the goal, I’ve reached it.

That should be a good thing, right?

Maybe. I don’t really know what I think. I don’t really think much about it. What I think about it isn’t going to change the fact that I’m really fucking old, and my body is about to give out.

And it isn’t going to change the fact that Asriel is still standing next to my bed, clutching my hand, and sobbing his eyes out.

I want to call him a crybaby.

I don’t. I haven’t called him a crybaby for more than ninety years—not out loud, anyway—and I’m not going to break my streak right now.

Besides, I’m tired, and talking is difficult, and I don’t want to waste any of my words on something like that.

Instead, I just lie there, watching him as he sniffles and cries and holds my hand so tight it might hurt if I could actually feel my hand properly. I can feel it a little. It’s warm and close. I don’t want him to let go.

He’s here. Mom and Dad are here. All those human kids who aren’t kids anymore are outside, because I don’t really want them here, but apparently they wanted to be close, and I’m not going to tell them to leave.

I’m not really sure how they know I’m about to die. I’m not even sure how I know I’m about to die. I just … know.

And maybe that’s one more thing that monsters know better than humans do.

I guess I’ll never find out.

Asriel squeezes my hand a little tighter, and I use all the energy I can to tilt my head to look at him properly. As I meet his eyes, I swear he cries twice as hard, bringing my hand to his lips before clutching it under his chin.

“You’re not supposed to go yet,” he whimpers, and he’s full grown, he’s a king, but he still sounds just like he did when we were nine years old.

I huff, and I try to make it sound annoyed, but it comes out sounding sad and sympathetic and I can’t bring myself to regret it.

“C’mon, stupid,” I say, because just because I’m old and croaky doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being me. “I’m not a boss monster. I was never gonna live forever.”

His lip wobbles, and his eyes grow wetter still. “But you—you … you’ve always been with us. You’re … you don’t even like it when people call you a human, you’re my sibling, I just … I knew you were getting older, and I knew you’d d-die before me, but …”

He trails off, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his forehead to my hand, almost reverently.

He’s not wearing his crown, and he doesn’t look like a king. In a way, I’m glad. He was the humble prince for most of my life, and even if he’s just as humble as a king, the familiarity is at least a little reassuring.

“Asriel,” I say.

He sobs a little harder and clutches my hand tighter. I glance at Mom and Dad, standing at the foot of the bed, and find their faces just as pained. They’ve grieved before. They’ve grieved for more people than I could ever imagine caring about.

They’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t going to last much longer. They know humans. They’ve been expecting this.

It doesn’t look like it’s making it hurt any less.

I turn back to Asriel, lips pursed.

“Asriel,” I repeat, and it hurts, but I don’t care. His breath hitches, and I bite back a huff. “Hurry up and look at me, stupid.”

His head snaps up, as if he thinks that I’m going to die in the next two seconds. He always was dramatic. Sensitive. Took everything too seriously even though he could always take a joke. Too nice for his own good.

Fuck, I love him so much.

My throat hurts. Everything hurts, but it doesn’t matter. Soon, nothing will hurt anymore. So I don’t really give a fuck about dealing with a little pain now.

I swallow hard and hold his gaze.

“You’re gonna do great.”

He blinks, lost, confused, clutching my hand as tight as ever. “W-what?”

“You’re gonna do great,” I repeat, a little louder, a little clearer. Mom and Dad step closer in the corner of my eye, but I don’t look at them. Not now. I look at Asriel and make damn sure he’s listening. “Being king. Keeping the peace. All that shit.”

I don’t usually swear around him, but if he notices, he doesn’t react. He gives a loud, messy sniff and shakes his head.

“But I … I don’t … not without …”

He trails off, and I huff something that vaguely resembles a laugh. “You don’t need me. You never needed me.”

“Yes I did,” he says, without missing a beat. He leans a little closer, his eyes burning into mine just as strong as mine burn into his. “I always did, Chara.”

I blink, a long, slow blink. I’m tired, but I still feel something odd and thick and warm bubbling in my chest, and my lips curl up even though I didn’t think I had the energy to move them.

“Hm.” It takes all the effort left in me, but I squeeze his hand in return. “Not as much as I needed you.”

He purses his lips, and I smile a little wider.

“I love you, too, stupid.”

The words are foreign on my lips, but at the same time, nothing that has come out of them has ever felt so right. And even when Asriel’s breath hitches and he looks like he’s going to start sobbing again, I don’t regret it. I just wish I had the chance to say it more.

But hey, better once than never.

I settle into my pillow, Asriel holding my hand, and it’s like I can feel the last weight lifting off my shoulders. He knows. If nothing else, at least he knows. And maybe he’ll be able to figure out that I’ve loved him since long before he first spoke the words to me.

Dying from old age isn’t like dying from buttercups.

For one, it takes a hell of a lot longer.

But while getting old is slow and uncomfortable and really, really annoying … dying isn’t.

I can feel my heart stuttering, skipping beats. I can feel my breath catching in the back of my throat, getting shallower, slower. But I’m not scared.

My family’s with me. My family’s always been with me. They’re here now, and they’re going to be here long after I’m gone.

They’re safe.

They’re free.

And maybe it doesn’t matter if I wasn’t the one who did it.

Maybe … maybe I didn’t need to set them free to be worth their love.

I guess … if they loved me anyway … if they loved me from the beginning … then maybe it was enough just to be me.

It’s a funny thought, but I can already feel it sticking, and I know, very quickly, that it’s not going to leave.

I don’t mind.

“Hey guys?” I murmur.

All three of them come over, leaning in close, Mom resting her hand on my head, Dad touching my arm, Asriel clutching my hand. Like I’m about to say something profound and important.

Stupid. Stupid …

I let myself smirk, but it feels more like a smile.

“Thanks.”

Their eyes widen, all firmly locked on me, their mouths opening as if to say something in return. But my eyes close, and my breath comes out in a long, heavy huff. My heart stutters one more time, and even though I know it’s impossible, I swear I can feel it give its one last beat.

I thought it would be scary, dying, knowing that I’m not going to come back. Knowing that I’ve lived all that I’m going to live. That I’m done.

It’s not scary.

It’s like curling up under the covers after a long, long day and drifting off to sleep, with hands on your arm and head, the brother you love more than anything holding your hand as you fall into the darkness.

It doesn’t matter what’s going to happen after. It doesn’t matter if there’s a whole other life waiting for me, or nothing at all.

I’ve already been through hell.

And I guess … I’ve already been through heaven, too.

The world fades. My soul shatters.

And I know, no matter what, that everything is going to be okay.