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Long was the day of adventure for you, moving fast from someone who had hardly saw themselves getting out of bed in the morning to marching across an entire kingdom of friends and adversaries, drinking in dozens of new stimulating sights and feelings. Every last moment of the journey replayed itself under your shut tight eyelids again and again to burn them into memory, even as you rested those ever so tired muscles in your lonely bedroom you kept busy with that task. From dancing jesters to mundane puzzle solving you dared not lose a second of the precious recollections, far too fond of the feelings of excitement that had previously been absent since Asriel left. However, you recognise that you need to sleep as your whole body aches mildly, thus you allow yourself to slip downwards towards the quiet dark.
Something is terribly wrong.
Every ache you felt lightly caressing your nerves flares into a roaring fanged bite of pain that bleeds into the deepest parts of your mind. Panicking in your half slumber you shout as loud as you can hoping your beloved mother would come running to your rescue. Except you don't shout, you can't, the muscles around your chest constrict far tighter than they should; every scrap of air is crushed from your lungs leaving you with a wilted rasp of a scream. Soon enough you find your muscles spasming erratically, causing you to turn this way and that until you drop clear of your bed over the edge to land hard against the floor. Not long after your ungraceful fall you pull back the strength to stand, choosing to walk towards the centre of the two beds decorating the room. Pain turns to dull throbbing turns to nothing, no sensations being reported by the burnt nerves of your body. In horror you see your hand turn upwards with no input from you and the fingers flex several times as if some horrible thing was getting a feel for flesh.
Then it happened. Your own hand buries deep within your chest, mind-shattering feelings of nothing mixed with a pain that affects the spiritual over the physical. A second passes that stretches into infinity until you find yourself gripped in the palm of your own hand. No, not your hand, not anymore. The not your hand flings you maliciously into the birdcage that had given you pause that same morning.
You are not Kris, you are you. A thing so great and incomprehensible to the lives of those you had touched today that to reveal but a small part of your truth would tear their mind asunder and now, you were locked in a metal cage. Everything was light and sound without meaning, so bright in the eyes that you didn't have. There was a trick to this you remembered, a way to see with the soul that you had forgotten after the two of you had merged. With some effort, the patterns of light coalesce into meaning. Kris stands within the centre of the room or maybe you do, no, you are two things not one but that's not how it should be. A glint of cold metal appears over their head as the small knife - you didn't take that to bed - holds perfectly still in their tight grip. Dots of crimson stare into you from one who is as animated as a statue.
Barely a room separated the both of you but to you it felt like an immense expanse, your true place far away in the distance calling out to you with sharp edges and dangerous reds. Noise pours off the cage as you rattle around it trying to break free of the stifling thing. At first Kris makes no indication of a response until you spot them shaking their head at you with a smile that impresses the idea that they were implying there'd be no more of 'us'. This unaired statement spurred you on to try harder against the metal until it finally gave to its own weakened state. Your fluttering form's new freedom pushed Kris back into a more neutral stance, they did not break the glare directed at you. Unable to resist the call you fly quickly back towards them hoping to reunite the two of you. That hope is just as quickly dashed.
Kris back peddles away from you towards the right leading you on to fly straight past them. Turning about you take another run at them and another with each ending in a near miss. Then you stop trying, choosing instead to hover just above eye level with them. It's obvious they don't want you back yet they don't take any more action towards you. You take them in fully for what must be the first time, looking over their bedroom as you do. The empty shelves, absent brother, the unkempt shaggy appearance of a person who no longer cared to try with others. That visage plants a growing sadness within you, deepening into your being with each passing second. An entire minute of seconds pass without anything but the unwelcome feeling twirling inside of you.
"You've been all alone" Words escape you and they don't. These not words spread out into the air as a sense, an idea in concept rather than form yet they respond to it with a barely noticeable stiffening of the back. You can see the steadfast defiance that gave them the strength to claw you out faltering at your utterance. Hesitatingly you test the waters of this communication.
"No friends to love and waste away the hours with, just a far away brother and a community unready to accept you as someone to love" Kris lurched forward a half step practically dripping with malicious intent only for it to bleed away quietly. Your words had struck true you could see, Kris turned away to hide the upset that was spreading to their face. It pained you so dearly to see them like this, which is why you had to get back and help them have the love and friends they deserved. You grow bold to the point where you risk closer proximity. You needed to show them that you were only there to do good for them.
"It hurt so much to be alone, it was as if the world could not see you wasn't it? You never have to feel that way again with me. Kris, please...." Rarely did they show emotion so you couldn't tell if their unwillingness to turn back to you was simple disinterest or a protesting silence. Somewhere within the shifting patterns of energy that made up your being lay a great anxiety, one that could only be fulfilled through the fusion of your existences. You could do so much for them.
"We've got friends now, who was it that gave them to you?" Emotions flare up at your periphery, a strong need to reach out and touch overwhelms you so greatly you push against the boundaries of the heart that is your form. Empathetic energies trickle out of you eerily, swirling erratically for a moment before bending together to form a disfigured parody of human arms. It's simple to see that they're too long as you clumsily wrap them around Kris's shaking shoulders.
"You saved a kingdom and you want to go back to what you had before?" After a moment the arms close tighter inwards across their torso ensnaring them in a tight hug. You chew on your words, unsure of what could work to convince them. Kris had to understand you, understand that you truly wanted to help them be happy more than anything else. Kris curled further into themselves in the embrace.
"It's my life" Words slid themselves into the air quietly with rage painting their trails. The voice was strained to achieve a deeper a tone, the lowest they could muster you think, an obvious attempt at intimidation. In those few seconds after you find yourself more concerned with the fact that the sound of their voice was a surprise to you, giving you significant pause. Why did it sound so foreign and without a hint of familiarity you ponder? You had used the voice a dozen times today alone yet it came across as something alien to your mind. You refocus.
"I'll overlook all of this and we can be together again. Tomorrow we'll see Susie and go back to the darkners." Kris halted at that. You push forward with newfound momentum.
"We'll find more friends, go to Church again as a family too." They fail to respond to your words and warm tones. The dark of the room encroaches on your intimacy.
"The town will love you as they should. Your father even, I can get him back to you, make it your perfect life and so much mor..." Slowly you realise that Kris had been growing active again at every word past father until they burst free of the wide grasp of your gangly arms forced onto them. They spun on their heel, knife brandished towards you with a glare equal parts dancing rage and fear.
"I'm me! Not you or us, not something to be fixed!" Heavy silence crushes both of you. It had been we you were sure, the both of you together as something better than the parts ever could be. Kris stood stock still bar the small cutter that twitched every few seconds upon their palm. The weapon was nothing you couldn't get over, a little thing to forgive them for in the grand scheme of it all. You stepped forward. No, not stepped but something between flying and walking. Your form had shifted without your notice, an assemblage of something with the outline of a torso and legs even though said legs were closer to party streamers flailing pointlessly beneath you. More arms somewhat mirroring the first had bloomed across the pseudo torso except these lacked the size or fullness of the originals.
"Why me" Not a question really, not actually directed at you either. Instead Kris stared down at their feet ignorant of or uncaring at your creeping approach.
"I wasn't doing enough with my life, not being good enough, is that it?" Now that was aimed at you with unsubtle venom. Kris stared directly into you unfazed by the newly sprouted appendages. Their only focus was the outline of the heart that flickered in and out of reality.
"Of course not Kris, you are wonderful, let me give you what you want" With sudden haste in the last half a metre you rush in close with all arms outspread to hug Kris again in a firmer more total embrace. It's clear the sensation of your ethereal limbs is warm and overpowering to them. Your surprise touch shocks them to the point they lose grip of the knife completely. It clatters noisily on the floor now that the owner lacked the will to use it.
"You were happy with me Kris, you had fun because of me. If you truly wanted me gone you would've attacked, I can see your true feelings clearly" Now the struggling is far weaker though not absent entirely.
"You'd come back, you always brought everything back. All those times" Strange you think, they shouldn't have any memory of the scrapped attempts, those failures discarded into the cosmic wind to slip between the gaps of reality into the absolute nothing found beyond.
"You could try, if you so desperately wished me gone you could destroy me again and again to delay the inevitable and it is inevitable Kris. I love you, all of you too much to give up" Seemingly the sentiment was a critical blow to their defences as for the briefest moment Kris let slip their guard almost completely and in that two second span of opportunity you slunk a dozen parts of yourself inside, pushing hard into the immaterial essences that made up Kris, opening the way for your return.
"There Kris, please don't fight, I want us to be together again, to be better" A last twist weakly moves across you as Kris loses all the fight they had left, opening themselves entirely to you either because of your words or your power. It mattered little, they would take the time to be upset and you would fix it just as you always do, you know you can fix everything. All those unhappy wrongs. Kris croaks out quietly as you feed back into their mind, mixing essences combing once more to make two into one.
"I want to be me, this me...I want..this....me..." Kris barely squeaked the words out.
"We'll be a better you, the both of us" With that you slip fully back into the flesh form.
You are not you. You are Kris. The name rolls around your mouth for several seconds as you adjust yourself. Yes, you are as you should be, as you should always be. Your skin twitches at the sensation of something akin to worms snaking over each other just beneath the upper layer, some shrinking part of you resisting at something you can't quite remember.
You are Kris you know for sure, the one who walked across an entire kingdom to face down a towering monster surrounded by newfound friends. Each memory slides back into place casually now ripping away the light veil of fog clouding at the forefront of your mind. You come to realise you're silently crying as a wetness runs down from your eyes though the reason for which you can't grasp fully. You shrug it off, probably a minor thing, you had been through a lot today after all.
Yes, you are Kris.
And things were going to be much better from now on.