Archive of Our Own

"This is STUPID," Flowey spat, vines awkwardly wrapping around the bent circle of plastic. "Does it look like I have hands?!"

"(Does it look like I can pick up and eat the solid chocolate?)" Chara retorted. "(Dumbass!)"

"Butthead!"

They huffed, looking away from each other as Chara folded their arms and Flowey folded his leaves.

"...Thanks. For - thinking of getting me something."

"(You should be grateful, with how much effort it took! ...And. Thanks. For thinking of something I'd like.)"

Flowey huffed and grunted as he dragged the surprisingly heavy log behind him. Chara couldn't have a chocolate log, but they'd mentioned something about "you'll" once and how cool setting things on fire was...

He reached the clearing they met up in just in time to see Chara painstakingly moving a log of their own towards it.

"(Hey! No fair stealing my gift idea!)" Chara protested.

"No way! YOU stole it from ME!"

"(Did not!)"

"Did too!"

"(Did not!)"

"Did too!"

"(DID NOT! And mine's gonna burn better, so there!)"

"DID TOO AND IT WON'T!" Flowey shrieked back.

They both glared at each other, panting even though neither of them needed to breathe.

"(Prove it! Set them on fire!)"

Flowey drew himself up to do just that - and then remembered that it was Asriel who'd had the fire magic, not Flowey.

"...I forgot the matches."

"Hah!" Flowey exclaimed, throwing down the third pen he'd swiped from someone's pocket. "Told you I'd do better than you at this scavenger-hunt thing!"

"(Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't let your head get so big you fall over, dirtbutt.)"

Flowey pulled the meanest, scariest face he could at them. They retaliated.

The stolen pens never did get returned to their owners...

Flowey didn't want to bring it up, but he'd been thinking about it more and more, and it finally spilled out before he could stop himself.

"Mom would be really mad we aren't ending our fights properly by saying what we still like about each other."

Chara froze, looking stricken. "Not like we have to listen to her!" Flowey added quickly. "I mean, she's already replaced us, right? So if we want to ignore her stupid rules then we can, and no one can stop us, and -"

"(I like how you always come back.)"

Flowey's mouth snapped shut. He stared at Chara.

"(I know I'm mean to you, and I know you don't have to hang out with me when you've figured out how to befriend everyone else in the Underground, so I like that you still want to even after I've been an assface at you.)"

"...I like how you haven't given up, even with how hard it is for you to move stuff now."

"(I like how you aren't just letting me walk all over you any more.)"

"I like how you're not blaming me for getting us both killed...?"

They stared at each other.

"It's a dumb idea to do this," Flowey said, voice wavering a little.

"(It's not like Mom's gonna know we didn't,)" Chara agreed.

They didn't bring it up again.

"HA HA! Take THAT! And THAT! HAH!"

The once-peaceful town of Snowdin was a scene of unrepentent sparkly chaos, as the townsfolk desperately fled for any cover they could find to protect them from their glittery doom.

Towering above the Gyftmas tree, Flowey cast about eagerly for his next victim.

"(Here, here, over here! Long-haired bunny hiding behind the wall!)" Chara shouted, waving their arms frantically.

Flowey wound up his vine, and "AH-HAH!" threw another glitter bomb, trying to aim it to land just behind the wall the cowering bunny was hidden by so they'd be hit by maximum spray.

He missed.

The glitter bomb went through the window of Grillby's.

Flowey and Chara barely needed a moment to exchange glances before they were fleeing together, long before the fire elemental could get out of his own building.

"(OhmyGodthatwassofunny!)" Chara gasped out as the two of them fled, literally crying with laughter. "(We have to do that again!)"

"Sure! Next reset!"

"ScaryfacecontestGO!" Flowey's grin was pretty obviously based off Undyne's - too many large triangular teeth to fit in his mouth, sharp and vicious and cruel.

"(Disqualified for being awesome instead of scary! My turn!)" Chara pulled their very best 'evil doll' impersonation, blank eyes over a smile that looked painted-on.

"Disqualified for being boring!"

Chara dropped their impersonation to pout. "(Hey, that used to make you cry when you were Asriel!)"

"Everything made Asriel cry, because Asriel was a whiny little crybaby! Now watch THIS!" Flowey's face distorted into a skull-like caricature of Asgore's.

"(Lame! Skulls aren't scary! Watch me show you how it's done!)" Chara's smile was identical, but this time, instead of blank eyes there were two empty holes into nothingness.

"Disqualified for being unoriginal! And YOU just said skulls aren't scary!" Flowey concentrated, and pulled his face into so much shadow it looked black against his yellow petals. A wide white grin slashed across it as he 'opened' two white 'eyes'.

"(Okay, that's pretty cool,)" Chara agreed reluctantly. "(But! Watch THIS!)" Their face suddenly melted, sockets and mouth gaping holes that were eating into the rest of their face -

"YAAAAAH!"

Chara burst into laughter as Flowey fell over. "(Wow, the look on your face! Guess that means I'm still the winner, huh?)" they said smugly.

"Yeah, yeah." Flowey glanced at them again, and shuddered despite himself. "...You think I could learn how to do that?"

"I'M NEVER FOLLOWING ONE OF YOUR STUPID IDEAS AGAIN!" Flowey shrieked, glancing around frantically as he tried to convince himself he'd tunnelled far enough to escape the dedicated pursuit of Snowdin's Royal Guards. Seeing Lesser Dog's head weaving between the trees, he ducked back under the earth before Chara could respond.

"(Sure you will,)" they told the thin air confidently, completely ignoring Greater Dog bounding past. "(Just as soon as you stop being such a wuss for long enough to remember the looks on their faces when you said you'd started saving money to get Doggo a seeing-eye cat!)"

"(Mine are gonna go further!)" Chara announced, slowly carrying their ships fashioned out of leaves to the icy river.

"That's what you think!" Flowey tugged four of his own leaves off and shaped them with his magic.

"(Hey, no fair!)"

"Fair's for losers!" Flowey stuck his tongue out at them as he used the residual magic in his leafboats to steer them around the ice-chunks that would normally make them capsize.

Chara pouted, then smiled. Instead of putting their own four boats into the water, they laid them out on top of one of the ice-chunks, in a hollow that would keep them from being blown away.

"Hey, that's not fair!"

"(Fair's for losers!)"

Flowey ended up using all the magic in his leaves to knock Chara's boats off the ice, and all eight of the leaves promptly sank.

"...You know what, this is a dumb game anyway."

"(Yeah, let's find something else to do.)"

"NEVER! LISTENING! TO! YOU! AGAIN!"

Chara cackled, flitting between the lance-shaped bullets with ease as they laughed at their brother. "(C'mon, this is way less dangerous for you than it was for me when I was alive!)"

"I'M A FLOWER! I CAN'T DO ANY VERSION OF SWORD-DANCING!"

"Not with THAT attitude, you can't!" Undyne shouted, completely unaware of the human ghost Flowey was talking to.

Chara's only regret was their lack of a camera.

"Human tradition."

"(Yep!)"

"Not something you just made up because it'll be funny."

"(Nope!)"

"You're really expecting me to buy that," Flowey asked with a dubious stare.

"(I'm absolutely not!)" Chara grinned, "(and I'm absolutely sure you're gonna do it anyway!)"

"Well..." Flowey started to grin evilly. "It would be a real shame to pass up this opportunity without trying it at least once..."

He stretched up till he was just level with the window to the house's communal bedroom, where all nine family members were fast asleep and blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. He took the deepest breath he could.

And 'sang'.

"IT'S GYYYYYFFFT-MAAAAAAAAS!"

"I keep telling you, they're not called starstones!"

"(And I keep telling YOU that there's no way Dad would have called them anything else!)"

"He called them lightstones! You KNOW he called them lightstones! Why would he call them 'starstones'?"

Chara waved their arms frantically. "(Because they look like stars! Duh! Everyone KNOWS they look like stars!)"

"THEY'RE LIGHTSTONES!"

"(THEY'RE STARSTONES!)" Chara stamped on thin air in frustration. Flowey wished he still had legs to stamp with.

"WHATEVER you wanna call them, I got you five LIGHTSTONES."

"(Well I got YOU six STARSTONES!)"

They glared at each other in silence.

"(C'mon, let's just go put these in a wall somewhere and make a pattern with them.)"

Flowey scooped the eleven stones up and sped off. "I wanna make a flower!"

The two siblings looked at the - things - in front of them, then side-eyed each other.

"So, what kind of instrument was this meant to be again?"

Chara huffed. "(I dunno why you're looking at me like that when YOU'RE the one who let Alphys know about air-guitars!)"

"Who DOESN'T know about air-guitars? How the heck was I supposed to know she'd take it as some kind of -" Flowey spluttered, waving at the things - "challenge, or, or inspiration, or whatever these things are meant to be!"

Chara huffed, rolling their eyes, then reached out and cautiously poked at one of the things.

It moved.

"(That. I. I could FEEL that. I could feel that!)"

There was a sudden mad scramble for them both to get into position, and then Chara raised their arm and Flowey raised his vine and they both posed, for one glorious, unforgettable instant.

Then their limbs came down, and they hit the strings.