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You aren’t expecting to see him when he crawls to the side of your bed, fingers gripping the edge of your mattress and sheets stained with all kinds of questionable fluids, at-- whatever hour it is. Too early. He peers at you, all eyes, eyes that widen with surprise when he notices you peering back.
You’d pretend to be asleep, but whatever. He sits all the way down and scoots back a little. He’s always smiling but not tonight; he’s looking at you with warped and familiar piety, laminated against his heart, folded inward and smothered. You haven’t even said anything.
“What,” you rasp.
He’s been sleeping in mom and dad’s room, curled up into mama’s side, and dad’s been on the futon. He wanted to sleep in his bed, next to you, but obviously he couldn’t handle that. Mama tells him it’s because of the noise, because you do a lot of coughing and snuffling in your sleep, and it would keep him up at night-- the kind of thing you tell a little kid when you can’t tell them the truth, that you don’t want them to wake up in the middle of the night to hoarse, pained screaming, to their sibling vomiting blood all over themselves, to a corpse. And that’s what you hate about Asriel-- no, not hate, because hatred is a song you already know, and these are not the words-- this is what bothers you about Asriel, that the two of you are the same age, and yet he’s somehow still such a baby.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. A beat, and then, “I wanted to check on you.”
A feeling swells up, but if you name it you’ll have to respond to it, and your words are too limited to waste them.
You aren’t sure if you want him to leave. You wonder what time it is. You hum over the scabs in your throat, getting ready to ask, but give up halfway through and go quiet, closing your eyes.
“Chara?” There’s a note of panic in his voice. You open your eyes, but you don’t see anything, at least for a couple seconds. Then Asriel’s face floats back into view, and you sigh through your nose. You tap your trembling fingers to your lips, which has become your sign for flowers ever since talking started getting harder. This time it’s a question. He shakes his head.
“No, no, Chara--” He lifts himself into a kneel and gently tucks your arm back under the covers-- “I don’t think you need any more of those.”
Alarm runs through you. How much of it shows, you can’t be sure. “Don’t--” You cough, struggling to make yourself clear-- “Plan, Azzy--”
“Oh--” He leans back, looking increasingly uncomfortable, “um, no, that’s not what I meant.”
You squint.
“It’s-- nothing,” he utters, both arms wrapping around his stomach. “Mom and dad were talking. You shouldn't worry about it.”
Your frustration is already chronic, but the inability to punch him is making it grow. This is so needlessly dramatic, just tell me-- you settle for rolling your eyes.
“I wasn’t supposed to hear. They said you-- um. It doesn’t matter, because you-- well, mom was saying that you might not... make it, through, um, the night. And it would be bad if I missed it, ‘cause--”
You stare. He’s shaking, but you can’t tell if he’s crying.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s wrong, right? I mean, you don’t think you’re gonna--”
You shrug, very slowly, with the little energy you have. You want to think that death will come in the form of a midnight drive, long and slow, God or Satan or someone driving the car and you in the backseat, songs you’ve never heard playing quietly on the radio until you fall asleep and wake up to find that the car has crashed into a ravine and you’re in Hell. Or maybe it just keeps going forever, and Someone never stops driving, and you never wake up. That seems a lot less likely, though.
“Okay,” he says. “But just-- try to stay awake, because I don’t think I’m-- I don't think it's time, yet.”
Whatever that means. You’re going to die-- well, you’re going to turn into some kind of freaking god-tier monster and save everyone in the Underground, first, and the courage it’s gonna take from Asriel is only going to dissipate. He’s not even doing the hard part. He’s gonna be fine.
You kind of want your mom. You want her to sing. Maybe that’s what you’ll fall asleep to, in the car; your mama’s voice. That’d be good.
Your eyes slip shut again.
“Chara!”
Oh, yeah.
“Go ‘way.” You swat at him, but her misinterprets the gesture and takes your hand between both of his.
“Hurts,” you moan, and he drops it instantly.
“Sorry. But you need to stay awake, okay? Chara?”
You don’t have the energy or motivation to respond. Your arm is hanging off the side of the bed, flopped over, and it feels like your shoulder might break off but you want to go to sleep. Asriel grabs your wrist.
“Chara, hey.”
You try to scream at him to get out, but it comes out pathetically small and unintelligible. You whimper and sob and squirm onto your back, and you want to kick your legs, but it doesn't feel like they're even attached to you anymore.
Asriel toys with your cold, clammy fingers. You can tell it’s meant to be comforting and that in itself just scrambles up your feelings even worse, sending them into a frustrated mayhem, sending your stomach into knots.
You heave, “I’m gonna--”
But you don’t; Asriel lets go of you to grab the heavy metal pot by your bedside and holds it right by your face, but all that goes into it is a drool of pink saliva. You fall back onto your pillows, already halfway a corpse, and want to die.
(You will; exploding in a fit of golden flowers and sugar-coated suicide pacts, you’ll collapse from your monstrous form into your old one, and Asriel will cry, and you’ll see him in Hell-- have a family barbeque, maybe, roast hotdogs with him over the flames. Or maybe you’ll wake up, back in this place, and do something else. You don’t need to break the barrier to set everyone free.)
“Hey, Chara?” A pause. “Um, I love you a lot, okay?”
“Gross.”
“Sorry, I know.”
You had this idea, a long time ago-- well, it was a dream, but you held onto it for a while. This dream, idea, whatever, that Earth was just a frisbee hurtling through space, aimlessly, freefalling. And at any second, it could crash into another planet, or pass through a galactic tundra, or get too close to the sun and burn everyone up. Asriel is gonna absorb your soul and you’ll be big enough to sit on top of the world and watch the apocalypse get closer and closer. Jump off the edge before it hits.
You tell this to Asriel in snapshots, and he politely calls you delirious. But he’ll see. You’ll show him. You’ll hold his hand and freefall through blackness and say, I told you so.
You pass out.