Work Text:
She waits outside the hospital, leaning against the wall. It’s not her first time standing out here, anxiously fiddling with her watch, glancing again and again at the door. At least this time she’s not waiting for news.
She’s not sure what she is waiting for, yet.
It’s not too long before she hears footsteps nearing the door from inside, and she pulls away from the wall.
Kris emerges, blinking a few times behind their bangs as the sunlight hits their face. It takes them a few seconds before they catch sight of Noelle, and when they do, they just stare. No greeting. No reaction.
She hates that she almost feels used to that.
“Kris, um…” She pauses, for a moment, feeling the band of her watch for comfort. Trying to remember what a woman in something like a dream said about her strength. Trying to gather the power she’d felt, for a few moments. “Can we talk?”
They hesitate for just a moment, then step out fully, hospital door swinging closed behind them. “Alright,” they say, voice a monotone.
“I…” She finds she can’t look them in the eyes. “Kris, there’s… something off with you lately. And I…” Twirl the watch around her wrist. Try and focus. “I thought at first it might just be that you were missing Asriel, but… You’re barely acting like yourself, Kris. You don’t talk, and when you do you bother everyone in town? The nurse says you’ve stopped playing the piano? And--”
She falters, half sure that this is the part where she outs herself as having completely lost it from stress. “I had this… dream, with you in it, and you were acting wrong there too… But… Kris, I don’t think it was a dream. I think you were there, and you know what I mean. I don’t know if something there hurt you, or something, but…”
A deep breath. They’re still staring at her, but she tells herself there’s a spark of life in their eyes. Maybe she’s just imagining it.
“We’re friends,” she says at last. “If something’s happening, I want to be there for you. Like we used to be there for each other. Okay? But if you just--don’t say anything, I can’t… do anything. And I’ll be honest, I’m getting really, really tired of not doing anything.”
For a few seconds more, they keep staring, and she thinks she’s said something all wrong, that she’s made some terrible mistake. That they’ll take her kindness as pity or worse.
Then, slowly, almost stiffly, they raise one finger.
Wait.
She raises an eyebrow, but stays where she is.
They glance back and forth around the empty street with those same jerky motions, then give a tiny nod.
Their hand rises to their chest, grabs a fistful of their hoodie--
Oh, she thinks dimly, as the red light seeps around their fingers. They’ve gotten a lot better at the special effects since the ketchup-for-blood days. It almost looks like they’re actually reaching into their chest, right through their skin.
She manages up until she sees the blood-red thing they’re gripping in their hand before she faints.
---
She’s laying somewhere peaceful, somewhere soft. A bed of feathers, a cloud, a pile of snow. Somewhere comforting, at peace, far away from blood and hearts and open chest wounds.
Except for the feeling of someone shaking her, it’s perfect.
“--elle,” the person says, rudely. “Noelle, c’mon--”
Five more minutes, she wants to say, but it comes out as a groan.
Slowly, unwillingly, she opens her eyes a bit. The cloud-soft bed beneath her resolves into the much less comfortable feeling of autumn leaves and twigs digging into her. Soon after, the gentle white light becomes Kris looking down at her with an expression of worry.
“Are you okay?” they ask, tilting their head, and the motion looks -- stiff. Wrong. “Sorry, I would’ve warned you, but I, uh, kind of, um, can’t, so… Uh…”
It’s the most she’s heard them say in weeks. Somehow, their slight stammer and hoarse voice helps coax her back into reality.
“I’m alright,” she says, slowly sitting up and looking around. It looks like they’re behind the hospital, in a little copse of trees. It explains her makeshift bed, at least.
She notices twin trails of dirt leading to her that look suspiciously like hooves being dragged along the ground, and decides to not ask until she has her bearings.
“I’m… alright,” she repeats, maybe more for her own benefit. “Vasovagal syncope, that’s all, and I don’t think I hit my head… Kris, what was that?”
“Um.” They hesitate, sitting back on their heels with an awkward lurch. “That was, uh. Me pulling my soul out of my chest.”
A moment’s pause while she processes that.
“Why?” she finally asks, for lack of a better question.
“Because it’s not… mine,” they say, picking through the words with familiar care. “I don’t know if… if it was mine and something else took it, or… what… but it’s not mine now. Something else is… in it. Making me do stuff. Making me not do stuff. Dragging me around. I can, uh, I can take it out for a bit like this, but, but it kind of… um. Sucks. Dunno if you noticed but I’m, like, barely moving, and that’s because moving extra sucks.”
“Kris…” She looks at them, taking them in. She wants to think this is some new prank, some new joke -- but there’s no hint of the way their mouth involuntarily rose at one corner every time they thought they had her fooled, no sparkle of mischief in their eyes. There’s just them, head low, hands trembling on their lap.
There’s a faint red light escaping from one of their pockets.
“Can I… see it?” she asks, holding out a hand.
They hesitate, then reach into the pocket, pulling out the soul. It glows a sickly, too-bright red, casting the world in unnatural shades. She swears it wasn’t this bright before, in the world where they were a knight and she was a mage, but…
The thought catches her. Why had she not thought that was strange? That their soul lead each fight, with them just following behind? At the time, it had just seemed to fit the logic of the place, but now in the light of day the idea feels absurd.
She feels guilty.
She should have noticed.
But her thoughts are put on pause when they hold the soul out to her, stiffly. “Be careful with it, it squirms,” they tell her, then pause. “And don’t lick it. Tastes awful.”
“Why did you…” she begins, then shakes her head and stops herself. Despite the situation, she smiles just a little.
And then she wraps her hand around the soul.
It squirms against her hoof-like nails, like a caught animal trying to get free. She can feel it pulse against her, and she swears her own heartbeat slows an inch to match.
Up close, the light is brighter still, almost burning her eyes, and she thinks she can almost see something in the heart of it-- a shape, unfolding wings, something fractal and terrible that is looking back at her--
She forces herself to look away and look at Kris instead.
“Have you told your mom?”
They shake their head. “No. Um. Actually… you’re, um. You’re the. Only person.”
She blinks, sitting up a little straighter. “Kris, you have to tell someone. This is serious, if you’re, what, possessed? You can’t just…”
“And what would I tell them?” Kris asks, looking at her through the curtain of their bangs. Only this close does she see the deep bags under their eyes. “Best case, they… they figure it’s another joke. Kris making up some new story to get attention, or, or, whatever. Worst case--” They swallow. “Worst case. Mom worries. Dad worries. Azzy comes home, Azzy worries. Susie worries. Nobody can-- can do anything. About it. Everyone just… has to worry about me. Forever.”
She looks at them for a while, brow furrowed. She remembers when they were little, the time in the woods when they had a coughing fit so bad she worried they were going to die while they begged her not to tell Toriel and Asgore between gasping breaths.
In the end, she’d cracked and told her dad, and Kris had gone to the hospital for a few weeks, and they’d been better -- but she never forgot the look of panic on their face when they acted like someone knowing would be far, far worse than simply going on.
She sees that same look now, exhausted and weary and so, so afraid.
She wants to argue, to point out that Toriel would help, that Susie would help, that anyone would, but she knows they wouldn’t listen. Not yet.
“So why did you tell me?” she asks instead.
They pause for a little while, considering. The soul beats on in her hand.
“Because you asked,” they say at last. “Because you.. noticed. From the first day it got, like, this bad. Because you-- you know me, and I know you know me, and I know that I can’t lie to you. Not about. Big stuff like this. Because…” They hesitate. “Because you smiled when I called you a friend in the Dark World, and I-- I still… want to be your friend. Even if I can’t--can’t help you, even if I just make things worse for you, I still-- still want--” Their breathing’s ragged, their hands shaking.
“Kris--” She scoots closer across the leaves. “Kris, I… I want to be your friend too, you have to know that. And I don’t want you to deal with this alone! I want to help.”
“I know you do,” Kris mumbles. “And I know you always would have. But… after everything… after… I have so many problems, and you were hurting, and I didn’t want to...”
They hesitate, breaking their gaze.
Something wells in her chest, and it takes a moment for her to recognize anger.
“Is that what it was?” she says, staring at them. “That’s made you avoid me since, what, 5th grade? Because of, of Dess?” Her voice cracks on the name, and she winces, but continues. “You were too afraid of putting demands on weak, fragile Noelle, so you just-- stopped talking to me?”
“That’s not--” Kris protests, looking up again, but she cuts them off.
“That’s exactly what it is,” she says, surprised at how clear her voice is. “You get so mad about anyone pitying you, but when it’s me you can just make the decision yourself that I’m too fragile to deal with you! And so for years I thought you were just sick of me, that you hated me, that my best friend had just given up--”
“Noelle, I--”
“No, listen. I--I’m scared, Kris. All the time. And this is really, really, really scary. But.. but I’m not going to let you pull this any more, okay? I’m not going to let you just-- stew on things alone while I start to worry you’re having a complete breakdown and then it turns out the truth is you have a demon in you--”
She’s squeezing the soul, she realizes. She can feel something unpleasantly slick slide down into her fur, but she ignores it. “I’m going t-to help you with this. And find a solution. And we’re going to work together, and you’re going to tell me things, and we’re. Going to get this done. Okay?”
They stare at her for a moment more, then give a familiar rasping, wheezy laugh. “This is why I didn’t, um, tell you before. You’re scary when you’re mad, y’know?”
Despite herself, she smiles, her grip relaxing. “Well, then, maybe stop being a jerk and I’ll stop being so scary.”
“Okay, okay… I get it.” They nod, sitting up. “So, uh. You’re really in on this with me, huh?”
“Yeah.” She nods, once. “Whatever… this is? Kris, are you sure you didn’t just stumble into a creepypasta or something?”
“Nah, not nearly enough photorealistic skeletons,” Kris deadpans, grinning. “Unless you count the grocery guy.”
“Let’s leave him out of this unless he tells us that the princess is dead or something.” She returns the grin, adjusting into a more comfortable position. “Okay, so… Tell me everything you know, and we’ll go from there?”
They nod, moving just an inch closer.
“Okay, so, uh, I guess it starts around the bunker…”
And she listens as the sun begins to set somewhere in the distance, nodding along, asking questions, raising ideas.
Despite the thing that pulses in her grip, despite the fear that she feels with every beat, despite all of it--
For the first time in a long time, she remembers the comfort of talking to her first and best friend.