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"I... I think i'm going to go...home now"
Steps resounded in the frozen alleyway. Slow, careful steps, the now frosted floor making it difficult to walk, and interrupted only by shakey breaths, becoming ice shards mid fall and threatening to make the floor even more dangerous that it already was.
After an eternity, the reindeer-looking monster shambled away, looking exausthed. And then, there was nothing but the wind.
No more sounds, nobody else with them anymore, there wasn't anything at all.
Thump
And then there suddenly was, as the idle figure, still as a statue during the commotion, fell down and knelt, shield still in hand, it's outer layer frozen over and cracked as it protected it's wielder from the snowstorm.
And they sobbed.
It wasn't their now usual crying, when they felt hopeless, trapped, with no control over their destiny.
No, it was like when they were a kid, bawling over hurting themselves or losing at some game, which their child brain took as an incredible loss, and they were comforted by Asriel.
Except this wasn't a game anymore. And they had nobody, least of all their brother, now.
The tears, turned into ice shards, scratched their face and their hands, and they stood there, their anguish and guilt pressing on their back, pulling them down.
Kris was shivering, their emotions now exploding inside them the moment they regained control over themselves, snapping out of the apathy taking hold of them. They kept their head down, not wanting to see the awful scene they knew was in front of them. Whatever it was. Their hands tried to grip the ground beneath, trying to find something to latch onto, but there was nothing, and the ice beneath them only served as a constant reminder of what transpired.
They hated it, they hated the sight of it, they hated the feeling of it under them, they hated what it rapresented, so it really shouldn't have come as a shock when their fist impacted with the floor with an awful piercing noise, akin to nails on a chalkboard, their eyes glossy and puffy from crying, looking redder than usual.
But it somehow, was.
They winced, snapping out of their rage, and holding their arm, their gauntlet shattered where it collided with the frosted floor and leaving a bruise on their hand, all the while the ice was still completely intact, not even a scratch on it's surface.
They hadn't meant to do that. And yet, could they really blame it on anyone other than themselves? They still did it, and if they could lose control like that then who's to say they couldn't again? Or...before.
Noelle.
Tears began falling once again, the sting of the ice crystals feeling even worse, scraping their face as they descended on the ground and fused on the floor. Did they do that to Noelle? Did they, choose to do that? Were they in control all along, was all that talk of control just to...have a scapegoat? To not feel this aching guilt?
They felt sick, thoughts hammering inside their head. They got unsteadily up, they had to get out, they had to leave, they couldn't stay put in the place where-
A particularly big ice crystal caught their attention, and their throat tightened. The ice was thick, but the shape of something could be seen into the ice.
Their head hurt. Their head hurt. Their head, hurt, but they still stood upright, taking small unsteady steps towards the ice sculpture, the noise filling the empty surroundings.
It was cold. So cold. Freezing, in fact. Which should have been obvious to them before, considering the conditions of the area around them, but now they really felt it. The freezing, chills running over them, like from a moment's notice they'd be equally as cold, stuck in that endless winter. Finally, they arrived to the crystal, it's freezing surface not helping their now-noticed severe shivering which made it hard to stand upright.
The armor didn't help at all, one of the stray thoughts in their head noted. They raised their hand, looking at the bruise and the torn gauntlet, bent like cheap plastic and barely filtering the cold. It was freezing. They were freezing.
They slowly raised their head. It felt so heavy, and the shivering made it impossible to stay still, but after what were probably a few minutes they succeeded, using the crystal to stay upright.
And inside the ice, they saw it. A silhouette, completely unrecognizable, except they knew who it was. They did that to him, didn't they? They made Noelle do that to him, they-
Berdly stood, perfectly still, engulfed by ice far thicker than the rest, barely visible inside his fatal prison. His face was not visible, something that Kris was thankful of, as they didn't need nor feel like they wanted to gaze upon what was, most likely, terror in his last instants.
They stood like that, the only sound the constant ringing in their head.
And then they laughed.
They bent down from the laughter, shards falling from their eyes and drawing scarlet drops from their face, hands still on the crystal.
They did that, they ruined his life, ruined noelle's life, ruined everything, under what? The pretense of being controlled? The fact they had an excuse, someone to pin everything on? For curiosity, their own amusement? Their hands curled up into fists. What a joke!
And then they fell.
The cold was too much and the ringing inside their head made it impossible to focus. They slipped, or maybe exhaustion simply took it's toll, falling face first into the floor, the pitiful armor clanking on the ground.
Their nose was probably broken, scarlet scattered in front of them, bleeding out in a lone alleyway, but they couldn't tell. They couldn't open their eyes even if they wanted to, and their already shakey breathing got raspy and difficult. They didn't even know if it hurt, the ringing was too much and the guilt pressed on them on top of the exausthion. They couldn't get up, couldn't lucidly think, and it was so. Cold.
Their skin was freezing, their whole body was freezing, going completely numb, the thoughts getting more confused and sparse. They deserved that, after what they did, after all the lies they told themselves and everything those caused. They didn't even try, one last time, to get up. They deserved that.
And the only sound was the wind.
As the strings tightened, wishing for another round, amused by their puppet reaching it's breaking point.