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Chara Dreemurr woke up one day to the light of the sun filtering through the curtains. There was no stopping the crippling feeling of dread that loomed over him, and though the birds sang their little songs and his father's flowers bloomed outside, nothing was as it should be.
There was a stirring in the bed situated across him, the yawning of his brother filling his chest with an emotion he refused to give vent to. Even now, even in this place where nothing should hurt him.
Nothing would hurt Asriel ever again, not if he had anything to say about it. As far as Chara was concerned that was how it always was- and how it should always be.
His soul remained content. It beat steadily, betraying the tempest of his mind.
In this picture perfect life filled with everything he knew he deserved, Chara Dreemurr felt hopeless.
-*-
He'd woken up to the smell of perfectly cooked butterscotch pie, and he is filled with Determination.
The smile painted across his brother's face was warm.
Humans outside weren't waving their nasty pitchforks and spitting out vile words- the world he'd woken up to wasn't as cruel as it should have been and it didn’t feel real at all.
That fish monster managed to become part of a police force.
That skeleton father was allowed to present his discoveries to the intellectuals.
His mother was allowed to set up a school where kids like him weren't being beaten up and ostracized and called demons-
And somehow, somehow-
-*-
Chara Dreemurr woke up another day in this strange new world, and he sorely wondered how he'd managed to last for this long without having stabbed this loathsome council bitch at least once.
He supposed it had to do with the large, comforting hands of his father on his shoulders as he struggled to level his voice enough for him to sound civil- and enough for him not to reach for the knife buried in his trousers.
The meetings were unpleasant and tedious and they made his blood simmer to a steady, raging boil- the AMD, was how they'd called themselves? Fools- the lot of them. Speaking about his family as though they were nothing but vile things as though they themselves weren't such disgusting, repulsive d e m o n s-
But he held on. His father's hands kept him stable- his old, grave voice an anchor in a sea of turbulent, insatiable ignorance. Asgore Dreemurr was the only warm thing in this bittercold room, and without him Chara was all too sure that everything they'd built in this place would have gone to waste by his hateful hand.
He was in the future now. He was free, and so was his family.
There were consequences waiting to happen. He wasn't going to be the one who'd take this future away from any of them.
So he buckled down, keeping to himself his fanciful wishes of being someone else- someone who hadn't held onto a thousand-year hate. His determination was not a kind one.
Even now, he sees it in the eyes of his companions- they still grieved over what they've lost. His father's eyes shone bright with guilt as he spoke in steady tones and mediating gestures. There was never going to be a clean way out for any of them, and the cross he bore atop his old back was as heavy as they came. One day, it'll be his and Asriel's sins to bear.
Vaguely, through that incomprehensible storm of political bullshit and racist nonsense, Chara truly wondered if that ounce of kindness was worth being spent on this audacity- if that irritable woman leading this absurdity could ever understand this grief.
-*-
That short skeleton was never more than politely casual with him, and Chara Dreemurr thinks he could deal with this arrangement. Monsters were the only family he'd ever known- and annoying as he was, that skeleton was still a part of that family he so stubbornly loved.
Every time they'd meet, he clutched onto something strange- like a band, wrapped loosely around his bony wrist. It always seemed as though that brittle thing would fall off his brittle self if he moved too suddenly, and he scratched at that spot constantly like it was something irritating. He made no effort to hide any of it.
But alas, Chara never saw him walk around without that thing. Not once was that eyesore of an object absent from his person, despite everything.
"You know kid, it's an odd little thing." He spoke up one rainy afternoon, when they'd found each other under some bus stop in the outer reaches of this strange city. That guy didn't even need a bus for anything. His sleeve was crumpled up, and he didn't have his hood on- but his eyes were blank. Chara could spot the blue band, plain as day.
He still couldn't make out what it was that it said.
"…if it's that much of a nuisance to you, couldn't you just throw it away? I don't think you even know what it says." Chara said, wiping himself dry with a napkin in vain. Sans chuckled mirthlessly. The boy noticed that he did that a lot these days- never around Asriel, but often enough that nobody could tell it apart from a genuine laugh of his. The skeleton removed the band from his wrist, holding it up where the boy could see it.
There was a face on it that he'd never seen before, and a phrase in a language he couldn't read. Seeing it made the soul in his chest convulse.
"…I can guess." The skeleton's perpetual grin remained on his joyless face. "Maybe it says 'besties for resties'. Maybe it has our names on it. And maybe…" He clenched his bony fist, crushing the rubber in his hand. "Maybe it's a promise. But I wouldn't know."
Unfurling his fist, the rubber was safe and its text was no less legible than it was before. Sans held onto it still- like a vice grip, grasping at its cursed existence.
The bus never came that day, in that forgotten place. Sans teleported them both back, and the band was back on his pale wrist. Every other time they met, neither of them acknowledged its existence- and they both pretended they were fine with that arrangement.
It turned out they were both brilliant at that.
-*-
There were boxes of things from the Underground that he doesn't remember retrieving. And then again- he didn't remember taking along a lot of things, and he supposed it didn't really hurt having them. It had been one evening when he visited that strange doctor that he'd come across them-
"-lost relics of dead children," Gaster told him that night when he found him in the backyard of his laboratory, tracing a finger over the toy knife made of rotting, moldy wood. He doesn't remember why he was here- what he was supposed to be doing, nor even what his connection to the doctor was. "If I'm remembering correctly, Toriel gathered them from around the Underground sometime in the last few weeks," He said, unsure- as though he were testing the words on his tongue and seeing if they sounded right at all.
Chara was sure the doctor hadn't convinced himself of that either. The skeleton sat next to him, taking the empty gun out of the box and looking it over. "None of these children lasted very long. They're not anything like you."
"If they were anything like me… they wouldn't be brats. They were just as stubborn." He scoffed. "They wouldn't have done anything they could to get out."
"…you weren't in such a good place when you fell. I can remember at least this much."
The stars twinkled in the distance, and not for the first time Chara blinked- once, twice, just to make sure what he'd been staring at wasn't the high caverns of Waterfall. Lights of dead flames reaching the Surface some million years too late stared down at him and the doctor, bathing them in a fruitless glow.
Even with his gaze directed elsewhere, the boy could feel the skeleton's gaze on him harden, hollow eyes boring holes into his very soul. There was no malice there- in the place where it should be, there was only a quiet understanding. A mutual connection, despite the oddities of their relationship.
There were secrets they shared. A steady, suffocating feeling of an unpleasant wrongness persisting from a place beyond themselves. The skeleton remained in his place beside him in the grass, quiet as a dormouse. The breeze didn't seem like it reached either of them.
"Doctor," he swallowed, hazarding to ask. "Do you think I'm in a good place now?"
Gaster was silent for a long time, his bony face betraying no emotions- but Chara could almost feel it. The answer to this question was something they'd both dreaded. The boy had his fair share of regrets, and so did he. The toy knife felt hot in his grip. That box stared at him pitifully, but any rage the brunet might have felt melted in the evening air.
Eventually, the doctor sighed.
"You're here now."
They were both here now. Perhaps they were kindred spirits after all, Chara mused-
-he feared that fact more than anything. And despite their fear, they were still just here- under the lights of dead flames their family had yearned for so earnestly.
His soul thundered in his chest. It was Determined, still.
-*-
In his dreams he sees himself trapped in a hellish place from which he felt he could never return from.
But he does, every single day- he escapes, the sun stubbornly shone from behind the curtains each and every time he drowned in that abyss. He could almost welcome that light if it weren't for the peculiar sight he had to greet every damned morning.
It felt like a ritual to step over the boards in that exact order so as not to let the floors creak and his brother wake, carefully making his way over to their shared closet. There hung the sweaters he shared with Asriel- bright greens and yellows kept in pristine condition because his mother would not allow anything else.
Resting next to them with the miasma of fresh corpses and the overpowering scent of butterscotch and cinnamon were sweaters of his size, colored blue and violet.
Undoubtedly they were stitched and crocheted together by his mother's hand- he could recognize the loops and curls that made it, and each thread felt like another noose around his neck, looping around his limbs and cutting into his skin. They hung in that place like they belonged.
The feeling of drowning followed him everywhere he went and he had those accursed sweaters to blame.
Choking back the dread pooling steadily in his gut, he reached for one of them- hissing quietly as the burning sensation of unfounded grief met his fingertips. He branded the feeling onto his skin, enveloping himself in the murmurs of the soft fabric and the woven nightmares within.
They fit too perfectly and the beating heart in his chest was all too elated to be one with the feeling.
His soul was filled with Determination and it weighed heavy on him.
It smelled of dust and buttercups and on his shoulders it felt like he carried the weight of the world.
-*-
Chara Dreemurr doesn't remember how long ago it was since he'd turned fourteen.
He was fourteen when he died and he remembered it- he remembered it so vividly, and yet the memory felt horribly out of place.
Everywhere Chara went, he smelled faintly of buttercups.
And perhaps he really was going insane- more than he ever had been before.
But he couldn't fold in the face of it, he needed to hold out. He didn't dare give in. He was where he wanted to be.
Chara Dreemurr was fourteen and he didn't remember when he started being fourteen again.
Maybe it didn't matter.
-*-
"…you know, I don't remember where those things came from, either."
One simple mistake. That was all it took- one faulty creak of the boards betrayed Chara one evening- that one fateful evening.
That was how he'd seen it, but the concern written across Asriel's face told him everything he needed to know.
His brother sighed, slipping off his bed and approaching him with a tired, weary smile. "I'm surprised they even lasted as long as they did. There aren't a lot of things that manage to survive your wrath, and well," He lifted his paws to gesture to all of Chara- who wore blue and violet like it suited him. "You don't look like you like those things very much."
Twilight shone through the cracks of the walls and the clear glass of the window panes in their shared room. The birds finished singing their songs hours ago, and their father's flowers drooped downwards, with no sun in the skies to face but the ones in the distance.
Nothing was as it should be. He was a fool to assume that Asriel hadn't known that as well as he did.
But still Asriel's eyes shone a bright green, a soft and gentle kindness in the way he held himself.
"You're making a very painful face right now, Chara. And it's okay- I understand-" his voice wavered for a moment, before he too took a sweater from the rack- running the pads of his furry paws across their mother's threadwork. "-I understand that you're put off by these. Neither of us even like blue and purple all that much. And Mom doesn't remember making them-"
"-Asriel-"
"-and the worst part is that I don't even have the heart to throw them away." he choked out, his grip on the sweater turning harsh and desperate- creasing and bruising the fabric in his hands. "Even after watching you all this time."
They were quiet for a long while after that. Chara stared at his brother, breathing in the sickening scent of dust and buttercups. It wasn't until his brother touched his face tenderly, thumbing away at the flesh that he realized he'd been crying.
"Chara. There's times where I feel like I shouldn't be here either."
It hadn't been that. Asriel always belonged here-
"Sometimes I think about what it might have been like if I never came back to life."
The dust settled in further into the fabric, creeping nightmares crawling on their backs like shadows in the dark-
"And every day," Asriel took a shuddering breath. "Every day, I wake up and wonder why I have this perfect life. Why I'm in this bed. Why I feel like there's something missing-"
They leaned into each other's embrace, grasping at any evidence of their existence. The threads of the sweater in Asriel's hands came undone, and so did Chara- choking on their own sobs and the wrongness of it all.
He remembered what it felt like to belong- and it was here, with Asriel- against all odds and oddities.
"We're here now. We're here together. That's all I want to matter to me."
The gold of their lockets was pristine and it shone bright in the blue hours of the morning, and Chara thinks that for the first time since he saw the light of the sun again- the Determination he felt was truly his.
Maybe it really didn't matter after all.
-*-
Smoke billowed out from the fires they'd set the next afternoon- and they watched climb up into the heavens, with the assurance that it'll reach them without worrying that it'd be blocked by the caverns they'd once called home.
That night, they watched what remained of the fires fly off into the wind, tiny ashes of burnt fabric painting the milky way skies with blotches of black. The scent of dust and buttercups lingered in the air, and it almost smelled pleasant.
The next morning, Toriel doesn't question the lack of vibrant blues and violets in their closet- resolving instead to sit by the empty fireplace with new spools of yellow and green wool, humming familiar tunes as Asriel and Chara sat by to help.
It was a perfect picture of the peace and quiet of a September morning, and for once Chara Dreemurr felt like he belonged in it.
-*-
The first day of their second month on the Surface was fast approaching, and with resolve Chara Dreemurr got himself dressed in the freshly-made sweater he made together with his mother and brother- combed his hair and made himself look halfway presentable.
His brother had plans to meet up with Sans that day, and his father was busy preparing for the formal signing of the peace treaty- the success of which was entirely dependent on Chara's performance that day, convincing that council bitch that monsters weren't as bad as they'd so stubbornly assumed.
It was alright. Chara was just as stubborn.
He bid goodbye to his mother before he set off, the scent of freshly baked butterscotch pie wafting out of their humble home. All around him were monsters and humans getting along- children of both races playing freely in the streets with their smiles twinkling like stars in the bright of the day. Everywhere he looked, he saw opportunities for peace-
-and for once, all was well.
The sounds of a skidding, reckless car resonated ahead of him- and in its way, a girl in pink walking without a care in the world.
Chara Dreemurr's soul was filled with Determination, and with no time to spare he jumps in front of the car-
-*-