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They're in the Ruins gathering piles of dead leaves for Asriel to set on fire when they find it sleeping beneath the pedestal with the candy bowl on top. The bowl is empty, and the human looks pretty empty too, with hollowed out cheeks and bone-thin limbs.
"Are they..?" Asriel asks.
"It's still breathing," Chara tells him.
"Is that a knife it's got?"
No, idiot, that's obviously plastic, they almost say, but stop themself. "Not quite. That doesn't look like it would do much to another human. I think it's a weapon that only works on monsters."
"Why would they have something like that?"
"Why indeed?" They lay a hand on his shoulder and lean in toward him. Once they're pressed up close to his ear where he won't be able to see, they let themself smile. "Go find me a rock or a brick or something. Anything light enough to swing but heavy enough to work. I'll keep watch to make sure it doesn't hurt anyone if it wakes up."
With a jolt, Asriel snaps out of the weird melty state he seems to go into whenever they touch him. "Shouldn't we-"
"No, we are not calling your parents. We can't risk taking that long. Trust me." He didn't trust them before, and now he owes them. They haven't forgiven him, and he knows it, and he wants to earn their forgiveness.
He wouldn't bring them buttercups. But he fetches them a rock.
"Asriel, stop crying," Chara says when they've laughed off enough of the adrenaline shock to speak. "Do you know what color this is?" They hold the soul toward him in wet, reddened hands.
"B-blue?" Asriel sobs in confusion.
"Come on, you were obsessed with that 64-count crayon box we found."
"Oh." He gives one last sniffle and then breathes normally again. "It's sky blue."
"That's right," Chara tells him. "A little piece of the sunlit sky. I took it back for you."
Asriel stares up at them in awe, his face illuminated by something almost like daylight, and Chara knows what they want to live for.