Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Frisk opened their eyes to the white ceiling of their room.

Morning. A voice inside of their head greeted them.

"Morning, Chara" Frisk responded via thoughts.

It had been a little over two weeks since their adventure underground, and around a week since they had been enrolled into school again. They were now living alone with Toriel, in a house on the surface in the outskirts of a human city.

Their life had changed so drastically within those couple weeks that they still at times struggled to believe it. They had a place to live in, they had a family, they had friends.

And you have a disembodied voice in your mind commenting on your life.

Yeah... Also that.

They had first felt Chara's presence shortly after their fall underground, and whilst they were originally as weirded out by their presence as Chara was weary of them for being human, the two of them surprisingly ended up becoming becoming very close very fast. Now, Frisk considered Chara as their best friend.

Aw, thank you !

Oh, did they mention the part about mind reading yet ? That was a thing too between the two of them.

As they got up, Frisk noticed that they had a little headache. It didn't hurt much, but it was certainly enough to be a bother.

Perhaps there is something in the bathroom that could help with this ? Chara proposed.

The eight fallen human checked only to find out that there was no such thing in stock, actually there was little to no medicine at all. It was hardly surprising, they had only moved here very recently after all, Toriel hadn't gotten the time to buy such things yet.

It was alright, it was just a small headache. It barely even hurt at all, surely it would be gone within a few hours. Frisk believed they would be able to handle it. And even if it did persist, they could just ask Toriel to get them something later on, they weren't in a rush.

You could ask her right now.

"She's busy with paperwork and i have to go to school" Frisk pointed out. "Even if i did, she wouldn't be able to get any before i left. I would just be making her worried for no reason".

"Its okay." They added when they felt Chara worrying about them. "I'll be fine".

"See you soon, my child" Toriel waved them goodbye as they were about to close the door behind them.

"Bye, mom !" Frisk told her as they stepped outside of the house.

For some reason, when they had called her 'mom', it had come to them far more naturally than it usually did. Whilst they were happy to refer to her as such and had been almost immediatly, something just felt different today. It was like Frisk had known her as their adopted mother for years, even it had been less than a month since they had met.

As they walked down the same path they did everyday, lost in thoughts, Frisk reflexively brushed their hand over their forehead as they felt a drop of sweat rolling down their face.

Despite the fact that it was September, Frisk felt a little hot.

Sometimes i do not understand you Frisk. You were able to bear Hotlands' temperature surprisingly well and yet you feel hot here ?

Frisk stopped walking and shrugged in the middle of the street. They were lucky no one could see them or they would ask themselves some questions.

As the day passed by, it became apparent to Frisk that their headache wasn't going away as easily as they had thought. This made it a lot more difficult to concentrate in class as their train of thought kept getting interrupted by minor spikes of pain.

Chara would have made a snarky comment about how they had been right to insist earlier, but they could tell that Frisk wasn't really in the mood for any of that right now. They decided to keep quiet instead.

Once their school day was over, Frisk ended up surprising Chara.

Wait, really ?

"Yes"

Why ?

"I don't know" Frisk answered. "I just feel like it today."

The human grinned. "Not that you can complain ! You'll taste it too !" They pointed out while walking to the vending machine.

They were right of course, Chara was glad that this was happening, but it didn't prevent them doing finding it a bit weird.

Whist Chara had always had a particular liking for chocolate, Frisk did not. They didn't hate it either, they had been fine with eating it once in a while for Chara's sake as they could taste what Frisk did as well. But as far as Frisk's own tastes were concerned, they didn't really like chocolate. If given the choice between it and another kind of candy or sugary substance, Frisk would be very likely to ditch the chocolate in favor of the other option.

This was why it felt so surprising to Chara to hear Frisk say that today, they wanted to buy chocolate from the vending machine. Chara's first thought was to think that this was for them, which partially, it was. But Frisk had insisted that in addition to wanting to make their friend happy, they really did just feel like eating chocolate for once.

When Frisk took their first bite, Chara took a moment to savor the treat. Afterwards, they attempted to peek into Frisk's thoughts. The latter noticed this and voiced out loud what they had been thinking after their bite.

"This tastes better than i remember" Frisk admitted. Unlike the few times they had eaten some for Chara, it did actively make Frisk want to eat more. Not just for their friend but for themself too. They actually quite enjoyed this.

Maybe we found a brand that you like better than the rest ? Chara innocently proposed.

"Maybe so" Frisk concluded. They began heading home, still with what was left of the chocolate in hand. They would end up finishing it while walking.

Chara made a mental note of the name of the brand before Frisk threw the paper away in the matching recycling bin. There was a bin at the school too but it wasn't getting recycled and having the chocolate for the trip just felt convenient to them.

Once they made it home, Frisk did end up giving in and asking Toriel to get them some medicine for their headache. Which the ex-queen took to the heart as she left almost immediatly in order to obtain it. She was very protective of her children.

In the meantime, Frisk began making use of what remained of their afternoon by opening a book. Them and Chara silently read through it, only being interrupted once when Toriel came back with Frisk's treatment. The latter thanked her and after reading the instructions carefully, swallowed the pill along with a glass of water in the bathroom.

Hopefully, their headache would be gone soon now.

And why were they still so sweaty ?

A couple hours later, dinner was ready.

Despite the fact that they had monster food, which was transformed into pure energy, left no waste, and overall just tasted really good, Toriel insisted on making them eat some amount of regular vegetables. This was because she had read it was healthy for human children.

Unlike most kids would have, Frisk didn't really mind it that much as they always had a taste for healthy food anyway. But even they had to admit that monster food was just much more convenient overall for all kinds of reasons.

As Frisk took their fork using their left hand and quietly ate their meal (although they didn't feel very hungry today for some reason), Toriel gave them some information on how things had been progressing regarding relations between humans and monsters. It had only been a couple weeks since they left the underground after all, this whole thing was still a huge mess for now. Frisk had not accepted when they were asked to serve as an ambassador for monsters. Not because they didn't want to help of course but simply because they felt like they wouldn't have been up for the task. And going by what they had heard, it had probably been a smart call to let a more competent adult deal with this instead.

As they got lost in those thoughts, Frisk served themself a glass of water, filling it all the way up to brim without even realising it.

Toriel's expression changed when she noticed this, first it reflected a small shock before turning into a nostalgic smile.

"Isn't that a little too much, my child ?" She asked them.

Frisk snapped out of it and noticed that they had indeed served themself too much water.

They scratched the back of their head in embarrassment. "Oops, well at least there aren't any spills."

Now, Toriel was the one getting lost in thoughts.

"A long time ago, i knew someone that always filled up their glass. So the liquid was just peeking over the brim." She mentioned.

Frisk noticed Chara suddenly taking renewed interest in the conversation from the depths of their mind. They nodded to Toriel to show that they were listening to her story.

"It was the most efficient way to fill it, they said. Regardless of how thirsty they were." Toriel let a small giggle as very vivid memories came back to her. Frisk quickly reciprocated as they found the idea of filling a glass this way for the sake of efficiency both silly and funny.

They did not feel any amusement from their companion however, just little bits of... embarrassment ?

This made a couple puzzles pieces click in Frisk's mind and they immediatly brought it up via thoughts.

"That was totally you, wasn't it ?"

I will neither confirm nor deny these accusations. Chara kept their mind closed off from Frisk for a moment, which ironically was extremely telling.

"Im taking this as a yes."

Take it the way you want to take it.

Toriel had told them she would let them have a nice cream for dessert. Whilst Chara made a mental complaint about how when it was dessert she was suddenly fine with monster food again, Frisk waited for Toriel to come back with it.

And waited.

And waited.

Why was this taking so long ? Shouldn't it be just a few rooms away from here ? It shouldn't take more than 20 seconds to go get it, yet it had already been two minutes.

Jeez, Frisk. I remember you being more patient than this. Maybe she just checked the wrong place or got a phone call while on the way there. Its not like its gonna disappear if you wait.

The human almost pointed out that Chara was being a bit of a hypocrite by calling them impatient, but Toriel came back with their treat before they could do so. After giving them a little talk about brushing their teeth after eating (which made Chara giggle as they remembered a joke Sans told them using Toriel's phone about brushing their teeth before crossing the street), Frisk opened the wrapper and Chara read what it said.

"Is this as sweet as you ?"

After letting a little smile escape, Frisk opened their mouth and prepared to give the nice cream a lick.

No, it isn't. You're the sweetest. Chara responded to the wrapper's message.

Frisk was lucky not to have any nice cream in their mouth yet, otherwise they would have likely spit it out as they coughed in surprise. Their cheeks turned pink and they blushed a little. They were not prepared for their tendency to flirt with people when they least expect it to see how they'd react to be turned against them like this. And especially not by Chara of all people.

...I can't believe i just said that.

"Me neither" Frisk admitted. Unsure if they should be proud of their friend, embarrassed by what they had said or simply laughing it off.

But it was worth it ! That reaction was priceless.

Their face slowly turned into a smug as they winked into what might appear to be empty space for any outside observer. "Looks like im rubbing off on you, Chara".

Shoo. I just wanted to try that once to see the kind of face you'd make. Im not like you, i do not flirt with my mother. They denied it.

"Well at least i a-" Frisk was about to respond before they were interrupted by sudden pain again. They put down the nice cream and held their palms against the part of their head that hurt, as if that would make the pain magically go away.

This thing still hurts pretty bad. It is getting a bit concerning. Chara mentioned after feeling Frisk's pain.

Frisk nodded before letting go of their head now that the pain spike had passed.

Eating nice cream probably doesn't help with the headache either. If you had told Toriel that it still hadn't gone away yet, she likely wouldn't have given you this nice cream in the first place.

Frisk didn't say anything, they knew Chara was right about that part.

They still ate the nice cream anyway though. They had taken the pill for the headache already, it should be fine.

"Thank you for the dinner, mother" Frisk voiced out while helping with filling up the dishwasher. This again reminded Toriel of her first human child, who often addressed her similarly. This was not a subject she should be bringing up with Frisk though.

Frisk ? Can i give you some advice ?

Frisk mentally gave them approbation while they left for the bathroom to brush their teeth.

I think we both noticed that you've not been in your best shape today. On top of that headache that's been annoying you all day, i can tell that you just felt tired overall. You haven't been acting like your usual self either and you've been sweaty all day.

What im trying to say is, there's something unusual happening to you today and i think i might know what that is.

Frisk, interested, mentally prompted them to continue. They too had felt like something was off today but they had been unable to tell why.

I think that you're getting sick. You feel hot and tired because your body turns up its temperature and spends its energy to fight back. Not wanting to eat much and changes in attitude are all classic symptoms as well, and that's probably where the headache comes from too.

Right. Frisk thought. That made sense. Frisk had a lot of trust in Chara, they tended to be correct about a lot of things. And after all, if anyone would know about sickness it would be them wouldn't it ? Yes, they were probably just getting sick.

I would advise you to go to sleep early today, this might help you feel better tomorrow. Chara finished.

After finishing to brush their teeth and spitting out, Frisk looked at their reflection in the mirror.

Its you ! Chara told them, it never failed to make Frisk smile when they did that.

There was just something to this. Being able to stare at a mirror and think "This is me", "This is who i am". That try as they might, they would continue to be themself. That no matter what, they would always have this to rely on. A constant in a world that kept changing. This feeling of selfhood, of ipseity. It made them feel safe, it made them feel at home, it made them feel happy.

Shortly after, Frisk decided to take on Chara's advice and went to bed early.

Frisk felt hot under their covers. They eventually decided to remove them to be more comfortable. It didn't help them much.

Their sweat left little wet marks on the sheets while they breathed in and out heavily. This went on for a pretty long time. They were struggling to fall asleep today.

They even felt as if their insides were... moving around a lot. More than they should.

Frisk had a gut feeling. A gut feeling that this wasn't just it. That there was something wrong going on with them that was far worse than just the beginning of a sickness. It wasn't anything rational of course. They just... felt like it. Like something had been set in motion that couldn't be undone as simply as by taking pills. Maybe they had just gotten a bit pessimistic following their many painful deaths underground.

Everything would be fine, right ? Chara said that it would, and they knew what they were talking about.

Frisk hoped that they were just imagining things as they finally lost consciousness.

Chapter Text

Frisk was woken up by the Saturday morning's sunlight passing through their window and into their eyes once the sun had risen high enough into the sky.

The first thing they did after waking up was to check what time it was. They were quite surprised to see it was already 10:40 AM. Frisk was used to not sleep for as long as most people did, them waking up this late was something that just didn't happen. Considering that they had also went to sleep much earlier than usual yesterday, they must have slept for almost 14 hours today.

This was ridiculous for someone that even at this young age only slept for about half that time on a usual day. Frisk was legitimately unable to recall a single time in their entire life where they had slept for this long. It certainly didn't happen since their fall and before that well...

If they had, it was likely when they were very little. They concluded.

Woah. Chara couldn't help but to comment. You really slept like a baby.

The eight fallen human was forced to agree. "Guess you were right about me needing that" They snickered.

Speaking of, do you feel better now ?

Frisk took a moment mentally scan their own body but were interrupted halfway through it by a familiar sensation, which made Chara mentally wince in reaction once they felt it.

"Well, the good news is that i don't feel tired anymore. The bad news is that my head still hurts." They stated.

I think you need to tell Toriel about that. This is going to be a massive inconvenience if you don't find a way to get rid of it soon enough.

"Don't worry, i'll do it" Frisk responded while getting dressed.

You need to care care of your health a bit more, Frisk. You've been like this as far as i can remember. In the underground already, you had been eating food straight out of the garbage. Toriel would have a heart attack if she learned about that. Its no surprise that you would get sick.

Chara had gotten it wrong, it was because their body had gotten used to this kind of stuff already that they basically didn't ever get sick anymore in the first place. Frisk didn't intend on telling that to Chara, but it seemed that they must have thought about it a bit harder than they had thought since their companion was able to grasp it anyway. Something that Frisk had apparently been capable of noticing unconsciously as well.

Well, in fact, Frisk could even tell that Chara hadn't meant to let Frisk know that they had indeed heard them. Frisk wasn't really sure how they could know that, but they just felt it without even thinking about it. Their consciousness just immediatly caught on in pretty great detail to something their friend hadn't intended to share. And considering they didn't want Chara to feel their disagreement with what they had said in the first place, it seemed like it had happened the other way around too.

It was like the spiritual space that separated them from Chara within their own head was a bit thinner than usual. That the two of them felt slightly "closer" mentally than they usually did.

Did that make sense ?

Maybe not.

Whatever.

Either way, they would be fine. And well, even if somehow they weren't, they'd find a way to deal with whatever issue they had. That was how things always went. Frisk was pretty good at finding solutions to problems in ways people didn't see coming.

Technically speaking, nothing bad could happen to Frisk. Well, nothing permanent to be precise. They still had their "special power".

Honestly, they'd rather not have to use it anymore. They hadn't SAVED since they left the underground and they didn't plan to do so either. if they did, they might be tempted to make use of that power, even just for small things. And in that case, maybe they'd be tempted to make use of their ability more and more. They knew that having power could corrupt people, and the bigger the power, the more it could affect the one who had it. Considering how powerful of a power the ability to SAVE was and what became of the last person to have had that power before them, even if they had Chara to keep them in check, Frisk would rather not even let themself the chance to be tempted to abuse it.

It was better like this, they could just live their life like anyone else would, but they knew that if something went terribly wrong, they would always have that option as a very last resort.

For their breakfast, Frisk finally dared to try out something one of their friends was supposedly a big fan of. Oatmeal with dinosaur eggs.

I don't know how to feel about this. I do not have the greatest trust in Papyrus when it comes to food.

"Im sure it'll be fine" In reality, Frisk wasn't entirely "sure", but they were down to try it at least.

In the end, it ended up tasting better than expected for a product that was discontinued twenty years ago.

Halfway through it, Frisk told Toriel about the persistence of their headache. She suggested them to drink more water (Frisk wasn't really sure how that was supposed to help but whoever told her that probably knew better than they did) and proposed to take them to a doctor soon if things didn't improve.

In their opinion, it wasn't so bad that they needed a doctor, but alright. They'd think about it if it didn't stop soon enough.

Once they were done with their breakfast, Frisk went to brush their teeth machinally.

Hum... Frisk ?

"What ?" Frisk stopped and asked, not within their mind but actually asking out loud. They didn't articulate very well due to the fact that they mouth was still half-filled with watery toothpaste.

I think you've got the w-...

Chara was about to joke about what Frisk was doing, but they suddenly stopped as they noticed that they could only feel confusion from the other human. There was no dissimulated smile nor anything that they would expect from Frisk when they were doing this sort of thing on purpose in order to get a reaction.

Did... they really not notice ?

"Notice what ?" Frisk wondered.

They weren't faking it, they weren't pretending not to have in order to annoy them, they really hadn't even noticed what they were doing... How ?

"Chara, please tell me what's going on" Frisk was getting impatient.

Look in the mirror.

Frisk did just that. They only saw their reflection. Maybe they had something on their face ? Yet, Frisk failed to notice anything.

No, not at you. Look at what you are doing.

What they were doing ? Well, aside from looking at this mirror, they were just brushing their teeth. They didn't see what was so unusual about tha-

...

Oh.

Frisk was honestly just as baffled as Chara was. How did they do that without even realising it themself ? It should have felt wrong to them immediatly. Yet somehow, it didn't.

To someone who didn't know Frisk, it wouldn't have appeared to them as if anything was wrong. They were just just standing up in the bathroom, above the sink, facing the mirror while brushing their teeth with their toothbrush in their right hand.

That could have been perfectly normal...

If it wasn't for the fact that Frisk was left handed.

Were you really so distracted that you failed to notice you were using the wrong hand ? Chara still couldn't make sense of this. Wasn't this something that one should notice instantly ? Shouldn't it be uncomfortable to use the wrong hand ? How could Frisk have done this without even noticing ?

Frisk had the same questions, unable to answer them either. It had just... happened. They decided to now take the toothbrush with their left hand instead, moved it around a bit, then grabbed it again with the right and did the same thing.

It didn't.

It didn't feel off at all.

The young human decided to try something. Still keeping it in their "wrong hand" and now fully conscious of it, they tried to continue brushing their teeth anyway.

It didn't feel uncomfortable whatsoever. After a few seconds, they swapped hands again and were forced to come to the conclusion that they didn't find it harder with their right hand than with their left.

Neither of them had words for what was happening. It just... worked.

They didn't have the slightest idea of how this was possible, but it was as if Frisk had become ambidextrous overnight.

As soon as they were done, Frisk dashed out of the room and attempted to do all sorts of things from opening doors and drawers to grabbing random objects within their range, all with their right hand.

They were frankly amazed. They had no clue what the hell was going on but they loved it. They really could just use their right as well as their left now somehow.

"This is awesome" They couldn't help but to think really loudly whilst Chara was absolutely floored trying to make sense of this rationally.

It wasn't that Frisk could always do this but just didn't realise it before, they had definitly felt that Frisk was more at ease with their left than they were with their right before. Since dominant hands were a genetic thing, it should only depend on one's body, even Chara, who had been right-handed in life, became temporarily left-handed whenever they did anything whilst using Frisk's body. Clearly Frisk's only dominant hand had been their left.

But then why ? People don't just magically become ambidextrous, right ?

Frisk shrugged. The only thing they knew for sure was that they liked this development.

Can you look this up ? I need answers.

To be honest, Frisk also did want to know how this could have happened, so they searched for information online.

As it turned out, it was actually not impossible to train one's body into becoming ambidextrous. But that was a process that took a while as well as a very conscious effort,and even then those people would only be comfortable with both hands for a certain range of tasks, they weren't fully ambidextrous.

Whilst they hadn't seen Frisk performing that many tasks with their right hand yet, it seemed pretty clear that this was not what had happened to them.

In the end, they remained without a proper answer. They couldn't find anything that could explain this change naturally.

Maybe you really should go to a doctor, and talk about that too.

Did they really need to go to a doctor for something that was purely beneficial to them ? Frisk wondered as they used a towel to get rid of some heavy sweat dripping from their forehead.

Frisk. This is not normal.

The eight human would have been glad to answer by saying that nothing about them was normal anyway, but after remembering the gut feeling they had the previous night, they had to admit that this was too strange to be shrugged off. Considering that they were also still sweaty and that their headache hadn't gotten better, it was true that the odd things happening to them over the last couple days were starting to pile up... A simple disease couldn't explain what was going on with their hands. This was getting a bit worrying.

Chara attempted to make a projection of themself appear next to Frisk.

But failed.

Whilst they did not do it very often, Chara had been able to project a mostly transparent image of what they had once looked like that only Frisk could see within a few steps of where Frisk was. That projection wasn't really them of course, the real Chara still remained within Frisk's mind. It was just a way for Chara to appear visually to Frisk temporarily. Something that they mostly did when Frisk felt troubled.

Here however, Chara was the one increasingly freaking out. It just didn't work ? After taking a second to focus, they attempted to do it again. But for the second time, they were not able to do it.

What ? Why ? Never had the first fallen human failed to establish a projection before. What could have caused this to fail ?

It wasn't a complicated process, they just temporarily split a very minor representation of themself away from Frisk. But instead, here it wouldn't let go. It was stuck within Frisk's mind and refused to let go of it. If both of their consciousnesses were glued together in Frisk's head, it felt as if said glue was resisting stronger than it usually did and didn't let them have as much flexibility within Frisk's mind as normal.

Chara was growing increasingly uncomfortable with this entire situation. Between Frisk suddenly gaining a better usage of their non dominant hand and themself having seemingly lost the capacity to do something that they had never struggled with before or even the way they had been reading each other better than usual lately in general, too many weird things were happening to them both in a far too short period of time for it to be a mere coincidence.

A common feeling of anxiousness rose up in the children's shared headspace as the obvious conclusion found its way into both of their thoughts.

Something was off. Something more was happening to the pair beyond Frisk's apparent early form of sickness. Something that was changing them.

Despite it having been complicated at first, the two had ended up getting used to bodysharing. They had settled on how to handle such a life. They had learned to get along. They knew what they could do or couldn't do relating to each other or to their common body. Whilst this whole thing was a strange form of cohabitation from the beginning, they always felt like the two of them had it under control. They knew how it worked. It was stable.

But since yesterday, things were starting to feel abnormal. They struggled to make their thoughts accessible or not to their companion even though this had previously been something they had both gotten used to enough to do accurately without even thinking about it. They were gaining and losing certain abilities both physically and mentally without either of them being able to understand why it happened.

It was like a status quo had been broken. Like the rules of their cohabitation were being changed up on them without them getting a say about it. It made them feel uneasy.

Was all of this going to be permanent ? Were these strange small changes going to keep happening in the future ? And most of all, why ? Why was this happening to them now ?

"Chara, please calm down" Frisk advised their friend as they sensed them getting more and more stressed.

"We're going to be fine, remember ? We always are." Frisk pressed Chara's presence a bit closer to their own consciousness, doing the mental equivalent of holding their hand. They didn't get see Chara acting this way very often, typically they disliked to show any kind of weakness. They guessed that the feeling of not being in full control of their link hit them particularly hard.

After all, as nobody else knew about their continued existence within Frisk yet, Frisk was the only one Chara had to talk to and get a response from, the only one they could care for and have it be returned. Frisk had countless friends, but as long as their existence stayed a secret, Chara only had Frisk.

Frisk ?

"Yes ?"

I think Toriel is right. You should go see a doctor. I doubt it can help much but if we can get any clue about identifying the problem, i think we should take those chances.

Frisk nodded.

Everything was going to be alright.

Chapter Text

Still feeling incredibly hot, Frisk decided to change their clothes to put on a thinner T-shirt and shorts. Hopefully that would make things a bit more bearable.

There was still quite a bit of time to kill left before lunch. Chara, like the weeb they were, proposed Frisk to watch some anime in the meantime. Frisk usually didn't particularly like anime, although they had nothing against it either. Yet, today, they oddly really felt like giving it a try and accepted their friend's proposal with little hesitation to the surprise of them both.

They didn't watch Mew Mew Kissie Cutie as they had already promised Alphys to watch it with her one day or another. Intsead, they let Chara pick something that they thought Frisk might like.

Frisk didn't really know how to describe what Chara made them watch. It was... The plot was a bit strange. And the artstyle was definitly weird, too. But they found it fairly enjoyable in its own way.

This is just the beginning, it gets better afterwards.

They had no doubt that Chara meant what they said, but they had no intention of making a marathon either.

Though, the human was also left wondering if-

If Undyne would like this anime ? Well it has buff people with supernatural powers and big magic weapons. That is a yes by default in her book.

"Yeah ! How did you know i was gonna say that ?" Frisk wondered.

I... I don't know ? I guess i just know you pretty well. Chara laughed it off.

Frisk grinned in reaction as they went to check on Toriel.

"Mother ?" They asked. Toriel closed her book and stabilised her reading chair to look at them. Frisk noticed a strange look in her eyes. It was like she had just seen a ghost.

"What is it, my child ?" The boss monster interrogated them, trying to chase away the thought she just had.

"I really don't feel well... Can you take me to the doctor like you said, please ?"

Toriel blinked.

"Of course my child. How about we go there after lunch ?" She proposed, getting a nod from the human. Frisk then went to play outside for a little, leaving Toriel alone with her thoughts.

Chara...

Why was Frisk reminding her so much of them lately ?

Even if she had only first met them a few weeks ago, the monster could tell they hadn't been acting quite like usual for a little while. But more importantly, the way they had been acting instead was much closer to how her second child had once been.

It was just small details really. The way they spoke a bit fancier, their posture, even little habits like the way they filled up their glass yesterday. All those little things kept piling up on top of one another to the point where sometimes, when looking at them, Toriel could swear that she was looking at Chara again if only for just a moment.

Maybe it was just because they looked quite similar physically, Chara has been gone for a long time after all.

Perhaps this was why she was so quick to propose them to go see a doctor when they told her they felt sick. After having lost Chara to a sickness, she was inclined to be particularly careful with Frisk even for something so small. She couldn't afford to lose yet another child...

"Chara ? Do you believe mom would like these ?" Frisk wondered as they had the idea of bringing her something they just stumbled upon in the grass by chance.

Whilst i am certain she would appreciate the gesture, those might have the side effect of bringing back some old memories. They pointed out.

"I just want to make her a little gift and think that those look really pretty !" They justified themself.

Well, we can agree on that. Chara mentally snickered. Alright.

The ex-queen thought that she had managed to make peace with herself regarding Asriel and Chara's deaths. Even if the memories stayed painful, she believed that she had been able to accept that it had happened by now.

But when she was around Frisk, she at times felt like Chara was right there. Just within her reach, from beyond the grave. This was a silly thought of course, and it was one she would never tell Frisk about as to not make make her child think they were causing her pain. But it was there. The painful impression that Chara was present, that they needed her, and that Toriel was unable to provide once again. Like some sort of odd motherly instinct that refused to let go even now that it was far too late for anything to be done about Chara's fate.

Her child...

Her child that she had buried herself...

It seemed that despite what she believed, she hadn't fully gotten over the incident yet. She had merely managed to restrict it to a corner of her mind, only for it come back now that she had Frisk to care for.

She would protect them. She would do her best to make sure that Frisk could live a happy life.

"Mother ?" Frisk's voice surprised her. She hadn't noticed them coming back so soon.

"Look, i've gotten something for you !" They handed her a bouquet of flowers. How sweet of them !

Toriel's newborn smile froze almost immediatly as she looked at the flowers with a bit more attention. Those were not any flowers. Those were golden flowers. Frisk had just gotten her golden flowers... Chara's favorites.

But most of all, their eyes... Frisk's eyes...

The look they gave her was one that already had its place in the monster's memories. It was the one she saw in Chara's eyes the day they first called her "mother". Even the color of Frisk's irises felt like it had a slightly different shade than usual.

In just the time it took for her to blink, it was gone. Frisk's look was back to normal. Was she seeing things that weren't there ? Was her imagination playing tricks on this poor old lady ?

Maybe she was a bit tired.

"Thank you, my child" She finally responded, taking the flowers and making sure not to let her voice tremble as she did.

She should probably start cooking lunch now. It would be able to distract her and the quicker it was done, the quicker Frisk's problem could be taken care of.

One lesson that was learned the hard way through Chara's tragic tale was that as monster and human bodies were composed very differently, things like diseases worked and were treated using fairly different methods from one species to another. Her child's symptoms had been severe and got worse quickly, monsters were unable to prepare any medicine that could have saved them, or at least made it less painful.

Monsterkind only disposed of limited information when it came to modern human medicine. They knew of the human body itself quite well, but human medicine like it was used nowadays did not exist before the war and whilst they had been able to collect some information via the garbage dump throughout the years, their understanding remained rather limited.

For these reasons, Toriel judged it would likely be better for Frisk if she took them to see a human doctor. Besides, Alphys was currently busy anyway.

The drive wasn't very long, around 20 minutes. It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining bright over the city. Perhaps a little too bright as Frisk kept complaining about how hot and sweaty they felt during the ride. Toriel found it quite odd that Frisk was willing to wait two hours for her to come back in the Ruins with just a few phone calls once in a while to pass the time, yet was now unable to bear the heat for such a short trip.

Frisk wasn't usually so impatient. But well, if they were unwell, it was understandable they could be in a bad mood today.

Unfortunately, Frisk would have to wait just a little longer before the doctor could receive them. Whilst she anticipated more complaints, Frisk actually managed to keep themself entertained by drawing on some paper that was left there to keep children busy.

"Hey, Chara ?" They had asked their friend mentally. "Do you want me to let you draw something ?" They proposed to lend Chara control of their hands for a little while.

No thanks. Not right now. The incorporeal child denied the offer. Toriel could get suspicious something was off if you drew things that looked too good for your standards anyway. They added as unlike them, the eight fallen human was not very good at drawing.

Not having anything else better to do, Frisk decided to try and attempt to draw something anyway on their own. After a little bit of thinking, they settled on trying to draw Toriel. They would most definitly make something that looked awful, but it might be fun to try.

Frisk surprised themself. Despite not really having any clear idea of what they were doing, they instinctively made cleaned curved lines with pretty good proportions on their first attempt. It just came naturally to them, as if it was something that had done many times before already.

Halfway through their drawing, Frisk noticed that they were using their right hand again instead of their left. If Toriel saw this she might ask herself some questions, so Frisk changed hands quickly. Well, it was true they would have to talk about this to her later on, but now wasn't the time.

Somehow, they felt like drawing had become less instinctive now that they were using their normal hand. They couldn't explain it, drawing with their right hand just felt right. It felt more natural. Which was a ridiculous thing to say for a left handed person with little drawing skills. And yet it was sincerely the way they felt.

Frisk finished the outline of their drawing. Chara said nothing, but Frisk could feel that they were fairly impressed. The human then got started on coloring and shading their drawing. Once they started shading and did a pretty good job at it, Chara finally intervened.

How are you doing that ? You haven't even tried doing shading ONCE before. They were quite baffled at what seemed like too much to be merely beginner's luck. Did Frisk magically develop a new skill again ?

Frisk shrugged. They indeed hadn't attempted shading before. They just tried something instinctively and it just... worked ? It seemed they just had this in them.

Another thing that they noticed was that the way they had drawn Toriel was similar to some manga/anime art style. This had not been intentional on their part, but examining it more closely, it actually looked quite close to Chara's own art style... Just not quite as good of course.

Maybe that was just because Chara sometimes drew things with their hands, and thus that they gained some indirect muscle memory from that ?

Frisk couldn't find any other possible explanation, so they assumed that must be it.

"Oh ! Did you draw this, my child ?" Toriel asked when her eyes turned to Frisk again and she noticed the drawing of her. "This is really good.." She added quietly, genuinely surprised to see that Frisk had apparently gotten much better at drawing since she last saw something they made.

Frisk happily nodded in response, fairly proud of themself.

Though, Toriel couldn't help but to notice the odd similarity between what Frisk had made and the way Chara used to draw. She really couldn't help but to compare the two of them at every turn recently it seemed. Maybe it was just her mind trying to handle the loss by comparing what she used to have to what she still had, to try and convince herself that things were still alright.

At the same time, it was hard to deny that the coincidences kept getting more obvious and more numerous. Frisk couldn't possibly be doing this on purpose, could they ? Why would they be imitating someone they had never got to meet ?

Shortly after, Frisk was finally received by the doctor. They described their headache and the specifics of how it felt and when did it start as well as they could, then, the doctor asked them several questions.

There were many possibles causes for headaches, ranging from being under high stress for long periods of time to lack of food/sleep or spending too much time in a row on screens every day regularly. All of those possibilities could also be influenced by other factors that depended on the person, like age or wether they had other health problems. This made identifying the cause of a headache a pretty difficult task simply because of how many different ways somebody could get one.

Yet, even after discussing for quite a long time, the older human was unable to provide a proper diagnostic. The doctor went through some old notes and reports, trying to find a case similar to the one Frisk described that had been seen in the past or some rarer causes of headache that might have slipped his mind after not having had to consider it in a diagnosis for so long. A simple headache probably wasn't worth such an extensive search, but the patient was Frisk. They had been on the news a lot the past couple weeks and they were accompanied by the ex-queen of monsters, it was a special occasion so the doctor was willing to make some extra efforts for them.

But unfortunately, even then, the doctor was unable to find anything that could explain Frisk's headache.

It seems there was little more he could offer to do to help. He simply didn't have enough information to work with in order to properly help them. As he prepared to give them some generic advice on how to make headaches less painful or how to avoid getting them in the future as a closing note, Frisk surprised him by saying something very strange.

"Sir ? There's something else very strange that has happened very recently." They spoke up rather quietly. The doctor invited them to continue in case what they had to say could be useful to him.

"I became ambidextrous. From one day to the next with no explanation, not long after the headache started getting worse." They explained. The human adult stared at them with widened eyes. Spontaneous ambidexterity ? What in the name of science ? Toriel was doing very much the same, Frisk had not told her about this.

"Describe what you mean by 'From one day to the next.'" He requested.

"Well, i went to sleep left handed and i woke up ambidextrous. I didn't even notice it at first until i caught myself in the middle of doing something with my right hand." They obviously let out the part about Chara's involvement in that story.

Whilst the the first symptom was one he couldn't do much about because it was so common, this one had the opposite problem. He couldn't think of anything at all that could cause such a thing to happen. The doctor asked Frisk a few more questions to make sure that what they had described was indeed what had happened to them and that there was no misunderstanding of the situation from either of them. But this did not appear to be the case.

As much as he disliked to admit it, he frankly had no idea of what to do next aside from proposing them to visit a colleague that might be more qualified for their odd case than he was. There was however one more thing that he could at least give them the option of trying if they wished.

There weren't any more patients waiting after Frisk currently which meant they had some free time, the machine was available for use and again this patient wasn't quite anybody, so the doctor proposed them that if they really wanted, Frisk could always do an MRI to check for any oddities just in case it could help identifying an issue. Free of charge of course.

Not wanting to have done all of that for nothing and to follow Chara's advice regarding trying to find any trace of the issue, Frisk accepted the offer fairly quickly. After having been burned alive before, they weren't afraid of some scanning thing.

They had to fill a little information page about themself first for formality reasons. It asked for things such as birth date, name, or sex at birth.

Funnily enough, as monsters hadn't seen a human in years and that Frisk looked too androgynous for them to be able to tell, they had went through their entire underground journey without anybody knowing of their biological sex. (Except Chara of course, Chara could tell immediatly for obvious reasons).

But as things like getting enrolled in school required providing this information, it eventually got out after a few days on the surface. They had to give Toriel the answer and by now, most of their friends knew as well. Frisk didn't really care wether people knew about that or not though, as long as they used their preferred pronouns.

"Try to stay still and hold your breath". The doctor informed Frisk a few moments before starting the procedure.

The young human felt slightly uneasy, this whole being fit in a big tube thing was definitly a little weird to them.

We'll be fine. Don't worry.

Frisk closed their eyes and exhaled once before breathing in and holding their breath.

Chara almost blurted out some goofy narration to ease the tension, but eventually decided against it to let Frisk concentrate.

The one thing they hadn't expected about this was how much noise it would make. They thought it would be more of a sort of silent scan but it appeared they were wrong.

It was over soon enough, Frisk felt a little dizzy after the procedure but other than that, they were just fine. Toriel was waiting for them outside the room.

Usually, getting results for these scans took about a week. But since it was for them, they could likely get those as soon as tomorrow. They weren't sure if they liked being privileged that way but well, they couldn't really complain.

Before leaving the doctor's office with Toriel, Frisk spent some time staring at the mirror again. Their hair was even more of a mess than usual today and sweat kept pearling down their cheeks. More so even than the day before.

Considering how much you've been sweating recently, you sho-

"Should drink more water as to not get dehydrated ?" Frisk finished Chara's sentence for them.

Yes. That.

"Hehe..." Frisk giggled. "Looks like i know you pretty well too !" They winked, fairly happy of having been able to guess what their headmate was about to think to them before they did so.

It appears that way. The first fallen human conceded.

Frisk continued staring at their reflection. Something about it felt off. Only very slightly off, but still definitly off. They couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly...

Its still you. Chara commented. Earning a little smile from Frisk. Come on, let's go now.

The children left the hospital, oblivious to the fact that Frisk's natural melanin production had recently slowed down by a small amount, resulting in their skin color having gotten slightly paler than before.

Chapter Text

There was nothing more to be done about their issue until tomorrow at the earliest when they would receive scan results. Continuing to worry about something that they couldn't do anything about would not be productive and only stress them more.

As such, Frisk decided to do their homework after coming back from the doctor's office. It would distract them and it was something they would have to do anyway.

Whilst Frisk was initially not particularly talented in school due to their lack of a proper education during their younger years, they had been catching up to the others at a relatively good speed now. Chara however, as Toriel had long wanted to be a teacher, had to follow a strict curriculum during their time underground and thus were quite significantly ahead of Frisk when it came to studies.

Because of this, they were sometimes frustrated when Frisk spent a long time figuring out something that they considered child's play. Chara helped Frisk sometimes, but only rarely gave away answers as they considered it barely different from cheating, instead they just tried to lead Frisk in the right direction so that they could find on their own.

Frisk however did not have any issues finding their answers today. When the young human read a question, their subconscious appeared to know how to answer it almost immediatley, sometimes using methods that Frisk felt like they didn't even know that they knew how to use. Yet, they just sort of did, without even thinking.

Not that they could complain of course ! They had finished their work in a lot less time than usual and didn't even need to ask Chara for help once.

Completing yo-

'Completing your homework fills you with determination' Frisk thought before Chara even had the chance to actually finish their line. The first human was slightly frustrated of not having gotten the chance to do much to help them with anything recently aside from some generic advice about sickness which didn't even amount to anything so far. Could they not even narrate anymore without being this predictable ? As much of a selfish thought as this was, they missed a little when their advice literally saved Frisk's life on regular occasions in their initial adventure underground.

'Its fine' Frisk reassured them, having heard their thought despite Chara's attempt to keep it to themself. 'There's nothing selfish about wanting to help people. Quite the opposite.' They smiled.

'Just your mere presence is useful, you know ?' Frisk continued. 'Just having someone that understands me by my side at all times helps so much more than someone that explains maths problem.' They winked aiming at nothing in particular, the important part was just for Chara to feel them winking.

Thank you. Perha-

Before Chara could finish their sentence, another spike of pain tore through Frisk's head. However, this one was different. Chara had felt the previous spikes through the link they shared with Frisk, perceiving their pain. But this time, Chara felt a pain of their own as well. They were not certain how that could be, but Chara themself was suffering too.

Worse, they could both feel not only their own pain but also that of the other as well, which made the experience twice as bad.

Frisk vainly tried to hold their head with their hands but it had no effect on what they suffered through. The sharp burn that ravaged their mind refused to weaken and made them worry their head would explode. They picked up a couple pillows and shoved them against their mouth so that they could scream without alerting Toriel with the noise.

Frisk ! Chara managed to articulate a thought in spite of the pain.

It had been ten seconds now and their agony showed no sign of slowing down. Unable to hold it back any longer, tears began to form around Frisk's eyes. What was this torture ?

Chara attempted to squeeze their consciousnesses closer together to calm them down but it felt like that barely had any effect at all.

The only time Frisk could think of where they had felt more pain than this was when Flowey burned them alive after having taken the six human souls. The majority of Frisk's deaths had not been as horrible as what they were feeling right now. Although that was actually not saying all that much. As Frisk knew from experience, death itself was surprisingly peaceful and painless. It was the process of dying that one should really be afraid of.

The tears began wetting the pillow that their face was still pressed against as the screams turned into sobs.

The acute pain finally began slowly wearing off, Frisk felt their muscles contract and let go a few times without them intending to do so but without Chara willing it either. They were more like some sorts of spasms. Their arms and legs were trembling and their rapid heartbeat slowed down a little at last.

Frisk continued to lay there for a bit longer, breathing in and out before removing the pillows from their face when they were certain it was over.

Frisk ? Are you alright ?

'Do i look alright to you ?' They let out with a slightly angry sounding tone. 'No ! What the heck was that ?' It wasn't frequent for Frisk to act this way but given what they'd just been through it was understandable. To be honest, Chara was a bit weirded out by the fact that what they had both just said would have felt more natural coming from the other than from themself. Almost like they had just switched their lines.

What was not funny to them however was that once again they had been completely unable to do anything to help Frisk. They just watched them suffer. It mattered little if Chara had been impacted by it too, fact was that they had done nothing but to make it all even worse as Frisk had to face their pain as well.

They couldn't help but to wonder again wether they were doing Frisk more harm than good. They barely had any use for their help anymore. Not for homework, not for drawing, not for anything. Whenever Chara wanted to give advice, it was either pointless or Frisk somehow was able to guess what they were going to say just before they did so. It was like they knew everything that Chara knew how to do.

...

The more they thought about it, the more terrifyingly accurate they realised this was.

Frisk had kept magically gaining skills in domains where Chara was supposed to be better than them like they had been reading their mind. But, that couldn't be right. They knew Frisk hadn't been doing that just now with the homework, they had made made particularly sure of that so that Frisk wouldn't cheat.

Then again, they had both felt the subconscious barrier between the two of them had been getting thinner recently. They had more difficulties controlling wether to allow to other to read their thoughts and Chara couldn't project themself anymore. The connection between them felt like it was stronger and didn't let them have as much independence from each other within Frisk's mind.

Could that explain how Frisk had been completing their sentences ? Or gained skills with drawing or maths ? Let alone drawing in the same style as them ! Was it possible that they were now intertwined enough for Frisk to extract knowledge or skills that belonged to Chara or follow the first human's subconscious trains of thoughts without even realising it themself ?

Not just that too... Now that they were thinking about it, these days Frisk had been...

They had been acting a lot like... like them ?

A series of events flashed through Chara's thoughts. Liking golden flowers, filling glasses all the way up, wanting to eat chocolate or to try to watch anime, acting impatient or even their way to address Toriel... Frisk recently had been doing and saying things that felt a lot like themself.

Were they overthinking this ? Given how close they both were, it was normal they'd been rubbing off on each other, right ? But... not this much either. It had just been over two weeks since they met !

Yet all of those puzzle pieces fit together so disturbingly well that they wondered if what was really going on with Frisk all this time was that they-

Frisk and Chara felt a chill run down their common spine when the latter had a scaring thought.

The hands.

Chara had been right handed before they died and became de facto left handed after reincarnating due to the fact that Frisk was.

Did Frisk get the ability to use their right hand as a dominant hand as well because of them ?

That would certainly explain everything but... It'd mean that their connection was deepening not just mentally but physically too. Which would be pretty worrying...

'You've... been acting a bit more like me, too' Frisk added to Chara's previous thoughts. They felt heavy drops of sweat pearling down from them, unable to tell wether they were getting anxious about was Chara was thinking or if they were just hot again.

Have i ?

'You have attempted flirting with me as a joke yesterday. You usually do not like it when i do that with people. That was a bit surprising. Also you been completing my thoughts a couple times as well.'

Chara paused a little before being forced to acknowledge that Frisk had a point. They did feel like Frisk had been acting like them more so than the other way around but perhaps that was simply because they were given more chances to show it as they actually had a body. If such a thing really was happening, it probably made sense it wouldn't go just one way.

'Come on Chara. Don't look so down !' Frisk tried cheering them up. 'Even if that was true, i wouldn't mind much to be getting even closer to you.' They didn't say it, but Frisk also thought that gaining new abilities out of nowhere had been pretty cool so far.

That is... not the part i am worried about. Frisk, when did we start acting this way ?

"I don't know exactly" Frisk actually responded out loud this time. Not via thoughts. "A couple days ? What does that have to do with anything ?" They wondered.

Frisk suddenly felt Chara getting very worried. More so even than before.

...When did this inexplicable "sickness" of yours start ?

They didn't answer. But they both knew what the answer was. Those two events had been practically simultaneous.

Suddenly, Frisk didn't feel so calm about this whole ordeal anymore.

'Do you think... ?' They didn't dare spell it out but they didn't need to for their headmate to get the question.

It certainly sounds plausible. What has been happening to you might be my fault.

'Will you stop blaming yourself already ? We're not even sure this is happening and even if it was, it'd be going both ways so you wouldn't be to blame. It'd be us both. What do i need to tell you to make you understand that you're my best friend ?' Frisk refused to let Chara see themself as responsible for this hypothetical issue. 'I would rather go through that thing from earlier again a dozen times than to lose you' They added to make sure Chara wouldn't doubt their importance again.

This hypothetical situation of yours appears disturbingly likely. If this partial blending of our subconscious and your sickness really are actually one and the same problem, those spikes of pain risk to continue happening more frequently in the future.

Frisk was not pleased at the idea that for all they knew, the next spike could fire any second. Besides, if such a thing happened again while they were with Toriel, how could they explain to her what was going on without causing her to panic ?

But more so, if this was indeed what Frisk's problem came from, then how on Earth could it possibly be fixed ? How could that condition be healed ? As far as they knew, what they and Chara had was unique. If the issue came from the link they shared, then they were practically patient zero for a whole new medical issue that had never been seen before. That did not sound very promising for recovery.

What about mom ?

'Mom ?' Frisk wondered.

If this is correct, she cannot know what is really happening. Chara affirmed.

'What about the scan ?" Frisk wondered. They hadn't considered this before, but there might be a chance that it could reveal something that would compromise the secret of Chara's existence if their link did cause the sickness.

Frisk felt afraid. Or to be exact, they felt the fear that Chara radiated from within them.

Nonono... This cannot happen. I cannot. I am not ready. Not like this. They cannot know about me. The first human began to panic a little at the thought of possibly risking to have to reveal themself in the near future.

Frisk attempted to press their consciousnesses closer as Chara had earlier, but that didn't work either. After a moment, they realised that the reason why this wasn't having effect anymore was because their consciousnesses were already pressed particularly close at all times now. They could no longer provide each other with this symbolic affectionate gesture. Their condition had just taken away from them the main thing that always helped them comforting each other whenever they needed it.

Sadly, they had little time to mourn this loss as they had to try and calm down Chara. It was alright. It was very unlikely that this would occur and even if it did, nothing bad would happen. If anything the Dreemurrs would cry tears of joy if they learned Chara still lived on in their own way. Chara wouldn't risk messing anything up. No matter what, happened, they would be okay. No matter wether others knew about them or not.

Frisk let Chara take control of their body for a few minutes so that they could breathe in and out on their own will which would help them relax.

'Do you feel better ?' They asked when Chara returned their limbs to them.

I... I think i'll manage. Chara didn't sound very confident.

'I think you will, too' Frisk added.

The pair was strangely silent for the rest of the day. Toriel noticed that her child looked troubled by something, but didn't question it further as she assumed it was simply about their illness. One thing that she didn't prevent herself from pointing out however was how much they ate for dinner today. Not so long ago Frisk didn't feel very hungry, but now they were eating as much as two children in one.

The boss monster only got a nervous smile in response when she said that to Frisk.

A few hours later, Frisk asked their friend a question before going to bed. 'Chara ? Can i tell you about something ?'

You're scared. Chara stated before Frisk could even begin. About what's happening to us.

Frisk quietly nodded. As much as they wished otherwise, the more they thought about it, the more obvious it became to them that Chara had to be right. The signs were everywhere and there was no alternative explanation. How could they ever get back to normal if no one knew what was truly going on with them ? And if they didn't do so soon, how much further would they risk to intertwine ? Not that they minded sharing their headspace with Chara of course, but they had to admit that not knowing how much more their connection could intensify in the coming days was a bit scary considering that the side effects so far had already been pretty bad for Frisk.

They knew that nothing bad could happen to them. That no matter what they could still LOAD even if the worst took place, but yet they still had this unexplainable feeling, this intuition that something terrible was taking place.

A feeling of dread hungs over you... But you stay determined. Chara narrated while Frisk washed away the sweat on their forehead with a towel in the bathroom.

As they were just near the mirror, Chara would have taken the occasion to remind Frisk that once again, it was still them. But given the current situation, they decided that this wouldn't be very appropriate of them this time around. So they would pass on it today.

They didn't need cheesy lines to cheer themselves up. They were virtually immortal physically speaking, and mentally, they would always have each other. Closer than two people could ever dream to be.

There was no such thing as being "too close" to each other mentally, was there ?

Chapter Text

Frisk woke up at 2AM the next day. Their insides were gurgling. It felt similar to a grumbling stomach, but Frisk was not hungry. Instead, they just felt nauseous.

Of course, they attempted to fall asleep again. It was far too early for them to get up. Unfortunately, their body had a different idea. A few moments later, Frisk had an acid reflux that they tried to swallow back, but that still managed to leave a bad taste in their mouth. They tried getting rid of it by swallowing their saliva a few times but it didn't have much effect aside from making their mouth dry.

Deciding to try and ignore it anyway, Frisk closed their eyes and rolled around to try and force themself to go back to sleep.

A couple minutes later however , they had a second one worse than the first. It even made the back of their tongue sting a little from its acidity, making the young human frown a bit.

Frisk raised their torso to reach a sitting position, in the hopes that having gravity working against it would prevent it from happening a third time.

It did seem to work to some extent, they stayed like this for a few minutes without another reflux. However, they did feel their head spinning a little and their throat and mouth felt dirty and dry.

Eventually, they decided to get up and drink some water before trying to fall asleep again. They walked slowly as to make sure not to risk waking up Toriel. Luckily for them, the bathroom was located just next to their room. Frisk took a glass and filled it up halfway with cold water before drinking it.

They did feel a little better for a moment, but just when they were about to head back to their room, their nausea doubled in intensity and they felt their diaphragm and their abdomen contract. They only had a couple seconds to react before throwing up in the sink.

They felt disgusting. The taste was terrible, the smell was terrible. And most concerning of all, among the gastric acids and remains of food, were those traces of blood in their vomit ?

Frisk let the water run again, first in order to wash it away, then for rinsing their month and get rid of the taste, hopefully for good this time.

Was this another side effect ? Chara finally spoke up after having remained silent since they woke up.

'Most likely' Frisk thought back to them while checking in the mirror if there were any traces of it on their pajamas. Luckily for the human, there weren't.

We can't continue like this for much longer. The first fallen human commented. Our situation appears to be worsening.

Yes. Frisk knew that very well. But they had already done everything they could do so far, right ? Besides, they would get the MRI results later today, surely they could figure out what to do from there ?

I guess you're right.

When Frisk went back to their room, they opened their window before going back to bed, hoping that having some fresh air would prevent them from getting nauseous again.

They were pleasantly surprised to have managed to fall asleep again so quickly. It felt like it had been less than a minute since they laid on bed again and yet it had been four hours. The quickly got up and proceeded with their morning routine.

They didn't really have anything planned for today, so they could do pretty much whatever they wanted for entertainment. Maybe they could find some board game to play with Toriel ? Maybe call some of their friends ? Or they could just stay on their own and do some nerd things with Chara. To be honest, given their current situation, it was probably going to be that last one. It would get pretty problematic if they ended up throwing up or having another headache intensity spike in front of someone and made them worry.

Well, they guessed there was an argument to be made that they should let people who care about them know how bad things really were, but the cause of these issues was something they could hardly understand or believe, let alone help them with. It was probably better for everyone if they didn't know the full story. Especially according to their companion who had no intention of being exposed.

While the two headmates had a short inner debate regarding wether to drink apple juice or grapefruit juice, a knock was heard on the door.

"Who's there ?" Toriel's voice responded from afar as the boss monster approached.

"aaron"

Oh no.

They hadn't taken this into account. 2 weeks ago on Sunday, just a few days after they reached the surface, Sans had shown up uninvited so try a knock knock joke on Toriel, who then invited him in leading the two to end up chatting and telling each other jokes for some time, which Frisk had even participated in (To be exact, they repeated the jokes that Chara whispered to them.) Then the next week on the same date and time, he had shown up again. As the two of them used to practice jokes to each other in the underground, Frisk guessed that these Sunday mornings were probably going to become their new weekly pun hangout.

They liked Sans, of course ! he was a great friend ! It was just that he had a certain skill for somehow figuring out a lot of things going from very little information. Frisk had learned to not underestimate the skeleton when once upon a timeline, he had managed to find out about their time travel ability simply by noticing that they looked bored repeatedly in situations that should have picked their interest of that they solved some puzzles way too easily for someone who had never seen it before, such as MTT's colored tile maze.

And well, in a situation where they were having to hide a lot of pretty important things, having Sans around did make them a little anxious.

He was never able to pick up on my existence in any previous timeline iteration. Why would he do so now ? Chara asked with very little confidence. It seemed they were more trying to convince themself that it was true than anything else.

Both of them knew that the presence of their friend didn't really have any symptoms in the past aside from when they let Chara control of their body. Now however, the physical and mental changes were very noticeable from the eye of an outsider. They would indeed have to be pretty careful not to let too many signs around him.

"Aaron who ?" Asked Toriel, who had now reached the other side of the door.

"why aaron you opening the door ?" The skeleton delivered his joke.

Toriel let out a quiet laugh before opening the door. Frisk themself was unable to restrain a little giggle.

"hey tori, what's up ?" He asked.

"Oh well, we are still trying to finalise the formalities for living on the surface. For the most part though, things are working out just fine." The former queen explained. "Do you want something to eat, Sans ?" She proposed.

"nah, i already got something." Frisk wasn't looking but they could imagine that it was probably a hot dog. Either that or ketchup.

"heya frisk." Sans called out to them when he saw them. The human hummed and gave a little wave as an answer without looking at him in the eyes.

The two monsters then went to the living room while Frisk want back to their own room as they were not particularly eager to participate this time around. Frisk couldn't understand what they were saying, but as they regularly heard laugh coming from afar, they could assume there were unsurprisingly at least some jokes involved.

Hey, Frisk ?

'Yes ?' The latter responded mentally.

Vomiting blood can hardly be a good thing. Can you search about this online ?

Without more words, Frisk went ahead and did so. There was apparently a medical term for that : "Hematemesis". It was considered a pretty important and concerning sign medically, there were multiple possible causes for it but none of them were very good. Aside from the one involving having previously ingested blood, which Frisk had obviously not. They closed the page before making themself worry even more. This would likely come up with the MRI anyway.

After around an hour, another short knock on their door signaled Sans' arrival. The human tilted their head around to meet the skeleton's eyes as he entered their room.

"kid ? you've been kinda quiet today." He began. "how's life been treating ya ?" The short monster tried to start a conversation.

"Could be better." Frisk answered, remaining quite vague.

Sans looked to the side and sat down next to frisk. "well, lighten up bucko. things never go perfect. instead of thinking about how things could have been, try to make the best of what's given to ya." The skeleton's advice felt like it was more than a simple life tip. He seemed to feel quite strongly about what he had just said.

Quite the ironic words to say to someone with a power like yours. Chara commented from within their mind.

But Frisk did sort of agree. Although what was currently being "given to them" was quite troubling.

"I guess so." They finally responded. The skeleton's grin grew slightly larger upon hearing those words. "What about you ?"

Sans looked to the side. "papyrus is trying to get a driver's license. its... uh... a work in progress. but im sure he'll make it in no time"

Noticing his answer had been about his brother rather than about himself, Frisk playfully reacted. "Hey, i've asked about what's been up with you Sans !"

"okay, sure. but how's about you go first ?" the skeleton asked.

Go first ?

"Go first ?" The human child repeated to the monster.

"i dunno, you still haven't told me anything." Sans pointed out.

Act natural. Chara reminded Frisk when they were about to flash a nervous smile by manually preventing them from doing it and leaving a slim twitch near their jaw as the only trace of what Frisk had been about to do so.

"Me ? Well, i feel a bit sick lately but other than that nothing much." Frisk answered. Sans seemed somewhat unsatisfied with this response. He stared at them blankly for a moment before closing his eyes.

"hmm... that expression." He started, freezing the children in place. "that's the expression of someone who's hiding something" He pinned them with his glare.

'Crap' both of them thought simultaneously. As they got visibly more tense, many of their muscles contracted in reaction. They became conscious the moment it happened that this had most definitely not slipped by the skeleton's body langage detector of a mind, which could grill a hot dog from 5km away.

Sans chuckled. "don't sweat it kid. just remember you've made some good friends. these people really care about you, ya know ?" The skeleton got up and glanced at them with a worried look. he stayed like this for some time before heading back out of the room. "well, see ya."

That went...

"...Well ? But also kinda bad ?" Frisk finished Chara's thought for them. He had certainly seemed to notice they hadn't been telling the full story, but at least he wasn't into what that full story was ? His departing words felt like they were trying to suggest Frisk to tell their friends about what they were hiding rather than keeping it to themself.

They decided to remain in their room until Sans left, just in case they risked giving away anything accidentally. It was the safer bet.

"tori ? can i ask you something ?" The skeleton sounded a bit worried.

"What is it, Sans ?" She responded.

"is there something happening with frisk ? seems like they've been avoiding me today and i get the feeling there's something they aren't telling us." Sans brought up.

"Frisk has not been going very well lately. They are fairly stressed and they've been quite sick. Sweating, having headaches, they've even passed an MRI. Excuse them if they aren't in a very good mood." The boss monster tried to justify Frisk's actions.

"heh, maybe. i still think you should look out for 'em though. still feel like they know something we don't and they don't wanna share it."

Toriel believed she knew Frisk pretty well, and whilst they had certainly been acting a bit oddly, Toriel could difficulty imagine them hiding something of major importance from her. Nevertheless, she noted what Sans had said in a part of her mind before wishing him goodbye and returning to her occupations.

It was only late in the afternoon that she was disturbed again, this time however, it was her phone. She had been messaged by an unknown number. It had sent her several messages along with a few documents. After giving it a quick look, she was fast to identify those as Frisk's MRI scan results. Intrigued, the boss monster decided to take a look.

Oh, god...

"F-Frisk ?" Their adoptive mother's voice trembled as she tried to catch their attention.

"What is it ?" the child wondered.

"The results are here..." Toriel answered.

"Oh ! What do they say ?" Frisk asked.

"...Lets sit down." She requested.

This is not a very good sign...

Toriel brought up her phone and showed Frisk what she had been sent. The first part was mostly administrative formalities, so she skipped straight to the part that mattered. "The way your organs are disposed is slightly atypical." She started. "Many of them are positioned very slightly differently than what one would expect, they should be going back to normal over time, but until then, there are many possible side effects or increased vulnerabilities."

Frisk took Toriel's phone from her and scrolled through the list in search for a few select things. In between loss of balance or stomach aches (Frisk was glad not to have had that one. Headaches were already bad enough), they eventually found nausea and low iron (which would explain the light headedness) among the likelier symptoms and hematemesis among the unlikelier ones. So they guessed that they did have their explanation regarding those. There were a few other concerning things though like a weakened immune system or difficult digestion.

It was pretty insane how a few slightly oddly placed things in there could cause this many issues, at least this was not going to be permanent...

Frisk gave a short nod and gave Toriel her phone back.

The monster's eyes lowered as she selected another document.

"This is the part that is the most concerning." She looked at them worryingly whilst the report regarding their brain opened. This was probably not a good thing. As far as they knew, the anomalies spotted in brains via MRI scans were rarely anything good. Usually it was things like tumors or strokes. After all it could hardly be a good thing to have something wrong with such an important part of their body. What worried them most however was the nature of what exactly could they have "found".

The boss monster remained silent for a moment before showing them some radio images along with some complicated text and the words "Frisk syndrome" written in bold letters. Frisk didn't understand much of what that all meant.

The fact that this wears your name cannot be good either.

"My child, do you know how thoughts work ?" She asked them.

That was an odd question.

'I do not like where this is going.' they both thought at the same time.

Frisk didn't answer.

Toriel decided to give them an oversimplification of a more complex process that would allow Frisk to understand without too much difficulty.

"You have nerves cells which can detect information from the outside world through your senses." She began. "And those cells can transmit this informations to other cells so that all of the cells can talk to each other. They can change, learn, adapt, and coordinate together to create thoughts."

Frisk was getting a bit afraid of what she would say next. Chara remained silent.

"And... Why is that important ?" They dared ask the question.

"Well, Frisk, your brain is doing something strange. Its spending much more energy than it should on its thought process." As she said those words out loud, Toriel realised that this was probably why Frisk had been eating a lot since yesterday, that extra energy they spent had to come from somewhere...

"When it receives information, it shares this information in between its cells too many times. The activity detected in your brain was 1.7 times as intense as it should have been. They think that the initial information might occasionally be shared to networks of cells more than once. Basically, your head is trying to formulate a thought multiple times from the same thing rather than just once. This might be the reason for your headaches." She attempted to remain calm and collected while explaining.

"This is something that has never been seen before. Your case is unique so they do not know how to treat it either. It shouldn't be too dangerous aside from what you've already experienced, but they still want you to come to the hospital very soon just in case. Just to make sure that you're fine and to learn more about your condition. Is this alright with you ?"

When she looked back up at her child, she found them shaking. They looked absolutely mortified. Oh, dear... She had tried to not scare them but it appears Frisk was quite afraid of what she had told them.

Meanwhile, within the child's head, hell was breaking loose.

Nononono. This is not happening. We are going to wake up.

'Chara, please' Frisk tried to think to them. 'Calm down.'

Calm down ? Calm down ? Frisk, you know exactly what this means. It could not be clearer, they know there is more than one set of thoughts forming in your head. This can only be because of me. Do you know what will happen next ? They are going to make you take more tests. They are going to make you a guinea pig to study you and your condition, and then... and then... They will find out about me. And once that happens they wil-

'CHARA, STOP !' Frisk interrupted them. 'Please. Listen'

What is there to listen to, Frisk ? We are screwed. Screwed.

'I know this looks bad, but they don't suspect a separate consciousness. They just think im wasting energy by overproducing thoughts. And even if they do run tests or ask questions or something, i can just... lie to them ? I won't let out your secret as long as you aren't comfortable with it.' Frisk attempted to reassure their friend that although this was not looking good, they were most certainly not doomed either. They just had to stay determined as always.

"Frisk, dear ?" Toriel snapped them both back into reality after watching her child shaking absentmindedly for a concerning amount of time. "Do you hear me ?"

"Oh... Sorry !" They apologised.

'I think i should accept. At best they can help us without knowing it, at worst we will lose some time. We don't have anything to lose by accepting to go there, do we ?' Frisk thought in direction of Chara.

I do not like this. The first human restated.

'I get that. But i really think we'll be just fine. Can you trust me on this ?'

Chara internally sighed. I guess i will. Buy please be careful.

"When would that be ?" Frisk asked.

"The last message suggests you to come to the hospital as soon as they can have a room adapted for a case like yours ready. Which should be in about a day." Toriel answered.

"So... After school tomorrow ?" They asked for confirmation of what they believed to have understood of the planning.

Toriel nodded in response.

Just before she left, the monster turned around one last time to reassure them. "Don't stress yourself too much over this, i am sure everything will turn out fine."

Chapter Text

Morning, Frisk. 'Morning, Chara.' The two told each other at the exact same time when they got up on Monday, which made them giggle a little.

Frisk quickly jumped out of bed and immediately almost tripped. Chara had to take control of their leg for a moment to prevent them from starting their day on the bad foot. Both figuratively and literally.

Hey, careful.

"Thanks." the younger child whispered before walking out. Frisk usually had a pretty good balance, Chara didn't know many people capable of stacking 29 hotdogs or a literal sphere on their head without dropping them after all. It was quite odd for them to trip so easily. Then again, Toriel's document did mention loss of balance among the possible symptoms for their condition, so they guessed it wasn't that surprising either.

One of the good sides of what was happening to them was that it made eating more convenient. Having most of their tastes now in common made it easier for them to agree on what to eat rather than having to make deals or compromises. Sure, these compensations paled in comparison to the worry it brought them, but well-

'Might as well focus on the positives, right ?' Frisk completed Chara's thought for them while showing some cereal in their mouth. They would have taken chocolate ones if they could, now that they were able to enjoy these as well as Chara did, but of course Toriel had not bought any as Frisk was not really a fan until now.

They actually felt a bit more in shape today than they did yesterday. That was likely for the best, it would have been too bad to go on what would probably be their last day of school for a few days while feeling unwell.

Toriel waved them goodbye when they were about to leave for school and reminded them that they would be going to the hospital once they came back. This was not necessary, Frisk had not forgotten.

There was only a slight breeze outside. This was the kind of weather that Frisk liked. Today though, they didn't feel like running through the wind or anything.

In fact, Frisk was not really walking normally, they were more just shambling about. Dragging their feet from place to place. Chara could feel that Frisk's body felt a little sluggish. Their movements were ample and stiff, they didn't feel very natural.

Are you stressed ? Obviously, Chara could feel that they were, but they couldn't tell wether this was the reason as to why they seemed tense while walking.

'Of course i'm a little stressed. How could i not be ?' Frisk answered while wiping away some sweat. They were however uncertain as well regarding what Chara was thinking about. They weren't tired, like they had noticed earlier, they felt pretty much alright today. Their body just seemed a little heavy to carry around.

Though considering all that happened recently, Frisk knew they shouldn't dismiss it like that. It was probably not 'nothing'. As Chara had thought of earlier, it was likely another new symptom of their condition. They would just have to be careful not to fall over today, they guessed.

The young human had the luck of not living far from school. It was just a few minutes away. Sometimes, when their schedule matched, Toriel even accompanied them as she took care of a class of kids younger than they were at the same school. Today though, she started a few hours later and would finish a couple hours after Frisk as well.

The number of other kids walking near them grew as they got closer to their destination. Frisk was going a bit slower than them.

Paying attention in class was somewhat difficult when they had so many things on their mind. Chara had to frequently give Frisk inner pokes to make sure that they were listening. This was made even harder by the fact that Chara didn't really have anything to learn from this class, which meant that Frisk could know everything that was being said pretty much immediately through their link.

However, they were not actually learning anything, it was just Chara's own knowledge which made them feel as if they had understood, not Frisk's. Frisk themself grasped the concepts instinctively through Chara, but would not actually learn much themself if they stopped at that. If they wanted to actually learn what was being said in the long run and not forget how to do it once their current 'condition' was fixed, they had to keep on focusing and go through the process they were studying over and over again.

It was difficult to tell the difference between Frisk knowing how to find the answer and Frisk finding it through Chara's thought process. This meant that it was hard to know when they were actually done with an exercise or a property and could move on to the next one or not.

It felt slow. It felt to Frisk as if they were spending ages working on things that they knew how to solve. If school was already tiring before, it was nothing in comparison to this. They felt like they were making no progress, even if they were. There was nothing to try and understand for them. They were just repeating the same things in their mind over and over until they eventually arbitrarily decided that it must have been enough for Frisk's consciousness to retain it. Every hour felt like an eternity.

They were actually really glad that this would only last a day. Frisk might have ended up hating school within a couple weeks if they had to keep this up for longer. They didn't have many words for it other than that it just sucked and they wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.

Frisk felt relieved when the bell finally rang to signal the end of class. Chara, who at that point was mostly zoned out, suddenly regained their focus as well.

Hey, can we-

'Get something from the vending machine ? Sure !' They finished once again before Chara could do it. As much as they enjoyed being close enough to each other to do these things, they both wondered if they should be worried that it was becoming a bit more frequent for them to have matching thoughts...

They hurried to take their treat, but took their time to savor it. They were lagging behind the other students which were already leaving while they ate.

Once they were done, the pair went through their planning again as they headed home. Now all they would have to do was to get there and wait for Toriel to pick them up. After that, they didn't really knew for how long would they be in the hospital. Hopefully not too long, but they had the feeling it would be several days. Maybe even longer. They should probably have taken some time to text goodbye to their friends first.

Had Toriel warned their school that they would be absent for some time ? She probably had by now, they couldn't imagine Toriel forgetting about it.

Maybe they cou-

Frisk suddenly screamed.

They felt a pain not unlike that of a blade shoved into their head (Frisk really wish they didn't knew what that felt like. But unfortunately, they did.)

It was happening again. They were having another spike. It was as if the tissues inside their head were tearing themselves apart. Their legs were trembling and...

and...

It stopped ?

They breathed in and out slowly. It was over so soon ? It had barely lasted one second.

Well, they were certainly not going to complain.

Are you alright ? The first fallen human wanted to make sure as the very first spike had not quite felt the same for the two of them. Chara had been in great pain for an instant and could tell that Frisk was as well, but was uncertain of how bad it had been for them this time.

'I... I think so.' The human responded. 'It was comparable to yesterday.' They added to answer the question Chara was asking themself. 'Just much shorter.'

Glad that the episode had not been as bad as it could have been, Chara relaxed a little.

Frisk took another step forward and felt like their leg weighed a ton. Their feet was practically dragging against the ground.

Try to lift up your shoe a little more. You might damage it otherwise. The older child suggested.

Frisk followed their tip. But with every step, their movements felt increasing forced. Chara noticed it took more effort for them to push themself forward. Their walking cycle seemed almost... mechanical ? Like it had been divided into its composing steps : First raising one foot, then advancing it and posing it back on the ground, then leaning forward to shift their center of gravity to the foot they just pushed forward before repeating the same steps with their other foot.

Frisk ? Are you alright ? You feel... Chara was about to say 'tired'. But that wasn't correct. Frisk wasn't tired. They still felt just fine. They were just... struggling to walk properly ?

'I... Im just a-'

Frisk lifted up their left foot, and when they tried to push it forward, their body caved. They felt their muscles relax in the span of a moment and Frisk collapsed on the ground, face first.

They hit their nose pretty hard and attempted to voice out their pain, but Frisk was unable to.

Worse, their mouth didn't even open itself when Frisk attempted to do so.

They tried to move their arm, so that they could use it to get back up, but it was unresponsive. Frisk's body refused to move a single muscle even if they tried.

'Ch-Chara ?' Frisk asked within their mind. 'What's going on ? Why can't i move ?' They were starting to freak out. Frisk tried to wiggle a leg, to bite their lip. Nothing was working. They told their body to do something and... it just wasn't obeying them !

I... I don't know ?

Chara was clueless as Frisk was regarding what had just happened, but they did have an idea.

Let me try to see if i can move you ? They proposed.

Frisk attempted to give control of their body to Chara, but quickly realised that this was useless.

Not because they couldn't give them control, bur rather because Chara was already in control.

How did this happen ? At no point did Chara intend to take control, they hadn't even realised it until Frisk tried to give it to them. The first fallen human attempted to move Frisk's leg, but got no better results than Frisk did. They were unable to move their body as well. When they tried to give control back to Frisk, they couldn't do it because once again, Frisk was already in control.

Frisk was in control, but so were they.

Somehow, they were both 'in control' of the body at the same time.

Their shared headspace filled itself with terror when it came to them that this was why their common body wasn't responding. Frisk couldn't move because Chara was in control, and Chara couldn't move because Frisk was in control.

If the pair wasn't panicking before, now they certainly were. How were they going to get up ? Were they stuck like this ? Was anyone going to help them ? Oh god... Were they even going to be able to move ever again ?

Blood slowly oozed from Frisk's nose while the consciousnesses in their mind were racing.

Frisk desperately tried to find a way to make their body respond again. Let it be by attempting to move something, by trying to take full control or give it to Chara, or even by trying to go limp again, hoping it would somehow undo the effect.

Chara was usually the wiser one, but here they were too terrified to think properly and Frisk wasn't making it any easier to concentrate.

There had to be something they could do. Something ! ANYTHING !

A few moments later, Chara attempted to move one of Frisk's fingers at the same time as them. And to the surprise and relief of them both, the finger did tilt slightly. Not for more than half a second, but it did move.

'Did you see that ?' Frisk wondered.

I have. Chara sounded very shaken up, but somewhat hopeful.

'I have an idea. I think i got it.' Frisk told their companion. 'If we're both in control, we might be able to move something if we both try to make the exact same movement at the exact same time.' They proposed. Both of them were aware that this was a way easier thing to say than to do though...

Chara still gave them an inner nod.

Alright. At the count of tree, try to raise your index finger on your left hand. They decided to verify their theory.

One.

Two.

Three !

The finger jumped a little.

If they could, they would have sighed in relief. So they were not immobilised forever at least.

'G-good ! Want to try moving my arm next ?' Frisk proposed. Maybe by working together, they could still manage to get up.

Sure. At the count of three.

Frisk got ready.

One.

Two.

Three !

…

Nothing happened.

Damnit.

Chara was the first to realise what went wrong, Frisk learning about it from them just a few instants later. Simply agreeing on 'moving an arm' wasn't enough coordination. In order for it to work, they would need to both want to move the arm in the same way, in the same angle, at the same moment, and to keep that coordination up every instant all the way up until the arm rotation movement was finished.

That… That was just not possible. The two of them may share their feelings and their thoughts, but there was simply no way that even they could coordinate the countless factors of a complex gesture.

And that was just for moving an arm !

While something very simple like blinking or lifting a finger upwards was possible, things like speaking would require far more coordination than they would ever be capable of. Let alone something which involved coordination of the entire body such as walking…

Frisk and Chara took a moment to cope with the fact that they might have just lost the ability to walk or to talk forever.

Well… n-not necessarily forever ?

For the first time since they left the underground, Frisk genuinely considered LOADING.

As they thought about it, a realisation came to their mind. LOADING wouldn't help them avoid this problem. Since they and Chara persisted through LOADS, they didn't even know wether the state of their blending would be RESET along with the timeline or not. And even if it was, it would just be a matter of time before it all happened again.

At best, it would delay the inevitable. At worst, it would destroy everyone's happy ending.

They had promised to themself not to do it… They couldn't break that promise for something that not only wouldn't help all that much, but that risked backfiring as well.

As horrible as their situation was, they decided not to LOAD. They were going to have to get through this somehow. They could stay strong. They could do it together.

...right ?

But for now, there was one thing and only one thing they needed.

We need help… Chara admitted.

Something. Someone. Somebody had to come by eventually. Surely people wouldn't ignore it if they saw them seemingly passed out on the tar, Frisk thought.

The tar was burning, and so was the sun on their neck. In all likelihood, it was likely only a matter of time before the two of them really did pass out if they stayed like this any longer.

So they waited. A few minutes passed, but nothing happened. They didn't hear voices, they didn't hear footsteps in the distance, nothing to indicate that anyone was nearby.

Frisk ? Listen to me. Chara eventually spoke up. We need to attract attention to us.

'How can we do that ?' Frisk thought back.

Maybe we cannot form words, but i believe there is one thing we may still be able to do.

The younger human nodded after perceiving Chara's idea. Yes, they should be able to do that…

'...Ready ?'

Whenever you are.

'One.' Frisk began.

'Two.' They were quite glad that their body was still breathing in and out on autopilot...

'Three !'

They didn't coordinate things like how much to open their mouth, or even what to say exactly. The body would work out the details on its own, what counted was that it would work these out in the same way for both of them in response to the single command that Chara and Frisk gave to their body : Scream as hard as you can.

Hoping that someone, anyone would come to their aid, Frisk and Chara called for help.

...But nobody came.

Chapter Text

Toriel's phone rang twenty minutes before it was time for her to leave, not long after she had dismissed the kids in her class. It was an unknown number. Assuming it was likely something to do with the formalisation of treaties between humans and monster, she decided to accept the call and brought the phone to her ear.

"Hello ? Ms Dreemurr?"

It was an adult human male voice, one that she was not familiar with.

"Yes ? What is it ?" The boss monster wondered, noticing that her caller sounded rather concerned.

"Uh... Its about Frisk. I've found them laying down on the street. They seem to be unconscious. I don't know for how long they've been there..."

Toriel covered her mouth with her hand. "What ? Oh, dear. Are they alright ? I am coming immediately, tell me where they are." Toriel hurried up to take her things and get ready to leave a little earlier than planned.

"Well... They don't look like they've been badly injured or anything. There's some dried up blood near their nose but it doesn't look like much. Maybe they just fainted from the heat and hit it when they fell ?" He took a wild guess. "They are breathing just fine but they'll catch something bad if they remain here. Besides, its dangerous for an unconscious child to stay in a place like this. They are on the Arcas street, near the 31th. You should come pick them up before something bad happens to them." The man explained.

Toriel was on the verge of hyperventilating. How irresponsible of her had it been to let Frisk on their own when they were like this ? The teachers and other students couldn't be around them at all times...

"Thank you very much for telling me. I will be here in a minute." Toriel responded not without some fear in her voice. Frisk must have been here for over an hour... She hoped they were alright. At least they had been found by someone well intentioned, she would rather not think about the possible alternatives.

After excusing herself with some brief explanations, the monster ran a few minutes to the location she had been described to eventually find a man kneeling down next to a passed out Frisk. Toriel knelt down next to them as well and held their hand. It was unresponsive.

"Have you called an ambulance ?" She questioned.

"No." The human responded. "Calling you was the first thing i did after checking their state."

"I see." She closed her eyes. "How did you know my number ?" She suddenly wondered.

"I just called the city hall as i knew they would have it and asked them to give it to me. Said it was an emergency." He explained. "Well, i think i'll get going now." The human got up again and waved Toriel goodbye.

"Thank you for your help." The queen thanked him. "Oh, how rude of me. I didn't ask for your name !" She realised.

"Name's Levi. And no need to worry about it. If anything, i would have blamed myself if i didn't do anything and something bad happened to that kid. Bye !" The human turned around and left with a clean conscience.

Toriel took out her cell phone again and decided to call an ambulance. They were supposed to have to go to a hospital anyway in less than an hour. And while it may not look that bad when looking at them, given that Frisk was patient zero of a new medical issue, this fainting was potentially quite worrying.

Frisk woke up lying on something soft. The area around them was quiet, with not even the slightest sound disturbing the silence.

They attempted to open their eyes but were unable to, reminding them of the cruel reality of what had happened to them earlier today.

'Chara ?' They tried reaching through to their headmate. 'Are you awake ?'

I am. We seem to have woken up simultaneously.

'Can we o-'

Yes Frisk, we can open your eyes. They answered immediately.

After another short countdown, the two managed to open their eyes. Thankfully, this was an action simple enough for them to synchronise. Things were already bad enough without them losing their sight as well.

The room was entirely white. They were laying on a bed and a couple pieces of machinery seemed to be checking for their heartbeat and other similar metrics. It was easy to identify that they were in some kind of hospital room.

They didn't know how they got here. Actually, they didn't know what time it was either. There was no clock in this room despite all the screens there were. Well, no clock which they could see at least.

There was not much more that they could do besides looking around them and waiting. They were still practically incapable of moving.

It seems we have eventually been found. Chara pointed out the obvious. They had passed out for real before somebody could come to their aid, but apparently someone did at some point. It may have been Toriel, since she would follow the same path as them when going home. If so was the case, they would rather not imagine how much worry they must have caused her.

Well, in all cases, if they were here then Toriel and possibly more of their friends must at least know of what happened to them by now.

This made them wonder, as they were meant to come here anyway for a different purpose, had the doctors already started collecting data on them and their condition ? Or were they letting Frisk rest for now before starting with more serious procedures ?

I would imagine the first to be likely.

'You're biased.'

Maybe i am, but i stand by this answer.

Unable to do anything else, they waited for someone to eventually check on them. In order to pass time, the two of them decided to play some games within their mind such as rock-paper-scissors or trying to guess what the other was thinking about. There were a few cases of accidental cheating as they struggled to dissimulate their thoughts from one another. Although, even when this didn't happen, over three quarters of their rock-paper-scissors games ended in tie and they always found what the other was thinking of after only very few questions.

It was almost too easy...

They didn't know how long did they spend doing this. But it was a pretty long time. Enough for them to play dozens of rounds. Eventually, someone came in. She approached their bed and checked on the readings. In order to attempt to catch her attention, Frisk and Chara blinked repeatedly until she noticed it.

"Oh ! You've awake." She reacted. "How do you feel ?"

After a little pause. They blinked a few more times. They were not in capacity to answer any other way than this.

"Hum... Do you feel alright ?" She asked again, wondering if perhaps Frisk hadn't heard her. But there was still no proper answer from the child.

"...Can you speak ?" She eventually questioned after Frisk responded to her previous question by blinking multiple times again rather than speaking up.

They did the same again.

"Blink once for yes, twice for no ?" She proposed.

Frisk and Chara blinked twice, making her wince.

"Oh... Well, don't worry, we'll help you." She attempted to reassure them. "Wait a moment, i'll go tell the other you are up. I will be back any second." The doctor hurried out of the room.

The two children felt slightly annoyed at being told to stay put. It wasn't like they were going to go anywhere...

Soon enough, three doctors entered the room. The second doctor, a man who looked a bit older and more experienced than the other two, spoke up.

"Salutations, Frisk. As you can see, you're in the hospital. You've been brought here after you've passed out on the way home. Toriel called an ambulance after a stranger found you and contacted her."

'Don't worry' He added. 'This incident didn't seem to leave any problematic repercussions on you. However, we will have to keep you here for some time to we can study you to help you with your disease. Is this alright ?' The man asked. Frisk didn't really have much of a choice, but he hoped to make them feel more comfortable this way.

Frisk blinked once. This was more or less what they were expecting to hear.

'That means yes.' The first doctor pointed out, realising she didn't mention to her collegues how did she communicate with them earlier.

The second doctor scratched his small beard before wondering out loud. 'Can't they sign if they cannot speak ? Give a thumbs up or down ?'

Frisk blinked twice. The first doctor reported the response.

'Why not ?' He questioned himself before the thought came to him that Frisk had been staying in the exact same position this whole time, raising a doubt inside him. 'Can… you move ?'

Frisk blinked twice again.

The three medical professionals looked at each other and at them worryingly. 'I'll check on the records.' The third one said before leaving their side to use one of the machines in order to try and understand what was going on with Frisk.

Sean, the second doctor, felt particularly empathetic for them. The reason he had chosen this career path in the first place was because his own younger brother was paralysed for life as a pre-teen following an accident on the road and a medical mistake that ruined any chance of recovery left for him.

Let him be damned if he let the same happen to Frisk under his care. Whatever was going on with them, he would do his best to get them back on their feet. He would never forgive himself if he didn't.

'Don't worry, we're here to help you.' He attempted to reassure them again as he could only imagine how scary it must be to be in their situation. 'Toriel will be here soon, she'll be glad to know you're awake.'

Frisk blinked once.

'Hmm…' The first doctor spoke up again. 'Do you want us to try and find a way for you to talk other than with yes or no ?' She proposed. Being restrained this much in their ability to communicate was likely very unconvenient.

The two children quickly blinked once.

'Alright. I'll try to find something for you.' She left the room, presumably to come back soon with a solution.

Just as the door was about to close behind her, the third doctor came back and spoke up. 'There doesn't seem to be anything abnormal with the readings. From what they say, Frisk does not seem like they should be any more unwell than they were a few days ago, there isn't anything that suggests they would have issues with speaking or moving.' He reported.

'Well, clearly they do.' The other doctor responded. 'Let me see…' He went to see for himself.

Only the third doctor was now left with Frisk. While his two collegues were busy, he helped them pass the time and distract themself from the bitter reality by telling a little story about his life.

'They are all being really nice with us.' Frisk mentally pointed out to Chara.

Well, they have to. They need you to be cooperative. The first fallen human mentioned. They likely aren't doing this just for the sake of it.

Frisk made note of the use of the word 'likely'. 'Well i still appreciate kindness when i see it. And i do think it isn't just because of that.' They answered.

Possibly. Chara admitted. Their hatred for humanity seemed to have weakened just a little.

The first doctor came back with a singular piece of paper. 'Frisk, what do you think of this ?' She approached them and showed it to them. It was a translation paper between the latin alphabet and morse code.

This was an interesting idea, both of them thought at the same time. Using morse code, they could form words or sentences with only blinking. The one issue was that it would take a while for them to spell out anything, but it was a way for them to speak at least.

Frisk and Chara blinked once.

'Do you want me to leave it here so you can learn it ?' She continued with a small smile on her face.

The children blinked once again.

'Great !' She went ahead and left the paper just to their right, angled so that both Frisk and potential visitors could see it and hopefully render communication easier.

Frisk and Chara spent the next hour alternating between daydreaming and trying to memorise morse code. On a couple occasions, someone would come into their room and use some weird sciency-looking gadget on their head, presumably to gather some sort of data on them which could be useful for uh… doctor things ? At some point, a sort of helmet was put onto them. They weren't given details on what it did. They presumed it must be for reading like, uhhh.. brain waves or something ? They didn't know what they were saying, neither of them had a PHD in medicine...

All of these looked like really expensive stuff, they thought. Given their situation, it was likely that quite the budget was made available to study them and help them, Frisk assumed.

They also asked them a few yes or no questions regarding the situation or the order in which certain things happened. For example, that it was the sudden immobilisation that caused them to fall on the street and not the other way around.

"Frisk ? You have some visit." They heard the voice of another person they hadn't seen yet before the door opened to a still sweaty Toriel. She had likely ran to her car the moment she heard the news that they were conscious again to get here as fast as possible.

"My child..." She approached the bed on which they were laying down. "I am sorry, it was irresponsible for me to leave you alone for so long when you were in no condition to." She knelt down next to the bed and held their hand after the doctor in the room confirmed to her that she could.

There were many things that Frisk wanted to tell Toriel. That it wasn't her fault, that they were the one that was sorry, that they were happy that she had come here... But they felt bad for her too, knowing that they were hiding the truth from the very person that cared for them every day.

There was actually a lot they were hiding from everyone. From Chara to their SAVE power passing by many things from their past life or how was the barrier actually broken. They kept everything to themself and to Chara, enveloping themself under a thick layer of secrets and dissimulated truths that separated the honest pacifist child people saw them as from the plural traumatised neurodivergent time traveller that they really were.

Today, they felt the weight of the secrets they held over them. Like it was all going to finally come crashing down on them at any moment.

Instead of saying any of these things they had wanted to say, which would have taken a long time to spell out anyway, they just told her one thing. One thing to sum it all up and that came from both of them at once.

I

L-O-V-E

Y-O-U

Toriel began tearing up a little while staring at Frisk's pale visage. They almost seemed like a fallen down monster.

Why ? Why did this have to happen ?

The way Frisk was lying there... In that bed... Sick with a disease they didn't know how to cure... Unable to get up... And so suddenly, too...

"Chara..." She whispered, barely loud enough for Frisk to hear. This was all way too similar to the story of how the life of her first human child had ended for the old queen to bear.

The first fallen human felt their heart ache, or rather Frisk's heart. If they still could, Frisk would have given them a mental hug. But alas all they could do was share their anguish. They almost asked Chara again about the question of revealing their existence but they could feel how scared and unready their companion was and that asking would be pointless.

The door suddenly opened and everyone but Frisk turned towards it.

'Frisk ?' The doctor asked. 'Did you feel something just now ?'

Everyone now turned towards Frisk, who stayed silent for a moment.

'This may be important.' He insisted.

The pair only had a couple instants to decide what to do. An inner debate ensued.

I do not believe anything major happened to you physically just now. Your heart rate did go up a bit and such but that is nothing worth such an intervention. Especially as Toriel is here which would make it normal for you to feel emotional.  Either they are wrong or...

'Or they saw something from that helmet thingy. Which would me-'

Which would mean what they saw likely had to do with me. I did just have a significant emotional reaction of my own just now...

'Do you think they noticed that ?'

Well, they noticed something at least. This unfortunately seems like the likeliest option currently... They sounded afraid.

'What do i say ?' Frisk asked, not wanting to make this decision for them in case Chara was right. 'In that case, they must want me to confirm to have felt what they've perceived.'

I... I cannot do this, Frisk.

'If it is what you want, i can do as i mentioned i could earlier, remember ? I could lie to them and say that nothing happened.' They mentioned.

It is what i want, but i am also afraid of risking your safety with my selfishness. Our condition is quickly getting worse, even if it is what i want, i cannot ask you to lie to those that are supposed to help us with a clean conscience.

'But it is what you want ?'

...Yes

'Then i won't say it. Thank you for caring about my safety, but don't worry. I always find a way in the end, don't i ?' They snickered in their mind.

"No, nothing out of the ordinary i think." Frisk finally answered.

The doctor bit his lip.

"Anything new ?" Toriel perked up and asked.

"Yes, actually. Some pretty intriguing news..." He sounded a little worried.

The kids got tense while Toriel listened carefully.

"Firstly, the surplus of brain activity has went down slightly. From 1.7 to 1.6. This might be a good sign or the beginning of a natural recovery. However, we do not know what could be causing this change yet." He explained. Toriel nodded.

"The more concerning part is however, that there may be more to these parallel sequences of thought that we initially believed."

Frisk felt a chill run down their spine.

The doctor continued. "Not only is most information from Frisk's senses treated twice, but parallel chains of neurons issued from duplicated sensorial information are often contradictory to each other. Those extra attempts at formulating thoughts are not mere duplicates that waste energy, they go through a full thought process different from Frisk's."

"W-what does this mean ?" Toriel sounded very worried.

"We are not certain. It is different from MPD/DID, but it seems to share some similarities with it. This is a brand new case but we do have some theories. As all of this happens within the conscious part of their brain, we believed Frisk should be aware of these extra thoughts to at least some extent. But if they are not aware of it, then the likeliest option would be that these might come from an independent split personality running subconsciously alongside their own, if not an outright separate conscio-"

He continued until a loud beeping sound echoed through the room and made him stop. The doctor hurried to the machine to see what was wrong and saw that Frisk's heart beat had skyrocketed from 80 to almost 190 within the last couple minutes, something that the machine had considered as dangerous.

What was the most intriguing was not the event itself but rather its cause. How could his response warrant so much stress in Frisk ? Unless...

He ran a few scenarios in his head regarding a few different reasons as to why this could have triggered such a response with the child, but the conclusion he came to was always the same : This was not a natural reaction. But then why ? Did they know something ?

Yet, they had just claimed that they didn't notice anything odd recently whilst data had shown a significant divergence just now. Things just didn't add up.

He approached the child.

"Frisk, this might sounds like a very strange question, but please answer honestly."

"Do you ever feel like you aren't alone in your head ?"

Chapter Text

A cold shiver spread through Frisk's body. They suddenly became conscious of their breathing, but for once, this did not make them have to start breathing manually. For a moment, they were almost thankful not to be able to move as otherwise, they were almost certain that their expression would have betrayed them already.

Then, they just felt regret.

Regret about how they had handled their answer. If they had been more careful, surely they could have avoided putting Chara in this situation... But now, it appeared there was no more avoiding it.

Perhaps there might be some good in this ? Perhaps if this cat got out of the bag, it would help the doctors understand how to help them a little better ? Or perhaps, they were just trying to make excuses for themselves to justify their failure to keep this a secret any longer.

In any case, there was one thing that they had clearly lost on the matter : Choice. It was no longer in their hands.

Frisk wanted to apologise, but they knew very well that Chara had already read their thoughts. That everything they felt, Chara had felt it, too.

They decided to talk about it.

But there were no words uttered. Not even via thoughts, just feelings, a primordial conversation with emotions as the letters of its alphabet. Angst, fear, comfort, it was all they needed to feel, it was all they needed to emit to understand everything about each other. It was a truer, more sincere kind of conversation than what could be expressed with words.

Chara was a mess, they were afraid, but not in the traditional sense of the term. It was more of a mixture between that feeling you get when you lie, but then lie again to cover the previous lie and so on until it gets out of hand and far too big to ever talk about, a sort of stage tract, and an anticipation of all the ways telling the truth could go wrong. And lying underneath that was a lot of built up shame. The consequences of Chara's actions the last time they were known to be alive had after all been quite dire and were not easy to live with. Being gone to the eyes of others had made it simpler, but now they feared an eventual confrontation about what they had caused. Frisk had already previously tried to talk to them about this with only limited success.

Although, Frisk could tell that a part of them also wished they could talk to their loved ones again and be acknowledged as themself rather than being assumed to be "Frisk". Something that would be forever impossible unless they came clean.

Since their reincarnation, Chara had sort of taken the backseat. They had been the "guest" within Frisk's body. Which meant mostly letting Frisk live their own life, but providing them with comments and companionship. Revealing themself would also mean giving up on that role and becoming more of a person again to the eyes of others. But in doing so, wouldn't they be taking part of what was Frisk's ? These questions had been running in their mind for a while, but now in the face of all this, it all felt so... irrelevant.

This body. This frail young sick body. It was all that separated the eyes of the outside world from them. Not from Frisk and Chara, but from a sort of bubbly warm puddle of thoughts they both lived in. In this state, Chara was already a "guest" no more. They were, to put it simply, an integral part of this body. As tied to Frisk as their own organs.

Actually, maybe they were both a mess.

But at least, they were in this together.

Although it had felt like much more, it had barely been over a second since the words escaped the doctors' mouth. Frisk let Chara decide how to approach this. As they could no longer simply let them in control of their body, they would instead help them form whichever words they wanted with synchronized blinking. This morse thing was turning out rather useful. At least they wouldn't mess it up if they had to spell it out together in order for it to work.

Toriel stayed still, worried, waiting for her child to answer to the strange question. Although she tried not to show it as to not risk worrying Frisk, she did not really understand that much of what those humans were saying anymore. This was leaving the range of her knowledge, but she kept faith that they would know what to do.

Frisk blinked. One long blink, then a short one, then two long ones. After a short break, they made another long one before chaining three short blinks after one last pause.

"Y-E-S"

Toriel covered her mouth with her hand. Frisk... What was going on ? She felt a growing heartache, the monster wished she could just kiss their forehead and make their problems go away or take part of their pain for herself instead. But no, once more, it appeared that helping her child was out of reach. Like some sort of cruel joke the universe played on her by constantly repeating itself.

The doctor readjusted his glasses. He was unsure wether he should be happy to be making progress or distraught by how much more complicated this might be about to turn if his assumptions were correct. While this had the potential to further the cause of science, the prospect of healing Frisk would appear increasingly bleak as this would be leaving the range of known medicine. He wouldn't dare to admit it, but this case was... Scary. And this came from someone who had seen more gore than he would like to remember in his career.

What was causing Frisk harm might just be a kind of parasite living in their own head, most likely unintentionally created by Frisk's own subconscious, which would have somehow eventually grown strong enough to clash with Frisk's conscience for control over them. Using their body's energy to keep itself running and in doing so, possibly even restraining their access to their own body. It sounded... horrifying. It was straight out of a horror movie.

This poor child... He thought.

It wasn't unheard of for people to unintentionally create alternate personalities to help cope with trauma, and given the strange readings they had gotten from Frisk, the existence of a foreign entity itself didn't seem to be that unbelievable. But outside of some freakish creations of nature like the Cordyceps which only affected ants, parasites that could control their hosts to such a horrible extent were so far limited to the realm of science-fiction. Especially on a human scale.

No, even the Cordyceps did its best to avoid impacting the brain itself and took control of the ants' muscles directly instead. Frisk's parasite seemed not to be shy of invading their very headspace.

But then, what would come next ? If it kept strengthening its control at this rate, it could very well kill Frisk long before they found a solution.

He breathed in and out a few times. No ! He was a professional, damn it ! A man of science ! He shouldn't let feelings or suppositions impact his judgment. Some of these things were still far from confirmed. There could still very well be other explanations...

For Frisk's sake, he really hoped that there were.

Before he could speak up or begin to think of how he could possibly bring up any of this to Toriel, Frisk blinked again. He was too focused to notice it, but Toriel was suspended to their signs. As was Frisk, really. They were a bit surprised by this choice of words, but they understood that their companion did not want to be too direct with this.

"C-H-A-R-A..."

The boss monster's heart got heavier after the fifth letter. She waited for them to continue the word, but Frisk did not. They took a break. This was the end of this word. "Chara". This filled her mind with more questions, what did they mean by this ? Were they talking about... Before she could interrogate them, Frisk kept going.

"...I-S..."

Her heart skipped a beat.

They really were talking about them. But why now ? Was this really the time ? What could they even have to say ?

Actually, how did they even know this name ? She wondered. Toriel had alluded to them around Frisk a few times before, but she didn't remember having ever told them her first human child's name. Did Asgore tell them about it ? Or perhaps another monster mentioned it back in the underground... Gerson, maybe ? Or one of the Snowdrakes ?

The old lady bit her lip.

Frisk took a longer pause after this word than after the first one. Like they were hesitating, or thinking about something. Those moments felt like an eternity.

"...H-E-R-E." They finished.

Toriel tried breathing in and out, but her breath was shaky and irregular. Chara was... here ?

After a moment, a thought crossed her mind when she remembered what Frisk had said just before this. One that felt ridiculous. No, that was impossible wasn't it ? Chara was gone. She had seen them sick. She had seen them in agony before they passed. She had buried them. She had grieved them. It was silly for this old lady to have even considered it.

Was it ?

But what else could they be trying to say ?

She could keep those questions to herself no longer. Toriel approached them a little closer.

"M-my child..." The doctor payed attention to them again when she spoke up. "What do you mean by this ? Chara cannot be here.. They've been gone for a very long time." Saying those words still hurt. As long as it had been since then, the memories of this day were still as painful.

The first doctor Frisk had woken up to came back into the room at this moment, but went quiet when she realised she seemed to be interrupting something. Her colleague meanwhile, figured that he must be lacking some context regarding this but payed close attention.

Frisk closed their eyes and kept them shut for a while. A heavy atmosphere installed itself in the room.

"I-M

S-O-R-R-Y"

They eventually said. Surprisingly enough, their expression managed to shift a little. It reflected a feeling of apprehension, of shame or fear.

Beyond how intriguing it was that they were able to actually move their face even in such a minor way, what struck the doctor as the oddest was that they were apologising. They were apologising seemingly about mentioning this "Chara" being here.

This was when things started clicking.

Frisk earlier had been somewhat incoherent about the entity... One explanation made its way into the options table, one that somehow would make things even worse if it was true.

Were they apologising about this because they said it, or because they did not say it sooner ?

"Frisk ?" He took the initiative before they could respond to the previous questions from Toriel. Is "Chara" the name of the thing with you in your head ?" He decided to press the issue.

The human child answered fairly quickly.

"C-H-A-R-A

I-S

N-O-T

A

'T-H-I-N-G'"

This, unfortunately, indirectly answered his question in what was possibly the worst possible outcome.

Between Frisk earlier being somewhat incoherent about the entity, their previous apology and... this, it looked like Frisk was trying to protect or to hide the entity from others. It seemed to have managed to get Frisk to get attached to it one way or another.

It was surprisingly not that uncommon for people to grow to like their parasites, which often rendered treatment very difficult. And if this one was sharing their brain and their very thoughts, well, he was not specialised on the psychological implications of such a thing, but he could very well imagine how this could result in Frisk growing attached to it. Maybe even to the point of endangering themself in order to protect it.

If so was indeed the case, then this case was truly turning into a nightmare. Even if they found a way to cure Frisk, they could very well refuse to do it out of fear of 'murdering' their companion in the process if they did, which may result in their own death instead. How could they ever convince them not to trust in the entity, but to kill it instead to save their own life ?

Maybe they would even have a point ? If the parasite held what was practically a human consciousness, would killing it be morally reprehensible ? By proposing a cure, would they actually be giving Frisk the choice between death and the murder of a 'friend' ?

The boss monster did not know what to think anymore. For a moment, she even considered the idea that she might be dreaming, but her senses contested it. This was real. In the midst of everything, of all her thoughts and questions, there was one which burned far hotter than any other. It still seemed like a ridiculous thing to ask, and yet... and yet... Maybe somehow...

"F-Frisk ?" She spoke up softly, gently caressing their left cheek as if she was going to wish them goodnight. "Is this Chara the same Chara that..." Due to the weight of her own feelings, she failed to pronounce the words.

A heavy silence filled the room again, only disturbed by the weak ambient noise of the machinery monitoring the human child.

Frisk didn't speak up again to respond to her. After a few seconds, when she started wondering if they had actually heard her, their face tilted slightly again. Their eyebrows lowered a little and it oriented itself a tiny amount to the side, like it was trying to flee from her stare. Finally, she spotted one single tear, slowly rolling down Frisk's right cheek.

Toriel grasped their hand, she was trembling. She wiped away the tear with her finger before making eye contact again.

Frisk blinked once.

It was too much to handle for the old lady. In a matter of seconds, she was the one in tears.

She wrapped her arms below their shoulders so that she could lift their upper body from the hospital bed just enough to be able to hold them.

Worried about the patient's safety, the doctor who had led them to learn the truth felt compelled to intervene to make sure Frisk wouldn't be hurt in the process. "You should not-"

Before he could finish, the first doctor caught his attention by catching his arm. "Let it." She said. "I don't understand it, but they're having a moment." Her colleague resigned and did not force them apart.

"My... My children." She whispered, tightly holding Frisk's fragile body. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, but they were here.

Somehow, she felt like a part of her deep inside had known. Like her instinct has been telling her that there was something that tied Frisk to Chara and she hadn't paid enough attention to it.

But that didn't matter now. Chara was here, they were really here.

Chara and Frisk felt a lump form in their throat. The former may not usually be that emotive, but there was no doubt that if they had control, they would be crying. Not tears of sadness nor happiness, but rather from releasing all the worries and sorrows they had kept bottled up since their reincarnation at Frisk's side. After all this time and these secrets, to finally just let go.

"I love you." Toriel told them just as they were starting to calm down and Chara fell back into it again. Those words, they were not just to Frisk, they were also to them. She was actually saying it to them, and she knew that she was. That was the first time they'd even been knowingly addressed by somebody other than Frisk since... Since Asriel that day.

They stayed like this for some time before the doctors finally had to make Toriel let go of them.

Chara felt like an enormous weight had been lifted from their shoulders, but they also continued to fear for what would happen now that people knew they were around.

'Well' Frisk thought in their direction. 'We're going to have to do lots and lots of catching up and explaining, i imagine.'

'Yes.' Chara acknowledged. 'From now on, things will not be the same anymore.' Even if they managed to heal their condition, Chara's second existence would find itself radically different. Unless Frisk used their power to undo this timeline entirely, there was no going back from this.

They now lived in a world where when looking at Frisk's body, people would see Chara, too.

Frisk caught a glimpse of their reflection through one of the machines, which was not there earlier due to the position of the sun in the sky outside. This prompted Chara to say what they often did to raise morale in these situations.

'Its y-'

Chara stopped before they said it once they realised.

No. It wasn't just them. Not anymore.

'Its us'.

Chapter Text

"Miss Dreemurr ?" The boss monster felt a hand grab her shoulder and turned around to see the older doctor searching the words for what he was about to say. Before he spoke up, she wiped away a leftover drop of tear that she had previously missed.

"I sincerely apologise given the circumpstances, but your visit time is already long overdue. And besides, after the events that just unfolded, we are going to have to ask your child a lot of questions now. It may be critical to their recovery." He explained.

Toriel opened her mouth to protest, she had barely gotten to talk to Chara again after they came back from the realm of death. How cruel could you be to a mother as to send her home so soon at a time like this ? She wanted to stay here, to talk to them more, and to be there for her child. For all the times she wasn't able to do so in the past.

But no words came out.

Despite her heartache, deeply she knew that their health was more important than what she was feeling. After all, Frisk's disease had progressed so quickly.. And again, she had already lost a child so many times... In the end, the most important thing was for Frisk and Chara to recover from this. All else could wait. Even if her gut wanted her to insist on staying.

It had been so many years… She could afford just one more day.

Against her heart's desires, Toriel eventually relented. "I… I Understand." She said, attempting to keep a stable voice but still leaving enough irregularities in it for everyone to be able to tell what she was doing.

As she was accompanied out of the room, Toriel continued to look at Frisk behind her shoulder until the last moment.

Upon seeing this unfold, the children were certain that the very minute the establishment allowed visits tomorrow, she would be back here to see them.

The two doctor remaining in the room said some things to each other. Frisk tried to listen to what they said, but they were unable to grasp it. The one who'd lead them to reveal Chara's existence then left the room, presumably to let other people in the establishment know about the new developments regarding them.

They were left alone with the remaining one for some time. They guessed that she must be keeping an eye on them until the others figured out how to proceed with them or something like that. Or until they came back for those questions they mentioned.

The pair still felt quite shaken up, especially Chara. In order to try and help, Frisk tried to imagine what it would feel like to trail their fingers through Chara's hair if they had a different body from them. Which thus made Chara think of what that would feel like, too. And just to think about it, even only for a moment, made them focus on something calming for a little bit instead. It wasn't much, but it was all Frisk could think of to comfort them.

As time passed, the room got slightly darker as the natural light coming from the window dimmed. Leaving only that of the room and the luminous projections of the machines. Their cardiac rhythm had only now just started slowly lowering back down again.

"Chara, was it ?" They suddenly heard a feminine voice ask.

...

Y-E-S

They finally answered after Chara hesitated to help Frisk to pronounce this word for a little while.

"My aunt has the same name." She mentioned. "I think it sounds nice on the tongue."

Chara didn't really take the compliment. They were more wondering about what did she think she was doing by trying to start a conversation.

On the outside, Frisk just stayed silent.

"Are you sure that you can trust that Chara ?" She eventually continued, unaware that Frisk couldn't answer her question without Chara's approval.

They answered by the positive. At that moment, footsteps could be heard going down some stairs nearby. She got up and poked Frisk's forehead gently.

"Alright, just make sure you know what you're doing." She advised them before heading out to meet with the approaching men. "You still have a lot of people that care about you."

The woman disappeared behind the door. But not much more than a minute later, she came back along with Sean, the more experienced second doctor who had only just been told about everything minutes ago and was as interested as worried about seeing it for himself.

He moved next to them and crouched to their level, trying to build a climate of trust between him and Frisk as he knew it would be needed to be established that for what came next.

"Frisk ? We're going to have to ask you some questions about what you said earlier, okay ? Don't see this as a test or as something scary, we just want you to help us understand. Is that alright ?" He spoke slowly and clearly. Trying to make sure they felt comfortable.

The eight human was rather pleased by how nice and careful he was when approaching the subject. Chara did not comment, but Frisk could tell that this was not quite how they were expecting this to go.

O-K

They responded.

The next few hours would quickly turn into a massive interrogation session. The young human had to answer an avalanche of questions about their companion and the connection that bound them. When did they first feel Chara's presence ? How much could they read about each other ? Every answer they gave was written down and they were asked to clear up any potential confusion.

At first, things went fine. Or well, about as fine as a situation like this could be at least. But things took a complicated turn when Frisk was asked to develop some more on what they meant after they answered a question regarding how much they could influence each other.

They stayed silent for over two minutes before they told their caretakers the truth. And once they finished, the only reaction they heard was that of a pen being dropped on the floor following their revelation.

"…" The second doctor has nothing to say.

He looked at his colleague, then at Frisk, then back at his notes. He too, wondered wether this could be a dream for a moment. But he was quick to dismiss it. After all, people claiming the presence of split consciousnesses in their body often said similar things. Only, their experience was internal and unprovable, whilst Frisk's was undeniably real.

Chara had, up until recently, had the capacity to take over Frisk's body and move it around like it was theirs.

He did not let himself get lost in the considerations and instead breathed out before asking a few follow-up questions.

"Would it possible for Chara to do this without your consent ?" Despite everything, Sean maintained professionalism as if they were talking about the common cold.

Frisk hesitated for a moment.

Tell the truth. Chara suggested.

'Are you certain ?' Frisk was unsure about wether it would be good to give them more reasons not to trust their companion.

I disagree with this conclusion. Chara responded to their previous thought. I think that letting them know i could have used this ability to do bad things but chose not to is a better look than leaving them uncertain as to wether i would have done it if i could. Might as well say the truth.

'Alright.' Frisk decided to follow their reasoning.

Y-E-S

Their supervisors noted their answer, not without a slightly worried frown.

"Has Chara ever made use of this in order to force you to do something which you did not approve of ?"

…

N-O

That was not exactly true…

In fact, Chara had already stolen control of Frisk's body without permission a number of times. Although it was always for small things and they would both laugh it off afterwards. There was never any real ill intent to any of it. It was almost always for humoristic purposes, never did they consider seriously the idea of forcing Frisk to do something they would have strongly opposed.

Even if this was somewhat dishonest, giving a different answer would have given them the wrong idea about their friend. Chara may be the cause of their current issues, but they were not the problem. Chara was a friend, their best friend even.

It was not a strictly factual answer, but they agreed it was the most correct one they could give to them for an accurate representation of their situation.

It did not escape Frisk that the doctors were very suspicious of Chara and of what they could do to them. And honestly, they could understand why to some extent. But it would be far better and far easier if they could understand that Chara was not a malicious entity.

I will have to agree. In the current state of affairs, cooperation would be better for all parties involved.

The first fallen human wasn't that fond of these people either. They especially did not appreciate being referred to as a "thing" earlier. Which they did actually find quite reflective of the way humankind treated anything they weren't familiar with. What they didn't like wasn't being dehumanized, in fact, they did not mind being considered separate from the rest of their species at all. It was rather the way he seemed to refer to them like they were a sort of parasite ruining Frisk's life.

He knew nothing about them, nothing about Frisk, and yet already classified the thing he didn't understand as a force of malice. Talk about a Dunning Krüger effect...

And yet, despite this, Chara knew that trying to cooperate would be for the best here. It seemed to be their only chance.

Frisk was rather surprised to see Chara suggesting to cooperate with those humans. Although they guessed that in a situation so dire, it truly was a mandatory step to take. Still, they were proud to see Chara could put their dislike of mankind aside when it was truly necessary. Either that or Frisk was really rubbing off on them.

While the pair had this inner conversation, the two doctors shared notes and whispered a few things to each other.

If you would let me, i believe i may have an idea. Chara thought. Frisk immediately felt what they meant by this and accepted their proposition.

G-R-E-E-T-I-N-G-S

The two adults went back to focusing on them.

I

A-M

C-H-A-R-A

Frisk helped Chara to pass on their message.

Sean felt a real unease upon assembling these words from Frisk's blinks, something that had gotten rare after years in the profession. Nevertheless, he managed to hide it quite well.

"Salutations." He answered without flinching even as his head filled with questions. So was this Chara ? He wondered. Or was Frisk just relaying something they wanted to say ? In both cases, it seemed Chara did want to communicate something to them through Frisk.

He readied his pen and paper again. "Is there something you wish to tell us ?"

Y-E-S

"Well, go on." Sean repeatedly tapped his foot against the floor lightly like a middle school student bored during class. It was something he often did when anxious. When he swore to himself to help Frisk to not let them end up like his little brother did, this was not the way he had expected this all to go down.

I

M-E-A-N

N-O

H-A-R-M

Chara affirmed.

F-R-I-S-K

A-N-D

I

A-R-E

F-R-I-E-N-D-S

It was difficult to convey a meaningful message while keeping it short enough to be possible to say via blinks without it taking forever, but they did their best to try and convince them that they were on their side.

I

W-A-N-T

T-H-E-M

T-O

G-E-T

B-E-T-T-E-R

T-O-O

They finished their intervention. When enough time had passed for them to be sure Chara was done, the older humans started taking notes again. There was no visible emotional reaction. This made Chara wonder wether they'd done something wrong or if they just didn't care. Frisk contested this thought, believing that they did care at least to some extent, but that their priority was simply on doing their job and helping them.

"I present to you my apologies in advance Frisk, please do not take what Im about to say against you, but there is something that I feel is important enough to have to be said." Sean started.

"You understand that we are not in your head, so we have no choice but to trust you regarding what you say about all of this." He continued, Frisk was uncertain about where this was going.

"We know you think of Chara as a friend." He asserted. "And that you have their interests in mind. But please do not let that get in the way of your safety." He paused for a moment. "It would be easy for you to lie about anything we ask. It could have even been you rather than Chara speaking just now in order to make us believe they are good willing to convince us they aren't bad, and there would be no way we could tell the difference."

The air suddenly felt heavier.

"So I simply wish to tell you that if at any point today you've told us something which was untrue for Chara's sake. You need to tell us about it and say the truth. Its okay, we won't be mad at you if you did, but please just remember that we can't help you if you aren't honest with us. Alright ?"

Y-E-S

"Did it happen ?" The tension in the room intensified.

They responded with the negative, and it dissipated as fast as it came.

Sean closed his eyes. "Alright." He said. "I trust you. And i'll trust Chara, too."

Paradoxically, the fact that he felt like asking that question was necessary in the first place actually made Chara feel even less trusted. That "climate of trust" he tried to set up was as fragile as the wings of a butterfly. Even now that they really did try to cooperate with those humans, their eternal suspicion of the things they don't understand was sabotaging their efforts.

Nevertheless, they guessed that this was still progress in a way.

Sort of...

The questioning resumed. Only from then on, a couple of the questions would be addressed to Chara instead. This distinction did not make much difference in the end as they both knew the things the other did anyway. But they still played by it.

One thing Chara said which prompted lots of reactions was when they shared their observations about how they were becoming increasingly similar to each other over time. Let it be via tastes, personality traits or even their thoughts and that this coincided with when their disease had begun.

Combining this with some of their previous readings about Frisk, it now seemed all but confirmed to Sean that Chara was responsible for what was happening to them. This strange link that tied Chara to them was unstable, and it looked like it was now starting to collapse, taking Frisk down with it.

There was one more unfortunate angle to this news. It proved that Frisk was indeed willing to endanger themself for Chara. Or at least, that they had done so in the recent past. He could only hope that they had been sincere earlier and that they now prioritized the truth above the rest, because if Frisk had lied to him still even following his previous intervention, then even with all the goodwill in the world, there would not be much he could do to help them if they refused to cooperate.

He could only assume they were honest, and then work from here. It was his only option to go forward.

While the news brought regarding Frisk's condition were the most concerning, they were not the most intriguing.

Indeed, the most mind-blowing thing about all this was what Chara revealed when came to the question of the origin of their identity. The question was originally aimed at understanding how the Chara consciousness first became to be the way it is (Did they choose their own name ? What about personality ? Did Frisk's pysche play an important role in shaping it ?)

But instead what he was told an an answer seemed to defy all established science.

Chara was not an entity created by Frisk's own subconscious or even from it. They used to be a living human with a body of their own, reincarnated with Frisk after having previously died. This was something which had been somewhat implied by Toriel previously, but that was not mentioned to Sean when he was given a resume of the situation.

This was… insane. They were practically claiming to have gone through a sort of resurrection. Or a reincarnation in someone else's body. How ? Why ? None of this seemed to make much sense and yet there were plenty of reasons to believe it had to be the truth.

With this kind of escalation, it would likely be necessary for Frisk's case to be considered as classified information from now on. Although that decision would ultimately fall in the hands of his superiors, letting the public know about this discovery before they could grasp a good understanding of it would probably be a mistake. With a slightly trembling hand and a sudden loss of confidence in plenty of things that he had considered as basic facts until today, the interrogation finally ended.

The time of dinner was long passed by the time Frisk and Chara were done with the questions. Although to be fair, they could not communicate particularly fast in this state, which prolonged it by quite a bit.

Talking about things they couldn't do anymore in this state. When they started getting hungry, it came to their mind that eating or drinking were going to be among those as well.

In order to be kept alive for more than a few days, their body was going to have to be 'fed' via injections of nutrients directly into their veins. As if they were in a coma.

They were actually okay with this. Considering Chara's cause of death and that Frisk ate garbage on live camera once in the underground, they didn't really have any standards when it comes to anything related to food. And they didn't really feel like starving so…

Frisk and Chara fell asleep very quickly that night, the events of the day have been emotionally and mentally exhausting.

From the an outside perspective, their unconscious body looked peacefully asleep. Inside however, they were scared. Their future had rarely felt so uncertain.

But they stayed determined.

Chapter Text

It was dark.

They couldn’t see anything, but they were awake. They must have woken up in the middle of the night, they thought. It wasn’t surprising. After what they went through recently, it would have been more surprising for them not to keep on having sleeping problems.

‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Frisk answered mentally as they glared towards the only remaining source of light in the room, a very small screen linked to one of the machines, on which it was said to be 3:21 AM.

What do you mean ? Chara wondered, still feeling a bit dizzy.

‘I said you were right, we woke up in the middle of the night.’ Frisk repeated.

Well, yes, we have. They acknowledged. I did not say such a thing, though ? The first fallen human felt slightly confused. Frisk was the one that had thought that when they woke up. Chara was still just snapping out of daydreaming.

‘What ? No ! You thought that.’ Frisk pointed out after reading Chara’s thought. It was after they felt that Chara was wondering about this that they had checked for a way to tell the time in order to verify their hypothesis.

I… I am fairly confident that I didn’t. Are you sure that this was not your own thought that you followed through with by checking the time ? They proposed.

Frisk began to doubt themself. ‘No I… I'm pretty sure that was you ?’

I do not believe it was ? Chara tried to go through it again, wondering whether their memory had just failed them. If they were the one that felt like they were half daydreaming still when it happened, perhaps it was them that forgot what they’d just thought about ?

‘I…’

Forget it, Frisk. Chara advised. We’re just too tired and one of us got confused. Let’s just try to go back to sleep.

Frisk nodded and laid their head back down on the pillow.

Sean felt his heart sink a little as he parked his car.

‘Here we go again…’ He thought.

It was now the second morning since he had learned about the true nature of Frisk’s condition. Whilst his determination to see this through until they felt better had not weakened, he now felt an uneasy sense of dread when approaching their location and held a little apprehension.

His throat tightened slightly and he felt more aware of his surroundings while entering the building. He wasn’t scared of the children, he told himself. Of course he wasn’t! There was just… something slightly unsettling about those two he was in charge of taking care of. A feeling he couldn’t quite manage to get rid of.

He would never let that show of course. He was here to help them. And he would. That was what he swore to himself. That was his job.

‘Stop’, Sean confidently told himself when he felt his thoughts deviate too much from what he should be focusing on. ‘They are in a very weird situation, but in the end, they are just children and they need your help.’ He repeated in his mind in order to motivate himself. They were not that different from all the other kids he has to take care of over the years. They just had a… stranger kind of situation. That was it.

In the last couple of days, the case had developed in a rather unorthodox manner. After Toriel came back and cleared up a few things the next morning following Frisk’s revelation, it was firmly established that Chara should be considered as a second patient and put in the same boat as Frisk. As ridiculous as it may have seemed, they really were a once deceased child now revived in another’s body. It was during that following day that it truly sank into everyone that despite their circumstances, Chara really was just another victim in all this.

Taking care of a couple of immobilized bodysharing children fallen victim to a completely unknown phenomenon was a challenging experience in more ways than one. When Sean made it into their room and glared at Frisk and Chara’s body, only a single thought crossed his mind.

‘I wish I could understand what’s going on in your head.’

He had been doing his best. He really had. With every talk, every test, every hour of the day. Sean truly gave the most effort he could in order to try and understand, to try and save this puddle of flesh, blood and consciousness who he could hardly comprehend.

And yet, despite everything, he felt so powerless. He felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. When attempting to tend to any wound, to cure any disease, comfort any patient, there was always a sort of objective, an end goal, or at least a definitive sign that they were either making progress or stalling. But here, they had nothing to base themselves on. It was like participating in a race in a dark tunnel, without knowing how long the race was. Or if there even was an end to it. And running. Running without a clue where you’re going. The only thing that he could do was to observe Frisk and Chara and to collect data in hopes that it may eventually serve to cure them soon.

But when observing them, Sean noticed something was off.

Over time, Frisk felt a little… less focused ? They were just a little more… disconnected from the world than before. Maybe he was just imagining it, he had nothing to prove what he was feeling. They still answered people’s questions the same way as before. But there was something about them. About their eyes. About their blinks, something that simply felt slightly calmer yet more distant than before. Like they’re slowly losing grasp on something.

He had dared to ask them about it yesterday, but they had answered that they didn’t understand what he was talking about. Yet he couldn’t shake away this strange impression. It was similar to what you would feel when watching a person with dementia spending their last days before they lost reason. Yet Frisk was doing just fine, weren’t they ? Was he wrong? Was he just imagining something ?

Frisk and Chara had also started to refer to themselves using ‘We’ rather than ‘I’ once in a while when talking of things that concerned them both. As it was no longer possible for just one of them to have control of the body and that the secret was no more, it felt a bit more natural to use a more inclusive pronoun for things that weren’t about one of them specifically.

One good thing that had happened during the last couple of days was that they were able to move just a little more again. While large movements remained out of the question, actions that required low concentrated muscular effort now seemed fairly easily within their reach again. While spinning around and folding a finger in all angles was still too difficult, they had little to no problem lifting a stretched finger up and down.

The reason as to why this worked however was a bit more worrying. The first and best possible reason would simply be that they were getting more used to this and thus better at syncing their thoughts and actions in order to move. That was however not the likeliest option to explain it. The other option was their ‘blending’. As Chara has described it. If the two of them were still getting closer to each other over time, it may be making it easier for them to synchronize.

Sean sighed and checked the readings gathered during the night. Things were looking somewhat normal, aside from the fact that extra thought processing had gone down again and that their skin/hair color has gotten slightly paler. Probably related to stress or something. Did those effects also affect kids ? Anyways, the extra thoughts proportion was now reaching down to 1.4 times the normal amount.

At first, they’d considered this decreasing number as a good thing. It started with a dangerously high value when they were diagnosed but had been slowly lowering back closer to normal with time. They’d thought this may be the start of a natural recovery regarding their ‘extra thoughts’.

But now he wondered, if Chara was around as well, having a higher value for this might have been normal for Frisk after all. What would have been their normal value ? It had to have been less than or equal to 2, but definitely superior to 1. He guessed that the exact value would have depended on how much of Chara’s psyche was fundamentally different from Frisk’s. The more different they were, the closer it would be to 2.

But then, those decreasing values…

‘I win’ Frisk thought. Finally.

Seventy-three.

They had made seventy-three draws in a row before somebody actually won a game.

They really needed to find more ways to pass time, because their mental rock-paper-scissor games were becoming quite pointless when they could predict each other this easily even without allowing mind-reading. They had wanted to stop after the 32nd draw, but decided to keep going to see how long it would actually take for one of them to lose.

Good job. The first human congratulated them somewhat mindlessly. They didn’t really care much about who would win anyway.

They spent a few seconds in silence. Feeling their chest rise up and down slowly, pondering about their existence.

‘Do you still think we’re going to be fine ?’ Frisk asked their headmate.

Chara could not lie.

I am not sure, our future currently seems rather cloudy. But I hope so.

Frisk would have liked to hear them say yes, just for reassurance, but of course, they would have still known what their partner actually thought even if they had.

The older human did not need to ask the question back to know that Frisk felt like they had to be fine. Because they had gotten this far, because Chara had gone through with admitting their continued existence, they had to be fine. They had to recover and take back hold of their life with a safer base. Maybe even start a more open life regarding Chara. Perhaps they could start sharing days of being in control, it wasn’t very fair for them to have had to stay in Frisk’s shadow.

They had too much to look forward to to give up now. That was what Frisk believed, and Chara could only mentally praise them for maintaining this attitude. Even now, and even after having gone through significant blending with them. Despite everything, that remained something which was truly Frisk.

Both of them felt a sort of sweet warmth as they communicated their feelings. Their intra-system communications felt more sincere and profound than other ones. More soothing, too.

In comparison, using their body to communicate with the rest of the world was more…

...cold.

For the lack of a better word.

Despite their hopes that things would turn out alright, they could still feel their respective fears that it wouldn’t. That things might take a turn for the worse, or even that they’d be forced to take a shot at LOADING after all, undoing all they had went through with, including the others' knowledge of Chara’s existence. What if they had to do all this again ?

‘Don’t worry.’ Both of them tried to tell each other at the same time. They laughed it off together in a quiet inner giggle afterwards. They were trying to cheer up each other despite having similar worries, and the other knowing it. But this wasn’t pointless either, it was because they could still count on each other’s hopes that they didn’t fall into despair. They could up each other’s morale and resist. Resist together.

Always together, whether they liked it or not.

"Still nothing, Jane ?"

"No…" The first doctor confirmed with a slight frown. She hadn’t gotten any updates from the higher-ups. They were seemingly still on their own with Frisk and their strange companion. Their condition didn’t seem to be getting much worse than before at least, on the physical side, there was even a slight improvement. But when it came to finding a way to undo the process the children were going through, they simply hadn’t gotten any convincing leads.

This has taken a bit of a toll on them. The morale was still there but things were looking grimmer by the day.

It wasn’t to say they had obtained no leads whatsoever of course, but they weren’t leading them toward anything concrete. And even if they did, they were in no way qualified to pursue their research in those domains. That was why they hoped to get some backup from other fields, but that didn’t seem to be happening anytime soon.

All humans had a soul, and those souls held a fixed amount of soul power, the soul power of a human soul being far greater than that of a monster soul. So much so in fact, that one human soul would be almost enough to match that of the whole monster population. What they’d uncovered was that Frisk’s soul was not exactly on the same level of strength as what human souls are supposed to be at. Frisk’s soul was just a little bit stronger.

It wasn’t a very big difference, it was quite small in fact. Just about 5% more. But once again, this extra soul power was something undocumented. As a matter of fact, there was only very limited documentation at all regarding souls or even magic for that matter as their use had been lost to time centuries ago...

Research had only officially been picked back up the week after monsterkind emerged from the underground and too little time has passed since then for it to have amounted to anything major.

Of course, there was very little doubt about the fact that this extra soul power must have had something to do with Chara one way or another, but they were pretty clueless regarding the mechanics of it or about whether doing something about that, if even possible, could lead to a recovery of Frisk. Their body having more soul power than it was supposed to handle could be part of the cause of their problems. Or maybe not. They couldn’t be sure, but it was one possibility at least.

But even if that was right, what could they do about it? They simply lacked the expertise and the data.

As another day came to an end with no significant progress and Sean morosely drove his way back home, he reflected on how pointless this was. As long as they continued to lack data and expertise, it was virtually hopeless. The chances of them actually achieving anything other than staying by Frisk and Chara’s side and watching them slowly fading away seemed very low.

It was during dinner with his wife that the solution came to him. Frisk and Toriel weren’t nobodies. Surely monsterkind, which still used magic, must have some kind of archive laying around somewhere with information about souls, or maybe even people working in that domain. If Frisk’s life was potentially on the line, after going through some paperwork, they should be able to make a formal request to gain access to those or obtain help. And maybe then they would be able to do something.

Sean took out his phone and wrote that down in his notes in order not to forget it.

Toriel was sitting on her rolling chair early in the morning, equipped with a red pen and her glasses. With her right hand, she reached for one of the papers she had placed on the table and took a look at it. That student had done her assignment rather well. In fact, Toriel could only spot one minor inaccuracy on the entire page. She put a small ‘X’ next to it before writing an encouraging motivational note at the top of the page.

With a thin smile, she put the copy back on the table right next to the others, starting a new stack, before picking up the next paper.

Halfway through the fourth paper, Toriel's phone began ringing. She got up with a sigh and took the call.

"Yes ?"

"Miss D-Toriel ?" The boss monster noticed the way the person on the other side of the phone was about to refer to her as Dreemurr before changing their mind at the last moment, but pretended not to.

"What is it ?" She prompted them to continue.

"Well..."

Chapter Text

Frisk and Chara were staring blankly into the air, trying to count all of the small black dots they could find on the otherwise white colored ceiling. What even were those things? They wondered. Considering this was a hospital, it probably wasn’t dust or dirt. They assumed a place like this must be maintained to be very clean. Perhaps it was simply tiny bits of the paint which had withered away ? That would make more sense. The further away from them the ceiling tiles were, the harder those dots were to distinguish from the tiles.

After counting a bit over a hundred in total, starting with the easiest tiles to see just above them, the angle of the tiles further away began making it both really hard to see the dots and even harder to remember which ones they had already counted. Quickly enough, they gave up on counting them altogether.

Being stuck in a room like this for days on end with barely any ability to move was not fun.

Even with the company they sometimes had, it was still really boring.

The real world was boring.

At least, they were lucky enough to be able to find refuge with Chara in their mindspace, where they could at minimum entertain each other. They were possibly the only things keeping each other from going nuts alone in this place.

They had given up entirely on any kind of games involving guessing at this point. There was no point in those anymore when their thought processes had become so closely tied together. Instead, they engaged in inner conversations regarding their opinions, beliefs, hopes, dreams, and despair for most of the morning.

Once again, what they had was a much more ipseitic type of conversation than you could have with friends, family, or even a therapist. They could physically feel each other’s thoughts or feelings the moment they went through their companion’s mind.

Well, actually, perhaps ‘physically’ wasn’t the right word.

It was more like... When Chara thought about a memory they hadn’t thought about since the two of them were first bound, and thus, that Frisk wouldn’t have known about, it didn’t feel that way to Frisk. Instead, it was like they too had just remembered something that they had known for a long time, even if it was the first time they came across this information. It was like they already knew about it, but simply didn’t realise it themself before their headmate began to think about that. It felt just like it was their own memory they hadn't known they had, although it was just Chara’s.

They weren’t certain how to explain it. It wasn’t just finding out about the other’s memory via mind reading. It was rather similar to if they both had one single common pool of memories, but that the memories closer to one’s side of the pool were easier to access for them, while it was buried deeper within their subconscious for the other. They were however, inherently accessible from either side.

Even without the mind reading, their subconscious was aware of memories of the other that they’d never shared nor even thought about in months if not years. Only revealing that they had in fact known about it deep inside all along only once one of them had their conscious side go over that memory.

It did, in fact, put into question what was even the difference between ‘’Frisk’s memory’’ and ’’Chara’s memory’’ at this point. They were different, they could feel that it was different, and yet at the fundamental level, both of them contained the same information didn’t they ?

Where did the difference lie, then ? What was it which made Frisk’s memories Frisk’s and Chara’s memories Chara’s ?

If one’s memory was not defined only by what it contains, then what was it ? Was it also the perspective ? Was it also how deeply each memory is buried within their consciousness ? To go back on the pool metaphor, was one’s memory pool not just about the shape of the pool and the water inside, but also about where on the side of the pool were they standing ? Was that the only factor that differed between theirs and Chara’s at this point ?

Wondering about all these things just made their head hurt. Maybe they were overthinking all this. Frisk was Frisk and Chara was Chara, and that was it, no matter how close they’d become.

A knock was heard on their door, snapping the children out of their train of thought. "Frisk ?" They recognized the second doctor’s voice. "I have some good news today." He informed them. Feeling rather intrigued, they listened carefully. "As some of the leads we’ve gotten regarding how to treat you relate to subjects in which human science is quite far backwards, we’ve obtained an agreement with monsters regarding sharing tools and knowledge which may help with your case. They were quite cooperative." He explained. A very thin smile managed to crawl its way on their nearly frozen expression.

"We’ll give them access to everything we’ve already collected about your situation and they’ll provide us with the information and expertise we lack in the domains of souls and magic. And by working together we might be able to find a solution." Sean further detailed. This all sounded pretty good to them. They did however, have one question. How would their status change under this new arrangement? Would they stay here like before or… ?

W-I-L-L

T-H-I-N-G-S

C-H-A-N-G-E

F-O-R

U-S-?

"Yes, somewhat." He responded. "Well, your overall situation won’t change too much, but we’ll be transferring you to another establishment very soon. To be exact, you’ll be moved to a section of the not-yet-opened laboratory near the town center dedicated to monster science. Because that’s where they moved all the results of the research done in the underground over the years."

'So… Things from the true lab ?’ They both wondered. That was where they’d seen all kinds of whacky sciency reports and… experiment results. If they could call them that.

Actually, it may include some more than just that. Chara realised. We haven’t seen all of the blueprints for Mettaton or some of the puzzles for instance, those may have been included, too.

‘I guess that’s right.’ Frisk admitted. ‘Wait, would Alphys really give away all the Mettaton blueprints ? Wouldn’t those potentially reveal he wasn’t always a robot ? I don’t think he’d want that information to leak.’ They brought up.

Fair point, but I don’t think this is relevant to our situation. The first fallen human conceded.

"We’ve also asked whether we could cooperate with monster scientists, but it appears monsterkind only has a single scientist: The royal scientist. However, this position is currently vacant, therefore we did not have anyone to try and get in contact with."

‘Vacant ?’ Frisk wondered.

If I recall, Alphys was fired by Toriel over the amalgamates incident just before we all left for the surface. So I guess there is no more royal scientist. Chara considered as a response.

‘Im sure Alphys could still help.’ Frisk thought.

Perhaps she could, but Toriel mentioned her being busy and I sincerely doubt that ‘multiple entities merged in one body’ research is something she would want to touch again even with a stick after what happened in the true laboratory. Would that truly be reasonable ? Chara doubted.

‘I get it.’ Frisk affirmed. ‘But there really isn’t anyone else who could possibly help us, is there ? Alphys is my friend, and she actually has some experience with this. I mean...Aren’t we kind of an amalgamate as well in our own way ?’

I suppose we sort of are. Chara accepted. Anyhow, do you really believe this is a good idea ?

Frisk hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s our only option, isn’t it ? Who else has the experience she does with ‘souls and magic’ as they said ?’

…It is your decision. I’m simply saying that you must consider how Alphys may feel about this, first.

‘I know’ Frisk repeated. ‘I know it's going to be stressful for her or bring back some bad memories, but we really need her help. And I believe that she can do it.’

Very well. Chara chose not to question Frisk’s choice further and helped them speak out.

A-S-K

D-O-C-T-O-R

A-L-P-H-Y-S

"Doctor… Alphys ?" Sean wondered out loud. "Is this somebody you know ?"

Y-E-S

He looked aside for a moment before writing down something on his paper, presumably Alphys’ name as to not forget it. "Very well. I’ll see if we can ask for this ‘Doctor Alphys’ to come to our aid" The man reaffirmed. "I believe that should be everything. As you are aware, we will be moving you to the new location tomorrow somewhere around 2-3 PM. You don’t have anything to worry about, if you want, we can even put you to sleep during the trip." The doctor proposed.

N-O

N-E-E-D

"Alright…" He answered. "Do you need anything else ?"

W-E

D-O-N-T

T-H-I-N-K

S-O

It had become quite easy to communicate this way. For a while now, they hadn’t needed to count to three anymore or anything of the sort before talking. They just instinctively knew exactly when to say things together. And they just did. As simple as that. It came to them naturally now.

Overall, they felt better than they did a few days ago. Even other symptoms such as the heavy sweating had been fading out and by now were mostly gone. They didn’t really feel sick anymore. Well, they definitely felt weird, but they didn’t feel sick. It was less akin to the feeling terrible of a sickness, and a bit closer to feeling light, oddly relaxed, almost dissociating a little. Sometimes they would zone out for what felt like just a second, to find that 20 minutes had actually passed.

According to Chara’s memory, they had felt a somewhat similar way after ingesting buttercups, except that all of those things were overshadowed shortly by the very real pain that came with eating those poisonous flowers, so their memory of that experience was a bit vague.

The doctor politely ignored the first two rings as she progressed the dialogue a couple more times. Who could possibly want to call her right now ? She was busy doing something quite important !

Well, not right now, she had been doing that yesterday and would continue tomorrow, right now she was just playing a Japanese visual novel game about a bi-color bear getting high-schoolers to kill each other. But that was also important ! She had only gotten to see the anime adaptation of the first opus of this game in the underground, but she recently realised up here that there was actually so much more! And unlike a certain anime she kept ranting about on her blog, it didn’t get worse in the sequels. Her weeb brain was drooling...

Once her current dialogue scene was over a couple of presses later, Alphys looked to her left and checked the phone number. It wasn’t anyone she knew, Still, she decided to pick it up anyway.

"Yes ?" She answered without stuttering. Undyne had been trying to help her with that. And by helping, she had meant calling Alphys 15 times a day to make sure that she wouldn’t immediately stutter when picking up the phone.

Unfortunately, this turned out not to work very well as the doctor sometimes couldn’t help but fail the test on purpose so that Undyne wouldn’t stop calling her all the time. This time though, she’d done it right. Alphys gave herself a metaphorical pat on the back.

"Is this doctor Alphys ?" A male human voice requested to know.

Alphys hesitated for a moment. It was her indeed, but she didn’t know whether it would be right to call herself a doctor as she was no longer working that job. Should she say no, then? No, because clearly he was trying to talk to her, so she should say yes for him to know he’s talking to the right person. Or maybe she could just explain all of that to him directly ? And also who was that person anyway ? What did he want ? Also where did he get her number in the first place ? Oh, maybe he found it on her blog somewhere ! If so, he must have seen her anime reviews. She wondered what he thought about Mew Me-

Alphys snapped herself out of it and shouted. "Y-yes !"

Damnit. She did it again.

"Hello doctor" the voice continued, ignoring her strange change of tone. "I have been tasked to contact you because your assistance may be required for a case of great importance."" He developed.

Alphys felt her hand tremble a little. "O-of great importance ?" She repeated.

"Yes." The man kept going. "It is about Frisk. They are very gravely sick and we have so far been unable to help them. We suspect that the cause may be outside of the realm of human expertise, so the help of a monster may be extremely valuable. Frisk has also personally requested your help. So we would like to formally request you to lend us your experience and help us save them."

Alphys was at a loss for words. Frisk was… in danger ? From a sickness ? And they wanted her help with it ? After what they saw she had done ? "W-what sort of s-sickness do they h-have ?" Alphys felt her anxiousness come back with every word she spoke. She had a bad feeling rising in her stomach.

"The best way to describe it would be a blending of consciousnesses with a foreign entity sharing their body-"

The man said a few more things after this, but they did not reach Alphys’ ears. His words echoed through her mind multiple times. This couldn’t be what she was thinking, right ? There was no way… Not this! Anything but this! Not again… She couldn’t… She’d already messed up horribly once, she was going to screw it up ! And that was with Frisk, too. What would everyone say? She couldn’t do it. If she tried, she would just ruin it all. She was going to lead them to d-die...

They… But they were already risking death, w-weren’t they ?

That man said she needed to ‘save’ them, and that they hadn’t managed to help Frisk so far because they didn’t know what to do. And that made sense, because they would have no experience with this kind of thing, and as for those that would have it...

Oh no... That was just her. She was the only one on this earth who would have any experience with that...

No… nonononono! She didn’t want to have to do this. Not now, not anymore, why did she have to bear that responsibility ? Why her ?

Ever since she’d been fired from her job as Royal scientist and moved up here, her life changed for the better. She was no longer stressed at all times, no longer constantly afraid of being a fraud, of not being good enough, she no longer had to live bearing the heavy weight of her lies and fearing that they might be discovered. She was on the road to self-improvement.

She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t want everybody to rely on her, she was going to mess up again, it was going to be all her fault again. She wasn’t ready to support the pressure. She wasn’t ready to have to handle a situation like this one again. Alphys thought. There had to be somebody else, anybody else who they could ask instead…

…

No, there was no one. No one except for herself and she knew it.

In the end, she had only two options. She could either n-not go and p-probably leave Frisk to die. O-or she could go and t-try her best. B-but then if she failed, she would be responsible for…

Alphys buried her face in her pillow. Why did she have to be such a coward ? Why couldn’t she be more like Undyne ?

Frisk was the one who had taught her to be honest with herself and break away from the vicious cycle she had buried herself into, they even helped her with getting together with Undyne. But more than that, they were her friend. And now, they were the one who needed her to help them back after all they did for her.

That was why they asked for her, right? Not just because she had experience, but also because they believed in her.

She… She could never live with herself if she let them down after that. If she chose to do nothing, and in the end they weren’t able to save Frisk, then this moment would haunt her for the rest of her life. She’d spend the remainder of her days wishing she had done something while she still had the chance.

Alphys swallowed her saliva.

She needed to be strong. She had to take her destiny into her own hands a-and stand up for her friend. T-that’s what Undyne would wa-. No, that was what she wanted to do.

She’d made her decision.