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Asriel follows you.
Every few feet he pops up from underground, petals unfurling to reveal a different face and a different voice to the ones in your memories. This doesn't surprise you. Death is not the end you thought it was. No one escapes unchanged.
In this house, you tread lightly and move slowly. You leave pale footprints in the hall and dusty fingerprints on the mirror. Your room is untouched. Boxes left as if they knew, somehow, you would come here. This doesn't surprise you either. Your drawing is curling at the edges, paper yellowed with age. The house is full of golden flowers now. One waits for you just outside the door.
You don't linger over the family photo.
Asriel keeps talking. You keep running your fingers along the worn edge of the knife. Still keen, despite the notches. The locket throbs against your chest, a ticking countdown. Asriel keeps talking. It's funny, a funny story. But it's not like it matters now. You're almost there. Asriel keeps talking.
Your lips-- dry, cracked, white with powder --part for the first time since you woke up. Your voice is barely a whisper. Not the voice you remember.
"Why are you telling me all of this?"
Asriel pauses, as if the question surprises him. "Chara, I said it before. Even after all this time... You're still the only one that understands me."
"Chara, be careful!"
You're waist deep in the underground river. Echo Flowers whisper to each other on every side. Their babble melts into a soft hissing, background static. "Why? Are you scared?"
“No! I’m not!” Asriel stands in the shallows. The water just barely covers his paws. “But the current gets really strong deeper in, and if you get washed away, you won't come back."
You laugh, because it's funny. You wade in deeper. Up to your armpits now.
"Chara!" His voice trembles. The current really is stronger further in, and you struggle to keep your footing against the stony riverbed. You sink in until only your eyes and ears are above the inky surface. You hold your breath.
"Chara, I'll-- I'll c-call Mom! I'll tell!" Asriel's words are thick with tears. Of course he's crying. Something cold and hard and mean twists deep inside you. All at once you surge upright, splash your way back to the bank where he sits sniffling. An Echo Flower repeats his last phrase over and over again. I'll tell, I'll tell, I'll tell.
"Do you know what they say about the mountain we live under, in my village?" Asriel flinches at your tone. He shakes his head, hiccuping. "Travellers who climb it are said to never return."
He looks confused. You smile. It's not a happy smile. There's a gnarled, angry knot deep in your chest, and it's not Asriel you're mad at, not really, not at all. "I climbed it, knowing that. I wanted to disappear forever. To never come back. I..." You swallow. The knot in your chest has moved to your throat. "I hate them, Asriel. I really hate them."
(I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, says the Echo Flower)
"Why are you telling me this...?" Asriel's voice is very soft.
"Because... you're the only one who understands me."
You sigh.
"You won't give me any worthless pity! Creatures like us... wouldn't hesitate to kill each other if we got in each other's way."
You stop.
"So that's... so that's... why..." Asriel hasn't missed a beat since you entered your childhood home. You'd matched your steps to the tempo of his words. Now you stand still. Now he trails away into silence.
Your lips pull up, up, at the corners. The cracks widen, stinging, and you taste the slight tang of blood. Still, your lips pull wider. You smile. It's not a happy smile.
"Hey... Chara... no hard feelings about back then, right?" Asriel's voice is small. His petals quiver. He almost sounds like you remember.
Gently, you lay your old, wasted husk of a body down among the flowers you'd played in as a child. You’re glad to be rid of it. Asriel's anticipation and fear and sadness and worry, worry, worry threads through your own giddy excitement, making your shared hands tremble. He should be excited, too. Isn't he happy? You're going to free everyone.
“Are you okay?” Asriel asks you. The question makes no sense. You’re better now. You’re strong.
The screaming starts before you have a chance to answer him.
People are running. Most have the sense to retreat. Some are fool enough to run toward you. You're ready. They'll pay for their complacency. Every last one of them. With their SOULs, you will remake this world for the better.
"Chara?"
Your village looks different from this vantage point. The people look smaller. The way you must have looked to them when you lived here. You see fear flash across the face of the nearest human and satisfaction wells from the deepest parts of you. You rear back, ready to strike, to take the first.
Your body won't move.
The arm you'd readied to sweep the villager aside is frozen. A fear that isn't yours crawls down your spine.
Asriel.
"I-- I've changed my mind about all this," he says. "Let's go back."
You want to laugh. You do. It bursts from your chest, a wild, hysterical sound. "Asriel. Let me go."
You see something glitter in the sunlight. Metal. Weapons.
"Asriel, I have to do this."
"No you don't! I didn't see that until-- until just now, but you never--"
"You promised you'd never doubt me!"
"Chara, please--"
He doesn't see it. Asriel hasn't ever been to the surface. Hasn't lived it the way you have. Doesn't know humans like you do.
The first blows are always the worst. Cold steel and hard stone. Asriel cries out. He staggers, shielding your face with your paws. He's never been hurt before. Not like this. You batter against his control from within. He meets you with a strength of will that surprises you.
"You promised! You promised me!" You throw the words at him like knives. He sobs. You can feel your body moving. Not the way you want it to. He bends down to cradle your empty corpse, shielding it from stray blows with your own flesh. “I thought I could trust you!”
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers. This body bleeds. You can feel it pouring down your sides. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Liar! Traitor!” The humans are shouting, too. Murderer. Monster. Another blade slides home, nestles deep between your ribs. Asriel stumbles. Keeps walking. Back the way you came. “You’re in my way!”
You tear at him from the inside. You take all the jagged parts of you and dig them into all the tender parts of him, if only to make him see. You have to. You have to kill them. They’re wrong, and you can make it right. You’re supposed to make it right. You need to. You need this. Doesn’t he understand you’re doing this for him? “Asriel!”
“You don’t have to,” Asriel’s voice is faint. Wavering. Firm. “You don’t.”
“Please!” A heavy thud. Snap. Twist. The taste of iron. Everyone is screaming. Asriel is smiling. “Please! They’re killing us! They’re killing you! Please! Fight!”
“No,” he says.
And he drags your broken body home.
You shamble forward in a distant parody of that death march home, years ago. Asriel recoils.
“H-hey, what are you doing?! B… back off!”
He ducks underground before your outstretched fingers can touch the golden petals. You stumble. Skin your palms against the flagstone. He reemerges just a few feet ahead. Shaking, as if in a high wind. There is no wind down here.
“I... I’ve changed my mind about all this. This isn’t a good idea anymore. You should go back, Chara. This place is fine the way it is!”
He doesn’t see it. He won’t ever see it.
“S-stop making that creepy face!”
It takes you a moment to recognize the hacking sound as laughter. It takes you another to realize you’re the one doing it.
“This isn’t funny!”
But it is. It’s an inside joke only you will ever get. Tears cut tracks through the dusty residue that coats your face, and you laugh even harder. Your stomach roils. You might throw up. You hope you do.
“You’ve got a sick sense of humor!”
You don’t know how long the spasms go on. Minutes. Days. By the time it stops, your palms have scabbed over, and Asriel is gone.
Soft palms against your cheeks. Body cradled against something warm. You’re getting blood on the queen’s robes. The king’s hands tremble where they touch your face. Asriel is talking. You know that because your mouth is moving.
When you jumped down that hole on Mt Ebott you hadn’t expected it to hurt so badly. You’d cried because it hurt and you’d cried because hurting meant you were alive to feel the hurt. You called out for help. Someone answered you.
When you ate the buttercups you hadn’t thought your throat would blister until you couldn’t talk and every harsh pull of air tasted of blood. You hadn’t cried then because Asriel had cried all your tears in your stead. They were warm, where they dripped onto your face.
You were not afraid to die, then. But this is different. You didn’t choose this. There is no sense of relief. No sense of purpose. You can feel Asriel, afraid, but not afraid the way he should be. Believing in the king and queen’s reassurance. Believing it can still be all right. Believing anything will ever be all right again.
“You idiot.”
You don’t know if he answers you. You don’t know if he can. Maybe he didn’t even hear you. You can’t hear the king’s words or feel the queen’s gentle embrace. Asriel is just a flicker at the edge of your mind. You can’t see. You’re alone.
You have to stay determined. Stay determined. Stay
“I’m going to Grillby’s,” Sans tells you. The slice you'd made in his front drips ketchup. Stains his slippers. He shuffles past. Faintly, from over your shoulder, you hear-- “Papyrus, do you want anything?"
You’re gone before the dust settles.
“That’s the Delta Rune,” Asriel tells you, hanging off the edge of Asgore’s reading chair. He looks funny upside down, floppy ears inside out and dangling just within reach. “They say an angel who’s seen the surface is going to come down someday and free us all.”
The throne room houses a carpet of golden flowers. Birdsong fills the air. The old king’s silhouette blocks the way, his back to you.
“Curious. I’ve never seen a plant… cry before,” he says, confirming what you already know.
Asgore stiffens, pulling his cape tight around his shoulders. As if he's felt a cold draft. He turns slowly, and there is no spark of recognition in his eyes when he sees you. This doesn’t surprise you.
“You must be the one that flower just warned me about,” he says. “Howdy.”
He hasn’t absorbed the SOULs. You can see it in the way he holds himself. The look on his face. The way he extends a hand toward you, as if you might take it. Why hasn’t he absorbed the SOULs? He must have known how this would end.
“Erm… what kind of monster are you? Sorry, I cannot tell.”
You touch the locket, warm against your chest. It’s stopped ticking.
“Well, we can always--”
It’s a formality now, bringing up the interface for Them. This outcome was decided the moment you stepped into this room.
“Now, now. There’s no need to fight.”
Nobody here ever did what they needed to do.
“Why don’t we settle this over a nice cup of tea?”
Asgore’s smile is patient. His offered hand hasn’t wavered. You swing the knife high, in the way that’s become so familiar to you, and watch the smile freeze-dry on his face when you bring it back down. Idiot.
He staggers. Slips down on one knee. Bile rises in your throat. Your fingers tighten around the knife, and you raise it again.
The circle of bullets takes you both by surprise, and you falter just enough that they get there first. Dust spreads across the throne room. Asgore’s SOUL hovers just in front of your face. You watch the bullets close in a second time, watch it shatter and dissolve to nothing.
"Asriel," you whisper. "Asriel, wake up."
The warm lump beneath the covers stirs. Rolls away from you with a sleepy grumble. Not the answer you wanted. You pull yourself up to kneel beside it, peel the covers back. You'll push him off the bed if you have to.
"Go away, Chara," Asriel groans. He pulls both ears around to cover his eyes. You tug his hands away.
"You're not sleeping."
"Yes I am."
"You have to promise me," you say, insistent.
"What?"
"You have to promise you'll never betray me."
"Why?" He's looking at you, now, bleary eyed through the gloom.
"I need to trust you," you say.
Asriel sits up slowly, shoves you a little bit to make room on the narrow bed. You move over, settle in beside him.
"Do you not trust me now?"
"I..." You hesitate. "I want to. I want-- to know you'll never doubt me."
"Never," he says. "I'd never betray you, Chara, not ever."
"So we're really friends," you press. You're glad it's dark-- he can't see your face, won't see the way your eyes scrunch up and your teeth worry at your lower lip.
"Best friends!" Asriel says, sounding relieved. "Forever!"
"Forever," you say. Hold the word close to your chest.
“See?” Asriel smiles. “I never betrayed you!”
You are, and have always been a fool.
“It was all a trick, see? I was waiting to kill him for you!” He’s quivering again, petals curling at the edges. “After all, it’s me! Your best friend!”
The locket has gone cold. You’d shove it down his throat if he had one. Your fingers tremble around the knife handle, and you look down into the face of someone you once thought you could trust.
“I can help, I can be useful to you. I promise I won’t get in your way.”
You know what Asriel’s promises are worth, though.
“I can help, I can, I can…”
You smile, mouth stretching wide enough to hurt. You don’t make the same mistake twice.
“Please don’t kill me,” Asriel begs with a voice you never want to hear again.
The knife comes down. (Mom and Dad say you can stay here with us, if you want to.)
And again. (It’s a striped shirt, like mine. So we match!)
And again (You’re happy here, right? You don’t mind staying?) and again (Ugh, that’s not fair! You always win!) and again (What’s it like on the surface?) and again (Are there buttercups in butterscotch?) and again (We can still stop, Chara.) and again until there’s nothing left but you and the silence and scattered, shredded petals.
The joke of it all, the great punchline, isn’t that Asriel never understood you at all-- it’s that you never understood yourself. Your own purpose in this world. You were foolish enough to think you could save it. You were foolish enough to think yourself an angel.
You’ve only ever been a demon.
You feel a distant sense of recoil. They are disturbed, it seems. They didn't expect this outcome, and you suppose you can't blame Them. You've been indulging Their whims for some time now, letting Them satisfy the twisted curiosity that drove Them to this path in the first place. You're grateful, after all. Without Their guidance, you might never have discovered your true purpose. What would've become of you then?
(You remember something. A far away flicker of something warm, another time, another name. Someone else was here. Someone else was silenced.)
But now, it's the end. Numb fingers fumble the catch of the locket, undo the chain. It slides from around your neck, pools in the palm of your hand. You let it sit for a moment, feel the weight of it.
You let it fall.
You get to your feet, and turn around. You smile.
"Greetings,” you say. “I am Chara."