Work Text:
You were almost vibrating as much as a Temmie as you made your way deeper and deeper into the Ruins, nervous yet excited energy radiating from your soul. Today was the day you’d been waiting for ever since you’d been able to fully grasp the concept of soul mates.
You glanced at the timer on your hand, one of the two reading ten minutes now, give or take a few seconds.
You’d started to feel an unexplainable tug maybe twenty minutes prior, and you would have guessed after leaving home with your parents’ well wishes that you were headed towards the city where most monsters lived, but instead the pull drove you to take a right instead of a left and you’d been pulled along through the Ruins before you could very much comprehend the situation for yourself. Your mother had always made a big fuss about entering the deeper parts of the Ruins, claiming the puzzles were too dangerous—especially for a child like you—and aside from a couple instances where you traveled a few steps in out of your childish curiosity, you obeyed. Now, however, you strode through the area as if you’d traveled through it a hundred times before, led on by that ever-insistent tug inside of your chest, the ticking timer on your hand, and the knowledge that your soul mate was somewhere in the purple labyrinth before you.
You checked the timer again. Four minutes.
As the time ticked down, your excitement only grew. You’d always wanted someone to call your best friend. Being a prince came with its downfalls, such as it being difficult to forge strong relationships with any of the other kids your age, most of them either fawning over your status or too intimidated to speak. But now, all of that would change. You weren’t sure if your soulmate would be platonic or romantic—no one never really knew for sure until they met and had known each other for a while—but seeing as you were only ten, it could be a very long time until you knew for sure. Still, this didn’t faze you, you would be happy with whatever happened in the future; and besides, that was all stuff you didn’t need to worry about until later. For now, all that mattered was meeting them for the first time.
You checked again. Thirty-eight seconds.
“Help…”
The sound of a weak voice-- only traveling this far because of the way these caverns could echo, you were sure—reached your ears, and your feet froze against your will.
“Someone… p-please, help me…”
Mind suddenly devoid of all thoughts and the timer on your hand forgotten, your instinct kicked into high gear. Someone was in trouble. They needed your help. In an instant you were off and running, thankful that this part of the Ruins seemed to only have one path to travel down. You kept going, even as the caves got darker and darker and you could hardly see, and it felt like forever to get through the stretch of darkness, heart pounding and ears roaring almost painfully.
The light seemed to hit you all at once as you emerged from an intricately carved doorway and into another cave that looked a lot different than the rest of the Ruins. Gray stone surrounded you on all sides, and up ahead you could see a few columns, stalagmites, and—there!
Lying in a patch of grass at the very end of the cavern was a shape you couldn’t make out all too well from the distance you were at, but you could tell by the way that it was moving that it had to be the person you were looking for.
You didn’t notice that the timer hit zero.
As you got closer, you began to make out a few of their features. Their head was covered in short reddish brown hair, all ruffled and messy as if they hadn’t seen a hairbrush in weeks. It looked like they were wearing a green sweater, not much different from the one you were currently wearing. Soon, you were able to make out splotches of red here and there, something that puzzled you as well as the strange color and texture of their skin, light and smooth, something you’d never seen a monster have before.
Not wanting to scare them, you called out, “Hello?”
Their head snapped up, and though the smile on their face conveyed politeness, their eyes held nothing but fear. You thought the red shade of their irises looked cool. The rest of the red on their body, leaking from their nose and forehead, seemed a lot less cool for some reason you couldn’t exactly pinpoint other than the distinct feeling in your gut that something was wrong.
“You were the one calling for help, right?” You tried again, speaking softer than before. When their look of fear didn’t subside, you crouched down to get more on their level, but made sure to stay a few feet away to be safe. “My name’s Asriel. I came through here looking for my soulmate, but then I heard you calling for help and— oh!” It was as if everything clicked into place at once. “Are… you my soulmate?”
They seemed rather overwhelmed, but by what, you weren’t sure. After a few seconds passed, they gave a nod of their head, before wincing suddenly. As soon as you saw the display of pain, you were at their side, wrapping an arm beneath their shoulders to help lift them up. Besides a small grunt, they didn’t make any more vocalizations to indicate that they were in pain, but it was clear enough from their actions—from the limp in their steps as you began walking forwards to the way they grabbed at their head with their hand—that they were hurting. You wished you could use healing magic to ease some of their pain, but mom had just begun her lessons with you and you really didn’t want to mess anything up in your attempt to fix it, so you would just have to get them home as quickly as you could.
“Don’t worry, my mom is a great healer. She can fix everything in no time!” You spoke aloud, trying to dispel the silence as well as assure your new friend that everything would be fine. “By the way, what’s your name?”
Again, a few moments passed, as if they were debating whether or not to speak. And then, finally: “I’m Chara.”
~
Everything hurt. You were used to it, after the past few weeks of your life up until the moment you died had been filled with coughing up blood, open sores all over your body, and the bitter taste of buttercups on your tongue. Asriel, however, had nowhere near the pain tolerance that you did, and seeing as he was the one in control of your body and refusing to give it up to you, all you could do was take the backseat and watch as he stumbled up the mountain, bits and pieces of himself already crumbling to dust where the humans had attacked him with knives and pitchforks. Despite your advice to just dump your body—after all, it was no use to you now, and the thing was only serving as dead weight to slow Asriel down—he kept a tight grip on it anyways, cradling the thing to his chest as if it was still you and you weren’t sitting snugly beside his soul.
”I’d never doubt you, Chara!” was what he had told you. Internally, you scoffed. Ever since you were moments away from your death he’d done nothing but doubt you, whining about how he wanted to go back on your plan, refusing to let you take the human souls you needed to break the barrier, just standing there and letting them strike blow after blow to him, ignoring your advice that would get you both to the safety of New Home faster, because maybe if he would just drop your damn corpse then he’d make it back with enough time for Toriel to heal him.
Asriel needed to live. His second timer, it was so close to hitting zero. You’d already taken away his one soulmate, even if your souls were now one it wasn’t the same as what you used to be, and you couldn’t afford to keep him from whoever the other one would be. In the past, you’d been jealous and fearful, your heart weighted down with the worry that he would get bored of you as soon as he met his other soulmate. But now, with his death hanging above you like a knife, you couldn’t afford to be so selfish. You were mad at him, sure, maybe even furious, but in the end he was your best friend and you couldn’t let him throw away his life like this, like you had done, because he was worth so much more than that.
The entrance to the Underground was in sight, but you could feel more and more of Asriel’s body crumbling away with each step he took. Bleakly, you realized he wasn’t going to make it. There had to be a point where a monster was too far gone to be healed, and you were sure he’d already passed it by now. Still, he trudged on, stepping through the barrier and into the throne room, and you had a feeling the only reason he was still going was because of your own soul’s power. A few steps in, and his legs began to tremble, giving out shortly after.
No, no, no, no, no! Asriel!
You could now taste the dust in his mouth and smell it in his nostrils. Despite the fact that you were watching his arms dissolve in front of you, he clutched your body even tighter in his grasp, as if you could still feel it. Your soul was breaking along with his own, and you weren’t sure if it was emotionally or physically but it was still the worst pain you’d ever felt in your existence.
“Chara… I’m… s-sorry…”
The timer was at twenty-six seconds when the two of you turned to dust completely.
~
Staring up at the hole above you, you weren’t sure exactly how you’d survived your fall. Sure, it was a matter of instinct more than anything to take a leap of faith like that, but the logic of it all told you that you should have come out of it with at least a few broken bones. As it was, your bum felt a little bruised, but aside from that you’d come out of the experience completely unscathed.
With no other explanations to think of, you stared at the timer on the back of your hand in wonder. It had to have been the thing to protect you, right? After all, no one ever died before their timer stopped. It was unheard of. If someone had a timer, then they would be meeting that soulmate, period, end of story. Was there some kind of protective magic that the timers themselves gave off, to make sure you met your soulmate at least once?
You shook your head once and lowered your hand to be hidden by the sleeve of your sweater. There was only a minute left to go. With that in mind, you started down the only pathway in front of you, the thought of meeting your soulmate filling you with determination. In fact, you were so determined that you weren’t focusing on the ground in front of you, causing you to nearly trip over the single yellow flower in your way. Luckily, you noticed it in time, and stopped in front of it—them? The flower had a face?—before you could trample over the poor thing.
“Howdy!” The flower chirped. “I’m Flowey! Flowey the Flower!”
The ensuing conversation (and fight, as it turned out) was distracting enough to push any thoughts of a soulmate to the back of your mind for a good while after the entire ordeal was over. It wasn’t until Toriel had left you alone to wander around yourself that you remembered, and pulled your hand up to your face to examine it, as if everything up to that point had only taken less than a minute to pass. The sight that greeted you made your blood run cold and your head swim with confusion.
Your timer was stuck at one second.