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It’s quiet.
Well, that’s not exactly true. There’s the hum of the small radiator, bringing the temperature from a slightly pleasant chill to something approaching warmth, but not enough to leave you sweating and uncomfortable. There’s also the sound of chatter, distantly behind the door and far away enough to make it feel like a dream. Lastly, and most importantly, there’s the sound of breathing. Shallow, slightly labored, sometimes even, breathing that keeps Kris sat in their chair. But, in comparison to how it should sound, the room is terribly, awfully, unbearably quiet.
It shouldn’t be like this. This should never have happened. The hospital is only ever supposed to have one familiar face presiding inside. It was never supposed to have two. A million questions come to Kris’s mind as they sit, eyes never leaving the slumbering figure lying in that hospital bed. Why? Why was it him, of all people? Why didn’t he run away? Why did it make her do it? Why did Noelle listen? Why won’t Berdly wake up?
But, despite their questions, there comes no answer. There will never be an answer. The whims of the puppeteer are unknown to the marionette left dangling by its strings. There is only the performance, the endless, random dance that inevitably leaves more people hurt and more lives ruined forever.
Kris hates it. With every fiber of their being, they hate it. If not for the fact that they have a promise to keep (a promise that has, admittedly, been forgotten, given recent events) and that going without their SOUL for too long risks them collapsing from exhaustion, they would find a way to shatter it and finally relinquish the hold it has had on them for so long. They’ve locked it in the cage for now, holding out for as long as possible so they can be here at their reconciliation, muttering penance for all the wrong their hands have wrought. They’re not the religious type, despite their mother’s persistence, but stuck in that miserable hospital room, their hands are folded together in silent prayer.
From their pocket, their phone buzzes, and Kris pulls it out to see a single text from Susie:
Suz (11:15 AM):
u good?
Their mouth presses into a thin line. Right, they hadn’t really explained themself this morning, had they? After the Dark Fountain was sealed, Kris got up early, imprisoned their SOUL, and stumbled out the door with a half-mumbled excuse that they needed to “do something” before their mother could even set out their plate of pancakes. Their mom had been understanding, saying she would take Susie to church without them and that they were “free to join if they wished”, but Susie was confused. They feel a little bit bad for abandoning their friend like this, but it’s not like they could do this with her around. They don’t even think she knows he’s in here, let alone why Kris would want to visit him. She doesn’t know about what happened in the Cyber World, or of the weird little friendship they’ve had with Berdly for some time now. They don’t want her to know, because if she knew what happened she would have questions, too many questions, and Kris wouldn’t be able to answer a single one of them. She would doubt her friendship with the human, and she would leave. Or, do something much more drastic, and Kris wasn’t willing to risk her safety if the SOUL gets involved. It’s already hurt so many of their friends, they wouldn’t be able to bear if it hurt Susie.
Their hands tremble as they type, but they hope their response is enough to satiate her curiosity.
You (11:17 AM):
something came up. had to deal with it. sorry.
They pocket their phone for now, not ready to deal with whatever Susie has to say to their vague wording, and resume watching the rise and fall of Berdly’s chest. The nurse will probably be around soon to check up on him; she was in when Kris first arrived, surprised to see them visiting before his own mother, but happy nonetheless that someone was checking in on him. Berdly’s mom has not shown up in the time Kris has been sitting here, but that’s to be expected. By the bird’s own admission, his mother worked a very busy legal job in the city and would be gone for most of the week, only popping in on weekends to check emails on her PC and sip wine on the couch.
Those two’s relationship is…interesting, to say the least. Despite how long Kris has known Berdly, they’ve met his mother only a handful of times, and all of those were either in passing or while the woman was having a brief conversation with their mom while the two played. Judging by how their mom looks when Berdly’s mother is around, they can tell she isn’t Toriel’s favorite person in the world. She’s never gone so far as to badmouth her in front of Kris, but she’s definitely talked about how disappointing it is that Berdly’s mother misses so much of her son’s life. Berdly has never once spoken ill of his only parent, often boasting about how “cool” it is that he gets the entire house to himself most days and how “adult” it feels to be trusted to make his own meals and how “independent” he’s becoming as a result of it. But Berdly has always hidden his truths with loud laughs and long vocabulary words he only sometimes uses correctly, so it’s to be expected that he’s only admitted to Kris in late night Diskcord calls just how lonely he feels. It sucks and it kind of makes Kris hate his mother, but they don’t say anything to Berdly about it. There’d be no point, and it would only make Berdly upset.
Surely, his mother knows what’s happened, right? She had to have been called sometime after Kris dragged him through the door yesterday night. Why isn’t she here? Hell, why isn’t Noelle here? Are they going to be the only person keeping an eye on him all da--
As if in response, the door quietly creaks open, and Kris’s head turns to see Noelle peek in. Her eyes scan the room for a moment, locking on Kris only half a second later, and her pupils go wide at the sight of them sitting there. Yep, she looks terrified, alright. This sucks. Kris can’t even blame her for feeling scared, given…everything, but they wish she wouldn’t look at them like they were about to pounce. They could risk a wave but they don’t think their arms will move from where they’re rooted at their side, hands balled up into trembling fists as the two remain locked in this endless staredown. Then, as if remembering herself, Noelle gives Kris a tiny smile, stepping fully into the room and letting the door shut behind her. In her hands is a bouquet of flowers, a vase, and a “Get Well Soon!” card.
“Um, w-wasn’t expecting to see you, Kris…!” Noelle says, forcing her tone to remain light as she crosses the room to Berdly’s side. There isn’t a bedside table to put the flowers down on, so she settles for the sink counter beside Kris’s chair. She fills the vase with water, busying herself with the task so she doesn’t have to look them in the eye. “The nurse mentioned you visiting, but I had thought you’d be gone by now fahaha.” Kris can tell she wants to say more, something likely along the lines of that’s what I was hoping for, but she leaves her words at a pleasant observation instead of a cutting remark. Kris looks away from her, guilt pressing on their chest, and makes a small noise of affirmation. Once the vase is filled with water, she starts unwrapping the bouquet, gently placing the bundle of flowers into the vase.
“Oh, you’re not--” Kris starts, reaching to point at the vase. Noelle practically vaults away from their hand, letting out a tiny, terrified shriek, before realizing what she just did and slapping a horrified hand over her mouth. Kris clenches their jaw, lowering their hand slowly, well aware of how the gesture must’ve looked to her. “My dad says you should always cut the stems of flowers, at the ends. Helps them absorb more water, or something…” Their voice comes out quieter, more mumbled, trying their best to make it sound like them and not it. Noelle relaxes at that, coming back over to the flowers to pull them out of the water.
“That--makes sense, yeah!” Her voice is chipper again, plastering positivity over her abject fear. “Um, I don’t have--do you think the nurse would have scissors? Or…” She hesitates, looking between the door, Kris, and Berdly before simply shrugging. “I’ll just do it with my hands, faha.” She begins picking up each individual flower, finding a place at the end of the stem, and snapping that piece off, disposing of the excess into the little trashcan on her side of the sink. Kris chooses not to mention how that probably isn’t great for the flowers and returns to watching Berdly breathe.
A tense silence fills the air, constricting Kris’s lungs and making them squirm a bit in their seat. They’re used to silence--keenly used to it--but these past few days they’ve gotten somewhat familiar with the constant stream of questions flowing from their mouth. The noises of the hospital are distant, the room filled with the rhythmic SNAP of stems being broken and tossed into the trash. They glance at the bouquet again, now laid out on the counter in two piles. It’s a very simple arrangement, really. Probably something she picked up from their dad’s shop. White lilies, pink carnations, and the occasional blue forget-me-knot.
Kris stares. They’ve gleaned a lot of flower knowledge from their dad over the years. Simple meanings for common arrangements he sees people buy. They’ll never forget the conversation they overheard when Gerson Boom passed away. The flowers left at his funerary service.
Lilies, carnations, forget-me-knots.
They feel sick.
“So!” Noelle’s voice cuts through their inner dialogue, eyes flitting up to meet the doe’s. She isn’t really looking at them, more past them, her eyes landing somewhere just above their head. They don’t point this out. “Surprised you didn’t go to church.” She snaps a bit off the end of a lily. “Your mom was there. I mean--of course she was there, she runs the choir, but I noticed you weren’t with her. But Susie was, surprisingly?” She lets out a little laugh, the most natural she’s sounded this entire conversation. “She was wearing one of Azzy’s old outfits! Did you two, like, have a sleepover yesterday?”
“Yeah.” Kris replies, careful not to make any sudden movements with their hands. “She stayed over last night. But I wanted to come here, so I skipped. Did…you skip too?” To Kris’s knowledge, service should still be happening right now, yet here Noelle is. She lets out a stilted laugh, waving a hand.
“No, I was there! For my part, at least. Then I just kinda…left? I wanted to, um.” She struggles for a second with her words. “I wanted to be here. T-To see him. Just--wanted to check in, y’know? See if he’s…woken up yet.” She doesn’t look over to him, instead turning her head down to the carnation in her hand. “Has…Has he?”
Kris doesn’t want to give her an answer she already knows.
“R-Right…” Her voice tapers off, her worry evident. She snaps another lily. “You--Last night, w-when you…came to me. You said he’d get better, r-right? How--” she lets out a strangled laugh. “How do you know?”
I don’t Kris thinks.
“I just do.” They say instead. “I mean, it’s Berdly. He’s gonna get better.” Because the alternative is that Berdly never gets better, and the already sizable chasm between them and Noelle grows even further, and that it will all be Kris’s fault because no one will ever understand that something’s been controlling them.
“Gosh, you’re right,” Noelle sounds relieved as she says it. “I mean, remember that time he got pneumonia? He was holed up in his bed for, like, a week.” Kris does remember; how could he forget? He was too sick to play video games so he spent most of the day begging Kris to play for him. They had obliged, and the two spent two days playing through Insect Tales in its entirety, Berdly providing color commentary whenever he wasn’t hacking up a lung or bemoaning his illness.
“He kept saying he was gonna die.” Kris remarks with a snort. “Like he was the first monster to ever catch pneumonia.” Noelle laughs at that.
“My mom kept having me bring over soup, and he always asked me how class was going without him there. Like, take a break for once! You’re sick, faha, your priorities should be on getting better, not getting the notes.”
“That’s Berdly,” Kris replies, a small smile coming to their face. “He’s addicted to the grind.”
“The grind, right, he’s always calling it that!” She laughs again. Then, after a moment, her laughter tapers off. “It’s…gonna be weird not seeing him in class on Monday.” Kris grinds their teeth, looking away.
“...You’re acting like he’s dead.” They mutter just audible enough for her to hear. Noelle sucks in a breath, snapping another lily stem. She starts to make a noise--some sort of rebuttal--but it dies in her throat.
A beat. The space heater continues to whirr, but there’s no warmth left in this room.
“’M sorry.” Kris says, a bit louder. Noelle looks at them, head tilted just so. “For being weird recently.” Her expression softens as she sets the last flower down, collecting them back into a bouquet before placing them in the vase. Then, she does the strangest thing. She sits in the open chair beside Kris, hand placed gently atop their knee. They turn to look at her and it’s the calmest she’s looked all morning.
“Hey, it’s okay,” She says, honest and warm. “You already apologized last night. You said it was all a big prank, right?”
“...Yeah.” Kris looks away. “I got. Carried away. Sorry.”
“I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time.” Noelle squeezed their knee. “Remember that time you pretended to drown in the lake? Dess almost started doing CPR on you!”
“To be fair, I was a pretty shitty swimmer back then.” Kris notes with an amused smile. “I could’ve drowned at any point. I just wasn’t then.” At that, Noelle guffaws, now shoving at them playfully.
“Azzy was crying, you dick! He thought you died!”
“Woah, that’s a swear. Am I finally starting to rub off on you?”
“Fa-ha, very funny, Kris. The only thing you’re rubbing off on me is your weirdness.”
“So you finally admit that you’re weird?”
“Wh--Shut up!” She shoved at them again, the two devolving into giggles. For a moment, it was easy to forget why they were here in the first place. It felt like the two were back to being little kids, laughing and playing in the Holiday house while Asriel and Dess played Super Smashing Fighters on the big TV. For the smallest of moments, Kris felt light, like the weight of the past two days was lifted from their shoulders.
Then, Berdly makes a noise, a small whimper, and all the levity is sapped from the room in an instant. Noelle springs up, at her friend’s side in a moment, hands hovering over him like she isn’t sure what to check. She presses two fingers against his neck, checking for the pulse of his SOUL, though that seems more for her own sake than his. She then rests her hand atop the warm pack on his forehead.
“It’s…lukewarm.” She says after a moment. “We should probably tell the nurse.”
“Mm.” Kris replies simply, hands clasped together once more. Neither of them make a move for the door.
“Don’t--Berdly can’t know I told you this, but he was going to ask you to the Sadie Hawkman’s dance, y’know.” Noelle admits, still turned towards Berdly. “We were talking about proposal plans last week.” Now that came as a complete surprise to Kris.
“Wh--The dance isn’t until, like, two weeks from now.” The only reason they knew this is because everyone wouldn’t shut up about it. Between that and the festival, Kris was constantly bombarded with chatter about social events that they really didn’t want to go to. They especially didn’t want to go to the dance. They hated most formalwear and having your mom chaperone events is only cool when you’re five.
“I know, but he was pretty deadset on asking you.” Noelle turns to look back at them, a tired smile on her face. “I kept having to nudge him away from, uh, very public proposals. He was so convinced that everyone likes being publicly asked to dances, and I kept having to remind him that you don’t even like going to dances, let alone the Sadie Hawkman’s. But, of course, with him it’s like, in one earhole and out the other, fahaha!” She sounds completely broken when she laughs, and she quickly turns away from Kris, wiping at her face with her sleeve.
Kris, meanwhile, is left sitting there, thinking on what Noelle just said. Berdly…wanted to ask them to the dance? Why? Sure, they were friends, but they hadn’t been particularly chummy in a bit. They were better friends online than in person, where they could DM each other stupid memes and hop on Minecrap until late at night. At school, it was a different deal. Berdly upturned their beak at them, always chiding them for their grades and spotty attention span. It was like he could only be their friend where no one else could see, and that…kind of stung. But he wanted to ask them to the dance? Publicly? Where everyone could see? That…changes things. It colors Berdly’s insistent annoyances about grades and attendance in a new light. Makes his harsh personality soft around the edges, yielding to something more…sweet.
Look where that sweetness got him. Holed up in a hospital bed because of some stupid strings. Kris balled their hands until their knuckles went white.
It was too quiet. Without his laugh, without his annoying remarks, without him…the world was just too quiet.
“I’ll go with him.” Kris says, firm and final. “When he wakes up, tell him to do whatever stupid proposal he wants. I’ll go with him no matter what.” Then, they look up at Noelle, mouth upturned in a small smile. “But that means you gotta take Susie.” The doe flusters, nose blinking red for a moment, before she lets out an embarrassed laugh.
“Oh, please, like she’d go with me!” She says, self-conscious. Kris’s smile turns to a bit of a smirk.
“Just ask, you scaredy cat. I promise the outcome will be favorable.” Then, they shrug. “And if it doesn’t, then you can always third wheel me and Berdly.” That gets a genuine laugh out of her, head thrown back as her hands grip the side of the hospital bed. Kris snickers, glad for the warmth that’s returned to the room. Noelle calms down after a couple of moments, sighing breathlessly, before turning to Kris.
“Gosh, how long has it been since we’ve talked like this?” She asks, still smiling. “It feels like forever.” Kris’s smile falls.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” They reply, voice low. They don’t have an explanation for her; they figure she can probably guess why. It won’t be the whole of the picture, but it’ll be enough for her to figure it out. And it seems like she does because her smile turns a little sad before she turns back to Berdly. Her fingers drift over one of Berdly’s wings, as if to soothe him.
“I just…I missed you, Kris.” She admits softly. “I missed my friend.”
I missed you too, they don’t say.
“I know,” is what they manage. They grip their pants tightly.
“I miss Berdly.” Noelle says, even softer.
“Me too.”
There’s nothing more to say after that, so the room fills with silence. Noelle wraps her hand around Berdly’s and gives it a tight squeeze, the best she can manage without words. Then, she turns and heads out of the room, leaving Kris alone once more.
Back to quiet contemplation, they suppose.
In a couple of minutes, Susie will text them to let them know that church is over.
In a couple of minutes, Kris will have to retrieve their SOUL from its cage.
In a couple of minutes, they will have to live through whatever the world has next for them.
But for now, they linger on Berdly, whose shallow breaths fill the air with not enough noise, and hope beyond hope that they’ll make it to that stupid dance.