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Published:
2025-09-04
Completed:
2025-10-05
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2,779
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2/2
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From The Dark Water

Summary:

Kris didn’t care.

Kris couldn’t care.

The body kept the score, but the score could be overwritten in zeroes until it was empty and clean as a missing girl’s bedroom.

Don’t forget.

Ralsei was an object--less than an object, a concept, the washed-up seaglass fragments of old hopes and useless dreams. If Dess was here, she would’ve smashed him into fluff just for the EXPerience, and then she’d grin at Kris and flex her arm and they’d laugh and laugh and laugh.

And Susie? The bully who’d threatened to eat their face more times than they could count? That Susie?

If Dess was here, she would’ve smacked the hell out of Susie, too. There was only room for one mean girl in Hometown.

So why should Kris care if they liked the SOUL more than Kris? None of it was real. Susie and Ralsei only got close because they'd gotten to know the SOUL, and the SOUL made everyone better people.

...Except Dess and Kris. Even the sheer power of a human SOUL couldn’t remake the worst outcasts in Hometown into good people.

Wasn’t there something kinda satisfying about that?

Notes:

My favorite parts about Kris are how they're definitely not traumatized and definitely not self-destructive and definitely make good decisions always.

This took a couple inspirations, namely:

* The Krissociation meta from @radicaldreemurrs https://www.tumblr.com/radicaldreemurrs/tagged/krissociation%20meta

* Useful Gaming Tips For Newbies by @SeventhAgent https://archiveofourown.org/works/67713681

* Melody of the Heart by PatriotsPeak https://archiveofourown.org/works/66756748/chapters/172253674

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

❤️

If Dess was in the Dark World, she would’ve cracked Lancer’s skull open with a baseball bat five minutes in. 

It was one of those traits, like everything else about Dess, the town didn’t talk about anymore. She played rough, denting instruments until the strings broke and burning through sports equipment until her skates left jagged scars across the ice. And when it came to games, she was always the strongest, no matter how many enemies she had to destroy.

But everything got softened when you disappeared, didn’t it? Suddenly you were such a sweet and fresh girl, a nice and tidy girl, like everything dirty about you had gotten dusted away from your memorial pictures on the mantle. People--especially monsters, with magic and compassion making up their very beings--didn’t want to hold onto unresolved resentment. 

You didn’t shoot bullet patterns at someone who couldn’t fight back.

So everyone politely agreed to remember the wrong version of Dess. A nice girl, a sweet girl, just like Asriel. A girl who’d never really wanted to leave Hometown, so she wouldn’t mind if her belongings stayed there until they gathered real dust where her dust couldn’t get scattered, right? 

It was tragic, but somehow beautiful. A child lost where the forest would grow. 

And when Asgore wouldn’t stop looking for Dess in the sort of places nice girls didn’t visit, everyone politely agreed to let him go.

Everyone politely agreed that Asriel should go off to college and make new friends instead of mourning around town and ruining his image.

Everyone politely agreed that Noelle should speak softer, focus on her studies, and listen to her mother. 

And everyone politely agreed that there was nothing “wrong” with Kris after the incident. At least, nothing that a little art therapy, a gentle hug, and a school routine couldn’t fix.

Everything, in time, could be fixed. And if not fixed, then brushed over somehow. Dusted off, locked away, preserved and buried underground. Angel preserve us, in the Deltarune we pray. 

If Kris ever felt their human SOUL burning in their chest like a knife, burning in their eyes, desperate to lurch out and shatter something? If the human food and vitamins Toriel bought for them rotted heavy in their stomach long after monster food would’ve disappeared? If they strained until their lungs hurt for a way to cast out the emotions choking them into a beautiful bullet pattern?

Well.

They could always tear that part of themself out and lock it away somewhere.

It hurt a little, of course. Ripping out your SOUL always did. Even once they’d carved the bothersome thing through their ribs, it didn’t so much stop hurting as become the sort of hurt Kris didn’t care about anymore.

You didn’t care about anything when your SOUL was out. Not really. There were lingering memories in the body, still--the body kept the score like an old SAVE file, data stored in neurons and hormones and scar tissues--but you could overwrite anything written in past tense. 

Kris could force themself not to scream and learn to mumble instead. They could play with their toys like real (imaginary) friends instead of objects to be used up and broken. They could let all their EXPeriences with Dess wither in the back of their SOUL until they became soft and weak again. 

Without a SOUL, it was almost--almost--like Kris fit in with the monsters. Kind of ironic, wasn’t it? Kind of funny? They fit in best with creatures made of pure compassion when they put all their passion away. 

For the best, really. Rumor had it that a sufficiently determined human with a stick could turn a monster to dust without flinching. Kris couldn’t afford to get angry enough, petty enough, even curious enough to see what their knife did to something other than pies and floorboards. 

Kris couldn’t afford to act like Dess. When monsters lashed out, they ran away and disappeared. When humans lashed out, monsters died. Nothing was created equal. 

This is where we draw pictures, and don’t kill each other!

Toriel didn’t need to remember that she’d adopted someone worse than a monster. She’d read the human history books, but she treated them like a normal child, anyway. Even SOULless, they at least owed her the effort to try and prove her right.

They owed everyone so much. If a monster soul started off at 0, then they must’ve been something like -999. 

Aunt Carol wouldn’t let them forget that. How could she? It wasn’t like she could forget her own child. Best she could do was sort of... put it aside and lock it away somewhere. Focus on digging through the dark for animated pieces of Dess. 

But at least digging for Dess like a corpse was better than not looking for her at all. 

Dess would’ve liked being a cryptid more than a saint, anyway. 

Come follow me into the dark! 

And it was nice, being important for something! Nice having a use for their SOUL beyond the thankless task of living. In the Dark World, being a human meant everything. Humans could light the way. Take every hit. Solve every encounter. Command every ACT. 

If Kris really was stuck never being equal to monsters, at least in the Dark World they could be a hero figure, instead of always missing something and lagging behind. A negative 999 and positive 999 still made 0.

They could be content with being a false zero. Zero was as much like infinity as it was like nothing. A blank slate. An empty vessel.

It didn’t matter if every time they put their SOUL back, it felt slightly different. As if less and less of what they called Kris was controlling it. As if something else woke up right before the first Dark World, full of love and compassion and purified waters, and decided to be a better person without them. 

That was... fine. Kris couldn't imagine being a hero, anyway. They would’ve just broken things if they’d tried to be themself. The SOUL could carry its own raw compassion and recycle it into Dark World heroics, and Kris could keep bearing pure emptiness and recycling that into whatever Carol or the Knight needed done. 

Kris with their SOUL was an outcast. Kris without a SOUL was an empty husk. The SOUL by itself was a hero, a guiding light. 

Negative 999. Zero. Positive 999. 

Everything still balanced out fine.

So it didn’t matter if everyone liked the SOUL more than any other version of Kris. Kris had seen already how much monsters preferred a clean and golden child to a messy, angry one. They didn’t hold it against anyone to want to be treated with kindness. They owed them nothing less than kindness, after the monsters had seen everything Kris was and adopted them anyway. 

It didn’t surprise them to see how happy Toriel got when the SOUL brought home a friend from school. 

It only hurt a little when Noelle told the SOUL about December, like they’d become closer friends in a few hours than she and Kris had been for years.

And when Ralsei and Susie--


KRIS DIDN’T CARE WHAT RALSEI AND SUSIE THOUGHT ABOUT THE SOUL.


The hollow space in their chest where a SOUL wasn’t let out a warm throb, sending them staggering to their knees. They coughed until their throat burned, digging at their chest with bitten fingernails and aching tendons. Plugging the empty space like packed gauze on a weeping wound.

Kris didn’t care.

Kris couldn’t care.

The body kept the score, but the score could be overwritten in zeroes until it was empty and clean as a missing girl’s bedroom. 

Don’t forget. Don’t ever, ever forget.

Ralsei was an object--less than an object, a concept, the washed-up seaglass fragments of old hopes and useless dreams. If Dess was here, she would’ve smashed him into fluff with a bat just for the EXPerience, and then she’d grin at Kris and flex her arm and they’d laugh and laugh and laugh.

And Susie? The loud, stupid bully who’d threatened to eat their face more times than they could count? That Susie?

If Dess was here, she would’ve smacked the hell out of Susie, too. There was only room for one mean girl in Hometown.

So why should Kris care what Susie and Ralsei thought? None of it was real. Susie and Ralsei only got close because Dess wasn't here and they'd gotten to know the SOUL, and the SOUL made everyone better people.

...Except Dess and Kris. Even the sheer power of a human SOUL couldn’t remake the worst outcasts in Hometown into good people.

Wasn’t there something kinda satisfying about that? Validating, even? The SOUL could do everything right, and Kris would still beat it with a hockey stick and let them both suffer the damage for it. 

The SOUL could recruit absolutely everyone else in the Dark World, and Tenna--the one Darkner who wanted most to be loved and watched by Kris--would end up slashed and discarded in a snowbank like the broken old CRT he was.

The SOUL could do everything possible to clean up Kris’s mean reputation with kindness and heroism, to soften them politely into a sweet and golden flower of a child, but a dark smudge would always remain somewhere. You could never wash it all away. 

The SOUL could love everyone with an infinite intensity, 999 times, and Kris would hate it 999 times harder.

Ha. Ha-ha. Wasn’t it nice, when the numbers were balanced? When a zero wasn’t a zero in the same way a monster’s EXP was set at zero, but became zero by having infinite numbers in either direction? 

To be human was to live in perfect contradiction.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

...Their chest hurt. Blue-white candle flames flickered overhead, casting bricks and bookcases into jagged stripes of harsh light and endless shadow. Somewhere in the distance, above the panes of prophetic glass, a field of bells rang out a low tune. 

Kris could feel the shadows seeping in through the edges of their chest, itching to fill the void and shape themselves whole. They grit their teeth, trudging ahead another step. Two. More.

Aunt Carol had warned them about going without their SOUL for too long in a Dark World. They couldn’t seal fountains without it. They couldn’t dodge bullets or gather tension. They were just an empty husk, and the darkness abhored a vacuum. 

If they were slowly dying without a SOUL in the Light World, going without a SOUL in the Dark World was a death sentence in everything but body. Their body wouldn’t get to die, not with a million tiny darknesses carving it out from the inside like a nest of spiders. 

But, ha-ha, who was Kris kidding? They always knew they’d get used up someday. Today was as good as any other day.

Truth was, it’d been over since the day the SOUL woke up and decided it wanted to become a better person. It couldn’t grow into a better person as long as someone else in the body kept lashing out to sabotage it, resetting all its good deeds back to perfect zeroes. Eventually, it would realize Kris had to be discarded if it wanted to proceed. Eventually, it would win out.

Kris hated it for being a better version of themself than they ever were. 

Their head swam. They staggered again, huffing stale breaths in the darkness. 

...They hoped Ralsei and Susie were okay.

(Selfishly, they hoped Ralsei and Susie weren’t okay.)

They hoped Noelle and Berdly and Toriel were okay.

(They hoped they were all stranded and confused and disgusted at how ugly the SOUL looked in its new vessel, without its old cage holding it back.) 

They hoped the SOUL’s better vessel made them all so happy they forgot what Kris ever acted like.

(They hoped their empty husk in the darkness haunted everyone even more than Dess haunted Hometown. That it refused to be forgotten and polished. That when it went into the dark, it raged.)

The darkness kept growing, but Kris braced themself, shoving it back.

Just a little further. Had to keep moving. They could almost see the Knight ahead, jittering and crackling against the shadows like a hole in the universe.

Like a fountain pouring the Dark World into the Light, turning stories and memories and regrets into reality.

Like the first ever fountain.

The first crack in Hometown’s image, a memory so distorted and retold and reframed that it stopped being shaped like Dess anymore and turned into a rough and broken echo of Dess, mixed with every other cryptid legend in town, mixed with old hopes and broken dreams. 

Kris stepped closer. The world crackled around them, writhing with darkness. Their eyes burned with effort to see, half-formed shapes and fractals blooming across their vision like bullet patterns.

Dess is a good person. She’d defend anyone with her bat or her mom’s katana, like a brave knight.

Dess is a bad person. She’s always picking fights and screaming those rude lyrics too loud.

Dess is_a_FRIEND. She’s great at games and always wins against THE ENEMYs! Keep her in your party to gain EXP! Don’t leave her behind!

WHO_IS_THE_ROARING_KNIGHT? [YOU got the SHELTER KEY] <Kris please bring up a different topic>

Dess PrOmIsEd to take me to THE_CITY.ogg [someday]! 

Dess PrOmIsEd [we’d leave][Hometown][someday]!

Why can’t Dess leave [Hometown]? Why is the [CYBER WORLD] down? Why does the [TV TIME] only play reruns? What’s happening outside [Hometown]? Is there anything outside--

> [SOUL]town! A FRIENDly place to live! Nothing bad happens in [SOUL]town! It’s a perfect place for [YOU]. 

Kris stumbled into a kneel. The Knight stood over them. They stood over them. They smiled at them, who smiled at them, who smiled at them. They felt whole.

The numbers should’ve stayed at 0, but a human SOUL woke up one day as 1 new person, and suddenly 0 wasn’t infinite and everything anymore. Suddenly everything was 0s and 1s. 

Suddenly everything was binary, and nonbinary didn’t fit anymore.

Kris’s head hurt from staring at the Knight. The Knight hissed loving curses into their ear, choked their neck in a tender hug. They hugged them back, cutting their arms against sharp armor and dripping shadows into shadows until it was almost like they were one and the same again.

Like best friends who couldn’t stop hurting each other. Like a black shadow smear on a map of Hometown. Like bad eggs that would never hatch into real pets.

Like [hyperlink blocked].

LIKE FINDING LOVE. 

The Knight tilted its head at Kris, and Kris raised a shaking hand, pointing the way back towards the SOUL’s beautiful glow and the old friends that surrounded it. Betraying them, one last time.

Kris could at least do that much, before they rotted away. They could finish the last notes of their promise to [her], guiding her half-rotten, misshapen form to an encounter against the SOUL where it would either get purified completely... or explode. 

If the SOUL was lucky, it would gather its light and courage and purify the darkness out of Dess until only the clean and tidy girl remained. Then Dess could come back to the light like nothing ever happened, finally scrubbed down into a better person just like Susie and Ralsei had become around the SOUL. Her years in the dark would balance into a bright future with all the SOUL’s friends.

If Kris was lucky, the SOUL would purify the darkness and find nothing left there, functionally no different from purifying or slaying any other Titan spawn. The darkness would scatter and bloom into a shape so large it cracked the surface of the earth, roaring loud enough to shatter even the stained glass of the Angel’s Heaven, along with any illusion of a perfect Hometown with no bad memories.

A pure river, or a dark ocean.

999 or -999.

Either way, Kris would be used up and lost.

The least Kris could do, as a human, was make sure the numbers went up as high as they possibly could before everything faded to zero. Max LVL, max EXP, max POWER. The SOUL was such a good influence, they deserved only the best of the worst, right?

The knight smiled at the knight smiled at the knight. They moved together in the dark as best friends and worse people, hand in unLOVEable hand, to be stabbed against the earth together and finally see what came flowing out.

💔

Chapter 2: Art :D

Summary:

Still absolutely sick in the head for Corruption Arcs, so here's some art to go with this fic. Please enjoy it! I also added some art to the first chapter.

Chapter Text