Work Text:
And in the end everything was okay. It all happened, and they all got through it, and it was okay.
After, Susie held Noelle and Kris both, on the couch of the Dreemurr house, and they looked at each other across her and they were okay. Miss Toriel brought them pie and hot chocolate, and the heating unit buzzed the air burnt and close as a blanket from too long in the dryer. School doors opened like arms for them, back into a classroom lit eternally with afternoon sunlight, spooling, as if just for them, along the floor, warm, sweet, inviting.
Noelle walked home laughing, among autumn leaves kicked up by Kris and Susie behind her, autumn leaves that fell and stayed like that, glinting gold and auburn on the ground. The month was always on the cusp of ending, and Autumn stayed eternally soft around them.
Noelle’s house bustled, and she never caught the source of the laughter, of the wafting smell of Christmas dinner, because she was giggling, flushfaced, and tugging Kris and Susie up to her room by the hands. No one spared a glance over a shoulder as they walked past another bedroom door, why would they?
“You still have it,” Kris murmured, sitting across Susie’s legs on her bed, a picture in their hands. Noelle craned her neck to see it, but she couldn't make anything out.
“Anyways, I have a better idea than looking at weird old pictures,” Susie said, sitting up and smirking, and Noelle was suddenly, although, it’s strange, she couldn’t tell why, so relieved.
School again, and everyone was making fun of the three of them, not mean but entertained, a new relationship was always novel, fun, something easy and light to talk about. And that’s all anything was these days, easy and light.
“The closet,” Kris said, looking back over their shoulder, a strange look on their face. “We should–”
“Your mom works here, dude,” Susie said. “Not happening.” And Noelle laughed at the flush spotting Kris’ cheeks as they all leaned against the door, waiting on Miss Toriel to drive them home. And she was there, right on time, and shouting at them as they ran up Kris’ stairs to leave the bedroom door open.
“Azzy’s coming home,” Kris said, staring at the screen of the computer. They were trying to boot it up to call him, but it wouldn’t stop buzzing static.
“What?” Susie blinked at them as if her vision was clearing. “Wait, Kris. Wasn’t he supposed to get home last week? Or–when was last week? What day is it?”
Noelle laughed at them both and tugged Kris’ closet open, to look at all the new clothes they got. They could wear anything now, they said, anything.
Then it was school again, and Noelle’s room again, where there was no calendar, anymore, and then Kris’ room, and school, and school, and school. It felt like every time Noelle blinked there was another vision of what she wanted so desperately for so long, tangible, real, right there in front of her. Kris and Susie smiling at her, her house full and messy, gentle long afternoons and nights that never darken below the burn of the sunset.
“What’s going on?” Susie stood in the hallway in front of the closet door. “Why do we keep ending up here?”
“Something’s wrong,” Kris whispered.
“You are both so silly,” Noelle said. “Hey, I found an old coupon for QC’s, we should go.”
They were on the mountaintop, now looking out over the glittering lights of town. This, she wanted this.
“I'm scared,” Kris said, their hand tight in Noelle’s.
“Me too,” she whispered, and time unfolded itself around her, back to the hallways of her childhood, when they clutched each other just like this.
And how long has it been? How long, of warm, gentle, sweet? Can this be forever, please?
She opens her eyes and she’s alone, in the school hallway, and the closet door is open.
And she has nowhere else to go, so she falls in.
There is nothing here. Noelle curls into herself, arms over her head. There is nothing in this dark. It is so cold and so dark. There’s nothing here, it’s empty, everything fell down around her, into the dark, dark dark. Wind blows from nowhere and bites, bites cold and dark as a lonely night in the black maw of the coldest week in the snowcovered barren depths of December.