Work Text:
they're discussing something, perhaps a specific lyric, perhaps how dark it's grown, perhaps a cool stick. it's mostly dess talking, but that's fine. their wandering is heading back towards home, but they see a light on the road. it's asgore's truck, driving slowly along the perhaps not-so-well-maintained forest road. they stop, deciding to hitch a ride with kris' dad.
but, ah. the truck doesn't slow down.
it speeds up.
as those lights approach, all the both of them can see is a blinding white and the absentia around it, night-time eyes unused to highbeams meant for highways and not lowways. but dess, for all the talk of a deer in headlights, has held a distrust of the chief of police for as long as she had the mayor of hometown, for as long as she's leaned away from structures of power, so as her mind idly notes that this isn't a great situation, her body moves and pushes kris towards the treeline as she tries to dart into the dark herself-
(-a hand pushed back from the other side-)
-and she's stumbling, mind dark for a moment she can't afford to lose as a deer sprints, desperately hoping cervidae physiology will let her outpace a truck older than her. yet she isn't the holiday that takes cross-country, and she can only spare a moment to look back at a sprinting kris, their face indistinguishable from the extinguishing lights, before the truck hits a bump, gaining the most air it ever will, and everything goes dark for a moment (once more).
~~~
they struggle to understand quite what's happening, why their father isn't slowing down, but all of a sudden they're colliding against something that isn't there.
it feels like a hand. their own is still moving from the momentum.
and it is only an instant that they see inside the truck as it just barely avoids taking off their hand, empty beer cans and littered bottles and asgore with one hand on the wheel and that dumb little rearview ornament, before they see someone running from the truck, and as if they had been pushed they take off, knowing they won't be fast enough to catch up to either but hoping the worst doesn't come to be but then her head turns around and asgore's truck hits that annoying bump that never feels good to drive over and it goes into the air and-
-the sound isn't something kris can process right now. even the sight, searing as those lights, isn't what kris' mind latches on to at this point.
it's the fact that antlers aren't supposed to snap off out of season.
their sight is blurred by the time they catch up, short legs struggling to keep up but keep up they must, tears and the growing dark that floods back as the light recedes. even through the muddied red and grey, they can still see how it looks like a chunk of her chest and the entirety of her left arm was scooped out. they hope it's not her heart that rises and falls in the exposed air. they know it is.
"...'ris..."
no, that wheeze surely couldn't have been dess, dess who could take anything head-on and come out on top smirking, but their eyes travel upwards and
meet
her
eye
and there's just nothing on the left side of her face, shattered teeth digging into tongue and the faintest impression of her right orbit and a thousand strands all messed up among the viscera. her fur looks red and grey. it doesn't mix.
her hand that remains reaches aside, and they become cognizhant when a shaking hand pries open theirs, and in their hand now lies a... shattered part of her antlers? what-
that unsteady hand closes theirs around the broken antler. a soft forehead is barely pressed against theirs.
"...d'ya... 'member... dark...?"
it is only as they offer no resistance that their hand is raised unto the sky.
they think they remember. her head lulls back. her hand moves to cups their cheek.
"...it'll...help..."
and that's all that's on kris' mind, as their will is poured into something splintered, and thrust down did the human.
and lo, for the first time in untold years, did a new dark fountain pour.
~~~
it is quiet. dess' eye is closed, vaguely. trees taller than the sky loom, although kris was far from paying attention. there is a voice.
"She was always meant to die. Her body is to be discarded."
kris promptly chooses to completely ignore whatever bullshit this voice spouts-
"But not her soul."
...soul?
and as it was said, there was a light, with a crumbling monster soul floating before kris.
"She will die here. But, if you so wish, she could persist."
kris held out a hand to cup the soul before them.
"All it would take..."
and as it was said, there was a light, with a purple human soul floating in front of kris, just before dess' soul.
"Is your persistence. Your PERSEVERANCE."
a child is rare to consider the full consequences of an action. this voice may place weight upon whatever this perseverance thing is, but kris is going to do whatever they can to stop dess from dying.
"And in return..."
and as it was said, there was a light, with a hollowed soul floating above kris.
"You will bring my Prophecy to Light and Dark."
kris thinks they've heard of this before. one of the tropes noelle mentioned when writing a fic about this monster child who falls into a mountain filled with humans. 'deal with the devil', she said it was called.
they don't need to say anything. the voice knows they've accepted.
it feels as if someone has grabbed all of their tendons and pulled before gnawing them off with a herbivore's blunted teeth, but they persist, even as it gets harder to hold on, and even as they watch their soul jerk, and shake, and move towards dess' soul, before starting to glow-
"You were always meant to rescind your soul-"
~~~
"KRIS!”
they wake up. it's just before midnight. dried, musty tears cake their cheeks and eyes. they don't think about the dark. they don't look at their hands. they don't think about what they feel inside their chest.
because it's all fine. look, kris, azzy's here!
"oh, thank the angel!" asriel cups their head in his warm paws, before pressing his forehead to kris' and taking a shaking breath. he looks at them after pulling back, the new tears that weren't there a moment ago, still cupping their head as they look over them. "oh, kris, what happened to you? do you know where dess-"
-and all they can think about is the dark, a deer, a driver, a devil, a deal. they're screaming as they lose consciousness. they don't stop.