Chapter Text
Kris knew something about Noelle that no one else did.
For the longest time, they didn’t do anything with this piece of information. There was nothing really to do with it, at least not until a particular time of year. And even then, they didn’t have to do anything about it. It was the smallest, most insignificant thing.
But they remembered it, still. They took it to heart, placing the lone fact somewhere deep inside themself, with no intention of ever forgetting it. It was the kind of thing where, once you learned about it, you couldn’t exactly un-learn about it. Gently surprising, yet ultimately unimportant.
There was nothing Kris could do—or felt like doing—with the information they learned. For a while, at least.
It perhaps began with one instance, several years ago, in which the Dreemurrs and Holidays had united mid-December for a leisurely activity, something to kick up more holiday spirit, as if it were really necessary. Neither Kris nor Dess felt as though pottery painting was the most exciting thing to do as a group—but with Asriel encouraging Kris that it would be fun, and Noelle pleading with her sister to paint something with her, and the adults already planning what festive tupperware they would like to design, the two ended up going along without much vocal complaint.
The place, on the very outskirts of Hometown, was barely more than a cottage with blank, dusty pottery lining the cramped shelves. There were no pricetags, no signs or stickers for any of them; one instead had to ask the old, lone monster perpetually sitting at the front desk, to which she would croak out a value in a voice so naturally sweet that anyone was far more likely to walk away from the conversation heartwarmed rather than annoyed.
This didn’t bode incredibly well for the mothers of each respective family, with Carol growing increasingly irritated at the poor monster’s lack of speed, while Toriel would walk over to the counter with her arms filled, balancing multiple ceramics in each hand, eagerly asking how much each one was.
Looking back, Kris wasn’t sure why they remembered all these details specifically. They had been watching the two ladies out of the corner of their eye, before turning back to their own blank ceramic mug. They didn’t need anything special—-just the mug would do.
Sitting across from them were Noelle and Dess, both with matching Christmas trees to be painted. Noelle had selected a medium-sized one, while Dess had picked the smaller size; Kris noted that she had been initially eyeing the ceramic baseball models on the high shelf, but gave in quickly to her sister insisting that they should both paint the same thing. It was probably for the best anyway, lest a precious clay baseball were to be mistaken for a real one at any point.
To Kris’s left was their brother, who had settled on a decently-sized plate to project his mural of an idea onto. He had already filled a palette of various glazes in the orange to green range, methodically selecting which of his four paintbrushes to use and where. In the end, he would leave the group waiting on him to finish his masterpiece before they could all leave, keeping everyone almost past dinnertime.
Turning back to their own mug, Kris only had a relatively vague idea of what they wanted to do. The siblings had painted pottery together years before; they both split two sides of the same ceramic vase, with Asriel’s half being neatly painted and Kris’s side being a splatter of brush strokes, having utilized every color of glaze they could access. Fortunately, the finished piece – with both of its sides, each lively in their own way – was displayed proudly in the Dreemurr living room for a few years, with its flowers replaced periodically by Asgore.
But Kris wasn’t going to pull the same thing again. Firstly, they were already nine years old—their brain had developed quite a bit in the past four years, despite their ever-stunted social skills and complete lack of accomplishments compared to what their brother had achieved by their age. Kris was simply the “quiet and observant type,” as their mother had put it however long ago, with the slightest edge to her voice that silently added onto her statement with “when they’re not getting into trouble.”
And, secondly, they had an actual goal for this piece. An artistic vision, even. Glancing up at Noelle again, who was already drenching her tree in layers upon layers of green, Kris wondered if she might like what they had in mind, if she ended up noticing.
They began by arranging their own palette; all they needed were white, green and red. Asriel or someone usually helped them pour their paint in the past. Confident in doing it themself, they tipped the green bottle over carefully, only for an amount ten times more than what they needed to tumble out, completely dwarfing their selection of Apple Red and Titanium White. Dang it.
Well, it wasn’t a big deal. Trudging forward, they sat back down in their seat and began to pile their excess of Forest Green onto the outer side of the mug. They wanted to leave a wide stripe around the circumference of the cup to fill in with red later. The smart thing probably would have been to apply masking tape to the area they wanted to leave alone, so they could achieve a perfectly straight line; this is what Asriel and Toriel always suggested, after all. Confident in doing it themself, they freehanded the stripe with vigor, wasting no time in trying to make it around the whole mug. They held it out in front of them after finishing, only to see that the bare stripe was misshapen and crooked as a result. Dang it.
Well, it was just paint, right? Pottery glaze, at that. It was soluble in water; scrubbing a bit at the dried edges with a damp paper towel would lift up some of the green, and they could carve the shape into a perfect straight line. Kris knew that if they asked their mother or father or brother for help, they would certainly oblige.
But, still. Confident in doing it themself, they dipped a finger in the shallow bucket of water sitting in the center of their table and dragged it across the side of their mug. The green was only smeared, leaving an unsightly mark on the blank area. Dang it.
Maybe layering the red on top would cover it. That is how some paint works, after all. Surely, the red would cover it.
But, the colors did not layer. Kris’s less-than-confident brushstroke of red over the same spot looked like a shadow over the green, making everything darker. Then, the red mixed with the residue of the water, dripping down the edge of the mug and forming more ugly, ugly colors.
Dang it. Dang it. Dang it!!!
They felt stupid. Why did they think they could do this by themself? They couldn’t do anything by themself.
Masking their expression as rigidly as possible, they looked over to Asriel’s plate. A pleasant field of flowers was slowly forming, with their brother concentrating deeply on delicately painting each petal.
They turned towards Dess. Her tree was oddly painted, green splotches surrounding various colored ornaments. Dess herself was clearly trying very hard not to doze off completely.
Then, Kris angled their head towards Noelle. She was smiling, happily humming to herself as she dragged her brush up and down endlessly, applying her umpteenth coat of green already. The ornaments on her tree were a haphazard, messy mix of colors. One of them was probably supposed to be orange with yellow spots, but she had applied too much yellow, so the many small dots looked more like a few very large dots. A different ornament was purple with blue stripes, seemingly facing the same issue. Every so often, Noelle’s father would pass by to give her words of encouragement, earning him a beaming smile in response.
Kris watched her as she painted more and more. They looked at her, then her tree, then at her again, then at her tree again.
It looked… kind of bad. The tree, that was. There were mistakes everywhere. She wasn’t being careful or methodical. And yet she was cheerfully plugging on without care. She was just having fun.
Looking back down at their own ceramic, Kris studied the mess-ups and mistakes they were toiling over just a few moments before. It didn’t seem all that bad anymore. Sure, the lines weren’t straight, but they were reasonable enough to still resemble a stripe. The drips of red were on the backside of the mug near the handle—maybe it wouldn’t be that noticeable. Maybe it would still turn out okay.
Kris didn’t fully, consciously understand why they felt the need to be as perfect as their brother. Obviously, they weren’t, and they never could be; at this point in their life, they ought to have just accepted that by nature, they would always be inferior. The token troublemaking, socially inept human of the family—or rather, the whole town. It was an automatic response to feel as though they could never fit in anywhere; certainly not here, at least. It was perhaps for this reason that they felt the constant need to prove themself, only to fall flat every time they tried.
Then, there was Noelle: the complete opposite of them in every way. From a rich family of perfect monsters, she was raised as if she’d grow up to be the crown jewel of the Holidays, treated wholly as an extension of her parents rather than an outlier. Kris sometimes wondered if she felt stifled by it all; at least their own mother and father never expected them to act a certain way, beyond being decent at the most basic level. Would it be better to be crushed under impossible expectations, or freed via the complete lack of them?
But, at this moment, it seemed as though Noelle had forgotten about all of that. There was no need to be good. Just to be happy. Kris finally dipped their brush back into the paint once more to continue. To be a child was to be imperfect, maybe. Perhaps they could find it in them to feel like a child still, if only for a few moments.
Kris knew something about Noelle that no one else did.
… Actually, this was an exaggeration. It wasn’t that no one else knew about it; it was just that no one ever acknowledged it. The truth had been buried so deep it might as well be a complete fabrication. It wasn’t as though it had any real effect on anything, anyway.
The other holders of this forbidden knowledge were certainly Noelle’s parents, most likely her sister as well, and maybe Kris’s own parents. To assume Asriel knew about it might be a stretch—this fact somehow made it feel more special.
This taboo, classified, scarcely-questioned secret could have been any number of things. This was what Kris thought to themself on one dark, wintery evening—New Year’s Eve, as a matter of fact. The two of them stood in the Holidays’ backyard, Kris idly shuffling around trying to leave a trail of footprints in the snow, while Noelle sat uncharacteristically dejected by the porch. Kris had noticed her mood and elected not to say anything; after all, they were both out there for a reason.
“Kris, can I tell you something?” Noelle had said to them. “A secret. Something no one else knows about.”
They slowed to a stop in their treading, turning to look at her, seemingly, hopefully intrigued.
“My birthday was today, you know?”
Well, yes. They did know. That’s why Kris’s family had spent basically the entire day at Holiday manor, celebrating Noelle’s eighth birthday before the party eventually devolved into a New Year’s get-together, like it did every year.
So, they nodded in response.
“Well… the truth is, my birthday… isn’t actually today. It’s not December 31st.”
Kris stared at her at length. Noelle realized she should probably continue instead of waiting for a response.
“It’s tomorrow. January 1st.”
It was hard to notice, but Kris’s eyebrows did indeed raise at this. How peculiar. What was the point of telling everyone your birthday was one day earlier than it actually was?
But after a moment, Kris realized why. Carol Holiday’s birthday was December 9th. Rudy Holiday’s birthday was… December 22nd or 23rd, Kris could never quite remember. Dess Holiday’s birthday was, of course, December 25th. And, Noelle’s birthday, up until today, had been on December 31st.
The decision to lie to the entire town about their daughter’s birthday was something Kris had never even considered. Though it was likely only discounting a few hours at most, it was still kind of ridiculous. And also something that Carol Holiday would do, according to their own knowledge and observations of her.
Even at the leisurely age of seven, they did not have much of an appreciation for the subtly strict ways in which she controlled her children, and how those behaviors were occasionally redirected toward Kris themself. This all could have been her own way of saving Noelle from feeling like the odd one out in her family; or it could have been for something else entirely. There were a lot of things about that woman Kris just couldn’t understand.
“My dad only told me last year,” Noelle went on. “That I was actually born a while after midnight the next day. He talked about it like it was something funny, but…”
They could already imagine how that probably played out. Her father would explain that it wasn’t a big deal, and if anything, it meant she should celebrate two birthdays now. Her sister would've laughed it off, maybe uncomfortably, since it’d seem like something she’d protest at first before ultimately succumbing—something she’d blame herself for not stopping if Noelle decided she was unhappy about it. And her mother would’ve refused to comment further on it at all, most likely. Ever mysterious, ever subtly avoidant.
Kris thought back to the birthday present they had given Noelle earlier in the day. It had been a hand-knit sweater, made by their mother; Kris had delivered it to her in a neatly wrapped box, and this had been the extent of their involvement with the gift. Somehow, everything that had happened that day, with the insincere present to the admittedly accidental lack of attention she was receiving now, sitting alone on the porch on New Year’s Eve… When all of it was combined with the fact that today wasn’t even her birthday, it all felt sour. Her eighth birthday had been soured before it even began.
At least it all made sense now. Why, in the back of Kris’s mind, they could feel something off about Noelle’s smiles the entire day. They were a little fake, a little forced. No one else seemed to notice, so she must’ve done a good job pretending.
It’s why they had both ended up alone underneath the falling snow after dark. The adults had become progressively louder as the evening went on, having shifted focus already, while Asriel and Dess were off doing who knows what, their energy too high for either of the younger siblings to keep up. The racket flushed the two of them out of the house, where they now stood, solitary, quiet.
Noelle had been looking down at the snow falling to her feet, before raising her head to meet Kris with a small, sad smile that someone her age shouldn’t have been wearing.
“So, I’m still seven… Just like you, Kris.”
As the sun set through the window of the old cottage, Kris turned their mug around in their hands, attempting to admire their work. The orange light was diluting the green, which had long since lost its vibrance anyway, having dried into a dusty, pale hue compared to its wet paint counterpart. This was just how pottery glaze worked, according to their mother—it would become bright and saturated again once it was baked in the kiln.
Noelle’s tree was more or less finished as well, and Dess had long since wandered off. Asriel still hovered over his plate, hands covered in paint, gently dabbing his smallest brush to create his billionth flower, coat one of three.
Though she had noticed the theming of Kris’s piece a while ago, Noelle only just then bounded over to get a closer look, smiling widely.
“Krismas! You made it Krismas-colored!”
The final product had ended up reasonably nice, far from perfect but still comprehensible. The cup was green with a red stripe like they aimed for, but to cover up their mistakes, they dabbed bits of white paint all around for snow, even adding a few X’s as attempted snowflakes.
But the part that really seemed to catch Noelle’s attention was the handle; it was covered in winding, diagonal red stripes, like a candy cane. Surprisingly, it turned out quite well. Maybe having a chance to warm up and go back with a steadier hand was a respectable strategy after all.
“Can I hold it? Please?” Noelle turned to them with her sparkliest eyes on display. Wordlessly, they passed it to her.
As she rapidly turned it over in her hands to inspect every detail, Kris realized it might’ve been a mistake giving it to her, considering some parts of it were still half-dry at best. Already, the snowflakes were getting smudged here and there, causing Kris to almost reach out a hand to take it back.
But, to no avail. Noelle’s quiet ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s as she looked over it stopped them. She peered into the inside of the cup, excited to see that it had also been painted red, before flipping it around to see the bottom side, where she paused briefly.
All that was on the bottom of each ceramic was the painter’s name, written in kiln-proof pencil. Kris had written “Krismas” on theirs.
Noelle giggled. “Wow, you never call yourself Krismas!”
“You only call me Krismas sometimes,” they replied.
“I call you Krismas when it’s Krismas time! Like right now!” Noelle huffed. “But YOU never call me Elly anymore.”
Kris turned away, ever so slightly embarrassed. “I never called you Elly that much in the first place,” they said, quieter. She didn’t have to shout it for the whole building to hear.
“Liar!” Noelle shot back with a ‘blehh’ as she stuck her tongue out at them.
Before Kris had the chance to say anything else, Noelle had darted back over to her own piece, precariously holding their mug by the handle as she used her other hand to tip her ceramic tree backwards.
“See, look! Underneath!!”
Kris moved closer to peek under Noelle’s ceramic, squinting to see through the shadows. “Elly” was written in her own remarkably neater handwriting. It seemed like they both had gotten the same idea.
Noelle puffed out her chest like she had just won an argument. “See? Elly and Krismas!!”
“I didn’t write that, though. You wrote ‘Elly.’”
“No, no, no, you’re missing the point! The nicknames come in a pair! Like Dess and Azzy!”
“Why’s my nickname longer than my normal name?” A smile was creeping onto Kris’s face.
“Be– because it’s a good nickname!! You’ve got the shortest name anyway! How are we supposed to make it shorter?” Noelle’s face was starting to go red like it usually did in times like these. If they kept it up long enough, her nose would start to glow, too.
“... You could call me ‘Kri,’ maybe,” they said, trying not to snort at their own suggestion.
“That’s an AWFUL nickname!!!”
“Why?”
“Because it SUCKS!”
“Well how about Krim– no, Krisma… Kr…”
Noelle burst into laughter. “Krim! That’s it! We’ll start calling you Krim! Fahaha!”
“No, that’s not what I meant! That was just–”
“Hey, what’s with all the ruckus?”
Dess’s hand landing on Noelle’s shoulder from behind—a simple, friendly gesture she had done a thousand times before—proceeded to set off a chain of events.
Noelle jumped out of her skin, likely due to a combination of being hyped up by Kris, her sister’s appearance being rather sudden, and having devoted the rest of her concentration to balancing not one, but two ceramics in some way. Kris watched in slow motion as her hands flew upward, releasing both pieces and sending each to a different fate.
The tree wobbled around on the table, attempting to find its center of gravity before Dess quickly reached out to steady it, forcing it flat down. Unfortunately, this left the other ceramic, the mug, flying through the air, making a perfect arc before it landed smack on the floor.
Crack…!
Everyone stood frozen for a moment, staring at the broken mug, until Kris broke free and moved to inspect the damage. They picked up the pieces, shuffling their hands along the floor, and internally breathed a sigh of relief when they realized there were only two.
Had the mug not fallen onto the rug conveniently placed under the tables and chairs, it surely would have been in dozens of pieces. Thankfully, the break was relatively straightforward—the handle had simply popped off the cup. Kris held both in their hands as they stood up.
Noelle looked as if she were milliseconds from bursting into tears, hands over her mouth like she had just seen someone die. Dess was desperately trying not to mutter profanities, multitasking with keeping her sister calm and trying to get a good look at Kris’s situation.
“Sorry, Kris– uh, my bad… not my brightest moment, haha…” she said sheepishly. “Looks like the damage isn’t too crazy, though? That’s a relief…”
By this point, the other adults had gathered to observe the commotion.Toriel took the pieces from Kris, rapidly scanning over their hands to make sure they weren’t hurt. Even Asriel had gotten up from his station, already doing his best to try to comfort everyone.
“Kris, it’s okay! Don’t worry!” he said, placing his hands firmly on their shoulders. “When pottery breaks, you can just glue it back together! After they bake the pieces, we’ll fix it at home, yeah?”
Kris nodded, surprisingly not as upset as they thought they would be. Maybe they have come a long way in four years. Stoically, they turned back to Noelle before being practically tackled by her.
“Kris! Kris!! Oh, I’m so sorry! It was an accident!!” she blubbered into them, her tears and snot already soaking their sweater.
“I– it’s okay, really,” they stammered, inconspicuously trying to drive a wedge between the two of them by pushing her back slightly. She was practically their height now—it would only get harder and harder to keep her at bay as the two of them continued to grow, Kris thought. It wasn’t her touch that made them want to escape out of their skin; just… contact in general, most likely.
“B– b– but… Your Krismas mug… it was so pretty and now it’s–”
“Hey, Elly! Don’t sweat it! It was my fault, anyway,” Dess ruffled her sister’s hair before kneeling in front of her, dropping down to her level. “No need for tears, okay? It will turn out all right!”
Noelle still sniffled, but her sobs were slowing and her eyes were drying—and when Kris took back the pieces from the table where their mother had set them, they began to approach her instead.
Kris rotated the handle around, inspecting the break once more. It was reasonably clean; it should glue back together just fine. But…
They held up the handle to Noelle, who watched it with wide eyes.
“It really looks like a candy cane now, huh?” Kris said with the tiniest smile.
She stared at it for a moment longer, before her breathing slowed enough to allow for a giggle.
“It’s a weird-looking candy cane! It’s got a weird shape…”
“You wouldn't eat this one?” Kris replied with mock-disappointment.
Noelle laughed again. “Nooo! It’d taste super gross!!”
“No, it’s yummy! Try it!” They shoved it up to her mouth, causing her to playfully squeal and run off; Kris chased her outside into the frozen parking lot.
It was already almost completely dark—the sun always set so, so fast in winter.
While Noelle continued to run around, Kris slowed to a stop as they took in their surroundings. The spreading darkness, swallowing up the distant trees, the falling snow stretching out ahead of them until even the faintest of flakes were overtaken by the black; they looked down at their shoes to see the tracks they had left, just a few feet away from the entrance of the cottage.
The brightness and clamor behind them, and the darkness and snow ahead of them. Noelle ahead of them. They got the strangest sense of deja vu.
Holding up the striped handle again, allowing the snow and darkness to frame it, Kris remembered it was her birthday soon.
At the end of the night, which happened to be at approximately 12:15AM, the Dreemurr parents gathered their children to head back home, their New Year’s celebration concluding on the early side thanks to the combination of aging adults and young children. Asriel, half asleep, was led by his father to the front door. Dess was still at his side, poking and prodding him in various inconvenient places in an attempt to wake him, clearly not tired herself.
Kris stood back next to their mother as she finished up her conversation with Carol—they were tired, but not necessarily exhausted enough to sleep. They were more so just done with this party.
Noelle had been the only one to turn in early; Kris figured this would happen, considering she was the only one out of the four of them that actually adhered to her bedtime schedule—even at sleepovers when Dess would put on movies far too late at night, Noelle would always be the first to fall asleep. If she wasn’t scared out of her mind over something she saw, that is.
Although, her being asleep before midnight was rather disappointing on this night in particular, what with the special secret she had told them about just a couple hours earlier. Kris had sat rigid on the couch as the ball dropped on TV, cheers and exclamations of “Happy New Year!” echoing throughout the living room.
Vaguely, in the back of their head, they hoped she was already asleep. They hoped she hadn’t heard everyone’s hurrahs over a day no one even thought of as hers.
If anything, she probably knew she didn’t want to be awake for when the clock struck 12, maybe especially now that someone else knew her secret. Her family would ignore it or mention it in jest, only; but now somebody else, her own friend, knew about her real birthday—but what if they ignored it too? Would that make it something worth ignoring? Would it solidify in her mind that everyone, if they knew the truth, would ignore it as well? Then, what would be the point of telling them at all…?
With a sudden burst of energy, Kris tore away from their mother after squeaking out a quick “bathroom,” fleeing up the stairs. “Hurry, honey! We’re leaving in just a second,” Toriel called out behind them.
They reached the bathroom door, turning the handle halfway before stopping and looking back, making sure no one’s heads were angled in their direction. After confirming they were indeed under the radar, they instead took a sharp left turn towards Noelle’s room, soundlessly squeezing through her door like a scampering mouse.
She did seem pretty asleep. Noelle laid motionless on her bed, aside from the gentle rise and fall of her chest, curled up and facing the wall as if she were trying to hide. Kris, as quickly and quietly as possible, lightly stepped towards her, being sure to avoid the random squeaky spot in the floor near the edge of her rug.
They reached her bed, and hesitated. They could so easily do something mean, waking her up with a start, earning themself a few pillow-bashes in return. But it wouldn’t be funny, and Noelle probably wouldn’t laugh. Not at a time like this.
So, they banished the thought, and did what they had intended to do in the first place. Carefully, quietly, they leaned over her. Into her ear, they whispered—
“Happy birthday.”
Thankfully, there was no reaction. Kris wasn’t sure what they would’ve done had she really heard them, waking up and once again pelting them with pillow-bashes in return for sneaking into her room in the first place. The gesture was solely symbolic, proving to Kris themself that they did care about Noelle’s secret, at least enough to do something like this. They had hoped she really was deeply asleep—even though the smallest part of them still wanted those words to reach her, even vaguely, even from the farthest reaches of their mind to the farthest reaches of her own. If she could know that someone wanted her to have a happy birthday—on her REAL birthday—then it was enough.
It was sad, Kris thought, that they had ended up as that person for her. Truthfully, it wasn’t like them to overstep like this. To do something so strangely intimate that they felt almost embarrassed about it. Noelle deserved someone better, someone who was actually good to her. Someone who could comfort her instead of just stare at her and build yet another mental wall in response.
Her father and her sister could’ve helped her in their own ways, surely—and they did help, and their actions weren’t to be underestimated. Those two were probably the main reason Noelle could smile like she did every day. But every so often, it wasn’t quite enough; the same way one’s immediate family can only do so much for them. It was times like this that Kris felt it in them, the rare drive to help her as well—though they were always sure that whatever they contributed would never be enough. It was a fact of their life, they had come to realize.
They knew in their heart that, in the end, they’d be incapable of carrying that weight. They weren’t quite enough, and they weren’t very good, and it was just a little too tiresome. It was just a little too tiresome to take care of someone else like that.
But the squeak of the front door opening yanked Kris back into reality, and all of the fleeting thoughts that had crossed their mind dissipated near instantly. They quietly slipped out of Noelle’s room to dash after the rest of their family, leaving her behind.
“You could have just used the bathroom at home, you know,” Toriel said to them as they reclaimed her hand, stepping out into the windy cold behind their father and brother.
A millisecond’s worth of icy anger tore at them before melting away in an instant. It wasn’t directed at anyone, or maybe it was directed at everyone. They all really do pretend her birthday was the 31st.
“Sorry,” they managed to mumble, with an accidental defeated edge to their voice that made Toriel glance at them again out of concern. She squeezed their hand tighter, reassuringly.