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One question kept Kris up at night. One question that they always went back to, that they didn’t ever know the answer to. One question that ate them alive; spreading inside their brain like a parasite, gnawing away at any moment where they were enjoying something. The one question that they asked themselves over and over at any chance they got, trying to achieve at least some form of clarity over it. They didn’t like to admit it to adults asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up, or to Noelle whenever she asked their opinion on anything ever, but it was deep down their biggest longing to achieve the answers to it.
As a child, they’d catch themselves staring deep into the full body mirror in their room often. They’d look up and down at their body; get closer to see the details of their face, pull their skin down to expose the entirety of their eyes. They’d investigate ‘themselves’ as if it was something foreign they were handed, treat it precious, almost flinching away at the slightest movement in the mirror despite being the one doing it. They’d stay up at night; turn on the lights once they were certain that Asriel was too deep asleep to notice, and they’d sit in front of that frame for hours until their body fell victim to exhaustion. They’d have to explain to Azzy why they were there at 6 in the morning, slumped against the mirror.
When it shattered due to their own aggression at the sight facing them being nothing but meaningless illusion, it was only ever them that got hurt. The small piece of a glass shard stabbed into their hand, creating a puddle of blood where they rested it and staining onto the wood flooring. They were never bothered to clean that up, despite their mother asking several times why that was there, where the mirror went.
After all, how could they tell her that her child that she worked so hard to raise was a walking void of some sort? How could they explain to somebody normal what they saw when faced with a mirror? Wouldn’t they just get told the same things about how they “just needed to grow up” over and over again? What even would be the point, if so?
To the luck of the adults lecturing them about it, nothing really changed once they did grow up. They were still avoiding any surface that could show them their own being. They felt like a parasite stuck inside the body of somebody else, somebody innocent that did not deserve this. They ate away at their ‘vessel’ (that was nobody but them themselves, at the end of the day), taking away its innocence with their filth. They truly were contagious. They were a being that shouldn't've gotten a chance to exist in the first place; something that should’ve been harshly discarded right at creation. The world wouldn’t change much, probably, considering how much dirt was already filling it.. but they were certain it would be a better life for those around them.
When they met Susie for the first time, they couldn’t help but be concerned for her because of how physically close she got to them. If they were a parasite, bacteria, wouldn’t they just infect her, creating yet another victim to their dirt? Wouldn’t they stain her too, take away her sense of identity to place ‘them’ in the place instead? Why would she even be willing to get in the same room as such a creature?
Of course, their thoughts of this only got worse and more torturing when they got closer in the sense of a relationship. They kept silent, kept their head down, tried to be anything and everything that pissed Susie off that they could be at the mercy of something else roaming through their mind, their body. They were placed as the prey of the situation they were once the predator in. It was only what they deserved, after all those years they spent bringing nothing but pure pain onto something, but Susie..
Well, she was somebody, somebody surprisingly sweet. She had her actual mind inside her actual body, she was pure. She was light in darkness, and it should’ve been her soul that spread that lightness when they were stuck clueless deep in the dark. It should’ve been her to be the one spared and allowed a happy life at the end of the entirety of this, instead of them. She looked at them with such an oddly comforting expression that they could almost forget all of their sins in her presence. They could even forget that she was so close to being someone, something else, invaded by Kris.
Their name felt nasty to be uttered in the same sentence as hers. They almost couldn’t believe that somebody so perfect even existed in the same universe as them. It made them sick, physically sick. It made them want to throw up. Why was life so unfair to people like Susie? Who was this angel to place her in the same atmosphere as a parasite to those around them? What did she ever do wrong to deserve this treatment, and what did they ever do right to deserve the chance of her presence?
They screamed into the deepest pits of the void they fell into. They grasped their hair from the roots and pulled it away. They clawed their nails on their skin, trying to detach the body they adapted to from them, allowing it freedom. They kicked and thrashed, for they weren’t allowed free, and nor was their ‘vessel’. They’d now be a vessel themselves, they’d be robbed off the one thing they found themselves in. They’d be nothing other than their body, but they knew that this wasn’t their body to begin with.
Who were they without their mind, their endless thoughts? Who were they when something else gnawed at their freedom selfishly?
Who were they when they weren’t pretending?