Chapter Text
There’s a kid in the woods sitting on a big rock, absently picking at the velcro strapping a black fabric brace to their knee with one hand, the other folded in their lap, waiting for a command that’ll never come. That’s the hand Frisk is aware of. The one that might belong to their body. Might belong to their body because if it did, it’d belong to Chara in equal measure, and Chara would reach out and take control of it and bring it up to tangle its fingers in Frisk’s hair (if this hair is even Frisk’s at all) and give them some vague impression of comfort for lack of a body to hug them with. Because that’s how this works, and this body isn’t their body because this forest isn’t real and neither is the bright blue sky above them and neither is the body sitting across from them, muttering not-quite-curses over the shoddily-woven bones of a flower crown. They aren’t here. This isn’t real. This is a dream and they are asleep on the stained, ketchup-scented couch in Sans and Papyrus’s house in Snowdin Town, because that is the reasonable answer. That would explain, at least, why everything feels so far away from them. Why they’re nestled deep inside this body that can’t possibly be theirs and why the person sitting across from them, trying to make a flower crown, looks so much like Chara—like they must have imagined Chara to look like—because they couldn’t actually know, could they, and none of that could have actually happened, and the world would not be that kind to them. They’re waiting to wake up somewhere they recognize. They’ll blink their eyes open and focus on how bad their knees hurt and Chara will call them a ninnyhammer or a dunderhead or an idiot from somewhere between their own ears and there’ll be no sunlight out the window and everything will make sense again. Things like this don’t happen. Not to anyone. Especially not to Frisk.
Chara—not really Chara—a dream—something they made up—but close enough, they suppose—anyways—Chara grumbles in frustration across from them, tossing the half-finished flower crown to the ground and running their thin, pale fingers through their straight auburn hair. Simple descriptions. Simple things to say about them. Things that would be easy to make up. Their face is hidden in dappled shadows cast by the forest canopy above them. Frisk can’t make out the details. Can’t make out their features because they aren’t real. Because this isn’t real. Because they have never seen Chara in anything but dreams and imaginations and they never will and they aren’t here, can’t possibly be here, can’t move their hand enough to even pinch themself awake. “This stupid thing,” Chara hisses, tugging at their hair. Their voice sounds dull and far away. Not really here. Because it isn’t. Nothing is. “I can knit, you know…! It’s not MY fault weaving with living stems is impossible!”
Frisk knows they should respond, but there’s no point in this. That isn’t their Chara. Their Chara is a voice in their head. A ghost. They can’t let themself believe in this, can’t sink into the idea that they could just reach out and touch them, lace their fingers with Chara’s, hold their hand. Because they’re going to wake up. They’re going to wake up, and it’ll all be gone, and they’ll be back to fighting and clawing and kicking just to have something to eat and somewhere to sleep, stealing needles and safety pins to patch up the holes in their ratty blue sweater. They can’t really imagine themself in anything else. It’s as much a part of them as their skin. The fact that they aren’t wearing it is just more proof that this isn’t them. That this body isn’t theirs. That none of this is real, that they aren’t here at all, that sooner rather than later they’re going to wake up.
Sorry, Chara, they think absently, not even sure what they’re apologizing for. Just that there has to be something. They dreamed too loudly. They slept too long.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” Chara picks themself up, stiffly brushing their hands off on their shorts before joining Frisk on their rock. The hair on Frisk’s arms stands up at how close they are, and they try to will it back down. This is a dream. They’ll just block out the almost-touch, because it isn’t real. “Oh, right, of course. You are the reason I couldn’t finish that ridiculous flower crown. Because all of reality bends to your will, and you simply didn’t wish hard enough. Is that correct?”
Even Chara is acknowledging it, then. Frisk sighs quietly, wondering if they really need to breathe anyways. Since this is a dream, and all. “Yeah,” they mumble. “I…I wish I didn’t have to wake up. S’just…you don’t sleep, so…I’m not so good at saying it when I’m awake, but I…I really love you, Chara.”
The hand folded in their lap ignites as Chara’s own wraps around it, their thumb tracing a soft circle in Frisk’s palm. Their skin is cold, their fingers stiff and pale, and Frisk can’t blame them for struggling with the flower crown. Their hands still feel dead. Skeletal, lifeless. Still buried under the patch of golden flowers in the RUINs. They still don’t know if they’re pronouncing it right in their head, but Chara was never able to figure it out either, so they figure they’re probably fine. Would be fine, at least, if Chara could hear them at all. The real Chara. If this wasn’t a dream.
“I do sleep.” Chara narrows their eyes at them, squeezing Frisk’s hand tighter for a moment. “And you are well aware of that fact. I am a living being, whether or not my body agrees on the matter. You are to blame for that.”
“But you’re not.” Frisk can hear their own voice echo between their ears. Not theirs. This isn’t their body or their home or their life. They’re dreaming. They’re just dreaming. “You’re a dream and I’m gonna wake up and none of this is gonna be real at all. It never is. If this was real my knees would hurt.”
Chara is silent for a moment, their thumb tracing the same circle in Frisk’s palm as they take in a deep breath. Their other hand finds its way to the one picking absently at the brace on the-body-that-isn’t-Frisk’s knee, lacing its index finger with theirs. “Or,” they say, drawing out the vowel in a way Frisk can’t match to any monster punctuation they know, “maybe, you remembered to take your painkillers, and you had physical therapy yesterday, and you didn’t claw your brace off in the middle of the night for once. I could still very much kick you if you’d like them to hurt.”
“Asshole.” Frisk smiles despite themself, closing their eyes and focusing on the weight of Chara’s hands against theirs. It almost feels real. Like they’re pressing their palms against the glass between themself and the world and Chara is pressing theirs back on the other side, radiating warmth through layer after layer after layer in between. Some of it, some tiny fraction of it, manages to get through. “I wish that was it. I wish it was real. I do.”
“Why couldn’t it be?” Holding both their hands, Chara helps Frisk up, leading them down to the soft, sandy bank of the river that runs through the forest behind their family’s new house. New house. It’s been three months. It doesn’t exist at all. “I know, I do, it’s all rather strange. But if you can accept that you have died and returned from the dead, why not me? I know you. I know you’ve never doubted your powers when they apply to you. And I know you’ve never doubted, ah…how you feel for…”
Their face flushes. Chara has never been particularly good at talking about how they feel. Even admitting that they genuinely care about their favorite video games is usually too much for them. “Just…why should it be any different when it comes to me? When it comes to this?”
“...Because good things don’t happen to me.” Frisk chews on the collar of their shirt, staring down at the shadows of tadpoles skating by beneath the water. “I don’t wanna…I don’t wanna believe this is real and just wake up not even able to hold your hand again. Because that’s what’s gonna happen. If…if this is real it’s all actually over. And I don’t have to…I don’t have to keep fighting anymore. And if I stop now I’m never gonna be able to start again.”
Chara turns to look at them again, cradling Frisk’s hands in their own. They look so real. So alive. Even as pale and cold as they are, there’s a spark in their eyes incompatible with the idea of something dead. They look ever so slightly older than in the pictures from those horrible first few weeks. They don’t freckle easily, but there are a few faint specks on their cheeks that weren’t there before. Frisk can’t tell if the memory is theirs or Chara’s, but the same phrase keeps playing in their head. To change is to be alive.
They want this to be real so badly.
It is real, Chara thinks at them. They press Frisk’s hand to their own chest. Their freckled, scarred brown skin contrasted against the inky black of Chara’s shirt, they feel their heartbeat against their palm-pads. Slow, soft, like it always is. Like their body hasn’t fully gotten the memo that they’re alive again, every beat a lackadaisical afterthought, an impulse of half-asleep nerves. But there. Still there. Despite everything.
You aren’t dreaming. Their eyes meet Frisk’s, their mouth curling into a small smile so different from the one they wore as a mask in all their old family photos. There is nothing to wake up from. It’s over. I promise you. If I can believe it, anyone can. Even you.
Say it out loud. Frisk blinks tears that haven’t even fully formed out of their eyes, leaning against Chara, resting their cheek where their palm was before. Tell me it’s real. I want to hear your voice.
So Chara does what they’re best at. What they always do. What, more than anything else, they were made for.
“You rest your head against my chest,” they narrate, twining their fingers awkwardly through Frisk’s hair, “and look out at the water. It’s bluer than anything in the Underground. Even Waterfall’s bioluminescent marshes strike you as a pale imitation of what you see now. It reflects the sky. There is a sky to reflect. Tadpoles flit through mirrored clouds. You can’t help but think of dragons…”
“Hey, asshole, that’s you thinking about dragons!” Despite themself, Frisk snorts, their shoulders shaking with unbidden laughter. “I’m not thinking about dragons. I’m wishing there was crawdads in the river.”
“Perhaps you truly are from Ebott,” Chara scoffs. “I don’t believe you were truly born in Outwest. Even as far west as Port Springs, everyone says crayfish.”
“Maybe they did a million years ago when you were born!” Frisk sits up, smacking Chara playfully in the shoulder. “You don’t know what people say anymore. Everyone says crawdads now. Everybody does it.”
“I can feel you lying to me. You really cannot get away with that anymore, you know? We share a SOUL. You just say it like that to sound special.” With Chara’s lips curled up in a smile as big as this, their incisors look almost like real fangs. Good. They deserve to get to look a little bit scary, this unbelievable, impossible second time around. “I’m not a fool. I remember what you remember, and you remember actively choosing to say it like that.”
“Um. You are a fool.” Frisk sticks their tongue out at them, shaking their head in disappointment. “Just ‘cause you’re right doesn’t mean you aren’t dumb.”
“Well, we’re two peas in a pod, then.” The expression is so distinctly unlike Chara that Frisk can’t help themself from smacking their head against Chara’s chest with laughter, slamming their fist into the ground and splashing riverbank mud all over their already-dirty cargo shorts. It sounds awkward and stilted in their voice. To be fair, a lot of things sound awkward and stilted in Chara’s voice. Frisk likes that just fine.
“You’re not peas,” they say firmly once they’ve managed to regain their composure. “Maybe I’m peas, but you’re not. You’re carrots.”
“What? Do you really expect me to take after my mother THAT much? No!” Chara snorts, pretending to put any effort at all into shoving Frisk off of them. Frisk, of course, doesn’t budge. “I’d be something refined. Something classy. Like kohlrabi or bok choy.”
“No you wouldn’t. Wait, your mom likes carrots??? I was just saying ‘cause it sounds like your name!” Maybe this is real. Maybe they really are here. Here under a wide blue sky and a canopy of leafy, verdant trees; here in their best friend’s arms on the bank of the river that runs behind their house; here where they are safe and loved and warm. It never snows in Rayalmas. It never gets cold enough, even in the depths of winter. They’re so far south that when January comes, it’ll barely be colder than May. Snowdin’s bitter cold is far behind them. So is the blizzard that drove them up Mt. Ebott in the first place. There will never be another night like that night. Never again. They have somewhere to go home to, now. They have more than enough reasons to stay. This doesn’t have to be a dream.
It isn’t. Chara’s smile softens. Again, they take Frisk’s hands. I know it’s strange. It’s hard for me to believe, sometimes, too. But we are here. You’re safe. I’m alive. We’re free. You underestimate yourself. After everything you’ve done, you still can’t convince yourself you deserve this. But you do, Frisk. This is yours. It took me long enough to convince myself after I fell that I wouldn’t wake up back in my bed in that awful, awful house. But I got used to it. And you’ll get used to this, too. We both will.
I hate feeling like that. They take a long, slow breath, focusing on how warm Chara’s hands have become against their own. Like this is all just something I made up. I don’t know how I’m gonna handle it if you aren’t there. If I’m on my own I don’t know how to make myself feel real again.
It’s a very simple answer, Frisk. Chara reaches up to tuck a misplaced curl behind Frisk’s ear, their smile warm against their rosy cheeks. You won’t be. I will always be there.
And for a minute they can feel it. Everything. The grass brushing against their back, the sand and pebbles against their legs, the velcro on their knee brace tugging at their leg hair and their left sock bunched up awkwardly in their shoe. A warm breeze caresses their face and undoes Chara’s handiwork with their hair, and there’s no muffler over the birds singing far above them anymore. They can still feel Chara’s heartbeat. They can even feel their own. The air smells like wet earth and cool water and sun-soaked grass, peppered with sandalwood from Chara’s conditioner and the familiar scent of flowers that always clings to their skin. This is real. They are real. The kid sitting in the woods is them, and the person at their side, cold and pale as they may be, is the farthest thing from a ghost. If this was a dream, they’d have woken up by now.
They’re here. They made it through. They’re on the other side. They’re here. They’re here. Like Chara always says to themself, so quietly they think Frisk can’t hear it. Three times, or it won’t come true.
But it already is true. The storm has calmed. They’re here with their best friend in the woods behind their family’s house. They have all of those things. A best friend, a family, a house. They aren’t alone.
I will always be there. They replay it in their mind over and over again. It’s August. They won’t even be twelve until next month. But they don’t think they’re too young to know. They don’t think it’s too far away for them to be sure. Whatever happens, whoever they turn out to be, they belong at Chara’s side. All they know for certain is this.
They draft a letter to their future self, sitting there on the riverbank and watching the tadpoles. It’s a simple one. Are you and Chara still best friends?
They’ll never need to send it. They know, more certainly than they know that this body is their body, that the world around them is real, what their future self will say. It’s obvious. Plain and simple.
Yes.