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Saliva dripped off of Chara's tongue as they panted, a futile attempt to cool down in face of the oppressive heat. Their paws scratched against the earth again, another fit of activity that had to be abandoned as the exertion made them heat up again. The hole under the fence still wasn't big enough, and there was no way to tell how much time they still had to get out-
Out of what
Where is this
Chara's head swam with the heat and they shook it, only getting more dizzy as a result, and paws dove back into the hole again. Jordan would be back any moment and they had to get out of the compound before that, get back to the Underground, and-
He's sick
I made him sick
That's why they kicked me out
Wait how could they kick me out unless the Barrier is
With a growl Chara tore off their shirt and dove once again into the hole, still too small but the earth gave way against their onslaught even as the chain link fence above carved gashes into their back. That at least was familiar, and Chara stayed on all fours, such as it was, until they had managed to pass several streets before their legs finally gave out.
The sun beat down on them like a drum, matching their heartbeat.
The ground rumbled beneath them, and they managed to pull themselves into the partial shade of some sort of bush or shrub as a pickup truck drove by. Through the driver's side window they could see Asgore, one massive arm hanging out of the window, and Toriel on the other side, with Asriel, Frisk, and-
Wait Asgore doesn't know how to drive
He can't fit in most vehicles
He had to ride outside the semi truck when
Chara's mouth opened, but no sound came out as the truck turned the corner, country music fading with distance.
As tiring as the heat was, seeing another Chara, a human Chara, riding with the Dreemurrs, had taken the wind out of them completely.
Of all the places they could have been, the compound, the Underground, the family on the Surface, there was-
Wait if the Barrier is broken then the family is on the surface
What happened in the Underground was already
Where and when am I
Need to find a star
Are there stars here
Something is WRONG-
Chara fell out of their bed with a thud, paws flailing to get out from under sheets that were smothering them with insulated heat, and eyes blinked at the tiny specks of light in the darkened bedroom; a charging cell phone, the red glow of the ceremonial robe seeping through the cracks in their wardrobe, the steady LED of the uninterruptible power supply under the computer desk.
After a few minutes of ragged breathing, one paw came up to wipe away the treacherous tears that had managed to escape, and Chara managed to get upright. Slowly, with the exaggerated care of somebody who had non-retractable claws on the end of their toes, Chara made their way to a desk covered in books and papers rather than a personal computer, and picked up a notebook.
Outside the bedroom, the house wasn't much cooler, and Chara made their way downstairs, eyes flicking toward the sofa. No horns stuck out over the armrest on either end, and the dog monster sighed before making their way over to the dining room table. One paw reached out with a flash of blue light to flick the light switch on, and Chara sat down, opened the notebook, and began to write.
Asgore Dreemurr, King of All Monsters and school groundskeeper, ran a large and custom built brush through his massive beard and mustache as he watched his own face in the mirror. From time to time, he would hum a snippet of music, then stop as a tangle or knot required his undivided attention to resolve.
"...that should-"
Before Asgore could finish the thought, he was interrupted by the doorbell. More importantly, the doorbell rang twice, with the second ring just as the first was fading into silence.
"Hmm."
Shrugging into a shirt and buttoning the front as he navigated from bathroom to front door, Asgore's eyes darted to the wall calendar by the entry. Nothing specific was written down; the day was clear, unless the person ringing the doorbell was the bearer of new and unexpected developments.
"Howdy, how can I- oh."
Asgore looked down at a miserably hot, or perhaps just miserable dog monster that resembled a Siberian Husky, a red spiral notebook clutched in both paws, eyes downcast a split second after they made eye contact with him, and ears swept back.
"...rough night?"
Chara nodded.
"Come on in. I will get some iced tea out of the refrigerator."
INCONSISTENCIES
Back in compound but as monster even though I didn't die
not attacked as monster by people in compound including Jordan
Exiled from Underground despite Barrier apparently still existing
Asgore and Toriel on surface despite Barrier still existing
Asgore driving pickup truck despite being larger than largest human drivers
Other Chara in truck (partial rationalization; other timelines)
Asgore looked over the list again, eyes lingering over the hasty scrawl that had replaced Chara's normal handwriting.
"I suppose that is a lot to be concerned about back to back. Though dreams are never obligated to make sense, of course."
"...very true." Chara nodded slowly, eyes still fixated on the empty glass in front of them, recently drained of both tea and ice cubes in a way that was only possible for an overheating dog monster with an affinity for ice magic. "I think that. Helped wake me up when I did."
"And of course this weather is much harder on you than it is on the rest of us."
"Also true. The heat was. Part of the dream too." Chara sneezed, shook their head, and started scratching their neck with one paw. "But. It was after. There was, uh."
"...yes?"
"I write things down to. You know. Organized my thoughts. After so long of having to juggle it all in my head." Chara shook their head. "In Frisk's head, I mean. It helps. But. Not this time. All the. All the reasons I wrote down. To why the dream made no sense. It felt like. I was trying to convince... somebody else. Who had already made up his mind."
Asgore stared at his child, the ears still swept back in fear, the body language of somebody trying to occupy as little space as possible.
"As in... you felt like you were trying to make a case that, this world in the dream, it did not reflect who you were... but it felt like an accusation, and you did not feel your... defense was adequate?"
Chara sighed and nodded.
"Almost exactly that. Like I was trying to say that it was just a dream, and so much of it was not real. And..." Chara swallowed. "And someone said, some of it is. Too much of it is."
Asgore turned to look at the door to the backyard; through the windows, it was possible to see that the sun was shining, no longer blocked by the shadow of Mt. Ebott.
"And in this list. You wrote the word exile."
"Right. Because of." Chara made a vague, ambiguous gesture. "The buttercup pie, and all that followed. I think. That felt like. The top of the list of explanations."
"I see. So much comes back to that." Asgore sighed, and Chara nodded, still not making eye contact.
"For the record. I know that. This happening over and over again. Is not sustainable. It must be resolved. Somehow." Chara's ears swiveled forward, a welcome sight after their body language had only broadcast fear and shame all morning. "But I didn't think a professional therapist or psychologist could possibly help or understand, what with coming back from the dead, the time loop stuff, and that was before what happened to Frisk. I am." Chara's ears swept back again. "I am not trying. To make more work for you. To complicate things more than they are. I just-"
"Parenting is not 'more work' for me, Chara. If you need to talk, then I will always be here to listen. Perhaps I will not always understand, but I will always make sure that you are heard."
Chara nodded, though without enthusiasm, and Asgore reached up to run his fingers through his beard.
"...how is your work on decoding the Guardian Lore proceeding?"
Chara shrugged, but their posture shifted into something less defensive.
"Slow, but steady. Thank you for giving me a crash course in the old languages."
Asgore chuckled.
"Crash course is the right phrase. It has been a long time. Do you know, I cannot for all my effort remember the original line of succession. Perhaps Toriel does, as she has always been a better administrator. Perhaps Gerson does, for he was a historian even before the war. Perhaps it is written down somewhere in the books we managed to save and preserve. But for me, those were not just names and titles. They were family, distant family in some cases but family nonetheless."
"I see." Chara reached out and grabbed the notebook from across the table, turned a page, and started writing. "I'll keep an eye out. Not entirely clear if that information would be in the Lore but there is no telling what the original Magi had written down, and no telling what got copied later."
"Haha... that isn't quite what I meant."
For the first time that day, Chara looked up at Asgore's eyes, and the king smiled.
"You see, I still remember the people. The names, the faces, the playmates, the rivals, the peers and educators, the permissive caretakers and the stern ones. I still remember how I felt about them, the good and the bad. But the specific legal and hereditary connections are lost to me now. And perhaps, in this world we have all made, and that you fought so hard to protect, that knowledge is no more than an artifact of the past, only of interest to historians." Asgore shrugged. "But it was once very near and dear to me. The loss, small as it is, feels much greater because so much of my own life and history was intertwined with it. And so, even if I could rediscover it, the fact that I forgot something once so important that it was second nature is... more than a little disconcerting. Like mourning the death of someone who is still alive, almost."
"...oh."
Chara's posture shifted again, but now their chin rested on paws, ears swiveling at the sounds of the town outside, deep in thought but no longer consumed by it, as they evaluated something new to their experiences.
"Something I have noticed on the Surface is the way that so many humans treat grief as a temporary inconvenience. And they seek... or perhaps they expect... to get back to normal. For everything to go back the way it was before, even with a major part of their life changed, or missing." Asgore clasped his paws together on the table in front of him. "That feels to me like it may have some bearing on our circumstances. Losing somebody close changes us in a way that cannot simply be reversed if, by some miracle, those we have lost return to us. You and the other fallen children have new and different bodies. You missed years of events that others lived through, schooling and education of course, but also local and widespread incidents of note. Like a traveler who has visited a distant land, and returned to find their homeland had changed while they were gone."
"...I will admit. I could not have imagined. That this town would be so welcoming to monsters. When I was down in the Underground. For various reasons."
"That is certainly the most dramatic example we may point to. Well, I suppose the stars and the Tourists were more dramatic than that." Asgore paused to reach for a pitcher of iced tea, refilling Chara's glass and topping off his own. "But the example I was thinking of was much more personal. When Asriel came back. I said something to him that was not entirely accurate, but it was what he needed to hear in that moment. About grief, and loss, and how it changes people... and what it does not change."
Chara tilted their head to one side in a classic confused dog expression, and Asgore shrugged.
"I do not claim to have all the answers, but I have lived long enough to learn a few things here and there. Life and time move on regardless of circumstances. And meeting those other versions of you and Asriel and Frisk during the Titan nonsense was a very strong reminder of that, though I certainly wasn't thinking of it in those terms when it happened."
"Uhm. Not to distract, but what terms were you thinking of them in?"
"That it was very comforting to learn that all of those other worlds included a happy family on the Surface, with or without various trials and tribulations in between. Still. The other children, from the other worlds, were proof that even if everyone made different choices at key moments, that time when we were all a family in the Underground would have passed and given way to something else."
"...oh. Thort of. I mean. Sort of like how they say different parts of the human body are replaced over time. Like the Ship Of Theseus, or the Porcelain Tower. The design, the function, the plan, the purpose, it is greater than the material parts that go into it."
"In a way, that is very true. Of course, people change in ways that boats and buildings do not, even when rebuilt, but you understand the principle idea. Whether or not you, or any other version of you from another world, worked together with Asriel to make a pie that didn't go to plan, that part of all our lives was always going to end one day. We cannot halt the passage of time. And we cannot reclaim and relive the past. It can be painful if we have devoted so much energy and effort towards a goal so far out of our reach, but as with so many things in life, the only way out is through."
"I thee. I. I mean. I see."
"There is something else, Chara. In one of the other worlds, the one that is called The Optimal Timeline. That Asgore never watched his Chara waste away. Never saw his Asriel crumble to dust. Never saw his world fall into despair. Never declared an impossible war in a moment of grief and rage at the injustice of it all. And I am glad that there was a father who did not have to live through that. But. And this is important. As much as I wished, long after it was too late, that things had turned out differently. Now that I know that there is a world out there like that. I am neither jealous nor envious."
"...what? How? I mean-"
"Because of you. You and Asriel. You who were lost to us forever, and returned anyway. Despite everything, in the face of sheer impossibility, here you are. Changed, yes. Different, of course. But it's still you. And everything. Everything. Is better for that. A world pulled back from the brink. With your hands and by your will. The other worlds call this the Hero Timeline, correct? Whatever your regrets from before, the choices you wish you could change. They are also a part of you, and played their own part, to put you in just the right time, just the right place, to save the world."
Chara blinked, then looked down at one paw. Fingers rubbed against each other, paw pads against fur, where in another body and life, skin blistered from the juice of buttercups.
"...it doesn't feel like enough. Not even. A whole world." Chara shook their head and tapped their chest with one finger. "Of course. Like you and mom are always telling me. Love is never bought with suffering. But I'm not there yet. Not in here, anyway."
"This is, unfortunately, the nature of grief as well. It is not something we overcome overnight, because it is not something we overcome at all. That, I suspect, is the part that so many struggle with. That the wound in the heart is just... there. And there is no going back to normal, because that hole, where another person used to be, is the new normal. You and Asriel are back, but there was a substantial span of time where you were not. And that... gap. That is also a part of us no." Asgore sighed and looked out the window for a moment. "It is a paradox, in a way. The healing process begins with accepting that healing is impossible. Or rather, what people think healing looks like is actually a common misconception."
"...I don't know if I can let go of what happened." Chara's ears swiveled back against their head again. "It. Would be. Like the me. In the present. Is giving permission. For me in the past. To hurt you. To hurt. Someone. Who wath only kind to me."
Movement in the corner of Chara's eye caused them to flinch and look up; Asgore had held out one hand to them.
"Then leave that for another time, another day."
After a few seconds, Chara reached out and grabbed their father's hand with their own.
"Another day."
Father and child sat in silence for a few minutes, and for the first time that morning, the silence could have been considered comfortable.