Chapter Text
“We’re gonna change things,” Susie says the moment Kris catches up with her.
It's late at night. The outside air is quiet, and Kris was artful about tumbling out the window and landing on their hands and knees in the dirt. Artful enough, anyway. A branch of thorned vines caught in their hair on the way down, and Susie, unfazed, yanks it out when they get close enough.
The rain has started back up again. The sky is dark and moonless above them, and it’s only going to get darker, where the two of them are going.
Susie gives them a once-over, trying to determine if they’re hurt, before nodding to herself and tugging them along, out of the bushes and down the driveway.
“Starting at the bunker.” She pats the side of her jacket and grins joylessly. “Nothing a crowbar and some good old determination can’t pry open, yeah? And if it doesn’t work, maybe it’ll be enough to get that asshole knight’s attention. We’ve got all night.”
She glances back at Kris, whose expression gives nothing away. They can’t let her enter the bunker, just like they can’t break all their many, many promises. But it’s already too late; Kris is with Susie tonight in a way they shouldn’t be, severed from the Soul caged impatiently in their room, and the world has narrowed down to a single point.
The light in her eyes. More than the light of any soul, any world-destroying angel of prophecy.
She needs to be protected, Kris knows. Just like Noelle.
Noelle, who’s hopefully sleeping peacefully in her bed, putting to rest the horrible dream Kris subjected her to. They kept Noelle away from the Soul today, at her house, dragging her by the hand away from its languid approach, and they’ll do it again if needed.
Everyone who’s supposed to be fine will be fine.
Everyone, except…
Susie stops suddenly. Kris bumps into her hard, and her hands come up to their shoulders, gripping tight.
“Hey, you good?” She’s confused. Worried.
Kris has been breathing too hard. They force another heaving gulp of air through their lungs—and another, and another. They’ve been stumbling, too. Susie will realize something’s wrong. Above all, they can’t risk that.
They nod.
“All right, because if you’re hurt and not telling me, I’ll kick your ass.” Her voice is quiet. “Got it?”
They need to test out their voice, too, to see if she’ll be suspicious of the change. They try to make it sound the way she’s always known it, flat but projected. Powered from inside.
“Got it.”
Her eyes linger on them for a second longer.
“Okay, good,” she says at last. “Then let’s go. The future’s not going to save itself.”
The trust in her expression is almost enough to block out what they’ve done. What they let the Soul do. Almost.
Everyone who’s supposed to be fine will be fine.
“First.” Kris licks their lips. “I need to fix something.”
What happened to Berdly was an accident, they want to think. But there was nothing accidental about it. Each step, the Soul became more powerful, more focused; it knew exactly how to exploit the Dark World, how to turn harmless fun on its side.
Harmless. It’s just a prank. It’s just a prank.
Kris didn’t mean for it to happen.
But its momentum built to the point where, by the time they started to realize something was wrong, beyond wrong, they couldn’t resist even when they tried. Defend, IceShock, rinse and repeat, and then their arms couldn’t even come up to block the words from their mouth. It wasn’t normal, for how much control the Soul usually had. It was as if it had found a way to tap into every nerve and muscle of Kris’s body at once.
And then its grip had eased, so suddenly, once the deed was done. Like it never happened.
It was, on the surface, an accident on Kris’s part. But Kris fought back against the Soul all the time. Kris could handle it.
If they just pushed back harder, earlier, they’re sure they could have saved Berdly.
It doesn’t matter now.
The plan here is simple. A person’s deceased form can reanimate within a Dark World, like Gerson Boom. A living person’s Dark World self is tied to their body, too. Their real, static self. Their Soul. And if a Soul is trapped in a Dark World after the Fountain closes, and the body transferred to another one—like bringing a classroom’s worth of cards and dice and playthings into the storage closet—then the Soul should be present there, too.
And if the Soul is intact—if Berdly is intact—he can be freed from ice.
And then he will wake up.
He has to wake up.
“You think there’s a code in the police station?”
Susie shoots Kris an incredulous look. She can admit it’s a good theory, but she was just planning to whale on the doors to the bunker until either they opened or her muscles gave out. Actual detective work seems less satisfying, somehow, but she’ll give it a shot if that’s what her friend wants to do.
She had a few hours to ruminate on the prophecy, and she’s decided that their prospects can’t get any worse.
“M’going to check,” Kris says, pausing, “somewhere else. For the last code. I meant to do it before.”
Susie shrugs. She’s used to the cryptic talk. “Fine, we can meet up in the woods.”
Kris shakes their head. “Here.”
“What, you mean right where we’re standing?”
They’re just in the middle of town. To the left is the library, and to the right is the station and the hospital. Another time, Susie might’ve leaped at the chance to commit crime in the don’t-commit-crime place, but she’s pretty much beyond caring, at this point. At least it’s not like Undyne is around to arrest her.
Susie finds herself scowling harder. She makes herself stop when Kris nods.
They’re probably right that the code could be in the station, since one of the symbols on the bunker door was a badge. Susie racks her brains to remember what the last symbol is. The one Kris is going to look for.
Oh, yeah. The Delta Rune.
“So you’re gonna check the church, or something?”
Now that she thinks about it, the two of them spent a while trying to unlock a door in the church earlier, and they needed a code. Maybe it’s the same code. She can’t remember the numbers anymore, though. Thinking about the church leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
Kris says, “Yeah.”
You’re sure you’re alright? Susie almost adds, because Kris really doesn’t look too good. Their skin is clammy, and they’re swaying slightly. Maybe they’re getting sick, she thinks. It would explain why their voice sounds all scratchy. “Suit yourself, I guess.”
She leaves, determined to be thorough in her task. As a result, she doesn’t see Kris wait until she’s out of eyesight before they enter the hospital.
The search is fruitless. Susie feels like breaking something out of frustration, which will be good for when she goes ham on those bunker doors, but it doesn’t change the fact that the police headquarters is empty. All the doors and drawers are locked, she can’t find any keys, and out of all the stupid, boring papers scattering the desk, nothing looks like a code. Pieces of glass punctured her palms from shattering a window to get inside, all for nothing.
She thinks of the shattered glass of the prophecy. She used the same fist.
The rain stopped at some point, and when Susie gets back to the road, some paces away from their meeting point, Kris is still on the way. They’re coming from up the street, for some reason, even though the church is south. Susie assumes they checked somewhere else, too. Maybe Father Alvin’s apartment, although he’s definitely home right now, sleeping the night away, so Kris can’t have broken in.
Kris’s gaze is level. They look a little like a wet dog, but at least they also look like they’ve finally caught their breath.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” they intone. They even sound better, too. No hitching breath and scratchy voice.
Susie’s struck with the awkward thought that maybe Kris was crying earlier, when she showed up at their window. That would explain a lot. Well, it’s better to not mention it, then, to spare her friend a little pride.
She slaps the crowbar into her palm – the good one, not the one with all the window glass. “Ready?”
Kris nods.
And it’s at this exact moment, as Susie crosses the distance between them, that she notices the door to the hospital has blown wide open, spilling out an inky black interior. The telltale sign of a Dark World, in all its aggravatingly unexpected glory.
“What the hell,” she snarls, eyebrows raised.
Kris shrugs.