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Asriel Dreemurr’s life had been neatly packed away into boxes and bins, labeled in Mom’s careful handwriting. Tomorrow morning he would wake up to the sight of his empty closet and get dressed, his outfit for the day laid out lovingly on his barren desk. Tomorrow morning he would help Mom lift everything into the minivan and pretend not to be bothered by Dad’s carefully negotiated absence. Tomorrow morning he would hug Kris as fiercely as they allowed and remind them that his school was only a few hours away, and that he would always be just a text or a call away – always, always. But for tonight, clothes and electronics and bedding all towered over either side of the front door like guards at the gates, as if to warn him against leaving the safety of his home and stepping into the unknown.
As if to remind him of what had happened last time he’d done just that.
As if he could ever forget.
This time would be different, though. He was older and wiser and, he hoped, a little kinder than he’d ever gotten to be the first time around. He wasn’t going in blindly – he’d even toured campus a few months back, after he’d gotten his acceptance letter. The world he was entering would greet him with homework and house parties, not fear and violence and a slow, painful death. Really, the weight of all those boxes he’d have to lift tomorrow was nothing compared to how heavy it had been to carry his best friend’s lifeless body in his arms, their flickering soul in his chest, and the expectations of his people over his head.
Compared to that, he had nothing to be nervous about. That didn’t seem to stop him from staring at the ceiling that night, unable to sleep.
“This is stupid,” he muttered to himself, quietly so Kris wouldn’t stir. He hoped they wouldn’t; they really needed more rest. Making one last valiant effort at slumber, Asriel rolled onto his side and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his human sibling’s chest, just as he’d once done with a different human a lifetime or two ago.
He would have been lying if he said that Kris was the biggest surprise he encountered when he opened his eyes to this second chance. The biggest surprise was obviously that he had gotten a second chance at all. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when his body started to waver in that field of flowers. Maybe he’d expected to finally die for good, or to return to that horrible soulless half-existence and remain Flowey forevermore. He certainly hadn’t expected to awaken in this miraculous alternate world where monsters lived on the surface and everything had gone right instead of wrong – so yes, he rightfully considered that part the biggest shock. But the fact that he had a human sibling again was a strong number two.
He remembered fearing that he wouldn’t love Kris the way he should, that they’d forever be a stranger in a sea of familiar faces. Or that the shadow of Chara would hang over their relationship where only Asriel could see it and never leave. It still faintly embarrassed him to remember how long it had taken him to admit, No, Frisk isn’t Chara, and actually they’re not even that similar at all. To be fair, to say he hadn’t been in his right mind would be an understatement, but still. He hadn’t wanted to make the same mistake with Kris. And sure, he did notice uncanny similarities between the two sometimes – the love of chocolate, the intentionally creepy smile, and the flattering if somewhat distressing preference for monsters over humans foremost among them.
But he needn’t have worried, because Kris was wonderfully, obviously their own person. They loved playing the piano, whereas Chara had never been particularly musically inclined. Kris slouched and mumbled their way through adolescence, quite unlike the prim and proper Chara. Chara, who had fit easily into the Dreemurr household, slotting in so seamlessly that it was a wonder they hadn’t been there from the start. Kris, by contrast, had a lot more rough edges. Mom struggled to understand them and sometimes it felt like Dad didn’t even try to.
Honestly, Asriel didn’t always understand them either. It hadn’t been like that with Chara. With Chara, he had known them like the back of his paw, even before he’d literally taken their soul into himself, and he’d laid his soul bare to them in turn. The two of them had definitely been codependent, he was willing to admit.
That didn’t mean he didn’t miss Chara. He didn’t know if the old timeline still went on without him, or if they had a counterpart in this timeline, but he hoped they were happy, wherever they were. Kris could never replace Chara in his heart, and he didn’t want them to. His little sibling had carved out a space all their own in his new life.
Ugh, he was really going to miss them.
Asriel rolled over again and fumbled for his phone. 1:15 a.m. Ruefully, he recalled that he was supposed to be awake at 7. He guessed he’d be sleeping in the car.
He kicked off his sheets and grabbed his glasses from the bedside table. Slowly, he padded over to the bedroom door, wincing as it creaked slightly. It was dark in the house and he didn’t want to turn on his phone flashlight, but he managed to stumble his way downstairs and into the kitchen. He didn’t really know why he was down here; all he knew was that it was better than waiting for a sleep that was determined not to come.
There was a half-eaten pie on the stove, and he considered helping himself to a slice. It was still a little strange to see Mom cooking with technology instead of fire magic – the apparent lack of magic here still disappointed him after all this time – but at least her famed butterscotch-cinammon pie recipe apparently transcended universes. The first time he’d eaten it in this universe, a wave of nostalgia had crashed over him and threatened to drown him. Mom had noticed the tears welling up, and he’d had to scramble to come up with a plausible excuse. But then the pressure of that had made him panic, which just left him even more of a blubbering mess in the end.
In retrospect, one of the hardest parts of adjusting to his second chance had been having a soul again. He’d existed for so long in an emotionless fugue that even the slightest feeling felt overwhelming at first. That went double for his sense of empathy. The infamous green lizard incident was a result of that, and while Asriel could now laugh about it years later, he still remembered the instinctive, all-consuming rush of revulsion he’d felt toward himself for callously dropping the virtual creature into the bottomless pit. It felt like something Flowey would have done. Both the sacrifice, and the self-loathing. He shuddered and stepped away from the stove.
“...Okay, so no pie tonight then.”
He took a seat at the dining table. What am I even doing? he thought. He was meant to be looking forward to the next chapter of his life, but here he was trapped in memory instead. Old habits died hard, he supposed. Might as well go for broke. He took a deep breath and let his mind wander to where it always ended up on nights like this.
Because the thing was, those first few years in this world had been the happiest Asriel had ever been. Yes, monsterkind was on the surface and had, in fact, never been kept in captivity in the first place. Yes, his parents were together again, with a partnership that seemed unbreakable. (Then again, it had seemed that way the first time around, too.) Yes, he was well and truly alive in a way he hadn’t been in quite some time. But if he was being perfectly honest with himself, none of that had managed to light up his world quite like her. Quite like Dess.
He hadn’t known her very well the first time around. Sure, their dads were friends, but at the end of the day, he was a prince and she was a rather messy and unfocused girl from Snowdin. Plus, he already had a best friend and had no particular need for another.
In this world, though, it was a different story. It was hard to describe how much she’d come to matter to him. Chara had been the sun, drawing him into their orbit and burning him for getting too close, and Kris was the moon shyly peeking out after a rainy night. But Dess was a supernova, brilliant as she was unknowable, leaving him thrilled and blinded at once. Plus, she was really good with Kris, which was always a green flag. His second adolescence had been spent attached at her hip. He’d lent her his clothes and his retainer and his heart and she’d paid him back with guitar solos and midnight wanderings in the woods. And kissing. Lots of kissing. Asriel had died before puberty in his first life, so the sudden desire to kiss his best friend breathless had definitely been a surprise, though not an unwelcome one.
Okay, so maybe they’d been a little codependent. Old habits died hard indeed.
Maybe that should’ve been his sign that it was too good to last.
He remembered the weeks after Dess’ disappearance in scattered shards. There had been the blank expression on Kris’ face as they’d emerged from the woods on that horrible night – utterly, terribly alone. There had been Noelle’s hysterical sobs and Rudy’s feeble gestures toward optimism and Carol’s cold fear and clenched fists. There had been crying and crying and crying, and yelling and yelling and yelling. There had been the sweet scent of Dad’s flowers in the garbage and the sudden stinging sense that this second chance had gone irrevocably sour.
“Azzy?”
The voice was quiet as always, but Asriel whipped around to the sight of Kris standing in the stairwell. “Oh, Kris— What are you doing up? I’m sorry, I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Kris shrugged. “...I couldn’t sleep. And I wanted pie.”
Asriel gestured toward the stove, bemused. “Help yourself.”
Kris did just that and shuffled past Asriel, carving themself a slice that was definitely large enough for Mom to notice in the morning. They sat across from Asriel and dug into their prize as if this was a perfectly natural thing to do at 2 in the morning. The siblings sat in companionable silence. Finally, they muttered, “So what are you doing up?”
“Same as you, I couldn’t sleep.” Asriel sighed. “I guess I’m just a little nervous. Big day tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Kris’ expression barely shifted, but Asriel registered it as a grimace. “Right.”
The silence returned, markedly less companionable. As it stretched on, Asriel felt compelled to say something, but he couldn’t figure out what. If he were still Flowey, he could have replayed this conversation over and over until he found the exact right things to say at the exact right times. But Kris deserved better than that. He knew Kris wasn’t happy that he was going away, just as he knew that he had to leave. Finally, right before the silence grew unbearable, Kris spoke again.
“I wish you weren’t going.”
Asriel’s heart broke a little. “Kris…”
Kris was staring at their plate now, their slice of pie half-eaten. “I know I’m supposed to be happy for you,” they mumbled. “But I still wish you weren’t.”
“I get it,” Asriel said. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t going too. I wish I could just stay here and help Mom around the house and take you to QC’s after school every day.”
“Then why are you going?”
He sighed. “I just… sometimes I feel like there’s nothing for me here but memories, you know? Good ones, sure, but also bad ones and sad ones.” It was more true than Kris could have possibly known. Kris probably assumed Asriel was referring to Dess, and their parents’ divorce, and everything that had happened before and since, and he was. But he was also talking about his memories of everything that had come before. Aside from Kris, everyone here was a familiar face, reminding him of the tragic saga that had been his first life. In a way, he’d never really left the Underground. Until tomorrow, he hoped. “I need a fresh start, somewhere away from Hometown. Not forever! This place is my home, and I’ll always come home. Just enough time to put all those bad and sad memories behind me.”
Kris hummed noncommittally. Under their breath, so faintly that Asriel wasn’t even sure they’d meant to say it, they whispered, “But you can never wash it all away.” They got up and put their dish in the sink, then left without saying another word.
Asriel Dreemurr made a decision then. Since he’d arrived in this world, he’d kept his memories of another life a secret. He hadn’t wanted to do anything that could jeopardize his second chance at the normal, happy childhood he’d been denied. It had been freeing, at first, to put the past behind him, but now, standing at the precipice of adulthood, he saw that it had been a fool’s errand. There was an entirely different side to him that only he and his memories knew about, and they’d kept him rooted to the ground, kept him from truly moving on and starting anew.
Maybe he should have told Dess about it, but he’d lost that chance before he could take it. Kris deserved to know, though. So he would tell them. When he came home for the Festival, he’d tell them everything.