Chapter Text
They are sick from the drowning dread that sags from their skin as they pull themself up and over the windowsill back into their room.
It is not easy. It has never been easy, but there is no doubt that it has been easier than this before. The exhaustion is more than just waves of tiredness seeping into their brain - it is an all-encompassing, all-consuming onslaught of dysfunction that wrecks through their bones, aching and aching for the restoration of the being that is missing from their chest. Their covers blanket the SOUL heavily in the corner, and Kris hopes they crush it to death.
But it cannot die before the plan is over. Kris cannot die until they complete the plan. So, slow crawl after slow crawl, their only option is to drag themself over to replace the object they despise back into their feverish and troubled body. It has been too long for them without the SOUL, and their skin and eyes and sporadic trembles are the punishment for their brief few hours of solace.
It had been even slightly funny, before this, funny that Kris should lose even more of themself. A cage to their grief become a cage to this SOUL - what more is there left to lose? But ever since Dess, there has always been more to lose. The revolting, inane cry that never leaves their mouth stays stuck on their tongue as they force the item back into their chest. Although the scar left behind stings and stings with the agony of having been torn through, the instant control that the SOUL gains over them is palpable and prevents them from clutching the area in anguish.
Cool, courageous, aurafarming Kris. None of these words describe them. They are a schemer and a traitor and a fuck-up, and there is no limit to the pain they plan to dish out to all their friends and then some. Or should they say, the SOUL’s friends? Where does the line get drawn? Is there even a line?
Toriel is sleeping so soundly but wakes so suddenly when the SOUL drags them downstairs. Does the apology they’re forced into accepting matter? Will that skeleton come back?
And then, once they step out their home and are pulled, tugged, forced into the street, into the school, they are placed face-to-face with Ralsei. Even the whimsy of seeing him and Lancer cannot erase the memory of the most damning question they have ever asked at all -
Will Susie forget about me too when she finally finds happiness with Noelle?
Will Noelle forget what passed between us all those years ago when she finally gets what she’s wanted all this while?
Does it make a difference when they both deserve it? When Kris broke the bridge between them and Noelle with their own, fraying fingertips? When Susie, loud and brash and unapologetically good, could have so much better than them? It’s laughable. They don’t know why they even bother giving themself the space to feel the emotions. It had been so much easier to bury themself away after Asriel left, to stop going to the Holiday House, to drown themself in the sheer emptiness of losing all they had lost. It never ends. The SOUL drags them through cafés and sanctuaries and bakeries with eager ease, and Kris almost trips over their own feet when they try to push back in reluctance.
We’re all helping Susie get ready for her date with Noelle, the entirety of Castle Town screams. They want each other. They don’t want -
You.
Who even is you? Kris wonders for a fleeting, transient moment, so fragile it feels like a brush of gentle wind against their blue skin. They return to flicking through clothing options subconsciously, letting the SOUL’s decisions run their course; they don’t want to be tuned into the very opposite thing they want to be doing, but a sort of evil and twisted desperation to know keeps them fixed to the spot and attentive. Susie looks nice with her hair done up in a ponytail. Noelle will love her.
Noelle used to love when Kris’s hair had been longer, too. She’d been sat down beside them, twirling their locks around her finger until their hairband fell out into their lap and they told her all their hair was going to all fall off if she carried on. Their derisive smile had been met with juvenile surprise, horror, then blatant indignation. Kris! No!
Maybe they should tell that to Susie, even if in the form of a half-truth. It would boost her ego, make her feel more ready. But a selfish part of them, the chunk of flesh within their ribs that cries out louder and louder with every passing second they spend thinking of them two together, refuses to even muster it up as an option.
The SOUL is such a perfectionist. It seems to want Kris to pore over every detail in both lightner and darkner towns, and they are hauled to and fro between room and corridor without being granted the space nor the time to catch their breath. The room allocated as theirs in Castle Town has been slept in, and the SOUL’s vision must be sharper and more attentive than what Kris can see, because it notices the evidence first.
Suddenly, Kris feels so, so cold. Will all this be lost when her date with Noelle goes as spectacularly as they know it will? It’s such a trivial detail, one that shouldn’t even make a mark on them and their petty emotions. But the knowledge that Susie has slept here makes their human heart start to pound erratically and off-beat, their body desperate to cling onto the fragments of what they do have even if it is temporary. And it clings. They let the me next? bleed onto their features when Susie chucks the plushie of herself and then Ralsei up into subspace.
Kris is that desperate.
It’s pathetic.
The thing about being taken on a variety of adventures whilst being possessed by an otherworldly SOUL is that over time, as hard as they might try to tell themselves that the way things go is already set in stone, they still get attached to the dark worlds and darkeners and everything that happens. It’s impossible to remain impassive and dead-set on their greater goals; it’s just more fun to get wrapped up in it all, even if just a little. So they’re glad when Ralsei comes into his own a little when the SOUL takes them into his room and they’re mad when the SOUL fails thrice against the new trio in town and they try to hold the growing bitterness inside them back when Susie mentions Noelle liking rock music, I know, I know, I know it all and I should have forgotten -
It’s funny, though, at the make-up stand, when the SOUL makes Susie try out all the different styles, because Susie looks so smudged and…well…Queen-like that it’s impossible for them not to feel some mirth. And maybe they are just a little curious about how she might end up. It’s a look for sure.
When the SOUL takes them out of Castle Town back into school, Susie comments here and there on a few things they force Kris to look at. When they reapproach the dented lockers that Susie had slammed them into, they aren’t listening to her apology.
Picked up by the collar by strong, unwavering hands…Susie’s gaze hot on their face…so close, they can feel her breath down their neck, ah, yes! -
Their saucy thoughts must be showing on their expression, because Susie exclaims - “What? No, I’m not picking you up again, dumbass!” Kris jolts themself out of the memory and bounces back off the words instantly. They lift their hand forwards as if to propose the idea - “You’re not picking me up either, idiot!”
Susie’s expression is so incredulous that Kris laughs even despite themself and the slight pang of disappointment they feel. Of course, it’s wishful thinking, and the SOUL forces them away a few moments later without waiting nor knowing what’s passing through their mind. When the two of them leave school, they turn right, expecting to see the Festival but -
Kris drops their gaze and in the depths of their own brain they let out one long, drawn out cry. The fleeting excitement of re-entering Castle Town erases itself immediately and is replaced by a low-lying, bubbling jealousy in the pit of their stomach.
Noelle’s here.
And there she is, standing tall if not a little curled in on herself, and she’s blushing like her life depends on it and did she look like that when Kris had been sat beside her once on the big rocks in the forest? They don’t remember. And she says hi to Susie first, and greets them too in half-confusion too, and it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, they are just Kris with a mission, who even is Kris, the real Kris started to die a long, long time ago when Dess Holiday disappeared and never came back. They won’t meet her eyes and they won’t listen to their conversation - but words bleed in through their ears anyway, and Kris is so done and through and they want Susie and they want -
“...So…what do you want to do first?” Noelle asks eagerly, smiling so her teeth show, and Susie turns her head to the side as she considers the question at a loss for ideas. The brief patch of silence that follows is only a little awkward, but to Kris it is both a gaping chasm and a sliver of relief. Before they can react, Susie turns on her heel and heads in their direction, jabbing them in the back with her arm.
Kris’s body is thrusted forwards, and they accidentally meet Noelle’s eye in surprise. “Kris, figure it out!” Susie’s faith in them is sweet, but the fact they’ve been allocated third wheel stings. Noelle jolts, hand coming up over her mouth in surprise as her black eyes don’t dart away from Kris’s. She hesitates in confusion for a moment before -
“Um, yeah! Kris, be our tour guide!”
This has got to be a fucking joke.
The SOUL gets full control over their movements from then on, and they’re dragged to and fro from stall to stall without hesitation. Exchange after exchange happens between Susie and Noelle as Kris is lost trying to dream of other things in a bid to ignore their words about ketchup and strawberry milk, and the fact they think it’s easier that Kris is there beside them is a double-edged sword - whilst it’s reassuring that they have a place in this new development it’s also torturous to watch Susie, and Noelle, have fun together, in that way, without -
The SOUL decides Kris should go with Susie. They don’t speak when they relay the choice, pointing at Susie instead, and the two of them pick up rubber hammers accordingly. “Whenever you’re ready,” Susie tells them. They can read her intentions as easily as the SOUL can pick through its options. On command, they lift the hammer, preparing to strike -
Then Susie brings the hammer crashing down, albeit gently, onto their head, and laughs, winking - “Heh, got ya.”
In retaliation Kris hits her back square in the stupid grinning face, and she slams back almost instantaneously, and it’s yeowch! and slam! and yeowch! and slam! and yeowch! and this is what Kris wants to keep, and maybe they'll get to keep it, because Susie’s smile as they both fall to the ground at the same time is addictively cool and overpowering. Noelle comments on their predicament, a few words probably about how they'd barely touched the actual machine at all - Kris isn't listening, caught up in dragging themself to their feet and wishing so desperately that things don't have to change.
The SOUL takes them to the Festival King and Queen voting booth after dilly-dallying a little to speak to what feels like every monster in all of Hometown. It has all the say in who Kris chooses to write down, but as always it cannot dictate how - it tells Kris to write Noelle as King and themself as Queen, and they can only do so. But a thought stirs up in their mind like an spark jumping to flame - a long time ago, in this very place, it had been her telling them to do something different to what was expected, her and her young golden hair, made straw-yellow in the afternoon lighting -
Kris writes down Noel Hollyday and Kris Dreamer, hand trembling a little as they ink out the words. Seeing their disjointed script jagging up and down on the vote directly inking out the memory is sort of like being stabbed in the chest - when they are forced to show the paper to Noelle, she seems surprised at first, but then sobers up in realization. They can hear her half-muttering, half-thinking to herself, and it is excruciating. They know what names she’s put down and they know that she still thinks they deserved to have won.
Does she still think we could have had a chance? Kris asks to themself cruelly.
We won’t ever again, they answer in reply.
Because Noelle wants Susie and Susie wants Noelle and Kris wants Susie and do they want Noelle? and what do they want? and why do they want it? and Noelle wants Susie, she wants Susie, and Susie wants Noelle, they want each other back -
At the ferris wheel, the SOUL makes them ride with Noelle after unamusingly declaring that they looooooove Sans. She recounts the same, heartwrenching story that Kris has had kept away in the back of their mind this whole while, and how they’d told her to ride the wheel with her and had shaken it the entire time. And the SOUL seems to take a sort of half-wretched pity on them and their distance and how it has read between the lines and seen through Kris’s avoidance because it makes them shake the wheel, dragging them out of the awkward reverie back into terrified reality, causing Noelle to yell H-HEY!!!! and abruptly fall back in her seat the same way she had over seven years ago. “Gosh, you haven’t grown up one bit, have you, Kris?” she asks, and it’s so untrue that they go back to impassiveness again, internally in tears.
Maybe they had never grown up, yes. But one way of never growing up is to die inside. Kris will forever remain unchanged and wholly changed.
Unless the plan goes to plan.
“You guys are so lucky,” Susie says, once they exit their compartment on the ferris wheel, Kris feeling unplaceably breathless. “I couldn’t hit your window a single time.”
“You were, um, throwing dirt at us?” Noelle asks, and it’s such a Susie thing to do and something Kris would have done a long time ago too that it aches, it aches how she’s moved on so well, and this entire time they were hoping for that but how come it -
hurts.
They pop down to the Church to hold hands amidst eyeballs and upset Catti and pour blood into each others’ mouths before they get ice cream and leave. The SOUL makes them wait for a few moments, indecisive about whether they should approach the beach yet, but soon enough it makes up its mind and time goes on. The three of them sit down on the benches to rest, and Susie and Noelle hit it off with yet another conversation that makes their chest ache - it’s easy to drift off, their body still so, so exhausted from escaping without the SOUL from the night before -
It’s the sound of footsteps that rouses their weary self, and they lift their head slowly, blaring sunset driving fire straight into their eyes through their bangs. Kris’s body is pliant to their own control, to their own surprise - that means the SOUL is distracted watching something else, and the opportunity it provides them induces so much adrenaline into their system their lungs widen up in tense preparation. But then they realize what the SOUL must be watching.
“Here,” Susie is the one speaking, and they drop their head down in horror when they realize she’s facing towards them, but she’s likely too engrossed in her actions to care - “The honours of your phone.”
Kris peeks up from where they’ve bracketed their arms around their head, abruptly feeling the bottomless hole in their chest draw more and more emptiness from the scene before them. Noelle’s hands are up and likely covering her mouth, and Susie is knelt as if proposing with her cellphone - the dread Kris feels in that instant is immense, like a lake with no end swashing away out to a non-existent sea. This isn’t going to go how they want it to, but they can believe, they can believe, the sunset is so red and overbearing, their exchange is white noise but Kris cares about what they’re saying so fucking much -
“Don’t you wanna do something crazy?” Susie asks, and when Kris begins to pay more attention again they realize Susie is standing in the water. Noelle is still sat beside it, but Susie approaches her, holding out one hand chivalrously as her ankles drip damp from lakewater. “Then c’mon. Let’s take the first step.”
It happens in slow motion. It happens instantly. One minute Noelle is offering to go back and get her swimming suit and the next -
And then next, Kris’s head shoots up decidedly off the bench, and Noelle is struggling and flailing wildly about in Susie’s arms eyes wide and shocked in Susie’s arms and recovering in an instant in Susie’s arms as Susie jokingly offers to put her down again.
Fuck everything. Fuck the SOUL. Fuck the disgusting, bitchy part of themself that begs the world could be kinder, even just a little bit, even just anything. Anything as long as it isn’t this - Kris being left on the side, Kris watching all by themself, Kris alone watching the girl they know they like deep down inside sweep the girl they’d kissed once in their childhood off her hooves with strong, certain arms. Deep down inside, they can admit it to themself - there’s no longer any point barricading their feelings away in a bid to stop expressing themself in favour of the greater picture. They like Susie. There might have been something between themself and Noelle in the past.
And the grin on Susie’s face, that grin, so happy and clear and lit up a little softer than usual, is one Kris can’t bring themself to crush between their own trembling fingertips. It doesn’t matter that scathing guilt that still lingers within their chest when they look at Noelle, hidden away even more securely than that SOUL of theirs. It doesn’t matter that neither of the two are looking at them. It doesn’t matter that the crimson blushes pooling on both their faces are bright with the young flickerings of first love.
It doesn’t even matter that Kris is there. And it shouldn’t matter. A long, long time ago, Noelle’s smile had tasted like peppermint. It’s none of their business to wish so desperately they knew what Susie’s mouth might taste like too.
Susie walks the two of them into the water, and their words are wavering on the wind from how far away they are from Kris to the point where they can only catch certain phrases. Best days ever…I guess it’s still getting better…and then, damningly - “Sorry…I was…listening to your heart beating.”
“Heh…I can feel yours…too.”
Ralsei would be horrified if he knew the comparison Kris is making in their head in the moment. This is their own version of the Roaring, their pathetic little universe’s own way of shutting them even further out of what they own. Kris has a habit of being unable to keep people around. Dess. Their father. Asriel. Noelle.
And they’d finally made a friend, Susie, a best friend, honest and brilliant and mean and kind, but they’d started wanting too much even despite the fact that maybe this was always going to happen and now they pay for it. The bells going off to announce the Festival King and Queen would have woken them even if they hadn’t yet in another life, and they watch as the two make their decision to just stay behind. Noelle is speaking. There’s a rawness in her tone that Kris loathes and craves desperately. Stay away. I miss you. Stay away. I miss you. It had always been the former thought that had won in their mind - so why now does the latter rise and torture them so now? “For a long time I…I’ve actually been thinking about…what would happen if I left.”
It’s all their fault. It’s all their fucking fault. If they had just stopped Dess - if none of that had ever happened - Kris caused this, Kris caused all her grief, it’s all their fault it’s all their fault it’salltheirfault -
And Susie is so perfect. She is so kind. She reassures Noelle and Noelle is happy like this and Susie wants to make it like this forever, for her, as much as she can, the two of them are perfect, the two of them are endgame, Kris’s wild hopes are all wishful thinking and they should have died, they need to die, Susie has Noelle in her arms and that could never be Kris -
They almost trip as Susie starts walking them back towards the shore, and Kris lowers their head again. Now they can hear the conversation more clearly, and the joke Susie cracks about wanting to see how fast she can make Noelle’s heart beat is funny in every context but in Kris’s. Susie’s facing them again, but they could probably tear the SOUL out of their body and she would take a while to notice. Back to normal. Thank god. Thank everything.
Noelle’s mother calls. “I REALLY like her,” Noelle tells her. Kris gives up. They’re fully staring now, feet planted solid to the ground instead of dangling in front of them, half of their bangs brushed back behind their ear so they can see more clearly. No, no, no. Stop CARING! they scream at themself, but when has that ever worked? It’s fine, you were doomed anyway, it’s just Susie, it’s just Noelle, stop caring, stop caring, you don’t give two fucks about what Susie’s going to say next -
“I like you too, OK?”
Kris crash-lands back into reality. This doesn’t matter. The hot ghost of tears pricking at the corners of their eyes have been around for a while, and only now does one let itself run free down the side of their face, curving along their cheek and dripping down onto their sweater. I never mattered. “Whatever way you meant you like me, I like you too.” She won’t just forget about you. “It’s just…being with you…makes my days better. Makes ‘em…some of the best days I can have.” Everyone forgot about you. And you let them.
“Well…” Noelle has to turn to the side, not quite able to meet Susie’s eye. Once upon a long time ago, after a hastily-shared inexperienced kiss, she had done the same. Uhm, I guess…I kind of enjoyed that. It had been followed by KRIS! STOP THROWING GRASS AT ME!, but the memory still lingers so strongly to their pathetic self that they can’t brush away the nostalgia in the way they usually do. “And I have…for a long time.”
Tears, tears. They can’t help it. It’s so stupid and petty of them, but they’re crying. “Everything I learn about you…” They furiously rub their sleeve against their face, hunched up on the bench all by themself, unable to stop the torrent of unbelievably raw emotion suddenly shattering through their system. “...Just makes me like you more.”
Susie looks so, so genuine in the auburn-flame lighting. Her words reflect her face in every manner possible. “...Same back to you.”
Me, Kris shrieks against the inner walls closing in on themself slowly from their distance. Why couldn’t it be me? All I do is lose, time and time again, I lost Dess, I lost Asriel, I lost Noelle, I lost control of my fucking own body and now I’m losing Susie, I was always a lost cause, I’ve always been worthless -
“Actually, there’s something I really wanna tell you,” Susie continues. Kris tunes both in and out at the same time, unable to prevent themself from listening in further but also reluctant to face whatever it is she has to say - but then Susie delays it in favour of ice cream. Quickly and quietly, they slam their face back down onto the table - their arms fall limply to their sides just as Susie rushes past.
They don’t hear Noelle fall to the floor as they stare through the holes of the bench at their feet, but they do hear her exclamations and relief. Her footsteps as she walks back towards the bench are audible, however, and when she notices Kris she’s surprised. It’s good you’re forgettable to her. Then why does that make them hurt even more? “How much of that did you um…hear?” Her phone rings. She picks it up. Kris does not move a muscle nor reply.
Rudy fell down at the Festival. Even despite themself, Kris’s heart pangs for her. They could never detest Noelle. Sweet, angelic, lonely Noelle.
Lonely no longer.
“Kris…” Noelle says, loud enough so that they can hear. Her voice is shaking, and it shouldn’t affect Kris as much as it does. “Kris…please, just tell Susie I REALLY wanted to talk to her, but…I just…I just had to…”
There is no ending to her sentence in the same way there is no ending to anything. Her retreating steps are swift and agitated, and Kris can tell just by the sound. They’re replaced by Susie’s just barely a moment afterwards. The metal table is starting to leave dents in their face, and their teartracks have already dried in the evening chill.
“HEY, KRIS, WAKE THE HELL UP!” Susie yells, all of a sudden, and they jolt up to meet her eye instantly. The good thing about their hair is that it covers most of their face, so she can’t see their actual state through their usual semi-verbal self. They don’t quite expect her response. “Hahahahaha! Dude, you look like a pineapple!” Oh. It must be their skin. Somehow, Susie laughing at them makes them feel a little warmer within, although it’s slightly put out by her following question - “Hey, uh, where’s Noelle?”
Kris has no choice. Their mind only lands on one possible option, which is to answer what Noelle had told them to say, so to only their half-surprise when the words come out they’re unrestricted and unconstrained by the SOUL. They care about Noelle. They can’t stop it. “She had to go somewhere.” The sentence is mumbled, but it’s spoken nonetheless.
“What? She had to…go somewhere?” Susie repeats, confused. She pauses, parsing the information, then doesn’t miss a beat. “So what, dumbass?” Call me that forever and don’t leave me, Kris accidentally thinks inside. “That just means we gotta follow her, right? No time to waste!” She shoves the two ice creams in her mouth then inhales sharply. “Agh! Brain freeze!”
It’s not enough to induce them to laugh let alone put a smile on their face, but the sight of her riled up is funny in its own right. “Alright, let’s go, pineapple face.” Kris’s entire body straightens. The SOUL is back in control, and they are just a puppet again. Maybe it’s better for them to just let it control them mindlessly. Then they can just sit back and try and forget everything.
There is no sitting back with the SOUL in their chest. There is only a front-seat view to coin-flip decisions, and at the end of the long, festive day,
Kris cares about everything that has passed and will pass, and Susie and Noelle are in love, and they are the hopelessly, unbelievably useless tin can laying to the side of the street.
But if there is one thing that Kris cannot be useless when it comes to, then that is
the plan.
心臓が張り裂けそうになる
なんで苦しいの？
僕になにが足りないの？
作り笑い行けないのですか？
笑うしかないのです。
こんな世界誰が作ったの？
–✿–
My heart feels like it’s about to burst,
why is it so painful?
What am I missing?
Can’t I just force a smile?
I have no choice but to smile.
Who made such a world?
- Underwater Reflection, 美波 (Minami)