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You don’t look at the ferris wheel. You hear the creaks in its shoddy craftsmanship as it spins. The laughter in the gondola becomes fainter by the second and you allow yourself to breathe out. It’s better this way, you’ve said it to yourself over and over last night. Love finds its way to The Girl. Everything is as it should be. A cage need not involve itself any deeper.
You never stood a chance anyway.
But it didn’t stop you, did it? In the quiet moments with Susie, you’d catch yourself staring too long, your breath missing its rhythm, and whatever residing in your chest thumping so hard it hurts. When Noelle’s eyes met yours and she said a few words in passing, you think of the hundreds and thousands that she didn’t say.
Yesterday when you played the piano, part of you—and truly, YOU—blasphemed against the prophecy: you had hoped that Noelle would reminisce as you did. Last night amidst the cacophony of that skeleton and your mother, you heard Susie calling for you and you almost followed her into the rain.
Perhaps those are your biggest sins: that you hoped. You hoped that they would reciprocate. You wanted Noelle to look at you and still see the kid with a tooth gap and two horns on their head, and see that both of you can still be something even if not what once was. You wanted Susie to look at you like you looked at her, like you were the piece that fit on every missing tile on the mosaic of her life.
Alas, hope was not meant for The Cage.
You are a remnant. A ghost of something that once and never was. Ultimately you are to be forgotten and moved on from once this is all over. Susie and Noelle don't need a spectre haunting over them. Maybe even assuming that is arrogance. Who is to say that the times Susie looked at you for you, it was nothing more than a platonic gesture? And that Noelle’s constant words of ‘remember when’ were only just that: remembering, and nothing more?
Are you even Kris anyway?
No. What you are now is a corpse masquerading as Kris. You unclench your fists and look at them, crescent marks embedded in the epidermis. These are not your hands. This body isn’t your body. The words that made Susie laugh so much weren't spoken with your voice. The ears that listened to Noelle reminiscing the halcyon days weren’t yours. You don’t know who it was that stared back at you in the mirror this morning.
And you wonder if they prefer it that way. Susie and Noelle liked Kris Dreemurr. Would they still like you once the thing in your chest discards its skinsuit?
You stop thinking and take several quick breaths. You dare to look at the ferris wheel—Susie is cracking a joke; Noelle laughs and returns with one of her own. It’s a mistake. You clutch your chest and swallow the bitterness in the back of your mouth. You don’t deserve to feel that way. Not to Susie, not to Noelle.
So why can’t you tear your eyes away?
It’s the SOUL, you reason. That damned thing. It has to be. After all, every waking moment you’ve spent befriending Susie and reconnecting with Noelle has had an audience of an interloper inside you. An audience, director, and actor in one entity. The ‘you’ they’ve known this past week is only a character.
It stands to reason then that it's its fault. You can’t take your eyes off of Susie, because the SOUL kept pestering you to stick by her side. You keep prodding into Noelle’s past with you, because the SOUL was too nosy for its own good. And the moments in between without the SOUL where you did so regardless? Leftovers, like petals on your epitaph. Kris Dreemurr certainly does not hold these feelings they don’t deserve.
The feelings you’ve held are the SOUL’s to blame.
As long as it’s here, you can blame it on the SOUL.
And when it’s no longer here, neither will you. And things will be okay after that. Dess will come back. Dad won’t need to pin more papers to his board. Mom won’t need to worry about you anymore. Asriel will come home and be happy. The town will celebrate. No one will throw pity at you anymore. No one will worry about you anymore.
Noelle and Susie will be the couple they always deserved to be.
And you’ll be everyone’s burden no longer.
The ride slows down and for a moment you think that Sans’ qualification has caught up to him. When the gondola comes down and the laughter has been replaced with bashful chuckles and honeyed words, you dare to look back and see that it has made the full rotation.
“That was nice…” said Noelle.
“Yeah. That was… nice,” Susie said. “Sucks we couldn’t see that far though. The ride only went halfway up.”
“Yeah, I wish you could’ve seen the lake… It’s so pretty.”
You look at Sans and truly, earnestly, think about his lack of qualifications. It’s more interesting than the mutual pink on Susie’s and Noelle’s cheeks.
Susie turns to you and you find your neck involuntarily snapping to face her.
“Hey weirdo. We waved but your eyes were closed.”
“I warned Susie you might throw dirt at us…”
“Yeah. I was kinda disappointed you didn’t,” Susie chuckled.
The thought certainly didn’t cross your mind. And if it did, you did not stop yourself from doing it because you realized that there might be more in the dirt than just the earth in your hands.
You make another mistake in trailing your eyes down to avoid their eyes, and instead they fall to their linked hands.
They look so good together.
And certainly, Kris Dreemurr does not think about how they would look in between them.
“So,” Susie said, putting a hand on your shoulder, “where to next?”
You mumble an affirmative and the both of them return the lead to you while laughing with each other. You’re happy. You’re glad. You’re overjoyed. The two people you love most are finding who they deserve in each other.
You certainly don’t feel something burning beneath your chest.
You walk to where you will drown this nonexistent inferno, lovers in tow. It’s for the best, you tell yourself. They will hate you anyway when everything comes to a head. You know Susie will hate you for betraying her. You know Noelle will hate you once she knows what you don’t tell her. You’ve prepared them consolations with your fate in the end.
And after everything, you will be a ghost of loathed. From your ashes, their love will thrive than with you in between them.
The best ending doesn’t involve you.
You think that your host is being a bitch. In more than one sense of the word.
They do a good job of shutting you out of their thoughts, but at the same time they are more transparent than they’ve ever been in the days you’ve known them. The mere consideration presented to you to pair them with Susie or Noelle throughout the day tells you enough, no matter how intensely Kris may stare at Sans.
You can’t help but try to sigh. In their quest to play judge, jury, and executioner on themselves, Kris has decided that their just deserts are playing third wheel to their old and new crush and gritting their teeth through it, among other things.
Yet you can’t help but also breathe a little sympathy into the sigh. You’ve never fallen in love before, likely never will, but you’ve seen what it does at its worst and Kris is putting up a valiant fight to take the crown of worst.
When everything comes falling down, every string of events will trace its source nicely with each of Kris’ actions and they’ll probably come to regret everything they said and didn’t say to Susie and Noelle.
But in the meantime, you’ll let Kris blame whatever plagues them on you.
Deserve is a strong word; need is a much stronger one.
And you’ve decided, long before this, that you’ll take as much blame as the kid needs.
And if somehow you and them make it past this whole mess, you make a silent promise to help them out of ‘the chair’.