Archive of Our Own

It was a really nice Ferris wheel ride.

That’s what Susie’s thinking about as she waits around for the ice cream because one somebody is taking way too long and two probably she should like, give Noelle and Kris time to talk and stuff. She walked both of them to the beach and everything even if it was all separate. Still isn’t entirely sure what either of them wanted to talk about but eh, she can probably pry it out of Kris later. They’re mostly quiet all the time but she thinks she can understand them.

But yeah. the Ferris wheel. It’s still like—weird. How much they trust her and stuff. Both of them. The first time with Noelle she was just…quiet. She hadn’t been so talkative the entire festival really, probably tired or something, but she’d leaned her head on Susie’s shoulder without even seeming scared at all. Like of course she did it because Susie was there and the most comfortable, and even when Susie poked her, asked if she wanted Susie to move so Noelle could as least like look out the window or something, she just shook her head and scooted a bit closer. It was—well even thinking about it kinda makes her heart speed up. Noelle was just so calm. Her eyes were even closed even though Ferris wheel isn’t a great place for naps. It was way too jerky for that.

And Kris, too. Shaking the car was what got them to smile, the first smile she managed to drag out of them today too. She didn’t like how tense they were. And the weird way they walked, like they were trying not to limp. But against her they were—softer, or some stupid bullshit like that. When she dragged her claws through their hair she caught their eyes staring up at her, all wide and kinda-shiny, and she had to look away. Didn’t know what to do with them. Just that she wanted them there forever. Them and Noelle really. She had two sides for them to lean on.

Heh. Maybe she shoulda shown up when they were talking too. Not really to get involved or anything but just to like…hang out there. Keep Kris steady. Give Noelle something soft to rest on. Susie didn’t know she could be soft like that. Like, the sort that makes people wanna come back to her again.

It’s…it’s nice, though. It’s. It’s really really good. Noelle and Kris are good, and she’s…

She’s kinda getting there too, she thinks.

Soon enough she gets the ice cream and the sun’s nearly set and she figures she’s given her friends enough time, so she heads over to the lake. The ice cream is cold and smooth and that’s what she’s thinking about as the paved road turns to dirt and pebbles and sand and stuff, hoping that she guessed good enough at what flavors Noelle and Kris would like. She tried asking Noelle before leaving her at the beach, but Noelle just sort of shrugged. She wasn’t even looking at Susie then. Just at the water really, and Susie’d at least made sure she was like, okay enough that she wasn’t gonna fall in before going. It’s probably good Kris is with her ‘cause that’s better than being alone. Being alone is…is just not good for them all, Susie thinks.

“Hey guys,” she calls as she passes the picnic tables, shifting around the ice creams and stuff. Okay, they haven’t really melted too bad yet, and her hands are only kinda sticky. “If you’re not done talking I can like leave again but I’m at least gonna drop these off ‘cause I can only hold three ice creams for so long.”

She glances up and sees…beach. Ground. The water. And no Kris or Noelle.

Susie rolls her eyes. “Did you seriously go into the woods to talk to each other. Literally who was gonna overhear, we’re like, the only people not at that King and Queen ceremony thing. Well, I guess your dad was hanging up more lights Noelle, but that was way down.” Hmm, how deep in the woods did they go if they can’t hear her? Susie squints through the trees. Hometown’s like, rural rural. It’s a real forest and everything. Once the road and houses are gone she’s pretty sure other than the single highway it’s like, literally just trees upon trees upon trees. Still kinda weird that she could just like, start walking and not see another person for maybe the rest of her life.

Susie shivers. Ugh, okay, ice cream and kinda-chilly lakewind don’t go super well together. Maybe they aren’t in the forest then. It’s not like she told them to wait for her to come back once they finished.

Susie sighs and turns around. “Well I guess I’ll just carry these all the way back then,” she says. Kinda weird she didn’t pass them on the way back to Noelle’s house and stuff but again, rural town: everything is super walkable, even if everything is also only like three things. So, pros and cons. Mostly a pro here because it means she doesn’t have to go so far with her three—okay, actually, no. She’s solving that problem.

Susie bites down and devours the entire rest of her ice cream cone in one bite. Now she can use both her hands and doesn’t need to figure out the extra cone!

Only a bit of a brain freeze from that. She winces as she winds her way back through town, ignoring the skeleton convenience-store man before he like, convinces her to buy and carry even more ice creams. But it dies down eventually and she inches her way past the unlocked gates to Noelle’s house, where she can already hear people cheering for—oh, Jockington. Cool that he won both King and Queen. …does that mean he has to date himself or something?!

But Susie can’t find Noelle or Kris in the crowd. Nor does she find them like anywhere else as she has to dodge the stupid Couple’s Parade thing, to search the entire town. Did they go home? Without even saying goodbye?

…she got them all that stupid melty ice cream for nothing.

Well. Kris did seem pretty tired. And Noelle too, so. Maybe that does kinda make sense. Still, Susie sighs, turning to head back home then. Someone’s gonna enjoy the ice cream with her and she can probably get it to come to Castle Town and still be ice cream.

It’s a tiny bit hard to open doors without using her hands, but she’s Susie, she’s got experience, and before she knows it she’s landed back in Castle Town. Today it’s just Ralsei as her welcoming party, leaning against the wall though he brightens when he sees her, a smiling splitting his face.

“Susie! Hi.” He comes up to her, and then stops upon noticing the ice cream. “Did you…?”

“Aww, hell yeah, it came.” Susie shoves one cone into his waiting hands. He fumbles for it and blinks up at her. “Festival ice cream! I think Kris and Noelle went home early so it’s yours now.”

“Oh! Well…” He turns it around in his hands. “How do I…?”

“Eat it?” Susie stares at him because what do you mean Ralsei’s never had ice cream before. “Ralsei. You just kinda.” She licks her cone. Then takes a big chomp out of it. “Y’know. Like that.” The words are a bit muffled around the ice cream she’s trying not to spit everywhere.

Ralsei giggles. “Yes, Susie, I knew that. Thank you for the demonstration.”

“Well how was I supposed to know that? Like half the time you talk it’s like some new thing I didn’t know I was gonna be sad about.” She flushes, her cheeks hot, and Ralsei just laughs again, following her as she heads towards the castle. “You didn’t even have a room until yesterday.”

“I—” Ralsei hrumphs. It’s kinda cute what with the fact that he’s got ice cream on his nose. He shakes himself. “Well, how was the festival? Did you get to see Kris? I’ve missed them…”

“Eh, I mean, a bit. I think they’re like, sick or something? Maybe just tired, them and Noelle both seemed kinda tired. I had to go drag Kris out of their house, they missed like, basically the entire festival. It was…” She gnaws at her cheek. “I dunno. I hope they feel better tomorrow.”

“I hope that too,” Ralsei says. His voice is quiet. Castle Town is too quiet. Usually it’s bustling but everyone must be sleeping or something, as they head up for the castle. Maybe they’re all like, having a party. “Are they—are they okay?”

Susie shrugs. She doesn’t wanna think about it. It’s just—going to the beach and seeing nobody makes her scales itch, okay? Like she’s gonna start clawing them off like when they get stuck molting and it is the worst. She just kind of thought they’d wait up for her. That she could like. Sit in the sand with them or something dumb. Kris could curl up against her again. They liked it on the Ferris wheel. When she grabbed them in a headlock and they didn’t even try to fight their way out of it. Like she could do anything and they’d stay there smiling at her with their stupid face. And Noelle. Susie could be a really good pillow for her if she needed it. And make sure that like, nobody woke her up or something. And then they could all watch the sunset together. Like it was basically already gone but not, like, entirely. It could have been nice.

“Hey,” she says, instead of any of that, “how about we go sleepover in your room or something.” She manages a sharp-toothed grin, reaching out with her free hand to knock Ralsei’s shoulder.

“A—sleepover?” He stumbles at her contact, and Susie hooks her arm through his before he falls for real or something. He makes no moves to try and free himself, instead just slowing to walk at her side. “I’ve…never had a sleepover before.”

“I mean, you have a room now and everything,” she says. Ralsei’s got ice cream dripping onto his fur. He doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s really bad at eating it. Too distracted. It keeps smearing across his muzzle. It’s probably really good Susie’s hands are busy holding the other one because otherwise she might do something really dumb like try to wipe it off. “So it might be kinda nice and stuff. I can drag blankets over and sleep on the floor.”

“I wouldn’t make you sleep on the floor!” Ralsei’s offense is so strong that he smacks his ice cream cone into his face. “I—ah. Oh no.”

“Pfft.” Susie grins, as his free hand comes up to take off his glasses, the lenses all sticky. “You are really bad at eating that.”

“I am trying my best! It’s hard to talk and eat!” He frowns, shaking out his glasses. The ice cream remains, stubbornly melted across the frames. “…now I can’t see.”

“Aww, Rals, I won’t let you run into anything.” Susie picks his glasses out of her claws. She could like…use her jacket to clean them? But there’s a lot of spikes and stuff. She doesn’t really want to crack them. Maybe ice cream wasn’t the best idea. “Maybe we just save the ice cream for later. I mean it would kinda suck to get your room real messy like right away. We can just eat them whenever Kris comes back. I’ll stop by their house tomorrow and stuff. Also I’m pretty sure we have school?” She shrugs. Hell if she’s keeping track of the days. “So I can also just see them there.”

“That…that would be really nice.” Ralsei tucks his ice-cream cone back into their inventory or whatever it is, and Susie does much the same. It’s pretty cool because food doesn’t go bad there. She’s not been able to figure out getting it to work in the Light World, though. “Well!” He claps his hands together, and Susie snorts at the way his muzzle crinkles up at the reminder of the ice cream still stained there. “…I am going to wash my hands.”

“And your face,” Susie adds. “And your glasses.”

“Shut up!” But his mouth twitches into a grin. “You too! I don’t want ice cream on my bed, I just got it!”

“Don’t run into any walls!” Susie calls after him, still holding his glasses.

“Don’t break my glasses!” he yells back, and then, “wait, what am I—come with me! If you’re going to laugh at me you are going to help me clean them.”

Susie laughs and hurries after him. She is absolutely going to dump a bucket of water over his head. To help! What better way to clean up than that?

And if Ralsei turns it back around on her, well, she’s laughing too hard to even be mad.

The next day, Kris and Noelle don’t come to school. Toriel has a frantic, hushed conversation with Ms. Alphys out in the hallway before pulling Susie out there to ask her about the festival and stuff. Susie tells the truth: Kris wanted to talk to Noelle at the lake, Susie went off, when she came back they weren’t there and probably had gone home. Toriel frets and says nothing and keeps saying nothing even when Susie, some sort of fear seizing up in her gut, asks, are they okay?

Toriel’s already leaving again. Class lets out early that day.

Three days later they find the bodies.

Susie’s never been to a funeral before.

They suck ass. It’s the first thing she realizes, when she walks into that stupid church with all those stupid people and it hits her that she isn’t ever going to see Kris or Noelle again. Noelle because she’s already dust. Kris because apparently death-by-drowning and being left there for long enough makes a body too gross to look at. They had to put it off because apparently it took a bit to figure out if Noelle was even there. All they found of her was the dust that had clung to Kris’s rotting corpse.

Kris’s—

Susie is. Breathing. Or some bullshit like that. There’s too many fucking people in the church and she sort of hates all of them because those were her friends because she was with them both because she fucking left them at that lake and if—if she’d just, surely she could’ve. Gotten the ice cream faster or done a better job and made Kris smile more and she was with Noelle at the festival for like the entire day surely she should’ve noticed that Noelle was planning to drown herself in the fucking lake—

Someone says her name or something but Susie just ignores it. She’s like half-certain it’s Toriel and she thinks if she looks at Toriel she’s going to do something really dumb like break down in tears and start screaming. Not even words. Just noise. Because maybe then Kris comes back Noelle comes back because they had been right fucking there. Not even that long ago they were all here. In this very church and things were. Well. Things were sort of falling apart then too. All that shattered glass everything and that Knight and, and she remembers the way Ralsei looked with her blood across his cheek and mattered into his fur. She remembers telling herself we aren’t going to let that happen.

The stupid prophecy said nothing about Kris and Noelle drowning themselves in the lake.

She can’t even look at the fucking coffin.

She doesn’t even fucking know what item Noelle’s dust has been spread on.

When Susie leaves the church she knocks like ten people out of her way. Some of them she even kind of recognizes. Her teacher. Catti. Kris’s dad. If any of them look at her it doesn’t matter so she doesn’t notice it just pushes outside, and the sun is stupid-bright, this perfect day all burning her eyes, the sort where the sky is white and the clouds are thin and her friends are dead.

There’s one other person outside and Susie starts before she crashes right into her, her head jerking up as she comes into focus. It’s—oh.

It’s Noelle’s mom.

For a long long moment they just sort of stare at each other. Susie doesn’t know what to do. Her hands are all balled into fists at her sides. Noelle’s mom doesn’t even look like she’s been crying. Isn’t even inside at her own daughter and nibling or something’s funeral.

Not that Susie is either.

It’s Susie who breaks first, blinking back and yanking herself away and she doesn’t look back, can’t get herself to look back. Not if it means Kris and Noelle are—

You aren’t ever gonna see them again. She can’t get the thought to shut up no matter how many times she tries hitting it with her axe. But even her magic dark world axe isn’t so bright anymore. Without Kris at her side it’s all muddled in her memories. You are not ever going to see Kris and Noelle again.

She only stops when she realizes she’s knee-deep in lakewater.

It doesn’t even have the decency to look different. Like, like two people died here. And just like the day Susie showed up with her ice creams and nobody to share them with it’s just the same old stupid lake. Picnic benches with all the fallen food littered around. Crunchy gravel path that turns to sand. The water still at the shore all perfect blue. There’s no clouds to reflect. Just a beautiful fucking day.

It was beautiful back then too. Real nice day for the festival or whatever. And later that night when the sun was setting and the sky was this brilliant blazing reddish-orange and it lit Kris up in the same colors too, like their eyes or whatever. Gave a new richness to Noelle’s fur.

“Why did you…” Susie can barely get the words to form and hell if she even knows what she’s trying to ask. It’s just the water is cold and the sky is bright and she can’t see to the other side of the lake and she doesn’t even know where they were dredged up out of the muck and rock and dirty water. It’s that her pants are already getting soaked and there’s water in her shoes and her hands grip and ungrip around nothing at all because there is nobody left. “Why did you do it together? Why didn’t you also ask…”

The works stick in her throat. She doesn’t want to be dead. She doesn’t want any of them to be dead. She would like to wake up back in Castle Town to Kris finally coming to visit her and maybe she’d show it all to Noelle too and they could all, just, you know, live there and it would be good and it could last forever. She doesn’t even need the adventures. Just Castle Town. Just Kris and Noelle and Ralsei and she could. Figure it out. Just keep being friends forever and ever until it’s like, stomped into the world or something. Like everybody who looks at them says well of course they’re friends because there’s no other possible thing they could be.

Cold water pooling around her legs.

Susie’s apparently yanked an entire scale off her arm to reveal the blistering flesh beneath. She traces her finger down the sharp edge of the scale. It’s a dull purple nothing like the way she shines in the dark. She flicks it into the lake and stares at it until she loses it in the glare of the light.

There’s probably still bits of Noelle in the water. All the dust dissolved with nowhere else to go.

Probably less Kris. But there’s more Kris to bury so it evens out.

She is never going to see either of them again.

Susie turns, and drags herself out of the lake. Scrubs at her eyes until she can’t stand it any longer, trudges through Hometown and doesn’t look towards the church, which is pretty fucking easy because where she wants to go isn’t down that road anyways.

She keeps looking back over her shoulder. Like she’ll see Kris there or something. Like they’ve gotten tired of leading and are letting her do it instead. Maybe they’re whispering with Noelle behind her and Susie’s just pretending not to hear until she thinks of the funniest thing to do to get herself between them and make them laugh.

Just one more time. She didn’t savor it enough. Didn’t know it could all end so soon.

“I didn’t even get to see them again,” Susie says.

It’s the first thing she’s said since making it from the lake into Castle Town, sat in Ralsei’s room because she can’t bear to go into Kris’s and her own is too close to theirs and whenever she looks at that pink door she just keeps thinking back to how they got combined for a day, two rooms made into one, and now Kris doesn’t have a room anymore because there is no Kris anymore. So she’s on Ralsei’s bed instead. Mostly it feels like nothing even if she knows the sheets are soft. Ralsei’s watching her.

“I mean with Noelle it’s like.” Susie digs her claws into her thighs, into the tiny gaps in her scales where they haven’t fully slot together. Ralsei’s hand reaches for hers, hesitates. “I mean she’s a monster. I know she wasn’t, there isn’t a body, she was in water, there’s—it’s not like there’s anything left to see. But with Kris I thought.” She’s looking up towards Ralsei’s ceiling and it’s already all blurry. Every time she blinks her eyes are wet. “Even if they were all gross and rotted I could. I mean it’s Kris so I would. I would have done it for them. I would have if it helped them.”

“Susie…” Ralsei says, and this time he does catch his hand in hers, the pads of his paws squishing against her palms. “Susie.” If he has anything else to say he doesn’t say it. Just squeezes her hand to tight she can barely feel it anymore but to be fair it’s not like she can really feel much. Just like. There’s supposed to be feeling there but it’s all gone because the people who made it good and worth it to feel aren’t around anymore, and. And she just.

“I mean like.” This time Susie can’t stop the tears or the crack in her voice but also it’s Ralsei and he’s literally already cried so much he had to take off his glasses because otherwise he couldn’t see a thing. They’re on his dresser and still splotchy with tears and even now they’re building up in the corners of his eyes and she never wants to see him sad and she cannot imagine a world where he’s not just sad forever because it’s just the two of them left and it wasn’t supposed to be two. She, she wanted them all. Somehow. She thought she’d be able to figure it out. “I just, they could’ve like, said something, or, or I should’ve—noticed, that they were gonna—”

“Sometimes,” Ralsei says, and Susie tugs him closer, grips back his hand as tight as he’s gripping hers. What if she loses him to? What if she blinks and then Ralsei’s gone? She tugs him against her chest, tucks her muzzle between his horns. Ralsei smushes closer. “Sometimes I think that if—if I had just been, been braver, and better, and,” his tears drip down Susie’s scales. “I’m sorry,” he says, “that I—that I dragged you both into this, that I wasn’t—that I couldn’t, I should’ve told you everything, I don’t know why I—” He looks up at her, his hands tightening around her own. “Susie,” he says, and his voice breaks, “we’re never going to see them again.”

“Yeah,” Susie says. She can hardly get the word out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The last time I saw Kris I didn’t know I’d never see their face again. I didn’t remember it right. I should have like etched it into my brain. But it’s already leaving me. I barely ever even saw their eyes. Their stupid little smirk. They were so short. Why were they that short? It was adorable. And the way their hair always stuck up and how they’d inch out in front of us and do you remember that time they saved my life and I hadn’t even been all that nice to them. I wasted so much time. We could have had so much time.

“Don’t leave me.” Ralsei’s voice breaks her out of her thoughts, the press of his face to her shoulder, the hitch in his breath as he sobs. “Please, please please don’t leave, don’t—I can’t, I can’t be alone again, I don’t, I don’t want to I know it’s bad but I don’t want to—”

“Ralsei,” Susie says, as soft as she can manage, and she scoots down in the bed so they’re lying down, keeping Ralsei safe right against her chest. “I won’t. But you—you don’t leave me either. Don’t…” She doesn’t want to see it but she does. Coming to Castle Town one day only to find nobody left. Just empty buildings leaving it a ghost town all over again and not even so much as a few scraps of fur or bits of dust to remember Ralsei by.

“I won’t,” he says, curling into her chest. “Not ever. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I, I don’t know—I can’t stop crying—” His hands come up to rub at his eyes, and Susie catches his wrist before he like, starts clawing or something. In her arms Ralsei blinks, sniffles. “It is so unfair,” he says, “that, that just when I started to hope that maybe, maybe we would—we’d figure it all out—that maybe we really would, would find some way to make a good ending…”

He hiccups, trailing off. Susie pets flat the fur of his face. Mostly it’s kinda crusty with tears but she doesn’t even care. He’s here. He’s real. He’s here, still, and she hugs him so tight and Ralsei just snakes out a hand to hug her back just the same.

“You can’t leave me too,” she says, pressed into his fur.

“I don’t know what happens next,” Ralsei says, barely more than a whisper. Susie wants to curl around him until he’s inside her and then they won’t have to be apart again. Then she won’t ever have to leave and hope he’ll still be there when she comes back because she thought that of Kris and Noelle and look where that got her. “If, if they’re gone, I don’t know how, how any of the prophecy…” He shakes himself, ducking his head to tuck it better under Susie’s chin. When he speaks the words vibrate against her throat and Susie swallows, at the brush of his breath. “Can I tell you something really selfish.”

“Anything,” Susie says, and it comes out hushed so she says it again. “Anything.”

“I wish I was brave enough to say it when they were here,” Ralsei says, “I wish that…”

“I’m here,” Susie says, and even to her it sounds like nothing at all. But Ralsei breathes against her and is so close she can feel his heart or whatever beating, every tiny motion he makes, the way his chest rises and falls and how his ears twitch, the rustle of his fur.

“Sometimes,” Ralsei says, “I think that, maybe. If I did not have to be a prince, it would have been—it would have been really nice to be a princess.”

“I think you’d be a really pretty one,” Susie says. Ralsei’s sob is choked against her.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” His—no, her, right? Susie’s pretty sure she’s reading that one right. Her voice wavers. “I never thought that they would just.”

She doesn’t finish it. She doesn’t need to. Susie already knows.

“I’m—” Susie falters. She can’t fix it. She can’t really fix anything and clearly she never could. All that bravado underneath that shattered panel of the prophecy. They were supposed to have it all. They were supposed to—to keep being friends for all of eternity.

Instead she just says, “can I sleep with you tonight.”

Ralsei shakes in her arms. “Please,” she says, “every night.”

“Yeah,” Susie says. She doesn’t have a pillow. The blankets have been kicked to the floor. But she has Ralsei and that’s the most important thing, Ralsei as close to her as she’s ever been, and Susie’s never letting go of her again. Not after last time. Her voice still shakes, though, when she says, “forever.”

When Susie next wakes up she’s in the supply closet.

She is entirely alone.

“No,” Susie says, “no,” because she can’t be, because she was right there, because Ralsei was right there right there right there, she could feel Ralsei in her arms Ralsei was right there, and when Susie trips out of the closet the sun in shining in through the school’s windows and spills into the supply closet, lighting up its edges.

Susie closes the door. Opens it.

The supply closet is filled with shelves and an assortment of random items. Playing cards scattered across the floor. A whole mess of wires from the computer lab. A closed laptop. Dice and remotes and red solo cups and everything Susie still remembers gathering in her arms and sneaking all across town because sure it was stealing but it’s not stealing if those are her friends, and she needed to get them somewhere for them to be themselves again.

Susie closes the door. Opens it.

The room isn’t even that dark. There’s a single light in the center of the room and when her hand moves to tug at the metal string it comes on with a flicker and a buzz to chase away what few shadows remained. Really not so many things inside. She can see the back wall. From the door, she could take two big steps and already hit it.

Susie closes the door. Opens it.

Of everything in the room there’s two she’s drawn to most. There’s the jack of spades. And there’s a plastic headband, red with two little horns.

She can’t even find the strength to close the door again.

“Ralsei,” she says, sinking down to her knees, hugging her to her chest. She’s so—small. Just a flimsy bit of plastic is all that’s left of her and, but Susie was there. But Susie would never touch that fountain but it was hers but this was her home, and when she blinks there’s teardrops dripping down Ralsei’s thin band. But she promised. But she promised Ralsei she’d never leave. But Ralsei promised her in return. She already lost Kris and Noelle, she can’t—she can’t—

Kris apparently always carried a knife around which means probably that knife is somewhere at the bottom of the lake. Susie’s magic axe only ever showed up in darkness but that doesn’t mean she can’t find something sharp and anyways who says she needs anything sharp? She just needs—determination. She needs to hold onto her friends as tight as she can, and if she claws into the floor around enough, then she’ll do it. She’s already done it once before and it wasn’t even hard. Another fountain. Just—just enough to bring them back, to—

She’s clawing at the ground. Nothing is happening. She cannot get herself to stop. Like maybe it’ll bring them back. Like maybe, somehow, like it has to, like, like, like.

She doesn’t even notice she’s not alone until she hears Toriel make a sound that’s halfway between a sob and clearing her throat.

Susie jumps, clutching Ralsei to her chest as she turns to face Toriel, her nails all torn up from her useless scratching at the floor. This time Toriel’s sound is more obvious: she gasps.

“You found their—” Toriel goes quiet. Then she says, “Susie, dear, do you have anywhere to stay?”

“Do I—” Susie’s breath catches. “I, uh. I mean.” Her eyes flit about the supply closet. She could. Like there is a floor and sure all the good blankets were in Castle Town but—and, and okay, so nobody can talk to her anymore but they can’t be dead, not like Kris and Noelle if she just—opens another fountain, she can…

“…no ma’am,” Susie says, staring down at her shoes. Ralsei gripped tightly in her hands.

“Okay,” Toriel says. She’s—Susie doesn’t know. Susie can’t fucking figure it out. She isn’t even mad anymore. Probably she was never really mad. It doesn’t matter anyways. Kris is dead. Noelle is dead. Ralsei is—

“I think,” Toriel says, “that Kris would like if you kept that,” and she nods to Ralsei, to the headband. And then: “if you have nowhere to stay, I—I would be happy to…give you somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Susie says. It comes out hoarse. “Okay.”

Later that day the mayor’s missing daughter returns. But not the one Susie cares about.

Dess Holiday is, generously, underweight and malnourished. Her fur is a sickly sort of brown, patchy and unkept. Less like she didn’t bother to brush it—though that too—and more like it’s been falling out in clumps. Her hair is stringy and comes down to her shoulders, the edges choppy, streaky with black dye that’s barely even close to setting. The dye stains the fur of her shoulder and the worn t-shirt she’s pulled on. Her antlers, too, are black, though already Susie can see the paint is chipping off. She’s maybe two years older than Susie, which makes her five years younger than she should be.

She is also, for some reason, staring at Susie.

“Fuck do you want,” Susie bites out, turning away. She’s in the middle of the woods for a god damned reason.

“You’re the last one who saw them alive,” Dess says.

It has been three weeks since the worst day of Susie’s life.

“Because,” and Dess steps right down on a twig, that snaps underhoof, and drops down onto the same log Susie’s spent the past hour sitting on, doing nothing but holding Ralsei in her hands and staring at her chipped red plastic. “Because you were friends with Kris, so you must get it. Kris makes sense. That kid screams I’m gonna kill myself one day, it’s—it’s kinda hilarious.” Her big doe-eyes are wet and shiny. She blinks too-fast for Susie to keep up with. Won’t settle her eyes onto any one thing, but instead they flit back-forth. There’s a baseball bat gripped tight in her right hand, the tip of it dragging in the mud, stained dark which what is probably just the mud, all ruddy at the edges.

“Little shit should’ve been born like a dog or something,” Dess continues. Her voice is rough around the edges. Susie’s hands flex around Ralsei and she only doesn’t start crushing things because she’s not ever going to hurt Ralsei, but still she tugs at that empty spot in her chest where once in the darkness she could feel the pulse-beat of magic alongside her heart. “Maybe then they might’ve—”

Dess hucks her bat at the nearest tree and bites back a scream.

“Why are you here,” Susie asks, again, but she can’t really muster up any bite to it, tracing the nubby edge of one of Ralsei’s plastic horns. They’re not the right color. Her horns were far pinker than this. The plastic hasn’t faded enough yet.

“But Elly.” Dess’s voice is shaking. Susie’s not sure if Dess has noticed yet. “I, I mean I never thought my fucking baby sister was going to beat me to it. Even did it better than me! She got the hell out of this stupid town. I just got dragged right back, I.” Her voice cuts off. Susie takes the pause to scoot a bit further away from her, just in case. Dess continues, “I didn’t even get to see her again. Her or Kris so what’s the fucking point.”

Finally, Susie, careful as she can, sets Ralsei back into her place atop her head—she’s never really bothered to keep her hair out of her face before, and the headband is kind of too small for her but it’s Ralsei and she’ll take the pressure over nothing—and turns to glare at Dess. “Do you even care?”

“Who knows!” Dess is laughing, doubled over, her arms wrapped around her chest. “I don’t even think you’re real! Isn’t that funny!” Her eyes flick across Susie, briefly, but return to their wanderings. Susie debates hitting Dess over the head with her own baseball bat. “Sure wish you were the one who died instead!” She flops backwards, digging her hands into the dirt and glaring up at the sky half-hidden behind branch and leaf. “You were right fucking there and you didn’t even do a thing.”

“They drowned!” Susie snaps, and decides fuck it, kicking herself up and storming over to the bat. Heavy in her hands. She’s almost certain some of the mud is, in fact, blood, up close. The wood splinters across her palms. “The fuck was I supposed to do? I couldn’t—they were already gone, sunk to the bottom of the fucking lake, why would my first thought be that the two of them—that they—”

“Because Kris was apparently your best fucking friend and that kid’s been a suicide risk since they day they were born?” Dess rubs at her eyes, tears shiny at the edges. “You know they say when humans die their bodies are supposed to float.”

Susie says, tightening her grip around the bat, “they didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Dess says, and she sits back up. No care at all to the dirt clinging to her fur. She doesn’t even bother to brush it off. “I bet they’d really like that.” If she notices Susie with her bat or not she doesn’t say a thing, digging into her pocket and pulling out a pocketknife. She flips it open and tosses it Susie’s way.

“Wha—” Susie fumbles to catch it, dropping the bat in the process, and the sharp blade cuts into the soft scales of her palms. Around it Susie clenches her fist, ignoring the wavery way her blood beads up. “What is this.”

Dess shrugs, patting the spot on the log beside her. “You remember the Knight?”

Susie’s shoulders hike up. There is no reason at all for Dess to know about that, unless— “Yes.”

“Great. Do my antlers like that.” She waves a hand up towards them. Unlike the rounded edges of Noelle’s antlers, Dess’s are jagged at the edges, but not the sort of—smooth jaggedness the Knight had. This is a hackjob. The closer she looks, the more Susie can make out the bits of bone that had been carved away. “Hard as shit to get it right in a mirror.”

“You want me to—cut. Your antlers.”

Dess huffs. “Yeah, unless you’re a coward? They’re bone. Not like I’ll feel shit.” She digs her fingers into her thighs. “Sides. If you fuck it up and kill me you’ve got two of those already on your consciousness. Not like another can do anything.”

Susie takes a breath. Another. The way Kris laughed against her. Their eyes, always hidden behind their bangs, but if they shook out their head and their hair parted enough, for a moment Susie could see the way they lit up before fading back into dull nothingness, whenever they settled onto her. And Noelle, dull throughout most of the festival, but she always smiled, a bit, when Susie took her hand, trying to lead her somewhere fun. She probably failed at it seeing what came next. But all she can really remember is how drawn Noelle’s face was and how she still smiled at Susie anyways. Ralsei, too. His head tucked to her chin, his hands clutched at her wrists, like if he got small enough she could wrap him up and take him with her forever. Soft as a dream. She never thought he’d be taken so fast.

Lancer perched on her shoulders, trying to get a better view. Queen’s strange and easy affection. Seam’s weird shop, and how they always left out a spare bit of candy for her. How hard she worked to piece Tenna back together. And, and, and…

“It’s more than two,” Susie says, sitting down alongside Dess. She lifts up the knife, and she digs the sharp edge of it into the flat of Dess’s nearest tine. “I didn’t even know they were going to do it. And then I went home and that was gone too.”

“Funny how it works like that.” Dess’s long ears flick at the first press of the knife before stilling. “Maybe if you were just a bit faster, you coulda been a big hero and saved them all.”

“Yeah,” Susie says. Carves out a chuck of bone and catches it in her hand, the solid mass of once-Dess. It doesn’t fizz up around the edges like monster bits do when they’re not attached to a monster anymore. Just sits there in her hand where her own blood pools around it. Susie clenches it shut. Antler-shard is plenty sharp. “I think however your mom got you back it killed all my other friends.”

“Don’t worry,” Dess says, kicking up her legs in front of her. When she relaxes her back presses against Susie’s hand, and the knife cuts too-close to her neck. Susie catches it in the dip between two tines, and Dess doesn’t even wince. “It killed me, too. So let’s call it even.”

Susie and Dess aren’t friends, really.

Susie doesn’t like her much. Doesn’t like the way she talks about Kris, like she knew them oh-so-well, figured out all the little ways their mind made them tick, and how some of the things she says are scarily close to things Susie’s started to notice, when she looks back trying to remember them. Doesn’t like the way she talks about Noelle, either, like Noelle is somewhere between a little girl and some mastermind who broke out of Hometown, when really all she did is kill herself, and then Susie hates Dess even more for making her think that.

If it were entirely up to Susie she’d not talk to anybody at all. She’s got Ralsei, a handband atop her head. Lancer she keeps in her pocket, debates getting him like, laminated for protection or something, but without him around to ask it just kinda makes her feel itchy. Technically she has a room—Toriel’s, still, somehow, nice enough to let Susie stay with her, but also that means Susie sleeps in the room of her dead fucking kid, so.

She uses Kris’s brother’s bed. He came back for the funeral but she didn’t talk to him much, so really all she knows about him is from whatever Dess bothers to tell her. Kris’s bed she doesn’t touch, though she’s piled up all their other darkner friends there. If Toriel thinks it’s weird that the TV she threw out is set back up in her dead kid’s room she doesn’t mention it. Probably because then she’d have to mention all the other stuff Susie’s technically stolen from around town. In what was probably a low moment for her she even nearly stole the Old Man right out of the priest’s desk. Only didn’t do it because it turned out Dess had stalked her there. Followed her. One of the two.

Dess had said, her voice loud in the dead silence of an empty church still with leftover dying flowers from all the funerals, “next we should graverob.”

“Jesus fucking—” Susie jerked away from the drawer, crushing her hand between it and the top of the table. “Knock? Maybe? Why the fuck are you here?”

“You’re like, collecting trophies or some shit?” Dess shrugged, pushing off the door she’d been leaning against. She was taller than Susie, but only just, and mostly because of the antlers, which were still all carved up. Susie still kept that first antler-shard in her pocket, the one opposite Lancer. She wasn’t entirely sure why. “Well, lets go to the graveyard next. If you get Kris’s old headband I want a bit of their sweater and they were buried with that.

“I am not digging up the grave of my best friend!” Susie shoved the drawer shut, stormed out of the room, and Dess followed. It was a dumb idea anyways. She already knew the Old Man wasn’t coming back how she remembered him and it wasn’t like dark worlds opened anymore, anyways. “Why are you like this?”

“I’m a delight,” Dess said, swinging around to block Susie’s path. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t piss you off too. Even their own mom didn’t cremate them.”

“They’re—” Susie’s words stuck in her throat. “Humans are buried. When they die.”

Dess shrugged. “Thought we were on the same page with that. They didn’t float when they drowned, either.” She paused as they passed the shelf of prayer candles, the main source of light in the otherwise dark church. Susie caught her own name on one of them. Toriel’s doing, she knew. For some reason. A new one read Dess, but Dess herself didn’t even glance at that one. Instead she picked up the one labeled Noelle. There were a lot of Noelle’s. Less Kris’s.

The tiny flame atop the candle wavered as Dess tilted it back-forth in the palm of her hand. Her fingers were calloused where her fur was thinnest, though Noelle’s had been like that too so maybe it was a deer-monster thing. The scarring was probably all Dess though. When Dess set it back down rather than pull her hand away she lowered it down towards the flame.

Susie grabbed her hand and yanked it back. “You’re gonna burn yourself or some shit.”

“Can’t feel it. Doesn’t matter.” But Dess didn’t protest as Susie hauled her away, her fur bristly and uncomfortable where it scraped against the thin scales of Susie’s palm. “Let’s grave rob now. You were actually there when they were buried so you gotta show me where they are.”

“I—” The words stuck as Susie finally dragged them both outside, where the moon cut a thin sliver of light into the darkness. But not the right sort of darkness. It lacked the vividness the dark worlds did, like she’d be able to reach out and scoop it up and hold it close. This was flat and single-colored, just dark without all the endless spiral pulsing the fountains had that gave the shadows some quality that brought them to life. “I, uh. I wasn’t there. When they did that part. It just—” Still, Susie’s feet lead her on a path to the graveyard. “Just kinda pissed me off. All the people there who didn’t care about them when they were alive.” She was pretty sure most of the people there liked Noelle, at least. But even then it just kinda made her mad. Where were any of them, during the festival?

Dess tilted her head, lead along only because Susie’d grabbed her hand and for some reason hadn’t dropped it yet. She stumbled while she walked but didn’t really seem to care. “Oh. Yeah, I probably woulda blown up and killed everyone too.”

“Because you were that, uh, Knight thing.” It’s the first time Susie’s said it directly to her face.

“Well, that too.”

They didn’t grave rob in the end. But Susie was pretty sure that was only because Dess forgot a shovel.

So yeah. They aren’t friends. Susie still has to go to school, even if nobody really talks to her there. Too many empty seats. Dess wanders around town, an aimless blankness to her eyes, and Susie kind of hates that she’s able to tell that, now. It’s not that they’re friends, it’s that everyone else in town is so much worse. Susie wakes and sleeps and for some reason Toriel doesn’t like, kick her out or anything, even when Susie dodges all questions on the identity of her parents. Dess doesn’t ask about that. Dess drags her bat out in the woods and smashes dead trees, or tracks the whitetailed deer that flit through the forest with an intensity Susie was not aware a person could have. She steals cigarettes from the convenience store guy whenever he isn’t looking—he won’t sell them to her—and tosses them still-burning into the dry grass. Susie’s pretty sure if she didn’t go out into the woods with Dess, she’d end up setting the entire town on fire, so. What else is she supposed to do?

She’s not Kris. She’s not Noelle. But she does give Susie something to do.

Time keeps passing. Days, then weeks, then two months, and she can’t remember Kris’s stupid weird laugh, the way their face scrunched up when they were mad at her, in that playful way of theirs. Can’t remember the way Noelle would trip over her words and end up blurting out something louder than anybody had ever said anything before, or the exact shade of red her face would get. Can’t remember the way Ralsei’s fur felt or how Lancer’s weight pressed against her scales.

Sometimes Susie ends up at the lake. Sometimes the graveyard. Neither makes her feel much better. Splits the rest of her free time between her borrowed room, and Dess’s big empty one, whenever Dess hucks enough rocks at the window and Susie doesn’t want to make Toriel worry about all the broken glass. It’s not a friendship. But still something of Dess hooks into Susie’s chest and hunches there, all knotted and sharp when she pokes at it.

And so the days crawl on.

“It got in my room,” is all Dess says when Susie walks in.

“Oh.” If Susie’s being honest she almost can’t tell it even was a mouse. The blood doesn’t really look like blood. Dess like never turns on her lights so probably it could just be like, shadows or something, some dark blot that goes away when its bright again. But Susie doesn’t go to turn on the lights and Dess doesn’t either. Just stands there breathing too loud. The tip of her baseball bat is dragging across the carpet. Bit of mouse all mashed into it. Tufts of torn fur and shiny-white bone fragments. “This is what you’ve been doing instead of bothering me?”

She means it as a joke. Dess’s breathing still isn’t steady.

“It got in my room,” she repeats, and Susie squints sideways at her, her white-knuckled grip around the bat, that blank spaciness to her eyes, like they’ve gone to glass but not even the sort of glass that reflects anything proper. It makes her look like she’s dead and dying.

Susie digs her hands into her pockets, brushes up against Lancer’s card; focuses on the pressure at her forehead, where Ralsei’s headband squeezes just on the edge of too-tight.

“You wanna like.” Susie takes a breath. It smells like dead mouse. “Clean this up before you get sick.”

Dess shakes her head, drops her bat and staggers backwards until her knees hit her bed, upon which she folds down onto it.

“Yeah alright.” Susie’s not even sure why she fucking bothers. Dess has never once done a single thing to make her life easier. Dead mouse, bloody bat, in the center of the room that Susie’s gonna have to clean. She gives them both a wide berth and joins Dess in her bed. Every time she comes in this room she misses her friends harder. How it felt to have their pressure against her. Kris never tended to initiate but neither would they shy away when Susie would haul them in for a headlock, instead just tilting back against her. Noelle was a lot of frantic motion up until the end, where she was quieter, but by then she’d lean her head against Susie’s shoulder without prompted. And Ralsei—Ralsei, she can still remember the way her fur tickled across her nose, down there in the darkness, wrapped up in her arms.

Dess doesn’t really do anything like that. Just sits and stares at her own hands. And her fur’s not really so soft as Ralsei’s was, and even Noelle’s was softer. Mostly she just scratches against Susie’s side. Still Susie sits next to her and pretends like she can’t see the distance. Isn’t even sure she wants to close it. She only showed up here today because she had nothing left to do.

“It was supposed to be me,” Dess says, finally, and her gaze flits, momentarily, to Susie, before settling back on the dead mouse. Despite the dark the bone-fragments are shiny. Susie can make out its little caved-in skull, the pale white where all the fur scraped off. What might’ve once been an eye. “I was going to get us all out of here.”

“Great job you did at that,” Susie says, and Dess laughs, a quick, sharp sound.

“Ha. Yeah.” And then silence again. Silence with Dess is a weird thing. Susie never knows when it is going to end. But at least for the moment she seems pretty fine just sitting and staring at nothing, and the longer Susie does nothing about the dead rotting animal the worse the room is going to smell. So.

Blood and pulp and stringy flesh and shattered bone. It could probably fit in her hand. Probably didn’t even do anything wrong, the mouse. Dess is just jumpy. And she’s always got her bat on her. And the knife, though she never reaches for it first. Weird to look at, the mouse. Falling apart like Kris probably was—

Well.

If Dess has gloves in her house somewhere fuck if Susie knows where they are, so while she pokes around for a bit eventually she just gives up and does her best with what she does have. A broom pan is good enough. And paper towels for the rest. And of course she’s gotta get the blood out of the carpet, so that’s even more cleaning for her.

The mouse she dumps in the corner of Dess’s backyard. Maybe at least some stray cat can come by and eat it. She’s had her share of cleaning blood out of carpet so that goes by pretty fast. And the bat. Well. It’s not like dried blood is anything new for it. She kicks it into the corner of Dess’s room and figures that one is Dess’s problem to deal with.

Through it all Dess just watches her halfway, having gone from sat on her bed to lying on it, atop the covers, a pillow crushed beneath her cheek, eyes dulled. Her room is gross but Susie is also pretty sure Dess also hasn’t showered in at least a week. Her hair’s that sort of greasy.

It’s not really her problem, that. It shouldn’t have to be her problem.

Nobody talks to Dess. Nobody really talks to Susie, either.

Once she’s done Susie sits on the floor against Dess’s bed and says, “next time I’m making you do that.”

Dess shrugs, rolling onto her back. “I don’t listen to you.” She’s quiet for a moment longer. “What would you do if I killed myself.”

“Uh—” Susie starts, swallowing. Her hands are a bit sweaty. She can already see a spot she missed on the carpet. “I mean, like, I don’t know? I…” Nobody to throw rocks at her window. Nobody to talk to who will talk back, because Ralsei and Lancer and all the other dead darkners don’t count, and every day it gets harder and harder to drag herself to the graveyard. “Are you gonna?”

“I hate this town,” Dess says, which isn’t really an answer but also Susie kinda gets it, because she hates this place too. She hates how everyone looks at her and how at first she was only ever the new girl and now she’s the girl with the dead friends. She hates that she’s stayed here so long and she hates that she can’t imagine herself anywhere else because here is the only place that had Kris and Noelle and sometimes she thinks it’s the only place that had Ralsei and Lancer too, even if she carries them both on her person. It’s just not the same. They were real and that means they were real enough to die. Toriel still thinks Susie wears the headband in Kris’s honor, and she does, and it’s Ralsei, too. But not really. Not in the way she wants.

Dess continues, “you should have let me keep the mouse.”

“Yeah, so, no.” Susie laughs, though, leaning back against the bed, tilting her head to watch Dess, who is a bit less lifeless. Now she’s perched at the edge of her bed, propped up on her elbows, watching Susie right back. “Are you like—I mean not okay, ‘cause…duh.” They’re hard to see in the dark, but Susie’s caught glimpses of the polaroids Dess has pinned up to her wall. It’s strange seeing Noelle and Kris so young and baby-faced. Like they never knew there was something to be scared of. “…should I be like, worried, I guess. That one day I’m gonna wake up and you’ll be gone.”

“Like you’d care?” Dess rolls her eyes, and her grin is paper-thin. The sort that makes Susie wanna grab her and shake her, until she actually stops fucking around and says something real. Something that makes Susie’s time spent here worth it. “I just wonder sometimes if maybe Elly and Kris figured it out. Maybe there’s nothing out there but empty.” She looks, briefly, towards her door. Shakes herself and pushes herself upright, drawing her knees up to her chest, digging her pocketknife out, tracing a finger light down its bladed edge. “Maybe the only way out is we die. And then we’ll finally get to see something new.”

“I don’t think I wanna die,” Susie says, because she isn’t sure what else to say. She wonders, still, what Kris was thinking, in that Ferris wheel with her. If there was something better she could have done that would’ve let them stick around another day. If when Noelle laid her head on her shoulder if maybe Susie should’ve had them stop the ride forever, just let her sleep there, and then she’d wake up okay again and they’d all eat ice cream together and go on stupid adventures with Ralsei. She can’t imagine holding herself underneath the surface of the lake. Can’t imagine a world where she doesn’t struggle back for air.

“Aren’t you lucky.” Dess’s voice isn’t very bitter, though, as she jabs her knife into her bedsheets. It wobbles and collapses sideways. Susie grabs it before Dess forgets she’s left it there and accidentally stabs herself. It’s happened before. When she closes the blade she presses her scales against it, watches the way they buckle, slight, under the pressure. In the dimness of Dess’s room she can’t tell if they’re pink or purple. “I don’t remember Kris’s favorite color.”

“It’s—” Susie pauses. “…I don’t think they ever told me.”

“Stupid, right?” Dess rolls sideways, right where the knife would’ve been if Susie didn’t know her better. And isn’t that strange. She can’t remember Kris’s laugh but she knows to predict Dess’s motions. Can’t remember the shade of Noelle’s eyes but knows Dess’s anxious tells. “I think I only remember Elly’s ‘cause her room is right across the hall. Not that I can go in there. Too—still. Clean. Her stuff getting dusty. And I know it’s not her, Noelle’s like, mostly in the lake and only a bit of her got buried. But still.”

“You—shouldn’t. Say it like that.” Susie can’t keep looking at Dess but the problem is there isn’t anywhere else to look. Kris and Noelle are gone. Lancer’s in her pocket. Ralsei’s a fucking headband, and she and Lancer aren’t any less dead than her Lightner friends, are they? They’re all just gone. Gone into the lake, into the dirt, into inanimate objects that are cold to the touch. “Like they’re just…dust. Blood. Dead stuff.”

“True, though, isn’t it? Just a bunch of bits!” Dess claps her hands together, squeezing. “Just a whole lot of dust and rot and whatever the hell Kris was made of. Neither of them are here anymore to give a shit! Just me.” She unhooks her hands and surges forwards in her bed, teetering at the edge, her shadow cast across Susie’s face. “It’s all, it’s all the same. Just the same stupid town and the same stupid days and the same stupid life. Why’d Mom bring me back for this? I—I was happy. I, I liked it. I liked being something else. And now—look at me!” She laughs, doubles over, nearly falls off her bed. Susie steadies her in hesitant starts and stops, jumps when Dess’s hand comes up and snakes around Susie’s own, and then her big dark eyes are staring into Susie’s. Stringy hair falling in her face. Chipped black paint smeared across her muzzle like strange, oversized freckles. If Susie crosses her eyes and really tries to pretend, she can nearly see Noelle. But of course the illusion never lasts.

“I didn’t know I hated it that much,” Dess says, dropping Susie’s hand. “I didn’t know how much it felt like a cage.”

“It really does suck ass,” Susie says, because there’s nothing else she can. Because she’s right, Dess is. Because much as it makes Susie’s stomach seize Noelle and Kris are little more than whatever half-formed memories she has left of them, and moreso than that they’re the stuff buried underground: the bone, whatever skin that hasn’t rotted away, what little they found of Noelle’s dust spread across an item that won’t ever be her. Because all her darkner friends are dead, because Susie can stab the ground as much as she wants: there’s nothing left to draw a fountain up out of the earth. It’s all rotted away. Just faded trinkets to remember them all by.

She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to keep living like this. Going to school and moving up and down streets like nothing ever happened.

“You ever think like maybe.” Susie’s hand flexes. “Like, maybe if you’d just gone with them or something. And seen…seen whatever they saw.”

“Yeah,” Dess says, but less like she’s listening to Susie and more like she’s caught sight of something in the distance. Something Susie can’t see, somewhere Susie can’t follow. “Yeah. Yeah…”

And then she tips forwards, and is kissing Susie.

“Uh—” But Susie can’t even get the first syllable out because there is a mouth on her own and Dess’s hand braced in her hair. The kiss doesn’t last that long. The fur of Dess’s face is shorter than that of her body and actually sort of soft, her lips chapped and uneven and, Susie’s pretty sure ‘cause she can taste it, dusting, just a bit, which means probably Dess chews them a lot. It’s not gentle but it’s not like it hurts or anything either, and it’s not bad but neither does Susie really react to it happening, save for catching Dess’s wrist before she falls right off the bed and crushes them both.

When Dess pulls away she’s back perched on her bed, Susie sat on the floor, the headband that was once Ralsei knocked askew on her head from Dess’s hand yanking it off-balance.

Susie rubs at her lips. “Why the hell did you do that?”

Dess shrugs, blinking fast. She teeters backwards before sitting on her knees. “Just—wanted to see if it’d feel like anything.”

Susie asks, her claws digging into her thigh, “did it?!”

“Dunno.” She’s quiet for a moment. “No. Not really. You?”

“I—yeah.” Susie takes a breath. It’s not that her heart is beating fast. She’s just…sitting here. In Dess’s room. That smells a little bit like dead mouse. And she can still taste the cloying ash of dust in her mouth, the way it clings to her lips. She reaches up a hand to fix her-Ralsei’s headband. “You’re shit at kissing.”

“Pfft. It’s all fake anyways.” Dess falls back against her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. “Just a bunch of motions people do to trick themselves into thinking they care.” She wraps her arms around her middle. Susie bites down on her own lips, catching a loose bit of flesh. Huh. Dusty. With a faint metallic aftertaste of blood. When Susie stands up Dess’s eyes flick wide, and she scrambles to sit up.

“Don’t leave,” she says, and her voice cracks, and it’s maybe the smallest Susie’s ever heard her.

“I’m not.” Susie goes only to reclaim Dess’s bat, drag it over closer to the bed. Dess doesn’t grab it, but her shoulders slump, some, and she tips sideways against Susie when Susie drops down in her bed. Scratchy fur. Her antlers are chipping paint, like they always do, because it’s not exactly easy to dye antlers. The sharp edges of them nick Susie’s scales, leave little shiny pieces across Dess’s sheets. “You really want me to stay?”

Dess twists to look her in the eye. “If I was gonna die. I’d tell you before I did it.”

“That’s.” Susie swallows. Rests her head back against Dess’s. She’s too skinny for it to be comfortable, plus the antlers getting in the way. Already Susie can tell her hair’s gotten caught on a tine. “You promise.”

“Not like there’s anybody else worth telling in this town.” Dess sighs, falls back against her bed, tugging Susie with her. On her back Susie stares up at the ceiling, to Dess alongside her. Probably she should remember to do something about the pocketknife before it jabs one of them. But instead she takes a breath.

“The last night we had together,” Susie says, “I…I promised Ralsei that we’d stick together. We, we were sharing a bed. And I…I wanted to do that forever. I thought I’d do that forever.”

Dess huffs, knocking a fist against Susie’s shoulder. “You woulda cheated on my sister?”

“I, I dunno. Sometimes I wonder if I like…” Susie trails off. “I mean, I don’t wonder. I do. I did love all of them. I, I wanted it to just be us. Forever. For everything to just…stay like that. Make sure it wouldn’t be taken away.” It failed, of course. Susie lost Kris and Noelle and Ralsei all in one fell swoop and didn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. Just stood there while the world broke all around her.

“I like that,” Dess says. “Smash everything until all that’s left is the stuff you care about.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I bet I could write a really baller suicide note.”

Susie rolls her eyes. “Like anybody can read your handwriting.”

“Yeah, yeah, you aren’t any better.” Dess shifts against Susie, folding her hands atop her chest. “…I’m not gonna die in this town.” She tilts her head sideways. One of her antlers catches across the sheets, leaving a tear behind. The other still has bits of Susie’s hair tangled in it, taut and cutting into the black paint smeared across it. “Not like they did.”

If Susie closes her eyes, she can still see the lake. The still waters. Entirely unchanged. The empty supply closet, a door she could open as many times as she wants, but she knows it won’t ever show her what she’s looking for. An assortment of objects in a room belonging to her dead best friend. A grave burying someone piecemeal, because everything else that made her up was already gone.

“Next time you kill a mouse,” Susie says, staring up at the empty ceiling, “you’re at least going to carry it outside.”

Dess laughs, wet, rolls over to punch Susie across the shoulder. This time it’s Susie who catches her hand, fits her fingers between Dess’s. Still scratchy. Her nails have been bit down to the quick, her palms calloused and flecked throughout with faint scars. Dark fur stuck to the spaces between Susie’s scales.

“Promise,” Dess says. “I’ll just make it easy and snap outside next time.”

Susie squeezes, once. Nothing at all like the cold clamminess of Kris’s hand, always twitching in her own like they wanted to sign something stupid at her but couldn’t choose between that or sticking close, closer. Nothing like Noelle’s, gripping firmly back even if the rest of her was shaking, or Ralsei’s, the way her claws traced the patterns of Susie’s scales. But Dess is the only one left.

“We aren’t going to die here,” Susie echoes. She’s not really sure she believes it. Too many people she’s already lost to it. She doesn’t really believe that her living is gonna make up for the loss of everyone else. That a card in her pocket and a headband on her head means she’s managed to keep her friends close. But she knows that she doesn’t ever want to step foot in that lake again. That she doesn’t want to be a small pile of dust on a waterlogged sweater.

“Not ever,” Dess says, and squeezes back, before sitting up. “…I ever tell you about the album I wanted to make?”

Susie blinks. Her eyes are wet. But she allows Dess to tug her upright, makes sure her headband is straight, digs a hand in her pocket to give Lancer a little pat. Maybe she should find something of Noelle’s, someday. Something small. Something she wouldn’t’ve minded letting Susie take care of.

“I don’t think you have,” Susie says. And she means the interest in her voice. She doesn’t think this is ever going to be enough. But she is here now, as is Dess, the bloodstain she missed. Old pictures, watching them. So many memories they’re probably going to keep crushing Susie flat.

But in the moment, she’s able to stand. She’s able to keep going.

Maybe that’ll have to be enough.