Work Text:
Kris wakes up earlier than they mean to. But these days it can be difficult to tell what exactly they mean to do, and what they don’t.
They know this is much earlier than average, though. The light through their curtains is dewy and pale. Their house is silent and motionless. As in, their mother isn’t calling for them through the door, and they aren’t stumbling out of the bedsheets with their bangs tangled in their face, dragging their feet along the carpet, down the hall and out to her minivan.
This is about the time they woke up yesterday. For the festival. And the day before. For church. It could be harmless, then. An effect of their body’s natural circadian rhythm.
As if there’s anything natural about their body.
Especially not now, they think, glancing over to the empty, overturned cage in the corner, the clump of discarded blanket. They’d collapsed into their bed last night unthinking, and by the time they realized they weren’t technically alone, the second presence had already faded somewhere unreachable.
You don't always watch them. They know you’re not watching now, but they’re unsure how they know, and anyway these things can change from moment to moment. And you don’t have to be watching them, either, in order to change them. Their thoughts travel in branching patterns. They travel outside of them, filtered into options, filtered into words, numbers, ones, zeroes—
They can’t really describe the feeling. They only know that it is very big, and they are very small. They get out of bed and take one miniscule step across their carpet.
You don’t always watch them, but over these few days that you have, they’ve learned what you like. How you act. What you want.
They were told they’d never understand what you want. That you would operate at a higher, divine consciousness, far beyond their feeble human comprehension. They understand, anyway.
You want not to be bored. You want not to feel alone. Every day, you want them to get out of bed and go outside so much sooner than they want, just to make them look at objects around town and tell you what they are, just to make them look at their neighbors and have the same conversations they’ve had a million times.
When they slip out of their bedroom door, they’re not sure if it’s their choice, or your choice, or a habit, or something else entirely. They stare at their feet pushing into their shoes, their hands twisting the front doorknob. They’re unsure where they end and Kris begins. Or where Kris ends and you begin.
They press at the junction of door and doorframe, easing the knob into its catch so the click won’t wake their mother. Then they turn and walk down their driveway.
You aren’t watching them, but you’re still a part of them, somehow. Neither of you exists without the other, anymore. They carry themself through the empty streets, blinking groggily in the early dawn, against the chill that bites at their eyes, to the front doors of the school building.
They wonder if they can even go into the dark fountain, like this. They’ve never tried. They’re so weak these days, maybe it’ll just rip them to pieces. Maybe they won't even care.
Before they can test this theory, they notice something strange. Besides the fact that nobody locks up the school at night, that is. They nudge through the entrance, their face cast straight ahead towards the supply closet door they’d last confronted just a few short hours ago. Their chest pangs with memory. Their mouth twists, and they think of last night— their walk home in the dark, their walk here that didn’t seem dark at all, even though the sun set hours before. Because even Susie’s most nervous smile was still her smile, and they still…
A thin beam of light reaches through the open classroom door, splitting the hallway in half, a boundary between Kris and the row of lockers against the far wall.
The bruise on their shoulder has healed, mostly. When they’re alone— completely alone— it comes back. And so do all of the other bruises, and all of the other injuries they shouldn’t have survived. Their body stops just short of killing them, which you both appreciate. They know very well what it feels like to die, at this point, and the two of you would rather avoid it when you can.
They wander to the classroom and poke their head around the side of the door. It opens further, exposing rows of empty desks. And then it opens even further, with a soft squeal, exposing the last, not-empty row.
Susie sits up straight in her chair. For a split-second, Kris sees her teeth. A low, growling hum fills the room. Their shoulder twinges.
She blinks. Her mouth closes. “Oh,” she says, neutrally. “Kris.”
They make their way through the aisles of desks. They sit sideways in their usual seat, so they can look at her. They think of her closing the supply closet door last night. They wish they could remember what they thought of her, the first day she walked into this room. But they can’t.
“Excited for class?” they’re compelled to ask, for reasons that evade them. Unwatched doesn’t mean unaffected. Their thoughts splay out before them like lines on a page, like required reading that blurs together until they become frustrated and exhausted with the limits of their brain, randomly selecting a passage or two to pencil a response about.
Susie scoffs. Her hair puffs up when she exhales. Her claws tap the desk when she crosses her arms.
“Hell no,” she says, pitching forward in her seat to snatch away a leaf stuck to their sweater sleeve. She brings it to her nose, sniffs at it, frowns, and tosses it aside. Kris feels a bout of sympathy for the janitor, even though they’ve never seen whoever that is, and they really don’t give a damn about things like that.
Susie tilts her head, looks at them. They look back. Her slit-pupiled eyes narrow. “I know you probably—” She starts. Something makes her stop. Whatever it is, they hate it. “You can go ahead to Castle Town without me, if you want.”
Kris blinks.
“It looks cool. Everything’s already set up for Noelle, so. Yeah. You should go check it out before school starts.” She glances sidelong out the window. The sun presses through gaps in the trees. “Everyone’s there, and uh, Ralsei told me he was excited for you to see it, so.”
They’re compelled to speak again, but only to state the obvious. “You’re here, though.”
“No shit.” She lowers her head onto her crossed arms. They want to put their hands in her hair and pet her like a big dog. It might make one of them feel better. It might not be allowed anymore, since—
“I’m just nervous, I guess.” She speaks so softly, when she talks about Noelle. It’s… unsettling. Kris doesn’t think they’d ever want to be spoken about that way, by anyone. “I kinda just feel like… I don’t deserve this. Her.” She buries her snout under her arms, mutters, “Damn, I sound like such an idiot, don’t I? Sorry.”
Select thoughts are picked from Kris’ brain, an electric feeling at the base of their skull. You’re not an idiot and Don’t apologize, of course, but also…
You’re right. You don’t deserve it. The words unspool from a deep, dark crevice of themselves, a thread tugged at by an unseen force. They swallow nothing. You’re bad. You’re messed up. You’re like me, and you should stay that way. I don’t want you to deserve it.
They grit their teeth. If you wanted them to say these things, you would make them. But they’ve found that you are often gentler than them, despite warnings to the contrary.
“It’s just Noelle,” they say, and get the sense, somehow, that they’re lying.
Susie rolls her eyes. “Come on, Kris. I get that you guys grew up together, or whatever, but I barely even talked to her before a couple days ago.” She huffs another laugh. “It’s totally not fair. You’ve had so much practice.”
They definitely don’t think of it that way. They suspect she has more to say, though, so they don’t argue.
“But yeah. Anyway. The darkners are cool— really cool, obviously, and I’m glad they helped me with this, but they can sometimes be a lot. Ralsei gets it. I sometimes— need a second to think.” The corner of her mouth twitches downwards. Kris’ first instinct is to distract her from this whole ‘thinking’ business; she clearly doesn’t like it. They could pet her like they thought about before, or they could make her get up and look at Alphys’ computer wallpaper, which would probably make her laugh, or they could draw her on the blackboard, which is possible now that the chalk has reappeared in the little tray below it.
They could also just wait, and listen to her. They’re revolted, a little, and it sort of hurts them to hear her talk about this, but it’s also gotten to the point where they’re not sure who they are, without the hurting.
“I dunno.” She meets their eyes. They have a miniature heart attack, and the sensation is sort of like when they shove your soul back into their chest cavity. Equal parts painful and invigorating, and altogether wrong. Like a living splinter, or an overdramatic tapeworm. “You know her. How… do you think she’ll take it?”
They sit up in their chair and extend their legs, planting their feet flat on the floor. They do know Noelle. Possibly better than anybody else. Certainly in a different way from anyone else. They know she pretends to hide her face in her hands when her older sister puts on a horror movie, but she peeks through her fingers anyway. They know how the flashing images dance in her big, dark eyes. They know how small she looks, how fragile, but they also know how tightly she grabbed their wrist during the final scene of Blood Crushers. They know how she laughs after they scare her. They know that they once picked up a notebook from her desk— one with a big glittery snowman on the front— and opened it to a first page that started with the words Dear Mom, and she screeched and tore it out of their hands.
Please don’t touch that, she said, tucking a curl behind one pinned-back ear. It’s personal. This confused them. What was so personal about her that even they couldn’t know it?
They knew Noelle, maybe, is a better way to phrase it. Because these days she stares out the classroom window and Kris can’t pin down what she’s thinking about. She holds the iron bars of the gate at her driveway so gently, and most of the time they have to tap her on the shoulder, to remind her she doesn’t have to keep waiting. She’s looked in their eyes, this past week, and gotten a familiar, unreadable expression. Confused, Frightened. Unable to look away.
In some ways they’re the only two people in town who know each other.
Susie awaits their response. Their mind goes blank. Maybe…
“You wanna try with me?” they ask, the moment it occurs to them.
“Huh?” Her eyebrows press together. Her nostrils flare. A thrill goes through Kris’ whole body. “What? The hell are you talking about, try it with you?”
They shrug. They lift their hands to either side of their head, and poke their fingers through their hair. Like antlers. “I know her. I’ll help.”
Susie waves them away. “Be serious,” she says. “You don’t always have to act like such an ass.” But she’s smiling. Kris would do a lot of things they aren’t proud of, to see that. They already have. They’re doing another one right now.
“I am serious,” they say. But of course they aren’t, because if they were seriously pretending to be Noelle, or seriously trying to help Susie talk to her, they might bring up the matter of her father. Don’t try to make me feel better, they might say. There’s no such thing as magic, or you would’ve healed him. You would’ve at least tried. Right? There’s no such thing as another world, or else I already would’ve gone there.
She sat in their living room last spring, a couple weeks before the school year ended, a couple months before Asriel moved out, waiting for her mom to come home.
Where are you gonna go after you graduate? they asked, shoving a pencil through the fibers of the carpet.
Noelle laughed, more cynically than they thought she was capable of, over her precalc worksheet. Anywhere but here, she muttered, but by the time they turned to look, her face was blank and her mouth was closed. Like she’d never said anything at all.
Susie crosses her arms. She leans backwards in her seat, eyeing Kris suspiciously. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re sort of, uh, nothing like Noelle. At all.”
They recognize that this should come as a blow to their self-esteem. Susie thinks they’re nothing like Noelle because she doesn’t like them the way she likes Noelle, and the difference is so huge, it can’t be overlooked. They don’t really care, though. As long as she keeps talking to them. “I could be,” they say, and bat their eyelashes at her.
“Shut—” She’s blushing. “—Shut the hell up, man.”
They do, but they don’t stop staring.
“I— Alright, fine!” She stands, looping around to the side of their desk so that she towers over them. They turn their face up to her. “You’re so confident? Go ahead. Do what she’d do if I said, uh...” She pauses. “If I said her dream about us was real.”
Kris doesn’t miss a beat. “Which one?”
“Dude, in Cyber World. She thinks that was a dream."
“I know,” they say, and wait for her to catch on.
She does, after a moment. “You really… Kris, you honestly think she’s had more than the one dream about me? Stop being stupid.”
They clasp their hands in front of their chest. “Of course I have,” they say, as sweetly as they can manage. Which isn’t very sweet at all. It comes out twisted, sarcastic, like they’re about to laugh.
It leaves Susie in a bad state, anyway. She bares her teeth, and her face is only getting redder. “H-hey, come on! Don’t be weird!”
“Is it weird?” they ask. They feel their own cheeks warming. “That I like you?”
She pouts. “N-no. It’s just… uh, maybe a little. I’m just, um. Not that likeable, I thought.”
“Not true.” They think they could grab her hand right now. They think they probably shouldn’t.
“Yeah, but… like, what do you think she even…” She turns to them, hair shielding her eyes. “What is it that you even like about me?”
“I like that you scare me. It’s interesting,” they say automatically. It comes so easily, so much more easily than it would if it was really them, who she was asking.
Susie hums. “I guess that makes sense. It’s what I’m good at, yeah?”
“You’re good at lots of stuff,” they say, unsure which part of them is saying it. Maybe the part that knows Noelle, or maybe the part that just wants Susie to know this, or maybe a different, larger part, one entirely beyond their control.
Another, sharper hum. “You barely even know me.”
They know the important things about her. How her breath hitches after they’ve guarded her from another enemy. The feeling of her hand, catching theirs and lifting them higher. The way she laughs, and challenges everything and everyone, and faces her fate without fear. The flex of her knuckles around her axe handle, the press of her thumb to their face, adorning them in stickers. The glide of a finger over the fogged diner window. The curious shock in her eyes, held at the point of their knife. Her sly smile, her willing palm against the blade.
“I’ll learn about you,” Kris says, like they’ll ever have the time. She’s taught them a lot about overconfidence. Probably too much.
She peers at them out of the corner of her eyes, and, after a moment’s pause, lunges forward, wrapping them in a headlock. They stumble out of their seat. She pins them to her chest. They can hear her heartbeat, can feel it against their cheek, but they prefer the feeling of her hand ruffling their hair.
“Ugh! Stop! Being! Such a dumbass!” She scolds them. “Noelle’s not gonna say any of this shit!”
They curl their fingers into her sleeve. “She might.”
“No way! You’re acting like she’ll just— walk up to me and start giving a goddamn speech about how much she loves me, or something!”
“She could. Let’s practice that, too.”
“Shut up!” Her claws dig into the back of their head. Briefly, they close their eyes, and imagine her pushing them straight into their neck. Separating their brain and body in one clean swipe. If they squeeze their eyelids tight enough, force all the light away, it could be real.
But all she does is rough them up, and shove them away. They go, reluctantly, stepping backwards across a couple linoleum tiles. They don’t even bother smoothing their hair, or straightening their sweater.
Susie shakes herself off. Starting at her head, a shiver that travels down through the rest of her body.
“Alright. Okay.” She laces her fingers together and stretches her arms in the air above her. “Come on, I’ll show you the town.”
She knocks into Kris' shoulder as she passes them. They follow her out of the room, down the hallway.
“Sorry for being weird,” she says, turning the corner.
They shrug. It’s okay. The two of them walk to the supply closet, footsteps echoing through the empty building. Susie stops. Kris looks at the shadowy gap between the doors, and sort of hopes the fountain does tear them to shreds, right in front of her.
“Sometimes…” Susie starts. “Sometimes it’s just like— being with Noelle, and stuff. It feels, like, important. It feels like I can’t even control it, like it’s something, I dunno, huge. And I’m…”
“Small,” Kris says, quietly.
She nods. “Yeah.” She clears her throat. “I guess that makes sense, though. ‘Cause it’s in the prophecy and everything. Love, uh. Finding me.”
They say nothing.
“Kinda makes it sound, like, scary. Like she’s gonna hunt me down or something.”
They should probably keep saying nothing. They're compelled to say, instead: “Would you like that?”
“What? No.” She huffs. She faces the door, puts her hand on the knob. “And you know Noelle. She’s not— y’know. She’s not scary. I’m kinda an expert on scary.”
They nod, even though none of what she just said is true. They nod, and turn to the doors like there isn’t a part of them— and they don’t know which part, and they don’t know if it’s really them, and they certainly don’t know what it wants— already chasing after her, its claws extended, its teeth shining in a maw of bottomless black.
You should be terrified of me, they think. Mercifully, they’re able to avoid saying it.
They wonder how merciful it really is. Their body’s cohabitant is gentler than them, sure, but the two of you share one particularly annoying trait: an ever-present longing to be entertained. A need to poke and prod just to see what happens, see how you can push people, see how you can get what you want. Anything to distract yourselves from the cold, inevitable end.
The words she’ll learn soon enough echo in their mind. They’re unsure whose words they are. Susie looks at them, smiling the same smile as always, and opens the closet, and plunges ahead into the darkness.