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When Toriel takes you home from school, you usually spend the ride in silence. This is good. This is preferable. You sit in the seat that two other people sat in before you, because you’re tall enough now, and not sitting here would mean something. You don’t know what it would mean, but it wouldn’t be good for you.
Today she needs to talk to you. Which is to say that she needs to talk to your brother, but he is somewhere far away from here, and you are in the passenger seat.
“He left flowers on my desk.”
You keep your eyes focused on the windshield. Home town rolls by in shades of gold and white. The light outside reaches everywhere in the world except for the inside of this van. You make a sound, a hmm that takes very few muscles to produce save for the vocal chords.
“I just don’t understand—” she cuts herself off. She does that a lot. “No. I do understand. I know exactly what he’s like, don’t I? You do, too.”
This is the kind of sentence you can respond to with a nod. In a way, you do agree with her. And she looks over at you, long enough that you have to look back. You hope she finds sympathy in your face. It might make this shorter.
“I just— I gave him so much understanding, and grace, and he did nothing with it! Years of it, really. Years of my life. Our lives, Kris. You understand. This effort is so removed from what I actually needed from him. But he can leave flowers on my desk now. Of course he can.”
Toriel hits the brakes hard enough to make you slide forward. You keep your back straight. The belt digs into your upper chest when she does this, slides over your heart to graze your throat. It’s easy to not react to it anymore; you never really have, or she’s just never noticed when you did. Maybe she did, but she saw that you were keeping your mouth shut, so she never said anything.
“We need eggs,” she sighs, turning the car around. “Let us pray that he doesn’t show up there for his instant noodles, or whatever he can afford on what she pays him. How old were you, Kris…? No, I remember. You remember when he would talk about doing something for his health, didn’t you?”
Nod. You haven’t had anything to drink today. Suck down the spit in your mouth.
“I wanted to believe he would step up for his family. I really did. You know that I gave him time, that you and your brother respected him. But look where his obsession brought him. What a waste. So much time.”
She’s raising her voice. It’s not yelling. You’ve seen other kids in Hometown whose parents yell — Carol used to yell, when she caught her daughter doing something Kris planned. So it would be wrong to say that Toriel is yelling at you, but it is too loud in this car, and you have to ball your hands at your sides against the urge to put them over your ears. You’re sixteen, and you can’t do things like that anymore.
“I am so relieved that neither you nor your brother have that…” She struggles for words and to find parking. “That tendency. I don’t know how else to describe it. Asriel could be passionate, of course, but he knew when to stop…”
You wonder if there is some lingering presence from your father in this car. It would explain why it feels like she’s yelling at you.
“...and you are so good to me, Kris. We went through so much, and you… of course, I was worried for a long time that you didn’t have friends. But I knew you would make them. You know? You’re more like your brother than you think, and he had so many. I just had to give you a chance. But your father…”
The car stops. You can get out. You nod again so that she knows you’re listening, but your hand is already finding the button-lock and tugging, and you’re getting out. It’s warm today. There is something fungal on the wind, like dead wood.
“...I’m sorry.”
Toriel comes around the front of the car so that she’s standing in front of you. And she looks so tired, and the smile on her face is thin and twitchy.
“Thank you so much for putting up with your mother,” she says, stepping forward to stroke the back of your head. “I know you’re probably tired of my rambling. But I’m glad you’re still such a good listener. You always were.”
You nod and give her arm a squeeze, which lets you move away from her in the process. She smiles a real, eye-crinkling smile, which means she doesn’t suspect why you did it.
You are a bad person.
You visit your father’s shop. You didn’t choose to, but you have to.
It’s bright inside the front room, but you think that it’s the flat-yellow kind of bright that makes everything look chalky. There’s so little here, but you feel like you never remember what it looks like, that you couldn’t draw it if someone outside of here asked.
You barely register him, nearly twice your height and twice as broad — he looks like part of the scenery until he turns to look at the door. And when he beams at you, with his broad flat teeth, he is so full of joy that it makes something in the back of your throat twitch.
“Kris!”
He crosses the room in two strides to hug you, lifts you off the ground on purpose. Or maybe you’re just so small that he can’t hug you without pulling you off your feet. You are crushed into his chest, his beard scratching your face. You can remember laughing about that when you were small.
It feels like dry grass. You think he hasn’t been washing it.
“It’s so good to see you,” he says, letting you down with care, making sure you’re standing when he does. “I’ve been hoping you’d stop by. Did you cut your hair? How is… your mother?”
You shrug, and his smile falters. He was going to say Toriel, but he made sure to say your mother. You aren’t sure what that means. You realize in the same instant that you don’t care. You follow the tugging under your skin and look around, take in the place like you’ve never seen it before, and he just lets you walk around, grinning at you.
He doesn’t even say anything when you go to the back, to the room where he lives. It is dim, here, and there are scattered papers in the way of your feet, a cot against the wall opposite you.
“If you’re hungry, Kris, you can help yourself to anything in the fridge,” he says, trailing along like a great white dog. “And if you’d like to… to stay over, maybe, you can…”
He looks around and trails off. It’s like he expects a bed for you to materialize, then realizes that his dingy bed is the only thing here. His shoulders slump a little. Your mouth opens a little, like you’re going to tell him no outright, but nothing comes out.
“I’m sorry, Kris, I’m afraid I still don’t have a place for guests…” Asgore takes a seat on his bed, depresses half of it toward the floor. His smile is weak and self-deprecating, now, like he expects you to pity him.
“I’m going to make this place… better, for you,” he says, gesturing to the dusty shelves and the dirty watering can and the rust-covered fridge that still holds his wedding photo. “You deserve a better place to stay, whenever you want to come over. I’m sure Toriel’s house is much more comfortable, but I can get you a nice air mattress, make those tenders you enjoyed. Doesn’t that sound yummy, Kris?”
You make a face at him that is probably something like a smile. It’s dim enough that he thinks it is one, at least.
“And you don’t have to tell her if I give you some extra dessert!” he chuckles. “Though I’m sure you get plenty of her pie… well, it can be our little secret.”
He’s crossing the room again. He puts his hands on your shoulders. It’s dim enough in here that you can only see him when he’s close, see the tremulous smile on his face and the heavy notch between his brows. His hands are big enough to cover the top of your forearms.
You say something, or rather, you let your mouth move. His smile falters, then returns, and he steps away from you.
You’re glad he did.
“Well, I’ll… let you get going,” he chuckles, hands on his hips, looking around like he can find a reason to keep you there. “And thank you for visiting, Kris. It’s… it’s so good to see your face. You look like you’re growing up too fast, you know.”
This is enough. You walk out, faster, faster, and you’re almost at the door to the outside when his voice makes your whole body jerk to a stop.
“Oh! Kris!”
He runs to you. You turn in time to receive a bouquet of golden-yellow flowers. They are all you can smell, now, and you feel your throat becoming congested with it.
“These are for…” He looks at you, then chuckles and looks at his feet. “Well, you know who they’re for. You can tell her they’re from you, alright?”
When you were very young, he let you write your name on all of the presents he got for the Holidays.
You thank him. You leave with so many flowers in your hands. Something tells you to look over your shoulder as you go.
Through the window, you see him standing where you left him, staring into space. He looks so much older. He doesn’t look nearly as tall as he did, when he was pulling you into a hug.
You are a bad person.
You are fighting, and you are letting It win.
It drags you out of the way of a blade. It tells you the best thing to tell your friends at the best time, keeps all of you standing, keeps them in the battle. It makes you hand Susie something you bought at a bake sale, and she grins at you as she rips the food apart. You think It is smiling back at her, so you do, too.
It doesn’t speak to you. You only see It on the occasions when you force your hand into your chest, gagging on blood and pleural fluid, and you rip It out of your chest cavity to twitch and tremble in your hand. Like a rat. Like a heart still connected by the artery. Like You.
It does not want you to act of your own accord. It does not want you to smile at It, or call It anything, or listen to what It has to tell you. You can feel Its shock and panic in the way It jerks against your grip, but It still expects this to happen, anticipates the intrusion. It knows that you will be back, even as It flutters in its cage. Can that be called trust?
You aren’t sure what can be called trust. But It’s there with you in the bathroom, where no one else follows, where Toriel only ever knocks when you mess with the water. It’s there when you
It knows you’re not thinking about this fight. It doesn’t even need you to. You can close your eyes, and It will still dodge, and It will still force something that will heal you past your teeth. You don’t need to do anything, really. It would keep playing with you forever, if It could, wouldn’t It?
To this thing you are a blot of color. You are something in a petri dish. It might even like you, even as you abuse It, even as you slam It into a metal cage. It barely even remembers to feed you.
You are the method It uses to touch your world. You are an empty cup. You are an open mouth.
You are not a bad person. The relief of that makes your limbs looser, lets It use you more effectively, makes you dodge like a leaf on the wind. Your friends are staring at you and smiling. Susie pumps her fist.
You are not a bad person because you aren’t anything at all.