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The wind, for what you suppose is now the very last time, feels nice in your hair. You’ve taken it out of the ponytail it was in earlier to let the wind blow itself all the way through it. It’s nice. It feels nice. It’s a rare feeling for you, nowadays.
You stare out at the water which is bleeding itself into the horizon, the setting sun casting shades of orange and red across the sky. The colours reflect onto the river, shimmering, shaking.
Autumn soon, then. Soon - or not, maybe never again - the wind will bite at your ears, your antlers, your thin, bony wrists. You will have excitement sitting low in your belly, the same way fear does - and everyone will assume it's December that you're really looking forward to.
Oh, Noelle, what's your favourite holiday? What's your favourite time of year, Noelle? Trick question, haha. Of course it's Christmas! Of course it's Winter! Spell December. D-E-C-E…
You shake your head, shame pooling low in your gut. Not now.
Nobody knows you, not really. It's Halloween. Halloween is your favourite holiday, it has been for years now, maybe if anyone bothered to - to look at you, to see you, to talk to you they'd know, but instead they assume that Noelle Loves Christmas, That Is Such A Noelle Thing To Do. Noelle, Noelle, Noelle, Doing Noelle Things. She can’t do anything else, be anything or anyone else, trapped in her own skin like an ill fitting glove. Poor Noelle!
And you had loved it, once, back when there were four bodies opening presents under the tree, four voices present during dinner, the smell of cinnamon sticking to the room like smoke.
Before your dad got sick.
Before Dess…before she LEFT/VANISHED/GOT LOST/GOT KIDNAPPED/GOT SICK OF US/GOT SICK OF ME/WAS MURDERED/DIED.
You shake your head again as if to dislodge the thoughts via physical action. You hope nobody heard that, saw that, the way something, someone (Kris? The words had left their mouth, but…) was in your head when you two(?) were sitting on the couch in your room, the way they were in your head, like a craniotomy without anesthetic, peeling you right down to the cerebrum. Fingers dirtied from the nastiness of your thoughts, the thing that sits in you that let you cast the spell you didn’t know. You must be evil. You must be beyond redemption.
If nobody knows you, truly, then at the very least Kris sees you. Kris has looked into the depth of you and seen themselves looking back, seen themselves pulling the strings, a marionette with cracked lips and scarred wrists. Some part of you is reflected into them, and some part of them reflects back into you.
Your finger still has a tiny hole in it, visible only if you're looking for it, from the thorn. You licked the blood off your finger that evening over and over again, looking in the mirror, unsure who or what was looking back. Something inside of you shattered when they forced it onto your finger.
You think of Dess, as you often do. Her and Asriel would slink off, sometimes, baseball bat in tow, heading into the forest to smash things up just for the fun of it. You remember her and your mother having screaming matches over it, like smashing up old TVs in the junkyard was the worst possible thing for a daughter to be doing. What your mother would think of you, now, if she knew you were rotted at your core.
You remember another time when your mother had caught Dess coming out of the bathroom, her wrists fresh and bloody. A deer caught in the headlights.
You had been sitting in your room, headphones on while you were playing some game that you haven’t been able to find since though you’ve tried, honest, clogging up your search history along with december holiday missing, missing girl, missing girl hometown, how to run away, solved missing persons cases, how long can you survive in the woods alone.
A year or so after that particular screaming match, a few months after Dess had died vanished and the pain of missing her was so raw that you would have done anything, anything to have her back, would have paid any price if she would just please come back, you took her razor to your thighs and your upper arms, having learned to do it in places your mother wouldn’t see, hidden away in your missing/dead/lost sister’s closet, staining the carpet with your blood. It made you feel closer to her, somehow, revelling in the hurt, wondering if this is how it felt for her too. If you could bleed yourself dry as penance for being so rotten, maybe she would come back.
Kris understands, Kris, Kris who you know, you know, could ask you to sprout wings and you would, you can imagine the way the bone would split from under your skin, the way your newfound strength - Noelle will get stronger, Noelle will get stronger - would make you able to bear anything.
If they asked you to, you would be able to bear the pain of your back being flayed wide open to let the wings push out, out and up, spiriting you both away from here.
Away from this town, to somewhere no one's ever been, to somewhere where no snow falls and nobody's sisters are missing, and no classmates or dads are in hospital, and, and, and the autumn never leaves, a place where the sky is blocked out by the crimson canopy, turning it into one big bloodstain.
They’re here. You can tell - you can feel their presence behind you like it's something sharp looming over you. When you turn to look over your shoulder they’re a few feet away from you, looking at you from under their hair. You can’t make out the expression on their face. You turn away and face the water again, watching the river run. It’s peaceful. It’s nice.
Kris, I know, you think. You don’t need to say it out loud. They know what you’re thinking, have peeled you back from the core to reveal the heart of you, twisted and ugly and strong.
I know you wanted to deny it. I did too, at first. You hear them shuffle closer to you, slowly, like it’s taking all their effort to move at all. But... eventually...We're going to have to face the truth.
Thud, thud. The sound of their sneakers on the grass as they inch closer to you. Yesterday, when... everything happened...Every cell in my body was screaming at me to run away. And what a feeling that had been - fear, fear so strong your vision began to blur at the edges not from tears but from the overwhelming terror of it all. You hadn’t been that scared since Dess had left and your mother and father left you alone in the house to go to the police station to file the missing persons report. You wanted to leave, you wanted to go, you wanted to run, but you didn’t, you didn’t-
If I stayed by your side any longer…You were going to drag me down with you. Drag me down somewhere no one is supposed to go.
Thud, thud, thud. You can hear their breathing now that they’re this close, ragged like they’re fighting themselves just to put one foot in front of the other.
And you know what terrified me the most about that? I think… A hand grasps onto your shoulder, contact at last, squeezing so tight it hurts. Like they’re trying to hold you down, keep you tethered to the ground. Stop you from leaving.
The next part has to be said; it cannot exist only in your thoughts, even though they’re privy to those now, too, as well. ”I want that.”
Kris inhales so loudly that it sounds like they’re gasping for air after coming up from under the water, the way they used to do when you were kids, challenging each other to see who could hold their breath the longest.
Kris had won, of course, had waited so long to come back up for air that you remember getting scared; though how long could it have been, really? Your childhood memories play back in slow motion when you shuffle through them, now, a long, endless summer. They can’t have been down for that long. However long it was, the reality distorted by time, Toriel was upset with them, you remember that much.
She never got upset with you, for some reason. Even when you deserved it. Poor sweet, innocent Noelle.
The next part spills out of you, like you’ve finally been given permission to speak after a vow of silence. “Since Dess left...All I've been doing has just been...Marching down my path. Staying quiet. Getting good grades. It feels like... I've just been watching myself through glass. Watching someone else move me through my life,” you exhale and turn to look at Kris, their face nearly pressed up to yours. When did they get so close? There’s something you can’t place in their eyes, something manic, something expectant.“That's why I want... to do something crazy,” you smile as you say it. “That's why I want... to break free.”You finally turn all the way around to face them fully, putting your hands on their shoulders, gripping tightly. The smile feels plastic on your face, your teeth digging into your bottom lip. You wonder if the grip you have on their shoulders will leave a mark, if it will be notable on the post mortem. If they find you.
“Noelle,” they say, and it’s not them, that’s not Kris’ voice, but it has to be! Who else could it be? They’re standing in front of you, aren’t they? It has to be Kris. Who else could it be? Who else could do this with you?
“A Noelle that has to do Noelle things, and a Kris has to do Kris things…” you grip their shoulders tighter, tighter, wondering if you can draw blood through their thick sweater, the wind blowing through your hair. “But Kris... you changed. Kris, YOU actually changed!” You giggle as you say it, bubbling out of you without permission. How, how, how, you want to ask. Kris, how did you change? How! You! Of all people! I want to change! Teach me how to change like you have! You found out how to stop being Kris! Teach me to find out how to stop being Noelle!
They look - empty. Passive. A body uninhabited. A snail without its shell; a family missing a member.
“Kris, when I cast "Snowgrave..." you continue. “I felt stronger than I have in my entire life.” It hurts you to admit it, and the second you say it you want to pull the words back inside of you and lock them away because now you’ve admitted it, now it’s real, and you can never be forgiven, not now. Not now that someone knows.
It’s a horrible thing to think, let alone say, you know. You know! But, but, but…
“Kris. You... if it's you telling me to, I can do anything,” your words are shaky, vision blurred. “If you tell me to, I can do things that are impossible. So why don’t we? Why don’t we do something crazy, something impossible?” Tell me to fly.
“Noelle,” they croak again, like it’s the only word they know how to say. They keep closing and reopening their mouth, gaping like a fish, some terrible emptiness pooling behind their eyes. How can they be surprised? They’ve seen you, after all, haven't they? Don’t they see you? Don’t they know you?
“Tell me,” and it comes out forceful, commanding. Proceed. “Tell me to grow wings...And let's fly out of this stupid town!” Shake, shake, shaking their shoulders, your hands dug so deep into their skin you feel like you could reach beneath it, pluck out their soul. “Let’s go somewhere nobody has ever been before! Nobody apart from the two of us! Somewhere just for us!”
The other side of the lake, you think, and their eyes widen. They can hear you. They can see you. They can learn to know you, this new you, they can teach you how to stop being Noelle.
You let go of their shoulders and take their hands in yours, flesh on fur. You can see their veins beneath their hands, a sickly blue. Life, or something like it.
“You'll tell me, won't you?” you say, even as the two of you are already slowly inching backwards, away, out of here. Home free. “If you tell me to, I can do anything. So... tell me, Kris.” You take a deep breath. “The words I’ve been waiting to hear.”
Proceed. Clunk, clunk, tap, tap. Their shoes and your hooves on the ground, moving backwards in unison. Here together at the end of the world. The water gets deeper much faster than you expected, already up to your hips, cold and unforgiving. You say as much. Kris says nothing. If you couldn’t feel the thrum of their pulse through their hands you would think they were a statue, maybe. A living doll, made of wax. Something empty, something not human, something like you.
“Kris, don't let go of my hands,” you tell them. “Keep walking.”
Proceed.
“Kris…” the water is halfway up your torso now. It’s a good thing you don’t have to get out of the water, because the way your skirt and jumper are sticking to you is gross and the thoughts of having to walk home sopping wet and then explaining how that happened to your mother isn’t even worth imagining. It’s anticlimactic as final feelings go.
You can’t hear the crunch of their sneakers against the stones below you anymore. All you can hear is the rushing water as you slowly go deeper, deeper, now enveloped up to the neck in it, all you can hear is
Proceed.
Proceed.
Proceed.
Proceed.
Here it comes - your final gasping breath and then you’re under the water, a mouthful of it entering your lungs immediately. You’re choking, it hurts. Keep going. You wonder if you’ll see Dess again.
KEEP GOING, you think, and then somehow you’re screaming it even with your lungs full of water. KEEP SAYING IT. YOU CAN HEAR ME, CAN’T YOU KRIS? YOU CAN SEE ME, CAN’T YOU KRIS? YOU CAN FEEL MY HANDS ON YOURS, CAN’T YOU? AREN’T YOU HAPPY? AREN’T YOU EXCITED? WE’RE GOING TO BE FREE!
Tomorrow the lake will be cordoned off. Police will be called in from a neighbouring town. Undyne is gone, after all.
Tomorrow Susie will go into the closet in the school to be consoled by the Prince. She will cry and scream and he will hold her and know that it’s over. They can’t carry on without Kris. It’s over.
Tomorrow everything will fall apart, but at least neither of you will be there to see it. Susie will return, not long after the two of you fully submerge. She will piece it together. She will rush to Toriel who will fall to her knees. Asriel will return from college much too late.
A year or so after that, the Dreemurrs, cut from four to two, will leave Hometown and never return.
Your mother will have to put out a missing persons report again, a second daughter lost. Your father will die not long after the Dreemurrs leave, health worsened by your death. Your last terrible act - causing the death of your own father.
Your mother will drink herself to death by the end of the decade. The world will end. It will be over.
Now - you’re home free.