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When Chara agreed to taking half of Frisks soul, they failed to realize a lot of things.
Actually touching their soul was the first.
Chara had some experience in... touch. Possession. Fleeting sensations of corporeality granted through high LoVE and EXP.
They knew what it felt like to stand in Frisks body, as though they were but a shell—what it felt like when that body continued ticking onward like an unstoppable clock. They didn’t feel Frisks bodily functions so much as... acknowledge they were happening. A heartbeat felt like a knock at the door, every footstep felt like strings of their armature pulling taught.
Touch, in that form, was nothing more than a mental flag that they were changing something physical.
The feeling that coursed beneath their fingers now, however, was something they were unfamiliar with; unlike their body, Frisks soul itself was like touching a radiator of pure being.
It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold, either. It wasn't anything at all, but it was something. A feeling, pulsing throughout Chara’s form, each wave feeling like being stuck under the ocean. It was...
They’d closed their fist around the fragile, broken half heart they were offered, and they'd felt their hand... absorb it. Take it. Accept it. If it was anyone but Frisk, they knew, internally and intrinsically, that it would not have worked.
The waves of Frisks being crashed throughout their apparition, and where they once were nothing, they were now everything.
The second thing they'd failed to realize, was what it felt like to be a soul without a body.
They felt like their entire being was spilling out of a glass, into a puddle on the floor. They had so many thoughts, so many emotions, so much drive.
Their soul seemed to realize that too.
They know Frisk was trying to talk to them. Clover, too; words bouncing off their failing consciousness as they seemed to snap out of place.
... The third realization, was that where Clover had awoken amongst rows of carefully lined and maintained coffins, they were buried beneath a beautiful flowerbed, tucked far into the ruins. And they couldn't breath.
...
...?
... "H-"
A vice gripped around their head. Sharp, sudden, excruciating—they barely understood the feeling, but they felt they'd done something wrong.
What felt like vibrating roiled amongst their being. It felt like they were being crushed. A creaking groan reached their ears, and it seemed to hollowly echo in the dark.
Chara tried to speak again. "...H... H–" The vice was back. A pathetic whine sounded from near their head.
It took... embarrassingly long for them to realize the vice was their throat. Cramped, sore, stinging—it felt like...
They don't know what it felt like. They just know that it hurt, and it’s been so long since they've hurt.
The vibrating, they found out after, was their body shuddering under the stress of breathing and barely-contained emotion. Fear. they were...
They were scared. Chara tried forcing the feeling away, like they could do so easily before, but their already unsteady breathing struck through their consciousness like a metronome. Their entire being felt trapped in an unending loop of feeling, jittering waves through what they think are their fingers, their chest heaving in painful ups and downs.
... Adrenaline. They– They think they're experiencing adrenaline. They forgot fear could ever be physical. They forgot emotions could be physical.
They forgot what it meant to feel.
They pushed through the waves of pain, and emotion, and... existence. Pushed past it as hard as they could, until they could try and puppet their own body.
It was nothing like they remembered. Nothing like Frisks body ever was. They felt every twinge of their musculature as they carefully spread their fingers.
Chara was briefly relieved that they could still even do so.
One by one, Chara went through the parts of their body they could move. The pain got better with every tendon that stretched, every limb that brushed against the surface they lay upon. Under careful exploration, they assumed they were buried in a wooden casket.
... Had it not been a casket, they would have suffocated beneath the earth already. What a waste of a soul that would be.
Lifting their arms, they weakly tried to push upwards. Their shoulders bore the weight of however much earth lay between them and a bed of buttercups, and they internally cursed ever thinking it’d be a good idea to eat them.
...
Despite how useless it was, and how much it hurt their... frail, poorly kept body, Chara kept pressing upwards.
They pushed, and groaned, and shivered. Their shoulders seared into flame, and the weak, brittle wood of their casket gave way on their left side.
Dirt crushed into their shoulder, pouring into their prison, over part of their neck, and torso, and it pressed down. Down, and down, and down, and down, and down–
Chara spent just under a minute where they could not bear to think past the desperation almost dying again brought them to.
They do not think they could ever explain what they felt in that moment. Even if they knew the words to do so.
...
Minute by minute passed as they wiggled their trapped shoulder and arm beneath the dirt.
Soil continued slowly trickling over their body as they moved, but Chara held onto a thin string of... something, anyway.
They willed themself to keep going, though it was stupid to do so.
They pushed more, and their fingers pushed up and up through soil.
They pressed on, and on, and their fingers felt dirt shift and crumble around them, and something so, sweetly soft.
The flowers. They felt the flowers.
A groan of wood collapsed dirt even further onto their body, but they didn’t care anymore. They felt they could do it. They were so close—so close to being out of this coffin, barely a foot beneath soil.
They kicked with their feet to dislodge more of the wood, and the earth was so heavy they felt their bones groan in complaint.
(Something in their head tells them this should not be possible. They are a child, beneath soil; they should be unable to move. And yet...)
Through the power of their Determination alone, Chara let the soil envelope them in a twisted hug before they continued clawing their way upwards. They sucked in a breath.
And they fought.
...
Chara felt cold, humid air touch their soil-caked cheeks. Soft earth collapsed inwards around them, the soil that cushioned the fall of the seven children after them. And now here they were; adorned in a crown of soft, yellow flowers.
Exhausted, Chara let themself collapse forward. Their legs still beneath the ground, breathing ragged, dirt smudged across their lips, through their hair, beneath their nails.
It would be a while before anyone would reach them. Chara wasn’t sure how long they were out for. How long it took for their new soul to find their body, to replenish it. How long it took to claw their way out themself.
What mattered was that they were alive. They’d never felt such a strong mix of exhaustion and hope in their life.
Without another thought, Chara slumped into their own arms, and fell into rest.