I stand up and start walking back to the dinner table, feeling dizzy, somewhat. Asriel, Toriel, and surprisingly Asgore are sitting around the table eating bacon and eggs.
"Hey Chara!" Asriel calls to me, grinning madly, "Sit down, come on!" I can't help but smile and oblige. Before I can find my seat, there's a knock on the door. It sounds feeble, almost as if the wood was stroked rather than struck. As I sit down to eat, Asgore stands up, his face contorted. He goes to the door, wrapping his cloak around his neck and opening the door. As I funnel mouthfuls of bacon into my mouth I hear his conversation from beyond the door.
"Ah, Doctor! What a pleasant surprise-," Asgore says, before a new voice, cold and sharp, cuts him off.
"I apologise, my King. It wasn't appropriate of me to come to your home, but I-,"
"Nonsense!" Asgore interrupts, "Come on in, you're very welcome…"
"No, I don't think that's necessary," the voice rasps, but then I hear silence, almost like a blade through what jolly noise had been there before. "Perhaps I should." Asgore walks in and lays his cloak back down by the wall.
"Now Asriel, Chara, this-," he says, and with this a tall, thin man, with entirely pale white skin, with entirely black, almost shapeless eyes dotted with tiny white specks for pupils, his left eye and mouth conjoined by a huge black line, almost like a river of ink. He's wearing a black V-neck sweater with a white scarf strangling his neck, as well as thin black trousers. "Is Dr. Gaster. Your mother's already met the good doctor a few times before," Toriel stands up to attention,
"Ah," she says, "Yes, we have, would the doctor like something to…?"
"No, no." the doctor says with a polite wave of his hand and a smile, "I shan't be staying long."
"Well, that's too bad. You should let me know if you plan to come back any time." Toriel sits back down with Asriel and I to eat, but meanwhile I can't help but notice the doctor looking at me with a strange look in his cold, dead eyes.
"Asriel, I've talked about the doctor before," Asgore goes on, "You know who he is, right?" Asriel lazily drops his fork and turns to his father,
"Yeah, dad," he says, "He built the core, right?"
"Absolutely, son. The most important structure in the whole underground, built and designed by this man-," yet beyond Asgore's rambling the doctor doesn't attend to conversation at all. He just looks at me with his tiny, white, near pupil-less eyes. Soon, his attention is drawn back to Asgore as his lips begin to shake,
"Asgore," he says, "What is-,"
"And it was then that-," Asgore stops, turning back to the Doctor, "What is what?" I feel a pang in my chest. I place my knife and fork together and stand up.
"I'm finished." I say, taking my barely eaten breakfast back to the kitchen. I can hear distant, enamoured talking between Asgore and the Doctor as I walk back out and try to go past them. Without turning to say goodbye I start charging for mine and Asriel's bedroom, where I close the door and sit on my bed, looking over at Asriel's, anything, to distract me from… that. I start to hear the Doctor's rasping voice grow louder and louder against Asgore's desperate attempts to calm him down. While I can't hear anything specific… I can hear words like 'Human' and 'Disgusting' and 'My entire life' thrown about in a mad mess of vocabulary. Eventually, I hear loud, acute footsteps before the door closes, softly. The door creaks open.
"Chara?" Asriel's standing in the door. I look over at him. The pain in my chest is gone, but I steel feel weakened, strangely.
"Hey, Asriel." I say, meekly. He walks over, slowly, and sits down on the bed, next to me.
"I get that the doctor's a little scary but why did you have to run?" He asks. I start trying to speak but my words come out as a slur of excuses almost deafening to hear.
"I…" I try to say, "I'm sorry. I'm acting a little out of touch, aren't I?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm just doing stuff." I say, "I'm treating myself like I'm too important, and I shouldn't, so I'll stop."
"What-,"
"I'll stop," I snap back, "Asriel, I'll stop." He shuffles a little close.
"You don't need to stop, you know." He says. "Mom and dad and me really like you here, we don't mind if you need to… you know… do whatever if you feel like it." I wheeze, short of breath, trying to laugh.
"Thanks, Asriel." I say. We sit in silence for a few moments, before he punches me in the shoulder.
"Race you outside!" He blurts at me, getting up and bolting for the door. I sit motionless for a few seconds before I smile, and run after him. I run out of the house just in time to see him running down the garden path. I've been here a few times before, but never beyond the front gate. I don't really feel a twinge of guilt however as I run past and look both ways for Asriel, wherever he is. I… I can't see him. Where… I look to my right, nothing, left, nothing. Then, from my right, I hear a muffled giggle.
"AH HAH!" I shout and run down the path after the sound, where I see a tiny tuft of fur vanish into a tiny crevice in the wall. Bushes ensconce this tiny ovular hole, a bottom-half made of mud with almost a canopy of branches not three feet above it. Almost without thinking I drop to my knees and start burrowing into it. My knees and hands get caked with mud but I almost lose the will to care. I emerge on the other side where he's standing, arms crossed, in a beacon of light shining from a crevice in the craggy ceiling. The floor is a dense mixture of mud and cobblestones with some old pillars climbing toward the sky.
"Well well well," He says, turning away, keeping his arms crossed, "So you had the guts to make it here at all. Let alone beat me here." I snort and laugh.
"Shut up." I say back, smiling till I hurt.
"Since you're here I think it's high-time we go with fun 101, hide and seek." I try not to cringe and be polite.
"Sure thing…?"
"What? You must've played hide and seek before! No, come on," he walks over to me and places his hands over my eyes. "Keep your hands over your eyes while I hide, count to ten, and come find me.
"I know what hide and seek is, Asriel."
"Prove it." He removes his fluffy mitts as I place my own hands over my eyes. I hear a scuffling of paws over the ground mixed with a muffled sound of Asriel continuously falling over. As scratchy as my throat is, I open my mouth and begin counting,
"10," I shout, thinking to myself as I count. Today's been really odd. In spite of everything that's happened I can't help but feel energised, almost happy right now. "9," It almost doesn't make sense to me. In stories I hear, characters stay angry or sad for months at a time… "8," but in a morning where so much has happened it's jarring to think that I'm ready to play, like a kid, less than, what, ten minutes later? "7," I don't think I have time to think about it now. "6," I start seeing images of the people I had left behind. I feel the smile on my face grow wider. "5," Who the hell cares if it makes sense or not, "4," Who the hell needs to know? This is my life, not theirs. I don't have any rules I need to follow. "3," Yeah, I guess I don't anymore. "2," The world felt so regular, confining, almost. "1," but now… trapped underground, I feel free as if the rocks above were clouds, hole in the rocks as the sun itself. "Ready or not, here I come!"