Chara was already putting it off, it seemed. They'd found a million and one distractions in Papyrus' little TARDIS-room-thingy. The Doctor, expecting companions, built a small guest room especially for the ones the came. Small things were left over from the ones from the past, including a wedding ring with a very incriminating receipt.

"Oh my god." Chara gasped as she read the name. "She was going to propose to him?!"

"Who?" Papyrus asked, leaning over.

"Rose Tyler. She was forced to leave the Doctor, quite a while ago. Broke her heart, it did. Then she came back with a gun."

"Well, I guess it's for the best, anyway. She's human, he's a Time Lord, it wouldn't really work out…" Papyrus concluded.

Silence. Neither knew quite what to say.

"Well, I'm just putting it off, aren't I?..." Chara muttered. "I've been hoping to get this off my chest for a while and…I have a feeling you'd forgive me. Perhaps I'm just desperate."

"Well, go ahead!" Papyrus replied.

"Well…you remember the part of the story I left out? I'm surprised neither of you asked me how I stopped her. Well, I'll begin at the beginning of the end."

"Allow me to describe a pheonix. You know what those are…don't you?..."

"Oh yes! Pheonixes are cool…as I've mentioned, I've read Harry Potter."

"Who hasn't?...Anyway. I'll continue. Imagine a pheonix, and all its shining feathers the humans and the monsters that live on the Earth. Except…it's caged. Every now and then the pheonix is let out, and all the feathers feel the sun. Then it is caught and shoved back in again."

"Wait, wait! You mean…we don't even get to always see the sun once we see it?...Do the humans force us back underground?..." Papyrus asked.

"No. The human who freed them would reset. She'd try something else, like…killing just Jerry, or stiffing you when you wanted to date her, or…much, much worse. Anyway. Eventually, all the pheonix's feathers turn to dust, and the pheonix must burn to let the world continue."

"…What do you mean?" Papyrus inquired. "They…did another reset?"

"At the end, right after the human defeated the final boss, as you might call it…this final boss was your brother, by the way…I was able to see into her mind for a brief moment, being part of her consciousness and all. And…I saw all of this happening. The shining desert, turning dark. Whole planets that I'd never seen before turning into dust. The darkness was approaching. The stars going out. The universe turning black and all others as well. And there was…only one solution."

Chara took a long pause, wondering how exactly he'd react; she was beginning to have thoughts of turning back, ending the story, but…that would only leave her with more anxiety over when they'd find out on their own, because the Fallen God would…reveal it to the Doctor as soon as she got the chance.

She decided to continue.

"It stared me in the face. I realised that at this point I could split off of the human's soul due to all the Determination she'd gained, taking the only human part of her she had left, but still. Then I would take the six human souls and use them to…prevent what was happening. And the only sure way to do that was to destroy the world."

Papyrus just sat there dumbfounded.

"There you go. That's what I've been wanting to get off of my chest for a while. Anyway. It…worked out. After she gave me her soul, I moved us both to another timeline with half-erased memories of the experience. I gave her a new soul, she saved the world and I…scared her quite badly at that point. It worked exactly as I planned and she didn't do another reign of genocide for…quite a while, due to erasing her memory as well as mine. Every time I did it, I thought I was doing it for the first time, at least at first glance. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing it for the second time. And then the third. And then the fourth."

"Y-you destroyed the world four times?" Papyus asked. "Oh my god…"

Suddenly, without warning, Chara initiated a battle with Papyrus. The interface that came with it popped up in front of the both of them. Papyrus saw her statistics and was…incredibly shocked.

CHARA.

ATK N/A DEF N/A.

* Wouldn't hurt a single monster.
* Humans are a different story.
LV: 999999…

"See my LV? That's hard proof."

Sans. Sans had told him what LOVE was…it was a measure of how many someone had killed. Their level of violence, as it were. She had killed thousands in the name of the universe.

"What?!" he gasped. "I-" He looked back up at her face, and she hid it in shame. Trembling, she waited for his response.

"T-this is what you had to do to save the world?!"

"Yes. And every time I prevented what's happening right now from happening. But…what I didn't realise was…her memories weren't actually erasing. The fith time I prepared to destroy the world…she stabbed me through the chest right in the middle of my monolouge. That's how I got this scar, actually."

Chara lifted her shirt up a little, revealing a horrific scar in the rough shape of an arc.

"The scars on my arms are unrelated, by the way. Anyway. She turned the tables on me and imprisoned me in the void after she destroyed the world in my place. She kept me like a pet, demanding my soul so she could wreak havoc on other timelines, but…t-true to my name, I stayed determined. She called me a…demon…she called me…the true v-villain of everything. She told me…w-we were no different, and worst of all, she forced my previous memories to all flood back…I saw the demon that I was..."

"And you believed it?" Papyrus asked.

"Are you implying that she lied to me about what I was?!" Chara snapped quietly. "I've accepted that I am a demon. I've accepted that I'm just as much of a villain as she is, two dragons in battle for eternity, neither fighting the good fight!"

Papyrus honestly didn't know what to say.

"Oh, right. I get it." she whispered. "You still forgive me, but just don't want to say because you know what I've done is wrong. It's alright. I understand"

"Still, though! Even if you are as heartless as you think you are, which, might I add, you most definitely aren't!...Is that any reason for me not to be nice to you?" Papyrus answered.

Chara just sat there, realising he did indeed have the logic correct. But she hated it. She had watched him die to his own overbearing kindness. No, no, she thought, she would never let that happen again. But…something stirred within her. More specifically, memories. The yin and the yang, the optimism and the misanthropy, the…the burned-out pheonix and the scarlet macaw…where had she seen that before?

As…Asriel.

Chara smiled, her head bowed, as she remembered how she'd been brought up and given a second chance, even as a broken child she had been repaired, the scars from the slashes she and others had given her had healed.

They could heal again.

"I…see…your logic's irrefutable, though flawed in a thousand other senses…" she muttered. A single tear fell from her eye as she remembered a thousand things she could do again, even if she didn't deserve them…

"I was right…it seems. About you. You really would forgive the most heartless of demons, wouldn't you?..." she continued, laughing slightly. "Still, regardless if you do forgive me or not…just…promise not to tell the Doctor, alright? He wouldn't get it like you do, even if you don't get it yourself…He'd hate me."

"I'm not too sure about that. I mean, the Doctor doesn't hate!..."

"No. No, he does hate. Mostly…a race called the Daleks. He…fought them in a war a long time ago…and you know how he…hates…war…"

Chara suddenly realised something, something that she'd buried, something that everyone buried deep in their minds.

"No. You are correct, Papyrus." she whispered.

"Wonderful!" Papyrus replied, which made Chara laugh a little at his clearly unintentional narcissism. Suddenly, her laugh stopped, and she went deadly serious.

"He would understand."

Instantly, Chara's head snapped upwards to look directly at him. Papyrus jumped as he saw her blacked-out and widened eyes, seeming to elicit unfounded fear.

" , C A N ' T H E ?"

Papyrus stiffened as confusion hit him like a tidal wave. Relate to what? Relate to hating herself? Relating to destroying the- no! no! No! Just as quickly, she broke eye contact and her eyes shrunk back to normal.

"Sorry. Sorry. Forget I ever said anything. Ever." Chara muttered, immediately realising what she'd said while in her half-her state.

"Oh my god! You scared me half to death, Chara!..." Papyrus stammered. "I mean, that's not exactly hard for you, is it?..."

"It's strange. It's like your brother and his glowing blue eye. When I'm actually serious about something, my eyes just do that. It's almost like I…no, I don't become a different person. But still, you heard the way I spoke."

Papyrus was still silent, caught up in a moral dilemma. To forgive? To shun? He truly didn't know what to say or do. But someone wanted him to shun her, and it wasn't the Doctor. It was Chara herself.

"…I get the feeling you…don't want me to forgive you." Papyrus muttered under his breath.

"For one, I don't feel like I deserve such forgiveness. For another, the reason I thought you'd forgive me…still haunts me."

Chara fell silent. Would it be creepy to tell someone about their own death? Then again, being creepy was what she was good at. Wait. Wait. Did she just…say she was…good? At something?...Never mind. She was.

"I'll let the cat out of the bag, as it were." Chara mentioned. "It…was your death. On that route where Frisk killed everyone. Everyone had evacuated Snowdin, leaving you the only one left. You didn't even try to fight. You just…" Chara sighed at this point, voice trembling as she confronted the past. "…offered to be friends. You spared her right from the start."

Frisk was standing in the clearing, shivering uncontrollably. Chara was fairly sure it was purely due to the cold, and nothing to do with her non-existent emotions. Her clothes were covered with frost and dust, and she made no effort to continue surviving.

Chara finally mustered the courage to look up.

There was a shadow in the blizzard.

No, she thought, no no no no no no. NOT HIM TOO.

"Halt, human!" Papyrus exclaimed over the roar of white. Frisk immediately started running towards him, knife outstretched.

"H-hey! Quit moving while I'm talking to you!"

What…no…it couldn't. She couldn't. He couldn't. No. No. She wouldn't let her kill another. Her eyes were already dry from Toriel's death.

"But worry not!"

Chara looked up again to see the faint sillouhette of a figure with his arms opened wide.

"I, Papyrus, will gladly be your friend and tutor!"

No. No. No. No. He couldn't be. He didn't seem to notice Frisk padding across the snow towards him.

"NO! STOP IT, NO!" she screamed. "FRISK, FOR GOD'S SAKE, LOOK AT YOURSELF!"

Frisk turned to Chara, with a look of despair on her face that twisted itself into anger in Chara's eye, and her words fell like icicles to the floor. By now, she was far ahead of her, standing right in front of him. She hoped she was crying tears of regret and sadness.

"I welcome you with open arms!" Papyrus cried to the wind. The padding footsteps in the distance were drowned out with hopes that she would accept. She had to. In the other timelines they had grown so close, best friends across species. She wouldn't just kill him then and-

There was a faint hissing sound as his body turned to dust and flew away in the wind. A thump as his head dropped into the snow and a whirl as his scarf flew away to be caught on a pine tree far behind them.

"W-well, that's not what I expected…" he muttered, speaking with great difficulty as dust flew off of his head into the blizzard.

"But…st-still! I believe in you! You can do a little better! I…I promise…"

And he turned to dust, that smile of hope still on his face.

Frisk simply stood there, no tears falling this time. She'd definitely changed.

It was like she had done nothing at all, but still. She didn't move on immediately. Chara almost didn't want to believe she was silently mourning him. She shut her eyes, and then opened them as wide as she could, trying in vain to pass it off as just another dream.

"You still believed in them." Chara whispered under her breath. "O-on the bright side…it was probably the bravest thing any version of you has ever done."

"I've never heard a more tragic tale!" Papyrus gasped. "Honestly, I seem to have a habit of meeting people who've been through a lot."

"…that saying about birds of a feather flocking together couldn't be more wrong. Then again…you're a lot like him, though. You know?...Anyway. Do you still view me the same way?..."

"Well, of course not, that's kind of obvious… but…you know! You're still my friend!"

"Oh…" Chara sighed. "Well…just promise not to tell the Doctor, alright? It probably doesn't need saying, though. That is all I ask."

"Promise!" Papyrus replied, holding out his pinky, as best he could with mittens on. Chara responded by wrapping hers around his, almost jokingly at this point. She'd seen other girls. do it in the playground way back when she was on the surface but had never done it herself.

"Thanks. I've had that weighing me down for a while." Chara stated, before phasing back through the door.

"Finally, somebody gets it." she muttered. Suddenly, she realised that she felt very taken back, back to the time when she did in fact have a best friend. It was…happening again. The TARDIS morphed into the warm and fluffy corridors of their Home, running down carrying Toriel's best jewels while screaming and laughing at the same time about being a robber, or opening the present to find an ornamental knife, knowing immediately it symbolized her maturity, moving past her suicidal tendencies and how they could trust her now with a weapon that they would never trust her with alone. But…that was…gone now…

It was gone. The past was behind her. She was living in the past now, and she had always known that as something she strived to leave behind, why had she forgotten it now?...

Her time was running out. Her song would end soon, she thought.

But if her song was ending…

IT WAS GOING TO HAVE ONE HELL OF A FINALE.