Chapter 13

Finding where Toriel kept the butterscotch pie recipe was the easy part. Gathering the ingredients was slightly more difficult. Actually making the pie was a true test for both boys as they tried to interpret the instructions.

"Mom makes this look easy," Asriel, who held the recipe and gave Chara the instructions while Chara did the manual labor, muttered as he double checked whether he and Chara had collected everything.

"We already mixed the dry ingredients, so we are committed now," Chara replied as he added the shortening to what would become the pie crust. Everything was lied out on the kitchen counter, and Chara stood on a chair as he did what Asriel told him to do. "What do I put in next?"

"Uhhh," Asriel looked at the recipe, "half a cup of butter."

Chara stepped off the chair, looked over Asriel's shoulder at the ingredients, and frowned. "Like . . . sticks of butter?"

"Can't be." Asriel furrowed his brows as he tried to think. "You can't put sticks in cups, can you?"

"It's not a liquid. . . ." Pursing his lips, Chara also thought about the ingredient. "Do you think the recipe is asking for buttercups?"

"Hmm, cups of butter. Buttercups." Asriel scratched his chin. "Sounds about right. What do half of buttercups look like?"

"Maybe we fill the bowl halfway with buttercups," Chara suggested. "Come on, let's get some buttercups from the garden and come back to finish the pie. I want it to be ready for when King Dad and Ms. Toriel come home!"


Chara could not fight the bile rising in his throat. The pie was not the disaster he feared. By all accounts, the pie turned out fine. It looked like pie, and it smelled like pie. When Asgore ate it, he said it tasted good, so it had to even taste like pie.

Then Asgore got sick. Really, really sick.

Asgore was the only one to eat the pie Chara and Asriel made. He had come home a couple of days before Toriel did, and neither child wanted a bite since the whole point of making the pie was to give it to Asgore. By the time Toriel returned home, the pie was mostly gone, and Asgore was bedridden he was so sick.

Chara sat on the foot of his bed, fingers intertwined as he held his hands so tightly all of his fingers had long since turned chalk white. Asriel sat on his own bed, head held down. Toriel had only been home for a few hours, and she told the boys to wait in their room while she tended to their father.

"So . . . ," Asriel drawled, possibly trying to break the uncomfortable silence between them, "turns out that 'cups of butter' does not mean 'buttercups.' . . ."

"Yeah," Chara agreed. His eyes burned, and he had a lump in his throat. In an attempt to push back the shame and guilt, Chara forced himself to laugh and said, "How funny. What a silly mistake. I can't believe we did that. Ha ha ha. . . ."

For longer than was possibly appropriate, Chara tried to laugh off what had happened. Asgore would be fine, Chara hoped. After all, Asgore himself said that he was strong, and no bad food was going to take him out so easily.

Not that Asgore's words were all that comforting to the boys when his word choice included "take out." He could have meant being unconscious at best, but at worst . . . Chara tried not to think about it.

It was hours, days, a lifetime later when Toriel finally entered the room. She once again asked the children to explain what happened. Asriel ended up doing most of the talking as Chara couldn't bring himself to properly form words.

Toriel had not eaten any bad food, but she looked sicker than Asgore. She looked pale under her white fur, and her eyes were dilated, a possible side effect to being high on adrenaline from to what she came home. It was as if she, too, was fighting the urge to throw up.

After Asriel had finished, Toriel sighed and said slowly, "Your father will be fine. He will miss the opening ceremony for the festival, so I'll have to go by myself to give that speech instead, but he will be all right soon enough.

"What you two need to know is that buttercups are poisonous. Or, the fresh ones are, but the dry ones are harmless. Although you both put in a lot of buttercups into the pie crust, most dried during the baking process. However, some were still fresh enough to cause harm, and with how much of that pie Asgore ate . . ."

"We're sorry," Asriel repeated for the hundredth time.

Finally finding the words himself, Chara said, "I am sorry. This is all my fault."

Nobody said anything. Asriel kept his eyes locked firmly on his lap. Although he didn't look at her, Chara could feel Toriel's eyes locked onto him.

After a lifetime, Toriel finally said, "I believe that it is better if you two had no kitchen rights for a while. Next time, request Merla or me to assist you. The last thing we want is anyone else in this family being poisoned. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes," both children said in unison.

Without another word, Toriel walked out of the room and slowly closed the door behind her.

For the next hour, the two boys sat in silence. Every now and again, Chara could hear Asriel sniffle. If it wasn't for Asriel trying to cheer Chara up, none of this would have happened. This truly was all Chara's fault. He had been nothing but a thorn in the Dreemurr's side since the day Asriel found him and brought him home.

"I am never going to forgive myself for all of this," Chara said, speaking more to himself than to Asriel. When Asriel didn't respond, Chara added, "I should have known better."

"We both should have known better," Asriel corrected Chara. "This is not all your fault. I'm just as guilty as you are, Chara."

"We would not have made the pie if you were not trying to cheer me up, and you would have had no need to cheer me up if I wasn't such a mess to begin with."

"Chara, you're not a mess . . ." Asriel hesitated before saying, "We made a mistake, but Mom said that Dad will be fine. If getting him sick is the worse we can do . . ."

Seeing that Asriel could not bring himself to finish that thought, Chara thought of many possible, perhaps positive, conclusions.

". . . maybe everyone else in the castle will stop finding new ways to hate you."

". . . maybe some monsters will see that you're not as bad as they say you are."

". . . maybe you're not as much of a demon as we thought you were."

However, despite his best efforts to see the silver lining, Chara felt as if this was only the start to the damage he could do. Before he realized it, Chara lifted his head to look at Asriel. Taking a moment too long to process his own thoughts, Chara caught himself thinking about what could happen if soul absorption was something they accomplished.

As much as Chara didn't want to admit it to himself, this was something he had thought about more than he felt comfortable. He wondered if the combined forces of a human and monster soul were as powerful as the adults said they were. More so, if it took the two souls together to cross the barrier . . .

Chara forced himself to stare at his lap before Asriel could catch him looking. For all Chara knew, this information did not exist for Asriel. It had Chara almost envying Asriel's ignorance.

With Toriel tending to Asgore, Merla prepared dinner for the children. When Chara and Asriel were called to the table, they trudged as if approaching their death sentence. They were served nothing special – macaroni and cheese with chicken nuggets – but it was still too much for either of them to eat.

"Why do I bother cooking for these children if they hardly eat a bite?" Chara heard Merla mutter after the boys sat at the table for half an hour, picked at their food, then asked to be excused for the night.

King Dad is sick. Ms. Toriel is upset. Now Merla is irritated. Chara counted the household off one by one. Perhaps there is no silver lining to be had after all.

Without speaking to each other, the boys prepared for bed. They put on their PJs and even brushed their teeth without being told. When Chara checked a clock to see what the time was, he saw that it was still more than two hours before their scheduled bedtime.

After Chara turned off the lights and the two crawled into bed, they sat in dark silence for an unknown amount of time. Chara couldn't sleep. He couldn't even get his eyes to close. Staring at the ceiling, Chara tried to slow the racing thoughts inside his head. It was as if everything was just starting to fall apart, and Chara was helpless to do anything about it.

"Chara," Asriel's soft voice flittered through the dark, "are you awake?"

Taking only a moment, Chara replied, "Yes."

"I can't sleep."

"Me, neither."

"I feel horrible."

"I do as well."

It was quiet for so long, that Chara nearly jumped when Asriel asked, "Are you going to get nightmares again?"

"What are you talking about, Asriel?" was how Chara answered.

"Chara, we've been sharing a room for months now. You think I don't know about your nightmares? You think your tossing and turning and crying out in your sleep has never woken me up?"

Chara lied in silence for a moment before asking, "How come you never brought this up before?"

"I wanted to give you a chance to tell me yourself, if you decided to." Asriel went quiet for a moment before continuing with, "For a while now, you stopped having them. It actually scared me at first. Sometimes, when I woke up and I didn't hear you moving or crying out, I would get out of bed to make sure you didn't die in your sleep. But after what happened with the pie and Dad . . . Chara, I don't want to see you have nightmares again."

Thinking for a moment, Chara replied, "I cannot promise whether or not I get them, Asriel. Of course, with the events of today . . . I think it is more possible that I will have nightmares than not."

Asriel did not respond. Instead, Chara heard the rustling of sheets and paws softly hitting the floor. Asriel padded across the room, and before Chara knew it, Asriel was not only climbing on Chara's bed but also crawling under the sheets.

"What are you doing?" Chara asked as he scooted to the side to make room for Asriel.

"When I was little and I had nightmares," Asriel began to answer, "our parent would let me sleep in their bed. Dad always said that nightmares were cowards: They would go after someone sleeping alone, but nightmares wouldn't attack anyone who had someone there to protect them.

"I know I'm not strong or brave or powerful . . . , but I'm your brother, Chara. I'm never going to leave you. Never! No matter what. We'll be together forever."

At this moment, Chara was glad Asriel could not see him. Tears silently streamed down Chara's face. Asriel settled himself in Chara's bed as if he didn't need Chara's approval to sleep there. It was such a fierce display of loyalty and love that he had never once known before in his life. Chara smiled and, with Asriel by his side, drifted to sleep.