Chapter 49
Frisk didn't consider herself naturally inclined to her magical abilities, but with each lesson from Chara, she felt her control grow into one of ease. Using the magic within her ring went from something on which she had to intentionally focus to something that felt to be second nature. It was almost thoughtless to summon a magical weapon and use it with the same practiced precision as the weapons she trained with the Blues.
Neither Suzy nor Mandy had mentioned anything about Frisk's being a wizard. For a while, Frisk wondered why they never said anything. It eventually crossed her mind that perhaps they did not feel the need to pressure her for it. After all, Frisk did claim on public television that she was a wizard, and it was possible most of the Underground believed she was telling the truth despite not providing any visual evidence. Their knowing that Frisk wasn't lying probably did little to change their plans. If they anticipated that Frisk was waiting for her fight with Asgore to truly reveal herself, then they were not wrong.
"You are not focusing," Chara rebuked when Frisk stumbled on her form for the third time. He stood only a few feet away from her, his demeanor more concerned that disappointed. "What are you thinking about so intently that you cannot put all your energy into training?"
Looking around the clearing despite knowing they were alone – Mon had managed to get Suzy to train with her so Frisk could sneak away unattended – Frisk said, "Did we make a good decision claiming that I'm your reincarnation?"
Chara shrugged. "Honestly, I do not know. On paper, I do not see how the decision is a bad one. You are a magician just as I was, which helps the false argument. Not to mention I can tell you everything you need to know to 'prove' that my life was your past life. The only thing preventing us from knowing if it was a wise decision is the outcome, which we will not know for some time."
Letting her magical weapon disintegrate, Frisk asked, "Are you nervous for my inevitable fight with King Asgore?"
Chara hesitated for a brief moment before he answered, "Yes."
"What do you fear most about the fight?"
"That I do not know who it would hurt me most to watch get killed."
At Frisk's request, she sat on one of the boulders while Chara stood beside her. They were side by side so they could not see each other's faces. When she was not looking Chara in the eyes and seeing the pain he hide so well, Frisk found it easier to ask hard questions.
"Do you still love Asgore?" she asked.
"Of course," Chara did not miss a beat to answer. "Asgore was my dad. He raised me as his own. I could not stop loving him even after he executed me."
"Do you think he really believed you killed Asriel? I mean, that is why you were executed, right?"
"I don't know what Da—I mean, Asgore really believed. After all, the evidence was stacked against me. I did kill people, which was something he never knew about until after Asriel's death. When everything happened that horrible night and the truth finally came to light . . . Even if Asgore acted quickly and emotionally, it is not as if the decision to execute me was wrong. The question is does he believe he was wrong. Being right means nothing when you believe you are wrong."
After a moment, Frisk said, "I don't think I could kill him. The more I think about what he must have gone through – the murder of one son, personally executing the other, his wife fleeing in the night with his second son's soul – Asgore sounds like a tragic character. How am I supposed to think of him as the villain when his story is so heart breaking?"
"Maybe there are no villains," Chara replied. "Most of us think we are the heroes of our story, after all. Even at my worst and I was lost in the depths of my self-loathing, I thought of myself as . . . maybe not necessarily a hero, but an anti-villain of sorts. I did terrible things, but they were for good reasons. The few lives I ended were a small sacrifice to pay for the many lives that would get to live in the sunlight, or at least that was what I told myself. If I tainted my soul and threw away my life for the betterment of monsterkind, then perhaps I could be a tragic hero in their sight. I never wanted the power that came with EXP, but higher LV meant more power, and if I was powerful enough, maybe I alone could break the barrier. What a fool I was."
"EXP?" Frisk frowned. "LV?"
"Execution points and level of violence," Chara explained. "I told you before that humans become more powerful from killing monsters. While monsters become powerful creatures by killing a human and absorbing its soul, humans, on the other hand, gain EXP from killing monsters. The more EXP you have, the more LV you gain. The higher the LV, the more powerful a human is. A human who maximizes his LV becomes godlike in his own way, just as a monster who absorbs seven human souls. Rumor has it that such a human would be powerful enough to destroy and recreate the world."
"Can't humans absorb monster souls?" For this question, Frisk directed her gaze towards Chara, whose eyes were locked into the distance.
For a split second, Chara got a faraway look in his eye. He took a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, he finally said, "For the most part, no. Monster souls vanish the instant their bodies become dust. The only exception is what is referred to as boss monsters. Their souls exist outside of their disintegrated bodies, but only for a moment. A human that somehow does absorb a monster soul will also become a being of great power just as a monster who absorbs a human soul."
"What about a human that manages to absorb a boss monster soul and maxes out their LV?"
"A being with that kind of unbridled power, with barely any limits on abilities"—Chara visibly shuddered—"that would be the most powerful foe one could ever encounter. Such a creature would no longer be human. That would be a true demon. As powerful as I wanted to become in order to break the barrier on my own, I could never entertain the thought of reaching that unholy combination."
For a few minutes, the two of them sat in silence. Frisk pondered everything Chara had said. It was comforting, in a way, to now know for certain that Chara was not a senseless murderer. The truth – or at least enough of the truth that he chose to share – confirmed what Frisk knew in her heart to be true. Chara was not a bad person, but a good person who made bad decisions.
"Has any of this gotten easier to share?" Frisk asked, her words softly spoken.
Chara's answer was immediate. "No, but as you said, I can't keep so many secrets from you and try to tell you that I feel as if there are not any barriers between us. If you are to truly know me, you have to know what I did. More so, you have to know why. I truly appreciate you do not think of me as an awful person, but I do not want you to forget I committed unforgivable sins."
"I don't think there is such a thing as unforgivable sins," Frisk said, not knowing why she said it.
Chara snorted. "This is coming from someone who doesn't believe even the worst person can truly change for the better."
"Well, maybe I met someone who challenged that belief, and I'm now open to the idea that I might be wrong."
"Do you think even Mew Mew can change and become a good person?"
The question struck Frisk like a blow. She knew Chara did not have ill intent behind asking such a question, but it still shocked her to hear him ask it. If Frisk really meant what she was saying, she had to be willing to reevaluate her earlier statements about how people can't change.
"That one . . . is hard," Frisk eventually said. "As much as I want to say I believe Mew Mew can be a good person, I am not going to pretend if the next time I saw her and she, by some miracle, apologized and asked for forgiveness, I would offer it to her. Even if I change my mind about killing her, I am not going to be her friend either."
"I can understand that," Chara replied. "You were much closer to Toriel than I ever was, and even I cannot fathom forgetting what Mew Mew had done."
"You never refer to Mom as Mom," Frisk pointed out. "You always call her Toriel. Why?"
Shrugging one shoulder, Chara stated, "I always struggled to see Toriel as my mom. As my mother figure, yes, but it was harder to call her 'mother' than it was to call Asgore 'dad.' I always felt as if I never measure up to her standards. I always had to carry an air of formality, especially around her. I mean, I had a formal education on the surface, but I almost felt more pressure to display those mannerisms as part of the royal family. It is funny though, because Asriel never felt the need to act like the crown prince. Even Dad was relaxed. It was Toriel and I who felt the need to act like royalty, and mine came from a pressure I do not think now but believed at the time she put on me.
"It is clear to me she learned from the mistakes she made raising me in how she raised you. It is not only you were the child to her I could have been and failed to be, but she was also the mother to you she never was to me. I was deeply envious and hated you with an intense hatred you never deserved. So much so that I wanted you dead along with her. . . ."
"We moved past that," Frisk reminded him, her gaze never once leaving him since she turned her attention onto her fellow human. "I don't hold any of those deaths against you."
"Perhaps, but had you died that first time and stayed dead . . . If my existence did not disappear then and there, I know I would have grown to resent myself even more for killing you. Getting you killed over and over may have been a sick form of fun while my feelings of hatred were strong, but even if we never became friends, I knew regret would take root after those feelings faded away."
"Chara, you have regret now."
"Yes, but at least this regret is eased by knowing you have forgiven me even though I do not know if I can ever forgive myself. I do not wish to imagine how I would handle it if there was nobody to offer forgiveness for what I had done."
"Even if the whole world forgave you and went on to forget every bad thing you did, would you ever forgive yourself?"
For the first time since they began this conversation, Chara looked at her. There was such deep sadness in his eyes, Frisk wondered how she could ever believe Chara was emotionless. He may have done an excellent job hiding what he felt, but the more she got to know him, the more Frisk saw that Chara felt deeply, maybe even deeper than anyone she knew and could possibly ever meet.
"I want the answer to be yes, but I think the honest one is no," Chara said. "I have had one hundred years to make some sort of peace with my life, but instead I have let it make me hard and bitter. Had you never come into our lives, Stripes, I do not know where I would be right now with Toriel. I could never truly hate her for all the ways she had wronged me, but I knew I would burn down the rest of the world if I could. Maybe I would have eventually driven myself into some sort of madness. One hundred years to dwell on my mistakes made it easy for me to hate someone I barely knew enough to get her killed. Who knows what another one hundred years would have done to me given the chance?"
With nothing left to say, Frisk tucked her hair behind her ears and rose to her feet. "We should probably head back before anyone realizes that we're gone," she stated.
Chara agreed, and they both began to walk back to the camp. As they traveled together, Frisk thought about everything Chara had said. It felt as if she was finally getting to really know the prince who had become her constant companion and truest friend. There was a depth to him she never before would have expected. The more Frisk learned about Chara, the more complex she discovered his character to be.
"You know, I have been wondering something for some time now," Chara suddenly said. When Frisk gave him a questioning look, Chara stated, "When the Snake asked a question only I would know the answer to, she asked what picture I gave Dr. Gaster. How does she know about my rocket idea? Unless she had personally been to his office in the Core, there is no way she should know about it."
Heart leaping into her throat, Frisk realized that Chara had a point, and she too was concerned with how Mandy knew something she should not have known.
Sneaking back into the camp, Frisk kept an eye open for anyone who might notice she was gone. The deeper into the campgrounds she walked and the more monsters that populated the area, the easier it was for Frisk to relax as she saw that no one was concerned she had made a sudden reappearance. That is, until another monster approached Frisk.
"I had been looking all over for you," Alice stated with no effort to speak without being overheard. "Where were you?"
"I was training," Frisk replied, looking around to make sure nobody was watching.
"You were not at any of the training rings, and everyone I asked if they saw you answered they had not seen you for at least an hour."
"I was training," Frisk firmly repeated. "I just didn't say where I was training."
Arms crossed, Alice did not look convinced. Her long ears were pressed against her head. It was unusual to see Alice no longer in a long skirt and a sweater but now jean shorts and a baby blue ribbed tee. It was as if she was a different person. As far as Frisk was aware, Alice could have been a different person.
Frisk shook her head as if to shake away the conversation and asked, "Why were you looking for me, anyway?"
"I have been . . . concerned for you." Alice's arms dropped. "I never see you around anymore; you're always training, then you were sent on that mission, and now I hear that you might infiltrate the castle soon. Suzy seems to be your and Mon's new best friend, and I highly doubt it has anything to do with any girl bonding you did on the mission. Don't ask me the last time you laughed because I couldn't tell you the answer. It's like you are a totally different person. Am I wrong to be worried?"
So we both think of the other as a different person. "It's not like this is what I would have wanted for myself."
Alice flinched as if slapped. However, she did not argue. Instead she stared at her boots and whispered, "I never would have called Mettaton's show had I known this would have been how things ended. I thought that maybe if we could stir the Blues to action by revealing the Reds had killed Queen Toriel in cold blood and the queen's human daughter was held captive, they would stand up to protect themselves and to protect you. Never would I have imagined that a militia would come out of hiding and make you one of its soldiers."
"Then I don't know what you were expecting." Frisk shrugged. "You can't call people to fight and then be surprised that these same people are making plans to fight."
Eyes locked onto her boots, Alice said nothing. Frisk looked to Chara, who said nothing about the interaction. Life around the camp continued to happen all around them.
"I suppose I wanted a storybook ending," Alice admitted after a moment of thought. "You know, the good guys step in, and when the bad guys see the good guys not backing down, they realize the error of their ways. Then everyone can live happily ever after without nobody else getting hurt."
"I don't know what fairytales you were reading from the librarby, Alice," Frisk replied, a small smile growing on her face, "but you ought to know things are a lot more complicated than that."
Smiling a small smile herself, Alice said, "Yes, I was being extremely naïve. I should have listened to Mon when she told me that if I was really your friend, I would not have made that call. Frisk . . . I really am sorry."
"It's okay," Frisk said, surprised that she was telling the truth. "I forgive you."
Ears springing upright, Alice looked up at Frisk with hopeful eyes. Her face then melted into relief. When she opened her mouth, a light laugh came out.
"Forgiving does not mean forgetting, though," Frisk added, it now her turn to look at her boots. "It's going to be some time before I can trust you again. We can be friends again, but it's not going to be like it was before."
"I understand. I really do." Alice sighed. "If only there was a reset button. I never wanted to hurt you, and it's hard knowing you're in this position because of me. Mon . . . I don't think she will ever let this go."
"Who knows?" Frisk suggested, wanting to be encouraging but having no other words. "She might come around. Nobody can stay mad forever, right?"
Shaking her head, all Alice said was, "Sometimes, you can break things so badly they will never be restored, no matter how much you want them to be."
Frisk could do nothing save open her arms. When Alice noticed the invite, she rushed forward and threw her arms around Frisk. For a few minutes, the girls clung to each other, ignoring the passersby as they bumped into the girls or told them to have their sappy moment elsewhere.
It wasn't until she felt Alice's shirt getting damp under her chin that Frisk realized she was crying. She didn't realize how much she missed Alice until this moment. After everything she had been going through, it was nice to have Alice as a friend again.
