AN: Back to Chara's POV for this one. Italics indicate it's in the past. (or future, depending on how you think about it...)
The food options on the surface are a lot less limited than they were in the Underground, but everyone still has their favourites. Toriel, in particular, still has… peculiar tastes.
"-crack the shell, and then separate them, like so," she instructs, demonstrating as she goes along. "Then all there is left to do is wash them, and cut them into smaller pieces. Do you think you can do that for me?"
"Of course, mom," Frisk beams, smile vanishing as soon as Toriel turns her back on them to take the pie crust out of the fridge to shape it. She always makes them one day in advance. With a feeling akin to dread, Frisk turns back to the task at hand.
The snails squelch in the bowl. Frisk scrunches their nose up and sneaks a peek at Toriel out of the corner of their eye. Once they've confirmed she's not looking, they experimentally poke one of them, only to immediately jerk their hand back with a grimace and a soft, but heartfelt, 'ew.'
...you pick some up and get to work, you prompt them, after a moment has passed and they've failed to do so on their own accord.
This is gross, they grumble to you as they, slowly and with a lot of reluctance, sink their hands into the bucket to grab a fistful of snails. So incredibly gross.
It's not that bad, you say pragmatically. Snail pie is actually pretty decent.
They shudder theatrically in response.
Just give it a chance! you say, muffling a laugh. Maybe you'll be surprised… Preparing it can't possibly be worse than wading through waist-high trash-water, anyhow, and you didn't complain nearly as much that time.
I had other things on my mind then, they reply miserably, grabbing the small mallet Toriel has provided for the task and hitting one of the snails with it. Besides, the water wasn't slimy. This is. It's gross and I'll never be clean again.
Don't be so melodramatic.
There's an almost audible whine as they push the snails around on the cutting board, trying their hardest not to touch them with anything but the knife and the very tips of their fingers. While somewhat amusing, it's highly inefficient, and they do seem genuinely distraught. You take pity on them.
Fine, you sigh, metaphorically rolling your eyes at their ineptitude, Just let me do it.
Are you sure? Frisk asks, even though they're obviously itching to not have to touch the snails anymore.
Yeah, come on, you encourage them. Budge over.
They retreat with a relieved sigh, allowing you to take over. After some trial and error you've gotten the hang of things and fall into the rhythm of it, cracking them open, removing the snails from their shells and slicing them up. Even with Frisk's backseat-driving, pointing out every shrapnel of shell you miss, it's… nice, albeit time-consuming. You like feeling useful.
Also: knife.
"I'm done!" you announce once there's no whole snails left. Toriel glances up from her phone - the pie crust is finished and back to cooling down for a bit in the fridge, and the other ingredients (some of which were unavailable underground. Looks like she is updating her repertoire after all) are all ready to go. You must've taken longer than you thought. In the meantime, she has been… texting, judging by her somewhat flustered smile and barely held-back laughter with Sans, and letting you finish at your own pace.
She gives you a proud, motherly pat on the head. You let the warm glow fill your chest.
"Very well done, Frisk," she says, and the glow dissipates, leaving only a bittersweet flicker behind. "Would you like to stay in the kitchen until it is done, or should I call you back down for dinner?"
Frisk?
I never finished my maths homework, they say apologetically. You sigh.
"I need to do my homework," you tell Toriel, almost biting your tongue to avoid saying 'we'.
Thanks, Frisk says as you hand control back over to them and they trudge up the stairs.
No problem, you reply. … dibs on not eating all of the pie, by the way. You have to at least taste it.
Charaaaa, they whine.
It's an acquired taste, you insist. That means you have to acquire the taste for it.
They roll their eyes at you. You try to trip them up the stairs.
It's good. God help you, it's good.
There is a pattern to this: he heats up the water, and you get the cups, hoisting yourself up on top of the counter so you can reach. He promises not to tell Toriel you've been climbing on the kitchen furniture and you stay there, feet dangling above the floor. You talk for a bit, about everything and nothing, small-talk about how things are going with his garden, polite inquiries about your studies and whether you've done anything interesting that day, and then you lapse into comfortable silence and finish your tea before it grows cold.
The pattern is well-rehearsed enough that you can still perform the steps without much conscious thought, enough that it is still a comforting routine.
It has been a long while since you were alone with Asgore.
Frisk doesn't see him that often, because Toriel is still angry with him (of course she is - if she knew the truth, she would be angry with you too), and Frisk… doesn't have much incentive to seek him out on their own. You think the main reason they still do it at all is for your sake.
The thought sticks in your throat and you take an extra big sip of the tea to force it down.
Not seeing him much just the two- well, three of you doesn't mean you never see him, it's just that it's always with others. Ambassador things, which are almost entirely Frisk. Anime nights at Alphys' - those times are mostly you, because you always get super into it and Frisk says your excitement gets annoying when you can't even bounce in your seat or something to give it an outlet, and everyone's watching the screen anyways. They only really step in if it looks like you'll get into another debate about the underlying themes, or which character is obviously superior. (If you talk too much, someone is bound to notice the difference.)
Asgore tries to follow along with the debates when they do, inevitably, happen - you and Alphys are both very opinionated people when you find the right topic - but he keeps mixing names up. And timelines. And entire series. You can still recall, in perfect detail, the resigned look on Alphys' face when he tried to bring up Sayaka in a discussion about Sailor Moon.
… he's always been like that, you remember. Clumsily trying to relate to your and Asriel's interests. Asriel had to explain the rules of your games so many times…
You peek out from under your hair, watching him in what you hope is a furtive manner, trying to find and catalogue the differences between Asgore now and Asgore later, but… you can't. Speaking purely visually, there's nothing there for you to point to and say 'this, this is how you see it', no white fur now that will be grey later, no clear signs of aging. (Of course, there wouldn't be. He wouldn't age after… after.) Still.
He looks… not younger, then, but lighter. After there's always been like a weight on him, a tension in his shoulders that isn't there now (isn't there yet?), a… tiredness. He feels younger.
Especially when Toriel comes back home (you quickly jump down from the counter, Asgore intercepting her at the door so she doesn't see) and he greets her with none of the restraint, none of the reservation you've grown so used to seeing between the two of them.
You quietly leave your cup in the sink and sidle out of the room. It's starting to sink in that impossible as it seems you've really gone back, further than you ever have before.
'Prove yourself', she tells you- tells them, thischild who stumbles along and plays nice and acts like they're good when there's no such thing, you know how humans are and there is no such thing.
You heard her, you tell them, suppressing a scoff at their near-flinch. Show her you're strong enough.
The whole thing is such a farce, you think. Kid can barely even hold the knife properly; their grip is all wrong, clasped between both their palms and still they're shaking. It's ridiculous. It's not like Toriel, of all people, who's told you stories and tucked you into bed and never so much as tried to slap you or Asriel would ever hurt a child.
She throws fire at them.
The flames are temperature-regulated, of course. Like the ones in the fireplace. The kid is still scared, jerking out of their path with clumsy steps, trying in vain to give them a wide berth. You're rolling your eyes - but then they get hit, and they cry out in pain, and you cry with them, because it- it burns.
it burns you.
They force themself back on their feet to keep going, but you're trying to remember how to breathe even though you don't have lungs to do that with right now.
You should have known. You should have known.
You can't believe you were stupid enough to ever trust anyone. You should know better than most that love is a lie, that no one could ever really care like that, that everyone will come to betray you in the end, that if even Asriel could let you down-
Fight her, you hiss at them as they try to talk her down with no success, fight her, you coward, you fucking coward, you'll never get past if you don't, she'll KILL you, just show her you're strong enough and she'llSTOP!
Finally, finally they listen, and you move almost synchronised as you duck under and step aside from fireballs, lashing out with the toy knife as soon as it's your turn. She'll give up soon, you tell the kid (you tell yourself), she can't keep this up, she can't.
You're too slow to dodge and the fire sears their skin. They cry out in pain and for a moment she looks guilty, but she does not stop.
The kid forces themself back to their feet and make another clumsy strike. Their HP is getting low.
You need to dodge better, you say, and I'm trying, they shoot back, one of the first times they've spoken with you-
- and then, distracted so they forget to dodge, they're hit by two bullets in quick succession, a sharp scream bursts from their throat, and their HP hits zero.
The pain flares through their entire body - you imagine this is what being struck by lightning feels like - and their soul shakes, pulses brightly- and shatters.
The world goes black. You're slipping away again, back into oblivion; there is nothing to hold onto any longer, there is nothing there, nothing- no. You're not leaving yet. Neither of you are leaving yet. You are not letting go.
You reach out for a feeling, for a moment, a memory - you grab hold of it and you pull.
You reload your save.
The world blinks back into existence. Toriel's house stands before you, savepoint twinkling among the leaves. The kid's back to full health, but they're shaking, and within moments they're on the ground, retching.
She… killed you.
You died.
This is a betrayal the likes of which you've never felt before. A rage is welling up in you, ugly and loud, drowning out everything else until you're buzzing with it, until you can barely stop yourself from screaming until the whole world echoes with the force of it, until all you want is to, is to…
The kid's thoughts are a mess, an incoherent stream of what was that what happened what did you do what did you DO-
You died, you say, cold, cold, cold. You weren't strong enough and she killed you.
There's a pathetic little hickup, their breath hitching. But I'm still alive. What…
I don't know, you tell them, truthfully. But I think I could do it again.
Your mind whirrs with possibilities, all of you pulsing to the same beat as the hatred still filling you up, slowly becoming ice rather than fire.
Do you want to get stronger? you ask the kid, and you don't have lips but they feel wooden, not moving right.
They wipe the bile from their mouth. There's a second of hesitation, but that's all. Yes, they tell you.
Good, you say, let me show you how, and yo t
When you first moved into New Home you'd wander around and try to get lost in the halls, search for hidden spaces and interesting things both together with Asriel and on your own, but there was a disappointing lack of secret passages, and while there were plenty corridors and nooks and crannies to get lost in, after a while you'd seen it all.
This place hasn't changed.
Technically that is, or should be, obvious; of course it hasn't changed, when would it have had the time to? It's exactly as it was when you left it. Your clothes are still piled in the drawer, and the sheets in the bed still smell like home, rather than old and strange like they did when you came here with Frisk.
You find your knitting needles wedged between the mattress and the wall. On some level you'd expected them to be dusty, but of course they're not. They like new, a newly-started project wrapped around them. You can't remember what it was supposed to be, so you probably never had the time to finish it.
Toriel keeps chocolate in the fridge for you. You remember, she never stopped doing that, not even after… everything.
It is the same, they are all the same and they are talking to you as if you are too, and it is breaking you, just a little. This place is stagnant, suspended in time.
Some days you can't look them in the eyes. Looking at Asriel at all is bordering on impossible, and talking to him is worse. He still looks up to you, impossibly, blissfully unaware of everything you have done to hurt him, all the ways you have screwed everything up, the way you were ultimately responsible for his death. It is difficult to face Asgore and Toriel, too, but. You could fix that, you could undo those mistakes, you and Frisk, together, could set that right.
At the time you thought it got you one step closer to some sort of redemption.
Even so, staying here, being with them… It's like living among ghosts. (You're not certain who is less real; them, or you.)
You deal with it about as well as you've always dealt with anything, which is to say, disastrously poorly. You avoid Asriel more often than not,claiming that you're tired, you have a headache, you need to go over that thing Toriel talked about during your lessons yesterday one more time (and he brightens up and says that's okay, we can do it together! and the way his face falls when you make it clear that no, you want to be alone, would break your heart if you had one).
Avoiding Asriel leaves you with frustratingly few options to keep yourself occupied - and you do need to occupy yourself, or your thoughts threaten to drag you to places you never want to go again. Reading or studying isn't tactile enough. You need to do something, you're crawling out of your skin with the need to be active, but there are so very few things you can do. You clean your room several times over. You knit until your fingers start cramping. You even brave the garden again, pulling up weeds with vehemence.
During one of these desperate searches for household chores you find yourself in the kitchen, just as Toriel is preparing dinner. She pauses as she sees you, greeting you warmly. She does not ask if you want to help, though she does invite you to stay and observe.
You do.
...she's making snail pie. You still remember how it's done, though she is faster than you and Frisk were. Practice makes perfect, and all that.
Some ways through the preparations Asgore calls her over to the door - there's someone there to talk to her about something that sounds vaguely important, but also extremely irrelevant. Toriel quickly washes her hands and gives you a pat on the head that pretty much translates to 'run and play' before exiting the kitchen.
And then it's just you.
You really need something to do.
The cutting board is left unattended. It's practically begging for your attention.
Sneaking a peek out from the kitchen, you confirm that Toriel is still deep in conversation with her visitor, though you can't hear what they're discussing. There's only a few steps up to the counter, and you know this, know how to do this - there's no mallet but you figure you can just sort of use the flat side of the knife, and put some weight on it, if you're careful. Working with your own hands is a bit different than it was with Frisk's, but soon enough you've found the trick, methodically working your way through the bucket. The knife feels steady in your hand; it's a good one, even though it isn't yours.
You're about halfway through the bucket when there comes a sudden gasp from behind you, yanking you back into awareness of your surroundings. Your concentration slips.
So does the knife.
You cry out, more in surprise than in pain, as it skids off the shell and onto your hand, slicing across your fingers. Blood wells up along the cut, shortly followed by pain. How strange, you think, detached. How strange…
It seems somehow sharper when Frisk isn't there to share it with you.
Toriel - because of course it's her, who else? - exclaims in distress and kneels beside you, grabbing your hand to examine your injury.
"You have hurt yourself!," she frets. "You must allow me to heal you at once."
"I'm alright, really," you murmur, fighting the instinct to defensively rip your hand from her grasp and cradle it against your chest. "It's just a scratch, m-Toriel, I've had worse-"
You fall silent as she gives you a stern glance, turning your hand over in her grasp, and then calling up her magic to heal you. It tingles, and then the wound is gone without a trace, no chance of scarring at all.
"There…" she murmurs. "I believe that should do it. Does it still hurt at all?"
You experimentally flex your fingers and form a fist before shaking your head. "No, it's fine." There's no pain left either. No pain, no scar, nothing but a small bloodstain on your sleeve. Like it never happened. "… thank you."
"It is no trouble." Satisfied that you're all healed up, she stands back up. "I apologise - I startled you. I should not have left you unattended in the first place."
You frown, staring down at the floor. Her voice loses none of its worry, but gains more than a hint of exasperation.
"...Chara. We have talked about this."
This, you realise after a short moment of reflection, is not the cooking, but the knives. You're not supposed to use them. You're not allowed near sharp objects without supervision. (Toriel has taken great care to make sure there's few, if any, sharp objects in the house at all.)
"I know," you say. "I forgot."
You did. It's been…
Frisk does not have the same restrictions as you do. It's been, for lack of a better word, freeing to be trapped inside them. It's… easier, when you are two.
You are not the same child you were when you lived here. You have been with Frisk, travelling with them, helping them, been a part of them, for much too long not to be different.
Somehow, along the way, you suppose you must have grown.
You don't remember how to act, who they are expecting you to be. You don't remember who you are when you aren't Frisk's co-pilot.
Toriel hums noncommittally, bringing you back to the present.
"Are you alright?" she asks, with what seems to you a frankly unreasonable amount of worry.
"...yes?" you say, uncertain, before you realise what she's getting at. You straighten up, doing your best to look her in the eyes when you respond. "I'm fine. It was an accident, honest."
She nods, seemingly willing to accept your claim at face value. "Please be more careful in the future, my child. We all care about you very much."
"I will be," you say, and it feels half a lie. "... I care about you too."
"Well," she says, visibly pulling herself back to her good mood. You decide to follow suit. "Regardless, I'm afraid we shall have to cut this particular cooking session short. Do you know why?"
There's that particular glint in her eye and she's barely even trying to hide her grin. You ask anyways. "Why?"
"Because I goat-a go."
You stifle a snort and smile widely at her. "That one was bad even for you, mom. You could even say it was… sansationally awful." You wait for the giggle, but none comes. She just looks mildly puzzled, and with a painful twinge in your chest you realise: this Toriel has never met Sans. (has never met Frisk)
You wave her goodbye and you go to your room and pull the covers over your face and you try not to scream.
This time, they do not fear the flower. Toriel comes to save them and you look at her, you look at her, you try to see through the smile, through the act of care and compassion, through her lie.
The kid takes her hand even though they're trembling, and she leads them just as before.
There's the first froggit, and you tighten your grip around the stick and tell the kid here, like this, and then there is only dust. Toriel tries to chastise them and all you can think is hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.
She leaves you alone and everything turns to dust in your path. It's easy, so easy. You think it may have been the easiest thing you've ever done. Prove yourself, she'd said, and you are, you are. The dust covers everything, sticking to your boots like mud, and it doesn't matter, none of it matters, how could any of this matter when you don't even care? You hit them and they crumble and with each one you grow stronger, with each one it gets easier.
I- I want to stop, the kid tells you, when you're nearly done, when there can't possibly be that many left.
No, you tell them dismissively. We can't stop now. She's stronger than both of us, remember? If we try again like this she'll kill us. Do you want to die again?
You throw the memory of the fire at them, the pain, and they flinch and nearly whimper.
Of course I don't! they protest. But I don't- I don't think I like this plan anymore-
The phrasing and their tone is so shatteringly familiar and you don't want to remember. Your vision goes blindingly white and you shout at them to shut up, shut up SHUT UP until they stop talking and stop interfering and leave you alone, until they retreat to a corner of your shared mind and you can barely feel them anymore.
The following encounter you hit twice as hard and don't bother dodging. The pain is insignificant, you have enough of a HP buffer that the damage is negligible, and if the kid winces when you let them back in and they have to walk on their scraped-up legs again, good. They deserve it.
You erase everyone, one by one, until the ruins are empty and there is nothing left, there is no one left, you are as strong as you can get and you are ready. You throw the stick away to replace it with the toy knife, which is not good but will have to be good enough, and then you enter Toriel's house.
She gives you pie. You stow it away for later use. She tries to tell you things about snails, but neither of you care. She wants you to stay, but you can't trust her anymore. The kid insists that they need to leave.
You watch as her face goes stony and her gaze distant, follow her down into the basement where you ready the knife, held properly this time, facing her head-on as she pretends she's doing it for your own good, and you tap right back into that rage, and-
It only takes one blow.
Everything slows to a stop. Her eyes widen- she staggers backwards, and this time, when she looks at you, she sees you. The kid wants to cover their eyes, look away, but you don't even blink.
"Y-you… really hate me that much…?" she says, voice thin and trembling.
Yes, you think, at the same time as the human says no. Your fingers clench tighter around the knife.
"Now I see who I was protecting by keeping you here. Not you… but them." Her face twists into a desperate smile, she falls to her knees and you know her now, you know her like you've never known her before as she dissolves into dust, soul floating up and cracking apart, and then she's gone.
The rage bleeds out of you, giving way to an aching emptiness. There is a void in you. You drop to your knees, hit the ground too hard but you don't feel it, the pain is not enough to penetrate the numbness. You press your hand to the dust, spread all over the floor. It's- She's-
… but it's just dust. You sift through it. It's just dust. You smear your hand across your shirt - there's a choked-off sound of protest but you push it away, you push them away - it's just dust.
Who's the monster now?
There's no reply, and you don't care. There's no one here to reply anymore, no one here except you, endless piles of dust, and the kid, who has gone entirely silent, save for what you think might be muffled sobs.
Somehow, you hadn't expected you could actually do it.
It isn't real, you tell them, but they don't shut up. This isn't real. None of this is real.
If it was real you would be feeling something.
You get back up, dispassionately stepping over the pile. You have a job to do. You're getting out of here.
The door to the ruins open easily to your touch, releasing you out into the cold. You calculate the distance from here to the capital, wonder how many people- how many monsters could live in between here and there, wonder how many of them you'd have to dust to get strong enough. Conclude probably a lot.
You're going to need a sharper knife.
The incident in the kitchen is not an isolated occurrence. There are a myriad ways that you don't quite fit right anymore, where your edges bump against the accommodations they have made for the Chara that fell down for what feels like (and in a way really is) a lifetime ago, and it chafes.
You cut down on conversations. You keep avoiding Asriel.
You meet your own gaze in the mirror and your skin is too pale, your hair hangs too flat, and there's no one else looking out at your from behind those eyes. It's me, you think helplessly, it's you, it's you, this was only ever you and now you are alone and how are you supposed to bear that? How are you supposed to live with that, when you barely ever wanted to live to begin with?
This place isn't real. It's some ironic twist of fate, some sick joke the world is playing on you - dangle everything you've ever wanted right before your eyes and make it absolutely unbearable and see how long you make it before you off yourself again, before you…
before you-
You don't know how to function without Frisk anymore, and you have always been, at the very core of you, a selfish creature.
You only know of one way to make sure you get to meet them again.
There are buttercups in the garden.