.
ONE BY ONE
Chapter 7: Love
It was so cold.
Frisk stood within the decayed red radiance of Chara's soul, his muscles clotted with paralysis. There was no longer any wind; his every breath felt recycled, the chill scraping his throat raw. The light and the shadows teased at his skin, scraping him like fingernails, and he could hear the sounds of sharpening metal somewhere in that roiling black expanse, knives on a whetstone amidst low, satisfied laughter. The cavern had dropped away into infinity. The light showed none of the crags or cracks of the stony floor, just a smooth red plane that bore up their feet. Frisk's blood pounded in his ears, and he realized that it wasn't just his own heartbeat he was hearing; the darkness pulsed, too, every beat shaking him to the marrow. He felt caged in Chara's suffocating presence.
Chara himself stood before him, in Asriel's skin. His flesh rippled and contorted for sickening split-second periods as though something was trying to get comfortable underneath. Lights crawled like fireflies under his fur. His smile was mannequin-stiff. Darkness lay over those round, wet eyes like an oil slick.
"Determination."
Chara clenched his – Asriel's – knuckles. His bones popped like gunshots.
"The soul's greatest strength and its dearest secret. The power to remake the world through your own will. For your own reasons. But if your will should falter, and your reason should escape you, then what remains? I do. 'I have to do this.' 'I have no other choice.' 'I won't let anything stand in my way.' Those thoughts. Those words. That feeling...that's me."
Asriel's voice, but Chara's words, and with that maddened, hollow noise smeared over it like a patina of static.
"Pursue your goals without mercy. Fill your heart with LOVE. Call my name and let me in. I will appear at your side. And with your help, we will, in time, find the ending we desire.
"Thank you."
Chara grinned with Asriel's face; the teeth were far too sharp. Frisk felt every unseen eye in the dark train on him. His knees buckled from the weight of that collective gaze.
"Your power awakened me from death. My 'human soul.' My 'determination.' At last, I could reclaim them for my own. Because of your perseverance. Your refusal to let Asriel's sacrifice be. I was finally able to answer his call.
"At first, I was so confused." The darkness shuddered. "Our plan had failed, hadn't it? Why was I brought back to life? But then. With your guidance. I realized the cause of my reincarnation.
"Regret."
The light of Chara's soul flared ever brighter. It bored through Frisk's eyes as if it meant to tunnel out the back of his skull.
"The plan I had laid with Asriel ended in disaster. Our journey to the surface cost us everything. My body had expired. My soul shattered alongside his own. And yet, somehow, I continued. In whispers, and rumor, and the shadows of others' determination. Waiting for my name to be called. To strike down everything that had wronged me.
"I was so certain I had found my chance with you. Your regret. Your dissatisfaction. Your endless resets. I knew you would eventually succumb to my encouragement. You would kill out of frustration. You would call my name. And together, we would eradicate the enemy and become strong. I was patient. I suffered through your every hollow, superficial friendship. I heard Asriel pointlessly howl for me at the end of every cycle. Begging me not to leave.
"And then." His smile faded. "I started to listen."
Chara placed his hand to his chest. The isle of red became specked by countless others, white flecks glimmering like scattered pearls.
"It must have been so hard, Asriel. Having to spend all those years with the weight of your betrayal. And me, no longer sure of what I was, or why I was here. That day. That mistake. We've been haunted by it ever since, haven't we? But I'm here now. I finally made it back."
Frisk managed to take a step back, and the shadows snapped at him like jaws. Chara's gaze lanced through him once more.
"Your path guided you to that doctor. It allowed me to relive that fateful day. Gave me a chance to recover what I had lost. And then, it became clear what I had to do. Seven human souls. Every monster soul. All are contained in this body. And all are irrelevant." He pointed one finger at Frisk's chest, and Frisk felt that warmth in his heart squirm, as if Chara had cast out a line, tried to tear it out of him. "There's only one that I need. Asriel's true soul. Not this worthless amalgamate. Once I have that, we'll be ready to continue at last. We'll finish what we started, and then some. No more of this pointless world. No more of these unnecessary people. No more time. No more space. Only us. And maybe then, I can forgive him for what he's done. The both of us can finally rest."
Chara held out a hand. The light of his soul coalesced around his palm. He grabbed hold, tugged, and, with a sound like tearing gristle, produced another kitchen knife, the red aura around its blade so fierce that it seemed to be aflame.
"And so we come to the end."
He tested the knife's weight. He gave it an experimental swing. Even though he was yards away, Frisk could almost feel himself bisected by its movement.
"After all you've done, you at least deserved to know why this was happening to you. Now, don't struggle."
Chara advanced on him, the knife at his side.
"We want to take good care of that soul."
Frisk was riveted into place by the light; as Chara grew closer he could almost hear it squirming in his ears, an eye-watering mosquito's whine. He looked at the stick in his shaking hand. The laughter in the stagnant air just grew louder. Every exit had been smothered. Chara had cut away every moment but this one.
He looked into Asriel's blackened eyes. He appeared to come to a decision.
Frisk turned on his heel and walked away.
"...what are you doing?"
Frisk stopped on the periphery, where the shadows snapped and swam. They looked ready to pull him limb from limb. He held his hand to his chest, and warm red light spilled out between his fingers. It was a stronger, cleaner shade than Chara's diseased crimson, and though it couldn't hope to match the strength of his glow, it was enough. Guided by the light of his soul, he stepped into the writhing dark.
The blackness fell over him in curtains, it crashed down in tarry waves. Reaching out with tendrils and tongues to try and swallow him whole. Chara remained where he was; that parasitic dark would have done the job just as easily as his knife, because it too was Chara, all here was Chara, everything had been devoured by his soul and the silhouette it cast and its mad roiling and hollow ceaseless laughter were nothing but echoes of his own. But Frisk walked through it without fear. He'd stopped being afraid of the dark a long time ago.
Every shadow was repelled by his luminescent soul, though the small pool of light at his feet convulsed and wriggled as they tried to force their way in. Frisk took his time. He kept his eyes on the ground. He occasionally scraped his shoe across the cavern floor. Though all topography here had been cut away, leaving the world smooth and featureless as a placid lake, he could still feel the jags and contours of the stone underfoot.
At last he found what he was looking for. A spot where the cavern had cracked open long ago, exposing the soft earth underneath. Frisk gave the sides of the crack a few taps to judge the width. Then, he got down on his knees and started to dig.
The light around him held steady. He could feel Chara's gaze on his back, as though he was trying to peer around Frisk to get a better look. Chara himself had apparently lost patience; his footsteps resumed, that insectile hum grew louder. Frisk took his time. He clawed at the mud with his fingernails until he made a reasonably sized divot. Then, he held up his stick – the one he'd carried since the first time he fell, every nick and groove where it had always been, the wood still lively and green. But its fight was over. There was nothing more it could do for him.
He planted the stick in the hole he'd dug. He tamped the earth back down. Chara was now only a dozen paces away. He raised his knife as Frisk stood up again.
Frisk looked over his shoulder, and Chara stopped in his tracks. His smile curdled at the edges.
By now, Frisk had endured his journey more times than he could count. He'd been repeatedly pushed to the brink of death and sometimes beyond it; he had endured freezing cold and broiling heat; he'd been made to let down and let go of people he'd come to care for. He had whiled out the days in a place with no time, where the hulk of Mt. Ebott smothered the sky. He had listened to the collective misery and grief of an entire civilization over so many repetitions that he could quote their story down to the word. And worst of all, he'd saved them from that grief, only to cast them down into the dark again and again, all for the sake of someone who kept pushing him away for reasons he hadn't been able to understand, no matter how hard he'd tried.
And yet, despite it all, he still treasured every moment. The temptation of violence had never grabbed hold of him; the tenderness in his heart had never left. No matter the struggles or hardships he'd faced, he'd strived to do the right thing – and when, in spite of all his good intentions, he had still hurt people, he'd felt their pain as keenly as his own. He'd ventured into places and times beyond comprehension to grab hold of this last soul, which even now trembled within his breast. For the sake of one person, he'd gone to these lengths. And now, not just that one person, but everyone he'd ever known over the course of those countless loops was endangered. Imprisoned in the blankly grinning creature that now backed away from him, one shuffling step at a time.
Frisk turned around fully. He stuck his hands in his pockets and scuffed his shoe across the floor, just as he'd watched Sans do. He took a deep breath and let it out. He remembered why he was here today. He held onto his hopes. He felt everyone's dreams.
e
d
w i t h
N.
Frisk's eye burned.
The shadows fled up and away like a swarm of bats from the scarlet flame that erupted in Frisk's left eye – a heatless, continuous candle that beat back even the poisoned light from Chara's soul. For a moment, that rigid smile on Asriel's face broke. Then it returned again, wider than ever.
"Curious to the very end."
The dark leapt in and consumed him. He re-emerged much further away, standing thin as a tally mark in the nothingness.
"Childish as it sounds, I always did want to try magic for myself."
Scraping metal filled the air.
"But I think we've both had enough of Asriel's immature tricks. This time, let's try something a little more...practical."
At first they were only a suggestion, a scrape and a spark in the inky void. Then Frisk saw them as if they'd always been there, countless knives twinkling like fangs all around him, gently rotating as if suspended by string. As one, they twisted and faced him point-first, quivering with cold purpose.
Chara giggled, and snapped his fingers, and the blades shot towards Frisk all at once.
Something erupted from the ground and swiped them all aside. They scattered across the unseen floor, made a sad chorus of clatter, and disappeared.
Chara's laughter stopped. Even the shadows' movement froze.
Behind Frisk, the planted stick twitched. That was all the warning it gave before exploding into a riot of twisted roots and barreling trunk that threatened to send even Frisk himself flying; the root bed emerged under his feet, almost cradled him, and carried him away from the twig's explosive growth. The creak and groan of new wood filled the cavern and the shadows fled from his flaring eye as the tree's roots tore up the stone – and that meant there was stone to tear up, that new life repairing the world Chara had obliterated, forming earth so that it had somewhere to grow, restoring the cavern's ceiling so that this canopy of rich green leaves could spread and rustle, and the bark seemed to shine from within, a soft amber that loomed through the void, until Chara stared down a trunk wide as twenty people arm in arm, roots that snaked all through the cavern and cut through his cutting dark, leaves which hung high overhead like innumerable judgmental eyes. And at the base of the tree stood Frisk, who hadn't moved an inch (though his knees were noticeably shaking from the sudden commotion – evidently he was just as surprised as Chara), the flame in his eye leaping ever higher.
Chara took another hesitant step back. He felt the roots rumble in the stone.
He smiled again.
"Asriel was right about you the first time."
The cavern screamed with sharpening.
"You really are something special."
Crackling wood met shrieking cackle as the dark consumed Chara and the knives began to fly. Thin as stilettos, huge as broadswords, slicing at Frisk from every direction and configuration. Asriel, in the throes of his power, had tried to bury Frisk in stars and lightning and rainbow light; Chara was less varied, but more focused, and his attacks continued without pause or interruption. Metal whirled, corkscrewed, flew at Frisk with gunshot quickness, each blade honed so thin that it could carve his soul from his body and his body from the world, just like what had happened to Gaster, a single blow vicious enough to send him into the void beyond time and leave only enough of him to mourn what he once was. But every blade was rebuffed. Not a single blow could land. Even as the shadows babbled and yammered and taunted him in ten thousand voices, even as Asriel's mangled body hung suspended in dozens of places as though reflected through a prism – this one with his hands splayed in wild laughter, this one hanging limp as though dangling from a gallows, one with every limb askew, one with his head all wrong, one advancing with unstoppable purpose, and all of them holding that same knife burning with the rotted light of Chara's soul – the tree defended Frisk. Somewhere in its heartwood it remembered the time it had spent in his hand, and as long as Frisk wished to live, as long as he stayed determined, the tree heard, and obliged.
Chara's voice cut through the cacophonous darkness, thin and cold as an arrowhead.
"Curious. How curious."
Roots formed walls, and cages, and lattices, and webs. The knives could barely nick the wood, and as soon as their momentum stopped they fell lifeless and vanished, but five more blades took the place of every fallen one.
"Even with all this power, at the end of all things, you still won't attack me. Do you think you can defend forever?"
One knife expanded into ten like a folding fan and whirled at Frisk with a buzzsaw whine. A root swiped them all aside, and another smashed them into the ground for good measure. The ground beneath Frisk's feet buckled and shook as knives fought, vainly, to penetrate the root bed and impale him from below.
"Hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless."
Chara and his reflections stalked through the dark like ghosts, slashing at the roots with amused idleness. His own knife carved through the wood like butter, its edge rendered impossibly sharp by the whetstone of his soul, but for every one he slashed, ten more took their place. The sound of new growth clashed with the scrape and spark.
"Not even your soul can withstand this level of determination for long. It's your own life burning in that flame. As for me? I have countless souls to draw on. And even if I didn't, my own would be enough."
Knives slender as needles weaved themselves from nothing and descended on Frisk from overhead. The root bed heaved and carried him aside, and the blades vanished like smoke. Tendrils of wood coiled around him and straightened his back with something like affection.
"You survived this long because of your determination. That doctor survived because of his invention. Asriel survived because of luck, but me? I had nothing. My body was gone. My soul was gone. I had been let down and left behind by everyone I knew, but I was still here. That comedian asked me what I am, and this is my answer – I am still here. I will continue until I get what I want. As long as you're standing in my way, I'll fight you. And I will not stop."
It smelled like regret and old iron.
"I will never stop."
It smelled like sickness and sweet lemons.
"Even if I have to kill you a million times. Even if I have to kill you for a million years. I will never, ever stop!"
The screech and the clatter. The scrape and the cackle. Black cacophony. Endless din. It smelled like something Frisk couldn't remember. It smelled like something Frisk tried to forget.
Chara's movements were growing frenzied. His hallucinatory presence hanging in the void convulsed and shook. The blades turned twisted, serrated, attacking him from unseen angles, but the coiled serpents of tree roots kept up with effortless ease. One knife the size of a tree itself burst from nowhere with the dark still clinging to its blade like grease and fell on Frisk like a guillotine, but a root merely snatched it up, waved it in front of Chara almost playfully – look what I've got – and squeezed until the blade shattered and returned to where it came. The fire in Frisk's eye leapt ever higher. The tree's growth was relentless. Chara stood with the roots lashing and snapping at his feet. He was starting to look out of breath, and horribly confused at how this was so.
Then, Frisk heard a footstep.
Chara was there, on the root bed behind him, knife raised, peeling back Asriel's muzzle to show a nightmare of fangs. A solid wall of knives twinkled in front of Frisk with points out. Nowhere to run. No way to defend.
Frisk held his ground.
An instant later, the root bed burst up and enfolded him like a cocoon. Chara's knife barely nicked that barrier. The other knives harmlessly pinged right off.
Frisk stood there in the roots' embrace, the light from his eye staining the wood strawberry-red. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. His hands were slicked with sweat inside his pockets. Outside the cocoon, it didn't sound like Chara's composure was faring much better – he snarled and hacked wildly at the shield, but new wood grew to replace every inch of damage he did.
Then, he laughed.
"This is your final tactic? Doing nothing?" Frisk heard him pace around the cocoon, scraping his knife on the wood. "All I need to do is wait for your determination to run out. And I can wait for a long, long time."
Rotted red light seeped in through the cracks between the roots. It shifted and skittered as Chara paced around him.
"You have no idea how frustrating it was to endure these loops alongside you. Listening to Asriel beg for me to come back, only to turn on me every single time. As if I was the one who'd betrayed him." The wood near Frisk's cheek buckled as Chara stabbed the knife in. "I couldn't have made our plan any clearer. He knew what the consequences would be. I even took measures to show him what the world out there was really like, so he could act without hesitation or regret. And he still faltered. Kill or be killed – that's a lesson he learned too late. We're both like this because of his failure. That's the person you wanted to save. No matter how many times he told you to leave."
Chara fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, freer of that veil of twisted noise. It sounded more like Asriel's.
"He was always so sentimental. Even at the end, if he'd just left my body there and ran, he might have made it back safely." He grew quieter still. "...why didn't he do that? Why couldn't I stop him? Why do you keep trying to help him even though he pushes you away? I can't...I don't understand."
The harsh red light dimmed.
"Why aren't you saying anything?"
Frisk leaned his head against the inside of the cocoon. It had grown hard to hear Chara's voice.
"You were calling me all this time. And I answered you. I'm right here, Asriel." A long pause. "Aren't you happy to see me again?"
Frisk reached out and placed one hand against the wall of the cocoon. The roots trembled and slid away. On the other side he saw Chara, staring off to the side, his free hand pressed to his chest. His smile was gone. Without it, he looked more melancholic than Asriel had ever been.
Then his head snapped round to Frisk, eyes wide in shock. The shadows leapt up and swallowed him.
"Did you think you could take me by surprise? Unlikely."
The haze of hiss was back over his voice, but now his detachment sounded forced. Though he was far away, the light of his soul burned bright, and Frisk could see him smiling once again.
He recognized that smile. The same one Asriel wore. The mask he used to hide his fear.
"This battle is no longer a productive use of my time." He raised a hand and the air started to scrape. "I've humored you long enough. Now, I'll harness the full power of all these souls, and end things in one stroke." His fingers twitched. "Don't worry. I can assure you, there are far worse ways to go."
Knives streaked out of the dark. The tree roots swatted them aside.
It felt somewhat anticlimactic.
Not only had the blades' velocity slowed – the roots' swipe had an almost lazy air – but there weren't even as many of them as there'd been at Chara's peak. Some of them had barely found their mark; they'd harmlessly passed through the ground several inches to Frisk's left or right. Asriel's features twisted in confusion. Chara raised a hand again.
More knives. Another defense. Their clattering fall sounded embarrassed.
"...what's going on?"
Chara snarled and swiped his hand down. A stray handful of blades missed Frisk completely.
"It doesn't matter how powerful your soul is. I should be able to kill you with a twitch. None of these souls are calling out to you. I silenced all their voices! What is going on!?"
The shadows quaked and muttered. Then, Frisk heard a strangled gasp from where Chara stood. He tilted his head, the flame from his eye spitting sparks. Then, he felt it. Warmth from his chest. Enough to beat back even the bitter cold of Chara's presence.
He looked down, and saw the ivory light streaming from his heart. Resonating with the blood-red pool in which Chara stood, forming those firefly-bright motes that swam through the redness, blotted it out. Asriel calling out to himself, across both their bodies. Asriel blocking the power of the other souls.
"No."
Chara gripped the knife so tight that Asriel's fingers threatened to snap.
"No, no, this isn't happening. Again? Asriel, you're doing this to me again!?"
His composure was completely gone now; his voice cracked even through the darkness' snarling fuzz. He beat on his chest like it was a malfunctioning radio, to no avail. If anything, the white swarm at Chara's feet only grew brighter.
"You're my friend! You don't even know him!" He looked up at Frisk; his whole face trembled. "You've been calling out to me all this time. I was finally about to make things right! Why are you stopping me now!?"
"He hates to see people get hurt."
Frisk's voice was soft as ever, but slid through the dark as easily as the tree roots beneath his feet.
"You're his best friend." Frisk's burning eye illuminated the sympathy in his face. "You know that better than anyone."
Chara's – Asriel's – mouth hung open. His clouded eyes shone overbright. He looked on the verge of tears. Then, he grit his teeth, clutched his head, bent down low. The shadows buzzed like a subwoofer. A distortion of noise that rattled Frisk's heart in his ribcage like a pea in a tin can. The darkness grew wild. It swirled in a blue-black sea.
Chara threw back his head and screamed into the sky, and the dark caught that sound, echoed and magnified it ten thousand times over, so that even with his hands clapped over his ears Frisk felt like his skull would crack in two; the sound reverberated through the blackness, and gathered, and coalesced. Frisk looked up and thought he saw the stars – innumerable twinkles in that glossy flow. Then he heard scraping metal, and realized that they were yet more knives, more than all the others Chara had thrown at him combined and then some, poised to fall like a false rain and obliterate everything in their path. Chara's soul flared fierce enough to smother the other interloping lights. The metal overhead quivered like a prelude.
But Frisk still felt Asriel's presence within him. Not words, but a suggestion. A lingering sentiment – be brave. Keep moving.
He took a deep breath and started to walk.
The knives fell and deafened him immediately. An endless sleet of clanging steel. They hit the ground and were consumed like the rest of Chara's magic, but even on the way down the maddened music of their edges cutting against one another was enough to make Frisk's teeth shake in their sockets. He should have been reduced to mincemeat in moments. But he kept walking. He maintained a steady pace. And, though they would sometimes miss him by a mere inch, they missed him nonetheless – that lethal rain hitting the ground everywhere except where Frisk stood.
Chara stood alone in the isle of his soul and watched with horror as Frisk approached. That crimson flame burning brighter through streaks of silver. He could feel the souls straining against Asriel's skin. He looked at his own knife; the glow around the blade was dimming fast.
"I can't accept this. I will not accept this."
He looked at the continuous downpour of blades. He looked behind him at the twisting shadows. Frisk's flame bore down on him. Chara clutched his chest, seemed to gather up his own light; the pool around him shrank, pulled into Asriel's body. Red pinpricks glowed deep within the writhing black that covered Asriel's eyes.
And there was a feeling of displacement, of time itself ripping down the middle, when Chara summoned his determination and said,
"Again."
This was the only place in the Underground where you could see the sky. If you placed your back against the wall of this dank cavern, heedless to the stones scraping against your spine, and craned your head up just so, you would see it – that thin blue crescent at the outer edge of the cave mouth above. That merest hint of color. It would disappear completely at night. It would never be enough to see the stars.
But sunlight lanced in anyway, and pooled in the center of this cave, where the earth lay rich and he lay flat on his back. His eyes wide and staring at nothing. For a minute, it hurt too much to even blink.
He heard distant birdsong. The sound entering the cave and falling down here. Just as he had fallen.
The climb up Mt. Ebott had been easier than he'd expected. It had helped to think of it as just taking a walk. Put one foot in front of the other, until he reached the end. So even when the trail became overgrown, and the wind started to bite through his shirt, and the birdsong sounded like a goodbye, none of it mattered – what was important was that movement, one step after the next, to continue until he stopped.
He'd made a mistake.
If he had stuck to the trail, things would have been different. But the wind had begun to blow strong enough to make his teeth chatter and the cave looked inviting and not too dark, so he stepped in just until he could warm himself back up again. Then he'd taken another step, and another, and the unseen root had snagged at his ankle and sent him tumbling to the ground – except there was no ground, just empty air that went on for what felt like miles, and he'd been so shocked at his fall that he didn't even cry out before his back smashed into the soft earth at the bottom of the hole. Soft or not, it had still been enough to leave him paralyzed down here, his throat somehow incapable of drawing in anything more but the merest sips of air, his limbs splayed and unmoving.
The same place, the same thing. He drew in enough breath to find his voice, and started to cry for help.
He couldn't remember why he'd thought anyone would answer. He couldn't remember why he'd wanted them to. Maybe it had been the pain; it was certainly intense, he'd almost forgotten what it even felt like to hurt. Maybe it had been the thought of the sun going down and burying him in the dark, and him still lying here, feeling his life trickle out of him by inches. But this time, he knew someone would answer. So he called out.
His voice was thin and reedy as before. Made fragile as glass by his fall. He was still disgusted by the weakness in that voice as it limped around the cave. He pushed it away from himself, pretended that it didn't actually belong to him – this wasn't a voice, these weren't words, they were just noise, and so it was okay if that noise went on. It didn't have anything to do with him. He didn't need to be ashamed of it.
Before long, he heard cautious footsteps patter through the cave. Their owner remaining silent, still unsure of what he'd find. But Chara knew exactly who it was, this time.
This hadn't been the solution he'd wanted. Having to share Asriel with the rest of the world didn't appeal to him. But now he had the benefit of foresight – he wouldn't be shocked at this strange child's appearance, wouldn't have that moment of disbelief that all the stories about monsters were true. He wouldn't immediately start thinking of the opportunity in this moment. He'd take Asriel's arm and follow him home. He'd thank him as soon as he found his voice. It was important to make a good first impression.
Inch by agonizing inch, he turned his head. The footsteps were drawing close. That white silhouette emerging from the dark. And, at last, he saw-
But it refused.
He snapped back into the cold and the crashing shadow; he gasped for breath as if he'd just emerged from deep water. He nearly stabbed himself with his own knife as he clutched his burning chest; he'd forgotten he was holding it. He felt himself in the wrong skin. Asriel's body again. Back here again. Frisk here again, closer than ever, that dancing flame bearing down on him.
The knives' downpour had slowed. They were missing Frisk by feet now, not just inches, and even their blades were starting to deteriorate – in that hail of metal it was possible to make out knives that were warped, dulled, bent. Frisk either didn't notice or didn't care. His patient step continued. The dark cringed away from him. Chara looked down at his own knife and saw the glow around the blade had dimmed to a flicker. His soul's light had started to ebb.
He didn't give up. He stayed determined.
He stared down Frisk with his stolen eyes. He sucked in another burning breath. And then, that sense of division, of broken time, when he held onto his heart and said,
"Again."
Here were the tricks he had taught himself: do what people want, and they'll go away. Smile until everything seems funny. Avoid eye contact when possible; they might see what you're thinking. Remain silent unless spoken to; everyone prefers a quiet child.
He found himself drawing a picture of a flower. A basic thing, just a group of oblongs sloppily colored in, but that was another trick; keep up appearances, keep your hands busy, and they'd leave you alone. And when he drew these pictures, he remembered the smell of the flowers' pollen. Despite everything, he still treasured that scent. That bittersweet citrus.
His head snapped up and he saw that he was back in their bedroom – only it wasn't really theirs, nothing in here belonged to him, but this wasn't the time to dwell on that. His hand, his hand, went up to his chest, and he felt the cool metal of the locket press against his skin. A sizable jump, then. Asriel hadn't given him this until several months had passed.
(Knock, knock, knock.)
Another thing he couldn't understand. Everyone in this house knocked at the bedroom door if he kept it shut. He didn't know why they wouldn't just open it; this wasn't his room. And there was no mistaking that soft, timid knock in particular. Only one person could be on the other side of that door.
He'd made a mistake.
It was impossible not to draw attention down here. The entire underground was endlessly overjoyed by his presence alone. Everywhere he looked he saw smiles that made his own feel painted on. And yet, instead of enjoying their company, he'd read the stories in Waterfall, and lingered before the plaques that told the legends of human and monster souls. At mealtimes, when this strange family had asked him about his day, he'd replied with prodding questions about the nature of the barrier. And Asriel – Asriel, who clung to him like glue, with his gardening tools and his video camera and his permanent pathetically eager smile – he'd watched, and waited, and gauged just how far he could be pushed. How much he was willing to sacrifice for a friend.
(Knock, knock, knock.)
Asriel would never open the door if he knew Chara was in there. He respected Chara's privacy. Once, as an experiment, Chara had waited until after bedtime and asked Asriel to go to the kitchen and get him a glass of water. Then, he'd shut the door behind him and wouldn't open it again, not when Asriel knocked, not when he started to whisper Chara's name. He'd gone to sleep and woken up several hours later to find Asriel's bed still empty; in the hall outside he'd found Asriel curled up and snoring and shivering on the floor, the glass of water beside him. He hadn't been able to get back to sleep after that. He'd felt sick for the rest of the night.
He understood those feelings now. Forget the surface. Forget his tricks. Hold this moment together until it destroyed that freezing nightmare in his future. If he just stayed determined, and let this timeline heal, it would make everything right. He put his drawing aside. He clambered off the bed, and walked across the room, and finally opened the door for-
But it refused.
Chara let out a cheated scream as the future encircled him once again, and then screamed louder at the convulsions in Asriel's body; the souls had grown restless, they were trying to force their way out of Asriel's skin like boils, his body bulged in unnatural places full of searing light. Frisk continued his advance. The rain of knives had slowed to a drizzle. Some with blades bent at right angles, some so heavy with rust they fell apart before even hitting the ground, some without blades at all, just bare handles that bounced once and disappeared. Rust crawled across Chara's knife like fungus. Frisk's blazing eye fell on him and erased his own soul's light completely.
He tried to run and couldn't. His whole body felt like it would come flying apart at the least jostle. His chest buckled and heaved, but he still remained determined, stolen hands pressed against stolen skin to hold in his stolen souls, and once more that feeling of tear and shatter, time and space cracking apart when he raised his stolen voice and cried,
"Again!"
He'd made a mistake.
He realized his error the moment he felt the sun on his back. Even before he felt himself wearing Asriel's skin again, or smelled the pollen, or heard the riot of screams around him, that sunlight was all the warning he needed. There was only one time when he'd felt that sensation after he'd fallen into the underground. The worst time.
Blows struck him from every direction at once, with fists, with feet, with gardening equipment. Asriel's body – their shared body – buckled and bent. Asriel was in control right now, and to Chara the pain was far away, it was like the sun had been when he'd stared up at that hole when he'd first fallen down, it was certainly present but still too dim to reach him, but he could still feel Asriel's body cracking apart under the humans' violent intent. Even with all this power, Asriel was being beaten to death. Monsters were so terribly fragile.
The village with its squat houses and blue skies and the smell of sweet lemons. The sunlight warm on his back. The body lying in the flowers several feet away.
Dying the first time hadn't been so bad. It was painful, but the pain had been expected, necessary, and that was what he'd kept telling himself even as the poison had run through him like a river of acid and turned his insides to flame. But this – this hadn't been expected. When the doors of these houses had swung open and that wave of noise had engulfed them both, he'd been so certain that Asriel would listen to him and put all this power to use. He'd told him over and over that this was what they both wanted. The gathered souls, the broken barrier. The monsters could re-emerge into the sunlight at last. The fact that they'd do so over the burning coals of this village hadn't been stated outright, but absolutely implied. And if Asriel wouldn't do it to save the monsters, then he'd at least do it to save himself. A little fear would provide excellent incentive. Asriel was always so afraid.
But then, at the crucial moment, his willpower had turned solid as a cliffside and Chara had run right into it. Control lost, movements paralyzed. He'd been rendered mute by his own fury. Forced to watch as Asriel weathered the blows, and picked up his body, and walked off so they could die again. Pointless. Pointless.
A foot smashed against the side of Asriel's face and half their shared vision went dark. Asriel kept crawling toward Chara's body in the flowers. Chara could still feel his smile on their shared face.
He tried to maintain his composure. Even now, he was sure it wasn't too late. His soul whispered to Asriel's own. Fine, he said, if you don't want to kill them then just run, forget the body, what they do with it is their own business. We'll think of something else later.
But Asriel wouldn't listen. Chara wasn't even sure if he was being heard. He felt the relentless future tearing away his every second chance.
Ignore these voices; they're nothing but noise. Ignore these people; they're nothing but shadows. He smashed against the walls of his own mind, he shouted without a voice. He told Asriel to ignore that thing lying amidst the flowers, it wasn't his friend, it was never anyone's friend, it was just trash that no one had ever bothered to clean up. This surging mob, this blinding sun, this cloying scent. Asriel's smile implacable as he approached that body, and Chara could see the smile reflected in his own clouded, twinkling eye. He tried to make himself heard. He screamed himself deaf. Leave it behind. Just run. Save yourself. You have to save-
But it refused.
Frisk stood over him.
Chara knelt on the shadow-blanketed earth, head bowed, hands limp at his sides. Rust drifted down like snow. In the distance, the great tree's movements had finally ceased. The only sound was Chara's hoarse, rattling breath, which came from him and him alone; the darkness no longer amplified his voice, and every shadow hung ashen and exhausted in the unmoving air. His soul had been reduced to a dim ember tattooed over Asriel's heart.
His knife was barnacled with rust. He held it up and it fell apart in his hand.
He snarled, lunged, and smashed his fists against Frisk's chest. Asriel's muzzle peeled back to show his fangs, his face twisted with hate. He struck Frisk with everything he had, but even though Frisk's scrawny frame could scarcely withstand a stiff breeze, he barely reacted to Chara's blows. Physical attacks were not a monster's forté.
"Why won't you hit me!?" he cried. "Fight back! Fight back!"
Frisk didn't say a word. The flame in his eye guttered and died. Chara clutched the front of Frisk's shirt, then let go and slid down, hands over his stomach as if he suddenly felt sick. When he spoke again, his words were toneless and low.
"This isn't fair."
Frisk knelt down in front of him, so they could see each other eye to eye. Chara looked up at him, and that grin crept across Asriel's face again, desperate, slightly crazed.
"You want to see him again, don't you?"
Frisk nodded.
"Tough. I won't let you. And you can't make me." His grin widened. "Asriel can stop me from killing you, but I can still keep him here. All I need to do is outlast you. I still win. I still win."
"It's all right."
Chara's grin flickered.
Frisk said, "I can stay here as long as you need."
The two of them sat across from each other, at the bottom of the erased and lightless world. Frisk shivered a little in the cold, but his expression remained unchanged. Chara's breathing started to hitch.
"You." He swallowed. "Y-you think you can just wait me out? That's...that's funny."
Frisk said nothing. He looked concerned.
"I have much more patience than you do. I won't get bored, or lonely. I've been waiting like this for so...for s-s-so l-long..."
Chara hiccupped and covered his face. Feeling out the contours, as though trying to see it again with his fingertips.
"This was supposed to be different," he sobbed. "I don't want to feel like this anymore. I'm so alone in here...everywhere I go, I'm always all alone..."
Frisk grabbed him and held him tight.
For a moment, Chara went rigid in his embrace. Then, he laughed, long and low.
"Oh, are we doing this now? I've been with you all this time, remember? You can't fool me. Hugging's just an easy way to get what you...what are you doing?"
Frisk's body shook against Chara's own. His face lay buried in Chara's – Asriel's – bony shoulder. Chara felt moisture seeping through his sleeve.
"Why are you crying? You're not like Asriel. You don't cry without a reason." He paused, then smirked. "Oh. I get it. You're trying to pretend it's Asriel you're holding right now. Sorry, but tears won't bring him out. And I'm not the person you want-"
Frisk gripped him tighter and shook his head. Chara heard him talk, his voice choked with tears:
"It's horrible, isn't it? It's the worst feeling in the world."
Chara blinked. His breathing turned funny for a moment.
"I'm sorry," Frisk said. "You were calling me all this time. I'm sorry I took so long to answer."
"...stop it." Chara's chest shuddered. "Let go of me."
Frisk kept holding on.
"You don't understand how I feel." His voice cracked like ice. "You don't...y-you d-d-don't..."
Chara threw his head back and started to wail.
What he did couldn't even be called crying, exactly – the sound burst out of him like the steam and high whistle from a teakettle, forlorn and thin at first, then rising into an anguished howl that flung itself into the furthest reaches of this spaceless cavern. His body convulsed against Frisk as he screamed; his hands stayed limp at his sides; his tears streamed freely and lost themselves in the tangled thatch of Frisk's hair. The sound of all that accumulated misery wasn't even in his own voice, it was Asriel's, rendered as bent and warped as the blades of Chara's knives, but as it echoed and resounded through the cavern it doubled back on itself, became altogether different, as though that sound was trying, and failing, to recover the person that Chara used to be.
They stayed like that for a long time. Chara cried until his voice was gone and then wept for a while after. Throughout it all, Frisk didn't let go. It was only when his sniffles quieted, and his breathing approached something like a normal rhythm against Frisk's skin, that he loosened his grip, and leaned back. Chara's tears had left Asriel's fur soaked and matted. He wouldn't meet Frisk's eyes.
"Just tell me what you want."
His voice so low and broken that it was barely heard, even in this soundless place.
Frisk put a hand against his chest. Ivory light spilled out.
"We're both here for the same reason, aren't we?"
Chara wiped his eyes and nodded.
"Then, I'd like to talk to him. I think we should let him decide what to do."
Chara said nothing. But, after a moment, the last dying cinder of his blood-red soul flickered, and went out. Asriel's body slumped down, his hands on his knees.
The shadows bled away from the cavern; the darkness became mundane. Though night had fallen, Frisk could finally make out the ceiling overhead and the uneven angles of the floor underneath. The great tree rustled in an unseen breeze. Across from it, the opaque monolith of the barrier rippled and pulsed.
Asriel raised his head. His eyes were clear.
"Howdy." He tried to smile. "Your name's Frisk, right?"
Frisk took his hand. "Hi, Asriel."
After a moment, Asriel put his other hand on top of Frisk's.
"Wow," he said quietly. "You're really holding on tight."
They stayed like that, in the center of the cavern, uncertain of what else to say. Then, something at the corner of their vision made them turn their heads. The final hints of dusk had faded long ago, but new lights appeared near the peak of the barrier, pearly pinpricks whose shine strained into the cave and printed ivory amidst the stones and tangled roots. In the world outside, the stars were coming out.