Still feeling incredibly hot, Frisk decided to change their clothes to put on a thinner T-shirt and shorts. Hopefully that would make things a bit more bearable.
There was still quite a bit of time to kill left before lunch. Chara, like the weeb they were, proposed Frisk to watch some anime in the meantime. Frisk usually didn't particularly like anime, although they had nothing against it either. Yet, today, they oddly really felt like giving it a try and accepted their friend's proposal with little hesitation to the surprise of them both.
They didn't watch Mew Mew Kissie Cutie as they had already promised Alphys to watch it with her one day or another. Intsead, they let Chara pick something that they thought Frisk might like.
Frisk didn't really know how to describe what Chara made them watch. It was... The plot was a bit strange. And the artstyle was definitly weird, too. But they found it fairly enjoyable in its own way.
This is just the beginning, it gets better afterwards.
They had no doubt that Chara meant what they said, but they had no intention of making a marathon either.
Though, the human was also left wondering if-
If Undyne would like this anime ? Well it has buff people with supernatural powers and big magic weapons. That is a yes by default in her book.
"Yeah ! How did you know i was gonna say that ?" Frisk wondered.
I... I don't know ? I guess i just know you pretty well. Chara laughed it off.
Frisk grinned in reaction as they went to check on Toriel.
"Mother ?" They asked. Toriel closed her book and stabilised her reading chair to look at them. Frisk noticed a strange look in her eyes. It was like she had just seen a ghost.
"What is it, my child ?" The boss monster interrogated them, trying to chase away the thought she just had.
"I really don't feel well... Can you take me to the doctor like you said, please ?"
Toriel blinked.
"Of course my child. How about we go there after lunch ?" She proposed, getting a nod from the human. Frisk then went to play outside for a little, leaving Toriel alone with her thoughts.
Chara...
Why was Frisk reminding her so much of them lately ?
Even if she had only first met them a few weeks ago, the monster could tell they hadn't been acting quite like usual for a little while. But more importantly, the way they had been acting instead was much closer to how her second child had once been.
It was just small details really. The way they spoke a bit fancier, their posture, even little habits like the way they filled up their glass yesterday. All those little things kept piling up on top of one another to the point where sometimes, when looking at them, Toriel could swear that she was looking at Chara again if only for just a moment.
Maybe it was just because they looked quite similar physically, Chara has been gone for a long time after all.
Perhaps this was why she was so quick to propose them to go see a doctor when they told her they felt sick. After having lost Chara to a sickness, she was inclined to be particularly careful with Frisk even for something so small. She couldn't afford to lose yet another child...
"Chara ? Do you believe mom would like these ?" Frisk wondered as they had the idea of bringing her something they just stumbled upon in the grass by chance.
Whilst i am certain she would appreciate the gesture, those might have the side effect of bringing back some old memories. They pointed out.
"I just want to make her a little gift and think that those look really pretty !" They justified themself.
Well, we can agree on that. Chara mentally snickered. Alright.
The ex-queen thought that she had managed to make peace with herself regarding Asriel and Chara's deaths. Even if the memories stayed painful, she believed that she had been able to accept that it had happened by now.
But when she was around Frisk, she at times felt like Chara was right there. Just within her reach, from beyond the grave. This was a silly thought of course, and it was one she would never tell Frisk about as to not make make her child think they were causing her pain. But it was there. The painful impression that Chara was present, that they needed her, and that Toriel was unable to provide once again. Like some sort of odd motherly instinct that refused to let go even now that it was far too late for anything to be done about Chara's fate.
Her child...
Her child that she had buried herself...
It seemed that despite what she believed, she hadn't fully gotten over the incident yet. She had merely managed to restrict it to a corner of her mind, only for it come back now that she had Frisk to care for.
She would protect them. She would do her best to make sure that Frisk could live a happy life.
"Mother ?" Frisk's voice surprised her. She hadn't noticed them coming back so soon.
"Look, i've gotten something for you !" They handed her a bouquet of flowers. How sweet of them !
Toriel's newborn smile froze almost immediatly as she looked at the flowers with a bit more attention. Those were not any flowers. Those were golden flowers. Frisk had just gotten her golden flowers... Chara's favorites.
But most of all, their eyes... Frisk's eyes...
The look they gave her was one that already had its place in the monster's memories. It was the one she saw in Chara's eyes the day they first called her "mother". Even the color of Frisk's irises felt like it had a slightly different shade than usual.
In just the time it took for her to blink, it was gone. Frisk's look was back to normal. Was she seeing things that weren't there ? Was her imagination playing tricks on this poor old lady ?
Maybe she was a bit tired.
"Thank you, my child" She finally responded, taking the flowers and making sure not to let her voice tremble as she did.
She should probably start cooking lunch now. It would be able to distract her and the quicker it was done, the quicker Frisk's problem could be taken care of.
One lesson that was learned the hard way through Chara's tragic tale was that as monster and human bodies were composed very differently, things like diseases worked and were treated using fairly different methods from one species to another. Her child's symptoms had been severe and got worse quickly, monsters were unable to prepare any medicine that could have saved them, or at least made it less painful.
Monsterkind only disposed of limited information when it came to modern human medicine. They knew of the human body itself quite well, but human medicine like it was used nowadays did not exist before the war and whilst they had been able to collect some information via the garbage dump throughout the years, their understanding remained rather limited.
For these reasons, Toriel judged it would likely be better for Frisk if she took them to see a human doctor. Besides, Alphys was currently busy anyway.
The drive wasn't very long, around 20 minutes. It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining bright over the city. Perhaps a little too bright as Frisk kept complaining about how hot and sweaty they felt during the ride. Toriel found it quite odd that Frisk was willing to wait two hours for her to come back in the Ruins with just a few phone calls once in a while to pass the time, yet was now unable to bear the heat for such a short trip.
Frisk wasn't usually so impatient. But well, if they were unwell, it was understandable they could be in a bad mood today.
Unfortunately, Frisk would have to wait just a little longer before the doctor could receive them. Whilst she anticipated more complaints, Frisk actually managed to keep themself entertained by drawing on some paper that was left there to keep children busy.
"Hey, Chara ?" They had asked their friend mentally. "Do you want me to let you draw something ?" They proposed to lend Chara control of their hands for a little while.
No thanks. Not right now. The incorporeal child denied the offer. Toriel could get suspicious something was off if you drew things that looked too good for your standards anyway. They added as unlike them, the eight fallen human was not very good at drawing.
Not having anything else better to do, Frisk decided to try and attempt to draw something anyway on their own. After a little bit of thinking, they settled on trying to draw Toriel. They would most definitly make something that looked awful, but it might be fun to try.
Frisk surprised themself. Despite not really having any clear idea of what they were doing, they instinctively made cleaned curved lines with pretty good proportions on their first attempt. It just came naturally to them, as if it was something that had done many times before already.
Halfway through their drawing, Frisk noticed that they were using their right hand again instead of their left. If Toriel saw this she might ask herself some questions, so Frisk changed hands quickly. Well, it was true they would have to talk about this to her later on, but now wasn't the time.
Somehow, they felt like drawing had become less instinctive now that they were using their normal hand. They couldn't explain it, drawing with their right hand just felt right. It felt more natural. Which was a ridiculous thing to say for a left handed person with little drawing skills. And yet it was sincerely the way they felt.
Frisk finished the outline of their drawing. Chara said nothing, but Frisk could feel that they were fairly impressed. The human then got started on coloring and shading their drawing. Once they started shading and did a pretty good job at it, Chara finally intervened.
How are you doing that ? You haven't even tried doing shading ONCE before. They were quite baffled at what seemed like too much to be merely beginner's luck. Did Frisk magically develop a new skill again ?
Frisk shrugged. They indeed hadn't attempted shading before. They just tried something instinctively and it just... worked ? It seemed they just had this in them.
Another thing that they noticed was that the way they had drawn Toriel was similar to some manga/anime art style. This had not been intentional on their part, but examining it more closely, it actually looked quite close to Chara's own art style... Just not quite as good of course.
Maybe that was just because Chara sometimes drew things with their hands, and thus that they gained some indirect muscle memory from that ?
Frisk couldn't find any other possible explanation, so they assumed that must be it.
"Oh ! Did you draw this, my child ?" Toriel asked when her eyes turned to Frisk again and she noticed the drawing of her. "This is really good.." She added quietly, genuinely surprised to see that Frisk had apparently gotten much better at drawing since she last saw something they made.
Frisk happily nodded in response, fairly proud of themself.
Though, Toriel couldn't help but to notice the odd similarity between what Frisk had made and the way Chara used to draw. She really couldn't help but to compare the two of them at every turn recently it seemed. Maybe it was just her mind trying to handle the loss by comparing what she used to have to what she still had, to try and convince herself that things were still alright.
At the same time, it was hard to deny that the coincidences kept getting more obvious and more numerous. Frisk couldn't possibly be doing this on purpose, could they ? Why would they be imitating someone they had never got to meet ?
Shortly after, Frisk was finally received by the doctor. They described their headache and the specifics of how it felt and when did it start as well as they could, then, the doctor asked them several questions.
There were many possibles causes for headaches, ranging from being under high stress for long periods of time to lack of food/sleep or spending too much time in a row on screens every day regularly. All of those possibilities could also be influenced by other factors that depended on the person, like age or wether they had other health problems. This made identifying the cause of a headache a pretty difficult task simply because of how many different ways somebody could get one.
Yet, even after discussing for quite a long time, the older human was unable to provide a proper diagnostic. The doctor went through some old notes and reports, trying to find a case similar to the one Frisk described that had been seen in the past or some rarer causes of headache that might have slipped his mind after not having had to consider it in a diagnosis for so long. A simple headache probably wasn't worth such an extensive search, but the patient was Frisk. They had been on the news a lot the past couple weeks and they were accompanied by the ex-queen of monsters, it was a special occasion so the doctor was willing to make some extra efforts for them.
But unfortunately, even then, the doctor was unable to find anything that could explain Frisk's headache.
It seems there was little more he could offer to do to help. He simply didn't have enough information to work with in order to properly help them. As he prepared to give them some generic advice on how to make headaches less painful or how to avoid getting them in the future as a closing note, Frisk surprised him by saying something very strange.
"Sir ? There's something else very strange that has happened very recently." They spoke up rather quietly. The doctor invited them to continue in case what they had to say could be useful to him.
"I became ambidextrous. From one day to the next with no explanation, not long after the headache started getting worse." They explained. The human adult stared at them with widened eyes. Spontaneous ambidexterity ? What in the name of science ? Toriel was doing very much the same, Frisk had not told her about this.
"Describe what you mean by 'From one day to the next.'" He requested.
"Well, i went to sleep left handed and i woke up ambidextrous. I didn't even notice it at first until i caught myself in the middle of doing something with my right hand." They obviously let out the part about Chara's involvement in that story.
Whilst the the first symptom was one he couldn't do much about because it was so common, this one had the opposite problem. He couldn't think of anything at all that could cause such a thing to happen. The doctor asked Frisk a few more questions to make sure that what they had described was indeed what had happened to them and that there was no misunderstanding of the situation from either of them. But this did not appear to be the case.
As much as he disliked to admit it, he frankly had no idea of what to do next aside from proposing them to visit a colleague that might be more qualified for their odd case than he was. There was however one more thing that he could at least give them the option of trying if they wished.
There weren't any more patients waiting after Frisk currently which meant they had some free time, the machine was available for use and again this patient wasn't quite anybody, so the doctor proposed them that if they really wanted, Frisk could always do an MRI to check for any oddities just in case it could help identifying an issue. Free of charge of course.
Not wanting to have done all of that for nothing and to follow Chara's advice regarding trying to find any trace of the issue, Frisk accepted the offer fairly quickly. After having been burned alive before, they weren't afraid of some scanning thing.
They had to fill a little information page about themself first for formality reasons. It asked for things such as birth date, name, or sex at birth.
Funnily enough, as monsters hadn't seen a human in years and that Frisk looked too androgynous for them to be able to tell, they had went through their entire underground journey without anybody knowing of their biological sex. (Except Chara of course, Chara could tell immediatly for obvious reasons).
But as things like getting enrolled in school required providing this information, it eventually got out after a few days on the surface. They had to give Toriel the answer and by now, most of their friends knew as well. Frisk didn't really care wether people knew about that or not though, as long as they used their preferred pronouns.
"Try to stay still and hold your breath". The doctor informed Frisk a few moments before starting the procedure.
The young human felt slightly uneasy, this whole being fit in a big tube thing was definitly a little weird to them.
We'll be fine. Don't worry.
Frisk closed their eyes and exhaled once before breathing in and holding their breath.
Chara almost blurted out some goofy narration to ease the tension, but eventually decided against it to let Frisk concentrate.
The one thing they hadn't expected about this was how much noise it would make. They thought it would be more of a sort of silent scan but it appeared they were wrong.
It was over soon enough, Frisk felt a little dizzy after the procedure but other than that, they were just fine. Toriel was waiting for them outside the room.
Usually, getting results for these scans took about a week. But since it was for them, they could likely get those as soon as tomorrow. They weren't sure if they liked being privileged that way but well, they couldn't really complain.
Before leaving the doctor's office with Toriel, Frisk spent some time staring at the mirror again. Their hair was even more of a mess than usual today and sweat kept pearling down their cheeks. More so even than the day before.
Considering how much you've been sweating recently, you sho-
"Should drink more water as to not get dehydrated ?" Frisk finished Chara's sentence for them.
Yes. That.
"Hehe..." Frisk giggled. "Looks like i know you pretty well too !" They winked, fairly happy of having been able to guess what their headmate was about to think to them before they did so.
It appears that way. The first fallen human conceded.
Frisk continued staring at their reflection. Something about it felt off. Only very slightly off, but still definitly off. They couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly...
Its still you. Chara commented. Earning a little smile from Frisk. Come on, let's go now.
The children left the hospital, oblivious to the fact that Frisk's natural melanin production had recently slowed down by a small amount, resulting in their skin color having gotten slightly paler than before.