Chapter 45

Chara never knew that the locket had been stolen. Had Frisk not told him, Chara would have never suspected. If he didn't know any better, Chara might have accused Frisk of lying about it.

"It makes no sense," Chara argued. "If that talking flower wore the locket, I should have been present. I should have seen and heard the world around him and the locket."

Frisk laid on her bed, resting on her side so that she could look at Chara as he sat on the floor. If the bed wasn't so small that only Frisk could lie on it if she didn't stretch out her limbs, Chara might have sat at the foot. Although Frisk would have to arise in a few hours to journey to Waterfall Castle, she forsook sleep in favor of communicating with Chara. He had tried to talk her into resting, but Frisk refused. When she insisted that she wasn't going to be able to fall asleep regardless and would rather spend the rest of the night in Chara's company, he knew he didn't have it within himself to refuse her such a request.

"But he wore the locket," Frisk softly whispered in the night. "Suzy and I saw him. Flowey thought I was making a fool out of him."

Shaking his head, Chara said, "I believe you, Stripes, but that does not mean I understand what happened. I become conscious whenever a being with a soul wears the locket, that's why I don't appear when the locket is hung on a coat rack or something. The only reason that flower shouldn't have been able to see me is he doesn't have a soul. Except that's impossible, isn't it?"

Yet as Chara said the words, he had doubts creep in his mind. The first time Chara saw the flower, he was shocked beyond words. Golden flowers did not grow in the Underground, except possibly the ones he planted in Asgore's garden when—

Stop, Chara ordered himself. He couldn't let his mind go there. That day was best locked away in the deepest realms of his mind, never to be thought about let alone spoken aloud.

Despite this, however, that day was the one Chara never had a minute pass where it didn't come to mind.

"It was weird," Frisk said after a moment, unknowingly dragging Chara back to the conversation. "He . . . Flowey kept apologizing to you. He clearly knew who you were, but what did he do to you that's worth apologizing for?"

Chara snorted. "I don't know who that flower is, but I am sure, whoever he is, that I am the one who needs to apologize to him, not vice versa."

"Whoever he is." Chara racked his brain despite knowing he had never seen the flower before he and Frisk left the Ruins. More than a golden flower in the Underground, never mind it was a talking flower, what surprised Chara was how it felt familiar to him. It was as if he and the flower knew each other in a past life. Only that was impossible.

For a few minutes, Chara and Frisk sat in silence. Their eyes remained locked. There was nowhere else in the tent to look save for each other.

"Tell me about Asriel," Frisk suddenly said after a few moments had passed.

Chara blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry to bring him up, but . . . I don't really know anything about Asriel, except that he was your brother and you feel responsible for his death. I know you miss him a lot, but if talking about him is too painful . . ."

Trailing off, Frisk turned so that she now lay on her stomach. "Never mind. Forget I brought him up."

For a brief moment, Chara considered doing exactly that. It was hard to talk about Asriel without thinking about what happened to him. It was Chara's biggest regret. Asriel should never have paid for what Chara had done. Perhaps if Chara had been there just a minute earlier, then he could have saved Asriel from—

"Asriel was a massive dork," Chara said, getting the words out before his thoughts could progress any further.

Frisk was silent for a moment, possibly surprised that Chara had spoken. Then she processed what he had said. She pressed her face against her pillow and giggled.

"He liked filmmaking a lot," Chara began, picking the first interest of Asriel he could think of and telling Frisk about it. "When we were eleven, Asriel found our parents' old video camera. He carried that thing everywhere. I can't even begin to tell you the number of documentaries he made about our family. Or filmed, I should say. He did a lot of filming, but not a lot of editing things together for a consistent narrative.

"Of course, he got better at that as we got older. Soon his interest shifted from making unfinished documentaries to writing and filming mini movies. Well, he came up with the stories, and I did the actual writing. He did nearly all the filming. I couldn't hold the camera still to save my life, so if Asriel played a character in our movie he would find a box or table to set the camera on, only asking me to take it if he was truly desperate. Not that I cared. I liked painting the backgrounds and doing the acting a lot more, so all in all we made a pretty good team.

"He was usually behind the camera, and I was in front of it. I played nearly all the characters. Girl roles included."

Snorting, Frisk asked, "You pretended to be a girl?"

"Hey, the ancient Greeks had men play female roles," Chara answered, chuckling. "Besides, I used to have long hair and didn't hit puberty until I was almost fifteen. I think I made a pretty convincing girl."

Frisk rotated her head so that she could look at Chara. There was a smile on her face. "What kind of movies did you make?"

"Good guys beating up bad guys, mostly. What else would boys do?" Chara shrugged a shoulder despite smiling himself. "I wish I could show you one. After . . . After we died, I don't know what became of them. It's unlikely our parents threw them away, so perhaps they're in storage. I really don't know. . . ."

Chara trailed off. At no point did he ask Toriel if she had done anything with them. After all, she remained at the castle for a few weeks before she fled into the night with Chara's soul, seeking the only person she knew who could help her with the last piece of her remaining child.

"What else can you tell me about Asriel?" Frisk then asked, bringing Chara back to reality.

Thinking for a moment, Chara said, "When we were little, we were best friends. We almost never fought, and when we did, it never lasted. As we got older and started developing our own interests and finding our identities outside of crown prince and human, we butt heads a lot more often. Asriel was still my best friend, but we quickly found that we liked a lot of different things from each other.

"I was more into my art, and Asriel started taking filming a lot more seriously. I preferred to spend my downtime alone while Asriel wanted to go out with friends. Even something as simple as a difference in ice cream flavor preferences would cause us problems, but that was fortunately a short-lived phase.

"Looking back on everything decades after it happened, however, I see our issues were never with each other." Chara sighed. "I was the special one, and he was the good one. It was silly, but we desperately wanted what the other had."

"What do you mean?"

Chara bit his lower lip. If he treaded this line, he might cross it and reveal more than he desired. It was a matter of speaking carefully lest he start to say too much.

"I mean, I suppose you know how kids want to be special and different from the rest of the world. We crave to be unique. Well, as the sole human in a world of monsters, I couldn't be any more special if I tried. As for me, I felt like I could never measure up to Asriel. He was kind and compassionate, enough to a fault. I was never either of those things, or at least I could never believe I was. I was the broken kid with a dark past and terrible secrets. Everyone looked to me as their hope for the future, but I could never be the hero to them I wanted to be."

As Frisk shifted to once again be lying on her side, Chara found himself speaking before she could say anything else.

"You're the first person who really sees me for me."

Furrowing her brows in the dark, Frisk asked, "What do you mean?"

What Chara wanted to do was take back what he said, but he knew he couldn't ask Frisk to ignore him. Subconsciously, it might have been why he spoke without thinking. Chara danced along the edge, and he ended up crossing a line, just not the one he was afraid to cross.

"All my life, I felt as if people looked at me and saw only what they wanted to see," Chara answered, confessing something that had always existed in the back of his mind but had never been spoken aloud until now. "The people from my village on the surface looked at me and saw a demon. The monsters Underground looked at me and saw hope for the future. Even my family was guilty of seeing me as something I wasn't, although that was entirely my fault for not telling them everything they should have known.

"You, on the other hand . . . You're different. When you look at me, Stripes, I feel as if you see me. Not the mistakes I made, which are plenty, or some idealized version of me you have in your head. You look at me and see me. Not just my faults, but even good traits I can trust are really there, even if I don't want to think of myself as having any.

"I suppose what I am trying to say is . . . I feel as if I could be myself around you. I don't have to wear a mask or analyze everything I say or do. With you, I can let all that go and be me."

There was more Chara wanted to say, but he stopped when he saw the sadness on Frisk's face. It pained him to see her looking at him as if he were hurting her. Losing all courage to say what he desperately needed to confess, Chara shut his mouth and waited for Frisk to respond.

Seeming to sense that he waited for her, Frisk visibly swallowed and said, "How can you say all that when you won't even tell me the truth of your past? Chara, do you know how hard it is hearing so many different sides to your story, but you won't tell me the story yourself? How can you claim to be free to be yourself around me when sometimes I can't believe that I really know you to begin with?"

Unable to look Frisk in the eye, Chara stared at the ground and muttered, "I'm afraid that if I told you everything, you wouldn't be able to look at me the same way again."

"Then how can I trust you mean what you're saying?"

Not having a response, Chara continued to stare at the ground. He curled his fingers into fists and pressed them against his thighs. On the one hand, he truly did feel as if Frisk was the one person he could tell everything to; but on the other, he feared being wrong and losing her forever over things he would give everything to take back if he could.

"Chara."

Hearing his name spoken so softly, Chara could not help but look up. Frisk now sat upright, and her gaze was locked onto him. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, possibly trying to find the right words to say.

Then, "I know I can't expect you to spill everything you spent a century hiding, but you can't keep so many secrets from me and simultaneously try to tell me that you feel like there aren't any barriers between us. It just doesn't work like that."

Chara exhaled loudly. "You're right."

"What are you so afraid of?"

The question struck Chara like a slap in the face. It wasn't that Frisk said it unkindly, but it was such a simple question that demanded such a serious answer. No matter what Chara replied, he would be admitting more than he knew would be easy to share.

"I am afraid of losing the only good I have in this half existence," Chara said, the words falling out like a weight rolling off his chest.

Frisk tilted her head, the sadness in her eyes never leaving. Chara wished she would stop looking at him like that. Her expression was the closest thing to pain Chara experienced in this form.

"I know we had the worst possible start to our relationship," Chara continued, staring at the corner of the tent for he could no longer maintain eye contact with Frisk, "and I am entirely to blame for that, but you have since become a dear friend to me. Possibly the only real friend I have left. I mean, Sans and Mon are good people, and they are nothing less than kind, but you have seen the worst in me and still have not given up on me. You showed mercy to me when I didn't deserve it. Despite my giving you every reason not to, you still gave me a chance. Not that things between us was every perfect, but . . ."

Chara trailed off, not knowing how to end. It was difficult being so raw and honest, and it was also one of the hardest things Chara had ever done. To be so open and vulnerable – it was no different than telling Frisk all the ways she could hurt him the most.

That was why it surprised Chara when Frisk finished for him, "You don't want me to give up on you. After all the things you did that give me the right to walk away, you're afraid you're just one mistake away from me giving up on you too."

Unable to speak, Chara nodded.

Silence, and then, "I understand. After all, I told you about the experiences I had prior to Mom adopting me. If I'm being honest with myself, sometimes I think the only reason I kept you around was because you don't have the power to leave. I have all the power in whether you stay or go. I kept you around when I shouldn't have simply because I didn't want yet another person to leave me, even if that person was someone I was better off without."

"Looks like we're both toxic, messed-up people," Chara replied.

"Yeah." Frisk laughed without humor. Then, "I'm glad neither of us stayed toxic, or at least that we consciously try not to be. I like being friends a lot more than when we hated each other's guts for no valid reason."

"As do I." Try as Chara might to fight it, a smile grew on his face. Feeling as if he took a risk, he looked at Frisk. He was grateful she was now smiling at him instead of continuing to stare at him with sadness.

"You should try to get some rest before your journey," Chara said, kicking out his foot as if to nudge Frisk in the shin. "Even if you can't sleep, lying down and resting your eyes will be a lot better than sitting upright and staring into an empty tent."

Frisk snorted but lied down all the same. Closing her eyes, Frisk took a deep breath. Then she asked, "Chara, are you ever going to tell me the truth?"

Without thinking about it, Chara answered, "Of course, I will. Only . . . I am not ready yet. I can bear your knowing that I have ended the lives of many, but confessing the truth of Asriel's passing is something I do not want to tell even myself. Yet no matter how I try to not think about it, this is something that is always on my mind."

"Then perhaps, for tonight, you can tell me one thing." Opening her eyes, Frisk turned her head so that she could look Chara in the eyes as she asked, "Why did you kill?"

Shame and guilt crashed onto Chara like a mighty wave. Forcing himself to maintain eye contact when he desperately wanted to look away, he answered, "Humans get stronger by killing monsters. By leveling up and possibly becoming more powerful . . . I got it into my stupid little head that if I had accumulated enough power, I alone could shatter the barrier. Not that making sacrifices for the greater good was my call to make . . . Well, it doesn't matter. I did things I shouldn't have done, and by the time I realized this wasn't the right path to walk, I believed it was too late. I could never wash away my sins. I could never take back what I had done. In a way, it seems I never stopped believing that the way to free everyone was to throw my life away."

The sadness returned in the way Frisk looked at Chara, and he wanted her to stop. However, he didn't look away, and he didn't tell her to look elsewhere. This hurt, but it was nothing less than Chara deserved.

Lips wobbling, Frisk asked, "How old were you when you first killed someone?"

The face of Chara's victim flashed in his mind. He winced. All Chara could answer was, "Fourteen."

Frisk gasped, horrified. "You were practically still a child!"

"Even a child could wipe out life in the Underground if they were determined enough." Chara pressed his fists further into his thighs.

To that, Frisk didn't have a response. Closing her eyes again, she turned onto her side. After a moment or two, she muttered, "There's nothing you could ever tell me that would make me think less of you."

Although what Chara wanted to respond with was, "Don't make promises you can't keep," what he actually said without realizing what he was saying was, "I know."

As Chara watched Frisk pretend to try to go sleep, he trusted that he did know what Frisk said was true. He had no tangible proof that confirmed what she said was true, but he still doubted not a word. It had been so long since Chara could feel secure in any of his relationships.

It made everything Chara wanted to confess to Frisk harder to bear.

Frisk dragged her weary carcass out of bed and stumbled towards the gathering group. She saw Suzy standing near the front, arms crossed and posture straight. If Suzy was also tired from staying up nearly all night, she didn't show it.

As Mandy gave her speech to the group about their mission and offered words of encouragement, Frisk zoned out. Chara didn't need to sleep, so she left listening for anything important up to him. He would pass on whatever Frisk needed to know.

With she and Chara standing so close, Frisk found herself tilting her head to the side. Half a moment after this realization, Frisk understood she was slowly but surely trying to rest her head on Chara's shoulder. Frisk snapped her head straight and shook it so hard she gained attention from the monsters standing closest to her.

"Are you okay?" Chara asked, and Frisk didn't look towards him to see the worry she knew was etched in his face.

Frisk answered with a subtle nod, but she wasn't sure if she was all right. It wasn't simply that she couldn't touch Chara that made the subconscious action a strange one. What had Frisk snapping into high alert was how intimate something as simple as resting one's head on another's shoulder was. Trying not to shake her head anymore than she had already, Frisk reminded herself that in moments passed, she and Chara kept their hands close as if to hold the other's. They stood close enough for Chara to teach Frisk how to dance.

Being close to Chara was nothing new, Frisk told herself. It was only natural she would feel comfortable being so close to someone she had been close enough to touch in the past. Not that any of this should be weird since no matter how close Frisk and Chara got, they could never touch each other.

We're just good friends, Frisk told herself, and I'm tired from staying up all night. There's nothing strange about this at all.

As the crowd dispersed, Frisk turned around to see Sans standing a few feet away. Without thinking, she smiled and quickly approached him. When he was within earshot, she said, "I wish you were coming with us."

"Me too," Sans replied. "The Snake can't make me train if I'm on a mission."

Frisk, for show, crossed her arms and huffed. "This isn't a vacation we're going on, you know."

"I know, but I can just teleport to the castle and take it easy until the rest of you arrive. That would be the most break I've had in ages."

Dropping her arms, Frisk whispered, "I feel as if I'm walking into a trap."

Just as quietly, Sans replied, "If I sense another disturbance in the timeline, I won't hesitate to stop what I'm doing and come to your aid."

"Are you suggesting I allow myself to get killed?"

"Of course not, but if it happens, I'll be able to do something about it this time."

Frisk tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. Then, without thinking, she flung herself onto Sans. What was more surprising was his immediacy in returning the hug.

"You'll be okay, kid," he told her in her ear. "You're the strongest person I know. Everything will turn out fine."

Encouraged, Frisk pulled away and wiped her eyes before any tears could threaten to fall.

Before any more could be said, the call rang for the party to head out. The journey to Waterfall Castle had begun. Filled with dread, Frisk fought the urge to run in the opposite direction.

"You'll be okay," Sans repeated as he took hold of Frisk's wrist and gently squeezed it.

Not trusting herself to speak, Frisk nodded. Gathering the courage to move forward, Frisk peeled herself away from San's side and looked for Mon to travel beside.

After a moment, Frisk realized how quiet Chara had been. Trying to not draw attention to herself, Frisk looked around to see him walking behind her. His arms were crossed, and his gaze directed downwards. Unable to do anything, Frisk swallowed and returned her attention ahead of her. Perhaps talking about Asriel last night was what had Chara down, and Frisk blamed herself for bring him up.

"Yo, man," Mon said, seeming to drag her feet instead of picking them up, "this is gonna suck!"

"Could be worse."

Both Frisk and Mon jumped. Turning around, they saw that Suzy had come up behind them. The reptilian monster walked with her hands behind her head.

"We could be going to war against a giant beast that armies have tried to conquer in the past only to be vanquished!"

Feeling somewhat more comfortable around Suzy after the events of the previous night, Frisk didn't feel it a risk to reply, "If you're trying to make us feel better, it's not working."

Without a word, Suzy shrugged.