Chapter 26

Frisk rested her head against the back of the boat. It was pure luck the river person happened to be making his rounds when she made it to the edge of The Island or else she would have had to hide for who knew how long before he would come back around to give her a ride. The lull of the water soothed her, making sleep possible despite her dislike of being out in the middle of a lake of sorts.

"Tra la la. Look at you, not sick and dying," was how the river person greeted Frisk. "Where to?"

"The Core."

"Oh, tra la la, I'm afraid I can't take you there. I don't have access."

"How about as close as you can get me, then?"

"Nope. Tra la la. Either I take you off The Island, or you can stay on it. Your choice."

"I'll get off The Island then."

It almost upset Frisk how easy it was getting for her to sneak away like this. She knew she was going to have a lot of apologizing to do after she returned, but she was determined to prove herself. If everyone else knew what she was doing, they would try to stop her.

Between naps, Frisk would remove the locket from her sack and look at it. She didn't put it on, not even once. This was something she would do on her own.

After the river person dropped Frisk off, she gave him a cinnamon bunny and asked for directions to the Core. For the most part, the journey was peaceful. Waterfall was dark, and the crystals were the closest thing to stars Frisk had seen in years. It was nice, in a way.

Although she doubted most of the monsters in Waterfall would look at her and know she was human, she still kept away from anywhere that looked as if it might be populated. When she needed to rest, Frisk hid in the darkest corner she could find. When it was time to sleep, she spent the night in an abandoned cave.

As much as Frisk didn't want to admit it, she was terribly lonely. She missed Alice and her mom and aunt, she missed Mon, and she missed Papyrus. A small part of her missed Chara. Smaller parts missed Sans.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Frisk mumbled as she walked through a dark path illuminated by nothing more than glowing mushrooms. The ground didn't feel solid beneath her feet, but she assumed she would be fine as long as she didn't linger. "I shouldn't miss them. They're untrustworthy. Those guys are the exact type of people I need to stay away from."

Groaning, she added, "Look at me, talking to myself. That can't be good. I need to get it together before someone starts thinking I'm crazy."

"There's nothing wrong with a little crazy."

Spine rigid, Frisk shifted her gaze to the side to see a familiar yellow flower staring at her.

Before she could process anything else, Frisk screamed.

"You!" she shrieked, falling on her backside.

"I was beginning to wonder if you forgot about little old me," Flowey said, swaying around as if dancing. "It's been so long since you and I chat, hasn't it?"

Unable to speak, Frisk stared at the flower. Her heartrate escalated, and her mouth was suddenly dry. She pushed her hands onto the ground to steady their trembling.

"You're so messed up," Flowey went on to say. "You kill one person on accident, leading another to kill himself, and acted as if it was the worst thing you could have ever possibly done. Now here you are, wanting to kill someone else. Where's the kindness you tried so hard to show in the beginning? You spared monsters who wanted to kill you before, but now that mercy is gone. Can't say I'm surprised. It's so boring playing nice all the time, isn't it?"

When Frisk still didn't respond, Flowey asked, "What? Got nothing to say to me?"

Not having an answer, Frisk panicked and pulled the locket out of her sack and threw it over her head.

"—doing?!"

Chara appeared between Frisk and Flowey. He blinked, dazed.

"Stripes?" He spoke quietly as he looked around. "What's going on? Where are we?"

"What, is that locket somehow going to protect you?" Flowey taunted, unaware Chara now joined the scene. "I suppose it isn't incapable of raising your Defense, but that doesn't suddenly make you safe."

Turning around, Chara focused his attention on the flower. Frisk couldn't see the look on his face. She didn't know what Chara was thinking regarding the talking plant.

"Don't you have better things to do?" Chara snapped, and Frisk didn't know whom he was addressing.

"Don't you have better things to do?" Frisk repeated to the flower.

Flowey's eyebrows went up.

Frisk wasn't planning to play echo flower: she didn't have any plans at all. Without thinking, she put on the locket. It was the recollection of how unpleasant Chara could be that gave Frisk the idea that if she mimicked him, Flowey would get fed up and leave.

"I'm busy right now," Chara said. "Why don't you bother me when I'm not in the middle of something? Better yet, how about you don't bother me at all?"

Word for word, Frisk repeated what Chara said.

After a moment, Flowey overcame his surprise and said, "Look, I don't know what trick you're pulling here, but I can see it has something to do with that locket. I'll leave you to your 'busywork' for now. Just know I will be back."

For a moment after Flowey pulled himself under the dirt, Chara and Frisk were still. Chara, turning back around to face Frisk, was the first to speak. "What is going on?"

"It doesn't matter," Frisk said. "I'm taking the locket back off now."

"Wait!" The urgency in Chara's voice froze Frisk. "The ground is caving in beneath you."

"What—Ah!" When Frisk tried to look under her, she felt the ground begin to give way. She had lingered in one spot for too long. It stopped as suddenly as it started, and she had fallen on her backside. Her tailbone throbbed and heart raced, her senses heightened. This wasn't the best situation for a sinkhole, not with her right where the ground was about to collapse.

"Listen carefully," Chara began. "You are a few feet from the center, so you can get out of this. Just no sudden movements, okay? Now, slowly lie down and roll to your right."

Glaring at Chara, Frisk did the exact opposite. She threw herself to the left. The action caused the ground beneath her to collapse, and she fell into the hole.

When Frisk finally landed – she didn't know a sinkhole could go that deep – she felt every bone in her body break. For a second that lasted too long, her broken body lied on the rocky floors. Then she died.


Sans had mixed feelings about the day resetting. Now that he knew the days reset whenever Frisk died, he worried over the types of dangerous situations she had gotten herself into. On the other hand, he was grateful for a chance to restart this day.

Someone needed to go after Frisk, that was certain. The only problem was nobody had any idea where she was going. Sans even interrogated Alice, who surprised him by cooperating and promising she had no idea Frisk had planned to leave.

"I only tried to help her get her locket back, which you stole in the first place," Alice had said, sounding a little angry.

"Why would you help Frisk get a child's necklace back?" Sans asked.

"Don't act as if you don't know," Alice answered. "A human soul is quite valuable, especially in these times."

Surprised Frisk would tell anyone, Sans blurted out, "You know about Chara?"

Alice's pinched brows told Sans her answer before her words did. "Who's Chara? Wait," a gasp as her ears stretched high, "you don't mean Prince Chara Dreemurr, do you?"

Unfortunately, that wasn't the day that had reset.

Getting out of bed, Sans quickly changed and hurried down the stairs. Of course the other monsters didn't agree Sans was the one who should go after Frisk, especially since Alice, while still keeping Chara a secret, so openly told everyone how Sans pushed Frisk to run off in the first place. If Sans was to stop Frisk from whatever crazy plan she was enacting, he had to get out before anyone could stop him.

However, he didn't make it far before Alice shouted after him, "Where are you going, bonehead?!"

Sans swore and snapped his attention to the rabbit monster. He didn't know she visited his hotel the first time this day occurred. She probably stopped by while he was still lying in bed and gave up after a while because Sans spent two hours in bed after he woke up and even someone like Alice couldn't possibly have that kind of patience.

"We have a human on the loose," Sans said, not bothering to, as he put it, dance around the echo flower. "Someone needs to go after her."

Alice laughed without humor. "Tell me, why are you the qualified one to find Frisk? Do you need me to tell you that it's your own fault she doesn't trust you in the first place?"

An image of Frisk, bone sticking out of her midsection, staring at him as the very life drained from her eyes came to Sans's mind. He tried with little success to discard the image. Awake or asleep, the memory of what he had done haunted him.

"I don't need you to remind me."

"So, you know that nobody's going to give you the okay to go after her?" Alice asked.

Knowing there was no way of fooling this kid, Sans answered, "I'm an adult. I don't need anyone's permission to use the bathroom. If I decide I'm going to get Frisk before a Red gets their hands on her, then I'm going to do it."

"They'll try to stop you if you try to leave. After all, nobody wants a Red knowing where The Island is running around."

"That's why I'm going to leave before anyone can realize I'm gone."

Sans was expecting Alice to threaten to tell on him. It was why he was preparing to throw her so hard into the hallway wall that it would knock her out for a little while. He could never have anticipated what she actually said.

"I'm going with you."

"No, you're not," Sans argued. "I don't need another kid on my conscience."

Alice was determined. "I go with you, or I tell everyone that you're planning to sneak off. Oh, and don't try anything. Mon knows that if I'm not back in an hour, you did something to me, and in turn she will tell someone . . . our little secret."

Swearing, Sans snapped, "You told another person!"

"Who will tell someone else if you don't let us go with you," Alice replied. "Nobody else needs to know, but if you're going to sneak off, we need to alert the others whom Frisk has accompanying her."

This kid is too clever for her own good.

"This isn't a trip to the grocery store to pick up milk," Sans said. "This is a human we're talking about. Monsters are ordered by King Asgore to attack any human upon sight. Being a monster won't make you immune to attack if you're seen with Frisk."

"I don't care," Alice replied. "I'm sick and tired of sitting around while everyone else gets to go off and do things. I want to be a part of this, even if that part is keeping Frisk from getting herself killed!"

"If only you knew," Sans muttered. When Alice requested he repeat himself, Sans changed the subject. "You can't fight."

"Who says we have to fight?" Alice countered.

"Have you ever seen the outside world, kid, or did you spend your entire life never stepping out of Snowdin? It's a dangerous world out there."

"Then we all go," Alice suggested.

"All?"

"Yes, all. You, me, Mon, Papyrus, and Undyne."

"Now I know you're not serious," Sans replied. "You want Undyne to come with us?"

"She's a great fighter," Alice pointed out. "If finding Frisk is going to be as dangerous as you say it is, we're going to need muscle. Mon and I are Frisk's friends, so we're going to come to make sure you and Undyne don't hurt her when you find her."

"And Papyrus?"

"The glue who will hold us all together. It's obvious Undyne has a soft spot for him, and Mon and I know Papyrus would never hurt Frisk. He's there as a buffer of sorts."

Sans shook his head. "Too big a crowd will attract attention."

"We already have that much figured out. Now, are we going together as a rescue party, or are you going to spend the next few weeks under house arrest?"

"We don't even know where Frisk went," Sans pointed out. "How do you know we won't be wandering aimlessly?"

"We'll figure it out as we go. Now, do we have a deal or not?"

Alice's dislike of Sans was starting to become a mutual feeling. Begrudgingly, Sans said, "We have a deal."


Frisk woke up in the cave she slept in the night before and didn't move for a moment. Wincing, she waited out the phantom pain. As she waited, she stared at Chara.

"You were trying to help me?" It didn't hurt to speak, but she still gasped the words.

"Uh, yeah," Chara said, arms crossed. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"How many times did you tell me something just to get me killed?"

"Okay, you have a point there." Then, so softly Frisk almost didn't hear it, "I am sorry."

Those three words got Frisk stopping mid-motion as she tried to stand. "You're sorry?" she questioned. "You're sorry?!"

Chara furrowed his brows. "Wait, am I reading you right? Are you angry that I just apologized?"

"Like you actually mean it." Frisk pushed herself all the way up, steadied herself, and stormed out of the cave. "After everything you said to me and after everything you did, why should I believe that you're suddenly sorry?"

Running so that he was in front of her, Chara held out his hands as if demanding what Frisk wanted from him and spat, "I know it is too little too late, but is it really so impossible to believe I might have regrets?"

Frisk walked up to Chara so that they were standing nose to nose. He jumped back, startled. It was only because he couldn't touch her Frisk dared to get this close to him.

"Stop with the act," Frisk snarled. "I may have fallen for your tricks again and again, but not this time!"

"What tricks? All I did was say sorry."

"Oh, as if that means anything."

"You think it does not?"

"I know how gullible you think I am. Well, not anymore! I will not let you trick me into thinking you all of a sudden feel bad for hurting me and want to try to be nice to me. Once I trust you again, you're just going to go right back to killing me."

When Chara replied, it was the loudest Frisk had ever heard him use his voice. "I am not saying you have to trust me, but can you not at least think that maybe I am telling the truth? That I am capable of apologizing and meaning it?"

"People don't change," Frisk stated.

"Perhaps you have not seen yourself lately," Chara countered. "You look horrible. Why are you even alive?"

What Frisk wanted to do was say some sort of snarky comeback, yet when she opened her mouth, a cry of pain came out instead.

"I . . . I did not mean that." Chara had the nerve to stare at the ground, as if he was too ashamed to look her in the eye. If he was going to lie, he should at least do it to her face.

Stomping away, she sat at the edge of the river and stared at her reflection in the water below, at the sickly girl who somehow thought she could go on this mission despite all the potential dangers. She did look awful. It truly did look as if she shouldn't be alive.

Chara's words had really cut deep. All logic said she should take off the locket. However, Frisk had a question she wanted to ask for so long that she decided to get it out before taking off the locket and never wearing it again.

"Why do you hate me so much?" Frisk demanded, her voice breaking despite her efforts to sound furious.

"Stripes," Chara sounded disbelieving, "I don't hate you."

Frisk laughed without humor. "You got me killed multiple times, you insult me endlessly, and you treat me as nothing more than an emotional toy for you to play with. Don't try to tell me that you don't hate me."

When Chara didn't respond, Frisk slowly turned around so that she faced him. He still didn't look at her, instead choosing to stare into the distance as if there was something there he had to watch.

"Why do you think I hate you?" he asked softly.

"You said once that you hate humanity, and I, as a human, fall under that category."

"Right." Chara squeezed his eyes shut. "Think of yourself as the exception."

"That doesn't make a difference."

"What other reasons do you have for thinking I hate you?"

"Didn't you hear what I said?!" Frisk screamed, feeling betrayed by her own answer. "Why do you think I'm asking you, Chara?"

"Tell me what you think," Chara replied, calm as ever, as if he wasn't just yelling at her a minute ago. Frisk envied him for his ability to control his emotions. Only very rarely would he act out, but Frisk felt she acted out every other instance.

"Truly, I want to know why it is you think I detest you so much," he insisted.

Too ashamed to look Chara in the eye, Frisk returned her attention to the river and said, "Maybe, I don't know, you hate how I come back every time I die."

When Chara didn't say anything to that, she continued. "You died once and that was the end of it. Now I die again and again and again, and always come back without fail. Nothing I do is the cause of this. I just . . . come back, the day completely reset. Why do I have all these chances, while you were offered none? Why did the other humans not get the chance to come back from the dead and find a way to escape? Why just me? It's not fair."

It wasn't until hot liquid fell on her arms Frisk realized she was crying. Since wiping her eyes would be admitting to the tears, she chose instead to let them fall. There was no going back now no matter how much she pretended otherwise.

It took what felt like a lifetime before Chara spoke. "Do you think that is the reason I hate you, or is it a reason you hate yourself?"

Surprised by his words, Frisk turned around and watched Chara closely. He had moved to stand closer to her, his arms crossed. He continued to stare off in the distance, seeing nothing, as his fingers dug into the fabric of his sweater.

"I admit I was furious at first you return from the dead while the rest of us have stayed as such," he admitted, "but it is not why I ever treated you the way I did. My death was not an unjust one. I was punished for my sins and deserved the fate that fell upon me. Even my circumstance now – this torturous, agonizing half-life I'm forced to endure – is not beyond the sentence I deserve. I know Toriel never meant this existence I now have to be a penalty, but that is exactly what it is and will always be."

Questions rose up to Frisk's mouth, but she bit them back. She would not dare stop Chara now, not when he was sharing so much with her. Speaking may break whatever spell the boy was currently under.

"It was what your falling into the Underground did that sparked my hatred of you," he continued. "Toriel, my own mother, began to neglect me in favor of you. I did not hide my true feelings from you the day we met, Frisk."

Try as she might, Frisk could not stop herself from sucking in a breath. Other than the first time he ever spoke to her, Chara never called Frisk by her name. From that time on, Stripes was as good as her actual name to him.

"I was the mistake she could not erase, the child she could never fix, but you were her chance to start over," Chara continued. "She did not have as much to lose with you as she did with me, but I suppose such worked in your favor. I took everything away from her, and because she had so little to lose again, nothing stopped her from loving you and offering you all she had. You were the child to Toriel that I never was. That is why I hated you before . . . because you were everything I could have been but chose not to be. I threw my life away long before my death. You are the reminder of what I could have had, who I could have been if I had chosen a different path."

Something changed in Chara. For the first time since they left the Ruins, Chara didn't appear menacing. He was the scared and uncertain boy she had seen only once before. It was enough to confuse Frisk. Either this was a convincing act, or this was who Chara really was behind the emotionless mask he wore; and both meant he was capable of expression emotions to manipulative degrees.

"Mom loved you," Frisk whispered, knowing the words to be true. Why she was trying to comfort Chara, she didn't know. It might have been just something for him to say to bring her guard down.

If this is all just a game, she told herself, then I will play.

"But she loved you more," Chara replied, and Frisk did not know what to say to that.

Slowly, Chara sat beside her. They were a foot apart. Now was the time to take off the locket, but Frisk was frozen in place.

"I am sorry I treated you so horribly," Chara said. This time, she found the apology genuine.

"I forgive you," Frisk replied, even if large parts of her didn't believe the apology. She forgave Sans, and that ended badly. Even though Sans and Chara were two different people, it was still too soon for her to take a risk like that again.

Chara seemed to swallow. "Can we be . . . This should not be so hard to ask, but I suppose it is because I'm in no position to do so, but . . . Stripes, um, can we . . . can we start over? Can we be friends?"

Eyes locked at her reflection in the river – Chara's noticeably absent, Frisk said, "There's too much bad stuff between us. It's not as if we can be friends just like that."

Silence, then, "I understand."

"But," Frisk prompted, looking at Chara, who made eye contact with her, "we can try. I think maybe we can be friends, if we really try."

Why am I suggesting this? Chara and I can't be friends. A sad story doesn't suddenly undo all the bad things he did to me.

"Trying is a good start." Chara nodded in agreed.

"Tell me about yourself," Frisk requested. When Chara raised a brow, she explained, "I know so little about you. All I really know is Toriel was your mom, you were raised as a prince, and you did a lot of bad things you died for. Mew Mew said that you were a liar, a manipulator, and a murderer, but I still don't know how much of that is truth. Tell me something more personal. Tell me something good about you."

For a minute, Chara didn't answer. Frisk watched him until he smiled, possibly at some long-forgotten memory. When he finally spoke, his voice took on a delighted tone she had never heard him use before.

"I used to paint. I was a great artist whether I used graphic or charcoal or paint, but painting was my favorite. Had I picked the pacifist way of life, I know without a doubt in my heart I would have been an artist."

Frisk smiled, remembering the old artwork she found in Toriel's room all those years ago.

"I was a mischievous little brat, too," Chara continued, still smiling. "Oh, how I kept Mother and Father on their toes. My brother, Asriel, was constantly trying to keep me in line. I accidentally set fire to the royal garden once. I was on restriction for weeks after that. Then there was the time I got honey in my friend Stagia's fur. It took her a whole month to stop being mad at me for that one."

Then his whole demeanor fell. His fingers curled again. Hugging himself, Chara seemed to be shoving away an unwanted memory.

"Before we met," he said, the tone completely shifting, "I saw you three times. The first was when Toriel found you. 'Oh, here we go again,' I thought. Humans fall Underground, they leave the Ruins, and they die. You were the last soul everyone needed. It looked as if monsters were finally going to be free after all and rage war on humanity. I pitied you. I really did. You were just a little girl then. It saddened me to know you were never going to last.

"Then you surprised me by staying. As a result, Toriel wore the locket less. She did not want you asking questions or learning about me. I held her darkest secrets and a past she wanted to forget. Before you fell, we both tried our best to forget our past and live a simple life. When you were discovered, Toriel knew this was her chance to start over. Unfortunately, I was not a part of it, or at least not as much as I wanted. She still wore the locket in her room some evenings, telling me about you and how you adjusted to life in the Ruins, but I never got to participate.

"I did not realize how little Toriel started wearing the locket till you walked in on her one day," Chara said, eyes glazed over. "You were . . . twelve, I want to say? Twelve or thirteen, fourteen at the most. I do not know how long it had been, but I knew even then there was a lot of time missing. It only got worse.

"For the longest time, I could not admit to myself that I started hating this young girl for being the perfect child I never was." Chara laughed then, the sound bitter. "How pathetic of me, practically an adult hating a twelve-year-old girl because I was envious of the attention my Mother gave her as she slowly cast me aside.

"Then one day I begged Toriel to wear the locket as she went to retrieve you. I wanted to see you, Stripes. Despite how I hated you, I wanted to see you. Never had I wanted anything so badly as I wanted to just get close enough to see how human you are. Being a human in a monster world gets lonely sometimes. So much of me needed the visible reminder that I was not alone even if we would never meet. Then we did and . . . Well, I do not need to tell you what happened from there."

Frisk didn't realize she was crying again until she felt hot tears splash onto the back of her hand. This time choosing to wipe the tears from her eyes, she said, "Earlier you said you don't hate me, but you just admitted that you did. What changed?"

"I got to know you." Still Chara wouldn't look at Frisk. "I slowly began to realize that I didn't truly hate you but was envious over something you never had any control over. I say I was being a jerk, but that would be an understatement. I tried to kill you, no resets intended."

"And then you killed me again and again just to see if the day would reset." Frisk meant it lightheartedly, but seeing Chara wince alerted her it was the wrong thing to say.

"It has been a really long time since I cared for anyone," Chara said. "Although I ask we try to be friends, I honestly don't know what being a friend even is anymore."

"Honestly, friendship is freaking weird," Frisk muttered. "You meet this random person and think, 'I like this one. I want to go on adventures with this one.' Then you proceed to do stuff with them."

When Chara laughed, Frisk smiled. She got the response she wanted.

"We're already going on adventures, so I suppose we're halfway there," he said, finally looking at her.

"Yeah, I think we are," Frisk replied. Quietly, "Thank you for telling me so much about yourself. You really didn't have to say a lot, but I'm glad you told me what you did."

Chara shrugged. "After how long we have known each other, I think I owed it to you."

Instead of responding, Frisk smiled at Chara, and he returned the gesture. As they sat in silence, Frisk wondered what their relationship would be had Toriel not kept Chara's existence from her the whole time. Then she wondered what their relationship would be had they both been alive simultaneously. Perhaps his resentment towards her never would have existed. Perhaps they would have become fast friends, or possibly sworn rivals. It was a list of what-ifs to which she would never know the answers.

If this was part of Chara's grand scheme to get her to trust him so he can get her hurt again, Frisk wouldn't be surprised. Yet she still wanted to know this boy so filled with darkness and mystery and regret. Keeping that in mind, Frisk chose to keep the locket on a little longer and play Chara's game. If she got hurt as a result, Frisk would have nobody to blame but herself.