The lone shaft of sunlight warmed her skin. She stared up into its distant glory. What little light managed to make it this far down still made their eyes water. There was a numb sort of frustration nestled in her chest when she saw how far she had fallen. How was she ever going to get back up? How had she survived? Why?

A kind voice spoke to her and asked her name. She answered in a dismissive murmur.

“Chara, huh? That’s a nice name. My name is Asriel.”

***

Her eyes opened but it took her a while to realize she was awake. She stared unblinking up into the darkness from which they had fallen. Twisting vines framed the sides of the waterfall and reached out to bind themselves to each other in a green spider web of crisscrossing networks overhead. They hung low like a feeble curtain trying to hide the distant platform they had fallen from. They had helped to break her fall no doubt.

The smell of wet garbage harboring mold filled the air with a pungent earthy smell. All around them the water roared and lapped at piles of soggy junk. The water did not harbor such a bright glow down here. Pollution had tainted and killed off whatever magic had caused it to give off so much light in the first place.

Their body groaned with objections that she chose to ignore as Chara sat up and rubbed her head, taking a deep breath. It was then that she noticed the familiar smell that she had dismissed at first, even though it was strong enough to nearly overpower the smell of mold. She blinked in surprise. Flowers. Golden flowers. They were sitting in a bed of them. Stranger still, some of the familiar flowers had been plucked and laid at her feet, tied together by a single thin vine.

Chara picked a flower and took in its scent. It brought back a wave of old memories both bitter and sweet. Something finally clicked for her then. The identity of her helpful stalker.

She blinked in surprise but otherwise hid her surprise well. “Thank you, Asriel.” She looked around, wondering if she would see him. Surely he was hiding out there in the dark somewhere. “Not going to come see me? Ah, well, for the best I suppose.” She got up and dusted herself off. With an annoyed grimace she realized that her clothes were gaining quite a few holes in them.

She gave her injured hand a once over. The wound still had a fresh scab on it. She concentrated a bit, drawing on their Determination and willing the wound to mend. It shrank but did not entirely close.

“I must admit, I was surprised that someone had bothered to follow me out of the Ruins. I certainly did not expect it to be you. How did you come back, anyway?”

Silence.

She rolled her shoulders. Her whole body was stiff and bruised. “I suppose I should be thanking you. It would have been rather inconvenient if I had died in that fall.” She thought she saw some movement among the trash heaps but perhaps it was simply the bobbing motion of floating plastic playing tricks on her.

She checked her pockets. She would need to consume more food before she would have enough energy to finish healing herself. She frowned. Both her pant pockets and the pockets of her stolen cloak were empty.

“I hope you remembered to pick my things up out of the water. Otherwise saving me was pretty pointless. You know that, right?” She sneered out at nothing. “Then again this would not be the first time you half-assed things, now would it?”

The toe of her boot tapped against something hidden among the flowers. “Ah.” She stooped down. There was her spear, sharpened and lovely as ever. Its tip had been slipped through the knot in the handkerchief that held the two apples.

“Here we are! Good.” She took her leave, leaving the small island and splashing down into the thigh-high water. She waded through the floating trails of junk. There was far more trash here than she remembered.

She unraveled the handkerchief and began to snack on one of the apples. Despite the sweet taste her lips still curled into an unpleasant grimace. This place would have looked so much nicer if it was clean. Why was humanity so keen on polluting everything? Waterfall would have been so much nicer if it had not been forced to choke of the filth of humans that were too lazy to pick up after themselves..

As a matter of fact the whole world would be nicer if there were no humans around to pollute it.

Well, good things would come to those who wait. And she had been waiting for a long, long time.

***

She was not sure if she was awake or still asleep. Moments and events drifted by in a fog- the world tinted and discolored with blue and gray. The whole world had been cast into a hazy, ever-looming fog.

She felt her stomach empty and grumbling.

She felt it fill with food.

She felt her body ache.

She felt her body heal.

She could smell the mold in the air. Feel the spongy tension of old broken furniture bending under her weight as she scavenged the mounds for something extra to put in her pockets. Yet every touch felt like something distant and half imagined.

Their scavenging was a disappointment. She felt some distant, detached feeling of frustration or anger that she did not understand. It was not her own. But still the thought came to her that of course there had been no better weapons to find, anything made of metal would have been too heavy to be carried downstream.

There was however, some food to be salvaged. Prepackaged artificial stuff. Stuff with a vacuum seal and an expiration date that was meaningless to her.

She moved on.

Rain was content to simply watch over the shoulder of the-one-that-was-not-quite-her. She didn’t know how to do much else.

She watched her body wade through the waters and stub her toes a few times.

She watched herself encounter strange things she could not explain; like a haunted dummy that screamed so loud that its soul fused with its artificial body.

She watched herself laugh and pull the dummy apart.

She carried on.

The dream grew darker. It became a fevered, disjointed haze. She recalled only bits and pieces of it. Like creeping through the tall grass or diving into the water and hiding in an air pocket under the docks when a looming shadow clad in iron searched for her above.

Her dream was filled with the faces of monsters. Sometimes they hunted her, sometimes she hunted them.

Things became more and more disorienting. An uncomfortable knot formed in her stomach. She pressed against the walls of her dream in an attempt to break free but the walls merely constricted against her in an attempt to smother her efforts. She sank deeper and deeper into the darkness.

She felt like she was holding her breath and trying to swim up to the surface from the pitch black belly of the ocean.

They were resting now. Both of them. They had found a narrow bridge to rest by. From their hiding place by the roadside they could watch for anyone who tried to cross it.

That part of her that was shrouded in a sinister darkness reasoned that this was a good plan. Already they had caught someone trying to sneak across. The monster’s humming had given her away.

Rain screamed in frustration but no sound came out. She struggled against the smothering discolored world but only found herself being pressed deeper and deeper into its darkness.

In the end she fell quiet and waited.

The other her, the other soul, began to fall asleep. And as they did, a curious thing happened.

Rain’s presence drifted back into control. She could feel something now. She could feel herself waking up.

***

She opened her eyes and took in a deep, gasping breath. She had forgotten what it was like to breathe. She sat up and looked around. The light was dim but there was blessed color in the world again. Her mind raced and fumbled. Where was she? Why was she here? What had happened?

She remembered running from Undyne. She remembered falling and the world going dark. The black nothingness of a dreamless sleep had swallowed her whole: cold and terrifying.

But then what? How had she gotten here?

She recalled her dreams. Had they been more than that? Had she been watching Chara all this time? She tried to recall the details of what had happened but it was all a fading blur now. This too, was terrifying.

She looked at her hands. They had been healed. She must have been out for a long time then. She couldn’t even hear the roar of the waterfall anymore.

She was still alive. At least there was that. This thought should have brought her relief but she only felt fear. She struggled to remember her dreams but the harder she tried the more she forgot.

“What’s going on?” She whispered, holding her head in her hands. “What have I done?”

She realized she could hear footsteps. Careful, quiet little scratching sounds echoing through the dimly lit cavern.

She tensed up and pressed herself low to the ground. Through the veil of reeds she watched the bridge. A small black and yellow shape was slinking across the gap, his back hunched against the darkness, eyes wide and scared.

“Oh no. What are you doing here?” She breathed. “Get out of here, kid. It’s not safe.” She tried to lay back down in the moss, hoping that if she relaxed and acted like she was going back to sleep her emotions would not be enough to wake Chara and the little monster kid would be able to walk on by none the wiser.

Why? Why was that kid all the way out here? If her dreams were true, if Chara had been doing unspeakable things while she had been unconscious, then wouldn’t someone have raised the alarm? Wouldn’t the kid have known not to come this way?

She smiled. It was a frayed, pushed to the edge kind of smile. A breathy laugh escaped her and she covered her mouth to stop it. She felt a sense of relief wash over her. If her dreams had been real then surely no one would be letting their child roam free in this area! That was proof that everything was fine! Right? All those horrible things she had seen, all those flashing images, all those screams- they couldn't have been real! They were just dreams. Fevered, pointless dreams!

… Please...please, let them be dreams.

“Shyren?” A little voice called out. “Shyren? Aaron? Anyone?”

Rain closed her eyes and prayed that Chara would continue to sleep.

“I came to save you.” He continued to whisper. “Undyne thinks this path may be too dangerous now. We have to take the boat.”

Rain’s heart sank; a new possibility dawning on her. What if the kid was here because Chara had not left anyone alive to raise the alarm?

Her inner turmoil did not go unnoticed. She felt Chara waking up. “Oh. You’re finally back. Good.”

“No. No, no, no, no!” She whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut as tried to push the rising shadow back down.

The sound of footsteps stopped. “H-hello? Yo, Shyren? Is that you?”

“Oh, now this is amusing. Is it that annoying kid again?”

Rain tried to push Chara away but trying to contain her was like trying to smother an explosion. Their body began to twitch and thrash as they fought for control.

“C-Chara please.” She rasped, “I don’t want to do this anymore. You’re scaring me.”

“Yo, A-Aaron? Is that you? This is not funny man. C-come out. W-we gotta go. Undyne said the human will probably take this route. We need to get to the boat.”

“A boat?” Chara coiled in upon herself in preparation for a strike. Rain could feel her hands moving against her will- grasping for the spear. “Now this is interesting. I suppose this means we won’t be meeting any more friends from here. But I wonder… if they were all on a boat with nowhere to run...”

Their hand found the spear. Rain latched on to any semblance of control she could manage. The weeds wiped back and forth with the efforts of their struggle.

The little monster took a few steps back and their voice cracked. “Hello?”

Chara forced them to their feet and raised her spear.

Rain screamed, her voice going raw with desperation. “Kid, run!”

For a brief moment their eyes locked. They shared the look of two people who were finally realizing that they had both done something very, very stupid and now something bad was about to happen because of it. She saw a horror just as deep as her own reflected in his eyes as it dawned on them both she had probably found his friends long ago.

The little monster stumbled backwards and turned to run.

Chara aimed to throw her spear.

Rain lashed out with everything she could muster. She poured all of her effort into stopping her. Once again she was having that strange out of body experience. She was standing next to Chara, who was still taking aim. Rain threw herself at her spear arm. She grasped at her wrist with desperate hands and tried to hold her back. It worked. A little.

The spear nicked the kid’s tail. He yelped in surprise and tripped. In a mix of horror and frustration Rain watched him tumbled head over heels and slip over the side of the bridge. He managed to catch himself somehow. His little clawed feet scraped against one of the supporting beams, the small spikes in his tail wedged into the rough wood.

“Someone, anyone, help! U-Undyne! Undyne!” He cried.

“No!” Rain rasped. She was at a crossroads. Did she dare allow herself to get close enough to help?

Chara was laughing again. She all but skipped over to her spear and picked it up. “Very nice, Rain! I mean, it will be hard to absorb any power from him if he’s just a smear at the bottom of a ditch, but still, good job. This will be much more amusing to watch.”

She continued to struggle to regain some semblance of control over her body but it was like trying to swim upstream in a river of molasses. “Let... him… go. Let…. him…go.”

Chara cleared her throat and pushed her away. “Oh, I will. Don’t worry.” She leaned over the railing a bit and smiled. “I won’t lay a finger on him.”

A familiar sound reached them. Armored footfalls crashing through the darkness. Chara spun around. Rain felt a small ray of hope fall upon her. Yes. Oh please, please let it be her. Hurry. Please, hurry!

A tall figure clad in armor charged into view, red plume trailing behind her like a heroic banner.

Chara’s smile widened. “Hello Undyne. Come to join us?”

A spear collected in Undyne’s hand. Chara shook her head. “Now hold on. Isn’t there something else you should be doing first?” Chara leaned down to look at the kid again. “Down there? See him?”

Despite her face being hidden by a helm, both Rain and Chara could pinpoint the exact moment that panic hit the Captain like a physical blow. She looked over the edge and then all at once it became quite clear that her only priority would be saving the child.

“Undyne, help! I can’t get up!”

“Hold on, Kid. I won’t let anything happen to you.” She lowered her spear into a defensive pose and took a few cautious steps forward. “Get the hell away from him.” She ordered.

Rain prodded at Chara with a new Idea. “Chara, Chara lets go. Let’s run. We can escape while she saves him. We won’t have to fight anyone. Let’s go.”

Chara took a few steps back, each movement overly dainty to the point of mockery. “Go on.” She spread her arms wide and pointed at the kid with her own weapon. “Do it. Save him. He’s a monster after all- and we all know the Underground only likes to kill children if they’re human.”

“H-help! I’m slipping!” A series of frenzied scraping sounds caused Undyne to break eye contact with them and turn her attention to the child.

Chara danced forward a few steps.

Undyne jerked back into a fully defensive stance, spear held at the ready. “I said get back, you filthy psychopath!”

“Tick, tock, Undyne. Didn’t you hear the boy? He’s slipping.”

“What is wrong with you? Let them go! “

“Oh but I have a much better plan now. Just wait and see.”

“Undyne, help!” The child wailed.

“Come on now, Undyne. Don’t be rude. Play along. Let’s see who is faster. Can you get to him before I get to you? Or will you just watch him fall? I know I will!”

He screamed. There was another brief moment of desperate scraping and then a little yellow shape fell away, looking up at them with jaded shock in his eyes.

What happened next took up only a few heartbeats to unfold but it felt like it took place in slow motion.

Undyne ran to the place the monster kid had been and tossed her spear at Chara. It was a messy throw that landed at their feet. Just close enough to make Chara stop short and hesitate for a brief second.

Undyne took that split second for all it was worth. For one horrible instant Rain and Chara’s gaze locked with Undyne’s one shadowed eye. In that moment Rain could see all the hate, all the rage, all the solemn disgust that this monster felt towards her. Then it was gone. Brushed off like a pesky fly. Undyne had turned her attention away from them.

Chara rushed forward, her own weapon in hand. Her eyes were trained on a joint in Undyne’s armor but Undyne was too fast for them. Too aware of what was coming. Chara watched in mild frustration as Undyne dove off the bridge, the tip of Chara’s spear scratching a fine line in her armor as she slipped past them, diving into the abyss below, all of her concentration focused on the falling child.

A second spear collected in her hand and she let it fly. In a flash of light it snagged the falling child by the scruff of his shirt and pinned him to the rocky wall.

Undyne hit the wall soon after, grunting and sliding downward in a hail of rocks. She dismissed her spear and scooped up his small body in her arms and held him close as she slid down the Cliffside. She tried to summon another spear and lodge it in the wall to hold them steady but she slipped, pushed away by the rockslide.

She managed to right herself in the air just in time to minimize the damage taken when she hit the uncaring ground down below. A large puff of dirt rose up around the impact area. When the dust cleared Undyne was on her knees.

Chara leaned over the edge to observe, annoyed to have missed her shot but curious to see what would happen next.

Rain shuddered, feeling the darkness of her sins crawling under her skin. She wanted Undyne to pay. She wanted anyone who had hurt any of the human children to pay. But this was just sick. That boy had done nothing wrong.

In this brief lull when Chara was focused on other things, Rain tried to throw away the fire iron. If she could throw it down into the pit then they would have to run. There would be no other choice. They wouldn’t have a weapon any more.

Chara’s eyes widened in surprise as the spear slipped from her hand. Rain tried to throw it with a frustrated shriek but Chara caught on just in time.

“Oh no you don’t.” Chara pushed her back into the darkness again. “Nice try though. But this is no longer your choice.”

Down below, a small shape climbed out of Undyne’s arms. His voice echoed up the cliffs walls in shaky trills. “Undyne, y-you saved me? Yo, I thought I was a goner! Heh.”

Undyne fell forward onto all fours and her helmet rolled off.

“Wait? Are you ok?” He inched a little closer so he could peer under her plume of hair. “It looks like you fell pretty hard.”

“Yeah Kid. I’m fine. Not even a scratch.” She forced herself back into an upright sitting position.

“Oh man, Undyne, I’m so sorry! This is all my fault, isn’t it? I should have left like you asked me to! Ohhh! I was just worried about my friends and…and that… human...” His voice grew softer as they both looked up at Chara. “I was so scared. She was just waiting to watch me fall.” He breathed.

Undyne pulled herself back up onto her feet. She was favoring one leg over the other. “Get out of here, Kid. I will go deal with that thing.”

“Wha? Now? But you look hurt! You should rest.” He laughed nervously and snagged her glove in his teeth to try and lead her away.

Undyne looked down at him and gave him a fond pat on the head. “It’s ok. I’m a warrior, remember?” She looked up at Chara with murder in her eyes. “I don’t need rest. I don’t want it. What I want… is to make them pay.”

“Ah.” Chara sighed, backing away from the edge. “They are both going to be ok. Oh well. Some other time then.” She turned away and pulled her hood up over her eyes. “Come along, Rain. I think I know where we will meet her next. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. The place where the Captain caught my last two children. Do you think she killed your friend there too?” Chara smirked when she felt Rain react. “Ah, yes, there it is. I can feel it. You are still angry with them, aren’t you? Good. You should be. Because death down here is not quick and painless for people like us. It is slow and unpleasant. Don’t you want to make them pay for doing that to your friend?”

“I just want to go home.”

“And you will Rain, you will. I promise.”

“Please, let me have my body back. Let’s find some other way to do this. I don’t want to hurt any more people.” She pleaded, trying to convince herself that Chara was wrong despite the anger tightening in her chest.

“That’s not entirely true now, is it? You do want to hurt them. I can feel it. You are so, so angry. You want them to pay. You want to feel that there is a sense of justice in the world. But you are too weak to do the deed yourself. But don’t worry, dear Rain, I am here for you. I will help you get all the things you have been too afraid to ask for. All you have to do now is close your eyes…and stay Determined