Chapter Text

Her father squeezed her hand. His bearded face was close enough that she could feel his fur tickle her chin yet everything felt distant. The fevered pain made the world around her feel warped. His deep voice seemed to echo from some unfathomable pit in her mind, “You have to stay Determined! You can't give up! You are the future of humans and monsters.” He pressed his forehead against hers, trying to hold back tears. “Please, wake up. Don’t give up Hope.” He whispered.

Her parents left the room to go get more medicine. Healing magic was good for closing cuts and healing burns but it did not work as well against poison. Especially when they did not realize that it was poison and not some natural sort of sickness that was afflicting her.

Asriel lingered at the threshold of the door. She could sense his outline framed by the light outside of their darkened room. He had stayed close, just like he had promised he would.

It would happen soon, now. She could feel it.

He inched into the room and held her hand. “Psst. Chara…Please, wake up. I don’t… I don’t like this plan anymore. I-“

Chara squeezed his hand, gritting her teeth a little. He jumped in surprise at finding her awake and lucid. “You promised.” She rasped. “You promised you would be there to catch me. You swore you wouldn’t let me go. You don’t doubt my plan, do you?”

He lowered his head. To her great surprise and pride he did not seem to be crying. Good. Good he was growing stronger. It made her proud.

“No, I said… I said I’d never doubt you.” She felt more than saw him smile. “Six, right? We just have to get six.” He squeezed her hand to assure her he was not going to leave her. “And we will do it together, right?”

“Together.” She smiled. “We will be the Hyper God.”

***

It felt so strange. She remembered her body hurting and her awareness falling into the blackness. Then the next thing she knew, she was with Asriel; warm and strong and safe. They were both strong now. She could feel his magic and realized it was her magic now too. It felt incredible.

Likewise he felt her Determination. A force like fire that at first he flinched away from. But she shielded him from its negative effects and allowed him to bask in its power.

“Hello? Are you in there?” He asked, clawed hands going up to his face. They both blinked in surprise when they realized that they had grown much taller with their transformation and he was now sporting a twisted set of horns.

“Yes, I am here, Asriel. Greetings!” She replied in his voice, stretching out their hands and looking at them in awe. They certainly looked older and more intimidating now but not nearly as flashy as Asriel’s silly drawing had predicted them to be. “Guess the Hyper God thing was a bust, huh?”

One of their hands played with their horns. “We still look cool though!” Asriel assured, still optimistic.

They both looked down at the crumpled heap of Chara’s old body. It looked so tiny and frail now; its eyes half open and glazed over, blood leaking from the mouth. She felt a wave of grief flood over Asriel as they picked up her old body and hugged it close to them. “I’m so sorry, Chara. I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

“Stop apologizing. I’m right here.” She scolded.

“I know. It’s just…” He didn’t cry. She wouldn’t let him. “Do you still want to go see those flowers? I can carry you now.”

She rested a proverbial hand on his shoulder and took control of their body. “Let’s go.”

***

She had expected the screams.

Asriel had not.

She had expected them to run or accuse him of killing her.

Asriel had not.

But what neither of them expected was for the humans to group together and fight them.

“Please! Stop! I’m not here to hurt you! Chara is fine; she’s in here with me!” He pleaded, voice warped into something deeper than either of them were used to.

“Demon!”

“Evil spirit!”

“Monster!”

“Get back! In the name of God, get back!”

“Chara, Chara they are not listening!” Asriel cried; eyes wide in terror as the humans began to throw things at them.

“Don’t let them get in our way! Asriel, catch them! We need their souls!” She complained, feeling her Determination burn inside of them, mixing with hate and manifesting itself in flames. Real flames. Bright, hot flames that danced just like they had when she had set her house on fire.

Asriel was shrinking away in fear; the big crybaby.

She had to learn how to use magic on the fly but Asriel was a good caster and she felt his own muscle memory helping her along. “Don’t worry, I will protect you.” She assured, a wide arc of fire pushing the angry humans back as they tried to advance upon them. The humans screamed. “See? This is easy!” She threw her head back and laughed, hurling a ball of flame at the church that had housed so much of her misery. “Not so mighty now, are you? Not so easy to hurt me now that I am strong!” She turned their gaze to a cowering woman who had once let the other children bully her and outstretched her clawed hand. “May as well start the reaping with her.”

She pulled the soul from the human’s chest for all the world to see and summoned a torrent of flame to burn away her body.

“No! No! Chara, stop!” The flames vanished before they reached the woman. Asriel’s presence tackled Chara and they stumbled back in a tangle of confusion. “That’s not how we agreed to do it! We have to ask. We have to get permission. We have to be peaceful! We are ambassadors!”

“Peace? They never gave me any peace!” She shrieked. “They never showed me any kindness!”

The humans were rallying now. An arrow shot out of the dark and nailed them in the shoulder, making them stagger back even more.They gasped; hand going up to the wound where magic seeped out and turned to dust between their fingers. Asriel’s mind reeled in panic. This was so far flung from the relative safety of his home life.

Another arrow struck them in the side. A man on the roof with a compact hunting bow was reloading for a third shot. Chara threw a ball of flame at him while Asriel cried his objection.

Asriel knelt over Chara’s old body, scooping it up again from the bed of flowers they had placed it in and backing out of the town square. Each step was slow and clumsy as he tried to hold back his sibling in her desire to burn down the entire village.

Hot tears ran down their face as she cried out a list of past traumas for every fireball she managed to free from Asriel’s grasp and throw against the chipped paint of the old town.

The two of them fought, arguing internally as they were pelted with more and more objects. The pure intent to harm behind each attack caused the blows to hurt far more than Chara had expected.

“What is wrong with you? Don’t just stand there and take it! Don’t make me stand here and take it! Not again! Not from them! They don’t deserve pity! No one here deserves your mercy! It’s us or them, Asriel. It’s kill or be killed!”

Cries of “demon” and “monster” rose up from the rallying mass; shovels, axes and baseball bats swinging at them from all sides while a group of men in the back called for everyone to clear the area so they could take a clear shot.

Chara cried out in pain and tried to retaliate, snarling and knocking away several attackers. The humans crashed up against the wall of the corner store, where they groaned and did not get up. She tried to scorch the earth around them but once again Asriel blocked her.

A gunshot split the air like thunder. Asriel shrank away from the unfamiliar sound.

A bolt of pain tore through their back.

“Asriel!” She wailed as they doubled over in pain. “Asriel they are killing us! You are letting them kill us!”

He braced himself against the nearest wall, liquid magic seeping from their mouth. “We ...we will go back. Its ok, we will go back. We will try again some other time.” He panted.

Another gunshot. More pain. “Asriel!” She sobbed. “Let me fight them!”

“No. No it’s ok.” He was smiling. Why was he smiling? “They are just scared. We will be good. We are ambassadors, remember? We are…good.”

They had so much power. So much magic. So much Determination. Yet in this body she only controlled half of it. The other half fought her. She tried to protect them but alone it was not enough. She tried to avenge them but her attempts fell short.

Another shot. “Asriel please, don’t let me die. I don’t want to die again!” She bawled.

They ran, magic bleeding into their robes. “I won’t hurt them… I won’t hurt them. It’s ok... It will all be ok.” He assured her, his voice soft and gentle compared to the angry cries that echoed through the night behind them.

Asriel repeated himself over and over again while she cried out for retribution. He assured her everything would be ok even as they left a trail of dust leading all the way back home. He promised her he wasn’t mad at the humans for being afraid- even as his breath and body shuddered.

Chara tried to get him to drop her old body so they could move faster but he refused to abandon it.

She told him she was scared to die but he seemed to be having a hard time hearing her.

They limped back home, the world around them growing all the more fuzzy with every step. Asriel was fighting back his own steadily growing fear as he tried to make it back. He insisted that once they found their mother everything would be ok. She could heal them. They would be safe.

Chara knew better.

Asriel faltered as he tried to drag them into the throne room. Their eyes were wide but blind as they called out for their parents.

“Mom? Dad?” Chara croaked.

Silence.

“Mommy? Daddy!” Asriel wailed into the darkness as his hand slipped from the arm of his father’s throne, passing through it as he began to turn to dust. “Someone, help me!”

...But no one came.

They were alone.

He began to fall forward, eyes rolling back as time seemed to stretch out into an agonizing eternity. He just needed to close his eyes and rest for a moment…

Chara begged him to stay awake as she felt their connection grow distant. She begged him to remember his promise not to leave her as they fell. She screamed as he sighed, the crumpled form of her child-self falling among the flowers of the castle garden as the two siblings collapsed alongside it.

He let go of her then, her soul slipping through his fingers. They turned to dust as they hit the ground.

The darkness swallowed her screaming.

***

Sans had long since gotten past the habit of asking “why me” when he realized the logical answer was “ why the hell not?” Life seemed to have its favorite punching bags for no particular reason other than that there was no reason not to have them, so he endured it.

He was starting to think that maybe Rain was a kindred spirit in that sense. Poor kid was fucked.

Running into a Memoryhead was not a pleasant experience. He should know. He had run into them more than his fair share of times.

He wasn’t really sure what they were anymore. Bad thoughts? Bad memories? Echoes and imprints of things long gone, he supposed. It was something malevolent held together by the DT residue from old experiments. The DT was their glue and the memories their cannibalistic source of energy. They seemed to feed on misery in order to perpetuate their corrupted existence. They were drawn to inner turmoil. They pulled up your deepest, darkest memories and when they had absorbed enough negative energy from them, they split in two.

There were many reasons why both Sans and Alphys were reluctant to ever go down to the lower levels of the lab but Memoryhead was probably one of the most obvious ones.

The bottom levels were full of bad memories.

Poor kid. Judging by the nonstop screams she had been emitting ever since the thing had touched her, she had provided it with one hell of a feast.

Alphys had managed to shut down the machine and Sans had drawn Rain’s attacker away and lost it in the maze of lab levels just as he had done with it so many times before. But the deed had already been done. Rain was trapped reliving bad memories that had been pulled back to the surface. They had to listen to grim snippets of her story between her sobs and screams as they carried her back to her room.

She cried out for names she should have never known. She begged a long-dead child to save her. Her voice dropped frighteningly low with hatred towards a village that Sans had never heard of and wailed in terror over flames only she could see.

She was fighting things that only existed behind her eyes now.

Alphys was a wreck, panicked over what she had let happen. Yet when Sans had tried to convince her it was time to tell Rain the truth she only retreated farther into her own mind.

As of right now Alphys was gone. She was upstairs running through the data, desperate to find proof that this day had not been a total disaster; desperate to hide from her mistake and the prospect of coming clean.

Well if Alphys wanted to keep her damn secret then he would let her keep it! But he would stop Rain from comeing to her own conclusion now.

Sans stayed with Rain and kept watch as she struggled through her ordeal. It was the least he could to help make up for their screw-up. Now that the thing had gotten a taste of her memories it would come looking for her again in the night so he would keep an eye on her when he could. He had gotten pretty good at running from bad memories. He had also gotten pretty good at keeping quiet when they inevitably caught up to him, so he was perfect for the job.

He didn’t realize he had started to doze off in his chair until he heard the graceless thud of the human falling out of her bed in a tangle of sweaty sheets. He cracked one eye open, watching her in silence. Wondering if perhaps she would fall back asleep and spare him from an awkward conversation.

She groaned and sat up, rubbing her head and cursing under her breath.

“there’s some water over on the table.” He pointed out.

She flinched at the sound of his voice. She crawled over to the night stand and drained the glass. Her voice was raw and tired when she finally spoke. “What the hell happened?”

“what do you remember?”

She rubbed her head and plopped back down on the floor. She held her empty glass close to her chest like it would protect her from the creeping shadows. Her hands were shaking. “A whole lot of weird shit.” She rasped, taking several moments to try and quantify her memories. “ Voices, faces, static. Something went wrong during the extraction?”

“you could say that.” He ground his teeth ever so slightly in annoyance. He wanted to tell her but…“al is reading over the details of the extraction. she should be able to answer any questions you have in the morning.”

Her voice got snagged in a net of hesitation. “Was this something that would be worth doing again?”

He shrugged helplessly. “not sure yet. like i said, she’s still going over the details. the extractions shouldn’t all be this bad but we will understand if you don’t want to-”

“I’ll keep doing it.” There was no doubt or hesitation in her voice, just a hard, bitter edge.

Sans blinked in surprise. He had just listened to her scream and sob for an hour. As far as she knew everything she had gone through had been because of the DT extraction, not Memoryhead. Yet still she was desperate enough to do it again.

She shivered and hugged her knees close to her chest, dragging the blankets back over her. A thin line of whispered insults dripped from her lips; uttered by a voice darker than her own.

She began to whisper back to herself. “I’m sorry…. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. What they did to you was horrible. But it doesn’t have to be-”

Her voice changed. “I don’t need your pity. I don’t care. It needed to happen. I needed to learn who my real friends were: no one. In the end I will make things even. So why don’t you stop sticking your nose in my memories and worry about what happened to you? They are lying to you. Hiding something from us. Monsters will do that. They never follow through with the plans they promise you!” Chara spat under their breath.

Sans watched Chara with a wary eye, his grin fastened in place.

Rain’s eyes fell and she sighed. She turned her attention back to Sans. “Tell Alphys that I’m doing much better now. Tell her to do whatever it takes to get things right.” There was no energy in her voice.

Chara let out a frustrated sigh and then seemingly retreated into the darker reaches of their mind again.

Sans’s voice was unusually quiet when he eventually broke the silence. “what’s she like?”

Rain look up at him as if confused to find him still talking to her. “What?”

He shifted in place. “chara. what’s she like? i only ask because you didn’t even bat an eye at the prospect of another dt extraction. and buddy, after seeing what you just went through, to consider it the lesser evil…heh.” He shrugged. “well, guess it’s none of my business. just occurred to me that maybe nobody has asked you before.”

Her lip twitched and she buried her face among her arms. “No. No, thank you. You’re right. No one has thought to ask that before.” She took a deep breath and her eyes became haunted. “But I think you already know what she’s like. You have felt it before. Even if you don’t remember the details I bet you can still feel it sometimes. Because when I lose control and she breaks free, her feeling spreads. That cold silence? That aching emptiness that hangs in the air when an entire timeline turned to dust? That’s her. That’s Chara.

“Her words taste like a mouthful of ash and her touch is so full of anger that it burns. Everything aches until you go numb to it. Because despite all of her hate, despite all of her anger- she still fills me with nothing but cold.

“And when she is blessedly quiet to the point of near absents, I feel a gaping nothingness in my chest.” She shivered, voice edged with fear. “It’s like my skin is made of flaking paper and all of my insides have been scooped out. I feel brittle and weak. Like my chest will cave in and crumble upon my next breath. I used to know a feeling that was better than this. But I have been trapped with this for so long that I have forgotten what life without her was like. I have forgotten the word for it. But I want to find that word again. That emotion. That peace. Whatever it is. I will do whatever it takes. Even though the thought of not having her there sometimes scares me.”

He frowned. “it does? even after all this?”

She nodded. “I fear the empty shell that would be left if she were ever to leave. But what other choice do I have?”

He was surprised to feel a twinge of pity for her. He could relate to someone being trapped in the Underground. He could wvwn relate to someone trapped in a time loop. But your own body? Yikes. He slid out of his chair and stretched, several bones popping. “well, i guess i should go let alphys know you are awake. you had her pretty worried for a while.”

“Ok. I need some time alone with Chara to process some stuff now anyway.” She rubbed her eyes. “Thanks for listening to me for a while.”

“don’t mention it.”

She stopped him before he could slip out of view. “Sans?” Her voice was oddly cold now. The sudden change made him hesitate. “I’m reliving her life through my dreams. I’m seeing the things that turned her into what she is today. It’s very,” she gulped, “disturbing. And the parallels to my own life are kind of unnerving if I’m to be completely honest. I don’t like the idea of having to go through those memories again every time you extract some DT... But Chara is convinced that it wasn’t the DT extraction that caused these things to resurface. So I have to ask, what really happened?”

Sans was quiet for only a few seconds but it felt like an eternity. It took some effort for him to swallow the lump in his throat. He turned and took his leave, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands in his pockets as he escaped down the hall. “alphys will be down here with her findings in a couple of hours. she’ll be able to give you the play by play of her findings concerning the extraction. until then i suggest you catch a couple z’s. you had a rough ride.” He could just hear Chara’s whisper carry down the hall as he left.

“He’s lying to you.” She warned.

“No. Sans never lies.” Rain assured; her own voice low and tired. “He just tells empty stories. He tells truths that are easy to misinterpret into whatever you want to hear.”

He kept his gaze trained on his shoes as the elevator door closed behind him. She was right.