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She’s not going to do it.
Noelle squeezes her eyes shut.
She’s not going to do it. She can’t do it. Snowgrave? That’s not a spell she’s even heard of, that’s not something she knows how to use. And—
She doesn’t want to. And she knows what she wants doesn’t matter. Kris is the one who understands this world, who knows what needs to be done; she’s just a tool. But she doesn’t have a good feeling about this. She doesn’t want to do it. It’s not an enemy; it’s Berdly.
“Snowgrave,” Kris says, quietly. They’ve been dodging every one of Berdly’s attacks with calm grace, but they don’t sound out of breath at all.
“No.”
“Snowgrave,” Kris says, as cold and lifeless as the creatures they’ve left behind.
“No!” She’s hunched on the ground, eyes still closed, arms pressed over her head. “I can’t. I don’t know how. I can’t do it.”
But she’s going to give in, isn’t she? She’s never been able to say no to anyone. Anyone but her dad and—
Kris cries out in pain, and Noelle’s eyes snap open. She’s on her feet before she’s even conscious of moving. It feels like she could cast Snowgrave in that instant, whether she knows how or not.
The sight in front of her freezes her to the spot. Maybe that’s all that saves Berdly.
There’s agony in Kris’s voice, but it’s muted, somehow. A pain that’s intense but familiar: not something you can get used to, maybe, but something that you can anticipate and brace yourself for. Gasping and suppressed cries and quick breathing that would probably be non-stop screaming from anyone else.
They’re pulling out their own soul.
Berdly jerks backwards, takes a few sharp steps away. “What—”
“Run!” Noelle shouts at him. It’s too late for her, she’s too deep in whatever’s happening right now. But if Berdly can get away—
Berdly looks torn. “I’m saving you!”
“You won’t!”
Kris doubles over, screaming. It’s a voiceless sound, almost drowned out by the sound of ribs snapping and reforming.
Berdly runs, and Noelle gasps with relief. If he’s gone, she won’t—
(Kris wouldn’t, Kris wouldn’t, they’re just helping her get stronger—)
If he’s gone, she won’t have to kill him.
Kris collapses onto the pavement, their soul struggling in their fist.
Maybe Noelle could run, too.
The thorns in her finger feel like an anchor. She knows she can’t leave.
She stoops down next to Kris. They’re lying where they fell, their eyelids flickering; they look barely conscious. But they’re still gripping their soul, so tightly that the colour is seeping out of their knuckles.
“K...” It’s barely a sound, barely anything, and Noelle swallows and tries again. “Kris?”
Kris sits up, slowly. It looks painful. Noelle should offer to help.
She’s already backing away.
Kris reaches out with their free hand, grabs at the air a couple of times. Closes their eyes, takes a shaking breath. Reaches out with more purpose, and manages to pull something into existence.
Noelle has seen Kris do this before, in this dark world. Usually it’s their sword, or some kind of food. This time, the thing they grab is familiar, and it takes her a moment to realise why: it’s the lunchbox she gave to Susie.
It seems ridiculous, after everything, but that realisation still makes her blush.
Kris shoves their soul into the lunchbox, with a decisiveness that doesn’t seem to fit their weak state. Slams the lid shut, seals the clasps. Rests their forehead against the plastic for a moment, shivering.
No chalk left in the lunchbox. Maybe Susie enjoyed it?
There are other things she should be focusing on.
“Kris?” Noelle asks, tentatively.
Kris mumbles something, a half-word, barely more than a breath. It sounds like an apology.
Is it over? She doesn’t know if she’s allowed to hope.
“It wasn’t me,” Kris says, very quietly.
-
Kris’s explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense. Someone else has control of their soul, somehow, has been steering them around since yesterday morning. Deciding where they go, what they do, what they say.
Noelle’s kind of glad to hear it. Kris has seemed off this entire time; she didn’t want to believe they were really like that. But it’s so strange.
Kris managed to pull out their soul last night, apparently, for an hour or two of freedom. And then...
“You put it back in control of you?” If Kris hadn’t done that, does that mean Noelle wouldn’t have had to...? “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Kris says. “My life’s just been... more interesting, since it came along. And it hurts to move without it. And...” They hesitate, for a long moment, while Noelle’s still grappling with the idea of giving up your autonomy because it’s interesting. “It helped me make friends.”
Noelle presses her hands to her mouth. “Kris...”
“I didn’t think it was dangerous.” They won’t look at her; they’ve never been good at making eye contact. “It didn’t hurt anyone, before you. I don’t know what changed.”
She doesn’t know what to say. If Kris hadn’t been so reckless, maybe Noelle wouldn’t have had to hurt anyone. If she’d—
If she’d been a better friend to Kris, maybe they wouldn’t have let some unknown force control them, just to get closer to people.
It doesn’t feel like throwing blame around will help either of them. Kris didn’t want to hurt her. She didn’t want to – want to—
The only one who’s acted with malice here is the entity that has control of Kris’s soul, whatever that is. It feels important to remember that.
Kris tries to push themselves to their feet. Winces, whispers something Toriel would probably scold them for.
“You can barely move,” Noelle says.
“I’m fine.”
She doesn’t want Kris to put their soul back in. She doesn’t want to go back to that. But she doesn’t want to watch Kris suffering for her sake, either. “Can you survive without your soul?”
Kris flashes her a grim smile. “I’m going to have to.”
That’s not how it works. You can’t survive through force of will alone, no matter what her dad says.
But she doesn’t want to keep pressing.
She wants to believe that, if the entity tried to command her again, she’d be able to refuse. Knowing it’s not really Kris, knowing that that’s not what Kris wants for her. But she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough.
She holds her hand out. Kris ignores it, tries to climb to their feet again.
“Let me help,” Noelle says. If she can help in some way that doesn’t hurt anyone—
She killed that shopkeeper, didn’t she?
She jerks her hand back as Kris reaches for it.
For a moment they stare at each other, Noelle’s hands clasped at the base of her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Noelle says. “I know it wasn’t you. I was – I was just—”
She thought it was Kris. She thought Kris would actually ask her to do those things. It feels like she’s betrayed them, thinking they were capable of that. But the words were coming out of Kris’s throat; what else was she supposed to believe?
“I don’t want to be afraid of you,” she says.
Kris finally manages to struggle to their feet. Slowly, painfully. “It’s natural.”
Noelle freezes. It’s natural. Kris said that before, when they were... someone else.
Does Kris remember that? Is this one of their bad jokes? Or have they just forgotten about it?
Kris stumbles, and Noelle moves quickly to steady them. She gasps as the pressure drives the thorns deeper.
Kris goes very still. “Oh...”
They take her hand into theirs. She swallows, counts in her head, trying to focus on something other than the pain.
The pain, and the fact that Kris is touching her. Maybe she’s still afraid of them, even knowing the truth.
Kris tugs on the ring, gently, and Noelle flinches.
“I wouldn’t ask you to wear this.” They look up at her; it’s a rare moment of eye contact. It feels like an icicle being driven through her, pinning her in place.
Noelle swallows. “I know.”
She didn’t know. She never questioned whether it was really Kris.
“I know I’ve...” Kris seems to run out of words, stares at the ring for a moment. Tries to loosen it, and Noelle hisses through her teeth, despite trying not to show a reaction. “I’ve played pranks, sometimes.” A pause. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
She’s never really known how to read her relationship with Kris. She guesses they care about her, after all. She doesn’t know whether she feels touched or just feels ill.
“Can you take this ring off?” Kris asks.
She’s afraid of admitting that she’s tried. She shakes her head.
“Is it okay if I keep trying?” Kris asks.
It hits her like a punch to the chest, just being asked her opinion. Having the power to say yes or no. She wonders if Kris is feeling something similar, now that they’re free of their soul.
“Okay,” she says. It’ll hurt to have it taken off, but it hurts to wear it as well, and she just wants to leave this behind.
She doesn’t know if that’s possible. But they can try, at least.
Kris’s movements are clumsy, their hands shaking. No way to know if it’s pain or guilt. It’s hard to even think about the question, with the thorns digging into her like the ring’s a living thing, trying to hold itself in place.
But there’s movement. It’s slow, it’s agonising. But the ring seems to be shifting, maybe.
“The – the enemies I – froze,” Noelle says. It’s hard to speak through the pain, grabbing at words between quick breaths. “Did we – did we—?”
Did we have to? she’s trying to ask. She wants to hear that they had no choice, that their foes were unstoppable and vicious, that it was the only way to survive. But Kris ducks their head lower over her hand, hair hiding their eyes, and she loses the will to finish the question.
The ring comes free. It takes Noelle by surprise; the roiling guilt in her stomach was enough, for a moment, to distract her from the pain of the thorns being worked down her finger.
“I’ll take it,” Noelle says, quickly. It’s not—
It’s not that she thinks Kris would put it on her again. It’s just—
She’d just feel more comfortable knowing where it is. That’s all.
She’s half-expecting Kris to grab her hand, but they don’t make any sudden movements; they just let her take the ring from their palm. They dig into their pocket, produce another ring, and for a moment Noelle’s about to throw up, her mind straight back at the shopkeeper she—
But it’s not the ring she took. It’s her ring, the one her dad gave her for her birthday, the one with the snowflake emblem.
Kris takes Noelle’s hand and slides the ring onto her finger. Their motions are still stiff, but they seem perhaps a little steadier, now that they’re past the immediate aftermath of ripping their own soul out of their chest.
Noelle tenses up, her body expecting it to hurt, even though she knows it’s just a normal ring. It’s hers. It’s fine.
It feels uncomfortably like a proposal.
She’d probably say yes, if Kris did propose to her. Whether she actually wants to marry them doesn’t have anything to do with it. She just knows now, with soul-deep certainty, that she’ll say yes to anything.
-
An enemy pounces at them when they’re about to cross a road. A Tasque, Noelle remembers, Kris’s voice so clear in her memory it’s like she can hear it right now. The Tasque. Freeze it.
The ice magic is already boiling up to her fingers, and she doesn’t realise she hasn’t actually been commanded to use it until Kris catches hold of her wrist.
“You don’t have to,” they say. “Just pet it.”
Pet it?
“That’s not an order,” Kris adds, an instant later. “It’s advice.”
It helps to calm her down. She has a choice, she tells herself.
She darts past the Tasque’s bullets – are those balls of wool? – and lays a hand on its side, tentative.
The Tasque starts purring almost instantly, relaxing into her hand. It cranes its head around to lick her fingers, its rough tongue somehow both painful and soothing against the wounds left by the thorns.
Noelle stands there, motionless.
She killed so many creatures just like this.
She looks over at Kris. They glance away.
It wasn’t them, she knows. There’s still a part of her feeling that she needs to kill them, that that’s the only way to keep herself safe.
She’s stronger now. She could do it.
“I think it worked,” she calls. She can hear her voice shaking.
-
She keeps glancing over at Kris as they walk through the dark world. Wondering if they feel as guilty as she does, wondering if she wants them to feel that. Watching for them to change, somehow.
A couple of times she sees them hunched over, clutching their chest, breathing hard. She doesn’t know how much damage it’s causing, going this long without their soul. It doesn’t seem like it can be good for them.
She pretends she hasn’t seen.
Maybe she’s killing them slowly, passively. She’s not sure she’s escaped the ruthless person that soul was shaping her into. Maybe she’s just standing back and letting Kris die.
-
Kris asks if they and Noelle can go ahead to seal the fountain alone.
Susie raises her eyebrows, looking between the two of them in bewildered, attractive suspicion. Noelle tries to focus on that, and not on how her own body has tensed up. The thought of Kris trying to get her on her own puts her on edge in more ways than she can categorise.
Images flash across her mind. Kris, standing against her back, quietly ordering her to freeze Susie. Kris, on one knee, offering her the ring of thorns. Kris kissing her; she has no idea whether she’d reciprocate or run.
But she goes with Kris anyway. Does that mean she’s still following orders?
The dark fountain casts strange, long shadows. Even in the half-light it’s sending out, Noelle can see Kris swallow.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“It needs a human soul to seal it,” Kris says.
Oh. That’s why they didn’t want the others here; the others don’t know Kris is walking around without a soul.
“Can we use it without letting it back inside you?” Noelle asks.
“I don’t know,” Kris says. “I don’t think so.”
She’s stronger, she tells herself. She’s stronger. She can fight against orders, she won’t let herself be used like that again.
She can’t stop shaking.
Kris sets the lunchbox down at their feet, then produces a pair of shackles and hands them to Noelle. “Could you...?” They put their hands behind their back.
Noelle examines the shackles, trying not to look at the lunchbox, trying not to think about its contents. “Where did you get these?”
Kris shrugs, a little awkwardly, given their position. “Prison.”
“What were you searching for?” Is Noelle about to secure Kris with a pair of shackles their kinky web searches brought into existence? She has no idea how to feel about that.
Kris shakes their head. “Not the Queen’s prison. The one before.”
“How many prisons have you been in?” She clips the shackles onto Kris’s wrists. It still feels strangely intimate, somehow, even if they have nothing to do with Kris’s search history.
“Don’t let me hurt anyone,” Kris says. They tug against the shackles, testing the hold. “Stop me with your magic if you have to.”
Noelle goes still. She can’t believe Kris would ask her to use her magic again, knowing—
“Sorry,” Kris says, hastily. Noelle barely hears it.
“What next?” she asks. She’s unsettled by how cold her own voice sounds.
“You can open the box,” Kris says. “Or you can walk away. No one’s giving you orders.”
It helps her feel a little more steady. She kneels by the lunchbox, and – she doesn’t want to do this, but they can’t just leave the fountain here.
She undoes one of the clasps and moves to the other.
“Noelle,” Kris says, urgently, “if I don’t get to talk as myself again, I’m sor—”
The box bursts open, and the soul flies to Kris like an arrow, slams straight into their chest.
Noelle is braced for something, some kind of violence or mind games. Kris just looks around, calmly. Tests the shackles on their wrists. Looks over at her, and her chest tightens.
“Kris?” she asks, quietly. “Is it you?”
“I haven’t seen this before,” Kris says, quietly. They turn in a full circle, taking in the dark fountain, the surroundings. “It skipped to the end?”
“Kris?” Noelle asks, quieter still. She’s not sure she wants to be heard.
Kris looks at her again. “I’ve never seen Noelle at the fountain.”
“What are you talking about?” Noelle asks, trying not to back away too obviously. She swallows, tries for a firmer voice. “Who are you?”
Kris doesn’t answer. Tries to walk away, away from the fountain, back towards where the others are – towards Berdly, towards Susie—
Noelle’s in front of them in a flash, faster than she knew she could move, ice magic rising inside her like bile. She swallows it back down. No. It’s Kris. Or – even if it’s someone else, you’d be hurting Kris. No. You don’t have to do this any more.
“No,” she says. “You’re here to seal the fountain. That’s it.”
Kris tries to walk around her, and she grabs their shoulders and forces them to the floor. It’s easier than she’d expected. They can’t fight back with their hands bound, and she’s always been taller.
And she’s become so much stronger here.
She thrusts her hand into Kris’s chest, up to the wrist.
Kris’s eyes widen. She can feel their soul fluttering frantically in her grip.
“You’re going to seal the fountain,” she says, “or I’m going to pull you straight out of my friend’s chest again.”
It scares her, a little, hearing herself say that. But it feels good to be the one giving the commands for once. And, now that she knows she can get hold of Kris’s soul, she might have the power to stop the intruder if they try to harm people again.
“Understood,” Kris says, after a moment.
Noelle breathes deeply. Tries to stop shaking.
It cost too much to earn it. But maybe she can take a little of that strength back into the real world.