Chapter Text
The mornings were darker lately.
Not by much—just enough that the light through the curtains came in slower, gray and watery and quiet. Kris would lie there with one leg out, listening to the breeze slide through the half-cracked window. Somewhere outside, a lawnmower would start too early. Dogs barked. The usual.
Kris would ease up to sit on the edge of the bed for a while before actually (finally) getting up, letting their feet rest against the rug their mother used to call shaggy when she first brought it home. It was worn thin in spots now. Every morning, Kris dragged their heels across the same patch by the closet door.
Downstairs, the house made its usual noises: heater clanking to life, kettle whistling faintly from where Toriel had forgotten she turned it on. The floorboards near the fridge let out a soft creak whenever she reached for the milk, or just something on a higher shelf.
Kris idled, then shifted into drive, then pulled on the same pair of pants they wore yesterday. They brushed their hair with their fingers, tugged a sweatshirt over their head, and headed down without bothering to close the door completely.
Toriel was already dressed, already moving. Her glasses had slipped down her nose, her mouth set in a thin line—one of those rushed looks she sometimes wore on parent-teacher conference nights, or when Asriel used to call home from college unexpectedly. She was on the phone again, one arm wrapped around her middle, the other holding the phone to her ear. She didn’t see Kris right away.
“I understand,” she was saying, her voice soft but firm. “But you said the placement might take longer than that. It’s only been two days. I understand, yes… mm-hmm… that’s awful. Of course. But… no, no, I agree—she shouldn’t be there. Not like that.”
Kris hovered at the bottom of the stairs, pretending to retie their laces.
She saw Kris in the corner of her eye and mouthed “Cereal” with a little smile that didn’t reach all the way and a quick point towards the table.
Kris nodded. The tablecloth was new.
They ate in silence except for the low murmur of Toriel’s voice weaving in and out of the background. She moved around the kitchen like she couldn’t stay still, one hand always resting on the counter or fiddling with the dish towel or trailing over the phone cord like it helped her think.
Kris poured too much milk. They stared at the surface of their cereal until it started to swell, the flakes sagging inward like wet paper.
By the time the bowl was empty, Toriel was off the phone again, dabbing a cloth on Kris’s milk-mustache like second nature.
“Are you okay with walking today, dear?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She looked like she was going to say more. Then her face softened. She reached to brush a limp strand of hair out of Kris’s face but thought better of it. Just placed her hand gently on the back of their head for a moment, like a blessing.
“Have a good day.”
Kris shrugged on their backpack and left.
School was the same as always. The sidewalk had cracks Kris could step over with muscle memory alone. A few trees near the crosswalk had started to bud, but the grass was still brown and muddy. It clung to shoes their shoes no matter how hard they stomped. Kris walked alone, as usual. Sometimes Noelle would call out to them from across the street, and they’d give her a small wave. She’d always smile too big, clutch her backpack like it might float away, and then dart off to catch up with someone else.
It was hard to say when people started getting more complicated. They remembered when Noelle used to braid clovers into Kris’s hair and giggle when they shook them all out like a dog. Now she fidgeted with her sleeves when they passed in the hall.
Kris didn’t mind it, really. That was just how things went. Everything was always moving a little away from everything else.
Class was slow. Alphys played a nature documentary and dozed off halfway through. Someone behind Kris threw a paper ball that missed and landed in Berdly’s lap.
Susie wasn’t there.
She hadn’t been all week. No one really talked about it. It was like a ripple in a pond: a small disruption, quickly smoothed over. Kris had overheard snippets near the lockers. Police came to her place, someone had said. No one knew where she went. She got taken. She’s in juvie.
No one really knew anything.
Kris only knew she wasn’t there.
Susie didn’t talk much. Not to Kris, anyway. She mostly slouched over her desk, chewing the end of a pencil, or tapping out drumbeats on the plastic in short, agitated bursts. She always seemed a little too big for the desk, knees bumping the underside, legs sprawled into the aisle. Her head was usually down, hoodie pulled tight, hair in her face.
The class as a whole seemed a bit lighter without her around.
At lunch, Noelle offered them half a granola bar. Kris took it. Her sleeves were pulled over her hands like usual, her laugh coming out breathy and uncertain.
Kris liked her in a soft, faraway sort of way. She was one of the few people who didn’t fill up the space around her too much.
Still, Kris kept their earbuds in for most of lunch, and Noelle eventually lapsed into a quiet that seemed more comfortable for her anyway. The song looped. Something wordless and low and familiar. They watched the rain start up and collect in the corners of the windows, running down in sluggish little rivulets like the glass was crying in slow motion. Kris offered Noelle an earbud.
That night, Toriel made pasta. She burnt the garlic bread a little, muttered “oh Angel” under her breath, and scraped the blackened edges off with a butter knife.
The house smelled like scorched oregano and lemon cleaning spray.
Kris watched her from the dining room table, their homework spread out in front of them like a deck of cards. The phone buzzed again on the kitchen counter, her mobile this time. Toriel stared at it for a second, then picked it up without looking at the screen.
“Yes?” she said.
Kris tuned it out. They watched the steam rise from their noodles. The sauce was too sweet. Toriel always added sugar to offset the acidity, but she overdid it when she was stressed.
Toriel’s voice changed mid-call. Softer. Sadder. She said the word “funeral” once, then paused. “No,” she said. “She didn’t want to know.”
Kris looked up.
Toriel was facing the window. Her back was straight, her hand pressed against the sill.
“…We’ll be ready by Monday.”
She hung up. The silence that followed felt thick and important.
Kris stared at her, but she didn’t turn around.
That night, Kris lay awake longer than usual.
Asriel’s bed still sat across the room, neatly made, with the corner tucked in sharp like Toriel did on laundry days. A few of his posters were still up—band names Kris couldn’t remember, a faded championship flag from junior soccer. His desk was dusted but every item untouched, like he’d just left the room. It still smelled faintly like his old deodorant.
Kris turned over and stared at the ceiling.
They didn’t know exactly what was happening. But they knew it had something to do with the way Toriel had been measuring the hallway yesterday. How she’d asked if Kris still used both drawers of the dresser. How she’d pulled out Asriel’s old beanbag chair from the attic and patted it like it was something that could still comfort someone.
And the phone calls. Always the phone calls.
Kris woke to the soft clicking of blinds being drawn open.
It was still early—the sky hadn’t fully committed to morning yet, just that pale, milky color that made everything in the room look drained out and thinner than usual. Kris blinked against it. They didn’t need to look to know it was Toriel there, moving gently across the room, quiet in the way only someone used to waking children could be.
“Good morning, Kris.” she said softly. No term of endearment.
Kris made a noise low in their throat that could be interpreted as a reply.
Toriel was already dressed—not in her usual teaching clothes, but her weekend outfit: a soft gray sweater, wide in the sleeves, and simple black pants that swished lightly around her paws when she walked. Her horns were freshly filed and her fur fluffed out a little from sleep. She looked tired, but awake in the determined way she got when she had a list of things to do and only herself to do them.
“I thought we could get started early,” she said. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
Kris pushed the blanket off slowly and sat up. The floor was cold. Their sock found the shaggy rug.
Toriel lingered for a moment before smiling gently. “Thank you,” she said, with quiet gratitude, like Kris had agreed to something bigger than just cleaning.
Asriel’s side of the room was too quiet.
Kris had already stopped looking at it most days—just one long glance when they entered, enough to register that it was still there. But now, standing in front of it with a cardboard box and Toriel sorting methodically through the drawers, it felt different. Exposed. Like a museum exhibit being quietly dismantled behind glass.
Toriel moved slowly through it, pulling open drawers and sorting carefully with her claws tucked close. She held each item with a sort of reverence that felt halfway between sorting and saying goodbye.
“Let’s keep the things he might want,” she said, mostly to herself. “I’ll send him a box. The rest we can store… or donate, maybe. Unless…”
She glanced at Kris. “Unless you want to keep anything?”
Kris didn’t answer. They crouched by the bed and started pulling out old socks, most mismatched or balled into crinkly shapes. The room smelled like dust and detergent and something warmer beneath it—years, probably.
Toriel found a hoodie Kris remembered Asriel wearing in eighth grade—too short in the sleeves, the kind with thumb holes. She held it up and then folded it in half.
“You wore this once,” she said, quietly amused. “Halloween, wasn’t it? Said you were ‘a cool college student.’”
Kris almost smiled.
The silence between them wasn’t tense. Just heavy. It draped over the room like laundry hung to dry.
They worked in silence for a while. Kris filled one box, then started another. Toriel moved to the desk, lifting up an old pen holder shaped like a dinosaur. It still had chewed pens in it. A stack of CDs slid off from the motion and clattered to the floor.
Toriel sighed gently and knelt to gather them. Her knees cracked.
Kris found a photo tucked into the back of the desk drawer. Asriel and Kris, years younger, standing in front of the town library with juice boxes in hand. Their eyes were squinty from the sun. Asriel’s shirt had grass stains on it. Kris’s shoes were untied.
Toriel took it gently from them. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot about this one.”
She didn’t cry. Just pressed the corner of it against her mouth, held it there for a few beats.
Kris looked away.
“I suppose,” she said after a while, very softly, “we should talk about who’s moving in.”
Kris looked up, their hands stilled over a pair of scuffed-to-bits shin guards.
“I’ve been putting it off,” Toriel continued, her voice deliberate now. “Partly because I didn’t want to say anything until it was certain. And… partly because I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”
Kris waited.
Toriel placed the dinosaur cup down gently. Her eyes found the windowsill, distant.
“It’s Susie,” she said.
There was a pause, she didn’t look at Kris right away.
“I know you don’t know her well. And I know she hasn’t had an easy time of it. That… things may not have always been easy with her at school either.” Her mouth tightened for a second, but then relaxed again. “But she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. And it didn’t sit right with me to let her stay where she was.”
Kris didn’t respond. Not immediately. But the name Susie landed in their chest like a coin into water—something they’d half expected, something that still caught the breath.
They had guessed, in a vague way. The empty desk at school. The whispering. The vague shape of the story moving around their mother like a shadow she hadn’t turned to face.
Susie. All long limbs and bad posture. Slouched in the back of class, snapping pencils and biting off the erasers. Always late. Always alone.
Kris had no real opinions about her, negative or otherwise.
Toriel continued: “She’s had to move around a lot. Her mother passed recently. She didn’t want to know the details.”
The words came gently, but there was something brittle under them. Toriel’s hands were folded in front of her now, fingers twitching in slow circles.
“The foster care system was… not kind. She needed somewhere. And I—” She exhaled slowly through her nose, her fur ruffling a bit with the motion. “I offered.”
Kris still didn’t say anything. But they nodded.
Toriel turned toward them finally, her face soft and searching.
“I don’t expect you to become friends overnight,” she said. “I don’t expect anything, really. But it will be her room too. And I wanted you to hear it from me.”
Kris looked over Asriel’s side of the room. It already looked like it belonged to someone else. In a few days, it would.
They nodded again. This time slower.
“Okay,” they said.
And meant it, mostly.
By midmorning, Asriel’s side of the room looked hollowed out. Not empty, but changed. A few things were still there— His pc, a spare blanket folded over the chair, a couple of books Toriel had deemed “harmless enough to share,” a lamp that flickered a bit when you clicked it too fast. But it wasn’t his anymore.
Kris stood in the doorway and looked at it the way they looked at strangers in photographs.
Toriel came up beside them. “Would you come to the store with me?” she asked. “Just for a few things.”
Kris nodded.
“Thank you.”
The store was quiet that late in the morning. The kind of quiet that made the music sound louder than it was, all twinkly keyboards and lyrics you weren’t supposed to listen to. A calm that only existed in wide aisles and elevator music. It smelled like waxy fruit and floor polish.
Toriel moved with a list in hand. She didn’t check things off as she went, just held the paper like a compass and kept pausing in front of items with a furrow in her brow.
Kris walked behind with cart and let it drift a little to one side like always. They didn’t bump Toriel with it like they did every other time.
They stopped in front of the underwear aisle first. Kris stayed a polite distance away as Toriel picked through a pack with a frown. “Medium,” she murmured. “Though I suppose we can always return them.”
She turned to Kris. “Would that be alright?”
Kris shrugged. “Yeah.”
They didn’t know what else to say. Susie’s face hovered in the back of their mind, blurry and indistinct, more silhouette than person. All they could think was that she probably wouldn’t like being referred to in underwear conversations.
They moved on.
In the hygiene aisle, Toriel slowed in front of the pads. She glanced down the row with a look Kris didn’t quite know how to read. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly—just cautious. She picked up one pack, then another. Compared the wings. Kris stepped back again and stared at a display for floral body wash.
They got deodorant next. Two kinds—one unscented, one lavender. Toriel hesitated with them in her hands, then put both in the cart.
“She might like the choice,” she said.
There was something careful in her voice. Kris thought about the way she used to shop for Asriel when he was little. How she always came home with the wrong brand of peanut butter (he liked crunchy), but two different types of cereal, just in case.
They picked out a set of sweatpants and two T-shirts. Toriel held each one up like she was picturing someone else’s body in them. “Hard to know what will fit,” she said, “when you’ve only ever seen someone slouch.”
Kris found that funny in a quiet way.
“She does slouch a lot,” they said, their voice a little hoarse.
Kris volunteered a soft hoodie in a muddy purple that they thought might pass Susie’s vague standards for coolness.
At checkout, the cashier didn’t comment. Toriel counted out the bills with quiet focus, her claws clicking lightly against her wallet. She folded the receipt carefully and nodded her thanks.
On the drive back, the car was warm and smelled the plasticky smell of the bags from the store. Kris rested their head against the cool window and watched the trees blur past.
When they got home, Toriel unpacked everything with the same sense of quiet purpose she’d had all day. She folded the new clothes and slid them into the bottom drawer. Set the pads behind the bathroom mirror next to a spare toothbrush. Lined the deodorants up neatly like little soldiers waiting for orders.
Kris sat on their bed and watched.
Asriel’s side of the room was no longer Asriel’s. Not really. The posters were gone. The desk was clear. A beanbag chair had appeared, and one of the pillows had been swapped out for a softer one.
There was something strange about watching a room get ready for someone you didn’t really know. Not like preparing for a guest—more like expecting a season. Like opening windows because spring was coming, even if it still snowed last week.
Toriel adjusted the lamp one last time and looked around. She exhaled.
“She’s coming tomorrow,” she said. Not looking at Kris. “After school.”
Kris nodded.
Toriel was quiet for a long moment. Then, in a voice that barely rose above a whisper, she added:
“I don’t know how this will go.”
Kris watched her.
She looked older all of a sudden. Or maybe just honest, the lines carved under her eyes seemed deeper.
“Me neither,” Kris said. They meant it.