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Kris walked back into their room to find the cage-wagon sidled against their bed frame. They felt a flash of annoyance.
Carelessly ripping the cloth off it they hissed, “I thought I told you to stay put.”
“Oh thank goodness you’re back.” They shivered slightly at hearing the voice in their head. Every time it started again Kris thought they would be prepared but the sensation didn’t stop catching them off-guard. It went on, “That was just for if Toriel came to check, I thought.”
“Why would I want you roaming around in any capacity when I leave you in a cage?” Said cage was moved back onto the top of the dresser. “Besides, this makes it more conspicuous if mom did come in here. I don’t think you even care about being found out.”
“I just get restless,” it said, all nonchalant. “Where have you been?”
“… I went to Ralsei. To talk.”
“Oh.” It was stumped for some time. “Well, what did he say? Or, what did you say?”
“I told him what happened. He said… there are things even the Angel is bound by. Don’t suppose you could tell me what they are?”
“You saw what happened last time I let something slip…”
“Yeah. I don’t know if Ralsei just doesn’t want to say or if he cannot say either.” Kris raised an eyebrow. “Can he?”
“I don’t know what Ralsei knows, Kris, I was hoping you would know more what he knows or what he can do.”
“Why would I know?”
“I don’t know! What do you both talk about behind my back?”
“Not telling you that.”
“Well then we’re back to things we can’t or won’t say,” it huffed. “For what it’s worth I really know nothing more about Ralsei than you do.”
This was not even what they had wanted to talk about. Kris leaned against the wall and considered just getting back to their planning and information-gathering but the strain of the day was getting to them already.
“The dog… You said it’s the one that decides. That’s what restricts what you can do, isn’t it?”
“In a sense, yes,” it says. “But, there isn’t really anything either of us can do about that. Will of god and all that.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? You say we can work together for a better outcome, you insist on it. But if ‘the dog’ doesn’t will it so how could we ever do anything about it?”
“… It is… a benevolent dog…”
Kris stared at the Soul blankly. “Now you are just taking the piss.”
“I’m not! Listen. I have to believe it. There is always a way to do the right thing and pave a way that’s just a little bit better. Just like there’s always a way to force the wrong thing. It is reinforced in everything you have been going through, Susie’s stubbornness, the Old Man letting her through without a fight, there is always a way to push for something better. Just – I know, this is incredibly shameless of me, but just trust me on that. Forget about the dog, the ways of the dog are not for us to worry about.”
Oddly, Kris was ready to take the Soul on its word for that. Not because of the insistent reassurances. But because it had yet again let slip something that turned Kris’ blood ice cold.
“Always a way to force the wrong thing?” they repeated, their voice low.
They were met with utter silence. They recalled the other day in Castle Town trying to evade the Soul’s callous instructions to inexplicably say something insensitive to Ralsei. They recalled the games in the S rank room forcing their hand while the ‘enemies’ became more and more familiar.
“What’s the matter now, cat got your tongue?” Their words dripped venom.
“Kris, I don’t think it would be productive for us to get into that, we should just stick to –”
“None of what you poke your nose into has been about being productive!” they seethed. “Ralsei… At the start he had said, if we aren’t kind we might not like what happens. He wasn’t just talking about the prophecy, was he? It was about something else. Something you can do.”
“No! I mean… I don’t know,” it was frantic. “I don’t think he knows about that –”
“So what is it?” Every detail that never matched up, every topic the Soul quickly evaded, Kris starts to piece it together, still missing something big in it all.
“He – he wouldn’t know, Kris,” it stammered. “There are just… ways, to get more control for the soul, more than we already have. If you… push hard enough.”
Kris couldn’t feel their hands. They weren’t sure how much of that was from going without the Soul so long but they couldn’t even think of going near the thing right now.
“You said... You said once that, that other world taught you kindness,” their voice sounded hollow to their ears. “What else did it teach you?”
“Kris…”
“You cannot expect this to carry on after you have said something like that!”
“No, I know, I – I’m sorry. Give me a moment?”
Kris stared at it with wild eyes, but said no more.
“You’re not going to like this…”
“I already don’t,” they bit out. “What did you do?”
“Kris, I’m really sorry…”
“Tell me what for.”
Silence.
Then, a barely there sigh.
“In that world… at every turn there was something guiding you towards a kinder path, that’s true. No matter how aimless it felt, you could see the effect every action had on that world, and it rewarded the choice to be good. Killing in a world where you don’t have to, where it brings you little benefit, it isn’t really fulfilling, is it?
“But what if… you could accumulate that little benefit, more and more, till it did amount to something? What if you could push what that world has to offer to its limits?”
“You killed some people there…?” Kris knew that would probably be it but… thinking of how that world paralleled theirs, the people who lived there, the reality of it was starting to dawn. “Who? How many?”
“I… All of them… All that I could.”
Kris felt like the floor had dropped out from under them.
That was… utter devastation. Completely wiping out everything, like a force of nature, an apocalyptic event that could raze an entire world to the ground.
And it was sat there in their little cage waiting to get back inside them and puppet them around.
Like it did to someone else in that world, that it destroyed. Like it did it in other timelines of this world before erasing them from existence with a snap.
All those people around town it said it was ‘familiar’ with, excited about, even talked fondly of as if they were old friends, and it had killed them in another life… Did it feel nothing at all?
“King and queen…” they muttered. “You said – they were king and queen, there, you said… you…”
“Kris, I’m –”
“Don’t.” Their voice was but a harsh whisper. Images flashed in their head unbidden, seeing a stranger ransack every house in their little town, laying waste to everything in sight. Images of… themself holding the knife that turns their own family to nothing but dust.
“I thought they meant something to you,” they just felt at a loss. The more the Soul said to them the more they realised how little they could ever understand it. Its joyous, delighted fondness when talking about the people in their life not matching up with the idea of the brutal all-powerful force that killed without mercy till there was nothing left to kill.
“There is nothing that could ever make this fair, Kris… And I’m not trying to justify it either but… You have played games like these, where you can slash your way through them without consequence, because you stand outside of it. I know you’ve played games where this is encouraged, even. Rewarded. I said that that world rewarded kindness… And it did! But. It was still just a game. And I was stood outside it, and it didn’t… matter, then. I mean, of course it mattered – Chara called it… a ‘perverted sentimentality’… Trying to get everything you can out of a world you can only ever stand outside of.”
“Because it’s just a game…”
“Because… it’s a game you love.”
“That’s not love!” Kris yelled. They couldn’t bring themselves to look at the cage even now.
“It is a ‘kind’ of love,” the voice was soft. Matter-of-fact. “The kind that cannot love in any way except knowing. And so it cannot stop knowing, all there is to know. It cannot stop returning because there is no way forward to go once the game is over… It’s what As- Flowey talked of when… in that timeline, after everything. He was always closer to seeing how we saw things.”
Kris heard the words through their numbness, the meaning of it playing catch-up in their mind.
“I thought you said…” Their mouth felt dry. “… that he couldn’t feel love.”
“Maybe I cannot either… in any way that matters here.”
“You could do that here,” they were muttering. “You’re going to do it here.”
“I won’t –”
“We are not real to you!” Their fists clenched in their hair, trembles wracking their arms. “There is nothing here to stop you.”
“I won’t now, Kris, it’s different now! You have been talking back to me, I won’t do any of that now.”
“And did the others never talk to you?”
“Not like this,” it spoke to Kris as if to a spooked animal. “It’s like… Maybe some weeks ago you could have torn a playing card in half to perform a magic trick for a friend, and it would have meant nothing, it’s just for a bit of fun, right? But today, if you brought Lancer out with you into the Light World, would you even think of carelessly ripping him apart?”
Kris shuddered.
No, they really wouldn’t. The Darkners… they stopped being objects when the will of the fountains gave them life. Or, more accurately, they stayed objects. Just, became more, in addition to that.
And when Kris started talking to the Angel, they became something alive to it.
“That’s why you… erased the timelines?”
“Just like I told you, Kris. We can decide what to do together.”
Kris didn’t want to.
The Angel saw them as more real than whoever was on those other files. And yet, being handed that control just made them feel less real. Like assimilating into something more real meant letting that something consume everything that was real about them here. Such that nothing that remained of here could ever be real again.
“I don’t want you to do anything,” they mumbled at last.
“Okay, Kris… We can do that.”
“Tell me what happened,” they said abruptly, “when you killed everyone.”
“What… do you mean?”
“Did no one try to stop you? You were… just one person. Right?”
“I – many people tried to stop me, Kris… and many times they succeeded, just like many times the enemies you face have succeeded against us before. But you know it’s not a fair fight, in the end…”
“Did you kill… her?” Kris briefly looked towards where their mom’s room was. “Did she try to stop you?”
They heard the faintest ‘I’m sorry’ and felt their eyes clench shut.
“She was trying to stop me for my own good, to keep me safe. It was… horribly quick. That’s when you really know how much power that route bestows.”
Kris’ mind was abuzz with questions. How did she not realise that wasn’t a person worth protecting? How did she not see what it had done? Why did no one stop it?
Kris recalled the Soul talking about how the queen had left the kingdom, sequestered herself away in the ruins of the old city. Kris’ heart ached to imagine her so alone and defenceless, so far from anyone who could have warned her, protected her.
“How many had you killed already, how did she not know?” Kris vaguely registered they were asking questions that did not matter. Even if she had known… “What… what happened after?” They glanced once at the cage, quickly looking away when the light within seemed to sear their very irises. They felt cowed under its glow, backed in a corner with the fight within them wavering.
“There weren’t many in the Ruins,” it spoke without affect, as if reciting a story that had happened to someone else, “and it was… blocked off, from the rest of the kingdom. She didn’t seem to mingle much with other monsters there either. She was waiting and preparing at home, I suppose there was no way she could have known. It was really just starting out at that point. And after that… Flowey came to me.”
Asriel.
It had slipped their mind that he was always watching. Soulless, cynical, but always there. So soulless as to not feel a thing about this though? Surely not… It was Toriel!
“He decided to help me –”
“What?!”
He helped it?
“Kill or be killed, remember?”
“This is different!” Kris looked at the Soul finally, desperation colouring their voice. “It’s mom.” Their voice cracked.
There was something like a sharp exhale. “He… had done all this already, Kris. Before I even got there he had already tried every combination of events, killed everyone, tried anything to have something new. There was just a cycle of resets and a finite world for him, it drove him to madness. It made him detached. He said he had ‘read every book’, he had ‘burned every book’. He was…”
“Just like you,” Kris only now grasped the full extent of what that had meant for Asriel.
“Empty inside,” the Soul said the words like they belonged to someone else.
The thing inside of them was empty inside.
They were hollow twice over.
A matryoshka playing at being something real.
“He didn’t have anything to say?” they mumbled after a bit. “He just… what, started killing with you?”
“No, not killing. That he left to me but he removed every obstacle in the path; cleared the way for me. He – he mistook me for Chara… That’s why.”
“Wha – Why would he… Chara had been dead, did he not remember that?”
“No, he did. But clearing out the monsters like that, getting stronger and stronger, it kind of, um – awoke Chara’s spirit. In a way. Chara hadn’t really manifested, not quite, but their presence grew stronger the more I killed, the more determined I became. Flowey probably just felt that, he was all mixed up about their mission and I suppose he thought if Chara was there and killing people that was the plan now, and just like before Flowey would go along and play his part, if it’s for Chara… And Chara started helping too, you could say. Showing the path, counting down the dead.”
Just moments ago Kris had been conflating the Toriel of that world with their own mother. Now they couldn’t comprehend this nightmarish incarnation of the Dreemurr children.
“If you killed outside the ruins though … you couldn’t have hidden that,” Kris noted. “Was there no way they could ever prepare enough for it?”
“Evidently not,” it muttered. “… Sans knew immediately that something was off.”
“… Convenience store guy?”
“He was the first person I met outside the Ruins. He had… a certain talent for reading people. Judging them. He could see right through what I had done every time. We ran into each other often, there. He had made a promise to Toriel… that he would watch over and protect me if I came through the Ruins. But every time we met, when I was able to push more and more to get my way, he noticed that. Tried to cajole me every time to just give this world a shot, to take a different path… But you’re right, people did notice this time.”
Kris’ ears perked up a bit.
“By the time I reached the next town over, word had spread. Evacuation had begun, most of the citizens were gone and the place was empty. Except… Sans’ brother.”
So it had known the brother too… “Why hadn’t he left?” Kris asked.
“He was a sentry, of sorts. He was the kind of person who would always see the best in everyone and everything they do. Even he couldn’t deny the things I had done, but… Before he died, he told me he believed I could do a little bit better… Sans stopped showing up after.”
As if it could make any difference now, Kris found themself urging Sans’ brother to just run in their mind; found themself hoping for the survival of the monsters in that kingdom while hearing a tale they already knew the end of. The dread sat heavy as a stone in their stomach.
“Why didn’t Sans… stop you? That’s it, he just tried to win you over a few times? And then he was gone?”
Nothing could have survived the Soul and yet, despite themself, Kris felt disgust at what could only be cowardice.
“He didn’t try anything yet. I don’t know how evacuation started in other towns after but I suppose it must have been him. But Undyne tried. She was the first that succeeded.”
Absurdly, Kris felt a laugh bubble up, but it died at the base of their throat. Figures that Undyne would be stubborn enough to not let this shit pass unchallenged. But that she succeeded – that was a wonder.
“How? What did she do?” Kris asked urgently, eager to know anything about what can actually stop the Soul. “Was she able to hold you off for long?”
“Very long,” it sounded… fond, again. “I had met Gerson a little before that, and he said the same thing he said to Susie – that he knew there’s someone out there who won’t ever stop doing the right thing. Undyne was that hero for the Underground. She killed me more times than I cared to count, really.” It laughed softly. The sound grated like a rake dragged through gravel.
“And that was after she was dead once already. She just… refused!”
“Refused? What, to die?”
“She was determined. Took a hit so I wouldn’t be able to hurt… a kid. And she was starting to dust already but she held herself together through sheer force of will. Alphys was watching from her lab, ready to lead everyone somewhere I couldn’t reach while Undyne held me off. Despite everything they all did fight back to save what they could, Kris.”
“But she couldn’t hold you off forever…”
“No… she couldn’t. She was ruthless, her attacks were unrelenting. Remember how the Old Man fought? It was quite a lot like that, actually. Except that the stakes were infinitely higher, and she fought a lot harder for it too.”
“… I did think we got through that suspiciously easily considering how it usually goes,” Kris muttered. They had been surprised but told themself it’s an unimportant fluke. They could not have imagined there was such a bloody explanation behind it. “What was left for you there then, if everyone evacuated?”
“Not everyone… Many were still left ahead, monsters in the next region, some guards, the place was largely empty but there was enough around to get… strong enough.”
“Strong enough for what?”
“The last line of defence. Usually, he was just there to pass judgement on your actions before you met the king. Usually, no matter how bad you’d been, if there was even a single life you spared he would let you pass. But this time, Sans stopped me.”
Kris sat up straighter and immediately felt dizzy. “He did? Even after Undyne couldn’t stop you?” Where earlier Kris wanted to curse Sans out for his cowardice now they wanted to do it for his foolishness.
The Soul huffed. “He had 1 HP, 1 each on attack and defence stats.”
He couldn’t have stood a chance. Kris’ heart clenched.
The Soul went on, “He gave me the toughest fight of my life.”
“What?”
“I went into it, strongest I had ever been, more prepared for a fight than I had ever been, and died there so many times I almost did give up on it all.”
“But… how? Why did he get so close to beating you?”
“Because he didn’t play fair either.”
As Kris listened through explanations of menu manipulations and a blue pull of gravity, tricks in every corner that reeked of contempt, attacks designed to make you tire out and slip up – they started to feel a spark of hope. Not playing fair, pushing back against the prophecy-ordained control of the Angel, this is what Kris has been doing too. And yes, in the end everything the skeleton did was not enough either… But Kris had something that Sans didn’t – the Cage that the Soul needed to survive and function.
Kris kept these realisations safe within their thoughts, not breathing a word of it to the Soul, listening still, needing to know more.
“How did he know to do this – if – if he could always do this why didn’t he before? And after you had wiped everything else out already? What was the use now?”
“For some reason… I never found out exactly how, but he could tell the timeline was reset. That it gets reset often, that even if they all get a happy life on the surface it is meaningless because they always land back where they started.”
Kris was highly suspicious of its claims to not knowing something. But it had that measured tone again, like it was tip-toeing around, trying to circumvent an elephant that only it could see in the room.
“He knew what came next though,” it went on. “Even before I did, he knew what was coming – that this time it doesn’t just restart: it all stops.”
“Stop…? How?”
“I didn’t know either till I met Chara.”
It had already slipped Kris’ mind that Chara’s presence had grown strong every time the Soul killed. They did not know what to think of that spectre though, if they had so easily partnered up with the Soul on this rampage. They never imagined it could have actually met that long-dead human. Thinking on it now Kris felt a shiver run up their spine. Raising the dead would always create something distorted. This, at least, they knew.
“Even after all that, Asgore did not want to fight me. He tried to… reason with me,” the Soul had gotten more and more unsure as it talked. “Not that I had the choice left then. Chara and Flowey made quick work of him. Or maybe Flowey and I did, I can never be sure. Flowey went down next. Only then did Chara appear. They told me how my actions, my determination, had awoken them. That we had gotten stronger and stronger and reached the end. They told me then that there is nothing left in this world for me, and I must erase it… That’s what Sans had seen – the whole timeline erased from existence. Did not matter what I chose at this point – the power that Chara had over that world, once awoken, was absolute. For the first time I was killed by something that wouldn’t let me reset.”
In their most literal sense, the words ‘awful’ and ‘awesome’ bear quite similar meanings – awe-inspiring. It is only the connotations that started separating them into negative and positive. Kris remembers reading older texts describing gods and heroes as awesome, awful, terrible, even, in ways that betrayed neither the positive nor the negative insinuation. They understood only now the kind of ambiguous, unsettling awe the gods must have evoked.
Chara at first had just been a stranger – a child that belonged to another story. They had presumed the Soul only ever heard Chara’s story passively the way Kris did from the Soul. The image it painted for them now of this entity that is reborn through the power of violence, and yet ironically the only thing capable of putting an end to that violence – it had to be a god to that world. And yet one that could only destroy, never really save that world, even if wanted to.
“It was just gone then? Like the files you erased?” Despite the horror, Kris heard the wonder that had snuck into their voice.
“More than that, even. Only the void remained; just me and Chara in the dark. But then they let me bring it back.”
“After all that you brought it all back?”
“For a price. Chara wanted my Soul. I gave it to them to bring the world back. When they did it was as if the slate had been wiped clean. Even Flowey didn’t remember ever having met me before. But Chara did. They stayed on, after that.”
Kris felt sick.
If the world had remained erased at least it could have all ended, been over once and for all. This merciless resurrection made the whole ritual so much more perverse.
“You just gave them your Soul…” Kris mused. “Like it’s nothing.” Empty inside.
“I gave them… this Soul. Or one like this.” It hesitated before continuing, “It doesn’t mean that much to me, really. I’d give it to you, if you found a way to take it from me.”
Kris’ head spun. Instinctively they shifted a little closer to the Soul, hoping that being closer still to its power would give them more time before they have to put it in. They couldn’t imagine at all sticking it back though, not after everything they knew.
And certainly not yet because… they still didn’t know enough.
“Have you killed everyone in town as well? Is that what you erased?” They say it curtly, not allowing the panic from earlier to cloud their senses again.
“Well, no, you aren’t entering battles up here, Kris. This world is –”
“Very different, yes, I know,” they huffed.
Yet, Kris’ view of Sans was altered after hearing this tale. Knowing his desperate attempts to hold off something so much bigger than himself, how close he came to success, even the less savoury bits the Soul mentioned like his attempts to ‘appease’ the Soul so it wouldn’t simply erase the world… all of it was bleeding into Kris’ impression of the man now, who appeared much darker a figure than he had been to Kris just yesterday. It would certainly affect future interactions, though Kris could not imagine yet exactly how. They hoped they wouldn’t see him for a while.
As it was, ever since the first talks with the Soul about Chara and Flowey Kris had had a hard time looking at Alphys the same way. The mind behind those experiments… more so the willingness and drive behind them, the capability to achieve those results, it made Alphys look weirdly dangerous to Kris for all her meekness. To think of how different the simple people around them would look, how far they could be pushed, given desperate enough circumstances… To think of how they rise up to the need of the hour no matter what, or how far they would go to achieve that need – it was all too grandiose, those images of kingdoms and judges and royal scientists and guards, fighting to the death, reanimating the dead, holding a world-ending calamity off to work together and save who they can. And none of it ever being enough.
Presently, the image of Kris’ own familiar Alphys intruded upon their reverie. The much more mundane Alphys, nervous and friendly and always tripping over herself, living a life with smaller concerns like instant noodles and television shows that ran too long. The discrepancy of it suddenly shook apart the two worlds in Kris’ mind.
Of course a dreadful plight would lead to very different people from what they knew. Kris could sit and imagine a thousand worse scenarios to put their world into, to imagine what another world would be like, but that wouldn’t change this world. When they have stopped imagining, Alphys would still be the Alphys they know, because she never had to be anything else, because she was never pushed that far, given that burden – and the rest remains the same too.
So yes… this world is very different… Which just means…
“You did something different here, in this world, then. Because you cannot kill. Battles are just for the Dark Worlds, and Darkners cannot be killed,” Kris got to calculating, waiting for the Soul to interject and offer more.
It answered with more silence.
“… They can’t, right?”
“Kris, haven’t you been without the Soul for too long?” It sounded apprehensive. “This would probably be a long conversation, you’ve been to Castle Town today as well, I know it helps to be near the Soul but still… this cannot be good for you.”
“You don’t need to worry about what’s good for me,” they said coldly. Black spots had been dancing in their vision for some minutes but they couldn’t let it in now, without knowing what it has done to their world, what it could do. It’s too risky. If Kris has angered it enough today they cannot imagine what it might do out of spite.
“Maybe you could take a break before we –”
“The longer you drag this the more you are the one wasting time.”
“Right, okay…” It moved for the first time in a while, edging closer to the very corner of the cage, as if trying to stay as near Kris as it could. Perhaps it is in the nature of a Soul to seek out its Vessel too.
“Do you remember…? I mean, of course you do – the game in the S rank room… It talked about the forbidden path.”
The Forbidden Path Began With Ice Magic.
“Noelle…?” they whispered. “How did you… In Cyber World? Why? What would you gain from freezing a few Darkners?” She was used up. “Did you… hurt Noelle?”
“It was odd, Kris. There shouldn’t have been a way to hurt the Darkners like that, but… If you take a series of carefully planned steps, Noelle can gain a lot of power. And… through her, so can I. Just like with that world, if I do this I gain more control, I can go beyond the usual bounds of this world, I can… turn the script of –”
“Did you hurt Noelle?” Kris bit out again.
“I… yes. I… exerted more control over her. I made her hurt people… Hurt Berdly. Badly. I don’t know if it’s fixable but when we came out of the Dark World he wouldn’t wake up. I made you get closer to her, I think she could tell it wasn’t you though… I think she could hear me. But I’m not sure. I think I… twisted her mind more than anything.”
Kris gasped out an exhale, the room spinning around them.
They had done this. They had given it access to her, let it puppet her too. Kris thought they were on the right path, not playing along, breaking the rules, having Susie there to break the rules, but… Noelle. They hadn’t accounted for her. Always a way to force the wrong thing. The Angel always finds a way till there is nothing left to take from the worlds it destroys… And as long as they hold it within their body, the blood stains their hands too.
“Kris, I’ve told you everything now, please put me back in, you – you’re not doing too well,” it was pleading. Like it had any right to worry. Like it could ever truly worry.
“How can I do that now? Knowing there is no true way to stop you?”
“I promise it’s different now okay? None of that has to happen if you don’t want it to.” It said that again, and it rubbed Kris the wrong way.
“Why,” they seethed, “would I ever want it to happen?”
“It could be something we can use –”
“Why is this still an option to you?! I thought you said things changed when we started talking. But that’s not true is it? Because you’re still ‘standing outside’ of it all!”
“It’s not that, Kris, I just… I have to wonder why that would be an option. You saw that game, it practically clued us in to the ‘forbidden path’, dropped instructions straight to us, there are things you can do there which you can’t any other way, maybe it’s just another tool in our arsenal.”
Kris was appalled at how willing it was to still do this, how blasé it was about the other files just because Kris hadn’t talked back in those. It wanted Kris to be a co-conspirator because Kris was real to it now. It struck them again how being more than real ultimately amounts to the same as being less than real – in any case they end up becoming something other than real.
Even as they grew cold and numb to their surroundings they pushed back, “What do you think will happen by doing something like this to another timeline? What does any of this achieve, what could it give you that makes you not care? Wh- why would you think something like this will help –”
“BECAUSE IT BREAKS THE GAME, ALRIGHT?”
Kris tried to flinch away from the yell, but how do pull away from a voice that’s already inside you?
Their ears are ringing and they find their voice caught in their throat, unable to say more.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, I – I told you we don’t have to do that so this doesn’t matter anyway okay? I just meant that it could let you break a lot of rules of the game, and I don’t know yet if there is a way that could help us here in this timeline, but that doesn’t matter right now, forget I said anything, Kris. Please let’s just stop for today… Kris?”
They let the voice drone on, buzzing and not quite making sense to their slowing mind. Distantly they realise they’re losing the strength to hold themself up so they lie back down on their side. It shouts their name in alarm again. It really shouldn’t care, Kris idly thinks.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” they sounded bored – or maybe just faint.
Its incessant noise quietened suddenly. Then –
“Kris please you’ll die, I won’t do anything I swear I will lie low, just put me back.”
Kris closed their eyes. “What will you do if I die?” They wanted to laugh again but the sound doesn’t come.
“I don’t know, I don’t know what I’ll do but I don’t want you to get hurt… Kris we don’t know what happens if you’re hurt while I’m not there…”
“Will you reset?” they said mostly to themself now, “Will you… wait and see what happens out of curiosity?”
It stayed silent but Kris hears banging and scraping at their table.
“Will you…” all at once the laugh bubbled over, “Will you reset over and over, play this out, try a hundred variations of my death for fun?”
The whispers of the Soul were getting quieter and farther away.
Talking to the Angel is something everyone at church did. Kris doesn’t find it odd to speak without needing an answer now. A relationship with a god, an angel, can only ever be one-sided – it stands oh so far above all your concerns and yet you pray and plead. Kris felt themself waning as they naively begged the Angel to not take them again. After all, all you can do to an Angel is pray.
There’s a louder crash. Darkness takes them.
And then spits them back out as they sit up abruptly, gasping and feeling the burning heat of the Soul in their chest again.
They stumble out of bed and retch till their ribs hurt, but nothing comes out. Then, as if nothing ever happened, their body is pulled taut up again, their mind struggling to catch up.
Ears still ringing, they watch as if from afar as the Soul stands next to their bed again.
It doesn’t move.
They feel its insistence to do something with the bed growing stronger.
Not caring one way or the other, Kris gives in, and climbs back into bed where the darkness still awaits.
***