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For as long as Noelle can remember, all the world has felt like a stage.
Everyone has parts to play. There’s her, the leading character. Mom orchestrates with an iron fist, boxing everyone who doesn’t fit already into neat little roles. Kris is the strange childhood best friend, them and Asriel being the kids next door who tease yet care for her. It’s self-centered, yes, and Noelle knows it. She hates it. But everyone has their own way of making sense of things, and this is the only one that comes to her.
She tries to find exceptions. Flaws and cracks and actual people in their three-dimensionality. She really does try. Noelle is a nice girl, after all, that’s all she’s good for. She is a nice, sweet young girl, because what else is she?
It's in the romance novels she reads that she learns—The love interest pranks and teases the main character in spite of their hidden affections, no, because of their hidden affections. She thinks of Kris, and asks them one day, after they sneak salt into her eggnog—
"Kris, do you like me or something? Gosh!" she says, snickering to herself. "If you keep pranking me like that, I'll get the wrong idea!"
Kris flushes beet red, stammering and sputtering out fruitless denials.
Oh. Huh.
So they do like her?
Noelle isn't sure if she's surprised. Kris likes her, yeah—of course they do, the two are inseparable. But still... It's just like she read in the books.
Should she be happy, or disappointed? Kris likes her, just like those love interests like those heroines. Yet another example of compliance with a narrative that she's made up in her head.
Noelle wants to see the cracks. The imperfections. The things that don't stick to a script. But amongst it all, she finds none.
Dess laughs at Kris, who's still trying to huff out denials, ruffling their hair affectionately.
"Figures," she says. "That's not how ya' act with the girl you like, you little punk!"
"I don't-"
"Stop pranking her then," Dess challenges, raising a brow. "Stop tryin' all hard to get her attention."
Kris is still sputtering out more denials now, but it's to no avail.
"Gosh, Kris," Asriel says. "You're such a tsundere! As if you could be any more obvious..."
At that, Kris and Dess shoot him matching glares, and in their chastisement of his phrasing, the initial topic is forgotten. Figures. Dess doesn't seriously think Kris likes her—they would've gotten shovel talked to death if that were the case. But again, isn't it all so terribly derivative? Noelle is bad, bad, bad, for saying this about real life. That isn't how it should be.
But real life has its way of playing into the hands of fiction, and so she notices. Dess is an overprotective sister and tough and tomboyish and Asriel is the soft, sweet golden boy. Kris is the strange, outcast loner who no one really gets but her—and vice versa, the two of them forming a not-so-unexpected bond that results in them both knowing each other like the back of their hand.
It's old and stale and Noelle makes a little game out of predicting what will happen next. She learns that—once Kris pranks her, she can gauge the exact nature of the following interaction with Dess. She can predict with certainty what conversations will unfold at the dinner table. It's not a science, nor an art, nor a thing she's proud of.
Noelle wonders if she's the only person who's real sometimes. She hates herself for it—God, she's such a selfish, self-absorbed girl—everyone has a life outside of her and she can't just deny that!
Chastising herself makes her feel righteous, perhaps. Makes her feel like she is more than the thoughts, like she doesn't believe in them. Is that why she does it? Just to feel marginally better about her pitiful self? After all, it's not like chastisement ever makes the thoughts go away.
She wonders after that what would happen if she tried to pull things apart at the seam and watch it all unravel. Maybe that’s what she deserves. A disappointment like her, nothing like what they expect from their sweet Noelle. What Mom expects. She doesn’t deserve Dess’s loving words and Kris’s pranks that she secretly loves and that they know she secretly loves but do anyways without ever teasing her for it.
Noelle thinks one day about reaching at Kris’s face one day, after yet another prank, and punching their nose until it shatters. The impact of her fist and the sickening crack. She imagines Kris’s face scrunched up in pain—maybe they’d cry, maybe they’d falter. Would that make her feel happy? Would that make this all feel more real? Noelle doesn’t know why she thinks this way. She is a terrible person.
Kris looks down at her and smiles.
“You were thinking of hitting me,” they say, gauging her thoughts with accuracy that would’ve been bone-chilling if it weren’t so predictable. So typical. Kris is the smart and calculating one and always one step ahead. She knows this. And intrinsically, Noelle knew Kris would say that. “I could tell.”
Noelle can break out at any moment now, say something entirely uncharacteristic, but she doesn’t. She plays into it and lets out a startled squeak.
Kris continues.
"Don't think it escapes my notice," they say. They don't lean in quite as close as they used to—now that's an interesting development. Noelle can't say she hasn't missed the contact, admittedly, but-
She's too afraid to initiate it on her own. Her body just- freezes up for reasons unknown even to her. It's a continuation of the typical, a show set up and run by others. She stands passively around. Observing, effortlessly deducing the next moves, and then doing nothing.
It's an idyllic, small town life and it's only fitting that she, the mayor's daughter, is at the center. Everything revolves around her, like it or not. If it doesn't, Mom will make it so. School gets cancelled for everyone because it rained. Kris gets reminded on the regular to take her of her and her in particular. Why doesn't it ever happen the other way around? Why doesn't Aunt Toriel ever tell Noelle to take care of Kris?
Of course, for all her selfish, selfish musings, Noelle isn't ready for the day it falls apart. She doesn't even remember what happened—it all just... refuses to come to mind. Blocked out so fully that her head hurts whenever she tries to think about it.
But she does know that after that, Kris stopped coming over. After that, The Dreemurr family fell apart and Uncle Asgore got fired. And after that—
She thinks every night about Dess, about Dess's smile—her warmth, her jacket, her blue antlers that she dyed red rebelliously, her punk ska CDs and every time, without fail, there's a great big knot that starts to form in her throat. It's hard to even try and cry.
Noelle feels like a terrible, terrible girl. She doesn't deserve to cry for Dess. She doesn't deserve to reach out as Kris keeps her firmly at an arm's length. She took it all for granted, didn't she? Even as she hated herself for it, she took the idyllic, happy life for granted, and now she's here.
The worst part is that nothing really gets to deviate from the norm. She goes to school like normal—eats dinners at a table with too many plates laid out, goes to choir practice, talks to her friends—it’s routine. It’s the same life it was before it all happened, because it’s all a stage, and no one but her cares about the cracks in the glass, the slips and the falls.
It’s probably then that the crushing sort of apathy worms its way into Noelle’s heart. It doesn’t stop the yearning, no—it coexists with it, which honestly makes things worse. It’s the voice nagging at her that says that, well, there’s no reason to feel guilty for seeing things the way she does. No one else cares either, do they?
Noelle is the sweet, preppy daughter of the mayor—that’s who she is and who she has to be. Kris is her oddball childhood best friend who’s been avoiding her for mysterious reasons. Noelle doesn’t need things to go back to the way they used to be.
(She doesn’t bother to try and categorize the wallpaper of them on her desktop or the cactus that remains with their name. Nor does Noelle address the memories of better times that plague her mind every night, because that’s hard, too hard.)
Catti is the standoffish, tough punk girl, who has a not-so-inexplicable soft spot for her. Jockington is the quirky but nice athlete everyone likes. Berdly’s the nerd.
She can categorize everything and she hates it. Every day, Noelle tries to find misshapen edges, things that don’t fit cleanly. Of course, she only tries to find them, never make them, because Noelle is a coward and she doesn’t think she can bear any more of Mom’s ire—not when Dad is in the hospital and it’s all so cold and-
There’s a new girl in town.
Noelle feels her breath start shaking at the sight of her—wild and untamable and standoffish but like, really, really standoffish, in the proper sense—and best of all, completely unreadable. Noelle can’t fit her into a box no matter what she does, and it’s the best thing ever. Susie is something different.
She also really, really hates Kris.
Noelle has a dilemma and she doesn’t know what to do—the right thing or the only thing she can do, at least, the only thing she can do without her legs freezing up and panic taking hold of her and Mom’s glare burning into the back of her mind and-
She doesn’t do anything about it. She only stands there and watches, trying so desperately to will her body to do something, but to no avail.
Typical. Noelle’s read this in at least five books and played ten games. Games, she thinks.
Noelle likes games. You make your own story, feel real control. But more than that, she likes breaking them. The stories are stiff and scripted and in some ways, all too reminiscent of her own. So she likes pushing things off script—it’s the only environment where she can dare. Giving in to her selfish impulsions in a world where no one gets hurt, and making just the right moves to break the world.
She’s got a knack for it, too. It makes sense. If you know what makes the world work, you’ll know what makes it break.
Noelle wishes she had the guts to do it in real life, sometimes. To walk up to Kris one day and just flat out say—Hey, stop avoiding me, or to walk up to Susie and say—Hey, I like you, go out with me—but she doesn’t. She wouldn’t dare. Kris has a reason for avoiding her, selfish girl she is, and Susie doesn’t care about anyone, much less her.
It’s easy to drift through life feeling like a passenger in her own body. Kris and Susie go into a closet together one day, and they don’t come out for hours. After that, Kris walks up to her—walks up to her—stilted and janky and so unlike themself. Noelle wants to scream. Say something, shake them, be them to go back to normal because a normal Kris avoiding her is better than no Kris at all—but she doesn’t dare.
That’s their first conversation in years, and all it does is leave a bad taste in Noelle’s mouth.
The next day, in the Librarby, she falls asleep and has a dream—plotted out and intricately structured in a picturesque fashion—Noelle, the damsel, guided by Kris, her knight, and saved by Susie, her hero. She is special because she is strong and yet weak and oh, it’s all so predictable.
But then she gets to be the one to save Susie at the end. She gets to raise up her hand and say what she wants and Queen listens.
Noelle wakes up and feels like doing that again. She looks at the mice and doesn’t freeze, falls asleep that night and thinks of going out and looking for Dess herself. The next day, Susie comes over, and Noelle almost says something!
…And then, Mom shows up again, and everything falls back onto a script.
Chastisement. Susie standing up for her, and there’s those few minutes where it feels so good to be cherished that Noelle almost forgets about the inevitable wrath she’s going to face until is all comes crashing down, Mom’s burning glare making her wilt with shame.
Locked in her room, all Noelle can think of is a princess locked in a tower. It’s the same way she feels as Susie shows up, Kris at the side, offering her a hand.
She’s the princess. And Susie is the dashing hero, there to save her.
…
It’s not as appealing as it should be. Really, Noelle is so, so ungrateful. This is her crush, showing up all heroic to take her out to the festival, and she can’t even muster up a dose of cheer? Excitement? Gosh, something’s gotta be wrong with her.
But Kris is so quiet and so, how can she possibly enjoy the festivities, when it’s all laced with that same feeling of performance? Like she’s acting out a romance novel?
It’s easy to float through it all like she’s not even there.
And then, it all goes down.
It blurs in Noelle's mind again, her mind and body both too frozen to process anything, or to act. The next thing she knows, Kris and Susie stand before her, across from one another, and they're fighting. They really don't want to be, but they're fighting.
It feels like a novel again. It doesn't feel real.
Apparently, the truth is this—Kris has been harboring a different soul inside them this entire time, and it's been controlling their actions. They've been working with Mom. And on top of that, they've been working with Dess, who's alive, to try and- and bring her back for good. And that dream she had? It was real, but Susie lied about it, because of course she did, because Noelle's no good for the truth anyways, and-
They're talking now.
"The girl shatters the cage," Kris says, lips pressed thinly into a smile as they gesture between Susie and themself. Noelle should do something, oh, she should, but she can't, Angel forgive her, she can't, legs frozen like she's a statue. She's the perfect witness, through and through.
Damsel. That's her role.
"Noelle will finally have the life she deserves." And of course, at the end of the day, even Kris speaks for her. Kris, the closest it came to someone who really gets it, thinks that way too. Noelle is to be acted for and not to act. Others are to do what is in her best interests. But no point in asking her about it.
Maybe she doesn't deserve to be asked about it. Noelle is so, so bad, and she thinks in such strange ways. This is her fault. She has no right to complain. How can she, when she views the world through these boxes, be upset with Kris for treating her as she's treated them?
It's what she deserves.
Susie doesn't budge.
"Susie," they say. "Do it."
Susie approaches them, and Noelle thinks for a second, bitterly, that, well—of course it ends in the anti-hero's bitter self-sacrifice. Of course Kris will never live again.
But then her arms wrap tightly around their torso in a stifling yet loving hold, and it dawns on her.
That's not what Susie's going to do.
"Like hell I'm letting you die, dude!" she says, her voice watery, and Noelle realizes she's trembling. Her composure is breaking. Big, tough Susie is breaking apart at the seams.
It's...
"Susie?"
Kris's voice is trembling too.
"Kris," she says. "We'll figure it out together. I promise. But you're not dying on me, alright? Stupid prophecy be damned."
It's a plea for them to bear with her, and Kris freezes—their eyes widening and watering and Noelle can barely register it and yet she does, so, so vividly.
Kris is crying. They're burying their face in the crook of Susie's neck and they're crying. Breaking apart at the seams.
“S-Susie…” they murmur, sniffling. “I’m sorry.“
Susie startles momentarily, before looking off with a sigh.
“It’s-” she starts. “It’s not okay. But y’know what? It’s gonna be if I’ve got anything to say about it!”
She perks up and at last, pulls away, resolute in her decision. Kris looks at her with adoring eyes, as if she’s the most precious thing in the world.
“Susie,” they say, voice still watery, and yet so, so loving. Soft, littered with care. “I love you.”
That’s when it starts to blur up in Noelle’s vision again. Susie flushes, stammers something out, and the next thing she knows, they’re kissing, and…
Oh. So that’s how it all comes apart.
Noelle doesn’t remember much after that. The worlds are saved. Dess is back to her now. Kris, too.
They’d walked up to her and admitted fault, said they were sorry for avoiding her but they were just so, so guilty and so set on trying to fix things that they hadn’t stopped to think about what she really wanted. Said they understood if she didn’t want to see them again, but that they’d take her friendship gratefully should she offer it.
Noelle had taken them up on a heartbeat. They were so calm, so aware—and again, the roles all fell apart at the seams. But more than that, they’re Kris, and no matter what Noelle’s tried to tell herself all these years, she wants Kris back desperately, so of course she takes it when they give it.
Kris is… different, admittedly, from that role she’d thought of all these years ago. They’re broken, miserable. She lives with the fact that her mom put her through all these unimaginable things, her mom was the one that had them get their chest slit open so a foreign soul could be slit inside.
They’re more honest now. Way more when they were kids. When your lies are part of what aided in the end of the damn world, that’s kind of inevitable, Noelle thinks.
“...I used to like you,” they admit one day. It’s very quiet, and Noelle can hardly believe she wasn’t just imagining the words while Kris actually just stared there silently.
“H-Huh?”
Kris chuckles at her surprise, soft and fond, eyes crinkling a little. The bags under them have started to lighten. Of course—having a girl like Susie to cuddle up in bed with gives them all the more incentive to go to bed on time.
“Don’t you remember?” they say. “When we were children…”
It’s a fond sigh almost identical to Noelle’s own when reminiscing that escapes them, and she’s reminded again that it’s not a one way street, that their mannerisms have both bled into one another’s, not just Kris’s to Noelle’s.
“You asked me if I liked you one day,” they say. Memory returns to her so clearly—the question, their reaction, and everything she felt. “I remember being so heartbroken at the look on your face.” The soft little ‘faha’ they let out doesn’t escape her notice. It’s another imprint she’s left on them. “I tried to pull away after that. I was all deadset on overcoming my first heartbreak.”
They only look away with a fond little sigh, murmuring their regret to have let this friendship slip away, and yet, to Noelle, it’s startling. She realizes that there had been more to the story and that Kris had left that interaction just as, if not more, crestfallen, that the tiny little changes that had occurred were a direct result of her actions, of her seeming ‘disinterest’. Noelle never really thought she could do anything, make any difference, whether it be good or bad.
But it occurs to her that, all this time, she could.
And she’s not sure how to feel about that.
Especially when Noelle realizes that she’d held their heart in her hands and it hadn’t even registered to her, that none of the world had, and so she’d done nothing. Did she like Kris at the time? Does she?
“Don’t look all guilty, now,” Kris says. “You’re not the only one to see it all as a game sometimes.”
It’s an admission and a callout and a reassurance all rolled up in one. Surprisingly, it works. Maybe that’s what Kris had been trying to tell her back then. They’re all like this sometimes.
But Noelle doesn’t bother. She just smiles, sitting there in the comfortable silence for a few seconds before standing up.
“Seeya tomorrow, Kris!” she says with a wave. They smile and nod in response, fingers waving in a little bye motion. It’s cute, so very cute. It’s nothing like any of the boxes she’s imagined.
Noelle opens the door and looks off into a world that is real, no stage or roles in sight.
And she too is a person with power in all this, she thinks, stepping into a new day.