Chapter 3

A Truant Disposition

When the door closed behind Frisk, Chara threw themselves onto their bed, rolling onto their back and staring up for a while at the acoustic ceiling. Snatches of the conversation they had just made with Frisk replayed in their head, competing for their mind’s attention with all the hopes and the fears that the name “Asriel” never failed to conjure up. I’m going to see Asriel again, Chara told themself, trying to make their inner voice sound as hopeful as possible. After all the endless years of hateful semi-existence. Finally I’ll be with Asriel again. They tried to picture Asriel at his happiest, wearing that wide goofy smile that showed his fangs and whose cheerful glow always felt as though it could brighten a whole room. But Chara’s treacherous imagination insisted on obtruding other pictures of less cheerful Asriels: a weeping Asriel, an angry and vengeful Asriel, an imitation Asriel clad in the vile form of that loathsome animated flower that had looked into Frisk’s eyes, saw Chara hiding behind them and mocked—

Chara pounded the mattress beside them with a clenched fist and sat upright. Hey, brain! You’re being more of a jerkass than usual, Chara scolded. I don’t have to put up with this shit, you know. I’ve got a job to do. Fears or no fears Asriel was visiting soon and it was Chara’s duty, now that they had space and an interval of time to themselves, to take whatever steps were needed to greet him in the best frame of mind they could muster.

The first step they’d learned was straightforward enough. Chara opened the nightstand drawer and selected from their collection of pill bottles the one labeled “PROPRANOLOL”. They tipped at first one of the pink tablets into their palm, then two, and popped the pills into their mouth, not bothering with the formality of water, chewing the pills impatiently and swallowing the bitter fragments. The ritual itself was enough to calm Chara a little.

The next step was trickier. “Visualization”, that was the grandiose word Chara’s doctors kept using. They needed to hold in their mind a comforting image or memory that was strong enough to win out over all the bad images and memories that their brain kept hurling into Chara’s endless struggle to keep their composure. If only I could put good thoughts into a real war against the bad, Chara said to themself with a little smirk. There came into Chara’s mind a vision of an army of human warriors, each warrior the embodiment of one of their evil imaginations and recollections. The enemy soldiers looked so frightening massed together like that, all the pale-faced, black-clad, sneering humans with cruel smiles and harsh laughter on their lips. But then Chara’s good imagination strode into the fray, wearing the form of his father the King, his gold armor shining in the sunlight as he scythed down the enemy thoughts with one mighty sweep of his trident. Chara’s smirk became a genuine smile. Probably not a visualization that either Dr. Mitsunobu or Frisk would entirely approve of, they thought, but it works for me.

Rewarding themself with pleasant sensations and experiences was also important, Chara had been taught. “If you’re feeling miserable, don’t punish yourself by sitting there and wallowing in it!” their therapist had instructed. “Get up, change your scenery, do something you enjoy.” Hence Chara went to their quarters’ minuscule bathroom, closing the door and leaving the light off. In the dark they stripped off their clothes. Meditatively they ran their hands down their bare body from their chest to their legs. If only Frisk could’ve figured out how to restore me to a different body, Chara reflected. Instead of this angular, flat-chested thing I got stuck with. But dwelling on that old resentment didn’t count as doing something Chara enjoyed, so they pushed the thought aside with practiced facility and stepped into the shower stall.

The first streams of water that struck Chara were cold, setting their body to shivering, but they did not mind. It was like the momentary shock of stepping through the curtain of a waterfall to find the cavern hidden behind it. Soon the shower warmed to a pleasant temperature and Chara closed their eyes, standing motionless under the spray and feeling the drops and rivulets of water cascading over their skin. In their mind’s eye the room was not dark, but suffused with the ghostly blue phosphorescence of Waterfall. Below them and beside them the luminous flowers and mushrooms shone faintly in the humid air, and above them glittered the unchanging crystalline stars.

How long it had been since Chara had first seen that underground sky! They leaned against the wall of the tiny shower stall, letting their mind wander as they relaxed under the warm rainfall. It hadn’t been many months after they had fallen, Chara recalled. The King and Queen were both away from New Home on some tedious official errand involving the Royal Guard, having left their children to their own devices after extracting from Asriel a solemn promise to stay safe in the royal residence and keep a protective eye on his foster-sibling. Asriel had honored his promise for almost an hour…

---

“Come on, Chara! Get your shoes on! I’m gonna show you the neatest thing!” Asriel bounced up and down with excitement as he rooted in his closet for a clean shirt, while Chara watched from behind him, squeezing their arms anxiously round themself and occasionally shooting a nervous glance at the open bedroom door.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Azzy?” Chara asked, their tone uncertain. “You promised Mom you’d keep me here safe.”

“You’ll be plenty safe! Mom and Dad fret too much. I’ve been outside of New Home lots of times. There's nothing out there that's gonna hurt us. It’ll be fun!” Asriel shucked off his yellow shirt with a green stripe and pulled on the garment he had selected from the closet, a green shirt with a yellow stripe; then he turned to Chara, who was still standing diffidently in the middle of the room. “C’mon, get ready!”

Chara didn't move. “What if they find out?” they said, a tinge of fear in their voice. “They’ll be mad. They’ll punish us.”

“Chara!” Asriel came close, taking the human’s hands in his paws and squeezing them gently. “I dunno how they do things on the Surface but you're with us now. You know what’ll happen if Dad and Mom find out that we played hookie?” Asriel dropped Chara's hands so he could strike a pose like the King’s, paws clasped in front of him and head solemnly bowed. “You’ve disappointed your mother,” intoned Asriel, who strove to modulate his piping voice into a rough approximation of Asgore’s basso profondo. “Tori must insist on disciplining you. I'm sorry, son.” Then Asriel raised his head, narrowed his eyes and set his face in an adorable try at a scowl. In spite of themself Chara giggled. “My child!” declared Asriel, his voice now struggling to imitate the Queen’s resonant contralto. “You promised your father and I that you would watch over your brother! If you cannot handle this modest responsibility then I have no choice but to ground you.” Asriel ceased scowling, let his paws fall to his side, and sighed. “As if I don't already spend all my time cooped up in this place. But trust me, Chara…” Asriel once again gave Chara’s hands a comforting squeeze. “They’ll be easy on me and they won't do a thing to you. We’ll be fine. Besides, if I hadn’t snuck out of the house when I wasn’t supposed to all those months ago, I wouldn’t have found you. And that would have sucked.” Asriel booped Chara’s nose with his snout.

Chara giggled again and gave Asriel a little smile. “Well. Okay.” They disengaged themself from Asriel’s grasp and went to their closet to look for shoes. Chara still kept the frayed, leaky pair of decrepit sneakers they had been wearing when they had stumbled their way up the slopes of Mount Ebott but in the months since they fell Toriel had commissioned two new pairs from an artisan in Snowdin. The cobbler hadn’t quite got the hang of shaping a shoe to match a human foot and the resulting sneakers weren’t overly comfortable but they were the first new shoes that Chara had ever been given and they cherished them. They selected the older of the pairs and pulled them on. “So where are you dragging me, Azzy?”

“Waterfall!” cried Asriel as he grabbed Chara’s hand and tugged them toward the front door.

“Wait, isn’t that the place that’s just dark and wet all the time?”

“Gosh, Chara, you’ve haven’t seen any of the cool places in Waterfall yet!” Asriel led Chara out of the royal home and down the walkway that led toward the elevator to Hotland. The crenellated rooftops of New Home stretched out on both sides of them under the soft, featureless mage-light that shone throughout the Underground. Not far from the elevator Asriel took a side path into an apparent dead end. An alcove was tucked away there, recessed a few feet into the stone wall. Inset into the masonry at the rear of the alcove were carven blocks forming the Delta Rune. Asriel turned to Chara, leaning in close to address them in a conspiratorial whisper. “You haven’t seen this yet, either. Watch.” Asriel pressed the three triangles in the Rune in the order left, right, middle, then pressed the winged orb in its center. There came a whirring and then a loud thunk as of a heavy latch being worked; then a black gap opened up around the edges of a rectangular section of the stonework of the alcove’s right-hand wall. Asriel pushed and the concealed door swung inwards into a dark passageway beyond.

“What the hell…” breathed Chara. “What is this?”

Asriel clapped his paws together, beaming as though he’d just performed a successful trick of stage magic. “Isn’t it great? Dad told me about it a while back, though I don’t think he was supposed to. I was asking him how they used to get up and down from Hotland to New Home and back before the CORE was built and they could run an elevator. Turns out this is how! A hidden stairway! We should get inside quick.” He yanked Chara into the dark stairwell and shut the stone door. Utter blackness enveloped them for a fraction of a second and Chara felt a sudden wave of unreasoning fear but in the next moment they were standing within a broad circle of ruddy light. Asriel held his left paw aloft, cradling in his palm a small sphere of orange flame. “There we go!” He grasped Chara’s hand firmly in his free paw and grinned at them, the firelight glinting off the points of the monster’s incisors. “Ready, Chara?”

Fears and memories of parental retribution once again swirled up in Chara’s mind but there was another feeling coming to the fore, a strange feeling that quickened Chara’s pulse and kindled excitement in their heart, the excitement of doing something in secret. They squeezed their foster-brother’s paw in response. “Yeah. Let’s go!”

The first stage of their forbidding adventure was, however, rather dull. The minutes wore away as Asriel and Chara descended the endless stair. There was nothing to see but grey masonry glowing dimly red in Asriel’s magical light, and nothing to hear but the steady shuffling sound of Chara’s shoes on the stone steps echoing through the stairwell, easily drowning out the scarcely audible patter of Asriel’s soft paw-pads. After what seemed like hours, though, the children reached the bottom. Asriel lifted up one of his floppy ears so he could press the side of his head to the stonework, listening for any sounds coming from without. “Can’t hear anything,” whispered Asriel. “I think we can get out safely without scaring the crap out of anyone outside.” He wrapped both paws around a stout iron chain hanging down from a bracket set into the stone and, with only a gentle pull, the stone door swung inward on practically noiseless hinges. A gust of torrid air struck Asriel and Chara in their faces as the door opened: the sweltering atmosphere of Hotland greeted them as they emerged from the hidden stairwell and shut the door, which disappeared into the wall of the cavern as though it had never existed.

Chara looked around them, trying to orient themselves, but they saw nothing immediately familiar. A short distance away a large, rectangular, greyish-pink structure loomed up. A large sign over the single visible doorway bore the word “LAB”.

“That’s the old Royal Laboratory,” said Asriel, noticing where Chara was directing their attention. “It’s locked up tight. There used to be a Royal Scientist who worked there but not any more.”

“Really? What happened?”

Asriel frowned. “Nobody’s told me. Nobody seems to know. Mom and Dad can’t even tell me who the last Royal Scientist’s name was. It’s weird. Anyway…” Asriel pointed in the opposite direction from the Royal Laboratory. Through the hazy air Chara could just make out what looked like a wooden bridge over a chasm from whose remote depths shone a fiery glow of molten rock. “Just a little ways further and we’ll be in Waterfall.”

They crossed the lengthy bridge over the glowing pit and entered a long passage illuminated only with a fluorescent sign with scrolling red letters that read, “WELCOME TO HOTLAND”. The heat faded away behind them, and the atmosphere grew cooler and damper as they trudged through the long corridor. After a while the passageway opened out into dim caverns full of the sound of dripping water, with great stalactites projecting downward from the cavern roofs and stalagmites jutting everywhere from the cavern floors except where the footpath through them was maintained. Chara started and looked upward when they felt the splash of a water drop on their face, then another. Neither the water nor the air was very cold; nevertheless Chara shivered.

“So, uh, Azzy, are any of those ‘cool places’ coming up soon?” they said, their manner a bit cross. “I’ve seen the inside of caves before…”

“Soon, soon!” said Asriel, continuing down the path. “Trust me, Chara, it’ll be worth it.”

“Right.” Chara hastened to follow. The humidity increased, and phosphorescent mushrooms in a variety of shapes and hues began to appear here and there near the path. Chara had to admit that they hadn’t seen glowing blue and green toadstools ever before and they almost wanted to tell Asriel to stop so they could have a closer look at them, but their mind was increasingly preoccupied with the water dripping down from above. At first they felt only the occasional drop landing on them, but the drops grew rapidly more frequent and soon Chara could feel water dripping from the ends of their hair and trickling down the back of their neck. Panic began to rise within them as the dampness began to seep into their clothes. Yet Asriel continued his hike, leading Chara with him by the hand, seemingly oblivious to the ever-increasing precipitation that was threatening to drench them both. Did he know it was going to be this wet? Chara asked themself with rising impatience. If he did why didn’t the little idiot tell me? At least he could’ve warned me I’d need a coat!

Chara’s foot landed in an unexpected puddle, splashing water onto their sock and their pants leg. Water was falling all around them and upon them now, soaking into their shirt, dripping into their eyes, filling the cavern with the quiet but relentless pattering sound of a steady rain. Something in Chara snapped. They pulled their hand abruptly from the gentle grip of Asriel’s paw and turned round, stomping down the pathway in the direction they had come. Asriel gave out a surprised bleat and turned round to see what had happened.

“Chara?!” he exclaimed. Chara did not look back or respond but kept walking. They heard Asriel scrambling after them. “Chara! Where are you going? What’s wrong?” Still Chara did not say anything. “Chara, please!” Asriel’s voice was growing shaky, and desperation began to creep into it. “What’d I do wrong? I did something wrong didn’t I? Please, Chara, say something to me!” Asriel’s voice cracked. Chara still did not turn around but their steps slowed, allowing Asriel to catch up and seize one of Chara’s hands in both their paws. “I’m sorry, Chara, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Asriel wept. “Don’t hate me, Chara, at least tell me what I did to make you hate me…”

Chara whipped round to face Asriel, an angry speech about being a troublemaker on their lips, but their words died when they saw Asriel sunk to his knees on the damp floor, face crumpled with pain and loss, tears streaming freely from eyes brimming over with grief. Serves him right, one of Chara’s thoughts began to sneer, but Chara’s mind leaped on the thought before it could get any further and pummeled it into unconsciousness. They kneeled to face Asriel, heedless of the wet ground beneath their knees, and threw their arms around him.

“Hell’s bells, Asriel, stop saying I hate you,” Chara said as they hugged the tearful monster to their chest. “And stop crying. I’m not mad ‘cause of you really. It’s something that pissed me off because…” Chara sighed. “You couldn’t have known. ‘Cause I’ve never told you.”

“Told me what, Chara?” asked Asriel, arms clutched around their foster-sibling. He were still crying but his voice was regaining its steadiness.

Chara sighed again, at greater length. “You know I’ve never liked talking about my...um…” I am not calling them “my parents”, Chara commanded themself. “About the humans who raised me. Ever since Mom and Dad took me in I’ve tried to make believe those other people never existed.”

Asriel nodded. “Yeah, I remember how mad you got that one time I asked you about whether you had a mom and a dad on the Surface.” He shuddered.

“I did. Sort of. They…” Chara’s own voice quavered. “They didn’t...they were mad at me. A lot. Sometimes I didn’t even know why. But one day—” Chara’s eyes stung with unwept tears. “I got caught in a rainstorm when I was walking home from gathering plants for them. My clothes got soaked and splashed with mud. My...guardians were not happy with me. They accused me of playing in the rain and ruining my clothes on purpose. Then they—they—” Chara could say no more. They buried their face in Asriel’s shirt to muffle their sobs.

“Oh, Chara, I’m so sorry…” Asriel said in a small voice. They curled up on the damp floor of the cavern for a time under the warm subterranean rainfall, each seeking comfort in the other’s embrace, until the tears ceased to flow and the grief eased.

“I’m sorry,” repeated Asriel when next he spoke. “I’m sorry for reminding you of something horrible like that.”

“You didn’t know. You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Chara. Then they looked down at themselves and their clothes, now thoroughly sodden from the rain and from sitting on the ground. They winced. “Mom and Dad are gonna kill us,” they said.

“No they aren’t!” Asriel declared. “I’ve gotten wet and dirty before. I really did play in mud once. Sure they got a bit sore with me and Mom made me do chores but they didn’t yell or do anything nasty. Chara, don’t you believe me when I tell you that Mom and Dad are nice? You don’t need to be afraid any more.” Asriel touched Chara’s cheek. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I promise you. You’ll see. As long as you’re my best friend, you’ll never need to be afraid of anything again, ever.”

“You promise to protect me, Azzy? You woolly little crybaby?” Chara touched Asriel’s cheek in return, pretending to wipe away a tear.

Asriel pouted. “There’s nothing wrong with crying, Mom and Dad both tell me so.”

“Aw, Azzy, I’m just kidding with you.” Chara got to their feet, offering their hands to help Asriel regain his footing. “Well, now that we’re both drenched I guess we might as well keep going. These cool things you wanna show me had better be really cool.”

“Well. Um.” Asriel was suddenly quite diffident, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other and looking down at the ground. “There’s one cool thing I can show you right now. Or at least I hope you think it’s cool. I was gonna wait till we got to the star crystals to get this out, but…” Asriel giggled nervously. “Maybe it’d help you feel better if I gave it to you right now.” Asriel dug in his pants pocket for a few seconds and pulled out something that jingled faintly when they retrieved it. Cupping the item in the palm of one paw Asriel held it out towards his sibling. The metal of it glinted dimly in the pale light of the phosphorescent fungi around them. Chara stared at it, then raised their head to stare into Asriel’s eyes.

“Azzy…” Chara whispered. “You got this for me?”

“Y-yeah,” answered Asriel shyly. “Maybe you think it’s kind of a dorky gift, getting you jewelry, but…”

“It is dorky,” said Chara with a brief touch of sardonic amusement. “But I don’t care. It’s beautiful.” They carefully picked up the heart-shaped pendant from Asriel’s paw, letting it dangle from its chain before their eyes. Even in the cavern’s feeble luminosity the silver pendant gleamed, smooth and lustrous.

“It’s not just a heart,” said Asriel. “It’s a locket, it opens up. Here, let me give you some more light so you can see it better.” Asriel summoned another flame in his paw and brought it close for Chara’s benefit. “Open it up and see!”

Chara cradled the pendant in their palm and flicked it open. Inside the two halves of the locket were two tiny portraits executed in enamel. The right-hand picture showed Asriel with big shining eyes and an absurdly enthusiastic grin on his long face. The left-hand picture was of Chara. The artist had given them a smile also but it was a restrained, pensive smile. Their reddish-brown eyes looked downward out of their pale, ruddy-cheeked face, as if deep in reflection. Chara marveled for many long moments at the skill of the portraiture, then they snapped the locket closed. In the brighter light from Asriel’s mage-fire Chara could now see words engraved, in fine lines of flowing script, on the silver lid of the heart-shaped box: Best Friends Forever.

“Azzy! where did you get this?”

“I got it from a metalsmith in Snowdin,” Asriel said. “It’s, um, I kind of begged and worked on Mom until she got it done for me. I’m...I’m glad you like it.”

“I just...wow.” Chara blinked. “Nobody’s ever done anything this special for me...I dunno what to say.”

“Want me help you put it on?” Asriel asked, blushing.

“Right now?...Yeah. Sure! Why not?”

“Okay, hold still.” Chara stood bolt upright as Asriel looped the chain around their foster-sibling’s neck and did up the catch. When Asriel was done he stood face to face with Chara, holding out his arms before them with the offer of a hug. “Best friends forever, Chara?”

Chara reached up to touch the locket resting on their throat, then opened their arms and accepted Asriel’s hug, smiling a great smile that gave way to a peal of delighted laughter. They were soaked to the bone, their clothes were saturated, their hair was plastered to their head, and they didn’t care. Asriel had done it. He had kept his promise: he had taken away Chara’s fear. Joyful tears sprang to Chara’s eyes.

“Best friends forever, Azzy!”

---

Chara shook themself back to awareness. They had somehow managed to sit down in the little shower stall, slumped against the tiled walls with their knees up, and doze off under the warm spray. How long have I been out of it? Chara asked themselves as they scrambled awkwardly to their feet. I haven’t been sleeping enough, that’s the problem. Close my eyes in a dark room for a second and I pass right out. Hastily they shut off the water and fumbled for a towel, feeling around the dark bathroom till they found one.

Chara dried themself, scooped their fallen clothes from the floor and exited the bathroom. Good, they told themselves after a glance at the clock. I wasn’t asleep that long; Asriel’s not due for another hour. They stood irresolutely in their room for a minute, still unclothed. Semi-consciously they again reached up a hand to their throat, feeling for the absent locket.

I wonder where it went, thought Chara sadly. I guess it’s too much to hope for, seeing it again, after all those decades of being dead and buried so far as anyone knew. If it’s gone...does that mean, Asriel, we’re not best friends any more?...and does that mean I need to be afraid again?

Chara impatiently shook their head to derail the irksome train of thought, then rummaged in their clothes drawer for a clean pair of panties. Get dressed, Chara instructed themself. Brush your hair, brush your teeth, then lie down and try to relax till Frisk calls with the news that they’re on their way back here with Azzy. There’s nothing more I can do until then. Hop to it.