always thinking about daemons

Dess is woken with a grunt when a pointy figure lands on her stomach.

“Dess!” The voice is Kris’s, a loud whisper, and when she blinks open her eyes it is to see the kid digging their knees into her chest through the blankets, lit only by what weak moonlight trickles in through the bedroom window. Their antlers are knocked askew on their head, and even with her bleary eyes Dess reaches out to straighten them, some strange instinct.

“Dess!” Kris’s voice raises. “Dess! I gotta show you something!”

“At…” Dess scrubs at her eyes, glancing to the clock on her nightstand. “…two in the morning?”

Kris nods. Dess mumbles, “wouldn’t you rather wake Chara?”

Kris is already shaking their head, pawing at her chest with even more force. Dess literally is not even wearing a shirt. Or pants. Quite frankly she’s lucky she bothered to wear underpants to sleep. Next to her Chara hasn’t stirred, though she’s sure that won’t last much longer if she doesn’t get Kris out of here.

…two in the morning though, seriously?

“Okay, fine,” she says, sitting up and running her fingers through her messy hair to try and mostly keep it out of her eyes. Kris perches in her lap, hugging her arm against them, and despite it all—she has slept like shit for the past few days—it still brings a fond smile to her face. She drops her free hand to ruffle their hair, taking care not to dislodge their antlers. “You little harbinger. Just lemme like throw on a bra or something. Shh, don’t wake Chara.”

Kris giggles, mimes zipping their lips shut. Little nightmare of an eight-year-old. They’re tiny enough that when she stands she can just pick them up, held under the armpits, though she’s nowhere near as good as Chara is at the whole carrying-a-kid-one-handed thing. Instead she sets them down and pushes them towards the door, and thankfully they seem to get the point, scurrying back out.

What she wouldn’t give to fall back asleep right now.

Least Chara slept through it. She watches the slumbering form of her spouse before she actually goes to dig out a bra, the rise and fall of xir chest. It’s—weird. It’s her fifth night sleeping here. She hadn’t even planned to come home. It was just, halfway through a schema bash, like she’d stepped into a freezing shower. Couldn’t do it. She packed up that day, which mostly just meant grabbing her bag she kept on her at all times anyways, and dove down into the tunnels that would send her closest.

Still had to pay like way too much for an Uber, but.

Once she’s mostly decent she heads out of her room and down the hallway, where Kris is waiting, perking up upon seeing her and grabbing her hand. They drag her down the hall and into the living room, shoving her onto the couch and clambering into her lap before she’s even gotten comfortable.

“Harbinger?” Dess asks. Kris hums, nestling against her.

“Gotta show you something!” They twist around to grin, their eyes practically shining. The living room is much better lit than her room—Chara keeps a lamp on in case the kids wake up—and in the warm orange glow she can see the freckles smattered across their face, fawn-flecked. “So I couldn’t sleep and I was digging through the closet—”

“You were what,” Dess says.

Kris continues, ignoring her. “—and I found this in there!” They take something out of their pocket and press it into her hands, though with them taking up like her entire lap it’s a bit hard to see what it is. Dess squints and brings the object closer to her face. “You make music?!”

“Music?” Dess asks, squinting harder. “What are you—”

The object’s form comes together all-at-once. CD case. The edge of the cover paper is ripped, because she fucked up putting it in. The art is all Asriel’s—he really captured the punk-rock stage persona she’d always dreamed of. Even if he was still in his only drawing anime eyes phase.

She can still remember making it. Prying out the disc from some CD case she stole from Uncle Asgore’s truck, proclaiming to Asriel, my stuff’ll be better than whatever lame country shit your dad listens to. He’d laughed, beaming at her. She was 16 then—she didn’t know a damned thing about the bunker. Or about making music, really. The recording quality was straight ass. She’s pretty sure Noelle and Kris barged in at some point, demanding to be included. Asriel kept it on the track. It’s cute, he told her, maybe one day they’ll join us!

Us? she’d said, grinning at him. You’re just a glorified fan. Who’s the one doing all the singing and guitar work?

Asriel shoved at her. You’d be nowhere if you didn’t have someone to draw the cover! And mix all the songs!

Yeah, yeah. She shoved back. She sure as shit wasn’t learning the stuff he did. I’ll put you in the honorary mentions.

She had no idea she’d taken the CD with her, when she left. Doesn’t remember the lead-up to the leaving—just the desperation. Knowing, with every pulse of her soul, that something terrible was going to happen. That she had to fix it.

Kris is peering up at her, and she startles at their little hand on her arm.

“Do you still make music?” they ask.

“I…” Dess grips the CD tight enough that the edges of it bite into her palm. How the hell is she supposed to answer that? Just another thing I left behind. She remembers smashing her guitar, after the shelter. Felt like the right thing to do, there in her dark and empty room, her breaths ragged. Nothing sounded right, afterwards. Like the damned thing taunted her, always out-of-tune, and all the old songs she’d written sounded so nothing.

Still, though.

“…I don’t,” is what Dess says, finally. One of her legs is starting to fall asleep. Kris’s fault, she’s sure, though the kid is looking at her with such wide-eyed curiosity that she can’t bear to push them off. “I, uh, lost my guitar. You know how the schemas are.”

Kris nods with all the sincerity of an eight-year-old who has repressed every memory they have of entering schemas. (Or—Dess really, really hopes, at least.) And then they ask, “can we listen?”

No, Dess almost says. She couldn’t bear to hear Asriel’s voice again—Noelle’s—and she’s sure most of the music just sucks anyways. But instead of throwing the CD at the wall and smashing it once she sends Kris back to bed, her grip on it just grows tighter. All she has left of those times. Before the shelter.

Hard to imagine.

“…there might be one good song on there,” she says, and Kris cheers, pumping their fist into the air. God, this kid—like the music she made at 16 is worth this whole two AM adventure. They make a beeline to the kitchen and come back carefully carrying the CD player Chara keeps around for some reason, the cord dragging on the ground.

“Don’t trip,” she chides them, though Kris makes it without stumbling, setting the player on the coffee table and rushing over to plug it in. “And don’t get your hopes up! Most of the songs are, uh, bad. You aren’t hearing those.”

“But you made them!” Kris charges back over to her as she turns the player on, opening up the CD case to take out her CD. There is is—scrawled in her own messy hand. Wow, her handwriting truly has not improved since she was 16, has it? “They’re all gonna be amazing!”

“Lotta faith in me,” Dess says, as Kris just nods, shoving at her like that’ll make her go faster. “Okay! Jeez, harbinger.” She puts the CD in and glances at the handwritten tracklist. Right, so she’s skipping most of these, but…there’s one song she remembers. Put a lot of work into it. She’s pretty sure Kris has heard it before, actually. ‘Helped’ with writing it, which mostly means they drew on the extra pages she printed off for them.

…weird to think that they don’t remember it.

She moves to the right track, her hand hovering over the play button. Kris has leaned so far over the table she’s half-convinced they’re going to face-plant into it.

“This one is called, uh, Raise Up Your Bat,” Dess says. “Just—y’know. Some dumb thing I wrote.”

She turns the volume down—she is not waking up anybody else—and then…nothing left to it. She hits play.

It’s a weird experience, listening to her own voice sing. Did she really used to sound like that? And the guitar is all crunchy—Asriel did his best, but really neither of them had any idea how to work the technological side of recording music—but its…hers. She remembers the chords, the melody, the lyrics. How long she lay in her bed, chucking her eraser up at her ceiling, trying to make it just right.

Kris is jumping around in-time to the music, and it brings a grin to her face, seeing them so happy. When they half-dance, half-leap near her, she reaches out a hand, to make sure their antlers don’t slip off.

“DESS!” Kris yells, smashing into her chest, and Dess laughs, startled, as they drag her upright, bouncing on her hooves. “Dess! This is so cool!!!!! You gotta teach me music too!”

“Heh, well.” She spins them. Kris shrieks, giggly. “Y’know, when you were little—like, smaller than you are now,” and she ruffles their hair, teasing. Kris mouths harmlessly at her hand, still giggling, as she picks up the pace to head-bang to her own song. Kris copies her, jumping up and down. “You would pluck around on the piano a bit. I bet I could find you one.”

She had plans to help teach them. She doubts she can get them an actual piano—quite frankly she’s still not sure how her parents ever came into possession of one—but a keyboard or something, maybe. They loved it, back then, plinking away on the keys. Dess was self-taught and half-competent. It’s the one instrument she played that she didn’t end up breaking, though granted most of that was because it would be much more obvious than the stuff locked in her room.

…what happened to her old guitar, after she left? Thrown out, probably. Its warm wood splintered. Strings all snapped.

Would the music work for her, if she tried again?

She’s not sure how long she and Kris are there, in the living room. They drag her into dancing, and it’s fun, even if it’s just the one song they keep playing. Kris is inexpert, mostly just jumping around and dragging her, but they’re delighted despite that, and she sorta loves the way they try to copy her, start singing along on relisten number ten when they’ve started to get a handle on the lyrics. Dess doesn’t join them—can’t gather up the energy—but their little voice, half-shriek, is more dear than her own, anyways.

They only stop when Kris’s exhaustion catches up to them, the kid swaying in place, which is when Dess presses pause and says, “okay, you should probably go to bed.”

“Nnnnoo…” Kris whines, as she picks them up, wrapping their arms around her side and nuzzling into her fur. “Don’t wanna…wanna stay with you…”

“Well, I gotta sleep too, harbinger.”

“But what if I wake up ‘n you’re gone away?” They grip her tighter, and something catches in Dess’s throat.

“…I won’t be,” she says. The words stick like thorns as she speaks, but she manages to spit them out. She sits back on the couch rather than bring Kris to their room. “We can sleep out here. I’ll just stay on the couch with you. Won’t move at all. Promise.”

Kris mumbles, “say that a lot.” But they grip her tighter, their eyes drifting shut. “Love you Mom…”

When Dess blinks, her eyes are wet. Which is stupid. Kris is asleep, at least. Their breathing levels out. She’s pretty sure they’re drooling on her knee.

What the fuck is she doing, back here? There’s schemas to bust. Worlds to save. People to keep safe, and how can she do that if she’s here, staring at Kris? They’re so tiny, against her. Such a little scrap of a monster. Their antlers have been knocked askew again. Their fingers grip into her fur. Like they couldn’t bear to ever let her go.

“I was wondering where you were,” says Chara’s voice, and Dess startles, jerking up to see xir stood in the hallway, though xe enters the living room proper once she notices. “I was half-convinced you’d left already.”

Dess flushes. “Please tell me you didn’t hear the song.”

Chara shrugs. “Not much. The tail end, I assume?” Xe smiles at her, crossing the living room to join her on the couch, and Dess shifts, lifting up her arm not trapped by a sleeping Kris to let Chara cuddle up to her. “It’s sweet. Staying out here with them.”

Dess looks away. “Dunno. Just—they’re so little.” She glances to Kris, smoothing down their hair. “I didn’t know they were still this little.”

Chara hums. Agreement, probably. Dess could move Kris—shift them onto Chara’s lap, or between the two of them—but…she doesn’t. Just keeps petting their hair. It’s not really the same color as her fur—doesn’t have enough red for that—but it’s dark like hers. She settles her hand there between their antlers. Their little chest rises and falls.

“Would you ever try music again?” Chara asks, and Dess glances to xir. “What I heard, I liked it. You never told me.”

Dess shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like I have time. Music’s…I mean, compared to saving the world, it’s kinda…moot.” She elbows xir, light. “Plus, I think you might be a bit biased. I was like, 16. I didn’t know shit yet.”

Chara’s quiet, and so Dess follows xir example. It’s an odd sort of silence, settled across her heart. The room is lit orange-silver by the lamp and the moon, half-full through the window. Kris snores a bit, little growly sounds, which tug at the corner of Dess’s mouth. Their head is pillowed in her lap, as they curl up like a puppy.

“They really adore you, you know.” Chara breaks whatever stillness has fallen over them both, nodding down to Kris. “When you aren’t here—I swear, half their conversations lead back to when you’re coming home again.”

Dess shifts. Her legs have well and truly fallen asleep.

“Maybe I’ll try it,” she says, off to the vague distance of the far wall. “Might be nice.”

“Would be, I think.” says Chara.

Eventually, Chara falls back asleep, too. But Dess doesn’t.