Star Wish Festival

“Chara?”

A tilted head, locks of brown.

“What was it like… on the surface?”

Chara frowned, eyes tired with deep seeded resentment and a wary glance avoidant the young monster. To disappoint Asriel when he looked so hopeful wasn’t something Chara wanted, even if it was funny sometimes when he cried.

Asriel cried over the simplest things.

“...something else.”

That answer obviously didn’t satisfy the monster, but he left it alone as he plucked up a buttercup instead, twirling it between his fingers as the lips of his snout curled into a pout of worry.

Asriel always worried.

Sometimes too much.

Those moments weren’t as funny.

“If you could go back…” he began, before trailing off.

’Never!’

Chara’s hands fisted in their shorts, but the smile they wore was as perpetually unnerving and calm as it always was, as they gave a half hearted shrug. “You’re not missing out on anything, Asriel. Trust me. Humans suck.”

He glanced awkwardly away from them.

“I think humans are cool.”

They were about to retort with something snide, but then second guessed themselves as they eyed the purposeful way Asriel looked at the wall of the cave.

Oh.

Sometimes… Chara forgot that they were human too.

They’d been down here so long now that they’d stopped thinking of themselves as anything else other than a Dreemurr. And Chara had to wonder if that was really a good thing.

With a scoff, Chara pushed off from the boulder they were perched on and landed gracefully on their feet, a hand on their hip as they shot their adopted sibling a teasing smirk filled with malicious intent.

“What do you know about what’s ‘cool’?”

Asriel shivered, and then immediately shouted, “Don’t make your creepy face like that! I don’t even have my camera…”

Chara rolled their eyes, grin falling to an indifferent frown.

Their smile unnerved him so much he’d not even heard what they’d said. This was why Asriel wasn’t even fun to tease most of the time. The prince of the underground, so easily spooked, so quick to cry and worry…

Weak.

Asriel was more like Asgore than Toriel.

“Alright, alright, not doing it again,” Chara placated.

He wasn’t buying it.

“You always say that too,” was the reply as Asriel crossed his arms.

Ignoring him, Chara turned away to look up at the roof of the cave. Their crimson hued eyes caught on one of the few holes scattered throughout the underground leading to the surface world and they stared sightlessly at the small rays of golden light spilling through.

How magic worked down here was odd.

Though there were holes, no one could leave through them, only enter, and if someone were to look down through one from the surface they’d see nothing. A random human could kneel down overhead suddenly and only Chara would see them, they’d see nothing more than a hollowed cave with a field of buttercups at its center.

At least that was what Chara had seen, before lifting their head to a worried Asriel’s tear-stricken face two years ago.

Apparently they’d traumatized the younger boy too.

Asriel had never even known of the concept that was someone falling from a great height.

Chara’s eyes slowly panned back down to Asriel who’d started gathering buttercups for their ‘mother’, always wanting to present the queen with a bouquet as some sort of gift. They didn’t understand why he did it, but they figured it might have something to do with her baking them butterscotch pie afterwards.

“...you’re going to miss it,” Chara whispered.

Only Asriel would be the one to truly miss their smile.

Said goat froze mid-reach for another flower to look up at them in confusion.

“Chara?”

They resisted the urge to smile, and instead turned away from him.

“Hurry up slowpoke, I’m going to eat all the pie before you do.”

A sudden stutter had Chara smiling anyway as they tucked their hands behind their head and started walking, Asriel crying their name and rushing to catch up, and eventually passing them satisfying the cruel itch in Chara’s heart.

They didn’t know why they felt that way…

Why the urge to upset someone or make jokes at a person’s expense was tempting, almost natural feeling. It was as if it was in their very nature to bring tears and choked whispers. And that wasn’t to say if Chara liked it or not.

Chara was actually indifferent to it.

Accepting.

They watched as Asriel tripped over his feet and fell face first. It was impressive that he managed to still hold onto the flowers Chara had to admit. Leisurely, they passed him and called back in sing-song.

“I’m winning~”

Asriel jumped up like a gopher.

“Chara!”

They let him get ahead of them again.

The sight of Asriel desperately trying to climb and race over a small ledge of rocks twisted something in Chara’s chest, and the pain seemed to only get worse as they started climbing too, feeling the rough rock scrap against their palms without thought.

A wayward thought popped up into the young brunette’s head.

‘Who is going to bully Asriel when I’m gone?’

Monsters were so long lived, never aging unless they had children.

Asriel may have been younger than Chara by months, but in the end it would be them that aged and grew wrinkly while the other stayed youthful and vibrant. He would age slower, mature by decades rather than years.

Comparing their lifespans was rather pointless in the end, funny even.

And weirdly painful.

Because Chara could never see anyone actually marrying Asriel, let alone having children with him. Sure, they’d heard their ‘parents’ talk about arranged marriages and the like, but they’d also called it ‘archaic’. Without that, the chances of them both growing up and aging together were impossible.

Chara would leave one day and Asriel…

Would abandon them.

“...Chara?”

Chara blinked in confusion, and glanced up to see the center of their thoughts standing above them on the ledge’s edge, that familiar worried tick contorting his snout yet again as he lowered into a squat and held his hand out like a lifeline.

“Are you okay? Are you stuck?”

…were they stuck?

What a stupid thing to ask.

They shook their head, and took his hand anyway.

“As if.”

~~

Chara watched unseeing from the shadows as the young human once again fell to one of Mettaton’s bombs. The horrid sight of their demise making even the phantom wince as the darkness swallowed them up.

Ironic because none of the bombs were supposed to be real…

But each timeline had its variables, as Chara had come to find out.

They almost liked this human.

Which was saying something, because Chara rarely liked anyone, even when they were alive. It had to be somewhere around their first run in Waterfall when Chara had begun to feel something other than apathy towards Frisk.

Something about the way they’d looked longingly at the echo flowers had just…

Stuck with them.

Vaguely reminded them of when they’d first looked at the buttercups.

They were sure there was something wrong with Frisk, just as there had been with them. Maybe something broken, or missing, perhaps even forgotten, but something. It definitely wasn’t the same: Frisk was too kind for it to be.

But whatever it was made it easier to mess with them.

Just like Asriel.

“That looked painful~” Chara hummed.

Frisk barely graced them with one of those weird, closed eyed glances of theirs before summoning the LOAD button to their fingertips. But Chara wasn’t having it. They’d ignored them the last two times this had happened and if there was one thing Chara hated, it was being ignored.

“You’re never going to get out y’know.”

Frisk’s fingers twitched.

Chara’s lips curved into a knowing grin, grew sharp and separated at the edges as black began to leak from their ghoulish, blood red eyes. They had Frisk right where they wanted them: doubtful.

“And honestly why would you want to?” Chara asked, sickly sweet. “ Just stay down here where everyone likes you. There’s nothing for you up there. No friends or family. NOTHING.”

’Just like there wasn’t for me.’

The glow of the LOAD flickered, casting eerie shadows over Frisk’s delicate features.

They could sense it, the reluctance, the loneliness.

Delicious.

“Is that why you did it?” Frisk’s voice came as a rasp from disuse.

The smile fell from Chara’s face.

Golden hues met red.

“Is that why you went through with that plan? To keep Asriel close so you wouldn’t be alone?”

Chara was dead, they didn’t need to breathe.

But it sure felt like they needed to as they felt the lungs they no longer had lock in their chest.

They felt themselves glitch, fall apart and distort before painfully reassembling with their hands fisted in their hair and teeth ground hard in a snarl. Frisk didn’t know what they were talking about! How could they?

Frisk had never had Chara’s life, had never known the pain and—

“It’s okay.”

Chara twitched, and became as still as a statue.

There was so much kindness in Frisk’s voice, and compassion.

Slowly, they looked up and were met with a smile completely different from their own.

“You don’t have to fight to keep me close to you, Chara.”

Frisk held their hand out to them.

The image of Asriel’s form doing the exact same thing centuries ago flashed across Chara’s mind, flickering between Frisk and him both like bad television static. The black trails on Chara’s face slowly began to run clear, transparent like water tracks.

“Let’s finish this,” Frisk whispered, “let’s reach the ending again, and get Asriel back.”

Chara began to reach for them, but stopped.

Taking Frisk’s hand was different from taking Asriel’s. It wasn’t a furry paw promising a life free of struggle and disappointment, it was a turn back to where Chara had run from, to what they’d left behind the night that they’d fallen.

To take Frisk’s hand would be forgiveness.

Could they forgive humanity?

’Can I move on?’

Chara’s hand trembled, and they slowly pulled it back.

They straightened, and their features smoothed out to normal (unassuming and so painfully human), as they shot a disinterested smirk at Frisk who stared at them in surprise, and disappointment as their own hand curled against their chest.

There were more important things to worry about before Chara contemplated ‘forgiveness’.

“You finish this. And hurry up, I bet Asriel is so excited to show you some rainbows.”

Frisk blinked in confusion, but Chara didn’t elaborate, choosing instead to stay silent as they turned and pressed the LOAD button. The other human vanished along with the light, leaving Chara alone in the darkness as the world slowly rebuilt itself and tried to find its place.

They looked down at the ghostly echo of their palm.

“...we couldn’t have touched anyway,” Chara grumbled, “you’re still alive.”