Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something happens. This itself is strange, because it shouldn’t. Nothing ever happens here you know, but something does.

A… long time ago, you think you remember being carried, soft words whispered beyond your tomb. You remember something… touching you, like it was saying goodbye… then nothing. So much nothing.

It’s faint, nearly a whisper, but it’s still so much it’s almost enough to drive you to tears. “Who’s there!” you cry with no voice, in a way you haven’t for so, so long. The voice pauses, then grows a little louder.

You don’t know how long it is until you hear it again. Louder this time, and this time all you can do is whimper in response to the loud. It’s a while before you can adjust enough to understand what it’s saying.

“You’re… them?!” 

You scream instinctively, more out of surprise at being addressed than anything else. The voice recoils, but you’re quick to speak. “W-wait! Don’t go!”

You can’t see who it is. You don’t have eyes, you're not sure how you can even communicate, you don’t have a mouth… You're surprised you can even remember how to talk, you’d resigned yourself to never speaking to anyone ever again, and going from the expectation of an eternity of loneliness to someone talking to you is enough to drag a ragged not-whimper from your being.

“…all wrong.” The voice mutters, and then “Please stop! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” 

The voice sounds distressed, like they’re going to start crying, which is strange because you didn’t do anything. Terror grips you, and you nearly start sobbing yourself, “I’m not!- Who are you? Please! I’m scared!” 

The voice really is crying now, you don’t know why, but they keep apologizing to someone. You don't think it’s you. “Is… someone else there?”

“I have to- I have to g-go” the voice sobs, and you can only scream at the idea of being alone again.

“No!” you beg, “No! No! No! Don’t leave me alone here!” But it’s too late, the faceless sobbing is already getting further away, and you’re left alone again. You scream again, into the emptiness that surrounds you. You can’t cry, not really, but you can barely think over the endless waves of despair that crash over you.

“Come back…” you sob.

———————————

You're alone for a long time. Or you think you are. It’s hard to tell. 

In the beginning, so long ago you can barely remember, you tried to keep track of time. You counted seconds, minutes, until you lost count and had to start over. Eventually you gave up… it didn’t matter anyway. You knew this would never really end.

Not for the first time, you wish that there was anything for you… anything at all. There’s nothing to do here but think and remember things, but the thought of giving any thought to your friends is terrifying. 

You made that mistake a lot, and you know you’ll make it again. You can’t help it. You don’t want to think about how the others are doing, if you let yourself… you know you won’t ever be able to live with your choice.

But you’re already dead, and you can’t help but wonder if Martlet ever managed to patch things up with the guard. Or if Starlo ever got the gang back together. Or if Ceroba-

The thoughts send a wave of grief through your soul. You keen soundlessly, for the things you’ll never get to know, and again for doubting them, even now. 

You made this choice for yourself, you think. You just… didn’t think it would be like this. You thought it would be over, that you could sleep, but you haven’t slept a moment in more time than you can even understand, and your traitorous soul can’t help but wish that someone would come and take you away from this. 

You want… You want your friends. You want them so badly you feel like your soul could crack in two. But no one ever comes, not even to visit, and that one voice is the only thing you’ve heard in so, so long. 

And it’s not fair. You gave up your soul, isn’t that enough? Why do you have to endure this? Why can’t you be allowed to sleep? What did you do wrong? You can’t move. Can’t speak or hear or see or even feel anything. You can’t do anything but float here in empty space and think about everything you’ve lost. 

The guilt and regret are inescapable. You wish you never gave up your life. You never knew what it would be like to have nothing at all.

————————————-

The voice comes back… after a long time. You nearly weep from relief, but you don’t want to scare the voice again, and so you strangle the not-quite-sound before it can escape. You force yourself to stay quiet, as the voice talks to someone else, someone who’s not you. The conversation is a little too far away to make out, but it grows a little closer every few minutes. You can’t help but bask in the sensation of sound after so long of nothing. 

“... I’m sorry I ran.” They say, when they’re close enough to hear. “I didn’t realize how long you’ve all been… I’m so sorry.”

“... Who are you?” You ask, taking that to mean it's ok for you to speak. “I-I didn’t think anyone could hear me.” 

The voice is silent for a bit, and you nearly start to panic at the idea of being left alone again. “I’m… a human.” They finally say, sounding a little strangled as they do, “I thought I faded away a long time ago… I’m not sure why I woke up now. Our plan failed, didn’t it?” 

They say it more to themself than to you, “You said you’re human?” You ask, and then fear, because if they’re human the king might find them, and then they could be sealed away too. Your terror grows at the idea that you might never speak to them again, even through the surge of guilt that accompanies that thought for making this other child’s death about you. 

“You can’t be here!” You say suddenly, because at least if they leave on their own there’s a chance that you could talk to them again. “You have to hide!” The plea feels like tearing off a limb, it takes everything you have not to take it back.

“I’ll be alright.” They sound pained. “I don’t think he can s-see me.” 

You nearly sob with relief at that. “O-oh. Oh good.”

“Not really. I’m still dead.” 

You would cringe if you were able to, somehow having missed that part. The other child doesn’t seem offended at least. “But you can move around, right?” you ask hopefully, “And you said you could see the king?”

“Kind of. I don’t really have a body… but I figured it out.” 

You try to restrain your excitement, “Then… Can you teach me?” You all but beg them, the fragile hope is almost too much to bear. “I’ve been stuck here for… a really long time.”

“... I’m sorry. I would if I could.”

 Your soul sinks, “why not?” You whisper, still trying to keep that fragile hope alive.

“You’re… in a jar.” They say delicately, like they’re trying not to scare you.

“A… jar?” Right… Ceroba had it with her. Is that why you can’t do anything? The thought burns. She can’t have meant for this to happen to you.

“I’m so sorry.” And they sound like they genuinely mean it. “I can’t get you out. I already tried with the others.”

The others! “There are other people here?” You look around frantically, but you can’t see anything around you. You can’t see the voice either, but at least you can hear them.

“You don’t know?” they say, “You’re right next to each other…”

Your mind goes blank in an instant. “W-what do you mean?” 

“The others. The other humans… you’re all here.” 

“O-oh” You don’t have a voice, but it somehow seems to crack, “Ah… ha ha ha…” It's so awful to think that you’ve been so close to someone else this whole time. You have to stifle a sob.

“Are you all right?” they ask, “Do you want me to g-”

“Don’t go!” You scream, suddenly terrified. “Please. Please! Don’t g-go!” You can’t take it, they can’t leave you again, the voice is all you have!

“I won’t!” The voice says quickly, “I promise! I won’t go anywhere. I’m sorry! I won’t go.” 

Bright hot embarrassment burns inside you, but it doesn’t compare to the surge of pure, unadulterated relief you feel at the reassurance. 

“The other kids said the same thing…” They admit, “I can’t promise to stay forever… but If I leave I’ll come back. I promise.”

You manage to relax, upset but nevertheless grateful. You know you can’t ask for more… it's bad enough you’re stuck like this, you won’t force this stranger to linger in the same place for what could be forever as well. 

“... do you have a name?” They ask hesitantly, like they aren’t sure knowing is a good idea. 

“... Clover. My name’s Clover. What’s yours?” 

_________________________

They lied. You think numbly, as you sit in darkness.

You don’t know how long it’s been since Chara visited, but you know it’s longer than they’ve been away since the first time the two of you met. You feel foolish for believing them. 

It was so, so nice, to have someone to talk to. For a while you could almost pretend you’d never even died. You don’t know why you expected them to stay… Why would they stay and talk to one kid when they could explore the whole underground?

You hope Chara’s just bored of you. You hope they’re far, far away, because otherwise…You don’t think you could take it if they were still here, if they were a few feet away… in a tomb of their own. You feel selfish for hoping they’d come back, but you…

You miss your friends.

——————————-

Something happens. 

Suddenly, there’s sound, there’s feeling. You scream wordlessly, and for the first time in longer than you can remember there are other voices along with your own. There’s so many, hundreds, thousands, the sheer sensation makes you feel like you’re being torn to pieces. 

It’s too much, you can barely think over all the noise, over the feeling of neon flames licking across your fur, power rocketing from your claws. You have the faint memory of something before, of being gnarled and twisted, warped beyond all reason, but the not-quite memory can’t make any headway over the searing pain that feels like it’s consuming your entire being. It’s sound and feeling and sight after an eternity of nothingness, and for an instant you think you feel a familiar presence, the sensation of many hands linking with your own.

And then it’s over. You blink as you wake up, back in darkness. 

It’s not fair!

You howl, the reverb of your screams fill the tiny space with so much sound it’s deafening. You thrash and scrape your hands across the rough stone around you, tears flooding from your eyes as you squeeze them shut so tightly you see colors. You taste copper as you hit your head against the ceiling of the dark space. You cry and cry until the reality of sensation finally sinks in, until a confused whimper escapes you as you realize that the darkness around you isn’t the same as the one you were trapped in for so, so long.

This darkness feels like freedom.

Chapter Text

You find the souls on the fifth day.

It’s not on purpose. You have no desire to learn any more than you absolutely have to about how far your adoptive family has fallen, but there’s only so many rooms to explore in the castle, and only so many details you can inspect without hands to open draws and turn pages. You’ve long given up trying to get father’s attention, as you had with mother days prior. Without being able to speak, or touch, you’ve had to piece a lot of things together, but that's ok, you’re good at reading between the lines. 

Waking up had been its own ordeal, laying at the bottom of the hole like no time had passed since you’d fallen. It took the flowers to convince you that it wasn’t all a dream. 201X. One hundred years and it seems you still couldn’t rest in peace, not that that was easy to figure out either. No one ever cared much for keeping time in the underground, everyone knew this was a sentence that would never end. 

You’ve no idea why you woke up. There was no one there when you did, and no amount of screaming or crying or begging has been enough to let anyone take notice of you. You suppose it’s fitting, your death was meaningless, why should your afterlife be any different? Maybe this is justice, to let you see how you ruined the lives of everyone you loved, be careful what you wish for and all that. It reminds you of an old movie you’d watched before you came here. You were small then, even smaller now. 

The barrier is just the way it was, massive, looming, hungry. You’d wondered if you could go through it, you’re dead after all. Seems not. You’re a little relieved, that would have been too unfair even for you. You’re just turning to leave when you hear it, very quiet crying. It’s almost inaudible over the droning hum of the barrier, and it makes you turn around with a frown. 

It happens again. A sniffle that doesn’t echo despite the cavernous chamber. You creep closer on your hands and knees though you know you don’t really need to. “...Is anyone there?” You whisper, hoping you’ll receive no answer. It takes only a minute to find the circular indents in the ground, a little too smooth to fit in with the bare rock of the chamber’s floor. 

You immediately know what you’ve found. You feel stupid in retrospect because, really, where else would they be stored? Anyone who came here would have to face the king if they wanted to escape, doubly so if they wanted to take them back. “O-oh.” You breathe, ears straining to hear, hoping for silence. 

“Who’s there!” The shout comes from somewhere on your right. It’s not a sound, not exactly. The cry seems to echo through you, ringing inside your head, and you cringe backward, phantom hands scraping along the floor of the cavern. 

“You’re… them?!” You all but shout. That was a mistake. 

The child’s voice says something, but it's drowned in the sudden shrieking that erupts from the ground. It goes on and on, past the point a living human would have needed to pause for breath. Animal terror shakes through your form, causing the faint reddish wisps that form your not-quite-body to spike and stutter. 

It feels like burning alive. You nearly pass out from the force of memories and emotions not your own as they slam into you and you’re nearly drowned in the sensation of endless isolation and silence broken suddenly by the sound of your own voice. It’s unbearable.

“It’s all wrong,” You whimper, panicking. You’ve started crying, at some point, dry sobbing wracking through you. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” It’s all you can say, over and over as the screaming continues. You’re vaguely conscious of the voice from before joining them, straining to be heard over the other children’s despair. 

You… you need to get out of here, it’s too much, too much. It’s too loud, too awful, and you aren’t sure if those thoughts are coming from you or from the souls but you have to get away. “I have to- I have to go,” You sob, picking yourself up off the ground. 

And it keeps going, the kid from before is begging you to stay, to not leave them alone, but the others are screaming and their stampeding thoughts seem to want nothing more than to make you disappear, and you turn and flee from the chamber in terror of what you’ve done.

Your phantom legs pound on the stone as you run, and keep running. Out of the garden, across the main hall, back through the maze of ramparts and up the stairs until you’re tucked away in your room, hiding under your deathbed with intangible hands clasped to your useless mouth to muffle your silent crying. 

Sleep doesn’t come for you. You don’t think you’ll ever sleep again.

—————————————-

You spend nearly a whole day under the bed before you work up the courage to venture beyond your room. It’s silly, you know, why would you be hiding when all you’ve wanted since you woke up was to be seen? 

Father is sitting on the front step, running a whetstone across a disassembled set of shears. You sit next to him, peering over his arm as he works, letting the soft scraping sound wash the memory of the other children’s screams out of your head. 

He doesn’t notice you of course, even when you reach up and put a hand on his. Your fingers are dwarfed, and the back of his palm phases through you as you try and fail to follow the motion. The lack of touch aggravates you in a way it hasn’t since you first woke up, and you shoot to your feet, shoving at his shoulder uselessly.

“I’m right here!” You shout at him, because you haven’t learned your lesson. The constant scraping grows aggravating, no matter how loudly you yell, or how much you bat at his arms or back or face he doesn't change his pace. It’s not fair.

You can’t get exhausted, not really, but you start to droop anyway after a few minutes of your tantrum and retreat back into the house. You glare at his back through the open door he never bothers to lock, thoughts still back before the barrier. 

“They’re not asleep.” You mumble into your knees, then louder “You didn’t even check?!” And you’re angry, more than you have been since you died. “Why didn’t you just use one?” 

Because Asriel did, probably, and he died anyway. But Asriel was a fool, and a child, and you loved him and should have known better than to ask him to kill for you. But father is sitting here, on the step of his house instead of his throne, sharpening something that isn’t a weapon while he could be doing the right thing for his people and for the other kids he has trapped. What is he so afraid of? He already has blood on his hands. 

And you’re here too. The seventh soul, a willing one even, just a few feet away and all he has to do is turn around and look at you!

He doesn’t. No one will. You can’t do anything but watch them all suffer. It’s just like when you first came here. At least this time you don’t have to pretend it’s because they all care about you. 

_______________________

In the end you go back. You aren’t sure it’s a good idea based off of what happened last time, but you know that there was at least one voice begging you to stay in the chorus of the ones screaming for you to leave. 

You spend a few minutes crouching on the ground, murmuring to the little indents and receiving no reply. Experimentally prying at the stone with your wispy fingers, nothing of course. Maybe you’re too quiet for them to hear, maybe they only mind you when you’re shouting, either way there’s no response from most of them. Eventually you get your answer regardless.

Talking to Clover is… not nice, you suppose. Not nice in the way that talking to someone through prison glass wouldn’t be described as ‘nice’ but it's good to talk to someone, for them and you both. You’d started to go a little crazy in just the few days you’d been awake, thinking that your life could have been a dream. You can only imagine what the others must be feeling. 

It was a day or two after you woke up that you overheard a conversation between Father and a fish monster you don’t recognize. Most of it went over your head, but she said it had been almost seven years since the last human fell. Maybe you can’t imagine. 

The other souls… barely talk. You tried early on to get something out of them, but when they speak it's rare, and usually a quiet whisper you can’t make out. You’re a little afraid that you hurt them, somehow, the first time you came here. 

You talk to them regardless. All of them. It’s a little odd having a conversation with someone who isn’t talking, and you can’t see. But Clover always seems to appreciate it as long as you aren’t shouting at them, and you won’t begrudge the other kids what little you can give.

Clover themself asks you an almost constant stream of questions. You answer them as best you’re able, describing their surroundings, and the castle itself that they never got to see. You guess they were killed before they arrived here, but you know better than to ask. Eventually though… their story comes out anyway.

They ask you to check up on someone for them. A lady who used to live out in the dunes, apparently there’s a town there now. You search as best you’re able, but you don’t find anyone of her description. The town itself is barren and nearly buried under the sand. Whoever lived here moved on long ago, and there’s not so few monsters that you could hope to find them searching blind. You overhear some monsters mention how over-mining expanded the desert, and everyone moved on shortly after.

Clover takes it well enough, though they’re quiet for a bit when they hear about the town. They go right back to asking questions, what Hotland feels like, what the barrier looks like, and on, and on. You tell them as much as you can about the world beyond their jar. The way the stones in Waterfall twinkle, how annoying the echo flowers can be when you just want some peace and quiet… they never ask you how long they’ve been trapped. You hope they never do. 

Weeks go by like that. You visit every day, talking for as long as you can. Sometimes the conversation lulls, and you fill the silence by humming some of the old tunes mother used to sing around the house. Sometimes the two of you play games, though it's hard to do anything more than word-association.

One day they ask you a question. 

“Why…did you come back? That first time?” 

‘Because I have nothing better to do.’ You almost tell them, but that’s not the reason. If you’re honest with yourself… you wouldn’t have cared about them if the two of you were still alive. It makes your stomach clench, but you would have seen them as a threat. To Asriel, but to yourself too, what if they replaced you?

Maybe it’s just that they’re a little younger than you. Or would have been, if you’d both been around at the same time. Maybe their fate was just so awful you couldn’t live with yourself otherwise. Maybe it was guilt. You still haven’t told them about your past.

Maybe they remind you of Asriel, a little, in the way they latched onto you the moment you first met. In the way that they won’t stop asking you inane questions. In the way that they didn’t deserve to die but did anyway. Because of you.

“I was tired of not being able to do anything.” You say after a few minutes of mulling it over. “I died trying and… I just made everything worse.” You wish you could talk to your brother. Why would you come back and not him? It isn’t fair. “It’s nice to have someone I can actually help. Even if it’s just talking.” You sigh, looking down between your criss-crossed legs. “I’m sorry… that probably seems selfish.”

“I don’t think it’s selfish at all.” Clover says. “... I was tired of not being able to do anything too.” 

_____________________________

 You’ve been staying in the castle for a little over a month when Clover asks you to find some more of their friends. Apparently they live in Snowdin, though they seemed to think one of them could be all the way back in the ruins too. You’re a little hesitant to leave them for so long, the ruins are on the other end of the cavern, it could be more than a day or two before you’re back. But they insist that you shouldn’t worry about them, and you’d like to check in on mother anyway. 

You hurry anyway, aware as you are that your friend doesn’t have a way of knowing how long you’ve been gone. Searching all over Snowdin yields no results, and you don’t want to venture too far into the forest and risk getting lost. You can see lights at the bottom of a hill, maybe they live down there, but you resolve to check the ruins first before going all that way. 

Mother is the same as she was when you left. She keeps to the same routine, patrolling the same empty halls like she might have gotten a visitor in the half hour since she last checked. You remember when you first woke up, trying to get her attention, and eventually curling up on the floor by her feet as she read, trying to pretend she was reading to you. 

You only spend an hour or so with her before leaving to comb through the ruins. You don’t find Clover’s friend, but you explore every room you can reach, every nook and cranny just in case. Failure is starting to eat at you; you don’t want to have to tell them another person they care about is missing.

Eventually you make your way back to your grave. It's… nice, you suppose. She even planted flowers. You used to love them. Now they only bring back the memory of pain that wasn’t yours, screaming at your brother to drop the useless shell of your former life, the horror on your parents faces… 

You turn to leave and catch sight of movement in the shadows at the edge of the chamber. It makes you frown, and you take a step off the flowerbed. 

“...Is anyone there?” You ask, just in time for something to hit the ground behind you like a bag of wet cement