You don't know how Toriel would react, if she found out.

That only serves to make the guilt worse.

Luckily, your love of sweaters and constant feeling of being cold helps in hiding your little secret.

You aren't sure why you're doing what you're doing; all you know is that sometimes, a knife felt good in your hands.

That sometimes, Chara has come back - or at least, that's how it feels. That familar, oppressive feeling. And the constant realization of just how much of your life has gone wrong.

Even if all of your troubles back then had been seen through rose-colored glasses. Now, you know.

You sit in the bathtub, thinking. Suds rise around you and cover your body; only your legs stick out against the other side of the porcelain tub. If a toilet is a porcelain throne, is this a glass bed? You feel like you could fall asleep in it, sometimes, if it wasn't for the fact - and Toriel's persistent warnings against and fear of - you drowning in the bath water.

If you were honest, though, sometimes that thought appeals to you. You drape a damp arm over the edge of the tub and scrape a razor - the shaving kind - over the side of your wrist, at the turning point between veins and arm hair - until you draw a droplet of blood.

Red. The color of your Soul. The color of blood. Of mourning.

Part of you wants more. Wants to do something to stem the need to cry, but you stop at just the droplet.

No real pain this time; you are afraid of what might happen if you cut too vigorously and hurt yourself too badly. Especially when your skin is so thin and wet. You don't want to alarm Toriel; besides, it doesn't take much to abate the reincarnated Chara.

It started when you first realized that many of your 'friends' had originally set out to kill you. It seemed obvious, now, but you'd been ten at the time. You were young enough not to feel the danger, but old enough to know about consequences. Even when it hurt, you didn't think of dying; you felt invincible.

Since then, the others - Undyne, especially - became harder for you to be around. The fish-warrior's aggressive insistence that you were the best of friends had never really felt genuine, anyway, even if she had offered to beat up that one boy that broke your heart...

That was another thing; life after the barrier broke had been a complete failure. At least, for you. Everyone else that claimed they cared about you was happy; Alphys and Undyne were together, Toriel had her teaching job... Even Mettaton and Napstablook had reconsiled and wer making music together.

Everyone had gone to the surface. Achieved their dreams.

But you? You tried to be ambassador, for a while. But many of the humans didn't want to listen to a kid. Perhaps you shouldn't be so hard on your monster friends; the surface had been hard on them, too. They'd been relegated to certain areas of land, had restricted rights, etc, etc. Like the Native Americans, back in the day. Toriel had taken the helm of fighting for equality when it was clear that you yourself could not handle the task; you had been put back into a human school, though you had stayed with Toriel, having given up on finding your real parents.

It had been their abandonment of you that drove you to the top of Mt. Ebott that day. They had dropped you off at a park near the mountainside, told you they would be right back, and then disappeared. You waited for hours, with nobody around, until it got dark. You were hungry and tired and scared to be alone, and you remember crying, wailing for your Mummy and Daddy.

Maybe they'd gone up the mountain and disappeared, you told yourself. Maybe they were in danger and needed your help! You had picked up a nearby stick and raced off for the Mt. Ebott, desperate to save them, and then you fell down, and the rest was history.

You'd met many a monster along the way, and through all that time, you were desperate to be loved. That's why you refused to fight. That's why you flirted - something you'd picked up on during times when Mommy brought boys that weren't Daddy home - that's why you sought to fulfill their every need. All to be loved.

It didn't matter that the monsters had hurt you. Mummy and Daddy had hurt you too, sometimes, but they had always apologized after, so everything was ok, right?

And you'd figured, at the end of it all, that monsters were so much kinder than humans, and that it didn't matter your real parents didn't want you, because you had another family right there who had seen the sun and were eager to embrace you as you were. You would all turn over a new leaf, together.

Except it didn't turn out that way. Not completely.

You scratch a pimple on your face with one pruny finger. Puberty hadn't given you much except zits and a newfound sense of shame. Even six years after the barrier had been destroyed, you still looked like the ten year old that nearly broke her face falling down a mountainside.

People still mistook you for a boy, and that did wonders for your self esteem. Even when you tried to dress girly - grow your hair longer, put ribbons in your hair - but that only made it worse. The boys called you a fag and a monster freak. Even the boy you liked at the time. You were sure, at first, that he was only teasing you because he liked you; you were still in that awkard just-shy-of-preteen phase, and when you tried to flirt with him, the things you said got you into trouble.

The teacher told you that a young girl like you should know about the things you were talking about, then she chalked it up to you being raised by monsters.

You stopped talking in class soon after that.

Then at home.

You had always been a quiet child, so Toriel didn't say much about it.

It bothered you that no one noticed. That no one, not even your monster friends, seemed to care. They didn't need you anymore. Not now that they were free.

You stand and pull the plug on the bathtub, dry yourself off, and breathe a heavy breath. The small cut you'd made on the side of your wrist had stopped bleeding. You get dressed, then stand outside the bathroom door. You can hear Toriel humming, and you smell butterscotch cinnamon pie in the oven.

You prepare to face the world again. The smell of the pie fills you with determination.

You couldn't help but wonder, though. Could you face another day living this way? Barely breathing in this harsh, human world?

It's kill or be killed, you'd been told. But what happens if the person you wanted to kill... was yourself?