There appeared only one thing to do. She was going to have to stop taking her frustrations out on people who had long-since stopped feeling like people to her. She was going to have to try something new.

So she did something she had never tried before.

She didn't kill people. Not anyone. Not even Jerry. Or Undyne. And it was hard. And she almost forgot herself so many times which is why she was creating so many new SAVE points so she wouldn't have to start over.

Sans looked so suspicious of her she was amazed he didn't say anything but he didn't confront her.

Then, just when she thought she might burst, she got a call. Something new. Undyne wanted her to deliver a love letter. Alphys (really, those two? Well okay then) seemed to think that Chara had sent it even though it likely just reeked of Undyne-isms and couldn't be opened by less than a chainsaw. Then Alphys agreed to go on a date with a child out of gratitude or apology or whatever. She was this close to just killing everyone involved but she had gotten that far and, though she couldn't quite see why putting up with this infantile date might help her help him, she didn't have any other ideas.

Then Papyrus sent her off to Alphys lab. She had seen the lab before. She had not seen this lab before.

It was terrible. Even for someone who had calmly killed as many as she had, it was terrible.

She had killed but she had never caused dying monsters to melt into each other and become horrifying and miserable freaks of nature. One had something like sixteen dogs all merged into one. One seemed just as desperate as Flowey. And speaking of, if she hadn't realized who he was before, those notes would have removed all doubts. A surprise for the king? Chosen the ideal subject? Were they actually trying to save Asriel in flower form or were they just intending to use her favorite flowers?

She didn't know.

She just knew that it was a good thing she saved because she murdered Dr. Alphys quite a few times for what she had done before she had calmed down and could continue with her nice, peaceful play through. No wonder she kept hearing about Alphys' disappearances in runs when she made it to the end and there were still living creatures. There was some sort of sign that she hadn't worked on this alone but she didn't have the patience to waste time trying to solve that mystery. It didn't matter. Alphys' blood would have to be enough.

Then she came before Asgore again. She still hadn't seen Flowey. Was she supposed to try and spare him again and watch him kill himself in front of her?

She didn't have to find out. Toriel arrived.

Toriel.

She apologized for being late, saying she had to change her mind about coming. She insulted Asgore for his war and those dead children he was trying to build their salvation on. And she was there to save her. There was something…nice about that. Maybe she was always coming to save her, whenever she hadn't been murdered, and it was only that ridiculous waste of time with the date and then the lab that allowed her to reach Chara in time.

Then Papyrus showed up. And Sans. Undyne and Alphys although, really, who invited them? And it was all playing out like a happily ever after even though nothing had been solved. Sans and Toriel finally 'met' even though it was clear Sans had known exactly who she was. It was no surprise he hadn't bothered introducing himself but had gone on and on about Papyrus.

And Chara wanted to scream. What good was this? What good was any of this? Asgore hadn't died, everyone else seemed ready to call it a day, but how was this helping her?

She was a heartbeat away from either killing everyone or resetting (maybe both) when Flowey made his appearance.

They had taken their eyes off the human souls. Of course. She had known he was after those. And maybe armed with those, and with the souls of all the monsters, he'd finally feel safe facing her down. She'd beaten him when he'd had all the souls before, when he was some sort of horrific creature she could hardly stand to look at, but this was different.

This was…Asriel.

His back was to her.

"Finally," he said, sounding the way he always had. "I was so tired of being a flower."

"Asriel."

He turned around and smiled and it was such a vision of the past that her legs buckled and she fell to her knees.

"Howdy! Chara, it's me, your best friend," he said, as excited as he ever was.

There was a flash and as she climbed to her feet he was suddenly an adult. Suddenly who he might have been had life been kinder. Had she been kinder. Or if she'd never darkened their doorsteps at all. He was dressed just like his mother and, despite the fact he had absorbed her soul into him like everyone else's (did he even have a real plan?), that did not surprise her at all.

Neither did the fact that he tried to kill her. He'd done that before, of course, when he was that monstrosity. Just like before, he knew he couldn't make it stick. He may have had no problem killing her when he knew she'd remember even as she couldn't bring herself to do it to him. But then who was the real sentimentalist anyway? He'd called her Chara before she'd even really been Chara.

He'd already told her that he thought it might be enough, just living with her. Even as a flower. Now he told her how he was done trying to destroy the world. He just wanted to play this cat and mouse game with her forever. As if she would be able to bring herself to be so nice and non-homicidal over and over and over again if she had to deal with the frustration of him constantly killing her. Especially not when he looked like the monster he should have grown into by now, would have grown into by now if their paths had never crossed and she had just died in peace. She had barely managed it the first time and if she hadn't had that SAVE point in Alphys' true lab she wouldn't have been able to do it.

He wanted her to lose because he thought that would keep her coming back. He spoke of her love for her friends and, to some extent, that was true but it certainly didn't stop her from destroying them every other time she turned around. She probably wouldn't actually leave this world a wasteland but she hadn't been planning on leaving anytime soon. Did he really think he needed to manipulate her to stay?

There was no way she could withstand his attacks for long. They were big, they were powerful, and she was so weak right now with no LOVE and no EXP. So she did something that she honestly didn't believe would work and wasn't expecting anything out of except more mockery from him.

She cried out into the dark for help. And the boss monsters heard her. All she had to do was joke with them or encourage them or hug them and they came right back to themselves.

Then, though it was even more hopeless, she reached out to Asriel himself, remembering that very first time they had met. The time he had saved her. The time he had begun to sow the seeds of his own destruction.

He got more hostile when he realized what she was doing but that was expected. What wasn't was the way he started speaking then.

He told her why he was doing this, the real answer this time. That she was special and he cared about her and he couldn't lose her again. And when he begged her to just let him win because he wasn't ready to say goodbye to someone like her again…

It was shameful but she almost did it. The look on his face…she had never seen someone so pained. And she had watched him and his parents watch her die. She had watched his parents watch him die.

But that wouldn't change anything. And maybe this wouldn't, either, but nothing said she could reset after seeing this one through.

The fact that she still felt that way even though while he was saying this he was unleashing a terrifying rainbow attack that pushed her farther than she'd ever been pushed before really said something about how much he meant to her.

He was so alone, he said. He was so afraid. He kept using her name.

There was another flash and the Asriel she remembered was back. And he was crying.

"I'm so sorry," he said. He saw the look on her face and managed to smile despite his tears. "I always was a crybaby, wasn't I, Chara?"

"I'm, uh, beginning to suspect I might have overused that word," she admitted. "You did cry a lot but it was usually when I was doing things like nearly killing your dad or plotting my own suicide and making you a part of it or when I couldn't understand why you were being nice to me. I-I may understand a bit more how you were feeling."

He nodded and she could tell they were both thinking about when she had spared him after their fights. Some of it might have been an act to get her to the point he could absorb everyone but enough of it had been real. He really couldn't understand. Just like she hadn't been able to.

"What have I done?" he asked her softly.

"No worse than I have," she said, just as softly. "In fact, probably not as bad as I have."

"I killed you. You wouldn't kill me and I killed you."

"Your mother managed to kill me once," she said.

"What, really?" he asked, surprised. "I thought she made her attacks miss you on purpose if you got too close to death."

"A fact I figured out on my second try," she said simply. "I could tell she felt horrible about it and she hadn't meant to kill me to convince me it was too dangerous to leave. I'm glad I was able to reset that for her. She's so much less horrified when you kill her."

"How could I have done that, though, Chara? How could I have killed everyone?" he asked, hugging himself. "My own father! And my mother, though not as often. How could I have killed them? How could I not have cared?"

"It's not your fault," Chara said, beginning to feel the stirrings of something that might be guilt. For better or for worse, she cared about Asriel's opinion. He wasn't judging her but he was condemning himself for the very same actions and she didn't even have the fact that she was looking for an escape and was a soulless creature incapable of doing much of anything or feeling positive emotions to explain what she had done. And it wasn't even what she had done so much but Asriel's reaction to it that was bothering her now. Monster souls were made up of love, mercy, and compassion and here she was with a perfectly good soul not exhibiting any. She really was right to hate humans, wasn't she?

"How is it not my fault? I did it and I didn't even care. I was-I was curious. I told myself I didn't want to but I knew it was a lie. And after I satisfied my curiosity I kept doing it again and again and again!"

"You didn't have a soul," Chara insisted. "You weren't capable of feeling love and compassion and mercy and even then you tried your hardest to fix that! Even then your first instinct was to help people out and make their lives better! And it was only when you kept trying and couldn't change anything, couldn't save yourself, learned the situations so well it all stopped feeling real, that you started killing."

"And it's supposed to make it alright because I didn't immediately jump to bloody murder?" Asriel demanded.

"It didn't take me long to start killing. Killing woke me up, I think," Chara replied. "And I have a soul. And I could have just killed one and went home. My position was far better than yours and I'm not missing a piece and I still did it."

Asriel's face crumpled. "Chara-"

"Oh, don't. It's no shock, you being a better person than me."

"Can you ever forgive me?"

"For what?" Chara asked.

"I'm going to cry again," he warned her.

"I suppose forgiveness from your best friend, even if it's completely unnecessary, is another one of those things it's not silly to cry over," Chara said, feeling almost magnanimous.

"Unnecessary? Chara, how many times did I kill you?" he asked.

"I…don't actually remember," Chara said. "But it doesn't matter. And as for the rest, Sans is the only one who would have any idea. And he would never do anything to hurt Toriel so you don't have to worry there."

His eyes widened. "Chara…you can't tell them."

"Tell them what?"

"Mom and Dad. Anyone. You can't tell them about me."

"Why wouldn't I tell them that you're alive?" she demanded. "There is literally nothing in this world that would make them happier! And yes, that is true despite how many people you've killed although, really, it's probably best not to share too many details. Might confuse the issue. And no one except Papyrus, who never would, gets to pull the moral high ground argument with me."

"But this isn't going to last, Chara. You have no idea how much I wish that it could. But it can't. I want to go with you, I want to go with them, I want to be a family again. But I just can't."

"Why not?" she asked, getting frustrated. "If this is about misplaced guilt-"

"It's not," he said. "Though it wouldn't be misplaced if it was."

"Then what is it about?"

"I don't have a soul. I'm a flower."

"You seem to be doing fine to me," she offered.

He actually rolled his eyes at her. "That's because I have six human souls and enough monster souls to make up a seventh inside of me right now."

Right. That.

"And you know I can't keep them."

"Do I, though? I mean, you might want to put the monster souls back but it's not like the human souls were doing anything anyway. Just hang on to at least one of them until you die. It'll be fine."

"I couldn't," he said. "They deserve to be at peace."

"I mean, you keep saying that but, really, do they?"

He gave her a look. "Yes."

"You know, it's that kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place."

He actually smiled at that. "Perhaps. But I think I'm coming around on that actually, Chara. All this time I blamed myself for what happened. All this time I thought I should have listened to you. Kill or be killed. But you know there would have just been a war if we came back like that. You know what happened in the last war."

"We're really a lot less magical these days," Chara said. "It's all the technology, I think. They couldn't erect another barrier."

"They have bombs now," Asriel countered. "I did the right thing, Chara, protecting those humans."

"Those murderers, you mean."

"They didn't know. They just saw a monster with a dead child. What other conclusions could they have drawn?"

"They could have at least asked," she argued.

"Did they even know I could speak? Would they have believed my denials? Why would I tell a heavily armed mob about my child murder?" Asriel asked reasonably. "I did the right thing. Maybe it wasn't the best thing I could have done but it was far from the worst. And now it's led us here."

"Is here such a great place to be?" Chara asked. "You won't listen."

"There's nothing to listen to," Asriel said. "And don't you dare reset, Chara. This is enough."

"It would be," Chara said. "If you'd just-"

"But I won't. And no matter how many times you try, you can't change that. Having a human soul, coming back to myself like this…It's not worth it. I can't keep these souls."

"So…what? You go back to being a flower?"

A flash of terror crossed his face then before he nodded bravely. "I go back to being a flower. And one day, perhaps one day soon, I'll find out what happens to soulless flowers when they die. O-or I won't, which is really the same thing."

Her heart went out to him. "Asriel."

"But we will have our happy ending after all," he soldiered on. "We will finish what we started."

She blinked. "You mean-"

"Wouldn't you know that every soul in the underground just about amounts to one human soul?" he asked rhetorically. "Wouldn't you know that I can finally finish what I started and make all of this worth it? I can finally free my people."

"It's not worth you," she said. "It never was."

He smiled sadly. "I appreciate that but it's a little late to change things now. We can't go back to before and I-I'm not sure I even would. I can't afford to be selfish here. My people need this. They need hope. Two thousand years, Chara. And my father was there then. How can I do otherwise?"

"They wouldn't want this." If nothing else, she was sure of that. "I don't want this."

Another sad smile. "I know. But it's the right thing to do."

"You and your ethics," she grumbled.

"It feels good to have ethics again," he said.

"It's not selfish to want a chance to live your own life," she said. "You deserve that. You deserve to exist more than they deserve to go to the surface."

"Maybe it's not about deserve," Asriel conceded. "But I hurt so many people."

"And then it's all undone."

"I literally have everyone's souls inside me right now."

"You're going to give them back," she replied.

"I want to do this. Please, just let me do this."

Was she crying?

He seemed to take her silence as agreement and he raised his arms, the souls became visible, and the barrier shattered.

"I have to go now," Asriel said. "It would be better not to have to answer any awkward questions. You know my parents will be happier thinking I just stayed dead than knowing all that I've done. Than knowing that they can't save me and how much I hate it. And once I go back, I can't promise that I won't ever come after them again. Oh, at first I'll probably be fine. At first the memories will be fresh. At first I was fine then, too. But they can't trust me. Not even you can trust me, Chara. I know I don't."

Instead of answering, she simply walked over and gave him a hug.

She didn't know how long they stood like that, each trying to pretend like this wasn't happening, like things could go back to the way they were before. The way they were before they'd ended up saving the kingdom and losing themselves.

Eventually, he pulled away. "Take care of my parents for me, will you? It will…it will be enough, for them, knowing you're back."

"Asriel," she said. "Don't go."

"Don't reset, Chara. I don't think I could go through this again. And this is the best ending you're ever going to get."

She couldn't see. She blinked a few times, trying to clear the tears out of her eyes, and then she was lying on the ground, once again listening to her panicked parents trying to wake her. And the others were there, too.

No one understood what happened. They remembered Flowey showing up but that was it. They knew the barrier had broken. They had questions but she didn't know what to say.

They suggested she take a walk and go see all her friends before going to the surface. She couldn't care less about doing that.

She hadn't felt this numb in a long time. She wanted to reset. She almost did. But he'd asked her not to and surely she could honor his wishes for five goddamn minutes. It was all he'd asked, other than to keep his identity hidden. And he'd given everything for them, more than once, and they'd never know.

She thought she might know where to find him.

He never did stray too far from her grave.

Pasting on her best smile, she wove in and out of the revelers and their congratulations and tried to pretend like she didn't want to just murder all of them. It would make Asriel's sacrifice worthless if she did.

"Chara," he said when he heard her approach. He turned around. "I told you not to worry about me. And someone has to take care of the flowers, right?"

"My grave is fine," she said. "Don't abandon me to hang out with my decomposed body."

He sighed. "It's not that simple. I already explained this to you."

She shrugged. "So you turn back into Flowey. What difference does that make?"

He gave her an incredulous look. "What dif-Chara, you know exactly what difference that will make. And if you see me like that, I need you to not think of that as me."

"I don't think I can do that," she admitted. "I get why, I do, but I can't."

"I'm just going to take advantage of that," he warned.

"I'm planning on creating SAVE points regularly. I can fix anything I have to," she replied.

"Chara…"

"Oh, don't Chara me like I'm being unreasonable!" she said. "You're my best friend. You died for me and now you're sacrificing yourself for them and…what? You just want to be left alone done here, abandoned, as everyone else goes to live it up on the surface?"

He closed his eyes. " 'Want' might be putting it a bit strongly but you know it's for the best."

"I know nothing of the sort!"

"You would if you were being honest with yourself," he told her. "Please, just go be with the people who love you."

"I am," she said.

"Chara-"

"I am," she insisted. "All those people, they may love quickly but they technically met me today. All but Sans who sort of remembers me and doesn't have the best memories of my homicidal strolls through this place or of the constant resets. Your parents don't know who I really am and even if they did – even when they do – they couldn't love me half as much as you do. So you're running out of time. I've got nowhere to be. The surface can wait."

He managed a small smile. "You're going to keep me company until the end."

"At least that long," she agreed.

"At least?" he asked, puzzled. "Chara, don't do anything stupid."

"I never do anything stupid," she lied.

Asriel didn't even bother to dignify that with a response.

"You don't want your parents knowing who you are, fine. You don't want to hurt anybody, okay. I'll make that work. But if you think for one second that I'm just going to go off and basically steal your life after pretty much causing this then you've got another thing coming!"

"Chara, you didn't!" Asriel protested.

"You're not going to win this argument," Chara said. "I'm a lot better at the self-blame than you are. And all of it was my idea in the first place. Since you insist you did the right thing with those humans, you've got a lot less ammunition. Plus, regardless of what you think, no soul is a really great mitigating factor."

He made a face. "I don't need to hear that right before I turn back into a soulless creature. I won't need the encouragement."

"I'll remember you don't want to hurt anyone, not really," she promised. "No matter what you say."

"No matter what Flowey says," Asriel corrected.

"Your identity issues are going to give me a headache," she complained.

"I'm surprised you don't have any yourself," he said. "What with being two people and all."

"What's to have issues about?" she asked. "I'm me and I'm me. I didn't hate humanity before remembering which may get a little complicated but I need to not ruin this for everyone since you're being so stupid about this whole thing."

He smiled. "Thank you for that."

"Hmph."

"What do you intend to do, then?" Asriel asked seriously. "Spend the rest of your life down here as well? You know no one will let you. And my parents deserve to have at least one child back."

"You know, with the right application of resets we can probably figure out a way to get them back together," Chara said casually. "I could just be being paranoid but I don't trust Sans around your mom after they became bad joke buddies. He even refused to kill me because she asked him to even though he knew what I could do. What I've been doing. Even after he knew I killed her. Even after he knew I killed his brother. Not until I killed everyone else."

"I don't know, Chara. Don't you think we should let them make their own decisions?" Asriel asked uncertainly.

Chara stared at him. "What about me has ever suggested to you that I believe in letting other people make their own decisions?"

"That…is kind of true, actually…"

"Of course it is. My plan is simple. I honor your request to let you stay down here for as long as you can, if only because there's no way we could make it up to the surface without everyone in this whole kingdom seeing you, especially since everyone's waiting for me before going to the surface. And, I'm not going to lie, I hope I'm going to have a really long wait."

He hugged himself again and she put her hand on his arm. "So do I. But I don't think so."

"And then, when it happens, I'm going to take you with me. You're going to come live with us and you might be mean or try to kill people but we can all take care of ourselves and I have the SAVE and human souls aren't up for grabs anymore," she said. "And it will be as good as we can make it. And we're going to talk to Dr. Alphys. She knows how to keep a secret, if nothing else, and she made this mess so she can damn well help us fix it."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Am I a scientist? She figured out how to bring you back and do all kinds of other weird stuff and I can always reset if she makes you melt or something. Maybe she can figure out how to create a soul or something. Giving a robot a soul, even if that turned out to be a bunch of crap, was apparently plausible enough to convince everyone when she created Mettaton. And even if she can't, we're no worse off than we were before. I mean, I'm not saying it's ideal but it's clearly the best choice we have."

"Chara."

"It's happening, Asriel. Deal with it."

"It will just complicate things. It will just cloud your happy ending."

"Don't you get it? There is no happy ending. Not for me. Not without you. And you're the one who made all this possible! Your father was never going to use my soul to break the barrier. I was never going to stay dead and let him. Even if they do find out, they can't hold a grudge when you're the one who set them free. Really properly free, not free like I've been using that term to mean I'm going to kill everyone. And your parents deserve to have you back, even if they don't know it. And you're the big hero here. You deserve to be remembered and to have the happiest ending you can. And don't you even tell me being trapped down here would be it for you."

"You really shouldn't," he protested again but it was half-hearted at best. He knew this was the most he was going to get out of her and he really couldn't stop her once he became a flower again. "You should just leave well enough alone."

"Why is it that no one ever says that unless things aren't well enough?" Chara asked rhetorically. "Because they're not. And if I were the kind of person to leave well enough alone, we never would have even met. The first time or more recently. And even if we had somehow, I never would have found those flowers or kept resetting past getting my hand on a soul and heading to the surface."

"I've been meaning to ask you," Asriel said. "Why were you climbing the mountain this time, Chara? Last time it wasn't for a very happy reason but things seem…better…for you this time."

She laughed. "Would you believe Timothy Jones bet me I couldn't?"

"Who's Timothy Jones?"

"Some guy," she said dismissively. She reconsidered. He had brought her home. "Best damn guy I know."

Asriel laughed.

"I can't live with them, you know. If they're even willing to live together which I suspect they won't be just yet," Chara said. "I want to. I really do. I'd so much rather live with them than my parents but, well, I don't think anyone would be understanding. I think you'd rather stay with me and come visit as often as we can than stay with either of your parents if you're going to be hiding who you are but if I'm wrong we can do that, too."

"You're planning out our whole lives," he said fondly.

"No, just the immediate future. I think I'd like to not know what's coming for a while, wouldn't you?"

He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I would."

"So that's settled. Just you and me and the creepy grave of mine and the flowers and then just you and me and the monsters and the surface. Then you and me and the parent trap and Dr. Alphys and maybe Sans depending how helpful he feels like being. Just as long as it's you and me, really. I'm game for anything."

"Do I have a choice?" Asriel asked.

"That doesn't sound like an argument."

"No, I suppose it doesn't," he said. "Did you ever think we'd end up here, back when we first met?"

She gave him a look. "No."

He laughed. "Neither did I, really. But I think…and this may change, especially once I turn back but…I don't think I regret a thing."

"I do," she said. "But just the one. Most people would say I should regret more but, really, they're just lucky I've decided to stop killing everything that looks at me."

"They are," he agreed. "But hopefully there will be less people trying to kill you on the surface."

"There certainly can't be more."

"Chara," he said seriously, reaching out and grabbing her hand.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For everything. I'm really glad that I met you."

And she smiled and her heart broke and she was waiting for the worst possible thing and she thought that maybe, just maybe, this was what it felt like to finally grow up.