Chapter Text
To be perfectly honest, this is certainly, without any shadow of a doubt, the furthest from how Kris expected everything to turn out. Well, technically, they weren’t sure what to expect at all—that’s always been one of their chief rules: expect nothing and you won’t be surprised—but they know it’s not this. For crying out loud, it’s like nothing even happened in the last week.
With the majority of their “proceedings” having successfully been concealed or swept under the rug, nobody has been any the wiser about their “Prophecy bullshit”, as Susie calls it. And that’s something, because Hometown is a small, small town where everybody knows anything and everything about their neighbour, their neighbour’s neighbour, that onion thing in the lake, and hell, why not the whole town at this point?
There is one glaring issue, though, because of course things can never be that simple:
Goner, Hometown’s new, resident grey human anomaly thing (is it even a human?). The soul—it used to be—two or three days after reuniting with its long-lost vessel (which, in their steadfast and very correct opinion, really looks like an incomplete child’s portrait) and crashing at their house, thanked Toriel kindly for her hospitality, and said it “has places to go,” which they knew was total bullshit.
Despite that, they won’t deny how satisfying (and some other unidentifiable feeling) it was to watch it shamble out of their house with literally nothing in tow— not even one of those cartoony bindles on its shoulder.
Explaining its existence to the rest of the town was surprisingly trivial. Who’s that new human? Don’t know. How come you seem close then? It’s a human thing. (We’re not close.) Why is its skin grey? It’s a human thing. We come in all shapes and sizes, just like monsters. Where does it live? If you find out, let me know. Kris is the only human the town knows, so it was easy to write Goner off as not-a-big-deal.
For now, though, life is carrying on normally, halting for nobody and their problems. Which is something that Kris absolutely rues because it means having to wake up early in the morning five times a week and go to school five times a week. And Goner’s still there, too, whom they have to see five times a week, to further drive the stake into their heart. Yes, Alphys even added a shiny new desk for it and appended it to the class roster.
The worst part isn’t even that there’s now an odd desk sticking out from the grid at the back—which Susie happily accepted (under the guise that it’s in the corner and she can easily lean her head on the wall and dissociate, but Kris knows that it’s really because she now has an unimpeded view of Noelle at the front)—it’s that Goner’s there at all. Seriously, the week it spent puppeting them around was already torture enough, and now it has decided to stick around for the foreseeable future? Does it not have anything better to do?
Anyway.
Burghley is still on Noelle’s right, which is quite tragic because his yammering is all they can hear during class, but now Goner is behind her and in front of them. Susie on their left is a minor compensation, but they hear every time it makes an extempore remark to something Noelle or Burghley says. They see how its head bobs back and forth, how its shoulders fall up and down, how its messy, jet-black hair sways erratically and catches the fluorescent, classroom light when it laughs at one of Susie’s off-handed remarks.
Even worse, it seems to do everything but pay attention to Alphys’ droning and it somehow achieves Noelle-level grades. They’ll be dethroned from their number three spot if this keeps long enough, and it will probably make a raunchy comment about how Kris is always under them.
It’s still ever the social butterfly; instead of using Kris as their medium of communication it now has a body of its own with which to pester the locals after school. That’s another thing— it always arrives at class after them and leaves after them, too, no matter how late they wait, and outside of academic hours, it’s either chatting it up with someone on the street or nowhere to be found at all; they never catch where it comes from. It lives in the forest now for all they know.
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They don’t speak much anymore.
This is definitely not something they’ve been ruminating on the whole morning while preparing for school. It festers in them, birthing unidentifiable emotions that feel like butterflies in their stomach. Really? Kris? Butterflies in Kris’ stomach? Get a hold of yourself, Kris. It’s Goner for crying out loud. The one who possessed you like in a C-lister ghost movie. It’s just… what? They miss it? Carnally, or with whatever configuration they had going prior to its vessel, or otherwise?
Is Goner also to blame? It’s not talking to them as much as they’re not to it.
They’re not sure they’re making sense to themself right now. It’s seven-thirtyish in the morning and they are trying to justify why they would miss Goner. That’s no secret. It has a way of disarming them, of catching them off-guard, the way an extrovert friend would do to an introvert. The movement of its soft, grey lips while it talks is hypnotic, even more so when it’s on them. Its hands, perpetually freezing, which send sparks up all their nerves and dexterously throw eraser bits at Burghley. And then, there’s its— okay, Kris. That’s enough for now. They don’t need to be imagining that, especially not with their mom in the car next to them. (Besides, they’re good at pretending things never happened.)
Fine. Fine! They sometimes have to remind themself that it’s okay to want things, so fine. They “miss” Goner. Whoop-dee-doo. An obsession, maybe, at worst—actually, that might be the best way to save face—but that's all they are admitting.
School is now looming over them like an executioner, and the doors are the gallows. As they exit the car, they briefly wonder why they even use it when they could just walk, and they’re in class before they even know it. It’s empty, as always, when they’re the first one in; the curtains are drawn, and the melamine finishes of the desks gleam in what limited light there is.
Normally, they do Alphys the polite courtesy of at least waiting for her lesson to begin before nodding off, but they’ll make an exception today—call it “under the weather” or whatever, but they’re more enervated than usual today. It doesn’t last long, though, because the door slams open, and they hear an effervescent “Kris!” before Susie cacophonously slides into her seat.
Legs crossed over her desk, head against the wall, she faces them with a toothy grin and remarks, “Damn, Kris, you look even more beat than usual today! What’s wrong? Didn’t harvest enough souls today?” Just when they think they successfully hid how they bristled at “souls”, her expression softens and she continues. “But, uh… if there’s anything wrong, you know… You can talk to me, ‘s what I’m saying.”
They resist the urge to weakly chuckle at the fact that, a short while ago, it was likelier for her to dash their face into the lockers than say anything remotely similar to this. Hell, a short while ago, she would probably be the last one to enter, or just not bother coming at all. Alphys seems to think their “good behaviour” is rubbing off on her. “It’s… nothing. Just human stuff.”
The human stuff card is perhaps the cheapest of them all to play, but it works every time because Susie knows she can’t question them, lest she be accused of being a bad friend. Not that they’d ever do that to her. She settles for, “Okay, Kris. Whatever you say,” and the conversation ebbs into comfortable, familiar silence. Briefly. At least, before the day’s major disruption walks in.
Their head’s on the desk facing the front and they can’t muster the energy to move it away before it hits them with a “Morning, Susie. Morning, Kris!” They hate how they instinctively perk up at its peppy voice, but that’s new; Goner has never tried initiating conversation with them (outside of obligatory interactions— borrowing a pencil or bumping into each other in the corridor) and they had forgotten how they hang on to its every word. Well, it certainly doesn’t have a problem talking with literally anybody and everybody else. Did they scare it off? Or did it scare them off?
Susie’s enthusiastic “Hey, Goner!” inadvertently conceals how their own response catches in their throat; they settle for a hopefully indifferent wave as their eyes track it to its seat. It sits with its legs between the back of its chair, resting its chin on its hands, and faces them.
“I was thinking,” it starts, and they resist the innate urge to say no you don’t, instead keeping an eye on Susie to gauge her reaction. Now she’s looking with intrigue and curiosity as it continues, “after school, we should go to Castle Town and play some songs at that concert stage thing from TV World.”
Their brain lags behind their mouth long enough for the word to slip past their lips. “Why?” Damn it. The first real, voluntary, optional thing they’ve said to Goner in who-knows how long, and it’s rudely questioning its friendly invitation to hang out.
Susie looks at them like they belong in a mental asylum (which is probably true). Meanwhile, Goner’s simply confused, and says, like it’s the most obvious thing ever, “Because we’re friends? And that’s what friends do? They hang out? And play instruments if they’re musically inclined?”
They feel bad. “Bad” as in both feeling remorse and regret for what they said and bad in general. Something in their stomach says this is a bad idea, but, “Sure,” they mumble, and Goner flashes them a pearlescent grin that sets a white-hot flame to their chest. Heart. When did this even happen? They’re supposed to… No. This is the Prophecy’s fault. Or Goner’s. Maybe Carol’s.
“Uh, Kris?” It’s Goner again, snapping them out of their stewing reverie. They cock an eyebrow in acknowledgement and its eyes gain a tint of concern. “You okay? You look sorta… pale.” Angel, is it telepathic now? Nevermind that they’ve been feeling sort of queasy all morning—in addition to the constant feeling of needing to cough—now they have this person specifically worried about them??
“I’m fine,” they deflect, almost appending human stuff before remembering that it is also a human and would definitely see through their lie like it was air. Goner clearly doesn’t buy it but doesn’t pry further, either, and takes its seat.
As the rest of the class slowly filters in and takes their seats, Kris falls back into their daily ritual of “longingly gazing”—who knew Susie could tease (joke’s on her because Noelle.)—at Goner’s half-slouched, half-erect back. Alphys comes soon after the bell rings, a stuttering mess as always, and they take her nervous “G-good morning, c-class…” as their cue to mentally check out for the day. Head in their arms, and eyes on Goner— in their defense, where else can they look, lest they stand on their desk?