Chara Chapter 7

He was tossed around in confusion and darkness for a very long time. No sooner had Asriel walked their combined self back to the Underground, back to the throne room and the waiting arms of Toriel and Asgore, did their time run out. The power of their SOULs was no longer enough, and the body of the mighty goat monster collapsed into a pile of dust on the dirt. Chara tried to reach out his hand to grasp at a vision of Asriel fading into the distance, but it slipped away. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed with no sound at all, screamed Asriel's name and begged him to come back. But he was gone, and everything that they had been was splintering into pieces.

Chara did not know where Asriel — rather, Asriel's essence — went, only that he hoped beyond hope that he hadn't died. His own essence and his SOUL, and Asriel SOUL's, flew around and recombined and split apart again and again trying to reach some kind of balance, each time causing him horrible pain. Eventually, it all seemed to settle as a sudden strength was pushed back into him, but he was still nowhere and everywhere, perceiving the room and the crying, wailing figures of his adopted parents from all angles. He blacked out. He felt things, a sense of movement, of being picked up and carried, but he couldn't see or hear, and could not react to it.

His next passing thought was as a hallucinated nightmare.  Broken columns stabbing into the air, the roof of a cave, the tear-stained cheeks of Toriel looking down upon him, and then the smell of dirt and a choking heaviness all over his body. Darkness took him once again.

That was how he came to. Thinking of the smell of dirt. Chara remembered, when he had first fallen into the Underground, that he had awoken smelling dirt. Being still young, the boy had a good sense of smell; the dirt in the Underground all had a different scent depending where you were. It smelled acrid in Hotland, musty in Waterfall, had no smell around Snowdin (as it was frozen), and was always fresh and sweet in the forests around New Home. The dirt in the Ruins, however, had the smell of OLD. It was almost exactly the same as the peppery, papery smell deep inside some of Toriel's oldest books. It had assaulted his senses when he first arrived, but had since become comforting to him.

It was the dirt of the Ruins that he was smelling, or rather had been smelling. He was above the dirt, now, floating above it. He tried to look down at his body. The feeling of being everywhere came once more, and Chara realized he could see that he had no body, because he could see everything. He had no body! In a panic his mind flew to pieces and his consciousness disassociated into nothing.

A very long time passed before Chara could contain his essence into a single area. He had the strength to exist because he had gotten his SOUL back somehow, which explained why he wasn't just dead and gone (and the irony of this almost made the boy laugh, as he had now "died" a goatfucking THREE times, and yet every time it failed to take). The pain, the strangeness, the emptiness and the constant screaming panic of an ethereal existence took time to push away. Even Determination failed him; its familiar heat and power just would not come to Chara, try as he would; perhaps, without a body, it wasn't possible to generate any. He wished Gaster were there to help him, but the former Royal Scientist was now no more; only pieces of him were left. Eventually, though, Chara managed it. He could float around the area near the center of the Ruins, keeping himself looking as through only a single set of eyes. He could move with purpose and direction, and in doing so explored the area around that patch of dirt  where flowers now grew. Golden Flowers.

This, finally, gave him his answer. The seeds of the flowers had stuck to his body when it was carried to the Surface. If the flowers were here, it must mean his body had been here. Somehow, after collecting his SOUL, Chara's essence had found its way to his old body, and attached to it. Then Toriel had carried the body here to the Ruins, and buried it. But now that so much time had passed, his body must have rotted away, so his essence was freed from it. Chara had essentially become a ghost haunting his own grave. He had come full-circle. Was this his punishment for the things he'd done, for his sins? Chara didn't know, but it was not long before the only thing consuming him was a desire to find Asriel. He just saw no way this could happen, so long as he were stuck where he was.

Years continued to flow by as Chara drifted in and out of time and meaning and awareness. On occasion, monsters came by. It was probably only a few per month, but Chara had many, many months. Some of them came with friends and talked, and sometimes their thoughts were so clear that Chara could hear their minds as if in a whisper if he came close or passed through their bodies. In this manner, he began to learn about things that were happening in the world outside his little haunted patch of flowers.

The Underground had been full of despair. Asgore had commissioned a statue in his grief, in the honor of his two fallen sons, and placed it at the centerpiece of a grand memorial fountain at the still-unfinished MTT Resort. Soon afterward, he had declared war on humans once more. Any that fell into the Underground from now on would be killed, their SOULs harvested, and the barrier broken so monsters could go out and hunt down all of humanity. A new Royal Scientist has been found at last meeting of the "Human Fan Club" before it was disbanded, and was pressed into creation of weapons. Already, it was said she was working on a robot designed to eradicate humans, and she was beginning to study humans' mysterious powers.

Finally, from the last monster Chara encountered, he heard that the Queen had renounced the war and begged monsters to live in peace. But King Asgore must have refused her request, as she left the throne and went into exile. After that monster, no others came to the Ruins anymore except ones that never went outside the Ruins, and so Chara had no further news.

So many uncountable years drifted by. Without the rise and fall of the sun or the rhythmic paces of a physical body feeling sleepy or hungry, Chara could not perceive time anymore; it all just blurred together into a meaningless stretch of pointlessness. As it went on, Chara started to fade away, to lose himself to blackness for long periods, as if he were sleeping. There was little around to bother him except the rare passing spider or frog.

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One day, he "awoke" to a soft THUMP on the patch of flowers. Someone had fallen in. Chara had become so weak, so tired and morose, that he could barely sense they were there, and could see nothing. But he could feel the power of a strong SOUL, so it must be a human. As he had tried to enter and remain in the body of any of the passing monsters and failed, Chara expected no different, here. Nonetheless, he drifted his form close to it, and—

It was like an explosion of sensation! Brightness, color, sounds all around him, dozens of old familiar smells, and the taste of the air and the dust. Most of all was the feeling. Chara realized that he had a body again! He could feel every part of a human body stretching and squeezing and pulsing with life and being, could feel the clothes on the human's shoulders, the tightness of their shoes, the wind rustling through their hair.

But, slowly, this feeling started to fade. Chara realized the essence and mind of the human who owned the body was pushing him out of the forefront of its consciousness. Had they even realized Chara was there? His vision grew dim, and he become only just aware that the human was walking somewhere. He was stuck in the body, but had no control, just like it had been with Asriel. More impressions came over time in a jumble. Some words, too garbled for him to understand; the warmth and comfort of a hug; the taste of food, including what seemed like butterscotch-cinnamon pie; and the human's emotions, too: anxiety, shyness, fear; the sound of a song being hummed echoing through their shared skull; the feelings of toys being held in their hands.

Only one thing ever came clearly to Chara, and that was when the human gazed into a mirror and he was finally able to see the body he inhabited. It was a little girl, wearing a pretty dress and with a ribbon in her long hair, and clutching a small plastic knife to her chest like a protective charm. Mostly, he just felt a stillness about her. She didn't move around much, and performed every action slowly and carefully.

Chara did not know how she ended up in a fight with a monster; he could only feel her fear and panic and then the pain of injury. He realized that the girl had somehow been killed. He could feel the grasp of death (now a familiar one to him) and then the power of the human's SOUL being ripped away from their body; his essence was suddenly and violently kicked out, as well. It was over. As time went, he found his way back to the patch of flowers — his patch of flowers — and there he waited.

Another human fell in some time later. As before, Chara entered this new body, but as before he only received shattered pieces and glimpses of what was happening. His connection with the body just didn't seem right or complete. Only a look into the mirror revealed the new face: a little boy with wild hair and big eyes who seemed like he was always looking for a fight, with his child-sized boxing gloves and adventurous clothing.

The boy must have found that fight, though, and he also died. Chara returned to his damnable flowers, hoping the next human would provide a suitable host, knowing that if he could just take control, he might be able to save them both from death.

Other humans came, and always children, but the result was always the same. A little girl with a cool attitude, dressed like a ballerina in a tutu that looked plucked from the garbage. A little boy that Toriel would have loved, as he seemed passionate for cooking and even carried around his own pan. A little girl who spent most of the time reading and writing: the images of her books and her fantasies filling her mind (and Chara's) with fanciful dreams.

The final human seemed very strong. Chara thought this would be the one that he would be able to communicate with, help to survive, and maybe spend a lifetime in the same body with. The boy was tough, headstrong, and carried around a real gun (empty of bullets, however) that he always thought about being his weapon of justice. For a while, Chara even thought he could feel that familiar flame of Determination welling inside the boy's heart.

They were together for a long while, and the human traveled through a good deal of the Underground, getting in fights sometimes, but always surviving. Even though Chara could barely see anything, their connection grew over time, and he could feel the two of them becoming stronger. But it all fell apart in the end, before he had a chance to muster the power to speak to the owner of the body. There was a battle of unbelievable intensity and pain, the pressure of something held in their hands being struck, the ringing of metal on metal, flashes of light coming from all directions. Chara saw, for one terrifying second with perfect clarity, a view down the sights of the boy's gun, into the eye of a monster. Somehow a bullet of light and anger and Determination shot from the gun. The eye went dark, but then all Chara's world did. A blow found its way home, stabbing through their heart, and the boy was killed. Their last experience together was that of the human's SOUL, being torn from their body and disappearing into some kind of tube.

It took Chara a long time to get back to the Ruins after that.

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Despair overcame Chara. His ghostly form felt weaker, as if every transfer of his essence between the ghostly apparition and another human's body (or maybe each death) seemed to be weakening his SOUL. There seemed to be nothing left. No hope, no more dreams, no Determination to keep him trying. Chara let himself drift off to "sleep", and did not intend to ever wake again. Maybe his ghost would dissapate over time; maybe he would finally gain that nothingness he had craved for so long in his mortal existence.

Yet... what had he accomplished? He wanted to make something of his life or his death. He had told Asriel that he wanted to die in such a way that saved him, his parents, and all the monsters. Yet... here he was, a ghost with a dying SOUL, and things had been made even worse. The barrier still wasn't broken. The war still wasn't ended. His little brother was dead, and he was to blame.

He drifted away, and was at rest. Chara's mind went to strange places. Memories and images flooded through him. Strange devices overcame him. Golden flowers danced in his worst dreams and his best nightmares, and whispered to him. Time was in disarray: not just tattered but skipping about and repeating itself many times. The flowers on his grave spoke and danced and called for mommy and daddy, spoke of love and then of hate, called for a friend and then called it an enemy.

Then — in a flash so bright and clear that it seemed to be real — a memory...


[Tired of running, tired of feeling, he said: "It's good enough."]

[Chara didn't jump, like he planned to. He didn't dramatically hold his arms out like a skydiver and fall in a dramatic dive, like he sometimes daydreamed about doing. He just sort of crumpled in place from the physical and emotional exhaustion, and when he started to tumble into the hole, just didn't resist the force of gravity, the clutches of the Reaper.]

[He fell down, silently, with not even a sigh or a rustle.]


He was falling into the Underground once more, but at the same time it wasn't him. Then, a voice, from somewhere outside, seemed to whisper to him:

'CHARA.'

He woke up.