Chapter Text
There was water in their lungs.
Kris’s mouth, their nose, their eyes—all of it stung under the current. No matter how they tried to peer past the waves, they couldn't make out anything. It was just pure, blinding, light. The sun hung low over the horizon and bled down into the water, filling their vision entirely with nothing but the glow.
An iron grip clung against their icy hands. They could feel soaked fur wisping under the water and feel it try and tickle their fingertips. They didn't register the sensation, only the fact that there should've been one. With hands bleached white and numb from the late autumn water, it was a miracle they could feel her grip at all.
They should scream, the thought occurred, but their mind was as waterlogged as their body. Slow panic pulsed in their chest, lazy as a river.
“Proceed,” they didn't say.
Noelle's grasp on their hands faltered slightly. Her palms numbed to the bone, unresponsive to her whims.
“Proceed,” the voice rang out from everywhere and nowhere at once. Kris’s mouth opened. They swallowed muddy water.
Noelle was getting more frantic. If they squinted past the blinding halo, they could see how her pupils shrunk; her jaw hung wide in a soundless scream.
"Proceed." They could've sworn that thing sounded panicked itself.
“Proceed.”
The wafts of fur against their skin ebbed away alongside the current. Kris twitched a raw, red fingertip.
“Proceed, proceed, proceed…”
Noelle drifted further away. Her golden hair was indistinguishable from the golden sun. Both were dyed in the bloody colours of dusk. The lake shimmered beautifully.
“Proceed proceed proceed proceed proceed”
Something fluttered in Kris’s chest.
Their eyes, rimmed red with tears and water, focused hard on Noelle's face. On her blue lips, her vacant expression, and her lovely golden hair spreading out like the seagrass.
Their chest burned. Everything burned.
Their limbs were leaden. Hair soaked solid. They tried to gasp through frozen lips and only coughed up more water to swallow. Their head bobbed up and down, barely breaching the surface, again and again.
Noelle's eyes closed. Her arms stopped moving. She began to drift further and further away, sinking downward.
Their chest fluttered once more, and Kris realized, with their head full of sand, that the ‘something’ they were feeling was want.
They wanted to go to Noelle.
They wanted to breathe.
They wanted, somehow, to live.
A foreign feeling settled like the silt in their stomach. A pulse, a need, a will.
(Determination, they recalled dimly, was something their kind was known for.)
Moving was nothing short of agony. Their limbs were not their own; their body too heavy to maneuver. Their clothes dragged as weights with every movement as they inched their hand towards their chest.
“proceed proceed proceed proceed proceed”
Their head spun. They couldn't focus on a single sensation, a single thought. Their chest burned, their mouth swallowed more silt, their legs were heavy, their lips frozen, eyes red, and Noelle was getting further and further away.
“proceed proceed proceed proceed proceed”
Kris’s fingers twitched, nipping against their waterlogged sweater.
“Proceed.”
One final push, one final soundless scream, and Kris plunged their hand into their chest and tore. Water rushed into their throat and filed it, their muscles spasmed and sent ripples of bubbles floating up to the surface.
In their numb hand, a Soul pulsed defiantly.
They raised their arm above the surface, skin pale, fingers blue. They opened their palm. The Soul left their grip.
Kris didn't see where it went. They couldn't, not with the churning current against their eyes.
Energy spent and mind numb, they stopped struggling. Their arm sank back down with the rest of them, weightless against the waves. They tasted salt and algae and let the sun blind them. Both Kris and Noelle drifted apart, faint ripples tearing their bloated bodies away from one another, and Kris’s head sank down, down, down beneath the waves.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
One, two, three, four.
Susie’s arms burned from exertion.
What was it she was supposed to sing, to keep tempo? Something, something, staying’ alive, staying’ alive.
They should’ve picked a better song, a distant part of her brain decided. The current one was far too ironic, especially for a girl who slept through every health assembly—a girl who naively thought that she’d never need to know what they were teaching.
One, two, three, four—staying alive, staying alive, etc, etc.
Kris coughed up muddy bile. Her heart leapt up into her throat, and she kept pumping. Their sputtering breaths spurred her on, keeping her hands pressing down, one two three four, over and over and over.
How many pumps was she supposed to do before mouth-to-mouth? How was she supposed to count and hum at the same time?
Kris hacked up more brown water, blood and algae pouring out of them like a faucet. Susie swore under her breath, pushing her arms down hard enough to hear a crack. That was fine. Better a broken rib than drowning.
“Kris, Kris? Kris, shit—" She muttered to herself listlessly, words rushing out of her mouth like the bile flowing from Kris’s own. With one last quiet curse, she pulled their blue lips apart and shoved her mouth against theirs, breathing out as deep as she could.
The silly, teenaged part of her brain wanted to laugh at frenching her friend. She wanted to slap Kris across the back, cackle about how it isn’t gay to kiss the homies, or something of a similarly stupid caliber.
She tore her mouth away, a string of dirty slime following. Iron and salt flooded her tongue, but she had to keep going. Susie couldn’t be a teenager anymore. She couldn’t be some stupid asshole afraid of being vulnerable or whatever—because Kris was dying on the shore and she was the only person there to help.
She never had enough money for her own phone. The lake was too far in the forest for anyone to hear her screaming for help. Kris’s own mobile was either stuck deep in their waterlogged cargo pants or sinking to the bottom of the lakebed.
She was the only one who could help.
And she was doing a real shit job of it.
It was a miracle she’d even seen them across the lake. She had charged in, calling out obnoxiously loud with three cones of ice cream balanced precariously in her hands, melting against her scales. She still had a dumb smile on her face by the time she’d spotted a dark patch bobbing like a lily pad. The ice cream had melted by the time she’d pulled them out to shore.
Her damp hair trickled down, landing a droplet onto Kris’s face. Her claws were sticky from the ice cream.
“Shit dude, just…” One, two, three, four. “Staying alive…” She murmured. A wet chuckle escaped her throat, desperate for humour as her friend floundered like a half-dead fish. Another painful spurt of lake water and vomit poured out of Kris’s throat.
She didn’t know what she was doing.
Susie’s eyes were already wet from the lake, but salty tears still bloomed, blurring her vision. She slammed her weight down on top of Kris, her movements slower and sloppy but relentless still.
“Just… please, don’t…” Her own throat choked up. She tasted mud and fish. She’d lost track entirely of her rhythm and pumps, the stupid chorus echoing in her head like a taunt. “Please…”
She couldn’t do it on her own. Her friend, her first real fucking friend, was going to die on the shore, and it would be her fault. Kris still wasn’t breathing right; her hands were too shaky, her arms jittery from stress and adrenaline.
She couldn’t do it. Not alone.
“Kris…” Susie let herself sob just once, her hair falling over her eyes and tickling her snout. Kris sputtered out another painful, hacking, cough. They weren’t breathing right. Hopelessness poured through her body, weighing her limbs like the water weighed down Kris.
A sharp glimmer hit her eyes, and she squinted.
Reflecting the overpowering dusk, something shone in Kris’s pocket. A knife.
Claws trembling, she pulled the hilt out from their cargo pants. The knife was well kept—a nice and heavy kitchen knife with a case fitted over the blade. Shaky hands tore the cover off in a frantic motion, dribbling out trapped dirt and lake water. The blade was almost glowing in the sunlight, reflecting the deep red dusk off the polished metal.
She couldn't save them alone.
But she didn't have to be alone.
Susie took the hilt in both hands and raised her arms high above her head. The knife's tip pointed down towards Kris’s prone body, towards the pebbled shore and lapping waves. Will and want and need surged through her body and steadied her resolve.
“You'll be alright.” She whispered and plunged the blade into the earth.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
It was dark, Kris noticed.
In their half-aware state they noted that it wasn't unusual for them to be somewhere dark.
It was cold and dark. And wet.
They were on something soft, like sand. Calming waves brushed in and out against them. Thin foam lapped at their limbs and armour. Their throat burned horribly.
Kris tried to take in a breath and choked on metallic water instead. They hacked up, vomiting out as much as they could. Their head was swimming, dizzy, and stuck under the water they couldn't get out of their lungs. No matter how they tried to breathe, they couldn't. Algae and water clogged their airways. Every attempt at a breath just sent the liquid further down.
“...ris…” someone called.
Their head spun. They couldn't focus on a single sensation, a single problem. It was as if their mind was stuck on a spinning coaster, flipping between thoughts too fast to process.
They were dying, they were choking, it was dark, they had armour, they lost the soul, they'd lost Noelle.
“K… ris… Kris!” The voice grew louder. Who was it that was calling? Panic clawed bloody gashes through their chest as they coughed up another spurt of bile and still couldn't breathe.
Fingertips clawed over their body, holding their arms, their head. The touch burned their frozen limbs but they couldn’t help but lean into the sensation. A weight was removed from their torso, and two soft paws started to press against their chest.
Kris let their mind fade in and out of reality. Their head rotated round, round, round—impossible to stop and impossible to focus. Awareness came to them in fleeting bursts: a paw against their chest, scales brushing their lips and hot breath down their throat, and the tingling of magic bubbling through their veins.
They let their eyes close. Let the water spill from the cracks in their person, dripping down onto the sand they rested upon. Shallow breaths filled the emptied pools in their lungs. They started to cough less.
“K…is….” The voice again. Their face pinched with distant annoyance. “Kris! Kris, come on! Wake up!”
Kris forced their eyes closed, mouth contorting. They didn’t want to wake up. They couldn’t, not with that thing infesting their body. Forcing their limbs to move, Kris turned onto their side and curled into themself. They had already decided they would sleep for as long as possible, hadn’t they?
“Kris! Angel’s sake, wake up!” A harsh voice growled above them.
“S-Susie! They’re still in shock, give them a minute!” Asriel? No, no. That wasn’t right. The voice was too high pitched, too smooth, too sweet.
Slowly, Kris peeled open their red-rimmed eyes. Their vision swam in circles, spinning round and round. A weak whine carried out of their throat. A blurry white figure moved closer towards them.
“Kris…? Are you awake?”
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
Noelle had found Heaven.
She had found it within the white waves that surrounded her. The gentle lapping of it against her fur and the brush of undergrowth against her hooves. She had grown wings within the water and let it take her whole, flooding her lungs and mind as it showed her just how much stronger she had become.
Baptized in the lake, Noelle had changed. She had finally become something other than a frozen little doe—she had become something worthy of living.
Noelle let her eyes slip shut. She couldn’t feel Kris’s palms against her, but she could still hear them. "Proceed," they repeated, over and over and over and over. “Proceed.”
Their words were her mantra, her sermon. An ark to guide her through the waves and towards something new. Her one hope; to escape the bloody claw of Hometown, to escape her destiny of getting dragged down alongside her family—stuck so far in the past they could pretend her sister was still there.
She didn’t bother with breaths. Even the lake faded into static as the voice pounded against her skull.
“Proceed,” it said, and proceed she did. Nothing else mattered except her and Kris. Nothing else except their hands around hers, their voice in her head. The two were perfect for one another. She didn’t know how she never realized it.
Mindless in her bliss, all sensation ebbed away.
There was no resistance to her treading hooves. No algae brushing her fur, no slit sticking against her clothes. The light that had once danced in mottled orange against her eyelids had become nothing at all. Her eyes were closed, and yet all she saw was light.
"Proceed," Kris said. Even their voice was distant, crackling. As if it were playing through an untuned radio. Noelle let herself feel peace. Her lungs needed no air where she was; her limbs needed not to move. All she required was the call of Kris. All they needed was each other. She lifted her none-existent arms up into the nothingness in a form of worship, clinging to the glory she had found.
Peace. Salvation. Freedom.
She could hear a song.
At first she thought it must have been Kris, though she hadn’t thought how. Her ear twitched in the nothing. Kris’s voice still rang through her head, solid and steady. Their voice was close as a hot breath, whispering against her neck.
The song, however, was distant. She had to strain to pick up the chords, brows furrowing with the effort. It pulled her attention away from Kris’s commands, and as her focus wavered, the waves began to take shape once more. She could feel her throat start to fill and her lungs bloat with mud, but she couldn’t stop listening to the song.
Noelle had heard that song before.
She had heard the chords strummed gently, the notes plucked from a red guitar as she rested against someone’s side, letting herself drink in her warmth and music.
Her eyes burned. Her skin was frozen, fur heavy and dragging her further and further down. Kris’s voice was quickly buried underneath the rushing in her ears. Water flooded every one of her senses. Panic blossomed in her chest as she realized suddenly that she was dying.
Kris was nowhere to be seen, but she could still pick out their voice from under the current. Her limbs flailed uselessly around her, mouth gaping and desperate for oxygen.
Noelle’s only anchor was that song. The guitar strumming from somewhere deep below.
Dess’s guitar.
She could reach it. It was close, she could swear; it was close. Dess had wanted to leave this town as much as her. She was close. Her sister hadn’t vanished or drowned or ran off to the forest; she was here. Somewhere beneath or above or around Noelle, she could hear her.
Noelle forced her eyes open. The red sun blazed against her eyes, even when shining through the muddy water. She turned her head behind her, and she could’ve sworn that she saw a treeline. She was close. There was another side—she could reach it, she could find her.
Kris’s voice was still screaming against her skull. The song was louder. Noelle was strong; she could make it, she could make it—
—But the lake flooded with darkness, and Noelle fell deep, deep, down.