Chapter Text
In the immediate aftermath of Kris closing the Fountain, Susie sat awake on the couch, staring into the darkness of their living room as she tried to see shapes—to see people —who weren’t there. Kris had been awake just minutes ago, but they were already slumped against the couch, snoring away.
Susie didn’t know how they could sleep so quickly after everything they had just seen.
Officer Undyne had…
Susie let out a quiet growl, annoyance coursing through her tense body. If only they had been a little quicker…
… Whatever. They would figure out how to open that shelter, they would find Officer Undyne, and they would beat the Knight once and for all. They had fought the Knight until they had let their guard down once. They could do it again.
It was Susie’s fault that Officer Undyne had gotten involved. She had been the one grabbing at the Knight in a weak attempt to stop them from taking Toriel. Susie had expected the Knight to attack her again while she was tired and weak and couldn’t do anything to defend herself, but before they had been able to do anything, Undyne had drawn the Knight’s attention.
She had saved Susie. She had saved Toriel, and the Knight had taken her for it.
If only Susie had been—
On the other side of the room, Toriel awoke with a start and a sharp gasp. She gripped the arms of the chair and stared into the room as if she had seen a ghost, watching the door wearily. “I thought…” she said, her voice so soft that Susie could barely hear her.
She looked to the side and caught Susie looking at her before Susie could avert her guilty gaze, feeling like Toriel’s moment of weakness wasn’t something she was supposed to see. Toriel sat up, and— dammit! Why had Kris fallen asleep and left Susie to deal with the fallout?
“Oh dear,” Toriel said quietly, rising from her chair with a creak. “Did I wake you?”
“No, uh, ma’am,” Susie said, mimicking her volume to the best of her ability. “I’m… I’m just awake.”
Toriel nodded, looking apprehensive, as if she wanted to say something. Susie was well-acquainted with that look on other adults, though she hadn’t yet seen it on Toriel’s face. She braced herself for Toriel to tell her to—to leave or something.
Instead, Toriel’s features softened. “Dear, I’m afraid I need to lie down properly. Will you be okay on the couch?”
Susie nodded rapidly. “I’m fine!” Then, realizing her volume, she tried again more quietly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Toriel said, looking at Kris with something like worry. She glanced around the room, her gaze lingering on the windows. “You’ll let me know if you need anything or—if someone comes, won’t you?”
Susie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Why would someone be coming? Unless—
Officer Undyne.
Well, there was no way to explain that to Kris’s mom, though Susie felt anxious as to why the officer had been called in the first place—if that was what Toriel meant. Susie hadn’t upset Toriel somehow, had she? Toriel had said she could stay the night, and Susie was pretty sure that she hadn’t done anything to warrant the police being called on her.
But… Toriel was nice. Maybe she had called the officer about something else, or maybe Officer Undyne had been in the area and had realized there was something odd inside the house and had come to investigate. That was something the police did, wasn’t it? They checked the area for anything suspicious.
Maybe Kris’s house just got a lot of nighttime visitors.
Luckily, Toriel seemed to take her silence as an answer. Or, at least, she was so preoccupied looking out the window that she hadn’t noticed Susie’s lack of acknowledgement. “Thank you. And don’t be afraid to wake up Kris if necessary, alright?”
“I’m not,” Susie said immediately.
Toriel smiled at her. “I thought you might not be,” she said with humor, as if they were sharing a joke.
Susie shifted in place uncomfortably, but Toriel was already turning to hurry off, leaving Susie alone on the couch with a snoring Kris.
She waited, listening to the faint noises of Toriel moving about in the other room, but she couldn’t find the peace she needed to close her eyes and fall back asleep. Upon checking, Kris was still fast asleep, snoring away. And sure, Susie was tired, but she knew there was no possible way she was going to be able to relax.
At a loss, she reached for the remote, half-wedged into the couch cushion between Kris and herself, and pointed it at the TV.
She listened to the click of it powering on, watching the outline of Tenna’s light-world counterpart in the dark. The TV sat for a long moment, static against a dark screen, and then it turned itself off with another click.
Oh. Fuck.
Swallowing down her rising nausea, Susie tried again, turning the TV on, only to be faced with it powering itself off just seconds later—even quicker than before.
The thing was… Susie didn’t know how to fix a TV.
Nobody had ever trusted Susie with anything breakable or hazardous—fearing she would just cause trouble, whether it was intentional or not. The strange inner-workings of Tenna’s body—the wire connectors in his arms, the devices in his head—were just delicate and dangerous enough that Susie had never seen anything like them.
Sure, everybody had been helping her. The Weather Team, Pippins, Shadow Guys, and Zappers alike had crowded around her to bring spare parts and to direct each other—and her—on how to repair Tenna. And they had fixed him… sort of.
The worst of the injuries had been repaired—his arms had been soldered back to his body, the wires and mechanical nerves reconnected, and they had kept him as dry as possible. But the fact remained that he had been really damaged, and the snow had seeped into his inner workings enough that even Susie had the sinking feeling that maybe their efforts were for naught. And though one of the Pippins had assured her that Tenna was taking healing items properly, he hadn’t woken up.
Ralsei hadn’t had much to offer. Between his worrying about what Kris was doing and the whole situation with the Knight and Tenna and Toriel and Undyne—
Ralsei had looked more than a little disturbed, and Susie couldn’t blame him.
Finally, after what felt like forever of Susie toiling away trying to make everything right, Kris had sealed the Dark Fountain before the remaining Darkners were petrified.
Now, in the light world, with Tenna’s physical body an item under their care, she didn’t know what she could do. She had even less of an idea of what to do with a real TV.
She checked the remote, trying the TV again, but it lit up properly when she pressed the buttons, so it wasn’t the batteries. It was the TV itself that wasn’t working.
Getting up from the couch, she crept forward with the remote, feeling around the CRT’s overworked warmth as she edged around to the back of the heavy device. There were a bunch of plugs, and despite her having poked around inside of Tenna’s casing earlier that night, she didn’t know where any of them went.
Still, she jiggled each wire and pressed on them, ensuring that they were plugged in fully. And after that, she did the same for the wires connected to the outlet.
To her delight, she found one that had been dislodged at some point and slotted back into place with just a light push. That’s all it had been, then. That was an easy fix.
Hopeful and feeling much better, Susie once again reached for the remote and switched Tenna on.
She heard the click of the old TV powering up and watched the gradual lightening of the screen from pure black to a lighter one. As the screen lit up, Susie began to see staticky images, an old monster movie—and then darkness.
The TV turned back off and sat silently in Kris’s dark living room.
“Tenna?” Susie asked quietly into the dark, feeling cold and then angry.
Of course, fixing Tenna hadn’t worked. Susie had been the one helping. And now he was gone—he probably wouldn’t wake up again, even in the Dark World. They had failed.
Was that even a bad thing? Hadn’t Tenna been a liar? Hadn’t he kidnapped Toriel and trapped them and fought with them and—
There had been something about him that Susie had liked. He had seemed excited to play with them, and adults were so rarely excited to see Susie that it had stood out to her. He had joked with her and hadn’t been put off by her rudeness.
And now he was probably dead, and she didn’t know what to do, and at the end of the night, he had agreed to help them, he had given up Toriel, and Susie had promised they would find someone to watch him, and none of that could happen if he was gone.
Angry, furious, Susie fell to her knees and beat the ground, slamming the remote into the carpeted part of the floor. She let out an angered growl, and to the side, saw Kris twitch as they were startled awake, and right. Tenna had been Kris’s TV first and foremost before he was Susie’s friend. There was a history there that Susie didn’t know.
She had failed to fix their TV—the thing that had wanted Kris’s attention so badly. And it had known them for so long, if the strange, invasive names and memories it had brought up were even half true. He had acted like he had been part of Kris’s family.
And Susie had failed to fix him.
Maybe there was still something they could do, if they acted fast, if they went right back to TV World and told the Darkners that Tenna wasn’t working properly. Maybe something could still be done.
Furious, desperate, Susie struck the carpet again. “I couldn’t even—we have to go back.”
And suddenly, Kris was at her side, peering at her silently through their hair.
“What?” she snapped, voice thick as she stared up at them from the floor.
Slowly, methodically, Kris produced a knife from behind their back, maintaining eye contact with Susie as they held it out, the sharp point staring her right in the face.
Susie took the knife, staring at them incredulously. “Were you sleeping with that?”
Kris blushed immediately and brightly, something Susie could just see in the light from the moon outside, ducking their head so their hair covered the dusting of their cheeks.
Then they gestured to the ground.
“Wh—what the fuck do you want me to do with the knife, Kris?”
Kris took a moment to look back at her, as if composing themselves, and then knelt down at her side. They lifted their empty hands into the air, cupping them together, and then slammed their knuckles into the floor.
“Are you making fun of me?” Susie asked quietly. “You—you look so serious, Kris. You want me to… stab the ground with it?” A beat. “The Queen said something like that, didn’t she?” Susie took a steadying breath. Concentrate and stab into the earth. “Okay,” Susie said, snorting a weak laugh. “But if your mom gets mad, you’re the one who did it.”
Susie took the knife in both hands, grasping it as Kris had pantomimed. She stared down into the carpet, thinking Tenna, Tenna, Tenna, anxious and full of dread as she made the plunge, flooding the room with the inky black of a fountain.