Chapter Text
It Snowed.
Snowing was just about the only thing the world ever did anymore. With all the Titans dead, the Darkners stone, the Humans ash, the Monsters dust, and The Angel banished there wasn’t really anyone or anything to do things anymore. The eternal winter devoured the seasons and so the only real weather anymore was snow, or, on special occasions, hail. Everything else eroded slowly in place, like her own soul had done years ago. With no one to notice the changes. At least, no one who could bring themselves to care.
It Snowed.
She stopped bothering with coats decades ago, whatever magic allowed her to so thoroughly ruin the world made her immune to hypothermia, and nothing she could do would ever let her feel warm. The Inventory even removed the need for pockets, now that it was accessible everywhere. Still, nostalgia was a powerful force, and even her cold heart couldn’t stop her from pulling on her big sister’s signature jacket when everything was said and done and That Thing left her with the pieces. She’d drifted towards short skirts over various lightweight pants, usually with some sort of tee with a bad pun on it and sometimes a sweater on under the thing. There was no one to look good for in her travels, but skirts going spinny was a compelling reason to allow that concession from practicality.
It Snowed.
Which made most of the places she visited alien even as she recognized landmarks every so often in the sunless world stitched together from Light and Dark world lands piercing through one another. Still, she’d always wanted to travel, and there was little else to do with her unending time. Whatever had given her the power to end the titans changed her, made her something more. Something more like the Angel, even. She no longer needed to eat, to sleep, to breathe. She still wasn’t convinced her deadened emotions were solely caused by the trauma of it all, but as much as she’s read since Before, she still avoided the topics of psychology and self-help.
It Snowed
And that decision, that weakness had damned her. Her and the entire world. It was oddly humbling, for all that she held the power of an angel, it felt a constant reminder of the sheer impact even the weakest of doe could have on her world. It was also oddly empowering, for all she was the person she cursed the most when she found her thoughts wandering, to know that if she had to face any of them again that she’d been able to kill them once already. Most she cared about were even directly ended by her own hand. No matter how much she prayed, and raged, and threw her magic at the problem, she couldn’t change the past. That was always The Angel of Change’s purview.
It Happened.
So she was left to pick up the pieces, what few remained. With no one and no dreams or goals left, she found that traveling was the best hobby to pass the time. While her cold heart could have let her spend her last decades alone, staring into space and thinking of what was, she still found enough motivation to at least walk out the door. It was strange, she was a being above human, monster, darkner, and Titan. Arguably even over The Angel. But still she aged.
It Happened
She never forgot her sins. She never left her family behind, not when her thoughts kept dragging them up again and again. But travel eased the years. Reading every so often to break up the monotony of flight and walking with a body that never tired. She learned a lot, got to see every wonder of the world and major work of art. Which was a far harder feat in a world buckshotted with Dark Worlds and all their wild art, architecture, and “nature” to take in. Though all of it was rather bland in the same flat light of her magic and entombed in snow and ice.
It Happened
She never stopped thinking about it, no matter how hard she tried. How everything went wrong. How she shouldn’t have trusted Kris. What she pulled from The Angel and The Machine when they slipped up and made her too powerful for even them to control. The knowledge of where Dess was and everyone’s disparate plots. Yet when she could feel the pull to close her eyes for the first time in a lifetime and finally laid down to what she knew must be her final rest, she didn’t think of the past or her regrets. She didn’t pray for what could have been changed. She prayed to end. That there would be no afterlife for her and she could finally be free.
IT happened.
It hurt to wake again with a warm body, heart beating a million miles an hour, and a voice yelling. She’d forgotten how to deal with a panic attack, forgotten they were even a thing, so it took far too long for her to realize she had to do something if she ever wanted her lungs or heart to feel normal again. Yet just as she was starting to figure out how to do that the door to the room she was in (definitely not the place she closed her eyes in) slammed open and her mother started with the pointed and barbed comments to get out of bed and get ready for school.
Needless to say she was rather disturbed by someone who didn’t exist anymore, coming into a place that didn’t exist anymore, to tell her to do things that didn’t exist anymore, in a second place that didn’t exist anymore, for an audience of people who also didn’t exist anymore. To say she was confused was an understatement. Still, she lived in fear of the woman once before and had largely enjoyed school, so her body was happy to serve up all the nerves and muscle memory she needed to stumble through a parody of her old morning routine and eventually find her way to the school. The fact that it took until she was there to realize her body was smaller again and that she was once again using light to see rather than Dark was a testament to just how lost her mind was that impossible morning.
Something was wrong. Hopefully it was only minorly wrong, the everyday kind of misstep that still left you reeling when there was one less stair than you expected. But something was unquestionably wrong.
Noelle was late.
Catti didn’t let her worry show, but when Kris shuffled in before her, with that mechanical walk they’d taken to recently, she knew they saw it on her face. They paused in the doorway for long enough for Alphys to say something before talking to each and every person in the room, proving even further that something was also wrong with them. Kris and Berdly being forced to team up for a group project wasn’t rare enough to be an emergency but Catti was still chalking it up as a bad omen.
Then Susie slammed the door open and officially made Noelle the last to arrive. This was unheard of. So she felt justified speaking up as Alphys began asking after the chalk Susie kept stealing.
“Hey, Alphys, did you get a call from Noelle about being sick?” Catti tried to keep her tone bored but cringed as she finished asking anyway knowing that most of the class had known her too long not to tell. Only most though, since Snowdrake and Berdly picked up on little, and Temmie was always a roll of the dice.
Alphy took too long to answer, however, since her stuttering was interrupted by Noelle slamming the door open a second time in an uncharacteristic display and instantly set Catti on edge.
No holiday sweater, no cute skirt, hair in the utilitarian braid she reserved for Cross Country meets, minimal makeup, and most worryingly, no backpack. Instead she punched a hole in the normal schoolday with the animation of a corpse, no expression, and an outfit clearly pulled entirely from December’s closet. Which Catti appreciated on the girl, make no mistake, but that big a change on how she approaches grief in a single night? Demons had to be involved, and not the kind you could make a deal with.