It's funny, what determination does. Your body fights its hardest to keep living, even if your heart is already set on erasing yourself from existence. A child in blue rises up from a flowerbed. A flower recoils in terror from the idea of what might happen to something soulless after it dies. A human needs so, so many buttercups before they're sick enough. There's a grim sort of humour, maybe, to how the lengths you'll go to in order to escape pain so often just end up prolonging your suffering.

Ha ha. Even Chara can tell they're thinking pretty pretentious things right now.

But... those flowery, arm's-length terms are easier to think about than - than the painful, visceral matter at hand.

Was Asriel a very happy person?

"Are you?"

He must know them well enough to read what the smile on their face is saying.

"Asriel... time stopped for both of us a very long time ago." Neither of them knows how to live like they have a future. Neither can look at the world they call home and really see a place for themselves in it. Let them go, Asriel, right? That's what you wanted. Can't break their hearts all over again. "We both know what's waiting for us when all of this ends. That Asriel... time never started moving again for him." Waiting for when he'd turn back into a flower. Hiding from Mom and Dad, because what's the point of reuniting with anyone if you'll just have to say goodbye again?

"Is it moving for you?"