#was glad to try out the recipe tho. i wrote it up from memory for a friend and have been worried i was wrong

[milkweedman]

Potato leek soup and some honey whole wheat bread from yesterday.

[thethrillof]

oops i wrote an ut fic from a weird crossover au that would probs make no sense to anyone not in the know--tho i did at least keep it mostly vague until the very end so feel free to read it and ignore the neighbor bit of the last paras lol

warning for kinda self-harm/body horror and the mention of burning to death

[One: your body.]

Furry all over now, sure. There's a pair of scratchy spots on the top of your skull that are going to be horns, of course. Claws, fangs, the works. Everything you were expecting when you woke up to Asriel's panic whirling through your head, only seconds to recognize what's happened and resign yourself to it. One more body-share, you can handle that. Your old one was burned so badly it was nearly dust anyway, even if you could recover more than was really left on the asphalt in the end.

You can admit weren't expecting the rest of it. 

Turns out, neither were Asriel or Chara.

Flowers are the bane of your existance. They used to be just in how they looked, or in Chara's words, 'purely aesthetic', but now they're a physically painful part of your life. Around those horn-nubs, in the crook of your elbows, on either side of your spin, they grow as if they're a fuzzy mane.

They are a part of you, but it's not just funny monster hair. You learned this when the first few of them popped up overnight, and your shared reaction was to scream in shock and tear them out as soon as you opened your eyes.

They were tiny yellow flowers. Not the golden flowers, too small; not buttercups, too many petals; and when they slid out of your skin, they had silver-stained roots and showered your blankets with dust.

It has something to do with your thoughts, you've been told. Magic has specific form depending on the monster, but determination can twist it into anything, and you're nothing but monster-magic and determination these days, with maybe a little more of the latter than desirable.

You can't just pick the petals off and pretend it's all weird green fur or snip the stems down. You feel it as much as if you were peeling off bits of your own skin. The options are only to ignore it or tear every one out by the roots, all or nothing, no matter what, and they always grow back within days.

You haven't given up, but...well. The ones around your horns are kinda pretty, you admit one day, and they can't bother you so much if you're not staring in a mirror. And the ones around your spine aren't that big a deal, nobody can see them under your shirt. Only the elbow ones are left to deal with, and that's a lot easier.

Grudging acceptance is still acceptance, and not long after that, your magic seems to bloom and reward you. You still have flowers, still small, still everywhere they were before.

Only now instead of that sickening yellow, they're a fantastic shade of red.

[Two: your heart.]

Three minds in one is an uncomfortable arrangement. Yeah, moving your body itself can be weird, and sometimes you try to write with the wrong hand or brush hair you don't have or eat something you forgot you don't like anymore, but those are small things. You can handle those.

A little less is...feelings.

Chara locks them up pretty well, but when they spill out, they do hard. Icy explosions of emotion, leveling and coating everything around for hours until they can defrost--or one of you can fetch them from a corner of your mind, if things are particularly dire, but they rarely are.

Asriel locks them up with much less skill. It bursts in anger as the same as in happiness, as if all those emotions he didn't feel for a century are intent on catching up with him. For all you know, that's the truth. Just 'cause you're dead now doesn't mean you're an expert. He sometimes takes control when he does that, storming off with your body and heedless of whatever might be in his way--like doorframes against his shoulder. (Monsters can't bruise like humans do, but pain’s pain.)

You...thought you were the best at it. Locking up the bad, only expressing the better stuff, and you were wrong. Your emotions are always there, always leaking out, always building and putting pressure on everything. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it leaves you all wound up for reasons none of you realize early enough, keeping you pacing through the house and plucking at your good flowers and eating all the food in the kitchen without tasting any of it (which is a shame).

And oh, when the memories hit. The memories.

Sometimes it's the old ones; Chara feeling the weight of their own body in their shared arms, Asriel strangled by hope and fear and refusal, the melting, the dying, the waking. Always there, always a fear, what if something happens this time? What if we ruin it all again?

It leaves your fur on-end and again, pacing nonstop, reassuring each other that you're all together, or at least that they are. You step out when you need to. They're their memories and living nightmares, after all.

Sometimes it's new ones; you, with the flare of fire aimed at you, the explosion of pain in your upper chest and throat, the burning, the nothing--and then a far-away viewpoint seeing the flames, getting close enough to curl your leaves and stain your roots with your own smoldering ashes before you could get a grip on that slippery thing, that core of emotion, that SOUL--

And you forget who you are, and you need to go to the nearest place with a view of the sky, no matter how murky or clouded or how late the time shows, to reassure you that it's all real, to pick your own self apart to remember that it's all different viewpoints, you really are three.

It's rough. It's not something you can share.

...Sometimes, you find yourself getting tired.

[Three: your magic.]

A monster with a human SOUL is a horrible beast with unfathomable power, they say. A monster with a human SOUL that's been fused with another in some impossible way is even moreso.

This isn't wrong, as it turns out. Maybe the 'horrible' bit--you all have problems, some bigger than others, but you're reasonably polite, and you have and keep tons of friends, even now!

The power you have within yourself...is much greater. The ability to SAVE is still slightly outside your grasp on the surface--of course it is, you really wouldn't have let Flowey take your SOUL if you could avoid it, even if you're making the best of it and he's grateful to have a body again--only a SAVE isn't what you even need.

You have fire, like Asriel's parents, only tinged red in the center of the bullets' forms. You have stars, completely red, able to reduce anything to dust (not monsters, but stone, metal, whatever you set your mind to) within seconds. You can sometimes see the routes of reality itself and take shortcuts, and see where Sans' ones lead. You can grow at will, normal-looking Boss Monster Child Asriel and the first form of the God of Hyperdeath. Your favorite: you can fly.

Power has a price, however. You used to hate the plaster walls of Toriel's house, but now at least you can fix up what you smash holes in when surprised without much problem. Your fire can burst out of control if you aren't focusing hard on it, singing the fur off your hands and ruining any recipes you want to try. If you want to leave, any of your three parts, you leave; your abilities work on instinct, teleporting you elsewhere if you're lucky, throwing you towards the nearest window to smash through with your too-small-for-that horns and shoot up until you're in the clouds.

There's more, too. A deep wellspring of strength in your chest, in the red SOUL that still resides there, and you could tap it. The same power Asriel could use to destroy the village humans, so long ago.

You don't dare touch it. There's enough on your plate, thank you.

[Four: your friends.]

It wasn't easy. Asriel and Chara were dead for a hundred years. You were dead, a horrible public incident, set up to create tension between humans and monsters...probably. You don't know. You haven't been able to hunt down the one who got you yet.

Of course you came to Toriel first; limping, dizzy, crying, all three of you, various shades of hurt and confusion and fear and, oddly, hope. She called Asgore. What could be told, you told; what couldn't be...well, monsters are kind. They're still waiting for an explanation, but the relief of having you back is enough.

...And that's all. You're going to tell who else is mourning you, certainly. Undyne's unsettlingly calm declaration of hate at the one who did it on the news broadcast haunts you days later. Papyrus has been weeping and leaving your phone voice mails, even though he knows you're gone. You can only bet the rest are worse, but you can't bring yourself to check the news anymore, or Undernet. You feel terrible enough just getting used to it all.

And those are only monsters. Monsters, you can trust. They won't panic too badly, they'll be glad you're alive. But humans? You don't want to start another war over how monsters can take SOULS. You can't tell most of them, not directly.

...Though there is the neighbor, right across the grass. There's not much of a fence there, just some low shrubs--you're friends already, and he can see you whenever you're out. He does, in fact, your eyes are better now, and you can see his shape through the thin blinds over the windows. You think he's hurting; you think he's missing you; you know he's very observant.

Maybe he'll work it out on his own. Maybe...maybe you'll tell him, anyway. As a test. A try.

You can only hope.