Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a funny thing.

She remembers being six years old, quiet in front of teachers, a little ball of energy in front of her friends. Well, friend. Well… family, if she’s being honest. The Dreemurrs and the Holidays were always closer than close, an inseparable unit back then.

She remembers those days, and she remembers how she spent her time. Miss Toriel was her teacher as well as Kris and Azzy’s mom, so there rarely went a day where Noelle didn’t see her. Weekend mornings learning to bake, far from tall enough to see over the counter, held up in her dad’s arms like a ball on a court. After-school evenings playing in the snow, plied with hot chocolate and all the fixings to come inside before their noses fell off from the cold. Quiet days only perforated by the soothing sound of Kris playing piano in the room next door.

And one year, in the dark of winter, the year in which the whole family had gone over to visit the Dreemurrs every single day of the Christmas vacation.

Mom had been upset about something, she thinks, with ten years’ hindsight. Better to sit the kids in front of the TV and set aside that extra worry. And Dad had always been more than happy to kick back next to Asgore with a beer, chatting about… like, sports? Or something? It’s kind of funny how well her dad and Asgore get along when they’ve got such shallowly intersecting interests.

But Azzy had brandished the brand new version of Super Smashing Fighters, and Dess was invariably really good at looking up the cheat codes to unlock all the characters early, and that had left her and Kris to sit behind them and make their own fun between bouts of yelling and playful shoves.

That’s why it’s so funny - because she remembers the games they’d played.

Kris, in their quietness, spreading a deck of cards messily across the floor and picking up the ones with the coolest designs. And Noelle, on the other side of them, gesturing at an opposing force in the form of her mother’s laptop.

When she’s trying to get to sleep that night, she considers it. As much as she’d like to think that the only reason it’s so hard for her to pass out now is that she already had a nap at the library earlier… she can’t, not least of all because that nap didn’t make her more well rested at all. It’s like she really did go through all the exertion of her dream.

It was a weird dream. Let it never be said that Noelle can’t have some crazy freaking dreams when she’s got a lot on her mind. Although, honestly, less Susie than she would have figured, judging by her own track record.

Instead, there was… Queen.

She remembers being alone, and afraid, and accosted by half a dozen weird creatures with drill-faces before Queen had whisked her away in a cage. At the time it had seemed like courtesy, until she’d realised that it was more about laying claim to her prized possession than anything so selfless.

It was one thing after another, really. Queen kept trying things that… well, it wasn’t entirely clear what she wanted with Noelle for the longest time. Rollercoaster carts, and mixtapes, and detachable hands against which she got strung up like fairy lights. It was all so eclectic. Noelle supposes that that’s to be expected of a dream.

She thinks about her room, studded with statues and search results. Calendars turned to Christmas and a baseball moon.

It’s funny.

Noelle rolls over in her bed, stares into the starlit darkness. Phosphenes squiggle across the expanse of her bedroom ceiling. One antler bumps up against the headboard.

How Queen had changed her mind, at the end. Before that boy who looked a little too much like Azzy had explained what horrors Berdly was brushing at the edge of. How she’d told Noelle to choose the future that made her happy.

… It’s funny because her own mom would never, ever, ever do that.

She finds a tear gathering innocuously in the corner of her eye. It doesn’t shed when she blinks. It’s been a long time since Noelle’s mother made her cry.

But why her? Wait, let me guess. Is it because she’s weak enough to make into your peon?

Haha No It’s Just The Opposite. It’s Because She’s Strong

There have been nights that she spent staring at the ceiling just like this, wishing she was brave enough to tell people no. She can talk to her dad like that no problem; she can argue just fine with Kris… beyond that, it’s an issue. It had been floated, once, that Noelle might want to see a doctor about her nervous disposition, that it wouldn’t do for her to freeze up in the middle of the street or something.

Carol Holiday had shut that idea down. Her daughter wasn’t broken. There was nothing wrong with either of them, and neither would there be if they both knew what was good for them.

Since then it’s become less of a freezing thing and more that she’s just inclined to say yes, mom until it makes everything better. She only really locks up if the situation is deadly stressful. If questioned, her mother would insist that everything about Noelle is perfect, that she acts the way she’s supposed to. She’s a smart girl, and if she has a “fawn response”, that only makes sense, because she is one.

Queen had brought out that same instinct in her. But she’d overcome it. She’d found the strength to say no. The same strength that Queen had insisted was within her all along.

And it had worked.

It’s funny, because she knows it isn’t going to stick. Dreams will fade from memory, as dreams do, and Noelle will find herself shrinking under her mother’s authority by tomorrow morning, when she has to get ready for church first thing.

But right now, in the insomniac wake of her self-actualization…

For a moment, she can pretend she’s become somebody new.