Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart is a memory
And there you’ll always be
–The Fox and the Hound
Voteil waited until the prince’s rage was spent. A prince, so different and so like himself; another lost soul trapped by tragic circumstance. The only soul he could talk to, the only soul that could see him.
When blackness slowly began to creep towards them, Voteil finally did what he’d been wanting to do for eons: he reached out to the Prince of the Underground, forgiving him in an instant, and the other prince’s horrible disguise melted away in a new wave of tears.
“I don’t understand,” Asriel choked out, his face pinched with sorrow and self loathing. Voteil’s fins drooped, his heart twisting painfully for his old friend. “I’ve done…horrible things. To you. To your mom. Your sister and your family….to everyone.” He covered his face with his hands, his body quivering with full-bodied sobs that cut Voteil through and through. “I’m a monster, VoVo…why are you forgiving me?”
“Because someone has to, Asriel,” Voteil insisted, gently opening his wing and cupping it over the other boy’s back. Asriel flinched, but didn’t recoil. It was more than Flowey had ever allowed him to do. Voteil sighed heavily, watching as the tears left damp trails down Asriel’s white fur. “You aren’t bad…there’s just a piece of them in you that makes you bad. And bringing you back…changed you.” He lifted a paw and placed it on the goat monster’s chest. “But this is you. The real you. I’ve known since you came back as a flower.”
“H-how do you know that?” Asriel demanded, opening his eyes to stare at the young dragon spirit. There was slight accusation in his tone, but Voteil found he couldn’t take offense to it. “How do you know this isn’t one of my tricks?”
“I know because I know, Asriel,” Voteil insisted, putting emphasis on his friend’s name. He gently pulled him closer with his wing, until Asriel had no choice but to lean against his shoulder. He wasn’t that surprised when he felt the physical weight of the boy’s shoulder against his; but it was still so foreign, so new after all these years, that he felt the dam within him finally give way. Tears burned at his eyes and trickled down, and his head bowed. “You’re my best friend. We were gonna help make everyone in the Underground happy, remember? You, being the future king, and me, being a Seuth. I’ve seen it, Asriel.” He smiled, his chin wobbling as tears wetted his scales. “It would’ve been awesome.”
“Yeah,” Asriel said, sniffling and smiling in response. They both sat in silence as they watched the darkness slide ever closer to them. They both knew what happened now; Flowey had destroyed this timeline. The human and their guardian had been destroyed, and were allowing this Save to die. Beside him, Asriel shivered, and Voteil brought his wing in tighter against his friends back. “It’ll reach us soon. You…know what that means, right?”
“…yeah.” Voteil sighed heavily, his throat tight and the breath stuttering in his lungs. “You go back to being a Flower, and I go back to skulking around in Mom’s castle, trying to find a way to wake up the Gods again.” His fins drooped even lower. “I’ll forget most of this…maybe I’ll remember some things.”
Suddenly, the Prince of Monsters hugged Voteil. The late son of The Lost Queen’s wings flared open in surprise, his heart aching fiercely at realizing he hadn’t been hugged like this in hundreds of years. Eventually he returned the embrace, both his wings closing around them so that for a moment, they were shielding from the approaching darkness as it began to trickle over their paws.
“I don’t want to let go,” Asriel confessed when he pulled away, one hand still holding onto Voteil’s shoulder. The young dragon turned and pressed his forehead against Asriel’s, in one of the deepest signs of respect and camaraderie any Kuros could offer.
“I know,” Voteil said. Before their words, memories and physical beings were swallowed up by the Reset, he sighed one last time. “But it’ll be alright.
“It’s okay to let go.”
– – – – –
Well there go MY feels.
So this idea cropped up because of this ask someone sent to Weirdlanders. And it kind of…took on a mind of it’s own.I have a lot of ideas for this AU and I want to draw so many of them out now that I’ve written them down. Ghosts of dead Kuros trying to hunt Frisk down, Flowey torturing Feuriah by telling her that if Alphys had done the same thing that she’d done to the Golden Flower, Voteil still might be ‘alive.’ Chara having sold out the Kuros to a monster named Malefor, who tricked each human that entered the Underground to slaughter some of the Kuros until they were nearly extinct. So SO many ideas and they all kill me. They all kill me DEAD.
This was another experiment with my painterly style. It’s been a lot of fun taking the pixel-art based style of Undertale and using its characters and themes, the simplistic color schemes and rich character stories, as the inspiration for a new art style. 8> I hope you all enjoy this as much as I do!!!
Weirdlanders © to WeirdHyenas
Undertale © to Toby Fox
Art © to me
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crawl under my desk and cry. Please slip me an oreo or two every once in a while to make sure I don’t starve. I am going to need quite some time cuz this hit the feels hard bro. Waifu is too good at writing, my heart hurts ❤
Weirdlanders 