Noelle sat silently in Berdly's hospital room, only the steady blip of the heart monitor to distract her from her thoughts. She fidgeted nervously with the corner of the blanket that was draped over Berdly in a vain attempt to get him warm. Despite the destruction he caused, he didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve to be back in the hospital she put him in the first time, back in questionable condition, struggling under a mysterious ailment no one understood. Pale, shivering, and strained, his breath in small shaking puffs. The ailment she caused. Or Kris caused. She was still struggling to grasp who to blame. Something to take the crushing guilt off her.
A weak voice in the back of her mind nagged at the notion that it was something, someone, else. That whatever commanded her wasn't Kris. But she was unable to comprehend what that could possibly mean for her world. An outside force commanding death and desolation, pulling the strings like they were mere puppets to play with. So she fought the thought down. She couldn't blame what she didn't understand.
Her guilt ridden spiral only halted when the pattern was broken. When a long piercing beep engulfed the room. When Berdly's heart stopped, so did Noelles. Before she had time to react, the room plunged into darkness.
"It is not your time, little bird. Perhaps I was too eager, and put the weight of your world on your shoulders. I am sorry. I will make things right."
The words were foreign, completely incoherent to her. They were not meant for her and thus she could not understand. She simply stood in awe of the black abyss for a moment, unable to comprehend.
And then the light returned. As if nothing had happened. The steady blip of the heart monitor echoed through the room again, never more receiving to her in her life.
As if nothing had happened. A slight rewind in time, as if returning to the last save point.
A few days later he woke up.
"Berdly- I'm sorry" Noelle stood nervously in the doorway to his room, his parents unsuspecting and happily letting her in to talk to him.
"What are you talking about?" Berdly glanced over from his bed and tilted his head, confused.
"... what?" Shock seeped into her voice.
"Um- how did our project go? Sorry I couldn't help you much on it-" he changed the topic. Yet the smile on his beak was ever so slightly forced. The smallest twitch. The dots clicked.
"Berdly, you can't pretend nothing happened."
"I really-" there was a pained emphasis on the word, "really don't know what you're talking about. I was just a bit under the weather. A weird new cold, probably" he forces a nervous laugh.
She stared him down for a minute, then sighed. She let the topic drop, maybe another time.
YOU ARE READING
Frostbite
Fanfiction(Spoilers for Deltarune Chapter 2 and the Snowgrave route) Berdly wakes up in the frozen hell, alone with his thoughts. Thoughts that torment and twist and push to the brink of chaos and darkness. The lengths a lost soul will go for freedom and veng...
