Soul Matter (Chara x Asriel)

Chapter One ; The Hole at the Center of Everything

// Get the reference? Okay. Good.

That morning had been a gentle one, the one that marked the day Chara would go to Mount. Ebott.

The pallid child had spent their morning in their room, which was more of a closet with a blanket and a few books. It wasn't comfortable to most, but it was compact and easily accessible. The door only locked on the outside anymore, since Chara had made the mistake of locking themselves in from the inside.
Their father didn't take well to that.

Chara read a few fairytale books that they had stashed in their tiny room. These books had been stolen from the library down the road, but as of now, no one really found out Chara had them.

The situation looked bad, bad to most anyways, but Chara was used to it. Chara was everything their parents didn't want, and it wasn't a sensitive topic anymore. Unnatural crimson eyes, female, scrawny, and they developed a bad habit of stealing.

Chara was just another mouth to feed, and they knew that. They didn't care. If they complained or were ungrateful, they didn't get served meals. Chara tried to make their own food once, due to this rule, and it resulted in a small kitchen fire.
Over making toast, of course.

Chara didn't mind that the fire had started. Not personally, anyways. They had developed an odd carelessness in regards to getting hurt or doing bad things, they just needed to make sure they never got caught. That time, however, they had gotten caught. It's hard not to when it comes to almost burning down the house.

Chara taught themselves mostly everything, by that point.
Stealing, reading, whistling, medical treatment.
Was that not all they needed to learn? Meanwhile, it didn't guarantee they were good at it in anyway.

They always hoped to impress their parents with their extensive vocabulary, but it seemed that they didn't care, and only ever called Chara a smart-ass for their attempts. They probably were, anyways.

However, today had been September 15th. About six days after Chara's birthday, their ninth one.
It didn't mean much to them, except for they were older.

Sitting in the still darkness of their room, Chara waited out the day, until they heard their stomach growl and a sharp pain in their gut.

Damn it, they were hungry. They hadn't eaten for almost two days.

Chara glanced around, before standing up and opening their bedroom door, a bit dizzy from malnourishment. They had only been wearing an old pair of shorts at the time, their feet and chest bare.
They didn't have a good pair of shoes or a clean pair of socks. Chara did, however, have their brown shirt. It was simply brown, with a light brown stripe down the middle, horizontally. Chara put it on, letting the rather scratchy fabric clothe their scarred torso.

It was hard to get their hands on this shirt since Chara's parents didn't let them really have shirts...
To make them more masculine, it seemed. They never referred to Chara as their 'daughter'. No, Chara's parents only ever referred to Chara as their 'child' or 'son'.
They also never let Chara have hair longer than to their ears, and their chestnut hair covered their eyes.
They didn't mind the labels. As far as they cared, they weren't even human. They were a demon child.
Wouldn't that be great? To not be human?
Sadly, they were still burdened by human nature.

Chara had just finished a lovely book about monsters and some sort of war. They weren't spectacular at reading, so they didn't understand most of it, but it was about monsters and humans, and the mountain that was right by their village. Maybe a mile away.