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Jealousy. That was what filled Kris's hollow body, coursing through their veins but feeling like acid. It had always simmered in them, from when they first realised they would never be like anyone else, to now, seeing everyone they loved change and grow and find their places in the world.
Kris had never been able to find their place. It was there once, for a while, at her side, but that had broken and shattered, and now all they could do was cling to the pieces. They thought maybe if they had a place, they could define themself. That they just needed love to shape them into a Kris-like shape.
But, the shell was too tough. The love they wanted to reach deep inside and know them and feel them only scraped the surface, touching this thing, this body they hid within. Nobody really knew the real Kris, because not even Kris knew the real Kris.
Why was it so easy for everyone else? Noelle and Susie had only known each other for days, and they were already filling the holes in each other's hearts, while Kris sat hollow, every giggle from the shoreline hitting them like hunger pangs, starving to be with them. Noelle had filled Susie's heart, and Susie had filled Noelle's, and there was no room for Kris anymore.
Even Ralsei had found a way to grow, to change. Kris had seen through their mind's eye that moment, where the flower spoke to them. Told them they could change. That they could be a princess. That she could be a princess. Of course Kris knew what it meant - it was their world, their imagination that had spawned it.
Kris wanted that. They remember when she - Dess - had treated them like that. When she'd said they could be like her if they wanted to. That they could be anyone. And with her help, they could. It was easy, with her support, to tell people that they didn't want to be a boy anymore. They weren't ever quite able to say what they really meant, that they didn't just not want to be a boy, but that they wanted to be like Dess and Noelle, that they wanted to be part of that world while still being themself. But they figured that as long as Dess stayed with them, they'd be able to figure out who they wanted to be.
And then she went away, and Kris became stuck.
Stuck in-between, able to see the world outside the egg while still trapped inside it. They'd lived this way for so long that the shell had become all that anyone remembered. Nobody thought to look any deeper, because nobody cared.
But Kris cared! The world they saw through the shell looked so beautiful, now. A beautiful world between Susie and Noelle and Ralsei that they would never be allowed into, that their unfinished, sharp edges would cut apart like a knife through flesh. Because they weren't a “girl”. They were just Kris.
So they retreated. Changing wouldn't matter, would it, when everything would end soon anyways? Why bother going through the effort to try anything when it'd all be rendered pointless by the truth?
At least… At least there was Dess. She wasn't always there, and she couldn't always tell the present from the past and truth from lies, but she… she put her hands on Kris's head. She sat by their side. She would call them her… her sister. And Kris felt, for the first time in years, that feeling that they once had as a child.
So they would protect her. They would stick by her, even when nobody else would. They wouldn't let her fade away. Because without Kris, Dess was nothing, and without Dess, Kris was nothing. Empty shells that only fit within each other. Sharp knives that mutually sharpened each other. Something that used to be a girl and something that might or might not have been a girl, understanding each other when nobody else did.
When we break this stupid world, Kris thinks, then none of it will matter anymore. Maybe then we can be who we really are.