Chapter Text
After nearly 2 long years, the day was finally here. The day that December Holiday would be brought back to Hometown from the hospital, and to say that there were mixed feelings on the matter would be an understatement.
Carol was ecstatic, finally being able to see her oldest after all this time-no, after everything that had happened.
Rudolph was hopeful that his daughter was able to get the help she needed.
As for Noelle....she didn't really know WHAT to feel. Her beloved big sister, her Dess, was finally coming home. But on the other hand...2 years of a (mostly) normal life were taken from her. Dess was the prime suspect in the terrible tragedy that cast a shadow over Hometown that fateful day. The reason she was hospitalized, for rambling on and on about a "darkness darker than dark".
The reason why people whispered when they thought that Noelle wasn't listening. That she was related to a murderer.
The reason that Kris Dreemurr, one of her closest friends, was no longer with them.
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The reunion room of the psychiatric hospital was just as sterile as the rest of it. There was a counter with a somewhat tired looking monster made of fire on the other side of it. There were also plenty of folding chairs against the wall, and other families, parents, or other people seated in some of them. With a sigh, Carol and Rudy sat down, and beckoned Noelle to do the same.
As Noelle sat, she started thinking. Would Dess even remember her? Would she still be as volatile, as....dangerous, as she was the day she was taken away? Would she still be obsessed with gaining reentry to the Shelter, despite having gone missing for 2 days after going in the first time? Would she still be so scarred by whatever she witnessed that she would enter uncontrollable fits of fearing for her life, every time the lights went out, at one point enough to cause an...accident? Would she still lash out at the mere implication that she may have taken Kris's life?
Fortunately for Noelle, she would be receiving the answers to those very questions shortly, because through the door emerged a nurse, and behind her, Dess.
"Hey 'Ellie."
Noelle immediately rushed to her older sister, and embraced her in a tight hug. Things were going to be okay now. Dess was finally with them again and everything was going to be okay.
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Everything was NOT in fact, okay for December.
She spent 2 YEARS in the Ebott Psychiatric Institution because of what happened that fateful day. And honestly? That wasn't the worst part. She actually got help there, with her self-loathing, being provided healthier coping methods than her "special leaves". Didn't work as well, but it also gave her more time to reflect. She connected with people who went through similar situations. Events so horrible that they irrevocably damage one's psyche.
No, the worst part, was the before.
After she and Kris vanished, after her miraculous return...she came back alone. Battered, bruised, and exhausted, with a viscous black fluid dripping from her fingers and now reduced-to-splinters baseball bat.
She became the number one suspect in Kris's disappearance. Some thought that she had killed them, in a fit of rage, or perhaps envy, and made up a story to cover it up. She already was a bit of a black sheep in hometown...but then people started harassing Noelle with the accusations as well. And she wasn't going to have that.
MK ended up going to the hospital due to a skull fracture that day. Luckily nothing major, his brain was unaffected.
It wasn't just that either. Dess, once fearless, was now TERRIFIED of the dark. She would barely sleep, muttering about shadows and a pair of eyes. She would scream in fear a few seconds after the lights went out. At one point, she finally fell asleep, not stirring...and then she started sleepwalking.
When Rudy and Asgore found her, she was about to take a step off of the boardwalk near the lake, into the icy waters. After that "accident", Dess was placed on house arrest.
Then they found the post-its in her closet.
It all boiled over when she started obsessively doing research on the dark, and eventually, someone got h-
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