Chapter Text
You didn’t know how much time passed (or how many bad jokes you heard), but you were rolling on the floor laughing until the point of choking, Sans’ stupid grin almost shining while he saw you.
“Stop it, go-god dammit!” You tried to control your breathing, glaring at him without much effect due to your poor state “What’s with that shit-eating grin, you asshole?”
Sans just smiled wider, he found out that, after making you laugh enough, you dropped your good-teacher act and started behaving more like a normal woman with an awful vocabulary “c’mon, don’t be so sternum, i’m just trying to be humerus here”
You snort, not sure if you want or not to punch him. You (and all the other monsters) spent yesterday’s dinner hearing him tell every skeleton joke in the world, making you start to develop a love/hate relationship with them “Another skeleton pun and I swear to the Gods you’re not going tibia okay.”
His eyes shone like stars after that “i’m sorry to tell you this, but you can’t skelerun from my skelepuns”
You try to choke down your laughter while Sans’ infuriating smile widens (if that is possible anymore). Ok, maybe you liked his stupid skeleton jokes, but that didn’t change the fact that you wanted to punch him in the face.
“a skeleton walks in a bar and-”
“WITCH HUMAN! SANS! THE GUARD HUMAN IS HERE!” Thank goodness…
“Whoops! Gotta go!” You rose to your feet so fast that the world spun, and picked up your staff before exiting the room with big, quick steps, leaving Sans chuckling alone behind.
He didn’t understood quite well what was happening, he met you yesterday, threw a bone at your head, talked to you about his love life and made you cry from laughter, it didn’t make sense. But, to be honest, this last week (this long, long week) didn’t make sense, it had been surreal and tiring (specially tiring). And now he felt anxious, they got out of the Underground (again), Chara disappeared, the kid promised no more Resets (and maybe that was what had him more excited, no more Resets). He was worried and hyped, and you… well, you were a really good listener, you gave him space, but made him feel accompanied, you didn’t pressed him to talk or made him feel like telling you his problems would be a burden, you felt…
… reliable.
Of course, he didn’t trust you at the beginning, he could feel you were hiding something (and the last thing he needed was another psychotic human nearby), but after Asgore’s reaction (and we’re talking about a man that could offer tea to a burglar and ask them is there was anything he could do for them) and that big fight to decide if they should or shouldn’t carry your unconscious body out of the forest, well, he couldn’t really blame you. For how the kid talked, humans didn’t know you were a witch, and, based on the good work you did keeping your cool with them, hiding it looked like your main worry when meeting someone. He could understand that feeling(to say the truth, the only reason he knew you were hiding something was because you looked awfully familiar to him), the desperation to keep it hidden (there had been a couple of timelines where Papyrus almost got to know, where he almost broke down and said it, the anxiousness still hasn’t leave his chest), even if at the beginning he felt threatened by it .
Besides, and this was an important point, Papyrus really took a liking on you after last night.
Maybe it was that you too knew how it felt to keep a complicated secret, or how much you remembered him of Toriel (or the magic sparkling in your Soul, which he just found out was constantly making a soothing, static sound). Sans didn’t know, but when he went downstairs to found all the faces he had been lying about “being fine”, he felt truly at ease finding yours, smiling reassuringly.
“They WHAT?!”
Alphys and Papyrus are holding Undyne back while a very terrified Guard Edmund hides under your back. You don’t really care about being used as a human shield; you just don’t want blood in your carpet, or anywhere in your house.
“’We do-don’t wish to interact with monsters anymore.’” He stuttered, body trembling and fingers digging nervous in your shoulder “’Th-the Magic Society is disappearing, w-we need to take care of our own kind, a-and helping mo-mo-monsters will just put us in danger’, tha-that’s what the High Circle of Magic said…”
“WELL YOU CAN TELL THEM TO-”
“That’s enough, Undyne.” Asgore’s voice cuts the discussion like a knife and surprises you with the ease that it puts Undyne rage under control. The King looks at the messenger (and he looks nothing like the nice old man praising your flowers this morning) “Thank you for coming to deliver this message in person, we’re sorry to make you lose your time. Please send my gratitude to the Circle, and my greetings, I would be glad to meet them in person one day, after this situation has been sorted”
Edmund says the most trembling “Yes, your Majesty” ever and you accompany him to the door, assuring him that Undyne won’t try anything. After he’s sure he’s safe and the door is closed, you count to ten in your head. Then all hell breaks loose.
“How DARE they say something like THAT?!”
“U-Undyne, p-please…”
“I must have expected this to happen…”
“IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT, YOUR MAJESTY!”
“What are we going to do now...”
“hey, don’t worry, tori, i’m sure we’ll cranium something, it’s going tibia okay”
There’s a lot of voices in your living room, some angry, some worried, some trying not to break down, but there’s one that catches you attention over them all.
“Miss Fairy?”
Frisk looks at you with a little worried frown and you need to take a deep breathe to not let them notice how much their heartbroken expression affects you. Teacher Mode On.
“Yes, Frisk?”
The kid lifts their hands to move their sleeves back ‘Are they really not going to help?’
You take another deep breathe, lowering yourself to be at their eye level. You were expecting for this to happen, helping the monsters is a risky move, that’s why you don’t want to do it, but the Circle…
You didn’t expect the Circle to have a negative answer since the beginning.
“I-I don’t know, sweetheart, maybe they’re just surprised, I mean, it sure is a big new!” You catch how the monsters have stopped fighting to hear you. Great… “Maybe… maybe we should give them some time, try again tomorrow…”
Frisk nods, still not completely convinced, and turns to walk towards Toriel. When you get up, you get a perfect picture of all the monsters standing in your living room, their unspoken emotions making the air heavy. They look so… lost, even a little scared.
“I, uh,” You cough, unable to handle this amount of tension “I gotta go, do some witch stuff outside, uhm, what if we, uh,” You swallow, mouth feeling suddenly dry “What if we drop it for today? We can try again tomorrow, send a better argument, try to set a meeting…”
Asgore nods solemnly, and you try to ease the ambient telling Frisk and Papyrus that they can go play with Max’s toys, Papyrus practically shines when you tell him that yes, Max indeed has a rather large collection of action figures, and Sans follows the two of them upstairs to “make sure they don’t vertebreak anything”. Alphys asks if you, by any chance, have anime or manga here, and you try not to blush while telling her that there’s a big box in the library covered by a blanket, she beams you a smile before holding Undyne’s hand and going upstairs. Toriel offers to make an early dinner (after all, everyone was so worried about the meeting that lunch was forgotten) and you’re too tired to fight about it anymore, leaving just you and Asgore awkwardly staring at each other in the middle of the living room.
You try not to choke with your tongue “I, uh, ahm-”
“I wanted to apologize for my previous behavior, and to thank you for all your help” Asgore’s voice is deep and soft, but not in the same way as Sans’ voice, Asgore has the voice of a man who has lived a long life and tells stories to little kids while sitting near a bonfire “I didn’t know your kind didn’t wanted to create the barrier”
His words surprise you.
“I haven’t done that much, though…”
He lets out a chuckle, and makes his way towards the garden; you somehow feel like you need to follow him, like you want to do it “You gave us food and shelter even when it would mean to put you in danger” He stops in front of a bed of yellow flowers, looking somewhat nostalgic “You’re trying your best to give us an opportunity up here” How can some look like he can carry the world and he’s about to cry at the same time?
“Warlocks were the ones to put you down there in the first place, and with such a horrible way of breaking the spell; even if they were mercenaries, the Circle just showed to be no better…” What is this thing in your mouth? Why do you get such a bad taste just from thinking about your own kind?
Asgore’s soft voice rumbles through the garden “The decisions of a few shouldn’t be blamed on the whole, that’s a lesson it took me too much time to understand…” And you can feel the weight of those words (every one of them, pilling like stones on your shoulders, making difficult to breathe), the years of pain and regret from a single bad decision made in a rush of anger, the apology that will never be said, because he truly believes he doesn’t deserves to be forgiven “Don’t underestimate your actions, my child, they weigh more than any words that can be said”
You stand there for a while, frozen in place, watching Asgore carefully (almost lovely) caress the petals of a yellow flower, before you finally get some control over your body and start rummaging through the garden, looking for the items for your spell. Asgore’s words don’t leave you while you do it (but you’re pretty sure Asgore’s words won’t leave you your whole life), you feel like you just stepped out of a cold shower and wonder is Sans knew how Asgore feels when he talked with you (if Toriel knows how Asgore feels, if he wants her to know). You try to remember yourself that he cold bloodily killed six human children (and would have done the same with Frisk if other was the turn of events), but maybe it wasn’t as cold bloodily as it sounded. You can imagine him underground, an old, tired king sitting in a lonely throne, wishing, praying, for another child not to come, for his people to stand forever condemned to a life of fake lights if that could mean no one else would have to die.
Worse things have been done for human men in less desperate situations, and you’re sure that no human king has ever sounded as broken as Asgore for killing someone. You remember telling Toriel yesterday that “two thousand years is a long time”, but maybe for Asgore it hasn’t been enough time (and you wonder how much time is necessary to forgive yourself after something like that).
Even when you try to focus solely in picking up herbs, you can’t stop the couple of tears that roll down your cheeks or the sudden necessity to hug your child.
You choke down a sob, crying in silence.