Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Snowdin is very, very quiet.

For the first few months that he and Sans live there, that’s just about all that Papyrus has to say or even think about the move – Snowdin is very, very quiet. Within the first two weeks he practically knew everyone by name, and it was rare for anything at all to actually happen.

Unfortunately, although he’ll admit he likes the little town much better than he liked the city in terms of general vibe and number of people giving him odd looks, all that quiet doesn’t really help him keep his mind off of what he’s been trying hard to keep it off of. It was easier to distract himself in the city, what with all the trap-building and the walks and the ability to go haunt the university library when he was bored.

Here in Snowdin, though, there are no real distractions.

It’s quiet, literally quiet, and nothing ever happens. He can build as many traps and puzzles as he wants, but the house is silent around him. He can go on patrols all day long, but the quiet of the forest means he has time to think.

Worse, there’s no ruckus from Sans, these days.

In a number of ways, the move to Snowdin seems to have been good for his brother. For the first few months, he seemed like himself again, if quieter and sadder. Every once in a while, Papyrus would hear him fiddling with some machinery like he did in the apartment.

But as time marches ever onwards in a steady and unyielding parade of Everything Happening So Much, Sans goes even quieter. Even worse than his slow and steady decline is the fact he’s obviously still trying to pretend there’s nothing wrong. Aside from his little moment of honesty when they first discussed moving, he’s never admitted to anything bothering him at all, and he avoids the topic like he thinks it will burn him if he touches it these days.

Papyrus asks. Of course he asks.

But Sans never gives him an honest answer.

And with nothing else to occupy himself, Papyrus spends a lot of time thinking about it.

He frowns as he settles into the couch, staring at the place his brother was standing just a moment ago. Between his sentry job, which keeps him out of the house all day when he actually bothers to go to his station, and the mysterious other job he works in the Capitol, Sans is rarely home these days. It reminds Papyrus of when he was in college, a bit, except that when Sans was in college he was louder.

Friendlier.

Happier.

Whatever happened to him, whatever caused his terrible self-destruction spiral all those months ago, it seems to have… Well, he hesitates to use a word as final or violent as ‘kill’ in this context, but whatever happened to Sans really does seem to have killed the version of him who enjoyed living.

His brother is still alive, certainly. He’s still here.

But none of the things he used to do for fun seem to be for fun anymore. There’s none of the quiet glee when Papyrus groans at a bad pun, even though he laughs about it. His smiles never quite reach his eyes. Like so many other things, these days, his smiles are perfunctory at best. They’re just something he does.

Something major has changed. Something is wrong.

And Sans won’t tell him what it is.

And it’s only getting worse and worse and worse.

He seemed okay when they first moved. It seemed like the move was going to be good for him. He started to perk up a bit. But all of that is gone again, now, and Sans is little more than a ghost haunting the house, haunting his stations, haunting whatever other job he’s just been called away to do.

It’s not a new experience for Papyrus to wish that Sans would just talk to him.

Honesty never used to be this hard to come by – Sans would withhold information, at times, but never like this. Never so thoroughly that he won’t even admit there’s anything he’s withholding. Being purposefully vague is different than outright denying there’s a problem.

At least he isn’t smoking so much, now, he supposes.

He sighs and puts his hand over his sockets, blocking out the light. He’s getting a migraine, he thinks.

They’ve been happening more and more since Sans’ nervous breakdown and subsequent retreat from his job and schooling. He had them before, certainly, but never quite so often. These days, it’s as if just squinting a little too hard will set off the nausea, the ache in his skull, the dizziness. Sometimes his vision wavers, when the migraine is bad enough, although that doesn’t happen on a frequent enough basis for him to truly worry over it. He would imagine today’s has been brought on by that horrible dog’s nonsense, and now his inability to stop thinking about what could have happened to make his brother change so drastically.

(He misses Sans.)

(It feels silly to miss his brother when they still live in the same house. When he sees him every day. When they eat meals together every single morning and every single night.)

(But he misses him anyway. He misses the way things used to be. He misses when his brother was happy.)

The couch cushion dips, a quiet and cheerful wuffling sound reaching his aural canals as that horrible dog steps lightly into his lap.

He told the dog that he wouldn’t pet it until it stops stealing his attacks.

As it walks around in a prim circle and then settles in his lap, curled comfortably atop his femurs, he settles a hand on its head anyway. It noses into the touch, and he sighs, petting slowly over its fluffy head. He can never stay angry, not truly, and especially not when the dog, despite its constant mischief, is always so quick to comfort him.

“You’re still a terrible little creature and I resent your nonsense.” He tells it, clear and crisp.

It’s difficult to speak crisply with the building dull pounding of the migraine in his skull, but he manages. It’s hardly the first time he’s had to pretend he doesn’t have a migraine.

He’ll spare a little healing magic for himself in a moment to get rid of it.

He hopes Sans comes home sometime tonight. Sometimes, when he’s called away for work, he doesn’t come home until the following morning. He usually does, but sometimes. And Papyrus absolutely hates those nights, especially the ones where Sans forgets to text and warn him that he’ll be gone all night.

Oh well.

There’s nothing to be done if he doesn’t come home, he supposes. He’ll just sit here trying desperately not to worry that Sans has somehow gotten into a terrible accident and this time he won’t come back from it at all. All night. Until Sans finally drags himself home through a shortcut in the small hours of the morning, bearing a to-go mug of golden flower tea, a large bag of homemade mini-muffins, and a marrow-deep exhaustion in his bones that he’ll poorly mask with a smile while he apologizes for how long he was gone. Just like any other time he hasn’t come back the same night.

(For all the gentle heckling he gives Sans over how hard he slacks at his sentry job, and how lazy he is otherwise, Papyrus has to admit he puts a lot of effort into whatever other job he has.)

(Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. Whatever job he still reports to in the capital, that’s the one that’s paying their bills, and not the sentry job. It’s no secret to Papyrus that Sans has always put the work in when it matters, when it counts. Well-paying jobs like this one, and the informant thing when Papyrus was in middle school, and the lab job, get an effort out of him.)

Papyrus has foggy memories of Sans stumbling home when he first started the informant job, not so different from these nights. It’s comforting, although the lack of detail in the memory is a bit disconcerting. He tries to focus on that, instead, and does what he can to avoid thinking too much about the fact he can’t remember what the bedroom they shared looked like, or where it was.

Two hours later, after he’s used a little magic to ease his migraine and has settled in properly to wait, his phone rings.

He picks up on the second ring, as is polite, and says, “Hello?”

“Heya, Paps.” Sans greets from the other end of the line. He sounds exhausted, very poorly masked by an attempt at his usual mild tone. It must have been a rather bad mess he had to clean up. “I’ll be home in a bit. You want anything while I’m in the capital?”

Some very small part of Papyrus thinks, fondly exasperated, this could have been a text.

He says, “What a thoughtful question, brother! I don’t suppose you could bring home some tea?”

“Sure.” Sans answers, “By the by, I might just ask the boss to teach me how he makes it. S’good, right?”

Whoever his boss is, Papyrus can tell Sans likes him a lot. He speaks of him fondly – in fact, he speaks of both of his ‘bosses’ fondly, like they’re old friends of his. It’s different than how he talks about his so-called friends here in Snowdin, all slightly-detached amiability, like they’re just interesting trainwrecks for him to watch and he doesn’t actually care about any of them. It’s more like when he would talk about…

“—ster said we should have it up and running by next month.” His brother is saying, animated despite the dark circles. He’s spearing a truly ridiculously sized piece of waffle on his fork, smearing it through the puddle of chocolate syrup on his plate as he speaks, “It’s just a prototype right now, but if he thinks it’ll work…”

Papyrus can’t help the smile on his face as he also spears a piece of waffle. He has no idea what Sans is talking about, of course – science may as well be the dark arts for all the sense it makes to Papyrus –, but the fact he’s happy is enough. He likes seeing him happy, and knowing that he and __ster are getting along now.

He shakes the memory off, pressing a thumb to the space between his eye sockets as if he can prevent a migraine just by trying hard enough.

“Yes,” He says, slightly delayed, “the tea your boss makes is very good. I think you should ask him to teach you!”

There’s a brief silence, then the huff of a laugh that does not sound particularly happy. “You got it. See you when I get home, Paps. Love you.”

“I love you, too.” He answers, “See you then, brother.”

Before Sans hangs up, he hears him say, slightly muffled, “So hey, Fluffy—“

He doesn’t let himself overthink it. He’s very good at thinking about things a lot, but he’d prefer not to do that right now. Maybe he should do something to occupy himself until Sans gets home. Perhaps the laundry…

Hm.

Yes.

The laundry has almost certainly piled up in his brother’s room again. He rarely does it himself, these days, and the guilt he clearly feels over it isn’t enough a motivator for him to fix it. Papyrus doesn’t mind.

After all the ways his brother worked himself into the ground in order to keep them fed and housed during his adolescence, he thinks picking up the household tasks is probably the least he can do, no matter how disconcerting it can be that Sans no longer bothers to clean anything to his once exacting standards of neatness.

It's fine. Papyrus can meet those standards just fine.

(He just wishes he understood what changed.)

(Their apartment in the capital was always clean. Even when he was clearly exhausted, Papyrus would sometimes find him midway through scrubbing the kitchen counters until they sparkled.)

(Sans hasn’t cleaned anything in years, not really. Not to his old standards. Dishes, yes, Papyrus can bully him into doing dishes pretty easily, and Sans still painstakingly ensures their cleanliness when he does, but if Papyrus expects anything else to be as clean as their apartment used to be, he has to clean it himself.)

He rises from the couch, depositing the dog, who had been asleep in his lap and expertly imitating a snow pouf, onto the couch by itself. It gives a disgruntled whuff, but doesn’t move from the place he put it. Alright. Good enough.

To Sans’ room to collect his laundry, then.

Chapter Text

Asgore sighs as he stares down into his mostly-empty teacup, heavy and beleaguered.

It is easier to watch the leaves swirl amongst the last dregs of liquid than it is to look at Sans. Though the leaves form patterns and shapes that make his heart twinge, thoughts running rampant through his mind (Chara would have eagerly read these leaves for us, they would have some divinations to offer), they do not hurt quite so much as seeing the exhaustion written in every line of Sans’ body.

Chara is an old wound. He is used to the way that it aches.

Technically, so too is he used to the ache he feels when he looks at Sans across the table; the slump of his shoulders, the blindfold around his skull, the slight tremor in his hands as he picks at his customary post-Judgement mini-muffins… It’s all familiar. He has seen Lorone look this way many, many times, enough so that he eventually grew somewhat numb to the sight.

It is different, with Sans.

Tonight was especially difficult for his young friend.

The Judge was very, very angry.

The sheer muchness of his power seemed fit to buckle his knees in the Hall, the crushing weight of an angry Judge pressing down on them all as he looked into the eyes of the accused. Worse was the lack of mercy in his eyelights, the lack of sympathy he held for the accused.

Lorone learned to temper the Judge very quickly, upon becoming the Judge in an official capacity. In part, that was because she was older, much older, and had experience in knowing when to listen to the voice in her head and when to discard its words. She had practice long before she ever Judged anyone in an official capacity.

Sans, though, is young. Inexperienced.

Worse still, in the time that Sans has acted as the Judge officially, he has never had to pass Judgement upon a murderer.

Their accused, tonight, had been LV 3 – bad enough on its own, already worse than Asgore can abide or feel comfortable asking Sans to deal with. Alas, for homicides, Judgement is a legal requirement. He has to know for certain how the LV was acquired, although past LV 2 it’s difficult to assume any innocence at all.

The Judge isn’t impartial on the matter in any sense, its opinion on murder has always been cut and dry, but the person who holds its power may manage to be so. Lorone always managed.

Sans, though…

His entire demeanor had changed the moment his eyes met those of the accused.

The fury that lit in his lights had, truthfully, frightened even Asgore, reminding him of someone (not Lorone, someone else, tall and thin and quiet, someone familiar) he knows he ought to be wary of. And, yes, Sans has been generally less jovial than he once was in recent years, despite his constant smiles, but now even that painted farce has been wiped away.

And his voice! It had been cold, so very cold, when he Judged the accused, laying out a detailed and matter of fact list of all the accused’s sins aloud, the same way Lorone had when she was in power. Until tonight, Sans has always been silent until he finished taking stock of the information he has. He has always waited until he has had time to think about it before he makes a call.

But not tonight.

(Children.)

(It had to be children.)

(Asgore knows that he has no room for disdain, that he is no better, carrying the blood of stripes aged children on his hands as he does. He knows that he has done unforgivable things.)

(But Asgore is not proud of the things he has done, and will likely be made to do again. His sins were born of necessity.)

(The accused, sickeningly, had not denied it when Sans said they were enjoying what they were doing. They had only smiled serenely across the Hall at him, like they thought this was funny. Like they had just been waiting for someone to catch onto the truth.)

(It had taken effort to silence his own LV enough to think, to be reasonable, to follow the rule of law and not just spear them on his trident right then and there.)

In the end, Sans’ verdict surprised no one. The accused was guilty.

It was the sentence he imposed that surprised Asgore, because he sentenced them to death.

Asgore had hoped for that outcome, yes. Had prepared to argue for it if Sans, like Lorone, had remained steadfast that execution does not a lesson teach.

He hadn’t needed to, Sans didn’t hesitate to explain that he knew they would never be convinced to stop so long as their soul was still beating, and so would spend the rest of their life trapped in the dungeons. It would be a waste of the Kingdom’s resources to keep them if they would learn nothing and would not change. It was more humane, and of more benefit to the good of the entire Underground, if they were simply executed instead.

Lorone, and her predecessor Olain, had acted as both Judge and Executioner in many of these situations.

The idea of putting Sans in that position made Asgore’s stomach churn with nausea. He had shared a stricken look with Gerson across the Hall, both of them horrified and trying to measure which of them could probably get away with offering to do it in his stead. They had come to the silent agreement that Sans would be overall less angry with Gerson, and Asgore had nodded to him, encouraging him to speak before the Judge took matters into his own hands.

“Your Honor,” He’d said, more formal than usual, “if you would permit me, I would… Take care of the particulars, let’s say.”

Sans had, after a long silence, granted Gerson his permission to do so.

Asgore had, in turn, escorted Sans out of the Hall before the deed was done.

Sans had shied away from his touch even without being able to see him reaching for him. He had tried not to let it bother him. He understood, and still understands – considering this evening’s events, of course Sans won’t want Asgore to touch him. Not with his filthy hands. He may well have tolerated a steadying hand from Gerson, who carries only the lives of adults on his conscience, but…

It has been silent since they sat down, nearly an hour ago now, except for the very brief moment wherein Gerson had poked his head into the room and softly informed them that the accused was dead. He’d been gone again the next moment, likely overseeing the disposal of the dust and personally tracking down a servant who has had to clean up dust before.

(There aren’t many left on his payroll that remember any executions he or Lorone performed over the later years they worked together. There are none at all who remember their frequency under his mother’s rule.)

(He has that to be proud of, at least: his people don’t live in fear of him deciding to kill them on a whim.)

(A hollow victory.)

Sans has had absolutely nothing to say, not even to Gerson.

Asgore doesn’t believe that anything he says is going to make a difference.

And so, they sit in silence.

He glances up, as he has a great many times in this last hour. Sans stares sightlessly down at the table from behind his blindfold, tearing the defenseless mini-muffin in front of him to pieces, the same as he’s been the whole time. A small, positive difference is that he is finally actually eating the muffin as he tears it apart. His cup also sits nearly empty, as it has since very early in the hour. It was the only thing he ingested for the entire first half-hour. It seems to have finally calmed him, just a little bit.

Asgore tries to think of something, anything, to say every time he looks at him, and every time the words die in his throat.

Nothing he says will undo this, or make it easier. Sans is permanently changed by this night, just as every Judge before him has been changed by execution.

It is his duty to do this, that is the sad truth of Sans’ existence as a Judge, but the truth brings Asgore no comfort. (It likely wouldn’t bring Sans any, either.) He had so sorely hoped that Sans would never be put into this position.

How must it feel, he wonders? To so detest killing, and yet feel there is no choice at all but to have someone killed in order to stop them? He thinks he must have known, once, but if ever there was a time when he was so kind, it is long gone. The feeling evades him quite entirely, but it must surely be painful. And to have a little brother waiting at home, a young and idealistic thing who believes so wholeheartedly in mercy…

He can’t even hope to imagine the anguish that Sans must be experiencing at this moment.

He opens his mouth, once again trying to summon words. Any words. Something to break the awful silence, to try and put even a fake smile back on Sans’s young, exhausted face.

Sans sighs, flicking a few errant muffin crumbs irritably from his fingertips. He speaks before Asgore can, hollow and quiet, “Is it always like that?”

“… Judging a murderer?” Asgore asks, as carefully as he can, “Or sentencing one to death?”

An incline of Sans’ head as he seems to consider the question. “Both, I guess,” He says, “but mostly the execution bit. That sucked.”

A dramatic understatement for the ages, Asgore is sure.

Sans is very, very good at dramatic understatements. It’s part of his charm, he thinks – the fact that Sans, despite how poorly he feels at all times, cares enough to ensure the mood stays light. That no one worries too much. That someone laughs, even if it isn’t him.

“I can’t say from personal experience.” Asgore settles on saying in reply, “But I would imagine it gets easier with time and experience. No less awful, but… Less distressing, perhaps. I pray you never have to do it again.”

Sans’ mouth twitches, up, then down. “That makes two of us.”

No nickname.

Most days, once the Judgement is over, Asgore can’t escape every couple of sentences containing that silly old nickname. Sans is especially fond of ending sentences on it. He ensures that he’s positively haunted by the name ‘Fluffybuns’.

Its absence for even just this short conversation is glaringly obvious.

He is glad for the fact Sans can’t see his face, or the way he feels himself flinch.

“Should…” Asgore begins, unsure, “Would you like me to have a servant escort you up to your room for the night?”

Sans lifts his head, just a little. Even with the blindfold, Asgore can feel his imaginary gaze like a physical thing. Somehow, he knows that, were the blindfold not there, Sans’ eyes would be on his. The frown that twitches on Sans’ mouth is uncharacteristic, bitter. Asgore cannot begrudge him that.

“Nah.” Sans finally says, painfully mild. “It’s cool. Gonna just sleep in my own bed back home.”

Asgore bites back a protest before it can leave him. Any other night, he could probably convince Sans to stay by reminding him that he’s had a long night already, and he shouldn’t risk a teleport halfway across the Underground when he has a bed waiting for him a considerably less dangerous five-minute walk from where he sits. Tonight, he gets the feeling this isn’t an argument that he’ll win, and so he simply chooses not to have it.

(He learned that from Gaster, Asgore thinks, that no nonsense mode that makes him twice as stubborn as any mule. He never could win an argument with Gaster once he started feeling contrary or set his mind to something. He influenced his little brother so very strongly, even if Gaster had not realized it.)

(What was he thinking? It was important, he thinks. There is a name tickling the back of his tongue, just out of reach.)

(His head is pounding.)

“Very well.” He says, instead, “I insist that you stay long enough for me to ensure you have food for the road.”

Sans does not object.

Asgore goes to fetch more of those mini muffins he likes so much. (Gaster always preferred the cinnamon ones.) Sans likes the blueberry ones, so he doles out quite a lot of them from the stock the chef makes in their downtime.

They’re a passion project, so there are always plenty, and if they don’t go to Sans after a Judgement, they end up being given away with the golden flower tea every month.

(Gaster never asked for them with his tea refills, but they’re practically all he would eat at galas and banquets. Asgore can remember the first time he watched Gaster offer a young Sans one of them, an action he’s sure the child hadn’t known the significance of. Gaster never shared his food with someone unless he loved them.)

Goodness, his head really does hurt quite a bit tonight.

When he returns, Sans has his phone pressed to his skull, and he’s quietly speaking, “Heya, Paps. I’ll be home in a bit. You want anything while I’m in the capital?”

Asgore politely says nothing as he sets the larger than usual bag of mini muffins in front of the young skeleton on the table. He waits patiently while the brief conversation goes on, trying not to wince at the way something Papyrus says makes Sans’ expression go briefly stormy.

He knows Sans would never hurt Papyrus, it’s simply not within the realm of his capabilities. Still, when he’s already so off balance, it’s too likely for him to be unpredictable. He may do something he regrets if Papyrus presses the wrong button on him.

(The first time Gaster had witnessed an execution, they were both barely over twenty-five. One of the nobility had been found guilty of high treason and plotting to overthrow Asgore’s mother, along with a few key co-conspirators who had also been brought before the current Judge, Olain. It was nearing the end of his mother’s rule, her policies angering humans and monsters alike and her age slowly creeping up on her.)

(Gaster wasn’t the most tactile friend Asgore had, he preferred not to be touched and not to touch anyone else. It made the fact that Gaster held his hand the entire time meaningful.)

(He’d been strangely emotional, especially considering his usual detached manner, in the days following the execution. Irritable, quick to sharp verbal barbs. Only Asgore had been generally safe from his temper, and even he did not get out of it emotionally unscathed.)

(It’s one of the only times he remembers Gaster ever apologizing to him.)

“See you when I get home, Paps. Love you.” Sans says.

Asgore gets the strangest feeling he has missed something. Spoken words, mostly, and a change of expression. The stormy look is gone, and now Sans just looks tired once more.

He really needs to see someone about these headaches.

“So hey, Fluffybuns,” The skeleton says, preventing him from thinking too much more on the matter, “Don’t suppose you have some instructions on how you make your tea? My brother likes the way you make it.”

(Gaster had preferred it the way he makes it as well.)

“The secret is paying attention to the temperature of the water.” He tells him, almost immediately, not minding to share this and honestly just glad that Sans is talking to him, “and how long you steep it. If you want exacts, I think… Yes, you’ll want the water to be right about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and then you’ll need to steep for no longer than four minutes.”

Sans stares sat him, or in his general direction, for a moment. Then he huffs out a laugh. “Good to know G was just steeping it too long.”

(Yes, Gaster was a serial over steeper of teas.)

(He would forget about the leaves, too. Chara used to give him so much hell for nearly draining the dregs before they could see the patterns they settled into once the cup was nearly empty.)

“Most people do steep it too long.” He says, squinting against his headache. It just keeps getting worse this evening. It must be the stress. “It’s a very picky plant, even in the form of a tea.”

Sans chuckles.

“Oh, golly, hang on.” He finds himself saying, the next second, “I keep forgetting. Here.”

Across the table, he slides a hand carved wooden box, one of the ones he keeps for tea refills for his dear friends. This one is special. (It was Gaster’s, made specifically for him. Asgore was supposed to refill it, before…) It’s Sans’.

Sans doesn’t peek at it, just runs a hand over its surface, feeling out the details carved into the lid.

His expression betrays nothing.

(His breath hitches, though. Asgore knows that he knows this is Gaster’s tea box.)

( … Why was the box here, with him, and not in the Lab with Gaster? Why hadn’t he delivered it back into Gaster’s hands ages ago?)

(Why hasn’t he seen Gaster since before Sans became the Judge?)

“Thanks.” He says, tucking the box and the muffins into his inventory. “I think I’m gonna head home.”

Again, Asgore bites back a complaint. “Very well, my friend. Travel safely.”

The next moment, Asgore is alone. The muffin crumbs on the table make him feel wistful in much the same way he feels when he thinks about his children. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, the fond sadness he feels seeing the table littered in crumbs yet again. (He doesn’t know why Sans’ tendency to tear his food into pieces is a surprise to him. Gaster always did the same thing.)

He dusts the table off himself, even picking up Sans’ teacup. He never did understand Chara’s tea reading, what the real significance of the shapes were, or the exacts of the whole ritual. But he does remember some things, and in his momentary worry over Sans’ wellbeing he can’t help but put what he does know to use.

He holds the cup carefully in his left hand, swirls the contents three times, clockwise. Then he gently upends the cup onto its saucer and waits. He’s not sure how long you’re meant to wait, he never paid attention, but he waits for a little over a minute before he rotates the cup three careful times. He turns the cup back over, then, gazing into the shapes created by the leaf clumps within the cup.

The bottom of the cup yields a collection of small, almost star shaped clumps. Up the side, something shaped like a bat. And right along the rim, next to the handle of the cup, is a shape that almost looks like a bit like a camel.

He has no idea as to what it could mean.

Perhaps he should have listened more closely to Chara’s explanations.

He sighs and puts the cup down, pressing his eyes closed. This headache certainly isn’t making it any easier to remember if he retained any of the shape meanings they did try to teach him. Perhaps he just needs to rest…

Chapter Text

Admittedly, there isn’t much going through their head when they slip out of the house.  

The only thing that they’re really thinking about is getting away, just for a little while. Away from the yelling, and the name-calling, away from the people they’re stuck living with.  

Just for a little while, just until they’ve had a chance to breathe.  

Otherwise, there’s nothing to think about.  

Nothing good, anyway.  

Nothing that will help them in this situation.  

Just a lot of unpleasant thoughts that will do nothing but make them feel worse, thus defeating the entire purpose of taking this little unauthorized stroll of theirs through town.  

They dodge a few of the neighbors who might try to just drag them home by the arm, duck around a cop or two, and try very hard not to think at all while they make a beeline for Mt. Ebbott’s dumb little hiking trail at the edge of town.  

There’s a less traveled trail that branches off from it and leads to the infamous Pit. It’s always been their favorite place to go think for a while. No one else really goes up there, and they spent a lot of time in the general area when they were younger.  

(Admittedly, their near-constant presence out here instead of at school or home when they were younger is probably one of the reasons the cops cottoned on to their... Situation.)  

The trail looms up in front of them, and they breathe a sigh of relief. It took them nearly a half hour just to make it this far, mostly because they had to do a lot of backtracking and runarounds to make sure no one actually knew where they were going. If anyone had followed them out of the house, they lost them fifteen minutes ago somewhere in the shopping center parking lot.  

On their way up the trail, they instead find their mind filled with much more pleasant thoughts. The types of plants around them, mostly – a fern there, a patch of New England aster here, two different species of moss on that tree’s trunk (broom forkmoss and brocade moss)...  

Definitely a much better train of thought.  

Eventually, they reach the little branch. There’s one of those small, portable barriers covered in caution markings sitting in the middle of the path, and a sign on it reading: PATH CLOSED.  

Below those two (frankly enormous) words, there’s a couple of lines of smaller text. One line is only the dates the path will be closed.  

The other says: Fencing to be erected around the Hole.  

They wrinkle their nose and make a disgruntled noise, inching around the road barrier anyway. It’s about two days into the projected closed dates for the path, but there’s no sign of any construction anywhere. They’re honestly a little bit surprised that the city is even going to bother to fence the Hole off, seeing as they’ve had the better part of a hundred years to do it before now.  

It just seems like too little, too late – kids these days, themself notwithstanding, are smart enough to avoid the area around the Hole. Mostly because they’ve all been hearing about all the kids who fell in and whose bodies were never recovered since birth.  

(Admittedly the idea holds some appeal to them.)  

(But they’re going to ignore that. That’s what their court-ordered therapist tells them to do.)  

They continue up the path anyway.  

This is where they come when they want to be left alone, when they want to think, and no supposed fence construction closure is going to stop them from taking solace in their favorite private place. If anyone is even here, they can just climb a tree and ignore them.  

Arriving at the Hole at last, they find absolutely no one in the immediate area, although there are construction supplies for that fence laying off to the side of it. They guess that’s not entirely surprising – it is about eight in the evening, and even they know how long construction takes around here.  

(Their mom used to joke, back before everything, that there are only three seasons around here. Construction, Summer, and Autumn.)  

(Sometimes, they really, really miss her.)  

(But she obviously doesn’t miss them.)  

They linger a little ways back from the edge of the eponymous Hole, in a spot where they’re surprised they haven’t worn a whole new hole. They lean forward, just enough to see for the millionth time that the drop is a long one, and that the bottom is completely impossible to see from this high up.  

(For a second, they wonder what it would feel like to take that final, daring step and let themself fall.)  

(They shake the thought away.)  

(Ignore it.)  

(Ignore it.)  

They should be able to hide out here for a while. Long enough to finish calming down, anyhow.  

Their foster parents certainly aren’t going to come all the way up here to get them, if they notice they’re gone. They won’t check outside the house at all. If their foster mother doesn’t find them in their room, she won’t remember why she wanted them by the time they get back to the house, so it doesn’t matter. If their foster father doesn’t find them in their room...  

Well, he won’t bother looking for them, he’ll just wait until they come back, and they’re already screwed if he’s looking for them.  

But the point of coming up here is that it’s easier than staying in town. No one bothers them here. It gets them out of the house, lets them walk a while, lets them sit alone and collect themself until they’re ready to return to their newest foster home, resigned to the way things are once more.  

This is their fourth foster home in two years. They’re not exactly optimistic it’s going to be the last one for the year.  

It’s been about a month since they were placed here, now, but there are just too many big red flags. If their foster parents don’t end up giving them the boot for being so ‘disobedient’ and ‘bull-headed’, then their social worker will notice the bruises and pull them out of the home when they see her next.  

They like their social worker. She’s cool.  

But her being as nice as she is accomplishes pretty much nothing, because no matter how nice she is, the inevitable fact is that none of Frisk’s foster families can ever tolerate them for longer than nine months. Most of them don’t even last three. If it’s not their supposed stubbornness and lack of obedience – how dare they be so curious about the world, how dare they have trouble speaking, how dare they not be a girl like the paperwork says they are –, then it’s their purported ‘clinginess’ once they get comfortable.  

(God forbid they actually start to like their new home, and care about the people around them.)  

They’ve been in the system long enough to have gotten used to the whole song and dance.  

They’re tolerated for the first couple of months, sometimes only barely. If they make it past the adjustment period with their new family without being removed from the home, they get labelled as needy or clingy and eventually get the boot anyway. It’s fine. They don’t really mind so much now, because it usually just means they spend a few weeks or months with their social worker instead while she hunts for a new family to take them.  

(They’d love if she could adopt them. She’d love that, too.)  

(But supposedly they’re only waiting around for their birth parents to clean up their act so they can go ‘home’ to them instead, so she can’t. You know, because the courts haven’t gotten it through their thick heads that Frisk’s birth parents don’t care enough to bother even trying to change for them.)  

(They don’t want Frisk anymore. They haven’t wanted Frisk for a long time.)  

(It’s fine. The courts will figure it out eventually. They just have to be patient until then, or until they age out.)  

They look around the area, trying to focus on something else. The species of tree directly across from them, the color of the leaves. The grass.  

Eventually, though, their gaze wanders back to the Hole.  

They don’t really want to think about any of this, but they just can’t help it. It’s been a long month! They’re not sure they have it in them to go back to the house. Some part of them just wants to wait right here until the police pick them up and force them to go. At least then they’re more likely to get pulled from this particular home because they weren’t being watched closely enough.  

Again, they can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to just take that final step.  

Surely it would be easier. So much easier.  

Maybe that’s morbid.  

... It’s probably morbid.  

Their therapist would be disappointed in them.  

But they just can’t help but wonder.  

Would they feel it? Yeah, maybe. But if it’s a long enough drop then they’ll probably be dead before they even realize it.  

If they have to go, they want it to be like that. They don’t want to feel it. They don’t want it to hurt.  

They’re so sick of hurting.  

It brings up a new, semi-related train of thought: once, just once, they wish they could fight back. But fighting back now just gets them punished more later. It’s not worth it.  

They shake the thoughts away with a shake of their head, then sigh. As much as they don’t want to, they probably should head back soon. It’ll only get worse and worse the longer they wait.  

Just as they start to turn, they hear voices carrying up the trail. Familiar voices.  

“-- stupid girl never listens!” One of their foster brothers is all but yelling. “She’s gonna get us all in trouble if she keeps running off like this.”  

They hardly cringe, even though they know that he’s talking about them. That’s... Derek, they think. He’s always like that. Carbon freaking copy of his old man, their foster father, to no one at all’s surprise. Like father, like son.  

They’re both huge fucking jerks.  

“They run off like this because you and your dad are fucking jerks.” Comes another voice, their foster sister Jenny, bored as can be. She’s the only person in the whole household that Frisk likes, partially because she just gets them. “ Also, if they hear your annoying-ass voice, they’re just gonna bolt. Shove a sock in it.”  

Immediately, the two descend into their usual bickering.  

Again, they hardly cringe. They’re used to Jenny and Derek arguing.  

It’s still annoying, though.  

(What’s more surprising is that it never comes to blows. Jenny is in this particular household because she kicked the absolute crap out of her last foster brother, and the one before that, and the one before that. She’s combative. Frisk respects her for that.)  

Well, they may as well go find those two and head back to the house. There’s no point in dragging all this out, especially if their foster siblings are out looking for them.  

Their voices are getting louder, anyway, so Frisk sighs and turns toward the Hole one last time. They peer down, down into the infinitely inky depths, and they think.  

It’s funny to them, suddenly, that no one has ever actually bothered to try and find out what’s at the bottom. Sure, they say there are monsters down there, but where’s the proof?  

They think monsters are probably just a convenient excuse for the cops to not have to ‘waste’ man hours searching the bottom of the Hole for the inevitable pile of desiccated corpses that’s sure to be there after all those kids disappeared or fell in.  

Behind them, a twig snaps.  

They jolt, caught between reeling back from the drop and trying not to throw themself onto the ground.  

It really wasn’t that scary, it shouldn’t have startled them so much, but it did.  

Their foot slips on a patch of grass as they try to right themself.  

They pinwheel their arms, tossing their weight backwards as hard as they can, but...  

“Frisk!”  

That’s Jenny’s voice. She sounds frightened.  

And that’s the last thing they hear before they land on their butt, legs sticking straight out, and slide, terrified, right into the yawning maw of the pit.  

Chapter Text

Keeping an eye on Sans at all times has truly become a labor of love.

Chara always cared about him, since the moment Gaster found him, but they’ve gotten fonder and fonder over the years. They worry about him. They wish there was something they could actually do in order to help him, to make him feel less…

Well, whatever it is he’s feeling.

Chara isn’t great at identifying emotions anymore. They’re definitely not as good at it as Sans is. Still, they spend all their time watching him and wishing that there was more they could do for him. Alas, they’re too dead to help.

They can only imagine how Gaster feels.

They’re both just sort of trapped here, not-really-real, watching someone they care about slowly give up on everything, and all because he blames himself for something he didn’t even do.

(Chara does know how he feels. They do understand. But it’s been so, so long since their birth mother died that they can’t quite remember how it felt to mourn her, to blame themself for not screaming for help sooner, for not calling the cops themself. But at least there was technically something they could have done – they know it must be harder for Sans than it was for them. He can’t even blame someone else for murdering Gaster, because Gaster’s death was entirely accidental.)

Gaster sticks around longer, these days. He’s rarely gone, although the whole… Goopy… Issue… Hasn’t really improved at all.

They get plenty of time to talk, considering how often Sans takes naps or just lays on his bare mattress on the floor staring at the ceiling. Chara has it on good authority that Gaster absolutely does not blame Sans for his current predicament. He doesn’t even blame Flowey, who may well be the reason he’s trapped between death and life rather than just dead. He doesn’t even blame Sans for not trying to catch him – realistically speaking, all of them, even Sans, knows that there wasn’t enough time for him to act.

That doesn’t mean that Sans doesn’t continue blaming himself for it, muttering to himself in the midst of his worse breakdowns about how if he was just faster…

They love Sans to pieces, they really, really do, it’s one of the only feelings they still understand properly, but watching him destroy himself is kind of exhausting.

That’s why, when they feel something fundamental shift in the world around them, they don’t immediately feel any urgency in trying to figure out what it was. They feel it, sure, but they’re just so mentally tapped out from a long week of Sans having breakdown after breakdown in his closet so Papyrus won’t hear him crying. They’re too tired to care. They just hand-wave the sensation away.

It’s a minor, pesky detail. Probably just Flowey messing with the timeline again.

(One of these days, he’s going to lose the fights he keeps starting with Sans in between his sporadic Resets. There’s only so much further than Sans can be pushed before he snaps. Chara isn’t looking forward to the fallout, but at least it won’t be permanent. And, hey, maybe Flowey will learn not to play with Sans if Sans wallops him hard enough.)

Ten minutes on from the feeling, they can’t help noticing that Sans is strangely off-kilter as he goes about his usual routine. And Gaster, too, seems tense and concerned, staring off into the distance like it might bite him.

It takes wondering what, exactly, could have them so obviously concerned for them to go back in their thoughts and realize that what they felt wasn’t a Reset.

Sans, they have found, is abnormally sensitive to shifts in the timeline. Even if he doesn’t ever remember Resets, he always seems to know when one happened, like a sixth sense. Could be a Judge thing, maybe. They’re not sure.

Whatever just happened wasn’t a Reset, but Sans felt it too, and obviously so did Gaster.

With a start, they realize what just happened. It all but smacks them in the face, and all of their scattered thoughts finally coalesce into one single, coherent and urgent thought: I need to get to the Ruins right now.

They meet Gaster’s eyes. They’re not sure when he turned his head to look at them.

They sign, a little too sharply, ‘HAVE TO GO’.

Gaster gives them a characteristically slow and jerky nod. The shaky construct he uses to speak forms only one sign: ‘GO’.

They go.

Being incorporeal makes these things easier, at least, since they can just phase through walls at will, but the hustle is still important. Unlike Sans, they can’t just teleport, so they have to fling themself through the wall of the house and half-float, half-run all the way to the Ruins, then up through their Mom’s house, and across the Ruins to the bottom of the Pit.

It’s been over a quarter of a century since the last human child fell into the Underground, and Chara was starting to think there might not ever be another one.

And if there really is another one, then they have to go and help them. This is, possibly, the second-worst possible time in history for a human child to fall down here. The political situation is dire, their father is desperate and so are so many others down here, they only need one more soul to escape. One more unlucky kid.

Even if Chara can’t actually help them, they can still try to guide the poor fool.

The fact that it accomplishes approximately nothing has never stopped them from trying before.

When they finally reach the little flower patch beneath the Pit, they find a human child in stripes face-down in the flowers, brown hair askew around them and limbs at odd angles. They can’t help an instinctual, sympathetic wince – emotions might be difficult for them, but they distinctly remember how much pain they were in when they woke up down here, and they don’t envy the pain this child will no doubt feel as a result of that.

(They remember being surprised that they woke up at all, before they got mad.)

(They had wholly intended to kill themself when they went up the mountain. The fact they ended up tripping changes nothing about their initial intent.)

(They were furious when reality set in and they realized that they’d survived.)

(It took a long time for that fury to settle. Asriel helped with that, even if he didn’t know it. Between him, Lorone, Mom, Dad, and Gaster, they’d finally felt loved and understood again in a way they hadn’t since their birth mother died.)

They wonder, as they look at this child, if they fell on purpose or on accident. It’s varied between the other fallen humans, certainly. Some took one wrong misstep while hiking, some jumped in on a dare, and some had been like Chara.

No way of knowing, yet, and admittedly the kid’s not likely to move for a while, so Chara just sits down in the flower pile and waits.

And waits.

The sun slowly rises, early morning light filtering down onto the flower patch. The kid’s chest steadily rises and falls.

The sun rises further.

Mid-morning, the child finally stirs at last.

They groan, cracked and shaking, and push themself up on trembling arms, sitting back on their knees when they manage to get mostly upright.

For a moment, the child only looks around in slow, exhausted and confused sweeps of their sleepily lidded eyes.

Gradually, reality seems to dawn on them. They blink. Blink again. Blink a third time. They very, very slowly tip their head back to look up at the yawning maw of the Pit far above them. Their face pales.

Then, like a switch has flipped, they grin.

They laugh, silent, but hard enough to shake their shoulders, and let themself flop backwards into the flowers. It can’t possibly be comfortable, their legs still bent beneath them like that, but they don’t seem to care about the discomfort of the position. It doesn’t even seem to register to them.

After a moment, they stop laughing and tip their head to the side to look at the flowers.

They mouth something, as if in wonderment, although Chara doesn’t quite catch what it is, and start laughing again.

As they heave themself back into an upright position on their knees, again an uncomfortable-looking set of movements that they don’t even flinch about, they gently pluck up just one of the flowers. They bring it close to their face, utterly delighted and fascinated as they examine it, turning it around and around in their fingers.

All Chara can do is watch them, unsure what, exactly, they’re doing.

Yes, okay, they’re examining a golden flower, but Chara isn’t sure why they’re so fascinated. Those things will grow anywhere. Drop one seed after it gets stuck to your sweater and you’ll have a field of them in no time. They’re surprisingly low maintenance, aside from needing lots of water.

They want to ask, but there’s literally no point. No one has ever been able to hear them before, or see them so they can sign. That’s not likely to change now.

The kid’s mouth opens again, and their voice is small, dry, and cracked like Chara’s gets when they go a while without speaking when they say, with a deep delight, “Helianthus aster. But these went extinct, like, a hundred years ago!”

Chara blinks.

Alright, so they’re a plant nut. Good to know. Flowey is going to love that.

More concerningly, what do they mean golden flowers went extinct? Those things will grow literally anywhere. They’re the weed of the aster family, sturdy and concrete-loving as a dandelion. Chara watched their mother grow something like six of them in a planter box outside their apartment with the cheapest and least nutrient-rich soil available at the dollar store while her other plants languished until she got a better potting soil during tax season.

That’s…

Odd, to say the least.

In any case, they choose to focus on the ‘plant nut’ part instead. It’d be funny to watch them try to puzzle out his taxonomy.

They muffle a snort into their hand, although there’s no reason to when no one can hear them anyway. Force of habit that not even a hundred years of ghost-hood can break them of. They slowly get to their feet as they continue watching the kid – they’ll probably get up soon, head deeper into the Underground. Even if not of their own accord, they know that Mom still comes out this way to check for fallen humans, so she’ll probably collect them at some point.

… Looks like the kid is going to find her, first, though.

They stand, brushing off their pants and sweater, then mussing their hair. They don’t quite get all the seeds off of their clothes, but they seem to get most of them out of their hair, and the remnants don’t really seem to bother them. Chara watches them stoop, tuck the plucked flower back into the flower bed between a couple of less lively-looking flowers, and then pick their way out of the patch.

Look at them, ensuring that one becomes nutrients for the others and trying not to damage the rest.

Definitely a plant nut.

The extra care isn’t necessary, golden flowers are hardy little bastards, but if they’ve never seen one in person then of course they wouldn’t know that.

They follow along at the kid’s heels as they curiously wander the room before proceeding to the next. Their first few steps outside the flower patch are halting, careful, and Chara catches what looks like a pained wince before they rub at their rear with a sigh and then seem to decide to ignore any lingering aches and pains. They also pick up a stick they find near the flowers, giving it a couple of swings like they’re wielding a sword and laughing to themself.

Tellingly, they take the stick with them.

The kid doesn’t make it very far into the next room before Flowey is bursting up out of the ground in front of them, to their clear surprise.

He pays Chara no mind – not unusual, they’re not sure if he can see them or not –, but there’s something like recognition in his beady black eyes as he greets the newcomer to the Underground.

Sans is a master of smiling to cover his intent.

Flowey is too.

But Chara knows them both, and they can see through Flowey’s friendly grin like it’s made of little more than decorative lace. They know that he’s going to try and kill the kid before he even does it.

One of his bullets (sorry, “friendliness pellets”, stars what a nerd he is) only barely cuts the newcomer’s cheek beneath their eye before they jerk clumsily out of the way of the others. They catch onto the ruse in no time at all, looking first surprised, then annoyed, then resigned.

For as mad as they were for a second, Flowey is angrier. He tries again, and the kid dodges every one of his bullets.

Chara tenses when he surrounds them with attacks, slowly closing in.

There’s nothing they can do.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Emotions are hard, they don’t feel as many of them as they should anymore, but the hopeless, pointless protective rage they feel for a second is powerful.

Thankfully, Mom shows up at pretty much the exact moment that the kid seems to realize they’re about to get brutally murdered by a plant. She apparently has zero issue at all nailing him with a fireball to get him to leave, which is new, but thankfully works.

Chara sags in relief out of instinct, tension draining from them. There’s no real relief, but the release of tension is as good as it gets for them these days.

They can’t even imagine how insulted they would have felt, personally, if they’d survived the drop only to get murdered twenty seconds later.

Sure, they’d wanted to die and all, but they’d have gone to the afterlife mad as hell under those circumstances.

Chara looks at the kid, half-expecting that Flowey’s nonsense will have dropped them into fight-or-flight and they’ll try to hit Mom with that stick they’re clutching, but they don’t.

They just eye her warily as she introduces herself. When she beckons for them to follow her through the Ruins, they do so without a word. They don’t attack her while her back is turned, but they also don’t let go of the stick, and every sudden move she makes makes them wince like they’re expecting to be hit.

Chara can’t help a slow-welling feeling of anger.

Not because they think that the kid will fight their Mom, no, because under the circumstances Chara would understand the hostility entirely. They don’t know Mom like Chara does, they can’t possibly know that she’s telling the truth about wanting to help. Can’t possibly know she wants to keep them and keep them safe.

No, they’re angry because this kid seems used to this feeling of being in danger. There’s a resignation in their posture even when they flinch, the hallmark of a kid who is very well-acquainted with being struck.

Chara really, really hates adult humans. Kids like this one, kids like Chara, are a lot of the reason why. There may or may not be a few good ones out there, somewhere, but they’ve never personally met an adult human who didn’t deserve, at minimum, a broken fucking nose for their behavior.

This is a pretty good reminder of why they feel that way.

(Okay, so they’ve met a couple of adult humans who weren’t awful. They remember their birth parents, how both of them had been kind all the way down to their marrow, before they died. Their mother, especially – she made a conscious decision every single day of her life to be kind, to care about the world and the people in it no matter how badly she was hurting. She was a better person than Chara.)

(That’s not surprising.)

And, yeah, sure, they’ve been down here long enough to know that there are probably just as many awful adult monsters as there are adult humans. But they’ve met far more genuinely kind monsters in their life than they ever met even passably decent humans.

Monsters were always the ones to welcome them without judgement, treat them like they mattered, and not call them a spoiled little boy who just wanted to be special and different. Monsters helped them shape their identity in a way that didn’t feel wrong. Monsters called them a them without even needing to be asked to.

Humans always had some big honking opinions about that. About their mother referring to them as her child, not her son. Humans had disappointed and hurt them and belittled them at every turn – worse than that, they’d insulted Chara’s mother even after she was dead.

(Chara’s always heard that the good die young. They guess their mom and Asriel are pretty good examples of that.)

(Mom wasn’t even thirty yet. Asriel was barely 12.)

Mom is careful, as she leads the kid through the Ruins. She explains the purpose of puzzles, how to solve them. She must remember what it was like to have to reckon with Chara’s touch repulsion, too, because she always asks or warns the kid before she touches them.

As they walk, Chara gets to watch the kid’s posture slowly loosen, the tension bleeding out of them by fits and starts.

By the time she gets around to trying to teach the kid how to avoid fighting, they’ve even stopped holding the stick so tightly and flinching every time she moves too quickly.

Chara has to stifle a laugh, though, when she gets around to it. The kid just looks so utterly bewildered by the instruction of ‘try talking to the dummy’. Chara remembers what that was like, too. It felt so silly, even though they’d learned by talking to Dad instead of a dummy – although they guess he counts as a dummy, too, albeit a colloquial one rather than a literal one.

They’d been half tempted to attack him just to show how dumb they thought it was, but they’d given it a try anyway.

The kid hasn’t spoken a word to Mom yet, and Chara is starting to think they won’t for a while. After all, outside of them yelling for help when they fell, they hadn’t said a word to anyone for months. They were perfectly capable of it, it was just…

Well, they were stubborn, is the thing, and they were angry. They didn’t think they could speak wisely if they opened their mouth, so they just didn’t, and everyone sort of left the matter alone except for Gaster, who had offered to teach them to speak Hands.

It’s hard telling what, if anything, this kid’s issues with talking are.

Based on how their voice sounded earlier, though, Chara would guess they just don’t talk much.

The kid’s hands lift, slowly, as they throw a few slightly skeptical and uncertain looks at Mom.

They wave, haltingly, at the dummy. Then their hands shape a slow sequence of signs Chara doesn’t recognize.

American Sign Language, probably, they guess. They only ever learned a few signs, themself. They forgot most of them ages before they ever died.

Mom looks pleased with the kid’s efforts.

For the rest of the time that the kid follows her, she carefully teaches them a few signs in Hands. Just the basics, really, the important stuff that other monsters are the most likely to know or at least recognize as an attempt to communicate. ‘Hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘spare’, ‘yes’, and ‘no’.

The kid looks somewhere between baffled and hopeful as they copy the signs until they’re executing them perfectly.

Even when Mom isn’t looking at them, they keep repeating the signs with their hands, a slow smile blooming on their face.

Chara isn’t entirely certain how widespread Hands is, these days, but they’re pretty sure most people at least recognize signs enough to offer other methods of communication. Most people in Snowdin at least seem to understand a few signs, but that might be more to do with Sans sometimes signing while he’s talking than it does with them actually having learned to speak in Hands.

Eventually, Mom leaves the kid to wait for her to come back. You know, after testing their independence, which doesn’t seem to faze the kid whatsoever.

Or, well, the independence test doesn’t faze them.

When she asks them to wait right here for her, and that she’ll be back, Chara watches a flicker of resignation and distrust cross their face before it’s just as quickly banished behind a blank expression.

And then they wait.

Well, sort of.

For a little while they just meander the room they were left in, examining the walls and the floor and the pillars. Particularly the pillar that Mom hid behind. They swing the stick around a little, pantomiming a sword fight with no one, dramatically pretending to be slain by their invisible enemy, complete with an over-the-top death pose.

Eventually, though, they seem to get bored.

They pace the length of the room a few times, then huff, roll their eyes, and exit the room, heading deeper into the Ruins.

Admittedly, Chara expects them not to spend any effort trying to talk their way out of fights now that Mom isn’t watching, or lingering close enough to stop an encounter like she did the first couple of times. Honestly, it would make complete sense if the kid were to panic and fight back the first time a Froggit tries to fight them without Mom around.

But…

They don’t.

Chara sees them consider it, clutching at the stick like they want to swing it, but they don’t. They do use it to bat away a couple of flies the Froggits throw at them, but they never try to hit any of the monsters. They just sign one or two words in Hands, or some things in sign, until the monsters see fit to accept that their conditions for mercy have been met.

The kid steadfastly spares every monster they come across.

Chara feels…

Relieved, they think?

It’s difficult to name some of their own emotions, particularly the positive ones, but they’re pretty sure they’re relieved.

On some level, they also know that they appreciate just how little the kid seems to want to hurt anyone. They don’t have any EXP to their name at all. By the looks of things, they aren’t interested in earning any, either.

Obviously, Chara isn’t a judge. Humans can’t be, for one thing. But if they were to try their hand at a pseudo-Judgement, they’d say that this kid is used to violence, but has probably never once hit back when they got hurt before. They’re wary and untrusting of strangers, but they warm up quickly when shown kindness, and they deal that kindness back in spades.

… If they leave the Ruins, as all of their predecessors eventually have…

Well, Chara has a feeling that will change.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s also unavoidable in the current political climate of the Underground.

The last human to fall came right after Lorone died, almost 30 years ago now, and, well… People were hostile enough back then. They’ll have only gotten more desperate, more hostile, over the last three decades. They’re so, so close to getting out. Just one more human soul and they’ll be free.

Folks in the Ruins, who have been trapped in here for generations and don’t even know what the rest of the Underground is like… They’re nice enough. They go through life never even considering an escape, because they like it here. It’s enough for them. It’s their home, and no news from the rest of the Underground reaches them here. Eventually, they’d get used to the kid. They’d start fighting them playfully, just a little game to pass the time.

Monsters love a good playfight.

(So does Chara.)

(Or, well, they did. When they were alive. When they could participate.)

… If the kid isn’t willing to kill to stay alive, or at least hit back when someone hits them, they…

They won’t make it past Snowdin. They’ll be just like every other staunch pacifist to pass through the Underground: either they will make an exception to save their own life, or they’ll die.

But, of course, all of that is only if the kid decides to leave. There’s no guarantee they will. It’s possible they’ll decide to stick around. That they’ll decide to let Mom adopt them, keep them safe, keep them happy until they pass on of natural causes some 80 or 90 years from now.

It just isn’t likely.

Statistics certainly aren’t on their side.

(Statistics. Ha. They’ve been spending too much time with Gaster and Sans, they think.)

(Oh well.)

(There are worse things.)

It takes the kid a while to catch up with Mom, and by the time they do find their way to her, they’re clearly exhausted. It’s been a long day already, by then, or at least it feels like it has been to Chara. They can only imagine how the kid must feel, what with having to walk all that way, dodge all those attacks, and do all that backtracking to the Spider Bake Sale to buy donuts and cider.

Pretty much as soon as they’re led to their new room the kid flops into the bed and promptly falls right to sleep. Chara snorts. It took them all of four seconds to pass out entirely, which is kind of impressive. Even Sans at his most stoned and exhausted can’t manage that.

They sit down on the edge of the bed, watching the kid for a little while. They reach out, after a few minutes, instinctively moving to tuck a stray strand of hair back into place like they would have with Asriel, and don’t quite manage to stop short before touching the kid.

It’s a moment of utter vapor-lock for them when they make contact.

They reel back, of course, snatching their hand back and tucking it to their chest. No one but Gaster has been able to touch them in decades. No one but Gaster has felt solid in even longer than that. What in the…?

They try again, slowly.

… Sure enough, they can feel the hair beneath their fingers, slightly brittle strands of brown hair that are warm to the touch. When they try to comb the stray strand back into place, staring in wonderment, it moves.

Their fingers brush the kid’s ear, barely touching, and something in their chest aches and starts to resonate, humming at a frequency they can’t hear so much as feel.

The kid shifts in their sleep.

Chara stares, hand frozen, as they realize that they suddenly just know that the kid’s name is Frisk. Even without checking them, they suddenly just know that Frisk is, summarily, utterly fucking harmless. 0AT. 0DF. And only 20HP…

Such a narrow margin for error.

How in the world have they survived the fights they’ve been in already? Even the average Froggit could do a lot more than just a measly 20HP worth of damage in a fight.

They’re seized by a protective instinct, one they haven’t felt since…

Well, actually, they’re not certain they even felt this protective over Asriel, if they’re honest. They hadn’t needed to. He was a crybaby, sure, but even he had more than just 20HP, and he actually had some DF and AT to his name. He could defend himself just fine without Chara’s help, although he never complained if they did step in.

Another thing occurs to them, then: Frisk’s soul is red, and that means they share a trait.

Chara can’t help wondering if that’s the only thing they share – if, maybe, just maybe, Frisk has gotten their little hands on the Reset button.

… It’d certainly make the way their empty chest is resonating make more sense. Their mother always told them that, once upon a time, humans believed that possessions happened when a ghost whose soul shared a living person’s trait took an interest in them.

(She’d sighed, as she was telling that story to them a few months before she died. She’d admitted, very quietly, that she wishes she and their father had shared a trait, because then maybe she’d still be able to feel him there with her.)

Well, they have no interest in possessing this kid, but if having the same trait has somehow linked them like this…

Maybe they can be of some assistance to them, after all.

Slowly, they start to stroke the kid—Frisk’s hair. Feeling the split ends, the strands that are more brittle than others. It’s not well taken care of, they don’t think. It’s brushed and clean, yes, but it’s so dry.

Mom’s shampoo will help with that. It had helped with Chara’s hair, after all.

They stay there, petting Frisk’s head, until Mom eases the door open just a little. Seeing the room dark, and Frisk sleeping like the dead, they watch her face go soft and affectionate, but deeply pained. It occurs to them just how much Frisk must resemble them, in the dark.

… Poor Mom.

They stay perfectly still, not daring to move.

She can’t see them, they know. They’ve tried to be seen by her, once or twice. It never works. Her eyes never linger on them. But tonight they freeze like a deer in the headlights, staring at her as she slowly enters. Part of them prays she won’t suddenly see them, even though being seen and acknowledged by a living person has been one of the only things they’ve wanted since Asriel died.

Mom leaves a slice of pie for Frisk, likely anticipating them waking up in the middle of the night and being hungry. She only lingers a moment, watching them sleep, before quietly leaving.

Frisk sleeps through the night, though, only stirring in the small hours of the morning. Chara keeps vigil over them all night, the same way they’ve done for Sans for the last half-decade of his life. They can’t help worrying over Frisk almost as much as they do over Sans, although not necessarily for the same reasons.

They just…

They worry that Frisk is going to get themself hurt, especially if they try to leave the Ruins.

When they wake, Chara slips off the bed and steps away. They’re so used to being neither seen nor felt that they don’t think anything of it until Frisk jolts at the feeling of the bed moving at their back.

Frisk shoots upright, turning to look around the room.

Not scared, exactly, but clearly startled.

Chara watches helplessly.

Frisk’s eyes land on them, linger on them. Not like they’re looking through them, but like they can see them.

Then, slowly, Frisk looks away to examine the room instead. They look steadily more confused than startled, brows starting to furrow. They sign something, more to themself than to Chara, and Chara only faintly has any recollection of the sign. They remember their mother teaching it to them – thumb beneath the chin, pointer finger up, others folded down, and then crooking the pointer finger. The expression is characteristic of a question, too, inquisitive and a little exaggerated.

That one is…

… “Who”, they think.

Then Frisk points at them, a fluent and careful motion.

‘Who are you’, Chara thinks they’re asking.

“… Who am I?” They ask, to be sure. Frisk seems surprised, but perks up and nods. Okay, so they can hear them, or at least read their lips – that’s good to know. “… My name is Chara. And, um, in Hands, you sign that like this.”

They demonstrate the sign for ‘who’. Thankfully, pointing at the subject of your question is a shared feature.

Frisk lights up like a kid at Gyftmas, repeating the sign to themself a few times.

Chara can’t help smiling.

Thankfully, the kid doesn’t seem too creeped out by their smile.

“Yes, excellent. That was perfect.” They tell them, when they ask their question again, this time in Hands. Gaster would have been proud of the speed at which they picked it up. Chara settles for trying to be proud on his behalf.

Frisk beams, then looks thoughtful.

They make a few signs with their hand, but not like they’re trying to say something to Chara directly. More like they’re thinking ‘out loud’. They repeat the sequence of signs. Then, more sure, they point at Chara and repeat the signs one more time.

… Fingerspelling, Chara realizes. ‘C-H-A-R-A’.

Frankly, they’re just impressed that Frisk spelled their name right on the first try like that. People always used to miss the ‘h’.

“Correct.” They tell them. Frisk grins triumphantly, then frowns again. “Don’t worry. I know your name already.”

Frisk looks relieved and wary simultaneously.

(Asriel went out of his way to learn a little human sign from them, back when they first came here. He also learned Hands with them so they wouldn’t have to do it alone. He made a constant, concerted effort to make them feel understood in whatever language they were using.)

Somewhat hesitant, they add, “Perhaps… You might remind me how to spell that in sign? I tend to forget which signs are Hands and which aren’t.”

Frisk seems pleased as they fingerspell their own name.

Chara repeats the symbols, relaxing as the motion starts to jog their memory.

“Thank you.” They say, “It’s been a long time since I used those signs, I apologize. I was never very good at it to begin with.”

Frisk stifles a laugh. They sign something, stop, give them an apologetic look, and use one finger to ‘write’ in the air in front of them. ‘H-A-R-D’.

“It is a little difficult, yes.” Chara agrees, stifling a laugh of their own. “In any case, you ought to get up and eat. You must be famished. Mom left some pie for you, just there.”

Frisk ends up gladly helping themself to the pie. They don’t ask any follow-up questions about Chara, either because they can’t figure out how to ask or because they just don’t have any, and eventually they venture out to explore the house a bit. Chara follows indulgently.

They look somewhere between confused and concerned, later, when they realize Mom can’t see Chara. Chara just gives them a lazy, ‘what can you do’ shrug that Sans would no doubt have been proud of.

There’s no point getting into that story, just yet. Chara doesn’t really want to talk about it, anyhow.

Frisk lets the matter lie.

For the next few days, they explore the Ruins, buy lots of spider donuts and cider, and otherwise get used to the Underground in fits and starts. They really seem to like Mom, Chara thinks, and as she teaches them a little bit more Hands at a time, they start to seem more confident.

It’s not until they wander into the basement that Mom seems to get stressed out. She’s quick to escort them back out before they reach the door. For the most part, Frisk lets that matter lie as well, but they do seem confused and a little suspicious about it.

That night, they sit up in bed instead of falling right to sleep. Mom’s taught them just enough Hands that they can string together a few sentences, and Chara’s been quietly thrilled by how quickly they’ve picked up on it.

But the serious expression on Frisk’s face makes them uneasy, tonight.

As soon as they seem sure that Chara is paying attention, they don’t sign anything. They just point, very firmly, down beneath their feet, expression an obvious indication they’re asking something.

It isn’t hard to figure out that they’re asking what’s in the basement.

Chara sighs. “… The door out of the Ruins.” They answer, “It’s at the very end of the hall, leads out into the rest of the Underground. You really, really shouldn’t go through it.”

Frisk blinks. Looking mildly bewildered, they sign, ‘MORE?’.

“Yes, there’s more to the Underground than just this.” Chara confirms, “Quite a lot more, actually.”

A slow nod. Frowning, Frisk looks away for a moment. They’re clearly thinking about something.

Then, they look back and sign, ‘WAY OUT?’

Chara cringes instinctively. They sigh heavily, far heavier than the first one had been, and nod. There is a way out, and it is past the Ruins door.

Before Frisk can reply, they say, firmly, “It’s not worth your life, Frisk. You’ll die if you go out there. Monsters are kinder than humans are, but they’re desperate and they’re afraid. That only gets worse the closer you get to New Home.”

Frisk looks doubtful, but this matter, too, they seem to decide to leave alone.

Chara doesn’t trust it for a second.

They’re right not to, of course – Frisk tries to leave the very next morning. Mom stops them, of course, but when they pointedly ask her how to get out and if they can return to the Surface, all her composure seems to strain under the pressure.

It’s not a surprise she tries to trap them there. A breakdown like that has been a long, long time coming for her.

She’s lost eight of her children. She can’t bear the thought of losing a ninth.

Frisk doesn’t seem surprised, either, is the thing. They look Determined, yes, but not like this was an unexpected turn of events.

Mom tells them to fight her, to prove they can make it out there, past the Ruins door.

Chara doesn’t interfere. They just stand watch and keep their thoughts to themself.

Frisk never once raises their silly little stick to hit Mom. They never choose to fight her, they just steadfastly dodge as many of her attacks as they can, grit their teeth through the pain of the ones they can’t dodge. They don’t look betrayed or upset. Every time an attack lands, they don’t even look resigned to the pain.

Over and over, they sign to her that they aren’t going to fight her. After a certain point, they just sign ‘spare’. Over and over and over.

Mom resorts to bargaining, eventually. Offering them safety and a place with her if they just go back upstairs and never try to go through the door. She tells them they’ll die if they leave.

Finally, though, the fight concludes with Frisk giving her a hug. They tell her they’ll be alright, and thank her for caring.

They don’t look happy, exactly, when they exit the Ruins, but they don’t let it stop them.

Chara follows. Of course they do.

Subtly, Frisk signs to them, ‘ANGRY?’

Chara sighs. “… No, Frisk, I’m not angry with you.”

Frisk glances over their shoulder. Their eyes don’t seem to land on them even though they’re right next to them. Something like fear and concern colors their expression, and Chara feels their own stomach sink. Can… Frisk not hear them? Not see them?

“I’m right here.” They say, a little bit strained.

Frisk’s head snaps back around to where they are, but their eyes still don’t seem to be able to find them. So they can hear them, just not see them.

That’s a workable situation. Chara can handle that.

“Keep walking, okay? You’ll… You’ll get to Snowdin eventually. Try not to get brutally murdered. I’ll with you the whole time.”

Frisk stares hard into the space where they’re standing, like they’re trying to see them by sheer force of will, but eventually they nod, and they start walking again.

Please, please let Sans have enough sense to try and stop the kid before they get themself hurt.

Please.