Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The top of Mount Ebott is peaceful. The wind whistles gently past, grass sways in the breeze, the sun shines down, warming you even through the chill of the wind. It would be nice if you weren’t drenched in sweat from hiking up the damn thing.

You collapse onto the ground with an achy groan, dropping your hiking bag at your side as you cosy up against a rock. Well, cosy isn’t quite the right word, but it is cold against your sun-beaten back, so it’s better than nothing. You turn to look at the view from up there, the grassy plains surrounding the mountain, the winding path you’ve just made your way up. You let out a long whistle as you eye how far up you are. It’s not a trail for the weak, that’s for sure. 

You’ve been hiking for years, usually simpler trails than this, but you’ve had your fair share of rough terrain. This was more annoying than any of them though. The ground was loosely packed from the lack of footfall and left you slipping on the inclines and choking on kicked up dust the whole way up. Next to no one hikes this trail because of centuries old superstition; some people still believe all that toss about monsters and magic . You like a bit of whimsy in your life, but believing in the things that go bump in the night is just a bit far, in your opinion. Even one of your friends is in on it.

“Mount Ebott? ” she had repeated, aghast. “You know people go missing up that way, right? You’ll get snatched! By, by a–”

“By nothing,” you assured. “You don’t seriously believe all that, do you?”

“But there’s tapestries, and folklore, and—!”

“Do you also think pirates actually found the Kraken in the middle ages, just because they wrote ‘ Here there be dragons ’ on their maps?”

She had huffed at you and the conversation moved on, but not before she warned you: “Well, when you get eaten by monsters, don’t say I didn’t tell you so!”

Now, you turn to look at the pit in the centre of the summit, and you can’t help but wonder if the myths were based in any truth.

Everyone knows the story of The Banishing, but there aren’t many people today who still believe it. Sure, there’s the artwork, and the word of mouth, but when the legend ends with ‘and then we destroyed all records of monsters from history and never spoke of them again’, it’s a bit hard for the idea to seem believable. There’s no concrete evidence in museums, nor in any specialist collections, there is only the coincidentally similar art from around the world. Which isn’t enough to convince most people. Like how just because there are versions of werewolves and vampires in every culture, that doesn’t suddenly make them real . They were just folktales of cannibals and wolves and unsolved murders.

Yet, as you creep closer, peering over the edge of the pit, a shiver runs up your spine. The wind seems to pull you in, dragging you down towards the opening. The light doesn’t reach far into the cavern; even with the sun almost directly overhead, you can’t see beyond a few meters. You find a stone and drop it in — it falls for a few silent seconds before you hear the dull thud of it landing.

You take a step back, only just realising how close to the drop you had gotten, toes hanging over the edge, barely even aware you had stopped breathing.

With an inhale through your teeth, you shake off the nerves that had crept their way under your skin and turn around to finally sit down and enjoy the snacks you had packed, but there’s someone in the way. You yelp as you nearly walk right into them, narrowly missing the short figure in front of you. They’re a child, staring up at you through a choppy fringe, absolutely swimming in their striped jumper. You can’t read the emotions on their chubby face, but they definitely don’t look happy. How the hell did they even get up here?

“Hi,” you say, trying to recover from the shock. You crouch down to their level, sitting on your heels. “Are you alright? This isn’t really a place for kids, you know.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the child says. They turn over the stick clutched in their tiny hand, angling it up at you. An old bandage clings to their knee, slowly sloughing off at one corner.

“You’re not supposed to be here either, kid,” you retaliate. “Why don’t I help you get down the mountain, huh?”

The child stares at you for a few moments longer, lips twitching into a small frown. You try your best to keep the smile on your face; maybe they’re just scared.

“C’mon, kiddo, why don’t I get you back to your parents,” you say, looking over their shoulder to see if anyone is accompanying them. “What’s your name? Do you live in the town by the mountain? I can help you back down.”

The child stares, and stares, and stares. Then two tiny hands reel back and push you by the shoulders.

For a moment, you’re weightless. You’re all prepared to land on your ass and give this kid an earful, but you don’t land. You keep falling, tipping backwards as you realise that you’re falling into the pit. The most you can let out is a strangled cry before your voice freezes up, limbs flailing, the wind whipping past you as the ledge grows further and further away.

The kid shuffles up to the edge, hands on their knees to lean over, and they watch you fall. The little shit tilts their head just before they’re too far away to see, as you plummet into the darkness. 

For the seconds that you fall, every nerve lights up with anger. How dare this kid do this to you? What did you do, huh? You offered them so politely to help them back down the mountain, you were nothing but nice. And how do they thank you? By killing you. Pushing you into a mountain like some medieval sacrifice.

It shifts into panic as you realise you are going to die and you don’t want to die . Death was not something you considered too terribly often — of course, everyone has their moments, but yours were not frequent. You never thought you’d have to consider that you truly do not want to die. Yet, here it comes. All because you somehow annoyed some little kid too much. 

The speck of pink and purple stripes is the last thing you see, and a thick crrrunch is the last thing you hear, before it all goes black.

The first thing that crosses your mind as you wake up, head spinning and every inch of you screaming in pain, is: ‘God dammit. I’ve become a statistic.’

The next thing is that your leg is definitely broken. And maybe your spine. With an audible creak and a groan, you move your head to the side, discovering that your rucksack has been tossed in after you, landing just a few feet away. Not a broken spine then. At least that’s good. Well, is it good? You’re stuck in a hole in the middle of a mountain in a country you don’t live in and you have no way out. Even if your leg wasn’t broken, the walls are too smooth to climb, you think — your eyes keep blurring and unblurring as you try to look around, so you can’t be too sure — and it’s definitely too tall to climb without equipment. 

So, you lie here. There’s something soft underneath you — and that stupid rock you dropped digging into your back — but it surely couldn’t have been enough to break your fall. How are you still alive? Are you still alive? Is this some weird afterlife? Hell? Limbo?

Your thoughts are interrupted by an odd rumbling sound, and a grunt.

“What the hell is taking so long?” a voice on your right asks. You let your head flop back onto its side and search for the source of the complaining. Something yellow and citrusy-smelling gets into your right eye so you close it, squeezing it shut against the dusty pollen that tries to get in. Flowers. You’ve landed on a bed of golden flowers. And across from you, another one stands tall and proud. 

Except, this one has a face.

“What the fuck,” is what you try to say, but all that comes out is a wet gargle, coppery blood spitting out onto the petals. The face flower recoils. You decide that you either have the most severe concussion known to man, or you are completely and utterly dead.

“You’re not,” the flower starts, looking you up and down. It has a southern accent. The face flower, a flower with a face, sounds like it’s from Texas. You’re leaning more towards the concussion option, if only to spare yourself from the idea that this is what comes after death. “I need to get… You stay there!”

The flower gives you a scrunched up, angry look, face puckered like a cat’s arsehole, and it disappears into the ground. Right. Cool. You nestle back into the flowers, breathing through the pain in your leg — and ribs, and head, and organs, etc. — and you wait to die.

It’s not the worst place to die, really. The flower bed is at least somewhat comfortable, and the view isn’t too bad. The rocks are an odd, dull purple, reaching up towards the warm sunlight that paints the walls orange. It was midday when you fell in. Have you been down here until sunset? Is it dawn? It’s pretty enough for you to not really care. The broken leg still sucks, though. You try to lift your head, spine screaming in protest, and you get a quick look of your own fibula before you flop back down. The golden flowers are stained with dark red, soaking into the delicate petals your mangled limb is crushing. Shame. They’re quite nice flowers. 

You try to go back to looking up at the cave entrance, but your eyes have started to blur again — to darken at the edges. As your vision splits into two, then three, a figure moves to stand over you. You can’t make out much of them. Pale skin, dark hair, yellow and green stripes. A necklace dangles in your face as they tilt their head. Everything fades to black for a moment, and when your eyes snap back open, the figure is gone.

You’re not sure how long passes before the flower comes back, only that the cave has gotten significantly darker (it was sun set then). The flower pops out of the ground with a spray of dirt and gravel, looking at you, then somewhere behind your head. Another person leans over you, and you find that they’re not a person at all.

A goat. A giant goat in a purple dress shuffles around, examining your broken body, a large paw covering her mouth in shock.

“Oh, dear,” she says, and her voice is smooth and gentle. She has one of those posh Scottish accents that verges on English sometimes. Motherly. Like she might ask to read to you, any minute now. “Oh, my child, what a terrible fall you’ve had. Thank you for bringing me to them, Flowey.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Flowey grunts. The woman’s face turns stern.

“You may go now,” she instructs. The dirt rustles and you assume Flowey takes his leave. The lady — lady feels more appropriate of a word — kneels down and brushes your sweat matted hair from your forehead with one dull claw.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she coos, muffled by the rising ringing in your ears. “I’ll heal your leg for you…”

You vaguely nod, eyes slipping shut, and for a moment, the ringing reaches a peak, deafening you to whatever she says next. Your eyes snap back open as the tone finishes.

A rush of adrenaline flows through you. There is no goat lady. No talking flower. No pale figure. It’s a concussion. It has to be. Somehow, you are going to die of this concussion, or blood loss from your leg, and all this weirdness and pain will be over. Because no one is coming to help you, no matter how many goats you hallucinate. 

You see the pale one again. You squeeze your eyes shut, and feel tears drip down your temples. You hear footsteps approach and feel a spray of dirt.

“Oh, dear,” a voice says. You peel your eyes back open. The lady is back. You want to tell the vision to go away, that you’ve had enough of this torment, but getting your vocal cords to work seems to be a losing battle. You only manage a few wet chokes. “Oh, my child, what a terrible fall you’ve had. Thank you for bringing me to them, Flowey.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Flowey says, and he disappears without further prompting. At least the hallucinations are picking up speed now. 

“Oh, you poor thing,” she says, again brushing your hair back from your forehead. “I’ll heal your leg for you, This may feel a bit… unpleasant, at first.”

You don’t try to watch what she does, the pain of looking down last time is still pounding in your neck, but she moves down to kneel by your wound. 

This is when something weird happens. Maybe the weirdest part of your day so far, which is saying quite a lot. 

With a — indeed, very unpleasant — crunch, your bone snaps into place, setting itself straight. You can’t help the wail of pain you let out, your chest heaving with ragged breaths as the lady coos at you. Your hand finds the skirt of her dress and you cling to it. She lets you, petting your hand before getting back to work. 

The next part is significantly nicer. It’s a little strange, but you can feel the pain receding. Your skin stitches itself back together, muscles reform, feeling comes back to your limb. You experimentally wriggle your toes in your boot, and are surprised to find that you can. The rest of your body is still crying for help, but it’s a massive relief. You’re not sure if concussion induced, imaginary pain relief is possible, but you decide not to question it that far. The other option is, you’re dead and in the afterlife, whichever one that may be, and you don’t want to think about that one. 

The lady sets a soothing hand on your leg once she’s finished whatever it is she was doing, and places the other on your forehead. She frowns.

“I’ll need to bring you back to my home,” she says, mostly to herself. “Do not worry, my child. I will take good care of you.”

Another thing you don’t think usually happens as a result of head injuries, is beautiful goat women getting an arm under your legs and shoulders and hoisting you up into the air with ease.

She carries you through the tunnels, away from where you fell, and all the while your vision wanes in and out. You pass a set of stairs, a room with buttons on the floor, a room with switches on the wall.

Another room of buttons on the floor. Another room with switches on the wall. A training dummy. A room full of spikes.

Switches. Training dummy. Spikes. A long corridor.

A long corridor. Piles of leaves.

A long corridor. Piles of leaves. Winding paths.

Winding paths. Pillars with switches behind them. A black tree. You’re laid down in a bed.

A black tree. You’re laid down in a bed.

You’re laid down in a bed.

You’re laid down in a bed.

Your eyes open, and you are not granted the fuzziness of having just woken up. You are immediately aware that you are not in your house. You are not in your bed. And you were not hallucinating. 

(Being dead is still very much on the table.)

The room is small, the bed a little too short for your legs, and the duvet is heavy and warm. The air smells of fresh baked pastry, dim yellow light creeping in through the slightly open door. You carefully turn your head, only to find that any pain in your spine is now gone. In fact, you feel amazing. You stretch out your stiff and tired limbs, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room. Some toys sit at your left, between the bed and the wall, the wall above your head is lined with a wardrobe, a bookshelf, a teenager in a striped jumper, a lamp, and—

Your eyes dart back to the figure that had been peeking out from behind the bookshelf, only to find that they’ve disappeared. Maybe you are still seeing things.

A gentle knock on the door grabs your attention, and a white paw curls around the edge. The lady from before peers around the wood; she smiles at you, ducking under the door frame to enter the room, cupping something in her paws.

“It is good to see you awake, my child,” she says, voice soft and caring. “You seem more alert already. Are you feeling alright?”

“Am I dead?” you ask, voice raspy, as the goat kneels down next to your bed. “Who are you? Where am—”

Your voice catches and you fall into a coughing fit, turning away to hack into your elbow. The woman helps you sit up against the mountain of pillows on the bed, easing a glass of water into your hands. You mean to just take a sip, but you down the entire glass in just a few seconds. It’s like you haven’t had water in years.

“To answer your questions, little one,” the goat lady says, and you wonder if she knows you’re an adult. “You are not dead, though you did give me quite a scare. My name is Toriel, and you’re in my home.”

“What happened to me?” Toriel gently takes back the glass you’re white knuckling and sets it aside. 

“You fell into the Underground, my dear,” she explains, taking both your hands in her own. Her paw pads are warm and her fur is soft as she rubs a thumb across the back of your palm. “I have been taking care of you for a few days now. You had me quite worried, I must say.”

You don’t know what to say next, so you stay quiet. You stare down at your hands, feel the duvet cover between your fingertips, Toriel’s paws still caressing your skin. It all feels very real, yet like complete fiction at the same time. You didn’t think any of this was real . monsters, a magic war, an entire civilisation locked underground. Even most of the people who do believe in it assume that monsters, as a species, would have all died out by now.

“How do I get home?” you ask, and it tumbles out of your clumsy mouth by accident. Toriel’s face pinches, just barely, but she recovers. 

“I’m… I’m afraid you may still need more time to heal,” she admits. “My magic can only do so much. But, I can take good care of you while you’re here! Speaking of, for no reason in particular, which do you prefer? Cinnamon, or butterscotch?”

You’re so taken aback by the question that you almost forget what the original topic was. You stammer for a moment before Toriel barrels on.

“Oh, don’t tell me! It’s cinnamon, isn’t it?” She claps her hands together, smiling eagerly at you. You don’t want to ruin this for her.

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. Toriel lets out a sweet little laugh. “Yeah, cinnamon. Love it.”

“I had a feeling,” she says, a little sheepishly, standing and brushing off her dress. “When humans fall down here, strangely… I… I often feel like I already know them.”

“There have been more humans down here?” You eye the box of little shoes tucked between the bookshelf and the lamp. A tiny pair of velcro trainers, a Mary Jane, a battered set of Converse.

“It doesn’t happen often, but I always make sure to help those that do fall down,” Toriel says, making her way to the door. “Truthfully, when I first saw you, I felt… like I was seeing an old friend for the first time. Strange, is it not?”

Very strange. Maybe you should work on your escape plan. Quickly.

“Ah, well,” she sighs, shaking her head, seemingly embarrassed by the admission. “You are free to stay here and rest for as long as you like. Once you feel alright, I’d like to show you around the Ruins.”

She smiles at you, and you give a tight smile back. She closes the door with a quiet click, and you flop back down amongst the pillows. They are very nice. You bend your leg up toward you — only now noticing that you have been changed into a slightly-too-big pair of pyjamas — and pull your trouser leg up to inspect your calf. The skin is healed over with a large, but faint, scar; the pearlescent skin of a wound well healed. Poking at it results in a dull pain. You poke it again.

The door opens and you jump to pull your trouser leg back down, as if you’ve been caught doing something wrong. Toriel peers around the corner.

“You do not dislike butterscotch, do you?” she asks. “I know what your preference is, but… would you turn your nose up if you found it on your plate?”

“No, I like it too,” you assure, not wanting to disappoint. 

“Right, right, I understand,” she says, and starts to close the door. It opens an inch again for her to ask: “You do not have any allergies, do you?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” The mischievous little smile on her face says otherwise. “No reason at all!”

That night, Toriel bakes you maybe the best pie in the history of ever, and you decide you can afford to stay in the Underground for a little while longer.

In the coming days, Toriel shows you around as you adjust to using your leg again, pulling a branch from her tree for you to use as a cane. 

(You tried, a few times, to explore the downstairs of Toriel’s house, but she insisted that it was too dangerous for you to ‘play down there.’ You seriously doubt Toriel has ever seen an adult human, but you mind your business out of respect. She’s letting you live rent-free in her house and makes you dinner every night, the least you can do is not go into her basement, right?)

The Ruins are a beautiful place, and much larger than the trek to Toriel’s home had made it seem. She explains that all the monsters made a home in the Ruins — literally calling the city Home — but everyone migrated after the population grew too much. 

“Why’d you stay?” you ask, then wonder if you’re insinuating that she’s super old. She doesn’t pay it any mind. 

“I didn’t,” she sighs. “I just came back eventually. Now, it’s just me and the small amount of monsters still down here. You can see why I am so pleased to have some company, surely.”

She squeezes your hand as she guides you along, smiling sadly down at you. You squeeze back, if a little awkwardly. 

“Do you ever think about leaving?” She slows to a stop, and you let her — as if you could pull this seven foot tall woman along — shifting your weight onto your good leg. 

“Sometimes, I do.” Toriel’s eyes trace the brickwork of the walls, the cracks in the clay, the dust pooling in the corners of the rooms. The pillars are chipped and smoothed down over years, the paths are well worn and trodden. Even the carved scripture on the walls has started to fade with erosion. “I have been here for a very long time. I often wonder what it’s like, out… Well… Never mind all that. This is my home now, and I am happy with it. I hope you find it comfortable as well.”

You decide now is not the time to ask when you can leave.

Toriel does this thing where she disappears, telling you she’s off to one of her bug hunting spots, or going to find some supplies, but she never comes back with anything. She’ll come back with a gentle smile on her face, writing something down in her notebook. You’ve tried asking her what kind of things she needed to pick up, but she only tells you that she couldn’t find any, or that she already had some and simply forgot. The one thing she always comes back with, is corny knock knock jokes.

Every day, she disappears for about an hour, and comes back without a word of where she had gone. Once, you caught sight of her just as she was leaving, hurrying quietly down the stairs to her basement. You had wanted to follow her. You wanted to figure out what secrets your caretaker is keeping from you. If you’re going to be living under someone’s roof, you don’t want to be living in anxious suspicion. 

You remember how Toriel had hurried you out of the basement the first time you ventured down there, taking your hand in her firm paw, and pulling you back upstairs. You hadn’t even been aware that she could see you going down there; one moment you were alone, and the next you weren’t.

You don’t follow her. But you do keep an eye on her.

At the end of your second week in the Underground, after Toriel has warmed up some leftover snail pie — which is not nearly as bad as it sounds, much to your surprise — you tell her you’re going to go on a short walk by yourself.

“Are you sure?” she asks, setting down her book and pushing her reading glasses up to her forehead. “Do you not want help with your cane?”

“I’d like to get used to using it on my own, thanks,” you say, nodding to your makeshift cane as you try to let her down gently. In all honesty, you would just like a moment to sit and think about the situation you’ve found yourself in, alone. It’s been quite a while since you fell down here, and you’ve yet to truly have a moment of time entirely to yourself that isn’t laying in your bed in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, watching the glow-in-the-dark stars until your eyes go fuzzy.

She lets you go, telling you to call her if you need any help, and you walk around the halls of the Ruins. Now that you’re not walking with Toriel, monsters come up to greet you nervously. You can’t understand what many of them are saying, but you try to talk to them as best you can. They show off their magic, much to your amazement, each one unique, following different patterns, matching their personalities. They all seem very nice, going against much of what you’ve heard even in the mythology of monsters. All of the folklore had depicted them as dangerous, as a ruthless force needing to be stopped before they turned on humanity with their magic. But, these monsters are kind, and chatty, or too shy to even get near you. It all makes you wonder, what really happened before The Banishing?

Once your leg grows stiff, you make your way back to Toriel’s, but decide to stop by the balcony that overlooks the city of Home. You don’t think you’ll be able to make it down the stairs to the actual streets before your knee starts to creak, but you can sit on the ledge and appreciate the view. 

Even from up here, the whole place looks dusty. The buildings are slowly aging, the houses clearly not built to last. Like everyone was ready to move before they even settled down. Doors lie open, windows shattered and never repaired, pavements lined with so much dirt they’re almost white. The buildings are enormously tall and old, rising higher than the balcony you sit on. The architecture is gorgeous — at least, what you can see through all the bits falling off of it. You would love to see it before it started to crumble. It must have been full of activity and monsters, living their new lives. Trapped in a mountain… after losing a devastating war…

Maybe you’ll pass on seeing its original state.

A scuffle behind you breaks you from your thoughts. When you look over your shoulder, Flowey is there staring at you.

“Oh, hi!” you greet, smiling. Flowey starts to lower into the ground again, but you reach a hand out, spinning around where you sit, moving away from the barrier of the balcony. “Wait, I want to talk to you!”

He slowly stands up straight, shaking off the dirt from his petals. “About what?”

“I wanted to thank you,” you say. He makes a face. “For calling Toriel when you found me.”

“Oh.” Flowey avoids eye contact, shrinking down a little. He must be embarrassed. “That. Right…”

“I would’ve thanked you earlier, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.” You set your cane aside, leaning down a little to his level. “I feel like I should introduce myself properly, considering you helped save my life.”

“Well, golly!” He perks up a little, a smile gracing his features. “Why don’t I start us off, then?”

You gesture for him to go ahead, a little taken aback by the sudden can-do attitude. He clears his throat, theatrical and dramatic, a loud ah-heh-heh-hem!

“Well, howdy! My name’s Flowey, Flowey the Flower!” He barrels on before you can tell him your name. “You’ve been here a few days now, but I’d say you’re still pretty new to the Underground. Someone ought to show you how things work around here! I guess little old me will have to do. And what better way to do it than a one-on-one demonstration? Stand up, and I’ll give you a good old run down.”

As you pull yourself up with your cane, the world seems to close in on you, suddenly claustrophobic. A small glow emanates from your chest, a bright red point under your shirt. No, under your skin.

“See that?” Flowey asks. “That’s your Soul. The very culmination of your being!”

A heart shaped object rips from your chest like velcro, floating in front of you. You poke at it, and the feeling ripples through your body, radiating from your chest out to the edges of your limbs. It’s blisteringly warm, but your skin doesn’t burn.

“Your Soul starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV,” Flowey explains. Your face must be doing something, because he keeps going. “What’s LV stand for? Why, Love , of course!”

“Okay,” you shakily manage. “Yeah. Souls. Love. Uh huh…”

“You want some Love, don't you?” he asks. You don’t know if you do. “Don’t worry, I’ll share some with you!”

“Take me to dinner first,” you mutter, trying to steady your thundering heart. 

“Down here,” Flowey continues, either not having heard you, or pointedly ignoring you. A circle of what looks like sunflower seeds surrounds him. “Love is shared through… Little white… ‘friendliness pellets.’”

Flowey’s eyes shift to the side, brows lightly furrowed. He’s a bad liar. You begin to wonder just how friendly this little flower actually is.

“Are you ready? Move around! Get as many as you can!”

The ‘friendliness pellets’ move toward you, slow enough to dodge, and so you do. Your Soul follows you as you step aside. Flowey’s eye twitches, smile growing strained.

“Hey, buddy,” he grits, “you missed them. Let’s try that again, okay?”

You decide it might be best to just get whatever this is over with, then you can call Toriel, and she can sort out this little freak. The pellets spin toward you again, zoning in on you, and you reach out your hand. Your Soul takes its place at your palm, and you let the pellets hit you.

The instant they make contact, you’re flooded with a pain so terrible it buckles your knees. You cry out as you slump to the floor, Soul cowering close to your chest, cane rattling on the ground. A small bar sits underneath your Soul, mostly red with a sliver of yellow. 1/20 , it reads. Flowey laughs, rising up on his stem to tower above you.

“You idiot,” he chuckles, voice suddenly shrill and seething. You look up and are greeted to Flowey barely three inches from you. His face is grotesquely forced into a large, toothy grin, eyes whited out from what had been simple black dots. “In this world, it’s kill or be killed. Why would anyone pass up an opportunity like this!?”

“But,” you try, catching your breath. “But the monsters I met were… They were all so…”

“Only because they think big, bad Toriel is going to come chasing them off,” Flowey bites back. “The monsters still stuck in this pile of rubble are weak . Out there? You’re easy pickings.”

You try to think of something to say, some way you can call Toriel’s phone, but you can’t seem to move to check your pockets. Dirt rustles behind you.

“ Die. ”

Flowey’s shrieking laughter is all you can hear as a coarse vine pierces through your back, and erupts from your chest in a spray of cherry red blood. You strangle out a gasp, watching your Soul snap in two, then shatter. Flowey continues to laugh, his blood splattered face wild with adrenaline as the vine rips back out. You sway for a second, collapse onto your side, and you die.

—-----

“Are you sure?” Toriel asks, setting down her book and pushing her reading glasses up to her forehead. “Do you not want help with your cane?”

You blink. What just happened? You were just…

“My child, are you feeling alright?” Toriel asks, walking over to you. “You look as though you have seen a ghost! And not just that little one who visits sometimes.”

You don’t respond, even as Toriel presses a hand to your forehead. You were just on the balcony. Flowey was… and you had… Was it a dream? A nightmare? If so, how were you back in the living room? It all felt so real , so painful , how could it have…?

“I,” you start, pausing to swallow the lump in your throat. “I think I’m going to go lie down, actually.”

“That might be for the best, little one,” Toriel mutters, taking you by the elbow to guide you back to your bedroom. “Let me know if you need anything, alright?”

You nod, hands trembling as you lower yourself onto the bed. She closes the door behind her, and you listen to her shuffle off before you let out a long, exhausted breath. It can’t have been real. You were daydreaming, or you fell asleep for just a second, or maybe… You don’t know, but whatever that was, it can’t have been real. People don’t just come back from being killed like that. You rub a hand over your chest, the skin still tingling where you had been impaled. Or rather, where you imagined you had been impaled. With a rising sick feeling in your throat, you look down your shirt.

A healed over scar sits in the centre of your chest, shiny and paler than the skin surrounding it. You run your fingertips over the indent, breath picking up. It doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense. Was it magic? Is this just how the magic in the Underground works? You cover it back up, clutching at your shirt and leaning over to try and take a deep breath through your nose. It doesn’t really work. 

“What’s got you freaking out?” 

You let out a short shriek as you flinch back, looking around the room. Leaning against the door, arms crossed and letting off a dim light, is a teenager. They’re maybe fourteen, tall and lanky, and dressed in a yellow and green striped sweater vest, a golden necklace dangling around their neck. It floats vaguely over their chest, their hair moving like they’re underwater. They raise their eyebrows, giving you an impatient look.

“What?” they ask. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Who… what are…?” This has already turned into a very strange day, and you would appreciate it if more weird shit stopped happening to you. 

“I’m not a Ghost Monster, if that’s what you’re wondering,” they explain, like it’s an actual explanation of anything. They slur more than they speak, sentences spilling past their lips like one long word. One big South London Mutter. “Just a regular old dead kid.”

“And that’s, what? Better?”

“Worse, generally.” They push themself off the wall, sauntering over with all the attitude of a living teenager. They sit on the edge of your bed, right next to you, and a chill eats through your clothes, goosebumps rising on your skin. “I’m Chara.”

“Okay. Chara. Hi.” You extend a hand, then wonder if they can even shake it. They pass their own hand through yours, which does answer your question, but it sends an awful freezing sensation all the way up your arm. Pins and needles sting at your fingers, and Chara smirks as you shake out your hand.

“So, what’s your deal?” they ask, leaning back on their hands. Their weight leaves no dent on the duvet. “Did you trip and fall? Cryptid hunting? Jump in on purpose?”

“What are you talking about?” you splutter. “Like, down here?”

“Yes, into the Underground,” they say with a roll of their eyes. “Obviously.”

“Oh, um… I was pushed in,” you admit. You leave out the fact that you were pushed in by a small child. “It was pretty rude, to be honest.”

“Pushed?” Chara seems to take more interest, floating in front of you with an inquisitive hand on their chin. “By who?”

“Uh…” You want to lie. You want to lie, really bad. “Some- some kid.” Not really a lie. Your face grows hot with embarrassment. Chara squints at you. Bested by a child and being judged by a teenager. You really cannot win here.

“Interesting,” they say. “Very interesting.”

“Why’s that?” you try, but they don’t answer, instead flipping onto their back in the air, legs crossed and hands behind their head like they’re laying on a lounger. 

“Doesn’t matter now, I suppose,” they sigh, a smile settling on their face. “That’s a good thing, just so you know.”

“Getting pushed into a mountain doesn’t feel all that great,” you mutter back. Chara waves a hand. This angsty teen is the last thing you need right now. After what happened — or, didn’t happen? — with Flowey, you’d really like to just take a long nap and brush all this off as a crazy dream. Better yet, you’d like to wake up in your hotel room, before you even set off on that hike. “Listen, do you mind leaving? I just need a minute to- to process some things.”

“The fact that you’re seeing a ghost or the fact that you died?”

“The fact that I died, actually– wait, what?” You force yourself to your feet, and Chara barks a laugh. “Did- did you see that?”

“No, I was just taking a stab,” they claim, in a voice that makes it obvious that they absolutely did see, especially as they poke you in the chest on the word stab . “Don’t worry about Flowey. He just kind of does that.”

“What, are you friends with him?” you ask, unimpressed. Chara shrugs. You’re getting a bit sick of their schtick. “Listen, if you know anything about whatever happened just there, I need you to tell me.”

Chara looks you up and down, and you’re sure you look a mess. Trying to deal with the fact that you’re stuck inside a mountain and healing from your injuries makes it a little hard to keep up appearances day in, day out. They squint at you again, crossing their arms over their chest, then nod their head toward the door before phasing through it. With a roll of your eyes at their antics, you grab your cane and follow them through the house and out into the front garden.

“See that?” Chara asks, gesturing to an empty spot by the leaves that coat the ground. You stare for a moment, expecting something to pop up, then look at Chara.

“The leaves?” You must be missing something here. That, or Chara is playing some weird prank. They seem the type to do that.

“Just move a little closer.” They sit cross legged on the ground — or rather, a few centimeters above the ground — and wait for you to join them. You crouch down, leaning on your cane for support as your knee creaks, and look again; before you, a gentle prism of light sparkles into being. A four-pointed star, twitchy and grasping, clings to existence before you, bathing its surroundings in a gentle golden light.

“What is this?” you ask, voice a whisper, as if the glowing point might startle and run away at the first hint of noise.

“A Save Point,” Chara says. “If you die, you end up back here.”

“What, like a video game?”

“A what?”

“A video game. You know, like- like, uh…” The star shivers as Chara passes a bored hand through it. All examples leave your head as you absentmindedly wave your hand, transfixed by the shimmer in front of you. “You know.”

“I don’t,” they say, growing impatient. “Anyway, just touch it and it’ll Save your point . Got it?”

As you reach out to grasp the star, a tinkling noise reaches your ears and a feeling of relief washes through you. “Not at all,” you say. Your hand comes away from the Save Point shimmering, like you’ve dipped your fingers in body glitter. It fades after a few seconds.

“You’ll get there,” Chara says with a little smile. “So, are you gonna get on out of these Ruins any time soon, or am I gonna have to watch you mope around for another two weeks?”

“I’ll- I’ll talk to Toriel about it tonight,” you decide. “I’m happy she’s helped me so much, but… I’ve got to get home sooner or later.”

“That’s the spirit,” they say, initiating their lounge position yet again. “Get yourself together and get outta here!”

“Toriel,” you hesitantly start. “Can I ask you about something?”

“Of course, my child,” she replies, letting her glasses dangle from their delicate chain around her neck. “What do you need?”

“Look, I…” You wring your hands together, eyeing Chara as they float behind Toriel’s chair, giving you a hand signal to tell you to get on with it. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful for all you’ve done for me, I really do appreciate all of it, but I– I was wondering when I’ll be able to go home? Y’know… leave the Ruins?”

Toriel stares at you, blinks, and takes a breath. She still doesn’t say anything for a moment, until she lifts her book from her lap.

“How about I tell you about the book I am reading?” she says in place of answering your question. “It is called ‘72 Uses For Snails’. How about it?”

“Um–”

“Here’s an exciting snail fact. Did you know that snails…” She flips through the pages until she lands on one near the middle. “Sometimes flip their digestive systems as they mature? Interesting.”

“Yeah, it- it is, but… I really need to get home, Toriel.” Your heart pounds in your chest as she stares at you, eyes piercing and suddenly serious, her jaw set. “I have a life to get back to. It’s been really lovely staying with you, really, it has, but I—”

“I have to do something,” she says, setting her book down. “Stay here.”

Toriel rises from her chair and sets off down the stairs that she had forbidden you from going down. With a worried look to Chara — who doesn’t look worried at all — you follow after her. 

The basement is cold, your footsteps echoing off the walls. Toriel slows to a stop as she hears you catch up to her. She does not turn to face you as she starts talking.

“You wish to know how to return ‘home’, do you not?” It is not phrased like a question made to be answered. “Ahead of us lies the end of the Ruins. A one-way exit to the rest of the Underground. I am going to destroy it.”

“What?” you splutter, even as Toriel wordlessly marches onward, shoulders set and fists clenched.

“No one will ever be able to leave again,” she says, not even looking over her shoulder at you. “Now be a good child and go upstairs.”

“Toriel, you can’t just keep me here, I have- I have a life, I have a—”

She stops in place again. “Every human that falls down here meets the same fate,” she says, voice like ice. “I have seen it again and again. They come. They leave. They die. You naive child… If you leave the Ruins… They… Asgore… Will kill you.”

“Who– what are you—” You try to get a word in between her warnings, looking to Chara as if they can help mediate, but your brain is currently short circuiting at this change in attitude, this sudden turn. Chara shrugs like they’re used to this, gesturing for you to keep following her. 

“I am only protecting you, do you understand?” she asks, head slightly tilted toward you. “Go to your room.”

You do not do that. You follow her further down the hall, wishing you had brought a jumper with you as the dusty, chilly air eats away at your warmth. Toriel strides through the basement, the bottom of her skirt kicking up the dirt along the path. A well worn trail makes its way down the centre of the floor, the dust piled up in the corners; you wonder what she could possibly need to come down here every day to do. There’s nothing in the halls, just walls, floor, ceiling, and the occasional cobweb. As you reach a corner, Toriel slows down again.

“Do not try to stop me,” she instructs. You can see just enough of her face to tell that she is — maybe not angry, but disappointed. Like she thought you would be different from all the rest. “This is your final warning.”

She disappears around the corner. You don’t want to keep going. You look to Chara.

“If she destroys that exit, you’re here forever,” they say, and float after Toriel. Deflating, you trudge on after the two of them. 

Toriel stands with her back to you in front of an enormous door. She towers almost as tall as it, even with her head bowed.

“You want to leave so badly?” she asks.

“I have to,” you say. Toriel huffs. “You know I can’t stay here forever.”

“You are just like the others. There is only one solution to this.” She turns around, tall and proud, looming over you as your heart pounds in your chest. Chara slips out of the room. “Prove yourself… Prove to me you are strong enough to survive.”

The room grows darker, closes in on you in a way that you’ve felt before. With Flowey. Yet again, your Soul unsticks from your body, floating before you and coating you in red light. 

“I don’t–” You take a steadying breath. “I don’t want to fight you, Toriel!”

She doesn’t respond. Great, big balls of fire form around her hands, but they don’t burn her fur. In one sweeping motion, she throws an arc of flames at you, hitting you square in the chest and knocking you to the ground. It burns, hot and angry, but it doesn’t set you aflame. In fact, it disappears the moment it hits you. The small bar under your Soul goes down, the yellow replaced with red. You pick up your cane and pull yourself back to your feet. Toriel stands, readied, waiting for your move.

“Come on, we can talk this out,” you try, gritting your teeth through the pain radiating from your chest. “You don’t have to do this!”

Toriel looks through you. She sends another attack your way, surrounding you in individual balls of fire, flying around the room. You’re not very good at dodging them, fumbling with your stiff leg and slipping on the dusty floor. It hurts. Smoke stings at your eyes, tears streaming down your face as you try to blink it out of your vision. You blearily look up at Toriel, wondering how you could possibly end this. 

You try to talk, but you can’t think of any topics of conversation. But you don’t know what else to do.

After your attempt at talking is over, Toriel readies her attacks again. She fires magic from her palms, her sleeves blown back by the force, her face stony with concentration. One attack hits you, then another.

The last one hits you square in the back, and you feel your lungs fill up with smoke.

Toriel’s paws fly up to cover her mouth, her eyes growing wide as saucers, as you collapse onto the ground, heart cracking down the middle.

She rushes to your side as you choke on the smoke slowly seeping out of your mouth. She’s crying, sobbing as she cradles your body, watching helplessly as it burns from the inside out. The pain is like nothing you’ve ever experienced, white hot agony melting away your lungs, your throat. Your hands cling to Toriel’s robes without your input, blood gurgling out of your mouth, splattering her white apron and fur a deep red-black. A green light blinds you for a moment, Toriel’s hands flickering with it. She’s trying to heal you, even through all her big, heaving sobs. All it does is send a brief wash of cold over your burning and blistering skin. Through your muffled hearing, you can vaguely hear her begging; for you to be okay, for her healing magic to work, for you to not leave her. 

For her to not have killed you.

You try to comfort her, feeling like you should even after what she’s done to you, but all that comes out is a terrible series of retching and attempts to gasp through the fluid in the back of your throat. It only makes Toriel’s face crumple even further, her snout wrinkled from nose to brow, the fur of her cheeks matted down to her face.

You fade slowly into the darkness, the pain growing numb, the heat receding, your grip loosening. Toriel grips you tighter and tighter, holding you like a newborn. She rocks you back and forth as you die.

You end up staring at the Save Point in complete silence for over twenty minutes. You know this, because Toriel tells you.

“My child?” she asks, gentle as ever, a hesitant paw resting on your shoulder. Your heart races as your whole body stiffens, the faint tingling of burns still tingling across your skin. “Are you quite alright? You have been standing out here for twenty minutes, staring at the floor.”

“Huh?” You dumbly look up at her, her reading glasses perched on her forehead, her clothes smelling like fresh baked pastry. She looks at you with a concern that she is clearly trying to hide. It grows less and less hidden the longer you take to reply. “Oh, uh… Yeah, I guess I just got… lost in thought.”

“Perhaps you should go back to bed, dear,” she says, guiding you to your room with a hand on your back. Between your shoulders. Right where— “You seem tired. A good nap will make you feel better.”

You sit down on the edge of your bed feeling like an empty husk; more a discarded cicada shell than a human. “Yeah. Some sleep,” you say. You barely even remember to kick off your shoes before you pull your legs up to your chest. Toriel leaves and comes back with a glass of water, her face full of worry as she perches on the edge of the bed. She raises a paw to check your temperature again, and you flinch back.

“Did something happen, little one?” she asks. “The monsters living here haven’t been giving you trouble, have they?”

You carefully watch her face, stomach still churning as you remember the anguish in her eyes when she delivered the final blow. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember a thing. And why would she? It hasn’t happened yet. 

“No,” you say, trying to sound convincing. Your shaking voice betrays you. Toriel doesn’t push, though she looks like she wants to. “I- I think I just need to get some sleep.”

Toriel hesitantly raises her hand again, patting down your hair. You don’t flinch this time. She manages a patient smile at you before she leaves, flipping the light off and quietly closing the door behind her. You lie down with robotic precision; the blanket doesn’t make you feel any warmer. You try to close your eyes, but they peel themselves back open. A dim light catches your attention, and Chara sits on the floor in front of you.

“You good?” they awkwardly ask, looking uncomfortable at the prospect of talking about your feelings. 

“What do you think?” Chara sighs through their nose, looking away at the floor. 

“I think maybe Toriel was right about that nap.” They scooch to sit with their back to your bed, legs outstretched in front of them. “I need to teach you how to fight, that’s for damn sure.”

You don’t respond, exhaustion taking over you like being buried in snowfall. You still can’t sleep, even as you try to get comfortable in the blankets. Even as you squeeze your eyes closed. Even as you force the image of Toriel cradling your corpse out of your head. You can’t block out the echoes of her screams, her cries, her pleading. 

“She won’t listen to you if you talk to her,” Chara mutters. You hum inquisitively, and they seem surprised to see that you’re actually awake. They clear their throat and continue on with their point. “You need to spare her. Don’t fight. Spare her.”

“And how do I do that?” you rasp out. 

“You just do it,” they say with a shrug, looking back at the wall. “There’s no other way to explain it. When it’s your turn, you spare her. She’ll know what you’re doing.”

“My turn?”

“Have you seriously never been in a fight before?” Chara turns to give you an incredulous look, like they’re about to call you a wimp. You shrug, growing more irritated with how they treat you like an idiot. “Even humans have this rule!”

“Well, forgive me for not getting into enough fights at school, I guess, fuck!” you whisper shout at them, turning over in bed so your back is to them. They just float into the space between your bed and the wall.

“Look, it’s whatever, just know that down here, fights go in turns. monsters will approach you first, and you get the first turn.” Chara looks you in the eyes, their own wide and dark, pupils blown in the dark room. “You have to spare her.”

“Okay,” you say, and take a shaky breath through your teeth. “Okay. I will.”

Chara does indeed end up watching you for another two weeks, just as your leg gets better and goes a bit back to normal. It still gets stiff every now and then, but Toriel has found a proper cane for you to use when you need it; something easier to carry around with you than a heavy branch. It’s a rather nice cane, really. A knobbly, curling piece of wood, polished to a brown so dark it’s almost black, with a smooth wooden handle stained turquoise and blue. It fits your hand well, the wood old enough to be somewhat worn into shape. 

Toriel still goes over your leg with her healing magic each day, occasionally apologising for not being able to fix it completely in one go.

“It’s fine,” you tell her. “human knees kind of suck. Poorly designed, really.”

“They are indeed,” she mutters with a shake of her head. “I am happy that it is working better for you now. I was starting to get worried again!”

You manage a laugh as she saunters into the kitchen, her tail twitching as she hears it. 

You would say that you’ve ‘patched things’ with Toriel, but there was nothing for her to patch. It’s more accurate to say that you came to accept what had happened, why it had happened, that it was an accident. It didn’t take you too long to stop flinching when she patted your shoulder, or recoiling when she used her fire magic to cook. She’s far too kind for you to hold a grudge against her. Chara had been pretty insistent on you forgetting it, writing it off as a fluke. They seem to have lived in the Ruins for a long time; you conclude that they must just care a lot about Toriel, but you don’t push. 

The next time you ask Toriel if you can go home, you make sure to put on a jumper first. 

She takes it about the same way: tells you a snail fact, tells you she needs to do something, rushes downstairs. You’re not nearly as nervous this time. You’re prepared. In the last weeks, Chara has taught you all they know about fights and how they work down here. Your leg is better, and so is your ability to dodge. They had even pushed you into fighting some of the other monsters in the Ruins as ‘training’ (most of them didn’t want to fight you anyway).

“Remember, just spare her, and she’ll stop eventually,” Chara says as you make your way through the basement. 

“How do you know?” you ask.

“I just do.”

Toriel stops again in front of the door, her head bowed.

“Prove yourself,” she says. “Prove to me you are strong enough to survive.” She turns around to face you, and pauses. She hadn’t paused the last time. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

You wrestle your face into neutrality. “Like what?”

“... Never mind.”

The battle begins, just as last time, your Soul glowing in front of you. Toriel does not make her first move. She stands, readied, and waits for you to begin. 

“Spare her,” Chara says from over your shoulder, as if you could have possibly forgotten one of the only pieces of advice they’ve given you. 

You reach into the depths of your Soul, and something reaches back. Another option. Mercy .

Toriel’s eyes finally focus on you, registering the move you made. She still does not hesitate as she throws her attacks your way. You dodge them a lot easier this time, your knee protesting less combined with having seen it before. If your familiarity with the attack is obvious, Toriel does you the courtesy of not showing it.

You spare her again, and her brows furrow, just a little. It’s different from last time, where she hardly even acknowledged you until you were laid dying on the ground. 

When it’s your turn again, you spare Toriel, and she falters a bit. Her attack warbles, not going where she wills it to go, and she huffs as you dodge each projectile. Not in a way that she wants to hurt you, but that she still needs to teach you a lesson.

You spare her again. Her face twitches with something like confusion and familiarity. She refuses to look at your face unless she has to, trying her best to aim her attacks properly and failing. On your next turn, she finally speaks.

“What are you doing?” she asks. You don’t respond. Toriel steels herself and attacks again, her hands shaking. “Attack, or run away!”

You get hit a couple of times, Toriel’s arms swinging with the force of slinging her attacks at you. She circles around you, fire crawling up the length of her arms, illuminating her face, heating the room to the point you regret pulling on a jumper. 

“What are you proving this way?” Toriel asks when you spare her again. Chara gives you a thumbs up from the corner like a wrestling coach watching from the sidelines. “Fight me or leave!”

You spare her again. She continues to attack, whittling down your health. 

“Stop it.” The room lights up with fire, climbing up the walls like vines, blocking the exit. You roll up your sleeves, sweat trickling down your face. “Stop looking at me that way.”

You do not do that. You continue to do your best to dodge her magic, but your knee is starting to complain. Chara watches closely, hands clasped in front of their face so they can hide behind their fists at a moment’s notice. 

“Go away!” Toriel shouts, hurling a fireball at you; it hits you in the stomach, winding you and sending you to your knees. You’re still alive. You’re alive, and you’re not going to die. Not this time. Coughing up a lungful of smoke, you spare Toriel once more.

Her eyebrows knit, eyes glittering with tears as she watches you stagger to your feet. She sends more fire your way, but it curves around you the moment it gets too close. Her fire starts to dim as it avoids you, puttering out like a candle without enough air. The room slowly dims as the fire dissipates into nothing, not even leaving ash in its wake. Toriel lowers herself to her knees, utterly exhausted. 

“I know you want to go home, but…” She grips her apron, bunching it up in her paws as her eyes water. “But, please… go upstairs now.”

You want to say something, but you can’t think of anything. Instead, you move closer to her. Chara turns their back to the scene.

“I promise I will take good care of you here.” Toriel’s voice wobbles, her eyes trained on the ground. “I know we do not have much, but…” She looks up at you, still only a little shorter than you while she kneels on the ground. Tears finally spill down her face. “We can have a good life here.”

“I- I’m sorry,” you start to say. You flounder for something to add, but your throat closes up before you can manage it. Toriel smiles sadly at you, a paw coming up to cradle your face.

“Why are you making this so difficult?” she asks. For a moment, you think she’s genuinely looking for an answer. “Please, go upstairs.”

You don’t move. You don’t speak. You couldn’t if you wanted to. Your feet might as well be rooted in the ground, your mouth sealed over with glue. After a long moment has passed, one that could have been seconds or years, Toriel lets out a wet laugh.

“Pathetic, is it not?” she asks, wiping her eyes with the back of her other paw, not letting go of your face. “I cannot save even a single child.”

Now is not the time to correct her. She looks between your eyes for another moment longer, then deflates, like all her will to keep you here has melted away from her.

“No, I understand,” she says, lowering her hands to fold them in her lap. “You would just be unhappy down here. The Ruins are very small once you get used to them. It would not be right for you to grow up in a place like this. My expectations… My loneliness… My fear… For you, my child… I will put them aside.”

the room expands. Your Soul phases back into your chest, into its rightful spot, and it’s only now that you notice how cold the space between your lungs had felt without it. The warmth tingles out from your centre, all the way to your finger tips. You flex your hand, not sure how welcome the feeling is.

“If you truly wish to leave the Ruins, I will not stop you.” Toriel takes your hands in her own, rubbing the back of your palm with her thumb. She blinks away the rest of her tears. “However, when you leave… Please do not come back. I hope you understand.”

She looks at you for a moment longer, lip quivering with the effort to contain her emotions, then drags you into a hug. Her enormous arms are strong and warm, wrapping all the way around you. You can barely get your arms around her shoulders. Still, you try your best, burying your face in the downy fur of her neck, as she nuzzles into you the same way.

Eventually, Toriel does force herself to stand, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead before she passes you and heads for the exit. 

“Goodbye, my child,” is all she says before she gives one final glance over her shoulder, and disappears down the hallway.

You scrub your face. A knot ties itself tight in your chest; you try to breathe around it, but only end up sucking air through your gritted teeth.

“You did good,” Chara declares, patting your shoulder. Their cool touch is welcome, the room still hot and stuffy from all the fire magic. “You should get going now. Best not linger.”

You turn on your heel and march right back through the basement.

“Or you can do that,” Chara grumbles as they’re pulled along through the air. “Sure.”

The house is completely still when you make your way up there. Not a single sign of life. Even the lingering smell of fresh-baked pie has faded. The only evidence that someone has been there at all, is a set of clothes and supplies laid out on your bed. A thick coat, a scarf, a hat, a pair of gloves, your emptied rucksack and a small tupperware container with a big slice of butterscotch-cinnamon pie.

You search the Ruins for over an hour — enough time to walk up and down the whole length of the paths leading to Toriel’s house — and you find no one. Not even a single Monster. With a defeated sigh, you pull on the winter clothes and rucksack, and you leave through the exit that Toriel had taken your life trying to protect you from.

“Clever,” Flowey drawls. “Verrrryyy clever.”

“What do you want, Flowey?” you ask, crossing your arms.

“You think you’re really smart, don’t you?” he says, instead of answering. He clearly just wants to get under your skin. “In this world, it’s kill or be killed. So you were able to play by your own rules; you spared the life of a single person .” He giggles, face contorted into an odd smile, eyes wide. “I bet you feel really great.”

“You better watch your tone, little man,” you warn. You don’t care if this thing can’t remember the time he killed you; you know he still has it in him to try. 

“You didn’t kill anyone!” His eyes narrow, sly grin spreading, pulling unnaturally at his cheeks. “This time. But what will you do if you meet a relentless killer?”

“What are you talking about?” He doesn’t know, does he? He can’t know. You still don’t know how Chara knows about Saving, but you’re sure this little petal-covered freak couldn’t possibly have insider knowledge. Could he?

“You’ll die, and you’ll die, and you’ll die . Until you tire of trying.” With a fleshy creak, Flowey rises on his stem to meet your eyes, self congratulatorily watching your face scrunch up into a snarl. “What will you do then? Will you kill out of frustration? Or will you give up entirely on this world… and let me inherit the power to control it?”

He knows. You curse internally, trying not to let your dread show on your face. None of the Underground makes any sense to you, and you’re close to giving up on trying to make sense of it before you’ve even begun.

“I’ll play a game of he loves me not with your petals if you don’t back up,” you threaten, hoping he can’t tell you have no intention of picking a fight with him. Flowey only looms closer.

“I am the prince of this world’s future,” he spits. “Don’t worry, my little monarch, my plan isn’t regicide.”

He shrinks back to the ground, mouth lined with blunt teeth, straight as piano keys, oversized in his head.

“This is SO much more interesting!”

Flowey cackles as you step back, recoiling away from the grotesque sight of his face. He disappears into the ground, leaving nothing but disturbed soil in his wake, and the room falls silent.

“What a little freak,” you mutter, partly to Chara, mostly to the air. You keep walking. It’s the only thing left now. The walk to the true exit of the Ruins is long, and you can feel the air getting colder and colder as you go. You pull the coat close around you, rubbing your hands together through the gloves. At the end of the tunnel, an enormous wooden door blocks your way, snow seeping under it, coating the floor with white. You wonder how snow can even exist down here.

“This is it,” Chara says. “This is the door to Snowdin. No turning back now. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.”

“I’m ready,” you tell them, tell yourself. You don’t feel it. Not one bit. Still, with a deep breath through your nose, the cold air stinging your nostrils, you take a hold of the handle, and push the door open.

Chapter Text

Sans doesn’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he has been through this a million times now.

The familiar golden light of the Judgement Hall sends long shadows across the floor, half of the Fallen Human shrouded in darkness. They stare at him, knife glinting, flipping it in their hand as they wait for Sans to fall asleep. As he always does. He sways on his feet, utterly exhausted, and wonders, for a brief moment, if it’s possible for exhaustion to carry over from Reset to Reset. He wouldn’t doubt it at this point. 

They’ve already beat him twice in this run, Resetting to come back for another round. They’ve been getting better. Faster. Sans could barely land a hit on them this time. 

They stand and stare at each other, panting and sweating and unblinking. The Fallen Human does not ready their stance, like they had done in the first few attempts; now they stand like they’re waiting for their name to be called for their appointment. It’s only a matter of time, and they’ll get their turn. They always do.

Sans forces himself to look casual, too. He doesn’t think the Human knows he remembers each and every run, but he doesn’t plan on just telling them. Telling them he knows of the alternate timelines, at the very least, is more than enough. Still, whether they know or not, it goes the same every time: they wait, he falls asleep, he dies.

He tries to convince himself that there’s still a flicker of hope in his chest, a little flame determined to stay awake. A tiny hint of something that tells him this might be the time they give up. They’ll grow bored, they’ll grow too frustrated. This time, they’ll finally let the Underground go. Sans doesn’t even care if monsters get their freedom anymore, just so long as this kid never shows their face here again.

His eyes slip shut, and he can’t peel them back open. Not until he hears a rush of footsteps and his body drags itself out of the way on pure muscle memory. He shrugs, like he always does, tired brain still catching up.

“heh, did you really think you’d be able to—”

The Fallen Human strikes again, as usual. Sans hopes this is their last go round. Even he’s getting bored of his own death. He gives the usual lines, and shuffles off down the hall. Their eyes watch him as he passes, leaving a blood red trail in his wake. He collapses against a pillar, sliding down to sit on the floor, staining his mittens and his slippers with ketchup.

(He thought it would be funny and dramatic the first time the Human tried this, now it’s just annoying, and he never remembers to leave the ketchup at home.)

“hey, papyrus,” he asks the air, knowing the Human is still listening, anticipating the next line in the cycle. “you want anything?”

As his body crumbles to dust, he closes his eyes, and prays to whoever’s out there that they’ll open to his bedroom, and not a golden hallway.

Each Reset starts the same.

A gentle, gloved hand lightly shakes his shoulder, and Sans bolts upright to see Papyrus sitting on the edge of his bed. No matter how many times he watches the Human kill Papyrus, no matter how many times he, himself, is killed, he always reacts the same way: by leaping into his arms and crying like a baby.

(He was never really someone who cried before all this started. Not even the first handful of runs would make him cry. After all, he had to stay strong for his brother. Turns out, watching everyone you know and love die over and over can break a guy down a little bit.)

Papyrus holds him tight, rubbing his back as he cries. Sans remembers when he used to do this for Paps when they were younger. He’d have a nightmare and Sans would run to his rescue, offering to sleep in his room to protect him from his bad dreams. Now, Papyrus has grown much taller, and Sans is the one fleeing nightmares. Feels like decades ago, now.

“Oh, Sans,” Papyrus sighs, resting his chin atop his head. “I’m here. It’s alright now. The Great Papyrus is here to protect you once again!”

“three times, paps,” he heaves, clinging to his scarf. “they got me three times!”

“It’s over now,” Papyrus assures. “It won’t happen again. The Human will change, I just know it.”

Sans doesn’t reply. He loves Papyrus, and for that reason he wants to argue — to try fruitlessly, again, to convince him that there is no changing that kid. How many more times do they need to kill him for him to see that?

But Sans is tired, so he lets Papyrus rattle off all his new ideas to placate the Fallen Human. Everything from making them even more spaghetti, to redesigning the puzzles to something they might find more fun, to picking them up in a hug the very next time he sees them.

Once Sans’s crying has subsided, he leans back, using his sleeve to wipe his cheeks dry. Papyrus leans lower to meet his eyes, smiling.

“Why don’t I make us some breakfast?” he suggests, clapping Sans on the back. “I’ll make you anything you like, even if it’s just cereal!”

“can you actually, um…” Sans sniffles, voice nasally from all the tears and schmultz. “could you make me some spaghetti?”

“Why, of course I can, brother!” Papyrus cheers, launching upright so fast he almost loses balance. Sans manages a huff of a laugh; just the reaction he was looking for. “I’ll make you as much spaghetti as you want!”

Sans drags himself out of bed, Papyrus already marching down the stairs, but he barely makes it to the door before the world goes dark for a moment. When his vision returns, he’s sitting on his bed again, Papyrus perched on the edge of the mattress. He looks around for a moment, scratching his head.

“What happened there?” Papyrus asks, standing up again. Sans wipes his face, finding it wet again. He sniffles.

“a reset, i think,” Sans mutters. “weird…”

“I hope the Human is alright,” Papyrus says, heading for the stairs again. Sans bites his tongue. 

They head downstairs, actually making it down this time, and Sans looks out at the living room. The floor is clean, the couch is neatly set, all the mess that had accumulated as Sans had stewed in his grief is gone. Set back to one. He decides he won’t ever tell Papyrus how bad the house gets when the Human kills him.

The world goes dark again, and the brothers are sent back to the top of the stairs. Papyrus gives him a worried look, and Sans shrugs, failing to hide the bloom of satisfaction in his chest at the idea that the Human is suffering. Maybe they had a particularly bad fall. Maybe Toriel came to her senses. Maybe the Human finally lost it. 

He doesn’t vocalise any of this, not wanting to get into another argument with Papyrus like he has in past runs, so he just goes back down the stairs and sits on the couch. Papyrus shakes it off.

“Not to worry,” he announces, marching downstairs and making a beeline for the kitchen. “No worries in this house! Certainly not in this skeleton!!”

In the end, it takes about two hours for Papyrus to be able to actually make the spaghetti through all the Resets. First, he gets sent back to the stairs and nearly falls down them, then the water un-boils itself, then the tomatoes un-chop themselves. Sans watches the setbacks from the couch, unable to help his laughter as Papyrus grows more and more frustrated.

Once the pot of spaghetti is done, and the vegetables are all over the kitchen from Papyrus crushing them, he pauses for a moment, waiting for everything to jump back again. He stands with his hands out, looking about as if he’ll get some kind of warning this time. Then, satisfied, he dishes the spaghetti onto two plates, heads over to the couch, and sits down next to Sans.

Darkness. Back in the kitchen. Papyrus scrubs his face as Sans snickers. He dishes the plates out again, sits down, and—

When he ends up back in the kitchen again, he throws his arms up and shouts: “FOR THE LOVE OF—”

He takes a deep inhale through his nose as Sans cackles. 

“no worries in this skeleton, huh?” he calls out, and Papyrus lets out a long, frustrated noise. He heaves up the pot of pasta and drops it in front of the couch, handing Sans a fork.

“We’ll just eat it without plates,” he decides, ever the optimist. Still, he huffs, brow bone furrowed. “I do hope the Human is alright. They’ve never Reset like this before.”

“i don’t,” Sans says, trying and failing to get a forkful of pasta. “the longer they take to get here, the better.”

“Brother, I really wish you would–”

“would what , papyrus?” Sans snaps, then rights himself. “sorry, it’s just- how can you still think they’re gonna change?”

“I just know it! ” Papyrus huffs, exasperated, and for a moment Sans thinks he isn’t going to elaborate. “They haven’t killed everyone every time, right? There was that time they opened the Barrier and everything!”

“and then they reset before we even got to look outside,” Sans grumbles.

“But they still did it!” Papyrus waves his hands for a moment, thinking how he could possibly convince Sans that the Human could have a good side. “You need to give them a chance, Sans! I promise you, if you just try, I’m sure you could help me change their mind.”

Sans looks over at Papyrus, the sparkle in his eyes, the hopeful look on his face. Ever since Paps could talk, Sans found it hard to say no to the kid. After everything they’ve been through, it hasn't gotten any easier, if a little more tiring. 

“sure thing, bro,” Sans sighs, finally managing to get some food on his fork. Before Papyrus can celebrate, he quickly adds: “but the moment they start their whole creepy weirdo freak act, you have to promise me you’ll actually stay away from them this time.”

“But brother—”

“i’ve watched you die more times than I can count—” Four hundred and seventy eight times, “— and i don’t want to see it again. do this one thing for me, yeah?”

Papyrus deflates a bit, and Sans can’t bring himself to feel all that bad. He’s tired. Too tired. Every time he sees Papyrus crumble into dust, still trying to befriend the Human even as he sits as just a skull on the ground, a part of Sans withers away. A part of him dies every time he loses his brother, and he’s going to turn into nothing more than a walking husk at this rate.

“Fine,” Papyrus relents. “I will.

The two brothers continue to eat their breakfast spaghetti, and both of them know that the other is lying. 

Later that day, Sans goes through the motions he does on every Day One. He sits at his post, he goes to Grillby’s, he sits at his post, he heads to the door.

He sits with his back to the wood, the chill eating through his coat, and raps his knuckles on the door.

“knock, knock,” he says, and begins to wait. No answer comes, but he doesn’t panic. It usually takes a while for Toriel to get to the door. A nagging part of him insists that she’s dead already. She’s dead and the Human is revelling in the dust coating the Ruins, making snow angels in it or whatever the hell that little freak is into. Sans forces the image out of his brain with a shake of his head.

He still remembers the runs where everyone made it to the end. The first time he met Toriel was like magic. She was towering and gentle and a silly old lady, just like she had said. He had taught her how to text, they had shared so many puns that Papyrus had to talk a walk, she treated being the former queen as a fact no more interesting than when she told him she used to host a book club. 

It had been nice to finally meet his friend in person, not just talking through a door. The Human had Reset back a bit, and he got to meet her all over again. He’s not sure what happened after everything went white, but when he awoke, they were all free. He could see the sunlight pouring in, feel the breeze wafting through the tunnel, smell the fresh air. 

Then the Fallen Human made a face, and Sans woke up in his bedroom. It’s the first time Papyrus had ever gotten angry with the Human, pacing up and down the hall in furious silence, but he quickly invented excuses on their behalf. Maybe they didn’t do something right, maybe something was wrong with the Surface, it could have been anything! Sans had had to bite his tongue so hard it bled.

Sans has had to meet Toriel ‘for the first time’ eighty two times now. During most of their more peaceful runs, they get bored and quit halfway through. Sans doesn’t know if they see all their more violent methods through to the end, or what they do after they’ve cleared out the Underground. He’s never lived to see it, or bothered to find out past leaving them a voicemail. He’s not sure he wants to. 

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. He recognises them as Toriel’s instantly, and he sits upright from where he had slumped down into the snow.

A knock reverberates through the thick wood. “Knock, knock,” she says. 

“who’s there?” he answers.

“Who.”

“who, who?”

“Oh! Has an owl managed to get into the Ruins?”

Sans barks a laugh as Toriel giggles. She’s the same as always. Just another lap round the block. These days, it makes Sans’s chest hurt to relive this very conversation over and over.

“that’s a good one,” Sans says, still chuckling. He’s heard it a million times and it’s still one of his favourites. “i’ll have to tell my brother. he really liked that one about the yodelling.”

“Didn’t you say he hates puns?”

“yeah, he says that, but he still smiles at ‘em.”

Toriel laughs again, and Sans hears the shuffling of her sitting down against the door. Back to back.

“I must apologise for arriving late today. Hopefully, I did not keep you waiting too long.”

“nah, you’re fine,” Sans assures, scooping up some snow and making a ball between his mittens. Waiting for her to pop the question always makes him fidgety. “i’m on watch duty, anyway. i get paid to sit around and wait all day.”

Their conversation continues as usual: talking about anything and everything, telling jokes back and forth, until the inevitable moment where Toriel stops laughing as much.

“what’s up?” he asks, knowing the answer. “are my jokes not as funny today?”

“No, no,” she says. “I’ve just had some things on my mind.”

here we go.

“like what?”

A long pause follows. Sans moves to gather up another snowball and finds that he has run out of snow within reach. A small pile sits a few feet in front of him, a totem to his anxious handiwork.

“I just had to tend to some errands today. Perhaps, I am a bit tired.”

Well, that’s… different. Normally, that’s Toriel’s cue to tell Sans to protect the Human. Maybe she really did kill them. Maybe they tried to mix things up, kill her off earlier than usual, and things backfired. But, Sans can’t imagine she’d show up to the door if she had killed the kid.

“right… what kind of errands?” he dares to ask, as if she’s going to go, ‘Oh, you know, I hung out my washing, bought some groceries, killed a ten year old, ironed my socks…’

“Someone got hurt, here in the Ruins,” she finally says, after much deliberation. “I am taking care of them.”

“oh, are they gonna be alright?” Sans asks, wrestling down the glee that rises in him.

“i do hope so,” she says with a sigh. “They were in quite a state when I found them. Speaking of, I should go back and check on them. I don’t think I will be able to visit you for a few days. They need monitoring.”

“dang, and i was just getting ready to tell you some of my best jokes!”

“Well, you will just have to save them for next time,” she says. Sans can hear the smile returning to her voice. “I will see you soon.”

“see ya later, t– lady.”

He listens to her walk away; Sans practically skips back to his station.

Papyrus shows up a while later, right on cue, to complain about Sans’s puzzles. He expects to see Sans along the path, and pulls a double-take when he spots Sans sitting at his station, feet kicked up on the desk. 

“‘sup, bro,” he greets, taking a sip from his ketchup bottle.

“I’ll tell you what’s ‘sup’, brother!” Papyrus splutters, a little more unsure than he usually is during this highly rehearsed segment. “It’s been eight days and you still haven’t- and where is the–” He looks around, marches over with a hand cupped around his mouth, and whispers: “ Where is the Human? ”

“they didn’t show up,” Sans says, cackling. “can you believe it? i think the little sucker finally gave up.”

“Don’t be insensitive, brother!”

“this is a win , paps!” Sans stammers for a moment as Papyrus groans and scrubs his face. He scrambles to his feet, walking around the side of his station to face his brother. “tell me this isn’t a good thing! no human, no murder, no problems, the way i see it.”

“How am I supposed to help them if they’re not even in Snowdin!?”

Papyrus mopes as he stares down the path, as if the Human will appear before him with open arms if he just looks sad enough. Sans’s smugness recedes, if only a little.

“look, paps,” he sighs, hopping up to sit on the desk to be closer to his eye level. “i’m sure another human will fall down eventually, alright? a nicer one, who’ll do your puzzles, and eat your spaghetti, the whole shebang.”

Papyrus looks over, still sullen, toying with his gloves. “Do you really think so?”

“i know so, bro.” Sans smiles a bit more genuinely at him. As much as he hates the Human, he knows how much this means to Papyrus. Seeing his brother unhappy, after all this time forcing himself to stay positive, is a bit of a punch to the gut.

It seems to work. Papyrus straightens himself out, puffs up his chest, and marches back down the path with a bravado that might only be partially false.

“Well! Time’s a-wasting, brother! Recalibrate your puzzles, you never know when the Human is going to show up!” Papyrus gestures wildly as he walks, a pep in his step, arms swinging at his sides. Sans chuckles, waiting until he’s out of sight to take his seat and kick up his feet again.

“good riddance,” he says to the air, deciding it’s time to take his break and have a nap.

Sure as shit, Toriel does come back in three days. In a much better mood, as well.

“Knock, knock!” she says.

“who’s there?”

“Cash.”

“cash, who?”

“No, thank you, I will have some peanuts.”

Sans laughs, flooded with relief. Even with the Human no-showing that first day, he couldn’t help but worry about his friend. His mind was plagued with the image of the Human, dust on their hands, living it up in Toriel’s house.

“knock, knock,” he says instead of thinking any more about that.

“Who is there?”

“wooden shoe.”

“Wooden shoe, who?”

“wooden shoe like to hear another joke?”

Toriel cracks up with laughter, and Sans feels a million times better. She’s here. She’s okay. They’re still telling jokes through the door.

“you seem happy,” he notes. “i take it that person you were taking care of is doing better?”

“Oh, much better,” she says, still chuckling. He can practically see her wiping her eyes as she settles down. “They are awake, for one thing. I was not able to fully heal their leg, but they are managing.”

“their leg? did they have a fall?” Very on the nose, he knows. He nose (Sans allows himself a very self-congratulatory snicker that he preys Toriel doesn’t hear).

“Yes, quite a nasty fall…” She sighs. “They broke a bone.”

A shiver runs through Sans. The day he found out humans have bones — a whole skeleton – was maybe one of the worst moments in all these runs. Aside from the obvious. He had broken the Human’s bones many times: with his magic attacks, by slamming them into the walls of the Judgement Hall, or even simply from them landing wrong while dodging. The first time he had seen a human’s bones, was when he had hit one so hard against a pillar that the whole thing collapsed. That was on their first ever attempt to wipe the Underground clean. He had been so full of anger, and a sense of responsibility, that he threw them full force into the nearest solid object. Under the rubble of the ancient marble, he found them lying, dead as anything, with something white sticking out from their back, through their torn jumper. Well, mostly red, but still kind of white. He recognised it immediately as a spine. Each spinous process stuck out like spikes, the vertebrae forced out of shape, discs bulging out of place.

They had reset before Sans had time to fully process this. He still feels a chill wash over him every time he thinks about it.

“geez…” he shifts uncomfortably. “good thing they’ve got you lookin’ after them, huh?”

“I have been showing them around the Ruins, making them snail pie,” Toriel hums. “It is quite nice to have some company around the house. Not that I do not appreciate your wonderful jokes, of course!”

“yeah, who could resist my puns?” Toriel hums a laugh. Sans decides to take a step further. Out of curiosity, nothing more; he just wants to confirm something. “maybe i could tell your guest some jokes. to cheer them up, y’know?”

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s necessary,” Toriel quickly replies. “It is a long walk from my home to this door, I am not sure if they would like to go all that way.” 

So it is the Human. Something went wrong — maybe they fell weird and are simply biding their time. Maybe they have other plans. The time they spend in the Ruins is always his least favourite. He can never tell what kind of run he’s in for until they leave, and Toriel never gives anything away about how they might be acting. 

“well, if you ever change your mind, the offer’s always open,” he says, forcing himself to sound relaxed. “it’s hard to find a new audience to practice my material on.”

“Oh, am I becoming old news now?” Toriel asks, voice light and teasing.

“‘fraid so, lady,” Sans jokes back, actually relaxing now. It’s nice to get back into the rhythm of their usual conversations. They’ve had plenty of serious, personal chats before, but Sans has never exactly been one for deep emotional talks. “i’m dying to meet your little friend. see if they like knock knock jokes.”

“For now, I could deliver them for you. I am sure they would like something to lighten their mood.” She sighs through her nose; Sans hears the gentle thump of her head leaning back onto the door. “I am trying my best, but they seem quite unsettled about this whole situation. I do not blame them.”

“i’m sure they’ll come around,” he says, shrugging. 

“I do hope so… I should probably get back and check on them,” she decides. “It has been lovely talking to you, but it is not good to leave someone so young on their own for too long.”

“they’re young?”

“A child, yes,” she says as she stands. “It is quite irresponsible of me to come visit you while they are alone, but you do have a way of pulling me away from things I need to do.”

“it’s my specialty.” Sans performatively checks his watch that he doesn’t actually have, like Toriel can somehow see what he’s doing. “i should probably get back to my station as well. i’m due my break from my second job now.”

“Make sure you do some work at your various jobs today,” Toriel chides with a chuckle. They say their goodbyes, and Sans sets off back to his desk, grabbing a bottle of ketchup he had left buried in the snow to chill earlier. 

This is definitely a strange one. 

He doesn’t hear of the Human again, and he doesn’t ask. They meet up every day for a week, telling jokes through the door, talking about anything other than Toriel’s guest. It’s just like how it was. Even Papyrus has stopped mentioning the Human as much. It’s Sans’s idea of heaven at this point. 

A small part of him, one he is trying his very best to ignore, is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A week later, the Human Resets again. Not to the beginning, just a couple of hours back. One moment, Sans is in Grillby’s having brunch; the next, he’s sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal, watching TV with Papyrus.

Sans stares at the TV, vaguely watching Mettaton lounge on a piano in a dress with a bunch of grapes that he isn't eating — even though this was supposed to be a news segment — as dread mounts in his gut. He has to admit, he had gotten his hopes up. He thought that maybe, just maybe , the Human had given up. Decided to retire and settle down in Toriel’s house, or lay down and die, or whatever. He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter to him. But if things are resetting again…

“I hope they’re alright,” Papyrus mutters,  leaning back and looking off to the left, as if he could see the door to the Ruins from their house and check in on them. “This is very unusual behaviour.”

“tell me about it,” Sans says through a mouthful of cereal.

During his shift that day, he rushes through his usual routine and heads straight for the door.

“knock, knock,” he calls out, louder than usual as he raps his knuckles on the door. He sits with his ear to the door — well, wherever his ear would be — holding his breath as he listens for her footsteps.

He’s starting to like this run less and less. An awful part of him wishes this was just going like normal. He knows the Human is in there, biding their time for something, whatever it is they’re planning, and he doesn’t know what the hell they’re playing at, but he doesn’t like it one bit. For years of his life, collectively, he’s had a routine. It’s the same thing every day: wake up, watch everyone he knows and love die, or only some, do whatever he needs to in the Judgement Hall, go home. The Human would normally have torn through the Underground five times over by now, but they’re still in the damn Ruins.

This is by far the weirdest run he’s lived through (other than that one where a little white dog became the king, but this is a close second).

When he hears footsteps through the door, he completely deflates with relief, back sliding down the door until he’s almost lying flat on the ground. Toriel settles down, oblivious as Sans scrubs his face, quietly thanking whoever might be up there, and she knocks on the door.

“Knock, knock,” she says. 

Sans takes a long, deep breath, steadying himself before he answers. “who’s there?”

“Spell.”

“spell who?”

“W-H-O.”

Sans manages a laugh, but Toriel doesn’t laugh with him.

“Was that not one of my better ones?” she asks, an odd quality to her voice that Sans can’t pin point.

“nah, it was good,” Sans insists. It was quite good. Papyrus will hate it. “i’m just tired today, is all.”

“Oh, dear,” she coos, in that motherly tone she always has when Sans admits to not taking care of himself properly. “Were you not able to sleep?”

“not a wink,” Sans lies. He’s actually been sleeping better than he has in months. Now that he knows the Human is still messing about with the timeline, or hasn’t given up completely, he doesn’t think it’ll continue. “was tossin’ and turnin’ all night.”

“You should make sure you go to bed early, then,” she instructs. “A young man like yourself needs his sleep!”

“i would hardly call myself a young man.” Sans pokes at his stomach. He may physically be only in his late twenties — he thinks — but he has lived to experience far longer than his age. Even Papyrus has matured a lot, even if he never truly let go of his more naive side. “still, i’ll make sure i have an early beddy-bye tonight.”

If Toriel picks up on the teasing tone, she doesn’t comment on it. 

They talk for a lot longer than usual this time. Usually, Toriel will have some errands she needs to run, or Sans will have another job he needs to slack off on, but today, they sit back to back through the door and let themselves have this time together. Toriel does not talk about the Human, and Sans doesn’t ask.

That night, the Human Resets another time. Toriel doesn’t come to the door for three days. When she does, Sans is all but ready to kick the damn door down and find her himself.

“My apologies for disappearing,” she says. “I was a bit worried about my guest there. Something must have happened, because they stopped acting like themself entirely!”

“it’s totally fine,” Sans says, hands digging into his femurs so hard the bones creak. “barely even noticed, i’ve been that busy.”

“Well, I am glad you were not worried about me!” she says with a small laugh. “I do enough of that in my own time.”

“how, uh… how are they doing? your guest?” Sans does not want to ask. He never wants to know how they’re doing. A small part of him — one that spends all its time arguing with the much bigger part of him that has a bit more sense to it — likes the time he’s spent waiting for them to emerge from the Ruins; he can pretend, for even a moment, that everything is going to go fine. Reality always has its ways of catching up, though. “they getting on fine?”

“Well…” Toriel trails off, and Sans catches a faint sigh through the wood. Sans looks over his shoulder, like he might be able to see her face, reach out to her. He gets a faceful of wood. “I think they might be…”

“what’s up?” he prompts after a few more moments of silence.

“If a human ever comes through this door,” she says, dropping a freezing cold bucket of water on Sans’s head.

There it is. There it always is. He knew this was going to come eventually. He knew it was stupid to think this damn human would ever give up. They haven’t given up after hundred of runs, why would they now? 

“Could you please, please promise something?”

Sans doesn’t have a heart in the traditional, physical sense, but what is there pounds a mile a minute. He curls his arms around himself to give them something to do, shuffles his feet firmly into the ground to keep them from lifting him up and running away.

“Watch over them, and protect them, will you not?”

Why would he ever think the Human would give up on the Underground? Why would he let himself buy into that? He knows better than to give into false hope, and yet…

“y’know, i really hate makin’ promises,” he finds himself saying, teeth gritted hard enough to chip. What is he doing? Why, after all this time, does he still agree to this? “but i just can’t say no to someone who sincerely likes bad jokes.”

“So, you will look after them?” she asks, a glint of hope in her voice.

“i’ll keep an eye socket out for them,” he relents. “every step of the way.”

“Oh, thank you,” she says, flooded with relief. “ Thank you, dear. It means so much to me that you would agree.”

It’s here he remembers why he always agrees. 

Every single time, she loves that Human to pieces. Toriel reminds him of Papyrus, in a way. She wants to see the best in people. Each time that kid falls down here, she takes them in, feeds them, gives them somewhere warm to sleep, reads them stories. Sure, it’s not for the healthiest of reasons, but she still tries her very best. She never stopped being a mother, in that regard. 

Toriel loves the Human, and Sans loves her. And how could he say no to his best friend?

“of course,” he says. “why wouldn’t i?”

He doesn’t actually see any sign of the Human for another week and a half. Toriel sparsely shows her face, giving short updates on her guest that mostly add up to, well, they aren’t dead yet! It’s still disappointing news. It takes all of Sans’s efforts to mutter out a strained little great and move onto another topic. Their conversations don’t last very long anymore. Sans knows what’s coming.

He spends every minute of that week and a half pacing around, taking his job as a sentry more seriously than he ever has in his life. He hasn’t slept properly in days, spending all his time watching the door, waiting for something to come out of it. It doesn’t really get dark in the Underground, which Sans is suddenly very thankful for, because now he can always see what’s coming down the path. Each time he has to leave, he checks for footprints in the snow when he comes back. It’s driving him insane. The stress might end up killing him before the Human can even get the chance.

Papyrus has started to notice how hard working his brother has become. 

“Sans?” Papyrus starts, hesitantly sidling up to his station. “Are you alright?”

“why wouldn’t i be, bro?” Sans mutters back, not taking his eyes off the path that leads to the door. “i’m doing great.”

Papyrus stammers for a moment, trying to think of what to say. Then, with a small sigh through his nose, he puffs his chest out and sets his hands on his hips. “As your amazing brother, I can tell that something is up with you! I demand you tell me what’s bothering you!”

“nothing’s wrong, paps,” Sans insists, not very convincingly. “just watching out for that human you’re so excited to see.”

“Sans!!” Papyrus huffs, stepping in the way of his line of sight. “You never actually do your job. You haven’t even been taking your night naps! What’s going on?”

“it’s fine, bro, don’t worry about it.” Sans leans around to watch the path again. Still nothing. He’s starting to wish the Human would just hurry up a bit and get on with whatever they’re doing.

“I’m sorry, brother, but that simply won’t do!” Papyrus picks Sans up under his arms, easily lifting him around his station and setting him on the ground in front of him. “Consider it part of your job now to tell me what’s wrong!”

“paps, i’m telling you, it’s fine!” Sans looks off down the path. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to see. The Human walking smugly towards them? Running full pelt? Raising that knife they like so much just to hurl it at his brother? They’ve already broken the pattern this much, why not just go on a rampage right out the gate? Anything can happen, at this point. The imagination goes wild.

“Sans!” Papyrus shouts, batting his head with his glove. It’s now that Sans realises Papyrus has been talking this whole time. “Are you even listening?”

“huh?” Sans shakes his head. “sorry, papyrus, i’m just super focused on this sentry thing. i thought you wanted me to take it more seriously!”

“Yes, but–” Papyrus stops himself, pointing hand paused midair. His brow bone furrows as he stares at Sans. “There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”

Sans stares back, shoving his hands uncomfortably in his pockets, turtling into his jacket. He doesn’t want to tell Papyrus about the Human. He might get too excited, Sans might not be able to keep him away from them. He can’t let Papyrus die again. He says that every time, and if he stops believing it’s true, it’s over for him. The only thing keeping Sans going is the mere idea that he can protect Papyrus, one of these days, from that awful child. But… Papyrus deserves the truth. 

“listen, if i tell you, will you promise to stay calm?” he asks, already regretting the words as they come out of his mouth. 

“Why wouldn’t I be calm? I am a pillar of calm!”

“i think it's a pillar of strength.”

“Why, thank you, brother! I am very much that, too!” 

“of course you are, bro,” Sans chuckles. Papyrus looks at him expectantly. He can’t avoid this any longer. “alright… that human might be… showing face soon.”

“ Really!? ” Papyrus squeals, clapping his hands together. “Do you know when? How do you know? Did they say hi?”

Oh, boy…

“i told you not to get too excited, paps,” Sans pleads, slumping his shoulders.

“It’s too late, brother!” Papyrus walks in a small circle like he wants to pace the length of the underground, but wants the rest of the story first. “Consider me enthused! Tell me everything.”

“i don’t really know any more than that,” Sans huffs as he perches himself on the edge of his sentry station. “i just know they’re on their way…”

“This is good news, brother,” Papyrus says in that tone that makes it clear he’s scheming something. He walks back and forth, shuffling on the spot and shaking out his hands in excitement. “I need to- I have so many– I need to recalibrate my puzzles!!! ” 

He runs off, knees high and form perfect, snow kicking up with each step. Sans can’t help but laugh as he watches Papyrus run off, laughing triumphantly. He shakes his head. No matter how many times Sans tries to convince Papyrus that humans are not something to be excited about, he can never win. He wonders if someday he’ll be able to accept that. 

Probably not. He doubts there will ever be a day that Papyrus doesn’t want to turn the Human down a better path, and if that’s what keeps the spark in his eyes, Sans will put up with it. 

Part of Sans’s process of searching for humans includes hiding within the trees. Waiting. Watching. The light in the Underground is all artificial, but even that constant light can’t penetrate into the woods. With his hood up, and far enough into the shadows, he’s almost invisible. (He swears he once heard someone talking about seeing something between the trees, how it scared the daylights out of her. One of those girls from that rabbit family had been out on a walk and caught a glimpse of him. He avoids that lot now…)

He normally only has to wait in there for the better part of a day, or even just a few hours for the Human to appear; he’d stopped recently, not seeing the point if they were apparently out of commission in Toriel’s spare room. It was nice, not feeling like he had to act all cryptic in the woods. He was starting to become a local legend. But, these past few days, he’s been lurking in the dark more often than not. Hell, he even scaled a tree just so he could sit down while he camped out at the door. He may have fallen asleep in that tree, but the Human never showed up, so he supposes it doesn’t matter too much.

Today, he had spent a while at the door, knocking every ten minutes, telling jokes to himself – to the empty halls behind it. He didn’t laugh at any of them. Toriel hasn’t been back to see him in four days. He tries to tell himself it means nothing. She’s busy with her ‘guest’, that’s all. She even said she wouldn’t be back as often. It’s no big deal. 

Sans disappears into the forest, sitting back against a tree with one hand shoved in his pocket, the other absentmindedly flipping a bone he had summoned. He stares unblinkingly at the door until his eyes burn and his vision blurs. He’s probably memorised every board, every knot in the wood, every curve of the engravings in the stone. He could draw it with his eyes closed; could know it by touch alone. He scrubs his eyes as they start to sting even worse, then settles back into the groove of staring.

If there’s one thing he hates more than the tension of waiting for the Human to arrive, it’s the mind-numbing boredom. Sitting in silence, all alone, in the forest, is so incredibly boring. He doesn’t know how bird watchers do it. Not to mention, he’s freezing his ass off. He may be a skeleton, but the cold can still creep in just like it can do to anyone else. A shiver dances up his spine as he pulls his coat tighter around himself, cold hands clenched inside his gloves. The cold always makes him feel tired. More than usual, at least. His bones rattle with one particularly big shudder, the jolt forcing his eyes back open. He needs to stay awake. If he misses his cue, if he doesn’t catch the Human on the way out the door… He doesn’t want to know what will happen. 

So, he waits. He keeps his eyes open through pure spite, holds himself tense and stiff until he stops shivering, and he waits.

Sans wakes up to the sound of the door being pushed open. 

He startles at the familiar noise, the crunchy snow scratching against the arch of the door, the wind whistling through the exposed halls. Sans scrambles to his feet, ducking behind the tree he had been napping against, watching the exit carefully. This is it. Everything is finally going to go back to normal. The Human is going to tear their way through the Underground, they’ll do whatever it is they want to do this time, Sans will do what he needs to in the Judgement Hall, and then he can go back to bed. Easy. Simple. Just like he’s done every day for god knows how long. 

He doesn’t know whether to be relieved, or not.

The door doesn’t open very far, the wood heavy and stubborn, creaking long and loud through the emptiness of outer Snowdin. A gloved hand curves around the edge of the door, a figure shuffling through the gap that seems still a little too small for them. The Human is dressed differently. Usually, they wear a striped jumper that sits about two sizes two big, and a baggy pair of shorts that fall just below their knees. This time, they’re actually dressed for the weather. A big coat, with a wooly scarf and hat — one of those ones with the pom pom on top and flaps to cover the ears — thick boots and a rucksack instead of just their pockets to hold their things.

Now that he looks at them, they look like they’ve gotten taller. Sans isn’t sure how fast humans grow, so maybe this past month was enough for them to have a growth spurt. The Human looks around, kicking at the snow like they haven’t seen it a million times before. With an over-exaggerated shiver, their shoulders jumping as they adjust their grip on a tall, knobbly cane, the Human presses their shoulder to the door and starts to walk it back shut. It takes a couple minutes of their boots slipping in the snow, and straining with effort, but they get it shut. They take one last look to make sure it’s fully closed, and pat it with their mitten before they finally look down the path. Sans wonders why they’re taking so long. They’ve been through the Underground, through Snowdin alone, about a billion and one times. Why use this run to take in the scenery?

The Human reaches up to their hat, tugging it off their head and shaking out their hair. Sans furrows his brow and squints at the sight. That’s weird… their hair looks different. Did they cut it while in the Ruins? Grow it out a bit? he can’t tell from this distance. Is it even the same colour? He dares a few steps closer, peering around the edge of the trunk, the light in his eyes flickering out as he tries to remain hidden.

He finally gets a good look at their profile as they stare off down the path. A different nose, different eyes, different chin. They’re older. Taller. This is definitely a human. But not the Human.

Something has drastically changed in this timeline.

This is going to be very, very interesting.