Takes place about two years after Barrier Fall, when Frisk is ten or so. Provides a little bit of backstory relevant to what's coming next in Under Shield.

You are burning.

Whimpering, you try to move, but something wraps tightly around your limbs. Though you struggle, you feel only clammy, sweat-soaked damp around you, and a deep voice speaking from far away. You know that voice. You know…

You are burning. He stands before you, hulking against the darkness, tears streaming down his face as you cry for help, but there will be no mercy. Not now. Not ever, as you burn over and over again, until one day you'll just give up and let the cruel points of the trident rip the soul from your body-

hey, now. nothing wrong with a stroll down memory lane, but it looks like you took a wrong turn into a bad neighbourhood.

This voice is different. You know this one too. You try to focus on it, but it hurts so much… You are burning…

that was then. this is now. we need you to come back to the here and now, pal. too many people are depending on you. 'sides, if papyrus crams any more balloons in here, the house is gonna float off, which tori won't like at all, and i kind of prefer my bro in once piece. here. lemme show you a shortcut. someone here really needs to talk to you.

Cold fingers wrap around your hands. A flare in the dark, blue against the burning, and you surge toward it. That first voice is there too, though, and you are frightened. You pause just shy of surfacing from the dark and linger, listening. It's so much clearer now, and it shakes other memories loose from the dark….

"Frisk. You… you can't give up. You have to stay determined…."

("Katie… Please… wake up… I don't like this plan anymore….")

No! You don't want to remember that! You struggle against the memory, gasping for air, and the fire sears your throat. Panic tightens around your heart, and a harsh, ragged cry tears its way out of you.

The deep voice makes a terrible sound. It speaks to you of pain, and heartbreak, and you flinch away from it, but there are hands against your brow, smoothing the damp hair from your face. Those hands… you remember the pain they caused. Remember your own hands inflicting pain in turn, until they were stained red, for he gave you no other choice…. But there is no pain now. Nothing but gentle comfort as they lift your head and press a cup to your cracked lips, and something warm and honey-sweet soothes your tortured throat and lets you breathe again.

"There… there's a good child. The tea… the tea will help…"

A sound nearby, strange, a soft bumping, like someone trying to push through a forest of balloons… and then a new voice that floats around you, familiar and beloved, sweet as cinnamon and butterscotch. "...Asgore? Have you been here all night?"

"I… yes. I think they are dreaming, and I do not think the dreams are pleasant. The… the tea seems to help."

A new hand against your sweat-dampened brow, but even this… even this brings with it memories of fire and pain, though not nearly so bad as the other. "I daresay you are correct. I should like to get your recipe, when Frisk is well again. I have not tried this blend before."

"Well..." That great, strong voice breaks on the word. "You think they will be, then?"

"I do." The bed dips as a weight settles beside you, and a soft hand strokes your hair. "Frisk is a human child, and human children do sometimes fall ill. They have the combined might of human medicine and our magic working together to cure this illness. I promise you, Frisk is improving. This… this is not that."

"Frisk is such a little thing…" Memory swims to greet you through the dark, and you are not even certain that this one is yours. You can see a face - your face - framed in gold. Standing in a garden of golden flowers, so small against them, looking down in surprise as a watering can falls, forgotten, to the blossoms. Again, your face turns up to the great height from which you see yourself, and the look on your face - fear and hope at once - drives through you like a blade.

A cry from the here and now shatters the memory, and huge hands lift you in your swathe of blankets. Strong arms surround you, forming a bulwark against the darkness. That great, towering bulk still looms over you, but now it feels less a threat, and more a shelter from the fire.

"Tori, I can't… I can't go through this again." Those strong arms tighten around you, and you can feel them trembling as that strength - as Asgore - cradles you against his chest. You feel the pounding of his heart through the soft silk of his shirt.

A soft sigh, and the scent of clover and honey swirls around you as Toriel moves closer. Asgore shifts, and fabric rustles, and you have had been hugged by Toriel often enough to know that rustle when you hear it. "Oh, Gorey. Frisk will wake. You will see."

"Are you sure?"

Gentle laughter, tinged with awe. "That child has more determination than every monster in this house combined. They will wake. Just give them time. Some hurts take a while to heal."

A slight shift, and you hear the soft brush of horn against horn as two heads lean against each other, an old, unthinking show of mutual support. "All right. I will believe. But... "

"Hmmm?"

"Do you think that after… after this…. we might…?"

He cannot finish the question. You can feel it in the way his chest tightens as he holds you against it. Toriel is silent for a long moment, as the air drips with pain and regret.

"You have been good to Frisk," she says at last. "I reconciled with you for Frisk's sake, and I will admit that I believed you would be father in title only, but I can see how much you have come to care for this little one. I can see, too, how much Frisk cares for you. I have no question that Frisk has forgiven you for what you tried to do. How, then, could I do any less?"

Hope surges like a palpable thing. You can feel it in the rush of breath that swells the chest beneath you. In the shock that runs through the arms that hold you close. Hope charges the air until you are breathing it in, like a cool mist against your parched throat. But hope freezes as Toriel clears her throat. "I did not say that I have forgiven you."

"But if you have forgiven me for Frisk, what other reasons could there be-?"

It is the wrong thing. You wish you could cry a warning, but you remain helpless, floating in the dark, as Toriel shifts away from Asgore, leaving a void of cold in her wake.

"Emily."

"...Emily?" Confusion rings in Asgore's voice.

Toriel draws a breath sharp with pain. "She had the most beautiful hair. There was not much to dress it within the Ruins, but I found a ribbon that was only a little faded, and it kept it out of her way as she pretended to help me make dinner with her little toy knife. She was a quiet, patient little thing."

He understands now. You can feel the tension, the panic racing through him. "Tori-"

"Do not 'Tori' me, Dreemurr, I am not finished!" Even he knows better than to contradict that particular voice, and she presses on. Her words echo through him like blows; you can feel the jolt as each one strikes a nerve and Asgore quivers beneath the stinging rain of them.

"Alexander. So brave. Convinced that nothing in the world could hurt him, so he faced every challenge head-on. Lin, a sweet creature of beauty and grace. When she danced, there was such joy on her face that she shone." Toriel's breath comes ragged with old, remembered grief. "And then… then, I stopped asking for their names. I thought it would make things easier, somehow. But I still knew them. My little scholar, so thoughtful and studious. He cracked his glasses in the fall, and had to make do with my old, clouded pair, but he persevered. My kind little shadow, who wanted only to see me smile, and learned to fry snails despite her own distaste for them because she knew how much I liked them. The precious little sheriff, so concerned with righting wrongs that I could not convince him to stay. He all but ran from the Ruins, so determined was he to face you and set things right."

A low, pained sound escapes Asgore, but Toriel presses on, without mercy.

"I know how much it hurts you to see Frisk this way. How could I not? I know how unbearable it is, the very thought of losing a third child. But you forget; Frisk is not my third child, Asgore, but my ninth. There were six others that you took from me. Oh, I know you regretted it, yet you could do what you did to those children because they were not yours… but they were mine. I loved them, though I knew them but briefly. Do you know what it did to me, to send them to you, knowing what would become of them? And that it was your hands that would do the terrible deed? I tried to keep them with me, but in the end, they were too human, and all of them chose to go. And then… and then Frisk. That precious child lived with me for months before they finally asked to leave, and I still do not truly understand why. We were so happy. I showed them my favourite spot for catching bugs, and we read stories every night, and explored the Ruins together… they called me "Mother"... From the moment I set eyes upon them, it felt less like a first meeting, and more of a homecoming. Surely, I thought, this child was different. This child would be content to stay. As the weeks turned to months, I finally allowed myself to believe. I was even prepared to ask for their true name. But then they asked me to show them the way out of the Ruins, and I couldn't stand to lose this one, too. I tried to destroy the door rather than let you have them, but they wouldn't let me. They just stood there, staring at me as I tried to frighten them off, until I could not bear it any longer. They just said it was… it was time. And in the end, it was also my time. I knew this determined little child would not lose to you, and I could not let them kill you."

Toriel's voice grows distant as she speaks, accompanied by the soft bumping of balloons. As she unleashes the years of fury and heartbreak, the tremors in the arms that hold you grow progressively worse, and you can hear the hitch in Asgore's breathing as he struggles beneath Toriel's merciless onslaught of words.

"I am so, so sorry." His voice is shattered and raw. "I would undo it all, if I could."

"But you cannot. I have forgiven you for Frisk.. But I do not yet know how to forgive you all the others."

With that, she is gone, and the great tower of strength that holds you cracks and shatters, and folds around you, wracked with sobs. Tears rain upon the sweat-dampened blankets that swaddle you, and though you still float in the dark just before waking, the pain in that soul cries out to you.

Monster souls are made of love, and compassion, and hope. The first two you know all too well. There is a reason you love Asgore. Since the Barrier fell, he has done everything in his power to be as much of a father to you as you needed, and you have never doubted the sincerity of his actions. He has been kind and loving not out of duty or obligation, but because that is who he is, and because he loves you. Yet those first two qualities are nothing without the third, and without it, a monster's soul could shatter beneath the weight of the world. You can feel the cracks running through him now as his hope bleeds away, and it is unbearable. And so you move through the dark, pressing against the last veil that keeps you from waking, and the fever breaks beneath your touch.

Your eyes open slowly, and it is not an easy feat, caked as they are with sleep from the fever. Colour assails you from all sides, and you blink beneath the brilliance of Asgore's patterned shirt, and of the dozens of balloons that sway around your bed, bumping up against the ceiling, all bearing some variation on the words "GET WELL SOON, HUMAN!" (though the one directly above you simply says "NYEH!"). As your eyes gradually adjust, your gaze drifts to Asgore's face, and the despair in it breaks your heart.

But your heart is not one that is inclined to stay broken. You have far more determination than that. Though your muscles are sore, and weak from days of illness, one hand finds its way free of the blankets, drifting upward until it rests against the side of his face, and you gently pat the tear-damp fur of his beard.

At your touch, his eyes snap open, and as he looks down upon you with fear and wonder. You manage a smile in return, and if it quivers a little from the effort, it is no less genuine for it. "She needs time," you say in a voice little more than a whisper, but he has no difficulty hearing you. You can tell in the shame that blossoms across his face as he realizes how much you have heard. You shake your head, trembling with the effort. One of his hands covers the one you have pressed against his cheek, and it gives you strength enough to find the words you need. "Sometimes it takes a long time to heal when you're hurt. Sometimes, you have to rebuild everything from the beginning to make things right. But we'll do it. She loves you. Trust me, Dad."

The word echoes oddly through the room and sits strangely on your tongue, and only then do you realize that it's the first time you have said it to him. Immediately, you know it was the right choice. For just before he pulls you close and nuzzles his nose against the top of your head in raw, unspoken gratitude, you can see the hope return to the warm depths of his eyes.

This time, the warmth brings only comfort.