Written for True Reset's Snowed In event on tumblr.

They first found each other by the hillside, where the impenetrable door stood within the stone.

The mouse was a watcher, passive in his activity, barely moving himself from the snowbanks. He watched as the younger monsters, in their own clueless ways, tortured the gyftrot. They would tangle streamers around its horns, hang bright spheres where there was space, and throw glitter at its snout. Though Snowdin was large and full of so many people, it was also quite boring. What other way was there to pass the time except in playing cruel jokes against the other? The mouse felt that this was what the Underground was made of; cruel jokes and infinite time to do them, only because there was nothing else to be done.

The gyftrot was then left alone, burdened with festive baubles and the like. A walking eyesore. The mouse made no move to help it. He knew this did not help but, again, what else was there to do?

"Cheer up. It's only temporary."

The mouse heard footsteps before, light against the snow. Their voice was clear despite the mask. Yes, it was a mask, forever upturned in a smile, and eyes that were pinned like the most basic understandings of a star.

"Why would I?" he asked. "I can't smile when there is suffering."

"I never said that you should smile." A slow shift of their head, so bright against the white. The simple shade of a flame that could sear the eyes if sunlight existed in the Underground. But it did not, along with so much else. "Just to cheer up."

The gyftrot kept shaking their head, bringing with it cheerful chimes from each movement. A festive tune.

The mouse tried to think of one nice thing. At least he was warm, bundled within his overlarge scarf. That was something to be cheerful about.

The masked monster seemed to be satisfied.

When the human climbed up the slopes, he could already hear his friend's smugness.

"I told you. It was only temporary."

The bells chimed with each of the human's steps. They carried winding streamers around their arms, the bells clasped firmly in small palms. Even some of the bright little lights, that would illuminate the gyftrot even in the darkest part of the Underground, were carried as well. The human had wound those lights around their head, a walking celebration to the amusement of some of the other monsters that hung around in town.

"It took three weeks," the mouse replied. His scarf was so large it covered up his arms, but that was okay. It kept in the warmth and shut out the cold. "Every time gyftrot moved, we heard them. During lunch. And at night. It suffered needlessly."

"But now that suffering has ended."

Another turn of the head. What a bright smile, but a fake one. It was painted on orange with deep incision, the blackness cutting deep. He thought the force of such a cut would be enough to shatter that mask.

In the three weeks together, he had never asked to see his friend's face.

"Or did you hope for something else?"

The mouse turned away. The scarf covered his mouth so that none of his breath fogged in the air.

For the first in a long while, the Underground witnessed change. But change did not mean hope, and the mouse was careful to keep it buried. Life was full of disappointments after all, in others but mostly in yourself. Like a looming tower of fire, he felt his friend lean close, draped in their cloak of bright orange, their face artificial and so, so cheerful.

"In those three weeks, we had opportunity," his friend said. Engulfing. Consuming. "We could have helped."

You could have helped. The mouse knew what his friend truly meant.

"I believed you when you said it was temporary."

"And was I wrong?"

The human passed by them, having dumped their festive gear at a tree near the center of the Snowdin plaza. They did not tell any jokes or puns, and that was all well and fine to the mouse.

They did not freeze in their tracks and question every move they would make. And in that revelation, the mouse dared to hope.

The lack of space in the Underground had always been a problem.

"But if you need a room, I have a spare." The mouse was hospitable, or felt he needed to be. His friend would always stand outside in the cold, for hours on end. Even when the mouse would leave, that bright shape would remain in place until the next day.

"The loud skeleton said the same." Again, so clear, through that mask. (But every day he doubted. Was it a mask? Was it their face?) "Very kind. Very loud."

"Too loud," the mouse huffed. His friend stood on his doorstep, the snow building on their shoulders. He hoped their voices were quiet. The hour was late, and the slime family next door had children that went to bed quite early. "At least he doesn't tell puns."

"Puns are light-hearted things." Smile. "He offered me his own room. That he would sleep on the couch for as long as he needed if necessary."

In here, the mouse felt a test. "Do you want me to do the same?"

Towering. Engulfing. "It is a temporary thing."

It always was.

The thing about his smiling friend was that he did not truly think him to be a fire monster. After all, there were other fire monsters in Snowdin itself. Grillby for one, who could only leave his own establishment through the fire exit and nothing more. The shouting flamesman for another, who, unfortunately, he kept losing his full name on occasion. Grillby was intimidating at times, the flamesman was blunt, yet his friend could be both and yet none.

"Why is my room cold?" the mouse asked his friend, and that was another thing. When they sat on his bed, wrapped in their cloak, legs and arms hidden, it seemed then that all heat had left. It called for the mouse to wear his scarf and hat indoors instead of just out.

"I only opened a window. You should be glad. The air would otherwise be suffocating."

"…I should be glad?" the mouse repeated. Suddenly, in the weeks he had known his friend, he felt a true ire. It had only been a few hours since the human had left Snowdin, traversing through the rest of the Underground. Any hope that the mouse once had seemed to get further and further out of his reach. He felt it like it was an inevitable thing, and who was to say it wasn't?

"You should be glad." His friend leaned down, too much, bending their back to a strange posture, still seated. Another turn of their head, their mask perfectly in place. "It will be the end as we know it."

"Is that a joke?" the mouse shot back quickly.

The creaking of his own bed, inhabited by another, disturbed him greatly.

"It will be the end, and we will no longer have to pretend."

But he had never-

No.

That was wrong, too.

He was happy before he came upon the docks. Waterfall was too dark, too humid, too wet. But monsters loved the place for its stars, so high up in the rock ceilings, impossible to reach, like anything that was above them. It used to be refreshing to leave the landscape of white and find shadows that churned with restless water.

But it was so easy to get lost.

The marshy wetlands had docks for monsters who did not wish to get their feet wet, or did not have either gills or fins to travel with. The mouse fit all those categories, and his bare feet would make the planks creak with his weight. He had left his scarf at home, so that he could breathe the air freely, despite how musty it was. Mold grew on the cavern walls, and fish that thrived within the deepest darkness sometimes washed ashore to rot – though not for long. Always out of the corner of his eye, he would find a vibrating little creature snatch up those dead things, whining about muscles.

He had gone too far and found himself at the end of a long pier. It led to nowhere, not even water. Just blackness below, and above, and everywhere else. The child stood at the end, the same one that sometimes ran through Snowdin, tripping through snowbanks, no arms to save them from their fall. The only choice really, for the child, was to fall and accept its consequences.

Their scales were grey, their shirt black and white, but before the mouse could question anything more, they fell. There were no arms to grab the edge, or at anything else. Pulled in by the weight, to go further, deeper into this place. Is that not depressing?

The mouse could have run after them. He saw their feet shift, and their head turn to him, to see if he would move.

But he had always been a watcher.

To watch – and not act, he realized – was a cruelty in and of itself.

The snow was at least full of silence. And sometimes even that was too much.

Both stood together when that ferocious cry reached out to them. It reached out to everyone, it's need so desperate and sad and lonely that no one could have resisted it. Monsters had been cheering before, something that, for a brief moment, lifted an unseen weight from the mouse's shoulders.

But then.

"There is nothing to be done about it."

Even as their souls were ripped out, leaving them formless, thoughtless, emotionless, he kept that in his heart, now also completely turned into mist.

"Tragedies will continue to happen, and there is nothing to be done about it. But that doesn't mean that you should be sad." Still smiling. Still, still, still. "Everything is temporary. Sorrow is temporary. Happiness is temporary."

"If everything is temporary, then why bother feeling anything at all?" Did he ask that? He no longer had a mouth. Yet who else would ask that? No one ever spoke to his cheerful friend. No one would ever even turn their head – not to the monster as bright as a dying flame.

He can't remember if his friend said anything back.

He had let that kid fall.

On the surface, there was now snow, and that very fact alone was entirely too unsettling.

Will he get a new house? Will the floorboards creak? Will there be more than one bed to sleep on?

The only question he didn't need to ask was whether his friend would come along. Still, there were plenty of others.

"We haven't known each other that long, have we?" was one of them. On the surface, there was an actual sky above them, much wider than a rocky ceiling covered in gemstones. The world was moving. Most of the monsters had moved on from the mountain, including that human who had once carried away festive trappings in their hands. Yet the mouse and his friend remained near its base, having only moved from the great view up top, now down into the covered forest. There were fir trees surrounding them, shifting from a breeze that tugged at his scarf. A breeze. Nothing stale, nothing lifeless. Still, even without the snow, it was very cold.

"We have known each other…" his friend started, tilted their head at a certain pattern against the sky, then softly continued, "…Enough."

In the soft darkness and the cold, the mouse confessed.

"The world is still cruel. I can feel it. There are still terrible things, but much more of them now." He shuddered. "At least in the Underground, everything was contained."

"And now we are only adding onto more tragedies, is what you mean," that smile explained, and there was relief in those words. The mouse was not sure why.

"There are more tragedies, and more chances to create those tragedies." The darkness with the sloshing water. The brief look shared before disappearing into the depths. "And I can't change any of that."

"There is something," his friend interrupted, very gently. It was not so disturbing now, not so intrusive. "That you must understand."

And into the forest they ventured, into the deep brush they explored. There was grass underneath his feet, and the scent of pine from the trees above. The wind was brisk, and the fibers of his scarf made him itch. But he followed his friend, for it was hard to lose a lantern in the dark.

"Sometimes tragedy happens long before we find them." His friend sounded very tired all the sudden. "And all we can do is watch. All we can do is hope. Maybe others will say differently. Maybe something can be done. But we are all so limited. Especially us. Especially monsters."

And the forest parted, and the sky still stretched on. The stars were not there, the mouse realized, remembering something from a book he had once found, one that had been hidden within the creases of another book, its jokey binding far too tattered. They were already gone, and he was looking at tragedies that had already happened, that would have been beyond his understanding had he not learned it by chance.

"There is nothing to be done, except to keep smiling. That is what I have always known."

When the mouse turned to his friend, he found the other already seated on the grass. Their head was raised to the stars above – stars long gone to their tragic fates.

"Are you smiling now?" he asked.

Nothing.

The mouse did not like to pry, did not like to get involved, so he accepted the silence and merely sat nearby. No, his friend was not a fire monster, but there was warmth still. They must have been quite cozy as well, wrapped up in their long cloak, covering both arms and legs.

"Some would not like us to just watch, to just know there are bad things and do nothing about it." The mouse fidgeted at his own words. "Some would call us cowardly, or weak, or terrible."

"That is true."

A pause.

"Why should we be happy when others are not?" the mouse asked.

"Simply because it is not pleasant to be sad," his friend answered.

And the mouse had to ask once more, directly this time, "Are you sad?"

Another pause.

The mouse, in search of warmth and wanting to feel useful, scuttled near his friend. The cloak was a soft thing, and his friend embraced him with it. This was no longer so unsettling, because in that embrace there was something very familiar. Something so unsure.

He asked one final thing. "Does this mean you'll stop pretending?"

Something slipped from beneath the monster's mask. The mouse didn't comment on it. Friends do not need to point out another's flaws, for they could recognize such a kindness.

Instead he turned his head, to watch the rest of the world. A shake from his friend now and then, but that shared pain was a comfort.