Frisk could feel the stares drilling into their back and making their skin crawl. They shifted, uncomfortable, and their red SOUL pulsed rapidly in front of their chest, identical to a heartbeat.
Frisk was used to seeing their SOUL by now; everyone who had traveled through the Underground thought it was normal. It was a common occurrence, a regularity, a side effect of the magic that filled both monster's SOULS and the very air of the Underground for reasons that Frisk didn't quite understand.
But humans did not have magic.
None of them... except for Frisk, the lone human who had survived the trip to the Underground.
Frisk had tried saying it wasn't magic per say- it was just their SOUL, nothing more and nothing less. And when that hadn't worked, Frisk had tried to hide it.
That hadn't worked out as well as Frisk had hoped.
Frisk covered their SOUL with one hand, self conscious, and told themself that they should be used to this; they should know better by now. Three months on the surface, and already they had realized with a sinking feeling something that they hadn't wanted to admit to themself.
They missed the RESETS.
No, that wasn't quite right. They didn't- didn't miss the long, lonely walks, the long days of solitude and of fear. They didn't miss being trapped and used.
What they missed was knowing what would come. What would happen next. And knowing, that if they somehow messed up, it would be okay. They could fix everything- even things they had once thought impossible. Sans was fine after all, wasn't he?
"Hey… isn't that…?" A voice murmured, and Frisk jerked their head up, scanning their surroundings quickly. Humans made them nervous, too. Frisk hadn't exactly forgotten what had happened prior to their journey Underground, after all.
"Yeah, I'm sure of it. It's the monster's human ambassador. The little kid."
"Huh. They're smaller than I thought. You don't think the rumors about them are true... do you?"
"Which ones? There are a lot."
"Y'know, y'know! The rumors that they're a changeling or something. Like, a monster just pretending to be a child so the monsters look harmless and friendly. I mean, they don't even talk, right? For all we know, the lot of those monsters could eat humans or something..."
Frisk felt their SOUL pulse in response to their sudden shift of emotions and they sped up, walking faster. They didn't want to hear this. It had only been a few months since humans realized monsters were real, but Frisk had thought people's feeling would change faster about the monsters than this. Frisk had accepted monsters within a few days, after all, in their first RESET alone... why couldn't everyone else?
Worse, Frisk realized that the Surface made them nervous. They had known, of course, getting used to the Surface would be hard for them just as it would be for everyone else, but they hadn't realized just what the RESETS had done to them.
They had been gone for nearly three years, trapped in that repeating loop. And during that time, Frisk hadn't seen any humans other than Chara, who wasn't exactly the best reflection of humanity themself. And now that their SOUL still came out of their body whenever they were feeling strong emotions…?
Frisk knew they belonged more with the monsters than the humans.
But it was their duty now to bridge the gap between humans and monsters so… so why did Frisk feel so hopeless about it?
"hey, kiddo!" A familiar voice called. The humans' voices faded to distant background noise, receding from Frisk's concentration, as a familiar skeleton drove up to Frisk in a moped. Frisk's SOUL vanished back into their body, and they let out a breath of relief. Sans slowed down, grinning down at Frisk and winking. "c'mon, frisk, we don't want to be late to dinner again. this time should be the first time paps' food is actually edible, and you don't want to miss that event."
(Miss it? Me? I'd never,) signed Frisk with a small smile. They hopped up onto the moped behind Sans, grabbing hold of his hoodie.
Sans glanced back at them and smirked. "throw me a bone and don't tell tori i let you ride without a helmet, okay kid?"
Frisk, their hands unavailable, squinted back at Sans and stuck out their tongue. Sans chuckled, and the moped sped up with a whirring sound, the wind snatching at Frisk's hair.
Despite the promise of the pleasant evening and weather, however, Frisk couldn't help but glance back.
Monster's child.
.
The child gazed at the figure wreathed in shadows, curious as the monster skimmed another line of the white coding of the Underground.
"Chara!" A voice called in the distance, and the child twitched, red eyes widening as their head swiveled to see if they had been caught. Not yet.
Chara glanced back and frowned. Gaster was no longer there. Where had he…?
[What are you doing?] Gaster asked from behind Chara, his voice flat.
Chara jerked startled, and then grinned up at Gaster, blatantly unashamed of their presence. "What?" Chara repeated. "I was just curious."
[Hmmmm.] Gaster's eyes narrowed, his form swirling and shifting in and out of view. [I'm sure. You've never done anything wrong, is that it?]
Chara shrugged.
"Chara!" Flowey popped up besides them, and Gaster scowled, crossing his arms.
[I've told you two many times-]
"Don't come into your lab, we know, we know." Chara rolled their eyes. "Technically it's Alphys' old lab though, and I never heard her tell you that you could be in here."
Gaster's eyes narrowed. [This is my lab.]
"Chara, you ran off again! I thought you said you'd stop doing that, it's not fair you can go through walls now," Flowey grumbled.
Chara's eyes narrowed as they glared up at Gaster defiantly for a moment longer before they spun on their heel and stalked back out. "All right, then, Asriel. Let's go."
Chara didn't look back, and the flower hesitated for one moment, glancing up at Gaster wearily before following Chara out.
Chara watched out of the corner of their eye before they shrugged. Their sibling still hadn't gotten used to the strange existences of Chara and Gaster. Because Flowey had both experienced RESETS and gained a lot of LOVE, he could see both Gaster and Chara when they wished. But for Flowey, Chara was an expected entity and Gaster... Gaster was quite the shock for the flower.
It wasn't that Chara and Gaster got along, either; since meeting two months ago, Chara was instead intrigued to find someone worthy of fighting once again. It had started fairly harmless- and by that, Chara entirely meant that they might have possibly tried to kill Gaster with the pure force of their DETERMINATION, something which the skeleton had not appreciated. ([I was in the middle of working,] he had grumbled, tossing them outside. Chara was back the very next day, attempting to come up with creative ways to get their ethereal hands on a very pointy knife.)
Since then, Chara constantly returned to bother the scientist. They didn't have anything better to do; not many monsters had stayed behind in the Underground, and Chara was invisible to almost all of them no matter what they tried.
Asriel wasn't the worst companion, Chara noted. It was just Chara missed Frisk and their stubborn kindness. Even more importantly, Chara missed the power Frisk had given them. The feeling of holding a knife, of being covered in dust and being filled with a terrific joy and anger, of knowing how powerful Chara was…
Frisk wasn't here anymore, though, and there was no point in moping. Chara had moped enough in the many, many years of solitude they had been left to wallow in after they first died.
Chara didn't think they'd ever meet Frisk again, anyways. Whenever the human returned to go pester Gaster or whatever, Flowey and Chara both vanished so they wouldn't have to deal with them. Sans was always trailing behind in the human's shadow and looking ready to attack anything that moved, especially when he sulked outside of Gaster's room during Frisk's visits. (Chara had went to look once after Asriel told them and knew that the skeleton was indeed sulking.)
And besides, it wasn't like any other humans with LOVE points came down to the Underground every day…
.
Frisk squirmed uncomfortably in their bed, rolling over one way and then the other. They missed the sofa in Sans' and Papyrus' house. Toriel's house was nice, too, of course, but Frisk didn't like sleeping alone.
Opening their eyes and fumbling for the lamp as their stomach growled, Frisk squinted in the light as they made out the shape of a piece of pie lying innocently in the center of the floor.
Frisk's stomach growled again and they slipped out of bed and got up, carefully tiptoeing over the cold floor with their bare feet. They picked up the pie and inspected it carefully, squinting their eyes to see better in the darkness. A little while after Frisk had settled into their new home, Toriel had started experimenting with different types of pie to see if they liked additional flavors. When Frisk had discovered what a snail pie tasted like, the unpleasant surprise made them a lot more wary of the midnight snacks that they sometimes found left in their room.
Assured that the pie was their favorite, butterscotch and cinnamon, Frisk didn't bother looking for utensils and instead started eating it with their fingers. They walked over to their window, pulling aside the curtains with one hand as they munched on the pastry.
The moonlight cast the room in a soft silver hue, and Frisk relaxed as they watched the few clouds drifting serenely across the moon. Moonlight always seemed to help to calm them down when they were having trouble sleeping.
They would have preferred keeping the curtains open in their room all the time, but Toriel kept forgetting and closing them anyways. She thought Frisk had a fear of the dark by now (three out of the five nights Frisk stayed at her house during the week they crawled into her bed and curled up next to her until the nightmares went away) and had thoughtfully bought a small nightlight to plug into Frisk's wall, but that wasn't the issue. Not really.
Sure, Frisk wasn't a fan of dark places, but it wasn't one of their phobias. They were afraid of waking up and seeing golden flowers again, of hands coated in dust and a haunting smile with a voice that giggled once in awhile. They were afraid to be laughed at and told that it was all a dream and that the nightmare wasn't over. They were afraid everyone once again looked at them in fear and disgust and hands that used to reach for them never came. They were afraid of humans, their smiles taunting, telling Frisk to wait on the mountain for a little bit but never coming back.
"I'm sorry... I just wasn't ready for the responsibility..."
Yes. There were many things Frisk was afraid of… but darkness wasn't one of them.
Frisk also had trouble making friends on the surface. They hadn't noticed until recently that, although Frisk had a body of a nine-year-old (they had just had a birthday two months ago), Frisk wasn't acting nine at all. They had the years of a twelve-year-old and the harrowing experience to make them seem that much older. It hadn't crossed Frisk's mind that this difference would show so acutely to other human children.
Humans also treated children differently than monsters did. The officials Frisk met with to try and help monsters gain an equal standing looked down on them because of their appearance; their lips twitched when Frisk used Sans or Papyrus as a translator, like it wasn't even Frisk speaking at all but just one of the adult monsters. Frisk wasn't some kind of decoration, a pity mascot for the monsters. They knew they weren't. They… they hoped they weren't.
And it all circled back to their greatest and worst fear: that Frisk wasn't good enough. Like some insidious cycle of emotions that repeated themselves over and over and over just like Frisk's fears had done in that repeating cycle in the Underground in what felt like just yesterday…
Frisk climbed back into bed, placing the now-empty plate back onto the floor.
They left the curtains open, though, their hair almost appearing silver in the moonlight as they closed their eyes and went back to sleep.
.
.
.
((The story continues... It'll be a small wait for next chapter though (probably next weekend) since I have lots of tests and my other fanfic to try and update. Until next time!))