Chapter One
Papyrus had given her dozens of flowers. Undyne, hundreds, until parts of her body were more meadow than skin. Even Mettaton had given her a few before she had convinced him that she could help him. Only Sans had never been able to lift a finger against her to grow the deadly flowers. He had begged her not to face the king. It was only after the flowers slipped down over her eyes, so that her vision faded to a mere half-lidded blur that she had accepted her fate.
"I will not fight him," she had said.
"Come live with us, then, honey," Sans had replied.
"But I promised - wait, what did you call me?"
"Nuttin'," Sans said, sinking into his coat until only his dead eyes were visible.
Frisk smiled, an innocent expression full of the grace and beauty that was new to the whole underground.
"Alright," she acquiesced, her smile growing.
"Wait, really?" Sans and Flowey said at the same time.
"Shut up, Smiley Trashbag," Flowey growl-shouted. Sans' eye flared, and Flowey squeaked and started to shake.
"Sans…" Frisk warned.
"Alright, alright," Sans muttered, his voice muffled through the fluff of his coat.
Frisk extended her hand. "Let's go home."
Papyrus stood before Frisk, frowning. "You may have bested me in battle," he declared. "But now you must prove yourself the better chef before you may live with us. You must be of some use, after all. He pointed a bone at Frisk, and her breath caught. Suddenly she was facing Papyrus in the blizzard, stumbling around as she tried to see the white bones through the thick white snow. Tears were wrung from her eyes by the cruel wind and the bite of not just cold, but jagged edges of bone.
She felt her soul break, a feeling like all the pain of the world condensed into a single, explosive pinpoint of force. And again. And again.
Finally she shouted in frustration, "Why can't we be allies? We'd be stronger together!" A bone cut across her cheek, sending searing pain across her face.
"If I spare you, I'll not live another day!" Papyrus shouted back, sending another line of bones out with a wave of his arm.
"How do you know that? Isn't it the stronger thing to spare someone, not knowing what they'll do to you or how others will react? You're acting out of fear!"
Papyrus howled in rage. "Finish me or die, human!"
"That's enough, boss," Sans said calmly, stepping in front of her. Papyrus stumbled in shock and managed to dissipate the bones just before they reached his brother.
"How dare you defy me?" Papyrus screamed.
"The kid's right," Sans shrugged. "We can't live our lives in fear. There is strength in unity, brother."
"You would call me-" he started, but Frisk cut him off.
She ran forward and gave Papyrus a hug. He froze in shock, then tentatively hugged her back. He started to shake, tears coursing down his face, lit red from his burning eye, which flared bright with emotion. Frisk held Papyrus, shaking as well, but in her case, it was from physical pain.
She was back in the kitchen, on her knees in fetal position, hands pressed against her ears, shaking.
"Frisk," Flowey cried desperately, sounding very childlike. Frisk tried to slow her rapid breathing, and felt Sans' arms around her. She turned and buried her face and her tears in his coat.
"I - I am sorry, human," Papyrus said. "I did not mean-"
Frisk, still shaking, managed to say, "It's'ok." Then she hiccuped.
Sans drew back and stared at her, as did Papyrus. She hiccuped again. Then they all burst out laughing.
Hearing Sans' low belly-laugh and Papyrus' high "Nyeh-heh-heh!", Frisk could only laugh harder, which in turn made her hiccup more, which sent them all into fits again.
"Hey," Sans gasped. "I can try to cure your hiccups, but I wouldn't hold your breath!"
"Oh my god Sans!"
"You're smiling, boss."
"I am and I hate it!"
Frisk guffawed, gasping for breath. The hiccups, it seemed, had stopped, but the whole house was bright with laughter.
Sans' expression changed. "In all seriousness, though, what was that? Are you okay?"
The smile slid off Frisk's face like water off a window. Her shoulders slumped.
"I - I was remembering the times I fought Papyrus," she said, looking down. "76 flowers, Sans." He was the only one who knew about her condition. For all that she trusted her new friends, she was not sure if they would react so well to learning that she had such power over time.
"Times?" Papyrus asked, confused. "And what's this about flowers?"
"Slip of the tongue," Sans said, covering for her. "And it's an inside joke." He laughed, fairly convincingly, but too late.
"Human," Papyrus said, kneeling before her. "Does this have to do with the flowers on your body? None of the other humans had them." He paused, looking to one side, frowning. "If something is wrong, I want to help. After all, you've helped nearly every monster in the underground. You taught us what love really means."
"Wow, boss. That's sappy, even for you," Sans quipped. Papyrus' eye flared, and Sans held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but he was smiling.
"I'm alright," Frisk said. With Papyrus perhaps, it wasn't so much that she couldn't know how he'd react as that she could. He wouldn't know how to fix this - the reset abilities were a secret between her, Flowey, and Sans, as far as she knew. That reminded her - where was Flowey?
"Flowey?" she said, whipping around. The little yellow blur was nowhere to be found. She scrambled to her feet.
"Whoa, there, Sans said, standing and putting a hand on her arm. "I'm sure the brat is okay."
Frisk bit her lip. She did not miss the look that the brothers shared. She pulled away from Sans and ran from the house, shouting his name.
"Frisk," Sans called in the background, but she easily outpaced both of them. Her experiences with Undyne had made her into quite the runner.
A golden petal lay in the snow in front of her, bright against the dull grey of the days-old slush.
"No," she whispered, and pumped her legs harder, her quick, jagged breaths like cold blades in her throat.
Following a trail of scattered leaves and vines, she made her way into Snowdin forest. It was only as the trees became thick and dark around her, closing off the dimming light of the vast cavern, that she slowed. She was uncertain where to go next.
The branches of the trees seemed like black fingers, damning her, though for what crime, she did not know. She struggled for breath as the trunks seemed to close around her. A blur flashed in the corner of her eye, and her arms pinwheeled as she tried to steady herself. She fell backwards, seeing her soul start to glow, and desperately tried to push whatever-it-was with her arm.
There was a sound she knew well, and she braced herself for the pain.
"Frisk!" Sans called, skidding into the clearing, and Frisk was confused. She should be dead. A single yellow flower drifted down past her eye, and fell upon a whiter patch in the snow.
"Frisk?" Sans asked as she struggled for breath. No, she couldn't have - she would never!
"Sans," she cried, and he rushed to her side.
"You -" he gaped at the small pile of dust, and the flower that lay atop it.
"No," Frisk murmured. "No, no, nonononono."
"Shh, it's okay, sweetheart," Sans said, pulling off his jacket and draping it around her slender frame as she shivered uncontrollably. "You didn't mean to, it's not your fault. Darling, please, if you cry you'll freeze your eye shut."
She didn't show any sign that she had heard, so he picked her up in his arms. She was surprisingly light.
"Wait-" she gasped, as he turned around.
"Yes?" Sans said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice, one sweet and soothing like mellow jazz.
"Flowey," she choked out.
"We'll find Flowey," Sans said,and Frisk was startled by the use of his name. It was enough to make her catch her breath and look up at him.
"What're you looking at me like that for?" Sans grinned. "We can't have our girl without her watchflower, now can we? Besides, for all that he annoys the hell outta me, he's your friend."
Frisk smiled weakly.
"There we go," Sans said. "That's my girl. C'mon, let's get you somewhere warm before you catch your death."
"I can walk," Frisk protested.
"Too bad," Sans said.
"Sans!" Frisk blushed.
"Alright, be my guest," Sans said, setting her down. As soon as he stopped supporting her, though, she crumpled to the ground. He immediately knelt and picked her up again.
"I -"
"Don't say it," Frisk snapped, tears springing to her eyes unbidden. "Damn these rotten flowers!"
Sans was silent, and as the silence stretched, Frisk's guilt grew. "I'm sorry," she finally said. "I didn't mean to -" She was surprised when Sans started laughing.
"You swore," Sans said.
"Wha- No I didn't."
"Did too," Sans grinned. "Hate to break it to you, but damn is a swear word, honey."
Frisk allowed a small smile to creep onto her face. "Okay, so I'm not perfect," she said. "It was just one time."
Sans chuckled. "There's a chance for you after all!"
"Oh, don't you start," Frisk laughed. Then her face drew in and she clutched Sans' jacket tighter around her. Sans was troubled. If he had seen what he thought he had - but she would never, not even for her own survival. Even if these flowers weren't like any other time, that even her Determination couldn't bring her back, she would give that up before taking another's life.
Frisk was sick in bed with a bad fever for the next couple of days. She shivered while sweating, nightmares spiraling around her until she was dizzy and fatigued with the weight of them.
Undyne's spears came at her from all directions, faster than she could move, some switching direction and appearing behind her without warning. They were icy cold as they struck, ripping through her slim body. She couldn't move except to pivot on the spot, desperately deflecting them with her small shield.
Undyne laughed maniacally. Finally the magical hold lessened and Frisk ran. Undyne was faster, though, and her boots thundered on the ground with all the wrath of a waterfall, promising to hold her down until she succumbed.
Her soul broke.
And again.
And again.
Agony beyond description. Worse even than the reason she had come to Mt. Ebott, worse than anything she had ever encountered.
Burning hellfire. Breaking asunder into a million razor-sharp shards. Until she longed for the physical pain of battle because it was as a balm, soft and sweet as snow compared to the explosive pain of her soul breaking again.
And again.
And again and again and
Frisk woke to find Sans sleeping, head in his arms on her bed. She smiled weakly. This wasn't the first time she had gotten sick - when she had first come to Snowdin from the Ruins, she had been stronger, but by the time she had reached Waterfall, the flowers had started to take their toll. The weather didn't help, either. She had earned quite a few flowers from long, slow deaths alone in hidden corners, half-drenched and hopeless.
And for all that Undyne was a fish monster in heavy armor, she was very strong, and she had only lasted a few hundred meters into Hotland. How many times had Frisk succumbed to dehydration, heat exhaustion, stumbled with dim vision over a ledge into the fiery depths? She took a deep, shuddering breath at the memory.
Sans yawned, looking up at her. He looked exhausted. He sat up and held out a hand towards her, then remembered himself and started to draw it back. Frisk reached out, weakly, and put her hand around his, drawing it to rest gently on her cheek. She leaned into his touch, the first kind contact she had felt since Toriel had hugged her goodbye.
"Sans," Papyrus said, bursting into the room. "I have brought more cooling pads-" he stopped abruptly, blushing. Frisk hadn't known skeletons could blush. She quickly dropped her hand as Sans whipped his away.
"Ahem," Sans cleared his throat. Frisk looked over at him, and saw he was a brilliant shade of red. She covered her smile with one hand. He was adorable.
Papyrus coughed "I- here, human," he said. He set down the cooling pads and brought over a bowl of -
"Soup?" Frisk asked. "Not spaghetti?"
"Well," Papyrus said, shifting in place. "The innkeeper said it was good when you were sick, and it's tomato, which is not that different from spaghetti sauce."
"Thank you," Frisk said sincerely, and his sharp expression softened.
She spent the next few days of recovery studying books of monster history from the Librarby. They were invariably dusty - the kind she was used to, not monster dust. Monsters rarely used history except to justify a fight.
Sans brought her the books. She knew he took more time than he'd probably admit finding the ones she'd enjoy the most, or ones on the topics she requested.
Sans or Papyrus would read to her - mostly Sans, really. She suspected this was less an unwillingness on Papyrus' part - as uncomfortable as he was with anything he considered overly mushy, he seemed to enjoy reading to her - as a favor Sans' had asked him. Often Papyrus would listen in, seeming to doze off in a chair by the window, but opening one eye when Sans would pause to take a drink.
Finally, a week after Flowey had gone missing, Frisk was fully recovered. They still hadn't found him. Where could he be?