A/N: Posted this on AO3 a couple of days ago, but I love this story (and Undertale) so much that I couldn't resist posting it here, too. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
They find the ribbon in the Ruins, after falling down a hole concealed by leaves.
It's a red ribbon, and very faded, on the ground beyond the patch of leaves that broke their fall. "I remember that," Flowey says when they pick it up. "I remember the girl who lost it."
Uncertainly, they say, "Should I put it back?" And that's about the moment when something whispers in the back of their head: If you're cuter, monsters won't hit you as hard.
Frisk wrenches away, so suddenly they nearly knock Flowey's pot over. "What?" he cries. "Frisk? Are you okay?"
"I…" The human rubs their head, confused. But whatever it was has come and gone—their head now just rings hollowly. "Yes. I'm alright. Just heard something."
"It might be more Vegetoids." Flowey cranes his head. "We should probably head back home. Toriel won't be happy if I let you get hurt."
Frisk smiles a little, picking the pot up. "Hey. I can defend myself."
Flowey shoots a crooked smile back. "Speak for yourself."
Frisk, still smiling, tucks the pot into the crook of their arm and heads back. Toriel's out front gardening when they return.
Upon seeing them, she exclaims delightedly. "Oh, how precious! Did you find that out there?"
Frisk bounces on their toes with a smile, anxious. It's not their ribbon, so it feels strange to wear it, but within a moment, Toriel is clapping her hands.
"You look so cute."
Later, after Toriel's gone to sleep, they lie awake in the darkness of their room.
They suspect Flowey isn't sleeping, either, and their suspicions are confirmed after they whisper, "Wasn't a monster."
And he replies, "What?"
"I said, wasn't a monster." They're sure to keep their voice down, knowing that Toriel is right on the other side of the wall their bed is pressed against. "Earlier. Didn't hear a monster. I heard...somebody. Something. It was talking."
"I...see." Flowey hesitates. "And what did it say?"
Frisk smiles softly. "They told me to wear the ribbon. That it'd make me look cuter."
"That's all?" Flowey sounds amused. "Funny. Maybe it was Sarah."
"Sarah?"
"The owner. She wore that ribbon, long ago. She…" Flowey chuckles. "She lost it after she tried to use it to fend off a Whimsun. But it was already terrified, and flew away at about the same time she spared and fled."
Frisk giggles. "Oh."
"Not all monsters wanna fight."
"Yeah."
"Some are still kind," he says. "Not many. But some."
Frisk smiles, hugging the blanket to themselves. "Like Toriel. She's nice."
"Yes."
"Are you a monster, Flowey?" They don't ask to be rude, but they're unsure. They've yet to see another talking flower. "Because you're kind, too."
Flowey just chuckles, and the human yawns. "Will you come with me, when I leave?" they say.
"Leave? Leave the Ruins?"
"Mm." Already, they're beginning to fall asleep. "The Ruins, and the Underground."
Flowey doesn't answer for a moment. Then he just says, "You should sleep, Frisk."
So they do, not long after, and never quite get an answer.
When they ask for the first time, they're not expecting Toriel to look at them the way she does: with such a wretched look of disbelief in her face.
"What did you say?"
"I...I said, how do you exit the Ruins?"
Toriel just stares at them for a moment. The Ruins, being secluded, are painfully quiet, and the surrounding silence borders on unnerving.
In a soft, affronted voice, she hisses, "Is that why you went for a walk yesterday? You were trying to leave?"
"What?" She continues to glower. "No, Mother. I just—"
"No more leaving the house." Her voice is razor-sharp. The human immediately falls quiet. "Is that understood?"
"But I—"
"No more, child. This isn't up for debate."
"I'm sorry," they say, but it sounds more like a question than anything. It seems to agitate her more, as she huffily returns to her book. She ignores them when they tug on her robe sleeve.
"But how do I leave?"
"Enough," she barks, clapping the book shut. Frisk jumps. "Enough. Go to your room this instant. And no leaving the house unless I come with you. Understand?"
And of course, Frisk complies, because it would be rude to disobey their mother. But they're still shaken, lying on their bed later and staring at the ceiling.
"Don't understand," they whisper. "She can't keep us here."
They've moved Flowey to the floor beside the bed. The flower looks up at them. "She'll certainly try. She always does. She built this house over the escape to the Ruins with hopes that any human who fell down Mt. Ebbot could live with her and be safe."
They feel a pang in their heart, knowing that what their mother must have gone through is far too great for them to ever understand. The sleep that follows is dreamless and dark.
The next day, they try to escape while Toriel is in the kitchen, but their sneakers are heavy and clunky on the wooden floors of her home, leaving no room for subtlety. She finds them in a matter of seconds, but instead of punishing them, as they feared, she invites them to help her finish baking her pie.
Flowey chuckles. They glance at him questioningly, following Toriel into the kitchen.
"Peace offering," the flower mutters sardonically. Frisk frowns.
Later, they resolve to wear new shoes—easy enough, they're thinking, having remembered the box of various different shoes in their room. So they sift through it, pulling out everything from cowboy boots to plain dress shoes to a pair of ballet slippers. There's a pair in their size, from a human Flowey recounts to them while they try the pair on.
It's looking good, a good fit with some room in the toes, but when they slip one off, something funny about its texture catches their eye.
"What's wrong?" Flowey says, noticing their inquisitive stare as they finger the heel.
"Feels strange," the human mutters. Small pieces of rubber flake off. "Really dry. Almost like…"
They angle the shoe in the light, and very clearly see how it's been charred.
For a moment, they don't react, just find it bizarre that these shoes could have somehow been burned.
Then they—
"I've always loved magic," Toriel said, cooking her pie through with a brilliant display of fire magic. "I've been using it for years! Plus—" She winked. "It's easier than paying MTT a bill."
They laughed.
With a small cry, they drop the shoe.
Flowey is on the floor in his pot, watching them. Desperately, they look to him. But he says nothing.
Frisk covers their mouth with shaking hands. From the kitchen, Toriel calls: "Frisk! Dinner is ready!"
They don't ask how to leave for the next three days.
Until they do.
Toriel tries to dodge the question again, tries to offer up facts on snails, but they're steadfast in their requests. This time, however, she throws the book across the room instead after getting fed up, the ends of the pages glowing with the after effects of her magic. Frisk, who has Flowey's pot in their hands, hugs it closer to their body.
Very softly, Toriel says, "Do not ask me again."
"Mother—"
"Don't ask me again." This time she snarls, her hands clenching and flushing red from fire, like the sunlight just beginning to peek through somebody's eyelids. Her face is twisted, in a horrible combination of rage and despair. "Understand?"
The child doesn't answer. They can only stare at her hands. They can only feel their blood, racing through their chilled body.
Their mother softens, looking down. "Stop looking at me like that." Her hands cool and drop into her lap.
"Why can't I leave?" they whispers.
"Why do you want to?" Her face scrunches up more, in a way that announces impending tears. "Did I do something wrong?"
They feel their chest tighten and tell her immediately of course not, it was nothing she did or didn't do. She doesn't appear to believe it.
"I want to stay," they say, trying to smile. "I promise I do."
She inhales sharply. "Then do. Stay. Stay forever."
They wince. They can hear her vulnerability, and it's killing them.
"I can't, Mother." At this, she flinches. They're starting to realize that, perhaps, it's cruel of them to refer to her as their mother.
"You don't know what you're saying," she says. "If I let you go, you will die. The monsters on the other side will do everything in their power to kill you and take your soul." She bites her lip, trembling. "You could be happy."
"I know about the barrier," Frisk says. "And I want to break it. I want to free you all." But Toriel still looks wretched.
"You don't understand," she screams out, and Frisk inches backwards, fearing an offensive outburst. She begins to hyperventilate. "Every time I let them go, they always die."
"I have to go home."
"You're home. You are home." She looks them in the eyes, hers wavering with bright tears. "Don't leave," she croaks. "Stay with me."
Frisk shakes their head. Toriel sobs.
"I'm sorry," they whisper, or at least, they're about to, because the next thing they see is the fireball Toriel throws at them and their soul being obliterated.
Dying is not easy.
They know they're going to have to die eventually, and were never imagining it to be easy, but nothing quite compares to their soul being blasted to pieces.
They hear that voice, the one that whispered to them, call out a litany of Stay determined, you cannot give up just yet, stay determined... They remember Flowey telling them about Determination, and wonder if it's him. But they're not sure how it could be. They imagine he would have told them, too, the first time they heard the voice, which is a little bit like their own.
Stay determined, the voice whispers. Then it says, This is far from over, before going totally silent—right as Frisk opens their eyes and sees the ceiling of their bedroom in the Ruins.
They think they're going crazy, or that, at the very least, it was all just a dream. Their clothes are intact. When they touch their skin, it's smooth and unburned. Then Flowey, no longer in their arms and instead in his pot on the dresser across the room, says, "Welcome back."
Frisk looks at him, blinking slow, confused blinks. They have a massive headache, the kind that will likely stick around for a while.
"Did I...die?" they whisper.
Flowey, rather than answering, nods, before bursting into tears.
Dying is not easy, but living is a lot harder.
Toriel doesn't remember. Of this, Frisk can be certain. She seems happy to see them when they get up, which isn't the attitude Frisk expects a mother who just murdered her adoptive child to have. They sit at the table and eat their breakfast and listen to her stories. When prompted, they even laugh.
They still love her. They know right away, taking one look at her, that they're not angry with her for what she did. They know that she's had other children, who are probably dead, and that she wants to protect them and is terrified of losing them to whatever lies beyond the Ruins. They know.
What really shakes them, they think, is the dying and coming back to life without a scratch.
Flowey remembers, which is about the only concrete thing in this madness. "Both the first child, Chara, and I had Determination at one point," he tells Frisk, with haunted eyes. "But they were the more Determined one, so only they were able to die and reload."
"Is that how? My Determination?"
He nods. The child wonders if they should ask more, but that seems to be all that Flowey wants to share. So they change tact: "It's good to know this. It tells me exactly what I'm dealing with."
"What are we going to do, though?" Flowey sounds scared. They're sitting in the dark of the bedroom, without much light. Neither can see the other's face. "We might have to kill her if we want to leave."
"No," Frisk says immediately. "Don't kill her."
"But, Frisk, she won't—"
"No killing," Frisk repeats. "We'll find a way. Even if it takes longer. Even if it takes forever."
Flowey doesn't respond right away, but eventually, he just laughs. "What?" says Frisk.
"There's that Determination. The King used to tell Chara that: stay determined. And they did, of course." His voice grows fond.
Frisk wants to laugh, as sort of an ironic thing. "That's what I heard when I died."
They mean it to be funny, or cute, but Flowey's eyes immediately widen. And not happily. "Really?"
Frisk falls silent.
"I...alright." He pushes out a breath. "Okay."
"But what does that mean?" they say. But he's silent, eyes distant—in another place, another time. And no one talks again after that.
Later, after they're sure Flowey is asleep, they untie the ribbon and slip it into their pocket.
"Didn't work," they murmur. The voice is quiet.
They ask Toriel again the next day. And the next. Every day after she goes to bed (or after they die—whichever comes first), lying awake, they devise a plan, of ways to convince her to let them go. They offer to learn how to fight, even if they would never actually raise a hand to a monster. Then they tell her that Flowey's coming with and will protect them. Then they tell her that they'd rather die trying to save the monsters than not.
Each time, they're destroyed by Toriel's fireballs, which she releases in a fit of agonized rage. Each time, they draw up a new plan. Each time, they step foot into the hall and head for the living room, they're feeling revitalized, and ready. Each time, they're killed again. And each time, that voice—which is all but silent these days—whispers to them, to stay determined, to not give up.
Toriel kills them roughly two dozen times. They know because, after a while, it's all they can do but to keep track of it, in rough ticks they start scratching into Flowey's flowerpot. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two, and so on.
Their head is high, their resolve unwavering. They don't plead, or cry, or beg.
Not yet.
"I had a son, you know," Toriel tells them one day, while she's reading to them. It's a peaceful reload, one where they haven't died in a while, and they're seated on the arm of her recliner.
Frisk perks up questioningly. Toriel nods.
"I've had many children, but he was different." She sets her book down, hands folded in her lap. "A true, blood son. His name was Asriel."
"What was he like?"
"Oh," she laughs softly, "he was a good little boy. Kind-hearted, smart, honest—he died long ago."
Slowly, Frisk takes her hand. She doesn't pull away.
"He reminds me a lot of you—or, I suppose, I should say, you remind me a lot of him. He's not around anymore."
"What happened?" Frisk hates to ask it, but they feel like they must. They feel as though they've stumbled on something huge and important.
"Ah," Toriel says, as she often does when she's startled, "it's complicated. He was...you see, the first human that fell into the Underground, Chara, was adopted into our family. Asriel was their best friend."
"He was killed by humans," Flowey interrupts from the table, causing Toriel to nearly jump. Frisk squeezes her hand. The flower's voice is darkly emotional. "Chara came down with a terrible illness, died, and Asriel carried their soul across the barrier to a surface village. Where he was fatally wounded by humans, who thought he'd killed Chara and attacked him without hesitation. That's how Asriel died."
"That's enough," Toriel says softly.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty. They deserve to know the truth—of why most of the monsters hate humans."
"Most of the monsters here want a human soul so that we can finally cross the barrier," Toriel forces. Her lip quivers when she speaks, eyes flashing. "Not because they hate humans."
"Speak for yourself," Flowey grumbles, and doesn't speak again. After a while, Toriel returns to the story, but her hands shake as she flips the pages. Her face is haunted, even after she's finished and kisses Frisk on the temple.
"What did you do that for?" Frisk asks later, in the dark of their bedroom. "You didn't have to upset her like that."
"She's always been too soft on the other monsters. The humans were wrong to kill her son, but the monsters were wrong, too, to go human hunting."
"There is no right and wrong," Frisk says, "just how you look at the world."
Flowey winces. "They killed children, Frisk. Innocent children."
"So did Toriel. So did the humans on the surface, who killed Asriel." Frisk smiles, laid out on the bed with their arms folded behind their head. "I think, tomorrow, we should try to escape again. What do you think?"
"Fine."
"And Flowey?"
He huffs. "Yes?"
"New rule. Promise me: no killing. Don't lay a hand on Toriel, or anybody. Okay?"
Flowey sighs again. "Yes. Fine. No killing, or hurting, or touching anybody. You have my word."
"Not a single soul. We're pacifists, now and always." They crane their head toward him. "Alright?"
"Alright."
They don't escape the next day. Or the next.
They stop asking, after dying a few more times and realizing that it's pointless trying to convince her. She's too hurt, they've come to realize. Too raw to be reasonable. So they try different angles, different times: they try slipping out when Toriel is asleep, but she always catches them. During a different reload, they try taking their noisy shoes off, to see if that makes a difference (it doesn't). Then they try slipping out when she's running errands, or gardening, or out in the Ruins. Nothing works.
So Frisk begs her, pleads with her a couple of times, to please please please let them go, and she's crying too, every time, as she burns their body to a crisp. They reload a dozen more times. Two dozen times. Forty, fifty.
During some reloads, depending on what they do, she acts differently. Like once, when they tell her they're going to take a nap then try to slip down the stairs, she catches them in the basement and drags them by the ankles to the kitchen. She only does this a few times, when they're especially deceitful or sneaky, but being burned alive and feeling their partially-charred body being prepared into a pie is horrific enough that they lie awake after each ensuing reload, shaking violently all over.
But.
They don't give up.
The worst part about Toriel, they think, is that she really doesn't want to kill them. She cries every time she raises a hand, every time her fire magic starts to glow. A few times after a reload, they find themselves getting frustrated, even angry with her, for keeping them here. But they know what she's been through; Flowey reminds them of thise couple of times, serving as a stable point in the chaos. And Frisk nods, and whispers their forgiveness into the space above their head, clutching their resolution to their chest like it's something they can physically hold.
Stay determined, the voice chants, floating them through it all. And sometimes, when they sleep, they'll dream, too, and the voice will say, You are the future of humans and monsters, and it'll sound so human that Frisk will wake up in a cold sweat, thoroughly tangled in the sheets.
They don't give up. They can't give up. The voice tells them as much, and they don't. Don't even consider it.
As painful as it is, being ripped apart by flames, Frisk knows, definitively, that the monsters past that gate won't be half as kind as Toriel is about killing them. They accept this, bow their head, and move forward.
The voice will talk even when they don't die.
They don't know it at first, because they don't spend much time doing much other than trying to escape. But sometimes, when they look at something in the home, or pick something up, it will creep up. Sometimes, as Frisk is reading something, the voice will offer comments; during one reload, for example, they go into Toriel's bedroom—initially for an exit, because what better place to hide an exit than in a bedroom they're not even supposed to be in, but curiosity gets the better of them as they start looking around. They bump into Toriel's desk chair by accident, and the voice pipes up, Toriel's small chair...it's name is Chairiel.
Stunned, Frisk laughs, and Flowey looks up in confusion.
The child smiles to themselves. "Just thought of something funny."
Flowey furrows his brow—if flowers even have such a thing—before shaking his head. Frisk starts laughing again when, in the corner of the room, they run their hand along the pot of a cactus and the voice says, Ah, the cactus. Truly the most tsundere of plants.
"Frisk?" Flowey sounds amused. "What's up?"
They bite their lip, grinning. "Sorry."
"Humans are weird," the flower says. But he's smiling.
Nonetheless, they don't find an escape in Toriel's bedroom, and the one down the hallway is locked. The voice offers no explanation or help. But they go to bed later, alive and healthy, so—they'll take what they can get.
And Frisk wants to know more.
They figure out what makes the voice talk, in between dying and reloading. If they touch things, the voice will narrate, so they spend most of one morning touching as many things as they can get their hands on (without Flowey, so he doesn't think they've gone crazy). They run their hand along bookshelves, go through Toriel's bedroom again, and eventually start in on the kitchen, running their hands along pots and pans, the refrigerator, the stove. The voice tells them about Toriel's pies, and about the brand-name chocolate in the fridge—but nothing more.
"What are you?" Frisk wonders aloud.
No answer. They touch the stove again.
The stovetop is very clean, the voice repeats, like a tour guide. Toriel must use fire magic instead.
Frisk tries again: "What are you? Are you a ghost?" But there's no answer. It makes them huff.
Toriel is coming back inside from running errands when they pass the front hall, and gives them a small wave as they head toward her bedroom. Their soul is pulsing with Determination, so brightly that it gives off a red glow, which she frowns at but otherwise doesn't comment.
In the hall, Frisk touches one of the side tables holding a flowerpot. The voice tells them about the flower seeds in the drawer, as well as the broken crayons. They touch one of the strange, cattail-looking plants, and the voice proclaims that it's a "water sausage".
"Why won't you talk to me?" Frisk wonders, mostly murmuring so Toriel won't hear. Unsurprisingly, their head is silent.
At the end of the hall, there's a mirror mounted on the wall. They touch the cool glass with one hand.
It's you!
They smile. "It's me." They make a funny face at themselves, before touching the mirror again.
It's you! It almost seems to say this louder.
This makes Frisk's smile broaden. "You're funny," they say. "You know that? I like you."
It's you!
"It is! It is me!" Frisk replies, in the same, bubbly tone that's in their head. Giggling, they poke the glass again—
Living room.
Frisk jerks back, nearly stumbling over their own feet.
Nothing stirs again, either in their head or in the mirror. Their entire body is suddenly cold. In the glass, their face has gone pale.
When they touch the mirror one last time, the voice brightly exclaims that it's Frisk, nothing more.
They head back to their room, shaken, but don't find Flowey where they'd left him on the dresser. Their head is already bad, and not seeing him in his usual spot fills them with an irrational panic, thinking that, somehow, they've lost him.
And yes, Flowey's there, in his pot on the side table when they peer out from the hallway. Toriel is reading a book with her glasses on. Frisk nearly doesn't stop themselves fast enough when they realize that, whatever this conversation is, it's not a happy one.
"Why do you bother?" Flowey is saying. Toriel shrugs, still scanning the page she's on.
"There's a little good in everyone."
"Right. And in him, there's a lot of bad."
"Aren't those the ones that need our help the most? The ones who have so much bad?"
The flower just sighs, looking annoyed. Toriel looks at him. "I have to ask."
"No, you don't," he mutters.
"I think I do." She smiles sadly. "Do they know?"
"What? About me?" When she nods, the flower flutters his leaves dismissively. "No. Not a chance."
"Funny." She stands, brushing off her robe. "You ought to tell them one of these days."
Flowey's stem stiffens, and he seems to shake himself off again. "One day," he murmurs, although Toriel's already vanished, having headed down the stairs.
Frisk, after a while, steps into the living room. There's still a lot that they don't know. But they don't ask.
That night, Frisk thinks, Who are you?
Flowey and Toriel are asleep, and their bedroom has fallen into its usual, quiet self. They hadn't tried to escape, so the day was soft and sweet. Even after what happened at the mirror.
They don't speak. Not just in fear of waking Flowey, but as means of trying something different: I know you're not a what. You're a who. What's your name?
The static-y silence hisses all around them. Through the wall, Toriel is snoring softly.
You told me about the living room...how did you know I'd be looking for Flowey? How did you know he was there? But their eyes have grown heavy, and they know that their head is empty tonight.
After a while of lying there and staring at the ceiling, Frisk rolls onto their side, pulling the blanket to their chin.
Tomorrow, I'm going to escape. The last time, I promise. I have a plan. Okay? They think this with a small smile on their face, whether anybody's listening or not, and slip into sleep a few minutes later.
In their dreams that night, the voice says, You are the future of humans and monsters, like always. Frisk vaguely sees themselves thanking somebody. It's a formless, colorless shape. A shadow, with two slits that could be eyes. They never know where they are in these dreams; it feels like they're lying down, and whatever is speaking stands over them.
Just as it's about to end, the shadow—which usually stays put and gradually fades away—leans forward this time, so close that Frisk feels the cold fan out over their face.
In their ear, the voice says, So get us out of here.
When Frisk jumps awake, the room is bathed in the red glow of their soul, shining at their neck like a star.
It takes them sixty-three tries to escape the Ruins.
Toriel is screaming, crying with grief and despair, and it's not like many other saves before, because in the middle of an attack, she stops, dead stops, and folds to the ground. Frisk is running, half-blinded by blood from a gushing head wound that's left after a fireball struck above their left eye. They'd finally just gone for it, just like they said, just woke up and grabbed Flowey and said goodbye to her and sprinted down the stairs as fast as possible. They're smaller, but not much faster, with Toriel on their heels all the while blasting attacks at their back. And when she fell, they'd nearly stopped themselves. Nearly dropped down to comfort her, and hug her, and tell her that everything is okay, but the prospect of escaping after so many failed attempts courses through their body harder than any amount of love or sympathy. May she one day forgive them for turning and running that much faster.
Her voice carries like an electric pulse down the long tunnel to the gate, as she cries for them, as she begs them not to do this, not to run, for one of the humans to finally just stay. They don't stop.
"It's okay, Mom," they call over their shoulder. Shards of broken teeth spray with each word, from where they were flung against the wall. "I'll watch my back. I'm gonna go out there and save you all, I promise."
"COME BACK," Toriel howls, wretchedly, and Flowey raises his vines to cover his ears. "DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS!"
Shivering, Frisk clutches Flowey's tight to their bloody body. They're in bad shape, real bad shape, much of their body twisted up and burnt and bleeding—and Toriel barely took any swings at them. Things will be so much worse on the other side.
"I'm sorry," they whisper, much too quiet for her to hear.
"I hate this part," Flowey cries. Toriel's voice echoes behind them, fading—she could follow them, but doesn't, and Frisk is in too much pain, is too grateful for it, to try to guess why. "I wish she would stop."
Frisk pulls their ragged lips back into a haphazard smile. "She doesn't know how to stop. She's too determined."
"Even wounded, you're still funny."
"Tell me a story." Frisk stumbles a bit and realizes, blinking past the blood flowing into their eyes, that their shoe is untied. This makes them wrench out a broken, raspy laugh.
"What? What is it?" Flowey says, panicked.
Frisk smiles shakily. "Nothing. Just...tell me a story. Alright? Trying not to pass out."
"Oh, uh…" The flower looks around, as if he'll find something in the soil of his pot. "Okay. Wh-when I was younger, my father and I used to love gardening. And I used to pl-plant stupid things, like coins, or candy, or small trinkets I found around the house. And I would always get s...so upset, when they wouldn't grow."
Frisk coughs wetly, their lips coated in blood. Their face is as pale as paper.
"Keep going," they rasp. "This...is a good story. I like it."
Flowey sucks in a sharp breath, and Frisk can tell it's all he can do not to cry. "S-s one morning dad w-woke me up and...he said, 'Asriel, come outside! Come look! Your garden, it's blooming…'"
Slowly, Frisk smiles.
"My dad, he'd planted all sorts of stuff over the seeds. Like books, and compasses, and fake flowers from inside the house." Flowey lets out a soft, sad sound. "That was the best day of my life."
"Asriel," Frisk whispers.
Flowey goes rigid.
"It's funny, is all," they say—carefully, as if they can't remember the words. They've slowed to nearly a walk, stumbling forward. They use the wall to prop themselves up. "Toriel...had a son named Asriel."
"I…" Flowey begins, but Frisk shushes them. Their finger is a burnt, charred stump; the bone shows when they raise it to their lips.
"Another time. Finish later. Another...time..." They repeat this a few more times, before collapsing. Their soul's weak pulse is a mere flicker now, but Flowey still manages to pull them through the gate to the save point before the light snaps out for good.
There's snow on the ground, a good layer. It's stained red with blood.