*Trigger warning*

Frisk was lying awake in their cot.

It was late. After I came home from Alphys and Undyne's I came back to my room. Papyrus, Sans, and I ate pizza and watched the food network until bed. Now I was lying awake in my cot. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't afraid of my dreams or anything. I was afraid of what the government was going to do. Last I heard, the situation was handed over to the United Nations. I was scared that the humans were going to unleash a war on us, or that the monsters would be hunted and enslaved for their magic. None of these were happy thoughts.

I tried to quiet my mind. I listened. It was raining outside. The little pitter patter on the window was soothing and hypnotic. It must have been an overcast night. The nights were you can't sleep, but instead think and remember. I started to reflect about how far I'd come, what had happened to me before. It all started flooding back.

My first memory. I was three. My whole family was on the beach. It was my sisters birthday. She blew out the candles. She just turned twelve. I wandered off along the beach. My mother yelled at me, "Don't go too far!" I couldn't remember much after that.
I was older. I was watching cartoons on our crappy T.V. The carpet was brighter. It had less sofa wasn't ripped. I was sitting about four feet from the T.V on an oversized pillow. "Hey! You can't be doing that!" I whirled my head around. It was my brother. "You just never listen do you?!" I was scared and confused. He never told me what I was doing wrong. "I didn't here you?" I asked. "Thats IT!" My brother picked me up, threw me to the ground, picked me up again, threw me into the closet, and locked me inside. I screamed! And screamed and cried. I was sobbing the whole time i was in there. I begged for him to let me out. I promised I'd be good. I'd apologize even. It was dark and cramped in there. Even when I was little. I was just so confused, and scared. I eventually passed out, still crying. When someone finally opened the door, I was a wreck. Half starved, tears burning my skin, my eyes swollen and stinging from the sudden, harsh light, my lungs felt like they were swollen and on fire from lack of oxygen. I looked up and saw my mother, with my brother behind her. "What were you thinking?!" she started, "You broke everything! The window is trashed and you broke my favourite vase!" "Wha-" I started, but I was cut off. "You shouldn't have been playing baseball in the house," My brother said with a cruel look on his face,"I told you to stop it." And thats when I realized I was everyone's punching bag.
A few weeks after that I was sent to grandma's house. All of my siblings hated it there because grandma was strict, and made them do a lot of chores. I had never been to grandma's before. mother and father only sent them here if they were being bad. I walked up the porch steps and knocked on the door. Grandma answered. She saw me and immediately swooped me up into a great big hug. I was stunned. It was the first time anyone had ever hugged me before. She held my hand and lead me to the kitchen. She lifted me up onto a chair and put a metal bucket by me feet. I gave her a confused look. "My dear," she started in a sweet, honey like voice, "We're having corn on the cob and chicken for dinner!" My mouth watered. "But, you are going to have to help." I looked at her. She had a warm look in her eyes. She looked like she had been smiling all of her life, like she never complained about anything. "You're going to shuck the corn on the table o'er there." She pointed to the table behind me. "So you better get cracking!"
I was back at home. My siblings were all crowded around the T.V. They were watching baseball. I remember the bruises going all the way up my arms. They were all from them. Mom hit me with a broom because I wasn't cleaning fast enough, another four from where my brothers beat me because I lost the baseball, and a few from my sisters from where i accidentally knocked over their makeup bag. I felt miserable.
I was crying in my bed. I was just let out of the closet for another one of my brother's episodes. I was miserable in this place. My dad had been home for the first time in months. I had two cigarette burns on my arm. I didn't know my dad was as bad as everyone else. I climbed out of my window and ran. I didn't know where I was running to, but I knew I needed to get there fast. I ended up in the middle of the community dump three miles away. I collapsed onto a broken mirror. The broken glass cut into the flesh on my arms, chest, thighs, and a little on my neck. I started crying, softly, as if I didn't really want anyone to find me. I was still crying when the social services found me there. I was rushed to the hospital. I needed almost two hundred stitches to prevent me from bleeding out. I was sobbing the entire time.
I was in a police station. It wasn't the interrogation room, instead it was a comfy place with pictures on the walls and comfy chairs. The lady from social services was asking me a lot of questions. All I could do was sob. She kept asking me where i got my bruises from, and where the burns came from. I insisted that she wouldn't like the answer and continued to cry. I cried until i didn't have enough tears left to cry. I sat there shaking. "Im going to ask you one more time," the lady said, soothingly, "Where did you get those bruises." I took a very long, shaky breath. "My siblings bruised me." I stared at the floor. I couldn't handle looking at her face anymore. "Thats all I need to know."
I was at Grandma's. I was really happy. We were weeding the cabbages in her huge garden. The house was in a large clearing in the forrest. It was about thirty miles from Mnt. Ebott. We were surrounded by the sweet smell of pines and ripening blueberries. It was wonderful. "Well, hun, do you think we have enough cabbage for saurcrout?" Grandma asked cheerfully. I nodded my head. We spent the whole afternoon covered in vinegar and shredded cabbage. I had managed to flip the pot over on my head. I was worried that Grandma would be mad, but she just stared for a second and laughed. We ended up laughing our guts out on the basement floor.
"Well, hun," she always called me hun. I loved the nickname, "Do you have any dreams?" We were in a clearing about a mile from the house. We were watching the stars. It was our favourite thing to do together. We did it whenever we had a bad or frustrating day. Grandma said that it helped her clear her head. "I don't know Grandma. I've never thought it." It was true. I was usually too worried about day to day things to be bothered about things like dreams. "Oh come on hun. You're allowed to have dreams with me." I thought about it. There was only one thing I wanted out of life. "Grandma?" "Yes dear?" Grandma asked. "I want to be loved each and every day. Thats my dream." Grandma looked like she was going to cry. "If I can help it, you are never going to go back to those rotten people ever again." She looked very determined to make that happen. "What's your dream, Grandma?" She looked like she was lost in thought. Grandma always looked like that whenever she was thinking about better times. "I want to visit Mnt. Ebott. I want to see how it's changed since I was there as a girl. Grandma and I got up and walked back to the house.
Grandma and I were at the village, Samburry, for groceries. We rarely needed to go into town for anything. Grandma usually had everything we needed. Preserves from the basement, vegetables and fruit from the garden, the boy who sells eggs usually came by every Saturday, and the milk man came by on Mondays. We only needed to come into town for meat. Grandma wanted to make pulled pork sandwiches this week. After shopping we went out for cream soda floats from the ice cream stand. We went back home and ate leftovers. I went to bed in my steel framed, single mattress bed. I was sleeping underneath a quilt she sewed especially for me. It was purple and blue, my favourite colours. I heard Grandma talking to someone on the phone downstairs. I got out of bed and sneaked down the stairs to listen in. She was done by the time I was down the stairs. She was in her baby blue rocking chair, crying. "What's wrong?" I asked. I was sad, Grandma never cried. ever. "Oh hun. They want me to give you back." She said with a defeated look on her face. "I can't go back! They're so mean. Please, don't let me go." I was very, very sad. "Hun, I was able to convince the agency to keep you from your relatives. I'm crying tears of joy." I looked a little closer, wondering if she was telling the truth. She was! I jumped into her lap and have her a great big hug. She hugged me back, and we just sat there for a while, laughing and crying. She let me go and told me to go back to bed.
Grandma and I worked in the garden each and every day. She taught me how to do the bills, and science, and grammar. Other than that, as far as she was concerned, you learned by experiencing. We were happy. We went to the beach one time, and a seagull stole grandma's hat and flew away with it. It was a funny picture. We had fun visiting the neighbours. They lived on a farm a few miles from here and had a bunch of kids around my age, including the boy who sold us eggs. I eventually got a crush on him. He was funny, and oh, so cute. Us kids had fun jumping into the dugout and chasing the ducks out so we could swim. We would run off of a big Elm tree into the water, and we swung into it from a tattered rope swing. We had a blast. I helped raise some chicks, and gather eggs. Thomas, the egg boy, taught me how to milk a cow. Most of the milk always ended up on my face, but the look on his face was priceless. He would laugh at me whenever I did it wrong. One day I was feeling a little cruel and i devised a plan. "Hey Thomas. Can you try to help instead of laugh at me?!" He came close. He was about to help me when, "SPLAT!" I sprayed the warm milk onto my face. He looked shocked, But eventually he started laughing so hard that he knocked over the milk pail. We just sat there in the straw and laughed. I was living a paradise.
Grandma and I were going through her old jewelry. I loved doing this with her. All of her different bracelets and necklaces each held a different story. I fished around in the attic until i found a new jewelry box that we'd never gone through before. I brought it down to Grandma's room and she opened the box delicately. When she opened it, she gasped. "Where did you find this?" she asked cooly. "I found it in the attic." I said, a little confused. She sounded like she was holding back an uncontrolled rage. "If you found this that means-" She stopped before she could continue. She turned so that she was facing me. "Frisk, what I'm about to tell you could mean life or death." She said grimly. "Wh... what does that mean?" Grandma looked at the ground, a little sad. "It means you're next." I was about to ask her what that meant, but she continued before i had a chance to say anything. "I was best friends with a beautiful girl once upon a time. She was the love of my life. One day she found a necklace like this, but it was blue. It quickly became her favourite necklace. She wore it every day, and polished it once a month. It was her prized possession, second only to her Mother's wedding band. One day we took a hike on Mnt. Ebott like we had many times before. But this time it was weird. The necklace started to glow. On the third day of our hike, she said that she needed to jump into a pit. I begged her not to, but she just said, "Sorry." and jumped backwards, watching me as she fell as if to say goodbye. The necklace glowed so bright on the way down that it almost blinded me just by watching her fall. Two more kids fell in my lifetime that all wore a similar necklace. All children who wear this necklace fall into that pit, and never return." I was confused as to why she told me this, but she never said anything else.
We had a great year and a half together. I played with the neighbour boy, his big sisters taught me how to make straw hats. They became a second family to me. We had cook outs, and fish frys, and we rode horses through the woods. My best memories are with grandma and the neighbour kids. I loved them.
We were in a regular routine now. I would finish my Grandma's basic lessons and go over to the neighbours' house to ,"learn from experience" as Grandma put it. It was just another day. It was hot, so we were in the dugout the entire day. We Jumped off the tree, and swam, mostly. That night Thomas's Papa brought a good catch from the lake so we had a fish fry in the hearing about 200 feet from the dugout. We sang campfire songs and ate marshmallows. Grandma was going to go back to the house for some hot chocolate. We sang a couple more songs. Thomas was trying to tach me how to strum the guitar when we heard a loud "BANG!" We all sprinted toward the house and saw the house engulfed in a fiery inferno of flames. "GRANDMA!" I sprinted to the house, blind by tears. Thomas caught me before i ran into what was left of the house, grabbed me, And held me as tightly as he could. "LET ME GO! Let ME GOOOOOOO!" I was crying as hard as I'd ever had before. I was struggling against Thomas's grip. I was trying to get free. He slowly started to drag me away from the flames. "GRANDMA! GRAAAAANNNNNDDDDDMMMMAAAAA!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. My legs gave out as the grief started to overwhelm me. Thomas supported my weight and dragged me slowly away from the flames. He collapsed onto the ground with me. He lifted me onto his chest and held me there, crying very loudly into his shoulder. He was grabbing my shirt back and I realized that he was crying too. I had never known what devastation was until that day.
Thomas's family moved into Grandma's house temporarily. The boiler had exploded. She would have been killed instantly. I didn't cry after that night. There I was. Living with the family of my dreams, and I couldn't feel anything. It was about two weeks until the agency had things lined up for me to go back to my biological family. That night Thomas came into my room. "Hey," I looked at him. He looked bad, like he had been crying, but long enough ago that he was just sad and shaky. "You know, you could live with us. You could be my family." I looked at him. "You guys have given me so much. You gave me a home when I never asked for one. You showed me kindness when I never deserved any. You gave me a life I could live with." I looked at him with tears threatening to roll down my face. "I love you. Please don't say I never loved me because I've always had. I just can't ask for more." I stared down at the floor. "I never deserved to receive love in return." Thomas walked towards me. He sat down and pulled me onto his lap. He made me look into his eyes. "You deserve so much more then what we can give you." I started to cry. He held me and cried softly along. "I love you, Frisk." I looked at him, dead in the eyes. "I will die if I go back there." "I know." He looked back. I put my hand on either side of his face, and he quickly leaned in and kissed me. I pulled away after a while. "I love you." He said simply. I went across my room, rustled around, and returned with a gift. I have Thomas my most prized possession. A picture of him and me underneath the Elm tree, his arm around my back, my head resting on his shoulder. "Ill never forget you." He looked at me, puzzled. I kissed him one last time, and left.
I watched my biological family take all of Grandmas stuff away. They hauled it into a cheap moving van. While they were starting to haul out the attic Grandma's necklace caught my eye. I quickly grabbed it. I went up to Thomas. He looked shaky, like he'd been crying again. He was looking down at the grass, trying not to look at my face. "Thomas?" He looked up. He looked like he had been in a lot of pain, and was putting on a brave face for me. I gave him the necklace. He looked at the necklace, then back at me. "Can you keep this safe?" He gave me a closer look. He saw there was a new bruise on my arm where my mother had threw me down the stairs. She said I was in her way, but really, she was just angry that I got her into a lot of trouble. He took a step towards me. "I know the story, Frisk. Is... is that what you're planning to do?" He already knew the story. I gave him a big hug. I looked up at him. "I can't stay with these people, and I can't stay with you." I added sadly. "We could run away together," he was holding my hands now, "You don't need to jump into that pit alone." I refused to let myself cry in front of my family. They would be too worried and wouldn't let me go. "I won't let you die." I said, drained of emotions. "If you leave, I'm going to be dead on the inside anyways." I looked up at him one more time. "I meant what I said in my room last night." "So did I, just now." I felt defeated. "You deserve a better life than I can offer you, anyways."
That night I ran all the way to Mnt. Ebott. I was gazing down at the pit from Grandma's story. I looked up at the sky. A single tear ran down my face. "Ive lost everything" I whispered. There I was, completely broken, devastated, and grieving. I lost everything I'd ever loved. I'd lost my dream. I jumped into the pit, still looking at the stars.