Ryan ran through the dark tunnel endlessly. He pleaded through huffing breaths to anyone that may be listening that the way he was going be the right way out. He was lost; he had been so for a long time, but that was not why he ran. He was also being chased. Every time he thought he was safe, had managed to slip past their notice, they were there. And so he ran.
His chest burned; his legs were numb. He knew that if he stopped he would collapse and it would spell his end. So he kept pumping limp arms and willing his legs to lift, trying not to trip and fall on the uneven rock of the tunnel. Running proved all he could do. He was powerless against his hunter. He had known that from the start. Yet still, he had challenged them. His hunter played with their advantage. They did not just want to see him dead, they wanted to see him destroyed. His hunter wanted him to know that there was no hope in their wake. They were content to keep him on a leash and lead him towards not only his death, but his ruin.
But he was certain he managed to slip away this time. He had seen no sign of his hunter for a long time. However, every turn through the dim and narrow tunnels ate away at that confidence. Every branching path and cavern looked the same as every other and his assurance quickly turned back into fear. Where was sans? Where was anyone? In truth, it was not a surprise. His life was nothing but tales of abandonment. If they did not leave him, he left them.
He should have just stayed with Toriel. He should have just been content with his own happiness. He imagined himself still reading books by the fireplace of his old home, the motherly monster in the kitchen preparing yet another phenomenal meal, humming to herself as she often did. The fantasy shattered as his foot hit a rock hidden by the shadows and he spun to the ground. He struggled to stand, but his limbs would not cooperate. Tears streamed down his face, and he yelled at his body to move. Not for the first time, his hysteric fear was becoming the only thing that kept him alive.
Spots danced in his vision from his fall. He waited until they cleared before trying to stand once more. Then he noticed it. The tunnel seemed to be lighter than all the rest and hope filled him. Though his body still struggled against him, he managed to get back to his feet. The difference was subtle, if not for the fact that he had been wandering through a constant darkness for what felt like days he would not have noticed. He could not run now; pain shot up his right leg as he tried to put weight on it. Limping with one hand against the wall, he went towards the source of the light. It led him to a large cavern. Much of the floor had fallen away into oblivion to form a gaping maw into the earth and Ryan shrunk back from its edge as he peered over it. Where there was ground, it formed a bridge spanning the gap to another tunnel. And before the other end, his greatest fear stood to block the way. His hunter had him trapped at last. "Human" the figure said, "You have evaded me long enough. It is time to die."
Ryan tried to turn and run back the way he came, but was useless. His injured leg gave out from under him before he had taken a step and he fell to the ground. He did not try to get back up this time. Hopelessness kept him still. Tears streamed down his face anew. This was the end. He simply prayed it would be quick.
"No more running." The figure continued as he heard it step toward him. "Face your death with some courage, human." The hunter grabbed him by his neck and lifted him off the ground. The figure held him out in front of them as if he were weightless. His exhaustion was making darkness already begin to creep in on the edges of his vision. Raising its arm, a spear materialized in the hunter's hand. Ryan tried to scream, tried to say anything, but he could only stare at the armored creature pleadingly. The figure showed no hesitation, however. "Thank you." It said before thrusting the spear towards Ryan. The last thing he heard was laughter and a familiar voice that said I win again, brother.
.
Ryan bolted upright. He looked around. He was still in sans's and Papyrus's house. On their couch, not in some dark cavern. It was just a nightmare. Wiping cold sweat off his forehead, he grabbed a drink from the fridge and sat back down on the couch, trying to make sense of what that was. "It was almost like a warning…" He said to himself. His hands still shook in front of him. "Or maybe my fear's just getting the better of me…" He clenched his fist. "Yeah, must be." For a while, he tried to go back to sleep to no avail, images from the nightmare kept surfacing in his mind and caused his heart to race. So instead, he grabbed a candle he found in a drawer and practiced magic.
A few hours later, Ryan opened his eyes and jumped when he saw that sans was leaning the wall next to him. The monster could have been there all morning for all he knew. "Jeez, I didn't hear you come back." He told him.
"well, i'd be surprised if you did" He said back.
"One of these days you got to tell me how you do that, Sans."
"i have no idea what you talking about" The monster insisted. "so, are you still leaving today?"
He almost said yes immediately, but the images of his nightmare resurfaced again and he hesitated. Instead he asked, "How strong is Undyne?"
The skeleton shrugged. "well, i've only seen her fight a few times. my bro would know better than me, but i'd say she's pretty strong"
"Do you think there's any chance I'd be able to give her the slip? Or get past her if we happened to cross paths?"
sans thought for a moment before saying, "you have no chance of getting past her, that's for sure. she knows everything that goes on in waterfall and knows the place inside out. some even say she can be everywhere at once" The skeleton winked at his joke. "as for getting into a fight with her, like i said yesterday, you have no chance the way you are now. but you have potential. if you were a bit better at magic, then maybe"
"Then will you teach me?" Ryan stood up from his spot on the floor. He did his best to hide his desperation but was certain he failed.
The skeleton shook his head. "sorry kid, but i'm not a very good teacher. you can ask my brother. i'm sure he'd be more than happy to help, but i don't know how far that will get you. otherwise, you're on your own. you're welcome to stay as long as you want though. as long as you can put up with my bad jokes and my brother's bad cooking"
Ryan said nothing, not wanting to commit either way. He had very little luck on his own with magic thus far, and he agreed that Papyrus was probably a bad idea, but… Eventually sans just shrugged and went upstairs to his room. Ryan tried to go back to practicing, but his concentration was ruin. He decided to take a walk instead.
The hour was early enough still that very few monsters were out and about yet, so his stroll through Snowdin went largely undisturbed. He walked down to the bridge just below the town and sat in its center, staring out over the forest that stretched far below him. The trees followed the contour of them ground, forming a vista of rolling hills all rising to the center of the dome where an ancient stalagmite formed the mountain under the mountain. Ryan took out his phone and put on some music. The calmness brought back his concentration and he decided to try again.
He closed his eyes and focused on the buzzing feeling that leapt over his skin. With his hand out in front of him, he tried to extend that awareness to just above his palm. He began to gather the energy in his hand, shaping it with only the smallest amount of his own energy as he could manage. It took a while, but finally he had managed to collect what he thought would be enough for a small flame. He formed the image of a fire in his mind's eye and tried to will the magic into that shape. He tried to push the magic to fit its shape and form one property at a time, but it just seemed to eat at the energy he fed it, changing only slightly before returning to its original state. Eventually, he gave up. He let the energy go and opened his eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he tired and, more importantly, hungry.
Ryan walked back to Grillby's trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. How did monsters make it look so easy? He was sure he had the process right that time, but at the rate it was going, he would eat up more energy than he normally would and it would take him forever just to make a fire large enough to burn a candle wick.
At the restaurant, he ate more than he had the day previous in an attempt to recover as quickly as possible. It earned him a few stares from the sparse number of patrons in that early. When he was done, Ryan asked Grillby how much it was but the monster shook his head and pushed away his offered coin. Before he could ask what was wrong, the duck monster from yesterday spoke up again. "Grillbz says Sans was in earlier and told him to put anything you ordered to eat on his tab until he said otherwise. Never knew the skeleton to be so nice to anyone. He must like you a lot." The fact raised questions in his mind. Just what was the skeleton trying to do? He thanked Grillby for the food and left.
Back at the skeletons' house, he took the candle he had found earlier, lit it the traditional way, and sat beside it on the floor. On his way back he had thought of a few more things he could try to get magic to work for him. He took the flame under his control using his own power – Toriel had told him that was always necessary – and held it above his palm. Gathering energy as before, he tried to use it to change the flame instead of using his own energy. It worked but the process was achingly slower; the magic seemed to resist his attempts to change it in any way. It certainly would not be practical in a fight. He was not even certain it was better than the alternative. He decided to try something else.
Cautiously he switched back to using his own energy to feed the flame. The process was instant as if he was neck deep in rapids and had finally decided to jump with the current instead of pushing against it. He made the flame rise until it was above his head and almost touching the ceiling. The distance made it no more difficult than if it were just over his palm. He brought it back down and sent it towards the kitchen. When Ryan guessed it was about ten feet away from him, he could feel it start to waver, the connection weakening. He pushed harder to maintain it but he could not be sure it was making a difference. The flame made it to the door under the sink before he felt it wink out of existence. He tried it again with the same result.
That was his limit of conscious control then, just under twenty feet with anything under ten taking little more effort than if it were right before him. He tried it the other way: taking things under his control that were not right in front of him. Ryan relit the candle and placed it across the room. Reaching out much like how he had pushed away the flame, he tried to touch the flame and tried to bind it to him, but he could not even feel it. He got closer, still nothing. He held his hand out so it was just over a foot away from the flame and still it would not come to him. Instead, Ryan watched the flame fly away from the candle towards the staircase to the upper floor. The flame flew to sans's raised hand where he stood at the top of the stairs. "having trouble?" He asked once Ryan noticed his presence.
Ryan sighed to relieve some of his aggravation before answering. How did the skeleton make it look so easy? "No more so than usual." He told the monster. "I tried doing what you said yesterday to fix what I was doing wrong, by the way. It barely worked, let alone seemed like a better alternative."
sans let the fire die and shoved his hand into his pocket. "show me" He told Ryan as he walked down the stairs. The skeleton leaned against the wall and watched him. He question if the monster was just going to make fun of him. He had already told him he was not going to help. But after a moment, Ryan closed his eyes a focused. He barely had the energy gathered when sans told him to stop. "what are you doing?" he asked.
"Gathering energy?" Ryan told him, unsure what else the answer could be.
The skeleton shook his head. "that should not take anywhere near that long. fire magic takes the bare minimum amount of energy to form so that it can be made quickly and changed to fit many purposes just as quickly" Ryan remembered Toriel explaining fire magic to him in much the same way. She said it was why monster's usually learned fire magic first. "my guess is that you're trying to grab enough energy for a decent sized flame off the bat, right?" Ryan stayed silent. That was exactly what he had been trying. "that will never work for anything. you always start small, as small as possible and build on top of that. it gets easier and faster the more you do it"
So much for being a bad teacher. "Alright, but what about getting the spell to actually form? Every time I tried it just seemed to resist me."
The skeleton shook his head again. "the only reason that would be the case is if you were hesitating. remember, energy moves fast – faster than anything. if you want to move it, you have to be just as quick. otherwise it's like trying to push the blade of a fan that's already spinning: too slow and you just swipe at air. if you want a spell to work, all of the information needs to be sent over at once, in an instant"
Ryan was still skeptical. "Is that even possible?"
sans pushed himself off the wall and began to walk around the room. "c'mon, you've seen the movies, right? how they always snap their fingers and it makes a fire? well, it really is that easy. try it"
Willing to give anything a shot at that point, Ryan tried to push the doubt he felt about the idea out of his mind. He made himself believe that when he snapped his fingers it would make a fire. He focused on that thought: fire. Warm, orange; he pictured its shape, flickering in his mind's eyes.
His fingers clicked and the same jolt he felt the first night after he had fallen down went through his body. Over his hand, a spark of a flame burst into being before quickly dying out in the lack of energy to maintain it. Ryan almost laughed in joy. "there you go" sans commented. "now you can wield magic almost as well as a newborn"
Ryan ignored the skeleton's slight, oblivious to it in his delight. He snapped his fingers again and then again. Each time a tiny flame burst into existence. He did it over and over. At some point sans must have left, because when he stopped to eat, the monster was gone. He continued to practice well into evening. He practiced until he could form the flame without needing to snap his fingers and then practiced that well into the night. That night for the first time in weeks he went to sleep with a smile on his face.
.
Ryan awoke from the same nightmare he had had the night before of running through a dark cave to escape some unknown hunter. He brought a hand to his throat. It had been exactly the same as the night before. He looked at the clock on his phone. He had been asleep for seven hours. Why had it felt like days? There was no point dwelling on it, though. It was only a dream. He pushed it out of his mind. The act was much easier than it had been yesterday.
After he could no longer feel his pulse drumming in his ears and his heart trying to beat out of his chest, he emptied his mind and focused. The flame sprung into being almost instantly, but this time he caught it before it could sputter itself out. He smiled. The flame became three and he made them rotate around his hand and around each other. Even if it was unwise to do it for anything else, he could still control fire the way he was used to. He could do complex patterns spells with it for hours without feeling tired.
Satisfied that he had finally made progress with magic after so long, he went over to Grillby's again for breakfast. He felt a little bad that sans was paying for him. He was certain the gold he had saved up from his time in the ruins would have been enough for a few days of food. He would have to make it up to him somehow.
He made it back just in time to catch the skeleton returning himself. "leaving today?" The monster asked him casually. Ryan shook his head before he realized what that implied.
"I'm just starting to get the hang of magic. A few more days of practice, then I'll be ready." He justified.
sans just shrugged. "whatever you say kid. you're welcome to stay as long as you need. just try not to make a mess" The skeleton winked at him before heading upstairs to sleep.
Ryan decided to move his practice to the woods behind the house. The skeletons lived right on the outskirts of the town and he was certain he would be able to practice without disturbing anyone or drawing attention himself.
He had a million things he wanted to try and more ideas popped into his head every second. Ultimately, he decided it best to start with what would probably be easiest: figuring how to do what he had done while fighting Papyrus and testing out the limits of that power. But how had he done it? It came to him so easy the last time, like he had flipped on a switch that started some kind of electric motor. He tried to think back to what had happened. He had already been close to collapsing, certain he was done for, and then he remembered the resolve he felt when he decided to leave the ruins, the determination to fulfill his promise.
Ryan's hand clenched in a fist and he felt his pulse quicken. He suddenly felt alert, like he just drank an entire pot of coffee. He could see farther; able to pick out individual clumps of snow clinging to branches on the other side of a narrow stream. He could hear better; snippets of conversation drifted over from the town just under the point where he could make out the words. The forest had been silent a moment ago.
This was it. He was certain. The feeling was… extraordinary. He imagined it must be the power hero's in comic books feel. He felt truly invincible and capable of anything. He decided to test it. Crouching, he leapt up and grabbed one of the branches of a nearby tree almost twenty feet off the ground. He laughed to himself as he swung himself to stand on a lower branch and took in the view of the forest before flipping out of the tree to land on his feet without feeling the slightest shock. He looked down at himself. His soul was glowing bright enough to shine through both of his shirts. He would have given himself away instantly if anyone happened to walk by, but at that moment he did not care. What could anyone do against him like this? But he knew better now. Reluctantly, he let go of the feeling and it washed out of him like a cold breeze.
Instantly, he felt more drained than he had before. He felt like he had just climbed a twenty foot tree in actuality. His soul dimmed back to invisibility and he sighed in relief, deciding it would probably be better to practice something else instead.
Ryan returned just as the brothers were waking up. "Greetings, human." Papyrus greeted him. "And what has my good friend been up to today?"
"This and that." He answered vaguely. "Hey Papyrus, you doing anything tomorrow? I could use your help with something." He had hatched an idea while practicing, but he would need help with it.
The skeleton looked away awkwardly. "Well, you see. Tomorrow is the day I train with Undyne, you see. As much as I would like to help you, Undyne is not the kind of monster you try to reschedule with, or tell no to, or do anything that isn't what she says or wants, really. She's very good at throwing people onto cliffs that it is extraordinarily difficult to get back down from, you see."
"That's fine." Ryan assured the monster. Papyrus looked like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, afraid to tell no to either him or Undyne and afraid of the consequences of both. "Just let me know when you have some free time."
The skeleton recovered as he cleared his throat. "Of course, human. I have often wondered what it is like to "hang" with one's friends. I mean… specifically you, of course. I have "hung" with many of my friends before, but have yet to with you."
"Of course." Ryan smiled.
With one more apology, the skeleton went off to his sentry duty, leaving sans and Ryan alone. "You don't think he'll tell her about me, do you?" He asked the monster.
sans simply shrugged, doing little to rid Ryan of his doubts.
.
That night, he was able to recognize the nightmare for what it was while it was happening. He ran, blind and breathless, through the same tunnels he had before. He tried in vain to escape his hunter. Knowing what lay in wait for him did nothing to make him try to change it. He was not surprised when he found the hunter around the corner after chasing the light to the end of the tunnel. This he had waited for. Here he would try to change things. He took hold of his determination and let the feeling of invincibility wash over him as he charged at his hunter. Fire enveloped his hand as he pulled it back to strike. But when he swung, he hit nothing but air. Something hit him in the back of the neck and his head swam, his vision went back, and a hand caught him by the throat. "Enough of this." His hunter growled. And then something stabbed into his chest and the dream was washed away in a fire of pain.
He gasped as he sat upright on the couch, panting and sweating just as he had the two nights previously. He put a hand to his chest and was genuinely surprised to see it come away clean. He tried to calm himself, but it did not work. It had never gone that far before. He had always woken up before the blow landed. He could still feel the hand crushing his neck. Something against the wall next to the TV drew his mind away from the nightmare. As he got up from the couch he saw that it was a dirty sock with a string of sticky notes around it. The first was in an angular script that Ryan guessed was Papyrus's because it said, Sans! Please pick up your sock! The second note simply said, ok.
Don't put it back down! Move it! The notes went on.
ok.
You moved it two inches! Move it to your room!
ok.
And don't bring it back!
ok.
It's still here!
didn't you just say not to bring it back to my room?
Forget it!
Ryan laughed to himself, fears and worries over nightmares put aside, but the thought of practicing magic more did not appeal to him yet either. So, he decided to take another stroll through Snowdin, this time going farther into the woods. He tried to see if he could trace his steps back to the entrance to the ruins. He managed to make it back to the cliff where he had found the monster with the tree horns he had come to learn was called a Gyftrot and the mysterious door where he found another familiar monster perched near the edge of the cliff looking over the forest.
It was the Snowdrake that supposedly ran away from home. Its back was to Ryan; it had not seen him yet. "Hey," Ryan started and the monster jumped to its feet. It turned around and looked up at him just as frightened as it did the last time. "You're Snowy, right?" The Snowdrake did not answer him, but instead jumped off the cliff. Ryan tried to run up and grab the falling monster but it was just out of his grasp.
The Snowdrake let himself fall for a moment, picking up speed before spreading its wings and catching the air as it rushed by him. He was jolted as his decent slowed rapidly and then he glided to the ground to a small clearing near the bottom of the cliff. Once he was on the ground again, he let out a sigh of relief. "That was a little unnecessary." Ryan said, stepping out from behind one of the trees. "I was just trying to talk."
With a yelp, the monster turned to run away, but Ryan was already behind him and the monster fell backwards in fright. "Calm down, kid, I'm not here to hurt you." Ryan tried to reassure him.
"W-what do you want?" The Snowdrake finally said. "Leave me alone." He was kicking at the snow to try to put some distance between him and Ryan while trying to scramble back to his feet at the same time.
"I can't do that." Ryan told the monster taking a slow step towards it.
"Why not?" Ryan leaned down and reached out to the Snowdrake. The small monster shut its eyes and flinched back but Ryan just picked up the monster and set him back down on his feet.
"Because your brother is worried about you. And he asked me to bring you home if I happened to find you." The monster's head lowered in shame. The word 'chill' escaped with a sigh. "So I take it you are Snowy, then?"
The monster nodded and then seemed to remember it was being held and struggled out of Ryan's hands saying, "I don't care what he told you to do. You can't force me to go back there! I'll just run away again."
Ryan let Snowy go. "You're right; I can't force you to go home. But I'd like to know why you ran away at least. Maybe I can help."
The monster's eyes became downcast once more. "Can you bring back my mom?"
The question hit Ryan beside the head like bag of bricks. "No, I can't." Ryan said quietly.
The Snowdrake shook his head. "Then there's nothing you can do to help."
"I'm sorry." Ryan told the monster.
Snowy rounded on him, looking like he was about to scream, but his voice stayed level. "So is everyone else apparently. That seems like the only thing people ever say to me anymore. But it doesn't change anything either. And I'm sick of hearing it."
"So you ran away?" Ryan tried.
"I ran away because my dad doesn't understand me, and he has no idea how to raise a family on his own. My dad was always away doing shows, so mom was the one that took care of us. With her gone, he's just fumbling around in the dark when he's actually home. He hasn't been his old self since then either. He never smiles. He just yells at me to study and yells at my brother to stop being lazy. Sometimes I wonder if he even cares about us." The drake's voice was cracking by the end and he was shaking.
Ryan went over to sit next to the monster in the snow. "It sounds to me like your dad cares about you quite a bit." He told him.
"Then he's got a crappy way of showing it. But you're wrong. He doesn't care. If he did, he'd do more than just yell."
"The fact that he is yelling at you means he cares a lot, and he loves you very much. It means he wants you to be better than what you are now and he believes that you can be."
The monster looked up at him angrily. Ryan could see tears threatening to spill from his eyes. "And how would you know?"
"Because my dad never yelled at me." Ryan told the Snowdrake. "I could do anything, good or bad, and he'd never even comment on it."
"That sounds like it would be great." Snowy commented. Ryan shook his head.
"My dad never yelled at me because he didn't care. He didn't believe in me, never thought I could make anything of myself. He'd given up. So, trust me, your dad still loves you and he's doing his best to raise you and your brother right. You just have to forgive him if his methods are a bit harsh." Ryan smiled at the monster. Snowy said nothing, but Ryan could tell he had taken Ryan's words to heart.
Satisfied, he went on. "So what does your dad do that he's never home."
"He's a comedian at this hotel near the core. It's pretty hard to get there and he has a show five days a week so he only comes home on the weekends."
Made sense. "And what do you like to do?" Ryan asked.
The monster sniffled before answering. "I want to be a comedian too. But my dad won't even listen to my jokes. He tells me that I'll never be a comedian and that I shouldn't want to be. It's all because he never liked being one himself. He was just always good at it. So he thinks I'll be just as miserable as him. But I won't. I like telling jokes and hearing people laugh."
Ryan frowned at that. "Did you explain that to him?"
The monster shook his crested head. "He wouldn't listen."
"Well then, that's the first thing you need to do. You have to sit him down and make him listen. He still may not accept it, but at least he'll know. And I think he will support you, if you're passionate and you try hard."
Snowy looked up at him again with a newfound light in his eyes. "You really think so?" Ryan nodded. "You want to hear one of my jokes?"
He chuckled. "Sure, why not?"
"What do the people of Snowdin eat for dinner?" The monster paused a moment, letting the suspense build. "Macaroni and Freeze! Well, what do you think?"
Ryan cleared his throat after a moment. "I'm not going to lie to you, Snowy, that wasn't very good." The monster's head dropped instantly. "But that in itself is not a bad thing. I could give you a list a mile long as to why, but the most important reason for you, I think, is that it's not something that justifies the naysayers, and it's not a reason to quit even though many may tell you it is." Ryan put a hand on the drake's head. "Failure is an important part of success, the most important part; the part no one knows about unless they've made it past it and the part no one ever talks about. You learn far more from it, especially in the beginning."
The monster still was not as happy as it had been a moment ago, but it nodded. "So, do you want hear some more jokes, then?" He said hopefully.
Ryan smiled once more. "I would be happy to."
The pair spent the better part of the day trading jokes back and forth. It turned out that the kid did have a few good ones. He just needed a confidence boost and someone willing to help him weed out the bad from the good. The late evening found the two sitting on a high branch in one of the trees. They peered out between the snow and needles to the rest of the forest sprawled out around them. "So where is your house?" Ryan asked Snowy as the laugher from the last joke faded.
The Snowdrake answered by flapping its wings to boost himself up to a branch higher in the tree. He looked around the forest, squinting, until he had is bearings and then pointed out, saying. "There."
Ryan followed the monster's gesture. In the distance he could see a wisp of smoke rising from the trees. He tilted his head to the cliff they were still near. If he was right, then that was the house in the clearing he had seen from its top. "I think it's time you headed home then." He told the monster.
Snowy still looked reluctant. He sank down on his perch and stared at the ground. Ryan sighed and stood up so he was eye level with the small monster. "Just remember what I told you and you'll be fine."
"I don't know." The monster mumbled.
"Kid, if there's someone out there who's worrying about you, you can't let them keep worrying. It's unfair to them and to you. And, I won't take no for answer." He smiled, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.
Snowy looked up at Ryan after a moment. "I'll go, but only if you promise to hang out with me some more."
This time Ryan drew his eyes away. "I'm not very good at promises, kid. But, I will be in Snowdin a little while longer at least. If you want to hang out during that time, then I will drop everything to do so."
The young monster seemed to accept that. "Where are you going?" He asked.
Ryan turned back to stare up at the cliff again, in the direction of town. "Somewhere far away." He told the drake.
"The capital?"
Ryan chuckled. "Farther than that."
"What's farther than that?"
Ryan jumped from the tree to the ground, the snow coming nearly to his knees. As he kicked his way to shallower ground, he said. "Maybe someday I'll tell you about it. But for now, it's time for you to go home."
The monster jumped from the tree as well, floating down to land much more gracefully than Ryan had. He started walking back towards his home before turning to say, "You know, you're really nice. I'm glad to have found a friend like you."
Ryan said nothing until the monster disappeared from his sight. "No, I'm not nice." He said to himself. "One day, you'll come to realize that."
Finally alone, Ryan let go of his power and almost immediately fell to his knees. He had held on for almost the entire day. He had been afraid that after jumping off that cliff he would have collapsed immediately and he could not let the young monster get away again.
When he was sure he was in no danger of passing out, he stood back up and began his walk back to town. If Grillby wasn't mad at him for eating him out of house and home yet, he would be soon.
As he finally made it back to the skeleton brothers' house, he was surprised to find them standing out front. They both turned to him as he approached. "Good news, human." Papyrus started once the three of them were standing together. The last word was whispered, hand to mouth and eyes scanning for invisible eavesdroppers.
"we're kicking you out" sans finished. "we want our couch back"
Ryan was taken aback. Why the sudden change of heart? He wondered. Papyrus gestured to the small building to the side of their house. It was a sort of shed, he knew, but had never seen the monsters actually use it for anything. "And we're moving you into our shed." Papyrus added. "Isn't that great? A space of your own! That way we don't need to worry about doing anything embarrassing around you anymore. And you can do… whatever it is humans do when their alone."
The two led him to the front of the shed and opened the door. It had seen better days. That was Ryan's first thought as he entered the room. The walls were cracked in several places; one of the windows was as well. The floor, at least, had been swept, though evidence suggested that it had been pretty built up before then. The "bed" was more of a cot, low to the ground and very stiff looking. It was also the only thing in the room. Still, Ryan felt it was better than the couch. At least he'd have some privacy now.
Papyrus had left at some point, leaving sans and Ryan alone once again. "Thank you." He told the squat skeleton. "You both have been so nice to me. I don't think I could ever repay you."
sans shook his head. "you already have, in a way"
Ryan chuckled. "I don't see how that's possible."
"kid," sans started, sounding much more serious than he had a moment ago. "i don't think you realize just how significant your presence here is"
Ryan did not like where this was going. "How so?"
"you are the antithesis of what pretty much everyone down here believes humans to be. with you around, maybe they'll finally start to realize not all humans are bad. and then, maybe, we'll finally be able to get somewhere"
"Get where?" Ryan asked, confused.
The skeleton shrugged, "i don't know. somewhere else. as perfect as you find this place to be, it does have its problems. they're just harder to spot as an outsider, i guess. there's a major overcrowding problem brewing and it doesn't help that half of the underground is uninhabitable for most monsters. we've already dug out as close to the barrier we can, and we're out of options. do you know what happens when a regular monster gets too close to the barrier? they get sucked in. the thing pulls in magical energy like a black hole. somehow, i have this feeling that, with you around, it'll help us find a way to get out of here"
Ryan felt like the skeleton had just put the world on his shoulders. "I don't plan on staying, you know. And it wasn't really a part of my plan to try to break the barrier." He told sans.
sans shrugged again. "that may be so. but still, i got this feeling" The monster turned to the door to leave and stopped. "one more thing, if you ever deliberately cause harm to single monster, you will find that my good will runs out very quickly. and if that happens, you won't last very long."
Ryan showed no outward reaction to the skeleton's threat. "I have no intention of hurting anyone. I just don't want to die."
"just keep that in mind" sans finished and he closed the door behind him.
Ryan sat down on his new bed. A fire sprung to life in his palm and he worked to shape it into a miniature version of Toriel. The figure was smiling up at him with all the care he remembered so clearly. "I still need to get stronger." He told the image. "Then I'll be ready."
The dream did not touch him that night. Nor any night after.
