Sans wasn't really sure what to expect when Toriel called him. Heck, how could he? It wasn't like she'd ever really called him all that much, anyway. They usually scheduled out their meetings whenever they talked through the door to the Ruins – tomorrow at five, two days from now at six, whatever time worked for both of them. They talked on the phone sometimes, but not all that much.

More often than not, he was the one to give her a ring to let her know that he couldn't make it or something similar to that. She never really had that problem. Said she was never really all that busy. Sans understood that. He wished he had as much free time as she did, and that was coming from a guy who spent most of his time doing nothing. Sitting around. Pretending he was working hard.

Her voice came out of the speaker. It was a bit scratchy since her phone was kind of garbage, but he could hear her well enough. "Hello, Sans? This is Toriel."

He didn't know why she always prefaced her calls like that. Like he was gonna forget about her when they'd only talked just… how many days ago was it? Yesterday, maybe? It could've been. Time really didn't mean much to him, anymore. Once a day came and went, he just kind of forgot about it. Sure, there were a few exceptions. Holidays, Papyrus's birthday, and things like that stuck with him no matter how many other days came and went. There was something to them that was just too important for him to forget about. They were different, but that wasn't really it. They just felt warmer and more valuable. Like golden sand in a brown hourglass.

That was part of why he liked talking to Toriel so much. It gave him something to be happy about when Papyrus was busy working or bothering Undyne. Maybe he didn't remember them as well as he wanted to, but so what? That just meant he could enjoy the next joke session even more.

"I apologize for calling without notice," Toriel continued, "but there is something that I must discuss with you."

Sans leaned back against the wall. He was seated up on his mattress – a grimy, filthy thing that hadn't been washed in a long time. Papyrus kept telling him to clean his room before someone wandered in and died from the smell. So Sans locked the door. That seemed to work pretty well.

It also gave him an excuse to keep people from coming in.

"What's up?" he asked. "Are you not gonna make it today or something?"

"No, that is not it," Toriel said. She was quiet for a moment. A long moment. "Sans, I need to ask a favor."

Sans paused. What? He couldn't've heard that correctly. Was Toriel seriously calling in a favor? Toriel?

He sat up a bit. Just a bit. "You… uh… You sure you wanna ask me for this? I mean, sure, but it'll probably take a while." He chuckled. "Unless you want me to sleep a lot or somethin'. I'm pretty quick about that, being a lazybones and all."

Toriel went quiet again. She wasn't laughing at his joke. That was a bad sign. She always laughed, even when the punchline didn't make sense. Toriel was weird like that.

Then she said, "Sans. A human fell into the Underground."


Grandt stepped back into the room with the moon. Or rather, it'd been the room with the moon. Now the sun hung high above the mountain, and Grandt could see its rays shining in through the ceiling.

He didn't look up. Not because he didn't want to. Because he knew that if he turned his eyes back to the ceiling, he wouldn't be able to look away. And he needed to clean off his wounds and get back to Toriel before anything else happened. Before he made any other stupid mistakes like punching a wall or trying to climb a ledge on his own or letting himself get trapped in the past again.

So Grandt walked past the hole in the ceiling without once looking up at it. He forced his eyes forward, his head level with the ground. He clenched his teeth and stepped onward, ignoring everything else with all the force he could muster. Leaves crunched beneath his boots. The sunlight felt warm against his side and head. Birds chirped loudly outside, apparently perched on some of the trees that grew on the side of Mt. Ebott. It seemed as though the universe was conspiring against him to get him to just look up, turn your head up, turn your head towards the sky and stare at it and hope and pray and dream that someone's been looking for you.

He wondered what would happen in Ebott without him. Would Dyse, Kira, and Frisk keep living there even though they were the only ones left? Would they pack up their meager supplies, take to the road, and head to Hartsvaldt like everyone else? Maybe he'd get out of the mountain and they'd already be gone.

Grandt shook his head. Stop it. Stop being so pessimistic all the time. There's no point in it.

He kept walking down the long, long hallway, thinking all the while.

They'll stay if they want to. Nobody's forcing them to leave. And they'll leave if they want to, as well. Nobody's gonna make them do anything.

Should they stay, though? There were barely enough of us to begin with. Now there's just two of them.

Three. Frisk's there.

She's a child. She can't take care of herself. Not yet. She's too young for it.

Still, she's there. That's all that matters. All that matters is that she's safe. Nobody goes to Ebott, anyway.

But people leave it. They leave it often.

Grandt blinked and brought himself back to reality. He was standing in that room from earlier – the one with the spikes in the middle surrounded by a pool of water. Slowly, he stepped over to it and knelt to the ground, feeling his legs crack beneath him as he went. Then he dipped his hands into the pool. The water was cool and still, and the blood washed away quickly.

Grandt sighed and went about scrubbing his hands against each other. This wasn't a perfect solution, but it was probably about the best he could do right now. It helped that his hands didn't hurt half as much as they probably should have. They just sort of throbbed dully in the same way that his heart throbbed in his chest.

Slowly.

Brokenly.

Just like every other Journa's.

His fingers slipped, and he accidentally stabbed a cracked fingernail into one of his wounds. "Shit!"


There was silence on the other end of the line for a long, long time. Then Toriel heard Sans breathe in slowly.

"… you sure about this?"

"Yes," she said without even a moment's hesitation. "But if you do not want to do it, then I will not force you. It is your decision, after all. Not mine."

"Yeah." She heard Sans shift a bit on the other side of the line. "I guess it is, huh?" He chuckled. "That's a heck of a burden to lay on a guy's shoulders, Toriel."

"I know."

"Yeah." A pause. "Still, all you want is for me to keep him safe, right? Doesn't sound too tough. At least he'd probably be okay in Snowdin for a while. Nobody'd try to hurt him here."

"I hope not." Toriel leaned back against the wall and turned her eyes to the room's entrance. Then suddenly she smiled in realization, and she said, "Does that mean you accept?"

Sans chuckled. "Eh, why not? Long as this guy's not a serial killer or somethin', I ain't got a problem with it. Besides, Papyrus'll lose his mind if he sees a human. How could I miss that?"

Toriel's grin could have split her face. "Ah, Sans, thank you so very much for this! I am sure he will be delighted to hear this news!"

"Sure." Sans paused, then, and she could hear the mischief creep into his voice. "After all, it's like I've got a bone to pick with this guy or anything, right? So why not give him a chance and snow him around a bit?"

Toriel could not help herself. The sudden levity, combined with her own (self-admitted) poor taste in jokes, caused her to start laughing like a hyena. She laughed until tears rolled down her face, until her gut started to ache. It was probably about a minute until she was finally able to force herself to calm down. Even then, it took all her energy to not start back up again right then and there.

"Hey," Sans said, "you good?"

"Y-yes, of course," she said, even as a few stray giggles got through. Then she turned to the chamber's entrance – or rather, the doorway through which she and Grandt had first entered the room –, and she paused for a moment. "It may not be a bad idea to let Grandt know about this now. Would you mind… uh… 'coming along' with me?"

She did not really need him there, of course, but it certainly would not hurt. Besides, Grandt had a right to at least learn the kind of person he would be dealing with in the near future. If he became used to Sans's personality now, it would make things easier when they met face to face in the future.

"Eh, why not." Sans said. "Not like I'm busy right now, anyway."

Toriel frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Yep. My next job doesn't start 'til twenty minutes ago."

"Ah. That is good to–"

Wait.

"Saaaans," she groaned, and he burst out laughing on the other end of the line.


Grandt quickly realized that his hands were in a worse state than he'd originally thought.

His fingertips were covered in tiny cuts and scratches. His fingernails were splintered along the edges, so that small pieces of them hung off or shot out like tiny needles. Bruises spread across the knuckles on his right hand – the hand that had become quite intimate with one of the Ruins' walls not fifteen minutes ago. There were still traces of blood from where he'd cut his hand on one of the sharper bricks, but most of it was gone by now. Floating, drifting away in the pool of once-clear water.

Grandt sighed and began removing the stray parts of his fingernails one at a time. There was no point in accidentally stabbing himself again, after all. And there was no point in looking like too much of a mess, either. He was already an emotional wreck. He didn't need to be a physical one, too.

Wish I had a pair of nail clippers right now, he thought as a thin strand detached from the rest of the fingernail. But he hadn't thought to bring them with him, since he'd expected the climb up Mt. Ebott would only take about half a day. If he'd planned to climb to the mountain's peak, he might've considered otherwise, but he hadn't, so here he was. All he'd brought with him was a pocketknife that'd probably broken on the way down.

Not that he'd trust himself to cut his fingernails with anything that was too sharp. Shaky hands and all that.

Grandt smiled grimly. At least he still had a sense of humor. That went a long way towards keeping a man's sanity intact, and he needed his sanity if he wanted to get out of the Underground in one piece.

A nail fragment brushed against one of the cuts on his fingertips, and Grandt flinched again. The smile dropped from his lips, and he stuck his hands back in the water with a sigh. He scrubbed the rest of the blood from his knuckles using the underside of his left hand, ignoring the pain that came up every time he touched those darkening bruises.

Then he went back to his nails. And back to his thoughts, too.

There's no point in worrying about Ebott. That was what Grandt decided as he tried to scrape the tiniest and most frustrating nail shard from his left pinky. If they leave, they leave. That's their choice.

But they'll take Frisk with them.

Why was that part of his brain always so negative? Couldn't it just let him go twenty minutes without worrying about something stupid?

They should. She can't live in Ebott forever. There's not enough people there anymore. She must be lonely. There's no children her age. They all packed up and left for Hartsvaldt.

I won't be able to see her if they go.

That's selfish. And stupid. And I know it's selfish and stupid, so why can't I stop thinking like that? I just… I just shouldn't be this obsessed with it. I shouldn't be. I know that. Dyse and Kira should take her away from that place. They should just take her to Hartsvaldt already, or something.

Then she'll just be that much closer to Kallis.

Grandt finally tore off that tiny piece of his fingernail, and a bit of skin decided to go along with it. He breathed in sharply, but he was at least thankful that the pain took him out of another one of his pessimistic inner debates.

It's not pessimism. It's realism.

He grit his teeth. Stop. Just stop thinking like that. It doesn't matter what it is. It's stupid and irrational and and and and pointless.

So he forced himself to think about other things, like the pain in his knuckles. The skin had finally settled on a blackish-bluish color. Just above the bruising, the cut had already closed up a bit. Or at least, it looked like it had started to close. He wasn't a medic, so he couldn't really say.

Grandt stuck his hand in the pool and felt the pain disappear into the cool water. The blood had already washed into one of the grates on either end of the pool, and the water had become clear again. So clear, in fact, that he could see his face in it. It looked older and more tired than he remembered. Grimier, too.

He grimaced and touched his face. His beard was matted and filthy. His neck was coated in dirt and dust. His head was scraped up a bit from where he'd hit the ground. Grandt imagined that his clothes probably looked worse, but he didn't really want to look at them too closely. Really, his face was all that bothered him at the moment.

Had he looked that disheveled the first time around? Or the second or third times? He looked so old. So tired. And so filthy, too. It wasn't even the almost-dignified dirtiness of a soldier coming back from the battlefield, or the understandable dirtiness of a chef who'd just finished cooking a particularly messy meal. Was this how he always looked? Like someone who was already half dead?

Grandt just ran a hand over his neck for a few seconds, taking it all in. Then he looked up from the water and stared over to the passageway on the other side. "Well," he said to nobody in particular, "there's no point in looking this way forever."

He stuck his hands into the pool, closed his eyes, and began the rigorous process of washing the grime off his face. Everything above his beard came off easily enough. Grandt was mindful of his splintered fingernails and cut up fingertips, and he managed to avoid cutting himself up any further.

"Managed to avoid it." Right. Grandt rubbed the water over his eyelids. Because God knows I'd screw it up and stab myself, otherwise. Arthritis and all that.

Grandt cracked a grin as he washed off his forehead. How was Papyrus doing, anyway? He was probably getting along pretty well at the moment. Probably preparing for Christmas. Or making puzzles. Or making Christmas-themed puzzles.

It was weird. He reminded Grandt a bit of… of somebody. He wasn't sure who it was, though. Maybe Dyse? No, he wasn't cynical or rude enough to be Dyse. He was probably closer to Kira. Or Frisk.

Or Nines.

Grandt felt his hands go numb.

Why was he thinking about her now? This wasn't the time for it. It wasn't the place for it, either. It'd be better if he just stopped his brain from heading along that path immediately. He could go back to ripping off his fingernails or to making himself look vaguely presentable or to doing literally anything else.

But it's true, isn't it? Kind, optimistic, cheerful to a fault, hopelessly naïve…

Grandt's hands shook a bit. His throat felt tight. Don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it don't

Fire.

Bright. Burning. Smoke.

"Nines? What happened to her?"

There was a man in the village. Nobody knew him.

Grandt suddenly pulled his hands down further. One of his fingernails trailed down the side of his neck, leaving a long and shallow cut as it went.

His breathing was shallow, too.

Grandt just knelt there for a moment, eyes wide and mouth partially agape. He stared into the pool again, watching his face and his throat and his eyes. His hands shook against his neck. Then he pulled them away and stared at them for a moment.

"Calm down…" he whispered. "Please. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down."

Too fast.

It's going too fast!

"Calm down!"

It was getting harder to breathe. His voice sounded raspy.

A hand went down to his neck

Smoke

to check his pulse.

in his lungs.

To force himself to breathe harder.

can't breathe where are they can't breathe

He moved it down

"They're all dead, Major."

below his collar,

"Everybody died but you and Frisk."

and time seemed to stop.

Everything stopped. His breath. His heart.

No.

There was something there. He could feel it. There was something there.

Something thin.

Something familiar.

Something around his neck.

Cr


Sans wasn't really sure why he'd agreed to look after this Grandt guy. Sure, he sounded okay – or at least, Toriel's description of him sounded okay –, but that didn't really mean much to him. Was it callous of him to admit that? Maybe. But it was still true.

Besides, monsters weren't supposed to help humans. They were supposed to kill them on sight. Or they were supposed to inform someone else to kill them on sight. Those were the rules. They weren't really written anywhere, but they didn't need to be. Everyone just knew them.

Of course, that didn't mean all that much when so few humans fell down, anyway. Considering that most of them got killed by accidents and all. Sans could count the number of humans who'd fallen down on one hand. The number of humans who'd been killed by monsters? One finger. And that one had been an accident, too.

He leaned back against the wall. So what was the point in helping this guy out, then? What was his motive, his reason? What good would it do anyone to keep him alive when everyone needed to his SOUL to escape the mountain? It was just because he wanted to see Papyrus smile or anything like that, though that was a part of it. There was something else to it. He just wasn't sure what it was.

"… and I am certain that the two of you will get along very well! He shares your sense of humor."

Sans blinked. Had Toriel been speaking that whole time? She wasn't usually this talkative. Loud, yeah, but she never really rambled on that much. Weird.

"He does, huh?" Sans asked, trying to pretend that he'd been listening the whole time. "Sounds like a funny guy."

"He is! Sans, you must see what he is doing with the puzzles down here! You would get a kick out of it."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." Then there was a long pause, and Toriel sighed. "But he is suffering, too."

"'Cause he's old?"

"Maybe. I think that is part of it, but…" Toriel paused again, as though she were searching for the right words again. "I think there is more to it than that, Sans. I think he hates himself."

"What makes you say that?" Sans asked.

"His words. And his actions. He has broken down more than once. He called himself an idiot."

Sans nodded again. If that were true, it meant the old guy was probably harmless. That'd make things easier. People who beat themselves up didn't really have all that much time to beat up others. Sans knew that better than anyone.

"Anyway," Toriel continued, pushing his thoughts aside, "I should see him soon. Once I reach the end of this hallway–"

"You're still there? How long is that thing, anyway?"

"Too long," Toriel said. "I have considered cutting it down a tad. I could probably fit a puzzle in it if I try hard enough…

"But Grandt should be just at the entrance to the next chamber. Then I can introduce the two of you and let him know that he can leave the Ruins." Toriel stopped walking. "I just hope we can make it to Home without him breaking down again."

Sans knew what she meant. Toriel was a bit too kind for her own good. She wasn't as kind as Papyrus, but she was pretty damn close. For her, Grandt beating himself up must've been like something out of a nightmare.

And that was the guy he'd have to deal with in the near future. Sounded like fun. At least nobody'd get hurt from it, and it'd probably go by quickly.

Plus, it'd give him a chance to introduce Papyrus to a real human. He could tell him it was an extra Christmas present or something. Let the two get to know each other for a bit, then ship Grandt's SOUL off to the capital when his time came. Sans could always tell Papyrus that Grandt had gotten out of the mountain safe and sound and that he'd returned home to his family or something. Sure, it was a lie, but did it really matter all that much? It'd make Papyrus happy, knowing that his new friend was okay. That was all that really mattered.

Besides, what difference did it really make? If Grandt died because of natural causes, there wasn't really anything Sans could do about it. Keeping him safe from monsters was easy. Monsters could be misdirected, and most really didn't want to fight, anyway. Most of them didn't even know what old humans looked like, so Grandt could probably just stumble on past them as long as they didn't look too closely at his SOUL.

But time? Time was inevitable. Time couldn't be challenged or fought off or misdirected like monsters could. That was something else that Sans knew better than anyone.

At least Papyrus would be happy for that short period of time. And as long as he didn't go and blab to Undyne or any of the higher-ups in the Royal Guard, Grandt would be able to live his last few days peacefully. Or as peacefully as things could get for him, at least. It was a win-win situation. Except for the part where Grandt would spend the rest of his life trapped under a mountain. That was pretty bad.

But hey, Grandt was just an old man. At least it'd be quick.

"Ah, here we are…" Toriel said.

"You made it?"

"Almost."

"'Almost'? How much longer is it?"

"There are only a few more steps to go. Aaaand here we are!"

Sans chuckled. "Congrats. You walked down a hallway."

"It was a long hallway."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

Toriel snorted. "In any case… Oh, I see him. Grandt! Gra–"

And then her voice suddenly cut off into a sharp gasp.


When Toriel walked into the chamber, Grandt was facing the pool opposite the entrance. His back was hunched over, and his hands were in front of him. Perhaps he was still cleaning them.

"In any case… Oh, I see him," she told Sans.

Still, why would he bother to clean his hands while standing up? The pool was down at his feet. Maybe he had finished already and was now drying them off? His clothes were covered in dirt, though. If he wiped his hands on them, they would only get filthy again. Toriel would have to talk to him about it and teach him some proper cleaning etiquette. But that could wait a little while longer.

"Grandt!" she called. He started to turn towards her. "Gra–"

And then she saw his front, and all that came out of her mouth was a sharp gasp.

Grandt's neck, fingers, and face were all drenched in blood. His hands were trembling. His neck was covered in thin cuts and scrapes and slashes. His fingernails were jagged. Uneven. They were like tiny, dripping needles.

"G-Grandt…?"

She took a step forward. Grandt recoiled back, and she noticed that his expression was twisted in fear. His pupils were pinpricks. His mouth dangled open and trembled and shook. And had his face always been that pale?

Toriel shuddered. Focus! she told herself. Focus!

"Toriel?" Sans asked.

She blinked. The phone was still on? She was still holding it? How had it not slipped out of her hand just yet?

Toriel slowly – very, very slowly, with all the care and patience somebody handling an explosive – slid her phone into her pocket. She did not need to have one hand occupied right now. Sans could hear her, and she could hear him. That was all she needed.

"What's going on? Is something wrong? Toriel?"

Toriel ignored him and took a step forward. "What are you doing, Grandt?" Her voice was shaking. Her hands were shaking. The world was spinning and shifting and shaking why is everything shaking?

Grandt stepped back so that his foot was against the edge of the pool. He clawed at something wrapped around his neck. "Have to get it off…" he whispered in a mad, raspy sort of voice.

His fingernails slashed and cut into his skin. All the while, he stared at Toriel with that horrified, almost-feral expression on his face. Blood dripped down from his neck to his jacket, from his fingers to the floor. Everything it touched turned red.

"Have to get it off…" Grandt gasped. "Get it off… Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff…"

"Toriel?" Sans asked, cutting through Toriel's thoughts.

And the world immediately stopped spinning.

Toriel lunged forward as quickly as she could. She grabbed Grandt's hands and pulled them away from his neck. Blood splattered against her fur and clothes.

Grandt fought back with all of his might. But he was an old man, and she was stronger than him. So even as he desperately tried to pull his fingers towards his neck again, he could not push against her grip. He thrashed about and kicked and bled. Insanity continued to cloud his vision, and none of his attempts at fighting off Toriel did anything but show off his frailty.

"Let me go!" Grandt screamed breathlessly. "I have to get it off! Let me go! Let me go! I have to! I have to!"

Toriel grit her teeth and held his arms apart. "Stop this, Grandt!"

There was a spark in his gray eyes as he pushed back against her grip. Was that Determination? Was he so desperate to rip that object off his throat that he was willing to go that far?

But if he becomes Determined, I will not be able to hold him anymore! Please… Please! There must be something that I can–

And Sans's voice cut in again. "Hey, what's he doing? Toriel? C'mon, Toriel!"

"This is not the time, Sans!"

As soon as she finished said Sans's name, the spark in Grandt's eyes disappeared. He blinked, and for just a moment, awareness returned to his face. "Wait… Sans?"

"Yeah?"

Toriel relaxed a bit. Perhaps he was becoming lucid again. Perhaps he was returning to his old self. If that were the case, she could talk him down. She could find a way to help him, to save him. She could wash off the blood and bandage his wounds and ask him why he was–

And the spark suddenly returned to Grandt's eyes. Only this time, it was brighter than before. It filled his pinprick pupils and spread out from there, until all but the whites were consumed with it.

Grandt pushed back. This time, Toriel could do nothing. He shoved her away, and her back collided with the stone floor.

Then he began clawing at that thing on his neck again. But now he moved faster. More frantically. And his breaths sounded more labored.

"Have to get it… Have to… Have to get it off… Get it off…"

Toriel forced her way back to her feet. The light had now faded completely from Grandt's eyes, so that they had become completely dull and dim. Any trace of awareness had disappeared completely. Now he just looked like a wild animal – crazed and screaming and relying entirely on instinct.

Toriel slammed her eyes shut, but the sound of scraping flesh and dripping blood remained. Focus! Do not let him do any more damage to himself! Focus!

She could feel her phone in her pocket. It was bloody, but Sans's voice still came through well enough. "What's he trying to do?"

"His neck," Toriel said numbly. "There is something wrapped around his neck."

"And he's trying to cut it off?"

"With his nails, yes." She opened her eyes. "Sans, be glad you are not here. It is…" She breathed in slowly, and the rotten smell filled her lungs. "It is horrible."

"… yeah. Sounds like it."

Grandt continued to scrape at the object. "He can't… Can't… Where is…?" He sputtered and stumbled forward. "Has to be… He has to be here! Where is he…?"

Every time he scratched at the thing on his neck, his fingers simply slipped over it. Could he not get his fingers under it? Was it too tight?

Is that the problem? Can he not breathe? Is he suffocating beneath that band?

No. If he were unable to breathe, he would not be able to speak. So why was he panicking so much about it? And why had he wrapped that object around his neck like that if it was so tight? Was he not responsible for it? Perhaps it had been an accident, but then…

Focus!

Toriel breathed out slowly, mostly to get the odor out of her lungs. So Grandt could breathe. But what if he thought he could not? What if he was panicking because he believed he was choking? Yes, that could be it. In that case, if she could convince him that he was not in any immediate danger, she could simply burn it off with a weak fire spell and get him to relax.

She stepped towards him again, this time with her plan in mind. "Grandt, please calm down," she said as calmly as she could.

"Have to…"

"I can help you." Her voice cracked a bit. The look in Grandt's eyes was just too much. He looked as if he were about to start foaming at the mouth.

Grandt ignored her. "I won't… I won't…"

So Toriel shouted, "Grandt, stop ripping at your throat!"

"No!" But his fingers did freeze. He stared at Toriel for a long moment. "I can't. I can't! I have to… Have to get it off… I can't… I won't…"

She grabbed at his hands again and pulled them away, and Grandt immediately started panicking again. "Stop!" he screamed. "Stop, stop, stop! Let me go! Please, let me go! I have to get it off! I have to! I have to! I won't let him kill me again!"

Toriel's thought processes came to a sudden and immediate halt. "… what?"


Sans let out all the air in his body in a single long, drawn-out hiss.

"What. Did he just say?"


Toriel's hands slipped away from his. But this time, Grandt didn't immediately go back to clawing at his neck. Instead, he just stared straight ahead, as though he were looking through Toriel's body at something far away.

"It's over." His voice was dry and raspy and filled with nothing but despair.

"Grandt?" Toriel stepped forward and reached towards his face.

He looked so much older, now. His bloody fingers trembled at his sides.

"It's all over, now." Was he speaking to her or to himself? It sounded like he did not even know she was there, anymore. "I said it again. And he knows. It's over…"

Sans had gone dead silent on the other end of the line.

"I called…" Grandt said. He stepped forward, past Toriel. He stepped over to the wall and stared emptily at it. "I called. I screamed. He was there. But nobody came. And he…"


Crack.


"And he…"


CRACK.


"And he…" Grandt reached towards his neck again, slowly. "And he… And he… And he… And he… And he… And he…"


And Grandt screamed.

He dug his fingers back into his neck.

There was no pain. Not anymore.

The pain had gone away a long time ago.

Back when he'd started.

Back when he'd ripped away the flesh.

Back when he'd pretended not to know anything.

That was pain.

But he couldn't feel his neck anymore.

All he felt was smoke in his lungs. Fire on his face.

"Traitors… don't deserve to live."

"Dad, please! Just take Frisk and run!"

"Nines? What happened to her?"

The flower.

The vine around

stop

his neck,

get it off get it off get it off get it off get

shattering it completely.

"Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…"

Did Toriel say something? He couldn't hear her.

Did Sans say something? He couldn't hear him.

Was he still in the Ruins? He couldn't see the walls.

Where was he?

Everything was just…

Red.

Burning.

And Fain screamed.

She screamed because Shord was dead.

She screamed because Kallis killed him.

She screamed because he killed her, next.

And then something gave way. Grandt choked and coughed and stumbled. The Ruins returned. The walls came back. And he turned around, and he smiled at Toriel.


He slowly held the band up. It was thin and riddled with small cuts. Beneath the blood, Toriel could make out bits of green.

Grandt smiled at her. It was a vacant, empty smile. "I… I got it."


Strange… Why did Toriel look so upset? It was gone. He was safe. It was okay, now. Everything was okay.

Grandt took a step forward. He stumbled, but that was fine.

"It's gone." The world was red and shifting, but that was fine. "The flower's gone."

"'The flower'?"

Was that Sans? When did he get to the Ruins?

Wasn't he always here? Grandt tried to think about that. But thinking hurt his head, and now his brain was swimming in his skull. What had he just been doing, anyway?

Grandt tried to step forward again, but his legs wouldn't work. And why did he suddenly feel so tired?

The world was spinning. And there was something dull in his neck that he didn't recognize. Was it pain? Maybe. He hadn't noticed it before. But now it was the only thing he felt. But that was okay. The flower and the fire and the smoke and Kallis were all gone. So why did his chest feel so strange? So fast…

"It's all okay, now. It's all… It's all…"

Then Grandt's heart exploded in his chest, and the world disappeared.


AN: So normally I'd leave this chapter without an author's note, since really, I should just let it speak for itself. But unfortunately, it's been over two months since the last update, and I feel like I need to explain myself a bit.

Basically, college ended for me at the beginning of May, and I stopped writing this story because I wanted to spend time focusing on my exams and final projects. I intended to get another chapter out when I got home and had more free time. The key word here is "intended." As it turns out, it doesn't matter how much you intend to do something if you don't sit down and do it. I had about up until Grandt's first scene written for about a month, now, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I finally sat down and forced myself to finish it up. I kept telling myself to write throughout May and June, and every time I did, I said, "I'll just do it later."

It's not like I lacked the motivation for it. Hell, if anything, I was extremely motivated, since this story was almost always on my mind. What I lacked was discipline. I lacked the discipline to force myself to sit down and write this thing. And for that, I apologize.

That's all there really is to it. Again, I'm sorry. I'll try to keep going as best I can from now on. All I can promise is that there will be a chapter next week, no matter what happens.

So thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, reviewed, or even just read the story up until this point, and thank you to all of you who have been so incredibly patient these last few months. Next time, Subchapter 3-1 will either nearly or completely come to a close.

EDIT: I shouldn't promise things like that. As of this edit (July 14, 2017), I have made substantial progress on the next chapter, but it will likely not come out for a little while longer. It looks like it's going to be a bit longer than I'd expected. That being said, I now know that it will definitely be the last part of Subchapter 3-1, so at least it has that going for it. Sorry for that, and thank you for your patience.