Papyrus had no idea how long he had been running when his legs gave out on him. He face-planted in the snow, and the white powder instantly shoved its way into his eye sockets and nasal cavity. He couldn't have held back the sneeze if he tried. It was huge, it was loud, and it was painful. He went from there into sniffles, which, once the tears finally came, turned into sobs. He curled up in a ball as his own hormones, trauma, and fear finally hit him.
He didn't recognize the blanket that was put on him. All he knew was that, suddenly, he was warmer. When he sat up it slipped and he automatically clutched at it to keep it from falling. Then, with a familiar faint tumbling of dirt and crunching of snow, Flowey popped up before him.
"Howdy, Papyrus? What's got your knickers in a twist?" Flowey said vaguely cheerfully.
Papyrus tried to give him a disapproving look, but it was hard to do through the tears. "AZZY, FLOWEY, WHATEVER I'M SUPPOSED TO CALL YOU, PLEASE DON'T PRETEND. I TOLD YOU I REMEMBERED AFTER I K-K-KILLED S-S-SANS."
Flowey nodded. "Let's go with Flowey, then. I'm not really your brother any more. I'm just a soulless husk that was fertilized with his dust and brought to life by DETERMINATION."
The teenager's eye sockets narrowed. "YOU'RE STILL MY BROTHER BECAUSE I SAY SO. IF BODIES MEANT ANYTHING THEN WE NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN FAMILY BECAUSE SANS AND I WEREN'T BORN INTO YOURS! NEITHER WOULD CHARA! THEIR BODY WASN'T EVEN A MONSTER ONE!"
Flowey sighed. "Fine, cheery doormat. What brought you here so early? Don't you have a script to follow?"
Papyrus winced. "I- I- I COULDN'T TAKE IT! HE LOOKED SO SC-C-CARED OF ME, AND I… I COULDN'T HANDLE IT! HE HAS SO MANY BAD DREAMS… I'VE NOTICED SOME PEOPLE REMEMBER STUFF FROM THE PREVIOUS TIMELINE AS DREAMS… BUT THIS…"
Flowey looked at him with something Papyrus must have mistaken, because it looked like his brother felt sorry for him. How could a soulless being feel sorry for someone? He had to have imagined it. Whatever the expression really was didn't stick around for long. Flowey turned a look of curiosity on Papyrus. "So you ran all the way out here crying because of that? Did you want your big brother to make it all better?"
Papyrus gulped and nodded. "PLEASE, FLOWEY. I JUST… I NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM SANS, AND I DID PROMISE YOU THAT I WOULD PLAY WITH YOU. I'LL STAY WITH YOU AND PAY ATTENTION TO YOU FOR AS LONG AS YOU WANT. JUST… DON'T MAKE ME GO BACK TO SANS YET. I'M NOT… STRONG ENOUGH."
Flowey wrapped his vines around Papyrus' arm in a floral hug. "Got it. Now, you said we could play humans and monsters, right? It's been ages since I played that."
Undyne felt mildly guilty that she hadn't called to let Papyrus know she was stopping by to put some spaghetti in his fridge. In her defense, her phone had run out of battery, so she couldn't make the call. Of course, it had run out of battery because she'd used her charger as a shoelace by accident. Back to her defense, she'd done that because Waterfall had lost power after a Tsundereplane in Hotland had flown into the wire and knocked it out. Once more against her defense, it had done that because Undyne had been chasing it. The defense speaks once more to say she was chasing it because it had stolen Woshua's sponge to get clean and forgotten to give it back. This cleaning was needed because Undyne had been making spaghetti and the sauce had exploded in a very… widespread manner. This, of course, happened because she'd heard Papyrus complain about her previous recipe's abundance of cinnamon, so she'd made him a batch without any to prove that it was needed. Which led her back to needing to put the spaghetti in Papyrus' fridge.
When she got to the house, though, that whole escapade flew out of her mind. Papyrus' door was swinging open. Inside, the living room was trashed. The TV had been toppled to the floor, the couch's left side had fallen off of its plank base, bone attacks were scattered and stabbed into every surface, including the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and-
"Fu-dge, Sans!" She shouted as she leapt over a pile of blunt bones by the door. Sans had collapsed on his stomach in the middle of the living room floor. He was half tied up in a bundle of rags that might have once been a bedsheet. At least 14 different sharpened bones had been sliced through the sheets. She guessed they were his, because they'd half freed him; however, Sans clearly hadn't cared about aiming, because a good 10 of them were surrounded by blood. Not a lot of blood, but Undyne knew he didn't have much to give.
She checked him instinctively as she kneeled next to him and she did not like what she saw.
"Sans - Undertale"
"The easiest enemy. Can only do 1 DMG."
1 LV
0.473 / 1 HP
5 / 90 MP
AT: 1 (0)
DF: 1 (0)
EXP: 0
NEXT: 10
WEAPON: None
ARMOUR: None
GOLD: 4219 G
"Fudge! Sans, who- wait, don't speak. I'll get you to Alphys right awa-" She froze, then looked around wildly. "Papyrus, I have to find Papyrus."
She stood up and made a frantic search through the house, but she found nothing. Literally, nothing; his room was empty of everything he cared about. She felt a shiver run up her spine. Someone had attacked both, disabled at least one of her sentries, and kidnapped her best friend. They were in big trouble if they thought they could get away with this. First, though, she needed to get Sans to safety.
Once back downstairs she carefully picked Sans up. She didn't remove the bones or the sheet because she knew that would only make the wounds bleed worse. Gerson had also taught her that you should never move someone until you knew they were stable enough to handle it, but right now she didn't have much of a choice.
She carried him out of the trashed house and headed for the boat dock. On the way she ran into Greater Dog. He sniffed the air a few times, then growled. She nodded. "Someone attacked them. Papyrus is missing. Start searching for him, I'm taking Sans to the Lab for medical care."
Greater Dog saluted, then ran off to find the others. She watched him for only a second before she turned and, once more, headed for the dock.
Chara couldn't bring themself to talk as much with the next human who fell. They seemed to be a mixed-race girl named Patience. She was wearing a handmade dress that reminded Chara of the princess dresses that had been forced upon them for "play time" in those years before they fell into the Underground. That dress made it easier for Chara to distanced themself from Patience, despite her best attempts to strike up a conversation. They might need to be this human's guide, but that didn't mean they had to be friends.
It wasn't until they reached the Ruins that Chara was brought abruptly back into the present. Patience ran over to the collapsed figure and tried to roll her over. Chara was too dumbfounded and terrified to help, not that they really could. Why was their Mom here? She'd been so happy to finally move out of the Ruins. Why was she collapsed on the floor? Was she okay? Was she conscious? She wasn't reacting to Patience. She wasn't dead… was she?
Then Toriel let out a sob and curled up again, and Chara knew more. There had been a name on her tongue. Their name. Mom had sobbed their name. Oh how Chara wished she could see them, but she couldn't. They turned to the human and, stiltedly, asked them, "Can you take care of her? She's… my Mom. I need to know why she's hurting so much, and why she's here."
Patience nodded, and slowly started taking care of Toriel. Over the next few days Chara would learn that their and Azzy's deaths had pushed Toriel into a deep depression. She'd reached a point where she couldn't leave her bed to eat, let alone take care of Sans and Papyrus. Asgore had taken over everything, and she'd let him up until Ama. Toriel didn't know her name, but she did remember smelling blood. She'd stumbled out of bed, instincts from the War propelling her. She'd stumbled into Asgore killing the child.
She'd lost it, yelling at him and accusing him of horrible things. He'd meekly accepted them. Then she'd run away. She'd felt betrayed and disgusted and wanted to get as far away from Asgore as possible. It was only later that she'd remembered Sans and Papyrus, but she knew she couldn't take care of them. Asgore had done it before. She'd just have to keep every human that fell after Ama from leaving the Ruins so he wouldn't be a child murderer more than once.
Patience agreed to stay with her and help her, just like she had done her own mother. It had gone well until one day, when she was on a solo trip to water the flowers on what was apparently Chara's grave, that she ran into an angry ghost who had killed her and taken her soul to the King. Toriel came across her body and buried her next to Chara. She never woke up.