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Not with a Bang but with
Just a quick note to let you lovelies know that NWABBW has a tumblr, which you can find under the tumblr "nwabbw." There I'll be posting the odd tidbit of behind the scenes updates (usually just if a chapter is taking a particularly long time), answering asks, and posting other related NWABBW content. It won't be used terribly often, but follows are always nice. Also feel free to follow my main tumblr under "Randomcat1832," if you want to see some of my regular fandom posts and mini-essays, mostly about Undertale and Doctor Who, or hear my thoughts on arugula or social equality related stuff.
CHAPTER TWO:
Somebody Who's Listening
Warnings for slight body horror.
oOo
Frisk visited the Underground in her dreams.
She had other dreams too of course, and even most of the dreams she had of her time in the Underground were ordinary.
Most, not all.
She was in a dark and endless void. There was a floor of sorts under her, or at least, rather than falling she was sat cross-legged upon some kind of surface, which she could simply sense: she could not necessarily feel it. She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn on her journey through the Underground: a pair of sturdy black shoes, which she'd lost along the way; Capri shorts; and her beloved pink-and-blue striped sweater, which was worn and oversized and slightly moth-eaten, and was the most comfortable thing she owned.
The child before her was also seated cross-legged, only a bit taller than Frisk. His own feet were bare, his expression uncharacteristically solemn, and he wore slacks and a green-and-yellow sweater.
Neither child spoke, their attention focused instead upon the daisy-chains they were making together, though there were no flowerbeds in sight for the daisies to have come from.
Suddenly, the other child stood and tossed down his daisy-chain. It vanished as it fell to the ground. Frisk stood too, lifting a hand to begin weaving the daisy-chain into her hair. Leaving the flowers to the darkness felt wrong, somehow.
"I think," said the princeling Asriel in a quiet voice, "that it's time for me to go and you to wake up."
Frisk gave a sage nod. "Okay." She paused, waiting. "How?"
Asriel wrinkled his little nose and shook his head, ears flopping slightly. "Oh. Gee, um. I don't really know."
"Thanks," Frisk deadpanned, and Asriel laughed. He had a nice laugh. Had he lived and grown, Frisk thought he might have developed a great and hearty laugh, like his father's.
"It'll be okay," he said. "It's actually really easy! I think maybe it just happens?"
Frisk tilted her head to consider this, then nodded in agreement. In the past she'd always just woken up in these kinds of dreams, when the time was right.
"It's kind of happening to me, now. I can feel it!" Asriel scrunched up his face for a moment, eyes screwed tightly shut. When he opened them again, his expression fell back into a peaceful one. "Frisk… you're… you're going to do a great job, okay? No matter what you do. Everyone will be there for you, okay?"
Frisk tilted her head, brow furrowing – he'd said those same words to her once before. But she nodded again. Then her frown deepened.
Something was wrong with Asriel.
Something was wrong with his face. It seemed to be crumpling, falling apart, and by the time Frisk realised what was happening it was too late.
"Well… " Asriel smiled, the bottom half of his body crumbling into pieces of soil to form a small patch of dirt beneath him, his face curling in on itself like a piece of paper set on fire, his top half shrinking and wilting into the ground, the green wool of his sweater darkening. "My time's running out." There was hardly any of him left now. "Goodbye."
And then all that was left was a small golden flower. It turned to Frisk, and the face on its disk blinked up at her, smiling pleasantly. Slowly Frisk sank to her knees, crawling hesitantly closer. "… Asriel?"
The flower continued smiling at her pleasantly, and gave a slight wriggle. A flash of near-blinding light made Frisk scrabble back, but then the light dimmed to a pleasant, faint glow, and she could make out its source quite clearly: a small, inversed heart, the shape of a monster soul, thrumming gently in the middle of the flower's stem.
Frisk paused before scuttling closer once again. "Asriel?"
The flower bowed its stem in something like a nod. Then, with a sudden breeze that took the daisy-chain from Frisk's hair where she'd only begun to weave it in, it crumbled to dust and was gone, taking the dirt patch with it.
Frisk stood, fiddling with the hem of her sweater. She would normally wake up at this point, but she was still here, and now she was unsure of what should follow. After waiting for a moment, she decided to go for a walk until something happened. It wasn't as if there was anything else to do.
Her shoes clicked against the surface beneath her. It sounded as if she were walking upon tiled floor, and she looked down to see – perhaps she was making her way through Alphys' labs? Environments had a tendency of simply appearing to her as they needed to in these kinds of dreams, piece by piece. But rather than being greeted with the expected sight of grimly-coloured tile, she saw nothing but the same empty blackness under her feet.
And fog. Wisps of mist had formed beneath her, knee-deep, reaching up to stroke her arms and legs like phantom fingers, their touch strangely cool. Suddenly unsettled, Frisk lifted one leg high up before resuming a faster pace. Now she really wanted to wake up.
The wall of fog was lifting, surrounding her, until it nearly overcame the blackness. Against every possibility, shadows seemed to have formed in this empty place, and they crawled and skirted and skittered around her.
Frisk walked faster.
And the world in which she found herself (in which she was trapped?) grew dark, darker, yet darker still.
Movement, just before her.
She shuddered and gasped as the darkness seemed to reach for her, the shadows cutting closer, and in the emptiness she heard a sound like her name. But the voice was strange – broken, somehow. Barely understandable.
"It's just a dream," she whispered to herself around the fingernail she'd taken to biting without realising it. She repeated it like a mantra. "It's just a dream, it's just a dream, it's just a dream – "
A shape stepped into view.
At first, Frisk was immediately reminded of her encounter with the other human children, the ones who had fallen before, as they'd helped her fight Flowey before they'd gotten where they were going: they had been blank slates of children, faces shrouded behind clouds of static, exact age and gender impossible to determine, their only distinguishing features the heart-shaped souls that had shone bright and clear in the centres of their chests. As the figure before her now stepped closer, however, it soon became clear that that was not the case. The figure looked to be female, and its face, though obscured by the fog, remained unhidden. At its chest thrummed a soul that was a fierce, deep red.
"Hello, Frisk." The voice was a girl's voice, a child's, though Frisk though it sounded slightly older than her. It also clearly had a different owner than that of the detached voice she'd heard just before.
Frisk bit her lip, then raised a hesitant hand and waved. "Hello." But the figure was already gone.
Frisk rocked back and forth on her heels. The fog seemed to have dissipated, and the empty place did not seem quite so frightening, now. Still, she felt out of place, and she very much wanted to return home. Frisk waited, uncertain, impatient for the moment when she finally woke up. After several minutes went by and nothing happened, she stepped forward and the blank surface beneath her sagged as though struggling to support her weight. Her eyes widened; she didn't want to fall –
oOo
Frisk surged into wakefulness with a thin gasp, and lay in bed for a moment, dazed, the sheets tangled around her legs. She shuddered a little, drawing her arms around herself.
A glance at the clock on the bedside table told her it was 4am.
A dream, she told herself. It had just been a dream. A scary dream, but scary dreams were normal. Frisk had had plenty of ordinary scary dreams in the past, but none of the Underground. None of those kinds of dreams.
Frisk told herself she was being silly.
Then she remembered Asriel crumpling like a wilting flower, remembered the red-souled child and the voice –
No, she definitely didn't want to be alone tonight. Even if it was just a regular dream, she wanted – no, needed – someone to comfort her. It had taken her some time to realise that there were people who would be there to comfort her when the nightmares came, that there were people who cared enough to want to. It had taken some time to get used to.
Frisk sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, hesitantly placing her bare feet on the wooden floor. It did not give way beneath her. Then she stopped to think a moment.
Normally, when Frisk had bad dreams, she went to Toriel. But her new mother was away for most of the week at an important conference, in a big city several hours' bus ride away. That left the rest of her monster family. Her next-best option, then, was Uncle Papyrus. He was very good at cheering anyone up, in any situation, and he always knew how to make her smile, even if he had yet to call her by her name.
Papyrus it was, then.
Impulsively Frisk padded down the hall as she made her way to Sans and Papyrus' room, pushing the door open. Her gaze went to Uncle Papyrus' bed, but it was empty, and neatly made. Her brow furrowed and she was about to slip away and seek comfort from her Auntie Alphys, who was at least warm and kind of squishy and good for cuddling, when a voice sounded from the bed on the far side of the room.
"Hey, kiddo."
She stepped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. "Dunkle Sans?"
He sat up, scrubbing a hand down his face. "Whatcha doin' up, bud? Scary dream?"
She lingered by the door and bit at her thumbnail, nodding. "I was looking for Uncle Papyrus. He's really good with nightmares."
Sans gave a chuckle. "Heh. Don't I know it – he is at that. Anyway, I think he's out for a morning jog. Wanna curl up here instead?"
Relieved, Frisk nodded, crawling into his bed and pressing herself against him. That a creature made of just bones should be comfortable to cuddle with went against all reason in every way, yet somehow he was. Dunkle Sans wasn't much taller than she was, and Frisk rested her head against his clavicle and looked up at him. "Morning jog at four?"
"Eh, he's Papyrus."
She giggled.
He drew her closer, stroking her hair. It felt nice, even when strands of hair got caught in the joints of his phalanges and he had to yank to free his fingers, and Frisk closed her eyes contentedly. His voice came as a gentle murmur, smooth and subdued. "You wanna tell me about it?"
Frisk opened her eyes and thought. "There was a big dark place," she said haltingly. "Empty. Like a void?" The stroking fingers faltered for a second. "And, um." She steadfastly avoided mentioning Asriel. He had asked her to keep his identity a secret, after all. "Then it got really creepy. There was a kid there, a girl I think, and she said my name, and also there was another voice, but it was… " – she shifted – "… weird, and, um, then I stepped and I was… " She blushed, looking down. It sounded so ridiculous and babyish saying it out loud.
"Sure sounds scary," Sans deadpanned, and Frisk's head snapped back up in surprise. She hadn't expected him to say anything like that.
"Yeah, it was." She shook her head. "It's okay. It was just a dream."
"Hmm. Yeah. Dream. Guess I'm not as good with bad dreams as your mum, though, huh?"
"Nuh-uh. Mum is the best. You're still good, though. Almost as good as Uncle Papyrus."
Sans cocked a brow. "Oh? Ah, geez. You're flatterin' me, kid." He ruffled her hair, and Frisk relaxed, smiling a little. She held him a bit tighter, wrapping her arms around him slightly, burying her nose into the fabric of the oversized T-shirt he was sleeping in. Cuddling him closer like this, she could feel every little groove and ridge in the bones of his arms.
"Your arms are all bumpy," she observed, the words a mumble.
He shifted next to her. "Yeah?"
Frisk nodded into him. "More than Uncle Papyrus."
"Guess they are," was all he said. Frisk got the sudden, strange feeling he didn't want to talk about it anymore.
"Did I wake you up?" she asked suddenly, biting her lip. "It's really early."
He blinked, then shook his head. "Nah. Wasn't actually asleep."
"Why not? It's four. And you're not Uncle Papyrus. You're a napping lazybones."
That made Dunkle Sans snort. "Ain't that the truth." He paused, seeming to think. "Sometimes I have trouble sleepin', I guess. No big deal."
"Maybe you can't sleep 'cause of the light," said Frisk sensibly. The curtains of his bedroom window were wide open, and shafts of moonlight cut into the room, brightening it significantly along with the harsh glow of the streetlights. Frisk couldn't imagine sleeping with so much bright light. There was nearly enough to read by, if you were willing to squint.
Sans seemed to falter. "Maybe. Us monsters ain't so used to all this light. But we like it. 's like a… reminder? Sometimes it's easy to forget you're on the Surface. I keep going to bed thinkin' I'll wake up back in the Underground."
"Oh." That made sense, at least a bit. Frisk shifted. "I guess this stuff is more new to you, so it's still really cool and everything."
"Hmm. Yeah." Sans nodded. "'s really nice." He patted her head. "Anyway. Let's both try to get some sleep, huh, kid?"
Frisk nodded into him, and yawned, sleepiness beginning to fog her thoughts as it took over once again. "Mm-kay. You too." Her eyes drifted shut. Then Dunkle Sans' words, a low, soothing murmur, brought her back to wakefulness.
"You don't gotta be scared of having bad dreams, y'know, kid. Or ashamed, or whatever. Everyone has bad dreams. And everyone gets scared by 'em. There's nothing wrong with that. Anyway, you're a little kid."
"I'm eight." Pause. "Almost nine."
"Heh. Hate tibia blunt with ya, but that still counts as a kid."
Frisk opened her eyes, looking up at him in accusation. "That one was bad. It didn't even make sense. No con-text."
"Now you're changin' the subject."
"I think you're losing your pun sense."
"You wound me, kiddo."
Frisk giggled, closing her eyes again. "Goodnight, Dunkle Sans."
"… Night, Frisk."
oOo
The kid fell asleep barely a minute later, her arms still wrapped around his ribs and her features relaxed. She trusted him so completely, and at times it overwhelmed him. A little kid hadn't trusted him this much since Papyrus was her age. Or anyone for that matter.
Sans chuckled dryly to himself, closing his eyes. Frisk was a good kid. Small. Sweet. In the six months since the Barrier had been destroyed, she'd been growing more and more talkative, and rapidly so.
It was hard to imagine that this little girl was the same kid who'd traversed across the Underground with such a calm, collected and fearless approach, despite countless near-death experiences (and a few real-death experiences), who'd believed in the good in every monster there with a stubborn assuredness remarkably similar to his brother's. The same kid who'd freed all monsterkind and given them back the Surface and the stars.
God, he loved the stars.
It was hard to believe that this little girl was the same kid who had the power to take it all away.
When he finally fell asleep, Sans dreamed he was falling through a dark and bottomless void. The darkness seemed to be waiting for him.
Just a quick note that the next chapter will probably come with a fairly longer wait, as it's going to be a real beast of a chapter and will almost certainly end up longer than even Chapter 1. But it will come! Just remember what we learned from our dear dead light blue-souled child. And reminder that if you check out the NWABBW tumblr, there might be previews! Thrill!