Chapter 11

"That no good, lazy a-!" Undyne tried not to rip her hair from her scalp. Sans was not at their rendezvous – Grillby's, the one place anyone could find the skeleton monster. His absence wouldn't have been an issue if he wasn't an hour late to the place he always, without fail, arrived to first. Turning to Papyrus, Undyne asked after taking a deep breath, "Have you called your brother?"

"Thirteen times, each with no response," Papyrus answered, embarrassed to tell Undyne not what she wanted to hear. "Maybe he got the time mixed up?" he suggested, weakly grasping for anything to explain his twin's absence.

Undyne didn't believe it but chose to keep that thought to herself. It wasn't Papyrus's fault Sans was unreliable; there was no need to take her frustration out on the goofball. To distract herself, Undyne studied the notes she got from Doggo for the seventeenth time.

"It was the strangest thing," he told her and Papyrus. "This ghost stick just came out of nowhere. Maybe a spirit from the afterlife wielded it? All I know is it came and went without a trace."

Of course, Undyne thought, he's practically blind. Shaking her head, Undyne examined her other notes. Doggo came across the "ghost stick" the same day the trap was sprung. If there was one thing Undyne believed, it was that there was never, under any circumstances, such a thing as coincidences.

It was with a steady hand Undyne wrote, The human made it past Sans's station undetected and came across Doggo, who actually pays attention to his job. Gritting her teeth, Undyne scratched out the last part. She continues to write, For some strange reason, the human decided to evade Doggo by playing a game of fetch. After Doggo was tired out, the human continued to travel down Snowdin Road, where it solved the puzzles Papyrus laid out and set off the alarm. Evidence suggests it was heading to Snowdin Town.

"Except a certain someone isn't here to tell me what he found," Undyne muttered.

"I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation Sans isn't here yet," Papyrus tried.

"He ditched, that's the reasonable explanation." Undyne picked up her glass and chugged the burning liquid down in one gulp. She asked Grillby for another and tipped the bottom up for that shot as well.

"Sans wouldn't disappear from a major investigation," Papyrus said, believing every word to be the truth. He pushed away his fries, uncertain why he ordered such greasy food in the first place, and Undyne took this as the opportunity to help herself. "He must have gotten caught up on a lead."

Raising an eyebrow, Undyne questioned, "And he didn't think to call?"

"My brother doesn't think things through as thoroughly as the Great Papyrus does." Papyrus threw his backpack over his shoulder. "I'll go look for him right now and have him back here before you know it."

"Papyrus, wait, it could be danger-" But he was gone before Undyne could finish. Undyne slumped in her chair, internally cursing the skeleton brothers' ability to teleport. Some monsters flinched when they noticed Papyrus disappear in their peripheral, but there were little other reactions from the patrons. One did a double take, but that was it.

Undyne's cursing grew in volume. Her interview with Doggo confirmed that if not the human, someone was definitely in the Underground along with the human. Whoever this was may have chosen to spare Doggo instead of killing him, but that didn't make this person safe. For all Undyne knew, Papyrus was looking for danger simply by hunting down his brother. There was no doubt Papyrus could take care of himself if need be, but that didn't mean Undyne would rest easy till she saw him again.

She couldn't bear losing another loved one, not when she was still recovering.

Swearing one final time, Undyne snatched her things and stormed out of Grillby's. If Sans wasn't going to show up to give her his report, then she would check out what was left of Snowdin Town herself.


Meeting Mon for the second time was more or less the same from Frisk's first encounter with the monster. Frisk tried to keep her responses close to the original meeting, but since Alice had already shown Frisk the town the day before, there was even less for Frisk to latch onto when it came to befriending the armless monster. The girls sat at a table in the lobby of Beatrix's inn, trying to find some way to spend their afternoon. As before, Mon insisted on seeing the river, but Frisk firmly told Mon that there was no way in the Underground she would be going anywhere near water.

"What are you," Mon snorted, "scared?"

"Of drowning? Yes."

"You're not going to drown."

Experience proves otherwise. Frisk shook her head. "No river." She was glad Chara wasn't there. She wore the locket so it wasn't that the human was unaware, but he ventured off to wherever the locket would let him travel. It seemed he had no interest in what she did, and she wished she wasn't curious to how he spent his time elsewhere.

"Well I don't know what else you expect we do!" Mon snapped.

"I don't see why we can't play games," Alice tried, her sweet demeanor slipping as her irritation with Mon grew. "We got card games, board games-"

"Boring!" Mon slowly rotated her neck, enjoying each crack in her spine. "If you're going to play a game, why not make it a fun one?"

"Such as?" Frisk asked, doing her best to not add to Alice's frustration.

"Darts," Mon answered. "We can go to my place and throw darts. Losers have to clean the winner's room for the next week."

Deciding it would be wise to not mention Mon's lack of arms, Frisk turned to Alice and said, "I'm up for it if you are."

With a groan, Alice replied, "Fine, fine. We can play darts. However, we don't need to go all the way to Mon's house. We have a dartboard in the game room."

"You wouldn't mind an extra player, would ya?" a new voice asked, and Frisk's heart stopped. "We could split into teams."

Snapping her head around, Frisk sagged at the familiar face before her.

"Sans," she whispered, the name sounding like her salvation.

"You again," Mon sneered. She stood abruptly from the table. "You know what, I don't really want to play games anymore. I think I'm going to go home and bully my sister."

Without another word, Mon stalked out of the inn, ignoring Sans and not sparing a backwards glance at Frisk and Alice.

Sans didn't seem phased by Mon's exit. He simply shrugged and suggested, "I'll play winner."

"I'm surprised you showed," Alice said, neither malice nor bitterness in her words. Just caution. "Last time you said you would be back in three days, it took you over three weeks just to remember we exist."

"I didn't have someone bleeding to death last time," Sans pointed out. "Just because I don't have a heart doesn't make me heartless."

With a shake of her head, Alice turned to Frisk and asked, "How do you know this monster?"

"How do you know him?" Frisk returned, surprising herself.

If the bluntness got to Alice, she didn't show it.

"Old neighbor of ours, back in Snowdin," Alice answered. "He was the one who warned us about the Reds." Turning to Sans with the first sign of mistrust in her eyes, Alice added, "He saved us from Red hands, yet he still associates with them. We tolerate him because he saved us, but very few of us here trust him."

Sans took a seat across from the girls. "No need to talk about me like I'm not in the room, sweetheart," he said. To Frisk, "How are you doing?"

"Anemic, but alive." Frisk looked him over. "Where were you this whole time?"

"Y'know, here and there." Sans waved his bony hand in the air. "Alice, mind telling your mom that I'm here and that Frisk and I will be speaking in one of her rooms?"

Alice looked at Sans as if she wanted to answer, "Yes, I do mind."

"Not a problem at all," was how she chose to respond. "We'll have lunch ready for you when you're finished. Do you want a hamburger or a hot dog?"

"Surprise me."

To Frisk, "And you would like?"

"Whatever he's having," Frisk told Alice.

After the rabbit monster walked away, Sans asked Frisk to follow him. It was at this time Chara decided to return. He said nothing, only glaring at Sans in malice that would make Alice's distrustful stare appear as if she thought of Sans as the town hero.

"Good thing I came back when I did," Chara said. "Be careful what you tell him, okay, Stripes? You're gullible, and until proven otherwise, you shouldn't trust him as far as you can throw him."

Frisk nodded the slightest bit to signal that she understood. However, she had many arguments for Chara she wanted to voice. "Sans helped me back with his brother and then saved me when I was dying." "If Sans wanted to kill me, he would have already." "There's nothing I have to offer that he could possibly want." She kept all comments to herself. The only reason she was able to give Chara the benefit of the doubt was because Alice, a very trusting character from what Frisk could tell after knowing her for a day that happened and one that didn't, was weary of Sans, the monster who supposedly saved her and everyone else's life.

After shutting the door behind them, Sans signaled for Frisk to sit on the bed while he sat on the desk chair. "Does anyone suspect you of being a human?" he asked, cutting straight to the point.

Chara, who stood next to Sans's sitting figure, nodded. Frisk swallowed and answered, "Other than Beatrix, Peter, and the dog, I don't think so. Most comments I hear are of how strange of a monster I am."

The way Sans nodded implied he was relieved. "You doing just fine here?"

"Better than I thought I would," Frisk replied before Chara could give his thoughts. Then at his insistence, Frisk asked, "What did you do to cause such weariness in these townspeople?"

If Sans was surprised, it didn't show. Not having eyebrows gave him such an advantage. "When you keep allegiance with the people who tried to kill your friends, naturally your friends are not going to be inclined to openly trust you even if you warned them in time to save their lives."

"But why?" Frisk furrowed her brows. "You have to agree burning down Snowdin was wrong if you warned its residents to flee. Why continue being a Red after that? Why continue being a Red if you're helping me?"

"There's a lot more to Reds and Blues you don't understand," Sans answered. His left eye began to glow red, as did his hand. The pens on the desk also glowed red, and they soon levitated and danced along with the motions Sans waved his illuminated fingers.

"It's not as easy and straightforward as black and white," he explained. "Just as there's shades of gray, the Underground also has shades of – what do red and blue make?"

"Purple," Frisk supplied after a second of thought.

"The Underground also has shades of purple," Sans continued. He kept playing with the floating pens. "There is no such thing as good and evil. We're all in the middle, but some of us lean towards one more than the other."

Chara bit his lip. He wanted to disagree with Sans, Frisk could tell, but he honestly couldn't. For once, Frisk was the one to take Sans's words with a grain of salt.

"I disagree," she began. "About there being no such thing as good and evil and that we're all in the middle. Even if no one is completely evil, we're all selfish, and that puts nobody on the good side of this seesaw. It doesn't matter if we make bad decisions with good intentions or good decisions with bad intentions – the foundation for most the choices we make is 'What do I want? What will make me happy?' Being selfish is easy, but being good, putting the needs of others above your own, is hard."

The boys' reactions were complete opposites. Chara crossed his arms and wouldn't look at Frisk at all. Sans stared at her as if her words were written all over her and he wanted to read them for himself.

It was Sans who challenged her by asking, "Do you think even the worst person can change . . . ? That everybody can be a good person, if they just try?"

To answer that question, Frisk tried to imagine the worst person she could ever possibly meet. She sucked in a sharp breath when she realized she didn't have to think half as long as she suspected.

The worst person Frisk could ever meet was the monster who killed Toriel. Kind, motherly Toriel who wouldn't even fight back. Toriel who died saving a child that may not have been her flesh and blood but was still just as much her heart.

Frisk asked herself if anyone who would kill Toriel could ever change if they really just tried. Shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the cold, Frisk answered, "No." There was no way she could believe that anyone who would kill Toriel could ever, ever change. Not for the better.

If Sans wanted an explanation for her reasoning, he didn't ask for it. Frisk dared not look at Chara. For a few minutes no one in the room spoke. Sans kept levitating the pens in the air, and Frisk, with nothing else to do, watched him.

"You're left-handed," she pointed out, desperate for any conversation topic to latch onto. "Like me," she added quietly, her cheeks turning red.

"Ah, so the brotherhood grows." Sans returned the pens to their mug. Turning his full attention to Frisk, Sans questioned, "Are you happy here?"

"Uh," Frisk shifted on the bed, "yeah, I am."

"You think the town's nice?"

"So far, yes. Snowdin Two is really cozy."

"And you feel safe?"

"For the first time in a long time."

"Then that settles it." Sans leaned back in the chair and placed his hands behind his head. "This should be a great new home for you."

"I suppose it cou- Wait a minute." Frisk angled her body forward and looked pointedly at Sans. "You want me to stay here?"

Sans shrugged. "Don't see why not. Said so yourself you're happy here and feel safe."

"That's exactly what you said, Stripes," Chara added, smirking at her.

"But I can't stay," Frisk argued. "I need to leave."

"Leave Snowdin Two?" Sans sounded disbelieving. "Where could you possibly go that would be better than Snowdin Two?"

"I want to leave the Underground," Frisk corrected. "The surface might or might not be better than Snowdin Two, but it'll definitely be safer."

"I don't know if you're aware," Sans said slowly, sitting upright, "but there's a barrier keeping us all trapped Underground. Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. That includes you, human."

"I got into the Underground despite a barrier," Frisk argued, "so certainly I should be able to get out."

"It's suicide."

"I'd rather die trying than die hiding."

Chara whistled. "Didn't think a person like you would say something like that, even if you can't really die."

Shaking his head, Sans said, "If I knew you had a death wish, I would've just left you there in the cold."

Although Sans wasn't completely wrong to say that, his words still struck Frisk like a spear to the heart.

"I have to leave," she insisted. "Humans don't belong Underground."

"And monsters do?" Sans's eye was glowing red again, and this time Frisk was sure it wasn't because he wanted to play with the pens a second time.

"I didn't say that," Frisk said, heart jumping in her throat. Chara snickered, and it took all she had to not glare at him.

"No, you didn't." Sans's eye stopped glowing, and he stood up and tucked in the chair.

"I'll pay for your month stay at Beatrix's inn," he said. "If you want to leave, I can't stop you, but don't run off without having a plan. The monsters out there aren't as friendly as the monsters here."

"You said so yourself it's less of red and blue and more like shades of purple," Frisk pointed out.

"And you said we can have bad actions with good intentions," Sans replied. He tucked his hands into his hoodie pockets. "I need to go, kid, but I'll be checking back in every chance I get, so don't get any ideas."

Before Frisk could respond, Sans was gone.

After a solid heartbeat, Chara said, "I think that went well."

Frisk bit her lip. "We can't stay here. We need to get to the surface."

"Why?" Chara challenged.

"Mom told us to!" Frisk snapped. She stood to her feet and began pacing the room. "Why are you asking a question you already know the answer to?"

"I think you need to be asking yourself why you're entire motivation for getting out of here is because Mommy told you to," Chara snapped back.

"It was her dying wish for you and I make it to safety."

"Perhaps she should have found better ways to protect you than to shelter you for eight years."

"Well whatever strategy she chose to protect you clearly didn't work." After the words came out of Frisk's mouth, she realized what she had said.

It was only slightly, but Chara's shoulders drooped, and his previously crossed arms dropped to his sides. His eyes narrowed, glaring at her with a hatred that made Frisk want to cower in the corner. When he spoke, his words were calm and hinted at no anger. "There was nothing she could have done for me, just as there is nothing she can do for you now. I made my choice, now it's time for you to make yours. Are you really satisfied knowing everything you now do is for a dead woman?"

Words spoken softly, Frisk said, "I was the one who killed her. You said so yourself that her death was my fault. Shouldn't I give up everything to make sure in the end she gets what she wanted?"

Before Chara could answer, Frisk swung open the door and stomped down the stairs. She came into the kitchen just in time to see Sans take a brown bag from Beatrix. It looked as if he was taking his food to go.

"I'll be back tomorrow," Sans said, looking at Beatrix but clearly addressing Frisk. "We need to discuss payments for the kid's room."

"I'm sure Frisk is old enough to discuss such matters with me," Beatrix said, unaware of the human standing behind her. "She's able to work here at the inn – there's no reason she can't help Alice and Peter keep things up and running with me."

"Either way, I'll be back," Sans said. Spinning on his heel, Sans shouted, "Thanks for the dog!" as he exited.

Frisk turned around and scurried up the stairs. When she entered her room, she closed the door, locked it, and scooped up her backpack. Going through its contents, she muttered, "Everything I packed at home should be enough. The original Snowdin isn't far from what appears to be a warmer, albeit darker, climate. Once there, I can figure out what to do next."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with that comedian," Chara said. "If you're going to play runaway, at least have a plan."

"I do have a plan," Frisk argued.

"If that vague map inside your head is your plan, then you might as well give up. Stripes, you have a terrible habit of acting without thinking."

"And I should listen to you, the one who got me killed twice?" Frisk threw her backpack under the bed. "I can't stay, and I need to leave before Sans finds a way to keep me here."

"He didn't threaten you or blackmail you into staying, you know."

"Why are you on his side all of a sudden?!" Frisk exhaled sharply. Seeing her companion give her a knowing look, Frisk asked, "Chara, what are you not telling me?"

"Which thing? You know I keep a lot of secrets."

"For starters," Frisk tried to clarify, "where were you earlier? What did you see? What do you know that I- No. What do you know that Sans doesn't know?"

Chara walked towards Frisk and stood over her. It was the closest they had ever been. As he grew closer, Frisk noticed things she hadn't before. He wasn't much taller than she – his nose was at level with her eyes. Chara didn't have the kind of strong, square jaw like the kings in her old fairytale books, his cheeks and forehead had what appeared to be acne scars, and he wasn't that much wider either, having shoulders she would never describe as broad. How human he looked sent Frisk into a trance, so much so that she forgot until too late that he wasn't really there.

"What I saw was that comedian taking the back entrance to Beatrix's inn," Chara supplied. "What I saw but he didn't see was that he was being followed."

Frisk's knees nearly buckled from under her. She reached out to hold on to Chara, but she screamed when her hands went right through his body. Falling backwards, Frisk landed on the bed and stared up at him.

"I would suggest you don't try touching me again," Chara said when the gaping Frisk failed to say anything. "The thing is, you can't."

"Can you touch me?" Frisk asked, surprising herself with the question.

There was no hesitation in Chara to reach out and slap her. Frisk flinched at the action, but his hand went right through her face. She didn't feel a thing.

"Unfortunately, no," Chara answered. "Now pull yourself together, Stripes. If I have to put up with you, I would prefer you don't faint regularly."

"Then I guess I'll stay seated then," Frisk replied, not showing Chara how much his ghostly presence got to her.

Chara was human. He looked like her, was built like her, and had a soul like hers. Except she was alive, and he was dead. As alike as they were, there still existed an unbreakable barrier. In the truest, rawest sense, she was just alone in the Underground as he was.

Taking herself out of those thoughts, Frisk asked, "Did you see who followed Sans?"

It was with a sinister chuckle Chara answered, "You're not going to believe it, Stripes. The mastermind who followed behind your comedian without his noticing is that pathetic brother of his."