Hey guys, I'm SO sorry this took so long for me to get finished! I got distracted by one of my Christmas presents… my sister got me the fourth Sims game and I've been playing it every day ever since (damn you Sims for being so addicting and fun – also, damn you brain for deciding that trying to create characters from KHR in the Sims was a good idea.) I'm going to be trying to get another chapter out for you guys before school starts again, but considering my track record so far, no guarantees on that happening, okay?

It was a little more than an hour later that the Winnicks emerged from the depths of the hospital. Frisk had spent that hour sitting with the Drakes in the lobby, trying their best to comfort the worried monsters and ignore their own anxiety. Mr. Drake had ended up perched on the edge of his chair, cold feathers fluffed up and eyes constantly darting to follow both patients and hospital staff in green scrubs as they went about their day; Snowdrake, on the other hand, hadn't stopped moving once, fluttering about restlessly and persistently bothering the secretary behind the desk for news.

As soon as the human couple stepped out into the lobby, looking about with obvious anxiety but otherwise looking perfectly fine, Frisk stood up, drawing the monsters' attention first to them, then to the Winnicks themselves – and the instant he recognized them, Snowdrake wasted absolutely no time in flinging himself bodily across the room with a frantic squawk, his father following closely behind.

"Are you two okay?! You're okay, right?!"

"Oh thank goodness, the 'surgery' worked? You're both healed now?"

"Er," Mr. Winnick said, obviously bewildered at the monsters' hysteria. His wife looked equally bewildered, and, under normal circumstances, it might have been funny, two humans looking so confused at monsters that they barely knew (by human standards, at least) fretting over them in what was nearly a full-blown mother-hen mode.

As it was, though, Frisk had already seen how the two of them were still hesitant to move, how sometimes Mr. Winnick's hand would drift up towards his side as if expecting a wound, how Mrs. Winnick was practically clinging to her husband's arm… nothing about this situation was funny.

"I'm glad to see you're alright, Mr. and Mrs. Winnick," they managed to get out, not bothering to hide their own relief. They'd spent so much of the last hour repeatedly going over every possible thing that could go wrong. It was one thing to get shot with a single bullet. It was another thing entirely to be shot with several. In previous runs, Frisk had learned the hard way some of the complications of healing gun wounds with monster food – the injury might be healed, yes, but the food wouldn't get rid of the bullets, and that would leave bits of lead buried inside the human body that, if not removed, could cause problems later on. And since the surgeons were trying to remove bullets before using monster food to avoid that problem – if there were too many bullet wounds to get patched up in time…

They could have died, bled out on the operating table before they could be saved. And if they had, it would have been nobody's fault but theirs, Frisk, the Monster Ambassador. Their fault for getting on HuRg's radar, their fault for getting kidnapped, their fault for not giving O'Reilly the information he wanted, their fault for provoking him into ordering this assault –

Their fault for putting monsters under the Winnicks' roof in the first place, and thus making them a target.

"I –" Mrs. Winnick still looked more than a little stunned. "Thank you, Ambassador. But – how did you know –?"

"We heard about the attack from a contact of ours," Toriel said gently, reaching over Snowdrake (who had graduated from frantic chatter to clinging to the woman like a limpet) to rest one furry hand on the woman's shoulder. "One of their friends saw the attack happen, and we came here as soon as we heard the news. How are you?"

"We're fine," Mr. Winnick managed, still looking uncertain. "Just a little shaken. Did – did anyone else get hurt?"

"As far as we know, no," Toriel assured him. "You two were the only ones that were injured that we have heard about, though I'm sure that we will hear if there have been others."

*Hey, Frisk, incoming policeman. He just came in.

Frisk looked up at Chara's words, and a new voice butted into the conversation.

"No other bystanders were hurt." The officer approaching was short and stocky, with grey hair and a face tailor-made for frowning that he was obviously putting effort into smoothing out into something a little more approachable. "Officer Harrish at your service, sirs and madams. And Ambassador."

Greetings were murmured, and Frisk silently questioned Chara if the man was armed. He was, apparently, but only with a single gun in a very visible holster on his belt, and his hands were crossed and far away from the weapon.

"Chief's ordered us to provide you with a police escort until we're sure you four aren't under threat anymore," the officer said, frowning and gesturing towards the door to the outside world. "The men that attacked you are still at large, and the patrols we've sent after them lost them a couple of minutes ago, so that might be a while."

Frisk's eyes widened in alarm – the police had lost the terrorists? – but before they could interject, the man continued.

"Do you four think you're well enough for a few questions? The more we know about these people, the easier it'll be to take care of them."

The Winnicks grimaced. Their anxiety visibly intensified, and the policeman sighed.

"Fine, we can give you a little time to calm down first. We'll escort you to the station –"

"Can we go home first?" Mr. Winnick blurted out, then wilted a little. "I – I mean –"

"We can stop there long enough for you to get anything you might want or need while you're at the station," Harrish said, gruffly, "but we need to pick up the fifth witness, and, to be blunt sir, your home might not be safe for you anymore."

Mr. Winnick nodded jerkily, sucking in a fortifying breath. "Thank you, officer." He glanced over at Frisk and Toriel. "Thank you too, Ambassador, Your Majesty. For your concern."

Frisk nodded mutely and watched as the human-monster quartet were quickly hurried out of the lobby by several other officers.

"Officer," Toriel said, quietly. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

The man's eyes narrowed in thought.

"Maybe," he said, after a long moment of terse silence. "Any idea of who these men might have been, or who they might have worked for?"

"Humanity's Resurgence," Frisk said, quickly. "The gunmen – they left a message for me, with the Drakes. Now all the murderers die. The man who kidnapped me, he was a member of HuRg too. And he – he kept trying to get information about the monsters out of me, and he threatened to kill monsters when I didn't to what I was told, and he called them all murderers."

The man cursed quietly under his breath. One hand went in his shirt pocket – Frisk caught a glimpse of a pack of cigarettes – before he stopped himself, and settled for scowling. "Of course it's them," he muttered under his breath. "They just keep getting bolder and bolder, don't they? Any of your… Anonymous contacts know anything, Ambassador?"

Frisk pursed their lips, and then, after a long, hesitant moment, shook their head.

"It was one of Anonymous's contacts that let us know about the attack in the first place, sir. They don't know anything more than we do."

"And you trust them, Ambassador?"

Frisk opened their mouth, a yes trotting onto the tip of their tongue – then, slowly, they closed their mouth again.

Once upon a time, they would have trusted Anonymous and anyone that Anonymous trusted. But now that they knew who Anonymous actually was, who he was affiliated with? Now that they knew what the fairies could do, and what they did do? When their philosophy of everyone deserves a second chance was being put to the test?

"I don't know, sir," they mumbled, lowering their eyes to the floor. "I really don't know."

Technically, Crane shouldn't have apologized to the Ambassador. Fowl's orders had been clear – keep your distance, let the Ambassador know you're there, but don't actually make contact for now – and Captain Short had insisted on giving them some breathing room, after everything they'd been put through. Normally, Crane would have agreed with the sentiment and obeyed her orders, but, well, the guilt had been eating away at her ever since seeing the kid's panic attack at Tara. No kid should be put through something like that, and if she'd known how they'd react to the mind-wipe… well, when it was finally her shift to watch over the child, all she'd been able to think was what kind of heartless sprite would I be, not to at least try to apologize?

The apology hadn't actually done anything for the guilt, though. Not really. Not when the kid's eyes were so full of suspicion, not when their words kept coming out sharp and snappish in their distrust. Not when it was at least partially Crane's fault that the kid felt like they had to distrust the fairies as a whole, and they had a pretty damn good reason to not trust Crane in particular.

(That was without mentioning the severe look Toriel had been giving her – cold, disapproving, just as suspicious as her child but with a lot more visible distaste. Having a monster giving her that look had been enough to have her fingers itching to reach for her Neutrino handgun, but she'd left it sequestered away on the roof for just this reason – so she couldn't reach for it, even by instinct. She refused to give them yet another reason to distrust the fairies. It was for that same reason she kept her eyes averted whenever she could get away with it, too – she didn't know if the kid or the monsters had figured out how the mesmer worked, but she wasn't going to take any chances.)

Then word of the attack had come, and Crane had been mercifully distracted from their guilt, following the Ambassador to the hospital and then back to their hotel room again after the fully-recovered human couple and their monster boarders had left.

She fully expected Frisk (the Ambassador, she silently corrected herself – she doubted the kid nor the monsters' Queen would appreciate the familiarity here) to ignore her again when she settled on the fire escape outside the window again, making sure to land heavily enough for it to creak underneath her. Instead, though, after only a couple of minutes making calls to various monsters, warning them about the attacks and organizing police escorts for their friends with the help of their overworked police guards, the Ambassador took a deep breath, and then raised their voice to address the room at large.

"Lieutenant Crane? Are you still here?"

Crane blinked – the Ambassador still wanted to talk to her? – and then slowly unshielded, raising her visor but keeping her eyes averted, ever-so-slightly, as she stepped back into the room.

"Right here, Ambassador," she said, uncertainly. The kid's eyes were still distrusting, but… the distrust was less intense this time. Less obvious. Instead, there was something that could almost be called indecision – as if they were debating with themselves how to continue.

After several moments of that indecision, though, the Ambassador's gaze turned steely and determined – and suddenly, this wasn't the same distrusting, scared kid she'd saved from Humanity's Resurgence. This was truly an ambassador, unwilling to give ground or stand down, wielding their own willpower like a weapon.

"Are you keeping an eye on the terrorists from earlier? Any of you?"

Crane pursed her lips. As a matter of fact, yes, they were – the Private and one of Section Eight's corporals had been tailing the group ever since the shooting had begun. The men had fled like a troll was on their heels – or, in this case, like a terrifying monster had been chasing after them. For all that white blobby creature had looked like "the Drakes," there had been something distinctly unsettling about it. Maybe it was the fluid way it moved, like it was barely solid, maybe it was the unsettling sentences it uttered, maybe it was even the independently moving faces where there should have been nothing but frills and feathers, but the creature had been almost as intimidating as any troll could be. Almost.

So, yes, there were two fairies tailing the terrorists right now. And Crane could guess well enough why Frisk – the Ambassador – wanted to know. Know where the threats are, and you can avoid them.

"Yes," she said, after a moment's contemplation. Fowl and Short would hardly report her for telling the Ambassador – their entire mixed squadron was already going to be on thin ice as this was. "We've got a couple of fairies tailing them. Four men, three middle-aged and one younger. They've holed up in a small motel on the other side of town. Gotten rid of the disguises, too – they even had voice modulators on, and they're acting like nothing's happened."

Toriel frowned, and Crane spared her a slightly intimidated, apologetic look before turning her full attention back to the kid. She could practically see gears turning in the Ambassador's head, taking in what little information she'd offered and running calculations over and over again in quick succession. Apart from the returning indecisiveness, that narrow-eyed, considering look was almost a dead ringer for the calculating looks of the two genii of the Fowl family, both the older and the younger. And considering what both of those Fowls got up to after said expressions were used… well, Crane could only hope that she wasn't about to be dumped in a pit with her wings clipped, so to speak.

The Ambassador took a deep breath, then squared their shoulders, lifted up their chin, and looked her right in the eyes.

"The fairies have contacted the police about HuRg before," the child said flatly (what was with monsters and their weird acronyms? Still, Crane had to admit it was easier to say and could actually be considered funny, so she wasn't going to complain). "Would you be willing to do it again?"

She couldn't hide her surprise, no matter how hard she might try to.

They're actually asking us to contact the police again? After everything the fairies have done to them when they have so many reasons to keep us at a distance, they're willing to trust us again, just like that?

No, she corrected herself, after seeing the conflict in the kid's eyes. No, they don't trust us. But…

Were they willing to give them a second chance?

Slowly, she reached up to the side of her helmet, turning on the mic again and switching to Captain Short's channel. "Captain? Lieutenant Crane speaking."

There was a quiet sound that might have been a groan, and then the elf's voice was ringing into her ears. "What is it, Lieutenant?"

She took a deep breath, and, consciously still speaking English so the Ambassador could hear what she was saying, asked, "The account you used to warn the Dublin police force about Humanity's Resurgence, what they were planning to do – is it still active?"

The Ambassador's eyes widened.

A pause.

"Yes. Why?"

Crane hesitated, and Short snorted. "Crane, I can assure you, whatever you're thinking of doing, I've done things ten times worse over the course of my career. And that Artemis had done things several times worse than that."

… Well, that was definitely true. A little more heartened, Crane kept talking. "The Ambassador wants to know if we'd be willing to contact the police again."

Another pause – then another voice, Fowl's, interjected over the com unit. "That would depend upon what they wish for the fairies to tell them."

Crane glanced back at the Ambassador, who was still watching them with hesitant eyes.

"Do you… want us to tell the police where the terrorists are?" Crane guessed quietly.

The kid nodded. And there was definitely a sigh echoing through the speakers of her helmet at her words.

"Lieutenant, I seem to recall giving you all orders to leave the Ambassador alone for the moment, yes?"

"You did order that Fowl," Crane agreed, testily (and couldn't help but notice the kid and Toriel both tensing up at the Irishman's name.) "But considering my own involvement in the whole mind-wiping affair, I thought an apology of my own was prudent."

Captain Short snorted. "Fair enough. Tell the police where the terrorists from the attack today are. Yeah, I'll do that. It's not like it's going to expose the People if one fairy makes contact over anonymous emails, and to be blunt, we still owe the kid. Expect those humans to be on the run again by evening, Lieutenant."

Crane murmured a yes ma'am and muted her microphone again. When she turned her full attention back to the Ambassador and the Queen, both were watching her intently – the Ambassador, nervous, and Toriel, uncertain.

"Captain Short's working on it, right now. The police should know where they are by evening."

The kid swallowed, nodded once, apparently having no words, and something in their expression, something she couldn't quite figure out, had Crane feeling suddenly uncomfortable and about ten times as guilty as she'd felt before. She grimaced, and then lowered her visor back over her face.

"I should get back to my patrol," she said, quietly, and then tried very hard not to look like she was fleeing the suddenly unsettling conversation as she left through the window.

She paused, for a moment, after shielding again, when she heard Frisk speaking quietly behind her – hesitant, and sounding so much more like the kid she'd saved from Humanity's Resurgence.

"Mom? Is it… is it bad that I wanted to give them another chance?"

A pause. And then, Toriel's voice, much warmer than it had been when Crane was in the room.

"No, my child. It is not."

Crane took off into the sky and shoved those very private words into a locked box in the back of her mind. It wasn't her place to listen in, and if the Ambassador really wanted to give the fairies a second chance? She wasn't going to be the one to ruin it.

I was halfway through writing this chapter as fully Frisk POV before my brain suddenly remembered that Crane POV was a thing, and started writing that instead. I like how this turned out much better than when I was planning for it all to be all Frisk.

Also, yay, the Winnicks are fine! And poor Frisk is drowning in guilt. It's okay, Frisk, it's not your fault.

On why Snowdrake and his dad were so worried for the Winnicks after "barely knowing them:" in the game during a True Pacifist Run, all the monsters Frisk was nice to turn up to support them against Flowey after barely having encountered them a few times. Plus, there's what Asriel said - "they barely know you, yet they already love you." Monsters get attached very quickly to people, and I figured that would carry over to the surface as well. Thus, limpet Snowdrake and frantic Mr. Drake. Don't worry, Winnicks, you'll get used to it eventually.

As for "dumped in a pit with her wings clipped," that's a sprite saying I came up with on the fly (heheh). All of the different fairy races are so different from one another that they're bound to have a few unique sayings or maybe even unique slang that the other races don't have. Crane saying something like "dumped in a pit with her wings clipped," in this case, means "forced into a horrible/dangerous/lethal situation." Remember, sprites have real, flesh-and-blood wings, so getting their wings clipped could cause them some serious trouble.