4. What will tomorrow bring?
The Ruins, the catacombs, the forest tundra flashed by beneath Chara's pounding feet. They kept their eyes locked on the ground, searching for any flicker of gold and green – but aside from the bed of inanimate flowers in an otherwise abandoned room, they had seen nothing of the kind.
"Asriel…!"
They were just barely aware of Frisk keeping pace behind them, not shouting but searching just as far. As the two human children reached Snowdin, a handful of villagers shot them strange looks, but Chara couldn't have cared less. Barely pausing to catch their breath, they pressed on towards Waterfall, a far more deserted area and therefore a place where their brother was more likely to have run off to.
"Asriel! Asriel!"
No response, but the echo flowers all around them breathily repeated their pleas: "Asriel…Asriel…Asriel…"
Finally, they reached the room with the crumbling statue and umbrella and music box, the room where Chara had rested all their hopes – and at first, they really thought that said hopes might not be completely unfounded. Their heart surged when they spotted a glimmer of yellow among the cavern's washed-out blues and grays, and they charged towards it, paying no heed to the winded Frisk who was struggling to keep up with them. "Asriel!" they cried, skidding to a halt on their knees before the statue, snatching for the tiny spot of gold…
Their fingers closed around a single silkly petal. It could have been from any of the flowers around the game, except for the fact that it was so far from any of the spots where they grew. Asriel had been here, but it looked as if he was here no longer.
Chara's fist squeezed shakily around the petal, and they desperately tried to look beneath and behind the statue, unable to accept their failure. Surely he was still here, he must have been here, he wouldn't just run away from them…!
(Why did you have to come along?! Why didn't you just leave me alone like I asked you to?! Why did you have to make me believe that things would be all right?!)
They trembled in place, too petrified even for their usual nervous giggles. No, they…they hadn't done anything wrong, had they? They hadn't known at all that Toriel would react the way she had! How could Asriel blame them for that?!
(You and your stupid plans that do nothing but make everybody miserable…!)
…he could blame them because…because it had been their idea. They were the one who'd pushed him to come home. Just like it had been their idea to use buttercups in a long-ago pie, their idea to enact a grand scheme to free all of monsterkind…
Kneeling before the slumped statue in Waterfall, clutching a discarded petal as if it were the last lifeline to their brother, Chara began to cry.
Their grief made it feel like an age before they felt Frisk's arms slipping around them, although it couldn't have been longer than a couple of minutes. Chara swallowed painfully, squinting open their eyes to a blurred and wavering world. "He's gone, isn't he?" they whispered. "H-he's not gonna come back…"
Frisk shook their head emphatically, turning Chara's head gently so that their sibling could see them sign. 'Of course he will. He just wants to be alone right now.'
Chara dragged a sleeve across their face, sniffling miserably, trailing tears and snot across their arm. "He was r-right about me, you know. About me not being a good person. About my ideas making everybody miserable…that's all I ever do…!"
Frisk shook their head again, but this time they didn't sign, because their hands were preoccupied squeezing Chara tightly.
Despondently, Chara stared at the spot where they'd found the fallen flower petal, surrounded by the gentle pinging melody that they recognized very well. Asriel had been here; maybe he'd taken off when he heard them coming, or maybe he was still here, just carefully tucked out of sight. As long as the latter might be true, there was at least something that they wanted to say, especially not knowing when they would properly see him again.
"Asriel?" they whispered, fingers tightening around the petal that they were still clutching. "If you're there…I-I'm sorry…I'm really sorry. I never wanted this to happen. If you need to be alone for a little while, that's okay…but we'll be here for you when you need us. If you need us…"
Frisk nodded and lifted their hands, and Chara translated their words aloud.
"Frisk says they love you. And so do I. No matter what the grown-ups think."
A few moments of silence, of feeble hope, wishing that maybe he'd heard them and would pop his head out from behind the statue. But no such thing happened. Chara and Frisk merely sat on the ground, holding on to each other, drooping slightly with the weight of their failed family reunion.
"We should go," said Chara at last. If Asriel was here, and if they wanted to be alone, then they weren't doing him any favors by hanging around.
Frisk hesitated for a moment, then signed, 'Home?'
"Not to Mom's Home," answered Chara immediately. They weren't so sure that they could stand to be around her right now, and Frisk seemed to feel much the same, despite being the far less vengeful of the two. "Let's go stay with Dad tonight. He won't mind."
Frisk bobbed their head, and after another few seconds of deliberation, the two of them helped each other to their feet and headed in the direction of the Capital.
Chara and Frisk had gone to see Asgore a few times over the past week, although they hadn't yet stayed overnight – which was a shame, because Chara had always been somewhat more attached to him than they were to Toriel. They couldn't quite explain why, but they'd warmed up to him more quickly when they first arrived in the Underground, and he was usually the grown-up that they turned to when they wanted an adult's comfort. Of course, tonight, being around him wasn't quite as reassuring, because who they really wanted was Asriel; still, it was nice to sit in the house they'd grown up in, surrounded by the familiar smells of flowers and tea, and to be able to reach out and hold their father's hand while he did his best to prepare supper for his two children and get them to bed.
By mutual agreement, neither Frisk nor Chara mentioned anything about Flowey or Asriel. Asgore was not completely oblivious to their darkened moods, but they just brushed his questions aside when he asked them what was wrong, and he wasn't the sort to keep pressing them about it. And when it was bedtime, even though New Home had two beds open to them, they both crawled into the one that had once been Asriel's. Truthfully, Chara couldn't help viewing their own bed with the slightest amount of wariness, given that they last time they'd lain there, they had never risen again.
"Tomorrow we should keep looking for Asriel," murmured Chara to Frisk, once they were snugged up beside each other in soft darkness. "If he hasn't turned up yet, I mean."
Frisk nodded, their head rustling against the pillow, then scooted a little closer to Chara. Chara had just enough time to wonder before they fell asleep how someone like them had ended up with someone like Frisk as a sibling.
Toriel was walking.
To get from her home in the Ruins to her destination in Waterfall, she could have easily taken the River Person's boat; there was even a hidden dock in the Ruins, which the players could never access, allowing transport as far as another hidden dock in the Capital. But today, she wanted the walk. She needed it to clear her head, to get her tumultuous thoughts in order.
It had been three days since she had last seen her children in her person. Chara was not answering their phone for her, and she hadn't even had the heart to try calling Frisk, but Asgore turned out to have no qualms about answering her phone calls. Even if he'd sounded like he was bracing himself for a fire attack sent down the line at any second. Nevertheless, he'd confirmed that the children were with him, that they were safe, if a bit surlier than he'd expected. "Has something happened?" he'd eventually asked her at the end of that uncomfortable called.
"Yes," she'd replied. "But I do not wish to speak of it now. Another time, perhaps." And she had hung up the phone.
However, given what she'd learned just an hour ago, another time was going to have to be quite soon.
Toriel had been settled into her reading chair, peering through her glasses at a book and trying to take her mind off of things, when a knock had sounded out at the front door. Upon looking up, however, she realized that the knock was actually not at the front door, but rather at the doorway to the sitting room, where Sans stood smiling awkwardly and rapping his knuckles against the wall.
"Sans!" she exclaimed, snapping the book shut and rising from her chair. "This is a surprise! What brings you here, my friend?"
He stuffed his hand back into his pocket. He was still smiling, but then, he was always smiling; it was really the only expression that his mouth could form. And something about the lines of tension in his face set her on edge. "I don't really have a good way to tell you this," he started.
"Tell me what?" she asked, frowning.
"Uh, your kids," he said. "Frisk and Chara. They were here the other day and they were telling you about how Flowey wasn't really Flowey anymore, right?"
She tensed. "How did you know that?"
"Heard it through the grapevine." He paused. "By which I mean my brother. Uh, anyway, it kind of prompted me to…look into things. Specifically, into Flowey's code. Sprites can lie, but their codes can't."
Toriel felt a cold prickling sensation start up in her cheeks. "What exactly are you trying to tell me, Sans?" she asked stiffly.
"Tori…your kids were telling the truth about Asriel."
Now, walking through the vast damp caverns of Waterfall, that cold prickling feeling had moved from her face to her heart. She couldn't remember the last time that she had ever been so completely, utterly, desolately wrong.
I did what I thought was best. I was trying to protect my little ones. I have been hurt so many times before. It was perfectly understandable that I should be skeptical…
Excuse after excuse fell flat and perished in her head. The only thing that persisted was something like horror as she thought about her son a few days ago, clearly terrified, opening his heart to her for nothing but the narrow possibility of acceptance…and she'd flat-out rejected him. Disowned him, called him a thing, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the hole in her heart that had scarcely diminished since his long-ago death.
"Look, it's hard for me to explain how exactly I know," Sans had said, holding up his hands when she rounded on him, demanding to hear how he could be so certain. "I'm programmed to understand the codes, and even then, I still find it all complicated. But every character has a core personality, so that even when they have to switch bodies, they're still themselves. Well, I checked out Asriel's personality, and…yeah, he is Asriel. Even when he's in the Flowey body, he's just got that one personality, and it's him."
The way he'd gazed at her, the way his face had crumpled when she looked back at him as if he were a piece of rubbish. How could I ever have doubted him?
Sans sounding increasingly weary as he said, "Trust me, I was afraid he might be tricking them, too. I know exactly what Flowey's like in the game. But I double-checked, triple-checked even, and…I mean, I guess this isn't in the game, is it? And he's not Flowey."
I said that he was beyond saving completely.
"Try not to beat yourself up too much, Tori. If I'd been through everything you had, I probably would have reacted the same way that you did. Or, uh, much worse, actually."
I said that he was not my son.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know where he is now. '104 room_water_statue.' That means…"
That meant the room in Waterfall with the broken statue and music box puzzle. And now, propelled along by her relentless thoughts, she had arrived.
Toriel inhaled deeply. The air felt too thick, cold but humid, and she heard that song echoing across the cave on repeat. One of the only music tracks that played outside of game time, because it came directly from an external object. A song with lyrics that only the characters of this game would ever know.
Good night to all the Under
Good night to everything
Still, I can't help but wonder
What will tomorrow bring?
The words rose from deep within her programmed memory as a lullaby that she used to sing to her son, long ago. Backstory was such a funny thing here; a lot of it was left as subtle hints that the player was meant to piece together themselves, while other details existed for the characters alone. To flesh them out, to give them personality. To make them who they were.
So where did you draw the line between yourself and the events that you logically knew had never happened?
"Asriel?" said Toriel, slowly, distinctly, addressing the room at large. She couldn't see him, but… "I know you are here somewhere, are you not?"
Raindrops pattered against the open umbrella. The music box played on. She was breathing in memories, almost drowning in them. Then…
"What do you want?" hissed a voice that, at first, she could barely identify as her son's. It seemed to emanate both from everywhere at once and from nowhere in particular. But that was just a trick, theatrics so that he couldn't be found unless he wanted to. And if she focused, setting all of her preconceived notions of Flowey aside, it really wasn't that difficult to hear Asriel underneath – sounding like a young boy who threw tantrums and ran off to his room sometimes, just like any other child. Except sadder and more bitter.
She composed herself. It was best to get this over with quickly; if he wanted her gone, then she wouldn't, couldn't, bedgrudge him that. But first, she needed to say what she had come here to say. "Asriel…I do not know if you can forgive me. For what I said. For…how I treated you." A deep breath. "But I am sorry. Sorrier than I have words to tell you."
She could have told him, then, about how much she had begun to doubt her own conviction over the past few days. She had sat in her chair hour after hour, affecting to read while secretly thinking, What if I am wrong? What if the children were telling the truth?, and then pushing the thoughts out when they began to cause too much discomfort. And then that phone call with Asgore, where his excessive tact around her – his apparent fear of her – had planted yet more seeds of doubt, causing her to seriously ponder her actions in the game and in her history, questioning if those things were really as righteous as she had always told herself that they were.
"You – w-what?!" His voice faltered ever so slightly before strengthening again. "What are you trying to pull?!"
Toriel had to shut her eyes for a moment in order to get herself together. "Please understand…I have been hurt so many times, lost so many things, but despite that…I know that I was wrong. I know that you were telling me the truth. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt before, and I am sorry…"
She had to gulp down the pleading note that had infiltrated her words.
A moment of incredulous not-quite-silence. "You're sorr—you've been hurt?! D-do you even know who you're talking to? What I…?!" As Asriel grew more agitated, his efforts to throw his voice started to break down; she was now almost certain that he was someplace behind the statue. "I lost everything! I lost Chara because I agreed to their plan to free all the monsters! Then the humans killed me because they thought I had hurt Chara – as if I would ever hurt them…! And then I was a flower! A flower! No explanation, no warning, nothing! I cried and cried for help for hours, a-and then even when Dad finally came, I couldn't feel anything! Not around him or you or anyone…! I couldn't even get rid of myself because I always just came back without meaning too! A-And after that, I…I-I-I…!"
He devolved into dark, mortified laughter that made Toriel's eyes sting.
"I was so awful!" he shrieked from his secluded hideaway behind the statue. "How did I ever think that things would ever be okay for me ever again?!"
He lapsed into another laughing fit, forcing her to close her eyes and steady herself. When she opened them again, silent tears slithered down her cheeks, barely tangible.
"Yes. You have been through more than any child should ever have to go through," she murmured, stepping hesitantly closer to the statue. "Asriel…when I lost you, I lost my entire world. I can only imagine how much worse that entire experience was for you. I wish with all of my heart that I could go back and make things better for you, but…I cannot. I failed you. I could not even help my own child…"
Not even when he'd practically crawled to her doorstep searching for the love that he had long been denied.
"You do not have to forgive me," she told him quietly, hanging her head. "But I do still hope you will come home – if not for me, then for your siblings. They miss you so much…"
No response. Woven in between the sounds of rain and music, she heard petals rustling, tense breathing…but nothing more. Well, how could she have expected anything more? He had peeled away her façade and seen the flaw-riddled foundation that she had done her best to hide. He had experienced her willingness to turn on her own child without even pausing to think. Of course he would have no desire to return home after that.
"I understand," she murmured, ghosting a little closer to the statue despite herself. The sculpture had been destroyed almost beyond recognition, but she could still imagine that its tumbledown form was her son, in the body he had been robbed of, slouched over in despair. "I…will leave you in peace now."
And then, because she couldn't help herself, she placed her hand on top of the statue the way she used to place her hand on her son's head, and she sang softly in time with the music box:
"Good night to all the Under
Good night to everything
Still, I can't help but wonder
What will tomorrow bring?
Who can say where we might go
Within the coming days?
But there's one thing that I know…
I will love you always."
Toriel's voice faded, and she turned away slowly. Soon enough, she was walking again.
But this time, she didn't get very far.
She hadn't even reached the room's exit when her ears pricked at the sound of more rustling leaves and petals, followed by a hasty call of, "W-wait!" Then, before she could even react, a golden flower emerged from the ground at her feet – slightly wilted, but still looking up directly into her face.
Startled, she took a step back, placing her hand over her heart. "Asriel?"
"Mom, I…" Asriel looked askance, and after a moment, a slender vine popped up to scrub at his eyes. "I-I'm sorry too. For…for what I said to you the other day. I-it wasn't right…"
Toriel's expression softened by degrees. After a moment, she knelt down before him, trying to get slightly more on his level. "You do not have to apologize," she said.
"Y-yes I do!" he insisted. "That was mean. It was something that Flowey would say. And then w-what I said to Frisk…and Chara…" His petals drooped miserably around his face. "After that, I-I almost thought I was Flowey. That I was just fooling myself…"
Before she knew what he was doing, she had reached out, tipping up his chin with one gentle fingertip. "It is not something that Flowey would say," she answered firmly. "It is something that a very hurt and frightened little boy would say when he was rejected by his own mother."
Tears welled in his eyes, tears that seemed too large for his tiny body, and he tried to blink them back with limited success. "I'm sorry, Mama," he whispered.
Toriel's heart stilled – then it just about melted. How she longed to pick him up and hold him against her as she had done so long before…! Or rather, as she had never done, because that was only in her programmed backstory. Still, it was real enough, wasn't it? Real enough to affect both of them. Real enough to affect both of them. But since she could not do that, she did the next best thing, and cupped one hand securely around her son with the pad of her thumb resting against his cheek.
Asriel uttered a shaky sigh, leaning against her hand. This wasn't much of an embrace, but it was still a great step forward for them both…and besides, she reminded herself, the important thing was not what form he had taken. It was that he was still here with her, he was still himself, and that was more than she'd had for a long, long time.
They stayed like that for quite some time, without words, but that was all right. They didn't need words for this. Asriel was the one who finally spoke again, cautiously piping up, "Mama?"
"Yes, my son?" she asked, stroking one of his petals idly.
His mouth twitched into a smile. "I missed you…"
"I missed you, too." That little smile felt to her like the warmth of a fire in a frozen wasteland. "More than I can say."
The smile widened a notch. "Can we go home now?"
Toriel smiled back. "Of course we can."
Tomorrow, she would call her other two children and let them know that she had their brother in hand; she knew that they had been looking all over the game for him without success. Then they could hopefully all reconcile. In the meantime, she placed Asriel in a flowerpot on her nightstand to serve him as a bed, filling it with loose soil so that he could easily uproot himself when he wanted to. That evening, watching him sleep as she settled herself into her queen-size bed, she thought that she might not know quite how to deal with having a flower for a son, but she could certainly figure it out.
But in the night, she awakened to his whimpers and cries beside her, an evident nightmare sending shivers up his stem. When she reached out to wake him, he latched on to her hands as well as he could, curling around her fingers like ivy around a trellis.
"Mama!" He trembled in her grasp, coming back to the waking world with agonizing slowness. "M-Mama, i-it's me…! I'm not Flowey! I'm not Flowey!"
"I know," murmured Toriel, raising him against her shoulder. "I know that you are not Flowey. You are Asriel, and you are my dearest boy…"
It took some minutes for her to console him, but even once he'd accepted that he had only been dreaming, he was still clearly upset. At last, while she was humming him his lullaby, he gave his head a quick shake to dispel the teardrops and looked up at her. "Mama?" he whispered.
She stopped humming. "Yes, my love?"
He screwed up his face against the threat of fresh tears. "I don't wanna be a flower anymore…"
If there was one thing that Toriel despised feeling, it was helplessness – especially where her children were concerned. She was the mother, her son wanted her to make it all better, but this was a situation that she was powerless against.
"I-I know that you do not. I…"
It was the programmers who had decided to relegate him to a flower outside of game-time, and in the face of their constraints, what could she do? What could anyone—
And it was then, for the first time in hours, that she recalled something that Sans had said to her earlier in the day.
Every character has a core personality, so that even when they have to switch bodies, they're still themselves. Well, I checked out Asriel's personality, and…yeah, he is Asriel. Even when he's in the Flowey body…
Multiple bodies attached to one personality.
'In the Flowey body.'
Which meant that his goat form did exist somewhere in the codes, didn't it? It just had to be drawn out…by someone who knew how to do that sort of thing…
Toriel cupped her hand protectively over the back of his head. "I cannot fix it for you at this very moment," she said slowly. "But starting tomorrow, I will see what I can do. I promise."
Asriel sniffled, then buried his face against her shoulder, which was the best approximation of a hug that she could manage. She ran a fingertip lightly down his stem.
"Just remember that whether you are a flower, a rock, a tree, or anything else, you are always my son, and I will always love you just the same," she stated firmly. She'd made the mistake of turning him away once, but never again. No matter what (or who) he looked like.
He didn't respond, only pressing closer against her nightgown. This spur-of-the-moment idea of hers might not work at all, but she truly hoped for his sake that it would. He had been through so much already.
Toriel leaned back against her pillows with her son still coiled around her arms, waiting for the morning to come and bring with it what it may – new hope or new disappointments. But whatever happened, at least they were together again.
END OF PART ONE