Asriel crept slowly along the ground, not daring make a sound as he sneaked toward the bush. Once he was close enough he paused for a moment, steeling himself. Then he lunged forward, pushed a branch aside, and thrust his head through the mass of leaves.
"Found you!"
"Seriously?! That's the fifth time I've been found first! How did you find me so fast?" Chara demanded.
After going through a whole day of travel, introductions, and doctor visits the King and Queen decided it would be good for all the children to have a day to run around and play. As Gaster predicted, the new spell had allowed Chara to heal overnight. They still had a noticeable limp, but they no longer needed to be supported or carried everywhere. This was a great relief to Chara, and they eagerly agreed to a game of hide and seek to test out their mobility.
Mary also jumped at the chance for a game now that she didn't hurt all over. She also figured it would be fun to find some brand new hiding places. She'd memorized all the ones in the gallery ages ago.
"I saw the orange stripes of your sweater through the branches." Asriel explained. "This bush grows white flowers and red berries, so you kind of stuck out."
Chara looked down at their orange and brown striped sweater as though it had betrayed them.
"Dang it, I should have picked out green like Mary did. With that dress and her hair she blends in with everything around here."
Mary's head popped out of another bush several feet away.
"Oh! Does that mean I have natural camowflag?"
Both children stared at her.
"You have what?" Chara asked, their face all scrunched up.
"Camowflag. You know, when something is the same color as the stuff around it so it blends in really well?"
"Do you mean camouflage?" Asriel suggested. Now it was Mary who scrunched her face up.
"Camouflage? That just sounds weird, and the word doesn't look like it should sound anything like that."
"Yeah, that's because English is dumb." Chara chimed in. "Anyway, since Mary gave away her hiding spot, I guess we gotta start over."
"It's my turn to be it!" Mary declared happily. She pushed forward, but was forced to stop. The branches snagged her skirt and held her back. She struggled with them, but it didn't seem to help.
"What's the hold up?" Chara asked with a raised eyebrow. Mary struggled a bit more before giving up; her cheeks coloring in her embarrassment.
"I think I'm stuck."
"I'll resolve the issue!" Asriel declared. He ran over to Mary and knelt down, looking for the places her skirt had caught. "I can reach most of these, but not the ones on the back. Chara, can you pull Mary forward once I get the snags out?"
Chara shrugged and walked over to them. "You know this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't worn a dumb dress to play hide and seek."
"Shirts can get caught on stuff too! And I never had a problem playing in a dress before." Mary argued. Granted there hadn't been many bushes in her old home.
"Then obviously you weren't doing this whole 'playing' thing right." Chara replied. Then Asriel gave the signal and Chara grabbed Mary's hand and yanked her forward. She broke free so easily that she ran into Chara and the momentum sent them both to the ground.
"Get off me." Chara grumbled.
"You're the one that pulled so hard." Mary said, moving to get up. She stopped when something caught her eye though.
"Hey, look at that flower! I didn't see any like it yesterday."
"What flower?" Chara had to drop their head down and almost rolled their eyes up into their head to see the direction Mary was looking. It was worth it to see the beautiful, glowing blue blossom though.
Chara let out a sound of awe. Mary finally remembered what she was doing and finished getting up. Asriel came forward and helped pull Chara up, now seeing which flower they were talking about.
"Oh yeah! That's a really neat one. Come here, I'll show you how it works!"
The children gathered around the glowing blossom that stood at the edge of the garden. The two non-monster children crouched down to study it closely, though they made sure not to get in each others space. Asriel stood beside the flower, and addressed his new siblings like a teacher.
"This is the Echo Flower. It has the unique trait of repeating the last noise that occurred in close proximity to it. It requires a lot of water, so it can only grow naturally in Waterfall. That's why there's only one in the garden, and why it's so far away from the others. Dad tried planting one closer to the other flowers before, but it kept hogging all the water in the soil and made it hard for the other flowers to grow."
"Does that make it lonely?" Mary asked.
"Does that make it lonely?" The flower repeated in a wispy voice, startling Mary a bit. Chara laughed.
"That's so cool! Let me try!" Chara pushed their face forward and whispered something to the blossom.
"I'm the legendary fart master." The flower said a moment later. Chara fell over cackling and Asriel snorted in laughter. Mary frowned.
"Don't make it say bad things about itself! You made it sound sad!" Mary accused once the laughter subsided. Chara rolled their eyes.
"It's a plant Mary. It doesn't feel anything, and it probably always sounds like that."
"How do you know it doesn't feel? I'd sound sad too if I had to stay over here all by myself."
"It's a PLANT. It can't feel lonely."
"You thought a dog couldn't be a guard either. So how do you know plants can't feel down here?"
"Fine! I'll ask someone then. Hey Asriel, are the plants sentient in the Underground?"
"Um, I guess I never really thought about it, but I don't think so." Asriel replied. "The closest thing we have to sentient plants are Moldsmal and Moldbygg. But those move around and stuff, so you can tell they are monsters and not plants. Echo flowers don't move around."
Chara gave Mary a smug look, and the girl pouted.
"Just because they're stuck doesn't mean they aren't alive." She said quietly.
"No one said they aren't alive, but they aren't the sentient kind of alive."
"You guys fight a lot. Is that normal for friends?" Asriel asked. The pair looked up at him.
"We're not friends." Chara stated.
"Not before we came down here anyway." Mary added. Asriel looked confused.
"But you fell down here together; I thought that meant you were friends."
"Nope, I didn't even know Mary before I woke up to her beside me on that flower bed. I guess we both just have really bad luck."
"Yeah, it was weird timing. But it's good we were both down there at the same time, so we could help each other. Does that mean that both of us falling was good luck or bad luck?" Mary asked, trying to keep them from asking how she had ended up there.
"Bad luck." Chara answered at the same time Asriel said "Good luck."
"How is it good luck?" Chara demanded.
"Well, if Mary hadn't fallen with you then I might not have heard your cries for help, or been able to get you back to Mom on my own." Asriel said.
"Maybe, but if either of us had good luck we probably wouldn't have fallen in the first place. Nothing against the Underground, but I broke a leg to get here. It's really surprising that Mary didn't, so maybe she doesn't have quite as much bad luck as me."
Mary wasn't sure about that, considering where she'd been living previously. You had to be pretty unlucky to be stuck in a place like that, right? But then she found her way here instead of dying. So maybe she was gaining some good luck, or at least losing some bad luck. But she was still stuck inside a place that had a barrier around it that kept everyone from reaching the Outside. That revelation had been pretty hard to swallow once she'd actually had time to think about it, so she actively avoided doing so. Still, this was better than being dead, and she'd met such wonderful people. She had a family now, and wouldn't give that up for the world. So she definitely had bad luck, but she would hold on to what her good luck had brought her.
She listened to Asriel and Chara have a similar debate about luck. It didn't sound like either side was making headway into changing the others mind. Well, Asriel was making a bit of progress, since he got Chara to say that they mostly liked it down here.
Mary smiled a bit. Chara never gave into anything easily, but Asriel had a way of drawing them out and making them admit things they might not have otherwise. Seeing them like this made her miss Ib terribly, but it also reminded her how happy she was to know both of them.
Still, after her introspective about luck, Mary couldn't deny that her feelings about the Underground were more mixed now.
Chara whispered something to the Echo Flower. When Asriel started to make his next argument Chara poked the flower and it murmured "Idiot."
Mary couldn't help but giggle, both at Chara's excellent timing and how weird it was to hear the insult done in such a sweet, whispering voice.
Asriel blinked in surprise, and tried to plow ahead anyway, but Chara kept poking the flower and making it repeat the word. Chara giggled at their own actions, Mary joined them, and soon even Asriel was laughing at the weird turn the argument had taken.
They were still laughing when Asgore came to fetch them for supper.
"Don't think this is over Chara, I'm gonna bring this up over dinner and we'll see what Mom and Dad think."
"Cheater." Chara accused with a grin, accepting the challenge of taking on all three monsters in verbal combat.
"It's not cheating, I'm deliberating with advisers." Asriel replied.
Mary considered bringing up her own thoughts on the subject during the dinner discussion, but refrained so she didn't accidentally saw anything about her past. She did ask Toriel for a diary after supper though. She loved her new family, but full knowledge of Mary's origins had driven people away before. She wasn't willing to risk that with them, but she still needed some way to get things about her past off her chest. Thankfully her mother agreed to her request, and even found diaries to give to Asriel and Chara as well.
The first thing Mary wrote in her diary was a reminder: Visit the Echo Flower often, and give it lots of positive things to say.
A.N.
I'm glad I finally got this chapter sorted out, it was being a real bugger. I have a much clearer idea of how I want to writer the chapters after this, so hopefully it won't be nearly as long until the next update.
Also, if anyone has ideas for situations or encounters you want to see these kids go through, then please continue to send them to me. I don't really have anyone irl that I can bounce ideas off of, because I don't know anyone else in both of these fandoms, so reader suggestions can really help me solidify ideas.
Also, in case anyone was confused about the whole camouflage thing:
I figure Mary has a fairly large vocabulary, but sometimes gets pronunciations wrong because she's only read the words and never heard them spoken aloud. I myself that the word 'macabre' was pronounced 'mack-ah-brey' when I was younger, because that's what I got by sounding it out. I might make this a minor running gag for Mary. Any ideas for other words she might have trouble pronouncing because she never heard them aloud? Let me know!
Thank so much for sticking with this everyone!