.

DAY TO DAY

Chapter 5: Kindness

Even after all this time, Hotland was still far and away the least inhabited part of the Underground, a tiresome obstacle between the ever-more crowded Capital and the ever-growing hamlets in Snowdin and Waterfall. Some monsters, being thick-skinned or metallic or perpetually aflame, gladly kept their own little community out here, where the climate was ideal and the crowds weren't an issue, but for everyone else the sweltering heat and twisted geography quickly became unbearable. The rocky paths were sharp-edged and unkind to anyone's feet, and they arched and bent and reversed into themselves like a plateful of sedimentary spaghetti, a confusion of smoldering bridges over the bubbling magma whose convection made every outline waver like a mirage. Every time Asgore crossed over that sullen orange sea, he thought that the Underground's growing energy crisis could be neatly solved if they just found a way to harness all this heat. But such matters were beyond his knowledge.

Still, he thought about it again as he made the trek back home, returning from his monthly visit to Waterfall's snail farm. He never bought anything there, he had enough trouble with just one of Toriel's old recipes, but it was a comforting routine and he enjoyed the time he spent with the farm's spectral owners – one of them was a bit on the melancholic side, but their cousin was more than lively enough to make up for it.

He wiped sweat off his brow and peered over the edge of the path. The lava below roiled and surged.

"Should really install some guardrails here, at least," he muttered. "Terribly unsafe."

He stepped away, paused, and bent down. There were other, fresh footprints in the layers of soot and scorch on this rock – small and flecked with red like grains of rust. That alone wouldn't have been very noteworthy, but the prints were askew and unsteady in a way that reminded him unpleasantly of the ones the second human had left in Snowdin. When he looked closer he saw rough handprints there too, and long tracks that cut through the ash. Whoever had left these hadn't just walked through Hotland; they'd fallen to their knees and tried to crawl.

Asgore tutted and followed the trail, walking slowly, head down. Monsters had gotten lost here before, and the heat made it dangerous to linger if their bodies weren't suited for it. Even he already felt like he was in a pressure cooker, thanks to his breastplate helpfully sealing in all this boiling air. Still, he took his time, tracking the prints – now just the feet again, apparently their owner had managed to stand upright – and eventually stepped off the main trail and down a craggy tongue of stone whose black-glassed surface held a wicked glitter.

He stopped. His eyes widened.

The human was laid out on his back, unconscious, fighting to breathe, his chest heaving with every labored rasp. Asgore assumed it was a boy, but couldn't be sure – the body itself didn't tell him much, he had never seen a human so thin. His clothes, ragged and streaked with soot, lay on the geography of his ribs like a bas-relief; the hard knobs of his cheekbones cast canyons of shadow down the sides of his face. And his shoes were gone, his socks clotted with hardened clay from where Waterfall's mud had been blasted dry by Hotland's heat, and with soles worn down by the rocks, so that the skin underneath was cut and raw and bleeding free.

There was something else at the end of the path, where the footprints doubled back – evidently the human had reached the outcropping, dropped something there, tried to retrace his steps, and collapsed. Asgore gingerly stepped over the body and went to get a better look. He found an old apron, riddled with holes and unknowable pastel stains, and a non-stick frypan that was scorched and eaten half-through with rust. It nearly glowed from the heat of the stones beneath.

When he returned to the boy, Asgore felt it again. That yawning gap in the pit of his stomach. That sense of motion without motion. The future grasping him and pulling him ever closer to some dread conclusion. He was expressionless and numb. He looked up and saw the twisted tendrils of stone casting shadows like hungry fingers.

Asgore breathed deep, and clenched his fists, and bent down low.

When he arrived at that quiet gray cavern where the unadorned fountain bubbled, his mantle was folded shut, arms hidden. What he carried underneath was so light that it might as well have not been there at all. He moved past the cave and through the Capital's outskirts, head down, face slack, like someone in a dream. The boy's body burned like a coal against his chest. His pained breaths counterpointed the clatter of Asgore's armor. When Asgore glanced behind him he thought he saw those shadows again, cheated and trailing in his wake.

He arrived at his front yard – the true face of that grand castle, the rest occupied by little more than the antechamber and the garden and the cold and quiet basement where the number of coffins climbed ever higher. He saw his front door wide open and clutched the body tighter. Of course his home was always open to visitors, it certainly wasn't being used for anything else these days, but right now he dearly hoped no one had stopped by to give him some company.

He sidled up to the entrance, stuck his head in.

"I'm home!" he called. "Anyone there?"

His voice trailed through the silent halls and cold kitchen and empty bedrooms. No answer. He sighed in relief and stepped in, shutting the door behind him. The boy's chest shuddered against his own.

"I know," he said, unsure what he knew. "I know, I know. It'll be all right. Everything will be all right."

The house always quiet and somehow colorless in the Underground's unchanging light. These unread books, this dusty carpet, these doorframes notched by careless horns. The stiff-cushioned easy chair and unlit fireplace and ill-used kitchen and these rooms which should have seen the patter of small and running feet. He disregarded it all and went to the children's bedroom, and gripped the doorknob, and hesitated, and let go. He went to his room instead.

"Here we are. Don't worry. It's all right."

He removed the boy from underneath his mantle and carefully tucked him into the crook of one arm. His room was the same as always, the journal turned to the latest entry, the bed neatly made. He pulled aside the covers and set the boy down and tucked him in. His hair laid across the pillow, a neck-length mat of ragged, uneven clumps, like someone had just chopped off the most troublesome bits with or without a mirror. The sheets rose and fell with that rattling breath. He leaned over to prop up his head on the pillows, and then froze.

The boy's eyes were open – just a sliver, the corneas gleaming underneath. He smiled, faintly, but enough to dimple those wasted cheeks.

He said, "Hi."

The voice was so low that it was scarcely heard at all; it seemed to lodge in Asgore's mind without ever reaching his ears. But he smiled back anyway.

"Howdy," he said. "How are you-"

But those eyes were shut again. He'd already gone back to sleep.

Asgore stared down at him. It might have been his imagination, but the boy seemed to breathe a little easier.

He went to his journal and wrote a hasty note: Howdy! Feeling a little under the weather. Sorry I missed you! Then he tore out the page, left the house, and stuck it up on his front door.

He risked a last look behind him, and thought he saw them again – those reaching shadows, the clutches of the inevitable. He glowered at them, and stepped inside, and shut the door. And for the first time in many years, he locked it tight behind him.

Asgore pulled open the oven door and peered inside, his expression hopeful.

The pie had turned out fairly well, he thought. The pillowy mound of butterscotch-cinnamon filling was well-shaped and filled the air with its fragrance, and the outer ring of crust was delicate and firm. Yes, there were a few light scorches on the crust, and the sweet scent possessed a certain acrid undertone reminiscent of an overused vacuum cleaner, but those were easily ignorable.

"How is it?"

The voice came from the living room, hoarse and frail.

"It looks okay," said Asgore. "A little burnt."

"Just a little?"

"Well…relatively speaking."

He regarded his previous four attempts, which sat huddled like convicts on the countertop. Two of the pies were so burnt that they resembled charcoal briquettes in tins – even the tins had burned, which he guessed was also impressive, in a way – while the third was so underdone that it would be best eaten with a straw. The fourth was little more than a few bedraggled scraps of crust and filling on the edges of the tin; it had actually looked quite appetizing, right up until the point where it had mysteriously and abruptly exploded. There were still a few butterscotch-colored patches on the ceiling that he'd failed to scrub off after that misadventure.

He slid the latest pie out of the oven, set it down to cool, then pulled off his mitts and stepped into the living room.

"It will have to do, in any case," he said. He pulled out a chair at the dining room table and sat down. "I'm out of ingredients."

The boy smiled. "It'll be fine."

He was in Toriel's old reading chair, enveloped by a quilt, a steaming mug of tea held in both bony hands. He noticed Asgore's meaningful look at the drink, then shrugged, took an obligatory sip, and looked back to the lit and crackling fireplace. His bare feet poked out from under the blanket; all the cuts were healed.

He'd awoken the morning after Asgore found him, and in fact had needed to wake Asgore up himself, limping out of bed to shake him feebly by the shoulder; he'd said, not unkindly, that Asgore's snoring was terrible. That had been their introduction. Asgore had tended to his wounds as he slept, but his step was still hobbled and slow. Whether it was because his feet still ached or because he couldn't find the air to walk, Asgore didn't know, and the boy wouldn't say.

He was ill, that much was clear – something had infested his lungs before he'd even come to the Underground, and the chill and damp and blasting heat he'd sucked in on the way over here had just worsened his condition further. Even now, as he sat and sipped his tea, his every inhalation rattled loud enough to drown out the hiss and pop of the hearth. Monsters knew little about human diseases and Asgore couldn't risk the boy's discovery anyway, so he'd fallen back on an old, reliable treatment – bed rest, fresh air, and so much piping hot tea that whatever illness he had was likely to drown in it.

The boy was quietly grateful for all of it; that faint smile rarely left his face. They passed the time reading through the catalogs of dusty books that had accumulated on Asgore's shelves, or down in the garden, Asgore carrying him there with his books and blankets and leaving him on the throne as he tended to the flowers, all of them the same as ever, the tall one in the center nodding towards the boy as if acknowledging his presence.

They spoke little, at first. The boy was cheerful in his understated way, but strangely guarded, deflecting Asgore's oblique questions about where he'd been and what he'd seen. He did say that all the people he'd met had been very nice to him, and it was his own fault that he'd lost his shoes; he'd wandered too far astray in Waterfall and the mud had sucked them clean off his feet. "They made an amazing sound, though," he'd added, as if that made it all worth it. But he wouldn't say his name, and didn't use Asgore's, either, though he'd introduced himself shortly after the boy had awoken. Still, Asgore didn't pry. It had only been a few days.

The boy continued to sleep in Asgore's bed, while Asgore dozed in one of the dining room chairs (he still didn't sit in Toriel's) – the boy had protested but Asgore knew this was best for everyone, it meant his guest didn't have to suffer through his snoring and that he was able to quickly answer the door whenever some kind well-wisher knocked, opening it just a crack, affecting a sniffle and a cough and a thank-you and goodbye. The rest of the world could wait outside, for now. For now, all he had to worry about was the human's recovery, and all the problems that would follow from there – the monsters' reaction, the question of the barrier, the promise, the souls, all of it – would be dealt with in their own time. For now, he just brewed his tea, and tended his garden, and made the occasional glance to those seats to make sure the human was still there, still real, and return his smiles when they were given. He traded out his cumbersome regalia for his old sweater, garish though it was (Toriel had knitted it shortly after Asriel was born, and Asgore, in what he believed to be one of his more inspired moments, contributed the lettering on front). The fireplace stayed lit and warm. Color seemed to bleed back into the house, little by little.

"I've been trying for ages to get that recipe down," he said. "Never had the knack for it. Maybe you could give it a shot, one of these days."

"That wouldn't be a good idea," the boy replied.

"Really? I saw the things you brought down with you. The apron and-"

"Oh, geez, you actually found that stuff?" He laughed, then coughed, then stopped. "It's…it's kind of embarrassing, actually. I never, um, had a whole lot to eat, so I thought it'd be nice to learn someday. I found those a while ago and just sort of wore them around. Like playing pretend, you know? But I never actually got around to the 'learning' part. I still liked having them, though. Didn't want to drop them, but I got turned around and it was just so hot."

"I could always step out for a bit and retrieve them, if you like. They were rather off the beaten path, no one should find them for-"

"It's fine. I don't mind if someone else picks them up. Maybe they'll be useful." He shook his head. "But yeah, I can't cook for beans." He paused. "I can't cook beans, period."

"Ah, that's good. Wordplay," Asgore said drily. And, before he could stop himself, he added, "My wife would love you."

His teeth clicked together as he tried to take back what he'd just said, but the boy's smile only widened.

"Oh, I think I met her! Does she live in…what was it called, the Ruins? That old place with all the purple?"

"Yes, she…well, in a manner of speaking, we. Ahem." He fidgeted with the front of his sweater. "We're apart, for now, but yes, we're married. Did she mention me?"

The boy turned away, and sipped his tea again. Their shadows wavered in the fireplace's glow.

"She was really nice," he said, sidestepping the question. "I wasn't in great shape when she found me, but she worried about me like crazy. I guess that's her pie you're trying to make?"

"Yes. It's more complicated than it looks, I assure you."

"I bet. She cooked a lot. Even said she'd teach me, once I got better."

"But she let you leave?"

He tapped his thumbs on the side of the mug; his smile turned slightly brittle. "I, um, sort of ran away after a few nights. Snuck out. I didn't want to be stuck in a bed, is all. Probably wasn't a great idea, considering what happened. I hope she isn't too upset."

"Well, maybe once you're fit to travel we can both apologize." He sighed and settled back in the chair. "Something to think about for when you get better. And speaking of which, you should really drink that tea."

"I'm savoring it."

"It'll be much harder to savor when it's cold."

"You're no fun." He raised the mug to his mouth, and lowered it, and then asked, quite suddenly, "Hey, where do your kids live?"

Asgore's palms had been resting on his knees. Now his grip tightened so hard his legs nearly cracked. The boy didn't seem to notice; his voice remained quiet and casual.

"Sorry, I, uh, peeked into the other rooms last night. Don't worry, I didn't touch anything. But I noticed how dusty the place was. I guess they moved out a while ago?" He took another drink and went on. "I hope they visit Toriel, at least. She seemed really lonely out there."

"They." He stopped, and cleared his throat, and look down at his feet. "They've passed on. Both of them."

The boy's face fell. "Oh. Sorry, I was just…I shouldn't have asked."

"It's all right. It was a long time ago."

For a while, the silence was broken only by the fireplace's crackle and the boy's occasional cough. He stared down into the tea, chewing his lip.

"I really am feeling better, by the way. I know I don't sound too good, but before I…you know, fell…I was having some trouble eating. Not anymore, though. It's nice."

"Well, monster food doesn't work quite the same as human food. Maybe it was the medicine you needed." He straightened in his seat. "And while we're on the subject, I suppose it's time we tried that pie."

"You can have the first piece."

"Oh, that's very generous of you." He sighed and set off for the kitchen. "A king's trials are never done."

"Um, can I ask you one thing?"

The boy's head was bowed, his fingers massaging the sides of the mug. Those butchered locks of hair blocked his eyes from view.

"I really appreciate you looking after me like this," he said. "But, when I get better, I just wanted to know…"

Asgore held his breath, felt his hands begin to shake. The faces of the last four flipped through his mind. All of them, in their own way, asking the same question. All of them desperate for home.

The boy looked up. "How long do you think I can stay here?"

Asgore's eyes widened. He looked away. He tried to hide the relief on his face, and when he spoke, he made his voice as gruff as possible.

"I think the answer to that is up to you," he said.

When he looked back, he saw the boy grinning ear-to-ear, the parchment of his skin wrinkled with the effort. He couldn't help but smile back. Then the boy bent double with coughing again, and the moment passed.

Still, it was a nice day. Later he would make a note in his journal.

He remembered the sickbeds.

When he'd first tried the pie Asriel had made him, he had ignored its acidic, bitter taste. He had assumed it was just because the pie happened to be his son's first attempt at cooking. As it turned out, he'd been right, but that had given him little comfort in the days to come, trapped in his bed with his insides writhing and cramped. "I guess neither of us are any good at baking," he'd tried to joke as Asriel bawled at his bedside; that had just made him cry harder.

The pain had been almost enlightening, in a sense. Asgore had experienced his fair share of tribulation over his long life, but sickness like that was new, it had filled every grain of him, squirming through him with every breath and every twitch. Time and space had seemed confused, as he'd lain gasping under his sheets; the bedroom had swum before his eyes, bigger than the world and yet smaller than a cell, and he wasn't sure if he'd been there for a few days or a hundred years. He'd done his best to grin and bear it, insisting to Toriel and Asriel that they shouldn't worry, even as she fretted and he cried up a storm. Only Chara had kept his distance, always standing in the shadows of the doorway, fingers curled around the jamb, his face divided in half. Even then, his face had been the same – his cheeks high with color, his smile oddly stiff. Asgore always recalled that face clearly. It didn't have the smear of glare that had crawled over Asriel's in his memories.

The nights had been the worst – the dark suffocating, every tick and creak so loud that they'd threatened to burst his head open like old fruit. He'd passed in and out of consciousness, never sure of when he was dreaming or awake, the world warping and dripping like candle-wax as it tried to decide what was real.

In one dream, Chara had been there, slipping into his room easily as a ghost – he wasn't there and then he was, standing in the darkness opposite his bed. Arms held tight to his sides, hands clenching, unclenching, a spasmodic rhythm. "Are you awake?" he'd asked. "Can you hear me?"

Asgore hadn't answered, too wracked with cramps to make speech. And then Chara had kept talking, faster and faster, more words pouring out in that soft high voice than Asgore had ever heard at once, rushed and breathless but strangely articulate, as thought he was biting them off in chunks and then spitting them out. It was an accident, he'd said, but this was for the best, it was exactly what he'd been waiting for. All of them. All of us. This would make up for the mistake, all the mistakes. It would be hard, he promised it would be hard, but in the end it would be best for everyone. Everyone who mattered. Then Chara's face had loomed over Asgore, and the dream curdled into nightmare, because through his bleary half-lidded eyes Asgore saw that he was still smiling, but that smile lay on his face like a parasite, the rest of it didn't match, every feature twitched and jumped like a bug trapped under a rock, and his eyes and cheeks glistened with unacknowledged wet.

"Just don't die," he'd said. "I don't want Asriel to hate me."

Then he'd gone, and morning had come, and Asgore had forgotten everything. He'd soon have other things on his mind, anyway. Chara would fall again, take to his own sickbed, where Asriel's stuffed animals watched blindly and the blind eye of his video camera nestled in the corner. Asriel would cry until his body seemed to shake apart; he would bend over Chara and say things that Asgore either wouldn't hear or wouldn't understand. And Chara would keep smiling, even as his color drained away and his eyes grew dim; in his final extremity, Asgore almost would have described his expression as triumphant.

It was two days after they'd shared Asgore's pie. He sat beside his bed, in the chair that had been at his desk; four dark circles marked the carpet where he'd dragged it out and away. He rocked back and forth, the wood creaking rhythmically, his face unsmiling and pale. The boy's struggling, strangled gasps filled his ears.

He hadn't gotten better. He'd been fine until the afternoon after their talk, and then his coughs had erupted worse than ever, so fierce that he'd spilled his tea and clutched his chest; he was exhausted by the fits, and took to bed early. He hadn't gotten out of it since. He opened his eyes rarely, and when he did his gaze was unfocused and fleeting. His skin had gone chalk-white, save for two feverish points of color in his cheeks. And the sound of his respiration now made Asgore's own stomach churn; it no longer sounded like the breath of any living thing, but the air passing through some broken and burnt-out machine, flaring up one more time before falling silent for good.

When visitors came now, the weariness he showed when he asked them to leave wasn't feigned; he hadn't slept or eaten since the boy had relapsed. He sat vigil at the bedside, ready to give him a sip of water every now and then and prop him up when the coughing grew too intense. He didn't know what else to do. That feeling of not knowing, the same as with Chara's own illness. The same awful uncertainty.

"Hi."

Asgore jerked out of his reverie and looked down. The boy was watching him, his eyes clear.

"It's taking me a while to shake this off, huh?" he said. The words punctuated by that awful, broken breath. Asgore leaned closer.

"Try not to talk, okay? You just," his voice broke, but he swallowed and finished, "you just have to hold on."

"Why?" the boy asked. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

Asgore couldn't reply. His mouth hung open uselessly. The boy turned and stared up the ceiling.

"I heard what you were trying to do," he said. "All the souls. So when I woke up here, I thought you were…you know, waiting. It wasn't like I could do anything about it. But you tried really hard to take care of me." He shrugged apologetically. "I didn't think it was a good time to mention it before. But was everyone wrong?"

"No. They weren't." He shook his head. "But I…I didn't want-"

"It's okay." He looked back to Asgore. "I'm still doing my best. But in case that's…you know, not enough, that works out too, right? I wouldn't mind if you took it." He smiled. "Maybe it'll be useful someday."

Asgore stared. He tried to speak. Something had gone wrong. His voice was all strange. He'd meant to say something. But instead he hiccupped, like the words had broken up in his chest, and then his own breath was broken, it was bending him double, and the boy's face doubled and tripled as his eyes welled up.

Asgore hadn't cried when the other humans had perished; not when he'd mourned his own people, or seen the statue of his son rise and then vanish, not on any of those days or all the days in between. But he did now, and with such force that the whole room rumbled. He buried his face in his hands and wept like a child.

The boy's smile was gone. Even through his exhaustion, he looked close to panic.

"Hey. Did I say something wrong? I didn't mean-"

"This already happened," Asgore said, voice choked. "The same thing. No matter what I do, it's always the same thing…"

The words dissolved again. And as he continued sobbing, the boy frowned, and struggled out of bed, his thin limbs shaking with exertion. Asgore felt small, burning hands clasp over his own, and looked up to see that pale face inches away.

"Listen," he said. "I think…no, I know that you're a good person. Because that's why you're crying like this, right?" He tried to smile again. "I don't really understand everything, but please don't be sad. Just do what you think is best."

Asgore shook his head, his cheeks damp with tears. "I don't even know what that is anymore."

"That's okay, too. Things will get better, okay? Even if you don't think so. You just-" He started coughing again, and the force of it made him fall to his side and nearly roll off the bed; Asgore straightened up, eyes wide, and caught him, and picked him up. The feel of him almost made Asgore start crying again; he was so alight with fever that his skin nearly hurt to touch.

But Asgore set him back into bed, and tucked him in, and propped his head on the pillows. He lay there under the acreages of linen, and looked up at Asgore with that same, faint, familiar smile.

"Thanks," he said. "For everything. But you shouldn't stick around me all the time. You're a king, right? Don't you have anything better to do?"

"I just want you to be comfortable."

"I am. And, um, I just want you to know. I'm really glad I came here. I don't regret any of it."

"I'm glad," he said.

The journal lay open, its pages bare. The fireplace unlit, the oven clean and cold, The reading chair stiffening back up. Those labored breaths marked off the moments between them.

Finally, Asgore said, "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he replied. "I'll see you tomorrow."

But he didn't.