Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale

A/n: Next one. In case you haven't guessed, the reason for me not specifying an update schedule is because I sometimes have weeks like this one, where I sit in my office until late every evening amending documents... I hope everyone enjoys this chapter!

Justice (Yellow)

You're nearly out of the room when you hear the thump. When you turn, you see a small figure push itself up carefully and, rather shakily, hold something up and point it at you. Pausing, you squint at the object, and then you freeze.

The object is a gun.

Your heart beats wildly. It's been a long time since you last saw a gun but you have by no means forgotten what they can do. Could you knock it out of the human's hands? You don't know.

"G-Greetings," you say in as firm a voice as you can, though you can hear the tremor there. "Welcome to the Underground. I am T-Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins." The human and the eye of the gun still look at you. "Are you hurt?"

"What are you?" The human's voice is young but curiously empty and that puts you even more on edge. "You don't look like anyone I know."

You try not to gulp. "I am a monster, young one. I live here."

"Then I'm in the right place."

"You, you are?"

The gun is still pointed at you. "They said kids like me should be burning in Hell with the monsters."

"Kids … like you?" You shake your head. "I am sure that is not tr-"

"He deserved it." The child looks up. "He hurt him. I couldn't… I did what I had to. That's why I threw myself down here." They look at you. "Are you here to punish me?"

"No," you say faintly. "I, er, intended to offer you a meal." The human seems confused so you decide to take advantage. You hold out one paw, hoping this isn't going to be the moment that the other monsters are proven right. "I want to help you, my child."

"I'm not your child." Despite the reprimand in those words, the human doesn't sound angry. "I'm not anyone's child now." Another pause. "Why didn't jumping work?"

"My … what did you intend to do by jumping?"

"Burn in Hell."

You try hard to keep your voice even. "Then, er, what is the gun for?"

"In case it failed."

With a sudden feeling of dread, you realise that you that you can forget about keeping the human alive over the next few days or weeks – if you don't get hold of the gun, you're going to have a hard enough time for the next few minutes.

"Child, could I ask you to hand over the gun, please?"

"I can't."

In hindsight, you're not sure why you thought that would work.

"Please, child. Give me the gun. It is for your own good."

"I can't."

You don't know what to say. If the human has made up their mind that they need to be punished then-

An idea – a horrible, horrible, but maybe for the greater good idea – hits you.

"I've tried being nice, child, but now I must be firm," you say loudly. You hate how your voice gets louder when you lie. "You must give me the gun. No human here may be armed."

"Huh?"

"These are the Ruins: your new home. All those who fall from the Surface are sentenced to live here."

"Sentenced? But you said-"

"You are younger than those who normally fall," you say even more loudly, "and it is policy to ease children into their sentence. But you have disobeyed me twice. I will ask once more: please hand over the gun."

The human steps forwards and now you can see her properly. She's small: maybe as old as Asriel and Chara were. Her hair is dark underneath a strange hat (a cowboy hat? Is that what they're called in those old movies?), her eyes are narrow and her skin is pale. She's skinny though you can't work out if she's too skinny. Slowly, she extends her arm and you carefully take the gun. Once it is safely in one paw, you say, "What is your name, child?"

"Masako." Her voice is still curiously empty.

You extend your empty paw. "Follow me, Masako."

She takes hold of your paw and you try not to breathe a sigh of relief that that worked. Except now you have to pretend this is some kind of prison, otherwise she might-

You can do it. You just have to do it in such a way that when you reveal that she isn't being punished, she won't … react badly.

You are not qualified for this.

You push that thought out of your head. You have to stay positive and focused. Although if Masako were to make her way out, or have some burning desire to escape, or even just get out of your sight…

You let go of her hand to fumble with the gun. They're not made for paws and it takes you about a minute to finally open it and remove the bullets from five of the chambers inside – one appears to be empty already. Then you hand it back to her.

"I must go ahead. If I have not returned in five minutes, please head east." You hand her the gun. "You may encounter others like me. Try not to fight them. Talk to them."

Masako looks at the gun. "I thought I wasn't supposed to be armed."

"Do you think you are armed, child?" you say although you're mentally cursing yourself for forgetting you told her that not more than fifteen minutes ago.

Thankfully, she seems to consider this as she inspects the gun further. "I can't use this."

"You should not have to."

You leave her then and, as you did years ago, walk for five minutes and wait. Ten minutes later, Masako arrives, her face as expressionless as it was before.

"I killed two monsters," she declares, holding the gun out to you. You take it, trying not to flinch at the chalky grip. "They were attacking others. Picking on them. I gave them what they deserved." She frowns slightly, which looks weird. "Does everyone here deserve to burn in Hell?"

"Nobody here deserves to burn in Hell, child."

"But I-"

"You are to live here, but this is not Hell." You look at her and wonder just what happened to her on the Surface. But this is neither the time nor place so, instead of asking, you hold out your paw and ask her to follow you. This time, you speak a little about the Ruins, trying not to be put off by her complete lack of response which continues for the whole of the walk. Even when you arrive at the house, she doesn't speak, though her eyes widen slightly, and once inside, she sits in the living room and watches you. It's beginning to unnerve you.

She eats her dinner slowly, her eyes flickering around warily as she chews each bite. By the time you've finished, she's eaten maybe a quarter of the plate. So you sit and wait until she's eaten all of it, and then give her dessert even though it's probably past her bedtime. This turns out to be a mistake: she can't fathom why you would make her any kind of pie and convincing her to eat it takes more effort than making the pie in the first place did. Finally, you give up and send her to bed to sleep, which she does without complaint. You wait for a couple of hours, to make sure that she isn't about to sneak away, before hiding the gun and five bullets in the room at the end of the corridor, leaving quickly so that you won't look in the drawer of the table too closely. Then, before you go to bed, you go into the guest room to check on her.

She's thrashing and kicking and moaning but is very clearly asleep. You go to stroke her hair but the moment you touch her, she jumps and wakes, her eyes wide in the gloom.

"You were having a nightmare, my … Masako. I sought only to calm you."

There is sweat on her forehead, glistening in the light from the corridor. "Sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for." You don't know what to do now. "Would you like to talk about it?" She shakes her head fiercely. "Would you like me to stay in here tonight?" She weighs this up and then shakes her head. That's you out of ideas. "OK," you say as firmly as you can. "Please do let me know if you would like anything though."

You're nearly at the door when she says, "I don't understand why you're being nice." You turn around. Her eyes almost seem black in the gloom. "I don't deserve it."

"Everybody deserves kindness."

"Not me."

"Everybody," you say firmly. "No matter what they have done or who they have killed. Everybody deserves a second chance. That is why you are here."

You're not sure you believe that actually – Asgore certainly doesn't deserve a second chance and with the amount of deaths and shadows that must be staining your soul, maybe you don't either – but it feels like the right thing to say. Masako considers this, nods, and lies back down. You don't think she believes you either.

The following day is just as strange. You wake Masako, give her breakfast and then teach her, which is fine because she does everything you ask her to. But when you suggest that she go out and play, she looks confused. Apparently playtime is not a punishment. So she ends up following you around the house and doing chores because you're fairly sure that can be interpreted as a punishment. She remains quiet and morose until she sleeps, when she moans and kicks and thrashes. Once again, you go to calm her; once again, she wakes and can't understand why you're being nice to her.

On the third day, you discover something else more worrying. When you ask Masako to help sweep the floor of the kitchen (it doesn't need it but even when you said that prisoners in the Underground are allowed some time to relax, she still wouldn't play), you return about ten minutes later to find her holding a kitchen knife to her wrist. You snatch it off her before she does anything with it but when you try to find out why she did it, she only says that she deserves it. That night, you go to great effort to hide anything even remotely dangerous looking in the highest cupboards. You are definitely not qualified for this.

The next day, you barely let her out of your sight. You start asking questions too. Not direct ones but trying to find out how she feels. That night, when she has nightmares, you wake her up again and ask her to tell you about the nightmare. When she refuses, you tell her she has no choice, which is a cruel and horrible thing to do but it works. Or sort of works. Her speech is fragmented and you don't get a coherent picture of what haunts her – a human man with claws for hands, a human boy with bones shattered, a human woman covered in blood, a gun and one bullet because that's all you need, one – but it's horrific enough that you hug her.

"Toriel?"

"You do not need to look for Hell, child," you say softly, blinking rapidly. "I think you already found it."

"But I-"

"Anybody who dreams what you dream is suffering more than they need to."

She doesn't have anything to say to that. But this time, when you let go and ask if she would like you to stay in her room tonight, she says yes. So you lie on the floor and don't sleep until you can hear even breathing from her.

Over the following days, things change, but slowly enough that you don't notice immediately. Masako starts to speak to you without you needing to speak to her. Her back straightens a little. She offers to help with a chore before you can ask her. She draws a four-leaf clover and hands it to you ("For luck," she says. "He always looked for them."). She asks you questions about yourself, about the Underground, about the monsters. She tries to run into a wall once (you'd think it was an accident but you saw her do it) and you can't exactly remove all of the walls so you watch her even more closely. You spend every night on the floor of her room.

Then she starts to offer opinions. She walks around the house of her own initiative, although you still follow to make sure she isn't looking for something deadly. She smiles once, in response to a joke you make. You gain two more clover pictures.

And as the days turn into weeks, she smiles more. She speaks a little more, though rarely about her life on the Surface. She stops talking so much about needing to be in Hell, though you can tell from the way she isn't walking completely straight that she is still weighed down with guilt. She laughs a few times, the first being when you explain that snail pie really is meant to be a treat rather than a punishment. When you suggest she play with some toys, she actually complies.

You start to think that maybe you can raise Masako and help her recover from her past: you clamp down on the thought that you had this idea before, years and years ago. There's no point worrying about the past – the only way to redeem yourself is the future. So you can, you tell yourself. You definitely can. But then, when you walk through the Ruins together one day (you still won't let her stay in the house alone), she hears two monsters talk about the war and human souls. It's only passing conversation but the one thing you've learnt about Masako by now is that she is smart. She asks you about it later and, grudgingly, you tell her about the war, and Asgore's decree.

She looks thoughtful. "What started the war?"

"Fear."

"And Asgore wants to kill us because we sent you all here?"

It hurts but you just about manage to say, "He is a monster, child. That is all there is to it."

"But the other monsters want us dead too, don't they? They can't all be bad."

She asks a few more questions over the next few days about the war. Then she asks about the other humans who fell down here. She asks about the other monsters and how they are. The conversations are strange and maybe even a little painful. You don't think you give anything away but after one line of questioning, Masako says, "You're like me, aren't you?" Some of your confusion must show on your face because she says, "You want to hurt the person who hurt the people you loved." She looks at you curiously. "Why don't you?"

"Violence is never the answer, child," you say and resolve to keep a tighter check on your emotions about the past. You're making the right choice. You have to believe that.

Finally, one evening, at dinner, she says, "The Underground is a prison, isn't it?"

"I prefer to think of it as-"

She shakes her head. "Not for me. You made that up, didn't you? It's a prison for monsters. The whole thing, including whatever's beyond that door in the basement. But only because humans made it one."

"Masako-"

"You don't deserve it." She looks up. "I can kinda understand Asgore. Why should kids like me get to play in the sunshine but monster kids have to stay down here?"

"Two wrongs do not make a right, Masako," you say quietly.

"Not always," she says. "But sometimes, you have to do something wrong to fix a wrong, as long as you know what the price is."

She won't say anything else about the topic and you assume she's just going through one of her melancholy phases. But when you wake up the next morning, she's gone, with only the clothes on her back and the hat that's a little too big for her. You look all through the house and then the Ruins, but she's nowhere to be seen. Confused, you return to the house and that's when you notice that the cupboard where you keep the key to his room is open. Frowning, you walk towards it.

The key is gone.

You turn and run through the living room, down the corridor, paws thudding heavily on the floor. The door is open. Inside, a piece of paper sticks out of the drawer in the table where you hid the gun and five bullets.

I have to do this Toriel. I know what the price is and I want to pay it. I know why you didn't and I understand. I'm sorry.

Love

Masako

You nearly run out of the Ruins. You actually get as far as the exit, with your paw on the handle, but you can't take that extra step. You swore you wouldn't leave the Ruins and too much time has passed for you to reveal yourself now. And you tried. Nobody can say you didn't try. Besides, maybe you've misunderstood the note. You've been wrong before.

Why can't you make good on both of your promises?

You hear about her a few weeks later. She made it to the end of Hotland before Asgore saw her. She held out the gun she stole from his room and declared that she was there to see justice done. Asgore struck her down to the cheers of those around him.

The really strange thing, you hear, is that when they picked the gun up afterwards, it was empty. Nobody is sure exactly who she killed on her way to the Hotland nor why she threatened Asgore with a gun that wouldn't work, but it's not important. The important thing is that she was stopped and her yellow soul added to the other human souls.

Distantly – because you feel strangely empty and hollow – you wonder how much searching for those six dust piles and bullets the monsters will do before they realise the truth. Because you, of course, know exactly where the bullets are: one is in the body of a human with claws for hands and five are in the drawer in a table in a room you keep locked. How else could Masako guarantee that she would be the only one to die that day?

Something was done when Asgore struck a human child down in Hotland but, somehow, you're struggling to believe it was justice.