6 months later
Waiting...
Waiting...
A hand reaches out to the horizon, its human fingers grasping at that distant dream.
There was a man, his features lost like a smeared water color painting but...I could feel it looking at me.
Looking at me...
It hurts...
It hurts...
Things get red when I look at the man so I turn away.
Waiting...
Waiting...
He's right behind me. Even still he's...Breathing...down my neck.
Why is he like this now?
I turn around to look at him.
Our hands, wrapping around each others throats.
Waiting...
...!
Toriel awoke in cold sweat from her arm chair. The night was dark and its implications...even darker. Her weary eyes hazily surveyed the room. She hadn't been sleeping well since the human's short arrival to the underground. She hated Asgore, hated him more than anything not because of what he was doing but because he would still continue on with his plan while his wife, the love of his life was out here waiting for the idiot to come to his senses and take her home.
Waiting...
The thought disturbed Toriel so she rose to her feet, maybe she could walk off these feelings of uneasiness. Her feet seemed to move on their own as she walked down to the basement of her home. It was safer than walking around at night. She had heard the rumors from the froggits. Every so often they would hop back talking among one another. They say Asgore only needs one more soul. That in his blind quest for power, he only has to slay one more innocent to get the chance to kill hundreds of thousands of humans. She had also heard the rumors that the core had overheated and that the royal scientist, W.D. Gaster, was no more. But somewhere down the line, Toriel had stopped caring. Really and truly no longer caring for the world outside her home. There was this glint in her eye of something vicious, something that sought justice in anyway possible.
Did she blame herself for not doing anything to stop Asgore? Did she become someone that was too weak to stand up for herself? No...she didn't think so. Only that she was doing the one thing she knew how to do best of all.
Wait.
As she walked things seemed to get even darker, the walls had a distinct purple shade even at night and yet, right now, she couldn't see them. It was just a pitch black hallway. And then...she heard a voice from the far end of the darkness.
ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN
DARK DARKER YET DARKER
THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING
She hadn't seen it at first but the farther into the darkness she walked the more apparent the source of this voice became. A monster, or rather, a ghost pretending to be a monster. Toriel recognized its features as Gaster almost immediately but something seemed very different. Like he was one with this darkness, bits and pieces of him seemed to swirl around like vapor, it seemed he was having a hard time maintaining this form. She came to stop as fear slowly crept up her spine. Was this...the skeleton that Asgore was using to collect souls?
THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPERPHOTON READINGS NEGATIVE
*!
On the other side of Gaster another skeleton appeared, this one however did not seem to know what was going on. Toriel couldn't bring herself to walk any closer to the frightening aberration before her but even from here she could tell. That skeleton was the same one she had met at the river all those years ago. Gaster must have...somehow...gotten these two together...
THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT SEEMS
VERY VERY INTERESTING
...WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?
*I thought I told you...I'm not your puppet anymore.
She could barely hear the skeleton say those words before Gaster's expression changed with delight and then faded into the darkness. With Gaster gone, Toriel had a clear shot at Sans, who seemed to close his eyes with remorse, his voice was still muffled by the darkness they were surrounded in.
*Toriel...I'm sorry.
And before she could even blink Toriel again woke up from the armchair in her home. This time, the sun was shining and morning was upon her. Her mind was swimming with questions. How had Gaster done any of those things? What did he mean by "experiment"? Why was that other skeleton there? Why was he sorry? Again she found her feet moving on their own as she headed back to the hallway. This time however, everything was normal, there was no trace of Gaster or that other skeleton's appearance. That was...until she heard a voice from the other side of the door.
*Knock knock!
Her heart skipped a beat, like hearing a voice from the dead, Toriel knew it was that skeleton again. And judging by his inflection he was telling a knock knock joke to anyone that could hear it. Those jokes that had so long ago kept Toriel from falling into madness, the source of it all was on the other side of this door. So instead of bursting out to the skeleton to ask a million questions about last night, Toriel simply went along with it. After all, right now, these jokes were the only thing that made sense in this cruel and strange world.
*Who is it?
*...!
*dishes.
*Dishes who?
*Dishes a very bad joke
And she howled with laughter, like it was the best joke she heard in a thousand years. Because it was.
Later on, Frisk would appear in the underground and change the fate of the underground forever. Toriel was the one who was exposed to the most resets out of any other monster underground since she was the first one Frisk met. And each time the reset happened, Toriel would always wake up the same, by seeing an image of Gaster in the blackness of her mind. That was when the suspicion started. The suspicion that perhaps Gaster, and even the river skeleton had been apart of Asgore's plot. After the third pacifist run that Frisk went through, Toriel had actually remembered bits and pieces of previous runs and finally asked Sans about it while Frisk was saying good bye to the denizens of the underground.
When Sans heard her questions, it was like time froze. Although his expression didn't change you could tell he felt the weight of Toriel's questions on his shoulders. Was it you and Gaster that helped Asgore collect the souls? Why does it seem like nothing is changing? What was really going to happen to them now that the barrier was broken? Making up an excuse, Sans teleported himself and Toriel away from the others to talk although Sans was hesitant to say anything.
*...
*Sans...Please tell me.
*Toriel, look it isn't that easy to explain. If you keep asking these questions...
*Sans! I can't take it anymore! If there is something you're hiding from me I need to know! I...I've waited too long to hear that someone as kind as you...betrayed me.
*...
And after a long pause, Sans told Toriel everything. About the resets, about the genocide and about how many times Sans had seen Toriel die. It broke Toriel's heart. Not only had the one monster in the world killed the innocents she wanted to protect, but she had failed to help the human from doing something so misguided as killing other monsters to increase their LOVE. She couldn't help but be upset, to shout at Sans and threaten to never speak to him again. Even now she remembered his face as she screamed at the skeleton. It was a face that was just getting further squeezed by the pressure of this child's sins. One that hated with every ounce of their body that they were losing a friend over this, but accepting it as part of their reality. Sans...was a really strong monster.
As Frisk continued to reset the world in their vein attempt to right their wrong, Toriel vehemently rejected Sans claims and lost herself to the endless looping world. But the resets piled up, again and again she saw the human do the same moves and the same interactions. And she was remembering more and more each time until finally she realized that she was doing it again.
She was left in the dark...waiting.
So this time, when the human left the ruins, Toriel quickly followed after them, darting to a nearby brush she saw Sans lying in wait and simply walked behind him, placing her hand on his shoulder. She wasn't ready to forgive him, but she was ready to work with him. If what he said was true and he had been working through each reset to get to through to Frisk, then it was Toriel's duty to help. But looking at him now...she could only feel sorry for the skeleton...