The large door slid gradually slid shut behind the squad with a loud bang. Their slow steps echoed throughout the dark hallway. The four of them walked side-by-side (Chara was an exception, however, sitting on Kirsty's shoulders mischievously), listening to the tiny sounds of itsy-bitsy spider feet pitter-pattering across the floor. It was so quiet that they could hear a pin drop without difficulty.
As they advanced down the dark corridors, they heard in the distance the very faint sound of bone to crockery. Chara flew off to follow the sound, filled with intrigue.
"Heh." said Sans, picking up on the distant noise. "I should probably tell you that since Toriel returned as queen, she didn't have enough time to constantly be here, waiting for another human to fall, so she needed a replacement. And who better than the captain of the Royal Guard? So my bro, Papyrus, has taken the job. And ever since, I've barely seen 'im at all."
"But he loves it here." Frisk added. "Every time I've seen him here, he's always had a smile on his face! And even with all the weight of the standing around doing nothing, his job as a Royal Guard and everything else, like our every other Tuesday meals together, he still manages to get Sans out of bed in the morning!" Kirsty let out a wall giggle at that.
"I know I wouldn't. Not even if he was nice to me - which he probably wouldn't be." Chara chortled, doing backflips in the air. Frisk pulled a face, which only made Chara laugh even more.
"Yeah, my bro's pretty cool, huh?" Sans grinned.
"Not." Chara added.
"Uh huh." beamed Kirsty.
It didn't take long for the four - with Chara leading, though only Frisk knew - to travel through the violet cellar and up the stairs to the kitchen, where The Great Papyrus stood making yet another plate of spaghetti.
"Oh! Hello, humans! Have you come to see how the spaghetti's going? I must admit, Lady Asgore's help certainly does make a big difference!" Papyrus beamed as the small group stepped into the kitchen.
"Lady Asgore?" Kirsty questioned, curiously.
"That's just what he calls Toriel, because she looks like her dead ex husband. Don't ask." Frisk explained, jumping up onto the counter beside the tall skeleton.
"Ah. Sans. What are you doing? Slacking off work again?" Papyrus asked.
"Actually, I'm doing my work right now." Sans protested, pulling a proud face.
"And what's that?"
"I'm showing this human around. She's new and needs to know where everything is."
"Yeah! We're exploring!" Frisk grinned, throwing her arms in the air.
"Well, if that's the case, carry on." Papyrus said. "I need to get back to my spaghetti."
"Alright. We won't bother you then." Frisk smiled.
"But-bye!" waved Kirsty.
"This is where I fell?" Kirsty asked, gazing up at the distant sun. The four of them stood on the golden flowerbed, after traversing the whole of the Ruins together.
Sans glanced down and noticed the bloodstains from yesterday. "Uh... It probably is, 'cause I don't think this is my blood." Sans commented. "Frisk, is this blood yours?"
"Nope." Frisk replied, shaking her head. "It's either that or you've been here with some ketchup."
Kirsty looked down at the dry, red spillage. "Yeah, I think it's mine." she stated, monotonously.
"Whilst her body is in the Underground, her mind is clearly somewhere else." said Chara. "Definitely weird. Talk to her for me."
Frisk rolled her eyes at Chara, and stepped towards Kirsty. "Is something on your mind?"
Kirsty studied the room before looking back at the sun again. "I was...thinking about home..."
"... Did you have a family there?" Frisk asked.
"... Yeah. My mom, my dad and my sister..." she sighed.
"Did you have friends?"
"Yeah." She said. Her eyes wandered around the room.
"Oh... Sorry. I had a few friends in the orphanage in my village. They weren't really very good ones, but they were enter than the people at the school."
Kirsty stayed silent. So did the others. They all stood for a few minutes in silence. Just thinking. Just reflecting.
Kirsty's thoughts were filled with memories of family and friends; Frisk's were of all the people who would be wishing she was still there right now - little Lily, the young autistic girl she always stood up for when she was being bullied; Abigail, whom she admired dearly. Old friends were replaced by new ones when Frisk had arrived at the Underground, never to be remembered again. This was the first time she had actually looked back on her life before the fall.
Chara, like Frisk and Kirsty, also thought back to how many people would be missing them at the moment, and what they would be doing right now. Would they even still be alive? How long had it been? No one could tell. They were in the dark about almost anything down here? "Abandon all hope, he who enter here." she muttered.
Sans, however, could only dream of what the surface could've been like. He had only ever seen pictures of it in books and things he'd seen from the dump, where random rubbish from the surface came down from a long waterfall and collected in the Underground at the dump. Still, the pictures were only pictures and although they painted a thousand words, it only showed a fraction of the Earth's true identity.
Kirsty was the first to turn back, after a long period of Surface Thought. Eventually, the others followed - first Chara, then Frisk, and then Sans - and the live buttercup in the corner that Kirsty had spotted earlier on waited for the very last moment to tag along.