Alright, first things first, I owe you all both an apology and an explanation. I did not intend for this chapter to take so long to publish, by any stretch, and I'm sorry to have made you all wait so long. I know that last one was really kind of a cliffhanger, so yeah. My apologies for the delay. When I posted the last chapter, I knew I had to take a step back from the story for a day or two because it's really hard to write on an emotional level sometimes, and especially after that chapter, I just needed a break from the weight of all of it to clear my head up a bit. Unfortunately, the day or two wound up becoming a couple weeks because I got distracted by other fandoms, real life drama, and a lot of schoolwork thanks to procrastinating a lot. So yeah. There's the reason for the delay, for whatever it's worth, and I apologise for taking so long.

I also want to say thank you to all the people who have been leaving comments and messaging me. It's actually really touching to me that you all care so much about this weird little story of mine, and I appreciate it a lot. So thank you.

Now then, I think I've kept you all waiting long enough. This chapter isn't especially long, but I hope you'll all like it. Hopefully, the next chapter will be up soon. We're in the home stretch everybody, hard as that is to believe. I hope you enjoy what's left. : )

Guest review replies:

Arisor: Aww, thank you so much! I'm really glad you're liking it, haha. I'm always super nervous about sharing my writing so I'm psyched that people are finding it enjoyable. Anyway, thanks so much for dropping by!

Guest: You are correct, haha! I honestly never intended for them to show up at all in this story until literally the moment I wrote those lines, but now here they are! Go fish, haha. : P Thanks for dropping by!

Guest: I'm glad you think so, haha. I was super nervous about that last chapter because of how little plot progression it had and just because of all the stuff in it so yeah, I'm really glad that you thought it wasn't filler, haha. Thanks for dropping by!

It's 12:38 in the morning and you're sitting at your kitchen table when you pull yourself back to life. Your phone is in your hand. The clock is ticking steadily. Your heart shivers in your chest.

As soon as those first few, fragile breaths come stuttering into your lungs, the memories come along too, and your hands start to shake when you realise when your last save was, what's about to happen, what you have to do. Any minute, your father will come back through the door again, maybe a few minutes before Emily might have, maybe a few hours, and if you don't run, he'll kill you again, just like before, and there will be nothing you can do to stop him.

You react instantly to the thought, telling yourself that if you have to flee then you need to be ready, thankful that you have your phone readily available so that you'll be able to contact the monsters, but as soon as you stand up, you almost fall over with how hard your legs are shaking, and you have to brace yourself against the table with equally unstable arms to keep from collapsing right then and there. You tell yourself to get it together, to be brave and stay determined, but you can still feel Daddy's hands around your forearms and your skull cracking again, and you remember the hatred in his eyes that wasn't always there, and you know that for however much it may be necessary, you may not be strong enough to run from him, even now.

For all that he's done, he's still Daddy. He doesn't deserve to be alone either.

Frisk. The voice in your head speaks up, the one from the Underground, and you choke on your surprise, blinking hard in shock. You haven't heard from them since the fight with Asriel, since you'd gone up to the surface. You'd been sure they were gone. "Chara?" you mumble uncertainly, maybe even a little hopefully, your lip quivering.

Chara sounds almost amused when they respond. The one and only. Unless you have some other voices in your head that I don't know about.

Once again, you find yourself reeling, though this time you're not sure if it's because of relief that you're not alone or fear that Chara might have been watching silently in your head the last time and is probably thinking of less than pacifistic things to do to your father right now. You don't have the time for either emotion right now. You have maybe a minute before you have to run, and you need to pull yourself together.

You open your mouth to tell Chara something, though you're not entirely sure what that something may be, but they beat you to it. Frisk, they say, do you trust me?

The question pulls you up short. You care about Chara, of course, and you know they've changed since when you first fell down, but as for if you trust them, you're not entirely sure. You don't distrust them, at least. You think that's close enough, so you nod slowly. "Why?" you ask.

Because I need you to trust me, Chara states plainly. I'm going to help you.

"Help me how?" Your heart is pounding, your limbs shaking. Talking to Chara is a nice distraction from the current situation, but it's not one you can afford if you want to escape without living through all this a dozen more times.

Chara's response is swift and firm. I'm going to help you get out of here. I'm helping you get away from him. I know how to fight people-

"No," you say immediately, shaking your head and leaning back against the table. The idea of fighting your father sets your stomach to churning, and you clench your hands at your side to try and control their shaking. You can think of about a million ways Chara might try to help you by fighting, and none of them involve an ending you want to see. You think of knives and shudder at the memory. "No," you repeat, "I don't want to hurt him-"

And I won't, Chara says emphatically. I won't lie and say I don't want to, but I'm not going to make you hurt anybody again, Frisk. I promised.

You frown. "Then how-?"

Just trust me, Chara says. Trust me and listen.

The front door opens, and your heart stops. You spin around to look toward the doorway as your father steps in, and you brace yourself, sagging back against the table, eyes wide as he looks at you, and he gives an alcoholic smile, and his eyes flash. They're storm grey and angry, even through the drunken glaze, and you can feel something in you breaking, because looking at him in this exact moment, you know that he is not who he used to be, and he never will be again. That Daddy died with Mommy, and this one can never be happy with you.

Still, the word falls out of your mouth unbidden. "Daddy," you choke out, and it sounds like a plea. He doesn't respond.

Chara's voice in your head is strong, stubborn. Frisk, they say. Do you trust me?

Your lip is quivering. You want to cry, but you won't, not yet. You nod as Daddy closes the door behind him and gives you the same look he gave you last time you stood here, the same cruel smirk twisting his lips. Yes.

You can almost feel Chara's relief, a ghostly sense of satisfaction flooding through your veins. Then dodge left, they say. Do it now.

You do.

Your father moves toward you with a terrifying agility just as you move out of the way, and you stumble backwards on shivering limbs as he crashes into the table right where you just were, catching himself and straightening, spinning around to glare at you, his face twisted in rage. "You little bitch!" he roars, and flings himself toward you again.

You follow Chara's instruction to dive right this time and narrowly avoid getting grabbed by the arm again as you trip, falling to your knees before scrambling rapidly back to your feet in desperate panic as your father recovers from his own near miss and lunges for you again. You slip right again as instructed, and a part of you wonders why Chara is so good at dodging before realizing that there are some questions that shouldn't be answered in the middle of a life-and-death situation and deciding to be grateful that they have the skills that are currently keeping you alive.

Your father's fingers catch on your shirt, but you pull out of the way before he can really latch on, and the fabric tears. He stumbles into the wall just as you use the cabinets to pull yourself back to your feet from where you've tripped again.

Chara's voice screams in your ears, and you look up just as your father makes another move for you, his face red with rage and alcohol, and you all but dive left in your attempt to evade the attack as your life flashes once more before your eyes.

You escape just barely, and your father loses his balance. He moves to try to catch himself on the cabinets as well, but he throws out an arm and finds only air instead, and he crashes forward, cracking his head on the counter as he goes down. He hits the ground hard, his head bouncing against the tile of the kitchen floor, and his limbs crumple like a puppet with its strings cut. He doesn't get up again.

The fear that sets into your body is immediate, and you gasp a bit in shock. Chara promised. They promised. "Daddy!" you yell, and run to his side, stumbling and falling beside him.

Frisk, relax! Chara's yelling in your head, but you're not sure if you should listen to them, if this is what happens when you trust them. Frisk, they say, Frisk, he's okay, he's fine, I promise, he's just unconscious!

"What does that mean?" you demand desperately as you reach forward and shake your father's shoulder to try to wake him up. You don't know what unconscious is, or how you can tell between unconscious and sleeping and dead and nobody ever tells you these things and there isn't any blood on the floor but you don't know what means what, and you don't know that you can live in a timeline where Daddy's gone entirely, especially if he's gone because of you. "Is he dead?" you ask, and your voice shakes. "Is that what unconscious means?"

No! Chara yells, and their voice is so loud in your head that you flinch. No, they say again, quieter this time. Unconscious and dead aren't the same thing, Frisk. Trust me. I know.

You think of the flowers that broke your fall, of the story the monsters told you about Chara and Asriel as you'd wandered through New Home. You think of Chara's grave, and you shudder. You suppose they would know. "Then what's wrong with him?"

Nothing major, Chara assures you. Not physically, anyway. It's just like when he came home about a week ago, when Sam brought him here and he had knocked himself out on the bar, remember? You look to the still healing cut on your father's head and nod. It's just like that, Chara repeats. Nothing worse. He'll wake up just like he did then. He'll probably have a headache, but other than that, he should be fine.

You look at your father's face, and you blow out a long and shaky breath, pulling your hands away from where they'd been on his shoulders, and you nod slowly, your heart still pounding. You don't see any blood, and your father is breathing, so you think that means he isn't dead, at least, and if he's not dead, then Chara must be right, and you can trust them after all. You choose to believe in that idea. You don't know that you can take believing in an alternative. "What do I do then?" you ask, and your voice is shaking. "What do I do now?"

This time, Chara sounds almost sympathetic. Now comes the hard part, they say. You leave.

Your heart stutters again in your chest, and you open your mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. You want to say something meaningful, want to argue the point, make a case for staying, but no such case comes to mind, and no words come to your lips. Your body aches with bruises, and your heart aches with knowledge, because every mark on you is a testament to a truth you knew the day you came back but still couldn't face. As much as you want to stay, as much as you want there to be something here for you, there is nothing.

The tears that have been stinging at the back of your eyes start to spill over your cheeks, and you scrub at your face, knowing that the tears will do nothing for you, will not clear your mind or change the situation. A thought tugs hard at your mind, telling you that maybe if you tried hard enough, you could load a save from before Mommy was dead and fix this, but even as you think it, you know that it's impossible, that worse than impossible, it's selfish. If you were to reset that far, all the monsters would be back Underground again. There would be no Chara, no Sans or Mettaton or Papyrus in your life. There would be no Toriel to offer you hugs and butterscotch pie, no Asgore to smile and laugh so deep that it rumbles in his chest, no Alphys to talk to or Undyne to suplex you and no monsters to make you feel like you have a home again.

You think of the Underground, of the echoflowers that whispered back a million wishes for freedom under the rocks that passed for stars in Waterfall, and you feel the ache deep in your chest. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't go back. Not for yourself. Not for anybody. You couldn't do that to your friends. Not after all they'd been through to get to here.

You look at your father, and your lip quivers as you shake with sobs. You don't know where Emily is, and it doesn't much matter. Getting you patched up isn't a problem, not anymore. No matter what happens from here, this will always be the ending that you find. Once upon a time, you were Francis Cohen, and Mommy wasn't dead and Daddy may have loved you, but that time is gone. The reality is now, and your future lies away from him, away from here.

You are Frisk. You are the ambassador for monsterkind, the future of humans and monsters, and you cannot give up just yet.

Chara's voice in your head is silent as you lean forward and kiss your father quietly on the forehead, closing your eyes. Tears race down your cheeks, and your entire body shakes. "Goodbye, Daddy," you whisper, and he doesn't respond.

You push yourself to your feet, and are unsurprised to find that as the adrenaline has worn off, the pain has taken its place. Movement hurts. Everything hurts. You ignore the pain, and you shuffle to the doorway, pulling it open and locking it from the inside, hoping that when you close the door it will work without a key. You look at your father again, and as he lays on the floor, you think he looks almost like he used to, that he looks all too young.

You stare at him for a long moment. You know with painful certainty that you will never see him again.

"Goodbye, Daddy," you whisper once more, even though you know he won't hear you, and then you step outside and shut the door behind you.

You stand on the steps and shiver in the cold for a moment. Everything aches, most of all your heart. You pull out your phone to check the time. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and you start to walk.

It's 1:04 in the morning and the sky is full of distant stars as you leave your home for the last time.

You follow your feet. Maybe Chara's leading you, or maybe you're leading yourself without intending to, but you don't think it matters either way, not really. You don't know where you're going, just that it's away.

Somewhere over an hour later, you shuffle up to the park where the monsters had picked you up for that first meeting as the ambassador, and you wrap your arms around yourself to fend off the cold as you progress toward the same spot where you'd waited for them then on the sun-warmed boards of the playground. They're not warm now as you crawl onto them, but they're sturdy. You can appreciate that.

As you press your back against one of the walls of the playground, you pull your knees tight up against yourself, compacting like you always do when you're upset, wrapping your arms around your knees and resting your head against them. You know you need to get out of this park before morning arrives and people come with it, but you're not sure where to go. You weren't paying attention when you were running away from Sans a few hours ago, so the route you'd taken to get from the monster's village to your home is unclear at best, and you really don't think that wandering through unfamiliar parts of the city is the best idea or the safest at a quarter past two in the morning. Granted, the park may not be much safer than the alternative, but at least you know this place.

You reach into your pocket and fumble for your phone. It takes a few tries for you to manage to put in the passcode correctly, and then you turn your attention to the more important task of figuring out who to call. You don't want any of the monsters rushing out here to find you and scaring the humans, but you really don't want to stay here all night either, not alone. You've had enough of being alone for a lifetime. Right now, you want a hug, and someplace warm, and sleep.

You scroll through your contacts until you find Papyrus's name. Undyne had mentioned once that he always, always picked up by the second ring, no matter what time of day it was. You figure it's as good a shot as any, and you push dial, then close your eyes, pressing the phone to your ear.

It doesn't even make it through the entirety of the first ring. The other end of the line buzzes quickly to life and Papyrus's voice floods the connection. "FRISK?" he shouts into the receiver, in typical form. "FRISK, IS THAT YOU?"

You let out a shaky breath, then nod. "Yeah," you murmur, your voice small. "Yes, it's me."

Papyrus's relief is palpable. "THANK GOODNESS!" he sighs. "YOU HAVE EXCELLENT TIMING, MY SMALL HUMAN FRIEND. WE WERE ALL VERY WORRIED ABOUT YOU AFTER THIS AFTERNOON. ACTUALLY, WE'VE ALL BEEN VERY WORRIED ABOUT YOU FOR A WHILE, BUT WE WERE ALL ESPECIALLY VERY WORRIED AFTER THIS AFTERNOON. ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

You smile, or you try to. There's something reassuringly familiar about Papyrus's cheerfully loud nature, something about it that feels like home. That feeling of happiness stirs slightly in your chest, and the sensation serves to also stir up the barely controlled pain you've been fighting against all evening from where it too is nestled in your chest. You open your mouth with every intent of telling him you're fine. Instead, you start to cry again, choked little sobs that tumble out of your mouth as your tears come back anew.

You know Papyrus hears you, because you can practically hear his anxiety through the phone line. "FRISK?" he says nervously, "FRISK, WHAT'S WRONG?" You try to respond, but you only wind up crying harder. You think he moves the receiver away from his mouth, because when next he speaks, the words are marginally quieter and not addressed to you. "SANS," he says, "THEY'RE CRYING. WHY ARE THEY CRYING, SANS? WHAT SHOULD I DO?"

You hear a low mumbling in the background, white noise that you recognise as Sans's voice even though you can't make out the words. You can hear Papyrus agree to something, but you have no idea what it is.

There's not a lot of time for you to ponder. From the other end of the line, you can hear the soft sound of bones clicking against the receiver as it shifts hands, then Sans's voice fills the line. "hey kid," he says, and you curl tighter into yourself as relief floods through you. "where are you at?"

You clamp your eyes shut, and when you try to speak, it comes out as a shaky, tearstained laugh. You try again. "The park," you manage eventually. You would clarify which one, but you think he already knows, and speaking is more or less beyond you at the moment, so you can only hope you're right in your assumption.

"gotcha," Sans says. "i'll be there in a minute. just stay there for me, alright? here, papyrus, take this."

You hear the soft click of bones again, and you bury your face in your arms, crying harder as you tighten your fingers around your arms to try and pull yourself back together. He's coming. Sans is coming. You're almost through with this night. You're almost safe.

There's a flash of blue light that burns through your eyelids, igniting the darkness. For a few moments, there's silence, and then there's a skeletal hand resting gently over yours, prying the phone from your grasp, and another one tugging gently at your fingers, loosening the death grip you have on your arms. You comply with both actions, letting Sans take your phone and letting your grip go slack as he wraps one arm around you and pulls you against his ribcage. "hey, kiddo," he murmurs, "good to see you again."

You bury your face in his coat, and he hugs you tight, resting his head on top of yours. You don't look up to see the expression on his face, just keep your eyes shut tight as you cry hard into the fabric of his coat and he rubs a soothing circle on your back with his free hand. It hurts with all the bruises clustered along there, and you can't be bothered to hide the pain right now, but you appreciate it more than you can quantify.

You can hear Papyrus's voice coming through the line even from where Sans has the phone held against his skull, several inches away from your own ears. "SANS?" he asks, still sounding nervous. "SANS, ARE YOU THERE? IS FRISK?"

Sans pulls you tighter against him and nods. His voice sounds relieved and sad and happy all at once, and you can't for the life of you figure out why. "yeah," he says softly, "i'm here, pap. i've got them. we're coming home."