Writer's Note: So Frisk is female in this version. In past versions of this series, I've kept true to the original and kept Frisk gender-neutral. This time, I've decided, due to her age and the nature of the story (which becomes clearer with time), Frisk is female in this version. However, that doesn't mean YOU have to read Frisk as female. (In the original version of Better Than Fanfiction, Frisk was female as well, but I changed it.) Forgive me, please x_x!

Also, the title is a reference less to the Abrahamic Bible's story than it is to Florence and the Machine's song. You don't need to worry; this isn't a song-fic, though I may quote one or two lines as dialogue - but only due to being a giant nerd. The reason for naming it so will, again, be clear as you read on.

Chapter One: Story

Frisk was growing up. It was inevitable, yes, but it was still sometimes easy to forget. Especially when her parents did not.

Toriel watched Frisk hunched over a large stack of papers, tongue out and eyes focussed, as she marked the work before her with quick hands and quicker eyes. Thanks to being not only tutored by Toriel and Alphys, but also her exposure to the local politics once the barrier broke, she had long ago finished basic education. Now, at eighteen, she worked as a teaching assistant part time for both Toriel and Alphys, the rest of the time spent with political matters. If she could, she also supply-teacher for subjects she knew rather well. She was very rarely without something to do.

It was late, and Frisk was lit by a single lamp at her desk, her dark hair tucked behind her ears and her bangs a little messy from being ruffled in thought. She wore loose clothes over her slightly-chubby frame, her legs covered in brightly patterned tights, her socked feet occasionally tapping to the music she listened to as she worked. Occasionally, she would pause and wiggle in her seat, dancing to the music with her eyes closed while she mouthed the words. Now was one of those times, and Toriel watched with shining eyes.

A large, gentle hand cupped Toriel's shoulder, and she leaned back at once, feeling Asgore's arms go around her. She sighed against him, relaxing, and Asgore gave her a whiskerey kiss on the cheek. In silence, they watched as their daughter finished her dance, then learn over and make a quick correction, before finally being able to shove the pile aside and stretch out, grinning happily.

Frisk checked her phone and jolted. "Shoot!" she cried, hurriedly typing something on the small screen of the phone. Even now, at this age, Frisk rarely used curse words, even when alone, despite Undyne's constant attempts. She grabbed the phone and then her sweater that hung from the back of her chair, then stood up towards the front door.

Both of her parents jumped at the same time she did, and all three Dreemurrs blushed, though Frisk was grinning. She walked over and hugged them both at once, bringing a laugh from Toriel and an "oof" from Asgore.

"What's up, Goat Parents?" she wondered happily. She still had to look up to meet Asgore's gaze, but not so much for Toriel; they were almost the same height, now, and since Frisk seemed to have stopped growing, it always amazed Toriel that such a tiny child was now such a tall person.

Something deep hurt withing Toriel's chest at that thought, but she pushed it aside. "We're just checking up on you, dear," she replied, giving Frisk's cheek a gentle touch. "Going out now?"

"Yep. Already late, too, but I was on a roll!" said Frisk cheerfully.

"Oh, dear! What a waste of good bread!" Toriel couldn't help but say, smiling. Of course both Frisk and Asgore laughed; for them it was genuine, which was always nice. (Alphys was that way, too, but Undyne always used her fakest laughs whenever she joked that way - annoying.)

"Where are you going?" asked Asgore, eyeing outside the window warily. "Not too far?"

"Just Underground," Frisk answered, pulling on long, large boots - what they all commonly called her "Underground Boots".

Beside her, Asgore stiffened, looking uncomfortable, and Toriel bit her lip. This had been going on for quite some time, now; at the end of the week, Frisk would disappear Underground, though for what, no one knew; just that she did, and had been a few weeks following the barrier's destruction. As she grew up, her visits were more consistent, more regular, though she never, ever explained it - even when everyone had at least asked her once.

Frisk looked up at once, knowing her parents all to well by now. She smiled at their worried faces. "You both know that the Underground is safe! Sometimes even safer than here! What's wrong?"

"Well." Asgore looked at Toriel, who nodded. "Why the Underground, every week? Why not here, where we all belong, where your family is?"

Frisk's smile flickered, but she managed to keep it. How does one explain this without fully explaining it? How does one say that there were places, people, Underground that still had yet to come up and be free? That one, in particular, seemed to need her more Underground than anyone else on the surface?

"Well..." she said slowly, unable to keep hesitation from her voice. "Some monsters didn't come up, and some humans also went down. It's still my job to be ambassador, so I need to be one on both sides, right?" It was the truth, and she was glad it was, because she never, ever wanted to lie to her parents in a way to hurt them, ever.

Asgore looked instantly mollified, but Toriel eyed Frisk closely for a moment. When younger, this particular look always made Frisk blurt out anything she had withheld or was lying about. Though it wasn't easy, she did manage to keep it in this time.

She'd made a promise, after all, and she would keep it.

"Alright," Toriel said finally. "Come home before..." She looked at Asgore, who said, "Eleven." She nodded. "Yes, unless you're staying overnight. If so, text me and let me know, understand?"

"Of course!" Frisk leapt up and hugged Asgore, then Toriel. Toriel hugged her tight, then withdrew to hold Frisk's oddly bare face between her hands. With a tender smile, she kissed her daughter's forehead, who leaned in at once to accept it with closed eyes, before letting go.

When she was gone, Asgore narrowed his eyes. "She's lying." Toriel turned to him and saw his eyes were dark, though also sad. He slouched a bit and added. "Do you think she's... met someone? A mate?"

"No, not exactly," Toriel said kindly, smiling at his fatherly worry (though it would be remiss to leave out that she was actually more worried about that prospect than he.) "I think it's more like she's going to see someone she knows we won't approve of, but not a for a mate." Toriel paused, rubbing her chin. "She doesn't strike me as someone in love, and I've seen it enough in class to know."

Asgore nodded, though his eyes were still dark. "Someone we don't approve of, though, Tori?" he said slowly. "What kind of person does she think we would never want to know she was friends with?"

Toriel leaned on him, slipping her arm around his waist, as they watched the faraway speck that was their daughter disappear into a checkpoint. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I know she'll tell us someday. If she's ready."

Frisk made her way through the Ruins; it was still closed off to everyone but its original inhabitants, at their request and also at Toriel's, all citing that the people were there to be private citizens and thus should not be disturbed. This also extended to Frisk, who not only as ambassador had assess to all of the Underground now, but was also considered one of those citizens thanks to Toriel - and the citizens themselves. She had memorised the puzzles long ago and drifted through them quickly, trying to make up for lost time, but of course one decided to give her some trouble, as usual.

"Pumpkin, I adore ya, but every time I see ya, ya make me work."

Frisk sighed from the other side of the wall of spikes blocking her. "Please? I have Aboveground grass for you! And a surprise!"

A pause. Then the spikes retracted at once, and she leapt forward happily, kneeling to the monster rock and giving them a gentle pat, before adding a handful of sweet bluegrass - and oak leaves, the surprise.

"Oh, my buttered buns," the monster said. "I thankee, darlin'. Ya do make it worth while after all, dontcha?"

With a final pat, Frisk continued, whistling happily. Walking through the Ruins alone used to make her wistful, almost sad, seeing its neglected state and - she thought at the time - its even sadder and neglected residents. Now all she saw was a nice, quiet place, unsullied by human hands (she didn't considered her own human by now) and the home of some of the nicest monsters she had met in the Underground. Every time she visited, she regretted not coming more often, because all of them seemed to miss her - or her gifts, but she'd take that anyway.

When she got closer to her destination, memory washed over her, like it usually did - only this time she let it. She remembered the day she fell, and everyone she had met since. But most of all, she remembered why she had fallen. And it was today - the Friday before the eighth anniversary of that fall - that she would finally explain why she had fallen to the one monster who always asked, every time he saw her.

She sat down on the bed of golden flowers, almost exactly where she had been found, and waited. She didn't have to wait long. A ring of bright white pellets slowly surrounded her, and she sighed, feeling a tug at her soul as her instincts reacted. With almost bored ease, she avoided them from where she say, knowing that no more would follow them - it was merely a greeting.

Flowey instantly popped up beside her, his face arranged annoyed despite his smile. "Howdy, Frisk!" he said rather tersely. "Guess who's late?"

"Me," she replied easily. "I had to grade some papers, Flowey."

"Hey, you're the idiot who made this promise," Flowey replied, his smile widening. "I don't care if you keep it. It's not like I can do anything about it, anyway, ever since you came here. Why did you come here, again?"

There it was. She eyed him closely. "Right," she agreed carefully. They both knew he cared, but of course neither would admit it - his type of care wasn't something to brag about.

"So what's the story this week?" Flowey wondered, twining his body around her right arm slowly. "I see no book. Don't make one up, Frisk. We both you you're shit at it."

She laughed and easily shook him off of her arm. Part of the promise was the inclusion of an Aboveground story every Friday, in exchange for his remaining in the Underground. They had just finished "The Magic of Reality", which had actually delighted them both, but Flowey decided he wanted something more along the lines of fiction. Well, she had something for him, something that sounded like fiction, but not a book.

"I'm not going to make anything up. Do you know what day it is today?" She kept her gaze sharp as he thought about it.

"I hardly have a calendar around here, but obviously it's Friday, since you're here. Or Friskday, as I like to call it, because I know you hate it." His smile twitched a little, though. He knew.

"Yes, but it's also eight years tomorrow that I came here. Since I met you," she finally said. She reached out, grabbed him by the stem, and gave him a pat on his polleny head - something he both hated and was good revenge for the "Friskday" joke. He never attacked her when she did this, however, and in face, the gesture on this day seemed to surprise him, as if not expecting her to do anything of the kind.

"Oh, golly, Flowey! You thought I forgot?!" Frisk cried.

"Even if you did, I don't care!" he instantly snapped back.

"Well, I didn't, so if you want your darned story, shut up!" she sallied back easily enough, fluffing her bangs in her annoyance. "Even though it's not out of a book, I'm not making this one up, so it won't suck, okay?"

"I'll be the judge of that, Frisky Dreemurr. Or is the judge already here?" He made a mock look-around for sans, before grinning at her. However, once he had seen she was annoyed by the comment, he went into his usual position when listening to her read: a coiled up roll of a flower with his head at the top. It was his only indication that he would shut up - at least as long as he wasn't bored - so, Frisk took a deep breath, looked away, and told the story.

"If I catch you wandering there again, I'll push you in myself! You see if I don't!"

Frisk was practically thrown back into the house, feeling at once violated and afraid the moment her senses became aware of the place. Her foster mother had found her close to Mount Ebott again and had dragged her home - worried more about the loss of stipend than the actual child herself.

She could hear the other five of her supposed siblings and winced, lowering her head and silently making her way to her tiny bedroom, knowing better than to expect any food at this point. She threw herself onto her tiny cot - unchanged since her great-aunt had got sick and died, the one she had come with two years prior, despite her growing bigger. She wanted to cry, but felt too tired to even do so. She was so hungry, but knew that begging for food was just a waste of breath - and an increase of beatings.

She had been so close, so close, to reaching the mountain's base, if only one of the neighbours hadn't called her stupid foster mother and told her that her money was walking away...

Frisk knew the legends, knew both facts and fictions, but she loved the folklore the most, the ones about monsters being sealed beneath Ebott until the day they would be freed by humans, who had sealed them there over a stupid war. Frisk knew real monsters, and knew that anything down there would be immensely easier to deal with than here.

She'd been at the foster home for two whole years, and she wished she - or it - would die. Her parents had died in a hit-and run-when she was very small, leaving her in the care of her only living relative, Great-Aunt Maine, took her in as her own. It was from her that she had learnt all about Mount Ebott, and why she now was desperate to run to it.

Once, before she got sick and Frisk had to watch her die, Great Aunt Main spoke about her middle sister who had disappeared one day without a trace, a sister named Chara.

"Oh, she was a terror," Maine said with a nostalgic smile. "Ter and I were her best patsies, and she loved to bully others, loved to be in charge, loved to boss anyone and everyone around her. And she was so lovely and adorable, she always got away with it." Maine looked at Frisk kindly, and her smile widened. "You've a darker complexion, my dear, but you look very much like her. It's uncanny.'

"What happened to her?" Frisk wondered, her eyes huge on her small face.

"Oh, she disappeared," Maine said softly, giving Frisk's head a gentle pat. "Over the years, kids will always go missing. But now that I look back on it, I wonder if she meant to disappear, and was heading for the mountain."

"Mountain?" Frisk had seen it in the distance, its majesty like a giant snowglobe, full of strange angles and stranger lights.

"Yes, dear, Mount Ebott. I showed you, remember?" When Frisk nodded, Maine went on. "Every place has a fairy tale, and of course mountains are rich with them. Ebott's was special, though: monsters who had tried to take over the world were sealed instead in the bowels of that mountain, never to return. And how, if a human dared to enter, they would never come back." She placed a hand to her cheek. "Dearie me, so many stories we told about it! Yes, if Chara had wanted to disappear, that would be how she would do it."

"How can you know for sure?"

Maine paused, looking contemplative. "Oh, well, there were stories following her disappearance, several years after. By that time, my youngest brother had moved away, and my mother was getting sick and needed care, so I only heard the rumours, but..." She sighed. "There was a story that someone came back with Chara, late in the evening, and that Chara was dead, and that someone was a monster of some kind." She suddenly laughed. "How absurd. The only monsters there were the ones too high or drunk to even take care of their own kids!"

"What happened?" Frisk wondered, her eyes wider, feeling a chill around her neck and arms.

"Well, they said it was a monster who had come from the surface using Chara's soul to murder humanity. So they claimed they drove him off with any weapon they could find, and both the monster and Chara disappeared. This time for good."

Frisk was amazed, though also deeply disturbed by the story - especially when Maine was laughing about it. "That's terrible, especially if it was true!"

"Oh, Frisk, of course it wasn't true," Maine chastised gently. "People just wanted to make something into nothing, to keep our silly town a tourist attraction and what not. Using Chara was bad form, but I can see why they would want to make a tragedy into something beneficial." Maine paused again. "Besides, I know that where ever Chara is now, she's better off. She was never happy here. Maybe she found happiness elsewhere. Or maybe she simply found peace. I'll never know."

Now, lying on her bed, awash in dismay and hunger, Frisk found herself empathising with Chara's unhappiness. It was why Frisk had been trying to get close to Mount Ebott in the first place, to see if she could find her lost great-aunt and be adopted by her, by family, and be free of this hellhole...

Tonight.

Frisk's head jerked up, confused. She could have sworn she had just heard that, not as a thought, but in her ear, outside of her own head. She felt a chill along her neck and arms, her heart racing, and slowly, she sat up, listening so hard she shut her eyes.

Nothing; just the sounds of her hated prison. She lay back down, curled up into a ball, and tried to imagine herself far away...

She must have fallen asleep, because she next remembered a chill creeping up her spine, one that woke her. She opened her eyes to twilight, her tiny window showing a small square of darkening blue.

Tonight. Go tonight. Right now.

It was that voice again, Frisk realised with another chill, her arms covered in gooseflesh. But, oddly, she wasn't afraid; rather, she felt anticipation, eagerness. Slowly, she got to her feet, pulled on her favourite sweater - one that had been her father's - and crept to the door, pressing her ear to it and listening. She could hear the sound of several TVs blaring, trying to drown each other out, but that was it. She slipped from her door as silently as possible, finding the hall, to her relief, empty.

Now! Go, Frisk!

Heart racing now, Frisk fled down the hallway to the door, her steps quick but quiet. She grabbed her boots and shoved them on, before running out into the dying light, not once looking back, no once even listening for a reaction.

She was done with them.

Stay determined, Frisk!

She nodded as she ran, her face set and her eyes blazing, not caring if she was going crazy from hearing voices, especially from taking the advice of a voice. How could anyone deal with what she did and not go crazy from it? Besides, all she knew was that the voice was helping her, so of course she would listen to it.

Quite suddenly, as if on that thought, she tripped over an exposed root, landing hard on her hands and knees and cutting open a scratch on one of her shins. She stayed that way for a moment, the shock of pain knocking her breathless, before she shifted, sat down, and pulled out one of many bandages she always kept in her pockets - thanks to her "loving family". She bandaged it up, then, as an afterthought, found a stick big enough to serve as a walking staff, just in case. Once she felt ready, she pulled herself to her feet and went on.

As night crept up on her, so did Mount Ebott. It was huge, a towering giant of foreboding, and she found herself looking up at it the closer she got.

This way. There's a way in over here.

Frisk followed the tugging in her breast, which she took to mean the direction she had to go, and soon enough, as she walked, she saw a semi-hidden gash in the side of the mountain, one she had never seen - or even noticed - before. With her stick, she edged close to it, looking down below, but she couldn't see much - just dark blurs.

Now jump, Frisk.

The words made her stop in her tracks and lean back onto her stick. She knew that was a bad thing to ever think, and she dug the stick into the ground hard, along with her heels, in order to do exactly the opposite.

"Why?" she asked aloud. If she was crazy, fine, but she needed to get answers, regardless.

What else have you, Frisk?

Frisk's lips trembled at that, sick reality crashing into her like a fist to the stomach. It was true; she really did have nothing. If she went back, she'd only be back in hell. if she jumped, she would likely die, but even so, well, at least she would be free. Wasn't that what Maine had said once?

Wordlessly, using the stick as a boost, she threw herself into the crevice, and down into the mountain. The moment she hit the empty air, she panicked, as if she could somehow backwards-jump, but it was too late - she was falling.

The last thing she saw was a young girl of about her age, very pretty, with a smile on her face and a hand held up and waving. Then, nothing.