A/N: Would it come as a shock to you if I said that one of the main reasons I put an author's notes at the top is because this website's text formatting doesn't allow me to start a chapter with a line break, thus necessitating something to be above the chapter so that I can have the double line breaks above and below each chapter's title to give it its aesthetic?

Nah, that theory is a little too out-there, even for me.

Heartache

Of course, getting there is half the fun.

Last time I was in the Ruins, a leisurely walking pace was enough to get me from start to finish in maybe half an hour, not counting detours. But that was an entirely different era, a more innocent time, when survival was paramount and all else was immaterial. That was a century ago, in those halcyon days when no amount of armies or monsters could stop me if I so willed it, and the idea that the spectre of a child could do so was laughable. It was a lifetime ago.

It was yesterday.

This time isn't quite as seamless a journey. For one thing, my traveling companion is an all-too-mortal human child and not an invincible ghost who's been here before, which meant long-forgotten puzzles like that fucking spike bridge actually slowed us down since she couldn't just wade through the surrounding water like I had.

That's okay, it still doesn't stop me for long.

"Thanks," she said as I set her down on the other side.

"No problem," I replied, shaking the water from my boots.

Our conversations were pretty firmly in the monosyllabic realm for a while. Which, to be fair, I get it. If I was her, I wouldn't be too eager to spill my life story to someone who reeks of old blood and moves without making a sound despite carrying an armory's worth of weaponry. As for me, I'm not feeling too chatty myself, so caught up in my own thoughts about how after everything I've been through, how the hell am I going to keep the both of us safe and why is she even here this time but most pertinently, what the fuck happened? What am I going to do?

I'm mulling that last one over in my head when we run into our first monster and I realize Frisk hasn't moved.

That had been enough to startle me. Most of my previous companions were pretty handy to have around in a fight, and hardly needed me to look after them. Don't get me wrong, we watched each other's backs, but I wasn't too used to the idea of having to protect the person I was traveling with.

So the first time a Froggit hopped out of a pile of leaves and into my way, I didn't even react until I noticed that Frisk wasn't at my side, she was standing right in front of it, returning the monster's curious gaze with equal intensity.

You ever see an ex-soldier get startled? How their entire body goes through its own micro-seizure then scrambles to reach for a gun that isn't there?

I did something like that, except the gun was definitely there. It was in my hands and pointed straight at the monster in the blink of an eye.

But they must have been laser-focused on each other because neither Frisk nor the Froggit noticed me fumbling in the background, weapon at the ready and trying to figure out a plan that somehow didn't involve violence. Killing the thing just for getting near us feels wrong. Way too wrong, after all the shit that's happened so far. Should I just grab the kid and run? Or-

(*Froggit hops to and fro. It doesn't seem to know why it's here.)

Frisk nodded to herself, as if she heard that same voice I'd been stuck with for so long. She looked at the Froggit, me, and…

"Ribbet," she said. Then, after a beat, "Ribbet… ribbet?"

All three of us stopped to ponder the kid's words of wisdom.

"…Ribbet," the Froggit agreed sagely.

(*Froggit seems too reluctant to keep fighting.)

Then it jumped back into the leaves.

Frisk nodded to herself, then went back to business as usual; walking through the Ruins, just slow enough to look in every nook and cranny, and just fast enough to make me fret like some kind of overly-concerned mother.

"You… might want to be a little more careful," I cautioned the kid after we got held up by another Froggit. "Some of the monsters in here are not as friendly as others."

Frisk stopped for a moment, and I think she even realized how much it was worrying me if the wave of concern that passed over her face was anything to go by.

"Okay," she agreed. "I'll try."

She didn't.

Or maybe she did try and was just really bad at it. We ended up getting acquainted with a few other kinds of monsters. A Whimsum, a Loox, and a pair of Moldsmals (if the voice in my head can be trusted, and what a fucking sentence that is). Some of them just rounded a corner and saw us by sheer coincidence. A few were looking for a fight.

Whenever that happened I would take a step forward to clue in a few monsters that attacking her was bad for their health. Other times, Frisk defused things before it got out of hand. Sometimes by making a joke, complimenting the monster's appearance, or lying on the ground to get a better understanding of the situation.

I'll be honest, I've talked my way out of a fair number of fights, but that last one was a pretty new strategy even for me.

"That was an… interesting tactic," I said when she got off the floor and finished waving goodbye to the Moldsmals, who began to gradually slither away.

Frisk just shrugged.

"It worked," she replied in the tone all children who had never been wrong before possessed.

I still thought about telling her off but I didn't have the heart, or lack thereof, to do it. She's just a kid. You're a complete stranger, I told myself. You'll probably end up traumatizing her. It's not like she's ever had to deal with something like that before.

It didn't take me too long to revise that opinion of my latest ward.

See, I'm a little more perceptive than most. At least, when I'm not too busy grappling with the mental trauma I've been collecting as a hobby over these last few years. In fact, I've gotten pretty good at reading people, especially those who are actually human and not monsters, of the mutated or underground variety.

So as we journeyed on, I could see the ways in which Frisk was just slightly off. Little tells that almost but didn't quite escape my notice.

I saw how whenever a new monster would appear she would flinch back instinctively, these little shivers that she suppressed before anyone else could notice it. The involuntary way her eyes didn't quite meet mine when she turned to me, even after I let my helmet hang at my side and reminded myself not to glare at everything.

You didn't need to be a detective or a psychologist to tell that Frisk had her own issues to deal with. The kind that you don't get from an easy or peaceful life.

Common enough if you grew up in the wastelands.

But that was part of a bigger issue, wasn't it? Like I said, I'm not blind, I didn't just look at the obvious details, I looked at them and wondered what they implied.

My geiger counter had yet to go off once during this whole journey. The monsters' Grand Mural of History back in Waterfall didn't match with anything I'd ever heard of. Frisk's clothes weren't totally clean but the fabric looked new, you'd never find them in post-war America. Not to mention the entire, you know, community of underground monsters, and I don't care how well-hidden they are, you can't keep something like that from the notice of the raiders and tribes that roam most of the country in search of something to ruin. Someone, somewhere, would have heard about it.

Do you know what goes through my mind when I look at evidence like that? It's something I don't want to acknowledge, because then I'd be admitting to myself that this hasn't all been some big delusion and this shit with the monsters and magic and Chara really did happen. But even more terrifying than that is how all these little context clues tell me that wherever I am—and whatever is up on the surface—is very, very far from the Mojave Wasteland, or hell, anywhere in the post-apocalyptic shithole world I'm so familiar with.

And I still have no idea how I got here. Or Frisk, for that matter, but I couldn't just go up and ask her because it seems a little obvious that people who jump down bottomless pits in a mountain are probably not in the best of personal situations, and they definitely wouldn't like being interrogated about it, either. There are some things you just don't tell to anyone, not even your best friend in the whole fucking world.

Suffice to say, we weren't that close. We were two mostly-strangers who were just traveling together because going at it alone was less appealing. So even though it was galling, to go against my inquisitive-but-good-natured problem solving routine, I didn't press Frisk for the details of her life story. I didn't try my hand at roadside psychiatry. All I could really do was… be there.

And I did.

Or tried to, at least. I kept an eye on the kid, enough to bail her out of trouble if it looked like the monsters we encountered weren't going to be dissuaded by friendly conversation, while still letting her explore at her own pace. And if she took a second to get through the puzzles I already knew the solutions to, I gave advice and waited patiently instead of dragging her by the hand through the entire thing.

"I found it!" she celebrated, flipping a hidden switch and unlocking the door for a particularly annoying puzzle.

"You did." I tried to be encouraging. "Well done."

The kid smiled like no one had ever told her that before.

I don't know why, but for some reason I think that's the saddest fucking thought I've ever had.

After that, it takes about ten minutes before things go wrong.

The worst part of it is, nothing bad would have happened if I hadn't been there.

The kid did her usual routine and dashed into another room while I was keeping an eye on some curious monsters that had been eyeing us for a few minutes. Realizing she was gone prompted me to rush in after her, which is how I found her having an animated conversation with a ghost.

Not a ghost like Chara, a ghost that literally looked like how they do in the cartoon holotapes. Just imagine a guy covered up by stark-white bedsheets, float him a few inches off the ground, and give him a pair of perpetually-watery eyes that look more goofy than scary, and you've got a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

Neither of them noticed me standing off to the side, but that wasn't too surprising. They were so wrapped up in their talk I'd have to stand between them to be seen.

"i usually come here to be alone, er, more alone than normal," the ghost- (*Napstablook), the voice in my head supplied.

"Mm." Frisk nodded and gave a patient smile.

"i guess it's nice though. meeting someone here who's nice, i mean." Napstablook's pauses were stilted and awkward beyond the limits of what the socially inept should be capable of, but to his credit he kept the conversation going; "hey, do you want to see something? let me try…"

The water around his eyes gathered, then dripped up, coalescing into- something. A top hat, I think is what he was going for. It looked more like a misshapen drum barrel.

Satisfied the thing was harmless enough, I turned back towards the way we came in and kept an eye out for any other monsters. I felt pretty sure that after the ghost was done with showing off that party trick, we'd be able to get moving again-

Something hot and sharp went through my shoulder, and everything that wasn't combat instincts went out the window for me because something just shot me and I should know how that's not what happened but my nerve endings feel like they're on fire and all my experiences are screaming what are you doing you idiot take cover and shoot back you don't have a lot of time you have to-

"oops! i'm so sorry, i didn't see y-"

But the words come just a little too late, and I'm returning fire long before something as banal as reasoning comes into the equation.

On that note, have you ever fired a gun in an underground corridor?

It's deafening beyond all imagination.

The Ruins are as silent and serene as ever right up until they aren't, and I'd bet you could hear the gunshots from both ends of the place. Frisk's hands shot up to her ears instinctively as she cringed in pain, and all five shots rippled through Napstablook's center of mass, each one having about the same effect as pebbles against water: you disturb the surface, but you don't kill the pond because it's a fucking pond.

And by the time I've processed that I haven't actually been shot, that it was just a magic teardrop from a ghost that happened to scratch me by accident, Napstablook has already skipped town (and I can tell because I can faintly hear him saying "sorry, sorry, sorry," the whole time), Frisk is staring at me with wide and frightened eyes, blood leaking from her ears in little rivulets, and I'm standing there holding a smoking gun like some trigger-happy-

(*Murderer.)

-lunatic.

The last echoes of the gunshots fade out, and all that's left is the ringing in our ears of permanent hearing damage and a silence that's a lot more tense than it was just a minute ago.

…Jesus. I couldn't even act like a normal human being for less than half an hour into our journey-

And then Frisk's survival instinct kicked in. She scrambled to her feet before taking off in a sprint while I was still moping.

"Wh- shit. Wait! Kid!"

That was my eloquent response as I got up and started after her.

But apparently I must be a lot more tired from all this than I thought, or maybe getting hit took more out of me than I realized because somehow a girl who can't be older than eleven managed to outrun me in just a few seconds.

And my shoulder still burned. Like it had been branded.

I don't know how I'd ignored it at first, but the pain almost seemed to ratchet up over time, going from merely-annoying to outright debilitating. It took everything I had just to stagger my way to a dead tree.

I couldn't help it. I snarled, slammed a fist into it, hard enough to shake loose what few leaves were left on it. What the hell was wrong with me? First that whole mess with Napstablook, and then I chase after the kid as if I can convince her I'm harmless after trying to shoot the guy? How stupid was that? I…

That ache in my shoulder was throbbing like a second heartbeat, each one sending out a spike of pain that- no, I wasn't imagining it, it was definitely getting worse. I jammed a stimpak into my shoulder, then some Med-X. Neither did anything to stop the constant searing and-

Drowsiness…

Something dripped from my undamaged armor. It was too monochromatic to be blood.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I sank to my knees. I couldn't stand anymore.

Something rustled the leaves to my right, and I managed to turn. A face came into view, ageless and graceful. Familiar rust-red eyes, so full of this- this kindness that didn't seem like it should exist in a world as colorless and tortured as ours.

I thought to myself: You again.

Because believe me, I haven't forgotten her. In another time, not so long ago, in another place, not very far from here, I put a bullet in that face. I watched it turn to dust. But there she stands, Toriel in the flesh, catching me as I fall to the ground, hands aglow with magical light.

I know what it means when you start to see dead people and you feel yourself slipping away.

She's here to deliver me from this life.

I made an ugly whimpering sound from the back of my throat. I think I started to weep, but that's just a guess. Everything feels really dull all of a sudden.

I'm dying. I'm dead. I don't know how such a little wound could possibly lead to this but it's happening and after countless brushes with death, I'm still not ready.

Somehow, something about what I just thought drags me back, brings the world into focus just a little bit more. And I might be grasping at straws here but I keep repeating the words to myself like it's a mantra, as if it can save me.

No, goddammit, I'm not… ready to…

Toriel was saying something, worried lines appearing in her face before we're suddenly a lot closer, and it takes my mortally wounded ass a minute to realize she's carrying me.

Stop. I…

I can't see anything anymore. I can't even tell if I went blind or closed my eyes because I can't feel them.

All I can do is repeat myself like a broken holotape.

I… Can't…

But it's not enough, and I die for the second time in the same day.

…

No. I'm bullshitting you. Of course I'm not dead yet.

That would be too easy.

Though it could have fooled me at first. I was in a dreamless, senseless void once again, and I could barely get my muddled thoughts together enough to think through whatever near-death experience I was going through this time.

On second thought, maybe this went a little beyond near-death and I really did die—including back with Chara—and wherever the hell I am now is just the place your consciousness (or soul or whatever they're calling it these days) goes before waking up again in a field of flowers or some bullshit like that. But until that happens, I get to enjoy being without sensation once more in the exciting realm of That Which Comes After Death:

A purgatorial existence in an eternally still and abandoned place.

I've been here once before, and didn't enjoy it all that much. I'd prefer to leave sooner and not later.

And wouldn't you know it, it seems I won't have to wait long. Something's tugging at me even though there's nothing to pull, but I start to move anyway. My senses are beyond scrambled but even then I'm aware of the doorway in front of me, beckoning me forward into its arms, reaching forward and-

Wait.

It stretches to full height once I'm there, this black and white thing with too long a face, like a wax statue that got melted and frozen way too quickly.

This is not a door.

Its hands array themselves before me, and I'm too mesmerized to do anything in response until I hear a voice, but that's not really the best term for it. For one thing, the creature's mouth doesn't move one iota. For another, the sound is nothing like normal speech. It's like someone modulating the motors on an electric hair clipper into the approximation of a voice. Only a couple words, but it's clear as day and it's apparently more than just noise, it fucking beams information into my brain as well, a vision of a great machine I'm certain I've seen before, though only from afar. Its mechanical guts churning with primordial lava and energy. A sense of urgency, that this is our last chance. We have come so far. There can be no more delays. You must-

"Find me."

Dimly, I realize I've seen it before but this is the first time I've seen it, this thing that's hid behind the mirage of those grayscale not-monsters in the Underground. It's been trying to talk to me for a long time, and now we finally meet. It's gaunt, it seems to blur at the edges like an apparition, and it speaks only with its hands in this mad yet perfectly-coherent blur of sound that I comprehend without really knowing how.

I try to respond with a "Who are you? What are you talking about?" and "That machine—isn't that all the way in the Core?" or even just a simple "What the fuck?"

But it's barely finished speaking those two simple words before my whole world shifts sideways and I'm tumbling head-over-ethereal-ass back to the land of the living.

It happened for the first time with Arcade Israel Gannon, a few months after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.

"I…" he paused, then continued on. "I don't… think I can do this anymore."

Those solid red eyes stared back at him with all the expressiveness and motion of a statue. Yet Arcade couldn't shake the feeling that his words weren't being considered as much as they were being acknowledged.

There had been a time when that wasn't always the case. He still remembered, with clarity, the day he met the Courier. How one traveler had walked into the Old Mormon Fort and convinced him that he could still make a difference in the world. After and not before the same traveler had secured the Followers of the Apocalypse with a steady supply of badly-needed medicine and successfully treated several patients from severe drug addiction.

Arcade had remembered feeling proud to join the Courier, even if it meant he had to leave his medical career with the Followers behind. And for a while, he felt more than proud, he felt fulfilled. There was an ineffable sense of satisfaction to bringing a battered solar power array back to life in a desolate wasteland. A kind of accomplishment to ridding the Strip of its more corrupt elements that couldn't be had by simply stitching up the same wounds on the same people day after day with the Followers.

That didn't happen so much anymore. All they did now was kill people.

Arcade had never really considered himself to be some icon of virtue by any measure. Nor did he cry over the deaths of the kinds of murderers and psychopaths the Courier seemed to favor hunting. But, he realized after he caught himself staring into space for the seventh time one quiet night, he just didn't have it in him to continue any further. Maybe there was just some limit where the human mind couldn't accept any more violence, however justified, without coming to some kind of breaking point.

If that was the case, Arcade felt reasonably certain he was reaching his limit.

"I just… look. The person I signed up with, who would take the time to help people without resorting to this-"

He gestured to the bodies of the dead and dying Fiends all around them. Torn flesh and blood was strewn generously around the road, and Arcade made it a point to avoid looking at one of the few raiders who had died with her head intact, haunted expression preserved and staring back at him.

"-I don't know how else to say this, but you're not that person anymore. And it's taken me a while to realize that, but I don't think I can follow you now that I have."

He wondered what the Courier would say. If there'd be a comment about how serious the situation must have been, to hear an honest-to-god confession from Arcade without any sarcastic remarks. He wondered if there would be an attempt to convince him otherwise, that deep down, nothing had changed and there would be some attempt to appease-

"Alright, then. I understand."

Arcade floundered. "W-what?"

"I get it," said the Courier, so calmly it was as though they were simply discussing the weather. "This type of thing just isn't for you."

There was a moment, just one, where the facade slipped and Arcade thought the Courier's voice took on an almost mournful note.

But it had to have been his imagination because in the next second the expressionless mask and toneless voice were back in play, with no sign of any slip-ups.

"Maybe you're right and you should leave," said the Courier.

"..." Arcade found he didn't know what to say, not when he'd been expecting any other response. Was the Courier not even going to try and convince him to stay?

Those same red eyes glanced back at him from the corpse they'd been looting, as if curious why he was still there.

"Go on, then."

He did. At the moment, he couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Arcade walked off into the desert, back towards New Vegas. He never saw the Courier again.

When I woke up again, for real this time, I was immediately aware that I felt warm, and that it was hard to move. In front of me was a fireplace that crackled with flames that seem pleasantly warm no matter how close I got. There were blankets draped over me, which I discarded after only a few moments of struggling.

Still, you learn to be thankful for what you get.

But what was even better than all that was the utter lack of pain I felt as I got up. I rolled my shoulders experimentally, and felt- fine. Better than fine. I was rested. I was ready to go, and all that despair, that self-hate that consumed me after my little episode caused Frisk to run off? Fuck that, I am back. I've even got a mission now: to find that machine in the Core, and figure out why my dreams are haunted by a demonic skeleton with a speech impediment.

I'm not at all concerned that maybe I'm being led to a trap, or that this is all some attempt at mind-controlling me or something. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's happened so far. Wouldn't even qualify for top five.

…Actually, that's a lie. I am worried about whatever the hell just transpired, from the part where such a tiny attack somehow brought me to my knees, to the fever dream that felt far too vivid and reminiscent of my earlier brush with death for my liking, but what else was I supposed to do? After all, I just got a personalized invitation via telepathy for a meeting with the only entity that sounds like it actually knows what's happening to me, and- what, I'm supposed to just ignore it?

I'm being manipulated. It's obvious to me even as it's happening, but there's a saying about desperate people doing strange things, and once you cheat death twice in just a few hours without really knowing how or why, you start to entertain all kinds of ideas as long as they have a chance at figuring out what the hell is going on.

But before I could do any of that, there's someone I need to see.

I looked around. I know this place. Toriel's living room looks just like I remember it, worn and lived-in, but clearly maintained and cared for. This wasn't a house, it was a home.

I shook off those thoughts and started looking through the rooms. Where would- oh.

Frisk walked out of the first door on my left and came to an immediate halt when she saw me.

"…Hey," I said after a beat.

There's not a whole lot of ways to open a conversation with someone after you traumatize them. Just trust me on that.

"…Hey," she said.

"I'm sorry I shot the ghost you were trying to make friends with," I offered after another beat.

Frisk opened her mouth to speak, then paused and closed it before patting me on the back. No hard feelings. Please don't do it again, she managed without a word.

I nodded.

Frisk tried to give a reassuring look. She hadn't forgiven me. Not really, if the nervous way she smiled and her obvious hesitance to approach me was any indication. But the fact that she put in the effort anyway? I'd take it. It was more than I deserved.

"Thanks for…" I gestured at nothing. "That. Anyways, what happened while I was out?"

"Well-" she started to look at the ground, then aborted the motion and looked up and behind me. I turned around.

"Oh, you're up!" said Toriel, and if I had any more doubts about this all being some elaborate hallucination, they were gone now. There was no mistaking the monster's droopy ears and fashionably purple robes. It was all exactly like I'd remembered from-

"I am glad to see you are well enough to be on your feet!" she beamed at me, then nodded towards Frisk. "Your sister was very worried about you when she found me, you know."

Whatever I was going to say, I forgot it. I looked over at the kid, who suddenly found the floor very interesting again.

"…Yes," I said slowly. "My sister. That is… exactly what she is."

Toriel nodded distractedly, glancing back towards the kitchen. "Well, while I'd like to check up on you later—your injuries were rather severe, after all—why don't we go to the table, er- Courier, was it?"

The table? Why-

She grinned when the kid and I sniffed the air and came to the same conclusion.

"I baked us a pie! I do hope you like butterscotch and cinnamon!"

Toriel handled most of the conversation at the dinner table, but that was just fine as far as me and the kid were concerned. Neither of us were particularly talkative, and we were too hungry anyways.

"I apologize," she said to me once we were done and started working on doing the dishes. "But I do not think I have a bed large enough to fit a human of your size."

"That's fine," I said. With luck, I'd be out of here before that became an issue. "If you could loan me those blankets from earlier, I can just sleep on the floor."

"Oh, thank you for being so understanding," the monster said in relief. "Perhaps tomorrow I'll see about building a new bed frame. I can't say carpentry is my strong suit but you'll certainly need somewhere to spend the nights if you're staying and…"

Right. That was my cue to leave. I had come up with a plan while we were eating, and it had to stay on schedule for any chance of working.

"Thanks again for the pie," I started to leave the kitchen.

"It's no trouble, dear! Tell your sister there's more pie if she's still hungry!"

I walked back to the kid's room. The door was already open and she was inspecting some of the worn and dusty children's toys next to the bed.

I coughed. Frisk looked up.

"I think you should stay here for now," I said.

She stared at me, blank expression unchanging.

"It's safer here than in the rest of the underground," I continued. "And Toriel's a good person. She'll take care of you. I know that-"

Frisk shook her head so violently that for a moment I wondered if she was going to incur a spinal injury.

"Woah, calm down," I raised my arms. "What's wrong? Do you not like Toriel or something?"

"No," she said, reverting back to her signature quiet voice. "She's fine."

"Then what?"

"I-" she refused to meet my eyes. "I can't stay here."

"Why's that?"

Frisk opened her mouth, then closed it after a moment of thought.

"What's so important that you have to leave here to get to it?" I asked, a little frustration bleeding into my voice. At her silence, I continued. I doubted I'd get an answer but it wasn't like I'd get to ask later. "…Why are you here, anyway?"

"Why are you?" she muttered, but not so softly that I couldn't hear it.

It stung a little, that I literally could not answer the question. Everything leading up to me falling into this place was still one big blur that I'd gotten no closer to solving. Although even if I knew, I wondered if it was a story I'd be willing to share.

Like I said, I would imagine that happy people don't choose to fall into a forsaken underground cave.

"I can't stay here," she repeated, and this time there was real conviction in her voice, the kind that could move mountains and topple nations.

When she spoke again, she met my gaze. "You understand, don't you? I can't stay here. I've got…"

She trailed off. That momentary fire in her eyes went out, and for a while we just stood there, staring as if to will the other into action. Both of us stayed silent when the quiet sound of Toriel's footsteps on creaking floorboards neared us, at least, until it finished passing by the room.

I waited until I heard a door close down the hall before speaking.

"Alright," I said. "We'll go then. Both of us. But you follow my lead out there, got it?"

I held out my hand. Frisk eyed it for a moment, then nodded.

"Got it."

We shook on it. Then, by some unspoken agreement, we left immediately.

Alright, so the plan where I would just head straight for the Core and leave the kid with Toriel was now in shambles, but this wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. Even if the kid tolerated rather than trust me. This was- acceptable. Workable. I could do this.

"This is the only way out of the Ruins," I explained once we went down the staircase. I doubted Toriel would be able to hear our voices from all the way over here, but I kept from shouting anyways. "It's locked, but I might be able to blast it open. Or pick it."

"You can pick locks?"

"Yeah." I glanced back at her. "You can't?"

"No," she said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

I struggled to comprehend that for a bit. "Do you at least have any bobby pins on you?"

After giving me a strange look, she shook her head slowly.

…What a weird kid. Who doesn't know how to pick a lock?

The intricacies of our backgrounds had to wait for later though, because once we turned the corner we were there, at this big pair of stone doors that probably hadn't been opened in at least a few decades. It's a lot less impressive-looking the second time around.

I hadn't noticed it my first time through here, but sure enough there was a keyhole nestled into the runic carvings on the door, and it doesn't take ten seconds for me to-

The door burst into flames.

God.

Frisk and I turned around to see Toriel, fire magic swirling in her hands and all around us.

Damn it.

"You… you would leave? Just like that?" she asked, and she sounded so offended, so obviously hurt, that I didn't know what to say.

Then she took a step forward, anger and resolve clear in her posture before glancing over us.

"Do you even know what awaits you in the rest of the underground?" she asked, so quietly I had to strain to hear it. "Are either of you aware of what the rest of Monsterkind will do to you? They- Asgore will kill you."

The flames intensified at her words, becoming more hotter, more solid. I stepped between her and Frisk.

Toriel narrowed her eyes at me, specifically. "You do not care, do you?" she asked, and this time her voice was pleading, "Perhaps, Courier, you have no fear for yourself, but what of your sister? You can't believe you will both be safe out there. Please. Just go back upstairs."

Frisk was still behind me. I held onto her hand but didn't dare to take my eyes off of Toriel, or the fires dancing around her. None of us were willing to yield to the other, and in that moment I think we all came to the same conclusion.

"…So be it, then," said Toriel, this time without an ounce of the kindness she always seemed to carry. "If you insist on ignoring my warnings, then I must demand one thing of you."

The fires gathered into pillars, whipping and writhing like a bunch of angry vines. Frisk squeezed my hand tighter as they closed in.

Toriel steeled herself. "Prove to me, that you are able to defend yourselves."

It was only then that it occurred to me, as if from a great distance, that my free hand was resting on the hilt of my knife, and probably had been the whole time.

The realization had never made me feel so disgusted before. Suddenly it was like I was staring at Asgore again, neither of us willing to fight, neither of us wanting to kill the other. But we tried all the same, and it didn't matter how much I regretted that violence was my go-to method of problem solving. It didn't change the fact that I still did it anyways.

Papyrus was right. What a miserable fucking life I'd been living, where lying, sneaking, or killing was how I dealt with other people.

(*Not much of a life at all, is it?)

In that moment, as Toriel held a column of fire in her hands, I made a decision.

I took a step forward. I met Toriel's sorrowful, determined gaze.

"No," I said.

The fires grew hotter. Toriel actually faltered for one micro-instant before her eyes hardened with the kind of resolve afforded only to the desperate.

"You have to," she- said? Pleaded? Threatened? I can't say for sure. What I did know—in one single frightening moment of clarity—was how often I heard that very same phrase in my own head, usually right before I did something I knew was wrong.

The fire evolved past the threshold of 'sweltering' and had transitioned firmly into 'blistering' territory. My instincts screamed at me to use the knife.

Then I remembered, just for a moment, how that ended. How familiar Toriel's expression had been before I killed her. The look of someone who died full of regret, someone who died wanting so desperately to change what had already past.

I knew that look all too well. I've worn it twice now.

"No," I said again. "I don't have to fight you."

Toriel looked as though she was trying to figure out if it would be best to attack or tell me off again.

"I can't say that you're wrong," I admitted. "I know you don't want us to leave and get killed. Or kill anyone else. But I do know that what you're doing isn't the answer. Fighting us, sealing the exit, it's not going to fix anything. I know you're lonely here, and afraid of what might happen…"

I still remembered Undyne's haunted expression as she kneeled over Alphys' corpse. Sans and Asgore, both of them faced with death and not quite ready for it. And… whatever the hell Chara had done to me, right before I decided to end it on my terms. I doubted I'd ever forget any of it.

The pause grew a little long, and I hesitated before continuing, searching for the right words. "But I promised myself, when I woke up in those flowers at the start of this place, that I would do the right thing. Even if it wasn't easy. And I know I can't do that if you keep us from leaving."

I'm not sure why I said it, but I added…

"I don't… really know what more to say but… I know you'll do the right thing, if you had the chance."

I took my hand off my knife.

There was a longer silence this time, filled in only by the crackles and roars of a great many fires.

They all sputtered and went out a few moments later.

"That," Toriel began, then cut herself off, working her jaw and figuring out what to say.

"I did not expect that of you, Courier," she said at last. "You do not seem the type who would choose to talk rather than fight."

"…Yeah," I agreed. I only felt a little offended at what she said. Mostly because it was correct.

Toriel huffed out a sad little laugh after a moment. "Pathetic, is it not? I could not even stop someone who refused to fight."

"You're not pathetic," said Frisk. She stood to my side now, and I wondered if she caught Toriel's pained expression at her words.

"…Still," Toriel managed to continue, "My fears… my loneliness… it haunts me even now. I worry for both of you, and those who might encounter you," she said to me.

I couldn't blame her for that. Not really.

"If you truly wish to leave the Ruins, you may. However," and here she looked stricken, "Please do not return. I… hope you understand."

I did. I hoped Frisk did too.

As if thinking the same thing Toriel bent down to hug Frisk, so gently and yet so very desperately, as if she could shield the child with her arms alone. For some reason, it pained me to keep watching them.

"I'll just… wait for you outside," I said awkwardly, then stepped through the doorway before they could reply. After all that, I wanted nothing more than to sit down for a minute, and the clearing up ahead looked pretty inviting.

So of course, it wasn't.

"Golly, you must feel really proud of yourself."

I stared at the flower that had spontaneously erupted from the earth.

Flowey was glaring. If he had arms, he would have had them crossed across his nonexistent chest.

"You have all the power in the world to change this world, and this is what you do?" His face started to twist and distort, like Chara on a bad day. "You don't deserve the-"

Okay, fuck this.

I grabbed him by the stem and ripped him out of the ground.

"Listen to me," I ignored his bug-eyed panicked look and slipped into the easy rhythm of speaking the only language people like him would ever understand. "I'm trying to be better right now, but these past few days have been really rough. It's made me a little short on patience. So I'll make this quick and easy for you to remember-"

Flowey made a sound that could have been a squeak or a whimper, which was the response most people had whenever I would pull a sword out of my coat, flick the valve to ignite the flames, then press that fiery blade just a little too close to their necks for comfort.

"If you even think about trying any of your tricks near me, or the kid, I'll rip the eyes out of your skull and tie them in a loop around your neck. I'm going to use this-" I pressed Gehenna closer, the writhing flames dancing across the blade, inching closer to Flowey's struggling form. "-to weld a little smiley face into you, and then, then, I'll start to get really creative. Do you understand what I'm getting at here?"

I squeezed a little, which was just the incentive Flowey needed to gasp and nod his head up and down, inasmuch as anyone in his position could without hitting the flaming sword in my other hand.

"Good, then we have an understanding," I dropped him on the ground, then leveled the sharp end of Gehenna at him. "Now run along. And if you ever show up again…"

I wasn't sure how I was going to end that sentence since I already threatened him once, but fortunately he got the message. Flowey's head whipped up and down and disappeared into the ground.

I flicked off the burners on Gehenna and stowed it under my jacket. Not long after that, the doors opened.

"Hey," I greeted the kid, whose eyes were a little red-rimmed, but still focused and sharp. "You okay?"

Frisk wiped at her eyes. "Yeah."

I offered a hand again. "Ready to get going? Or do you need a moment?"

She took a breath.

"Let's go. I-" she stopped and sniffed twice. "Why does this place smell like spent gasoline?"

"Uh."

I faltered for a second, then took her by the hand and started to lead her away.

"Don't worry about it."

A/N: I was split between this and 'Heartaches by the Number' as a chapter title, but was afraid not enough people would get the reference.

And yes, I'm aware this chapter took a while. Mostly because of a combination of other obligations, a worsening medical condition I have to contend with, and my own procrastination. I still intend to complete this story within the near future, however.

Also, fun fact: canonically, Courier Six receives no memory loss as a result of being shot in the head during the intro to the game. Any references to amnesia/poor memory on the Courier's part in this story is a result of things which shall become clearer at a later date, as well as my personal interpretation of the Courier's backstory.

On a side note, do you think this story will ever get big enough to the point it'll have its own tvtropes page?

Yeah, I suppose that's a bit optimistic.