A/N: Here it is, the sequel to "Beyond Forgiveness!" If you haven't read Beyond Forgiveness yet and just stumbled across this, I advise you go back and read it, because without it you won't understand a lot of things.
For the context of this story, I'm placing Mount Ebott in the Sierra Nevadas. This wasn't just a random decision: I checked the image at the end of the game and cross-referenced it and decided it could fit in the Sierra Nevada range.
And finally, just for reference, in the world of Undertale, the monsters were freed on October 20th, 2014. Don't go into the whole "201X" debate with me, I'm just going to assume that it's a monster dating system that works differently from ours. There will be some differences from our world but they won't be too major, just enough to propel the story along its desired course. Don't overthink it.
Now that we're done this super long author's note, let's continue!
Asriel Dreemurr, Prince of Monsters, was bored. A traditional state he found himself in nowadays, mostly when he was sitting on the leathery, scratchy bus seats.
Two years, he thought.
Two years since monsters were freed from below the surface.
The humans' response to the monsters hadn't been tame. After the war between humans and monsters, humans had done everything they could to erase the fact of the existence of monsters from their memory, to the extent that only a few powerful heads of government knew that an entire race was trapped underground.
One year since the humans of the outside world found out about us.
After the monsters left the underground, they were immediately contained by the government of the country controlling the area: the United States of America. All of the monsters were placed in a ramshackle town of tents and huts inside a chain-link fence and kept there, in the hopes that they could be contained and sealed back underground.
But the information that monsters existed had been leaked, along with that of their pacifistic tendencies and the knowledge that the CORE could power a large portion of the area around Mount Ebott, and humans began protesting in favor of the monsters.
One year and four months since we were freed from the camp.
Faced by enormous public opposition, the government had no choice but to release the monsters. They had fanned out and settled most of North America, with sparser settlement in Eurasia and South America. Asriel's family, however, had chosen to settle in the immediate area, in a small town called Alta Nevada.
Asriel snapped out of his thoughts and looked up as he heard footsteps, and then Frisk sat down next to him. With a sigh, she set her backpack down at her feet.
"That good, huh?" Asriel asked.
Frisk made a noncommittal grunt and stared at her feet. After a moment, she looked back up and asked, "What deep thoughts were you thinking?"
"Huh?"
"I could tell from the way you were glaring at the back of the seat in front of you that you were thinking about something." Frisk explained.
"Ah... it's just the fact that we wasted almost a year and a half of our lives in that stupid camp." Asriel scratched his head and winced as he almost nicked himself on the beginnings of horns sprouting there.
"And how the humans kept trying to take me away." Now it was Frisk's turn to stare at the back of the seat in front of them. Her biological parents hadn't even shown up to claim her, but the humans outside in general kept trying to take her out and put her with human foster parents. The only reason they hadn't was because Frisk had threatened to leak the information that monsters existed and were trapped in the "construction site" right by Mount Ebott if they did.
They were both snapped out of their dark thoughts by a voice from the seat behind them: "Hey, guys."
Frisk swung around to see a fellow human peering over the back of their seat: messy brown hair, gray-blue eyes, a little taller than she was but shorter than Asriel. "Oh. Hi, Caleb."
"How'd you get back there?" Asriel frowned. "I would've seen you coming up the aisle."
"Well, would you believe me if I told you I could teleport?" Caleb grinned. At the looks they gave them, he continued, "No? Fine. I crawled under the seats on the other side and rolled across the aisle behind you."
"All just to make us think you can teleport?" Asriel raised an eyebrow.
"I've done stupider for less." Caleb shrugged. "When you're me, you can afford to do that kind of thing." His gaze drifted downwards to the necklace he wore, a shark tooth on a leather cord, then snapped back up. "Anyway, can I hang out at you guys' place until dinner?"
"This is becoming a regular occurrence... is there any particular reason?" Frisk teased.
Caleb sucked in a breath between his teeth. "You guys know how my mom got after my dad died. Help a pal out and don't ask questions, okay?"
"Very well. Just because you're our friend."
"Thanks." Caleb shrank back down into his seat and pulled out a notebook.
"What're you working on?" asked Asriel.
"Eh, the usual." Scratching down a few notes, Caleb added, "I'm trying to figure out what would've happen if Germany managed to win the Battle of Jutland."
"What war was that?"
"First World War." Frowning, Caleb added, "First thing is to figure out how they could've won, though. I mean, I guess that they could've hit the Brits with everything they had and beat it before Jellicoe arrived, but that would've been more of a draw..." His voice trailed off. "I'm boring you, aren't I?"
"Well..." Frisk started.
"Yes." Asriel was more blunt than his adopted sister.
"See, that's why you guys are my friends. You don't lie just to spare my feelings." Caleb went back to writing down notes.
The bus shifted into motion and pulled away from the school.
Frisk and Asriel were both silent as they watched the road and houses swarm by the window. For the most part, they had settled into life in Alta Nevada fairly well, but after the first few months the novelty of living with monsters had worn off for Frisk. As for Asriel, the novelty of the surface had worn off pretty quick after the first few weeks in what Frisk had termed "the concentration camp."
Frisk and Asriel's stop was pretty early on in the bus route, and before they knew it the doors hissed open. Asriel poked Caleb. "Hey! You're getting off here, too, remember?"
"Oh, yeah, I wasn't really paying attention." Caleb gathered his supplies into his backpack, took a final bite of out the granola bar he was holding (when did he pull that out?) before stuffing it in his pocket and followed them off the bus.
The house Toriel had procured was relatively large given the size of the town. The cheery blue siding usually made Frisk smile, but today her straight face remained fixed as she headed through the door.
She and Asriel dumped their backpacks at the front door. Caleb stood in front of the door for about a minute (they could both tell from the expression on his face that he was thinking about something probably more than a hundred years before the modern day) before Frisk poked him with an elbow, and he started before shrugging his backpack off and following them.
As Frisk opened the door into the next room, she realized from the smell in the air that Toriel had been baking something. Asriel stopped right in his tracks, tilted his head up, and inhaled. Caleb, for his part, dug in his pocket, pulled out that granola bar, and finished it off in one bite. "What?" he asked at Frisk and Asriel's stares.
"Surprise, my children!" Toriel smiled as they walked into the kitchen. "I baked a pie for your after-school snack! Oh, hello, Caleb." she added as he slouched into the room. "Would you like some pie, too?"
Several pie slices later, Frisk and Asriel were sitting at the kitchen table working on their homework. Caleb wasn't really focusing on his homework and was instead trying to see how long he could balance his notebook on one side before it fell on the table with a muffled splat. After about ten times, Frisk's head snapped up, and her hand darted across the table, grabbed the notebook, and pinned it on the table. "No. More." she said in a dangerous voice.
"Oh, sorry." Caleb stuffed the notebook in his backpack. "I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing."
"That's your excuse every time you do something like that!" Asriel pointed out.
"I can't help it if I'm the absent-minded professor type." Caleb sniffed.
"You're certainly absent-something alright." Asriel muttered, just loud enough for Caleb to hear.
After they were finished their homework, Caleb pulled out his cell phone.
"What're you looking at?" asked Asriel.
"Eh, just boring history stuff you wouldn't be interested in." replied Caleb.
"I'm not surprised." Asriel pulled out his own phone.
"What are you looking at?" Frisk asked.
"Stuff in the modern day that's actually relevant, unlike stuff that happened a hundred years ago." Asriel looked up at Caleb.
"Hey! First off, the Anglo-Persian was 159 years ago, and second, it's actually very important in the context of British naval-"
"I thought you were focusing on World War One." Frisk interrupted, not wanting him to go into a three-hour long discussion about history.
"I still am." Caleb insisted. "I'm trying to figure out if, had it lasted a little longer, British naval power could have been affected enough to cost Britain the first world war."
Suddenly, Caleb's phone started to ring. Asriel and Frisk only heard the first few melancholy bars of the music he used as his ringtone before he picked up and held the phone to his ear. "Hello?" he asked, and winced immediately. "Sorry, Mom. I'll be home as soon as possible." He hung up. "That was my mom. Something went wrong with the TV or something, and she wants me to fix it." He shrugged. "Oh, well. So much for escaping my problems at home. See you guys tomorrow." He left the kitchen, and they could hear him pick up his backpack and slam the front door shut behind him.
It was really a shame Caleb couldn't stay for dinner, seeing as Toriel had made Frisk and Asriel's favorite food tonight. Then again, hadn't Caleb once said he couldn't stand snails?
"Great snail pie, Mom." Asriel muttered in between frantic bites.
"Eat more slowly, my child." Toriel admonished gently.
Frisk had been obeying her adopted mother's instructions before she even gave them, the sedate pace being caused by her mind being elsewhere. Namely, on Papyrus. She wondered how he was faring. He hadn't been in much of a good mood since-
The house phone rang, and everyone froze for a second before Toriel picked it up. "Hello?"
Frisk couldn't hear what the person on the other end was saying, but it sounded frantic. Toriel lowered the phone from her ear. "Papyrus is missing from his apartment, and nobody can find him. Do you two have any idea where he might be?"
"But he literally doesn't do anything or go anywhere." Asriel's brow crinkled with puzzlement. "All he does is make spaghetti. Where could he-"
Frisk snapped her fingers. "I know where he is." She turned to Toriel. "We'll be back in a few moments."
As the two siblings got up from their chairs and hurried out the door, Asriel asked again, "Where is he?"
Frisk only needed to say one word: "Sans."
Frisk could see Papyrus kneeling there before anything else. The moonlight reflected off of his skull.
"I MISS YOU, BROTHER. EVERYTHING IS SO DULL AND BLEAK WITHOUT YOU..."
Papyrus cleared his throat and dug around in a pocket. "ANYWAY, I BROUGHT YOU SOME KETCHUP. THE SAME KIND AS ALWAYS, BUT THIS IS THE LAST BOTTLE GRILLBY HAD. SO I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE IF I HAVE TO BRING HUMAN KETCHUP NEXT TIME."
They heard the clink as he set it down on hard stone, and a stifled sob.
"WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO, SANS?" Papyrus's voice was muffled. "WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE STAYED HERE WITH US?"
"Papyrus!" Frisk called out, and the skeleton jerked upright. "Papyrus, it's time to go home."
Papyrus nodded, as if he hadn't thought of that, and turned around. "Y...YOU'RE RIGHT, FRISK."
And the three of them walked away, leaving behind the simple headstone marked "Sans," with the one full bottle of ketchup beside it... and the many empty ones scattered around.
The best anybody could figure out was that Sans had been drinking ketchup while he crossed the road and hadn't been paying attention. That much they could infer from the trail of dust with tire marks in it and the half-crushed bottle of ketchup next to it.
After Sans's death, Papyrus had grown more isolated and withdrawn, staying inside the apartment they had shared and making spaghetti, every so often coming down to visit Sans's grave. It was a sharp departure from the fun-loving innocent personality he had had before, to say the least.
Too many of us have died, Frisk thought. But at least I still have Asriel and Mom.
After they delivered Papyrus to his apartment and made sure that he wouldn't burn the apartment block down with his attempts at making spaghetti, Frisk and Asriel headed home. Seeing Papyrus in that state had depressed both of them so much that they went to bed early.
I wish I didn't have to give up my power to reset to save Asriel, Frisk thought as she pulled the covers more tightly around herself. But there's no going back, is there? At least things can only go uphill from here.